CO2 Is Green
In a classic example of how capitalism is literally killing us, television is being bombarded by an ad campaign called Plants Need CO2. Working the modern TV watchers brain, the logic goes something like this: Plants need CO2 . CO2 is good. Those trying to scare you about CO2 are bad. Simple , clean, effective and insane. To Jim Bob Lunchpail, however, this seems to fit in with his vague distrust of all this "global climate change" bullshit and the necessary links are quickly made to gun rights, taxes, Big Government and socialism. Presto.
Going to Source Watch we learn that , SHOCKER, the ads are paid for by CO2 is Green which is a front group for the , get this, Institute for the Study of Earth and Man at Southern Methodist University and whose board chairman is H. Leighton Steward. Lets de-construct this name before moving on. Who starts their name with the first initial? Who prefers "Leighton" over whatever that first initial represents? ( Higby? Hooper?) WTF is up with Leighton? Could Jim Bob and H. Leighton sit down to a "beer summit"? Pabst Blue Ribbon or Heineken?
Any way, of course H. Leighton ( can I just call you H ? ) was formerly the director of Exxon Oil and Gas which now funds the Institute for the Study of Dirt and People along with Shell, Hunt, Lyco and Five States Energy Corp. , all embraced by the quiet, contemplative comfort of Methodist Ministers and their unbelievably boring music. Capitalism actually enlists the sturdy, hard working Methodists in not only their own suicide but the murder of the rest of humanity as well. Goebbels would be impressed, but this is just a coarse, audacious example of what takes place at every level of culture creation and production.
The Yes Men lead the way in creative, effective culture jamming, in resisting the Spectacular vortex of commodified nihilism and cynical manipulation and they have fun doing it. Kesey and the Pranksters tried one variation but ran out of acid. The Diggers found a steadier groove and other agit-prop is out there just waiting to be employed. As soon as I get back from some needed steelhead fishing I'm going to start studying it in depth. Any resources I need?
posted by troutsky @ 8:46 AM
23 comments
23 Comments:
I call foul on your research, troutsky. Koch Petroleum and the Koch brothers have to be in there somewhere.
Another likely suspect is Cleon Skowson and his "The Five Thousand Year Leap".
That's Glenn Beck's handbook and a source of many of the cliches that travel so widely these days.
Guy was an economic adviser in the St. Ronnie Raygun administration and was big on privatizing social security and going back on the gold standard to eliminate the national debt.
The far right's media saturation has been a thing to behold. We can pooh-pooh talk radio but they have radicalized a very vocal portion of the populace.
... and state capitalism is there behind everything. Hell, I wonder how much mischief Koch Industries and Bechtel are involved in. They are huge private industries funding "think tanks" (what a misnomer) everywhere.
Trout,
No one is "Jim Bob Trailerhitch", or any of the stereotype you've strewn all through this post Doing so reinforce whatever the reader thinks you meant as if there was a they that is irretreivably that way and we're not, when you know as well as I do Jim Bob lives in each of us to the same degree fat marbles a rib eye; lazy thinking-half fat, open mind-lean as venison.
Listen to yourself here,
…but this is just a coarse, audacious example of what takes place at every level of culture creation and production"
After more than one put down of my even suggesting what you are suggesting above occurred on 9/11/01. WTF!
Maybe you could use a little navel gazing. ;p
Yodood,
What do you mean no one is "Jim Bob Trailerhitch"? Not even the moms and dads of my soccer team whose house spent the evening in two nights ago that asked me why one of my soccer players was so lazy during practice by asking: "aren't all Mexicans or Spaniards or whatever lazy"? (The player happens to be from Spain and is just lazy!).
Yodood, there are plenty of these people, maybe you need to leave the rez you're living in and come back to the world of milk, honey and spectacle and see for yourself!
Deer-hunting with Jesus is a real thing!
Che,
How convenient for you that everyone absolutely, completely fits whatever you decide they are, its easier to choose sides that way; more impossible to coexist. But then, what other problems could you dedicate you life to so completely you feel justified in preaching to others like they were your bloody students? Perhaps you aught to know a little more about whoever you've decided I am before you begin advising me from your perspective of life how to live mine. That you believe I am a shutin is laughable.
Sorry Death Cultists
The greatest killer of man remains the bug eyed followers of Marx. There are those who try and put a smiley face on the death cult but it remains a proven killer.
Of course the bug eyed fundamentalist power mad zealots will make excuse after excuse.
We shall liberate the masses by starving them to death. Death is an alternative form of liberation.
The Rosenberg's practiced an unusual form of patriotism.
If you commies want to better humanity than adopt Jim Jones as your role model. Jim Jones was a classic commie icon. Practice class
genocide on yourself first.
In all actuality, Reds are far from Greens. The alternative energy is nuclear fission.
