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The Catalogs of Springtime

t's time for my annual pre-spring hyperdrooling seed catalog mania, which was prompted once again by the arrival of the Redwood City Seed Company catalog yesterday. We'll start out with an item that I would order (two of 'em, as a matter of fact) in a second if I had the acreage to deal with it.
Collection No. 5 - "The Super 102" all the hot peppers: Achari, Aci Sivri, Aji Bolivian Long, Aji Bolivian Marble, Aji Brazilian Bonanza, Aji Brazilian Dedo De Moca, Aji Brazilian Little Red, Aji Exploding Fire, Aji Little Finger, Aji Rojo, Aji Yellow, Anaheim, Ancho Mexican Large, Andra, Api, Asao Fang Tsiao, Assam, Azr, Bangalore Torpedo, Barker, Bengali Small, Bishop's Cap Red, Calcutta Long (PC-2), Caloro, Cayenne French, Cayenne Long Slim, Cherry Large Hot, Chimayo, Cobra, Conquistador, Cubanelle, Cueredo 6K, De Arbol, De Rata, Espanhola, Flame Fountain, Fountain Red, Fresno, Guajillo, Gundu, Habanero Chocolate, Habanero Ecuador Red, Habanero Gold Bullet, Habanero Orange Craig's Double-Hot? 10K, Habanero White Bullet, Hawaiian Sweet Hot, Hungarian Yellow Wax, Indian PC-1, Jalapeno Craig's Triple-Hot? Chipotle, Jalapeno Early, Jalapeno Grande, Craig's Jalapeno M, Japones, Joe E. Parker, Jwala, Kumuthi, Kurnool, Laungi, Malagueta Craig's, Mandi, Manzano Orange, Manzano Red, Manzano Yellow, Mayan Cobanero Love, Merah, Mexican Negro, Mulato, Navajo, Nanded, Nepali Orange, New Delhi Long, New Mexico 6-4L, New Mexico Improved, Numex Big Jim, Patna, Pequin, Portugal Hot, Pueblo, Pungent Red, Punjab Small Hot, Puya, Red Chili, Rio Grande, Round Chilly, Sandia, Santa Fe Grande, Scotch Bonnet Jamaican Red, Scotch Bonnet Red 5-in-1, Scotch Bonnet Yellow, Serrano, Sri Lankan, Suryamukhi Cluster, Sweet Wrinkled Old Man, Tabasco, Tepin, Thai Bangkok Upright, Trupti, Twilight, Yatsufusa, Zimbabwe Bird, and Zimbabwe Large. PRICE $285 postpaid.

The only missing item is the ultra-rare and highly prized Guatemalan Insanity Pepper.

Other interesting items in this year's catalog:
LIMA BEANS - Incan Giant White (Pallares) Twice the size of the largest limas in America, 1" long white seeds, swelling to 2" long when cooked. Vines grow to 5-6 feet. In Peru, beans are cooked until tender, then chilled and seasoned with salt, black pepper, lemon juice vinegar, oil, two chopped onions and two fresh aji peppers cut into strips. Let dish stand covered for 30 minutes before serving to absorb the flavors. PKT. (20 seeds) $2

KALE - Palm Tree or Dinosaur Kale Elegant plant which can grow to six feet and have leaves nearly three feet long, becoming finely crimped and turning from dark green as they grow. The plant looks like a miniature palm tree. When picked young, the leaves can be cooked like spinach and have an excellent flavor. PKT. $2.50


The Redwood City and J. L. Hudson catalogs remain my favorites. I discovered both about 12 years ago and eagerly await them even if I'm not planning to grow anything that year. Another interesting feature they share is that while the print editions have started including pictures, they're both still printed in black and white. Both are also available in their entirety on the web,


 On the Road to Iran

Gary Brecher gives an overview of what will happen when the cabal attempts to invade Iran.

Everybody's asking me what'll happen if we attack Iran. To get a quick preview, just do what this guy in my eighth-grade class did: put a firecracker in your mouth, hold it between your front teeth, and light the fuse.

