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Monthly Archives: March 2008
My Earth Minute of Reflection
I’m typing this on the Earth Hour. Immediately after, actually. By the time we’d thought to look at the time, we’d missed the whole thing. Our usually regressive city council had registered Colorado Springs as an official participant, and we wondered if we’d watch the city lights go dark, on a Saturday night, when offices and stores are vacant anyway. Except for the clubs, which would surprise me if they even dimmed the music to mark the event.
Earth Day became Earth Hour became an Earth Minute of Reflection.
Had we observed Earth Hour, extrapolating that by advocating turning off the lights, the organizers had meant all power, I would have unplugged by laptop, to rely on my battery until such a time, the hour later, when I could plug back in to recharge and resume my online connection.
I’m playing right into the comparison described by a friend. He said the Earth Hour effort reminded him of the calls to boycott gas stations on a collectively agreed date, which keep circulating via email. Even if everyone is able to conspire to stop buying gas for one day, the gas companies can count on twice as many customers the next day. Nothing changes unless we curb our consumption of energy.
Earth Hour is wonderfully pragmatic by offering a palatable measure of ECO effort for attention spans which could no longer apply themselves to a whole day of green etiquette required by Earth Day. Perhaps this hoopla garnered more adherents. I missed it. The thought I gave to the environment and Global Warming was my Earth Minute or two. Talking about it. Probably next year I can shorten that.
What does it accomplish when we lower the bar to accommodate the slower adapters? Earth Hour seems all the more a tragic opposite of another progressive concept, the Long Now. Thinking in terms of expanding our sense of responsibility to the future, by tying it to our present, seems a more promising revelation. Earth Minute seems to me like Pennies For Peace, it suggest we can get away with paying the fiddler from just the change in our pocket.
Poverty beyond our comprehension
Can u say Ushuaia?
USHUAIA, ARGENTINA- Today I am in Ushuaia, on the island of Tierra del Fuego, the southernmost city in the world. Woot, woot! I took a leisurely boat ride through the Beagle Channel — so named for the ship in Charles Darwin’s famous journey — and learned about the Yamanas, the indigenous Fuegons as they like to be called. Right. More on the Yamanas later, but I think they will prove my theory about the body’s natural thermostat.
Nearby are the Straits of Magellan (Ma-fricking-gellan…think of it!) and the Drake Passage, one of the world’s most dangerous waterways (Go Shackleton!). It’s the place where the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans commingle, where nature definitely has the upper hand, where time is measured by migration and weather, not by the clock. I can understand why this part of the world led Darwin to ponder the origin of species. It’s quite an amazing place.
Another cool thing about being far far away from Estados Unidos is that you meet people from other countries. It’s not so much the people that I care about, for they will be gone from me in mere days. But the information they impart about the U.S. is very interesting.
Today I had dinner with a guy from Madrid. He had some interesting things to say. He said — I swear I’m not making this up — that the country’s current financial meltdown has been orchestrated by what he called old money. The old money players — the names we all know and many that we don’t — have always held the cards and been able to take the chips at will. With the rise of the dot-com era, and the explosion of high-technology in general, the old fuddies have been losing their grip on the American power grid and have been forced to share the pie, loosely defined as the system, with young upstarts who play an entirely different game. Backgammon versus Wii.
The meltdown will lead to the collapse the financial system as we know it (Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, JP Morgan Chase — who, oh who, will be next?!), the dollar will tank (but who really cares when you’ve moved all of your assets into offshore investments and South American real estate?) and the government-corporate consortium will join hands, chant tick tock the game is locked, nobody else can play, and the lawn bowling can continue uninterrupted.
And for those of you who rail against conspiracy theorists, everyone who lives outside the U.S. is a conspiracy nut. However, they prefer to be called intelligent!
Gotta run. My thirty minutes are up!
A gift for a traitor
Adbusters:
In the classic novel, Treasure Island, any pirate suspected of betrayal is handed a piece of paper with a black spot on it — a warning that the receiver has been marked for judgement. So dreaded is this mark that when the grizzled pirate Billy Bones has one slipped into his hand, he suffers a fear-induced stroke and dies.
Since the late 1980s, the oil gian ExxonMobil has pumped tens of millions of dollars into dozens of front groups whose sole job was to confuse people about the link between fossil fuels and global warming. This strategy of “manufacturing uncertainty” has served ExxonMobile well, with the company riding its wave of confusion to record profits — $39 billion in 2006 alone, making it the world’s most profitable public corporation.
