Left I on the News

Two juxtaxposed stories in the News in Brief section of the San Jose Mercury News today make for a nice demonstration of the power of the masses. In the first, "Tens of thousands of President Hugo Chavez's supporters filled the streets Wednesday [see picture, right, taken from Granma] to back his proposed constitutional changes." The changes won't be voted on until Dec. 2, but the fact that the corporate media in the U.S. is even reporting this demonstration is our first illustration of the power of the masses; previous pro-government demonstrations have been routinely ignored.


Our second demonstration is a bit more offbeat. A giant mass of Mauve stinger jellyfish - said to be...a dense pack of about 10 square miles and 35 feet deep (!) - attacked and killed the entire population of Northern Ireland's only salmon farm - 100,000 fish (!). In the words of Lucy Van Pelt in a different context: "These five fingers: individually they're nothing, but when I curl them together like this into a single unit, they form a weapon that is terrible to behold!"

Incidentally, you probably won't be surprised to learn that "until the past decade, the mauve stinger has rarely been spotted so far north in British or Irish waters, and scientists cite this as evidence of global warming." Further illustration of the power of the masses to influence events, unfortunately in a rather undesirable direction.