Saturday, June 17, 2006

Kenneth Patchen

"Now is then’s only tomorrow."


The Hangman's Great Hands

And all that is this day. . .
The boy with cap slung over what had been a face. ..

Somehow the cop will sleep tonight, will make love to his
wife...
Anger won't help. I was born angry. Angry that my father was
being burnt alive in the mills; Angry that none of us knew
anything but filth, and poverty. Angry because I was that very
one somebody was supposed To be fighting for
Turn him over; take a good look at his face...
Somebody is going to see that face for a long time.
I wash his hands that in the brightness they will shine.
We have a parent called the earth.
To be these buds and trees; this tameless bird Within the
ground; this season's act upon the fields of Man.
To be equal to the littlest thing alive,
While all the swarming stars move silent through The merest
flower
. .. but the fog of guns.
The face with all the draining future left blank. . . Those smug
saints, whether of church or Stalin, Can get off the back of
my people, and stay off. Somebody is supposed to be fighting
for somebody. . . And Lenin is terribly silent, terribly silent
and dead. November 1937


Kenneth Patchen was and is an underrated American poet, a surrealist, an anarchist, a founder of the Beat movement, a painter and illustrator. I came across his works when we ran Erewhon Books, the Anarchist Bookstore in Edmonton in the seventies and eighties.

His stream of conciousness novel The Journal of Albion Moonlight has many memorable mise et scenes. Like Jesus and Hitler arguing about capital punishment, murder and war on a train. Hitler wins the argument.

Or the tale of the little light bulb that hides in the impoverished home of a poor working class family, keeping them in light to live and learn, hiding from the nameless electrical company which wants to kill this lightbulb because unlike its mates, it is eternal. It can provide light forever, but the evil corporation that makes light bulbs has created all the other bulbs to die out, planned obselecence.

He was anti-war, a true anarchist pacifist. He spoke out against WWII when it was far from popular to do so, even amongst the left. His wife Miriam was his muse and his most ardent advocate.


For more than thirty years, Patchen lived with a severe spinal ailment that caused him almost constant physical pain. The weight of this personal battle was compounded by his sensitivity to greater issues of humanity, and his poetry paid special attention to the horrors of war. With his work he tried to create a kind of sanctuary for the reader, apart from reality, where larger-than-life characters were motivated by their loving and benevolent natures. Kenneth Patchen died in 1972.


There is a Canadian connection with Patchen. Both Vancouver and Edmonton. His poetry reading accompanied by Jazz music was recorded for Smithsonian, and is both in their Folkways collection in the U.S. and at the University of Alberta.

He was the first avante garde poet to mix avante garde jazz with the spoken word.
Patchen was a man out of time, ahead of his time, always in the here and now. He is still influencing modern music; New Redlemon Song 'Truly,' from StarSearch Winner Turned Lawyer, Features Beat Poet Kenneth Patchen; Flash Anime Video to Follow

Patchen is relevant today as an antitode to the era of the Security State whose politics of fear exudes the paranoia of the endless aimless war against terror, which is terror itself . "There are so many little dyings that it doesn't matter which of them is death."




Kenneth Patchen - Reads with Jazz in Canada (locust 60)

"Comic, surreal, compassionate, fierce, wild, angry, joyous, cantankerous, alive, visionary, and divinely human." - george parsons, dream magazine

“This modern-day minstrel is as fascinating and interesting as any swing or blues singer…phrases and thoughts so beautifully woven into the jazz background, and so expertly phrased and timed, that it is a revelation to the ear and mind.” – Los Angeles Examiner

On a single October evening in 1959, fabled people’s poet Kenneth Patchen and Vancouver’s Alan Neil Quartet made a little bit of history. Together, they cut one of the first jazz-and poetry recordings to disc – fiery, spontaneous and free of pretensions, where hard bop playing wailed neck-and-neck with Patchen’s scathing, slurred, rabid vocalizations. Today, many see Jazz In Canada as among the very first truly beatific documents on record – preceding efforts by Kerouac, Ferlinghetti & Ginsberg. This new edition features original notes by Alan Neil & new retrospective notes by rock’n’roll poet of the San Francisco renaissance David Meltzer.


Larry Smith

Kenneth Patchen — Poetry and Jazz days, 1957–1959

This is an excerpt from chapter fourteen of Kenneth Patchen: Rebel Poet in America by Larry Smith, A Consortium of Small Presses & Bottom Dog Press, 2000, ISBN 0-933087-59-4
http://members.aol.com/_ht_a/lsmithdog/bottomdog


Yes, I went to the city,
And there I did bitterly cry,
Men out of touch with the earth,
And with never a glance at the sky.

