Resistance, Tortise Style

Apparently millions of latin americans can slip into north america and find cash work. They start small, work incredibly hard, live low, save dough and often build a decent life for themselves and their famlies. What does that tell us? It tells me that, just like 35 years ago when i awakened and started living la dolce vita, there is honest work to be done almost everywhere. That, especially with the huge language advantage norte americanos have over our latin brothers, a person can still build an honest life out of hard work and patience.

Folks who live in the underground economy never buy anything on credit, they don't get into debt, their meager money keeps its buying power because they never pay interest. The banks and the billionaires make very little profit on the cash economy. When a tortise like, cash only, person needs a car they know that a car is a tool not a status symbol, they buy a car they can afford. A hare like, i want it all now, person, on the other hand, goes for the Hummer and the payments. Every month after that the hare has less dough the tortise has more.

Same arguement holds for whatever your dreams are, if you want to live them, to stand straight and resist the empire, don't think it-do it. Start small, but start. If you want to be a farmer, go to an area of small farms and start knocking, keep knockin on doors until you meet a farmer who'll give you a cash job [maybe just room and board], you'll work your ass off, you'll meet other farmers, barn doors will eventually open for you, one day you'll look back and be amazed how many of your dreams have come true.

All of the hares we meet as life unfolds have uncertain futures, some stay awake long enough to finish ahead of the toll extracted by the empire's interest, profits and taxes, most fall asleep and lose hold of their contantly over-leveraged lives, some though awaken for whatever reason and see that the joy is in the process not the end product. The awakened realize that the beers earned with sweat and calluses taste far better than those bought on credit and that when your car dies you convert it into a chicken coop and look for another beater you can afford.

We Have The Right To Not Cooperate

It's our duty to not cooperate with the industrial beast consuming the earth. Every non cooperative action has a doubling effect in that there's the 'with the flow' step not taken and the step upstream taken instead. Our small actions of themselves are insignificant but they too have multiplier effects including the awakening of our resistance genes. Our ancestors fought and resisted the power of kings, bankers and dictators, it's in our genetic memory to do it too, it feels good to stand up straight for a minute or two.

Non-cooperation can be as easy as paying with cash and asking to be paid with it, or, better yet, barter. i realize i'm an oldtimer and that disappearing into the underground economy was a lot easier in a number ways 35 years ago. 'Big Brother' was only a baby, credit/debit cards were rare and everyone carried cash, and there was far less fear of the unknown throttling the spirit of uniqueness...but even now there's lottsa ways to leverage the basics of the Toilet Bowl Theory of Economics which states: Just like how gravity pulls at the water going around in the toilet so that quickly all the water is down the drain, so to do profits, interest and taxes pull the buying power of your dollar down the drain after a few revolutions.

Even now i'd bet there's an opening in most places for a hard working honest carpenter-designer, who never makes a dime off the sweat of others or a profit on the materials handled, who always uses re-cycled everything, who gets paid cash by the hour and who buys the first round on friday after work. Check out a small or medium sized community, you'll see where to stop and ask for your first 'boot in the door' job, look for a concrete truck parked twiriling away, maybe they need another hand, look especially for sheated roofs loaded with roofing, i bet you'll find your first job with the roofers, they'll often pay in cash.

Next you chat up everybody on the site during coffee and lunch breaks, work your tail off in between and keep yours ears open especially for home owners who need some other work done. When you do score an independent job you'll do the best job possible for the least cost possible and your next job will magically appear, and the next...until you say enough. i finally stopped 25 years later when my left hip went on strike. Resist the profit paradigm, work hard, never buy on credit, abundance will follow. It happened to me, it can happen to you.

"Individuals have international duties which transcend the national obligations of obedience. Therefore [individual citizens] have the duty to violate domestic laws to prevent crimes against peace and humanity from occurring" -- Nuremberg War Crime Tribunal, 1950

Survival Equals Plunder Divided by Resistance, S=P/R

Once upon a time the size our future abundance was at stake due to capitialist plunder now it's our descendants' survival. Only when the capitialists meet sufficient resistance in time will there be a livable world remaining hand on to the future. S=P/R means all forms of non-cooperation with the plunderers are tactics in a broader strategy who's goal is the long term survival of our families.

