open menu; contribute as you’d like

Posted on January 25, 2017 by | 43 Comments

coral-reef
feel free to talk to one another….

my sole contribution:

(the transcript)

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43 responses to “open menu; contribute as you’d like”

  1. Bruce | January 26, 2017 at 12:26 pm | Reply

    Und, USians STILL Moronically refuse to sustain Solar-electric energy and electric cars (not to mention over-population) to reverse the effects of GLOBAL WARMING ! : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_Killed_the_Electric_Car%3F
    But, equally unsettlingly moronic is the apparently stiff upper lip grinnace expression, typical of Brits discussing apocalypse; surely unfunny, especially considering that Miami for instance won’t even have drinking water because saltwater intrusion into its (porous limestone) Biscayne aquifer! I prefer real person reaction, such as,

    • wendyedavis | January 26, 2017 at 4:00 pm | Reply

      it’s easy to see why big oil kept gas cheap, and were subsidized seven ways from sunday, as well. keep amerika in love with their little boxes on wheels: freedom! now i dunno about the many external carbon energy costs of some of the alternatives, as w/ electric cars, solar, etc., but they have to be factored in as well. and aren’t batteries still pretty toxic? lithium batteries (teslas?) use dwindling supplies of lithium, and iirc, wars are being fought over them in…africa.

      sorry i don’t have time to watch the long video, but how horrible on the biscayne water. i’m sure you far more than i about this developing story, though: ‘Why Protest Camp In Florida Is Being Called The Next Standing Rock’, the guardian.

  2. juliania2 | January 26, 2017 at 1:04 pm | Reply

    Thanks for the realnews transcript, wendye. I was particularly interested in the comments, which explore to some extent the atmospheric occurrences we were discussing recently. Only one small comment by the interviewee addressed the temperature gradient while the comment by brooksenglish did bring up disagreements concerning the methane releases and concluded that more needs to be studied in that area.

    I also thought the points made by Nixak77 were very pertinent. While indeed as Bruce states there needs to be a ‘Manhatten project’ for renewable energy (and not life-threatening nuclear) we don’t nead geo-engineering projects by wacky scientists, not even on an ‘experimental’ scale. That’s as bad as GMO in my book – I don’t trust the science on that score.

    Climate change is upon us, and the less we pollute the better. I gave up my car partly for that reason, do a lot of walking and public transportation when I can. Not perfect, I will admit. If I’m offered a ride I don’t refuse, getting old. One offspring can afford a hybrid car; I grow trees, veggies, worms. . .have a small footprint. . .

    (big feet though.)

    • wendyedavis | January 26, 2017 at 4:12 pm | Reply

      welcome, juliania. at your suggestion i read the comments, and i’ll beg off saying who’s right, although i’d thought it was established science by now that methane, while ‘dispersing’ more readily, has a far more deleterious global warming footprint than coal, although coal smoke plumes may cause more acidification (sulpuric acid as it degrades, iirc), in the oceans and on the earth. that’s one of the reasons that not restoring wetlands is so hideous.

      i did read a piece at the NYT about a ‘peer-reviewed’ study showing that some man has developed some gizmo to measure methane more accurately though. but now that herr trump has sorta shut down scientists at the epa from publishing…we won’t even have their studies to go on, for what they’re worth.

      the time for that manhatten project would have been three decades ago, but again: the main culprit is capitalism, and all the false solutions like ‘green capitalism’. in davos it was the carbon sequestration sorts of fixes; maybe a notch or two more hi-tech than that.

      • juliania2 | January 27, 2017 at 2:49 pm | Reply

        I think the jury is out for the huge quantities situation on methane and how it will perform in the atmosphere, was the point being made there, sounded scientific to me though. And I did agree with the comment that geo-engineering, which apparently the interviewee advocates, is a bad idea. I’d just like us to clean things up as soon as poss., focus our energies on that, and let nature take us where she is going to – that’s gonna happen anyway. I would agree most those davos ideas are like finger in the dam solutions, but we might as well go all out organic etc.,because we like to eat healthy food, and live good lives as best we can. Our time is short anyway, and our kiddlings will have fond memories.

