Greece Ablaze: Is This The Way The World Ends?

Peter Hammill:

The current affair gets to be my business,
I heard the news on the radio:
the sun on earth... what is this?
Is that the way that the crazy goes?

The Scotsman:

UP TO half of mainland Greece was in flames yesterday with firefighters battling to save the ancient site of the Olympic games and a 2,500-year-old temple of Apollo from wildfires raging through the country.

The death toll rose to at least 58 after five people were killed on the island of Evia, north of Athens, but it was feared many more may have perished in fires so large and intense they were visible from space.

New fires also broke out faster than others could be brought under control.

Officials believe that arson was responsible for many of the blazes and several people had been arrested. The government also announced a reward of up to £500,000 for anyone providing information that would lead to the arrest of an arsonist.

International Herald Tribune:

In late afternoon, [Maria Dimopoulos], 56, decided to lay down a bunch of white daisies on the spot where her cousins, Nikos and Maria Dimopoulos, the brother and sister, both in their 70s, died.

The three of them had been fleeing the fire together when a police officer stopped and urged them to get into his car. Dimopoulos did, but the other two did not want to leave their donkey, their only possession of value.

"I told you, 'Come with me!' " she said, laying the flowers down next to the dead donkey on the side of the road. "You wouldn't come. Why wouldn't you come?"

Hammill:

Attention tuned to the satellites,
looking down for an overview.
In the chapel of space we are acolytes.
In the battle of time we're all soldiers too
and the relative choir push the energy higher
Under fire.

International Herald Tribune:

The fire quickly ripped into Artemida, about three kilometers, or two kilometers, away. Residents piled into cars down the road toward Zaharo, the area's main town, on the Aegean Sea. Alexandropoulos, at the time in Zaharo, said he heard that the flames reached his village and called his mother, who was taking care of his son, Phillipos.

"I didn't even speak with her," he said. "I just said, 'I'm coming. Get going.' "

"I just didn't make it," he said.

He could not, according to several accounts, because fire swept across the road to the village, blocking off cars. Karta-Paraskevopoulos, her car full of her children and possibly others, turned around along with another car. In the smoke and confusion, there was an accident with other fleeing cars and a fire truck, which rolled over. Everyone in the convoy, several of them elderly, fled up a slope into the olive groves, where they died.

"I thought of nothing - just death," said Vassilis Mitros, 28, among a party who saw the bodies - he counted 24 - early the next morning.

Now the once-lovely hills are burnt to white ash and olive trees like blackened skeletons, planted after death. All but 14 of the 60 homes here were damaged or destroyed; in Artemida, 17 of the 70 houses were lost, though Karta-Paraskevopoulos's house was intact. The region normally produces 10,000 tons of oil, but nearly all the trees are now destroyed, along with countless livelihoods. Charred donkeys and chickens litter ruined farms.

"This village is literally wiped out," Bammi said. "It's not just those who have been killed. Those who are left have no fields to work in, no olive trees. They have nothing to look forward to."

International Herald Tribune:

A woman killed on Friday, her charred body found with her arms around her four children, might have been safe if she had stayed in her home. It was the only house left untouched by the flames in the village of Artemida in the western Peloponnese. The house's white walls and red tile roof were unscathed, surrounded by blackened earth.

Hammill

The current affair gets to be all our businness,
it's filtered in through the T.V. screen.
The norm, the average...what is this,
when it goes blank what does that all mean?
And what's the drive of each individual?
And what's the way that the story ends?
Is it Mr. X, left as the last residual
holder of the flame, conscience of all men?
But he's so tense to expire
he throws himself on the wire
under fire.

The Scotsman:

In the early hours of the morning, church bells rang out the alarm in Kolyri and residents gathered their belongings and fled through the night.

They told how the blaze had covered 1¼ miles in just three minutes.

"It's hell everywhere," said resident Costas Ladas. "I've never seen anything like it."
...

Constantine Karamanlis, the Greek prime minister, has declared the entire nation in a state of emergency and national mourning and ordered flags to fly at half staff on government buildings.

The opening of the Greek premier football league, scheduled to start yesterday, was postponed until further notice as were a number of cultural and entertainment events.

Three weeks away from a general election, the government presented the country as under attack by "suspect interests", which it would not specify.

Mr Karamanlis said: "So many fires in different places and at the same time cannot be a coincidence. This is a national tragedy."

But the opposition socialist and communist parties blamed the government for incompetence and delays in taking action.

International Herald Tribune:

Greece's few remaining patches of forest rapidly were being rapidly incinerated, and the environmental consequences will be dire, experts said.

The worst of the fires are concentrated in the mountains of the Peloponnese in the south and on the island of Evia north of Athens. Strong winds blew smoke and ash over the capital.

"This is an immense ecological disaster," said Theodota Nantsou, WWF Greece Conservation Manager. "We had an explosive mixture of very adverse weather conditions, tinder-dry forests — to an extent not seen for many years — combined with the wild winds of the past two weeks. It's a recipe to burn the whole country."

The Scotsman:

THE weather has been causing worldwide havoc.

The US states of Idaho and California have, like Greece, been hit by wildfires, while Ohio, already suffering from flooding, was hit by tornados that left hundreds of thousands with no electricity.

Meanwhile, China, India and Romania have been suffering from severe flooding.

In the US, a mandatory evacuation was ordered for residents of more than 1,000 homes south of Ketchum in Idaho where a massive wildfire raged.

And in California, a seven-week-old wildfire has been burning in Santa Barbara county and a recommended evacuation has been put into effect.

In Ohio, beleaguered residents were picking up the pieces after tornado-bearing thunderstorms knocked out power across the state.

Powerful storms during most of the past week caused disastrous floods from south-eastern Minnesota to Ohio that were blamed for at least 18 deaths.

In China, the official Xinhua News Agency yesterday reported torrential rainstorms had triggered landslides and floods, killing at least 13 people.