"Civil disobedience becomes a sacred duty when the State becomes lawless or, which is the same thing, corrupt.... Nonviolence is the greatest force at the disposal of humankind." - Mohandes Gandhi

Usually resistance, like blackberries in Cascadia, start out as small seperate meaningless blips, but as anyone who lives here knows, there is only one blackberry plant, their above ground seperation hides the interconnected nature of their roots. Resistances to the flow of capitialist plunder [and the damn blackberries] are slowly growing by their various methods towards their common goal of future survival.

Resistance is a strategy and the sum of many independent tactics connected by shared philosophies. Those who choose to resist most often begin with small symbolic acts of non-cooperation like paying with cash and asking to be paid with it, or, better yet, barter. Every small act of resistance builds your spirit, stands as a example to others and is a small step toward the goal. Before action often comes a period of comtemplation, of reading and learning, of 'turning on' and 'tuning in'. Wherever each of us is on the curve sliding us toward acts of resistance we are on it. More on 'R' tactics manana.

Nonviolent Resistance or Climate Hell - The truth is that those of us living within industrial society have become seduced by the power which accrues from the burning of fossil fuels, and entrapped by the destructive consequences. We have created an entire social structure which bows at the altar of fossil fuel and have in essence entered into a massive "Faustian bargain" with the gods of oil and coal.

Fall Fell Early on Cascadia's Rainforests

After months of drought like conditions September's near record rains have brought a smile to the kisser of most folks here in Cascadia. When people stop to chat the return of the rain is a frequent topic. The creeks are thundering again, the mountains again retreat in the mists, the mud arises from its summer hibernation and the forest fairies awaken.

The early fall rains are filling Cascadia's creeks and rivers in time to allow the biggest possible runs of the Sacred Salmon into her heart. The salmon bring life to every corner of the rainforest. The bears and eagles gorge on their brother salmon, they haul the carcasses up into the forest, they defacate further inland still. Biologists can trace the ocean's minerals brought into the forest by the salmon after they've been taken up by the forest's flora and incorporated into their tissue.

We live in an area long inhabited by the Coast Salish. In their millenia of co-operation with nature's bounty the Salish learned many lessons about harmony and abundance including the reality of their immersion in-not seperation from-the Great Spirit. Unfortunately the worldview of our conquering christian ancestors allowed no communing with creation, instead they murdered or enslaved those who opposed them. It was another example of the dark ages that surround us still.

Unless we, the rogue primate, realize quickly that every stakeholder in our bio-region, flora-fauna-fairy alike, owes its existance to the Sacred Salmon and the wheel of life they are immersed in our time will quickly pass. If so, gone too would be our capacity for wonder, compassion and beauty. Gone too would be the tyranny to which we subject nature with our industrial madness and thus, in time, allow the Great Spirit to replenish her strength and banish those dark ages for good.

An Auspicious Day For Planting Garlic

Planting garlic on the fall equinox under a harvest moon, how cool is that eh? The fall equinox is one moment in the pendulum's cricuit, it happens everywhere at the same moment, 8:09PM,pst in our case. The harvest moon rolls around the globe in consort with the dance of the setting sun and the rising moon. Our prime full moon viewing here, if the cloud gods allow it, would be about 8PM too.

What all this has to do with planting garlic is difficult to prove but better safe than sorry eh? Garlic, in the better safe than sorry vein, has served long and well in our centuries old 'War on Vampires, Werewolves and Zombies' [predecessor to the War on Terror]. Either worn, if living in common V-W-Z territory, or eaten daily if not, garlic is a proven sheild against the ages old V-W-Z terrorists. Garlic at the ready as i walk through the valley of V-W-Z i fear not.

More recently garlic has been researched by modern science, who as usual, has proved so many colflicting claims about garlic's curative properties as to be useless. Folks can believe what they want, i believe that re-planting the garlic each fall is a positive postulate, a statement supported by the work needed to prep the area, to have that area ready in the yearly rotation of the garden's plantings, the saving of the best heads from the mid-summer's harvest, that this fall's work will bear fruit again next mid-summer.

Garlic as a statement, amulet or food is one of the easiest things to grow. Once you've planted your cloves about one finger deep into the freshly prepped bed loaded with plenty of compost/manure on or just after the harvest moon nature takes care of it mostly. You'll probably have to weed once around may 1st and harvest the curled flower heads about june 1st, then harvest in late july. Round and round she goes, our planet rocking gently as it rolls around the sun, its moon twirling through lighted phases as the solar system circles a blackhole at our galaxy's center. What a wonder filled world, what a miracle that garlic has saved us from the V-W-Z menace long enough so that we might see its majesty.

