Another Unknown daVinci Is Unveiled

excerpted from the blog alloldmastersdontbelongtothequeen.co.uk:

"We have been following the astounding strides in art examination, particularly the recent expose by Artist Ron Piccirillo that the Mona Lisa is full of rather blurry animalist forms. But of course Leonardo was known for his ramblings en pittura, his virtuoso asides and his adolescentist humour- albeit in a deeply, profoundly futurist way.




In this rarely-mentioned da Vinci painting, Questo è una Pittura Bizzarro, there are concrete allusions to the machine age in the mechanical forms of the background that might lead one to believe that that is all there is; however, this is a painting about immigration. Prof. Georgina Morant, granddaughter of Prof. Dr. George Morant who famously unburied the crystal skull of the Aztecs, noted on close examination that a very clearly non-white woman in a bathing ensemble stands as though astride a porpoise in the centre-right near the edge, while an equally non-white man appears to be snoozing with his lion centre-left near the outer rim.

"Harrrrumph," Prof. Morant said after clearing her throat rather vigorously, "Leonardo meant to imply that the immigration of all manner, indeed, all colour of persons, would, at some future time - though we don't yet know when - emigrate to Canada, the land of multicult - and what could be more alludingly correct than Canada? Why, I have - this is totally speculative of course, I haven't had my tea yet without which I cannot counteract the effect of the Carruades de Lafite - yes, I have seen images of Canadian provinces, a side view of half of Gordon Lightfoot's head, and the tops of the heads of the fifteen thousand minions of Der Leader, bent over their daily slog, which must be reconstituted as benevolences flowing from God Harper. How can it not be Canada?"

Indeed.
-photomanipulation (c)Daisy Morant

Beeeeware the Beeeehive!!!

-pretend you're Ferdinand. Just sit and sniff the flowers


Many are the turkeys who are busy revamping FB in time for a splashy announcement at a tech conference this Thursday. This ilk presume to know what it is that you or I want without actually asking us.

Really, the paternalistic attitude is a bit much. This is the 21stC. Are we not supposed to be reaching a consensus on ideas, rather than allowing them to be pushed down our throats - then mumbling our gratitude as we tug our forelocks??? (At least, that is what the computer community has been pouring into our heads for the last decade and a half as they raced desperately toward blanket coverage of the planet. Everyone must get plugged in! instantaneous communication will be the new order of the day, just like that at the basic building block, the cell. Or the bee in the hive.) We are already more than halfway there. And it's been handled cleverly - at least until the great recession sprang upon us.

Everyone happy? no? then you should check your status to see whether your friends have included you in the latest event - check the ticker. What has become the social principal networking site, Facebook appears to be constantly worried about losing market share. Many and often are the changes thus pushed onto the users. Consequently FB is becoming less and less friendly as the company pushes its users toward a pay-as-you-go model. It is not enough to make billions from advertising, there are a few drops left in ye olde lemon, time to squeeze them out! hurry before google does! or myspace!(LOL)

It is not that one is against change; it has never been that. Rather, it is unnecessary change, illogical change, more time-consuming change, change simply for the sake of change, to give the illusion of movement. After all, is this new world not supposed to be one of constant change? constant adaptation? a more ruthless sink-or-swim?

The usual note from those working for FB and every other internet company has a tenor which can only come from being hopped up on 15 cups of lightly roasted java, and usually has the aura of just-enough-sense to make one sound sane.

The idea that there is virtue in being chronically overworked, overstressed, with insufficient resources to combat the incipient cold, the burgeoning conviction that it is all for naught, strikes me as absolutely ridiculous. Not just that, but also so tragically counterproductive. Other applications and other sites have had their moment; some did not change and others changed too much but all of them had this in common with FB - the same rabid attitude that has infected the online world and now spills over into reality.

I am for temperate movement of ideas as well as people, projects, communications. The email composed in anger and sent off in haste has haunted many a sender. Reflection is not supposed to enter into this new, reflexive world. The idea that sometimes an idea does not work even after it has been considered and debated, or tried, seems to have no place in this universe. The inference that things that do not work at lightning speed ought to be obsolete is, in fact, an obsolete idea.

There is value in everything, even the unconsidered afternoon sitting in a field, thinking or simply being. but not in this universe, which is supposed to be profitable everywhere and at all times, with everything superfluous jettisoned as a drag on speed.

Speed, however, can only go so far. Even now Google is falling over itself while one is entering a search term, anxiously shoving into one's face answers projected from one's partial entries.





-yes, this is what you'll get with reindeer urine! ©Ernst Barlach

While researching a title of a woodcut made by the great German expressionist Ernst Barlach I entered "Reitender Urian" - before I had finished, it was anxiously asking me whether I didn't really mean "reindeer urine, you great clomping twit, hopelessly challenged as you are by your fingers, are you certain you don't want to get your brain wired into Google?" No, I did not want reindeer urine, not in fact and not even in scintillating pixels. We appear to have gone into the deep end with all this nonsense. Machinery - whether mechanical or electronic - is meant to serve us, to aid us, to be there as a great resource. Not our master, not our director. We should take ten and think on it.



- everything one needs: oxygen, sunshine, time to think.

unattributed images ©Daisy Morant

OFF WITH THE GLOVES!

Oh, how remote the mighty among us! I got a little bit of this when I was doing Public Affairs in the federal government of Canada, where messages were carefully constructed to be as clear and as ambiguous as the occasion demanded. But even there, the messages concerned people who were in their position by the grace of the people, who could voice their displeasure at the next election.

Then there are those who are insulated from the sordid world around them by their vast monetary holdings, like rows upon rows upon rows of Teflon shields that serve their purpose of keeping the protectee lily-white. The rich are different because of this, because protection can be bought so that precious little will adhere. A case in point: the Mayor of New York City, one Michael Bloomberg, net worth $18.1 billion in 2011, the thirteenth richest American.

$18,100, 000,000.00 just for perspective which - as one might imagine - can be fairly skewed from such august heights. Especially in the land of filthy lucre, whose entire goal and purpose appear to be for one to make as much money as possible, by hook or crook. Crooks such as Bernie Madoff really only incited the wrath of the public once his illegal schemes had been unmasked; before that, it seems, everyone loved Bernie.

The Mayor of New York City's web pages state that the Mayor's Alliance has as its admirable goal the elimination of kill shelters - animal shelters that kill their captives if they fail to be adopted in very short order. Even the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals kicked in one million dollars a year and a bit ago - April, 2010. Its news release, however, was very carefully worded: "to end the killing of healthy and treatable cats and dogs" that populate the wretched shelters run by Animal Care and Control.

And here I always thought that a healthy newborn kitten was an admirable creature to protect until it was adopted out to a loving family.

Bet you didn't think that you would ever see a picture such as this:

Yes. This is a healthy mum with her little clutch of kittens. In a cage. A cage so small that she cannot raise her head. So small there is no room for food or water.

A cage, moreover, that sits on the floor with the rest of the garbage. (Photo courtesy of Urgent Part 2, a division of urgentdeathrowdogs.com)

Don't feel too bad about them. They were all euthanized. They are feeling no more pain. And just so you know, this picture has been up on Facebook for many days and nobody from ACC has contradicted the descriptions of the cage, the location, or the cats' health.

I sent the mayor a message about this - as a matter of fact, I have sent a few to him of late, all about the sad state of cats in his fair city. I sent one on 8 August 2011 about a cat whose hind legs were both badly broken and who, according to the ACC report alongside, was of NO CONCERN! but don't worry. He was euthanized.

On 11 August I sent the mayor another message, this one about a badly injured cat who sat, in her pain, with bleeding open wounds. He didn't reply about that one either. But not to worry. The cat was euthanized.

On 17 August I sent another message - this one about the cat and kittens so woefully depicted above. What did Gandhi say? - oh yes, a nation's greatness is measured by how it treats its weakest members.

Not so great, are we? WE have invited the cat and the dog into our membership for millennia. We ask them to work for us for nothing more than a corner in a barn or a kennel and some food. Many of us never give the cat or the dog their due, never give them love, care properly for them. Some of us have done atrocious things to them whereas most are simply callous, careless, mentally otherwise occupied. And now that there is a devastating recession that won't go away, we cannot muster the moment's thought about the welfare of our animals - many of us have literally tossed them aside or dropped them off at "shelters" such as those execrable miniature concentration camps in New York.

When one spends one's days killing animals one develops a crust of indifference. One no longer sees the life, the love in their eyes, their mute requests for help, their pleas to retain what we all have and about which we care so little - life.

NYC and ACC have gone too far. Today and yesterday they euthanized a kaboodle of healthy kittens one week old. Needless to say I vented my displeasure to the mayor by way of his page, which is located at:


http://www.nyc.gov/html/mail/html/mayor.html

Please. If you think that killing healthy week-old kittens is acceptable, of leaving seriously injured animals without care, of processing so many units in the euth. room day after day is wrong, tell the mayor. He wants to know what you think.

