The Axis Of Evidence!

It strikes Elroy that there is a certain amount of hypocrisy abroad in the world, and that double standards abound on some very, very big topics which annoy Elroy more than somewhat. What counts for one issue does not matter for another, so in the name of consistency, truth, justice and the humanist way, Elroy would like to iron out a few of these wrinkles and make the case for applying principles in a manner which is, well, principled.

So, what are the issues? Well, in no particular order, here are three big ones that more or less define the post-modern condition, the axis of evidence that spill from one into the next – the Iraq War, Global Warming and 9/11.

Nothing much then, just the most volatile, contentious and partisan, bi-partisan, cross-partisan and non-partisan subjects of public debate currently on the table, so what’s the problem?

The problem, dear reader, is one of approach, of truth, of working out the who-what-why-where-when of it all. Let’s take the Iraq War. We were told, back in 2002, that Iraq was a threat that could not be denied or ignored, that the cost of doing nothing was far greater than the cost of doing something and, if we didn’t act now, the cost of acting then would be too much too bear, that humanity could not afford the risk, after all, with all those WMD with Saddam, the future of the entire planet was at stake etc etc, blah blah blah, waddaya waddaya, and the naysayers and doves who argued and asked for proof, who found experts that knew full well Saddam had as many WMD as the Easter Bunny, were shunned, ignored, sidelined and ridiculed.

So many people, faced with what they were told was incontrovertible proof that world was in eminent peril, went along with the invasion and occupation of Iraq – shame that it was completely bogus, but that’s not the point – the point is that the threat was too, too great and so literally untold billions of dollars have been spent to mitigate said threat.

Which brings us to another issue which has some similarities with the Iraq war in that it is also a threat that cannot be denied or ignored, that the cost of doing nothing about it is far greater than the cost of doing something and, if we don’t act now, the cost of acting then will be too much too bear, that humanity could not afford the risk because, after all, the future of the entire planet is at stake and we are faced with incontrovertible proof that world was in peril, but the people that sold us this logic to go to war with the WMD menace are the very ones that deny the existence of this other highly pressing subject.

The climate change deniers, those that were the head cheerleaders for war, take all the arguments that the peaceniks used to talk the hawks out of combat – the financial cost, the human cost, the lack of verifiable scientific evidence – and use it to beat environmentalists over the head, despite the remarkable volte face it requires.

The logic used to argue for action against global warming is the same as was used to prosecute the Iraq war, but for some reason those that once urged haste urge caution, and visa versa, but there is a crucial difference – the WMD of Saddam Hussein, if they ever actually existed, which they didn’t, could never have actually turned the lights out from pole to pole, whereas global warming actually can.

Another feature of those intent on lightly poaching the globe in its juices is their sudden expertise on all things climatic; even the most rationally challenged blogger has become ofay with the intricacies of climatologising, and one can hardly peek at a conservative website these days without being barraged by arcane scientific data of the most intricate and obscure variety which desperately tries to prove that it’s all a big con put up by evil, tree-hugging climatologists hell-bent on retaining their funding and living it large at the tax-payers trough.

‘It’s a conspiracy!’ cry these devotees of Newton and Galileo who also generally exhibit a distinctly unscientific allegiance to an all-powerfull, all-seeing, all-knowing unknowable ‘creator’, ‘They’re just after the cash!’, while spurning any suggestion that the Iraq war was set up in part as the mother of all boondoggles for the military/industrial complex. They also whine that they are merely asking for proof, that they have found experts who know full well that the planet is getting colder, and that the are being shunned, ignored, sidelined and ridiculed, yet if the anti-war mob got the kind of media coverage the climate change sceptics have been accorded there would still be running water on the Tigris.

Indeed, one of their ‘experts’, the ‘mathematician’ (cue approving nods) Mr David Evans, has been widely quoted as whining that ‘The world has spent $50 billion on global warming since 1990’, but when one takes into consideration that the entire global GDP is approximately $64 trillion, that works out to more or less $3 billion per year which, when spread across all 6-odd billion, of us is chump change!

$3 billion a year for a whole planet? Where else are you going to get a bargain like that? It’s certainly better value than the warlords plan for global preservation, currently running at $3.5 billion per week.

