Nous ne pouvons plus vivre loin de l'éternité.

Il est vrai que ce monde où nous respirons mal
N'inspire plus en nous qu'un dégoût manifeste,
Une envie de s'enfuir sans demander son reste,
Et nous ne lisons plus les titres du journal.

Nous voulons retourner dans l'ancienne demeure
Où nos pères ont vécu sous l'aile d'un archange,
Nous voulons retrouver cette morale étrange
Qui sanctifiait la vie jusqu'à la dernière heure.

Nous voulons quelque chose comme une fidélité,
Comme un enlacement de douces dépendances,
Quelque chose qui dépasse et contienne l'existence;
Nous ne pouvons plus vivre loin de l'éternité.

Michel Houellebecq
Il est vrai

Earth enters sixth extinction phase with many species – including our own – labelled 'the walking dead'

The planet is entering a new period of extinction with top scientists warning that species all over the world are “essentially the walking dead” – including our own.

The report, authored by scientists at Stanford, Princeton and Berkeley universities, found that vertebrates were vanishing at a rate 114 times faster than normal.
In the damning report, published in the Science Advances journal, researchers note that the last similar event was 65 million years ago, when dinosaurs disappeared, most probably as a result of an asteroid.

"We are now entering the sixth great mass extinction event," one of the authors of the paper told the BBC.
Gerardo Ceballos, lead author of the research, added: "If it is allowed to continue, life would take many millions of years to recover and our species itself would likely disappear early on".

READ MORE: Eastern Cougar officially listed as extinct
Are hen harriers heading towards extinction?
6 major energy companies ask UN for help to set up carbon pricing scheme

The research examined historic rates of extinction for vertebrates, finding that since 1900 more than 400 vertebrates have disappeared – an extinction rate 100 times higher than in other – non-extinction – periods.
"There are examples of species all over the world that are essentially the walking dead,” said Stanford University professor Paul Ehrlich.
He added: "We are sawing off the limb that we are sitting on."
The research, which cites climate change, pollution and deforestation as causes for the rapid change, notes that a knock-on effect of the loss of entire ecosystems could be dire.

As our ecosystems unravel, the Centre for Biological Diversity has noted that we could face a “snowball” effect whereby individual species extinction ultimately fuels more losses.
The report, which builds on findings published by Duke University last year, does note that averting this loss is “still possible through intensified conservation effects,” but that “window of opportunity is rapid closing.”

S.:http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/earth-is-entering-sixth-extinction-phase-with-many-species--including-our-own--labelled-the-walking-dead-10333608.html

America's Denial of Its Own History

Charleston, America

by ROB URIE

 

The American capacity to deny history might be heroic if it weren’t so persistently in the direction of social repression. The port of Charleston, South Carolina was the major entry and distribution point for kidnapped Africans forced into slavery in the American colonies. Slaves built the city of Charleston and were the force that drove the colonial economy of South Carolina. By 1709 South Carolina had the first slave patrols in the colonies, self-appointed groups that policed the movements of Blacks. By 1837 the Charleston slave patrols became the first official municipal police department in the U.S. Today Charleston’s role in the horrors of slavery has been sanitized through the storyline of the ‘progress’ of history. But with the blood of nine Black innocents freshly spilled, this history doesn’t wash away so easily.

 

The racist sociopath who committed the murders, Dylann Roof, made it clear that there was ‘nothing personal’ in the commission of his crime. His stated motive, to start a race war, was categorical— by reports the murderer knew none of his victims until shortly before he murdered them. In contrast to the willful obfuscation of the professional promoters of White supremacy among the chattering classes, the fact that the murders were categorical, were motivated by racism, makes them political. The murderer’s broader motives are White supremacist boilerplate, the generalities that signal tribal allegiance, not response to actually occurring offenses. Given American history, these motives are near perfect reversal of the facts of three centuries of torture, rape, murder and exploitation of enslaved and nominally free Blacks by Southern Whites.

 

Rest in Peace: Rev. Clementa Pinckney, Cynthia Hurd, Sharonda Coleman-Singleton, Tywanza Sanders, Myra Thompson, Ethel Lee Lance, Susie Jackson, Daniel Simmons and Depayne Middleton.

The White resentment evidenced by Dylann Roof is over lost privilege that was never lost. The flag flying over the South Carolina State House isn’t the Confederate flag as has so often been reported, it is the Confederate battle flag— a potent and purposeful statement that the culture of racist repression was never defeated. And while the existence of the Emanuel AME Church where the murders occurred is evidence of resilience in the face an unbearably tragic, and purposely inflicted, history the theme of a reversal of this history, of ‘the country being taken over,’ is so radically delusional that discourse— a ‘conversation’ and symbolic acts, stands little chance of providing the needed link to social circumstances as they are actually being lived. The willful, insistent peace that led those murdered to welcome their assassin into their midst appears to be the ultimate target of Dylann Roof.

