Monthly Archive for April, 2007

Another Great Day For The 2nd Amendment.

Published on April 17, 2007 in ..The Dude, Life and Politics. 4 Comments

33 dead in Virginia. Once again the cowards best friend, otherwise known as guns, enable some fucked up loser to destroy numerous lives. Guns: Artificially giving power to the weak, courage to cowards, authority to nobodies, and command to the pathetic for hundreds of years. God bless America!

Unlike some right-wingers I don’t want to selectively decide which parts of our constitution to keep and which to expunge or alter. Keep the damn bloody 2nd Amendment. But as far as I’m concerned the NRA and the God, guns, gays crowd who make it harder to make and enforce laws to at least make it harder to get a gun than a pack of cigarettes or limit the kind of guns available to ones that can’t take out entire crowds of people, are culpable parties to massacres like todays at Virginia Tech.

Now apparently this idiot today, and I do have sympathy for whatever about his life and our culture made him an idiot, but he is nevertheless an idiot and piece of garbage; this idiot today didn’t use an AK-47 but he did have a semi-automatic whose remarkable flexibility and talents make for some sweet, easy, and numerous killings. Plenty of mass shootings in this country have used guns that no human being without horrid intent and a bloodlust without bounds should ever need to use. And it’s a safe bet this murderer today got whatever gun he used without much effort or vetting.

These people aren’t even half a day dead yet and you have Republicans like John McCain making statements in support of the 2nd Amendment. Even Bush said through a spokesman “There is a right for people to bear arms,” hours after the massacre. It’s like a defense mechanism stemming from their guilt automatically popping up before anyone even gets a chance to bring the issue up. And make no mistake about it the easy availability of guns in this country is a byproduct of the political right and the sources of financial and voting supports they’ve aligned themselves with. And yes, the religious are part of that voting and ideological block. Just one of their many contradictions.

But you hear the stories about the individuals killed, guys like Ryan Clark who, all reports from classmates say, was an upstanding, kind, talented guy with a very bright future, and you have to wonder if any of their wonderful traits mean as much to some people as their right to carry a gun. Or whatever sick rush or twisted thrill they get out of it. It’s just sad how all those wonderful character traits that Clark possessed are nothing besides a weak minded piss-ant with a gun. In the end that gun has more power to alter the world than all the best traits or intentions. I find this tragically sad and morbidly telling.

And as far as I’m concerned all the gun manufacturers who have engaged in disreputable activities for years to assure their products reach the streets no matter what and who or for what purpose, every politician who has let themselves be used by these manufacturers and their political brothers in intent, even movies that glamorize endlessly the easy and cool use of semi-automatics, and yes the Bush administration that has supported legislation along with Congress to grant manufacturers immunity when the guns they make and get to disreputable dealers they could stop are used on days like such as this, all of them have some blood on their hands. We have to wake up and realize everything we do, say, and think effects us all. Self-interest drives our economy and of course to some extent our evolution as a species. But we’re not so close to chimps anymore. We know better. As trite and banal as movies like Babel and Crash may be, their points are trite in part because they are by now truths that are pretty well established.

We don’t live in a vacuum and nothing we do, say, think, or believe is without effects beyond ourselves. I think allot of these people choose their allegiances for very pragmatic reasons and then shut their minds off from the degrees of separation between themselves and these decisions often tragic consequences.

I don’t want to go off on a religious rant here but yeah my old favorite hobbyhorse does apply at least a little as well. They did put Bush in office and at least indirectly support allot of malicious interests such as gun manufacturers. All while offering up their many contradictory prayers in the aftermath of this event and events much like it. I can’t help but see these connections and contradictions on days like these. Much more practical solutions could have prevented this and made those prayers needless. But once again we have that reminder of just how powerful a gun is and how weak the best of people may be in its cross-hairs.

And it happened in Pennsylvania today too. A man shot 10 girls in an Amish schoolhouse. And then like the guy at Virginia Tech, he shot himself.

Seems like these guys are getting the order of their shootings wrong.

And none of it would have happened if guns were as hard to get and as specialized as they should be. We can blame the shooter and not the gun just as we can blame the driver not the alcohol, the institution and not the religion, or the abuser and not the abuse. But every coward needs his enabler, every weakling needs his implement, and every animal adapts to their environment. The objects that make up the landscape are benign in themselves. But the ideas and intents of those that make them, market them, and promulgate them are much more malignant when they are not thought through or are products of greed and other less preferable human traits.

And in the end once again today I see a cruel reminder of just how much those bad intentions can so easily destroy and obliterate the good ones from people like Ryan Clark. All in the blink of an eye and without much effort. A lifetime is ended. A rest of a life erased like some kind of malignant time machine. What once was is no more and what would have been will never be. Strength of character wiped easily off the stage by a god damned prop.

Life in the cross-hairs.

Let us pray.

Who Killed The Electric Car?

