Emiliano Zapata-Revolutionary Defender of the Commons

Zapata was one of the two the most famous leaders of the Mexican Revolution, the other being Pancho Villa. Zapata was paid much lip but his revolutionary ideas are ignored by those who inherited the power won in the Revolution. Zapata's 'revolution as defence of the nation' is still a vibrant force in rural and indigenous Mexico today.

Zapata's Liberation Army of the South did not accept the new government, the Zapatistas fought on. The Zapatistas demanded 'tierra y libertad' - land and freedom - for their people. This was the core of Zapata's 'Plan de Ayala', clearly influenced by anarchist ideas, Zapata and his followers demanded the socialisation of land.

"The lands, forests and water that have been usurped ... will be immediately restored to the villages or citizens who have title to them ... Because the great majority of Mexicans own nothing more than the land they walk on ... one third of these properties will be expropriated ... so that the villages and citizens of Mexico may obtain ejidos , sites for towns, and fields." - Emiliano Zapata

A lot has changed in our world during the last 100 years, but Zapata's memory, like his ghost, rides on in Mexico. His name has been invoked by the indigenous rebel army in Chiapas, the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN), in their struggle against exactly the same social ills that Zapata fought against: large landlords and (often foreign-owned) big business running a corrupt and repressive régime that leaves the peasants, particularly indigenous peoples, landless and exploited. Throughout this century, people all over the world have risen up against oppression, taking heart from Zapata.

On 1 January 1994 the EZLN seized power in parts of Chiapas, southern Mexico, calling for the reforms Zapata had fought and died for. Forty thousand federal troops still surround the revolutionaries. The struggle of the indigenous and oppressed people of Mexico has never ceased and the EZLN have captured the imagination and support of many

The Prairie-Chicken wiped out in Canada

"The Greater Prairie-Chicken, a bird that once numbered in the millions on the grasslands, is now considered wiped out in Canada" - Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada

From millions of birds to none in about 100 years, the prairie-chicken has been wiped out in Canada. Another sad symptom of our suicidal short term lust to turn the consumption of the biosphere's bounty into quick bucks. The first Europeans to encounter North America's grasslands stood atop many feet of topsoil built up over millennia, the sequestered carbon exceeding 500 billion tons. Today, along with the prairie chicken, the top soil's extinction is imminent in most of the grassland's former domain.

When those first explorers and pioneers arrived on the North American prairie they saw the living grasslands from horizon to horizon. The most abundant types of plant life being: Buffalo Grass, Sunflower, Crazy Weed, Asters, Blazing Stars, Coneflowers, Goldenrods, Clover, and Wild Indigos. They saw a cornucopia of animals in the grasslands: Coyotes, Eagles, Bobcats, the Gray Wolf, Wild Turkey, Fly Catcher, Canadian Geese, Crickets, Dung Beetle, Bison, and of course the Prairie Chicken.

Thousands of years of agriculture have created ecological crisis throughout the world, but nowhere is the story more dramatic than in the North American grassland. We fenced the range, slaughtered the bison, overgrazed our cattle and over harvested the land. We ate up the topsoil, killed the microbes that sustained it with our fertilizers, harvested and harvested until the drought and the wind blew it away.

DNA evidence has concluded that the prairie-chicken is a species native to North America and has been around for at least 9,000 years. The flora and fauna of the grasslands created and sustained each other once, they could again. If the grasslands of North America were to allowed to live again they would begin to re-sequester the biomass we insanely used up. The grasslands and the prairie chicken can make a comeback, we, the rogue primate, can learn to live with our cousins not off them.

Nature has given us clear instructions as to how we must redesign agriculture and economy to resurrect the creative power of the plains. These instructions point the way not only to ecological restoration, but also to revived economy and human well-being. - Richard Manning

I Love The CBC

This morninng an old friend's email arrived extolling me to learn about the perilous situation the CBC. In part the email says: "Stephen Harper’s secret plan for the CBC was revealed on November 23rd when the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Canadian Heritage mused publicly about killing our public broadcaster! Consider for a moment: cutting CBC’s grant would kill CBC Radio One, CBC Radio Two, CBC Television and CBC NewsNet, leaving Canadian broadcasting entirely in the hands of the private broadcasters, and in the case of television, private broadcasters controlled by cable monopolies!"

YIKES! i love the CBC, it's not perfect but, compared to all the other north american competition, it's the only source willing to take even a modest anti-corporate perspective in choosing its news or documentary subjects. The CBC is an intagrel part of Canadian culture, millions of radios in Canada are permenently tuned to it, the National every evening is the most watched show almost every night, hell, Hockey Night in Canada is the most important unifying force Canada possesses. Kill the CBC, you kill Canada as we now know it.

Living here in southwest BC we have access to all the corporate American networks, the BBC and the Canadian networks. On any given day on any topic or story all of us are better off by examining things from different perspectives, the wider apart the better in terms of telemetry. Even the slight differences able to be gleaned from our available media can give a more multi-dimensional view. That's, for me-a news junkie, the #1 reason i love the CBC is the slightly different viewpoint that their mandate as a public broadcaster demands of them.

So, in my turn, i'll ask you to please sign the petition below in support of our beloved CBC. Agreed, Internet petitions are often useless, nonetheless, by reading up on the issue, by taking an action, i ended up more aware, more awake. You will too.



When governments control information, they control you - Anonymous

We are all told that totalitarian regimes use the control of information as one of their key tools, we don't often see as clearly our governments do the same. Back in my youth we believed that our 'free press' protected us, then, as the lies surrounding the Viet Nam war surfaced and the complicity of the press in supporting those lies became obvious that pipedream of protection from propaganda evaporated.

Now, 40 years later, our compliant media is controlled by the same corporate interests whose goal it is to encircle every commons for their private profit including the commons of the freedom of information that must underlie free speech if informed change is ever going to be possible.

The growing darkness of the light of personal freedom is the corporate agenda. Well informed, independent, people exercising their free will are most often difficult to control with simple fear tactics, they seldom stalk the malls in zombie like pursuit of consumables and they often resist in unpredictable ways.

Yesterday i did a buncha research on Anonymous and learned a lot. The link below to the story of retro theme fax machine attacks is good, but the video at the bottom, if you haven't seen it yet, is great. On the video the narrator says, “Anonymous, as a distributed consciousness, is focused on protesting peacefully for Freedom of Expression on the Internet. We ask the world to support us, not for our sake, but for your own. When governments control information, they control you.”

