The Perfect Storm: Meteorologists at NOAA and elsewhere believe we are now entering a cycle of intensified mega-storms threatening our coasts. There may be an effect from global warming from the greenhouse effect, but there also seems to be an inherent 25-40 year storm cycle in the North Atlantic associated with a periodic rise in ocean temperature. So why are public officials ignoring the threat? Tompaine.com

Mysterious ice rings in Ontario and Quebec are baffling investigators tracking the
appearance of strange circles in ponds and fields across Canada.

Cold, hard facts about the frozen phenomena are scarce, making it too early to tell if the rings are
related to their better-known cousins, the crop circles that continue to turn up in farmers’ fields
worldwide, says a newly released report. National Post

James Fallows’ email exchange/interview with Christopher Hitchens about his recent book Unacknowledged Legislation and his argument that Henry Kissinger should be indicted as a war criminal. Atlantic Monthly

We’ve Still Got a Long Way to Go. The Europe researcher for the Women’s Rights
Division of Human Rights Watch comments in the Moscow Times about the nascent movement against domestic abuse in Russia.

Social ecology “seeks to fundamentally transform society to abolish the
nation-state and capitalism. As such it is integrally embedded in the
tradition of the left, especially the revolutionary libertarian left. Social
ecology calls for a decentralized, libertarian politics based on the
tradition of direct democracy, known as libertarian municipalism. It
proposes a face-to-face democracy that can potentially create an
institutional counterpower to the nation-state and capitalism, and
thereby lead to the creation of an ecological society.” Red Pepper In the ’70’s and ’80’s, particularly in Northern California and the Pacific Northwest, a very similar-sounding bio-regionalist movement called for — and perhaps lived out — the devolution of the state, finding expression in Peter Berg’s Planet Drum (no, not the Mickey Hart project) and poet Gary Snyder’s thinking.

Observer review: Grammars of Creation by George Steiner: “In Grammars of Creation, he puts pressure on us to consider the
various nothingnesses we live with. Not only are our individual
lives haunted by our forthcoming absence, but every work of art –
and art, for Steiner, is at once our grand inquisitor and the best
way life has come up with of justifying itself – is ‘attended by a
two-fold shadow: that of its own possible or preferable
inexistence, and that of its disappearance’.”

Let’s Ditch Dixie  – The case for Northern secession:

‘You hear echoes of Southern nationalism
whenever Mississippi invokes “states’ rights” to justify flying
the Confederate flag over their capitols; or when the GOP’s
honorary Dixie chick Gale Norton mourns the defeat of the
South saying that “we lost too much”; or when John Ashcroft
praises Southern Partisan magazine for helping “set the
record straight” on the War Between the States.

This re-emergence of Confederate pride is merely the
symptom of a much deeper problem: The North and South
can no longer claim to be one nation. If you want proof, just
look at the electoral map from the last presidential election.

(T)he cultural
gap that pits NASCAR fans against PBS viewers continues to
widen. Ted Turner all but confirmed the balkanization of
America when he established a cable network exclusively for
the citizens of Dixie, serving up finger-lickin’ TV fare that
includes Andy Griffith reruns, the best of World
Championship Wrestling, CNN South, and slapstick movies
such as Dumb and Dumber (which, according to the president
of “Turner South,” gets unusually high ratings regionally).

The United States doesn’t have to refight the Civil War to set
matters right. Rather, North and South should simply follow
the example of the Czech Republic and Slovakia: Shake
hands, says it’s been real, and go their separate ways. And if
the South isn’t inclined to leave anytime soon, then we should
show them the door by seceding unilaterally. Because for all
the hue and cry of the South being a conquered people, it is
the North that increasingly finds itself under the dominion of
the Confederacy. ‘ Slate

Bush, in Reversal, Won’t Seek Cut in Emissions of Carbon Dioxide, says his earlier promise was a “mistake.” Trends are clear — he continues to pander to corporate interests, he continues to demonstrate that he doesn’t really understand the positions he takes, and he’s fully able to leave his cabinet officials — in this case EPA chief Christie Whitman — swinging in the breeze. And yet — this boggles the mind, although, by the dictum that a people get the ruler they deserve, it shouldn’t — the illegitimate son’s job approval rating is 60%, similar to that his father and Bill Clinton had early in their presidencies. It probably has something to do with the incredibly bald-faced bribery of his tax cut promises. Heartening, though, that in that poll, half of respondents recognized he’s not really in charge of what’s going on in his administration. And almost half of Americans, and more than three-quarters of African Americans, do not feel he’s their legitimate president. New York Times