Who's been damned, what's been planted?

[imomus]

* New Japanese magazine Planted is about "life with plants on this planet".

* DAMn is a relatively new -- and very interesting -- magazine from Belgium about design, art and architecture. I like the fact that it has a drawn cover, like Relax used to.



* "Bamboo Pop" by 80s idols like Tomoyo Harada and Chisato Moritaka is nice to watch on YouTube.

* In America, both houses are now controlled by the Democrats and Donald Rumsfeld has resigned, thus marking a definitive end to "The Project for a New American Century". Like Hitler's "Thousand Year Reich", it didn't last more than five years or so.

As a gardening magazine might put it, always check the seed packet; your mighty oak tree might be a bonsai.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Talking of false prophets, what do you make of Vladimir Romanov?

[imomus.livejournal.com]

When I was on the cover of the Daily Record, the headline was "Runaways wed in fear". When Romanov is on the cover of the Daily Record the headline is "Jambos chiefvlad splashes out on sub". What does that mean? Is it even in English?

[nicepimmelkarl.livejournal.com]

i don't know. you are the man of daily headlines. i'm a poet.

[(Anonymous)]

There are currently a lot of problems at Tynie re. things making sense/being in English. It's essentially a re-run of the end of the Cold war with Hearts being the besieged utopia where the worker-peasants are increasingly disillusioned and disposed to open revolt. It is a command society where the great dictator is entirely lacking in real-world expertise. Dissidents are banished to the Riccarton salt mines. Can't be long until the walls finally cave in.

As for the sub, Romanov used to be a submarine conscript in the Soviet navy. He's apparently just purchased his old boat (the infamous K-19).

[nicepimmelkarl.livejournal.com]

i just love youtube.....rumsfeld is gone...i can feel the difference...

[mini-snape.livejournal.com]

Wow, the Benelux produces a lot of lovely magazines these days. Maybe I should move back there.

[lord-whimsy.livejournal.com]

Now all we need is a magazine devoted to sponges, echinoderms and mollusks: Crusty.



Maybe one devoted to cocoons and chrysali: Wrapped.



Or one devoted to carnivorous plants: Gulp.

[nicepimmelkarl.livejournal.com]

thanks for sharing

[lord-whimsy.livejournal.com]

Scooped.

[(Anonymous)]

If it only were true, oh glorious world...

[cheapsurrealist.livejournal.com]

...it didn't last more than five years or so

It's going take at least five years to clean up the mess they left.

[(Anonymous)]

and Rumsfeld has this rude habit of coming back...

[wingedwhale.livejournal.com]

I think you would've concluded that about the US either way.

[(Anonymous)]

Don't hold your breath...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/midterms2006/story/0,,1944311,00.html

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Oh, I'm well aware of the fact that the US will probably (outside metropolitan centres like NY and SF) continue slipping right. Some commentators have said that the GOP were punished, this time, not for being too right wing, but for not being right wing enough, just as Rumsfeld has lost his job not for sending troops to Iraq, but for not sending enough troops to Iraq.

The question arises, "does the failure of the Project for a New American Century actually make a new American century more likely? In other words, will a return to dialogue, pacts, treaties, multilateralism and so on actually achieve what the PNAC couldn't?

I think the answer is that whatever happens in the US, this will be a Chinese century, and for pretty much the same reasons that the 20th century was an American one. Not because some small clique of people drafted a "project" in which they stated their intention to rule the world -- that's the Intentional Fallacy -- but for much bigger reasons, factors beyond the power of mere politicians to control.

high hopes for pelosi

[mongoltrophies.livejournal.com]

So it begins. (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/09/AR2006110901899.html)
I'm trying to believe that slipping right has reached its peak in America, or will in the next few years. We're in the death grip of the know-nothings, but they'll face change or expire soon.
The leadership of the Democratic party is liberal, even if they've had to make concessions to attain a majority.
The GOP may have been punished, in the sense that you mean, specifically because they failed to enact the kind of policy they paid lip service to for their evangelical constituency. The evangelicals were too out of touch to realize that what they wanted would never make it through Congress, like the gay marriage amendment that was shot down instantly. It's true that they're still quite powerful and they reproduce like a mad virus, but I'm optimistic that cooler, better-informed heads will prevail, and have already started to.
And yes, the only other option to not invading a country in the first place is doing it well enough that fighting and bloodshed don't drag on for years afterward, as has happened. The decision wasn't Rumsfeld's, as defense secretary, whether to send troops. It was up to him how decisively the country would be taken over, by extension how quickly and strongly it would recover, by extension how many people would die. In this he failed. He was trying to do it on the cheap. He actually wanted to send even fewer soldiers than he did, but Colin Powell had to step outside of his role as secretary of state and insist that he send more. Of course the war should never have happened, but when it did happen its conduct was the responsibility of the war secretary (as the position used to be more appropriately called). So, he lost his job.
Now that Republicans aren't setting the terms for discussion, which I think is the most important aspect of the majority, perhaps the herd will slide left.

[akabe.livejournal.com]

I think the answer is that whatever happens in the US, this will be a Chinese century, and for pretty much the same reasons that the 20th century was an American one.

and korea will become china's cuba, japan china's nicaragua, the US china's china, the EU china's japan ..

[(Anonymous)]

The EU is impotent ... at least, the Western half, and excluding the UK. What's the last thing France produced of note in the past 10 years?

[(Anonymous)]

What has France produced of note in last 10 years?

Some of the world's finest food and wine?
Three goals against Brazil in the 1998 World Cup final?
Two fingers to GW Bush?
Renault V10 and V8 Formula 1 engines?