(Doubleheader 41)
KENNETH PATCHEN met the end of the 1950s like a wounded lion, healing and rising in a loud and rhythmic roar. At the beginning of 1957, while still recovering from the back operation, he and Miriam were told by the director of the Palo Alto Clinic that their house on Bryant Street was scheduled for demolition. Just out of his body cast and into a metal brace, Patchen still lacked mobility and so began to look around for a house nearby. A young fan and graduate student from Stanford University came to the rescue. William Packard (who would later help organize benefit readings for Patchen and would edit New York Quarterly) had visited them at their place on Bryant Street. In February, he drove them to the end of Palo Alto’s residential Sierra Court, to the little house where Kenneth and Miriam would live the rest of their lives together. For two people who had made homes out of the more than twenty apartments during their twenty-three years of married life, this was as close as they would ever come to the ‘little cottage’ of their dreams. Here Kenneth Patchen would launch his poetry-jazz tours and achieve his ultimate writing-visual synthesis in the original picture-poem form. Here also he and Miriam would suffer and endure the tragic debilitation of his last fifteen years. [. . . .]
It was soon after their moving into their Sierra Court home that he told Miriam, ‘I think people need a little joy and humor as well as commitment in their lives’ (Interview 1990). He was preparing to give them both through a new medium, his poetry-jazz.


Perfect Sound Forever: Kenneth Patchen- jazzy poet

Kenneth Patchen Reads with Jazz
by Mike Wood
Ignored both by the academy and by the street, Kenneth Patchen's rebellion against and challenge to conformity continues even in death. His black mark seems to be that he truly believed in freedom, which put him outside hip fads, outside any political groups left or right that demanded his loyalty, and where no critics' asses would be kissed. He followed his own vision to the end, with little recognition or financial success. His poems, paintings, "painted books" and novels, make him to the 20th century what Whitman was to the 19th, and a close to a true Dadaist, minus the nihilism, of any American. His novel, The Journal of Albion Moonlight, is one of the greatest written by an American; its absence from official critical conversation is a further disgrace to academia. While tenured professors fawn over any literary theory that floats over from France, American writers who do not fit into neat post-modern paradigms, or who challenge whatever canon is currently hip, are ignored. Language is distancing enough as it is; the obsession with linguistic pretension further distances one from an actual cultural discourse that all can participate in. Patchen risked ridicule and poverty to speak both to the powerful and to the powerless. Henry Miller called Patchen "the living symbol of protest" in his essay "Kenneth Patchen: Man of Anger & Light." It was his compassion for communicating eternal truths that made his connection to music authentic. His hope, for art and for the country, rivaled what Toqueville saw when he first hopped off the boat in Newport. His was a voice unafraid to be hopeful, accusatory, sentimental, alone.

CAGE, JOHN / KENNETH PATCHEN: The City Wears a Slouch Hat: ReR .

Kenneth Patchen at the Blue Neon Alley

Kenneth Patchen (The Lied and Art Song Texts Page: Texts and ...

Kenneth Patchen - Free Music Downloads, Videos, CDs, MP3s, Bio ...

Allyn Ferguson : Allyn Ferguson and Kenneth Patchen with the ...

Kenneth Patchen reading with the Charles Mingus Band.

From Beneath the Underdog, His World as Composed by Mingus by Charles Mingus: "Not long before I worked with a poet named Patchen. He was wearing his scarlet jacket and sitting on a stool on a little stage in a theatre you walk upstairs to down on fourteenth street.

We improvised behind him while he read his poems, which I read ahead of time 'It's dark out, Jack-' this was one of his poems-'It's dark out, Jack, the stations out there don't identify themselves, we're in it raw-blind like burned rats, it's running out all around us, the footprints of the beast, one nobody has any notion of. The white and vacant eyes of something above there, something that doesn't know we exist. I smell heartbreak up there, Jack, a heartbreak at the center of things, and in which we don't figure at all.' Patchen's a real artist, you'd dig him, doctor. 'I believe in truth' he said, 'I believe that every good thought I have, all men shall have. I believe that the perfect shape of everything has been prepared.'" [p.330] - Charles Mingus


His most famous art book of concrete poetry that used creative typescripting is Sleepers Awake.

A Box Aria from

Sleepers Awake

by Kenneth Patchen

A sample collection of his poems can be found here:Poet: Kenneth Patchen

Well ahead of his time his illustrations remind one of those created by Peter Max for the Beatles Yellow Submarine movie.


An Elegy on the Death of Kenneth Patchen - Lawrence Ferlinghetti ...

Kenneth Patchen - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Kenneth Patchen, Naturalist of the Public Nightmare (Rexroth)

Patchen is the only widely published poet of my generation in the United States who has not abandoned the international idiom of twentieth-century verse. He is the only one we have, to take these two books as examples, to compare with Henri Michaux or Paul Éluard. Twenty-five ago no one would have prophesied such a comeuppance for what we then thought, and I still think, was the only significant tendency in American literature. What happened to the Revolution of the Word? Why is Patchen still there? Why did everybody else “sell out” or sink, like Louis Zukofsky, Parker Tyler, Walter Lowenfels, into undeserved obscurity? Why did American poetry, a part of world literature in 1920, become a pale, provincial imitation of British verse in 1957? We are back, two generations behind Australia.

Man thrives where angels die of ecstasy and pigs die of disgust. The contemporary situation is like a long-standing, fatal disease. It is impossible to recall what life was like without it. We seem always to have had cancer of the heart.

