Bought and sold, modern environmentalism?

Seeing as I’m interested in belief systems and how they warp what should be purely intellectual debates, I thought I’d have a nose round some fairly reputable sources and try to sort some wheat from the mountain of chaff. Now I do have a dog in this fight, as during my youth I was a card carrying member of the Green party. I’m firmly on the side of the environment, anti pollution and pro recycling when it’s done properly, not simply sorted and shipped off to landfill. What I’m definitely not on the side of is the Environmental movement as a bought, sold paid for advocacy group used to manipulate markets by foreign investors. I’d heard or chequebook Journalism, but chequebook Environmental protest?

Well, yes. It’s been an open secret for years that various protest groups from both left and right have bolstered their numbers by offering ‘incentives’, mostly for small scale events that they want to look bigger, ‘bussing in’ supporters to areas where there wasn’t really any ‘support’ at all apart from the less with-it residents of various care homes. Not so much ‘rent a mob’ but ‘protest a gran’.

If I can offer a true story of my very own from the times I used to (cough) hang out with (cough, cough, no this isn’t a confession Sarge) what in polite circles was called ‘the rougher type of boy’ there were three separate occasions when a bunch of us greasy looking yobbo’s were gently carousing (No casualties, just a little friendly ‘horseplay’ and discussions regarding the intricacies of various friends social lives) in various drinking establishments to be approached in a faux-matey manner by some grinning soft handed type, telling us earnestly all about some ‘bad people’ who we should go and ‘protest against’. Sometimes we listened, mostly not, before returning to more important matters like motorcycles and where to go in Summer.

A couple of my social circle actually went on two of these ‘protests’ for a free pint and a chance to grope some hippy chicks. These are the large unkempt leather and denim clad gentlemen featuring in numerous police photographs of said events, grinning hugely, with a can of beer in one hand and the other fondling one of the least ugly women. Was that my old mate DA exposing himself? Surely not constable. He must have been experiencing a minor crotch malfunction with his zip. DA was known to have issues in this department, especially with not being able to keep said zip done up in female company. Were incentives offered? Of course, and it was common knowledge that there was cash to be had. Although those I knew who tried to take up the offer were always bitterly disappointed in the amount that was often never paid.

If you want to look up who has been paying for what over here in BC and Canada generally, you could do worse than start with a visit to Vivien Krause’s worthy little web site, which while not encyclopaedic, does have extensive public domain evidence of back door payments to various soi-disant ‘Green’ activist groups. Not to mention the very public big oil sponsorship of Environmental causes from companies like BP, Exxon, Chevron. So much for ‘Big Oil’ being on the side of the ‘deniers’.

BTW; if a ‘science denier’ is someone who does not believe in the scientific method, because without method there is no science, only dogma, then those who bandy the D word around the most are ironically those most guilty of ‘denying science’. Because their faith is belief in fixed constructs, and ‘science’ only deals in facts subject to constant change and update, no-one can be a ‘science believer’, therefore there can be no such thing as a ‘science denier’. Succinctly put; ‘science’ is never settled. Only professional liars and the perpetually befuddled and deluded will say otherwise.

I mean, never mind the Koch brothers, of whom I’d only heard because of their contributions to PBS programming. There are far richer fish to fry. For example Billionaire financier and currency speculator George Soros is a known sponsor of the Tides Foundation, which has backed Vancouver Mayor George Robertson to the tune of over half a million bucks, amongst other things; including the current US Administration’s Internet grab via the ‘Open Society Foundation’ (Oh, the irony). Russian and Chinese funds filter via various shell companies into various advocacy groups back pockets in a massive protectionist financial shell game. Nine bob notes aren’t in it. Never mind the wild Salmon, it’s honesty which is the real endangered species. Frankly it’s the biggest open secret in Canadian politics.

Some things should not pass from memory…..

Just a quickie for all you youngun’s out in jolly old Interwebland. A small antidote to the doom and gloom about insane mass murdering death cults, inept Presidents, the dunderheadedness of bureaucrats, radical vegetarians, idiots who still believe against all evidence to the contrary that CO2 driven man made global warming is real, professional protesters and the general lack of worthwhile cerebral activity in the online world……

A pre Python Michael Palin introduces the legendary, the phenomenal, the so incredibly awesome Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band from Do not adjust your set (A 1960’s children’s TV show? Link to playlist here Oy gevalt already).

