Even with the addition of computer hacking as a reason to bomb someone off the planet, we don't have enough casi belli to keep our perpetual war machine in top form.
Here are a few more acts the Pentagon might use as reasons to wage war:
Flatulism. As Vice-Adm. Gaylord Billy Lee Dunkle, who is in charge of training Navy Seals at a secret base, put it recently: "You ever smelt a Ayrab fart? Wouldn't take too many of 'em to wipe out an entire Merkin city." Far fetched? Not to the Innuit, in whose mythology Matshiskapeu (Fart Man) is a powerful spirit, a Shaman capable of inflicting great pain on humans.
Granted, flatulism can be harmless: St. Augustine, in City of God, spoke approvingly of performers who had "such command of their bowels that they can break wind continuously and at will, so as to produce the effect of singing."
To assure that only terrorist flatulists, who hate us because we have freedom, become targets of war, the Pentagon could make a distinction between "siffleton et bumbulum" (musical farting) and the really, really stinky kind that can cause human beings to suffocate.
Dirty Fingernails. As the WikiLeaks documents demonstrated, our intelligence has verified that Muslims, particularly in the Middle East, are prone to maintaining very dirty fingernails. "Lord knows what kind of killer germs they could have in there," one diplomatic cable said.
Picture hundreds of Muslim terrorists spreading out across the country, dirty fingernails laced with lethal germs, and getting jobs as waiters. And you thought Swine Flu was scary?
Collecting Pornography. Osama bin Laden did this. Enough said.
Francophilia. War is the next step beyond "Freedom Fries." In fact wouldn't it be a good idea to kidnap all the really good French chefs, press them into service cooking for Our Troops, and then bomb the rest of the dam' Frogs off the face of the earth?
Nuclear Disaffection. Germany is going to entirely quit making nuclear energy by 2022. Didn't the Krauts learn anything from two World Wars?
Calling Soccer "Football." Since every country in the world except the United States does it, this would give the Pentagon absolute license to make war on any other country in the world without so much as an "if you please."
Who needs War Powers Acts and Constitutional restraints? Bomb! Kill! Make the world safe for Democracy!
"Don't tell Momma I'm a journalist; say I play the piano in a whorehouse."
Tuesday, May 31, 2011
Did Anyone Bother to Save Noah's Blueprints?
Like all mothers confronting errant, defiant children, Earth is punishing us. And the worst is yet to come.
Here in southern New Mexico, we've gone more than 100 days without rain. The winds came earlier, blew harder and are hanging around longer than any year in memory of most locals.
"Our respiratory systems weren't made to breathe dirt," a doctor friend said the other day when gusts over 40 mph called off our tennis session.
"Wait till 'monsoon season,'" I replied. "We're going to get a 200-year-rain and it'll wash everything, including us, down the arroyo to the Rio Grande." I was only half-joking.
Five years ago we had a "100-year rain." Lots of flood damage. The next year we had another, worse rain. We spent $20,000 repairing the damage to our own house and grounds.
Yet Nature is treating us kindly in comparison with other parts of the world. An epic wave of deadly tornadoes in the central United States. Wildfires in New Mexico, Texas, California and Oklahoma. Massive flooding in the Mississippi River valley, in Australia, in New Zealand, China and Pakistan.
Extreme weather. "Freak" weather? No: it's exactly what all the climate science models predicted: a proliferation of extreme weather events. Climate chaos. The third law of thermodynamics -- entropy -- on steroids.
We're killing the food in the oceans. We're melting the polar ice caps. Grain harvests have failed in Russia, China, Australia and Texas. Farmers in the midwest can't plant grain because their flood-ravaged fields are too wet. This in a world where a fifth of the population already couldn't afford adequate nutrition.
Just a run of bad luck? No, all these bad things are happening because greenhouse gas emissions increased by a record amount last year, to the highest carbon output in history, according to the International Energy Agency. The planet has already warmed by one degree celsius; if it warms by more than another degree, scientists say it will be difficult to sustain human life on most of the globe. Coastal cities, islands, perhaps even entire small countries will be submerged. Massive human migrations will take place. "It is becoming extremely challenging to remain below 2 degrees," Faith Birol, chief economist for the IEA, told the Guardian UK. "The prospect is getting bleaker. That is what the numbers say."
Bill McKibben, one of the first prophets of climate change, says the killer second degree of warming is "already in the pipeline." The year of record carbon emissions just ended, heaped on the emissions in the years immediately preceding it, means that warming energy temporarily stored in the oceans soon will escape to warm the entire envelope of life-sustaining atmosphere around the planet.
This is happening much faster than even the most dire climate change scenarios predicted.
Our government, our political leaders, and particularly our most profitable corporations, have sneered at climate change. In fact, the planet-raping profiteers have financed a massive fog of pseudoscientific nonsense to persuade us that we can adapt to whatever is happening.
Somebody build an Ark. Quickly.
Here in southern New Mexico, we've gone more than 100 days without rain. The winds came earlier, blew harder and are hanging around longer than any year in memory of most locals.
"Our respiratory systems weren't made to breathe dirt," a doctor friend said the other day when gusts over 40 mph called off our tennis session.
"Wait till 'monsoon season,'" I replied. "We're going to get a 200-year-rain and it'll wash everything, including us, down the arroyo to the Rio Grande." I was only half-joking.
Five years ago we had a "100-year rain." Lots of flood damage. The next year we had another, worse rain. We spent $20,000 repairing the damage to our own house and grounds.
Yet Nature is treating us kindly in comparison with other parts of the world. An epic wave of deadly tornadoes in the central United States. Wildfires in New Mexico, Texas, California and Oklahoma. Massive flooding in the Mississippi River valley, in Australia, in New Zealand, China and Pakistan.
Extreme weather. "Freak" weather? No: it's exactly what all the climate science models predicted: a proliferation of extreme weather events. Climate chaos. The third law of thermodynamics -- entropy -- on steroids.
We're killing the food in the oceans. We're melting the polar ice caps. Grain harvests have failed in Russia, China, Australia and Texas. Farmers in the midwest can't plant grain because their flood-ravaged fields are too wet. This in a world where a fifth of the population already couldn't afford adequate nutrition.
Just a run of bad luck? No, all these bad things are happening because greenhouse gas emissions increased by a record amount last year, to the highest carbon output in history, according to the International Energy Agency. The planet has already warmed by one degree celsius; if it warms by more than another degree, scientists say it will be difficult to sustain human life on most of the globe. Coastal cities, islands, perhaps even entire small countries will be submerged. Massive human migrations will take place. "It is becoming extremely challenging to remain below 2 degrees," Faith Birol, chief economist for the IEA, told the Guardian UK. "The prospect is getting bleaker. That is what the numbers say."
Bill McKibben, one of the first prophets of climate change, says the killer second degree of warming is "already in the pipeline." The year of record carbon emissions just ended, heaped on the emissions in the years immediately preceding it, means that warming energy temporarily stored in the oceans soon will escape to warm the entire envelope of life-sustaining atmosphere around the planet.
This is happening much faster than even the most dire climate change scenarios predicted.
Our government, our political leaders, and particularly our most profitable corporations, have sneered at climate change. In fact, the planet-raping profiteers have financed a massive fog of pseudoscientific nonsense to persuade us that we can adapt to whatever is happening.
Somebody build an Ark. Quickly.
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