[NetBehaviour] Fires in Australia

Alan Sondheim sondheim at panix.com
Sun Jan 5 16:50:16 CET 2020


Dictators are an easy sell - look at the building to Nazi Germany. I think 
it's almost in our genes, someone, if not religion, who will handle 
uncertainty for us. The people who believe in Trump BELIEVE in him; there 
are evangelicals who consider him almost a messiah brought by God. The 
world's complex; when answer come down to a man (almost always a man), the 
focus becomes easy, almost healing. We have to blame ourselves for these 
people, as well as blame them - not to mention our brutal consumption of 
world resources - our cellphones coming out of slave labor, Amazon 
harnassing a lot of people who can't get work elsewhere...

Alan

On Sun, 5 Jan 2020, Ana Vald?s via NetBehaviour wrote:

> Edward money is not enough. The class Bolsonaro support, the core of his
> electors, are greedy landowners and they want the WHOLE Amazonian for
> planting soya.
> They want draw motorways and erase the jungle as they did in Rio and in
> other parts. Brasil has other jungle, la Mata Atl?ntica, once an immense
> jungle running along their long coat. Now it?s bare exist taken away for give
> place to cities.?
> For me the puzzle is why people choose them? Morrison or Bolsonaro or Trump
> are chosen they can behave as dictators and they can have come to power in
> rigged elections as Trump In the US or Bolsonaro in Brasil but they were
> elected.
> Ana?
> 
> El El dom, 5 de ene. de 2020 a la(s) 12:19, Edward Picot via NetBehaviour
> <netbehaviour at lists.netbehaviour.org> escribi?:
>       Ana,
> 
> As for Bolsonaro, it's my belief, and has been for many years, that if
> the West expects a country like Brazil to preserve rainforests and
> biodiversity on behalf of the whole world, then they have to pay them
> to do it, and I mean serious money. It should be worth more
> financially to preserve the forests and export oxygen for the benefit
> of the rest of us than to cut them down and plant palm oil or create
> beef farms or whatever. Then there wouldn't be any argument.
> 
> Bolsonaro is an arsehole, but wagging a finger at him in the style of
> Macron isn't going to make him budge.
> 
> Edward
> 
> On 05/01/2020 15:05, Ana Vald?s via NetBehaviour wrote:
> 
> Thanks for sharing so important inputs and thoughts! I feel a
> growing frustration about how politicians are handling this
> issues. In the worst draugh a province in Australia sold the
> common water to a private enterprise.
> And neither Bolsonaro or Morrison or Trump are acting as leaders
> in time of a crisis. They carry on and on and on not relating
> fires to capitalism and its ways, fracking and mining.
> They despise the knowledge of scientists and of the aboriginal
> ways to live and work they blame the people speaking about
> climate change.
> I assume many on this list are familiar with Donna Haraway. Her
> writings about the Anthroposcene a new age where we, Mankind,
> are responsible for disasters and ways to live which unsettle
> Nature and the natural order are very important and give advice
> and explanations.
> Ana?
> 
> 
> El El dom, 5 de ene. de 2020 a la(s) 11:43, Edward Picot via
> NetBehaviour <netbehaviour at lists.netbehaviour.org> escribi?:
>       Helen,
> 
> That's really useful information about the donation links
> and the Adani coal mine. I didn't know about the coal mine
> before.
> 
> As for Scott Morrison and his government, I think there's
> more to it than sheer stupidity. As with Trump and Boris
> Johnson, there's a right-wing populist agenda at play,
> which is all about protecting and promoting the interests
> of big business, but it sustains itself in power by
> appealing to certain lowest-common-denominator prejudices
> in the minds of the voting public, and serving up what are
> basically lies to reinforce its appeal. So Morrison has
> now moved on from claiming that the link between bushfires
> and global warming is all in the minds of urban woke
> greeny loony lefties; he's now claiming that he never
> denied that link in the first place; but he's also making
> out that the bushfires are particularly bad because the
> greeny loony lefties have been blocking bushfire hazard
> reduction measures in the national parks. This is rejected
> as nonsense by bushfire experts, but the claim doesn't
> have to be accurate to make its impact. And that's the
> problem. Populist politics has found the faultline in
> modern democracy, where things don't have to be true, or
> even make sense, to influence voting patterns; they use
> tactics of misinformation and misdirection as a deliberate
> policy to sustain themselves in power. And the left/green
> parties haven't yet found a way to counteract those
> tactics, or to tap into the huge groundswell of opinion
> which is undoubtedly building behind environmentalist
> causes, particularly amongst the young. In countries like
> the UK young people just take it for granted that
> something urgently needs to be done about the environment;
> but they don't have any faith in the political parties to
> deliver the required changes. So their convictions don't
> translate into votes. And you can't blame them. The
> environment hardly featured as an issue in the election we
> just had.
> 
> Things are going to change, I'm sure. But how much damage
> is the planet going to sustain before the changes happen?
> It's a frightening prospect.
> 
> Edward
> 
> 
> On 05/01/2020 13:10, Helen Varley Jamieson wrote:
>
>       hi alan,
>
>       it is truly devastating & catastrophic what is
>       happening in australia, & outrageous that the
>       government there continues to be so fucking
>       stupid. i heard that scott morrison (the prime
>       minister, who chose to have a hawaiian holiday
>       in the midst of it all) would fly out to china
>       to discuss trade negotiations, including coal
>       mining, immediately after meeting with fire