The first twenty-five years of the century were the years of revolutionary hope. Immediately after the First War, this hope became almost universal among educated people. There was a time when most men expected that soon, very soon, life was going to change; a new, splendid creature was going to emerge from its ancient chrysalis of ignorance, brutality, and exploitation. Everything was going to be different. Even the commonest, most accepted routines of life would be glorified. Education, art, sex, science, invention, everything from clothing to chess would be liberated. All the soilure and distortion of ages of slavery would fall away. Every detail of life would be harmoniously, functionally related in a whole which would be the realization of those absolutes of the philosophers, the Beloved Community wedded to the Idea of Beauty.

We who were born in the early years of the century accepted that hope implicitly. It was impossible that any feeble hands could halt the whole tendency of the universe. This was not the Idea of Progress, of indefinite human perfectibility, now the whipping boy of reactionary publicists and theologians. The nineteenth century had believed that the world was going to go on becoming more and more middle class until the suburbs of London stretched from Pole to Pole. We believed that man’s constant potential for a decent, simple, graceful life was bound to realize itself within a very few years, that the forces of wealth, barbarism, and superstition were too weak to resist much longer.

On August 29, 1927, Sacco and Vanzetti were executed with the connivance of the leading descendants of the New England libertarians. A cheap politician and a judge with the mind of a debauched turnkey were able to carry through this public murder in the face of a world of protest of unbelievable intensity, mass, and duration. When the sirens of all the factories in the iron ring around Paris howled in the early dawn, and the myriad torches of the demonstrators were hurled through the midnight air in Buenos Aires, the generation of revolutionary hope was over. The conscience of mankind went to school to learn methods of compromising itself. The Moscow trials, the Kuo Min Tang street executions, the betrayal of Spain, the Hitler-Stalin Pact, the extermination of whole nations, Hiroshima, Algiers — no protest has stopped the monster jaws from closing. As the years go on, fewer and fewer protests are heard. The spokesmen, the intellects of the world, have blackmailed themselves and are silent. The common man dreams of security. Every day life grows more insecure, and, outside America, more nasty, brutish, and short. The lights that went out over Europe were never relit. Now the darkness is absolute. In the blackness, well-fed, cultured, carefully shaven gentlemen sit before microphones at mahogany tables and push the planet inch by inch towards extinction. We have come to the generation of revolutionary hopelessness. Men throw themselves under the wheels of the monsters, Russia and America, out of despair, for identical reasons.

With almost no exceptions, the silentiaries of American literature pretend that such a state of affairs does not exist. In fact, most of them do not need to pretend. They have ceased to be able to tell good from evil. One of the few exceptions is Kenneth Patchen. His voice is the voice of a conscience which is forgotten. He speaks from the moral viewpoint of the new century, the century of assured hope, before the dawn of the world-in-concentration-camp. But he speaks of the world as it is. Imagine if suddenly the men of 1900 — H.G. Wells, Bernard Shaw, Peter Kropotkin, Romain Rolland, Martin Nexo, Maxim Gorky, Jack London — had been caught up, unprepared and uncompromised, fifty years into the terrible future. Patchen speaks as they would have spoken, in terms of unqualified horror and rejection. He speaks as Émile Zola spoke once — “A moment in the conscience of mankind.” Critics have said of him, “After all, you can’t be Jeremiah all the time.” Indeed? Why not? As far as we know, all Jeremiah ever wrote was The Book of Jeremiah and the world of his day was a Chautauqua picnic in comparison with this.


There Are Not Many Kingdoms Left

I write the lips of the moon upon her shoulders. In a
temple of silvery farawayness I guard her to rest.

For her bed I write a stillness over all the swans of the
world. With the morning breath of the snow leopard I
cover her against any hurt.

Using the pen of rivers and mountaintops I store her
pillow with singing.

Upon her hair I write the looking of the heavens at
early morning.

-- Away from this kingdom, from this last undefiled
place, I would keep our governments, our civilization, and
all other spirit-forsaken and corrupt institutions.

O cold beautiful blossoms of the moon moving upon
her shoulders . . . the lips of the moon moving there . . .
where the touch of any other lips would be a profanation.


"Patchen: Man of Anger & Light" by Henry Miller and "A Letter to God" by Kenneth Patchen

THE first thing one would remark on meeting Kenneth Patchen is that he is the living symbol of protest. I remember distinctly my first impression of him when we met in New York: it was that of a powerful, sensitive being who moved on velvet pads. A sort of sincere assassin, I thought to myself, as we shook hands. This impression has never left me. True or not, I feel that it would give him supreme joy to destroy with his own hands all the tyrants and sadists of this earth together with the art, the institutions and all the machinery of every day life which sustain and glorify them. He is a fizzing human bomb ever threatening to explode in our midst. Tender and ruthless at the same time, he has the faculty of estranging the very ones who wish to help him. He is inexorable: he has no manners, no tact, no grace. He gives no quarter. Like the gangster, he follows a code of his own. He gives you the chance to put up your hands before shooting you down. Most people however, are too terrified to throw up their hands. They get mowed down.

This is the monstrous side of him, which makes him appear ruthless and rapacious. Within the snorting dragon, however, there is a gentle prince who suffers at the mention of the slightest cruelty or injustice. A tender soul, who soon learned to envelope himself in a mantle of brim-fire in order to protect his sensitive skin. No American poet is as merciless in his invective as Patchen. There is almost an insanity to his fury and rebellion.


