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Solar, Wind, & Subterfuge
Solar, Wind, & Subterfuge
Raw Realities of Renewable Energy
Something that long hasn’t set well with me in the green movement is that so much of it is based on marketable products. For example, not long ago, the world was set alight by the idea of plant-based soda bottles. It was as if making plastic from plants had solved all our issues, and suddenly, using these innovative new bottles made the plastic-bottle experience guilt-free. Of course, that wasn’t the case.
Bioplastics, in many ways, are likely more problematic than petroleum-based plastic. In the case of Coca-Cola’s “PlantBottle”, the end result was the same non-biodegradable chemistry. It just had to be derived from plant-based ethanol instead of fossil fuels. With that in mind, it’s probably worth pointing out just how much fossil fuel was required to grow, harvest, transport, and process the plants to make that plastic. In reality, we’d only found a new way to make the same old problem, which really boils down to the fact that disposable plastic bottles are detrimental to the environment.
In other words, the packaging both literally and figuratively changed, but the end product wasn’t green at all. That didn’t stop the marketing bonanza. Soon, “plant-based”, “biobased” and “biodegradable” plastics were everywhere, and the prefixes “bio” and “plant” persuaded consumers that now an end to the issue of plastics was in-hand. We were on route to a viable solution, and buying our water in biobased plastic bottles was aiding in this answer. What a sham!
The truth is that we needed to (and still need to) drastically reduce our use of plastics and eliminate disposable plastics, but this would be detrimental to a convenience-based economy that hugely relies on fossil fuels, plastic packaging, and nonessential “necessities” to survive. The answer isn’t a new type of plastic, i.e. a new way to continue along the wrong route. Rather, it is a re-imagining of how we are living, a version of vitality not reliant of caffeinated cola products distributed in plastic bottles.
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British Propaganda and Disinformation: An Imperial and Colonial Tradition
British Propaganda and Disinformation: An Imperial and Colonial Tradition
When it comes to creating bogus news stories and advancing false narratives, the British intelligence services have few peers. In fact, the Secret Intelligence Service (MI-6) has led the way for its American “cousins” and Britain’s Commonwealth partners – from Canada and Australia to India and Malaysia – in the dark art of spreading falsehoods as truths. Recently, the world has witnessed such MI-6 subterfuge in news stories alleging that Russia carried out a novichok nerve agent attack against a Russian émigré and his daughter in Salisbury, England. This propaganda barrage was quickly followed by yet another – the latest in a series of similar fabrications – alleging the Syrian government attacked civilians in Douma, outside of Damascus, with chemical weapons.
It should come as no surprise that American news networks rely on British correspondents stationed in northern Syria and Beirut as their primary sources. MI-6 has historically relied on non-official cover (NOC) agents masquerading primarily as journalists, but also humanitarian aid workers, Church of England clerics, international bankers, and hotel managers, to carry out propaganda tasks. These NOCs are situated in positions where they can promulgate British government disinformation to unsuspecting actual journalists and diplomats.
For decades, a little-known section of the British Foreign Office – the Information Research Department (IRD) – carried out propaganda campaigns using the international media as its platform on behalf of MI-6. Years before Syria’s Bashar al-Assad, Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, Libya’s Muammar Qaddafi, and Sudan’s Omar al-Bashir became targets for Western destabilization and “regime change.” IRD and its associates at the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) and in the newsrooms and editorial offices of Fleet Street broadsheets, tabloids, wire services, and magazines, particularly “The Daily Telegraph,” “The Times,” “Financial Times,” Reuters, “The Guardian,” and “The Economist,” ran media smear campaigns against a number of leaders considered to be leftists, communists, or FTs (fellow travelers).
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