Snowden and Greenwald, Like Orwell and Edward R. Morrow, are Standing With the Truth

Margaret Mead once said, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed, citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” Whether or not Edward Snowden's heroic whistleblowing revelations and Glen Greenwald's journalistic bravery will 'change the world' is impossible to know just yet, but it has already raised the awareness of people around world to the gathering darkness of the police state.

As Abby Zimet points out this morning, America is being introduced to Big Brother by the revelations about the surveillance state recently. Abby says, "One small good thing to come of the NSA revelations: Americans are discovering the brilliant, prescient "1984" by English Democratic Socialist Eric Arthur Blair, aka George Orwell. Just in time for its 64th anniversary, sales of his classic dystopian tale of state surveillance and thought control have skyrocketed, with sales rising an incredible 5,771% and some editions hitting Amazon's top bestsellers list."

Yesterday's Mud Report was in part about Rand Paul suing the NSA. And today's article 'ACLU Sues Obama Administration Over NSA 'Dragnet' Surveillance Revealed in Historic Leaks' announced that because the NSA phone surveillance will have a 'chilling effect' on ACLU's ability to protect civil liberties they are launching a case. The ACLU's Brett Kaufman says, "As an organization that advocates for and litigates to defend the civil liberties of society's most vulnerable, the staff at the ACLU naturally use the phone—a lot—to talk about sensitive and confidential topics with clients, legislators, whistleblowers, and ACLU members. And since the ACLU is a VBNS [Verizon] customer, we were immediately confronted with the harmful impact that such broad surveillance would have on our legal and advocacy work. So we're acting quickly to get into court to challenge the government's abuse of [the Patriot Act's] Section 215." This is excellent news because the ACLU has a terrific legal team who often presents opinions before SCOTUS so they will be respected by the court and the case will get coverage in the MSM which will work to further raise awareness.

As for the dynamic duo, Edward Snowden said in an interview today in The South China Morning Post that, "I'm neither traitor nor hero. I'm an American". In the interview Snowden explains that he chose Hong Kong because he believes that their very fair legal system will allow him to fight US extradition effectively. And Glen Greenwald, channeling the great Edward R. Murrow - who stood up to Senator Joseph McCarthy's tyrannical Red Scare when all other journalists ran for cover in the 50s - reiterated his statement that many more leaks are coming, which in the face of a government that summarily executes its own citizens with no due process is IMO very courageous.

“There was truth and there was untruth, and if you clung to the truth even against the whole world, you were not mad.” - George Orwell, 1984

Once Again the Pauls-Ron and Rand-Stand Up Against the Orwellian State and for Guaranteed Rights

Just like back in March when Rand Paul's now-famous 13-hour filibuster attempted to sound the alarm that “no American should be killed by a drone on American soil without first being charged with a crime” and being found guilty in a court of law, a day Glenn Greenwald described as a, "Fascinating day:Tea Party Senator filibusters torture-supporting CIA nominee over civil liberties, while Dem establishment mocks & fumes.", Rand and his father Ron are again standing nearly alone in Washington, again embarrassing both Democrats and Republicans and reminding us all that 'silence is complicity'.

This time Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., is planning on filing a class-action lawsuit against the federal government over the National Security Agency’s surveillance of phone records and Internet data. “I’m going to be seeing if I can challenge this at the Supreme Court level. I’m going to be asking the Internet providers and all of the phone companies; ask your customers to join me in a class-action lawsuit,” he said, adding, “If we get 10 million Americans saying, ‘We don’t want our phone records looked at’ then maybe someone will wake up and things will change in Washington.”

Former Rep. Ron Paul, Rand's father, has been a vocal supporter of Snowden, saying he’s done a “great service for telling the truth” about government surveillance. Going on to say, “When you have a dictatorship or an authoritarian government, truth becomes treasonous and this is what they do if you are a whistle blower or you’re trying to tell the American people our country is destroying our rule of law or destroying our constitution, they turn it on and they say oh, you’re committing treason. For somebody to tell the American people the truth is a heroic effort.”

Three days ago Senator Rand Paul announced new legislation to "ensure that no government agency can search the phone records of Americans without a warrant based on probable cause." He calls the bill the Fourth Amendment Restoration Act of 2013. "The revelation that the NSA has secretly seized the call records of millions of Americans, without probable cause, represents an outrageous abuse of power and a violation of the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution," Paul wrote on his web site.

And in a Guardian editorial Friday, Rand Paul invited his colleagues to join him in supporting a new phone records protection law, saying, "We shall see how many join me in supporting a part of the Bill of Rights that everyone in Congress already took an oath to uphold."

In the end, both Pauls - known as a strong proponents of civil liberties - agreed this intelligence-gathering strategy is simply a step too far. "I think the American people are with me and I think if you talk to young people who use computers on a daily basis, they are absolutely with me. We fought a revolution over behavior like the NSA's." Rand Paul said.

There many many issues i totally disagree with the Rand Paul on. IMO Rand, like his father, should simply apply the same libertarian freedom philosophy to the all the issues like they do to 4th Amendment Rights, drug legalization, defense policies, the Federal Reserve and Foreign Relations. IMO, if Rand were to have an epiphany and see that abortion is a personal decision outside the purview of government, that homosexuality is too, that the right to health care is the same as the right to an education, that a true libertarian philosophy encompasses the fact that every individual has the right to clean air and water and that corporations aren't people and so have no right to poison the water and air of real people, he could be elected President as a 3rd party candidate in 2016.

The Global CIA and NSA Spy Networks are on the Hunt: 'Where in the World is Edward Snowden?

The heroic NSA whislteblower - Edward Snowden - checked out of Mira Hotel in Hong Kong at noon Monday local time just about the same time The Guardian was posting more text from Glen Greenwald's  inspirational interview with him.

His whereabouts are now reported by the 'authorities' as unknown. Where Snowden has gone is any one's guess but for sure the CIA and the NSA are on his trail. The Icelandic Ambassador to China commented yesterday that in order to apply for asylum in Iceland  he'd have to do it in person so maybe he's in Reykjavík. Or maybe he's in Quito, Equador knowing as he must that President Rafael Correa has already granted Julian Assange asylum.

Here's a few quotes from the last few hours:

Daniel Ellsberg says, "In my estimation, there has not been in American history a more important leak than Edward Snowden's release of NSA material – and that definitely includes the Pentagon Papers 40 years ago. Snowden's whistleblowing gives us the possibility to roll back a key part of what has amounted to an "executive coup" against the US constitution."

When The Washington Post reporter asked Snowden about threats to “national security,” Snowden offered an assessment light-years ahead of mainstream media’s conventional wisdom: “We managed to survive greater threats in our history than a few disorganized terrorist groups and rogue states without resorting to these sorts of programs. It is not that I do not value intelligence, but that I oppose omniscient, automatic, mass surveillance. That seems to me a greater threat to the institutions of free society than missed intelligence reports, and unworthy of the costs.”

