I don’t know about you but where I am, the weather is positively balmy. So warm in fact that this year’s crop of McIntosh apples is two weeks ahead of schedule (and growers are worried it may turn to mush if the nights don’t start turning cold soon) and local grape growers (for making wine, an unheard of occupation in these parts, when I was growing up) are reporting a bumper harvest. People bask in the warm sunshine, but you can hear it in conversations: the “new” weather (it’s been trending this way, the last few years) is kind of unsettling, like some strange, still-faint background noise that disturbs at some subliminal level. You step outside your door in the morning and the thought crosses your mind: July in October, what the fuck? Oh the trees are turning, sure (lots of maples around here) but the colours seem… faded. Just like last year. And the year before that. Geez, the last time I really saw the mountains blazing was in the nineties. Early nineties even. Not enough cold nights, they say… Some mornings it’s positively eerie.
But it isn’t happening only here. That’s the really creepy part. And when you bother to look, what’s going on elsewhere is downright hair-raising.
October 2007 archive
Oct 07 2007
“Much of the Amazon basin is burning”
Oct 07 2007
The Big Picture Vol. 2
There has always been a struggle….most likely there always will be.
It is human nature to struggle, in some that is expressed as full out rebellion. In others it is reduced to complaining under their breath. Or worse….being afraid to even do that.
On the other side of the struggle, there is the range of full time crackdown on the rebels….actively supporting supporting the crushing of rebellion by The People, to indifference and willful ignorance. Ignorance has two forms those who cannot get information….and those who ignore inconvenient or uncomfortable information. Cracking down on ‘rebels….even those who merely mutter is a full time struggle for the status qou-sters
The two biggest chunks of information that are being ignored right now, imo, are Climate Crisis which is literally off the charts in its acceleration….and the fact that not just America, but pretty much the entire planet, is now a Corporatocrasy.
Oct 07 2007
French People Are Terrified of Diebold Machines
I was just in Paris and talked to quite a few bartenders and so forth. Suffice to say the American dollar is barely worth the paper it’s printed on, so we may have spent most of our time in the more dodgy areas of town.
That said, I believe we interviewed quite a cross-section, in our pidgeonish Franglais. I was repeatedly told variants of the following:
1. Bush and Sarko (Sarkozy) are the same. (usually followed by an obscene gesture)
2. Sarko won because a weak candidate ran against him. (followed by a warning not to do the same in US)
3. Diebold voting machines are stealthily and gradually being installed in France. (followed usually by the comment, “We don’t want to happen in France what happened in US” = stolen election(s).
4. Unions are getting weaker and demonstrations and strikes are ignored in US and France and anywhere else they’re tried, because of globalization.
There were Chinese products everywhere, and a few suspected sweatshops, lots of immigrants “sans papiers” (& a demonstration planned to try to get preschool services for their children). Alot of things seemed familiar (though we are still having “reverse culture shock” upon returning to America).
We were staying in the area of Paris that was formerly known for incidents such as the “storming of the Bastille,” which was inspiring, but I have no doubt that something of the like needs to be done periodically, whenever the rich get too uppity.
Oct 07 2007
Should Domenici Retire Now?
Senator Pete Domenici was diagnosed with Pick’s Disease, a progressive and aggressive form of dementia. It is unknown when he received the disease, or at what stage the disease is in.
However, it is always fatal, and it always affects insight, judgment and behavior.
Given the known disease progression and prognosis (fatal, usually within five years), should Domenici retire now instead of planning to serve out the remainder of his term until 2009?
Oct 07 2007
Brian Eno’s Soundscape in Shrillville: The Vertical Colors of Shrill!
The British are coming! The British are coming! Wow. I thought artists were supposed to talk about airy nothings, like Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategy, “making a brick, not building a wall,” and the vertical colors of sound, you know, talking about things not related to concrete objects, but expressing something that can only be appreciated intellectually, based on general principles or theories rather than on specific instances, not aiming to depict an object but composed with the focus on internal structure and form, describing music that is intended to have no programmatic content, decorated with irregular areas of color that do not represent anything concrete, emotionally detached or distanced from something. You know, drifting clarifiers floating ideas in the air of abandoned churches, and shit. Boy, was I mistaken. Brain Eno has gone unmistakably thoughtless, vulgar, and insensitive as to lack all refinement or delicacy, extremely so, and flagrantly.
