Chinlone

Yoga and Conflict

Day of Action, Night of Mourning Against Offshore Drilling Friday May 14, Nationwide

via http://itsgettinghotinhere.org/2010/05/08/national-day-of-action-night-of-mourning-against-offshore-drilling-friday-may-14/

Once again the fossil fuel industry has brought crisis to the Gulf Coast. Devastation of untold proportions spews non-stop from BP’s oil well as politicians try to save face with empty promises, and oil companies preserve their profits with PR campaigns. This catastrophic spill comes on the heels of Obama’s plan to expand offshore drilling. The price of burning fossil fuels is too high. From combustion to extraction the oil industry poisons our communities, destroys ecosystems, and destabilizes the climate. Now is the time to stop offshore drilling dead in its tracks and drive another nail into the fossil fuel industry’s coffin.

Take action Friday May 14 to demand:

-An immediate ban on all offshore drilling

-A rapid and just transition away from fossil fuels

-No bailouts for the oil industry. All recovery costs must be paid for by BP, Halliburton, Transocean and other implicated companies.

-The federal government must remove any caps on liability for oil companies.

-BP provides full compensation for impacted communities and small businesses.

-BP provides full funding for long-term ecosystem restoration for impacted areas.

-Oil companies operating in the Gulf fully fund restoration of coastal ecosystems damaged by canals, pipelines, and other industry activities.

Take action at:

-BP gas stations and offices

-Halliburton and Transocean offices

-Federal buildings

-Offices of members of Congress

-State government officials in states affected by Obama’s offshore drilling proposal.

-Critical Mass bike rides

-Vigils to mourn the unspeakable loss brought by this spill

-Get creative!

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.

Animation and drawings by BLU

http://www.blublu.org/sito/video/muto.htm

http://www.blublu.org/

http://www.blublu.org/blog/

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

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

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 . . .

Thank You For Throwing Your Shoe

Muntadar al-Zaidi is the Iraqi journalist who was arrested for throwing his shoes at President Bush. This is a photo project devoted to letting al-Zaidi know that people from all over the world share in his outrage over the war in Iraq. We do not condone shoe-throwing, but we prefer it to war.

http://www.thankyouforthrowingyourshoe.com/index.php

http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1868099,00.html

SuicideGirls

Brad Warner on Suicide Girls

turn off all the noises you can

For more information about Fred Rogers and Family Communications, the company he founded, please visit our website at www.fci.org

“Here’s a gift you may not have expected. It’s a gift for you to give yourself. Sometime in your day today, try to turn off all the noises you can around you, and give yourself some ‘quiet time’. . . Have you noticed it’s the little quiet moments in the midst of life that seem to give the rest extra-special meaning?”

The Story of Stuff

What is the Story of Stuff / The Video

From its extraction through sale, use and disposal, all the stuff in our lives affects communities at home and abroad, yet most of this is hidden from view. The Story of Stuff is a 20-minute, fast-paced, fact-filled look at the underside of our production and consumption patterns. The Story of Stuff exposes the connections between a huge number of environmental and social issues, and calls us together to create a more sustainable and just world. It’ll teach you something, it’ll make you laugh, and it just may change the way you look at all the stuff in your life forever.

http://www.storyofstuff.com/index.html

http://www.urbandharma.org/udharma12/budeco.html

Moveon.org is trying to steal my $20 bucks

Resolved!

I was psyched to see the offer below because, contrary to what I thought my response would be, I was actually very happy that Obama won. I wanted a little keep sake of the times and decided to go with the $20+ donation to get 50 stickers to give to friends and family. Well read below to see what happened.

Here is Shepard Fairey’s site and offer . . .

http://obeygiant.com/headlines/get-your-free-obama-sticker#more-5494

Get Your Free Obama Sticker!

Shepard and Moveon.org have teamed up to mark this moment in American history.

These commemorative stickers mark Barack Obama’s historic victory and were designed by groundbreaking artist Shepard Fairey—the same artist who designed the world-famous, iconic “Hope” poster for Obama.

You can get one sticker for free. For a $3+ donation, we’ll send you 5 stickers. For a $20+ donation, we’ll send 50 stickers. Stickers are 4.5″ x 6″ (about the size of a postcard) and may take 5-7 weeks to arrive.

So after I send in the $20 bucks for the 50 stickers I get this email . . .

Thanks for donating!

