Is It Civil War Yet?

So asks Christopher of Back to Iraq 3.0. Defense News, the trade publication for defence contractors, says so. When will the media admit it?

Sink or Swim

August Nimtz, a New Orleans native who is now a history professor at the University of Minnesota and a leading American Marxist scholar, has this brief but pithy interview with the City Pages' Jim Walsh.

A smaller newspaper and a little self-disclosure

Of course, I had to buy the new Guardian today. Britannia has been all abuzz about the new "Berliner" format, quite like a tabloid but more serious and attractive. (I also had to buy an Independent, but that was because it had a banner that said "Life Without Sex" by Belle du Jour, which turned out to be a bit of a bait-and-switch. When will I ever learn?) The Guardian had this story, that everyone has, no exclusives, about the NHS recently discovering that - shock, horror - depression is rampant in the UK and the handing out of anti-depressants like candy is having almost no positive effect. A few skillion pounds is about to be invested in more cognitive-behavioural therapists. I could have told them this years ago. I first suspected the problem because almost everyone I know is clinically depressed, and almost all of them have tried drugs, and I don't know a single person who has "recovered" or even been helped. Oh, they sometimes say they are helped; they say they would be much worse without the drugs. But I wondered. So, after over 20 years as a diagnosed but unmedicated depressive myself, I gave two anti-depressants a try (not at once, obviously). The first made me want to die with almost the first dose so I quit it immediately. After a six month hiatus I tried again. The second one, I could tolerate and took for a few months. I noticed no improvement and stopped it on my own without consulting the GP. The only possible lingering side effect of this ignoble experiment is possibly a few (well more than a few) extra pounds I could ill afford. Grr. Bring on the CBT on the NHS, I say.

Gore airlifts stranded patients, while elsewhere . . .

Here's a story that you may not have heard at the time. Ex-VP Al Gore paid to airlift the patients of a hospital in New Orleans to Tennessee when they were stranded in life-threatening circumstances. (Gore has apparently been a little shy about the story, no doubt due to his unfair and atrocious treatment by the press in the past.)
In an interesting if chilling parallel, I was watching the new Andrew Marr show Sunday AM this morning and in the ritual reading of the newspaper headlines, one of the national tabloids had a front page story alleging that hospital staff in New Orleans engaged in mercy killing of stranded and terminally ill patients. I could not find a link for this on the internet (I'm sure it must be out there*) but I did find a lot of other stuff, including this powerful accusation of ethnic cleansing in New Orleans. Here's a quote:

Buffalo-based columnist Michael I. Niman notes Sept. 8 how the feds effectively shut down citizen self-help rescue efforts such as [New Orleans resident Charmaine] Neville's:
The Â?too dangerous to rescueÂ? myth was also employed by FEMA as rationale for ordering rescue teams to stand down early in the crisis. Louisianans are a tough lot, and many private boat owners from areas surrounding New Orleans immediately entered the city as flooding began, creating an ad hoc rescue flotilla. Many survivors tell of strangers in small fishing boats plucking them out of second story windows or off of roofs, depositing them high and dry on highway overpasses. The Federal government put a stop to such heroism, while failing to replace the independent effort with one of their own. (Online at MediaStudy.com)
There appears to have been an overt policy of racial and class discrimination in the rescue effort. ThMilwaukeeee Journal-Sentinel Sept. 2 reports the ordeal of Kelli Nelson, an African-American Wisconsin native working as a nurse at Charity Hospital, New Orleans' largest public hospital and trauma center. She and other personnel and patients were finally airlifted out to San Antonio on the 2nd, after she stood on the roof with a big sign reading "Save the babies, please get us out of here." The city's big private hospitals like Tulane were evacuated days earlier. Trapped in the city, Kelli did manage to get out some chilling text messages to her friends and family.
"She says the situation has gotten worse," the friends relayed that Kelli had messaged them. "The evacuation was aborted... [T]hey had taken babies and mothers down to a boat to go to Tulane's helicopter pad and they were refused access to the pad... what a horror story.
"Does that mean indigent people have no rights...?

* Update: It was The Sunday Mail. I ended up buying the paper and reading it "offline". The pundits on the show pooh-poohed the possibility of accuracy of this story, but I have to say it had, for me, a ring of verisimilitude.

