No-name progress II.

Soon gonna be Earth Day innit?

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TAKE THE ONLY TREE THAT'S LEFT AND STUFF IT UP THE HOLE IN YOUR CULTURE. On this day of days, I recommend a careful & repeated listening to Leonard Cohen's 1992 album 'The Future' - enough to see (perhaps) the overall shape & pattern of it, the 'order' if you will; or at least that the despair in it is not complete, or not completely in control, and that there is something there that might be called hope (but wouldn't be). In the face of such prescient eloquence we can temporarily overlook his being such a ham, and even forgive the kiss-&-tell on our Janis. 'CAUSE HONEY, THE FUTURE IS NOW. SLAVERY:   Oh, of course there are no more slave ships coming to the Americas from Africa ... but if you happen to be in the South China Sea there are others on the go these days just as desperate. A ubiquitous human behaviour down through the ages. Not to mention wage slaves the world over. ARMENIA, PASSCHENDAELE, GUERNICA, HOLOCAUST, MUSELMANN: In industrialized war, practice makes perfect. Then the pious peek into Auschwitz and their leaders mouth the words "Never again!" but what it means is "Always! Every time!" and they give us Rwanda, Darfur, endless extermination. Aztec, Tupí, Beothuk, Apache. 'Course y'all think this is rhetoric buddit ain't. None of it is clear cut, one could wish it were - see here. ATOMIC BOMBS:   Oh but the cold war is over now isn't it? We're disarming aren't we? Sure we are ... except for slowly, slowly, ever so slowly, and mostly not, and then there're North Korea and Iran. CIVIL RIGHTS:   Are you kidding me? You don't read newspapers. Is that it? THE GREEN REVOLUTION:   Ah! When will Norman Borlaug return his prize and join the ranks of Cecil Rhodes and Nobel himself in well-earned disgrace? GLOBAL WARMING, CLIMATE CHANGE   &c. &c. &c. :   Considering the unfolding environmental catastrophe from the pinnacle (or is it precipice?) of human perfectability is sobering & instructive. Eh? Don't you find? Here's Chris Hedges (from a 2013 Q&A session) on fantasy, discernment, & judgement:         The fact is if we were serious about attempting to extract ourselves from where we are we would declare global warming to be - every country would declare it to be a national emergency. We would shut down the tar sands in a minute. We wouldn't even discuss the XL Pipeline. We know where this is gonna end up. Part of the problem is that those who control the power of popular culture, popular ideas, and popular images have done a really good job of keeping us entranced by fantasy and feeding this mania for hope.         People say you're so pessimistic or you're so dark, but I don't make up climate change reports. I don't make up what Wall Street is doing to the global economy. Those are just realities. Having been a war correspondent for twenty years is a kind of advantage in that we didn't talk about who was a pessimist or an optimist. We coldly calculated what the weapons systems were at the end of that road and how we were going to react and people who had a kind of Pollyanna-ish view about their own immortality are no longer with us. ALAN RUSBRIDGER, 350, AVAAZ, MUSELI: It seems that Alan Rusbridger proceeds approximately without a plan. This is documented (for which one praises his open & forthright character) in a series of podcasts (five so far). The language used is replete with hedged & woolly diplomacy, contingent correctitude, hesitant understatement. It might remind us of perfidious Albion. One distinction is particularly interesting: that the boardroom right-wingers probably don't eat müesli for breakfast while the Guardian left-libs do. What this reveals is that the struggle is seen as being between elites, or factions of the elite class. All good except that it leaves us yobbo whoremongers and dirty old men out in the cold. Reminiscent of Birkenstock & Wellington (the black rubber boots with orange trim) greenies back in the day. The campaign is struggling along. Certain things - a quite open Q&A session, and reaching out via email for feedback & suggestions - seem very positive; as is the intermittent presence of 'Keep It In The Ground' on the Front Page. Some other indications are not so sanguine, particularly the involvement of 350 & Avaaz which are so hobbled by a narcissistic misunderstanding of the Internet - exalted navel-gazing determined to count its way to glory.                 TRENDING ON TWITTER?!   DOH?! Time will tell. An election coming up an'all. "He worships at an altar of a stagnant pool and when he sees his reflection he's fulfilled." (Or she as the case may be.)   MOSTLY 8-LETTER WORDS:                             RELIGION                                                           POLITICS                                                                                         ECONOMICS                                                                                                                             INTERNET Each of them sucks you off in different (and mostly gratifying) ways, but they are all energy-drains - ideologies, patterns without heart. The Internet (standing in for technology which has too many letters) is not alpha & omega, neither be-all nor end-all ... after all. No more than another place to hide, and not even a very good one, and so expensive in so many ways.         My life,                 by Gizélia:         My name is Gizélia - I am made of chalk [giz=chalk]. A magic fairy told me that         if I was clever she would transform me into a real girl ... (These kinds of transformations are seen frequently in Laerte's art.  No mystery in that.)   Consider the English expression 'not by a long chalk'. The OED tells us it alludes to the use of chalk in reckoning & recording bar tabs and keeping score in games (such as billiards & snooker where chalk also has other uses) scoring ‘points’, with citations from the 16th century to the present day. Taking the metaphor (allusion itself used to mean metaphor) as relying on 'long' introduces wholistic tinges: completeness, a sense of 'fresh from the box', even the punchline of a ribald joke "a pas longs" / 'take big steps [Appolon!]'. I come back again and again to the last sentence of the 1972 report 'The Limits to Growth':         The crux of the matter is not only whether the human species will survive, but even more whether it can survive without falling into a state of worthless existence. Of course, one presents such images and people immediately assume they are intended to shock; which happens not to be the case in this instance gentle reader. The search for the elusive Green Party of Canada has so far proven fruitless. I say "so far" ... And the famous blue three-point-plan is foundering (I use the present participle but really I think it's a done deal) upon the reefs of 350.org correctitude. It's hard to believe how they turn their backs on me. I used to claim complete ignorance - but I am coming (too late) to savour and appreciate the fear that accompanies this correctitude, which will not, cannot, can never bear scrutiny and so does not permit it.