'Dropping Out' a tool of awakening not social change.

Dropping out of the industrial capitialist economy is a tool only available to the small minority of humans who live in one. Even then it ain't easy. Unlike the vast majority of our species who live lives so close to the ground there's no where to drop to, we the entitled have the luxury of choices.

About 30 years ago i dropped out, bought a bit of land in BC, hand cleared enough forest for a big garden and free rangeing chickens. The little cabin kept growing as the family did and after working day and night on it all for all that time i never could quit working outside the little organic farm as a carpenter. Lesson learned? Even a dropout is connected to everything, if you're alive you're connected by your breath, your stomach, etc., if you're dead you're still totally connected, this time via the worms and mircobes, the forces and fairies.

Back then it seemed possible, especially as there was an early 80s recession up here in BC, that a person could live a cash life, could raise a family without being beholding to the beast, could even be an example to others that it could be done. Of course that was a pipedream, very few folks, then or now, are interested in a lifelong vow of poverty, sweat and mixed success. Some folks in some places succeeded well enough to have formed the roots of today's organic foods and local markets, our little attempt was maybe ahead of its time, maybe behind, but one thing it wasn't was the vechicle to social justice or change that i envisioned, just lottsa hard work.

What really happened was that the cycles of planting, tending and harvesting, of winter, spring, summer and fall, of rain or drought became my cycles. They snuck up on me, turned me on to the everyday miracle all around us, tuned me in to our immersion in-not seperation from-the miracle. We are all interconnected so actually dropping out is immpossible, we can though use the process of learning to live with nature and wanting less material goods as a tool for individual awakening. We can't drop out of the planet killing greed machine totally, but we can resist.

Small Acts of Resistance Awakening Individuals

All action starts small and grows. Step 1 can be into the cash economy. Ask for your cash deal everywhere, especially in BC where i live, pay cash for every service. Get paid in cash, if you can't, think of changing things so you can. Become a plumber or a gardener or a roofer or a million things that exist in the underground cash economy. Buying local and spending cash is an immediate way to spit in the Empire's drink.

Another rung up the resistance ladder might be growing your own everything, self-employment and getting out of debt. Debt kills both your assets and your spirit, Just Say No, sell the condo, cash in your equity, get outta the city, don't give the bankers and government another dime.

There's little overall effect these baby steps can make compared to the calamity of capitialism beyond awakening individuals. But that awakening is growing and small acts of resistance are too. We live in interesting times, as the Chinese curse threatens, and the best path for me will be knee deep in mud for others, for me it feels good to have less, to want less, to 'Drop Out' of the capitialist system that is consuming our mother earth, to read, to learn, to live freely through small acts of resistance.

"Resist much, obey little." -Walt Whitman

The planet's plunder will continue in the name of progress until the corporate greed machine encounters enough resistance to break its momentum. Each time an individual freely chooses the cash economy they take back a little extra money and gain alotta self-esteem.

Investing emotional and intellectual energy in electoral politics is a waste of time. Resistance means a radical break with the formal structures of American society. We must cut as many ties with consumer society and corporations as possible. We must build a new political and economic consciousness centered on the tangible issues of sustainable agriculture, self-sufficiency and radical environmental reform.-Chris Hedges

No matter where you go, there you are.

Freedom is taken not given. Freedom is an internal state not a political one. Freedom flows from empathy not laws. We all have the freedom to do whatever we want as long as we don't impinge on anyone else' right to do the same. We all have the freedom to disobey unjust laws, the freedom to do onto all as you'd have them do unto you.

Few today allow themselves the freedom to live their lives as self-directedly as our more agricultural ancestors. My ancestors, our ancestors, lived by the rythmn of the sun and the seasons, lived free from the fears that terrorize us, lived lives now characterized as short and brutal but seen by those living them as fulfilled.