Of the official ‘remedies’ being put forward one makes symbolic sense and the other little to no practical sense. The Confederate battle flag that hangs atop state buildings in South Carolina celebrates centuries of systematic repression of Blacks by Whites. This may be “history,” but it is history that favors oppressors over oppressed— it is a symbol that actual power remains with the White establishment. Conversely, how covetous of history would the White ‘traditionalists’ be if Whites had been enslaved? That the flag still flies is evidence that this American history remains radically unresolved. Removing it would be symbolic. But without redressing the material differences that are the residual of this history mere symbolism is misleading. Paying reparations and political power-sharing that removes White privilege would be steps beyond the merely symbolic.

The modern gun control movement began after legally armed Black Panthers entered the Sacramento State House in California in 1967. The prior three centuries of White gun violence had nothing to do with it. Effective gun control would require actively taking guns from large numbers of people. Given the history and current state of policing in the U.S., what are the chances that White nationalists would be the targets of this effort? (Answer: none). The gun used by Dylann Roof appears to have been a gift from his father that was legally purchased. And the case of Australia, where strict gun control laws were implemented after a horrific mass murder was committed there, is less compelling than is generally presented. Data compiled by the World Bank has the murder rate falling less in both relative and absolute terms than in other comparable countries, including the U.S.

 

Slaves produced American bounty and the capital now in the hands of the descendants of slavers. The coded language of economics is used in the present to wash this tainted history from current social relations. The ‘original sin’ of capitalism lies in the provenance of this ‘capital’ produced by slaves and its ongoing expropriation. Original image source: salient-points.blogspot.com.

Political economy was brought to the fore through the temporary alliance of the President of the North Carolina NAACP, Rev. Dr. William Barber, South Carolina State Representative Doug Brannon and the Chamber of Commerce in a recent piece on DemocracyNow! All agreed that the Confederate battle flag should be removed from State buildings. But when Rev. Barber argued for increased social spending and a living wage law to address the economic residual of slavery the alliance quickly dissipated. South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley gave the game away when she offered that none of the corporate leaders who were relocating ‘their’ companies to the state had complained about the flag up to that point.

Historical metaphor is apparently not the strong suit of the Southern business class. In South Carolina three or more centuries of slave ‘owners’ claiming the product of slaves for themselves has been replaced in the present by the executives of multi-national corporations using the social / political and economic residuals of slavery to claim the product of modern labor as ‘profits.’ The White political class in South Carolina wants to remove the flag because the historical distribution of political and economic power that it represents is better served by the more effectively coded language of economics. With the preponderance of American history as a guide, the international business ‘leaders’ to whom Governor Haley referred selected South Carolina in large measure because of this distribution, not in spite of it.

 

The current owners of luxury car maker BMW bought the company with the proceeds from Concentration Camp labor in WWII. Like the provenance of expropriated slave labor in the Americas, these proceeds are being used in the present to exert political and economic control over the social residuals of this tainted past. Even cursory investigation suggests that engineered dependence, coercion and directly expropriated labor are the material basis of modern capitalism. Original image source: thetruthaboutcars.com.

The profound moral and political differences between slavery and ‘free’ labor are as compressed in capitalist theory as they are by the material circumstances that are the residual of Southern history. The ‘human capital’ of capitalist theory can be owned, controlled or ‘free,’ with the determinant being that with the lowest cost. Among the business leaders to whom Governor Haley alluded, the owners of ‘luxury’ automaker BMW, now located outside of Greenville S.C., were major ‘users’ of concentration camp labor in WWII. The Boeing Corporation in North Charleston uses prison labor in its production processes. The ‘free’ labor that arrives at these doorsteps faces the historical question of why expropriated slave labor, now in the form of accumulated capital, is still owned / controlled by the descendants of Nazis and slavers?

 

The national ‘get over it’ chide that places current circumstance far removed from the legacy of slavery gets both current circumstance and the legacy of slavery wrong. In contrast to the ever-present ‘now’ of capitalist economics, slaves built substantial portions of the wealth and means of production that are presently owned and / or controlled by international capitalists. South Carolina is a particularly acute example of this history. And Northerners profited from trade in the cheap cotton produced by slaves, from the effect that slavery had in lowering factory wages and from the capital accumulation that resulted from these. Slave labor and its residual are deeply embedded in the fabric of current economic circumstance. The White and reactionary Black chides might make more sense if this past had ever been reconciled. Stating that history has ended while providing copious evidence to the contrary hardly makes it so.