 
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Digressions.

Distractions?           
Hasta la vista, baby.

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Gwynne Dyer in the Georgia Straight a few weeks ago: The threat of artificial intelligence and this in the New York Times a few days ago open up a thread, a vein, a seam of seeming gold in the murk: R.U.R. a 1920 Czech science fiction play by Karel Čapek. R.U.R. stands for Rosumovi Univerzální Roboti / Rossum’s Universal Robots. (Thanks to Martin) The theme is touched upon occasionally/sometimes/often in Doctor Who & Startrek. Lately several years worth of 'Person of Interest' episodes - ultra-conservative undertones but some interesting insights among bushels & bushels (& bushels!) of every-cheap-trick-in-the-book chaff. 'Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy', which is the best in my estimation because of the light-hearted humour in such nuggets as: "Don't Panic!" and, "The answer is 42." Luc Besson's recent film 'Lucy'. (Wowzers!) The Terminator 'franchise'.

Recursion #1 (digression within a digression): A thin layer of real story in James Cameron's efforts - T1 & T2 in this case - a tissue of lies rather than an integrated ideology of lies, which becomes clearer if you watch T3 & T4. Cameron seems to have fallen out with them over T3 somehow - idle speculation. Shades of Sidney Carton, altruism. Arnold Schwarzenegger later becomes the 'green champion' Governor of California. James Cameron becomes something approximately similar in the green movement with 'Avatar'. Both immensely wealthy. Both entertainers. Both getting lots.

I use the public library WiFi connection because I can't afford $300 a month for telephone & Internet anymore. There seems to be an increasing number of other people doing the same - competition for the limited number of chairs so it pays to be there when the door opens in the morning. A network such as the Internet is really a complex amalgam of devices spread through planetary space and components fail now and then. The reactions when the wideband narrows and slows (often apparently reacting to the weather outside) are interesting. No one says anything but you can feel people shift impatiently, hear them rebooting their PCs hoping for a return to 'normal' revealing that it's ... (just) an addiction. When the infrastructure stops Moore's Law will go into reverse hyperdrive and it will all vanish in a heartbeat. A century-long study funded (presumably) with Google profits? Are you kidding me? :-) A few loose ends: Symmetry with undead: intellect & mind cf. A.I. & cyber-whatever; and spirit cf. zombies, golem, vampires and the like. Last Exit to Brooklyn & Requiem for a Dream? These are some of the saddest stories ever. ... Why should they come to mind so strongly & repeatedly as I write this? And anorexic females? (Linda Hamilton?) Scale: at local & limited scale it all works fine; only in very large, general, planetary realms does it lead to collapse & extinction.