Naturally there is nothing to prove the climatologist/research complex conspiracy theory, but so what? That just shows you how crafty them there scientists are, but not all scientists you understand – the scientists that deny the reality of global warming are totally altruistic and not really in the pay of big oil. Like our friend Mr Evans, many are not actually climate scientists either, but never mind – they’re clever, that’s what counts, and that’s what makes them eminently quotable.

However, when it comes to the third corner of our trio of tribulation, science is suddenly back in its box and Osama Bin Laden’s true believers return to their faith-based approach to investigation and mercilessly mock those campaigning to discover the truth about 9/11; the ‘troofers’, as they are so sneeringly referred to, have many quite reasonable points to make about 9/11 and what really happened that fateful morn, but their opponents are having none of it – the troofers are as batshit crazy to them as the The Lavoisier Group are to Friends Of The Earth and the US Marine Corp appear to Code Pink.

Suddenly quoting experts, real experts, honest-to-god physicists, civil engineers, architects, jet pilots, demolition riggers, military personnel of every stripe and the fundamental laws of Newton and Galileo is cause for much scoffing and derision, as one is precluded from using any such evidence unless one actually has the relevant doctorate and not even then.

There are many ostensibly sane people who argue that they are not advocating a conspiracy theory so much as viable hypothesises that attempt to include all of the known facts, that are merely asking for proof, and they have found experts who know full well that buildings do not drop straight down through the path of most resistance without help, but they are being shunned, ignored, sidelined and ridiculed.

Of course, like the anti-war movement, if the troofers were granted the same amount of media oxygen as the climate change deniers – there are more docos that go out of their way to slam down the former next president of the United States on the telly than Australian soap operas, all in the name of free speech, doncha know – there would likely be a run on pitchforks as a million man mob advanced on the Capitol Hill with menace aforethought, but those that bleat about scheming weathermen are too busy yelling about tin-foil hats and Elvis driving the Roswell spaceships to care, or notice the irony.

Another problem is that these issues do not break along partisan lines. There are many lefties who originally supported the ousting of Saddam Hussein ¬¬¬but who are committed environmentalists, committed environmentalists who repudiate the alternative 9/11 propositions, pro-war advocates who agree that 9/11 is not all it seems, anti-war global warming sceptics, pro-war troofers and all stops inbetween; indeed, the one common bond they have is that the tactics that they complain are used on them are the exact same ones they use on everyone else.

And so here we are, where evidence is permissible unless it isn’t, the laws of physics are immutable until they aren’t and that cold, hard science is the ultimate arbiter unless God is, where groups that demand to be heard demand others aren’t, where experts aren’t experts unless they are, or not, where quoting said experts is legitimate or proscribed, where the interwebs is either a vital conduit for the free flow of information or a free-for-all cesspool of errant nonsense open to every miscreant nutter to stagger down the pike.

But does it matter? So what if these disparate bands of hard-disk jockeys go adjective and verb at each other? Well, in a word, yes, because if 9/11 was not perpetrated by 19 malcontent Saudis then the entire Bush presidency becomes even more illegitimate than it already is, if that’s at all possible, and because the case for the Iraq war, proven or otherwise, could have been solved in ways other than wholesale slaughter had Dick Cheney not been in charge, if it had to be solved at all.

It was successfully argued that there was no alternative to the chaos, poverty, misery, ignorance, a dark furture for the youth, instability on a generational scale and general death that the Coalition of the Willing™ has visited on Mesopotamia and that, without immediate action, chaos, poverty, misery, ignorance, a dark future for the youth, instability on a generational scale and death in general would be visited upon us.

Well, it turns out that not acting on the so-called ‘threat’ of Saddam Hussein would have actually brought about a wave of wealth, happiness, wisdom, a future for the children and life in general, as would averting global warming. Indeed, NOT averting global warming could well bring chaos, poverty, misery, ignorance, a dark future for the youth, instability on a generational scale and general death in general while action will bring wealth, happiness, wisdom, a bright future for the children and life in general. And if it doesn’t, well, it can’t hurt. Can it? We don’t even have the quaint old ‘diplomacy’ option on this one, so can we risk not doing it?