[(Anonymous)]

Are you sure? Economists are predicting a hard, long-term crash for China in the upcoming future ... the big reason China's been moving forward economically is because the United States has been lenient with its own economy. So, China's like the child being led by the hand of the United States - it's still very young in the 21st century, and is at risk of losing the guidance and support it *needs* to become a on par or even surpass the US. If America pulls itself out from under China, China lands hard ... very hard.

I say, if anything, the Chinese century could only be the 22nd. The US was already a successful, stable, economic powerhouse by the 19th.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

the big reason China's been moving forward economically is because the United States has been lenient with its own economy. So, China's like the child being led by the hand of the United States

In fact, the opposite is the case.

" Last year, Asian countries invested almost four hundred billion dollars in the United States, mostly in government bonds. China is effectively taking most of its excess national savings and lending it to the United States. The Japanese, who despite their creaking economy remain flush with savings, bought a quarter trillion dollars of American debt last year, even though the interest is lousy and the assets themselves are losing value. More than any other nation in history, the United States depends, economically, on the kindness of strangers. Right now, Asian investors appear very kind."

The New Yorker, In Yuan We Trust (http://www.newyorker.com/talk/content/articles/050418ta_talk_surowiecki)

from longnow foundation

[rroland.livejournal.com]

one of my bosses Wing points out that in the environment of dynamic growth, where you can build a freeway in a week, something has to suffer, in China's case it is the enviornment. The dynasty thought process would be a planning for future generations, the current President when asked about China's future, he commented 'we are like a blind man crossing a river by feeling the stones under his feet"
"China is the most unresolved nation of consequence in the world," Orville Schell began. It is defined by its massive contradictions. And by its massiveness--- China's population is estimated to be 1.25 to 1.3 billion; the margin of error in the estimate is greater than the population of France. It has 160 cities with a population over one million (the US has 49). It has the world's largest standing army.
No society in the world has more millennia in its history, and for most of that history China looked back. Then in the 20th century the old dynastic cycles were replaced by one social cancellation after another until 1949, when Mao set the country toward the vast futuristic vision of Communism. That "mad experiment" ended with Deng Xiaoping's effective counter-revolution in the 1980s, which unleashed a new totalistic belief, this time in the market.
So what you have now is a society sick of grand visions, in search of another way to be, focussed on the very near term.
These days you cannot think usefully about China and its potential futures without holding in your mind two utterly contradictory views of what is happening there. On the one hand, a robust and awesomely growing China; on the other hand a brittle China, parts of it truly hellish.
ROBUST CHINA:
- Peaceful borders in all directions
- Economic, non-threatening engagement with the entire world, including with societies the US refuses to deal with
- 200 million Chinese raised out of poverty
- Private savings rate of 40 percent (it's 1 percent in the US)
- 300 million people with cell phones, and the best cell phone service in the world
- A superb freeway system built almost overnight
- New building construction everywhere, and some of it is brilliant
- 150 million people online
- 350,000 engineering graduates a year
- One-third of the world's direct investment
- Huge trade surplus
- And an economic growth rate of 9 to 12 percent a year! For decades.
but also...
BRITTLE CHINA
- Not much arable land, so a growing dependence on imported food
- Two-thirds of energy production is from dirty coal, by dirty methods, growing at the rate of 1-2 new coal-fired plants per week
- 30 percent of China has acid rain; 75 percent of lakes are polluted and rivers are polluted or pumped dry
- Of the 20 most polluted cities in the world, 16 are in China; you don't see the sun any more
- Some industrial parts of China are barren, hellish wastes
- Driven by environmental horrors and by widespread corruption, there were 87,000 instances of social unrest last year, going up every year
- The population is aging rapidly, with no pension or welfare, and a broken healthcare system
- The stock markets are grossly manipulated
- Public and official amnesia about historical legacies such as Tiananmen Square in 1989
How can such contradictions be reconciled? The best everyone can hope for is steady piecemeal change. For the Chinese the contradictions don't really bite so long as they have continued economic growth to focus on and to absorb some of the problems. But what happens when there's a break in that growth? It could come from inside China or from outside (such as a disruption in the US economy).
It's hard to look at the China boom now without thinking about the Japan boom in the 1970s and '80s, remembering how everyone knew the Japanese were going dominate the US and world economy, and we all had to study Japanese methods to learn how to compete. Then that went away, and it hasn't come back.
The leadership of China is highly aware of the environmental problems and is enlightened and ambitious about green solutions, but that attitude does not yet extend beyond the leadership, and until it does, not much can happen.
That's China: huge, consequential for everybody, and profoundly unresolved.


--Stewart Brand

Re: from longnow foundation

[imomus.livejournal.com]

As Jonathan Porritt points out in this article (http://www.chinadialogue.net/article/show/single/en/384-China-The-most-important-story-in-the-world), although China's ecological situation is currently catastrophic, the government is taking it very seriously. There is some reason to be optimistic; this, after all, is the land of the one-child family. When they set their mind to it, they can achieve things.

Re: from longnow foundation

[rroland.livejournal.com]

i do hope the Chinese consumers will follow the green policies set forth. the 'green accounting' concept is very important in that respect. if after an audit, results show a failure to keep to those standards, the government could limit the access to markets. once China's production is cleaner, then the Chinese government could turn the 'green accounting' eye to the West, and not allow any imports unless the suppliers are audited and pass the 'green accounting' standards. that would really get things shaped up!

[(Anonymous)]

Village Voice, Yellow Fever (http://villagevoice.com/news/0646,chang,74988,2.html)