I have been trying for the last few days to discover a coherent logic towards my feelings on man’s relationship with his environment. This is proving not to be simple.
The process started when I heard on World Service radio a gentleman from the International Panel on Climate Change discussing their latest report. As you know, I tend to accept the established opinion on climate change, and rather take the view that if all our industrial activity were not affecting the atmosphere, that would be strange.
But what struck me was that the gentleman said that a pause in warming for the last fifteen years was not significant, as fifteen years was a blip in processes that last over millennia.
Well, that would certainly be very true if you are considering natural climate change. But we are not – we are considering man-made climate change. In terms of the period in which the scale of man’s industrial activity has been having a significant impact on the environment, surely fifteen years is a pretty important percentage of that period? Especially as you might naturally imagine the process to be cumulative – fifteen years at the start when nothing much happened would be more explicable.
Having tucked away that doubt, I started to try to think deeper. Man is, of course, himself a part of nature. Anything man does on this planet is natural to this planet. I do not take the view man should not change his environment – otherwise I should not be sitting in a house. The question is rather, are we inadvertently making changes to the environment to our own long term detriment?
That rejection of what you might call the Gaia principle – that the environmental status quo is an end in itself – has ramifications. It is hard to conceptualise our relationship with gases or soil, but easier in terms of animals. I am not a vegetarian – I am quite happy that we farm and eat cattle, for example – and you might argue that the cattle are pretty successful themselves, symbiotic survivors of a kind. Do I think other species have a value in themselves? Is there any harm in killing off a species of insect, other than the fact that biodiversity may be reduced in ways that remove potential future advantages to man, or there may be knock on consequences we know not of that damage man somehow? I am not quite sure, but in general I seem in practice to take the view that exploitation of other species and substantial distortion of prior ecological balance to suit men’s needs is fine, so presumably the odd extinction is fine too, unless it damages man long term.
I strongly disapprove of hurting animals for sport, and want to see them have the best quality of life possible, preferably wild. But I like to eat and wear them. I am not quite sure why it is OK to wear animal skin on our feet or carry it as a bag, but not to wear “fur”. What is the difference, other than that leather has had the hair systematically rubbed off as part of the process of making it? A trivial issue, but one that obviously relates to the deeper questions.
Yes I draw a distinction between animals which are intelligent and those which are not. I would not eat whale or dolphin. But this does not seem entirely logical – animal intelligence and sensibility is evidently a continuum. Many animals mourn, for example. The BBC World Service radio (my main contact with the outside world at present – I have just today found my very, very weak internet connection just about works if I try it at 5am) informed me a couple of days ago that orang-utans have the ability to think forward and tell others where they will be the next day. Why cattle and fish are daft enough to eat is hard to justify.
I quite appreciate the disbenefits to man of radically changing his environment, even if it could be done without long term risk to his existence – the loss of beauty, of connection to seasons and forms of behaviour with which we evolved. But I regard those as important only as losses to man, not because nature is important intrinsically. In short, if I thought higher seas, no polar bears and no glaciers would not hurt man particularly, I don’t suppose I would have much to say against it. I fear the potential repercussions are too dangerous to man. At base, I don’t actually care about a polar bear.
James
So you would seem to be saying that compulsion is ok for employees but not employers? Wouldn’t most reasonable people expect their to be some equivalence? I think you will find that Soviet style economies didn’t shy away from enforced labour.
Is James straight out of the Cabinet Office or Conservative Central Office, 30 Millbank? The latter is owned by the Reuben brothers, donors to the Tories to the tune of £200,000. (FT) Perhaps they give the space rent free too.
~~
In the Mail of all places!
Osborne denies thinking Duncan Smith is not clever enough to be in the Cabinet
Chancellor insists he gets on well with Work and Pensions Secretary
He hails colleague as a ‘remarkable individual’ after book revealed rift
IDS likens Osborne and Cameron to ‘Ant and Dec’, according to reports
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2438586/Osborne-denies-thinking-Duncan-Smith-clever-Cabinet.html#ixzz2gPqXCkty
More than 20 Tory MPs seeking an electoral pact with UKIP, Farage claims but Osborne insists: ‘There will be no deals’
Chancellor refuses idea of Conservative candidates doing local deals
Some Tory MPs fear they will lose their seats as voters switch to UKIP
Nigel Farage cleared local deals with the eurosceptic Conservative MPs
Refused formal pact with Tories saying he is despised by David Cameron
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2438509/There-deals-UKIP-Osborne-slaps-Tory-MPs-want-stand-joint-ticket-rival-party.html#ixzz2gPrQvaxR
The BBC seem to be behind Liam.
Liam Fox tells Tories to stand up for their beliefs
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-24333353
PS Gideon came over all poetic at the end of his monologue…
“We’re going to recover together. And together, we’re going to share in the rewards.