Here’s a summary of your order:

50-pack of Shepard Fairey stickers — $20.00 donation

Shepard Fairey sticker donation — $20.00 donation

You’ll be charged a total of $40.00.

Please note that stickers could take between 5 and 7 weeks to arrive.

Thanks again for helping spread our message!

–The MoveOn.org Political Action Team
November 07, 2008

Some how MoveOn.org sees fit to help themselves to my $20 bucks, to which I say, “thanks but no thanks you swindling bunch of fucking thieves!”

I emailed them to try and clear this up and got this response . . .

Dear MoveOn Member,

Thank you for contacting MoveOn — we appreciate hearing from you. Because we receive so much email, we are only able to read the email that comes in through our webform.

We have also created an easy to search database of questions and answers that lets you find information on a wide range of topics. You can read through our frequently asked questions, and/or resend your email through our webform here:

http://www.moveon.org/event/faq/index.html?expand_all=-1&faq_id=45

The webform enables us to efficiently read the thousands of messages we receive every week. Please don’t count on a personal reply, but all mail is read and carefully considered.

Sincerely,
MoveOn.org Support

I emailed them this message through the format provided in the above message . . .

That is very deceptive of you and if you don’t refund my $20 bucks I will tell everyone I can about what you are doing, basically swindling $20 bucks out of people (actually it’s already blogged and I will continue to document the process as it unfolds). From the looks of Fairey’s page you get 50 stickers for a $20+ donation. As far as I am concerned you just stole $20 Dollars from me, I can’t afford that and I am pissed off that you guys would do such a thing.

When I hit send I get this message . . .

An error has occurred.

We’re sorry, an error occurred while processing your request. We’ve dispatched an email to our tech staff, and they will try and resolve this matter as quickly as possible.

Thats real convenient for them wouldn’t you say?

All in all its a cool sticker and to me they are well worth the $20 dollar donation, but if they told me they were gonna gank an extra $20 bucks I would have passed.

Beware! Moveon.org are thieves!

———————————-

 

Resolved!

It looks like I added a contribution on top of the sticker contribution. I honestly don’t see how I could have, but either way, move on responded and resolved the situation. Here is the final message from move on . . .

It looks like you ordered the 50-sticker pack for $20 and then inputted an extra $20 donation on top of that.  That’s why your order total came out as $40.  That’s no problem, though, I’ve refunded your donation and you should see it on your credit card in a few days.
However, please note that we can’t refund part of a transaction, so I had to refund your sticker order as well.  We don’t keep credit card numbers on file, so I can’t put through just the sticker order again for you.  If you’d still like stickers, you can order them again at:

http://pol.moveon.org/shepstickers/

Thanks for all you do,
—–

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 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

Barack OBollywood

East meets West meets acid.

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!

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/

Our Congress has been betraying our trust and selling us out for generations

FREE Uncle Sam Poster

Via: http://www.kickthemallout.com/article.php/Story-Free_Uncle_Sam_Poster

http://www.kickthemallout.com/

 

Wednesday, May 14 2008 @ 11:26 AM MDT
Contributed by: BMcDonald
Views: 3,478

We made this 8 1/2 X 11 Uncle Sam Poster to help spread the word and instill the “true” patriotic duty of every American to rise up against a government that no longer represents it’s citizens and which threatens to destroy all our unalienable rights they swore an oath to defend and protect.   When the people in our government decide to “rule us” rather than to “serve us,” it becomes the duty of every citizen to vote the traitors out of office. 

“This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can excercise their constitutional right of amending it, or exercise their revolutionary right to overthrow it.“
                                                            - Abraham Lincoln

Please download the poster below by simply clicking on the photo, print them out in huge quantities, and plaster them everywhere!  It’s going to take every one of us to set aside our petty differences and unite the power of our votes to effect sweeping change in the upcoming election.  The big question you really need to seriously ask yourself is, “is your allegiance to a political party or to your country?”  Both political parties are destroying this country.

We have a small window left where we can save our nation.  If we all band together, set aside petty partisan differences and use the power of our votes in the upcoming election as a revolutionary weapon we can restore our Constitution Republic and rid our government of every petty tyrant in sight.  

Click on the Posters Below To Download a PDF Copy For Printing
We’ll be happy to customize these for you with your meetup group address
and your contact info on it if you’d like.  Just write to us and ask.

