posted 02-28-2004 12:06 PM            

By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist

Today's question: What do you get when more than 60 of the world's top scientists, 20 Nobel Laureates among them, get together and write one of the most scathing, damning reports in the history of modern science, aimed squarely at BushCo's thoroughly atrocious record of cover-ups and obfuscations and outright lies regarding the health of the planet?

What do you get when those very scientists, a highly respected, nonpartisan group called the Union of Concerned Scientists, go on to claim that no other president in modern history has so openly misled the public or been so flagrantly disrespectful of scientific fact and mountains of irrefutable research, deliberately and systematically mutilating scientific data in the service of its rather brutal, pro-corporate, antienvironment agenda?

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/19/politics/19RESE.html?ex=1078640694&ei=1&en=df86 4bb1019b1e5b

If you answered, "Why, you get even more painful polyps of sadness and disgust on your soul due to the BushCo onslaught," consider yourself among the millions who are right now rather horrified and appalled and who are wondering just what sort of human -- not what sort of politician, mind you, not what sort of power broker, not what sort of failed Texas oilman corporate lackey -- but what sort of human being you have to be to enact such insidious ongoing planet-gouging legislation, smirking and shrugging all the way.

It is not an easy one to answer, as you can only wonder what has gone so horribly wrong, what sort of line has been crossed so that not even the basic dignity of the planet, not even a modicum of respect for it, is the slightest factor anymore in modern American right-wing politics. What, too extreme? Hardly.

The story about the scientist's report is here:
http://www.wired.com/news/medtech/0,1286,62339,00.html?tw=wn_tophead_2

It was broadcast over many major media channels, somewhat loud and mostly clear, though most media was far more eager to bury it under all those more hotly controversial pics of happy gay people smooching on the steps of S.F.'s city hall than they were to trumpet the dire claims of a bunch of boring genius scientists.

Such is the national priority. After all, no one wants to hear how badly we've been duped by this administration, again. Given the nonexistent WMDs and the complete lack of Iraqi nukes and the bogus wars and manufactured fear and a galling budget deficit and nearly 3 million lost jobs and a raft of BushCo lies so thick you need a jackhammer to see some light, no one wants to know that even the world's top scientists are disgusted with our nation's leadership.

We can, after all, take only so much abuse, can be only so karmically and ideologically hammered, before we become so utterly exhausted that we just stop caring.

And, in fact, BushCo would love nothing more than to cripple our outrage and deflect attention away from all the dead U.S. soldiers in Iraq and his overall atrocious record on the war, jobs, the environment and foreign policy, and center it all on divisive issues of God-centric moral righteousness, like all those sicko gay people trying to dignify their sinful love.

This is a president, after all, who truly believes he is doing God's will by turning this country into the most lawless, internationally loathed aggressor on the planet, something I'm sure is very reassuring to those countless thousands of dead Iraqi civilians.

Does it really matter anymore? After all, as any child can tell you, politics has always been a wildly corrupt and slimy profession, valued somewhere between professional wrestler and professional baby-seal clubber on the moral and spiritual scale o' delicious karmic significance.

And, yes, it must be noted that there isn't a U.S. president on record who hasn't somehow deliberately mangled scientific data and covered up important reports during his term in order to further favored policies. Goes almost without saying.

But, as the Union of Concerned Scientists point out, never has the oppression of fact been so systematic, so widespread, so repulsive as that which Bush has wrought. Never has the abuse been so flagrant, the border marking what's morally acceptable so shamelessly crossed.

Maybe you don't believe the hippie environmentalists who are always spouting off about saving the whales and protecting the forests. Maybe you like to hiss at and dismiss, say, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s outstanding, powerfully researched articles in the recent issue of Rolling Stone and the latest issue of The Nation that carefully delineate just how Bush's enviro record is the worst in history, and call Kennedy just another typical left-wing liberal. You wish to be that small and boorish? Fine.