Snowden went on to say, "You don’t have to have done anything wrong, you simply have to have eventually fall under suspicion ... and then they can use this system to go back in time and ... derive suspicion from an innocent life”

Americans, and i'm one, can no longer trust the President, Congress, or the courts to protect them and their constitutional rights from the tyranny of corporate fascism. As is now apparent the freedom and liberty of Americans and non-Americans everywhere relies on whistleblowers and reporters. Certainly right now every 'asset' of the Surveillance State is searching the globe for Edward Snowden. The spooks may already have him locked away in one of their secret back hole dungeons, who'd know, but regardless of his fate, Edward Snowden will go down in history as a hero to the cause of liberty.

Secret FISA Court 'Overseeing' NSA's Spying Ruled 1,856 to Zero in 2012 to Allow Domestic Warrents

About a month ago Lauren McCauley wrote an article titled 'Secret Spy Court Authorizes 100% of US Government Requests' About the Secret Court Obama and his stooges have reffered to again and agiun in these last few days as the judicial oversight that should reassure Americans to 'trust us'. In the FISA court, McCauley reminds us, civilians have no representative and government's 'national security' claims win again and again.

As Wired's David Kravets explains, "The secret court, which came to life in the wake of the Watergate scandal under the President Richard M. Nixon administration, now gets the bulk of its authority under the FISA Amendments Act, which Congress reauthorized for another five years days before it would have expired last year. The act allows the government to electronically eavesdrop on Americans’ phone calls and e-mails without a probable-cause warrant."

The McCauley article references a report (pdf), which was released on May 2nd to Senate majority leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), which states that during 2012, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (the “FISC”) approved every single one of the 1,856 applications made by the government for authority to conduct [domestic] electronic surveillance and/or physical searches for foreign intelligence purposes.

"Though depicted as some kind of check on Executive Branch behavior," Glenn Greenwald writes, the entire process "is virtually designed to do the opposite: ensure the Government's surveillance desires are unimpeded."

The laws, Cicero wrote in the days of the Roman Republic, “are silent in time of war.” But what if the war has no end, no defined enemy, no defined territory?

Meet Edward Snowden - the Heroic Whistleblower Behind the NSA Surveillance Revelations

Meet Edward Snowden, the 29-year-old source of biggest intelligence leak in US history. Listen to him explain his motives, his uncertain future and why he never intended on hiding in the shadows in this historic video released just hours ago by Glenn Greenwald, Ewen MacAskill and Laura Poitras from Hong Kong as part of Glenn Greenwald's history making series on security and liberty.

Edward Snowden now joins the heroic ranks of Bradley Manning, Julian Assange, Daniel Ellsbergand many more...who have forsaken their own personal freedom and safety to expose the inner workings of the Evil Empire.  Glenn Greenwald and his team of journalists also deserve the highest praise that can be given for their service to the great tradition of journalism. They too are in the cross-hairs now...and they know it.

The US's illegal and unconstitutional surveillance program is being spun by corrupt Western governments as necessary for security from the threat of terrorism when it is actually fear mongering designed to elicit a fawning response in the millions of already indoctrinated and terrorized sheeple. In fact the whole thing is a counter-offensive launched by the 1% to protect themselves from the anger and protests by the folks who have been robbed of their jobs, homes and liberty.

The criminal elites are up to their eyebrows in war crimes, financial fraud and an unfolding global attack on liberty. They rightfully fear a rebellion from their victims, so they have ordered their puppets to monitor all phone calls, emails and web activity to identify dissidents and quell an uprising before it develops.

Edward Snowden, is a 29-year-old former technical assistant for the CIA and current employee of the defence contractor Booz Allen Hamilton. Snowden has been working at the National Security Agency for the last four years as an employee of various outside contractors, including Booz Allen and Dell. In a note accompanying the first set of documents Edward Snowden provided, he wrote: "I understand that I will be made to suffer for my actions," but "I will be satisfied if the federation of secret law, unequal pardon and irresistible executive powers that rule the world that I love are revealed even for an instant."

Greenwald asks Snowden in his interview, "Why did he do it? Why give up his freedom and a privileged lifestyle?" Snowden answers, "There are more important things than money. If I were motivated by money, I could have sold these documents to any number of countries and gotten very rich."

The Whisteblowers are Drawing Back the Curtains on the Modern Day 'Wizards of Oz' in Washington

Yesterday Anonymous released private NSA documents related to the Global Spy Network. According to those who have read through them the documents seem to mostly relate to PRISM and supporting operations. One of the key things Anonymous has highlighted from the documents is the existence of an “intelligence-sharing network” that shares data gleaned from PRISM with “intelligence partners” around the world.

The groups studying the docs claim that the global intelligence apparatus discussed within some of the documents shows that government agencies "are spying on the citizens of over 35 different countries" and that this is being "done in cooperation with private businesses, and intelligence partners" across the globe.

Surely Canada, where i live, who's ultra right-wing Harper government is the globe's #1 American ass-kisser, is proud to be a part of the program. The Anonymous release begins with their customary salutation, "Greetings Netizens, and Citizens of the world" and goes on to say,"Your privacy and freedoms are slowly being taken from you, in closed door meetings, in laws buried in bills, and by people who are supposed to be protecting you." Which includes everyone up here in Canuckistan eh.

Meanwhile the corporate owned MSM is awash with calls from the 'authorities' to punish the whistleblowers who've exposed this sweeping surveillance program. Washington officials are calling the heroic leaker, or leakers, 'Reprehensible, Reckless, Illegal':  Critics are condemning the spying program as "grave threat to democratic freedom" saying, "whole world is impacted." while at the same time 'the liar and thief' Obama is calling it a "Modest Encroachment"

Apparently it's not over yet according to Glenn Greenwald and others. Yesterday WikiLeaks' Julian Assange said, “Let’s ask ourselves whether the whistleblower who has revealed those, and there’s more to come, is going to be in exactly the same position as Bradley Manning is in today.”

The Glen Greenwald was interviewed yesterday [below] on Democracy Now is great. He along with Assange, Bradley Manning and whoever the new leakers have earned all the help and praise they are getting from every corner of the globe for drawing back the curtain on the old/weak little Wizards of Oz who's global fear campaign can only be stopped by knowledge.

Here's a copy of the list of documents Anonymous released both as a mirror site and as an acknowledgement of solidarity by The Mud Report:

2010 EA Conf_RA Track Presentation_20100506.ppt

3170_01.pdf

514401Doddirectoritenetworks.pdf

6212_01.pdf

800001pDirectoriteDodinfoenterprise.pdf

DT-12-COI-Glossary.pdf

DoDAF-DM2_CMP_v1-0_FINAL_2011-10-03r1.docx

DoD_NetOps_Strategic_Vision.pdf

EATransitionStrategy.pdf

NSI_EE.pdf

insa-spies.pdf

netcentric_jfc-1.pdf

security_clearance.pdf

Glen Greenwald interview on Democracy Now

Will We Be 'The Hollow Men'? Will Fear Win? Will Liberty End "Not With a Bang But a Whimper"

The fact that the spooks are spying on you isn't news. The facts that Glen Greenwald and others have been publishing have been an open secret for decades. The news is that a number of heroic people have leaked certain documents that corroborate what has up until now benefited from a thin veil of plausible deniability.

