Manuel Valenzuela: Grave and Gathering Dangers (I)

“Today, flat-earthers within the Bush Administration--aided by right-wing allies who have produced assorted hired guns and conservative think tanks to further their goals--are engaged in a campaign to suppress science that is arguably unmatched in the Western world since the Inquisition. Sometimes, rather than suppress good science, they simply order up their own. Meanwhile, the Bush White House is purging, censoring and blacklisting scientists and engineers whose work threatens the profits of the Administration's corporate paymasters or challenges the ideological underpinnings of their radical anti-environmental agenda.”

---- Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

"If you believe in a rational universe, in enlightenment, in knowledge and in a search for the truth, this White House is an absolute disaster."

---- Princeton University scientist Michael Oppenheimer

The tip of the iceberg continues its ominous melting and the giant unseen mass of ice below remains submerged, a grave and gathering danger lying waiting in the path of the vessel that is human existence. The state of the planet’s environment and by consequence human health continues its steady decline, in no small part a result of the Bush administration’s ignorant and hypnotizing love of the almighty dollar and the Corporate Leviathan that has shredded rules, regulations and protections once designed to slow the progress of environmental devastation. Today, after three years of the war president’s reign, our environment and health have been methodically pilfered through a carefully orchestrated strategy of lies, deceits and appointments designed to suppress and alter scientific fact and facilitate the Leviathan’s unhindered exploitation of land and man.

From the start of Bush’s ascendancy to the Presidency by the Supreme Court, a plethora of high level and policy-making position appointments were made, selected from a large contingent of minions who had at one time or presently been employed by environmentally degrading industries, utilities and companies, namely those of the mining, logging, energy (coal, oil, gas), chemical, pharmaceutical, agribusiness and military industries. From Cabinet positions to lower level ones, from scientists to engineers, advisors to panelists, the army of the Leviathan marched proudly into Washington trumpeting its intent and determination to facilitate and bring forth the continuing corporate leeching of America’s air, lands, forests and waterways. Dispersed throughout the government’s agencies and departments, the vast array of industry and corporate executives, lobbyists, CEO’s, attorneys and scientists immediately began undermining the many mechanisms that protected our environment, health and scientific fact.

The introduction of the Bush administration into Washington began the most systematic evisceration of environmental laws and protections the country has ever been witness to. As a result, those industries whose interest, profit and power lies in undoing environmental regulations began a reign of terror onto everything pristine, sacred and beautiful. A war against our lungs and bodies was declared; a war against our unborn children and grandchildren was unleashed. Our air continues to be polluted at unprecedented levels, causing massive amounts of asthma and disease in children. The lowering of human immune systems has also resulted along with hundreds of thousands of deaths in older adults. Our water continues to be made less clean, with increasing levels of arsenic, mercury, factory chemicals, pesticides and agribusiness runoffs being mixed with once clean water, leading to disease, death and the absorption of mercury and pesticides into the bodies of fertile American women. The health consequences on fetuses and babies, it is being learned, are devastating and criminal.

Bush has been unwilling to make fuel efficiency a priority, something that, given our dependence on foreign oil, would help bring security to our shores. His administration has granted subsidies and as consequence tax rebates for those buying gas guzzling SUVs. Investment in more efficient engines such as hydrogen fuel cells is minimal, a joke if the situation was not so serious. When Big Oil runs smoothly through the corridors of power, however, the expectation of self-cannibalization is an experiment in futility. The oilgarchs’ omnipotent power derives from the continued flow of black blood, and it seems they have no scruples sacrificing the red kind in order to achieve this goal.

American energy and foreign policy have been created by Cheney and his cronies in the energy/oil industries. Wars have been started and waged to attain feudal lands rich in black gold for energy conglomerates. Science has been corrupted, distorted and suppressed to fall in line with the energy industry’s goals. The surface of the planet is being mercilessly scarred and made barren; developing nations and their peoples are being turned into oppressed estates and serfs of the exploiting elite few.

The development and introduction of renewable solar and wind energy has been hindered and is but an afterthought as the growth of American corporatism continues. This technology is the future, the only solution to a world reeling from the released energies of carbon. Wind and solar technology can provide hundreds of thousands of jobs, it can clean our skies and help progress our planet forward, providing much needed stability, equality and opportunity. Yet Bush has done close to nothing with this amazingly available technology.

