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This earthquake has caused at this point 16 19 21 22 24 fatalities, 166 174 201 207 injured + a theoretical estimated economic loss of 200 million to 1 billion US
UPDATE 13:51 UTC : Due to the continuing reporting and the length of this article, we have decided to continue our reporting in a new article. Click here to be linked to part 2.
UPDATE 13:27 UTC : The weather in Yingjiang area will be sunny until Saturday. the temperatures will vary in between a low of 10 °C and a high of 29 °C
IMPORTANT UPDATE 13:15 UTC : We just received the following astonishing numbers :
127100 people affected
24 deaths (4 students)
207 injuries
320 houses (1264 rooms) collapsed
3986 houses (17658 rooms) severely damaged
5313 houses (15939 rooms) slightly damaged.
UPDATE 13:18 UTC : The area are hit by almost continuous aftershocks which are even more damaging infrastructure, buildings and residential houses.
UPDATE 13:08 UTC : Even after dark regular updates are published by Chinese authorities. 24 people have been confirmed dead after this cruel earthquake and 207 people have been injured. These numbers will certainly grow further the following hours and even days.
UPDATE 13:04 UTC : 2 standby rescue teams from Sichuan province have been rushed to Yunnan after they received the news of the earthquake. Sichuan province was the theater of one of the worst earthquakes in Chinese history.
UPDATE 13:00 UTC : A lot of people are staying overnight in open air shelters.
UPDATE 12:43 UTC : A new update on the Yunnan earthquake : 21 confirmed fatalities and at least 201 injured.
UPDATE 12:29 UTC : Earthquake-Report admires the Chinese disaster management teams for their highly skilled work.
UPDATE 12:28 UTC : China Eastern Airlines has been requested by the government to operate relief flights to the earthquake struck county. Rescue operations are continuing to fight against time.
UPDATE 12:15 UTC : Specialized emergency teams from other parts of China have been called in to support local teams.
UPDATE 12:13 UTC : Some hotels and many residential houses have collapsed following the shaking.
UPDATE 12:11 UTC : Next to power, also communications were also interrupted in the greater quake area
UPDATE 11:57 UTC : New numbers have been released : 21 fatalities and 174 injured.
UPDATE 11:20 UTC : First video of this cruel earthquake.
UPDATE 10:34 UTC : Earthquake-Report (by means of James Daniell) has come out with an intermediate estimate on fatalities  and damage.
Thee theoretical models are resulting in 15 to 100 fatalities and an economic loss of 200 million to 1 billion US$ (1.3 to 6.5 billion CNY).
UPDATE 10:29 UTC : So far we have NO news from the Myanmar side of the border. We expect however minor damage in Myanmar villages as the epicenter is approx. 40 km from the border and has a totally different landscape.
UPDATE 10:16 UTC : Search and rescue (SAR) are continuing after dark. An unaccounted number of houses collapsed in this earthquake.
UPDATE 10:12 UTC : The Dehong county (cities of Dehong and Yingjiang) suffered power outages.
UPDATE 10:09 UTC - Unfortunately the number of casualties has increased to 19 from 16.
UPDATE 09:29 UTC - For those among you wanting to read the earlier damage in the same area, please find a number of links to our earlier articles.
CATDAT 2010 damaging earthquakes overview by James Daniell
Small M 4.4 earthquake causes major damage in China
Very dangerous earthquake below the China / Myanmar border area
China " Magnitude 5.0 earthquake injures 14 people and damages 7,354 houses
Very damaging earthquake " 8,017 homes on the Myanmar / China border
UPDATE 09:40 UTC - Chinese Search and Rescue services are among the best trained in the world.
UPDATE 09:34 UTC - The updates are coming thick and fast as nightfall is about to descend upon the Yingjiang area. We will continue to update you with statistics as they come available. No news from the Myanmar side of the border has been found as yet.
16 dead and 166 injured, however unfortunately this is expected to rise. Our thoughts are with their families and friends at this difficult time.
UPDATE 09:26 UTC - Since January 2, 2011 a number of very damaging earthquakes occurred in the same area. What will come as a surprise to the international media is certainly not a surprise for earthquake-report. As we were the only ones outside China to report on the earlier damaging quakes in Yunnan, (mainly due to the expert knowledge and Chinese contacts of James Daniell), we feared from the very beginning that this earthquake would have a potential devastating character.
UPDATE 09:25 UTC - There have been 1146 earthquakes occurring in this area since the Yingjiang quakes 2 months ago.
UPDATE 09:15 UTC - Earthquake-Report expects a lot of damage due to this earthquake. Earlier earthquakes of magnitudes 4.4 and 4.9 created a lot of havoc in Yunnan, damaging thousands of houses.
UPDATE 08:56 UTC - There are at least 16 dead and 166 injured from this earthquake. It is being called a Ml 5.8 by the Yunnan Seismological Bureau with a depth of 10km. This is definitely the reason for the higher casualty counts than the previous Yingjiang quakes. (云å—盈江县5.8级地震已致16人æ»äº¡166人å—伤)
Students were at lunch when this earthquake occurred, however we can report that 2 students have been killed and 1 injured.
Zhudian Army has sent 500 people from the disaster area in Baoshan disaster relief. 300 relief workers are also on site.
7 people have been rescued so far.
At 8:03 UTC the value was 13 dead and 126 injured. There are no estimates of housing damage and economic loss as yet...
After 10 minutes, 3 times the local occurrence of a succession of aftershocks, the magnitude of 4.7, 4.5 and 3.6, respectively, occurred.
The same area was struck in early February from an earthquake of M4.8, severely damaging many homes.
Link to 2010 Yingjiang quakes.
Link to January Yingjiang quakes.
Link to February Yingjiang quakes.
Original article
Earthquake report is very concerned about the aftermath of this seemingly moderate and not dangerous earthquake. Based on earlier experiences and taking into account the location of the epicenter (in the Yingjiang valley at the Chinese side of the border) we fear that this earthquake has a very damaging potential.
Earthquakes and the resulting damaging process are not exact science. Depending on the type of the earthquake (Yunnan is a transform fault zone) and the geological layers, every earthquake will be felt differently. The existence of the Modified Mercalli scale was based on this experience.
Most important Earthquake Data:
Magnitude : 5.4 (Chinese are calling it M5.8)
UTC Time :Â Thursday, March 10, 2011 at 04:58:17 UTC
Local time at epicenter :Â Thursday, March 10, 2011 at 11:28:17 AM at epicenter
Depth (Hypocenter) : 33 km (Chinese are calling it 10km)
Send an "earthquake experience report" for this earthquake
Geo-location(s) :
10 km of Yingjiang, Yunnan, China
90 km SE Myitkyina (pop 90,894)
246 km (152 miles) WSW of Dali, Yunnan, China
Links to important maps
USGS Did You Feel It Map
Google satellite map of the area showing the kind of terrain the earthquake took place
3-dimensional view of the earthquake area (USGS epicenter location)
USGS historic earthquakes map
USGS Seismic hazard map
QuakeSOS+ is an iPhone application developed by Armand Vervaeck, the creator and main contributor to Earthquake Report. The Application simplifies immediate group communication to friends and family members (with your exact GPS location) and is constantly feeding the users with œEarthquake Report news. Together with your own family and friends, QuakeSOS+ will be your closest earthquake friend. Buying QuakeSOS+ will support the activities of SOS Earthquakes.
Quake-Maps.com was also created by SOS Earthquakes. Quake-Maps.com makes it easy to let the world know which shaking people have experienced during the earthquake. Quake-Maps.com gives also the opportunity to write some additional text. Filling up the form takes only 1 minute. Quake-Maps.com gives an overview of all the resent earthquakes and let you even go back in time and retrieve earthquakes of a certain date in the past.
Earthquake-Report.com headlines on twitter
@OnlyQuakeNews : Get all the headlines of our earthquake-report.com articles + regular updates on ongoing events
@QuakeSOS : earthquake-report.com news + automatic earthquake notifications of USGS earthquakes of M 4.0 or higher with emphasis to earthquakes in the America's and the Pacific Ocean sphere (4 and up) and a lot of the rest of the world (5 and up). This account was created for our QuakeSOS and QuakeSOS+ iPhone applications
@ShakingEarth : earthquake-report.com news + automatic earthquake notifications of EMSC earthquakes of M 4.0 or higher with emphasis to earthquakes in European and Asian / Middle East sphere (4 and up) and a lot of the rest of the world (5 and up). This account was originally created to stimulate our Facebook account
@QuakeMaps : earthquake-report.com news with mapping notifications of ALL earthquakes M 3.0 and higher from all over the world via EMSC and USGS. This account was created for our http://www.quake-maps.com website


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subset: commoncrawl


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Port Metro Vancouver wants to see the Lower Mainland's eroding industrial land base protected with a supply similar to the Agricultural Land Reserve created in the early 1970s.
