Cold Comfort

When the whole world seems to be going to hell, the best way to seek solace is to find a beautiful natural locale... while they still exist. One of the places which is near and dear to my heart is Kingsland Point Park in Sleepy Hollow, which is one of the most scenic spots in the lower Hudson River Valley. It overlooks the Tappan Zee, the widest section of the mighty river:

While it wasn't a frigid day, the mercury was at 37 Fahrenheit (not quite 3 Celsius), a persistent high wind off of the river made it feel about ten degrees colder. The river itself was decorated with whitecaps:

I didn't stay long, it was just a quick visit before heading to work, but it took my mind off of the current geopolitical climate... I prefer the cold of a winter day to the heat of irresponsible rhetoric.

Meet the New Propaganda War, Same as the Old Propaganda War

Longtime readers of this blog will know that I am a huge fan of surrealistic English singer-songwriter Robyn Hitchcock. Uncle Robyn began his unlikely pop career with a band named the Soft Boys (some of whom later backed him as The Egyptians in his later pop incarnation). Perhaps the best known Soft Boys songs is an anomaly in the band's typical oeuvre of psychedelic jangle-pop songs... I Wanna Destroy You was written as a spoof of the English punk scene, but nobody at the time seemed to get the joke because the song is a legitimate punk barnburner. It's also a song that I return to every time there is a push to get this country into another war (and we're in one with Iran, you can't just kill a general and say you're not already at war), since it is a scathing indictment of the News Entertainment Industrial Complex which hasn't seen a war it doesn't like:





Just like Robyn, I feel it coming on again, just like it did before...

The infuriating thing about the current propaganda push is that it is identical to the same propaganda push, as MoveOn.org demonstrates with this montage:

The Trump administration is using the same reckless arguments that got us into the Iraq War to take us to war with Iran. We don't need ANOTHER senseless war. #NoWarWithIran pic.twitter.com/EPRbajTV0k

— MoveOn (@MoveOn) January 3, 2020

Various news organizations are even trundling out the same mendacious monsters who lied the country into the second Gulf War, people that a sane society would have shipped off the the Hauge, or at least Leavenworth. We are even hearing the same 'if you're not with us, you're against us' lie. Heavens forbid a nuanced approach to a subject as serious as yet another land war in Asia, waged while we still have two continuing wars in the region. As Robyn sang, "A pox upon the media and everything you read, they tell you your opinions and they're very good indeed."

We're already at war, folks, no matter what any politician or pundit will tell you. It remains to be seen what sort of escalation is possible, but we already started the shooting. I just hope that people remember the past seventeen years, and the propaganda war waged on the American public. I've listened to enough news for the day, it's time to sit back and listen to some righteously angry music.

Strong Taliban/ISIS Vibes Here

Looks like the current occupant of the White House has issued a threat much like 'one false move and this shrine gets it':

....targeted 52 Iranian sites (representing the 52 American hostages taken by Iran many years ago), some at a very high level & important to Iran & the Iranian culture, and those targets, and Iran itself, WILL BE HIT VERY FAST AND VERY HARD. The USA wants no more threats!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 4, 2020

This threat of targeting cultural sites amounts to a war crime if followed through on. It is also the same sort of nihilistic destruction that the Taliban and ISIS have engaged in. Trump has a history of destroying culturally significant structures- when he built his, as Tengrain would put it, Trash Palace on 5th Avenue, he reneged on a promise to preserve the Art Deco friezes that decorated the Bonwit Teller building which he demolished. While the Taliban and ISIS destroyed art treasures that didn't conform to their definition of Islam, Trump's destruction was in service of his god, Mammon. In an especially gross corollary to this story, Trump used his 'John Baron' alter-ego in an attempt to divert public wrath:





Trump values nothing besides the Almighty Dollar, not centuries old mosques in Iran, not decades old friezes in Manhattan, not even the blood of children, American or Iranian.