Kenneth Patchen Calendar 1996

Last updated 14 February 1997

JanuaryFebruaryMarchApril
MayJuneJulyAugust
SeptemberOctoberNovemberDecember


Fall of the Evening Star

Kenneth Patchen

Speak softly; sun going down
Out of sight. Come near me now.

Dear dying fall of wings as birds
complain against the gathering dark . . .

Exaggerate the green blood in grass;
the music of leaves scraping space;

Multiply the stillness by one sound;
by one syllable of your name . . .

And all that is little is soon giant,
all that is rare grows in common beauty

To rest with my mouth on your mouth
as somewhere a star falls

And the earth takes it softly, in natural love . . .
Exactly as we take each other . . .
and go to sleep . . .


David and Ida Berner Endowment for the Kenneth Patchen Archive

Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco -
Kenneth Patchen, Untitled, circa 1950 - 1970

Kenneth Patchen - Poems, Biography, Quotes

fucking lies: kenneth patchen newsletter fund-raiser



I am the joy of the desiring flesh

The days of my living

are summer days

The nights of my glory

outshine the blazing wavecaps of the heavens

at their floodtide

Mine is the confident hand shaping this world.

— Kenneth Patchen



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Clement Was Bottle Fed


Performance artist offers breast milk tastings
Dobkin, who has given performances and presented artist's talks and workshops at galleries and universities throughout North America, said she became interested in taboos surrounding breastfeeding. "This project re-contextualizes something often regarded as indecent or repellent, offering a celebratory view," the 36-year-old Toronto-based artist said in the release. "A substance that nourishes us in our infancy later becomes a curiosity in adulthood. Though many drink it exclusively for the first months of life, the memory of that taste and the sensation of drawing milk from the breast are forgotten. No two women's milk tastes the same, and is influenced by things we ingest and our unique biology."


Oh please gimme a break from post-structuralist deconstructionism.

Taste date set at breast milk bar
The federal Tory government says it won't lay a hand on the Lactation Station Breast Milk Bar. A Toronto performance artist is offering the public an opportunity to sample human breast milk, in the spirit of wine tasting, and the lesbian single mother is using a $9,000 grant from the Canada Council for the Arts to help get the creative juices flowing. The breast milk, provided by six different women according to artist Jess Dobkin, will be pasteurized for health and safety reasons. But that consideration didn't seem top of mind for federal Health Minister Tony Clement. "A chacun son gout" -- to each his own tastes -- said Clement, before quickly adding, "It's not for me."


Obviously Tony was a bottle baby. Actually that's a clever quip from Clement.

Funny the silence coming from the screaming Tories who would have their proverbial knickers in a twist over this when in opposition. Now as the government, well of course it's hands off the Canada Council., and keep those hands away from lesbian breasts.

Ok folks here is the $9,000 question if this was a performance in a strip club would it not be denounced as exploitative of women. But since it's a lesbian doing it at the Ontario College of Art and Design its ok. Can you say 'feminist contradictions'.

Pasteurized? Guess the Vegans will be upset over that. Nothing is better and more wholesome than mothers milk as they say. Of course it isn't true anymore.Milking It: Moms find industrial chemicals in their breast milk

Unfortunately no real breasts will be used. It will be lactacation machines producing your glass of moms milk. Just like they use for that other milk we drink. So the whole experience wil be oh so clinical.

Will the Art Gallery be full of Adult babies?

Wasn't the Milk Bar somewhere Alex and his Droogs hung out at?

Oy the head spins. Even if it's called performance art, its more appropriate for the Jerry Springer show. Excpet that the prudes in the U.S. would probably fine Jerry. Bush approves tenfold hike for broadcast indecency fines

At least its not public urination art. For which Canada is famous.

But wait it gets better in Scotland the lads have their own art show. Its all post feminism now.Thank the girls for leading the way. Though it all began with DadA in the first place.

Under the influence

IAIN GALE

Dada's Boys
Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh

IN 1992 the British art world saw its greatest explosion of cultural creativity for three decades. The press called it "BritArt" and it was nothing less than revolutionary. But this was a revolution with a difference. For BritArt was underwritten by something essentially conservative. For all the Rachel Whitereads, Gillian Wearings and Tracey Emins that it spawned, it was at its core about art made by 'lads'. When they weren't pickling sheep or bottling their own blood, Hirst, Quinn and their mates were happiest down the pub getting drunk, watching or playing footie or getting their leg over. A new exhibition at Edinburgh's Fruitmarket examines this curious truth and puts it in its historical context with fascinating clarity.

We have become used to shows which deal with feminist or gay and lesbian issues. But, as the curator David Hopkins, Professor of Art History at Glasgow University, admits, it is only now in the comfort of the post-feminist afterglow, that we are able to examine the nature of male identity in recent British art.