Your friends won't believe you'll go through with it. So when it blows up in your face, you'll expect them to be impressed. And you'll be surprised, just like this guy in junior high was surprised, when all you get is a perforated eardrum and a reputation as the biggest dumbass in the school.

Right now, Bush is standing there with a lit match and a big firecracker labeled "Iran" in his mouth. Except it's more like an M-80 or a whole stick of dynamite than a firecracker. Nobody believes he'll be dumb enough to light it, to actually attack Iran. Even the Iranians don't believe it; Khameini, their head Mullah, said last week "America is in no position to invade Iran."

He's right about that. Even the US Army brass admits we're "overstretched." We don't even have enough troops to control Iraq; a war with Iran would mean calling up every National Guard unit we have. Even then, it would take years to get them combat-ready.

And this time the Brits won't come with us. They've been making that clear, on the quiet. If we go in, it'll be as a coalition of one.

So Khameini's right; we can't attack Iran. But that doesn't mean we won't. Khameini was making the same mistake everybody's been making: assuming Bush and his cronies have a lick of sense.

The best way of guessing what Bush will do is asking, what's the worst thing he could do to America? Whatever it is, that's what he'll do. I think he's been possessed by bin Laden, because everything he's done has been exactly what Al Quaeda hoped for. Right now, bin Laden is praying to Allah that we'll be stupid enough to attack Iran. That would be the cherry on his halal sundae, the one thing that could actually finish us off as a Superpower.

...

If we attack Iran, that'll make three Muslim countries invaded in three years. We may as well dress our soldiers in white tunics with red crosses on them, like they did in the Middle Ages.

We'd be fighting on three fronts: the conventional war against the Iranian armed forces, guerrilla war in the territories we'd conquered, and worldwide terror attacks by every group that sympathizes with Iran.

The third front, international terror attacks, would be the scariest of all. Because unlike Iraq, Iran actually does have terrorist connections. Very good ones, with some very scary people. Iran is the only country where Shia Islam is the state religion, so Shiites all over think of Iran the way old-time Catholics used to think of Rome. Attacking Iran would drive them insanely angry, not that it takes much to get Shiites in a crazy, suicidal mood.

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 Playing With the Pensioners

Mark Ames discovers how the winds of political expediency have recently ennobled the same Russian pensioners who were denounced as evil communists only a decade ago.

Of all the about-faces in the West's official sympathies, none is more nauseating than their new-found bleeding-heart adoration of Russia's protesting pensioners. Anyone who lived in Russia during the 1990s remembers the West's callous attitude towards Russia's pensioners when they were protesting against that era's Western-backed "liberal" reforms, reforms which not only rendered their pensions worthless or even non-existent, thanks to payment delays that stretched for months or years. It was all done for Russia's own good, in the name of keeping down budget deficits, a key demand of every well-wisher from the IMF and World Bank to Larry Summers, Anders Aslund and the good folks at Goldman Sachs. The Western line then was that for Russia to "move forward" — i.e., for it to become the kind of country Americans could make a buck off of while the locals smiled at them in gratitude — the older generation would have to die off.
And die off they did. By the elektrichka-load. I've read one estimate where up to 7 million Russians, predominately pensioners, went to their graves early in the 1990s thanks to the Western-backed reforms. Not that anyone in the West gave a shit — hell, they wrote the neo-liberal Final Solution themselves, and peddled it in every media outlet they could.

Back in 1996, I published a column about this called "The Good Genocide" for my previous newspaper, Living Here. At the time I was called a "Communist," even by some of my journalism friends, for suggesting that the West's callous attitude towards the pensioners' extermination was equivalent to the Western intelligentsia's dismissive attitude towards the millions of victims of Stalin's reforms in the 1930s, which were considered, at the time, the most progressive policies on planet earth, made inevitable by economics theory and the historical trend; its victims were just unfortunate eggs that had to be cracked in order to cook the glorious omelet of progress. The terminology changed in the 1990s, as did the means of extermination, but the callousness remained the same: pensioners were the kulaks of the 90s, and they had to go in order to achieve true free market paradise.

