tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-87102202502632768362024-03-06T12:02:56.509-08:00Permaculture PoliticsEarth Care, People Care, Fair Share
- In Each Other We Trust
- Politics for Resilient CultureAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03009370115428649864noreply@blogger.comBlogger170125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8710220250263276836.post-54097309274389884782015-10-12T19:38:00.001-07:002015-10-12T19:39:37.985-07:00Elect a Permaculturist to City Council in Syracuse, NY<h1>
Elect a Permaculturist to City Council in Syracuse, NY and Change the 'Landscape of Politics'</h1>
<h2>
A campaign by <a href="http://www.wethetrees.com/users/frank-cetera">Frank Cetera</a></h2>
<h2>
<img alt="" class="fbPhotoImage img" height="225" id="fbPhotoImage" src="https://scontent-ord1-1.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xap1/v/t1.0-9/11231916_10155996141250584_50527197299915807_n.jpg?oh=41d30d010f8d221c742ce8ee896e54e3&oe=56CBB9CA" width="400" /> </h2>
<div class="grid_12" id="flash">
</div>
<div id="campaign_icons">
<div class="campaign-location">
<a href="http://www.wethetrees.com/search?q=City%20of%20Syracuse,%20New%20York,%20United%20States&location=true">
City of Syracuse, New York, United States
</a>
</div>
<div class="campaign-category">
<a href="http://www.wethetrees.com/discover/social-change">
</a>
</div>
</div>
<div class="grid_8" data-video_image="https://img.youtube.com/vi/JG6h56okyeE/0.jpg" id="campaign_content">
<div id="stats">
<div class="progressbar">
</div>
<div class="center">
<div class="hint">
If this campaign does not reach 100% of its goal, then it will not be funded.
</div>
<a class="btn btn-primary" href="http://www.wethetrees.com/campaigns/elect-a-permaculturalist-to-city-council-in-syracuse-ny-and-change-the-landscape-of-politics/contribution/new">
Contribute Now
</a>
</div>
</div>
<div id="campaign_bio">
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<iframe allowfullscreen="" class="YOUTUBE-iframe-video" data-thumbnail-src="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/JG6h56okyeE/0.jpg" frameborder="0" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/JG6h56okyeE?feature=player_embedded" width="320"></iframe></div>
<div class="ytp-html5-clipboard">
<a href="https://youtu.be/JG6h56okyeE">https://youtu.be/JG6h56okyeE</a></div>
</div>
<div class="well white" id="campaign_data">
<div id="campaign_about">
<b>Hello Permaculture community</b>,
thanks for taking the time to read my appeal and consider a donation.
My goal is to get elected to Syracuse City Council and forever start
the trend of 'Changing the landscape of politics' in America and beyond.
I could use your help. <br />
<b>Candidates are still tasked (unfortunately) with spending much of their time raising money</b> to
run successful campaigns (unless your wealthy like I'm not, or you take
special interest PAC and corporation moneys, which I don't as a Green
Party member and candidate). <br />
I<b> am a hardworking person, with a full-time public service job</b>,
and involvement in numerous extra-curricular community activities (see
below), but I don't have the money to do this myself, I must ask the
various communities and groups of people and activists I am involved
with for a support. <br />
<b>I am trying to be diverse in my fundraising and not relying on any one population of people</b>,
therefore, I am setting the goal of this campaign fairly low at only
$300 (our total campaign budget is $12,000). But don't let that stop
you from helping me raise more than the $300 goal form the Pc community
(we would love to raise up to $15,000 total to really make a big impact
in the week or two leading up to Election Day on November 3rd). <br />
<b>Momentum is building</b> -
I have received the endorsement of the CSEA Union (Civil Service
Employees Association) and they have contributed $300, I have received
the endorsement of the Green Party of NY State and they will be
contributing a dollar amount yet to be determined, and I have been
recognized by the Green Party of the United States national campaign
committee as one of the 6 candidates/campaigns to watch and support
across the whole country! (and we expect a $500 support check form them
as well). I'm hoping the Pc community will be a part of this
potentially historic moment of electing a People's candidate to City
Council in one of the top 5 big cities in NY state.<br />
<i><b>Frank
Cetera lives on Syracuse’s Westside where he’s known to neighbors and
colleagues for his ability to accomplish a lot with a little.</b> Frank
has a proven record of economic development through his day job as a
New York State Senior Small-Business Advisor. As peer-elected Board
President at Cooperative Federal Credit Union, Frank is an active
promoter of community finance for families and local businesses. Never
afraid to roll up his sleeves and get his hands dirty, Frank has lead
the transformation of five unused Syracuse green spaces into productive
fruit and vegetable gardens. Whether he’s leading snow-shoveling
brigades with Westside Walks, securing funding for the neighborhood
Adopt-a-trash-can program, or organizing educational events -- Frank is a
tireless advocate for community building and cooperation.</i><br />
<b>Our
campaign will focus on policies to reduce and eliminate poverty, and on
civic engagement among residents of the 2nd District so that we can
organize to win the changes we need.</b><br />
<i>My Permaculture resume includes the following:</i><br />
<ul>
<li>2-year
resident steward at Harmony Homestead / Macoskey Center for Sustainable
Systems at Slippery Rock University of PA, an 83-acre Permaculture and
living lab/classroom at Slippery Rock University.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Founder of <a href="https://www.facebook.com/AlchemicalNursery?fref=ts">The Alchemical Nursery</a>
in Syracuse, a 501(c)3 non-profit educational organization, which to
date has facilitated the transformation of 5 unused lawn green spaces
into productive food gardens and landscapes, including the 1/5th acre <a href="https://www.facebook.com/Rahma-Edible-Forest-Snack-Garden-1434315193475219/timeline/">Rahma Edible Forest Snack Garden</a>,
and the DISHES Hellstrip Polyculture of which I wrote and published
about in the latest issue of Permaculture Design (Activist) Magazine.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Founder and developer of the <a href="https://www.facebook.com/BitternutHomestead?fref=ts">Bitternut Urban Homestead Collective</a>
- a rebuilt and renovated 'rustic/Victorian' home which includes a
1/8th acre Permaculture Kitchen Garden, and edible landscaping.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Two-time organizer and (one-time) host of the Upstate NY Permaculture Convergence.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Two-time attendee at the NE Permaculture Convergence.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Educated
in Natural Resources Management, including a M.S. in Sustainable
Systems from Slippery Rock University of Pennsylvania; and a Masters of
Forestry degree from State University of New York College of
Environmental Science and Forestry in Syracuse, NY.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>PDC received from the Hancock Permaculture Center in Hancock, NY with Instructors Andrew Leslie Phillips and Maria Grimaldi.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Multiple
published articles in the Permaculture Activist magazine (now
Permaculture Design), including 'Hellstrip Polycultures' in this Fall
2015 issues themed 'Life On The Edge'.</li>
</ul>
Please view the video for a montage of photos from my some of political and Permaculture activism work in 2015.<br />
<i>If you believe in acting local, then voting local and supporting local candidates is hopefully a given for you. </i><br />
<b>Let's
start a trend and elect Permaculturists to office across the United
States and beyond, and forever, 'change the landscape of politics'.</b><br />
We
don't have much to offer rewards-wise, but we promise if you send a $10
or more donation to send you a campaign button to wear or to add to
your button collection! And of course every donor will get thanked and
recognized for your contribution.<br />
<a href="http://votecetera-syracusegreens.nationbuilder.com/">http://votecetera-syracusegreens.nationbuilder.com/</a></div>
</div>
</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03009370115428649864noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8710220250263276836.post-29630973292709535392015-06-10T12:41:00.001-07:002015-06-10T12:41:18.803-07:00Conservative and suffering from commonsensivitis? There's a pill for that.<blockquote>
<b>Woman:</b> Honey, what's wrong?<br />
<b>Man:</b> I don't know---I'm just not feeling like myself lately. I keep having these weird thoughts.<br />
<b>Woman:</b> Thoughts?<br />
<b>Man:</b> Like, maybe single-payer healthcare is the right way to go.
Maybe we should increase taxes on the rich. Maybe we should keep
reproductive issues between a woman and her doctor. Maybe gay marriage
won’t destroy the foundation of civilization. Maybe government <u>can</u> be a solution for many of our problems. It feels so…<br />
<b>Woman:</b> …so wrong?<br />
<b>Man:</b> Yeah! It's like everything in my head is suddenly rational and clear!<br />
<b>Woman:</b> Honey, you're suffering from commonsensivitis.<br />
<b>Man:</b> Commonsensi<i>whatis???</i><br />
<br />
<div class="dkimg-r">
<span class="image_container"><img alt="Bottle of pills overturned" height="176" src="http://images.dailykos.com/images/147573/small/pilols.jpg?1433896809" width="260" /></span>
<div class="dkimg-cap">
Use only as directed by Fox News: chug the<br />
the whole thing and then say 25 Hail Reagans.</div>
</div>
<b>[Cut to] Doctor in white lab coat:</b> Commonsensivitis is a rare but
serious condition that occurs when neural pathways in the conservative
brain figure out how to connect to each other, producing high levels of
rationality, reason and, yes, common sense. Junk food and Fox News can
help destroy those connections naturally, but for really <i>stubborn</i> cases you need new <i>Screwusall</i>. Just take two <i>Screwusall</i> tablets and you'll be feeling like your usual paranoid, angry, loud, gun-crazy self again!
<b>Man:</b> Defund Planned Parenthood! Kill your Medicare but not
mine! Stomp unions into the dirt! Drill here, drill now! Social Security
is a Ponzi scheme but don't you dare cut my benefits! Libtard voter
fraud is an epidemic and I can't prove it! Obama equals Hitler! Sarah
Palin speaks for me! More tax cuts for the rich! Kirk Cameron movies are
instant classics! Science is for sissies! Jesus rode a dinosaur!<br />
<b>Woman:</b> Welcome back to the bubble, honey! No more commonsensivitis for you!<br />
<b>Man:</b> Thanks, <i>Screwusall</i><br />
<b>Announcer:</b> <i>Screwusall</i>---available at fine tea party
meetings, Republican campaign rallies and bait-and-switch GOP governor's
offices everywhere. Side effects include embarrassing spelling errors
on protest signs, voting against your self-interest and thinking like a
modern-day Republican.<br />
</blockquote>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03009370115428649864noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8710220250263276836.post-73156391913087754352015-02-17T17:02:00.004-08:002015-02-17T17:04:38.033-08:00<h2 class="date-header">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">The latest from Dmitry Orlov...</span><br /><span style="font-size: x-small;">Tuesday, February 17, 2015</span></span></h2>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="5865782816421017418"></a>
</span><br />
<h3 class="post-title entry-title" itemprop="name">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><a href="http://cluborlov.blogspot.com/2015/02/extinctextincterextinctest.html#more" target="_blank">Extinct—Extincter—Extinctest</a><br />by Dmitry Orlov</span></h3>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span>
<div class="post-header">
</div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span><br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEic14arNrI-PMCW4yYvrVI9UzP34i2VuLZOrrfCF5DIIU4r47LA3Gw-sbMo5-QqKhOUtTBRCTJJhtPHwdbHVTkjqCRbt1vPMA_8Xel7KxTBxkLtUys0qjSNdXGGqtv13cfhAfNG4js0H10/s1600/DavidHerbert_Rocker.jpg" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEic14arNrI-PMCW4yYvrVI9UzP34i2VuLZOrrfCF5DIIU4r47LA3Gw-sbMo5-QqKhOUtTBRCTJJhtPHwdbHVTkjqCRbt1vPMA_8Xel7KxTBxkLtUys0qjSNdXGGqtv13cfhAfNG4js0H10/s1600/DavidHerbert_Rocker.jpg" height="200" width="150" /></a></span></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">David Herbert</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
This blog is dedicated to the idea of presenting the big picture—the
biggest possible—of what is going on in the world. The abiding areas of
interest that make up the big picture have included the following:<br />
<br />
1. The terminal decay and eventual collapse of industrial civilization
as the fossil fuels that power it become more and more expensive to
produce in the needed quantities, of lower and lower resource quality
and net energy and, eventually, in ever-shorter supply.<br />
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="more"></a><br />
The first guess by Hubbert that the all-time peak of oil production in
the US would be back in the 1970s was accurate, but later prediction of a
global peak, followed by a swift collapse, around the year 2000 was
rather off, because here we are 15 years later and global oil production
has never been higher. Oil prices, which were high for a time, have
temporarily moderated. However, zooming in on the oil picture just a
little bit, we see that conventional oil production peaked in 2005—just 5
years late—and has been declining ever since, and the shortfall has been made up by oil
that is difficult and expensive to get at (deep offshore, fracking) and
by things that aren't exactly oil (tar sands).<br />
<br />
The current low prices are not high enough to sustain this new,
expensive production for much longer, and the current glut is starting
to look like a feast to be followed by famine. The direct cause of this
famine will not be energy but debt, but it can still be traced back to
energy: a successful, growing industrial economy requires <i>cheap</i> energy; <i>expensive</i>
energy causes it to stop growing and to become mired in debt that can
never be repaid. Once the debt bubble pops, there isn't enough capital
to invest in another round of expensive energy production, and terminal
decay sets in.<br />
<br />
2. The very interesting process of the USA becoming its own nemesis: the USSR 2.0, or, as some are calling, the USSA.<br />
<br />
The USA is best characterized as a decomposing corpse of a nation lorded
over by a tiny clique of oligarchs who control the herd by wielding
Orwellian methods of mind control. So far gone is the populace that most
of them think that things are just peachy—there is an economic
recovery, don't you know—but a few of them do realize that they all have
lots of personal issues with things like violence, drug and alcohol
abuse, and gluttony. But don't call them a nation of violent,
drug-abusing gluttons, because that would be insulting. In any case, you
can't call them anything, because they aren't listening, for they are too busy fiddling with their electronic life support units
to which they have become addicted. Thanks to Facebook and the like they
are now so far inside Plato's cave that even the shadows they see
aren't real: they are computer simulations of shadows of other computer
simulations.<br />
<br />
The signs of this advanced state of decomposition are now unmistakable
everywhere you look, be it education, medicine, culture or the general
state of American society, where now fully half the working-age men is
impaired in their ability to earn a decent living. But it is now
particularly obvious in the endless compounding of errors that is the
essence of American foreign policy. Some have started calling it “the
empire of chaos,” neglecting to mention the fact that an empire of chaos
is by definition ungovernable.<br />
<br />
A particularly compelling example o failure is the Islamic Caliphate,
which now rules large parts of Syria and Iraq. It was initially
organized with American help topple the Syrian government, but which now
threatens the stability of Saudi Arabia instead. This problem was made
much worse by alienating Russia, which, with its long Central Asian
border, is the one major nation that is interested in fighting Islamic
extremism. The best the Americans have been able to do against the
Caliphate is an expensive and ineffectual bombing campaign. Previous
ineffectual and expensive bombing campaigns, such as the one in
Cambodia, have produced unintended consequences such as the genocidal
regime of Pol Pot, but why bother learning from mistakes when you can
endlessly compound them?<br /><br />Another example is the militarized mayhem and full-blown economic
collapse that has engulfed the Ukraine in the wake of American-organized
violent overthrow of its last-ever constitutional government a year
ago. The destruction of the Ukraine was motivated by Zbigniew
Brzezinski's simplistic calculus that turning the Ukraine into an
anti-Russian NATO-occupied zone would effectively thwart Russian
imperial ambitions. A major problem with this calculus is that Russia
has no imperial ambitions: Russia has all the territory it could ever
want, but to develop it it needs peace and free trade. Another slight
problem with Zbiggy's “chessboard” is that Russia <i>does</i> have an
overriding concern with protecting the interests of Russians wherever
they may live and, for internal political reasons, will always act to
protect them, even if such actions are illegal and carry the risk of a
larger military conflict. Thus, the American destabilization of the
Ukraine has accomplished nothing positive, but did increase the odds of
nuclear self-annihilation. But if the USA manages to disappear from the
world's political map without triggering a nuclear holocaust, we will
still have a problem, which is that...<br />
<br />
3. The climate of Earth, our home planet, is, to put it as politely as
possible, completely fucked. Now, there are quite a few people who think
that radically altering the planet's atmospheric and ocean chemistry
and physics by burning just over half the fossilized hydrocarbons that
could possibly be dug up using industrial means nothing, and that what
we are observing is just natural climate variability. These people are morons. I will delete every single one of
the comments they submit in response to this post, but in spite of my
promise to do so, I assure you that they will still submit them...
