Climate Wednesday: Still Occasionally Being Positive

I read two pretty cool stories that are related and made me feel a little hopeful on the environment front because they suggest ways to overcome one of the greatest obstacles to tackling our energy and pollution problems--you know: human obstinacy. The first is a nice overview of how to talk to conservatives about climate issues from Salon. The other is a story of how a red state turned green over at ThinkProgress, basically showing how those arguments work in practice.

For my part, although I can get as worked up over oiled sea birds and dying dolphins as anyone, I can understand how those images are dismissed as maudlin. The same thing goes for diasappearing rainforest acreage--for many people, economics is transactional: exploitation of resources is exchanged for wealth. But it's bad economics--an actual waste of resources that doesn't yield as much wealth as it's throwing away. When you consider the massive economic damage that could be wrought, for example, by Arctic melting (that's $60 Trillion-with-a-"T"), that many people already suspect that Arctic warming is no good,  and that we can actually see that something is going on there, you've got the beginnings of a very practical, not a "hippy-dippy tree-hugging", argument that some changes must be made. Also, it's one thing for denialist politicians to smirk about limited weather events like snow or a lucky handful of temperate days and point to those as signs things must be okay--but when contending with the fall-out of major storm systems that do billions dollars of damage, or when being responsible for city-planning in a coastal region and needing to face up to the idea that significant real estate will simply cease to be usable without scuba gear?  It's just nonsensical to ignore climate issues when the stakes are as high as they are.

And the small-scale economic arguments against doing anything about it ("What about jobs?"  "What about energy prices?") just aren't legit in the long run. Not to mention, that what's money if our reckless resource use is spoiling our water and the land we grow food on? One doesn't eat money. And I think those arguments are easy to make and understand because they don't get into the weeds about the science at all--just enlightened self-interest and good business sense. It's the people who insist on wasteful, dirty energy that have got it wrong.

Climate Tuesday: Remember The Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill?

Well, I can't forget it, and you know what? I'm pretty sure the lawyers of Halliburton will not forget to defend their client by saying they at least had the unmitigated gall to admit after a couple of years that they were probably negligent and maybe destroyed some evidence, paid a freaking pittance and made a donation to a wee fund, like they are responsible corporate citizens just trying to live the only way they know how. Because that kind of shallow shit-show always looks good even if it's nakedly a tap-dance around how they got caught out this time over it being a disaster this time, and if they don't learn this time, well, next time it'll just be a huge disaster again, m'kay?

But don't you go worrying about the lost tourism dollars or the spent fishing industry or any of that. (Or, like, the lost health of clean-up workers or any of those human angles.) Because you know who the real victim is? BP, because everyone ends up picking on them for some reason like their culpability.  The nerve, you know?

It's almost enough to make you stop crying over the eyeless shrimp. Which they caused.

(But since all involved are also involved with the rising oceanic temps because global warming is a real thing, can I still also blame them for the flesh-eating bacteria? Because I will, probably, anyway. )

There Isn't A Penalty for Guys Like Steve King

You know, I am not surprised that Iowa Rep. Steve King is hanging in regarding the jackass comments he made regarding drug mule immigrants with calves like cantaloupes from schlepping as much as 75 lbs of reefer (on foot!) across the desert. This is who he is. This is what he says all the time. He's been a US Representative since 2003 with these very views. He's been a birther. He gets on tv. John Boehner can comment on King's actions, but you know what? He doesn't penalize him by taking away his position on any committees. He doesn't call for a censure.

And Steve King isn't alone. Take Louie Gohmert. He recently went out of his way to compare the civil rights of minorities to that of "snail darters" and other assorted wildlife. This is a guy who rambled on about "terror babies"   He's been a US Representative since 2005. He says crazy shit all the time. Doesn't hurt him any.  If anything, he grows stronger in the Derp side of the Force every day.

People can talk about there being lines you can't cross in our political discourse, and maybe to an extent, they might try and classify racism as being a certain line--but that line isn't in the same place in every region of the country. And these guys kind of show that even if there is a line you don't cross--as such, it can be politically profitable (to them, anyway) to come up to that line, sometimes, and just kick the bejesus out of it.

