[Letter to U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders, from Garret Keizer of Sutton, Vermont — Published in the Times Argus and the Rutland Herald, March 31, 2013. Removed by request of the author.]
... Bernie Sanders, ... de facto spokesperson for the opportunists of “green capitalism”.
wind power, wind energy, wind farms, environment, environmentalism, Vermont
March 31, 2013
March 28, 2013
Rump Steak
Advocacy group Rural Vermont is promoting its 2013 “Annual Celebration”:
“Philip Ackerman-Leist,” director of Green Mountain College’s Farm & Food Project ... will be the guest speaker. Ackerman-Leist will share his first-person account of the recent international controversy involving Green Mountain College’s pair of working oxen “Bill” and “Lou.” This moving and disturbing story illustrates the profound lack of understanding and connection between contemporary American society and the source of our food. ... Special guest Philip Phillip [sic] will offer his ideas on how we can work together to bridge this divide.Rural Vermont is a fairly politically progressive organization unfortunately bound by a devotion to and reflexive defense of the exploitation of animals. Ackerman-Leist similarly is too gorged on the flesh of (and the profits from) his grass-fed heritage-breed cows to consider that he might be the one with a profound lack of understanding. What possible ideas could he offer to bridge the divide between those who think a team of oxen deserved retirement after 10 years of work and those who can only think about such animals as food?
It was precisely people who are connected with the sources of their food who were able to draw a line at killing Bill and Lou. Ackerman-Leist, who petulantly had Lou killed despite (or rather because of) the controversy, is like the slaughterhouse worker who recently posted a video of himself shooting a horse. There is nothing in his actions or words that suggests working together to bridge a divide. In fact, the bridge is already there, but he refuses to acknowledge it, stubbornly seething at the shoreline, still shouting impotent defiance after those who have left him behind.
environment, environmentalism, animal rights, vegetarianism, veganism, Vermont, ecoanarchism
March 24, 2013
Life after Oil and Gas: Pity Earth’s Creatures
Today’s New York Times Sunday Review juxtaposed two pieces on its front page: Elisabeth Rosenthal’s puff piece (last gasp?) for large-scale renewable energy, “Life After Oil and Gas”, and Edward Hoagland’s lamentation about nature’s disappearance under the march of human civilization, “Pity Earth’s Creatures”.
Hoagland’s piece stands as the answer to Rosenthal’s.
Except for some comments by International Energy Agency economist Fatih Birol suggesting that conservation and efficiency are more practical and effective choices, Rosenthal hardly considers why we have an energy crisis, of consequences as much as supply. (She also ignores, of course, the fact that huge investments in wind and solar have never been documented to actually reduce the use of other fuels. And both Rosenthal and Birol ignore the fact that countries and states that produce a high percentage of their electricity from wind are actually on larger grids, which make the percentage very much less.)
Instead Rosenthal assumes that we can “easily” produce the power we need from wind, solar, and water, citing the latest work of Mark Jacobson, whose numbers should frighten rather than inspire:
For New York State alone: 4,020 onshore and 12,770 offshore 5-MW wind turbines, 387 100-MW concentrated solar plants, 828 50-MW PV solar plants, 5,000,000 5-kW home and 500,000 100-kW business rooftop PV solar systems, 36 100-MW geothermal plants, 1,910 0.75-MW wave systems, 2,600 1-MW tidal turbines, as well as 7 1,300-MW hydro plants (half of which already exists).
Except for the rooftop solar, where do these go? Where do all the new “smart-grid” power lines and substations go? Where do all the materials to build and maintain and replace all these things come from? And what if these projections fall short (as they most certainly would)?
Except for rare hydro sources like Niagara Falls (or geothermal sources like Iceland’s volcanoes), renewable energy sources are diffuse. Therefore they require sprawling facilities of huge devices to collect enough to meet even a fraction of our electricity needs, let alone all of our energy (i.e., including transportation, heating, and manufacturing).
Furthermore, wind and solar are intermittent: The wind isn’t always blowing, and the sun shines only during the day. On top of that, their energy is variable, wildly so, in the case of wind. That means they need 100% backup.
Jacobson’s vision has already been imagined by H.G. Wells. In his 1897 “A Story of the Days To Come”, he described “the Wind Vane and Waterfall Trust, the great company that owned every wind wheel and waterfall in the world, and which pumped all the water and supplied all the electric energy that people in these latter days required.”
As Hoagland writes in the other piece, we have already lost so much, as 7 billion people (doubled since 1970, tripled since 1940) trample over and push aside the world of other lives. The dream of renewables, which are inherently inefficient, only expands that process. If we would decry what we have already done to the earth, we need to start doing with a lot less. But the reality of renewables is that their use not only allows but requires more use of fossil and nuclear fuels, more extraction of resources, more paving over paradise.
wind power, wind energy, wind turbines, wind farms, environment, environmentalism, human rights, animal rights, ecoanarchism
Hoagland’s piece stands as the answer to Rosenthal’s.
Except for some comments by International Energy Agency economist Fatih Birol suggesting that conservation and efficiency are more practical and effective choices, Rosenthal hardly considers why we have an energy crisis, of consequences as much as supply. (She also ignores, of course, the fact that huge investments in wind and solar have never been documented to actually reduce the use of other fuels. And both Rosenthal and Birol ignore the fact that countries and states that produce a high percentage of their electricity from wind are actually on larger grids, which make the percentage very much less.)
Instead Rosenthal assumes that we can “easily” produce the power we need from wind, solar, and water, citing the latest work of Mark Jacobson, whose numbers should frighten rather than inspire:
For New York State alone: 4,020 onshore and 12,770 offshore 5-MW wind turbines, 387 100-MW concentrated solar plants, 828 50-MW PV solar plants, 5,000,000 5-kW home and 500,000 100-kW business rooftop PV solar systems, 36 100-MW geothermal plants, 1,910 0.75-MW wave systems, 2,600 1-MW tidal turbines, as well as 7 1,300-MW hydro plants (half of which already exists).
Except for the rooftop solar, where do these go? Where do all the new “smart-grid” power lines and substations go? Where do all the materials to build and maintain and replace all these things come from? And what if these projections fall short (as they most certainly would)?
Except for rare hydro sources like Niagara Falls (or geothermal sources like Iceland’s volcanoes), renewable energy sources are diffuse. Therefore they require sprawling facilities of huge devices to collect enough to meet even a fraction of our electricity needs, let alone all of our energy (i.e., including transportation, heating, and manufacturing).
Furthermore, wind and solar are intermittent: The wind isn’t always blowing, and the sun shines only during the day. On top of that, their energy is variable, wildly so, in the case of wind. That means they need 100% backup.
Jacobson’s vision has already been imagined by H.G. Wells. In his 1897 “A Story of the Days To Come”, he described “the Wind Vane and Waterfall Trust, the great company that owned every wind wheel and waterfall in the world, and which pumped all the water and supplied all the electric energy that people in these latter days required.”
Far away, spiked, jagged and indented by the wind vanes, the Surrey Hills rose blue and faint; to the north and nearer, the sharp contours of Highgate and Muswell Hill were similarly jagged. And all over the countryside, he knew, on every crest and hill, where once the hedges had interlaced, and cottages, churches, inns, and farmhouses had nestled among their trees, wind wheels similar to those he saw and bearing like vast advertisements, gaunt and distinctive symbols of the new age, cast their whirling shadows and stored incessantly the energy that flowed away incessantly through all the arteries of the city. ...Where is nature in all this? Where is the countryside? Jacobson’s vision would turn it all into a power plant for the cities, and mines and refineries for endlessly building that power plant. There would be no escape. No nature to marvel at and lose oneself in. No nature to be left alone to live its own lives. Only the vain hand of human expansion.
To the east and south the great circular shapes of complaining wind-wheels blotted out the heavens ...
As Hoagland writes in the other piece, we have already lost so much, as 7 billion people (doubled since 1970, tripled since 1940) trample over and push aside the world of other lives. The dream of renewables, which are inherently inefficient, only expands that process. If we would decry what we have already done to the earth, we need to start doing with a lot less. But the reality of renewables is that their use not only allows but requires more use of fossil and nuclear fuels, more extraction of resources, more paving over paradise.
wind power, wind energy, wind turbines, wind farms, environment, environmentalism, human rights, animal rights, ecoanarchism
March 20, 2013
Wind industry fears real scrutiny
To the Editor, Valley News:
What is the real threat of Vermont Senate Bill 30 (Dori Wolfe: “Don't Reject Wind Energy in Vermont,” letter, March 17)? Now stripped of the 3-year moratorium provision, it only requires the Section 248 permitting process to abide by rather than merely consider Act 250 criteria.
It is ironic that business people like Wolfe, while in one breath urging us to save the environment by buying their products and services, in the next express alarm that environmental scrutiny “would severely damage the wind industry.”
But on the latter point she is right: These projects, especially on otherwise fiercely protected ridgelines, are not green. The environmental (not to mention financial) costs far outweigh the necessarily minuscule benefit from a diffuse, intermittent, and highly variable source.
To avoid that conclusion, Wolfe raises the specter of oil and gasoline, which fuel our cars, heat our homes, and power our factories but provide almost none of our electricity. In fact, more wind requires building more natural gas– and even diesel-powered plants just for backup. She notes that housecats kill more birds, as if that absolves the additional deaths caused by wind turbines, and disregards wind energy’s unique toll on raptors (eagles, owls, and the like) and bats, the latter already decimated by white nose syndrome.
Wolfe also touts the latest poll showing continuing support for industrial wind energy (ignoring the broad dissatisfaction everywhere they are actually erected or even proposed). If industrial wind is as popular as the polls indicate, then the greater local involvement enabled by Act 250 would be a boon, not a threat.
But S.30 would make it harder for developers to divide communities and to pit town against town, because Act 250 puts the region’s interests before those of industry lobbyists in Montpelier.
If industrial-scale wind (and solar) are indeed beneficial to the environment and communities, locally as well as globally, then its marketers have nothing to fear from a more democratic and environmentally rigorous permitting process. If they do indeed have reason to fear, that’s precisely why we need to say yes to S.30.
Eric Rosenbloom
Hartland
[Note: The letter as reproduced here reflects minor editing by the author.]
[Click here to read about Jeff Wolfe's threats regarding S.30.]
wind power, wind energy, environment, environmentalism, human rights, Vermont
What is the real threat of Vermont Senate Bill 30 (Dori Wolfe: “Don't Reject Wind Energy in Vermont,” letter, March 17)? Now stripped of the 3-year moratorium provision, it only requires the Section 248 permitting process to abide by rather than merely consider Act 250 criteria.
It is ironic that business people like Wolfe, while in one breath urging us to save the environment by buying their products and services, in the next express alarm that environmental scrutiny “would severely damage the wind industry.”
But on the latter point she is right: These projects, especially on otherwise fiercely protected ridgelines, are not green. The environmental (not to mention financial) costs far outweigh the necessarily minuscule benefit from a diffuse, intermittent, and highly variable source.
To avoid that conclusion, Wolfe raises the specter of oil and gasoline, which fuel our cars, heat our homes, and power our factories but provide almost none of our electricity. In fact, more wind requires building more natural gas– and even diesel-powered plants just for backup. She notes that housecats kill more birds, as if that absolves the additional deaths caused by wind turbines, and disregards wind energy’s unique toll on raptors (eagles, owls, and the like) and bats, the latter already decimated by white nose syndrome.
Wolfe also touts the latest poll showing continuing support for industrial wind energy (ignoring the broad dissatisfaction everywhere they are actually erected or even proposed). If industrial wind is as popular as the polls indicate, then the greater local involvement enabled by Act 250 would be a boon, not a threat.
But S.30 would make it harder for developers to divide communities and to pit town against town, because Act 250 puts the region’s interests before those of industry lobbyists in Montpelier.
If industrial-scale wind (and solar) are indeed beneficial to the environment and communities, locally as well as globally, then its marketers have nothing to fear from a more democratic and environmentally rigorous permitting process. If they do indeed have reason to fear, that’s precisely why we need to say yes to S.30.
Eric Rosenbloom
Hartland
[Note: The letter as reproduced here reflects minor editing by the author.]
[Click here to read about Jeff Wolfe's threats regarding S.30.]
wind power, wind energy, environment, environmentalism, human rights, Vermont
March 17, 2013
Why do European cars have twice the fuel efficiency as in the US?
Dear Senator/Representative:
I use the Mini Cooper Clubman (manual transmission) as a typical example here, and because the Clubman is a larger model. Compare these fuel efficiency figures:
US: 35 mpg hwy, 27 cty, 30 comb.
UK: 50 mpg hwy, 34 cty, 43 comb. (CO₂ emissions 129 g/km, 152 g/mi)
(converted from Imperial to US gallons)
Diesel:
UK: 65 mpg hwy, 53 cty, 60 comb. (CO₂ emissions 103 g/km, 138 g/mi)
(converted from Imperial to US gallons)
These new super-efficient diesel engines (and apparently the regular gas engines, too) are burdened in the U.S. with obsolete particulate emissions rules that severely reduce their efficiency.