because they are morons.<br />
<br />
What we are looking at is a human-triggered extinction episode that will
certainly be beyond anything in human experience, and which may rival
the great Permian-Triassic extinction event of 252 million years ago.
There is even the possibility of Earth becoming completely sterilized,
with an atmosphere as overheated and toxic as that of Venus. That these
changes are happening does not require prediction, just observation. The
only parameters that remain to be determined are these:<br />
<br />
1. How far will this process run? Will there still be a habitat where
humans can survive? Humans cannot survive without plenty of fresh water
and sources of carbohydrates, proteins and fats, all of which require
functioning ecosystems. Humans can survive on almost any kind of
diet—even tree bark and insects—but if all vegetation is dead, then so
are we. Also, we cannot survive in an environment where the wet bulb
temperature (which takes into account our ability to cool ourselves by
sweating) exceeds our body temperature: whenever that happens, we die of
heat stroke. Lastly, we need air that we can actually breathe: if the
atmosphere becomes too low in oxygen (because the vegetation has died
out) and too high in carbon dioxide and methane (because the dead
vegetation has burned off, the permafrost has melted, and the methane
currently trapped in oceanic clathrates has been released) then we all die.<br />
<br />
We already know that the increase in average global temperature has
exceeded 1C since pre-industrial times, and, based on the altered
atmospheric chemistry, is predicted to eventually exceed 2C. We also
know that industrial activity, thanks to the aerosols it puts into the
atmosphere, produces an effect known as <i>global dimming</i>. Once it's
gone, the average temperature will jump by at least another 1.1C. This
would put us within striking range of 3.5C, and no humans have ever been
alive with Earth more than 3.5C above baseline. But, you know, there is
a first time for everything. Maybe we can invent some gizmo... Maybe if
we all put on air-conditioned sombreros or something... (Design
contest, anyone?)<br />
<br />
2. How fast will this process happen? <br />
<br />
The thermal mass of the planet is such that there is a 40-year lag
between when atmospheric chemistry is changed and its effects on average
temperature are felt. So far we have been shielded from some of the
effects by two things: the melting of Arctic and Antarctic ice and
permafrost, and the ocean's ability to absorb heat. Your iced drink
remains pleasant until the last ice cube is gone, but then it becomes
tepid and distasteful rather quickly. Some scientists say that, on the
outside, it will take 5000 years for us to run out of ice cubes, causing
the party to end, but then the dynamics of the huge glaciers that
supply the ice cubes are not understood all that well, and there have
been constant surprises in terms of how quickly they can slough off icebergs, which then drift into warmer waters and melt quickly.<br />
<br />
But the biggest surprise of the last few years has been the rate of
arctic methane release. Perhaps you haven't, but I've found it
impossible to ignore all the scientists who have been ringing alarm
bells on Arctic methane release. What they are calling the <i>clathrate gun</i>—which
can release some 50 gigatons of methane in as little as a couple of
decades—appears to have been fired in 2007 and now, just a few years
later, the trend line in Arctic methane concentrations has become
alarming. But we will need to wait for at least another two years to get
an authoritative answer. Overall, the methane held in the clathrates is
enough to exceed the global warming potential of all fossil fuels
burned to date by a factor of between 4 and 40. The upper end of that
range does seem to put us quite far towards a Venus-type atmosphere, and
the surviving species may be limited to exotic thermophilic bacteria,
if that, and certainly will not include any of the species we like to
eat, nor any of us.<br />
<br />
Looking at such numbers has caused quite a few researchers to propose
the possibility of near-term human extinction. Estimates vary, but, in
general, if the clathrate gun has indeed gone off, then most of us
shouldn't be planning to be around beyond mid-century. But the funny
thing is (humor is never in poor taste, no matter how dire the
situation) that most of us shouldn't be planning on sticking around
beyond mid-century in any case. The current oversized human population
is a product of fossil fuel-burning, and once that's over, human
population will crash. This is called a die-off, and it's something that happens all the time: a population (say, of yeast in a
vat of sugary liquid) consumes its food, and then dies off. A few hardy
individuals linger on, and if you throw in a lump of sugar, they spring
to life, start reproducing and the process takes off again.<br /><br /><a href="http://cluborlov.blogspot.com/2015/02/extinctextincterextinctest.html#more" target="_blank">Read the rest here...</a><br />
</span>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03009370115428649864noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8710220250263276836.post-91691885246659918812015-01-08T20:52:00.003-08:002015-01-08T20:56:08.680-08:00Authoritarianism, Class Warfare and the Advance of Neoliberal Austerity Policies <div class="itemTitle">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Some might question what this has to do with permaculture, however it well-describes conditions amidst which we are living and that will affect ALL our designs and plans. I doubt the author's "solution" will be sufficient but this article CLEARLY identifies the increasingly obvious social patterns we see unfolding all around us. A real lesson in "invisible" structures and pattern recognition. </span></div>
<div class="itemTitle">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<span class="wf_caption" style="display: inherit; max-width: 638px;"><img alt="Riot police shadow a protest march against recent austerity measures in Montreal, November 29, 2014." src="http://www.truth-out.org/images/Images_2015_01/2015_0105gir_.jpg" height="253" style="margin: auto;" width="400" /><span style="display: block; margin-top: 3px; max-width: 640px; text-align: left;">Riot police shadow a protest march against recent austerity measures in Montreal, November 29, 2014. (Photo: <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/bikeman04/15761245358" target="_blank">Gerry Lauzon</a>)</span></span><br />
<h2 class="itemTitle">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Henry A. Giroux | Authoritarianism, Class Warfare and the Advance of Neoliberal Austerity Policies
</span></h2>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
<span class="itemDateCreated">
Monday, 05 January 2015 10:54 </span>
<span class="itemAuthor">
By <a href="http://www.truth-out.org/author/itemlist/user/47063">Henry A. Giroux</a>, Truthout | News Analysis
</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Right-wing calls for austerity suggest more than a market-driven
desire to punish the poor, working class and middle class by
distributing wealth upwards to the 1%. They also point to a politics of
disposability in which the social provisions, public spheres and
institutions that nourish democratic values and social relations are
being dismantled, including public and higher education. Neoliberal
austerity policies embody an ideology that produces both zones of
abandonment and forms of social and civil death while also infusing
society with a culture of increasing hardship. It also makes clear that
the weapons of class warfare do not reside only in oppressive modes of
state terrorism such as the militarization of the police, but also in
policies that inflict misery, immiseration and suffering on the vast
majority of the population.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Capitalism has learned to create host organisms and in the current
historical conjuncture one of those organisms is young people, who are
forced to live under the burden of crushing debt. Moreover in the midst of a widening inequality in wealth, income and
power, workers, single mothers, youth, immigrants and poor people of
color are being plunged into either low-paying jobs or a future without
decent employment.
For the sick and elderly, it means choosing between food and medicine.
Austerity now drives an exchange relationship in which the only value
that matters is exchange value and for students that means paying
increased tuition that generates profits for credit companies while
allowing the state to lower taxes on the rich and mega corporations. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Under this regime of widening inequality that imposes enormous
constraints on the choices that people can make, austerity measures
function as a set of hyper-punitive policies and practices that produce
massive amounts of suffering, rob people of their dignity and then
humiliate them by suggesting that they bear sole responsibility for
their plight. This is more than the scandal of a perverted form of
neoliberal rationality; it is the precondition for an emerging
authoritarian state with its proliferating extremist ideologies and its
growing militarization and criminalization of all aspects of everyday
life and social behavior.
Richard D. Wolff has argued that "Austerity is yet another extreme
burden imposed on the global economy by the capitalist crisis (in
addition to the millions suffering unemployment, reduced global trade,
etc.)." He is certainly right, but it is more than a burden imposed on the 99%;
it is the latest stage of market warfare, class consolidation and a
ruthless grab for power waged on the part of the neoliberal, global,
financial elite who are both heartless and indifferent to the mad
violence and unchecked misery they impose on much of humanity.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />Read the rest at <a href="http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/28338-the-shadow-of-fascism-and-the-poison-of-neoliberal-austerity-policies">http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/28338-the-shadow-of-fascism-and-the-poison-of-neoliberal-austerity-policies</a></span>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03009370115428649864noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8710220250263276836.post-52054656285541898422013-07-16T07:17:00.000-07:002013-07-16T07:37:13.756-07:00You Say You Want A Revolution, Well, You know..........<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span id="goog_324479955"></span><a href="http://www.newsociety.com/Books/F/The-Five-Stages-of-Collapse" target="_blank">The Five Stages of Collapse</a> by <a href="http://cluborlov.blogspot.com/p/the-five-stages-of-collapse.html" target="_blank">Dmitry Orlov</a><span id="goog_324479956"></span>: <br />An excerpt from Chapter 3 on Political Collapse</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<img src="http://ts2.mm.bing.net/th?id=H.4552224038782429&pid=15.1&H=120&W=160" /><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />Suppose you wanted to achieve some significant political effect: say prevent or stop and unjust war. You could organize demonstrations, with hundreds of thousands of people marching in the streets, shouting slogans and waving anti-war banners. You could write angry editorials in newspapers and on blogs denouncing the falseness of the <i>casus beli</i>. You could write and phone and email your elected representatives, asking them to put a stop to it, and the would respond that they will of course try, and by the way could you please make a campaign contribution? You could also seethe and steam and lose sleep and appetite over the disgusting thing your country is about to do or is already doing. Would that stop the war? Alas, no. How many people protested the war in Iraq? And what did that achieve? Precisely nothing.<br /><br />You see, the slogan "speak truth to power" has certain limitations. The trouble with it is that it ignores the fact that power will not listen and the fact the the people already know the truth and even make jokes about it. Those in power may appear to be persuaded or dissuaded but only if it is to their advantage to do so. They will also sometimes choose to co-opt, and then quietly subvert, popular movements, in order to legitimize themselves in the eyes of those who would otherwise oppose them. But, in general, they cannot be shifted from pursuing a course they see as advantageous by mere rhetoric from those outside their ranks. Some weaker regimes may be sensitive to embarrassment provided the criticisms are voiced by high-profile individuals in internationally recognized positions of authority, but these same criticisms backfire when aimed at the stronger regimes, because they make those who voice them appear ridiculous, engaged in something futile. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">......</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In confronting the powerful, the need for secrecy is strengthened by the fact that, unlike chess, which is an overt game, the game of shifting those in power from their positions is best played covertly; it is advantageous to make game-changing events appear as accidents or coincidences, spontaneous rather than organized, and difficult to pin on anyone. Since a scapegoat is always found anyway, it is also advantageous if there isn't any identifiable organization with which it can be associated. Where an organization is required, it is best if it is transitory, fluid and anarchic in nature, and appears to be ineffectually engaged in some trivial, innocuous pursuit. In CIA parlance, it should at all times maintain plausible deniability.<br /><br />Such a strategy just might be conceivable, provided the whole thing stays off the Internet. In previous, less networked eras, the work of the secret police was challenging and labor-intensive, but the Internet has changed all that. Anything you say on the Internet, whether in a private email, an unpublished document or posted to a blog, can now be used against you, or anyone else.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">...</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Compare that to the situation in the US today, where CIA/FBI/NSA/Homeland Security is quite far along in forming one giant security apparatus that dwarfs the quaint old KGB in both intrusiveness and scope, though probably not in effectiveness, even though modern technology makes their job trivial to the point where much of it can be automated. There used to be privacy protections written in to US law, but they are in the process of disappearing as a result of new legislation. But whether or not a sweeping abolition of privacy rights make it into law, your online privacy is already gone. Since the government can detain you indefinitely without ever charging, trying or sentencing you, and has full access to your digital data, legal niceties make little difference. Nor does it matter any longer whether or not your are a US citizen: the firewall between CIA (which was supposed to only spy on foreigners) and FBI disappeared after 9/11, and although this practice violates several acts of Congress, you would be foolish to wait for anyone to do anything about it.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">People now tend to communicate via cell phone voice calls, text messages, emails, posts to Facebook and tweets, all of which are digital data and all of which are saved. Relationships between people can be determined by looking at their Facebook profile, their email contacts and their cell phone contacts. If your phone is GPS-enabled, your position can be tracked fairly accurately and tracked once your phone connects to a few different cell towers. All of this information can be continually monitored and analyzed without human intervention, raising red flags whenever some ominous pattern begins to emerge We are not quite there yet, but at some point somebody might accidentally get blasted to bits by a drone strike while texting when a wrong T9 predictive text autocompletion triggers a particularly deadly keyword match.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">...</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Thanks to vastly increased computational power, the emphasis is now shifting from enforcing the law by identifying transgressions to flagging as aberrant any sort of behavior that the system does not quite understand. That is, it is not looking for violations of specific laws, but for unusual patterns. One such pattern might be an attempt by you and others to go electronically dark for a time. Suppose you are walking to a park, and before getting there, you switch off your cell phone. And suppose several other people walk to that same park at the same time, an also switch off their cell phones before getting there. And suppose none of you called or texted each other beforehand. Well, that's an obvious red flag for conspiracy! Video from surveillance cameras installed in that park will be downloaded, fed through facial recognition software, and all the faces matched up with the cell phones that were switched off. Now you are all connected and flagged as attempting to evade surveillance. If this aberrant behavior is observed during some future time of national emergency (as opposed to the usual permanent "War on Terror"), drone aircraft might be dispatched to take you out. All of this might happen without any human intervention, under the control of a fully automated security threat neutralization system. It's a Catch 22: stay off the Internet and you are sure to be too socially isolated to organize anything; gent on the Internet and you are immediately exposed: do a little of each, and you suddenly start looking very suspicious and invite additional scrutiny. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">If you are a little bit savvier, you might be able to come up with ways to use the Internet anonymously. You buy a laptop with cash and don't register it, so that the MAC address can't be traced to you. You use Internet cafes that have open Internet access or private open WiFi connection from somewhere. You connect to web sites outside of the US jurisdiction via SSL (HTTPS protocol) or use encrypted services such as Skype. You further attempt to anonymize your access using TOR. You think you are safe. But wait! Are you running a commercial operating system, like Windows or Mac OS X? If so, it has a back door, added by the manufacturer base on a secret request from the US government. The back door allows someone (not necessarily the government, but anybody who knows about it) to install a keystroke logger that captures all your keystrokes and periodically uploads them to some server for analysis. Now a third party knows all of your communications and username / password combinations.