Domain: schillerinstitute.org
Stories and comments across the archive that link to schillerinstitute.org.
Comments · 10
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Re:That's messed up
I'm assuming you're talking about desalination.
There is that. The bigger issue is transportation. There's plenty of water, just not where we need it at the moment. And we have to restore contaminated water. Time to build some big-ass, nuclear powered tunnel boring machines, and pipe it around like oil, gas, and battery acid. And after bailing out the bankers, I don't want hear anybody crying that we don't have the money. There's plenty of that also, just not where we need it at the moment...
It's not like this is a new problem. Solutions were developed as far back as the 1960's, and many politicians promoted those plans as early as 1978 and warned of the dangers of doing nothing. But nobody listened. And it kept getting worse, and still nobody wanted to invest in it. There just wasn't enough corporate profit in it, politicians can succeed by ignoring it, and there is simply no stomach in the US electorate for taking on some pain to alleviate future problems.
So here we are. Carly Fiorina called out Jerry Brown for decades of needing infrastructure and the blockage of any progress by back-to-nature ideologically opposed to dams, canals, even reservoirs in California, so nothing got built and their paying for it now.
And no, it's not like "Climate change" where huge investments are maybe going to mitigate some warming, how much and whether any of it will work is questionable.
We have proven, practical solutions for storing and transporting water and, yes, even desalination where it's needed (just check out the projects in Dubai). But nothing happens. Worst drought ever in California, and what does the leadership say? Saving water for the future is "utter ignorance". Really? Seems I remember ancient Egyptians even knew enough to store food in case of famine.
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Re:This kind of stuff is Exhibit #1
Maybe the FBI were just reading too many actual Marxist manuals?
""religious illumination," says Benjamin, must be shown to "reside in a profane illumination, a materialistic, anthropological inspiration, to which hashish, opium, or whatever else can give an introductory lesson." At the same time, new cultural forms must be found to increase the alienation of the population, in order for it to understand how truly alienated it is to live without socialism. "Do not build on the good old days, but on the bad new ones," said Benjamin.
The proper direction in painting, therefore, is that taken by the late Van Gogh, who began to paint objects in disintegration, with the equivalent of a hashish-smoker's eye that "loosens and entices things out of their familiar world." In music, "it is not suggested that one can compose better today" than Mozart or Beethoven, said Adorno, but one must compose atonally, for atonalism is sick, and "the sickness, dialectically, is at the same time the cure....The extraordinarily violent reaction protest which such music confronts in the present society
... appears nonetheless to suggest that the dialectical function of this music can already be felt ... negatively, as 'destruction.' "The purpose of modern art, literature, and music must be to destroy the uplifting—therefore, bourgeois — potential of art, literature, and music, so that man, bereft of his connection to the divine, sees his only creative option to be political revolt. "To organize pessimism means nothing other than to expel the moral metaphor from politics and to discover in political action a sphere reserved one hundred percent for images." Thus, Benjamin collaborated with Brecht to work these theories into practical form, and their joint effort culminated in the Verfremdungseffekt ("estrangement effect"), Brecht's attempt to write his plays so as to make the audience leave the theatre demoralized and aimlessly angry."
Basically the long and the short of it was these these people were and apparently are trying to infect the arts and entertainment in order to get everyone bummed out enough to turn to communist revolution, by salting the depression with political statements. I'm not sure how bummed out you'd have to be to go that far but that didn't stop them trying. I mean why do you think that modern art is, sometimes literally, such a pile of shit?
Now just for clarity I don't agree with everything in that article, in particular his connecting art with religion - there may be a connection but it's far from as pervasive as he seems to think, however what I'm seeing happening in the arts and entertainment industries these days does appear to match the claims he's making.
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Re:Save Jack!The arguments aren't flawed because of the people spitting them forth. The arguments are flawed because the premise is ridiculous. Are you sure?
http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/16099971/
Researchers at the Indiana University School of Medicine say that brain scans of kids who played a violent video game showed an increase in emotional arousal - and a corresponding decrease of activity in brain areas involved in self-control, inhibition and attention.
http://www.sciencenewsforkids.org/articles/20070124/Feature1.asp
Despite what these readers say, many scientific studies clearly show that violent video games make kids more likely to yell, push, and punch, says Brad Bushman. He's a psychologist at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. Bushman and his colleagues recently reviewed more than 300 studies of video media effects. Across the board, he says, the message is clear. "We included every single study we could find on the topic," Bushman says. "Regardless of what kids say, violent video games are harmful."
http://www.schillerinstitute.org/new_viol/videos_brain.html Recently released medical studies indicate that violent video games damage the brain, possibly permanently.
