Condolences to all atheists out there who will be more than a little disappointed that Jezza Falwell is NOT burning in Beelzebub's bud toaster. . .
Mr Fish can be found [HERE]17.5.07
12.5.07
Gaia: The balance between Imagination and Knowledge
We are the product of 3 billion years of mollycoddling by a Heisenberg phenomena. Gaia is pure Chaos math. For me Gaia isn't a belief system, Its a theory, part of the Darwinist world and entirely as strange as the world the Pope lives in.
The system can't be beat. It's been 3 billion years growing and It has survived by maintaining water, somewhere on the planet, in a liquid state, for all of that time. (Liquid H2O is a prerequisite for carbon-based life). Its probability index is infinitesimally small. It shouldn't exist, but gods do play dice and we do exist. If you're not too busy chasing about for "happiness", stop and look up at the night sky - You know what those little sparks are, and why the clouds are covering them, you are a unique life form in having that ability. Possibly unique through all of Known Space.
The number of Earth-sized planets orbiting at circa 1 AU around boring old G2s would have to be myriad.
How many of these have Moon-sized moons? Still an unknowable plenty. So, cutting to the chase, look at the likelihood of any system maintaining liquid H2O through endless geologic epochs - vanishing few. Asimov, in his non-fiction essay "The Tragedy of the Moon" makes the point that our unusually large satellite, unlike Venus, has stripped away most of our atmosphere. It's this phenomena that allows water (solid, liquid and vapor) to moderate the resultant climate. This balance is the main component of what I think of as the Gaian mechanism. It's as much about the physics of the Earth-Moon tidal dynamics as it is about the water in which organic components chaotically thrive.
From the beginning, as soon as the environment was right, common organic molecules chaosed themselves into dividing. They developed into the protective shroud of green slime around the tidal fringes, releasing oxygen to rust the iron in the ocean water. Pilburra Iron. By exhaling O2, simple biota terraformed the planet and drastically altered the chemistry of the oceans. Now, any attempt by organic structures to interfere with the process will result in an imbalance likely to cause top-down (FILO) biocide. So, as the biota alter the conditions, all organics, both malign and beneficent, begin retreating until a Gaian balance is reestablished. The organics in the system effect the way water controls the global climate, this will feed back into the choices organisms are offered for sustainability in a Gaian (closed) system. Gaia is a fractal equation, part of chaos. Observable but not predictable, your place on the set is continually reiterated. This is a warning for god lovers - we are not Gaia's chosen species.
This was Darwin's cryptic message.
we are no longer part of the machine - like an earlobe overlocked with stainless steel trinkets, we're beginning to function outside of the regulated zone. The biota must be compatible with, or isolated from, the mainstream, lest the mainstream reconfigures and some functional gene pools are lost. Darwin, more or less, but Gaia's rules maintain the dynamic, you are only tolerated if you don't upset the harmony. All the cunning biocides are wrapped in fragile tissue, it doesn't take long before you stomp your way through the right combination, then Zippo! Your carbon is liberated. The dynamic moves on. No Heaven here.
If you look up now and then, Gaia's mechanics are easy to demonstrate. Its bones are shown every night on the television, every time Global Warming is yapped about, or when some bunghole drags out a "Computer Model". These models try to emulate the global climate under various conditions (usually greenhouse and CO2). We use powerful server farms and way complex 5GL compilers to emulate Gaia - a synergy that's been hardwired by supernovas. To emulate anything, you first have to study it. This codifying of the bones is beginning to expose the beast and, as fractal sets go, it's complexity belies it's fundamental simplicity. Nevertheless, it inexorably exposes and eliminates all unstable elements - It cleans up where Darwinian Evolution is confounded. If you have the intelligence to understand this, you are already extra-Darwin and Gaia is probably on your case . . .
Our science is thorough, accurate and wholly (1GL) serial-top-down topography. With a hippy's intuitive generalist overview, however, it's tempting to think that Gaia is not a freak of nature, rather, it is the freak called nature. Gaia is an improbable congruence of physical imperatives, and life as we know it has survived under Its mantle long enough to invent qwerty keyboards and write this observation down.