Rather, it continues to be suppressed by those entities that have everything to lose and nothing to gain from the introduction of clean and renewable energy. Threats to the establishment and to the greed infested Leviathan cannot be allowed to flourish, or to be made known. Carbon based industries must be allowed to prosper, even to the great detriment of the planet and its inhabitants.

The rape and pillage of America’s and the world’s forests and lands has accelerated. Through Orwellian doublespeak phrases such as Healthy Forests and Clear Skies the administration baits and switches its way toward granting the Leviathan unfettered powers to decimate forests and infest our air. Accountable to no one, polluters have carte blanche power to conduct profit-making devastation and free-market genocide.

Bush’s environmental record can aptly be termed a Scorched Earth Policy (SEP), a profound manifestation of a will to wage a war of terror on Earth’s resources, its breathable air and drinkable water while arrogantly ignoring the future of humanity and the only home we possess. This is a crime against humanity and against the planet.

Bush’s Scorched Earth Policy is one where the future is abandoned, the long term is an afterthought and the present is trashed. It is enabling the insatiable appetite of the Leviathan to gorge, becoming a bloodsucking vampire robbing life from the planet. Today’s children and tomorrow’s future are being denied the life they have an inalienable right to thanks to the unquenchable destructive appetite of those made blind by the hypnotizing blindfold of the almighty dollar and the captivating echo of the great Leviathan and the destructive power it espouses to protect. As more decimation is unleashed, humankind’s future will grow more and more diseased, living in a world once dreamed up by the realm of science fiction.

The lackey in the White House has placed the collective future of the human race in peril through his symphonious double-footed waltz with the corporate oligarchy. The hundreds of thousands who die yearly as a result of air, water and land pollution, not to mention through the introduction of carcinogens, chemicals, pesticides, hormones, preservatives, fats and sugars we ingest with the foods we eat are but an inconsequential necessity to corporate decision-makers in the system of exploitation we call capitalism.

We are made to fear the bogeymen that killed 3000 souls but not the terrorists who knowingly, clandestinely and with corporatist approval destroy hundreds of thousands of energies through the despoilment of the environment and the slow corrosion of human bodies. Wearing expensively tailored Armani suits is the armor and shield protecting white-skinned terrorists from the war proclaimed against brown-skinned ones wearing but turbans.

Since January 2000, the Bush administration has continuously lied about, altered and suppressed vital scientific fact from Americans and the world. It has distorted findings and research contrary to its political and corporate interests, pressured and cajoled government scientists and engineers into either acquiescing to its commands or being fired and has set back perhaps for decades the trustworthiness of government scientific findings.

Just recently a renowned amalgam of scientists and engineers, including Nobel laureates, published a report critical of the Bush administration for the realities mentioned above and for eviscerating governmental science that is unfavorable to those interests it upholds and protects, namely those of the Leviathan it serves. The report criticizes the Bush administration for purposely distorting scientific fact "for partisan political ends."

Any finding that does not serve its purpose or political aspirations is hidden from view, criticized, lied about or changed in favor of one, usually sponsored by corporate powers, that falls in line with the fiction Bush wants to make public. All objective, professional research, reports and facts that are seen as a threat to the Leviathan faces a collection of firewalls and obstacles that assure the public will never see or believe the reality that exists. Instead, the administration flaunts corporate sponsored scientific research, conducted by scientists friendly to polluting industries, utilities and companies, that distort the mess that is being created and the rape and pillage of both man and land that exploitation has brought forth. The legal form of corruption called lobbying and contributions has its rewards.

The suppression and outright lies of EPA air quality reports near Ground Zero in the aftermath of 9/11 in which the true extent of damaging pollution never saw the light of day is but one example of an administration that sacrifices American citizens’ health and lives for the continued profiteering of its corporate friends. In order for Wall Street to open in the days and months following 9/11, the administration assured New Yorkers the air quality near the tragic scene was acceptable and non-threatening.

In reality, however, air quality was exceedingly dangerous for human activity, with high levels of asbestos present, in many instances causing sickness in people working near the site of the World Trade Center. This outright lie will in the end cause premature deaths to hundreds, perhaps thousands of people who will suffer long-term disease due to the fictional assurances of the Bush administration. After all, money and stock trading had to continue making the few richer.

