Todd Walton: War On Global Warming

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Photo by Marcia Sloane

From TODD WALTON
Under The Table Books
Mendocino

“We shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.” Winston Churchill

You have no doubt heard the sobering news that the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has reached 400 parts per million, a concentration last seen on earth three million years ago. This means that widespread climatic disasters of heretofore unimaginable magnitude are now a virtual certainty and there is little hope of keeping global temperatures from rising to deathly levels, and soon. Indeed, many scientists think there is no hope of keeping earthly temperatures below those deathly heights.

But if there is any hope of turning things around, only a concerted global effort will do the trick, with everyone on earth doing his and her part to help reduce emissions of greenhouse gases, especially carbon dioxide. However, as of this writing most people and governments and corporations have shown little or no interest in working to reduce the production of greenhouse gases by swiftly and dramatically reducing our dependency on fossil fuels, which entirely underpin our systems of energy production and transportation and agriculture and manufacturing and just about everything that goes on in the so-called civilized world.

Why not? Why aren’t people and governments and corporations working day and night to turn things around when our very existence depends on such a turnaround?

Among Giants…

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From Rainhouse Cinema
Thanks to Todd Walton

Risking injury and incarceration, an environmental activist disrupts the clear-cutting of an ancient redwood grove by sitting on a tiny platform a hundred feet up in the tree canopy. Already three years into the tree-sit when filming begins, AMONG GIANTS blends vérité cinematography with intimate personal reflection to remarkable effect.

This film was shot and edited in 2011, and a year later, the tree-sit ended as a victory for the tree-sitters (indybay.org/newsitems/2012/06/26/18716373.php) As of 2013, negotiations are still underway for the sale of the land, and the exact acreage is still being determined.

Huge thanks to “Farmer,” “Bingmouse,” “Amanita,” and the rest of the tree-sitters for allowing us to live with them and film their story. Learn more about their work, donate, and see what they’re up to now: efhumboldt.org

For further requests about the film, please contact info@rainhousecinema.com
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Trailer: Just outside Grants, New Mexico, is a 200-acre pile of toxic uranium waste, known as tailings. After 30 years of failed cleanup, the waste has deeply contaminated the air and water near the former uranium capital of the world. Tailings is a cinematic investigation into the pile that is gravely shaping the lives of those who are stuck living in its shadow.
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James Lee: Uranium — A Hot Commodity…

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From JAMES LEE
Anderson Valley

‘As You Sow, So Shall You Reap’

Today there are no fewer than 60 nuclear plants under construction in 14 countries, with another 163 planned and 329 proposed.

Many countries without nuclear power are on the cusp of building their first reactors, including Vietnam, Turkey, Indonesia, Egypt, Kazakhstan, and several among the Gulf emirates. And while many countries with nuclear reactors took a moment to pause and reassess safety standards in light of the Fukushima disaster, almost all have reasserted their support for nuclear power as a major component of their energy strategies.

Uranium is simply the only fuel right now that can reliably produce large amounts of electricity without the release of greenhouse gases and other hydrocarbon pollutants.

Demand is clearly ramping up, and the world is already short on uranium. In 2011, world industry consumed 165 million pounds of U3O8 but produced only 143 million pounds.

Indeed, the world hasn’t produced enough uranium to meet demand for some two decades.

Secondary supplies have been filling the gap to date. For example, since 1993 the Megatons-to-Megawatts agreement between Russia and the United States has been working toward the goal to recycle 500 tonnes of highly enriched uranium (HEU) from Russian nuclear weapons into the LEU that reactors use to produce electricity. But remember, that deal is set to end next year.

The end of Megatons-to-Megawatts will eliminate 24 million pounds of uranium supply just as demand starts surging. The World Nuclear Association predicted global uranium demand will have increased 33% by 2020, and will then climb almost that much again in the next 10 years.

10 Benefits of Reading: Why You Should Read Every Day…

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From LANA WINTER-HÉBERT
LifeHack

When was the last time you read a book, or a substantial magazine article? Do your daily reading habits center around tweets, Facebook updates, or the directions on your instant oatmeal packet? If you’re one of countless people who don’t make a habit of reading regularly, you might be missing out: reading has a significant number of benefits, and just a few benefits of reading are listed below.

1. Mental Stimulation

Studies have shown that staying mentally stimulated can slow the progress of (or possibly even prevent) Alzheimer’s and Dementia, since keeping your brain active and engaged prevents it from losing power. Just like any other muscle in the body, the brain requires exercise to keep it strong and healthy, so the phrase “use it or lose it” is particularly apt when it comes to your mind. Doing puzzles and playing games such as chess have also been found to be helpful with cognitive stimulation.

2. Stress Reduction

No matter how much stress you have at work, in your personal relationships, or countless other issues faced in daily life, it all just slips away when you lose yourself in a great story. A well-written novel can transport you to other realms, while an engaging article will distract you and keep you in the present moment, letting tensions drain away and allowing you to relax.

3. Knowledge

Everything you read fills your head with new bits of information, and you never know when it might come in handy. The more knowledge you have, the better-equipped you are to tackle any challenge you’ll ever face.

Additionally, here’s a bit of food for thought:

Statement from Will Parrish: “The Greatest Gift Mendocino County Could Give The World Is To Stop The Willits Bypass”

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Little Lake circa 1905: closer to their original state.

From WILL PARRISH
Ukiah

“Red-Tailed Hawk,” aka Will Parrish (a local journalist), issued the following statement from his tree sit, May 20th.

“On May 14th, I ascended roughly 70 feet into a 100-foot tall valley oak that stands in the path of the California Department of Transportation’s proposed six-mile freeway (“The Willits Bypass”) through Little Lake Valley. This tree, which has a nearly six-foot trunk and is covered from top to bottom with an intricate tapestry of lichens and moss, stands amid hundreds of ash trees in a lustrous grove in the north Little Lake Valley wetlands. The tree is certainly older than the State of California. It may be older than the United States of America.

This mighty oak stands like a sentinel at the southern edge of the ash grove. In its life, it has experienced the gridding, platting, and draining of its wetlands home for cattle ranching and the construction of Highway 101. It has experienced Euroamericans’ destruction of the Central Pomo people, who referred to the valley by the evocatively intimate name Mto’m-kai – a name that closely translates to “Valley of Water Splashing the Toes.” It has experienced the wetlands as they existed when the Pomo and early Euroamericans lived here, as an incredibly vibrant and life-sustaining ecosystem:

The tree’s days are likely numbered, though, as are those of the entire ash grove and nearly 90 acres of these wetlands, which CalTrans intends to drain, fill, and pave over to build its highway. It would be the most extensive destruction of any wetlands in Northern California in more than a half-century.

Gene Logsdon: Using Food As Medicine…

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 David Fast Food

From GENE LOGSDON
The Contrary Farmer

I will probably get beaten over the head with one of the best-selling diet books, but I really doubt that we can eat our way to good health. I don’t want to sound opposed to the idea of food as medicine. I just don’t believe it anymore.  I made it to 80 in fine shape and what ails me now is something no food faith healer has a diet to counteract.

I have put my faith in fresh food from my own farm and garden, untouched by the factory food industry. But of course, I sin regularly by eating at fast food restaurants all over. Bob Evans was a friend of mine and when we ate at one of his establishments, it was so amusing to see how he would go through the menu and tell me what he considered to be good and what was not so good.  He lived into his 90s on all that fat pork sausage he became famous for.

