flux64

Occupy Oakland Activist Pancho Ramos

2011-11-17T17:29:00.000-08:00

"Beautiful short film about Pancho Ramos-Stierle -- he practices silence every Monday, in the tradition of Gandhi. This past Monday, he was arrested while meditating in Oakland."

"p.s. -- great news today -- Pancho was released by ICE! (Immigration)"

Marine Veteran Injured by Non-Lethal Rounds at Occupy Oakland

2011-10-26T13:39:00.000-07:00

Protestors are being targeted by the police:

That injured protestor is a Marine:

From Veterans Today - http://www.veteranstoday.com/2011/10/26/marine-veteran-injured-by-non-lethal-rounds-at-occupy-oakland/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=marine-veteran-injured-by-non-lethal-rounds-at-occupy-oakland

By David Edwards

A Marine veteran at Occupy Oakland was injured Monday night after being shot at point-blank range with bean bags or rubber bullets by police.

Scott Olsen was at 14th Street and Broadway when he was shot by either San Francisco Sheriffs deputies or Palo Alto Police, according to RT.

“We need medic!” one protester is heard screaming. “Medic! Medic!”

“What happened?” another asked.
“He got shot!”
As Olsen is carried away, he appears unconscious and bloody, unable to even respond when asked his name.
Olsen is associated with Veterans for Peace.

~~~

10/07/11 Occupy WallStreet and Integral Politics with Jeff Salzman - Ken Wilber Integral News

2011-10-23T07:54:00.000-07:00

Occupy the Present Moment

2011-10-15T16:44:00.000-07:00

The lure of occupying the present moment is what got me to my first Occupation. That and the fact that October 15th is World Occupation Day.

I am in touch with many people who support the movement, but are unable to directly participate. I suspect that occupying the present moment, where ever one might be, can be one way to bridge that gap, and to help benefit the cause. I am sensing that this is Occupy movement really is more of a lifestyle, and I wait anxiously to see how this will unfold.

Comfortable with ambiguity seems to be the theme lately. It is driving "left brainers" crazy!

Peace!

t23

~~~

“I think that, for me, the goal with what we’re doing here with Occupy the Present Moment is to contextualize how Dharma practice can support the best kind of radical protest possible by promoting inner calm, supporting emotional equilibrium—so that reactivity is kept to a minimum—promoting self-reflection, so that there is accountability within the community of activists and towards those who are witnessing and responding,” Korrigan said. “So my goal was to not just have sit-ins, so to speak, but to offer mini trainings to help people integrate their experience through quiet self-awareness.” - full article

Occupying the Present Moment Related Links:

Remaining human: A Buddhist perspective on Occupy Wall Street
http://matadornetwork.com/bnt/remaining-human-a-buddhist-perspective-on-occupy-wall-st/

This Is What Compassion Looks Like: A Buddhist View of Occupy Wall Street
http://www.upaya.org/news/2011/10/14/this-is-what-compassion-looks-like-a-buddhist-view-of-occupy-wall-street/

Dharma activists aiming to Occupy the Present Moment at Vancouver protest
http://www.straight.com/article-485426/vancouver/dharma-activists-aiming-occupy-present-moment-vancouver-protest

Meditation at Occupy Wall Street
http://www.wildmind.org/blogs/news/meditation-at-occupy-wall-street

Occupy Wall Street and Beyond
http://bpf.org/occupy-wall-street-and-beyond

Video:

Why Iceland Should Be in the News, But Is Not

2011-08-21T20:45:00.000-07:00

By Deena Stryker

via http://sacsis.org.za/site/article/728.1?frommailing=1#here

An Italian radio program's story about Iceland’s on-going revolution is a stunning example of how little our media tells us about the rest of the world. Americans may remember that at the start of the 2008 financial crisis, Iceland literally went bankrupt. The reasons were mentioned only in passing, and since then, this little-known member of the European Union fell back into oblivion.

As one European country after another fails or risks failing, imperiling the Euro, with repercussions for the entire world, the last thing the powers that be want is for Iceland to become an example. Here's why:

Five years of a pure neo-liberal regime had made Iceland, (population 320 thousand, no army), one of the richest countries in the world. In 2003 all the country’s banks were privatized, and in an effort to attract foreign investors, they offered on-line banking whose minimal costs allowed them to offer relatively high rates of return. The accounts, called IceSave, attracted many English and Dutch small investors. But as investments grew, so did the banks’ foreign debt. In 2003 Iceland’s debt was equal to 200 times its GNP, but in 2007, it was 900 percent. The 2008 world financial crisis was the coup de grace. The three main Icelandic banks, Landbanki, Kapthing and Glitnir, went belly up and were nationalized, while the Kroner lost 85% of its value with respect to the Euro. At the end of the year Iceland declared bankruptcy.

Contrary to what could be expected, the crisis resulted in Icelanders recovering their sovereign rights, through a process of direct participatory democracy that eventually led to a new Constitution. But only after much pain.

Geir Haarde, the Prime Minister of a Social Democratic coalition government, negotiated a two million one hundred thousand dollar loan, to which the Nordic countries added another two and a half million. But the foreign financial community pressured Iceland to impose drastic measures. The FMI and the European Union wanted to take over its debt, claiming this was the only way for the country to pay back Holland and Great Britain, who had promised to reimburse their citizens.

Protests and riots continued, eventually forcing the government to resign. Elections were brought forward to April 2009, resulting in a left-wing coalition which condemned the neoliberal economic system, but immediately gave in to its demands that Iceland pay off a total of three and a half million Euros. This required each Icelandic citizen to pay 100 Euros a month (or about $130) for fifteen years, at 5.5% interest, to pay off a debt incurred by private parties vis a vis other private parties. It was the straw that broke the reindeer’s back.