Freedom is not not having rules, instead it's the clear definition of the boundries and rules of a system or culture that allows an individual, outlaw or not, to freely choose a position consistant with their worldview and freely accept whatever consequences are reaped.
One night while I was out a ridin'
The grave yard shift, midnight 'til dawn
The moon was bright as a readin' light
For a letter from an old friend back home
And he asked me

Why do you ride for your money
Tell me why do you rope for short pay
You ain't a'gettin' nowhere
And you're loosin' your share
Boy, you must have gone crazy out there

He said last night I ran on to Jenny
She's married and has a good life
And boy you sure missed the track
When you never come back
She's the perfect professional's wife
And she asked me

Why does he ride for his money
And tell me why does he rope for short pay
He ain't a'gettin' nowhere
And he's loosin' his share
Boy he must've gone crazy out there

Ah, but they've never seen the Northern Lights
They've never seen a hawk on the wing
They've never spent spring on the Great Divide
And they've never heard ole' camp cookie sing
Well I read up the last of my letter
And I tore off the stamp for black Jim
And when Billy rode up to relieve me
He just looked at my letter and grinned
He said now

Why do they ride for their money
Tell me why do they ride for short pay
They ain't a'gettin' nowhere
And they're loosin' their share
Boy, they must've gone crazy out there
Son, they all must be crazy out there

Night Rider's Lament  by Jerry Jeff Walker

Double Dip Recession? Don't Worry, Be Happy

Recession and happy are seldom seen in the same sentance but maybe they will more often in the future. Humans appear incapable of containing their consumption of shiny new gagets and useless crap until the credit card bounces and the repo-man visits. Even when a shopping junkie tries to quit they are so bombarded by culture and media they quickly end up back at the mall filling the up SUV. People like stuff, stuff makes most folks feel secure, when times are tough people feel less secure so they'll keep buying more crap until somebody turns off the tap, somebody like Mr. Recession.

If 'ol Mr. DD Recression does manage to close the tap on consumerism what a wonderful world it might be. A huge second dip might cripple the industrial world thereby relaxing a bit of the stress nature is under from its relentless demands. During a long deep recession folks might be able to see the virtues of having and wanting less, might be to see the beauty of simplicity, might change.

Searching the news its easy to find hundreds of articles about a double dip from all sides of the issue. Few though touch the topic of how a deep recession could save us from the kind of near biblical collapse that otherwise, if we don't turn away from consuming the earth faster every day, might mean extinction for millions of species including homo sapiens.

Double Dip Recession, i'm not worried, i'm happy, i'm hopeful that turning off the tap might mean turning the tide of the consmptive paradigm long enough-far enough so that the light of real security has a chance to shine through the fog of fear, so that our grandchildren might have a still bountiful world to hand on to their's, and their's...

Wanting Less is Empathy in Action

Beliefs are a set of ideas. Wikipedia defines "A meme (rhyming with "cream") is a set of ideas, symbols or practices, which can be transmitted from one mind to another through speech, gestures, rituals or other imitable phenomena. We use our beliefs to triage incoming information into acceptable and unacceptable, deal with the one, trashcan the other. Each of our individual webs of belief is malliable. New sets of ideas, memes like 'want less', can outflank our cultural blinders and carry, their message to the forfront of our attention, making 'want less' the veil we triage events through. Beliving is seeing.

How is the big question, how to outflank a worldview, how? In the article 'Why Changing Somebody’s Mind, or Yours, is Hard to Do' Psycology Today uses self-affirmation research which seems to support the idea that the less threatened we feel, the more flexible our opinions are likely to be. By letting the conversation first concentrate on self-affirmation for/by all participants leads, they say, to an opening where new sets of ideas can slip through our perceptual defences.

George Carlin in his autobiography 'Last Words' shows and explains how humor also opens a pathway through our cultural blinders whereby a new set of ideas, a meme, can, Trojan Horse style, be accepted and then become part of the perceptual filter itself.

'Cool' would work. If, through peer pressure, it became cool to 'want less', to have less, to comsume the least, then our 'want less' meme might have its shot. Wanting less will be 'cool' when empathy for our fellow earthlings outshines bling. There is still a chance humans could change from the self-serving short-sighted greedy pigs we mostly are now into an empathetic member of the living earth. The Vagas odds are real long, but not zero. Wanting less is empathy in action.

A People's History of the United States a must read!

Finally, after lottsa near misses, i bought a copy of A People's History of the United States, 1492 - Present. i'm an american, i was brought up there, don't remember any of this being taught in any of my classes. One of the main reasons we have the divisions among us is ignorance of our real history, of the class struggle, of the consequences of capitialist greed and of the potential energy we could have if we united our against common enemy.

