Shoures soote. A (vernal) toss-up.

(The voice of the turtle revises all.)

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Who knew that French cartoonist tOad had visited Toronto since John Tory was elected mayor? (Image right.) Dreading the coming of spring all winter. Then there's some mild weather and the grackles arrive squabbling outside the window one morning in early March (coming in like a lamb). Back to sleep and wake with 'Masters of War' playing on the inside radio. A short step to "April is the cruellest month," but morning coffee and a smoke comes back, counters with "Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote," and it's a (vernal) toss-up. 'Soote' is still in the OED. Imagine! I hope that you die And your death'll come soon. I'll follow your casket On that pale afternoon. I'll watch while you're lowered Down to your death bed And I'll stand over your grave Till I'm sure that you're dead. DON'T EVER LET THEM SAY WE DIDN'T KNOW. WE ALL KNEW. AND YOU KNOW THIS IS TRUE         TOO. Then herself sings 'She Moved Through the Fair' and it all shifts into a minor key where it has stuck these several weeks. And no aides memoire to be had from Sinéad O'Connor nor Loreena McKennitt and their fuckin' echo machines. And it's not even April yet. The chief boo hoo mucky-muck over at The Guardian is retiring and, concerned about his legacy has begun (what I think he might call) a 'serious series'. One can at least applaud the forthright transparency of his faulty far-too-late rationale. Intro. Alan Rusbridger March 6; 1. Naomi Klein March 6; 2. Naomi Klein March 8; 3. Bill McKibben March 9; 4. George Monbiot March 10. Bill McKibben still claims he wrote the "first book," or he cares who wrote the first book or some fuckin' thing. I have yet to read anything by this man in which he does not mention this lie but it is just as untrue (and irrelevant) as it ever was. Oh, and he presents yet another positive spin-cycle, raised in a laundromat perhaps, or reading too much Paul Hawken. If wishes were horses beggars would ride. Whatever is driving Alan Rusbridger seems to run its course and lose headway, drift off into an eddy. He shifts gears and promises another series - podcasts this time. The whole presentation is strangely disorganized, unfocussed; as if he's literally winging it. Very odd. The links in the emails don't seem to work properly. Let's give him the benefit of the doubt - perhaps he sees what's called for - massive civil disobedience mobilization, call it CD+ - and just hasn't got the balls to say it; perhaps he's retiring because he's ill. Who knows? He's been head Guardian goombah for two decades - most likely he's feeling guilty for having warmed the chair for so long. And so are we all if we're honest. He didn't do it when he had anything to lose though. I believe people who behave like that are known as dilettantes by the educated, and fuckin' booge-was wankers by arseholes like me. George Monbiot talks about "intelligent, educated, well-paid and elegantly-dressed people wasting their lives." I know I will never be forgiven for wondering if this editor and these writers and associated stoop&fetchits are doing the same. Oh sure, another welfare-case nutbar, another crazed angry old man best ignored.

OK. WHOA! HOLD ON A SEC HERE. Years ago (it seems) I chase the United Church on fossil fuel divestment and get nowhere. Their justice focus at the time is all about Sid Ryan and boycotting Israel. It's so ridiculous. I meet Desmond Parsons. Who can bear talking with these people? Their moderator flies to Durban in 2011 and comes away praising Peter Kent (see here). Doh! Then last summer Trinity St. Paul's (TSP) United Church achieves some kind of divestment success (see here). I go along to the local church and get turned off, turned away, something like that. I email the guy at TSP but he mistakes me for a person of my name who edits the UC Observer and when I clear that up he lets the conversation drop. I mean to find out more, visit the church, but never get around to it. Now, despite initial skepticism, the Guardian initiative is looking more-and-more real: they (we?) are taking on Bill Gates and the billionaires; Ed Davey looks like he's on board; 100,000 petition signers within just a few days. Wowzers! It comes to me that divestment could be exactly the movement-building tactic that's needed, simply because there are possible, small, intermediate victories. Positive feedback! It could even (could it?) grow so quickly in the few months remaining as to overcome. Holy Shit! On Paddy's Day evening I go up to the East End Against Line 9 meeting (they've been praised here before) because I want to be sure they know. I get the bum's rush and stumble out and I'm not laughing. I walk most of the way home in a terrible state, awful, and when I wake in the night for a piss it's shin splints and I nearly pitch into the tub headforemost. It might be a near-death experience. This turns to good though. Just what the doctor ordered! Just the ticket! Now I'm laffin'. SO. I'm gonna leave Alan Rusbridger here for for a bit. He seems to've made a close alliance with Bill McKibben. This may be a mistake. Time will tell. I think I can survive on food-bank & welfare through April so there's a month to play with. I'll go up to Sunday service at Trinity St. Paul's. Even the new-age wanks (still) shove in the odd Wesley hymn sometimes and they probably (still) offer coffee & cookies afterwards. See where it goes and if they need any help. I'll contact the woman at Beaches United again with a qualified apology, and then see if there can be a renewed conversation. See if the UofT divestment committee holds meetings. A three-point plan.   :-)   (Plus the search for the Green Party already underway. The only thing I knew how to do was to keep on keepin' on like a bird that flew. I'll leave what was already into this post where it is - for perspective - and, report back after a while, at the end of March.