What happened next was extraordinary. The belief that citizens had to pay for the mistakes of a financial monopoly, that an entire nation must be taxed to pay off private debts was shattered, transforming the relationship between citizens and their political institutions and eventually driving Iceland’s leaders to the side of their constituents. The Head of State, Olafur Ragnar Grimsson, refused to ratify the law that would have made Iceland’s citizens responsible for its bankers’ debts, and accepted calls for a referendum.

Of course the international community only increased the pressure on Iceland. Great Britain and Holland threatened dire reprisals that would isolate the country. As Icelanders went to vote, foreign bankers threatened to block any aid from the IMF. The British government threatened to freeze Icelander savings and checking accounts. As Grimsson said: “We were told that if we refused the international community’s conditions, we would become the Cuba of the North. But if we had accepted, we would have become the Haiti of the North.” (How many times have I written that when Cubans see the dire state of their neighbor, Haiti, they count themselves lucky.)

In the March 2010 referendum, 93% voted against repayment of the debt. The IMF immediately froze its loan. But the revolution (though not televised in the United States), would not be intimidated. With the support of a furious citizenry, the government launched civil and penal investigations into those responsible for the financial crisis. Interpol put out an international arrest warrant for the ex-president of Kaupthing, Sigurdur Einarsson, as the other bankers implicated in the crash fled the country.

But Icelanders didn't stop there: they decided to draft a new constitution that would free the country from the exaggerated power of international finance and virtual money. (The one in use had been written when Iceland gained its independence from Denmark, in 1918, the only difference with the Danish constitution being that the word ‘president’ replaced the word ‘king’.)

To write the new constitution, the people of Iceland elected twenty-five citizens from among 522 adults not belonging to any political party but recommended by at least thirty citizens. This document was not the work of a handful of politicians, but was written on the internet. The constituent’s meetings are streamed on-line, and citizens can send their comments and suggestions, witnessing the document as it takes shape. The constitution that eventually emerges from this participatory democratic process will be submitted to parliament for approval after the next elections.

Some readers will remember that Iceland’s ninth century agrarian collapse was featured in Jared Diamond’s book by the same name. Today, that country is recovering from its financial collapse in ways just the opposite of those generally considered unavoidable, as confirmed yesterday by the new head of the IMF, Christine Lagarde to Fareed Zakaria. The people of Greece have been told that the privatization of their public sector is the only solution. And those of Italy, Spain and Portugal are facing the same threat.

They should look to Iceland. Refusing to bow to foreign interests, that small country stated loud and clear that the people are sovereign.

That’s why it is not in the news anymore.

Stryker is an American writer that has lived in six different countries, is fluent in four languages and a published writer in three. She looks at the big picture from a systems and spiritual point of view.

Another Santa Fe Moment: Low Income Seniors Left Hungry

2011-08-21T15:44:00.000-07:00

The Commodity Supplemental Food Program and the Senior Van Service here in the City Different are blocking more than one senior, who cannot drive or is homebound, from receiving their commodities. The Senior Van Service, operated by the City of Santa Fe, has a new policy for commodities enacted in 2011. Under this new policy all seniors are now denied rides to the Senior Commodities Program, which has a monthly distribution center at the rodeo grounds, stating that the Commodity Supplemental Food Program service delivers the commodities to the seniors who cannot drive or are otherwise homebound. The Commodity Supplemental Food Program has one person that legally delivers to 90 seniors. This list has been full for the entire year, since they first received a small grant to deliver commodities to seniors who are “homebound.” They will not add more seniors over their case load of 90 permanently to the delivery list.

So in the event that the Commodity Supplemental Food Program’s list fills up, and is only meant for homebound seniors, why can’t the Senior Van Servicetake seniors who are able enough to get there with transportation, but who cannot drive themselves to pick up their commodities? Their website still states that “Every third Tuesday of the month, rides for commodities, medical appointments, and lunch at senior centers are given top priority.” http://www.santafenm.gov/index.aspx?NID=413

Another senior has stated that while attempting to access the monthly distribution center at the rodeo grounds on foot, due to being truly poor and unable to afford a car, they were turned away. Apparently the Commodity Supplemental Food Program as well as the Food Depot, which both distribute food by drive-through only, are more geared towards an upper-class poor that have family to drive them, or who can afford an automobile.

Back to work

2011-08-05T08:12:00.000-07:00

A wrestler's power, a boxer's stamina, a martial artist's control, a dancer's grace, a yogi's surrender, an artist's creativity, a scientist's scrutiny, an innovator's vision, a child's exuberance, an elder's wisdom, a monk's serenity, a priest's piety, a brother's keeper. These are all to which I strive. Back to work. - Scott Sonnon

Three Card Monte - The Real Hustle

2011-07-14T11:35:00.000-07:00

Three Card Monte - The Real Hustle is a perfect title. It captures the point of view that there is more than meets the eye. It can be seen that most, if not all, in modern society is run along these lines. Can you think of one thing in our modern society that is not run this way?

If You Love Peace, Become a "Blue Republican" (Just for a Year)

2011-07-08T08:08:00.000-07:00

Interesting idea: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robin-koerner/blue-republican_b_886650.html?page=2

I am aware that the main objection to Ron Paul from the left concerns his belief that private charities and individuals are more effective in maintaining social welfare than the government. To this I ask one question. Do you believe so much in the effectiveness of our current centralized delivery of social welfare that it is worth the war making and the abrogation of civil rights supported by both Bush and Obama's administrations? Moreover, while Ron Paul would look to transition out of the huge federally run welfare programs in the long-run, that's not where he wants to start: his immediate fight would be to bring our forces back to the USA and to re-implement the Bill of Rights.

Koerner hit it right on here. This is one of my main concerns with Ron Paul. Another huge and far reaching concern is that he would deregulate like there is no tomorrow, which will end in an ugly corporate rule. I don't see how he is all that different in the end. I see the same results as any other candidate (corporate welfare, corporate rule, reappropriation of wealth), Ron Paul is just taking a different road to get there.