Hopkins' starting point, and the source of his irritatingly contrived title, is the Dada movement which rocked the foundations of European art in the early years of the last century. Don't suppose that this is a show of Dadaist art, however. Hopkins is concerned with the legacy of the late Dada which flowered in New York in the 1920s and in particular with the work of Duchamp, Picabia and Man Ray. Thus we are only treated to some seven works by those original bad lads. The core of the exhibition evolves from Hopkins' vision of Duchamp as a subversive form-master teaching all he has learned to a back-of-the-class mob of unruly, anarchic and bullishly heterosexual schoolboys.

See:

100 years of the Avante-Garde 1905-2005






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Friday, June 16, 2006

More Nude News

I see my blogging about Nudes In The News has caught on Weird, Wacky and Wonderful No pictures though. After all it is a Blogging Tory site.


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MP Raj Pannu

Is Raj Pannu thinking of running for the NDP in Edmonton Strathcona in the next federal election?

Civitensis raises the rumour then says it's not true. To bad he would win.

Maybe its time to start a Draft Raj campaign...hey we already have the campaign slogan:

Raj


Against the Machine


See:

Scoop

The Passing of the Raj


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Lagrange 5


I came across an interesting space news blog :

Lagrange 5 Waypoint to the past, present, and future of space.

Why because I was googling around my previous article about Hawking and space colonization, as well as this one:Astronauts board space shuttle for practice launch

So I have to wonder why NASA and all the other space agencies fail to build in L5 rather than in suborbital space where their stupid space stations will inevitably decay in orbit and crash back to earth.

Oh what am I saying, of course it's the planned obscelence of capitalism.

Whereas if we used the Lagrange 5 we could have already been on our way to space colonization.

But of course space stations are not for space exploration, they are war stations in space for use by the Military Industrial Complex to continue its business as usual.

As anarchist sci-fi author Mack Reynolds exposed in his novels.

Libertarian Forum

 Mack Reynolds -- Lagrange Five (1979)
 Reynolds was, for 25 years, an activist for the U.S. Socialist Labor Party.
 His radical perspective on political issues is reflected throughout his
 work. This book -- examining a quasi-utopia without sentimentalism -- is
 only one suggestion. Also of huge interest are Tomorrow Might Be Different
 (1960) and The Rival Rigelians (1960), which explicitly examine the relation
 between capitalism and Stalinism.

Mack Reynolds (Dallas McCord Reynolds) (November 11, 1917 - January 30, 1983) 
was an American science fiction writer. 
Many of his stories were published in Galaxy Magazine and Worlds of If Magazine. 
He was an active supporter of the Socialist Labor Party and consequently many 
of his stories have a reformist theme, and almost all of his novels explore 
economic issues to some degree. He was quite popular in the 1960s but most
of his work is out of print today.
The Volokh Conspiracy - Decentralization and Federalism in Science Fiction


The image “http://www.l5news.org/graphics/masthead.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.


Space Studies Institute » Second Place

HobbySpace - Life in Space

Lagrangian point: Definition and Much More From Answers.com

Space colonization - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Lagrangian point - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Mobile Suit Gundam: Developing Sound Habitats







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Bear With Me


As my faithful readers will know I am concerned aboutthe plight of Bears. A recent story on cannibal polar bears caught my attention.

Along with one about Thompson Manitoba locking up their garbage dump to keep bears out.

However back to the cannibalistic polar bears, well I have to agree with this guy, Conservative Joe. Shock, shudder, say it ain't so, for the most part.


WHEN SCIENCE IS USED FOR POLITICAL ENDS
Wednesday, June 14, 2006 10:47:41 PM

When science is used to achieve a political goal, it is no longer science. It may resemble it, but that is where the relationship ends. In a dramatic story being published across the globe this week, we are told that polar bears are eating each other because of global warming and that this behaviour is unprecedented. Historical evidence and past studies show this to be an outright lie.( Read Article )

He raises serious questions about the cannibal polar bear stories now circulating. Even if he is a right winger who has doubts about global warming.

He is far less an apologist than these guys though; Polar Bears on Thin Ice, Not Really! Brief Analysis

Who also use science for political ends, just conservative right wing ones. Of course they won't be denounced by Conservative Joe.



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Slaves To Ipod


What was that the right wing was saying about unions being outdated? As long as we have wage-slavery the wage-slaves will need to organize! Yeah codes of conduct are as useless as the paper they are written on. The only real code of conduct is when workers organize. Apple is the new Nike.


Sweatshop Conditions at IPod Factory Reported

IPod 'slave' claims investigated

WELCOME TO IPOD CITY
THE 'ROBOT' WORKERS ON 15-HOUR DAYS

Apple has responded to the recent claims of poor working conditions at iPod factories in China, stating that it takes the allegations seriously and that it is looking into the charges. “Apple is committed to ensuring that working conditions in our supply chain are safe, workers are treated with respect and dignity, and manufacturing processes are environmentally responsible,” Apple said in a statement. The company said it is “currently investigating the allegations regarding working conditions in the iPod manufacturing plant in China. We do not tolerate any violations of our supplier code of conduct which are posted online.”




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Screw Up A Planet And Move On

Yep thats what a leading scientist says.

Hawking: Life on Earth Dangerous, Humans Should Colonize the Moon

Sure its already a desolate wasteland so we couldn't possibly screw it up anymore than it is...could we?