Organic farming is surely the more economical and environmentally sane way to raise food. But I do not think that certified organic food is necessarily any more healthful than other food which gets me in real trouble with the members of my own choir. If Carol sprinkles insecticidal powder on the potato plants or else we won’t have any potatoes, our garden food can’t be sold as certified organic. I understand the necessity of the rules to keep everyone honest, if only they did,  but I surely doubt that our 90 percent organic vegetables are any less healthful, all things considered, than food shipped in, courtesy of fossil fuel, from a “certified organic” farm 2000 miles away. I guess I’m a food atheist.

Look at all the diet fads that have sprung up and sprung down in the last 80 years.

Life Lessons in Fighting the Culture of Bullshit…

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From JON LOVETT

The Atlantic

This item has been excerpted from the prepared Commencement Address to the graduates of Pitzer College in Claremont, Calif., on May 18, 2013.

What politics taught me that current graduates need to know…

I recently turned thirty, which I know seems like a generation away to those of you graduating this morning. But it’s more than just the worst. Thirty is a year where you’re left straddling two worlds. One foot stands in the world of the young, among the bright eager minds and supple bodies of students like you. And the other foot stands in the world of the grey and decrepit; the ancient shapes of your professors and parents; their dulling senses; their craggily, wizened faces.

And by the way, congratulations parents! This is your day too.

But what it means is that I am in a position to talk about life after college — as someone who just lived through it. For example, do you remember how your elementary school felt enormous? But then when you returned years later, you were amazed by how small it actually was? In time, your chosen professions will feel exactly the same way. That is not to say that you won’t have almost unlimited opportunities. But it is to say that if you sleep with someone who works in your industry, just be aware that you’re going to bump into that person at meetings and conferences and birthday parties for the rest of your life. I literally had to leave politics.

Yeah, we’re going to talk about it. Your love is a delicate flower.

So, I’m going to skip the platitudes, OK? I want this to be a practical commencement address. And I’m going to do my best to tell the truth — even when it’s uncomfortable to say, even when I probably shouldn’t say it. Because you’re already swimming in half-truths

Widely Visible Symbols Of Human Folly…

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From The Automatic Earth

[...] The issue is nuclear waste and its safe disposal. Germany will have to build a storage facility deep underground that can survive the ravages of wars, revolutions and even another ice age. Indeed, the remains of the nuclear age will have to be kept in a final repository for 1 million years – longer than the human race has existed.

[..] What the representatives of the people would rather not talk about, though, is the decommissioning of Germany’s nuclear power plants. They were once the cathedrals of industrial progress. But now their cooling towers and domes have become widely visible symbols of human folly.

German has a major nuclear waste problem. For almost 50 years, the former Asse II salt mine in the northwestern state of Lower Saxony has been used as an underground repository for nuclear and other harmful waste. Some 126,000 barrels of nuclear waste are in the massive mine complex. To make matters worse, the system of tunnels is in danger of collapsing.

It’s a monumental task that the Germans won’t complete until 2080 “at the earliest,” says nuclear expert Michael Sailer from the Öko-Institut, a non-profit research and consulting association for sustainable technology in Berlin. “After all,these are conservative estimates without any leeway for setbacks.”

But it doesn’t look as if things will go smoothly. On the contrary, the phasing out of nuclear power is accompanied by the agonizing challenge of decommissioning existing reactors: Eight nuclear power plants that were rapidly taken offline at the behest of the German government in the wake of Japan’s Fukushima disaster have to be dismantled concurrently, followed by an additional nine facilities by the end of 2022.

Too Soon To Tell…

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From REBECCA SOLNIT
TomDispatch

Ten years ago, my part of the world was full of valiant opposition to the new wars being launched far away and at home — and of despair. And like despairing people everywhere, whether in a personal depression or a political tailspin, these activists believed the future would look more or less like the present. If there was nothing else they were confident about, at least they were confident about that. Ten years ago, as a contrarian and a person who prefers not to see others suffer, I tried to undermine despair with the case for hope.

A decade later, the present is still contaminated by the crimes of that era, but so much has changed. Not necessarily for the better — a decade ago, most spoke of climate change as a distant problem, and then it caught up with us in 10,000 ways. But not entirely for the worse either — the vigorous climate movement we needed arose in that decade and is growing now. If there is one thing we can draw from where we are now and where we were then, it’s that the unimaginable is ordinary, and the way forward is almost never a straight path you can glance down, but a labyrinth of surprises, gifts, and afflictions you prepare for by accepting your blind spots as well as your intuitions.

The despairing of May 2003 were convinced of one true thing, that we had not stopped the invasion of Iraq, but they extrapolated from that a series of false assumptions about our failures and our powerlessness across time and space. They assumed — like the neoconservatives themselves — that those neocons would be atop the world for a long time to come. Instead, the neocon and neoliberal ideologies have been widely reviled and renounced around the world; the Republicans’ demographic hemorrhage has weakened them in this country; the failures of their wars are evident to everyone

My students are completely surprised to learn about Lilith, Adam’s first wife…

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From Teach Not Preach

When I start my unit on Judaism I bring into the classroom my framed print of John Collier’s, Lilith. My students have no idea who she is, but many are familiar with Lilith Fair. When I tell them that Lilith (according to legend) was Adam’s first wife, their jaws drop. And none of them know that Lilith Fair, a celebration of female music and recording artists, is named after this mythical figure. Below are two of my students holding my print of her. Needless to say, my students immediately want to know more about Lilith, and they want to know why her story is not in the Bible.

When I tell them the story about how Lilith left Adam and the Garden of Eden after being denied equality, and how God was then forced to make another woman (Eve), their jaws drop a little further. The story of Lilith is an amazing and enduring legend, and my students quickly realize that it is no coincidence that Lilith is also the name of a popular feminist Jewish magazine.

According to legend, Lilith later disguised herself as a serpent and returned to the Garden of Eden to tempt (help?) Eve gain knowledge of good and evil. Although this story is not in the Bible, the legend of Lilith was so popular in Medieval times that her image was worked into both the Sistine Chapel and Notre Dame Cathedral.

The Devil, Part One…

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From Robert Ingersoll (1899)

I — If the Devil Should Die Would God Make Another?

A little while ago I delivered a lecture on “Superstition,” in which, among other things, I said that the Christian world could not deny the existence of the Devil; that the Devil was really the keystone of the arch, and that to take him away was to destroy the entire system.

A great many clergymen answered or criticized this statement. Some of these ministers avowed their belief in the existence of his Satanic Majesty, while others actually denied his existence; but some, without stating their own position, said that others believed, not in the existence of a personal devil, but in the personification of evil, and that all references to the Devil in the Scriptures could be explained on the hypothesis that the Devil thus alluded to was simply a personification of evil.

When I read these answers I thought of this line from Heine: “Christ rode on an ass, but now asses ride on Christ.”

Now, the questions are, first, whether the Devil does really exist; second, whether the sacred Scriptures teach the existence of the Devil and of unclean spirits, and third, whether this belief in devils is a necessary part of what is known as “orthodox Christianity.”

Now, where did the idea that a Devil exists come from? How was it produced?