And this will not become a discussion about the merits of human beings in tight financial spots versus expensive-to-maintain animals. This is about one thing only: the inhumanity we accept so easily, as long as someone else is doing it where we can't see.

Boxing glove image courtesy of andrewsrobichaud.com

Whither The Book??

A group I belong to currently is discussing the perilous state of book publishing, particularly fiction. A week or so ago I put in my two cents' worth, which struck one of the members as "sad, sad, sad".

I countered that it was "realistic, realistic, realistic", which elicited the further comment "A sad but incisive commentary. Any solutions you see on the horizon?"

I am not sure there is a solution. My husband is an artist and for the last three years we have been discussing the situation almost non-stop. We are in the middle of a transition from a verbal to a visual society. The first strands tying together literacy, culture and social standing began to be cut with photography and were greatly accelerated with the onset of movies, which might have remained a novelty except that they acquired sound. Once television was in almost every home we were already more than half-way down the road.

Of course there were still endless gorgeously produced books containing illustrations, following the honourable tradition that began in largely illiterate times. And - sadly - it appears that the only books one will be able to sell will be those that are illustrated, and rare. . . .


illustration (c)Garrick Palmer, from The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Folio Society, London 1994. Does one really want it in Kindle for 98 cents???

Where once one bragged that one's children were reading books at age five the emphasis now is on computer literacy, which is entirely different, engages a different part of the brain and is a much more immediate experience. In order to understand the story in a book one first must recognize and understand letters, then words, then concepts. A significant part of society has always had trouble with that. Think of the comparative ease with which they are able to grasp a movie's story!

Many countries have developed multicultural societies, for the ease of which foreigners' comprehension pictographs were developed and standardized internationally. (The International Standards Organization in Switzerland was very busy with this in the Seventies.) Soon people will approach education visually as opposed to verbally. Computer program writing also uses a language, but - again - one that is different enough from English or French etc that it does not compare.

As you can see, the entire thrust of communication has gone away from the verbal precision upon which we prided ourselves to the perhaps sloppier and less articulate, but still understood, visual.

I personally see a contradiction in "eBooks", never mind any technical aspects such as a lack of engagement for someone like me. You can install the sounds of pages turning, you can adjust your screen to simulate lovely acid-free paper, but you can not sever the thought in the front of your mind that if you had a real book in the tub with you it wouldn't even matter if it fell in, for example. The entire experience of reading, with its sensual component, is being declared obsolete.

Do I see any solutions? Sure. Pull the plug. Yes, that will not happen. (As an aside, anyone else struck by the imbecility of wiring the world electronically, finding this new use for electricity everywhere, at the exact moment when we have to be cutting back?)

If I were a publisher I would undoubtedly go bust. There are too many people who can't, won't, or don't want to read, who see it as a mark of societal privilege against which they rebel, who have wholeheartedly accepted the electronic world.

That being said, there still are good stories, complex characters, epic histories and other subjects we have to protect and bring into being, however possible. The chief difference between the visually told stories and the published ones is that the visual brings everything to the viewer's eyes; the book stimulates and invites one to recreate the read word vividly in one's mind.

A Pirate In The World O' Cats

All right then, here we have a gigantic social networking site called Facebook that appears to have as members virtually anyone from anywhere - with the possible addition of a few of the Aliens Among Us, who have been observing us as strenuously uninterferingly as The Picard did in that episode in which he was unmasked and worshipped as a god.

You see? one cannot go for a paragraph without mentioning Star Trek or Facebook. Not these days.

Facebook is like an enormous, ever-expanding accordion of information that serves coincidentally as a platform for anything that is permitted. Not a day passes when one doesn't hear of some company's new Facebook page. And you thought it was a dating score site for college students!

What is of great interest is that numerous cat pages have sprung up - Friends of McAbernethy, RIP Fluffy, Puss in the CATskills and so forth. These are very useful in uniting the cat loving community, and are more than efficient in getting out the word when an animal - tho here we speak only of cats - does something startling, like reciting the Pledge of Allegiance in catspeak, stands on its whiskers, or plays the trombone for Obama.

On a more serious level, it is a platform via which it is possible to move people to rescue cats. This frequently works, although it does not yet keep pace with the deluge of cats and kittens that end up in kill shelters and are euthanized. In fact, Facebook is a venue that can facilitate the adoption, by someone in Michigan, of an animal in Florida or beyond.




Then there are pages and pages of helpful members who try to go that extra step,to a site such as chipin.com, where opening an account into which donations can be made is done fast and simply.

It was one such page that caught a lot of attention. A sweet little pink-nosed cat named Willow, with deformed hind legs, had been adopted by an acquaintance named Wendy. Lo and behold, one day a person with the screen name "Parkour Kitty" was found to be selling magnets with Willow's likeness. Never mind that Wendy's copyright was trampled on. When confronted Gina, the woman behind "Parkour Kitty" offered to split the proceeds.

Other cat pages commented, bought magnets, discovered other cats that needed help. And there was Parkour Kitty, in the forefront, this time opening a chipin account for an Australian acquaintance's cat named Chop Chop...



And a few days later there was yet another Parkour Kitty chipin, this one for a cat that truly did steal a lot of hearts, Marta, a sweet, bewildered cat of ancient lineage caught up in the turmoil that rocked Egypt. Marta was put up by the Egyptian Society for Mercy to Animals. But it was Parkour Kitty, that boundless bundle of empathy and love.

Meanwhile the magnets sold, the money rolled in, but not to Wendy, who was beginning to wonder.

And Parkour Kitty found yet another cat in desperate need, this one "belonging to a octogenarian" named Mrs Rebecca. It was a tale guaranteed to tear one's heart to bits: the impoverished Mrs Rebecca owned a pregnant Persian cat named Annabella, who had been hit by an auto, as a result of which she had two broken hind legs, a
dislocated hip, internal bleeding, and the need for bottomless pits of money.



And people donated.

That's the thing about people who love animals - they are sometimes too generous with their love or their money. Having heard many a story of animal abuse, they are too ready to believe horrors without actual proof.

Amid this Niagara of cash Parkour Kitty continued to post updates - the vet didn't know if he could fix her, more money was needed, the kittens were saved, more money was needed, the cat was sort of coming along, more money was needed . . . and, no, Annabella did not want to be seen by anyone in her current condition.




Now, if that last bit did not ring alarm bells, consider that many Facebook members become so enmeshed in catspeak that whole pages require translations, cats' internal monologues are quoted at length, and it sounds humanitarian that one not show a mangled cat, wrapped in dressings, with IV drips -

Reality check: The darling of New York, a rescued three-legged cat named Piper, and Bernice, a cat severely burned by a sociopathic moron in Oshkosh, have done exactly that. Constant updates and in Piper's case a copy of the $5,000 vet bill were posted.



Not so Annabella's information. She must be one vain cat, eh? Mrs. Rebecca's power was turned off by the heartless electric company;





and she had nothing to eat for the next two weeks.






Oh, and amid all these updates, Parkour Kitty's mommy couldn't meet a car payment and the bank was going to take away the car unless the kind wallets on Facebook coughed up another two thousand dollars.

And then, the crisis, followed equally swiftly by its denouement.

Parkour Kitty was unmasked as a recently married graphic designer living in Johnson City, Tennessee, the Australian cat received nothing, Willow received nothing tho Parkour Kitty brazenly suggested that the cheque had been returned by the Post Office, and -

Annabella was not real. Duh!


The internet is a place of scams and follies. Not a day goes by when some other scam artist does not create another sob story, another heart-rending account of some helpless creature in need.

And every time people discover that they have been scammed, the real needy ones - be they kat, kit or kaboodle - are regarded with suspicion or ignored.

Bottom line: trust no-one. Ask questions. and if you are scammed, report, report, report. Perhaps you were swindled out of only a few dollars, but you do not know the extent of the fraud.

The Internet Crime Complaint Centre:

The USPS.

The Canadian Post Office or if you live elsewhere, your postal service headquarters.

Your state/province's Office of the Attorney-General

The scammer's city's police force.

Last, but not least, your credit card company or - if you used it - Paypal.

BETTER LATE THAN NEVER

This blog has been sadly unattended for too long and Yours Truly has been sitting in the doghouse because of it.

Fortunately there aren't any critters in there with me, as that would not do, the doghouse being a tiny little thing from which anyone not as limber as a ten-year-old gymnast will not be able to escape.

When it comes to blogging - as I have found during my enforced stay in pooch hotel - one has to shred one's former ideas about newspapers, columns, magazine or book pages, and think instead of litle cue cards. The attention span appears to be perceived rather differently online, thus requiring a turn after the first or second paragraph - or so it has been said enough times now that one has taken the hint.

