Ken Layne's Blog, page 22
November 15, 2011
"Get back into your cages, they are telling us. Return to watching the lies, absurdities, trivia and..."
- I almost always agree with Chris Hedges, and have long admired him for dumping the NYT for becoming a Prophet. But his writing isn't always so awesome. This column is awesome: http://www.truth-out.org/what-revolution-looks/1321384587 )
November 14, 2011
November 11, 2011
When Badass Environmental Groups Fight Back (Against Brand-Name Environmental Groups)
John Sauven, Executive Director of Greenpeace, attacked Sea Shepherd today in a Huffington Post story accusing us of being counter productive to the campaign of saving whales. "We have to say each to their own tactics. We think strategically to fight our battles and we feel that we are winning the battle against whaling by talking to the Japanese themselves," he stated. "Sea Shepherd are confronting Japanese people aggressively and it is exacerbating nationalism, and actually making it more difficult."
What do you mean "we" John? The battle is in the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary not in your offices. We will be there, but where will Greenpeace ships be next month? Promotional tours? Banner hanging? Sending more origami whales?
Let me see John…Greenpeace builds a 33 million Euro ship to conduct fundraising tours while we intervene directly against illegal Japanese whaling in the Southern Ocean. While you guys sent origami whales to President Obama to protest Japanese whaling, we sent the Japanese fleet home with only 17% of their kill quota. Sea Shepherd has prevented the slaughter of nearly 3,000 whales while Greenpeacers were sitting and eating whale meat with the Japanese to demonstrate so-called sensitivity to Japanese culture. Greenpeace street solicitors tell the public that they send ships to the Southern Ocean, although they have not done so since 2006. They blatantly lie to raise funds.
Sea Shepherd has bankrupted the Japanese whaling fleet. That's activism John. Having tea with whalers is well, rather pathetic - just saying.
As a co-founder of Greenpeace, I have to say that they are now nothing more than the world's biggest "feel good" organization pretending to solve problems while growing a larger and more entrenched bureaucracy every year. I feel like Dr. Frankenstein having helped to create this big green monstrous fundraising corporate entity that IS NOT in Taiji saving dolphins, that IS NOT in the Southern Ocean saving whales, HAS NOT been off Newfoundland for two decades saving seals, HAS NOT done anything to protect bluefin tuna, HAS NOT opposed the slaughter of pilot whales in the Faeroe Islands, and actually DOES endorse the hunting of polar bears in Canada and Alaska. They are a sham, a fraud, and an embarrassment.
They have raised over 50 million dollars to oppose whaling in the Southern Ocean and they have used this money to fund additional fundraising efforts to raise more money. It's a disgrace and now they are condemning our activism saying we are making it difficult for them to "save" whales. I think what they are really saying is that we are making it difficult for them to continue to raise money by doing nothing.
November 2, 2011
More #OWS photos, 10/2011.
#OWS
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Mystery
When the weather was still good
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More #OWS photos, 10/2011.
Some pictures from #Occupy Wall Street, October 2011.
Zuccotti Park
Kitchen
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Busy busy
All from October 2011
Signs
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Magic Graveyard
By subject
#OWS Library
H. Nolan was one of those I brought down
Evening
Some pictures from #Occupy Wall Street, October 2011.
October 15, 2011
So that Sasha Frere-Jones column about Death Metal led me to the...
So that Sasha Frere-Jones column about Death Metal led me to the Oregon act Wolves in the Throne Room. I don't know anything about this subculture other than some outrage at Eurovision maybe a decade ago when a Scandinavian monster-costumed group that looked like 1980s' GWAR won the disco award or something? Vague television memories from living in the Balkans, mid-nineties. Whatever, this Wolves' music here is majestic and hypnotic. I've been on a Philip Glass opera kick lately, when I'm not listening to medieval liturgical music or this weird Russian ambient station in iTunes Radio, and this fits right in there. The guys in Wolves in the Throne Room are organic farmers/eco-radical people who live and work in the forests of Oregon. I am buying their new record right now, because why not.
October 10, 2011
October 8, 2011
"We intend to march on the police everywhere …. The precise programming of thought, feeling and..."
- William S. Burroughs, from the June 1969 Evergreen Review, quoted in V. Vale's most recent "weekly column" on the RE/Search blog, July 24, 2011, "We intend to destroy all dogmatic verbal systems."