Fear is an artist — a sculptor — a painter. All tribes and nations, having suffered, having been the sport and prey of natural phenomena, having been struck by lightning, poisoned by weeds, overwhelmed by volcanoes, destroyed by earthquakes, believed in the existence of a Devil, who was the king — the ruler — of innumerable smaller devils, and all these devils have been from time immemorial regarded as the enemies of men.

Religious Horror Show: Because ‘Religion Doesn’t Hurt Anyone’…

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From CEPHUS
Bitchspot

9/30/12 – Muslim Imams more than happy to marry underage girls to pervert Islamic men!

10/7/12 – Catholics argue age of consent is 14 so they can put a pedophile priest back to work.

10/14/12 – Julia Lovemore murders her 6-week old daughter by stuffing pages from the Bible in her mouth, authorities knew she and her husband were religiously deranged and did nothing.

10/21/12 – Benjamin Edetanlen beat his young son to death because the Bible says “spare the rod, spoil the child”.  Too bad we don’t allow stoning these days.

10/28/12 – Hey, when you can’t convert a Christian to your Muslim faith, kidnap and rape his 2-year old daughter, that’ll teach him to respect your religion of peace!

11/3/12 – If it’s not bad enough when Muslims kill non-Muslims, what about when they kill other Muslims?  Don’t you think Allah would frown on that kind of thing since, presumably, they’re not infidels?  And while we’re off killing other Muslims, why not drive a bomb-laden jeep into a Christian church?

11/11/12 – Because kidnapping gay men, imprisoning them against their will and screaming into their ears has been shown to scare away the gay, right?

11/18/12 – You’d better memorize your Qu’ran or your mother might beat you to death with a hammer, then light your body on fire!  Ah, Islam, the religion of peace!

12/2/12 – In India and Africa, killing children for being witches and harvesting their body parts

9 Questions That Atheists Might Find Insulting (And the Answers)…

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From AlterNet

Some questions make atheists feel second-class — and make you look like a jerk for asking them.

Asked of Hispanic-Americans: “Are you in this country legally?” Asked of gays and lesbians and bisexuals: “How do you have sex?” Asked of transgender people: “Have you had the surgery?” Asked of African Americans: “Can I touch your hair?”

Every marginalized group has some question, or questions, that are routinely asked of them — and that drive them up a tree; questions that have insult or bigotry or dehumanization woven into the very asking. Sometimes the questions are asked sincerely, with sincere ignorance of the offensive assumptions behind them. And sometimes they are asked in a hostile, passive-aggressive, “I’m just asking questions” manner. But it’s still not okay to ask them. They’re not questions that open up genuine inquiry and discourse, they’re questions that close minds, much more than they open them. Even if that’s not the intention. And most people who care about bigotry and marginalization and social justice — or who just care about good manners — don’t ask them.

Here are nine questions you shouldn’t ask atheists. I’m going to answer them, just this once, and then I’ll explain why you shouldn’t be asking them, and why so many atheists will get ticked off if you do.

1: “How can you be moral without believing in God?”

The answer: Atheists are moral for the same reasons believers are moral: because we have compassion, and a sense of justice. Humans are social animals

Theocracy Watch: Bangladesh Bloggers Face Constant Death Threats Since Government Labeled Them ‘Atheist’…

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From HuffPost

Even though Rasel Parvez is out of prison, he isn’t out of danger.

“They have pushed my life to a state in which I cannot walk free. I remain in self-confinement day after day, and my social relations are mostly snapped,” said Parvez, 36, in an interview with The Huffington Post.

He is talking about the Bangladeshi government, which arrested him and three other bloggers last month for “derogatory comments about Islam.” Parvez, who is currently out on bail, has been branded with the label “atheist” blogger because he dared to criticize the abuse of religion by politicians.

It took Parvez and Subrata Adhikary Shuvo, 24, another arrested blogger, more than a month to obtain bail. The other two — Mashiur Rahman Biplob, 42, and Asif Mohiuddin, 30 — remain in jail.

But Parvez’s own home in Dhaka, Bangladesh’s capital city, has become something of a prison, as he fears for his life whenever he steps outside.

After his release from jail, some of his most vociferous critics took to Facebook to offer rewards to anyone who killed Parvez, with one offer as high as $12,871 in U.S. dollars. (Per capita income in Bangladesh in 2010 was $641 a year.)

“Who knows — some of them may be waiting just outside my house,” said Parvez.

His wife, Asma Begum, said she’s at her wit’s end. She does her best to protect Parvez — among other things, preventing him from taking phone calls until she has checked the caller’s identity.

“His insecurity means the entire family is in danger,” Begum said.

“I don’t know if he could go to the office again. I am not sure if it is safe now to shift our home and find a new address.

Willits Bypass Protesters Get a New Tree Sitter: Will Parrish…

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From SAVE LITTLE LAKE VALLEY

As of Wednesday, Redtail Hawk landed in Condor’s nest and has roosted there. Condor has gone flying out in the Valley. Redtail brought a 25 foot banner with him that reads, ‘Save Our Water. Stop Caltrans NOW!’ The banner is visible from 101.

Redtail Hawk also goes by the name of Will Parrish. Parrish is a Ukiah resident who has been an instrumental part of the Bypass campaign. He is an activist and well known local journalist, who has written about and worked on forest and water protection, indigenous peoples land rights, nuclear weapons abolition, immigrant justice, and many other issues. He hasi written aabout dozen articles on the bypass and the resistance to it. To read Parrish’s most recent article on Caltrans mitigation debacle, click here.

This tree sit is in an Oregon ash grove just east of Highway 101, roughly a mile north of Willits High School. The tree is perched in one of the grove’s only oak trees. It is a valley oak at least 200 years old, one of precisely 1,815 oaks CalTrans inventoried to cut down.

This is the first tree sit in the wetlands area of the bypass construction zone, and has been strategically nested to bring attention to the activity happening in the wetlands currently. In a phone call with Redtail Hawk, he described the scene he is witnessing: Caltrans has brought in the wick drains and wick drain machine they will use to install the 55,000 wick drains to drain the wetlands, and they have begun test pile driving 100 foot steel tubes into the wetlands.

The current tree sit, and Condor and Redtail’s nesting in it, is to block destruction of this grove of trees in the wetlands, and to call attention to the destruction of the wetlands that is now beginning.

Todd Walton: Roots & Eggs

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Photo by Marcia Sloane

From TODD WALTON
Under The Table Books
Mendocino

“Lemon tree very pretty and the lemon flower is sweet.” Will Holt

Lemon trees growing near the kitchen. What a wonderful idea. So we chose the perfect spots on the south side of the house for two goodly Meyers, the warmest and sunniest place on our property, only to discover that one of those perfect spots was home to the root mass, still very much alive, of a gargantuan shrub I removed nine months ago. Thus a Herculean task awaited me, one I would postpone until I brought the lemon trees home and their presence inspired me to extricate the massive tangle.

And so on a sunny Saturday, homeward bound after pruning a gorgeous green-leafed Japanese maple, a crab apple, and a plum, I stopped at the admirable Hare Creek Nursery on the south side of Fort Bragg and bought two little Meyer lemon trees. The friendly folks there cautioned me not to plant the lemon trees in the ground, but to grow them in tubs. However, Marcia and I are not after bonsais; we’re aiming for large trees festooned with hundreds of delectable yellow orbs, and I figure with global warming proceeding apace, the Mendocino climate should henceforth be perfect for growing citrus in the ground.

