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Yet another gun-nutter headline:

“Colorado Movie Massacre”

I’ve grown sick of writing about the great American disease. Everytime there’s another massacre in the United States the media gushes forth its well-rehearsed hypocritical torrent of emotional shit, and once again pretends not to know the reason why it’s happened.

There’s a very simple equation to provide the answer:

Gun obsession + violent video game/hard-core media violence obsession + disillusion with American society (usually acts as a catalyst, but not always necessary) = mental displacement from reality. Result: predictable killing of innocent people.

The gun is the most under-used piece of property owned in America. It’s bought with loving affection, set in a place of honor in the home, taken out from time to time and fondled as a cherished pet.

It may occasionally get used down the local range, though most are not. The owner has spent a great deal of money to purchase an article he’s probably longed for all his life, only to find it’s a useless piece of scrap iron – unless ‘bad guys’ attempt to attack him in his home. And, let’s be frank, what are the odds of that occurring?

For most stalwart citizens, living with the frustration of not being able to shoot something is controllable. After all, most of us wouldn’t risk a lifetime in one of America’s gulag jails just for the momentary thrill of blowing away the sweet, grey-haired, old lady who lives next door.

For many, though, particularly as the gun collection stashed in the living room grows, the itch to use them for their designed purpose becomes steadily more of an irritant. The only way to obtain a modicum of relief is a metamorphosis into the twilight world of violent videos.

To even call these games ‘violent’ is to do them a disservice. The word is way too passive. These games leave nothing to the imagination. They are hard-core, pornographic, dehumanizing, filth. A sexual element is unnecessary, as the brutal, in-your-face, violence is sufficiently orgasmic to temporarily satiate those immersed in these ghoulish, evil, video fantasies.

Take, for example, ‘Postal 2’:

This is a game in which it is not uncommon to drop-kick grenades and whip scythes at unsuspecting civilians if they refuse to participate in your everyday life story (which is, after all, the plot behind the game). Of course, this includes using cat carcasses as silencers on your gun, hitting people with anthrax-laden cow heads and playing “fetch” with dogs using the severed heads of your dismembered victims. Postal 2 is the epitome of senseless, over-the-top video game violence.”

Or, ‘Manhunt’:

As history would repeat itself every time a controversial new video game was introduced to gamers, Manhunt and its producers ran into constant battles with game classifications, angry parents and censorship laws that stirred a fury among critics upon its release (including being the first video game classified as a movie by the province of Ontario in 2004 due to its grotesque nature). Either way, the player sneaks around a 3-D environment and commits heinous acts of murder as part of a sadistic form of entertainment. Decapitation, steel-object-to-the-brain impaling and even the ability to jam a sickle up an unsuspecting victim’s ass was part of the Manhunt experience. Violence indeed.”

Or, the more well-recognized, ‘Grand Theft Auto III’:

If Mortal Kombat was the granddaddy of ultra violent gaming, then anything from the Grand Theft Auto series (particularly Grand Theft Auto III) is easily its bastardized offspring. As the title suggests, you’re out to make a name for yourself by accomplishing missions in a third-person environment, and stealing cars is the most lighthearted crime you can commit. From massive gangland-style beat downs to barbecuing prostitutes with flamethrowers, nothing is too vile or unrealistic in the face of death, blood and mayhem. Subsequent violence from later sequels (including GTA: Vice City, GTA: San Andreas and GTA IV) was simply adding more fuel to the fire. Once the franchise hit the 3-D third-person perspective, all hell broke loose, and you can blame GTA III for all of it.”^[1]

And these are only examples of the ‘legal’ ones.

In those days before profit was more important than decency, such creations were banned by the censors. (If you’re young enough to be unfamiliar with the word, ‘censors’ were people who protected us from ourselves).

America, not content with confining its self-inflicted disease within borders, exports its steel-encased germs all over the world. John Horgan, writing on the Scientific American blog today, explains:

…About 100,000 Americans are wounded or killed by firearms each year in the U.S.—which has the highest levels of gun ownership in the world—and more than a million Americans have been shot to death since 1968. Although gun supporters tout the benefits of self-defense, a gun is 22 times more likely to be used in a suicide attempt; criminal assault or homicide; or unintentional shooting death or injury than for self-defense. Higher household gun ownership correlates with higher rates of homicide, suicide and unintentional shootings.

The American fetish for guns hurts non-Americans, too. The U.S. is the world’s leading source for small arms—defined as weapons that can be carried and operated by a single person—as it is for larger, more expensive weapons, such as tanks and jet fighters. Small arms, which range from pistols and rifles to rocket-launched grenades and shoulder-fired missiles, are the biggest killers in wars around the world. The International Action Network on Small Arms estimates that more than 600 million are in circulation.