Now, faced with solid science that it can no longer even pretend to refute, ExxonMobile is using a multi-million dollar ad campaign to wriggle out of responsibility for its role in endangering the planet with expanding deserts, vanishing fresh water supplies, rising sea levels and massive crop failures. It says that it has stopped funding fake grassroots organizations, and that it is sinking a tiny fraction of its profits into alternative energy research.
We say this isn’t good enough. We say that if you act like a plundering villainm you should be treated like a plundering villain. We say it’s time to hand ExxonMobil –the modern world’s equivalent of a traitorous pirate– its very own black spot.
Help us mark ExxonMobil for judgement. Join the strategy talks in the Meme Wars forums at Adbusters.org
Global Patriot thinks she’s a white SUV
While negotiating the Suez Canal in Egypt, the ship GLOBAL PATRIOT fired on enterprising Egyptian merchants who’d approached too close, who did not know perhaps, despite its GWOT themed name, that the container ship was under contract with the US Navy. The Egyptian traders may not have predicted the ship was manned by gun totting mercenaries, operating under Iraq privateer rules of engagement, shouting and shooting out the porthole as if everyone outside was an unlucky Iraqi. It’s reported that one Egyptian was killed and others wounded. Global Container Lines explained their people were wary of a USS Cole type attack, the usual contractor justification for preemptively strafing civilians. But US private soldiers aren’t above the law in Egypt.
Bachelor Nutrition, part 1. Breakfast
Want the quickest, healthiest breakfast? Try this: half a container of cottage cheese, half the blueberries, and a sprinkle of slivered almonds. These should be, respectively, without rBGH, organic, and raw* when possible. The second day this meal will be even more convenient, since the berries are already rinsed and you can combine everything in the dairy container without needing to dirty a bowl. Use a plastic spoon and you can take breakfast for the drive.
*The Bachelor Nutrition series is meant to provide simple authoritative culinary guidance without exhaustive explanation. Suffice to say, your food should avoid additives, pesticides, and processing, and should be fresh, not frozen. Which means not just organic, but local. Check eatwild.com for a clean source for meat and dairy. Check localharvest.com for local organic produce.
Resistance is fertile
Best sign of optimism I’ve seen ever.
resistance is fertile
from CrimethInc.
The greatest illusionist spectacle in the world no longer enchants us. We are certain that communities of joy will emerge from our struggle, here and now. And for the first time, life will triumph over death.
Bush accuses war critics of hectoring?
What do you suppose Bush’s wordsmiths had in mind to choose the arcane term “hectoring?” They’ve been quite astute at framing issues with novel usage like “surge” and other reinventions to frustrate our lexicography. (I’m having a flashback to another Jonathan Winters / Arsenic and Old Lace expropriation. I’ll think of it in a second.) We’re being led to infer that Bush knows his Homer, although we’re more likely to believe he saw the movie. Clearly he didn’t stay awake for long. Hector was the protector of Troy, and lent his name to the colloquialism for his constant criticism —in opposition to the war! Ultimately he died a valiant death, unlike a number of the warmongers.
Jim Hightower speaking in the Springs
The Independent is sponsoring a lecture by populist champion Jim Hightower of the HIGHTOWER LOWDOWN on
April 1st. No joke!
Gates Common Room, Palmer Hall, Colorado College, Tues. 4-5pm.
I confess for some reason I had ex-agricultural commissioner Hightower confused with Texan kill-joy Marvin Zindler of Chicken Ranch fame, but I loved him all the same.
Pesticides and Parkinson’s
There is such an assault on the idea that environmental toxins actually do cause disease these days, that this study linking Parkinson’s to pesticides is noteworthy. Pesticide Parkinson’s link strong Of course, poisons cause diseases like Cancer, Asthma, and Parkinson’s, etc. and not just genes and heredity, but the media generally keeps quite silent about that as a general rule. Don’t want anybody to seriously propose more government regulation, now do they? That would harm the ‘free market’ and be socialism, something that the corporate press is quite allergic to.
Billy Bob Clinton and the cane fields
Makes you sick… capitalism as a means toward social organizing and a just prosperity. Tell me after reading this you’re still convinced that capitalist democracy is viable any longer… for us, the working poor, the working class, the middle classes? We’ve lost all our gains, if any were actually made, since the early 70s. All the surplus that is produced from our labor, whether service or manufacturing, has been stolen by the financial industries and corporate wall street barons. This is the National Dividend that Richard Cook talks about and urges we demand, to get back our gains from our productivity.
