Rob’s brief no. 1: The price of being jet-setting wealthy over the planet
David Beckham, one of the world’s most recognizable and wealthiest athletes on the planet, have the largest carbon footprint in the planet, as blogged by Ecorazzi (originally reported by MSN Fox Sports). Seem to me that David Beckham is not alone in this, as there are many other jet-setting wealthy peoples and major corporations going from place to place spending their money at whim all the times. When you add up all the carbon footprints from them, you get the idea how much they can pollute the planet and not have a care about damaging the environment. You can sure be glad all the average people and low-income folks doesn’t produce that much carbon footprints like the wealthy people and corporations can do frequently. Huh.
Even Bono of U2 admitted to Al Gore at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland: “I’m not just a noise polluter, but a diesel sucking, methane producing, Gulfstream flying sinner.”
Heh.
Rob’s brief no. 2: Bush’s final State of the Union Address
On Monday, Jan. 28th will be President Bush’s final State of the Union address. Check your local TV listing for the broadcasting time. It is also noteworthy that this is the first time he is to broadcast his SotU address on Monday night instead of the customary Tuesday or Wednesday primetime like he had many times in the past. Make you go hmm, why Monday?
Flashback to my old blog about President Eisenhower in his farewell address to the nation:
This quote below is the best known part of President Dwight Eisenhower’s Farewell Address to the Nation on 17th of January 1961, often repeated and pointed out by people alarmed by the growing converging relationship between the military and the corporations since the end of World War II:
In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.
However, that is not the famous warning from the late President for my blog. It was this other, largely ignored warning – below – from the same Farewell Address, Eisenhower declared,
Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.
Publicly, to this day, the military-industrial complex is growing larger and stronger, bringing many employments and revenues to the communities and cities nationally, even branching out to other countries as well. Detractors have been decrying this unwarranted but completely converged relationship between the military and the corporations. However, the scientific-technological elite have quietly expanded its reaches into private and corporate interests and slowly attached itself to the public policy since 1920s, though largely unchecked and ignored over the decades. Fortunately, it was President Eisenhower who saw this growing, unwarranted and quiet acquisition of the public policy at all levels (I do mean ALL levels) by a scientific-technological elite with hidden agendas unknown to the public.
It was, perhaps, necessary for President Eisenhower to include that subtle warning to future generations of the ascendancy of a Scientific Dictatorship.
Rob’s brief no. 3: The Children of 1919
Had a great read of the TCS Daily interview with David Andelman about his book, A Shattered Peace: Versailles 1919 and the Price We Pay Today. I have say this many times in few discussion boards in the Internet or with someone in the past, that all the problems and circumstances we have in the world, including the war in Iraq and the conditions in the Middle East, began with the disastrous and draconian decisions made by the victorious powers in the Treaty of Versailles in 1919. President Woodrow Wilson’s 14 Points vision for peace, then viewed as a better, if entirely naive alternative to the revenge-minded provisions put forth by the Allied powers, would have lay the foundations and frameworks for a better world and would have avert another world war less than 20 years later. Even Adolf Hitler have long railed against the Treaty of Versailles provisions toward Germany in most of his speeches during his rise to power and leveled harsh criticism against Britain and France for pushing the “sham” treaty to the letter.
Read it all of the interview.
