Wednesday, January 28, 2009

the importance of biological diversity

======
unclejimswormfarm.com/index.php?show_aux_page=12
...a mixture of five different species of earthworms...Each species enhances the soil their own certain way...
======

Monday, January 26, 2009

We're a symphony of microbes

======
howtocompost.org
======
"...The vast majority [of microbes] are health- promoting, energy-supplying organisms vital to our very existence..."
~Brian J. Ford
brianjford.com/wmicpow1.htm
======
brianjford.com/06-07-ingenious-biologist.pdf
"...other cells in the body – no matter
how diminutively – have minds of their
own...even if most of
the personality resides in the brain, there
must be some – perhaps a substantial
amount – that derives from the choreographed
community of autonomous cells
that make us who we are..."
======
spiritual-endeavors.org/m-earth/index.html
baproducts.com/thertch.htm
baproducts.com/other.htm
======
spiritual-endeavors.org/m-earth/how/no-cause.htm
...On our planet with its interconnected ecosystems, there is no such thing as throwing something away...
======
earthweek.com
======
ecoagriculture.org
ecoagriculturepartners.org/resources/links.php
======
justseeds.org
======
earth-and-tree.blogspot.com/2008/02/borage.html
======
architectsofanewdawn.com
=======
sundancechannel.com/greenporno
world-wire.com/news/0901120001.html
======
bioelectrophotography (in French)
arsitra.org/yacs/categories/view.php/389/bioelectrographie
======
Association of Alternative Newsweeklies
aan.org
======
Deaths of Old-Growth Trees Double as Western U.S. Warms
1/1/9
ens-newswire.com/ens/jan2009/2009-01-22-01.asp
- Death rates of old-growth trees in western U.S. forests have more than doubled over the past few decades, and the most likely cause of the trend is regional warming, finds new research to be published Friday in the journal "Science."
======
greenbiz.com/news/2009/01/01/ge-ecomagination-centre-masdar-city
...World Future Energy Summit...
======
Signs of Change:Social Movement Cultures 1960s to Now
exitart.org/site/pub/exhibition_programs/signs_of_change/index.html
======

Sunday, January 25, 2009

Making biofuel doesn't have to compete with growing food.

======
Microbe power : tomorrow's revolution
by Brian J. Ford 1976
======
energy and nutrition from algae discussion -
oil from algae
overunity.com/index.php?topic=4578.msg152470

...Research is under way to start a new industry...oil from algae. Companies like Vertigro are on the cutting edge of tech. development to replace our dependency on imported oil and this tech also may be used to supply nutrients for fertiliser/vitamins etc....Some species of algae are over 50% oil.Unlike ethanol from corn/sugarbeets/sugarcane algae will not take out food producting land to supply energy needs...

...G'day all,

I wonder why this is taking so long. The whole process was described in Brian J Ford's book 'Microbe Power - Tomorrow's Revolution' (1976)

This is over 30 years ago and now they are talking about it again. One wonders.

Hans von Lieven...
======
Revealing the ingenuity of the living cell
by Brian J. Ford, August 2006
brianjford.com/06-07-ingenious-biologist.pdf
...No brain/body dichotomy
Cells throughout the body are dividing,
responding, reacting and controlling in
ways that are independent of the human
brain. To me, there is no brain/body
dichotomy. The brain is the body. Neurons
are cells that specialise in handling the
cognitive, higher-order manifestations
that make us look and behave like people.
But the other cells in the body – no matter
how diminutively – have minds of their
own. There have been books and programmes
claiming that human xenotransplant
recipients sometimes manifest attitudes
and traits they never had before, but
which are identical to characteristics of
the deceased organ donor. This is not
much of a mystery to me; even if most of
the personality resides in the brain, there
must be some – perhaps a substantial
amount – that derives from the choreographed
community of autonomous cells
that make us who we are...
======
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_J._Ford
======
brianjford.com/wmicpow1.htm
...Since Pasteur proclaimed his germ theory, all microbes have been regarded with suspicion. Not that Pasteur was wrong, but science may have been misguided in allowing its attention to concentrate so fully on only a tiny, rather nasty percentage of the microbe population. The vast majority are health- promoting, energy-supplying organisms vital to our very existence...
======
"When all is said and done, more is said than done."
~Groucho Marx
overunity.com/index.php?topic=4578.msg92252#msg92252
======

Saturday, January 24, 2009

Make Plants, Not War

=======
"To the people of poor nations, we pledge to work alongside you to make your farms flourish and let clean waters flow; to nourish starved bodies and feed hungry minds. And to those nations like ours that enjoy relative plenty, we say we can no longer afford indifference to suffering outside our borders; nor can we consume the world's resources without regard to effect. For the world has changed, and we must change with it."
~President Barack Obama
internationalpeaceandconflict.org/video/in-focus-congos-bloody-coltan
=======

Thursday, January 22, 2009

Bush screws workers (again) on way out:

======
===
real gangsta
The Right To Food
By Cernig
By a vote of 180 in favour to 1 against (United States) and no abstentions, the Committee also approved a resolution on the right to food, by which the Assembly would "consider it intolerable" that more than 6 million children still died every year from hunger-related illness before their fifth birthday, and that the number of undernourished people had grown to about 923 million worldwide, at the same time that the planet could produce enough food to feed 12 billion people, or twice the world’s present population. (See Annex III.)

The Bush administration, speaking for the U.S.A...

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article21806.htm
======
From the
United Farm Workers
ufwaction.org/campaign/h2aregs109a/iiuw7db4y7b68b3t?

...Change has started. Upon taking office President Obama immediately stayed any pending or new 11th hour regulations that the Bush administration tried to push through.

However, this does not include the devastating new H2A regulations...These Bush administration H2A regulations gut existing protections for both domestic and foreign farm workers. They make it easier for growers to slash the pay of domestic farm workers and hire imported foreign laborers instead of U.S. field workers. They weaken government protections in an industry known for violating the minimum wage, housing requirements and other rules.

The new Obama Administration is facing a mountain of problems left by the outgoing administration. All of them are important. And all require action.

We need your help to ensure that farm workers do not get buried under the pile of crises...
======
Bette Midler's
New York Restoration Project
nyrp.org
...founded the nonprofit...in 1995 in the belief that clean, green neighborhoods are fundamental to the quality of life, and that every community in New York City deserves an oasis of natural beauty. Seeing many parks and open spaces in dire need of cleanup and restoration, Ms. Midler created NYRP to be the "conservancy of forgotten places," particularly in New York City's underserved communities.

"When I moved to New York, I was very disappointed in how parts of the city looked. I was so upset, I didn't sleep for weeks. I love New Yorkers, and I'm like them—I'm noisy, I have my opinions—but I'm not used to the kind of carelessness and waste that I was seeing. People were throwing their garbage out the window, leaving their lunches on the ground. Finally, I realized I needed to actually do something—even if I had to pick up the stuff with my own hands."