Whereas their efficiency ensures very low emissions anyway.
Please do all you can to allow the new-generation diesel engines that Europeans enjoy into the US, without forcing them (or even regular gas engines) to lose their incredible efficiency.
Imagine cutting the greenhouse gas emissions from most of our cars by half!
[comment: CO₂ emissions are not regulated in either the U.S. or the E.U., and particulate emission limits are similar (and similarly specified as g/mi or g/km), so it is even stranger that high-efficiency diesel-powered cars, common in Europe, are not available in the U.S. Or that those few diesels that are available in the U.S. (e.g., from Volkswagen) get much less mileage than comparable models in Europe.]
I use the Mini Cooper Clubman (manual transmission) as a typical example here, and because the Clubman is a larger model. Compare these fuel efficiency figures:
US: 35 mpg hwy, 27 cty, 30 comb.
UK: 50 mpg hwy, 34 cty, 43 comb. (CO₂ emissions 129 g/km, 152 g/mi)
(converted from Imperial to US gallons)
Diesel:
UK: 65 mpg hwy, 53 cty, 60 comb. (CO₂ emissions 103 g/km, 138 g/mi)
(converted from Imperial to US gallons)
These new super-efficient diesel engines (and apparently the regular gas engines, too) are burdened in the U.S. with obsolete particulate emissions rules that severely reduce their efficiency.
Whereas their efficiency ensures very low emissions anyway.
Please do all you can to allow the new-generation diesel engines that Europeans enjoy into the US, without forcing them (or even regular gas engines) to lose their incredible efficiency.
Imagine cutting the greenhouse gas emissions from most of our cars by half!
[comment: CO₂ emissions are not regulated in either the U.S. or the E.U., and particulate emission limits are similar (and similarly specified as g/mi or g/km), so it is even stranger that high-efficiency diesel-powered cars, common in Europe, are not available in the U.S. Or that those few diesels that are available in the U.S. (e.g., from Volkswagen) get much less mileage than comparable models in Europe.]
March 13, 2013
Time and the Ferret Fancier
Time, still a cross, an irreconcilable liability; the single healthy moment chased by a starvation future and devoured by a voracious past. Paul Noble said time was only the skin of space, a necessity relative to the mind of man. That hard word relative: the height of a tree relative to the depth of the root and the strength of the storm.
Time like an everflowing stream . . . that pessimistic hymn that always made him see vividly the Annam and hear the curlews mewling, the melancholy air the cry of doomed prisoners in the dark; one of Rainey’s favorites because it could be dropped a key and roared without strain.
But he kept on trying to agree his two times – he had to, to make-believe some semblance of normality. He swore in a new set of intentions every night.
Morning and evening, Rainey one end, Jill the other and every evening scrape scrape scrape – Jill harping on the taut netting-wire with a not unmusical minor sound, the pink eyes flashing when they caught a spark of light. He always intended to be early with her meal but, just like going to school, some small thing or another appeared to delay him.
And then the dull end of a melancholy day – a few hours in the house, the fire dying down, the smell of hot rubber when the bottles were filled, Agatha making her policeman rounds, Ellen taking out her hairpins and letting the still rich gray-black hair flow over her shoulders, transforming herself unwittingly into a young old witch, the dark eyes burning in the parchment-pale face, Conor yawning, winding the clock and examining the kindling for the morning, the refreshed clock dinging and danging out time – ding-dang, time-time. Wash hands, face, teeth, feet and take the miming candle and dance a horde of shadows up the stairs. Bed and an insurance man's spell of a prayer that was a rope down which he slid into timelessness, through all the gathering pageantry of dream.
—Anthony C. West, The Ferret Fancier (1963)
Time like an everflowing stream . . . that pessimistic hymn that always made him see vividly the Annam and hear the curlews mewling, the melancholy air the cry of doomed prisoners in the dark; one of Rainey’s favorites because it could be dropped a key and roared without strain.
But he kept on trying to agree his two times – he had to, to make-believe some semblance of normality. He swore in a new set of intentions every night.
Morning and evening, Rainey one end, Jill the other and every evening scrape scrape scrape – Jill harping on the taut netting-wire with a not unmusical minor sound, the pink eyes flashing when they caught a spark of light. He always intended to be early with her meal but, just like going to school, some small thing or another appeared to delay him.
And then the dull end of a melancholy day – a few hours in the house, the fire dying down, the smell of hot rubber when the bottles were filled, Agatha making her policeman rounds, Ellen taking out her hairpins and letting the still rich gray-black hair flow over her shoulders, transforming herself unwittingly into a young old witch, the dark eyes burning in the parchment-pale face, Conor yawning, winding the clock and examining the kindling for the morning, the refreshed clock dinging and danging out time – ding-dang, time-time. Wash hands, face, teeth, feet and take the miming candle and dance a horde of shadows up the stairs. Bed and an insurance man's spell of a prayer that was a rope down which he slid into timelessness, through all the gathering pageantry of dream.
—Anthony C. West, The Ferret Fancier (1963)
March 10, 2013
Annie Gower
She bore me and she bears me still |
March 9, 2013
Gluttony dressed up as foodie-ism
B. R. Myers wrote in the March 2011 Atlantic:
We have all dined with him in restaurants: the host who insists on calling his special friend out of the kitchen for some awkward small talk. The publishing industry also wants us to meet a few chefs, only these are in no hurry to get back to work. Anthony Bourdain’s new book, his 10th, is Medium Raw: A Bloody Valentine to the World of Food and the People Who Cook. In it he announces, in his trademark thuggish style, that “it is now time to make the idea of not cooking ‘un-cool’ — and, in the harshest possible way short of physical brutality, drive that message home.” Having finished the book, I think I’d rather have absorbed a few punches and had the rest of the evening to myself. No more readable for being an artsier affair is chef Gabrielle Hamilton’s memoir, Blood, Bones and Butter.
To put aside these books after a few chapters is to feel a sense of liberation; it’s like stepping from a crowded, fetid restaurant into silence and fresh air. But only when writing such things for their own kind do so-called foodies truly let down their guard, which makes for some engrossing passages here and there. For insight too. The deeper an outsider ventures into this stuff, the clearer a unique community comes into view. In values, sense of humor, even childhood experience, its members are as similar to each other as they are different from everyone else.
For one thing, these people really do live to eat. Vogue’s restaurant critic, Jeffrey Steingarten, says he “spends the afternoon — or a week of afternoons — planning the perfect dinner of barbecued ribs or braised foie gras.” Michael Pollan boasts in The New York Times of his latest “36-Hour Dinner Party.” Similar schedules and priorities can be inferred from the work of other writers. These include a sort of milk-toast priest, anthologized in Best Food Writing 2010, who expounds unironically on the “ritual” of making the perfect slice:
It has always been crucial to the gourmet’s pleasure that he eat in ways the mainstream cannot afford. For hundreds of years this meant consuming enormous quantities of meat. That of animals that had been whipped to death was more highly valued for centuries, in the belief that pain and trauma enhanced taste. “A true gastronome,” according to a British dining manual of the time, “is as insensible to suffering as is a conqueror.” But for the past several decades, factory farms have made meat ever cheaper and — as the excellent book The CAFO [Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations] Reader makes clear — the pain and trauma are thrown in for free. The contemporary gourmet reacts by voicing an ever-stronger preference for free-range meats from small local farms. He even claims to believe that well-treated animals taste better, though his heart isn’t really in it. Steingarten tells of watching four people hold down a struggling, groaning pig for a full 20 minutes as it bled to death for his dinner. He calls the animal “a filthy beast deserving its fate.”
Even if gourmets’ rejection of factory farms and fast food is largely motivated by their traditional elitism, it has left them, for the first time in the history of their community, feeling more moral, spiritual even, than the man on the street. Food writing reflects the change. Since the late 1990s, the guilty smirkiness that once marked its default style has been losing ever more ground to pomposity and sermonizing. References to cooks as “gods,” to restaurants as “temples,” to biting into “heaven,” etc., used to be meant as jokes, even if the compulsive recourse to religious language always betrayed a certain guilt about the stomach-driven life. Now the equation of eating with worship is often made with a straight face. The mood at a dinner table depends on the quality of food served; if culinary perfection is achieved, the meal becomes downright holy — as we learned from Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma (2006), in which a pork dinner is described as feeling “like a ceremony … a secular seder.”
The moral logic in Pollan’s hugely successful book now informs all food writing: the refined palate rejects the taste of factory-farmed meat, of the corn-syrupy junk food that sickens the poor, of frozen fruits and vegetables transported wastefully across oceans — from which it follows that to serve one’s palate is to do right by small farmers, factory-abused cows, Earth itself. This affectation of piety does not keep foodies from vaunting their penchant for obscenely priced meals, for gorging themselves, even for dining on endangered animals — but only rarely is public attention drawn to the contradiction. This has much to do with the fact that the nation’s media tend to leave the national food discourse to the foodies in their ranks. To people like Pollan himself. And Severson, his very like-minded colleague at The New York Times. Is any other subculture reported on so exclusively by its own members? Or with a frequency and an extensiveness that bear so little relation to its size? (The “slow food” movement that we keep hearing about has fewer than 20,000 members nationwide.)
The same bias is apparent in writing that purports to be academic or at least serious. The book Gluttony (2003), one of a series on the seven deadly sins, was naturally assigned to a foodie writer, namely Francine Prose, who writes for the gourmet magazine Saveur. Not surprisingly, she regards gluttony primarily as a problem of overeating to the point of obesity; it is “the only sin … whose effects are visible, written on the body.” In fact the Catholic Church’s criticism has always been directed against an inordinate preoccupation with food — against foodie-ism, in other words — which we encounter as often among thin people as among fat ones. A disinterested writer would likely have done the subject more justice. Unfortunately, even the new sociological study Foodies: Democracy and Distinction in the Gourmet Foodscape is the product of two self-proclaimed members of the tribe, Josée Johnston and Shyon Baumann, who pull their punches accordingly; the introduction is titled “Entering the Delicious World of Foodies.” In short, the 21st-century gourmet need fear little public contradiction when striking sanctimonious poses.
The same goes for restaurant owners like Alice Waters. A celebrated slow-food advocate and the founder of an exclusive eatery in Berkeley, she is one of the chefs profiled in Spoon Fed. “Her streamlined philosophy,” Severson tells us, is “that the most political act we can commit is to eat delicious food that is produced in a way that is sustainable, that doesn’t exploit workers and is eaten slowly and with reverence.” A vegetarian diet, in other words? Please. The reference is to Chez Panisse’s standard fare — Severson cites “grilled rack and loin of Magruder Ranch veal” as a typical offering — which is environmentally sustainable only because so few people can afford it. Whatever one may think of Anthony Bourdain’s moral sense, his BS detector seems to be working fine. In Medium Raw he congratulates Waters on having “made lust, greed, hunger, self-gratification and fetishism look good.” Not to everyone, perhaps, but okay.
The Roman historian Livy famously regarded the glorification of chefs as the sign of a culture in decline. I wonder what he would have thought of The New York Times’ efforts to admit “young idols with cleavers” into America’s pantheon of food-service heroes.
But food writing has long specialized in the barefaced inversion of common sense, common language. Restaurant reviews are notorious for touting $100 lunches as great value for money. The doublespeak now comes in more pious tones, especially when foodies feign concern for animals. Crowding around to watch the slaughter of a pig — even getting in its face just before the shot — is described by Bethany Jean Clement (in an article in Best Food Writing 2009) as “solemn” and “respectful” behavior. Pollan writes about going with a friend to watch a goat get killed. “Mike says the experience made him want to honor our goat by wasting as little of it as possible.” It’s teachable fun for the whole foodie family. The full strangeness of this culture sinks in when one reads affectionate accounts (again in Best Food Writing 2009) of children clamoring to kill their own cow — or wanting to see a pig shot, then ripped open with a chain saw: “YEEEEAAAAH!”
Here too, though, an at least half-serious moral logic is at work, backed up by the subculture’s distinct body of myth, which combines half-understood evolutionary theory with the biblical idea of man as born lord of the world. Anthropological research, I should perhaps point out, now indicates that Homo sapiens started out as a paltry prey animal. Clawless, fangless, and slight of build, he could at best look forward to furtive boltings of carrion until the day he became meat himself. It took humans quite a while to learn how to gang up for self-protection and food acquisition, the latter usually a hyena-style affair of separating infant or sick animals from their herds. The domestication of pigs, cows, chickens, etc. has been going on for only about 10,000 years — not nearly long enough to breed the instincts out of them. The hideous paraphernalia of subjugation pictured in The CAFO Reader? It’s not there for nothing.
