TWO BITS OF REALLY, REALLY BAD NEWS
(As in "we’re probably fucked")

That Bush wants to make Donald Wolfowitz the head of the World Bank may well be a global catastrophe on a par with a largish asteroid impact. Watching Wolfie on TV has always left me feeling that here was a paranoid and very unpleasant little man seeking deep psychological payback for real or imagined childhood slights. Of all the swamp-draining, neocon weasels, his philosophic mindset always seemed closest to that of a stunted Ming the Merciless, and to give him such power over the global economy is nothing less than arming a weapon of mass inequality. With Wolfowitz holding the purse-strings, or, at least, the lines of credit, ideological blackmail will be the order of the day, and the fucking of poorer nations will, in the future, be conducted with all the finesse of a San Quentin gang rape.

Meanwhile, down at the South Pole, the South Antarctic ice sheet is going to collapse. About the only thing that can prevent it – along with a diversion of the Gulf Stream that would disastrously impact the climate in Northern Europe – is a 60% cut in carbon dioxide levels. Which is a dream. The Kyoto treaty calls for only a 5% CO2 cut and that’s being largely ignored. Humanity is simply too locked into its immediate greedy moment of gratification to do what’s needed. Middle America will only give up its SUVs when they’re pried its cold dead fingers. Europe and Japan might adjust but only minimally and avoiding any radical change of the lifestyle. Military industrial China is burning metaphoric aviation fuel, and the developing nations are going to go through some approximation of 19th century smokestack culture before they ever reach the modern world. Maybe we simply have to accept that we’re an aberrant species of sociopaths and the only sane strategy is one of high-speed hedonism and fast demise.

The secret word is Damned

Our lovely hipspinster has a thought provoking blog on the Haidel rape trial.
http://hipspinster.blogspot.com/

CRYPTIQUE – You stepped on the dog.