~Bette Midler
======
Rodale rodaleinstitute.org
Pleasant Park Community Garden
nyrp.org/gardens/garden.php?sub=0&p=3&g=3

This large, busy garden occupies a once-abandoned area between 114th and 115th streets in East Harlem and is one of NYRP's most actively used community gardens. In 1999, NYRP rescued the plot from commercial development and reclaimed the garden in partnership with local residents and the Little Sisters of the Assumption, who operate a social services organization in the neighborhood. A small group of neighborhood residents, mostly women who had emigrated from Mexico, cleared the lot and established the garden's first handful of raised vegetable beds. Since 2000, these gardeners have raised high yield crops of hearty vegetables, including radishes, tomatoes, squash, cilantro, and papalo.

In 2003, the garden received a $250,000 restoration and endowment gift from Rodale Inc. for capital improvements and other garden amenities. These include secure fencing, landscaped common areas, and 17 raised vegetable beds. The garden also includes innovative green-design amenities, such as a solar panel for electricity, one of the largest rain-water collection systems in the city, a composting toilet, and a garden shed/meeting room featuring hay-bale construction. In addition to funding the garden restoration and endowment, Rodale has provided mushroom-compost-enriched soil, a reference library, and has organized donations of supplies and equipment from garden-industry advertisers...Though vegetable growing is the primary activity, the restoration has created areas designed for ornamental gardening and group gatherings. The River East Elementary School on Pleasant Avenue conducts a student gardening program here, as well.

NYRP celebrated the opening of the restored Rodale Pleasant Park Community Garden, and its neighbor The Family Garden at the Fourth Annual Spring Picnic, held June 14, 2005.
======
Manhattan's Lower East Side gardens
creativelittlegarden.org/partners.htm
======
about 1975 - outdoor play called
Turning the Earth
at garden-to-be site W. North Ave. & Resaca St. North Side Pittsburgh, as actors and audience dig up the site.
"...Revolution means turning the Earth..."
tonisant.com/aitg/Radical_Theatre/more2.shtml
They played and dug, then 2 of us planted the garden.
======
www.livingtheatre.org/history.html
...In the 1970's, The Living Theatre began to create The Legacy of Cain, a cycle of plays for non-traditional venues. From the prisons of Brazil to the gates of the Pittsburgh steel mills, and from the slums of Palermo to the schools of New York City, the company offered these plays, which include Six Public Acts, The Money Tower, Seven Meditations on Political Sado-Masochism, Turning the Earth and the Strike Support Oratorium free of charge to the broadest of all possible audiences...
======
treebranch.com/community_gardens.htm
...saw community gardens as a powerful way to make New York whole and healthy again. Their efforts successfully anchored and revitalized neighborhoods and, in the process, community gardens wrought a significant change on the urban landscape.

Community gardens existed in New York before the 1970's. The Depression of the 1890's and the Great Depression of the 1930's spurred many municipalities, including New York, to permit citizens to grow food on city-owned land. The two world wars with their accompanying food shortages brought about Liberty and Victory Gardens. However, these were temporary measures, abandoned as the precipitating crises passed. New York's community gardening movement grew out of the fiscal crisis of the mid-1970's, but it laid down deep roots. Its strength and vitality endures despite the recent events described below.

New York's contemporary community gardening movement is grounded in the work of three extraordinary women:

Liz Christy, founder of the Green Guerillas (1973), "bombed" Lower East Side vacant lots with homemade "seed grenades" and created the Bowery-Houston Garden, New York's oldest community garden. She then went on to develop the Open Space Greening Program (1975) for the Council on the Environment of NYC.

Hattie Carthan, whose successful efforts beginning in 1969 to preserve three brownstones slated for demolition in Bedford-Stuyvesant, also saved a tree that had no business growing in New York City, the southern Magnolia Grandiflora. Committed to planting and protecting her neighborhood's street trees, she then established the Magnolia Tree Earth Center.

In the late 1960's, fashion designer Mollie Parnis encouraged volunteer efforts rewarding neighborhood clean-ups and beautification projects with a welcome check at a recognition ceremony hosted by City Hall. The Mollie Parnis Dress Up Your Neighborhood Awards, administered by the Citizens Committee for New York City, have supported hundreds of self-help initiatives throughout New York.

In 1976, Cornell University Cooperative Extension was chosen by the U.S. Department of Agriculture to implement the pilot Urban Agricultural Program to provide New York's backyard and community gardeners with horticultural expertise and assistance. This pilot program was so successful that by 1990, 23 cities were offering such services. (Unfortunately, the program was reorganized several years ago, eliminating this valued and valuable assistance.)

By 1978, scores of community gardens were flourishing by dint of hard labor and donated plants from nurseries and residents replanting their outdoor spaces. The one thing, however, that the gardeners did not have was permission to garden this city-owned land; technically they were squatters. Government resisted legitimizing gardens without liability protection. Neighborhood Open Space coalition created a low-cost liability program that gardeners could buy into.

This led to the creation of Operation GreenThumb in 1978. (The program's name was shortened to GreenThumb when it was transferred, in 1995, to Parks & Recreation from the Department of General Services [DGS], now known as the Department of Citywide Administrative Services [DCAS].)

For a year, GreenThumb operated with one part time staff person whose sole function was to issue leases. Permission to garden the land was authorized by a city-wide land use committee (this committee had many names over the years) that determined the disposition of city-owned land, e.g., to be sold at auction, selected for housing and commercial development, assigned to other agencies for open space, parking, or building construction. Leases were issued to community gardeners who requested land for which no immediate use was identified. From the beginning, GreenThumb was described as an "interim site" program, with access to land between demolition and development.

In 1979, GreenThumb applied for and received its first federal Community Development Block Grant, funding which continues to today. This allowed GreenThumb to hire staff and provide gardeners with materials to develop their gardens - fencing, tools, lumber for growing beds and garden furniture, soil, seeds, shrubs, and bulbs - and with training in how to design, build and plant their gardens.

Over time other organizations were created or established programs to assist the city's community gardeners. In addition to GreenThumb, Green Guerillas, Council on the Environment of New York City and Citizens Committee for New York City, organizations assisting gardeners include the Neighborhood Open Space Coalition, Trust for Public Land, Brooklyn Botanic Garden/ Brooklyn GreenBridge, New York Botanical Garden/Bronx Green-Up, New York Horticultural Society and Trees New York. Working singly and cooperatively for the past 20 years, these organizations eagerly offer materials and advice. The resources they provide are more than matched by the resources every neighborhood can supply in abundance - the people who live there.

