Art and Society

From The Past Recaptured, by Marcel Proust (1932 translation by Frederick Blossom of Le Temps Retrouvé (1928)):

Even in our artistic enjoyment, although sought after for the impressions it gives, we are very quickly content to leave those impressions aside as something that cannot be expressed and confine our attention to those phases which allow us to experience the pleasure without analysing the sensations thoroughly, while thinking that we are communicating them to others with similar tastes, with whom we shall be able to converse because we shall be talking to them of something which is the same for them as for us, the personal root of our own impression having been eliminated. At the very times when we are the most dispassionate observers of nature, of society, love, even art itself, since every impression has two parts, one of them incorporated in the object and the other prolonged within ourselves and therefore knowable only to us, we are quick to neglect the latter, that is to say, the one part to which we ought to devote our attention, and consider only the other half, which, being outside ourselves, cannot be studied deeply and consequently never will cause us any fatiguing exertion; the slight groove that a musical phrase or the sight of a church made in our consciousness we find it too difficult to try to comprehend. But we play the symphony again and again or keep returning to look at the church, until, in this running away from our own life which we have not the courage to face — they call this “erudition” — we come to know them as well, and in the same manner, as the most learned lover of music or archaeology. How many there are, consequently, who stop at that point and extract nothing from their impression, but go to their graves useless and unsatisfied, like celibates of art. They are tormented by the same regrets as virgins and idlers, regrets that fecund labour would dispel. They are more wrought up over works of art than the real artists, because they do not labour arduously to get to the bottom of their emotional state and therefore it is diffused in outward expression, puts heat into their remarks and blood into their faces; they think they are doing something really great when, after the execution of a work they like, they shout vociferously “Bravo, bravo!” But these manifestations do not force them to seek light on the nature of their love; they do not know what it really is. Meanwhile, this unexpended passion exuberates into even their calmest conversation and leads them to indulge in grand gestures, facial contortions and noddings of the head when they talk of art. “I have been at a concert where they played some music which, I admit, did not thrill me. Then the quartette began and, nom d’une pipe, that was another story!” (Here the music lover’s face assumes an anxious expression, as if he were saying to himself, “Why, I see sparks, I smell something burning; there must be a fire somewhere!”) “Good Lord! what a difference! It was exasperating, it was badly written, but it was stunning! It was not something everybody could appreciate.” And yet, ridiculous though these devotees may be, they are not entirely to be scorned. They are nature’s first efforts in the process of evolving the artist; they are as shapeless and lacking in viability as the earliest animals, which preceded the present species and were not so constituted as to be able to survive. These weak-willed, sterile dabblers should arouse our sympathy like those first contrivances which were not able to leave the ground, but in which there was, not yet the means, secret and still to be discovered, but at any rate the desire, to fly. “And let me tell you, old man,” adds the dilettante, as he takes your arm, “that’s the eighth time I’ve heard it and I promise you, it won’t be the last.” And in truth, since they fail to assimilate the really nourishing part of art, they suffer from a continual need of artistic enjoyment, a gnawing hunger that nothing can satisfy. So they go and applaud the same work for a long time at a stretch, believing also that in being present they are performing a duty, an act of piety, as others regard their attendance at a meeting of a Board of Directors or a funeral. Then come works of a different, even quite contrary, character in literature, painting or music. For the ability to launch new ideas and systems and, especially, to absorb them has always been much more widespread than genuine good taste, even among the producers of art, and this tendency is spreading considerably with the increase in the number of literary reviews and journals — and, along with them, of people who imagine they have been called to be writers and artists. There was a time, for example, when the better element of our youth, the more intelligent and more sincerely interested, no longer cared for any but works having a lofty moral and sociological, even religious significance. They had the idea that that was the criterion of the value of a work, thereby repeating the error of such as David, Chenavard, Brunetière, and others. Instead of Bergotte, whose airiest sentences, as a matter of fact, required much profounder meditation, they preferred writers who seemed more profound only because they did not write as well. “His intricate way of writing is suited only to society people,” the democratically minded said, thereby paying society folk a compliment they did not deserve. But the moment our reasoning intelligence tries to judge works of art, there is no longer anything fixed or certain; one can prove anything one wishes to. Whereas the real essence of talent is a gift, an attribute of a cosmic character, the presence of which should first of all be sought for underneath the surface fashions of thought and style, it is by these latter qualities that the critics classify an author. Because of his peremptory tone and his ostentatious scorn of the school that preceded him, they put the mantle of prophecy on a writer who has no new message to deliver. This constant aberration of the critics is such that a writer should almost prefer to be judged by the public at large (if the latter were not incapable even of understanding what an artist has attempted in a line of effort unfamiliar to it). For the talent of a great writer — which, after all, is merely an instinct religiously hearkened to (while silence is imposed on everything else), perfected and understood — has more in common with the instinctive life of the people than with the superficial verbiage and fluctuating standards of the conventionally recognised judges. Their battle of words begins all over again every ten years — for the kaleidoscope comprises not only society groups, but also social, political and religious ideas, which temporarily spread out more broadly through refraction in the large masses but nevertheless are shortlived, like all ideas whose novelty succeeds in deceiving only minds that are not very exacting as to proofs. Therefore parties and schools have followed one another, attracting to themselves always the same minds, men of only relative intelligence, always prone to partisan enthusiasms which less credulous minds, more exacting in the matter of proofs, avoid. Unfortunately the former, just because they are only half-wits, need to round out their personalities with action; therefore they are more active than the superior minds, attract the crowd and build up around themselves, not only exaggerated reputations for some, and unwarranted condemnation of others, but civil and foreign wars, which it ought to be possible to escape with a little non-royalist self-criticism. And as for the pleasure that a perfectly balanced mind, a heart that is truly alive finds in the beautiful thought of some master, it is no doubt wholly sound, but however precious may be the men who are capable of enjoying it (how many are there in twenty years?) it nevertheless reduces them to the condition of being merely the full consciousness of someone else. When a man has done everything to win the love of a woman who could only have made him unhappy and, despite repeated efforts over many years, he has not even been able to obtain a rendezvous with her, instead of trying to describe his sufferings and the danger he has escaped, he reads and rereads this pensée from La Bruyère, annotating it with “a million words” and the most moving memories of his own life: “Men often want to love and do not know how to succeed in so doing; they seek defeat but are not able to find it, so that, if I may so express it, they are forced to remain free.” Whether he who wrote that pensée intended it so or not (and then it should read “be loved,” instead of “love,” and it would be finer that way) it is certain that the sensitive man of letters referred to gives it life, fills it with meaning to the point of bursting and cannot repeat it without overflowing with joy to find it so true and beautiful, and yet he has added hardly anything to it and there remains merely the pensée of La Bruyère.

new translation of first 2 lines of the divine comedy

In the midst of the walk through our life
I found myself by a hidden forest
When I had left the right way.

(Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita mi ritrovai
Per una selva oscura ché la via diritta era smaritta.)

Vermont Congress members and big wind

The American Wind Energy Association's WindPAC has donated the following to Vermont's congressional delegation, according to filings with the Federal Election Commission

• Representative Peter Welch: $1000 in 2009
• Senator Patrick Leahy: $1000 in 2010, $1000 in 2011
• Senator Bernie Sanders: $3500 in 2009

David and Jan Blittersdorf of Hinesburg, CEOs of NRG Systems and Earth Turbines, have donated $41,000 to WindPAC since 1997.

Barton Merlesmith of North Ferrisburgh, Director of Business Development, NRG Systems, donated $500 in 2011.

Thomas Gray of Norwich, VP of AWEA, donated $3,450 from 1997 to 2004.

Earth Turbines also accounts for $5,000 donated directly to Peter Welch so far in the 2012 election cycle.

Turbine manufacturer General Electric has directly donated $8,000 and its employees $8,750 to Patrick Leahy so far in the 2012 election cycle.

wind power, wind energy, Vermont

Hope, a Tragedy

From Hope: A Tragedy by Shalom Auslander:

Pessimists, Professor Jove replied, don’t start wars. It was hope, according to Professor Jove, that was keeping Kugel up at night. It was hope that was making him angry.

Give Up, read the sign on the wall behind Jove’s book-covered desk, You’ll Live Longer.

But you’ve been to Yale, Harvard, Cambridge, said Kugel.

That’s how I know, said Professor Jove.

Kugel had waited weeks for an appointment.

We are rational creatures, Professor Jove explained; hope is irrational. We thus set ourselves up for one dispiriting fall after the next. Anger and depression are not diseases or dysfunctions or anomalies; they are perfectly rational responses to the myriad avoidable disappointments that begin in a thoroughly irrational hope.

Kugel wasn’t sure he understood. Professor Jove smiled warmly.

Tell me, he said. Hitler was the last century’s greatest what?

Kugel had shrugged.

Monster?

