Roaming Charges: Pity, the Poor Billionaire

I do not belong to any faction; I will fight them all.

– Louis Antoine Saint-Just

+ I knew Ted Turner slightly, because his foundation used to dispense print-sustaining lucre to our impertinent environmental rag, Wild Forest Review, when almost no other foundation would touch us, largely because we were sharply critical about the role that elite liberal foundations had played in neutering the environmental movement, especially when Democrats came into power, as Clinton and Gore had just done. Ted didn’t give a shit about the Democrats, but he did seem to genuinely care about old-growth forests, grizzlies and bull trout. 

One day, I got a call from Peter Bahouth, a former Greenpeace honcho whom Ted Turner had swiped to run his grant-making operation. Peter said, “Jeff, can you hold for a sec? My boss wants to talk to you.” I was going to say, “No,” to Ted Turner? I waited longer than “a sec,” more like two or three minutes. Billionaires must be busy managing their billions, I thought.  I was expecting to hear Ted’s southern drawl. Instead, it was Jane, who chattered on pleasantly for about 30 seconds, thanking me for mentioning the foundation [it was new then] in a piece I’d written with Alex Cockburn for The Nation, and then hung up without allowing me to say as much as “Hello” or “Damn, you had the greatest hair in Klute!“ 

A few months later, I met Ted in his place outside Bozeman. He gave me a tour of his ranch in his truck, a real mud-splattered and dented farm truck, not a rich guy’s polished Land Rover. He was very proud of his bison herd, which he slaughtered a bunch of each year, selling the meat at his steak house in town. I told him I thought this was gross and he said I was a wimp. And chuckled. Ted Turner seemed more substantial and human, somehow, than almost all of the other hyper-rich jerks, especially the current crop of tech bros and finance nerds. He piloted his own yachts (which were actual sailboats, not mini-cruise liners), liked baseball, sought to normalize relations with the USSR and Cuba and gave us TCM. Turner could be generous, brusque, profane, curious, petulant and funny, all in the same hour–if only he had resisted the temptation to colorize!

+ Speaking of billionaires and the press, the crybaby Matt Taibbi sued journalist Eoin Higgins (former CounterPunch contributor, before he hit the Big Time) for accurately describing Taibbi’s transformation from faux-Gonzo journalist into a sniveling scribe for the billionaire class, in his book Owned: How Tech Billionaires on the Right Bought the Loudest Voices on the Left. Taibbi’s baseless defamation suit–a suit so specious it was itself almost a case of defamation–was just dismissed, a victory for the First Amendment against a self-infatuated scold who bogusly claimed to be a defender of free speech. Congrats, Eoin. I hope you can soak Taibbi for lawyer fees and court costs. Here’s the judge’s tartly written dismissal … As our contribution Ari Paul quipped, “Gotta love how the ruling is basically like ‘none of this is actionable.’”

+ Billionaire NY real estate mogul Steve Roth claims that calls to “tax the rich” are the equivalent of racist epithets, somehow even managing to work “from the river to the sea” into his prissy diatribe aimed at NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani:

I must say I consider the phrase ‘tax the rich, quote ‘tax the rich,’ but spit out with anger and contempt by politicians, both here and across the country, to be just as hateful as some disgusting racial slurs and even the phrase ‘from the river to the sea.’ What these pols seem to be saying is that the rich are evil or the enemy or the targets or maybe just suckers. But the rich whom the politicians are targeting started with nothing, and are the epitome of the American dream. They are the largest employers and largest philanthropists and it’s the one percent that pay 50% of New York’s income taxes. They are at the top of the American economic pyramid for a reason. They should be praised and thanked.

+ Pity the poor billionaires, chased from state to state in their Lear jets by the threat of taxation, with no place to moor their yachts…Their struggle is our struggle! We must honor them! We must fete them! We must donate to their cause! And, yes, we must pay their taxes for them!!

+ Elizabeth Warren:  “If Jeff Bezos can drop $10 million to sponsor the Met Gala, he can afford to pay his fair share in taxes.” He probably wrote off the $10 million he dropped on the Met Gala to get a tax rebate!

