Contributing Writer for Wake Up World
"Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn't mean politics won't take an interest in you." ~ Pericles.
Everything is ultimately political these days, but everything is firstly biological. Yet, ignoring our biology and our humanity, the military-industrial complex, with all its toxic modalities, still claims to operate in our best interests.
The fact is, modern politics has become the imposition of institutional formality where individuals and truth once were. Increasingly favoring institutional privilege over individual rights, politicians on all sides of the game act to reinforce and advance the standing of corporations at the expense of our physical world. They embark on resource wars for profit, destroy our environment for energy, construe zealotry as patriotism, and steer a culture of social competition -- not cooperation -- all the while hiding behind veils of secrecy and meaningless rhetoric.
It does not matter what caste you were born into, whether you are wealthy or poor, victor or victim of the system; as far as the big picture goes, we live in a world where commerce, politics and war are dominant and inseparable forces. The outcome of this dangerous combination affects everyone and everything. So, whether we feel comfortable or constrained within the current paradigm, we are still ultimately at its mercy. And whether you care to stay informed or not, ignorance doesn't alleviate you, or our ailing planet, of its burdens.
The Nuclear Energy and Armament ExperimentsOne of the largest tentacles of the military-industrial complex is the nuclear experimentation facet of their operations. These operations include both energy and armament -- programs which are inextricably linked, as I will demonstrate -- with negative impacts on all life on earth and, and when disaster strikes, capable of negating life altogether.
Maintaining a deafening silence over the ongoing Fukushima disaster, for example, the world's political heads show zero regard for our biological wellbeing (much less our social wellbeing) in both the formulation and the execution of policy. Instead of shutting down the deadly reactors at Fukushima, the world's powers simply shut down any information about the situation.
For example, the Japanese government passed a law through Parliament, called the "States Secret Act" following the 2011 Fukushima meltdown. Under this act, both officials and private citizens who leak "special state secrets" (ie. details of the disaster) face prison terms of up to 10 years, while journalists who publish classified information (ie. all relevant information) face up to five years. [1] Meanwhile, in 2011 the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's response to increases in detected radiation levels within the United States was to reduce the use of radiation monitoring while at the same time, raising the official allowable levels of radiation in food, water and soil. [2] Of course, this was not reported by mainstream media.
Nor was the 2014 partial shutdown of the Florida Power & Light's Turkey Point facility in the Miami area, following a steam leak that resulted from the failure of the archaic facility's cooling system. [3] While mainstream news completely blocked coverage of this potential meltdown situation, the facility remained in operation not because it managed to rectify the cooling problem, but because the corporation lobbied for special permission to violate allowable water temperature safety thresholds from the previous limit of 100'F limit up to 103'F. [4]
The simple reason for the secrecy and suppression of information is that the nuclear experimentation industry is just that -- an experiment. Although it is touted as a 'clean' technology, the nuclear industry has no mechanism for disposing of the radioactive waste it generates, and no viable plan for such a mechanism in the future. All it has is a plan to contain the mounting radioactive waste it generates each day and store it for the million years it takes for radioactive waste to break down naturally.
So, whether nor not we accept or reject the philosophies of government, it is an inarguable fact that our biology, and that of our grandchildren's grandchildren's grandchildren -- is at the complete mercy of those individuals who, hiding behind political formality, have their fingers "on the button". And, for as long as their priorities are clearly shaped by the objectives of the corporate-military-industrial complex, there is very little mercy involved. Instead our collective future and the future of our planet is heavily influenced by corporate profitability and contrived political hemispheres which, with the support of corporate media, teeter between deliberately limited polarities, never really making progress or improvement or exploring possibilities -- such as peaceful solutions, or sustainable energy investment -- beyond those which may profit those already in power.
It was once theorized by power-brokers that nuclear power plants would deter any major revolution from taking place, because it would be too dangerous to jeopardize a nuclear power plants' operations. This idea is similar to the political schematic that the whole world has lived under for decades; that of Mutually Assured Destruction -- or the aptly shortened M.A.D., which assumes the only counter-balance that prevents nuclear war is the threat of nuclear war itself.
However the revolution in the former U.S.S.R. changed the understanding that nuclear experiments would deter revolution -- but was it a real revolution? How much can actually change within a nuclear society still bound by the confines of the military-industrial complex? Dare I say, besides some reshuffling of deck chairs, there really was no significant deviation that occurred. Both outside influences and inside conditions ensured the outcome remained within the confines of the existing complex -- nuclear reactors and all. Revolution cannot occur when nuclear military industrial complex is integrated.
The rise of the military industrial complex changed the whole dynamic of war and peace, and in the process, steered our society from exploring sustainable energy solutions toward the constant danger of nuclear meltdown. Nuclear power generation is inherently risky of itself; both the waste it stores and the pollution it releases pose a largely unseen but no less dangerous threat to our Earth Mother, and to our biology. But it also creates obvious military strike targets for enemy nations which, if detonated, can destroy entire nations in one sweep. Building nuclear power experiments is akin to building a self-destruct button into your nation's infrastructure; one false move, be it intentional (military) or accidental (like Fukushima), and it destroys the landscape and all who dwell on and around it for an eternity, with no known remedy.
And yet, nuclear experimentation will continue to be a threat as long as we allow corporate interests and corrupt governments to violate our human rights and natural laws, taking away individual freedoms in the name of peace, and risking our biology with these dangerous experiments. As long as we live in a war-world, where military and nuclear programs are a major part of our national and global economic and political structures, any revolution other than complete systemic reform -- systemic peace and sustainability -- is no revolution at all. Until war and dirty energy cease to be incentivized and by our political and economic structures, anything else is just the same game with a new name.
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