Re-brand the Brand
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Apparently, the late Osama bin Laden was tired of his brand name — al-Qaeda just didn’t have the kick and the joke-juice necessary to kill the crowd.
All organizations from time-to-time have to take a painful look at themselves, and it seems Osama was in the same fix, needing some kind of reboot to alter the ugly perceptions brought on by mass killings, which ultimately could get in the way of the group’s bottom line — more mass killings.
Osama just needed some space to brainstorm the problem — but there’s the boom, time’s up.
(Illustration found here).
From Wired:
The Associated Press reports that some of bin Laden’s final writings display an obsession with how far al-Qaida’s brand had fallen.
While the United States has flagellated itself for years for losing the information wars in the Muslim world, bin Laden thought he was worse off, irreparably tainting his terrorist organization by killing too many Muslims.
He started brainstorming new names.
The problem is that bin Laden sucks as a brand manager.
One of his new handles for al-Qaida? “Monotheism and Jihad Group.”
That was the original name of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s bloodthirsty al-Qaida franchise in Iraq that killed so many Muslims that Ayman Zawahiri begged Zarqawi to stop.
When Zarqawi didn’t listen, he lost his Iraqi allies, got blown up by the United States, and his group snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.
Not exactly a model for a new look.
There’s a spot at the bottom of the Wired post where you can submit some original titles of your own.
I’ve always considered, ‘Osama and the Tora Bora Terror Boys‘ a good catchy name — kind of gives the organization that folksy, Pete Seeger, hootenanny type of feel to it.
And now, after Seal Team Six, ‘Obama Nails Osama,’ though, it really doesn’t uplift or inspire terror, mainly the opposite, but it does look good in a newspaper headline.
Change We Can Believe In
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Remember all those most-wonderful slogans bubbling up from Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign, like ‘Change We Can Believe In,’ and ‘Yes, We Can,” which was chanted en-mass whenever the other motto ran out of steam.
The phrases were so effective and catchy, even Jackboot John McCain tried to get into the act, stealing Obama’s thunder and twisting it around to something really, really dumb-ass like, ‘A Leader You Can Believe In‘ — ha!
Of course, now we know (and not just believe) all that was just campaign trail bullshit — Obama is way-by-far the most disappointing president in US history, though, a bit right-on considering he followed the worst president in US history.
And, of course, Obama with all his faults and lies, was still a hundred-trillion-times better in 2008 than the alternative.
(Illustration found here).
Beyond the lack of transparency, beyond all the failed promises — Gitmo, Iraq, war in general, etc., etc. — the biggest let down is Obama’s seemingly nearly disregard of the entire planet’s biggest-by-far problem: Climate change.
Obama has never really seemed to have his heart in climate change.
He blew it on climate change legislation last year, and even with the BP oil spill in the gulf of Mexico, which could have been a watershed moment for global warming, Obama let the ball roll all away.
Instead, he’s out playing golf with The Boner, trying to patch together some consensus for the stupid debt ceiling bullshit, which won’t matter after a humongous F5 tornado wipes out the entire northeastern US.
Obama’s so bad, Al Gore, has lashed out at him.
In Rolling Stone magazine:
To sell their false narrative, the Polluters and Ideologues have found it essential to undermine the public’s respect for Science and Reason by attacking the integrity of the climate scientists.
That is why the scientists are regularly accused of falsifying evidence and exaggerating its implications in a greedy effort to win more research grants, or secretly pursuing a hidden political agenda to expand the power of government.
Such slanderous insults are deeply ironic: extremist ideologues — many financed or employed by carbon polluters — accusing scientists of being greedy extremist ideologues.
After World War II, a philosopher studying the impact of organized propaganda on the quality of democratic debate wrote, “The conversion of all questions of truth into questions of power has attacked the very heart of the distinction between true and false.”
…
Barack Obama’s approach to the climate crisis represents a special case that requires careful analysis.
His election was accompanied by intense hope that many things in need of change would change.