Just listen (even if it chokes you) to Chris Hedges talking with Abby Martin and then show me how to realistically walk around what they're saying. Gus Speth in the last chapter of 'The Bridge at the Edge of the World writes in 2007:         It is easy to push these challenges out of one's mind. Life for many of us is comfortable, and dwelling on such disturbing material is painful. Indeed, one still hears with regularity that it is a mistake to stress these gloomy and doomy realities if one wants to motivate people. In The Death of Environmentalism Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus remind us, for example, that Martin Luther King, Jr., did not proclaim, "I have a nightmare." My reply to them was that he did not need to say it - his people were living a nightmare. They needed a dream. But we, I fear, are living a dream. We need to be reminded of the nightmare ahead. Here is the truth as I see it: we will never do the things that are needed unless we know the full extent of our predicament. He is a lawyer and yet, as this last sentence is brief and unequivocal it merits repeated savouring: Here is the truth as I see it: we will never do the things that are needed unless we know the full extent of our predicament. Or, as the Christians like to say, "The truth shall set you free." But he evidently thinks we have more time than we do; and he, like McKibben, thinks the 'transformative process' is slow and gradual - never having considered (apparently) how long it took the Cuban Special Period to kick off, or never having played crack-the-whip as a kid. Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away. Two articles by Gwynne Dyer: How far will oil prices collapse—and for how long?, October 2014; and, How long will the oil stay cheap?, March 2015. He thinks (or wishes he thought) the drop-dead date is twenty-five years away and I think it's this year. I've put this here because we agree that our eminently venal governments will do what it takes to keep the frackers fracking (and the pipe lines piping and the train bombs bombing). Two books, both from the 70s really though one is published only in 1985: Ecotage! Sam Love and David Obst, 1972; and, Ecodefense - A Field Guide to Monkeywrenching, Dave Foreman & Bill Haywood (editors), 1985. No copies of Ecotage anywhere that I can see. Ecodefense you can still find on-line as of this posting. But really, you don't need 'em anyway. There's been enough articles and enough books and well more than enough. I was there at the time but on the other side - setting chokers for MacMillan-Bloedel & the IWA. I was there and missed my chance (like Lord Jim on the Patna though out of concupiscence not fear). In the 70s, 80s, even the 90s, we might have turned it around that way. Now gentle reader I sincerely don't believe there are any more realistic chances. Now the Tragedy of the Commons becomes the tragedy of everything. The end. Oh sure, I could be wrong. Apaga la tele / Turn off the screen [and find something else to do, alone if necessary].

Noght o word spak he more than was nede, And that was seyd in forme and reverence, And short and quik, and ful of hy sentence. Souninge in moral vertu was his speche, And gladly wolde he lerne, and gladly teche.

The Tyger Tyger! Tyger! burning bright, In the forests of the night, What immortal hand or eye Could frame thy fearful symmetry? In what distant deeps or skies Burnt the fire in thine eyes? On what wings dare he aspire? What the hand dare seize the fire? And what shoulder, and what art? Could twist the sinews of thy heart? And when thy heart began to beat, What dread hand, and what dread feet? What the hammer? What the chain? In what furnace was thy brain? What the anvil? What dread grasp Dare its deadly terrors clasp? When the stars threw down their spears, And watered heaven with their tears, Did he smile his work to see? Did he who made the Lamb, make thee? Tyger! Tyger! burning bright, In the forests of the night, What immortal hand or eye Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

 
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Two men in Rwanda.

And: Two recent books by two admirable women.
And: A modest proposal.   And: Applause for Elizabeth May.