There are better ways to leave Iraq
Cuba is a gayer place today than it was yesterday
Such a repressive place, Cuba! Hateful and nasty communists run the island. They are hateful and nasty that is, unless you happen to be Gay! That’s right, Cuba is a gayer place today than it was yesterday.
And I’m hoping that John Weiss, publisher of The Colorado Springs Independent, will run a piece about how Gay Havana can be! What about it, John? The Castros are gayer than the Teletubbies are even! Gayer than the teachers of Harry Potter! Gayer than Ted Haggard! Yes ! Castro champions gay rights in Cuba Got to love it!
She was just lucky that she didn’t have a pierced clit
Thank God that we have a Department of Homeland Security that is protecting us all from body piercings in airports. See… TSA Forces Woman To Remove Nipple Rings For Flight In fact, it’s like we have The Three Stooges loose in the airports these days.
And whatever did The Stooges do with their three light system? We haven’t herd from it in a long time now? Red, White, and Blue. Or wasn’t it Red, Yellow, and Green? Which was it, Moe?
The Department of Homeland Security. These guys are quite funny! Gomer, Goober, and Dubya. What security measure will they come up with next?
Iraq contractor deaths counted in digits
Revealed: two more US contractors were killed in Iraq. Their bodies discovered after they had been captured last year. The FBI has asked the families not to comment publicly. Plus, this latest report came with more gruesome detail than Americans are accustomed. Something about severed fingers.
Family members blabbing would certainly mar the news blackout under which our contractor mercenaries are concealed. Americans are told nothing about private warrior activities or casualties. Only by researching the number of US life insurance claims filed, listing Iraq as the place of death, was the Boston Globe able to tally 1,123 deaths in the Iraq private sector.
Though the condition of the two bodies are not being revealed, one of the bodies had been alive recently enough to provide a finger which his captors sent to expedite negotiations. Enclosed with it were fingers from three other captive contractors, whose bodies have not yet turned up. Perhaps the fingers were the proof our investigators asked for, that the captors held who they say they held, and that their captives were still alive.
Separating combatants from their fingers has a long precedent in war, in particular the index and middle finger, aka trigger fingers. This ensured that if your captive was released, he would no longer be able to wield a rifle against you.
Except for today’s report, severed fingers in Iraq hadn’t made the news. We don’t know, for example, which finger, or if this had been the first for Crescent Security Group Guard Paul Johnson-Reuben. Only FBI agents would know if hostage fingers arrive on a monthly basis, as a reminder or status check on the lives being negotiated. Do ten digits mark a captive’s expiration date?
Isn’t it interesting that the FBI is handling the case? Why not the CIA, nor INTERPOL, who handle international crimes, instead of our domestic investigators? To me this suggests something about the international jurisdiction of sovereign Iraq.
On location at Buenos Aires protest
In case you missed it, NMT is on location in Buenos Aires! Marie is in the thick of the protests, but without her laptop/Photoshop. She writes:
Thank you for supplying the graphic! Yes, that is exactly what I saw. The banner was very very long, and the procession at that point was quite solemn.
The protests are still going on today. The grandmothers are back home, but the young people are becoming more militant and the police are everywhere — waiting patiently it seems. Today they were wearing riot helmets and carrying 4-ft-long wooden batons.
The protesters carry huge banners and walk down narrow streets pounding drums and yelling, while the other marchers jump up and down pumping their fists and singing “OLE, OLE, OLE, OLAH.” The police follow them and block off busy streets until the marchers pass. Such cooperation! And more exciting than watching the Boca Juniors, Maradona´s former team, play futbol.
I am supposed to go look at waterfalls, and check out calving glaciers, but this is way more intriguing to me!
And, Tony, I would definitely rather get soaked than zapped. I just hope they don´t zap and spray at the same time, or we will all be electrocuted!
-TangoBetty
Big Dems don’t want another McGovern
Superdelegates were conceived to avoid the problem which George McGovern presented as the popular democratic nominee for the 1972 election. 
Without political guidance, the hoi palloi delegates selected a candidate, the best ever really, who promptly lost to Richard Nixon in a landslide. Since then the party has appointed superdelegates to temper future wayward exuberance. Perhaps the Democrat heavyweights who threw some of their fund-raising clout around –to suggest that the 2008 nomination be left to the appropriate authorities– are worried that Obama looks to be a similarly naive choice.
