Category Archives: Big Brother

Gulf Oil Spill as the Unfolding of Prophecy

Gulf Oil Spill as the Unfolding of Prophecy

The Gulf Oil Spill as the Unfolding of Prophecy

Daniel Pinchbeck

via: http://www.realitysandwich.com/gulf_oil_spill_unfolding_prophecy

As someone who has written extensively on indigenous prophecies relating to this time, it is hard for me to escape the uneasy presentiment that the massive, ceaseless, devastating cascade of what may be more than 100,000 barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico each day – apparently still mixed with the far more toxic dispersant Corexit that British Petroleum continues to inject, despite EPA objections – is anything but the inception of a new phase in the foretold unfolding of events that may terminate most life on earth, potentially leading to the rapid extinction of the human species. Recent articles reveal that there is a gigantic bubble of methane gas underneath the Gulf of Mexico, which has helped to create the enormous pressure that makes it unlikely, if not impossible, that the Deepwater Horizon oil spill can be stopped by human means. Video taken by undersea robots show oil and gas leaking from many fissures in the earth, far beyond the range of the well hole. This suggests that the underground containment structure is cracking apart. If the current effort to build relief wells fails or is ineffective, there are no more known technological fixes available.

According to  D. K. Matai, writing on The Huffington Post, “The “flow team” of the US Geological Survey estimates that 2,900 cubic feet of natural gas, which primarily contains methane, is being released into the Gulf waters with every barrel of oil.” If the estimates of over 100,000 barrels of oil leaking per day is correct, this means that over 16 billion cubic feet of gas may have been emitted, “making it one of the most vigorous eruptions in modern history,” writes Matai, an engineer and co-founder of The Asymmetric Threats Contingency Alliance. The huge methane deposits beneath the Gulf were well-known as a risk factor for drilling operations, which did not apparently dissuade corporations like British Petroleum from shirking regulatory safeguards in order to drill at the edge of known technology, 5,000 feet under the ocean floor and then 30,000 feet (imagine a distant speck of airplane far above the ground for a comparision) beneath that, into the core of the earth. Methane is a major contributor to global warming, turning into carbon dioxide once released.

What Matai along with other engineers, scientists, and journalists have laid out is a possible scenario where the methane, pushing up with enormous pressure, could lead to a gas explosion: “A methane bubble this large – if able to escape from under the ocean floor through fissures, cracks and fault areas – is likely to cause a gas explosion. With the emerging evidence of fissures, the tacit fear now is this: the methane bubble may rupture the seabed and may then erupt with an explosion within the Gulf of Mexico waters. The bubble is likely to explode upwards propelled by more than 50,000 psi [pounds per square inch] of pressure, bursting through the cracks and fissures of the sea floor, fracturing and rupturing miles of ocean bottom with a single extreme explosion.”

The methane gas explosion would be immediately followed by a series of enormous tsunamis engulfing Florida and the southern coast of the US. At the same time, during the day when this explosion takes place, “several billion barrels of oil and gas” will be released, as freezing water rushes into the enormous cavity, turning immediately into steam. There are many earthquake fault lines running from the Gulf through Mexico and much of the South West of America that might be triggered by a sudden collapse of the ocean floor due to such an event. “Could this be how nature eventually seals the hole created by the Gulf of Mexico oil gusher?” Matai asks. Of course, this is only one scenario, and it is unknown if this will occur, or what the timetable might be.

If such a devastating scenario does not take place, there is still the continuing spill, and the high likelihood that our current known and available technologies will be unable to address it. In this case, we may soon see the Gulf of Mexico area and the Southern coastline rendered uninhabitable. As the Christian Science Monitor has reported in its article, “Raining Oil in Louisiana? Video suggests Gulf oil spill causing crude rain,” there is some evidence that oil is beginning to rain down on inland areas of Louisiana. “Crude oil doesn’t evaporate, but some are speculating that oil mixed with Corexit 9500, the dispersant that BP is using on the ever-growing slick, could take to the air.” As Kerry Kennedy, from the Robert F Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights, stated in an interview on CNN,  the average life expectancy of cleanup workers on the Exxon Valdez oil spill was 51 years old. “Almost all those people who did work on the Exxon Valdez are now dead,” she stated. “And BP still here, once again, is big oil not giving the information to the doctors and health care officials.” According to Kennedy, cleanup workers in the Gulf “had been told by BP that the didn’t need respirators. Apparently, they’re concerned about poor media images of people wearing respirators and rubber gloves and starting, quote, ‘hysteria.’”

As widely reported, hurricane season is now upon us. Hurricanes could potentially carry the extremely toxic crude oil mingled with the even more poisonous Corexit hundreds of miles inland, creating either a slow-motion mass murder of the local populations or forcing the government to execute a total evacuation from the area. As the oil travels up the coastline over the next years, coastal cities facing the Atlantic and Pacific may also become uninhabitable “Haz Mat” sites. Caribbean islands such as Cuba and Jamaica will be devastated, as will be the coastline of Mexico.

As I explored in previous works, I am convinced that we are reaching the hinge point of a shift in human consciousness and the earth that will either lead to a rapid transformation of our way of life, our “civilization” and its basic paradigm, or the termination of our species in a series of intensifying cataclysms. One clear reason for this is that our technological powers continue to advance rapidly, while those who are currently in control of these galvanic forces reveal a dangerously reduced consciousness, a lack of forethought based on their self-centered greed, combined with a complete absence of ethical and moral development. As Rolling Stone recently exposed in a great piece of investigative journalism, the bungled handling of the oil spill was preceded by the gutting of the regulatory system that monitored such operations, revealing once again the government’s capitulation to corporate interests. It seems increasingly obvious that, if we wish to survive as a species, the current ruling corporate, political, and financial elite – working seamlessly together to bring about our collective suicide – must be deposed, replaced by a new orchestration of civil society, an openly democratic and truly transparent system, where nothing is hidden, where profit is not the only motivation, and all have a voice.

As the Deepwater Horizon cataclysm spreads gigantic dead zones in the Gulf, exterminating vast ecosystems of marine life, threatening millions of human beings with illness, dislocation, and death, potentially blossoming into an extinction-level event, British Petroleum CEO Tony Hayward continues to display the profound lack of remorse and the blithe disinterest we recall from the tenure of the last Bush to occupy the White House. Recently, he attended a yacht race off the as-of-yet-unsullied English coast, while his public statements include the infamous “I’d like my life back” and the equally extraordinary, “The Gulf of Mexico is a very big ocean.” Despite extensive scientific documentation of the extreme toxicity of crude oil, Hayward has suggested that “growing health problems among clean-up workers may be related to food poisoning, rather than their exposure to crude oil and dispersants.” Our corporate and financial culture instills a mindset of sociopathic disregard, and the system permits certain psychological profiles to thrive within it: those capable of disassociating their actions from any moral consequences. What should be an extreme liability in a complex and interconnected world shared by a multitude of living beings has become an asset for our corporate, financial, and political masters – the current ruling elite who congregate at events like the annual Bilderberg gathering, who see massive loss of life as “collateral damage” along the way to their next golf game or yachting match. By now, it seems fairly obvious that Barack Obama is one of this breed, indistinct from the rest.

“These deformed individuals lack the capacity for empathy,” writes Chris Hedges in his essay, ‘BP and the Little Eichmanns.’ “They are at once banal and dangerous. They possess the peculiar ability to organize vast, destructive bureaucracies and yet remain blind to the ramifications. … The corporations, and those who run them, consume, pollute, oppress and kill. The little Eichmanns who manage them reside in a parallel universe of staggering wealth, luxury and splendid isolation that rivals that of the closed court of Versailles. The elite, sheltered and enriched, continue to prosper even as the rest of us and the natural world start to die… And our business schools and elite universities churn out tens of thousands of these deaf, dumb and blind systems managers who are endowed with sophisticated skills of management and the incapacity for common sense, compassion or remorse.” Like the bail out of Wall Street, the BP oil spill disaster makes evident – if more evidence was needed – that, in the United States, the corporations and the government have merged into a single power, a destructive force founded on the mindset of Empire, seeking domination of nature through technology, and control of consciousness through incessant indoctrination via the corporate-controlled media. There is zero possibility that our atrophied electoral system will interrupt or impede this juggernaut.

