a scrap of rural life

"there is no town, no townlet without its villages, its scrap of rural life attached: no town that does not impose upon its hinterland the amenities of its market, the use of its shops, its wights and measures, its moneylenders, its lawyers...it has to dominate an empire however tiny, to exist." fernand braudel. "the structures of everyday life: civilization and capitalism 15th-18th century, volume 1._________________________well...fernand is an historian and like all historians he is biased...the honest ones share their biases upfront and i have to admit fernand puts his in the title...credit where it's due...and he highlights the exploitative nature of capitalism in that quote in masterful fashion...unwittingly perhaps...he is a booster of capitalism form page one and that howler was probably written in all admiration...his contention that "towns are like electrical transformers" holds water too...because they do not produce their own energy...they get it from outside...no town is self-supporting...that's why it has to "dominate" that "scrap of rural life"...and it does so by setting up an extractive system to take as much as possible with as little return as it can give...summed up nicely in the list of things the town must "impose" on the "hinterland" to survive...like "the amenities of its market, the use of its shops, its weights and measures, its moneylenders, its lawyers..." ( "take back everything you can" william s burroughs. deposition: testimony concerning a sickness. )his honesty in exposing the exploitative nature of capital is, i suspect, accidental...he is too innocent for the history business...an ardent lover exposed as a fool...

happy christmas

"frustration aggression theories use psychological theories of individual behavior to explain civil strife, including revolutions, insurgencies, strikes, riots, and coups. these theories suggest that people become aggressive when they feel frustrated by something or someone who is blocking them from fulfilling a strong desire. and important subset of these theories suggests that this frustration and aggression can be caused by relative deprivation, which arises when people perceive a widening gap between the level of satisfaction they have achieved ( often defined in economic terms )and the level they believe they deserve. deprivation therefore is relative to some subjective standard of equity or fairness, and the size of that perceived gap obviously depends on the beliefs about economic justice held by individuals." thomas homer-dixon "environment, scarcity, and violence"_____________(bear with me...there are only forty or so page left in the book to read...it will be over soon )...perceived is one of the more operant words here i'm thinking...those "beliefs about economic justice" are mostly informed by advertizing from a consumerist culture that expects ( because it is the foundation of the system ) people to purchase more material goods than they can afford, thus being "good citizens" who create new money by going into debt...which further depletes their ability to " consume more " ( because there are limits even to sub-prime debt and the cost are astronomical..."easy monthly payments" my ass...one of the blessings of aging is that advertisers [except for cemetery plots] don't target me because they are fairly well aware that i will say "no thanks" [ or, possibly, "fuck you" ] to any sort of new cycle of debt ) and adds to their frustrations...there is a lot of perceived and very real economic inequality going on around this country these days as cohorts of small, well funded coalitions move into the government to engineer more upward redistributions of wealth to themselves and their constituents...it is obvious...so overt you have to wonder why there isn't more violence and social unrest...the tea party thinks we're stupid...not so...stunned perhaps...but the political theft is so blatant no one could miss it...the flames are fed oxygen by the "news as entertainment and manipulation" bunch at fox and cnbc who insist on lurid new programming because it sells advertizing and everyone's out for a buck...people may be "branded" by what news they watch ( or other programming for that matter ) but that doesn't make them less manipulated...only insensitive to voices other than those in complete agreement with them..i, for one, call that stupid as well as manipulated...causality is non-linear...no one knows what's going to happen exactly..all we have are "informed" extrapolations of what "Might" happen..the airwaves are alive with allegations...the only certainty is that if we don't stop listening to the nightly news or the political blather from the government and start listening to each other all this is just going to get worse...merry christmas...happy holidays..."false and commercial festival"...whatever suits your fancy.

get a grip

"economic and technological optimists have an unrealistic faith in human-kind's ability to unravel and manage the myriad processes of nature. there is no a priori reason to expect scientific and technical ingenuity can overcome all types of scarcity...(one reason is)human cognitive limits. humans do not have infinite ability to understand and manage the nonlinear, multivariate, and often chaotic processes of ecological-social systems." thomas homer-dixon. "environment, scarcity, and violence.__________________so...we live on a finite planet with finite resources and a growing number of people to feed, clothe, and shelter...what "resource substitution" basically boils down to is replacing dwindling resources with processes dependent on increasing amounts of complexity and high quality energy...humans can handle only so much complexity before the cognitive dissonance becomes too much to handle and the returns on that increasing complexity bear a cost too high to pay in both intellectual and economic terms..in the end resources will continue to dwindle and as they do they will become rival and exclusive...there will be keen competition among groups for remaining stocks as they try to maintain a bankrupt system...since the world has been converted to a market which values everything by its monetary cost ( which discount present and future social costs because economists are apologists for greed ) wealth will be the vehicle that allows a small minority to trap vital resources for their own use leaving the rest to suffer ever more sever shortages...there is a lot of contentious violence going on in the world and if you look deeply enough the cause is rivalry for resources...israelis and palestiniand bicker and kill one another over the "west bank"...west bank of what? the jordan river...water...the arab spring started as a rising protest over surging food prices...it has widened into a factional war of haves against have nots...isis is about resources, not religion...that's just the vehicle...wealth has always had a stranglehold on the political process here...it is in the process of finishing the job of overtly converting it to a wealth-protection system base on the broad mass carrying as much of the economic burden as it possibly can...there is every possibility of collapse as the periphery looks somewhere else for a better deal...this is papered over by a distorted media in denial or owned outright as well as mouthpiece politicians...the times ahead will be interesting..especially when the current "recovery" is exposed for the smoke and mirrors paper game it is...who benefits from this "recovery" look at stock prices...look at legislation...then you tell me.

