O, that way madness lies; let me shun that!

(or Enfants! Faites attention aux baobabs!)
Up, Down, Appendices, Ménage à 99.

---

COP17/CMP7 Logo:

The official line on the logo's symbolic meaning is this: "A big element of the logo is the resilient Baobab tree. A symbol of endurance, conservation, creativity, ingenuity and dialoque.

"Baobabs are very difficult to kill. They can be burnt, or stripped of their bark, and they will just form new bark and carry on growing.

"According to native legends along the Zambezi, the tribes believed that when the world was young the Baobabs were upright and proud. However for some unknown reason, they lorded over the lesser growths. The gods became angry and uprooted the Baobabs, thrusting them back into the ground, root upwards.

"The globe in the logo has an eroded look indicative to the urgent need for a positive outcome."

But I find it to be far more eloquent and evocative than that.

Responses to email queries put to South Africa's Department of International Relations and Cooperation (DIRCO) tell me that it was designed by some anonymous person in that organization ... I have been imagining his or her process.

Some of us still remember The Little Prince in which baobab trees figure as dangerous and destructive; here, check out Chapter 5.

Opening to this additional layer of symbolism we could easily make them out as rapacious and uncontrolled corporations. Or (my preference) a cabal of transnationals, world governments, and the feckless UN diplomats/bureaucrats. It doesn't make much difference.

I will just repeat Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's warning from the end of the chapter:

"Enfants! Faites attention aux baobabs!"

(A-and note that he was a smoker. As I sit with a cigarette on the bench in the neighbourhood park, in full view of passing children, one of the blessings I count is that this egregious behaviour is still approximately tolerated out of doors ... in some places ... for now.)

This logo shows a world already distorted and off balance, supporting a Baobab which is already dead or close to it. Whether it represents a beseeching regenerative hope or rapacious greed and official complacency doesn't matter much - these qualities will all end with the species.

I hope that the ministers and their minions know this, as they move in their air-liners and SUVs towards Durban and COP17/CMP7. And that this is possibly, or probably, or 'very likely' ... whatever ... their last kick at the can, and our last chance to limit warming to 2°C.

But really, I do not hope.

Except maybe in this: a quality in the linework that goes straight to my gut - the artist was confronting something in the darkness and struggling to tell the truth about it.

[applause]

---

Ménage à 99:

---

King Lear Act III, Scene 4: Lear:      Thou think'st 'tis much that this contentious storm      Invades us to the skin. So 'tis to thee;      But where the greater malady is fix'd,      The lesser is scarce felt. Thou'dst shun a bear;      But if thy flight lay toward the raging sea,      Thou'dst meet the bear i' th' mouth. When the mind's free,      The body's delicate. The tempest in my mind      Doth from my senses take all feeling else      Save what beats there. Filial ingratitude!      Is it not as this mouth should tear this hand      For lifting food to't? But I will punish home!      No, I will weep no more. In such a night      To shut me out! Pour on; I will endure.      In such a night as this! O Regan, Goneril!      Your old kind father, whose frank heart gave all!      O, that way madness lies; let me shun that!      No more of that. Earl of Kent:      Good my lord, enter here. Lear:      Prithee go in thyself; seek thine own ease.      This tempest will not give me leave to ponder      On things would hurt me more. But I'll go in.      In, boy; go first. - You houseless poverty -      Nay, get thee in. I'll pray, and then I'll sleep.      Poor naked wretches, wheresoe'er you are,      That bide the pelting of this pitiless storm,      How shall your houseless heads and unfed sides,      Your loop'd and window'd raggedness, defend you      From seasons such as these? O, I have ta'en      Too little care of this! Take physic, pomp;      Expose thyself to feel what wretches feel,      That thou mayst shake the superflux to them      And show the heavens more just. Edgar:      Fathom and half, fathom and half! Poor Tom!

---

'Superflux' not being a word you run into every day ... and simply getting to the grammatical meaning of Lear's words being almost too much for me ... no one, myself included, will likely grasp the sense of this montage for more than an instant if at all.

The young woman has a session or two with someone indulging a body-paint phase, apparently. I am put off somehow at her being painted black when I first see one of the images (this one) on some Tumblr blog - there is nothing to hang onto. ... There still isn't; beyond a brief glimpse of what Lear's 'that way' might mean.

I continue uncertain about all of it.

---

False comfort:

Yevgeny Yevtushenko (previously here): "It would be far more terrible to mistake a friend than to mistake an enemy."

Paul Simon: "... a come-on from the whores on Seventh Avenue; I do declare; there were times when I was so lonesome I took some comfort there." And though he has to 'do declare' it, I know, having some experience of beijos na rua, that it was real comfort he got.