Can avoiding climate change cause chaos, poverty, misery, ignorance, a dark future for the youth, instability on a generational scale and general death? Surely cutting down on the use of fossil fuels can only help mankind? Anyone out there care to argue the opposite? Elroy assures you that all evidence will be heard and listened to, and challenged where applicable, if you can promise to do the same.

All we, the world, need is the will and the decency to hear the case for and against war, for and against global warming, for and against the origins of 9/11, soberly, sincerely, dispassionately and without regard to our own petty biases and beliefs to ascertain the truth and stop the endless churn of the axis of evidence before we all fry for one reason or the another.

And The Winner Is...

Ron! Yes, Ron has absolutely swept the board! No one came close to Ron because, well, no one else entered, so first-prize goes to Revolt Today’s proprietor…Ron!

So, let’s run it down. In reverse order we have Number 10. Ron reckoned that the country which bans only torture that is the ‘equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death’ is not founder member of terror elite organization the Axis of Evil, Iran, or axis wannabes, Syria, or even CIA sub-contractor Egypt. Nope, the only nation that explicitly allows this, says Ron, is the good ol’ US of A!

Grrr! Stoopid hate-America-firster! Trouble is…he’s right! Hmmm. Way to bring Western Values® to the world, USA!

Now, number nine. Ron says that George W. Bush said, "We have a responsibility to secure our borders. We take this responsibility seriously" about the Mexican border fence. Now, Elroy is pretty sure that Ehud Olmert feels much the same way about his construction, as did Zhu Yuánzhang and Sabine Bergmann-Pohl,
but Ron is right. GWB it was. Two to Ron.

Number 8 goes like this. ‘Tear down this wall!’ bellowed a world leader, but which one? Felipe Calderón sure feels a tad insulted by George’s little number, Mahmoud Abbas is ropable over Israel building its perimeter wall outside its borders on Palestinian land, Genghis Khan was undoubtedly peeved when his Mongol hordes bounced off the Great Wall of China and Ronnie took exception to the rather crude mechanism East Germany knocked up in order to protect the Glorious revolution.

Now, the odd one out here is Ronnie, as he is the only one not facing a wall built to keep him out, and why would Ronnie be griping about a wall that was, frankly, none of his business? Because that’s the specialty of American foreign policy advisors! Yup, the only guy with no real cause to go ‘round telling other leaders what to do was the guy going ‘round telling other leaders what to do.

How the current Republican cabal square off building a bloody great fence to keep out Mexicans with the memory of demi-god Saint Ray-gun and his hatred of all things wallular, but there y’all go! Ronnie said and Ron picked it! Three-nought to Ron!

To seven. ‘It is cruel and callous to do this to someone in this position and to play games like this is a disgrace’ wailed someone or other.
Was Malaki being magnanimous in defending Saddam when he was lynched by the USA? Or was he standing up for the Iraqis tortured in Abu Grahib? Was it Australian Prime Minister John Howard going in to bat for David Hicks and his holiday at Git’mo? Maybe it was the USA protecting the civil rights of them Freedom™ lovin’ a-rabs as they hung some poor hicks out to dry over the Abu Grahib debacle?

Or was it the Aussies defending Saddam? After all, Australia has long since done away with the death penalty. Or the yanks defending Hicks and burning some more defenseless grunts? Surely Abu Grahib put them off torture and coercion? Or was it the Brits doing the right thing? After all, Tony Blair is a Labour Prime Minister? He must frown upon painful persuasion?

Well yes, it was the Poms, but not on behalf of those poor wretches in Abu Grahib and Git’mo, or even the right of Saddam to a fair trial and a pulse. No, it was the British complaining about the treatment that might be being meted out to their detained sailors by Iran. Now, Elroy understands that the Iranians were a tad mean to them, but by coalition of the willing standards it was high tea and scones with the vicar. Ron got this one right too! Well done Ron!

GWB and TB claim to be good Christians, but their edition of the good book must be missing a fair few pages, particularly the ‘Do unto others as you would have them do unto you’ bit. Just ask that Iranian diplomat how his new suit fits him (no, not the orange one).