the law of averages

"average figures tell only a very limited story, however, because the inequalities in land distribution that exist in every society mean that some weaker and marginal groups will be subjected to harsher scarcity than the averages reveal. in large areas of the world tens of millions of marginalized peasants already subsist on extraordinarily small, and often fragmented, plots of low quality land. over 70 percent of all rural households in the developing world are either landless or nearly landless." thomas homer-dixon "environment, scarcity, and violence."_____________________________________________________________________tom is on about peasants, cropland scarcity, and subsistence...all subjects of interest to me...and how "average" statistics can hide real suffering...averages are pretty much distortions that can be used by...oh...say economists and government flunkies ( read bureaucrats ) to make things seem less intense or threatening or misappropriated or grossly unfair than they actually are...the dow jones averages can reflect gains or loss on the stock market bu they are an average...not everyone wins...not everyone loses...but the average spreads the gain or loss out over all investors so that you don't see at a glance who got stinking rich and who took a bath...you have to take a deeper look and who has time for that? "oh...good news...the market is up!"..it strikes me as no coincidence that many ( although not all ) of the economic indicators used by the government to assess and publicize "economic health" are averages...the national bureau of economic research releases economic data based on things like "average weekly hours"...what they don't really highlight is that figure is average weekly hours worked in manufacturing...not in service or information jobs...and, usually, not solely by minimum wage workers...so who works how long at wal-mart? government doesn't know or doesn't want you to know because it might be bad news and so much of the system runs on faith..."average weekly jobless claims"...this is a seriously cooked number under the best of circumstances and anybody who works for a living knows it...it does not include those who have flat given up on finding steady work for instance...all this number does is cloud the issue.."average duration of unemployment" is another parboiled number tied directly to the last one and just as distorted and manipulated...so the government can spout averages to bend and twist the data to fit political expedience ( and they will )...i will continue to use resources like shadowstats and a closer examination of what raw data i can find to assemble a more realistic view of what's up...these people lie to protect their jobs and a ramshackle system that has serious issues...take a hard look at what's going on in your family...in your friends and co-workers' families...put aside government and media distortions ( after all they report the "government figures" as some kind of consequentialist gospel ) and see how closely it matches the "economic recovery"...some win...some lose...the winners don't want you to know how much they are winning.

irruption

the fundamental principle is this: whatever necessity is least abundantly available (relative to per capita requirements) sets an environment’s carrying capacity.” William catton overshoot________________ “without powerful restraints, humans-like all other species-exploit all available resources; the difference is that, with people, what is ‘accessible’ is defined by evolving technology” William rees the human nature of unsustainability___________ “major jumps in population, at around a.d.1300, 1600, and in the late eighteenth century, each led to intensification in agriculture and industry. as the land in the late middle ages was increasingly deforested to provide fuel and agricultural space for a growing population, basic cooking, heating, and manufacturing needs could no longer be met by burning wood. a shift to reliance on coal began, gradually and with apparent reluctance. coal was definitely a fuel source of secondary desirability being more costly to obtain and distribute than wood…” Joseph tainter the collapse of complex societies__________ “wood was also used for cooking, for heating houses, and for all industries that needed fire-power, for which demand was increasing with alarming speed even before the sixteenth century…there were many eager takers for the forest wealth which was bitterly fought over since its abundance was only apparent…” “…it was said that a single forge used as much wood as a town the size of chalons-sur-marne. enraged villagers complained of forges and foundries which devoured the trees of the forest, not leaving enough for the bakers ovens…” “charcoal reached paris in the sixteenth century by way of sens from the forest of the othe; by the eighteenth century, it was arriving form all accessible forests…” Fernand braudel the structures of everyday life: civilization and capitalism 15th-18th century, volume I__________ humans are a product of evolution and, like any species, in the absence of competition, they will expand to completely utilize the resources of an available environmental niche and human technology defines what is accessible by eliminating competition from other species…and, given the nature of humans and a close look at their recorded history, other humans as well (as alluded to in the braudel quote)…energy moves civilization…you can argue that it is technology or ideas or economics, but without some sort of energy source that meets the needs of those technologies or ideas ( economics is voodoo) they are inert…don’t think so? what happens when the power goes out at your house? get restless looking at blank screens and inert play stations? head out some wi-fi “hot spot” or a sports bar in some oasis of electricity…or just fire up the generator and turn fossil fuel into electrons? humans still devour wood…but mostly for shelter and furnishings rather than fuel these days (for the nonce…this could change...woodcutter could become a job classification again)…we moved on to coal because wood was becoming scarce…didn’t want to..wood was familiar…there was an extant infrastructure for its procurement and distribution…one for coal had to be built…costs in money and time and labor, not to mention shortages and high energy costs…new technology helped along the way and coal is still mined…still big business…but like all fossil fuels it is not a renewable resource…and all the easy stuff has been mined…it’s getting more difficult to find, harder to mine, and the quality is deteriorating…sounds a lot like oil ( current conditions are an artificial construct…the glut and low prices will not last indefinitely)…I read that fuel cell autos powered by hydrogen are the coming thing( this was on yahoo, among other places…apply salt liberally)…there will need to be a new fuel infrastructure built if this is so…the current one would just leak hydrogen dangerously…new technology…new complexity...new interconnectivity of processes…new opportunity for cascade failures and diminishing returns…when does technology become too costly to maintain…when do diminishing returns on investment in technology and infrastructure dictate a shift to simpler and more sustainable economic ( voodoo) models…that point is out there ( barring cold fusion…that could change things...but even so there is only a finite amount of matter on the planet to be changed to energy…it is not a panacea) and we will find it as a species sometime…how far will we have degraded the planet’s carrying capacity by the time we get there? as a side note to my discontent...a new "style" magazine was in the n y times today...i have not done all the math bit there were 95 full page color ads and 9 black and white...104 of 190 pages were advertizing...yet another up-scale marketing bonanza for the times...as a further note to add to this the back page of the saturday business section had a full page ad announcing a "reimagined" sunday magazine section to make its debut on february twenty-second of next year..."brands" are asked to "add your voice to the conversation...for more information about advertising and launch packages contact your account manager."...the "paper of record" panders to the elite while the rest of us watch...i haven't browsed the condominium prices in manhattan just yet...i wan to save some entertainment for later.