From Bill McKibben comes the 'big' news on the Keystone XL pipeline that "We won. You won". And if you look at the comments there you will see that several have been 'removed' - those are mine. Trying to say that silly superfical Pollyanna-positive spin like this does not serve the cause. Oversimplified to the vanishing perspective of nonsense. A-and pointing out, natürlich, that he never did write the first book on global warming, again again again ...

That's integrity for you. And two weeks later TransCanada changes the route and the political heavies in Nebraska drop like flies.

While the idiot proselytizers echo and reverberate McKibben's lies; the lovely nubiles at CAN call it: 'Obama listens to the people, not the polluters!'.

If you Google news for 'TIPNIS' (previously discussed here), the (very little bit of) English stuff you troll up (as of the 19th) will tell you that the march on La Paz was a huge success, big victory. Sure, and it was. They are heroes, yes they are. But Evo has not changed his mind and the next innings show that clearly: Evo agora 'sufoca' índios contrários à estrada na Bolívia.

A-and in the ongoing saga of Brasil's Código Florestal Marina diz que texto do Código Florestal aprovado na última semana está péssimo.

And Belo Monte and twenty other dams are underway. This video is good (with subtitles).

I was going to translate the articles but I can't be bothered. Something for a rainy day maybe.

Be well.

---

Appendices:

1. Evo agora 'sufoca' índios contrários à estrada na Bolívia, Fabio Murakawas, 14/11/2011.

2. Marina diz que texto do Código Florestal aprovado na última semana está péssimo, Luana Lourenço, 16/11/2011.

---

Evo agora 'sufoca' índios contrários à estrada na Bolívia, Fabio Murakawas, 14/11/2011.

Fonte: Valor Econômico (bloqueada).


O presidente da Bolívia, Evo Morales, começou a contra-atacar as centrais indígenas que o pressionaram a assinar uma lei que impede uma rodovia financiada pelo Brasil de atravessar uma reserva no centro do país. O governo determinou na sexta-feira a suspensão de licenças ambientais de empresas de turismo e madeireiras dentro do Território Indígena Parque Nacional Isiboro Sécure (Tipnis).

A medida é vista como um artifício de Morales para sufocar economicamente as comunidades da região e fazer com que os indígenas passem a pedir a anulação da lei que inviabilizou a estrada. "Essa é uma maneira de pressionar a gente do Tipnis, que antes recebia as receitas advindas dessas atividades e agora vão deixar de receber", disse ao Valor Humberto Gomez, diretor da Fundação Amigos da Natureza, em Cochabamba.

Gomez explica que essas são atividades economicamente importantes para os indígenas, que têm direito constitucional sobre o território. "As madeireiras obtiveram licenças legais e mantêm convênios com as comunidades, repassando a elas parte das receitas".

O atrito entre governo e indígenas começou em junho, quando a construtora brasileira OAS começou a abrir caminho para a construção de uma rodovia projetada para ligar os Departamentos (Estados) de Beni e Cochabamba. A obra tem financiamento de US$ 332 milhões do BNDES (Banco Nacional de Desenvolvimento Econômico e Social) e corta ao meio a reserva, de 1,2 milhão de hectares.

Sem terem sido consultados sobre o projeto, e temendo o avanço do plantio de coca no parque, os índios organizaram uma marcha de mais de 500 km até La Paz. O movimento teve um forte apelo popular, e Morales se viu obrigado a assinar uma lei que proíbe essa e qualquer outra estrada de atravessar o Tipnis. Os indígenas também pressionaram o presidente a incluir na norma a "intangibilidade" do Tipnis, o que acabou se tornando uma armadilha para eles.

Após a assinatura da lei, começou um bate-boca na mídia local entre membros do governo e líderes indígenas sobre os alcances do termo "intangibilidade". Para o governo, isso significa que nenhuma atividade econômica pode existir dentro do parque.

Um dia antes da suspensão das licenças, Morales esteve em San Inácio de Moxos, em Beni, e pediu a indígenas e moradores que pressionassem seus líderes pela execução da obra. "Fiz cumprir minha responsabilidade garantindo financiamento para a construção da estrada. Portanto, não peçam a mim, peçam aos dirigentes e deputados da região".

A suspensão das licenças foi vista como uma provocação por Fernando Vargas, presidente da Subcentral Tipnis, que liderou a marcha a La Paz. "Essa é uma decisão política, porque há uma negociação em curso sobre a regulamentação da lei", disse ele ao Valor. "Se o presidente quer gerar brigas entre os indígenas, ele está fazendo um chamado à violência no país."