6. See above (Ron wins again! – Margaret Beckett on the Navals!) 5-0.

5. Someone said ‘Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the president to explain to us what the exit strategy is.’ Well, it couldn’t be George – he doesn’t know what one is, let alone explain one, John Kerry sure knows what happens if you don’t have one, Hilary Clinton’s hubby had one made specially and John Howard, well, he’s been around long enough to have said it to Lord Kitchener. Ron, however, has stuck with George, and…it’s true! George actually said ‘Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the president to explain to us what the exit strategy is’! What a shame George didn’t listen to the answer. 6-0 to Ron

4. ‘There is a road to freedom. Its milestones are Obedience, Endeavor, Honesty, Order, Cleanliness, Sobriety, Truthfulness, Sacrifice, and love of the Homeland.’

What a quote! But who did it? I wouldn’t be surprised if it were Rummy; they all sound like things not a million miles from the Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, John Ashcroft school of Republican philosophy. Saddam? Most dictators trot out this sort of nonsense, so that accounts for Hitler, Saddam and GSB too.

But the prize goes to Adolph, so the points go to Ron. I’m losing heavily.

3. Ron says that Winston said ‘History teaches that war begins when governments believe the price of aggression is cheap’ about the mounting threat of the Third Reich. Hey! It could have been Tim Robbins! I can see it! And Sean Penn! Directed by Michael Moore!
But I’m afraid it was the Gipper discussing the Cold War. George needs to pop down to the Ronald Reagan Memorial Library every now and then. Elroy hits back! 6-1!

2. ‘If we don’t stop extending our troops all around the world in nation-building missions, we’re going to have a serious problem coming down the road.’

John Kerry saw first hand how nation building could stretch the troops in SE Asia, and Hilary and Al have been ganging up on George W. for quite a while now. Ron says it was Al. It certainly couldn’t have been GWB; he is the present master of extending our troops all around the world in nation-building missions, no-one comes close to extending our troops all around the world in nation-building missions no matter how many serious problems there are coming down the road.

What? It WAS George? Talking to Bill? About Bosnia? Gee! He maybe ought to visit the George W. Bush Memorial Library. When it gets built. Wherever it gets built. A phone booth should fit it…6-2!

1. And finally: ‘History is littered with examples of where nation have over-reacted to presumed threats, only to their great long-term disadvantage'

Pretty profound stuff here. Nev may well have said it – Ron says he did – and it does have that ‘Peace in our time’ ring about it, that sort of British reserve that nearly saw Adolph set up a Beirkeller in Buckingham Palace. On the other hand, maybe it was GWB discussing Saddam Hussein – oh, silly me!

Was Kerry worried about the lack of looming threat from Iraq? Yes, he was, but he didn’t say this. What did he say? Probably something like: ‘Ladies and gentlemen, Congressmen, Senators, distinguished guests, it behoves me to relate that the long and difficult history of the modern nation state as we now no it in its current form is comprehensively littered with a perplexing myriad of extant examples of instances where certain nation states, whom I will not name here individually due to certain onerous time restraints that are rigidly upheld, have had a tendency to, in some matters, react in a manner which others may, upon reflection, be construed as somewhat excessive given that thee threat they are said to be facing is not, in any way, a real or concrete manifestation of physical force or the promise thereof but in actual fact is merely a presumed or, indeed assumed, and furthermore such a reaction…’ [Cont. P. 94]

Was it George on Iraq? Ah, wish that it were! Then we might have hoped he would take his own advice. But he may have been talking about Y2K, but then so could have Kerry, or John Howard.

Could John Howard have been commenting on Y2K? Or warning GWB about Iraq? Nah, that would have meant saying ‘No’ to George, and no one says ‘No’ to George, least of all the Governor of the 51st State. Anyway, everyone knows that the US and Australia never ‘over-reacted’ to the ‘presumed threat’ of Iraq; like Y2K, we went in hard and headed any danger off at the pass. That’s leadership! Nev dithered and hey presto! Before he knew it Adolph was asking for instructions on how to work the lawnmower at Number ten!

Not so Johnny! He is a strong leader! A born pre-empter! He’s going to get in for anyone else gets in first! Well, that’s what he’s told us. Often. At great length. So Elroy is sad to relate that it was, indeed, John Howard who said ‘History is littered with examples of where nation have over-reacted to presumed threats, only to their great long-term disadvantage' about global warming, proving that his hypocritectomy has been entirely successful.

