Let Us Climb Shit Mountain

Let the image sink in
if there is any space
for it to sink in
because maybe your mind
is already so full of s£!t
that there is no way you can swallow more.
Like the earth:
saturated
with crap

You did this
I did this
we all did this
and everyday
we do it
faster and harder
until one day it really sinks in
because it will weight more than you
or than me
more than the earth itself
and it will make the loudest and
most disgusting fucking sound
ever heard.

And the last one too.

85 Trucks of food, 35 tons each, full of money.

Dear Family and Friends,
Headline news on the propaganda mill one day this week was that three trillion Zimbabwe dollars had been raised for President Mugabe's 84th birthday party. I thought about what you could do with that much money but before I could work it out I had to check in a dictionary just exactly how much a trillion was.

My sources say that a billion is a thousand million and a trillion is a million million. This means that for the President's birthday celebration being held in Beitbridge, there is a pile of money which on paper is a 3 followed by 12 zeroes. Even in Zimbabwe's collapsed state, 3 trillion dollars is a huge amount of money. It didn't take long before my kitchen table was littered with bits of scrap paper covered with handwritten sums. Why didn't I just use a calculator you might ask? That's simple, there are too many digits and so this sum had to be done by hand.

The calculations took some time to perform and the results were shocking. For three trillion dollars I could buy three million kilograms of maize meal at the present Grain Marketing Board price of a million dollars a kg. This, of course, is assuming that the GMB had any maize meal for sale, which they say they haven't. Allowing half a kg of maize meal per person, 6 million Zimbabweans, half the population of the country, could have had one decent meal with the President's birthday party money. A friend who is far more mathematically minded than me, and had more patience with all those lines of zeroes, worked the figures out a different way. 85 trucks, each holding 35 tonnes of maize, could have been filled with the three trillion dollars of birthday party money.

Moving away from the dollars, I went in search of ingredients usually found at a birthday party. Three major supermarket chains which have outlets all over the country were visited. The cake came first on my list but there was no flour, sugar, margarine, baking powder, milk or eggs in any of the supermarkets.
Puddings and sweet treats were next on my list but there was no jelly, instant pudding, custard, biscuits or tarts to buy. Sandwiches, I thought, they are good for parties but there was no bread or rolls, no spread, cheese, cold meats or sandwich fillings to buy. What about a hot meal I thought but there was no maize meal, rice, pasta or potatoes and so that idea was also a non starter.

The shopping list and the search for ingredients was a pointless exercise but at least it was easier than trying to understand the latest official inflation figures. In January 2008 inflation was one hundred thousand, five hundred and eighty percent - it is the stuff of hellish nightmares and the reason why we parents can't sleep at night.

Trying to understand three trillion dollars was utterly absurd for an ordinary mum in a collapsed country. Hardest of all though was knowing that half the population of the country could have gone to bed tonight on a full stomach if the birthday party had been sacrificed for the suffering, hungry people of a country whose 84 year old ruler has been in power for almost 28 years.
Until next time, thanks for reading, love cathy.

From Cathy Buckle @: http://www.cathybuckle.com/thisweek.shtml

More about food

I relink the guardian news about food production here, because I think it is very important and its well written and researched. It's a scary piece of news I admit, but I would like to add a few things that are not mentioned in the article. One, maybe a minor one, is the fact that fish stocks around the world are being depleted, that means that fish are being taken out of the water at a faster rate than they can procreate, and this has being going on for quite a few years, a consequence of this is that fish stocks close to developed countries have pretty much maxed out, and in turn our ships go far away, even to underdeveloped countries coast's to 'harvest' their fish, as a result villages and cities that depended a great deal on their fishing have to look elsewhere for food, and that probably means grain imports. (haven't really researched this one, its pure speculation)

Another issue they don't mention is water, as you know, water is an absolute necessity in order to grow food, and intensive agriculture requires intensive irrigation which requires water that many times is sourced by withdrawing water from aquifers faster than they naturally recharge. Result: water tables are falling pretty much everywhere: Citing Lester Brown: "Over-pumping is occurring in an alarming number of countries throughout the world. In parts of the North China Plain, water levels are dropping by ten feet per year, which is particularly disturbing since this region produces half of China's wheat and one-third of its corn. India is over-pumping in every state except in the northeast. There is extensive over-pumping in the southern Great Plains of the U.S. In fact, over half of the world's people live in countries where water tables are falling." And what is one of the effects of global warming? Yes, droughts in dry places and floods in wet places (quite generally).