Low Ink Version
For Handouts
8 1/2 x 11

Low Ink Version
For Handouts
 2 -up on 8 1/2 x 11

Full Color Version
Best for printing on higher quality paper
for posting on bulletin boards
8 1/2 x 11

 

Tangle of Young Lips, a Sex Rebellion in Chile

By ALEXEI BARRIONUEVO

Published: September 12, 2008

from http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/13/world/americas/13chile.html

SANTIAGO, Chile — It is just after 5 p.m. in what was once one of Latin America’s most sexually conservative countries, and the youth of Chile are bumping and grinding to a reggaetón beat. At the Bar Urbano disco, boys and girls ages 14 to 18 are stripping off their shirts, revealing bras, tattoos and nipple rings.

The place is a tangle of lips and tongues and hands, all groping and exploring. About 800 teenagers sway and bounce to lyrics imploring them to “Poncea! Poncea!”: make out with as many people as they can.

And make out they do — with stranger after stranger, vying for the honor of being known as the “ponceo,” the one who pairs up the most.

Chile, long considered to have among the most traditional social mores in South America, is crashing headlong into that reputation with its precocious teenagers. Chile’s youths are living in a period of sexual exploration that, academics and government officials say, is like nothing the country has witnessed before.

“Chile’s youth are clearly having sex earlier and testing the borderlines with their sexual conduct,” said Dr. Ramiro Molina, director of the University of Chile’s Center for Adolescent Reproductive Medicine and Development.

The sexual awakening is happening through a booming industry for 18-and-under parties, an explosion of Internet connectivity and through Web sites like Fotolog, where young people trade suggestive photos of each other and organize weekend parties, some of which have drawn more than 4,500 teenagers. The online networks have emboldened teenagers to express themselves in ways that were never customary in Chile’s conservative society.

“We are not the children of the dictatorship; we are the children of democracy,” said Michele Bravo, 17, at a recent afternoon party. “There is much more of a rebellious spirit among young people today. There is much more freedom to explore everything.”

The parents and grandparents of today’s teenagers fought hard to give them such freedoms and to escape the book-burning times of Gen. Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship. But in a country that legalized divorce only in 2004 and still has a strict ban on abortion, the feverish sexual exploration of the younger generation is posing new challenges for parents and educators. Sex education in public schools is badly lagging, and the pregnancy rate among girls under 15 has been on the rise, according to the Health Ministry.

Indeed, adolescent sexuality has changed throughout Latin America, Dr. Ramiro said, and underlying much of the newfound freedom is an issue that societies the world over are grappling with: the explosion of explicit content and social networks on the Internet.

Chilean society was shaken last year when a video of a 14-year-old girl eagerly performing oral sex on a teenage boy on a Santiago park bench was discovered on a video-hosting Web site. The episode became a national scandal, stirring finger-pointing at the girl’s school, at the Internet provider — at everyone, it seemed, but the boys who captured the event on a cellphone and distributed the video.

Chile’s stable, market-based economy has helped to drive the changes, spurring a boom in consumer spending and credit unprecedented in the country’s history. Chile has become Latin American’s biggest per-capita consumer of digital technology, including cellphones, cable television and Internet broadband accounts, according to a study by the Santiago consulting firm Everis and the Center for Latin American Studies at the University of Navarra in Spain.

Chileans are plugged into the Internet at higher rates than other South Americans, and the highest use is among children ages 6 to 17. Therein lies a central factor in the country’s newfound sexual exploration, said Miguel Arias, a psychologist and head of the Santiago consulting firm Divergente.

Fotolog, a photo-sharing network created in the United States, took off in the last two years in this country. Today Chile, which has a population of 16 million, has 4.8 million Fotolog accounts, more than any other country, the company says. Again, children ages 12 to 17 hold more than 60 percent of the accounts.

Hit it for more

David Letterman Reacts to John McCain Suspending Campaign

On the “Late Show,” David Letterman talks about John McCain suspending his campaign in order to solve the economic problems.

Questions

The author, environmentalist and leading proponent of ‘eco-sabotage’ has five questions for you.

Lessons from Cuba

When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1990, Cuba’s economy went into a tailspin. With imports of oil cut by more than half – and food by 80 percent – people were desperate. This film tells of the hardships and struggles as well as the community and creativity of the Cuban people during this difficult time. Cubans share how they transitioned from a highly mechanized, industrial agricultural system to one using organic methods of farming and local, urban gardens. It is an unusual look into the Cuban culture during this economic crisis, which they call “The Special Period.” The film opens with a short history of Peak Oil, a term for the time in our history when world oil production will reach its all-time peak and begin to decline forever. Cuba, the only country that has faced such a crisis – the massive reduction of fossil fuels – is an example of options and hope.