---

Marina diz que texto do Código Florestal aprovado na última semana está péssimo, Luana Lourenço, 16/11/2011.

Encontrada: aqui.

Belém (PA) – A ex-ministra do Meio Ambiente Marina Silva disse hoje (16) que o texto do novo Código Florestal, aprovado na última semana, nas comissões de Agricultura e de Ciência e Tecnologia do Senado, “está péssimo”. A votação dos destaques ao texto ainda está pendente, mas, segundo Marina, o relator do código nas duas comissões, Luiz Henrique (PMDB-SC), não incorporou ao texto medidas que garantam a manutenção de áreas de preservação permanente (APPs) e reserva legal nas propriedades rurais.

“Até agora, o relatório está péssimo. O governo vai ter que bancar o que eles prometeram para a sociedade, de que não haveria emendas na CCJ [Comissão de Constituição e Justiça, por onde o texto passou antes] porque o Luiz Henrique iria acatar as emendas dos senadores e da sociedade. Como ele não acatou, agora espero que o governo trabalhe para que essas emendas estejam no relatório do senador Jorge Viana [que relatará a matéria na Comissão de Meio Ambiente]”, disse Marina depois de participar de debate no encontro anual do Fórum Amazônia Sustentável.

Na Comissão de Meio Ambiente, o senador Jorge Viana (PT-AC), tenta buscar consenso sobre as questões mais polêmicas, como a redução das APPs e a possibilidade de anistia para quem desmatou ilegalmente. Depois de passar pela comissão, o novo código seguirá para votação no plenário do Senado e, em seguida, voltará à Câmara dos Deputados caso sofra alterações.

Na avaliação de Marina, “é mais prudente” tentar melhorar o texto ainda no Congresso do que depender do veto presidencial. “Se dermos sustentação política para a mudança agora, com certeza, podemos fazer a diferença”, disse a ex-ministra, que convocou a sociedade a se manifestar contra as mudanças na lei florestal.

Marina, que foi ministra do Meio Ambiente nos governos do ex-presidente Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva por quase seis anos, disse que a tentativa de flexibilizar o Código Florestal é o estopim de uma série de retrocessos na área ambiental. “Já mudaram regras de unidades de conservação, já tiraram competência do Ibama [Instituto Brasileiro do Meio Ambiente e dos Recursos Naturais Renováveis] em fiscalizar desmatamento e, agora, se quer tirar o último bastião da defesa das florestas do Brasil, que é o código. É uma agenda de retrocessos”, avaliou.

---

Down.

Lame

lame, lame, lame lame lame lame lame ...
and sorry to say I am still stuck in the Waiting Room.
Up, Down.

about all that I have done in the last five years is blog, blog and watch movies, as an analgesic it is not bad but as a therapy I don't recommend it, just digging a deeper & deeper hole to be in, even with the odd moment of epiphany and a bit of boobage to ogle (nudge nudge, wink wink :-)

and too, it is just another energy-drain racket, suck you in, get you hooked if only by inertia, and there is (f'rinstance) no effective way to back it up, for, say, the grandchildren to see twenty years hence ... waste of time ... on the other hand as a waste of time it doesn't hold a candle to FaceBook and Twitter and their imitators & clones, gotta love those Israelis though! they've got the iPad figgured out at least :-)

"He that hath the steerage of my course, direct my sail!"   Romeo & Juliet, I watched Zeffirelli's version this week, and then The Magus, oh my ... with an early shot of Seven Types of Ambiguity by William Empson, himself an ambiguous fellow, and soon after, a Modigliani nude, look at these two images I have found, obviously the same yet profoundly different, the opening lines of the final stanza of T.S. Eliot's Little Gidding, and three Tarot cards, The Hanged Man XII, The Empress III, The Magus I himself, ... interesting that Wikipedia tells me the neurotic nit-wit mentioned below hated this movie, there you go :-)

... I will have to work on this, see if the Library has a print of the Modigliani, read Empson's book ... try to remember the Tarot ... good! something to do ...