Is a long stretch of text really that intimidating? Not that long ago the Globe and Mail, Canada's Establishment newspaper, was fairly reluctant to use photographs, and its readers were
presented with columns upon columns of text. If you look at the Globe now you will perhaps be shocked by the absence of text. Its Saturday edition appears to have magazeenis envy, with enormous photos splashed across clay-coated stock - on the front page, yet.

Somehow this appears to be meant to appeal to web browsing readers, whose attention span is claimed to be no longer than the open browser window is long.

So it is that this page will be undergoing revisions as Yours Truly learns to keep her left hand from messing with her right hand, and attempts to become at least semi-literate in the electronic world.

The One That Won't Go Away

SARAH PALIN: AS BOGUS AS THIS IMAGE


While looking through the pages of some former employers I chanced upon United Press International, across the top of whose pages a huge banner proclaims the question

"Sarah For 2012?"

oops, excuse me. . . I had to take a fast detour my sudden need to vomit took me to the loo but I'm all right now.

What continues to surprise me as I age - sometimes more quickly than I ought to - is that there are people who think this ill-educated person, whose actions appear governed by religious convictions and personal bias, as well as personal enrichment, would be of strong enough character, deep enough education and worldliness, and iron-willed decisiveness, to be a company president, let alone president of the currently most powerful country on the planet. They appear to work themselves into an excited delirium over her - let's hope the RCMP does not misinterpret their actions and taser them.

This person claimed to be a journalist; certainly she emphasized journalism in her college studies. But as a journalist myself I have to say that, to do the job properly, one has to put one's personal biases aside, be unflinching in the face of truth, and stand by one's statements. Which is why - if I were called upon to do so - I would never presume to report on her. There is not much in the person's character or former actions or thoughts that would inspire me. But there is much to challenge.

As an example of her manipulations one can point to the Gravina Island Bridge fiasco.

In 2005, the US Congress passed a spending bill containing an earmark worth nearly half a billion dollars - $442-million - to build two bridges in the state.
The Gravina Island Bridge was to have been longer than the Golden Gate and taller than the Brooklyn Bridge and would have connected fifty residents and Ketchikan International (because it receives flights from Russia) Airport to the mainland. After news reports that it would cost $233-million it was derided as "Bridge to Nowhere".

In the midst of controversy Hurricane Katrina happened. It was suggested to remove the funds and use them instead to rebuild a bridge over Lake Pontchartrain that was destroyed in the hurricane.

The Alaskan senator of the day, Ted Stephens, threatened to quit if the money were reallocated.

Despite the unimaginable deprivation and destruction of Katrina, and the small benefit to an even smaller population, Congress gave the funds to Alaska though the firestorm continued in the media.

The following year, 2006, Palin ran for the governorship with a "build-the-bridge" plank in her platform.

She said she would "not allow the spinmeisters to turn this project ... into something that's so negative."

She was elected, and in September 2007 she cancelled the project in an apparent snit, saying Congress had no interest in accurately portraying the project. And Alaska retained the funds.

Once she was unveiled as vice-presidential candidate Palin claimed that she had always said "thanks, but no thanks, to the bridge".

There are other incidents that show the fluid nature of her recollections, like electricity, always seeking the easiest - for her, the currently most expedient - path.

But that one is sufficient. We won't harp on her other missteps, because everyone, yours truly included, has done stupid things.

If one were to run for high public office, however, one would have to subject oneself to the deepest, closest scrutiny without the resentment she has shown. One should not claim to be penny-wise and array oneself in couturier duds at the expense of one's party committee, claim to have funded it out of one's own pocket, and then not declare it as a taxable income. And one most certainly does not betray one's ignorance before a national audience:


COURIC: Why isn't it better, Governor Palin, to spend $700bn helping middle-class families, who are struggling with healthcare, housing, gas and groceries, allow them to spend more and put more money into the economy instead of helping these big financial institutions that played a role in creating this mess?

PALIN: That's why I say, I, like every American I'm speaking with, we're ill about this position that we have been put in where it is the tax payers looking to bail out, but ultimately, what the bailout does is help those who are concerned about the healthcare reform that is needed to help shore up our economy, helping tho— it's got to be all about job creation too, shoring up our economy, and putting it back on the right track, so healthcare reform and reducing taxes and reigning in spending has got to accompany tax reductions and tax relief for Americans. And trade, we've got to see trade as opportunity, not as— competitive— scary thing, but one in five jobs being created in the trade sector today, we've got to look at that as more opportunity. All those things under the umbrella of job creation. This bailout is a part of that.


(Katie Couric of CBS interviewing Palin at the end of September 2008)


While we were rolling around the floor, howling with laughter, commentator Jack Cafferty of CNN was biting in his assessment of Palin. He said if being

"one 72-year-old's heartbeat away from being President of the United States... doesn't scare the hell out of you, it should".
Moreover,
"that was one of the most pathetic pieces of tape I have ever seen from someone aspiring to one of the highest offices in this country".

Nothing that has been seen, heard or read about her since then suggests that she is any wiser or more deeply read, more open or more educated as to the ways of the world. 2012??? Maybe the Mayans had an intimation of her eventual appearance, as their calendar ends then.

Fox has shown its true stripes by hiring her on a multi-year contract as a political commentator. Comedy is not dead, after all.

Our Moral Obligation To Take Haiti In Hand

It is time to put aside such comparative frivolities as the travails of Tiger Woods or the machinations of the lobbying around health insurance in the U.S. and address an issue that should concern us all.

Haiti should have been a paradise - a tropical island, full of natural beauty and charm. But Haiti for too many decades has been, for most of its inhabitants, a poisoned fruit. This is inevitable when one per cent of its elite owns half the resources and its late dictator, "Papa Doc" Duvalier, used voodoo and the brutal not-so-secret police, the Tonton Macoute, to keep people in line.

The magnitude 7.0 earthquake that has effectively destroyed Haiti should be seen as some sort of cosmic warning - for the religious, perhaps a smiting by the hand of God. This may sound harsh and heartless, given the unimaginable suffering of the population, particularly the poor, who have neither food nor shelter nor family nor - in far too many cases - the use of all their limbs. Medicins sans frontieres (Doctors Without Borders) is appalled by the number of amputations its surgeons are being required to perform, in many instances without anesthesia, as it is a race against time and gangrene.

Even when supplies have arrived at the still-functioning airport at Port au Prince, now under control of the U.S., there are almost insurmountable obstacles to delivering the supplies where needed. And when the United Nations asked the U.S. to take control of the airport two things happened that are indicative of the problems that lie ahead.

Flights increased from one or perhaps two a day, thanks to American air traffic controllers.

And a great wave of anger rose against the Americans for usurping Haitian controllers, and telling Haitians what to do or not. Riots have broken out and it is safe to say that, if by now it has not yet done so, the country soon will slide into anarchy.

Haiti should be everyone's concern, that is to say, every country's concern, not just in the sense of sending off some aid and - once a seemingly stable rhythm has redeveloped - leaving it to "soldier on". It is how things normally go after a major disaster. But Haiti is not a normal case. There is neither a functioning infrastructure nor an effective social structure. Gangs are undoubtedly going to jockey for position and grow in the aftermath, the elite will use whatever means required to keep a grip on itself, and the poorest of the poor will continue to pay the price.

The country is in such abject condition that the United Nations should step in and appoint an international armed force to keep order and rebuild. But in order to do it properly, the United Nations must leave its blue berets - symbols of peacekeeping - at home. Haiti is not in condition to behave with any normalcy; force will be required in many an instance, and the right to use force, lethal force, when needed, must be given to whoever contributes to UN operation for the rebuilding.

The Canadian Lieutenant-General The Honourable Roméo A. Dallaire - O.C., C.M.M., G.O.C, M.S.C., C.D., (Retired), Senator - suffered great mental anguish when, wearing the blue beret of the UN peacekeeper, he had to sit by and remain immobile while Rwanda became the scene of a bloodbath that has had few equals. As a "peacekeeper" Lt.-Gen. Dallaire could do nothing as eight hundred thousand Hutu and Tutsi individuals were reduced to bleeding lumps of flesh in a frenzy of genocidal hatred. The admirable Dallaire became suicidal; his experience is detailed in his book, Shake Hands with the Devil.

Lt.-Gen. Dallaire's experience should suffice as a warning never again to put soldiers into a position where they must be spectators to such a crime. Soldiers are trained to keep order, to kill if necessary in their duties. The force that is needed to keep order in Haiti, during the many years that its rebuilding will require, also must have the authority to kill, if necessary. One supposes that the major complaints against this idea will come - in Haiti - from those who have most to lose: the gangs, the secret criminal forces, the elite (though they might look favourably upon anyone who will keep the hungry from their stoop.)

