BY Stan Goff

Part 3

It becomes necessary at this point to introduce a rather unfamiliar concept in order to inoculate readers from their intuition, because the reality is counter-intuitive. Fractal space-time. Don’t be alarmed. It is actually easy to understand; and I will explain it in a few sentences. I am co-opting the notion from the realm of physics, and relying in particular on my reading of Mae-Wan Ho’s book, The Rainbow and the Worm. (The bastardization of the notion is my responsibility alone; and it does not aspire to any great scientific rigor.)

Everyone has seen time-lapse photography, and most readers have probably ridden in an airplane.
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Posted by stan as Analysis at 6:46 AM PDT

BY Stan Goff

Part 2

-From Part 1

The United States of America is an imperial core in deep crisis.

…data…

World population, 1939: 2,296,000,000
Total population of all WWII “battle” countries, 1939: 1,961,071,000
Total deaths attributable to WWII, 1945: 72,155,800
Civilian deaths from WWII (by selected country): China - 15.8 million+; Germany - 1.8 million + (not counting Jews, Roma, et al); India - 1.5 million+; Vietnam (French Indo-China) - 1 million+; Japan - 580,000; Poland - 1.9 million; United States - 11,200; Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) - 26.5 million

Per capita US consumption today: More than 4 liters a day
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Posted by stan as Analysis at 6:17 AM PDT

BY Stan Goff

Part 1

On February 28, 2004, I managed to fight my way through frantic crowds at the Toussaint L’Overture International Airport in Port-au-Prince to board my scheduled flight back to Miami. The general panic grew out of the near-certainty of an impending coup d’etat against the democratically elected and still popular government of Haiti’s President Jean Bertrand Aristide and his Fanmi Lavalas Party. The coup was planned and conducted with the direct assistance of the United States Department of State and Aristide was effectively kidnapped by US armed forces at his Tabarre residence on the next evening, February 29. US Marines were summarily posted throughout the capital to protect the Haitian coup-making class from the wrath of millions of Haitians who were conducting angry demonstrations throughout the city (which were never covered by the US press).
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Posted by stan as Analysis at 2:17 PM PDT

Reading Zodiac, by Neal Stephenson, courtesy of my co-conspirator DeAnander, and I run into a description of diaminobutane, aka putrecine. Protagonist and eco-sabateur Sangamon Taylor is a chemist who makes this stuff… which is the essence of decaying flesh — guaranteed to clear a city block with the right wind conditions, and a busy building in minutes.

Of course, the little wheels in my head went spinning and clicking at this. Problem is, I can’t find anything that says how to make this stuff… which, when you think about it, is the perfect poetic method to bring the essence of the war back home for the most clueless ciudadano.

Think of all the places…. theoretically.
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Posted by stan as Analysis at 12:56 PM PDT

The recent detentions of four Iranian-Americans in Iran on charges relating to national security have touched off a flurry of speculation about the real motives behind the arrests. FULL ARTICLE

Posted by stan as Analysis at 8:55 AM PDT

After seeing the video Stan linked to in the previous post Do you support the troops?, Jim Craven sent us something he wrote in 2004. Its his Comments on Fahrenheit 9-11 and Veterans in Film. Here’s a bit.

First of all, I have read some of the literature–from the services themselves–on the backgrounds of recruits (active duty, versus Reserves/Guard) and some of their own stated reasons for going in.

On active duty, the poorest of the poor, the ones who may “THINK” there is no way out of poverty except through the military, are found generally in the MOS categories having to do with combat arms–particularly at the “grunt” level. They can also be found as cooks, logistics, truck drivers, etc.

Actually, these days, with the squeeze on the middle class, and many young people unable to qualify for certain financial assistance because their parents make too much (even though they may not be living with their parents) many of the new recruits are not from strictly working class–or at least ultra-poor working class–or lumpenproletariat as was once the case. Many are from families hardly on the verge of starvation and outright poverty but are willing to get a hand through college doing what was once thought to be realtively “safe” duty;

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Posted by BrianR as Analysis at 8:24 AM PDT

Since the whole Support the Troops loyalty oath assumes some cardboard cutout as “the troops,” let’s have a look at what the Boy-War culture really produces. I can assure readers, who may find this shocking, that this is a very typical attitude in combat arms units.

Please ensure that this video get the absolute maximum distribution, including to your local Congress-critter.

Posted by stan as News at 5:48 AM PDT

[hat tip to Derrick Jensen]

Violence against women and violence against the Earth, legitimated and promoted by both patriarchal religion and science, are interconnected assaults rooted in the eroticization of domination.

-Jane Caputi

Posted by stan as Quotes at 7:24 AM PDT

The ET Diary The Utility of ‘Lite’ is a continuation of the discussion started in “Packing Light for a Long Journey”. Its title is a satirical reference or challenge to an earlier ET diary, “The Utility of Light,” by a nuclear power advocate. DeAnander and Nomad ask what it would mean to take seriously the Other Option — the one that capitalism cannot afford to put on the table, but which humanity cannot afford to keep off the table — the option of contraction, convergence, and demand reduction. What would it really mean to live a “sustainable” lifestyle? What would we have to give up? What hard choices would have to be made? Would we really be “shivering in the dark” as anti-environmentalist propaganda repeatedly asserts? Or could a sustainable level of energy and material consumption be satisfactory — comfortable, amusing, convivial and pleasant enough to keep us happy?

After so many decades of the feverish dogwaggery of industrial and finance capitalism, are we even capable any longer of honestly distinguishing want from need? What are the consequences if we cannot learn to do so? How can we go about understanding the true cost of how we live and what it means — for our own future, and for others? How does one even start on an “energy audit” of one’s consumption and living habits? How does one deal with the results, if the answer is “It would take 2 Earths for everyone to live the way I live”? What practical steps can we take to make our way of life more negotiable?

We’ll start a thread at Feral Scholar for further discussion. Below the fold, you’ll find the article in full:
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Posted by DeAnander as Analysis at 2:45 AM PDT