ISIS and the Roadwarrior---Revolution Watch

As we began getting images from the war in the middle east, the one were these Islamic State soldiers rampaged across Syria and Iraq, it seemed to me I had seen this before. There was these ratty-assed vehicles (some not so ratty-assed) all festooned with various weapons and foreboding individuals acting  menacing and hell bent. In the back ground were oil facilities and most interestingly a oil refiner.

Clearly, the ISIS group had an involvement with oil, or fuel, and was out to capture and hold those positions as if they were of great importance, if not imperative to their operations of marauding. All of their actions appeared indiscriminate as they killed every person in their path for dominance in the oily sands.

All of seemed chaotic at one point, but intent and focused on another. They wanted control of the oil facilities and the money they could generate. They wanted to establish a religious, rather fascist caliphate or region of their own making.

I knew I had seen this before. Oh yes, they have been doing versions of this theater before right in the same location, but memory was for another country. I realized it was in Australia. It was after the Apocalypse and they were fighting for the last remnants of the oil industry.It was Road Warrior. It was all the same. The Islamic State had introduced the Road Warrior gambit.

In the end the few survivors of the Road Warrior clash loaded up the last gasoline and headed out in an old school bus to a new life where there would be no gasoline. Wonder if that where this is all headed?

Foreign Affairs---The Shale Revolution---Revolution Watch

Every now and then I run into articles, actually I run into lots of them, that demonstrate how the predominate paradigm works at controlling the public narrative. I am sure this has always taken place and certainly in the past when access to the press and the public was much more limited, say post interweb, it was present in the usual form of propaganda. The sources of this propaganda are many faceted be it the church or the state, or  the corporations and it has always been there to influence the public opinions and public actions.

What I am getting at is this has always been going on even though there has usually been an attempt by the mainstream media to make an effort to be "News" organization providing there version of truth. We do have a free press which is real nice, but we are still going to get all kinds of jackass stuff like Fox and a hundred other right wingnut stuff, and this also goes on in the left but usually not as absurd as the right.

Any reasonable person can usually spot the nonsense and with luck pick out the drift in one direction or another. Right now the right has seized the narrative by effectively blaming Obama for every single problem in the world from Ebola to ISIS to the theft of money by the big banks and of course lying about global climate change. Oh ya, the last two dumb wars were caused by him.

The problem with all this bullshit is there are some real and very nasty problems out there, ones that are life threatening to the next generation. Having control of the narrative by the wrong group could prove are undoing. It simply is not a great time for much bullshit.

http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/141202/edward-l-morse/welcome-to-the-revolution

So here is an example of a steaming pile right here in the magazine called Foreign Affairs. One would think this was an publication that deals with thought out problems in an intellectual way and in a way that might benefit the readers knowledge, in a way that might help that individual shape the future of the nation. After all, one would think the reader of such a publication was not be your average Joe.

So in an attempt to latch on to this portion of the narrative, they proclaim in Welcome to the New Revolution that shale fracking is the answer to life on earth. There is so much oil and gas to be fracked that we should be kissing the hind ends of all the oil companies because, baby, we have enough to drive growth for ever. The link to it is attached and it is a good read for all you cornucopian types, unfortunately it is not even close to the truth. The comment section clearly points out the fallacies and the pure idiocy of the writer.

The worst part to me is there is no mention of the need to cut back on hydrocarbon usage due to climate change. To be cheering on finding more oil and gas is insane right on the face of it. It is absolutely appalling beyond imagination, but here it sits right in a glossy, respected magazine. For the love of Christ, we have to move away from this overt effort to fuck up the world.

Secondly, all this banter about this hydrocarbon wealth is not even true thus creating a false sense of security and the illusion we should not be looking for alternatives. It is a sad day to see this but , in truth, it goes on every day right in our own congress. Where do we turn?