The Power of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil

---

http://www.globalpublicmedia.com/articles/657

http://www.communitysolution.org/cuba.html

In Brief: “Try to image an airplane suddenly losing its engines. It was really a crash”… A crash that put Cuba into a state of shock. There were frequent blackouts in its oil-fed electric power grid, up to 16 hours per day. The average daily caloric intake in Cuba dropped by a third… So Cubans started to grow local organic produce out of necessity, developed bio-pesticides and bio-fertilizers as petrochemical substitutes, and incorporated more fruits and vegetables into their diets. Since they couldn’t fuel their aging cars, they walked, biked, rode buses, and carpooled.

By Megan Quinn
From Permaculture Activist

Havana, Cuba — At the Organipónico de Alamar, a neighborhood agriculture project, a workers’ collective runs a large urban farm, a produce market and a restaurant. Hand tools and human labor replace oil-driven machinery. Worm cultivation and composting create productive soil. Drip irrigation conserves water, and the diverse, multi-hued produce provides the community with a rainbow of healthy foods.

Farmers at the Organiponico de Alamar, a neighborhood agriculture project in downtown Havana, weed the beds. (Photo by John Morgan)

In other Havana neighborhoods, lacking enough land for such large projects, residents have installed raised garden beds on parking lots and planted vegetable gardens on their patios and rooftops.

Since the early 1990s, an urban agriculture movement has swept through Cuba, putting this capital city of 2.2 million on a path toward sustainability.

A small group of Australians assisted in this grass-roots effort, coming to this Caribbean island nation in 1993 to teach permaculture, a system based on sustainable agriculture which uses far less energy.

This need to bring agriculture into the city began with the fall of the Soviet Union and the loss of more than 50 percent of Cuba’s oil imports, much of its food and 85 percent of its trade economy. Transportation halted, people went hungry and the average Cuban lost 30 pounds.

“In reality, when this all began, it was a necessity. People had to start cultivating vegetables wherever they could,” a tour guide told a documentary crew filming in Cuba in 2004 to record how Cuba survived on far less oil than usual.

The crew included the staff of The Community Solution, a non-profit organization in Yellow Springs, Ohio which teaches about peak oil – the time when oil production world-wide will reach an all-time high and head into an irreversible decline. Some oil analysts believe this may happen within this decade, making Cuba a role model to follow.

“We wanted to see if we could capture what it is in the Cuban people and the Cuban culture that allowed them to go through this very difficult time,” said Pat Murphy, The Community Solution’s executive director. “Cuba has a lot to show the world in how to deal with energy adversity.”

Scarce petroleum supplies have not only transformed Cuba’s agriculture. The nation has also moved toward small-scale renewable energy and developed an energy-saving mass transit system, while maintaining its government-provided health care system whose preventive, locally-based approach to medicine conserves scarce resources.

The era in Cuba following the Soviet collapse is known to Cubans as the Special Period. Cuba lost 80 percent of its export market and its imports fell by 80 percent. The Gross Domestic Product dropped by more than one third.

“Try to image an airplane suddenly losing its engines. It was really a crash,” Jorge Mario, a Cuban economist, told the documentary crew. A crash that put Cuba into a state of shock. There were frequent blackouts in its oil-fed electric power grid, up to 16 hours per day. The average daily caloric intake in Cuba dropped by a third.

According to a report on Cuba from Oxfam, an international development and relief agency, “In the cities, buses stopped running, generators stopped producing electricity, factories became silent as graveyards. Obtaining enough food for the day became the primary activity for many, if not most, Cubans.”

In part due to the continuing US embargo, but also because of the loss of a foreign market, Cuba couldn’t obtain enough imported food. Furthermore, without a substitute for fossil-fuel based large-scale farming, agricultural production dropped drastically.

So Cubans started to grow local organic produce out of necessity, developed bio-pesticides and bio-fertilizers as petrochemical substitutes, and incorporated more fruits and vegetables into their diets. Since they couldn’t fuel their aging cars, they walked, biked, rode buses, and carpooled.

“There are infinite small solutions,” said Roberto Sanchez from the Cuban-based Foundation for Nature and Humanity. “Crises or changes or problems can trigger many of these things which are basically adaptive. We are adapting.”