Until the mid-1990's, a minimum of housing was developed in New York City. During that time, the number of GreenThumb community gardens grew to 750...
======
Wer jist a hole y gram
newscientist.com/article/mg20126911.300-our-world-may-be-a-giant-hologram.html

Wednesday, January 21, 2009

Earth rebelling against humanity

Let's stop arguing whether or not the climate change is human-caused or a "natural cycle". The facts are: co2 is increasing (we don't have to get agreement on why); co2 does cause a greenhouse effect; and, now, we have positive feedback effects such as methane coming from the bottom of the ocean. Coal is over, or we are over. The liars that are eliminating forest with mountaintop removal mining are so powerful as to get Obama to mention "clean coal" in his campaign. THERE IS NO CLEAN COAL. THERE IS NO CLEAN OR SAFE NUCLEAR. These people are gangsters, so powerful as to compel top politicians to roll with them. The ship of humanity as a whole is going almost full steam in the wrong direction.
======
Coal River Mountain Watch
crmw.net
======
Burning the Future: Coal in America
burningthefuture.org
burningthefuture.blogspot.com
youtube.com/watch?v=luVmMBppJc8&feature=channel
penniesofpromise.org
coalriverwind.org
youtube.com/watch?v=kQPYKD4WGew
ilovemountains.org
sludgesafety.org/press_room/2005/06_30.html
======
Student Environmental Action Coalition
seac.org/node/117
======
From:

Methane Hydrates: What are they thinking?
by Richard Embleton 12/5/8

wordpress.com/tag/fossil-fuels

"...There are various technologies under consideration for extracting methane from hydrate deposits. Most involve some form of heating the hydrate deposits - one, probably the dumbest and most dangerous, even goes so far as to suggest using nuclear explosions beneath the deposit to heat it, also suggested by some as a means of releasing oil from tar sands and oil shale - causing them to release the methane..."

oilbeseeingyou.blogspot.com/2008/12/methane-hydrates-what-are-they-thinking.html

...CO2 remains in the atmosphere for over 100 years.

Scientists studying global warming have long been seriously concerned about the possibility of large scale methane hydrate destabilization and methane release into the atmosphere. The greatest concern is about the large volumes of methane hydrates under the Arctic sea floor and that trapped in the vast permafrost zone surrounding the Arctic Ocean. That concern has now been heightened by recent discoveries of hundreds of methane plumes on the floor of the Arctic Ocean north of Norway and Siberia. [2] There is also evidence in pock-marked sea floors of large releases of methane plumes in the geological past. [3]

Paleoclimatologists now believe that large scale, natural methane hydrate releases have been partly but significantly responsible for short-cycle global warming and global cooling cycles in the past. The recent discoveries in the Arctic, in fact, are thought to suggest that methane releases have contributed to the global warming that has occurred since the last ice age 15,000 years ago. [2]

The problem is that these methane releases have a strong positive feedback loop. As they increase the warming of the atmosphere that warming in turn increases methane release which in turn increases warming which in turn releases more...... You get the picture. Acceleration of global warming through this positive feedback loop, by increased methane concentration in the atmosphere, far more than CO2 concentrations, represents, to paleoclimatologists, a far greater risk of pushing us into the Venus effect, runaway global warming.

When it comes to satisfying the world's energy lust, however, caution may be thrown to the wind. Powering down human society is never an option put on the table when politicians and other leaders discuss energy policies and strategies. We have proven over and over again that business as usual is the only model that will be considered. How else can we explain the tar sands, oil shale development, deepwater oil extraction, coal mines extending out under the sea floor, and more?

There are various technologies under consideration for extracting methane from hydrate deposits. Most involve some form of heating the hydrate deposits - one, probably the dumbest and most dangerous, even goes so far as to suggest using nuclear explosions beneath the deposit to heat it, also suggested by some as a means of releasing oil from tar sands and oil shale - causing them to release the methane which is then collected and piped to a processing facility of holding tank. Proponents of methane hydrate exploitation, conscious of environmental concerns, are quick to offer reassurances like ".....tapping into the gas hydrates assessed in the study is not expected to affect global warming, said Brenda Pierce, coordinator for the USGS Energy Resources Program." [4] The louder and more frequent such reassurances are, of course, the more it suggests they are trying to cover up the probability that the result will be the opposite.

There are many projects underway, funded by governments throughout the world (Japan, India, China, South Korea, Russia, Norway, Canada, the U.S.), aimed at developing commercially viable technologies for exploiting the planet's vast methane hydrate deposits. The selection of sites for these projects are, themselves, a clear indication of one of the primary roadblocks to using methane hydrates as a societal-supporting energy source. They have sought out test sites with high methane hydrate concentrations.

Most hydrate deposits are too small or too dispersed to be commercially exploited. Also, unlike oil and natural gas, those deposits are generally not capped in such a way that the geology can be used to contain releases. Most of those deposits on the sea floor, in fact, exist in unconsolidated, sandy or silt sediment. The geology surrounding them is inherently unstable, difficult to contain. Once the deposit, or any large portion of it, is destabilized it is very difficult to prevent unintended, uncontrolled methane releases into the atmosphere.

...methane hydrates are not like the other fossil fuels...The risk to the climate and the environment is so much greater than has ever been the case with other fossil fuels. Most importantly, methane hydrates are globally affected by exactly the same constrains; temperature and pressure.

Global warming itself - it doesn't matter whether it is naturally occurring or caused by human combustion of fossil fuels - is the greatest threat of tipping methane releases into a runaway warming mechanism. Scientists do not know with any certainty yet how much of a global temperature rise is necessary to reach the tipping point where methane hydrate release into the atmosphere accelerates out of control. They do know that once that happens the acceleration will be self-sustaining and self-accelerating.

If our leaders take the same cavalier approach with scientific warnings about runaway methane release that they have taken with warnings about CO2 buildup in the atmosphere, and the long-term, safe storage of spent nuclear fuel, we are headed toward a much more serious atmospheric and climatic disaster than global warming experts have thus far suggested. Methane releases from the ocean floors and from Arctic permafrost have not been built into any of the current global warming models as a factor...
======
"...when the Roman Empire finally collapsed, large parts of Europe had been deforested. Acres of forestland had been cleared for farmland and to provide firewood. Wood and food were essential, to maintain the Roman Empire. To meet their short term needs, the Romans overexploited their prime energy resource. They did not think about the consequences for later generations. So the demise of a seemingly invincible civilization was partially due to the unsustainable use of their prime energy resource. The question is, are we going to be any wiser?

What the Romans were experiencing, we would now describe as peak wood. Reaching a point of maximum production after which it enters terminal decline..."

~Crown Prince Willem-Alexander of the Netherlands

energybulletin.net/node/47796
europe.theoildrum.com/node/4991
======
"...local food, not fuel..."
youtube.com/watch?v=N1ZNorSvYzQ&feature=channel
======
"...If the nuclear industry is green, it's because it's glowing in the dark..."
youtube.com/watch?v=N1ZNorSvYzQ&feature=channel
======
Specter of slavery persists in fields
Tomato pickers insist practice is rampant
by Amy Bennett Williams 12/14/8
news-press.com/article/20081214/NEWS01/812140376/1002/NEWS01
======
Coalition of Immokalee Workers
antislavery.org/homepage/news/270508_CIW.htm
======
projectgreenteams.org
communityenergyservices.org
======
zkea.com/categories/category10.html

...Today we stand at the vanguard of a grim new era. The treaties banning the development and deployment of biological weapons are dead letters. (See the Treaties And Protocols archive.) The United States has publicly renounced these treaties and is actively pursuing new offensive and defensive biological weapons. A handful of other countries have already developed horrific capabilities, armed and at the ready, including weaponized anthrax and smallpox. Dozens of other nations are busily constructing their own arsenals. Why shouldn't they? Biological weapons are cheap, easily deployed, and quite effective. Plus everyone else has them. Therefore it seems prudent to have such weapons as well.