Locker Room Talk: This BS Again

Today was a day, I worked the graveyard shift, returned home for a quick shower, then headed down to Manhattan for my volunteer coaching gig... I really should just install a revolving door in the apartment. When I got to the dojo, the general conversation was, “Happy New Year, can you believe we in another war?” I’ve known most of the other coaches for a l-o-n-g time, and we spent a lot of time between classes talking politics and policy. Shortly after the 9/11 attacks, I went with Frenchy (who is Italian) to the three-story pile of burning rubble in which we had lost friends. Confronted with that horror, we were dismayed when the narrative shifted to Iraq, and we realized that our government would be visiting horror on innocent Iraqis, while letting the true powers behind the attacks go scot-free.

It was with a gross feeling of deja vu that we asked each other, “Can you believe this shit is happening again?” All those conversations, sitting on the tatamis, came back to mind, the discussions about the lack of strategy, the propaganda campaign, the risks posed to our Muslim friends. “Can you believe this shit?” All over again...

I didn’t notice an expanded police presence on streets or subway, but I’ve read that it’s out there. I was too beat to notice much, too tired from an overnight shift and four hours of classes, too preoccupied with the impending shitstorm. Right now, I’ve just gotten up to get ready to work the graveyard shift again. I’m sure I’ll be preoccupied with the impending shitstorm to contemplate much. It’s the Bad Old Days of the aughts all over again, at least I have good people to discuss it with, this is the kind of locker room talk that non-assholes engage in.

Perturbed About Persia

The killing of Iranian general Qassem Soleimani has me a bit perturbed. Sure, Soleimani was, as the current occupant of the White House would put it, a 'bad hombre', but he was a major player in a region characterized by shifting allegiances and conflicts of a tribal and sectarian nature that most Americans, and certainly not the current occupant of the White House, do not understand. Soleimani supported Iraqi Shiite militias that were participants in the anti-U.S. insurgency, but he also supported war efforts against the Sunni fundamentalist ISIS. Soleimani was a bad guy in a region full of bad guys, including some of the supposed good guys. In true Middle Eastern fashion, he was the supporter of our enemies and of the enemies of our enemies. I'm not mourning his death, but I have serious misgivings about what it portends.

The Iranian government has sworn revenge, as they always do, and although they can't stand toe-to-toe with the U.S. military, they have a lot of options for creating havoc. The could strike oil tankers in the Strait of Hormuz, which would create a recession. They could strike oil facilities in Saudi Arabia. They could launch missiles into Israel. They could ramp up their support for Shiite militias in Iraq. They could launch cyberattacks on U.S. computer systems. While they are no match for the United States, they are perfectly capable of initiating a broad spectrum of attacks on U.S. interests.

Looking at the Wiki page (which is never wrong) for Iran, it has a population of approximately eighty-two million, which would make an invasion of the country a harrowing endeavor. It is also less subject to factionalism than Iraq, which has three large demographic divisions. I doubt that any of our allies would join in with the U.S. on yet another war of choice... though the Saudis would cheer from the sidelines as Americans died to advance their Sunni fundamentalist cause in the Middle East. I don't think that even Trump is dumb enough to start yet another land war in Asia, but I have a suspicion that he doesn't have any plan for a follow up on Soleimani's death, that he is just spiking the football and thinks that he's won. Meanwhile, we're not in the runup to war, we're now in one- one doesn't just kill a high ranking military commander of another country and claim that it wasn't an act of war.

Perhaps my greatest misgiving is a sinking feeling that the American media will gloss over the costs, human and otherwise, of the wars that we have been engaged in since 2001, and will end up cheerleading for a yet another war. Already, a campaign of misinformation is being waged on the American public by administration officials, with Mike Pence attempting, poorly, to attach blame for the 9/11 attacks on the Iranians:

Assisted in the clandestine travel to Afghanistan of 10 of the 12 terrorists who carried out the September 11 terrorist attacks in the United States.