The fact is that as the Common Dreams email a few minutes ago says, "The Bush/Obama administrations have been building a dossier on you - on all of us. But don't worry, they say - they are only trampling on the US Constitution to keep you safe from the terrorists.They have all your emails. All your credit card transactions. All your Google searches. All the websites you visit. All your phone calls. All your text messages. All your online activity."

Once again, this shouldn't be news. James Bamford published a report, based on research and whistleblower information, 13 years ago about a software program named ECHELON. His report concluded that ECHELON was capable of interception and content inspection of telephone calls, fax, e-mail and other data traffic globally through the interception of communication bearers including satellite transmission, public switched telephone networks (which once carried most Internet traffic) and microwave links by searching for certain keywords and phrases.

Just in case you've missed them, here's 3 great and moving articles just out the last few days: 'NSA Collecting Phone Records of Millions of Americans Daily' by Glenn Greenwald, 'NSA Taps in to Systems of Google, Facebook, Apple and others, Secret Files Reveal' by Glenn Greenwald and Ewan MacAskill and 'The Bill of Rights Exists: An Open Letter to Dianne Feinstein' by Norman Solomon which quotes the The Bill of Rights where the Fourth Amendment to the US Constitution says, “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

Then earlier today,  Friday, June 7, 2013, Glenn Greenwald wrote an even more important article titled, 'On Whistleblowers and Government Threats of Investigation'. The Mud Report stands behind the heroic whistleblowers who put themselves at great risk to expose the truth.

Over half a century ago my parents, along with millions of others, put their lives on the line to fight the tyranny of fascism. Many brave and heroic people have died defending 'liberty and justice for all' . Now we face a new generation of tyrannical fascists spouting the same old McCarthyism by making accusations of disloyalty, subversion, or treason to restrict the dissent or political criticism of whistleblowers. In the 50s the bogeyman used to control people was the fear of Communism, today it's Terrorism.

For awhile the Red Scare worked on many minds, but as time went along more and more people recognized that this was exactly the same tactic Goering's quote refers to and became determined not to fall into its trap. In these last few days the same drama has been unfolding in the streets and homes of good people everywhere. Some folks understand the precipice we stand on, see clearly that the idea of 'liberty and justice for all' teeters in the balance.

Many others seem willing to bend to Goering's type of fear tactics. Today, Friday, June 7, 2013, and the next few will be pivotal days in history. Will we choose to be, as T. S. Eliot called them, 'The Hollow Men' ? Will we let this be...
"...the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper"

Are Both the KXL and NGP Straw Men Setup to Divert Attention From a New Great Game?

Yesterday's article by Andrea Germanos titled 'Is Enbridge Building a Secret Keystone Pipeline?' raised my hackles a bit. It has a great map and legend that appears at the bottom of this post and the information in the article itself is fine, though a bit thin. It's the title itself. The word 'Secret', which Enbridge's pipeline plan is not, is being used as a sensational piece of eye catching hyperbole. Andrea is a well informed science writer who's written many great articles at Common Dreams, she knows full well that the members of the Great Plains Tar Sands Resistance have been protesting and organizing against what they call Enbridge’s Tar Sands Frankenstein since their inception.

It's true that Canada’s largest transporter of crude oil - Enbridge - has an ongoing attempts to construct a route from Canada to Texas that has only recently started attracting widespread attention. The MSM's eyes are focused on TransCanada’s Keystone XL pipeline both because it needs Obama's stamp of approval and the fact that almost all of the Climate Change stars use the hyperbolic headline trick to keep attention focused on KXL. Enbridge's proposal doesn't need Obama's regulatory approval but it does need others and the folks on the ground have been fighting those approvals at every stage and continue to do so.

Nowhere in Andrea's piece does she acknowledge The Great Plains Tar Sands Resistance folks who along with the folks of the Tar Sands Blockade and others including Bold Nebraska are on the ground in the US resisting Big Oil's pipeline plans for the same reason Canada's First Nations and environmental activists are fighting the Northern Gateway Project and the Kinder-Morgan Expansion projects up here, to protect the water, land and wildlife that sustain us all.

Enbridge Inc is welding together a 5,000-mile network of old pipelines and new ones, reversing the flow on some and pumping up the volume on others, building their very own 'Frankenstein' pipeline down to the Gulf coast. The zig-zag route crosses Alberta and Saskatchewan then cuts through North Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas, placing an enormous section of  North America at risk for a spill—including the Mississippi River and hundreds of other waterways. Yet curiously the MSM's focus remains fixated on KXL in the US and the Northern Gateway Project [NGP] in Canada.

It's eerily similar. Could it be that both the KXL and Gateway are straw men setup to be beaten up then be rejected and declared a rousing success by the Climate Change celebrities when they have actually been duped into being part of a successful diversionary tactic that greases the path for the Tar Sands crud to the Houston and Cherry Point refineries? Some days this old skeptic wonders if the celebrity climate change activists like Bill McKibben, James Hansen, Naomi Klein,  Daryl Hannah and others are being used by Big Oil in a New Great Game.. [Retraction: After re consideration and a couple of re-readings i agree with the anonymous commentor below. It is unfair, to question the possible motives of other people i don't know at all  i was wrong, i'll try not to do it again, sorry.]

In addition to the map below, The National Pipeline Mapping System is a fairly straightforward (albeit somewhat buggy at times) mapping service provided by the US Department of Transportation. You can search oil and gas pipelines by county in the United States. There is a brief and informative instructional video on their homepage that explains how to use the public map viewer, which is free of charge.

The Quantum Reality that ' We're All in This Together' Offers a Field of Possible Solutions

Today's inbox contained a comment/question from an old friend, ally and Mud Report reader, BH, about the communication's bridge building project. BH is a long time climate change activist and widely published op-ed writer who knows the topic well. The email in part said, "I only have a vague idea who you mean by Greenville and Growthton members." The comment and my answer "i guess the populations of the two sides are cloud like in that they too are symbolic representations." are as good a place to start this next group of articles as any.

BH's comment points out that it's impossible to actually draw a circle around, isolate, define any group of people because everyone of us is different. Inevitably every attempt to represent a group of people on any topic ends up looking like a cloud who's boundaries are undefinable and constantly shifting. The same thing is true everywhere we look. The truth is there is no solid truth. we live in a probabilistic world not a deterministic one. The closer we look at anything the more we understand that there is no there there.

Communication though requires some type of symbolic representation that always ends up drawing lines where none actually exist. The physicists tell us that we live in a quantum world populated by probabilities, but when asked to use words or pictures to describe the quantum they're stymied because defining a thing locks it into a deterministic reality that doesn't exist. Without definitions words are gibberish, without boundaries pictures are meaningless, so the physicists use mathematical equations whose values are all derivatives of other derivatives. In a communicative sense at least, more gibberish.