Jimmie Lovelock's announcement that Gaia is doomed was a tad premature. Gaia's physical structure is quite capable of recreating Its biological automata from scratch.
We should act Now, before It cranks it's awesome array of trial-and-error antibiotics and pops out an effective anti-human vaccine.
We must act Now, because we're hard to kill and we're prepared to sacrifice the entire ecosystem attempting to live forever.
Now, because the carbon in the biosphere (and us) is merely recycled supernova dust and it may not pile up like this again. Ever.
The system can't be beat. It's been 3 billion years growing and It has survived by maintaining water, somewhere on the planet, in a liquid state, for all of that time. (Liquid H2O is a prerequisite for carbon-based life). Its probability index is infinitesimally small. It shouldn't exist, but gods do play dice and we do exist. If you're not too busy chasing about for "happiness", stop and look up at the night sky - You know what those little sparks are, and why the clouds are covering them, you are a unique life form in having that ability. Possibly unique through all of Known Space.
The number of Earth-sized planets orbiting at circa 1 AU around boring old G2s would have to be myriad.
How many of these have Moon-sized moons? Still an unknowable plenty. So, cutting to the chase, look at the likelihood of any system maintaining liquid H2O through endless geologic epochs - vanishing few. Asimov, in his non-fiction essay "The Tragedy of the Moon" makes the point that our unusually large satellite, unlike Venus, has stripped away most of our atmosphere. It's this phenomena that allows water (solid, liquid and vapor) to moderate the resultant climate. This balance is the main component of what I think of as the Gaian mechanism. It's as much about the physics of the Earth-Moon tidal dynamics as it is about the water in which organic components chaotically thrive.
From the beginning, as soon as the environment was right, common organic molecules chaosed themselves into dividing. They developed into the protective shroud of green slime around the tidal fringes, releasing oxygen to rust the iron in the ocean water. Pilburra Iron. By exhaling O2, simple biota terraformed the planet and drastically altered the chemistry of the oceans. Now, any attempt by organic structures to interfere with the process will result in an imbalance likely to cause top-down (FILO) biocide. So, as the biota alter the conditions, all organics, both malign and beneficent, begin retreating until a Gaian balance is reestablished. The organics in the system effect the way water controls the global climate, this will feed back into the choices organisms are offered for sustainability in a Gaian (closed) system. Gaia is a fractal equation, part of chaos. Observable but not predictable, your place on the set is continually reiterated. This is a warning for god lovers - we are not Gaia's chosen species.
This was Darwin's cryptic message.
we are no longer part of the machine - like an earlobe overlocked with stainless steel trinkets, we're beginning to function outside of the regulated zone. The biota must be compatible with, or isolated from, the mainstream, lest the mainstream reconfigures and some functional gene pools are lost. Darwin, more or less, but Gaia's rules maintain the dynamic, you are only tolerated if you don't upset the harmony. All the cunning biocides are wrapped in fragile tissue, it doesn't take long before you stomp your way through the right combination, then Zippo! Your carbon is liberated. The dynamic moves on. No Heaven here.
If you look up now and then, Gaia's mechanics are easy to demonstrate. Its bones are shown every night on the television, every time Global Warming is yapped about, or when some bunghole drags out a "Computer Model". These models try to emulate the global climate under various conditions (usually greenhouse and CO2). We use powerful server farms and way complex 5GL compilers to emulate Gaia - a synergy that's been hardwired by supernovas. To emulate anything, you first have to study it. This codifying of the bones is beginning to expose the beast and, as fractal sets go, it's complexity belies it's fundamental simplicity. Nevertheless, it inexorably exposes and eliminates all unstable elements - It cleans up where Darwinian Evolution is confounded. If you have the intelligence to understand this, you are already extra-Darwin and Gaia is probably on your case . . .
Our science is thorough, accurate and wholly (1GL) serial-top-down topography. With a hippy's intuitive generalist overview, however, it's tempting to think that Gaia is not a freak of nature, rather, it is the freak called nature. Gaia is an improbable congruence of physical imperatives, and life as we know it has survived under Its mantle long enough to invent qwerty keyboards and write this observation down.
