The Kitler trap

I threw another log on the fire and picked up my book on Mao. A few minutes later the doorbell rang. It was Rafa from down the road holding Kitler in his arms.

I found her in front of the fire when I got up this morning. God knows how she got in.

Gracias, Rafa. Cafe?

No, thanks. Wife's sent me on a message

Rafa always insists on speaking English to me because he spends a fortune on classes. I battle back in Spanish and we have a bilinguil conversation, both of us speaking the language were least comfortable with. His wife, Sofia, is pregnant and he's always driving into the city to get things to satisfy her cravings.

Kitler, who hasn't really forgiven me for moving house yet, but who clearly loves living round here, is on a mission to get adopted by Rafa and Sofia. I pretend not to notice and never make a fuss or get angry with her. I don't want to get anything "out of my system" and, like Blair, let her manipulate me into liking her more.

We sat together by the fire for a few hours reading and drinking tea. At least I was. Kitler was mainly licking herself.

Staring at the flames and supping on tea, a strange idea came into my head. 'What if the dark ages aren't on their way at all, but we've been living them for some time already? In which case, maybe what's coming is the new enlightenment.'

I could suddenly see everything clearly: the Climate Change movement is an attempted reformation - to unify then nullify the major religions and bring us slowly towards Gaia, the Green Goddess. And it will take a new enlightenment - an explosion of knowledge, self-awareness and healthy skepticism - to rein it back in.

When I came back from my thoughts, Kitler was gone again. No doubt plodding her way back to Rafa and Sofia's...

'Oh well', I thought, 'I could put a lock on that catflap.'

Solutions # 50: Are you too domestic? A tame human living in a human farm? Living in cosy domestication and eating food from the domestic human supermarket? Your survival instincts will give you the discernment you need. Re-discover them.

Hit me Tony one more time

At the moment I'm reading two books: Mao - The Unknown Story by Jung Chang and John Halliday and Tony Benn's Dairies 2001-2007 for a bit of light relief. From what I've read so far, Mao was a born tyrant with little interest in Marxist ideology. He was on Moscow's payrole in his early twenties and back-stabbed his way to the top of the communist party sacrificing many soldiers and civilians on the way. Stalin recognised early on that Mao was a kindred spirit and rather than immediately awarding him power, watched him from afar as he murdered and connived his way to the top. Proving in the clearest terms that he, Stalin, had been right: Mao was the man to rule Communist China - accounting for the deaths of 38 million people.

The Benn Diaries log his gradual disallusionment with Tony Blair and New Labour, though he was loathe to criticise the cabinet directly as his son Hilary had been appointed a cabinet minister under Blair's Premiership. There's an interesting comment in his entry for Sunday 20 February, 2005:

At 8.30 I went off by car to do the ITV News on the general election. Lance Price was also on, he worked in the BBC and then as number two to Alistair Campbell at Number 10. He said that Blair wanted to be knocked about now, to show how human he was, and if people kicked him, they'd get it out of their system, which is the masochistic theory of electoral preparation.

Well, last week Blair's EU presidential campaign was seen to have been scuppered by Merkel and Sarkozy who, according to the newspapers, are worried that people can't forgive Blair for invading Iraq. A whole host of commentators poured scorn over Blair's chances, while at the same time admitting what an excellent politician he is.

First we have to remember that it won't matter what the people - the citizenry of the EU - think, as the first EU president won't be elected, but chosen by the EU Council. Secondly, they said they wouldn't be discussing the position until later in November. My instinct tells me that maybe we're being played here. Could this be a little bit of Blair catharsis before his presidential appointment is announced?

Does he wants us to hit him now and feel sorry for him later? Is that how it works?

Let's not get pulled into this. Let's retain our focus on the fact that it doesn't matter who the EU president is. For the EU is still an anti-democratic organisation that has obtained - through the Lisbon Treaty- a self-amending stranglehold on European democracies, much the same as Hitler did over Germany with his Enablement Act.

It could be Tony Blair or Tony Soprano. It just don't matter.