In a non-deterministic universe communication can only be achieved by reducing our cloud like nature to symbols so rudimentary that only symbolic significance can be achieved on any topic. So, for utility's sake we simplify the interplay of the boundary-less clouds of reality into the representational simplicity of Venn Diagrams and the infinite fields of possibility into probability distribution curves. This genius humans have for communication by collapsing the infinite possibilities into manageable probabilities has allowed us to develop the technologies we employ to, temporarily at least, ride the waves of uncertainty.

Science, technology, art, literature, are all forms of symbolic representation that employ simplification of the incomprehensible quantum world as their tool to communicate their truths. Tomorrow this old fool will walk out to the mid-span of our new metaphorical communication bridge and try to use communication's reductionist tools to tell his truth about the field possible solutions to our environmental and social quagmire offered by the quantum reality that 'we're all in this together'.

#12 We are All in Thi$ Together as Unwitting Pawns in the Fake Reality of Capitalism's Matrix.

The final component of the Growthton - Grreenville Bridge, the bridge's deck, is where the metaphorical rubber meets the road. On a material bridge the deck forms a seamless connection between two locations, our communications bridge connects two distrustful encampments, two worldviews, both usually fog bound by their entrenched beliefs, neither able to see that we are all in thi$ together.

Like America before and during the Civil War, the Greenville and Gowthton encampments are slightly different aspects of the same overall economic system - The Capitalist Matrix. The mostly middle-class residents of both encampments are equally invested in the matrix in many different ways. They've invested, whether they acknowledge it or not, in savings or checking accounts, mutual funds and pension plans that trade in stocks, shares, bonds, currency speculation, real estate, commodities such as gold, fine art or, most likely, all of them. Retirement plans are usually the largest financial investment, with decreasing amounts of money invested in mutual funds, individual stocks, bonds, cash and life insurance. Of course the upper-classes have a wider range of 'investments', the lower-classes have none at all.

Retirement and all these other types of investments 'grow' in consort with the cancerous endless growth of the capitalist matrix. All of them in one way or another 'grow' in consort with the false profits generated by a capitalist system that externalizes costs in every way possible including downloading them onto future generations in the form of environmental degradation. Every financial Investment, be it by devout Greenville or Growthton believers, comes from the burning of fossil fuels. So, the two encampments are in thi$ together, right up to their wallets. Once again, there is no North or South, just two groups who see their personal interests best served by different strategies.

A leading economist, Dr. Ha-Joon Chang, has likened the world's acceptance of free-market capitalism to that of the brainwashed characters in the film The Matrix, unwitting pawns in a fake reality, an iconoclastic attitude that has won him fans such as Bob Geldof and Noam Chomsky.

We, Chang's brainwashed characters, now have a bridge built on the shaky ground of reality beneath us. Hopefully some from both solitudes will venture out onto the new bridge deck in response to the loud mouthed fool - that'd be me - ranting his truths into the wind. Then, hopefully again, some of them will criticize or agree and shout out their own ideas, suggestions and solutions and thereby begin, through real communication, to realize that we are all unwitting pawns in the fake reality of capitalism's matrix.

Just for the record, mr. mud has zero financial investments or pension plans and lives a low consumption, debt free, hermit's life-style on a small rural property in British Columbia that he owns outright and proudly shares with his best friend Pancho.

mr. mud's lifelong non-investment recommendation list includes: Saving money on future expenses by putting the money into your home through upgrading insulation, more efficient heating systems and passive energy storage building techniques. Next, by putting it into your kid's educations. Then buying the stuff for and building a food garden, a composter and a chicken coop. If that's not possible, invest in local food security, and your own, by joining a local organic farm food buying co-op. Finally, put every other dime of your money into buying land that has good water and air that can grow healthy organic food and building a small home on it that's equipped it with off grid power. There's still lottsa of good land available all over the world, the further you get from a mini-mall the better the prices become.

#11 Suspender Cables Will Distribute Our Bridge's Load, Real Communication, Across the Broad Span

A bridge's components work together to carry the loads. One of the most important components in the interconnected system's ability to distribute the loads are the suspender cables that tie the 3 spanning elements [main cable, girder matrix and deck] together into a flexible, interactive whole. The first suspension bridges were built in Tibet and Bhutan in the 15th century by the Tibetan saint and bridge-builder Thangtong Gyalpo. Gyalpo used of iron chains in his version of early suspension bridges. In 1433, Gyalpo built eight bridges in eastern Bhutan. The longest surviving was the Thangtong Gyalpo Bridge in Duksum en route to Trashi Yangtse, which was finally washed away in 2004.

The job of our communication bridge's many suspender cables will likewise be to distribute the loads created by our consumer culture and its impossible demands for endless growth on an Earth with limited resources.

Global warming and climate change are just a symptom of the much broader disease that our environment, our limited biosphere, faces. The environmental movement, IMO, lost its way when it allowed CO2 pollution driven global warming to become public enemy #1. Well meaning as most enviros are they nonetheless fell into the trap of mistaking a symptom for the disease. Confusing the issues of symptoms and disease has allowed the entire environmental about into a dead end that confuses symptoms with causes.This confusion has allowed the entire environmental debate, which should be about the broader causes of the disease, to be hijacked by one narrow controversial issue - the role of human CO2 production in today's observed climate change.

Many issues, like the crisis over our food supply created by annihilation of world's pollinators, which is now proven to be caused by the use of pesticides and insecticides in industrial agriculture is certainly more immediate and just as potentially catastrophic in the long term as global warming. Searching an of the issues on list below from 'Green Living' or others, shows that though fossil fuels and global warming are part of the disease created by the demands of the consumer culture but that they aren't alone or even the most immediately catastrophic

1. Contamination of Drinking Water
2. Water Pollution
3. Soil Contamination
4. Wildlife Conservation
5. Air pollution
6. Biological pollutants
7. Carbon footprint
8. Climate change and global warming
9. Consumerism
10. Dams.
11. Ecosystem destruction
12. Energy conservation
13. Fishing and over-fishing.
14. Food safety
15. Genetic engineering including GMO foods.
16. Industrial farming
17. Land degradation, desertification and soil and land pollution.
18. Urban sprawl and habitat destruction
19. Logging and deforestation
20. Mining pollution including toxic emissions and heavy metals.
21. Nanotechnology
22. human induced 'natural' disasters
23. Nuclear issues
24. Other pollution issues like light light pollution and noise pollution
25. Overpopulation
26. Ozone depletion
27. Resource depletion
28. Non-Sustainable communities
29. Human introduced toxins - a long list
30. Waste such as litter, landfills, incineration, marine debris...

Suspender cables distribute a bridge's load. Real communication, our bridge's load, between the encampments must distribute the debate about the broad disease, about its causes, about the role we all play in it as consumers who's demands the capitalist matrix supplies. As Jorge Majfud says, "Trying to reduce environmental pollution without reducing consumerism is like combating drug trafficking without reducing the drug addiction." It's important to notice that Majfud, a genius IMO, refers to the broad issue of "environmental pollution" not just to global warming.

Tomorrow the bridge deck will be assembled and our bridge over the river of distrust between the two solitudes will be complete.