Or am I mistaken?

a lament for linux (ubuntu in particular)

2011-07-02T10:47:00.000-07:00

I really like linux. I really super like ubuntu because I am more of a user and not a programmer. Ubuntu is an easy, idiot proof version of linux. Great!

I like that on the ubuntu website it says,

Compatible with all your devices Ubuntu works brilliantly with a range of devices. No installation CDs. No fuss. And it’s compatible with Windows too! So you can open, edit and share Microsoft Office documents easily. http://www.ubuntu.com/

This is so important as I have a range of devices, and I need to open, edit and share Microsoft Office documents easily.

The lament comes in where these things just aren't true. They are not true and I want them to be true because I strongly support the open software ethic. I want to participate in the community and to share it with others. I think this model applies to much more than just software.

I can show a concrete example of how ubuntu is not compatible with all my devices: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1771972&highlight=epson+printer+workforce
and
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1774191&highlight=epson+printer+workforce

All the info is there. I have also opened, edited and shared Microsoft Office documents easily using LibreOffice, and to my dismay the formatting was totally destroyed. Luckily I did a few experimental openings, editings and shareings of Microsoft Office documents easily. It just doesn't work. How embarrasing it would be had I believed the above statement by ubuntu and this one by libreoffice:

You get a simple-to-use yet powerful interface that is easy to personalize – Microsoft Office users will find the switch easy and painless, with a familiar look and feel.

Compatible with all major competitors' file formats. You can easily import files from Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint and many other formats, and can easily save to Microsoft Office and other formats when needed. http://www.libreoffice.org/features/

This simply is not true. Cross-platform use reveals incompatible formatting, even while working in Microsoft Office formats, and while the interface might be similar to Microsoft Office 2003, it is not at all like the two newer versions. Who has Microsoft Office 2003 at work or at school anymore?

