I had a really good, discussion generating link to go here, and I've lost it.

Vieques, Puerto Rico (CNN) - Nearly 40 years ago, Hermogenes Marrero was a teenage U.S. Marine, stationed as a security guard on the tiny American island of Vieques, off the coast of Puerto Rico.

Marrero says he's been sick ever since. At age 57, the former Marine sergeant is nearly blind, needs an oxygen tank, has Lou Gehrig's disease and crippling back problems, and sometimes needs a wheelchair.  "I'd go out to the firing range, and sometimes I'd start bleeding automatically from my nose," he said in an interview to air on Monday night's "Campbell Brown."  "I said, `My God, why am I bleeding?' So then I'd leave the range, and it stops. I come back, and maybe I'm vomiting now...

He said the weapons used on the island included napalm; depleted uranium, a heavy metal used in armor-piercing ammunition; and Agent Orange, the defoliant used on the Vietnamese jungles that was later linked to cancer and other illnesses in veterans...

"Beware of the man who does not talk, and the dog that does not bark." Cheyenne

Well, I had my annual review.  It went well.

I've set up my phone (dead for the past week since its overpriced contract expired) with a new SIM, new number, and I've even got the internet working.  In fact, it works better than before because I've downloaded Opera.

And tonight I'm going to check out the local photography club, which is keen enough to meet once a week  "in the season".  When isn't it the season, exactly?

That cartoon always reminds me of David bowie. He admits he gets involved in exactly those conversations.

keep to the Fen Causeway

feeling slightly bored this afternoon, I decided to check out some Matthew Parris columns I haven't read. Now Matthews is a Tory, a genuine compassionate conservative if somewhat infected by Thatcherite values. Yet he is easily the most entertaining writer on the foibles of the British political scene, he's like a pair of comfortable slippers you wear by the fire, but just occasionally one of the pins that hold him together come loose and jab you in the foot.

This was one such column

You may think this psycho-philosophical twaddle but it has direct consequences for policy. If individual, family and social conscience are to play a big part in public welfare, a measure of visible distress is required to refresh social concern. If we are to be spurred to provide for ourselves, our families and our communities, we have to believe that nobody else will. Those who govern must be unsqueamish enough to tolerate this; and honest enough to explain.

Here, this eminently civilised and urbane man, cold bloodedly advocates that the welfare system should be shut down to allow private charity to rise up and replace it. Never has the pitilessness of the right been so starkly exposed that even he thinks it a sensible way forward.

If I felt it would touch him , I'd have sent him Jerome's essay on charity. But it would be a futile gesture

keep to the Fen Causeway

The human species is truly damned. Watch out for the jump.

*Traitor*, n.
A benighted individual who perceives an illusory distinction between serving his nation and abetting the criminals who govern it.

Genius.

Still, it was worth reading the Parris columns cos I came across this rather good observation of Blair

Times - Matthew Parris - Blair's world view: simply goodies v baddies

How many viewers, watching the inquiry yesterday, noted his answer to a very early question? He rolled together in a single two-word phrase two political groupings in the Middle East who were in fact bitterly opposed to each other: "these people" was his collective term for Baathist nationalism and internationalist Islamic fundamentalism.

Worlds apart, surely? Forgive the italicisation, but this cannot be overemphasised: Tony Blair believes that all bad people are on the same side.
[...]
Tony Blair is a Manichean, or dualist. He believes that the Universe is best understood as an eternal struggle between the forces of good and evil, in contention for dominance. Christians are supposed to believe that the battle is already won, and Mr Blair's dualism is (paradoxically) closer to Islamic fundamentalism than to the Gospels. For Mr Blair at least "Axis of Evil" was not just a Bushite soundbite: it was a profound philosophical insight into the meaning of world history. Once you understand this, there is no arguing with him.

This now explains his otherwise illiterate belief that Iran and alQaeda conspired to render Iraq ungovernable following the occupation. The axis of evil as a bunch of disparate "evil doers" come together out of sheer malice to make life horrid for freedom loving westerners, iran, N korea and Lybia were all on the same side, The Dark Side with Ahmadinejhad as Iran Vader.

keep to the Fen Causeway

Adolph Reed on Obama in 1996

In Chicago, we've gotten a foretaste of the new breed of foundation-hatched black communitarian voices; one of them, a smooth Harvard lawyer with impeccable do-good credentials and vacuous-to-repressive neoliberal politics, has won a state senate seat on a base mainly in the liberal foundation and development worlds. His fundamentally bootstrap line was softened by a patina of the rhetoric of authentic community, talk about meeting in kitchens, small-scale solutions to social problems, and the predictable elevation of process over program--the point where identity politics converges with old-fashioned middle-class reform in favoring form over substance. I suspect that his ilk is the wave of the future in U.S. black politics.

h/t John Caruso

keep to the Fen Causeway

So today I let myself get talked into being an instructor for a university course on "IT and translation".

I'm as curious as the next person to see how this will work out.

Jesus died for somebody's sins but not mine - Patti Smith

Life Below 600px | I Am Paddy

Some people would have you believe that you aren't reading this.

If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.

This leaf was made for me by a bona fida blacksmith, in his leather apron. I watched him heat and cut the metal rod until it glowed orange and he hit it with his hammer, sparks flying, and knocked it into this leaf. I smelt the heat. 9 years old, on holiday in Norfolk with my Dad and his wife and my cousin James.

I had such little hands then and the leaf fitted perfectly in the crook of my thumb to my index finger and I knew it had been made to fit me. I had no idea that day what was to become of me, I just decided to always keep this leaf.

Now I'm 31 and even after feck only knows how many times of moving house, being homeless and finding my way again, and going through all the ups and downs that life dealt, my leaf is still here. With it so is that trace of 9 year old me.

Today I had an interview for an appointed Director post, a voluntary position, for a disability organisation here in Wales. I was really on form. I was appointed. I'm so genuinely pleased, really happy about it. I don't know why the leaf feels important today but it is just is.

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Make your own Malcolm Tucker poster

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Click the "Tuckerise" button below to see one of his (possibly extremely rude) Tucker-isms displayed on the poster.
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If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.