#10 Many Individual Small Cables Make a Main Cable Strong, Many Ideas Make Solutions Possible

YIKES...Maintenance worker re-paints the metal jacket that covers a bridge's main cable and protects it from corrosion. 

There are 3 different structures that span the distance from abutment to abutment, the girder matrix, the deck on top of it and the main cables. Fortunately our mental communication bridge, unlike its metal counterpart, doesn't need painting and re-painting [apparently the re-painting job is never-ending on The Golden Gate Bridge]. Our metaphorical bridge's main cables, like the real GG's, complement the girders and deck by adding another important strong and flexible structural element to the bridge's load carrying capability.

A real bridge's huge main cable is actually made up of many smaller cables wound together. Our two main cables will be made strong and flexible by the myriad of ideas that connect us all, regardless of our differences of opinion, to our desire to find the real world solutions that can unite us. Each encampment, shrouded in the fog of their particular beliefs, envisions endemic solutions based on their worldview. Both encampments though understand that we are all in this together.

The Greenville folks often concentrate on cultural and systemic changes designed to ameliorate the broad environmental destruction our species is causing, including global warming. Greenville solutions often mention biodiversity and soils rich in organic matter as the best strategy for climate resilience and climate adaptation, growing and cooking organically, making the Great Transition back to carbon ranching by re-establishing perennial grasses, and eating far less meat as a route to sequestering 100 percent of greenhouse gas emissions. Greenville folks envision a world free of pesticides, petro-chemicals and fossil fuels. Unfortunately, Greenville folks are often idealists who find it increasingly difficult to walk that talk in a world of chaotic consumption.

The Growthton folks see the same reality but envision a bountiful future based on humanity's ability to cope, to overcome, to succeed by technological prowess as they believe it always has. Growthton folks know that, whatever the cause may be, that global warming exists. They believe that risk management, based on sound cost-benefit analysis is the prudent path forward. Growthton folks know that the western security establishments, including all arms of the US military, consider environmental degradation, including climate change, to be the #1 long term security threat they face.

The specifics details of how these widely divergent worldviews can be refocused into convergent solutions is the main agenda, the main reason for attempting to build a strong, flexible communication bridge based on a solid foundation of basic agreement. Tomorrow we'll work on the smaller suspender cables that run between the main cable and the girder matrix further enhancing the bridge's load dispersing strength and flexibility.

#9 Every Bridge Relies on a Network for the Flexibility and Strength Needed to Carry the Load

We live interconnected lives not just within human societies but within the much larger and richer web of life itself. Civil engineers learned long ago that a massive column or monolithic slab is actually far weaker than a much lighter, more flexible, interconnected network of smaller members because a network allows flexibility when under stress from unpredictable random forces.

Often in our lives, and in the secret lives of bridges, loads and stresses of various sizes come at us in combinations from multiple directions. When we or a bridge tries to rigidly resist these forces we both often fail. As the ancient Taoist teaching says, if we mimic a strong tree when faced with the random forces of rampaging flood waters we will, like the tree, most often be washed away. But if instead, we mimic the grasses and bend flexibly in the face of the torrent we, and the grasses, will most often be unscathed after the flood waters recede.

So the deck of our metaphorical communication bridge, like an engineer's girders and the Taoist's grasses, will be carried by a flexible network. Our bridge's network is well explained rationally by Fritjof Capra's seminal book 'The Web of Life: A New Scientific Understanding of Living Systems'. Explaining the vital flexibility of the web of life has been the subject of the works of many, if not all, of humanity's great artists, prophets and thinkers down through time, our bridge will try to stand on their shoulders and with their spirits.

One scientist's research, Forestry Prof. Suzanne Simard of UBC, into the role of mycorrhizae and mycorrhizal networks in old growth forests shows how the survival of young trees was greatly enhanced when they were linked into the network of the old trees.and has proven that trees do communicate and share resources like human brains - in networks. Her research provides strong evidence that maintaining forest resilience is dependent on conserving mycorrhizal links, and that removal of hub trees could unravel the network and compromise regenerative capacity of the forests.

Just as every material bridge relies on the instantaneous, incalculable and unseen distribution of stresses throughout its supporting girder matrix to provide the flexibility and strength necessary so too does the network provided by the web of life, the green matrix, provide us with the flexibility and strength to manage the mental challenge of surviving, perhaps, the greatest test our species has yet faced through the unseen connections that support the span over our environmental communication chasm

A forest isn't just a buncha trees, it's an interconnected network of seen and unseen flora, fauna, minerals, microbes, forces and faeries all pulling together for the common good. We can too.

#8 From a Long Term Perspective Both Religion and Science Teach Us the Same Lessons

The second strong stable tower our communication bridge will use to flexibly support its span will, like the first tower, be built of a concept that also underlies the philosophies of both groups of believers in the Greenville and Growthton encampments. Once again, the two solitudes use totally different nomenclatures to define their beliefs. In fact agreeing with the viewpoint of the opponents on this aspect is often cause for expulsion from either encampment. Nonetheless, being a non-believer and a non-conformist allows me to happily hurdle this heresy.

The Cornwall Declaration on Environmental Stewardship, a broadly accepted document by many Growthton folks, says, "God is sovereign over creation and therefore humans can do no permanent damage." A statement which should be read and understood by all to be both symbolic of the primacy of "God" [which, being a heathen, i always immediately translate into Nature] and an intonation to 'chill out' because in the long run our short term actions, regardless of how weighty our human hubris thinks them to be, a just a blip. Further that we may well be able to cause lottsa short term pain, up to and including our own extinction and that of myriad other species. We may well be so good at poisoning, polluting and shiting in our nest that we soon end up nesting in our shit, as the old 60's saying said, that "God" [Nature] spits us out like a rotten apple. But that in time, life will rebound. That we humans are a short term vector and that, despite our illusions of grandeur, we 'can do no permanent damage'.

Science says the same exact thing, one particular field of science - geology - is totally devoted to the subject. James Hutton, known as the father of modern geology and a devout theologian, presented a paper in 1788 to the Royal Society of Edinburgh titled 'Theory of the Earth; or an Investigation of the Laws observable in the Composition, Dissolution, and Restoration of Land upon the Globe' that changed for ever how humans would understand just how little their short duration on the globe mattered from a long term perspective.

In his paper Hutton described the Earth as being formed by a continuous cycle in which rocks and soil are washed into the sea, compacted into bedrock, forced up to the surface by volcanic processes, and eventually worn away into sediment once again. Hutton concluded his his great geological treatise by saying "that the Earth offered no vestige of a beginning,--no prospect of an end." By today's reckoning, Hutton was asserting the unimaginably extended, "deep" time frame of an ancient Earth, what we today call the Geologic Scale of Time [see chart above].

Hutton’s ideas provided the framework for everything we now call modern science. And just as the ideas that God [Nature] is sovereign and that humans can do no permanent damage conveys comfort and strength to one group of believers, so too does the idea that no matter how much we ignorantly shit in our own nest one day our entire consumptive culture's contribution will be a thin shiny line in geology's sedimentary record give others of us strength through the same solace.

