From The Half-Red House

A local farm stand I visited yesterday had a sign saying “Peaches $2.50 per pound, $28.00 per half-bushel, $25.00 per bushel” I asked the woman behind the counter, and she said it wasn’t a misprint and that she doesn’t set the prices, just makes the signs. She assured me it was neither a mistake nor a joke, but that she was not at liberty to explain her boss’s reasoning.

Recently there has been a lot of talk about deflation, where the price of everything gets lower every week, investments lose value and no rational person buys anything today, since it will surely be cheaper tomorrow. The received wisdom on deflation is that it is a kind of financial apocalypse, though there are those of us who might thrive in a non-growth, non-money economy. I was wondering if this price structure might be designed to counteract deflationary pressure in the peach market: something like “if you buy enough to last you a long time, I’ll give you a price commensurate with the expected loss in value.”

On the other hand, it’s probably just that old cyclical farming dilemma that everybody’s zucchini, peaches, tomatoes, etc. are ripe at the same time, and there are few customers prepared to do the hard work of preserving them for future use.

As I was arriving in Peterborough today for the weekly peace vigil, the universe sent me a compelling reminder of the way the USA is divided into cultural camps that don’t communicate with each other. I was listening to New Hampshire public radio and they were starting their hourly five minutes of promotional blather, so I switched to WGBH, the NPR flagship station in Boston, to see if their programming was any more interesting. I was shocked to hear an editorial on how same-sex marriage is against God’s law and should not be legal. This was obviously not WGBH. Then came a station ID:  “You’re tuned to WZKM, Waynesboro-Meridian.” There was only one Meridian I could think of, and that was in the state of Mississippi, and it turns out that was where the signal was coming from. The next thing on the air was a public service announcement stating that evolution was a lie and that the Earth had been created 8,000 years ago, followed by some local sports scores. Just a reminder that a good third of the US population believes these religious propositions and that their politics reflect that fact.

A little while later, setting up the banners for the vigil, I noticed that the pickup truck parked in front of the Town House had bumper stickers saying, “Obama lied, Freedom died” and “Progressive, Communist: the lines are blurred”, along with a couple of pro-military signs and a don’t-tread-on-me snake. I anticipated having some interesting dialog when the truck’s driver returned, but when he came back, he just sort-of sneaked into the driver’s seat and sped away.

During the vigil, we had an interesting conversation on the strengthening effect of an alliance between religion and politics in that other America, as contrasted with the fragmented patchwork of beliefs here in New England. I, for one, am concerned that the cohesive anti-science authoritarian-minded bloc of believers/voters will gain absolute political ascendance in the next election cycle, with lots of help from the unlimited corporate funding they will be getting, thanks to the supreme court’s recent decision. We’ve really got to talk with the residents of that other America and find out what common issues we can all agree on. Otherwise, with those in power conflating progressive and nonviolent principles with communism and terrorism, this shift in political power could lead to violence tantamount to civil war.

Google tells me that Meridian is about 1400 miles from Peterborough, and since FM stations in the US are limited to 50,000 watts of power, the coincidence of WGBH being off the air (or overwhelmed) and sunspot activity strengthening a distant FM signal to deliver that particular message does seem a bit like an urgent message from the universe or God or whoever out there wants to make sure we don’t fall asleep. Ham radio operators (e.g. http://www.eham.net/articles/24223 ) are reporting unusual radio reception on the shortwave and AM bands this week, but such phenomena are much more rare on the FM band.

The official demise of my department at U Mass Lowell, RESD, was “celebrated” on Thursday by those who orchestrated it. The website put up by the department’s faculty and students (http://www.restoreresd.org/) tells the whole sad story in great detail from our point of view.

Late Friday evening, we got an incredibly mean-spirited email from the chair of the Economics department, and attached to it, documentation of the figures the administration had used to “prove ” that RESD cost the University more than it brought in in revenue. The administration had refused to release this document earlier, forcing the students and faculty to make their own estimates of the costs and benefits of RESD, which appear on the website. I tend to think that the figures we came up with better reflect the truth, but that’s almost beside the point. What really bothers me is the slimy, mean-spirited rhetoric of the email, which was ostensibly addressed to the (former) chair of RESD but actually insulted all of us. There has been real hatred and arrogance in this whole process.

Today I got an email from some of my fellow RESD graduate students, two of whom have been  leaders in the movement to restore RESD, saying that the house they share with several other students was burned down in an apparent arson incident last night. One of them lost her car, and all the people in the house have lost a lot. One person in the house went to the hospital with serious burns to the shoulder. Of course the arsonist, who apparently tried to set a number of cars and houses on fire last night, was probably not hired by the Economics department, but I confess that was the first thought that went through my head.