Jimmie Lovelock's announcement that Gaia is doomed was a tad premature. Gaia's physical structure is quite capable of recreating Its biological automata from scratch.
We should act Now, before It cranks it's awesome array of trial-and-error antibiotics and pops out an effective anti-human vaccine.
We must act Now, because we're hard to kill and we're prepared to sacrifice the entire ecosystem attempting to live forever.
Now, because the carbon in the biosphere (and us) is merely recycled supernova dust and it may not pile up like this again. Ever.
10.5.07
Quote of the day:
"Of all the enemies to public liberty, war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes. And armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few. "In war, too, the discretionary power of the Executive is extended. Its influence in dealing out offices, honors, and emoluments is multiplied; and all the means of seducing the minds, are added to those of subduing the force of the people. "The same malignant aspect in republicanism may be traced in the inequality of fortunes, and the opportunities of fraud, growing out of a state of war, and in the degeneracy of manners and morals, engendered by both. No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare. "James Madison, April 20, 1795
So, who sez our pollies haven't learned from history?
2.4.07
The Internet will replace Rock and Roll in the next Social Revolution
Since the fifties and sixties, music and lyrics have interfaced the powerful youth movements of the "underground" and "alternate" cultures with the mainstream world view. I'm reminded of that when the Oils or Arlo Guthrie are playing. Until the Interwires came of age, there was no better way to communicate across cultures.
I truly believe that Bush, Blair and puppy John where all brought unstuck because the mainstream media failed to keep the Facts off the front pages. Without the WWW, David Hicks would eventually die, an old man in Leavenworth. We would not know his name, nor the names of a million Iraqis murdered for their oil.
Guard Internet Freedom with your lives, be a seditionist now and then. Yu gotta work for Peace, love and freedom.
I truly believe that Bush, Blair and puppy John where all brought unstuck because the mainstream media failed to keep the Facts off the front pages. Without the WWW, David Hicks would eventually die, an old man in Leavenworth. We would not know his name, nor the names of a million Iraqis murdered for their oil.
Guard Internet Freedom with your lives, be a seditionist now and then. Yu gotta work for Peace, love and freedom.
2.3.07
relearning polity - uncured
This week I'm a non-aligned Gaian anti-theist kinda hippy. So, naturally, I spot Fundamentalism like cat shit in a sugar bowl when it’s applied to otherwise rigorous disciplines like capitalism, religion and democracy (or any other construction used to negotiate peacefully with your neighbours). This is especially important when it come to Saint Friedman and his chorus of retards in the Church of Capital, but it applies universally . . .
Utopian hippies are, at worst, a benevolent mob, not essential to society but, let me tell yu, a very comfortable place to be buried in. Anyone looking to some god for a Utopian afterlife may be tempted to martyr themselves and millions of others; Presnit Shrub, Christian and Capitalist, has murdered more civilians than all the jihad suicides combined. (theHippy's thing is to go with the worms, peacefully.)
More dangerous still, the Fundamental notion that the free market can solve most of our problems.
To believe that lot is to believe the "Intelligent Designer" was an economist. Jesus fucking Christ, who the fuck is rewriting the fucking bible this time? "'In God We Trust' On every penny you lend", say'th the Lord. And the Lord wiped his flaming arse on Shrub the Elder and Ol' Mose chalked up another ripping commandment.
The capitalist's application of economic terrorism has been sharpened in the US and is touted as the tactic that finished Russian communism. Meanwhile, Castro countered with "doctors for oil" (and kick started the Socialist debate in South America, again. More fundy hijinks to follow). The Albright/Clinton 1¢ jihad killed more kids in Iraq than all the Bushes - from Nazi Banker Bush on down to Gee Wiz Jr.
Now, our fundamentalist approach to capital is being redefined in the Chinese mainstream. The recent tsunami in the stock market was a Chinese torpedo, an evaluation run, a sabre rattling the Yankee buck. "Sell $US/buy euro", it was heard to mutter as it ploughed into the heart of democracy's arse . . .
Now, if you'll excuse for a moment, I've left a fine old Royal Navy rum alone in my basement with Mr. Grumpy.
