BigA Little C part 1.2 ver 6

It is with a Declaration of Devolution establishing independence from the Neo-Feudal Lords of Capital, that a community of 21st Century humans begins the process of building a social and political order which provides for all future generations a sustainable bio-diverse GAIA in complete harmonic relationships. I believe that such a world is possible and indeed probable. There are two central components that would be necessary for the development of communities within which this guiding ethos could blossom and flourish. First and foremost, each bio-region must be recognized as the source of life and creation upon which communities are structured. And second, the communities in each bio-region must become self-sustaining in and of themselves, losing the impetus to provide sustenance for a lifestyle requiring trade and economic exchanges.

In essence, the bridges across bio-regional boundaries must be destroyed in order that the communities that intend to continue to survive, within a specific region, can embrace the overwhelming task of downscaling lifestyles to a sustainable level within a bio-region. Desert regions for example, require sophisticated awareness’ of sharing precious life-sustaining resources between communities of biomes. It would not so much be an abandonment of technologies developed by and for the sole use of humans, as much as it would be a reprioritization of those technologies that would be empowered through long term use of local bio-regional resources, as in a desert without great water supplies. Desert based self-sustaining communities, scattered across GAIAN landscapes that are bereft of sufficient water supplies due to Global Warming, could provide tremendous opportunity for surprising large human populations.

Combining the technological applications created around the globe for living sustainably and appropriately in deserts--applications such as: solar energy, underground housing, short season crops, elaborate agricultural forms employing dew/fog moisture collection and distribution systems, wind power, protein enriched foods from insect species, etc.--opens incredible opportunities for future generations to augment and develop ever more sophisticated patterns. Educational environments within these communities would become, through necessity, creative dynamic laboratories for cultural enhancement and harmonious developments.

Likewise, riparian bio-regions would form logically delineated boundaries for communities who in most ways would be dependent upon the riparian habitats for sustainable life sources. I can easily foresee a 21st Century which embraces the secrets of the Mississippian and Tennessean Mound Builders as models for sustainable communities that relate to specific river bio-regions. Large social groupings living on raised mounds, surrounded by copious bottom lands allowed to be resilted seasonally when the up-river dam projects are removed, would recreate a river based sustainable culture. Flood plains would of course provide excellent resource enhancement opportunities, but would manifestly be clear of residential and other important structures and vocations.

As bio-regional sustainable communities developed along the riparian realms, more and more efforts would be made to share the responsibility of maintaining the integrity and purity of the water. In exchange for downstream based commodities such as larger species of both fish and grain, up-stream communities would work diligently to insure maximum water quality standards. This would of course restrict the common practices of mining and logging, and other damaging activities that have required all of us to redirect our visions of the future.

The interesting thing about this view is that no matter what happens between now and then, the same results will occur. The eventual development of bio-regionally oriented sustainable communities will come to fruition out of both wise and harmonious intent as well as from the impending collapse and chaos of neo-feudal capitalism . Whether it is global warming that dramatically alters human survivability; or if it is the horrendous economic programs designed to selectively enhance a very few lives at the expense of the millions; or if it is the stupidity of war and toxification of the planet;--it doesn’t really much matter. The only viable behavior for continued posterity of human generations will be within the formation of sustainable downscaled communities intellectually engineered to utilize the bio-region in its most efficient and cooperative form. My desire, my goal is for this transformation of the human being to occur through education that specifically encourages the children to make the change without the impending necessity.

In some ways this is tautological, in that since the change will occur anyway, it would be detrimental to reverse the expansion of standards of living and free expression of the maximum potential of human freedom from tyrannical possession. I find this position indefensible. Although it reeks of Ayn Rand’s Gingrichian formulas for government’s limited action, even the conservative Christian must admit that they already possess an agenda which is in many ways advocating the very same process for their own people.

But here i must reiterate that the children are the decision makers, not we the old and in the way. We will never have to live within these devoluted environments. We can only encourage the children to connect to one another in the most intense and real of ways, in order that they may find the common bonds that are manifest through tribal affiliations and clan relations. While Christianity may seem to ascribe some tribal relation for groups of individual families, it has only in its most mystical form been successful. Monastic, Shaker, Mormon, Amish, Moravian--these communities, sustaining and sustainable are the role models for Christians. Likewise, differing tribal affiliations have been modeled over GAIAN history--sects, clans, associations, of Buddhists, Moslems, Hindus, Jews, etc.,--all these and thousands more carry the bio-germ/mind-virus/meme of harmonic relations among members of intentional communities. Human history is literally overflowing with right and judicious actions that combine the best of technologies with the most reverent of sustainable, bio-diverse, bio-regional behaviors. It is within these communities that the tools, the visceral ideas of creative reconstruction, of our desire to find GAIA once again filled with vibrant complex lifeforms in plenitude, are resting. The names of these tools are rituals and litanies and dances and arts. It is here that we must start our journey towards reeducating our children.

yushínya?? yes they are best at covering up

The following stories from today's Google news share one explicit common thread. Each and everyone of them involve a coverup at the highest levels of the US government. It is ludicrous to think that the MSN is so complicitous that they are unwilling to engage a single one of these incidents in a forthright and investigative way. We are screwed.

NY Marine: Prober
New York Daily News - 6 hours ago
By BRIAN KATES. A New York Marine officer who killed two Iraqi prisoners should be cleared of dereliction of duty and murder charges that carried a possible death sentence, a formal military probe concluded yesterday. Investigating officer Lt. Col. ...

Campaign of propaganda, lies, cover-up can’t be ignored
Collective Bellaciao - 42 minutes ago
What do an Army Pfc., a well-known volunteer Army Ranger and a National Guard Brigadier General have in common? All three are victims of the Bush administration’s campaign of propaganda, lies and cover-up ...

How Could a Pilot Stumble Into White House Airspace?
ABC News - 19 hours ago
The White House and the US Capitol were evacuated when a small plane violated restricted airspace. Here, people leave the Dirksen Senate Office Building. (AP Graphics). May 11, 2005 — How on earth could the ...

Huge victory' as county to keep all major bases
San Diego Union Tribune - 4 hours ago
By Rick Rogers. Two years of intense lobbying and countless hours spent extolling San Diego County's value to the military seem to have paid off. Yesterday, the Pentagon recommended that 33 major bases in 22 ...

Extradition of exile asked
Miami Herald - 7 hours ago
Venezuela formally asked the United States to arrest and extradite Luis Posada Carriles for his alleged role in the 1976 bombing of a Cuban passenger jet that killed 73 people. BY PABLO BACHELET, ALFONSO CHARDY AND OSCAR CORRAL. ...

Call for US apology over Quran
CNN - 7 hours ago
KABUL, Afghanistan (Reuters) -- The United States should apologize to Muslims for the senseless desecration of the Quran which has only strengthened the hands of fanatics and undermined efforts to build democracy, an Afghan newspaper said on Saturday. ...

Boxer's hold another hitch in Bolton vote
San Francisco Chronicle - 4 hours ago
Washington -- Sen. Barbara Boxer of California has erected a roadblock against John Bolton, President Bush's embattled nominee for UN ambassador, in a fight with the administration over access to documents. ...

Crude oil futures rise as speculators buy back contracts
Xinhua - 14 hours ago
NEW YORK, May 13 (Xinhuanet) -- Crude oil futures on Friday rose from a 12-week low, as speculators who had sold contracts now rushed to buy them back. On the New York Mercantile Exchange, crude oil futures ...

How embarassing this must be.