“For the sun has started to rise above the hill. And the future looks brighter than it did, just a few dark years ago.”
LOL. Remember his ‘green shoots of recovery’?
“I hardly think that asking for 20 hours of work a week in return for unemployment benefits can be called slave labour. And I don’t think most reasonably minded people would subscribe to the view that one of the objectives of government policy is ‘to ensure that there are not enough jobs to go round’. Those are, if I may say so, rather unbalanced comments.”
Yet true.
Not shown on the BBC by order of the Tories. The march was held on public roads. Good photos here.
http://rt.com/in-vision/manchester-march-health-cuts/
Taxi driver Mark refers to 75,000 attending. He starts off by saying that the BBC is embedded in Syria. True.
75,000 anti Govt NHS privatisation protesters ignored by BBC http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Ni_gKLXFs_8
So, this is what sensible people do; obtain a front row seat in an entrenched, pre-fortified state of mind and call that ‘being open minded?’
Glad I’m not an alien passing through…
And come to think of it, I don’t think I fancy ‘sit-down’ comedy…
“I have reviewed the science at considerable length over many years”
…and reached the conclusion that the evolutionary purpose of the glans is to prevent the hand from slipping off.
Perhaps Tom Swift and his Isoclonic Antiboofatron here would explain to us how he adjusts his preferred representation of the isopycnal diffusion process for the Dunning-Kruger effect.
they don’t break any laws and that the JIDF “I prefer the terms ‘seize control,’ ‘take over’ or ‘infiltrate’ to ‘hack.'” – Furry Bully’s Day Off,
Viral and bacterial passengers on the tail of comets? The Hell you say…
“Estimates of the death toll in 1918 vary from a minimum of 30 million to about twice that number (Barry 2005). There are some estimates that suggest that 20 million deaths occurred in India alone. In parts of Alaska and in the Pacific Islands over half the total population in some villages and cities had perished (Barry 2005). The rapid spread of influenza across the frozen wasteland of Alaska in November/December 1918 remains a mystery on the basis of person-to-person transmission. With a population of 50,000 people very thinly spread over an area of the size of Europe, and with ground transportation essentially impossible, the only route of viral transfer must have been through the air.
There were three waves of pandemic influenza occurring in less than 12 months (Barry 2005). In the first wave, which occurred in the spring of 1918 the attack rate was 50%, but the mortality rate was not high. The second wave, which came in the autumn, was characterised by high attack rates accompanied by very high mortality rates.
The overall scale of the disaster caused by the pandemic is difficult to imagine. Populations in many cities and villages were decimated in a matter of weeks. In the State of Punjab in India, streets were reported to have been strewn with corpses of victims, and at railway stations carriages had to be continually cleared of dead or dying passengers. The devastation in parts of the African continent were incalculable.”
http://journalofcosmology.com/Panspermia10.html
http://www.sott.net/article/145683-New-Light-on-the-Black-Death-The-Cosmic-Connection
http://www.sott.net/article/146792-The-Hazard-to-Civilization-from-Fireballs-and-Comets
Will Earth pass through ISONs tail?
“Comet Halley is emitting both gas and dust at a rate of the order of 10 tons per second”
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1290563/pdf/jrsocmed00183-0005.pdf
Four Israelis mercs held in Guinea for plotting coup’
http://www.timesofisrael.com/4-israeli-merceneries-held-in-guinea-for-plotting-coup/
“This of course should be considered as ISON will be a prominent fixture in the sky through the winter months. Now, there seems to be a lot of concern along the Eastern seaboard for some reason and the concern has also been demonstrated by information that has been issued by FEMA to areas including Puerto Rico.
While there have been witnesses who have seen increase military activity and anomalous activity in the sky the same type of preparedness paranoia has swept into the tiny island and officials are concerned about a number of things that could happen in the aftermath of such extra-terrestrial encounters.
“One thing that has not been ruled out is that not only are the authorities of Puerto Rico preparing for the same events as their counter parts in the Northeast, but they have also made allocations for stockpiling various anti-virals, vaccines and antibiotics.
The CDC in the United States has ordered that there should be at least $11 Million dollars allocated for these vaccines and other remedies to have on hand in case of an outbreak. The deadline for having all of these drugs on hand is October 1st, 2013.
There are a few bloggers that have questioned the reasons for these vaccines especially if the running theory is that there all of these preparations are for Comet ISON.”
http://www.groundzeromedia.org/ison-the-pandora-strain/
NASA shuts down in just over 2 hours. You in the USA are fucking retarded cunts on balance should this happen.
Which would explain a lot to be honest.
PS: I am holding back until it happens.
Puhleeze, I thought we had enough American exceptionalism with the scoobydoo aliens of the Nevada Desert (they were then not being found any where else in the world!), until the ubiquitous cheap Japanese camcorder came to the fore, and they all somehow disappeared !!!! Now we have these two on about ISON, sorry, nobody gives a rats arse.