This begs the question: Who should lead this force? Anticipating great howls of protest, one nevertheless feels obligated to say that this force should be led by the United States, as it is best able to act, has the greatest access to military and civilian resources, and has never hesitated to make the unpopular decision. In the interest of impeccable behaviour the UN could appoint an overseer, so that there can be no question of US soldiers acting improperly.

(We can all thank Dubya and Dick - if you have been away, ex-president George W. Bush and ex-Vice-President Dick Cheney - for the disdain and hatred that is being levelled at Americans these days. In their wanton, arrogant, criminal disregard for the law, for the truth, they poisoned the well for a very long time to come. Let neither them nor ex-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld have any occasion to travel outside the country, for they will surely be arrested and charged with war crimes. Or so they should.)

The rebuilding of Haiti will require an effort that will take many decades. From reforestation to road building, sewer installation, house building, school building, hospital building, creation of a modern infrastructure and development of a proper educational curriculum that will free all Haitians from the prison of illiteracy and superstition, this effort will have to remain focused. We cannot walk away this time, a few months later, in the supposition that, now that the worst is over, the Haitians can look after their own.

In the past, we built the Great Wall of China, the Pyramids. We sailed around the planet in rickety ships, populated continents, deciphered the Rosetta Stone. We went to the moon, developed superb telescopes and microscopes that show the infinite progression from the very tiny to the truly unimaginably immense. We built railroads, developed tiny computers capable of extremely intricate calculations. We have extended greater rights to animals than the Haitians, and some other poor nations, give their own citizens.

Sometimes we don't remember this, as we are caught up in the amusing or the banal. But we should remember that we all have it within us to focus, to develop new ways of thinking about a problem, to maintain the will to carry it out.

We cannot stand by this time and watch the misery that is Haiti. We have a duty to our fellow man. We must step in.

(c) 2010 bluemlein.blogspot.com

Tiger Had Himself By The Tail. . .

There's that old expression, even expressed in that Buck Owens classic, "I've got a tiger by the tail", that suggests bad things will follow that unfortunate situation once one lets go, or it slips from one's grasp.

The recent Tiger Woods debacle certainly shows how one may be mauled when things get out of hand. Tiger Woods has apparently lost his wife and family, his hitherto spotless reputation, his sponsorships, and golf - having removed himself from the tour at the moment. (The last can only be good as nobody could possibly play so focused a game as golf when a zillion negatives and possibilities and insults are twirling through one's brain.)

The latest is General Motors' announcement today that it will no longer provide free Cadillacs to Mr. Woods. One supposes that it took the GM executive a few weeks to conclude that handing over expensive autos to a billionaire, one of which he then crashed into a fire plug, is perhaps not the best use of their product (especially as they no longer can fly their executive jet to his home in order to inspect the damage done).

Gillette was first to bail. Somehow the idea of their golden boy, their clean shaven golden boy, sleeping around with women who are not his wife, must have induced in them a vision of the typical thoughtless, homewrecking bum of the Fifties - hirsute and inimical to razors.

Next came a management consultancy, heard singing "you've got to Accentureate the positive" - which, in their opinion, is no longer possible with him.

As for AT&T, perhaps its management thinks that "ordinary" men - but mostly women - will take it to task for having provided Mr. Woods with the means to arrange his illicit trysts. Heaven forfend that AT&T be sucked into that particular funnel, especially when the cellphone business is so cutthroat.

Gatorade will always claim that the decision to scrub the Tiger Woods flavour antedated his exposure, but we all hear the heavy thud of the eyelid winking as the announcement is made. Sure you did! You decided to scotch a drink whose every bottle prominently displayed his name, because nobody was interested any longer.

Well, then, now that he is constantly in our thoughts and blogs that ought to raise your sales. You think? Revive the brand! you'll make millions.

A recent study by University of California suggests the total economic damages from this unfortunate situation could total $12,000,000,000.00. . . Twelve Billion Dollars. No wonder the American economy is not rebounding as it ought.

How heavy is twelve billion dollars, in thousand-dollar bills? Quite a heft, one should think, but is it heavier than the fallout from Mr. Woods's inability to keep a grip on himself?

The problem with developing a squeaky-clean image is that it becomes ever more difficult, in this universe, to remain so as one lives and ages.

While one cannot have much sympathy for the man, there are factors that should be considered, particularly if one thinks grooming one's own toddler to be a super athlete, or dancer, or politician, is a wonderful thing.

Eldrick Tont Woods has been welded to a golf club since he was two. His own father, who by all accounts held the blow-torch in an iron fist, made some ridiculous pronouncements to the effect that his son would change world history for the better. And since Eldrick was two, golf has been the steady diet that nourished his warped and emotionally stunted personality.

One cannot develop emotionally and intellectually when a millstone like this is planted around one's neck. When golf (or acting, or baton-twirling) is all one is allowed to think about, when everything one does is in support of the millstone, other aspects of one's life fade into the distance. Friends, being a stupid young child, adolescence, being a somewhat less stupid young man, disappear along with free time and free thought.

We all know that growing up is painful, especially during the middle teenage years. How much more so when one is not allowed to grow up naturally?

The endless skirt-chasing and sleeping around which have hoisted Mr. Woods by his own petard are symptoms of stunted adolescence. If one cannot partake of the banquet when one is hungry it should come as no surprise that, once one is starving, one is liable to gorge and binge at every opportunity.

The adult thing to do, of course, is to seek help in freeing one's psyche from making the sorts of mistakes that are so often made by child stars of all stripes. But child stars generally grow up to be lopsided - with over-developed needs such as attention and praise, and woefully starved needs and aptitudes in interpersonal and intimate relationships.

It would appear that Mr. Woods has lost almost everything that was important to him - his stature, his income, his endorsements, all of which fed his bottomless ego - as well as something he valued rather less, namely his own family. In return he now is in a deracinated limbo, front and centre in everyone's radar, with nothing to do and no one to talk to, no access to his children and the spectacle of an ugly and costly divorce hanging over his head like Damocles's sword. It didn't help that his advisors gave him bad advice, that it was made known that he would try to bribe his wife with a "bonus" of tens of millions of dollars if only she would stay and keep up the pretense, that a streak of cynicism a mile wide seems to be part of his makeup.

Or was the accumulation of all this perfection simply too much?Perhaps some day it will be possible to determine whether Mr. Woods let go of the tail deliberately. In any case it begs the question:

Was it worth it?


(c)2010 bluemlein

his endless walk of shame

on october 1, 2009, in the sleepy town of fairfield, connecticut, the fairfield university student newspaper published the ramblings of one chris surette, whose beefy jock-face stares out at the reader, under the title "her walk of shame".

whatever i was doing at the time must have been far more important than the tempest stirred up by this "scandalous" article.

let's understand one thing: the first amendment to the constitution of the US protects the right of anyone (with a few exceptions of which this is not one) to say and publish anything (with a few exceptions of which this is not one). so i am not going to demand that he be reprimanded, or his newspaper be reprimanded or even fairfield university get a slap on the wrist. he has probably come to realize by now that this article was not a very smart one, nor was it a good idea to publish it.

while searching for something entirely unrelated i fell into the "her walk of shame" page a few minutes ago. below you will find the comment which i have left at the site.

let's not forget chris surette.



he wanted fame and got notoriety instead.

* * *

so high school.

first of all one wonders at whom this is aimed - and i speak as someone who has been writing most of her life.

while it mostly addresses the "boys", it throws the odd bit toward the "girls". now, the last time i looked i found that most students at post-secondary institutions were adults or nearly adults, at least chronologically. am i then to assume that the author is addressing the very youngest members of the student body?

let's see.

the "lucky guy" can share this story at the grape - why, it's a pub. the lucky young guy is thus counselled not only to have a bit of rumpy-pumpy with someone he might not wish to invite into his bed when sober, the "girl" (presumably also very young, given that she clearly has not the discrimination to select the more honourable guy from the tools) is advised that the story of her conquest will be shared ad nauseam around the beer-soaked tables of the grape. as it appears that every one of you tools is seriously swilling draft instead of educating himself, that nauseam will come sooner than you think.

and it sounds like underage drinking to me. it's actually inadvisable to support underage drinking in most jurisdictions. i live in a more liberal country than you and still one looks askance at anyone who actively supports or advises breaking the law.

secondly i have a bit of a quibble with your continuity. lucky young stud, you have managed to invite "the swan" to "your place"; when the next morning you might be disillusioned by your partner, it is recommended that you "get out of there".

eureka! this article is aimed at morons! who else would invite a girl to his place, and split the next morning, leaving her in his bed? be careful. the revenge of the dumped might be to squat in the dumper's apartment (and this is real estate terminology, not scatological).

