Like Oceania, the US is virtually a one-party state. Its two big business parties are falsely presented as two “opposing” parties. In reality, they are little more than soft-rhetoric and hard-rhetoric factions of the one real party--the financial aristocracy--that has unchallenged sway over all matters of economic significance and resource ( Read more... )

The repressed instincts of pre-State existence turn up again and are deliberately fostered. The Germans are anticipating the tribal organization of an economically united world.
--Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy in 1938 (see links under the cut)

( Still waiting for some thoughts to come together--until then ... )

Well, I just got through putting together a new toy--a mini-greenhouse. It just barely fits on my back porch, but it's nice and roomy for my seedlings. The seedlings were really getting leggy under the grow light, so it's time to put them outside during daylight. I know they will outgrow the pots in a few more weeks, and I don't have enough big ( Read more... )

This chapter, beyond Iraq and its oil, is about the flow and tides of power, centered on a struggle over two competing visions for the Middle East; on one side, the aggressive neo-con agenda for remaking Arabia as a Little USA (or better, another Chile); on the other, Big Oil and the State Department's history-hardened view of the Middle East as a ( Read more... )

Tonight I will be seeing Nevada Rep's Cyrano de Bergerac. I was going to wait for tomorrow to try to post a review but something has come up. I don't think I'll need to review it. I've seen one other production at Hartnell College in Salinas a long time ago. I don't think it will be the kind of play I would end up saying much about. I received a ( Read more... )

Happy Year of the Boar and Happy Fat Tuesday! Last night some of the hike leaders got together for a potluck dinner to plan events for April and May. I'll wait until June to start leading hikes, though, and I'll cut back to about five hikes. I started seeds yesterday. I figure giving them ten to twelve days to sprout will give them about six weeks ( Read more... )

In 1984 Mark Crispin Miller offered some musings about 1984, which were printed in The Georgia Review 38:1 (Winter 1984), reprinted in Reflections on America, 1984: An Orwell Symposium edited by Robert Mulvihill (1986) and in his own book Boxed In: The Culture of TV (1988). He offers an interesting take on the subject. I had never heard of that ( Read more... )