Raping the Planet: Strip mining at Fort McMurray. Greenpeace / Colin O'Connor

President Obama will address the nation on Tuesday night, June 15, after a two-day trip to the Gulf, and tell us whose ass he has decided deserves kicking over the oil leak.  BP was told by the Coast Guard to come up with a plan to better deal with the leaking oil.  The deadline was Sunday night.  From the New York Times:

The order came in a letter sent to the company on Friday by Rear Adm. James A. Watson, who is the federal government’s on-scene coordinator for the cleanup effort. The letter, which was released to the media on Saturday, was sent to Doug Suttles, BP’s chief operating officer.

“I am concerned that your current plans do not provide for maximum mobilization of resources to provide the needed collection capacity consistent with the revised flow estimates,” Admiral Watson wrote. “Recognizing the complexity of the challenge, every effort must be expended to speed up the process.”

Below is a link to a very interesting talk  that puts our use of oil in perspective.  This is a  presentation by author Michael Klare on the follies and dangers of our unwavering ursuit of extreme energy. Klare’s latest book is Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet.  Oil is now actually “extreme energy”  and unconventional rather than normal,  because we are now getting it out of shale, from under miles of ocean water,  and from tar sands in Canada, for example.  We have passed peak oil, so oil is no longer readily available except by these extreme measures of extraction that push the very edges of what is possible.  And while they are pushing those edges, some of the very nastiest environmental degradation and pollution is taking place.  As a result, the Gulf of Mexico may have a permanent “dead zone” far bigger than anything imagined in the past.   Is this really what we want to do to our planet for a bit of energy that we will burn tomorrow and then it’s gone forever?

Michael Klare’s entire talk can be heard and downloaded here.  Watch, if you want to see the slides, from here.

Klare also wrote the following which was cross-posted on TomDispatch and Huffpo:

The Relentless Pursuit of Extreme Energy
A New Oil Rush Endangers the Gulf of Mexico and the Planet
By Michael T. Klare

Yes, the oil spewing up from the floor of the Gulf of Mexico in staggering quantities could prove one of the great ecological disasters of human history.  Think of it, though, as just the prelude to the Age of Tough Oil, a time of ever increasing reliance on problematic, hard-to-reach energy sources.  Make no mistake: we’re entering the danger zone.  And brace yourself, the fate of the planet could be at stake.

It may never be possible to pin down [...]

Il Vorticismo – Londra 1912-1915. L’avanguardia inglese antagonista del Futurismo

By Raffaella Picello
De Luca Editori d’Arte, Roma 2010
p. 160

Negli anni che precedettero lo scoppio della prima guerra mondiale i termini ‘ribellione’ e ‘rivoluzione’esercitarono un forte impatto sul panorama artistico europeo. Se, da questo punto di vista, in Italia i futuristi si fecero portabandiera di tale fermento di rivolta, gli artisti inglesi diedero vita a un movimento d’avanguardia, il Vorticismo, i cui presupposti non trovavano alcun termine di confronto nella storia dell’arte britannica. Il termine ‘Vorticismo’, coniato dal poeta americano Ezra Pound e dal pittore Wyndham Lewis, divenne l’imperativo categorico delle ricerche condotte da questi e da numerosi altri artisti presso il Rebel Art Centre di Londra tra il 1913 e il 1915, poi divulgate sulla rivista BLAST.

Nel mantenere una relazione evidente con la avanguardie cubista e futurista, il Vorticismo ne scardina alcuni presupposti annoverando precocemente degli sviluppi controproducenti insiti nel progresso tecnologico.

Attraverso l’opera di Wyndham Lewis, Edward Wadsworth, William Roberts, Jessica Dismorr, Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, il Vorticismo elabora di fatto un inedito linguaggio espressivo, fondato sulla rivoluzione formale introdotta in seguito all’avvento della macchina e destinato, attraverso gli ideali del primitivismo e del rigore geometrico, a segnare una tappa significativa nel cammino verso l’astrazione.

Raffaella Picello è storica dell’arte e si è specializzata in arte contemporanea presso l’Università di Udine. Fra i suoi settori di interesse si segnalano il vorticismo, il futurismo, l’arte inglese e il ruolo delle donne artiste nell’arte europea. Oltre ad aver collaborato a varie riviste del settore, ha curato diverse pubblicazioni e traduzioni, tra cui Schifanoia Cantiere Aperto, Donne e Arte. La conquista di una identità dal Cinquecento al terzo millennio, L’anello mancante. Un’avanguardia d’oltremanica: il Vorticismo, English Through Art.

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