New Orleans left to the dead and dying

A shocking story comes to a conclusion of sorts. Only read this if you have the stomach for the unpleasant truth.

Mississippi family all safe from Katrina

Okay, cast of characters for those who don't know me. Dad and Mom (79 and 72 respectively) are still alive. There are six of us "kids" : oldest, middle and youngest sisters and oldest, middle and youngest brothers. All but youngest brother, who is also the youngest, are married with one or more children. I am oldest sister (and the oldest). (It's beginning to sound like one of those nice logic puzzles, but never fear, this is just for orientation.)
Middle sister's family and Mom and Dad all live in Gulfport, not, thankfully, near the gulf. Youngest sister's family lives in Hattiesburg, MS. Oldest and youngest brothers both live in Alabama, youngest is in a nice little house in Birmingham. The middle brother is somewhat reclusive, so he actually is not very involved in this story. So, before Katrina hit, I phoned youngest sister Denise to check that Mom and Dad were with her and not left behind in Gulfport. Middle sister Cindy was in the midwest working on a contract. Her husband and son took refuge up in Northern Mississippi with another relation. And then, not surprisingly, we had phone silence for three days while I worried and fretted. Because we heard that things were not that good even in Hattiesburg. I now have news, even having received an e-mail from Mom, bless her, that they all had to abandon the house in Hattiesburg (not sure when - Tuesday or Wednesday) due to lack of water, power and food. By the way, there were other people sheltering there, too, a total of nine, including a baby. Denise and family and Mom and Dad set out in a 2-car convoy to the youngest brother's house, where my parents have been lodged and it looks like they may be there a while. All three houses are still standing, but damaged. That's "the blue house" that Cindy's husband built for their family, "the duplex" on the same land that he built for our parents and his very aged father (who apparently "rode it out" there and is also OK) and the lovely Victorian house in Hattiesburg that Denise's husband carefully restored. So it looks like Mom and Dad, at least, may be displaced persons for a couple of months at least. For one thing, the hurricane season is only started! Now there's a disquieting thought.
Oh, and. The parents' car died irreparibly just as they got to Birmingham. Still, we are all grateful, knowing it could have been a lot worse. Pray for those still suffering far crueler fates in Louisiana and Mississippi.

Thousands feared drowned in New Orleans

And then there is this:

President Bush flew over New Orleans and parts of Mississippi's hurricane-blasted coastline in Air Force One. Turning to his aides, he said: "It's totally wiped out. ... It's devastating, it's got to be doubly devastating on the ground."

Although ex-President Clinton is too much of a gentleman to criticise Bush, this has got to be said. If Clinton were president, absolutely nothing would have prevented him from landing in New Orleans and doing his famous touching, feeling, comforting thing. I am just saying. The difference between the two men is searingly obvious.
I am in mourning for New Orleans, a city I loved, and Mississippi, a state where half of my family resides. On a personal level it is hard to get information. I know more or less where everyone is, but they are cut off by phone and power outages, so I do not know how much loss they have suffered. All we can do is wait and pray. And send money to the Red Cross or your choice of charity if you can.

Update: here is a whole bunch of news photos from LA and MS.

Katrina headed for Mississippi

Most of the web news is focusing on New Orleans and the Louisiana coast in the hurricane Katrina story, but it appears that the Mississippi Coast is taking the brunt of landfall. This is something that concerns Deborama very much, as her mother, father, sister, brother-in-law and nephew all live in Gulfport. The live CNN and Fox News reports from the beach in Gulfport are very frightening. I am waiting for it to be a little later and then I will phone the other sister in Hattiesburg to see if the parents got evacuated and are up in Hattiesburg. I also have a young friend, mainly a friend of daughter Aimee, who lives in New Orleans. Apparently 80% of New Orleans is evacuated. Of course the concern there, apart from the possible loss of life, is the devastation that will result if the levees are breached and the petroleum wastes, toxic chemicals and septic tank contents flood New Orleans, which is up to 10 feet below sea level in places.