Utopian hippies are, at worst, a benevolent mob, not essential to society but, let me tell yu, a very comfortable place to be buried in. Anyone looking to some god for a Utopian afterlife may be tempted to martyr themselves and millions of others; Presnit Shrub, Christian and Capitalist, has murdered more civilians than all the jihad suicides combined. (theHippy's thing is to go with the worms, peacefully.)
To believe that lot is to believe the "Intelligent Designer" was an economist. Jesus fucking Christ, who the fuck is rewriting the fucking bible this time? "'In God We Trust' On every penny you lend", say'th the Lord. And the Lord wiped his flaming arse on Shrub the Elder and Ol' Mose chalked up another ripping commandment.
The capitalist's application of economic terrorism has been sharpened in the US and is touted as the tactic that finished Russian communism. Meanwhile, Castro countered with "doctors for oil" (and kick started the Socialist debate in South America, again. More fundy hijinks to follow). The Albright/Clinton 1¢ jihad killed more kids in Iraq than all the Bushes - from Nazi Banker Bush on down to Gee Wiz Jr.
Now, our fundamentalist approach to capital is being redefined in the Chinese mainstream. The recent tsunami in the stock market was a Chinese torpedo, an evaluation run, a sabre rattling the Yankee buck. "Sell $US/buy euro", it was heard to mutter as it ploughed into the heart of democracy's arse . . .
Now, if you'll excuse for a moment, I've left a fine old Royal Navy rum alone in my basement with Mr. Grumpy.
18.6.06
Just how "Left" are you? - A test for the Poseur
Cuban President Fidel Castro (R) and Mari Alkatiri visited students from East Timor who are studying in Cuba as part of a Cuban government program for Latin American doctors. (Reuters/Omara Garcia Mederos)He is, after all a democratically-elected Lefty. He is clearly in need of the Left's support. The local Yank puppies are rewriting history throughout the South Pacific, PNG, West Irian and Timore Leste to disguise the fact that the commies have not gone away. Socialists like Fidel are winning by lobbing medical expertise into crowds of Third World civilians - uninjuring thousands! Timor has oil, Havanah has Doctors, or haven't you noticed? So - which side are you on?
Socialism, if left to it's own devices, will overpower any religion, Islam to Catholicism. Violent socialism is the only force capable of stopping fundamental Islam in its tracks. It exposes the extreme right to powerful scrutiny in poor communities (Catholics throughout South America are sodding socialists, they are reminded of Jesus' teachings to the poor and they see a living God; long dead to the West.)
Emerging from years of capitalist exploitation®, South American countries are uniting and organising, they are not competing with each other, it's a powerfull synergy that appears to present an alternative to gangsterism, greed and intolerance.
Here's Tim Anderson's take from New Matilda
and Peter Boyle of Green Left Weekly
Will you be complicit in allowing US/Australian interests to overthrow Timor Leste democracy and hand power to the Portuguese elite? (Xanana Gusmao, Josã Ramos-Horta and that poor little rebel called Alfredo Alves Reinado - An Australian-trained elite officer who's wife works for the American ambassador - Hrrumph, some "rebel" commander! Sitiveni Rabuka would swallow his arse, whole.)
Labor won't dare bring this up as it's impossible to howl in Dogwhistledonia. It will eventually bring into question Labor's Lefty credentials, none too soon IMHippyO.
No mistakes here, Lefty-Lites, you're either with 'em, or you're with Howard/Downer. GOWAAN, git back in yer box before Bolt hears you bleating!
Viva Fidel xxxx. Viva Free Democracy in Timor Leste!
28/06/2006 11:12:50 PM - Update:
Straight out of the Che mission manual, Alkatiri has now been deposed by evil Lying Capitalist Running Dogs® - his followers in the East of Timor Leste now have their martyr, their valiant leader is now justified in revving up the 1975 civil war that followed Portugal's cut-n-run. Alkatiri, the clear winner of a "free and fair" election was removed by external armed forces (Australian) despite all the usual democratic remedies available to Timor Leste's democracy. There is no doubt that decisions were made with the Deputy's .45 in their back. Welcome to Open-source Warfare, there are workshops everywhere - "Enemy of my Enemies - 101".
