Category: Dangers

Lack of infrastructure

On By Nicholas AlexanderIn Dangers, DemocracyLeave a comment

Locking children in cages and separation of young children from their families is inhuman behaviour. And now, abrupt about-turns by Donald Trump does not signify that the President of the US would seriously contemplate discussing ideas and or listen to objections before enforcing sweeping Executive Orders that appear to be rapidly pushing the USA towards a police-state apparatus not dissimilar to a South American dictatorship. The internment of children and tearing apart of families is not just symbolic of evil, but an utterly inhumane form of torture as “a deterrent”.

What this reveals about Trump’s illogical diplomacy and flagrant snake-oil economics is a concern as it has created a lack of infrastructure. Trump thinks he knows everything but if he thought that this atrocity was acceptable behaviour toward refugees and immigrants he damages his case about making America great again as it makes America seem to be sadly introspective and confusing to the global order.

The fact remains that the creation of masses of debt by liberating the financial system has its ups and downs. Specifically, the scale of these reverberations increase, so this period of Western debt will result in a reflection where the West is in surplus. It seems inevitable, but if the West forever remained in debt, it would suffer in the future for the largess of the day.

That is the problem, America is being run by a person who is impatient and controlling and who appears to excerpt influence at every level of detail rather than having a machine that he trusts to implement his objectives. Trump even postponed a picnic for Congress in recognition of the seriousness of the result of his numerous directives being carried out.

Pollution and Plastic

On By Nicholas AlexanderIn Dangers, extinction

So much has been written on this blog and elsewhere about the importance of stopping pollution of the natural world if life and indeed the human race are to survive.

The Era of Oil has seen the rapid expansion of the human race.

The insidious oiling of the industrial age certainly helped the environment at first, by reducing smoke emissions from burning of coal, but the proliferation of cars, industry, and exponential growth has not only triggered global warming, climate instability and poisoned the environment, but it also creates many plastics. And now we discover plastic is being thrown into the sea without any regard for consequence. Our reaction? What reaction.

The pulling of whales out of the sea infected with kilograms of plastic waste makes a mockery of humanity. We can nearly be concerned about the effects of the burning of oil, but the manufacture of materials that never yield their structure to decay means an unchanging world with less and less in it. It will start with the sea, as sea creatures, constantly on the hunt for anything they can consume are weeded out of nature due to our insidious crime of the discarding of plastic.

Life forms that collect plastics, like the filmed whales, birds and fish, act as a storage mechanism that in time ruptures. The plastics ever increasing and accumulating (unlike other forms of organic matter that can be broken down and reconstruct themselves) nature mean that it will offset environments and kill plant life as well as animal life.

This is the most simple catastrophe to cure with law-making. Why are the governments of the world not legislating against plastic manufacture and disposal at sea?

How about people simply resolving they do not want to contribute to the mass murder of all life on this world by throwing a plastic drinking bottle into the sea.

Trumpism

On By Nicholas AlexanderIn Dangers, Politics, Russia, Syria, warLeave a comment

The Trump Doctrine is to lash out and then realise that was not a very good idea. A prime example is his reaction to Syria’s use of chemical weapons. He calls the leader of that stricken country an “animal” for killing a number of people with “nerve agents” and Chlorine gas and plans to send in the missiles. Except that Russia threatened him back and now he has to negotiate for fear of starting a firestorm and losing major assets as Russia threatened.

The legal point that it is an internal matter for Syria and that independence is the very heart of sovereignty that other nations have no business undermining. Oh, but if “we let Syria use chemical weapons” then “they will again, with impunity”. Understandable sentiment. The world would be a better place without weapons that kill people indiscriminately. Gassing the civilian population is not necessarily as evil as dropping an H Bomb, but it causes unbelievable suffering and only with effective action can their use be stopped.

But the May government in Britain believes that Syria’s sponsor, Russia, used a Novichok nerve agent in the UK to remove a retired spy. She has acted as though it were proven with evidence and it seems “the right thing to do” to most conservative idealists.

But is it? And is her plan to attack the government of Syria going to result in a war between the UK and Syria, or more significantly, with Russia?

Banning Weapons and 3D printers

On By Nicholas AlexanderIn gunsLeave a comment

Regulating human nature assumes some people are capable of evil, others are not. In fact it is a choice and our internal values are where the real risk lies. Face it, we all have weapons built into our bodies (teeth, claws) and our minds can be used to elaborately plan actions with unforeseen consequences.

Our real protection lies in the social contract, not regulating the spread of blueprints. Every citizen has access to sharp knives but that does not mean that we use them. Box cutters became weapons not because we failed to detect them, but because of a philosophy that does not enshrine value to others. It is the spread of radicalism and the rule of totalitarianism we have failed to defeat.

When we are taught values by an authority that uses its power in a corrupt way, whether it be religious or political, therein lies the source of insanity.

Guns in the hands of citizens do not protect them from guns. Money in the bank does not protect one from madness.

Guns

On By Nicholas AlexanderIn America, gunsLeave a comment

Guns are a religion in America.  It is amazing how second amendment faith does not get shaken by these mass shootings.  They shake their heads reassuring themselves “It’s not the guns that kill, it’s people that kill people.”

If you allow broad proliferation of weapons, then people will die.  And, if you don’t the same thing may happen, anyway.  The act of one individual with a particular distorted view of the world developed by obsessive behaviour and at a particular revision or developmental stage can have an impact that is amplified and acted upon to an extent of terrible violence and unbelievable harm.  Or without the weapons would it just be a lunatic waving his arms around and disturbing cinema goers?