And now add to this that energy is more expensive: They do mention as a factor that high oil prices will have an effect on the aid budget, that is obvious. Another fact is that high oil prices (and overall high energy prices) makes irrigation and all the harvesting process even more expensive, possibly pricing out farmers in poorer countries with no access to subsidies, which maybe will turn to subsistence agriculture instead of feeding the locals... that will just increase demand for grains making them more expensive until people will not be able to afford it. Another thing the article fails to mention is that the turn to bio-fuels is actually caused by high oil prices, maybe somebody will think that it is due to global action against global warming and maybe up to some extent it is (although some research has come to the conclusion that growing bio-fuels is actually worse due to the CO2 emitted by deforestation and other factors) , but the main cause is the dependence on the every-day-more-expensive oil imports. And why is that? well fellas, that is one of the first consequences of peak oil. More about this another day.

Well that' enough for now, I know I leave so many things out but I have to get some work done... Please does somebody has anything optimistic to say?

Now for some real Vertigo

Here is an excellent article that makes the obvious connexion between the subprime crisis and the rise in the price of oil with all its consequences, between them the transfer of wealth to the middle east and the fall of the dollar.
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/newsfull.php?newid=85606

On the same line this piece looks at the massive US trade deficit through the increase of the military budget. Analyzes the so-called "military Keynesianism" that is, the economic policy consisting of putting huge amount of resources on building an ever increasing military force to sustain economic growth. As we can see now, what is maybe considered the richest country in the world may have the biggest and most advanced army, but at the expense of being a country that is being now sold off to the middle east like parts of a car in a junkyard, at the expense of public health and education, and of the middle class going down the gutter. The article is quite long, but I really recommend its reading.
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/newsfull.php?newid=82203

And more about this on an excellent article by Peter Schiff.
http://www.europac.net/externalframeset.asp?from=home&id=11910

How the financial instruments got so complicated, and the derivate market so messed up, that some mortgage companies can't even tell who owns what.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=aejJZdqodTCM&refer=home

More about the global credit crunch... economic mayhem may very well be round the corner.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2008/feb/25/economics

And from the Financial Times, something that was waiting to happen, first signs of the real food crisis. The blunt equation is: More people that need more food, on soil that is increasingly eroded and degraded by industrialized agriculture and deforestation, used inefficiently to feed even more cattle and, now, cars, and even add to all this ever increasing chaotic weather! Do you feel the vertigo now?
http://cryptogon.com/?p=2088
More about this on the guardian today (26/02/08):
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/feb/26/food.unitednations
"WFP officials say the extraordinary increases in the global price of basic foods were caused by a "perfect storm" of factors: a rise in demand for animal feed from increasingly prosperous populations in India and China, the use of more land and agricultural produce for biofuels, and climate change."
Just as I was saying, except that they don't add to the 'storm' population growth or land degradation.

And just a few more things about the military industrial complex,
you can watch this documentary "Why we fight" on Google video, just click here, (i can not recommend it enough, it's a real eye opener!)
and you can listen to the last on point radio program which is about the same thing. But nothing better that to listen to Eisenhower's speech in 1960, you can read it here or listen to it.

Cosmic Calendar

I remember this really fascinated me on Carl's Sagan television series Cosmos when I was a kid, it is our yearly calendar assuming that the big bang was on the first of January, and that present time (or 1985, but at this scale it is really insignificant) is 31st of December at midnight. Yes, we are that small and that brief, kind of humbling in way.

and here is the footage. Thanks Sagan! (and thanks youtube!) BTW if anybody is interested I have the whole series in Divx that I can burn/lend.

More Nice News on a Very Nice Day

It is a bright sunny day, I feel almost like singing!