And I tend to believe that the kind of person who would return a Steve King or a Louie Gohmert to Congress for term after term? Probably is not susceptible to shame over their shenanigans either. I have wondered if these folks are like villagers who just send their idiot to Washington so that they can have a vacation from him, but no. I think they are more like people who have mistakenly become pursuaded that political contests are not about establishing who is a more competent office-holder, but a bid for who might be a more attention-getting mascot.

This is sad, and I am not sure what the corrective would be.

(X-posted at Rumproast.)

Know Your Class War: Four out of Five Americans

Four out of five Americans will experience some kind of financial difficulty, from unemployment to relying on government assistance, at some time in their lives. That seems like an amazingly general experience--but because for many people, this is a transient experience (a visit to "broke", as opposed to a prolonged stay), I think people are able to convince themselves that they haven't, you know, been poor. Not like, you know. Them. The Poor. As in: "The poor are always with us"?

Truth be told, it's more like: "The possibility of being poor is always with you, and me." At the ThinkProgress link, blogger Bryce Covert breaks down some of the ways the US is failing to address poverty--part of a painful trend of so-called "fiscal conservatism" has basically shaken down to an almost personal viciousness towards people experiencing need. But that is four out of five of us. This isn't a country composed of 80% lazy bastards. This is a country of increasing income inequality, where people can work (longer and harder than some of the 1%-ers)  and are still too poor to afford rent, to keep the lights on, or even feed themselves.

That's why when I hear that smug fake-Christian sentiment springing from mouths like Michele Bachmann's, for example, saying "If anyone will not work, neither shall he eat", I wonder if that person saying it ever considered whether "will not work" ever meant "will not work for a wage too low to feed themselves or their family". (But since she, like several other Republicans, has espoused the idea that there should be no minimum wage--no. Leaving possibility that some will work, and neither shall they eat, either.) And when I see that people who endorse such specifically insulting policies like drug-testing people who go on assistance get some support from people who are in that four out of five group--it strikes me that part of the on-going class war isn't just the elites shafting the broke. It's a war between people who know what limited resources are and have been conditioned to battle each other over the scraps. Which is why think tanks and major newspaper opinion pages are full of people who can, without flinching, suggest that, say, a political party might hold up a vote on unemployment benefits to gain a concession on taking money out of pensioners' pockets.

On some level, for the well-sinecured hams that dribble internecine class war gravy wherever they opine, suggesting that providing food programs for poor kids and giving some families health care too, only takes tax money! Away! From the job-creators! Must really be done, just a little bit, for sport. To raise up our fears that next time, maybe that "rich government entitlement" someone else gets, will take something from us.

It's a bum fight. Where 80% of us are bums. (And the honest truth is, no, it shouldn't be the government who provides for all our asses at all, at all. Why has this conversation so often excluded the very folks that should be, allegedly, creating the jobs and paying the people who fill them enough to live?)  We should be clever enough to realize it, proud enough to resent it, pissed enough to sort out how to end it.

Doesn't Seem Housebroken

I suppose that's a bit of a crude way to describe my general impression of former US Rep. Anthony Weiner's recent admissions, but I think it's safe to say, there could definitely be cruder ways to put it. As of his resignation from the House two years ago, I was pretty well done with interest in his political career, and haven't put a lot of stock in his "comeback" to run for mayor of NYC. In the first place, his original problem struck me as being a kind of gross immaturity, and if he hadn't already gotten an idea of the loaded game he was playing with his public image the first time around, well, two years isn't a lot of time for growing up and figuring out What Not to Do.  It looks like a bad case of what we'd call "boundary issues"-and learning where the acceptable boundaries are and how to respect them is best learned as a pup.

But also, with the recent revelations of alter ego "Carlos Danger", I think I'm getting the picture (just as an educated guess) that skirting the boundaries and testing reactions is a part of the thrill of the kind of transgressive play that Weiner likes. To use the "housebroken" analogy--you can't really scold someone for making a mess of things if they thrive on the scolding, or you'll just see more messes.