>       chiefs. his inability to make the connections
>       is staggering.
>
>       i have many family and friends in australia
>       and everyone is affected in some way; some
>       have lost property, everyone is affected by
>       the smoke, my family & friends in new zealand
>       are also seeing and breathing the smoke. yes,
>       an estimated half a billion birds, animals &
>       insects have died. and the fires are still
>       burning, many out of control, and no end in
>       sight. this level of catastrophe has been
>       predicted - but not for another decade;
>       everything is accelerating.
>
>       what can we do? suzon posted this list of
>       donation links:https://www.abc.net.au/classic/read-and-watch/news/bushfire-donations/11823
>       676 - there are plenty of places to make
>       financial donations & if you are in australia
>       there are practical things you can do to help.
>
>       we can write to scott morrison
>       (@scottmorrisonmp on twitter) and other
>       australian politicians, urging them to take
>       the climate emergency seriously (australia is
>       one of the worst countries in the world in
>       terms of climate policy:https://www.sbs.com.au/news/australia-s-climate-change-policy-ranked-57-out
>       -of-61-countries)
>
>       a related campaign that is well worth
>       supporting is the long struggle against the
>       adani coal mine - is a major fossil-fuel
>       extraction project which will contribute
>       massively to global warming as well as being
>       totally unethical. the queensland government
>       illegally rescinded native title to allow the
>       mine to go ahead, & the wangan & jagalingou
>       indigenous people have been bankrupted trying
>       to stop the mine.
>       https://wanganjagalingou.com.au/pledge-to-stand-with-us/
>       https://www.acf.org.au/email_siemens_global
>
>       it's hard to wish a happy new year in the face
>       of all of this (not to mention the tragic zoo
>       fire in germany, 30 primates killed thanks to
>       someone's carelessness) but i can only hope
>       that the scale of devastation will force
>       politicians to accept that they must act,
>       urgently, and that we will enter into a decade
>       of positive change ...
>
>       h xx
>
>       On 03.01.20 20:26, Alan Sondheim wrote:
>
>       (Apologies for a 2nd post today; I think
>       the situation warrants it. How do we, as
>       a community, respond to this? To the
>       approx. 480m killed? To a Ballard future
>       collapsing around us? How do we stop
>       from harming ourselves, how can we act
>       intelligently with this like this - on
>       top of all the other horrors? Because
>       this is going to spread of course; the
>       ash on NZ glaciers accelerating melt.
>       What do we do? What do we do as a
>       community?)
> 
>
>       Fires in Australia
>
>       http://www.alansondheim.org/Victoria.jpg
>       (map)
>       http://www.alansondheim.org/Victoria.mp3
>       (radio)
>
>       In Pennsylvania, we had house-destroying
>       floods, mine fires,
>       highly polluted air. We went back and
>       explored the area (around
>       Wilkes-Barre/Kingston) last April. I've
>       had my own things
>       destroyed in floods several times, oddly
>       including a storage
>       container in Los Angeles, a closet in
>       Providence, my parents'
>       house in Kingston. But nothing, ever,
>       like this. Reading Ballard,
>       the world's future is spelled out as a
>       scenario for now. Teaching
>       "The Year 3000" back in the early 70s, I
>       was face-to-face with
>       the statistics. I've continue to talk
>       and write and think about
>       this. I was influenced by post-modern
>       geography, and by the
>       collapsed flora of the
>       Carboniferous/Pennsylvanian, which I
>       collected. I grew up negative. I've been
>       following the fires and
>       started interviewing a few people by
>       Skype, people from eastern
>       Australia. I'm trying to make sense of
>       this, trying to find
>       optimism in a situation which I see as
>       the beginning of something
>       problematic, horrifying. (I'll send the
>       interviews out to the
>       lists.) I listened late last night
>       (here) to the radio - a short
>       segment is above. The map gives some
>       indication of locations.
>
>       There was a report that 480 million
>       animals have died in the
>       fires. It's inconceivable, as is the
>       number.
>
>       Best, hopefully, Alan
>
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>       NetBehaviour at lists.netbehaviour.org
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> 
> --
> 
> helen varley jamieson
> 
> helen at creative-catalyst.com
> http://www.creative-catalyst.com
> http://www.upstage.org.nz
> 
> 
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> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
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> 
> "When once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the
> earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been and
> there you will always long to return.
> ? Leonardo da Vinci
> 
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> https://anavaldes.wordpress.com/
> www.twitter.com/caravia158
> http://www.scoop.it/t/art-and-activism/
> http://www.scoop.it/t/food-history-and-trivia
> http://www.scoop.it/t/urbanism-3-0
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> cell Sweden +4670-3213370
> cell Uruguay +598-99470758
> 
> 
> "When once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your
> eyes turned skyward, for there you have been and there you will always long
> to return.
> ? Leonardo da Vinci
> 
>

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