        • wendyedavis | January 27, 2017 at 4:18 pm | Reply

          yes, it will all march on. davos saw climate change solutions for ways to make money on ‘renewables’, too, not ‘sustainables’, which has been part of the huge problem of green capitalism. but in the end, it’s clear that the largest of the empire’s carbon footprints are factory farming and the military, which has been one of my chiches w/ the big green brands: they never said that.

          yes, various organic farming methods are a major component and also fits w/ keeping ‘water is life’ ideas alive. poisoned rivers, aquifers, reservoirs, and tra la la. no monsanto, no bayer, syngenta…no gmo’s, glyphosate, 2-4d agent orange, to kill the planet, the bees, the butterflies, all are part of a healthy gardening/farming ecosystem, aren’t they?

          we’ll just have to disagree on the methane issue; i might just be yielding to confirmation bias from my reading over the past few years.

          oh, and if you have time, go look at the message i left for you on the reuters storify thread re: elites in kiwi-land. yves smith had weirdish guest post that mentioned it.

    • wendyedavis | January 27, 2017 at 8:06 am | Reply

      thanks, davidly. i’ve read part one, and hope he’s still correct that herr T still doesn’t want war w/ russia, but installing missile batteries against iran and north korea has me greatly concerned, esp. w/ his insane alliances with israel. he’d been back-pedaling on moving the u.s. embassy to jerusalem, declaring it undividedly israeli, thank the gods, but it seems to be that this is the reason. even abe fox doesn’t want it, whether or not his stated reasons are true or not. they also might have imagined that it would start a third intifada.

      i’ll read the other parts as i’m able.

  4. jason | January 27, 2017 at 1:04 pm | Reply

    how many times did i hear over the last few days:
    –do you want to go to the doctor?
    –do you need medicine?

    and just why do i need to do these things? b/c i’m missing work, that’s why.

    i watched “the visitor”, again, yesterday while convalescing (mostly i’ve watching things more on the comedic side, for health reasons). it’s quite understated. i mean, there’s not one explosion or anything. the movie is “middle class” in its own obvious way but still reflects the ruination of anything good that the System is designed to inflict on any human relationship. two couples from disparate parts of the world each come together & are ripped apart b/c fuck love we’ve got borders to protect.

    part of the reward of participation in the violence inherent in the system is a participant’s ability to stake out their own little turf & threaten to bring that violence against anyone who challenges their little outpost. And so the boundaries of the kingdom are maintained, everyone a psychopathic sentinel over his little territory, maybe no bigger than a file cabinet. In the movie, the ICE security guard who is just itching to whoop some ass of the white guy main character b/c, seconds after our “hero” has got the awful news that his friend has been summarily deported w/o notice, he refuses to immediately “step away from the window.” “Sir, i’m not going to tell you again: step away from the window.”

    anyway, long story short, the country is insane, and only decapitation can fix it. i am referring to power structures. As the good book so astutely says, “we don’t fight against flesh & blood,” etc. it’s hydra-headed, all right. but, you also know, that thing gandhi said about just going ahead & shooting the insane tiger. as a lesson to the other tigers ;)

    • juliania2 | January 27, 2017 at 3:07 pm | Reply

      I’m a bit puzzled. Who are you calling an insane tiger, Jason?

      All this shooting stuff has me worried. Folk should calm down and be patient. Maybe you weren’t around when we had a series of assassinations in this country – it didn’t solve anything but led to a terrible, stupid, war. As if the way to solve the situation was go ahead and wipe out people who had nothing to do with it. I know, we have horrible killings daily in this country now, and I would say it is all of a piece. It’s still the Kennedy assassinations and Martin Luther King’s like a bad record stuck in the deep scratch playing over and over. Those assassinations were horrible mistakes. And it is far too early to make another one now.

      I’ve admired wendye’s peaceful but spirited, spirited but peaceful, approach to the problems this country faced and is facing. It’s not for nothing to throw as much eloquence as possible into the public arena for this or that cause – it’s better than violence which gets more violence. It’s what we teach our young’uns, and even when they don’t seem to be listening, down the line they will remember what we stood for.

      They will remember just as we do.

      • jason | January 27, 2017 at 5:34 pm | Reply

        it’s partially a metaphor. a metaphor for Uncle Sam. a metaphor i mean non-metaphorically. as referring to the USG & its insanity. there’s no alternative but complete extirpation. no reformation, no flowery BS like that. burn the shit down & start over. the pentagon, the federal reserve, langley, HUD (for esthetic reasons, at least; the HUD bldg is just awful), NSA, maybe Treasury, certainly every military base w/o exception, etc. (again, on esthetic grounds, certain buildings might be preserved. we’ll defer that decision to the proletarian architecture committee, who, unlike the capitalists, will try not to demolish structures just so their cronies can cash in on the rebuilding funds.)

