Back From the Grave...
You can't keep a Blog Zombie down!
Well, not for long.
You can't keep a Blog Zombie down!
Well, not for long.
Yep, thanks to the collaborative exchange of info/media/scans between my respective computer gurus Jane Wilde (of Absolute Computing Solutions in Marlboro, VT) and web cartoonist extraordinaire and early founding member of the extended & growing White River Junction/Center for Cartoon Studies cartooning community Cat is now my computer guru, and you have him to thank for today's blog being up and running at last. We've got a lot planned, and will be posting info, links, and opening up the long-overdue Bissette website -- keep your eye out here, and all praise Cat! He's been making web comics since 1996, and he's a demigod in this old-timer's book.
That's a lot of back from the grave, eh?
________________
For those of you starving for Bissette comics work, there's a batch of stuff coming up and out -- but for now, suffice to note that Rick Veitch just sent me the first comp copy of his new King Hell anthology Shiny Beasts, which I previewed for ya
The book is gorgeous, and our collaborative Epic effort "Monkey See" never looked better (26 years out of print!), and there's also Rick and Alan Moore's long out-0f-print Epic collaboration to savor, too (including it's revelatory Bissette cosmic-VD panel) and Rick's afterword with vintage photos of his old hippy self (and Totleben and Bissette, in their younger years). A terrific package, if I may say so myself!
Rick dropped by the house last weekend to pick up the oldest Veitch & Bissette "Creative Burnouts" art in my flat files -- including our first ever collaboration, drawn up on our Kubert School drawing boards in September 1976! -- and Rick is planning an upcoming anthology featuring all our collaborative work. But that's later, folks -- Shiny Beasts is out now.
Shiny Beasts is shipping to comic shops pronto, and I'll post more on this blog once I know it's in stores and online. You might want to hold out, though, for buying the book via PaneltoPanel.net, as Rick, Alan Moore and I are currently signing signature sheets for PaneltoPanel's special promo of Shiny Beasts -- more info on that (and sales link) soon!
_________________
This-here blog has been down the entire week of the White River Indie Film festival, which is too bad -- I had scribed and was planning to post a day-by-day diary of the event, and promote the hell out of it.Alas, bandwidth issues decided otherwise, and WRIF ends this very weekend -- today and tomorrow. My panels and such ended last night (more on that later this week, as time permits).
Still, if you're in the area, as in today and tomorrow,
Best of tonight's offerings, to my mind, is the African film Bamako, which I reviewed
Sunday's program offers an intense lineup of "First Person" documentaries, including a panel on the genre. There's a lot of intensive scrutiny of abuses of power in these films, too: The Forest for the Trees,
Sorry I didn't have this venue available to promote all this past week's wonderful films and events, but c'est la vie. If you can come this weekend, see you there!
_________________________
My ol' pal Mark Martin has been posting some great vintage Mark Martin comics, art and stories on His latest excavation has yielded a complete MM parody of Harvey Comics's venerable bowler-derbied spook Spooky,
Now, tell me that ain't funny. Kudos to you, Mark, and here's hoping for a complete Harvey Comics parody comic from you one day!
Everyone in comics knows about Dan Clowes's Harvey parody in Eightball, but this has been a rich vein of comics satire for ages, and it would be a corker of a book if someone would brave the legal hurdles and put them all together into one fat tome. My old XQB pal and vet Taboo contributor Tom Foxmarnick had cooked up a hilarious satire of Hot Stuff a loooong time ago, which I still fondly remember. Rick Veitch and I once roughed out a Harvey parody of our own (back in 1979) intended for Dr. Wirtham's Comix and Stories which we entitled "Li'l MicroDot," in which our version of Harvey's beloved dot-obsessed li'l girl character was tripping her brains out and finally, in desperation, grabs the phone to call for help, only to space out on -- the little holes in the receiver! As she is mesmerized by this miniature landscape of uniform holes, a clutch of tiny Art Linkletters pop out of them all, screaming "Don't jump, MicroDot! Don't jump out the window!"
