Ye olde
open
thread
The Bush II regime held hands with the regime now shooting down the most citizens in the global wave of protest.
Washington's Blog has an interesting, detailed post about some of the nations likely to experience this current and growing phenomenon.
Ecocosmology Blog has a post about the Capitol of Bullshitistan.
To feed all those mouths, "we will need to produce as much food in the next 40 years as we have in the last 8,000," said Jason Clay of the World Wildlife Fund at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).
With regard to all the "open source democracy" hoopla breaking out lately, I think Kunstler sounds a very wise cautionary note:
ReplyDeleteLikewise, the infantile idea that these nations in the throes of revolt will slide from disorder into natural democracy like falafels into a pita pocket. What you generally get in political upheavals throughout history are protracted periods of confusion, factional fighting, and violence. More often than not, they resolve in the rise of a new tyrant, some figure who seems to know what he is doing when everybody else around him does not - which is the essence of human charisma, being a declension of the following:
1.) People who know what they are doing.
2.) People who seem to know what they are doing.
3.) People who pretend to know what they're doing.
4.) People who don't know what they are doing.
Most of the human race is composed of the fourth category, which is why the figures in the categories above them claim their attention and allegience. Sometimes, the results are very unfortunate.
White Is The New Black
Regarding our own leadership, I think only a handful are even reaching as high as #3. To his list I would add a 5'th: People who don't even know that they don't know what they're doing. There lies the fat part of the curve! And they're the truly dangerous one's as well.
The religious leaders issued a fatwa against Gadhafi ... those dudes are serious as a heart attack.
ReplyDeleteHeadlines for stories I have yet to write:
ReplyDelete1. Ethanol fuels hunger revolutions across oil kingdoms.
2. Israel claims Iran seeking self esteem in Suez
3. Gene Sharpe: Blood on his hands
coming to a shoe blog soon!
Oh, happy days, :)
One of the morning shows had pictures of Gaddafi down through he years. Man has that dude let it slide! He must have developed a little crack habit on the side to account for such complete physical and mental deterioration. Hard to believe that Libyans waited this long to over throw the fool, since I find it hard to believe that anyone close to him could actually take him seriously. Maybe he'll come to the US and do stand up comedy? He and W could team up like one of he old vaudeville acts, with W telling jokes at Gaddafi's punch-drunk straight man expense.
ReplyDeleteKathy,
ReplyDeleteThe ethanol ruse is one of the great scams of the "green revolution." I see a lot of bloggers discussing it at length, but for some reason the MSM and general public seem to ignore it altogether. I guess because hunger hasn't come to the US in a big way... yet.
More good stuff on our man in Tripoli:
Defiant Gaddafi vows to die as martyr, fight revolt
Crude Oil Gains a Fifth Day on Concern Libya Unrest May Spread
Gaddafi? Kadafi? Qaddafi? What's the correct spelling?
You say, Gaddafi, we say Qaddafi. Other variations on the leader of Libya include "Gathafi," "Kadafi," and "Gadafy," creating an unholy mess for newspaper editors.
Who needs cable TV when we've got stuff like this live everyday? Gotta love it!
Dredd Blog has always understood that methanol, not ethanol was the ticket that scares the shit out of MOMCOM.
ReplyDeleteAnyone remember the posts there must be some way out of here?
Doncha just luv Monbiot?
ReplyDelete"After I last wrote about online astroturfing, in December, I was contacted by a whistleblower. He was part of a commercial team employed to infest internet forums and comment threads on behalf of corporate clients, promoting their causes and arguing with anyone who opposed them. Like the other members of the team, he posed as a disinterested member of the public. Or, to be more accurate, as a crowd of disinterested members of the public: he used 70 personas, both to avoid detection and to create the impression that there was widespread support for his pro-corporate arguments. I’ll reveal more about what he told me when I’ve finished the investigation I’m working on.
But it now seems that these operations are more widespread, more sophisticated and more automated than most of us had guessed. Emails obtained by political hackers from a US cyber-security firm called HB Gary Federal suggest that a remarkable technological armoury is being deployed to drown out the voices of real people."
Gotta luv em.
Sorta ... anyway ...
On the plus side, we all had to know that this kind of thing was coming. The days of the internet's current wild, wild, west days are certainly numbered, both for security and financial reasons. Fascist police states simply can't allow the amount of free-wheeling open debate that's going on currently to last in perpetuity, plus there's simply WAY too much of the current internet that's free, and that's not economically "efficient." If current events teach us anything, it's that everything currently residing in the public realm will eventually be (sooner rather than later) privatized, monetized, bought and sold, and profited from. Running off the "crazies" so that all the good little capitalists can hold sway is just part of the plan.
ReplyDelete