July 22, 2006
Between the Lines
I’m going to come right out and say what the New York Times can only hint at with its top three headlines today.
Extra Extra! Hubbard and Keynes Throw End-Of-The-World Party! According to Experts, In the Long Run We’re All Dead!
The actual headlines:
U.S. Speeds Up Bomb Delivery For the Israelis
NASA’s Goals Delete Mention of Home Planet
New Orleans, Getting Less Power, May Pay More
First off, it is clear that the US plan to take over Afghanistan, Iraq, and part or all of Iran in order to draw oil from the Caspian Sea reserves at a rate that keeps it competitive with Russia, China and Western Europe is not going altogether well. Now that Israel looks ready to join the party with a bid for strategically placed Syria, the US is really desperate. One thing the US knows is that it had better not piss off Israel, or Israel might call in the US’s loans, or post the US’s military secrets on its blog. Israel has the US by the short and curlies and the US is really starting to regret that time it insulted Venezuela. Maybe it’s time the US realizes it has a drinking problem.
But in a classic case of denial, the US has changed the mission statement of one of its leading federal agencies studying global warming. NASA, whose mission, originally “the expansion of human knowledge of the earth and of phenomena in the atmosphere and in space” has recently taken a more exploratory approach, in essence dropping any and all funding for research intended “to understand and protect our home planet” in favor of sending people to Mars. Why let cirrhosis of the planet change your habits when the miracle of modern science allows for transplants!
Of course, it’s the neglected children who suffer most. Spotty utilities networks and resulting higher prices for delivery in post-Katrina New Orleans show that the people who get screwed the hardest by global warming are also getting screwed the hardest by the oil industry. Isn’t it always the way?
Somebody owes me a drink.