Anonymous starts fax attacks - On the Anonymous message board, folks participating in the action were reminded not to be disrespectful and send anything distasteful across the fax lines. Some sites have dubbed this the first “denial of service” fax machine attacks they’ve ever witnessed, although quite how many faxes have been sent, and whether this has had much effect on the offices of the respective companies is unclear. We’d suggest pushing the retro theme even further. How about some carrier pigeons trained to poop through Paypal’s office windows?

Bill C-6 violates Canadians' rights and freedoms

Bill C-6 gives Health Canada inspectors the right to search for and seize 'unapproved products' on people’s property without a warrant, which is a forbidden under Canada's Charter of Rights and Freedoms. 'Unapproved products' means everything that can't be profited on because it's unpatentable, criminalizing free choice and thousands of years of traditional cultural wisdom, and giving the industrial food and drug companies total domination of the marketplace.

Under Bill C-6, a person is considered guilty until proven innocent –the opposite from normal court procedures. The supplements aisle could shrink by 80 percent if natural health product companies don’t have the capacity to prove the safety of a “natural health product” through the scientific method. Every small organic market garden operation will be in non-compliance immediately. Individuals by the millions are turning to small, locally produced organic foods and products, the argibusiness and pharma corporations hate the competition and Bill C-6 is their scheme to keep control.

Bill C-6 violates Canadians' right to independently choose what's good for them and their freedom from unwarranted search-seizure. Why is there hardly any coverage of this bill in the news? The intention is for it to be passed quietly and a compliant corporate friendly media is greasing the way. Canadians should look closely at its details to judge whether the price paid is worth it.

This, Bill C-6, is the inside of the glove protecting the Canadian fist of oppression just as the 'security-perimeter' can be seen as it's outside. If our duty is to resist-oppose-rebel against the beast then Bill C-6 is a tangible target for us. We can resist by not changing our choices out of fear, by becoming part of the big solutions, by planting your own garden, by supporting your neighbors who do, by awakening to the source of the darkness and moving toward the light.

Bill C-6 will be passed into law any day now. It's to late to stop, but never to late to resist.

Pig-slaughter case sees Ottawa man cite charter

Laws, Morals and Order

"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

Today's article by Chris Hedges 'No Act of Rebellion Is Wasted' is another inspiring call to action by him, another step on the road to rebellion. Laws are meaningless compared to morals. Laws are made by the few to control the many, to control, and to keep order. i suspect that all of us, to differing degrees, obey the laws we agree with according to an individual inner moral code. Once upon a time slavery was legal-didn't make it a tidbit more moral. Anti-semitism was legal lottsa places and times in history, being lawful didn't make that moral either.

Hedges had a few moving paragraphs in his piece today, my favorite:
"We may feel, in the face of the ruthless corporate destruction of our nation, our culture, and our ecosystem, powerless and weak. But we are not. We have a power that terrifies the corporate state. Any act of rebellion, no matter how few people show up or how heavily it is censored by a media that caters to the needs and profits of corporations, chips away at corporate power. Any act of rebellion keeps alive the embers for larger movements that follow us. It passes on another narrative. It will, as the rot of the state consumes itself, attract wider and wider numbers. Perhaps this will not happen in our lifetimes. But if we persist we will keep this possibility alive. If we do not, it will die."

We have a duty to oppose-resist immoral laws. Every act of resistance creates a whirlpool of downstream effects. Each act awakens the actor. The vagabond homesteader, old RV owner, dog lover, long term near poverty resistance tactic may not be yours but one thing it does is 'act onto others as you'd have them act unto you', the golden rule.

"Hope and justice live when people, even in tiny numbers, stand up and fight for them." - Chris Hedges

The Darkness of Oppression

"As nightfall does not come at once, neither does oppression. In both instances, there's a twilight where everything remains seemingly unchanged, and it is in such twilight that we must be aware of change in the air, however slight, lest we become unwitting victims of the darkness." - Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas

The 'darkness of oppression' that Douglas speaks of above slowly encloses us each day. Yesterday i wrote about the 'security'-trade perimeter, tomorrow it'll be Canada's Bill C-6. They are the outside and inside of the same glove. They are two more steps further into that 'darkness'.

Corporate interests, and consequently those of the governments they own, always seek greater profits and less competition. These objectives are best achieved where there are very few voices of dissent, where consumers are predictable, where laws are harmonized to suit them and where they own and control a compliant media. Control is a biggy, but humans, free, independent humans, can be wickedly difficult to control.

So, down through time, the powerful have learned a few tricks in the control game. Fear works, especially fear of the unknown-the bogeyman, the psychological darkness of fear can transform free and independent people into pawns of the powerful. This is not news, this is history, our history, as Benjamin Franklin said, "People who are willing to sacrifice liberty for security end up with neither".

i realize most every attempt to define the power behind 'darkness of oppression' leads into the quagmire of conspiracy theories, the Tri-Lateral Commission, the Bildenburg Group, the Illuminati, the Club of Rome, the New World Order, etc. These groups do exist, except maybe the Illuminati Lizards, they do conspire to harmonize financial, labour, immigration, security and law enforcement policies to maximize the short term and long term objectives of the already rich and powerful.

"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism, since it is the merger of state and corporate power." - Benito Mussolini

Canada's 'security'-trade plan with US and the great manipulator

Who's 'security' gets protected by higher fences, bigger guns, less privacy and more fear of the unknown? Not mine, not yours either i'd bet. As theUS Department of Homeland Security has already proven along their US-Mexican border 50ft high fences spawn 51ft ladders. Real security lies is having and being a good neighbor, invading, torturing and terrorizing civilians with deadly drone attacks isn't often viewed as neighborly. These pathetic attempts to mollify the population into returning to their zombie like march to the malls are in themselves are huge danger to real security.

Harmonizing, collaborating and information-sharing to promote a trade agenda with the fear spun Americans hasn't worked before, won't now either. Its deja-vu all over again, remember the Security and Prosperity Partnership? and how North Americans rejected it? Now a buncha lawyers who, like rust, never sleeps has cooked up a new plan that won't change anything along the 49th parallel, not one more truck will roll through, not one less car load of Canadians will be lined up to consume in the yankee malls It'll just be another layer in the US security onion delusion.

"From the Harper government's hastily passed Anti-Terrorism Act to the controversial 'no-fly' list, harmonization has violated civil liberties while not improving trade between Canada and the United States in the slightest." - Council of Canadians

The US bigshots want unfettered access to Canada's natural resources especially oil right now, but increasingly water as time goes on. These guys see Canada as a colony, an amusing, polite, bi-lingual colony. Amerikans see Canada as already under their security blanket, most Amereikans think the only reason we can afford such luxuries as health care is because they protect Canada and its precious resources from the bogeyman with its nukes.