With the little beauties sitting nearby and crying for release from their plastic pots, I began digging around the root mass and confirmed that my nemesis was gigantic, well connected, tenacious, and uncooperative. To borrow from Bogart, I have met a lot of root masses in my time, but this one was really something special. After an hour of heavy labor using shovel, mattock, pick, trowel, axe and crowbar, the mass remained unmoving, as if I had done nothing. This depressed me, so I took a break, had some water and a handful of almonds and tried not to take the root mass’s indifference personally.

How did Barack Obama become Monsanto’s man in Washington?

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From JON RAPPOPORT
No More Fake News
Thanks to Ron Epstein

And when are anti-GMO activist groups going to stop saying they’re “shocked and disappointed” by the president?

Shocked and disappointed is polite-speak and politically correct reaction. It’s baloney.

Don’t you get it? Obama has never been on your side. He never deserved your trust.

Disappointment implies he was your buddy and then unaccountably walked away.

The man is a politician. He’s a liar. Different pols have different styles of lying. Some pretend they’re your friend before they screw you over and leave you in the dust.

I’ve previously published Obama’s track record as Monsanto’s number-one political supporter in America.

Meet Monsanto’s prime lobbyist, Barack Obama:

After his victory in the 2008 election, Obama filled key posts with Monsanto people, in federal agencies that wield tremendous force in food issues, the USDA and the FDA:

At the USDA, as the director of the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, Roger Beachy, former director of the Monsanto Danforth Center.

As deputy commissioner of the FDA, the new food-safety-issues czar, the infamous Michael Taylor, former vice-president for public policy for Monsanto. Taylor had been instrumental in getting approval for Monsanto’s genetically engineered bovine growth hormone.

As commissioner of the USDA, Iowa governor, Tom Vilsack. Vilsack had set up a national group, the Governors’ Biotechnology Partnership, and had been given a Governor of the Year Award by the Biotechnology Industry Organization, whose members include Monsanto.

Equal parts sad and pathetic…

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From Our Daily Train

This nonsense no doubt goes on in Christian private schools all over the nation, but I felt the need to write about this here because it involves my home state of South Carolina. The images below show an actual test given to fourth-graders at Blue Ridge Christian Academy in Greenville, S.C., which is about an hour drive north of where I grew up. Consequently, in college at Clemson University, I participated in a point-counterpoint debate in a student newspaper in which I defended public school education versus private schools. I was a Christian at the time, but even then, I recognized that private schools, unfortunately, provide a certain level of “shelter” from the real world, whereas public school students learn to interact with people of all backgrounds, and they get more of a well-rounded and less biased education.

These captures, from Blue Ridge Christian Academy, speak for themselves:

It’s time for an apocalyptic journalism…

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From ROBERT JENSEN
AlterNet

“Apocalyptic Journalism” and Why We Need Reporters to Face the Reality of Our Crumbling Society

The best journalists in our tradition have seen themselves as responsible for telling stories about the struggle for social justice…

For those who care about a robust human presence on the planet, the 21st century has been characterized by really bad news that keeps getting really, really worse.

Whatever one’s evaluation of high-energy/high-technology civilization (and I have been among its critics; more on that later), it’s now clear that we are hitting physical limits; we cannot expect to maintain contemporary levels of consumption that draw down the ecological capital of the planet at rates dramatically beyond replacement levels. It unrealistic to imagine that we can go on treating the planet as nothing more than a mine from which we extract and a landfill into which we dump.

We have no choice but to deal with the collapse of journalism, but we also should recognize the need for a journalism of collapse. Everyone understands that economic changes are forcing a refashioning of the journalism profession. It’s long past time for everyone to pay attention to how multiple, cascading ecological crises should be changing professional journalism’s mission in even more dramatic fashion.

It’s time for an apocalyptic journalism (that takes some explaining; a lot more on that later).

The Basics of Journalism: Ideals and Limitations

With the rapid expansion of journalistic-like material on the Internet, it’s especially crucial to define “real” journalism.

Can We Save the Commons that is the Post Office?

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From Institute for Local Self Reliance

For 225 years the U.S. Post Office has been the most admired and ubiquitous manifestation of government. From 1789 until the 1960s, the Cabinet level agency saw its mission not only to deliver the mail but to aggressively defend the public good. In the late 19^thcentury when oligopolistic mail order delivery companies abused their rural customers the Post Office launched parcel post.  The competition quickly forced private companies to reduce their exorbitant prices and dramatically improve the quality of their service. In the early 20^th century, when bank collapses resulted in depositors losing their life saving the Post Office created postal banks that for half a century provide security and attractive interest rates to millions of small depositors.

In 1970 Congress stripped the post office of its cabinet status and stopped providing public funding.  The new quasi public corporation was urged to adopt a more business like attitude.  Its name, the U.S. Postal Service, reflected a circumscribed mission statement.  No longer was it to be a tool to check the predations of the private sector.  Its sole mission would be to deliver the mail.

The USPS used its new flexibility and ability to borrow to dramatically increase productivity. By the 1990s, despite the elimination of a public subsidy that in 1970 had accounted for 25 percent of its total budget the USPS was generating a consistent profit. But to USPS management the mandate to operate in a more businesslike manner was viewed as a mandate to operate more like a private business, improving its internal balance sheet at the cost of weakening the balance sheet of the communities it served.  Again and again Congress had to step in to prevent USPS management from pursuing actions that would have inflicted harm on the nation:  stopping closing Saturday delivery, closing rural post offices willy-nilly.>

In 2006, in an accounting maneuver

Jim Houle: Those who believe in the future are idiots and already have a lot of political power…

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From JIM HOULE

A recent article on Ukiah Blog was entitled: ”Those Who Do Not Believe We Will Have a Future Should Not Be Placed in Charge of It“.  I would take the contrary position: “Those who do believe in the future are idiots and already have a lot of political power“. 

The Evangelical Fundamentalist Christians say the end is nigh, that only they will survive and be raptured into heaven. The Israelis claim that those damned Persians are about to build the Big Bomb that will crisp the “Land of God’s Chosen People”. The only alternative is to crisp the Iranians immediately. Yet the Evangelical Fundamentalist clan do not believe there is any place in heaven for the Jews regardless of the Persians’ plans (its in the Bible).  Surprisingly, both the Israelis and the Evangelical Fundamentalists believe they have a future.

President O’Bomber insists that we must protect our oil supplies and dominate any country that resists us. He seems to believe there will indeed be a future if we can just keep the oil flowing.

Hard-headed geologists explain that the world’s oil reserves are running out regardless of O’Bomber’s policies. Our Financial Overlords foresee a probably-fatal weakening of the dollar

Gene Logsdon: Lawns Of Purple and Gold

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From GENE LOGSDON

Rain and good old-fashioned laziness kept us from mowing the lawn until the first week of May this spring. By then the yard was so beautiful with wild flowers, I didn’t want to mow, but if I waited any longer I’d have to make hay out if it. As the photo above shows, major parts of the lawn had exploded in yellow dandelions, purple violets, whitish spring beauties and pinkish Quaker ladies. Other areas were blooming with wild phlox, grape hyacinths, daffodils, white violets, trillium, toadshade, mertensia, bluebells and even some vagrant tulips. I daresay no horticultural display, requiring hours of skilled work, could have produced a flower garden any prettier. In fact, I doubt very much that human handiwork could achieve such a garden, no matter how much effort and skill were put to the task. All these flowers come up every year without any help other than not mowing them until they are mature. Only nature could produce such a striking carpet of gold, blue, purple, white, pink, maroon and green grass. Who could want to mow such a lovely landscape?