happy holidays from the makers of dissent

“western colonizing powers offer the native the gift of individual freedom and independence. they try to teach him self-reliance. what it amounts to is individual isolation. it means cutting off an immature and poorly furnished individual from the corporate whole and releasing him, in the words of khomaiakov, “ to the freedom of his own impotence,” eric hoffer from the true believer: thoughts on the nature of mass movements__________________________________________ if eric hoffer was alive he’d merit a shot to the nuts for this dreck...it is redolent of the nineteen-fifties consensus era it was written in and i have launched it across the room any number of times…so what do the “western colonizing powers “ ( and this is an accurate statement…whether in the overt form of colonialism or in the covert subversion of local culture through the destruction of its mainstays like local agriculture through cheap imports of industrial food or sowing discontent through engineered desires the west invades local culture like a virus ) offer? western culture with all its material accoutrements…and none of the support offered by a local, traditional culture…an “i got mine, you get yours” market economy instead of the supportive social group humans evolved in…”immature and poorly furnished” for what and by whose definition…western culture with its imperial triumphalism and hubris…its unwarranted exceptionalism…you bet they’re ill equipped for that…it’s a polar opposite for where they are wrapped in a shiny lie that steamrolls local culture…local culture is self-reliant and adapted to local conditions in a way western culture can never be…local culture recognizes limits…western culture has economists that classify limits as irrelevant externals…guess which will last longer…local culture may seem impotent in the face of the barbarian west but it can find its footing and its voice…organizations like via campesina are proliferating in defense of traditional cultures…the homogenizing west has it wrong in a multitude of respects…eric hoffer’s eurocentric view was a symptom of a malaise that carries right through to john Boehner, barak Obama, and their sycophantic mouthpiece tom freidman…I need to read some buffalobird woman to cleanse the pallet.

Too late II

THE LUXURY ISSUE 2014 View All Issues » T's Luxury Issue offers an intimate look at some of literature, art and design’s most respected figures. In the issue’s centerpiece, authors including Philip Roth, George Saunders, Marilynne Robinson and Lydia Davis revisit, in candid prose, the circumstances and motivations that shaped some of their greatest works. (They also share annotated pages from those books — a sampling of a December auction of annotated first editions by 75 authors to benefit the PEN American Center, the range of which can be seen on T’s website.) Next, we celebrate the master decorator Robert Kime, whom we encounter at his picturesque farmhouse in the north of England; Rita Konig tours the property and gets a firsthand look at the English eclecticism that Kime has brought to his high-profile clients’ homes for decades. The polymath Danish artist Olafur Eliasson opens the doors to his sprawling studio in a converted brewery in Berlin and explains how art is just one of the ways — along with politics, philanthropy and cooking — he hopes to change the world. Elsewhere, Cathy Horyn answers the question, "To fast or feast?" by doing both in Germany’s Black Forest; Andrew O’Hagan opines that, yes, life really is better in the iPhone age; Christine Smallwood puzzles over a bizarre new theme park in Rome dedicated to Italian film; and one of T’s very own editors explores New York City on three wheels in an ode to the trusty and stylish, if oft-forgotten, tricycle. See all stories from this issue >> HIGHLIGHTS William Eggleston, The Third Way: Tricycles By EMILY STOKES Long a favorite of toddlers, three-wheelers have also attracted the attention of British lords, Indian maharajahs — and now, one writer hopes, a bold new generation. Top: the fruit juice “lunch” served during the 10-day fast at the Buchinger Wilhelmi clinic on Lake Constance. Bottom: lunch at the three-Michelin-star restaurant Schwarzwaldstube in Baiersbronn includes grilled quail, a Breton lobster and a granite of sour cherries. Famine or Feast? By CATHY HORYN Is it more rewarding to subsist on broth and cold mountain treks at a German clinic for 10 days or to settle into five-course Michelin-starred meals? One writer heads to the Black Forest to find out. Slouchy Suede Bags By T MAGAZINE A luxuriously supple carryall, just in time for fashion’s new ’70s groove. The Elegance of Time By T MAGAZINE While smart watches are grabbing headlines, there’s something thoroughly modern in bucking the trend in favor of a handsome gold timepiece with no complications. Diamonds in the Rough By T MAGAZINE Jagged stones, graphic settings and a touch of black give the new gems a strikingly youthful edge. Vintage furniture and custom pieces by Vincenzo de Cotiis in his former office in Brescia, originally a sock factory from the ’40s. Industrial Elegance By STEPHEN HEYMAN The interior architect Vincenzo de Cotiis — sought after in his native Italy for the dynamic monastery-meets-laboratory approach he brings to designing furniture, homes and hotels — deserves our attention. Philip Roth at home in September. “I certainly didn’t understand while at work that henceforth I was never to be free of this psychoanalytic patient I was calling Alexander Portnoy.” Old Books, New Thoughts By PHILIP ROTH, LYDIA DAVIS, ROBERT A. CARO, GEORGE SAUNDERS, MARILYNNE ROBINSON, JENNIFER EGAN, JUNOT DÍAZ On the occasion of an auction of annotated first editions to benefit PEN American Center, seven authors look back on their early books and younger selves. Anya Hindmarch’s World of Inspiration By EVIANA HARTMAN The beloved British accessories designer turns to playful influences to breathe a little life and laughter into luxury. Unfinished wooden sculptures at Studio Olafur Eliasson, which occupies a converted brewery in Prenzlauer Berg, Berlin. Olafur Eliasson on How to Do Good Art By NED BEAUMAN On the eve of his exhibition at the new Fondation Louis Vuitton, the artist discusses his work — which includes a school, an architecture practice, a charity, a cookbook and a herd of Icelandic sheep, and which is meant to make the world a better place. Really. Backstage at Dior’s spring 2015 show, where the creative and image director of Dior Makeup, Peter Philips, created subtle drama with adhesive strips across the eyelids. At Dior, Icing on the Cake By SARAH NICOLE PRICKETT Sugary pastel eyeliner made from strips of satin conjures worlds of romance and solace. One of the entrances to Cinecittà World, which opened last July. Hollywood on the Tiber By CHRISTINE SMALLWOOD What could be more melancholic, extravagant, alienated, operatic and deeply strange than Italian film? Try turning Italian film into a theme park. Poetic Justice By T MAGAZINE Finally for evening, a mood of natural elegance with loose, unadorned dresses and flat sandals._____________________________________________________________ the new york times rises to my bait every time...they go to great lengths to defend themselves as the "paper of record" for the general public and then they publish thinks like the T magazine "Luxury 2014" issue...in ethnography the rule of thumb is to write about what people say they are doing, what they think they are doing, and what they are actually doing ( not losing sight of the fact that even the most objective of ethnographers is going to have biases about what people are doing )...well...here's a quick run-down on what the n y times is doing...making money by pandering to a wealthy elite...among the tokenish articles on designer clothing, interior design, yet another article on phillip roth, and elitist kitsch they call art, are 74 full page color ads and 4 full page black and white ( full page ads were all i found )...revenue of $7,923,550 from the former and $293,680 from the latter...$8,217,230 total from an artificial section of a "newspaper" dedicated to "all the news that fit to print" as long as it turns a buck...i'll read it...but i won't trust it.