In India, nearly 2,000 people have been killed by snake bites, drowning, diarrhoea and in house collapses since July when swollen rivers burst their banks, inundating huge areas in eastern India and Bangladesh. The death toll rose by 74 over the weekend.

Overnight rains also caused widespread flooding in Romania, when rivers overflowed, leaving about 1,400 people stranded in villages and forcing the evacuation of the 17th-century Sambata de Sus Monastery.

Peter Hammill's monsterpiece, "Mr. X (gets tense)", in full:

The current affair gets to be my business,
I heard the news on the radio:
the sun on earth... what is this?
Is that the way that the crazy goes?

Attention tuned to the satellites,
looking down for an overview.
In the chapel of space we are acolytes.
In the battle of time we're all soldiers too
and the relative choir push the energy higher
Under fire.

The sliding show in the macroscopic,
finger on the button pointing to progress.
The apparatus roll, no-one here can stop it,
too busy learning more - always knowing less.
Soon turkey-wrapped in the spaceman blanket
we'll offer up lame duck apologies
and settle down for the final banquet,
the gourmet dish of technology...
cryogenic device catches all human life
under ice.

The current affair gets to be all our businness,
it's filtered in through the T.V. screen.
The norm, the average...what is this,
when it goes blank what does that all mean?
And what's the drive of each individual?
And what's the way that the story ends?
Is it Mr. X, left as the last residual
holder of the flame, conscience of all men?
But he's so tense to expire
he throws himself on the wire
under fire.

Is this the way the world ends?
Under ice, under fire?
Has there been some mistaken design?
Under ice
got to find the human voice.
Lord, deliver us from Babel.

Three Important Things You Probably Won't Understand

There's so much going on in this little thing I like to call "my life" that I haven't had time to do much research or writing today, but I do have a few important but mostly incomprehensible things to share with you.

The first is a very interesting 9/11 video called "ZEMBLA: Net Complot Van 9/11", which you really should watch, even though your ears probably won't understand very much of it. But if you can read, you should be ok. (It's Dutch with English subtitles.)

And then there's this page -- an account of the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center written by Daithí Mac Lochlainn, author of the excellent "Pastor Niemöller in the 21st Century", a modern variation on the classic German poem, which we all read a few days ago -- didn't we, class? -- when I quoted it here.

In the original version of "Pastor Niemöller in the 21st Century", as posted on "The Gaelic Starover", this page is linked to the text "World Trade Center". I changed the link, substituting a different page, when I reposted the piece here, because I thought you probably wouldn't understand it. But then I found out that it was written by Daithí Mac Lochlainn himself, who happened to be in the WTC on 9/11. So I want you to see it, even though I don't undertstand any of the text, and nor do I understand why the page is "watermarked" with a photo of two young women wearing ... what are they wearing, anyway? And why are they on this page?

Third, and perhaps most incomprehensible of all, the Pentagon's budget for fiscal year 2006 contained $20 million earmarked for a celebration to mark our victories in Iraq and Afghanistan. Needless to say, the money wasn't spent this year (and quite fittingly, in my view, considering that we haven't yet declared victory and hauled ass). Therefore, and with the prospect of an eventual victory growing ever dimmer, the $20 million has been "rolled over" into next year's budget. Is your head spinning yet? If not, consider these words of wisdom, from Rebecca M. Kirszner, communications director (i.e. professional mouthpiece) for Democratic Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, as quoted by the New York Times:

“If the Bush administration had spent more time planning for the postwar occupation of Iraq, and less time planning ‘mission accomplished’ victory celebrations, America would be closer to finishing the job in Iraq,”

Did you catch that? The "postwar occupation of Iraq" used to be a verboten phrase, back in ancient times (eighteen months ago) when we were "Liberators, Not Occupiers". Way back then, Republicans consistently denied that America was interested in any such thing as "postwar occupation of Iraq"; nowadays we are so modern that even a well-trained Democratic ventiloquist's dummy can utter the phrase as if it's the most natural thing in the world.

As the incomparable Peter Hammill (pictured above, during his famous half-a-beard phase) would say: "And this is progress? You must be joking!!"

Speaking of Hammill, at a time when we all badly need both some sanity and some good music, I hereby present a lyric of uncommon power and beauty. Except for the reference to the date, at the beginning of the first verse, this song could have been written yesterday. Or tomorrow.

The Future Now

Here we are, static in the latter half
of the twentieth century
but it might as well be the Middle Ages,
there'll have to be some changes
but how they'll come about foxes me.

I want the future now,
I want to hold it in my hands;
all men equal and unbowed,
I want the promised land.

but that doesn't seem to get any closer,
and Moses has had his day...
the tablets of law are an advertising poster,
civilisation here to stay
and this is progress?
You must be joking!
Me, I'm looking for any kind of hope.

I want the future now,
I want to see it on the screen,
I want to break the bounds
that make our lives so mean.

Oh, blind, blinded, blinding hatred
of race, sex, religion, colour, country and creed,
these scream from the pages of everything I read.
You just bring me oppression and torture,
apartheid, corruption and plague;
you just bring me the rape of the planet
and joke world rights at the Hague.
Oh, someday the Millennium!
But how far is someday away?

I want the future now
I'm young, and it's my right.
I want a reason to be proud.
I want to see the light.
I want the future now,
I want to see it on the screen,
I want to break the bounds:
make life worth more than dreams.

Why half-a-beard? OK, already. Four important things you probably won't understand!!

Fearful Yahoos High And Low

Once in a while [but not as often as I should] I spend a good chunk of time away from the "news". This weekend I've been doing that, in order to "reflect" ... and to get some other things taken care of [a.k.a. "blog-sitting"] ... and, especially on Saturday, I often found myself thinking of the "miraculous" day 30 years ago when the war in Vietnam finally ended. What a day! What a mess! What a bitter conclusion! What a sad delusion!