Steve Abrams, the president of the Kansas School Board, who had been instrumental in putting together the faux hearings on ID/Creationism science, sent a letter to the Wichita Eagle complaining about how they covered the affair. In his criticism he wrote:

<>The point of the science hearings is to show that, indeed, among scientists with many degrees, having received many research grants, having published many peer-reviewed papers and books and having accomplishments great and small, there is great controversy about biological evolution being taught as dogma. They presented testimony that there is controversy about the “factual” nature of biological evolution. They also presented testimony that there is controversy about the very definition of science as used in the majority draft. These hearings were not about my religious views; they were about what is good science. There was a huge amount of science testimony over three days last week. But to read the editorial and the article “Anti-evolution hearings end” (May 8 Local & State), a person would be hard-pressed to know that science was the main topic of discussion.

Yes they would! In point of fact, the "scientists" to whom Steve refers were in fact not ones who published in peer-reviewed papers, nor held positions at important institutions, nor for that matter were actually scientists. They were for the most part pseudo-scientists and self-described scientists, whose contribution to science is relegated to the footnotes of various studies on the input of divine intervention into the natural world. To prove the point read further.

One had to read the editorial and article closely to find that 23 people testified, but one might get the opinion that indeed there weren’t many scientists that testified. In point of fact, of the 20-plus witnesses, only two were not actively involved in science research or teaching science. Of course, the article quoted both of those who were not active in science research or science teaching.

We invited evolutionary scientists from all across Kansas and the United States to testify. But they have all decided to boycott. Now, a thinking person would ask: Is it because the hearings are rigged? Is it because of arrogance of the majority scientists? Or is it because what the majority proposes is actually full of holes?

Really, they invited real scientists, admitting not only that they did, but that the real ones didn't show up. How can Steve suggest that since the real ones didn't participate, the fake ones thus become real??? This is all too harsh a critique, but hey he wrote this. And to create the straw man argument so that the reader might not catch his own admission of failure, is the crowning jewel.
<>

and Sensenbrenner says: Recedite, plebes! Gero rem imperialem!

HR 1528 is a piece of legislation proposed by Representative Sensenbrenner that is essentially designed to threaten the mass of the public to comply and conform with his personal view of the world. Ostensibly drafted as revisions to the Drug Enforcement regulations under the Controlled Substances Act--his proposed law would in essence make it criminal conduct, punishable by no less than two years, for a person over the age of 18 to not report to law enforcement any activity involving an entire host of new provisions to the CSA. This is fascism at its worst, making failure to report your own children's behaviors and those of their friends, and those of their acquaintences, a crime with mandatory minimums. Indeed if it is your own children the minimum increases.

Such legislation will in fact force all school teachers to be law enforcement agents. It will force concert, music and art festival, arena producers and promoters to insure that they either never ever allow children to attend, or to remind every single patron of their potential criminal activity of failing to report. The Gestapo wasn't this intrusive and we know what their behavior created. How, in this nation, can we possibly accept such a monumental change to our judicial system? This man is a threat to the very core of this constitutional democratic republic. He is removing all of the safeguards and protections of the bill of rights. He is insane.

Deconstruct This! and then MF&BD

T. O'Connor is a libertarian environmentalist who blogs for the NRDC on issues of tempering environmental action against the greater good of economic prosperity and the well being of the rankist classes of elite property holders against the masses of ignorant bystanders. He is in essence a pseudo-enviro who poses faux dichotomies against straw men to sustain the view that any environmental activism that is other than his own is radical and wrong headed. The following post of his just begs deconstruction:

As I see it, the challenge and dilemma for what is rapidly and dangerously becoming our strident and unwelcoming little sub-culture is to navigate a more compelling course, by avoiding on the one hand to appear as being hostile towards economic well-being, and by resisting on the other our facile habit of demonizing anyone and everyone who can be dismissed as strictly "feeding their self-regarding needs." Where does the latter line of thinking end, really? And who will reign in this reflex of ours which stands to dilute the most important stories we have to report about the worst offenders?

There are certainly those abusers of Nature who merit our strong censure and worse. But what also worries me is that the "environmental community" is increasingly seen as lacking any ability or willingness to make those finer sorts of distinctions that most Americans rightly see themselves as capable of settling through a "common sense".

I start with two glaring phrases that project his elitism: "worst offenders" and "abusers.. who merit .. strong censor and worse." At no time in any of his posts has O'Connor supported environmental activism that sustains or supports protections of forests and watersheds prior to their destruction. His entire thematic context is to target only those profiteers whose actions are so vile, and without doubt, personally affecting himself, that they must be made the story. Does O'Connon support Bhopal based efforts to protect future environments from potential disasters? NO! Would he argue that the manipulation and bending of laws in Applachia that destroy the entire environmental habitat is a worst offender case? Probably not! Why? Because he must at all costs put property rights of the private and wealthy elite above and beyond the interests of the poor upon whom most rapacious environmental degradation occurs. He only wants to take down the worst because they are the ones that make the liberatrians look bad, they are the ones that make the "common sense: of the citizens want to act to make laws to stop them. He has no interest in keeping roads out of forests or off BLM land. He has no interest in restricting and regulating clearcutting, mining and drilling behaviors of the extraction industries especially if they are conducted on private lands, even if the runoff pollutes and toxifies all down stream and down wind.

That "strident and unwelcome sub-culture" he keeps referring to is his way of saying that only his brand of environmentalism is right and all others wrong. He is the worst of the abusers of rank. His pronouncements are nothing more than carefully crafted statements supportive of his corporate investments and propertied classes against any and all who would insist for a plethora of necessary and fundamental reasons to regulate and restrict their behaviors. How dare those in the environmental community suggest that citizens of the US are trained and educated to consume the earth without even the slightest cognitive awareness that these behaviors destroy their own lives--is how he really would rather put it. His consistent attacks on what is essentially the "left" within the environmental movement is his faux straw man argument. He is painting a broad canvas that portrays anyone who doesn't think as himself, and other libertarians, as members of the groups who think and behave like Greenpeace, EarthFirst! Ruckus, and ELF. He insists on this in constant subtextual frames, hoping it seems to denigrate the whole of the environmental movement, sufficiently attacking the core constituency's tendency to place the earth at the top of the pyramid of sustainable life rather than his, and his supporters/audience prefered scales of balancing the economy with some degree of environmental protection.

His rejection of GAIA centric principles for guiding environmental movements is nothing more or less than someone pretending to be an environmentalist as long as it supports his own NIMBY attitudes. He will always put economics first, he must do so in order to sustain his own livelihood and well being for himself and family and friends. He is quite simply the very core reason that environmentalism is DEAD.

chanté shicé wakinyan agli

Oil pricing is the most rigged of gamesmanship. See if any of the following makes any sense:
Oil prices sagged on Wednesday as the International Energy Agency said weakening economic growth and higher fuel costs slowed oil demand growth in the first quarter of this year. Expectations that a weekly government report later on Wednesday would show a further rise in U.S. crude stocks, already near six-year highs, also weighed on prices.

HEY weren't we told just five months ago that US crude stocks were dangerously low?? Now they say they are at six year highs, because the price is so high nobody is buying. Can they make up their minds? NO! This isn't about the truth. There is no reliable data because then they would have to reveal that the pricing of crude and gasoline is a scam to extract enormous profits from the people. Here is another duplicitous treat:
<>Prices fell as the International Energy Agency's monthly Oil Market Report said incremental demand in China, Europe and the United States was less than expected for the quarter. China's demand, an explosive 19.3 percent in the first quarter last year, slowed to 4.5 percent in the same period of 2005. The slowdown in growth means the outlook for fourth quarter world demand does not appear as likely to stretch producer countries as in the same period last year, the IEA said.