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Suppose you know about back doors in commercial operating systems, and so you compile your own OS (some flavor of Linux or BSD Unix) from source code. You run it in ultra-secure mode, and nervously monitor all incoming and outgoing network connection for anything that shouldn't be there. You encrypt your hard drive. You do not store any contact information, passwords or, for that matter, anything else on your laptop. You run the browser in "private" mode so that it doesn't maintain a browsing history. You look quite fetching in your tin foil hat. Your are not just a member of Anonymous, you <i>are</i> Anonymous! But do you realize how suspicious that makes you look? The haggard look from having to memorize all those URLs and passwords, the darting eye movements....Somebody is going to haul you in for questioning just for the hell of it. At that point, you represent a challenge to the surveillance team: a hard target, somebody they can use to hone their skills. This is not a good position to be in.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">...</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But even if you could remain anonymous, are you still rebellious enough to challenge the status quo through risky but effective covert action? My guess is that you are by now quite docile, thanks, again, to the Internet. You don't want to do anything that might jeopardize your access to it. You have your favorite music and books in the cloud, your online games, your Facebook friends, and you can't imagine life without them.....</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">...</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Does the idea of achieving some significant political effect still seem interesting? What if I told you that you could achieve the same effect with just a bit of patience, sitting Buddha-like with your arms folded, a beatific smile on your face? The idea is not too far-fetched. You see, the Internet is a very resilient system, designed to let packets flow around any obstruction. It is, to some extent, self-regulating and self-healing. But it depends on another system, which is not resilient at all: the electric grid. In the US, the grid is a creaking, aging system that now exhibits an exponentially increasing rate of failure. It is susceptible to the phenomenon of cascaded failure, where small faults are magnified throughout the system. Since the money needed to upgrade the system no longer exists, blackouts will continue to proliferate. As the grid goes down, Internet access will be lost. Cell phone access is more likely to remain, but without the grid most people will lose the ability to recharge their mobile devices. Information technology may look shiny and new, but the fact remains that the Internet is around 40% coal-fired and 20% nuclear-powered.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">...</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As the electric grid goes down, there will be a great deal of economic disruption. But in terms of the surveillance system, two effects are virtually guaranteed. First people will once again become very expensive to track and monitor, as in the olden days of the KGB. Second, people will cease to be docile. What keeps people docile is access to the magic shiny world of television and the Internet. Their own lives might be dull, grey, hopeless and filled with drudgery, but as long as they can be periodically catch a glimpse of heaven inhabited by smooth-skinned celebrities with toned muscles sporting the latest fashions, listen to their favorite noise, watch a football game and distract themselves with video games, blogs or cute animals on Reddit's / r / aww, they can at least dream. Once they wake up from that dream they will look around, then look around some more, and then they will become seriously angry. This is why the many countries and regions that at one time or another ran short of energy, be it former Soviet Georgia or Bulgaria or the Russian far east, always tried to provide at least a few hours of electricity every day, usually in the evenings during "prime time", so that the populace could get its daily dose of fiction, because this was cheaper than containing a seriously angry populace by imposing curfews and maintaining around-the-clock military patrols and checkpoints.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And so, if you want to achieve a serious political effect, my suggestion is that you sit back Buddha-like, fold your arms, and do some deep breathing exercises. Then you should work on developing some interpersonal skills that don;t need to be mediated by electronics. Chances are, you will get plenty of opportunities to practice them when the time comes, giving seriously angry people something useful to do. By then nobody will be keeping tabs on you, because those doing the watching will have grown tired of looking at their persistently blank monitor screens and gone home. They they too will become seriously angry - but not at you.</span>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03009370115428649864noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8710220250263276836.post-65496009428871278342013-03-06T18:15:00.000-08:002013-03-06T18:15:32.136-08:00Why Winona LaDuke is fighting for food sovereignty<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.mnn.com/leaderboard/stories/why-winona-laduke-is-fighting-for-food-sovereignty">http://www.mnn.com/leaderboard/stories/why-winona-laduke-is-fighting-for-food-sovereignty</a></span><br />
<br />
<div style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 16.363636016845703px;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;">Winona LaDuke wears a lot of hats. The 53-year-old member of the Mississippi Band of Anishinaabe in Minnesota is an activist, a mother and an occasional political candidate. (You may recognize her as Ralph Nader's vice presidential candidate on the Green Party ticket in 1996 and 2000.) The author of six books, she is also the executive director of two nonprofits: <a href="http://www.honorearth.org/" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #025689; text-decoration: none;">Honor the Earth</a>, which supports indigenous environmental justice, and the<a href="http://welrp.org/" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #025689; text-decoration: none;">White Earth Land Recovery Project</a>, which aims to recover the land and the culture of the Anishinabe people at the White Earth Reservation in Minnesota.</span></div>
<div style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 16.363636016845703px;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"> </span></div>
<div style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 16.363636016845703px;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;">Justice, land, culture — all concepts that have a connection with food, which makes sense. A focal point of LaDuke's recent efforts is food sovereignty, or as she put it in a recent essay, "the ability to feed your people." She says colonialism has robbed native communities like hers of much of their historic foods, not to mention their culture and autonomy. "As Shawnee scholar Steven Newcomb once pointed out to me, the word colonialism has at its root the same word as ' colon.' In other words, it means to digest — colonialism is the digestion of one people by another — in military, social, political, economic and food system terms."</span></div>
<div style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 16.363636016845703px;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"> </span></div>
<div style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 16.363636016845703px;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;">A recent study at the White Earth reservation revealed the depth of the problem. The community spends about $8 million a year on food, but $7 million of that is spent off the reservation. What little is still spent on the reservation is for foods with little nutritional value. "The money we spent on-reservation was largely sucked up by convenience stories, where we purchased really cool stuff like pop, chips, pizzas to heat up, and baked goods," she wrote. Not only does this create a drain on the community's economy, it also reduces its ability to be self-reliant and creates soaring rates of diabetes, which plagues the reservation's residents.</span></div>
<div style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 16.363636016845703px;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"> </span></div>
<div style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 16.363636016845703px;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;">To reverse the trends, LaDuke advocates restoring systems that have long been considered sacred. "Food for us comes from our relatives, whether they have wings or fins or roots," said the Harvard graduate at a recent TEDx Twin Cities talk. "That is how we consider food. Food has a culture. It has a history. It has a story. It has relationships."</span></div>
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="236" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/pHNlel72eQc" width="420"></iframe>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03009370115428649864noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8710220250263276836.post-58074996963964146642012-02-27T21:06:00.000-08:002012-02-27T21:06:08.904-08:00The Cybernetic Garden Farm: Information in; information out.<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">This unprepared, extemporaneous speech was delivered in the Fall of 2010 in Grand Rapids at the International Conference on Sustainability: Energy, Economy, Environment. It followed Nicole Foss's talk (embedded below) on how she prepared her family for peak oil and economic uncertainty.</span><br />
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="284" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/ySydk4R77po" width="500"></iframe><br />
<div><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"As a system of design, Permaculture provides a new vocabulary and pattern language for observation and action, attention and listening, that empowers people to co-design homes, neighborhoods, and communities full of truly abundant food, energy, habitat, water, income, and yields enough to share." - Keith Johnson<br />
<br />
Educator Peter Bane is preparing for the local future, beyond the global economy and post peak oil. Bane's talk is the story of the history of permaculture, and how he has used permaculture methods to move towards a self-sustaining homestead using free or low-cost techniques.<br />
<br />
Peter Bane has published the Permaculture Activist Magazine since 1990. He is a garden farmer with Keith Johnson in Bloomington, Indiana, where they teach permaculture design at Indiana University and elsewhere.. Peter has a bachelors from University in Illinois in political design and a diploma in permaculture design from the British Academy of Permculture design. He served on the peak oil task force for the City of Bloomington, Indiana, which was adopted in 2009 December and has recently finished working on The Permaculture Handbook: Garden Farming for Town and Country.<br />
<br />
In this talk, Bane describes, in his own words, how he is moving beyond the money economy, to providing his essential needs from his homestead, and how he is utilizing the principles of permaculture.<br />
<br />
Recorded at the International Conference on Sustainability: Energy, Economy, Environment 2010 hosted by <a href="http://localfuture.org/" target="_blank">Local Future</a> and directed by Aaron Wissner.</span><br />
<div><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><br />
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="284" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/ESYAix1QD1E" width="500"></iframe><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<a href="http://www.energybulletin.net/stories/2011-10-11/how-i-prepared-my-family-peak-oil-nicole-foss"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">http://www.energybulletin.net/stories/2011-10-11/how-i-prepared-my-family-peak-oil-nicole-foss</span></a>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03009370115428649864noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8710220250263276836.post-90317612994146980942012-02-01T13:52:00.000-08:002012-02-01T13:52:32.018-08:00The Too-Bright Future of Too-Big-To-Not-Fail Finance by Dmitri Orlov<iframe frameborder="0" height="451" src="https://docs.google.com/present/embed?id=dtxqwqr_240hfd3tq98&size=m" width="555"></iframe>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03009370115428649864noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8710220250263276836.post-49133746517110281562012-02-01T13:50:00.000-08:002012-02-01T13:50:16.119-08:00Practical Post Scarcity by Open Source Ecology<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This trio of video treats is re-evolutionary.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://opensourceecology.org/wiki/Crash_Course" style="background-color: white; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #0066cc; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Open Source Ecology</a><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px;"> is a network of farmers, engineers, and supporters that for the last two years has been creating the </span><a href="http://opensourceecology.org/gvcs.php" style="background-color: white; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #0099ff; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Global Village Construction Set</a><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px;">, an open source, low-cost, high performance technological platform that allows for the easy, DIY fabrication of the 50 different Industrial Machines that it takes to build a sustainable civilization with modern comforts. The GVCS lowers the barriers to entry into </span><a href="http://opensourceecology.org/wiki/Category:Food_and_Agriculture" style="background-color: white; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #0066cc; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">farming</a><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px;">, </span><a href="http://opensourceecology.org/wiki/Category:Housing_and_construction" style="background-color: white; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #0066cc; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">building</a><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px;">, and </span><a href="http://opensourceecology.org/wiki/Category:Digital_Fabrication" style="background-color: white; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #0066cc; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">manufacturing</a><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px;"> and </span><a href="http://opensourceecology.org/wiki/Key_Features_of_the_GVCS" style="background-color: white; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #0066cc; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">can be seen as</a><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px;"> a life-size lego-like set of modular tools that can create entire</span><a href="http://opensourceecology.org/wiki/Economic_Potential_of_Local_Building_Materials" style="background-color: white; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #0066cc; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">economies</a><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px;">, whether in rural Missouri, where the project was founded, in urban redevelopment, or in the developing world.</span></span> <br />
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="225" mozallowfullscreen="" src="http://player.vimeo.com/video/33701676?title=0&byline=0&portrait=0" webkitallowfullscreen="" width="400"></iframe><br />
<a href="http://vimeo.com/33701676">Practical Post Scarcity</a> from <a href="http://vimeo.com/opensourceecology">Open Source Ecology</a> on <a href="http://vimeo.com/">Vimeo</a>.<br />
<br />
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="284" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/wbqC8zm7Hyg" width="500"></iframe><br />
<br />
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="284" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/zIsHKrP-66s" width="500"></iframe>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03009370115428649864noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8710220250263276836.post-90161492691253434292012-01-17T14:38:00.000-08:002012-01-17T14:38:33.193-08:00Move to Amend - Get Corporate $$ OUT of Politics.<div class="post-body entry-content" id="post-body-7912488698088947487" style="background-color: white; color: #141414; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.4; position: relative; width: 508px;"><div class="post-body entry-content" id="post-body-5327583836195970229" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.4; position: relative; width: 508px;"><div style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt;">The movement to amend the U.S. Constitution to get corporate money out of elections is picking up some serious steam.<br />
<br />
Tens of thousands of activists across the country have already signed PFAW's <a href="http://site.pfaw.org/site/R?i=7ibdrJbEjSfNggDFtCPGlQ" style="color: blue; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">petition</a> calling for an amendment ... in November and December, thousands of Americans attended hundreds house parties nationwide -- organized by PFAW, Public Citizen, Move To Amend and other allies, and joined by Sen. Bernie Sanders and Jim Hightower -- to mobilize and plan for a day of action on the upcoming January 21st second anniversary of <em>Citizens United v. FEC</em>, the Supreme Court decision that unleashed unlimited corporate spending in our elections. Organizing meetings are taking place now and our movement was just this week featured on TV on both <em>The Dylan Ratigan Show</em> and <em>The Young Turks</em>.<br />
<br />
It's high time YOU got on board!<br />
<br />
<a href="http://site.pfaw.org/site/R?i=rqh_Egl3Vdv06nr6oFPdIg" style="color: blue; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank"><strong>Please take a moment to add your name to the petition now and help restore <em>Government By the PEOPLE!</em></strong></a><br />
<br />
TEN bills proposing a constitutional amendment to overturn the <em>Citizens United</em> decision have been introduced in the current Congress -- including one by Rep. Ted Deutch to expressly exclude for-profit corporations from the rights given to natural persons by the Constitution, prohibit corporate spending in all elections, and affirm the authority of Congress and the States to regulate corporations and to regulate and set limits on all election contributions and expenditures.<br />
<br />