Blogkeeping

I am posting this from my new laptop. Sorry for the huge lapse in blogging. Going back to work (11 hours per day), and trying to keep up the momentum of my new healthy lifestyle (10 hours per day, including 7 hours for sleep), and spend at least a little time with DH(3 to 4 hours per day), none of which can be done simultaneously, simply does not leave time for blogging. Something's gotta give! Any suggestions?

U.S. lowers sights on what can be achieved in Iraq

This article from the Washington Post details how the current US administration is gradually coming to realise that their initial "plans" for post-war Iraq were based on a very faulty understanding of Iraqi history and politics. With all the government officials being quoted anonymously, it appears that they are still rather skittish about openly admitting the unrealistic and even naive nature of the original ambitions for a unified, secular, pro-western government to emerge after the "liberation" from Saddam Hussein.

U.S. officials now acknowledge that they misread the strength of the sentiment among Kurds and Shi'ites to create a special status. The Shi'ites' request this month for autonomy to be guaranteed in the constitution stunned the Bush administration, even after more than two years of intense intervention in Iraq's political process, they said.

The US administration is giving up such hopes as the enshrinement of women's rights in the constitution, a totally secular government and the complete integration of Kurds and Shi'ites into a unified Iraq. Instead, they are now focusing limiting the failures by influencing the constitutional process to make it easier to amend in the future, and establishing some credibility and order in an accelerated withdrawal of coalition troops and advisers.

The best die young, part II

Mo Mowlam passed away yesterday after a period of grave illness. She survived a brain tumour several years ago. Among other glowing tributes, Prime Minister Tony Blair said of her:

It is no exaggeration to say she transformed the politics not just of Northern Ireland itself but crucially of relations between the Republic of Ireland and the United Kingdom, and it was this transformation that created the culture in which peace-making could flourish.

careycarter.com

My boy Carey has finally got his website up and running. Go see it. Buy some art. I love it, and not just 'cause he's my son, either.

The naive American - a correction

I posted (In good faith, having seen it in more than one "proper" news source) that the woman shot with Steven Vincent, American trouble-making blogger in Basra, was his fiancee as well as his translator. "Fiancee" being often the polite term for lover these days. This article in the 5 August Guardian G2 section causes me to be pretty sure that this was not the case. The article goes into far more depth about who Vincent was and where he was from, and quotes extensively, amongst others, from his wife back in New York City who was in almost daily contact with him and knew all about Nouriya and is adamant that the relationship was a platonic friendship. This is fairly important, because it has been suggested that the "reason" for the attack was a presumed sexual relationship between the two.

Well

I am halfway through the first week of my functional restoration programme. It is not Army basic training tough, but it is tough nevertheless. We were warned on Monday that our levels of pain may increase at first, that emotions would well up, and that we may have some negative feelings about the treatment. All true! Today we had a lecture about stress and learned that we may be experiencing random floods of adrenalin. Well, that may explain the two almost sleepless nights, despite being bone-tired, and the strange desire to do violence to DH, who has no idea what I am going through. Hormones mostly suck, in my opinion. And I say this despite having experienced pregnancy (thanks, I actually slightly prefer old age!) and having at least the memory of having a great sex life. The problems with hormones is that the good vibes they give you are far more than outweighed by the misery they can cause in other circumstances. YMMV.

Robin Cook dies after collapse on mountain

In the UK as in the US, it seems that the best die young. Robin Cook was only 59, with possibly the best part of his already brilliant political career ahead of him. This is a very sad turn of events.

Blogkeeping and personal stuff

I have made some minor changes to the template. I added my Truth Laid Bear status back in, now that I am back in the mammal category, although at a vermin level. Also, see the update of the Constant Gardener post to read about my woes over at the book review blog, and plea for debugging help.
Blogging may be scarce for the next two weeks, or it may be better than usual. I am off work, but attending day-long physical therapy, group therapy and punishing exercise sessions at the Priory, Sketchley Hall. Meanwhile at home, we are embarking on an intensive six-week house makeover, to put our house on the market for the second time. This time, we're serious.
In preparation for the above-mentioned PT fortnight, I decided to bite the bullet and get my hair cut really short. I have had medium to long hair for the past decade. I went to local unisex hair-cutter and said cut it really short - not a crew cut, but short enough so that nothing can touch my face. With a fringe (American = bangs) but not heavy or long. And that's what I got. It looks quite different. When I brush my teeth, I reach for my hair to keep it up out of the way and there is no hair. When I go to bed, I feel as if I need to "let my hair down" but there is nothing to let down. My scores of hair scrunchies and bobby pins can be hidden away, possibly forever. I am a new woman.

