Jack Burns Lives!

“Government should be weak, amateurish and ridiculous. At the present, it fulfills only a third of the role.”-Edward Abbey

Yesterday, I learned that BP has the Coast Guard telling investigators and citizens what they can and can’t document with film or camera.

Today, I wake up to this:

From The New York Times: “Louisiana animal rescue workers have volunteered to help treat birds affected by the slick and to collect data that would also be used to help calculate penalties for the spill. But federal officials have told the volunteers that the work must be done by a company hired by BP.”

And the company that will do most of the testing of water and sediment used to determine penalties against BP counts BP as one of its largest clients. That lab was selected by government officials.

It sounds shocking, but this is how government works at almost any level. People move back and forth from industry to government, help their industry buddies, then move back to industry for even better jobs. It’s a reward for helping “the home team.”

The really clever ones become lobbyists and enjoy multi-million dollar paydays from big business once they leave their government jobs.

Dick Cheney is a prominent example, leaving government to lead Haliburton for five years, then returning to government so he could help start a war that benefited Haliburton. The relationship worked well for him, as he accumulated a net worth of somewhere between $30 and $100 million dollars.

“When you see more examples of this revolving door between industry and these regulatory agencies, the problem is that it raises questions as to whose interests are being served,” stated Mandy Smithberger, an investigator with Project on Government Oversight.

Really! You don’t say. That’s an amazing example of deductive reasoning ability.

And people wonder why I’m an anarchist.

“A patriot must always be willing to defend his country against his government.”-Edward Abbey

A big “thanks” to all the reporters and environmentalists on the front lines doing just that.

Now, if the government really wants to do its job, serve the citizenry and protect our national assets, nationalize oil. Seize BP’s assets in the U.S., arrest its CEO and other responsible executives, even if you have to go overseas to do it, since in my mind, they’re terrorists.

Maybe we should learn a lesson from the Iranians. Iran arrests three American hikers, holds them on some BS charge of “spying,” and tells the U.S. to go pound sand after we “demand” their release. We, on the other hand, allow a foreign corporation to come into our country, destroy it and even allow them to tell us how the clean up will be handled.

We should send the Navy down there to take control. They need to be the ones telling BP what to do and when to do it. And at the point of the bayonet, if necessary.

We’re lying down like a cheap whore. Grow some, Obama. Do something.

I always thought this was an interesting cover for Abbey’s Black Sun. I’m reasonably sure I found this one in a used bookstore in Fayetteville, Arkansas. At some point, it was sold at Arlington Heights, Illinois, since a bookstore with that address placed its stamp on the inside cover.

The original publisher of the paperback was Avon books, a division of the Hearst Corporation, in 1982. Ed wrote the book in 1971. My first edition cover looks like this.

Two things strike me about the cover. One, the guy looks a lot like Ed, and two, his outfit. He’s dressed sort of like a 19th century “mountain man” in a fringe coat and western style hat, but with a modern shirt. The story has nothing to do with “mountain men,” and I’m not sure any mountain men that actually lived, during the brief twenty or so year period that characterized their existence, wore fringe coats. Their clothing was certainly not anywhere as nice as this fellas, at least until they abandoned hunting beaver and took up looking for silver and gold. Ed’s fictional character, Will Gatlin, is a fire lookout, not a 19th century “mountain man.” The figure looks like some out of place, publisher contrived Ted Kaczynski type. Their idea of what a rugged, loner should look like.

Will Gatlin probably looked more like this.

Black Sun is one of my favorite Abbey book. It’s an wonderful story of love and loss and was Ed’s favorite work. If you’re a fan of Abbey, it’s a must read.

“If you are inclined to leave your character solitary for any considerable length of time, better question yourself. Fiction is association, not withdrawal.” A. B. Guthrie, Jr.

