Tag Archives: War

How True Klingons Battle Climate Change

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klingonYou probobly assume that we Americans represent the Federation of the Star Trek universe. Not really. If anything, we are far closer to the Klingons – say otherwise and I will let you taste my bat’leth! Like the Klingons, we may be inept at maintaining our infrastructure, at providing affordable healthcare, at ensuring a good education, a secure retirement, or a working wage… but we are truly exceptional at waging war. We have far more military might than all other human civilizations combined. Our immense “defense” budget is sacrosanct and we subordinate every other priority to sustain it. We bring our armies down upon anyone who dares challenge us and have been involved in over a hundred wars in our short history (see here). Admit it or not – like it or not – we are the Klingons.

You probably mistakenly assumed that Russia represents the Klingon Empire. But the Russians are more akin to the Romulans, favoring cloaking devices and clandestine operations to advance their insular goals. The European Union is probably the closest thing our planet has to a Federation.

But I say, don’t deny our Klingon side, embrace it! In fact, call upon it to battle the biggest, most deadly enemy threatening us – Climate Change. What would a true Klingon warrior do if faced with the threat of Climate Change? Well yes, they would unhesitatingly invade and occupy a nice planet like Bajor that has been responsibly managed by peaceful refugees. But if that were not possible, they would meet Climate Change in glorious battle.

I realize that declaring war on Climate Change seems hopeless, particularly after the election of the world’s most moronic climate-change-denying buffoon to the White House and the impending purge of any remnant of reason from our government. But Klingon warriors scoff at such defeatism.

My proposal is that we get ourselves into a war against Climate Change and bring the full wrath and fury of the American Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines to bear against it. Our military knows how to win against all odds. I say bring it down upon Climate Change like a hostile fleet of Klingon Birds of Prey!

I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking there’s no way our Republican-controlled Congress would ever declare war on Climate Change. But there is nothing easier than getting America into a war. We love our wars way too much to ever say no to one. And even though many members of the Congress don’t believe in Climate Change, we go to war under false pretenses all the time. We don’t need real reasons when any old aluminum tubes will do.

But you are right about one thing, Congress would need some compelling excuse – merely saving our planet is obviously insufficient. So what we can do is stage a False Flag operation to get them all riled up. Maybe we can plant rumors that the Russians are actually orchestrating Climate Change to spread Communism. Or we could “discover” Climate Change documents in Nicaragua that implicate the drug cartels. We could even stage a fictional attack purportedly made by Climate Change against an American Destroyer or a government building. Better yet, the CIA can merely insert a fake news story on Breitbart reporting that Climate Change gave American soldiers the middle finger. Really, any of the old tried-and-true methods for justifying a war should do just fine.

Once we do go to war against Climate Change, that evil CO2 will be routed. Our Navy subs can fire modified torpedoes to defend salinity in the North Atlantic Conveyor belt. Our Air Force can bomb CO2 strongholds in the Middle East. The Army can hold off rising seas on our Eastern seaboard while amphibious Marines assault mega tornadoes and hurricanes in the Gulf. The Coast Guard can protect polar ice caps. Special Forces will be needed for missions into other countries while the CIA conducts covert ops to take out the worst methane polluters. Homeland Security may have to go door to door to uncover traitors in our midst and I would not rule out drones or even space-based weaponry.

Seriously, we need to leverage our greatest asset in a global effort to reverse Climate Change. Hey, if it takes a military coup to get this war started, I’m all for it. I’m even willing to resort to chemical warfare in this case. Heck, go ahead and waterboard Climate Change if it gets results. After all, desperate times call for desperate measures. And even if we fall, we can at least save our Klingon honor and perhaps even give the surviving cockroaches their chance to evolve to be wiser beings than us.

We are Klingon! Today is a good day to die!!

 

Ares Targets Iran

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GodOfWarIn Wonder Woman comics, the Amazon Princess often does battle with Ares. The God of War ceaselessly and eternally dedicates himself to instigating violence and fomenting war. He is especially difficult to combat since he doesn’t usually act directly. Most of the time he works covertly, behind the scenes, pulling strings and pushing buttons to ensure that greedy, ideological, or even well-meaning humans are tricked or prodded and driven to war. Two of Ares most powerful lies are convincing people that war is inevitable and that war is necessary to ensure peace.