So that’s it! Ron wins the special prize…a year’s free subscription to the online edition of Let’s Ask Elroy!™

Thanks for playing Who's Been Paying Attention?® and we’ll see y’all agin soon!

Denial Is Not Just A River In Egypt – Part Two.

So how do we have an honest discourse? How are all positions to be heard? Not though the media as it stands; with an ever-decreasing amount of companies running the show, and bearing in mind that they are not, by any means, altruistic organizations committed to the well-being of the grazing herd, the divergence of stories in the MSM is minimal.

Of course, Nutbags Athletic are not playing on a level pitch with their elected overlords. Establishment United can only harness the entire fire-power of the Western media – Rupert Murdoch alone can reach 4.5 billion souls – while the Nutbags are clearly have the upper hand as they coax broadband connections into life and lock their wheezing PCs on ‘Argue’.

However, there is no surprise that although the mainstream media are always on the side of truth, that truth is always on the side of the status quo. Be they laying down the Official Word for good and loyal patriots or fighting a rear guard action against wild-eyed anarchists, the MSM can always, up to a point, be relied upon to do Establishment United’s heavy lifting; even the multitude of balls-ups by the Bush administration have been given not much more than a cursory glance but that might just be, considering the multitude of sins they have to choose from, because there simply isn’t room.

The whole situation could change tomorrow if it suited the vested interests for it to do so, but it doesn’t, so the show goes on, and given the unstoppable force of the global media it is no great shock that Establishment United is ahead of the game; they have most of the star strikers and they not only own the rule book they rewrite it daily, and if they don’t like the referee’s decision, hey! They just ignore it!

But as these are the defining issues of our times and they must not be off limits for discussion and debate. Is the Iraq War going to explode exponentially and turn into a global conflagration, or is it the victory for democracy that the Coalition says it is? How can the voters of a liberal democracy be confident in the claims of the government if the tales coming out of the war zone are so diametrically opposed?

The Iraq war could be fought because the powers that be knew that their rationale for it was bollocks, and because of this they could change it around at will. They could never be upfront about the real reason, but fake reasons? Hey, they got them! How many do you want?

The logic that allowed the Iraq War to go ahead – the overwhelming threat of annihilation, the cost of doing nothing, the immediacy of the threat of annihilation, the cost of doing nothing about the immediacy of the threat – was shouted long and loud from every rooftop, and printed on the pulp of every tree.

It was inescapable, and those that argued were fools, cretins, appeasers – if we don’t face the threat head on, cried our rulers, we shall surely rue the day. Those that said we must be careful were brushed aside with a brute force that only the most determined can muster because, shrilled the western warlords, its all so obvious.

Of course we now know otherwise, but at the time, well… The thing is that many, many people at the time knew that the intelligence was dodgy, and it was proved to be; now, however, we have a new enemy, and once again we are face with the overwhelming threat of annihilation, the cost of doing nothing, the immediacy of the threat of annihilation and the cost of doing nothing about the immediacy of the threat, but this time Establishment United are not so gung-ho about its amelioration.

Now, careful is the watchword. Now, they want to make sure that the intelligence is absolutely perfect before we engage the foe. Now, they say, we really need to talk about it, and talk about it some more, because it really wouldn’t do if someone got hurt. 'Histroy' sniffed Australian John Howard just today, 'is littered with examples of where nation have over-reacted to presumed threats, only to their great long-term disadvantage', without it occuring to him for a nanosecond that this comment pertains just as happily to his government's Iraq excursion.

All good lawyers never ask a question if they don’t know the answer. However, the global warmists have asked a new question of Establishment United, and because they don't have an answer they like, our Dear Leaders control the damage by ridiculing the question, but neither Q or A will go away. However, no matter whether you run hot or cold on the subject, at least we are having the debate and the effect of the solar on the polar, once the exclusive preserve of dreadlocked enviro-vegies, is now on the dining table of every household on the planet.

Coming Soon – Part Three – How to clear it all up!

Denial Is Not Just A River In Egypt – Part One.

Denial is an interesting business; it is a phenomenon which has ensnared the modern human and one which threatens, one way or another, to kill us all, and so here at Let’s Ask Elroy™ we say maybe it’s time to dip our tootsies in the water and see what it is we do and don’t believe, and who do and don’t believe it.