I am NOT an Alkatiri supporter, I don't know enough about the man - I meekly point out how far to the right Australia has always been. The Real Left, for most of us, disappeared with the post-war affluence boom, the Really Left became the enemy of Australia's Left and the residual class distrust for capitalists became the foundation for today's unions and their political wingnuts.
These days the Real Left follow Che, not Marx, and the tactics are not post-modern. The point is, we are the enemy of the only sustainable force capable of keeping the theMob at bay. Capitalism cannot survive long without the socialist fat controller and praying to The Gods won't put food in the pot, so my guess is violent socialist revolution is sneaking right up under our well-elevated gnoses. We are so not Left. Alkatiri is.
18.5.06
I musta been a sheep when they passed this . . .
from BoingBoing
Australia puts out for Hollywood with new copyright lawAre there any wingnuts out there can't see that this bit of Yankey Doodle Gob-jobby is gonna get Costello into heaps of pain when his yooth demographic runs outa music! As Beazley's world still runs on vinyl, mayhaps someone will tell him that this will deliver votes from a mob that normally don't interrupt their grazing for anything . . .
Australia is finally reforming its backwards copyright law, which made it illegal to record shows off the TV and radio, and to rip CDs for personal playback. However, in the process, they proposed a new law that is even more backwards -- one that prohibits watching your recorded shows more than once, one that doesn't allow you to make backups of your CDs, and that doesn't let you loan them to friends.
Australia's digital TV standards come from the DVB, a standards-setting body that is in the midst of creating one of the worst, most restrictive crippleware DRMs ever conceived of. With this new law in place, the "super-broadcast-flag" envisioned by DVB will be a slam dunk in Australia.
It's funny: the Hollywood cartel couldn't get the US to adopt the Broadcast Flag, so they went and sold this bill of dubious goods to Australians. You'd think Australia would be smarter than that: it's pretty sad to be the easy-lay nation that Hollywood turns to when it can't convince America to put out.
Beazely! - Sheep Have Ipods!
12.5.06
They shoot Boomers, don't they?
One of my Grandfathers rode out of Colac to collected three Gallipoli Stars. His father drove the Cobb & Co Mail coach right up till a new fangled motor-lorry forgot to drive itself home when the 90-year-old bushie fell asleep at the "reigns". The other Gramps was the son of an immigrant Welsh Chemist who settled in Narrabri. An educated 16-year old in 1914, Pop took one look at situation in Europe and promptly became a cabinet maker at the Enfield Rail Yards in Sydney - an activist, atheist and socialist preacher, a Cabinet Maker to the Cockies.
These two didn't know each other, and never had that great debate that formed and polarized both branches of my family. I listened to both sides, agreeing with each in turn, but never together. The twin mirrors merged into an extended dialogue that a hapless and naive adolescent stitched into a world view that is, at once, immensely tolerant of others and totally at odds with the shallowness of human perception.
Now I bin grey'd and confused for so long - it ain't news . . . somewhere, out in the dreaming, there's a mob of post- boomer generations who mumble, unhelpfully, about grey nomads, Jews, wogs, etc. (If you thank us for the toys, kiddies, you can blame us for all the crap.) It was our parents who had the bejesus scared out of them by WW II, it was me (a boomer) who took advantage of the folks who swore "never again", again. In that great public push after the war - in a profound desire to ensure the world didn't repeat the mistakes - the UN flag was raised as an alternative to the misery.
(The UN is dead now. It gave up its soul when it couldn't stop the Coalition of the Willing from eating Iraqi kids, live to air, for material gain. The UN died defending its powerful patrons, the UN allowed itself to take sides and this just isn't survivable for a global umpire.)
The generation I exploited in the 60s was the same generation that fought over and destroyed a fair part of the civilized world in WW II. After getting the blame for 60 million deaths there was no way they were gonna profit from it unmolested. (I was only nineteen.) They had clearly, demonstrably failed their civilian populations and they got booted up the arse by their own kids - us hippy boomers. Then, reality sets in . . . they'd let us win.