that they are morons, indeed, is proven by the reference to their inability to remember the name of a person that has spent the entire night with them. most everyone i know, including my cat, recalls the name of a visitor, a guest. and my cat has better manners.

as if to underscore the rather low mental abilities of these morons, the writer (whom one will not dignify with his name) now builds up their sexual prowess, their studliness, with such emphatic words and images as "12 deep" and "the pounding". clearly his moronic audience has such poor self-imagery that such crude support is required in order to get it up.

we now get into territory that is clearly anti-feline, because when i read this aloud to my cat, who is a very intelligent young man, he laughed himself sillier than he ever did on catnip. don't "raw dog" it? yeah, okay. but it goes beyond that. who began as a "swan" has clearly, in his estimation, degenerated into first a victim, then a slut, a "stage five clinger", a broad, and a gonorrhea-riddled, heartless "hood rat".

yo, dawg, wrap your tool before one of the cuties grabs the hammer from your hand and brains you with it. because there is something you clearly do not yet know: women stick together. you think you are inflicting a "walk of shame" on your victim?

i'm betting that the walk of shame has been yours, boy, ever since you published this stupid, ridiculous, offensive piece of "*rap".

you live in the united states, which protects your freedom to say whatever you want, to publish whatever drivel drools from your infantile mouth. i wouldn't sanction you, boy. i would give you, your name, and your idiotic, sophomoric twaddle as wide a publication as possible, so that everyone, everywhere, will know what motivates you and what your morals are, though i am sure that your parents by now have disowned you, changed their names and moved to springfield to be near a more upright man, homer simpson.

by the way, you ruthless, shameless tool, thanks for providing your picture. i haven't had this good a laugh in a very long time.


c2009 bluemlein.blogspot.com

What About NObama?

Barack Obama may yet regret accepting the Nobel peace prize.

It could not have turned out better, as far as his opponents are concerned, if the Republicans had been able to fasten this millstone around his neck themselves. What will Obama do now, how will he be perceived, when he has to make tough, unpopular decisions about rogue states, nuclear weapons, and the various wars currently draining American resources? How will he be able to persuade his followers that being "rewarded" for his "peace efforts" in compatible with being the commander-in-chief of the armed forces and - if one may borrow an archaic term for a moment - "decider" in all matters military?

Meanwhile, on the medical insurance front, the Democrats appear to be so hungry for a two-term majority that they are allowing themselves to be divided and conquered by the Republicans and the various interested lobbies. Were they not all at death's door, last fall?

Obama is very good, indeed - with words. But he and the Democrats have squandered so much of his goodwill capital and momentum that even as ardent a supporter as Jon Stewart is railing against their inaction.

How can the Nobel be anything but a further hindrance?

He should have accepted the committee's enthusiasm and support, but he would have better served himself, his position and his country if he had graciously declined the award.


Maybe the thumb should have gone in the other direction?




c2009 bluemlein.blogspot.com

WORLD EXCLUSIVE - SCALAMANDRE SOLD

September 4, 2009 - Eighty years after its founding Scalamandre, the legendary textile company that some people rank next to God and Mariano Fortuny, has been sold to a man convicted in 2007 of cheque cashing fraud.

Adriana Scalamandre Bitter, only child of company founder Franco Scalamandre and his wife, Flora Baranzelli, sold the company early this summer to Louis Renzo, a principal in C.L.B. Cheque Cashing Inc., which was convicted in April 2007 of Rewarding Official Misconduct in the Second Degree (http://www.banking.state.ny.us/pr070426.htm) He and his co-accused were sentenced to five years' probation. They also are subject to a lifetime ban from involvement, either direct or indirect, in the financial services industry. Together, the defendants paid a total monetary penalty of $4.3 million.

None of the Scalamandre family members have any further association with the company. Mrs. Bitter's son Ward was trained in all aspects of the family business but decided on a different career path, which took him to Morgan Stanley among others. In 2001 he returned to restructure Baranzelli Silk Surplus(http://www.baranzelli.com/history.html) of New York. Originally funded by Scalamandre, but now owned only by Ward Bitter, the company sold Scalamandre's discounted old-stocks and overruns to the public. Many of those fabrics regularly find their way onto eBay, with no distinction being made by the resellers as to their age or status.

Scalamandre had been waging a long and nasty war with eBay, which permitted unscrupulous sellers to sell not only dead stock but outright counterfeit fabric under the Scalamandre name. This blog's previous posts on the Textile Wars (which see) detailed the experiences with several of those sellers. It was only when eBay accepted Scalamandre's right to finger the fakes that a significant dent was made in the counterfeit business; much Scalamandre fabric being sold online, however, continues to be old stock that has been resold several times before being listed.

Baranzelli now sells its own brand of fabrics.

Ward's brothers have also dissociated themselves from the company; their sister is an architect.

Scalamandre has a decades-long reputation as one of the finest textile producers in the world but was blindsided by the economic disaster.

An industry insider, who has previously helped in the prosecution of the counterfeiters - as detailed previously in these pages - told us the brutal economic climate, coupled with the banking industry's refusal to lend money to virtually anybody, took its toll.

He also sent a copy of the email sent out by Scalamandre after the sale (posted below for your reading pleasure); in it there is no suggestion that any major changes are planned. It does, however, include a four-page survey, hosted by surveymonkey.com.

Renzo has no experience in textiles. Following his conviction he bought a promotional products company that puts company logos on a variety of merchandise.

Weeks after he bought Scalamandre, Renzo shut down the trimmings division. He has hired Brian Landow, whose company, LANCO, produces promotional chocolate products. LANCO and Scalamandre are located in Hauppage, Long Island. LANCO has received development money from the Long Island Development Corporation. (http://www.lidc.org/PR0025.htm)



world copyright 2009 bluemlein.blogspot.com



c2009 bluemlein.blogspot.com

Google - huge, fat and arrogant

Well, the Nazis at Google are still at it.

My friend has a small business in the art field. Her company name is "last name+art" - such as, for example, "spencerart", and not unreasonably she relies in large measure on email.

So it was some time ago that she tried to register her name as username for a Gmail address - for example, spencerart@gmail.com:

- it was "unavailable".

- it is not being used by anyone.

- it simply is not available to her because someone at Google has some sort of nefarious interest in it.

She has asked several times for an explanation, from the people who run gmail, and she has faxed a letter to Larry Page, one of Google's founders, asking him why his company is withholding her name and what it intends to use it for. She was not expecting an answer from him and so it did not exactly bother her that she got none.

But "the gmail team" are something else.

After receiving no response several times, she wrote:

"I WANT TO KNOW WHAT YOU PEOPLE INTEND TO DO WITH
MY BUSINESS NAME
--- The Google Team
wrote:

> Hello,
>
> Thank you for your response.
>
> While we appreciate your interest in the
> username "******art," we're
> unable to reveal further information for
> privacy reasons.
>
> Sincerely,
>
> The Google Team"

as far as I can see this arbitrary, high-handed and snot-nosed approach by the Google Nazis requires some explanation, which is not forthcoming as the gmail team appears to have the same arrogant attitude as Louis XIV - his motto may have been l'etat, c'est moi, but theirs clearly is "l'internet, c'est google".

Today, I tried the following:

I entered first and last name, Flora Huntingdon, with the username huntingdonart@gmail.com:

"Get started with Gmail
First name: flora
Last name: huntingdon
Desired Login Name: huntingdonart
Examples: JSmith, John.Smith



huntingdonart is available @gmail.com"

So now tell me why "huntingdonart" should be available, but hers, a legitimate business name, is not.

Do not hold your breath while awaiting an answer. After all, Google is so enormous a business that it can - and does - get away with whatever it perceives as being in its interest - and you, paeon, be damned, even if your name belongs legally to you.


c2009 bluemlein.blogspot.com

MCCAIN - SABOTAGED BY HIS OWN PARTY?

Even to an only mildly interested foreigner whose politics are - to the minds of most Americans - stuck to the far left wall, the recent debacle within the Republican Party was puzzling.

That a man of John McCain's calibre should choose, as running mate, an unknown - to him - untested, venal, fourth-rate neophyte hick like Sarah Palin, is too bizarre for comfort. At worst, it indicated a fatal hubris, a cynical political trick to pick up votes from that great, unwashed, amorphous entity known as the "base" (a truly appropriate word in at least two of its meanings). At best, it suggested that the man was getting a bit old and fuzzy thinking had set in.

Now that the extent of the damage to the Grand Old Party is beginning to be revealed it is time to think about this person's "anointing" as a "star" by the very political insiders against which she railed so strenuously.

The Obama phenomenon - that a politician could speak in rational, adult terms, to an audience presumed to be equally rational, equally adult - is something new in politics. Even the revered JFK had bags full of dirty tricks, or rather, his father, who bankrolled his campaign, did.