        i’m not the pacifist i (used to think i) was. i no longer buy the argument that “violence only increases violence.” some violence decreases violence, which is gandhi’s whole point in that quote. preaching non-violence in the face of committed rapists is stupid. at least get some goddam mace. speaking as someone who identifies, at least nominally, as a christ dude, i think it’s problematic, if not immoral & injust, to “forgive your enemies” when 1) your enemies do the exact same heinous shit to million & billions of other people and 2) there is any possibility or potential to interrupt, impede, impinge upon, much less stop & reverse, the course of violence one’s enemies are hell bent upon. pacifism at that point becomes nothing more than a self-righteous cop out, the religious masquerade for what is really cowardice.

        i don’t have all this figured out. i try not to decry the violence of peoples resisting empire. that’s bourgeois BS. not all violence is equal. the people of afghanistan have every right to take the battle to ISAF & mow down every single foreign soldier there (note what i said: soldier, on the field of battle. but even that is rather idealistic in an arena of such asymetric extremes, which the afghanis did not create. & absolutely the cartographers of global domination like cheney & kerry when they come chopperin’ in to Bagram are fair targets. blow those fuckers out of the sky. no one will miss them, not even their shitty brats. w/their attacks on civilians, they forfeit their right to be treated as civilians. pretty simple. in a better world, of course they’d stand trial. the afghanis don’t have the luxury of waiting for that day.)

        people like cheney, kerry, obama, trump, HRC talk incessantly about killing people & peoples who don’t tow their line. “take their oil,” as trump now openly says. Their status & titles will not save them, hopefully, from getting what they so willfully & gleefully deal out to so many.

        i know it’s dangerous to talk this way but it’s b/c we accept badges & titles as covers for murder, rape and theft.

        b/c we are a bunch of moral cowards as revealed in our terror at speaking very obvious truths: the young girl or old man killed in obama’s last drone strike has every much of a right to live as that dogturd imperial shoeshine boy does. now maybe there are tactical to practical reasons or whatev why, e.g., the anti-DAPL protestors should not storm the local sheriff’s office. but it sure as hell ain’t b/c they recognize some kind of cosmic authority invested in these pig assholes.

        all that longwindedness aside, a great deal of power is ceremony & theatricality, a magic trick, legerdemain. the powerful are so weak, stupid, and brittle that they have to shoot everything in sight to get what they want and even tiny deviances from the security theater must be punished. The State must not be upstaged. i’d prefer that tens of millions of us just quit our jobs & refuse to participate. just stop participating & watch the system, after a brief period of pronounced, convulsive violence against those who are literally DOING NOTHING, watch the system collapse. i’m all for it. it just seems unlikely, and the “3rd world” can’t wait for overworked americans to just stop the ridiculous bullshit we do every day to keep the global death mill running. for which we pat ourselves on the back! work attendance, filling out the timesheet correctly, not lying on taxes, all that boy scout rubbish we’ve been fed from the teat.

        • wendyedavis | January 27, 2017 at 6:18 pm | Reply

          apologies for always being in hasty-mode, now as i’m trying to cook food for a neighbor and his wife w/ some weird form of cancer. mr. wd read your comment to me while i was in the kitchen, and while i know i’d missed some of it, what i heard reminded me of this:

          on my near horizon is a post as to ‘what’s next, post j20?’.

          • jason | January 27, 2017 at 6:49 pm | Reply

            yes, of course. i gather that, sadly, she “saw the light”, the light of lucifer that is, w/the election of obama? is that right?

            nice city on a hill we got here in Murka. isn’t part of the Trump phenomena the tried and tested “divide and conquer” phenomena? make people more paranoid and over false distinctions?

        • wendyedavis | January 28, 2017 at 7:38 am | Reply

          i thought i’d read this with fresh morning eyes, and i have, but one of my dishes to send out to our friends failed miserably, so i’ll remake it, then have some toast, and be back.

          on edit, noonish: my guess is that you’re back to work, so i’ll put off responding when i have a bit more time. hope you’re feeling waaaay better. and i do have a piece for one of those ‘what’s next, post j20 that you’ll like: ‘Critical Thought against the Hydra of Capitalism’. ;-)

        • wendyedavis | January 28, 2017 at 4:30 pm | Reply

          my take was that juliania had thought you were advocating assassinating herr trump, but i shouldn’t translate it for her; those lovely ideas are ubiquitous…. i poked about for the tiger quote, but didn’t find it, and a few quotes i found in the gandhi film were enigmatic, at best. but what you’re talking about (mainly) is making war on the buildings of the institutions. or are you? i utterly agree w/ your theory that soldiers being killed in foreign lands have a right to self-defense sine there are no courts of law available to them. and in fact, some of the MOUs w/ nations the US “rescued” and then occupied expressly prohibited nato, et.al., troops from being prosecuted for GI crimes, even mercenaries, iirc.

