Survival Versus Doom

Norman Solomon is a nationally syndicated columnist on media and politics. His website is www.normansolomon.com.

In the following interview, Dr. Doom of the Doom Institute, and some interns from the Institute for Survival, talk with media analyst Norman Solomon. The interview took place in July, 2007.

Dr. Doom: We at the Doom Institute feel we are at the precipice of great things. We are entering the age of global cataclysm, and the flames of war and resentment are raging. We feel that the world may be on the eve of a great conflagration, or that we can look forward to something approximating a Biblical deluge. Or both! Do you think we are over-optimistic?

Norman Solomon: Well these are boom times for the Armageddon boosters, and it must be quite exciting for those who for whatever reasons are excited by the prospect of conflagration and slaughter of unprecedented magnitude.

Dr. Doom: What can Americans do to further the doom process? By which I mean destroying humanity and the planet.

Norman Solomon: Oh, do nothing. Just be passive and it will happen. Trust our leaders and people in authority. Defer to them. Go along to get along, and don’t try to change history. That will do it.

Dr. Doom: If I may ask a followup, what possible threats to the doom process should we be looking out for?

Norman Solomon: Well there is the slight but real threat that peace could break out. If that happens, all bets are off. The doomers are not home free.

Terry Freud, B.S. psychology, an intern at the Survival Institute: Do you think Cheney and Bush are criminally insane, and if so what does that say about their supporters in the media and in the suites?

Norman Solomon: I’m not an authority on such matters. I’m a media analyst, not a psychoanalyst.

Buddha girl, Survival Institute Intern: I’m worried that so many people are sending Cheney and Bush ‘negative energy’ and that this will freak them out even more. Would you support a 1960’s-style LOVE-IN with the theme, ‘We Love You, Dick and George’? After all, Martin Luther King did say we should love our enemies.

Norman Solomon: I don’t know that negative vibrations are really problematic. I do think that nonviolence is the appropriate response, but it would have to be a militant nonviolence. To tell you the truth, Buddha Girl, I don’t think that Bush and Cheney care what you think of them.

There is an issue of sado-masochism here, but again, I’m not a psychoanalyst.

Brenda, Survival Institute Intern: I have the feeling that there must be a simple way to resolve the Iran crisis, but I don’t know what it is. Do you agree there is a simple solution, and if so, what it is?

Norman Solomon: I have a simple answer, but I can’t remember what it is.

Look. if you are determined to upend the chess board, metaphorically speaking, and double-or-nothing the bet after you’ve lost the first bet, then exploring peaceful resolutions and negotiations would make no sense whatsoever.

For those who believe ultimately, with the Pentagon under their command, in the efficacy of mass violence, then that should be the option that, as the saying goes, should always be on the table.

The Right Call

Blue Texan at Firedoglake had this comment on John McCain’s truly mind-boggling statement Monday that even in retrospect he would still have voted to authorize the war, as he did in 2002.

Yeah, get a clue you two-thirds of America who’ve concluded the war was a mistake in light of no WMDs, no ties to al-Qaeda, 4100 Americans dead, 29,000 wounded, several hundred thousand Iraqis killed, an emboldened Iran, a resurgent Taliban in Pakistan, Afghanistan collapsing, bin Laden at large, anti-Americanism at an all-time high, and $4.00 gasoline — all at a price tag of 2 trillion dollars. There’s no question it was the right call.

The following item is lifted from Jonathan Schwartz at This Modern World:

Yikes

June 27th, 2008

The North Pole may be briefly ice-free by September as global warming melts away Arctic sea ice, according to scientists from the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colorado.

Obama and congressional Democrats support Warrantless wiretapping and forgiveness (without trial) of telecom company crimes

June 20, 2008

See Glenn Greenwald for the story.

Holocene Epoch Ends
June 6, 2008

That’s the unanimous conclusion of the Stratigraphy Commission of the Geological Society of London, the world’s oldest and stodgiest association of Earth scientists. According to Mike Davis:

the members of the commission adduced “robust evidence that the Holocene epoch — the interglacial span of unusually stable climate that has allowed the rapid evolution of agriculture and urban civilization — has ended and that the Earth has entered “a stratigraphic interval without close parallel in the last several million years.”

Highlights of the story:

Coal production, especially, is undergoing a dramatic renaissance, as the nineteenth century has returned to haunt the twenty-first century. Hundreds of thousands of miners are now working under conditions that would have appalled Charles Dickens, extracting the dirty mineral that allows China to open two new coal-fueled power stations every week. Meanwhile, the total consumption of fossil fuels is predicted to increase at least 55% over the next generation, with international oil exports doubling in volume.

The United Nations Development Program, which has made its own study of sustainable energy goals, warns that it will require “a 50 percent cut in greenhouse gas emissions worldwide by 2050 against 1990 levels” to keep humanity outside the red zone of runaway warming (usually defined as a greater than two degrees centigrade increase this century). Yet the International Energy Agency predicts that, in all likelihood, such emissions will actually increase in this period by nearly 100% — enough greenhouse gas to propel us past several critical tipping points.

Even while higher energy prices are pushing SUVs towards extinction and attracting more venture capital to renewable energy, they are also opening the Pandora’s box of the crudest of crude oil production from Canadian tar sands and Venezuelan heavy oil.

Do Your Part!
June 12

The Doom Institute and its affiliated Doom Clubs throughout the free world endorsed the visionary Carbon Belch Day.

“We call on doomers everywhere to Take the Pledge. ‘Yes, I’ll increase my CO2 output on June 12!’

“The good people at Carbon Belch have some simple things you can do to help the cause on that day. Drive more. Turn down your air conditioning 5 degrees. Don’t recycle newspapers for one day. Do a partial load of laundry. Don’t bring your own shopping bags to the supermarket.” Dr. Doom

All right!

May 29, 2008

During a fund-raiser in Denver, Obama — a former constitutional law professor at the University of Chicago Law School — was asked what he hoped to accomplish during his first 100 days in office.

“I would call my attorney general in and review every single executive order issued by George Bush and overturn those laws or executive decisions that I feel violate the constitution,” said Obama

The story here.

Update: But will he overturn the FISA bill allowing warrantless surveillance and immunizing the telecom companies immunity from their crimes that Obama himself supports?