I am told that it isn't ubuntu's or libreoffice's fault. It is the other companies' fault for not opening their code. I can understand that. The thing is that it doesn't change the problems I am having. Which leads to my biggest lament: I still have to use windows for the most basic functions for which I use a computer. Ubuntu is barely useful to me at this point. I just wish they would stop saying that it is.

~~~

Dharna for Bank of America

2011-06-10T11:07:00.000-07:00

Solving the ‘food desert’ problem?

2011-06-01T08:04:00.000-07:00

BY GARY NABHAN, KELLY WATTERS

1 JUN 2011 7:00 AM

via http://www.grist.org/locavore/2011-06-01-community-owned-assets-big-box-stores-will-solve-the-food-desert

A few weeks ago, when the Obama administration released its Food Desert Locator, many of us realized that a once-good idea has spoiled like a bag of old bread. If you go online and find that your family lives in a food desert, don't worry: You have plenty of company. One of every 10 census tracts in the lower 48 has been awarded that status.

Two years ago, when one of us (Gary) moved to the village of Patagonia, Ariz., he inadvertently chose to reside in what the USDA deems to be on the edge of a food desert. Its maps show that Gary now lives more than 15 miles away from a full-service supermarket or chain grocery store that has 50 or more employees and grosses $2 million or more in food sales each year. Apparently, that's bad. Gary and his low-income neighbors are now being told that if they were bright enough to reside within walking distance or five minutes driving distance to a Safeway, Alberston's, Winn-Dixie, or Walmart, they would undoubtedly be more "food secure."

Why? A USDA report [PDF] to Congress in 2009 suggested that the average food in such big-box grocery stores is priced 10 percent lower than its counterparts in independently owned corner stores, roadside stands, or farmers markets. What's more, the USDA claimed that "full service" big-box stores offer more affordable access to food diversity than do other venues.

Those assertions may be the biggest bunch of road apples that the USDA has ever tried to force down the throats of low-income Americans. The fatal flaw of the Obama strategy to reduce hunger, food insecurity, and obesity in America is that it risks bringing more big-box stores both to poor urban neighborhoods and to rural communities. It categorically ignores the fact that independently owned groceries, corner markets in ethnic neighborhoods, farmers markets, CSAs, and roadside stands are the real sources of affordable food diversity in America. But in its 2009 report to Congress, the USDA conceded that "a complete assessment of these diverse food environments would be such an enormous task" that it decided not to survey independently owned food purveyors. Therefore, it decided to ignore their beneficial roles and focus on the grocery-store chains that now capture three-quarters of all current foods sales in the U.S.

Unfortunately, we will get what we measure. The $400 million that the Obama administration has set aside to create greater food access in these so-called food deserts will likely go to attracting full-service grocery franchises that heap upon our children megatons of empty calories like those in high-fructose corn syrup and corn oil -- yes, the very products that emerge from Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack's own great state of Iowa. But the profits made in those big-box stores will drain away from our neighborhoods and communities, bound for distant corporate headquarters, further impoverishing most food producers and consumers.

Instead, what we need is tangible support for rebuilding the rural and urban infrastructure that can enable more marketing of fresh, local foods by farmers, orchard keepers, and ranchers directly to neighboring consumers. The lack of a big-box store in our community may be an asset, not a disadvantage in keeping our children healthy and food secure. In Patagonia, we have a family-owned grocery, Red Mountain Foods, that uses its 900 square feet of indoor space and seasonal roadside displays to provide our 800 residents with a great diversity of nutritious whole foods, including both local and organic options.

Food stamp or "SNAP" purchases made by low-income residents currently account for over 5 percent of Red Mountain's $300,000 average annual food sales, and have allowed a doubling of local access to healthy foods in the last couple years. Red Mountain also provides $3,000 of healthy snacks annually to the Patagonia Schools, which have a high percentage of children from low-income families in its classes. In addition to Red Mountain Foods, Patagonians have access to two summer farmers markets within a 10-mile radius, a year-round community garden, and direct sales of grass-fed meat and apples from local ranches and orchards.

Ironically the USDA's Food Environment Atlas already offers a far more complete picture of food access on a county-by-county basis than does the new Food Desert Locator. Borderland communities like ours may still suffer from undeniable poverty, but if supported, not obstructed, their informal and local food economies may keep them from becoming true food "dead zones" where locally produced nutrients fail to reach those who need them the most. Nevertheless, we do indeed need help in rebuilding meat processing plants, grain mills, and community kitchens to make the best use of our locally produced beef, mesquite, fruits, and chiles. What we emphatically do not need is a Safeway or Walmart in our midst.

As a result of the chronic lack of USDA co-investment with rural communities in food security-enhancing local infrastructure, this country now has fewer farmers than it does Department of Agriculture employees. It is a sad sign of the times when a misguided bureaucracy has grown to a size larger than the constituency it was originally charged to help: the farmers and ranchers of America. If there are to be cuts to the USDA budget, let it be to the bureaucracy itself and not to the sustainable agriculture and economic development grants that go directly to farmers, ranchers, and small-scale growers in urban community gardens.

Finally, let's junk the term "food deserts" forever, and change government policies that have inexorably fostered food dead zones in both rural and urban areas. It's time we quit intensifying the inequities in the globalized food economy and start investing in a food future that creates true food justice through wedding relocalization with fair trade between regions.

Gary Paul Nabhan is a contributor to Writers on the Range, a service of High Country News, based in Paonia, Colo. He is the coauthor most recently of Chasing Chiles: Hot Spots Along the Pepper Trail (Chelsea Green, 2010).

Kelly Watters is the community organizer for Tucson Community Food Bank and the Somos La Semilla project in the Arizona borderlands. She founded the Santa Cruz River Farmers Market, ranked among the best 10 in the nation for its work in providing nutritious food to low-income residents.

and never the twain shall meet?

2011-05-31T16:47:00.000-07:00

Been watching the right and left political outsiders inching closer and closer to each other on many issues. Here is one of them:

http://the-classic-liberal.com/department-homeland-security-pre-crime-scan-malintent/

http://www.glennbeck.com/2011/05/31/minority-report-dhs-looking-to-catch-future-crime/

I will post more examples, I just wanted to get this up before yet another example slips by un-noted.

Dr. Gabor Maté on the Stress-Disease Connection, Addiction, Attention Deficit Disorder and the Destruction of American Childhood

2011-05-30T17:02:00.000-07:00

From disease to addiction, parenting to attention deficit disorder, Dr. Maté’s work focuses on the centrality of early childhood experiences to the development of the brain, and how those experiences can impact everything from behavioral patterns to physical and mental illness. While the relationship between emotional stress and disease, and mental and physical health more broadly, is often considered controversial within medical orthodoxy, Dr. Maté argues too many doctors seem to have forgotten what was once a commonplace assumption, that emotions are deeply implicated in both the development of illness, addictions and disorders, and in their healing.

