Rising Cost of Living is Not Due to War – Kiss my Tail Feather

Was reading the Daily Mirror today when I came across this -

JVP General Secretary Tilvin Silva says the government cannot blame the rising cost of living on the war. Speaking to the media today the JVP MP said by blaming the cost of living on the war there could be serious repercussions on the military operations.

Now that is a statement that would draw an exclamation from any body, and certainly made me incredulous.

As of 2004, Sri Lanka had 8000 military personnel per million population, which was the highest in South Asia, as well as spending about 4.1% of the GDP on military expenditure. (According to the Strategic Foresight Group)

According to Global Security (2003) figures 606 million dollars were spent on Military Expenditure.

Now of course one shouldn’t highlight this sort of expenditure because otherwise people might actually realize that this war costs more than we could afford. Even these rough figures can show you that. Flattening the economy to win a war does not seem a fair trade to me.  But try telling that to machismo oozing war mongers..

Gorey Prize

It has been a few weeks now, but I still can’t get over the fact that Al Gore is sharing a Nobel Peace Prize. When I learned that the Grameen bank had been awarded the prize previously I was quite thrilled, but Gore?! The man quite obviously has a political agenda and is marketing himself brilliantly. There are so many more people who put far more on the line for the cause of global warming, but Gore just has a bigger profile. I am not in agreement with the award this time, and there are several others I found that feel the same.

His 1992 book “Earth in the Balance” was more theater than advocacy. In it, he assessed the forces of planetary destruction that included air and water pollution, soil erosion, deforestation, overpopulation, ozone depletion and global warming. He highlighted the impact of auto emissions and need to phase out the internal combustion engine but made no effort in office to do it.

says Stephen Lendman in his article, and I happen to agree.

It reckoned that his 20-room, eight-bathroom mansion in Nashville sometimes uses twice the energy in one month that the average American household gets through in a year. The combined energy and gas bills for his estate came to nearly $30,000 in 2006. Ah, say his defenders, but he uses rainwater to flush his lavatories. Is there enough rainwater in the world, I wonder?

Damien Thomson

His documentary was not completely factually correct either, according to Justice Burton, a High Court Judge. The Nobel Prize seems to be a political tool now, as is most other things. A scientist believes that all this brouhaha is unnecessary as well.

Global warming doesn’t matter except to the extent that it will affect life–ours and that of all living things on Earth. And contrary to the latest news, the evidence that global warming will have serious effects on life is thin. Most evidence suggests the contrary.

According to Daniel Botkin, things are not as serious as Gore makes it out to be. (See his article here)

I wonder who will be awarded the next prize, maybe Rudy Giuliani for his efforts in licking porn?