Fearless Basra blogger is abducted and murdered

This story is from the Times Online. Steven Vincent was an American journalist/blogger based in Basra. He had been posting stories about the conditions of lawlessness and corruption in the (supposedly) British-controlled area, stories that were often critical of the British military. He was also the author of a well-received book about post-invasion Iraq and was said to be working on another about the history of Basra. He was kidnapped along with his translator and fiancee, who is seriously wounded.
Update: see correction post above.

"The Constant Gardener"

I see that David le Carre's last-but-one book, "The Constant Gardener", is to be made into a film. This is a great idea - not only is this one of le Carre's most moving and passionate books, with a message that is rarely seen in literature or non-fiction, but it is told in a very cinematic way. I can hardly wait to see it.
This post will be cross-posted at Deborama's Books and if I can get my lazy donkey in gear, I may even re-read and review it.
I was also very taken with le Carre's last book, Absolute Friends, but somehow I doubt that will ever be made into a movie. Not in this decade anyway.

***Update*** 7 August
I did try to cross-post this at Deborama's Book Reviews and Store, but we are having problems over there and I ended up deleting the post. For some reason, my template no longer displays as it did. Look and see, it's all messed up. I tried debugging it with my limited HTML/CSS skills but failed. Also, Amazon associates has changed the links they give you from simple text and/or book-cover graphics to some horrible, busy, scripted box, which really does not work with my book blog's format very well. The two latest posts use what they provide, and I don't like the look of it at all. I can edit it down to something useable, as I did with this post, but yecch. If anyone wants to volunteer to help me debug my book review template, or wants to offer a shortcut to getting simple links from Amazon, I would be very grateful.

Seth's obituary

Here is a link to Seth Garwood's obituary in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, including a "guest book" feature where people can leave condolence messages.

Londoners Pay Heavy Price for Blair's Deception

This no-holds-barred polemic against the Iraq war. which does not shrink from calling Bush and Blair war criminals, is on the usually more conservative Newsmax website. I probably would not have put it this strongly, but there really isn't anything I can disagree with in it.

Last Thursday

Rev. Seth Garwood, the minister of my church in Minneapolis, died quite suddenly and unexpectedly (he was young middle-aged) last Thursday. I was notified by e-mail, for which I am grateful, grateful that we have this e-mail connection which means so much to us absentee members. It is so painful to lose someone suddenly anyway, but when you cannot even grieve, except alone in your house thousands of miles away, it makes it worse, in a way. The only ripple on the www is this obituary on the Methodist Annual Conference website; no picture yet, but I am trying to obtain one.
Whenever I get news of someone dying who was a friend back in Minnesota, it sharply increases my sadness at being separated from that wonderful community of friends I enjoyed there, which is not something I expect ever to experience again in my life. (I can hope, of course.) Anyway, even though I missed the memorial service today, my thoughts and prayers are with my beleaguered little church in Minneapolis, and the family and friends of Seth.

The slowest-motion train wreck in history

The slowest motion train wreck in history is the unfolding horror show of GM technology. (Disclaimer: I am not a Luddite, nor am I opposed to all "tampering with nature", nor am I an ill-informed granola-cruncher with knee-jerk oppostion to "evil GM". This is serious stuff here, and I am quite serious about it.) The reality of GM testing and its commercial deployment is so far from the cynically glib pronouncements of its deluded proponents that it leads one to begin to doubt literally every word they say. They mouth platitudes about careful testing and scientific consensus about safety, when they know that no such things exist or could even be faked up if required. The thing is, they probably won't be required. This is because the main community relations effort of the giant headless chicken corporations that produce the actual GM products consisted of a very effective pre-emptive smear of anyone who opposes GM technology for any reason. Now we have a scenario where they roll out GM rapeseed to a few willing UK farmers (surrounded by a small horde of vociferous protesters and a vast, worried but quiescent public) blandly assuring us that gene transfer to create "superweeds" is a billion-to-one improbability (note the scientific precision of that; they obviously did tests far too sophisticated for us to understand.) Within a mere three years there is the news of the discovery of a GM superweed that herbicides cannot kill. It rates a few anxious paragraphs and the world goes back to its nap. Meanwhile, in the jungles of South America, GM trees are the latest untested and almost unimagineable threat to the vital rainforest.