Almost everyone would, that’s who. The Lawn Culture of modern civilization forever amazes me. Green swards of clipped grass are beautiful, no doubt about it, and quite necessary in many instances. Wherever we quit mowing close to the woods we live in, sapling trees spring up five feet tall in two years.

Chris Hardaker: Willits Bypass — These Desperate Times…

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From CHRIS HARDAKER
Willits

Good Morning, Mendo!

What a magical place for a desert rat. The trees, the ferns, the critters, the beards, the smoke. And grass! Actual grass growing anywhere it wants and can; and sometimes it even grows cows! And water, water everywhere.

Damn, this is the first county that defeated Monsanto. It’s in Guinness. A political superstar composed of grass roots. The people’s victory, literally. The sanctity of the environment is a sacred mission to all those who care. Kudos. Monsanto lost the battle. And you kept your seeds.

You defeated Monsanto and banned GMOs. Okay, great. But what has it really done to stem the tide? Okay, maybe a hell of a lot, since it got the news out there internationally. You made Anti-GMO, and probably Monsanto is Evil, a household word for those who still care to read or listen. Okay. Really okay. Prescient. Yaaaay for Mendo. A circle of determined people really made it happen. The rest was signatures and votes. But as a county, as the joke goes, what have you done for me lately?

If you want the answer, his name is Jack Shit. There’s a goddam four barrel attack on one of your most precious corners of the county

The Militarizing of America…

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From LAURA DAVIS
Story Telling Productions
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No Mo’ PoMo…

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From JAMES KUNSTLER

Whenever the Federal Reserve wants to tweak the dials of the economy — or pretend that it can — it turns first to its sock puppet at The Wall Street Journal, John Hilsenrath, and “leaks” a rumor of policy change (HERE). They like to do this late on Fridays when financial markets are about to close, so that market players will have a whole weekend to ponder the Fed’s actions like medieval viziers reading goat entrails.

Last Friday’s puddle of steaming guts was a supposed preview of the Fed’s “exit strategy” from its reckless policy of “quantitative easing” or “money” creation (or “liquidity,” if you like). In other words, they supposedly intend to stop juicing the financial markets with fake wealth, i.e. capital not accumulated from real productive activity, but just fictively created on computer hard drives. For the past year they have been doing this to the tune of $85 billion a month, “buying” US Treasury bonds and bills and an assortment of miscellaneous securities (mostly trash that can’t be pawned off on anyone else) through their so-called “primary dealer” bank cohorts, the too-big-to-fail usual suspects, who “earn” hefty transaction fees in the process of conveying all these pixels from Point A to Point B. These interventions are called Permanent Open Market Operations, or PoMo.

The theory all along has been that this $85 billion a month would seep down to Main Street to provoke spending (increasing the “velocity of money) and therefore “jump start” the economy. The theory has proven itself to be complete horseshit, of course.

‘A Writer’s Life’: Ray Bradbury on writing and the importance of the subconscious…

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From RAY BRADBURY
Dangerous Minds

‘A writer moves about, observing, seeing as much as he can, trying to guess how man will play the game,’ Ray Bradbury stated in A Writer’s Life, a documentary on his life and work from 1963.

‘Constantly measuring the way life is, against the way he feels it ought to be. He is a magnet passing through a factual world, taking from it what he needs.’

Bradbury was always generous with his advice and encouragement, always willing to explain his method of writing to those who wanted to know. Writing was like a love affair.

“You must write every single day of your life… You must lurk in libraries and climb the stacks like ladders to sniff books like perfumes and wear books like hats upon your crazy heads… may you be in love every day for the next 20,000 days. And out of that love, remake a world.”

Bradbury worked his apprenticeship as a writer in libraries, which he later described as places where:

…anything could happen there and always did. All you had to do was pull a book from the shelf and suddenly the darkness was not so dark anymore.

William Edelen: Mothers Day and the Bible

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From WILLIAM EDELEN
The Contrary Minister

Mother’s Day once again is here with the Sunday sermons filled with clichés, platitudes and banalities. So perhaps it is time to take a good, hard look at what the bible and the church have actually done to degrade women. The treatment of women in the bible is characterized by such indecency and utter contempt that it is total travesty to call this book the “word” of God.

Dr. Gerald Larue, Distinguished professor emeritus of biblical history and archaeology at the University of Southern California, wrote these words: “The Bible has been one of the most powerful social weapons in the arsenal of those who restrict and curtail the freedom of women. No matter what Bible you use, the message is the same: WOMEN ARE INFERIOR. Their inferiority is, moreover, ordained by God. How long are we going to let people who lived and died thousands of years ago dictate the way we live and think today?”

The bible is man-made, written BY men FOR men and promoting the ludicrous party line that they are taking orders from a male God.

A brief history lesson:
In the year 584 A.D. there was held the Council of Macon in Lyons, France. Sixty-three Catholic Bishops met to engage in a serious debate on this subject: “ARE WOMEN HUMAN?” The vote was finally called for. Thirty-two voted “yes”. Thirty-one voted “no”. Women were declared “human” by only one vote.

Ingersoll: Crumbling Creeds…

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From ROBERT INGERSOLL (1890)

There is a desire in each brain to harmonize the knowledge that it has. If a man knows, or thinks he knows, a few facts, he will naturally use those facts for the purpose of determining the accuracy of his opinions on other subjects. This is simply an effort to establish or prove the unknown by the known — a process that is constantly going on in the minds of all intelligent people.

It is natural for a man not governed by fear, to use what he knows in one department of human inquiry, in every other department that he investigates. The average of intelligence has in the last few years greatly increased. Man may have as much credulity as he ever had, on some subjects, but certainly on the old subjects he has less. There is not as great difference to-day between the members of the learned professions and the common people. Man is governed less and less by authority. He cares but little for the conclusions of the universities. He does not feel bound by the actions of synods or ecumenical councils — neither does he bow to the decisions of the highest tribunals, unless the reasons given for the decision satisfy his intellect. One reason for this is, that the so-called “learned” do not agree among themselves — that the universities dispute each other — that the synod attacks the ecumenical council — that the parson snaps his fingers at the priest

Todd Walton: How Stupid?

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From TODD WALTON
Under The Table Books
Mendocino

“Kids: they dance before they learn there is anything that isn’t music.” William Stafford

A recent phone conversation with a friend caused me to comment, “How could they have been so stupid not to know that?”

Our conversation was about a film my friend is working on, a documentary extolling the virtues of a pilot program in California called Pre-Kindergarten. I know what you’re thinking, and I thought the same thing. Isn’t pre-kindergarten just another name for pre-school or nursery school? No. Because kindergarten in America is no longer what kindergarten used to be. Why? Because Bill Clinton and George Bush and now Barack Obama have overseen a demolition of education in America that has damned an entire generation of students to ignorance and semi-literacy, and that demolition includes a tragic transformation of kindergarten.

