Self Promotion
How's the Moon?
moon phases |
2006
2005
--MacBeth V.v.
“Where they have burned books, they will end in burning human beings.”
/|\
Philadelphia's City Paper has a good article on last month's demise of Y100, the last alternative station in Philly. It goes into some depth about the media war between Clear Channel and Radio One over control of the urban market, and how that leaves other genres burned.
This can all be laid at Clinton's lap, frankly. Me, I hate this consolidation crap, but I'll save that for a longer post. In the meantime, read the article.
(I was always a bigger fan of WDRE; and nobody does it better than WPRB; but WDRE's been gone since 1997, and WPRB isn't always easy to get in; besides, that's up in Princeton.)
4:35 PMMay she rest in peace, and I hope her family--all of them--starts to heal. And I hope the country lets them.
11: 57 AMPeak Oil Acknowledge by Gov't?
Reportedly, the Department of Engery commissioned a study into the question of whether the Peak Oil moment does exist, and when that will be. The study was directed by Robert L. Hirsch, a Senior Energy Program Advisor at SAIC. His bio goes like this:
His past positions include Senior Energy Analyst at RAND; Executive Advisor to the President of Advanced Power Technologies, Inc.; Vice President, Washington Office, Electric Power Research Institute; Vice President and Manager of Research, ARCO Oil and Gas Company; Chief Executive Officer of ARCO Power Technologies, a company that he founded; Manager, Baytown Research and Development Division and General Manager, Exploratory Research, Exxon Research and Engineering Company; Assistant Administrator for Solar, Geothermal, and Advanced Energy Systems (Presidential Appointment), and Director, Division of Magnetic Fusion Energy Research, U.S. Energy Research and Development Administration. During the 1970s, he ran the US fusion energy program, including initiation of the Tokamak fusion test reactor.
At any rate, the U.S. government had him perform this study into the subject of Peak Oil--how soon it is, and what can be done. The full reports can't be found on the DoE website, which doesn't acknowledge that such a study ever existed; It can be found here, however.
Why doesn't the DoE mention this at all? For one thing, according to the study the DoE doesn't plan to do anything about the issue until they reach the Peak Oil moment itself, which could be next year, or could be up to twenty years in the future. However, as the study points out,
The inescapable conclusion is that more than a decade will be required for the collective contributions to produce results that significantly impact world supply and demand for liquid fuels.No more WalMart. No more malls. You can't drive to the big box shopping center. You can't live in the suburbs. It's small towns or moderate-sized cities. But that's not the bad part, really.[snip]
Peaking will result in dramatically higher oil prices, which will cause protracted economic hardship in the United States and the world. However, the problems are not insoluble. Timely, aggressive mitigation initiatives addressing both the supply and the demand sides of the issue will be required.
You see, it's not only economic hardship we're in for--try famine. Think I'm kidding? How do you think those megafarms grow all that wheat and corn? How do you think we feed ourselves? Big, gas-fueled tractors, combines, all of which become obsolete. Now, we can still grow food, but not the way we have been, and I don't know if we could sustain the number of people the way we do now.
A lot of us will have to be come farmers. Or serfs. Better a free commot than a feudal victim.
So why isn't the government doing anything about it? Hell, who knows? We can't even get a peak at who Dick Cheney was meeting with during those energy meetings back during the first term. Why should I be surprised by this?
1:37 PMI have to admit, I was surprised to find out that the latest issue of Rolling Stone has an article about the Peak Oil concept, and how it could have drastic effects on the world:
Food production is going to be an enormous problem in the Long Emergency. As industrial agriculture fails due to a scarcity of oil- and gas-based inputs, we will certainly have to grow more of our food closer to where we live, and do it on a smaller scale. The American economy of the mid-twenty-first century may actually center on agriculture, not information, not high tech, not "services" like real estate sales or hawking cheeseburgers to tourists. Farming. This is no doubt a startling, radical idea, and it raises extremely difficult questions about the reallocation of land and the nature of work. The relentless subdividing of land in the late twentieth century has destroyed the contiguity and integrity of the rural landscape in most places. The process of readjustment is apt to be disorderly and improvisational. Food production will necessarily be much more labor-intensive than it has been for decades. We can anticipate the re-formation of a native-born American farm-laboring class. It will be composed largely of the aforementioned economic losers who had to relinquish their grip on the American dream. These masses of disentitled people may enter into quasi-feudal social relations with those who own land in exchange for food and physical security. But their sense of grievance will remain fresh, and if mistreated they may simply seize that land.Not a rosy scenario. But I have to wonder, is this all plausable? Or are we taking some sort of perverse pleasure in doomsday, not unlike the fundamentalists who goes on and on about the Rapture, or the Communist who talks about revolution? I don't know. I can't help but think this article is on the right track, so long as we understand this to be a long-term problem, not an overnight upheaval. And that's the most important part--this future might be prevented, if we look to alternatives. 9:55 AM
Yesterday, there was another large quake off the coast of Indonesia; though there have been no reports of a major tsunami (thank the gods), over a thousand people are believed dead. Please go to the South-East Asia Earthquake and Tsunami Blog, which STILL has a lot of resources for those who want to help.
