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6/27/2009

I subscribe to Alternet's email headlines. Alternet usually just gets on my nerves. However, occasionally, they post a real gem like this one.

Look carefully at this picture.

This was taken at a conference where Pat Buchanan and some bozo who calls himself a White Nationalist were wringing hands and gnashing teeth and rending breasts over why they lost last November, and how they can win again.

One of the ideas was to push for English as the supreme language of the land.

(chuckle)...Yeah. Sure.

"Conferenece". On a huge banner hung from the ceiling, no less.

I have to love it. Delicious irony at its best. Thanks for making my day, Alternet.

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6/24/2009

South Carolina Repube Governor Sanford disappeared for 7 days while he was palling around in Argentina with his girlfriend. Now he's apologizing to his wife. I'd like to see a picture of her flipping him the bird. Another republican gets caught with his pants around his ankles. Nope, not suprised here.

The Supreme Leader in Iran is still shooting his mouth off, and protestors are still getting the snot knocked out of them by the al qaeda/hell's angels militia and the government police. Some say he is really pushing his luck, that the tone of this series of protests is different than the one in the 70's, and that the Khamenei could find himself figuratively castrated before this is over. That might just be the best thing for the Iranians.

500 other stories of political intrigue, mayhem, bloodshed and basic higgledy piggledy.

So let's talk about something else for a change of pace. Something cool. Something...a little bit...more.

Saturn's moon Enceladus might have water in its caverns, according to some German scientists. It seems they think they have found sodium deposits, which indicate water beneath the surface, and they think they have found alkaline ph value, which is very good for the formation of complex organic molecules. As we here on earth know, where there is water, there just might be life.

Back here on earth, prehistoric flutes made of bird's bones and dating back roughly 35,000 years have been discovered in Germany. "These finds demonstrate the presence of a well-established musical tradition at the time when modern humans colonized Europe, more than 35,000 calendar years ago," Nicholas Conard of Tuebingen University and colleagues reported in the journal Nature.

The cave paintings in Lascaux are sublimely lovely in their detailed, airy renderings of beasts and humans, so it is not suprising to find that we humans were also lovers of music, even then, in our societal and cultural infancy.

And in the Sahara, there's a Gold Rush on - for solar power, thanks to a German consortium which seeks to invest 400 billion euros on the project. Plans are tentative, but sound promising:

A 'gold-rush-like' buzz has spread across Germany in the last week over tentative plans to invest the staggering sum of 400 billion euros to harvest solar power in the Sahara for energy users across Europe and northern Africa. Even though European and Mediterranean Union leaders have been exploring and studying for several years the idea of using concentrated solar power (CSP), the Desertec proposition suddenly captivated the public's attention a week ago when German reinsurer Munich Re announced it had invited blue chip German companies such as Deutsche Bank, Siemens and several major utilities to a July 13 meeting on the project. The 20 companies aim to sign a memorandum of understanding to found the Desertec Industrial Initiative that could be supplying 15 percent of Europe's electricity in the decades ahead.

Solar panels in the Sahara. Now why didn't I think of that?

So there you have it - what I've been contemplating today in the face of meandering governors and climate change bills that let the agri-business off the hook and gay rights being denied left and right for no good reason and the market still doing its roller-coaster act and another hundred billion approved for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and by the way when are those going to end and old people moving in with their kids because their retirements were wiped out with their stocks and don't you know that's my worst nightmare and on and on and on and on.

So I'll take a moment to contemplate that if there is life on Enceladus, what might it look like? Would it glow, like our deep sea creatures which never see the light of the sun? Would it think?

And are the flutes found around the world dating back thousands of years all a collective memory of those first bird flutes found in Germany? And just how long were humans making music before those particular flutes were fashioned? And what would they sound like, and what would they sing about?

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6/21/2009

Every revolution has two elements that spur it, catalyze it and sustain the momentum.

The Civil Rights Movement had as its leader the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. Of martyrs, there were plenty. Emmett Till, whose brutal murder spurred the outcry of "enough!" that was desperately needed to put the revolution into motion. Dr. King himself ended up with his lifeblood spilling onto a hotel balcony before it was over.