Optimist, said Professor Jove. Hitler was the most unabashed doe-eyed optimist of the last hundred years. That’s why he was the biggest monster. Have you ever heard of anything as outrageously hopeful as the Final Solution? Not just that there could be a solution — to anything, mind you, while we have yet to cure the common cold — but a final one, no less! Full of hope, the Führer was. A dreamer! A romantic, even, yes? If I just kill this one, gas that one, everything will be okay. I tell you this with absolute certainty: every morning, Adolf Hitler woke up, made himself a cup of coffee, and asked himself how to make the world a better place. We all know his answer, but the answer isn’t nearly as important as the question. The only thing more naively hopeful than the Final Solution is the ludicrous dictum to which it gave birth: Never Again. How many times since Never Again has it happened again? Three? Four? That we know of, mind you. Mao? Optimist. Stalin? Optimist. Pol Pot? Optimist. Here’s a good rule for life, Kugel, no matter where you happen to live or when you happen to be born: when someone rises up and promises that things are going to be better, run. Hide. Pessimists don’t build gas chambers.

I just want my family to be safe, said Kugel. I just want the world to leave us alone. Is that asking too much?

What, asked Professor Jove, did Jesus Christ say when they nailed him to the cross?

I don’t know, said Kugel. What did Jesus Christ say when they nailed him to the cross?

He said Ouch, said Professor Jove.

I don’t get it, said Kugel.

There’s nothing to get, said Professor Jove. It hurt. First they whipped him half to death, then they held him down and nailed iron spikes through his wrists. If he was lucky, they did the same to his feet. The weight of his body bearing down on his chest made it difficult to breathe, and he died, slowly and agonizingly, from respiratory distress.

I still don’t get it, said Kugel.

There is hurt in this world, said Professor Jove. There is pain. Hoping there won’t be only makes it worse.

Arbeit macht nicht frei

“My wife has the occasion, as you know, to campaign on her own and also with me, and she reports to me regularly that the issue women care about most is the economy and getting good jobs for their kids and for themselves. They are concerned about gasoline prices, the cost of getting to and from work, taking their kids to school or to practice and so forth after school. That is what women care about in this country and my vision is to get America working again.”

That's what Mitt Romney said in a speech on April 4 to the Newspaper Association of America.

Here's what Hilary Rosen said on CNN on April 11:

"What you have is Mitt Romney running around the country saying, 'Well, you know my wife tells me that what women really care about are economic issues and when I listen to my wife that's what I'm hearing.' Guess what? His wife has actually never worked a day in her life. She's never really dealt with the kinds of economic issues that a majority of the women in this country are facing in terms of how do we feed our kids, how do we send them to school, and why do we worry about their future."

The rest is history, with most people revealing that they have thrown away their humanity in picking what political team they root for.

Mitt Romney and Hilary Rosen are saying the same thing. They deny the other's right to say it, because they are both expressing false concern. And both are wielding their comments as a weapon against the other.

What this whole stand-off illustrates is the false divide in U.S. politics.

Hilary Rosen is a right-wing corporate flack, famous for leading the Recording Industry Association of America's campaign against people sharing the music they've bought with friends. She still advises Obama on the issue. After quitting that job, for a short time she was interim director of Human Rights Campaign, which awarded their 2011 Workplace Equality Innovation Award to Goldman Sachs. While working at the Huffington Post, she was outed as a consultant for BP.

Ann Romney is married to one of the predatory capitalists that Rosen serves. They may not have anything in common in personal style and beliefs, but they both serve the same master.

At least Ann Romney only raised a few children and supported her husband on behalf of that system, whereas Hilary Rosen has actively contributed to its evil. Her dismissal of Ann Romney appears to be because the latter has only listened to women on the campaign trail, without a history of actively working to maintain their economic misery.

Many "liberal" commenters on this issue have expressed a hatred for women who choose to stay at home as a betrayal of feminism, as if feminism is only about a few women getting to the top of the exploitative pyramid and everyone else being forced to toil in "service" jobs as somehow liberating.

Rosen's strong support of Obama and the Democratic Party is clear evidence that the only difference between the parties is that one is slightly more tolerant of gays.

That's certainly a good to be counted, but it does nothing for the 99% of the people, women and men, gay and otherwise, who are not striving to triumph in a cut-throat system. It's good that Goldman Sachs extends benefits to gay partners, but that hardly makes it a benign force in the world. Human rights are rather a broader issue.

What is work for? Actively raising a family should not be the privilege only of the rich. Is either Mitt or Hilary suggesting an economic system that makes raising a family easier for everyone (as in many European countries)? They are both against women, against men, against families, against humanity.

Arbeit macht nicht frei. Work does not make you free.

human rights, anarchism, ecoanarchism, anarchosyndicalism

The Four or Five Funny Books

1. The Poor Mouth: A Bad Story about the Hard Life (translation of An Béal Bocht) by Myles na gCopaleen (Brian O’Nolan a.k.a. Flann O’Brien)

2. A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole

3. Fisher’s Hornpipe by Todd McEwen

4. Come to the Edge by Joanna Kavenna

5. Cooking with Fernet Branca by James Hamilton-Paterson

6. Hope: A Tragedy by Shalom Auslander

7. The Ascent of Rum Doodle by W. E. Bowman

The Arrogance of Industry

The state of New South Wales in Australia has drawn up draft guidelines to regulate further construction of "wind farms". Wind turbine manufacturer Vestas Australia duly submitted comments to decry them and denounce those supporting them. (The alleged latter, however, do not find the guidelines to be very good, either: see here, here, and here.)

Ken McAlpine, Director of Policy and Government Relations, writes:

Vestas opposes the Draft Guidelines, primarily because of the sheer number of new and additional requirements and barriers that would be placed in front of the wind energy industry without any clear evidence, justification or demonstrated need for this additional regulation.

The Draft Guidelines appear to be in conflict with the New South Wales (NSW) Government’s own renewable energy policies and seem to be primarily motivated by an attempt to appease anti-wind protest groups.

In other words, after removing requirements and barriers facing development of previously protected land and instituting favorable regulations and tax breaks and other financial benefits to make our industry profitable, without any clear evidence, justification or demonstrated need, and seemingly motivated primarily by an attempt to appease pro-industry investors, how dare you consider anyone else's concerns or wishes, let alone the people you pretend to represent!

wind power, wind energy, wind turbines, wind farms, environment, environmentalism, human rights, animal rights

Judy Callens: Good Riddance!

A friend writes:

The principal (no "pal" of mine!) of Hartland Elementary School, Judy Callens, is retiring at the end of this academic year (because her contract was not renewed?). We have therefore been subjected to a barrage of encomia for her devotion to learning and her inspirational leadership.

In fact, her vision is limited to producing little soldiers. She is obsessed with disciplinary trivialities and eager to punish anyone who does not fall in with her rigid program of indoctrination. Her paeans to "community" in a weekly newsletter were no more than self-aggrandizing assertions of her school as defining the limits of that community. She epitomizes the reasons that so many people are not just dissatisfied with their public schools, but flee them in horror.

When we reached out to the teachers to help us through a bad patch in our son's academics, asking them to warn us earlier than at grade-reporting of any problems, to suggest extra work that might be helpful, etc., we were met almost entirely with silence. The guidance counselor who further brought it up on our behalf was met with defensive anger. Finally, Judy Callens, with our son in her office to inform him of her latest punishment for poor grades, told him that his teachers have no responsibility to communicate (same root as "community"!) with us beyond entering grade data into the online "Powerschool" program.

She even prefaced her comment to this child with a sarcastic "With all due respect". Too cowardly to face his parents, she revealed her true lack of respect for, even hatred of, children. And that attitude characterized the entire school. Her "leadership" encouraged a blithe laziness among the teachers, an environment that expected respect to flow one way only, especially when not deserved.

The community of Judy Callens' vision is a narrow one indeed. It is entirely shaped by her own personality: mean, resentful, small. It is defined by deference to authority above all else, perversely tested by giving every reason to disdain it. Hers is the logic of an abusive parent: ensuring the very disrespect she demands in a vicious spiral of violence and failure.

Spring came early with the announcement of her departure. Let us hope that Hartland Elementary will do much better with her replacement.

I wish Ms. Callens all the misery and misfortune she deserves for the violence she has done to the many young lives entrusted to her.

School Choice Vermont!

Security Threat — Stand Your Ground

Are George Zimmerman and Robert Bales very different from Barack Obama?

George Zimmerman was protecting his gated community — and in the evening of February 26 shot and killed 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, because he didn't recognize him.

Barack Obama was protecting his country — and bombed and killed 16-year-old Abdulrahman al-Awlaki (and nine others) on October 14, 2011, because his father had said mean words against U.S. arrogance (and who (along with three others) had already been killed for it on September 30, 2011). Although their murders would be inexcusable no matter their country of origin or residence, both al-Awlakis were U.S. citizens. But Obama did not recognize them as part of his community and considered that to be justification for murder.

American soldier Robert Bales "snapped" in Afghanistan and, allegedly alone, methodically killed 16 people and injured five in the dark morning hours of March 11. In one house, he killed a woman, four girls aged 2-6, four boys aged 8-12, and two other relatives. He then set their bodies on fire. In another house, he killed a 55-year-old man. In another village, he killed four members of another family, including another child. [Click here for their names.]

