The Green Fields of France (Willie McBride)

Memorial Day 2010

"I do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God."



Do you know someone who needs to talk? Help is here:
Iraq Veterans Against the War

Daily Ben

Our Plan’s not to fix up the leak,
But to burnish BP’s green mystique,
Make sure you’re confused
While we keep you amused,
And hide that the prospects are bleak.
~~~
Ecology’s a useful tool,
Read up without going to school;
Only a fool
Thinks removing is cool
One leg from a three legged stool.
- Benjamin the Donkey
~~~

The Cult of Progress

What sort of world are we building for our great-grandchildren? What sort of life will they have and is the nature of our ecosystems being altered by our quest for "progress" to the point of no return, where it shall be unable to susatin life?
Why is the assumption that all technological invention is benign when it so very obviously is not? Why the blind eye turned to the suffering of organic life - plant, animal and human? Derrick Jensen's latest published in Orion magazine address these questions.

"Most people today have not awakened from the Cult of Progress. Even with the world being dismembered before their eyes, nearly all public figures continue to be members of this cult. The same is true for many nonpublic figures—for most of us—as we seem unquestioningly to presume that tomorrow’s progress will bring more good things to life, and will simultaneously solve the problems created by yesterday’s and today’s progress (without then creating yet more problems, as “progress” always seems to do)."
~ Dystopia, at LATOC
~~~
QUOTE In 1970 Lewis Mumford wrote, “The chief premise common to both technology and science is the notion that there are no desirable limits to the increase of knowledge, of material goods, of environmental control; that quantitative productivity is an end in itself, and that every means should be used to further expansion.” Mumford asked the same question that so many of us ask, which is, Why on earth would a culture do so many crazy, stupid, destructive things? His answer cuts through the typical cornucopian garbage: “The desired reward of this magic is not just abundance but absolute control.” Mumford knew—as we all do—that there was no hope in proceeding “on the terms imposed by technocratic society.” He didn’t think change would be easy, saying that it might take “an all-out fatal shock treatment, close to catastrophe, to break the hold of civilized man’s chronic psychosis.” He was not optimistic: “Even such a belated awakening would be a miracle.” UNQUOTE

The rest of the article here: High on Progress by Derrick Jensen from Orion magazine.
~~~

The Daily Ben 05/28/2010

I knew there was something amiss,

So I looked into the abyss;

Looked full in the maw,

Didn’t like what I saw

And returned to avoidance bliss.

---

You won’t need a tool for your Beemer,

Or even a Stanley Steamer;

If you should break a tool

In the age of no fuel

Just pick up the next handy femur.

~ Benjamin the Donkey

Our Daily Ben

We’re best psychologically suited

For tribal life which was uprooted;

But resources lack

When we devolve back.

Extinction is now undisputed.

It sure is a big f*cking ocean,

So stop making such a commotion;

Dispersant’s fine lotion,

Not poisonous potion....

(This bullsh*t might get me promotion!)

~ by Benjamin the Donkey

~~~

BP Oil Blowout

From AlterNet by Daniela Perdomo
10 Things You Need (But Don't Want) To Know About the BP Oil Spill
How the owner of the exploded oil rig has made $270 million off the disaster, and nine other shocking, depressing facts about the oil spill.

From AlterNet
Fishermen Hired by BP for Oil Clean Up Weren’t Provided Protective Equipment, Have Now Fallen Ill

Obama "Nobody's more upset than me" - Wanna bet, bro?
http://edition.cnn.com/video/data/2.0/video/politics/2010/05/25/obama.fundraiser.bp.oil.spill.cnn.html

Our Daily Ben

Since they don’t like to show what they do,

The video might not come through;

To see the top kill

They’re bargaining still,

And hoping to charge pay-per-view.

~ Benjamin the Donkey

Benjamin's poetic posts are found at LATOC.

May 26, 2010 BP Oil Blowout News Links

The inscription above the main entrance to Nebraska's beautiful State Capitol reads: "The Salvation of the State is Watchfulness in the Citizen." That's the whole idea behind neighborhood watch: residents will recognize and report criminal activity more readily if they know one another, and will deter crime by their watchfulness. We need a "cyber neighborhood watch" of the now five week old BP oil blowout disaster on the internet, and I am posting some links daily from here on out to help my fellow citizens do just that. The Gulf of Mexico is everyone's neighbor, so please help out with this "neighborhood watch".

From CBS: Gulf of Mexico "Poisoned"



Wall Street Journal "It’s become apparent that errors in judgment of workers on the Deepwater Horizon drilling platform probably caused the explosion that destroyed the rig and triggered a huge oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
But whose errors were they? Was BP, Transocean or Haliburton to blame?"

The Seminal: A series of explosions appears to have collapsed the seafloor and blown up the BOP at the well head.

Yet another BP oil leak? Zero Hedge

BP Ready to try top kill. Good luck and godspeed.
~~~

Cousteau: This is A Nightmare

From ABC News, a video of diving in a hazmat suit beneath the oil spill.