The protection of the industrial land base — including for port development, but also for manufacturing, and warehouse and distribution businesses — is needed to ensure one of the Lower Mainland's key economic engines thrives, said Port Metro Vancouver chief financial officer Allan Baydala.
The port and its spinoff businesses create more than 80,000 jobs, one in 12 in the Lower Mainland, Baydala said.
"Without a secure industrial land base we simply can't compete for new investment and the jobs it brings," Baydala said Friday.
And if the industrial land base continues to diminish, the port says it will be forced to poach lands in the Agricultural Land Reserve although it would be a choice of "last resort."
Port Metro Vancouver notes more than 3,000 hectares of industrial land has been lost in Surrey, Richmond, Burnaby and Vancouver during the past 30 years. That's an area more than seven times the size of Stanley Park.
A Metro Vancouver discussion paper released last summer, found the region will potentially need another 2,500 hectares of industrial properties over the next 20 years if port container volumes continue to grow, requiring more space for trucks and warehouse-related development.
Industrial land is being converted to other uses under pressure from developers seeking higher land prices, and municipalities looking to expand their tax base from commercial, retail and residential development.
The port is so concerned with the disappearing industrial land it bought up 47 hectares of industrial land in the past several years, including the former Interfor and Canfor mill sites in New Westminster.
Baydala noted U.S. retail giant Target was investigating locating a distribution centre in the Lower Mainland recently but decided to locate in Calgary because they couldn't find suitable and affordable land here.
And while Metro Vancouver adopted a new growth strategy in 2011 to protect industrial lands from rezoning, Baydala says it does not go far enough.
While it requires discussion of rezoning — and a board vote — it doesn't prohibit rezoning of industrial lands.
Baydala says there is "no easy solution" but that discussions to create an industrial land reserve need to take place with federal, provincial and municipal governments, as well as First Nations.
He expects those discussions to take place over the next year.
Richmond city councillor Harold Steves, who was an NDP MLA when the agriculture reserve was created, has endorsed the Port Metro Vancouver idea to protect industrial lands.
Steves said when the agricultural reserve was created in the mid-1970s the idea was to also create an industrial reserve. While the Agriculture Land Reserve survived, no such protection was afforded industrial land.
"It's what we should have done in the first place," said Steves, who is vice-chair of Metro Vancouver's regional planning and agriculture committee.
He said part of the problem is that Metro Vancouver's industrial land strategy includes commercial and retail development, which could eat up land that should be set aside for manufacturing, warehousing and distribution.
Gordon Price, the director of Simon Fraser University's City Program, said an argument can be made for creating an industrial land reserve given the importance of the port to the Lower Mainland's economy.
"Even under changed conditions — whether it be a melting Arctic or a widened Panama Canal — we're still so strategically located that no economic strategy or land-use vision is realistic unless it incorporates the needs of the port," he said.
Land suitable for industry is under constant pressure for other types of uses, particularly commercial, big-box retail and residential, said Price.
He added that Metro Vancouver's industrial land strategy still allows just that type of development, "large and medium format retail, where appropriate."


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Buzz- Growth spurt: Jason Pollock feeds off home-grown comforts
Going off to college is a turning point for most teens, allowing them to freely express their individuality and develop their personality. Charlottesville-area guitarist Jason Pollock's experience was no different–- it wasn't until he began attending the College of William and Mary that he had any interest in music. And yet while Pollock was eventually nationally renown in the rock band Seven Mary Three, it wasn't until years later that he finally found comfort in creativity at the helm of his own project, The Pollocks.
"The first day at college, when you have to say what you want to be in life, I said, 'I'm going to be a rock 'n roll star'," Pollock remembers. "But I was just joking."
Picking up a guitar for the first time in Williamsburg, Pollock hooked up with three fellow students and started performing up and down the coast under the moniker 7M3 to overwhelming success. Immediately after graduation in 1995, the band signed to Mammoth Records, moved to Florida, and achieved platinum status with their subsequent album, American Standard–- all in the same year. Four years later, Pollock left the band and found his way back home to Charlottesville to find his musical mojo once again.
"When I left 7M3, I was feeling stagnant, wasn't writing anything, wasn't feeling good," he says. "So I taught myself to sing, and it became a whole new ball game."
After years of writing daily and boosting his singing confidence, Pollock was urged by friends and family to take his music out to the public–- so in 2007, he and partner Maryline began releasing the first of what's become a evolving, momentum-driven wave of home-recorded records. Beginning with the poignant Last Tender Leaves and Pardon The Witches, then rising to a more emotionally buoyant Wine Diamonds, Pollock and his rotating cast of bandmates have run the lyrical gauntlet from heartbreak, sorrow, and hope, capturing both the "bitterness and sweetness" of the lives that inspire them with a British-pop, classic-American-rock sound.
"I've hit a great stride–- like people on sports teams who enjoy going to practice, I enjoy doing the work," Pollock says. "When a CD is finished, I'm immediately on to the next one."
And while the stark emotional residue inherent in his work with The Pollocks might be a far cry from his days in 7M3, incorporating a "normal life" alongside the responsibility and freedom he has as an individual artist seems to be the perfect fit.
"In 7M3, I was sharing the writing chores with the rest of the band–- that's what makes it a band–- but at the same time, some ideas got lost for the greater good of the group," Pollock says. "In this respect, I'm doing what I love–- I'm the benevolent dictator, I'm doing everything from writing, arranging, recording, singing, it's all on my shoulders–- and that's what makes it very satisfying."
The Pollocks release Wine Diamonds Saturday, December 12 at The Southern. The Brian Patrick Band opens. The show starts at 8:00pm, and tickets are $6.


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Last week, we were so excited to hear that "Zombieland" scribes Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick would be handling the script for "Deadpool." Apparently, these guys just became the hottest writers in Hollywood because they've also been tapped to pen the "G.I. Joe" sequel.
No announcement as been made if Stephen Sommers will be back to direct (we pray he won't be) or if any of the cast will return, though we assume the actors signed on for multiple films initially. But knowing Reese and Wernick are attached gives us tremendous hope that the sequel might not suck as devastatingly as the first film did.
Channing Tatum, who stars as Duke, has been quite vocal about his preference for a darker second film, moving away from the cheesy, wannabe family fun of the first movie. We just hope our childhood memories won't continue to be defiled as blatantly as they were last time.
U.S. & World
If knowing is half the battle, they should have known better. With any luck and this new writing team, a second pass could rectify the critical errors of the past.


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LEAP Of Faith
August 29th, 2013
Wouldn't it be great if the practical experience you got working counted toward a degree? Wouldn't it be great if the people needing a job done could find qualified people to do it in a city bleeding jobs?
Wouldn't it be great if people could step across political divides and jurisdictions – across aisles and a state – and talk about all of that?
Wouldn't it?
As published in The Daily News, August 30, 2013, and in The Memphis News, August 31-September 6, 2013
I have in my possession a rare document, evidence of a shared spark of hope, a light at the end of all the tunnel vision, a warm fire in that cold cave in Nashville.
I have a letter signed by two gentlemen of color – one black and blue, one white and red – pledging cooperation in a state program that could genuinely and uniquely benefit Memphis rather than target and isolate it. Think of it as Auburn and Alabama, Ole Miss and Mississippi State, Pelosi and Boehner, wet ribs and dry ribs, humans and Klingons – all together to save the universe.
I have a letter jointly from and signed by state senator Reginald Tate, Chair of the Shelby County Legislative Delegation, and state senator Mark Norris, Senate Majority Leader.
Told you it was rare.
But before I put it on eBay, I'm going to hold onto it long enough to see if it works out. If it does, a lot more of us are going to work and it's going to be worth a lot more than just the words and promises we're used to around here.
The letter is an invitation to city council chair Edmund Ford and the council to join "A Conversation About Work" to be held next week at the University of Memphis. The letter names various commissioners and representatives from state acronyms, education officials, funding foundations, not-for-profits and important people who will attend and they hope will attend.
The two most important words in the preceding paragraph are conversation and hope. In the case of conversation, we've forgotten that progress is impossible unless we can talk to each other. As for hope, those with the least need of it are systematically removing it from those who need it the most.
What they're going to talk about next week is LEAP (Labor Education Alignment Program), the new law championed by Norris and enacted last year that allows students at Tennessee's technology centers and colleges the opportunity to combine occupational training in a high-skill or high-technology industry with academic credit and to apply that experience toward a degree.
A conversation between the people who need jobs done, the people who need to teach and train others for those jobs, and the people who need the jobs. A conversation about the pragmatic return of self-worth and community to replace soul-sucking unemployment and under employment. A conversation about a solution to the problem that experts predict is coming in five years – over half of all jobs in Tennessee will require postsecondary credentials beyond a high school degree.
In short, a joint conversation about hope.
Over the past few years, I've come after Mark Norris hard in this column, and while I'm not apologizing for that nor he to me for doing things that fry my bacon, I'd like to say this to my old friend.
Pull this off and the next one's on me, and you can name the place.
I'm a Memphian, and we're about to share a conversation.