So here we go again with the story of the downer cow in a "meat packaging factory" in California.
Nice piece of news which comments on the reality that the meat industry (how an awful and truthful name!) is concentrated on a few hands, which pushes prices down and conditions to animal welfare lower: "Under such conditions, we can expect the meat packers to continue seeing animals as industrial commodities that must be processed as cheaply as possible to maintain profitability. And we can expect more abuse - both of animals and of the safety of our food supply." But I think that what matters is that people in general are not used to question what is on the tip of their forks, or to give a damn about where it comes from, it is this rooted ignorance which keeps the shit flowing... and given the capitalist system that we inhabit I doubt that things can turn around, as the media is controlled by private companies there to make a buck, and believe me when I say that telling people not to eat meat (or that type of meat) is bad business for big business... So draw your own conclusions, but the picture is clear.

http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/tom_philpott/2008/02/how_now_downer_cow.html

And now for a bit of Cosmology: Space junk, what a laugh!
"According to the space agency Nasa, there are now 9,000 pieces of orbiting junk, weighing a total of more than 5,500 tonnes: old rocket launchers, tools and instruments dropped by astronauts, and pieces of exploded spacecraft."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2008/feb/24/spaceexplorationspacejunk

Enough for now, gotta get out, enjoy the sun and maybe have a Belgian beer or two... or three what the hell I feel thirsty now!

One more thing, and I warn you that this is not for sensitive stomachs, yes, it's another food factory horror story. I'll post nicer things tomorrow, I promise.

Life is too short

Because I say so. Now. If I wouldn't say it, then it would be long, or the right length. But I say: life is too short, so it's too short, so don't waste time reading this, don't waste time listening to this and don't waste time, i mean, stop it, don't waste it, i'm telling myself to stop it, stop writing, stop wasting your time writing this, ok, I stop. But don't listen to this, its too slow, it won't get you anywhere, it will make you sad, it will stop you from doing other things that are not a waste of time, press stop, eject, cancel, yes, now, yes. Stop.

A few Photos of a few past days

This is at the church in St. Guiles in-the-fields, a gig with three duos: John Butcher and Mark Sanders, Alex Ward and John Turner, and John Tchicai and Tony Marsh. This is me and David before the concert drinking from a tahini jar.


This is John Butcher on Sax and Mark Sanders on drums. This was really good. First time I see John Butcher and I was impressed, Mark Sanders was supreme as usual. I know the vid quality is not great, but it is the sound that counts.

This is John Tchicai on Sax and Tony Marsh on drums. Very spiritual this man. On the vid, what he was saying before is something about turning mistakes into something beautiful, and that reminds me now of what louise bourgeois said on this interview. At the very end she says: "I transform hate into love, that's what makes me tick." Check it out! Great powerful and wise woman!


Details of the top of a theater. It is actually quite far, so I thank my 10x zoom of my camera. Actually it reminds me of one of Louise Bourgeois pieces called arc hysteria or something... hmm very different actually... is just the golden coat that is similar.

Typical London mishmash of old and new architecture. Here are three examples:

and a bucolic scene of a few tired seagulls waiting for some crumbs of our paninnis to fall.

Text for Nothing #8 (1958)

Sorry, I couldn't resist putting this one up, as I guess Beckett couldn't resist writing it either. Tell me if you finish listening to it, cause I haven't,
But I love the beginning.




From Aspen no. 5+6 Read by Jack MacGowan
written by Samuel Beckett

Enneagrams

I have heard about this some time ago but didn't do any research until yesterday. It is basically a personality system based on emotional fixations. You can do the test and it will give you a score in each of the personality type numbers. You can click here for a comprehensive explanation of the enneagram and you can also do a test to discover your type. I've done a few tests and this one seems the best so far, but they also give different results, at the end, they say, it is best to understand the enneagram and figure out yourself which type you are.
This are my results:

Type 1	Type 2	Type 3	Type 4	Type 5	Type 6	Type 7	Type 8	Type 9
-2	1	-4	7	3	-2	1	-7	3

Clearly a type 4, and an anti 8! I'll never be a leader, damn it!
Actually I agree with the description quite a lot. They say it is a very good tool to understand our own emotional fixations. Actually, all this -the fact that i'm doing the test, the fact that i'm blogging etc- it all falls into what a 4 would do!

