I have a per­son­al inter­est in Tim­buk­tu (see blog for Mar 7, 2006), so I have fol­lowed, as best as I can, the recent events in Mali that affect it. After the fall of Gaddafi’s regime, sev­er­al hun­dred young Tuareg who had been serv­ing as mer­ce­nar­ies in his army have returned to Niger and Mali. Along with them came a large stock of weapons. This re-ignit­ed the low-lev­el civ­il war which had come to an appar­ent­ly sat­is­fac­to­ry peace set­tle­ment in 2009. Dis­at­is­fac­tion with the response to this renew­al of vio­lence seems to have trig­gered a coup d’état by the country’s mil­i­tary against the demo­c­ra­t­i­cal­ly elect­ed gov­ern­ment. As a con­se­quence of the insta­bil­i­ty fol­low­ing the coup, the “Nation­al Move­ment for the Lib­er­a­tion of Aza­wad” (MNLA) quick­ly occu­pied the three largest north­ern towns (Gao, Tim­buk­tu and Kidal) and declared an inde­pen­dent state of Aza­wad, cleav­ing away the thin­ly pop­u­lat­ed north­ern half of Mali. Read more »

The Iron Gates are a nar­row gorge on the Danube, with Ser­bia on one side and Roma­nia on the oth­er. A his­to­ry of this place would fill vol­umes, or shelves of vol­umes, or banks of shelves of volumes.

My favourite store cookies:

Dare Black For­est Whip­pet [Forêt noire] :

President’s Choice Peanut But­ter Choco­late Chunk :

Read more »

This is a blog, not an aca­d­e­m­ic paper, and the con­tent is dri­ven by per­son­al pas­sion. I am very angry about what is hap­pen­ing to my coun­try, and to North Amer­i­can soci­ety as a whole, and this blog will not be tem­per­ate in tone. 

Con­tem­plate the fol­low­ing details very close­ly, because they are what is planned for you. 

You are an employ­ee in a fac­to­ry. You have no union. Any­one who attempts to form one, or even casu­al­ly speaks of the pos­si­bil­i­ty, will be arrest­ed and sent to a con­cen­tra­tion camp. In fact, all sorts of polit­i­cal and reli­gious dis­si­dents are sent to camps, where they are often dis­as­sem­bled for med­ical parts [1]. This sug­gests cau­tion is in order. Any­way, the issue nev­er comes up, for noth­ing along those lines has ever hap­pened in your fac­to­ry, and you have no notion of how work­ers could chal­lenge or influ­ence any­thing. Your employ­er mon­i­tors and con­trols every aspect of your per­son­al life. You have no “pri­vate” life. You are unmar­ried, and will remain so. You live in sex­u­al­ly seg­re­gat­ed bar­racks. There is lit­tle free time to do any­thing about it, any­way, because your work shifts occu­py most of your time awake. If there is a sud­den need for some change in pro­duc­tion, you are roused by supe­ri­ors at four in the morn­ing and sent to the assem­bly line. If you are injured on the job, or expo­sure to pol­lu­tants ren­ders you inca­pable of work­ing, you are sim­ply thrown out with­out com­pen­sa­tion. You earn a pit­tance. The shiny prod­ucts you pro­duce are for export, and you could not afford to buy any of them. Not that you care. All you are con­cerned with is keep­ing this “good” job, which is actu­al­ly one of the cov­et­ed ones. All the oth­er alter­na­tives are worse. Read more »

As time moves for­ward, the mem­o­ry of the Viet­nam War slips away, and is replaced with a car­toon ver­sion. Almost entire­ly for­got­ten, now, after a tidal wave of Con­ser­v­a­tive filth has been unleashed upon the world, is that a major­i­ty of Amer­i­cans came to oppose that war, and were revolt­ed by its futil­i­ty and bar­barism. The wars of recent times have been just as cor­rupt and bru­tal, but jour­nal­ists are now tamed and “embed­ded”, and a gen­er­a­tion raised on infan­tile war fan­tasies does­n’t want to know what’s real. Con­ser­v­a­tive ide­o­log­i­cal hacks are now busy crank­ing out lie-filled revi­sion­ist accounts of the war, and the social con­flict that it brought to Amer­i­cans. These “revi­sions” are the exact equiv­a­lent of Com­mu­nist pro­pa­gan­da. Read more »

Flur­pam­ka, noun

def­i­n­i­tion: the coin­ing and use of a self-ref­er­en­tial noun, with arbi­trar­i­ly cho­sen syl­la­bles, with­out regard to ety­mol­o­gy or usage. Read more »

As of this mid­night, Wikipedia is not avail­able on the Inter­net. This is a protest being made by the peo­ple who admin­is­ter Wikipedia. It will last for 24 hours. Read more »