But that very data is not accurate, if you take China's own reports as more reliable and verifiable. Picture this: Let's say we start in January 2004 with 100bpd. for China. By March it needs 119 bpd and by June it needs 132. September sees a need for 144 and in December the growth now requires 157bpd. The "slowdown" suggests that by the end of 2005 Chinas demand would stretch the production??? What kind of shit is that? By the end of March 2005 China needed 4.5% more oil, not than 100 bpd, but of 157 bpd. or 164bpd. Where is all this new associated production growth. It doesn't exist. These are numbers that are being strung out to forecast a curve of growth for China's demands but they intentionally are not graphing them along curves for production. Why? Because the actual production drops in relation to the ever increasing growth around the world. It doesn't matter that China will need say, by then end of 2005, a very conservative 190bpd--more like over 200bpd. What really matters is that China will need 100% more oil beginning in 2006 than it needed at the beginning of 2004!!! There is no possible way that total world oil production increase so much more than 100% in the last two years so that China could have its needs met while the rest of the world's growth also rose. Thus this is all bullshit.

mitakiye oyasin raptus regaliter

Ain't poker the best metaphoric symbol for our culture?? We have this fascination with gambling and always focussing on who's number one. Poker epitomizes the process of selecting number one's from out of the hordes in ways so quick to identify and so easy to embrace. We bet on our capacity to beat the other guy/girl down in the immediate time frames using nothing but our ingenuity and capital assets. Hundreds, and sometimes thousands, of people invest their life resources, their childrens' children's stake in the future, in a gamble to come out number one now. In essence poker players bet their lives in this culture against all possible odds, that just this once one of them will get to be at the top of the hierarchical pyramid.

This is important to consider. Only one person can be number one. Only a dozen or so people can receive any payback at all, out of the thousands who coughed up amounts that would feed them for a year, or buy a new car or appliances for the family, or provide health care, and so forth. This is the US in a nutshell; the willingness to sell out our children to get something now, and not something that is lasting or sustaining--but something transient and temporal. The viciousness of the game is in every possible way indicative of the viciousness of our consumer culture. The craveness of actually playing with money, nearly always someone elses when you have broken through the first few layers, a symbolic form of meaningless actual value, is quite revealing. Poker is the hucksterism of the revival meeting the carny's call to step right this way.

Why is this so appropriate as a cultural meme? Well, think about our relationship with the finite resources of the earth, and our addiction to energy that forces us to gamble away our childrens' children's future. Think COAL. There is only so much coal on the earth; it will take another quarter of a billion years to make more. And yet we are willing here and now to dig it all up and use it at any cost in order to get that last bit of life out of our capital investments in playing the game. The irony is hysterical in that it takes so much coal to power up the production of poker playing. And like the players at the table, who are only living in the immediacy of each and every hand, forgetting about their children, their families, their lives, we are constantly choosing to forget the future. In 2003, thanks in large part to coal burning, climatologists found record-high levels of climate altering carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of the planet. A forest, by contract, can store twenty time more carbon than grasslands or croplands or pastures. Its leaf litter slows erosion and adds organic matter to the soil. Its dense vegetation stops flooding. Its headwater streams purify the creeks and rivlets below. A contiguous forest ensures species diversity that assures the future of necessary decomposers, nutrient transference, initial protein provisioning, and so forth. A forest, in short, does all the things that the mining and burning of coal cannot do. A forest is for the future.

Peak oil is past, and the need for energy resources is ever greater. Coal is becoming the cheap oil of the now. But unlike oil, coal is a solid mineral form of carbon and requires the removal of the earth to make it accessible. To do this destroys the surface of the planet. All the forests, and grasses, and species are removed and what is left is waste and toxicity. The water that runs off through this landscape is hazardous and toxic to all live. It is carrying silts and metals and debris that choke streams, kill lakes, and fill up river bottoms. The more we take our energy now, the less we will have in the future. We are playing a game of poker with the planet. And we are forgetting that the planet is the house. The house never ever plays with its own money. The house always wins, no matter who comes out on top in a tournament. The house doesn't care who number one is, since the house will stand, while all others die. The house does however require a steady flow of life and people who are willing to gamble with their future. When the people stop coming the house cannot survive. When we finally use up the coal and the last few number one winners are left, they will realize that the house can no longer sustain itself. The Earth will be bust, it will be bankrupt of its sustainability for living beings. We will have lost the big bet, and our future generations will simply cease to be.

Letan khigla yo

A little bit louder and a whole lot worse...
<>Scientists who accept evolution say the evidence for the theory is as solid as that for electricity and plate tectonics. They say intelligent design, the idea that the world's complexity is best explained as being the work of a creator, is a 21st-century version of creationism. But the ID community says they simply want all sides of the debate to be taught in the classroom. Teaching only intelligent design “is as bad as teaching only evolution. We're looking for an objective approach that looks at both sides.”
Really, an objective approach to the two sides of the "debate" between religion and science. What the hell does that mean? Maybe the question really needs to be asked of the ID community, just how much of their underlying philosophical theories are they willing to expose to a deep objective scientific inquiry?? Are they willing to propose a set of theological constructs regarding this "creator" of theirs to a wide ranging critical inquiry beginning with the validation of one creation story over several others. Why is the judeo-christian-islam story more valid than the hindu, or buddhist, or afro-brazillian voodun?? Are they willing to make their material available to the methods of science and an objective, historically factual investigation and evaluation? They will not, they cannot, they are unable to do this. There spew is all one big lie. Incapable as they are of articulating their own stupid scientific claims regarding something as "too complex" they certainly are never going to broaden their "other side" to the same rigid rules of science that are used to evaluate say the Mars rover experiments. What a bunch of crap.

na `ce `ce

Florida's new law reads in part: 

However, a  person is  justified in the use of deadly force 
and does not have a duty to retreat  if:
(a)  He or she reasonably believes that such force is necessary
to prevent imminent death or great bodily harm to
himself or herself or another or to prevent the
imminent commission of a forcible felony;


how this all works will be very interesting...
you get to kill someone who you "reasonably believe" is
intending to cause you great harm, an imminent threat. 
Yep that makes sense.  Now just suppose
that the teaching of evolution become illegal, as it will in Kansas. 
Then if i was a deeply passionate
fascio-christo who felt that my children were in grave
and imminent danger of going to hell if they
heard the very words spoken by someone suggesting
 that evolution might be the most accurate way
to describe biological processes in reality,
 i would have to kill that person.  I would get away with it too
because i was reasonable in my belief, based on
my fundamentalist evangelical religion that the danger
of going to hell far outweighed any concerns
i might have had about public safety.

Tókhiyatanhan yau he? Hiya, hécetu sni ye.

More people are talking about the following story, willing to be interviewed by local media, making the effort to send in emails, calling media, than there are doing the same for all the stories about road building, destruction of the environment, lies about iraq war, etc. combined. This is exactly what is wrong with the US. We are suffering in a nation filled with fools.

Approximately 13.8 million viewers watched Clark's exclusive appearance on Wednesday night's broadcast of ABC's "Primetime Live," according to a report by the Associated Press, based on preliminary Nielsen Media Research ratings.

Kimmel said Clark has nothing to complain about.

"That kid would have been one of the happiest kids in the world," Kimmel said. "Not only did he get on 'American Idol' but he slept with Paula Abdul. What is he complaining about?"