Last Friday

The fatal shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes. I have been obsessed (a bit) with this ever since the story broke last Friday. DH and I have desultory half-arguments about it; neither of us wants to take a strong position, but he tends to be more forgiving to police (in general) than I am. I am interested in hearing from American bloggers, readers and friends as to how much coverage this gets in the US and what the general opinion is about it.

Food for thought

"Obesity craze spreads to pigeons." And . . . "Tattoo craze spreads to fruit." These were the twin headlines topping my Kitchen Gardners International Newsletter in the e-mail inbox. Sign of the times, both of them.

Take the BBC Brainsex quiz

The Brain Sex Quiz will tell you how female your brain is. This is related to a series on the Beeb called Secrets of the Sexes. It's better than the usual dumbed-down science fare on TV. At this site you can also read about the accuracy (or not) of intelligence tests, which celebrities have high IQs and the latest thinking on - um - thinking.

Blogkeeping - my life

Yesterday I missed work to go and be evaluated at The Priory, Sketchley Hall, in Hinckley. I have been recommended to a great programme they have there called "Functional Restoration". It's basically an intensive get-fit thing that lasts 2 weeks and corrects muscle-and-joint problems that may have been caused by accident, injury or neglect (or all three in my case.)
Today I attended the Nottingham Bookcrossers Meetup at Costa Coffee in Nottingham. I released eight books and caught three. I shopped a little and came home on the train.
Ah, the train. There used to be a direct train from Hinckley to Nottingham but it was discontinued about a month ago. Now, the first leg of my train journey (to home) is generally from Nottingham to Leicester and the second is from Leicester to Hinckley. The second leg is only on Central Trains but the first can be Midland Mainline, which is travelling to London via Leicester. Except not today, because there is a track-side fire outside of Luton, one of the stations it goes through, which "involves gas canisters". Therefore my second train was packed with people trying to get to London. They were bound for the next stop after mine to catch a Virgin Train to London Euston, which does not go through Luton. Everybody was quite cheerful about it; they were just glad it wasn't a bomb.

WWII Memorial celebrations link past and present for Londoners

The Times and other news sources covered the weekends WWII Memorial events in the same spirit they were presented, somehow simultaneously linking London's present-day terror attacks to the Blitz and the threat of world-wide fascism in the 1940s and still giving superior honour to the veterans of the Second World War. The Queen, the Archbishop of Canterbury and even the veterans themselves all followed the same theme, amidst the flypasts, mass marches and pageantry that the British do so well (dropping millions of poppies from a Lancaster bomber for example, and the seven Books of Remembrance with the names of all the wartime civilian dead).

In Iraq, as in London

Aslam, of the blog methinks [mythic flow], has a post about his love for NYC, Madrid and London. Then he puts it in perspective, quoting William Rivers Pitt of Truthout, and I nod my head sagely and pass it on:

In Iraq, they call events like this "Tuesday".

(Actually, I would have said "Thursday", but then I didn't think of it, did I?) The Truthout.org editorial goes on to say:

Tens of thousands of people have been killed and wounded in Iraq by way of deadly bombings that have been taking place every single day. These Iraqi people are no different from the Londoners who perished today. Their skin is darker perhaps, and they pray to a different God, but they have families and children and dreams and they die just as horribly as their British counterparts. Yet they earn perhaps a few sentences on the back page of the paper, and virtually no comment from the members of the international community which ginned up the invasion of Iraq in the first place.

