Saturday, January 14, 2012
What would have been nice were to have let the panel of luminaries discuss the future and simply make sure they all got a chance to talk and the subject kept focus…. ah well at least they did have quality airtime to cover an important subject…
so to address the content… I thought Nicole presented best, followed by Heinberg and Orlov. They verbalized the issues with the most clarity though at times I wondered if they spoke with more density than the listener could retain. Chomsky suffered for not being online for the beginning so his statement was askew from the tangent and he'd likely have pitched it differently were he listening to the first statements. Kunstler came off a bit the pessimistic know-it-all with an attitude. I know he's not, but that was my take-home. His confrontational attitude earned him little airtime. I do think Chomsky had a valid point that if there is 100 years of Oil left for the USA we've got perhaps even bigger problems with hegemony and its consequences than merely Peak Oil.
Imagine the world facing a crisis of scarcity vs the world facing brutal US Hegemony. At least in collective crisis people will rise up to their higher selves…. that's not true if the US just starts killing off entire populations of people to decrease the surplus population and control the dwindling resources.
Chomsky might be onto something… I've long wondered about the thousands of wells that have been capped off with no oversight… if Big Oil wanted to hide substantial oil deposits for safe-keeping, it merely caps off a drill hole and keeps its rights in tact. We've no oversight to determine the wells are actually dry do we?
Back to the rest of the show, it was great to have several like-minded speakers who were all on-point with each other (even if the MC was clueless)… for as heady as their subject matter was (and our MC even commented on the apparent hopelessness) they all presented it in such a way to bring encouragement to the upcoming "truth" rather than pessimism. Thats where my head is at… the facts about collapse can be shellacked-over by those wishing to keep the public on the dark till the collapse, but very soon they're going realize the truth and most will not have a chair when the music stops.
And whether Chomsky was right that the US was holding some aces in their sleeves or not, the world is going to be faced with some apocalyptic challenges… wish they had a second hour to really debate… What say?
Wednesday, December 14, 2011
This was a period in which robber barons, railroad magnates and the super-rich spread their corrupting influence throughout the political, economic and cultural landscapes - without having to deal with irritating social reforms such as Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, child labor laws, environmental protections, affirmative action, civil rights, union rights, antitrust laws, a progressive income tax and a host of other reforms. This was a period when money flowed and privilege shaped practically all aspects of American life, making a mockery out of democracy and imposing massive amounts of suffering on the vast majority of Americans. Women could not vote and were seen as second-class citizens, blacks were treated harshly by Jim Crow policies, young people were exploited through harsh labor, education was limited to the elite, inequality in wealth and income reached extreme disparities, slums festered, and politics was corrupted by the moneyed classes.
In time, protests emerged among students, workers, unions, women, people of color and others to address these injustices. Labor became a potent force in the first half of the 20th century. Then blacks mobilized a formidable civil rights movement, women’s groups organized to address a range of injustices, students infused new life into the drive for democracy both within and outside of higher education. Gay, lesbian and transgender groups - along with a number of other marginalized and oppressed groups - fought to gain basic civil rights. But these movements not only produced notable victories in deepening and expanding the promise and possibilities of a substantive democracy, they also were the object of a powerfully organized backlash on the part of conservatives, who organized a right-wing cultural revolution that successfully rolled back many of the progressive gains that emerged in the first and second half of the 20th century.
The conservative backlash and war against equality, justice and human rights has been reinforced in the last 30 years by the consolidation of the media into the hands of the corporate elite. There are precious few news outlets left that still speak truth to power... not only fighting the corporate propaganda trend, but showcasing a variety of writers and academics who take seriously the role of the Journalism in a Democracy. Journalists that fight for the truth, give voice to those who are powerless report more than the gossip and scripts redlined by executive producers and address issues that are ignored in the dominant and mainstream corporate media.
Please refuse to support the politicians, think tanks, media and anti-public intellectuals who are pushing to create a second Gilded Age. Our Democratic Republic matters to more than the people inhabiting the United States of America.. our policy, programs and newly made corporate citizens are hurting plant, animal and people alike all around this planet. We are the only ones in a position to lead the fight. Our Vote is our weapon to fight for a formative culture that demands we not only retain but improve the social contracts won by blood, sweat and tears of our elders throughout the last century.
