Blowing stuff up, watching people suffer and die, it's exciting!

Violence, domination, retribution and other attributes of this competitive

warring fascination clearly dominates our media

with films, television and other expressions constantly

glorifying and reinforcing this gesture of conflict.

In fact, it has been found that by the time an average kid

reaches the age of 14 in the West,

he or she has visually witnessed over 8,000 depicted acts of murder.

Given all of this, it might make you wonder:

Does art imitate life, or does life imitate art?

Likewise, isn't it interesting how most of us in America sleep quite well at night

while our military forces routinely invade,

slaughter and steal from other nations at will;

as, of course, all global empires have done historically,

with, this time, a global civilian death toll well over 1 million

in the past decade alone, many of them women and children.

Yet, the same American culture shudders in horror and confusion

when some dude stumbles into an American schoolyard and randomly wipes out

a couple dozen or so kids.

I ask you, by what measure do we differentiate importance

when it comes to the death of different groups of people?

What makes us so special?

While history is certainly full of xenophobic, racist, religious

and nationalist conceits which have served as convenient justifications for

external dehumanization, subjugation and imperial power abuse,

a rather unnoticed yet profound scientific truth has also emerged:

Today, every person on Earth can trace his or her lineage

back to a single common female ancestor who lived about 200,000 years ago.

'Mitochondrial Eve', she is now called,

proving indeed that we are truly one family.

Likewise, the planet Earth, the habitat this family shares, it knows no division.

It is a unified, synergistic system at every turn, fully connected.

It has no idea what a nation, a politician or a racist is.

It has no notion of any such human conceit, for that matter;

for division simply doesn't exist

in the order of nature by which we're all invariably subject.

Mark Twain once wrote

"Man is the only Patriot. He sets himself apart in his country,

under his own flag, and sneers at the other nations,

and keeps multitudinous uniformed assassins on hand at heavy expense

to grab slices of other people's countries,

and keep them from grabbing slices of his.

And in the intervals between campaigns he washes the blood off his hands

and works for 'the universal brotherhood of man'- with his mouth."

While we all love to give lip service to the idea of peace and collaboration,

holding up icons such as Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr.

something underneath the surface is clearly holding us back.

Yes, we know for a fact

that if we took the total war budgets of all the nations on Earth

(tens of trillions of dollars over the past quarter century alone)

and applied that energy-producing capital towards creating

an advanced, intelligent, efficient system of Earth/Human management,

not only would poverty and most deprivation be removed from our lives on the global scale

our progressive capacity to create, build and improve

rather than pillage, seek and destroy

could catapult the human family into an age of prosperity

never before seen.

Just imagine. If we took America's Pentagon or Britain's Northwood

along with all the world's advanced military centers,

kicked all the army freaks out...

OK, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to be harsh.

I guess we have to do something with them.

Maybe we can just take them all and place them in the Grand Canyon

and just let them beat the piss out of each other,

and hopefully they'll get it out of their systems and move on.

I don't know, we'll figure that out later.

But we, as the intelligent, mature human family

now interested in improving the lives of all,

we use that incredible technology to help assist true developmental progress.

Imagine if the Manhattan Project, which harnessed about 130,000 people,

mostly scientists and technicians, was dedicated not

to building a bomb that could destroy on a scale never before seen;

but rather, utilizing that collaborative drive to solve true global problems,

perhaps those very problems

which are causing the interest in war to begin with.

Today, the hyper-glorified, romanticized obsession with competition,

advantage and conflict has made it into almost every facet of our lives.

Not only do we declare war against virtually everything that annoys us:

'the war on drugs', 'the war on poverty', 'the war on crime',

'the war on terrorism', 'the war on cancer', you name it;

we also, apart from the near constant nationalist wars,

live in a perpetual state of common war or 'class war'

where we battle each other on a daily basis

for unnecessary economic survival and delusions of status.

The fact is, something has been set in motion

that keeps us all on a multilevel war path.

Something in our psychology and, hence, sociology is constantly pushing us

into justifications of these patterns, and as this episode will argue

that something appears to reside at the very foundation

of the socioeconomic condition itself:

a foundation which has given rise to an ever-expanding destructive neurosis

a neurosis clearly characteristic of a culture in decline.

This just in: The President has finished an emergency session at the White House

where he announced that the security focus of his administration

will be moving away from the global war on terror,

instead, focusing all available resources against something the administration

has deemed a larger threat to US and international security

than anything recognized before: Nature itself.

That's right, Dodge, the newly declared war against Nature

will be usurping funds from the Department of Homeland Security

effectively replacing it with a new department, the Department of...

I think I'm reading this right:

"Fuck The Earth And The Science It Rode In On."

That's correct, Summer, the administration has already appointed a head

to this new department, the CEO of Monsanto Corporation, Satan himself.

When questioned regarding concerns about a possible conflict of interest

of the new appointee, the Obama administration responded:

"Monsanto's reputation of challenging the vast power of this intolerant,

bullying force that goes by the terrorist name 'Natural Science'

holds great potential for our victory.