          i think i remember that we’d discussed diversity of tactics here earlier, and that both of us saw that breaking windows wasn’t expressly violent. during occupy days, you’ll remember, chris hedges penned “the cancer in occupy” (same issue) which created a great pause in some occupy locales while folks tried to figure out…tactics and strategy v. tactics. during the #womens march, there was some of that, and ché pasa said at ian welsh’s place that it was bob avakian’s revCom members; i dunno i it’s so or not; i thought THD had offered: Not, but you know my holey memory.

          but it does seem that ‘as to the ways forward’, those things will need to be examined, and certain actions may simply need to be quietly billed as diversity of tactics, though as social networking is the way these actions spread, that seems a bit dubious; maybe just on the ground? i have one occupy act-out essay on the subject that i haven’t read yet; somehow that woman who does the videos annoys me. ;-) but i’ll try to listen, i reckon.

          anyhoo, there are a number of essays out there concerning the fact that a more radical and anticapitalist agenda will be needed unless folks want to return to “the good ole obama days” (kai akuno and friend), and ideas how to help that process along. on the flip side are the “you infantile imbeciles who are chastising libruls” yada, yada sort.

          this paragraph: “as a christ dude, i think it’s problematic, if not immoral & injust, to “forgive your enemies” when 1) your enemies do the exact same heinous shit to million & billions of other people and 2) there is any possibility or potential to interrupt, impede, impinge upon, much less stop & reverse, the course of violence one’s enemies are hell bent upon. pacifism at that point becomes nothing more than a self-righteous cop out, the religious masquerade for what is really cowardice.”, i’ll need to mull over longer, but for now i’ll say that there were a few essays deploring the ‘respectability politics’ of blacks mown down en masse at the black church in charleston in 2015, and their families expected to “forgive the killers” straightaway. many did.

          the bolded sentence is the one reality checker offers thrice a day at ian’s place, but again: who is the arbiter of that, and who are the recipients? i just know that i couldn’t kill anyone unless it’s in defense of folks i love, and then: yes. nor could i/would i ever ask it of anyone else. oh, and gandhi did say that the worst violence is…poverty.

        • juliania2 | January 29, 2017 at 12:18 pm | Reply

          Well, see, I’ll accept that in the long, long arc of history, you could well be correct. But then, doing the ‘right thing’ in the face of all the horror seems also to be necessary. I’m thinking of “Dr. Zhivago” (and yes, I know the book was promoted into a chintzy movie by CIA and all – a movie which I along with many loved, still do, but it isn’t the book.) The book is what I reference, because the tale it tells involves the romance of the movie but much, much more. It involves the sheer chaos and wreck, and inability to make anything out of the violent overthrow of a corrupt regime, done quite specifically to someone’s purpose but out of hand.

          I remember from school days a similar passage in Vergil’s “Aeneid” that speaks of the intractibility of war – can’t quite it, but it was to the effect that violence takes over. You can’t manage it; no-one can. It’s easy to say “Let’s wreck it and start again.” It doesn’t work that way. You throw the baby out with the bathwater and you can’t get that baby back. Not until many, many lifetimes have passed.

          That’s “Dr. Zhivago” for you.

    • jason | January 28, 2017 at 6:58 pm | Reply

      “there are alternatives to fighting”-obi wan kenobi, star wars, episode v, a new hope.

      all right. raise your hand if you think any gov’t has the authority to tell an adult who they can or cannot love, much less one run by trump & clarence thomas and larry summers and bill clinton? since the sudanese & somalis are bad people for whom a US citizen is unqualified to feel & decide for him or herself whether or not to extend to such lower orders the benefits of their home, name, property, etc., have children by, protect, care for, nag, divorce, etc., maybe Trump can ban the sudanese & somalis from loving & marrying each other?

      fill the streets of the Homeland w/undocumented anchor babies! blow Trump’s fucking mind! when all the undocumented have their anchor baby, then bring as many as possible by any means to these shores & help them get their anchor baby too!

      For charity itself fulfills the law,
      And who can sever love from charity?
      Saint Cupid, then! and, soldiers, to the field! – Love’s Labors Lost

      one might say such a course is grossly irresponsible. to which i say, many africans & asians & russkies & peruvians may be lost over the coming years to war & environmental chaos. it is rather grossly irresponsible not to aid them in coming here, citadel of global capitalism, and aid them in taking it over w/the children they have lost. to help them to new families, friends, and lovers.

      as a non-violent course of action, here’s an option.

