Domain: chris-floyd.com
Stories and comments across the archive that link to chris-floyd.com.
Comments · 9
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Ironic, not Irrelevant
http://www.chris-floyd.com/component/content/article/1-latest-news/1937-unnatural-acts-breaking-the-fever-of-militarism.html#comment-2450
"Military robots like drones are ironic because they are created essentially to force humans to work like robots in an industrialized social order. Why not just create industrial robots to do the work instead? Likewise, nuclear weapons are ironic because they are about using space age systems to fight over oil and land. Why not just use advanced materials as found in nuclear missiles to make renewable energy sources (like windmills or solar panels) to replace oil, or why not use rocketry to move into space by building space habitats for more land? " -
The irony of 21st century militarism
"Neither party is wrong" perhaps but both are ironic: http://www.chris-floyd.com/component/content/article/1-latest-news/1937-unnatural-acts-breaking-the-fever-of-militarism.html (see my comment there on irony).
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Ironic -- this tech could bring abundance for all
I wrote on this elsewhere: "Recognizing irony is key to transcending militarism"
http://www.chris-floyd.com/component/content/article/1-latest-news/1937-unnatural-acts-breaking-the-fever-of-militarism.html#comment-2450
and:
"It's the unrecognized irony that kills you..."
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1590182&cid=31561028
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It is ironic that the technology that goes into such a missile, from the computers and materials to the social networks that plan and test such things could instead bring abundance to everyone in the world. Yet people still build such things from a scarcity-based mindset, not recognizing the total irony. The tools of abundance all around us now (robotics, computers, networks, biotech, chemistry, nanontech, nuclear technology, and so on) are so powerful -- we will destroy ourselves if we use them from a scarcity mindset. If used from an abundance mindset, we could instead make the world into a much happier place.
As Albert Einstein said, "The release of atom power has changed everything except our way of thinking...the solution to this problem lies in the heart of mankind."
We need to change our hearts towards providing abundance for all, before we all die of the unrecognized irony.
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Alternative security: sustainable and resilient
To echo your point on religion, here is another thing Albert Einstein wrote:
http://www.sacred-texts.com/aor/einstein/einsci.htm
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For the scientific method can teach us nothing else beyond how facts are related to, and conditioned by, each other. The aspiration toward such objective knowledge belongs to the highest of which man is capabIe, and you will certainly not suspect me of wishing to belittle the achievements and the heroic efforts of man in this sphere. Yet it is equally clear that knowledge of what is does not open the door directly to what should be. One can have the clearest and most complete knowledge of what is, and yet not be able to deduct from that what should be the goal of our human aspirations. Objective knowledge provides us with powerful instruments for the achievements of certain ends, but the ultimate goal itself and the longing to reach it must come from another source. And it is hardly necessary to argue for the view that our existence and our activity acquire meaning only by the setting up of such a goal and of corresponding values. The knowledge of truth as such is wonderful, but it is so little capable of acting as a guide that it cannot prove even the justification and the value of the aspiration toward that very knowledge of truth. Here we face, therefore, the limits of the purely rational conception of our existence.
But it must not be assumed that intelligent thinking can play no part in the formation of the goal and of ethical judgments. When someone realizes that for the achievement of an end certain means would be useful, the means itself becomes thereby an end. Intelligence makes clear to us the interrelation of means and ends. But mere thinking cannot give us a sense of the ultimate and fundamental ends. To make clear these fundamental ends and valuations, and to set them fast in the emotional life of the individual, seems to me precisely the most important function which religion has to perform in the social life of man. And if one asks whence derives the authority of such fundamental ends, since they cannot be stated and justified merely by reason, one can only answer: they exist in a healthy society as powerful traditions, which act upon the conduct and aspirations and judgments of the individuals; they are there, that is, as something living, without its being necessary to find justification for their existence. They come into being not through demonstration but through revelation, through the medium of powerful personalities. One must not attempt to justify them, but rather to sense their nature simply and clearly.
"""You might like the rest there too.
As I mention here:
http://www.chris-floyd.com/component/content/article/1-latest-news/1937-unnatural-acts-breaking-the-fever-of-militarism.html#comment-2450
We the People, based on deeply held humanistic and spiritual values, need to redefine security in a sustainable and resilient way. Much current US military doctrine is based around unilateral security ("I'm safe because you are nervous") and extrinsic security ("I'm safe despite long supply lines because I have a bunch of soldiers to defend them"), which both lead to expensive arms races. In order to end arms races, promote world peace, and also save money we can direct to civilian needs, we need as a society to move to other paradigms like Morton Deutsch's mutual security ("We're all looking out for each other's safety")
http://www.beyondintractability.org/audio/morton_deutsch/?nid=2430
and Amory Lovin's intrinsic security ("Our redundant decentralized local systems can take a lot of pounding whether from storm, earthquake, or bombs and would still would keep working"). -
OBAMA IS A WAR CRIMINAL AS WERE PREVIOUS 4 POTUS
Simply by applying the standards upheld at Nuremberg.
