On The Money, Cheap Calories

On The Money;

Economic Advice for the 99%

Cheap Calories

 

Its official. July 2012 was the hottest month in history. The last 12 months have been the hottest year in history. With the Olympics going on right now, it seems like a great time to break records, don’t you think? Maybe it’s time we gave Global Climate Crisis a gold medal for its performance this year, now that half the counties in the US have been declared disaster areas because of the heat, violent weather events, wildfires and drought.

 

I think Global Climate Crisis has really proven that it has what it takes to beat war, disease, poverty or political oppression, hands down. We’ll call the event “biggest threat to life on Earth”. This relative newcomer to the pestilence field has had to overcome a lot of obstacles to even be considered a contender, but this summer’s performance has really done a lot to remove those doubts.

 

NOAA’s chief climate scientist, James Hanson, says that this summer provides statistical proof that global climate change is real, and that it is man-made. However, if you don’t believe the evidence of your own eyes, and have gotten used to dismissing climate scientists as alarmist, Chicken Little types, statistical proof probably won’t change your opinion either. Such is the nature of denial. Reality doesn’t affect it much.

 

So, if you like triple digit temperatures, bizarre new weather events, dust-bowl-like droughts and giant wildfires, you are in luck, because we’re going to see a lot more of them. Yes, global climate change is likely to be more fun than you ever imagined. So get ready for some climate excitement, and be sure to thank the 1% for turning up the global thermostat.

 

Last year they gave us the Fukushima nuclear disaster. The year before that, it was the BP oil gusher in in the Gulf of Mexico. I can hardly wait to see what happens next year, because it only gets worse from here, but what do they get out of it?

 

Why do the 1% keep investing in fossil fuels, nuclear power, and GMO crops for that matter, even though it will almost certainly have disastrous long-term consequences? After all, if the richest 1% of us can’t take the long view, and base their decisions and devote their resources towards what’s best for the survival of life on Earth in the long run, who can?

 

Remember, that we, the 99% are just now figuring out that the 1% are ripping us off, destroying our planet, and ruining our lives, but the 1% have known that all along. The 1% knows that their empire would crumble, and that we would kill them if we ever get out from under their thumb. They really do have their hands full keeping all of us in line. Enslaving 7 billion people takes a lot of energy, and so, energy, not life on Earth, remains their highest priority.

 

If you want to watch the 1% in action in your life, look for the cheap energy. Gasoline, diesel fuel, grid electricity, natural gas, propane, aviation fuel. We wouldn’t have any of these without the 1%. Drilling platforms, nuclear power plants, oil refineries, etc. all take big capital, and the kind of government support that only really big money can afford. Whether you eat them, burn them in your car, use them to dry your clothes, watch TV, surf the internet, or fly to Miami, those cheap calories work to undermine the value of everything we do a human beings.

 

How so? Simple, you can’t possibly do as much work, in one day, as a gallon of gasoline. At today’s prices, that means your labor is worth less than $4 a day. That’s one way that cheap calories undermine your value as a human being. Cheap calories means it doesn’t cost much to ship jobs overseas to the cheapest labor markets, or to ship products and resources to the highest bidders, and cheap calories means our population continues to expand.

 

Cheap edible calories means most of us don’t ever struggle to find enough to eat. Instead, we struggle not to eat too much. By keeping food artificially plentiful, with capital intensive agribusiness techniques like high-tech factory farms, GMO food crops, and monoculture on a massive scale, the 1% has removed any sense of of our connection to the carrying capacity of of the land. As a result, global human population continues to explode exponentially, further lowering the value of any one individual.

 

So, if you want to see the 1% at work in your life, look at the places you find cheap calories; the gas station, grocery store, your electric bill, the corner convenience store or fast food restaurant. You’ll find cheap calories everywhere, and everywhere you find cheap calories, you’ll find the 1% using them to control your life and wreck your planet. Cheap calories cheapen life, and the 1% feeds them to you to keep you under control. There’s a view of the energy crisis that’s On The Money

The Olympics, Hitler’s Best Work

The Olympics, Hitler’s Best Work

 

The Olympic Torch arrived in Britain this week, carrying the Olympic Flame from Mt. Olympus in Greece, via a very circuitous route around the world. Thousands of Britains cheered the arrival of the torch, and lined the streets to watch it pass.