 

S.:http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/06/26/charleston-america/

I can make the earth stop in

I can make the earth stop in its tracks. I made the 
blue cars go away.


I can make myself invisible or small. 
I can become gigantic and reach the 
farthest things. I can change 
the course of nature.
I can place myself anywhere in 
space or time. 
I can summon the dead. 
I can perceive events on other worlds, 
in my deepest inner mind, 
and in the minds of others. 

I can 

I am


Jim Morrison.
Power

Angoisse d'une seule fin

Être encore où l'on n'est plus
que cet "encore" à vivre.


Edmond Jabès

La lechera de Vermeer

Yo que ya soñaba con hablarle...

F.: Rafael Suárez

La joven con espejo de Kuhn (1929)

Nina Simone: my baby just cares for me

Antonio López

Así ve Frissell un mar en tinieblas bajo el palio de un vuelo

Danaid. Auguste Rodin

El Concerto No. 2 de Paganini visto por Zhou

Definición de amor según Lope de Vega

Desmayarse, atreverse, estar furioso,
áspero, tierno, liberal, esquivo,
alentado, mortal, difunto, vivo,
leal, traidor, cobarde y animoso;

no hallar fuera del bien centro y reposo,
mostrarse alegre, triste, humilde, altivo,
enojado, valiente, fugitivo,
satisfecho, ofendido, receloso;

huir el rostro al claro desengaño,
beber veneno por licor süave,
olvidar el provecho, amar el daño;

creer que un cielo en un infierno cabe,
dar la vida y el alma a un desengaño;
esto es amor, quien lo probó lo sabe

Simplement, simplement pour survivre.

F.: Rafael Suárez

Un soneto de Garcilaso

Escrito está en mi alma vuestro gesto,
y cuanto yo escribir de vos deseo;
vos sola lo escribisteis, yo lo leo
... tan solo, que aun de vos me guardo en esto.

En esto estoy y estaré siempre puesto;
que aunque no cabe en mí cuanto en vos veo,
de tanto bien lo que no entiendo creo,
tomando ya la fe por presupuesto.

Yo no nací sino para quereros;
mi alma os ha cortado a su medida;
por hábito del alma mismo os quiero.

Cuando tengo confieso yo deberos;
por vos nací, por vos tengo la vida,
por vos he de morir, y por vos muero.

¡Aún dicen que el pescado es caro!

Joaquín Sorolla y Bastida.

No he de callar por más que con el dedo,

No he de callar por más que con el dedo, 

ya tocando la boca o ya la frente, 

silencio avises o amenaces miedo. 

¿No ha de haber un espíritu valiente? 

¿Siempre se ha de sentir lo que se dice? 

¿Nunca se ha de decir lo que se siente? 

Hoy, sin miedo que, libre, escandalice, 

puede hablar el ingenio, asegurado 

de que mayor poder le atemorice. 

En otros siglos pudo ser pecado 

severo estudio y la verdad desnuda, 

y romper el silencio el bien hablado. 

Pues sepa quien lo niega, y quien lo duda, 

que es lengua la verdad de Dios severo, 

y la lengua de Dios nunca fue muda. 

 

Quevedo

Sin palabras, Modigliani

If the doors of perception were cleansed, every thing would appear to man as it is: infinite.

To see a world in a grain of sand

And a heaven in a wild flower,

Hold infinity in the palm of your hand

And eternity in an hour.

William Blake

Auguries of Innocence

El Bolero de Ravel

Our Jihadis and Theirs

The Real (Armed) Dangers of American Life
By Tom Engelhardt

Consider this paragraph a holding action on the subject of getting blown away in America. While I write this dispatch, I’m waiting patiently for the next set of dispiriting killings in this country. And I have faith. Before I’m done, some angry -- or simply mentally disturbed -- and well-armed American “lone wolf” (or lone wolves) will gun down someone (or a number of people) somewhere and possibly himself (or themselves) as well. Count on that. It’ll be my last paragraph. Think of it as, in a grim way, something to look forward to as you read this piece on American armed mayhem.

National security officials and politicians have been pounding home the message that the “greatest threat” to Americans is an extreme and brutal jihadist movement thousands of miles away and the videos and social media messages its followers produce that make it seem close at hand. With that in mind, let’s take a look at a few of the dangers of armed life in these United States, a quick survey of national insecurity in a country armed to the teeth.