"...To give a peace prize to the commander-in-chief of a war machine now churning its way through the populations of three countries (Iraq/Af-Pak), with innumerable black ops, lightning raids and drone shots on the side
.... to a man who even as we speak is deciding just how he wants to kill even more civilians in Afghanistan and Pakistan ... a man who has enthusiastically embraced as "an extraordinary achievement" one of the most heinous and barbaric acts of military aggression since Hitler rolled across the border into Poland ... a man who blusters about leaving "all options on the table," including the use of mass-murdering nuclear weapons, to bully other nations into compliance with American wishes ... to give a peace prize to such a man, while all over the world, there are men and women who have devoted their entire lives to non-violence and reconciliation, many of them suffering imprisonment, torture and ruin for their efforts ... well, like I said, it's beyond words.But it's good to see that the spirit of arms merchant Alfred Nobel -- purveyor and profiteer of death and destruction -- is being honored so perfectly with today's award..."
"Almost no one will acknowledge the single, fundamental truth about Barack Obama, the truth of greatest and most terrifying consequence:
Barack Obama is a war criminal.
Many facts overwhelmingly and conclusively compel this judgment, and no other. Not because I say so, but because an honest application of the relevant language of international law, as well as of the Nuremberg Principles, necessitates the conclusion."
http://powerofnarrative.blogspot.com/2009/10/depraved-obscene-absurdities.html
Oh! My Surprise! "WAR IS PEACE!"
Barack Obama just used his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech to reiterate his threats against Iran.That's change you can deceive in.
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Re:Just wait ...
...In a land crawling with armed - and armored - SWAT teams, with operatives from innumerable federal agencies packing heat and happy to use it, a land where more than 2 million people languish in prison (many of them captives of an endless "war on drugs" that has done nothing to curb substance abuse but has greatly augmented the power of the state and the criminal gangs whose laundered money enriches Establishment elites), a land where almost every transaction is wired up to some national grid, where national ID cards are now being imposed - a land where you literally cannot exist without placing your liberty, your privacy, your very life at the mercy of a government apparatus besotted with violence, coercion and intrusion, there is no place left for the kind of action that Thoreau advocated. His way - and that of Gandhi and King, who took so much from him - envisions a state opponent which one could hope to shame into honorable action by the superior moral force of principled civil disobedience. But the very hallmark of the present regime is its shamelessness, its utter lack of any sense of honor or principle, its bestial addiction to raw power...
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Re:Cnn does it best
He was also aware in advance of the plan by Indonesia to massacre the East Timorese with U.S.-provided weaponry (~200,00 killed). Now, I'm not certain that we really needed to act militarily, but if the Indosesians wanted to kill a third East Timor's population I fail to see why we got to provide the weapons.
http://www.chris-floyd.com/index.php?option=com_co ntent&task=view&id=975&Itemid=135
http://redstateson.blogspot.com/2006/12/gaw-in-act ion.html -
Re:Fun day
well, for one, you don't see much media coverage of this.
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Re:Wow that's creepy
Just keeping you posted on how Bush is responsible for the Katrina Catastophe that killed so many of your fellow Americans "who deserved it".
Turns out that Bush declared an emergency, for which he and the Feds were primarily responsible, on 8/27/05, as Katrina approached the Gulf Coast. He declared the emergency only in the parishes not on the Gulf Coast. After the storm hit, on 8/28/05, as the city flooded, he declared an emergency in the Gulf Coast parishes, but only to the extent that money would be spent - not on Federal coordination of relief efforts, for which he had already assumed legal authority, which was his job.
Oh, and you probably haven't bothered to face the truth that DHS chief Chertoff was the person responsible for mobilizing the Feds, but failed to do so while thousands were killed by his negligence. Chertoff himself seems not to have realized he was responsible, so why should you care?
I know you don't care, that you'll be jizzing yourself tonight when Bush repeats the empty lies that he's "taking responsibility" for the failed Federal response to the catastrophe on TV. Of course, he's taking responsibility in the sense of avoiding responsibility, because anyone responsible for the murder of thousands of Americans, and abandonment of hundreds of thousands of others, should be fired, and probably hanged.
And while you're going all-out to fuck yourself, why don't you ask Cheney for some advice: he's the expert. You're in pretty grim company.