Coverage of London terrorist attacks

There are a number of sources of information about the terrorist attacks in London earlier today. Web sources do not tend to be as up-to-date as the TV and radio, but if you are at work or not near a TV, it may be your best bet. Sky News has a good selection of stuff on the web, including this summary of public transport and traffic conditions. My first checkpoint at work was Google News UK, and although it was a little slow getting the news at first, there is a lot there now. I see from the Guardian that the US has raised the HSA threat level to orange. (It is my perception, by the way, that the British take this sort of thing in stride a lot better than Americans; there is a remarkable air of sang-froid and getting on with it, and not letting the terrorists win by shutting everything down and going into full panic mode.) The Guardian also has a story about the possible perpetrators, and the level of planning that would have been required for this type of attack. The choice of time for the offensive is chillingly brilliant strategy, with the mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, in Singapore for the IOC meeting, and much of the nation's security force focused on Gleneagles and the G8 Summit.

It all depends on what you think "of" means

Nightlife - New York in the 70s

This is a smashing collection of photos of New York arty and queer and rock-and-roll society in the 1970s. The photos are all copyrighted by Allan Tannenbaum. I stole this link from Pete. And like he says, these are NOT work-safe pix so look at them late at night in the privacy of your study. Or with an open-minded friend.

Riverbend talks back

Baghdad Burning's point by point reply to George Bush. It's nothing you haven't heard before, but dammit, we just have to keep saying it.

Blogkeeping

Or not, as the case may be. I have been very remiss, I know. I have just come through a re-organisation of the division of the company I work for. I have "come through" in the sense that I have kept my job, by basically re-applying for it. A number of us were forced to go through a selection process involving tests and interviews. I think about 2/3 of the project team I am on did not make it, which does not bode well for the stress-free completion of the project. This reorganisation was forced upon us by economic necessity, and the management layer was hit at least as hard as the lower tiers, so there is not much point in moaning about it. Still, British people do like a good moan, and redundancies are never painless, so the stress levels have been high and are not going to go down very soon.
We recently took a little day trip to Ludlow, a place I have wanted to visit for a while, because of its foodie reputation. It was nice. We bought some foods. We had company in the house yesterday and overnight. DH made a smashing cassoulet with venison (from Ludlow) and chorizo (from the local supermarket) and flageolet beans and fresh tomatoes. My buffalo wings, made with free-range chicken from Ludlow, got lots of compliments, but were very easy to make. You can read more about Ludlow and our recent food and drink explorations on Deborama's Kitchen.
What with all this going on, I have also had to miss out on a bit of book-crossing activity. The Unconvention in Birmingham is just now drawing to a close, but I missed all of it, as well as the mini-meetup in Beeston two weeks ago. I was sorry to miss both of these events, just as I was getting into the BC spirit. I did manage my first release, a controlled-release to two non-BC friends from the train, of a really wonderful book that DH and I both liked a lot: The Last Family in England. Look for a review at Deborama's Book Reviews soon.

US acknowledges torture

The Information Clearinghouse website has a story from Agence France Presse that concerns the first official admission by US officials that torture by American personnel has occurred. The documents given to the UN committee against torture admits to torture of prisoners in Guantanamo, Iraq and Afghanistan, but says that all such acts were committed by low-ranking military personnel and were not approved by their superiors. Well, I guess it's a start. This, combined with more recent news that the American public is finally beginning to register some disapproval of the administration's pursuit of the Iraqi occupation, may in fact signal a long-overdue turnaround in the past three years of flagrant abuse of power on the part of America's ruling party.

Help save our rescue centre

Leicester Animal Aid, which runs the really excellent dog (and now also cat) rescue centre in Huncote, Leics, is facing the possibility of closing down at the end of this year due to a severe funding crisis. As the link explains, the organisation is entirely funded by donations (money and in-kind) and volunteers. The future survival of over 100 dogs and cats is at stake. Please visit the website and donate what you can to help. Our Sandi, who passed away about a year ago, and our current only-dog Desmond (pictured), both came to us from LAA at Huncote, as did Cassie, our Akita who died in 2000.

Baghdad Burning

Because I have not been keeping up with my blogging and, more importantly, my blog reading, I missedRiverbend's blistering rebuttal of Thomas Friedman's ill-informed (and as Riverbend says, incredibly arrogant) NY Times article Outrage and Silence. Don't you miss it, too; this is really vital reading.