too late

comments are doubtlessly closed on this howler of an op-ed piece ( if, indeed, they were ever opened )...but despite what the public editor has to say about a broader readership the nyt is an elitist newspaper...how do i know? pick up your copy of the new york times sunday magazine...got it? open the cover and what do you find? a two page black and white advertisement ( about $146,000 and change )for a patek philippe wrist watch that you don't own, you, " merely take care of it for the next generation"...no price ( if you have to ask you can't afford it )...my guess would be around what we paid for the house...flip to the next page and what do we find? a two page color advertisement ( $214,000 and change ) for 2,282 square foot condominium ( residence D5-05 ) for the bargain price of $4.8 million ( that explains why they can afford the color ad )...i think i could swing the monthly payment...how about you? or maybe just cash on the barrel head...no sweat...i subscribe to this rag specifically to find out what the elite are doing and thinking and saying as the carom though their daily routine existence...there is no better source for what madisons's "minor party" is up to than this..if comments were open i'd have to say "too late...your shameless pandering to the wealth of wall street is showing"

novemberland

if i were german i'd be a bit nervous today...the ninth of november is replete with events of note in the history of that country and at first glance you'd think it something of a coincidence or as some sort of proof of the validity of numerology...but i can see only one event that could be coincidence here...kaiser bill abdicated on november ninth 1918...all fine and good...and he fled to a reasonably comfortable exile in holland...ludendorf and hitler staged the beer hall putsch on the anniversary of that abdication as a reasoned ( if not reasonable ) reaction to the weimar republic...it was a conscious choice...and kristallnacht, while ostensibly related to the murder do a german diplomat, was connected to that train of event "celebration"...gunter schabowski precipitated the fall of the berlin wall in 1989 by mistakenly announcing the lifting of travel restrictions to the west a day early at what was supposed to be a run of the mill press briefing and that could be a coincidence...unless gunter has some subconscious german history going on...i'm not sure about that...later he said " we were assholes. the revolution was going on right in front of us and we couldn't see it"...so much for the wisdom of politicians and bureaucrats...so much for the wisdom of the powers that be...reality and causality are made up of billions of individual decisions and action taken on a daily basis...even the best informed among us can have only the most general idea of what's going on...life is not linear and coincidences are mostly non existent...when they do crop up they are fodder for conspiracy theorists because humans think they need an explanation for everything..."..bloody ignorant apes"

the air is foul with politics

"the herd is commanded, but prefers to think otherwise at the level of consciousness." f. nietzsche____________________from local to national as i wend my way through he alimentary canal of the leviathan that is american politics i notice a lot of shit...i went to vote after work today ( and no one offered me a damned sticker either...perhaps i telegraphed my viewpoint more than i thought...damn non-verbal communication ) in the library of an aging elementary school where my children began their "education"...in a blue collar town where i have lived for almost thirty years...this town has probably never even been close to good times, much less experienced them...as technology rendered jobs in the steel mills obsolete it was towns like this that suffered first from the economic reconfiguration of the past forty years...that would be irrelevant if american politics weren't so intimate with economics and the prerogatives of wealth...as it stands it's central...so what did i vote for? the common good? politicians like to call what they do "public service" and present themselves as "guardians of the public trust"...placing their political mandate in a higher power than mere politicians... when, in fact, they are creatures of special interests...whether those interests are their own..and here i am thinking of those lonely "independent" voices that have found a way to make their contrarian personalities pay or wealth controlling its political environment...or those of larger, more monied interests...whichever is the case old joe shumpeter was spot on when he said there is no common good in american politics...it is a shiny lie that it trotted out every election day to sway votes in a popularity contest...quickly returned to storage as special interests again take control of the political debate...dispensing wisdom and disguising their cronyism as "the will of the people"...i voted...but i voted with no illusions as to what this farce was all about...give the federalist papers a close reading...hamilton's ideals are alive and well...there may be a break now for the holidays but the new year will bring the debilitating plague of the start of a presidential campaign and with no incumbent every whore in whoretown and quite a few from the provinces beyond will think this could be their time...i can smell the putrescent stench even at this distance...where is the lake of fire?

