> Nadeau: 08.07

Sunday, August 26, 2007

Vera Lynn: I'm Yours Sincerely, and, most importantly, We’ll Meet Again



posted by Tom Nadeau at 4:21 PM 0 comments

Friday, August 24, 2007

CARE blunts food as policy weapon

One of the largest international aid organizations in the world turned the food aid industry on its head recently by declaring that they will turn down 46 million dollars in food subsidies from the U.S. government.The United States budgets 2 billion dollars a year in food aid, which buys U.S. crops to feed populations facing starvation amidst crisis or those that endure chronic hunger.

But the U.S.-based CARE International has forfeited its substantial slice of the food aid pie that is the U.S. “Food for Peace” program, claiming that the way the U.S. government distributes food hurts small poor farmers in the very communities and countries the program is supposed to help.

CARE has been one of the largest suppliers of food aid around the world for the past 50 years so its shift in policy could have a dramatic effect on the food aid industry.


This is a response to this.


frank1569 August 24th, 2007 8:47 pm
“The intention behind this film [“The 11th Hour”] was to be a massive conversation starter that would lead to action on a broad societal level.”

Not to be a bubble burster, but if a “massive conversation” about the catastrophically mutating climate hasn’t started at this point for God’s sake after thirty years of yelling and screaming, not to mention the hard evidence in front of everyone’s faces every day, then maybe it’s time to forget trying to convince those who refuse to accept their house is on fire in spite of the flames melting their skin and start focusing on surviving the projected worst case scenario. Especially since, so far, every projected worst case scenario has been way off. The bad way off.
I have to agree with Frank.

Altogether, the responses to the article are more telling than the article itself, a phenomenon that seems to be growing on the Internet leftie sites. The crowd is angrier and sharper than its self-annointed spokespersons. Not a good sign for the spokespersons, certainly.

But it is an even worse sign for the ones being complained about.

posted by Tom Nadeau at 6:23 PM 0 comments

Thursday, August 23, 2007

Hightower has lowdown on subprime

One of the most dramatic stories from the New Testament is of the time that Jesus encountered money changers in the temple. Enraged by their usury and sacrilege, he went on a tear -- overturning their tables, physically driving them out and chastising them for converting the temple into a "den of robbers." The Bible doesn't say where these bloodsucking lenders went, but now we know: They have re-emerged in recent years to set up their tables right here in America, working a dark alley of homeowner financing called the "subprime mortgage market." The what? Don't be deterred by the finance industry's jargon (which is intended to numb your brain and keep regular folks from even trying to figure out what's going on). At its core, this is a classically simple story of banker greed and outright sleaze. And the astonishing part is that nearly all of the rank injustice perpetrated by today's money changers is considered legal and is practiced by supposedly reputable financial firms.
“Reputable financial firms” has to be a self-cancelling term. Triply, since the firms you hear about that have made the news because of “subprimes” is not “firm” al all, but “shakey” at least and most likely “collapsed” altogether.

posted by Tom Nadeau at 7:41 PM 0 comments

Sunday, August 19, 2007

Arctic sea ice at record low

... and still melting
WASHINGTON (AP) 8/17/07 - There was less sea ice in the Arctic on Friday than ever before on record, and the melting is continuing, the Colorado-based National Snow and Ice Data Center reported.

"Today is a historic day," said Mark Serreze, a senior research scientist at the center. "This is the least sea ice we've ever seen in the satellite record and we have another month left to go in the melt season this year."

Satellite measurements showed 2.02 million square miles of ice in the Arctic, falling below the Sept. 21, 2005, record minimum of 2.05 million square miles, the agency said.

Sea ice is particularly low in the East Siberian side of the Arctic and the Beaufort Sea north of Alaska, the center reported.

Ice in the Canadian Archipelago is also quite low. Along the Atlantic side of the Arctic Ocean, sea ice extent is not as unusually low, but there is still less than normal, according to the center located in Boulder, Colo.
[…]
The puzzling thing, he said, is that the melting is actually occurring faster than computer climate models have predicted.

Several years ago he would have predicted a complete melt of Arctic sea ice in summer would occur by the year 2070 to 2100, Serreze said. But at the rates now occurring, a complete melt could happen by 2030, he said Friday.

Population pressure, continued

The cause of these delays is a world in which nearly 11,000 people are added every hour, creating a new population the size of Newark NJ each day. If we continue to grow at the same rate as in the past decade, America will double in population by about 2058. As Gaylord Nelson pointed out that means we will have or need twice as much as everything we had at the turn of the century. Twice as many cars, trucks, planes, airports, parking lots, streets, bridges, tunnels, freeways, houses, apartment buildings, grade schools, high schools, colleges, trade schools, hospitals, nursing homes, and prisons.

Twice as much water and food if you can find it. Twice as many chemicals and other pollutants in the air and water, twice as much heat radiation from all the new construction, twice as much crime, twice as many fires, twice as big traffic jams, and twice as many walls with graffiti on them. In Japan, there is already not enough room for pets in some cities, so people rent dogs just for the pleasure of walking them around the block.

Whenever I hear of another school shooting or other youthful violence, the first thing I think about is Dr. Calhoun and his mice. Dr. John Calhoun put four pairs of white mice in a steel cage eight and a half feet on a side. Within two years the mice had increased to 2,200. The adult mice began excluding young mice from their company and the young began biting, attacking, and slashing one another. Finally social and sexual intercourse became impossible without violence. The mice stopped reproducing and eventually all died out.