Security comes from full stomachs, warm-dry homes, meaningful work, education for the kids and a few laughs with friends. For some the freedom to enjoy the comfort of their religion, for others a few beers on Saturday night...but real security never comes out of reacting to fear. We are fed lies to keep us divided, fear of the unknown is the great manipulator if we let it be. My homeland is secure, my best friend gaurds us against the coyotes and bears while i keep an eye peeled for religious fanatics and tax collectors.

Council of Canadians demands release of secret Canada-US perimeter security plan

The Mud Report Turns One

A year ago today i thought-hoped The Mud Report would be a multi-user forum where all the bright well spoken people i know, and all the people they know etc, would share their new ideas and their big solutions to the big, complex problems we all face. It turned out that from the first post onward it was my baby.

i wondered at times if i'd be able to find topics everyday that would fit into The Mud Report's 'leadership from the bottom' perspective. It turned out that everyday there were always to many ideas, almost everyday i'd write one piece and think 2-3 others. Today is no different.

Europe has got the austerity blues, yesterday's student riots in the UK were emblematic. All over the world times are tough, the rich have a stranglehold on the planets resources, the poor are uniting, uncertainty reigns. The Irish fellow in the video below clearly understands the reality we all must face together. "Resist much, obey little." -Walt Whitman



Let The Anonymous Speak

"The internet is capable of connecting us all. When we are connected we are strong. When we are strong we have power. When we have power we are able to do the impossible. This is why the government is moving on WikiLeaks. This is what they fear. They fear our power when we unite. Do not forget this. We are Everywhere. We are Everyone. We are Anonymous."

Hacktivists will continue to attack, rumor has it today is Amazon's turn. The hacktivists collectively overwhelm a website's server with requests. This 'denial of service' attack is an annoyance to financial places like Visa-MC-PatyPal who have their processes operating safely-securely far from their public website-homepage. In Amazon's case the 'Anonymous' attack could be more than annoyance. We'll see.

A main goal of 'Anonymous' is to draw attention to their cause. So far, so good. One message is that the internet is a tool, like any tool, it's magic is in the magician. Julian Assange believes WikiLeaks will change the world, could be right, but it could be cyberwarfare in the short run.

Meanwhile i don't think 'Anonymous' is into, or able to, cripple any body's bank accounts or intravenous credit cards. There's lottsa great reasons to live a cash life, if 'Anonymous' can also open more people's eyes that's great. Fear not, let the Anonymous speak.

'Hacktivists' Warn Over More Action

Hactivist group persists with attack plans despite Twitter, Facebook blocks

Corky Evans - The Commons Is The Essential Prop Of Democracy

"Don't ever think that wealth ever comes from any place except labour and dirt."- Corky Evans

What the NDP here in BC needs is a leader with ideals, a leader who can reinvigorate the party with new ideas and a vision that connects with voters. The NDP must end their internal battles and rediscover their common cause. Today, after reading the Tyee's interview 'Corky Evans Unplugged', i think Corky Evans is that kinda person.

Below are links to a series of articles and interviews with Corky when he was in government. Each of them is right on. Corky Evans is the MLA who lost his teeth trying not to say the word "horseshit" in the legislature, when the word was already halfway out. Corky, a politician who always stood up and spoke up for the little guy, once said, "The commons is the essential prop of democracy, that without a sense of agrarian community, economic freedom is impossible and democracy is a lie. That's kind of the underpinning of my view."

Corky wears his heart on his sleeve, he offers big solutions to big problems:
"If you're asking about the large public policy questions, what it would take to make land-based resources sustainable and profitable, it would take breaking monopoly control of the beef industry, and the seed industry, and the logging business, and the fishing business."
"If you're asking what it would take to make things work, it would take breaking the monopolies, and it would take the public deciding that they want competition, free enterprise and creativity, and they don't want corporate control."

RUN CORKY RUN

Corky Evans on Making the Woods Work
Markets are good, logging can be honourable, and the left must lay claim to the language of the right to achieve its goals.

'Dear Friends of Formosa Nursery'
An NDP MLA vents his frustration at those who would pave a blueberry farm.

The Emperor Has No Clothes
Podcast: 'Deconstructing Dinner' records Corky Evans on food politics in BC.

La Via Campesina's Global Day of Action for Climate Justice

With colorful flags, hats, signs, posters, and lots of music the protesters took to the streets of Cancun and other parts of the world today as part of La Via Campesina's Global Day of Action for Climate Justice which has as its main slogan "Peasants cool the planet". The protesters will announce their opposition to the mechanisms being imposed in COP 16 such as the false solutions of carbon markets, REDD, agrofuels and geoengineering being imposed on the peoples of the world.

This action is part of the thousands of activities to be performed worldwide as La Via Campesina's “thousands of Cancun's.” Actions will happen in Latin America, Asia, Europe, Africa and in the United States and Canada. The actions include public meetings, forums and sit-in's in Korea, Ecuador, Peru, Uruguay, Brazil, Nepal, Turkey, and mass actions in India, Argentina, Indonesia, El Salvador, the Philippines and Mexico. It is estimated that these actions and events will bring together more than 1 million people.

Up here in Canada our Conservative government is totally behind the REDD program, it's the best thing since white bread to a buncha tar sands lackeys. See, if REDD gets adopted Canada gets huge carbon credits for all the forests they aren't currently mowing down. Then when they plant rows of GMO cloned hemlocks and feed 'em with petrochemicals they get more credits. All these groovy free carbon credits will be applied to Canada's carbon account and more than balance out the tar sands disaster. The three countries with the largest still intact forests, Russia-Brazil-Canada, are REDD's biggest boosters.

Every part of the globe has what seems like local issues, local problems with the whole COP process. The COP process is a front for the capitalists to slither into and out of private ownership of what was up until now part of the commons. Each of the schemes, the banker's solutions of carbon markets, REDD, agrofuels and geoengineering, all designed to sound good while allowing Business As Usual-no actual CO2 reductions and produce huge profits for the corporations and the banks that finance the schemes.

Viva La Via Campesina!

'Foro Global Por La Vida La Justicia Ambiental Y Social' gets under way in Cancun

Alternative Global Forum for Life, Environmental and Social Justice, led by Via Campesina-the International Peasant Movement, farmers have been travelling around Mexico before their caravans arrived here. Among the major actions planned is a day of protests on December 7 to reject the “false and market-based solutions” to climate change. Positioned as a direct challenge to the United Nations meetings, Via Campesina, which has a presence in more than 70 countries, has been uniting farmers, workers and indigenous people to stake a claim for their rights and make their voices heard.