The stillness and quiet of the morning. Broken only by the gentle rustle of wind through the trees and the calls of the various birds with whom I share this place. One of the calls is from a hawk. She (I assume it’s a she) lies in wait, hidden in a large sweetgum tree (Liquidambar styraciflua), scanning the surface with her powerful eyes, waiting for a careless neighbor, a chipmunk, a wood rat or a garter snake to make a mistake. To move beyond the safety of the poison ivy, yellow coneflower and virginia creeper and into open spaces drenched in early morning sunlight and punctuated with the smell of honeysuckle and then into the darkness that’s sure to follow.

As the sun rises higher in the east, the various avian calls and songs steadily grow into a symphony of perfectly pitched, precisely spaced tweets, chips, fee-bees, dee-dee-dees and tsay-day-day-days. It’s beautiful and soothing to the spirit, a little island of diversity of wonder in world increasingly overcome by industrialization. It makes you grateful to be alive and to share in the magnificent wonder of life.

I often ask myself why so many people don’t get it. Why they fail to see the sufficiency and absolute wonder in moments like this. Is it insufficient education? Do they not understand how complex and how full of life the average backyard can be? Or at least the ones not soaked in cancer causing chemicals? The ones allowed to flourish naturally, thereby providing needed habitat for native animals and insects. Why are so many people so pitifully disconnected from nature?

At 8:09, I wonder how much longer I have before the first leaf blower or lawn mower cranks up, ripping through my ideal morning like chainsaw through pine. By 8:57, my question is answered as the dimwit that regularly sprays his yard cranks up a pressure washer to wash around his swimming pool. His yard is a chemical smorgasbord. Chlordane, chlorine, glyphosate and perhaps hundreds of other chemicals linked to cancers, skin ailments, immune system disorders, species mutation and species eradication. Yet, he blissfully continues on, spraying and blowing in his jean shorts, tennis shoes and dark socks, apparently oblivious to the danger all around him.

Apparently, he didn’t read the literature I placed in his mailbox.

A small spider makes it way toward my chair, creating its own superhighway of webbing from the flower pot to my left. It’s an ingenious form of travel. Organic, strong and sufficient to carry a spider anywhere it wishes to go. And not only can it be used for travel, it can be used to snare food. When the spider is done with it, it fades away, back to the earth from whence it came. I compare it to human forms of travel and conclude the spider is far more efficient. Perhaps even a superior being.

But as I ponder this point further, I realize that no, the spider is not superior. The concept of superiority is man’s invention. The spider knows nothing of it and is better off for it. No creatures are “superior.” We all just “are.” We all share this whirling mudball for varied, brief amounts of time. And since the time is so brief, it seems sensible that we should all try to find ways to coexist more peacefully and cooperatively in what little time we have.

What a waste it is for man to spend his fleeting years waging war and mayhem on other forms of life. I believe if more humans would just sit in their yards and observe the wondrous nature around them, I think perhaps they’d view the world far differently and seek to live more in harmony with their surroundings. It’s not necessary to go to a neighborhood or national park to experience it. It’s right in front of you, at your doorstep. All you have to do is go outside, open your eyes and explore.

From Jan Mouawad’s Sunday editorial, “The Spill Vs. The Need To Drill,” in The New York Times:

“Beyond railing at BP, the company that owns the well now spewing oil, some environmental groups have demanded and end to offshore exploration and urged President Obama to restore a moratorium on drilling…additional oversight seems inevitable.

But whatever the magnitude of the spill at the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig, 50 miles off the coast of Louisiana, it is unlikely to seriously impede offshore drilling in the Gulf. The country needs the oil-and the jobs.”

Yes, oil demand has surged. Thirty-five percent since another disaster mentioned by Mr. Mouawad, the Santa Barbara disaster of 1969. And yes, the politics have changed, as pointed out in the editorial, since Republicans want to “boost domestic oil production,” while Democrats supposedly work to reduce carbon emissions. (How can you be for reducing carbon emissions if you also promote non-sustainable growth?)