Recursion (or possibly pre-recursion) #2: The effigies below are not identified by the Guardian editors responsible for the article in which the photograph appears. I guess you are just supposed to know who they are. One of them might be Stephen Harper but I'm not certain-sure. Why aren't they named? Why don't I recognise them? There is the odd link here and there to whatever the text of the agreement coming out of Lima might be. Why don't I bother to follow these links and read the text? And why am I ready to simply accept whatever the chief of AOSIS says about it? In the clip (farther below) from 'The Newsroom' two numbers put my antennae up: 3 million years since CO2 levels were last at 400 parts per million, and 2,795 gigatons already released. I thought it was longer than three million years and I thought the 2,795 gigatons were the already discovered but not yet burned reserves (according to Bill McKibben's 'Do The Math'). Why don't I (bother to) check these numbers out? These are rhetorical questions gentle reader. Do government pension plan investments in fossil fuels count as subsidies? What are the seven criteria that Quebec laid out to TransCanada for acceptance of the Energy East pipeline? No one answers so these questions hit the round file as 'known unknowns'.

UNFCCT COP(out)20, Lima Peru, December 1-12 2014: IF the remainder of the 'developed' politicians had imitated and exceeded the excellent but insufficient gestures made by Barack Obama & Xi Jingping, AND IF all of them had anted up dramatically to help their less fortunate neighbours THEN something useful might have been accomplished next year in Paris. As it is I must stifle my feelings on such cunning stunts in fear of being arrested for uttering threats. Some fluffy bit of TV dreck - a HBO soap called 'The Newsroom' aired around the world in primetime - slides in a few minutes of climate change between its main ongoing plot lines & cleavage (fore & aft). It ain't strictly factual but it's pretty damn close (say, 97%), and it lets you laugh at what is the un-funniest situation humanity has ever faced bar none - which is healthy psychology for a civilization on the edge, the brink, the very very verge, of collapse, dystopia, extinction, whatever. So of course, people who could know better (viz. Peter Sinclair & Michael Mann among others) damn it with faint praise extending to outright condemnation. Doh! The clip is here; Sinclair's petty crit here, and Mann's mewling here and here. There isn't a position on this any more than there is a position on the temperature at which water boils. What else? ... Oh yeah, Jane Fonda has come a long way since Barbarella Psychedella & the Excessive Machine (at 31). A-and there's this. "Fuck you," whispers Slothrop. It's the only spell he knows.

 
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Oh k-k-k-Canada, they've got you upside down.

Doolally tap.
Up-a-daisey! 

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[Who says no good comes from TV? The phrase 'doolally tap' is used in one of the silly soaps I spend my life watching these days. Deolali is a British army camp in India from the time of the Raj, not far from Bombay & Bhopal. Tap, tapa is Persian & Sanskrit for 'fever'. 'Doolally tap' then, is British army slang for 'going postal' (or simply mad).]

 

Not EVERY Canadian. Try this:                                                                       Who's gonna stand up?    Other versions: orchestral, With Crazy Horse, and solo.       A-and: Fork in the Road.

