The climate conference cited as the most important, in Paris, COP21, is entering its dire 2nd - & final - week, in which, if you believe the pundits, the fate of the world is decided. At the same time as the conference two ads now openly threatening the German audience with destruction if they don't come 'round have appeared in German cinemas. (And many ads all over the Western world in different languages, voiced by well-known folk.)

The first one, voiced by a German actor known for his strong activism, is the more threatening of the two. At the end, the Ocean says to us, the viewers: "I once covered the whole of the earth's surface. I CAN DO IT AGAIN!" And then the mission statement of ad owners, Conservation International, appears in big letters, beginning with: Nature doesn't need us...

A fascist argumentative structure always puts a section of human beings down as not having earned the right to life. In this case it's i.a. all of us "climate change deniers"^. The ad is implying that it's our final chance to come over to the winning side. Otherwise Nature will just shrug us off and let us die.

The structure mentioned also always has a fake argument at its base to justify the extreme-exclusion measures. Is the "climate change"** argument fake?

It's hard to say, because the science is so wishy-washy in public debate. Most "fact" sheets end up referring to complex statistical approximations (for the past) and complex computer models (for the future), that laymen have more than a hard time to fathom. The word "complex" nowadays implies exactly this obscurity. Which is why the side argument is always brought by the pro camp, that the vast majority of climate scientists (~98%) agree with the predictive findings. But a majority of scientists have been wrong before (e.g. when initially stamping General Relativity as bogus after Einstein first published it, almost exactly a century ago).

As sceptical laymen, we can only hold on to phenomenological criticism: The theory is mostly a prediction, that will only be proved in decades to come; such predictions have a very bad track record, especially ones pertaining to climate. Also, the initial models predicted a world temperature trend that has been way off compared to measurements in the last decade or so; those models have probably been adjusted now. And: One fearsome detail in the apocalyptic prediction was quietly dropped years ago because it turned out to be an exaggeration of too little data - the freezing over of the Northern hemisphere due to the stoppage of the North Atlantic Current (recall that Emmerich movie based on this?). "Too little data" may be the general problem of the theory if you look at the object subject to experiment here - the entire surface and aquasphere of the planet.

As unsure as I am about this fearsome theory - and its partly fear-mongering proponents - I have the feeling the whole theory may be equally uncertain. And that what we're seeing - i.a. in cinemas - is a now-grown-large hype snowball that has been gathering momentum for more than 10 years.

Beware an argument "too big to fail"! It always seems very hip and important, but it tends to divide humans into those who get it, and those who don't - who thus threaten the lives of the assumed majority by their "denial".

Somewhere else in the Web I'm "launching" a new list-keeping log of 10 little "life motivators" of what happened in the preceding 4-5 weeks; i.e. stuff that went well or was well-received. On a monthly basis.

Just to remind my black-heartedly pessimistic brain...

Here - once-off - is the initial offering:

1. having begun reading Hesse's best advice for quinquagenarians in novel form again
2. the best little video shop in Berlin now stocking THE GOOD WIFE, sn. 6
3. more frequent contact with a pleasant Canadian native who turns out to be a bookworm like me
4. discovery of DeConnick's run at "Marvel Now" detailing the new & crazy funny exploits of CAPT. MARVEL, now mantled by potent blonde Carol Danvers!
5. rediscovery of the Thunderous countdown restarting again, at last!
6. getting my step counter to run again (somewhat) even if I do still keep walking - now to get back to 8000 on average
7. continuing with MARCO POLO - both the Netflix series and the Bergreen travel journal paperback
8. finding a few last chestnuts underfoot, to keep on various desks
9. wonderfully warm start of autumn in Berlin
10. Merkel sticking to her refugee civility guns for now

That wasn't as hard as I thought. Flow, my ups, the policeman said.

The current edition of NPR's On The Media i.a. focuses on how the Pentagon does whatever it feels like doing, and then dresses it up textually to sort of agree with where US politicians say their military branches are blowing their bomb leaves.

Almost four years after Obama prematurely received the Nobel Peace Prize, he actually said drone strikes weren't the "cureall" for terrorism problems, and would only be used where "near certainty" had been determined, that no civilian casualties would occur. But on average 6 (in words: SIX) civilians die in every strike!

In fact the Pentagon nowadays, OTM reports, doesn't care much about ascertaining certainty - it just uses a "low Collateral Damage Estimate". And then a lot of civilians - non-US citizens, who legally apparently don't matter - just perish through these strikes. A good deal more than the no. of - assumed! - terrorists killed.

The latter are even targeted when "signature" behaviour identifies them as possible terrorists. What a thoroughly uncivilised, un-Christian thing for the Pentagon to decide to do; sanctity of human life be damned.

I felt bile rising when listening to this. So tired of this kind of aggressive crap being perpetrated on an already ravening world by the "leader of the free world". More like "ethics-free". No wonder there's ever-increasing global blow-back.

And we're hearing basically all presidential candidates of some likelihood of getting elected saying they will act even tougher than good old turncoat Obama.

When will anyone get up to lean on the brake of this run-away train of US military might? That probably forces its presidents to choose the red pill of conventional warfare vs. the blue pill of apparently riskless drone death-dealing near the beginning of their careers. Which they then have to try and talk their ways out of. Or not, always depending on the mood of the US electorate at the time.

And damn the - hey, short-term! - opinions of the rest of the trembling world. There is no free world any more. Just a sad & deadly hegemony in the shape of a five-sided line of fire.

Let's see how the modern-day lords of Zardoz explain the MSF hospital bombing, which will now apparently be "investigated" by the US military. The most recent above-average civilian overkill action to disgrace our news feeds.