Blogkeeping - Bookcrossing and more

I have finally got a few books registered at BookCrossing.com. You may need to join (free) to see this. Most of the books are in the "available" category, but two in "To be read" and two in "Permanent collection". Now I can go to book-crossing meet-ups with something to offer!
Other personal news - DH and I went to Meadowhall shopping centre in Sheffield today. It was quite exhausting. (It is also 75 miles away.) I bought tons of clothes, though. For work, and the possible upcoming job hunt. More later on that, as I am under a gag order at the moment.

Howard Zinn on the scourge of Nationalism

I found this link (from The Progressive) at Whole Wide World of Fat Buddha. It echoes my feelings on the subject perfectly. In my heart, I belong to a nation called "None" and our anthem is "Don't Fence Me In."

News of the Weird

This is a story I would think was a hoax, except who could make up such a thing? And I must ask, how many mayors, whether controversial or not, love their city so much that they want to import poisonous snakes within its boundaries?

Blogkeeping

I have been so bad that my page hits have drastically declined. I haven't done any actual blogging for over a week, but you may notice a change nevertheless. I have amended my template here to remove the button for meetup.com. meetup.com began charging for its "services", which is not so bad in itself, but what they are charging is absurd - 9 USD a month per group. It appears that people are leaving in droves. I was in 10 groups, some of which were struggling to become active, only one of which was really robust and every single one of them is either disbanded or abandoned. I have added in its place three new buttons for the current focus of my online community-building: tribe.net, Google groups and especially Bookcrossing.com.
Bookcrossing, Nottingham, was the one really active meetup group I was (am) in. It has migrated to a mailing group in yahoo.co.uk. But all the real action is in the bookcrossing-uk group and the Bookcrossing site itself. I just received my release kit from their US supply store this morning and I plan to get really involved with it.
I migrated my East Midlands Webloggers group, which has still not really got off the ground, to Google Groups, and Jay followed suit with the Midlands American Ex-pats group which she moderated. And I am still to be found hanging out on tribe.net sometimes. I wish it would get more participation in the UK (apart from London) because it is most useful and meaningful in its local dimension, with the possibility of f2f meetings, job seeking, swapping, and other activities. But it's still serendipitously interesting, for all its flaws.
I have also changed the template a bit over at Deborama's Books; I added a link to a great auxiliary Bookcrossing site called Wren's Crossing. I will soon (I hope) be putting up a small flood of new book reviews, including some books got through Bookcrossing.

Blogkeeping

I get political at Deborama's Kitchen.

Everyone Goes to the Mercado

Here's more of my "homesick for Minneapolis" blogging, courtesy of City Pages. This will be cross-posted at Deborama's Kitchen due to the obvious food-related content.

Sunday Times on Gorgeous George

Focus: Zero to hero in today's Sunday Times attempts to put George Galloway into context and answer the question is he a friend or a foe of Saddam Hussein? The answer they come up with is a little bit of both, and is best summed up by GG's own statement during an earlier phase of his besiegement by press and less radical lefties: “My opposition to American imperialism is greater than my opposition to this or that tinpot dictator with whom American imperialism from time to time falls out.”
While it is true that Galloway visited Saddam in 1994 and again in 1998, and that he made a sycophantic speech to him in 1994 and that he refused to condemn him in the harsh tones demanded by the establishment, but instead praised him with faint damns, it also true that he marched, demonstrated and spoke out harshly against Saddam from 1980 to 1993 (even though he also opposed the 1991 Gulf War.) In fact, in his own ultra-leftist way, Galloway has been quite consistent. The one thing the American people (including especially the Senate) will never understand is that there other standards of ethical public behaviour than their own, and there is a long and not yet defeated (despite what all the uber-patriots may wish) tradition of international anti-imperialist socialism which stands unashamedly in opposition to them. The British Labour party knows all about this tendency, but has no truck with it; but New Labour has no consistency or principles at all. If Galloway's actions in 1994 were so repellent, why did they wait until 2003 to expel him? I think we all know why: he has a following and he wins elections.

