(redux - from Latin: returning (as from war or exile), brought back or resurgent)

The buzzword "stress" has become passé.

It could be replaced by "pressure."

To be considerate to someone who is wondering whether to do something, a common expression is "no pressure"— implying that life has enough pressures already.

That the Boston Marathon bombs were reportedly made with "pressure cookers" proves an apt symbol of the times.

Recent earthquakes in China and Iran, with loss of lives, attest to that.

Add the Texas fertilizer plant explosion and the post-election violent shenanigans from the opposition in Venezuela (both causing loss of lives), and, to paraphrase that Chinese saying: we live in explosive times.

The drone bombings and killings in Pakistan, Yemen, and Afghanistan¹ are explosive, too, but much of the American populace is Hollywood-blow-some-shit-up-so-they-get-their-money's-worth numb to the lethalness spilling from the blood-on-their-remote-tech-hands of the military-industrial-complex.

If one can believe the hospital-bed confession: "The injured suspect in the Boston Marathon bombings has told interrogators that he and his brother were driven by hard-line Islamist views and anger over the U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq but had no ties to foreign militant groups, U.S. officials said Tuesday."²

If so, the logical solution would be an outcry from the public and the government to get the hell out of Iraq and Afghanistan— so as to help prevent more "blowback," a term coined by the CIA and the title of a book, Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire, by author and professor, Chalmers Johnson, who "served in the Korean War, and was a consultant for the CIA from 1967 to 1973."³

But all is quiet on the western corporate-media front. (Notice, however, the feeling of subtle relief upon reading that there are, supposedly, "no ties to foreign militant groups." Yet, the Iraqi and Afghani Peoples suffer daily because of foreign militant groups that have invaded their countries.)

Aside from violent blowback the U.S. Empire citizens may also have to deal with surveillance blowback, if the on-camera posturing of the NYC Mayor is any indication of the way things will go post-Boston-Marathon bombing:

"Mayor Michael Bloomberg said Monday the country's interpretation of the Constitution will 'have to change' to allow for greater security to stave off future attacks. 'The people who are worried about privacy have a legitimate worry,' Mr. Bloomberg said during a press conference in Midtown. 'But we live in a complex world where you're going to have to have a level of security greater than you did back in the olden days, if you will. And our laws and our interpretation of the Constitution, I think, have to change...We have to understand that in the world going forward, we're going to have more cameras and that kind of stuff. That's good in some sense, but it's different from what we are used to,' Bloomberg said."⁴

On the one hand, it's a rational solution to want more, but how much can the surveillance cameras really do when, for the most part, they only catch a picture of criminals/terrorists, not initially stop them? How far are we willing to go with searches and screenings? Even if far, could they prevent everything from ever happening?

More than eleven years since the 9-11 attacks on the World Trade Center and does anyone take responsibility for the fact that all the latest tech surveillance and data-mining couldn't prevent the Boston Marathon bombings, but it's just that "we're going to have more cameras and that kind of stuff"?

One cannot discount the possibility of a preexisting military-surveillance state agenda, à la Naomi Klein's book, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism.

Nor can one neglect to mention that "that kind of stuff" includes homegrown drones:
"New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg has indicated that the appearance of drones over the city's skyline is all but inevitable."⁵ And, "New York City's three Republican mayoral candidates endorsed the use of surveillance drones in New York City, The New York Post reports."⁶

As to the "level of security in the olden days," one might want to run that statement by the Native Peoples. Oh, and by the way, the formulaic, across the country night-raid crackdowns on the occupy movement encampments, the NYPD stop-and-frisk policy (see Floyd v. NYC) and spying on Muslims are all Constitutionally questionable.

Another concern is the massive surveillance budget at the expense of social services, aging infrastructure, and rampant poverty on Indian reservations, in minority neighborhoods, plus seeping into mainstream suburbia and wealthier areas. Will society become like some dystopian sci-fi scenario, where all is 'perfectly safe,' yet masses of people wander around hungry and homeless? Wait, that's sorta happening already.

At a marathon, covering more than twenty-six miles, is it even possible to surveillance and screen every single person?

Rather than try to answer that question, I offer the beginning lines from Narrow Road to the Interior by Matsuo Bashô, this version translated by Sam Hamill: "The moon and sun are eternal travelers. Even the years wander on. A lifetime adrift in a boat, or in old age leading a tired horse into the years, every day is a journey, and the journey itself is home. From the earliest times there have always been some who perished along the road. Still I have always been drawn by windblown clouds into dreams of a lifetime wandering."

Syria and North Korea are pressure cookers, too, with Libya and Egypt, for the time being, somewhat cooked. The list here is incomplete.

So, how do we, as a species, let off some steam?!

For what it's worth, music helps; here's a song by David Bowie, "Under Pressure."

But probably the most important answer actually, ironically relates to the real purpose of pressure cookers— food! and the ecosystem, aka Mother Earth, that sustains our physical nourishment!

According to a new report by the Insect Pollinators Initiative: the environment itself is a "'cocktail' of human-made 'pressures' threatening insect pollinators across the world, whose decline will have 'profound environmental, human health and economic consequences.' Insect pollinators such as bees provide pollination for up to 75% of crops and enable reproduction in up to 94% of wild flowering plants, meaning their current decline greatly 'threatens human food supplies and ecosystem function' around the world, the group urges. 'Pollinators are the unsung heroes of the insect world and ensure our crops are properly pollinated so we have a secure supply of nutritious food in our shops,' said co-author Professor Simon Potts from the University of Reading. 'The costs of taking action now to tackle the multiple threats to pollinators is much smaller than the long-term costs to our food security and ecosystem stability. Failure by governments to take decisive steps now only sets us up for bigger problems in the future.'"⁷

And in London: "The organizers of the so-called "March of the Beekeepers" included Avaaz, Friends of the Earth, Buglife, Environmental Justice Foundation, Greenpeace, Pesticide Action Network UK, Soil Association and the group 38 Degrees. Ministers can't ignore the growing scientific evidence linking neonicotinoid insecticides to bee decline," said Friends of the Earth's campaigns director Andrew Pendleton. "Their claims to be concerned about bee health will ring hollow if they fail to back European moves to restrict the use of these chemicals."

Greenpeace's Graham Patterson added: "In the US, bee numbers have halved in the last few decades, with a 30% decline in the last five years. Several countries in Europe have suffered similar declines, with nearly 80% of Spanish hives lost."⁸

Several days after that story: "A Win for the Bees: EU Votes to Ban Bee-Harming Pesticides – Victory for bees, but more must be done to ensure safety of bee population, global food."⁹

Can we possibly balance surveillance with keeping our eyes wide open to what is going on with the natural world?

Without clean water, without real food and snacks, who could run a marathon anyway?

Pollinators . . . Pollinators . . . hey, there's a buzzword worth remembering.

Notes