Well, it was funny to us in 1979. We never drew it, though, so it remains a layout in one of my sketchbooks, which ain't funny.
____________________
What really ain't funny, and has prompted me at last to turn off the fucking news by yesterday AM, is
Bush and Cheney and their corrupt cabal have manipulated their budgets year after year by keeping the genuine cost of the war(s) off the table, and out of their annual budget -- it's at last caught up with them. Is anyone really falling for Bush's bullshit? Cheney, per usual, is even more reprehensible in his rhetoric; I have never, ever so loathed a public figure in my life. The man is evil incarnate; typical of our times, he was keynote speaker at the Brigham Young University graduation recently. Now, there's religious values for you.
I am so aching for any coverage of this current "showdown" to confront the core issue -- the President and Vice President's false budgeting of this war, by persistently not budgeting for these war, by absolutely refusing to budget for these wars -- for what it truly is: the consequences of this President's ongoing strategic shell game.
These two bastards don't give a flying fuck for our troops -- they created this horrorshow, they have abused the military and military families every step of the way (note this week's Pentagon hearings), they created this current standoff by refusing to responsibly budget for and truly wage the war they claim our very lives depend upon, and they are the lowest slime to ever hold the highest office in our country in US history.
Have a great weekend, one and all --
Labels: Alan Moore, Cat, Cayetano Cat Garza, Jane Wilde, Mark Martin, PaneltoPanel, President Bush, Rick Veitch, Shiny Beasts, WRIF, WRIF movie reviews
posted by SRBissette at
6:58 AM
11 Comments:
good to see you back in the saddle, steve :)
Hi Steve- This is Luke Przybylski, the author of the "spam" email concerning the Global Warming Hoax that you blogged about some time ago. I only now -by Googling my own name ( yep)- came up with your post. I think you misrepresent both my intentions and my views on the issue.
Here goes:
You wrote:
"this link has been spam-emailed to me more than once, most recently from one Luke Przybylski, which claims to link to "a recent BBC production, [which] is constantly dissapearing [sic] from Youtube and Google Video, only to be uploaded once again by concerned members. See it while you can..."
I'mnot sure what you consider "spam" and what you don't. The email addresses I sent the email to are from my own personal email account. My Gmail account automatically saves every address, wether incoming or outgoing, into a 'contacts' list.
The vast majority of the recepients know who I am, as I've communicated with them before via email- this includes you.
"I love the intro to these spammed "science" exposes: "Before we all subscribe wholesale to the secularist rapture theology we've come to know as Global Warming, I think it's important to hear from the dissenters; climatologists and other scientists who were effectively barred from the mainstream (politicized) scientific "community" after their findings diverged from the manufactured consensus presented by the UN."
There is, of course, no 'rapture' whatsoever implicit or explicit in the science of climate change research and investigation."
I wrote that text myself in attempt to express my very real concerns about how we're being sold on the Global Warming story- It seems to me that the entirely assured manner in which prognostications of abject doom and destruction are "talked at us" by the salesmen for this power-grab is entirely similar to that of the worst, most manipulative right-wing christian zealots, who use the fear they manufacture to grab power by other means.(Curiously, both involve the oil and energy regulation...hmm.) Witness Al Gore presenting Global Warming as a "moral" issue, witness the comparisons of "deniers" as similar to the "deniers" of the secularists' crucifiction scenario, the Holocaust.They are framing his as a religious issue, to be viewed as an article of faith, while they control the information, while they present the "consensus" view .
Ultimately, regardless of what you might think, or where you're own biases might lead you, the text of the email was a personal matter of opinion expressed by myself alone for the purposes of starting up discussion by alerting nearly everyone on my email list to a very good documentary on the subject of Global Warming- which, I don't "claim" is a BBC production- It IS a BBC production. It was aired on BBC4.I was alerted to it by friend who lives in the UK and saw it himself.