The American Indian Movement had Anna Mae Pictou Aquash and Leonard Peltier as it's martyrs, along with those killed during the occupation of Wounded Knee in the 70's. As it's leaders and catalysts, it had Dennis Banks and Russell Means. Charismatic men who felt that the American Indian had taken enough bad treatment and had the means to galvanize an entire people.

What both of these groups' leaders understood was that power of film and tape and documented testimony while the revolutions were in full force. Images of police dogs and cops with firehoses attacking non-violent protestors in Birmingham. The knowledge that the Federal Marshalls surrounding Wounded Knee in 1973 would massacre them all at the site where their ancestors were massacred decades earlier, if the press wasn't there filming it all for the nightly news to be piped into living rooms all over America.

In Iran, today, we see millions of protestors swarming the streets in what seems, from most accounts, to be non-violent protest of what they consider to be stolen elections. I tend to think that the election was indeed stolen, and that the protests are rational responses.

What Iran has now is a potential leader of the revolution in Mousavi, and a martyr in Neda, a young woman shot in the head in the street for protesting the election results. Her death was filmed, and has circled the globe, and, thanks to twitter, might just be the catalyst for the continuation of a revolution which might just change Iran. If they are lucky, it will be for the better.

Revolutions can be "fought" with non-violent means, but blood is always shed. In the age of Twitter and a cell-phone with camera and video capability in every young hand, we can rest assured that no matter what the officials in power try to do to limit the amount and type of press coverage, we all will get a glimpse at what is really happening on the street. Like a hurricane, internet memes can be forces to be reckoned with. This is a lesson that the "winners" of the Iranian general elections are learning as I type. It will be difficult to massacre them all, as the Ayatollah seems to desire, while the world is watching the blood run rivers in the streets.

My heart goes out to Neda's family and friends, but the rallying cry is being twittered across the globe today: Don't let her death be in vain."

In her autobiography Lakota Woman, Mary Crow Dog recounts a Cheyenne proverb that says:

A nation is not conquered until the hearts of its women are on the ground.

Which leads me to wonder, when our own elections were stolen in 2000, we didn't take to the streets to protest, save for small smatterings here and there. Were our hearts on the ground?

The Iraq war was waged without proper justification - and when it became widely known this was the case, we still didn't take to the streets, save for small smatterings here and there. Were our hearts on the ground?

The next revolution here in the States will be our gay and lesbian and transgendered and bi brothers and sisters. They still need to find their charismatic leader, but martyrs they have plenty of already. When the time comes, and it will come soon, will our hearts be on the ground for them, too?

While Neda most likely did not expect to take a bullet for her cause, she still walked into that street to protest for her life and her people. That took bravery - even accompanied by her father, it took bravery. Her heart was not on the ground.

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6/20/2009

Asheville, NC was lovely - great town. I did find out what makes it so liberal - artists, artists and more artists. An entire district devoted to artists, and it's been like that at least since George Vanderbilt built his testament to immense wealth, Biltmore mansion. I can only fault George so much for his excesses - he also had a community center for the african americans in Asheville, and was all in all a pretty good employer, even by today's standards. The local art deco architecture, which abounds in Asheville, is alone worth the trip.

During our daytrip over to the Cherokee reservation, I was pleased to see the nation doing well for itself. Their wholly tribal-owned Harrah's casino has expansion going on with a new hotel, and a new bridge going up over the Oconoluftee river just down the street. New schools, new hospital, the works. After the way native americans have been treated in this country for past 500 years, it's nice to see them doing well for a change - or, at least the nations that own casinos are doing better. They have a very nice Museum of the Cherokee Indian on the Res, just down the street from the casino, so if you're ever in the area, I highly recommend it.

What sucks about going on vacation, though, is the coming back. Especially to this type of highly disturbing news:

Inventory Uncovers 9,200 More Pathogens Laboratory Says Security Is Tighter, but Earlier Count Missed Dangerous Vials.

Oh, that's just lovely - ebola, hemorrhagic fevers from before the Korean War - vials and vials of the stuff, lost.

Lost in the bowels of freezers that hadn't been cleaned out in decades.

Fortunately, those NINE THOUSAND vials of deadly and not-so-deadly diseases were discovered on the premises. However, as the article points out, they could have just as easily have been carried out the front door, since apparently noone was watching the store.