On the other hand this could be another example of capitalism in space since the Moon is rich in heavy metals.
See Explanation. Clicking on the picture will download the highest resolution version available.


Also See:

NASA



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Thursday, June 15, 2006

Don't Eat No Yellow Snow

Did ET pee in the arctic?

U of C searches for ET

Arctic's strange sulphur spring may hide secrets of life
University of Calgary geology professor Benoit Beauchamp was in the High Arctic studying rocks when he noticed an unusual yellowish stain in a snow-covered valley. He flew over in a helicopter several times, but couldn't figure out why the snow had turned yellow. "I thought it was some sort of moss or vegetation," he recalled Tuesday. "It's not until I landed that I realized it was pure sulphur.University of Calgary geology professor Benoit Beauchamp was in the High Arctic studying rocks when he noticed an unusual yellowish stain in a snow-covered valley. He flew over in a helicopter several times, but couldn't figure out why the snow had turned yellow. "I thought it was some sort of moss or vegetation," he recalled Tuesday. "It's not until I landed that I realized it was pure sulphur.
Arctic expedition will investigate alien-like glacier


And remember Frank Zappas warning kids: Don't Eat No Yellow Snow

Save for an unexpected pair of top-40 hits in "Don't Eat the Yellow Snow" and "Valley Girl," Frank Zappa didn't make much of a dent in the mainstream in his quarter century as a recorded artist. And understandably so; he was, and remains more than a dozen years after his passing, years ahead of his time. To Zappa's benefit, and probably much to the appreciation of his still-die hard fan base, he never fit the rock and roll mold, inspired more by the likes of Igor Stravinsky than the Fab Four and making no bones about it. He was also an astute social and political commentator, despite penning locker-room savvy classics such as "Broken Hearts are for A******s" and "Bobby Brown."

Let's be Frank

Frank Zappa's Family Brings His Music to a New Audience



Also See:
Classical Rock



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Prehistoric Loonie


Another fossil discovery with Canadian links. Just like Frank and Gordon.

This time it's the Loon.


The similarity of G. yumenensis to modern birds came as a surprise: Previously, such advanced anatomical features had been seen only in birds that lived during and after the late Cretaceous period — within the last 100 million years. "In short, no one expected to find a bird this modern in rocks this old," Harris says, referring to the shale formation where the team made its discovery. The shale dates to the early Cretaceous period, which occurred between 100 million and 145 million years ago. As a result of the finding, G. yumenensis now has the distinction of being "the oldest-known bird that is really, really modern in its anatomy," he says.

As such, G. yumenensis may help fill in gaps in the branch of the evolutionary tree that gave rise to today's birds. Specifically, scientists are looking to G. yumenensis for present-day evidence of whether modern birds originated in aquatic or terrestrial habitats.

An artist's reconstruction shows Gansus yumenensis in a lake in China's Gansu province. The bird probably had the ability to dive and swim underwater, much like modern loons or grebes. Illustration by Mark A. Klingler, courtesy of the Carnegie Museum of Natural History.

"The most primitive living birds — for example, ostriches, rheas, and chickens — tend to be terrestrial" and therefore would seem to hint that today's birds got their start on land, says Matthew Lamanna, a research team member from the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pennsylvania. Yet two other features of G. yumenensis — webbed feet and a large crest on its lower leg bone that would have provided a strong anchor for leg muscles — suggest the bird was aquatic and had the ability to dive and swim underwater like loons or grebes. According to You's research team, this supports the idea that modern birds actually originated in water habitats.

Also See:

Fossils

Prehistoric

Dinosaurs


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Scoop

Daveberta has a scoop on his site. Following the resignation announcement by Edmonton Strathcona NDP MLA Raj Pannu, Daveberta correctly predicted that Rachel Notley will be announcing her candidacy as Raj's replacement. . notley quick on the draw.

As the ultimate party insider, daughter of former NDP Leader and Saint; Grant Notley, her shoo in is assured. Seems though that Daveberta was not supposed to announce her candidacy. Dave writes:

UPDATE: It seems that a clever webmaster has discovered that I have prematurely announced Ms. Notley's candidacy.

As such, her site has been taken down until the official announcement is made. Even though I did have the foresight to see this coming and captured screenshots and copied her announcement speech and press release (dated June 16), I'm really not cruel enough to post stuff like that (this early in the nomination game).


She will be announcing her candidacy tommorow, Friday June 16, 10:30 AM at the Edmonton Strathcona Community Centre. Then her website will probably go back up.

Her hubby is Lou Arab a former PR guy for the ABNDP now PR guy for CUPE Alberta. And maybe Bob the Angry Flower will join her campaign.

The old family compact is alive and well in the Alberta NDP.

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A Birthday Present For Che


A Liberated Bolivia

And lets not forget that other great Cuban Revolutionary who would have turned 78 yesterday. The guy who ran the bank of Cuba because when they were handing out jobs around the table, they asked whose an 'economist', and he said I am. Only to find out later he thought they said 'communist.'