This wasn't an aftershock, it was a new quake. This is a very geologically active area of the world, and I just hope folks make it through OK.
9:55 AMMore on the Schiavo Protesters
Over at All Spin Zone, there's a good--though short--exploration of exactly who some of these protestors are--and, disturbingly, Operation Rescue doesn't just have fraudmeister and hypocrit Randall Terry running around, but it also has Scott Heldreth, a fugitive rapist from the Illinois Sex Offender list.
Now, Scott Heldreth is the man whose ten year old son Joshua was arrested on television during the protests last week. I can't imagine the amount of indoctrination this kid has gone through that his dad was able to get him to put on this little political theater. If there's one thing I can't stand, it's using children for political gain--I don't care if you're kissing babies or arresting them. But secondly, apparently Papa Scott is on not only Illinois' sex offender list, but is also on Flordia's for TWO rapes.
Is it a surprise, as ASZ asks, that a member of Operation Rescue turns out to be a rapist? It doesn't surprise me, of course. While some anti-abortion activists are honest in their beliefs (and as much as I disagree with the Catholic Church, they are at least consistant by also being against the death penalty), Operation Rescue is merely another arm of the Christian Reconstructionists, radicals who want to impose theocracy upon the U.S.. And theocracy, folks, is particularly hostile to women.
10:55 AMWhether you're into Jesus or the Easter Bunny, just want to wish you a nice holiday.
11:52 PMDid some reasearch on the net to find if there even are fair-trade sneakers in existence. Lo and Behold, there are! No Sweat outfitters works with only unionized shops around the world. For instance, the sneakers I found are made in Indonesia, like many sneakers are, but the shop is unionized, so that the workers are getting good wages, benefits, etc. And the sneakers are only $46 USD, including shipping and handling, which is about what I'd pay for a pair of Chucks anyway.
With any luck, I'll soon be wearing these:
They look just enough like my old Chucks that I'm practically giddy.
11:48 PMRich White Life
Oh, but I'm always better joining the chorus than going for a solo...
As many voices are asking, why the hell is Terry Schiavo more important than fourteen dead schoolkids? As Ye Olde WaPo says,
Native Americans across the country -- including tribal leaders, academics and rank-and-file tribe members -- voiced anger and frustration Thursday that President Bush has responded to the second-deadliest school shooting in U.S. history with silence.Three days after 16-year-old Jeff Weise killed nine members of his Red Lake tribe before taking his own life, grief-stricken American Indians complained that the White House has offered little in the way of sympathy for the tribe situated in the uppermost region of Minnesota.
[snip]
Even more alarming than Bush's silence, he said, is the president's proposal to cut $100 million from several Indian programs next year.
[snip]
"The fact that Bush preempted his vacation to say something about Ms. Schiavo and here you have 10 native people gunned down and he can't take time to speak is very telling," said David Wilkins, interim chairman of the Department of American Indian Studies at the University of Minnesota and a member of the North Carolina-based Lumbee tribe.
And as Maureen Dowd pointed out yesterday, "The president, who couldn't be dragged outdoors to talk about the more than a hundred thousand people who died in the horrific tsunami, was willing to be dragged out of bed to sign a bill about one woman his base had fixated on." Yeah. Wore his pajamas.
Meanwhile, as any number of other, liberal blogs have pointed out, Bush signed the Texas Futile Care Law, which allowed for a Houston boy--Sun Hudson, who was from a poor and black family--to have his feeding tube removed, even though it was against the mother's wishes. A similar case is currently happening to Spiro Nikolouzos, a man who is 68 and in a persistant vegetative state, like Terry Schiavo--again, the family doesn't want the plug pulled, but the hosiptal is threatening to, since the family can't pay for treatment.
It's all a show, kids, put on for our benefit. Don't ever forget that. These so-called Right-To-Life-ers don't care about Sun Hudson. They don't care about the kids in Red Lake. They don't care about Spiro Nikolouzos. They don't care about 120,000 dead in the tsunami. But damn it if they don't go around calling Terry Schiavo "Jesus Christ".
Now, I want a better explanation then that Terry is white, isn't poor, and doesn't have an immigrant-sounding name. But I can't come up with one.