Here's just a glimpse of the growing national movement!</div><ul style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 1.4; list-style-image: initial; list-style-position: initial; margin-bottom: 0.5em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0.5em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 2.5em; padding-right: 2.5em; padding-top: 0px;"><li style="border-bottom-style: none; border-color: initial; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-style: none; border-right-style: none; border-top-style: none; border-width: initial; border-width: initial; font-size: 10pt; margin-bottom: 0.25em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">In Colorado, the Jamestown Board of Trustees unanimously passed a resolution calling for a constitutional amendment establishing that only human beings, not corporations, are entitled to constitutional rights and that the First Amendment does not protect unlimited political spending as free speech. And voters in Boulder City passed a ballot measure calling for an amendment to the US Constitution that would state that corporations are not people and reject the legal status of money as free speech.</li>
<li style="border-bottom-style: none; border-color: initial; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-style: none; border-right-style: none; border-top-style: none; border-width: initial; border-width: initial; font-size: 10pt; margin-bottom: 0.25em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">In California, the city councils of Fort Bragg, Richmond, Marina, Point Arena and Aracata, Oakland and Los Angeles passed resolutions last year supporting an amendment to make sure corporations don't have the same free speech rights as people in elections.</li>
<li style="border-bottom-style: none; border-color: initial; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-style: none; border-right-style: none; border-top-style: none; border-width: initial; border-width: initial; font-size: 10pt; margin-bottom: 0.25em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">Missoula, Montana voters approved a local ballot referendum urging Congress to propose a constitutional amendment that clearly states that corporations are not people and do not have the same rights as citizens by a three to one margin.</li>
<li style="border-bottom-style: none; border-color: initial; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-style: none; border-right-style: none; border-top-style: none; border-width: initial; border-width: initial; font-size: 10pt; margin-bottom: 0.25em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">Residents of Monroe, Maine passed a Local Self-Governance Ordinance stating that "no corporation doing business within the Town of Monroe shall be recognized as a ‘natural person’ under the United States or Maine Constitutions or laws of the United States or Maine."</li>
</ul><div style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">And the councils of Chapel Hill, NC, Duluth, MN, Pueblo County, CO and New York City just recently passed resolutions supporting a constitutional amendment to overturn <em>Citizens United</em>.<br />
<br />
<strong><a href="http://site.pfaw.org/site/R?i=yvELlvvGsSC2SkOxe7Xxow" style="color: blue; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">It's time to add your name to PFAW's petition to Congress calling for constitutional amendment now and help us get from our current number of signers -- 75,000 -- to 100K!</a></strong><br />
<br />
Generations of Americans have come together to force much-needed change by amending the U.S. Constitution to expand democracy and protect fundamental rights. With the voice of the voter being increasingly drowned out by unlimited corporate spending in elections, the need has arisen again. Now, it's our generation's turn.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://site.pfaw.org/site/R?i=IvkmUBWPq_UuNnAofqY4aQ" style="color: blue; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Please speak out now.</a><br />
<br />
Thank you for standing up against corporate power run amok and <em>for</em> Government By the People</div></div></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03009370115428649864noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8710220250263276836.post-45524833425721023652012-01-03T19:18:00.000-08:002012-01-03T19:18:03.963-08:00PROTECT IP / SOPA Breaks The Internet<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="360" src="http://player.vimeo.com/video/31100268?title=0&byline=0&portrait=0" webkitallowfullscreen="" width="420"></iframe><br />
<br />
<br />
<div style="background-color: #f4f6f8; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 20px; padding-bottom: 10px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: left;">The video above discusses the Senate version of the <strong style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.opencongress.org/bill/112-s968/show" style="color: #55a4f2; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: none; outline-width: initial; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none;">PROTECT IP Act</a></strong>, but the House bill that was introduced TODAY is much much worse.</div><div style="background-color: #f4f6f8; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 20px; padding-bottom: 10px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: left;">It'll give the government new powers to block Americans' access websites that corporations don't like. The bill would criminalize posting all sorts of standard web content -- music playing in the background of videos, footage of people dancing, kids playing video games, and posting video of people playing cover songs.</div><div style="background-color: #f4f6f8; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 20px; padding-bottom: 10px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: left;">This legislation will stifle free speech and innovation, and even threaten popular web services like Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook.</div><div style="background-color: #f4f6f8; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 20px; padding-bottom: 10px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: left;">We need to act now to let our lawmakers know just how terrible it is. Will you fill out the <a href="http://fightforthefuture.org/pipa/" target="_blank">form here</a> to ask your lawmakers to oppose the legislation?</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03009370115428649864noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8710220250263276836.post-78652599068068109922012-01-03T17:48:00.000-08:002012-01-03T17:48:00.340-08:00What Living On $7 An Hour Actually Means<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Barbara Ehrenreich is featured in this musical excerpt from The American Ruling Class, a "dramatic-documentary-musical" starring Harper's Magazine editor emeritus Lewis Lapham. In this clip, award-winning journalist Barbara Ehrenreich gets to the root of what it means to be nickel and dimed by the 1%. <br />
</span><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/gDgFiW2xtf0" width="420"></iframe>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03009370115428649864noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8710220250263276836.post-57688668697923990622011-12-30T17:31:00.000-08:002011-12-30T17:31:14.900-08:00Your Tax Dollars At War<span style="font-family: inherit;">If you've been wondering why the economy sucks, here's one reason:</span><br />
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="243" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/kFeduoDWKj4" width="420"></iframe>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03009370115428649864noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8710220250263276836.post-76946300068028577552011-10-07T17:44:00.000-07:002011-10-07T17:44:45.894-07:00No way in US system to vote against banks<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Between Occupy Wall Street, in New York, and the other cities it's spread to, as well as the October 2011 movement that just began here in D.C, something seems to be happening in this country. Earlier at Freedom Plaza Chris Hedges, Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter and author, tells us what this could lead to.</b></span><br />
<br />
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/uz5RxhahHK0" width="420"></iframe>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03009370115428649864noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8710220250263276836.post-13607055953816918322011-10-01T22:36:00.001-07:002011-10-01T22:36:23.254-07:00History is Knocking: Join the October 2011 Coalition<iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/KjXARZDKdHk" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03009370115428649864noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8710220250263276836.post-35104571458974563412011-07-28T11:43:00.000-07:002011-07-28T11:50:23.356-07:00DOUBLE DIPPING DANGER<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Want a pesticide factory in your intestines or increase abortions? Eat GMOs or animals that eat them. </span><br />
<iframe frameborder="0" height="300" src="http://player.vimeo.com/video/23976975?title=0&byline=0&portrait=0" width="400"></iframe><br />
<a href="http://vimeo.com/23976975">DOUBLE DIPPING DANGER</a> from <a href="http://vimeo.com/nogmo">NO GMO</a> on <a href="http://vimeo.com/">Vimeo</a>.<br />
<br />
<iframe src="http://player.vimeo.com/video/22416828?title=0&byline=0&portrait=0" width="400" height="300" frameborder="0"></iframe><p><a href="http://vimeo.com/22416828">IT'S TIME FOR A FOOD FIGHT</a> from <a href="http://vimeo.com/nogmo">NO GMO</a> on <a href="http://vimeo.com">Vimeo</a>.</p>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03009370115428649864noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8710220250263276836.post-36774246695398670892011-07-17T08:56:00.000-07:002011-07-17T08:59:05.605-07:00Occupy Wall Street<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.898438); color: #1f1f1f; line-height: 24px;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Just copied and pasted from <a href="http://www.adbusters.org/blogs/adbusters-blog/occupywallstreet.html">Adbusters</a> the following (BTW, a Google search for the phrase Occupy Wall Street received "</span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; font-family: arial, sans-serif; white-space: nowrap;">About 4,360,000 results") </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">(Meanwhile, stop consuming so damn much, start producing your own food and entertainment, relocalize your economy, learn new skills, stop supporting chain stores which suck money and resources from your town, turn the frickin' lights off in rooms you aren't in, weatherize, etc., etc., etc. Act like you actually care! Change doesn't happen in a vacuum and Obama, the Dems or Repubs will not change it for us.) :</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.898438); color: #1f1f1f; line-height: 24px;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.898438); color: #1f1f1f; font-size: 19px; line-height: 24px;"><strong style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-size: 19px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Alright you 90,000 redeemers, rebels and radicals out there,</span></strong></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.898438); color: #1f1f1f; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span></span><br />
<div style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 1.5em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A worldwide shift in revolutionary tactics is underway right now that bodes well for the future. The spirit of this fresh tactic, a fusion of Tahrir with the acampadas of Spain, is captured in this quote:</span></div><blockquote style="background-attachment: scroll; background-clip: initial; background-color: #eeeeee; background-origin: initial; background-position: 95% 100%; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.55; margin-bottom: 1.5em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; overflow-x: visible; overflow-y: visible; padding-bottom: 12px; padding-left: 12px; padding-right: 12px; padding-top: 12px; quotes: none; vertical-align: baseline; width: 501px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"The antiglobalization movement was the first step on the road. Back then our model was to attack the system like a pack of wolves. There was an alpha male, a wolf who led the pack, and those who followed behind. Now the model has evolved. Today we are one big swarm of people."</span><br />
<div style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 1.5em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"></div><div style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #999999; font-size: 13px; margin-bottom: 1.5em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; margin-top: -20px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: right; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">— Raimundo Viejo, Pompeu Fabra University</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Barcelona, Spain</span></div></blockquote><div style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 1.5em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The beauty of this new formula, and what makes this novel tactic exciting, is its pragmatic simplicity: we talk to each other in various physical gatherings and virtual people's assemblies … we zero in on what our one demand will be, a demand that awakens the imagination and, if achieved, would propel us toward the radical democracy of the future … and then we go out and seize a square of singular symbolic significance and put our asses on the line to make it happen.</span></div><div style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 1.5em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The time has come to deploy this emerging stratagem against the greatest corrupter of our democracy: <strong style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Wall Street, the financial Gomorrah of America</strong>.</span></div><div style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 1.5em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">On September 17, we want to see 20,000 people flood into lower Manhattan, set up tents, kitchens, peaceful barricades and occupy Wall Street for a few months. Once there, we shall incessantly repeat one simple demand in a plurality of voices.</span></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.adbusters.org/content/occupy-wall-street" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); border-bottom-style: dotted; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #1f1f1f; font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: none; outline-width: initial; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><img alt="#OCCUPYWALLSTREET" src="http://www.adbusters.org/files/newsletter/2011/Wall-Street-text.jpg" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-style: none; border-color: initial; border-color: initial; border-color: initial; border-left-style: none; border-right-style: none; border-style: initial; border-style: initial; border-top-style: none; border-width: initial; float: right; font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 8px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; width: 320px;" title="#OCCUPYWALLSTREET" /></a></span><br />
<div style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 1.5em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Tahrir succeeded in large part because the people of Egypt made a straightforward ultimatum – that Mubarak must go – over and over again until they won. Following this model, what is our equally uncomplicated demand?</span></div><div style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 1.5em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The most exciting candidate that we've heard so far is one that gets at the core of why the American political establishment is currently unworthy of being called a democracy: we demand that Barack Obama ordain a Presidential Commission tasked with ending the influence money has over our representatives in Washington. It's time for <span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-size: 16px; font-variant: small-caps; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">DEMOCRACY NOT CORPORATOCRACY</strong></span>, we're doomed without it.</span></div><div style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 1.5em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This demand seems to capture the current national mood because cleaning up corruption in Washington is something all Americans, right and left, yearn for and can stand behind. If we hang in there, 20,000-strong, week after week against every police and National Guard effort to expel us from Wall Street, it would be impossible for Obama to ignore us. Our government would be forced to choose publicly between the will of the people and the lucre of the corporations.</span></div><div style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 1.5em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This could be the beginning of a whole new social dynamic in America, a step beyond the Tea Party movement, where, instead of being caught helpless by the current power structure, we the people start getting what we want whether it be the dismantling of half the 1,000 military bases America has around the world to the reinstatement of the Glass-Steagall Act or a three strikes and you're out law for corporate criminals. Beginning from one simple demand – a presidential commission to separate money from politics – we start setting the agenda for a new America.</span></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03009370115428649864noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8710220250263276836.post-81511046386034465692011-04-18T17:46:00.000-07:002011-04-18T17:46:37.361-07:00Waiting for the Spark<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">(I think Ralph Nader wrote this but am not sure. It's potent whoever wrote it.) </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://nader.org/index.php?/archives/2260-Waiting-for-the-Spark.html"><b>Waiting for the Spark</b></a></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">What could start a popular resurgence in this country against the abuses of concentrated, avaricious corporatism? Imagine the arrogance of passing on to already cheated working people and the jobless enormous corporate losses? This is achieved through government bailouts and tax escapes.