Bales had quit his career as a stockbroker to sign up with the Army after the hijacked airplane attacks on September 11, 2001. His fortunes as a capitalist were obviously not going well, and now he had something to blame. Eradicate that eternal enemy and his honor and prosperity would be restored, the latter at least in the expanded war market.

"Restoring America" — implying attainment of the personal "success" every citizen/consumer feels entitled to, somehow never wondering how everyone can triumph over everyone else — is the normal cry of every election in the U.S.A. That means that social and economic breakdown is the normal situation. It's as if politicians and every other huckster (the only people that do in fact "make it") want it that way! They market fear so they can sell you redemption.

It is the eradicating of an enemy — any enemy — that promises honor and profit. Without that enemy, where are you?

The message is the same from all of these killers: Stand your ground, America. It's never your fault. You have good reason to be scared, because other people aren't like you. Don't ever change! Don't ask questions! Shoot first! You're not a failure if you can kill! Your readiness to kill proves you're right!

[Ten years later: “Warshington Warlords”]

All that remains

From "Going, Going" by Philip Larkin:

And that will be England gone,
The shadows, the meadows, the lanes,
The guildhalls, the carved choirs.
There'll be books; it will linger on
In galleries; but all that remains
For us will be concrete and tyres.

Most things are never meant.
This won't be, most likely; but greeds
And garbage are too thick-strewn
To be swept up now, or invent
Excuses that make them all needs.
I just think it will happen, soon.

environment, environmentalism

Into the tumbril!

Jeffrey St. Clair writes:

The environmental movement has become freighted with more and more deceptive terms. Let’s begin by banishing the tiresome phrase sustainable development. Coined by NGOs in the 1970s, this discreditable term has been used to put a green gloss on everything from mega-dams to rainforest logging. Endless development is a more accurate description.

Next, let us eliminate the Mephistophelean phase win-win solution, a verbal potion of the Clinton era that was used to justify oil drilling in the Arctic, logging in the redwoods, and rollbacks in air pollution standards. In win-win solutions, industry gets what it wants and environmental groups get paid in grants to go along with the deal.

Finally, let us jettison the term holistic, especially when affixed to “ecosystem” or “resource management.” Holistic is a merely a New Age-update of the venerable term “multiple use,” one of the oldest cons in the history of conservation. Multiple use was the ludicrous notion that public lands could be all things to all people (or more properly all industries). In other words, wildlife could peacefully co-exist with mining, logging, livestock and off-road vehicle use. Holistic ecosystem management posits the same battered notion, but escalates the deception by suggesting that logging and grazing are actually beneficial to the long-term health of the ecosystem.

environment, environmentalism

A friend writes

Good god, women have enough problems and then to be "defended" by the likes of this Queen of Banality Maureen Dowd. Disgusting and dull as always, a free ad written for the too awful to even adequately describe Hillary Clinton. Maureen Dowd writes this embarrassing, dumb ode to female power, yet more men are mentioned in the column than women, and the only two who qualify to be in this faux-feminist bit of dreariness are military/industrial complex good soldiers Hillary Clinton and Olympia Snowe. O saintly Hillary Clinton, she has "fought for women's rights around the world", she has. And O, the "mass misogyny" of the Republicans! Poor ole Olympia Snowe -- fed up and leaving, and she be a woman! O if ye be female clasp your hands and shake them at the bitter heavens in despair and rage, rage rage at the Republicans, except if they be women.

Hillary should run for President in 2016, opines the ever vulgarian Dowd. Women are beginning to think Obama is not enough -- (surely not!) so, naturally, "they " are turning to Hillary, who as we know is so different from Obama in that she is apparently a female. She writes "If women are so vulnerable, they may need one of their own. Is she inevitable?" Excuse me while I throw up. I am channeling Santorum now. Wow. This monster known as Hillary Clinton is a champion for women's rights, as long as they are in her peer group, and they certainly don't include the women and female children she has consigned to a violent death in her endless war-mongering and support of drone attacks -- was it not she who said she would obliterate Iran? And applauded her vile husband's ending of welfare for poor mothers, and decided that desperate people, many of them undoubtedly women, should not be allowed to declare bankruptcy? How in any way is this charlatan lauded as being for women's rights? Is feminism defined as merely a privileged class of women "taking over", identical in nearly every way to the men who now hold power? How sad and pathetic.

The Republicans are barbarians when it comes to women, there is no doubt. But they have gotten this far in erasing abortion rights because the Democrats never fought back viciously and relentlessly against these deadly thugs. The Dems, including Clinton, (who described abortion as a "tragedy") apologized every fucking step of the way and pathetically tried to seek "common ground" with anti-abortion, anti-women forces, and so they lost this war, and THAT is a tragedy for women.

WHAT IS THE WORST thing is not Dowd's ignorant, trashy chick-lit-style column -- it is that every single commenter agrees with her -- every single one. Not one person not extolling Cinton to the skies, not one person pointing out what a war-mongering piece of shit she is -- opining all over the place that the head of the World bank is the place for her, the Supreme court, the presidency -- oh my god! The place for her is in the dock answering for her war crimes, but as these comments indicate, what passes as the "left" is essentially dead in this country -- they are brain-dead, banal, only think in the lifeless, claustrophobic terms handed to them by the media, can no longer think critically and have become Republicans albeit ones that believe in abortion rights (to a degree) and the difference between the parties has been essentially erased but the team players on both sides are so brainwashed they don't even see it. Now because Repubs hate women, the Dems now LOVE women (except for those women who made the bad decision to be Palestinians or Afghans, Pakistanis, Libyans, Yemeni, Iraqi, Irani, etc etc....) Dems even lauding that vicious creep Snowe, who quit only because she and her corporate sleaze husband are facing a big corruption lawsuit.

I despise the repubs for their hatred of women, but I despise the Dems for the same. I know that women are just as vile as men, and take no comfort in the prospect of seeing "one of my own" as President, unless perhaps it was Green party candidate Jill Stein, which will never happen. The only kind of woman who would be electable in this backwards kind of culture are women like Clinton, who are utterly indistinguishable from the men who run this country -- psychopaths all.

The Allcymicall Wetting of Earth and Air

Vestas V112 uses less power

A full page ad from Vestas in the March North American Windpower (below, or the part that fit in my scanner) boasts that its 3-MW V112 wind turbine "uses less power", that it has a "unique system that uses the wind's own energy to cool the nacelle and reduce power consumption".

This is interesting because the industry and its apologists have long insisted that power consumption by large wind turbines (which can not operate without power from the grid) is insignificant.

But if it is insignificant, then the energy savings of the Vestas "Cooler Top" design would be insignificant. Yet they devoted a full-page ad to promote it.

Which clearly suggests that energy consumption by wind turbines is indeed substantial.

Update:  The new design may not work so well to prevent overheating, as a model in Germany was destroyed by fire of "undetermined" cause.

wind power, wind energy, wind turbines

Capitalism versus individual freedom

Capitalism is antithetical to individualism. Capitalism replaces individualism with commodification. People are nothing more than units of production and consumption in the accounting of capital. Even the "masters" of capital are mere servants to the cancer of profit. Individualism is a threat to capitalism.

(Conversely, only with socialism can the individual be free to be him- or herself. See Oscar Wilde's essay "The Soul of Man under Socialism".)

human rights, anarchism

Lim’rick

There once was a foolish young clerk
Who was after some fun in the park

With two saucy sisters

But three loyal fisters

Had bites that were worse nor his bark.

The Dream Awakes

Finnegans Wake is the last novel written by James Joyce. After Ulysses was published in 1922, installments of Work In Progress soon began to appear, the final title being a secret between the writer and his partner, Nora Barnacle. The finished book was published in 1939, and Joyce died less than two years later, leaving a work the reading of which is still very much “in progress.”

The language of Finnegans Wake is confounding; consider, for example, “O here here how hoth sprowled met the duskt the father of fornciationists but, (O my shining stars and body!) how hath fanespanned most high heaven the skysign of soft advertisement!” The language is like that of a dream, not quite conscious or formed, shimmering with layers of possible meaning. Yet this is a return to possibility, shaped by the experiences of the world we have fallen (into sleep) from. One of the many sources Joyce drew from is the Ancient Egyptian story of Osiris, torn apart by his brother or son, Set, the pieces gathered and reassembled by his sister or wife, Isis, and their other brother or son, Horus, slaying Set, allowing Horus to rise as the new day’s sun. So in Finnegans Wake, we have fragments and allusions and confusing messages that the reader must, like Isis, put together into a recognizable form.

The book begins with the fall of Finnegan, a hod carrier, from a scaffold. At his wake, in keeping with the American vaudeville song, “Finnegan’s Wake,” a fight breaks out, whiskey splashes on Finnegan’s corpse, and he rises up again alive. But Joyce has him put back down again (“Now be aisy, good Mr Finnimore, sir. And take your laysure like a god on pension and don’t be walking abroad”). Someone else is sailing in to take over the story: Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker, whose initials HCE (“Here Comes Everybody”) lend themselves to phrase after phrase throughout the book.