via http://www.democracynow.org/2011/5/30/dr_gabor_mat_on_the_stress

The Nature of Change

2011-05-29T22:29:00.000-07:00

CHANGE - Episode 1 - "The Nature of Change" from Green Renaissance on Vimeo.

urban homesteading

2011-05-29T21:39:00.000-07:00

Urban homesteading is a growing movement in this country, part of the global re-imagining of culture on the other side of governmental indifference and corporate greed. Concerned about climate change and peak oil? Thinking about localizing your food sources? Wondering how to manage water, waste and energy better? Interested in community building and local self-reliance? Looking for resources for taking care of yourself while taking care of the world?

This book will answer these questions and provides an inspirational how-to and why-to for the urban homesteading movement. Richly illustrated with drawings and photographs, and featuring interviews with homesteaders “on the ground”, Urban Homesteading will give you an introduction to urban permaculture, creating a personal sustainability plan for yourself and your neighborhood, and how-tos on the basics of do-it-yourself ecological living in the city. - http://urban-homesteading.org

Excerpt - http://www.iuhoakland.com/excerpt.pdf

Gandhi: Ahimsa and The Law Of Love

2011-05-29T19:22:00.000-07:00

PERMACULTURE & PEAK OIL: Beyond 'Sustainability'

2011-05-28T21:18:00.000-07:00

The Opulence Bubble

2011-05-28T20:59:00.000-07:00

by Umair Haque

via http://blogs.hbr.org/haque/2011/05/the_opulence_bubble.html

Here's a question: What if, just maybe, it's our way of life itself that's a bubble?

To illustrate why I ask, consider this set of questions: How's your house price doing? Where would your 401K be, if central banks withdrew life support for banks? How steep is a college education this year (hint: on average, 10-15% more than last year)? How are weekly grocery and gas prices doing? Where are commodity prices — not to mention gold — headed? Bubble, bubble, toil, and trouble: these days, it seems, everywhere you look, there's a bubble inflating — or popping.

I believe the mini-bubbles above are different ripples in what might call the surface of a superbubble: an opulence bubble. Here's what I mean by opulence bubble: our conception of the good life, as I've discussed with you, has been centered on what I call hedonic opulence — having more, bigger, faster, cheaper, now. But we might be finding out, the hard way, that the pursuit of lowest-common-denominator industrial age stuff might have been steeply overvalued, in terms of its social, human, and financial value. And now, it's coming back down to earth.

Here's what I don't mean by opulence bubble: that global GDP's going to collapse tomorrow, and continue to crater for decades, until we're back to hunting with stone axes and singing by firelight. Nor that we should aim to stop growth dead in its tracks, and preserve ourselves in a perma-cocoon, with shades of the Amish, where life in the distant future is, well, exactly the same as it is today.

Rather, what I mean is that "more, bigger, faster, cheaper" doesn't necessarily add up to or equal "better, wiser, smarter, fitter, closer." Examined closely, relative to GDP, living standards already did collapse: examined closely, measures of gross industrial output decoupled from still deeply flawed but perhaps slightly more meaningful measures of human welfare, like the Index of Sustainable Economic Welfare and Genuine Progress Indicator, which have at best sharply lagged, or at worst flatlined, for decades. (And lest you pooh-pooh these updated conceptualizations as the utopian visions of idealists, remember that the Measure of Economic Welfare, for example, was conceived of by no less than Nobel Laureate James Tobin.) Concisely: the opulence bubble says that stuff probably yields sharply diminishing returns in human terms. It means that we can pursue Olympian levels of output, live in skyscraper-sized McMansions, drive Sherman tank-sized SUVs, glued to Jumbotron-sized 3D TVs — but it's at best unclear whether and at worst improbable that doing so will power any lasting marginal boost in our capacity to live meaningfully well, especially when you factor in the hidden costs and unintended consequences of doing so. All the above, without a wholer definition of prosperity, might just turn us into less into all-powerful demi-gods than zombified, hurf-durfing couch potatoes.

Consider a series of today's mini-bubbles in turn, and how they've been swollen by the frenzied quest for opulence. Higher education has become an almost farcical expression of opulence: you go less for what you learn, than to buy a credential, live in a plush dorm, and get your party on. Commodities prices are spiking because China's chasing opulence like Charlie Sheen chases ladies of the night. Gold? Well, because the master of the universe and the house-husband alike are hedging against currency collapses from nations whose backs have been broken on the wheel of debt-driven opulence. Then there's housing (the mere word "McMansion" says it all), and perhaps the ultimate mini-bubble: debt itself, which Robert Reich, Joe Stiglitz and I have argued was piled up not just in the pursuit of designer aquariums and $300 shoes (made in a sweatshop for three dollars), but, more vitally, because median incomes have stagnated for decades.

The plain truth might be that we're living beyond our means because our way of life atrophied our means. And it may be that way we live, work, and play requires deep transformation — if we're to upgrade our means to live, work, and play better tomorrow.

The biggest unintended consequence and hidden cost of the pursuit of opulence might not be outside us, but inside us; might not be poisoning the skies, emptying the seas, or even fracturing societies, but withering and blighting human potential itself, what an economist with a heart might call a negative consumption externality of the soul: that it rots a society from the inside out by imploding the institutional capacity, organizational ambition, and personal hunger to take on tomorrow's greatest world-changing challenges, solve really big problems, and work on the stuff that matters most. From an economic perspective, opulence might mean something like: "This nation of tanned, toned, comatose vegetables is choosing to cash in its chips and spend them on the VIP Cabana at the pool, where they can be fed $10 soy-chai-mocha-lattes by legions of McVassals — instead of forging the path towards a better tomorrow."

So here we stand, amid the creaking, hissing ruins of opulence. We can find shelter here, discover somewhat less shaky dwellings to inhabit, and probably eke out a few decades more (though each will probably be less stable, secure, and comfortable than the last) in the still-warm, familiar embrace of yesterday's good life. But the truth is that doing so might be something like hiding. Something like disappearing, vanishing, receding, shrinking — declining.

Or we can step out of the tired, toxic comfort zone — and create the future.

Integral Social Work

2011-04-08T21:48:00.000-07:00

(Larkin, 2005)

References

Larkin, H. (2005). Social work as an integral profession. Retrieved from http://csisw.cua.edu/SocialWorkAsIntegralProfession.pdf

seed bombs

2011-03-29T09:31:00.000-07:00

Various Forms and Functions
http://www.guerrillagardening.org/ggseedbombs.html

Seed Bomb Vending Machine Dispenses Guerrilla Gardening Fun
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2010/04/seed-bomb-vending-machine-greenaid.php

23 Feet Trailer

2011-03-20T10:50:00.001-07:00

23 Feet Trailer from Allie Bombach on Vimeo.

"So . . . that cheesy expression that you hear, uh, do what you love the rest comes, or something like that, I mean . . . Its, its true, it really works like that."

This is great stuff. Now to find a caravan of vehicles to gear up folks in the projects. I am sure many of them would love to head out on the road and beyond . . .

General Strike Poster - Eric Drooker