swill bucket

"advertising is the sound of a stick in a swill bucket."-george orwell_____________________i have always admired orwell's take on many things...this being one of them...advertizing is rank manipulation and i know it when i see it...today's new york times is a disappointing two pounds nine and three-quarters ounces in weight...one presumes this will pick up a bit as the "false and commercial festival" gathers inertia...we will be delving into that...forewarned is forearmed...i was curious to see what the cost of all this manipulation was so i went to the n y times advertizing web site and did ab it of research...i looked at full page ads only...mostly because i didn't want to sped the time screwing around counting half and quarter page ads...so the totals for advertizing revenues herein are woefully incomplete...forewarned is forearmed...full page ads in the newspaper itself range in price by section and color/black and white...$214,723 buys you a four color full-page ad in the front section or the business section $178,633 for a black and white..the fine arts section brings up the tail end $107,970 for color and $71,870 for black and white...perhaps out of deference for starving artists...so the three full page beauties pictured fetched the nyt $644,199...but it is the magazines that drive the business and no mistake...full page color in either of the magazines ( the standard weekly or the periodical style ) runs $107,075 and black and white $73,420...today's magazines contain seventy-four full page color ads and six black and white for a total full page income of $8,364,243...and combined with the three full page ads pictured we're up to $9,008,442...add in half page, quarter page column, half column and subscriptions and you can see that there is cash flow here and, despite the whining from the print media about digital, profit as well i'm thinking...clearly news is a secondary part of this and i don't doubt that it is slanted to placate the advertiser's world views...the truth is a flexible thing...we all find different versions..but this alone is valid reason to trust no media. 7:52 p.m. 11-2-2014 just a note to say that my original figures were off...blame age...they have been adjusted downward...that's still no excuse for gross manipulation or gross amounts of cash...it's just an adjustment.

business unionism

i am a third generation union member...doubtlessly not some sort of world's record...but how many of us are left? i grew up in a union household where belief in the positive good of unions was strongly held and imparted...so i am inclined to see the recent proliferation of "right-to-work" legislation in a number of states, including my own, to be an unwarranted intrusion of increasingly unbridled capitalism into the ability of workers to earn a fair living..i have no love whatsoever for the oligarchical tendencies of wealth or the political whores who serve those proclivities...that said let me also say that the union i belong to does a miserable job of protecting and expanding workers' rights in the face of that ongoing rollback by corrupt politicians and their wealthy owners...this may not be entirely their fault...the wagner act of 1935 did not do workers any favors, nor did the interpretation of that law by the courts...essentially it took unions off the street where they had been increasingly effective in gaining concessions by direct action through mechanisms like the now illegal sit down strike ( illegal because it was effective ) and brought them "into the system" and made them reliant on politicians for a "seat at the table" of government...and as a result forcing them to compete for political clout with the seemingly always ( not to here the forces of reaction tell it ) better funded agendas of corporate interests...politicians are notoriously fickle ( and pretty much whores ) and their "friendship" cannot be counted on where the possibility of more cash is in play...labor has fallen into the trap of, among other things, believing that democrats are more friendly to labor's interests...the behavior and voting record of the congressman ( and democrat ) from this district alone should be enough to put paid to that silly illusion...additionally ( and most unfortunately for working people ) the courts interpreted the wagner act as guaranteeing the rights of unions, not workers...so unions effectively became a lesser entity in the department of labor subject to government rules and regulations...add into that the tradition of "business unionism" which sought to limit union activities to seeking financial gains for their membership while limiting politics as a valid subject for unions members to pursue as union members...in other words, no labor party...you were a democrat or republican in your politics and your union served only as a vehicle for economic security...when the political winds began to blow directly in the face of unions this left them bereft of "friends" and replete with detractors...so they find themselves backed into a corner with things deteriorating rapidly and not a bit of political sympathy in sight...right-to-work legislation says union members may opt out of paying dues while still being represented by the union as "free riders"...clearly this is aimed at the slow economic strangulation of unions with their ultimate demise as the goal in an effort to leave working people unorganized and effectively balkanized as a class...well...politicians are whores to a (wo)man and i simply cannot say that enough...aside from the standard wobblie graphic you will find a page from my union's journal...it is a craft union that has never and , seemingly, will never understand industrial production workers...there is no hope here...impossible...it is a page from a section on production news and in the section under the subheading "trane" they have, in bold face type, printed the names of nine members who have "opted out" of paying dues and become free riders ( you may have to click on the image to actually be able to read it )...the editorial staff of "the craftsman" want readership to "encourage them to do the right thing and become good standing union members."...here is a union run as a business clearly concerned with its cash flow...being a "good" union member means shutting the fuck up and paying your dues regardless of the quality of representation that you may receive...their desperation may be understandable but trying to publicly shame individuals that may only be making a statement about the relative value of union membership is hardly a way to build the solidarity unions will need if they can even hope to overcome the current political assault...when i was a member of the steelworkers i was in a union that had stewards and grievers...here i have business agents...a holdover form the old sam gompers days that leaves me thinking union leadership has more in common with management than with me...the more desperate they become the more shrill they will become on this issue...and the more shrill they become the more they will alienate the people they need to survive...the prognosis is not good.

the festival is upon us

eric blair was in the habit of dissecting a page or two of his newspaper from time in his tribune column...reading between the editorial board approved lines to try to find out what was really going on...when i hefted this morning's new york times off the front deck i had my suspicions about what was up...but first i stopped off in the kitchen to weigh the bastard...a shade over three pounds of newsprint and...you guessed it...glossy advertizing...including the "T" style magazine and the annual "watch your time" section of watches so expensive ( think of a figure equaling or surpassing what i paid for my working class hovel ) there are no prices printed ( "if you have to ask you can't afford it " )...the front section was expanded to two because every other page was a full page ad for something or another ( at&t and apple went berserk )...so scrooges "false and commercial festival" has arrived and we better fucking well consume or retailers will suffer and so will the economy...i can feel the advent of deeply seated streaks of both austerity and the pariah mentality...i can see me holed up with a few books and the basement projects until mid january when the new year grind begins to kick in...my favorite? the tired and passe rolling stones flogging grossly expensive watches to the proles...priceless.