Coming in October, a new book of columns, comments and character references for a city filled with it and often absolutely full of it. Buy it now. Really. Right now.
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The Scourge of Militarism: "The Scourge of Militarism
Commentary: Imperial dreams are undermining our political institutions. Is America going the way of the Roman Republic?
By Chalmers Johnson
June 10, 2005
Introduction by Tom Engelhardt
In September 2003, only four months after our President's "Mission Accomplished" moment on the USS Abraham Lincoln, it was already evident to some of us that neocon dreams of establishing a robust Pax Americana on the planet were likely to be doomed in the sands of Iraq -- but that, in the process, the American constitutional system as we've known it might well be destroyed. The question of just what Rubicon we might have crossed when American troops first took a bridge over the Euphrates was on my mind -- and Chalmers Johnson's as well. He sat down early that September, having just seen a production of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar and wrote out his own version of the fall of the republic, which he entitled "The Scourge of Militarism," an essay as resonant today as it was then. It is the second offering in my Best of Tomdispatch 2003 series.
Looking back almost two years later, Johnson writes,
"The American governmental system is no longer working the way it is supposed to. Many distinguished observers think it is badly damaged in terms of Constitutional checks and balances and the structures put in place by the founders to prevent tyranny. General Tommy Franks, commander of the American assault on Baghdad, predicts that another terrorist attack on the United States would 'begin to unravel the fabric of our Constitution,' and he openly suggests that 'the Constitution could be scrapped in favor of a military form of government.'
"Another military writer, the historian Kevin Baker, fears that we are not far from the day when, like the Roman Senate in 27 B.C., our Congress will take its last meaningful vote and turn over power to a military dictator. 'In the end, we'll beg for the coup,' he writes. At the same time the American public seems apathetic. Most Americans sense that the country is in great trouble, but evidently don't know how to think about the crisis we find ourselves in. Having been poorly schooled and without an elementary knowledge of earlier republics, the problems of standing armies in any form of democracy, and the threat of militarism (a fear that virtually all Americans shared during our first century as a republic), the American people today stare blankly at the mounting evidence that our military is totally out of control. Back in 2003, my 'Scourge of Militarism' essay tried to lay out some new ways to think about our current dilemmas based on what happened to an earlier republic faced with similar conditions. Unfortunately, given what's happened since, there is no reason to be optimistic about this fate of ours."
At the time, I introduced Johnson's essay this way -- and I wouldn't change a word:
We were to be the New Rome. As right-wing columnist Charles Krauthammer (emphasis always on the "hammer") wrote in Time magazine near the ides of March, 2001 ("The Bush Doctrine, In American foreign policy, a new motto: Don't ask. Tell"), "America is no mere international citizen. It is the dominant power in the world, more dominant than any since Rome. Accordingly, America is in a position to reshape norms, alter expectations, and create new realities. How? By unapologetic and implacable demonstrations of will."
And that was before the terrorists of September 11th flew into the picture. In the wake of our President's declared "war on terrorism" and an instant "triumph" in Afghanistan, as the drums of war began to pound again, from the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal to those of the Washington Post, the New Rome analogy only grew and prospered. Empire, once a dirty word in the American lexicon, was suddenly a badge of pride, or at least a Kiplingesque "burden" (as the New York Times Magazine had it in a cover story) to be hoisted on our capacious military shoulders. Our world, once we were done pounding it into shape with "implacable demonstrations of will," would put the Pax Romana and Pax Britannia combined into the shade. There would be nothing like it.
Of course, along came history, which meant the unexpected, and blind-sided our already dazzled neocon imperial dreamers. Now, Chalmers Johnson, who wrote a book, Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire, which in the wake of September 11th came to seem all too prophetic, suggests that perhaps the imperial dreamers of this administration picked up the wrong end of the Roman analogy. What if the applicable part wasn't Pax Romana/Pax Americana, but the fall of the Roman republic under an onslaught of imperial militarism/the fall of the American empire under the same?
Johnson's newest book, The Sorrows of Empire, takes up the thoroughly under-reported, largely ignored issue of American militarism. Let him now plunge you into a short course in Roman history -- and while you're reading imagine that anyone in this country ever wanted us to be like the Roman empire in its heyday.
Little has changed since then, I'm afraid. Chalmers Johnson's books remain indispensable and the militarism he addressed so starkly then is hardly less ignored in our country today (despite the publication of Andrew Bacevitch's remarkable book The New American Militarism); and, except at websites like Antiwar.com or LewRockwell.com, the fall of the republic isn't at the top of many American agendas. (Juan Cole at his Informed Comment website recently argued strikingly that our prison complex at Guantanamo should be closed exactly "because it was conceived as the beginning of the end of the American Republic.") One small change: Apologists for the Bush administration no longer speak or write proudly of our "Roman" legions marching forth to global battle, and yet the republic, already in shreds in 2003, remains desperately endangered. This essay was first posted on Tomdispatch on September 9, 2003.
The Scourge of Militarism
Rome and America
By Chalmers Johnson
The collapse of the Roman republic in 27 BC has significance today for the United States, which took many of its key political principles from its ancient predecessor. Separation of powers, checks and balances, government in accordance with constitutional law, a toleration of slavery, fixed terms in office, all these ideas were influenced by Roman precedents. John Adams and his son John Quincy Adams often read the great Roman political philosopher Cicero and spoke of him as an inspiration to them. Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay, authors of the Federalist Papers, writing in favor of ratification of the Constitution signed their articles with the name Publius Valerius Publicola, the first consul of the Roman republic.
The Roman republic, however, failed to adjust to the unintended consequences of its imperialism, leading to a drastic alteration in its form of government. The militarism that inescapably accompanied Rome's imperial projects slowly undermined its constitution as well as the very considerable political and human rights its citizens enjoyed. The American republic, of course, has not yet collapsed; it is just under considerable strain as the imperial presidency -- and its supporting military legions -- undermine Congress and the courts. However, the Roman outcome -- turning over power to an autocracy backed by military force and welcomed by ordinary citizens because it seemed to bring stability -- suggests what might happen in the years after Bush and his neoconservatives are thrown out of office.
Obviously, there is nothing deterministic about this progression, and many prominent Romans, notably Brutus and Cicero, paid with their lives trying to head it off. But there is something utterly logical about it. Republican checks and balances are simply incompatible with the maintenance of a large empire and a huge standing army. Democratic nations sometimes acquire empires, which they are reluctant to give up because they are a source of wealth and national pride, but as a result their domestic liberties are thereby put at risk.
These not-particularly-original comparisons are inspired by the current situation of the United States, with its empire of well over 725 military bases located in other people's countries; its huge and expensive military establishment demanding ever more pay and ever larger appropriations from a supine and manipulated legislature; unsolved anthrax attacks on senators and newsmen (much like Rome's perennial assassinations); Congress's gutting of the Bill of Rights through the panicky passage of the Patriot Act -- by votes of 76-1 in the Senate and 337 to 79 in the House; and numerous signs that the public is indifferent to what it is about to lose. Many current aspects of our American government suggest a Roman-like fatigue with republican proprieties. After Congress voted in October 2002 to give the president unrestricted power to use any means, including military force and nuclear weapons, in a preventive strike against Iraq whenever he -- and he alone -- deemed it "appropriate," it would be hard to argue that the constitution of 1787 was still the supreme law of the land.
Checks and Balances
My thinking about the last days of republics was partly stimulated during the summer of 2003 by a new book and an old play. The book is Anthony Everitt's magnificent account of the man who had his head and both hands chopped off for opposing military dictatorship -- Cicero: The Life and Times of Rome's Greatest Politician (Random House, 2001). The play was a modern-dress production of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, seen at San Diego's Old Globe theater. The curtain opened on a huge backdrop of Julius Caesar looking remarkably like any seedy politician with the word "tyrant" scrawled graffiti-style beneath his face in red paint. At play's end, after Octavian's hypocritical comments on the death of Brutus, who was one of the republic's most stalwart supporters ("According to his virtue let us use him. . . ."), the picture of Caesar dropped away, replaced by one of Octavian -- soon to become the self-proclaimed god Augustus Caesar -- in full military uniform and bearing a marked resemblance to Arnold Schwarzenegger. In fact, Octavian's military rule did not actually follow at once after the suicides of Brutus and Cassius at Philippi in 42 BC and Shakespeare does not say it did. But that is what the play -- and the history -- are all about: killing Julius Caesar on the Ides of March, 44 BC only prepared the ground for a more ruthless and determined successor.