2:48 PMTheater and Religion Have the Same Origin
Or,
Dance with the Devil and You're Gonna Get Burned
Seems an odd statement, but bear with me. For those dramaturgs and maybe even those theology students in the audience, you've probably heard this spiel. Anyway, theater has its origins in the Dionysian festivals of ancient Greece. It began as rituals, playing out the myths of the gods and legends of the heroes. Theater began as a religious rite, in other words, and only later did the idea that theater could be a device for fiction become evident.
So, a few hundred years of this, and we get the greats like Sophocles, Euripedies, and Aristophanes (a social satyrist). Give two generations, and Aristotle comes along and writes a book called The Poetics, probably the first work deconstructing theater, how it works and what it does. Now, Aristotle had this idea that the point of theater was to bring about a kathartic release. The protagonist of a tragedy is someone whom the audience identifies with; their fall from grace via the transgression of the law, followed by the divine punishment of the protagonist, acts as a steam valve for the audience. They metaphorically indulge in transgressions such as incest and patricide, human sacrifice, and other dark impulses, and are made clean by partaking in the punishment. It's a form of social control, which has spawned no small amount of debate, even going back to Plato's decree that the poets should be banned from his utopian Republic.
Now, what I'm going to link to, save the credit, because it all goes to S.Z of World O'Crap.
Via the Tallahassee Democrat:
Gary McCullough, a media adviser to activist Randall Terry, says the Schiavo case grew from 10 pickets and a couple of TV cameras at her parents home to a national debate in 18 months because of careful "packaging." And the save-Terri forces made an early tactical decision to focus on Gov. Jeb Bush, who has been adamant in his support of reconnecting the stricken woman's feeding tube.
World O'Crap has a lot more links about who this Gary McCullough is, but suffice to say, the Schindlers have picked one hell of a spokesman:
Missionaries to the Preborn (MTP), is one of the most dangerous and violent of the direct action anti-abortion groups active in the United States. Since its founding in 1990 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin by the Rev. Matthew Trewhella, four of Milwaukee's nine women's clinics have been closed; primarily as a result of their relentlessly brutal attacks. Missionaries to the Preborn have recently re-located their national office to San Bernadino county in California.I'd hesitate to call Christian Reconstructionists fascists--authoritarian, even totalitarian, but not fascists, which has as much to do with corporate-government relationships as it does to do with the sacrifice of individual freedom at the behest of the state. However, Garry McCullough is also apparently tied to the Army of God terrorists.Matthew Trewhella, Joseph Foreman and Gary McCullough, the chief organizers of the group, are ardent proponents of the neo-fascist, Christian Reconstructionist movement. All three are members of Howard Phillips' far-right, United States Taxpayers Party (USTP). Trewhella is a member of the USTP's National Committee. Additionally, MTP leaders have supported Rev. Paul J. Hill's Defensive Action organization in Pensacola, Florida. At the May 1994, Wisconsin state party convention of the USTP, the 100 page "Principles Justifying the Arming And Organizing Of A Militia," was sold to participants.1
[snip]
SOURCE: 1. John Goetz, "Missionaries Leader Calls For Armed Militias," Vol. 1, No. 2, August 1994, p. 1, FRONT LINES RESEARCH, Public Policy Institute, Planned Parenthood Federation of America, 14th Floor, 810 7th. Ave., New York, New York 10019
So yeah, it's religions--but it's also theater in the Aristotelian sense of identification and katharsis in order to affect social control. I work in theater, and I work in ritual. I know the power of the two, and how close they truly are.
note: everything is spelt the way I meant it.
1:30 PMFahrenheit 212
I like fables, just like I'm into folksongs, medieval literature, and antique sailing implements. There's one fable that I can't get out of my mind lately--about two frogs. You probably know it already. Two frogs sitting in a pot of water, enjoying themselves in the dark, the lid above them not even a thought. Slowly the water gets hotter, but since it's gradual, they don't notice. And so the frogs sit, not paying attention to the water, which is getting hotter and hotter, until it becomes so hot that the frogs feel themselves starting to burn, bubbles of water and steam starting to form. But by now, it's too late, of course--the frogs are trapped. The water is boiling, the the frogs can't escape.
There's rumblings on the blogs about conservative John Cole's realization that the Republicans are run by religious fanatics. (Because, you know, Pat Buchanan's 1992 speech at the Republican Convention just went over John's head.) But I think Maureen Dowd got it right yesterday:
Oh my God, we really are in a theocracy.Are the Republicans so obsessed with maintaining control over all branches of government, and are the Democrats so emasculated about not having any power, that they are willing to turn the nation into a wholly owned subsidiary of the church?
The more dogma-driven activists, self-perpetuating pols and ratings-crazed broadcast media prattle about "faith," the less we honor the credo that a person's relationship with God should remain a private matter.