2011-03-13T10:46:00.000-07:00

"used by protesters all over the U.S.
(and perhaps the world?)"

High Resolution Poster

http://ia600403.us.archive.org/25/items/EricDrookersGeneralStrikePosters/gen_strike_english_hi-res.jpg

Article/Writeup

http://www.richardsolomonblog.com/2011/03/general-strike-poster-eric-drooker.html

The Iroquois Confederacy's Great Law of Peace and the US Constitution

2011-02-20T07:48:00.000-08:00

I am collecting here links and resources on the Iroquois Confederacy's Great Law of Peace and the US Constitution.

"Besides well-known European precedents — from Greece, Rome, and English common law, among others — indigenous American ideas of democracy have shaped the government of the United States. Immigrants arrived in colonial America seeking freedom and found it in the confederacies of the Iroquois and other Native nations. By the time of the Constitutional Convention in 1787, these ideas were common currency in the former colonies, illustrated in debates involving Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and John Adams. Later, during the 19th century, conceptions of Iroquois gender relations had an important impact on major architects of American feminism. These ideas illuminate political debates today." via http://www.america.gov/st/peopleplace-english/2009/June/20090617110824wrybakcuh0.5986096.html

Bill Summary & Status
100th Congress (1987 - 1988)
S.CON.RES.76
All Information

http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/D?d100:76:./list/bss/d100SC.lst:@@@L&summ2=m&

Iroquois Confederacy and the US Constitution
http://www.iroquoisdemocracy.pdx.edu/

Oldest Living Participatory Democracy on Earth
http://www.ratical.org/many_worlds/6Nations/

HAUDENOSAUNEE GUIDE FOR EDUCATORS
www.nmai.si.edu/education/files/HaudenosauneeGuide.pdf

The Great Law of Peace of The Longhouse People
http://www.manataka.org/page135.html

Lesson Plan: The Iroquois Great Law of Peace and The Constitution of the United States

http://thecenter.spps.org/Lesson_Plan_The_Iroquois_Great_Law_of_Peace_and_The_Constitution_of_the_United_States.html

Iroquois Confederacy and the Influence Thesis
http://www.campton.sau48.k12.nh.us/iroqconf.htm

The Documents That Bind US
http://www.adl.org/tools_teachers/lesson_documents_bind.asp

If we could see even one percent of the whole picture, we would have a revolution

2011-02-05T20:39:00.000-08:00

How to Survive the Crash and Save the Earth

by Ran Prieur

http://ranprieur.com/essays/saveearth.html

December 19, 2004

1. Abandon the world. The world is the enemy of the Earth. The "world as we know it" is a deadly parasite on the biosphere. Both cannot survive, nor can the world survive without the Earth. Do the logic: the world is doomed. If you stay on the parasite, you die with it. If you move to the Earth, and it survives in something like its recent form, you can survive with it.

Our little world is doomed because it's built on a foundation of taking from the wider world without giving back. For thousands of years we've been going into debt and calling it "progress," exterminating and calling it "development," stealing and calling it "wealth," shrinking into a world of our own design and calling it "evolution." We're just about done. We're not just running out of cheap oil -- which is used to make and move almost every product, and which gives the average American the energy equivalent of 200 slaves. We're also running out of topsoil, without which we need oil-derived fertilizers to grow food; and forests, which stabilize climate and create rain by transpiring water to refill the clouds; and ground water, such as the Ogallala aquifer under the Great Plains, which could go dry any time now. We're running out of room to dump stuff in the oceans without killing them, and to dump stuff in the atmosphere without wrecking the climate, and to manufacture carcinogens without all of us getting cancer. We're coming to the end of global food stockpiles, and antibiotics that still work, and our own physical health, and our own mental health, and our grip on reality, and our will to keep the whole game going. Why do you think so many Americans are looking forward to "armageddon" or the "rapture"? We hate this shitty world and we want to blow it up.

In the next five or ten years, the US military will be humiliated, the dollar will collapse, the housing bubble will burst, tens of millions of Americans will be destitute, food, fuel, and manufactured items will get really expensive, and most of us will begin withdrawal from the industrial lifestyle. SUV's will change their function from transportation to shelter. We will not be able to imagine how we ever thought calories were bad. Smart people will stop exterminating the dandelions in their yard and start eating them. Ornamental gardens will go the way of fruit hats and bloomers. In the cities, pigeon populations will decline.

This is not the "doom" scenario. I'm not saying anything about death camps, super-plagues, asteroid impacts, solar flares, nuclear war, an instant ice age, or a runaway greenhouse effect. This is the mildest realistic scenario, the slow crash: energy prices will rise, the middle class will fall into the lower class, economies will collapse, nations will fight desperate wars over resources, in the worst places people will starve, and climate disasters will get worse. Your area might resemble the botched conquest of Iraq, or the depression in Argentina, or the fall of Rome, or even a crusty Ecotopia. My young anarchist friends are already packing themselves into unheated houses and getting around by bicycle, and they're noticeably happier than my friends with full time jobs. We just have to make the mental adjustment. Those who don't, who cling to the world they grew up in, numbing themselves and waiting for it all to blow over, will have a miserable time, and if people die, they will be the first. Save some of them if you can, but don't let them drag you down. The first thing they teach lifeguards is how to break holds.

2. Abandon hope. I don't mean that we stop trying, or stop believing that a better world is possible, but that we stop believing that some factor is going to save us even if we do the wrong thing. A few examples:

Jesus is coming. If you believe the Bible, Jesus told us when he was coming back to save us. He said, "This generation shall not pass." That was 2000 years ago. Stop waiting for that bus and get walking.

The Mayan calendar is ending. Some people who scoff at Christian prophecies still manage to believe something equally religious and a lot less specific about what's going to happen. At least Jesus preached peace and enlightenment -- the Mayans were a warlike people who crashed their civilization by cutting down the forests of the Yucatan and exhausting their farmland. That's what we should be studying, not their calendar and its alleged message that a better world is coming very soon and with little effort on our part. Now the Mayan calendar gurus will say that it does take effort and we have a choice to go either way, but go back to 1988 and read what 2004 was supposed to look like, and it's obvious that we've already failed.

Technology will save us. If it does, it will be something we don't even recognize as "technology" -- permaculture or orgonomy or water vortices or forest gardening or quantum consciousness or the next generation of the tribe. It will not be a new germ killer or resource extractor or power generator or anything to give us what we want while exempting us from being aware and respectful of other life. Anything like that will just dig us deeper in the same hole.

The system can be reformed. Yes, and it's also not against the laws of physics for us to go back in time and prevent the industrial age from ever happening. Ten, twenty, thirty years ago the ecologists said "we have to turn it around now or it will be too late." They were right. And not only didn't we turn it around, we sped it up: more cars with worse efficiency, more toxins, more CO2, more deforestation, more pavement, more lawns, more materialism, more corporate rule, more weapons, more war and love of war, more secrets, more lies, more callousness and cynicism and short-sightedness. Now we're in so deep that politicians right of Nixon are called "liberal" and the Green Party platform is both totally inadequate and politically absurd. Our little system is not going to make it.