I try to maintain faith that the human spirit will awaken in time to liberate itself from the prison that has been built around it. While my doubts grow, I continue to work for that result – to hope and to pray for it. What seems more likely is that the great churning multitude of humanity will choose to remain distracted, disconnected, pursuing narcissistic aims, vain and virtual pleasures, as the natural world, the generative earth, crumbles around them. On what the Russian mystic G I Gurdjieff called our “ill-fated planet,” most people apparently prefer to die rather than awaken to the situation, think for themselves, and join together in a collective movement to restore the earth and build a sustainable and equitible global society. Many of us can see the awakening happening, but it seems to be coming far too slowly, in hesitant fits and starts, while the destructive force also grows in strength, pumping up the volume on mind control technologies, predatory drones able to assassinate from a distance, data-mining intelligence operations, and all the rest of the sterile evils that our technocrat sociopaths can envision and unleash.

These are aspects of my current view of the world: the faltering of my faith, that horrible presentiment that the forces of disillusion and destruction have already triumphed, that creepy familiar feeling (as if I already experienced this, long ago, on some other lost world, many forgotten splinters of incarnated lifetimes ago) of failure and futility. On another level, I feel an equally uncanny presentiment that all of this is still going perfectly according to plan, that the script of our collective world movie/space oddysey has to unscroll or unfurl in just this stomach-clenching way, toward its still mysterious denouement. Observing my own life, I see that it often takes a drastic crisis to spur me into action – perhaps that is the only way change ever takes place, on the individual or species level.

The environmental and economic meltdown could clear away all the obstacles and obstructions that keep us from attaining clarity, from putting into practice what we know intuitively to be true. Is it possible that the Jungian archetypal Self – the increasingly humanized god-image that seeks to incarnate in our human world – must bring about the complete breakdown of what is known and familiar, to open the space for what can only be revealed, in the fullness – and emptiness – of time? Perhaps we can only reach the depth dimensions of our higher being through an unfolding mega-crash that exposes all levels of delusion and self-deception, that forces those of us who desire illumination to break all the bonds, the “mind-forg’d manacles,” that keep us from attaining liberation. Or perhaps I am only making a hopeful story out of the toxic rubble and radioactive fragments that will soon be all that remains of our ruined world, if the corporate sociopaths and Little Eichmanns have their way.

I consider the geyser in the Gulf to be analagous to the rupturing of the amniotic sac that occurs at the end of  pregnancy. This event presages the birth of the new being, who must be forced by a terrifying and life-threatening crisis to use the organs he or she has developed over the previous months – developed without knowing what purpose they serve or how they function. Like the fetus at the end of the pregnancy, the human race has devoured the stored resources within our mother’s secure womb, the fossil fuels buried deep underground, and now we must learn to survive on new forms of energy, taking the initiative on our own.

Over the course of history, humanity has developed delicate and sensitive organs of consciousness and perception, without truly knowing their eventual meaning or purpose. Unlike other species, we have a tremendous excess of communicative capacity, leading us to make art, write novels, dance, compose symphonies, imagine elaborate inner worlds. How do we know that these seemingly marginal aspects – aspects that seem to have little to do with our survival as a species – are not, in fact, essential to our unfolding evolutionary trajectory? Aboriginals in Australia believe the sacred task of humanity is to “sing the world into being,” communicating with the ancestors in the Dreamtime. Perhaps, through an awakening of our imaginative and psychic faculties, we can restore this primordial communion, and reopen doorways that modern society slammed shut long ago.

Our creative capacities are one legacy of our species’ recent history, a new extension or organ of  consciousness that has developed along with our increasing technical and technological capabilities. Another aspect of our evolution can be found in the world’s esoteric knowledge systems. These systems give us tools for evolving consciousness, for perceiving and interacting with other dimensions of reality. We learn from the traditions of mystery schools that humans are capable of performing marvelous and magical feats that overturn the apparent physical “laws” proposed by science. Up until now, such manifestations have appeared rarely, usually linked to a particular person – books like In Search of the Miraculous or The Autobiography of a Yogi describe many psychic feats of certain masters. In our modern desacralized world, there are also many well-reported accounts of “miracles” – inexplicable psychic phenomena – such as mothers suddenly able to lift 3,000 pound vehicles off of their children after an accident, and so on – acounts of powers that exist in one moment, but afterwards seem to fade into nonexistence.

In the same way that electricity was once inaccessible to us until engineers learned to channel it in the early 19th Century, is it conceivable that these psychic or psycho-physical capacities could become steadily available to people through a disciplined training, once the mechanisms behind them are better understood? I believe that we are currently in transition from the physical to the psychic phase of our evolution as a species. In order to manifest this, we would need to develop a shared realization that such a shift is possible. This requires an open dialogue on the legitimacy of psychic phenomena and synchronicity, building a foundation for general acceptance of the powers and potencies contained within the psyche. I am compelled by Rupert Sheldrake’s theories around “morphic resonance” and the “morphogenetic field” that forms when sudden inspirations and breakthroughs become habits and patterns, creating what scientists mistakenly call “laws.” Those who have broken through to a new level of understanding need to create the template, strengthen the morphogenetic field, before the larger population can comprehend what is happening, and make a transition.

It is now agonizingly obvious that humans do not change their ways until they are far outside of their comfort zone. It is only at the point of death that transmutation becomes possible. Perhaps the rampant desecration of the physical world is going to force the more conscious subset of humanity to purify their intentions, clearing cobwebs from the shadowy corners of the psyche, to access extrasensory capacities on a regular basis. Many of us have experiences of this energy, this potential, but the manifestations tend to occur at uncontrollable junctures and in mysterious ways. In my own life, I have found that psychically charged events occur at certain highly charged junctures, which seem to reveal the working of a synchronic order, as if some form of superconsciousness, when magnetized by the energy of intention, can ripple through the underpinnings of our 3-D reality, causing changes that seem beyond the parameters of what we generally accept as possible. Can we learn to access these capacities on a regular basis, like the dependable current we get from electricity? If we can come into alignment with this superconscious shaping force, we may be able to begin to heal the wounds of Gaia, to stop tormenting the generative earth that shelters us and gives us life. I think it is quite possible that even the course of seemingly unstoppable biospheric and geophysical events, like climate change or the oil spill, could be altered through collective psychic effort, much as indigenous groups like the Hopi used initiatory ritual and trance dances to bring rain down from the sky.

I pray this is the universe’s wager for us: that we will go beyond our current ruts and limitations, that we will manifest a future of imaginative joy by stepping into our potential, becoming the wizards, warriors, and initiates that the world needs so desperately now. As Nietzsche pointed out accurately, “man”, in his current form, can only be a transitional creature. Either we are rapidly approaching the terminus point for our species or we can collectively choose to transmute, creating an evolutionary implosion, from the physical to the psychic realm. As the oil gushes forth and the earth’s resources disappear, it may be that we can learn to thrive on subtler and far more powerful forms of energy. Working together, we can guide the world toward its next phase of being – a plateau of intensified consciousness and synchronic coherence, in which conscious evolution becomes both sacred game and participatory art form.

Decentralize the web with Diaspora

Decentralize the web with Diaspora

Diaspora – the privacy aware, personally controlled, do-it-all distributed open source social network

We are four talented young programmers from NYU’s Courant Institute trying to raise money so we can spend the summer building Diaspora; an open source personal web server that will put individuals in control of their data.

What is it?

Enter your Diaspora “seed,” a personal web server that stores all of your information and shares it with your friends. Diaspora knows how to securely share (using GPG) your pictures, videos, and more. When you have a Diaspora seed of your own, you own your social graph, you have access to your information however you want, whenever you want, and you have full control of your online identity. Once we have built a solid foundation, we will make Diaspora easy to extend to facilitate any type of communication, and the possibilities will be endless.