The Roman republic is conventionally dated from 509 to 27 BC even though Romulus's founding of the city is traditionally said to have occurred in 753 BC. All we know about its dim past, including the first two centuries of the republic, comes from the histories written by Livy and others and from the findings of modern archaeology. For the century preceding the republic, Rome had been ruled by Etruscan kings from their nearby state of Etruria (modern Tuscany), until in 510, according to legend, Sextus, the son of king Tarquinius Superbus ("King Tarquin"), raped Lucretia, the daughter of a leading Roman family. A group of aristocrats backed by the Roman citizenry revolted against this outrage and expelled the Etruscans from Rome. The rebels were determined that never again would any single man be allowed to obtain supreme power in Rome, and for four centuries the system they established more or less succeeded in preventing that from happening. "This was the main principle," writes Everitt, "that underpinned constitutional arrangements which, by Cicero's time [106 to 43 BC], were of a baffling complexity."
At the heart of the unwritten Roman constitution was the Senate, by the early years of the first century BC composed of about 300 members from whose ranks two chief executives, called consuls, were elected. The consuls took turns being in charge for a month each, and neither could hold office for more than a year. Over time an amazing set of "checks and balances" evolved to ensure that the consuls and other executives whose offices conferred on them imperium -- the right to command an army, to interpret and carry out the law, and to pass sentences of death -- did not entertain visions of grandeur and overstay their time. At the heart of these restraints were the principles of collegiality and term limits. The first meant that for every office there were at least two incumbents, neither of whom had seniority or superiority over the other. Office holders were normally limited to one-year terms and could be reelected to the same office only after waiting ten years. Senators had to serve two to three years in lower offices -- as quaestors, tribunes, aediles, or praetors -- before they were eligible for election to a higher office, including the consulship. All office holders could veto the acts of their equals, and higher officials could veto decisions of lower ones. The chief exception to these rules was the office of "dictator," appointed by the consuls in times of military emergency. There was always only one dictator and his decisions were immune to veto; according to the constitution, he could hold office only for six months or the duration of a crisis.
Once an official had ended his term as consul or praetor, the next post below consul, he was posted in Italy or abroad as governor of a province or colony and given the title of proconsul. It is absurd for journalistic admirers of the U.S. military today to pretend that its regional commanders-in-chief for the Middle East (Centcom), Europe (Eucom), the Pacific (Pacom), Latin America (Southcom), and the United States itself (Northcom) are the equivalents of Roman proconsuls.1 The Roman officials were seasoned members of the Senate who had held the highest executive post in the country, whereas American regional commanders are generals or admirals who have served their entire careers away from civilian concerns and risen to this post by managing to avoid making egregious mistakes.
After serving as consul in 63 BC (the year of Octavian's birth), for example, Cicero was sent to govern the colony of Cilicia in present-day southern Turkey, where his duties were both civilian and military. Over time this complex system was made even more complex by the class struggle embedded in Roman society. During the first two centuries of the republic, what appeared to be a participatory democracy was in fact an oligarchy of aristocratic families that dominated the Senate. Not everyone was happy with this. After 287 BC, when the constitution was more or less formalized, a new institution came into being to defend the rights of the plebs or populares, that is, the ordinary, non-aristocratic citizens of Rome. These were the tribunes of the people, charged with protection of the lives and property of plebeians. Tribunes could veto any election, law, or decree of the Senate, of which they were ex officio members, as well as the acts of all other officials (except a dictator). They could also veto each others' vetoes. "No doubt because their purpose in life was to annoy people," Everitt notes, "their persons were sacrosanct." Controlling appointments to the office of tribune later became very important to generals like Julius Caesar, who based their power on their armies plus the support of the populares against the aristocrats.
The system worked well enough and afforded extraordinary freedoms to the citizens of Rome so long as all members of the Senate recognized that compromise and consensus were the only ways to get anything done. Everitt poses the issue in terms of the different perspectives of Caesar and Cicero; Caesar was Rome's, and perhaps history's greatest general; whereas Cicero was the most intellectual defender of the Roman constitution. Both were former consuls: "Julius Caesar, with the pitiless insight of genius, understood that the constitution with its endless checks and balances prevented effective government, but like so many of his contemporaries Cicero regarded politics in personal rather than structural terms. For Caesar the solution lay in a completely new system of government; for Cicero it lay in finding better men to run the government -- and better laws to keep them in order."
"Remember that you are human"
Imperialism provoked the crisis that destroyed the Roman republic. After slowly consolidating its power over all of Italy and conquering the Greek colonies on the island of Sicily, the republic extended its conquests to Greece itself, to Carthage in North Africa, and to what is today southern France, Spain, and Asia Minor. By the first century BC, Rome dominated all of Gaul, most of Iberia, the coast of North Africa, Macedonia (including Greece), the Balkans, and large parts of modern Turkey, Syria, and Lebanon. "The republic became enormously rich on the spoils of empire," Everitt writes, "so much so that from 167 BC Roman citizens in Italy no longer paid any personal taxes." The republic also became increasingly self-important and arrogant, believing that its task was to bring civilization to lesser peoples and naming the Mediterranean Mare Nostrum (our sea), somewhat the way some Americans came in the twentieth century to refer to the Pacific Ocean as an "American lake."
The problem was that the Roman constitution made administration of so large and diverse an area increasingly difficult and subtly altered the norms and interests that underlay the need for compromise and consensus. There were several aspects to this crisis, but the most important was the transformation of the Roman army into a professional military force and the growth of militarism. During the early and middle years of the republic, the Roman legions were a true citizen army composed of small, conscripted landowners. Differing from the American republic, all citizens between the age of 17 and 46 were liable to be called for military service. One of the more admirable aspects of the Roman system was that only those citizens who possessed a specified amount of property (namely, a horse and some land) could serve, thereby making those who had profited most from the state also responsible for its defense. (By contrast, of the 535 members of Congress, only seven have children in the U.S.'s all-volunteer armed forces.) The Roman plebs did their service as skirmishers with the army or in the navy, which had far less honor attached to it. At the beginning of each term, the consuls appointed tribunes to raise two legions from the census role of all eligible citizens.
When a campaign was over, the troops were promptly sent back to their farms, sometimes richer and flushed with military glory. Occasionally, the returning farmers got to march behind their general in a "triumph," the most splendid ceremony in the Roman calendar, a victory procession allowed only to the greatest of conquerors. The general himself, who paid for this parade, rode in a chariot with his face covered in red lead to represent Jupiter, king of the gods. A boy slave stood behind him holding a laurel wreath above his head while whispering in his ear "Remember that you are human." In Pompey's great triumph of 61 BC, he actually wore a cloak that had belonged to Alexander the Great. After the general came his prisoners in chains and finally the legionnaires, who by ancient tradition sang obscene songs satirizing their general.
By the end of the second century BC, in Everitt's words, "The responsibilities of empire meant that soldiers could no longer be demobilized at the end of each fighting season. Standing forces were required, with soldiers on long-term contracts." The great general Caius Marius undertook to reform the armed forces, replacing the old conscript armies with a professional body of long-service volunteers. When their contracts expired, they expected their commanders, to whom they were personally loyal, to grant them farms. Unfortunately, land in Italy was by then in short supply, much of it tied up in huge sheep and cattle ranches owned by rich, often aristocratic, families and run by slave labor. The landowners were the dominant conservative influence in the Senate, and they resisted all efforts at land reform. Members of the upper classes became wealthy as a result of Rome's wars of conquest and bought more land as the only safe investment, driving small holders off their property. In 133 BC, the gentry arranged for the killing of the tribune Tiberius Gracchus (of plebian origin) for advocating a new land-use law. Rome's population continued to swell with landless veterans. "Where would the land be found," asks Everitt, "for the superannuated soldiers of Rome's next war?"
During the last century before its fall, the republic was assailed by many revolts of generals and their troops, leading to gross violations of the constitution and on several occasions to civil wars. These included the uprisings of Marius and Sulla and of the failed revolutionary Catilina. There was also the Spartacus slave rebellion of 73 BC, put down by the immensely wealthy Marcus Licinius Crassus, who in the process crucified some 6,000 survivors. Crassus was a member of the First Triumvirate, along with Pompey and Caesar, which attempted to bring the situation under control by direct cooperation among the generals. Everitt writes, "During his childhood and youth Cicero had watched with horror as Rome set about dismantling itself. If he had a mission as an adult, it was to recall the republic to order. . . . [He] noticed that the uninhibited freedom of speech which marked political life in the republic was giving way to caution at social gatherings and across dinner tables. . . . The Senate had no answer to Rome's problems and indeed sought none. Its aim was simply to maintain the constitution and resist the continual attacks on its authority. . . . The populares had lost decisively with the defeat of Catilina, but the snake was only stunned. Caesar, who had been plotting against Senatorial interests behind the scenes, was rising up the political ladder and, barring accidents, would be consul in a few years' time."
Caesar became consul for the first time in 59 BC enjoying great popularity with the ordinary people. After his year in office, he was rewarded by being named governor of Gaul, a post he held between 58 and 49 during which he earned great military glory and became immensely wealthy. In 49 he famously allowed his armies to cross the Rubicon, a small river in northern Italy that served as a boundary against armies approaching the capital, and plunged the country into civil war, taking on his former ally and now rival, Pompey. He won, after which, as Everitt observes, "No one was left in the field for Caesar to fight. . . . His leading opponents were dead. The republic was dead too: he had become the state." Julius Caesar exercised dictatorship from 48 to 44 and a month before the Ides of March had arranged to have himself named "dictator for life." Instead, he was stabbed to death in the Senate by a conspiracy of eight members, led by Brutus and Cassius, both praetors, known to history as "principled tyrannicides."