Our communication bridge's towers are complete. The next job will be connecting them to each other and the abutments at each end with the massive girders underlying our interconnected lives.

#7 Bridge Engineers Take Precautions Because There Are 'Unknown Unknowns' Lurking Out There

Like a real suspension bridge our metaphorical communications bridge must have strong, stable towers that can support the cables and girders that will provide the bridge with both support and flexibility. Last week we built the tower foundations for the Growthton-Greenville bridge, next comes the towers themselves. Their strength will be in that they are constructed of principles held dear by both encampments, though they use different words to describe these same underlying principles.

Growthton, like almost everywhere, has both secular and religious ideas that contribute to its worldview. These groups may have different outlooks in some ways, but each is to some degree motivated by concepts of concern for the well-being of others and stewardship. Stewardship is the idea that humans are responsible for the world, and should take care of it. All  religions teach various degrees of support for environmental stewardship including the protection of all creation.

Aldo Leopold, a deeply religious man, championed environmental stewardship based on a land ethic "dealing with man's relation to land and to the animals and plants which grow upon it." Environmental stewardship refers to responsible use and protection of the natural environment through conservation and sustainable practices.

Greenville is likewise populated by a wide range of ideas and principles around which groups are organized. Like their Growthton cousins, the Greenville folks have strong beliefs about the nature of reality but both groups also recognize that as Donald Rumsfeld said:
"There are known knowns; these are things we know that we know.
There are known unknowns; that is to say, there are things that we now know we don't know.
But there are also unknown unknowns – these are things we do not know we don’t know."

Rumsfeld was US Secretary of Defense at the time and was referring to national security and the precautions America had to take. It's the same logic engineers use when they design bridges, the same logic Aldo Leopold used, the same logic the environmental movement supports. Every human knows and agrees that there are 'unknown unknowns'. Every human instinctively understands and agrees with the Precautionary Principle.

The first of two towers on our communications bridge will be strong because it's built from the fact that there are always 'unknown unknowns' lurking out there, on the fact that folks should never bet what they can't afford to lose, on the Precautionary Principle.

#6 Hyperbolic Headlines Only Harm the Cause of Intelligent Discourse about the Environment

Another thing the Greenville and Growthton encampments share is a love hyperbolic headlines. To be fair it isn't totally their fault, sensationalism is a widely-acknowledged bias in media coverage. The newest, most counter intuitive, most highly sensational headline is the primary way media attracts readers. The MSM is in it for the dough, the more 'exposures' an outlet gets the higher their advertising rates. Smaller non-profit places like The Mud Report try to invent headlines that contain commonly searched keywords relative to the posting's content, not for the dough obviously, but for wider exposure.

Proponents and opponents of every issue know that nothing beats a sensational headline when it comes to getting wide spread exposure in the MSM. The penchant both solitudes has for using hyperbole to gain the attention of the MSM and therefor the public is mostly through fear mongering. Unfortunately the most hyperbolic headlines always end up rallying one encampment or the other at the expense of real learning or communication because both the non-zealots and the opponents of whatever sensational assertion is being made are turned off and turned away by it. So, not only are they crap, but they're worse than useless when it comes to engaging others in intelligent discourse.

Hyperbole is the use of exaggeration to evoke strong feelings. It may be used or to create a strong impression, but is not meant to be taken literally. But the billboard above, sponsored by The Heartland Institute, is an example of how a well known and well healed group uses sensationalism. But most of the Growthton opponents GWT keep their fear-mongering spinning in a tighter spiral which most often centers on the fact they've never seen a conspiracy theory they didn't embrace. Here's a list of recent hyperbolic headlines that is either funny or frightening depending on how you look at things.

IMO though, the all-around hyperbolic headline hunter champions come from Greenvile. Years ago Micheal Mann got a lotta sensationalist credit and dis-credit for his famous hockey stick graph. Then Al Gore, never one to miss an opportunity, got his inconvenient hyperbolic headlines. But none of the early Greenville sensationalists holds a candle to today's crop led by Bill McKibben and 'indisputable' champ James Hansen who's famous “essentially game over” quote about development of the Alberta Tar Sands stands head and shoulders above the rest.

Looking back at past Mud Reports it's easy to see mr. mud is not a supporter of bitumen a-tall but when Bill McKibben says the KXL pipeline represents “the fuse to biggest carbon bomb on the planet.” And when James Hansen says developing Tar Sands crud would make the climate problem unsolvable they do nothing other than bolster their base while alienating potential allies and being scoffed at by their opponents who immediately point out that: All Canadian sources, not just the Tar Sands, produce about 3% of the world's oil now and once fully ramped up could be producing 5% of the world's oil in 20 years or so, the other 95% represents more of the "game" to be over or not than anything coming out of Canada.

There is a serious GHG problem, IMO, but GHGs come from more than just oil. Coal produces many times more emissions than oil does; and coal use is growing faster than oil use. There's also natural gas which is a bit cleaner to burn than oil but the new shale gas being produced vents a whole lot of CO2 as part of its production process and many now say this 'fracked' gas actually has a larger overall GHG footprint than coal. Then there are natural emissions as well; and secondary feedback emissions like methane [100 times as bad as CO2] being released as the permafrost melts. This planet has just one atmosphere. Getting our little corner of the globe tidied up would be nice, but immaterial if the rest of the globe is demand side chaos.

The hyperbolic headline hunting by both sides is actually doing far more harm to the cause of intelligent discourse than either encampment will ever admit. It's a race to the bottom because all 'sides' lose. Nothing could further the cause of communication between the solitudes more than burying the hyperbolic headlines once and for all, mafia style, and using them as the rebar in our last set of tower foundations.

WAHOO...our communication bridge is out of the ground. From here on we'll be up in the air working on the more flexible components an intelligent discourse requires.

#5 Burying Distrust of Motives, a Deafening Barrier to Real Communication, Learning and Change

The on a metal bridge the four towers which support the 2 large suspender cable are each supported by foundations, so to for our mental bridge. On a physical bridge the 2 sets of adjacent towers are connected by a cross beam that supports the girder to form a sorta a giant H. The 2 sets of towers on our psychological bridge will be connected too. The first set, the distrust of motives set, could be either set as the occupants of both the Greenville and Growthton equally and unreasonably distrust the motives of their opponents.

The Greenville proponents of the Global Warming Theory [GWT] truly believe that their opponent's beliefs are informed by the lying, fact spinning, authority bribing, selfish fossil fuel industry and/or the prognostications of religious 'seers' who tell them that their all knowing imaginary being, "God", is sovereign over creation and therefore humans can do no permanent damage to its creation...and there are folks who unquestionably fall into parts or all of this framework. But, and this is one of the major points The Mud Report will be arguing loud and clear from upon the bridge deck once it's built, the opponents of GWT aren't just dizzy dunderheads blindly following the spin doctors. There are scientific uncertainties, lots of 'em, and despite having all of the best intentions, the Greenville folks have just as much trouble accepting information contrary to their belief system as the Growthton folks and the rest of us do.