Climate change needs can't be met under capitalism. The competition factor, makes green jobs utopian. If one company isn't polluting, their competitor always can. You can't regulate a system, based on its own invisible hand.
Wrong Renegade Testicle
Would you care to look at the actual environmental records of the Soviet Union, China, Cuba and other faux workers paradises? When the State owns the means of production it has zero incentive to regulate itself in any manner.
The environmental movement is a scam by Commies to use an alternative route to power. Plenty of Commies like Joel "Insane" Kovel
call themselves Greens as cover for
their Marxism. A so called Green who has written extensively about
the evils of anti Communism remains a sick joke.
Although it pains me to find myself in frequent agreement with libertarian fantasists and various tycoons of energy-America, the fact is, the science of logic of the Global Warming Crowd (GWC) is just bad. You should take some time to investigate it and leave aside what the NYTimes, and their opponents on the looney right have to say. There's plenty of scientific material out there from people who are severely critical of the science involved.
Just a moment to point out a few troubling facts:
-The sum of arctic and antarctic ice has been increasing. Arctic ice was quite diminished in 1997-8, but is well within "normal" now.
-The north pole has been ice-free many times in past decades, before GWC got going.
-The mean-global-temperature (whatever that is) has been flat or declining for the last ten years depending on what time slice you use. Nobody, not even the GWC, disputes this. The holy computer models did not predict this. Does this not give one pause? They say, it's just a temporary trend, warming will come back with a vengeance, but his is pure religious faith.
-The Hockey Stick has been so discredited, the IPCC no longer features it.
Just stick to the science for once.
Gee Beak, I've found Kovel's critique that capitalism doesn't produce goods to fulfill needs to be pretty relevant.
Sorry you can tame your blind anger to give it a careful read.
Yodood,
Where do you live? Don't you live away from civilization (except your computer)? Don't you live in some kind of off-the-grid style? I am under the impression that you have chosen to live away from much of the madness...that is why I made the leap that you are out of touch...especially if you are expecting anyone who lives among the Jimbobs to take you seriously when you say: "No one is Jimbob Trailerhitch."
Even still, where do you live? In Montucky like us? There are lots of the people like the ones Trout describes. American society is teeming with them. Just read the letters to the editor of the Missoulian (the main newspaper in a supposedly progressive town). These people exist, hold school board positions, vote, stockpile guns, tea-bag protest and parent many a chillingly racist children.
So, back at you! Don't lecture me as though you can speak from where ever it is that you live that these people are not abundant and a serious concern for a just world.
I mean, listen to your own quote below and direct it at yourself. It could be used against you, me, or anyone else here on this blog. We are all speaking from the perspectives we have based on the experiences we have. It's so nihilistic that it's pointless. Reread your own quote and then apply it to the way you are talking to Trout or myself. You're lecturing us too! You're deciding whatever it is we are to fit your own perspective and so on and so on....
Let's get back to work and figure out how we can coexist! We are arguing that there are things that we can't coexist with such as racism, homophobia, sexism, hierarchy, capitalism, etc. And these are the things Trout and I are dealing with in our communities. We are indeed trying to change people (as are you). We find our critique to be self-evident, ethical and just. If you need us to restate our program and debate it's merits, let's do that. But we'd certainly appreciate you put forth your ideas so that we debate them as well.
"How convenient for you that everyone absolutely, completely fits whatever you decide they are, its easier to choose sides that way; more impossible to coexist. But then, what other problems could you dedicate your life to so completely you feel justified in preaching to others like they were your bloody students? Perhaps you aught to know a little more about whoever you've decided I am before you begin advising me from your perspective of life how to live mine. That you believe I am a shutin is laughable."
Yodood,
In your original comment to Trout you left with a very "preachy" and condescending comment: "Maybe you could use a little navel gazing. ;p"
(you even pulled out the emoticon!)
I mean, c'mon! Own this! Be the person you are asking us to be! Maybe you could use a little navel gazing. ;p
Che, My original statement is about considering that your negative stereotypes of Jim Bob et al is extremely lazy thinking and a distraction from the fact that there's a certain degree of JB in all of us —— own that, or be the kind of bigot you accuse.
Sure there are some worse than others, but no one deserves such prejudgment as to be completely painted with the the evil you imagine you see in the worst, none of them are that guilty.
The navel gazing comment was a reply to Troutsky's contorted take on my comment in an earlier post.
@Che Bob:
Is that a pun on chez Bob?
...In Montucky like us? There are lots of the people like the ones Trout describes. American society is teeming with them.
With all due respect to the great high plains states, not all that many people live in Montanna. If everyone in MT were as you say, America would not be "teeming with them" if that were the extent of it. Not a very large sample.
Maybe you should move somewhere more urban where there are likely to be more kinds of people.
Ducky
Kovel is a laughing stock amongst his fellow Professors at Bard. I spoke with two last week who told me they are tired of him making their college look like a joke.