— Mike Pence (@Mike_Pence) January 3, 2020

Not only does he get the number of terrorists wrong, but he completely ignores the Saudi complicity in the attacks.

As far as Trump himself goes, there's a tweet for everything, and the idea that he killed Soleimani to distract the public from his ongoing legal problems is not far-fetched.

I just have the feeling that the news media will screw this up again, and that we are entering yet another quagmire that will end up in more dead Americans. I also suspect that Trump and his cronies have invested in arms manufacturers' stocks, and stand to make a killing on the killing. I also believe that this misadventure could spell the end of NATO- to use a Yonkers-appropriate analogy, if your drinking buddy keeps starting barfights, you stop drinking with him.

Whatever happens, it looks to me like there's a supreme shitstorm a-brewin'. There's no doubt that Iran will escalate the conflict, and there will be, at minimum, the sort of asymmetric warfare that will disrupt the world economy. I haven't even looked at the price of gasoline today, and gasoline is far less precious than blood.

How Do We Sleep When Our World Is Burning?

The images out of Australia are horrific, as Tengrain and the Doktor Zoom have described. The conditions are hellish, a combination of drought, heatwave, and, now, wildfires. To compound matters, right-wing politicians in Australia have long been involved in climate change denial.

The extent of the wildfires is staggering, with smoke reaching New Zealand, and soot staining the country's glaciers. One factor in the vastness of the territory in flames is the nature of eucalyptus trees, which are basically botanical tinderboxes- the trees are laden with volatile oils which foster fires that clear the forest undergrowth, leaving a burned-over district in which the fire-activated eucalyptus seeds can germinate, allowing the fast-growing trees to grow with little competition. Wildfires have always been a normal factor in ecosystems, and in the case of Australia, the aboriginal peoples used controlled burns to regulate the environment in their favor, to the extent that early European explorers described the land as 'parklike'. The current out-of-control fires are due to the drought, the forces which once worked to sustain the Australian biomes, including fires, are now out of balance. As if the situation on the land isn't bad enough, the kelp forests of Australia are dying.

I sure hope that the hellish images out of Australia act as a belated wake-up call to the world, though I imagine that the usual suspects in the media will obscure, as if with a smokescreen, the role of climate change. The post title was adapted from the 1987 song Beds Are Burning by Australia band Midnight Oil, a band which always promulgated environmental and social justice issues, and was led by big, bad, bald frontman Peter Garrett, who went on to a long career as a progressive politician. The song is required listening:





I always note that we are not destroying THE planet, but we are destroying OUR planet... there are organisms which thrive under conditions which would end us quickly, these organisms will survive pretty much anything we can throw at them. That being said, we are taking down a lot of really charming species with us.

A Clear Vision for 2020

Now that 2020 is upon us, it's time to create a clear vision for the year. Obviously, the number one priority for decent Americans is to vote the cretinous creep in the White House out of office. The idea that some Trump supporters are itching for a civil war makes this even more imperative. I don't think that the bulk of the MAGA people will get off of their duffs to start anything, but I have no doubt that some 'lone wolf' dead-enders will be up to some mischief. At any rate, I think 2020 is going to be a Very Stupid Year.

One somewhat disconcerting feeling that needles me at times is the challenge posed by the rise in hate crimes. I thought I was pretty well insulated from this madness, but the mass-knifing in Monsey, across the river, has caused me to take pause. I don't think that I, personally, would be targeted for a hate crime (being cis, white, hetero, and tough-looking), but I am once again forced to consider what I would do if things got bad for people I know... one comment I saw on a recent story about the Monsey attack was 'who am I going to have to hide in my attic?'

2020 is going to involve a lot of work- passive hope that things will get better just isn't going to cut it this year. It's going to be an exhausting year, but I have some hope that good people outnumber the bigoted assholes. We just need a clear vision for 2020- without that, we'll just be stumbling around, headed for oblivion.