a peaceful and nuclear-free future...

Just a quick rant, its waaay too late and I should be writing essays instead of blogs...
Procrastination Nation...
Yeah so...
An interesting article by Geoffrey Garrett over at The National Times today..

The debate over climate change reform has reached the US senate. The bill that has already passed congress is expected to be highly ammended before it passes the senate. Some of  the proposed changes to the current bill, which is supposedly quite green, seem to be designed to ensure the bill isn't so radical and revolutionary that it will cause panic amongst big business. As I've written about before, I worry that Obama is opening himself up to propaganda attack from conservative America by being quite so open about his more left-centric political rhetoric and policy decisions. As Garrett's article points out, reform policy such as the health care bill, put forward by the administration and passed by the overwhelmingly democrat, Obama-loving house of congress are being toned down and tempered by ammendments put forward by the less-left senate. Maybe having a leader with strong ideologies being kept in check with the political mainstream by a moderate senate is a good thing...

As I was saying, some of the changes being championed by, amongst others, former presidential candidate John Kerry seem to be aimed at tempering the bill as to avoid too much of an ideological backlash from the right. Although some of the taxes and tarrif changes will probably make it more difficult to significantly encourage big polluters to reduce emissions, in the real world of politcal game-playing they may be a necessary evil. The Rudd government took a similarly frustrating but possibly politically unavoidable option when they offered up big compensation dollars to Australia's dirtiest polluters as part of the emissions trading scheme legislation...
BUT....
As you can see, it is a pretty big but...
As well as changes to tarrifs and the ugly probability of America not submitting itself to binding emissions cuts anytime soon, Kerry and his cohorts are advocating nuclear power as a key factor in combatting emissions.

"nuclear power needs to be a core component of electricity generation if we are to meet our emission reduction targets" - John Kerry

Two words...
FUCK. THAT.
This announcement immediatly brought to mind a Quarterly Essay I read a couple of years ago before attention-span crippling internet addiction began to destroy my capability to read anything on paper longer than ten pages. A severely abridged version of the 25,000+ word essay can be found here. The QE, titled "Climate Change and the Nuclear Option", was written by one of Australia's leading commentators on science and the environment, the current professor of science, technology and society at Griffith University and all round really-smart guy Ian Lowe. The dude has a PhD in Physics alright kids? As well as a compelling range of others, these are the main reasons Lowe denounces nuclear power as a solution for climate change:
1. There is still no proven way of safely storing nuclear waste created by the nuclear power process.
2. Nuclear power stations are still imperfect in design and susceptible to catastrophic nuclear meltdowns.
3. Nucear power stations are a prime target for terrorists, the consequences of an attack would be immense.
4. It is still common practise for countries to either use or sell excess uranium for the purpose of making nuclear weapons.
5. The economic and carbon emission costs of effectively building nuclear power facilities to replace coal and gas generated electricity would have severely negative ramifictions for both the economy and the environment.
6. Renewable enrergy sources such a solar, wind, and geo-thermal enrgies are more econimically feasible, safe, and environmentally friendly.

These are admittedly brief and simplified surmations of the problems outlined by Lowe, the essay goes into the nitty gritty details of each...  but yeah you get the drift...

Uranium is dodgy shit.
Hiroshima.
Chernobyl.
Leave it in the ground.
Spend money on safe renewable energies.
Covering a large section of the Australian desert in solar panels would generate enough energy to power a large percentage of the world's energy grid. The only thinng holding society back from progressing away from environmentally dangerous and harmful energy sources is the cost, and nuclear energy is, according to Lowe, at least equally, but more likely even more expensive, than renewable energy sources.

Nuclear power as a solution to climate change, he argues convincingly, is like ADVOCATING SMOKING AS A CURE FOR OBESITY. Yeah, it might work for a little while, but even during that little while it will be incredibly expensive and polluting. After that little while, there there is such a broad range of life-threatening health risks involved that you're almost certainly fucked. And although I suck down a hundred of the cancer-canes a minute, I know it is eventually going to kill me and I don't suggest the whole world should smoke. Nor would I suggest to a fat person that they become addicted to ciggies in an effort to lose weight. The US senate should take the same stance on Nuclear Energy as a solution for global warming.

Wow. That rant didn't turn out so quick. Oh well.

**********

ban the bomb...

I know I never write about anything but Obama...

but...

On Friday, the UN adopted a resolution that aims to rid the world of nuclear arms within our lifetime:

"a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought...no matter how great the obstacles may seem, we must never stop our efforts to reduce the weapons of war...we must never stop until we see the day when nuclear arms have been banished from the face of the earth. That is our task. That can be our destiny." - President Obama addressing the UN Security Council - 25th Sep. 2009.