You continued:
"The affixing of that term to the sentence is in and of itself misleading, with intent: it plays to two sets of prejudices. On the one hand, it's an alert signal to those predisposed to belief, in some measure, to 'the rapture,' and thus suspicious of anything that smacks of secular science. On the other hand, it ridicules science in the eyes of those who do not subscribe to belief in 'the rapture.' Thus, the cynical adoption of the phrase "secularist rapture theology" cuts both ways, a masterstroke of manipulative agitprop of the worse (and most seductive, to many susceptible minds) kind."
Well, I'm glad to know I'm capable of a "Masterstroke". I think I covered my intentions pretty well. There are, to my knoweledge, no recipeints of the email who are ".. predisposed to belief, in some measure, to 'the rapture,' and thus suspicious of anything that smacks of secular science.", except for one, Jim Pinkoski.
I don't attempt to ridicule "Science", I do ridicule what is called "Scientism", a concept which includes describing the practice of using variations of the "scientific methods" in order to achieve pre-determined outcomes, usually politically motivated. It's the "science" of eugenics, population control, racial superiority, etc..
To read more on scientism, I suggest subscribing to Kenneth Smiths' mailing list. I'd be glad to forward you various articles myself.
"First, though, let's frame the subject itself -- Global warming -- with some objectivity.
Clearly, something is going on, and on a global scale.
But the reduction of the legitimate questions associated with "What is going on?" to this false battle -- over which extreme "side" is "right" or "wrong" -- ignores the obvious."
I totally agree. Did you watch the film Ilinked to, are you self-educated when it comes to the claims of the "deniers"?
"Something, globally, is changing with the Earth's climate. What is it? What's causing it? What, if anything, can we do about it? Those are the vital, literally the life-or-death, questions.
Where ever one lives, the evidence is manifest: there were never annual wildfire seasons on the mindboggling scale we see (or experience); the winters have clearly changed in Vermont and New England in a significant, measurable way (this year was the warmest winter ever on record), and the climate changes have already yielded measurable results. It's all around us, here, and if you talk to those who have worked all their lives in the affected arenas, sometimes carrying on generations of tradition it's irrefutable that something fundamental is changing: ski seasons abbreviated to a mere six weeks; maple syrup yields down and maple trees showing limb damage, loss and degeneration; apple orchards blooming too early; etc. These are all having momentous impacts upon our home state: the life cycles, ways of life, traditional livelihoods."
No one in the film claims that climate change is not occuring, the question is why? Do we really have the authority to claim that the type of climate change we're experiencing has "never" been experienced, ever, on this planet? Of course not.
See the film.
"Of course, the 'dissenters' habitually refer to the scientists on "their side" (most of whom are corporate-funded shills)"
-Absolute rubbish. Read the minutes of the recent CFR convocation- these heads of industry describe how to use Global Warming Hysteria to manufacture scarcity ( something they're actively engaged in now) to drive up oil prices . Chevron itself sponsored the scientistic studies that revealed- gasp!- we're running out of oil, for, what else? To manufacture scarcity.
The "pro" GW scientists are, in fact, almost all funded by non-profits and grants that are issued via U.N proxy groups.The provenance of the funding almost always leads back to Rockefeller $, the same dough that bankrolls military industrial complexes, Global Banking schemes, etc.
".. as now besieged and ignored "experts," neglecting to note that "their side" has held sway for decades now, actively undermining any advances the 1970s environmentalist movement gained in the wake of a prior generation's most obscene excesses: Lake Erie rendered toxic, rivers that could be lit on fire, etc. The nay-sayers have had the full weight of the current Bush Administration behind their ongoing campaign to deny any climate change -- or, admitting that, any human culpability in said climate change -- for the past six years."
It's amazing to me how effective they've been at manufacturing these false "them vs. us" choices.
