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Draft: the cultural climate crisis, global to local &c

Saturday, November 9th, 2019

[ by Charles Cameron — i’m posting here some earlv drafts of longer pieces i’m working on for eventual publication elsewhere — this is a draft of the outline of a paper on climate change ]
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How about them Independent headlines?

I intend to write a longish paper in which I voyage from the global to the intensely and varied local, and then catch up with cross-cuts that have either appeared in sundry of the localized sections but deserve gathering under their own heads, or which have somehow escaped the net of my keen interest.

For now, though, I thought this spray of headlines from the Independent would make a nice intro to the project for ZP readers.

**

Sources:

  • ‘Untold human suffering’: 11,000 scientists from across world unite
  • Extinction Rebellion: Nearly 400 scientists support climate activists’ civil disobedience
  • Climate activists including Extinction Rebellion to receive £500,000
  • Why the Green Party is proposing £100bn a year
  • Climate ‘apocalypse’ to leave Scotland with abandoned villages
  • Scotland plants 22 million trees to tackle climate crisis
  • Ireland becomes second country in the world
  • Our ageing world rulers are unfit to tackle climate change
  • **

    Scots:

    Of course I’m a Scot down my father’s line, clan Cameron, of the Camerons of Erracht.

    And another next, 26, mixed

    Friday, March 22nd, 2019

    [ by Charles Cameron — running the gamut from Mike Pompeo a flailing, failing theologian, to ISIS, not that their theology is so great, ahem, but still around, with cat-herding visible unto the days of the grandkids ]
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    Credo quia absurdum? Or, getting the original quote right, credibile est, quia ineptum est? That’s no inept as to be believable?

    There’s actually a passage in Cicero’s Rhetoric for Herrennius that describes how to make objects of contemplation more memorable by choosing the most beautiful or ugly images as analogs / analogies to represent them:

    We ought, then, to set up images of a kind that can adhere longest in memory. And we shall do so if we establish similitudes as striking as possible; if we set up images that are not many or vague but active; if we assign to them exceptional beauty or singular ugliness; if we ornament some of them, as with crowns or purple cloaks, so that the similitude may be more distinct to us; or if we somehow disfigure them, as by introducing one stained with blood or soiled with mud and smeared with red paint, so that its form is more striking, or by assigning certain comic effects to our images, for that, too, will ensure our remembering them more readily.

    It may be that Tertullian — the Church Father who authored that phrase about believing something because it’s so incredible — was not so far in his thinking from Cicero — was accustomed to at least the concept of using the strangest, most strained analogies, and applied it to his contemplation of the unspeakable, unimaginable Godhead, since such disfigured analogies are both the most memorable and the least likely to be taken literally, and thus mistaken for the Reality to which they are intended to point.. but that’s pure speculation on my part.

    But I’m sorry, No. Mike Pompeo may have been first in his class at Annapolis, and I may have been far from first in my class at Oxford, but at least my studies were in Theology — and No.

    **

    Here’s one for the liminal collection:

    An island, you know, is something else. In a continent, the watersheds are important natural divisions, as are linguistic groupings and cultures. There’s arguably a cultural component of Brit-oriented Northern Irish, and they’re not enemy — but the naturalness of a united island Ireland seems pretty clear.

    Islands:

    History has time and again highlighted the importance of islands in establishing naval dominance.

    That’s from Darshana Baruah, SISTER ISLANDS IN THE INDIAN OCEAN REGION: LINKING THE ANDAMAN AND NICOBAR ISLANDS TO LA RÉUNION

    Through a ring of bases and naval presence on islands, the British essentially controlled the entry points into this crucial area. In the east it had Singapore and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, while Socotra and the port city of Aden provided access to the Red Sea and Bab-el Mandeb. With control of Sri Lanka, Maldives, Mauritius, the Seychelles and, briefly, Madagascar, the empire turned the Indian Ocean into a “British Lake.” To consolidate its presence along the coast of Africa, the British Empire fought bloody wars to take control of Kenya, Uganda, and the island of Zanzibar. With these islands and coastal territories, the empire projected its power across the region and dominated the key chokepoints and shipping lines between Asia, Africa, and Europe.

    Bloody, note the bloody. And dominance, note the British dominance. I’m not sure that bloody dominance is quite so well-supported any more, but a little less Biriths dominance and Ireland might be a little less bloody.

    **

    Dan Nexon recommends a paper featuring an arc — yes, we’re collecting arcs — but not the MLK moral arc that may be long, but in the end “bends toward justice”..

    **

    JM Berger has been interviewed by Terry Gross — to be aired on Monday:

    Stay tuned!

    **

    All In, Chris Hayes:

    Unh.

    They’re [WH] basically blowing off a co-equal branch of government which gives a strong indication of how they plan to back-rush their way through anything damning from the Mueller report, when it comes.

    In fact, there is such a swarm of criminality, prosecutions and pleas around the President and his ever-moving dynamic vortex..

    A trial run, a warm-up inning..

    Y’know, Mueller report ridiculous, but I want to see it is vaguely reminiscent of credo quia absurdum, or th more accurate quote in my own translation, see above:

    That’s no inept as to be believable

    **

    I can’t find the Jon Meacham quote on ceremonial trolling, so here’s one from India:

    Rohit is to this series what trial ball is to gully cricket

    Twitter went ahead with its ceremonial trolling of Rohit soon after he was dismissed. It’s become a routine of late for the right-hander to perish cheaply and be the butt of jokes on social media.

    At least it’s a fun replacement, though for seriosity I’d have preferred the Meacham.

    **

    and btw:

    **

    D’oh.

    **

    Clint Watts @selectedwisdom:

    I really would like everyone to read that story ..