The Action Network lobbies for tighter national and international controls on the manufacture and trade of small arms; urges a system of marking all firearms (perhaps with embedded computer chips, to allow easy tracking by law-enforcement officials); and promotes programs for collecting and destroying small arms. But the NRA has successfully blocked international as well as domestic gun control.”^[2]

The US National Rifle Association is also adept at promoting the American macho-man image of the gun owner. John Horgan again:

The gun lobby consists of people like Robby, whom I met in 2009 while flying to Salt Lake City to attend a conference (on the evolution of aggression, of all things). Robby (not his real name) was a chatty fellow with a bad-boy chuckle: Heh heh.

I asked him what he did for a living and he replied, with a sly grin, “Recreational equipment.” His wife insisted he give strangers this answer, because she worried that liberal pansies would get upset if Robby told them that he sold firearms. Heh heh. Robby had sold all sorts of guns to all sorts of people, including Italian and Russian mobsters. In fact, in a few days he was flying to Arizona to peddle his wares at a big gun show.

Robby had a conspiratorial view of illegal aliens. Young Latino men, he claimed, were joining the U.S. armed forces in huge numbers so they could get training for gang fights and possibly race wars. War was going to break out between Latinos and whites in the U.S. Southwest; it was only a matter of time. There has always been war, Robby chortled, and there always will be. And he will be there to supply the weapons! Heh heh.

Obama had been great for Robby’s business; as soon as it looked like Obama might become president, folks started stockpiling guns, because they figured Obama would favor stricter gun controls. When I said I believed in gun control, Robby replied that he did, too: Hold onto your gun with two hands; that’s gun control. Heh heh.

Shutting down gun dealers like Robby may not have prevented the massacres in Arizona and Colorado, but it would be a step toward a saner world.”

And while we’re at it, let’s rid the world of those who peddle the filth we innocuously label, ‘violent video games’.

^{[1] “Top 10: Most Violent Video Games” AskMen.com, undated.}

^{[2] “How Many Massacres Will It Take for Politicians to Stand Up To Gun Nuts?” Scientific American blog, July 21st 2012}

This week the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) managed to pull its head out of the sand long enough to finally conclude there’s an eighty percent chance the extreme weather patterns noted over the last few years result from man-made climate change.

Below are some significant facts contributing to this shift in official US scientific opinion:

“-The UK experienced a very warm November 2011 and a very cold December 2010. In analyzing these two very different events, UK scientists uncovered interesting changes in the odds. Cold Decembers are now half as likely to occur now versus fifty years ago, whereas warm Novembers are now 62 times more likely.

– La Niña-related heat waves, like that experienced in Texas in 2011 where many areas experienced consecutive days over 100° Fahrenheit, are now 20 times more likely to occur during La Niña years today than La Niña years 50 years ago.

– Major greenhouse gas concentrations, including carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide, continued to rise.Carbon dioxide steadily increased in 2011 and the yearly global average exceeded 390 parts per million (ppm) for the first time since instrumental records began. This represents an increase of 2.10 ppm compared with the previous year. There is no evidence that natural emissions of methane in the Arctic have increased significantly during the last decade. [Despite media misinformation to the contrary, pledges to reduce emissions by industrial nations committed to Kyoto have all been broken – RJA]

– Four independent datasets show 2011 among the 15 warmest since records began in the late 19th century, with annually-averaged temperatures above the 1981–2010 average, but coolest on record since 2008. The Arctic continued to warm at about twice the rate compared with lower latitudes. On the opposite pole, the South Pole station recorded its all-time highest temperature of 9.9°F on December 25, breaking the previous record by more than 2 degrees. Note: The South Pole/Antarctica region continues to grow ice across the region. Meanwhile, the Arctic ice continues to melt and decrease.

– Ocean heat content, measured from the surface to 2,300 feet deep, continued to rise since records began in 1993 and was record high.

– Oceans were saltier than average in areas of high evaporation, including the western and central tropical Pacific, and fresher than average in areas of high precipitation, including the eastern tropical South Pacific, suggesting that precipitation is increasing in already rainy areas and evaporation is intensifying in drier locations.

– The floods experienced in Thailand cannot be directly related to global warming and climate change as rainfall rates in the region were not completely unusual. In fact, reservoir policies and increased construction on the flood plain were the primary reasons why flooding occurred.

– Arctic sea ice extent was the second lowest ever recorded since record keeping began. Maximum ice extent was roughly 5.65 million square miles, on March 7, 2011 and the minimum extent was roughly 1.67 million square miles on September 9, 2011.”^[1]

So significant is this shift off-the-fence by NOAA, even the US corporate-controlled media couldn’t ignore it, though the extent to which certain news outlets ‘played down’ the information was almost laughable.

The Washington Post, for example, lifts its head out the dust momentarily, to tell us:

“…the globally averaged temperature of the planet has risen beyond any doubt beyond where you would expect … with natural variability alone…”

This, they point out right at the start, is the view of one man, Martin Hoerling, a research meteorologist at NOAA’s Earth System Research Laboratory.

They fail to acknowledge it’s also the view of 378 climate scientists from 48 countries around the world, who all contributed data to NOAA’s ‘2011 State of the Climate’ report.