Now for the foodie version. The human animal evolved “with eyes in the front of its head, long legs, fingernails, eyeteeth — so that it could better chase down slower, stupider creatures, kill them, and eat them” (Bourdain, Medium Raw). We have eaten them for so long that meat-eating has shaped our souls (Pollan, The Omnivore’s Dilemma). And after so many millennia of domestication, food animals have become “evolutionarily hard-wired” to depend on us (chef-writer Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, The River Cottage Meat Book). Every exercise of our hungry power is thus part of the Great Food Chain of Being, with which we must align our morals. Deep down — instinctively if not consciously — the “hardwired” pig understands all this, understands why he has suddenly been dragged before a leering crowd. Just don’t waste any of him afterward; that’s all he asks. Note that the foodies’ pride in eating “nose to tail” is no different from factory-farm boasts of “using everything but the oink.” As if such token frugality could make up for the caloric wastefulness and environmental damage that result from meat farming!
Naturally the food-obsessed profess as much respect for tradition as for evolution. Hamilton, in Blood, Bones and Butter, writes of her childhood dinners: “The meal was always organized correctly, traditionally, which I now appreciate.” Even relatively young traditions like the Thanksgiving turkey must be guarded zealously against efforts to change or opt out of them. Foreign traditions destigmatize every dish even for the American. In Best Food Writing 2010, one foie gras lover asks another whether he would eat tortured cat if there were sufficient Mongolian history behind the dish; the answer is yes.
So tradition is an absolute good? No. When it dictates abstention from a certain food, it is to be rejected. Francine Prose shows how it’s done in her prize-winning Saveur article, “Faith and Bacon.” I need hardly explain which of those two she cannot live without. Prose concedes that since pigs compete ravenously with humans for grain, her Jewish forefathers’ taboo against pork may well have derived from ecological reasons that are even more valid today. Yet she finds it unrealistic to hope that humans could ever suppress their “baser appetites … for the benefit of other humans, flora, and fauna.” She then drops the point entirely; foodies quickly lose interest in any kind of abstract discussion. The reader is left to infer that since baser appetites are going to rule anyway, we might as well give in to them.
That’s right: guests have a greater obligation to please their host — and passersby to please a vendor — than vice versa. Is there any civilized value that foodies cannot turn on its head? But I assume Bourdain has no qualms about waving away a flower seller, just as Pollan probably sees nothing wrong with a Mormon’s refusal of a cup of coffee. Enjoinders to put the food provider’s feelings above all else are just part of the greater effort to sanctify food itself.
So secure is the gourmet community in its newfound reputation, so sure is it of its rightness, that it now proclaims the very qualities — greed, indifference to suffering, the prioritization of food above all — that earned it so much obloquy in the first place. Bourdain starts off his book by reveling in the illegality of a banquet at which he and some famous (unnamed) chefs dined on ortolan, endangered songbirds fattened up, as he unself-consciously tells us, in pitch-dark cages. After the meal, an “identical just-fucked look” graced each diner’s face. Eating equals sex, and in accordance with this self-flattery, gorging is presented in terms of athleticism and endurance. “You eat way past the point of hitting the wall. Or I do anyway.”
If nothing else, Bourdain at least gives the lie to the Pollan-Severson cant about foodie-ism being an integral part of the whole, truly sociable, human being. In Bourdain’s world, diners are as likely to sit solo or at a countertop while chewing their way through “a fucking Everest of shellfish.” Contributors to the Best Food Writing anthologies celebrate the same mindless, sweating gluttony. “You eat and eat and eat,” Todd Kliman writes, “long after you’re full. Being overstuffed, for the food lover, is not a moral problem.” But then, what is? In the same anthology, Michael Steinberger extols the pleasure of “joyfully gorging yourself … on a bird bearing the liver of another bird.” He also talks of “whimpering with ecstasy” in a French restaurant, then allowing the chef to hit on his wife, because “I was in too much of a stupor … [He] had just served me one of the finest dishes I’d ever eaten.” Hyperbole, the reader will have noticed, remains the central comic weapon in the food writer’s arsenal. It gets old fast. Nor is there much sign of wit in the table talk recorded. Aquinas said gluttony leads to “loutishness, uncleanness, talkativeness, and an uncomprehending dullness of mind,” and if you don’t believe him, here’s Kliman again:
Such antics are encouraged in the media with reports of the exotic foods that can be had only overseas, beyond the reach of FDA inspectors, conservationists, and animal-rights activists. Not too long ago MSNBC.com put out an article titled “Some Bravery as a Side Dish.” It listed “7 foods for the fearless stomach,” one of which was ortolan, the endangered songbirds fattened in dark boxes. The more lives sacrificed for a dinner, the more impressive the eater. Dana Goodyear: “Thirty duck hearts in curry … The ethos of this kind of cooking is undeniably macho.” Amorality as ethos, callousness as bravery, queenly self-absorption as machismo: no small perversion of language is needed to spin heroism out of an evening spent in a chair.
Of course, the bulk of foodie writing falls between the extremes of Pollanesque sanctimony and Bourdainian oafishness. The average article in a Best Food Writing anthology is a straightforward if very detailed discussion of some treat or another, usually interwoven with a chronicle of the writer’s quest to find or make it in perfect form. Seven pages on sardines. Eight pages on marshmallow fluff! The lack of drama and affect only makes the gloating obsessiveness even more striking. The following, from a man who travels the world sampling oysters, is typical.
environment, environmentalism, vegetarianism, veganism
We have all dined with him in restaurants: the host who insists on calling his special friend out of the kitchen for some awkward small talk. The publishing industry also wants us to meet a few chefs, only these are in no hurry to get back to work. Anthony Bourdain’s new book, his 10th, is Medium Raw: A Bloody Valentine to the World of Food and the People Who Cook. In it he announces, in his trademark thuggish style, that “it is now time to make the idea of not cooking ‘un-cool’ — and, in the harshest possible way short of physical brutality, drive that message home.” Having finished the book, I think I’d rather have absorbed a few punches and had the rest of the evening to myself. No more readable for being an artsier affair is chef Gabrielle Hamilton’s memoir, Blood, Bones and Butter.
It’s quite something to go bare-handed up an animal’s ass … Its viscera came out with an easy tug; a small palmful of livery, bloody jewels that I tossed out into the yard.Then there’s Kim Severson’s Spoon Fed: How Eight Cooks Saved My Life, which is the kind of thing that passes for spiritual uplift in this set. “What blessed entity invented sugar and cacao pods and vanilla beans or figured out that salt can preserve and brighten anything?” And I thought I knew where that sentence was going. The flyleaf calls Spoon Fed “a testament to the wisdom that can be found in the kitchen.” Agreed.
To put aside these books after a few chapters is to feel a sense of liberation; it’s like stepping from a crowded, fetid restaurant into silence and fresh air. But only when writing such things for their own kind do so-called foodies truly let down their guard, which makes for some engrossing passages here and there. For insight too. The deeper an outsider ventures into this stuff, the clearer a unique community comes into view. In values, sense of humor, even childhood experience, its members are as similar to each other as they are different from everyone else.
For one thing, these people really do live to eat. Vogue’s restaurant critic, Jeffrey Steingarten, says he “spends the afternoon — or a week of afternoons — planning the perfect dinner of barbecued ribs or braised foie gras.” Michael Pollan boasts in The New York Times of his latest “36-Hour Dinner Party.” Similar schedules and priorities can be inferred from the work of other writers. These include a sort of milk-toast priest, anthologized in Best Food Writing 2010, who expounds unironically on the “ritual” of making the perfect slice:
The things involved must be few, so that their meaning is not diffused, and they must somehow assume a perceptible weight. They attain this partly from the reassurance that comes of being “just so,” and partly by already possessing the solidity of the absolutely familiar.And when foodies talk of flying to Paris to buy cheese, to Vietnam to sample pho? They’re not joking about that either. Needless to say, no one shows much interest in literature or the arts — the real arts. When Marcel Proust’s name pops up, you know you’re just going to hear about that damned madeleine again.
It has always been crucial to the gourmet’s pleasure that he eat in ways the mainstream cannot afford. For hundreds of years this meant consuming enormous quantities of meat. That of animals that had been whipped to death was more highly valued for centuries, in the belief that pain and trauma enhanced taste. “A true gastronome,” according to a British dining manual of the time, “is as insensible to suffering as is a conqueror.” But for the past several decades, factory farms have made meat ever cheaper and — as the excellent book The CAFO [Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations] Reader makes clear — the pain and trauma are thrown in for free. The contemporary gourmet reacts by voicing an ever-stronger preference for free-range meats from small local farms. He even claims to believe that well-treated animals taste better, though his heart isn’t really in it. Steingarten tells of watching four people hold down a struggling, groaning pig for a full 20 minutes as it bled to death for his dinner. He calls the animal “a filthy beast deserving its fate.”
Even if gourmets’ rejection of factory farms and fast food is largely motivated by their traditional elitism, it has left them, for the first time in the history of their community, feeling more moral, spiritual even, than the man on the street. Food writing reflects the change. Since the late 1990s, the guilty smirkiness that once marked its default style has been losing ever more ground to pomposity and sermonizing. References to cooks as “gods,” to restaurants as “temples,” to biting into “heaven,” etc., used to be meant as jokes, even if the compulsive recourse to religious language always betrayed a certain guilt about the stomach-driven life. Now the equation of eating with worship is often made with a straight face. The mood at a dinner table depends on the quality of food served; if culinary perfection is achieved, the meal becomes downright holy — as we learned from Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma (2006), in which a pork dinner is described as feeling “like a ceremony … a secular seder.”
The moral logic in Pollan’s hugely successful book now informs all food writing: the refined palate rejects the taste of factory-farmed meat, of the corn-syrupy junk food that sickens the poor, of frozen fruits and vegetables transported wastefully across oceans — from which it follows that to serve one’s palate is to do right by small farmers, factory-abused cows, Earth itself. This affectation of piety does not keep foodies from vaunting their penchant for obscenely priced meals, for gorging themselves, even for dining on endangered animals — but only rarely is public attention drawn to the contradiction. This has much to do with the fact that the nation’s media tend to leave the national food discourse to the foodies in their ranks. To people like Pollan himself. And Severson, his very like-minded colleague at The New York Times. Is any other subculture reported on so exclusively by its own members? Or with a frequency and an extensiveness that bear so little relation to its size? (The “slow food” movement that we keep hearing about has fewer than 20,000 members nationwide.)
The same bias is apparent in writing that purports to be academic or at least serious. The book Gluttony (2003), one of a series on the seven deadly sins, was naturally assigned to a foodie writer, namely Francine Prose, who writes for the gourmet magazine Saveur. Not surprisingly, she regards gluttony primarily as a problem of overeating to the point of obesity; it is “the only sin … whose effects are visible, written on the body.” In fact the Catholic Church’s criticism has always been directed against an inordinate preoccupation with food — against foodie-ism, in other words — which we encounter as often among thin people as among fat ones. A disinterested writer would likely have done the subject more justice. Unfortunately, even the new sociological study Foodies: Democracy and Distinction in the Gourmet Foodscape is the product of two self-proclaimed members of the tribe, Josée Johnston and Shyon Baumann, who pull their punches accordingly; the introduction is titled “Entering the Delicious World of Foodies.” In short, the 21st-century gourmet need fear little public contradiction when striking sanctimonious poses.
The same goes for restaurant owners like Alice Waters. A celebrated slow-food advocate and the founder of an exclusive eatery in Berkeley, she is one of the chefs profiled in Spoon Fed. “Her streamlined philosophy,” Severson tells us, is “that the most political act we can commit is to eat delicious food that is produced in a way that is sustainable, that doesn’t exploit workers and is eaten slowly and with reverence.” A vegetarian diet, in other words? Please. The reference is to Chez Panisse’s standard fare — Severson cites “grilled rack and loin of Magruder Ranch veal” as a typical offering — which is environmentally sustainable only because so few people can afford it. Whatever one may think of Anthony Bourdain’s moral sense, his BS detector seems to be working fine. In Medium Raw he congratulates Waters on having “made lust, greed, hunger, self-gratification and fetishism look good.” Not to everyone, perhaps, but okay.
The Roman historian Livy famously regarded the glorification of chefs as the sign of a culture in decline. I wonder what he would have thought of The New York Times’ efforts to admit “young idols with cleavers” into America’s pantheon of food-service heroes.
With their swinging scabbards, muscled forearms and constant proximity to flesh, butchers have the raw, emotional appeal of an indie band … “Think about it. What’s sexy?” said Tia Keenan, the fromager at Casellula Cheese and Wine Café and an unabashed butcher fan. “Dangerous is sometimes sexy, and they are generally big guys with knives who are covered in blood.”That’s Severson again, by the way, and she records no word of dissent in regard to the cheese vendor’s ravings. We are to believe this is a real national trend here. In fact the public perception of butchers has not changed in the slightest, as can easily be confirmed by telling someone that he or she looks like one. “Blankly as a butcher stares,” Auden’s famous line about the moon, will need no explanatory footnote even a century from now.