Howard Zinn's biography is stunningly admirable, he lived, worked and wrote throughout his life in tune with his ideals. Professor Zinn's most excellant history is a powerful force in the prevelant paradigm of US history. "Historians may well see it as a step toward a coherent new version of American history"-Eric Foner, NYTBR

Written from the vantage point of the workers, the non-whites, the women 'A People's History' is unique in its empowering of todays underclass by teaching/showing us that our ancestors courageously stood up to the tyrannts of their times. Zinn transmits their long lost voices accross time to tell a history of resistance to corporate capitialism. As Zinn points out 'we the people' have allowed ourselves to be conquered by division, by the illusion of entitlement that allows the 'middle class' to be the gaurdians of the rich instead of our brothers and sisters at the barricades demanding social justice.

If i could be the Easter Bunny just once, i'd magically turn everyone onto Zinn's masterpeice, make it cool to be a Zinnhead.

Why the Feds Fear Thinkers Like Howard Zinn - by Chris Hedges
Zinn knew that if we do not listen to the stories of those without power, those who suffer discrimination and abuse, those who struggle for justice, we are left parroting the manufactured myths that serve the interests of the privileged.

The forgotten fan does not forget.

Out here in the hinterlands, the 85% of canuckistan outside Rogers' area, Jays fans are still fuming at the Rogers Empire and the soccer fans are starting to shake their World Cup hangovers off enough to see many of the coming years big games being held hostage by Rogers gung-ho fan screwers. But nobody's got a bigger voice than hockey fans and everyday another group of 'em figures out they too either won't get the games in their area or will be paying mordida to Rogers.

Blue Jay fans, like me, are not showing up at the gate, last week's games were the worst attendence all season. Some are turning in their cell phone contracts, many are supporting the boycott of merchandise, most think the Sportnet One debacle will hurt the Jays, all agree that Rogers' greed has broken the spirit of the fans accross the country.

Rogers lied to us, to me, they proudly announced earlier in the year that we'd be able to watch all 162 Jays games this season. Now i can't watch 'em, they lied. i've sent my complaint to the CRTC Complaints Division, it felt good to say my bit, might feel good for you too, go for it!

To paraphrase that prick Conrad Black: 'The forgotten fan does not forget'.

Sportsnet One Screens out the Sedins - Did we really need another sports station? One that carries Canuck games we can't see?

Senators fans might make noise, too

Biofuels, Food Riots and Land Grabs

Last week food riots caused by steep increases in the price of bread left seven people dead and hundreds injured in the southern African country of Mozambique. Not the first food riots this year or the last. The prices of grains are soaring worldwide because of extreme weather, because of biofuels production competing with food production for acreage and because of the increasing wealth and populations in the developing world, not least in the vast markets of India and China, which are fuelling the surge in demand for meat.

Grains have been the stuff of the staff of human life for thousands of years. Now though more than a third of the world's agricultural land goes to feeding meat and dairy production. Meat consumption's long-term growth trend is driving the grain price wildly skyward because it takes [on average] 10 grams of vegetable protien to grow 1 gram of meat. This 10-1 ratio didn't mtter when cattle were foraging on marginal land not suitable for agriculture but now things are different, agribusiness has turned cows into cash machines and our old bovine buddies no longer spend their days ambling through meadows munching now they spend their short violent lives knee deep in their own shit being force fed antibiotic laced grain, wonderful eh.

The World Bank Land Grab Report was made public today, their conclusion: Biofuels Cause Land Grabs simplifies the equation, dummy's it down for us non-elites, by putting the blame squarely on biofuels and avoiding the nasty, uncomfortable fact that what the rich want to eat is at least as big a factor in grain prices and land grabbing as biofuels.

Another factor the spinmeisters of international banking like to avoid are the ecological implications. Agribusiness consumes huge inputs to produce the food-like substances it markets, fertilizer, pesticides, drained aquifers etc. always make bankers happy but they all contribute to climate change whereas organic means of production sequesters atomospheric carbon. As the land grabs in poor countries by corporations and governments increases the bankers and capitialists wll be, once again, raking in obscene profits by spinning the facts, hiding the true costs and calling the difference quarterly profits.

Oh well, it's almost Happy Hour...

A common link among fire, floods, food riots: extreme weather

US Food Riots Much Closer Than You Think

Roger's Sportsnet 1 Knee Deep in the Big Muddy

Paul Beeston, current president of the Toronto Blue Jays, observed trying to answer the question: "Hey Paul, whadda ya think of Sportsnet One?"