The WP article concludes:

Whereas scientists are making advances in linking climate change and extreme weather, the NOAA/UK Met Office study cautions: “Currently, attribution of single extreme events to anthropogenic climate change remains challenging.”

But the study also notes considerable progress has been made in this area of research, and it’s not unreasonable to link certain weather events and climate change provided percentages or probabilities are used to characterize any connection.

Linking climate change and heat wave intensity is less controversial than linking climate change and the intensity of precipitation extremes. The study found that in some cases, extreme weather occurred with no apparent link to climate change. For example, no strong connections was identified between climate change and the devastating Thailand floods of 2011.^[2]

Climate change is universally recognized as a current event. Only once does the WP deign to mention ‘man-made’ climate change, or ‘human-induced’, as they discreetly put it. In a quote towards the end of the article the term ‘anthropogenic’ crops up. Presumably, an assumption by the WP editor that his readers won’t know what it means.

Note, also, that the piece ends with a climate-change negative: Thailand’s floods weren’t connected to climate change. The presumption: that the extreme, devastating, floods in parts of the US, Europe, Australia, and many other areas of the planet, weren’t either.

KENS5 of San Antonia, Texas, went even further in downplaying a report that should really shock this major polluter nation into action.

It starts off well enough:

“There (is) definitely is a connection between greenhouse gases and extreme weather,” said Tom Karl, who heads NOAA’s climate office. “We are seeing very strong evidence to suggest that not all, but many, of the extremes we’re seeing around the planet are being enhanced by greenhouse gases.”

His comments marked the first time government scientists have made a statistical link between extreme weather and human behavior. NOAA recently looked at 50 years of weather data in Texas and concluded that humans made last year’s drought 20 times likelier to happen.’

You will note that Tom Karl is the head of NOAA’s climate office.

KENS5 then drops the ball completely by bringing in ‘Neil’. In the following paragraph, Neil Frank is described as ‘a meteorologist’. His qualifications (if any), who he works for, whether he is an amateur or professional weather man, are ignored. All that matters is Neil’s opinion:

Others, however, disagree. Meteor-ologist Neil Frank said NOAA’s data did not go back far enough, and did not explain how some parts of the world became cooler.
“When we talk about global warming or climate change, we’ve got to look at the entire planet,” Frank said. “We can’t just zero in on one small area.”

If Neil had bothered to read NOAA’s ‘2011 State of the Climate’ report he wouldn’t have needed to proceed further than the section marked ‘CONTENTS’ to realize this was a fairly comprehensive study of every country, region, ocean, ice sheet, and weather pattern on the planet.

He obviously hadn’t.

Not content with blitzing the head of NOAA’s climate office with an almost anonymous nondescript, KENS5’s ‘journalist’ then feels the balance must be redressed and heads off to the ‘Houston Memorial Park’, where he approaches the first person he can find, who couldn’t care less about climate change and just wishes this annoying little reporter would bugger off and leave her to find a shady spot where she can sweat out the heatwave in peace.

At Houston’s Memorial Park, at least one woman was willing to accept human responsibility.
“I think there is a certain natural occurrence of ice ages and warnings,” Ceci Norman said. “But I think man does some things to accelerate that.”

To what degree remains at the center of intense debate.^[3]

The last sentence of this journalistic offering is, perhaps, the most offensive of the whole article. The only ‘intense debate’ about man-made climate change is the one manufactured by the US media and spread by ill-informed – usually politically right-wing – bloggers happy to accept its outpourings as gospel.

This type of journalistic mind-manipulation is not restricted to a second-rate news source in Texas. It abounds throughout America. It’s a ‘divide-and-conquer’ technique that takes the truth and wraps it in half-truths and downright lies, quoted by so-called ‘experts’ with no – or at best, shaky – qualifications.

In 1896, a Swedish chemist, Professor Svante Arrhenius, wrote a groundbreaking paper on carbon dioxide and atmospheric warming that prophesied the global impact of fossil-fuel use. It was largely ignored by his scientific colleagues.

Seventy years later, early computer models suggested Arrhenius might have been correct. It took nearly one hundred years before a sudden sharp rise in global temperatures in the late 1980’s woke science up to what was really happening.

Now, another thirty years on, the evidence is so overwhelming it’s impossible to ignore, yet still corporate America – terrified it may have to spend money, rather than make it – is behind a major effort to split popular opinion, in an attempt to delay the inevitable.

One hundred and ten years after manmade climate change was scientifically predicted, the United States National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has finally woken up and opened its eyes.

It’s a pity it took so long, but then, maybe that had something to do with it’s other association.

^{[1] “STATE OF THE CLIMATE IN 2011” NOAA, July 7th 2012 (.pdf file)}

^{[2] “NOAA scientist: 80 percent chance recent heat records due to climate change” Washington Post, July 10th 2012}

^{[3] “NOAA links Texas drought to human behavior” KENS5.com, July 12th 2012}

Sign in a Mississippi Wal-Mart:*

“No Child Left Behind,” was obviously a great success!

*^{Thanks to “Vineyard Views’ for the story.}