But food writing has long specialized in the barefaced inversion of common sense, common language. Restaurant reviews are notorious for touting $100 lunches as great value for money. The doublespeak now comes in more pious tones, especially when foodies feign concern for animals. Crowding around to watch the slaughter of a pig — even getting in its face just before the shot — is described by Bethany Jean Clement (in an article in Best Food Writing 2009) as “solemn” and “respectful” behavior. Pollan writes about going with a friend to watch a goat get killed. “Mike says the experience made him want to honor our goat by wasting as little of it as possible.” It’s teachable fun for the whole foodie family. The full strangeness of this culture sinks in when one reads affectionate accounts (again in Best Food Writing 2009) of children clamoring to kill their own cow — or wanting to see a pig shot, then ripped open with a chain saw: “YEEEEAAAAH!”
Here too, though, an at least half-serious moral logic is at work, backed up by the subculture’s distinct body of myth, which combines half-understood evolutionary theory with the biblical idea of man as born lord of the world. Anthropological research, I should perhaps point out, now indicates that Homo sapiens started out as a paltry prey animal. Clawless, fangless, and slight of build, he could at best look forward to furtive boltings of carrion until the day he became meat himself. It took humans quite a while to learn how to gang up for self-protection and food acquisition, the latter usually a hyena-style affair of separating infant or sick animals from their herds. The domestication of pigs, cows, chickens, etc. has been going on for only about 10,000 years — not nearly long enough to breed the instincts out of them. The hideous paraphernalia of subjugation pictured in The CAFO Reader? It’s not there for nothing.
Now for the foodie version. The human animal evolved “with eyes in the front of its head, long legs, fingernails, eyeteeth — so that it could better chase down slower, stupider creatures, kill them, and eat them” (Bourdain, Medium Raw). We have eaten them for so long that meat-eating has shaped our souls (Pollan, The Omnivore’s Dilemma). And after so many millennia of domestication, food animals have become “evolutionarily hard-wired” to depend on us (chef-writer Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, The River Cottage Meat Book). Every exercise of our hungry power is thus part of the Great Food Chain of Being, with which we must align our morals. Deep down — instinctively if not consciously — the “hardwired” pig understands all this, understands why he has suddenly been dragged before a leering crowd. Just don’t waste any of him afterward; that’s all he asks. Note that the foodies’ pride in eating “nose to tail” is no different from factory-farm boasts of “using everything but the oink.” As if such token frugality could make up for the caloric wastefulness and environmental damage that result from meat farming!
Naturally the food-obsessed profess as much respect for tradition as for evolution. Hamilton, in Blood, Bones and Butter, writes of her childhood dinners: “The meal was always organized correctly, traditionally, which I now appreciate.” Even relatively young traditions like the Thanksgiving turkey must be guarded zealously against efforts to change or opt out of them. Foreign traditions destigmatize every dish even for the American. In Best Food Writing 2010, one foie gras lover asks another whether he would eat tortured cat if there were sufficient Mongolian history behind the dish; the answer is yes.
So tradition is an absolute good? No. When it dictates abstention from a certain food, it is to be rejected. Francine Prose shows how it’s done in her prize-winning Saveur article, “Faith and Bacon.” I need hardly explain which of those two she cannot live without. Prose concedes that since pigs compete ravenously with humans for grain, her Jewish forefathers’ taboo against pork may well have derived from ecological reasons that are even more valid today. Yet she finds it unrealistic to hope that humans could ever suppress their “baser appetites … for the benefit of other humans, flora, and fauna.” She then drops the point entirely; foodies quickly lose interest in any kind of abstract discussion. The reader is left to infer that since baser appetites are going to rule anyway, we might as well give in to them.
But if, however unlikely it seems, I ever find myself making one of those late-life turns toward God, one thing I can promise you is that this God will be a deity who wants me to feel exactly the way I feel when the marbled slice of pork floats to the top of the bowl of ramen.Yes, I feel equally sure that Prose’s God will be that kind of God. At least she maintains a civil tone when talking of kashrut. In “Killer Food,” another article in Best Food Writing 2010, Dana Goodyear tells how a restaurant served head cheese (meat jelly made from an animal’s head) to an unwitting Jew.
One woman, when [chef Jon] Shook finally had a chance to explain, spat it out on the table and said, “Oh my fucking God, I’ve been kosher for thirty-two years.” Shook giggled, recollecting. “Not any more you ain’t!”We are meant to chuckle too; the woman (who I am sure expressed herself in less profane terms) got what she deserved. Most of us consider it a virtue to maintain our principles in the face of social pressure, but in the involuted world of gourmet morals, constancy is rudeness. One must never spoil a dinner party for mere religious or ethical reasons. Pollan says he sides with the French in regarding “any personal dietary prohibition as bad manners.” (The American foodie is forever projecting his own barbarism onto France.) Bourdain writes, “Taking your belief system on the road — or to other people’s houses — makes me angry.” The sight of vegetarian tourists waving away a Vietnamese pho vendor fills him with “spluttering indignation.”
That’s right: guests have a greater obligation to please their host — and passersby to please a vendor — than vice versa. Is there any civilized value that foodies cannot turn on its head? But I assume Bourdain has no qualms about waving away a flower seller, just as Pollan probably sees nothing wrong with a Mormon’s refusal of a cup of coffee. Enjoinders to put the food provider’s feelings above all else are just part of the greater effort to sanctify food itself.
So secure is the gourmet community in its newfound reputation, so sure is it of its rightness, that it now proclaims the very qualities — greed, indifference to suffering, the prioritization of food above all — that earned it so much obloquy in the first place. Bourdain starts off his book by reveling in the illegality of a banquet at which he and some famous (unnamed) chefs dined on ortolan, endangered songbirds fattened up, as he unself-consciously tells us, in pitch-dark cages. After the meal, an “identical just-fucked look” graced each diner’s face. Eating equals sex, and in accordance with this self-flattery, gorging is presented in terms of athleticism and endurance. “You eat way past the point of hitting the wall. Or I do anyway.”
If nothing else, Bourdain at least gives the lie to the Pollan-Severson cant about foodie-ism being an integral part of the whole, truly sociable, human being. In Bourdain’s world, diners are as likely to sit solo or at a countertop while chewing their way through “a fucking Everest of shellfish.” Contributors to the Best Food Writing anthologies celebrate the same mindless, sweating gluttony. “You eat and eat and eat,” Todd Kliman writes, “long after you’re full. Being overstuffed, for the food lover, is not a moral problem.” But then, what is? In the same anthology, Michael Steinberger extols the pleasure of “joyfully gorging yourself … on a bird bearing the liver of another bird.” He also talks of “whimpering with ecstasy” in a French restaurant, then allowing the chef to hit on his wife, because “I was in too much of a stupor … [He] had just served me one of the finest dishes I’d ever eaten.” Hyperbole, the reader will have noticed, remains the central comic weapon in the food writer’s arsenal. It gets old fast. Nor is there much sign of wit in the table talk recorded. Aquinas said gluttony leads to “loutishness, uncleanness, talkativeness, and an uncomprehending dullness of mind,” and if you don’t believe him, here’s Kliman again:
I watched tears streak down a friend’s face as he popped expertly cleavered bites of chicken into his mouth … He was red-eyed and breathing fast. “It hurts, it hurts, but it’s so good, but it hurts, and I can’t stop eating!” He slammed a fist down on the table. The beer in his glass sloshed over the sides. “Jesus Christ, I’ve got to stop!”We have already seen that the foodie respects only those customs, traditions, beliefs, cultures — old and new, domestic and foreign — that call on him to eat more, not less. But the foodie is even more insatiable in regard to variety than quantity. Johnston and Baumann note that “eating unusual foods is part of what generates foodie status,” and indeed, there appears to be no greater point of pride in this set than to eat with the indiscriminate omnivorousness of a rat in a zoo dumpster. Jeffrey Steingarten called his first book The Man Who Ate Everything. Bourdain writes, with equal swagger, “I’ve eaten raw seal, guinea pig. I’ve eaten bat.” The book Foodies quotes a middle-aged software engineer who says, “Um, it’s not something I would be anxious to repeat but … it’s kind of weird and cool to say I’ve had goat testicles in rice wine.” The taste of these bizarre meals — as researchers of oral fixation will not be surprised to learn — is neither here nor there. Members of the Gastronauts, a foodie group in New York, stuff live, squirming octopuses and eels down their throats before posting the carny-esque footage online.
Such antics are encouraged in the media with reports of the exotic foods that can be had only overseas, beyond the reach of FDA inspectors, conservationists, and animal-rights activists. Not too long ago MSNBC.com put out an article titled “Some Bravery as a Side Dish.” It listed “7 foods for the fearless stomach,” one of which was ortolan, the endangered songbirds fattened in dark boxes. The more lives sacrificed for a dinner, the more impressive the eater. Dana Goodyear: “Thirty duck hearts in curry … The ethos of this kind of cooking is undeniably macho.” Amorality as ethos, callousness as bravery, queenly self-absorption as machismo: no small perversion of language is needed to spin heroism out of an evening spent in a chair.
Of course, the bulk of foodie writing falls between the extremes of Pollanesque sanctimony and Bourdainian oafishness. The average article in a Best Food Writing anthology is a straightforward if very detailed discussion of some treat or another, usually interwoven with a chronicle of the writer’s quest to find or make it in perfect form. Seven pages on sardines. Eight pages on marshmallow fluff! The lack of drama and affect only makes the gloating obsessiveness even more striking. The following, from a man who travels the world sampling oysters, is typical.
Sitting at Bentley’s lustrous marble bar, I ordered three No. 1 and three No. 2 Strangford Loughs and a martini. I was promptly set up with a dark green and gold placemat, a napkin, silverware, a bread plate, an oyster plate, some fresh bread, a plate of deep yellow butter rounds, vinegar, red pepper, Tabasco sauce, and a saucer full of lemons wrapped in cheesecloth. Bentley’s is a very serious oyster bar. When the bartender asked me if I wanted olives or a twist, I asked him which garnish he liked better with oysters. He recommended both. I had never seen both garnishes served together, but … (Robb Walsh, “English Oyster Cult,” Best Food Writing 2009)I used to reject that old countercultural argument, the one about the difference between a legitimate pursuit of pleasure and an addiction or pathology being primarily a question of social license. I don’t anymore. After a month among the bat eaters and milk-toast priests, I opened Nikki Sixx’s Heroin Diaries (2008) and encountered a refreshingly sane-seeming young man, self-critical and with a dazzlingly wide range of interests. Unfortunately, the foodie fringe enjoys enough media access to make daily claims for its sophistication and virtue, for the suitability of its lifestyle as a model for the world. We should not let it get away with those claims. Whether gluttony is a deadly sin is of course for the religious to decide, and I hope they go easy on the foodies; they’re not all bad. They are certainly single-minded, however, and single-mindedness — even in less obviously selfish forms — is always a littleness of soul.
environment, environmentalism, vegetarianism, veganism
What Is Finnegans Wake?
Some thoughts for those about to enter the river of life or dig in the mudmound for the first or the five-hundredth time.
By Karl Reisman, author of “Darktongues”: Fulfulde and Hausa in Finnegans Wake and more.
Many people begin their journey carrying as baggage certain preconceptions: about books, about novels, about characters and even about plots and their roles in such novels or books. True, Finnegans Wake has characters and plots but to focus on them, while sometimes enlightening, is often to miss the larger stream in which they are involved.
Also. as the wisest readers have discovered, it is not possible to make a consistent story or cast of characters that carries you through your reading - although sometimes the story line is very clear.
So the first notion that has to be abandoned is that Finnegans Wake is about something.
It is not about Life, it is life.
As Samuel Beckett said in the short profound essay he wrote for Mr. Joyce: "His writing is not about something; it is that something itself."
Scientists dealing with difficult concepts sometimes build a kind of "model" of what they are contemplating. The model behaves in the way that their object of study behaves and by understanding the model they are able to understand things about the world they have made a model of. Niels Bohr's model of the structure of the atom was one such. As even earlier the model of the solar system which most of us have in our head.
In that sense we might, although it is limiting, say that Finnegans Wake is a "model" of Life. It behaves the way life behaves. Finnegans Wake, then, is not a book in the traditional sense. It is a living object.
Finnegans Wake has many identities - it is, for instance, a river. Joyce lets us know this in the first word, "riverrun".
One feature of the world Joyce has created is that it is built pervasively on ironies - what Giordano Bruno called "the coincidence of contraries". We can see this immediately in understanding life as a river. There is the river of Heraclitus, constantly changing so that one can never step into the same river twice. But there is also the river that endlessly repeats the same process of moisture from the clouds down the same path to the sea, that takes us "by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs." Both are present and one in the structure of Finnegans Wake.