As indignant as the reaction has been to the apparently undemocratic influencial Democrats who sent the letter to Pelosi, why do the big donors go unmentioned by the news outlets? Capital Eye calculated their cumulative throwing weight at 24 million dollars in donations. They are, in dollar order, from 10M to 80K:
Haim & Cheryl Saban
Bernard L & Irene Schwartz
Robert L. Johnson
Mark & Susie Tompkins Buell
Steve & Maureen White Rattner
Jay T. & Tracy M. Snyder
Alan J. & Susan Patricof
Hassan & Sheila Nemazee
James R. & Mary K. Pritzker
Stanley S. & Sydney R. Shuman
Marc & Cathy Lasry
Pradeep R. & Amy J. Rao
Sim & Debra S. Farar
Clarence A. & Jacqueline A. Avant
Lynn Forester de Rothschild
Christopher G. & Irene Korge
Mark A. & Judith M. Aronchick
The Surge morphs into The Purge
The US is now attacking the allies of Iran within the Iraqi Shia community, and this new battle in the US War to Re-Colonize the Middle East is now underway. It is an effort by the US to clean up behind the lines before it begins its bombardment of Iran.
All the candidates for the presidency have signed on to this new campaign by merely keeping their silence, as both the corporate political parties have done exactly the same thing. And the antiwar and Peace community seems totally befuddled by it all, while the mass media keeps it silent and news and clues-less as long as possible for the general public.
Yes, The Surge has morphed into The Purge, and nobody seems to have much taken notice. In fact, it looks like we’ll all have yet more nap time until the direct bombardment of Tehran begins. What, us worry? Not a chance!
Bush calls The Purge, a positive moment. Increase in death and fighting always seems to turn Dubya and Dick on. There is almost something Hitler-like in their attitude toward other peoples dying. No sacrifice on other peoples’ parts is too much for them, it seems. America must control the region… America must control the declining world oil supplies.
MARCH 27-30 Sixth Cairo Conference
This year for the first time the Hands Off Venezuela campaign will be taking part in the Cairo Conference (International Campaign against US and Zionist Occupation, 6th Cairo Conference, 4th Cairo Forum, Press Syndicate, March 27-30, 2008). HOV will be holding a seminar on The Bolivarian revolution in Venezuela and the struggle for socialism.
On March 25, YOUNG LEFT in Sweden passed a motion in support for the HANDS OFF VENEZUELA campaign.
A revolution against the horrors of neo-liberalism is spreading through Latin-America. The centre for this development is Venezuela. What is happening there is totally different compared to the politics of cuts in the welfare state that politicians, economist and “experts” have said for decades is necessary. In this poor country a redistribution of wealth and power is taking place. Good housing is provided for ordinary people, poor people are getting access to free healthcare and land is handed out to farmers cooperatives.
A discussion about how to construct a socialist society is taking place. The people have begun to build new structures that they control, that can replace the old state. The power of capital is threatened through nationalisation and workers control.
A privileged layer – the owners of the big companies and the highly paid civil servants in the state – are violently against the changes. In 2002, with the support of the USA, there was an attempted military coup which was followed by a lockout. This is a part of a campaign against the revolution that includes slander in the media, violence and economic sabotage.
The development in Venezuela is connected to the future of the international labour movement. The revolution in Venezuela spreads hope – it shows that another world is possible. It is necessary for the defence of the revolution to get solidarity from the international labour movement. With this appeal we want:
* To show our solidarity with the revolution in Venezuela
* Say no to USA and other international forces attacking the people of Venezuela
* Give our support to the Venezuelan trade union federation UNT
* Support the call for a solidarity conference to discuss how to develop the solidarity movement with Venezuela
Corrupt Fed wants control
These bastards are brazen thieves and agents of disinformation. Has the entire fricking country gone stupid? We are witnessing the transfer of vast sums of our money… not theirs, ours… to them!! And a Fed who wants to get the SEC out of the way so they can do it! Paulson, Bernake, Greenspan, Volker, Rubin… all wall street thieves and crooks, liars and scum. This is the fascist business model in full head long dive to the bottom with the Fed cleaning up the mess and divvying up the bailout money to their wall street buddies. For the next 6 months.
This had to be planned. No concerned economic professional in their right mind would have let this happen. The Fed is responsible for the housing bubble, the subprime crime, the weak dollar and now for looting the U.S. citizen treasury!! JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, Bank America… they’re all going down. They’ve all got the CDO-SIV-Hedge Fund cancer bad. Why is the Fed taking on all this worthless paper and risk? All for show. They create and destroy money all the time.