Betty Wass, 74, of Leominster, said she heard about it on the radio Thursday morning.

"People have been calling, saying it's a horrible thing to do," Wass said referring to the alleged affair.

Casey Laycox, 19, of Winchendon, said she was shocked when she found out.

"I am a little distraught," Laycox said. "And wasn't' he (Clark) a minor? It's supposed to be American Idol. It just shows what people do to get ahead."

Clark was 22, and Abdul, 40, at the time.

Clark, a finalist in the show's second season, had to eventually leave the show after getting arrested for a domestic dispute with his sister, and failing to inform the show's producers about it.

Laycox said the scandal will ruin the reputation of the show and tarnish the credibility of the judges.

"That show is definitely not going to be as big because you will never know if someone slept with someone on the show," Laycox said.

Megan Richardson, 17, of Leominster, said the scandal will only boost the show's ratings.

"People will watch the show to see what happens next," Richardson said. "And people who watch the show for the singing would not care much about the whole thing."

Richardson said she watches the show only occasionally, and is not a big fan. Yet she is commenting in the media about it?? Gee fifteen minutes of fame discussing american idol must be all of her life..

Alyssa Vinton, 17, of Lancaster, said she rarely misses an episode of the show, and hopes Abdul will continue to be one of the judges.

"I love Paula," Vinton said. "I think she is one of the best judges ever." This girl is seventeen, how could she possibly evaluate a "best judge"---irony here, given that this is a case of judicial activism.

Vinton said she does not believe Abdul had an affair with one of the show's former contestants, but does not condemn the action, if true.

"If I were her, I would do the same," Vinton said. "If I were a contestant, I'd do it."

Vinton said she likes the show because she wants to see who will be the next big star.

Joyce Reyna, 16, of Lancaster, said she believes Abdul had an affair with Clark.

"I can see that happening," Reyna said. "She's hot for her age ... Why are people making such a big deal out of it. It's her life."

Kelly Sanches, 16, of Fitchburg, said she doesn't find Clark's claims plausible.

"She (Abdul) doesn't seem like that type of a person," Sanches said. "People would do anything for five minutes of fame."

Carl Holmgren, 58, of Orange, said Clark's story is not convincing because he waited two years before disclosing it. Then why in the fuck is he talking about it at all. Irony abounds--"he is taking it to the media."--and so is Carl.

"It's just a guy trying to make some bucks," Holmgren said. "His timing is interesting. He is not taking it to court or anything; he is taking it to the media."

this is the end, beautiful friend, the end...

of our dear beloved planet, the end:

The Bush administration's action to open nearly a third of the nation's remote national forests to road building, logging and other commercial activity is being criticized by environmental groups and most Western states governors. Bryan Bird of Forest Guardians says it's a classic example of the Bush administration trashing democracy and trashing forests. The 58.4 million acres involved -- mainly in 12 western states -- had been put off limits to development by former President Clinton eight days before he left office in January 2001. Under existing management plans, some 34 million acres of these pristine woodlands could be open for road construction.

Yes it is the end. When the vast majority of untapped forest land in the US is suddenly opened to the extraction industries at a time when regulation and enforcement of their activities is at an all time low, we are on the verge of remaking the planet into the true hell of Max Headroom and Blade Runner. Alaskan coastlines, salmon streams, bear habitats, last vestiges of severely endangered species are all openned to the whims of developers craving the opportunities to sink exploratory explosives, strip away all topsoils and overlayers to expose possible minerals that then need to be blown out of the surface of the earth, we have signaled as a species that we are ready to give up on the planet, on feeding the people, on supporting any healthy sustainability of the oceans.

This behavior is rape, a vicious evil perpetrated in the name of dollars and euros and yuang. There is no intelligent use, wise use here. We may as well look at one another and see the blessings of liberty go by by with the forests as well.

Chéye shni yo ye. Léchi u wo we.

On this 35th anniversary of the massacre at Kent State, we need to notice that over the course of the last five years, things have gotten far worse than they were even then. For example:
On April 28, Americans United for the Separation of Church and State released a report on Religious Coercion and Endorsement of Religion at the United States Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs. The organization investigated complaints from a variety of sources from people of different religious backgrounds and concluded that the USAF Academy was involved in coerced religious practice, discrimination against non-Christians and non-religious cadets, and failing to adequately handle complaints of religious intolerance. The report concludes that the abuses come down from the top of the military hierarchy at the Academy.

Among the abuses:

• Academy chaplains Major Warren "Chappy" Watties instructed cadets who attended his protestant worship service to return to their tents and proselytize to cadets who hadn't attended; failure to accept this proselytizing would cause cadets to "burn in the fires of hell."
• Cadets who did not attend a chapel service after dinner were forced to march in a "Heathen Flight" back to their dorms.
• Head-football-coach Fisher DeBerry informed his team he expected to see them in church on Easter. He also hung a banner in the locker room proclaiming "I am a Christian first and last * * * I am a member of Team Jesus Christ"
• Many mandatory events (meals, awards ceremonies, training) were opened with Christian prayer.
• Instructors introduced themselves as born-again Christians and encouraged students to also become born-again during the course of the term.
• One instructor told his students to pray before taking a history exam.
• Signs were placed on every dining plate announcing a Christian-themed program related to the movie The Passion of the Christ. Flyers of a similar nature bore the message, "This is an officially sponsored USAFA event please do not take this flyer down."
• Non-Christian, lower-class cadets have been subjected to religious harassment and proselytizing by more senior cadets and are not punished for their inappropriate conduct. (Senior cadets hold authority over more junior cadets amounting to virtually complete control.)
• Commander of Cadets General Johnny Weida emailed cadets endorsing National Prayer Week and saying "[a]sk the Lord to give us the wisdom to discover the right, the courage to choose it, and the strength to make it endure." In an official "Commander's Guidance" document, General Weida instructed cadets that they "are accountable first to your God."
• Christian students wishing to leave campus to attend religious worship services are issued "non-chargeable passes" which don't count against leave. Those who practice other religions are not able to obtain these passes.

Tin soldiers and Nixon's coming, we're finally on our own.
This summer I hear the drumming, four dead in Ohio.
Gotta get down to it, soldiers are cutting us down. Should have been done long ago.
What if you knew her and found her dead on the ground?
How can you run when you know?

Gotta get down to it, soldiers are cutting us down. Should have been done long ago.
What if you knew her and found her dead on the ground?
How can you run when you know?

Tin soldiers and Nixon's coming, we're finally on our own.
This summer I hear the drumming, four dead in Ohio,
four dead in Ohio, four dead in Ohio, four dead in Ohio, how many more?
Four dead in Ohio, four dead in Ohio, four dead in Ohio, home many more?