The attacks on RESD have led me to mistrust the administration of this institution, a fact that makes me incredibly sad. Public higher education in Massachusetts should be a major force in bringing about real grassroots economic recovery, using techniques developed by RESD professors and students, rather than devoting all its energy to furthering the short-sighted political ambitions of a few highly-placed individuals.

I just had to share this video… it covers all the possible comedic aspects of a situation that is not at all funny:

Brazilian documentary-maker Iara Lee (see http://english.cri.cn/6966/2010/06/02/2321s573964.htm ), who was on the Turkish ship Mavi Marmara when it was attacked by the Israeli military in late May, has managed to smuggle some of the video she took on board the Turkish ship before and during the attack. There are credible reports that the Israeli authorities made intense efforts to confiscate and in some cases destroy, all audio and video records from activists’ cameras, phones and recorders, which makes it all the more remarkable that this young filmmaker was able to get a memory chip past them.

The film shows a scene quite different from that shown by the Israeli footage we have all seen. The full film is over an hour long, but a 15-minute “highlights” clip has just been released. It shows an apparently out-of-sequence shot of quantities of blood dripping through a gangway from the upper deck. It shows two young passengers shooting at the helicopter above the ship with slingshots (These are the only weapons visible in the film, and I assume they are the reason the Israelis issued the shoot-to-kill orders). Mainly it shows scene after scene of wounded people being carried below and given first aid, including, apparently, two wounded soldiers. There are loud explosive sounds and sounds of rapid-fire gunshots. The blood and suffering are excessive, and he film would probably get an R rating in the US. Most of the dialogue  is in languages other than English and the background noise makes it mostly unintelligible in any case. There is a moving scene of two young men on the deck performing Muslim prayers calmly and methodically while chaos reigns all around them. At one point in the woman goes on the ship’s PA system and calls for strict nonviolence, reminding people of the reason for the flotilla, the desperate human needs of the people of Gaza.

In a loosely-related matter, Helen Thomas, the persistent and courageous White House reporter who asked Obama that question about the “secret” Israeli nuclear arsenal last year, was summarily stripped of her job and her honored position because she made one intemperate remark about Israel. Ralph Nader is calling for her reinstatement, and I agree with him that she should be reinstated.

Ships carrying humanitarian aid to Gaza by sea were attacked by Israeli troops. 10-16 people killed and unknown numbers injured. On board were intellectuals, politicians and activists I respect, some 400 volunteers in all. [update: 85-year-old Hedy Epstein decided not to be in the convoy at the last minute. The Guardian has a list of many people known to have been in the convoy at http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/may/31/gaza-freedom-flotilla-activists-passengers-israel/ ]

I wish I didn’t have to write about this. These people were just bringing humanitarian aid to the besieged residents of Gaza by sea, and yes, of course, making a political point. I know they had been trained in nonviolence and would not have attacked the Israelis with weapons, as alleged by the Israelis.

Here is an earlier video report from RT Moscow:

Here is some background on the Free Gaza Movement: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/may/31/free-gaza-movement-blockade

Note that they are committed to nonviolence (see http://www.freegaza.org/en/about-us/mission ) “We agree to adhere to the principles of nonviolence and nonviolent resistance in word and deed at all times.”

Here is one British nonviolent activist’s reaction: http://thelinc.co.uk/2010/05/free-gaza-movement-speaks-out-against-deadly-israel/

Democracy now has mentioned the incident and spoken with a relative of one of the participants in the flotilla: http://www.democracynow.org/blog/2010/5/31/interview_at_least_15_dead_after_israel_attacks_gaza_bound_aid_flotilla

Some invesigative journalism from an unlikely source, an astrology website (http://planetwaves.net/pagetwo/2010/05/04/explosives-dumps-gulf-of-mexico-oil-spilll/), has turned up some mighty plausible evidence that an unexploded bomb may have caused the oil-well blowout that is now threatening the Gulf ecosystem.

Remember the old BBC TV series “UXB”, where teams went from place to place in World-War-II London finding and disarming bombs that had landed but not exploded. Well, it seems there are UXBs at the bottom of the sea as well. The US (and other) military(s) routinely drops live bombs into the ocean and on certain small islands to train crews and test munitions. It turns outr that NOAA (the US weather service) keeps track of where in the ocean these bombs are reported dropped, so that the positions can be mapped by anyone who is planning, say, an oil drilling operation. The article cited above cites coordinates of 19 such UXB sites near the site of the disaster, and the Minerals management Service officially warns Gulf drillers:

BP, Halliburton, et al. may be even more culpable than we thought, if ithey cavalierly disregarded this official 2003 warning.

Thanks to my astrologer and naturalist friend Amelia for this information!