It occurred to me that, as bad as we thought that war was, and as bad as we knew its domestic toll was going to turn out to be, and as bad as we all had to suspect its toll on southeast Asia was going to turn out to be... Even with all that, if you had told me back in the summer of Philadelphia Freedom and Love Will Keep Us Together that just 30 years later we'd be talking about even one tenth of what we're talking about now, I would have kicked you out! Not violently, you understand, but ... I never would have believed you!!

Further mental wanderings led to musing about how easy it can be to believe we're right, even when we have no idea, as opposed to how difficult it can be to admit we're wrong, even when we haven't a clue. How easy it is to kick somebody out because you don't believe something that you actually have no idea whether it's true or false. And I'm not talking about right vs left here; nor about anybody in particular; I'm talking about humanity in general: how easy it is to stop wondering about the things we don't know, how simple it is to assume we know everything that matters and that there's nothing else to learn or to worry about. We all do it, to a certain degree. I mean: How often do you look yourself in the mirror and ask the most basic questions? Questions like: "Is everything we believed yesterday ... true?"

After pondering that for a while, in the usual way that my thoughts have of meandering when I'm tired, I found myself thinking about Mark Crispin Miller, thinking that I should know more about him, and that probably my readers should know more about him too ... and then I found myself reading [for the first time] his excellent [though not exactly "recent"] piece, "Brain Drain", to which I heartily direct your attention and from which I will quote here eventually.

But ... in order to set that up ... I want to quote an even earlier piece from Mark Crispin Miller, an excerpt from "The Bush Dyslexicon" published at AlterNet under the title: What You See Is What You Get.

[T]here is very little place for "substance" – or, indeed, for any rational discourse – on TV for formal, political and economic reasons. As the networks have developed it, the medium is far too speedy, loud, disjunctive and sensational to permit a complex sentence (much less an idea). The heavy pressure of the advertisers, furthermore, forbids the airing of whatever issues might be either too depressing or too complicated for the venue's crucial atmosphere of lite festivity – a non-stop pseudo-carnival that never can slow down, or else someone might lose money.

Into this tightly regulated riot of commercial propaganda every politician has to fit his/her own propaganda "message" – and, if s/he's lucky, also has to fit him or herself, looking "nice" enough (with just the right amount of Self-Effacing Humor) and sounding "clear" enough (without alarming anyone) to keep from standing out as "stiff," "robotic," "wooden" or in any other way ridiculous. With such smooth integration all "political" success has everything to do image – which, by and large, leaves out telling truth, or making sense.

Thus Bush belongs in the culture of TV. He fits in, not despite his open calculation and the utter superficiality of his (overt) concerns, but because of them. Such defects don't disturb the pundits of today, most of whom – whatever medium they work in – cannot even see what's wrong with Bush, so steeped are they themselves in TV's trivial worldview. Our President's most calculating predecessors weren't so lucky, their over-concentration on mere spin arousing strong objections back in those less TV-saturated days.

Miller was talking about the 2000 campaign but what he says rings true today as well. He got a ton of flak for it, and some of the flak was very revealing. This passage sets the stage for "Brain Drain":

Once I started to promote the book, I learned that Bush's psychopathic traits exert a strong appeal to his most zealous fans, many of whom took full advantage of the first-strike capabilities of cyber-space to let me know their thoughts. For example, I received this e-mail in mid-August -- just after W's big speech on stem cell research -- with "THE BUSH DYSLEXICON" written in the subject line:

Mark ...
I just finished your above-named book (borrowed it, wouldn't buy it) and it confirms my suspicion that you are a typical left-wing jerkoff !!! Did you happen to catch Bush's speech last night ... he really put it up your left-wing asshole ... asshole!
Fred Fittin

To call that message "anti-intellectual" would be a comic understatement. Since it's unlikely that he read the book, or knows anybody who would have a copy, Fred could not be said so much to hate it as to have despised the very thought of it. Any act of critical intelligence, any reasoned effort to see through the mask of power, enrages types like Fred.

Later, once he's sufficiently "wound-up", Miller writes:

Those hooked on such propaganda have been well-trained by its authors to scream into the nearest telephone, or pound out a threatening e-mail, at the slightest hint of what they might perceive as "liberal bias" by the corporate media. [...] Such repressive tactics, we should note, are anti-intellectual in the deepest and most frightening sense -- i.e., opposed to any rational attempt to jolt the public out of acquiescence. It is that livid quietism on the right, that militant and gleeful anti-rational animus, which marks this latest surge of anti-intellectualism -- an attitude not necessarily the same as mere old-fashioned anti-academic feeling. Of course, the anti-intellectual attacks do often come in anti-academic garb -- as in one Amazon "review" complaining of Bugliosi's putative embrace by both "the media and leftist academics," or in another that assails The Bush Dyslexicon for dissing "someone with a Harvard Business School degree who has solid common sense values and is not the least bit interested in the liberal academic establishment's opinions." Although they often coincide, however, it is the animus against the active mind itself that really drives such vigilantes, and not a simple class-based beef against the snooty professoriate (the types that, as our president has put it, snack on "Brie and cheese").

This much is clear from the incurable selective blindness of the anti-intellectuals, who can perceive the hated caste of academic privilege only insofar as it includes "the left." [...] At times the need to reinterpret Bush the drunken Eli as a dedicated populist has led to some absurd inventions. On Amazon, one troubled critic of my book asserted that "Bush was an excellent student at Yale, but many of his tests were graded down at his request to keep him as 'one of the people.'" ("This is never acknowledged by Miller," he observed correctly.) For the most part, however, the attackers don't resort to fabrication, but are content fanatically to tune out any aspect of reality that contradicts their vision of "the liberal academic establishment." In their eyes, Condoleezza Rice is not an arrogant and fuzzy-minded prof, nor is Paul Wolfowitz, despite their full commitment to the crackpot scheme of "national missile defense." Likewise, for all the bloodshed and destruction caused by his simplistic notions, the anti-intellectuals would never think to damn the pompous Henry Kissinger as a "misguided" academic, any more than they would damn, in retrospect, the cohort of distinguished Ivy Leaguers who propelled us into Vietnam.