How can you not love a show that invented the ‘electric spoon’ concept? Which was so good someone had to invent one.

Well, they were more innocent times.

Religions of hatred

Well isn’t that nice? Rabid followers of a nameless middle eastern religion took pot shots at a Danish cafe where people were having a peaceful discussion about religion, bigotry and hatred. Elsewhere, a number of captured Kurdish fighters are about to have their colds cured permanently by being burned to death in cages. Which I feel is a bit of an extreme treatment for a relatively mild viral infection. As was another attempt to cure asthma amongst Libyan Coptic Christians by removing their heads. So much for fringe medicine, eh? Pass the pixie dust. As for being ‘on the doorstep’, the bastards are already in the parlour with their boots up on the coffee table demanding free lunches.

Temples are burned and wars fought, all over religion. Which, as God commented last time he dropped by for a post fishing foray coffee, is a bloody silly reason to kill people. Don’t even get him started on Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland. Or Methodists and Anglicans. Honestly, last time some of his language curdled the cream in my fridge and scorched the wallpaper. Although he was very good about it, and sent JC down to the store to buy some fresh. A couple of cherubim with paintbrushes dealt with the property damage. Very gracious deity, God. Although he’s not very keen on many of those who claim to be his worshipers. He’s got some very forthright opinions about them. Specifically that he doesn’t like being used as an excuse for fantasists and fruitloops to go around killing people with impunity. The killing he can’t do much about because of the free will thingy, but he does draw the line at having the blame lumped on him. I have it on good authority that he’s negotiating more room for an extension to Hell. Specifically the lake of fire. Satan of course complains endlessly about these policy changes. His demons are on near permanent double time, it takes too much out of his operating budget, wear and tear on pitchforks, fire insurance etc. It’s bad enough having to take all the Lawyers and Politicians. They do so lower the tone of the infernal netherworld. I’m told the overcrowding has got so bad, like the punchline of one very old joke (One of God’s favourites by the way), is that you can’t get near the fire for priests.

One of the many, many ironies of the current situation is that should the rabid control freak psycho’s using religion as a cover for all their most frothingly violent fantasies get their way, as this writer posits, theirs would be the first religion in the firing line. The rule of ‘be careful what you wish for’ seems to apply here, in spades, with the law of unexpected consequences grinning from the shadows. Universal blasphemy laws make the mistake of equating God with religion. As God says, “They’re nothing to do with me.”

It’s also worth noting that you don’t & can’t insult God when you take the piss out of any particular religions inconsistencies. Why? Religions are not God. He thought he’d made that point with Moses and the whole Golden Calf debacle. Interesting religious point: A church or temple may be classed as a house of God, but don’t expect him to spend much time there, if any. They’re big, draughty, and a bugger to keep warm. Similarly for so-called ‘Holy’ relics. Ask yourself this, if God is omniscient and omnipresent, (he is, but only when he feels like it, some days, not so much); why can a particular bit of rock, a book written by sincere but slightly unhinged old men, or set of old bones that may or may not have belonged to a noted human waybackinnadawnatime be seen as a short cut to getting a priority collect call through on the celestial communications net? That’s pure cargo cult with its roots firmly planted in pantheism and idolatry. Want to get a prayer through? Take your time, be honest, don’t bother God with trivia, your petty jealousies and short time scales. He’s busy enough as it is. Yes, you decided to get yourself into the mess, now stop asking God to bail you out all the time. A heartfelt thank you occasionally would be nice, too. He’s a busy deity and the Universe wasn’t built in a day. BTW; the whole seven days creation myth is an allegorical joke the priests haven’t got yet. And probably never will.

So are the rabid psycho’s doing God’s work? No. If they were they’d be in the galaxy crafting business with the Gas Giants sub contract. In reality they’re just a bunch of small minded human crazies with less tolerance than a bad tempered rattlesnake on acid with severe personal space issues. As an illustration of this assertion they don’t even let their own head hackers bunk off for a quiet between stressful beheadings ciggie break. I dunno, some people, eh? No live and let live. Just die, die, and die again.