The denial industry is thriving at the moment; we have Iraq War denial, climate change denial, 9/11 denial and, shock horror, holocaust denial. Opposing tribes are at war and unfortunately, like all wars, truth is the first casualty, and it seems that whoever controls the truth gets to say who is in denial and who is being full, frank and honest with the population at large.

Lets take the Iraq War. Without the support of one Rupert Murdoch, the Iraq war would be over; in fact, it would never have been started and the War On Terror wouldn’t exit either. They were both predicated on intelligence now known to be suspect, and there were many voices at the time crying out the same message, but those voices were exiled to the wilderness. They were, we were assured, lone nuts and Internet partisans, heretics and traitors, maniacal deniers who had not left their bedrooms since 1996 and not anyone to take seriously.

Well, it looks like the lone nuts were right, but not for everyone. The war’s cheerleaders still believe that WMD are down there somewhere and that the USA will create Geneva-on-the-Tigris, and those that want to believe that do. The White House doesn’t, they know what’s going on, that’s why they have returned to funding Sunni extremists in order to fight the Shiites they came to save, but although the true believers keep on keepin’ on, the tide is turning on them; they are themselves becoming the one in denial.

However, the catastrophe in Iraq is, in some way finite, provable in the most gruesome of terms – refugees, body counts, blood n’ guts, collapsing infrastructure – but global warming is far more fertile ground for obfuscation. The concept of global warming has been around for a while, but as it is only now that it has reached some sort of critical mass, so it is only now that we see criticism of it ramped up to the point hysteria.

But this time the flipper is on the other foot as the establishment finds itself cast as the denier. Oops! Did I say denier? I meant realist! This time deniers are not nutbag partisans hell bent on nobbling the opposition because they are, well, the opposition, this time the deniers are noble crusaders for truth and justice. They are still heretics but more of your ‘Joan Of Arc’ stylee, and those that oppose them are but closed-minded zealots deaf to legitimate arguments and terrified of real debate.

Yes! Behold the brave forces of the Establishment as they dare to take on that mighty army of socialist radicals who hate industry, gasp with admiration as they toil against anti-capitalist commies who want nothing more to than take down the system and reduce us all to serfs whose very lives are dependent on five-year tractor quotas!

And thanks to the Murdoch noise machine this stuff is cutting through, but the next on the list of controversies has not been so favoured. The story of 9/11 is one of The Greatest Ever Told, and for this tale no dissent is to be tolerated. Far from being applauded for seeking honest discussion, those worried that the Legend Of September 11 might be tad iffy are maligned, marginalized and vilified to within an inch of their laptops; suddenly, heretics are back to being burned at the stake and any idea that they may have anything to add to the debate is spat upon. Funny that, eh?

The powers-that-be are also in no mood to be messin’ with the holocaust either. One of Western civilization’s last great taboos, to be accused of denying that the holocaust happened is one of the most potent pejoratives in the arsenal of political insults available to man; it is so serious a smear that all other ‘deniers’ are damned by implication, except for global warming ones who manage to use this association as proof of their victim hood while simultaneously employing it to mitigate their position (‘It’s not’, they whine, ‘as if we’re holocaust deniers!’).

If 9/11 deniers are heretics to be burned at the stake, then holocaust deniers are Satan incarnate. So foul are the connotations of being called a holocaust denier that historians who class themselves as holocaust revisionists are tarred with the same putrid bush; however, the revisionists merely claim that they are, with the benefit of sixty years’ worth of hindsight and technological advances, just trying to work out the truth of what happened.

So just as truth is relative, so is the search for it. You are either a champion of veracity and actuality, or you are an evil subversive heading for a detention camp for enemy-enablers nowhere near you depending on which, or whose, truth you seek. It would appear that the inside running for the truth is with whoever gets their story in first; the CIA, Pentagon, State Department and White House with Iraq, the Greenies and environmentalists on global warming, the White House et al again with 9/11 and the Allies, better known now as the UN Security Council, with the holocaust. Establishment United 3; Nutbags Athletic 1.

Watch out for Part 2 – The rest of the mess!