+ The Wall Street Journal reports that since 1976, the top 0.001% of U.S. households have seen their wealth increase by 3,500%, versus 2,200% for the top 0.01%, 1,200% for the top 0.1%, and just  200% for the average household.

Canadian PM Mark Carney: A lot of countries rushed into deals with the US — they weren’t really worth the paper they were written on…

Reporter: Like which ones?

Carney: I’ll put it back to you. Tell me which countries you’ve bumped into that are pleased with their deal with the US.

Reporter: You don’t think there are any?

Carney: Well, certainly not in private.

+ According to the BBC, 35% of young men aged 20-35 in the UK are living with their parents, more than young women (22%). I’m all for this, by the way. I like our kids, their partners and the grandkids and wish we were all living together, sharing expenses, child care, gardening, cooking, cleaning and putting our collective wisdom (and inside knowledge) together to strike it rich on the predictive markets…

+ Don’t knock it. Fraud is one of the last thriving sectors of our economy.

+ Baby boomers comprise about 20% of the U.S. population, but hold more than $85 trillion in assets. Yet, millennials, who make up about the same percentage of Americans, hold roughly one-fifth that of baby boomers, about $18 trillion, according to data from the Federal Reserve.

+ Overworked, underpaid and super-charged with stress, nearly a third of all U.S. adults sleep fewer than the recommended seven hours per night.

+ Under capitalism, the underclass has always been permanent, but under AI Capitalism, the permanent underclass will eventually encompass almost all of us…Welcome to the club, as Joe Walsh sang.

+ According to the National Association of Realtors, the average age of a first-time home buyer in the US has climbed to a record high of 40. Meanwhile, the average age of a repeat buyer has reached a record high of 62.

WSJ: More and more people are selling their cars, even though they still owe more money than the car is worth.

+ Elon Musk “AI/Robotics will mean everyone can have a penthouse if they want. The output of goods & services will be several orders of magnitude higher than today’s economy.”

+ Reuters: “Big Tech firms are set to spend over $600 billion on data centers this year, driven by AI investment.”

+ We keep being told that the US doesn’t need foreign oil, yet as this chart from analysts at JPMorgan shows, the spiking gas prices in the USA in response to Trump’s Iran war are higher than any region in the world, except Southeast Asia, which is the most dependent on oil from the Persian Gulf States. 

+ Goldman Sachs:  “Iran conflict could push oil to $170.”

Bloomberg News: When do oil storage tanks run empty?

Jeffrey Currie, energy analyst at the Carlyle Group: Parts of the world, like Australia, the Philippines, Thailand, you are there. But the question is, when and where. I still say that it’s going to be sometime in the month of May that you’re going to end up with Europe hitting tank bottoms. And in the US, it’s somewhere in that July 4th time period, if not sooner.  By the way, the inventory numbers coming out of the US, the ones we got last night [Tuesday], the ones last week, I’ve never seen anything like that before.”

+++

+ Marco Rubio: “If Iran had a nuclear weapon and they decided to close the Strait and make our gas prices $9 a gallon, there would be nothing we could do about it. This is another example of why Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon.”

+ Is this an inexpressibly stupid statement or am I missing some deeply coded message that Rubio is trying to transmit here? I mean, Iran doesn’t have a nuclear weapon. Its leadership and military were (allegedly) “totally destroyed” and yet it closed the Strait of Hormuz and there was nothing the US could do about it…

+ Not to rub it in, but let’s just say that Rubio got progressively more outlandish as he sputtered on during his WH briefing on Iran, in what was billed as an audition for the spot of front-runner to replace Trump now that JD Vance has been locked in cold storage.

Rubio:

You’ve got friends who have been SHOT IN THE HEAD because they’re out PROTESTING, and it’s heartbreaking to him to see these people are abused in this way and have no measures to take against their own government as a result of it. This is a vicious regime.

+ The more profound Rubio tries to sound, the more juvenile he shows himself to be…

+ Rubio: “The operation is over, Epic Fury. We are done with that stage of it. We’re now on to this project of Freedom.”