And it does not stop there. Genetic engineering is now actively harnessed to the cause. Incurable forms of existing pathogens - as well as completely artificial organisms - are already deployed. Incurable anthrax, particularly vicious mutants of smallpox, horrific blood fevers, and universally fatal toxins, all these and more await their use in the next war.

So we move into an increasingly unstable world, with apocalyptic weapons spreading like viruses. And yet the world sleeps.

======

American Biological Weapons Programs

zkea.com/archives/archive10005.html

...it is believed that the United States has indeed restarted a major biological program under the Bush administration. Driven by the events of 9/11 and the perceived failure of the BWC treaty, the United States believes that biodefenses are again strategically critical. Unfortunately the line between defense and offense is an exceedingly fine one. It is an interesting logical paradox. In order to develop and test defenses against theoretical biological weapons, often one must develop those very same biological weapons. Thus the theoretical threat becomes real by virtue of the need to anticipate the threat. This is an interesting nuance that Dr. Strangelove would have appreciated.

A new arms race has begun. Unfortunately, this arms race will not be confined to a few large research facilities safely locked inside a couple superpowers. This arms race will encompass the world.

======

From the

Henry L. Stimson Center :

Old Plagues, New Threats:

The Biotech Revolution and its Impact on US National Security
by Rita Grossman-Vermaas, Brian D. Finlay, and Elizabeth Turpen, Ph.D.
March 2008

stimson.org/cnp/pdf/Old_Plagues_FINAL.pdf

...According to the Center for Biosecurity at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, “BSL-3 laboratories are used to study biological agents that are potentially lethal and transmissible by the aerosol route and require special safety design features, such as sealed windows and specialized ventilation systems. BSL-4 laboratories are typically used to study lethal agents for which no vaccine or therapy is available. They incorporate the BSL-3 laboratory safety features, plus additional safety features such as full body suits ventilated by life support systems.”13
Biodefense research, which impacts bioterrorism prevention and infectious disease
surveillance and response capacities, including development of countermeasures, is a
critical component of the broader US strategy to protect populations against a biological
weapons attack. Much of this research, particularly on some of the most harmful
pathogens, is conducted at the growing number of high-containment facilities, in many
cases, by researchers with little or no laboratory experience with dangerous agents. This
not only increases the risk of an accidental release of biological weapons agents, but also
gives larger numbers of people access to the materials, technologies and knowledge that
could be used to undertake a bioweapons attack. The rapid increase in the numbers of
these facilities has also raised policy questions from the public and scientific community,
including personnel training in biosafety standards, the adequacy of existing biosafety
and biosecurity measures, and transparency of policies and research directions. Even the
rationale justifying expansion has been called into question.14 Because of the inherent
dual-use nature of biodefense research, US activities have not only created skepticism
within the US about the intentions, but perhaps of more grave consequence, in the
international community. Suspicions have spurred other countries to pursue their own
biodefense research programs, an unintended consequence of US policy...

======

uncommonthought.com/Resources.php
=======

Monday, January 19, 2009

Laugh them off the scene.

They don't hold the high ground; they don't hold the common ground; they don't hold the middle ground.
======
From:
Bubbles, Bailouts and Real Security
by Chuck Collins 12/7/8
firstchurchjp.org/Sermons/ChuckCollins120708.asp

...How many stockbrokers does it take to change a light bulb? The answer is two: one to take out the bulb and drop it, and the other to try and sell it before it crashes....

...the potential silver lining of this time - the potential for community building, meals at home, growing and sharing food, slowing down...
======

Sunday, January 18, 2009

status quo stuck on stupid large-scale

======
"When the people realize they're not stupid..."
~Steve ben Israel
youtube.com/watch?v=dtL3pjwZo4s
======
openthoughtmusic.com
======
International Energy Agency 'blocking global switch to renewables'
minesandcommunities.org/article.php?a=9011 1/8/9

The international body that advises most major governments across the world on energy policy is obstructing a global switch to renewable power because of its ties to the oil, gas and nuclear sectors, a group of politicians and scientists claims today.

The experts, from the Energy Watch group, say the International Energy Agency (IEA) publishes misleading data on renewables, and that it has consistently underestimated the amount of electricity generated by wind power in its advice to governments. They say the IEA shows "ignorance and contempt" towards wind energy, while promoting oil, coal and nuclear as "irreplaceable" technologies...
======
energywatchgroup.org/fileadmin/global/pdf/EWG_Booklet_D_E_v2.pdf
...The climax of the oil production was already exceeded in the year 2006, peak oil has already
been reached. What is more: The rather leisurely upward trend till that time will be
replaced by a dramatically steep downward trend.
======
energywatchgroup.org/fileadmin/global/pdf/2008-08_EWG_Bulletin_3_E.pdf

...A Comment by Thomas Seltmann

Until now, politicians, the media, and the public have been
provided with information about energy issues almost
exclusively by sources who, first and foremost, have their
own benefit at heart. Many actually have an existential
interest in veiling the explosiveness of the situation. For
example:

 The producers of fossil and atomic fuel, in their efforts to
torpedo the vigorous search for alternatives;

 Governments, in their desire to avoid having to take
decisive measures and confess to dramatic policy errors.

 The providers of established consumption technologies,
in their striving to avoid the premature loss of their
market share and power.

Systematic disinformation has led to the waste of valuable
time, making it all the more important and urgent to
present the true situation in unadulterated form, both
foreseeable problems and durable solutions.

Transparency...

[From ] Editorial
On the development of oil prices on the German governmental tv
station ARD’s program “Today’s Topics” - May 21st, 2008:

...the fact that oil prices over the last few decades have been too low to stimulate
the necessary investments in alternatives is coming back to haunt us. We slept through the need to put emphasis on gas-saving hybrid and electric vehicles faster and sooner. The price, though, is driving the lesson home. The ever increasing fuel costs have ignited recognition of the need to
adjust. Any change is painful, but we need to move fast before it hurts even more....
======
duq.edu/humanrights
www.newsroom.duq.edu/r20090106-humanrights.html
minesandcommunities.org
mikestoutmusic.com
======

Saturday, January 17, 2009

Not ta worry

"The most revolutionary act that you can commit in our society today is to be happy...If you want to change the world, then be your own focus for a celebration of life. Really, fundamentally, at the very core of your being, be thankful you are alive, that you've got this opportunity, with these molecules, at this moment."
~Hunter "Patch" Adams, MD
patchadams.org
betterworldheroes.com/adams-patch.htm
======
litkicks.com/category/ecology
======

Friday, January 16, 2009

Love all life.