Shakespeare's recreation of the scenes that followed, based upon Sir Thomas North's translation of Plutarch, has become as immortal as the deed itself. In a speech to the plebeians in the Forum, Brutus defended his actions. "If there be any in this assembly, any dear friend of Caesar's, to him I say that Brutus' love to Caesar was no less than his. If then that friend demand why Brutus rose against Caesar, this is my answer: Not that I lov'd Caesar less, but that I loved Rome more. Had you rather Caesar were living, and all die slaves, than that Caesar were dead, to live all freemen?" However, Mark Antony, Caesar's chief lieutenant, speaking to the same audience, had the last word. He turned the populace against Brutus and Cassius, and as they raced forth to avenge Caesar's murder, said cynically, "Cry 'Havoc!' and let slip the dogs of war."
Who will watch the watchers?
The Second Triumvirate, formed to avenge Caesar, ended like the first, with only one man standing, but that man, Caius Octavianus (Octavian), Caesar's eighteen-year-old grand nephew, would decisively change Roman government by replacing the republic with an imperial dictatorship. Everitt characterizes Octavian as "a freebooting young privateer," who on August 19, 43 BC, became the youngest consul in Rome's history and set out, in violation of the constitution, to raise his own private army. "The boy would be a focus for the simmering resentments among the Roman masses, the disbanded veterans, and the standing legions." Cicero, who had devoted his life to trying to curb the kind of power represented by Octavian, now gave up on the rule of law in favor of realpolitik. He recognized that "for all his struggles the constitution was dead and power lay in the hands of soldiers and their leaders." In Cicero's analysis, the only hope was to try to co-opt Octavian, leading him toward a more constitutional position, while doing everything not to "irritate rank-and-file opinion, which was fundamentally Caesarian." Cicero would pay with his life for this last, desperate gamble. Octavian, allied with Mark Antony, ordered at least 130 senators (perhaps as many as 300) executed and their property confiscated after charging them with supporting the conspiracy against Caesar. Mark Antony personally added Cicero's name to the list. When he met his death, the great scholar and orator had with him a copy of Euripides' Medea, which he had been reading. His head and both hands were displayed in the Forum.
A year after Cicero's death, following the battle of Philippi where Brutus and Cassius ended their lives, Octavian and Antony divided the known world between them. Octavian took the West and remained in Rome; Antony accepted the East and allied himself with Cleopatra, the queen of Egypt and Julius Caesar's former mistress. In 31 BC, Octavian set out to end this unstable arrangement, and at the sea battle of Actium in the Gulf of Ambracia on the western coast of Greece, he defeated Antony's and Cleopatra's fleet. The following year in Alexandria Mark Antony fell on his sword and Cleopatra took an asp to her breast. By then, both had been thoroughly discredited for claiming that Antony was a descendant of Caesar's and for seeking Roman citizenship rights for Cleopatra's children by Caesar. Octavian would rule the Roman world for the next 45 years, until his death in 14 AD.
On January 13, 27 BC, Octavian appeared in the Senate, which had legitimized its own demise by ceding most of its powers to him and which now bestowed on him the new title of Augustus, first Roman emperor. The majority of the Senators were his solid supporters, having been handpicked by him. In 23 BC, Augustus was granted further authority by being designated a tribune for life, which gave him ultimate veto power over anything the Senate might do. His power rested ultimately on his total control of the armed forces.
Although his rise to power was always tainted by constitutional illegitimacy -- not unlike that of our own Boy Emperor from Crawford, Texas -- Augustus proceeded to emasculate the Roman system and its representative institutions. He never abolished the old republican offices but merely united them under one person -- himself. Imperial appointment became a badge of prestige and social standing rather than of authority. The Senate was turned into a club of old aristocratic families, and its approval of the acts of the emperor was purely ceremonial. The Roman legions continued to march under the banner SPQR -- senatus populus que Romanus, "the Senate and the Roman People" -- but the authority of Augustus was absolute.
The most serious problem was that the army had grown too large and was close to unmanageable. It constituted a state within a state, not unlike the Pentagon in the United States today. Augustus reduced the army's size and provided generous cash payments to those soldiers who had served more than twelve years, making clear that this bounty came from him, not their military commanders. He also transferred all legions away from Rome to the remote provinces and borders of the Empire, to ensure their leaders were not tempted to meddle in political affairs. Equally astutely, he created the Praetorian Guard, an elite force of 9,000 men with the task of defending him personally, and stationed them in Rome. They were drawn only from Italy, not from distant provinces, and were paid more than soldiers in the regular legions. They began as Augustus's personal bodyguards, but in the decades after his death they became decisive players in the selection of new emperors. It was one of the first illustrations of an old problem of authoritarian politics: create one bureaucracy, the Praetorian Guard, to control another bureaucracy, the regular army, but before long the question will arise: Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (Who will watch the watchers?)
Augustus is credited with forging the Roman Peace (Pax Romana), which historians like to say lasted more than 200 years. It was, however, a military dictatorship and depended entirely on the incumbent emperor. And therein lay the problem. Tiberius, who reigned from 14-37 AD, retired to Capri with a covey of young boys who catered to his sexual tastes. His successor, Caligula, who held office from 37-41, was the darling of the army, but on January 24, 41 AD, the Praetorian Guard assassinated him and proceeded to loot the imperial palace. Modern archaeological evidence strongly suggests that Caligula was an eccentric maniac, just as history has always portrayed him.2
The fourth Roman emperor, Claudius, who reigned from 41 to 54, was selected and put into power by the Praetorian Guard in a de facto military coup. Despite the basically favorable portrayal of him by Robert Graves (I, Claudius, 1934) and years later on TV by Derek Jacobi, Claudius, who was Caligula's uncle, was addicted to gladiatorial games and fond of watching his defeated opponents being put to death. As a child, Claudius limped, drooled, stuttered, and was constantly ill. He had his first wife killed and married Agrippina, daughter of the sister of Caligula, after having the law changed to allow uncles to marry their nieces. On October 13, 54 AD, Claudius was killed with a poisoned mushroom, probably fed to him by his wife, and at noon that same day, the sixteen-year-old Nero, Agrippina's son by a former husband, was acclaimed emperor in a carefully orchestrated piece of political theater. Nero, who reigned from 54 to 68, was a probably insane tyrant who has been credited with setting fire to Rome in 64 and persecuting some famous early Christians (Paul and Peter), although his reputation has been somewhat rehabilitated in recent years as a patron of the arts.
The short, happy life of the American republic
After Augustus, not much recommends the Roman Empire as an example of enlightened government despite the enthusiasm for it of such neoconservative promoters of the George W. Bush administration as the Washington Post's Charles Krauthammer, the Los Angeles Time's Max Boot, and the Weekly Standard's William Kristol. My reasons for going over this ancient history are not to suggest that our own Boy Emperor is a second Octavian but rather what might happen after he is gone. The history of the Roman republic from the time of Julius Caesar on suggests that it was imperialism and militarism -- poorly understood by all conservative political leaders at the time -- that brought it down. Militarism and the professionalization of a large standing army create invincible new sources of power within a polity. The government must mobilize the masses in order to exploit them as cannon fodder and this leads to the rise of populist generals who understand the grievances of their troops and veterans.
Service in the armed forces of the United States has not been a universal male obligation of citizenship since 1973. Our military today is a professional corps of men and women who join up for their own reasons, commonly to advance themselves in the face of one or another cul de sac of American society. They normally do not expect to be shot at, but they do expect all the benefits of state employment -- steady pay, good housing, free medical benefits, relief from racial discrimination, world travel, and gratitude from the rest of society for their military "service." They are well aware that the alternatives civilian life in America offers today include difficult job searches, no job security, regular pilfering of retirement funds by company executives and their accountants, "privatized" medical care, bad public elementary education systems, and insanely expensive higher education. They are ripe, it seems to me, not for the political rhetoric of patrician politicians who have followed the Andover, Yale, Harvard Business School route to riches and power but for a Julius Caesar, Napoleon Bonaparte, or Juan Perón -- a revolutionary, military populist with no interest in republican niceties so long as he is made emperor.
Regardless of the outcome of the next presidential election, the incumbent will have to deal with the Pentagon, the military-industrial complex, our empire of bases, and a fifty-year-old tradition of not telling the public what our military establishment costs and the devastation it can inflict. History teaches us that the capacity for things to get worse is limitless. Roman history suggests that the short, happy life of the American republic is in serious trouble -- and that conversion to a military empire is, to say the least, not the best answer.
The first two books in Chalmers Johnson's Blowback Trilogy -- Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire, and The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic -- are now available in paperback. The third volume is being written.