Now, that doesn't mean he can't be a brilliant guy or a good politician in other ways, and if he had a cause that wasn't ultimately self-serving, and wanted to throw himself into it, I'd be like--"Go! Do that thing!" But running for an office like mayor of New York and having one of these "wife awkwardly supportive at his side" press dealios as he weathers yet another self-set sex-themed media time-bomb? No, I think he's burning up the oxygen in the race and needs to take his going-up-in-flames-ass outside, now.

Does that sound prudish of me? Well, I think the problem is, he hasn't been respectful of some of the women he's been all up in the sextmoshine with before, and all speculation about how his wife feels about this aside, she is a professional politico too, and this isn't really a big help for her, either.  It isn't just a thing he does without consequences and respecting other people's consent. I could care less what he was into--if he could balance it with his public life intelligently. That sure isn't what it looks like. And it hurts his political allies.

He should probably get out of the race, is all. Maybe he can throw his support to someone else, be a  consigliere to a candidate he believes in, but just...not ...be the candidate himself. Nothing personal.

(Everything personal.)

Climate Monday: Twilight of the Clods?

I know that I usually focus on the "bad news" aspect of climate change, but I think I want to be positive for a change. There's still plenty of bad news to go around, but in terms of acceptance of the science, public awareness, and vindication of it against the denialists, I think there have been some good signs that maybe humanity can grasp a clue before we are thoroughly sunk. Kind of. I guess. For a degree of "clue" that means "knocking off our shit" and "before we're thoroughly sunk" meaning "adapting to a changing environment without pretending nothing has changed/is changing". The most meaningful thing, then, that I think can happen is what I'll term "The Twilight of the Clods"--the era when denialism ceases to be even marginally persuasive to any but deliberate and obvious hacks and fringe personalities.

I think we might be getting there--for one thing, climatologist Michael Mann has been vindicated, once again, this time in a court of law.  For anyone who has followed this saga, Mann has been regularly slurred as being a fraud by denialists, even though his hockey stick graph has been virtually reproduced by other researchers looking at the data and investigations into his own work have repeatedly absolved him of any charges. It isn't enough that he has been proven right--it is meaningful that those who have tried to discredit him and his work with ad hominem attacks to skew the perception of his work, be exposed for the hacks they are.  This should go some way to those attacks no longer being repeated. (Not that bullshit can't reverberate in wingnuttia for a long time, but it would be nice to see some skullduggerous fingers well and truly slapped, and the slurs appearing in WND and not so much WSJ, you know?)

For another thing, denialists aren't really holding their own end up, what with their own end being made of sloppy bullshit, and all. I really had to link to this article as a nice account of open dialog leading to factual and earnest debunking. I'm pretty much for public spankings of contrarians when they have determined that their sense of style holds sway over facts in their presentation of information. (I feel a bit bad that I hadn't followed Matt Ridley as a science writer more--I actually have enjoyed some of his books regarding genetics, but oh well.)

Which leads me to this interesting plea from a Republican senator regarding "tolerance":

Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) said Thursday that people should be more open minded to differing opinions on climate change.

“At the very least, I think it’s time for some tolerance in the public discourse regarding the many scientific viewpoints on climate change. Respect should be shown to those who have done the research and come to a different conclusion,” Wicker said during a Senate Environment and Public Works Committee hearing on climate science.

I find this interesting because, if anything, I've thought the media at least, showed an awful lot of "tolerance" regarding denialism, to the point of false equivalence.  If that "tolerance" is fading, it probably has a lot to do with a reservation of respect only to those who have done research that comes to a different conclusion--"Nuh-UNH!" not being a valid opposing hypothesis, and all. But I have found that denialists' version of "intolerance" seems to merely rest in having a differing view and defending it. Sen. Wicker doesn't seem to realize he's already being afforded a heaping helping of "tolerance" and the rest has to be earned. If he feels like denialists are losing...

Oh. Well.