GreenWay article for February for
hazelwoodhomepage.com
To: editor@hazelwoodeditor@yahoo.com
======
Respect Earth or Perish

We human beings have managed after all these years to not kill ourselves off completely so far. We have shown restraint. By the time I was born - 1952 - there were already easily enough weapons of mass destruction manufactured to have collapsed the whole ecosystem of which we are a part. But the saner among us, aware of the awesome destructive potentials of our various technologies, have managed to keep us from the brink. The terrible high-tech wars of our time have been the worst in recorded history. And the manufacture and maintenance of the world's militaries has damaged environments, bled social systems, and ultimately collapsed economies. But - as difficult as it is to imagine - these wars and their consequences could have been worse.

Now - these many years later at the dawn of the cybernetic age - we stand dangerously close to yet another world war, this one with even higher-tech weapons. The new weaponry has been developed, as is typical with the military, with the mindset that there is this battle between good and evil, (and we, of course are the good).
But this is a childish attitude, regardless of how advanced our technology is. There are no bad guys out there, separate from us. There are only people, with different points of view, all terribly imperfect and as blind to our ways of looking at things as we are to theirs.

It reminds me of a friend who taught his child (who loved dinosaurs) the value of making peace by telling him about how the dinosaurs had horns and bony armour to fight and protect themselves...and then there were none... If we don't learn to value other peoples and other species, we're doomed to population collapse basically brought about by our inability to work together.

We are already in an extinction period right now, just like the dinosaurs. I'd be willing to bet that if any of our particular species makes it past this present ecosystem collapse and lives to reproduce again, these new people will have a much more profound respect for life.

I've written about growing food, and how we can use healthy soil to deal with the pollutants that settle on a garden. But I'm coming to the conclusion that there's something deeper that's intrinsic. We each, naturally, solve our problems by moving them somewhere else. Well - now that the world is so intimately connected and there is no longer an elsewhere to get rid of problems to - we're being challenged to just not make the bloody problems in the first place.

Don't recycle beverage bottles and cans, for instance; don't make the damn things in the first place.

Duh! Who'da thunk it?

Oh, no, I'm going to hurt the beverage container industry by saying we don't need all those cans and bottles! What will we ever do without them?

Drink water. Or bring your own container and fill it up at the store. That's one of the things got the hippies in trouble. They (we) got sick of all the packaging - and consequent increase in prices - when wholesalers broke up quantities into smaller amounts and then prettied them up with advertisements...inside of packages which are themselves inside of packages...till the product was all additives and packaging and hardly any of the original thing you went to buy. So we started co-ops, working together to buy our rolled oats and walnuts etc. in barrels or whatever and then bringing our own bags or cans or whatever and just paying by the pound for the stuff - much cheaper.

Now that most everyone agrees we on average are going to be having to do with less money to work with, let's (finally) start a food co-op in Hazelwood. This has been a periodically discussed possibility for some years now off and on.

With our last grocery store now apparently going (there were at least three on Second Ave. at one time), isn't it about time to think about stores, individuals and groups working TOGETHER rather than trying to compete for the diminishing number of dollars available? It's not about cutting an ever smaller pie into ever smaller portions, it's about MAKING pies, and making them bigger. We have to start making things again, to service the Earth's dire needs.

There's plenty of carbon dioxide available, for instance; in fact it's a problem. So let's use this waste as food for plants. High-tech greenhouse growers have been using increased CO2 levels to enhance plant growth for some years now. Why not use some of that CO2 in aquarium-like structures, with natural and/or artificial light, to grow biological products like fish or tomato plants or bioplastics or algal biofuel or microbial food?

Assuming we still have a functioning government a couple of years down the line (a big if, in my opinion) there will by that time be incentives for what is called "carbon sequestration" (capturing carbon dioxide rather than emitting it). The waste becomes a resource. We may not be able to make much money for a while, but we can make valuable products which will sooner or later show up in our balance books.