The book and its parts in many ways share features with stages in the life of human beings. At the end for instance as death approaches we come to see that much of what we have thought important in our lives is not so important, and life becomes much clearer and we see clearly the answers to questions we thought so difficult, so at this point the writing in Finnegans Wake becomes much clearer and simpler, until the final catastrophe of death itself on page 628.
The book is its own teacher. The keys to it have been given in the book.
"Lps. The keys to. Given!" (page 628.15)As with rivers so with roads - or "ruads". And here the thing is that there are so many. There is no right road to the book. As it says on page 497: "from Rathgar, Rathanga, Rountown and Rush, from America Avenue and Asia Place and the Affrian Way and Europa Parade and besogar the wallies of Noo Soch Wilds and from Vico, Mespil Rock and Sorrento," ...
And so also it is a book of many languages all of which contribute to the multiple meanings of its sentences. When different languages come in contact they often break down the structure of language itself. One example that Joyce uses is the African based Creole languages of the West Indies and other plantation societies with African slaves. These languages often break words into syllables and play with the meanings that emerge - as Joyce himself does in Finnegans Wake. This book is "an earsighted view", you have to hear the sounds of the different languages as your are able, and at the same time see the words on the page, with their special and peculiar spellings. Each person brings different perceptions to this process.
Although as you become more and more familiar with the book you will find that you begin to speak its language.
For the language of Finnegans Wake is some of the most beautiful ever written, and it sounds in your head and becomes engraved in your memory, so that eventually it transforms from a written work into an oral one.
And of course Finnegans Wake is a book of the night and of the dark. Whether approached psychologically as John Bishop does in his remarkable Joyce's Book of the Dark, or mythologically or by any analysis of dreams and dreamers.
And then the remarkable mind of Joyce takes us far beyond all these.
Because it is such a living work, all reading of Finnegans Wake in which one finds pleasure, or enlightenment, or beauty or particularly laughter, is valuable reading whether by novice or longtime reader.
One consequence of what I am saying is that Finnegans Wake is not a "difficult" book. It may be unfamiliar at the start, but it speaks the language of us all.
So to answer the question in my title, Finnegans Wake is far more than a "book". It lives, it talks to us, it finds us new things. And we talk to it. And eventually it changes us and lives in us.
As I said the book is its own teacher, although one may be lead to discover many things through curiosity aroused by the book.
The only other "teachers" I would recommend to the beginner are Samuel Becket's little essay "Dante ... Bruno . Vico .. Joyce" from Our Exagmination Round His Factification for Incamination of Work in Progress and the remarkable and loving book by James Atherton, The Books at the Wake.
March 8, 2013
Ten Ways to Kill Big Wind
Mike Bond writes:
Despite many victories, communities around the world are still facing a plague of industrial wind projects that like hideous War of the Worlds steel monsters are destroying communities, mountains, and wildlands, slaughtering birds and bats, sickening people and driving them from their homes.
Even though these wind projects do not reduce greenhouse gases or fossil fuel use, they have dreadful environmental, social and economic impacts on whole regions. But they are a tool for energy companies and investment banks to make billions in taxpayer subsidies that get added to our national debt.
The good news is that communities worldwide are learning how to defeat these dreadful projects. More and more laws and moratoriums are being passed against them, while other projects are defeated on legal grounds or by overwhelming public opposition.
In Hawaii, an industrial wind project that would have constructed ninety 42-story turbine towers across seventeen square miles of Molokai has been defeated by a determined two-year effort of the island’s residents. In the process we learned many tactics, which I’ve tried to summarize below and are further described in Saving Paradise:
wind power, wind energy, wind turbines, wind farms, environment, environmentalism, human rights
Despite many victories, communities around the world are still facing a plague of industrial wind projects that like hideous War of the Worlds steel monsters are destroying communities, mountains, and wildlands, slaughtering birds and bats, sickening people and driving them from their homes.
Even though these wind projects do not reduce greenhouse gases or fossil fuel use, they have dreadful environmental, social and economic impacts on whole regions. But they are a tool for energy companies and investment banks to make billions in taxpayer subsidies that get added to our national debt.
The good news is that communities worldwide are learning how to defeat these dreadful projects. More and more laws and moratoriums are being passed against them, while other projects are defeated on legal grounds or by overwhelming public opposition.
In Hawaii, an industrial wind project that would have constructed ninety 42-story turbine towers across seventeen square miles of Molokai has been defeated by a determined two-year effort of the island’s residents. In the process we learned many tactics, which I’ve tried to summarize below and are further described in Saving Paradise:
- Show wind projects for what they are: industrial. Not environmental, not green, not renewable, and cause no reductions in greenhouse gases or fossil fuel use, no long-term jobs and few short-term ones.
- Don’t be nice. These wind developers are your enemies: they want to destroy where you live, steal your money (property values), and are quite happy to literally drive you from your homes. They will lie, cheat, bribe, buy politicians, and do whatever else they can to win. They won’t be fair and you can’t trust them.
- Create a group and get your community behind you. Point out property value loss, human health issues, environmental destruction, tourism impacts, and all the other dreadful results of industrial wind. If you have a homeowners’ associations, make them aware of the danger so they can join the fight.
- Publicize your case. In the newspapers, TV and radio, on blogs and in nationwide petitions. Use good graphics. Go viral, worldwide. Develop a good professional website with lots of information and ways for viewers to participate. Community members should write op-eds and letters to the editor. A very powerful tool is frequent press releases that pass on news reports from National Wind Watch and other groups about the devastating impacts of industrial wind. These press releases should be sent to all relevant media outlets and local, state and national legislators.
- Do mailings to everyone. In Molokai we sent two mailings to all the island’s 2,700 addresses. The first mailer described the dangers of the project and included a survey with a stamped return envelope. We had a massive response, with 97% of responses against the project, and our group gained hundreds of new members. A year later we sent a second mailer with photo mockups showing how the turbines would tower over homes and landscapes. This mailer also included a bumper sticker which many residents then put on their cars.
- Be visible. Put up lots of signs, both homemade and professionally done. Put up billboards if you can. Professional signs show you mean business, and are taken more seriously.
- Find legislators who will help you. On the state level, Republicans are often more responsive and more concerned about the environment than traditionalist Democrats who have bought the idea that wind is environmental (or who are receiving contributions from wind companies).
- Litigate. Find every avenue to impair or slow the wind developers. Once the Washington industrial welfare subsidies are removed, industrial wind companies will vanish overnight.
- Get property value loss appraisals. Average losses of 40% or more are being reported; in Molokai, one of the reasons the landowner planning the project cancelled it was they estimated a 75% property value loss on their lands near the project. Publicize the loss of assessed value at county level, and how that will reduce tax revenues. In most cases, property value loss far exceeds any revenue the county might receive from the project.
- Civil disobedience. Politicians and energy companies are terrified of this. Don’t be afraid to go to jail to protect the land and homes you love. On Molokai we planned if necessary to start a hunger strike on the island, and there were people ready to starve to death to protect our island. The level of your commitment is equal to the level of your success.
wind power, wind energy, wind turbines, wind farms, environment, environmentalism, human rights
March 2, 2013
Coal has surged despite destroying environment for wind energy
Wind Wise Radio (blogtalkradio.com/windwise, windwiseradio.org, facebook.com/windwiseradio) has recently posted a few news items about the increase of coal use around the world, despite (or in part because of?) the huge expansion of industrial-scale wind energy.
China's Wind Farms Come With a Catch: Coal Plants
‘To safeguard against blackouts when conditions are too calm, officials have turned to coal-fired power as a backup. ... More coal is being burned in existing plants, and new thermal capacity is being built to cover this shortfall in renewable energy. ... Officials want enough new coal-fired capacity in reserve so that they can meet demand whenever the wind doesn't blow’
China consumes nearly as much coal as the rest of the world combined
‘Coal consumption in China grew more than 9% in 2011, continuing its upward trend for the 12th consecutive year, according to newly released international data. China's coal use grew by 325 million tons in 2011, accounting for 87% of the 374 million ton global increase in coal use. Of the 2.9 billion tons of global coal demand growth since 2000, China accounted for 2.3 billion tons (82%). China now accounts for 47% of global coal consumption—almost as much as the entire rest of the world combined.’
As China Burns More Coal, India Needs More
‘It has now been estimated by the International Energy Agency that India may be importing as much coal as China by 2017. ... India has large reserves of coal, however, its economy is growing at a rate where domestic production is unable to meet consumer demand. India currently relies on coal-fired power plants for the majority of its electricity production. However, strict environmental regulations make it difficult to increase the output of the power plants. Importing large amounts of coal is also not always an efficient alternative, as it is difficult to pass on the costs to consumers, many of whom live on less than two U.S. dollars a day. India is thus commonly faced with power outages due to the slow supply of coal. Cities are commonly plagued with blackouts that last for hours, especially during the summer months when air-conditioning is needed. In response, India now aims to build at least 16 more power plants, referred to as ultra-mega power projects.’
Most U.S. coal exports went to European and Asian markets in 2011
‘In 2011, total annual coal exports were up 31% compared to 2010, reaching 107 million short tons, due largely to rising exports to Europe and Asia. ... In general, coal use abroad continued to grow. ... Falling domestic coal consumption (down 4.6% in 2011) along with a slight increase in U.S. coal production (0.9%) freed up more coal to export. ... Rising spot natural gas prices in Europe, up about 35% in 2011, prompted European electricity generators to use more coal.’
Coal resurgence threatens climate change targets [U.K.]
‘Coal is enjoying a renaissance, with the highest consumption of the fuel since the late 1960s. ... The controversial use of shale gas in the US, where it now makes up a quarter of electricity generation, has brought down carbon emissions there – but the greenhouse gases have simply been exported elsewhere, meaning no net gain for the planet. As gas power has replaced coal in the US, the excess coal has pushed down prices on world markets, sparking a bonanza for the high-carbon fuel. Last year, coal had its best year in more than four decades. Its global share of primary energy consumption rose from about 25%, where it has been for years, to 30% – the highest level since 1969, long before governments made any efforts to tackle climate change. ... In the UK, between the second quarter of 2011 and the second quarter of 2012, coal consumption rose by nearly a quarter. Europe overall has burned more coal in the past year than any time since it pledged steep emissions cuts, and China and India have also been burning more. Cheap coal, caused by weakening demand in the US where power stations have switched fuels to use gas, has been the biggest factor. ... Fracking has cut the US's greenhouse gas emissions to their lowest level since 1992, as power stations across the country have switched to gas from coal.’
Germany to Add Most Coal-Fired Plants in Two Decades, IWR Says
‘Germany will this year start up more coal-fired power stations than at any time in the past 20 years as the country advances a plan to exit nuclear energy by 2022.’
wind power, wind energy, environment, environmentalism
China's Wind Farms Come With a Catch: Coal Plants
‘To safeguard against blackouts when conditions are too calm, officials have turned to coal-fired power as a backup. ... More coal is being burned in existing plants, and new thermal capacity is being built to cover this shortfall in renewable energy. ... Officials want enough new coal-fired capacity in reserve so that they can meet demand whenever the wind doesn't blow’
China consumes nearly as much coal as the rest of the world combined
‘Coal consumption in China grew more than 9% in 2011, continuing its upward trend for the 12th consecutive year, according to newly released international data. China's coal use grew by 325 million tons in 2011, accounting for 87% of the 374 million ton global increase in coal use. Of the 2.9 billion tons of global coal demand growth since 2000, China accounted for 2.3 billion tons (82%). China now accounts for 47% of global coal consumption—almost as much as the entire rest of the world combined.’
As China Burns More Coal, India Needs More
‘It has now been estimated by the International Energy Agency that India may be importing as much coal as China by 2017. ... India has large reserves of coal, however, its economy is growing at a rate where domestic production is unable to meet consumer demand. India currently relies on coal-fired power plants for the majority of its electricity production. However, strict environmental regulations make it difficult to increase the output of the power plants. Importing large amounts of coal is also not always an efficient alternative, as it is difficult to pass on the costs to consumers, many of whom live on less than two U.S. dollars a day. India is thus commonly faced with power outages due to the slow supply of coal. Cities are commonly plagued with blackouts that last for hours, especially during the summer months when air-conditioning is needed. In response, India now aims to build at least 16 more power plants, referred to as ultra-mega power projects.’
Most U.S. coal exports went to European and Asian markets in 2011
‘In 2011, total annual coal exports were up 31% compared to 2010, reaching 107 million short tons, due largely to rising exports to Europe and Asia. ... In general, coal use abroad continued to grow. ... Falling domestic coal consumption (down 4.6% in 2011) along with a slight increase in U.S. coal production (0.9%) freed up more coal to export. ... Rising spot natural gas prices in Europe, up about 35% in 2011, prompted European electricity generators to use more coal.’