So much for heightened security after 9/11 and the anthrax scares of 2001-2002.

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6/13/2009

Sure, the economy is in a shambles. Sure, we should all hold onto our hard-earned cash if we're lucky enough to still have a job (especially those working in commercial/residential real estate, like yours truly). Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But I really, really, truly and madly need a vacation. I've got the wanderlust, and it must be heeded, no matter the cost.

So, the Bee, Mr. Bee and Lil' Bee are taking a break, packing the station wagon and hitting the open road tomorrow morning for a MUCH needed 5 day vacation in the liberal-loving land of Asheville, North Carolina.

How did Asheville North Carolina become such an artsy-fartsy, liberal stronghold in the heart of Appalach and the Smokies?

Well, I have no idea, but I intend to find out.

So keep up the good blogger fight, friends. I might be able to sneak in a short rant, since the hotel has wifi :)

We'll talk soon.

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6/10/2009

Some 80 year old geezer, who also happens to be a white supremecist, walked into the National Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C. today with a "long gun" and the obvious motive of shooting himself some jews.

So, to any right-wingers who might ever wander by my humble abode, why exactly were you bitching about the Justice Department's report on Right Wing Extremists? Guess what: you own this guy. Now own up to your party, because all that fear-mongering you and your talking heads have been doing lately are in direct cause to this kind of bone-headedness going on around this country right now.

Your crackpots are buying every gun they can get their hands on. Your crackpots are murdering doctors at church because they don't like them. Your crackpots want to stomp on a Judge who just happened to be appointed to the low bench by one of your own. Even your crazy elected governors talk about seceding from the union when they can't even keep their own unemployment checks printing.

So what about that Right-Wing Extremists report you were so quick to jump on as "hateful"?? That dog don't hunt.

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6/7/2009

America has its fair share of serious problems such as The Giant Healthcare Scam, racism, misogyny, child abuse, too high an infant mortality rate, too high a poverty rate, too much nasty ideology which lays us all victim to the whims of the few. We have a long history of severe humans rights abuses toward minorities - blacks, Native Americans, hispanics - you name the minority group and this country has at some point treated it like something the dog left behind.

However, we have building codes and zoning codes and regulations placed by states and localities on various parts of the service sector which are crucial to the safety of the population.

Mexico doesn't have much in way of regulation, and even less in the way of enforcing the regulations they do have, particularly of it's daycare industry.

This past week, 38 infants and toddlers were burnt to death when their daycare went up in flames.

When the converted warehouse, next door to a tire and auto warehouse, caught fire, the center cared for 142 infants and toddlers, with only one exit, and only 6 staffers. That equates to one caregiver for every 24 children. A legal ratio in Mexico. A ratio that is unconscionable on a good day, and tragic on a bad day. And only one working exit.

While daycare regulations vary based upon locality here, those numbers are pretty much unheard of.

The people of Mexico are in mourning over those 38 little ones lost in that terrible fire. Tragic, but infinitely more so given that the situation was entirely avoidable.

So when I hear various groups here deny the importance of building codes and various other governmental regulations as unnecessary encroachments upon personal freedom and free market ideology, all I think of that you just don't get these kinds of stories coming out of this country. When a hurricane comes through, we don't hear about 50,000 dying. Imagine the horror of Katrina multiplied by 500 - it could have been a lot worse. Entire cities do not disappear into dust with a strong earthquake. Bridge collapses, while they do happen, are rare occurrences.

Tragedies, whether of nature or man-made in origin, happen here just as they do everywhere else. The difference is that the US, for the most part, doesn't suffer for them as much as many other places in the world suffer.

When was the last time we heard of dozens of children dying trapped in a burning daycare here in the US?

Building codes, zoning laws and public service industry regulations. Those are just a couple of things that really make this country great.

It doesn't take much to make this jaded blogger tear up, but this event tears at the mind. You see, my little one goes to daycare every day. Each room has its own exit - there are sprinklers and alarms and a low teacher-child ratio. The chances are very good that I will never have to face the reality of my child dying in a fire while at daycare. So my heart goes out to the people of Mexico, particularly the families of those 38 little ones who did not have to die that way. That is possibly the most horrific part of this story - it did not have to happen at all.

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