======

Saturday, January 10, 2009

relocalization, regeneration, manufacturing

Let's get REALLY productive. Let's make some of what we consume, so that we'll be a little less close to being in hock up to our souls. And let's stop producing stupid destructive shit like nuclear power plants and internal combustion vehicles and weapons of mass destruction and junk "food" and advertising flyers and plastic wrapping and plastic bags and...
======
"Just as General Motors 40, or 50 years ago bought up the trolley systems and shut them down, the oil companies have opposed the creation of an electric infrastructure."
~Joseph Romm
“Who Killed the Electric Car?”
tabacco.blog-city.com/who_killed_the_electric_car_the_ev1_shhhhh_dark_secret_.htm
======
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosumer
...economists see the prosumer (producer–consumer) as having greater independence from the mainstream economy. It can also be thought of as converse to the consumer with a passive role, denoting an active role as the individual gets more involved in the process....
======
From:
The Coming Collapse In The Value Of The The US Dollar
"...We need more production and less consumption...We need to dismantle our military-industrial complex..."
~Peter Schiff, President Euro Pacific Capital
europac.net/management.asp
informationclearinghouse.info/article21701.htm
======
Center for Energy and Climate Solutions
getf.org/ourwork/energyclimate.cfm
======
newconsumer.com
======
“Who Killed the Electric Car?”
tabacco.blog-city.com
/who_killed_the_electric_car_the_ev1_shhhhh_dark_secret_.htm
...Despite the praise from drivers, General Motors stopped manufacturing the cars and forced all drivers to return their EV-1s. GM was able to do this because none of the cars had actually been sold, only leased. After the electric cars were removed from the road they were sent to Arizona where they were crushed. The film’s director Chris Paine joins us in our firehouse studio today. And in Los Angeles we are joined by Chelsea Sexton, she is a former General Motors employee who worked on the EV-1 electric car. She is now the executive director of Plug In America...
AMY GOODMAN: In 1996 the company introduced the EV-1 electric car in California and Arizona. Hundreds of the electric cars were soon on the road, then they all disappeared. The mystery behind their disappearance is the subject of a documentary Who Killed the Electric Car...
SEXTON: The car was so fast it looked like it would outrun its own shadow.
TEST DRIVER: Awesome car to drive.
GREG HANSSEN: It was the crest of a wave that we thought was coming in. It was the new thing that was going to change the way everybody travels.
NARRATOR: Other car companies began to comply, often with conversions of gas cars, but with many of the same advantages of the EV-1.
ALEXANDRA PAUL: I'm not mechanical at all and I love dealing with my electric car because it's so easy. I plug it in at night and when I need to drive it, I unplug and drive it away.
J. KAREN THOMAS: They’re for people who love the environment...
TOM HANKS: Well, this is amazing. What you do with this electric car, Dave, is put the key in and turn it, and then there is this thing on the floor called the pedal, a pedal.
WALLY E. RIPPEL: The exciting thing about this, is that the cost of operating the car is the same as if you were driving a typical gasoline car, but the gasoline only costs 60 cents a gallon. CHELSEA SEXTON: Going to the gas station is a hassle believe it or not. Plugging the car in is not.
TOM HANKS: The battery you charge at home...
DOUG KORTHOF: When I first tried to buy the Honda EV-Plus, I drove in it and I said hey this is a great car. I said I’ll take it. The person that was trying to sell it to us was dumbfounded. He didn’t know what to do. He had never leased one before, didn't know how to do it and it took me six weeks of negotiations before I was able to get the car from their hands.
PETER HORTON: There's nothing like driving a car when you realize as you are sitting in traffic there's no pollution coming out of your tailpipe.
DAVID LETTERMAN: By driving an electric car, what are you sparing us from?
TOM HANKS: I’m saving America, Dave. That's what I am doing; I am saving America by driving electric cars...
CHRIS PAINE: We flew over at General Motors and looking down, we could see right next to the racetrack where the EV-1 was first tested, we saw maybe 50 EV-1s, crushed and put on top of semi flatbeds right next to the yellow crusher. General Motors is almost finished off I think. I don't imagine there's many EV-1s left that haven't been crushed out. It’s pretty sad...
JIM BOYD: When I saw the picture of the pile of crushed cars, it hurt and I, you know, I thought it was pretty spiteful.
IRIS OVSHINSKY: To see on the computer, on the Internet, that the crushed EV-1s that GM did – it was tragic.
STANFORD OVSHINSKY: It was wrong. It was wrong, but more wrong is the reason for it. CHELSEA SEXTON: All the sudden we were sort of left at odds. You know, what do we do now? At the time most of this was going on, no one had any idea that every automaker was going to jump ship.
NARRATOR: More Internet tips revealed that the EV-1s were not the only electric vehicles in jeopardy. A number Ford Thinks and Ranger electric trucks were discovered in Palm Springs and rumored to be set for destruction...
DOUG KORTHOF: ...Toyota, which is supposed to be the greenest car company, but which is simultaneously crushing, and hiding the fact they are crushing, clean rav4 EVs, instead of selling them to willing customers.
NARRATOR: No one had seen Honda’s electric cars since they were taken...
HUELL HOWSER: And what’s interesting, the first thing we noticed when we drove up here, you are going to be shredding some new cars here too. These look like perfectly good cars, why are you shredding them up?
WORKER AT FACILITY: Little bit of a mystery really. Since I have been here the last eight years. They bring us these cars from the dealerships, and they say they are test cars and they have been brought over to test various emissions and the insurance companies won't reinsure them so they have to watch them be destroyed here.
HUELL HOWSER: That seems like a shame.
WORKER AT FACILITY: It’s a terribly shame.
HUELL HOWSER: I would like to drive off in one of these things. Ladies and gentlemen that's the sound of a crushed automobile being shredded into a million pieces.
CHELSEA SEXTON: There's no precedent for Car Company rounding up one of a particular type of car and crushing them as if they are afraid one might get away.
S. DAVID FREEMAN: I think they wanted to be sure that none of them were driving around the streets any more to remind people that there is such a thing as an electric car.
AMY GOODMAN: David Freeman is Energy Adviser to the Carter Administration, from the documentary Who Killed the Electric Car...Chelsea Sexton. Yes she is the whistle-blower, the former General Motors employee who worked on the EV-1 electric car, now Executive Director of Plug In America. We welcome you both to Democracy Now!.Chelsea Sexton, you must have been shocked when you thought you were just doing your job for General Motors, selling EV-1 cars or pushing them out to the public, and yet, describe what happened when you actually did that?
CHELSEA SEXTON: Well it was sort of interesting because we were hired to create a market and get these cars on the road. Through a series of small steps along the way we became really aware that that was not really what General Motors and the other auto manufacturers in fact, wanted to happen. The more we did it, the more liability we became. There was an organization of factions. Some people to this day really loved that little car and some people in General Motors never wanted to see it happen, there was a bit of a power struggle going on in the company.
AMY GOODMAN: Chris Paine why did you do the film?
CHRIS PAINE: I had driven that EV-1 for five years and I had just a terrific experience. I got an electric car as kind of a notion I tried out. Within about two months, it was the only car I was driving. My gas car was sort of in the background for emergency days when I needed to go on long trips. And in that five years I don't think I needed service once. And so, all you do is plug it in at night and every day you go 60-miles. If you really need to go farther, you have your gas car.When they announced they were taking the cars away, well, why? Could I buy it? They wouldn't let you buy it; it was only a lease option. And we all tried to hold onto our cars, and the car companies said no. It wasn't just GM, it was Toyota, and Ford; they all said you can't keep the electric cars. And we thought of everything we could do including -- maybe we should steal the cars. And we thought no, that’s not what this is about. So, we thought well, we have to tell the story, because the public press version of the story was that nobody wants electric cars and there's no demand and we went that's not true. That is not the whole story. So let's go get the story and see what happens.
JUAN GONZALEZ: Well, if it was all of the car companies doing it at the same time, that would suggest there was some kind of policy decision or collusion on their parts all to reach the same goal.
CHRIS PAINE: You know, the only reason that the cars ever hit the roads is because California told car makers if they wanted to sell gas cars they also had to sell some electric cars and they enforced it through a mandate. And it was a very good mandate. Because electric cars had been trying to come into the market place for a long time and for new technology like electric cars, or bio-diesel, or anything to really get a foothold you need to have government pressure on vested interests.And in this case the vested interests being the internal combustion engine car companies and the oil companies. So they put this pressure on and the car companies fought it for, really, what, Chelsea, 12 years? Something like that.
CHELSEA SEXTON: Yeah.
CHRIS PAINE: And they finally buckled and as soon as they buckled the car companies took the cars off the road and then, unbelievably, they destroyed them.
AMY GOODMAN: You have scenes and Chelsea Sexton you are intimately involved with the whole film, you are one of the stars of the film if you will. Mel Gibson, you had famous people driving these cars, of course, Tom Hanks, and others. And you were pushing to get these cars out there. You were fighting your own employer. Why do you think the electric car was such a threat to the company that made it? To General Motors? It's as if you were fighting the competition, but you were fighting your employer.
CHELSEA SEXTON: Absolutely. I don't think any of them expected how popular those little cars would become. And they thought we’ll make a good show of this and we’ll get these really enthusiastic kids to go out there and push this car and they’ll never actually get cars on the road and we’ll be able to call it a day. And then not only did we run out of cars, but we had a waiting list of thousands of people and the cars became their own best advertisement.And you could sort of see the thought almost ripple upon the -- across the collective face of the automotive companies sort of saying what do we do now? And that's when they started really actively trying to pull back. The more we created a market for the cars, the more they considered that a liability because truly their core products are larger cars, trucks, and SUVs, and so the more that we showed the benefits of these clean, quiet, little cars, the more that begged the question: Well what about the Suburban? The Impala? And some of these less than clean cars.
AMY GOODMAN: Chelsea I want to go to another clip of the film, a part of Who Killed the Electric Car?, that examines the various parties responsible for killing off the electric car. NARRATOR: Oil companies have rarely shied away from global issues, but why did they lobby so hard to build public opposition to the electric car in California?
JIM BOYD: I find it difficult to rationalize why the oil industry got so intimately involved in this other than maybe they saw it as a threat to what I would call a monopoly they had on providing the transportation FUEL.
JOSEPH ROMM: There's no question that people who control the marketplace today, the oil companies have a strong incentive to discourage alternatives, except the alternatives that they, themselves control. You know, just as General Motors 40, or 50 years ago bought up the trolley systems and shut them down, the oil companies have opposed the creation of an electric infrastructure...
WALLY E. RIPPEL: There's still roughly a trillion barrels worth of oil in the earth's crust. And if you figure that the average price of that subsequent oil will be $100 a barrel, that's $100 trillion worth of business yet to be done. However, at some point when an alternative is good enough, people will snap over. That's what the oil companies fear the most.
NARRATOR: Federal policy has always had tremendous power to shape the future. As it gave enormous incentives to buy SUVs, the Federal government also sued California to stop the electric car. Some pointed to the influence of the oil and auto industries.
S. DAVID FREEMAN: They controlled things in Washington. They and the automobile industry. Now they have Andy Card, their former lobbyist, right there as Chief of Staff in the White House. And I guess they don't have to pay lobbyists any more so they are saving a little money there. NARRATOR: Andrew Card was Chief of Staff when the Bush Administration joined the suit against California. Card had also been President and CEO of the American Automobile Manufacturers Association during its campaign to kill California’s electric car mandate.
JIM BOYD: Industries began to see, if we don't kill this cancer in California, it's going to spread....
======
pluginamerica.org
======