Not so easy, however, to dismiss a small army of nonpartisan, internationally respected scientists as just more agenda-thick political BS, as BushCo has done. To do so reeks of something far beyond mere name calling and dumb party maneuvering. It reeks of sheer heartlessness regarding the planet. It reeks of abuse. It reeks of hate.

This, then, is the gist of the BushCo attack on the planet: a hate crime. An intentional, ferocious dismantling of protections and guidelines, a view that Mother Nature is nothing but a cheap resource to be exploited, a giant oil can to be suckled, a hunk of toilet paper for Dick Cheney to -- well, let's not imagine.

Look at it this way. It's like music videos. Over and over again, endless droning shots of gyrating sweating booty-pumping faux-sexy bodies pretending to writhe in bogus orgasmic bliss, video after video and hour after hour where you watch and watch and go slowly numb and say, Jesus with a skimpy thong and a spray bottle of baby oil, how much further can they go?

How much more naked and sexist and overblown and abusive can they get before they say oh screw it and just strip down and have sex with a live chicken as 50 Cent downs a bottle of Crystal and grins maniacally?

This is like the saturation level of BushCo. Something's gotta give, you say. Surely some sort of ugly orgiastic critical mass has been reached wherein Bush and his planet-reaming policies simply cannot go any further without some sort of meltdown, some sort of massive international cosmic recoil whereby we finally see the Bush admin for what it is, quite possibly the most self-serving, egomaniacal cluster of enviro thugs in modern history.

But with the Union of Concerned Scientists report, this sentiment goes one step further -- this is not just hate for the planet, not merely a blatant right-wing revulsion for those much-loathed intangible New Age-y touchstones like earthly vibration, energy, true spiritual connection and a deep veneration and sense of profound awe for the raw divinity of nature.

This is more sinister, and more disturbing. BushCo's ugly rejection of not merely the "liberal" environmental politicking but also of the factual science of the natural world is, ultimately, a form of self-loathing.

It is a snide and self-destructive rejection of the human-nature connection, of the very real and very direct correlation between how we treat our world and how we view ourselves, between what we choose to celebrate/annihilate in nature and what we venerate/devastate in own spirits. After all, the less regard you have for one, the less you care about the other. Simple, really.

Look. We reflect the planet. The planet reflects us. And 60 out of 60 scientists agree: BushCo's time of reflecting nothing but cruel blackness and abuse needs to come to an end, right now.

*****************************************

posted 02-28-2004 01:23 PM            

I had written a response including Huffington's article link, but it was erased -- said my password was wrong! UGH!

Hope you can provide that Huffington article link. I read her article. I love Huffington BTW, have her book "How to Overthrow the Government" -- excellent columnist and great thinker with sarcastic wit at times!

I thought Karen Kwiatkowski would have something to say about that Pentagon announcement, but as yet she hasn't posted an article on it, so I wrote her:

Dear Karen,

First of all I want to congratulate you on your columns for their style, their wit, their historical and factual significance, and your motivating adherence to truth!!! Bravo! Huffington just wrote an article about the Pentagon announcement and documents related to global warming and I and many would so love to read your "take" on the matter.

Know that many of us, here in the states and around the globe, are aware of the particulate spraying occurring through DOD special ops, commonly called "chemtrails," This directly and definitively relates to the global warming controversy and points to the administration's knowledge and acceptance of it at one level, while continuing to give the offending polluting corporations free reign and a green light with no consequences. As though just spraying the atmosphere is all you need to stop pollution! If you want proof of our awareness go to:
http://www.chemtrailcentral.com http://www.carnicom.com