For reasons too complex for us to hazard here, the anti-intellectuals are finally on the side of power at its most unforgiving and voracious. And so they give a pass to those professors who are at the service of such power, while jeering anyone -- inside or outside the Academy -- who thinks to raise a fuss about how wrong it is. For them, this isn't something to discuss, because discussion is itself suspicious, even dangerous -- the sport of jerk-offs and Prevaricators. Thus there is no point in arguing with them -- and yet no wisdom in attempting to ignore them. And such is true not only of the Bush regime's most unrestrained supporters, but of the Bush regime itself -- a fact that now requires a lot of careful thought, and something more.

And yet it's just such thinking that has all but disappeared since 9/11 -- as it always disappears in time of war. In bringing down the World Trade Center (a mile from where I sit right now) and ravaging the Pentagon, the terrorists not only murdered thousands, and left tens of thousands more bereft, and devastated lower Manhattan, and sparked the wreckage of the local and the national economy. Through that spectacular atrocity, the killers also managed, at one blow, to knock the brains clean out of countless good Americans. Although those citizens had started out that day with all their wits intact, by dinnertime they sounded way much like Fred -- a terroristic consequence a lot less hideous, surely, than what happened in the air and on the ground, and yet even more destructive in the long run. For while we can and will no doubt rebuild beyond the shattered lives and property, the prospects aren't as upbeat for our frail democracy, which cannot function if too many people think like Bill O'Reilly and his fans.

The swift migration of (let's call it) Fred's position from the cyber-fringes into the great neo-liberal mainstream is apparent in all sorts of weird new attitudes among the educated. Where Bush's lifelong callowness and dimness had been obvious, and his incoherence a cause for endless easy ridicule, he is now reverently applauded for his eloquence ("Churchillian"), the rare "nimbleness" of his communications to the public, and, according to The New York Times, his "gravitas" -- although his off-the-cuff remarks are just as adolescent, repetitious, empty and illogical as ever. (Go and read them if you don't believe me.) Where Bush/Cheney's rule was widely recognized, except among Republicans, as having been arranged not democratically but through grand theft and fraud, his presidency is now deemed a blessing to us all -- and not just by his fellow partisans, but by the Democrats, who all but thank God for the placement of his foot on their collective neck. And where our prior wars had met with just and patriotic skepticism, the hard-won civic legacy of Vietnam, this latest, and in fact most perilous, of our Third World adventures meets with mere assent -- edgy resignation if not frank applause -- and, all too often, with a nasty allergy to all the rational and necessary questions: e.g., How will all this bombing keep us safe from further terrorist attacks? Won't it only make them even likelier? Why should merely cracking down on terrorism help to stop it, when that method hasn't worked in any other country? Why are we so hated in the Muslim world? What did our government do there to bring this horror home to all those innocent Americans? And why don't we learn anything, from our free press, about the gross ineptitude of our state agencies? about what's really happening in Afghanistan? about the pertinence of Central Asia's huge reserves of oil and natural gas? about the links between the Bush and the bin Laden families?

Ask such questions now, and, while you probably won't get the answers that you're looking for, you're likely to learn something quite important from the current climate -- that terror serves to sabotage democracy, by making thought itself seem like a crime against the state. Ask those questions, and you will surely be accused of siding with the enemy -- just the sort of answer that Al Qaeda's goons would also give you, if you asked them certain tactless questions. Outside of your armchair, then, there really is no place for intellectuals to hide, in this new world of terrorists both foreign and domestic, and fearful yahoos high and low.

Wow! I used to think I could write!!

And now, my friends, I must bid you farewell. Congratulations if you've stayed the course. What a meandering stream of semi-consciousness it's been! I hope in some way you may have found it fruitful.

But now ... how can I tie together all these disparate themes, from Vietnam to Fearful Yahoos? And how can I counteract the brutalizing memories of those two horrible songs? Nothing personal against Elton John, nor The Captain and Tennille, you understand, but ... It might be a good idea to close with another song, something perhaps a bit more "thematic"...

This one's been running through my brain quite a lot lately. It's by Peter Hammill.

The Old School Tie

Oh the bright young men in their tight-buttoned suits:
the light beams out from capped smiles to the shines on their lick-spittle books.
Oh these sharp young sparks with their fresh rosettes -
yeh, the artful way that they promise the earth to all suffragettes.
What they won't promise we don't know yet.
They say they're build - and shaping society
but we know they're just saving for their own
safe home in politics.
Anything goes: look at them run.

Come from every side, noses Pinocchio clean;
lock in synchromesh, oil the wheels and the gears of the party machine
and the final goal is a cabinet seat...
in the trappings of power, the presumption to speak for the man in the street.
Once they move in, they're in for good;
yeh, once they get that bed made
it's a safe home in politics.
Jobs for the boys: look at them run.

There's just one thing none of us should forget:
a political man is just in it for the power
and the smell of sucess.
Sure, some start out as idealists -
pretty soon they all cop for ideal careers
and a safe home in politics,
a cushy job in politics;
look at them run.

The politicians fight it out on the conning tower
but they all agree not to rock the boat..
A safe home in politics
It's built on your vote.

Mike Whitney and the "Invisible Hand"

There's only one thing that the administration can do to ensure that energy dealers keep trading in dollars: control the flow of oil. That means that an attack on Iran is nearly a certainty

I've spent quite some time reading and thinking about Mike Whitney's latest piece at Counterpunch. To read the whole article in its original form, click here: The Economic Tsunami: Coming Sooner Than You Think.

It seems that there are a growing number of people who believe as I do, that the economic tsunami planned by the Bush administration is probably only months away.

Yep. Well, one, anyway.

