As usual, International Workers Day was a combination of festivity and militance in the Danish capital, as a diversity of left and workers parties and organizations held various events around the city and throughout the day. Below, a quick photojournal of the day’s proceedings.
May 5, 2010 archive
May 05 2010
Is This All There Is?
Crossposted at DKOS after a long delay. Some really good comments over there!
Gradually, we have stopped really looking at the horror. Not that it is all horror. Life itself is sweet. It is that sudden gust of summer wind that carries honeysuckle and a mixture of green-tinted scents. This is life, so full and opulent. This great Goddess that nurtures us without stint, without regret, without reproach. She accepts us just as we are and always will no matter what we do. She will cry in a dark corner but blame no one. Crying and hurt is part of the nature of fecundity.
But what of us? Actually we don’t give a shit. Not really. We are able to live in a very artificial world very far away from our Great Mother who cools her heels beneath the window of our daydreams. Daydreams and fantasies dominate our world-we want fantasies to be real. It seems that we want to shape the world and other people to fit our fantasies.
Something is profoundly wrong with the way we live today. For thirty years we have made a virtue out of the pursuit of material self-interest: indeed, this very pursuit now constitutes whatever remains of our sense of collective purpose. We know what things cost but have no idea what they are worth. We no longer ask of a judicial ruling or a legislative act: Is it good? Is it fair? Is it just? Is it right? Will it help bring about a better society or a better world? Those used to be the political questions, even if they invited no easy answers. We must learn once again to pose them.
Tony Judt wrote the above in the first paragraphs of an article he wrote in the New York Review of Books. In a way he is stating the obvious but it is hard to understand what has happened during the period Judt describes unless you’ve lived through it. It seems like wondering what a good society might look like is almost forbidden. The general view is no other way of living is possible.
May 05 2010
The Curious Connexion Between Tommy and Glenn Beck
Leader of the Teabag Movement. He has eclipsed damned old Limbaugh and even Hannity as the moon baying leader of the Right.
Interestingly, he is an addict, just like damned old Limbaugh, but he flaunts it. At least his addiction was to a legal substance, unlike damned old Limbaugh.
But, after his rhetoric, there are several threads that connect him with Peter Townshend’s seminal work (and I think the best of Mr. Townshend’ life, the very second rock opera, Tommy. (The very first one was also by Townshend, A Quick one While He’s Away)
May 05 2010
Pity for the Earth
Ia ora te natura
E mea arofa teie ao nei
Its in the coastlines now, in the harbors, bays and myriad brackish branches of the bayou. Visions of fingerling rainbows sparkling their false gold promise in the sun, creep into my view. Beautiful death, such a mask for the evil. Bright orange globs and tarred waters tint and leach into these relentless prismatic wisps, breaking free and meandering, searching, seeking to spread its chokehold throughout the very alveoli that breathes life into the Gulf.
Mother, mother ocean, I have heard you call
Wanted to sail upon your waters since I was three feet tall
You’ve seen it all, you’ve seen it all
Watched the men who rode you switch from sails to steam
And in your belly you hold the treasures few have ever seen
Most of ’em dream, most of ’em dream
May 05 2010
Chris Hayes to Olbermann: ‘Our’ Gulf Oil gets sold on World Markets
This was a stunner.
With all the hoopla about how America desperately needs to become “Energy Independent” — and SO the “urgent need” to Drill off OUR Shorelines — well it turns out, all that Drilling and Spilling, is just for Barrels of Oil, destined for resale on the World Markets!
Turns out — “Our” Gulf Oil is just another “fungible global commodity“!
Huh, what? Fungy-what? Does that mean it’s “more fun”?
No. Fungible simply means something is “interchangeable”. That One unit of something (like a barrel of Oil) is worth just as much as any other Unit of that same something. One Ounce of Gold, is exchangeable with any other Ounce of Gold.
Or as Chris Hayes succinctly put it:
There’s NO barrels marked somewhere, “Foreign.”