Mum and Dad somehow didn't trust what their folks had taught them, after two world wars, the "blind obedience to authority" trampoline was pushed aside because it was dangerous to kids. The boomers are those protected kids, the 60s student hippies were outraged by authority when conscription meant the jungle nightmare. The revolution was as inevitable then as it is now. The boomers are a lousy demographic to pick on if you rely only on big brother sound bites.
The boomers, in my mirrors, became evenly divided - those who cherished their children directly, no matter what came along, and those who never really met their kids - they were busy making the bucks and giving their kids every advantage possible, way into the future. Both were compelling arguments until theMarket chose sides. Suddenly half the population had money and theMarket covering its bum, those who chose their kids over consumerism were, and are, vilified as "hippies, layabouts, welfare cheats, etc". Hippies are anti consumerist and hostile to economic fundamentalists. As a consequence, half the population thinks it's their sacred duty to imagine hippies and all the socialist/social democrat pinkos as the enemy.
In theMarket's ken, you are simply
a.) Profiting from it
b.) Working for it
c.) Contributing to it
or
c.) Hell spawn, witch, hippy, commie, etc.
The entire industrial revolution is based on this work ethic.
Most Boomers remember that for every drug-encrusted radical out there there was a straight dealer working the crowd. We grew out of the drugs and got on with it, but the profiteers followed along like hags until they finally regained the power and completed the revolution, The wheel is coming around again - theMarket is at "top-dead-centre". Shit! Do you need a degree in Tantric Activism to know it's time to start banging on the bars. Some things need to be repeated, ad nauseum, in this case it's both the message and the music - "Freedom is a constant, eternal struggle". Were genXers watching T.V.? Why did they stay so quiet for so long? Feel free to abuse me, please, it would be a sign of life, at least - I'm nowhere near as scary as the bloke paying your wages.
So where did things go wrong? "All the way with LBJ" had been soundly routed, so the second wave of teenagers chilled out and switched on a MacTelevision. By the end of the seventies the 12-14 year old GenXers were firmly understood by theMarket and bracketed with the "greed is good", "buy now, pay later" and "Ronny McD is your best friend" advertising and, fuck me, it's "life's too hard" and home to mum and dad to bitch about the boomers - this is not my story, it's yours. As I keep telling my four 20-somethinks.
The only truth I heard from Keating was when he called Australia the "arsehole of the world" and the "banana republic" jibe. He didn't mention that there is no difference between a banana republic, an oil republic or a democratic republic - If you're a one-trick pony and that trick isn't sustainable then the market can and will dictate your social outcomes. Australia has many crocodiles and just a few trick holes in its geography - these holes are protected as places of worship, a source of eternal wealth for the theMarket believers, in 20 years they will be old bones, a smile on the dial of the crocodile.
If boomers are to be dealt with as a group, then they are no different than any other group of humans, across time from America to Rome. Greed is life's minimum requirement, whether animal or insect, the ability to curb greed is the mark of true civilization (at least in my treehouse), hence my disdain for capitalism - it legitimizes and rewards larceny.
Australia is just another street walker, pimped hard by the market till she's so old and ugly her own kids will be ashamed of her. If you're serious about the future, take yer dick out of your wallet and give the old girl a break.
These two didn't know each other, and never had that great debate that formed and polarized both branches of my family. I listened to both sides, agreeing with each in turn, but never together. The twin mirrors merged into an extended dialogue that a hapless and naive adolescent stitched into a world view that is, at once, immensely tolerant of others and totally at odds with the shallowness of human perception.
Now I bin grey'd and confused for so long - it ain't news . . . somewhere, out in the dreaming, there's a mob of post- boomer generations who mumble, unhelpfully, about grey nomads, Jews, wogs, etc. (If you thank us for the toys, kiddies, you can blame us for all the crap.) It was our parents who had the bejesus scared out of them by WW II, it was me (a boomer) who took advantage of the folks who swore "never again", again. In that great public push after the war - in a profound desire to ensure the world didn't repeat the mistakes - the UN flag was raised as an alternative to the misery.