Saturday, August 13, 2011
Unlike their forefathers and those of great nations like Britain before them, the new Supreme Court ruled that even though a Corporation has no life-span limit, no soul or moral compass, no single body to hold responsible, they should be able to dig deeply into their enormous coffers to pay limitless amounts of money influencing government. And now without need to disclose to whom or how much. Oligarchy, government by the few, is borne.
Yes, our vote insured they can employ scores of minions who's sole job is targeting elections and politicians, funding (and in fact launching) their candidates... as well as sabotaging the opponents through any media, mailing or underhanded method they can concoct and fund, for there is no longer any accountability or tracabililty either. They can run ads that polarize a candidate they don't like and make it look like it was the candidate who authorized it... sound like Constitutionally protected free speech to you?It must if you voted to for retaining th status quo.
Your vote to continue this billionaire corporate agenda sealed the fate of this nation to a new world order.... Congratulations. We the people no longer have the ability to speak up in a system controlled by multinational corporations who are now equals to each of us in rights, and freedoms... oh except you also gave them immunity from paying any taxes or having any rules or regulations to govern their behavior....
So lets all enjoy the air, water, resources and climate while we can.... or simply declare ourselves an entity like General Electric who can pay no taxes, trash the environment and taxpayers to clean it up. We can extract resources without compensating the the peoples who rightfully own it... and own any media outlet that might have a chance to actually report the facts.
For it is now illegal to enter a business whether as an employee or concerned citizen, and take any pictures or describe any improprieties (whistlebowers) as it infringes upon that multinational's newly given rights... This while it is now okay that your phone conversations, emails, financial records and your every location can be tracked traced and recorded by these same companies —all under the protection of law.
A few of America’s most notorious oligarchs – including the Koch and the DeVos Families (Big Energy & Amway) billionaires – as well as countless transnational corporations—who do most of their business here and keep their profits outside the US, are apparently okay to funnel millions to elect their candidates and pass their laws.
Thanks to an irrational and likely illegal Supreme Court ruling, we have moved into an era of oligarch-run politics. As much as $40 million of oligarchy money was spent in Wisconsin in a handful of local races – a testing laboratory for strategies that will now be used against Democrats nationwide in 2012.
And so now we enter the battle of the oligarchs over the next fifteen or so months. Perhaps you thought the politicing was bad for the recall... brace yourself, the 2012 elections are gonna make you pray for an Alberta Darling/Sandy Pasch commercial.
As the old saying goes, when the elephants fight, the mice get trampled. In this case, the mice is democracy itself.
America is now – as proven by Wisconsin – just a few steps from a totally corrupted, totally billionaire- and transnational-controlled political system. The Citizens United election experiment is over, and the oligarchs won. Long live the oligarchy. Three cheers for the Wisconsin voters who with the stroke of a pencil, ended 230 years of an experiment in a Representative Democratic Republic. Hooray for the new Transnational Oligarchy... enjoy.
And if you're interested to see how its all going to turn out... take a look at England, the middle East, the horn of Africa and hundreds of other places today, where the separation of classes is turning into riotous masses... Tonight, in several of the greatest cities in the world, society is ripping itself apart. London's burning... Israel is roiled in turmoil from within, Italy, France, Ireland, Spain... all are rising up against the power that happens when societies are separated into classes.... united we stand... divided... we will be conquered.
It is with a heavy heart that bears witness to such divisive propaganda clouding the souls, eyes and judgment of so many, who's decision will likely bring about our darkest days here on Earth. Devastation and destruction on a global scale at the hands of a select few who've used power and corruption to quell the only nation capable of stopping the madness. And it all started here in Wisconsin... last week.
Monday, February 21, 2011
Monday, February 14, 2011
Just in time for Spring Planting, Transnational Agribusiness Corporations have been granted unconditional permits to expand the use of Systemic Insecticides. These water-soluble products initially were sprayed on plants, but moreso now they are absorbed to directly to the seed, expressing themselves genetically in every part of the plant. The sub-lethal neuro-toxins attack the insect's nervous and immune systems after merely eating into the stalk or leaf. However, these poisons are also expressed in the nectar and pollen (and one would surmise fruit). Now Bees and other pollinator insects are suffering similar symptoms. Catastrophic losses are resulting in disruptions further up the food chain into birds and bats.
These Neonicinatoids, particularly Clothianidin, linger and accumulate in the soil long after the plants have been harvested. Studies show a soil toxicity half-life of 19 years after a single application and they accumulate with subsequent plantings.