Obama’s removal of the moratorium is supposedly a compromise “that would expand domestic offshore production in exchange for Republican support for its (Democratic) climate policy.”

Now, let’s think about this for a minute. Whatever the magnitude of the spill, the country will keep drilling. That means the Gulf ecosystem doesn’t matter. We’re basically willing to let it go in order to keep fueling the non-sustainable, metastasizing beast known as industrial capitalism. We’re growing no matter what.

According to this editorial, that’s our national psyche, and I frankly believe Mr. Mouawad is right on the mark. Not what I want to hear, but it’s the truth. As a nation, we simply don’t give a you-know-what. We’re so ignorant, we’ll maintain our current behavior even if it eventually kills us.

We’re like a laboratory rat (apologies to rodents) in a cocaine experiment intended to show the effects of massive, habitual use. We just keep repeating and intensifying the same old destructive behaviors until we die.

And as for Obama’s “compromise,” well, he looks pretty silly now, doesn’t he?

There was a time when environmentalists hoisted a banner that stated “NO COMPROMISE FOR MOTHER EARTH.” Back in the good old EarthFirst! days, before the FBI got to Dave Foreman and scared the bejesus out of him. Getting rid of Foreman declawed EarthFirst! Afterward, EarthFirst! gradually became a non-factor in the environmental movement. We were left with the perpetually compromising Sierra Club (Edward Abbey called them The Sahara Club) and a handful of other “national” clubs that always struck me as being little more than money raising machines. During their heyday in the 80′s and 90′s, I watched things gradually continue to deteriorate, as the capitalist machine chugged onward, fouling the air in the Smokies, ruining Prince William Sound and turning our largest estuary, Chesapeake Bay, into a marine dead zone.

Watching environmentalists take on moneyed, industrial capitalists was akin to watching the Lakers play a high school school basketball team. There was a lot of esprit de corps and effort, but in the end, the Lakers were too tall, too fast and too strong. Occasionally, we’d get a bucket (maybe save a river or a patch of land from being turned into a parking lot) but by the half, it was 120-10.

We have to get back to real, grassroots activism in this country and the principle of no compromise. Not on all issues, as certainly some issues require compromise. But not when entire ecosystems are at stake. Not when our home is under attack, and make no mistake about it, our home is under attack. The enemy is massive and powerful, but like the great armies and empires, eventually, this force will also meet its match. Perhaps not in our lifetimes, but it’s coming.

My hope is the obloquy that arises from the recent Gulf disaster will be a catalyst for change, but I have little faith that will happen. Americans seem too set in their ways, and too few Americans apparently have the educational background to connect the dots between out-of-control industrialism, ecocide and their own peril.

The only way to contain or kill the oil beast is to limit its food supply. It’s fed by demand, and if we curb the demand (yes, a tall drink, I know), we can possibly get the situation back under control. But if we attempt to continue our ways unabated, we’re going to literally destroy the country.

Big government isn’t the big problem, nor is terrorism the big problem. The big problem is greed and lifestyles that require non-sustainable amounts of energy.

In 2006, Mr. Mouawad published another article in the Times about Gulf drilling. In that article, he quoted a senior geophysicist at Shell named Rocco Detomo (sounds like the name of a Mafia hit man) who said “This is an industry that has to manage risk. It’s much to risky and expensive to look for the oil the old-fashioned way.”

As it turns out, the industry hasn’t managed the risks too well. In fact, I’d have to characterize it as abject failure since a single failure is too many when the stakes are this high.

And speaking of old-fashioned, may I suggest a return to an old-fashioned approach to life? Living within limits, turning off lights, opening windows, walking, cycling and not living like crazed, ravenous beasts?

There’s no free lunch folks, and Mother Nature always bats last. We can either change our ways voluntarily, or we can continue the present course and quickly find ourselves in an ugly Orwellian hell.

The choice is ours.