Directory of Lost Causes

I've read quite a few of Ian Dunt's articles now. Sometimes I agree with him, sometimes not. This article is, in my opinion, the most on target that I have read so far. Quote therefrom:

In actual fact, the government has no particular interest in the truth. As Professor Nutt said yesterday, the Home Office's decision to upgrade cannabis from Class C to Class B had a far more significant political effect than the error of its imposition. With the experts all telling the government this was the wrong move, and all the data pointing to a reduction in use since the drug was downgraded in 2004, Smith, under orders from the prime minister, upgraded it to class B anyway. The precedent was clear: experts and evidence mean nothing. Tabloid headlines mean everything.

There could be no better lesson upon which to start a politically conscious life: the government is not telling you the truth. With that piece of knowledge you can become a fully active citizen, rather than the passive sponge government wishes you to be. The next time a prime minister tells the public that a country can attack us in 45 minutes in order to justify a war, the kids will be suspicious. The next time politicians throw insults at each other as a means of evading debate, they will be suspicious. The next time a politician justifies taking away British freedoms with reference to the threat of terrorism, they will be suspicious.

And here are a couple of articles relating to climate change:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/oct/28/climate-change-senate-national-security?CMP=AFCYAH

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/21/20091028/tuk-climate-change-to-hit-food-prices-6323e80.html

I was walking the streets of Swansea just the other day, seeing all the new mothers with their offspring, and I couldn't help seeing reproduction as an almost military thing, part of a tactic of genetic occupation of resources from a particular DNA tribe. To have children is, as I have said before, to stake one's claim in genetic immortality. However, it is a claim that is contested - by all the other DNA tribes also reproducing. Reproduction, in very simple terms, is a war for resources. Affluent couples are like affluent nations. They know they can secure a bigger share of the world's finite resources for their children.

That's all it is, folks. That's all it is. Reproduction is war.

Walking back to the car park from Swansea town centre, I stopped to let a mother pass with her child in a push-chair. Instinctively, I apologised, in what should be the normal British manner, when there is any hesitation or confusion over 'right of way'. She stared at me wordless and insolent, and pushed her precious load onwards. This is the way it always seems to happen. Reproduction is not seen as an act of selfishness that must be indulged, but as something that confers on the breeder some greater social rank, some greater entitlement, as if we should all care about that person's scrabble for genetic immortality as much as they do. The vanity, the conceit and the tyranny of family values!