Coal resurgence threatens climate change targets [U.K.]
‘Coal is enjoying a renaissance, with the highest consumption of the fuel since the late 1960s. ... The controversial use of shale gas in the US, where it now makes up a quarter of electricity generation, has brought down carbon emissions there – but the greenhouse gases have simply been exported elsewhere, meaning no net gain for the planet. As gas power has replaced coal in the US, the excess coal has pushed down prices on world markets, sparking a bonanza for the high-carbon fuel. Last year, coal had its best year in more than four decades. Its global share of primary energy consumption rose from about 25%, where it has been for years, to 30% – the highest level since 1969, long before governments made any efforts to tackle climate change. ... In the UK, between the second quarter of 2011 and the second quarter of 2012, coal consumption rose by nearly a quarter. Europe overall has burned more coal in the past year than any time since it pledged steep emissions cuts, and China and India have also been burning more. Cheap coal, caused by weakening demand in the US where power stations have switched fuels to use gas, has been the biggest factor. ... Fracking has cut the US's greenhouse gas emissions to their lowest level since 1992, as power stations across the country have switched to gas from coal.’
Germany to Add Most Coal-Fired Plants in Two Decades, IWR Says
‘Germany will this year start up more coal-fired power stations than at any time in the past 20 years as the country advances a plan to exit nuclear energy by 2022.’
wind power, wind energy, environment, environmentalism
February 20, 2013
Lifting livestock’s long shadow
To the Editor — In the News Feature entitled ‘Light is cast on a long shadow’ by Anna Petherick [1], it is stated that developing countries’ middle classes “are on course to demand twice the current amount of livestock products in 2050.”
This statement does not take into account the International Food Policy Research Institute’s scenario by which global meat consumption will decline until at least 2030 [2]. Moreover, Petherick [1] cited mainly livestock researchers, whereas good practice is to consider assessment by environmental specialists where significant environmental risk occurs [3].
As environmental-risk specialists employed by the World Bank and International Finance Corporation — two United Nations agencies — my colleague Jeff Anhang and I have estimated that livestock products account for at least 51% of anthropogenic greenhouse-gas emissions [4]. Links to consequential citations of our analysis can be found on our website [5].
In our assessment, reality no longer reflects the old model of the carbon cycle, in which photosynthesis balanced respiration. That model was valid as long as there were roughly constant levels of respiration and photosynthesis on Earth. However, respiration has increased exponentially with livestock production, and intensified livestock and feed production accompanied by large-scale deforestation and forest-burning have caused huge increases in volatilization of soil carbon, resulting in a dramatic decline in the Earth’s photosynthetic capacity. Therefore, either carbon dioxide in livestock respiration, or its reflection in carbon debt created where land is used for livestock and feed production, must be counted as emissions.
In assessing livestock, emissions relating to land use for livestock and feed production are considered indirect emissions. According to the Greenhouse Gas Protocol — the most widely used tool for greenhouse-gas accounting — indirect emissions should be counted when they are large and can be mitigated or reduced [6]. One of the key sources in Petherick’s Feature [1], Mario Herrero, co-authored an estimate that 45% of all land is now used for livestock and feed production [7].
Kanaly et al. [8] summed up our study as follows: “Goodland and Anhang explained what may be a large-scale paradigm shift in the approaches to mitigating climate change.” Previously, renewable-energy infrastructure was thought to be the key to reversing climate change. After years of inadequate action, sufficient new infrastructure is now projected to take at least 20 years and US$18 trillion to develop [9].
Yet the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the International Energy Agency have both warned that the next five years may be the last real chance to reverse climate change before it’s too late [10,11]. We say that the only pragmatic way to do so is to replace at least 25% of today’s livestock products with better alternatives — this would both eliminate much more than 4% of agricultural emissions, and allow reforestation and forest regeneration on vast amounts of land, which could then absorb enough atmospheric carbon to reduce it to a safe level.
Robert Goodland
World Bank, 1818 Society
e-mail: rbtgoodland/gmail.com
Nature Climate Change, January 2013
References
This statement does not take into account the International Food Policy Research Institute’s scenario by which global meat consumption will decline until at least 2030 [2]. Moreover, Petherick [1] cited mainly livestock researchers, whereas good practice is to consider assessment by environmental specialists where significant environmental risk occurs [3].
As environmental-risk specialists employed by the World Bank and International Finance Corporation — two United Nations agencies — my colleague Jeff Anhang and I have estimated that livestock products account for at least 51% of anthropogenic greenhouse-gas emissions [4]. Links to consequential citations of our analysis can be found on our website [5].
In our assessment, reality no longer reflects the old model of the carbon cycle, in which photosynthesis balanced respiration. That model was valid as long as there were roughly constant levels of respiration and photosynthesis on Earth. However, respiration has increased exponentially with livestock production, and intensified livestock and feed production accompanied by large-scale deforestation and forest-burning have caused huge increases in volatilization of soil carbon, resulting in a dramatic decline in the Earth’s photosynthetic capacity. Therefore, either carbon dioxide in livestock respiration, or its reflection in carbon debt created where land is used for livestock and feed production, must be counted as emissions.
In assessing livestock, emissions relating to land use for livestock and feed production are considered indirect emissions. According to the Greenhouse Gas Protocol — the most widely used tool for greenhouse-gas accounting — indirect emissions should be counted when they are large and can be mitigated or reduced [6]. One of the key sources in Petherick’s Feature [1], Mario Herrero, co-authored an estimate that 45% of all land is now used for livestock and feed production [7].
Kanaly et al. [8] summed up our study as follows: “Goodland and Anhang explained what may be a large-scale paradigm shift in the approaches to mitigating climate change.” Previously, renewable-energy infrastructure was thought to be the key to reversing climate change. After years of inadequate action, sufficient new infrastructure is now projected to take at least 20 years and US$18 trillion to develop [9].
Yet the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the International Energy Agency have both warned that the next five years may be the last real chance to reverse climate change before it’s too late [10,11]. We say that the only pragmatic way to do so is to replace at least 25% of today’s livestock products with better alternatives — this would both eliminate much more than 4% of agricultural emissions, and allow reforestation and forest regeneration on vast amounts of land, which could then absorb enough atmospheric carbon to reduce it to a safe level.
Robert Goodland
World Bank, 1818 Society
e-mail: rbtgoodland/gmail.com
Nature Climate Change, January 2013
References
- Petherick, A. Nature Clim. Change 2, 705–706 (2012).
- Msangi, S. & Rosegrant, M. Feeding the Future’s Changing Diets: Implications for Agriculture Markets, Nutrition, and Policy (IFPRI, 2011); available via http://go.nature.com/Sdukkp
- Green laws take no prisoners. Legal Brief Today (13 September 2011); available via http://go.nature.com/IeAfKM
- Goodland, R. & Anhang, J. World Watch 22, 10–19 (2009).
- www.chompingclimatechange.org
- Putt del Pino, S., Levinson, R. & Larsen, J. Hot Climate, Cool Commerce: A Service Sector Guide to Greenhouse Gas Management (WRI, 2006); available at http://pdf.wri.org/hotclimatecoolcommerce.pdf
- Thornton, P., Herrero, M. & Ericksen, P. Livestock and climate change. (ILRI, 2011); available via http://go.nature.com/wYaVA6
- Kanaly, R. A., Manzanero, L. I. O., Foley, G., Panneerselvam, S. & Macer, D. Energy Flow, Environment and Ethical Implications for Meat Production (UNESCO, 2010); available via http://go.nature.com/VBMWVw
- Statement by Nobuo Tanaka, IEA Executive Director to COP 16 (IEA, 2010); available via http://go.nature.com/ivfhds
- Spotts, P. Climate change report: Time to start preparing for the worst. The Christian Science Monitor (28 March 2012); available via http://go.nature.com/8Cl4ct
- DiLorenzo, S. IEA: Time running out to limit Earth’s warming Newsvine (9 November 2011); available via http://go.nature.com/1fdbPO
February 16, 2013
The animal killers' dilemma
Glenn Davis Stone, Professor of Anthropology and Environmental Studies at Washington University, St. Louis, Missouri, and pro-GMO blogger at fieldquestions.com, posted an essay on Nov. 26, 2012, "The Animal Lover's Dilemma", by Elizabeth Vandeventer of Davis Creek Farm, Nelson County, Virginia. She is another supposedly ex-vegetarian who describes her sense of missing out on the death action in the great cycle of life. So she attacks vegans, who she blames for palm oil plantations, among other evils of industrial agriculture and chemistry, for not being more informed than the general population about the same food that everyone else eats. And of course, unlike people who just buy their packaged meat in the grocery store, she "honors" animals by raising them and thanking them before killing them to sell as packaged meat at farmers' markets.
Vandeventer was inspired to write because of the international outrage about Green Mountain College's determination to kill their oxen Bill and Lou. (They went ahead and killed Lou, rather than give him adequate veterinary care, but did it medically so they could whine that his "meat" was wasted.) Bill, no longer working for his room and board, still languishes at the college in Limbo despite at least two offers of sanctuary.
While the college raised one of those sanctuaries, called VINE, for Veganism Is the Next Evolution, to arch-adversary, unable to separate VINE's specific concern for Bill and Lou from their antipathy to its larger outlook (animal rights, human rights), and then unwilling to hear any advocate for Bill and Lou except that of their imagined version of VINE — now an extremist, terrorist organization ready to firebomb the college — Vandeventer creates her straw man at the other end, conjuring mindless consumerist sentimentalist "animal lovers" who are singularly responsible for the destruction of rain forests for palm oil plantations.
The essay is the usual self-justifying drivel, which continues in the comments below it. I write about it today because host Glenn Davis Stone just added what I suppose he thinks should be a succinct wrap-up:
Meat eating causes more death but it causes more life as well. I have been to Elizabeth’s farm and seen the hundreds of chickens and cattle enjoying life on her pastures. All because of meat eaters.How does one respond, after the laughter, to such madness? "Rucio" tries:
And then having that life cut violently short. For the enjoyment of meat eaters. Only increasing the animals' gratitude, no doubt.Note: According to a profile of Charlottesville (Va.)–area farmers, Vandeventer's farm has 4,000 "meat" chickens. Each of them named, of course, and roaming free. And according to her own web site, both the chickens and the cows do not exist solely on the grass and grains of the farm. Although Vandeventer claims that grazing is the only agriculture possible for her land (the pictures showing lush grasses and fairly flat fields suggests otherwise, however), her business depends on other farmland growing crops not for people but for her "livestock", i.e., it is not at all a model of sustainability unless that means only sustaining a meat industry.
Update: Davis Stone replied to Rucio's comment: "I’m not sure what “violent” means here — Elizabeth’s animals are killed instantly. Hard to imagine an animal being grateful to people for arguing they never be born just because they were going to die." To which Rucio replied: "What could be more violent than killing another being well before the time of its natural death?" and "It is even harder to imagine an animal being grateful to people for arguing that they must kill it to justify its life."
environment, environmentalism, human rights, animal rights, vegetarianism, veganism, Vermont, anarchism, ecoanarchism
February 3, 2013
Vermont Senators defend “rural tradition” of military-style assault weapons
From The Valley News, Tuesday, Jan. 29 [comments below]:
Civilization is about limits: freedom, not license. No person is free when anyone can be a tyrant. Baruth's bill was withdrawn "so not to cause any conflict or discussion" — in other words, in cowardly capitulation to well armed bullies. That is indeed more suggestive of eastern Congo than open progressive democratic Vermont.
And U.S. Senator Patrick Leahy going on, like fellow "liberal" Jane Kitchel above, about how special Vermont is with so many guns and relatively little gun violence (ignoring its leading suicide rate) ignores the obvious fact, which Leahy just helped promote nationally, that Vermont is the go-to state in the region to load up on destructive weaponry. (This "straw purchasing" was noted in the Valley News article by former Norwich Selectwoman Sharon Racusin.) (And of course, Leahy's "job" as a senior senator is mostly to land military contracts for Vermont companies, and part of the military economy is our arming the world, including with "small" arms.)
Finally, Joe Benning (and Kitchel with a more blatant diversion) echos the inanity that "guns don't kill people, people kill people". And people with assault weapons are able to kill lots of people. A letter in today's Valley News similarly insisted that guns are just tools, that we shouldn't blame the gun any more than we blame the car in an accident. But a gun is a tool with only one purpose, a deadly purpose. A civilized society requires cars to be safe so that their use does not bring undue danger to the public. Likewise, a civilized society limits the deadliness of weaponry in the hands of its citizens.
That lawmakers fear even talking about reasonable limits that do not threaten in any way hunting and other recreational shooting, nor the defense of one's home or animals, the "right to bear arms", is itself frightening.
