Monday, October 27, 2008

Gary Snyder - Front Lines / As the crickets' soft autumn hum

The edge of the cancer
Swells against the hill-we feel
a foul breeze-And it sinks back down.
The deer winter here
A chainsaw growls in the gorge.

Ten wet days and the log trucks stop,
The trees breathe.
Sunday the 4-wheel jeep of the
Realty Company brings in
Landseekers, lookers, they say
To the land,
Spread your legs.

The jets crack sound overhead, it's OK
here;
Every pulse of the rot at the heart
In the sick fat veins of Amerika
Pushes the edge up closer--

A bulldozer grinding and slobbering
Sideslipping and belching on top of
The skinned-up bodies of still-live bushes
In the pay of a man
From town.

Behind is a forest that goes to the Arctic
And a desert that still belongs to the
Piute
And here we must draw
Our line.

As the crickets' soft autumn hum
is to us
so are we to the trees
as are they
to the rocks and the hills
.


More posts coming soon with the ending of the semester, as well as more Home Improvement! This time hopefully will be somewhat more successful.

Wednesday, October 15, 2008

Comprehensive failure of [extreme] Capitalism

Australia's Maoist PM (proof) Kevin Rudd has declared capitalism's failure is behind the recent economic disaster - almost. "What we have seen is the comprehensive failure of extreme capitalism — extreme capitalism which now turns to government to prevent systematic failure," said Rudd recently.
However Rudd makes sure he doesn't criticise the good capitalism, the capitalism where workers are exploited normally (not extremely!), and where divisions are fostered between human beings normally (not extremely!), and people alienated from one another and the product of their labour normally (not extremely!). The kind of capitalism Rudd likes is the one where the working class are kept firmly under the cosh, yet also in a home, and able to buy some distracting flat screens on credit once and a while.
However some of us might be asking - well isn't this outcome logical considering the kind of scum that controls markets and governments the world around?
Lumpen Professoriat has looked at this in a recent blog titled Not Forbidden. Lumpen Professoriat reckons that "What the striking lack of regulation in these strange new markets trading in mortgage debt has meant is that every risk becomes not just possible, but mandatory. The competition to produce the highest rate of return possible insures that those too squeamish to pursue unforbidden risks will fall behind. This is different from individual greed. It is institutionally required greed."

And some bloke frequently quoted is supposed to have said;
With adequate profit, capital is very bold. A certain 10 per cent will ensure its employment anywhere; 20 per cent certain will produce eagerness; 50 per cent positive audacity; 100 per cent will make it ready to trample on all human laws; 300 per cent, and there is not a crime at which it will scruple, nor a risk it will not run, even to the chance of its owner being hanged. If turbulance and strife will bring a profit, it will freely encourage both. - Karl Marx
Anyway, read the original post, it's much better than this.

Doll Praises Islam... and Satan
While some people choose to worry about a looming (is it still looming?) financial crisis, thankfully some people have their priorities right. It seems that ZOG has joined up with Islam in an attempt to convert American toddlers to "the light", while simultaneously praising Satan.
The toy company Mattel has fielded calls from consumers who wonder whether their Little Mommy Cuddle 'n Coo doll, which giggles, gurgles and coos, is also mumbling, "Satan is king" and "Islam is the light." More.
The reaction to this doll is bizarre.

Tuesday, October 14, 2008

Cops a-Zappin' the whole world round.



"[It was] the most horrendous experience [of my life]. At one point I just pretended like I was dead because I thought ... then they would stop." - Patricia Skelly, who has a mental illness, was tasered between nine and 15 times while in custody in jail and later in hospital.

The fact that police have been using tasers with little scrutiny in the USofA may come as little suprise to many of us, though the normal Australian reaction of "Heh; America is so fucked.", doesn't seem quite as comforting now that Aussie plod are carrying the electric weapons.

Between September 1999 and October 2008 at least 378 people have died after being stunned by police, and that's in North American alone, according to a list compiled by Truth Not Tasers. Despite the alarming statistics, Top Dog Scipione pushed hard to grow the ever expanding police powers to include the devices, that the United Nations has deemed a form of torture, into the Arsenal of NSW Cops.

Scipione is quoted as saying "There are people out there who are generally not very pleasant when it comes to having to intervene as a police officer - they're in the business of committing crimes, or they've lost control of their senses, be they heavily under the influence of drugs or alcohol, and police have to subdue them, we have to take them into custody,"

So perhaps Australia's mentally ill will face a similar experience that Patricia Skelly did. If not the mentally ill, scipione certainly seems interested in the use of electroshock weapons on drug effected people - a group that many say are most at risk when it comes to the use of tasers.

However; in the unlikely event that these tasers are withdrawn, police needn't worry about waste. Welsh police have shown recently that you don't even need a person to target when using a taser! "POLICE zapped a runaway sheep that was blocking traffic with a Taser stun gun, a weapon issued for use in violent situations." reports LimitedNews.

Sunday, October 12, 2008

Pack'em, Rack'em, Stack'em.

"Thirty of South Australia's most hardened criminals have surrendered to police after rioting inside a jail.

The prisoners were barricaded in a high-security compound of the Port Augusta jail, surrounded by tactical response police who today brokered a resolution on a second day of negotiations with the inmates.

A group of 39 prisoners rioted late yesterday, forcing staff to withdraw as the inmates, brandishing weapons such as chair legs, smashed windows, computers and air-conditioners." Reports LiveNews.

Few news reports seem to shed any light on the legitimacy of the prisoners claims of bashings, though history would suggest that what happens behind the bars generally doesn't get out. Most News reports seem to focus attention on overcrowding being the cause for the "riots", while not exploring the fact that people denied of almost all liberty will probably harbor some resentment for the people and institutions involved in taking it from them.