Bolivia was where Che began his understanding of the oppression of the indigenous peoples of Latin American, and where he would die helping the Coca farmers.

Bolivia's president pays homage to Che Guevara

LA HIGUERA, Bolivia (Reuters) - Bolivian President Evo Morales pledged solidarity with Cuba and Venezuela on Wednesday as he paid homage to Ernesto "Che" Guevara at the spot where the legendary leftist guerrilla was killed in 1967.

Clutching double-sided Cuban-Bolivian flags, white-coated Cuban doctors joined Morales and hundreds of local residents in the remote eastern village La Higuera to mark the 78th anniversary of the Cuban revolutionary leader's birth.

Morales, who has hung a large portrait of Guevara in the presidential palace, defended his leftist alliance with Cuba and Venezuela and said he would be willing to take up arms to defend them in the face of any U.S. attack.

"If they did it in Cuba, in Venezuela or Bolivia, we'd be willing to take them on with arms to defend the nation, natural resources and social reforms," Morales said.

"Ten years ago, I said there'd soon be many Cubas in Latin America and I now feel I was right ... . Now we've got another commander, our comrade (Venezuelan President) Hugo Chavez. We've got two freedom-fighting commanders ... whatever the empire says," added Morales, who often dubs Washington "the North American empire."

He is the first Bolivian president to pay homage to Guevara in the mountainous area where the Argentine-born medical doctor was captured and shot to death by Bolivian soldiers as he sought to spread communism to Bolivia.

Guevara was Fidel Castro's lieutenant in the 1959 Cuban Revolution. His attempt to spark another movement in Bolivia in 1967 was stopped after seven months of fighting in the subtropics.

He was captured on October 8 and taken to the school building in La Higuera, where he was executed the next day at the age of 39.

Che was executed by the CIA and Bolivian Army in the first act of the phoney War On Drugs that began way back then.

Bolivia Remembers Che for Humanity

La Paz, Jun 15 (Prensa Latina) The government and people´s tribute to the 78th anniversary of Argentine-Cuban guerrilla commander Ernesto Che Guevara, shared by ambassadors from Cuba and Venezuela, has caused a great impact in Bolivia.

President Evo Morales, and Cuban and Venezuelan Ambassadors Rafael Dausa and Julio Montes ratified their nations´ will to emulate Che´s solidarity fight as the greatest homage to his memory.

History has done justice to the guerrilla fighter, in an emotive revolutionary activity at the La Higuera village, where he was assassinated in 1967.

In his address, Evo Morales described Che as an immortal leader who tirelessly fought against US imperialism and for the liberty and dignity of Latin America, "dying for us, equality and justice."

"When I was a farmers´ leader ten years ago, I was asked about my views on Cuba, and I answered there would be many 'Cubas' in Latin America. I am very satisfied I was right," he noted.

Morales referred to unconditional solidarity among Cuba, Venezuela and Bolivia, calling it the axis of humankind, of the poor who fight for life, as proven in health and education collaboration, and pledged he would never betray Che´s ideals.

Cuban and Venezuelan Ambassadors Rafael Dausa and Julio Montes also addressed participants, including Che´s son Camilo Guevara March and government officials from Caracas and Havana.

Evo Morales Honors Che Guevara with New Clinic from Cuba

Bolivian President Pays Homage to Che Guevara Today

Bolivian President Pays Tribute to Guevara


Thirty years ago Che's Revolution in Bolivia planted the seeds for the revolutionary movement of Evo Morales and MAS.


''Bolivia's Evo Morales Launches His Movement Toward Socialism ...
Unlike the traditional populist leaders in the Andean region, who originate in the middle and upper classes and who implement redistributionist measures from above without coherent ideological grounding and grassroots organization, Morales comes from a poor indigenous background and heads an organized mass movement with ideological foundations and programmatic applications of them. His Movement Toward Socialism (M.A.S.) -- Bolivia's largest political party -- brings together indigenous, community, peasant, labor and student groups in a coalition that, despite the many tensions within it, seeks to replace permanently the oligarchic rule of the European and affluent mestizo middle and upper classes that have become linked to and dependent upon multinational corporations and the states that protect them, particularly the United States. [See: "Bolivia's Evo Morales Shifts the Hemispheric Balance of Power"]

The aim of the M.A.S. is not simply to take over the existing system and run it by keeping it intact, but to change it fundamentally. The extent of the transformation that the M.A.S. envisions became evident in June when it released its program, "Refounding Bolivia," which incorporates its agenda for the forthcoming constituent assembly.

At the highest level of ideological abstraction, the document interprets Bolivian history as "indigenous-popular resistance to discrimination and poverty," proclaiming the "rights" of indigenous peoples to self-determination, control over their territories and "collective resources," and use of their traditional political and justice systems, consistent with respect for human rights. The M.A.S.' vision for Bolivia is a "plural, participative, communitarian and representative democracy, based on diversity of peoples, for the elimination of all forms of colonialism, segregation and discrimination." In the economic sphere, "Refounding Bolivia" declares that natural resources are "social property" and that their management falls to the state -- a model of "social economy" with room for private productive property so long as it serves socially useful purposes.