It's funny how this much evidence proves global warming but the link between violent video games and violent behavior is still a myth.
I think the saddest thing here is that the above comment got a 5 for insightful when the facts seem to clearly contradict the statement. Is it because we like video games that we ignore the facts and promote the fiction? -
Re:News Flash from our cute neighbors to the north
Actually, I would prefer the water over all the land. US is already having problems with water not to mention China and rest of the world. Canada has something like 10% of all the non-ice-locked drinkable water. US already has plans to try to export Canada's best resource many times in the past including something called NAWAPA [1]. Too bad US, you can't have it.
[1] - http://www.schillerinstitute.org/economy/phys_econ/phys_econ_nawapa_1983.html -
This wouldn't be the same
Lyndon H. LaRouche that we all know and love? Ah, to dream...
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Kissinger's 1974 Plan for Food Control Genocide
http://www.schillerinstitute.org/food_for_peace/k
i ss_nssm_jb_1995.html
"There is also some established precedent for taking account of family planning performance in appraisal of assistance requirements by AID [U.S. Agency for International Development] and consultative groups. Since population growth is a major determinant of increases in food demand, allocation of scarce PL 480 resources should take account of what steps a country is taking in population control as well as food production. In these sensitive relations, however, it is important in style as well as substance to avoid the appearance of coercion."
"Mandatory programs may be needed and we should be considering these possibilities now," the document continued, adding, "Would food be considered an instrument of national power? ... Is the U.S. prepared to accept food rationing to help people who can't/won't control their population growth?"
Kissinger also predicted a return of famines that could make exclusive reliance on birth control programs unnecessary. "Rapid population growth and lagging food production in developing countries, together with the sharp deterioration in the global food situation in 1972 and 1973, have raised serious concerns about the ability of the world to feed itself adequately over the next quarter of century and beyond," he reported.
The cause of that coming food deficit was not natural, however, but was a result of western financial policy: "Capital investments for irrigation and infrastucture and the organization requirements for continuous improvements in agricultural yields may be beyond the financial and administrative capacity of many LDCs. For some of the areas under heaviest population pressure, there is little or no prospect for foreign exchange earnings to cover constantly increasingly imports of food."
"It is questionable," Kissinger gloated, "whether aid donor countries will be prepared to provide the sort of massive food aid called for by the import projections on a long-term continuing basis." Consequently, "large-scale famine of a kind not experienced for several decades--a kind the world thought had been permanently banished," was foreseeable--famine, which has indeed come to pass. -
Re:Try talking to the arabs
They're even thinking of building a Nuclear Desalinization Plant in the Mideast. At an estimated cost of $200-300 million it will be able to provide enough water for 3 to 4 million people.
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Don't Shoot the Messenger
You might decide that this is looney because Lyndon LaRouche is associated with it.
You have to understand first that LaRouche is NOT a Libertarian - he is a Democrat. That in itself, explains much.
Anyhow ...
Outline of NAWAPA
"The North American Water and Power Alliance--NAWAPA--is the most comprehensive of a series of plans developed during the 1950s and 1960s to capture and redistribute fresh water in Alaska and Canada. NAWAPA would deliver large quantities of water to water-poor areas of Canada, the lower forty-eight states of the United States of America, and Mexico."
and the map of the project. -
Don't Shoot the Messenger
You might decide that this is looney because Lyndon LaRouche is associated with it.
You have to understand first that LaRouche is NOT a Libertarian - he is a Democrat. That in itself, explains much.
Anyhow ...
Outline of NAWAPA
"The North American Water and Power Alliance--NAWAPA--is the most comprehensive of a series of plans developed during the 1950s and 1960s to capture and redistribute fresh water in Alaska and Canada. NAWAPA would deliver large quantities of water to water-poor areas of Canada, the lower forty-eight states of the United States of America, and Mexico."
and the map of the project. -
Bad codename for a next-gen processor
Previous McKinleys haven't fared very well.