[Note: The Valley News carried an editorial on Saturday about "this unseemly bit of moral retreat".
human rights, Vermont]
Gun control advocates in the Upper Valley are criticizing Democrats in the Vermont Senate for abruptly withdrawing a bill that would have banned the sale or manufacture of assault weapons before the legislation even had a chance to be discussed at a public hearing.If the 2nd amendment protects the right of individuals to own military-style assault rifles, why not rocket launchers, mortars, cannons, tanks? Weapons of mass destruction don't belong in the hands of individuals. This is not (yet) central Africa or Somalia. "Rural traditions" of hunting and shooting have nothing to do with assault weapons. And Adam Lanza's mom was considered to be a "responsible gun owner"; he himself was well trained to handle those guns "responsibly". Could it be that owning such guns — especially more than one — is itself a sign of mental instability? Or at least a dangerous antisocial proclivity? Or at least a very risky enabler of great potential harm?
The bill, initially filed by Senate Majority Leader Philip Baruth, D-Burlington, would have prohibited the manufacture, possession and transfer of semiautomatic assault weapons and large capacity ammunition, and made it a crime for a person to leave a firearm accessible to a child. ...
Caledonia state Sen. Joe Benning, R-Lyndon, had lunch with Baruth a few days before he pulled the bill, and told him he wouldn’t support the assault weapons ban. Baruth then shared with him that he couldn’t find anyone in the Democratic caucus who would support his bill, either.
“When he recognized there was no support for his bill, he decided to withdraw it so not to cause any conflict or discussion,” [emphasis added] said Benning, whose district includes several Orange County towns in the Bradford area.
Numerous Democrats interviewed said they wouldn’t have supported the bill if it had gone forward, many citing the rural nature of Vermont life.
Benning said he has received hundreds of emails from constituents and every email was opposing the bill, which Benning said he found shocking.
State Sen. Dick McCormack, D-Bethel, said that in 23 years, he has never supported gun control in Vermont, and it’s because Vermont is a rural area and firearms are part of rural life.
State Sen. Jane Kitchel, D-Danville, said she wouldn’t have supported the bill because assault weapons are not the only way that people can harm or kill others. Take Melissa Jenkins for example. The St. Johnsbury Academy teacher was strangled to death last year and her death did not involve a firearm.
“I wish we could legislate (against) evil,” said Kitchel, a Caledonia senator also representing the Bradford-area towns.
And while Kitchel understands that there are a lot of gun owners in Vermont and gun laws are relaxed, she said there is no correlation between the number of gun owners in Vermont and gun violence. ...
Senate President Pro Tempore John Campbell, D-Quechee, said he too wouldn’t have supported Baruth’s bill because he said he doesn’t want the Senate to have a reactive approach to what happened in Newtown, Conn.
Instead, he sided with Benning and said that the Senate should focus on the flaws in the system that allow people with mental illness to have access to guns. ...
Civilization is about limits: freedom, not license. No person is free when anyone can be a tyrant. Baruth's bill was withdrawn "so not to cause any conflict or discussion" — in other words, in cowardly capitulation to well armed bullies. That is indeed more suggestive of eastern Congo than open progressive democratic Vermont.
And U.S. Senator Patrick Leahy going on, like fellow "liberal" Jane Kitchel above, about how special Vermont is with so many guns and relatively little gun violence (ignoring its leading suicide rate) ignores the obvious fact, which Leahy just helped promote nationally, that Vermont is the go-to state in the region to load up on destructive weaponry. (This "straw purchasing" was noted in the Valley News article by former Norwich Selectwoman Sharon Racusin.) (And of course, Leahy's "job" as a senior senator is mostly to land military contracts for Vermont companies, and part of the military economy is our arming the world, including with "small" arms.)
Finally, Joe Benning (and Kitchel with a more blatant diversion) echos the inanity that "guns don't kill people, people kill people". And people with assault weapons are able to kill lots of people. A letter in today's Valley News similarly insisted that guns are just tools, that we shouldn't blame the gun any more than we blame the car in an accident. But a gun is a tool with only one purpose, a deadly purpose. A civilized society requires cars to be safe so that their use does not bring undue danger to the public. Likewise, a civilized society limits the deadliness of weaponry in the hands of its citizens.
That lawmakers fear even talking about reasonable limits that do not threaten in any way hunting and other recreational shooting, nor the defense of one's home or animals, the "right to bear arms", is itself frightening.
[Note: The Valley News carried an editorial on Saturday about "this unseemly bit of moral retreat".
human rights, Vermont]
January 27, 2013
Paul Gaynor forgets to mention mafia connection
In today’s New York Times, First Wind CEO Paul Gaynor writes:
In 2004, another G.E. colleague asked me to join UPC Wind Management as president and chief executive, and I accepted. Because another wind company had a similar name, we changed our name to First Wind in 2008.That “other” wind company was in fact its own parent. They changed the name because its deep corruption was coming to light in Italy. That “other GE colleague” was Brian Caffyn ...
UPC Solar: Our Management —
Mr. Caffyn ... was the founder and inaugural Chairman of UPC Wind (now First Wind). ... Mr. Caffyn is also Managing Partner of UPC Capital Partners and UPC Energy Partners. He spent the first part of his career in project financing for wind, cogeneration, hydro, solar, geothermal, waste-to-energy and biomass energy projects with GE Capital, Heller Financial, Inc., and several private companies. Mr. Caffyn personally oversaw the establishment and construction of the largest wind energy company in Italy — Italian Vento Power Corporation.Brian Caffyn: Executive Profile & Biography, Business Week —
Mr. Caffyn is a co-founder of UPC Energy Group and UPC Group. ... He founded First Wind Energy Company in 1996 ... He founded First Wind Holdings, Inc. and served as its Chairman. He founded and served as Chairman of First Wind Energy LLC (UPC Wind Partners, LLC). ... Mr. Caffyn served as Director or Partner of ... Italian Vento Power Corporation (IVPC), Srl, ...Caffyn, founder and former CEO and [still?] chairman, has been expunged from mention on the First Wind web site.
Italian Vento Power Corporation: Background —
The Group [Italian Vento Power Corporation] came to light in 1993 from an idea of Oreste Vigorito who formed the company IVPC Srl on behalf of UPC, an American company which operates in the wind sector in California. ...Anti-mafia police make largest asset seizure, by Guy Dinmore, Financial Times, September 14, 2010 —
Between 1996 and 2000, UPC forms several project companies for the installation of new Wind Farms in the Campania Region, in Sardinia and in Sicily. During this period, the Group develops 241MW. In 2005, UPC sells its assets held in Italy to the Irish group Trinergy and furthermore, sells the 50% of the original IVPC Srl (with its trade mark) to Oreste Vigorito who remains in partnership with Eurus Energy (ex Tomen) which owns the other 50%.
Trinergy, in its turn, in 2007, sells the assets previously acquired from UPC to the English group International Power [IP]. Oreste Vigorito is Managing Director of the ex IVPC Group, previously called Trinergy and now IP Maestrale, until November 2008 when he hands in his resignation.
Italian anti-mafia police have made their largest seizure of assets as part of an investigation into windfarm contracts in Sicily. Officers confiscated property and accounts valued at €1.5bn belonging to a businessman suspected of having links with the mafia.Green energy tangled in web of shady deals, by Guy Dinmore, Financial Times, May 5, 2009 —
Roberto Maroni, interior minister, on Tuesday accused the businessman – identified by police as Vito Nicastri and known as the island’s “lord of the winds” – of being close to a fugitive mafia boss, Matteo Messina Denaro.
General Antonio Mirone, of the anti-mafia police, said the seized assets included 43 companies – some with foreign participation and mostly in the solar and windpower sector – as well as about 100 plots of land, villas and warehouses, luxury cars and a catamaran. More than 60 bank accounts were frozen. ...
The renewable energy sector is under scrutiny across much of southern Italy. Some windfarms, built with official subsidies, have never functioned. ...
Mr Nicastri sold most of his windfarm projects to IVPC, a company near Naples run by Oreste Vigorito, also president of Italy’s windpower association. Mr Vigorito was also arrested last November on suspicion of fraud and later released.
Over coffee, Mr Nicastri confirms that he has developed the "majority" of Sicily's wind farms, arranging land, financing and official permits. He then sold the projects for construction to IVPC, a company run by Oreste Vigorito, who is also president of Italy's wind power association.Wind Power, by Joan Killough-Miller, WPI [Worcester Polytechnic Institute] Transformations, Summer 2005 —
Mr Nicastri says he has worked on projects resulting in construction of wind farms for International Power (IP) of the UK; Falck Renewables, the London subsidiary of Falck Group based in Milan; IVPC; and Veronagest, another Italian company.
"I am not a prostitute for everyone. There are other prostitutes for the others," Mr Nicastri laughs, mentioning other multinationals with wind assets in Sicily. ...
IP became the single largest wind farmer in Italy with its 2007 purchase of the Maestrale portfolio of mostly Italian wind farms, including five in Sicily, for €1.8bn from Trinergy, an Irish company, which had purchased them from IVPC.
As president and CEO of UPC Wind Management, located in Newton, Mass., Gaynor was tapped to bring the success of the parent company, UPC Group, to North America. In Europe and North Africa, UPC affiliates — including Italian Vento Power Corporation — have raised over $900 million in financing and installed some 900 utility-scale wind turbine generators (WTGs), with a total capacity of more than 635 megawatts. UPC subsidiary companies, positioned across the United States and in Toronto, are currently pursing some 2,000 megawatts in projects from Maine to Maui.Also of note from Gaynor's NY Times piece: “Some people will always be against development, whether it’s a shopping mall, a condo project or a wind farm.” Yes, “wind farms” are “development”, no different from shopping malls and condo projects, which is why they should similarly never be allowed on the ridges, open spaces, and coasts that wind developers target.
wind power, wind energy
January 24, 2013
Let’s cry for the oxen, not for Green Mountain College
To the Editor, Valley News:
Lisa Rathke's Associated Press story about Green Mountain College (GMC) representatives presenting their case to the Vermont House Committee on Agriculture (“College Pleas for Vt. Aid in Ox Crisis,” Jan. 17) shows how unwilling they still are to take any responsibility for the consequences of their decision to kill the hardworked and beloved oxen Bill and Lou.
It was the cold heartlessness of that decision that outraged first some of GMC’s own students and alumni, and then as the news got out, so many people around the world, especially as the college adamantly refused offers of sanctuary and even monetary compensation to let Bill and Lou live out their lives in peaceful retirement with attentive veterinary care.
In response, the college only invited more outrage: by smearing as “extremists” all those asking them to show mercy; by responding to the offer of sanctuary for these two special oxen as a threat to all animal agriculture; and by characterizing the resulting publicity as “terrorizing” them.
This was a crisis of their own making, in both the inhumane decision itself and the paranoid and misplaced sense of victimization that this latest “plea” exemplifies. GMC’s quest for absolution and vindication only reminds the world — and perhaps themselves — of their guilt.
One hopes that someone on the Committee kindly suggested that they might stop being so childishly stubborn and show some human kindness: and let Bill, who they have not killed yet, retire to a sanctuary.
Eric Rosenbloom and Joanna Lake
environment, environmentalism, animal rights, vegetarianism, veganism, Vermont
Saving Paradise (Murder Is in the Wind)
Ua mau ke ea o ka ’aina i ka pono.
The life of the land is preserved in righteous action.
In this taut and fast-paced thriller about corporate and political greed, corruption, murder and mayhem, Mike Bond keeps the tension high throughout and the evil wonderfully complex (as well as the answer to it). The book also provides a nice tour — and history — of the islands.
Saving Paradise sets the fight against big wind clearly as one of good against evil. Which it always has been, of course, but a lot of people have a hard time believing that the developers really are purely evil, that there really is no benefit to big wind except to the developers, and to the ones who will follow them into the now desecrated lands that were off limits before Enron started buying environmental groups, who are now all about “balance” (their bank balance, in effect) instead of preservation and protection. And those that do see the developers for what they are, often do so through irrelevant political partisan eyes (as do most of those who support wind, even while otherwise decrying everything behind it), so the bigger problem remains: and corporate/political power pits community against community, neighbor against neighbor.
Big wind is nobody’s friend. They don’t even care about their own giant wind turbines, as they move on to destroy the next crest and plain and coast. It is only about destruction and robbery. The developers are vandals. Their supporters are fools or worse.
wind power, wind energy, wind turbines, wind farms, environment, environmentalism, human rights, animal rights
The life of the land is preserved in righteous action.
In this taut and fast-paced thriller about corporate and political greed, corruption, murder and mayhem, Mike Bond keeps the tension high throughout and the evil wonderfully complex (as well as the answer to it). The book also provides a nice tour — and history — of the islands.