Politico Doesn't Think Marco Rubio Has the Stuff, and Neither Do I

Immigration was supposed to be FL Sen. Marco Rubio's "thing". But it looks kind of like it isn't something he wants to be his "thing" anymore, because the GOP at large would prefer immigration reform actually not be anyone's "thing".  Here's the problem: if Marco Rubio has thoughts about running for president in 2016, he probably needs a stand-out issue, and immigration looked like a good choice because it might make sense to not only do an issue that has some heft, but it counts as a possible "win", presumably, with the Hispanic demographic and helps sell the GOP as a more diverse party. It could have been "wins" all around, but somehow, there's a conservitive contingent of no small size that would rather listen to, say, a Tom Tancredo, than a Marco Rubio. Which leaves him a kind of sad set of options--

Of which, brushing up his Tea Party bona fides is probably the one that feels most natural to Rubio, who was one of the 22 Senators who voted against VAWA and who has a 20 week gestation abortion ban in the hopper. As if a little misogyny will win him points with the Teahadists?

Meh. I don't want to say it was all over when he reached in a carpet-tongued panic for a very little bottle of water, but he's not really coming across as Mr. "Courage of his Convictions" but more like, Mr. "Pandering Misogynist".

All I'm saying is: the secret of being a candidate for president might be not wanting it enough to act like it's the thing you're thinking about. He doesn't seem to be cool enough to pull that off.

Michele Bachmann is Interested in Spanking, Magic Wands

Wow. Feeling that neglected, are we?

I'm not sure what she's talking about when she says that Obama gave undocumented Latin@s under 30 the right to vote, but I'm pretty sure she doesn't know what she's talking about either. You know, even if she isn't going to continue to be in Congress, maybe they could keep her around as a mascot or something? Because she certainly represents why Congress is so unpopular right now. She doesn't bother to even know what's going on, but speaks very emphatically about it. All the while giving reasons for being useless as hell.

I think the nugget of wingnut truth buried in there is "We can't pass immigration reform because the bigots will blame us and the new voters won't love us." Otherwise, that was some vintage Bachmann whine, no?

They'll Say My Foot Was in the Right Place, I Hope

This is a clip from an interview with Juror B37 from the Zimmerman trial who was given a pretty soft interview by Anderson Cooper. She has a book deal lined up to discuss a variety of things, like, I guess, how she made up her mind before the trial, and how she thinks that peaceful demonstrations that actually got a trial to come about were "riots", how this trial was certainly not about race (Heavens!)and a whole lot of other odd foolishnesscompelling details.

In America, one can sometimes be assured of getting a jury of one's peers.

I think it's interesting that she referred to the defendant in the trial as "George" throughout the interview and that she wholly believed the testimony of a man who did not testify. I will look forward to seeing her story on the remainders table at the 99Cent Store.

Climate Monday: Louis C.K. Animated--If God Came Back

This is brilliant, especially when you stop and think that there seems to be a link between the denialists and the theocrats:




Via Huffington Post.

You Could Say They Found Someone Guilty. Just Not Zimmerman.

I know there are people who believed that George Zimmerman would be acquitted all along, or just never let themselves hope that a jury might, in the end, find the slaying of a 17 year old boy a criminally objectionable act, but I did hope. Not that it's good for much. To me, they had it from Zimmerman's own mouth that he wanted to stop one of those "assholes" from getting away. He told the 911 dispatch that he was following this kid. The police were on their way. They didn't need Zimmerman to be on this kid, but he was. He got out of the car, and as for the events that transpired between then and the shot, the only word we really have is Zimmerman's.

Because the other person who was at the scene from start to finish is dead, and can't speak for himself.

So what did the jury believe? I know the media is bound to coax statements from them and get some kind of answer about "reasonable doubt", but I can't help but feel like the real answer is something they would, not one of them, say aloud:

Trayvon Martin was guilty.  In their eyes, George Zimmerman had to be acting in self-defense, because, really--look! Just look!