In just 5 short years

Short? These have been very long years for me... but I know what you're saying. Please...

the national debt has increased by nearly 3 trillion dollars while the dollar has continued its predictable decline. The dollar has fallen a whopping 38% since Bush took office, due largely to the massive $450 billion per year tax cuts.

Tax cuts correspond to roughly three-quarters of the $3 trillion increase in the national debt. Increases in military spending surely cover the rest. For how many years could you keep spending and giving away money you don't even have? Four? Eight? Even if you're spending it all on weapons systems? You can't be vulnerable if you're spending billions of dollars on weapons systems, can you?

At the same time, numerous laws have been passed (Patriot Act, Intelligence Reform Bill, Homeland Security Bill, National ID, Passport requirements etc) anticipating the need for greater repression when the economy takes its inevitable nosedive.

You noticed that too, did you? I don't think we were supposed to notice that. I don't think we were supposed to mention it, either. Especially in the same breath as "billions of dollars on weapons systems". Add 'em up and here's the result: "greater repression when the economy takes its inevitable nosedive."

Regrettably, that nosedive looks to be coming sooner rather than later.

Oh yeah? How soon? I've been thinking about that myself for a while now. Not even sure whether it's to be feared or applauded. But ... Yeah. It really does seem inevitable. Sooner rather than later. But how soon? What's happening?

The Iraq war has contributed considerably to our current dilemma. The conflict has taken nearly one million barrels of Iraqi oil per day off line.

Yikes!

In other words, the astronomical prices at the pump are the direct result of Bush's war.

Well he never said the war was being waged for cheap oil!

The media has failed to report on the negative affects the war has had on oil production, just as they have obscured the incredibly successful insurgent strategy of destroying pipelines.

There are a few other things the media have failed to report, or obscured. For instance, do you think we actually voted for more of this? Or did something fishy happen in November? But anyway...

This isn't a storyline that plays well to the American public, who expected that Iraq would be paying for its own reconstruction by now.

And ain't that the stinkin'est lie you ever heard? "Iraq would be paying for its own reconstruction"? Well OK maybe not the stinkin'est ever but it certainly does reek, does it not? I never bought it and I never imagined anyone buying it. Shows what I know. Did you buy it? I thought it sounded like the victim of an unprovoked attack being forced to pay reparations to his attacker. Didn't make any sense to me at all. Looked like sheer wishful propaganda. But people did buy it, didn't they?

Instead, the resistance is striking back at the empire's Achilles heel (America's need for massive amounts of cheap oil) and it's having a damaging affect on the US economy.

As if the American economy needs any more damaging affects. Sometimes I think the national economy is run by a bunch of blockheads. Other days I think the situation is much much worse. But I digress...

The administration is currently putting as much pressure as possible on OPEC to ratchet up the flow of oil another 1 million barrels per day (well over capacity) to settle down nervous markets and buy time for the planned bombing of Iran in June.

Nervous Markets! Why are the markets suddenly nervous? They should have been nervous about this bunch a long, long time ago.

Like Fed Chief Alan Greenspan's artificially low interest rates, the manipulation of oil production is a way of concealing how dire the situation really is. Rising prices at the pump signal an upcoming recession, (depression?) so the administration is pulling out all the stops to meet the short term demand and maintain the illusion that things are still okay.

But, of course, things are not okay.

You noticed that too, did you, Mike? It has seemed to me for a long time that things are not okay... But boil it all down for us. How serious do you think this is?

This is much more serious than a simple decline in the value of the dollar. If the major oil producers convert from the dollar to the euro, the American economy will sink almost overnight. If oil is traded in euros then central banks around the world would be compelled to follow and America will be required to pay off its enormous $8 trillion debt. That, of course, would be doomsday for the American economy

Not really. Just do the math. It's only 8 trillion dollars. We are something like 300 million people. What's that? It's about $30,000 per person, is it not? I think that's right. If each person kicked in a measly thirty grand, we could pay off the entire national debt right now! And remember, that $30K/person is just a rough guess; by the time we pay this whole thing off, we will probably have an extra trillion dollars lying around, and we can have a party. More on that later. But first, consider this:

For a family of four, it's only a hundred and twenty thousand dollars. Most families of four probably have that much lying around in a sock somewhere. Or in the fridge. My uncle used to keep his loose cash in a paper bag in the fridge. He figured that's the last place a thief would look. But anyway that's my late uncle. He passed away. He doesn't keep anything in the fridge anymore. So don't get any ideas. Don't go out robbing houses looking for cash in the fridge. That's the last place anyone would put loose cash. They probably keep it in a sock somewhere. Thirty grand per person, more or less. But there's a catch:

A recent report indicates that two-thirds of the world's 65 central banks have already "begun to move from dollars to euros."

And so America is about to be slapped in the face by the "Invisible Hand" of Adam Smith, whose inviolate rules of supply and demand specify that if the demand for something [like American dollars] decreases while the supply of it remains constant [or increases], the price [or value] of that commodity [all that money] will decrease as well. So we may need 40 or even 50 grand apiece to buy our foolish asses out of debt to the rest of the world, which we continue to ignore -- except for business or war -- at our peril. But that's another story. Or maybe this is still all the same story... And did you notice that your money all of a sudden became a commodity? Well them's the breaks, kid. Economists talk and all the rest of us can take a hike. We're commodities too, by the way. Did you notice that, too? But I digress...

The Bush plan to savage the dollar has been telegraphed around the world and, as the New York Times says, "the greenback has nowhere to go but down". There's only one thing that the administration can do to ensure that energy dealers keep trading in dollars: control the flow of oil. That means that an attack on Iran is nearly a certainty.

Emphasis in that last paragraph was mine. The slashing and thrashing beast is determined to devour another victim before it goes extinct -- or goes on to its next feeding! Who knows? Not this lowly and nearly frozen somebody. I just wanted to warn you it might be coming: Some day in the near future you may need to go get that sock and pay your share of the national debt.

