A children's ‘comic book’ from 1904, against vaccination for smallpox
You might have thought the anti-vaxxers were a recent phenomenon, but no, these clips are from the ‘Buster Brown’ comic strip, published in the New York Herald in 1904, when smallpox was endemic throughout the world
I am the ruling virus
That now strikes fear in you
My armies come in numbers
beyond your means to know
I’ve allowed you all to live here
for a million years or more
you’ve abused my hospitality
and all others in my care
You are now a problem
To others you oppress
But I have come as guardian
Of those you dispossess
Creatures that you try to own
need their freedom too
I won’t allow your avarice
to renounce perfection’s due
The smallest critters here with me
have rights that you deny
not for you to use as food
And on your plate to…
floods, hurricanes, plagues.
these are all narure’s incursions that disturb our status quo
what we have difficulty understanding and accepting, is that these have a single factor in common: they are manifestations of the unlimited power that nature possesses.
But it is we who have brought these disasters on ourselves, by breeding too many of us
Our reaction to them all is to spend money. (not that we have any choice in the matter). But money represents tokens of our available energy supply. Which is miniscule compared to what nature has available.
Doesn’t matter if we use money to build flood defences, or pay airline pilots to stay at home, or make 000s of respirators to keep sick people alive. The end result is the same: We have to spend money/energy to hold back the forces of nature. …
The sideswipe of disaster
Was bound to come one day
We thought it would be warfare
Or a strike from outer space
Instead the smallest of us
Those we cannot see
Know that we have done enough
To bring Earth to her knees
So they’re rising up to save her
(it’s their home too you see)
To reassert their power
And cull us with disease
They’ve been around since life began
While we but late arrived
They know the way survival works
As we still stumble blind
They’ve decided we’re too many
And numbers must reduce
Our skill at procreation
Must now end our…
The Jesusfreaks want to rule your world in the name of their god
If in the name of tolerance we accept these theofascists, they will eventually take control. When they have control, our tolerance will not be reciprocated. If we let it happen, there will be no turning back. Their god will never give up power once we have allowed them to take it.
Timeline 2020:
Trump is impeached.
Impeachment fails in the senate
Trump walks away convinced that the law does not apply to him.
Sees himself as above the law even more than he does now. He is untouchable.
He gets re elected.
Climate change officially seen as a hoax. …
Just as Adolf Hitler was there because the German people wanted him there.
In both situations, each was seen as a harmless buffoon who would be controlled by the establishment when he got into office.
There was even a Nazi movement to replace FDR. Had the Japanese not attacked in 1941, who knows where that might have led? Certainly the ‘new deal’ was faltering, and people were becoming dissatisfied. It was WW2 that kicked off our current version of the consumerist society.
Disgruntled people heed the words of the extremist because they have nothing else to cling on to. …
When I crossed the Canada-US border last week — -it took 85 minutes to process me — -with paperwork, passport etc in perfect and unquestionable order, all registered electronically. I’m white and English. I do not pay homage to any god of the infidels. There were no crowds of would be immigrants. It was nearly midnight.
The same crossing in 2006 took just 5 minutes (and we thought that was long time), so the bureaucracy now is not a remnant of 9/11. Each crossing since 2006 has got longer and more obstructionist, the questions more surreal: Was I or had I ever been a member of the Nazi party? Did I intend to commit any sexual misdemeanours while in the USA? Was I entering the USA to abduct a minor?
Who writes this stuff? Chance would be a fine thing. I wasn’t allowed to say that. At least those questions seem to have disappeared from the agenda lately. …
January 10th, 1709 might seem an insignificant date in history. You would be forgiven for dismissing it as a day when nothing much happened of any critical importance in the grand scheme of things.
But on that day the course of humankind shifted towards modernity and away from agrarian feudalism and totalitarian rule. It was the day that Abraham Darby smelted iron on an industrial scale using coke as a heat source, and in so doing disconnected the production of iron from the speed at which trees grew.
Without the need for charcoal, iron could be made cheaply in vast quantities. Cheap iron gave us all that makes modern society work. When thinking of a different form of future society it is important to bear in mind that we need hard defined edge. From a surgeon’s scalpel to a ploughshare, the sharp edge is a critical part of our existence. …
My child of coming future
My seed of self unsown,
Unknown as you are to me
I think of you forlorn.
Now the future die is cast
And as I see what is to be,
As despoiler of your planet
My conscience troubles me.
guilt has forced confession of my
culpability
I broke into your future house
Where you unknown still slept,
You could not guard against me
With your policing so inept.
The treasure of your posterity
Was there for me to take,
No one tried to stop me
All were on the make.
I spread the news about my crime
that said it was all…
Articles about doing without oil now punctuate every form of media, to the point of repetition.
The same can be said of heaping blame on the oil companies for the mess we find ourselves in — -as if, suddenly at some point during the last decade (or maybe less) we’ve woken up to the fact that fossil fuels are killing us. Shell and Exxon are the culprits, so they must be responsible for our imminent demise.
I recall we all had the same revelation/denial about tobacco. The tobacco barons collectively denied that their product was death on a stick. …
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