And that pisses me off, because Martin never should have been on trial. This never should have been about his right to be on the street, or to wear a hoodie, or to be black, or to breathe. It should have been about whether the defendant knowingly drew a gun on that victim with the intent to kill him. And for the life of me, I don't see anything reasonable about doubting that that was what the gun was for.

I was livid the other day when FOX News personality, Geraldo Rivera, stated that the ladies of the jury would, had they been armed, killed Trayvon Martin even sooner than Zimmerman had. Who was he to say that? What sense did that even make? Wouldn't I, a middle-aged white lady myself, have not even gotten out of the car? Wouldn't I have seen he was young enough to be my own son, and just hope he got himself home to the people waiting there for him?  And now Geraldo is at least half-right about how that jury would have looked at a young black man. And I am just sad. Sad for the family who never got their young man back home. Sad for the jury who sat in judgement, not over the killer, but the slain.

I'm sad for the prosecution, who have nothing to congratulate themselves over, because between all us on the internet? I think they half-assed it. I'm sad for the defense team of George Zimmerman, because they will live with themselves and I don't even get that. Except Don West. He looks like he can. I hope that's an act.

I'm sad even for George Zimmerman and his lying wife and the gun-loving closet racists that will fete him for the near future. Because they just got all their wrongness justified and why start seeing where this was a miscarriage of justice now?

But I am crying for Trayvon, because that young man is in his grave, and this trial spat on it. He was someone, and who and what he would become we will not ever know. Because Zimmerman only saw a "fucking punk". And then six people who sat through this trial and wanted to get on home to their families--agreed.

Climate Sunday: Petrochemicals are Volatile You know.

For one thing, a pipeline spill occurred this week on a Crow reservation in Montana. No word if Black Eagle has anything to say about it. But 25K gallons of petroleum probably is cause for concern--it runs like a liquid to wherever there is water. They say it won't pollute water, but claim they don't know if underground aquifers are affected. I know what I would suspect.  

Gasoline is highly toxic. Unlike oil, it can evaporate, making the cleanup on the reservation potentially more straightforward as long as no water bodies are tainted by the fuel. 

"That's not saying it won't have an effect on the environment, but it's not like oil which seeps into the ground and sticks around," said Damon Hill, a spokesman for the U.S. Department of Transportation's Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration. 

However, if water is involved, gasoline can be more damaging than oil, because it seeps through the ground more quickly and mixes in with water, making it harder to remove, said Carl Weimer executive director of the Pipeline Safety Trust, an advocacy group based in Washington state.

Here's another recent disaster:

In Lac-Megantic, Quebec, a train derailment involving petrol carrying cars.

I Know This is Days Late--But I'm Still Wondering About the Morales Plane Deal

Okay, I have a bias that I have very little fear of admitting because I am not often proved entirely wrong--I refrain from thinking in conspiratorial terms because perfidy requires competence above and beyond most job specs, and it's easier to assume that when things look hinky, it's because someone was having a bad brain day, or week, or month. There's just no underestimating human intelligence. So when something just looks damn stupid to me, my first instinct is that it must be following the SNAFU principle.  Step one of the test is identifying who has the presumptive upper hand and who is being stupid. If they are one and the same, congratulations--this is a normal situation of up-fuckedness. So, when a bunch of "Old Europe" (as intended by Donald Rumsfeld, not Marija Gimbutas) countries (Spain, Portugal, France, and Italy, I think, were all of them) decided that the plane carrying Bolivian President Evo Morales probably shouldn't land in any of those countries, but should probably land where it did--Austria? It just looked to me like an authoritarian allergic reaction to comments made by Morales earlier about just maybe thinking of offering asylum to Edward Snowden puffed out into his actually being presumed guilty. Initially embarassing, not overtly hinky.

But mulling over the Die Presse assertion that the claim that Snowden was on Morales' plane actually came from a US official, Amb. to Austria William Eacho, raised a bit of a flag in my head. Is there any reason at all that someone connected to the State Dept would have valid reason to believe Snowden was on that plane? Even if I thought life did sometimes work like a LeCarre thriller, the answer is, "No". Simply, Sheremetyevo is probably staked out to the max and movement from there to the airport Morales left from would probably have to be confirmed before someone would have the brass to assume that Snowden was being transported in the ultimate of Diplomatic Attache cases--a plane carrying a head of state.