These are only two of many sites. At the same time this administration has balked and refused participation in fossil fuel independence and environmental controls of various corporations, the secret solutions to global warming have been ongoing around the world. Why such secrecy? Well, of course the wealth of the oil companies is important to this administration and possibly to the economy, but the spraying needs to be openly addressed. We're also aware of the other prongs of this particulate spraying which involve DOD funding under the defense appropriations and thus a national security priority. But under these programs, the fossil fuel mitigation program is not the only agenda. Weather manipulation for war field, catastrophic weather avoidance, as well as possible uses to influence weather of other countries as a weapon -- we know is being studied. Under the communications area, experiments are under way using the sprayed particulate matter to enhance global communications for submarines and kinds of radar using satellites as well as the experiments involving HAARP. Many legitimate Air Force and Navy documents referencing such goals and experiments are in the public domain for weather control as well as communications. The other more dark experiments include bio-research for population innoculation and other secretive projects. But the overarching alarm this creates in the populations living under these various projects is the secrecy itself. Now we can understand the reasons for defense weaponry and heating the atmosphere with the HAARP arrays and such as these advanced weapon systems seem more benign than the nuclear type weapons, but we wonder if the experimentation itself is upsetting the electro/magnetic balance of our planet itself. Books have been written on the subject, one in particular "Angels Don't Play This HAARP: Advances in Tesla Technology" www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0964881209 by Nick Begich and Jeanne Manning. Here's an article relating to this book: http://www.nexusmagazine.com/HAARP.html . Other implications of this new technology involve low frequency waves and mind control experiments of certain kinds. All in all, the secret ops involving particulate spraying from the atmopheric cleaning to the other arenas mentioned simply point to a national defense system that for many, has outstripped its ethical and spiritual groundedness.

As we look back to the early experimentations with nuclear weaponry, we see that mistakes were made even back then. People were harmed through the various experiments and many innocents killed because of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And one could say that the nuclear detterent effect worked, but where has it gotten us as a planet? Now we have to worry about rogue countries and unstable religious fanatic leaders getting nuclear bombs and materials and using them. And speaking of religious fanatics, I find this administration with its disrespect of our Constitution and it's holier than thou attitude and Biblical quoting verging on the very kind of theocracy -- with advanced weaponry --that many of us citizens fear from other arenas! Did you know a bill is in Congress right now to further this Biblical agenda? http://www.yuricareport.com/Dominionism/TheDespoilingOfAmerica.htm

Dominionists in Congress
have placed the Constitution
Restoration Act of 2004
before both Houses of
Congress. In an attempt
to control the judicary.

Karen, like William Rivers Pitt and Greg Palast and other journalists, you are gaining a readership that so many value as TRUTH in an administration that disregards and trashes the meaning of the word. The neocon agenda, as you well know, values power, control, and fear more than compassionate democracy, world cooperation, and hope!

Please write on this latest Pentagon announcement referring to global warming and weather changes. If you do some research, you can find that Woods Hole Oceanographic reports that such drastic climate changes have actually happened before in evidence through core samples. Indeed, it may be the sun itself that stimulates these cycles, so not all may be as it seems. The world could come together on this, rather than disunite and become even more chaotic than it is already.

Thank you for your great contributions to our democracy and freedom!

Peace,

(me-edited out), former teacher, English Lit. degree, mother, wife -- Colorado

http://lewrockwell.com

Find Kwiatkowski and her archives on LewRockwell!

Will post her article when it comes up!

bc

posted 02-29-2004 10:49 AM            

But did you see Jay Reynolds' response to my posting. And note that I am not able to reply to it.

The message that comes up is:

'You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot vote in polls in this forum'

Can you see if you can post a comment there yourself, BC, so that we can find out if I am the only one who is being blocked.

posted 03-01-2004 06:44 PM            

So if you're talking about that other board, I don't know. OK?

Best,

posted 03-01-2004 06:51 PM            

Keep posting and give Arianna a list of links!

I'll find some for you, too!

Hang in there, OK? You're doing good work!

posted 03-01-2004 09:01 PM            

That is the approach that we have used here in Greece, and it has had some success.

Can the chemtrails group in Santa Cruz adopt such an approach? I am trying to persuade them to do so.