Some things have, but others have not.
Climate policy, unfortunately, is in the second category.
Why?
First of all, anyone who honestly examines the incredible challenges confronting President Obama when he took office has to feel enormous empathy for him: the Great Recession, with the high unemployment and the enormous public and private indebtedness it produced; two seemingly interminable wars; an intractable political opposition whose true leaders — entertainers masquerading as pundits — openly declared that their objective was to ensure that the new president failed; a badly broken Senate that is almost completely paralyzed by the threat of filibuster and is controlled lock, stock and barrel by the oil and coal industries; a contingent of nominal supporters in Congress who are indentured servants of the same special interests that control most of the Republican Party; and a ferocious, well-financed and dishonest campaign poised to vilify anyone who dares offer leadership for the reduction of global-warming pollution.
Despite all that still nothing.
And in a real-depressing, though, most realistic overview of the global warming problem was posted this week with Aljazeera English, detailing the plight of mankind.
A couple of snips:
Scientific research confirms that, so far, humankind has raised the Earth’s temperature, and the aforementioned events are a sign of what is to come.
“If you had a satellite view of the planet in the summer, there is about 40 per cent less ice in the Arctic than when Apollo 8 [in 1968] first sent back those photos [of Earth],” Bill McKibben, world renowned environmentalist and fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences told Al Jazeera, “Oceans are 30 per cent more acidic than they were 40 years ago.
The atmosphere is four per cent more wet than 40 years ago because warm air holds more water than cold air.
That means more deluge and downpour in wet areas and more dryness in dry areas.
So we’re seeing more destructive mega floods and storms, increasing thunderstorms, and increasing lightning strikes.”
So far human greenhouse gas emissions have raised the temperature of the planet by one degree Celsius.
“Climatologists tell us unless we get off gas, coal, and oil, that number will be four to five degrees before the end of this century,” said McKibben, “If one degree is enough to melt the Arctic, we’d be best not to hit four degrees.”
…
Unpublished estimates from the International Energy Agency (IEA) recently revealed that greenhouse gas emissions increased by a record amount last year to the highest carbon output in history, despite the most serious economic recession in 80 years.
This means that the aim of holding global temperatures to safe levels are now all but out of reach.
The goal of preventing a temperature rise of more than two degrees Celsius, which scientists say is the threshold for potentially “dangerous climate change” is now most likely just “a nice Utopia”, according to Fatih Birol, a chief economist of the IEA.
And that’s change we most-definitely don’t want to believe in.
Morning Cycles
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(Illustration of Edward Hopper‘s ‘Morning Sun‘ found here).
Here we are on a wee-early Thursday morning trying to slop through the night’s news and nothing other than the usual war, pestilence and grief, with much emphasis on war, jumps out at me — another daylight-coming on an earth eat-up with bad shit.
Nothing seems to reach out and grab my imagination — all the mind-blowing shit from climate change to Afghanistan to Greeks running financially amok — and all seems to melt down together into one giant stain on the carpet.
So, to my most-favorite poet and a wonder at the prospects:
Will there really be a morning?
Is there such a thing as day?
Could I see it from the mountains
If I were as tall as they?Has it feet like water-lilies?
Has it feathers like a bird?
Is it brought from famous countries
Of which I have never heard?Oh, some scholar! Oh, some sailor!
Oh, some wise man from the skies!
Please to tell a little pilgrim
Where the place called morning lies!
– Emily Dickinson
Emily cried at the coming light, and like the rest of us, yet without a clue.
Premature Extraction — Drawdown Everlasting
Filed Under Bullshit, War & Politics | Leave a Comment
Actually, when you think about it, this country has had a manhood problem for some time.
You can tell the language we use; language always gives us away.
What did we do wrong in Vietnam?
We ‘pulled out’! Not a very manly thing to do.
No. When you’re fucking people, you’re supposed to stay with it and fuck them good; fuck them to death; hang in there and keep fucking them until they’re all fucking dead.
