as a would-be revolutionary, i am perpetually annoyed by the way the united states propagandizes and controls foreign resistance movements, often in ways that the people on the ground are not aware of. but i've come to expect it.

the americans are backing yet another hard right group in an attempt to assert their global hegemony. they never, ever support democratic forces, either. it's always the most right-wing, racist, fundamentalist fascists they can find...

i hope ukraine doesn't end up like syria.

http://www.democracynow.org/2014/2/20/a_new_cold_war_ukraine_violence

i had a thought walking through the rain: what we need to deal with flooding issues are elephants. if you just let an elephant walk through the streets it would suck all the water up and voila...

....except there are some problems. it's too cold for elephants, and that's not clean water, and it has to find it's way back out eventually.

so, robot elephants. seriously. this is the future of flood control.

i mean, we could maybe deal with the weather issue by genetically engineering mammoths, but it's still not humane to have them out lapping up water on the street.

it's not a crises, it's a reorganization of global trade and global wealth. and it's not going to "resolve" in the sense of a return to previous levels of employment. this is the new reality.

akyuz is full of relevant observations, but he's confusing cause with effect. lower consumption is an effect of falling wages, which is itself a result of global trade agreements that seek to take advantage of the surplus of global workers. that's an irresolvable situation that will keep wages spiralling down for as long as the labour market is global (unless it collapses itself first). further, the ideas he's suggesting are highly problematic in the context of a society that needs to be focusing on changing the way it uses energy and produces waste.

worse, if you were to ask around, i think you'd get the feeling that there's a general resistance to this idea of centering the economy around frivolous production.

the other side of this isn't a return to the past. that cannot happen. rather, the current situation will entrench itself and worsen. this is the way the system was designed. rather, people need to adjust to the reality of global markets by moving into the future in a way that focuses more on local economies.

http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=11508

it's dry in here and not likely to spill over. i don't feel the structure got the test i was expecting it to, but it's not really a needed test, either. i'm not expecting this kind of snow again next year. but the temperature didn't climb to where it threatened it would, and the rain didn't come down nearly as hard, either. really, windsor seems to have completely skipped the system.

that's ok with me. there's still a lot of water to get out of here, but the temperature is going to drop enough to stop the melt and let it drain.

head is also clearing. what a wasted week...