      Saint Cupid, then! and, soldiers, to the field!

      • wendyedavis | January 28, 2017 at 7:56 pm | Reply

        bless your heart, amigo. but it’s closing time for me, so i’ll try to read in the mornin’. and yeah, i read the disturbed assholes at ians on the muslim bannings, and offered this:

        ‘Trump, it seems, will not ban all Muslims. He’ll only ban Muslims whose countries and homes we are bombing.’ http://bit.ly/2kx4fGa

        pleasant bunch of ‘pragmatic’ xenophobes he has there; my stars/

        yes, i remember it well back in the day. my favorite lovett.

      • wendyedavis | January 29, 2017 at 7:54 am | Reply

        thank you; i spent some time reading act. IV, scene III, and am always enchanted by your homages to love. i do understand and often feel similar feelings and imagine that the world would be better off without such murderous bastards, mindful, too, of jfk’s “those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.”

        i’m just feeling my along the hallway, arms outstretched to the walls, to paraphrase barbara kingsolver, like many of us. reading this re T’s muslim ban: (by ‘amerikaner’ and ‘starveling’)

        “You are correct, it is a choice in values. And I have chosen to remain loyal to my people and race.”

        “When Hart-Celler was passed it was promised US demographics would not change. My people were 90% of the US population as of the 60′ Census. We are slated to be a minority within my lifetime.

        I would welcome Caesar to reverse that decline. I refuse to be replaced.
        We aren’t talking about high class Iranian doctors and businessmen fleeing revolution, we are talking about Somali ferals and illiterate Syrian peasants.
        Was the Green Card issue bad optics? Sure. Would I shed a single tear at the total removal of every Somali and their children from the US? No.”

        ‘leftist’ website?

        • jason | January 29, 2017 at 11:18 am | Reply

          omg. we really are seconds away from opening concentration camps, aren’t we? i know we really are already there, w/our prisons & ICE camps & torture sites. but sure, let’s have more, much more, of the same. and boast about it as much as possible.

          [cupid’s] disgrace is to be called boy; but his
          glory is to subdue men. Adieu, valour! rust rapier!
          be still, drum! for your manager is in love; yea,
          he loveth. Assist me, some extemporal god of rhyme,
          for I am sure I shall turn sonnet. Devise, wit;
          write, pen; for I am for whole volumes in folio.

          i like my proposal for anchor babies b/c it has the added virtue of pissing liberals off. “women are not baby factories! they need to go to vasser & get degrees in biz mgt & become mid-level managers in a gov’t or corporate bureaucracy or, better, start their own business and write their own stories of female empowerment! and *then* they will be ‘free to choose’. *then* they can decide whether a child or two is valid for them at this point in their all-consuming careers.” to which i will from now on reply w/a dose of happy, familiar, ego-massaging goo about “self talk,” as in: “do you ever listen to your self talk? ever?”

          • wendyedavis | January 29, 2017 at 11:57 am | Reply

            okay, uncle, lol! i was thinking earlier that i might need you to decode your atiric wit/sarcase, but got delayed by a zillion chores. could you please do that? i’m a bit lost.

            long story, likely needlessly boring, but i was in a discusion as to bob avakian of revco.us (one the rancid honeytrap) being either a commie or a revolutionary. the site was all: print yer #nofascism us signs here’ stuff… yeah, pffft. and a book on ‘the new communism, the table of contents didn’t yield much. but i looked again today, and found this stuff you might like to read given what you’d said earlier. “how we can win“. now i like carl dix, but sarsour has been deemed a mite suspicious by revolutionaries, smile.

            • jason | January 29, 2017 at 6:10 pm | Reply

              yes, 4.3. love is a hercules, still climbing trees in the hesperides.

              what was unclear in what i said? the sun will not be deep-searched with saucy looks.

              after i posted that comment i realized i was thinking of a conversation i had recently w/a certain former HUD employee about why all these inner city young, some very young, women were already hauling 2, 3, 4 kids around as they went in and out of a 7/11 in the city near where we were parked. it was so silly all this very simplistic “they need college and this and that” and the other so that they can…do what? oh right, be more middle class, more like the person making the comment. it really annoyed me that she could not consider that having a baby or 3 might be the most sane & reasonable decision this young woman had, given her circumstances. “after all the women success stories in our day! like Michelle & Hillary.” yes. no i am not kidding. to which i say, shit, i might stay home & collect welfare (income) from babies rather than work for such a dreary place as HUD. at least she’s doing something that might possibly, just maybe, be construed as natural, quite unlike working at HUD.

              if the program of uplift & improvement for these young preggers runs along the axis of “pop out babies & be a welfare queen” vs. getting a lot of loan debt to qualify for a seat in the educated cube, for life, maybe the program should be rethought.