WOW.

I'm still worried that Obama is jerking his shitty American-made car so suddenly towards the left-hand lane that the oncoming right-wing traffic that still careers along the status-quo side of the road is going to obliterate his administration in a nasty head-on propaganda incident... But rhetoric like that is just too inspiring to get negative about. The resolution was passed unanimoussly by the UN Security Council.

Total nuclear disarmament is a notion that would have been beyond the wildest realms of possibility during the cold war, or even during the years of the Bush administration. We can only hope and pray that world leaders have the sense to diplomatically negotiate practical strategies for stockpile reduction and disarmament. When hell freezes over with a nuclear winter you say? You're probably right, but talk like this is a serious step in the direction of hope.

THEY SAY:
BAN THE BOMBS,
NO MORE NUKES,
MAKE LOVE NOT WAR.
YOU SAY:
HEY WAR-WHORES,
FUCK YOUR GUNS,
YOU CUNTS SHOOT BLANKS.
I SAY:
BONGS ARE BETTER THAN BULLETS,
DROP BEATS NOT BOMBS,
MAKE CURRIED SAUSAGES, NOT WAR.

horribly exciting/worrying words...

obama on letterman last night...

check out the rest of the interview, it is all over youtube...

As you may have already noticed, the mention of obama kinda gives me a boner. I don't truly believe that he is going to change the world anywhere near the amount that it needs to change in order for to the human race to feel okay about the way we conduct ourselves. The system will still be the system. I just feel that he may steer the system in a slightly more humane direction.

It's amazing to see an American leader who, at least at face value, seems to care about the plight and suffering of the "lower" echelons of American society. Hearing an American president denounce Washington's obesession with maintaining the status quo; stating that "the status quo is unacceptable", and that "I will not accept the status quo as a solution", is pretty exciting stuff.

Much of the rhetoric Obama espoused on Letterman was ideologically driven; there was alot of talk of "the left", "the centre-left", the "centre-right", and so on. The above quotes signalling his intent to create "change" came as a defence of his "socialist" healthcare reforms. He certainly doesn't seem to be afraid of aligning himself with the liberal, humanist ideologies of "the left".

While all this talk of steering the ship to the left may seem to be a reason for the liberally minded population to celebrate, I'm not sure that it is the sanest political philosophy.

As Bush demonstrated, the American electorate is massively susceptible to a good old fashioned political scare campaign, and as I have written before, the conservatives are already beggining to paint Obama as a communist who is going to steal from the rich and eat their babies.

In addition to the healthcare reforms, the administration is changing the way it deals with national defence policy. Where previously America has generally adopted the ideology of force-and-threats-over-diplomacy, Obama is attempting to push a far more negotiations-based approach for America's influence in the sphere of international diplomatic relations.

The administration last week took a drastic diplomatic measure of scrapping plans for a missle defence system that was planned for construction in eastern Europe, pretty much on Russia's doorstep. The Russian's were massively agrravated by the plans, which were supposedly designed to protect the western world from missile attack from rogue states such as Iran and North Korea.

In another more rationally-minded parallel dimension, this might be seen as an effort to reduce the perception of America as an overly-aggressive nation of war-mongers in the international consciousness.

But on this planet..

Withdrawing plans to build so-called "national defence" sytems, especially after being pressured by Russia to do so, seems to me to be giving the conservatives perfect ammunition to carpet bomb the American public with "Obama is a weakling and a communist" propaganda.

Schwarzenegger-Palin 2012?

********

Bonus Bush:

********

UPDATE 24/09/09:
I woke up this morning to find this article; apparently Obama is deadly serious about eliminating the threat of nuclear war: 

"Obama has this week demanded that the Pentagon conduct a radical review of the US nuclear weapons doctrine with the explicit aim of slashing its nuclear arsenal. The President rejected the first draft of the Pentagon's Nuclear Posture Review on the grounds that it was too timid in advancing his aim of eventually ridding the world of nuclear weapons."

Again, Obama is expressing some amazing ambitions, but is he professing too much peace-and-love too soon to an American people who surely still uphold a passion for guns, xenophobia, and holy-wars? The world hasn't changed that drastically with the election of a black president has it? Obama  seems to hang his hat on the fact that he was elected in the first place as sign that the times they are a-changin'. As his plummeting approval rate amongst the wealthy white population seems to indicate, it won't take very much for the American public to swing back very hard in the direction of a conservative political doctrine if they fear for their money and national security... 

obama get raw with his wall street niggaz...