A New Agricultural Revolution

Cubans are also replacing petroleum-fed machinery with oxen, and their urban agriculture reduces food transportation distances. Today an estimated 50 percent of Havana’s vegetables come from inside the city, while in other Cuban towns and cities urban gardens produce from 80 percent to more than 100 percent of what they need.

In turning to gardening, individuals and neighborhood organizations took the initiative by identifying idle land in the city, cleaning it up, and planting.

Farmers pose with their produce at a farmers’ market in downtown Havana. The Cuban government now allows these private markets, which provide year-round fresh local food to the community. (Photo by John Morgan)

When the Australian permaculturists came to Cuba they set up the first permaculture demonstration project with a $26,000 grant from the Cuban government.

Out of this grew the Foundation for Nature and Humanity’s urban permaculture demonstration project and center in Havana. “With this demonstration, neighbors began to see the possibilities of what they can do on their rooftops and their patios,” said Carmen López, director of the urban permaculture center, as she stood on the center’s rooftop amongst grape vines, potted plants, and compost bins made from tires.

Since then the movement has been spreading rapidly across Havana’s barrios. So far López’ urban permaculture center has trained more than 400 people in the neighborhood in permaculture and distributes a monthly publication, “El Permacultor.” “Not only has the community learned about permaculture,” according to López, “we have also learned about the community, helping people wherever there is need.”

One permaculture student, Nelson Aguila, an engineer-turned-farmer, raises food for the neighborhood on his integrated rooftop farm. On just a few hundred square feet he has rabbits and hens and many large pots of plants. Running free on the floor are gerbils, which eat the waste from the rabbits, and become an important protein source themselves. “Things are changing,” Sanchez said. “It’s a local economy. In other places people don’t know their neighbors. They don’t know their names. People don’t say ‘hello’ to each other. Not here.”

Since going from petrochemical intensive agricultural production to organic farming and gardening, Cuba now uses 21 times less pesticide than before the Special Period. They have accomplished this with their large-scale production of bio-pesticides and bio-fertilizers, exporting some of it to other Latin American countries.

Though the transition to organic production and animal traction was necessary, the Cubans are now seeing the advantages. “One of the good parts of the crisis was to go back to the oxen,” said Miguel Coyula, a community development specialist, “Not only do they save fuel, they do not compact the soil the way the tractor does, and the legs of the oxen churn the earth.”

“The Cuban agricultural, conventional, ‘Green Revolution’ system never was able to feed the people,” Sanchez said. “It had high yields, but was oriented to plantation agriculture. We exported citrus, tobacco, sugar cane and we imported the basic things. So the system, even in the good times, never fulfilled people’s basic needs.”

Drawing on his permaculture knowledge, Sanchez said, “You have to follow the natural cycles, so you hire nature to work for you, not work against nature. To work against nature, you have to waste huge amounts of energy.”

Energy Solutions

Because most of Cuba’s electricity had been generated from imported oil, the shortages affected nearly everyone on the island. Scheduled rolling blackouts several days per week lasted for many years. Without refrigerators, food would spoil. Without electric fans, the heat was almost unbearable in a country that regularly has temperatures in the 80s and 90s.

The solutions to Cuba’s energy problems were not easy. Without money, it couldn’t invest in nuclear power and new conventional fossil fuel plants or even large-scale wind and solar energy systems. Instead, the country focused on reducing energy consumption and implementing small-scale renewable energy projects.

Ecosol Solar and Cuba Solar are two renewable energy organizations leading the way. They help develop markets for renewable energy, sell and install systems, perform research, publish newsletters, and do energy efficiency studies for large users.

Ecosol Solar has installed 1.2 megawatts of solar photovoltaic in both small household systems (200 watt capacity) and large systems (15-50 kilowatt capacity). In the United States 1.2 megawatts would provide electricity to about 1000 homes, but can supply power to significantly more houses in Cuba where appliances are few, conservation is the custom, and the homes are much smaller.

About 60 percent of Ecosol Solar’s installations go to social programs to power homes, schools, medicals facilities, and community centers in rural Cuba. It recently installed solar photovoltaic panels to electrify 2,364 primary schools throughout rural Cuba where it was not cost effective to take the grid. In addition, it is developing compact model solar water heaters that can be assembled in the field, water pumps powered by PV panels, and solar dryers.