HCE is a foreigner and takes a native Irish wife, Anna Livia Plurabelle (whose initials ALP as well are found in phrase after phrase), and they settle down to run a public house in Chapelizod, a suburb of Dublin. HCE personifies the city of Dublin (which was founded by Vikings), and ALP personifies the Liffey river, on whose banks the city was built. Joyce universalizes his tale by making them stand as well for every city-river pair in the world. And they are, like Eve and Adam, the primeval parents of all the Irish and all humanity.

ALP and HCE have a daughter, Issy, whose person is often split, and two sons, Shem and Shaun, eternal rivals for replacing their father and for Issy’s affection (among other things). Shem and Shaun often are seen with a third fellow in which their two halves may join against HCE or in winning Issy.

A scandal in the park threatens HCE’s reputation, perhaps his life. In a midden heap, a hen named Biddy finds the letter that ALP has dictated a letter to Shem which Shaun is charged with carrying to the ruling power of the time, which may be HCE himself. It is a letter that is hoped will redeem his past, just as Finnegans Wake is a vast “comedy” that seeks to redeem human history.

The progress of the book, however, is far from simple as it draws in mythologies, theologies, mysteries, philosophies, histories, sociologies, astrologies, other fictions, alchemy, music, color, nature, sexuality, human development, and dozens of languages to create the world drama in whose cycles we live.

—Wikipedia, Sept 2–13, 2002

O brave new world of false environmentalism

The United States Climate Action Partnership: "We are committed to a pathway that will slow, stop and reverse the growth of U.S. emissions while expanding the U.S. economy."

USCAP Members Include:

• AES
• Alcoa
• Alstom
• Boston Scientific Corporation
• Center for Climate and Energy Solutions
• Chrysler
• The Dow Chemical Company
• Duke Energy
• DuPont
• Environmental Defense Fund
• Exelon Corporation
• General Electric
• Honeywell
• Johnson & Johnson
  
• Natural Resources Defense Council
• NextEra Energy
• NRG Energy
• PepsiCo
• PG&E Corporation
• PNM Resources
• Rio Tinto
• Shell
• Siemens Corporation
• The Nature Conservancy
• Weyerhaeuser
• World Resources Institute

environment, environmentalism

The divine right of money

Paul Craig Roberts writes in Counterpunch:

Austerity is the price charged by the EU for lending the Greek government the money to pay to the banks. In other words, the question was austerity or default. However, the question was decided without the participation of the Greek people. ...

Some say that the EU is using the banks for the EU’s agenda, and others say the banks are using the EU for the banks’ agenda.

Indeed, they may be using each other. Regardless, democracy is not part of the process. ...

Violence begets violence. Violence in the streets is a response to the economic violence being committed against the Greek people. ...

Perhaps future historians will conclude that democracy once served the interests of money in order to break free of the power of kings, aristocracy, and government predations, but as money established control over governments, democracy became a liability. Historians will speak of the transition from the divine right of kings to the divine right of money.

Simple Fact

The simple fact is that industrial society is based on ever more concentrated sources of energy that add to both the power of those who control society and the productivity of those whose work makes continually increasing wealth and power possible.

The simple fact is that industrial society can not continue on less concentrated sources of energy, such as the sun and wind. Rather than sharing their abundance out of the secure comfort of their power, those who control society would instead concentrate the benefits of such diminishing energy to maintain their power and comfort at the expense of the rest of society (and the environment).

Rather than help to facilitate that horrible future by advocating "alternatives" and "sustainability", we need to do everything we can to slow things down, deescalate, decentralize, ... deindustrialize.

The Laundromat of Wickedness

Peter de Vries, The Tents of Wickedness (1959) —

He awoke in a strange bed. Not awoke exactly, but felt it penetrate his consciousness that it was a strange bed in a strange place, before sinking into even deeper slumber . . .

. . . Then for some reason he could not explain, except within the logic of dreams where no explanations are required but oddity itself imposes its kind of clarity, he was in one of those places where people take their laundry to wash it in automatic machines. The public Laundromat. It would be a mistake to say he was there in person: he was rather there in spirit, to witness the two old women who were the only customers as they drew the soiled family clothes from their bags and chucked them into the washers. The machines were side by side, the center pair in a glistening white row of perhaps ten. The women sat side by side on a bench to gossip, and as the machines simultaneously commenced the first of the cycles, the drone of their words mingled with the hum of the motors and the wash and splash of the water and the clothes, while all of it seemed to be going on in Swallow’s head itself, where it merged in an endlessly flowing river of dialogue.

FIRST WOMAN

It was a literary friendship. (Laughter from the toothless crones.) Can’t you see them in their trysting shanty, talking about books. Well, it’s the sterne realities they’ll be facing now.

SECOND WOMAN

What he minds most they say is the being a laughing stock. It’s his rire end to be seen sticking through the britches he was too big for.

FIRST WOMAN

And hers out front. They must have known it would illicit comment.

SECOND WOMAN

That sort’s not practical, the artistic — and when it comes to the poets! I understand he could be treacly in his tastes for all that. Not even above a little Tennyson.

FIRST WOMAN

Chacun à son goo. And that’s not all. Think o’ them fancy composers they must have cuddled up listening to. Everything was fine and d’indy then, but I de falla now to see a bright side to the situation. Now don’t fly off the handel about the modern stuff, Molly, that’s not what the subject is about. Let’s stick to it for once, for a luscious one it is, my duck.

SECOND WOMAN

I’m not shootin’ me mouth off about that aspect of it either. There ought to be a law against all these illicit relations. What’s needed is some good plain penal reform.

FIRST WOMAN

Beginning with his. Cut it off without a pity — and don’t stop there either. Let him die intestate, him on his Castro convertible.

SECOND WOMAN

So he’ll never go whole hog again? (Laughter) But he won’t soon again anyway, I’ll be bound. Still, it’d be a stop in the right direction.

(There is a pause and they suddenly turn silent and thoughtful, even sad. There is a transition in the machine and a change of tempo in the wash)

FIRST WOMAN

(Half humming) Ha hee ha ho a low . . . It’s keening the sound of these machines makes me feel like doing. A mournful ancient seadark sound it is, this in the Laundromat, as of all the waters washing all the shores in the weary world. The splash and swish of the suds reminds me of all the rivers running into the sea, yet the sea not full. There, the pre-rinse is over, and now it’s the water frothing and swirling in the seacove, lonely beyond knowing, my Molly, the last outlet of Time . . . the wash everything comes out in as they do be sayin’.

SECOND WOMAN

Stop your lip, woman, and leave the poetry to them as can moan it proper. Poets are born, not made.

FIRST WOMAN

Aye, but we know one was made, don’t we now? And proper too she was. She priapubly had them lined up waiting their turn. Had I the queue for passion she has I wouldn’t be doin’ meown washin’, let alone others’. There’s food for thought there — intravenus injection. Still ’twas she, not I, met with a foetal accident.

SECOND WOMAN

Ah, you’re a foul-mouthed sweet old soul. Yes, made she was I must admit — and made once, maid no more.

FIRST WOMAN

Stop grinning with them two remaining teeth. They remind me of cloves, which reminds me I’ve got to get home and fix a ham for the poor old clod I’ve remaining to me. An incurable rheumatic. Ah well I love him just the same, the same. He’s persona non Groton, but he’s mine, and he wouldn’t go cheatin’ on me even if he had the opportunity, like that other blatherskite.

SECOND WOMAN

Oh, let’s not blacken the lad to the point of using him as a sinonim for all ruttin’ off the reservation. I’ve heard rumors he was the one prevailed upon. The soft sell and then the hard sell, and him so young and rubicund. It’s the company he kept.

FIRST WOMAN

Kept is it now? He keep anyone, that cheapskate, at least to hear tell? He’d never get in that deep — he’d never get fiscally involved if he could help. Furs and flowers, and then Christmas coming round and she up there in the flat waiting over the eggnog, in hopes that St. Necklace soon would be there. And him with his Santa Claustrophobia. No, not him. Just once he slipped and now he’s slapped and that’s the long and the short of it. Slapped around just like that clothes behind the glass there. Did you ever hear the one about the woman who looked at one of these and said, ‘Well, if that’s television . . .’?

SECOND WOMAN

Oh, woman, if you can’t tell jokes at least no older than yourself, button up. Here comes the Spin-dry. Then you can spread your washin’ proper and get home to cook that ham. How do you cook a ham?