Solutions #49: Don't support a political party like you would a football team.

Fire

Woke up at 7.10 am. It was perishing cold. After a few minutes of agonising hesitation tring to squeeze some warmth out of the thin arrangement of blankets, I leapt up and put on my clothes as quickly as I could. Yesterday, we were still enjoying an Indian summer and overnight the temperature had dropped like a bomb. The wind was howling through the trees and buffeting the windows. Kitler was nowhere to be seen.

I lit the kitchen stove - which runs off a gas bottle - and put the coffee on to boil. Ten minutes later, I poured the coffee into a metal camping cup and went out into the garden looking for wood. There were some stacked logs right at the back of the garden. I felt a few drops of rain as I looked for logs the right size for the fireplace - I haven't got round to buying an axe yet. Standing for a moment to finish off my coffee, I could hear wild pigs grunting and snuffling around on the other side of the garden wall.

Sliding the empty coffee cup onto my little finger I managed to carry six resonably sized logs down to the house.

I leant two of the logs against each other on the firebox and then stuffed twigs and paper in the gap beneath them. At first I used recycled printer paper, twisting it up to make sticks, but it didn't burn well and created a lot of smoke which the wind rushing down the chimney forced out into the room. Newspaper burned much better and soon the twigs caught light, which burned long enough for the logs to take. Once the logs got going the room quickly warmed. I read in my Survivors Manual that if you get the fire roaring quickly enough the hot air pushes upwards through the chimney and stops blowback. Got to learn to do that otherwise I'll end up with smoke-damaged lungs.

Or I could just get an electric heater. But no, I'm going primitive.

Solutions # 48: Steer clear of the boar.

They hunt in packs

Animals to emulate #1

The wild boar (Sus scrofa)

Killer Quotes

Humans as disease

"We have grown in number to the point where our presence is perceptibly disabling the planet like a disease. As in human disease there are four possible outcomes: destruction of the invading disease organisms; chronic infection; destruction of the host; or symbiosis - a lasting relationship of mutual benefit to the host and the invader."
From James Lovelock, who is a fellow of the Royal Society and one of the world's leading environmentalists. He is also the originator of Gaia Theory.

Does Sustainable Development mean population reduction?

"The root of our problems with the environment comes from a lack of constraint on the growth of population. There is no single right number of people that we can have has a goal; the number varies with our way of life on the planet and the state of its health. It has varied naturally from a few million when we were hunters and gatherers to a fraction of a billion as simple farmers; but now it has grown to over six billion, which is wholly unsustainable in the present state of Gaia, even if we had the will and ability to cut back."
James Lovelock from his book The Revenge of Gaia

Strange nuances: human herd reduction, women's liberation and sterilisation

"Personally I think we would be wise to aim at a stabilized population of of about half to one billion, and then we'd be free to live in many different ways without harming Gaia. At first this may seem a difficult, unpalatable, even hopeless task, but events of the last century suggest that it might be easier than we think. Thus in prosperous societies, when women are given the chance to develop their potential they choose voluntarily to be less fecund."
James Lovelock from his book The Revenge of Gaia

Does this man have Gaia's ear?

"In the end, as always, Gaia will do the culling and eliminate those that breaks her rules. We have the choice to accept this fate or plan our own destiny within Gaia."
James Lovelock from his book The Revenge of Gaia


Euthanasia?

"The regulation of fecundity is part of population control, but the regulation of the death rate is also important. Here,too, people in affluent societies are choosing voluntarily seemly ways to die. Traditionally, hospitals have for the elderly been places for dying in comparative comfort and painlessness; the hospice movement has served to set standards and make this otherwise unmentionable role of the health systems acceptable. According to Hodkinson,in his book An Outline of Geriatrics, about 25% of the elderly entering hospitals die withing two months. Now that the Earth is imminent danger of a transition to a hot inhospitable state, it seems amoral to strive ostentatiously to extend our personal lifespan beyond its normal biological limit of about 100 years. "
James Lovelock from his book The Revenge of Gaia