I’m sure you won’t be surprised to learn that, in the first half of 2015, there’s been a plethora of incidents to draw on. There’s the killer still on the loose in northern Colorado who shot at people in cars or out biking or walking late at night. There’s the suspected serial killer who dumped seven bodies behind a strip mall in New Britain, Connecticut, and may now be in jail on unrelated charges. There’s the ongoing trial of James Holmes who blew away 12 moviegoers and wounded 70 in a multiplex in Aurora, Colorado, in 2012. There was the mass killing of seven people in February in the tiny town of Tyrone, Missouri, by Joseph Aldridge, an armed recluse who then killed himself. And don’t forget Sudheer Khamitkar, who shot to death his wife and two young sons and then himself in Tulsa in April, or Christopher Carrillo, who murdered four of his family members and then turned his gun on himself in a Tucson home in May. And many others.

In such a list, there should be a special place for a phenomenon that, though largely untabulated, has been gaining attention in recent years as ever more Americans “carry” in ever more places.  This means ever more loose guns lying around.  I’m talking about the mayhem committed by toddlers (or perhaps they should be thought of as American lone wolf cubs).  Toddler shootings range from the two year old who killed his mother in a Walmart in Idaho with the gun she was packing in her purse as 2014 ended to the three year old who discovered a gun in a purse in an Albuquerque motel room in February and wounded his father and pregnant mother with a single shot.  Such a list for this year would have to include the Florida two year old who found his father’s gun in the family car and killed himself with it in January, the three year old who picked up an unattended gun and killed a one year old in a Cleveland home in April, the Virginia two year old who found a gun on top of a dresser and killed himself in late May, and the four year old who, at about the same time in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, picked up a shotgun at a target shooting range and killed his 22-year-old uncle. Toddler killings have been commonplace enough in these pistol-packin’ years that they now significantly outpace terror killings in the U.S.

The Big Leagues of Violence

While we’re at it (before we get to the really big stuff), there is the crew I think of as American-style suicide killers. They lack a political or religious ideology like the suicide bombers of the Middle East, but they are on missions for which killing yourself as well as others is the imagined end. Think of them as informal American jihadis, in touch with no ISIS social media types, watching no inflammatory terror videos, but all riled up anyway, often deeply disturbed, armed, and on suicide missions in the American homeland.

 

I’m referring to a remarkably commonplace kind of killing that, as far as I know, no one has taken the time to record or count up: men who kill their girlfriends or wives (and sometimes others in the vicinity) and then take their own lives.  Here’s an almost random list of just some of the reported cases I stumbled across for 2015: In January, in the appropriately named Nutley, New Jersey, a 38-year-old man shot his 37-year-old girlfriend and then killed himself; in January, in Lincoln, Nebraska, a 49-year-old man shot his 44-year-old girlfriend, called the police to report the killing, and then killed himself; also in January, a 29-year-old man shot his 27-year-old pregnant girlfriend six or seven times in a hotel for the homeless in New York City’s Times Square before taking his own life; in February, in Wading River, New York, a 44-year-old man shot and killed his 43-year-old girlfriend and her 17-year-old daughter before taking his own life; in March, in Chicago, a 23-year-old man shot and killed his 24-year-old girlfriend, then himself in the mouth, committing suicide; in April, a 48-year-old Fort Worth man, who had a winning $500 lottery ticket and refused to share the spoils with his 46-year-old girlfriend, shot her and then himself after they argued, then called the police to report the crime before dying; in April, in Cleveland, a 48-year-old man shot and killed his 19-year-old girlfriend and then repeated the act two doors down, murdering his 47-year-old ex-wife, before turning his gun on himself; also in April in Montgomery, Alabama, a man shot and killed his girlfriend, subsequently killing himself; similarly in April, a 35-year-old doctor shot and killed his 39-year-old girlfriend in Fayetteville, North Carolina, followed by a 32-year-old doctor in New Jersey, and then, when police approached him, committed suicide; in May, in San Diego, a 52-year-old man shot his 28-year-old girlfriend and her 63-year-old mother to death before committing suicide.  As June began, in Cleveland, a 30-year-old man shot and killed his 24-year-old ex-girlfriend and her grandfather, badly injuring her grandmother, then killed himself.  And so it goes, and mind you, this is just a starter list for such acts, which seem remarkably commonplace.

F.:http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/176013/tomgram%3A_engelhardt%2C_armed_violence_in_the_homeland/

Samso, l’île danoise aux énergies vertes

Les Vikings, maîtres des vents, avaient fait de cette petite île perdue au centre du Danemark une place stratégique. Ils y avaient creusé un chenal et bâti un château, d’où ils contrôlaient la course des drakkars vers les contrées lointaines. Leurs descendants, eux, ont planté les mâts de leurs éoliennes sur la terre et sur les flots. Samso fait aujourd’hui claquer le pavillon des énergies vertes. Elle tire toute son électricité du vent qui la fouette sans relâche, et sa chaleur du soleil, du bois ou de la paille. Elle veut désormais aller plus loin, en éliminant les carburants fossiles de ses transports.