1. See, for example, Dana Priest, The Mission: Waging War and Keeping Peace with America's Military (New York: Norton, 2003).
2. Shasta Darlington, "New Dig Says Caligula Was Indeed a Maniac," Reuters, August 16, 2003.
As The World Burns
A Mother Jones special project on global warming
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Introduction by Tom Engelhardt
In September 2003, only four months after our President's 'Mission Accomplished' moment on the USS Abraham Lincoln, it was already evident to some of us that neocon dreams of establishing a robust Pax Americana on the planet were likely to be doomed in the sands of Iraq -- but that, in the process, the American constitutional system as we've known it might well be destroyed. The question of just what Rubicon we might have crossed when American troops first took a bridge over the Euphrates was on my mind -- and Chalmers Johnson's as well. He sat down early that September, having just seen a production of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar and wrote out his own version of the fall of the republic, which he entitled 'The Scourge of Militarism,' an essay as resonant today as it was then. It is the second offering in my Best of Tomdispatch 2003 series.
Looking back almost two years later, Johnson writes,
'The American governmental system is no longer working the way it is supposed to. Many distinguished"
WTC7 seems to be a classic controlled demolition. WTC 1 &2 destruction appears to have been enhanced by thermate (a variation of thermite) in addition. Pentagon was not struck by a passenger aircraft. It was a drone or missle.
Monday, June 13, 2005
Salon.com News | Return of the body counts
Salon.com News | Return of the body counts: "Return of the body counts
With Americans souring on the war in Iraq, the U.S. military has started talking up the number of insurgents killed. Are we headed down the same corrupting road we did in Vietnam?"
With Americans souring on the war in Iraq, the U.S. military has started talking up the number of insurgents killed. Are we headed down the same corrupting road we did in Vietnam?"
The Gadflyer: Fly Trap (Social Security piece in NYT)
The Gadflyer: Fly Trap: "willful ignorance of the intensive ways in which the issues involved have already been addressed. So it goes in Sunday's New York Times"
Brit Hume is defending Gitmo and Bill Kristol goes after him, briskly asking Hume to say why we need to be involved in heavy handed techniques of interogations and outside of legal jurisdictions, and why can't we accomplish our goals using standard, legal military rules. Hume is left mumbling, only able to call him "Bill" in a sarcastic tone. Kristol makes a strong and simple point. Must see TV.
ABC News: Some Turn to Videotape to Challenge Police
BG: ABC News Mostly misses the point (why should we not be surprised?)
Feres Doctrine
Link to Press Release
Buildup to 09/11/2001
Interesting Discussion Website
Extract #1
Extract #2
Exerpt: September 1987-March 1989: Michael Springmann, the head US consular official in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, later claims that he is "repeatedly told to issue visas to unqualified applicants." He turns them down, but is repeatedly overruled by superiors. Springmann loudly complains about the practice to numerous government offices, but no action is taken. He eventually is fired and the files he has kept on these applicants are destroyed. Springmann speculates that the issuing of visas to radical Islamic fighters continued until 9/11. He says he later learns that recruits from many countries fighting for bin Laden against Russia in Afghanistan were funneled through the Jeddah office to get visas to come to the US. They would then train for the Afghan war in the US. He says the Jeddah consulate was run by the CIA and staffed almost entirely by intelligence agents. Springmann suggests that this visa system may have continued until present day, and that the 15 of the 19 9/11 hijackers getting their visas through Jeddah (see May 21, 2002 (C)) could have been a part of it (see also October 21, 2002 and October 23, 2002). [BBC, 11/6/01, AP, 7/17/02, Fox News, 7/18/02]
Anxiety Culture: Newsletter
Anxiety Culture: Newsletter
9th December 2001 - Some voices of "reason and moderation" from the respectable US media:
Michael Kelly (Washington Post): "American pacifists... are on the side of future mass murders of Americans", they are "objectively pro-terrorist", "evil" and "liars".
Steve Dunleavy (New York Post) "The response to this unimaginable 21st-century Pearl Harbor should be as simple as it is swift - kill the bastards... A gunshot between the eyes, blow them to smithereens, poison them... As for cities or countries that host these worms, bomb them into basketball courts".
Rich Lowry (National Review): "If we flatten part of Damascus or Tehran or whatever it takes, that is part of the solution".
Jonathan Alter (Newsweek): Urged dissenters to shut up because "it's kill or be killed".
A.M. Rosenthal (Washington Times): In addition to Afghanistan, wants to bomb Iraq, Libya, Sudan, Iran, and Syria.
Ann Coulter (ex-National Review): Her response to terrorism is to "invade their countries, kill their leaders, and convert them to Christianity".
Interesting survey by FAIR of imbalances in the US press coverage following September 11th (http://www.fair.org/activism/nyt-wp-opeds.html)
Here's a brief excerpt:
"In polls that offered a choice between a military response or nothing, it's true that overwhelming majorities chose war. But given the choice between either a military assault or pressing for the extradition and trial of those responsible (eg Christian Science Monitor, 9/27/01), a substantial minority either chose extradition (30 percent) or were undecided (16 percent). These people had next to no representation in the op-ed debate; in fact, it's likely that many people asked to choose whether or not to go to war had never seen an alternative to war articulated in a mainstream outlet."
(From Robert Anton Wilson)
"In the feudal age, people once fought wars over Land, when Land served as the source of wealth. Those who had Land wanted more, on the usual addictive rule that we want more of what makes us feel very very good. They also worried that others wanted to take their Land away. Then paper Money appeared, almost as abstract as pure information in communication theory. For over 400 years now, the world has struggled over Money -- working for it, swindling and robbing for it, conspiring to monopolize it, going to war over it. Since less than one percent of Earthians owns 99 percent of the Money, the [approximately] 6 billion of the rest of us struggle evermore desperately over the one percent of the green magick not yet monopolized".
9th December 2001 - Some voices of "reason and moderation" from the respectable US media:
Michael Kelly (Washington Post): "American pacifists... are on the side of future mass murders of Americans", they are "objectively pro-terrorist", "evil" and "liars".
Steve Dunleavy (New York Post) "The response to this unimaginable 21st-century Pearl Harbor should be as simple as it is swift - kill the bastards... A gunshot between the eyes, blow them to smithereens, poison them... As for cities or countries that host these worms, bomb them into basketball courts".
Rich Lowry (National Review): "If we flatten part of Damascus or Tehran or whatever it takes, that is part of the solution".
Jonathan Alter (Newsweek): Urged dissenters to shut up because "it's kill or be killed".
A.M. Rosenthal (Washington Times): In addition to Afghanistan, wants to bomb Iraq, Libya, Sudan, Iran, and Syria.
Ann Coulter (ex-National Review): Her response to terrorism is to "invade their countries, kill their leaders, and convert them to Christianity".
Interesting survey by FAIR of imbalances in the US press coverage following September 11th (http://www.fair.org/activism/nyt-wp-opeds.html)
Here's a brief excerpt:
"In polls that offered a choice between a military response or nothing, it's true that overwhelming majorities chose war. But given the choice between either a military assault or pressing for the extradition and trial of those responsible (eg Christian Science Monitor, 9/27/01), a substantial minority either chose extradition (30 percent) or were undecided (16 percent). These people had next to no representation in the op-ed debate; in fact, it's likely that many people asked to choose whether or not to go to war had never seen an alternative to war articulated in a mainstream outlet."
(From Robert Anton Wilson)
"In the feudal age, people once fought wars over Land, when Land served as the source of wealth. Those who had Land wanted more, on the usual addictive rule that we want more of what makes us feel very very good. They also worried that others wanted to take their Land away. Then paper Money appeared, almost as abstract as pure information in communication theory. For over 400 years now, the world has struggled over Money -- working for it, swindling and robbing for it, conspiring to monopolize it, going to war over it. Since less than one percent of Earthians owns 99 percent of the Money, the [approximately] 6 billion of the rest of us struggle evermore desperately over the one percent of the green magick not yet monopolized".
Anxiety Culture: Stupid, Pointless Jobs
Anxiety Culture: Stupid, Pointless Jobs: "Financial Services is pretty much all based on what used to be called usury - the practice of making money from money. No creation of anything useful or worthwhile is involved. No real wealth is being created (to use Buckminster Fuller's definition of real wealth as whatever "nurtures and accommodates human life")."
BG: I referenced this site at the top of this blog, not realising how quite unhinged the writing seems to be in some areas. The idea that financial services do not at times "nurture and accommodate human life" is just hooey.
BG: I referenced this site at the top of this blog, not realising how quite unhinged the writing seems to be in some areas. The idea that financial services do not at times "nurture and accommodate human life" is just hooey.
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United States: First US Offshore Wind Turbine Launches in MainePublished at Jun 3, 2013
source: Renewable Energy World
This particular project will focus on a semi-submersible platform, with a concrete hull and lightweight composite materials instead of steel. It also includes
United States: GOP revolutionaries push Georgia Power to embrace solar energyPublished at Jun 3, 2013
source: The Atlantic Journal-Constitution
Republicans in the Georgia State Congress are leading the charge to bring more solar energy production to the state. McDonald would like Georgia Power's future portfolio...