But Obama, to warm to whom it took us some time, never deviated from his intent to keep the discussion on that narrow path. Time and again there were opportunities to turn into a pit bull - lipstick-wearing or not - to attack his opponents, particularly once Palin entered the arena. But he resisted. Since it is necessary to be attacked so that it may be returned in kind, this sort of refusal to play by the established rules must have been intensely frustrating to the GOP strategists. Their purpose, after all, is to return the party to power, by hook or by crook.

Knowing that there is a significant doorstop in the White House, a drag on their fortunes, not a dead duck so much as an albatross, some of the high muckety-mucks in the party must have realized that they were not going to win.

These people are the same ones that were highly antagonistic to their own candidate. Make no mistake about it, McCain was, and is, deeply distrusted and reviled by a large chunk of the party. The man, after all, had integrity in buckets, the man never hesitated to tar and feather his own, if need be. The man, in other words, did not embrace the concept of standing behind one's party at all costs. And that did not endear him to a number of major GOP players. Oral Roberts, for example, refused to permit him to speak at his university. . . so much for intellectual freedom.

The majority of people are weary of the Republicans. Eight years of Dubya is more than eight years too many. The excesses and criminal activities of the last eight years are now coming home to roost on the Republicans' heads, and they might squat there for a long time. But - hey! perhaps some within the party thought McCain would make a fairly good scapegoat.
He is old, after all, and won't be back in four years, or eight. Hardly universally loved by party members, he could wear a target on his back without taking too many of his clique with him. And, as he is loyal, and a gentleman, he is unlikely to speak out against his own.

So we can look at Palin in another light. Dumb as a stump but photogenic, ignorant but capable or rousing the rabble, she made a convenient anchor. And by the sounds of it, McCain permitted this anchor to be affixed firmly around his ankle without a peep. In one fell swoop the people could be given "hope" by the "star quality" of this "fellow maverick"; after the inevitable defeat McCain could be conveniently blamed for picking her and thus "sealing the party's fate".

Sounds possible. Yes, we know that there is an enormous difference between possible and probable. But it is plausible and it remains a tantalizing possibility.


As for Palin, she is finished. No amount of tutoring, no amount of whitewash, rebranding or reinvention can return her to the supposedly squeaky-clean state in which she was presented to the world. Listening to the prank call by two Quebecois comedians one is struck by the number of opportunities she was given to realize that it was a hoax, opportunities she did not take because she is DUMB AS A STUMP.

One cannot do much with deadwood except to burn it, or ignore it and leave it to all the little critters that will, over time, turn it into something useful. Over a loooong time.

Meanwhile, though, there is something to be said to John McCain:

Time cannot erase the sacrifice you made for your country, nor can it dull the keen edge of the gloss of your honour. But perhaps time can eventually wash the stain of the Palin choice from your name, because of all the available, talented, photogenic, young, intelligent people from which a future leader could have been chosen, hers should have been the last to be considered.


c2008 bluemlein.blogspot.com

Time To 'Get Real'

The historic election of Barack Obama to the presidency of the United States, a mere century and a half after the country
imperfectly and unwillingly shook off the idea that one man could own another, will be seen as a step every bit as significant as that of Neil Armstrong when he set his boot down upon the dead dust of our moon.

Not only significant for the election of a man with black skin, this election also marked the first time a candidate tried to hew to the road of adulthood, respect and reason. Whereas John McCain, out of desperation, yielded to the Rovian thuggery of playing to the lowest common denominator, Obama brushed off more than a few incitements to return the favour in kind.

Perhaps there is yet hope that people from a broad sweep of backgrounds, contexts and ancestries can join together to make common cause against the evils that are capable of tearing apart the fabric of their society.


We all know that the wolf is at the door, accompanied by wolverines and other predators, and we hear the not-so-distant strains of the piper. So we must gather ourselves together and work from our commonalities rather than our differences. Surely anything is preferable to the throat-grabbing, head-bashing anger that rose up in the dying embers of the McCain campaign, that marred his generous and eloquent concession speech. One wonders what might have happened if that one, the real McCain, had continued his electioneering, instead of the one that opened a Pandora's box of antagonisms and dislikes.

Coaxing hope out of the bottom will not be as difficult as it might have been first time around, however, for hope has been one of the keynotes of Obama's campaign. It is something positive and constructive to seize upon as a guide to the complex repairs that must be made to so many aspects of US - and global - business, society and industry, that were let slide in the mirage of the past eight years.

Yes, the US has a historic choice, a man whose skin is black.

Yet one feels that it is also important to note that this black man has no genetic or emotional associations to the desperate struggle that split the country for so many decades; he is not a descendant of slaves, nor of free black Americans, and thus comes to the table - to the presidency - free of any taint or motive from historic grievances, wrongs to avenge, or other unresolved issues.

In a way he is unique - an African American whose route to the table is not through the terror of slavery or the
long fight to overcome prejudice; who can undestand from first-hand experience what it means, yet by virtue of his ancestry has stood, paradoxically, to the side of both black and white American society and in it. Everyone - even those who voted for the Republican party rather than the man - should be prepared to roll up their sleeves and get to work without, for once, thinking about other people's politics, religion, choice of decor or ancestry. The damage done under the mindless watch of the albatross in the White House is severe and pervasive, whether in an illegally founded war upon the wrong country or the wholesale destruction of the financial sector. The next three months cannot pass quickly enough.

c2008 bluemlein.blogspot.com

Improvin' the Wannabe Decider

So the Republican National Committee spent $150,000 on improvements to Sarah Palin?

We knew that some major work was needed but we didn't think it would cost that much.

The RNC must have felt that outfits at JC Penney or Target - surely the type of store likely to be patronized by the 'frugal' governor - were unsuitable, considering that she is runnin' for vice-president.

We have news for the RNC: you can dress her up all you want but you cannot hide the fact that Mrs Palin is dumb as a stump. Not that this is necessarily a negative quality - heaven only knows how many dumb but attractive women are in surprisingly elevated positions as wives, girlfriends, actresses, singers, members of one board or another, but they usually have somethin' that Mrs. Palin does not, namely a pleasin' personality. There have been comparisons to a pit bull - but the canine does not have her nasal whine, which even strenuous coachin' by a former actor cannot completely subdue. We are reminded more forcefully of Bart Simpson's Grampa's false teeth as they are clamped tightly onto a fan blade, sending Bart very nearly into orbit. In that same way Mrs Palin seizes hold of somethin' and refuses to yield, even when the RNC is goin' into a cataplectic fit upon hearin' her lies about Obama "pallin' around with terrorists".


The longer Mrs. Palin is left loose in the public eye, the more she grates, whether she is denyin' that the RNC spent the equivalent of at least a one-bedroom condo on her appearance, or she is tellin' tall tales about the vice president's function in the Senate - "A vice president has a really great job because not only are they there to support the president's agenda, they're there like the team member, the teammate to the president. But also, they're in charge of the United States Senate, so if they want to they can really get in there with the senators and make a lot of good policy changes that will make life better for Brandon and his family and his classroom. And it's a great job and I look forward to havin' that job.”

Admittedly she was talkin' to grade three students but this deep misunderstandin' of the role of the vice president vis-a-vis the Senate - to cast the decidin' vote in times of a tie - also shows how inflated and self-aggrandizin' a view Mrs Palin has of herself. Can she blame it on the Alaskan air? You betcha! Is Alaska not the place where cabbages grow to the size of Volkswagens?

We have previously noted that Mrs Palin is hyper-ambitious. In her own mind, at least, she appears to be well on the road to the White House - whether via the increasingly less likely route of accompanyin' an elderly candidate and prayin' for the unsayable as others pray for rain, or perhaps in 2012, as candidate for the Republican Party. On this point one must hope, in all earnestness and with all sincerity, that the Party will irrevocably scotch that stupid idea if they wish ever to return to significant power. One Decider was more than enough. Mrs Palin may look sexy to a lot of men but to the Party itself she must be an ever heavier, more obvious albatross.

c2008 bluemlein.blogspot.com

Froggie Did a-Courtin' Go...

Watching the debate last night, between would-be vice-presidents Joe Biden and Sarah Palin, we were struck by Palin's relentless glorification of her man, John McCain, and the high-keyed, almost manic manner in which she presented herself. It was more than a contrast to her dull-seeming, ill-informed appearances with CBS's Katie Couric; it was as though she had stepped through a door into another universe and come out as SuperMom.