              • wendyedavis | January 29, 2017 at 9:18 pm | Reply

                well, both comments were after i’d posted those nationalist jingoistic anti-immigrant diatribes. so…i couldn’t tell if you were mocking me for being blown away by them, or agreeing w/ them, as in: fema camps and all that jazz. that’s all, i guess. and i’m still none the wiser, but it’s easy enough to let it go. sweet dreams. oh: but remember davidly had spoken to the washington wives warning labeling senate hearings?

                one of the songs on the list was this one by cyndi lauper: they reckoned it was about masturbation. swear to goddess i’d never seen this version; must have been ‘the official one’. too fun for words. ;-)

                • davidly | January 29, 2017 at 10:13 pm | Reply

                  Morn’, wd :-)
                  Well, it is about masturbation and, as so much rock &/or roll, blankets the metaphor in homophonic dance moves. But wd, dear — apropos your down-thread admonition re. the phony, on-militaristic-grounds argumentation — it doesn’t matter what the lyric entails, the Parental Advisory issue was Stepford-like, busy-body, at once moralizing and distracting steer kacka.

                  • wendyedavis | January 30, 2017 at 6:38 am | Reply

                    mornin’, davidly. (dayum, i love your avatar…) sure it’s about masturbation; i’d reckoned i hadn’t needed to add :’go figure.’/s) to viewers even the signage made it pretty clear. the vibrations of the motorcycle fenders made me hoot! the wiki on the commission said that it was indeed called “the stepford wives commission”.

                    anyway, it’s a fine production, and tickled the hell outta both mr. wd and me. sure needed the laughs. plus: i love her. well, before he was on that evil show anyway.

                    on edit: i hadn’t seen that she was skewering homophobia so much; so thanks for that.

              • wendyedavis | January 30, 2017 at 6:48 am | Reply

                okay, apologies. re-reading, you’re kinda channeling bill and melinda gates: “let’s give them birth control and smart phones so they can improve themselves and live in OUR world”. well, sure contraceptives help, but billy and melinda don’t get to decide! i’m thinking of the remote controlled birth control chip….who controls it, for the first question? but let’s have some photographic evidence! (drum roll, please…)

                • toxic bodily fluids | January 30, 2017 at 10:54 am | Reply

                  “look, D.C.! something gentle falling from the sky.” snowed a little bit.

                  yes of course on the contraceptive distribution. melinda gates sure sounds pious & concerned. not hard to do. i didn’t catch any comments on her part about remote-controlled IUD’s or whatever, but sounds great! let’s let a bunch of stepford wives control not only what we hear (and, by a cyndi lauper extension, when we self-pleasure, perhaps), but when we ovulate! what could possible go wrong? let’s put the remote in national endowment for democracy chair, madam albright’s hands.

                  remote controlled drones, remote controlled IUD’s, what else? remote-controlled irrigation systems to for the release of the glyphosate and, later, the rationing of the water?
                  ———-
                  shorter trump’s small business press conference today:
                  buy a jingle. buy american.

                  • wendyedavis | January 30, 2017 at 6:02 pm | Reply

                    sorry to be so long; trying to get together a new post had me…flummoxed.
                    but it was cordeliers who’d somehow shown highlighted text (dunno how that’s done) lovely melinda aghast, agog, and agape at those african women who carried ‘a bundle of sticks, a baby astride, and one in the belly’ or some such. weren’t some of their projects akin to eugenics? the depo for instance, that dinnae work out all that well…for them, but mebbe for ‘us’?

                    ah, yes: water rationed like morphine in horse-pitals: ya press and press the button on the feed, but nothing goes in ‘until the timing’s juuuuust right’. not that studies have found that post-op meds are addictive in the long run…but water? drink the lead-filled kind, or else buy NESTLE! look to the last drop.