If we have lost Brian Eno to the anti-war movement, then who can we look to salve our flaming souls? Follow below the fold into the absurd reality of an artist banging his head on the political abutment that is Iraq!
Oct 07 2007
Pony Party: Democracy Edition
Democracy can get rather sticky and inconvenient when suddenly the people, the citizens, the great unwashed, want those silly privileges like democracy, freedom of speech, the right to assemble and peacefully state their case. I mean honestly, if “the people” got democracy what would they do with it anyway?
Surely, we don’t want people making decisions for themselves, challenging authority, questioning the ethical/moral/ financial intent of elites…
Oct 06 2007
Four at Four
This is an OPEN THREAD. Here are four stories in the news at 4 o’clock to get you started.
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First, a mix of climate change news from dire to hopeful.
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The Guardian reports Climate change disaster is upon us, warns UN. Sir John Holmes, the United Nation’s emergency relief coordinator, “said dire predictions about the impact of global warming on humanity were already coming true.”
“We are seeing the effects of climate change. Any year can be a freak but the pattern looks pretty clear to be honest. That’s why we’re trying … to say, of course you’ve got to deal with mitigation of emissions, but this is here and now, this is with us already,” he said…
Two years ago only half the international disasters dealt with by [the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs] had anything to do with the climate; this year all but one of the 13 emergency appeals is climate-related. “And 2007 is not finished. We will certainly have more by the end of the year, I fear,” added Sir John, who is in charge of channelling international relief efforts to disaster areas.
More appeals were likely in the coming weeks, as floods hit west Africa. “All these events on their own didn’t have massive death tolls, but if you add all these little disasters together you get a mega disaster,” he said.
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Ariana Eunjung Cha of the Washington Post reports China is having a Green Awakening. For nearly 30 years, Wuxi “had welcomed some of the world’s biggest polluters.” But, after industrial pollution had “poisoned the province’s vast network of lakes, rivers and canals… City officials decided they’d had enough. In a series of radical proclamations that sent shudders though the business community, Wuxi declared itself a newly reformed green city.”
“Last week, China’s State Council approved an environmental plan that includes reducing major pollutant discharges by 10 percent by 2010. Plagued by water shortages, choking on dusty air and alarmed by a sharp increase in pollution-related diseases and deaths, China has been searching for years for a way to fix its environment without hurting its economy.”
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Terry Macalister of The Guardian that World’s largest offshore wind farm is given government approval for Kent, England. “The world’s largest offshore wind farm, which will occupy a site of 90 square miles off the coast of Kent, has been given the go-ahead by the government and should be ready to provide clean power for a quarter of London’s homes by 2010… The consortium developing the wind farm, which is led by Shell and Eon, is reluctant to comment on the ambitious plan for up to 341 turbines until it has tied up a range of commercial contracts and received approval from National Grid to provide new high- powered overhead cables.”
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Kevin Siers / The Charlotte Observer (October 5, 2007)
Siers’ editorial cartoon pretty much sums up the Bush administration this week.
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A profile of a French priest that roams Ukraine’s back roads and forgotten fields to document the Nazis’ murder of 1.5 million Jews.
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Today’s round-up of all things Blackwater in the “Guns of Greed” focusing on the people of Blackwater – guard and guarded.
Four at Four continues below the fold, including stories on:
And a double-shot bonus below the fold: 1) zebra mussel invasion and 2) is this the next bridge in Portland, Oregon? Find out, below the fold…
Oct 06 2007
Troops Actually Mistreated – Silence From the RW
It’s not a bogus, Left Wing-smearing story about a miscommunication at an airport, it’s about 2,600 soldiers getting kicked in the teeth by the Pentagon.
Oct 06 2007
I have not left Docudharma
It seems that there is a post at political flesh feast claiming that I have “left” Docudharma. That is not the case. I don’t know why a person posted that I have. Whoever did so seems to be imitating pinche tejano, who has left DD, but whom I have not spoken with.
Since I been made aware of the existence of this post about me at PFF, I’ll proceed to answer a few things that came up there below the fold.
Oct 06 2007
Hang a noose if you must, but don’t you dare sing!!
John Mellencamp wrote a song about racism, which he titled “Jena”. From the linked website:
“I am not a journalist, I am a songwriter and in the spirit and tradition of the minstrel, I am telling a story in this song. [cut]
The song was not written as an indictment of the people of Jena but, rather, as a condemnation of racism, a problem which I’ve reflected in many songs, a problem that still plagues our country today.