Is it an emergency yet?
Well, it has been for a long time, but more people are starting to notice. The symptoms can’t be papered over as easily as they get more severe, frequent, and ubiquitous. Peak Oil… climate derangement… authoritarian movements… rollback of women’s rights… food contamination scares… concentration of media owmership… species loss… water shortages… runaway incarceration… megafires… resource wars… financial meltdowns… Seems like things are going more wrong, more rapidly, more generally than we’re used to. What’s to be done?
A natural response is survivalism: how am I gonna get through this? But there’s more than one kind of survivalism: if you are worried about how your community — your tribe, your extended family, your township, your county, your neighbours and friends are going to get through this together — then we’re working on a radio show for you. The Emergency Wormcasting Network has two basic premises: (a) we believe there’s a real emergency, and (b) we believe there are things you can do about it… both to influence public life to soften the landing, and to safeguard the health and freedom of yourself and your community.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by DeAnander as Pedagogy, News, Analysis at 5:55 PM PDT
We are pleased to feature, with the authors’ permission, front-page links to two very important books: Susan Bordo’s Unbearable Weight and Sandor Katz’ The Revolution Will Not Be Microwaved. IA’s core beliefs that (1) the politics of food maps onto virtually every other issue, and that (2) no politics can be serious that does ignores gender analysis, are the reason we are featuring these tomes. Sandor Katz’ overview of a broadly emerging and ever more revolutionary underground food movement is not only a remarkable bit of research and analysis, it has multiple and extremely useful bibliographies for the people who are writing, thinking, and ding these things. Susan Bordo’s book is absolutely essential to understanding the contradictory relationship that many American women have with food… and for beginning any serious conversation about feminism and-or food-politics. A public shout-out to both authors… thank you, to two insurgent Americans.
Posted by stan as News at 8:25 PM PDT
The Permaculture Gathering
Celo Community, North Carolina
August 3rd-5th, 2007
The Permaculture Gathering every year is a reunion of friends-family & welcoming new friends - a time of retreat & rejuvenation, of fun, joy, magic & learning.
Ceremonial village - Self-organizing “open space” agenda - Permaculture and Sustainable Culture - Fantastic Organic food - Plant walks - Drum circles – Cool temperatures – Cold mountain swims -Seed and Plant Exchange – Healing Tent, Saturday night fun…. & MORE!
Go to our website www.sepermaculture.org For the printable registration page, information, & schedule. You will also find some links, comments from participants and more!
Early Bird Discount! Register by June 25th!
Number of Participants limited!
Yahoo group: groups.yahoo.com/group/SoutheasternPermaculture (to subscribe, simply hit the “Join this Group” button on the group homepage)
Posted by BrianR as News at 8:36 AM PDT
By Judith Matloff, Columbia Journalism Review
The photographer was a seasoned operator in South Asia. So when she set forth on an assignment in India, she knew how to guard against gropers: dress modestly in jeans secured with a thick belt and take along a male companion. All those preparations failed, however, when an unruly crowd surged and swept away her colleague. She was pushed into a ditch, where several men set upon her, tearing at her clothes and baying for sex. They ripped the buttons off her shirt and set to work on her trousers.
“My first thought was my cameras,” recalls the photographer, who asked to remain anonymous. “Then it was, ‘Oh my God, I’m going to be raped.’ ” With her face FULL ARTICLE
Posted by stan as News at 4:56 AM PDT
By YIFAT SUSSKIND
Indigenous activists are putting up a fight against violence. At the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, activists are focused on passing a declaration that recognizes the right of Indigenous Peoples to their lands, territories, and resources. This organizing drive is seeking international legal protection from the violence done to Indigenous Peoples, which over the centuries has threatened their very survival. Indigenous women, meanwhile, are organizing against gender-based violence. This violence has derived not just from gender discrimination and subordination but also from the violation of the collective rights of Indigenous communities.
At the international level, 2,500 Indigenous activists and NGO representatives from around the world have gathered in New York this month to debate the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which FULL
Posted by stan as News at 5:19 AM PDT
The Town of Carrboro, in North Carolina, is working with the Carrboro Community Garden Coalition to create a public garden at the “Martin Luther King Jr. Park for at least the next few years”. This is a great example of a small US town with real progressive values transforming how we live in America. (Slowly but significantly.) Lets hope the idea of community gardening spreads.