We can quibble if you like over 'save the earth', 'save ourselves', 'save humanity', whatever. Here's a series you won't soon guess: 7, 11, 13, 17, 22. Seven & eleven are lucky numbers, thirteen is normally an unlucky number but maybe not for those born on that day, seventeen is a prime number I happen to like, twenty two is the top of 22/7 an approximation of pi (the number that contains all numbers). Taken together they are the dates on which the blog will be published this month. See how simpleminded it's become. :-) Found in an OED citation:   "The most labyrinthine acrobatic choreography — a tortuous series of slithers, blind leaps, upsy-daisy lifts, and ass-over-heels floorwork." (The New Yorker, 1984) Confession: (I'm a lumberjack and I'm OK.) Darling, I have to tell you something. I'm not a lumber-sexual. I'm just a wood-cutter. "Faire is foule, and foule is faire." Canada is upside down, inverted, backwards, fucked-up: Our governments don't give a rat's ass for the environment or for us. What they do care about is anybody's guess - probably continued affluence and hope for the odd blow-job. Speaking of which: All levels of morality are given lip service and no more. On November 11 shortly before noon we stand with tears in our eyes - and that's the extent of it. You may wonder how the demise of the CBC is related. We might say good riddance to bad rubbish as they simultaneously implode and explode (much like a kicked-in TV tube). Fact is the information deficit might have been alleviated, mitigated by a public broadcaster worthy of the name. Barbara Frum was one of those but she and her generation are long gone. It's Hamlet ("to be or not to be") AND Macbeth ("faire is foule, and foule is faire, houer through the fogge and filthie ayre") all rolled up into one.   Exeunt. Always keep in mind that these pipelines are not designed to bring oil to Canadians: The jobs that are supposed to come from all of this ... are grossly overestimated & exaggerated by proponents as is the resulting prosperity 'human flourishing' and what not. The unions are (quite naturally) trying to hang on to more than their share. Government propaganda (lies) is identical with corporate rationale (lies): I've looked high and low and cannot find the "seven criteria for the Energy East pipeline" laid out by Quebec and endorsed by Ontario ANYWHERE. They are mentioned and loads of pundit jizz are spent in the general area but no actual expression of what they are. Kathleen Wynne has already begun to backtrack apparently. If anyone reads this who knows where the seven pillars of this wisdom can be found please let me know. Given all the hyperbole, some sensible talk about oil prices from Mark Jaccard is in order. And some more-or-less enlightening remarks - if mostly by reflection, and after you discount that the author wants it both ways. Both of these bits are in the Globe, Imagine! The UN flogging a dead horse (at great expense):

A problem not to be solved by national governments & bureaucracies nor by international governments & international bureaucracies. Surely this has been sufficiently demonstrated over more than two decades. Jim Hansen sounded the official warning in 1988. It was well understood years before that. Let's say thirty years of official incompetence (greed, inertia, complacency, wishful thinking, diplomatic forbearance ... whatever). Well then ... what kind of thing could possibly solve it? [When I ask this question people back away from me holding their fingers crossed in front of them, and as soon as I begin sketching out the hypotheticals I'm able to imagine they turn and leave.] If there were time then the adoption of renewable energy (which is already more than doubling every year) combined with drastic birth-rate controls and effective (Fee & Dividend) carbon pricing could do it. But there is neither political will nor time. What else? 1) Economic collapse. 2) Plague, pandemic, what you will. 3) Widespread and general sedition, revolt, revolution. A-and, it's got to be sooner rather than later. These are all projects beyond planning & executing. Anyway, the Black Death reached England in 1348, more than thirty years before the Peasants' Revolt in 1381 and the revolt did not succeed nevermind we don't have thirty years. Take Canada (Please! :-). A national election is coming, possibly within a year. But both of the main alternatives to Stephen Harper's Conservative sleveens - the Liberals with Justin Sinclair and the lame left with whazizname Tom Mulcair - endorse similar energy & economic policies including tar sands development and pipelines. Jobs! and Growth! One could wish for some electoral miracle that would give control to Elizabeth May and Bruce Hyer. But I went up during the last two elections to visit the Green candidate(s) in my riding ... and neither of 'em understood the kind of jeopardy humanity is facing, or if they did their policies didn't show it. Say something! Tell me I'm crazy.         I wish I were.

How ridiculous! The [drug] traffic controls all of society. We're hostages. They control cities, corrupt the authorities, murder innocent people with impunity ... Burn busses, bring down military helicopters ... There are even people who promote the legalization of drugs as the only way to stop the traffic. Really?! Nonsense! Who could believe that? A bunch of idiots who want to take the country into anarchy. [The Brasilian pronunciation of 'absurdo' includes a kind of silent 'i', the stress is on the long 'u', and there is a tiny roll on the 'r' - so it sounds like abiss-ÚÚÚrrdo. Delightful!] THIS is the future we are passing to our children and theirs:

 
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