More Wal-Mart news than you can shake a big stick at

LabourStart, the excellent online news source and organising tool, has a dedicated Wal-Mart page. Get all the hottest late-breaking news about those corporate buzzards that bring you Asda supermarkets. Along with scofflaw child labour practices, political ads comparing their opponents to Nazis, and health-care benefits for their workers that are so lacking that in most states Wal-Mart workers get their only health-care from state benefits (if they exist in their state that is, otherwise, nada.)

Galloway vs. The US Senate: Transcript of Statement

Thanks to Joani (via e-mail) for this link. Joani, ya oughta get a blog, you are so very on the ball. Via Common Dreams, this is the entire transcript of George Galloway telling the US Senate exactly where they can put it and how hard to shove it up there. Respect!

Stress at work costs economy £100bn a year, says Mind

A story in the Guardian cites the charity Mind in saying that one in five people in Britain are too stressed to go to work. I can readily believe it. I think three of the remaining four are nearly as stressed, but can't face the hassle of trying to sign off work, or the added stress of losing their job and having a reduced income. The one in five remaining is simply too stupid to be stressed, and he is usually made the manager of the other four, which is why they are so stressed. So it's really stupidity that's costing the economy £100bn a year, but just try getting funding to prove that.

Permanent power to the non-elected

A Guardian comment piece, The rise of Tony Zoffis, shows just what an appallingly un-democratic thing is going on, has been going on since 1997, with New Labour's education policy. Now the naked power play is in the open, with ennobling of Andrew Adonis to be supposedly a junior minister in education, but obviously he is still calling the shots, "ensuring total obedience from his nominal boss, Ruth Kelly", as Francis Beckett says in the Guardian. Unlike in America, where the legislative and executive branches are completely separate and the President appoints the entire cabinet from non-elected citizens, in Britain all cabinet members must be members of one of the houses of Parliament. This means that non-MPs must be brought in through the Lords. The really sick thing about this, is that even if Tony B. is ousted soon from power, and Adonis's moment of cabinet glory is decently brief, he will always be Lord Adonis, and always eligible to sit in the House of Lords, exerting some power however limited over the people who never elected him and never would have done.

Nuclear energy battle looming

Margaret Beckett is accused of blocking the government from considering building new nuclear power plants as part of its strategy for achieving carbon emission reductions. On one side of the argument, some government policy wonks think solar and wind energy are "unproven" and too expensive, and say nuclear power has the "potential" to be green. But committed environmentalists will never buy that. How can a technology be called "green" if it produces deadly wastes? I myself would have to come down on the no-nukes-ever (what part of "no" don't they understand?) side of the argument.

The best news always comes from Minnesota

Another rural Minnesota high school in the news, not for a mass shooting this time, but for a good old-fashioned pro-American free speech protest. In the best tradition of Minnesota liberals and feminists, two high school girls were sent home from school for wearing "offensive" T-shirts from the "Vagina Monologues". This came after a rally was held outside the school with numerous students wearing similar T-shirts in support of one of the girls, who had been threatened with expulsion for wearing a button purchased at the show that read simply "I [heart] my vagina". At the rally, girls wore T-shirts with the same slogan and boys wore T-shirts proclaiming "I support your vagina". Most of the students turned their T-shirts inside out to hide the slogans before returning to school, but two girls who wore theirs the right way were sent home for a day. "We consider public education to be the backbone of America. And we have to draw the line. If you let this in, what's next?" said the principal of the school.

Those wacky MIT guys

From the Guardian:

One of the strongest arguments against time travel is that we are not overrun with curious tourists from the future. A university student in Boston plans to change that, by inviting budding Doctor Whos to the world's first time traveller convention this weekend.
The organiser, Amal Dorai - a masters student in electrical engineering and computer science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology - aims to test the theory of time travel by inviting people from the future to the event.

Dorai says: "Of course, no time travellers doesn't rule out the possibility of time travel, they could have just decided not to come to our convention." Hmm - yeah. But it gets better.

Physicists believe some kind of time travel is theoretically possible, but it will take hundreds or even thousands of years to work out the technical details.
Concerned that people will have forgotten his convention by then, Mr Dorai is urging volunteers to publicise the event to future generations by carving the details into clay tablets and burying notices in time capsules. He has slipped invitations on long-lasting paper inside dozens of obscure books in the MIT and Harvard University libraries.