To make a long horror story short, beginning some twenty years ago the morons (evil ones?) in charge of dispensing federal education dollars to the public schools of our fifty states, declared that America was falling behind the rest of the world because of low test scores in our public schools. The thinking of these evil ones (morons?) who had somehow gotten into positions of power in our government went something like this: “Well, heck, if low test scores is the problem let’s just bring those test scores up by making the kids memorize a bunch of useless crap so they score higher on the dang tests. Yeah. Sure. That should do the trick.”

Willits Bypass: Hard-hitting feature story on ABC7 News…

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From Save Little Lake Valley

If you live in the Bay Area, you know bad traffic can be. There are thousands of cars backed up in the same spots day after day. Many of those communities could make good use of $200 million of taxpayer money to improve their highways. Instead, that money is going north to a little town where traffic is actually going down.

There have been angry protests, tree sitters, and senior citizens begging to be arrested over this issue. It is happening in the normally quiet town of Willits where residents are at odds over a massive highway bypass that will cost at least $210 million.

“It’s insane to put this much money into a project that isn’t necessary,” said one protester.

Willits is 135 miles north of San Francisco on Highway 101. It is the major route through Mendocino County and north to Eureka. Just south of Willits, Highway 101 is a four-lane freeway, but when it comes into town 101 turns into Main Street with five traffic lights. So Caltrans wants to build a freeway to bypass Willits.

“To improve inter-regional traffic along 101. 101 is a very important corridor for commerce and for just people going on vacation,” said Phil Frisbie, a Caltrans spokesman.

Those Who Do Not Believe We Will Have a Future Should Not Be Placed in Charge of It…

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From Atheistrev

Natural resources and the environment. Debt and the economy. The long-term costs of war on a nation’s standing in the world and future diplomatic efforts. The food and water supply. The sort of the world we are leaving to future generations. There just a few of the things about which most sane people are at least somewhat concerned. But what if absolutely none of it mattered because the world was going to end soon? What if there was no point in being future-oriented because the entire show was about to come to an end?

Among the many things I find toxic about evangelical fundamentalist Christianity, one that consistently rises to the top of the list is the manner in which the belief that we are living in the “end times” undermines the efforts of those who are trying to improve our world. Ask yourself what you would do differently if you truly believed that the world was going to end in your lifetime. You sure as hell wouldn’t worry about the environment, saving for your children’s future, your legacy, or much of anything else, would you?

Hemant Mehta (Friendly Atheist) brings us the personification of this sort of nonsense in the form of evangelical Christian pastor Mark Driscoll. Regardless of whether Driscoll was joking, the fact is that many evangelical fundamentalist Christians do believe this sort of thing. And best of all

Hidden Power Grab Stops Communities From Deciding Their Own Futures…

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From DAVID MORRIS
On The Commons

There has been much written about the federalist nature of the American political system. But virtually all of it focuses on the rights of states vs. the federal government. At this historical moment, where the last bastion of true democracy is at the local level, we need to extend the debate to include the rights of communities vs. the states.

In his 1996 State of the Union Address Democratic President Bill Clinton famously declared, “the era of big government is over.” And during his tenure he did everything he could to make that true—deregulating the telecommunications and the financial industries; enacting a free trade agreement severely restricting the authority of the federal government to protect domestic jobs and businesses; and abandoning the 75-year old federal commitment to the poor.

Seventeen years later I fully expect a Republican Governor or two to declare in their state of the state address, “the era of small government is over”. Because again and again, Republican governors and legislatures are preempting and abolishing the authority of communities to protect the health and welfare of their communities.

*Earlier this year Wisconsin passed a law eliminating the authority of cities villages and counties to require public employees to live inside city limits, which also voids any existing requirements.

European Commission to criminalize nearly all seeds and plants not registered with government…

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From NATURAL NEWS

A new law proposed by the European Commission would make it illegal to “grow, reproduce or trade” any vegetable seeds that have not been “tested, approved and accepted” by a new EU bureaucracy named the “EU Plant Variety Agency.”

It’s called the Plant Reproductive Material Law, and it attempts to put the government in charge of virtually all plants and seeds. Home gardeners who grow their own plants from non-regulated seeds would be considered criminals under this law.

The draft text of the law, which has already been amended several times due to a huge backlash from gardeners, is viewable here.

“This law will immediately stop the professional development of vegetable varieties for home gardeners, organic growers, and small-scale market farmers,” said Ben Gabel, vegetable breeder and director of The Real Seed Catalogue. “Home gardeners have really different needs – for example they grow by hand, not machine, and can’t or don’t want to use such powerful chemical sprays. There’s no way to register the varieties suitable for home use as they don’t meet the strict criteria of the Plant Variety Agency, which is only concerned about approving the sort of seed used by industrial farmers.”

All governments are, of course, infatuated with the idea of registering everybody and everything. Under Title IV of the proposed EU law:

Gene Logsdon: Once A Farm Boy, Always…

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From GENE LOGSDON
The Contrary Farmer

I was sort of shocked by an ad in a recent New York Times Sunday magazine which I read regularly. It showed photos of a magnificent new high rise apartment and the surrounding skyline of the city, also magnificent. The building’s form was awesomely grotesque with the floors seemingly piled on top of each other rather haphazardly, not stacked straight and square, jutting into the sky as if in a careless, random flirtation with the natural environment. Most of the walls were glass which added to a feeling that this was not a building at all but just a dream of a building. I am sure the whole affair was a triumph of architectural design but instead of being awed by it, I felt fear and discomfort. The building looked like it was going to topple over in the first strong wind. In fact the whole scene suggested impermanence and instability to me. My main thought was wondering where all the power came from to energize those zillions of electric lights sparkling unnecessarily across the cityscape.

As I studied the photos, my agrarian upbringing struck me with renewed conviction.

All Empires Crash Soon After They Reach Their Peak…

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From WASHINGTON’S BLOG

Thomas Jefferson said, “Dissent is the highest form of patriotism.”   And because I love my country, I frequently criticize America’s shortcomings in the hopes of making her better.

But the truth is that the United States is not unusual … it is just like all other empires which have hit their peak and then quickly crashed.

We noted in 2008:

Political insider and veteran reporter Kevin Phillips has documented that every major empire over the past several hundred years has undergone a predictable cycle of collapse, usually within 10 to 20 years of its peak power.

The indications are always the same:

- The financialization of the economy, moving from manufacturing to speculation;

- Very high levels of debt;

- Extreme economic inequality;

– And costly military overreaching.

We wrote in 2009:

Bernanke’s Neofeudal Rentier Economy…

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From CHARLES HUGH SMITH
oftwominds

The Fed has directly created a neofeudal rentier economy and society.

Federal Reserve Chairman Bernanke is a Reverse Robin Hood, robbing from the lower 95% and giving to the financier class. The Real Reverse Robin Hood: Ben Bernanke and his Merry Band of Thieves (August 31, 2012).

It’s worth understanding the mechanisms of this wealth transfer: in essence, the Fed extends low-cost credit (i.e. “free money”) to the financier class which then uses this free money to buy rentier assets, that is, assets that generate economic rents for the owners, who add no value and create no wealth.