Say What? I thought we were risking our precious Ecosystems, to “free ourselves” from the need of Foreign Oil — to increase our “Domestic Reserves”?
If British Petroleum, can pump it and dump it, on the Global Marketplace, where one Barrel of Oil is identical to every other Barrel (assuming no disastrous spills of course) —
Then what the Hell is the Point?
May 05 2010
Cimate: Today’s Gulf Images, Govt Denies Spread Potential of 19 mil oil gallons to Florida
Today is Tuesday, May the 4th, the 2 week anniversary of the blowout, fire, and sinking of the BP Deepwater Horizon oil drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico. 14 days x 5000 barrels per day, = 70,000 barrels, or 2,940,000 gallons of oil so far have been dumped into the Gulf. For my earlier diary today, with satellite photos from the past weekend, go here:
This Oil Spill is Bigger Than Delaware, You Idiots!
There are new satellite pictures from today which show the spread of the oil slick has continued west and south.
May 05 2010
Tonight’s Sunset Open Thread
cross-posted at firefly-dreaming.
Today was a very beautiful day in New York City. After a late night I never got out of the apartment and spent the day enjoying beautiful cloud formations and a strong cold breeze. The sky cleared in the late afternoon but the clouds came back for sunset.
The view tonight seemed like a few sunsets, so there are many photos below the fold. I hope you enjoy the show.
May 05 2010
1099 My 600 Dollar Ass
Waxman sneaks anti-vitamin clause in Wall Street reform bill.
US wants to censor GMO frankenfood labeling on a global basis.
Pennsylvania want you to know they know where you live.
http://www.naturalnews.com/
Potential find of ancient artifacts in Egypt’s Giza area.
http://projectcamelotportal.com/
Deep politics of diversity.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/i…
Bilderberger Bloomberg shoots his mouth again.
http://www.infowars.com/bloomb…
1099 my 600 dollar ass!
http://www.google.com/#hl=en&s…
Yes We can? Now Anybody Can.
http://cryptogon.com/?p=15176
Stealth local implimentation of discredited carbon scams.
http://www.blacklistednews.com…
And the bees are still dying.
http://www.blacklistednews.com…
And Superfriends+eugenics links are “changing”
http://www.vidoemo.com/yvideo….
Gee, can ya tell I’m in a shitty mood.
May 05 2010
May ’70: 6. Four Dead In Ohio
Handmade pins from the anti-gym struggle at Kent State, mid-70s
May 4 fell on a Monday in 1970.
At some point during the morning, four students each woke up, grabbed a toothbrush, maybe showered, got dressed, probably had a bite of breakfast, and headed out.
It wasn’t the proverbial day like any other day. For one thing, over the weekend National Guard troops had occupied their school, Kent State University.
Bill Schroeder and Sandy Scheuer both made their way to their first classes anyhow. Alison Krause figured she’d hit the big anti-war rally scheduled for the Commons at noon. So did Jeffrey Miller, despite the spreading reports that Kent State administrators planned to ban it.
At 12:24, they were flung into history.
May 05 2010
Now the wintertime is coming
May 05 2010
Lieberman: Strip accused terrorists of American citizenship.
Joe Lieberman (Quisling-CT) thinks American citizens should be stripped of their citizenship and constitutional rights if they are accused of being a terrorist.
Some of us have started to talk about it here, which is that there is an existing law – which hasn’t been much used – that says if an American citizen is shown to be fighting in a military force that is an enemy of the United States, then that person loses their citizenship and they no longer have the rights of citizenship. That’s an old law that was adopted during a very different time of conflict.
I think it’s time for us to look at whether we want to amend that law to apply it to American citizens who choose to become affiliated with foreign terrorist organizations, whether they should not also be deprived automatically of their citizenship, and therefore be deprived of rights that come with that citizenship when they are apprehended and charged with a terrorist act.
Lieberman’s suggestion goes much further than the Alien and Sedition Acts signed into law by John Adams during the undeclared “Quasi-War” against the French.
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