Now we have grey cadets and Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld coming.. killing thousands and destroy the lives of hundreds of thousands. Where is the outrage, where is the anger?? So successful has the TV campaign been to distance the US population from reality, that even when presented with the clearest of all possible evidence, the citizens shrug their shoulders and kiss their own asses good bye. Well i hope they discover before too long how seriously misguided and wrong they have been.

chanupa pejuta

The voice or sound or whatever mechanism was utilized to invoke symbols in my being, told me the story of what had happened to this island of GAIAN crust, crushed between the great oceans, called by its conquering heros, the United States. The symbols told of the Indian, who was in harmony with this land and with all the things that lived in this land. Visitors came to the Indians and made the Indians unconscious of their relationships with all things and the order and peace they once had. These visitors then took the land from the Indians and left the Indians to suffer for their unconsciousness. These visitors did not know the land nor did they know the proper relationship between men and all the things of this land. They ignored their ignorance of this and proceeded to fight against all things. They destroyed the relationships like they destroyed the Indian. They created for themselves a universe and an environment that did not relate at all to any natural reality. They have now gone so far as to control the powers of the Thunder Beings, the Wakinyan, and the white gift of purity. These visitors, who were welcomed as brothers by all things, now kill all things, because they have created new non-living, non-spirit things that walk the Black path. This new reality is backward and frozen, and it will eventually lead to the end of both the Red and the Black Paths.
The symbols showed the end of the relationship between the animal beings and the plant beings. To end this relationship is to kill everything; it is done everyday by the visitors, not only on the land they claim to possess, but also in the spaces they want to control and dominate. All plants and animals share a fundamental gift that must always be. The plants give to the animals what they need and the animals give to the plants what they need most. This giving away brings new freshness to the Whole Earth. Without this giving the air would become stale and die.
The visitors forget this. They take from the plants and they take from the animals, but they never give back life. They only give poison, and that is given not as a gift but as a result of discarding waste, the byproduct of their behaviors. These visitors have days that they are to give to one another. These days are special to them, but even then, the gifts they give are perceived only as trading for what they receive in return. The Indian does not know this way, nor do all the living sentient beings.

The red spirit path is a giving path. The Indian lives this giving path, sharing everything with everything, never owning or possessing anything. Above all, the Indian never possesses the land. The earth and all the living things are the greatest gift ever given, and in the spirit of this gift, the Indian gives it all back and shares it with all. The visitors do not understand this. To them the land, like the plants, is there to do with whatever they want. They own it, fight over it, rape it, kill it, pollute it, but they never know it, nor share with it, nor find harmony with it or all of the relations living through it.

These visitors do not even understand the need to communicate with all nature, rocks, trees, birds, insects, animals, fish. If a visitor is seen communicating with any of these, outside the privacy of his own little environmental shell, the visitor is considered crazy. The more the visitor attempts to find harmony and oneness with all things, the crazier he/she is called. If the controllers of the visitors, those visitors that have the power to keep the new reality in order and to assure its continuation, deem a visitor crazy, they lock him away and use him for play. To all nature and the Indian, there is no craziness; there is only the harmony of all living beings. Behavior that may have been seen as eccentric by visitors is seen by the natives as merely another relationship of the whole circle. The natives understand that each being and spirit has a center, and that each must find that center. When it is found, order will be had, and harmony and peace will reign.

The visitors believe that harmony and peace can only be maintained as a by-product of conformity, competition and gamesmanship. It is rather amusing to know that the shamen, the holy men of the natives, undergo life experiences that the visitors would call very sick and very crazy. These men must pass through this phase because they have great power, and it is a a great ordeal to center oneself with so much power. But when they are centered and know the Truth, these men can perform healing and can make rain and are one with the great powers of the universe, the Wakinyan, the Thunder Beings, the healing plants, the calming waters, and Wakantanka, the Great Mystery. If visitors show signs of this experience, they are removed from the rest of the masses of citizens and are dealt with as misfits and wrong, sick, crazy, people.

As all of these symbols danced in my being my spirit beheld the urgency of the message. It is becoming too late to teach the visitors the ways of the land that they are visiting. They merely ignore these attempts anyway. They even play games at it. Muir believed in preservation of natural lands and environments, yet the followers of his teachings, the Sierra Club, confess faith only in conservation. To most Americans the notions of setting aside large bio-regions as laboratories for observing the raw processes of the natural world are unthinkable and obscene. Conservation is merely a delaying technique to give special interests first chance at special ripoffs. Ecology is a game to play, simply to understand what health foods and homeopathic techniques will apply to individuals, while still retaining the overwhelming economic benefits for the greedy ‘hippies.’

I cursed my own involvement in the visitors’ games and swore to fight against the destructive systems. The cloud and its voice bade me to calm down and showed me patience and serenity. I was carried to a creek and my anxiety was washed out of me. My temper, cooled by the chattering stream, flew away on the wings of a blowing leaf. The cloud then carried me above the stream and showed me some beautiful cottonwood trees. The cloud touched the trees and they lived through their seasons before my eyes. From deadness in winter to rebirth in spring, from adolescence and young adult in summer to middle and old age in fall, and back to death and rebirth.

The cloud said to me that a human is like the cottonwood tree. He/she is born from a small seed and grows over years, dying and being reborn as the seasons go round and round. We grow until we get too old to grow anymore, then we degenerate and return to the elemental form from which we aroze. During this life-time, encompassing many rebirths, humans have a multitude of experiences. Our experiences are like the branches and twigs and leaves of the sacred cottonwood; blooming in climax, they fall off, to only have been. Each new branch and new twig symbolize a new experience connected to the previous experiences as a twig proceeds from a branch, supporting the next seasons growth of foilage and experience. The experiences are only connected together by the roots. But the roots are at the center; the trunk, as the core which holds, supports, and ‘establishes’ the tree, serves as the medium of communication between the leaves and the roots. The tree grows from the roots, spreading into other experiences and to other relationships with the earth. Roots also signal the tree to grow up from the ground, reaching into the sky spreading into other experiences and to other relationships with the earth. The leaves, like the roots, contact between the wholeness of the air, the wholeness of the earth, and the breathing of all life on the GAIAN planet. The tree is the same either up or down--lifeflowing, spirit breathing. This is the way of the indigenous peoples too. Their experiences connect at the roots in the center. Life flows through the peoples from the sky, to the earth, and back again.

As the cottonwood stands by itself, it reaches in many directions above and below the ground. These are the many experiences of the tree. The tree is flowing with life. If we were to live alone in the diverse natural realm, we too would be whole beings flowing with life. If we put the tree in a very crowded forest it cannot reach out and experience so much. It must live in a smaller space, occupying and experiencing only a little in comparison to being allowed to grow in a freer, more spacious place. Likewise humans, if crowded by other people, can only live a little and not as fully. The tree, though, will still be in harmony with the whole while the man will only regret his smallness and not allow himself to live his whole and complete being.

This is what the visitors have done to themselves and America. They have made themselves too dense and have found that they do not know wholeness do not know wholeness. It is not that life of the forest tree is simpler; no, in fact, it is much more complex and difficult, but it knows the whole circle and relates in harmony with the nature around it. Thus it lives in the spirit way. The visitors do not know the spirit way nor the whole circle--they do not live in harmony with their neighbors because they resent existence.

The cloud also explained to me the connection of all things. The visitor's scientists have revealed that everything in the universe is comprised of energy and matter. These are arranged atomically. A being is merely a particular arrangement of atoms, as is all the matter which is apparent. These atoms have rhythmic pulses and movement as part of their existence. The electrons flow around them, and in certain elements these electrons move about the atoms at great distances. These electrons come into contact with electrons from all over the universe, yet they retain their connection to their original atom. In this way, we, as masses of atoms, are always in contact with all things atomically. Every movement, every electron shell change, every breath, is felt by all the atoms in the universe. It is our limits of perception that keep us from seeing these relationships. The energy that powers us comes from the operations of our atoms and is guided by our spirits. Our spirits are also in relation to all spirits and are one with all. The Great Mystery Spirit, Wakantanka, is the oneness of all spirits. Our brother spirits, the wakan beings, are those arrangements of atoms and energy and spirit that complement us and maintain our continuation in the universe. The shamans know the keys to these relationships and can transcend these boundaries and merge into different configurations. This is the ultimate revelation of Truth, and is accessible to those beings that are truly centered in their grace-filled existence.