We are more interested in the missile satanyahu fired towards Damascus recently to start a WW3, which the Russians averted by shooting down. And the US Navy belatedly woke up to say they were also participating in the “training exercise” (right in the middle of a highly explosive situation, no less). None of the two USraeli devils even knew Putin had actually shot down the missile which had hebrew markings.
Now cut the ISON crap FFS please, desist from clutter and only lurk if you dont have anything meaningful to add here.
@Fed up. So you felt it necessary to call me by my name, rather than moniker. Was that some kind of revelation or news? cause most here know it already, I’m not here for clandestine expletives, you are.
Then you tell me not to get involved, I’m not! just had enough of utter nothingness, so why don’t you use your head rather than your mouth.
Lifted from RT
“Robles: I mean: we are talking about this, I mean… I kind of get the feeling like we are talking about normal events going on, but we are talking about: “426 children were killed as a pretext to invade a country!” Is anybody thinking about that? Is anybody thinking about going after the people who were behind this, because these are obviously, monsters of historic proportion?”
Not bloody TSON digress FFS !!
I agreed with Craig that your points are an amazing and helpful.I must say that the far greater problem with Darwin’s Theory is that his superseded, subverted and over simplified the cybernetic theory of Russel Wallace.
I am happy to reveal that the Torygraph has just discovered Tony Blair’s charter jet (typ. return fare to Bangkok, £125,000).
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/tony-blair/10341587/Former-prime-minister-Tony-gets-a-30m-Blair-Force-One.html
But you read it here first.
I now await with interest its revelations on the Gibraltar-registered companies Windrush Ltd and Firerush Ltd – not to be confused with the six British-registered companies with similar names….
Re skills training, though I’m off to do some physical work in a minute and won’t be able to debate this.
Its proposed that these youngsters sign on daily.
Now in a rural county such might mean a £5 round trip on a bus, putting a new and unusual strain on people.
I have been in the position of having had to pay 13.20 to come in and sign on some years back, I decided to rather pay this fare into my NI account and stop signing on, what a farce.
Osborne should be explaining why he uses taxpayers money to take the EU to court, for daring to suggest that bankers bonuses should be regulated. This electioneering measure aimed at his banker friends in the City is despicable and callous.
Here in the east the Tory’s have cut down the organisation overlooking and regulating gang masters, so now the full exploitation of immigrants can go on undisturbed by pesky regulators, people are being enslaved and after a full week end up with £ 20 to live on.
If anything needs regulating its the probity of politicians, if they don’t serve other thinking constituents, are only there for those who voted for them, then they have no right to the job, they should be fired. If we want to curb benefit scroungers, should we not also curb tax scroungers and off shorer’s in the same breath?
Should Osborne not call in these bankers and tell them they are free to leave to a regulated Franfurt or NY if they don’t like their bonuses regulated?
Ben Franklin Ref pandemics. Is that why Glaxo Smith Kline called their swine flu vaccine Pandemrix?
Its after effects – There was an item on the BBC1 One Show last night about children developing narcolepsy after being given this vaccination during the swine flu panic. A little boy of 8 has this condition very severely and has also had a change of character. He has episodes of aggression and temper whereas before he was easy going and pleasant. His mother is greatly affected and upset as she has to keep a constant watch to make sure he is not hurting himself when he suddenly falls asleep.
Pandemrix was given to 700,000 children I think I heard. After side effects were reported in large numbers, it was withdrawn from use on under 20 year olds. The Dept of Work and Pensions manages compensation for claims of damage from vaccine (why not Hunt’s crowd?) and are now considering compensation whereas before they were refusing. GSK have lawyers.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-24172715
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pandemrix
Narcoleptic schoolgirl who falls asleep 30 times a day because of swine flu vaccine hopes to be given £120,000 payout
Chloe Glasson became narcoleptic four months after having Pandemrix jab
She falls asleep throughout the day and suffers extreme mood swings
She cannot use public transport by herself, have a bath, or go swimming
Hopes she’ll receive a payout from Vaccine Damage Payments Scheme
For every 55,000 children who were given the injection, one has developed narcolepsy
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2439408/Narcoleptic-schoolgirl-Chloe-Glasson-hopes-swine-flu-vaccine-payout.html
and
[H7N9] ALL Americans Will Get Two Experimental Vaccinations, Says U.S. Government
WATCH THE VIDEO: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBGVRuYz7_0#t=13
There will be a risk of narcolepsy from the vaccines. By the way, in case you don’t know how the “vaccine con” works, here’s the story. They first find evidence of a small amount of a disease or bacteria in the population and report it widely, saying it may be an epidemic, even when it might be easily stopped. They tell everyone they need vaccines. The VACCINES now either spread the disease further, or make people MORE susceptible to the disease. Now the disease reaches millions, but many live, and they tell you in the end that the vaccines saved them, when in fact, the vaccines were used to create the pandemic.