We feel if anyone can take down these insurgent laws

which restrict our God-given freedom, it is the professional experience

of our true lord and master: the Prince of Darkness.

We've just been informed that a press conference is now underway

with the Pentagon's spokesperson answering questions.

We now go live to the White House.

As the President said earlier, the greatest barrier to US interests

has been a constant state of offensive interference by this rogue network.

Nature has been forcing its will against our freedom for long enough.

Our economy, our values, the American way of life, it's not negotiable.

Either Nature concedes to our interests and stops terrorizing us

with its hatred of our liberty,

or we will be forced to destroy it.

Next question.

Hi. Joe, from L.A. Times:

Don't you feel it could be a bad idea to move against

a force which has historically never been overcome

or even phased by human action?

Also, I understand Nature has given a set of demands which, if met,

would cease many of its counterattacks.

Has the administration considered just meeting these demands?

Listen Joe, we don't negotiate with terrorists, and I've seen Nature's demands,

full of queer Communist propaganda such a balance and sustainability.

It even demands that we shut down our infinite growth consumption economy

to make way for something where we are to be slaves to some oppressive

natural regeneration respect.

Listen, I didn't spend 35 years defending this country

to have some metaphysical terrorist group with science on its side

ruin what has made this nation great.

No further questions.

(P. Joseph) When we think of war, we usually think about gun-wielding soldiers,

tanks, flame throwers, fancy metal honors and other theatrics.

Yet, when we step outside the theater,

digging deeper in our examination of the world around us

we find that war is actually a state of mind,

a reaction, driven by some type of competitive condition.

If we had to classify the different levels of large scale competition,

we might end up with two broad categories:

imperial war and class war.

Imperial war, otherwise known as national war,

is when an aggressor nation decides to invade some other nation,

justified by some form of perceived threat.

Back in the day, this threat often appeared as purely ideological with

religious groups battling it out to make sure they were in good with God,

while in a mildly more literate scientific world today,

the threat is, more often than not, pitched as direct to each of us.

Such as, a rogue nation getting a nuclear weapon

to blow up your grandmother's bingo tournament

or perhaps a crazed state-funded hijacker crashing a plane

into your favorite taco stand (bastards!).

Regardless, in virtually every historical case, the justification for war

put forward for public digestion has always been far from the truth.

You see, there is indeed always a true threat,

but that threat has little to do with the vast majority of the population.

Instead, it is a threat that bothers only the highest echelons

of social hierarchy, an elitist upper class self-preservation

based around a loss of broad power and control.

When was the last time the citizenry actually cried out for war?

It doesn't happen, only the politicians go for it.

Since the establishment would be hard-pressed to explain to their citizens

that they are going to invade some nation for its natural resources,

maintain currency domination, enable freedom for transnational corporations,

along with other generally economic concerns

to secure the interests of the upper 1%,

various superficial, psychological ploys are used instead.

The most common today is the moral crusade:

We must not tolerate this regime using military force against its own people.

(P. Joseph) coupled with some basic yet irrational threat of attack.

Iran's nuclear and ballistic missile activity poses a real threat,

not just to the US, but to Iran's neighbors and our allies.

(P. Joseph) In the words of famed sociologist Thorstein Veblen, writing from 1917:

You see, a large part of the imperial war is the psychological war

against the domestic citizenry itself.

The US government spends billions of dollars every year

on public relations and recruitment alone,

producing signs like this one:

"For our nation, for us all."

Is it me, or does that sound like Orwellian doublespeak?

If it's 'for our nation', then it clearly isn't 'for us all', as the human species

is the closest thing we have to 'all'. If it's referring to all of us in the nation

that would be hideously redundant, right? I think what they mean to say

in this warm, loving community slogan is:

"For our nation, screw the rest."

Hello! Welcome to the show! My name is Pepé.

Today, I've got something very special for you,

a true international delicacy:

War!

To prepare for war is a very delicate matter.

The first thing we need to do is create some spicy tension

to put fire in your belly.

The first ingredient we need is a well-tempered provocation.

Provocations are, of course, seasonal and subject to personal taste.

So may I suggest something along the lines [of]

a marinated Gulf of Tonkin,

a robust Pearl Harbor,

and if you're feeling bored, a bustling 9/11.

Then, we let that cook for a bit and prepare our second ingredient,

a special sauté to give life to our fiery dish:

the mainstream media.

Can you just smell the propaganda and delectable ignorance?

After we get a nice sizzle going,

we now add our final, most important ingredient:

the delicious soldiers.

The most ripe soldiers tend to grow in the more poor,

rural areas of the world, often with limited literacy.

You want to pick them around

18, 19, because their brains are very immature and quite yummy,

perfect for participation in our war meal.

We mix it all together.

Perhaps add a few, some preservatives like patriotism

(not too much)

jingoism,

and, of course, our very special secret sauce.