Also, there's a time lag between smokestacks and acid rain, between radioactivity and cancer, between industrial toxins and birth defects, between atmospheric imbalance and giant storms, between deforestation and drought, between soil depletion and starvation. The disasters we're getting now are from the relatively mild stuff we did years or decades ago, before SUV's and depleted uranium and aspartame and terminator seeds and the latest generation of factory farms. Even if we could turn it around tomorrow, what's coming is much worse.

We're not strong enough to destroy nature. Oddly, this argument almost always invokes the word "hubris," as in, "You are showing hubris, or excessive pride, in thinking that by lighting this forest on fire to roast a hot dog, I will burn the forest down. Don't you know humans aren't capable of burning down a forest? Shame on you for your pride."

In fact, we've already almost finished killing the Earth. The deserts of central and southwest Asia were once forests -- ancient empires cut down the trees and let the topsoil wash off into the Indian Ocean. In North America a squirrel could go tree to tree from the Atlantic to the Mississippi, and spawning salmon were so thick in rivers and streams that you couldn't row a boat through them, and the seashores were rich with seals, fishes, birds, clams, lobsters, whales. Now they're deserts populated only by seagulls eating human garbage, and nitrogen fertilizer runoff has made dead zones in the oceans, and atmospheric carbon dioxide is increasing oceanic acidity, which may dissolve the shells of the plankton. If the plankton die, it's all over.

Maybe we can't kill absolutely everything, but we are on the path to cutting life on Earth down to nothing bigger than a cockroach, and we will do so, and all of us will die, unless something crashes our system sooner and only kills most of us.

3. Drop Out. (See my essay How To Drop Out.) Dropping out of the present dominant system has both a mental and an economic component that go together like your two legs walking. It's a lot of steps! Maybe you notice that you hate your job, and that you have to do it because you need money. So you reduce expenses, reduce your hours, and get more free time, in which you learn more techniques of self-sufficiency and establish a sense of identity not dependent on where you get your money. Then you switch to a low-status low-stress job that gives you even more room to get outside the system mentally. And so on, until you've changed your friends, your values, your whole life.

The point I have to make over and over about this process, and this movement, is that it's not about avoiding guilt, or reducing your ecological footprint, or being righteous. It's not a pissing contest to see who's doing more to save the Earth -- although some people will believe that's your motivation, to justify their own inertia. It's not even about reducing your participation in the system, just reducing your submission and dependence: getting free, being yourself, slipping out of a wrestling hold so you can throw an elbow at the Beast.

This world is full of people with the intelligence, knowledge, skills, and energy to make heaven on Earth, but they can't even begin because they would lose their jobs. We're always arguing to change each other's minds, but nobody will change if they think their survival depends on not changing. Every time you hear about a whistleblower or reporter getting fired for honesty and integrity, you can be sure that they already had a support network, or just a sense of their own value, outside of the system they defied. Dropping out is about fighting better. Gandalf has to get off Saruman's tower!

4. You are here to help. In the culture of Empire, we are trained to think of ourselves as here to "succeed," to build wealth and status and walls around ourselves, to get what we desire, to win in games where winning is given meaning by others losing. It is a simple and profound shift to think of ourselves instead as here to help -- to serve the greatest good that we can perceive in whatever way is right in front of us.

You don't have to sacrifice yourself for others, or put others "above" you. Why is it so hard to see each other as equals? And it's OK to have a good time. In fact, having a good time is what most helping comes down to -- the key is that you're focused on the good times of all life everywhere including your "self," instead of getting caught up in egocentric comparison games that aren't even that fun.

Defining yourself as here to help is a prerequisite for doing some of the other things on this list properly. If you're here to win you're not saving anything but your own wretched ass for a few additional years. If you're dropping out to win you're likely to be stepping on other outsiders, instead of throwing a rope to bring more people out alive. And as the system breaks down, people here to win will waste their energy fighting each other for scraps, while people here to help will build self-sufficient communities capable of generating what they need to survive.

In the real world, being here to help is easier and less stressful, because you will frequently be in a situation where you can't win, but you will almost never be in a situation where there's nothing you can do to help. Being here to win only makes sense in an artificial world rigged so you can win all the time. Thousands of years ago only kings were in that position, and they reacted by massacring all enemies and bathing in blood. Now, through a perfect conjunction of Empire and oil energy, we just put the entire American middle class in that position for 50 years. No one should be surprised that we're so stupid, selfish, cowardly, and irresponsible. But younger generations are already getting poorer and smarter.

5. Learn skills. Readers sometimes ask for my advice on surviving the crash -- should they buy guns, canned food, water purifiers, gold? I always tell them to learn skills. You know the saying: get a fish, eat for a day; learn to fish, eat for a lifetime. (Just don't take it too literally -- there might not be any fish left!)

The most obvious useful skills would include improvising shelter from materials at hand, identifying and preparing wild edibles, finding water, making fire, trapping animals, and so on. But I don't think we're going all the way to the stone age. There will also be a need for electrical work, medical diagnosis, surgery, optics, celestial navigation, composting, gardening, tree propagation, food preservation, diplomacy, practical chemistry, metalworking, all kinds of mechanical repair, and all kinds of teaching. As the 15th century had the Renaissance Man, we're going to have the Postapocalypse Man or Woman, someone who can fix a bicycle, tan a hide, set a broken bone, mediate an argument, and teach history.

Even more important are some things that are not normally called skills, but that make skill-learning and everything else easier: luck, intuition, adaptability, attentiveness, curiosity, physical health, mental health, the ability to surf the flow. Maybe the most fundamental is what they call "being yourself" or "waking up." Most human behavior is based neither on logic nor intuition nor emotion, but habit and conformity. We perceive, think, and act as we've always done, and as we see others do. This works well enough in a controlled environment, but in a chaotic environment it doesn't work at all. If you can just get 10% of yourself free of habit and conformity, people will call you "weird." 20% and they'll call you a genius, 30% and they'll call you a saint, 40% and they'll kill you.

6. Find your tribe. We minions of Empire think of ourselves as individualists, or as members of silly fake groups -- nations, religions, races, followers of political parties and sports teams, loyal inmates of some town that's the same as every other. In fact we're all members of a giant mad tribe, where the relationships are not cooperative and open, but coercive, exploitative, abusive, and invisible. If we could see even one percent of the whole picture, we would have a revolution.