Thursday, January 08, 2009

Da latest science sez

The latest REAL science says that love is the only thing that's real. Everytin else is jis dissin.

======


www.asklepia.org/crpjourneys/paradigm.html
...Relativity says that your frame of reference determines your measurement of reality.
Quantum Physics goes one step further and implies all is relationship - the universe is an interconnected web of relationships. One electron knows what another electron is doing and one molecule knows what another is doing, even if they are at opposites sides of the universe. Somehow they coordinate their efforts to include the observer who is also part of that system which is part of every other system in the universe all cooperating in harmonious relationship to create unique realities for each of us. Suddenly, the whole framework of reality is like jelly. There is nothing firm to stand on. We are part of a natural process, influencing it and being influenced by it at subtle levels, where structure is only a passing creation of continuing evolution...
======
livingthefield.com
======
The latest BALONEY science tries to separate and control everything:
+
From libertyark.net:

Stop the National Animal Identification System (NAIS)

Industrial agriculture and technology companies are urging the government to adopt a program that will drive many small farms out of business, burden horse owners, invade our privacy, increase the cost of meat, and expand the government bureaucracy.

If NAIS is made mandatory, anyone who owns even one horse, chicken, cow, pig, sheep, goat, or any other livestock or exotic, will have to:

Register their property with the state and federal government;

Identify each animal, in most cases with electronic identification;

Report events to a government-accessible database within 24 hours, including every dead or missing animal, private sales, and regional shows.

NAIS will:

violate individuals' Constitutional rights, including freedom of religion and right to privacy;

reduce the availability of local, organic, and grass-fed foods;

raise the cost of food, because tagging and tracking costs will be passed on to consumers;

create a massive government bureaucracy.

NAIS will not:

make food safer since most food-borne illnesses, such as e coli and salmonella, are due to food processing and handling practices - not live animals;

protect us against bioterrorism - the proposed microchips and radio tags are easily reprogramed and large databases are easy targets for terrorists or other criminals...
+
======
By recycling used nuclear power plant fuel (depleted uranium) into weapons , those who try to separate themselves from their victims by pointing out only their victims' bad sides (such as U.S. media portraying the underdog Palestinians as the sole original attackers, in order to let our proxy Israel get hold of the natural gas off the Gaza coast) are assuring themselves suffering in the future.
======
"When the truth is replaced by silence, the silence is a lie."
~Yevgeny Yevtushenko
======
The psychiatric drug racket:
Making a Killing:
brasschecktv.com/page/524.html
======

Wednesday, January 07, 2009

We've been made suckers of.

======
seattletimes.nwsource.com/news/special/fear_fields.html
... industrial wastes laden with heavy metals and other dangerous materials are being used in fertilizers and spread over farmland. The process, which is legal, saves dirty industries the high costs of disposing of hazardous wastes...
======
For all my extensive reading over the years in biology, agriculture, and technology, it has taken me till now to see that corruption of some in the business world is much greater than I had imagined. I swallowed the rationale about the use of recycled industrial materials for fertilizer that the mineral such as calcium content of the materials made them best disposed of as fertilizer. As with so much industry greenwashing hype, the word "recycling" has been perverted. Toxics were allowed to be called fertilizer if they contained some lime or trace mineral such as zinc. It reminds me of how appalled I was thirty some years ago to find that cereal and bread makers - after refining out trace nutrients such as iron - were "supplementing" with iron sulfate, a form which does damage to the stomach, because it was the cheapest form of iron to use. You might as well be eating rust. Reading Fateful Harvest, I am inclined to think that the reason my garden suddenly failed about 4 years ago is that I had used a trace mineral "natural" fertilizer. It further confirms that organic is the way to go. And it reminds me that there are SOME doing good in government, like the former PA truck driver who - upon realizing that his job (midnight dumping) was mass murder by destroying an area watershed - let himself be wired to bust some waste management gangsters and who later became a PA environmental official.
======
Fateful Harvest:
The True Story of a Small Town, a Global Industry, and a Toxic Secret
by Duff Wilson
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fateful_Harvest
safefoodandfertilizer.org
The small town in question was Quincy, Washington...investigation into the recycling of fly ash, tire ash, flue dust, tailings, phosphoric acid from car factories, baghouse dust from recycling plants, zinc skimmings from galvanizing industries, and assorted other industrial byproducts with heavy metals such as arsenic, beryllium, cadmium, lead, titanium and other chemicals into plant fertilizer based on the agronomic benefits of their alkalinity (sold as lime) or their micronutrients zinc and manganese. Part of the reasoning behind this is that plants growing in alkaline soils do not uptake the metals as easily...
======

Tuesday, January 06, 2009

the knitters and the splitters

======
"I could never understand, if you have three meals a day and a place to live, why try to double or triple what you have?..."
~Senator Claiborne Pell
albionmonitor.com/0901a/copyright/clairbornepell.html
======
Past the seeker as he prayed came the crippled and the beggar and the beaten.
And seeing them...he cried,
"Great God, how is it that a loving creator can see such things and yet do nothing about them?"
...God said,
"I did do something.
I made you."
~Sufi Teaching
======
freegaza.org/index.php?language=EN&module=links
youtube.com/watch?v=_n4OhUpc20Q
======
agronomy.org/about/sustainable-agriculture
======
www.genesisfarm.org
======
Disease suppression via composting:
recycledorganics.com/publications/reports/diseasesuppression/diseasesuppression.pdf
jgpress.com/archives/_free/000026.html
======
All the nutrients work together in the body to do everything.
youtube.com/watch?v=OcuOgm01Bz0
"...look at the body and all of it's biological systems as a whole living system...there's no such thing as an isolated vitamin in nature. In nature there's only a vitamin complex, and every single plant or food substance contains carbohydrates, fats, proteins, enzymes, vitamins, minerals and trace minerals. And they work in a complex, and it's so complicated that no scientist can break it apart...Nutrition is like a watch. What part of a watch tells time? Well, the whole thing, right? So if you're chasing down isolated vitamin approaches without addressing the basics...Human bodies are not linear systems, they're harmonic systems..."
~Paul Chek
======
Dreaming of the Earth...speaker coming Jan 12
From Karen Bernard kbsweethome@yahoo.com:
Sister Miriam MacGillis is coming to Pittsburgh
Monday, January 12,
to give a lecture, "Image of God: The Universe Tells the Story of God."
The Association of Pittsburgh Priests will host the event
at 7:30 p.m.
at Kearns Sprituality Center
on the LaRoche College campus.