Paul, like everybody else in Blue Jay Nation, knows the Rogers braintrust have thrown the Jays fans under the bus. The difference between Paul and the rest of us is that he's an owned man and we're not. Paul's a baseball guy recently turned into a vertically integrated corporate hack, he's yet to master the perfect ass-kissing technique so vaunted by his collegues, thus his moment of confusion when asked to choose between his team and his paymaster.

Eventually Paul spit out some pro-Rogers mumbo-jumbo and split. Everybody knows cutting off 85% of the nationwide fan base is insane especially the Blue Jays management.

Today/tonight under 40,000 will watch the Rangers vs. Jays on Sportsnet One. Some sports fans will watch the Canada vs. Honduras soccer game on all the regional Sportsnets but most will surf to TSN and the US Open. Rogers will lose at least 300,000 viewers and the advertising revenue to match. So it's a lose-lose-lose situation, we're all kneedeep in the Big Muddy and the fools at Rogers say push on.

Banks Rule, Workers Drool on Labor Day

There have been more than 300,000 foreclosure filings in the US every single month that Obama has been president. The Republican-Democratic robbing of the Treasury they call the 'Stimulas Package' kept the cleptocracy in power, kept Wall St. afloat and sank the working class. It's Labor Day, there's massive unemployment, millions are living in tent cities and on the streets. Where is the outrage?

In the US, government debt has reached a frightening 360% of US GDP. US government debt per person has soared from $16,000 per person in 2001 to $34,000 today, its unrepayable. The US simply prints more money every day to cover yesterday's excesses, it's bankrupt. But never mind, today the liar Obama is announcing another $50billion in stimulas, any bets in whose mits that dough will land or where it'll come from. Mine is it'll come from the Fed buying worthless T-bills with freshly minted money and it'll land in the hands of the bankers and their shareholders via interest and profits quicker than you can say The Toilet Bowl Theory of Economics.

Of course this game can't go on forever, sooner or later the Empire will obviously be naked and the whole thing will collapse. Whenever that day comes, and it could be a longtime comin as the capitialists and their corporate whores have a lotta treasure hoarded away that they'll try to use to divert the deluge, but me thinks a hard rains gonna fall.

Finally, the good news, in the aftermath of that collapsing economy, nature's bounty is poised for a comeback. The collapsing economy might salvage the living planet. When the collapse is complete, non-industrial cultures and non-human species will be relieved of tremendous, ongoing oppression by industrialization. Environmental advocate John Muir once said that he was better off than the billionaire E. H. Harriman. "I have all the money I want," Muir explained, "and he hasn't." And he never will have enough, neither will any of them fuckers in the Wall St. highrises. My advice on how the bankers can avoid the imminent collapse: Jump.

Starve Organized Crime, Shop Less

Sounds like Canada is about to build $9,000,000,000.00 worth of new prisons, not a bad idea if they were gonna house real criminals instead of just more of the poor, the drug addicted, the mentally disabled, the old, the native, those left behind by the consumer culture. The poor steal bread, the rich use our common resources as a dumping ground for their poisons.

The rich have bribed and corrupted the government, they own the banks, they own the corporations, if that isn't organized crime nothing is. North America wide the top 5% own 85% of the assets. Every dollar spent in the industrial economy ends up in the hands of the rich sooner rather than later. The rich have organized a system whereby the rest of us pay them interest [banks]. They've organized a system where any cost their corporations can avoid is calculated as profit. A system where they rule and we drool.

It's insane, we the people keep buying more useless crap in an attempt to fill the emotional void created by consumerism. "Round and round and round ya go, faster and faster, tighter and tighter until, like the fabled Malaysian Concentric Bird which flies in ever-smaller circles, you disappear up your own asshole"-Ed Abbey.

'Want Less', that's the only way out. Consume only re-used, re-cycled, re-furbished stuff. Pay cash or barter for everything. Don't send organized crime a dime of your hard earned money. Stay local, buy local, be local. If not, the planet's plunder will continue in the name of progress.

Animocracy Gives a Voice to Democracy's Silent Stakeholders

When we have the next election or convene the next big conference who'll speak for the totality of stakeholders, who'll speak for the birds and the bees, the bugs and the trees, the myriad billions of microscopic lives without whom none of us others could exist. Democracy is a myth because it assumes human dominion over all of creation, it assumes a self declared unique role for one rogue primate.