To me, this is weird, because of the number of countries involved and that a name of a US official was floated as being the source of the rumor (or rather, since more than a rumor should have been needed--are we saying a firm lead? What should that have been--Interpol? Because like I suspected, Snowden is letting other countries' laundry hang out). But there doesn't look to be any major attempt at corroboration of the one link to the US floating that rumor we have (I suck and am no journalist, I checked Eacho's Twitter profile and Googled him, but mentions of l'affaire Snowden are scarce). And it still seems to me like it would be hella stupid for the US to initiate that kind of pressure--

For one thing, so heavy-handed. It looks totes authoritarian, which we should be trying to avoid right now, you think? Because if the US wanted to not call attention to what Snowden was putting out, "Hey, look over here, we're trying to catch Snowden a lot!" especially after Obama pointed out we wouldn't be scrambling jets after the guy looks a little klutz-fingered.

Also, if you think in terms of whether any action has an equal and opposite reaction (that's just science, peeps), doesn't it seems like doing stop and frisk on a Latin American head of state might just engender the handful of asylum offers that have occurred with Venezuala, Nicaragua, and now Bolivia? You know, to anyone who has ever watched a tv sitcom since the dawn of tv and has heard of the term "reverse psychology? Where something like Snowden's asylum has been almost embarrassingly discouraged and now it seems like the hip y tu mama tambien thing to do?

I dunno. I don't know why folks do what they do. It just bugs me.

All Politics is a Personal Problem

It seems to me like I've probably not blogged enough of late about many things (I am having some news fatigue, and I haven't even touched the DOMA decision yet-WTF, me?) but definitely, the recent flurry of assaults on reproductive freedom is a thing I've been sadly neglecting. And you know what? I'm going to blame that lug in the picture. The bearded fellow who "regrets his abortion."

Dude with the "I regret my abortion" sign, I am trying to understand you. I really am. But I can't help but be very well aware that you did not physically have an abortion, yourself. Usually, your gender of reproduction concern troll carries a sign that says "I regret my lost fatherhood" or some more biologically possible flavored  nonsense. But even if you regretted your "lost fatherhood", I think you have a bad case of point-missing in this debate, and I want to try and fill you in.

My experience with male genitalia over the past 25 years has led me to the conclusion that y'all orgasm pretty quick compared to my gender. My vicarious experience of motherhood from all my female relatives, friends, and acquaintances who have experienced reproduction firsthand, is that this experience is long and deep and changes a person. If you, guy with an "I regret my abortion" sign, happened to have an orgasm, your partner did not owe you nine months of pregnancy and possibly several hours labor (maybe even an episiotomy) to bear that child, and a lifetime thereafter of motherhood, so that you could have some fond memories of playing catch.

Freedom isn't yadda, yadda, yadda....*

The above is from Egypt, where the military served a fairly unpopular president, Mohammed Morsi, with a colossal pink slip for just not doing it for them. I don't know an awful lot about Egyptian politics, but that's all right--that feeling is probably going around, because it looks an awful lot to me like Egyptian politics is getting invented. And even though they aren't by any means in for clear sailing now that they have rid themselves of another burdensome leader in what must seem like a hot minute, I can't help but feel something like awe when I see the massive protests there, or the demonstrations happening in Turkey, and consider that   humankind is always in a state of revolution, somewhere on this planet. We hope, we dream, we imagine better things--and once in a while, we even work together to do them.

It being the tag-end of July 4th as I write, I think that sometimes, USA-ians like myself do think of freedom, democracy, progress, like it was, you know. Our thing. But I think the main ideal that our founders stood for was that striving for democracy, for self-governance, for responsive and responsible government, should be everyone's thing. So when I see those fireworks there, it makes me kvell a little for them, even while my neighbors are setting off their Independence Day displays.  Freedom should be everyone's thing.