There is no denying that this woman can cram; there is no denying that she can work a room even from a stage. But the aura of the enterprise had more than a whiff of futility about it. The idea, that someone can go from "hockey mom" to small-time mayor to vice-president in a couple of years and a few short hops is uniqely American and calls to mind - in this instance, at least - the movie "Election" in which Reese Witherspoon exhibits the same relentless drive to get to the top. And it rings alarm bells. All these alarms, as has been expressed in the domestic and international media, concern the possibility that she could become president by default, should McCain die or become incompetent in office.

That she can acquire and regurgitate any number of facts in a short time cannot obscure the fact that a president also requires judgment and tact, must at times keep the cards close to the chest, that at times s/he must dance on knife edge while juggling many balls. And we are not convinced that she is as capable as that. Hollywood aside, the real world is messy, full of loose ends and unsatisfactory conclusions, and even the best-informed, smartest, most sympathetic person can and does make mistakes that can have drastic consequences that don't make themselves felt immediately. And the likelihood of this occurring in a Palin fantasy - we can't bring ourselves to say "Palin presidency", it simply is absurd - is rather higher than an Obama presidency, even if she is livelier and prettier than he is.

In her recent meetings with heads of state, Palin has been guarded and supervised to within an inch of her life, as the saying goes. We would venture to guess that the amount of time she has spent, since being nominated, alone or with just her family, is rather slim. So that the question becomes - who will supervise her if she should by chance be elected?

Ms Palin spent many minutes throwing out cliches that reminded us of The Simpsons, of all people, specifically Montgomery Burns and his railing against the elected officials and "fat cats" whom he will unseat and eject from "the state house". As pointed out numerous times by Joe Biden, McCain, by his quarter-century presence in Washington, D.C., cannot help but be considered in that same group, cannot help but be called to account for his many votes supporting the organizations, corporations and people that Palin dispatched with obvious distaste. In her need/desire/cool calculation that she present herself as being a true outsider, Palin is overlooking the fact that all politics is compromise, and those who would not compromise should not be there. So that her protestations that she would clean up Washington are hollow and outright silly. What will she use, Miz Clean?


As for calling the sub-prime mortgage mess the consequence of "predatory lenders" (repeated several times) that simply shows the simplistic view of someone who does not know, or appreciate, or understand the complexity of the mess that was kick-started by George W. Bush after 9/11, when he told the American people that salvation and protection from terror would come through shopping. The mess highlights a societal problem: casting borrowing as a sinful or shameful activity that a true American would not deign to undertake also creates an environment in which borrowing, and its consequences, are never properly addressed or analyzed or taught. By subsequently cloaking the spending - which surely would have to be underpinned by lending at some point, for almost everyone - in patriotism, Bush set the average American off on the road to perdition. As with the White Rabbit, Americans merrily followed their leader's advice and now find themselves in freefall down the rabbit hole. "Predatory lenders" - a favourite phrase of Palin's - were just one set of many that contributed to the unwellness of the U.S. banking/credit system, as were the media that extolled the savvy and virtues of "managers" who were taking home, in some cases, a million dollars a week. And whose army of tax experts undoubtedly found a number of ways to reduce that dreaded figure, taxable income.

The thought that someone with such simplistic notions - even if she is a quick study - should have the possibility of stepping into the Oval Office as anything but a visitor is enough to give one full-body shivers.


Her constant repetition of the grand numbers of barrels of "gassanoil", at least some of it "clean and green", underscore the fact that this woman, and the party she represents, have their heads in the sand as far as the real crisis in energy supplies goes. One longs for a true debate, one in which the cliched and rehearsed responses are stripped away to reveal what she actually thinks.


Was the debate structured to require or permit the speakers to address the moderator rather than one another? It seemed more a series of interchanges with PBS's Gwen Ifil than an actual debate between two candidates that ought to be considered equal. This structure gave the advantage to Palin, who looked beyond Ifil, beyond the live audience to the viewers at home. She presented herself as a "hockey mom", a wholesome presence full of gosh darns, and gee whizzes, and dropped endings that fairly screamed "I am one of you!" And she cast herself as loyal follower of the chosen candidate to the extent that we thought she would follow Howdy Doody, had he been selected as the party's candidate.


Palin is a big frog in a little pond who, through circumstances, has been transported to the ocean.
We hope that the safety net keeps her from falling into it, as much for the ocean as for the frog.

c2008 bluemlein.blogspot.com

Shake that Tambourine, Boy, them End Times is a-Comin!

One finds it difficult to accept that in the Republic, which advertises itself as the freest place on earth, whose citizens like to think of themselves as the most skeptical of men - a large chunk of the population accepts what it is told, believes that their Glorious Leader does not lie, that everything is honourable and above board. But then these are also the people who used to queue for the most recent installment of Bat Boy, who fawn over image, who lap up awards shows, who believe equally in God, the Almighty Dollar, and Survivor. And that Mrs Palin is capable of fulfilling the duties of her office following the inevitable moment when McCain decides (pardon, Shakespeare) "to die, not to sleep".

It would be interesting to hear from these believers. Do they believe also that the world is only a few thousand years young? That Satan really stalks the land and the only way to fight him is to be obedient, that is, to vote Republican? Was that silliness not swept away by the most recent fresh gust of Reason?

Do these believers not understand the difference between truth and lie?

Truth is that Mrs Palin, as mayor of Wasilla (pop. somewhere between 5,469 and 9,780), hired a lobbyist and travelled to Washington annually to support earmarks for the town totaling $27 million or $2,760.7361963190184049079754601227 per resident - earmarks that she now attacks so violently she appears to be frothing at the mouth.

Truth is that, in her two years as governor, Alaska has requested nearly $750 million in special federal spending, another $1,119.3144422903859843922794167029 per resident, by far the largest per-capita request in the country. Is this, perhaps, what made her stand out to the backroom boys? the audacity of so enormous an amount, for such paucity of beneficiaries? Was she already laying the groundwork for her ascension to power?

Do they accept without question, without verification, that Mrs Palin told the big bad boys in Washington that she didn't want $398 million for a bridge from Ketchikan to an island with 50 residents and an airport? (In case you are interested, that amounts to $7,960,000 per resident. And why would those fifty residents need an airport?)

Firstly, her hackles went up only after the plan was ridiculed nationally as a "Bridge to Nowhere".

Secondly, she now has ensconced herself in the lap of the Big Bad Boys, has sold out whatever integrity she might have had, has named her price to Lucifer - or whichever Devil is on duty at the moment.

Yes! - and these people probably also are the ones who believe that we are in The End Times. wooowoooowoooo!

Let's put it plainly, folks:

if this is End Times, then you need look no farther to find the forces of evil than >D'oh< bya, Cheney, Halliburton Co., Rove, Abu Ghraib, Abramoff, Cunningham, DeLay, Foggo, Foley, Gonzales, Griles, Kerik, Libby, the National Security Agency, Renzi, Tobias, Wolfowitz. Better yet, you can follow your mousetracks on a page laid out visually - http://www.slate.com/id/2165783 - or you can just read about it at http://www.slate.com/id/2165980". Or visit http://www.halliburtonwatch.org, which chronicles all the known misdeeds of the corporation that is tied so intimately to the (vice) president.

This is where Satan and the gang hang out, these are their evil deeds, and if you are old enough to remember Seven Days In May, or the Manchurian Candidate, or any number of similar fictions, this is why you can weep:

* because the Forces of Evil have sold out your country;

* they have put greed and profit ahead of the dignity and respect that should be every person's right;

* have been destroying the legal, moral, ethical foundations that made the US a truly different place, once;

* have lied nakedly to friend and foe alike, in the service of Mammon and of power;

* have readily taken your children - your future - and sent them to Iraq to fight a war predicated on a mountain of lies. (Lest you think we know not our Bible, ask yourselves how appropriate this quotation is: "What have you done? Listen! Your brother's blood is crying out to me from the ground.")

To that infamous list you can add two more who would sell out not just their own souls but those of everyone they can hoodwink into voting for them.

If you believe that you are in the End Times you should consider that these two are, themselves, part of that cabal that has been running the U.S. into the ground.

If you do not, you are probably already much likelier to vote for Barack Obama, who is, after all, an imperfect being, a man, but one who does not have ties to the above.

Even if "End Times" is the farthest, most obscure thought in your head, you can be sure that this election is much more important than many recent ones. It is as much a contest between Reason and Stupidity, Honour and Dishobour, Sobriety and Venality, as it is between left vs. right, Democrat vs. Republican, et vs. cetera.

Every single characteristic that made the United States a great and generous place, an idea that was capable of burning down the barricades of stupidity, prejudice, ignorance, bigotry, hatred and animosity, is at risk of being destroyed. If you cannot force yourself up off the sofa to vote this November you may be asking yourself, in the new year, how you could have missed all the signs and portents.