Bolivia’s Gas Nationalization: A South American Affair
The diplomatic whirlwind following Evo Morales’ takeover of Bolivia’s gas fields has revealed that South American unity is far stronger than critics of the regio... :: 14/6/2006

Morales to Release Economic Plan

By CARLOS VALDEZ Associated Press Writer
 © 2006 The Associated Press

LA PAZ, Bolivia — Leftist President Evo Morales will unveil an economic plan on Friday that aims to create 100,000 jobs a year and lift South America's poorest country out of crisis by investing profits from Bolivia's recently nationalized natural gas industry.

In a shift from previous administrations that have backed free-market style reforms, Morales is favoring a strong state role in the economy. Shunning a free-trade agreement with Washington, he has signed a pact with his left-wing allies Cuba and Venezuela.

A draft of the Morales plan obtained by the Associated Press says the government plans heavy public investment that could reach US$1.6 billion (euro1.3 billion) by 2011 that it hopes will spur annual economic growth of 7.6 percent _ more than double Bolivia's current growth rate.


Also See

The Left In Latin America

Che Meets Benedict

Nothing To Worry About In Bolivia

A Libertarian Defense of the Left Wing in Latin America

Bolivia Moves Left


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Guess Who Is 80


Well that social parasite the Queen, for one. She is celebrating her birthday, AGAIN this week for one. Those British aristocrats just can't get enough of their Queen. Threw her another birthday party.Which we all pay for.

Britain`s last Queen?

And one implication of all this that must trouble Her Majesty as she receives the genuinely affectionate birthday greetings of her subjects is that the future of the Monarchy she inherited is very far from secure.

Another new poll for Britain`s ITV News this week suggested that while 52 percent of Brits think the Queen provides 'good value for money,' only 31 percent think the same of her son and heir Prince Charles. Yet another poll this month in The Times found that only 37 percent of Brits think that Charles should succeed his mother.

Though as Canadians we may have saved some money on this her second birthday party.Where's Michaelle?

But wait apparently she is secretly a Marxist! Queen Elizabeth supports Marxism

But for those who have no use for royalty, well we have someone we can celebrate who is turning 80. None other than that arch nemesis of Amerika; Comrade Fidel Castro. And he is a Marxist just like the Queen.


Castro's new soldiers

One of the revolution’s endearing features has been its ability to reinvent itself. Castro was originally a guerrilla revolutionary with a utopian programme to create a new society; later, in the 1970s, he became a Soviet placeman with a communist blueprint; then in the 1990s (after the collapse of the Soviet Union) he was a simple hand-to-mouth survivor, regardless of the ideological cost. In the 21st century he describes himself as a socialist, but is also a fully paid-up green campaigner. Efforts to curb corruption, save energy and promote organic farming are all part of a new struggle to put revolutionary fire into the bellies of a younger generation that doesn’t remember the palmy days of the Soviet-subsidised era, let alone the revolutionary excitements of half a century ago.

Castro, in his 80th year, is the same age as the Queen of England. He has been Cuba’s ruler for almost as long and is still apparently as active as ever. Last November, he spoke for five hours at the university and then talked to the students until dawn. Yet he doesn’t look well. While I used to think he could go on for another decade, I now suspect he may not last much beyond the celebrations of the revolution’s half century in 2009.

Castro may well be of the same opinion. Speaking to the university students, he addressed the problem of what might happen after his death, and asked a series of rhetorical questions: “When the veterans start disappearing, to make room for new generations of leaders, what will be done? Can the revolutionary process be made irreversible?’’ He warned that it would be possible for the country to self-destruct. He said it would be up to the new generation to see that this did not happen, admitting that his own rule had hardly been perfect. “After all, we witnessed many mistakes that we simply did not notice at the time.’’

THE United States will not succeed in its attempt to destroy Cuban President Fidel Castro's resolve to serve humanity, Dr Kenneth Kaunda said yesterday.

In an interview, Dr Kaunda said he was delighted that President Castro had invited him to attend his 80th birthday celebrations scheduled for August. "We have been personal friends for a long time indeed," Dr Kaunda said.

Coordinator for Africa and the Middle East in the Department of International Relations of the Central Council of the Cuban Communist Party, Dr Rodolfo Puente Ferro, disclosed to The Post in Havana, Cuba, last week that Dr Kaunda was among the eminent personalities from around the world who would grace President Castro's 80th birthday anivessarry on August 13, 2006.

And Dr Kaunda said President Castro had contributed towards a safe global village due to his belief in socialism, which favoured the poor people.

He said President Castro had succeeded in making the Cuban population as one of the most educated people in Latin America. "He has trained doctors, engineers and professionals...a number of those doctors, engineers and other professionals have come to Africa to assist the poverty stricken continent," Dr Kaunda said.

"When Angola was invaded by the Afrikaans or Boers' troops, Comrade Castro sent his troops to assist his brothers here in Africa."

Venezuela Decorates Cuban President


Also See:

Made In Cuba Green Policy



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SpOilers


Yep twas a great game.....Oilers hold off storm
I predict seven games since both the Oilers and Hurricanes are evenly matched.Cause the Canes have as many Canadians on their team as the Oilers.




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