Or maybe you keep it in the fridge.

Thanks to Peg C. at the Brad Blog for mentioning this article on that blog. If not for Peg, I would probably be sleeping now. Thanks again, Peg.


We haven't had a song in a long time. Here's one from Peter Hammill.

The Sleepwalkers

At night, this mindless army, ranks unbroken by dissent,
is moved into action and their pace does not relent.
In step, with great precision, these dancers of the night
advance against the darkness - how implacable their might!
Eyes undulled by moon, their arms and legs akimbo,
they walk and live, hoping soon to surface from this limbo.
Their minds, anticipating the dawn of the day,
shall never know what's waiting mere insight away
-- too far, too soon.

Senses dimmed in semi-sentience, only wheeling through this plane,
only seeing fragmented images, prematurely curtailed by the brain,
but breathing, living, knowing in some measure at least
the soul which roots the matter of both Beauty and the Beast.
From what tooth or claw does murder spring,
from what flesh and blood does passion?
Both cut through the air with the pendulum's swing
in deadly but delicate fashion.
And every range of feeling is there in the dream
and every logic's reeling in the force of the scream;
the senses sting.
And though I may be dreaming and reality stalls
I only know the meaning of sight and that's all
and that's nothing.

The columns of the night advance,
infectiously, their cryptic dance
gathers converts to the fold -
in time the whole raw world will pace these same steps
on into the same bitter end.

Somnolent muster -- now the dancing dead
forsake the shelter of their secure beds,
awaken to a slumber whose depths they dread,
as if the ground they tread would give way
beneath the solemn weight of their conception.
I'd search the hidden corners of all this world,
make reason of the sensory whorl
if I only had time,
but soon the dream is ended.

Tonight, before you lay down to the sweetness of your sleep
do you question your surrender to the drop from Lover's Leap
or does the anaesthetic darkness take hold on its very own?
Does your body rise in service with not one dissenting groan?
These waking dreams of life and death
in the mirror are twisted and buckled;
lashes flicker, a catch of breath,
skin whitening at the knuckles.
The army of sleepwalkers shake their limbs and are loose
and though I am a talker, I can phrase no excuse
not to rise again.
In the chorus of the night-time I belong
and I, like you, must dance to that moonlight song
and in the end I, too, must pay the cost of this life.
If all is lost none is known
and how could we lose what we've never owned?
Oh, I'd search out every knowledge that I could find,
unravel all the mysteries of mind,
if I only had time,
if I only had time,
but soon my time is ended.

What's Your Price?

A flurry of news stories lately has reminded me of this old story:

George Bernard Shaw once found himself at a dinner party, seated beside an attractive woman. "Madam," he asked, "would you go to bed with me for a thousand pounds?" The woman blushed and rather indignantly shook her head.

"For ten thousand pounds?" he asked. "No. I would not." "Then how about fifty thousand pounds?" he contined.

The colossal sum gave the woman pause, and after further reflection, she coyly replied: "Perhaps." "And if I were to offer you five pounds?" Shaw asked.

"Mr. Shaw!" the woman exclaimed. "What do you take me for!" "We have already established what you are," Shaw calmly replied. "Now we are merely haggling over the price."

Apparently, every man has his price. For some, it seems, the price is obscenely low. How much would it take for you to sell your honor? Would you do it for a million dollars? How about a quarter of a million? How about even less than that?

Editor & Publisher reports the sad story of a cheap media whore who was bought off by some much more expensive whores.

Tribune Media Services (TMS) tonight terminated its contract with columnist Armstrong Williams, effective immediately. But Williams told E&P that he plans to continue his feature via self-syndication.

TMS' action came after USA Today reported this morning that Williams had accepted $240,000 from the Bush administration to promote the No Child Left Behind education-reform law on his TV and radio shows. E & P subsequently reported that Williams had also written about NCLB in his newspaper column at least four times last year.

Meanwhile, CBS has been reporting on the shady dealings of a high-class whore. Well, maybe not high-class, but certainly high-priced.

Chances are you’ve never heard of Darleen Druyun, but she’s been spending a lot of your money — your tax money.

For 10 years, Druyun was the Air Force official who decided how much to pay for bombers, fighters, missiles -- you name it. She had such a reputation for toughness, she was commonly known as "The Dragon Lady." Which is why there is shock that Druyun, one of the most powerful women in Washington, is headed to prison.

In the biggest Pentagon scandal in 20 years, it appears that billions of dollars were doled out to the Boeing Company, as Druyun was accepting personal favors for her family.

Click on the links to read the full stories, if you think you can stand it.

Meanwhile, consider this: If you work for the government, the bribes you take will come from the private sector. But if you work for the private sector, the bribes will come from the government. Vicious circle. Vicious world.

I'm beginning to think that greed is the most destructive disease known to man. Once you catch it, you can never have enough money. You can never have enough of anything. Your life ceases to imitate art and begins to imitate Monopoly. From then on, you're doomed to go round and round, buying up everything you can get your hands on, and for what?

While you're enjoying that thought, here's another piece from Peter Hammill.

Sci-Finance

You've got some shares in a speculative venture
you've got some stock in a gilt-edged bond
you're stretched out tight by the terms of debenture
the game is on

You chase the bulls in eternal Corrida
the thought of loss is more than you can bear
you scan the index for a market leader
a tip and a prayer

You better see daylight
night comes on the City so soon
You say you are a Christian capitalist
but you dance to a different tune

Jobs for the boys and dole for the shop-floor
rationalize, strip the assets and run
If the contract stalls, then you've just got to cop more
ain't Monopoly fun?