(The UN is dead now. It gave up its soul when it couldn't stop the Coalition of the Willing from eating Iraqi kids, live to air, for material gain. The UN died defending its powerful patrons, the UN allowed itself to take sides and this just isn't survivable for a global umpire.)
The generation I exploited in the 60s was the same generation that fought over and destroyed a fair part of the civilized world in WW II. After getting the blame for 60 million deaths there was no way they were gonna profit from it unmolested. (I was only nineteen.) They had clearly, demonstrably failed their civilian populations and they got booted up the arse by their own kids - us hippy boomers. Then, reality sets in . . . they'd let us win.
Mum and Dad somehow didn't trust what their folks had taught them, after two world wars, the "blind obedience to authority" trampoline was pushed aside because it was dangerous to kids. The boomers are those protected kids, the 60s student hippies were outraged by authority when conscription meant the jungle nightmare. The revolution was as inevitable then as it is now. The boomers are a lousy demographic to pick on if you rely only on big brother sound bites.
The boomers, in my mirrors, became evenly divided - those who cherished their children directly, no matter what came along, and those who never really met their kids - they were busy making the bucks and giving their kids every advantage possible, way into the future. Both were compelling arguments until theMarket chose sides. Suddenly half the population had money and theMarket covering its bum, those who chose their kids over consumerism were, and are, vilified as "hippies, layabouts, welfare cheats, etc". Hippies are anti consumerist and hostile to economic fundamentalists. As a consequence, half the population thinks it's their sacred duty to imagine hippies and all the socialist/social democrat pinkos as the enemy.
In theMarket's ken, you are simply
a.) Profiting from it
b.) Working for it
c.) Contributing to it
or
c.) Hell spawn, witch, hippy, commie, etc.
The entire industrial revolution is based on this work ethic.
Most Boomers remember that for every drug-encrusted radical out there there was a straight dealer working the crowd. We grew out of the drugs and got on with it, but the profiteers followed along like hags until they finally regained the power and completed the revolution, The wheel is coming around again - theMarket is at "top-dead-centre". Shit! Do you need a degree in Tantric Activism to know it's time to start banging on the bars. Some things need to be repeated, ad nauseum, in this case it's both the message and the music - "Freedom is a constant, eternal struggle". Were genXers watching T.V.? Why did they stay so quiet for so long? Feel free to abuse me, please, it would be a sign of life, at least - I'm nowhere near as scary as the bloke paying your wages.
So where did things go wrong? "All the way with LBJ" had been soundly routed, so the second wave of teenagers chilled out and switched on a MacTelevision. By the end of the seventies the 12-14 year old GenXers were firmly understood by theMarket and bracketed with the "greed is good", "buy now, pay later" and "Ronny McD is your best friend" advertising and, fuck me, it's "life's too hard" and home to mum and dad to bitch about the boomers - this is not my story, it's yours. As I keep telling my four 20-somethinks.
The only truth I heard from Keating was when he called Australia the "arsehole of the world" and the "banana republic" jibe. He didn't mention that there is no difference between a banana republic, an oil republic or a democratic republic - If you're a one-trick pony and that trick isn't sustainable then the market can and will dictate your social outcomes. Australia has many crocodiles and just a few trick holes in its geography - these holes are protected as places of worship, a source of eternal wealth for the theMarket believers, in 20 years they will be old bones, a smile on the dial of the crocodile.
If boomers are to be dealt with as a group, then they are no different than any other group of humans, across time from America to Rome. Greed is life's minimum requirement, whether animal or insect, the ability to curb greed is the mark of true civilization (at least in my treehouse), hence my disdain for capitalism - it legitimizes and rewards larceny.
Australia is just another street walker, pimped hard by the market till she's so old and ugly her own kids will be ashamed of her. If you're serious about the future, take yer dick out of your wallet and give the old girl a break.
11.5.06
Pot Verses the DopesWhoDon't
This extract is from the Economist - A frightful little Nun put me on to it.