But in Vietnam what happened was by accident we left a few women and children alive, and we haven’t felt good about ourselves since.
– George Carlin
(Illustration found here).
In about four months, the war in Afghanistan will a decade old — the longest war in US history, and arguably one of the most-screwed up.
A nasty, two-faced case in horrible point was the hypocritical, sanctimonious, and total-dumb-ass remarks this past weekend from Karl Eikenberry, the U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan, who blubbered like a baby because the Afghan leadership doesn’t appreciate the war’s total disaster as they should.
From CBS News:
“I must tell you that I find occasional comments from some of your leaders hurtful and inappropriate,” Eikenberry said Sunday.
“When we hear ourselves being called occupiers and worse and our generous aid programs are being dismissed as totally ineffective and the source of all corruption, our pride is offended and we begin to lose our inspiration to carry on.”
…
“Mothers and fathers of fallen soldiers, spouses of soldiers who have lost arms and legs, children of those who have lost their lives in this country,” Eikenberry said.
“They ask themselves about the meaning of their loved ones’ sacrifice.”
Eikenberry was talking out-his-ass about Afghan President Hamid Karzai and other Afghan officials who have commented lately about the half-assed US war machine’s decade-old operation in country.
CBS added this at the end of its story: Eikenberry is accusing Karzai of more than just ingratitude. He’s saying the president of Afghanistan doesn’t get what this war is all about.
Which is a pure crock of shit.
No one in DC has a shit-kicker’s clue about what the whole Afghan adventure was about, much less anyone else in the whole frickin’-frackin’ world.
As far as those ‘generous aid programs’ are concerned, a report earlier this month indicated that money is often not having a positive impact — and in many cases, may be contributing to corruption and to future economic woes for the poverty-stricken country.
And for Afghan’s heroin operation, according to Viktor Ivanov, head of Russia’s Federal Service for Narcotics Control, the drug production pipeline is 40 times higher than a decade ago, and there’s no real-quick remedy.
The Afghan war is like a punch-drunk fighter just swinging his fists at empty air.
Seemingly, the war in Afghanistan has had two possible conclusions at hand, both nearly a decade apart.
The first, the best option, was in December 2001 when US forces trapped Osama bin Laden in the Tora Bora Mountains, but aborted the mission.
How wonderful if George Jr. had finished up then, but nooooooo….
And the second end, of course, occurred this year with bin Laden’s assassination — that should have been the big gong to get the shit out of Dodge (or Kabul).
US peoples in a high majority think it’s time — according to a Pew Research Center survey released this week showed 56 percent of respondents wants the US out of Afghanistan “as quickly as possible,” the largest result in such polls and up eight percentage points in less than a month.
And along with the public’s response is also the huge cost of the thing, especially in the current economic climate — Spending on the war in Afghanistan has skyrocketed since Mr. Obama took office, to $118.6 billion in 2011. It was $14.7 billion in 2003, when President George W. Bush turned his attention and American resources to the war in Iraq.
Money way-needed back home.
And today, President Obama is expected to to announce a draw-down of US troops in Afghanistan — maybe up to 30,000 GIs — but it will take place over an 18-month period, which is double-speak for we’re going to be in country for a long, long time.
But the DOD has other thoughts:
The military is asking President Barack Obama to hold off on ending the Afghanistan troop surge until the fall of 2012, in a proposal that would keep a large portion of the 33,000 extra forces in the country through the next two warm-weather fighting seasons.
So, no pull-out too early, and like George says, fuck ‘em until everybody’s dead.
Dropping Acid
Filed Under Cloud gazing, Environment, Madness | Leave a Comment
Sitting here along California’s northern coast on a quiet Tuesday morning — the first day of summer — the world’s largest ocean continues its massive movement a couple of miles away, and even way out there in the darkness of the Pacific, the growing danger of climate change is rippling, creating a much-more shitty future for us humans sitting on our collective asses in smug comfort.
