The Daily Blog Open Mic – Thursday – 10th October 2019

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Announce protest actions, general chit chat or give your opinion on issues we haven’t covered for the day.

Moderation rules are more lenient for this section, but try and play nicely.

EDITORS NOTE: – By the way, here’s a list of shit that will get your comment dumped. Sexist language, homophobic language, racist language, anti-muslim hate, transphobic language, Chemtrails, 9/11 truthers, climate deniers, anti-fluoride fanatics, anti-vaxxer lunatics and ANYONE that links to fucking infowar.

8 COMMENTS

  1. “The Guardian today reveals the 20 fossil fuel companies whose relentless exploitation of the world’s oil, gas and coal reserves can be directly linked to more than one-third of all greenhouse gas emissions in the modern era.”

    “Chevron topped the list of the eight investor-owned corporations, followed closely by Exxon, BP and Shell. Together these four global businesses are behind more than 10% of the world’s carbon emissions since 1965.”

    “The great tragedy of the climate crisis is that seven and a half billion people must pay the price – in the form of a degraded planet – so that a couple of dozen polluting interests can continue to make record profits. It is a great moral failing of our political system that we have allowed this to happen.”

    “A study earlier this year found that the largest five stock-market-listed oil and gas companies spend nearly $200m each year lobbying to delay, control or block policies to tackle climate change.”
    The Guardian – Environment – The Polluters

    • Great link

      Also the guardian has some good articles on this…

      The big polluters’ masterstroke was to blame the climate crisis on you and me
      https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/oct/09/polluters-climate-crisis-fossil-fuel

      (My only criticism of this analysis is that there is still a lot of blame topics about his, rather than moving on to preventative action, to avoid climate catastrophe the public and government need to take action on all factors (especially and promptly the big ones aka big climate change polluters and their control on government/media/legal systems, to keep going with their activities while creating numerous ways to avoid responsibility).

      Aka it’s mostly big polluters like oil companies, overpopulation and growing consumerism that are the big factors that should be addressed at the same time and quickly and together, aka not playing each factor off against each other and different nationalities and sectors, and thinking just focusing on one factor will help, they all need to be looked at, and addressed concurrently.

  2. “The largest five stock market listed oil and gas companies spend nearly $200m (£153m) a year lobbying to delay, control or block policies to tackle climate change, according to a new report.” – 22nd March this year.

    “Chevron, BP and ExxonMobil were the main companies leading the field in direct lobbying to push against a climate policy to tackle global warming, the report said.”

    “Increasingly they are using social media to successfully push their agenda to weaken and oppose any meaningful legislation to tackle global warming.”

    “Separately, BP donated $13m to a campaign, also supported by Chevron, that successfully stopped a carbon tax in Washington state – $1m of which was spent on social media ads, the research shows.”
    Top Oil Firms Spending Millions to Block Climate Change Policies

  3. There’s an interesting article on quakes and shakes out today, by Jamie Morton. It is to do with predicting the size or nature of any follow-up quakes, after one occurs. Some quakes may be precursors rather than aftershocks.

    I’m interested because the 5.2 that struck here three days ago seemed different from others that we’ve been through in recent times. As it moved away it felt unfinished, as though something was still crashing around below, rather than a thump and rumble and ‘that’s that’. (Hope I’m wrong about this. Had enough of them.)
    After a quake, can we tell if a bigger one is coming?

  4. https://www.rnz.co.nz/international/pacific-news/400637/moruroa-nuclear-site-could-collapse-mp-warns-un
    French Polynesian pro-independence politician, Moetai Brotherson, says it is only a matter of time before the French nuclear weapons test site at Moruroa collapses.
    Mr Brotherson made the claim while addressing the UN decolonisation committee in New York which heard about France’s refusal to engage in a UN-supervised process.

    He had asked France to remove remaining radioactive substances from its former weapons test site at Moruroa, where 181 nuclear weapons tests were carried out between 1966 and 1996.

    This is an example of the dysfunction in our brains – taking on high-risk and high-tech, high intelligence projects while at the same time having low control over our levels of excitement of discovery and satisfaction at creating machines and systems, as opposed to the level of cautionary, wise consideration with a view to choosing practicality, long-term value, and low effect on the planet’s dynamic systems.

    Capitalism is glossy and enticing, and encourages big ideas which as it has built-in failure recovery systems as part of its practices, doesn’t expect to take responsibility for long-term deleterious effects. The hunter/explorer dumps in the woods and moves on, way of thinking. So externalities is built into the models that capitalists use as templates. The test of worth is how much money the practice makes now, and devel take the hindmost.

    An interesting point about how big organisations manage to obtain cheaply the basic information or product and build it into a very profitable item for resale. In an obituary for a bio-chemist from the USA Kary Mullis
    it referred to the fact that he and another colleague invented polymerase chain reaction (PCR) which enables fast copies of DNA. The company Cetus which he was working in owned the new information he found with another colleague, paying him in the 1980’s a $US10,000 bonus and on-selling the rights to a pharmaceutical company for $300 million.

    The corporates can build powerful and expensive structures in this increasingly technological world, and utilise the intellectual capital of workers as in this case. On Radionz this morning the conversation was about how tech can trawl through archives easily looking for useful information to background anything being posited. The vocabulary and understanding of syntax is at an adult level though the nuances are at a kindy level apparently. So what do ordinary people think of the ramifications of the points in this comment? Or are we too busy listening and watching other people spouting their thoughts, or what passes for thought amongst the moronators?

    • You’re right. Its a typical colonial attitude and has very high similarities to the corporate attitude to workers. Workers are just another indigenous population to be exploited. When people say we have to look at the wellbeing of the company Its the same thing as swearing loyalty to the crown. Neither entity is an actual being. The same with the economy which has a purpose but no actual life. If its purpose is to enrich the 1% then it is more than useless. It is a form of evil. Look at Ecuador which is in the process of being subjugated by the IMF. Enriching the traitor Moreno at the expense of the people because the IMF demands austerity. And then people get excited because countries turn to China?!? And Ecuador gets a free pass from the West even though Moreno trashes the constitution that allows the Constituant assembly to sack the President and call for fresh elections. Why? Because he couldn’t win a free election. Even now the troops are on the street shooting protesters but you wouldnt know because Western press is in the pocket of the IMF and World Bank. And Venezuela is demonised? Because they refuse to be subjugated? Even though Maduro continues to win elections that Jimmy Carter calls some of the Fairest in the world? Its a crazy world all right. Those that are in control just keep finding ways to make sure that all your time is taken up with survival to have any left to think about what they are doing to you, your family, your community and the world. And the irony is that unlike the economy or the company or the crown, these are all actual living beings. This includes planet earth

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