Collaborative gardening is certainly an activity that requires teamwork. Right now there are about 20 folks involved in Carrboro’s community garden effort and it’s increasing rapidly through word of mouth. McGreger said that many of the folks involved in this project had known each other before but have become much closer as they’ve worked together on the garden, and that the community-building aspect of it is as exciting as the growth of the food itself.
The group is planning to do a lot of its work on Saturday mornings but as of yet has no regular schedule. If you’re interested in getting involved you can e-mail ccgc@riseup.net to be added to their electronic discussion group.
Hamm said that their vision is that the garden project will let people see that community gardens can be “abundant, beautiful and doable,” and inspire similar smaller projects throughout the rest of the town, state and world. For instance, he’d like to see Carrboro move from this initial townwide garden to having small ones in each neighborhood all over the community, allowing folks to work in even smaller and locally oriented groups to produce food.
McGreger said another nice aspect of the process in getting the garden started has been the opportunity “to learn how to participate in direct democracy.”
Check out the whole article Making the Community Garden grow at the Orange Politics blog.
Posted by BrianR as News at 4:54 PM PDT
…here is Black Agenda Report’s Richard Muhammad
Enabling Imus
American Life - Racism & White Privilege
Wednesday, 11 April 2007
by Richard Muhammad
In a horrific display of racist solidarity, white media men have circled their wagons around Don Imus, the career broadcast bigot who called the Rutgers women’s basketball team a bunch of “nappy headed hos.” All is forgiven, because “Imus is us,” say his defensemen. And they are right: Imus is them, irredeemably racist children of white privilege who believe their casual slandering of other races and genders are of no more concern than getting drunk at a frat party. The most important element of the tale is not Imus’ putrid outbursts, but the reflexive defense of him by his co-racists, who have “outed” themselves in the process. FULL
Posted by stan as News, Analysis at 2:50 PM PDT
Help find the truth about the death of Pfc. LaVena Johnson
Once upon a time lived a young woman from a St. Louis suburb. She was an honor roll student, she played the violin, she donated blood and volunteered for American Heart Association walks. She elected to put off college for a while and joined the Army once out of school. At Fort Campbell, KY, she was assigned as a weapons supply manager to the 129th Corps Support Battalion.
She was LaVena Johnson, private first class, and she died near Balad, Iraq, on July 19, 2005, just eight days shy of her twentieth birthday. She was the first woman soldier from Missouri to die while serving in Iraq or Afghanistan.
The tragedy of her story begins there.
After an investigation, the Army declared LaVena’s death a suicide, a finding refuted by the soldier’s family. In an article in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Lavena’s father pointed to indications that his daughter had endured a physical struggle before she died - two loose front teeth, a “busted lip” that had to be reconstructed by the funeral home - suggesting that “someone might have punched her in the mouth.”
The military said that the matter was closed.
Little more on LaVena’s death was said for many months until a recently televised report on KMOV in St. Louis disclosed troubling details not previously made public:
• Indications of physical abuse that went unremarked by the autopsy
• The absence of psychological indicators of suicidal thoughts; indeed, testimony that LaVena was happy and healthy prior to her death
• Indications, via residue tests, that LaVena may not even have handled the weapon that killed her
• A blood trail outside the tent where Lavena’s body was found
• Indications that someone attempted to set LaVena’s body on fire
And yet, the Army continues to resist calls by LaVena’s family and by local media to reopen its investigation.
We have seen with other military deaths that the Army has engaged in an insulting game of deny and delay when it comes to uncovering embarrassing facts. Only when public and official attention is brought to bear on the matter - as happened, eventually and with great effort, with the case of Army Ranger and former professional football player Cpl. Pat Tillman - do unpleasant truths come to light.
While it is possible to disagree generally over the war in Iraq, we are unified in our respect for the men and women who serve us in dangerous places, and in our concern for the families who give them up in our name. The very least we owe families of the fallen is an honest accounting of how their loved ones died.