For a little more detailed explanation, checkout this blog post.

What is the project about?

We believe that privacy and connectedness do not have to be mutually exclusive. With Diaspora, we are reclaiming our data, securing our social connections, and making it easy to share on your own terms. We think we can replace today’s centralized social web with a more secure and convenient decentralized network. Diaspora will be easy to use, and it will be centered on you instead of a faceless hub.

Why are we building it?

This February, Eben Moglen, Columbia law professor and author of the latest GPL, gave a talk on Internet privacy. As more and more of our lives and identities become digitized, Moglen explains, the convenience of putting all of our information in the hands of companies on “the cloud” is training us to casually sacrifice our privacy and fragment our online identities.

But why is centralization so much more convenient, even in an age where relatively powerful computers are ubiquitous? Why is there no good alternative to centralized services that, as Moglen pointed out, comes with “spying for free?” Why do we keep our personal data in a thousand places? We have the technology, someone just needs to take the time to figure out how we can communicate smoothly and intuitively, without the hidden costs of “the cloud”. As good programmers, when we noticed that the application we need doesn’t exist, we set out to fill the hole in our digital lives.

Why do we need money?

We have a plan, a bunch of ideas and the programming chops to build Diaspora. What we need is the time it takes to iron out a powerful, secure, and elegant piece of software. Daniel, Ilya, Raphael, and Maxwell are all ready to trade our internships and summer jobs for three months totally focused on building Diaspora. We want to write code all the time, everyday. Once we have made our first solid iteration, we are going to release our code as free software so everyone can make Diaspora even better. $10,000 buys the software for everyone who wants to use it, forever. We think it can change the way people communicate and empower individuals to permanently take control of their online identities.

After we open source our source code, we hope to also provide a paid turnkey hosted service in the vein of WordPress.com to make it easy for people who want to use Diaspora, but don’t want to deal with the fuss of setting it up.* We will make it easy to export your data and configuration, so if you decide you want to graduate and host your seed yourself, you are free to do so at anytime.

Our goal is for everyone to have full control over their data and to empower people in to become responsible, secure, and social Internet dwellers. We believe offering this service will be helpful to non-technical users who are also worried about their data and privacy online.

Our Promise.
We promise to you that Diaspora will be aGPL software which will released at the end of the summer.

Want more info?
Check out our website for project updates, blog posts, pictures, and plans. More information is being added every day! www.joindiaspora.com

Check out more videos here.

Follow us at @joindiaspora Twitter or identi.ca

Want get Diaspora updates via email? Sign up here!
* This service will be available a few months after the end of the summer.

Project location: New York, NY

Move Confrontation in Philadelphia

Move Confrontation in Philadelphia

BP's oil spill clean-up: out of sight, out of mind

BP's oil spill clean-up: out of sight, out of mind
http://www.grist.org/phpThumb/phpThumb.php?src=http://www.grist.org/i/assets/2/gulfplanespraying.jpg&w=615

A few interesting thoughts from an article found at

http://jacksonville.com/opinion/blog/401574/abel-harding/2010-05-10/oil-spill-clean-doing-more-harm-good

“It is important to understand that oil spill dispersants do not in any way reduce the amount of oil spewing from its source nor do they eliminate oil from the environment. What these chemical agents are designed to do is alter the physical and chemical properties of the oil allowing it to sink further down into the water column.” 
Because to “alter the physical and chemical properties of the oil allowing it to sink further down into the water column” means out of sight, out of mind.

As ProPublica.org points out, there are significant concerns that the treatment could severely harm the Gulf’s ecosystem, leaving dead fish in its wake.

The exact makeup of the dispersants is kept secret under competitive trade laws, but a worker safety sheet for one product, called Corexit, says it includes 2-butoxyethanol, a compound associated with headaches, vomiting and reproductive problems at high doses.

“There is a chemical toxicity to the dispersant compound that in many ways is worse than oil,” said Richard Charter, a foremost expert on marine biology and oil spills who is a senior policy advisor for Marine Programs for Defenders of Wildlife and is chairman of the Gulf of the Farallones National Marine Sanctuary Advisory Council. “It’s a trade-off – you’re damned if you do, damned if you don’t — of trying to minimize the damage coming to shore, but in so doing you may be more seriously damaging the ecosystem offshore.”

http://jacksonville.com/opinion/blog/401574/abel-harding/2010-05-10/oil-spill-clean-doing-more-harm-good

other interesting articles . . .

Chemicals Meant To Break Up BP Oil Spill Present New Environmental Concerns
http://www.propublica.org/article/bp-gulf-oil-spill-dispersants-0430

BP’s Oil-Dispersant Use Veers Into Uncharted Science (Update1)
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-05-12/bp-s-oil-dispersant-use-veers-into-uncharted-science-update1-.html

Is the BP Clean-Up Creating A Toxic Soup in the Gulf?
http://motherjones.com/blue-marble/2010/05/toxic-soup-gulf

What are we dumping into the Gulf to ‘fix’ the oil spill?
http://www.grist.org/article/2010-05-03-how-risky-is-the-dispersant-strategy-for-addressing-the-gulf-spi/

Find out more by doing your own search, I used2-butoxyethanol gulf oil spillto find these articles.

The Story of Your Enslavement

The Story of Your Enslavement

We can only be kept in the cages we do not see. A brief history of human enslavement – up to and including your own. From Freedomain Radio, the largest and most popular philosophy conversation in the world. http://www.freedomainradio.com

Google, Evil genius with plans to take over the world ?

Google, Evil genius with plans to take over the world ?

This post via http://crazysexytechiecool.blogspot.com/2009/08/google-evil-genius-with-plans-to-take.html

Is Google trying to take over the world ? And what is up with Google’s colors being the same as Microsoft ???? (see Cartoon below, I never thought of it either until now)..


Maybe they are just trying to Kill Microsoft and are a force of good ? I don’t honestly know, personally I love Google Chrome, Google voice and Android. -Eff it lol, only time will tell what Google’s legacy will be.

I present my case exhibit one:

  • Google (search engine, control what shows up on the web and what information you see)
  • Google Voice (Done right, will Kill the companies with FREE phone calling)
  • Clear Wimax (Wireless internet covering entire cities and Google is a main investor)
  • Google Chrome ( Access the internet via Google Chrome’s browser)
  • Google OS (Run your computer on Google Chrome OS)
  • Google Android ( Control the mobile operating systems)
  • Google cell phones (Control the mobile phone market)


Fond this interesting article about Google and the Good vs Evil argument.

“I’m no conspiracy theorist, I swear. I don’t think Google tries to be evil (though they missed a pretty good chance), and I don’t think they sit there all sweaty and peering at all the private data they collect from users. But they do have it, don’t they?

The Largest Violator of Privacy…

…is almost always the user. People like myself realize the dangers of your information exchanging too many hands, but 90% of people do not, and will freely hand it over if the receiver has a shiny appeal and a trusted name (like, say, “Google“).

Chrome OS will be no different, just with a more streamlined way of going from hardware -> boot -> Internet -> Google for the information exchange.

And there’s no doubt that, with Google controlling the entire GUI layout and design, there will be a heavy slant towards Google Docs and other products to take the place of Word etc. for the new netbook.

While this will undoubtedly appeal highly to users, the exchange of so much information into the hands of one entity will trouble many concerned about privacy on the Web (such as myself).

I know Google isn’t evil (at least 90% sure). But the very fact that Google owns so much information about users along with a history of sharing it with other entities (including governments), it is troublesome. Not to mention the fact that they own doubleclick.net.

It worried me even before the giant was behind every bit of software running on my hardware (I like netbooks), and it troubles me even more so now. If Google, say, was ever compromised on a large scale, could you imagine just how devastating that would be to the general population”..