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">History teaches us that the spark usually is smaller than expected and of a nature that is wholly unpredictable or even unimaginable. But if the dry tinder is all around, as many deprivations and polls reveal, the spark, no matter how small, can turn into a raging inferno. </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Boston Tea Party lit up the American Revolution. Storming the hated Bastille (prison) by impoverished Parisians launched the French Revolution. More recently, in December 1997, an Israeli military vehicle rammed a civilian van in the West Bank killing seven occupants and igniting the first Intifada.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Last December, a young fruit vendor, abused by thieving police in a small Tunisian town, immolated himself in the local square. Seen by millions on Facebook, this self-sacrifice launched the Tunisian and Egyptian overthrow of their long-time dictators. Later, in Syria, after police arrested 13 youngsters in a southern border town for anti-government graffiti the place erupted in riots and rallies that are spreading to other cities.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A few weeks ago, many progressives and quite a few pundits believed that the recurrent, ever larger February-March rallies in Madison, Wisconsin by workers, students and others against the Governors’ and the Legislature’s attack on public employee unions and social services, following earlier blatant corporate welfare enactments, would be the long-awaited spark. </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Madison eruption spread briefly to Ohio and Indiana where Republican officials were moving in the same direction, punishing workers and families while leaving the corporate and wealthy to count their mounting privileges. There, the crowds were neither as large nor as frequent. In all these states, the Republicans got most of what they wanted, albeit with a possible, future political price to be paid. The rallies have subsided, not even culminating—as some organizers hoped—in a gigantic march on Washington, D.C.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Granted, rallying a long repressed people into losing their fear and demanding, as in Cairo’s huge Tahrir Square “out with the dictator”, is a simple, anthromorphic goal. In our country, the rallies are hardly as clearcut, though use of the citizen right of recall for Republican legislators, and later Governor Walker himself, may produce an interesting accountability election. But sparks are difficult to sustain.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In authoritarian regimes, there are few options for dissent or airing one’s grievances. So when the spark does occur, the climate is fertile for an explosion of outrages.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In the United States, there are largely myths such as “anyone can sue,” or “anyone can run,” or “anyone can directly tell off the President or the Mayor,” or “anyone can blow the whistle.” These combine with a few celebrated successes by rebels or an ordinary David taking on a Goliath for a win here and there, from a corporate-government ruling class that bends a little so that it doesn’t break.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Meanwhile, the inequality, gouging, political exclusions and overall gaps between the top one percent and the rest tighten the grip of the oligarchy and its draining, violent militarized empire.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Loss of control over almost everything that matters, including their children to daily direct corporate marketing of junk food and violent programming, is rampant. Over seventy percent of those polled told Business Week that they believed corporations had “too much control over their lives”—and that was in 2000 before conditions and controls—viz, the Wall Street collapse, severe recession and taxpayer bailouts—worsened.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The American people don’t see much they can do to counter the pressures of greed and power that tracks them daily from debt to debt, from lower standards of living to outright penury, from denial of critical healthcare to the iron collar of the cruel credit score, from inscrutable, computerized bills to fine-print contracts trapping their sense of unfairness into waves of frustrations, from being put on hold by the companies until they’re told no, no, no or penalty, penalty, penalty!</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">How do we break the cycle of despair, exclusion, powerlessness, and endless betrayal by those given the authority to bring down the exploiters and oppressors to lawful accountability? </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Empire rips up the Constitution and takes the reserve army of the young unemployed to kill and die in aggressive wars of the White House’s choice, with Congress watching from the sidelines; its only role to funnel trillions of tax dollars into the insatiable war machine’s unauditable budgets. President Eisenhower wanted us to control the “military-industrial complex”. Instead it grew much more out of control. Eisenhower’s grave warning as expressed in his farewell address in 1961 was prescient. </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The spark can come from a recurrent sequence of abuses that strike a special chord of deeply felt injustice. Or it could be a unique episode or bullying that tolls the feeling “enough already” throughout the land. Such sparks cannot be manufactured; the power to arouse and break people’s routines is spontaneous.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">When that moment comes, millions of Americans whose self-respect and keen sense of wrong will remind them precisely why our Constitution begins with “We the People” and not “We the Corporations”. They will realize the necessity for a Jeffersonian revolution. </span>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03009370115428649864noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8710220250263276836.post-75800203126050890392011-03-17T18:36:00.000-07:002011-03-17T18:36:20.396-07:00The Second American Revolution Looks Like This<h1 style="clear: none; color: rgb(51, 51, 51) !important; font-family: Arial, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 1.2em; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; overflow-x: hidden; overflow-y: hidden; padding-bottom: 0px !important; padding-left: 0px !important; padding-right: 0px !important; padding-top: 0px !important; text-overflow: ellipsis;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Democracy School online</span></h1><br />
<br />
<iframe frameborder="0" height="300" src="http://player.vimeo.com/video/18467914" width="400"></iframe><br />
<a href="http://vimeo.com/18467914">Democracy School - Part I</a> from <a href="http://vimeo.com/user5651125">Mari Margil</a> on <a href="http://vimeo.com/">Vimeo</a>.<br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;">The Daniel Pennock Democracy School is a stimulating and illuminating course that teaches citizens and activists how to reframe exhausting and often discouraging single issue work (such as opposing toxic dumps, quarries, factory farms, etc.) in a way that we can confront corporate control on a powerful single front: people’s constitutional rights.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;">Democracy School explores the limits of conventional regulatory organizing and offers a new organizing model that helps citizens confront the usurpation by corporations of the rights of communities, people, and the earth. Lectures cover the history of people's movements and corporate power, and the dramatic recent organizing in Pennsylvania by communities confronting agribusiness, sewage sludge, and quarry corporations. Included with enrollment in the Democracy School is a 300 plus-page notebook of background reading material. For a historical review of the Pennsylvania work through the end of 2003, see a feature article that appeared in Orion Magazine.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;">Created by the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF) and Richard Grossman, co-founder of the Program on Corporations, Law, and Democracy (POCLAD), Democracy Schools were launched with five weekend sessions at Wilson College in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania in 2003. Since then, the number of schools has grown rapidly. In 2006, there are over a dozen locations across the country offering Democracy Schools, so peruse our list and find a school near you!</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;">The Schools are built around carefully designed readings, clear presentations and group discussions.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;">* Each School reveals how it came to be that the law enables corporate managers to dictate their values, and impose their projects on communities.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;">* Includes an intense, comprehensive history of the judicial bestowal of constitutional rights of persons on corporations.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;">* Learn the secret of how People’s Movements have cut to the essence and won their struggles to be “found” in the constitution.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;">* The Anti-Federalists</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;">* The Abolitionists</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;">* The Suffragists</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;">* The Populists</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;">* The Labor Movement</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;">* And learn about earlier Movements, including the Levelers and the Diggers.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;">* Experience the story of Pennsylvania communities, and New England Town Meetings, as well as North Western city battles – in the ongoing struggle to take the power to govern out of the Corporate Boardrooms and put it back in our communities where it belongs.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;">* For people of all ages, interests and occupations</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;">* Classes consist of small groups of 10-15 people like you.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;">"If you take no other training this year, do the Democracy School. It is a superlative unfolding revelation of how corporations have hijacked democracy. It meticulously deconstructs the historical arc that brought us to this precipice. But most importantly, it then departs into the highly pragmatic and inspiring work now underway that is slowly turning the tide . . . This Second American Revolution may be the most important political work going on anywhere in the country or the world."</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;">-Kenny Ausubel ‘05, Founder and Co-Executive Director, Bioneers</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;">"Democracy School was a mind-blowing experience. During the School, I was forced to come to grips with the understanding that I really knew very little about the true structure of law that controls our activism. Democracy School is a must for everyone who seeks to be liberated from our defensive, after-the-fact reactive organizing strategies."</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;"><b>Featuring <a href="http://ow.ly/3OB3c" style="color: #2e8899; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Thomas Linzey Esq.</a> and Mari Margil -- WATCH PARTS II - VI <a href="http://celdf.org/section.php?id=110" style="color: #2e8899; text-decoration: none;">HERE</a></b></span>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03009370115428649864noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8710220250263276836.post-34587081420722209022011-03-14T20:22:00.000-07:002011-03-14T20:22:07.464-07:00Twelve Unsustainable Collapsing Systems<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">(NaturalNews) </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">If you look around what's really happening in our world today, there's an inescapable pattern that curiously emerges: <b>Much of what's going on is simply unsustainable</b>. It can't go on for much longer, in other words. And it must collapse due to the laws of economics or physics.<br />
<br />
Here, I've put together a collection of <b>twelve systems </b>that are utterly unsustainable on our planet. Each of these twelve is scheduled for some sort of collapse or shut down in the coming years. They range from <a href="http://www.naturalnews.com/economics.html" style="color: #3366cc; text-decoration: none;">economics</a> to medicine, population and <a href="http://www.naturalnews.com/the_environment.html" style="color: #3366cc; text-decoration: none;">the environment</a>. And interestingly, the <a href="http://www.naturalnews.com/collapse.html" style="color: #3366cc; text-decoration: none;">collapse</a> of just one of these twelve would have devastating consequences across <a href="http://www.naturalnews.com/human_civilization.html" style="color: #3366cc; text-decoration: none;">human civilization</a>. What happens when two, three or ten of these things collapse?<br />
<br />
This <a href="http://www.naturalnews.com/article.html" style="color: #3366cc; text-decoration: none;">article</a> doesn't cover the <i>consequences </i>of the collapse of these unsustainable things, but we'll work on covering that in <a href="http://www.naturalnews.com/future.html" style="color: #3366cc; text-decoration: none;">future</a> articles. Here are the twelve:<br />
</span><br />
<h1 style="color: black; font-size: 15px; line-height: 18px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">1) Debt-based <a href="http://www.naturalnews.com/banking.html" style="color: #3366cc; text-decoration: none;">banking</a> and economic systems</span></h1><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">There's little question that our global fractional reserve banking system is headed for a catastrophic collapse. It's a system based on <a href="http://www.naturalnews.com/debt.html" style="color: #3366cc; text-decoration: none;">debt</a> rather than sound <a href="http://www.naturalnews.com/money.html" style="color: #3366cc; text-decoration: none;">money</a> principles, and the laws of economics dictate that the global multiplication of money and <nobr>debt </nobr>is entirely unsustainable.<br />
<br />
This system will collapse, and when it does, it will be so large that the economic devastation will be global. Governments have actually made this worse, of course, by bailing out the dishonest investment institutions that have made the situation worse. The coming financial collapse will teach humanity some hard lessons about honest money.<br />
<br />
When it comes to money, banking and debt, Ron Paul has always been right, after all.<br />
</span><h1 style="color: black; font-size: 15px; line-height: 18px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">2) Conventional <a href="http://www.naturalnews.com/agriculture.html" style="color: #3366cc; text-decoration: none;">agriculture</a> and "rape the planet" farming</span></h1><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">The current agricultural system that feeds the planet is simply unsustainable. It is a "rape the planet" model that clear-cuts forests to grow GMO <a href="http://www.naturalnews.com/soybeans.html" style="color: #3366cc; text-decoration: none;">soybeans</a> that feed factory cattle which are turned into processed meat. Even the plant <a href="http://www.naturalnews.com/crops.html" style="color: #3366cc; text-decoration: none;">crops</a> grown through conventional agriculture depend on chemical fertilizers from sources that are running out (<a href="http://www.naturalnews.com/fossil_fuels.html" style="color: #3366cc; text-decoration: none;">fossil fuels</a>, phosphate mines, etc.).<br />
<br />
Furthermore, the mass <nobr>application </nobr>of chemical <a href="http://www.naturalnews.com/pesticides.html" style="color: #3366cc; text-decoration: none;">pesticides</a>, fungicides and Monsanto's Roundup <a href="http://www.naturalnews.com/chemicals.html" style="color: #3366cc; text-decoration: none;">chemicals</a> is destroying the viability of soils while polluting the world's farms, rivers, streams and <a href="http://www.naturalnews.com/oceans.html" style="color: #3366cc; text-decoration: none;">oceans</a>. This system is unsustainable. When it collapses, humanity will learn (the hard way) that only sustainable agriculture can sustain human <a href="http://www.naturalnews.com/life.html" style="color: #3366cc; text-decoration: none;">life</a> on our planet.<br />
</span><h1 style="color: black; font-size: 15px; line-height: 18px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">3) Mass-consumption economies based on buy-it-and-trash-it <a href="http://www.naturalnews.com/behavior.html" style="color: #3366cc; text-decoration: none;">behavior</a></span></h1><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">When children are raised to be good little Americans (or Canadians, or Australians, etc.), they're taught to <b>consume more stuff</b>. In <a href="http://www.naturalnews.com/America.html" style="color: #3366cc; text-decoration: none;">America</a>, it was even called "patriotic" by former President George Bush. To support your local economy, you're supposed to go out and buy stuff that you don't need, then chuck it into the trash after you use it, then go out and buy more!<br />
<br />
Virtually the entire first-world economy is based on this idea that people need to consume more stuff, then throw it away, then consume more. That's what all the corporate advertising is for, to convince people that they are inadequate unless they buy and consume more high-priced cars, designer jeans, electronic gadgets and throwaway home cleaning supplies. <b>This system is insane</b>. And it cannot continue indefinitely.<br />
</span><h1 style="color: black; font-size: 15px; line-height: 18px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">4) The accelerating loss of farming soils</span></h1><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">There's a great documentary you need to see on this called<b>Dirt.</b>(<a href="http://www.dirtthemovie.org/" style="color: #3366cc; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">www.DirtTheMovie.org</a>) It explains the value of dirt (<a href="http://www.naturalnews.com/soil.html" style="color: #3366cc; text-decoration: none;">soil</a>) and why conventional agriculture methods are destroying the dirt upon which our <a href="http://www.naturalnews.com/civilization.html" style="color: #3366cc; text-decoration: none;">civilization</a> depends. We even wrote about the movie here: <a href="http://www.naturalnews.com/031597_Dirt_movie.html" style="color: #3366cc; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">http://www.naturalnews.com/031597_D...</a><br />
<br />