The Armed Services Committees of the Senate and the House have funding authority and legislative oversight over the armed forces. The members of these committees can compel the Army to acknowledge the grief of the Johnson family and reopen its investigation of LaVena’s death. All that is needed is the political will. Help those legislators find that will by signing this petition.
The mother of Pat Tillman once put the matter in stark and honest terms:
“This is how they treat a family of a high-profile individual,” she said. “How are they treating others?”
In the case of Private First Class Johnson, we know the answer – but together we can make a better answer for LaVena’s family, and for all the families of those in the military.
* * *
Help compel the Army to reopen the investigation of Pfc. LaVena Johnson’s death.
[The petition site is here.]
This petition sponsored by Philip Barron, author of the blog Waveflux. Mr. Barron is not a representative of the Johnson family.
Posted by stan as News at 7:47 AM PDT
IA has Antonia’s talks linked in the Video Section. We have cited more than once the importance of understanding Iraq’s Hydrocarbon Law as a key index of US intention in Iraq. Antonia Juhasz knows this issue forward and backward.
New York Times
Opinion Editorial
March 13, 2007
Op-Ed Contributor
Whose Oil Is It, Anyway?
By ANTONIA JUHASZ
San Francisco
TODAY more than three-quarters of the world’s oil is owned and
controlled by governments. It wasn’t always this way.
Until about 35 years ago, the world’s oil was largely in the hands of
seven corporations based in the United States and Europe. Those seven
have since merged into four: ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell and BP. They
are among the world’s largest and most powerful financial empires. But
ever since they lost their exclusive control of the oil to the
governments, the companies have been trying to get it back.
Iraq’s oil reserves — thought to be the second largest in the world —
have always been high on the corporate wish list. In 1998, Kenneth
Derr, then chief executive of Chevron, told a San Francisco audience,
“Iraq possesses huge reserves of oil and gas — reserves I’d love
Chevron to have access to.”
A new oil law set to go before the Iraqi Parliament this month would,
if passed, go a long way toward helping the oil companies achieve
their goal. The Iraq hydrocarbon law would take the majority of Iraq’s
oil out of the exclusive hands of the Iraqi government and open it to
international oil companies for a generation or more.
In March 2001, the National Energy Policy Development Group (better
known as Vice President Dick Cheney’s energy task force), which
included executives of America’s largest energy companies, recommended
that the United States government support initiatives by Middle
Eastern countries “to open up areas of their energy sectors to foreign
investment.” One invasion and a great deal of political engineering by
the Bush administration later, this is exactly what the proposed Iraq
oil law would achieve. It does so to the benefit of the companies, but
to the great detriment of Iraq’s economy, democracy and sovereignty.
Since the invasion of Iraq, the Bush administration has been
aggressive in shepherding the oil law toward passage. It is one of the
president’s benchmarks for the government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal
al-Maliki, a fact that Mr. Bush, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice,
Gen. William Casey, Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad and other
administration officials are publicly emphasizing with increasing
urgency.
The administration has highlighted the law’s revenue sharing plan,
under which the central government would distribute oil revenues
throughout the nation on a per capita basis. But the benefits of this
excellent proposal are radically undercut by the law’s many other
provisions — these allow much (if not most) of Iraq’s oil revenues to
flow out of the country and into the pockets of international oil
companies.
The law would transform Iraq’s oil industry from a nationalized model
closed to American oil companies except for limited (although highly
lucrative) marketing contracts, into a commercial industry,
all-but-privatized, that is fully open to all international oil
companies.
The Iraq National Oil Company would have exclusive control of just 17
of Iraq’s 80 known oil fields, leaving two-thirds of known — and all
of its as yet undiscovered — fields open to foreign control.
The foreign companies would not have to invest their earnings in the
Iraqi economy, partner with Iraqi companies, hire Iraqi workers or
share new technologies. They could even ride out Iraq’s current
“instability” by signing contracts now, while the Iraqi government is
at its weakest, and then wait at least two years before even setting
foot in the country. The vast majority of Iraq’s oil would then be
left underground for at least two years rather than being used for the
country’s economic development.