Agribusiness is corporate business, they're only goal is short term profit, it matters not if we mortgage the future, if we burn up the resources, if we turn the arable land into deserts. Agribusiness is in the business of not paying all those inconvenient long term costs, and a lotta others [like how much is a depleted aquifer worth]. Agribusiness sells cheap food to the world by not paying anywhere near the full costs of producing it. Agribusiness depletes our real wealth, pollutes our Mother Earth and enriches the few while enslaving the many.

Organic farming and range management do pay their share, they sequester CO2, increase arable land area, create soils that hold water and is a part of the great circle of life we are immersed in. Paul Hepperly, The Rodale Institute's research manager, says, "The extent of carbon sequestration found and the impressive ability of organic systems to capture carbon are important results that should be used by policy makers when planning future agriculture development."

Small is beautiful. Having spent a good portion of my life on my knees with my hands in the earth i learned...to love the weeds, to love the worms, to see the circle of the seasons and this one life turn. i learned that the magic is in the process not the product, that, once the basics of survival are covered, more money doesn't equal more happiness, often, more is less...

Farmers to denounce “market-based solutions” to climate change

Opening day of Global Forum for Life and Environmental and Social Justice

Even in death Abbey was inspirational

Edward Abbey, in a career spanning four decades, wrote passionately in defense of the Southwest and its inhabitants, "Resist much, obey little," from Walt Withman, was his motto. Abbey was a genuine rebel who simply did not believe in the modern industrial way of life. He wrote against the grain, in 1969 he published one of the first great environmental novels 'Desert Solitare'. Abbey's novel 'The Monkey Wrench Gang' inspired many of the direct action enviromental protection movements of our time.

Abbey was a dedicated outdoorsman, a father, a farmer, a rancher, a lover and a drinker. His books and essays are a must read and will, hopefully, continue to inspire generations long into the future. The website 'Abbey's Web' is a great resource for learning more about Abbey's life and his works.

Edward Abbey died March 14 1989 at his home in "Fort Llatikcuf " (read backwards) near Tucson, Arizona from complications from surgery. He was 62. Even in death Abbey was inspirational, his burial was different from all others, as requested by himself. Abbey wrote a message directed to his wife and pertained to what Ed Abbey wanted done for him, and not to him, after his death.

He wanted his body transported in the bed of a pickup truck. He wanted to be buried as soon as possible. He wanted no undertakers. No embalming, for Godsake. No coffin. Just an old sleeping bag... Disregard all state laws concerning burial. "I want my body to help fertilize the growth of a cactus or cliff rose or sagebrush or tree." said the message. As for graveside ceremony: He wanted gunfire, and a little music.

Ed lived a great life, his books and essays continue to inspire me and many others, Edward Abbey is one of my heroes.

Viva La Revolucion Organica!!

La Via Campesina is leading the charge of the small scale organic revolution especially this week in Cancun. Everyday the numbers outside the barricaded chateaus grows. Everyday the marches grow larger, the marchers more jubilant. Inside the barricades the dinosaurs do their dastardly deeds, outside the peasants party. Inside it looks hopeless, outside a rising tide of hope.

The hope springs from the growing understanding that organic farming and ranching on just a quarter of the Earth's 12 billion acres of farmland and range land can clean out and safely store in the soil 3,000-7,000 pounds of carbon dioxide per acre per year. If farmers stop planting GMOs and make the transition to organic farming, farm and ranch land will become a significant sink or sequestration pool for greenhouse gasses, literally sucking excess greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere and sequestering them safely in the soil, where they belong.

Earth has five pools or repositories where greenhouse gases are absorbed, stored and re-cycled: the oceans (which contain 40 trillion tons of carbon), the atmosphere (800 billion tons), the soils (3.2 trillion tons), plants and forests (650 billion tons), and hydrocarbon/fossil fuel deposits (4 trillion tons). The current living soils of the Earth hold four times as much carbon as the atmosphere. Before the advent of industrial agriculture and industrial forestry, these same soils sequestered or stored twice as much carbon organic matter as they do today, or eight times the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere today.

Bringing the soil back to life is the dream and the work of millions who'll live in more diverse, and more localized economies. Bringing it back to it's former sequestration capacity would be useless unless the industrial agriculture model that has destroyed the natural sequestration capabilities of our farmlands, pastures, range lands, and wetlands is abandoned. Viva La Revolucion Organica!!

Climate Catastrophe: Surviving the 21st Century:


Organic Farming Sequesters Atmospheric Carbon and Nutrients in Soils - "The extent of carbon sequestration found and the impressive ability of organic systems to capture carbon are important results that should be used by policy makers when planning future agriculture development." Paul Hepperly, The Rodale Institute's research manager.

BC's NDP Leader Carole James and The Italian Flag Principle

Headlines across BC picture Carole James as on the horns of a dilemma. Should she stay or should she go? The same 'ol two sided logic that traps us so often. There is another logic that is right now making huge inroads into the fuzzy zone of unknowns. It's called The Italian Flag model, (IF), is a representation of three-valued logic in which evidence for a proposition is represented as green, evidence against is represented as red, and residual uncertainty is represented as white. The white area reflects uncommitted belief, which can be associated with uncertainty in evidence or unknowns, both known and unknown.

The term unknown unknown refers to circumstances or outcomes that were not conceived of by an observer at a given point in time. The meaning of the term becomes more clear when it is contrasted with the known unknown, which refers to circumstances or outcomes that are known to be possible, but it is unknown whether or not they will be realized. The term is used in project planning and decision analysis to explain that any model of the future can only be informed by information that is currently available to the observer and, as such, faces substantial limitations and unknown risk. - Wikipedia

That's where Carole sits, not on the horns of a go-stay dilemma, but in the white zone of uncertainty. Like all difficult choices, there are the arguments for and against each choice and the unknowns floating around in between. When looked at through the IF lens it seems that any conclusion to Carole's situation, like all situations that require a conclusion, can never be 100% certain. Certainty and logic, certainty and science, are strangers. Certainty has no unknown-unknowns, no IF to consider.

Applying the IF model to Carole's situation it appears she has a fairly equal number of supporters and non-supporters among elected NDP incumbents and roughly the same number of uncommitted members of caucus. Neither 'stay' or 'go' can produce the near unanimity Carole, or any party leader, needs. The third choice, open the leadership race tomorrow, offers Carole, or whoever wins, the opportunity, after hearing the uncertain member's admonitions, to include all the known and knowable-unknown voices and thereby minimize the uncertainty, white part of the IF, to only the always present unknown-unknowns. Carole could well be the best choice, let's see.

'Every MLA Will Be Held Accountable': James - As NDP leader announces emergency caucus meeting, some see fate of the party hanging in the balance.

