San Manuel smelter towers come crashing down

For many of us in Arizona copper mining is a symbol of environmental destruction and pollution and the rape of the wilderness. At the same time, mines like the one in San Manuel, northwest of the 9000 foot Catalina mountains that tower over Tucson, created a nice town, lots of jobs with decent pay, and a facet of Arizona culture where people came together and did what people are best at doing- being people, working, sharing peace love and family time, and of course, beer. Lots of beer, I'm sure of that.

The 500 foot twin towers of the San Manuel mine were blown up yesterday January 17 2007, as the mine up there finally was shut down by its Aussie parent company. You can watch the video here at the Arizona Daily Star and see a thousand linear feet of smoke belching industrial equipment hit the dirt. I'd post it to uTube but I don't have Quicktime Pro.

I don't have data on the weight of the pollutants this mine and these towers put into the air. I don't have data on the extent of the mine's effort to clean and scrub the material that went into the air. I do not have data on the toxics that can be found underneath the tailings ponds of the mine.

I can tell you that in the late 70s and early 80s when local miners were on strike the air around Tucson was crystal clear and it looked like a whole different town. I can tell you that as some of the major mines have shut down the air has become clearer and clearer, but in the past 5 or so years more and more filled with auto exhaust. I can tell you that today mining companies continue to do everything they can, here and in northern Mexico, to get at their copper, to leave a wasteland behind, and pay their public relations folks pretty good salaries. I have also heard that precious stones are their real income, while copper is just their gravy, but that is only a rumor.

The venerable Arizona Daily Star published this nostalgic public relations puff-piece, which looks like it could have been written by copper company pr-types, the other day. The piece, which is factual but leaves out lots, also includes some great photos from the Star archives, some of which look like they were shot by Jack Sheaffer, a Star photographer who worked at the Star for around 30 years and whose photos did a nice job of capturing the essence around here somehow.

Arizona restaurant gets fined $5000 for dancing

Dale Bell, the owner of a Phoenix area bar and grill, said he'll take it step by step.

Read the story published in the Arizona Daily Star here.

The gist is that this guy was fined 5000 dollars because people were dancing at his restaurant. Welcome to Arizona, everybody! You can really see the dark ages in motion here, folks. Come to Arizona for your own history lesson!! I'm sure the Phoenix chamber of commerce is jumping all over this.

The restauranteur has enlisted the help of the Arizona chapter of the libertarian Institute for Justice. Hear hear. The Institute's main page states "IJ Litigates nationwide on behalf of individuals whose rights are being violated by government."

Charles Bowden sums up America in one paragraph

Bowden also does a good job assessing the illegal immigration scene in the Southwest in this article in Mother Jones.

Here is the paragraph that sums up the U.S. and the world at large these days:

In America

The birds can no longer be trusted. Our government suspects a duck or a goose, perhaps that rare swan, will bring plague to our shores. The ice is melting, also. The polar bears are fated to die, the seas are guaranteed to rise and flood our coasts. The skies have mutinied and new monster winds whip off the ocean. We've already lost one city and there is concern about future storms. We worry about nuclear weapons that are not controlled by white people. The government eavesdrops on many people and says this is necessary for our protection. The enemies can be anywhere and appear as almost anything.

Bowden is the author of about a dozen books, mostly on the Southwest, and used to be a reporter here in Tucson.

So far I've read Desierto, Frog mountain blues, and am now reading Blood orchid : an unnatural history of America. All highly recommended reading for anyone interested in the West, Mexico, that whole nexus of cultures and related past present and future.

Grand Canyon and creationism

It's official, the Bush administration is living in Fairy-Tale Land. Nobody cares much where you worship but people draw the line at myth being passed off by the government as fact. Science, one of our most civilized accomplishments as humans, and of which God, if there is one, would surely be proud of us for, must not be supressed in the public and educational arena. It is science that is going to save us from global warming, industrial pollution, nuclear waste, and rampant mutant bacteria. Trying to force myths and stories down our throats as fact will do nothing but make things worse, and it appears BushCo supports this practice as some kind of diversionary tactic. The BushCo bullshit machine is continuing its policy of spreading lies and insane policy throughout the federal government, in this case at the Grand Canyon.

Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility is publicizing the fact that federal workers at the Grand Canyon are not allowed to state the age of the canyon. Morons appointed by BushCo supporting the right wing Christian agenda also won't allow the canyon bookstore to sell books about geology, while allowing the sale the sale of just one new book, a book stating the Grand Canyon was created in the same flood that Noah got mixed up in. A pamphlet written for Park Service interpretive rangers detailing how to discuss the difference between science and religion was also supressed by BushCo over the past four years.

Now, this is in a U.S. national monument, here, land stewarded by the federal government, and last time I looked our government has a pretty strong policy about separation of church and state.

Apparently that doesn't really matter to BushCo, who, with this action and many, many others like it, is promoting a very false view of reality. I suppose this is because the only people who support Bush and his henchman, besides those who would gleefully dig up the Grand Canyon to mine copper, are fucking gullible morons who believe whatever they're told and who're too subsumed with guilt to distinguish between myths and stories versus reality.