As Russia continues to age like most Northern nations, newer generations of pensioners are filling the ranks of those killed off by reforms, pensioners with the same pesky budget demands and the same scowling, not-made-for-US-television faces. A generation of elderly wiped out, nothing accomplished for their sacrifice; a new one taking its place: the same ugly mugs with the same Communist flags, victims of the same need for reform, resulting in the same devastation. The dramatic elements in Putin's pensioner protests are an exact repeat of the Yeltsin ones. Only the Western sympathy changed.

Pensioners once formed the backbone of the anti-Western Communist electorate — so they made perfect villainous photo-copy for Western newspapers which wanted to equate Communism with everything old, ugly and recidivistic, a necessary image to help snuff any conscience-pangs over their increasing death rates. The pictures, and the nasty quotes and captions, helped Western liberals say, "...and good riddance!"

Then the pensioners backed United Russia and Putin, which made them essentially objects of mild mockery, so long as the Western financial community was making a handsome profit, which they did until right around the time that Khodorkovsky was arrested.

Now, after Putin took down Yukos and opposed the US in Iraq and Ukraine, the West wants him out. Suddenly the "stability" that the Western financial community praised when they were making a killing in investments like Yukos no longer means "stability for Western capital." So now the catch-phrase to describe Putin is no longer "brought stability," it's "crushing democracy." And everyone acts surprised at how authoritarian he is. Now we're outraged, and by gum, the only thing that will appease Americans is if they can make an honest buck again.

Not that that's anything new. Making a buck in Russia has guided American policy ever since the Cold War thawed and Russia's markets — and assets — appeared to be in reach. In Bob Woodward's book Commanders, he recounts how, in 1988, president-elect George H. W. Bush's first and only question to Mikhail Gorbachev after Reagan introduced them in a private meeting was, "What assurance can you give me that I can pass to American businessmen who want to invest in the Soviet Union that perestroika and glasnost will succeed?"

According to Woodward, then-National Security Advisor Colin Powell was stunned by Bush's question. "It was as if Bush was asking for Gorbachev's assurance that the Soviet Union was safe for American capitalism, or the businesses of large Republican campaign contributors."

Gorbachev was also stunned, but he lightened the mood with an almost painfully obsequious quip: "Not even Jesus Christ knows the answer to that question!" Hardy-har-har, Misha, you're such a nutty Russian jokester!

Reading that now, in hindsight you can tell that Gorbachev had no idea how voraciously greedy and single-mindedly sleazy his American idols were.

Well duh, so there's nothing new about American policy guided by crooked profit. And the pensioners aren't doing anything new either — trying to keep from dying. They're just reviving the same losing battle they fought in the 1990s, only this time, since they're opposing the West's bogeyman, they've found someone big to squirt a few for them — even though they're protesting the very policies that the West convinced Russia to impose a decade ago. And, interestingly enough, despite the fact that Putin's regime is more authoritarian than Yeltsin's, it's also shown itself to be more responsive to public grievance than Yeltsin's. Unlike Yeltsin, Putin seems to be giving in to their demands.

Now the West glorifies one faction of reactionaries — the pensioners — against an "obstructionist" authoritarian figure, in the idiotic hope that it may lead to a revolution in Russia — a liberal orange revolution which would install a pro-West leader who would, of course, slash pensioners' benefits so that the state can allocate enough funds to make Russia safe for American businessmen. In other words, we support the pensioners against Putin so that a friendly pro-Western regime can kill them off, rather than the unfriendly Putin regime. It kind of reminds me of what Terry Jones wrote about Bush's reasoning to invade Iraq: "Mr. Bush says that one of the reasons he wants to kill a lot of Iraqis is because Saddam Hussein has also been killing them. Is there some rivalry here?"

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