Break it down KRS

Break it down KRS

Break it down KRS-One 1/3

Break it down KRS 2/3

Break it down KRS 3/3

The Obama Deception HQ Full length version

The Obama Deception HQ Full length version


The Obama Deception is a hard-hitting film that completely destroys the myth that Barack Obama is working for the best interests of the American people.

The Obama phenomenon is a hoax carefully crafted by the captains of the New World Order. He is being pushed as savior in an attempt to con the American people into accepting global slavery.

We have reached a critical juncture in the New World Order’s plans. It’s not about Left or Right: it’s about a One World Government. The international banks plan to loot the people of the United States and turn them into slaves on a Global Plantation.

Covered in this film: who Obama works for, what lies he has told, and his real agenda. If you want to know the facts and cut through all the hype, this is the film for you.

Watch the Obama Deception and learn how:

- Obama is continuing the process of transforming America into something that resembles Nazi Germany, with forced National Service, domestic civilian spies, warrantless wiretaps, the destruction of the Second Amendment, FEMA camps and Martial Law.

- Obama’s handlers are openly announcing the creation of a new Bank of the World that will dominate every nation on earth through carbon taxes and military force.

- International bankers purposefully engineered the worldwide financial meltdown to bankrupt the nations of the planet and bring in World Government.

- Obama plans to loot the middle class, destroy pensions and federalize the states so that the population is completely dependent on the Central Government.

- The Elite are using Obama to pacify the public so they can usher in the North American Union by stealth, launch a new Cold War and continue the occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan.

http://www.infowars.com
http://www.prisonplanet.tv

Human, All Too Human (BBC) – Jean Paul Sartre

Human, All Too Human (BBC) – Jean Paul Sartre

Human, All Too Human (BBC) – Jean Paul Sartre: Part 1

Human, All Too Human (BBC) – Jean Paul Sartre: Part 2

Human, All Too Human (BBC) – Jean Paul Sartre: Part 3

Human, All Too Human (BBC) – Jean Paul Sartre: Part 4

Human, All Too Human (BBC) – Jean Paul Sartre: Part 5

Human, All Too Human (BBC) – Jean Paul Sartre: Part 6

It's on!

It's on!

The BBC’s Ben Brown reports on the violence at the RBS offices

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/7977489.stm

Protesters stormed a London office of the Royal Bank of Scotland as thousands of people descended on the City ahead of the G20 summit of world leaders.

Demonstrators launched missiles and forced their way into the bank after clashes with police in the capital. A branch of HSBC also had windows broken.

Twenty-two people were arrested and some police and protesters injured.

Climate change activists have pitched tents in the street, while anti-war campaigners are holding a rally.

The protests came as US President Barack Obama spoke of the “sense of urgency” needed to confront the financial crisis after he met Prime Minister Gordon Brown at Downing Street.

World leaders are holding a series of bilateral talks on Wednesday to thrash out finance reform plans, with Mr Brown claiming that a global deal is just “hours away”.

The police estimated there were about 5,000 people taking part in demonstrations, and officers cordoned off a number of streets.

Officers later used “containment” then “controlled dispersal” and made temporary toilets and water available to protesters, police said.

At about 1800 BST, a small group of protesters faced a line of riot police in Threadneedle Street, near the Bank of England and the branch of RBS attacked earlier.

The BBC’s Rob Broomby said demonstrators were “angry, but getting weary – they’ve been held in just a few narrow streets for a number of hours now”.

A few protesters threw plastic bottles, banners and toilet rolls at police, amid chants of “Let us out, let us out.”

Riot officers

Protesters had smashed RBS windows with missiles, including coins and computer keyboards, and entered the building. The branch had been closed already as a precautionary measure.

Mounted police and riot officers used shields to push demonstrators back and officers said they entered the RBS building just after 1400 BST “in support of building security”.

Two people were arrested for aggravated burglary at the RBS, police say.

RBS has been in the spotlight after the £703,000 pension arrangement of former chief executive, Sir Fred Goodwin, sparked public anger.

By late afternoon, the BBC’s Dominic Hurst said a branch of HSBC had also been attacked and had windows broken.

Police say CCTV footage and other video evidence will be reviewed to try to identify those involved in crimes.

Earlier, officers were pelted with empty beer cans, fruit and flour outside the Bank of England as the crowd of demonstrators had attempted to reach a peaceful climate change protest in nearby Bishopsgate.

Police said officers suffered only minor injuries during the protests, although one was admitted to hospital. Scotland Yard also said its response had been “proportionate”.

Some of the protesters had been “provocative” and “determined to cause violence”, claimed Met Commander Simon O’Brien.

Seven demonstrators were taken to hospital for treatment for injuries.

Hundreds of Climate Camp demonstrators – behind direct action protests at Heathrow Airport and power stations in North Yorkshire and Kent – pitched tents in protest against carbon markets.

The BBC’s Mark Georgiou said there was an “almost Glastonbury atmosphere” at the demonstration outside the European Climate Exchange, which featured “music and meditation”.

But from about 1630 BST “a different sort of demonstrator has started to arrive – clad in black, masked and aggressive”, he said.

Several hundred anti-war demonstrators have also marched to a rally in Trafalgar Square from the US Embassy in central London.

The BBC’s Dominic Casciani said it had been “completely different” to the protests in the City, and demonstrators were in peaceful mood.

Crowds also gathered outside Buckingham Palace for the arrival of US President Barack Obama and his wife Michelle, who began a visit with the Queen shortly after 1700 BST.

The day began with protest groups under the G20 Meltdown banner marching to the Bank of England in the City urging those who had lost their homes, jobs, savings or pensions to join them in following four “horsemen of the apocalypse” to “lay siege” to financial institutions.

‘Greed’

Many City workers have dressed in casual clothes after banks and other institutions were warned they may be targeted.

Protester Daniel Blinkhorn, from Brighton, was among those marching from London Bridge station to the Bank. He said the G20 leaders had a “real opportunity to green the global economy”.

Housing association worker Tony Streeter told the BBC: “I’m here because I think people are angry about what’s going on in the world there’s too much greed.”

Scotland Yard said there had been 22 arrests related to the protests on Wednesday, following four arrests on Tuesday.

The four people detained on Tuesday were charged after officers were alerted to a group trying to break into a building in the Holborn area of central London, police said.

On Wednesday, police questioned demonstrators travelling in an armoured vehicle dressed in helmets and overalls.

Police say 11 people have been arrested on suspicion of possessing police uniforms and for road traffic offences.

Six police forces are part of the £7.5m G20 security plan, led by London’s Met.

G20 map

Home Squatters

Home Squatters

a la . . . http://www.realitysandwich.com/home_squatters

A US Congresswoman from Ohio, Marcy Kaptur, is encouraging her  constituents to squat in their foreclosed homes, counseling them to to refuse to leave without “an attorney and a fight.”  She is advocating that homeowners stay put until the bank “produces the note” that proves it owns the home.

“During the lending boom, most mortgages were flipped and sold to another lender or servicer or sliced up and sold to investors as securitized packages on Wall Street,” explains the Consumer Warning Network. “In the rush to turn these over as fast as possible to make the most money, many of the new lenders did not get the proper paperwork to show they own the note and mortgage. This is the key to ‘the produce the note’ strategy.”

Kaptur addressed citizens from the floor of the House in Washington: “I say to the American people: you be squatters in your own homes.  Don’t you leave!”

Image by Jeff Turner, courtesy of Creative Commons license.

Off the grid of modern technology

Off the grid of modern technology

more about “Off the grid of modern technology “, posted with vodpod

What do you think, is it possible, would you want to, is he doing it right?

What benefits would it have in the practice of Bioregional Animism?

How would you do it?

When you give up on hope

When you give up on hope

obama-hope

A WONDERFUL THING happens when you give up on hope, which is that you realize you never needed it in the first place. You realize that giving up on hope didn’t kill you. It didn’t even make you less effective. In fact it made you more effective, because you ceased relying on someone or something else to solve your problems—you ceased hoping your problems would somehow get solved through the magical assistance of God, the Great Mother, the Sierra Club, valiant tree-sitters, brave salmon, or even the Earth itself—and you just began doing whatever it takes to solve those problems yourself.