allende day

"make the economy scream" richard nixon on the cia's approach to salavdor allende's presidency in chile___________________________chalmers johnson says we will debase our society with empire and the societies of all those we try to police...certainly the will to empire remains but as the means to empire ( and the philosophical double-think involved )become more complex and costly the hegemonic culture will debase both the national currency and what little remains of the national ethos to pay for it...and to what end one wonders? to deny that we all benefit form empire would be self deceit..to deny the stain it leaves is equally a function of denial...being an anthropogenic structure it will fail at some point and the old saw about bumping into the people you met on the way up while you're on the way back down is particularly appropriate for empire and its assorted "unfortunate" actions and their collateral damage...the allende coup is a case in point...the apparent "losers" never completely disappear no matter how hard the seeming "winners" wish it or try to implement it ( wolfgang shivelbush's book " the culture of defeat" is instructive in this and you can see the mechanics of it in action in the southern tier of states in this seat of empire )...the current president of chile, michelle bachelet, is the daughter of an air force general who remained loyal to allende and was killed by pinochet and his generals...she does not appear to believe in "an eye for an eye", but there are doubtlessly millions who do...joseph stalin was a tsar who said, " one death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic", relying on humans' difficulty in processing large numbers as a vehicle to avoid being cast as the mass murderer he surely was...what old joe failed to realize is that statistic that equaled a million deaths also equaled a million tragedies that, once responsibility was established, human nature wasn't going to let go of ...imperial behavior is not without responsibility or harm to others and you may not always be able to divine or control their response...i would suggest a fundamental rethinking of who we are and where we would want to go is in order...but no one will listen...jihaddi is the new commie...a useful tool in leveraging fear and acquiescence in the imperium.

a matter of timing

“the sailor, officially a stenographer, had been copying nsc documents and kissinger’s memos for ten months, making an extra copy of everything that went into the Xerox machine, working at night and searching burn bags…after Kissinger returned to Islamabad, Radford, went through his room and his briefcases taking notes…” “Kissinger figured the president was drinking too much, not so unusual when rebozo was around.” President Nixon: alone in the white house. richard reeves ________________________________________________________________ ________ august 8, 1974 was a thursday as I recall…summer work in the steel mills had drawn to a close and there were several weeks left before the fall semester started so we decided to go camping…in colorado…we left hobart at about eight in the morning and drove straight through to denver, arriving there at about two a.m. on friday the ninth…this would have put us somewhere in the endless wastes of nebraska when tricky dick took to the national airwaves to bid the presidency farewell…we caught a few hours of sleep in the car after we got to denver and when the sun came up we stopped to buy a couple of cases of coors and headed southwest out of denver towards woodland park and the mountain backwoods…we pitched camp by a creek and settled back to watch mule deer and get thoroughly buzzed…high as kites on mountain air…next day we were joined by a couple of friends ( bill and frank to be specific ) who had driven out in a decrepit fiat and were delayed by numerous mechanical woes but had soldiered on to the mountains...their arrival doubled the exhilaration delivered by the alpine climate and we lazed the next few days away hiking in the mountains, swimming in icy streams, swatting horse flies, and digging out ticks…70s style camping at its very best…the weekend evolved into a new week and by Tuesday thoughts of heading home intruded ( some of us had real world jobs )…bill and I headed into woodland park to find an auto parts store to purchase parts for a desperately needed tune-up for the fiat ( the primitive automobiles we drove forty years ago had such exotic parts as distributor caps, rotors, points, and condensers…all swept into the dustbin of automotive terminology by the advent of the computer and a systems deepening so complex that I believe you’d have to take the engine out of my pick-up to change spark plugs…it was a simpler time when you listened to an engine to diagnose a problem rather than paying ninety bucks to hook it up to a diagnostic computer…complexity equates to progress in the consumerist utopia )…it was around noon when we wandered into the parts store and pissed the clerk off by interrupting his lunch…bill rattled off a list of necessities and the grumbling counterman stomped off to gather the goods…the small black and white television ( electronic media were as primitive as the autos…if you look closely enough at photos of the era you can just make out the shadows of the dinosaurs that gave us so much trouble then ) was tuned to the “news at noon” which was on hiatus for a few commercials ( some things never change )…when the local news anchor returned he led the segment off by announcing that “president ford” would be holding a “televised” news conference that evening…startled bill and I looked at one another and I asked “wasn’t Nixon president when we left?”…in some suspense we waited for the clerk to return and when he did bill and I both said at the same time, “what happened to Nixon?”…the clerk affixed us with a look of combined pity and loathing he must have used when confronted by morons or strangers who were obviously deranged and said, “that fucker quit”…this ignited ( literally ) a celebration when we returned to the car and we celebrated all the way back to camp…which induced some forgetfulness as to the cause of the celebratory binge...the amnesia was temporary however, and when we recalled and recounted the news to the others it reignited ( again , literally) the celebration…content we retired to the tent and initiated repairs on the fiat in the morning, leaving to return home by around nine…the trip home took us through nebraska in daylight with a remarkable train of events at a truck stop outside lincoln…that is another president however…and a completely different story.