Austerity Comes to Ireland

The road to ruin that Ireland took is well laid out in an excellent article: ‘Disaster Capitalism’ Comes to Ireland by Robert E. Prasch. It's the same road Greece took and Iceland and Italy and...all of 'em, if they call themselves capitalists, they took the free lunch bait and are now in trouble. The Irish 'bailout' will be paid back at 5.8% interest, higher than a mortgage at the corner bank. Guess Ireland is a good bet to either go bankrupt or go rogue.

The bankers get bonuses, the rest of us get austerity programs. Austerity means less spending on education [the rich have private schools anyway], health care, social services, etc. everything the many need especially in tough times. What austerity doesn't mean is higher taxes on the rich, the banks or the corporations.

The corporate control of our world is so vast that people who call themselves anything politically—liberal, conservative, progressive, libertarian, independents or anarchist—should be banding together against the reckless industrial steamroller. Austerity is a tool. If wielded from afar it's a tool of oppression. If self imposed it's a tool of independence.

People are marching by the millions all across Europe to protest the austerity measures being imposed on them as a means of paying off the debts incurred by their governments when bailing out their banker buddies. Going rogue is a way out.

“History doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme.” – Mark Twain

La Via Campesina at Cancun

La Via Campesina and its friends are traveling in caravans from across Mexico and converging on Cancun. The caravans will stop at various places of peasant, social and environmental struggles, as well as at the world alternative Forum and for a large demonstration taking place in Cancun as well as in the rest of the world, on December 7th. The alternative conference at Cancun, The Global Forum for Life and Environmental and Social Justice, will focus on small-scale and diverse solutions in contrast to the unremitting march of carbon-emitting, neoliberal globalization.

La Via Campesina and its allies will propose alternatives to the climate crisis and to the lack of responsible agreement between governments. A press release from La Via Campesina gives a schedule of highlights during The Global Forum for Life and Environmental and Social Justice. It'll be a great week wrapped up with a speech by Evo Morales of Bolivia.

The International Peasant Movement, will attempt to make two basic points:

1. That industrial agriculture is by far the biggest source of carbon emissions is based on a recent study that looked at all emissions from the global food system. Surprisingly, one-third of the emissions come from food processing and transport. The bulk of emissions come from land use changes - conversions of forest and grasslands - and from direct agricultural production like fuel use, fertilizers and tillage.

2. The potential rates of carbon sequestration due to improved range land management practices have been shown to rise from 50 to 150 (kilograms carbon per hectare per year). If farmers could make the transition to organic farming the land base could, passively, become a significant sink or sequestration pool for greenhouse gasses, literally sucking excess greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere and sequestering them safely in the soil, where they belong.
 
Organic Farming Sequesters Atmospheric Carbon and Nutrients in Soils "The extent of carbon sequestration found and the impressive ability of organic systems to capture carbon are important results that should be used by policy makers when planning future agriculture development." Paul Hepperly, The Rodale Institute's research manager.

Cancun, and more Consequential C Words - Considering climate change, Copenhagen, Cochabamba, the coming calamity, and most controversial: capitalism.

Cancún, where money talks

It's fitting that Cancún is the setting, it's unnatural, plastic, over-priced, corrupt, garish and absolutely un-Mexican, for the latest climate debate-debacle. The Americans are spearheading the charge to commodify everything and thereby give their corporations even more private, for profit, access to the globe's common wealth. Not just the Yanks, many Euro folks, the Canucks, the Aussies, the Japanese, lately the Chinese...all the haves, can be heard in the background singing 'yup-yup-yup'.

REDD is this iteration's [COP16] hottest acronym. REDD, or reduced emissions from deforestation and forest degradation, is one of the most controversial new issues in the climate change debate. The basic concept is simple: governments, companies or forest owners in the South should be rewarded for keeping their forests instead of cutting them down. The devil, as always, is in the details.

REDD will destroy indigenous forest cultures."Everyone who cares about our future, forests, Indigenous Peoples and human rights should reject REDD because it is irremediably flawed, cannot be fixed and because, despite efforts to develop safeguards for its implementation, REDD will always be potentially genocidal." - Tom Goldtooth, indigenous environmental leader and contributer to Red Cancun: A Daily Guide to the COP16 Summit from the Indigenous Environmental Network.

There are several concerns about the way REDD is currently developing:

• Failure to recognise Indigenous Peoples’ rights in the UNFCCC.
• Failure to consult with Indigenous Peoples and local communities (for example in the FCPF).
• The UN definition of forests fails to differentiate between plantations and forests, meaning that companies could replace forests with monoculture tree plantations and still qualify for subsidies under REDD.
• “Technical” issues: Baselines, measurements, additionally, leakage, permanence.
• There is a serious risk of increasing corruption: in the South, where large sums of money could pour into some of the most corrupt regimes on the planet as well as in the North, where a new sub-prime market in forest carbon could be created.
• There is a risk of increased deforestation in the build-up to Copenhagen. For example, earlier this year, Indonesia allowed pulp companies to log native forests and allowed oil palm plantations to be established in peat swamps. Guyana is threatening that it could increase the rate of deforestation unless it is compensated for not doing so through REDD.
• Trading carbon stored in forests would create an enormous loophole allowing greenhouse gas emissions to continue. There is also a high likelihood that allowing forest carbon to be traded would lead to a crash in the price of carbon.
• Trading forest carbon would also fail to address climate change – we need to find ways to stop burning fossil fuels, not create massive new loopholes to allow the pollution to continue.

REDD is an idea dreamt up by economists. Accountants and economists count the board feet of timber but miss the greater forest. The forest is a living community, its life can be extinguished or cherished but never bought and sold.

"The interests of the corporation state are to convert all the riches of the earth into dollars."

-William O. Douglas, former U.S. Supreme Court Justice, 1969

Voting Against Goldman Sachs

Banks are corporations, corporations serve only their shareholders short term investment interests, therefore banks serve only shareholders' interests. The banks have their tentacles in almost every cranny, mortgages-lines of credit-credit cards-car loans-etc. The bank's already rich shareholders get slightly richer with every banking transaction. There's a huge sucking sound, it's the rich vacuuming your wallet, it's gotta stop.

How? Use Cash. Freeze out the bankers share. Learn about 'The Toilet Bowl Theory of Economics", learn the power of wanting less, learn to live independently in an interdependent framework, exercise your free will. Every independent action, freely chosen, further awakens the actor. At some point enough independent actions and unexpected acts of resistance would be called an insurrection. The success of this insurrection wouldn't depend on the size of the crowd nor extent of the media coverage, but on its usefulness, through a million tiny awakenings, in bringing corporate capitalism to a grinding halt.