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I watch a (pirated) video of PBS/Frontline's 'Ghosts of Rwanda' for the second and third times last week. In the film both Phillipe Gaillard and Romeo Dallaire speak openly about themselves, and Phillipe Gaillard also speaks openly about Romeo Dallaire, and there are a few symmetries in what they say that stand out for me. In the event something here appears to be critical of them let me make it explicitly clear up front that both of these guys are heroes to me and I praise 'em. One would like to list all the heroes (particularly Captain Mbaye Diagne who simply disobeys his official UN orders God bless 'im) who appear in the film - I strongly recommend watching it. Two hours well spent. The official website is here. There are torrent copies abounding and on such providers as YouTube.

Ten years later Phillipe Gaillard and his wife have changed their minds about children and have a son. Romeo Dallaire has (apparently - he's a competent man and if he'd meant to he would've) attempted suicide. Gaillard says, "He is still deeply wounded while my scars are ... OK." That's it.

Gaillard is head of the Red Cross in Rwanda during the genocide. He breaks protocol and speaks out but the Red Cross supports him both morally & practically. He does not feel guilty. Dallaire obeys orders. The UN does not support him either morally or practically. He feels (profoundly) guilty.

I have been over-indulging my Madame Defarge side lately. This is not good. Nonetheless, since guilt and shame are part of this story I think it bears repeating that the guilt and shame of it belong with Kofi Annan & Bill Clinton as well as with the actual killers. And with Belgium which did much of the early social engineering, laying the groundwork that led to the genocide, and who then left the room at the first opportunity after the shit hit the fan. After the Holocaust people in high positions began to say (and they continue to repeat it), "Never again!" It is clear that what they mean by this is, "Every time! Always!" It's good to post a picture of Bill & Hillary Clinton holding hands. She may be the next American president. Birds of a feather flock together. Two recent books by two admirable women (and a modest proposal): 'Nature's Trust - Environmental Law for a new Ecological Age' by Mary Christina Wood, 2013, and, 'This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate' by Naomi Klein, 2014. There are two videos too: Bill Moyers, The Children’s Climate Crusade; and Naomi Klein & Owen Jones, This Changes Everything; which serve as good introductions. (Thanks again to Angela Bischoff for recommending these videos in her Greenspiration newsletter - you can sign up for it here.) The notion of sudden positive shifts in direction has appeared here before: The Climate Swerve by Jay Lifton. I followed up on this by reading two of Lifton's books: 'The Nazi doctors - medical killing and the psychology of genocide' 1986, and 'Witness to an extreme century - a memoir' 2011. I'm sorry to say that I now have difficulty believing anything he says. Now a similar notion shows up in the penultimate section of 'Nature's Trust' with a reference to Malcolm Gladwell's 'The Tipping Point - how little things can make a big difference'. I follow this up too and read the book. Again I'm sorry to say that he not only fails to convince but by the time I've finished I've turned entirely skeptical, not only of him but of anyone who mentions him. [Selected criticism in The Guardian and The New Republic.] The other reference in 'Nature's Trust' which I chase is 'The Bridge at the Edge of the World - capitalism, the environment, and crossing from crisis to sustainability' by Gus Speth, 2008. He refers to Jay Lifton but more than compensates by quoting Wallace Stevens. He does fail to identify & footnote (he quotes the first line) so here: The Well Dressed Man With a Beard After the final no there comes a yes And on that yes the future world depends. No was the night. Yes is this present sun. If the rejected things, the things denied, Slid over the western cataract, yet one, One only, one thing that was firm, even No greater than a cricket's horn, no more Than a thought to be rehearsed all day, a speech Of the self that must sustain itself on speech, One thing remaining, infallible, would be Enough. Ah! douce campagna of that thing! Ah! douce campagna, honey in the heart, Green in the body, out of a petty phrase, Out of a thing believed, a thing affirmed: The form on the pillow humming while one sleeps, The aureole above the humming house ... It can never be satisfied, the mind, never. Wallace Stevens, from 'Parts of a World', 1942. BUT     [You knew there was a bold & capitalized 'but' coming didn't you?] Read Gus Speth's book for yourself - it is one I wish I could still afford to have on my shelf and definitely worth the investment of time to read and savour - and then try imagining discussing it in a longshoreman's bar somewhere in New Jersey or the east end of Montreal. (Oh sure, I couldn't probably discuss Wallace Stevens there either.) 'Nature's Trust' is a book by a lawyer, carrying forward a program to reform the entire system (from Gus Speth, also a lawyer) which looks like decades to bearing fruit, addressing a catastrophe which has to be dealt with right away. 