We pursue turban-wearing Arabs “hiding in caves” half a world away when the worst kind of terrorist lies, distorts, manipulates, suppresses and alters relevant information that is leading to the unnecessary death of hundreds of thousands of Americans per year. Wearing a small American flag push-pin on a suit and hiding behind a sentinel army of American red, white and blue flags, while proclaiming undying patriotism and divine inspiration should not make our “elected leaders” immune from the crimes against humanity they help perpetrate.

Perhaps the greatest deception being committed by the Bush administration is the perverse suppression of scientific fact and policy within the private and public scientific community detailing the increasingly real dangers of global warming. This growing and gathering menace, seen in many circles as a threat much bigger than terrorism, has the potential of creating devastation and havoc around the world. The signs are everywhere, they do not discriminate and they are gathering energy, not unlike a massive and catastrophic typhoon ready to unleash its tumultuous fury on civilization.

Our devastation of Earth’s resources and our consumption of carbon based energy are heating the planet at unprecedented levels. Oceans are getting warmer, coral reefs are being wiped out, glaciers are melting, Arctic sheets of ice are disappearing and animal and plant species are being made extinct. Summers are seeing hundreds of deaths due to heat; storms are bigger, stronger and much more devastating. Ocean currents are changing, leading to an alteration of temperatures and weather patterns worldwide. The dreams of fantasy are rapidly becoming our nightmarish reality. We are helping to seal our own fates, and the Bush administration is hiding this frightful reality from billions of world citizens.

A Pentagon study that outlined a very grim future for mankind due to global warming was concealed by a White House that tried everything in its power to prevent its dissemination to the public. Fortunately, the report was leaked and today we see the military’s deep seated worry about our planet in the next twenty years if global warming is not treated and dealt with as a threat much greater than terrorism. The study outlines a future of anarchy and perpetual war, of the deaths of hundreds of millions of humans, of extreme drought, human displacement due to famine and increased ocean levels.

It predicts famine and dwindling supplies of food, water and oil will lead to wars and nuclear proliferation. Weather fluctuations will change the complexion of entire countries. Rich nations will become fortresses as starving and displaced peoples, mostly those of the south, will migrate north. Given human history and nature and the dire prognostications of the study, our continued reign is about to come to an abrupt end.

The Pentagon study was conducted by a department that today possesses the most power in the US government, so it is safe to assume that its conclusions should be taken extremely seriously and have indeed reached the highest office in the land. Instead, Bush hid it from view, saying not a word, no doubt to protect the interests of his masters who contribute mightily to the growing phenomenon that could make us all extinct creatures that brought about their own demise.

The Bush administration is a grave and growing danger, a threat to national and global security. Bush has declared war on the environment and our health; he has lied and hidden to appease those holding his puppet strings. By association, the war president has declared war on the planet, on each and every one of us. His policies serve not 285 million people but those holding the reigns of the Leviathan, thereby endangering all six billion of us. It seems the man cares not for his own progeny, condemning their future to a world bordering on the unthinkable.

Sacrificing the future of our species for the present profits, power and wealth of the Leviathan, Bush and the new era of corporatism is making cockroaches of us all, a mere pestilence for the greed-infested demons of the corporate world that will soon have us living in sewers of waste squabbling for the crumbs of a civilization lost.

The present American administration has catapulted our world through barren forests and wasted lands, flying into contaminated air and landing in toxic waters. The globe is changing, and we are the culprits. Mother Nature is pissed, and she is ready to purge us from her surface. Four more years of George W. Bush and this process will be accelerated.

A grave and gathering danger has been unearthed, global security is in peril, the Leviathan and its legions in government see neither what they are creating nor what they are destroying. The disease in Washington is coughing up toxic futures devoid of truths or pragmatism. Its acidic phlegm is infecting the world’s environment and its peoples. A gang of miscreants is deciding our collective futures. One man is leading the charge into oblivion and into the fossilized record books. In the end, without action from the Other Superpower, we are all dead apes walking. Our failure to act today is sealing our fates tomorrow.

Manuel Valenzuela is social critic and commentator, activist, writer and author of Echoes in the Wind, a novel to be published in Spring of 2004. His articles appear weekly on axisoflogic.com where he is also contributing editor. Mr. Valenzuela welcomes comments and can be reached at manuel@valenzuelas.net

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