Why I love Michio Kaku

[freshwest]

Last edited Sat Jan 25, 2014, 01:54 AM - Edit history (2)

Recorded during the Bush reign of terror, but it's not primarily about him. It's about peace, the USA, history, how we got where we are now, and more important, how to change. I agree and was part of those who had converged on D.C. We see how cavalier the attitude on using nuclear weapons was. Kaku mentions Social Security and there is no lack of money. We cannot trust the MIC with our lives; that is not their function, is it?

Wish someone of his wisdom was on the Murray-Ryan committee.

I saw Kaku's solution to Fukushima almost immediately after it happened. He was brought into physics by Edward Teller, and diverged from his path early on. He knows the way these guys think.

The CWC was a step in bringing the major powers back to sanity and away from MAD. We must never forget, as he says, that it is not Peace through Strength but Strength through Peace. PBO's version says the days of Might Makes Right must pass away, and that Right Makes Might is the way we must pursue. His and Kaku's versions mean the same thing.

The society Michio describes here and what Democrats want to return to, is that we had a few decades ago. Instead we are heading to The Demon Haunted World feared by Carl Sagan, who saw what was coming.

The world that Kaku describes and that we work for is the only path worth taking. What has been done in our name is wrong and it is unsustainable. But note that he also knew, it was the reservoir of peace loving Americans who stopped the Vietnam War, not flight from civic responsibility. We have a choice to make as to how we will go forward.

Will we, as Lincoln said, be the agents of our own destruction?

...Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant, to step over the ocean, and crush us at a blow?

Never! All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth (our own excepted) in their military chest; with a Bonaparte for a commander, could not by force, take a drink from the Ohio, or make a track on the Blue Ridge, in a trial of a Thousand years. At what point, then, is the approach of danger to be expected?

I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide...

~Abraham Lincoln

http://www.constitution.org/lincoln/lyceum.htm

Just a few thoughts. I think the words of Michio here are worthy of a deep discussion of how we want to live.

[dougolat]

1. When did war proffiteering become an honorable business? nt

[freshwest]

3. When they stopped calling it that and using euphemisms, of course.

That was what they called MIC contractors when I was a kid. It was a term imbued with evil, a perjorative on the same level as a Nazi, rapist or murderer.

Then the Cold War with its 'better dead than red' propaganda started; and people never restarted thinking straight again. Besides, there was good money to be made by some.

Eisenhower was caught up in the paradigm that many from WW2 were; they were adamant that it would not happen again, just as the Jews said about Germany, 'never again.' Vigilant to the point of vociferous opposition to any other way to do things.

Eisenhower still had some of the older values in him and put a tax on the firms that made a fortune supplying the means to victory over Germany, no gratitude really, he knew what they were.

It was punitive and used to build infrastructure by taking back their profits. Possibly the highest tax rate, IIRC, it was 90%.

The Birchers have been running on preventing the castles of the super rich from being stormed by the tax man ever since that time to take back their booty from a nation in dire straits and in a war against a foe that intended no less than world domination. There is no such nation to carry this out now. Instead, other groups are doing the same thing.

When the words profit, jobs, contracts and the like in terms of national policy and specifically anything militatistic or coercive are eliminated as from public discourse as being a criminal act, we will see the end of this. But we are faced with a media that tells our fellows otherwise.

There are things on this planet that cannot be justly measured by profit or even humans. We have no right to do many of the things we do, we are abusing our privileges and killing that which gives life.

[90-percent]

2. Zappa wrote a song about this

http://www.last.fm/music/Frank+Zappa/_/Star+Wars+Won%27t+Work

Michio is spot on through all of this. Nice to have a scientific mind researching social problems. Lots of USA history I never knew about before!

Michio came out real strong about Fukashima shortly after the disaster. His solution was to gather the best and brightest science and engineering and nuclear minds in the world and give them free use of the resources of the governments of the world. Instead the world is content to let the dithering private company Tepco and the Japanese government continue to dither.

Has he said any more about this recently?

We are therefore currently enjoying a slow motion impending disaster of biblical proportions in the Pacific or at least Japan.

And it clearly illustrates the Institutions of our entire planet are incapable of dealing with big problems. We are on the tipping point of so many environmental, economic, military and social disasters these days. Which will be the next disaster bubble to pop?

-90% Jimmy