Sam Smith
Losing time, losing space


posted by Tom Nadeau at 7:34 AM 0 comments

Saturday, August 18, 2007

‘The Shepherdess’…

... on the erhu



Now, the erhu – which is Chinese Mandarin for “two string” – ‘er’ = two; ‘hu’ = string – makes beautiful music in its own cultural setting. But does not translate well into western music.

Here is is, same artist, same instrument, only now it is being used to play Paul Anka’s "My Way"
This may be an unfair comparison of course, because "My Way" is a truly awful song to begin with, one that makes a stupid and pretentious boast to a tuneless non-melody.

Some say Frank Sinatra singing "Mairzy Dotes" in his bottom rung moment in the late ‘40s, early ‘50s was the worst song of all time to make the popular chart.

Since Sinatra has refused to have the song ever played again in his presence or any place else he could control, there is no sample of what it sounded like when he chanted it. (I heard a copy long ago.)

But Pamela Holt gives us an example of how bad it sounded. She is even costumed for the period.
In any event, and in my opinion "My Way" – even as Sinatra sang it – tops it for terrible.

I mean, "exemption?" Come on. That word belongs in small print at the bottom of the back page of a federal government form, not in a song.

Oh, by the way, both songs were immensely popular in their times and both made the charts, which tells you all you need to know about the poor taste of the American public.

posted by Tom Nadeau at 7:37 AM 0 comments

Friday, August 17, 2007

Mortgage/market meltdown

We've said it before. We say it again. Money out of US. Put it in some safer location.
As stock markets from Paris to Tokyo declined for a second day in response to an international credit crunch that started in the U.S. mortgage industry, European leaders scrutinized the cause of the fall. They paid special interest to an oversight system that failed to provide adequate warning to financial institutions and investors on the weaknesses in the subprime mortgage lending business

"We have had a long period of greed," said Marc Ostwald, a strategist at Insinger de Beaufort in London. "Now there's a realization that people should have been a lot more careful, and the chickens are coming home to roost."

Trouble Tracks Far and Wide
Washington Post
8/17/07

John Denver

"Hey, it’s good to be Back Home Again."

Who’d a thunk it?

Eleven years of the average American's life span is spent watching TV.
Deploying 250 million televisions which absorb 11 years of the average America's lifespan, the hologram regulates the nation's neurological seasons. Football season is delivered with its competitive passions, political election seasons, Christmas shopping season, but especially marketing seasons. It regulates the national mood, stirring our patriotic passions during wars and anxious vigilance against the threat of unseen terrorists who look absolutely normal.

Together, we live within a media-generated belief system that functions as the operating instructions for society. It shows us how successful people supposedly behave, invest, and relate to each other. Through crime shows, it demonstrates what happens to us if we don't behave. It shows us who we should hate (Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro, for starters). Anything outside of its parameters represents fear and psychological freefall.

Joe Bageant
The Great American Mind Warp
8/17/07

Steve Frobert

"Any Old Time you want to come back home. Just drop me a line...."

Carol Leigh, Climax Jazz Band …

“Oh, Careless Love.”

Rove lacks ruth, i.e., he's ‘ruthless’

Here’s a look into Rove that should have been done in 2000.
I don’t know what happens in a childhood to produce a figure like Karl Rove, but it can’t have been good. Like a serial killer with ice-water running through his veins, for whom the idea of compassion or remorse is a foreign concept, Rove is the quintessential amoral man - the very definition of a sociopath. Don’t take the way he treats you personally - it’s not that he doesn’t like you. He just utterly couldn’t give a shit one way or the other, dude. But woe unto you if you possess something that he wants, like money, a vote, cannon fodder capability, or shock troop potential. He will simply say or do whatever is necessary to liberate you from your dollars, your common sense or your life in order to achieve his goals. There are myriad examples, but one which is highly illustrative is Rove’s response to Hurricane Katrina. While you and I looked at our television screens and saw there a disaster in which compassion and immediate action were the watchwords of the day, Rove - the guy Bush put in charge of the crisis - was at that exact same moment spinning the gears in his head, literally thinking instead about the partisan political implications of relocating a quarter-million black (and therefore likely Democratic) voters out of the state, thus perhaps putting Louisiana back in the Republican column in future elections.

It’s no wonder that a guy with such empathy defects could spot George W. Bush coming from miles away, like freight train rolling down the mountain. Bush was the perfect partner for the exploits of someone like Rove, who once trained under both Donald Segretti and Lee Atwater. Jim Hightower (himself one of the many unfortunate members of the Rovian Wreckage Club) once mused that Bush père - infinitely more sane and humane than his son, though still borderline on both fronts - was born on third base, thinking he hit a triple. If that’s so, the mind strains to find the appropriate metaphor for the Boy King. Perhaps we could say that he was handed ownership of the entire ball club based on his family name, only to think he had earned it on his own, pulling himself up by his bootstraps. Trouble is, that’s no metaphor at all - it was quite literally true. Sigh

David Michael Green
Karl Rove and the Damage Done
CommonDreams
8/17/07

Shostakovich 7th Symphony

"So, he counted: how many violins are left? Half have died. There is one oboe, the other died. There is one bassoon.”

posted by Tom Nadeau at 2:20 PM 0 comments