Do you recall the documentaries, the scare-mongering news reports of the 1970s' that claimed the Earth was heading into a "new Ice Age"? - This is the "environmental" movements' team of scientists at work. The scienists you shit on here, are, in fact well respeced climatologists, - an M.I.T professor, Dutch researchers whose works were excised from U.N reports for failing to arrive at the sought-after "consensus"( huh?!) they wanted to present.
"Reality has caught up with them. Hence, they are now besieged and ignored."
No, the last of the corporate and governmental hold-outs have recognized the P.R victory that the G.W body has scored. Who are these heretics besieged by? - CNN, NBC, NYTIMES; corporate-controlled media outlets.
"The wording of this particular piece of spam is telling. The nay-sayers are embracing tactics familiar to those of us invested in the more-than-a-century-old conflict between Darwinism and Biblical literalists. Note the now-current contextualizing, the cloaking, of global warming and the related sciences in the vocabulary of matters of faith."
Yeah, well, it's a conspiracy of one in this case Steve.
"This is accomplished in a heartbeat, almost invisibly to the casual reader, via the inverted logic of the phrasing, "the secularist rapture theology we've come to know as Global Warming" -- it's a cynical adoption of the Creationist/Intelligent Design tactics which deliberately plunges science into the realm of religion."
Secular Humanism is an ideology, it is not the absence of an ideology. Wether or not we agree on the veracity of any science-based claim, by and large, the majority of those who do consider their world-views to be based in science in fact do not have a complte understanding of the research they claim to understand. For these people, the scientific body has replaced the clergy- it's a matter of faith entirely- worse still, it presents itself as unassailable.
"This conceit, born of and insistently refined by the Creationist and Intelligent Design corruption of science (neither is, of course, a 'science' at all), is the most insidious aspect of this spam, denying science as having any validity whatsoever by framing science, as a whole, as a matter of faith; that is, science recontextualized into the arena of religion."
"Science" itself, is a methodology, we should have no "faith" in it beyond this."Science" contextualizes itself as religion when it fails to employ the method objectively, or by framing their findings in langauge designed for certain effects. Anyone who reads research papers on a regular basis realizes that what passes for hard-research today is a pale figment of what it presents itself as.
"Science" is employed today -as it always has been- by governmental and private agencies for the purpose of manipulating the public toward it's desired ends. It's very simple.
-I skip a lot of meaningless blather here-
"In this case, the only human beings who could possibly benefit from an orchestrated denial of the realities of climate change are those who will profit from that denial -- corporate energy providers, corporate polluters, etc. -- and those who still buy into the corporate falsehood of "free market" as having any validity in an economic environment increasingly controlled by multinational corporations who function above the law in every arena."
You ask yourself who benifits from the denial, but you fail to ask yourself who benifits from the approval of the GW theory. Global governmental agenecies- the unelected agents of economic and social control- have everything to gain from this scenario.It goes far above the image of idiot-Bush they're broadcasting into our homes in order to deflect attention away from reality ( this is the image that says- "the mess in Iraq is cuz Bush is an idiot!" Right, right... go to sleep..)
The proposals for 'dealing with' Global Warming involve forced regulation of industry via Global taxation and the selling of "carbon Shares" - wha agency, do you imagine, might enforce these "laws" and regulations? Who will sell the "shares", who will the tax be paid to? Do I even have to say it? Could it be the same agency that's presenting an unnasailable case for the necessity of these measures, the UN?!
"Anyhoot, Tony Millionaire responded to being on Luke's Easter weekend spamming of the link by emailing all receiving the above link and attendant bogus "science"
this link to another online video that competently refutes all the crapola being shoveled about Global Warming by its "opponents," as if one could be "opposed" to climate phenomenon (in reality, simply pretending nothing quantifiable is going on).
The naysayers will continue to refute the evidence of their own eyes, bodies and experiences until they're either dislocated, relocated, drowning, burning to death, starving, or profiteering from the new real estate boom in Wisconsin and the Dakotas."