At the same time, though, I can't help but think it means something more when self-determination does mean just that. There are limits to the degree of support that the US can provide to those who seek it, without actually kind of getting in their way. It's why I despised the argument that we should have anything to do with provoking regime change in Iraq, why I was dubious that our assistance in Libya would do us any favors, why I am damn glad the US kept it's nose out of Iran's Green Revolution, and support us not really breathing down Egypt's neck with offers of too much help. It's why I deplore the potential for our over-involvement in Syria, all hints of proxy war aside.

Maybe we could be Lafayette. But we can't do more, because that just isn't helping. Freedom is a double-edged sword, and taking on the cause of another's freedom is noble, but fraught with sharp bits.


(Yes, I know. I "yadda, yadda, yadda'd" freedom. I have so little decorum, it's not even funny.)

He's A Lonely Boy, He Ain't Got A Home

It's hard for me to settle on a way to write about Edward Snowden's predicament, because there is a grudging part of me that wants to commend him for being a "doer". He saw something that pissed him off about the government of the country in which he lived and he by gawd did something about it. In a country where any number of lax-asses can't be bothered to read a newspaper or vote, he should be awarded with many, many "give a shit" points. I kind of want to sympathize with the situation he's in--a stateless wanderer who can't go home again without paying a high price for his act of conscience. In a world where things were really fair, wouldn't good intentions count for something? But at the same time, I can't help but question what he's done and what his plans and motivations were just because of all the unintended consequences that he doesn't seem to have anticipated.  It's one thing to believe in openness and want to defend the privacy of individuals against an omnipresent surveillance state--especially when such a paradigm may have no urgent purpose and be too ripe for exploitation by a corrupt government. It's another thing to all on one's lonesome determine that now is as good a time as any to let it all hang out, and then trot the globe hoping blowback is a thing that only happens to nations--not, you know, "doers".

Which is why the "terminal" plight of one airport bound whistleblower (or is it, hornblower?) opens up another meditation on exactly what his long game will have to be, because one can not live in an airport. But it has become clear that the promise of a berth with Ecuador  is essentially evaporating (and the relationship between Ecuador and Julian Assange of Wikileaks is possibly a little strained, by now, too)--long story short: Ecuador isn't running a hotel for wayward truthtellers.  And the possibility of asylum with Russia is not without strings:

Putin, who hosted a summit of gas-exporting nations in Moscow that included leaders from Venezuela, Bolivia and Iran, said he doesn't know if any of those attending could offer Snowden shelter. 

"If he wants to go somewhere and there are those who would take him, he is welcome to do that," Putin said. "If he wants to stay here, there is one condition: he must stop his activities aimed at inflicting damage to our American partners, no matter how strange it may sound on my lips." 

Putin added that Snowden doesn't want to stop his efforts to reveal information about the U.S. surveillance program. 

"Just because he feels that he is a human rights defender, rights activist, he doesn't seem to have an intention to stop such work," Putin said.

And this is not without reason. While Snowden may have access to intelligence that is at least somewhat useful, and there may be some countries who don't entirely mind giving the US a "black eye", he's still kind of a diplomatic nightmare and a weird walking irony, since most of the nations on his asylum application list aren't exactly champions of the repressed, themselves. Because he has become so high-profile, countries that might consider hosting him are well warned-off. (And no, they don't need direct pressure from the US to know this.)

However, I've given some thought to whether his notoriety isn't in his favor in the one place that would love to have him--the US. I doubt he would be given the same treatment as Bradley Manning, let alone be "droned to death"--specifically because the whole world would be watching. It seems to me that the conditions that Edward Snowden's father indicated as being favorable to his son's return would be honored because of this. And should he return to the US to face sentencing and a trial, the actual questions of what he has uncovered can be properly publically debated, with less emphasis on "Where's Edward?" and "What will he do next?"

Provided, of course, that this a thing still within his means to do.  Which, though my glib blog title may have you think otherwise, is the thing that makes me fear for him. There are many forms of alienation--but being rootless because one has cut oneself off from one's roots is a terrible renunciation. More terrible if it was made for one.