FIRST WOMAN

(Growing absent) So little thyme. Sanctuary much, he’ll say ironiclike. He was good for the jests he was, once and many a spare quid for a case of bottles. Remembrance of Things Pabst, that’s the story of our life, and ah, how we lay dreaming on the grass. Him reading to me books with plots. How Greene Was My Valley of Decision then. Yes right off, and him with the wherewithal to hitch us up straight off. Legal Tender Is the Night. Him laying in bed drunk singing as I dropped my shift on the cold hotel room floor, Sister Carrie Me Back to old Virginibus Puerisque. It’s all a welter mitty in my head, thinkin’ back so fondly. For the lad it’s Beth In the Afternoon. As I went walking down the street I metamorphosis. It’s like that Spin-dry in my head as it must be in his too. I hear he’s mental now, aw, let’s have a kind thought for the chap. This is the end for him: delirium: tear-a-lira-lirium: stream of conscience: you pays your money and you takes your joyce.

(His head spins furiously at top speed. Then something mercifully clicks the end of the cycle and the whirling slows. The spectral blur sorts itself out in a circle of faces wreathing the bed, into which he looks up. Dr. Bradshaw is there, then another physician, a nurse, and Crystal too, wiping his brow.)

DR. BRADSHAW

(Raking his boyish gray hair) It’s the most amazing case of auto-suggestion I’ve ever encountered in my thirty years as a family doctor in these parts. To think so strongly you’re a swine as to turn into one! Look at it. I mean the eyes. Like beads.

UNIDENTIFIED MAN

And the red along the face — not just around the eyes. If it isn’t arrested the whole skin surface will be covered with it, which might be fatal. The only case on record like it that I recall is in Tender Is the Night. The woman in Diver’s sanatorium there, remember? [Then this man isn’t a doctor but a critic, and the consultations are literary, not medical. Could it be Blackmur? Or Burke? One of the giants? One of the Symbol Simons of literature?] It was related to the blush. When guilt is so strong it has to be organically realized —

SWALLOW

(Resentfully) You mean this is derivative too? I tell you I won’t —

(Hands press him firmly back onto the bed)

PROBABLE CRITIC

He seems to take it so personally. But there, he’s dropped off again. He must be exhausted. But now to get back to what we were saying, there’s another way of analyzing this particular hysteria. The need to convert himself into a swine may be an indirect way of blaming the woman.

DR. BRADSHAW

You mean the Biblical legend — ?

PROBABLE CRITIC

I was thinking mainly of the Circe scene in The Odyssey, where she changes them all into pigs, remember? Thus it becomes, you see, the woman’s work, the woman who’s responsible.

(Swallow sits bolt upright, profoundly elated)

SWALLOW

We’ve done it! A Homeric parallel. This is it! We’ve made it! We’re in! Tell Cowley, tell Warren, get everybody on the wire, we’re in, do you hear! A Homeric parallel! At last! Get Wilson on the wire, get Hyman and Daiches and Jarrell! Shoot it to the newspapers and magazines. Wire Prescott and Rolo and Gissen and Hobson and Hutchens and Hicks —

VOICE

He’s really delirious now.

(The two washerwomen briefly reappear, keening and chanting “Dear a lear and leerious . . . ”)

FIRST WOMAN

You need to cut it both ways now, with hidden meanings I’m afreud. You Rahv Pater to play ball, and a little Levin levineth the whole ump. Ah well, they were boobs in the wood, those two, like us all, beside this babbling book that has no end. My years ache with the melancholy plaint of footnotes, and my poor head rumbles when the Kazins go rolling along. And that other bunch washing their Lenin in public. Who will resolve all this and bring White peace again? Look look, the desk is groaning, and my poor chair’s gone ashen. What’s left for the likes of us but to draw up our chair to the fire of a night, and munch the tried old crusts again. What ails the new loaf I can tell you straight. It’s too inbread and lax —

SECOND WOMAN

Lacks what?

FIRST WOMAN

That good old William Butler Yeast.

SECOND WOMAN

That does it! I’m going home to Maugham.

(The two women fade, gently moaning “Tear a leer a lirium . . . He’s a merewolf.”)

SWALLOW

Phone Fadiman —

VOICE

Shh . . .

(Another voice is heard offstage, growing louder. It is a Dutch accent of somebody obviously shouldering his way forward)

DR. BRADSHAW

Dr. Van Kuykens, thank God you’ve come. (There is a stir of handshaking all around, while a hand with a cool cloth continually soothes Swallow’s brow) This thing has gotten a little beyond me. I mean while we doctors like to keep abreast of psychosomatic medicine as the situation calls for these days, we’re not geared for anything like this. It’s an amazing case. Organically realized delusion. I’m sure you can tell by one look what he fancies himself to be.

(Dr. Van Kuykens wedges a round, smooth-shaven face into the circle. He looks Swallow over, feeling his forehead and taking his pulse. He lifts Swallow’s left eyelid and lets it drop.)

DOCTOR VAN KUYKENS

I can certainly see what dis is at a glance. Dis man has got trichinosis!

OTHERS

Trichinosis! (They back sheepishly off) I never gave that a . . .

DR. VAN KUYKENS

Severe edema of the eyes. Bad enough to make dem almost disappear. Soreness of de muscles I’m sure from de vay he moofs on de bed . . . (He breaks off, openmouthed a moment.) You mean I have come all de way from Rotterdam to diagnose an case of trichinosis? Och, God in hemel, wat is me dit? Ezels! (Going away) Give him aspirin, a mustard bath to bring de fever down, absolute rest and quiet. Plenty of nourishing food as soon as he can take it, and in a few days maybe a little light readink.

(Blackout)

Homecoming, a poem

HOMECOMING
by Eric Rosenbloom
copyright 2012

Where are you turning toward now? All your shipmates have gone And the days alone are long Of sameness and sameness before the prow. Remember the one that remains Embraced by ethereal arms Or washed by the earthiest rains — Your time like the darkness comes. You forgot all the names And work turns to play While your voice is echoing the air — And she rose above the waves To call you forth that fateful day When you joined the waters forever.

The Grey

The Buffalo is father to the Wolf, the Wolf to the Buffalo.

The Cowboy is Death to both.

Silence Is a Commons

From remarks by Ivan Illich at the "Asahi Symposium Science and Man - The Computer-Managed Society," Tokyo, Japan, March 21, 1982:

On the same boat on which I arrived in 1926, the first loudspeaker was landed on the island. Few people there had ever heard of such a thing. Up to that day, all men and women had spoken with more or less equally powerful voices. Henceforth this would change. Henceforth the access to the microphone would determine whose voice shall be magnified. Silence now ceased to be in the commons; it became a resource for which loudspeakers compete. Language itself was transformed thereby from a local commons into a national resource for communication. As enclosure by the lords increased national productivity by denying the individual peasant to keep a few sheep, so the encroachment of the loudspeaker has destroyed that silence which so far had given each man and woman his or her proper and equal voice. Unless you have access to a loudspeaker, you now are silenced.

Just as the commons of space are vulnerable, and can be destroyed by the motorization of traffic, so the commons of speech are vulnerable, and can easily be destroyed by the encroachment of modem means of communication.

The issue which I propose for discussion should therefore be clear: how to counter the encroachment of new, electronic devices and systems upon commons that are more subtle and more intimate to our being than either grassland or roads - commons that are at least as valuable as silence. Silence, according to western and eastern tradition alike, is necessary for the emergence of persons. It is taken from us by machines that ape people. We could easily be made increasingly dependent on machines for speaking and for thinking, as we are already dependent on machines for moving.

Such a transformation of the environment from a commons to a productive resource constitutes the most fundamental form of environmental degradation. This degradation has a long history, which coincides with the history of capitalism but can in no way just be reduced to it. Unfortunately the importance of this transformation has been overlooked or belittled by political ecology so far. It needs to be recognized if we are to organize defense movements of what remains of the commons. This defense constitutes the crucial public task for political action during the eighties. The task must be undertaken urgently because commons can exist without police, but resources cannot. Just as traffic does, computers call for police, and for ever more of them, and in ever more subtle forms.

By definition, resources call for defense by police. Once they are defended, their recovery as commons becomes increasingly difficult. This is a special reason for urgency.

human rights, anarchism, ecoanarchism, anarchosyndicalism

The piddling contribution of wind power in New England

ISO New England: Seasonal Claimed Capability (SCC), Jan 2012 report

Total New England Claimed Capability (MW)
Winter (March):  34407.889;  125.964 (0.366%) from WIND
Summer (August):  31766.431;  50.735 (0.160%) from WIND

The SCC of Intermittent Power Resources generator assets are determined using the median of net output from the most recently completed Summer Capability and Winter Capability Periods across the Summer (HE 14-18) and Winter (HE 18-19) Intermittent Reliability Hours, respectively.