You may feel like you want to do it alone, but you have never done it alone. To survive the breakdown of this world and build a better one, you will have to trade your sterile, insulated links of money and law for raw, messy links of friendship and conflict. The big lie of postapocalypse movies like Omegaman and Mad Max is that the survivors will be loners. In the real apocalypse, the survivors will be members of multi-skilled well-balanced cooperative groups.

I think future tribes are already forming, even on the internet, even among people thousands of miles apart. I think the crash will be slow enough that we'll have plenty of time to get together geographically.

7. Get on some land. This might seem more difficult than the others, yet most people who own land have not done any of the other things -- probably because buying land requires money which requires subservience to a system that makes you personally powerless. I suggest extreme frugality, which will give you valuable skills and also allow you to quickly save up money. You probably have a few more years.

If you don't make it, it's not the end of the world -- oh wait -- it is the end of the world! But you still might know someone with room on their land, or someone might take you in for your skills, or if you have a tribe one of you will probably come up with a place in the chaos. And if not, there will be a need for survivors and helpers in the cities and suburbs. So don't force it.

If you do get land, the most valuable thing it can have is clean surface water, a spring or stream you can drink from. Acceptable but less convenient would be a well that doesn't require electricity, or dirty surface water, which you can filter and clean through sand and reed beds. At the very least you need the rainfall and skills to catch and store enough rainwater to drink and grow food. (The ancient Nabateans did it on less than four inches of rain a year.) Then you'll need a few years to learn and adjust and get everything in order so that your tribe can live there year-round, even with no materials from outside. With luck, it won't come to that.

8. Save part of the Earth. When I say "the Earth," I mean the life on its surface, the biosphere, as many species and habitats as possible, connected in ways that maximize abundance and complexity -- and not just because humans think it's pretty or useful, but because all life is valuable on its own terms. We like to focus on saving trophy animals -- whales, condors, pandas, salmon, spotted owls -- but most of them aren't going to make it, and we could save a lot more species if we could put that attention into habitats and whole systems.

So how do you save habitats and whole systems? You can try working through governments, but at the moment they're ruled by corporations, which by definition are motivated purely by short term increase-in-exploitation, or "profit." You can try direct physical action against the destroyers, but it has yet to work well, and as the world plunges to the right I think we'll see more and more activists simply killed.

My focus is direct positive action for the biosphere: adopting some land, whether by owning or squatting or stealth, and building it into a strong habitat: slowing down the rainwater, composting, mulching, building the topsoil, no-till gardening, scattering seed balls, planting trees, making wetlands -- a little oasis where the tree frogs can hide and migrating birds can rest, where you and a few species can wait out the crash.

Tom Brown Jr. mentions in one of his books that the patch of woods where he conducts his wilderness classes, instead of being depleted by all the humans using it for survival, has turned into an Eden, because his students know how to tend it. Some rain forest environments, once thought to be random wilderness, have turned out to be more like the wild gardens of human tribes, orders of magnitude more complex than the soil-killing monoculture fields of our own primitive culture.

Humans have the ability to go beyond sustainability, to live in ways that increase the richness of life on Earth, and help Gaia in ways she cannot help herself. This and only this justifies human survival.

It requires a new set of skills. A good place to start is the permaculture movement. Sadly, in the present dark age the original books are rare, and classes are so expensive that the knowledge is languishing among the idle rich when it should be offered free to the world. But the idle poor can still find the books in libraries, and many of the techniques are simple. What it comes down to is seeing whole systems and paying attention and innovating, driven by the knowledge that sustainability is only the middle of the road, and there's no limit to how far we can go beyond it.

9. Save human knowledge. When people of this age think about knowledge worth saving, they usually think about belief in the Cartesian mechanical philosophy, that dead matter is the basis of reality, and about techniques for rebuilding and using machines that dominate and separate us from other life. I'd like that knowledge to die forever, but I don't think it works that way. Humans or any other hyper-malleable animal will always be tempted by the Black Arts, by techniques that trade subtle harm for flashy good and feed back into themselves, seducing us into power, corruption, and blindness.

Our descendants will need the intellectual artifacts to avoid this -- artifacts we have barely started to develop even as the Great Bad Example begins to fall. In 200 years, when they are brushing seeds into baskets with their fingers, and a stranger appears with a new threshing machine that will do the same thing with less time and effort, they will need to say something smarter than "the Gods forbid it" or "that is not our Way." They will need the knowledge to say something like:

"Your machine requires the seed to be planted alone and not interspersed with perennials that maintain nitrogen and mineral balance in the soil. And from where will the metal come, and how many trees must be cut down and burned to melt and shape it? And since we cannot build the machine, shall we be dependent on the machine-builders, and give them a portion of our food, which we now keep all for ourselves? Do you not know, clever stranger, that when any biomass is removed from the land, and not recycled back into it, the soil is weakened? And what could we do with our "saved" time, that would be more valuable and pleasurable than gathering the seed by hand, touching and knowing every stalk and every inch of the land that feeds us? Shall we become allies of cold metal that cuts without feeling, turning our hands and eyes to the study of machines and numbers until, severed from the Earth, we nearly destroy it as our ancestors did, making depleted uranium and polychlorinated biphenyls and cadmium batteries that even now make the old cities unfit for living? Go back to your people, and tell them, if they come to conquer us with their machines, we will fight them in ways the Arawaks and Seminoles and Lakota and Hopi and Nez Perce never imagined, because we understand your world better than you do yourself. Tell your people to come to learn."

FIXING THE FUTURE

2011-02-05T19:17:00.000-08:00

Watch the full episode. See more NOW on PBS.

2011-01-14T14:34:00.000-08:00

sofiatopia

2010-12-20T22:40:00.000-08:00

Report

Philosophical Studies

epistemology, ethics, esthetics, hermeneutics
metaphysics, ontology, philosophy of religion
mysticism, neurophilosophy, studies in
Ancient Egyptian philosophy & religion
studies in Buddhadharma

ALL TEXTS l SYNOPSIS l SEARCH

Class War in the U.S.A.?!?!

2010-12-05T08:17:00.001-08:00

De kortfilm der logo's

2010-12-03T21:01:00.000-08:00

Dance of Darkness

2010-09-22T22:47:00.000-07:00

Dhaka: fastest growing megacity in the world

2010-09-09T08:52:00.000-07:00

A five-part, multimedia series on the coming dystopia that is urbanization.

via http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/asia/100831/bangladesh-megacities-part-one