+ As part of the Trump team’s attempt to evade the 60-day requirement for reporting on the War to Congress, Rubio seemed to say that because the Pentagon had changed the name of the operation from Epic Fury to Freedom, it was in fact a new war.

+ Of course, this awkward attempt at political legerdemain was undone only a few hours later by Trump, who pulled the plug on Operation Freedom…Does Trump tell Lil Marco anything or does the Secretary of State get his briefings from Sean Hannity on Fox News?

+ Somebody who plays the markets seems to have much better and timelier inside info on what’s really going on than Rubio…

+ Reporter: How long are you prepared to maintain the blockade? Several more months?

Trump: “Well, the blockade is genius. Now they have to cry, ” Uncle. ‘We give up.’ That’s all they have to do.”

+ With the Mullahs still in control of Iran, the Republican Guard, battered perhaps, but intact and capable of closing the Strait of Hormuz and hitting targets across the Middle East, including US bases, and the country’s uranium stockpile still secure, Trump, after wrecking the global economy, appears to be the one saying, in fact, pleading, “Uncle.”

+ Here are a few reasons why Trump is desperately seeking an emergency exit from his Iran War:

+ US intelligence has determined that Iran can hold the Strait of Hormuz for months longer than the US.

+ Iran’s counter-strikes against US military positions in the Middle East have been much more numerous and effective than the Trump White House or the Pentagon has publicly admitted.

+ Iran still possesses a “vast” stockpile of weapons. 

+ The war is beginning to blow up numerous sectors of the global and US economies, including American farmers who are running out of fertilizer and getting crushed by sky-high diesel prices. (This may be a good thing ecologically, but not for Trump’s rural base in the short term.)

+ Whirlpool, which reported a 12% drop in its share price, warned that the war is causing “recession-level industry decline.”

+ Shell warned that the global oil market is hurtling toward a supply shortfall of nearly 1 billion barrels, with the deficit growing each day.

+ Megan K. Stack: “In which a war ends not with a bang, nor with a whimper, but with blustering about how we are now fighting to fix the thing we broke when we started the war.”

Pete Hegseth: Their nuclear facilities had been obliterated!

Rep Adam Smith: Whoa whoa whoa whoa. We had to start this war, you just said, because the nuclear weapon was an imminent threat. Now you’re saying it was completely obliterated?

Hegseth: They had not given up their ambitions.

Smith: So Operation Midnight Hammer accomplished nothing of substance.

+ The British-Palestinian writer Selma Dabbagh in the LRB on Israel’s demolition of southern Lebanon:

The Israeli finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, said at the beginning of March that the southern suburbs of Beirut “will become like Khan Younis”. What Israel did to Gaza, it is now doing to Lebanon: the indiscriminate bombing of urban centres; the dropping of bunker busters and cluster munitions; the use of white phosphorous in residential areas and the destruction of crops; the land grabbing and efforts to cut off water supplies; the targeting of humanitarian aid workers, rescue workers, health workers and schools.

+ What fallacious justification will they manufacture for this?

+ Mike Waltz: “President Trump won’t always be around to cut all of these peace deals. You need the UN with some leadership. We won’t always have President Trump, a president for peace, leading the charge.” Isn’t that a pity, isn’t that a shame…

+++

+ Staff members at ICE facilities used physical force or chemical agents to “control immigrant detainees” at least 780 times during the first year of the Trump administration, a dramatic increase of state-sponsored violence over the Biden years…

+ After the Washington Post exposed increasing levels of violence against detainees in ICE concentration camps, the Trump administration is shuttering the office responsible for investigating misconduct and abuse in the immigration detention system…

+ Todd Blanche, Acting AG: “There’s a lot of things we can be doing, like voter ID. Every time you walk into a restaurant, you have to show ID. How about you have to show your idea to vote? That’s not anything that’s crazy.” I can’t remember ever having to show ID to get into a restaurant…MAGA is rewriting the Cheers theme song…

A place where everyone knows your name
But you’ve got to prove it just the same.