The ISO-NE report lists 34 wind-powered generators, only 26 providing any winter and 24 summer capability (two of which because they are still under construction or not yet connected and therefore deleted from the list below).

generator	capacity (kW)	winter	summer
MA:
BARNSTABLE_DPW_ID1545	200	80 (40%)	14 (7%)
BARTLETTS OCEAN VIEW FARM WIND	250	0	0
BERKSHIRE WIND POWER PROJECT	15000	6988 (46.6%)	1704 (11.4%)
CITY OF MEDFORD WIND QF	100	0	0
HOLY NAME CC JR SR HIGH SCHOOL	600	0	0
HULL WIND TURBINE II	1800	458 (25.4%)	52 (2.3%)
HULL WIND TURBINE U5	660	180 (27.3%)	46 (7.0%)
IPSWICH WIND FARM 1	1600	342 (21.4%)	125 (7.8%)
JIMINY PEAK WIND QF	1500	0	0
MOUNT ST MARY-WRENTHAM MA WIND	100	4 (4.0%)	2 (2.0%)
NATURE'S CLASSROOM WIND QF	100	0	0
NM-STONE	600	6 (1%)	0
NOTUS WIND I	1650	500 (30.3%)	187 (11.3%)
OTIS_AF_WIND_TURBINE	1500	199 (13.3%)	125 (8.3%)
OTIS_WT_AFCEE_ID1692	1500	1200 (80%)	1200 (80%)
PRINCETON WIND FARM PROJECT	3000	582 (19.4%)	157 (52.3%)
RICHEY WOODWORKING WIND QF	600	0	0
TEMPLETON WIND TURBINE	1650	401 (24.3%)	74 (4.5%)
TOWN_OF_FALMOUTH_WIND_TURBINE	1650	133 (8.1%)	6 (0.4%)
ME:
BEAVER RIDGE WIND	4500	1240 (27.6%)	466 (10.4%)
FOX ISLAND WIND	4500	159 (3.5%)	0
KIBBY WIND POWER	132000	34590 (26.2%)	13375 (10.1%)
ROLLINS WIND PLANT	60000	20860 (34.8%)	6207 (10.3%)
SPRUCE MOUNTAIN WIND	19000	9000 (47.4%)	4500 (23.7%)
STETSON II WIND FARM	25500	6740 (26.4%)	2602 (10.2%)
STETSON WIND FARM	57000	15725 (27.6%)	7056 (12.4%)
NH:
LEMPSTER WIND	24000	8518 (35.5%)	2457 (10.2%)
RI:
NE ENGRS MIDDLETOWN RI WIND QF	100	0	0
PORTSMOUTH ABBEY WIND QF	660	0	0
TOWN OF PORTSMOUTH RI WIND QF	1500	159 (10.6%)	178 (11.9%)
VT:
SEARSBURG WIND (listed in Mass.)	6600	900 (13.6%)	202 (3.1%)
SHEFFIELD WIND PLANT	40000	17000 (42.5%)	10000 (25.0%)
TOTAL WIND	459420	125964 (27.4%)	50735 (11.0%)

Note that several of these figures are obviously bogus, with round numbers and summer values an even fraction of the winter value suggesting developer reports rather than actual data, and the 80% claimed capacity for one of the Otis Air Force Base turbines is clearly impossible.

Therefore, the ISO-NE report of 0.37% of its power in winter and 0.16% in summer is an exaggeration of the true situation. That piddling contribution includes the output from nine very large wind energy facilities, all on mountain ridges that used to provide important forested habitat.

(Note that the 42-MW Mars Hill Wind Farm in Maine is not included here, because it is outside of the ISO-NE network. And according to the New England Wind Forum of the U.S. Department of Energy, there are two other large facilities currently under construction — Record Hill Wind Project [50 MW] in Byron and Roxbury, Me. and Kingdom Community Wind [63 MW] in Lowell, Vt. — and five more that have been permitted — Cape Wind [468 MW] and Hoosac Wind Energy Project [30 MW] in Mass., Spruce Mountain [19 MW] in Me., Granite Reliable Power Windpark [99 MW] in N.H., and Georgia Mountain Community Wind [12 MW] in Vt.; the Hoosac and Granite projects are in fact under construction, and the Record Hill project is operating.)

wind power, wind energy, environment, environmentalism

Leahy loves fascism

Not only did Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy vote to further codify the USA's march to military dictatorship in the form of the NDAA, he is also the sponsor of PIPA, the Senate version of SOPA, adding censorship of the internet to his acquiescence to fascism.

human rights, Vermont

The Washington Post shakes things up

First, on Friday Jonathan Turley wrote "10 reasons the U.S. is no longer the land of the free":

Every year, the State Department issues reports on individual rights in other countries, monitoring the passage of restrictive laws and regulations around the world. Iran, for example, has been criticized for denying fair public trials and limiting privacy, while Russia has been taken to task for undermining due process. Other countries have been condemned for the use of secret evidence and torture.

Even as we pass judgment on countries we consider unfree, Americans remain confident that any definition of a free nation must include their own — the land of free. Yet, the laws and practices of the land should shake that confidence. In the decade since Sept. 11, 2001, this country has comprehensively reduced civil liberties in the name of an expanded security state. The most recent example of this was the National Defense Authorization Act, signed Dec. 31, which allows for the indefinite detention of citizens. At what point does the reduction of individual rights in our country change how we define ourselves? ...

Americans often proclaim our nation as a symbol of freedom to the world while dismissing nations such as Cuba and China as categorically unfree. Yet, objectively, we may be only half right. Those countries do lack basic individual rights such as due process, placing them outside any reasonable definition of “free,” but the United States now has much more in common with such regimes than anyone may like to admit.

These countries also have constitutions that purport to guarantee freedoms and rights. But their governments have broad discretion in denying those rights and few real avenues for challenges by citizens — precisely the problem with the new laws in this country.

The list of powers acquired by the U.S. government since 9/11 puts us in rather troubling company.

Assassination of U.S. citizens ... Indefinite detention ... Arbitrary justice ... Warrantless searches ... Secret evidence ... War crimes ... Secret court ... Immunity from judicial review ... Continual monitoring of citizens ... Extraordinary renditions ...

And the week before (and appearing in our local paper this past Sunday), John Tirman wrote "Why do we ignore the civilians killed in American wars?":

As the United States officially ended the war in Iraq last month, President Obama spoke eloquently at Fort Bragg, N.C., lauding troops for “your patriotism, your commitment to fulfill your mission, your abiding commitment to one another,” and offering words of grief for the nearly 4,500 members of the U.S. armed forces who died in Iraq. He did not, however, mention the sacrifices of the Iraqi people.

This inattention to civilian deaths in America’s wars isn’t unique to Iraq. There’s little evidence that the American public gives much thought to the people who live in the nations where our military interventions take place. Think about the memorials on the Mall honoring American sacrifices in Korea and Vietnam. These are powerful, sacred spots, but neither mentions the people of those countries who perished in the conflicts.

The major wars the United States has fought since the surrender of Japan in 1945 — in Korea, Indochina, Iraq and Afghanistan — have produced colossal carnage. For most of them, we do not have an accurate sense of how many people died, but a conservative estimate is at least 6 million civilians and soldiers. ...

Why the American silence on our wars’ main victims? Our self-image, based on what cultural historian Richard Slotkin calls “the frontier myth” — in which righteous violence is used to subdue or annihilate the savages of whatever land we’re trying to conquer — plays a large role. For hundreds of years, the frontier myth has been one of America’s sturdiest national narratives.

When the challenges from communism in Korea and Vietnam appeared, we called on these cultural tropes to understand the U.S. mission overseas. The same was true for Iraq and Afghanistan, with the news media and politicians frequently portraying Islamic terrorists as frontier savages. By framing each of these wars as a battle to civilize a lawless culture, we essentially typecast the local populations as theIndians of our North American conquest. As the foreign policy maven Robert D. Kaplan wrote on the Wall Street Journal op-ed page in 2004, “The red Indian metaphor is one with which a liberal policy nomenklatura may be uncomfortable, but Army and Marine field officers have embraced it because it captures perfectly the combat challenge of the early 21st century.”

Politicians tend to speak in broader terms, such as defending Western values, or simply refer to resistance fighters as terrorists, the 21st-century word for savages. Remember the military’s code name for the raid of Osama bin Laden’s compound? It was Geronimo. ...

Perhaps the most compelling explanation for indifference, though, taps into our beliefs about right and wrong. More than 30 years ago, social psychologists developed the “just world” theory, which argues that humans naturally assume that the world should be orderly and rational. When that “just world” is disrupted, we tend to explain away the event as an aberration. For example, when encountering a beggar on the street, a common reaction is indifference or even anger, in the belief that no one should go hungry in America.

This explains much of our response to the violence in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan. When the wars went badly and violence escalated, Americans tended to ignore or even blame the victims. The public dismissed the civilians because their high mortality rates, displacement and demolished cities were discordant with our understandings of the missions and the U.S. role in the world.

The Faustian Bargain that Modern Economists Never Mention

Gary Peters writes at Our Finite World:

Historically people have shifted their belief systems in various ways. The Greeks and Romans believed in numerous gods and goddesses and attributed all kinds of powers to them. Then the great monotheistic religions came along and people began to believe in just one god, though they honored him under different names.

Recently, beliefs have shifted again, with people worshipping just one part of a god, the invisible hand. Thanks to Adam Smith and those who followed him, especially the current neoclassical economic theologians, we have seen such an increase in the world’s wealth and sheer numbers that it is hard to imagine life before the industrial revolution, with its shift from mostly human and animal muscle power to the energy dense fossil fuels—coal, oil, and natural gas. It is also hard to imagine that humanity could someday slide back into another age of scarcer and more expensive energy, but that is a possibility that cannot be excluded from our thinking.