(theHippy long ago escaped the drudgery of "scalpel and Wax" but cutting and pasting in moderation is cool while the chuffer is warming):
(theHippy long ago escaped the drudgery of "scalpel and Wax" but cutting and pasting in moderation is cool while the chuffer is warming):
IF CANNABIS were unknown, and bioprospectors were suddenly to find it in some remote mountain crevice, its discovery would no doubt be hailed as a medical breakthrough. Scientists would praise its potential for treating everything from pain to cancer, and marvel at its rich pharmacopoeia-many of whose chemicals mimic vital molecules in the human body. In reality, cannabis has been with humanity for thousands of years and is considered by many governments (notably America's) to be a dangerous drug without utility. Any suggestion that the plant might be medically useful is politically controversial, whatever the science says. It is in this context that, on April 20th, America's Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued a statement saying that smoked marijuana has no accepted medical use in treatment in the United States.Do you think that Sativa and her children are a bigger threat to health than a big mac in a Parramatta Road café? Sorry, rhetorical. I'm fresh outa figs.
The statement is curious in a number of ways. For one thing, it overlooks a report made in 1999 by the Institute of Medicine (IOM), part of the National Academy of Sciences, which came to a different conclusion. John Benson, a professor of medicine at the University of Nebraska who co-chaired the committee that drew up the report, found some sound scientific information that supports the medical use of marijuana for certain patients for short periods-even for smoked marijuana.
This is important, because one of the objections to marijuana is that, when burned, its smoke contains many of the harmful things found in tobacco smoke, such as carcinogenic tar, cyanide and carbon monoxide. Yet the IOM report supports what some patients suffering from multiple sclerosis, AIDS and cancer-and their doctors-have known for a long time. This is that the drug gives them medicinal benefits over and above the medications they are already receiving, and despite the fact that the smoke has risks. That is probably why several studies show that many doctors recommend smoking cannabis to their patients, even though they are unable to prescribe it. Patients then turn to the black market for their supply.
In America, this [research] is impossible. But it is happening in other countries. In 1997, for example, the British government asked Geoffrey Guy, the executive chairman and founder of GW Pharmaceuticals, to come up with a programme to develop cannabis into a pharmaceutical product.
At the start of this year, the company made the first step towards gaining regulatory approval for Sativex in America when the FDA accepted it as a legitimate candidate for clinical trials. But there is still a long way to go.
And that delay raises an important point. Once available, a well-formulated and scientifically tested drug should knock a herbal medicine into a cocked hat. No one would argue for chewing willow bark when aspirin is available. But, in the meantime, there is unmet medical need that, as the IOM report pointed out, could easily and cheaply be met-if the American government cared more about suffering and less about posturing.
Our drugs enforcement industry (including the regional cages you see round many country towns) chews up somewhere in the order of eleventy billion dollars per year to maintain. (I made that number up.) I do wonder about the numnuts who are prepared to pay so much for a "small government, low taxation, devil-take-the-loser" kind of society. Just so long as the disabled get reamed they're prepared to abandon their Tory/Conservative principles and let the Government balloon into this caricature that chases kids around playgrounds with beagles. (Sorry Snoop, Woodstock has no sense of humor.)
Drugs are currency, they're not illegal because Joe Blow might harm hisself and his neighbors, or because society may fall apart - they're illegal because that's what gives them value! Col. Oliver North was Hopalong Regan's personal guns-for-drugs dealer. To legalize drugs would would do to the White House what banning the Yen would do to the NYSX.
Ice and meth would disappear overnight if you stopped the profitable manufacture of the precursor to it all - pseudo-ephedrine. (Ephedrine itself was banned decades ago.) That wouldn't help that 2 or 3% of the population biologically destined to chemical addictions, though. They'll always find something new.
Chemical addictions we can see and ameliorate without resorting to violence - it's the insidious, invisible addictions loose in every human's psyche that are driving our culture raving mad. Prohibition is one symptom of that, religion is another. Zero tolerance is a religio-facist Utopian ideal, demonstrably unrelated to the human condition. All of this is maintained by fools, incapable of thinking critically for themselves, screeching self-righteous dogma.
Do you think Afghanistan could have been taken without the Northern Alliance - the drug warlords? Shouldn't the DEA arrest those mothers, rather than some babe with an ekky in her purse? Oh, right, that's different somehow. Let the Twerp who is without sin decide . . .
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