    The whole idea is, everybody around the world knows that you can hire companies to crack into any one of these endpoints —

    — and go through any of these communications ..

    If you want to feel your communications are safe, don’t worry about government surveillance, worry about corporate guys-for-hire that are hired by all these companies ..

    Here’s the article:

    A New Age of Warfare: How Internet Mercenaries Do Battle for Authoritarian Governments

    BTW another Clint quote from my day’s scan:

    If we were to go after Wikileaks, it could lead to massive information dumps of US secrets around the world ..

    In have the feeling I quoted an abbreviated version a while back, without that crucial “of US secrets” — good to have thee full version, in any case.

    **

    Sigh:

    Charles Lister, Trump Says ISIS Is Defeated. Reality Says Otherwise.

    The ISIS of the future could be just as bad if not bigger and worse than the one we watched dramatically expand in 2014. In Iraq, nearly 20,000 ISIS detainees currently lie in prison and tens of thousands more who are accused of having maintained ties to ISIS lie in squalid camps surrounded by hostile security forces. A further 20,000 Iraqi ISIS prisoners and family members currently in Syria look set to be transferred back to Iraq in the coming weeks, all of whom will surely meet a similar fate: prison or secured camps. If that were not bad enough news, tens of thousands of Iraqi children born under ISIS rule look set to remain stateless due to Baghdad’s continued refusal to recognize their ISIS-produced birth certificates or to produce Iraqi replacements. All told, that may amount to at least 100,000 people in Iraq with ties to ISIS whose bleak futures will undoubtedly fuel long-term radicalization.

    Enough.

    It’s snowing metaphoric chyrons 6

    Tuesday, February 19th, 2019

    [ by Charles Cameron — brewing, churning, fighting, lashing out, crush, slam, push back, skewer, walk away, road warrior, hit job, full court press, cage match, power grab, bombshell, wow ]
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    It’s almost a chyron blizzard today, after the calm weekend!

    A Mad Max film ref, perhaps?

    — and the ideal Full Court Press example — I’ve had quotes before, but never a chyron. Excellent!@

    Fast tracking — is that a spooorts term? Not sure:

    A shutdown fight? Okay:

    Best mano a mano.. definitely a trove!

    IO think I had an explosive interview chyron recently — here’s another, just in case:

    And I’ve been tracking arcs, moral and otherwise — trajectories belong in that collection:


    **

    New batch:

    pushback — nothing much:

    power grab — better:

    skewers — excellent

    sparring:

    hmm: — move along:

    lashes out:

    slams as treasonous — that’s quite a hit ~

    **

    Time for a break:

    Judge Jackson and those cross-hairs

    **

    Okay, how about some quotes — not many, this has been chyron season with a vengeance — but a few:

    Robert Costa: Through the churning political waters of the Robert Mueller investigation and everything else that could come ..
    Hardball, we Biden: walk up to the starting gate, and then walk away .. ?
    One thought that comes to mind, Ben, is the bullet that was dodged in Sessions having to recuse himself early on, given the account McCabe gives of Sessions behind the scenes ..
    it was actually the general counsel of the FBI who said That’s a bridge too far, we’re not there yet ..

    **

    Back for some headers and a tweet:

    hm, hit job:

    cage-match is a pretty good one..

    and this one goes to our continuing liminal / borders collection:

    Umpires, Brexit, and the State of the Union

    Thursday, January 31st, 2019

    [ by Charles Cameron — the UK looks to be teetering over the White Cliffs of Dover, with 22 miles of channel separating them from the rest of Europe — and a hard border with Éire ]
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    There are few more tumultuous games on earth than the British House of Commons, with its two sides lobbying and lobbing insults at one another, while the no-side-works-for-me cross-benchers face the no-side-I’ve-retired-from-the-fray Speaker across the length of the chamber, no doubt relishing the spectacle but, in the Speaker‘s case, regulating it with roars of “Order, order!!!”

    And fray it is, glorious in its freedom, so wild as to demand frequent pruning — the Speaker, in the New Yorker‘s words, “presides over whatever fare — technical, listless, boorish, crazed — is unfolding in the chamber at a given moment. The House may be full with paper-waving cries of “Foul!” “Fiend!” Recant!” or even these days, I suppose, “Repent” — we do live, after all, in a remorselessly secular age..

    **

    But then..

    Pattern recognition: there seems to be a pattern of Speakers disinviting Donald Trump.

    **

    Sources:

  • NYorker, Is the Speaker of the House of Commons Trying to Stop Brexit?
  • WaPo, Sorry, judges, we umpires do more than call balls
  • WHOtv, Speaker Pelosi Tells President Trump State of the Union Won’t Happen
  • Dates and Times:

  • te [re-invited] State of the Union is scheduled for 6.00pm Pacific, Tuesday, February 5
  • the Superbowl is 3.30pm Eastern, Sunday, February 3rd
  • Brexit will occur in un-negotiated form if nothing stops it, at 11pm GMT, Friday, March 29.

  • One way or another, fun times ahead..
  • Do unto yourselves more of what you would do unto others?

    Thursday, April 28th, 2016

    [ by Charles Cameron — IRA kills more Catholics, IS kills more Muslims ]
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    Tablet DQ victims catholic muslim

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    Is there anything we can learn from either one of these situations that would shed light on the other? Are there other instances of this pattern? How quickly can we take note of this effect in future, to benefit from that recognition?

    Sources:

  • The Guardian, Catholics main victims of Northern Ireland republican terror groups
  • The Independent, Paris attacks: Isis responsible for more Muslim deaths than western victims
  • Hat-tip: John Horgan


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