The Faustian Bargain

What about the Faustian bargain? It remains deeply hidden from view because its exposure by the high priests of modern economics would force us to rethink how we live and why we live this way, as well as what we’re planning to leave for future generations. The Faustian bargain goes something like this: Thanks to the discovery and exploitation of fossil fuels, humans (really just a small minority of them) are able to live richer lives today than even the queens and kings of yore could have dreamed of.

Furthermore, we’ve used some of those finite resources to increase food supplies and to expand the human population, which provides the economic system with both more workers and more consumers, a necessity to keep the economy growing under our current economic model. The world’s population increased from 1.6 billion in 1900 to 7 billion today, and we add about 80 million more each year. Humans have quickly become the most numerous megafauna on the planet.

The other side of the bargain, the side hidden from view and never mentioned in economics texts is this: At some undetermined time in the future, one that creeps ever closer, this economic system, fed by energy and other resources at ever increasing rates at one end and spewing out waste products at rates that cannot be absorbed by Earth’s ecosystems at the other, is unsustainable. What that means is simple enough: Industrial society as we know it cannot go on as it has forever—not even close.

Our economic system must exist within Earth’s finite limits, so recent and current generations have sold their soul to the devil for temporary riches, leaving the Devil to collect his due when the system falls apart under its own weight and the four horsemen of the apocalypse ride again across the world’s landscapes. None of this will happen tomorrow or this week or this year, but our economic system is faltering at both ends.

For many, if not most, of the world’s population life may become more difficult, incomes lower, and uncertainty greater. It does not mean the end of the world, as some predict for 2012, but it will mean that future generations probably will not live like current ones. Rather than admit that the current system cannot be sustained, the affluent and powerful will do everything possible to maintain the status quo.

The Fallacy of Long-Term Economic Growth

Economic growth remains a mantra for politicians and corporate leaders, including the banksters who brought us the Great Recession. Even President Obama, like presidents before him, speaks regularly about “growing the economy.” But nothing in the real world suggests that economic growth can continue forever. Nor does much evidence support the notion that economic growth has been a good thing for either the planet or billions of its human residents. It looks more like a colossal Ponzi scheme.

One of the most optimistic supporters of modern economics and its marvels is Tim Harford, who wrote, in his book The Logic of Life, “The more of us there are in the world, living our logical lives, the better our chances of seeing out the next million years.” This may be the dumbest thing an economist has ever written and he shows not even the slightest understanding of the planet on which we live. Homo sapiens has only been around for about 200,000 years, so another 800,000 years at the rate we’re going seems absurd. If our population were to continue to grow at an annual rate of only 1.0 percent, slightly less than our current growth rate, then our numbers would increase to over 115 trillion in just the next thousand years. You can play with the growth rate if you wish, but you cannot escape the cold hard fact that human population growth must stop. Only economists seem to miss the fact that economic growth must stop.

Among the high priests of modern economic theology, Paul Krugman came closer than anyone to admitting that growth could not go on forever on our planet. In an Op-Ed piece in the New York Times (12-26-10) he wrote, “What the commodity markets are telling us is that we’re living in a finite world [my italics] ….” He went on to mention the possibility of peak oil production and even climate change, both of which threaten the modern economic system, but then, returning to the faithful fold, he wrote, “This won’t bring an end to economic growth….” He admitted that our lifestyles might have to change but gave no clue about where and how that might come about or where it might lead.

Economic reality and economic theology don’t fit together very well. In 1988 Edward Abbey wrote, in his book One Life at a Time, Please:

It should be clear to everyone by now that crude numerical growth does not solve our problems of unemployment, welfare, crime, traffic, filth, noise, squalor, the pollution of air, the corruption of our politics, the debasement of the school system (hardly worthy of the name ‘education’), and the general loss of popular control over the political process—where money, not people, is now the determining factor.

Today, 24 years later, virtually every word of Abbey’s statement is truer than ever, yet politicians and economic theologians continue to preach that if we can just grow the economy (local, state, national, and world) then all will be well again. You need not look far or deeply to see how wrong they are and what price we’ll pay when the Devil comes looking for our collective souls.

Among economists, Herman Daly is one of the few who has tried to reveal the Faustian bargain for what it really is, as is apparent in this statement from a Dec. 26 article, Rio+20 Needs to Address the Downsides of Growth:

Even though economies are still growing, and still put growth in first place, it is no longer economic growth, at least in wealthy countries, but has become uneconomic growth. In other words, the environmental and social costs of increased production are growing faster than the benefits, increasing “illth” faster than wealth, thereby making us poorer, not richer. We hide the uneconomic nature of growth from ourselves by faulty national accounting because growth is our panacea, indeed our idol, and we are very afraid of the idea of a steady-state economy. The increasing illth is evident in exploding financial debt, in biodiversity loss, and in destruction of natural services, most notably climate regulation

Click here to go to the complete essay.

The Veritas Papers: A Crash Course on the Truth

A crash course on the truth about the struggle for Palestinian human rights: The Veritas Papers

Download:

1.  Occupation from Scratch — Confused? Have no idea what this is all about? Find out here!
2.  Myths vs. Reality — Don't believe everything you’re told about the occupation of Palestine
3.  The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine — The “Nakba” of 1948 and continuous policy of ethnic cleansing
4.  Israel’s “Right” to Exist — Why don’t Palestinians accept or support this “right”?
5.  The West Bank and Settlements
6.  Apartheid — The separation and privilege of one people over another another
7.  Breaking Gaza — Collective punishment and incarceration of an entire population
8.  International Law — What does the UN & International Law have to say?
9.  Resistance — Is the Gandhi way the only way? Violent vs. non-violent resistance
10.  A Real Partner for Peace — Who is preventing peace in the Middle East?
11a.  Canada's Role in Occupation — Is Canada the “peace-maker” we think?
11b.  America: Israel’s Biggest Ally — Unconditional American support and funding of war crimes
12.  Boycotting Israel — The international boycott, divestment & sanctions campaign
Addendum 1.  Companies to Boycott — Be a responsible buyer and stop supporting apartheid
Addendum 2.  Famous People and Things Who Support Palestine

All 15 Veritas Papers

The Veritas Handbook — A guide to understanding the struggle for Palestinian human rights

human rights

Military spending: USA vs. the world

Military expeditures 2010 (in billion 2009 USD, as % of 2009 GDP, and per capita) according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute:

Worldwide total:	1,604b	2.5%	$229
Non-USA total:	917b	1.9%	$137
USA:	687b	4.7%	$2,196
China:	114b	2.2%	$85
France:	61b	2.5%	$938
UK:	57b	2.7%	$915
Russia:	53b	4.3%	$371
Japan:	51b	1.0%	$399
Germany:	47b	1.4%	$575
Saudi Arabia:	43b	11.2%	$1,587
Italy:	38b	1.8%	$626
India:	35b	2.8%	$29
Brazil:	28b	1.6%	$146
South Korea:	24b	2.9%	$494
Canada:	20b	1.5%	$578
Australia:	20b	1.9%	$877
Spain:	16b	1.1%	$346
UAE:	16b	7.3%	$1,928
Turkey:	16b	2.7%	$217
Israel:	13b	6.3%	$1,667
Netherlands:	12b	1.5%	$714
Greece:	9b	3.2%	$833
Colombia:	9b	3.7%	$194
Taiwan:	8b	2.4%	$345
Poland:	8b	1.8%	$210
Iran:	7b	1.8%	$92
Venezuela:	3b	1.3%	$112

The military expenditures of the next highest 22 countries after the USA, including the two most populous nations, China and India, all together equal those of the USA alone.

Military expenditures by the USA account for 43% of the worldwide total, are equal to 75% of the rest of the world's combined, and per capita are 16 times the average of the rest of the world.

Iran's military expenditures are one one-hundredth of the USA's, Venezuela's four-tenths of one one-hundredth. Per person, the USA spends 24 and 20 times more than Iran and Venezuela, respectively.

Obama's useful idiots on the left

Ron Paul certainly deserves criticism on many issues. So does Obama. That has been Glenn Greenwald's point. You can't avoid criticism of Obama by changing the subject. A more interesting article would have been "Obama's useful idiots on the left", since, as Greenwald notes, Obama has relentlessly attacked civil rights, entrenched executive secrecy and authoritarianism, and used war to further the economic misery of most Americans (not to mention the misery and demise of the people who happen to live in his "theatres").

I would go further and note that Obama has not been even center-left on almost all social and other domestic issues. The balance of good and bad in a candidate is one that must be weighed by each of us, but Paul's "positives" are transformative and Obama's are tepid (at best). There is no shortage of negatives from either of them.

The obvious worry of the Obamacrats is that they would actually have to answer to Ron Paul as the Republican nominee instead of one of the mainstream candidates, who, since Obama is already so far right, are easily dismissed as extremists in their efforts to outdo him.