"The giant corporate control of our country is so vast that people who call themselves anything politically—liberal, conservative, progressive, libertarian, independents or anarchist—should be banding together against the reckless Big Business steamroller." - Bill Totten

"If we are ever going to save the earth from climate change, pollution, species decline, and the stark-raving-madness of the consumer culture we will have to radically reform the corporation. Anything less and we can kiss the planet goodbye. But that will be so difficult we might as well set our sites even higher and get rid of this dangerously insane "citizen" amongst us -- one utterly irredeemable and incapable of rehabilitation. A good start would be to find a compelling case to take to the Supreme Court and have corporations' "natural persons" status removed." - Murray Dobbin

"Justice demands that we take more from the rich so as to reduce inequality. But this idea, along with most ideas concerning economic justice and people's control over the economy, was cleansed from the debate. Certain ideas have since become unthinkable, which is in the interest of corporations such as Goldman Sachs. The power to exclude certain ideas serves the power of corporations. It is unfortunate that there is no political party in the United States to run against Goldman Sachs. I am in favor of elections, but there is no way I can vote against Goldman Sachs." - Chris Hedges

Shamanism, Emotions and the Immune System

Shamanism is the spiritual practices of ancient civilizations and cultures. Shamanism is the oldest healing tradition in the world. Shamans were powerful men, sometimes women, who served as intermediaries between the natural and supernatural world. Shamans are held in the highest regard due to their authority in matters of death, of healing and of the spirit realms. The brandishing that authority is the real Shaman's Art.

Belief is a powerful healer, modern medicine calls it the placebo effect which is often belittled by big pharma and their drug distribution network. But 'before big pharma', BBF, started selling us its wonder snake oil our ancestors swore by their earlier versions. My grandparents knew plenty of miraculous recoveries caused by elixirs [and i'd add the revivalist spirit of the seller].

Science is convinced, emotions are hugely involved in immune response in every culture, geography and climate. Bobby McFarrin's advice, "Don't Worry, Be Happy" gets a thumbs up from the peer-review community. People are often most healthy when they are happy and vice-versa. Healthy people are internally independent, they exercise their free will with empathy for all, within a framework of the possible. Free will, freedom to chose, freedom to change makes happy people and-as we learned a few days back- Happy people would often choose to eat happy buffalo, who ate happy grass, that lived in happy soil, that helped clean the air, who helped clean the lungs and the thoughts of the previously unhappy people.

Back on our little farm there was a Shaman's Garden where i grew magic medicinal plants. Our climate and growing season set limits on the things we grew, nevertheless we grew a wide variety of organic food and medicinal plants for ourselves and our neighbors, medicinals included:

Comfrey - grows abundantly here without any help works miracles on all kinds of skin ailments

Lemon Verbena - an instant cure for depression, like listening to the banjo, ya can’t smell it without smiling

Opium Poppies - easy to save and store plus its tea can make even the most worn out hip a little less painful and a lot more fun

Mota - like opium, another cure for what ails ya, both have been in use for thousands of years

Purple Sage - very strong tasting but also a very strong cleansing smudge comes from burning the dried flowers

Blackberries, Salmonberries, Huckleberries, and Thimbleberries - that we didn’t do anything to help grow, we just grazed and enjoyed the bounty and nourishment.

In many cases i've seen personally how a stroll through the Shaman's garden, a few questions and answers, a bit of belief engendered, can lead to people taking control of their own health. Growing and tending a few herbs, picking some 'wild' berries are independent acts initiated by free will. Interdependent we are, our biology determines the parameters of our action, but not its direction-not its intent. Each of our destinies is unique because we have free will. The extent to which each individual gets to exercise their free will the greater their sense of independence and freedom. Clear a small area this winter, add compost and worms as soon as possible in your climate, start a few magic herbs, learn their stories, share their stories and the herbs with friends. Watch as cousins beam with inner power and vitality upon learning the stories and the herbs...Become the Shaman.

Emotions and the Immune System

Canada's Team, Roughrider Nation, Rolls Into Edmonton Looking For The Cup

Edmonton's downtown is unseasonably green these last few days, today, with just one day before the big game, the party will be bigger than ever. The Saskatchewan Roughriders have become Canada's Team in that they are every one's second choice [after their local favorite]. They have the smallest population base and the greatest fans.

After last year's embarrassing loss to Montreal, Roughrider fans are looking extra green this year [perhaps from holding their breath until the last whistle]. There are some Montreal fans among the crowds, they kinda stand out in the sea of green surrounding them. Montreal is probably the bookies favorite by a couple points, but here in BC, and the rest of the west, it's Roughrider Nation at least 'til Monday.

Keep your beer cold and your chips dry it could be a barn burner. Out west here fans will tell ya that the he Roughriders big-play potential on offence will be the difference. Al's fans snicker and ask if Saskatchewan's found anyone who can count to 13 yet.

Canada has a few moments every year where this vast country, coast to coast to coast, 51/2 time zones, come together, tomorrow is one of them. Canada's culture rides on the shoulders of its sports heroes, none broader than the Roughriders. i'm bettin Saskatchewan will finish its centennial season with a Grey Cup championship.

GO RIDERS GO

Zombie Walk and Whirl-Mart = Black Friday Theatre

Whirl-Mart is a 'mall theater' event where a group of supposed shoppers slowly push empty shopping carts silently through store aisles. Participants will not buy anything and form a lengthy chain of non-shoppers, continually weaving and "whirling" through a maze of store aisles.Whirl-Marters seek to mimic and mock what they perceive as the absurdity of the shopping process.

The Zombie Walk is big too. In this ritual the cheerful dead wander around malls marveling at the blank, comatose expressions on shoppers' faces. The zombies are happy to be among their own kind, but slightly contemptuous of those who have not yet begun to rot. There are over 500 organized theatre performances registered at Adbusters. Check it out, there are meetups and small theatre actions you could join and support. Why no give it a Whirl?

It's Black Friday and millions of my fellow humans are storming the malls [evolution eh?]. It's also Buy Nothing Day and we're well into The Carnivalesque Rebellion where Adbusters' culture jammers of all kinds – from artists to churchgoers, anarchists to carpenters – will disregard the illegitimate laws of consumer society [hopefully]. The Carnivalesque Rebellion is, above all else, a chance to rise above cynicism, skepticism, and ironic detachment. It is an invitation to don the prankster’s mask, to regain the sense of magical possibility, and to finally start living.

Canuckistan saves it's grossest consumption for Boxing day, interestingly malls on both sides of the border now promote both Boxing Day and Black Friday sales. Ain't it grand? On the other hand a Google Search of Buy Nothing Day in the news shows thousands of people in hundreds of communities are out whirling through the isles, that zombies are wandering among the dazed shoppers happy to be among their own kind, both groups are urging us all to simply want less.