We have evolved fiction as a means to understand the more difficult parts of human nature. These thoughts exist already, the fiction does not inform, it may provide a storyline but so does Crime and Punishment, and The Bible, and we do not see these works as informing murderers to murder.  Our fiction is our strength.  It allows us to learn consequence without hurting ourselves.

It is not the gun that kills.  It is not the snake that bites.  It is not the disease I will catch.  The safety hymns of reassurance we need to remember to stay sane.  Of course over 99.99% of the people we know will probably survive the week and if we all behave, well and good.  Violence is visible in a moderate environment.  We believe outbreaks can be quickly contained, quelled and increasingly these days crave harsh decisive treatment by the police.

The London Olympics.  Isn’t it nice for the Tory government to be seen by the world for the next few weeks having the military providing a security presence.  It is seem almost logical to get them dressed in mufti.  No!  That would be even creepier.  The cameras of the world will record the UK in the guise of a military dictatorship.  And maybe that’s fair.  It has been hard to discern Osbornomics as much apart from a grand Malthusian erosion of the needs of the state by shipping the poor off to forgotten council estates to fend for their financial existence he is exerting a kind of social totalitarianism.  But now they exert a show of the military for the most watched World gathering of sports.  I think that it is a Government ploy, a kind of show-piece Falklands – a Thatcherite glow of austerity for people and freedom of the corporate monster to consume them.

Countries survived on bluster backed by destructive power and domination.  Bluster is only useful if it can be backed by military force.  Something Britain had talent for.  It is a dishonest assessment of our safety and economic state.

It guns become part of the culture, when citizens bear deadly force, you probably need a functioning social infrastructure without the usual feeders of crime.  It still does not stop those with emotional demons or subverted realities from acting out drama with a deadly set of consequences.

 

The Norway Killing

On By Nicholas AlexanderIn guns, war on terror1 Comment

Although most of us have that part of being human that loves others, a few do not. It is hard to spot absences as we are tuned to see things that are odd or out of place. The real horrors are ones that appear to have no basis in the shared world, but the horrors that are expressed from the mind of a terrorist.

This is an aspect of murderous insanity that supports the death penalty, at least their malign influence is truncated. But the danger of putting innocents to death is far greater. Merely because for each guilty person, there are millions of innocents.

In the calculations of war this may make little difference. But a society that is based on fear is a weaker society. Real effort is expended due to purpose and intent. An atmosphere of threat can breed indifference. Neglect may breed resentment Abuse breeds inappropriate behaviours.

However, average children being adequately educated universally and who are not hungry or mutually disadvantaged by the greed of the majority such that their education is not a principled priority of the state.

Universal medical care is a given. If this is too expensive, then perhaps so should firemen, plumbers and maintenance technicians should also be paid more, as well as everyone else, so that universal medical care can be a given, it an be afforded and resourced. This must not preclude a private medical service available with private insurance, which may compete with the universal benefit by boosting its effect.

The Real Economic Crisis

On By Nicholas AlexanderIn Environment, extinction, population controlLeave a comment

Population growth is the core disturbing trend that can only get more intense and unsolvable as religious belief and economic priorities define our politics.

Our brains quiver at the figures presented in the EU and the USA of debt mountains that appear increasingly insurmountable. We forget that we are barking at the moon, criticising the figures but ignoring what they are measuring. We care more about our economic scorecard, consider political alignment a sign of sanity, and criticise green thinkers and the Left as a form of irrationality.

Chinese economic growth and its growing domination on the economic stage say two things. One is that huge populations bestow economic muscle, and the other is that exploitation of need allows an export economy to outpace consumption. The problem that the West is threatened by is consumers believe their largess is a birth right. The wars of religious beliefs have been an expression of fear in our DNA, we have evolved a need for huge explosions in population and thus require economic growth to sustain consumption. The deterioration on our environments is more of a political issue than a scientific one. And for the fundamentalists who control much of the political thinking in America large families and environmental destruction are seen as religious duty.

These are all forces that could contribute to our eventual demise, and the sixth mass extinction. Humans are so many and so greedy. Nobody wants to surrender luxury in favour of their grandchildren. Nobody wants to give up on greed.

As our population keeps edging up and up, we seem unable to restrain ourselves.

Contraception is not the only solution required. It is a new economics and religious philosophy that allows all life to continue ad infinitum that is required. It is realising that our thinking has brought us to where we are, for example: threatened fish stocks and climate change will suddenly and drastically reduce populations and then our intellectual infrastructure is undone. War, famine and plagues do not save us from ourselves, we are but a blip on the geological time scale, but a blip that has changed the nature of nature and the meaning of survival.

Our inability to manage the relatively simple calculus of economics does not bode well for the more complex management required to prevent ecological doom. A nation may be able to default on sovereign debt, but we can not hide from extinctions of vital parts of the food chain.

See also – http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/jul/18/population-7-billion-planet

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malthusian_catastrophe

The right to bear arms

On By Nicholas AlexanderIn gunsLeave a comment

Political protest is a sign of a healthy democracy.

In America, the Second Amendment gives a citizen a right to bear arms. Right wing protesters carrying assault rifles may be a legal right but is it a legitimate protest? How many presidents has American guns assassinated? On the Right we have Ronald Reagan, on the Left we have JFK. If Reagan had died, perhaps the Right would be a little more sensitive.

Is the right to carry arms relevant in today’s world? And is that in fact a valid political protest or just perpetuating the myth that being under the threat of random death is a benefit to anyone?

A man mistaken by a security guard was shot in the back, and left his child without a father. In the back. He kept walking when the guard started to shout at him, trying to get away. He was innocent of any crime. Having a gun does not make you right. It makes you into a potential murderer.