No <a href="http://www.naturalnews.com/dirt.html" style="color: #3366cc; text-decoration: none;">dirt</a> = no food. Get it? And the dirt is disappearing at an alarming rate, thanks to the unsustainable practices of conventional agriculture, with all its tilling, soil destruction, poisons and <a href="http://www.naturalnews.com/GMOs.html" style="color: #3366cc; text-decoration: none;">GMOs</a>. I wonder what the people will plant their <a href="http://www.naturalnews.com/seeds.html" style="color: #3366cc; text-decoration: none;">seeds</a> in when all the cropland dirt is either dead or gone?<br />
</span><h1 style="color: black; font-size: 15px; line-height: 18px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">5) The mass <a href="http://www.naturalnews.com/poisoning.html" style="color: #3366cc; text-decoration: none;">poisoning</a> of the oceans and aggressive over-fishing</span></h1><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Oceans<a href="http://www.naturalnews.com/ecosystems.html" style="color: #3366cc; text-decoration: none;">ecosystems</a>are collapsing. This isn't some future prediction, it's happening right now. <b>Ocean acidification </b>is destroying the coral reefs and mollusks all across the globe. At the same time, human civilization treats the oceans as <b>giant planetary toilets </b>into which all the <a href="http://www.naturalnews.com/toxic.html" style="color: #3366cc; text-decoration: none;">toxic</a> chemicals of modern civilization are flushed: Pharmaceuticals, pesticides, fertilizers, heavy metals, hormone-disrupting chemicals and a whole lot more.<br />
<br />
Massive <a href="http://www.naturalnews.com/fish.html" style="color: #3366cc; text-decoration: none;">fish</a> die-offs are becoming increasingly common (<a href="http://www.naturalnews.com/031645_dead_fish_Redondo_Beach.html" style="color: #3366cc; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">http://www.naturalnews.com/031645_d...</a>), and fish populations are plummeting across several species. We are beginning to see the results of mankind's ongoing poisoning of the oceans.<br />
</span><h1 style="color: black; font-size: 15px; line-height: 18px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">6) Mass genetic <a href="http://www.naturalnews.com/pollution.html" style="color: #3366cc; text-decoration: none;">pollution</a> of the planet through GMOs</span></h1><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">It will be the great, dark legacy of our modern civilization: The widespread <b>genetic <a href="http://www.naturalnews.com/contamination.html" style="color: #3366cc; text-decoration: none;">contamination</a> </b>of the planet through the use of GMOs.<br />
<br />
Genetically engineered seeds are spreading their altered genetic code all across the world. The DNA of <a href="http://www.naturalnews.com/GMO.html" style="color: #3366cc; text-decoration: none;">GMO</a> crops is now detectable in soils, foods and <a href="http://www.naturalnews.com/water.html" style="color: #3366cc; text-decoration: none;">water</a> systems. What's the upshot of all this? It's a big unknown, of course, and that's the frightening part: No one before has ever "played God" with the planet, right out in the open, and then observed what happens after a few years (or decades). Thanks to companies like <a href="http://www.naturalnews.com/Monsanto.html" style="color: #3366cc; text-decoration: none;">Monsanto</a>, <b>we are the experiment</b>, and no one know if it might ultimately <a href="http://www.naturalnews.com/lead.html" style="color: #3366cc; text-decoration: none;">lead</a> to something like a widespread crop failure or even the alternation of <a href="http://www.naturalnews.com/natural.html" style="color: #3366cc; text-decoration: none;">natural</a> web-of-life interactions across multiple ecosystems.<br />
<br />
And if genetic pollution causes problems, how do you "clean" that pollution? You can't! Genetic pollution endures. Once crops become infected with GE seeds, it's all but impossible to eliminate the DNA contamination.<br />
</span><h1 style="color: black; font-size: 15px; line-height: 18px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">7) The drugs-and-surgery conventional medical system</span></h1><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Big Pharma's days are numbered -- based on economics if nothing else. The monopolistic pricing, the deadly side effects and the corrupt, criminal operations of the industry make it all utterly non-sustainable.<br />
<br />
Big Pharma and the whole chemical approach to <a href="http://www.naturalnews.com/medicine.html" style="color: #3366cc; text-decoration: none;">medicine</a> is bankrupting companies, <a href="http://www.naturalnews.com/cities.html" style="color: #3366cc; text-decoration: none;">cities</a>, states and nations. No nation can economically survive in the long run if it keeps spending its money on <a href="http://www.naturalnews.com/Big_Pharma.html" style="color: #3366cc; text-decoration: none;">Big Pharma</a> sick care schemes. Ultimately, those nations that hope to survive will need to ditch Big Pharma and return to natural medicine and preventive nutrition.<br />
<br />
That day is coming. Sooner that you think, probably.<br />
</span><h1 style="color: black; font-size: 15px; line-height: 18px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">8) Widespread pharmaceutical contamination of the human population and the <a href="http://www.naturalnews.com/environment.html" style="color: #3366cc; text-decoration: none;">environment</a></span></h1><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Until the day comes that Big Pharma collapses into ruin, the pharmaceutical pollution of the planet will continue. Right now, pharmaceutical factories in India (which export their pills back to the states to be sold as brand-name drugs) are dumping untold thousands of<i>gallons</i>of dangerous chemical drugs into the waterways there (<a href="http://www.naturalnews.com/025415_water_Big_Pharma_chemicals.html" style="color: #3366cc; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">http://www.naturalnews.com/025415_w...</a>).<br />
<br />
In the U.S. and Canada, the water near every major city is heavily contaminated with pharmaceuticals. (<a href="http://www.naturalnews.com/025933.html" style="color: #3366cc; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">http://www.naturalnews.com/025933.html</a>)<br />
<br />
The situation is so bad that Big Pharma's chemical runoff threatens the future of life on our planet! (<a href="http://www.naturalnews.com/029314_waterways_contamination.html" style="color: #3366cc; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">http://www.naturalnews.com/029314_w...</a>)<br />
<br />
Fortunately, this sad chapter in human history will soon come to an end.<br />
</span><h1 style="color: black; font-size: 15px; line-height: 18px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">9) Runaway human <a href="http://www.naturalnews.com/population.html" style="color: #3366cc; text-decoration: none;">population</a> growth</span></h1><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Here's the one nobody wants to talk about. But make no mistake: The human population growth we see right now is entirely unsustainable. The available of cheap<a href="http://www.naturalnews.com/food.html" style="color: #3366cc; text-decoration: none;">food</a>and fossil fuels over the last century has contributed to an unprecedented population explosion that is now nearing its end. There are only so many acres of farmland, after all, and only so many acre-feet of water to irrigate it.<br />
<br />
Don't misinterpret this, however, of thinking that I support some sort of population reduction measures a la Bill Gates and his quote about reducing the world population by 10 - 15 percent through the use of vaccines and health care (<a href="http://www.naturalnews.com/029911_vaccines_Bill_Gates.html" style="color: #3366cc; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">http://www.naturalnews.com/029911_v...</a>).<br />
<br />
Unlike some of the truly evil world leaders, I don't believe in killing off human beings just to reduce global population. Rather, it makes more sense to<b>teach sustainable living practices</b>along with good parenting and well-considered parenthood. Strangely, most of the new children brought into the world today are not the result of stable, well-prepared parents choosing to have children, but rather the unintended consequences of casual copulation.<br />
</span><h1 style="color: black; font-size: 15px; line-height: 18px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">10) Fossil water <a href="http://www.naturalnews.com/consumption.html" style="color: #3366cc; text-decoration: none;">consumption</a> for agriculture</span></h1><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">We just published a story on this issue, talking about how the Ogallala Aquifer is <a href="http://www.naturalnews.com/running.html" style="color: #3366cc; text-decoration: none;">running</a> dry, threatening the agricultural output of Kansas, Oklahoma, Nebraska and even parts of Colorado and Texas (<a href="http://www.naturalnews.com/031658_aquifer_depletion_Ogallala.html" style="color: #3366cc; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">http://www.naturalnews.com/031658_a...</a>).<br />
<br />
This is a global issue, affecting India, China, North America, South America and nearly every nation that produces any significant agricultural yields. <b>Fresh water is running out </b>all across the world, and while additional water supplies can always be created through desalination, for example, that's a very expensive way to replenish the water, and it's almost entirely dependent on fossil fuels (see below). Even if you could build enough desalination plants to irrigate the world's croplands, the resulting food prices would still result in mass starvation by those who couldn't afford the food which might cost ten times the current price.<br />
<br />
Imagine paying <b>$20 for a loaf of bread </b>and you get the idea of what's coming.<br />
</span><h1 style="color: black; font-size: 15px; line-height: 18px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">11) Fossil <a href="http://www.naturalnews.com/fuel.html" style="color: #3366cc; text-decoration: none;">fuel</a> consumption</span></h1><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">I realize this is a highly contentious issue, with some people claiming that there's an "unlimited supply of <a href="http://www.naturalnews.com/oil.html" style="color: #3366cc; text-decoration: none;">oil</a>" in our planet because it's replenishing itself all the time. This idea simply doesn't square with what we know: The Earth is a finite object, occupying finite space. Inside it can only be a finite amount of fossil fuels. The recharge rate of fossil fuels is on the scale of millions of years, meaning we can't simply wait around for more fuel to reappear if we use up the current reserves.<br />
<br />
There is convincing evidence right now that Saudi Arabia, the world's largest oil producer, has been lying about its output capacity for at least the last decade. It can't reach its production targets, and there is reasoned speculation that its own best-producing oil wells are approaching their end. Even if oil remains available for a few more decades, it still becomes increasingly <b>expensive </b>oil, meaning that everything else down the supply chain becomes more expensive, too: Food, fuel, consumer goods, etc.<br />
<br />
The era of cheap fossil fuels is coming to an end. Although fossil fuels will no doubt be around for several decades more, the cheap stuff is long gone, it seems. The citizens of Earth will soon need to find an alternate way to power their cities, cars and businesses in the 21st century.<br />
<br />
Oh, and by the way, solar probably isn't the answer, as solar panels depend on rare <a href="http://www.naturalnews.com/earth.html" style="color: #3366cc; text-decoration: none;">earth</a> metals that are entirely dependent on Chinese <a href="http://www.naturalnews.com/mining.html" style="color: #3366cc; text-decoration: none;">mining</a> operations (<a href="http://www.naturalnews.com/028160_rare_earth_metals_mining.html" style="color: #3366cc; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">http://www.naturalnews.com/028160_r...</a>). Wind energy also hasn't panned out as it should have. And the governments of the world continue to suppress free energy technologies such as <b>Cold Fusion</b>, which has now been proven to work by even the U.S. Navy (<a href="http://www.naturalnews.com/025925_cold_fusion_science_Amazon.html" style="color: #3366cc; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">http://www.naturalnews.com/025925_c...</a>).<br />
</span><h1 style="color: black; font-size: 15px; line-height: 18px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">12) The widespread destruction of animal habitat</span></h1><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Here's one that drives some people nuts. What? We can't keep clear-cutting the rainforests to plant <a href="http://www.naturalnews.com/genetically_engineered.html" style="color: #3366cc; text-decoration: none;">genetically engineered</a> soybeans?<br />
<br />
Not if you want the planet to survive, actually. There's a delicate <b>web of life </b>on our planet upon which human life ultimately depends. The more animal habitat we destroy, the more it ultimately comes back to haunt us.<br />
<br />
Now, I'm not in favor of the insane <b>green police </b>and the UN's freedom-stealing efforts to pigeon-hole human beings into centrally-controlled behavior boxes. The key here is finding ways for people to live in balance with nature while still maintaining their freedoms.<br />
<br />
And that depends on education. We need to continue to teach people how to make sound decisions about where they buy their wood furniture (to avoid the slashing of old-growth <a href="http://www.naturalnews.com/forests.html" style="color: #3366cc; text-decoration: none;">forests</a>). We need to teach people who eat <a href="http://www.naturalnews.com/meat.html" style="color: #3366cc; text-decoration: none;">meat</a> to buy truly free-range, grass-fed meat rather than factory-farmed meats that depend on soybean mega-farms. And of course, we also need to make people aware of the benefits of getting more plant-based <a href="http://www.naturalnews.com/foods.html" style="color: #3366cc; text-decoration: none;">foods</a> into their diets where possible, because when properly prepared, plant foods provide a lot of nutrients with a smaller ecological footprint than most meats.<br />
<br />
I'm not against those who eat meat, by the way. I just think that people need to consider where their food comes from <b>no matter what they're <a href="http://www.naturalnews.com/eating.html" style="color: #3366cc; text-decoration: none;">eating</a></b>, and then take steps to reduce the ecological footprint of the food they're choosing to consume. The best answer to this is to <b>buy local food</b>. In fact, I would argue that eating some beef steaks from a local farmer is more ecologically sound than juicing up organic fruits and vegetables grown and imported from Chile (unless you live in Chile, of course).<br />
<br />
That's an arguable point, of course, and opinions differ sharply on this, but I believe that we really need to focus on <b>eating local foods </b>just as much as we do on<i>what we're eating</i>. Personally, I don't eat cows, but even for the plants I consume, I'm working hard right now on growing more of my own so that I'm acting with integrity -- "walking the talk" so to speak -- to be aligned with what I'm advocating for others.<br />
<br />
While we're at it, one of the best ways to reduce the destruction of animal habitat is to <b>grow your own food </b>by turning your yard into a garden. Reduce your demand for store-bought food and you unquestionably reduce your ecological footprint on the planet.<br />
<br />
And reconsider how much <b>seafood </b>you eat. Most seafood is extremely damaging to ocean ecosystems. I don't have space to discuss it all right here, but we'll cover it more on <a href="http://www.naturalnews.com/NaturalNews.html" style="color: #3366cc; text-decoration: none;">NaturalNews</a> in the near future.<br />
</span><h1 style="color: black; font-size: 15px; line-height: 18px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Life is on the line</span></h1><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">So those are 12 of the biggest things that are entirely unsustainable on our planet right now. Human life depends on most of them. It makes you wonder: How will humans survive when these systems and resources upon which we depend have run out or collapsed?<br />
<br />
That is a question we'd all better be asking ourselves right now. Because the age of cheap fuel, cheap money, cheap water and cheap food is fast ending. The future of life on our planet will require something far more evolved than the infantile, selfish and self-destructive mindset that humanity has so far demonstrated.<br />
<br />
Debt-based money systems don't cut it. Burning up all the fossil fuels is only a fool's abundance. Medicating the humans and animals with toxic, synthetic pharmaceuticals is a form of medical insanity. These things will all come to an end.<br />
<br />
The question is: Who will survive the end of these things and be around to help shape the next society which must operate with far greater humility and wisdom?<span><br />
<br />
Learn more:<a href="http://www.naturalnews.com/031669_life_on_earth_unsustainable_agriculture.html#ixzz1GdM2ZOWl" style="color: #003399; text-decoration: none;">http://www.naturalnews.com/031669_life_on_earth_unsustainable_agriculture.html#ixzz1GdM2ZOWl</a></span></span>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03009370115428649864noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8710220250263276836.post-89781658939823507352011-03-07T16:59:00.000-08:002011-03-07T16:59:48.585-08:00Plutocracy - A No-Love Story<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJ27x1rCprf0d0WqVgM7Sq0lx3ZpmxqxMT8JVr6HB5ECqT8sW3BYIKt95yDPlSUh4h6naldrnMDLdNh_DI7jUcqCWWRbcBMnqo_xbTVb7ftfgv1gJ3EPdRnc4KS-1zJ0Y8YVq-vtBkjXk/s1600/MichaelMooreSicko.jpg"></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: small; font-weight: normal;"><img height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJ27x1rCprf0d0WqVgM7Sq0lx3ZpmxqxMT8JVr6HB5ECqT8sW3BYIKt95yDPlSUh4h6naldrnMDLdNh_DI7jUcqCWWRbcBMnqo_xbTVb7ftfgv1gJ3EPdRnc4KS-1zJ0Y8YVq-vtBkjXk/s320/MichaelMooreSicko.jpg" width="320" /></span></span></b></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: small; font-weight: normal;"></span>America Is NOT Broke...the Madison speech<br />
by Michael Moore</span></b><br />
<br />
Delivered in Madison, Wisconsin on Saturday, March 5th, 2011. Video available <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wgNuSEZ8CDw">here</a>.<br />