-Until they experience the RAPTURE, you mean??!
"If that's the current scraping-belly nature of "the debate," fuck it, give me what Drinky Crow's drinking!
Tony, wit that he is, also opened his email reply by saying, "First of all Luke, I'd like to thank you for adding me to the 120 people on your Cc list."
Yep, thanks, Luke! Thanks, Tony! Thanks, Drinky Crow!"
Tony's a friend who couldn't give a shit about any of this stuff.Drunk as I'm sure he was, he at least recognized the email for what it was. I do apoloize for not hiding the list from everyone- it was an honest mistake, as was the bad-link in the first email.
All this said: Have you watched the f-ing documentary yet?
Well, hellooooo, Luke! Good to hear from you, and glad you read the post; sorry I didn't recognize the post as being what you present it as, because (as I noted) I had already received a NUMBER of such emails with links to the BBC broadcast (which, in every case, wasn't at the link given) -- though, yes, yours featured different text in the letter itself. Thanks for clearing that aspect up.
I've seen three recent (2005+) documentaries from overseas, including the BBC4 documentary, concerning the framing of the current global warming phenomenon as not being the result of human habitation. I'm also pretty well-versed (as a layman; I'm a writer/cartoonist, not a scientist) in geological (real geological, as opposed to bogus Intelligent Design/Creationist 'geology') history and the many climate changes this planet has experienced, and the considerable fossil records (including at least four mass extinctions of then-current lifeforms) demonstrating the effects of those climate changes. I know Earth has been through major climate changes before, some cataclysmic in nature, long before the arrival of mankind.
Still, the evidence for our (humanity) playing a major role in the current situation is pretty staggering -- based on my readings, attending lectures, and seeing a great deal of evidence presented in various scientific journals prior to anything Al Gore had to say that I was attuned to. I've stayed an avid reader of scientific journals since my TYRANT days (though I allowed my membership to SVP -- the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology -- to lapse); beyond that, Luke, I'm not sure what you're arguing. We have had NO impact on the planetary environment? Is that your proposition?
Is your current view based on seeing this one BBC4 documentary alone?
If so, sorry, I don't buy it. Our collective impact on the planet is manifest and, logically, must be playing some role in what is happening.
If it's all an agency of predestined global climate change, which we have absolutely no role in save as passive recipients, well, then, bring on the Rapture, my friend, because I can't do a damned thing about either -- but neither is a believable scenario for me.
As a population, mankind has created massive chemical, atmospheric and environmental changes that simply would not have existed without our active role as manufacturers, scientists, military industrial complexes, corporations, consumers, and polluters. To believe we've had NO significant hand in what is going on globally is to deny the population explosion, the manner in which mankind dominates the globe in sheer numbers for the first time in recorded history, the covert and overt scaling back of any preventative or regulatory measures to check corporate raping of the environment for profit, over half-a-century of nuclear weapon testing, the existence of the entire petrochemical industries, plastic, landfills, pollution, etc.
These are all measurable realities, traceable to the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. The rapid escalation of hydrocarbons and most of all the massive amount of exhaust emissions spewed into the atmosphere since Henry Ford's successful bid to supplant every mode of previous human transportation with the car is also quantifiable, measurable and its chronology can be traced quite easily (including the collusion of auto manufacturers and government in the scrapping of viable mass-transit systems in urban and rural areas).
Are you arguing, Luke, based on that one BBC4 documentary, that NONE of this matters? That nothing we, as a species, has done has ANY impact on our ecosystems?
If so, who's being absurd here?
I apologize for mischaracterizing your email -- I did reply, sending you the link to my blog posting, so I don't know why it took a Google search to find it. I did name you, I did credit the source of the email, and I didn't slander you; my error in judgment in misidentifying the email as 'spam' (though one of multiple letters, all with multiple recipients, counts most often as 'spam' in my experience) is what I will apologize for. I never meant any ad hominum attack, per se -- note it was the substance of your text, what you said, that I dissected and discussed.