Miriam founded Genesis Farm in Blairstown, NJ, and, in 1986, began a pioneer program in community-supported biodynamic gardening. Since 1990 Genesis has offered extensive Earth Literacy courses "to awaken our capacity to 'read' the book of the natural world and to 'hear' the voices of its community of life." Miriam's teaching is organized around the insights of geologian Thomas Berry (Dream of the Earth, The Great Work, The Universe Story). She invites us to explore a new cosmology, a new vision of the nature of the universe and the role of the human within it. With this kind of new vision, we think, comes the chance of awakening the deep psychic energies necessary to shape a new, healthy and whole world.

Tickets for the lecture are $15 and can be purchased at the door, or by sending a check to Sister Joan Coultas, DP, Kearns Spirituality Center, 9000 Babcock Blvd., Allison Park, PA 15101, or call 412-366-1134.
======
From:
Original Instructions:
Indigenous Teachings for a Sustainable World
2008 bearandcompanybooks.com
"...Traditional farming is organic farming, and that is give and take. You don't take, take, take, and deplete and deplete, where nobody will have it after you. This is the mentality that we're going to have to get into to make sure that our children have something in the future..."
~Mark Paikuli-Stride
+
nativevillage.org/Archives/2005/September 21 News I 157/Sept 12, 2005 News I 157 V4.htm
...Students sink hands in the land


Hawaii: For years Mark Paikuli-Stride educates new generations about the traditional ahupua agricultural system. Each year, students are invited to his land where they work in a taro patch, planting, weeding and harvesting. Paikuli-Stride and Aloha 'Aina Health Center are working together to preserve agriculture land especially where taro once flourished. Their goal is to protect agricultural lands, make it productive again, and provide food at a price that people can afford. "We have to start securing our food-source areas," Paikuli-Stride said. "Right now, we look to the supermarkets for our water and our food, but in traditional times the ahupua'a was where everything was gathered, and right now our ahupua'a are being depleted and destroyed." Paikuli-Stride wants to grow taro just as the ancient Hawaiians did--without chemicals and pesticides. "We can't go back to that way of life but we can understand the tradition, the way they cared for the land, and do what we can to preserve it..."
======
worldagroforestry.org
======
Why we have nuclear power plants
aotearoaawiderperspective.wordpress.com/2008/05/08/i-have-become-death-the-destroyer-of-worlds
======

Saturday, January 03, 2009

We must tame the Machine.

The "company store" was an employer's way to get more money by making it difficult or impossible for employees to buy from anywhere else. For the same reason - eliminating competition - all over the world residents have at times been discouraged from owning land, learning how to grow food, or even - now with genetic engineering to stop plants from producing viable seeds - saving their seeds for the next year. Ask yourself why grocery stores so rarely sell food plants, only flowers. There is a long history of distorted and cooked science to discourage natural (nowadays called organic) gardening and farming, for instance alleging that the use of manures spreads disease when in fact industrial agriculture does so. The biological diversity in healthy soil has been long known to suppress (though not eliminate) plant and animal diseases.

We have the right to grow our own and to eat REAL food.

We have the opportunity to transform Dimperio's market into a store that sells better food at regular (not high muckety muck) prices. Several years after Eleanor Roosevelt set a good example, and promoted competition in the agriculture industry with people who grew their own, by - against the wishes of some ag businesspeople - establishing a 5 acre farm on the White House grounds, 40% of the food grown in the U. S. was from small local gardens, according to Michael Pollan, who wants Obama to establish an organic farm on White House grounds:
======
thewhofarm.org
======
pbs.org/moyers/journal/11282008/transcript1.html
======
well.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/01/17/an-omnivore-defends-real-food
======
Processed People
+
They call it "food"
+
brasschecktv.com/page/502.html
...Eat food. Don't eat foodlike things. Don't be fooled into eating processed foodstuff. Eat food. We're processed people because we let them process us...
======
shelaughsatthedays.blogspot.com/2006/10/why-dont-americans-eat-real-food.html

"...I can’t bring myself to buy bread at...There are two choices really, white bread, or whole grain that's been sweetened within an inch of its life. What is the point of buying whole grain bread if the second largest ingredient in it is corn syrup, or sugar? To my mouth its disgusting and fake tasting, and I won' eat it...

...I shop the outside circle, produce, dairy, meat, bakery, household goods, and I’m outta there. It is rare for my cravings to take me into the deep darkness that is the center aisles. Every time I go there I leave empty handed, and frustrated. I’m lucky that where I live there are alternatives, there is Trader Joe’s, a store that makes their food out of real ingredients, doesn’t over process or poison their food, I can feed my family their crackers and cereals, and even cookies, and frozen entrees and not feel like I’m poisoning us all to death a little bit at a time; because it’s good, and good for you...We have stores here where everything is organic, you don’t even need to label read because they’ve done it for you, they don’t stock anything that doesn’t have real food in it and no preservatives and over processed whatchmacallit. But these are specialty stores....is a store that represents mainstream shopping and eating habits of the American public, and it has barely any food in it and by that I mean things that actually nourish.

The kids that my son plays with in our neighborhood are fat, almost all of them. I’m not talking about cute and cherubic, they are still young and round and chubby type of fat, I’m talking about dangerously obese..."
======

Thursday, January 01, 2009

Focus on nurturing life.

======
Healthy Corner Stores Network
healthycornerstores.org/resources.php
"...to promote the sale of healthy, fresh, affordable foods in small, neighborhood stores in underserved communities.

Corner stores frequently only carry unhealthy food items, liquor, and tobacco—and low-income communities and areas with limited access to public and private transportation often rely on these stores as their primary grocery outlets. The HCSN supports the work of participant organizations to promote innovative retail models, policies and programs that can help corner stores become the backbone of healthy neighborhood food retail..."

======
rawfoodlife.com
http://alleghenyfront.org
visionpaperbacks.co.uk/linkList.php
======
Opinion of a former scientist at the Livermore National Weapons Laboratory: 9/11 was a false flag operation
exopolitics.blogs.com/files/coop-haarpand9_11-leurenmoret_32.mp3
peaceinspace.org
======