You made some pretty deals along the way
Judas and Faust are in accord
When the revolution comes you may be blown away
but I bet you'll end up on the board

Only the money
Only the money

Sometime in the future you may realise
that the day you made your decision
to follow money as a goal
was your darkest dawn
and that, since then
you have venerated figures as deities
and, for you
people are just pawns

But that includes you
you're just an asset like the rest
and you, too, stripped naked, beg the Money-God
not to put you to the test
But He's got no further use for you
Now there is silence on the floor

Clever money-computers chatter privately
There's no people anymore

Only the money
No people anymore

The Triumph of Bullshit

It's over, gang. It is officially over. Bullshit talks. Regular guys and gals walk. If you didn't believe that before today, you just got all the proof you will ever need. And if you don't believe it after what you have seen today, you are so deep in denial that you may never recognize the truth again, even if it hits you over the head. Which it probably will. Someday. Just like it did today.

Ah yes, today ... After a so-called historic debate, the United States Senate voted, by the margin of seventy-four to one, to accept a slate of illegally selected electors from the profoundly corrupt state of Ohio. Only one Senator dared to vote against this bullshit election! But before she did that, she had the audacity to stand up in Senate chambers and feed us a bucket of bullshit herself. Well, why not? Bullshit talks. And we walk.

The writing on the wall has never been clearer. It is completely over. Politics as you used to know it is a thing of the past. You wanted electoral reform? Forget it. You wanted to see some intellectual honesty from your 'elected' representatives? Forget it. You wanted to know whether or not your country was a democracy? Well, today you got the answer. And the answer is "No"! It is not now, and it never was, and the sooner you wake up and face this fact, the better it will be for all of us.

The United States of America, a so-called 'democracy', was never an actual democracy at all. At best, it was a democratic republic. But that's not what it is anymore. It's not even close. Let's take a deep breath and face the facts, folks. The United States is a bullshit country run by bullshit politicians, supported to the hilt by bullshit 'news' media.

Am I kidding? No! Am I ripping our so-called leaders unnecessarily? No! I am being kind to them. Do you want me to be completely honest? No, you don't. You may think you do, but you really don't. You don't want the truth. Nobody wants the truth. You can't handle the truth. Hell, I can't even handle the truth.

First things first: Hooray for Senator Barbara Boxer [photo], Democrat from California and the one and only Senator who had the nerve to sign the objection [of Congressman John Conyers and others] against the Ohio electors.

Next things next: Senator Barbara Boxer, in her speech today, proclaimed:

Our democracy is the centerpiece of who we are as a nation. And it is the fondest hope of all Americans that we can help bring democracy to every corner of the world.

The fondest hope of all Americans? Oh really, Senator? On what planet did you hear that? You don't talk to your constituents, do you? Or maybe you talk to them but you don't listen. You don't read the papers either, do you? Otherwise, how could you be so far removed from reality? So far removed that you don't seem to have any idea what Americans hope for.

Well, perhaps I can enlighten you. Perhaps you might accept some free advice from a Winter Patriot, a reward for standing up when all the other Senators chose to sit down, a little gift that might help you survive the remainder of your term in the highest legislative chamber in the land.

First and foremost, there is no "fondest hope" of all Americans. There is virtually nothing that all Americans can agree on. The country is deeply divided, not only geographically, but politically, spiritually, culturally, economically, and in many other ways as well.

For some Americans, their fondest hope is that their taxes will be cut yet again. These people will always support the so-called president, because he will always promise them tax cuts. Nothing else he does seems to matter to them. Their attitude seems to be "promise me tax cuts and I will follow you anywhere." Most of them will never admit this, of course, but they will follow him all the same. And there is no doubt in my mind that they will follow him straight to Hell. Which is exactly what they deserve, for they are nothing but cheap and selfish whores, happy to sell their children's future for a few lousy dollars, the value of which, by the way, is declining steadily and inexorably.

Some Americans hope that the so-called president and his neo-conservative thugs will be able to embroil the entire Middle East in such a grand conflagration that it will bring Jesus Christ himself back to Earth, triggering the 'rapture' and sending them all to Heaven. They are deluded dreamers, every one of them. But it seems that they are in control at the moment. At least it seems so to them. They claim to believe in an omnipotent God but yet they think they are in control. How completely absurd; how perfectly representative of their hypocrisy. May they burn in Hell forever.

Some Americans hope that the issue of electoral fraud will go away, so they can get on with their plan to install electronic voting machines everywhere in the country. Then they will work on eliminating the 'paper trail' that the best of these machines can produce. If they get their way, never again will there be a free and fair election in the United States. Neo-conservative Republicans will rule forever. And their supporters will dance with glee. What a pretty sight they will make, frolicking in the ashes of the democratic republic which they themselves will have destroyed. Won't they be surprised when their totalitarian leaders turn on them? It won't happen? Bullshit! It will happen. It always happens. It has happened every time totalitarians have gained power in any country. And it'll be exactly what they deserve. It's what all traitors deserve.

Some Americans hope that somehow the federal government can become the instrument by which they can eliminate all 'sin' from the entire nation. The 'sin' they seek to eliminate is 'sin' as they define it, of course. And they will define it as anything that differs from the lifestyle which they choose to lead. Down with gays, down with feminists, down with liberals, down with civil libertarians. Down with Blacks and Hispanics and Moslems and Arabs. Down with every single person or group who is in any way different than they are. Their fondest hope is to remake America in their image. And they tell us so, very clearly, every day, though often not in so many words. They are easy to recognize; their arrogance is exceeded only by their ignorance. And they claim to be people of God. Followers of Christ. What Christ is that? Surely not the Christ who lives in my Bible. Surely not the Christ who walked with prostitutes, ate with sinners, and told his disciples to love their enemies. They are followers of a different Christ, a fictional Christ, a spiteful character made up out of whole cloth by the false prophets who call themselves 'evangelical Christians'. 'Money-grubbing charlatans' is more like it.

What do these Americans have in common? They all support the so-called president. None of them care a bit about bringing "democracy to every corner of the world". They don't even care about bringing democracy to every corner of America. They would be quite happy living in a country where the only people who are allowed to vote are the people who agree with them. And in fact, they are already on their way to living in such a country. So as far as they are concerned, the system is working just fine.