Above all, it's the dualistic nature of your email letter -- in effect, demonizing Gore and anyone subscribing to "his" theories -- that resonated with the previous clutch of emails of a similar tenor, and led me to assume (unfairly, but at least give me credit for closely reading yours, hence the analysis) this was another of those. For all I know, they may have all been individually scribed, but the tenor and tone is almost identical in each, and every single one chose to ridicule or demonize Gore and his film.
My two cents: You're both right, but Luke is righter.
Yes, mankind can be harmful to the ecosystem. But carbon offset hypocrites do not have the solution, and do not have the overwhelming proof of science backing up their claims.
Their claims have validity, but the importance of what they demonize pales in comparison to larger issues that they have no clue how to address, and no guts to face. Overpopulation being the biggest problem. If there weren't so many dadgum PEOPLE on the planet, there wouldn't be such a huge "carbon footprint", deforestation etc etc. But will anyone dare suggest a mandated limit to the number of children a family can have, and God forbid that economic GROWTH, new housing, new businesses should ever be questioned as anything less than a Holy Grail.
Al Gore should be demonized. I don't see that as a bad thing. If YOU, Steve Bissette, were preaching to the world about Global Warming I'd listen to what you have to say. (I probably would not listen to Tony M) But carbon offset shysters make me want to puke.
This does not mean I totally discount environmental concerns. It just means I totally discount the fuckwads who have set themselves up as moral authorities and The Answer.
And let's not drag Dooky into this! He buys carbon offsets, so his POOs are harmless!
Note I said nothing, NOTHING about 'supporting' carbon offset bullshit, ever. Luke dragged that puppy in the door -- I didn't. Nor did Al Gore.
The buying and selling of pollution 'points' has been part and parcel of the false economy of pollution the corporate and gov't powers that be have instituted. It's got nothing to do with anything I've said, written or supported, so don't put those tainted conceits in my mouth, bwah!
And Dooky's flatulence hasn't anything to do with it, either, any more than the bullshit about dinosaur farts does, did or will ever.
I never said you said anything about carbon offsets. You are wrong about Al Gore though - he does indeed justify his massive throbbing carbon footprint by buying carbon offsets.
Know your enemy, Steve. Or your friend, or whatever Al Gore is to you.
Seriously, I just re-read my comment again.
How did you get the idea I put the carbon offset puppy on YOU? Ya big silly!
Note, oh Mark, I didn't say you said anything.
I wrote: "Note I said nothing, NOTHING about 'supporting' carbon offset bullshit, ever. Luke dragged that puppy in the door -- I didn't. Nor did Al Gore."
I was specifically responding to what Luke wrote: "The proposals for 'dealing with' Global Warming involve forced regulation of industry via Global taxation and the selling of "carbon Shares" - wha agency, do you imagine, might enforce these "laws" and regulations? Who will sell the "shares", who will the tax be paid to? Do I even have to say it? Could it be the same agency that's presenting an unnasailable case for the necessity of these measures, the UN?!"
(So, it's all about the UN? Oh, brrrrr! The UN! Let's demonize the UN!)
And I didn't bring up Al Gore, either, that was in Luke's original email -- uh, letter.
However, I do sure wish Al Gore had won the election he had indeed won instead of FUCKWAD Bush and his War-Profiteering Lying Sack of Shit Vice Prez shanghaiing the whole democracy -- and hey, what is it with Condi (oops, I almost wrote "Cunti", I'm such a potty-mouth) Rice refusing a Congressional subpoena? What the -- ?? If you or I did that, we'd be carted away in handcuffs with the news channels at our doorstep broadcasting the spectacle.
OH YEAH? Well I was talking to Luke too! Ya big moebius strip!
YEah!
-I'll respond to his as soon as I can. I have no interwebs access right now, so I can only sneak a minute at work every now and then- Should be able to get back on for a spell in a day or so.
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