It's End Times, all right, End of Republican Times.

c2008 bluemlein.blogspot.com

HEATHER, WEATHERIN' THE PALIN* RAGE

*quick now - what's red white and blue? ohnonononono, guys, we aren't talking about the Stars and Stripes. We're talking about the newly acquired "star" candidate of the Republican Party, Red as in neck, White as in Pal(e)in and Blue as in why isn't everyone voting Democrat!?

Our compatriot and fellow journalist Heather Mallick, surely one of the better writers that the Globe and Mail let go, in a fit of someone's pique, recently wrote a column about the Republican Convention. (Read it, it 's engaging and entertaining - http://www.heathermallick.ca/cbc.ca-columns/a-mighty-wind-blows-through-republican-convention.html) In it she cited yet another terrific columnist, John Doyle, who called Mrs Palin an Alaska hillbilly, and that, along with a number of other statements, appears to have ignited a "firestorm" on the right, who seem always to have their panties in knots about something(http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/capress/080920/world/us_cda_palin). Someone named Greta Van Susteren repeatedly called her a pig - well, she is on Fox News, what else should one expect? Fox prides itself on being the deliberately dumbest, most ignorant, most prejudiced television entity around and it is all about money.

And the ignorami commented with such stupidities as "Canada is made up of small towns and many if not most trace their ancestry back to their 'redneck cousin' and they still have relatives here in the U.S." - dream on, bozo, Canada is a cosmopolitan country made up of virtually every nationality on the planet. We too have our rednecks, who currently are gearing up to vote for one Stephen Harper, who is probably your wet dream boy.

And calling us morons - why, that shows that your vocabulary has reached a grade four level. Keep up the improvements and you ought to be getting out of grade school in time for retirement.

Way to go Heather, we are standing right with you.

The U.S., we are told, is the home of the brave, and still - let's hope - the land of free speech. So let's examine Mrs Palin a little bit more.


Mrs Palin is a type, all right, a power-hungry, I'll-smack-you-upside-the-head-if-you-don't-behave type of mom, a hockey mom all right but the kind whose great loud mouth is used to drown out other hockey moms. One who cloaks her desire to run everyone's life with the piety of religious belief. We have known her many a time in our years of being a different type of mom. One can sense her coming before one even has her in view.

One sees it in the glint in her eyes as she is traipsing across the U.S., a country conveniently shell-shocked by last week's self-immolation of Wall Street. It is nakedly obvious that she smells power. One can hear the wheels grinding, the calculation - every day he gets a day older and a step closer to the grave
>chortle< and then!

and then, ladies and gentlemen, we truly will have an ignorant person, small-minded in the extreme, beholden to some of the darkest, slimiest powers behind the shaky throne upon which she is thrust, and with her finger too damn close to the button for our comfort.


Mrs Palin will be debating Democratic vice-presidential candidate Joe Biden but this has come about only after the Republican Party held out for a tightened debate format, one that will consist primarily of yes-no questions that require nothing of her but that she remember which is which.

One supposes that it is actually fruitless, perhaps even stupid, to assume that she might have some coherent thoughts that have not been put into her head by one of the boys still sniffing "eau de W" on his nose.

And yet one can't have just the presidential candidates debating, especially not in a year when the Reaper is in the precinct. One hears him rattling around occasionally, when McCain has one of his blank moments, reminiscent of Keats's "drowsy numbness", in which he looks entirely lost - the same look Aunt Violet had shortly before she decamped entirely to Neverland. McCain's hiding behind his obviously fresher memories of forty years ago, his aimless, doddering aura, also recall Baudelaire - "Où coule au lieu de sang l'eau verte du Léthé" - where [in whose body] flows, instead of blood, the green water of Lethe - Lethe being the Greek personification of forgetfulness, oblivion. Before we leave him there, let's all remember that Lethe is the root of our word "lethal". Anyone need a definition of that?

It is curious that simply being a Republican is not in itself lethal this election year, given the corruption, lies, and gallop toward totalitarianism of the Bush years. It's old news that the election of 2000 was stolen, the Democratic candidate of 2004 was deliberately sabotaged, the dismantling of rights guaranteed by the Constitution continues at breakneck speed, and it's startling that none of these evinces even a yawn from the broad populace. Perhaps they, too, have dipped their oars into the waters of Lethe.


c2008 bluemlein.blogspot.com

Stephen Harper The Brrrrrrrrrrittle Without The Peanuts

I've just had a look at a blog by our local Member of Parliament, who beat the Liberal incumbent last time around by 246 votes. This should have told him that the last Canadian election was a protest vote against a party that had been in power for a very long time and which was being racked by a scandal or three (note to self: find a government that has had no scandals -LOL. . . LMAO!!!) - but he chose to read it a different way. He took his election to mean that he had been elected for being himself - not bloody likely - and that as one of the Chosen, diligently blowing hard in Ottawa, he must let the people know it - time after time after time after time. . .yea, even unto eternity.

So he flooded local mailboxes with flyers purportedly outlining the government's work for which we should be grateful, but which were, in fact, political advertising.

Ordinarily one would say out, out, damned ad! and throw the thing into the recycle bin.

Except for the little matter of free franking privileges that are one of the often misused perks of our MPs. Boy! were they misused or what? In the first months we tossed at least a half dozen flyers, notably four in one week, but then we began to readdress them to the Prime Minister's Office, with choice comments for his perusal. As if . . .

. . . hmmmm. While it is highly unlikely that Stephen Harper reads every piece of mail coming to his office, he is known to micromanage his government's operation. As a matter of fact his most recent feat, calling an election more than a year before the new fixed date for elections - which he himself engineered via a bill that his minions voted for - amounted to the same pouty sour grapes of a five- or six-year-old saying "I'm taking my ball home" because the others weren't playing his way. Harper tried to blame it on the other parties, but fact remains that he claims he can't govern with the minority he had and so we must elect again. Wake up, Steve - there will be much egg on your face when another minority takes up the reins. But this is a digression - we sent the junk mail to the PMO, each and every time we got another advert.

Soon there was a small item in a local newspaper which took the local MP to task for abusing his free franking privileges - proof that we weren't the only ones ticked off by this petty criminal behaviour.

What? You think labelling it "petty criminal behaviour" is excessive? Not according to the Tory playbook. The party of Stephen Harper is one seeking to criminalize every transgression, no matter how minor, and to exact stiffer penalties so that the criminal is "justly" punished. So, yes, our local MP was stealing postage for flyers that had no relevance to any government work, but much to his ongoing self-advertisements.

What? You think this is a bit too rigid? There's the rub - the Prime Minister of Canada is himself too rigid, too inflexible, vastly unimaginative, and for one who has - at the very least - aligned himself with the religious right he has yet to pay a lot of attention to the teachings of one Jesus who counselled forgiving the transgressions of others as a way to be a better person.  

But then, the religious right is not about Christianity, it's about fire and brimstone and revenge and getting the God of Old to do their dirty work when someone irks them. (Even the MP in question adheres to the religious right.) And Harper simply won't bend, because he can't bend, because he lacks imagination and humanity.

This is not too harsh. Harper - like Duh-bya - is rigid to the point of brittleness. He may have a far better, more polished intellect than the leader of the free world, but he is not any more able to imagine other possibilities. (We think he might be this way because he had a bad experience at then-notoriously snobbish Richview Collegiate, teen years and high school being major factors in the formation of one's adult personality.) And this rigidity causes him to micromanage not just the government but also his campaign. This election is not about parties, it is all about HIM - Stephen Harper. Everywhere one looks there is Harper, heart and soul and corpus of the Conservative Party of Canada.


WOULD YOU TRUST THIS MAN?

We don't see anyone except Harper, cozying up to the fireplace, philosophizing and ruminating - and possibly chewing his cud once the camera moves away. He thinks, perhaps, that he is showing his softer, warmer side, his human side. But he is simply showing - again - that he has only one. He is a nearly two-dimensional being like those in Edwin Abbott's great book, Flatland (except that it might, in Harper's case, be subtitled A Non-Romance in One Dimension). And this assault of Harper-style "hominess", which makes one feel about as warm and fuzzy as a cobra might, is showing also that, emperor or not, he has no clothes. It highlights that Harper's machinations are trite and predictable, that he will get others to do his dirty work - insulting and mocking people for their ethnicity, moral values, unfortunate ingestion of a food-borne poison - even as the ads connect "Harper" with "warmth" and that he will jettison his subordinates if publicity threatens to swamp his boat.

Harper is unlikely to permit further mass mailings of pouf pieces, unless originated by himself. Our local MP - who resumed flooding our mailboxes with irrelevant bits of paper a short while later - should remember that. We don't have a lot of hope on that point as he strikes us as terribly naive and jejune. Perhaps he will be re-elected. But he still will serve at Harper's pleasure. Hm - "Harper" and "pleasure" in the same thought? not bloody likely.

c2008 bluemlein.blogspot.com