+ Remember the global outrage over the Taliban firing RPGs at the  Bamiyan Buddhas back in 2001. Now, 25 years later, the Taliban is protecting the site and encouraging tourists to visit. Over here, however, it’s largely crickets from the press over Trump’s wanton destruction of 1000-year-old archaeological sites, sacred mountains and springs, such as Oak Flat, and the entire historical site plan of the nation’s capital…

+ Trump: “4 or 5 snipers way up high on buildings killed 42,000 Iranian protesters.” (He went on to describe in graphic detail how the snipers, who allegedly killed 10,000 protesters apiece, aimed at people’s heads, which then exploded, making these gruesome remarks in front of pre-teen children.)

+ On Wednesday, Trump struggled to explain drug trafficking by land, air and sea: “By sea, by ocean, by water. A lot of people say, ‘What do you mean by sea? Is it see? Like vision?’ No, it’s sea, SEA.” He’s almost certainly the only one who asked his advisors, “You mean ‘see’ like vision?” And given the way he emphasized this anecdote, he probably asked more than once…

+ When asked whether Trump’s Iran war might fuel new terror threats, the human blowtorch Sebastian “High Tea” Gorka snarled,  “You are testicularly challenged if you don’t support this war….That’s a low T approach.”

+ In his ineffable wisdom, Trump has put the freakish Gorka in charge of terrorism prevention. In that capacity, as Ken Klippenstein has repeatedly warned, Gorka and his jackbooted cohort have put forth a Dickian (as in Philip K.) policy of pre-crime detention known as National Security Presidential Memorandum 7 (NSPM-7), aimed at neutering, some may say neutralizing with the unpleasant sub-definition of that word, the “Left,” which includes American citizens who hold “anti-American,” “anti-capitialist,” “anti-Christian” and, of course, “radical transgender ideologies” (in other words about 53% of the population)…

In addition to cartels and Islamist terror groups, our national CT [counterterrorism] activities will also prioritize the rapid identification and neutralization of violent secular political groups whose ideology is anti-American, radically pro-transgender, and anarchist. We will use all the tools constitutionally available to us to map them at home, identify their membership, map their ties to international organizations like Antifa, and use law enforcement tools to cripple them operationally before they can maim or kill the innocent.

+ In FBI closets where J. Edgar Hoover once hung his favorite dresses, blouses, feather boas and nightgowns, current top cop Ka$h Patel apparently stashes bottles of bourbon with his name on them. According to the latest piece in The Atlantic by Sarah Fitzpatrick, FBI director Patel has his own personalized stockpile of bourbon, which he ferries around on his DoJ jet and hands out on the job: “several current and former FBI employees, including multiple senior leaders, told me that the director regularly handing out his own personally branded bourbon, including to civilians outside the bureau, was unheard-of.” Patel filed a $250 million defamation suit against Fitzgerald for her previous exposé of the mounting concerns within the FBI about the G-Man’s alleged relationship to demon drink. This new piece seems to be the investigative reporter’s response to Patel’s lame suit: “You want to see the goods? Well, here are the goods.” And I suspect Fitzgerald has even more goods yet to be delivered.

Over to you, Jimmy Liggins…

It’s a mean old bar they call Moonshine
Red red wine so mellow and fine
Come home at night with a-swimmin’ in the head
Reach for the pillow, miss the whole dern bed
Drunk, drunk, drunk, drunk
Drunk, drunk, drunk, drunk

Gin is a drink so mellow and slow
Get a little taste and you want some more
Start out walking and you just can’t go
Reach for the knob, miss the whole dern door
Drunk, drunk, drunk, drunk
Drunk, drunk, drunk, drunk

It’s a low-down dog’s life spending on the bar
Dusk till dawn, then that’s where you are
Out on a party, get groovin’ tight
Come home and forget to kiss your baby good night
Drunk, drunk, drunk, drunk

+++

+ A portrait of our battered, hand-me-down world from Artemis II…

+ In April, the level of atmospheric hit a new record high, averaging carbon dioxide detected in the atmosphere, averaging about 431 parts per million (ppm).

+ As if still rising levels of atmospheric CO2 weren’t bad enough, new research shows that the ambient particles of microplastics now saturating the planet’s airstreams are also fueling climate change.