charlie's got your number jim

"complaints are everywhere heard from our most considerate and virtuous citizens, equally the friends of public and private faith and of public and personal liberty, that our governments are too unstable. that the public good is is disregarded in the conflicts of rival parties, and that measures are too often decided, not according to the rules of justice and the rights of the minor party, but by the superior force of an interested and overbearing majority." federalist X (madison ) _______________________________"this maintenance of the legal basis aims at asserting minority interest as if they were the predominant interests...it aims at retaining legislators who are concerned only with their particular interests; it seeks to misuse political power in order forcibly to place the interests of a minority above the interests of the majority." karl marx from his defense speech at his 1849 trial _____________________________________ sixty-one years later and charlie provides insight into the thinking of the vanguard of the political operatives who were struggling to create a "more perfect union" because the sort of "public and personal liberty" that the jeffersoinian declaration of independence had brought into being was spawning movements that were inimical to the interests of the elite and were in serious danger of exposing those interests as anything but "predominant" in the new republic...shay's rebellion displeased madison while it scared the living shit out of hamilton and moved him into an even more reactionary stance that even abigail adams found distasteful...have a leisurely but close perusal of the federalist papers and you will find hamilton is the only one of the three authors who cites shay's rebellion by name...the others simply referred to it euphemistically as something like "the recent unpleasantness in massachucetts"...as if calling it by its popular ( and now historical ) name would lend credence to the idea that the new hegemons' interests might not be in the best interest of the public at large ( that "overbearing majority"...in 1787 madison is already putting paid to the concept of majority rule...jefferson's vision snuffed out in the cradle...much like lennin croaked it in russia in 1917...hegemons are cut from the same cloth historically speaking )...the vanguard never has much use for "the herd"...an unwashed rabble with barely a brain amongst them...only useful fools and a vast pool of consumers...readily mislead and manipulated by desire and emotional appeals...they are missing a central point i think but i am not going to try to enlighten them...the center has had a fair run since 1789...it's gone from a collection of imperial wannbes wearing their desires on their sleeves by garnishing the capitol with neo-classical kitsch architecture to an actual imperial machine that has taken what it wanted since 1945...but entropy is catching up to it...as the system becomes more and more complex to try to deflect and deter real and perceived threats ( how much money does the nsa really cost? what's the real budget..come on...you guys read this blog...give us a ballpark figure we can run with ) the law of diminishing returns is kicking in..pretty soon all that complexity is going to simply cost too much and coercive efforts to collect ever rising taxes are going to have the periphery looking for a better deal...eventual collapse into a simpler form of extortion is fairly inevitable..the cascade failure will see to that...politics in this country have grown so unbearably rank and out of touch with reality ( someone should seriously whack the tea party over their collective heads to get their limited attention and try to explain as simply as possible that you cannot have empire and small government...one or the other morons...both are impossible ) that it is not really possible to take it seriously...it's a circus and the menagerie in whoretown is only going to get more out of control..it can be entertaining at times but as a steady diet it's a lot like having yahoo as your home page...to damned busy...no room for quiet thought...which may be what they want...but who cares what they want? the object is to expose the enter as the irrelevancy it is and get to work on building a culture and a community that will help us crawl out form under the rubble of the late republic's collapse and help one another...that is as inimical to the interests of the elite as you can get.

princip day

it's one hundred years to the day that gavrilo shot franz and sophie as they rode through the streets of sarajevo...it was a sunday and th elast day of their visit to the imperial outpost...sophie went along because she could be photographed with her husband there...franz had married nobility ( sophie was a countess ) but he hadn't married a princess or a grand duchess..so when they were in vienna the rigid court protocol required sophie to stand behind the princesses and grad duchesses of the court...so no photographs of the couple in public in vienna...sophie was freer away from the imperial center and so she died with her husband...gavrilo was a bosnian serb nationalist so his memory there is somewhat clouded by more recent events...he was the catalyst, not the cause of the first world war which resulted in, among billions of other things...the french and brits drawing abstract and artificial borders in the "middle east" after the war to ease their administrative burdens while creating an ethnic and religious tragedy that still plays on today in seemingly endless conflict...the bolshevik revolution which beget stalin and a teleological bureaucracy that took on a life of its own embedded in a secular religion in which parentage was ( and still is in all secular religions ) original sin, poison gas, tanks, fighter aircraft, massive artillery...and on and on...the armistice, the treaty of versailles the "stab in the back" and, along with the poison gas business, hitler...an entry of the u s into the wider world of imperialism in which we had been mere dilettantes before the war flouncing around cuba and the phillipines ( look at us now! )...eerie to be able to pinpoint an historical catalyst so precisely...causation is non-linear...this gave it focus momentarily before it caromed off into history...but not before franz and sophie's driver turned down the wrong street and stopped to back up giving gavrilo his perfect moment.

there are elections and then there are elections

just got home from some after work events...including discharging my civic duty...yep...election day...and the most useless and patently foul abuse of "the people's will" since the federalist papers or the seventeenth communist party congress in 1934...only three delegates crossed off kirov's name on the ballot but stalin won the election and somewhere over a thousand of the delegates were arrested during the following purges and many just plain disappeared...kirov was assassinated by some stalinist patsy and that left only trotsky to clean up...stalin's boys acted quickly to cover up the embarassing defeat and the covert party revolt was ruthlessly crushed...lake county doesn't need the nkvd or yagoda or beria to keepa lid on dissent...the party has less violent methods here...in two pages of ballot in the democratic ( oh please! ) primary i believe i saw three races in which the candidate was not running unopposed ( pete visclosky for instance was the only name on the ballot for district representative...my vote...or abstention for that matter...reduced to farce )...even stalin had kirov's name on the ballot for form's sake...and i have to wonder if that damned ass hamilton would have disapproved of any of it.

guardians of the law

"people may act as they think proper in their elections, and they still will do so. lawyers and merchants are generally their choice...lawyers have a keenness and a fondness for disputation. wrangling is their business. but long practice in supporting any cause that offers has obliterated regard to right and wrong. the question only is, which is my side?...o candor and integrity ...where are ye to be found? seldom in professional men." wilian maclay's journal of the first congress. 5 june 1789__________________________of the five hundred and thirty-five voting members of the current congress one hundred and seventy-three are lawyers...that's just under a third...over half are millionaires ( one presumes this excludes campaign funds ) this explains much and maclay provides a solid line of evidence that wealth and law were bedfellows from the start..."i fear we shall follow on nor cease until we have reached ...all the frivolities, fopperies, and expense practiced in european governments. i grieve to think that many individuals among us are aiming at these objects with unceasing diligence." hamilton's vision lives on.