"The success of our insurrection will not depend on quantity of the crowd nor extent of the media coverage. In some cities the rebellion may be invisible and in others its impact downplayed. None of that matters. The Carnivalesque Rebellion will be victorious when we stop waiting for the majority, the mainstream, or the consumer class to give us permission to rebel. The revolution against consumerism will come when we trust our intuition and find within ourselves the permission to act." - Adbusters

Sacrificing civility to the Dollar Almighty - Today plenty of Americans will fall in with their comrades and try to massacre their Christmas lists. On the other hand, they might simply surrender. After all, Black Friday also happens to be Buy Nothing Day.

Thanks For The Memories

'The First Thanksgiving' by Jean Louis Gerome Ferris
notice how Ferris gives the best friend center stage

That first Thanksgiving was a high water mark in Euro-American relations with their indigenous cousins. There really were a number of first Thanksgivings but they all shared one feature, starving European colonists being fed by empathic natives. The native inhabitants were animists, they believed that plants and animals had spirits which were angered by the harvest. To appease these spirits, tribes would make offerings which often included elaborate festivals. These ceremonies provided the foundation for today’s Thanksgiving Day holiday.

Early on i learned that football, dinner and a nap were followed by endless turkey sandwiches and days of turkey soup. Even back then i had lots to be thankful for. Thanksgiving, back in the day, wasn't a prelude to shopping, it was a day of football shaped turkeys and those damn brussel sprouts.

There's a lot to give thanks for everyday, the health of my kids and grand kids, the love of my best friend Pancho, the forest, the air we share, everything really. Thanks for the snow falling outside, thanks for the hot coffee and the window between them. Thanks for the memories...Thanks

Winter Arrives Early - a good day to prepare for the Big Run on Dec. 7th

The coyotes come rolling through around 4AM lately, Pancho hears 'em-smells 'em-barks at 'em, and our day begins. The possibility of freezing focuses the mind. It's beautiful, crystal clear arctic air, crunchy ground underfoot-the mud having retreated into hibernation-a million-million stars. we see 'em early. It was -10C yesterday morning and it is again today. Unusual that winter would arrive so quickly and so early to the hideout. Even the insurrection slows down at these temperatures.

i love the first few days of snow and cold each year, always have. It's invigorating to breathe the cold air. It bring back memories of cold air breathed during New England winters when i was a kid sledding down its hills. One of the best parts of growing up back in Adams, Mass was that every winter night a kid could go to sleep secure in the knowledge that school the next morning was far from a sure thing. No matter how unprepared we were for a test, or how undone an assignment was, we slept easy, the snow was our ally.

Most days i sit and read on the web while drinking 1 huge cup of coffee. Today i've been reading about Eric Cantona's most excellent idea- A World-Wide Bank Run on December 7th -organizers are calling for the use of a new weapon, one available to any of us with a bank account. It is the simple act of removing all of our money from the banks, and doing so in mass on the same day - December 7th.

Bringing Cantona's protest here to North America could mark the beginning of a new direct action movement , who takes actions outside of the normal process. In preparation for Dec. 7th, open an account at a credit union, then you'll have somewhere to put your money when the protest ends. If you are worried about the security of your funds on the day of the protest, withdraw all but a token sum beforehand and then close your account on December 7th.

Perhaps happiest of all, this protest has no downside. You don't even need a permit - after all, you are just going to the bank! Your actions will tie up their bank operations all day, and their back offices for some time afterwards. While waiting in line, you will have a chance to meet friends, neighbors, and like-minded fellow citizens who care deeply about the future.- Eric Cantona

Let's Join a World-Wide Bank Run on December 7th

Consuming Less Is The Road Out Of Banker-ville.

Folks in Ireland woke this morning bankrupt. Seems their banks lent huge sums to real estate and mortgage schemes, bubble bursting sums that must now be paid back, not by the few who pissed away the dough on their self-serving speculative schemes, but by the many who neither speculated nor profited. Austerity programs continue to sprout, the many protest-the few laugh, they all know who owns who.

Ireland's a democracy eh, so's Greece, Portugal, Spain, France and the UK. All of 'em, and lots more, are in trouble for going all in to save their billionaire bankers from their own stupidity and short-sighted greed. Democracy is meaningless, people will believe any story, no matter how ridiculous, if it ends with them getting to have the stuff they want ...as Josh Holland of AlterNet says, "If you could create a political party that convinced a large number of people that by electing you they could eat all the ice-cream they want, and then sit on their butts watching TV all day and never put on an ounce, you’d have a pretty good chance at gaining power."

The US is in especially deep, no nationality has consumed their way into crushing debt more efficiently than my fellow Amerikans. Yesterday The Mud Report ended with a call to 'bring corporate capitalism to a grinding halt'. Today it's one road to 'how': Stopping conspicuous consumption, genuinely wanting and being happy with less, growing and making our own, these are the ideas and actions that will hobble the runaway corporate agenda. Timothy Leary's advice to "Turn on, Tune in, Drop out" still works.

With the consuming season accelerating toward the insanity of Black Friday now would be a great time for real austerity to take hold. A great time to realize that you'll never fill your psychiatric prescription with more stuff. Only wanting less can curb corporate capitalism. More tomorrow on felling the beast, but for the next few minutes why not relax, relax, You're getting sleepy... Your legs are feeling heavy...Your arms are feeling heavy...You're falling into a deep sleep...

Independent action, freely chosen, awakens the actor.

Central Montana along the upper Missouri River

Yesterday a friend said that many ideas in 'Let The Buffalo Roam' were quite like those in Richard Manning's 'Grassland' written in 1997. i don't think i ever read any of it but...who knows. His newest release 'Rewilding the West' sounds great, Richard Manning begins: "The most destructive force in the American West is its commanding views, because they foster the illusion that we command". As he tells the story of this once rich, now mostly empty landscape, Manning also describes a grand vision for ecological restoration, currently being set in motion, that would establish a prairie preserve larger than Yellowstone National Park, flush with wild bison, elk, bears, and wolves. Manning proposes that we now find the wisdom to let the prairies remake us. Please read Manning's new book, i will.

Another interesting email centered on building bridges and overpasses. He suggested we could re-use the miles of abandoned steel track left behind on spur lines. He suggested thousands of people could be employed as reverse John Henry's, who become a new steel lifting man. Further, the millions of treated wooden ties liberated in the process could morph into forming material. More honest work, love it. My answer centered on the aggregate, binding agent and the CO2 sequestration that might be achieved is by embracing new cement technology which features the blending pozzolans with Portland cement and adding mineraliser additives to reduce process temperatures.