The visitors must ask themselves what they are doing here, before they continue doing. Their scientists must understand their gifts and the powers of these gifts, before they allow the leaders to use them. In this way, these gifts will not become bent things to have. The visitors must seek the wisdom of the natives to know how to live in this land in peace and harmony. The visitors seem to show some concern about peace and harmony in the world, but they don't even know what it is all about.

They must stop playing games and realize that they have lost their visions. They must be made to quest for new visions as the native indigenous people have done for centuries. They must be made to see the way to the Red Path and unfreeze their own Medicine Wheel. If they do not do this, then they will die, but not alone. They will kill Maka, they will kill the skies, they will kill all of their space. To not see this is blind ignorance. To assume that everything will be alright, that the leaders know what they are doing, or to feel that it doesn't really matter anyway, that we are all going to die eventually so let us play happily with out care --these are all the Begging Way, the frozen path of tradition and dying visions. They are poisons in the minds and death to the hearts, as are money and the whole economics game. These visitors have brought disease with them, and they have infected the American land with their mind virus of "use and destroy." The natives are dying from this, and soon all living things will die too. When they are gone, there will only be the virus and the Void.

"fighting for our lives"--ho ka heye

We dropped out of school, got divorced, broke with our families and ourselves and everything we’d known.We quit our jobs, violated our leases, threw all our furniture out on the sidewalk, and hit the road.We sat on the swings of children’s playgrounds until our toes were frostbitten, admiring the moonlight on the dewy grass, writing poetry on the wind for each other.We went to bed early and lay awake until well past dawn recounting all the awful things we’d done to others and they to us—and laughing, blessing and absolving each other and this crazy cosmos.We stole into museums showing reruns of old Guy Debord films to write fight foul and faster, my friend, the old world is behind you on the backs of theater seats.The scent of gasoline still fresh on our hands, we watched the new sun rise, and spoke in hushed voices about what we should do next, thrilling in the budding consciousness of our own limitless power.We used stolen calling card numbers to talk our teenage lovers through phone sex from telephones in the lobbies of police stations.We broke into the private pools and saunas of the rich to enjoy them as their owners never had.We slipped into the offices where our browbeaten friends shuffled papers for petty despots, to draft anti-imperialist manifestos on their computers—or just sleep under their desks. They were shocked that morning they finally walked in on us, half-naked, brushing our teeth at the water cooler.We lived through harrowing, exhilarating moments when we did things we had always thought impossible, spitting in the face of all our apprehensions to kiss unapproachable beauties, drop banners from the tops of national monuments, drop out of colleges . . . and then gritted our teeth, expecting the world to end—but it didn’t!We stood or knelt in emptying concert halls, on rooftops under lightning storms, on the dead grass of graveyards, and swore with tears in our eyes never to go back again.We communicated with each other through initials carved into boarding school desks, designs spray-painted through stencils onto alley walls, holes kicked in corporate windows televised on the five o’clock news, letters posted with counterfeit stamps or carried across oceans in friends’ packs, secret instructions coded into anonymous emails, clandestine meetings in coffee shops, love poetry carved into the planks of prison bunks.We sheltered illegal immigrants, political refugees, fugitives from justice, adolescent runaways in our modest homes and beds, as they too sheltered us.We improvised recipes to bake each other cookies, cakes, breakfasts in bed, weekly free meals in the park, great feasts celebrating our courage and kinship so we might taste their sweetness on our very tongues.We wreaked havoc upon their gender norms and ethnic stereotypes and cultural expectations, showing with our bodies and our relationships
and our desires just how arbitrary their laws of nature were.We wrote our own music and performed it for each other, so when we hummed to ourselves we could celebrate our companions’ creativity rather than repeat the radio’s dull drone.In borrowed attic rooms, we tended ailing foreign lovers and struggled to write the lines that could ignite
the fires dormant in the multitudes around us.

Táku tókhanun han he? kte sni!

Alas, the circle of the time on the wheel of life reaches again into spring, and the colors are everpresent. Wouldn't it be nice to think that the world is a safe and healthy place upon with to live. Unfortunately we can't think that. It is not safe, nor healthy. As the planet's water and air become more and more toxic, humans, who live quite literally at the very pinnacle of the food chain absorb these toxins, concentrating their inherent evil. WE become more violent, more hatefilled, more vicious, more desperate. Across the US, children are increasingly exhibiting all the signs and symptoms of absorbed hazmats. ADD/ADHD, Aspergers, OCD, OOD, BD, HD, DD, and so many more acronyms that describe nothing so much more than that the best and brightest of our future live in environments that are increasingly damaging to well being and harmonious human interrelations.

And what do our leaders wish to do about it. Excise themselves from it, hoarding as much of the available wealth they can create with the most heinous and vile regressive economic policies. Collecting this wealth from increasing profitability of corporations that take keep more than $11.5 trillion offshore protected in various accounts and financial instruments, waiting for the moment of collapse when they can arrange their rides to secret places built of security contractors invested in the protection of this wealth. They have chosen to leave the mass of the world's population to fend for itself, supporting religious fundamentalisms across all spectra of life. These then become the breeders for the future of mass murder and genocidal violence. Spawn of the evil, will spawn more until all that is left is a burnt crispy planet, upon which, hidden in their little biodomes and biospheres, the rich will live out their days protected from one another by armies of ever weakening strengths until the last few vestiges of humanity decide that nuking them all is the final solution, the last option.

The beauty of the natural world struggling against all of this is heartening, knowing that once the blip of human activities has subsided into the bowels of stones and sticks, GAIA can recreate herself again, spinning in circles of time around the wheel of life...

not in my own words.. but share full sentiments

Jason Miller writes:

From a young age, American society bludgeons the individuality out of us. The natural human instinct to self actualize through finding a deep-seated sense of self and sense of purpose is shunted by Madison Avenue, think tanks, political propaganda, government-manipulated mainstream media, churches that manipulate through fear, and a patriarchal system that continues to ensure the dominance of white males...

The world has entered a dark age. America represents a significant blight on humanity's well-being. The current administration's insatiable desire to spend money it does not have, and incur massive debt, has placed the world economy on a precipice. America is becoming a debtor nation, beholden to its lenders, not unlike the so-called "Third World", developing countries, which the United States views with such condescension. Despite its scandals, the United Nations represents a unifying body that could potentially offer solutions to many of the world's problems involving poverty, war, and natural disasters, if it was properly managed. Yet if this administration has its way, the UN will be little more than a puppet to further American imperialistic interests. America is involved in an illegal, imperialistic war in Iraq, and a potentially "never-ending" war which Bush has launched against terrorists, a nameless, faceless enemy with whom we can engage as long as it fills the military-industrial complexes coffers. For them, the beauty of it is that it does not matter whether any more terrorists exist or not because there it will be virtually impossible to prove that they have been extinguished. Bush and his followers have created the real judicial crisis in America as they are attempting to railroad several unfit candidates onto the federal bench, are attempting to do away with the filibuster in the Senate, and have created and endorsed attacks and threats on the judiciary. Bush and the Religious Right both have an irrational resolve to severely cripple the judiciary because it is the only remaining significant check on their power. Since stocking the judiciary with "their people" was not effective, their new plan is to render it impotent. America's Religious Right mirrors the dogmatic followers of Islam in the Middle East, and is garnering the political power to convert our republic into a theocracy. Many of these events have unfolded because people have been beguiled by the propaganda of Karl Rove and the Religious Right, or because their obsession with attaining the "American dream" of "success" has kept them too occupied to be aware of what these schemers have been doing.