+ Last week’s mega-storms in Missouri produced softball-sized hail that dented cars, shattered skylights and windows, damaged utility meters (there’s some justice) and killed a 21-year-old emu at the Springfield Zoo.

+ In 2000, coal generated 94% of Poland’s electricity. This year, it will generate less than 50%, with wind and solar powering more than 24%. Meanwhile, Trump’s own US Energy Information Administration projects that solar, battery storage, and wind would account for 93% of all new utility-scale power generation capacity added to the nation’s electricity grid this year.

+ One acre of solar panels produces as much energy as 100 acres of corn for ethanol, yet 40% of the corn grown in the US is meant for ethanol.  “Ethanol is just comically inefficient,” Tom Philpott.

+ As you might suspect, Roaming Charges is particularly incensed by the Trump-run Interior Department’s plan to eliminate American bison from federal lands in the West, to appease a noxious faction of welfare cattle ranchers, who scapegoat bison for their own miserable management practices and misguided financial speculations.

+ A Reuters/Ipsos survey asked a sampling of Americans about their attitudes toward pesticides, microplastics and food additives and their health.

I am concerned about…

Chemicals and Food additive
Yes: 79% No: 19%

Microplastics in drinking water
Yes: 79% No: 19%

Pesticides used on food crops
Yes: 79% No: 20%

Pesticides in everyday use, like lawn care
Yes: 69% No: 30%

Pesticide companies should be protected from lawsuits if they warn consumers of the risks
Yes: 35% No: 69%

+ Chelsea Kirk writing in the Baffler on the ecological deterioration of the Palos Verdes Peninsula in LA: “Politicians are quick to blame climate change for the peninsula’s woes—but while the storms of recent years were almost certainly intensified by a warming climate, the deeper problem is that we built there in the first place.” This conclusion applies to many more landscapes beyond Palos Verdes.

+ Almost eight million people in South Sudan are at risk of “acute hunger”.

+ Africa Uncensored reported that an AI-run public health insurance system in Kenya ascribed the highest costs to the poorest patients. 

+ There’s math. There’s the new math. And there’s Trump math. RFK Jr: “President Trump has a different way of calculating percentages. If you have a $600 drug and you reduce it to $10, that’s a 600% reduction.”

+ Dr. Tyler Evans on the hantavirus outbreak aboard the cruise ship MV Hondius:

Hantavirus is not a typical cruise ship pathogen. Unlike Norovirus or respiratory viruses that move easily between passengers, hantaviruses are primarily spread through contact with the urine, droppings, or saliva of infected rodents. With one important exception. The Andes virus, which circulates in Chile and Argentina, is the only hantavirus documented to transmit from person to person, and it is rare.

The Hondius left from Ushuaia, in Argentine Patagonia, which is squarely within that virus’s range. That geography matters. It is the most plausible explanation for what we are seeing, and it is also the reason this outbreak should not cause panic among people who have no connection to that part of the world.

There is a pattern that has repeated across every major outbreak I have worked on, from HIV in sub-Saharan Africa to COVID-19 in New York City. The acute event commands attention. The structural lesson does not. Cruise ships, whether they carry six thousand passengers or one hundred fifty, are mobile communities that move pathogens across borders faster than any public health system can track them.

+ I don’t know what kind of people enjoy going on these floating Petri dishes after outbreaks of Legionnaires’ disease, Norovirus, Covid and now Hantavirus …but they should all be nominated as a class for the Darwin Awards.

+ Of course, the Trump/RFK, Jr. CDC wasn’t just MIA, it was gone, baby, gone, as in eliminated.

+ In 2025, the Trump administration eliminated funding for a project studying how the Andes hantavirus (the variant spread by infected passengers on the MV Hondius) is transmitted from rodents to humans. This had to be the surest bet on Polymarket.

+ Kayla Hancock, Director of Protect Our Care’s Public Health Project. on the chaos and circus-like atmosphere at the FDA:

The Trump-RFK Jr. FDA has been embroiled in a credibility and stability crisis since Day 1, thanks to mass layoffs, staff revolt, and risky, unfounded policy moves motivated by politics, not science. The constant turmoil inspires little to no confidence that public health is a bigger FDA priority than favors for dangerous special interests like big vape. The more that unqualified Trump political appointees obstruct and silence career scientists, the more we should all worry that life-saving drugs and vaccines aren’t seeing the light of day, and what horribles Trump’s industry donors are getting a pass on.