 

Carried high overhead, by a single runner, the Olympic Torch must be light enough to carry comfortably for long distances, and produce a bright flame visible from a distance, even in broad daylight. It must withstand high wind, rain or a fall without going out, and it must carry enough fuel to keep the torch burning all day. At night, the torch must allow refueling while it is still lit. The Olympic Torch represents a kind of technological achievement, and its design has remained unchanged since before WWII.

 

This invention has made the single most archetypical symbol of the Olympics, The Olympic Flame, a reality for millions of people in the ensuing years, as it continues to do, all over the British Isles in anticipation of the start of the 2012 Olympic Games in London. How many other machines remain essentially the same as they were in 1936? Zippo lighters haven’t changed much since Bogart’s day, but of course, everyone uses a Bic now.

 

The British promised us a new Olympic Torch, with a lower carbon footprint, the Bic of Olympic Torches, if you will, but they failed to deliver. Sure, the London torch has a new look, but underneath, it is still Hitler’s design. So, again in London, the Olympic Torch still liberally burns the same mixture of propane and butane as designed by its inventor, Adolf Hitler, all those years ago.

 

Yes, that Adolf Hitler. It shouldn’t surprise you that the Olympic Torch comes to us as a result of advanced German engineering, but it may surprise you to know that Hitler was that German engineer. In fact, the whole torch relay thing was Hitler’s idea. Before 1936, there was no torch relay.

 

Hitler had a very intimate, hands-on, and long lasting effect on the Olympics in other ways as well. In many ways, the Olympics of today remain a living expression of Hitlers creative vision, a vision the Olympic Committee works tirelessly to maintain.

 

Not only did Hitler invent the Olympic Torch, he, working with filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl, defined the aesthetics of the Olympics, creating a work of art, the likes of which the world had never seen before. Hitler and Riefenstahl’s presentation of the Olympics continues to inspire the world today. Hitler and Riefenstahl branded the Olympics, and its a brand the Olympic committee doesn’t dare change. They recognize the creative genius behind that vision, and they do they’re best to recreate it every four years.

 

Sure, they held the Olympics before 1936, but they were a much more low-key affair. Hitler made the 1936 Berlin Games the centerpiece of his global propaganda campaign. Hitler, and as a result Germany spared no expense in producing a grand spectacle on the global stage. The 1936 Games became Hitler’s pet project, and his fingerprints are all over it, right down to the Olympic Torch that he invented. Hitler elevated a simple sporting event into a sacred ritual that continues to entrance the world. The Olympics represent the pinnacle of Hitler’s creative work as an artist.

The beginning of Riefenstahl’s film “Olympia”

They don’t actually get to the torch until pt2

 

So, as top athletes from all over the world descend on London to play their parts, tens of thousands of spectators and TV cameras reaching hundreds of millions more all over the world, focus on Hitler’s torch, as it finally arrives at the London 2012 Games, initiating the elaborate opening ceremony, where they will recreate once again, Hitler and Riefenstahl’s choreographed expression of human transcendence through the evolution of a master race, in all of its power and glory.

 

I’m sure all of the Londoners who lost their homes to The Olympic Village, feel it is a small price to pay to breathe new life into this Masterwork of the 20^th Century. After all, Hitler, more than any other artist, and more than any other human being on Earth, in fact, defined the 20^th Century. Certainly Hitler had a tremendous influence on the architecture of London in the early 1940′s, and I’m sure all Londoners want to celebrate his influence on their city.

 

With the best of the best of the world’s athletes gathered beneath snipers and surface to air missiles in their highly fortified enclave, Hitlers vision lives again this Summer in London. What does this tell you about sports fans, and their taste in art?