When you give up on hope, something even better happens than it not killing you, which is that in some sense it does kill you. You die. And there’s a wonderful thing about being dead, which is that they—those in power—cannot really touch you anymore. Not through promises, not through threats, not through violence itself. Once you’re dead in this way, you can still sing, you can still dance, you can still make love, you can still fight like hell—you can still live because you are still alive, more alive in fact than ever before. You come to realize that when hope died, the you who died with the hope was not you, but was the you who depended on those who exploit you, the you who believed that those who exploit you will somehow stop on their own, the you who believed in the mythologies propagated by those who exploit you in order to facilitate that exploitation. The socially constructed you died. The civilized you died. The manufactured, fabricated, stamped, molded you died. The victim died.

And who is left when that you dies? You are left. Animal you. Naked you. Vulnerable (and invulnerable) you. Mortal you. Survivor you. The you who thinks not what the culture taught you to think but what you think. The you who feels not what the culture taught you to feel but what you feel. The you who is not who the culture taught you to be but who you are. The you who can say yes, the you who can say no. The you who is a part of the land where you live. The you who will fight (or not) to defend your family. The you who will fight (or not) to defend those you love. The you who will fight (or not) to defend the land upon which your life and the lives of those you love depends. The you whose morality is not based on what you have been taught by the culture that is killing the planet, killing you, but on your own animal feelings of love and connection to your family, your friends, your landbase—not to your family as self-identified civilized beings but as animals who require a landbase, animals who are being killed by chemicals, animals who have been formed and deformed to fit the needs of the culture.

When you give up on hope—when you are dead in this way, and by so being are really alive—you make yourself no longer vulnerable to the cooption of rationality and fear that Nazis inflicted on Jews and others, that abusers like my father inflict on their victims, that the dominant culture inflicts on all of us. Or is it rather the case that these exploiters frame physical, social, and emotional circumstances such that victims perceive themselves as having no choice but to inflict this cooption on themselves?

But when you give up on hope, this exploiter/victim relationship is broken. You become like the Jews who participated in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.

When you give up on hope, you turn away from fear.

And when you quit relying on hope, and instead begin to protect the people, things, and places you love, you become very dangerous indeed to those in power.

In case you’re wondering, that’s a very good thing.

Full article here . . .

Harmonious discord; dissonance & dissention.

Harmonious discord; dissonance & dissention.

Going AWOL, Trees of Life, Life, & AWOL life in trees.

by Lucas

As a kid I used to go hiking in the mountains and cliff jumping and fishing at the lake I used to live near. I remember people would share food from their gardens, and they would play bluegrass in the middle of town three days out of the week. As a kid I remember thinking I would never leave. But in backwoods Arkansas there are few opportunities for young people trying to get started in a professional life. My mom was single most of the time and poor all of the time, and I didn’t know where to go when I left the house. I naively joined the Army; I didn’t know what else to do. That was back in 1999, and I promised myself I would not do anything that I disagreed with; that was my personal ultimatum for joining, and I was way too trusting of our government to use good discretion behind what they told us to do. When I joined I was looking at the need for a military as being in a sense of immediacy as if I would be expected to act in immediate defense of our country.

Some time after I joined, that ultimatum was compromised. I’m not proud of it, and I rarely talk about it. But there are things that happened in places I was deployed that will be with me for the rest of my life. I have to be vague; its much easier to talk about things you didn’t do sometimes.

Since then, I have been drawn to anything that could be an attempt to explain the circumstances behind the situation in which I and so many other people found ourselves. I became interested in anything that addresses the dynamics of how culture and religion lead to wars and other conflicts, and that inevitably led to a largely academic type of interest in religion and philosophy as would any critique of all the encompassing aspects of a political paradigm. Retrospect has treated the situation I was in much better than it treated me while I was involved.

In the military there is this type of conditioning you go through beginning in training that is intended to break you from acting upon your conscience, and many people go through things later in their service that cause that separation to widen further. Honestly, that training is very affective, and it ostensibly works for its intended purpose. It starts with desensitization and can eventually move to actualization, but despite its intensive psychological purpose and implementation there are many known residual affects of this conditioning and many more upon implementation. Your conscience will always come back to you; in some situations you can die due to a conscience, but you can never live without it.

The months leading up to the Iraq War almost seemed surreal. It was an encroaching reality of which I could not justify being a part. It was a taboo around our Army post with the exception of faint rumors that some private, specialist, or other low ranking person had seen a shipment of DCUs (desert combat uniforms) come in. No one talked about it. People talked about Afghanistan, but not Iraq. It was too sensitive of a topic. Per procedure we knew we were on 24 hour notice. Twenty four hours notice and we would have to report and start packing our gear. After a while there seemed to be less of a question as to if, and more of a question as to when we would go.

The situation kept getting more volatile. I felt the fear and paranoia keep growing all around me and throughout the rest of the world. I would walk back onto post from the little German town I lived near and my backpack would be sniffed by dogs. F16s and Apache helicopters would patrol the airspace above the barracks where I lived, and the Germans, usually very courtly and obsequious, now treated me and other Americans with an unusual apprehension or disregard.

Something was going badly wrong, and I knew it. I watched the news relentlessly, and I looked around at all the new soldiers that were coming in and thought to myself, “They’re stocking up, oh shit.” I would see them come in from the bars and in their rooms playing video games, and I couldn’t help but to think, “You can’t know,” and I could see that in the eyes of any other veteran as well, but no one ever talked. I was only 21 then, and maybe I was still too innocent to be quiet.

I broke and started talking. I called bullshit on the war in front of everyone. I was so vocal that my company commander pulled me aside and told me that I needed to stop talking about it. He was a little mystified by it because throughout the unit I was respected and had never caused a problem. I asked him to allow me to be placed on conscientious objector status, and he reminded me that I had signed an agreement to be a part of a combat unit, and also of the clauses in the UCMJ where it says, “the willful disobedience of an order or regulation,” and, “conduct prejudicial to the good order and discipline of the armed forces, or that will bring discredit upon the service,” was against military law. I told him that legality doesn’t define morality and that going to Iraq would be prejudicial to the ‘good order’ of the of the unit,” and I walked out of his office without being dismissed.

This exemplifies the obvious paradox about being in the U.S. military. In theory you are defending, and are a part of, a democratic country where you have the right to question anything, but you live in a totalitarian segment of it and have little room to question authority as you should be able to in a democracy. You relinquish many of your civilian rights when you enlist. Freedom of speech is often litigiously impeded by issues of national interest, and the general morale of the soldiers is of enough importance to an officer that they will reprimand anyone raising the right questions.

I mailed myself some civilian clothes before I went to a field exercise, and six years ago when I got the package and I went AWOL. I hiked 20 miles through the woods at night in mountainous terrain to get to the nearest road, and I hitched to the nearest town with a train station. I had to leave the country in less than 24 hours because I knew the Army would put out an “All Points Bulletin” or an A.P.B. with the Interpol, also known as Europe’s International Police. I got on the next train leaving the country, and on the train I found myself on a car that was completely empty except for myself and a sinister looking upper middle aged man of middle eastern descent. It was quiet for half an hour except for the sound of the tracks, but I think this man sensed my anxiety and began asking me questions first in broken German and then in broken English. The state of mind I was in must have been so apprehensive that something about the way I just filled space raised his curiosity. “Wo Sie tat, kommt her,” or, “Where did you come from,” he asked suddenly. It seemed intrusive, but I tried to fight back any inclination that this man could be some form of a threat. “Ich bin eine Americanish soldat, und ich ous Baumholder,” or, “I am an American soldier, and I am out of Baumholder,” I answered because I knew he would figure it out due to the haircut and my accent. In english he asked where I was going, and I answered, “I don’t know where where I am going; I just went AWOL.” I didn’t expect him to know what that meant, but he reacted with a moment of rumination, and said, “I was a soldier, and I left also.” I knew better than to ask about what country or what kind of service in which he had been enlisted, but after another long pause he said, “I was in the Iraqi army.” “I fought in the Iran-Iraq War and what you call Desert Storm,” he said with retention in his voice. The train started picking up speed and the tracks started making more noise. Both were more comforting than the conversation we were having.