As if this weren't true enough, on the same day Joe Baegent writes:

Every person there seemed to understand and acknowledge the coming global human "die-off." The one that has already begun in places like Africa and will grow into a global event sometime within our lifetimes and/or those of our children. The one that will kill millions of white people. That's right, clean pink little Western World white people like you and me. Nobody in the U.S. seems to be able to deal with or even think about this near certainty, and the few who do are written off as nutcases by the media and the public. Mostly though, it goes unacknowledged. All of which drives me nuts because the now nearly visible end of civilization strikes me as worthy of at least modest discussion. You'd think so.

Here's the short course: Global die-off of mankind will occur when we run out of energy to support the complex technological grid sustaining modern industrial human civilization. In other words, when the electricity goes out, we are back in the Dark Age, with the Stone Age grunting at us from just around the corner. This will likely happen in 100 years or less, assuming the ecosystem does not collapse first. And you are thinking, "Well ho ho ho! Any other good news Bageant? And how the fock do you know this anyway?"

For those willing to contemplate the subject, there is a scientifically supported model of the timeline of our return to Stone Age tribal units. A roadmap to the day when we will be cutting up dog meat with a sharpened cd rom disc in some toxic future canyon. It is called the Olduvai Theory.

The *Olduvai theory was first introduced in a scientific paper by petroleum geologist/engineer/anthropologist Richard C. Duncan titled The Peak Of World Oil Production And The Road To The Olduvai Gorge. Duncan ("Dunk") chose the name Olduvai because, among other reasons, "...it is a good metaphor for the Stone Age way of life." It also sounded cool, he confesses. The Olduvai Gorge is a deep cleft in the Serengeti steppe of Tanzania, where Louis and Mary Leakey found the remains of prehistoric hominids, some up to two million years old... Dunk says "the Olduvai way of life was and still is a sustainable one --- local, tribal, and solar --- and, for better or worse, our ancestors practiced it for millions of years."

Dunk's Olduvai theory provides a modern database support structure for the Malthusian argument. The Olduvai theory uses only a single metric, as defined by "White's Law," and deals with electricity as the most vital expression of other forms of energy such as crude oil or coal. The theory is an inductive one based on world energy and population data, so elegantly simple that any 12th grader can do it, assuming he or she can do multiplication (a risky assumption now that no child has been left behind by our great ownership society.) In the Olduvai schema permanent blackouts will occur worldwide around 2030. Industrial Civilization ends when energy availability falls to its 1930 level. Measured as energy use---energy expended or consumed---our industrial civilization can be described as a one-time phenomenon, a single pulse waveform of limited duration which flashed out from the caves to outer space, then back to the caves over approximately 100 years.

So when was the highpoint of the flash? On the average, world per capita energy-use crested around 1977. That was the same year John Travolta made "Saturday Night Fever," which few of us consider much of a highpoint. To make a long story short, there are three intervals of decline in the Olduvai schema: slope, slide and cliff -- each steeper than the previous. After more than a decade no scientist has been able to refute it and even given the flexibility and bias inherent in what passes for common sense in this country, it's still pretty damned hard to argue with.

When we do go off the cliff, the Big Die-off will play no favorites, and will happen everywhere more or less simultaneously. But there are some particularly lousy places to be when permanent worldwide electrical blackouts happen. In or near a big city is the worst. You can imagine the, uh, "discomfort" of billions when the electrical grids die and power goes out across the densely packed high-rise buildings surrounded by a million acres of asphalt. People with no work, no heat, no air conditioning, no food, no water. Put on yer Adidas, it is migration time. Wherein bankers, skinheads, little old ladies and taxi drivers swarm like insects toward whatever passes for the countryside by then. Looks like all those survivalists up in North Idaho and Oregon may be right. Personally, I wouldn't want to be in New York or Bombay, or even Toledo when the deal goes down, and in fact want to be as distant from a city as one can get without having to be too far into the woods (of which there will de damned few) to eat my daily requirement of tree bark.

Americans busily expanding their lard content to fit the contours of their air-conditioned SUVs are among the chief accelerators of the Big Die-off. However, people worldwide assume that the average American is a blind dickhead who wouldn't acknowledge the ecological price of his/her lifestyle if it were branded on their forehead. That assumption is correct. Americans for the most part don't give a twit what kind of world their own children inherit, muchless about dolphins, Hottentots, Frenchmen and the approaching desertification of distant places like Kansas.

Still, it is reasonable to believe that many powerful people and organizations with all the research capability in the world at their fingertips must understand the future before us. In fact, I am sure some in industry do because even 10 years ago when I used to deal with chemical executives at Monsanto, Zeneca, Dow and other corporations, it was discussed and acknowledged a couple of times over cocktails, and even discussed how to profit from it through genetically engineered non-reproducing seeds that eliminate all the native crops around them. One might also guess that the U.S. president and his cabinet know, and that their solution is to fight for more oil and higher profits, given its increasing scarcity. Even the superficial whoring media is broaching the topic of "peak oil," though mostly for shock entertainment value.

Shut up and watch Survivor!

Well hell then. What does keep the American people from looking around them and seeing the obvious? That the earth is a finite thing being used up at exponential rates? Answer: The Spectacle. American capitalism's "media hologram." We no longer have a country, but the artificial spectacle of one. We have a global corporation masquerading electronically, digitally, financially, and legally and every other way as a nation called the "United States of America." The corporation now animates most of us from within through management of the need hierarchy of goods and information. We no longer have citizens. We have consumers, "purchase decision makers" whose most influential act in life consists of choosing a mortgage banker and an NFL team. And a car. The majority of modernized technical humans, Digitus Cathodus Americanus, cannot perceive the hologram because their self-identities were generated by it. It's "reality" to them---the only one they will know until the hologram collapses with their electrical industrial civilization.

By design or not, the hologram's primary effect has been to induce the illusion of a national "value system" through hypnotic repetition of images. Thus profit seeking enterprises are legitimized as the animating spirit of our identities as individuals and as a nation. The end result of course is the mass replication of millions of uniform "market segmented consumer identities." Individuality is circumscribed by brand identification. The overall aggregate of brand identification groups is interpreted to be an inherently superior race or nation (worth fighting for to expand the resource base and markets.) We no longer have lives, just lifestyles which are defined and expressed through ever expanding (and more profitable) consumption.

Net result: The legions of humanity toil to generate the trucks and tofu, munitions, missiles, newspapers, petrochemicals and pizza and millions of tons of ground up cattle sold to fire the furnace of an economic engine that has taken on a life of its own. One that must grow exponentially, devouring everything just to survive. Just to keep from collapsing. And people are taught that it is called "human progress."

This mass hallucination generated by this totalist capitalist system, the state as engine of profit, is one thing. Life on a real planet made of dirt and water and flesh both warm and cold blooded is quite another. Viewed from outside the web of Western illusions, say, an Iraqi citizen or a Filipino Moro, one finds the economic engine to be driven by unseen death and war and the pillaging of the weak by the powerful. All this is set against the backdrop of explosive human disease, growing starvation, the impending failure of the environment and petroleum based civilization, resulting in the greatest mass extinction event in the history of this planet. The Big Die-off. And in your very lifetime too. Admission is not only free, it is compulsory.

One of the hologram's great illusions is that Industrial Civilization is evolutionary---that it advances forever. Industrial civilization does not evolve. In the overall history of man it is extremely short and completely unsustainable. It is a one-time biological drama that rapidly consumes the necessary physical prerequisites for its own existence, the ecology and resources of the planetary gravity well in which it is trapped. Any good news, for Chrissake?