In a similar thread I was hearing this radio program on 'on point radio' about this research they have done to understand what happiness is about. One of the striking things that they say is that our happiness is conditioned 50% by our genes, 10% by our experience and then there is this other 40% that depends on our present outlook, that is, on our power to change... it is good to think that it is our own hands to be able to feel happy or at least to change our emotions from negative to positive, positive thinking must work then...
I remember when somebody (maybe you remember) asked me if I was happy, and I said: yes, of course. And then she told me: then why are you not even smiling?
I guess I wasn't THAT happy, I mean, c'mon, a smile, only psychopaths and children smile! Another time I was in the underground and a girl looked at me and said: Smile, it can't be that bad... That was a classic.

A bit of Gamelan please

Cita Utsawa, Written by Wayan Berata and performed by The Gamelan Ensemble of STSI Denpasa in 1983.



"As with other pieces on this recording, Cita Utsawa (also known by the name Kebyar Dang) represents a fusion between genres. It unites instrumental and vocal music in a new way, highlighting the particular beauties of each style of composition: the explosive, multicolored world of kebyar instrumental music is
combined with the floating and poignant melodies of Balinese vocal music. But it also achieves another kind of fusion. Cita Utsawa is a perfect example of how theatricality, in its distinctly Balinese character, can be-married to form in an
instrumental work, made possible through the virtuosic playing technique of the gamelan musicians. Unlike the Western classical aesthetic, which often puts composition (form) on the highest pedestal, the Balinese aesthetic universe defines the ideal performance as one in which "the three Ts" are in perfect balance: tampil (appearance, display), terampil (skill, technique), and tabuh (composition)."

If you hold on for 6 minutes the singing starts, so high pitched at the beginning that it sounds almost like one of the flutes. It's worth the wait! Here is what the lyrics mean:
"Farming must be strengthened
Fishing as well
That's what we all wish for

A fertile county, a prosperous people
So that we can continue development
And cooperation-all must be protected "

Cookie Pizza

Maybe I should come up with a better name, but it somehow resembles a cookie. This is a dessert pizza, it has mascarpone, Chocolate from a chocolate and chilli Lint tablent, and pieces of pear soaked in rum. It was a worthy dessert for another fine pizza night.

First Post

I don't know how the hell to start so I will let Franz Kafka start for me, so here it goes:

The Wish to be a Red Indian

If one were only an Indian, instantly alert, and on a racing horse, leaning against the wind, kept on quivering jerkily over the quivering ground, until one shed one’s spurs, for there needed no spurs, threw away reins, for there needed no reins, and hardly saw that the land before one was smoothly shorn heath when horse’s neck and head would be already gone.

and in Spanish

Deseo de ser un piel roja

"Si uno pudiera ser un piel roja siempre alerta, cabalgando sobre un caballo veloz, a través del viento, constantemente sacudido sobre la tierra estremecida, hasta arrojar las espuelas porque no hacen falta espuelas, hasta arrojar las riendas porque no hacen falta riendas, y apenas viera ante sí que el campo era una pradera rasa, habrían desaparecido las crines y la cabeza del caballo".

Kafka

Links of the day

Some news here are last weeks, but are valid anyway....

another food horror story:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/feedarticle?id=7317239
A California meatpacker accused of animal cruelty is making the largest U.S. meat recall on record -- 143 million lbs (65 million kilos), the U.S. Agriculture Department said on Sunday. Most of the meat, raw and frozen beef products, probably has already been consumed...
and two vids with footage of what was going on:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x-5FUaK3FOM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xTZTCNnrUNY
nice uh... just stop for a minute and think that this can't be an isolated case but just a normal consequence of how the meat industry works, i mean, already the way the live can be considered as a torture. and we pay this bastards for this, so we are all responsible...

Government apathy sabotages Britain's shift to a low-carbon economy
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/feb/18/energy.economy

Oil firms' output is down, yet profits skyrocket. It all points to the crisis predicted by the peakists
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,2252581,00.html

Tesco hits new lows with the £2 chicken

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/food-and-drink/news/tesco-hits-a-new-low-with-arrival-of-the-163199-chicken-778672.html

wow, yeah, the 2pound chicken, isn't it great to have cheap food! check this out then:

and part two:





A "plastic soup" of waste floating in the Pacific Ocean is growing at an alarming rate and now covers an area twice the size of the continental United States
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/the-worlds-rubbish-dump-a-garbage-tip-that-stretches-from-hawaii-to-japan-778016.html