Nothin' to do with me, guv'!

I must confess that I haven't read the 6,300 pages of the State of the Future report as yet - nor shall I, to be frank - and I don't want to underestimate the many and varied non-western-derived problems facing out teeming billions as we crawl gasping towards "interesting times". A cartoon is a cartoon and cannot cover all bases.

http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/green-living/weve-seen-the-future--and-we-may-unotu-be-doomed-866486.html

I happen to like wind turbines -aesthetically as well as philosophically and practically.
I also love walking in wild country and one of the pleasures associated with that is the internal romance of timelessness that the absence of technology affords. Although the sight of a wind farm looming over the horizon as one crests a favourite hill might squash the wandering Viking fantasy, it's a sacrifice I'm more than happy to make. Wind farms are majestic and fruitful and we should welcome them into even our most precious panoramas.
Of course scale is an issue, but so is global climate chaos, which is rearing up over the horizon a lot quicker than we care to imagine.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article4322739.ece

http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/antarctic-ice-shelf-collapse-imminent-866504.html

Goodbye from the World's biggest ********!

Dubya opted to demonstrate his contempt for the entire population of the planet with the phrase "Goodbye from the world's biggest polluter", a big smile and a celebratory punch of the air, as he left the dumbfounded G8heads to return to his planet-razing agenda at home. What is there to say. It's hard to satirise someone who demonstrates that level of open, blase contempt. He might as well have bared his arse and given the assembly the finger. I await the footage on YouTube.

the origins of specious

As the (theoretically) most powerful folk on the planet return from Japan having commited themselves to thinking a bit more about possibly doing something at some point in the future - subject to growth projections and the contingencies of the electoral cycle - the obvious speciousness of it all is left hanging in the air. The television media (who seem to grow worse by the year) seem disinclined to comment beyond the normal circumspect soundbites. Hints that the democratic world's brightest and best (!) dropped the ball spectacularly are whispered for fear of upsetting the cosy relationship twixt commentators and government, or otherwise frightening the horses. Then they move swiftly on to the staggering hypocricy of their middle east coverage and the tub thumping myopia of the petrol price crisis/bonanza (depending on your share portfolio)
So we all wait for the other fella to start the ball rolling - blaming the Indians and the Chinese for doing what we spent two hundred years bullying, badgering and bombing them into doing - all the while crying for more free trade, more trans-global movement of goods, more energy consumption and just plain more of everything.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/politics/bush-to-g8-goodbye-from-the-worlds-biggest-polluter-863911.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/jul/08/climatechange.g8
Cynics of the Diogenes school might be tempted to abandon their barrels and take to the streets with inflatable hammers. As a species we are in need of a good slap!

Hard Snooze

This cartoon keeps drifting, unbidden, into my head every morning - between slaps at the snooze button. I'm hoping that drawing it will make it go away.

I have no illusions that drawing it will stop the Orag-utans going away.

http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/nature/orangutans-on-fast-track-to-extinction-860884.html

Born on the fourth of July.

It's an old chestnut, but one man's terrorist IS another man's freedom fighter, and the history of the post-Ottoman middle east has enough label-confusion for a thousand lifetimes. The post independence US - with its genocides, manifest destiny and Monroe doctrine - is another case in point. Maybe it would be nice for all people of good will to use July 4 (or 14th or any of many other dates) to celebrate the idea of self determination and not the fiction of colonially imposed international frontiers or prehistoric devine claims.

Ignore the next bit if you are a person of faith. Skip to the end. I'm going to have a bit of a rant.

On the subject of claims: According to prehistoric celtic tradition the god Llew made a pact with the ancient Welsh that whilst the sacred head of Bran the blessed lay entombed in London, the whole island would belong to them and to them alone. Accordingly all the English and all other immigrants/invaders/settlers/refugees over the past two thousand years in the whole of the UK have to be summarily ejected from their homes by force of arms and confined on the Isle of Wight without access to resources or self determination. Only those with a living tradition of mistletoe worship and oak hugging shall be granted citizenship.
For it is written.

But... that's...utter, utter bollocks, I hear you cry! - Fairy tales and foolishness fit only for children and the slow-witted; A superstitious, fascistic throwback that flies in the face of everything we know to be true and everything we hope for. These tales are metaphors and comfort blankets and not to be taken literally, you say; Read some more stories, you say? - some different ones: - there's a million of 'em? Really?
You mean - being arrested in a first/fifth/eighteenth century mystical timewarp is not the ultimate in human possibility? Well f*ck me sideways. Next you'll be telling me we're all on a spinning rock in a vast ocean of nothingness with bugger all between us and extinction but a brain and an opposable thumb!

Thank the gods that no major international decisions are ever made on that sort of ludicrous basis! Imagine what sort of a mess we'd be in.

I myself base all my decisions on the sacred diatribes of the Cosmic Juggler as vouchsafed to Fat Kevin after a night of cider and horse tranquilisers in Liss Forest. It works for me.


Meanwhile, on planet earth - A World Bank report declaring that up to 75% of recent food price inflation is due to Biofuels is kept under wraps so as not to embarrass the American President - and BigOil is set to soak up 75% of the income from Iraqi oil fields, old and new, in a move nobody anywhere saw coming from a million miles away right from the very start. Links to follow

Urgent Logic

Now that the urgent logic of $150 a barrel oil focuses our glorious leaders on the subject in hand, all of our ducks seem to be lining up. But - call me a cynic - I remain suspicious of all the Johnny come latelys who now profess green souls solely for financial reasons. I do not believe much spot-changing has gone on. The leopards stalking the world's poor in search of an easy meal are still as they always were.
Some very large scams will be launched amongst the forthcoming initiatives, and some political poison.
Vigilence, as always, I suppose.

"Seeing off" the weak and vulnerable"

The FT is a fine source of news as it doesn't bother to glaze the true motives of the elite with a layer of pretence. It says it like it sees it - with all the venality and contempt intact. The story of a massive transnational drug company "seeing off" attempts by a generic manufacturer to produce a cheaper version of a schizophrenia drug is written as a victory against the barbarians (allow me a little poetic license.)
For the already safe and comfortable to gloat over an industry gouging ever greater amounts out of overstretched public health services - (particularly a branch over which drugs interests wield a totally disproportionate influence ) is depressingly telling.
The recently released footage of an elderly immigrant woman dying in a waiting room in an american mental health facility provides a chilling counterpoint to this stockholder banditry.
I happen to work amongst these blunt instruments, drug rep beanos and discarded lives and am of the opinion that Capitalist fundamentalism is not the panacea for these ills.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/3b27ba56-4815-11dd-a851-000077b07658,Authorised=false.html?_i_location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ft.com%2Fcms%2Fs%2F0%2F3b27ba56-4815-11dd-a851-000077b07658.html&_i_referer=

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/itn/20080702/twl-video-released-of-us-woman-dying-41f21e0.html



and another thing...
The belated national "debate" surrounding our "choice" between life and lifestyle often has the traditional characteristics of British public life. ie - clout out-muscles wisdom 9 times out of ten. But,,, we may be seeing a sea-change in that, a recent poll illustrates.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/jul/02/climatechange.ethicalliving
Be of good cheer.