A Russian invasion of Ukraine would look like the kind of war that has been largely absent in the past 80 years and that was once common. It would involve a powerful nation setting out to expand its regional dominance by taking over a neighbor. A war like this — a voluntary war of…
Capitalism is an extractive circuit which quite literally crisscrosses the world. 1. Its global value chains stretch through physical infrastructure and “frictionless” financial flows at the speed allowed by telecommunications; fossil fuels; and geophysical, technological, psychosocial, and bodily limits and “optimizations.” 2. It connects economically and ecologically dispossessed agricultural communities in the Global South…
Yesterday I wondered if they celebrate February 14 as Valentine’s Day in Ukraine. I consulted the Oracle, no longer at Delphi. The answer: yes they do. That it is possible to celebrate love when surrounded by serried ranks of armor, self-propelled artillery, motorized infantry seemed a truly human image of resistance. We ought to…
After more than five hours of talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow, there was little doubt Emmanuel Macron walked into the grizzly bear’s den — and he got mauled. With more than 100,000 Russian troops and heavy weapons massed on the Ukrainian border, the French president and his advisers had insisted that,…
I am not a fan of Heavy Metal music. That would be an understatement. If offered free tickets I would not attend a concert. However I have friends who are fans of Heavy Metal. There’s something about a song, or a band, or a composer that resonates with a chord in one’s own soul. …
Snow continues to fall. I, the creature of habit, fetched my usual cup of coffee from Starbucks, despite the slippery roads. I returned safely. Perhaps I was a little lucky. No accident and here I am. One has to be somewhere, as long as one is alive. I’d rather be in Batavia, Illinois than…
Last night before turning in I watched a piece on the Magellan channel about volcanoes. Scenes of Mount St. Helens in Washington state, before and after the eruption on May 18, 1980 were featured. An eerie aspect in the piece was a radio report, from an observer on the mountain side describing in some…
Yesterday was Martin Luther King Jr. day, the national Federal holiday for marking the birthday of Dr. King. I was in high school, in the South when Dr. King was in the news. King was organizing, raising to consciousness the formal and informal practices by which we whites were relegating black citizens to second…
Today I upgraded the theme software for this blog. I paid a nominal amount for some added features. Upon activating the new theme, I discovered the image for my header vanished. The gods or demons within what-we-have-created, the world wide web, again manifested their presence. Magic or superstition is that feeling of “mystery” in…
Couldn’t access the blog this morning. I yelled, “help” to Hostgator support. They fixed the obstruction. I’m no code monkey. We often need help from others who have expertise that we will never have. Felt like yelling “help” on account of the top-of-mind subjects that I am compelled to write about. Like a child,…