Honey Bees Colonies have been dying at an alarming rate. Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) was discovered by pollinator beekeepers in 2006, the same year neonicinatoids were given Conditional Permits for use in Corn. The US has 88 million acres of corn growing within its border. Most of it is laced in neonicinatoids. Even though corn is wind-pollinated, bees are still attracted to the abundant pollen stores regardless of whether they help with pollination. Several EU nations have banned the use of neonicinatoids because their research showed the direct correlation to CCD.
In the US we have several agencies, mandated to protect citizens through regulation and supervision, but nowadays they seem to serve their Corporate citizen's interests rather than constituents. Our newly elected, corporate-sponsored legislature is poised to execute marching orders to finally kill or neuter these agencies, offering instead, self-regulation and supervision by the manufacturers and provider. This would effectively place the wolf in charge of tending the chicken coup. They've begun a two-pronged assault on the EPA, FDA & USDA to either close them down or severely cut their funding. For years these same Corporate giants have employed a revolving-door "if ya can't beat em, infiltrate em" agenda placing execs an insiders in positions of power to systematically dilute or disable their Agency's ability to function, only to return home to lucrative positions following their term in office—and this practice happens regardless of political party affiliation.
With tactics involving media pundits, think tanks, programming, and newly consolidated journalistic and political groups such as the Tea Party Movement, they have not only been successful at focusing attention on how the Agencies are ineffective or broken, but also have forged ways to divide the population against each other over how and why rather than what was responsible. It appears they think a divided population's dissent and polarized ideology will prevent any groundswell from gaining traction to demand reform and restructure, and instead allow them to simply abolish these Agencies.
But to abolish them is to end the only means our citizens have to exercise collective protections, safety and regulations of these products practices, toxins and genetically manipulated flora and fauna by transnational petrochemical and agribusiness corporations who's track record on self-governance stands, in shambles, for itself.
Please listen to this interview with a longtime Beekeeper, UW-Madison grad and ex IBM exec, Tom Theobald. He's the whistle-blower who uncovered much of the information we now know about the agency testing confirming a problem, and subsequent denial, obfuscation and deception by the revolving-door department heads... this is important information.
The American Bee Federation is requesting people call Congress to urge that the small honey bee research program be left intact and remain at least at current spending levels:
—Point out the urgent need for a solution to CCD and other conditions affecting honey bee health.
—Point out the importance of honey bees to agriculture crops $17.9 billion by the latest estimate.
—Point out that USDA honey bee research's program is too important to receive cuts
—Point out how important good honey bee health is to your own beekeeping business.
— But most important Point out that you demand reform and restructure rather than abolishing the agencies.
Call today! The debate is scheduled to begin in the House on Tuesday, Feb. 14, 2011.
Capital switchboard: 202.225.3121 (House); 202.224.3121 (Senate). Ask for the individual handling agricultural issues. Or, send a message via the Congressmens Web sites. You can find them at www.senate.gov or www.house.gov.
For more information about the pesticides, laws and real-world accounts of bee colony survival please look over these websites:
Saturday, November 13, 2010
How can we transcend this manufactured line-in-the-sand that pretends to divide us apart from each other while the true wealth and power of our planet is consolidated to soon be wielded against us—the same way its been used to destabilize and topple governments and peoples round the world...
Divide and conquer is the oldest game in the book, and we're getting schooled in it in our own nation right now... how is it so many people think they'll have a chair when the music stops? The chairs are being folded up and this game is turning into a mosh-pit while the band leaders exit the building with all the all our cash, and our coats from coat-check... and still they keep us bickering.
Saturday, September 18, 2010
Percy Schmeiser vs Monsanto: The Story of a Canadian Farmer’s Fight to Defend the Rights of Farmers and the Future of Seeds
Gathered here in Bonn this week are some eighty Right Livelihood Award laureates, including the Canadian farmer Percy Schmeiser, who has battled the biotech giant Monsanto for years. When Monsanto seeds blew into Schmeiser’s property, Monsanto accused him of illegally planting their crops and took him to court. Ultimately his case landed in the Canadian Supreme Court. He was awarded the Right Livelihood Award in 1997 for fighting to defend the rights of farmers and the future of seeds.