  5. juliania2 | January 29, 2017 at 12:29 pm | Reply

    I’m reading “The Secret Life of Trees”. It’s wonderful stuff. Found out what ‘coppices’ are – it’s a revelation. I love it. I always think of the old oak in “War and Peace” – sorry to be so Russian minded, but today is also the first of the pre-Sundays to Lent (doesn’t matter Old Calendar or New as both are on the same track with Easter.) This Sunday is Zacchaeus Sunday, the little tax-collector who climbed a sycamore so he could see Jesus above the crowd. I’m gonna get a sycamore and plant it over my wall. I promise! They are beautiful trees – there’s a magnificent one just down the road.

    Do you want to burn down my sycamore, Jason? I know you don’t.

  6. juliania2 | January 29, 2017 at 12:50 pm | Reply

    Just saying that trees are people too – as we’ve said for animals, so it applies to plants to a lesser but also tangible degree. Buber extended his “I and Thou” to every living creature, known or unknown, and heaven knows there are so many of the latter that sustain us. I know, the things we hear about on the news and from friends and not friends tie us into knots so that we feel like the ones in that Edna St. Vincent Mallay poem stretched out staked to the ground for our ineffectiveness, (I always forget the name – ‘Resurrection’ or ‘Revelation’ – it’s a goodie) – that alternating with the all too human need to shift the balance away from the violent and rapacious course our leaders seem impelled to pursue.

    Sorry to sound polemical – it always happens to each of us at different times as we don’t see clearly the way ahead. wendye is always honorable in pointing it out when the fog descends.

    I’ll go over and see what is on that ian thread. Gonna keep looking at my trees to keep my balance.

  7. juliania2 | January 29, 2017 at 1:27 pm | Reply

    Sorry to be posting so much, and I’ll admit the sun (love it!) could have addled my brain, but I didn’t see the following thoughts over at that site, so here’s my 2 cents:

    We are currently in a situation where immigration, an innocuous sounding word, is being used as a sledgehammer by the ptb against other countries. It’s not a trickle, it’s a tsunami. Look at what it has done to Greece to have all those refugees come pouring in. Practically speaking it has been a weapon of war. It’s horrible for the people involved, who are fleeing the atrocity of war. We need policies which are compassionate, but also practical. And as you were saying, Jason, a whole new apparatus of accepting refugees is what we need and in the interim to have the ability to help their homelands become habitable again.

    They are not fleeing this or that stable regime to find a better life – they are looking to save their lives – anywhere. They are not coming to the promised land – most of them, given a choice would prefer their own land. Is this country a better place for them to be? I don’t think so.

    This is not a race thing. I’m of mixed race, and I was an immigrant once. And I don’t think this is a permanent ban. But people who say it’s a terrible think to do this, well, all I can say is they aren’t looking at the state the world is in right now.

    The policy is clumsy and people can take offense if they want to. But something has to be done. Russia already has a screening process in place. They’ve had horrible violence, children murdered in their classrooms. They are sensitive to what can happen. I think Trump is trying to follow up on that awareness. I think he’ll modify his stance once places like Syria and Yemen and Libya become nations again.

    Sorry to be so verbose. I love you all.

    • wendyedavis | January 29, 2017 at 3:00 pm | Reply

      i guess i’ll have to note that the ‘immigrant crisis’ was authored by the u.s. Imperium by way of proxy wars, resource wars, alleged r2p projects like libya an iraq, and trump’s military is still bombing and drone assassinating the same countries obama and bush did.and yet..he wants to eradicte all the isis/daesh/look-a-likes he’s still pissing off. but oh, our partners in peace: the saudis, and the UAE where he does bidness: No.

      i love you too, and you seemed to be able to decode jason’s comments where i was unable. thank you. yemen i fear, has little left to destroy, and many never be what we think of as ‘a nation’ again. poor people…

      but over yonder at ian’s: i like my race and amerikan values. what are they by now (shudder)? i reckon you wouldn’t care for who reality checker has become by now (at least on past threads). sad, but a total bully of the conservative kind.

      p.s. which is not to say that there isn’t a lot of virtue signalling at play.

      on edit: except iran, a gift to isreal. and as joss would have it:

      “People make the racist mistake of trying to fix the ban (#muslim ban) by deciding who deserves it, the good vs bad Arab or Muslim based on US propaganda.”
      (click tweets for bigger; they’ll open in a new window)

      jan 28:

      17 mins

  8. wendyedavis | January 30, 2017 at 7:38 am | Reply

    you may have seen thee already, but for posterity:

    ‘Bloodsport: Trump Carries on Presidential Tradition, Notches First Child Murder’, chris floyd

    “Trump keeps another campaign promise. During the race for the presidency, Donald Trump said he would “go after the families” of terrorists. On Sunday, his 10th day in office, he did just that: he killed 8-year-old Nawaar al-Awlaki, the daughter of US citizen Anwar al-Awlaki, an accused al Qaeda operative killed by Barack Obama in 2011. (Obama later killed al-Awlaki’s teenage son, Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, in what the US called a “mistaken” drone strike on an open-air cafe. Abdulrahman was not even alleged to have any connection to terrorism.)

