Hammer Mill Days

It can't be morning yet, right? It's still freaking dark outside. What? Oh, right. My night mask. I'll just pull it off and ... OH MY GOD ... IT'S MORNING! Well, that's my revelation for today. What have you got? Hope you're having a great holiday season, whether or not you celebrate any of the various commemorative feast-days that fall sometime around now. Like Trump in the White House, we've been staked out here at the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill in upstate New York (a.k.a. that farm upstate that every alt band goes to eventually) waiting for someone to tell us it's safe to venture outside without proper shoes. That's right - our shoes are a disgrace, my friends. No bones about it. And when you've got substandard shoes, Spring can't come soon enough. And while we've been cooped up in this drafty old barn, we've tried to busy ourselves with some low-budget Kringle-ing, sending out some old recordings via social media to our gagg...

As you know, this is the week when every news and opinion broadcast, podcast, etc., typically does their year in review. There are, of course, economic reasons for this - they basically run clip shows or pre-taped round tables, which can occasionally be worth watching (Chris Hayes usually does pretty well with these) but are mostly pretty dull and awful. So, inasmuch as this is not, repeat, NOT a news blog or, really, an opinion blog in the traditional sense, I am breaking with this obnoxious practice and running with something I think is more useful .... the century in review. Meaning stuff that happened over the last 100 years, selected at random, and by "stuff" I mean historical and political stories that are, in essence, lost to history, particularly in the United States. One such story is the Iran-Iraq war (1980-88). which I have mentioned previously in the blog over the years. This, in my opinion, is one of those seminal conflicts that set the stage for much that foll...

Hmmm, let me see. Nicely wrapped. Let's see what's inside. Okay ... huh. An empty bubble pack that used to contain a ballpoint pen. Nice. So .... who amongst you could have known that that's something I've always wanted? Oh, hi, everyone. Yeah, it's that time of year again, and Big Green is celebrating the holidays in the usual way. We put on a bunch of cheesy records. We make a little extra rice and mustard greens. And then there's the Secret Santa exchange of gifts, which we do in the traditional way ... one gift at a time, and the recipient tries to guess who the giver is. How exciting. Someone bring me my sodium bicarbonate. This could be a long night! That's not to say that the holidays are any less problematic in our makeshift home than they are in everyone else's. There's a lot to look out for here at the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill - a lot going on beneath that cool, clammy exterior. For instance, if you're stringing the lights on t...

Well, I was half prepared to do a post on General Flynn this week, but with the advent of Trump's apparently unilateral decision to pull U.S. forces out of Syria and the nearly apoplectic response, it seems more appropriate to concentrate on the broader matter of our foreign policy and how it plays out in what passes for our national conversation. I think it's worth saying at the outset that I have no idea of what our military's mission is in Syria. I keep hearing that it's essentially the same as the one we're pursuing in Afghanistan - training and equipping a local force to fight the war for us - but that doesn't exactly inspire confidence. It is, in fact, a formula for another unending deployment, one that has the support of most of the foreign policy voices in the media. Much of the criticism of Trump's abrupt decision has been from a right militarist perspective, though one that is broadly shared, much like the criticism of his Korea policy. The only ...

Seems like old times, Marvin. You know what I'm talking about, right? Well ... then load up some of your old data cassettes. I have that tape backup deck sitting around here somewhere. Or did I use it for an ideas tape ... ? Ah, yes. 'Tis the season for looking back ... something I always look forward to. (Yes, I did just say that.) And this year I'm looking back on what a hack I've been for the last nineteen years. This is the nineteenth anniversary of this humble blog, which first made itself known under the questionable moniker "Notes From Sri Lanka" back in December of 1999. Even to call it a blog was kind of questionable - I wasn't using Wordpress or Blogger at the time, just flat html pages that I would post via Frontpage. What's the difference, right? (Attn: web developers: pretend you didn't hear that.) So we're walking into the twentieth year of this phase of Big Green's existence, and really ... not much has changed since 1999...

Overwhelmed by all the mainstream news coverage of the COP conference in Katowice, Poland? I thought not. It's possible that the international climate negotiations in Poland have been covered in passing by the evening news shows, etc., but I haven't seen a single mention of them on the various talk shows, most notably on MSNBC, which is purported to be the centrist-liberal network. Their constant obsession is the Mueller probe, and while I can understand the temptation to follow such a strongly narrative-driven story, to do so to the exclusion of all other news is craven on the part of any organization that lays claim the mantle of investigative journalism. Probably the best source on what's happening at Katowice is DemocracyNow! - Amy Goodman and her crew have been broadcasting from Poland all week, covering the activities of the American delegation. Yes, there is an official U.S. delegation, even though our lord emperor Trump the first has chosen to withdraw from the w...

It's called snow, Marvin. The white stuff, falling from the sky? That's not hard rain, it's freaking snow. What the hell kind of weather station are you, anyway? Oh, hi. Well ... we're getting into that time of year when larger mammals hibernate. That's not how we roll, of course, but we do get a little more sedentary (if that can be imagined) as the winter months wear on. Fortunately, we have our podcast THIS IS BIG GREEN to keep us hopping this December. Here's what we've packed inside this hollow tree: Ned Trek 38: The Squire of Mara Lagos . Our new installment of Ned Trek is a takeoff on the classic Star Trek episode entitled "The Squire of Gothos" and features me doing really, really poor imitations of both Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin. Perle turns out to be a compulsive gambler this week in a Lost in Space-style plot twist. See what you think ... and feel free to play it back at 125% speed. Put The Phone Down . Matt and I begin our ...