This is of course the neofeudal model: the financial aristocracy in the manor house own the rentier assets and the debt-serfs toil away to pay the rents and taxes. The financier class (i.e. those that benefit from the financialization of the economy) are as unproductive

Cancer Capitalism…

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From THOM HARTMANN

Unregulated capitalism is cancer on our nation. Like tumors, greed has metastasized, strangling once-healthy parts of our economy, and our social safety net. A new piece on Alternet lists several ways this cancer capitalism has taken hold. For starters, the hoarding of wealth by the banksters and the 1% has diverted resources away from nutritional aid programs. Twenty people in our country collected a whopping $73 billion in investment income – all taxed at a lower rate than working Americans. Compare that with the fact that President Obama couldn’t even get $1 billion to improve childhood nutrition in our schools.

And, while cancer capitalism has lead to higher-than-ever corporate profits, it hasn’t translated into good jobs for college grads. Because of rising tuition costs, the average student graduates with $26,000 of student loan debt, and adding to that burden, high-unemployment allows the corporate elite to underpay workers, and hoard a larger share of profits.

In addition, tax-dodging corporations have drained much-needed revenue out of our society like a tumor choking off the blood supply to our economy. According to Alternet, tax exemptions and corporate loopholes drain nearly a trillion dollars from “the body of our society” every year.

And, the worst parasite of all is the unrestrained corporate purchase of our politicians.

A worldwide March against Monsanto is scheduled May 25th 2013…

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From RiseEarth

Comparison of GMO and non-GMO corn – the real statistics will astound you!

As Monsanto parades their genetically modified seed, throwing it out like candy into the fields, future generations are being subjected to nutritionally void, disease-causing food. As the government protects the GMO industry, with its recent signing of the “Monsanto Protection Act”, the republic’s health interests are being discarded.

A 2012 study, called the Corn Comparison Report, was recently released by Profit Pro and published on the website for Moms Across America March to Label GMOs – a group dedicated to raising awareness about the dangers of genetically modified organisms.

The Corn Comparison Report detailed the nutritional deficiencies of GMO corn compared to regular organic corn. The report reveals the stunning levels of glyphosate in GMO corn and the amount of vital nutrients that have been drawn out.

GMO corn: nutritionally void

The nutrition statistics for GMO corn are bone chilling. Here is what the report indicates:

Stewart Brand’s Whole Earth Catalog, the book that changed the world…

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From CAROLE CADWALLADR
The Observer

Stewart Brand didn’t just happen to be around when the personal computer came into being; he’s the one who put “personal” and “computer” together in the same sentence and introduced the concept to the world. He wasn’t just a member of the world’s first open online community, the Well; he co-founded it. And he wasn’t just another of those 60s acid casualties; he was the definitive 60s acid casualty. Well, not casualty exactly, but he was there taking LSD in the days when it was still legal, with the most famous hipster of them all, Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters.

For nearly five decades, Stewart Brand has been hanging around the cutting edge of whatever is the most cutting thing of the day. Largely because he’s discovered it and become fascinated with it long before anyone else has even noticed it but, in retrospect, it does make him seem like the west coast’s answer to Zelig, the Woody Allen character who just happens to pop up at key moments in history. Because no one pops up like Stewart Brand pops up, right there, just on the cusp of something momentous.

I discover this for myself when I go and hunt down my ancient copy of Tom Wolfe’s The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. It’s one of the defining pieces of new journalism

Victory for WikiLeaks…

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From Adbusters

[See today's Chris Hedges interview with Julian Assange here]

Time to send some money to Julian again!

Iceland may just have given WikiLeaks & Julian Assange a much needed and overdue boost.

The supreme court of Iceland passed a ruling on April 24, 2013 ordering Valitor – a.k.a Visa Iceland – to resume processing online donations to WikiLeaks within two weeks. And if they don’t follow through, the judge will hold them to it by charging Valitor a nice daily fine of $6,830 until it complies.

“This is a victory for WikiLeaks and freedom of information,” Reporters Without Borders declared, “The arbitrary blocking of payments put in place by financial service companies was completely illegal and has now been condemned as such by a country’s highest court.” RWB continues:

We hope that this ruling will put a stop to the controversial decisions that Visa has been taking until now in connection with WikiLeaks and that Visa will instruct all of its partners and subcontractors around the world to comply. It would be strange, and unacceptable, if only Valitor were obliged to provide a service to WikiLeaks in Iceland while all the other subcontractors, including those in the rest of Europe and the United States, were not.

Telling the Truth about the Holy Bible, Part Seven…

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From ROBERT INGERSOLL (1894)

Part One | Part Two | Part Three | Part Four | Part Five | Part Six | Part Seven |

THE PHILOSOPHY OF CHRIST

Millions assert that the philosophy of Christ is perfect — that he was the wisest that ever uttered speech.

Let us see:

Resist not evil. If smitten on one cheek turn the other.

Is there any philosophy, any wisdom in this? Christ takes from goodness, from virtue, from the truth, the right of self-defence. Vice becomes the master of the world, and the good become the victims of the infamous.

No man has the right to protect himself, his property, his wife and children. Government becomes impossible, and the world is at the mercy of criminals. Is there any absurdity beyond this?

Love your enemies.

Is this possible? Did any human being ever love his enemies? Did Christ love his, when he denounced them as whited sepulchers, hypocrites and vipers?

We cannot love those who hate us. Hatred in the hearts of others does not breed love in ours. Not to resist evil is absurd; to love your enemies is impossible.

Telling the Truth about the Holy Bible, Part Six…

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From ROBERT INGERSOLL (1894)

Part One | Part Two | Part Three | Part Four | Part Five | Part Six | Part Seven |

THE NEW TESTAMENT

Who wrote the New Testament?

Christian scholars admit that they do not know. They admit that, if the four gospels were written by Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, they must have been written in Hebrew. And yet a Hebrew manuscript of any one of these gospels has never been found. All have been and are in Greek. So, educated theologians admit that the Epistles, James and Jude, were written by persons who had never seen one of the four gospels. In these Epistles — in James and Jude — no reference is made to any of the gospels, nor to any miracle recorded in them.

The first mention that has been found of one of our gospels was made about one hundred and eight years after the birth of Christ, and the four gospels were first named and quoted from at the beginning of the third century, about one hundred an seventy years after the death of Christ.

We now know that there were many other gospels besides our four, some of which have been lost. There were the gospels of Paul, of the Egyptians, of the Hebrews, of Perfection, of Judas, of Thaddeus, of the Infancy, of Thomas, of Mary, of Andrew, of Nicodemus, of Marcion and several others.

William Edelen: To Embrace The Silence

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From WILLIAM EDELEN
The Contrary Minister

People often ask me…”what are you…what do you believe?” When I answer that question seriously I tell them that I am within the historical stream of mysticism. That orientation, world view, cosmology, or philosophy of life is the same, whether one lives in a Taoist society, Buddhist, Jewish, Christian, Hindu or secular. Mysticism has nothing to do with sitting in a cave looking at your navel. You can be a mystic in the busiest office in downtown Los Angeles or Chicago, and many are.

Mysticism is entering into the Silence. Finding harmony within yourself and your surroundings. It is as Twylah Nitsch says it in Language of the Trees: “I listen and HEAR the silence. I listen and SEE the silence. I listen and TASTE the silence. I listen and SMELL the silence. I listen and EMBRACE the silence…” People in the Lakota tradition of the American Indian believe profoundly in silence, as do the vast majority of Indian traditions. Silence is the absolute poise or balance of body, mind and spirit. If you ask them what the fruits of silence are, they will say: “self control, true courage, endurance, patience, dignity. Silence is the cornerstone.”

