Undulating Ungulate

There’s not much to say about this, other than this is the daily reality we ignore to live our lives.

Every child who dies of hunger in today’s world is the victim of an assassination, a United Nations expert on the right to food, Jean Ziegler, said today in New York.

The world’s agricultural production should be able to feed 12 billion people, but globally, 852 million are consistently undernourished, 100,000 people die of hunger every day, and a child under 10 years of age dies every 5 seconds, Mr. Ziegler told a press conference. He called this a daily massacre of human beings through malnutrition

Scoop: UN – Millions Of Children Assassinated By Hunger

Filed by billy at 11:54 pm under the world
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This is a ridiculously awesome collection of downloadable videos of all sorts of conspiracy and parapolitical and twilight science and oh boy!

Filed by billy at 3:05 am under politics
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“I don’t believe in “average people” doing anything. People ought to support mitigation and adaptation within their own line of work, no matter how un-average that is. I mean: if you’re butcher, baker, ballerina, banker, or a plumber, envision yourself as the post-fossil-fuel version of yourself, and get right after it. We’d be best off struggling to create some kind of Solidarnosc-style entirely alternate society, for a 1989-sized across-the-board upheaval. So, just, well, stop co-operating with the status quo. Stop collaborating. Stop being afraid and stop feeling helpless. Just stop all that and start living by entirely other means.

Be glad for any scrap of choice you’re offered. The UN expects 50 million people to have their lives entirely uprooted by environmental mayhem — EVERY YEAR. That could be you or me. You’re worried that a hybrid car costs more money? People in Key West are standing on the roofs of drowned cars.

Our best hope is to “collapse upwards.” ” – Bruce Sterling (moose’s emphasis)

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The moose is pleased to announce this summer is going to rock. Seriously. On the scale of “best summer of your life”, this is one we’re all going to look back on and nod, “yeah”. So get with the living.

Filed by billy at 1:14 pm under new zealand,the moose
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The moose has been in the recording studio of late. The rough mixes sound rocking.

On Thursday, the moose dances, and sings, for your pleasure, at Valve, for free.

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Taiwan has announced that in order to protect their population from the possibility of avian bird flu it will ignore patent law and make generic, virtually identical versions of flu drugs, quicker and cheaper.

BBC news article

The moose is pleased by this, and hopes that, say, Africa, will invoke this precedent to manufacture generic retroviral AIDS drugs for their populations rather than pay the profit-mongering price of Western pharmacological firms.

This is another illustration that “information wants to be free”, whatever form it takes. And as technology spreads to the street, it will, in Gibson’s phrase, find its own uses for things. Again, these debates over intellectual property and patents will determine a substantial amount of our future, not the least of which the ethical status of our culture.

Filed by billy at 12:26 am under politics,technology,the world
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Over the past few years, one of the funniest, nastiest, most relevant publications to hit a world unprepared to deal with its hypocrisy and bullshit laid bare, has been The Babylon Express. Unjustly robbed of infamy, and frankly lots of money and acclaim, it’s back for another blast.

The moose is informed that there will be five new issues before christmas, the first available now, with subscriptions at $2/issue, including delivery and quite likely a chance to shoot shit with the editorial staff. Become the envy of your workplace with the hottest ticket in cool cachet, and support rabid local artistry into the bargain. Contact bexpress69 (at) hotmail (dot) com

Filed by billy at 1:42 pm under new zealand
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The moose has been reading The Price of The Ticket: Collected Essays 1948-1985, by James Baldwin. Baldwin was a black american writer who rose to prominence in the 50’s and of course throughout the 60’s civil rights era. Born the son of a poor preacher, he was himself a youth minister before leaving the church. He writes with astounding rage and passion of the situation of his country and fellow man, and yet somehow, through his anger, he comes to great compassion and wisdom in his assessments, and realises recognising the universality of the human condition and uniting honestly is the only hope for redemption and survival.

“And if the word integration means anything, this is what it means: that we, with love, shall force our brothers to see themselves as they are, to cease fleeing from reality and begin to change it.”

(from The Fire Next Time, 1963)

It is very difficult to argue with him, and he is exceptionally quotable. He is a great writer, honest and personal, with an impressive understanding of human nature. Particularly, I don’t think I had the faintest insight into what racism means, experientially, for the victim, before I read The Fire Next Time, nor what it means for the oppressor. Both lose their humanity.

The world he describes is so foreign it is strange to consider much of what he wrote was scarcely a decade before the moose was born. Most interestingly, his analysis of the white man’s wilful blindness to history and the present, and the nature of racism and exploitation, makes an exceptional parallel to our modern times, for the underlying historical drive is the same.

But for power truly to feel itself menaced, it must somehow sense itself in the presence of another power – or, more accurately, an energy – which it has not known how to define and therefore does not really know how to control. For a very long time, for example, America prospered – or seemed to prosper: this prosperity cost millions of people their lives. Now, not even the people who are the most spectacular recipients of the benefits of this prosperity are able to endure these benefits: they can neither understand them nor do without them, nor can they go beyond them. Above all, they cannot, or dare not, assess or imagine the price payed by their victims, or subjects, for this way of life, and so they cannot afford to know why the victims are revolting. They are forced, then, to the conclusion that the victims – the barbarians – are revolting against all established civilized values – which is both true and not true – and, in order to preserve these values, however stifling and joyless these values have caused their lives to be, the bulk of the people desperately seek out representatives who are prepared to make up in cruelty what both they and the people lack in conviction.

(No Name in the Street, 1972)

And that is as eloquent and contemporary a description of our circumstance today as the moose knows.

Filed by billy at 1:55 am under consciousness,quotes,the world
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” Biopresence creates Human DNA trees by transcoding the essence of a human being within the DNA of a tree in order to create “Living Memorials” or “Transgenic Tombstones”.”

Biopresence. Human DNA Trees.

Weird.

Filed by billy at 12:20 am under technology,the world
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I took a day off from writing today – a rarity. A day off from my life, my routines. Went for a walk in the sun, wrote a letter to a friend I haven’t seen for a couple of years who’s having hard times, posted it, then caught up randomly with some people having post-work drinks.

And damn if I don’t feel out of place. Or, at least, have no idea why I’m there. Sit and watch. Sit and watch.

Nothing to say and unable to leave. So fucking detached. I’ve been out here a long time, and I don’t know if I know the way back. What do people say? I mean, they get drunk to say anything, of course, and I wasn’t drinking. I can be funny, part of me remembers how, but it feels so false, and it’s been so long, I’m not sure I remember the rules. This goddamn gulf between people. We sit and skirt the edges, so far apart, keep it safe and meaningless, when really we need to be running at each other, yelling our truths, as our only hope of finally meeting.

This beautiful city is changing. Rubble everywhere. I want to scream and shake it off, a second skin grown too small. But that’s not altogether true – it’s a symptom, not a cause. It’s myself I’ve outgrown. And when I take that away, as soon I will, who is left?

—

Hours later now, picked myself up and headed to a party, not anywhere on the map, expecting nothing. Walk in, know no one, a younger crowd. Greet the hostess, then she’s away. Suddenly everyone’s dancing, espy a half familiar face on the floor. End up talking, a girl met once before who I could have given my heart to, a ghostly regret. Reconnect into the groove, instant open communication, a real person here. Her girlfriend takes the first opportunity to introduce herself as such, natch, so it goes. Then another once met face appears, friendly energy and open talk. Soon we’re drumming and dancing the night away. The hours pass, who can say how long?, there is only now. The neighbours complain and we pack down, seek to meet again. And I feel fine.

And, of course, on my day off, here I am writing. Problem and solution in one.

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