Obama's speech to a congregation of politicians and wall street sharks on the first anniversary of the collapse of thee Lehman Brothers and the beginning of the stock market crash:
http://www.crikey.com.au/2009/09/15/obama-lays-into-wall-st/

"there are some in the financial industry who are misreading this moment.  Instead of learning the lessons of Lehman and the crisis from which we’re still recovering, they’re choosing to ignore those lessons.  I’m convinced they do so not just at their own peril, but at our nation’s.  So I want everybody here to hear my words:  We will not go back to the days of reckless behavior and unchecked excess that was at the heart of this crisis, where too many were motivated only by the appetite for quick kills and bloated bonuses.  Those on Wall Street cannot resume taking risks without regard for consequences"

Ohhhh sheeet. Oh yes he did. You go girlfriend. Tell those greedy-arse blood thirsty American Psychos what's what and if they step out of line pull out yo piece and pop a cap in their over-bloated piggy banks. Then retire back to the back yard of the White Cribb for a BBQ and to shoot hoops at your bad-ass street-ball setup that you knocked up in place of Georgie Dubya's white trash bowling alley. You da man. Pity you still either believe or pretend to believe in the free market and global capitalism. Oh well, pobody's nerfect I suppose.

bonus drinken em' at the nicks game pic:

Kill the rich, indeed...

If only that was his real campaign poster. HAHA.

http://www.theage.com.au/world/thousands-rally-against-obama-government-20090913-flws.html

I know I'm on the same "what the fuck is wrong with americans?" tangent as the other day but...
I'm finding it infuriating that both the Obama administration and Rudd government have had to spend half of the week fending off accusations of having "socialist" or "left-centric" political ideologies.


Obama attempts to reform America's ailing health system and gets depicted by the christian right as the second coming of Che Guevara. "He is a traitor. He's either a Marxist or a Communist and we're not. He's totally un-American," Ms Calzone said." These rednecks obviously don't have even the slightest semblance of understanding of the policy being debated. They know only that Obama is trying to steal their hard-inherited fortunes and dole it out to disgusting poor people like one of those damn commies their uncle's love to talk about shooting.

Wayne Swann talks bank regulation in question time, so Joe Hockey jumps on his iPhone mid-sitting to conspire with the twitterverse about the left-leaning nature of the majority of finance ministers at the G20 summit. Rudd is forced to spend the majority of the next day in the house waxing some hard-style empty political rhetoric about his government's fresh and factionless core and denouncing Howard era "neo-liberalism" in an attempt to stamp out any potential ideological fear campaign from the opposition.

For fuck's sake. Debate the issues; your ideologies are all fucked regardless.

Apparently Rudd may be considering re-introducing the bill to means test the private healthcare rebate to parliament in December in an attempt to force a double-dissolution election.... It seems that "socialist" health care reforms are going to be front and centre of both American and Australian politics for some time to come...

wising up to the ways of white america

http://www.theage.com.au/world/obama-honeymoon-over-as-loyal-supporters-lose-heart-20090907-feby.html

This was a horrible article to read to begin my day. Obama's approval rating with white Americans is dropping like um's and ah's from George Bush's donkey-with-down syndrome mouth. Fast and furious. The percentage of the population that he managed to persuade to vote for a black man even though they didn't really want to has pretty much turned the page and realise the folly of their ways. They knew in their hearts that Bush was a bad-man (not BATMAN) and America needed real "change". Obama screamed that word loud enough and long enough that eventually they caved in and voted for something different even though they had no idea what the change would entail. They just knew they wanted something else. Now that he is trying to cure America's sick and sadistic health care system and reform the unfair elitist education system, the conservatives all scream "socialist" and every cookie-cutter-white-bread Miss and Mr. Americana jump of the bandwagon kicking and screaming and clutching their dollars. I wish he was a real socialist and I wish the American people would let him act like one so that the world could be at the very least a slightly less fucked up place. I wrote this after he was elected:

The gears of war,
on the evening news,
seem to be grinding down,
through a few of their teeth.
Still no hope of a decent world,
but are we seeing glimmers,
of a slightly better style?
The problem will be on the flipside.
Be it one, two, or three,
what will follow is what frightens me.
Will the successor represent,
the pendulum-axe of the reactionary people?
Will every positive action,
have its future cousin reaction of evil?
I hope for the first time,
what goes up,
will keep rising.
Believing in breaking the laws of physics,
isn't my style,
but for some reason,
I can't help but hold hope.
Holding out hope for the future,
is different to religion right?

Fail. I was wrong. The world is fucked.
Unfuck the world!

Apathy is easy,
resistance is futile,
change is impossible,
hope is useless,
while money is power,
and hegemony dominates.
FUCK.