<br />
America is not broke. Contrary to what those in power would like you to believe so that you'll give up your pension, cut your wages, and settle for the life your great-grandparents had, America is not broke. Not by a long shot. The country is awash in wealth and cash. It's just that it's not in your hands. It has been transferred, in the greatest heist in history, from the workers and consumers to the banks and the portfolios of the uber-rich. <br />
<br />
Today just 400 Americans have the <a href="http://www.alternet.org/economy/149918/9_pictures_that_expose_this_country%27s_obscene_division_of_wealth/">same wealth</a> as half of all Americans combined. </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br />
Let me say that again. 400 obscenely rich people, most of whom benefited in some way from the multi-trillion dollar taxpayer "bailout" of 2008, now have as much loot, stock and property as the assets of 155 million Americans combined. If you can't bring yourself to call that a financial coup d'état, then you are simply not being honest about what you know in your heart to be true.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<div><div style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">And I can see why. For us to admit that we have let a small group of men abscond with and hoard the bulk of the wealth that runs our economy, would mean that we'd have to accept the humiliating acknowledgment that we have indeed surrendered our precious Democracy to the moneyed elite. Wall Street, the banks and the Fortune 500 now run this Republic -- and, until this past month, the rest of us have felt completely helpless, unable to find a way to do anything about it. <br />
<br />
I have nothing more than a high school degree. But back when I was in school, every student had to take one semester of economics in order to graduate. And here's what I learned: Money doesn't grow on trees. It grows when we make things. It grows when we have good jobs with good wages that we use to buy the things we need and thus create more jobs. It grows when we provide an outstanding educational system that then grows a new generation of inventors, entrepreneurs, artists, scientists and thinkers who come up with the next great idea for the planet. And that new idea creates new jobs and that creates revenue for the state. But if those who have the most money don't pay their fair share of taxes, the state can't function. The schools can't produce the best and the brightest who will go on to create those jobs. If the wealthy get to keep most of their money, we have seen what they will do with it: recklessly gamble it on crazy Wall Street schemes and crash our economy. The crash they created cost us millions of jobs. That too caused a reduction in tax revenue. Everyone ended up suffering because of what the rich did. <br />
<br />
The nation is not broke, my friends. Wisconsin is not broke. Saying that the country is broke is repeating a Big Lie. It's one of the three biggest lies of the decade: 1) America is broke, 2) Iraq has WMD, and 3) The Packers can't win the Super Bowl without Brett Favre. <br />
<br />
The truth is, there's lots of money to go around. LOTS. It's just that those in charge have diverted that wealth into a deep well that sits on their well-guarded estates. They know they have committed crimes to make this happen and they know that someday you may want to see some of that money that used to be yours. So they have bought and paid for hundreds of politicians across the country to do their bidding for them. But just in case that doesn't work, they've got their gated communities, and the luxury jet is always fully fueled, the engines running, waiting for that day they hope never comes. To help prevent that day when the people demand their country back, the wealthy have done two very smart things: <br />
</span><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsmI7T6emEHjDUJxF_6aO5K1nIgJaDc0vmppeXP78U7JY2PRMEdj1zL0VAiLpaC_ZyxCNMeu3OzbvWkVJrr855bWm4MQW6uj6w-oj0GbhGbYTdoO0X96GEmE-IWlqbKOU0PjuPj5BIzfYQ/s400/reporter.jpg" width="302" /></div><div style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">1. They control the message. By owning most of the media they have expertly convinced many Americans of few means to buy their version of the American Dream and to vote for their politicians. Their version of the Dream says that you, too, might be rich some day -- this is America, where anything can happen if you just apply yourself! They have conveniently provided you with believable examples to show you how a poor boy can become a rich man, how the child of a single mother in Hawaii can become president, how a guy with a high school education can become a successful filmmaker. They will play these stories for you over and over again all day long so that the last thing you will want to do is upset the apple cart -- because you -- yes, you, too! -- might be rich/president/an Oscar-winner some day! The message is clear: keep you head down, your nose to the grindstone, don't rock the boat and be sure to vote for the party that protects the rich man that you might be some day. </span></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"></span><img height="217" src="http://www.blackcommentator.com/293/293_images/293_cartoon_wall_street_bailout_large.gif" width="400" /><br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">2. They have created a poison pill that they know you will never want to take. It is their version of mutually assured destruction. And when they threatened to release this weapon of mass economic annihilation in September of 2008, we blinked. As the economy and the stock market went into a tailspin, and the banks were caught conducting a worldwide Ponzi scheme, Wall Street issued this threat: Either hand over trillions of dollars from the American taxpayers or we will crash this economy straight into the ground. Fork it over or it's Goodbye savings accounts. Goodbye pensions. Goodbye United States Treasury. Goodbye jobs and homes and future. It was friggin' awesome and it scared the shit out of everyone. "Here! Take our money! We don't care. We'll even print more for you! Just take it! But, please, leave our lives alone, PLEASE!" </span></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"> <br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><a href="http://www.truth-out.org/files/images/cartoon022811.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="302" src="http://www.truth-out.org/files/images/cartoon022811.jpg" width="400" /></a></span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><a href="http://www.truth-out.org/files/images/cartoon022811.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a></span>The executives in the board rooms and hedge funds could not contain their laughter, their glee, and within three months they were writing each other huge bonus checks and marveling at how perfectly they had played a nation full of suckers. Millions lost their jobs anyway, and millions lost their homes. But there was no revolt (see #1). <br />
<br />
Until now. On Wisconsin! Never has a Michigander been more happy to share a big, great lake with you! You have aroused the sleeping giant known as the working people of the United States of America. Right now the earth is shaking and the ground is shifting under the feet of those who are in charge. Your message has inspired people in all 50 states and that message is: WE HAVE HAD IT! We reject anyone who tells us America is broke and broken. It's just the opposite! We are rich with talent and ideas and hard work and, yes, love. Love and compassion toward those who have, through no fault of their own, ended up as the least among us. But they still crave what we all crave: Our country back! Our democracy back! Our good name back! The United States of America. NOT the Corporate States of America. The United States of America! <br />
<img height="266" src="http://www.blogforarizona.com/.a/6a00d8341bf80c53ef014e5f57be51970c-500wi" style="cursor: move;" width="400" /><br />
So how do we make this happen? Well, we do it with a little bit of Egypt here, a little bit of Madison there. And let us pause for a moment and remember that it was a poor man with a fruit stand in Tunisia who gave his life so that the world might focus its attention on how a government run by billionaires for billionaires is an affront to freedom and morality and humanity. </span><br />
<br />
<img height="323" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjEp5K6VrzCYytEb7Q8pFQIATsFbrXOVoG-ImGglaALNku6wMyqjgG2LYvTAUNREePYcHWFjsCbHqZvYPegCg1NPSrPMXoIUfUrp8NZpviD9vfwfGA8nu58cZXbunctJY-S1WsnKXe81SE/s400/top-rate.jpg" width="400" /><br />
<div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Thank you, Wisconsin. You have made people realize this was our last best chance to grab the final thread of what was left of who we are as Americans. For three weeks you have stood in the cold, slept on the floor, skipped out of town to Illinois -- whatever it took, you have done it, and one thing is for certain: Madison is only the beginning. The smug rich have overplayed their hand. They couldn't have just been content with the money they raided from the treasury. They couldn't be satiated by simply removing millions of jobs and shipping them overseas to exploit the poor elsewhere. No, they had to have more -- something more than all the riches in the world. They had to have our soul. They had to strip us of our dignity. They had to shut us up and shut us down so that we could not even sit at a table with them and bargain about simple things like classroom size or bulletproof vests for everyone on the police force or letting a pilot just get a few extra hours sleep so he or she can do their job -- their $19,000 a year job. That's how much some rookie pilots on commuter airlines make, maybe even the rookie pilot who flew me here to Madison today. He told me he's stopped hoping for a pay increase. All he's asking for now is enough down time so that he doesn't have to sleep in his car between shifts at O'Hare airport. That's how despicably low we have sunk! The wealthy couldn't be content with just paying this man $19,000 a year. They had to take away his sleep. They had to demean him and dehumanize him and rub his face in it. After all, he's just another slob, isn't he? <br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">And that, my friends, is Corporate America's fatal mistake. But trying to destroy us they have given birth to a movement -- a movement that is becoming a massive, nonviolent revolt across the country. We all knew there had to be a breaking point some day, and that point is upon us. Many people in the media don't understand this. They say they were caught off guard about Egypt, never saw it coming. Now they act surprised and flummoxed about why so many hundreds of thousands have come to Madison over the last three weeks during brutal winter weather. "Why are they all standing out there in the cold?" I mean, there was that election in November and that was supposed to be that! <br />
<br />
"There's something happening here, and you don't know what it is, do you ...?" <br />
<br />
America ain't broke! The only thing that's broke is the moral compass of the rulers. And we aim to fix that compass and steer the ship ourselves from now on. Never forget, as long as that Constitution of ours still stands, it's one person, one vote, and it's the thing the rich hate most about America -- because even though they seem to hold all the money and all the cards, they begrudgingly know this one unshakeable basic fact: There are more of us than there are of them! <br />
<br />
Madison, do not retreat. We are with you. We will win together.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03009370115428649864noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8710220250263276836.post-61374191304269726922011-02-25T14:24:00.000-08:002011-02-25T14:24:37.727-08:00CAFO's Can Kill You - No Joke.<h2 class="subhead" style="color: #fc7000; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-weight: bold; line-height: 1; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-transform: uppercase;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #3c3b3b; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 30px; line-height: 36px; text-transform: none;">Flies and cockroaches carry antibiotic-resistant bacteria from factory farms, study finds</span></h2><div id="article-meta" style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; clear: both; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.3; margin-bottom: 15px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; width: 616px;"><div class="left-meta" style="background-color: white; border-top-color: rgb(227, 227, 227); border-top-style: solid; border-top-width: 1px; clear: none; float: left; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.3; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; min-height: 68px; padding-bottom: 10px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 10px; width: 205px;"><a class="avatar" href="http://www.grist.org/member/1554" style="color: #006699; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.3; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none;" title="go to profile page for Tom Philpott"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><img alt="Grist admin avatar badge" class="avatar_badge" src="http://www.grist.org/i/badges/badge_g.gif" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(192, 192, 192); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-left-color: rgb(192, 192, 192); border-left-style: solid; border-left-width: 1px; border-right-color: initial; border-right-style: none; border-right-width: initial; border-top-color: rgb(192, 192, 192); border-top-style: solid; border-top-width: 1px; cursor: move; display: block; float: left; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.3; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;" /><img alt="avatar for Tom Philpott" height="50" src="http://www.grist.org/phpThumb/phpThumb.php?src=http://www.grist.org/i/avatars/uploads/avatar_1554.jpg&w=50&h=50&zc=C&q=100" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(192, 192, 192); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-left-color: initial; border-left-style: none; border-left-width: initial; border-right-color: rgb(192, 192, 192); border-right-style: solid; border-right-width: 1px; border-top-color: rgb(192, 192, 192); border-top-style: solid; border-top-width: 1px; cursor: move; display: block; float: left; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.3; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;" width="50" /></span></a><div class="left-meta-text" style="border-top-color: initial; border-top-style: none; border-top-width: initial; clear: none; float: left; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.3; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 7px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; width: 124px;"><div class="author_name_list" style="color: #888e93; font-size: 10px; font-style: normal; font-weight: bold; line-height: 1.3; margin-bottom: 2px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-transform: uppercase;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">BY <a href="http://www.grist.org/member/1554" style="color: #005a84; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-weight: bold; line-height: 1.3; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; text-transform: none;">Tom Philpott</a></span></div><div class="article_timestamp" style="color: #888e93; font-size: 10px; font-style: normal; font-weight: bold; line-height: 1.3; margin-bottom: 2px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-transform: uppercase;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">25 FEB 2011 3:24 PM</span></div><ul class="author_tools" style="color: #010101; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.3; margin-bottom: 20px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 4px;"><li class="rss" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: initial; background-image: url(http://www.grist.org/i/screen/new/social_icons.png); background-origin: initial; background-position: -80px 0px; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; border-bottom-style: none; border-color: initial; border-left-style: none; border-right-style: none; border-top-style: none; border-width: initial; float: left; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.3; list-style-type: none; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 5px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.grist.org/services/rss/site/rss/author/id/1554/" style="color: #006699; display: block; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; height: 16px; line-height: 1.3; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; width: 16px;" title="Subscribe to RSS feed for Tom Philpott"></a></li>
<li class="twitter" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: initial; background-image: url(http://www.grist.org/i/screen/new/social_icons.png); background-origin: initial; background-position: 0px 0px; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; border-bottom-style: none; border-color: initial; border-left-style: none; border-right-style: none; border-top-style: none; border-width: initial; float: left; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.3; list-style-type: none; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 5px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;"><a href="http://twitter.com/tomphilpott" style="color: #006699; display: block; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; height: 16px; line-height: 1.3; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; width: 16px;" title="Twitter feed for Tom Philpott"></a></li>