The international oil companies could also be offered some of the most
corporate-friendly contracts in the world, including what are called
production sharing agreements. These agreements are the oil industry’s
preferred model, but are roundly rejected by all the top oil producing
countries in the Middle East because they grant long-term contracts
(20 to 35 years in the case of Iraq’s draft law) and greater control,
ownership and profits to the companies than other models. In fact,
they are used for only approximately 12 percent of the world’s oil.
Iraq’s neighbors Iran, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia maintain nationalized
oil systems and have outlawed foreign control over oil development.
They all hire international oil companies as contractors to provide
specific services as needed, for a limited duration, and without
giving the foreign company any direct interest in the oil produced.
Iraqis may very well choose to use the expertise and experience of
international oil companies. They are most likely to do so in a manner
that best serves their own needs if they are freed from the tremendous
external pressure being exercised by the Bush administration, the oil
corporations — and the presence of 140,000 members of the American
military.
Iraq’s five trade union federations, representing hundreds of
thousands of workers, released a statement opposing the law and
rejecting “the handing of control over oil to foreign companies, which
would undermine the sovereignty of the state and the dignity of the
Iraqi people.” They ask for more time, less pressure and a chance at
the democracy they have been promised.
Antonia Juhasz, an analyst with Oil Change International, a watchdog
group, is the author of “The Bush Agenda: Invading the World, One
Economy at a Time.”
What You Can Do
+ Go to the Oil Change International website www.PriceofOil.org
to find an automatic letter you can send to your Congressional
Representative and Senators demanding Hands Off Iraq’s Oil!
+ Use this letter and any and all of the background material provided
on the site to write your own Op Ed, Letter to the Editor, language to
use to call-in to a radio show, and a flyer to hand out to your
friends and colleagues.
+ Specifically, you can write a letter to the New York Times in
response to my Op Ed - use the Op Ed as an entry way to have your say
about the oil law and the war for oil. Write no more than 150 words
and send to: letters@nytimes.com.
+ Participate in Protests against War AND Climate Change on the 4-Year
Anniversary of the Iraq War.
Oil Change International (www.PriceOfOil.org), Global Exchange
(www.Globalexchange.org), and more organizations and groups every day
are joining with Hundreds of communities throughout the US, and the
world to hold protest events on March 17-19, to mark the 4-year
anniversary of the Iraq war.
We urge environmentalists and climate change activists to join with
peace activists and organize protests on these dates at the
headquarters and gas stations of the oil companies leading the charge
in Iraq: Chevron, ExxonMobil, Marathon, ConocoPhillips, Shell and BP.
What better locations to send a message about war, oil and the
consequences of oil addiction?
List your protest at www.unitedforpeace.org.
MARCH 19 - In the Bay Area, I’ve joined with activists planning a
Rally, Protest, and Nonviolent Direct Action at Chevron’s World
Headquarters on March 19 from 7:00-11:00am in San Ramon. Visit
www.myspace.com/ProtestChevron.
+ Learn about an international network of organizations organizing
protests under the heading “Hands Off Iraq’s Oil!” Visit their website
www.HandsOffIraqiOil.org/.
+ Share this information with your friends, neighbors, community and colleagues.
+ Hold your own rally, protest, press conference, direct action, or
festival and spread the word!
+ With the media? Contact Celia Alario to arrange for great
interviewees at 310-214-6830 or celiaalario@earthlink.net.
Learn More - Visit
www.PriceofOil.org
www.TheBushAgenda.net
www.platform.org
www.handsoffiraqioil.org
–
”The people running the United States government are from the energy
industry,” said Fredrick D. Palmer, of Peabody Energy, the world’s
largest coal company. ”They understand it and they believe in energy
supply.” - April 21, 2002.
Antonia Juhasz
Ida Tarbell Fellow
Oil Change International
www.PriceOfOil.org
and
Visiting Scholar
Institute for Policy Studies
www.ips-dc.org
The Bush Agenda: Invading the World, One Economy at a Time.
by, Antonia Juhasz
HarperCollins Publishers
www.thebushagenda.net
Posted by stan as News at 7:38 AM PDT