By the time he got off of the train in Uterect he had told me a detailed account of how he had to leave his family and move to the Netherlands to seek asylum because he didn’t support his county’s recent foreign policies with America. We were both defected soldiers from opposing sides of an impending war. The last thing he said to me was, “May peace be with you my good friend.” He was only the second person I talked to after I went AWOL.

I made it to Amsterdam, and stayed there for a couple of weeks in a hostel, Bob’s Hostel, for any of you who may know of the place. The rest of my experience in Amsterdam is a little hard to explain, but I can definitely vouch for the importance of psychedelic drugs in times of both personal and international crisis. It was a very meaningful experience. Psylocibin was definitely a good idea at that point. Everything that was going on in the world, and everything that was going on with me made so much more sense. Every fear, every hope, every insight, every premonition, every instinct, every facet of connectedness that I experienced in the world in the past or present at that time had reaffirmed itself with me and with what I was doing, or not doing. Somehow I gained a more encompassing vantage point on how my personal state of existence correlated with the rest of the world. It made me feel invulnerable to the ramifications of that situation, which affectively empowered me to live it out in a manner that allowed me to enjoy it. I knew I would never have another experience like it. I was going to make the most of it, and I reveled in that fact. Albeit that I was an international fugitive, I found freedom in where all the possibilities of that situation could take me.

I had no way to survive for long in Amsterdam or the rest of Europe for that matter. I needed to be in a place where people hated me as much as they hated themselves, and that place was not Europe at this point.

I didn’t know if the leave form I had forged would get me through an airport, and I knew that my name would most likely be flagged in any airport’s security system. Just to stay random I jumped a passenger train to Luxembourg dodging the train attendant the entire way. I made it to the airport and booked a flight from there to Newark, New Jersey with British Airways. I made it through security. Somehow the leave form with made up control numbers and account numbers along with my own name signed as my commander worked to get me through security, and as I boarded the plane I remember thinking, “This was too easy.” The “fasten seat-belt” light turned off and I took my carry on, containing the only things I owned at this point, and went to the restroom and changed clothes and put on a hat, and when I was done I sat down in a different seat. I didn’t know at the time if this was a precaution or just paranoia, but if they were going to find me I was not going to make it any easier for them. The plane landed at Heathrow airport in London where I was going to have to get off and transfer to the Gatwik airport. As we taxied to dock with the terminal, the plane stopped just before the gate, and a couple of minutes later the pilot said, “Will the person sitting in seat 86b with boarding pass number 5384606 please stay seated security reasons.” That was my assigned seat and boarding pass number. The plane took an eternal fifteen minutes to dock with the terminal; they were waiting on security to show up. When they did, the plane finally docked, and I got into the aisle with everyone else. When I walked by the stewardess, she very cordially said, “Welcome to London.” I said, “Thanks,” and kept walking with only a slight grin on my face I’m sure. At the end of the ramp there were two straight-faced British airport security guards standing beside each other just within the roped off area. I made eye contact with one of them as I walked by and concentrated hard on not increasing my pace after I had passed them; for some reason I had almost started laughing. At the ground transportation exit of the airport I exchanged some Euros for Pounds so I could catch my bus to the Gatwik airport.

Upon arrival at Gatwik I hid in some bushes and changed clothes again. It occurred to me that I should do something with the rest of the weed I had picked up in Amsterdam. I rolled a spliff and smoked the rest of what I had; maybe it was due some existential want of mine, and for some reason it brought out the sheer sublimity and farcicality of that situation. From the onset of the whole airport experience I was dumbfounded about how it all seemed so amusingly diverted from the dire reality of it all; my freedom for months afterward depended on the outcome, but I still had an unheeded disposition despite the reality that I was at the whim of other powers at large. I walked up to the British Airways kiosk and presented my itinerary, my U.S. Army I.D., and the bogus leave form. The attendant took a quick glance at the I.D. then at me. She then turned her attention to the leave form and started typing in information. This hadn’t happened in Luxembourg. The typing stopped and she took a long discriminate look at the computer screen, and then she shifted in her seat a little and picked up a phone and called a manager with a fleeting and peculiar look in my direction. Several minutes passed while she was waiting on her supervisor and she continued to try to decipher whatever syntax her computer was spitting out. The line began to back up, and my flight was only twenty five minutes out, and I still had to either deal with security or they else they were going to deal with me. I was surprised she didn’t tell me to step aside so she could help other people; I stood there like a statue of a man in purgatory, and when she looked at me again our eyes locked for a moment. She looked at the I.D. again with more contemplation this time and gave it back to me as she began printing my boarding pass. Minutes later I was at customs explaining that I had nothing to declare.

Once my transatlantic flight was at cruising altitude I couldn’t resist asking the stewardess for a drink even though I knew I shouldn’t attract any attention to myself. One thing led to another, and I was given complimentary beer through the whole flight; benevolence seemed like just as good of a plan after a while. The flight was nearly empty, and I ended up talking to a couple of the stewardesses for a couple of hours with banter about the ridiculous state of affairs in the world at that point. Over my last beer before we started our descent into Newark, I told one of the stewardesses that I was a soldier and was going home for good. Airlines personnel in particular know the comings and goings of soldiers, and she had to have known about the stop-loss on American soldiers; no American soldier, in good health or good standing, had legally gone home “for good” in months, and that was all over the news as well as evident in their absence on her flights. “Was it a medical discharge or some kind of a chapter,” she asked. “Neither,” I responded. She started to say the word, “How,” with consternation, but decided not to pursue an answer. Instead she grinned and whispered, “You need to be more careful,” as she walked to the back. The plane landed and moments later I was showing the same worn out leave form to a tired looking customs agent who sent me on my way. I don’t know how that happened. I guess someone didn’t get the memo. I had just traveled internationally with a federal warrant for my arrest and was not even given a second look by inbound customs or security.

Culture shock set in sometime after I left the airport. I hadn’t been in civilian America since 9/11, and on top of that I found myself on a train to New York. I didn’t pay for the train ticket of course, and when the attendant came by I flipped open my wallet unintentionally revealing my military identification to grab ten dollars of the only hundred I had left. She said, “Don’t worry about it. Thanks for your service.” That made me want to pay for it anyway, but I couldn’t find the brevity to respond without complicating matters. My situation put me in a strange sort of suspension between a division in our society that had continued to widen with every step toward war in Iraq. I don’t look at the soldiers in my unit that invaded Iraq as having poor judgement in deciding to go; they were subjected to just as much if not more deception as anyone else. They were acting upon the misjudgment of a few misguided people, and their vitality was compromised regardless of any personal decision they could have made; our country had done them a disservice by allowing the invasion to happen, and for not being more critical of the prosecution of the Iraq War in its onset. I can honestly say that I respect and supported everyone I knew in the service, but I cannot say I respect and support the totalitarian organization of the military or its given directives as a whole. In every sense of the word I cannot say I did my country a disservice by not going; it was a blatant misrepresentation of the will of the public for the war to even begin. It has been very disheartening for me since this time to be criticized for being unpatriotic by people who have never done any more public service than to vote; shielded -per their own hypothesis- by combat operations of which I was a part. I knew I could run but not hide; I knew my vitality would be strongly affected by the public perception of the impending war.

With that in mind, I looked around and listened in passivity to people on this train. English spoken in public had been a rare encounter for me for a long time, and I almost wanted it to be German, Dutch, Belgian, or French again. There was a sense of disquietude that seemed to pervade every public area, every thing I saw on the news, and everything that was said to me. I began to question why I had come back, but then I realized that, being a product of the American Dream turned nightmare, it would be a little irresponsible to expect non-Americans to be receptive to my immediate problems: American problems. If I was ever going to be any part of a dynamic for changes made to these circumstances I would have to be in America. After all, the international community often receives American influence and foreign policy involuntarily; I didn’t want them to have to receive another problem involuntarily: an indigent American fugitive.