To embrace the silence is the key to living in the world of mystical thought and experiencing the NOW, the immediate. It is to recover intuition and feeling. It has nothing to do with PAST or FUTURE. Mysticism refuses to deify Reason or Rationalism. It is Carl Jung writing that “reason and rationalism are the two major diseases of our time.” He wrote that in his autobiography.

Belief in biblical end-times stifling climate change action in U.S…

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From ERIC W. DOLAN
The Raw Story

The United States has failed to take action to mitigate climate change thanks in part to the large number of religious Americans who believe the world has a set expiration date.

Research by David C. Barker of the University of Pittsburgh and David H. Bearce of the University of Colorado uncovered that belief in the biblical end-times was a motivating factor behind resistance to curbing climate change.

“[T]he fact that such an overwhelming percentage of Republican citizens profess a belief in the Second Coming (76 percent in 2006, according to our sample) suggests that governmental attempts to curb greenhouse emissions would encounter stiff resistance even if every Democrat in the country wanted to curb them,” Barker and Bearce wrote in their study, which will be published in the June issue of Political Science Quarterly.

The study, based on data from the 2007 Cooperative Congressional Election Study, uncovered that belief in the “Second Coming” of Jesus reduced the probability of strongly supporting government action on climate change

Chomsky: USA a Top Terrorist State…

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American academic Noam Chomsky says the United States would be recognized as a leading terrorist state if international law is applied.
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Raising Freethinkers…

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From a Mom…

I am a secular humanist and raise my kids to be humanists. In other words, our view at home is that we can be ethical, deeply moral, caring, decent, respectful, honest, deep thinkers, reflective, loving-kind, compassionate, virtuous, kind, good, and much much more, without religion. In fact, we actively eschew religious dogma and belief.

We meditate, we find awe in nature (of which we are part), and recognize the deep interconnection that unites us all in nature/life. We value human creativity and ingenuity, and do not believe that humans are the only creatures that matter. We value peace, compassion, loving-kindness, and making the world a better place.

Our family abides by the belief that we ourselves add meaning and purpose to life, it does not come from anywhere else, except from the fact that we are all part of nature and thus ought to always consider that interconnection and the broader responsibility that it might entail.

Believe it or not, we also value deep critical thinking, non-dogmatic attachment, and freedom of thought. We aim for an ecological and planetary ethic, an ethics of interbeing (to use one of Thich Nhat Hanh’s favorite words).

Will Parrish: What’s Next For Caltrans & The Willits Bypass?

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From WILL PARRISH
Ukiah
TheAVA

On May 7th, Caltrans goes hat-in-hand to the California Transportation Commission (CTC), which allocates funding for California transportation infrastructure projects, to request $30.986 million for the wetlands and riparian areas “mitigation” plans that I describe in the adjoining story.  The CTC’s 11 esteemed board members, most of them members of California’s elite business circles with financial stakes in the real estate, construction, and transportation industries, are convening in Los Angeles to deliberate on 166 agenda items over the course of four hours.

Although one of the conditions of CalTrans’ Clean Water Act permit with the Army Corps of Engineers for the Willits Bypass is that it cannot begin construction before securing all mitigation funding, the Army Corps granted Big Orange an exemption to that condition.  So that CalTrans could begin destroying trees and vegetation starting in February, the Army Corps merely required that CalTrans provide them a written “assurance” that the CTC would vote in its favor next Tuesday.

Whatever form the assurance took, it was probably superfluous.  The CTC’s clearly established record is to rubber-stamp everything that comes before it, excepting rare instances where influential officials intervene in advance of the meetings.

Will Parrish: The Bypass ‘Mitigation’ Charade…

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From WILL PARRISH
Ukiah
TheAVA

In Little Lake Valley, aka the Willits Valley, CalTrans is preparing to destroy the largest area of wetlands as part of any Northern California construction project since at least 1977. That was the year the US Congress amended the Clean Water Act to require the US Army Corps of Engineers to enforce a “no net loss of wetlands” policy.

Big Orange’s spokespeople claim their plan to “mitigate” the damage from the process of draining, filling in, and paving over nearly 90 acres of wetlands more than compensates for the loss. The agency’s propagandists have even claimed, for example, that their new six-mile freeway would be “good for the fish.”

“This is definitely not our grandfather’s way of constructing a highway,” reads an exemplary post on the Willits Bypass Project web site, set up last month in an attempt to stem the tide of criticism the project has been receiving. “Learning more about the sustainable approach and care that has gone into the Willits Bypass Project offers special insight into Caltrans’ application of contemporary and world-class engineering practices.”

The statement does contain a kernel of truth. Learning more about Caltrans’ approach to “mitigating” the damage wrought by the Willits Bypass does, indeed, offer special insight into the agency’s practices.

Todd Walton: $1.50

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Photo by Marcia Sloane

From TODD WALTON
Under The Table Books
Mendocino

“Once, during prohibition, I was forced to live for days on nothing but food and water.” ~W.C. Fields

This just in: Ben Affleck, the movie star, is going to try to survive for five days spending only one dollar and fifty cents per day on food. He is lending his celebrity to the Live Below the Line Campaign to bring attention to the plight of millions of people in America and hundreds of millions of people around the world who try to survive on a dollar-fifty or less for food every day of their lives. Several celebrities I’ve never heard of (I’m old and don’t watch television) are joining Affleck along with twenty thousand other Americans voluntarily partaking of the five-day ordeal. The organizers of the event recommend that anyone wishing to attempt this amazing feat spend their entire budget of $7.50 at the start of the five days by purchasing “pasta, lentils, rice, bread, vegetables, potatoes and oats.”

Clearly, these folks don’t shop where we shop. Pasta? Forget it. Largely empty calories and too expensive. Bread? Are you kidding? At nearly six dollars for a decent loaf? Vegetables? Maybe a few carrots won’t bust the budget. Potatoes? Perhaps a russet or two. Oats? No way. Much ado about nothing. Rice? Brown rice. Yes. A big yes. Lentils? Sure, but be prepared for profound farting

Debtors Prisons Are Cruelly Punishing the Poor Across America…

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From BILL BERKOWITZ
AlterNet

A 19th century tool for instilling fear in the public to pay off debt…

“In the 1990s, Jack [Dawley's] drug and alcohol addictions led to convictions for domestic violence and driving under the influence, resulting in nearly $1,500 in fines and costs in the Norwalk Municipal Court. Jack was also behind on his child support, which led to an out-of-state jail sentence.” After serving three and a half years in Wisconsin, Dawley, now sober for 14 years, is still trying to catch up with the fines he owes, and it has “continue[d] to wreak havoc on his life.”

Tricia Metcalf is a mother with sole custody of two teenagers. In 2006, Metcalf “was convicted of passing multiple bad checks. The fines mounted into the thousands. Unable to pay the total amount owed, Tricia entered into a payment plan of $50 per month.” Although she’s worked temporary jobs, a long-term job has been hard to find. “Whenever Tricia missed a payment, a warrant was issued and she was taken to jail.”

The stories of Jack Dawley and Tricia Metcalf are only two of several compelling accounts in the ACLU’s new report