Democracy stands on the definations of stakeholder rights and who gets to vote. Remembering that not long ago we white guys were able to deceive ourselves into believing that women and blacks weren't deserving of equal stakeholder status, now we're saying only humans. We were deceiving ourselves before, and we are again.

“When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world”. - John Muir

Animocracy would, in a perfect world, give voice to the silent countless stakeholders in every bio-region not just the extractors and profiteers. Animocracy would re-draw democracy's attempt to control us all with artificial borders by re-establishing the watersheds and microclimates as the only real boundries and as an early step in re-focusing attention on the interconnectedness of our world. Animocracy is Gaian politics in action.

Over time, Life shapes the planet while the planet shapes Life. The moment one glimpses themselves as a part of that one interwoven Life the transformation from humanist to animist unfolds. We are all stakeholders in the biosphere, we will either survive together or not survive at all.

It's Unanimous, Jays Fans Irate Coast to Coast to Coast

As sportswriter Chris Zelkovich says, "Toronto Blue Jays fans across the country plan torch-and-pitchfork parades as they face being deprived of watching their favourite team on television" in his article Sportsnet One battle turns into a shooting war. Even out here in the heart of the west coast's lala land there are sports fans, lottsa them are Blue Jay fans. Up until a couple weeks ago it was easy to overhear people talking about the Jays. Not any more, now if two sports fans meet the first topic is the pigs at Rogers and their satanic child Sportsnet One.

The big brass at Rogers are #1 at one thing: shedding fans daily. In the here and now 'we the fans' feel lied to. We watched Rogers Sportsnet's 4 regional channels run commercials stating they were carrying ALL the Jays games "Right here on Sportsnet". Then, in their brain dead short-sighted wisdom, they changed where 'here' is and moved 25 Jays games onto a speciality channel nobody gets outside of S. Ontario [and nobody anywhere wants].

Raptors fans are next up to weep and wail as 23 Raptors' games will air exclusively on Sportsnet One starting in early October. The biggest fan explosion up here in Canuckistan against Rogers' schemes will be in two weeks when the hockey coverage schedule will be published..

These guys at Rogers are doing exactly what monopoly capitialists do. They've vertically integrated their niche, now its time to jack up the profit margins. Worked wonders on widgets but maybe not so well on 'we the fans'. The Rogers braintrust forgot that people often wiggle free as the screws are tightened, sometimes they organize and resist, sometimes they remember how much fun it was listening to baseball on the radio as a kid, someimes they just do something else with their time. Rogers has forgotten that to build the Jays' team they need a growng fan base not a shrinking one. And that watching a favorite baseball, basketball or hockey team is a habit reinforced by the community of friends that share the habit, no community-no fans.

Greenpeace's message: Go beyond oil. Where? Conservation and Hemp

Greenpeace protesters have climbed an oil exploration rig in the Arctic off Greenland. They say "Our climbers are on that rig with a simple message: Go beyond oil." And that, "We are faced with a choice: act with real urgency to move away from fossil fuels and develop the clean tools that will help us completely rebuild our economic system, or carry on squeezing out the last drops and hope for the best."

But where do we go to get beyond oil? Conservation is the most obvious and best answer. Every joule saved is really three, one being the embedded cost of the technology required to make every joule available, another being the downstream costs that will have to be paid to cleanup the mess left behind by its production and the 3rd being the profits-interest-taxes that won't be sucked outta your joule buying dollar by the forces of financial gravity also known as The Toilet Bowl Theory of Economics.

Next miracle hiding in plain view: Hemp. Jack Herer spent his life trying to educate everyone to the miracle of Hemp, to the truth about why Hemp's atributes have been hidden and by whom. Among the many great things on Jack's site is the section on 'Things Made of Hemp', it's well worth a visit. FreeLabs, another well informed Hemp research site says, "Hemp produces 4 times as much biomass per acre as the nearest competitor. 1 acre of hemp can produce 1000 gallons of methanol. That is enough to drive 20,000 miles on a 20mpg small SUV or 50,000 miles using a hybrid car. The average household consumes 3.6 gallons of crude oil per day."

The trouble, as we've seen in the Gulf recently, is that big oil owns the governments, the regulators and the courts. Hemp and conservation mean change which automatically means today's oil cartel will fight to the death to avoid them even being mentioned. 'Educate Yourself' as Jack said during his life's work and as Jeannie Herer, his wife, says in carrying on the work.