An Interview With Kim Stanley Robinson - Climate Change

Comparative Planetology: An Interview with Kim Stanley Robinson

It begins like this:

[ BLDGBLOG: I’m interested in the possibility that literary genres might have to be redefined in light of climate change. In other words, a novel where two feet of snow falls on Los Angeles, or sand dunes creep through the suburbs of Rome, would be considered a work of science fiction, even surrealism, today; but that same book, in fifty years’ time, could very well be a work of climate realism, so to speak. So if climate change is making the world surreal, then what it means to write a “realistic” novel will have to change. As a science fiction novelist, does that affect how you approach your work?

Kim Stanley Robinson: Well, I’ve been saying this for a number of years: that now we’re all living in a science fiction novel together, a book that we co-write. A lot of what we’re experiencing now is unsurprising because we’ve been prepped for it by science fiction. But I don’t think surrealism is the right way to put it. Surrealism is so often a matter of dreamscapes, of things becoming more than real – and, as a result, more sublime. You think, maybe, of J.G. Ballard’s The Drowned World, and the way that he sees these giant catastrophes as a release from our current social set-up: catastrophe and disaster are aestheticized and looked at as a miraculous salvation from our present reality. But it wouldn’t really be like that. ]

Just the sort of thing I am thinking about, re my mess-in-progress. While the limburger&co bellow "global climate change is a liberal scam to get taxpayers' dollars into their own pockets!"

From the New Hobsbawm

From the galley of On Empire: America, War and Global Supremacy; March 18, 2008; Pantheon Books, this from the chapter titled, "War, Peace, and Hegemony at the Beginning of the 21st Century" -- note, Eric Hobsbawm does not write in the first person in the other parts of this essay, or address the reader, as he does here:

[ Frankly, I can't make sense of what has happened in the United States since 9/11 that has enabled a group of political crazies to realize long-held plans for an unaccompanied solo performance of world supremacy. I believe it indicates a growing crisis within American society, which finds expression in the most profound political and cultural division within that country since the Civil War, and a sharp geographical division between the globalized economy of the two seaboards, and the vast resentful hinterland, the cuturally open big cities, and the rest of the country. Today a radical right-wing regime seeks to mobilize "true Americans" against some evil outside force and against a world that does not recognize the uniqueness, the superiority, the manifest destiny of America. What we must realize is that American global policy is aimed inward, not outward, howver great and runinous its impact on the rest of the world. It is not designed to produce either empire or effective hegemony. Nor was the Donald Rumsfeld doctrine -- quick wars against weak pushovers followed by quick withdrawals -- designed for effective global conquest. Not that this makes it less dangerous. On the contrary. As is now evident, it spells instability, unpredictability, aggression, and unintended, almost certainly disastrous, consequences. In effect, the global ambitions of an uncontrollable and apparently irrational government in Washington. ]

Seas of Blood

Craig Unger -- what he heard on a trip to the Holy Land with lehaye and about 90 evangelicals:

[ As LaHaye sees it, the word "secular" is not merely a morally neutral term that means "worldly." It means "ungodly," and, in his view, there are godly people--who are on the road to Rapture--and then there is the rest of the world, which is either complicit with the Anti-Christ, or, worse, actively assisting him. As a result, LaHaye argues, good evangelicals should no longer think of humanists merely as harmless citizens who just happen not to attend church. "We must remove all humanists from public office," he writes, "and replace them with pro-moral political leaders."

These views may sound extreme, but that does not mean they are marginal. The Council for National Policy, a powerful but secretive umbrella group founded by LaHaye more than 25 years ago, has had extraordinary access to the Oval Office during the Bush-Cheney era. As the late Jerry Falwell told me in 2005, "Within the Council is a smaller group called the Arlington Group. We often call the White House and talk to Karl Rove while we are meeting. Everyone takes our calls." Falwell added that they were consulted on crucial issues such as Supreme Court nominees.

Reports of the death of the Christian Right have been greatly exaggerated. This time around, their man is Huckabee. ]

The rapturists testify to how they eagerly await the seas of blood when the billions of non-christians are killed.

The Dems' Forum Today in Iowa

Such a difference from yesterday and the gops' forum of angry and mean mean all terrified of everything from US to immigrants to THEM and the future, and howling about religion in government and schools and everywhere as the only answser to everything. And getting rid of the income tax in favor of a flat tax on EVERYTHING (meaning when you pay your gas and electricity bills you pay another 23 - 30 cent per dollar) and getting rid of everything federally funded from education to social security (which we've funded, but nevermind).

In contrast, the Dems all sounded sound, intelligent, informed, committed, courageous, energetic and -- lordessa save us, even optimistic, while not pretending that that challenges are nearly beyond counting and enormous. They sounded ready to take on these challenges and eager to do so.

Of course, Dennis Kucinich was barred from participating because he didn't have a campaign team on the ground in Iowa -- or something equally bogus.

GOP Iowa 'Debate'

More and more it looks as though this nation's movers&shakers are on the way to declaring a lack of health insurance to not be a health problem but a crime.

The only response to the problems of health care in this nation is to force everyone to have health insurance.

Hello? People don't have health insurance because they can't afford it. Declaring it mandatory doesn't change the fact that people can't afford health insurance.

Not to mention that health insurance charges more and more and more and pays for less and less and less.

IOW, another way to transfer your money to the corporate fat cats. Man, by now, they really must all just be pushed around in lorries, considering how fat they are.

A Mystery Found On The Street

The mystery about this find is here. The cord is of some synthetic material. It wasn't broken, but melted, which presumably is the reason the Cuban tres pesos coin was on the street now, not around the neck of whomever was wearing it. Why was it melted off? Why there? Who did it? The person to whom it belonged? Who was s/he? Why was it removed?

"Electoral College" Copyrighted by NeoCon Clothing Company

If I understood that correctly.

Got to this new blog site, "It's All One Thing" and check out the "Copyright Trumps Free Speech."

Another tactic in the strategy to change the states' electoral college rules AND shut down all public protest against this.