A visit to “Los Tumbos,” a solar-powered community in the rural hills southwest of Havana demonstrates the positive impact that these strategies can have. Once without electricity, each household now has a small solar panel that powers a radio and a lamp. Larger systems provide electricity to the school, hospital, and community room, where residents gather to watch the evening news program called the “Round Table.” Besides keeping the residents informed, the television room has the added benefit of bringing the community together.

“The sun was enough to maintain life on earth for millions of years,” said Bruno Beres, a director of Cuba Solar. “Only when we [humans] arrived and changed the way we use energy was the sun not enough. So the problem is with our society, not with the world of energy.”

Transportation – A System of Ride Sharing

Cubans also faced the problem of providing transportation on a reduced energy diet. Solutions came from ingenious Cubans, who often quote the phrase, “Necessity is the mother of invention.” With little money or fuel, Cuba now moves masses of people during rush hour in Havana. In an inventive approach, virtually every form of vehicle, large and small, was used to build this mass transit system. Commuters ride in hand-made wheelbarrows, buses, other motorized transport and animal-powered vehicles.

One special Havana transit vehicle, nicknamed a “camel,” is a very large metal semi-trailer, pulled by a standard semi-truck tractor, which holds 300 passengers. Bicycles and motorized two-passenger rickshaws are also prevalent in Havana, while horse drawn carts and large old panel trucks are used in the smaller towns.

This unique Cuban transport vehicle, called a “camel”, can carry 300 passengers. (Photo by John Morgan)

Government officials in yellow garb pull over nearly empty government vehicles and trucks on Havana’s streets and fill them with people needing a ride. Chevys from the 1950s cruise along with four people in front and four more in back.

A donkey cart with a taxi license nailed to the frame also travels Cuba’s streets. Many trucks were converted to passenger transport by welding steps to the back so riders could get on and off with ease.

Health Care and Education – National Priorities

Even though Cuba is a poor country, with a per capita Gross Domestic Product of only $3,000 per year (putting them in the bottom third of all nations), life expectancy is the same as in the U.S., and infant mortality is below that in the U.S. The literacy rate in Cuba is 97 percent, the same as in the U.S. Cuba’s education system, as well as its medical system is free.

When Cubans suffered through their version of a peak oil crisis, they maintained their free medical system, one of the major factors that helped them to survive. Cubans repeatedly emphasize how proud they are of their system.

Before the Cuban Revolution in 1959, there was one doctor for every 2000 people. Now there is a doctor for every 167 people. Cuba also has an international medical school and trains doctors to work in other poor countries. Each year there are 20,000 Cuban doctors abroad doing this kind of work.

With meat scarce and fresh local vegetables in abundance since 1995, Cubans now eat a healthy, low-fat, nearly vegetarian, diet. They also have a healthier outdoor lifestyle and walking and bicycling have become much more common. “Before, Cubans didn’t eat that many vegetables. Rice and beans and pork meat was the basic diet,” Sanchez from the Foundation for Nature and Humanity said. “At some point necessity taught them, and now they demand [vegetables].”

Doctors and nurses live in the community where they work and usually above the clinic itself. In remote rural areas, three-story buildings are constructed with the doctor’s office on the bottom floor and two apartments on the second and third floors, one for the doctor and one for the nurse.

In the cities, the doctors and nurses always live in the neighborhoods they serve. They know the families of their patients and try to treat people in their homes. “Medicine is a vocation, not a job,” exclaimed a Havana doctor, demonstrating the motivation for her work. In Cuba 60 percent of the doctors are women.

Education is considered the most important social activity in Cuba. Before the revolution, there was one teacher for every 3,000 people. Today the ratio is one for every 42 people, with a teacher-student ratio of 1 to 16. Cuba has a higher percentage of professionals than most developing countries, and with 2 percent of the population of Latin America, Cuba has 11 percent of all the scientists.

In an effort to halt migration from the countryside to the city during the Special Period, higher education was spread out into the provinces, expanding learning opportunities and strengthening rural communities. Before the Special Period there were only three institutions of higher learning in Cuba. Now there are 50 colleges and universities throughout the country, seven in Havana.

The Power of Community

Throughout its travels, the documentary crew saw and experienced the resourcefulness, determination, and optimism of the Cuban people, often hearing the phrase “Sí, se puede” or “Yes it can be done.”

People spoke of the value of “resistir” or “resistance,” showing their determination to overcome obstacles. And they have lived under a U.S. economic blockade since the early 1960s, viewed as the ultimate test of the Cuban ability to resist.