Dale Carnegie, How To Win Friends and Influence People, noted here as something to avoid, having been kid-gloved and forborne-upon too much these past weeks

I refuse to join any club that would have me as a member.
     Groucho Marx, (though it is sometimes incorrectly attributed
      to an excessively neurotic New Yorker who should have remained nameless)

1 part per billion is one second in 32 years
1 part per million is one second in 12 days

the point is not that these numbers are unspeakably and unimaginably small, it is that they have a proven effect, so the Canadian limit of 1.75 ppb BPA ('proposed' limit mind you, it is far beyond these bureaucrat maggots to actually DO anything) comes from the fact that at this level negative effects have been seen in brown trout reproduction, see 'Effect of bisphenol A on maturation and quality of semen and eggs in the brown trout' by Franz Lahnsteiner - not available free on-line anywhere that I can find it, see also the EPA's Bisphenol A Action Plan as of 2010, the doses are measured as micrograms per litre, and a litre has 1,000 grams hence per billion instead of per million, gives new meaning to the phrase 'mad as a hatter' eh? or maybe it should be 'impotent as a trout'

the way in which these tiny amounts are measured is worth a remark, it is easy to imagine that it is done by guess and by golly, check out Chromatography on Wikipedia, though my smart friend, the quantum chemist tells me the technique is Gas Chromatography which does not seem to be there, and the upshot (which I so often forget these days eh?) is that indeed, they can measure parts per billion accurately

another measurement which might be useful would be the number of BPA molecules among a given number of water molecules, giving, say, the number of BPA molecules in a glass of water, the number of Tritium molecules in a glass of water, I will try to follow this up ...

I went down to scrub & rub but I had to sit in back of the tub ...
     Bob Dylan, I Shall Be Free, 1963.

Angola, Oil, The Pope, and everything:


Oikos: Climate Change and Environmental Decline as Moral Issues (who knew something so useful and true could come out of the University of Calgary?)

this remarkable young woman's parents were there too but I could not manage to sneak a photograph of the two of them together, oh well

but in the process I did change my mind about Mardi Tindal, she's not an air-head, or only sometimes, or not all of the time, or something ... her eloquent letter coming out of the grief that engulfed many of us following Copenhagen is available here, she addresses it to 'all Canadians' instead of 'O Povo do Mundo Inteiro' which shows how much American parochialism has overtaken us, but I found some comfort in this letter, an acknowledgement of my own grief - someone to grieve with if only at second or third hand, and more too

but the United Church of Canada, at least in its centralized aspects could be burnt down and I for one would not grieve for a minute, fitting that they share a building with Sun Life of Canada, the insurance company

the majority of people there seemed to think that letters to their MP are going to have some measurable effect, that there is a political solution out there in some way shape or form, ostriches! if Yvo de Boer knows that it isn't going to happen and says so publicly, then it is very probably not going to happen, if Yvo de Boer says a minimum of two years (God bless him for the diplomatic optimist he is) then it will be 2015 at the soonest and it will be too late do do any good,

and those with any kind of vision were talking about 'mitigation' and 'adaptation' which belies the speed with which this thing is coming down, Cochabamba? do you really think Evo Morales will sort it out? AI AI AI!

what we didn't do was get up and march down Bloor Street stopping all traffic (and without any damned permit) to Queen's Park to camp there permanently - that's what we didn't do ("bring forth the cowards, and as I step forward with you" Pierre Coupey)

and just a word on a word (which I knew before and had forgot), 'ecology,' the root of which is the Greek 'oikos' meaning house, dwelling, or home.

I honour the memory of those who died at Eldorado dos Carajás so many years ago, the fourteenth anniversary of the massacre was yesterday, and I honour the wonderful courage of Ola in Babylon:


Well I need a steam shovel mama to, keep away the dead. I need a dump truck mama to unload my head.
     Bob Dylan, From A Buick 6, 1965.


Comics from the 10s
A hundred Japonese dwarfs will come in your mouth, after that we'll record The Golden Shower.
I think I'm gonna need a smoke ...
I'm very sorry, but it's forbidden to smoke in closed spaces.

a-and Lennie Cone is all'a time echoing in my head, "if your life is a leaf that the seasons tear off and condemn," and I did it already, I've been there to visit, I've translated it into Portuguese, I even think that how I loved them and then was taken into their homes and families, to meet their mothers (not too many fathers in evidence I have to admit), to dandle their babies, to drink with their brothers and uncles and aunts and friends, I even wonder if I may not have done one up on our old Lennie Cone, but after all that here I am waiting and smoking cigarettes ... there's more but, I will spare you, gentle reader, except to say that I am wondering now ... perhaps you can buy true happiness and perhaps the spiritual noise to the contrary is just that, noise :-)


the Ottawa Courthouse West Façade from Elgin Street (thanks to Google Streetview), designed by Tim and Pat Murray of Murray and Murray Architects (?), opened 1986, sculpture by Bruce Garner.