In the TV culture-age marketers tell us that if a lie is hammered home again again and again people will eventually come to believe it and support it. Like the idea that McDonald's serves food, for example, or the idea that sending the best and bravest and brightest folks in the U.S. military to Iraq was somehow necessary.

In a further demonstration of BushCo standard operating tactics, the huge uproar over the bookstore policy and the creationist book being passed off as science, and the supression of actual scientific books, was quelled by an empty promise to "review" the moronic fake-science book about a supposed biblical origin of the Grand Canyon. A Freedom of Information Act request by PEER revealed BushCo standard operating procedure: lie, redirect attention, and keep on doing stupid shit. From the press release of 12/28 published on PEER's website:

In August 2003, Park Superintendent Joe Alston attempted to block the sale at park bookstores of Grand Canyon: A Different View by Tom Vail, a book claiming the Canyon developed on a biblical rather than an evolutionary time scale. NPS Headquarters, however, intervened and overruled Alston. To quiet the resulting furor, NPS Chief of Communications David Barna told reporters and members of Congress that there would be a high-level policy review of the issue.

According to a recent NPS response to a Freedom of Information Act request filed by PEER, no such review was ever requested, let alone conducted or completed.

Pitiful, eh? Don't let's tolerate this kind crap in the government that represents us.

Weakening organic standards

The USDA has an organic advisory board which is being packed with representatives from large industrial agribusiness concerns. The board is in a position to define what the word "organic" means, as far as what practices are observed to eliminate pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, antibiotics, and other chemicals and poisons from the food we eat. Read about the current state of the board here in the article by Megan Tady of the New Standard.

Presumably, this article also functions as a good indicator of the state of the USDA during the Bush regime. In other words, the USDA functions to represents big business rather than to keep food supplies safe, and agriculture renewable and sustainable.

I don't know why it is but since we've had that psychopathic moron Bush in office, there has been this idea stated over and over again that these huge businesses that control so many things can be trusted with our food supply, our economy, our infrastructure. It was bad enough under Clinton, there was NAFTA, and a lot of creepy pro-megabusiness things going on. But now, given the evidence of so much greed and corruption (Haliburton comes to mind- read up on the scandals surrounding its stake in the Iraq boondoggle), it is particularly unwise and devastating to continue to allow foxes to guard our henhouses.

The Organic Consumers Association is grass roots non-profit that works, among other healty, vital things, to keep the meaning of the word organic from changing into something the mega-corporations can throw around in an attempt at short term gain and smashing competition from smaller farms.

If huge corporations had their way, our entire food supply would be nothing but tasteless poison. You can easily taste the difference between vegetables and meat grown in corporate conditions versus those grown in a truly natural setting. Places like McDonalds have to infuse their food with flavor agents to make it even taste like food. Read Fast Food Nation for a chilling, well researched and packed-with evidence report on routine agribusiness practices. I heard the movie was not that good- but the book showed the journalistic talent of the San Francisco Chronicle reporter, Eric Schlosser, who wrote it. I have not spent a dime at McDonald's or the like since, except for the time I saw a movie with a coworker who needed to have coffee and cookies after.

Organic farmers have an eye toward a healthy end product, without the wake of environmental and economic destruction left by mega-agribusiness. Tune in and think. Read up. And think what happens when our food supply consists of frankencrops and animals not even given the dignity due to living things. We parish, that's what. We can't survive eating poison and shit, and that's what the mega-corporations like Con Agra and the like feed us- it's well-documented, and with the money these folks are making (that's right, at the heart of all this nasty stuff is people, not some robot like corporate entity, but people, very very rich people) it is best for them to invest some in changing their ways of doing business so that our one-and-only planet, and our one-and-only community are sustained in a healthy manner.

Viewing a hardon from space

This is classic, apparently, according to this story in UPI, schoolboys painted a giant dick on the roof of the Yarms school in STOCKTON-ON-TEES, England. The penis could be seen from space and made it to the venerable Google Earth.

Hint, if you read the news story: In Britain, "Willy" means "dick."

Apparently, they also burned a big dick into the grass.

Let's hear it for dick from space!! I always knew dicks from space could be seen as important, and I've always sensed Google Earth could be used for something humorous, or at least a venue for the interstellar transmission of some kind of fertility symbol.

Pacifica radio network and digital preservation

Pacifica radio was where I discovered jazz when I was a kid. WPFW in Washington, D.C. did a lot to lift me and my buddies out of the 70's doldrums.

It turns out Pacifica is a lot older than that, having been there during the civil rights movement, the times of the Beat generation and much more. Not only did they broadcast a significant portion of culturally vital events, they also recorded them.

Digital preservation is a way to stay in touch with heritage, the different cultures we all come from, and culture we all, to one degree or another, share. In this article in Raw Story, the story is on how Pacifica is looking to spread the word and collaborate to preserve our heritage, and the voices who have let us all benefit from, and demand a true freedom.

In the library/computer geek world it's called LOCKSS, "lots of copies keep stuff safe." Work is involved, cooperation is involved, and, these days, unfortunately, having courage to stand up against copyright paranoia and culturally repressive trends is also involved. Tune in to a Pacifica radio station today. Delve into heritage, and history, and the voices and ideas that make our country great.

Info can be had about, and donations can be made to, the Pacifica Radio Archive here.