There is much to learn from Cuba’s response to the loss of cheap and abundant oil. The staff of The Community Solution sees these lessons as especially important for people in developing countries, who make up 82 percent of the world’s population and live more on life’s edge. But developed countries are also vulnerable to shortages in energy. And with the coming onset of peak oil, all countries will have to adapt to the reality of a lower energy world.

With this new reality, the Cuban government changed its 30-year motto from “Socialism or Death” to “A Better World is Possible.” Government officials allowed private entrepreneurial farmers and neighborhood organizations to use public land to grow and sell their produce. They pushed decision-making down to the grassroots level and encouraged initiatives in their neighborhoods. They created more provinces. They encouraged migration back to the farms and rural areas and reorganized their provinces to be in-line with agricultural needs.

(Photo by John Morgan)

From The Community Solution’s viewpoint, Cuba did what it could to survive, despite its ideology of a centralized economy. In the face of peak oil and declining oil production, will America do what it takes to survive, in spite of its ideology of individualism and consumerism? Will Americans come together in community, as Cubans did, in the spirit of sacrifice and mutual support?

“There is climate change, the price of oil, the crisis of energy …” Beres from Cuba Solar said, listing off the challenges humanity faces. “What we must know is that the world is changing and we must change the way we see the world.”

This article appeared in the special Peak Oil issue of Permaculture Activist, Spring 2006. The author, Megan Quinn, is the outreach director for The Community Solution, a program of Community Service Inc., a nonprofit organization in Yellow Springs, Ohio. For information about its soon-to-be-released documentary, “The Power of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil” visit its website, e-mail her at megan@communitysolution.org, or call 937-767-2161.

Are You An Eccentric?

“That so few now dare to be eccentric marks the chief danger of our time”.

— John Stuart Mill, On Liberty.

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A profile emerged with fifteen characteristics that applied to most eccentrics, ranging from the obvious to the trivial. We found that an eccentric may be described in the following ways, more or less in descending order of frequency. (Quoting from research by Dr. David Weeks)

Characteristics of Eccentrics

• Nonconforming

• Creative

• Strongly motivated by curiosity

• Idealistic: wants to make the world a better place and the people in it happier

• Happily obsessed with one or more hobbyhorses (usually five or six)

• Aware from early childhood that he is different

• Intelligent

• Opinionated and outspoken, convinced that he is right and that the rest of the world is out of step

• Noncompetitive, not in need of reassurance or reinforcement from society
  Unusual in his eating habits and living arrangements

• Not particularly interested in the opinions or company of other people, except in order to persuade them to his – the correct – point of view

• Possessed of a mischievous sense of humor

• Single

• Usually the eldest or an only child

• Bad speller

The first five characteristics listed here are the most important and apply to virtually every eccentric. Nonconformity is, of course, the principal defining trait of the breed.

A profile emerged with fifteen characteristics that applied to most eccentrics, ranging from the obvious to the trivial. We found that an eccentric may be described in the following ways, more or less in descending order of frequency. ( Quoting from research by Dr. David Weeks)

• Less likely to be addicted to consumer culture than the general population.

• Very unlikely to be substance abusers or alcoholics. Dr. David Weeks “fewer than 30 of the more than 1,000 eccentrics he sampled had been substance abusers or alcoholics.”

Nonconformity, extreme curiosity and irreverence for the strictures of culture continually resurface as the most distinguishable eccentric traits, and these are indeed qualities that most of us consider admirable.

• They’re permanently non-conforming from a very early age, and there’s a great overlap between eccentric children and gifted children. They develop differently, though.

• The eccentrics become very, very creative but they’re motivated primarily by curiosity. They have extreme degrees of curiosity, and they’re very independent-minded.

• Their other motivation is fairly idealistic. They want to make the world a better place, and they want to make other people happy.

• They have these happy obsessive preoccupations, and a wonderful, unusual sense of humor, and this gives them a significant meaning in life. And they are far healthier than most people because of that.

• They have very low stress. They’re not worried about conforming to the rest of society, low stress, high happiness equates with psychological health.

• They use their solitude very constructively, and physical health, because of that.

• They only visit their doctors perhaps once every eight or nine years, which is about twenty times less than most of us do. (David Weeks)

• “Time and again, the eccentrics in our study clearly evinced that shining sense of positivism and buoyant self-confidence that comes from being comfortable in one’s own skin.” Dr. David Weeks
  

Read the entire article at http://www.gnomesondope.com/eccentric.htm