+ Speaking of circus acts, as all of this was unfolding, RFK, Jr. decided to spend an afternoon this week doing pull-ups at National Airport in DC…

+++

+ In the latest Washington Post-ABC-Ipsos poll, disapproval of Trump has hit a new high, not only on his bloated self, but on his entire political agenda: 62% on his job as president, 76% on how he’s dealing with the cost of living, 72% on how he’s confronting inflation, 66% situation on the war with Iran, 65% on his relations with U.S. allies, 65% on handling of the economy, 59% on how’s dealing with immigration.

+ The Trump DOJ says that other people who posted “8647” won’t be charged like James Comey. Isn’t that an admission of selective prosecution?

+ As Trump drives airlines into bankruptcy and air traffic controllers into early retirement, Palm Beach County decided to brand its airport with his name…The Trump family will profit from the deal, the airport will probably end up in foreclosure.

+ Another nugget for my Trump is a closet case file. Trump to CBS:

I wasn’t worried. I understand life. We live in a crazy world… I also saw a lot of very strong, physically strong, REALLY ATTRACTIVE law enforcement people come through those doors. And frankly, it made me feel very safe.

+ Was this one of the “very attractive” agents Trump said he saw rushing to protect him last weekend?

+ Not satisfied with soaking their candidates with outlandish fees for simplistic, often dubious, advice, political consultants are now betting on their own campaigns in the predictive markets. NPR reports that some consultants have “made thousands” betting on their own candidates. But do you really think they’re only betting on their candidate after they see the secret internal polling showing that their well-paid advice will lead to inevitable defeat?

+ The red-baiting Rep. Rick Crawford is chair of the House Intelligence Committee: “Senator Sanders is a communist. How he ever got elected is beyond me. And he is a threat to national security.” In a political world with so few Communists left standing, it’s impressive how potent the word “communist” remains in the recesses of the reactionary mind.

+ Here’s Trump’s predicably racist Cinco de Mayo message…(US citizens of Mexican descent comprise 11.7% of the US population–71% of Mexican Americans were born in the United States.)

+ Trump isn’t going after Smith College primarily for admitting trans students, although that will satiate his ravenously bigoted base. He’s going after it because it teaches kids how to think (which is why Smith admits trans students)…Thinking is the real enemy.

+

Trump to a young boy in the Oval Office this morning: “You look strong. Do you think you can take me in a fight?” It’s violence all the time with this mummified artifact from the 50s. Look at the expression on the young girl’s face, like “What the hell’s wrong with this stinky old guy?” Notice, Trump never says, “Do think you could run a faster mile than me?” Do you think you could hit a baseball farther than me? Do you think you could serve an ace to me? Do you think you could beat me one-on-one at basketball?” or  “Do you think you could take me in a Cognitive Test?” Because he knows the 8-year-old would kick his ass in all of these events…

+ Under questioning in a deposition for a lawsuit brought by more than 200 former wrestlers and other students at Ohio State University who claim they were sexually abused and molested by Dr. Richard Strauss, the team physician from the mid-1970s through the late 1990s, former athletic director Andy Geiger said that the creepy Congressman and moral scold Jim Jordan, who was the assistant wrestling coach at Ohio State from 1986 to 1994, probably knew about the abuse and kept his mouth shut as his wrestlers were preyed upon by a serial molester.

Geiger: “I believe that the conversation about Dr. Strauss was active — with the wrestlers. Particularly loud and clear, I heard all about the unhappiness with the showering situation. For somebody who was part of the program, it doesn’t seem credible to me” [that Jordan was unaware that Strauss regularly abused male athletes.] I don’t know for sure. But my opinion is that he probably knew.”

Ilann Maazel, attorney for the plaintiffs: “Meaning Jim Jordan?”

Geiger: “Right.”