    “She was hit with a bullet in her neck and suffered for two hours,” said the eight-year-old’s grandfather, as Reuters reports. Nawar died in a ground raid that also saw the first US serviceman killed in the vicious US-Saudi war against Yemen. The Saudis are trying to re-install one of their puppets in Yemen, after he was ousted by Houthi rebels. The Houthis are sworn enemies of al Qaeda, and had greatly reduced the terrorist group’s presence in Yemen before the United States — ostensibly also the sworn enemy of al Qaeda — joined with the Saudis in a ruthless onslaught that has killed thousands of civilians and brought millions of people to the brink of starvation. The US-Saudi war also opened the door for al Qaeda to flourish again in Yemen.” the rest is here.

    ‘Woman at center of Emmett Till case tells author she fabricated testimony;
    Carolyn Bryant disappeared from public view after alleging Till harassed her in a grocery store. Sixty-two years later, it has emerged her story was not true’ the guardian

    • jason | January 30, 2017 at 11:06 am | Reply

      thanks for this & the tweets above.

      and here’s bill gates licking his chops at remote controlled contraceptives
      http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/07/10/wireless-birth-control_n_5568336.html

      surely sex workers should be implanted. no one will ever seek citizenship again from claiming one of Merka’s war fighters knocked her up on one of the country’s literally innumerable military bases.

      i ran into a gaggle of Americorps kids over the weekend and tho’t of an appropriate song they might adapt as their anthem:

      “Americorps! Fuck yeah!” in case you didn’t get it. Tipper Gore might not approve. Ow, those children’s virgin ears!

      • wendyedavis | January 30, 2017 at 6:19 pm | Reply

        wow. zounds. egad and fuck yeah. sorry, tipper.

        who made it? or is that question superfluous?

        on edit: thanks; i’ll use it.

      • jason | January 30, 2017 at 8:40 pm | Reply

        from trey parker & matt stone’s generally lame but w/a few hilarious moments in it, “team america: world police.”

        freedom isn’t free…there’s a hefty fuckin fee…

        they capture the jingoism & wanton destruction all over the place of the US military, even in these two silly songs…but then they cop out in the end & rationalize it cuz hey, crazy Korean dictator is crazy. and of course never address the subject of *imperialism.* nope. murkins are just stupid. but good-intentioned.

        anyway, i found the musical “rent” to be unbearable, so i’ll confess i guiltily enjoy this travesty of it, “lease”:

    • wendyedavis | January 30, 2017 at 8:56 pm | Reply

      unconfirmed photo? jeezum crow.

  9. juliania2 | February 6, 2017 at 10:00 am | Reply

    Today was Waitangi Day in New Zealand, corresponding somewhat to 4th of July here in importance but increasingly important down there as Maori rights were established with the Treaty of Waitangi. This sense of importance is conveyed in the following address, in which Maori language features prominently. Best way to read it is to sound out the maori phonetically but just move into the understandable English for meanings. The one important word is “tamariki” – children. The address is about state recognition of Maori values when addressing issues concerning children – dear to my heart as my own maternal grandmother was enfolded into the maori system back in the day. It gave her unique spiritual centeredness from which I benefited greatly. Here’s the address:

    http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PO1702/S00019/the-future-is-behind-us.htm

    I love now how before my fave athletic event, cricket, when played in Aotearoa, New Zealand, the national anthem is first sung in maori, then English.

    • wendyedavis | February 6, 2017 at 3:14 pm | Reply

      awfully long to do more than scan, juliania, but i read more carefully toward the end, and loved:

      ““Nothing on earth can silence The quiet voice still inside you Moana listen Do you know who you are?
      Our children are telling us – the universally indigenous themes of identity, connection and belonging are the story that shapes their lives. Knowing who we are; who we connect to; our special songs, our places, our ancestors, is all about whakapapa; whānau, whenua, whare.

      It matters. It is about faith; about belief; about love. A faith in our whānau; a belief in principles that help us to be better people; a love for the generations that will create and shape the world as we want to be in 2040.”

      we’re seeing that in spades in the global indigenous movements, aren’t we? heady and inspirational stuff.

      oh, and a good waitangi day to you and yours. ;-)

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