'This Changes Everything' is a book by an earnest and (truly) lovely person who stammers as she tries to get to the point and balks, shies away from bare-knuckles hard ball. These books and their authors (and so many more that line my shelves) now seem closer to vaccines & prophylactics than incentives. Allowing that if I resemble (in quality not degree) any one of them it's Malcolm Gladwell; especially as I look closely at the photograph from the Guardian interview - he's skinny and athletic and I'm fat and terminally sedentary, but a sour air-head loose cannon (loose bb-gun in my case). [The apparent lawyer bigotry could be a ploy gentle reader - Wallace Stevens was also a lawyer.] There are two or three people I know who are doing good work. I offer myself to assist but am not taken up. Enough air-heads already I guess. Even so I'll put out this proposal. (I shoot an arrow in the air ... It comes to earth I know not where.) The proposal I am thinking of is one I was going to put to Peter Sale because I know he can think and write and spell (and then didn't), viz., that what might be useful in the way of books just now is a short anonymous pamphlet, stapled and folded to make ten pages max with some thoughtful graphics and images, which says (with no exaggeration): Here is where we are. This is how we got here. These are some things we can do to save ourselves                 (and by implication our children and grandchildren). This is the time frame to be effective. A diagnosis and a clear prescription: 'Environmental Catastrophe for Dummies' (but not a 400 page effort such as the one produced by Elizabeth May). I wish I were clever enough to write it myself. Top of the list of "things we can do" is massive civil disobedience mobilization. Call it CD+ or CDn. They might lock me up for saying such a thing (it might trigger the terrorism jackpot in the government's pachinko-machine mind) and provide a warm place to sleep, might even feed me between beatings and that would be ... something ... OK. An alternative is to organize the upcoming Paris climate summit along the lines suggested by tOad (right) - and every national parliament, commons, every congress and senate, every board meeting of such institutions as the NEB, and every meeting in every corporate board room too. A completely un-subtle and unequivocal replacement of the profit motive with the personal survival motive - immediate corporal dissolution upon failure to achieve results. I bet that would do it. We would see solutions coming forward very quickly from all sides - even, perhaps, quickly enough. It's either get serious or wait while more and more of the world's peoples are forced into ISIS look-alikes. Sure, that sounds pretty crazy eh? It's way worse than crazy because revolt will have to overcome generations, centuries, of 'God is Love' which will slow things down and by the time it fully arrives it will be too late to do any good whatsoever. Just listen (even if it chokes you) to Chris Hedges talking with Abby Martin and then show me how to realistically walk around what they're saying.  Correction, a qualification:   (I make mistakes and correct them as I am able.) I don't like going out to these events anymore. I inevitably see a few activists who recognize me and then turn away, don't say hello, and it hurts my feelings. But this week I went over to UofT for a 'Federal Pre-Election Town Hall on Climate Change' featuring Green Party Leader Elizabeth May, NDP MP (in my riding) Matthew Kellway, and Liberal Party Environment Critic John McKay, another Toronto MP. Kellway (in common with Toronto Mayor John Tory) doesn't even know that the oil in the pipelines he supports is primarily for export - Doh! - and Justin Sinclair's rep is simply and predictably lame ... but ... Elizabeth May ... shines (if not in the only photographs I could find of the event). One: She tells the truth - there is only one issue and this is the drop-dead year for it and our election (locally, nationally) and the COP in Paris (globally) are the last kicks at the can. (What a blessed relief to hear her say it!) She tells the truth while keeping the tiny window of hope which remains firmly open. This is no mean feat. Two: She is polite, even cheerfully and sincerely compassionate, towards her two colleagues even as she flat-out refutes their stupid incompetence with facts. Three: She connects. An apparently off-the-cuff quip which ranks right up there with Dylan's "Abe said: Man, you must be puttin' me on." She was talking too quickly for me to quote accurately (if and when the video comes along it may be clear) but it was "Arise Lazarus and walk!" referring either to the government formulating a serious plan, or the environmental 'movement' finally getting its thumb out - or both. Not a tall woman, but taller by far than anyone else in sight. There is obviously (apparently? something like that?) a huge disconnect between herself and her party. She actually recommends reading the 'Green Vision' platform document - which is nothing at all like what she is saying. Maybe it's just that she hasn't read it, hasn't had time; or maybe she accepts it somehow as the inevitable inertia of party politics. Here, read for yourself: in brief or in (100 page .pdf) detail. The twenty-odd organizations behind the event manage to bring out fewer than two hundred people. The technology and event-planning is ... pathetic - one imagines it has been provided by the (absent) Conservatives. There are two videos: I have not watched the official & complete version yet (there seems to be a - predictable - technical glitch); but I have seen this shorter one and recommend it. And yes, I will find and visit the Green Party candidate in this riding if there is one and report.

