Posted by beckett2 on December 13, 2019, at 20:43:53
In reply to Re: hope and friendship, posted by sigismund on December 13, 2019, at 18:43:03
> An American woman in Boston, confronted with my wife's recitation of these problems replied 'Small acts of kindness will have to see us through', which sounds wrong, kind and comforting all at once.
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> For every human problem there is a solution to make it worse, and the fact that these are seriously entertained is the hardest for me. Rivers drying up? Need more dams, rather than another form of agriculture. Base load electricity? Nuclear power. I'm sure there is a long list, or you could half remember them, make them up. Global warming? Fill the atmosphere with sulphur dioxide. Because we need to act out our tribal hatred? Freud had, as well as Thanatos an idea about 'the narcissism of small differences'.
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> Rivers drying up, tradable water rights......not so far from what Bechtel was doing in Cochabamba, Bolivia.....privatise the rain. Everything is commodified. Could I sell myself to someone else and rent myself back (income stream).....who has the energy for this nonsense? That's what happened to our biggest river. The family farmers rightly feel it is sinful for water to be wasted while the communities and animals go without. But it is where these policies (and corruption) have left us.
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>The Guardian reported on a water bottling company (Coca Cola?) stealing water or buying up farmland to 'water mine'. Is this an exaggeration? Stealing water in the night and a school being closed for lack of water. (California, mind you, has a dark history of water rights. From the state that brought you some of the best noirs.)
My thoughts were about crops. If the farm is purchased for water mining (why can't farmers water mine?) then who is growing the wheat?. Oh, nevermind. Import some.
On other topics, the poem "First They Came For Me" was brought up in a conversation. I wonder if that prose poem structure works for food supplies. "Then there was no one left to grow for me."
like a bird on a wire
poster:beckett2
thread:1106285
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/poli/20191212/msgs/1107245.html