Other News, Articles, Or Links Of Interest

Hard for many to imagine, but there are still slaves in the world today... These photographs are haunting.

Slavery Still Exists (September 26, 2012)
"It was 130 degrees when I was first introduced to the brick kilns of Nepal. In these severe temperatures, men, women, and children -- whole families, in fact -- were surrounded by a dense cloud of dust while mechanically stacking bricks on their heads, carrying them, 18 at a time, from the scorching kilns to trucks hundreds of yards away.

"These are slaves. Deadened by monotony and exhaustion, they worked without speaking, repeating the same task 16 hours a day. They took no rest for food or water, no bathroom breaks -- although their dehydration suppressed their need to urinate."
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/09/slavery-still-exists/262847/

Poet

Caption: "Uttar Pradesh, India: In India I visited a village where whole families were enslaved in the silk industry. This is a family portrait. The father (hands in black) and his sons (hands in red and blue) are held captive in a 'silk dyeing house.' The dye they work with is toxic. It's common for entire families to be enslaved for generations. My translator told me their story. 'We have no freedom,' they said. 'But we hope, some day, we will be able to leave this house and make dyes in a place where we actually get paid for it.'"

A number of science fiction writers - some quite famous - were asked to make predictions for the year 2012. here they are:

http://www.writersofthefuture.com/time-capsule-predictions

One, Aldris Bydrus, wrote an interesting one: "Because we will be in a trough between 20th-century resources and 21st-century needs, in 2012 all storable forms of energy will be expensive. Machines will be designed to use only minimal amounts of it. At the same time, there will be a general expectation that a practical cheap-energy delivery system is just around the corner. Individuals basing their career plans on any aspect of technology will concentrate on that future, leaving contemporary machine applications to the less ambitious or to those who foresee a different future. The most socially approved-of individuals will constitute a narrowly focused aristocracy, and will be at the mercy of dull functionaries and secretive rebels who actually perform the day-to-day maintenance of society. It should be noted that most minimal-energy devices process information and microscopic materials, not consumer goods. The function of "our" society may depend on processing information and biotechnology to subjugate goods-producing societies. These societies may be geographically external, or may be yet another social stratum within central North America. In either case, crowd-management technologies will have to turn away from forms that might in any way impair capital goods production. Social regimentation will then have become so deft that most people will regard any other social milieu as pitiable."

Sad to say, Budrys died in 2008.

Poet

I came across The War Tard a while back,and have been enjoying the especially colourful commentary that is amusing, sarcastic, irreverent, and yet informative (although claims cannot be backed with sources, you'll have to take them with a grain of salt). His writing shows that he believe in resource scarcity and peak oil, and includes these in context.

Mali: The French Go To The Desert (January 31, 2013)
"It's always time to break out the popcorn when the French go to war. The French intervention in Mali, Operation Serval, isn't exactly a shocker since the French can be pretty touchy when it comes to what goes down in their former colonies. True, the French can be pretty touchy about just about everything but foreign deserts they used to own get them extra twitchy."

And...

"Because Niger is France's main supplier of uranium, that pesky yellow cake the Bush Administration lied about when they needed access to Iraq's oilfields. Uranium is basically what keeps the lights on in France and nuke reactors provide 75% of Gallic electricity generation; electricity they also export to neighboring countries for serious bank. Any disruption in supply and the French get further exposed to the big fear of every developed economy in the 21st Century; buying energy on world markets that are sure to get increasingly pricey as we strip mine the planet frantically in search of more juice; just like Mad Max in the wasteland."
http://wartard.blogspot.com/2013/01/mali-french-go-to-desert.html

Poet

The Supreme Court heard arguments this week over a challenge to the 1965 Voting Rights Act. This is one of the stories behind what led to the Voting Rights Act.

The Voting Rights Martyr Who Divided America (February 28, 2013)
"The murder of Viola Liuzzo was one of the most shocking moments in the civil rights movement. On a winding, isolated road outside Selma, Liuzzo was ambushed and shot to death by a car full of Ku Klux Klansmen.

"She was murdered while giving a ride to a 19-year-old black man, Leroy Moton, one of many civil rights marchers she had driven around Selma. Liuzzo had joined the movement's carpool system soon after arriving in the small Alabama town. Liuzzo's murder became international news. Her photo became a fixture in history books. Her name has been inscribed on civil rights memorials throughout the United States.

"But people had far less sympathy for Liuzzo when she was murdered. Hate mail flooded her family's Detroit home, accusing her of being a deranged communist. Crosses were burned in front of the home. Her husband, Anthony Liuzzo Sr., had to hire armed guards to protect his family.

"A Ladies' Home Journal magazine survey taken right after Liuzzo's death asked its readers what kind of woman would leave her family for a civil rights demonstration. The magazine suggested that she had brought death on herself by leaving home - and 55% of its readers agreed."
http://www.cnn.com/2013/02/28/politics/civil-rights-viola-liuzzo/index.html

We're not that far removed from racism and hate laid in the bedrock of religious belief and moral conviction. People who were 20 years old in 1965 are 68 years old now. While attitudes have changed greatly, many still (quietly, unobtrusively) harbor sentiments - and pass them on to their children...

I truly believe that as we continue to head into uncertain economic times in this highly polarized world, racism and hatred will become more common again.

Poet

Off the beaten path, all right. Watch the video.

Culture Shock For Amazon Chief's Son Who Left Rainforest For New York ()
"Nilson Tuwe Huni Kui lives a long way from New York City. In fact, the 29-year-old lives a long way from anywhere. His village in the Amazon rainforest has a population of only 600 people and it takes five days of travelling by boat to reach the nearest town. Yet the son of the traditional chief of the Huni Kiu Kaxinawa tribes in Brazil has swapped the rainforest for the concrete jungle, and now calls the Big Apple home."
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-21806193

I wonder what he thinks about our civilization.

Poet
 

An interesting perspective on humans as locusts in a "locust economy" that strips value without delivering long-term mutual benefit.

The Locust Economy (April 3, 2013)
"Locust swarms don’t create new value. At a systemic level, the most charitable thing that can be said about them is that they efficiently strip mine value in a tyranny-of-the-biomass-majority way.

"They out-compete other species through sheer numbers, and leave others to pick up the pieces as they return to their solitary, non-swarming grasshopper phase. In this case, human farmers. The collapse of locust swarms completes the cycle in a way we’ll get to.

"Locust economies are built around 3-way markets: a swarming platform 'organizer' player who efficiently disseminates information about transient, local resource surpluses, a locust species in dormant grasshopper mode, and a base for predation that exhibits a scarcity-abundance cycle.

"So long as different locations are not synchronized, a locust market will usually have a surplus somewhere, even if it is a zero-sum or negative-sum market overall. Where that surplus comes from varies."

Two more quotes:

"Hotels, taxis, education, music, publishing, restaurants. The list of locust-devastated/soon-to-be-devastated industries is growing longer every day. I suspect the locust economy is now bigger than California’s economy."

And: "offering a Groupon deal is by now so strongly associated with a desperate, dying restaurant that professional food critics tend to write off any restaurant that offers one without even trying it."
http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2013/04/03/the-locust-economy/

Poet