 
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Sheep & Goats (Full Moon).

Lookout! The living-dead are on the loose!

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Indeed, on the 17th will begin the Chinese lunar Year of the Sheep, Year of the Goat, or Year of the Ram - as you like. In Portuguese, however, 'carneiro' is specifically a male sheep or ram, with 'ovelha' for the generic, 'bode' for billy goat and 'cabra' for nanny goat. One of those little linguistic cracks that let in the light. :-) [Letting in light for the dim dills eh? As usual I've got it wrong and make little or no sense. And yet, all pretentions revealed ... even imagining these cracks is a comfort.]

And worse still considering the likes of Canada's Ludicrous Left which is as much behind building pipelines as the rest of the mouth-breathing knuckle-draggers. There is a HUGE turd coming down the pipe (followed by many more), officially unacknowledged and popularly not hardly understood, but it's there on the periphery of the Zeitgeist and soon to be a central feature (and soon after that 'the' central feature). It's in the consciousness and no accident that Gwynne Dyer began to take the environmental catastrophe seriously when he noticed his chums in senior security positions doing so.

Most of you will make out the fellow to the left as a Republican, but some of Joep Bertrams' acronyms may not be familiar: Pegida, PVV, FN, and UKIP. And there are others popping up every day (reminiscent of Edward Lear: "And thick and fast they came at last, and more, and more, and more!"). Neo-Nazis of one flavour and another, Stephen Harper's Conservatives of course, and whatever Tony Abbott's party is called. It would be bad enough if these were nutbar fringes, but it's mainstream in Canada & Australia and increasingly so elsewhere.

 

Belt tightening in a home economy, at the scale of one or several individuals or a family, even some certain small neighbourhoods, can be accomplished without immediate blood letting. At larger scales I think not. At larger scales it's police and the army and vigilantes and gangs of thugs. A suite of Laerte on the general theme (a ram in this case): What cracks nuts: Nutcracker! Nutcracker! Speak to me nutcracker. The magic is gone. Will it be the year of the ram? The Ram - One Act:         Study         Pain         Applause         Immortality The Ram - Second One Act: EMPOWERMENT STATION      Fill the tank.      More!      More. The Ram - One Act No. 3:             Do the possible and you will get the probable. The Ram - One Act IV:             Forgetting the causes does not cancel the effects. The Ram - One Act Vol. 7:         This is the historical moment. This is the historical place. I just don't feel like it.   The Twilight Zone (indeed) I:

Brian Gable's effort comes from 2013 - so, a perspicacious fellow then, is Mister Gable. Watching the whole State of the Union speech several times I see a good man, worn out and looking for a Flander's Fields moment. No one in sight to pass the torch to though ... Oh well.

The Twilight Zone (indeed) II: Why do we hate the politicians (when we do hate them) so viscerally? Is it that they (the ones we hate) lie so transparently and so continuously that our psyches are forced into a lower register? The phrase 'dead cat bounce' turned up in The Globe and Mail. Quite forthright talk for Crowley or whatever his name is to permit on his pages. See: Crude oil prices gain for second day: A bottom or a ‘dead cat bounce’?. 'Hog cycle' is another one: Oil's 'hog cycle' smacks Canada but in this case the columnist is touting the Bank of Canada deputy governor, Timothy Lane. I am hoping that his 'hog cycle' analysis is optimistic and that the decline hovers just above drop dead until the greed heads have squandered all their cash and wind up in the welfare line (with me). It hardly got started ... ... and 2015 has already crashed.   But Adão exaggerates. It hasn't missed, yet. 2015 is the last chance saloon sure enough but it's got some months to go. Gonna be what they call in the trade a 'cliff hanger'. (David Wilson)   I wonder if readers find this blog irritating in the way that I often find Doctor Who irritating?

 
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