Of course, if we had an actual democracy here in the U S of A, we could talk about Rocky Anderson, running in the Justice Party, who deserves our votes more than either Paul or Obama or anyone else spewed up for us by the two Wall St parties.

Would Romney treat America as he treated his dog?

Steve Nelson, "Sensibilities", Valley News (White River Junction, Vt.), Jan. 8, 2012:

It is nearly the eve of the New Hampshire primary and, despite the surprising Iowa results for Rick Santorum, Mitt Romney appears to be the man to beat. I suppose this is no great surprise, as Romney is a known quantity and seems relatively sensible despite his opportunistic lurch to the right during this campaign. While his reputation for flip-flopping is well deserved (health care, abortion rights, gay rights, etc.), there are few politicians who don't pander or at least play to the base (both meanings intended) during primary campaigns. Bill Clinton was, somewhat affectionately, dubbed Pander Bear by some during his presidential campaigns.

Ambition and opportunism are not qualities that should disqualify Romney. If they were disqualifiers, we'd have few if any candidates for high office. Romney is ill suited for the presidency because he once drove to Canada with the family's Irish setter on the roof of the car, as New York Times columnist Gail Collins never fails to humorously note in her Romney-related columns.

But unlike Collins, I'm quite serious. America is in trouble. Poverty is at the highest levels since the Great Depression. Unemployment is tenacious and debilitating for millions of families. The gap between rich and poor is shameful. Folks don't have access to decent health care. Schools are underfunded. As the Occupy Wall Street movement chaotically reminds us, life is better for 1 percent and decidedly worse for the other 99 percent. While this may be slight statistical hyperbole, the general point is indisputable.

Mitt Romney was and is among the 1 percent. He was born into privilege and, like too many others with this birthright, believes deeply in the myth of opportunity and meritocracy. There is not a shred of evidence in his personal, professional or political life that he is self-aware enough to recognize his own unearned privilege or empathic enough to understand the deep structural disadvantages that plague millions of Americans. He believes that decisions can be made by analyzing mounds of data and trusting the ethically blind mechanism of free markets.

He embraces his religious faith with the same uncritical certainty that he embraces the other "values" he learned in the privileged and exclusive confines of his private schools, his Mormon university and his gated communities. It's not that these things are necessarily bad. It's that they are his world, not the world.

It is not that wealth and privilege should disqualify anyone from public office either. Other privileged folks in American political history have shown great capacity for genuine empathy. The Kennedy family, despite imperfections among some family members, comes to mind. Their privilege was accompanied by a deep commitment to social justice that continues to play out in the lives of the current generation. The convictions of wealthy progressives may be a form of noblesse oblige, but noblesse oblige beats the heck out of no sense of obligation whatsoever, which is what Romney displays in word and deed.

Romney's treatment of the family dog during a road trip 25 years ago offers a clue to his political sensibilities. I am, quite admittedly, an unrepentant dog lover who mourned the loss of my last dog with intensity that surprised even me. But my excesses aside, I cannot imagine what would lead someone to put his dog in a carrier and strap it to the roof of the car. He claimed that the "dog liked it." The dog, of course, couldn't verify or deny that claim, but it was certainly put at significant risk compared with the human passengers who enjoyed relative safety and comfort inside the car. I can't know the dog's experience, either, but an empathetic person can reasonably deduce that it wasn't a joy ride up there with the roaring wind and isolation from family members.

But just like the struggling Americans that Romney doesn't seem to really see, he may have assumed the dog was lucky to be along for the ride. Romney has never been buffeted by the winds of misfortune or been at risk because of poverty, lack of health care or substandard housing. He's never felt the sting that comes with being denied basic human rights and dignity because of race or sexual identity.

Mitt Romney can't help that he's never had these experiences, but he can't be excused for failing to understand them.

Steve Nelson lives in Sharon (Vt.) and New York City, where he is the head of the Calhoun School.

Opportunity Knocks: Romney vs. Reality

Editorial, Valley News, White River Junction, Vt., Jan. 8, 2012:

As Mitt Romney tells it, the 2012 presidential campaign will be a titanic struggle for the very soul of America, in which the Republican hero (played by … Mitt Romney) seeks not only to unseat President Obama but also to rout the incumbent’s dark vision of transforming America into “an Entitlement Society.” By contrast, the shining Republican knight will fight under the banner of what Romney calls “the Opportunity Society.” We take it the candidate is Big on Capitalization, as well as Unfettered Capitalism.

“In an Entitlement Society,” Romney wrote last month in USA Today, “government provides every citizen the same or similar rewards, regardless of education, effort and willingness to innovate, pioneer or take risk. In an Opportunity Society, free people living under a limited government choose whether or not to pursue education, engage in hard work, and pursue the passion of their ideas and dreams. If they succeed, they merit the rewards they are able to enjoy.” What happens if they fail is not specified.

Anyway, it’s easy to understand why this fable appeals to Romney, with $200 million in the bank and houses from sea to shining sea. One might even say the former venture capitalist exudes a sense of entitlement. It has apparently escaped his attention that the average guy has approximately as much chance of succeeding in the Opportunity Society of Romney’s fantasy as he does of hitting the Powerball numbers.

The Opportunity Society as many Americans experience it consists primarily of the opportunity to switch careers in middle age because their job was hijacked and taken overseas by corporate buyout specialists; to run the risk of not carrying health insurance because it is literally unaffordable; to see their children graduate under a mountain of higher-education debt; to watch their savings flushed down Wall Street’s 401(k) sewer because traditional pensions hardly exist any more. These are the sorts of opportunities created over the past few decades not by Obama, but by a philosophy that very much mirrors Romney’s faith in the wisdom of the market.

For the moment at least, people can still fall back on “entitlements” like Social Security and Medicare, benefits to which they become “entitled” by a working lifetime of taxes borne by themselves and their employers. Perhaps if he’s elected, Romney will create the opportunity for people to forgo these debilitating obstacles to the entrepreneurial spirit.

And what of this Entitlement Society allegedly being constructed by the current president? In the Romney version, Obama seeks to transform a merit-based nation of natural-born strivers into one of those notorious European-style social democracies. As it turns out, that might not be as bad as Romney imagines. As The New York Times reported Thursday, many researchers have concluded in recent years that Americans enjoy far less economic mobility than their peers in Canada and much of Western Europe, where unionization remains strong, the social safety net is more robust, and income inequality is less sharp.

All this is not to say that creating an Opportunity Society in the United States is impossible or undesirable. The question is, opportunity for what? Our answer would be the chance to live a good life, however each person defines that; a chance to fulfill one’s potential and to use one’s abilities to their fullest. How to get there? The first prerequisite is a level playing field. In our opportunity society, no one would suffer a disadvantage by the circumstances of his or her birth, and educational opportunity would be equal. Inherited wealth would confer no permanent advantage. Talent and hard work would be valued and rewarded by society in proportion to how much they contribute to the commonweal. A sturdy safety net would prevent those who stumble on the way up from going into free-fall. Risk-taking would not be confused with recklessness. Access to affordable health care would be a given, and those nearing the finish line in the race of life would enjoy secure retirement. In short, constructing a true merit-based democracy requires providing opportunities starkly at odds with many of Romney’s priorities.

What is the alternative to wind power?

If you are against industrial-scale wind power, than what alternative do you support?

That question is in fact a means of changing the subject.

The alternative to erecting industrial wind turbines is obviously to not erect industrial wind turbines. The burden is on the developers and proponents to answer whether the benefits outweigh the costs — and not in theory, but in actual practice.

The first question above is an attempt to avoid answering the second question, which nobody should be tricked out of continuing to ask.

(Recognizing this rhetorical deception is helpful in many other situations as well, wherever the status quo or accepted wisdom or tribal consensus is being challenged: Keep the guilty and the hypocritical on the defensive!)

Nevertheless, even the theoretical benefits of industrial wind can be easily obtained by simply using a little less electricity, which would also save the planet and the neighbors from the impacts of wind development.

wind power, wind energy, wind turbines, wind farms, environment, environmentalism

Wind development math

The existing 6-MW wind energy facility in Searsburg, Vt., generates an average of 11,000 MWh per year.

Its proposed 30-MW expansion into the Green Mountain National Forest in Readsboro is projected to generate 92,506 MWh per year.

This figure has been blindly accepted by both the state Public Service Board and the USDA Forest Service, both of which have approved the project. (Spain's Iberdrola is the developer.)

The 30-MW expansion is 5 times larger than the original 6-MW project.

But nobody questions that its output will be 8.4 times more!

wind power, wind energy, wind turbines, wind farms, environment, environmentalism, animal rights, Vermont

House and Senate votes for NDAA, military dictatorship

House (283-136): http://www.govtrack.us/congress/vote.xpd?vote=h2011-932

Senate (86-13): http://www.govtrack.us/congress/vote.xpd?vote=s2011-230

More information: http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d112:H.R.1540:

Vermont, anarchism