Thursday, July 08, 2010
So now we got a hole in the Ocean floor that BP won't let us touch... let alone study so we can determine how to fix it... no they need to cover their asses at our doom. And what, their Judge overturns the Presidents ban on Drilling cuz it hurts his investments... yes folks while we got fat and lazy letting Bushco steal our nation to rule the world, we lost any chance of governing ourselves without an uprising. Swell... so now MoveOn wants you to sign a silly petition in the hopes someone in Washington might go against the machine that paves their roads in diamonds.... to help you and me.... right.
so I signed... go ahead and sign too... but perhaps tonite as the sun settles on the horizon where ever you live, know that the richest 10% of the world's elite own 85% of the planet's wealth. The bottom 50% own less than 1%.... the 3 richest people (we know of) own more than the cumulative wealth of 48 nations.... BP proclaimed to a deaf MMM agency, run into ruin by their own appointees, to have the means to be able to salvage 480M gals of oil PER DAY in the event of an underwater leak -TWO MONTHS BEFORE the Deep Water Horizon Crisis... TO DATE... BP has skimmed less than 9% of what it said it could skim EVERY DAY.
And yesterday "their" Coast Guard and puppet Judges declared the Gulf Coast OFF-LIMITS TO JOURNALISTS without proper prior approval !!! And so it goes.. our lifestyle, our livelihood, our nation and the planet many of us call home.
Enjoy the sunset... of the day, of Democracy and of mankind... oh, and sign this silly statement.
Friday, January 15, 2010
Thursday, January 14, 2010
Friday, March 20, 2009
Part of the transformational landscape being forged by the destruction of news as we know it - is access, localization and community. During the last seven years we've seen tremendous consolidation of media empires. Whether radio, television or print, corporations and private equity firms have quietly been buying up our media landscape and severing thousands of links to communities, government, local whistle-blowers, great journalists and newsmakers.
All this while simultaneously creating the largest and most available media spectacular known to mankind. As the Springsteen song says, 57 channels and nothing on. Actually, its worse than that, now we've got 1000 channels with the same thing on! We've got fewer than 10 media conglomerates owning all the major newspapers, television, entertainment and radio. They've consolidated into most of the local and regional markets as well. What this means is less reporters actually reporting, less transparency in business and government, and less useful information for the citizens. What it also means is greater ease in controlling the content that does make it out.
Last year a train derailed near a small urban town who's local radio stations were bought up and "upgraded" to nationally syndicated broadcasts. As the highly toxic fumes swept over the town, many turned to the radio for news of the eye-burning, gaseous smell making it hard to breathe. As hundreds vomited into their toilets and put wet washcloths on their children's eyes, the local radio just played song after song with an announcer giving weather and national news.
This is just the beginning of what will become "newspeak" in the future: non-specific corporate-edited, white noise. I can hear Orwell spinning in his grave right now.
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
Do they really think they can just will away reality and truth? Did they watch the Wizard of Oz so many times they think they can just click their heels and wish themselves back to Oz? Well you'd certainly think so round here.
They've fabricated a world that makes the yellow brick road of Oz, with its flying monkeys, talking scarecrows and witches from the four directions, seem par for the course. But even so, they seem as spellbound as the wicked witches minions when it comes to following commands... O wee O, oh waaay oh...
The financial troubles we face today had nothing to do with 8 years of right-wing ideology and their regulators asleep at the wheel... O wee O
Extolling a vibrant fiction of scary trees throwing apples, flying monkeys and goons, they forget the fact that it was right wing leadership who passed the bankruptcy act for the credit industry and has emptied our nation's pockets to pay off the very crooks who stole our nation... oh waaay oh
Or that their privatization policies and consolidation principles allow multinational corporations to hold us hostage for more ransom daily... or face millions of jobs lost... their foreign policy of imperialism has helped corporations expand to middle eastern oil fields, chinese labor pools, latin american resources and simply condoned diabolic chaos and genocide throughout the world and even within our secret "detention centers". O wee O, Oh way Oh!
Not even a wizard behind a curtain serving up their style of sensationalism and grandeur seems to be able to break the spell cast on these "fiscal con-servant-ives". They handily regurgitate hate-speak and lies while forming a fabric of conviction to justify every ill that befalls their little world of make-believe.
As our nation crashes into the very chaos that I and so many "rational lefties" have been warning about for years, these right-wing minions have assumed the costumes and garish colors of Oz and seem to prefer them.