The Growthton opponents of GWT are equally convinced that the proponents are being duped/spun by a gang of self-serving scientists who's goals are acquiring grants for themselves and their institutions by getting dubious/sensational papers published by a church-type peer review process that never accepts anything outside the paradigm of their belief system or any song not sung by their choir. Despite them also having the best of intentions, the Growthton folks also refuse to accept any of the scientific uncertainties or results that don't validate their cherished beliefs. They too see those in the other encampment as being used by the spinners in science and the lamestream media in a giant conspiracy to enrich certain individuals and 'green' industries and in so doing impoverish those now invested in the non-'green' parts of the capitalist matrix.

Both solitudes rally their teammates, in part, around this distrust of their opponents motives. Both use this canard of distrust as a fall back position whenever they have no logical argument to immediately counter their opponents position. It's easy to see this type of communicable psychosis in action in almost every type of group human confrontation. Check it out, do the opponents in  Palestine and Israel listen to each other in an attempt to have an intelligent discourse? How about the Hindus and Muslims? The West and the 'Terrorists'? How about the overheated fans of rival sports teams or...

Only by listening can we really hear. Only by burying our prejudices about our opponents, including those about their underlying motives, can we really listen to their positions. Only by really listening and hearing the arguments of those that oppose us can we learn from them and counter their positions logically. Logic requires that every argument [thesis], even the most universally agreed upon, is only conditionally accepted. As soon as a valid counter argument [antithesis] comes to light the old argument is either thrown out completely in favour of the new or, more often, the two are amalgamated [synthesis], but in either case the newly accepted argument, the synthesis, becomes the new thesis which then is just as open to counter-argument as the original was. This is the basis of the scientific method. But without being able to listen and hear the contents of an antithesis because of deafening prejudices no change, no learning, no synthesis will ever be possible.

So today, hopefully, another of the deafening prejudices, the distrust of our opponents motives, will get buried mafia style in out communication bridge's tower foundations and good riddance to it. Tomorrow we'll head over to the last set of tower foundations where we'll try to turn the penchant both solitudes has for using hyperbole to gain the attention of the public through fear mongering and how the media's addiction to the most sensational hyperbolic headline almost always ends up rallying one encampment or the other at the expense of real learning or communication.

#4 Exorcising Absolutism in the Pursuit of Intelligent Discourse and Mutual Respect

R-E-S-P-E-C-T, as Aretha Franklin crooned so clearly, means a lot to everybody. It's a what goes around comes around sorta thing, that's why we're building our metaphorical communication bridge's abutments outta mutual respect and in the process trying to bury, mafia style the overheated, name calling issuing from the solitudes on both sides of the chasm of distrust - Greenville and Growthton. Today it's Growthton's turn to sing along with Aretha.

First off, it's important to state that global warming/climate change is a symptom, not the disease itself. Defining and dealing with the overall disease can only be accomplished through the 'bumpy' progress of communication. Right now, there's less than zero communication between the two encampments and the pejorative labeling by both sides is one of the biggest hurdles to raising that score. For sure the Greenville proponents started the manure flinging, but the Growthton opponents quickly rose in indignation to the affront with a buncha well flung dung of their own.

'Warmist' seemed to be the best at sticking to the opposition so its usage quickly skyrocketed. The term 'warmist' is now used in a derogatory sense as in 'the warmist cult', 'the religion of warmism', or, my personal favorite, 'the warmistas'. The Urban Dictionary's definition says that every 'warmist' has these 5 traits:
1) An absolute belief that humans are primarily or even completely responsible for causing a mass climate change which will raise the average temperature of the planet.
2) Will not entertain the idea that it is possible that natural phenomena may cause climate change, regardless of any evidence.
3) Believes it is a good thing to throw billions upon billions of dollars at an idea that may or may not work to stop climate change, "just in case."
4) Believes that natural disasters such as hurricanes and earthquakes are an indirect result of humankind's actions to cause climate change.
5) Shouts down, puts down, and insults anyone whose beliefs run contrary to their own, rather than having intelligent discourse. A zealot for their cause.

The over all religious 'absolute belief' vibe and the totality of #5 perfectly define the view both encampments have of each other. Our bridge will hopefully be a venue for 'intelligent discourse' and the exorcising of absolutism from both of the present solitudes.

The Growthton abutment is appropriately made of concrete. For concrete to be both strong and flexible it needs what engineers call pre-stressed re-enforcement. Don't know about you but whenever somebody calls me a prejudicial, ugly name like 'warmist' it pre-stresses me so it sounds like 'warmist', and it's cousins, are excellent choices to be buried and forgotten by the Growthton opponents of Global Warming Theory in service to the cause of building a strong and flexible connection through mutual respect.

Words matter. Sticks and stones may break your bones, but bones heal fairly quickly, deeply hurt feelings usually don't heal quickly, if at all. Words stick on the inside even when they've been forgotten on the outside. Looking at the terminology, the verbal manure, both sides fling at each other it's no wonder that every attempt at 'intelligent discourse' is quickly undermined by a mutual distrust of motives. As our project moves on to the tower foundations next mutual distrust of motives will be the next foul fiend we use to re-enforce our communication bridge.

#3: Building Greenville's Connection to the Bridge by Showing Respect for its Opponents

Mutual respect, the abutment we'll be using to connect our communication bridge to the encampments on both sides of the chasm of distrust between proponents and opponents in the environmental debate, is only possible when both of the solitudes buys into it. Greenville's abutment will be made of logs and gravel, cosmic eh, and it'll be tied together by its rebar - the loaded names buried in its back fill.

The Greenville residents were first outta the shoot in the name calling wars during the early days of the global warming debates when they started tarring those who disagreed with the name 'deniers'. The Mud Report has tried for years to avoid the pejorative term at first by trying to re-define opponents as skeptics. But that never really caught on because almost everybody was skeptical. Another post tried to show how all sides, all people really, deny those truths that inconveniently don't mesh well with their worldview. But now, as of today, mr. mud and The Mud Report are taking the pledge. The pledge to never [after this post] use the loaded name of 'denier' to describe those who are stating their version of the 'truth'.

What does in denial mean? Wikipedia says: Denial is a defense mechanism postulated by Sigmund Freud, in which a person is faced with a fact that is too uncomfortable to accept...Fact being the operative word IMO. A 'fact' is something that's indisputable. Global Warming is obviously not indisputable. You might say one who disagrees with your 'truth' is mistaken, misguided or even wrong, all fine, none of them IMO implies that the adversary knows your truth to be true but, for some reason, denies it.

Another online popular definition from Yahoo is: "refusal to acknowledge existence of something: a refusal to believe in something or admit that something exists". Here the crucial word is admit. A person can only admit what they believe to be true. The opponents of Global Warming Theory aren't 'denying' anything. they embrace their reality just as avidly as the proponents embrace theirs.

The Greenville residents are not only using the term 'denier' as an elitist bullying tactic to rally their base around the worthiness of their version of the 'truth', but incorrectly to boot. 'Denier' is dismissive, a terrible foundation to build mutual respect upon eh. 'Denier is divisive, derisive and offensive so i won't use it, from now on it'll be rebar in the Greenville abutment. If in the future, for brevity's sake, The Mud Report can't use a descriptive phrase and instead must choose a single word - it'll be opponents.