[snip]
The scene on Capitol Hill this past week has been almost as absurdly macabre as the movie "Weekend at Bernie's," with Tom DeLay and Bill Frist propping up between them this poor woman in a vegetative state to indulge their own political agendas. DeLay, the poster child for ethical abuse, wanted to show that he is still a favorite of conservatives. Frist thinks he can ace out Jeb Bush to be 44, even though he has become a laughingstock by trying to rediagnose Schiavo's condition by video.
Therein lies the crux--just like drugs, prostitution, and abortion, it's about legislating a view of what you think your deity wants everyone to do.
I read Jon Ronson's great little book Them a few years ago; in it, he noted that the conspiracy-minded folks see themselves as fighting a "THEM"--and really, that's what the Right sees itself fighting--a mythical, unified, godless Left. Peggy Noonan believes we worship death. David Horowitz sees a cabal of commie professors. And Tom Delay? He sees the Schiavo's case as being an attack on himself, and a gift from God.
Oh Jesus.
But folks, it's about context. You can't see this case--which has gone to 19 different judges, and even refused by the Supreme Court--without seeing the bigger picture of what's been going on, particularly since last year's election cycle. The word in our politicians' mouths has been "activist judges." Activist judges want gay marriage. Activist judges want abortion. Activist judges want to kill Terry Schiavo. And non-activist judges are being denied the bench by those godless liberal Democrats.
Activist judges, it seems, are folks who attempt to interpret the Consitution in light of modern society; the "strict constructionist" judges treat the Constitution as uninterpretable, only to be judged by the standards of the 18th century. And it's hard not to see the correllation with those who are constructionist, and those who refuse to view the Bible as anything but the word of God, with every word to be believed literally.
This case, you see, is an attack on the judicial system as much as it is an attack on the first amendment. It's hard not to see this in the context of the fight over judicial review, and the Right's attempt to dissolve it.
The Legislature, which while in the hands of Republicans is little more than the attack dogs of the White House, is out for blood. What we're witnessing, not just with Schiavo, or gay marriage, or abortion, but with a multitude of issues, is the slow-but-sure dismantle of our judicial system as an independent branch of the government, seperate from both the presidency and the congress. What we're seeing is a consolidation of power into the person of the president and a few powerful congressmen.
What we're seeing is the slow dissolution of the republic as we know it.
More than the disturbing redistribution of power is the question of who is orchestrating it, and who its footsoldiers are.
The forces are gathering. Last month at the National Press Club, when asked the right-wing’s top three moral priorities, Pat Robertson replied, “Judges, judges, judges.” The Federalist Society, the legal and intellectual shock troops of the right-wing counterrevolutionaries, has retained the same media firm that prepared the smear campaign against John Kerry for Swift Boat Veterans for Truth – a clear signal that the far right will wage a win-at-all-costs campaign. The National Association of Manufacturers, the nation’s largest industrial trade association, has announced that it will be spending millions of dollars in support of President Bush’s nominations to the federal courts.
Pat Robertson. The televangelist and former presidential candidate. More frightening than him (didn't think that was possible, huh?) are the Christian Reconstructionists, like Howard Ahmanson the owner of American Information Systems, which he co-owns with the owner of Diebold.
Is it getting hot in here, or is it me?
You know what I like about this country? The fact that I don't have to be a Catholic. I grew up Catholic, and now am a Druid. Things happen. I'm not a Christian for theological issues. I'm not a Catholic for political reasons--because let's face it, the personal is political, as they say. I'm pro-choice, pro-gay, pro-assisted suicide. I'm a feminist. I believe in legalizing drugs and prostitution. I'm a lot of things the Catholic Church disagrees with. Point is, I was able to walk away. I was able to pursue a religious path which made more sense, which I felt pulled towards. Five hundred years ago, I'd be burned at the stake. Three hundred, and I'd have to find some American colony to hide in, probably my own home state of Pennsylvania, among the relatively tolerant Quakers. Just recently, the Justice Department, rather surprisingly, came out with a ruling that yes, Satanism, Wicca, and other non-mainstream (and even, ugh, white supremacist) religions must be tolerated, even when the practitioner is incarcerated. Score one for the good guys.
But if the Delays, the Frists, the Randal Terrys, the Howard Ahmansons, the Pat Robertsons, of the political landscape get their way, we'll be living in the Republic of Gilead. Maybe not with the forced polygamy, but certainly the other elements. Christian Reconstructionism makes no room for other religions. The Taleban is marching on to war.
The water's not boiling yet, but I'm starting to see wisps of steam.
11:46 AMBack (Again)
See, this is what happens when you do big, upheaval stuff like moving. Which is what we just did a whole month ago, but if you've moved recently, you know how that can throw your life out of whack for even a couple of months afterwards.
But I'm back, kids, so no fears. I'm not dead, in Gitmo, and I haven't quit. I am trying to take charge of my life somewhat, make this slow down, be a bit less hectic.
10:00 AM