Ares would have been proud of our 1990 Gulf War which was based on “a pack of lies” (see here). In the comics, he often takes the form of humans to influence events. He certainly might have taken the form of Bush Senior in snookering Saddam into attacking Kuwait. Then, he no doubt might have inhabited Dick Cheney to lie us into the second Gulf War and subvert Colin Powell into supporting him.

We really need Wonder Woman right now because Ares has long set his gaze upon Iran as the next great senseless battleground and he is hard at work to sabotage any possible deal with them that might delay his carefully laid plans.

Of course I refer specifically to the battle over approval of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), commonly referred to as the “Iran Deal.” The opposition to this agreement is much more than merely an honest policy debate between well-meaning people of good-will. This really is a clash between those who align with war-imperative of Ares versus the peace-making ethic of Wonder Woman. For Ares, this Iran deal threatens to delay his plans to ensure uninterrupted and perpetual war.

While Ares and Wonder Woman may be only metaphors, these figures nonetheless personify our real, iconic struggle against those who are dedicated to the ideology of war and crave the plunder that wars yield. And the rest of us are not merely spectators of this struggle, we are participants in it whether we accept it or not.

But we cannot win this war against war if we do not understand our enemy. If we naively refuse to consider that anyone would actually WANT war, we cannot hope to defeat those who do. And make no mistake. There are many people with tremendous amounts of power and influence over the political process in America who greatly desire a steady stream of war and will do anything to ensure the uninterrupted flow of the war pipeline.

In 2011, the 100 largest contractors sold $410 billion in arms and military services with some of the highest profit margins of any industry. Is that a lot you ask? Well consider that the entire world-wide cell phone market is expected to reach $341 billion in 2015. So yes, the military industry is indeed humongous by any comparative measure with far higher profit margins to boot.

But the mobile phone industry has something the war industry does not. Cell phones wear out, get lost, and need to be upgraded constantly. The viability of their market, their prospect for sustainable revenue, has no inherent limit barring some completely unforeseen new technology to replace it. The war industry however has a fundamental sustainability and growth problem. Without a constant stream of new wars to consume all those bombs they produce, without a constant stream of existential crises to convince people to pay for wars rather than for the betterment of the human condition, their entire industry collapses. Their gravy-train of war hits a brick wall.

Simply put, the war industry withers and dies without perpetual wars, and the war-profiteers understand that uncomfortable reality even if you do not. And the most foolish thing is to imagine that there just happen to be enough legitimate “organic” wars to keep the war profiteers in business and satisfy their lust for profit. There are not. On the contrary, without Ares-grade machinations, the war industry would dry up very quickly. In fact, we have innumerable quotes that reveal the determination of the war industry to ensure a permanent war economy by any means. Immediately after WWII, corporate war-moguls terrified at the prospect of peace set about ensuring that America would never return to a peace-time economy. I still recall just one memo that was circulated decades ago. It was written by a former President of General Electric and it said something close to the following:

“We can anticipate in the foreseeable future a time when aversion to war might become an insurmountable obstacle to our corporate interests. We must therefore take every action to assure a permanent war economy in the United States.”

This is not an anecdotal wacky comment. This general sentiment has been repeated by corporate leaders over and over again, often proudly. And “every action” includes searching for enemies and creating new ones to ensure wars. It includes destabilizing other countries to make them ripe for war. It includes making sure the “defense” industry is too big to fail so that any cuts can be linked to losing jobs. It includes ensuring that we remain in a perpetual state of fear. And of course it includes blocking any initiatives like the Iran Deal that might result in peace.

Some of these warmongers may truly be motivated by ideology rather than profit. But it’s hard to separate motivation from rationalization. It’s difficult to know when ideology is just a rationalization for profiteering or when ideology is the pawn of profiteers. In any case, it kind of doesn’t matter. Either way, the result is reprehensibly glib calls to “bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran.”

The bottom line is that we must recognize that Ares is not a nice, well-meaning guy who may simply be misguided or uninformed. We must acknowledge that he and real people with financial and political power actually DO want war, even cataclysmic war. They have worked a long time to set Iran up as the next bad guy in their domino chain and they don’t want see those war profits slip away.

If we keep assuming, as we typically do, that our opponents don’t really want war, or that they don’t understand that their obstructions could lead to war, we cannot hope to combat them. As unthinkable as it may be, many opponents of the Iran Deal do understand it would likely lead to war and that is exactly what they want.

If we don’t understand that reality, the real nature of our opponent, we cannot hope to help Wonder Woman to defeat Ares. And she cannot fight him without your help.