Along with me, another nearly three billion other people live within 60 miles of some ocean, and more a dozen of the earth’s major urban centers are right at the seawater — a shitload of humanity in harm’s way.
Just in getting wet, the world’s sea levels are now rising faster than at any time in the past 2,100 years.
And the real cause of this situation — the so-called Industrial Revolution.
Mankind in its great desire for civilization has left in its wake a battered and dying planet, and despite the tornadoes, the wildfires, drought and flooding, the real nasty business of global warming is already taking place in the oceans.
(Illustration found here).
Along with the melting North and South poles, resulting in sea-level rise, the world’s oceans are becoming more polluted, more acid-like and bringing unimaginable death to our life-giving waters.
From Reuters this morning:
Time was running short to counter hazards such as a collapse of coral reefs or a spread of low-oxygen “dead zones,” according to the study led by the International Programme on the State of the Ocean (IPSO).
“We now face losing marine species and entire marine ecosystems, such as coral reefs, within a single generation,” according to the study by 27 experts to be presented to the United Nations.
“Unless action is taken now, the consequences of our activities are at a high risk of causing, through the combined effects of climate change, over-exploitation, pollution and habitat loss, the next globally significant extinction event in the ocean,” it said.
…
Jelle Bijma, of the Alfred Wegener Institute, said the seas faced a “deadly trio” of threats of higher temperatures, acidification and lack of oxygen, known as anoxia, that had featured in several past mass extinctions.
A build-up of carbon dioxide, blamed by the U.N. panel of climate scientists on human use of fossil fuels, is heating the planet.
Absorbed into the oceans, it causes acidification, while run-off of fertilizers and pollution stokes anoxia.
“From a geological point of view, mass extinctions happen overnight, but on human timescales we may not realize that we are in the middle of such an event,” Bijma wrote.
One of the major problems in tackling climate change is the view of most of humanity ruling peoples is the lack of enthusiasm, especially from rich peoples.
Richer countries have failed to supply the $30 billion of climate financing they pledged at the Copenhagen summit in 2009, developing world officials and non- governmental organizations said.
Only about $5 billion of the funds due to be delivered through next year are “new and additional” as promised, with the rest of the so-called Fast Start money diverted from other aid budgets or previously announced, according to a report by the Washington-based Institute of Policy Studies that was endorsed by Pakistan, Bangladesh and Solomon Islands officials.
“This is overseas development aid repackaged as climate finance,” Farrukh Khan, Pakistan’s lead negotiator, said in an interview in Bonn, Germany, last week.
“Deep down, the feeling is very real that this is not happening.”
And are we too late, or what?
Or does mankind still have a chance?
An interview with Jared Diamond, a professor of geography at the University of California at Los Angeles, and author of, Guns, Germs, and Steel; and, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed.
Via Climate Progress:
“There are so many societies in which the elite made decisions that were good for themselves in the short run and ruined themselves and societies in the long run.
For example, the most advanced society in the New World before Columbus was the Maya of the Yucatan Peninsula, Guatemala and Honduras.
They ended up collapsing …. because of a combination of climate change, drought, water management problems, soil erosion, deforestation….So the Mayan kings had strong power.
Why didn’t the Mayan kings just look out the windows of the Palaces and see the forests getting chopped down, soil being eroded down at the valley bottom.
Why didn’t the kings say `stop it’?
Well the kings had managed to insulate themselves from the consequences of their actions — in the short run.
Even while the forests were being chopped down, they were still being fed well by the commoners, they were in their wonderful palaces.
And the kings didn’t recognize that they were making a mess until it was too late, when the commoners rose in revolt.
Similarly, in the United States at present, the policies being pursued by too many wealthy people and decision makers are ones that — as in the case of the Mayan kings — preserve their interests in the short run, but are disastrous in the long run.”
Diamond says the world has the opportunity to do something, but to paraphrase The Rolling Stones, time is NOT on our side.