...And I have lived in Connecticut, Utah, California, Colorado, Michigan and Oregon...Montana is not my only sample.
Lichanos, where do you live? What do you do?
Yodood, where do you live? What do you do?
Yodood and Lichanos,
How does Glenn Beck sell so many books? There must be an audience for his insanity.
Oh, Che,
are you another person that thinks Fox news is actually popular rather than being pumped up by the money the hysteria it pumps up is designed to protect? See — there's a little Jim Bob in you right there. Own it. This is not a pipe.
Where do I live? I've been from Greenland to Tierra del Fuego, from Flafstaff to Amsterdam and I live wherever now finds me.
What do I do? Observe people strike out at their worst nightmares personified by anyone who reminds them slightly of such fears, from as far out of their physical harm's way as I can manage, and hold up a mirror at which they also strike. What's it to you? Do you have some sort of approval authority? Let me see YOUR papers.
You're not gonna believe the word varification: grubsin
Yodood,
I teach Spanish, organize with the IWW, advise a student group called Students for Social Economic and Environmental Justice, coach soccer and live in Missoula, MT. I took 12 students to live in a Zapatista community for a month to study languages, racism, power and privilege. I co-direct the National Coalition Building Institute workshops on prejudice reduction and violence prevention in our school. I'm not a chicken shit who cannot answer simple questions without hiding behind obfuscating bullshit like this:
"Where do I live? I've been from Greenland to Tierra del Fuego, from Flafstaff to Amsterdam and I live wherever now finds me.
What do I do? Observe people strike out at their worst nightmares personified by anyone who reminds them slightly of such fears, from as far out of their physical harm's way as I can manage, and hold up a mirror at which they also strike. What's it to you? Do you have some sort of approval authority?"
I'm actually engaged and involved in my community. I go out with other worried and concerned community members door-to-door to listen. This is called the Missoula Listening Project, i.e. we listen to people right where they are and when they are. We listen to their racism, bigotry and hate. We listen and then ask how we should move forward.
We are actually creating dialogue with racist fucks that actually do exist everywhere. Your bullshit is so thick it's pathetic. You offer nothing in the way of solutions just criticism for those of us that are actually trying to connect an isolated and atomized world...which if you had your way would become more so!
If you are wondering if Trout or myself are capable of seeing or admitting to having any of Jimbob shortcomings, well I can speak for myself and say that that is a huge affirmative. But as you said yourself, "sure there are some worse than others." So what should we do about those of us who are worst? And how does that change the reality that they exist (in abundance) and pose a serious threat to social justice? There is work to be done and it begins by shifting attitudes about race, religion, class, sexual orientation, etc.
More importantly, we are working up here to end capitalism that we believe is a reason so much ignorance and bigotry persists.
What is your solution to dealing Jimbob Trailerhitch?
Go back to the comment I wrote earlier and try to answer any of it with some honesty and transparency.
Well, gee, Che. I guess you've nailed me. I'm just a chickenshit that has no intention of further discussion with someone so expert on and so full of his own self-righteous holier-than-thou mission in life bullshit there doesn't seem to be room to respect anything or anyone else no matter how much you claim to listen. This series of your oh, so sympathetic comments shows that to be your self delusion. If you don't mind, would you please sign your posts here at thoughtstreaming from now on so I'll have an indication which ones can bear comment without attacking an allied messenger.
Where do I live, what do I do?
I live and work here:
http://iamyouasheisme.wordpress.com/2009/01/24/la-vie-quotidienne/
Raised in CA, but been an east coast person for years. I am an engineer, and most of my career has involved water quality/environmental issues.
As for Glenn Beck and his ilk, yes, they have an audience. It's a big country, 300 million. Even if only 5% of the people like him, that's a LOT of people. I'm not sure that they are evenly distributed throughout. Perhaps MT has a nice cluster of them.
Why does Beck sell so many books?
1. He does have a dedicated audience.
2. Bulk buys. A lot of the wholesale buys are remaindered.
Beck serves a lot of the same crew that was following Cleon Skowson and other Mormon end timers.
Lichanos:
THANK YOU! Thank you for the courage to be more transparent. It's easy to be vituperative when we don't know each other. It's like there is some contrary and unreasonable voice with no history, no background saying this and that about whatever. Very nice to meet you.
I seriously doubt the "5%" estimate and think it is still higher based on his book sales, TV and radio ratings, but I really appreciate your reasonable and rational response. It was nice to hear a concession that what Trout and I experience is not irrelevant nor unreal.
However, it wasn't just school districts in Montana and Texas, but Colorado, California, Utah, Arizona, Idaho, Washington, Illinois, Minnesota, Missouri, Florida, Virginia and Wisconsin that wouldn't show Obama's 18-minute "pep talk" to students to stay in school, study hard and stay off drugs.
What about Minutemen, Tea-baggers, and all of these countless others?
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