I got off of the train in New York somewhere near the Greyhound station. Directions were easier to understand, but so were the vagrants in the street. It had always seemed more wholesome and fulfilling to give money to the people on the street in Europe. Maybe that was because I couldn’t understand what they were saying, and I could just let my imagination think they would use it for a rightful purpose. It was a little more burdensome to explain, “I’m in your situation,” to people that I knew could understand me. Vocalizing it made it sink in a little further at the time. I made it to the station, and I used my I.D. for the last time to buy a $99 military discount on a trip to San Francisco. I was completely broke except for the dollar in change. I went back outside while waiting on the bus and set the dollar bill on fire in front of all of the bums, and when they protested I just looked around at all of them and said with enthusiasm, “Live free.”

Later that night, after I had transferred from my original bus in Washington D.C. to another one headed to Oklahoma City, I woke up to red and blue lights behind the bus. As it came to a stop, I read the emergency exit label on the window beside me over and over, “Pull up and push out, use only in the event of an emergency.” I asked some people in the seats next to me what was going on and they said that people on the bus had been screaming at the bus driver to stop because he had been driving erratically. Someone on the bus had called the police on the driver, and they ended up arresting him for driving the bus at over three times the legal blood alcohol limit. They took witness statements on a voluntary basis so I was able to stay out of it. After the troopers had left the bus and it occupants on the side of the Beltway, a Greyhound driver showed up two hours later only to drive us back to the D.C. bus station, and when we got there I was a little appalled that there was a television crew and a reporter filming and questioning everyone that was exiting the bus. When I walked by them I said, “Kerl war betrunken,” or “Dude was drunk,” in German. I guess it was some attempt to force them to not broadcast my fugitive mug to the rest of the world. If I had said something in English or nothing at all they might have rolled it anyway. I waited twelve hours for a transfer out of D.C., and I took that time to take a walk by the F.B.I. building where I enticed a few drunk bums into flipping the building off with me for a while; surveillance cameras were rolling. It was a weird move I know, but at least it was on my own agenda that I was on camera.

It took a total of five days to get to San Francisco because I had to be rerouted through Atlanta and other parts of the south before I could head west on the what used to be Route 66. When I made it to San Francisco I walked to my sisters apartment. I hadn’t told my family anything at this point and even though it was risky I decided to make a brief appearance and to let them know I was okay. I just appeared unannounced at her front door very strung out from the road. I thought a phone call would have been a bad idea. She told me that Army investigators had called my mother’s house in Arkansas, and that everyone was very worried about the fact that I had been missing from my unit in Germany. Most civilians, including my family, seemed to treat the possibility of the war with what seemed to me to be disregard. Its implications seemed to be less of a reality than they were to soldiers, and with it being a foreign war of course this was the case. My sister was the only person in my family that was solidly anti-war at this point, and I asked her to explain to the rest of my family that what I was doing would explain itself eventually. She insisted that I stay there for a couple of days, and I did with some well-founded objection. When I left I told her that I had plans to travel to Vancouver, Canada, and I had even bought another bus ticket to get there with a small amount of money she had given me. But I was lying to her in order to protect her from withholding information from the authorities. Federal marshals showed up there to serve the warrant they had on me only days after I left.

I was squatting in Golden Gate Park for about a week after I left my sister’s apartment. I was having fun hanging around the drum circles that would happen only when the sun was out, and I soaked up whatever subculture the city had to offer at that point. After talking to a few kids in the park I learned that there was an anarchist bookstore a few blocks down the Haight, a great street of cultural importance in the Bay area, and I walked there out of curiosity. Once inside, I immediately found the place to be a priceless resource for someone with such a history of transgressing state authority. There was free information about urban survival all over the place, and I also found a flyer about tree-sitting there. It explained that it was a nonviolent form of environmental activism that involved living illegally in redwood trees for long periods of time. I didn’t second guess the impulse I had to do it; it was something that would put me right in the middle of the radar. It was the perfect confrontation with authority that I had wanted for a long time. I didn’t care if I was arrested doing it; I had finally found something that I can honestly say that I agreed with wholeheartedly. The itinerary on the bus ticket I had included a stop in the town where the point of contact was to begin training for direct action and forest defense. After the January 18, anti-war protest that I was a part of in San Francisco, I used the ticket to get to Arcata, in Humboldt County.

Northern California treated me well. I found a lot of hospitality there; creatively motivated dissidents were well received. Days after I arrived there I was living a couple of hundred feet up in a 1,500 year old redwood tree named Jezebel. During one of my first nights that I spent in that tree, one of the tallest in the immediate area, there was a wind storm that came off of the Pacific with gusts upwards of fifty miles an hour. The tree was swaying twelve feet from side to side at the platform violently throwing me and everything else inside it around. I managed to put on some rain gear and climb to the top of the tree; first on the rope and then via free-climb. I don’t know if it was safer than the platform, but it definitely heightened my perception of what a windstorm in a 280 ft. tall redwood tree was like. It was more than just an adrenaline trip. After that, I was in love with it.
Initially, other activists had trained me to ascend a climbing rope with a rock climbing harness and prusiks, and later I began to learn to set platforms in the trees to set up as structures for small living spaces in the trees. I also was taught how to throw lines into new trees to climb and how to set traverses with trucker’s rope allowing us to set up with a pulley and traverse from one tree to the next. I turned into a more experienced climber after a couple of months of living in the trees, and I soon began volunteering to help train other people to climb even if they were just coming to climb for the day. It was an awesome experience to be able to share, and when we did this we often met people from all over the world that had heard of us and what we were doing.

During the entire time I spent there I had some of the most awesome, beautiful, and powerful experiences I have ever had in my life. Some evenings the locals would come out and start a drum circle down by the bases of the trees, and other nights there would be people that would play harmonicas, violins, and mandolins solo purely out of appreciation for what we were doing. Although there was ample support from within the group I was with and from the wider community, I spent long periods of time completely alone without the languishment that often accompanies a prolonged absence of normal amounts of sociality. At one point I had not come down from a tree I was in for a month, and it was, at first, hard to remember how to talk when I was around people again. The only vocalizing I had done is when everyone in the trees from all over the hillside would start howling at the full moon.

People appreciated the fact that we were protesting logging of old-growth redwood trees and donated food and supplies to us; that is how we survived. The community would give our ground-support, food, and supplies so that we could willfully trespass on an active logging zone that was private property owned by an unsustainable logging company, which has now imploded and gone bankrupt due to its own ill contrived logging practices. They cut down all of the trees over ninety percent of the county and had nothing left to profit from.

The fact that it was solely an act of the heart by anyone involved was the beauty behind the action. It was a way to transcend the indirection, or indirect actions, of a conventional lifestyle in our present society. So many of us have the right insights, the right ideas, the right amount of consideration, and the right amount of willpower to make steps toward living a sustainable lifestyle harmonious with the rest of existence, but there is little avenue for its implementation. This type of activism is in no way a panacea, but it is an outlet of expression unparalleled in modern society. Recognizing that humans are highly communicative this type of expression definitely has its function. I see it as a way to set a nonviolent example for people to respond to situations where and when the exploitation of resources proves to be a direct impediment to the local community. In so many situations people fail to organize, communicate, and stand up for what is rightfully theirs.

In contrast with indirect action, direct action is action based upon the basic human willingness to share, to have gratitude, to be giving and generous in a manner that is not transactional, or done with the direct expectation of something in return. It shares the ideology of sustainable living; it is to have a direct and meaningful connection and interaction with the immediate resources and community that sustains you. Indirect action can still withhold the right values, for example, if someone votes or recycles it can still be indirectly beneficial to the rest of the community, but the vast majority of indirect action is the involuntary participation in a transactional infrastructure where what is given is just as meaningless to the individual as what is taken. In this kind of sustainment people lose sight of, and respect for, the natural resources and the community effort behind what they consume as well as the services they provide. The ideological makeup of sustainable living is the same as it is in direct action, but direct action is a way to oppose unsustainable living. This was the first time in my life I had participated in something I can say I fully agreed with.