The potential rates of carbon sequestration due to improved range land management practices have been shown to rise from 50 to 150 (kilograms carbon per hectare per year). We're talking about millions of hectares, billions of tons of CO2 passively sequestered by encouraging the grasslands by letting the buffalo roam. Millions of jobs building fencing, fences, overpasses and old track removal.

 

Millions of jobs, rebuilding something big. Hands on work, for to long people have lost jobs to inappropriate technology. Bigger wages often meant no job security, robots and accountants ruled, their jobs went offshore, their hearts went too. Now to many people are outta work, down on their luck, foreclosed on and pissed off. FDR built with a similar excess of labor, he taxed the rich and redistributed a small portion of the American pie. Maybe that's impossible now that the corporations own everything, maybe not.

Corporate control is so depressing that people who call themselves anything politically—liberal, conservative, progressive, libertarian, independents, tea partyers or anarchists—should be acting together against the corporate criminals. Independent action, freely chosen, awakens the actor. At some point enough independent actions and unexpected acts of resistance would be called an insurrection. The success of this insurrection wouldn't depend on the size of the crowd nor extent of the media coverage, but on its usefulness, through a million tiny awakenings, in bringing corporate capitalism to a grinding halt.

"The first truth is that the liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is Fascism—ownership of Government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power.” - Franklin D. Roosevelt

On Princes and Paupers, Grasslands and Buffalo

Buffalo and grasslands, predator and prey, co-dependent, co-evolved, interdependent and independent at the same time. The buffalo and grasslands exist only as part of the 'big picture', the framework we hang our metaphors on. Grasslands and buffalo must have a back story as a frame, to give their song a rhythm. Same for everything, without a frame of reference, events have little meaning.

An individual's frame of reference is constructed from his/her-story, each frame, like its owners experience, is unique and independent. After we reach some conclusion based on our frame of reference, we can exercise our free will in acting, or not, on those conclusions. Princes and paupers depend on the common weal for their dinner, one on his estate, one in his council house, each equally dependent on stability if nothing else. Princes need paupers just as much as the other way around.

We all have hard times in our lives, we all need help getting outta the ditch once in a while. Helping our cousin, and we're all cousins, is empathy in action. The trick is to reach a conclusion where everyone parts as equals holding their head high. Sweat equity can work, everyone gains together. Dependence begets depression which begets poor immune response, inflammation and bad juju. Dependence takes a toll on princes and paupers. Princes can ever know if they are worthy or just born lucky, princes can only know the agony of defeat, that's why so many of them come to foul ends.

In these times of worsening unemployment, rampant foreclosures, tent cities and fear we need "leadership from the bottom" as Wendell Berry says. Jobs based on hard work, on an honest days work for an honest days pay. We need big solutions to big problems. Letting the buffalo roam is a big [at least wide] solution to the wicked problem of emotional and fiscal dependence.

Healthy, successful people are independent. Independent folks exercise their free will with empathy for all, within a framework of the possible. Free will, freedom to chose, freedom to change makes happy people and...Happy people would often choose to eat happy buffalo, who ate happy grass, that lived in happy soil, that helped clean the air, who helped clean the lungs and the thoughts of the previously unhappy people. Change is good, free will is better still.

"The pencil is mightier than the pen"- Robert Pirsig

The Flame Of Free Will

Interdependent we are, our biology determines the parameters of our action, but not its direction-not its intent. Freud said, "Anatomy is destiny." But Freud got lottsa stuff wrong, this too. Anatomy is the doer of deeds and the rules of the game, but not the chooser of which and why. Each of our destinies is unique because we have free will. The extent to which each individual gets to exercise their free will the greater their sense of independence and freedom. We are all connected by our anatomy, by our breath, by natural history, by our skin that connects us with the rest of creation.

Our actions are mediated by our emotions and worldview as well as anatomic realities. Emotions, and the sieve of assumptions we see the world through, determine our actions and therefore our destiny. Everybody can remember the energy and joy during a big positive emotional moment, and its opposite. 'The thrill of victory and the agony of defeat', without free will there's neither.

Medical science has shown with many studies that our emotional state has a huge influence or our physical health and our immune response. Emotions and perspective have leverage, each on the other and each on the result. Positive emotions are generated by a positive perspective which is often the product of successful outcomes especially those won by free choices. Free choices are choices taken independently by a 'chooser'. Free will is our one independent freedom, if we exercise it, like Arnold's arms, it'll grow and there will be more happy people ready to eat the happy buffalo...

We are all biologically dependent, but where the independence of spirit feeds the psychology of freedom, the spirit dependency does not so much. Dependency is a wicked problem, like independence, it feeds itself, is circular and it's a free choice. People, all people, need jobs, fair wage jobs that provide food and shelter for their families, jobs feed independence of spirit, freedom and the emotional state most conducive to all healing.

If letting the buffalo roam isn't your top priority yet maybe exercising your free will muscle might be. The flame of free will is extinguished by the depression of dependence be it individually or across the wider culture.

co-dependents in a culture of dependence...manana

For Buffalo Or People-The Wheel Of Happiness Rolls On The Hub Of Independence

Most of what was once the buffalo's natural range has been taken over by agribusiness and bankers cloaked in farmer's garb. Bankers love fences, fences stop the free flow of...everything, everything real that is, whereas ghost like capital floats through unhampered. Fences, like all political borders, serve the few at the expense of the many. We need overpasses to allow the buffalo the freedom to roam, we need bridges to connect our divided culture...

Since the open range daze of Hollywood's heyday, the Great American West has come to contain vast parking lot type areas of two basic designs. In one, millions of metal monsters park outside huge malls where their owners go to consume. The other type of lot has thousands of cattle type creatures, often knee deep in mud and feces, eating-shitting-waiting...

It's fairly easy to equate the health and happiness of ourselves with the health of our food and its food in turn. Happiness, emotive content, is becoming a little less-fuzzy of a problem in that we can trace stress hormones from our food through into our bio-chemical soup. Happy people would often choose to eat happy buffalo, who eat happy grass, that is growing in happy soil, which helps clean the air, which helps to clean the lungs and the thoughts of the previously unhappy people.

Cattle have been forced into short dependent lives by the importance of quantity of bankers' quarterly profits not by the quality of any, cattle or consumers, of our lives. Our individual quality of life, as well as our bank accounts, are not served by the agribusiness worldview. Independence of spirit lies at the hub of wheel of hapiness. Happiness is not a local phenomena, happiness is a contagious emotion, it's circular nature lies beyond the reductionism of science .

"John Cassian spoke of work as an anchor which can stabilize the boat of our heart on the tumultuous waves of our thoughts."

Eat well, breathe deeply...mas manana...