Jordan, who made his political career by digging through other people’s laundry looking for dirty linens, has repeatedly claimed he knew nothing about the crimes committed in his team’s own locker rooms.

+++

+ Most of you probably know that Kathy Kelly is one of my favorite people on the planet. She embodies almost every characteristic you’d want to see in an ideal representative of our species: intelligent, kind, empathetic, and fearless. Multiple times, Kathy has been willing to put her body on the line to protect the lives of others. Next week, Kathy will be presented with the Berrigan-McAlister Award by DePaul University’s Department of Catholic Studies. I know that Kathy’s probably not much for awards, but this one is certainly well-deserved, overdue, and will help further the cause of peace and nonviolence, which is, of course, her cause and ours. You can watch the ceremony online on Monday, May 11th, at 6:30 p.m.  Register here. 

+ I imagine Madame Thérèse DeFarge, the best seamstress of them all (give or take Penelope of Ithaka), watching the parade of these ridiculous celebrities swaddled in their haute couture at the Bezos-Met Gala from her little midtown wine shop, calmly knitting their names into her shawl for future deliberation…

+ This week, your humble prosecutor submits his own candidate for eradication from the common language. For the execrable offense of what Marcel Proust called “slovenly usage,” I indict the phrases “human resources,” as if the human body were something to be mined, drilled, clearcut, dammed, grazed or dewatered, and its corollary “natural resources,” as if nature only existed to be plundered and commodified. Extend them no quarter, Maître l’Exécuteur!

+ Saint-Just: “If you wish a just Republic, so order it that the people may have the heart to be virtuous; for there are no political virtues without self-respect, and it is impossible to be self-respecting in the midst of poverty.”

+ I just discovered this great portrait of the radical lawyer, Louis Saint-Just, who wrote popular pornographic poems to help fund the Revolution, for which he, even more so than Robespierre or Marat, was the Avenging Angel.  If there was one thing I would have liked to have swiped as a memento mori for 20 years of working, traveling, laughing, feasting and feuding with Cockburn, it would have been the two plaster medallions he picked up in France during the celebration of the 200th anniversary of the Revolution, one of Robespierre, the other of Saint-Just. But they cracked during one of the earthquakes that periodically remind coastal Californians of who’s the boss, and Alex had the remnants cemented into his barbecue pit, the highest place of honor at Rancho Cockburn.

+ As Saint-Just’s ideological descendants in funk, the Isley Brothers, used to sing: There’s a lot of bullshit going down for which there’s only one remedy, fighting the powers that be… (If I could point to that one axial moment when the US plunged into terminal decline, it would be the day when Don Cornelius’s Soul Train went off the air and we were forever more deprived of the unifying and redemptive bliss transmitted without discrimination to black, white, brown and gay America by the Soul Train dancers…)

Booked Up
What I’m reading this week…

The Invention of the Future: A History of Cities in the Modern World
Bruno Carvalho
(Princeton)

The Moment of Cubism and Other Essays
John Berger
(Verso)

I Still Am: a Woman, Pissed Off & Curious
Su Frederich
(Seven Stories)

Sound Grammar
What I’m listening to this week…

Fenian

Kneecap
(Heavenly)

In Times of Dragons

Tori Amos
(Fontana)

Créole Gypsy
Roland Brival
(Soundway)

Something for Luddites to Look Forward To

“If our world survives, the next great challenge to watch out for will come – you heard it here first – when the curves of research and development in artificial intelligence, molecular biology and robotics all converge. Oboy. It will be amazing and unpredictable, and even the biggest of brass, let us devoutly hope, are going to be caught flat-footed. It is certainly something for all good Luddites to look forward to if, God willing, we should live so long. Meantime, as Americans, we can take comfort, however minimal and cold, from Lord Byron’s mischievously improvised song, in which he, like other observers of the time, saw clear identification between the first Luddites and our own revolutionary origins. It begins:

As the Liberty lads o’er the sea
Bought their freedom, and cheaply, with blood,
So we, boys, we
Will
die
fighting, or
live
free,
And down with all kings but King Ludd!

B

–Thomas Pynchon, “Is it Ok to be a Luddite?” (1984)