United States: State Approves PSE&G's $500 Million Solar-Energy InitiativePublished at May 31, 2013
source: NJ Spotlight
A nearly half-billion dollar program to promote new solar projects proposed by Public Service Electric & Gas won approval yesterday from state regulators, with officials...


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When the 5th Maine Infantry Regiment sought a doctor in the house in 1863, officers discovered that a medical student just would not do.
The 1,000-odd men and boys who had marched to war with the 5th Maine two years earlier had encountered germs, diseases, Confederate bullets, and viruses galore. Carried on the muster rolls as "surgeons" and "assistant surgeons," the regimental doctors had poked and prodded myriad patients, many of whom had died or gone home unfit for military service — or much of anything else.
Competent doctors could be hard to find, but when a double vacancy occurred in the 5th Maine in midwinter 1863, two qualified volunteers applied.
Writing from "Headquarters 1st Brigade … near White Oak Ch.[urch] Va." on Tuesday, Feb. 10, Dr. L.W. Oakley informed Maine Gov. Abner Coburn that "I have been intimately acquainted with Dr. F[rancis]. G. Warren," the 5th Maine's assistant surgeon, "for some months." The doctors had worked in the same hospital after the Battle of Antietam; Oakley described Warren as "eminently fitted for the position of regimental surgeon."
Oakley's recommendation came a month late. On Friday, Feb. 13, regimental adjutant George W. Bicknell reported that the appointments of Warren to surgeon and Dr. William S. Noyes to assistant surgeon "were duly received" at regimental headquarters. The appointments were dated Jan. 7.
But a slight problem arose. Writing to Maine Adjutant General John Hodsdon on Tuesday, March 31, Noyes announced, "I found after accepting the commission" as the regiment's assistant surgeon a month earlier "that I could not obtain a leave of absence for the purpose of finishing my studies and taking the requisite degree."
He was still a medical student.
Because he could not "qualify myself for the proper discharge of the responsible duties" of "an assistant surgeon," Noyes told Hodsdon that "I have resigned." Back to square one went the search for a qualified 5th Maine assistant surgeon.
Make that two. Looking around the medical tent, Warren counted the number of doctors "present and accounted for" at one: himself. He hurriedly told Coburn on Friday, April 1 that "as we are soon to engage in an active campaign it is very desirable that the vacancies in this department be filled as early as practicable."
Warren had someone in mind. "Doctor Melville H. Manson of Lymington [sic]has been suggested to me as a candidate for one of these [assistant surgeon] vacancies, and I would respectfully submit him to the position, knowing him to be in every way qualified for it," Warren told Coburn on April 1.
"I have been acquainted with him for some length of time and feel assured that he would fill such a position with great credit to himself and the Regiment," Warren concluded.
The 5th Maine's commanding officer, Col. Clark S. Edwards, leaped at the opportunity to snag the good doctor Manson. Writing to Hodsdon on April 6, Edwards claimed that the nominations of Manson and another doctor as assistant surgeons "are made at the request of the Surgeon in Chief of the [1st] Division to which we are attached."
The division surgeon "says that it is necessary to have both vacancies filled," Edwards wrote.
He was correct; the Battle of Chancellorsville lay a month away, and the 5th Maine would need every doctor available.
Warren wrote Manson and asked him to became an assistant surgeon. "I would like the position and would go cheerfully with your assent," Manson assured Coburn from Brunswick on Friday, April 8. Manson hoped "to give aid and relief in some degree to those who may be unfortunate in losing health and in receiving wounds while fighting to maintain their country's rights and honor."
Manson stressed to Coburn that "I have not received my diploma yet, but this is my third course of medical instruction and should you see fit to appoint me to that position, I can have a premature examination and take my degree."
Writing from Bowdoin College on April 10, Dr. Israel T. Dana, M.D. stated that Manson, "now a member of the Medical Class of this institution," was "expecting to graduate in medicine at the close of the present term."
Dana recommended with "great pleasure" that Manson be appointed an assistant surgeon with the 5th Maine Infantry; "he would be found truly useful, competent & worthy in that position," Dana wrote.
Then Warren informed Coburn on Wednesday, April 13 that "under late orders from the War Department … only one Asst. Surgeon will be allowed for each Regiment." If the 5th Maine Infantry could have only assistant surgeon, "I would earnestly recommend Doctor Manson for the position," Warren lobbied for his candidate.
Coburn acted quickly.
"Dear sir," Melville H. Manson wrote him on Friday, April 20. "I see by the Lewiston Journal that you have appointed me assistant surgeon of Maine 5th Reg."
Manson had received no official letter announcing his appointment; instead, he had read about it in a newspaper that a friend had likely forwarded from Lewiston.
Still a medical student, the determined Manson asked Coburn "about what time you would have me join the regiment as I wish to take my degree before going." The Bowdoin "medical faculty must be called together, which will require a short notice" of "two or three weeks if possible," Manson explained.
A medical student just would not do as the 5th Maine Infantry headed to war that spring.
But Dr. Melville H. Manson, M.D., would suffice.
He passed his medical exam and went to war.
If you enjoy reading the adventures of Mainers caught up in the Civil War, be sure to like Maine at War on Facebook and get a copy of the new Maine at War Volume 1: Bladensburg to Sharpsburg, available online at Amazon and all major book retailers, including Books-A-Million and Barnes & Noble. —————————————————————————————————————–


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"Dedication," written by Lexington native David Bromberg, opened last week.
Just writing a screenplay that makes it to the silver screen is tough enough. Lexington High School graduate David Bromberg discovered that pleasing national film critics is even tougher.
Bromberg, 40, wrote the film "Dedication," which opened last weekend and stars Billy Crudup and Mandy Moore. It was accepted into the Sundance Film Festival, which is an accomplishment in itself, and got good reviews there.
Upon national distribution, however, many film critics, including Wesley Morris of the Boston Globe, panned the film.
After his success at Sundance, Bromberg said he was still adjusting to having his work whacked around by so many critics.
"I'm like everyone else. When I see a bad review it really kind of gets to me," said Bromberg. "I know people say not to read the reviews, but it's kind of hard not to. It does get to me, and I guess I'm going to have to grow a thicker skin for the next project."
Some of that criticism hurt because of the personal writing his film included. He wrote "Dedication" after the death of his best friend, Jonathan Kaplan, and he attributes many of the themes in the film to what he was going through at the time.
"I don't think I realized how many elements there were from my life there were in the screenplay until after I was done and I looked back on it," he said.
Bromberg said that actor-turned-first-time-director Justin Theroux did a great job recruiting the cast for the film, and was faithful to the tone and feel of the script, but made a movie that was slightly different from what Bromberg created.
"There was a great cast in the movie, and I give Justin all the credit for that," said Bromberg. "I like the look and tone of the movie. I wasn't quite the movie I wrote, but I think that's typical of Hollywood movies in general. Not everything in the movie is the product of the screenwriter, so sometimes I get criticized for things I didn't even write."
Bromberg said that his insatiable nature is just part of who he is.
"I'm a real glass is half-full, but it's full of poison, kind of guy," he said, showing what one of his teachers once called "acerbic wit." "So I'm never going to be that happy with anything."
One person who is quite happy with the work he has done is his mother, Carol Bromberg of Lexington. She has been following his writing career his whole life, and said he began writing poetry at age 9."The writing is a gift: it just flows," she said.
Carol and her husband, George, went to Park City, Utah to the Sundance Film Festival to see "Dedication." They sat in the front row, and when the movie was over, she said the 1,200-seat theater erupted in applause for Bromberg's film.
With so much adulation in Utah, Carol was not prepared for what she read last week.
"When I opened the Globe, I read [the review] three times," she said. "I had to laugh because I said, 'I can't believe this is this person's spin on it.' I was hurt for my son reading it, but he handled it so well."
Carol said she took same approach that allowed her son to turn a tragic event, Kaplan's death, into a romantic comedy for thousands to see.
"You have a choice in life," she said. "When something bad happens you can either cry it off, or lighten it up."


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I am listening for a sound beyond us that travels the spine's invisible ladder to the orphic library. Where rebel books revel in the unremitting light. Printed in gray, tiny words with quicksand depth embroidered with such care they render spirit a ghost, and God, a telescope turned backwards upon itself dreaming us awake.
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I doubt mobile computing will evolve to computers on a USB stick for most people, but this prototype device offering found by The Verge is certainly intriguing to a gadget geek like me. Called the Cotton Candy, the small device looks like a traditional USB flash drive with one extra hardware bit on the outside; an HDMI port. While the stick can be plugged into any computer's USB slot, it works as a standalone computer as well, capable of running Android, Ubuntu Linux or, through a virtualization client, Microsoft Windows or Mac OS X.