</ul><div style="border-top-color: initial; border-top-style: none; border-top-width: initial; clear: both; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.3; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;"></div></div></div></div><div class="article-body" style="border-top-color: initial; border-top-style: none; border-top-width: initial; clear: both; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.3; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 10px;"><div style="color: #010101; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.45; margin-bottom: 20px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;"><span class="media mediaItemundefined media-right" style="border-bottom-style: none; border-color: initial; border-color: initial; border-left-style: none; border-right-style: none; border-style: initial; border-top-style: none; border-width: initial; display: block; float: right; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.3; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 10px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 5px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; width: 307px;"><img alt="dead pigd" src="http://www.grist.org/phpThumb/phpThumb.php?src=http://www.grist.org/i/assets/pigs_SteveWing_425.jpg&w=307" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(192, 192, 192); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-color: initial; border-color: initial; border-left-color: rgb(192, 192, 192); border-left-style: solid; border-left-width: 1px; border-right-color: rgb(192, 192, 192); border-right-style: solid; border-right-width: 1px; border-style: initial; border-style: initial; border-top-color: rgb(192, 192, 192); border-top-style: solid; border-top-width: 1px; cursor: move; display: block; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.3; margin-bottom: 5px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;" /><span class="caption" style="color: #010101; display: block; font-size: 11px; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.3; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 2px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A fly's paradise: Near a giant hog factory in North Carolina, downed pigs fester while sprayers spread untreated manure onto fields.</span></span><span class="credit" style="color: #b7b7b7; display: block; font-size: 11px; font-style: italic; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.3; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 3px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Photo: Steve Wing</span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">What sort of antibiotic-resistant pathogens are growing on factory farms, along with all the cheap pork chops and chicken wings? And what level of threat do they pose to our health?</span></div><div style="color: #010101; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.45; margin-bottom: 20px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Well, we know that in total, factory-farm animals consume a jaw-dropping four times as many antibiotics as do people in the United States, thanks to diligent reporting by <a href="http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/12/news-break-fda-estimate-us-livestock-get-29-million-pounds-of-antibiotics-per-year/" style="color: #006699; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.3; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none;">Maryn McKenna</a> and<a href="http://www.foodsafetynews.com/2010/12/animals-consume-lions-share-of-antibiotics/" style="color: #006699; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.3; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none;">Ralph Loglisci</a> and work by <a href="http://www.louise.house.gov/index.php?Itemid=141&catid=91:press-releases-2010&id=1683:confirmed-80-percent-of-all-antibacterial-drugs-used-on-animals-endangering-human-health&option=com_content&view=article" style="color: #006699; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.3; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none;">Rep. Louise Slaughter</a>(D-N.Y.).</span></div><div style="color: #010101; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.45; margin-bottom: 20px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And we know that a kind of antibiotic-resistant staph infection called MRSA now kills more people than AIDS -- and infects people who never set foot in a hospital, which is the site where MRSA is thought to have originated. We also know, due to the <a href="http://www.grist.org/article/Pork-superbug-documented-" style="color: #006699; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.3; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none;">stellar work of Iowa State University researcher Tara Smith</a>, that pigs in confined animal feedlot operations, and the workers who tend them, routinely carry MRSA strains (her paper can be found <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19145257?ordinalpos=1&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_DefaultReportPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum" style="color: #006699; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.3; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none;">here</a>).</span></div><div style="color: #010101; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.45; margin-bottom: 20px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">We also know that, by the FDA's own reckoning, meat on grocery store shelves is <a href="http://www.grist.org/article/2011-02-15-chicken-antibiotic-resistant-bacteria-and-regulatory-independenc" style="color: #006699; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.3; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none;">routinely infected by pathogens resistant to multiple antibiotics</a> (again, McKenna's <a href="http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/02/superbugs-canadian-chicken" style="color: #006699; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.3; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none;">work</a> brought the FDA's perhaps intentionally obscure report to light).</span></div><div style="color: #010101; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.45; margin-bottom: 20px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And now we know of yet another means by which antibiotic-resistant nasties can make their way from meat factories into the broader community: through the cockroaches and flies drawn to the titanic amounts of manure produced on factory farms. For a <a href="http://news.ncsu.edu/releases/014mkschalantibiotic/" style="color: #006699; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.3; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none;">paper</a> published last month in the journal <em style="font-style: italic; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.3; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">Microbiology</em>, researchers from North Carolina State and Kansas State universities took one for the team -- i.e., the public. They did something few of us would want to do: rounded up common flies and roaches hanging around factory hog farms, and tested them to see what kinds of bacteria they were harboring.</span></div><div style="color: #010101; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.45; margin-bottom: 20px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Their finding? More than 90 percent of the insects sampled carried forms of the bacteria Enterococci that are resistant to at least one common antibiotic, and often more than one.</span></div><div style="color: #010101; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.45; margin-bottom: 20px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.grist.org/article/2011-02-25-flies-cockroaches-antibiotic-resistant-bacteria-factory-farms">Read the rest here.</a></span></div></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03009370115428649864noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8710220250263276836.post-45286124859688389242011-02-25T13:29:00.000-08:002011-02-25T13:29:45.768-08:00Boycott Land O'Lakes - GMO Pushers<div class="entrytitle_wrap" style="color: #151515; font-family: Verdana, Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17px; padding-bottom: 1.8em;"><div class="entrytitle" style="text-align: left;"><h1 style="font-size: 2em; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: -0.1px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: left;"><a href="http://farmwars.info/?p=5376" rel="bookmark" style="color: black; text-decoration: none;" title="Link to Hay Now — It’s Boycott Time: Land O’Lakes, This Means You!">Hay Now — It’s Boycott Time: Land O’Lakes, This Means You!</a></h1></div></div><div class="entrybody" style="color: #151515; font-family: Verdana, Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17px; overflow-x: auto; overflow-y: auto; padding-bottom: 6px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 10px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;"><strong></strong></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 10px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;"><strong><a href="http://farmwars.info/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/Boycott-Land-OLakes-copy1.jpg" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(204, 204, 204); border-bottom-style: dotted; border-bottom-width: 1px; color: #7f9a42; text-decoration: none;"><img alt="" class="alignleft size-full wp-image-5381" height="292" src="http://farmwars.info/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/Boycott-Land-OLakes-copy1.jpg" style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; display: inline; float: left; margin-bottom: 2px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 7px; margin-top: 0px; max-width: 580px; padding-bottom: 4px; padding-left: 4px; padding-right: 4px; padding-top: 4px;" title="Boycott Land O'Lakes copy" width="300" /></a></strong></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 10px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;"><strong>By Citizens for Safe Food and Feed</strong></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 10px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;"><strong></strong><strong><a href="http://farmwars.info/?p=5376" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(204, 204, 204); border-bottom-style: dotted; border-bottom-width: 1px; color: #7f9a42; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Farm Wars</a></strong></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 10px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">By now you’ve heard how President Obama and his Monsanto Administration have plowed through approvals of three more genetically engineered products, including GE alfalfa. Well, here’s something else you should know:</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 10px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">To produce its Round-Up Ready Alfalfa seeds, Monsanto partnered with a company called Forage Genetics International, which is a <strong>wholly owned subsidiary of Land O’Lakes dairy co-op.</strong> That’s right, Land O’Lakes stands to make a fortune from polluting our food supply with untested and unlabeled GMOs.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 10px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">To protest, you could sign one of the many petitions going around that will likely just be ignored. But there’s another way to show your disapproval of genetically engineered Round-Up Ready Alfalfa: <strong>Boycott all Land O’Lakes products</strong> — its butter, cheese, eggs, speads, margarine, seasonings, creams, cocoa and cappuccino mixes, sour cream and milk. All of them.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 10px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">You have the power to <strong>economically punish Land O’Lakes</strong> — the owner of Forage Genetics, <strong>Monsanto’s partner in crime</strong> — for its role in polluting the food chain with untested and unlabeled GMOs, increasing the use of toxic glyphosate herbicide, and potentially destroying the organic beef and dairy feed market <strong>by loudly refusing to support Land O’Lakes with your dollars.</strong></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 10px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">Tell all your friends to go to all the supermarkets in their area and let the check-out clerks know that they’re boycotting Land O’Lakes products until they are out of the GMO business, loud enough for other shoppers to hear. And next, stop by the store manager’s desk and tell him about the boycott.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 10px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">Send Land O’Lakes and other companies a clear message: <strong>HAY you — We’re FED UP with GMOs in our food supply!</strong></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 10px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">And to make sure Land O’Lakes knows why its sales are down, contact its president and CEO Chris Policinski and let him know you won’t be buying Land O’Lakes products anymore because you don’t want genetically engineered food or animal feed:</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 10px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">Chris Policinski<br />
President and CEO<br />
Land O’Lakes<br />
4001 Lexington Avenue<br />
Arden Hills, MN 55126-2998<br />
651/481-2222</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 10px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">Spread the word…</div></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03009370115428649864noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8710220250263276836.post-31545988056387591352011-02-09T19:36:00.000-08:002011-02-09T19:39:31.926-08:00Taking Root in Detroit<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="345" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/h7ptPuYtmbU" title="YouTube video player" width="420"></iframe></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Be part of the solution. Join us in Detroit:</span><br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><img height="73" src="http://pri-de.net/board/images/com/topimage.gif" style="cursor: move;" width="524" /></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
<a href="http://pri-de.net/board/sub1.php">ReNew, ReVision, Redesign Detroit - A Permaculture Design Course</a><br />
April 27 - March 8th, 2011Larry Santoyo and Keith D. Johnson, Instructors <br />
<br />
An Invitation to Mutually Assured Succession<br />
<br />
The concept for the ReNew, ReVision, ReDesign Detroit - Permaculture Design Course is inspired by Detroit's efforts to re-imagine itself after decades of slow, steady decline. In Detroit, real green shoots arise in once-empty lots as individuals and organizations create community and market gardens as ways to beautify, create green spaces, provide fresh, nutritious food to city residents, create or recreate community, and pursue self-reliance as entrepreneurs in the food system. While some pursue food justice via gardens, others pursue racial and economic justice. Some do all three, many of them via a garden, or urban farm.<br />
<br />
On some streets a rooster may crow, a goat bleat or a duck quack. Pheasants, raccoons, opossums and deer can be seen in various places. But this is not chaos and ruin, it is edge meeting edge, which is where magic happens. This is nature saying, "Join me. I haven't forgotten you." This is opportunity to design a regenerative, sustainable city. But the city is more than fallow fields and squawking chickens.<br />
<br />
Old meets new as the Motor City becomes a city with a growing reputation for attracting entrepreneurs, artists and wanderers looking for niches, and filling them. Some are wary of the new, some embrace them. Tension like the surface tension of a bubble stretches until boundaries burst and edges blend creating magic and conflict. Techno whizzes bring the whiz-bang of new frontiers while social media rides a wave of enthusiasm for ethereal connectedness. Grace Lee Boggs sings a song of resistance to powers tangible and hidden while schools descend into chaos and overcrowding, and a new style of education seeks to rise from the ruins of industrialization.<br />
<br />
Into the political crisis following the fall of Kwame Kilpatrick rises Mayor Dave Bing, bringing a new game, far from the basketball court, one where the stakes are very much higher. Assembling a cadre of corporations, experts and advisors, the Mayor and his select group set about the designing a future for Detroit. A Detroit from a corporate, growth-oriented view in which the citizens are engaged in meetings without dialogue and are asked to respond to pre-selected questions out of context and without any data, information or expression of what assumptions they are expected to consider. The claim is transparency, but little is known and less stated openly. The city is told people will be incentivized to move to renewed, walkable neighborhoods, but there is no money to make it happen - and they will be left behind with reduced or absent city services, but may do as they please in these left-behind "green" spaces.<br />
<br />
An equal and opposite reaction is the response to every action. Not from the top, but from the bottom. Not behind closed, corporate and governmental doors, but in city squares, school auditoriums and neighborhood meeting places. Not in the name of growth, power and profit, but people, sustainability and community. Perhaps the people populating DetroitWorks can create a Perfect Possible Future, but sound principles of ecological engineering suggest this is ulikely. How can sustainability arise from a profit motive? How does a community grow when torn from its roots and transplanted without them? How can a city be the sum of only some of its parts?<br />
<img alt="[5_39peacemakersgardenchene.jpg]" height="272" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1cY2bsrOkxt18lW9KBthTQp0ALDPS9EooP08Tf5IJmCcATTMBw3uJj9TmXCxehFiLnzTbwemnS5zaub-orzMoF_mr0qIx_hKd6g3DCzidxTAUBVUfdAENC_WfGQjzUG9ij7YBAqKqFyVg/s400/5_39peacemakersgardenchene.jpg" width="400" /><br />
An equal and opposite reaction, this is a call and an invitation to all to engage in a discussion and a deseign process where all are equally empowered and the process is open and interactive. We hope this process can lead to an alternative to the current DetroitWorks process, or help create a realignment and redesign of the DetroitWorks process, that has as its primary concerns community and sustainability.<br />
<br />
The ReNew, ReVision, ReDesign Detroit PDC will fulfill all content requirements of a PDC, however, it is, possibly, unique in its goal to apply permaculture principles to produce a workable design for a major city as the course Design Project. Detroit's difficult past, it's vibrant entrepreneurial spirit, under-utilized workforce, abundant water, vacant land, and it's industrial past all combine to make Detroit the perfect candidate to be the first large, post-industrial, post-carbon urban area.</span>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03009370115428649864noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8710220250263276836.post-61933695750627706232011-01-30T09:20:00.000-08:002011-01-30T09:20:19.389-08:00Bank Bailouts Explained<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The story of the bank bailouts, and what we've gotten so far in return. </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">by Omid Malekan </span><br />
<br />
<iframe allowfullscreen="" class="youtube-player" frameborder="0" height="266" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/yipV_pK6HXw" title="YouTube video player" type="text/html" width="420"></iframe>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03009370115428649864noreply@blogger.com0