420

it's april twentieth...the obscure formula that pinpoints the easter holiday on the secular calendar is ignorant of human affairs and so the holy day falls on marijuana day...which, since it is a later manifestation of the linear timeline imposed by the enlightenment and historians ( and cheapjack novelists as well )that falls on hitler's birthday...so many competing religions...secular and spiritual ( although let us not lose sight of the fact that hitler was profoundly catholic )...so which do we choose? the holy carpenter? the tao of the stoned hipster? a deep draught form a cup of intolerance? none of the m have it right...and each is as limiting in its own fashion...reefer? done that and found it lacking...never a favorite of mine and abandoned with youth...slow and stupid...perhaps not as slow and stupid as i found myself with other substances...but the same general effect...i am done with them all...racism? slow , stupid, and self-limiting...a blinkered and a jaundiced view of a diverse world...hitler was wrong...all fundamentalists are wrong...all fundamentalists are teleological and intolerant of criticism of the utopia..a secular religion of evil..or a spiritual one for that matter...witch trials, heretics, inquisitions, conquistadors, settlers, divine right...the theologian and the executioner have long been bedfellows...they tolerate and support one another...no thanks...organized belief is just that ...organized...for someone's agenda...i find none of it believable...they all have it wrong...a multiplicity of theocracies to choose from...i won't abide a missionary...if you come to convert me come armed...there will be resistance.

debs is invisible in terre haute

eugene v debs was the socialist party of america's presidential candidate five times in the last century or so and he was born in terre haute indiana...a day jaunt to that burg today had me wondering if i would find any trace of him or of his home town's recognition of his existence there...there may be some but i didn't see any...and given the political small-mindedness of this state it comes as no surprise...the statehouse is rank with ignorance backed by the hubris willful stupidity imparts to the dullwitted...so be it...i come form a part of the state that has been grossly misunderstood and vilified by those pompous twits fro years...they are pathologically incapable of understanding...on the other hand, benton county held out some hope for this melting pot of fools...wind power has been a staple of rural america for quite a while and if you squint at the top photo you should just make out an old farm windmill of the sort that used to drive well pumps and, in later years, generate home electricity ( it is on the left hand side of the road about the middle of the photo and mid-distance betweenthe road we're on and the wind turbines in the background )...it is in juxtaposition to a huge wind farm that...according to benton county's web page...is home to five hundred wind turbines generating electricity...they are not completely energy clean...no doubt fossil fuels were used to mine and refine the metals in them...there is doubtlessly petrochemically based plastic in them...energy was used in their manufacture, assembly ,and shipping...and in their placement and erection as well...but they hold out some spark of progress in a thoroughly reactionary state...with luck coming changes will make them irrelevant.

indiana is a hotbed of dissent

"Since 1915, the principal supporter of daylight saving in the United States has been the Chamber of Commerce on behalf of small business and retailers," says Downing. "The Chamber understood that if you give workers more sunlight at the end of the day they'll stop and shop on their way home. It's not just golf—the barbecue industry loves daylight savings, so do the home good stores because people tend to go out of their houses, see that their roofs need replacing and buy more shingles. It's a really important part of niche marketing for the retail industry."-michael dowling__________________________________________________ you can read some specious bullshit about the miniscule amount of electricity that daylight savings time allegedly saves but when i look at all the little electricity vampires on all the electronic gizmos around here...from the little red light on my monitor that's on even when the monitor is off or the neat little lit up logo on the goddamned flat screen tv in the livingroom or the green lights on the dishwasher ( which i patently refuse to use )or the red ones on the hardwired smoke detectors i know that's all lame posturing and cheap rationalization....the real reason is neatly outlined by dowling and is the brainchild of the chamber of commerce...that crypto-fascist purveyor of gluttons consumption...they are as doomed as dinosaurs and they can take their time theft and get bent, pound sand, eat shit and die...whatever strikes their greedy little fancy..everything those cretins do is extractive and deleterious to the environment...i will be forced to reset my clocks because i still have to deal with the "real world" ( despite its continual, illusory belief that "business as usual" will remain unchanged within established parameters ) and it has no sense of humor...greed will do that...as a footnote this state has been a bastion of resistance to daylight savings time resulting in a chaotic temporal situation at time, until that paragon of neo con politics turned university president sign a statute making the state observe it...another reason to say fuck these people...where is the lake of fire?

i'm right, you're wrong. why are you still talking?

"Comrades! The insurrection of five kulak districts should be pitilessly suppressed. The interests of the whole revolution require this because 'the last decisive battle' with the kulaks is now under way everywhere. An example must be demonstrated. • 1. Hang (and make sure that the hanging takes place in full view of the people) no fewer than one hundred known landlords, rich men, bloodsuckers. • 2. Publish their names. • 3. Seize all their grain from them. • 4. Designate hostages in accordance with yesterday's telegram. • Do it in such a fashion that for hundreds of versts around the people might see, tremble, know, shout: "they are strangling, and will strangle to death, the bloodsucking kulaks". Telegraph receipt and implementation. Yours, Lenin. Find some truly hard people"________________________________________________________ this is what happens when teleological bureaucratization becomes the standard for government. lenin took marx's dictum "from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs" ( and i notice just now that this doesn't say anything about individual desire...only need...no wonder capital hates marx so...he denies it it's greatest manipulative tool ) and rewrote it as "from each according to our needs, to each according to how necessary they are to our ends." ( i neglected to add when i originally wrote this that this dictum is true of every hegemonic culture...you, as an individual, have value in their eyes only in so far as you serve their ends...if you aren't a minion you'd better be self-validating ) and in so doing lenin beget stalin. they knew what history's final end was...anything they did to reach it was acceptable.

it just drones on

i heard a piece on the bbc this morning about general atomics...industry leader in drone manufacturing whose pr people do not like te moniker "drone"...it is redolent of male bees who have a reputation as mindless drudges ( a concept pertaining to males that seems to be readily applied across species by some...but we verge on political incorrectness here..back to the lead-lined personal journal with that )and so implying that the targeting done by said drones is somewhat less than fail-safe at best ( one would need to ask a pakistani in the tribal area bout the efficacy of targeting...and one wonders what the federal response would be to say chinese drones in u s airspace...but, once again, we venture into waters bound to be offensive to some )...so general atomics wants us to call them something like "remotely operated aircraft" so the name can pass into the realm of bureaucratic euphemism and obfuscation and the "special vocabulary" that dulls the discourse...control the language and you frame the debate...goebbles understood this and so do his heirs..of course general atomics calls their drones "the predator' and "the reaper" which immediately calls the entire project into serious question...obamaland called them drones in his state of the union message...if it is good enough for the commander-in-chief then who am i to question it? drones it is.