What I want to know is exactly who in the name of all that is holy do those people at BP think they are? They've been lying and misleading the government, the media and the public at large, they've basically told the EPA to go sit down and shut up and they've been conducting themselves like despots, balking at giving the citizens the slightest bit of information about the danger and catastrophe that is befalling them.
~~~

Benjamin's Limericks

My favorite place on the net for news and savvy commentary is LATOC, the discussion forum for Peak Oil: Life After the Oil Crash which is owned and managed by Matt Savinar. One of the regular forum members is a certain Benjamin the Donkey, real name unknown, who has given permission for some of his wonderful comment-in-the-form of-limerick to be posted here.

If you are not familiar with LATOC please do yourself a favor and check it out.

Enjoy!

All poems by "Benjamin The Donkey".

The rich give the poor short shrift,

But the race is not to the swift;

When doom’s widely sniffed

And culture’s adrift

There will be an observable shift.

For teaching and having minds turn,

The time left should be of concern;

It is hard to bestow

Understanding PO

When it took us much longer to learn.

Humor might help make us wiser

In dealing with things like this geyser,

Or it may turn out lame

Like trying to blunt blame

With a tiny tube in a riser.

Relax, nothing’s wrong with our spray,

Our stock’s nearly gone anyway;

But should it convey

Too much death and decay

We wont use it next time. OK?

So finally BP invites

You to look at some spewing oil sights;

You might be impressed

But you won’t see the best

Till they’ve peddled the movie rights.

If you totally kill the oceans

By using your poisonous potions,

Please do let us know

In a year or so

(Or at least, go through the motions).

Some say Socrates knew quite a lot,

But he said that he didn’t know squat;

People jeer and they smirk

At Darwin, that jerk,

And who understands Einstein’s rot?

Old Homer wrote his crap in Greek,

And Shakespeare, his words are oblique,

There is no Lolita

In Bhagavad Gita,

And Faust’s deal can wait till next week.

Distortions from Vincent van Gogh

Don’t look just like life, so they blow;

And the women, you know,

They come and they go,

Talking of Michelangelo.

Bach wrote junk for something divine,

Brahms ripped off symphonic design;

And you know, for my bucks,

Shrieking opera sucks,

And Beethoven only wrote nine.

In my view, the arch and the dome

Don’t compare to the woods where I roam;

Heard da Vinci imply

That people might fly,

But who cares for London or Rome?

I don’t like how people behave,

There is nothing here that I crave;

But I’m sure I would glow

In a time long ago—

I wish I were back in a cave.

~~~

Pentecost 2010

The weather here in Lincoln, Nebraska USA this morning is absolutely a perfect summer morning. The peonies and poppies are in full bloom, and the roses are just beginning. Petunias purchased for my window boxes a month ago are blooming riotously and the veggies are off to a good start although I have to figure out who and what is eating my pepper plants and some of my herbs, and put a stop to is tuit suite.

Happy Whitsunday, happy Pentecost, happy happy Holy Spirit day to all!

Blessed art Thou, O Christ our God, who hast revealed the fishermen as most wise by sending down upon them the Holy Spirit: through them Thou didst draw the world into Thy net. 0 Lover of Man, Glory to Thee (Troparion).

When the Most High came down and confused the tongues, he divided the nations. But when he distributed the tongues of fire, he called all to unity. Therefore, with one voice, we glorify the All-Holy Spirit! (Kontakion)

The Eastern Churches, Part One

A Month Down the Road and Worse Every Day

From Esquire. by Mark Warren

QUOTE Goodbye, oysters. Goodbye, shrimp. Goodbye, crawdads. Goodbye, pelicans. Goodbye, bayou. Goodbye, way of life.

Lord, my people must've done something bad somewhere along the way. A couple hundred years ago, my ne'er-do-well family began washing up in the marshy bottom of Louisiana, with some loose idea of making a go of it in the inhospitable swamps. And they managed to create one of the most interesting civilizations the world has ever known, built on mudbugs and zydeco and the wonderful mixing of peoples.

And now, not five years after the storm rolled in to get them, the oil rolls in, too.
One could be forgiven for thinking that God is angry at these people. (But that would be an awfully moronic thing to say, Rick Perry.) Of course, this was not an act of God. Harry Reid was right when he said it a few days ago: This was an act of greed. UNQUOTE

Read more: http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/oil-spill-live-feed-not-enough-05210#ixzz0ogw4h3tz

More Than An Oil Spill

Dear reader, I am back from a brief vacation from blogging. I have been following the BP Gulf oil disaster over the past month with great interest and no small amount of fear and trembling. I mean, massive amounts of raw oil, natural gas and methane gas have been pumped into the ocean 24/7 and there isn't a damn thing anyone can do about it at over a mile down, don't let them fool you.

I have been startled to see such a disinterested response on the part of my fellow citizens, and dismayed to have sometimes encountered a spirited defense of the indefensible by people of goodwill who really should know better. But alas they have chose not to know better, and to take the "easy" route. Last laugh goes to Mother Nature, however, just who did they think they were messing with?

Yesterday's NYT has an excellent op-ed by Bob Herbert on the vapidity of America's response to this corporate-sponsored global nightmare:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/22/opinion/22herbert.html

“You can’t sleep no more; that’s how bad it is,” said John Blanchard, an oyster fisherman whose life has been upended by the monstrous oil spill fouling an enormous swath of the Gulf of Mexico. He shook his head. “My wife and I have got two kids, 2 and 7. We could lose everything we’ve been working all of our lives for.”