Sept 9, 2013
http://pissinontheroses.blogspot.com/2013/09/alert-all-300-million-american-citizens.html
!!
Fred: ““I hardly think that asking for 20 hours of work a week in return for unemployment benefits can be called slave labour. And I don’t think most reasonably minded people would subscribe to the view that one of the objectives of government policy is ‘to ensure that there are not enough jobs to go round’. Those are, if I may say so, rather unbalanced comments.”
Yet true.”
No, with respect, I think your two points are neither balanced nor true (or, if you prefer, they are unbalanced because untrue).
If I may ask, what is your definition of ‘slave labour’? Feel free to refer to the UN/ILO definition if you wish. On your second point, what aim would the government be attempting to achieve if your assertion were correct, and how in your opinion is the government going about it?
Nevermind.
Glad to see you are‘HARDWORKING’Bold!
That is the Con conference theme of course. I have not watched any of it apart from what is shown on the news but I have heard it many times already. Agent Cameron used it this morning in a live Sky News interview. Today’s theme is apparently going to be extending GPs’ opening hours to relieve pressure on A&E departments. A lot of that pressure comes from antisocial binge drinkers. If he had brought in minimum alcohol pricing and had not rolled over to the drink lobby, as he rolled over to the tobacco lobby on packaging, the pressure would be less.
NuLabour had a similar scheme but Lansley trashed it!
GP Plan To Bring In Out-Of-Hours Surgeries
David Cameron tells Sky News the plans for longer opening hours will help “hard-working people”Boldand ease the pressure on A&E.http://news.sky.com/story/1148528/gp-plan-to-bring-in-out-of-hours-surgeries
Trust me to foul up the formatting. http://mail.yimg.com/ok/u/assets/img/emoticons/emo6.gif
Sorry about that.
…I don’t think most reasonably minded people would subscribe to the view that one of the objectives of government policy is ‘to ensure that there are not enough jobs to go round
Most reasonably minded people don’t make the connection between ‘flexible labour market*’, and ‘not enough jobs to go round’, do they? A pool of rather desperate unemployed is central to the philosophy of any capitalist economy. Competition keeps labour costs down.
Or, if you are a Commie-sympathising leftie librul subversive socialist (*makes sign of cross*), it keeps wages down.
Sod reasonably-minded people.
*Source – any politician in any of the major parties
“If I may ask, what is your definition of ‘slave labour’?”
Why certainly. I think the necessities of life, food shelter fuel to keep warm are everyone’s human right. The land food and trees grow on belongs to everyone, the coal and oil belongs to everyone. When man invented ownership of these things for the elite the elite inherited a duty to supply the people. The unemployment benefits received by a single man hardly cover the cost of these. Even slaves in America were provided with food, shelter, clothes.
To take someone who is on subsistence income then force them to work for no extra pay is slave labour. Even prison inmates who choose not to sew mail bags are provided with food, shelter, heating and clothes.
ONS:
“Turning to unemployment, there was a rise of 15,000 in the number of unemployed people between October – December 2012 and January – March 2013. There were 2.52 million people who were looking and available to work but unable to find a job. The percentage of the labour force aged 16 and over who were unemployed was 7.8%.
However looking at vacancies for February to April 2013, there were 503,000 jobs advertised, this is the highest since October to December 2008.”
So that’s 503,000 advertised jobs and over 2 and half million job seekers. Not just slave labour, but guaranteed slave labour.
Is this the start of the end? It’s got to come sometime, and will not be pleasant. But there is a chance for something decent to grow out of the evil. Note that national security is the first priority, not national welfare. Remember that.
http://rt.com/usa/us-congress-government-shutdown-568/
Call Me Dave takes a leaf out of his illustrious and saintly predecessor’s book:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2127909/Note-PM–youre-supposed-promoting-British-business-Cameron-flies-Tokyo-Angolan-plane.html
Ok, Tony has a murky business empire to support his extravagant lifestyle. And Dave has the Exchequer, or borrowed cash, as we call it. Calculate London-Japan hours at £6-7000 an hour, return, for yourselves, and thank God he’s practising austerity. Even if he is selling arms to Indonesians.
Again:
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/david-cameron-spends-267000-luxury-2052038
Could wish for more detail here, but hey, it’s the Mirror.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-united-states-of-genocide-putting-the-us-on-trial-for-genocide-against-the-peoples-of-korea-laos-viet-nam-cambodia-iraq-and-elsewhere/5352227
US genocide. Kieran Kelly takes a researched look into US genocide from how it was born with the extermination of native north Americans, but concetrates on the post-war years looking mainly at the three genocides of Korea, Vietnam and Iraq.