So, all that being said, what are we in the West to do? Personally I’d go for the quarantine option, which is to build a nice high wall all around their self imposed territory (Which Saudi Arabia has already started), let them have all their own brutal little regime away from the rest of the world, cut off all trade and other links, then shoot anyone trying to get out. Which might not be the answer, walls can be breached, undermined and flown over. Even the so-called ‘Iron Curtain’ was regularly breached by people wanting to get through, and Israeli attempts to blockade Gaza have regularly been tunneled under. Besides, the enemy is not only inside the gates, they’re being invited to set up shop just to show how ‘tolerant’ we are. Last time it took over fifteen hundred years to dig ourselves out of the resulting feudal mess.

Nope, I think what will happen is that this particular virulent head hacking faction will hamstring itself by killing off the brains they need to flourish because the moderately smart techie and mercantile types will always ask “What are we doing this for?” before the blinkered ones come back with their own brand of terminally cutting remarks. Which ultimately lowers the quality of their gene pool. History shows that regimes encouraging openness and enterprise last a hell of a lot longer than ones simply attempting to subjugate and oppress. Force alone is never the answer against information. The Japanese, Italians and Germans learned that hard lesson back in the 1940’s and they were technophiles and innovators rather than techno abusers. Since that time, Fascism, once thought to be the answer to all the socio-economic ‘ills’ of Western civilisation, has become a rightly reviled and widely banned philosophy. How long before the crazies drag Islam down to the same fate?

I was going to ask God, but he’s decided it’s too nice a day to talk about religion, and the fish are biting.

There’s no such thing as social justice

Welcome to the Bill Sticker Institute for Axiom Testing and Infinitive splitting. Our team of highly trained Stunt Grammarians and specialist word jugglers (We recruit only those who can handle a minimum of ten syllables) have been working day and night for at least half an hour testing some much cherished political sound bites to total aphorism destruct. We’ve saddled up our Thesauri, loaded our dictionaries, and straightened our phrasebook armoured trousers meaningfully before heading ’em up and moving out to rope and brand a few of those consarned political soundbite critters for the last big drive to the railhead, pardner. Yee-haw. We think. Possibly.

Here’s how it works; A statement is selected and its underlying concepts thrown into our patented axiom tester for a full rinse and spin cycle before careful drying. Once cleaned, the statement is then carefully scrutinised for any bits of truth it might contain. There are no half way houses here. A statement is either proven or not proven.

Example:
Bill Sticker is a complete bastard.

Axiom test result: Proven. Bill’s parents were not married when he was conceived and born, therefore he was legally born out of wedlock, specifically a bastard. As far as ‘complete’ is concerned, several of our in house team thought that this was rather gilding the lily, because one is either a bastard or one is not. (Bill has also developed an evil streak that could be used to pave the entire two lane length of Highway One from mile Zero in Victoria BC to Halifax, Nova Scotia, including hard shoulders, but that’s by the by). Therefore Bill can be called a ‘bastard’ to his face with impunity, as the statement is proven. Cutting remarks in response are extra and will be charged accordingly.

Here are three left wing sound bites and concepts which were given exactly the same treatment.

Statement 1:
Governments can create a fairer society.

Axiom test result: Not Proven. Repeated attempts by various governments around the globe to produce legislation to promote ‘fairness’ have so far failed because one persons ‘fairness’ is demonstrably another’s injustice. Giving privileges to one section of the population invariably requires removal of rights from another according to the well known rules of societal causality.

Statement 2:
‘Social Justice’ is fairness for all

Axiom test result: Not Proven. The phrase ‘Social Justice’ was found by our team of extreme Axiom testers to be little more than a hollow political sound bite, a speechwriters catch-all with little or no real meaning. To say it is ‘fair for all’ is also palpably not true following the well known principle that taking another’s possessions without recompense is theft. Our chief Grammarian was also heard to remark that the phrase is “Utter bollocks” and has had to contribute a good deal of his disposable weekly income to our Axiom Testing Stations swear box.

Statement 3:
Redistribution of Wealth is fair.

Axiom test result: Not Proven. Actually it’s complete and utter nonsense. Asset stripping the active middle to support the growing inactive lower simply creates more poor people. In addition, a consulting team of highly skilled Stealth Economists who are currently Chair of the Society for Artful Accountancy have discovered that the money rarely gets where it’s meant to go, and often ends in the pockets of those least entitled to it. Usually logged as expenses.

Thank you for visiting.