Saving Paradise sets the fight against big wind clearly as one of good against evil. Which it always has been, of course, but a lot of people have a hard time believing that the developers really are purely evil, that there really is no benefit to big wind except to the developers, and to the ones who will follow them into the now desecrated lands that were off limits before Enron started buying environmental groups, who are now all about “balance” (their bank balance, in effect) instead of preservation and protection. And those that do see the developers for what they are, often do so through irrelevant political partisan eyes (as do most of those who support wind, even while otherwise decrying everything behind it), so the bigger problem remains: and corporate/political power pits community against community, neighbor against neighbor.
Big wind is nobody’s friend. They don’t even care about their own giant wind turbines, as they move on to destroy the next crest and plain and coast. It is only about destruction and robbery. The developers are vandals. Their supporters are fools or worse.
wind power, wind energy, wind turbines, wind farms, environment, environmentalism, human rights, animal rights
It’s Time to Jail the NRA
Mike Bond writes:
It’s time to jail the National Rifle Association Directors as accessories to mass murder. For once again a madman with automatic rifles has slaughtered our children. And we rid ourselves of the NRA’s political accomplices, the Senators and Congressmen who vote to legalize weapons of mass murder. The time has come.
If the United States were a civilized, rational nation this horror could never have happened. But we have become an errant, self-pitying, dysfunctional, and emotionally and fiscally bankrupt society run by a corporate-political clique that sells us nice visions of ourselves while they rob us blind and inject our minds with poison.
Over 13 years ago, after the Columbine School Massacre, I wrote in The San Francisco Chronicle that as a hunter and gun owner I recommended the following:
Obviously, none of this has happened. There have been 36 major massacres since then, each bloodbath aided and abetted by the National Rifle Association. Mass murder weapons are far easier to obtain now than they were then.
We are talking about murder here: cold, calculated murder. For even the NRA fanatics – even our pay-for-hire politicians – know that every law they pass to legalize mass murder weapons will result in many more deaths. This is premeditated murder. It’s time we jail them for it.
We have descended to the ninth circle of Hell, a place where so many crazy people have guns you fear you need to have guns yourself, because it’s obvious the society cannot protect us. The politicians will not protect us – they have no interest in our welfare, only in the corporate contributions they use to sell us nice visions of themselves so we keep them in office.
The police cannot protect us – they’re targets themselves. At Sandy Hook the police were earnestly reporting that they were going to do “a detailed investigation” – who cares about an investigation when your child is dead, and you know who did it and it keeps happening over and over again? And when for a long time everyone has known the cause?
Just like the insane murderer at Sandy Hook, the NRA and their fully-owned politicians have developed a pathological personality disorder, an emotional disconnect – they cannot understand the impact of their actions. They are immune to other people’s pain.
And the media is equally at fault – there’s lots of talk about emotional connections, how people are helping each other, lots of nice photos of teary mothers hugging rescued children. But what about the little girls with their heads blown away by high-powered bullets? Where are those pictures, so we can see what it’s really like? Where are the pictures of the little boys with their intestines spread across the classroom? So we can fully understand the horror?
Because until we fully understand the horror we can never change the evil in ourselves, in our nation, in our way of looking at ourselves, in our way of being governed.
The simple truth is that we are owned, and our politicians work for, Colt Arms, Ruger, Remington and all the other murder industries and their lobbyists. We are owned by the National Rifle Association.
It’s time to take our nation back. To do so, the first step is to jail the criminals. All of them.
It’s time to jail the National Rifle Association Directors as accessories to mass murder. For once again a madman with automatic rifles has slaughtered our children. And we rid ourselves of the NRA’s political accomplices, the Senators and Congressmen who vote to legalize weapons of mass murder. The time has come.
If the United States were a civilized, rational nation this horror could never have happened. But we have become an errant, self-pitying, dysfunctional, and emotionally and fiscally bankrupt society run by a corporate-political clique that sells us nice visions of ourselves while they rob us blind and inject our minds with poison.
Over 13 years ago, after the Columbine School Massacre, I wrote in The San Francisco Chronicle that as a hunter and gun owner I recommended the following:
- Private ownership of handguns and assault rifles be prohibited. Their sole purpose is to kill people.
- Ownership of rifles and shotguns be registered, like automobiles, and limited to those who have passed a licensing program and mental and criminal background tests.
- Advertisement of guns be prohibited in all media.
- Gun-related political contributions be prohibited.
- All media, particularly the Internet, be controlled for the level of violence. We spend billions to restrict trace chemicals in our children’s foods but scarcely a penny to govern what goes into their minds.
Obviously, none of this has happened. There have been 36 major massacres since then, each bloodbath aided and abetted by the National Rifle Association. Mass murder weapons are far easier to obtain now than they were then.
We are talking about murder here: cold, calculated murder. For even the NRA fanatics – even our pay-for-hire politicians – know that every law they pass to legalize mass murder weapons will result in many more deaths. This is premeditated murder. It’s time we jail them for it.
We have descended to the ninth circle of Hell, a place where so many crazy people have guns you fear you need to have guns yourself, because it’s obvious the society cannot protect us. The politicians will not protect us – they have no interest in our welfare, only in the corporate contributions they use to sell us nice visions of themselves so we keep them in office.
The police cannot protect us – they’re targets themselves. At Sandy Hook the police were earnestly reporting that they were going to do “a detailed investigation” – who cares about an investigation when your child is dead, and you know who did it and it keeps happening over and over again? And when for a long time everyone has known the cause?
Just like the insane murderer at Sandy Hook, the NRA and their fully-owned politicians have developed a pathological personality disorder, an emotional disconnect – they cannot understand the impact of their actions. They are immune to other people’s pain.
And the media is equally at fault – there’s lots of talk about emotional connections, how people are helping each other, lots of nice photos of teary mothers hugging rescued children. But what about the little girls with their heads blown away by high-powered bullets? Where are those pictures, so we can see what it’s really like? Where are the pictures of the little boys with their intestines spread across the classroom? So we can fully understand the horror?
Because until we fully understand the horror we can never change the evil in ourselves, in our nation, in our way of looking at ourselves, in our way of being governed.
The simple truth is that we are owned, and our politicians work for, Colt Arms, Ruger, Remington and all the other murder industries and their lobbyists. We are owned by the National Rifle Association.
It’s time to take our nation back. To do so, the first step is to jail the criminals. All of them.
January 18, 2013
A friend writes ...
A friend writes, about Democrats' "tepid support for any gun regulation":
If a classroom of children were obliterated by the Taliban in Afghanistan, they'd be appalled at the savagery, and say it's just a barbaric society and we must DO SOMETHING to civilize them. When it happens here, they confirm that the USA is indeed a barbaric society by the way they shrug their shoulders and move on, life as usual, ho hum. Yesterday in the Times there was an essay (or a comment) where someone wrote that someone in Europe said to them that "life is cheap" in the US, and how sad that made them feel. But it's true, and it's reflected in the cruel policies everywhere here, from accepting warlike levels of gun violence, not providing universal health care and higher education, wrenching people's homes and property away when they are old and go into a nursing home, the level of incarceration and homelessness and poverty that is astounding in a nation that is so "rich". The list is endless, really. Cruelty and violence is all the US really stands for anymore.
If a classroom of children were obliterated by the Taliban in Afghanistan, they'd be appalled at the savagery, and say it's just a barbaric society and we must DO SOMETHING to civilize them. When it happens here, they confirm that the USA is indeed a barbaric society by the way they shrug their shoulders and move on, life as usual, ho hum. Yesterday in the Times there was an essay (or a comment) where someone wrote that someone in Europe said to them that "life is cheap" in the US, and how sad that made them feel. But it's true, and it's reflected in the cruel policies everywhere here, from accepting warlike levels of gun violence, not providing universal health care and higher education, wrenching people's homes and property away when they are old and go into a nursing home, the level of incarceration and homelessness and poverty that is astounding in a nation that is so "rich". The list is endless, really. Cruelty and violence is all the US really stands for anymore.
January 16, 2013
Means and Ends: The films of Kathryn Bigelow and Quentin Tarantino
With Django Unchained and Zero Dark Thirty in theaters at the same time, it is revealing to compare them. Both are manipulative entertainments profiting from a taste for violence, but they get away with it — that is, they are actually honored — in different ways.
Bigelow wallows in the violence of imperial war exploits with just enough ambivalence that discerning viewers can comfort themselves that her movies raise important questions about that violence. What is never questioned, however, is its justification. In other words, the end justifies the means, though maybe not any means.
Tarantino has also landed on the formula that the end justifies the means: any means as long as the end is unquestionably justified. Thus, in the context of the Nazi holocaust or American slavery, few people would begrudge the vengeful violence that Tarantino obsessively presents.
In short, Tarantino avoids questioning the means, and Bigelow avoids questioning of the end. Thus each of them allows an unquestioned indulgence in violence as entertainment. There is no reason to consider their films as anything more serious. Bigelow and Tarantino are poseurs.
Bigelow wallows in the violence of imperial war exploits with just enough ambivalence that discerning viewers can comfort themselves that her movies raise important questions about that violence. What is never questioned, however, is its justification. In other words, the end justifies the means, though maybe not any means.
Tarantino has also landed on the formula that the end justifies the means: any means as long as the end is unquestionably justified. Thus, in the context of the Nazi holocaust or American slavery, few people would begrudge the vengeful violence that Tarantino obsessively presents.
In short, Tarantino avoids questioning the means, and Bigelow avoids questioning of the end. Thus each of them allows an unquestioned indulgence in violence as entertainment. There is no reason to consider their films as anything more serious. Bigelow and Tarantino are poseurs.
January 14, 2013
Freedom to Connect
From speech by Aaron Swartz, May 2011, University of Chicago, about the fight against COICA/SOPA/PIPA, by courtesy of Democracy Now:
I was at an event, and I was talking, and I got introduced to a U.S. senator, one of the strongest proponents of the original COICA bill, in fact. And I asked him why, despite being such a progressive, despite giving a speech in favor of civil liberties, why he was supporting a bill that would censor the Internet. And, you know, that typical politician smile he had suddenly faded from his face, and his eyes started burning this fiery red. And he started shouting at me, said, "Those people on the Internet, they think they can get away with anything! They think they can just put anything up there, and there’s nothing we can do to stop them! They put up everything! They put up our nuclear missiles, and they just laugh at us! Well, we’re going to show them! There’s got to be laws on the Internet! It’s got to be under control!"I'm pretty sure that deranged senator was Patrick Leahy of Vermont, lead sponsor of COICA and PIPA (SOPA was the House version of PIPA).
Now, as far as I know, nobody has ever put up the U.S.'s nuclear missiles on the Internet. I mean, it's not something I’ve heard about. But that’s sort of the point. He wasn’t having a rational concern, right? It was this irrational fear that things were out of control. Here was this man, a United States senator, and those people on the Internet, they were just mocking him. They had to be brought under control. Things had to be under control. And I think that was the attitude of Congress. And just as seeing that fire in that senator’s eyes scared me, I think those hearings scared a lot of people. They saw this wasn’t the attitude of a thoughtful government trying to resolve trade-offs in order to best represent its citizens. This was more like the attitude of a tyrant. And so the citizens fought back. ...
January 13, 2013
Mental Health Screening for Gun Ownership
Mental health screening as part of the "background" check for gun purchasers requires only one (1) question:
Do you want to own a gun?
If the answer is "yes", it is clear that the person should be not allowed to have a gun.
Do you want to own a gun?
If the answer is "yes", it is clear that the person should be not allowed to have a gun.
January 7, 2013
One way to look at it
William Blum writes:
Capitalism can be seen in historical evolutionary terms, independent of any moral point of view or judgement. Broadly speaking, the organization of mankind's societies has evolved from slavery to feudalism to capitalism. And it's now time for the next step: socialism.
Socialism or communism have always been given just one chance to work, if that much, while capitalism has been given numerous chances to do so following its perennial fiascos. Ralph Nader has observed: "Capitalism will never fail because socialism will always be there to bail it out."
Capitalism gave rise to some very important innovations, such as mass production and distribution, and many technological advances. But now, and for some time past, the system has caused much more harm than good. It's eating its young. And our environment. We can take the advances instituted by capitalism for the purpose of profit and use them to create a society based on putting people before profit. Just imagine.
human rights, anarchism, ecoanarchism, anarchosyndicalism
Capitalism can be seen in historical evolutionary terms, independent of any moral point of view or judgement. Broadly speaking, the organization of mankind's societies has evolved from slavery to feudalism to capitalism. And it's now time for the next step: socialism.
Socialism or communism have always been given just one chance to work, if that much, while capitalism has been given numerous chances to do so following its perennial fiascos. Ralph Nader has observed: "Capitalism will never fail because socialism will always be there to bail it out."
Capitalism gave rise to some very important innovations, such as mass production and distribution, and many technological advances. But now, and for some time past, the system has caused much more harm than good. It's eating its young. And our environment. We can take the advances instituted by capitalism for the purpose of profit and use them to create a society based on putting people before profit. Just imagine.
human rights, anarchism, ecoanarchism, anarchosyndicalism
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