So the Greenville abutment, Greenville's connection to this communication bridge is the showing of mutual respect for its opponents by taking the first step of ending the tarring of those opponents by name calling. It's just the first step toward acknowledging that there is no absolute right or wrong and that we're all in this together.

Tomorrow we'll work on building the Growthton abutment and try to bury a few more devise terms there too.

#2: Abutments For Our Communication Bridge From the Slings and Arrows of Outrageous Zealotry

This morning's emails included an interesting one from an actual engineer. He was amused by my project. He mentioned a few important things i'd overlooked. Apparently the most important foundations for any bridge are its abutments. These structures connect the bridge deck to the ground where it lands and protects the bridge's overall integrity.

He also mentioned that yesterday's simplistic outline of bridge engineering had over looked some very important concepts not the least of which is flexibility. Every bridge is constantly in motion and just as the ancients long ago figured out that a bridge's abutments are its most important and long enduring foundations they also figured out that a rigid structure didn't last very long. In addition to the forces of wind, rain and tides that i mentioned yesterday i overlooked the constant small seismic movements, the occasional large tectonic movements as well as the movement of whatever is passing over the bridge, but most important is the daily and seasonal thermal expansion and contraction of the bridge's components that constantly change how and where the loads are carried.

The engineer wished me luck and said he'd be checking the blog from time to time to see how the bridge was coming along. Yikes...he mentioned some other stuff too, but for now including just these few 'constructive' ideas is daunting enough.

So the first foundations we'll build for our metaphorical bridge will be its abutments, its connections to the Greenville and Growthton sides of the philosophic abyss we're attempting to span. Two sides, two abutments. They each may need to be constructed a bit differently because of the different terrain on the two sides, but they will be doing the same job of protecting our communication bridge's long term integrity.

IMO the most important foundational connection to establish on both sides and the most important thing presently missing is: MUTUAL RESPECT. Yesterday's post said we'd begin by pouring concrete and burying, mafia style, some of the name calling both sides presently use both to tar their opponents and to rally their supporters. The Yale University Forum on Climate Change and the Media does a pretty good, even-handed job [IMO] in its article ‘Denier,’ ‘Alarmist,’ ‘Warmist,’ 'Contrarian', 'Confusionist', 'Believer'...The List Goes On ... and On ... and On of defining the loaded names we'll try to bury. And this blog post at the Discover Magazine asks some interesting questions about the use of  'loaded labels' that elicit some thought provoking answers by famous journalists and scientists.

Tomorrow, load willin and the engineers don't intervene, construction will begin with the building of two mutual respect abutments, to protect our communication bridge from the slings and arrows of outrageous zealotry.

Part #1: Building a Bridge Between Greenville and Growthton Starts With Solid Foundations

There's many famous photos like the one above of the Golden Gate Bridge spanning the gap between two fogged in shores. The bridge and the fog isolated shores serve as an excellent metaphor IMO for the gulf between the two environmental pollution encampments - Greenville and Growthton - as well as the need to engineer a communications bridge between these two fogged in solitudes. Indisputable fact #1 is: we're all in this together, #2: nobody is gonna get out alive.

The first step in building a bridge, be it metaphorical or material, is to envision a plausible plan. Next the bridge's planners would work backwards, using reverse engineering, from the final finished product one step, one stage, at a time until the bridge is un-built back to its landing points. Then, when begining conctruction itself, the first step for all bridges is building foundations that are capable of carrying the loads. The the case of the GG bridge it'd be cars, trucks, steel and concrete plus the forces that act on those loads like the winds, rain and tides. A communications bridge on the other hand would have to carry the load of many differing opinions, perspectives, interpretations and expectations all being buffeted about by the forces of ever changing knowledge and uncertainty.

The GG bridge successfully spans the Golden Gate Strait from San Francisco to Marin County, with a lotta luck our metaphorical bridge will span the wide river of distrust between the proponents and opponents in the often rancorous debate about the causes of, the long term effects of  and the solutions to environmental degradation.

IMO the first necessary foundation for our bridge must be ending the name calling [shouting] from both sides. Today's goal was the overall plan of envisioning of a bridge between the encampments and acknowledgement our common humanity.  Tomorrow the hard work starts, we'll begin by pouring some concrete and burying, mafia style, some of the pejorative name calling we've slipped into as a convenience and a rallying cry for our camp mates.

Hopefully the BCNDP Will Learn From Their Defeat That There's a Difference Between Poles and Polls

There's totem poles, fence poles, utility poles, ski poles, bean poles, fireman's poles, barber's poles, pike poles, the North and South Poles, the magnetic poles, mono-poles, di-poles, lottsa useful types of poles. There's pole vaulters, pole sitters and a personal favorite - pole dancers. Then there's polls and pollsters. Hum, different spelling, different smelling too eh.

This past week has been another smelly one for the pollsters. The BCNDP is in large part blaming their shit-kicking on the pollsters, a lot like Alberta's Wild Rose Party did after their recent shit-kicking. Both claim that their supporters were seduced into complacency by the inaccuracy of the polls. And it probably is true because both the NDP + WRP acted arrogantly like they had it in the bag. Apparently all those impressive poll numbers convinced NDP + WRP supporters it was okay to skip voting as long as they remembered to “like” their candidate on Facebook.

Unlike Alberta though only 52% of eligible voters showed up to vote in La La Land further allowing the NDP to blame their own supporters. Only one group of pollsters got it right. BC Liberal Party polling, based on only listed land lines, was dead on accurate. Older citizens, nearly all voting the 'fascist' cause, have land lines while young folks nearly all supporting the 'progressive' causes, use cell phones and the Internet but, apparently do not vote.

Winston Churchill once famously said, “The biggest argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.”  He got it slightly wrong., the best argument against democracy would be a five-minute conversation with the average political party executive IMO. Certainly the party brain trusts must realize the polls, and polling companies, are multimillion dollar media companies whose god-like powers are derived from the fact that the media needs fantastic headlines to sell their ads. No one dares question the methodology or the numbers until the actual voting results come in. Then almost everyone remembers that polls, and polling companies can't be trusted. That how questions are framed and who is asked them determines the answers. That pollsters find the answers they're looking for.

Think about it. Do you respond to an unknown caller or immediately hang up when you don't recognize the voice? If you have call display, do you even answer calls from unknown numbers? Do you talk to them any longer than it takes to yell a couple of expletives? Do you fill in online surveys? Nobody i know does. Who has the time for this stuff in a tilt-a-whirl world?

There are lessons to be learned by the BCNDP from all this and hopefully they'll get beyond their current stage of denial and take responsibility for their own mistakes. Hopefully they'll remember next time that polling companies make a living predicting the sales of shampoos and deodorants so it's no mystery when their results turn out odoriferous? The BCNDP would be well advised to learn from their mistakes and stop blaming others.  To remember the old adage "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me." And to reflect on what happens if/when a third shaming happens.