We've seen "PC on a stick" products before, but the HDMI port helps make the Cotton Candy stand out. Attach a monitor to the HDMI port and a power supply to the USB jack and y0u're up and running. Adding to the feature set is a microSD slot, and integrated Wi-Fi and BlueTooth radios; these wireless options provide both connectivity and support for a keyboard or a mouse.
Of course, if the Cotton Candy prototype ever makes it to market, don't expect a full desktop or laptop level of performance. Internally, the device is expected to have the guts of a capable smartphone: 1.2 GHz Cortex A9 processor, 1 GB of memory, and a quad-core graphics chip supporting 1080p video encoding and playback. But with dimensions of 8 cm x 2.5 cm, you weren't really expecting an 2.8 GHz multi-core desktop processor, were you?
While I like the mobile aspect of the Cotton Candy, a better use for the product may be to extend the feature set of a traditional laptop or computer. It can be used to transfer media from a mobile operating system to a desktop environment or for running Android inside Windows or Mac OS X as needed. Sure, it's a very niche product, but we geeks often gravitate to such things!


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Very irresistable! Have made using white chocolate too.
- Yield
- 4 dozen 2 1/2" cookies
- 1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter
- 3/4 cup sifted confectioners' sugar
- 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
- 2 cups sifted all-purpose flour, plus more for dusting
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 3 ounces semisweet or bittersweet chocolate, finely chopped
- 1 teaspoon canola oil or pure vegetable shortening
- In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream butter, sugar, and vanilla until combined. On slow speed, beat in flour and salt until combined. Wrap dough in plastic wrap; chill until firm, at least 2 hours, or overnight. On a lightly floured surface, roll out the dough until 1/16-to-1/8 inch thick. Cut out hearts with a 2-inch heart cookie cutter. Transfer cookies to an ungreased baking sheet; chill for 30 minutes. Heat oven to 300 degrees with a rack in the center. Press the tines of a fork into each cookie to make designs. Bake until just beginning to brown around the edges, about 18 minutes. (Cookies will keep in an airtight container at room temperature for about 5 days.) In the top of a double boiler or in a heat-proof bowl set over simmering water, melt the chocolate, stirring occasionally. Stir in the oil. Dip half or one third of each cookie into the chocolate mixture. Transfer cookies to a cooling rack to dry, or place them on a piece of parchment paper in the freezer for 10 minutes. Serve.


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Old and broken down auto parts are nothing more than trash for some, but for people like Armando RamÃrez they are no less than treasure. The artist transforms these objects into sleek, black and silver chess sets. The horses, pawns and everything that you see on a chess set. To complete the chessboaround objects are rolled into a specially crafted die machine that transforms them. Armando uses everything from screws and bearings to a car's electrical system.
We've got a massive DIY chess roundup here, and you can even make a chess board double as secret-agent storage.


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Sometimes, a gallant space explorer has no choice but to make a massive sacrifice, and blow up the spaceship. And sometimes, a ship just blows up whether you want it to or not. But what's the coolest, or most dramatic, spaceship explosion of all?
Please include a picture, book cover or clip of the detonation in question. And mention where it comes from, and why it rules. Thanks!
Top image: Star Trek III: The Search for Spock.


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The end of another week of WoW, not that its ever a full week on Oceanic realms anyway, we only get 6 days per week, yet for some reason pay for 7.
Of course this week has been unusual, filled with high drama and not of the guild variety. Mind you, the only drama in my guild these days is when the guild leader /ragequits, which of course means there is no guild.
It was also unusual in the sense that I didn't pick up one Frost Emblem. No VoA, no Weekly, no ICC, not even a random heroic. Two toons, zero emblems.
Mind you, I haven't really been in the mood to raid. Not even to take down Internet Dragons. I think in part it's because I'm tired of the mechanics, they are new and exciting replications of the old ones.
You know immediately what it means when someone says:
Don't stand in the bad!
The thing is the bad is of a different color this week.
- It's not red
- It's not black
- It is green, but a different shade of green.
It's the shade of green that money is made out of.
Forever more when someone says "don't stand in the bad", I will be thinking of a different boss mechanic, the corporate boss mechanic rather than the raid boss mechanic.
I have been playing a bit of Arena. We noted last night it's a bit like a casino.
- We win some, we lose some.
- We get an awesome run, then we lose it all.
- When the time comes to log off, we won't until we get one more win. We need to taste that victory.
It was during a couple of matches last night that my friend and I started cursing about our latency. We were sitting on 400-700, good fps, but buttons weren't firing when we pressed them.
It wasn't even 3 second instant casts that were killing us, it was complete lack of response.
- Press button – nothing.
- Press button – nothing.
- Press – button – Target not in LoS.
Well at least it registered on the 3rd attempt, even if I couldn't use it any more.
Which got me thinking about one of the oldest QQ's in the game – from an Oceanic perspective anyway.
No local servers.
Just in case you didn't know, those of us in the Oceanic regions don't have our own servers locally. We play on rebranded US servers. By the time our keypress has hopped it's way across the Pacific our opponent has gone, we've been standing in the bad for too long, the safety dance would be shut down for health and safety reasons.
When we do Frogger, we aim to hit the slime, hopefully that way we will miss it. Of course usually that coincides with one of those rare drops in latency and we are outed for noobs.
The RealID threads over the last few days certainly overshadow any threads previously. But only in size in quantity over a short period of time. I expect for quality of posts the "give us a server of our own" posts probably have more entries, just over several years.
It got to the point that even those that wanted the servers got sick of the QQ. They just gave up. We all gave up.
Why would we care, it's not like Blizzard would ever suggest they put servers in Australia right?
Except they did.
Back in Alpha, or Alpha Alpha, or Vanilla Alpha – right at the beginning. Of course as time went on people started to accept that it would never happen, it wouldn't be worth Blizzards time. Who can honestly, hand on heart, say that WoW will last longer than 2 years?
I guess we were standing in the bad.
I guess we believed that Blizzard would follow through.
I guess we thought we mattered to Blizzard.
I guess we should have learned our lesson 5 years ago.
A lesson for Blizzard/Activision.
Banking in Australia is a strange creature. We fundamentally only have 4 banks (the 4 pillars as they are refered to).
Over the years there have been lots of suggestions of collision. Occasionally they prove it, but generally they operate independently, just doing the same thing at the same time.
For years now they have been value adding. By this I mean increasing their value, not so much the services they provide.
Fees were the winner. They were getting more money out of fees than anything else. What kind of fees?
- Fees for being overdrawn
- Fees for not having enough in your account.
- Fees for taking money out
- Fees for putting money in
- Fees for having a credit card (whether you used it or not)
- Overdraft charges for the overdraft you never asked for, never wanted, couldn't remove, plus of course the fee for being overdrawn.
- More fees than you can imagine.
They rarely introduced more than one fee at any time and the info was there in the product disclosure booklet, the 30 pages of fine print they would mail out occasionally, or these days they just stick on the website.
Something changed a while back, one of the banks (just one) did the unthinkable… They removed fees, lots of them.
For some reason their share price didn't really suffer. Sure there was an initial dip, but then as the news of the extra customers, the increase in mortgage sales etc took off, the shares rose again.
They had more customers, happier customers that brought their friends and businesses with them. Those customers brought their funds with them, which meant greater capital for investment by the bank, which means… (the potential for) greater profits.
Wrong Blue Posts
One of the things I have realized with the ReaIID fiasco is that we, as players, as customers, have been reading the wrong blue posts.
We read the "your talent got nerfed/buffed" posts, but we don't read the shareholder statements.
We read the exciting new feature blue posts, but we don't read the boring grey ToS and EULA posts, looking for the word, line, paragraph that has changed.
We accept the changes by virtue of dragging that slider as fast as possible so we can get to the login fields behind it.
- Read it? No
- Understood it? No
- Care about it? About what? Ohhh the conditions under which I have paid my money.
I really hope that Blizzard thinks along the lines of the bank. Happy customers will bring happy customers.
I'm tired of standing in the big bad green, especially since the green seems to get constant buffs and the playing conditions constant nerfs.
Ohhh Blizzard, if you really do want to get the Facebook generation from the Oceanic region, give us some local servers and give us back 1/7 th of our sub.
I'll settle for the servers of course.
Nothing to Lose, Everything to gain.
On one final note, the Oceanic Server issue is another example of the "White Middleclass Male" ignoring the needs of the less fortunate. Of course in this case we aren't talking about White Middleclass men, we are talking about US based players on US realms shutting down discussion by Oceanic based players about the need for Oceanic servers.
Those forums were always well trolled, by people with nothing to lose (except a 400ms advantage in PvP) and everything to gain (Raid mates actually know they are standing in the bad!).
Meanwhile, the marginalized (in this case the Oceanic players) don't just have to get their voice heard by Blizzard, but they have to shout above the noise made by people with no real stake in the issue.
Why is it that human beings can't be happy with just the happiness of others?
Gnomer and Out!
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