They no longer cling to their true fiscal conservative (black and white tv) roots... they've traded them in for technicolor HDTV realities of consumption and consent. Ignoring the harshness of a desperate truth, they are content with their lazy-boys and surround sound, they enjoy visions of munchkins, and lollypops with occasional visits from witches and wizards.
Well we grayscale farmhands have tried again and again to awaken our "dorothy" friends who fell in with a pen full of pigs and their slop. Awaken them to the reality of the world they truly live in... which ain't no technicolor fantasy. Its troubled, suffering and in dire straits. But even in the darkest moments, our community -our nation- has proven we can, not only seek that sliver-lining in those dark clouds, but we can sew together a world of cooperation and community if only we can all learn to face the truth; that we're not lions, scarecrows, tin men and wizards, but people struggling together to make a just and sustainable future. And that in that struggle, we build tighter bonds and stronger communities than anything in make-believe.
I pray that our Right-wing Dorothies realize there's no place like home... and no benefit to clinging to their technicolor lifestyles of consumption and greed. For it is but a dream, and no wizard or witch can can keep them from realizing there's no place like hope... and no better time than now to awaken to it.
Thursday, November 06, 2008
Up to that point, things weren’t looking all that decisive for Barack Obama. The Democratic National Convention barely delivered a bump, while the appointment of Sarah Palin seemed to have shifted the momentum decisively over to John McCain.
Then, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac failed, followed by insurance giant AIG, then Lehman Brothers. It was in this moment of economic vertigo that Obama found a new language. With tremendous clarity, he turned his campaign into a referendum into the deregulation and trickle down policies that have dominated mainstream economic discourse since Ronald Reagan. He said his opponent represented more of the same while he stood for a new direction, one that would rebuild the economy from the ground up, rather than the top down. Obama stayed on this message for the rest of the campaign and, as we just saw, it worked.
The question now is whether Obama will have the courage to take the ideas that won him this election and turn them into policy. Or, alternately, whether he will use the financial crisis to rationalize a move to what pundits call “the middle” (if there is one thing this election has proved, it is that the "peoples" middle is far to the left of its previously advertised address). Predictably, Obama is already coming under enormous pressure to break his election promises, particularly those relating to raising taxes on the wealthy and imposing real environmental regulations on polluters. All day on the business networks, we hear that, in light of the economic crisis, corporations need lower taxes, and fewer regulations—in other words, more of the same.
The new president’s only hope of resisting this campaign being waged by the elites is if the remarkable grassroots movement that carried him to victory can somehow stay energized, networked, mobilized—and most of all, critical. Now that the election has been won, this movement's new missions should be clear: loudly holding Obama to his campaign promises, and letting the Democrats know that there will be consequences for betrayal.
The first order of business—and one that cannot wait until inauguration—must be halting the robbery-in-progress known as the “economic bailout.” Author, Activist, Journalist, Naomi Klein, has spent the past month examining the loopholes and conflicts of interest embedded in the U.S. Treasury Department’s plans. She's just published feature articles in Rolling Stone, The New Trough, and her column in The Nation, Bush’s Final Pillage.
Both these pieces argue that the $700-billion “rescue plan” should be regarded as the Bush Administration’s final heist. Not only does it transfer billions of dollars of public wealth into the hands of politically connected corporations (a Bush specialty), but it passes on such an enormous debt burden to the next administration that it will make real investments in green infrastructure and universal health care close to impossible. If this final looting is not stopped (and yes, there is still time), we can forget about Obama making good on the more progressive aspects of his campaign platform, let alone the hope that he will offer the country some kind of grand Green New Deal.
Klein's best selling book, The Shock Doctrine details how terrible thefts have a habit of taking place during periods of dramatic political transition. When societies are changing quickly, the media and the people are naturally focused on big “P” politics—who gets the top appointments, what was said in the most recent speech. Meanwhile, safe from public scrutiny, far reaching pro-corporate policies are locked into place, dramatically restricting future possibilities for real change. Wonder where Cheney's been since the "collapse"... busy busy busy...
But it’s not too late to halt the robbery in progress, though it cannot wait until inauguration. Several great initiatives to shift the nature of the bailout are already underway, including bailoutmainstreet.com. I added my name to the “Call to Action: Time for a 21st Century Green America” and invite you to do the same.
Stopping the bailout profiteers is about more than money. It is about democracy. Specifically, it is about whether Americans will be able to afford the change they have just voted for so conclusively.
(lifted from Naomi Klein)