Sort of. We may not become completely extinct. It looks like the earth's immune system is beginning to shake off its infection by the human virus through what appears---to we virus at least---as environmental collapse. But for the sake of discussion, let's assume that extinction through nuclear war and ecological collapse is somehow avoided (nowadays, we're allowed to assume anything we want, regardless of the evidence around us. Just ask any U.S. capitalist free market economist.) If what is left after the Big Die-off can still be called a human society, it will be bottomed out at the subsistence level of energy-use. Now that is one ugly booger of a notion to contemplate. What is subsistence level energy-use? In all likelihood it has to do with shitting in the winter darkness at a sustainable 45 indoor degrees. Meanwhile, a cockroach watches, thinking to himself, "What a shame, because at the height of their culture these guys made a damned good peanut butter sandwich."

Your attention please. This is your pilot. We have crested in our evolutionary journey and are beginning our descent. Please lock your folding trays, put you seats in an upright position and enjoy the landing. (Captain! Why are there no lights down there at the airport?) It was a helluva crest, that spurt of technological jism by the industrial state toward outer space and impregnation of the moon. What with Neil Armstrong bouncing around in the lunar dust in his high tech Pillsbury doughboy outfit and all, it added up to about one week of attention by the masses and a lot of dough for government contractors. But as one who within my lifetime witnessed the entire evolution of the space program, and its accompanying nationalistic hoopla about beating the Russians at being to first to fart in the vacuum of space, I am somehow unconvinced it was worth it. I dunno. Maybe my wife is right, Maybe I'm just a goddam crab. Maybe I'm a little resentful because, thanks to the big American suckdown of the planet, I will never have grandchildren. My kids are among that portion of their generation who understand what their lifetimes hold and are not remotely interested in adding to the problem.

We weren't always like that. Right after World War II and the advent of the atomic bomb a majority of Americans (67% of those surveyed by Gallup) wanted a cooperative one world government with all nuclear weapons put under the control of the United Nations. Now you cannot get an American to turn of a light switch to save human civilization. As a friend from Cape Verde once remarked, "Just watching Americans consume things gives me a headache."

lo wa `cin

A Swedish diplomat to the EU community legislative convocation described the US attitude towards the environment as follows: "The US is inclined to fatten the banker's golden goose at the expense of filling the rivers with poisoned fish!"

I love the metaphoric drifts behind this comment. Indeed that is a most apt description of the US GOP attitude towards the environment. We feed the golden goose to lay golden eggs for the scions of the bankers and associates, while we poison the air and water. We encourage the children of the bankers to increase the golden egg production(repeal estate taxes, void environmental laws, lower taxes on wealth, etc.) while we teach the mass of the children who will never have access to the golden eggs to fish. Of course we never tell them that the fish are going to kill them. We teach the mass of the non-egg receiving children to work hard and if they do so they will maybe get a golden egg before they die; of course we teach them this by teaching them to gamble, so that they don't realize that the odds are always stacked against them(98% return on all slot machines). Interestingly, the bankers have been deluded as well into believing that they can eat the golden eggs, failing to realize that the golden eggs had to be cracked open and broken into little pieces and distributed to the mass of children to get fish to eat. Thus, by their own insulation from reality, the children of the golden geese will likewise become poisoned. AAAhh ignorance is such bliss.

Tohanl yagli kta he? kona kte yeyapi

CBS/AP) American soldiers who shot and killed an Italian intelligence officer in a friendly fire incident in Baghdad generally followed instructions for dealing with potential threats, a U.S. investigation is expected to conclude. But the probe into the March 4 shooting is also expected to raise concerns about the rules of engagement at a Baghdad checkpoint, a senior U.S. defense official said Monday. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the report has not been finished.

hehe: generally followed instructions??? I wonder what would happen to students in school when they are taking the standardized tests for the NCLB formula scoring that determines the funding and sanctions for their school if they just 'generally followed instructions'??? What if people driving on the Interstate highway system just generally followed the rules and regulations?? How bad would it be if rather than actually reading the instructions, a taxpayer filing their annual 1040 sort of generally followed the instructions? Would there be consequences for all of these actions??? Would there need to be a followup and reorganization and insuring heads would role if generally following the instructions led to loss of school funding, traffic accidents, hugely inappropriate tax filings?? NO, no one would care, because everyone was generally following instructions just as those in our military were doing when they shot to death an unarmed group of people in a car travelling away from them on a road we totally controlled and knew who these people were.

the Texas Taliban are taking control

I am a church-going, Bible-believing Baptist, but I recently learned that I'm not a Christian. Indeed, I've not only learned that I'm not a Christian, I've also learned that I'm anti-Christian and hostile to religion. Why? Because I dare to disagree with a certain political and legal agenda.

<>The press release for the event states that certain judicial nominees are being opposed "because they are people of faith and moral conviction." It labels a broad range of court decisions as "liberal, anti-Christian dogma," claiming that "activist courts ... have been quietly working under the veil of the judiciary, like thieves in the night, to rob us of our Christian heritage and our religious freedoms." In sum, the release says that "we must stop this unprecedented filibuster of people of faith."

... according to supporters of this agenda, including one of the foremost leaders in Congress, anyone who has a different view of the Constitution is an advocate of "liberal, anti-Christian dogma." Anyone who takes a contrary position on Senate rules of procedure is hostile to faith. End of story.

It's time to tell the truth.

There is no "filibuster against people of faith." Religious people are on both sides of the debate about the filibuster and certain Bush-nominated judges. And it's wrong for one of the country's foremost political leaders to lend legitimacy to a contrary notion. Just as no one should have to pass a religious test in order to hold political office, no one should have to pass a political test in order to claim religion or morality.

it would be improper to oppose judges because of their faith, but it is legitimate for senators to inquire about a judge's constitutional philosophy and ability to follow settled law, whatever his or her personal opinion. And surely reasonable minds can agree that something is seriously awry when a non-Catholic senator, Alabama Republican Jeff Sessions, lectures Catholic senators about Catholic doctrine during a hearing on judicial nominations.
Melissa Rogers is a visiting professor of religion and public policy at Wake Forest University Divinity School.

fascism in a walnut shell

Ill., April 22 - Scores of African-American and Hispanic students at a small Evangelical Christian college here missed classes and were set to spend a second night in seclusion on Friday, after a series of threatening racist letters spurred their evacuation from the campus. Officials at Trinity International University, a conservative Bible-based school headquartered in this village 30 miles north of Chicago, said three students, two of them black and one Hispanic, had received hate-filled handwritten notes through the campus mail over two weeks.

<>The officials said they urged nearly 200 minority undergraduates to leave their dormitories after the third letter arrived on Thursday because it included growing threats of violence and was sent within days of the anniversaries of the Columbine school shooting in Colorado, the Oklahoma City bombing and Hitler's birth. It was not clear when, or if, the black and Hispanic students would return. The university president, Gregory L. Waybright, said they would be able to complete their academic work for the year. Mr. Waybright said Trinity embraced racial diversity but could not shield itself from the ugliness of an "imperfect world."

This is a conservative christian institution of higher education!!! This is the US. This is where all the priorities are skewed towards the most vile and vicious evils incarnate. It is really difficult to call this anything other than cannibalism. Attack the core constituency of the deeply faithful for their being inferiorly bred subhumans. Yes indeed, compassionate conservatism in its christian finest. I do believe god is blessing the USA./