Regardless, they will bail them all out… on our tab. Bear Stearns was sacrificed to keep JP Morgan on life support. But you can bet the Bear Stearns management got out before the crash of stock price. I think the SEC would investigate that right? And how is it that the Fed can act alone on these things, and the Congress (many of whom voted to repeal the Glass-Steagal act with Clinton) [there’s a question for Hillary] in the aftermath asks their sniveling little questions of how the deal was structured? Because the Fed runs the show. It is a private banking system… not a government agency! We are witnessing the power of the central banking system that was set up in Europe by the Bauers (Rothchilds), the Greens, the Schifts, the Warburgs…all German banking Zionists. Then brought to the U.S. (The Money Masters -dvd). Talmudist Jews by the way. Sold out Germany with the British to bring U.S. into WWI. Even though Germany was offering England a return to peace with no reparations or conditions.
Now, what happened to that 2.4 trillion that went missing from the Pentagon… just before 9-11? Hmmmm Dov Zakhiem might know. Another Zionist and dual Israeli/U.S. citizen who was in charge of the Pentagons budget as comptroller. Funny how that “plane” hit the accounting area of the Pentagon, destroying all evidence and records of misplaced funds. Darn the luck. Who’d have thought?
The smoker’s right to be hooked
Poetry Slams slam poetry
Poetry Slams have reduced our most elevated literary genre to the arena of Hallmark Cards. Can you imagine compelling Longfellow to extemporize on the spot, faced with one-upping a fast-rapping carnival barker? Perhaps Oscar Wilde could have risen to the challenge against a ghetto phoenix such as Eminem, but Eminem is not representative of the norm. We have to acknowledge the aberration of genius.
These days we are prepared to recognize the profound in autism. Improvised mental acuity may be the specialty of some few, but it will remain a statistical improbability that such genius resides in your neighborhood. I’d say poetry voice-offs in malls or coffee shops, with contests open to all comers, are most likely efforts in philistinism. Like all things pop, crap for crap tastes.
Poetry appreciation in common circles is for reading not writing. Poetry writing is therapy fodder, meant for no further than the support group circle.
I say more art appreciation, less gluing of noodles to paper plates painted gold. Otherwise to a passerby, unschooled like the majority have become, poetry is an abysmal cacophony of disjointed near-sighted observations, shall I compare thee to a navel on the half-gazed?
Is promoting First Affirmative Financial Network promoting ‘economic sustainability’?
Is promoting the First Affirmative Financial Network actually promoting real ‘economic sustainability’? The reason I ask this, is that tonight the Justice and Peace group here in Colorado Springs is hosting the message of this FAFN group in the PPJPC offices downtown. The host (a paid PPJPC office staff member) is somebody that keeps pushing something he calls ‘sustainability, but has never defined what he means by this.
It seems now, that his idea of economic sustainability is having and/ or pushing a stock investment portfolio in so-called ‘green’ companies. Read The Gazette about this outfit Certified green
Yes, Yes. The Gazette is certainly a great champion of environmental causes, right? This color green keeps coming up with the PPJPC, does it not? So now it arises that the PPJPC is championing ‘green investment’ as the idea of how capitalism can solve earth’s problems. Wow! It’s great to have common cause with The Gazette on this one, for sure. That is sarcasm now.
The point is that there is a big difference between championing the environment and the championing the green washing of a certain sector of the corporate world. That is what the First Affirmative Financial Network is more about than anything else, but is the world going to be saved by pushing for people to make nicer investments? That is a totally doubtful idea, and is a simplistic strategy to help save the environment for future generations.
Is the Justice and Peace Commission to be nothing more than green-washing huggers for the city, the military, and a certain sector of the corporate world? I hope not, but that seems to be the direction that some in the PPJPC want to push the group, while keeping out real discussion about what saving the environment for future generations would actually entail.
African Union ugly iron fist of status quo
Comoran and Tanzanian African Union soldiers in Mutsamudu beat a man suspected of collaborating with Mohamed Bacar, the renegade Anjouan leader. Tanzania, with the backing of the African Union, has retaken the small Isle of Anjouan, which has been rebel-held/ independent, depending on how you look as it, since 2001. Members of the African Union, like any collective of largely undemocratic governments, are threatened by independence movements. The UN is similarly flawed when compelled to act against popular uprisings within its member states, to preserve the power of their ambassadors’ regents.