Published on April 9, 2007 in ..The Dude, Films and Reviews. 0 Comments

Just when I was beginning to think Al Gore also invented the documentary I was reminded that there are other great ones out there using the theatrical format to focus scrutiny and attention on under covered topics. And doing it in an entertaining way as well. I finally got around to seeing Who Killed The Electric Car and it made me wonder how An Inconvenient Truth won the best documentary Oscar. I liked the latter but WKTEC was an even more impressive movie and better ride (pun intended).

Part of it is that most of the stuff covered by Gore’s doc was pretty well known information to me and alot of other people. Gore somehow managed to make it simpler, more lucid and understandable. But there’s stuff in WKTEC I was surprised by. And as I was being surprised I was entertained more than AIT because I was out of the realm of power point presentations and into what felt like a real murder mystery procedural with characters I cared about even though some of them were cars.

I knew there were electric vehicles out there a few years back and like most people I fell prey to what this movie proves to me was a concerted effort by GM and others to deligitimize and undermine not only the technology but their own product. I thought of these cars as slow moving, ponderously up-kept and charged-up, boxy vestibules catering to wealthy liberal movie stars.

But Toyota, Ford and particularly GM engineered and produced a pretty effective car. GM’s was pretty cool looking and sleek as well. These cars were loved, and I mean loved, by their owners. They had 0 emissions, cool interiors, a near silent running, and they were pretty fast to boot. Yeah they had to be charged every 70-100 miles but the beginning of an infrastructure of electric filling stations was coming along and there were burgeoning advances in battery power going on. Things looked so good the California Air Resources Board pushed their 0 emissions requirement on car makers as CARB saw the practicality and technology there to back it up.

Further investigation that sometimes literally follows the trail of transport trucks trying to take electric vehicles to demolish, indicate that the oil industry and car manufacturers then started pushing an anti EV campaign. A few years ago you may remember that the present Bush administration even got involved in backing a lawsuit against California for enforcing those emission standards. The federal government getting involved in a lawsuit, much less one pushed by oil and car companies is not a very common occurrence. It actually seems quite scandalous to me though of course not to the mainstream media who underreported it at the time.

All this led CARB to negotiating a compromise that asked the car companies to at least continue manufacturing the cars to meet consumer demand. This apparently only exacerbated the negative p.r. that flowed from everywhere regarding electric vehicles. You have to see the EV commercials GM ran to believe it. Gas powered cars get shiny vistas, climbing mountain sides, pretty models etc in their adds. These EV spots were dark and ominous. They were full of the shadows of families strewn across the pavement in what seemed a post apocalyptic landscape voiced over by a narrator that sounded creepy and neither quite male or female. There were posters of bleak landscapes with the car in the background and stuff like a scarecrow-ish humanoid figure lurching towards it like some nightmarish avatar.

I mean it’s real clear watching these that the car companies used all the focusing groups and sociological and psychological experts we know they use in advertising, to come up with something that would turn people off and leave them feeling uneasy. Not the usual approach to selling product.

And we even get what i considered the smoking gun in the form of an internal memo calling for ways to alleviate positive press for EV’s and decrease demand.

Two issues I had was the movies lack of information or speculation about two things. One was why automakers started manufacturing the cars to begin with. The other is some scientific testimony regarding the cars companies assertions that the production of electricity for these cars burns just as much fossil fuel. These two questions don’t diminish the evidence and even pathos created in the films examination of the killing of the EV though. And on the extras section of the DVD we do get stats based on recent studies to do give an indication that the coal burned for electricity to power these vehicles is far less damaging than what fossil fuels powering standard internal combustion engines do. I mean it doesn’t take too much mental effort or scientific background to to grasp that cars with 0 emissions coming from their tailpipes that keep the source of their power limited to factories with capturing facilities is a better alternative than factories combined with out of control ubiquitous tailpipes all over the country.

And as for the original motive to produce I can only guess that in the early stages of environmental pressures and technological advancement companies like GM can’t ignore a new technology. They have to have every corner covered in case it takes off. But given the chance to stay with the tried and true they will do that. We didn’t get seat belts or air bags out of the goodness of manufacturers hearts. We got them due to tireless activism by Ralph Nader.

I highly recommend this movie even if some of the funeral procession stuff in California is a bit flaky. There is still a genuine feeling of loss over the main character of this movie who is snuffed out before its prime. Maybe it’s because of its symbol of better things squashed by sinister and greedy forces or innocence lost to harsh realities. But when I saw those demolished cars lined up and piled on each other, taken off the roads forcibly by manufacturers apparently to remove their memories and influence, I couldn’t help but think of mass graves. The whole thing really did play out like a oil industry backed vehicular genocide or an environmental ethnic cleansing. It’s not like real human lives haven’t and won’t be lost due to the events coordinated by the Bush administration, auto manufacturers, big oil, and CARB. The number of kids with asthma and other serious lung and breathing issues will continue to grow. The climate will continue to be altered and countless lives lost. And as sure as Bush, a CEO at Exxon-Mobil or GM ripped thier necks open with a dagger the blood is on their hands.