I learned of the start of the war while I was in a tree.

In the weeks prior, loggers had been moving into the area clear-cutting the entire mountainside. I woke up every morning to the seismic activity generated by one of those trees hitting the ground. In the weeks following this time a good friend of mine in the trees got to meet Starhawk; a widely known proponent for nonviolent environmental direct action whose influence was felt throughout the movement. Recognizing that things were getting intense she came to express gratitude and admiration for what all of us were doing. On March, 21st the extractions began. The company, Pacific Lumber, had hired trained Arborists to extract us from the trees. They would spend all day girthing the trees in order to get high enough to reach us. Once they were into the branches, they would set a belay point and haul up a generator and a grinder to cut us out of cast iron lock-boxes which were cast iron pipes in the shape of a ‘V’ that had a piece of re-bar welded to the center of the inside. This would allow someone to put their arms around the tree and chain themselves to the piece of the re-bar while their arms were inside the piping. Twenty of the twenty-four of us in the trees were extracted. I saw most of them happen in trees that were very near me. I was one of four that never got arrested for some reason. The extractionists came up the tree I was in and cut down the platform, but they realized when they climbed higher that there were too many people in the tree and not enough daylight to get us all out. I spent the next few weeks living on a web of parachute cord that I had woven between a couple of branches. I had also hung a tarp above it to stay dry. I was eventually relieved from the tree by a good friend who was seemingly glad to be arrested in it only a few days after I left. The arrest is an important part of an action for most because it brings out the tenacity and determination of an activist where it otherwise cannot be achieved. This is an enigmatic part of activism that is hard to explain. We were happy to do what we did, for what it was, when it was.

Recognizing my situation, my friends had made sure that I would not get arrested because they did not want to see me get extradited back to Germany. Everyone that got arrested was not only charged with trespassing. They were also civilly sued for sums of $45,000 each for the obstruction of interstate commerce. That was the amount of money that the arborists’ labor costed Pacific Lumber.

I went to Siskyou County to help set up for another action in a national forest, and I also stayed on a commune in the area for a couple of weeks that had an organic farm and orchard; it was 98 miles out on a dirt road. They were 75% self sustaining, and did sharecropping and work-trade for the rest of their food and supplies. I had the option to stay there indefinitely, but I could not justify it somehow. I wanted to be more involved in the wider community and not as isolated. If I was intent on evading the authorities that would have been a perfect option for me, but I, as usual, chose the path of most resistance. I wanted to go to school for journalism eventually and take part in reporting about permaculture, environmental activism, environmental ethics, and environmental science. I wanted to be able to contribute to that movement on a professional level.

After I went on a 2,500 mile hitch-hiking trip around some of the most amazing parts of the West, I turned myself in to the authorities on the fourth of July, and I spent a year in military custody. Seven and a half months of that time I was in jail, but I never was convicted of being AWOL. At that time I learned that six of my friends from my old unit had been killed in Iraq, and I now know that two more have been killed in later deployments to the region. I was given a general discharge from the Army, and was allowed to keep my honors from my deployment to Kosovo, which I have since mailed to my congressman along with a letter about the ability of service members to obtain a conscientious objector status after they enlist.

Greek rioters use lasers

Greek rioters use lasers
Athens Dec 15 2008

Protesters used lasers, huh, against greek law enforcement in an attempt to show force for the death of a teenage boy killed by police two and a half weeks ago.

Hey, a bald eagle landed at the polling station while I was voting — for reals!

Hey, a bald eagle landed at the polling station while I was voting — for reals!

This is a great voting experience that my friend had yesterday, pictures and all!

Via http://favoritematt.blogspot.com/2008/11/hey-bald-eagle-landed-at-polling.html

 

I went to vote this morning in Red Bank, NJ at the elementary school that is the polling station for my district. After voting I was sitting in the small park across the street having a scrapple egg and cheese sandwich and some coffee when I saw my first real live wild bald eagle! it might not be so exciting for folks in other locations but they are a real rarity here in NJ still, only 60 nests in the entire state.

It landed in a tree in the school’s playground for a few moments. Me and another two guys saw it. I had my camera and one of the other two guys grabbed his out of his glove compartment of his truck. By the time we started to cross the street to get a close enough shot it started to fly away, I got a pic of it sitting in the tree and two of it in mid flight but all are from quite far away. (i used the “sharpen” feature in GIMP – if you doubt this story and require the originals I can send em to ya – just ask :)

Anyway, I had been sitting on the bench watching all the different kinds of folks go in and out of the polling station, old men, young hipsters, sweat suit moms and pantsuit businesswomen, guys in BMWs and guys in old beat up pickuptrucks, grandmothers and young brothers all getting along and being friendly and courteous, and I was thinking that America is pretty cool after all when… what else can I say, this sign from above came down. I don’t know if he was trying to vote or send a message or just tired from flying around but he delivered a message to me, whether he intended to or not :)

taking flight

sitting in a branch upper left

Soaring away

my polling place, no lines

my flags

my sign (and some gourds I grew)

the preview of the electronic voting booth’s setup. no paper trail here in Jersey yet (boooo). all the other parties presidential candidates trail off to the left, there were two different socialist parties, the green party, the constitutional party, a communist party and maybe 2 or 3 other choices besides Barack and John.

Vote Globally

Vote Globally

Vote Globally

via http://realitysandwich.com/world_difference

Stephen Hershey

The World For, an interactive, online ballot designed by Seth Carnes provides an ongoing consensus of the upcoming US presidential election, allowing users from across the globe to cast a vote for Barack Obama or John McCain. Obama currently holds 90% of the popular vote, yet an ironic majority of voters from the Middle East favor McCain. Additionally, out of various “top issues,” terrorism was rated the least important.

Steal Back Your Vote

Steal Back Your Vote

Steal This Vote

via http://realitysandwich.com/unblock_vote

Erin Shaw

Robert Kennedy Jr. and investigative journalist Greg Palast collaborated to make Steal Back Your Vote, a comic book that illustrates how to combat the insidious efforts of the Help America Vote Act. HAVA allows partisan Secretaries of State rather than nonpartisan election boards to maintain lists of voters. That could lead to a “Catherine Harris effect,” meaning votes could be thrown out at their discretion in crucial swing states. Kennedy and Palast point out more voter requirements that disproportionately impact Democrats, such as the “perfect match” rule. Under the perfect match rule, government officials are required to check registration information against existing government databases. If there is a minor difference like a middle initial, apostrophes or hyphens in your name, then your registration can be thrown out. Fortunately, Steal Back Your Vote helps you avoid these voter traps. It is available to download for free here, and donations go towards getting more copies out to reclaim the right to vote for all.

image: “New Steal Back Your Vote cover!” by Greg Palast on Flickr courtesy of Creative Commons licensing

Voting VS. Direct Action

Voting VS. Direct Action

I am not quite sure what got into me last night to listen to the presidentail debate, but I did, in its entirety.  

It reminded me of a couple things. The main thing that came to mind is when you call service xyz (credit card, bank phone service), whatever, and you keep getting sent to a different department, until finally you get a dead end recording or a loop that sends you in circles. When you do talk to someone, they tell you that its not their fault or that another department is in charge of that issue. Isn’t that frustrating?

Well, thats the feeling I get after listening to the debate last night. The other guy did it, or the other party’s policies ar responsible. Funny thing is that i believe them. The other party is responsible, both of them. The whole thing is rotten.

Check out this zine for some possible solutions, use the first (imposed) one to make copies to hand out, its a great season to spread the word!

Voting VS Direct Action

from http://crimethinc.com/tools/downloads/zines.html

Download Imposed PDF

Download Reading PDF

Via: http://mexiconuevo.wordpress.com/2008/10/08/tweedle-dee-or-tweedle-dum-2008/