they took my children in this place, almost dismembered them, tore them limb from limb like some medieval torture machine, my daughter drew a picture for me of a dream she had of two fire-breathing dragons tearing apart their prey on a hilltop, it seemed as if I was the only adult in the room when I stopped it, "alright then, take them," I told the Judge, and then told her to fuck off and walked out, hahaha, barely made it - the maggot had pushed her red button and I just managed to slip past the two heavies coming down the hall to get me, good thing I was wearing my three-piece suit :-) that was when I signed-off finally from k-k-Canada, I have never recovered, but the kids could be worse, I think I saved them some grief at least, I sort'a thought they might eventually figgure it out but if they have they haven't told me about it so I guess not, my friend Marg offered to sleep with me that night but I couldn't relate, I got drunk and stood looking at the statues until dawn and again, often and often and often in the days and weeks and months and years ... yeah, I know this place ...

of course the historical record around Demosthenes is ambiguous, does not really include, or maybe includes, or sometimes includes, the story, or legend, or myth, or fiction, that he perfected his oratory by practicing with stones in his mouth, whatever! and maybe this is not such a bad place to insert into our meditation Zephaniah's "For then will I turn to the people a pure language, that they may all call upon the name of the Lord, to serve Him with one consent."


Appendices:
1. Isreal bans the iPad in clash on wireless frequency standards, AP, Apr 15 2010.
2. Bolivia hosts talks on rights of Mother Earth, BBC, April 19 2010.


***************************************************************************
Isreal bans the iPad in clash on wireless frequency standards, AP, Apr 15 2010.

Customs officials said Thursday they already have confiscated about 10 iPads since Israel announced the new regulations this week

Israel has banned imports of Apple Inc.’s AAPL-Q hottest new product, the iPad, citing concerns the powerful gadget consumes too much capacity on wireless networks and could disrupt other devices.

Customs officials said Thursday they have already confiscated about 10 of the lightweight tablet computers since Israel announced the new regulations this week. The ban prevents anyone — even tourists — from bringing iPads into Israel until officials certify that they comply with local transmitter standards.

“If you operate equipment in a frequency band which is different from the others that operate on that frequency band, then there will be interference,” said Nati Schubert, a senior deputy director for the Communications Ministry. “We don’t care where people buy their equipment. ... But without regulation, you would have chaos.”

The U.S. Federal Communications Commission allows Wi-Fi broadcasting at higher power levels than are allowed in Europe and Israel — meaning that the iPad’s stronger signal could throw off others’ wireless connections, Mr. Schubert said.

The iPad combines the features of a notebook computer with the touch-pad functions of the iPod. It went on sale in the U.S. on April 3. Apple this week delayed its international launch until May 10, citing heavy sales in the U.S.

Israeli officials said the ban has nothing to do with trade and is simply a precaution to assure that the iPad doesn’t affect wireless devices already in use in Israel.

Although Israeli standards are similar to those in many European nations, Israel is the only country so far to officially ban imports.

Mr. Schubert said he expects the problem to be resolved as Apple moves closer to the international release.

In the meantime, confiscated iPads will be held by customs — for a daily storage fee — until their owners depart the country or ship the gadgets back to the U.S. at their own expense.

Apple’s chief distributor in Israel, iDigital, declined to comment on the Communications Ministry’s decision, and a message left at Apple’s headquarters in California was not immediately returned.


***************************************************************************
Bolivia hosts talks on rights of Mother Earth, BBC, April 19 2010.

Delegates are gathering in the Bolivian city of Cochabamba for a grassroots alternative to last year's UN climate change summit in Copenhagen. The meeting will also celebrate the rights of Mother Earth on 22 April.

Bolivian President Evo Morales was one of several leaders who refused to sign the Copenhagen climate change deal. He is set to use this week's talks to propose a world referendum to ask up to two billion people their views on how to tackle climate change. Several thousand people are expected in Cochabamba for what is billed as the People's World Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth.

The meeting, which runs until Thursday, aims to bring together indigenous and civil society movements, scientists, activists and government delegations. Mr Morales proposed the Cochabamba meeting in the wake of the climate change summit in Copenhagen last December, arguing that the views of developing countries were largely ignored.

The talks will have no direct bearing on the UN climate talks, but the idea is to give a voice to the world's poorest people - those most affected by climate change - and to make governments more aware of their plight.

"Our experience in the last process of negotiation over the last year and a half is that things are moving in a bad direction," Pablo Solon, Bolivia's ambassador to the UN, told the BBC.

"I would say this is the only scenario to make a balance between the pressure that at this moment the corporations are putting on the government versus the pressure that can emerge, can arise from civil society."

The Bolivian government wants the UN to set in motion moves to create an international environmental court.

Last year, the UN backed a proposal by Mr Morales to designate 22 April as International Mother Earth Day to celebrate the Andean divinity Pachamama, or Mother Earth.