Samso se mérite. Depuis l’aéroport de Copenhague, il faut prendre le train pour rejoindre le littoral, avant d’embarquer sur l’un des deux ferries quotidiens qui desservent ce minuscule bout de terre en forme d’accroche-cœur, long de 28 km et large, dans sa partie la plus évasée, d’à peine 7 km. En approchant du rivage, au soleil couchant, on aperçoit d’abord un alignement de dix turbines posées sur les eaux. Puis les pales de onze moulins à vent disséminés au-dessus de maisons basses au toit de chaume.

 

LE MONDE | 15.05.2015 à 11h13 • Mis à jour le 17.05.2015 à 11h44 | Par Pierre Le Hir (Samso (Danemark), envoyé spécial)

F.:http://www.lemonde.fr/energies/article/2015/05/15/samso-l-ile-danoise-aux-energies-vertes_4634140_1653054.html

"El corazón, si pudiese pensar, se pararía."

"El corazón, si pudiese pensar, se pararía."

Fernando Pessoa

Libro del desasosiego

Locos como la bruma y la nieve

MAD AS THE MIST AND SNOW

 

Bolt and bar the shutter,

For the foul winds blow:

Our minds are at their best this night,

And I seem to know

That everything outside us is

Mad as the mist and snow.

Horace there by Homer stands,

Plato stands below,

And here is Tully's open page.

How many years ago

Were you and I unlettered lads

Mad as the mist and snow?

You ask what makes me sigh, old friend,

What makes me shudder so?

I shudder and I sigh to think

That even Cicero

And many-minded Homer were

Mad as the mist and snow.

William Butler Yeats

Locos como la bruma y la nieve

Echa el cerrojo, atranca ya el postigo,

porque esta noche el viento en contra viene:

tenemos puestos los cinco sentidos,

y es que a mí me parece

que fuera de nosotros todo está

tan loco como la bruma y la nieve.

Allí se encuentra Horacio junto a Homero,

Platón debajo de los dos se yergue

y abierto se halla aquí el libro de Tulio.

¿Cuántos años habrán pasado desde

que tú y yo fuimos jóvenes incultos,

tan locos como la bruma y la nieve

Preguntas, buen amigo, a qué suspiro,

qué me hace a tal extremo estremecerme:

me estremezco y suspiro de pensar

que hasta Homero, con todos sus saberes,

y Cicerón estaban

tan locos como la bruma y la nieve.

Nous ne pouvons plus vivre loin de l'éternité.

Il est vrai que ce monde où nous respirons mal
N'inspire plus en nous qu'un dégoût manifeste,
Une envie de s'enfuir sans demander son reste,
Et nous ne lisons plus les titres du journal.

Nous voulons retourner dans l'ancienne demeure
Où nos pères ont vécu sous l'aile d'un archange,
Nous voulons retrouver cette morale étrange
Qui sanctifiait la vie jusqu'à la dernière heure.

Nous voulons quelque chose comme une fidélité,
Comme un enlacement de douces dépendances,
Quelque chose qui dépasse et contienne l'existence ;
Nous ne pouvons plus vivre loin de l'éternité.


Michel Houellebecq (1958- )
Il est vrai

Time is...

Time is very slow for those who wait
Very fast for those who are scared
very long for those who lament
Very short for those who celebrate
But for those who love time is eternal

Shakespeare

Love is something far more...

Love is something far more than desire for sexual intercourse; it is the principal means of escape from the loneliness which afflicts most men and women throughout the greater part of their lives.

 

—Bertrand Russell

 

....discover that I had not lived.

“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.

Henry David Thoreau
Walden, Or Life in the Woods

J'ai eu le courage de regarder en arrière

J'ai eu le courage de regarder en arrière
Les cadavres de mes jours
Marquent ma route et je les pleure
Les uns pourrissent dans les églises italiennes
Ou bien dans de petits bois de citronniers
Qui fleurissent et fructifient
En même temps et en toute saison
D'autres jours ont pleuré avant de mourir dans des tavernes
Où d'ardents bouquets rouaient
Aux yeux d'une mulâtresse qui inventait la poésie
Et les roses de l'électricité s'ouvrent encore
Dans le jardin de ma mémoire

 

Guillaume Apollinaire (1880 - 1918)
J'ai eu le courage de regarder en arrière...