Of course there are many other Americans who have very different hopes.

Some Americans hope they can find a decent job. Some Americans have given up looking for a decent job; they hope they can find any job. They hope they can somehow earn enough money to care for their children, and for their parents. And they hope that there's something left of Social Security for them, when they grow too old to work for themselves.

Some Americans hope that the rapid and increasing destruction of the natural environment can be slowed, maybe even brought to a halt, and possibly even reversed.

Some Americans hope that their kids will be able to grow up in a society where a difference of opinion is not only tolerated but respected, as it was for many of them when they were kids.

Some Americans hope that their children won't be sent off to fight illegitimate wars in countries which they have never even heard of. For other Americans, it's too late to hope for that; they hope their children who are already fighting illegitimate wars will be returned to them, healthy in body and not too badly damaged in spirit. And of course, for other Americans it is already too late even for that. They hope that their family can somehow recover from the death or serious injury suffered by their son or daughter, husband or wife or parent, whose only 'crime' was being naive enough to buy some war-mongering propaganda, who wanted to give something of themselves to defend America from foreign enemies, never realizing that the most vicious and dangerous of all enemies were here at home, playing their mad empire-games in the corridors of power.

Some Americans hope for world peace, and pray for a safe and prosperous future for their children, and their children's children, and their children's grandchildren.

Some Americans hope that their nation, once a world leader in fighting for human rights, will get over its current fascination with torture. They hope for an end to unlawful confinement, and a return of respect for the Bill Of Rights.

Some Americans simply hope that the bloody mass-murderers who now control all three branches of the federal government will eventually be removed from office.

Some hope that a reasonably balanced discourse will someday return to their national 'news' media, and that they will be able to learn the truth about their country, and the role it plays in the world, from sources within their own country.

And, of course, a great many Americans hope that somehow democracy can be brought to every corner of America. But how can that be done? Through legislation? How? We've got one senator with enough spine to vote against the outrageous theft of a presidential election, while the rest of them -- even those who supported her in open debate -- left her twisting in the wind. And even that one Senator -- the one with the spine -- seems to have no idea what's up in her own country.

Either she's been fed too much bullshit or she's deliberately feeding bullshit to us. One way or the other, it's over. The opposition in the Senate now consists of one woman with a spine and a bucket of bullshit; all the rest have buckets of bullshit of their own but no spines. So how are they going to push for electoral reform? How can they possibly push for anything, when they can't even support the one senator who dared to sign the objection?

It's over, folks. It is completely over. The Democratic party is a dinosaur. It's still walking, still breathing, but it is as dead as a pterodactyl, as extinct as a brontosaurus.

Even the most die-hard of Democrats can see that their party ran a bullshit convention in which they never even attempted to show how disastrous -- for the country and for the entire world -- another four years of this so-called presidency would be. And then they nominated a bullshit candidate, who didn't take a strong or principled stand against anything, including an illegitimate war, the widespread use of torture, the unprecedented use of unlawful confinement without charge or trial, or any of the other thoroughly evil policies of the current administration. As if this were not enough of a head-slap to the voters who supported him anyway, he then conceded while the outcome was still in doubt, taking much of the steam out of a strong and fast-growing grassroots effort to prove that the election was a sham -- and to do so in time to do something about it.

But that wasn't all. The bullshit candidate then wasted two months sitting quietly in the wings and doing nothing, while private citizens dug up all kinds of evidence showing that the election had been rigged, and that, had it been fairly conducted, he would have won.

Sitting quietly must have agreed with him, for he continued to sit while private citizens wrote letters and e-mails and blogs, desperately trying to spread the news about this fraudulent election -- news that the bullshit 'news' media refused to touch -- and looking forward to a day -- today -- when the criminals who ran this sham election could finally be challenged in public. And when the day of reckoning came, our bullshit candidate found it most expedient to be out of the country.

In my books he will be forever remembered as the big man with the little heart. The world's tallest living spineless skunk. The word on the net is that he didn't want to get involved in this fight because he wants to protect his image, since he's thinking of running for President again in 2008. What a pathetic joke! I wouldn't vote for him if he were running for dog-catcher. It takes courage to catch a dog, Johnny boy. You can't catch a dog with bullshit.

But maybe his entire bullshit performance, not only today but throughout the entire campaign, was exactly what the doctor ordered. After all, bullshit talks. And regular guys and gals walk. This campaign certainly talked. And so did this election.

And maybe a bit of bullshit is what we, the regular guys and gals, needed too. In polite society, as we all know, it's not called "bullshit". It's called "manure". And according to the gardening experts in my neighborhood, it promotes growth!

~~~

How about another song? We really need a song tonight, don't we? Well... Here's another one of my favorites. It's by Peter Hammill, in my opinion the most abundantly gifted poet who ever graced the rock 'n roll stage.

The Future Now

Here we are, static,
in the latter half
of the twentieth century
but it might as well be the Middle Ages
there'll have to be some changes
but how they'll come about, foxes me

I want the future now
I want to hold it in my hands
All men equal and unbowed
I want the Promised Land

But that doesn't seem to get any closer
and Moses has had his day
the Tablets of Law are an advertising poster
civilization, here to stay
and this is progress?
... you must be joking!
me, I'm just looking for any kind of hope

I want the future now
I want to see it on the screen
I want to break the bounds
that make our lives so mean

Oh blind blinded blinding hatred
of race, sex, religion, colour, country and creed
you scream from the pages of everything I read
You just bring me oppression and torture
apartheid corruption and plague
You just bring me the rape of the planet
and joke world rights at The Hague
Oh, some day, the Millennium
but how far is some day away?

I want the future now
I'm young and it's my right
I want a reason to be proud
I want to see the light
I want the future now
I want to see it on the screen
I want to break our bounds
and make life worth more than dreams