The Green Movement Welcomes Homer Simpson and Everyone (Who Wants to Live)

Here’s a funny op-ed at the BBC website (which we check daily to keep in touch with the world…we haven’t watched the news or read much in the way of newspapers for a long time). It’s from George Meyer, a long-time writer of the Simpson’s, and uses humor (on the mature list of Freudian defense mechanisms, Maj reminds me frequently) to talk about the rather serious predicament we as a species find ourselves in, creating the climate change that is going to threaten our survival (or at least our life as we know it) if we don’t get our act together in time to reverse it.

Bayer Ranks High in the List of Evil Corporations

If you’re concerned about a shadowy group of Europeans pulling our political strings and ruining good people’s lives (what some like to call the Illuminati, though anyone with sense has to see that these folk are not enlightened in the least), check out the Wikipedia article on Bayer AG.

Here are some interesting snippets:

As part of the reparations after World War I, Bayer had its assets, including rights to its name and trademarks, confiscated in the United States, Canada, and several other countries. In the United States and Canada, Bayer’s assets and trademarks were acquired by Sterling Drug, a predecessor of Sterling Winthrop.

Bayer became part of IG Farben, a conglomerate of German chemical industries which formed the financial core of the Nazi regime. IG Farben owned 42.5% of the company that manufactured Zyklon B, a chemical used in the gas chambers of Auschwitz. When the Allies split IG Farben after World War II for involvement in several Nazi war crimes, Bayer reappeared as an individual business. Bayer executive Fritzter Meer, sentenced to seven years in prison by the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal, was made head of the supervisory board of Bayer in 1956, after his release.

Isn’t that great? I’m thinking of writing a short story based on the transactions…imagine, businessmen making a deal over boxes of poison gas. “Thanks for doing your part for the Final Solution, Fritz. And here’s a bag of money for it, to boot.”

Bayer AG is involved in an ongoing controversy with French and Nova Scotian beekeepers over claimed pesticide kills of honeybees from its seed treatment insecticide imidacloprid. France has since issued a provisional ban on the use of Imidacloprid for corn seed treatment pending further action. A consortium of U.S. beekeepers has also filed a civil suit against Bayer CropScience for alleged losses.

I’m wondering if this could explain the problems bee keepers in America have been having with the as-yet unexplained hive collapse syndrome which is threatening our food supply.

Austrian journalist Klaus Werner alleged in his Black Book on Brand Companies, that the Bayer subsidiary H.C. Starck financed the civil war in the Democratic Republic of Congo by trading illegally with the mineral coltan. The allegations were also confirmed by a U.N. panel of experts. Bayer alleged that since 2001 it didn’t trade any more with congolese coltan, but never proved where their resources came from.

How much these people care about human lives: zero. Which would explain the following:

In October 2001, Bayer was taken to court after 24 children in the remote Andean village of Tauccamarca were killed and 18 more severely poisoned when they drank a powdered milk substitute that had been contaminated with methyl parathion.

The white powder that resembles powdered milk and has no strong chemical odour was packaged in small plastic bags that provide no protection to users and give no indication of the danger of the product within. The bags were labelled in Spanish only, and carried drawings of healthy carrots and potatoes but no pictograms indicating danger or toxicity.

Let’s worry about reality, folks, not science-fiction human-reptilian hybrids. There are evil homo sapiens on this planet. No extraterrestrial DNA needed.

The Wolf Totem Speaks

For those following the entheogenic discovery journal, tryptamines in the intense phase have been completely mastered.  At the end of this period, a wolf totem appeared to announce both a shift in paradigm as well as switch to more traditional shamanic entheogens such as phenylethylamines (peyote, mescaline) and sub-intense ritual tryptamines (psilocybin).  I have realized that animal spirits are an even more fundamental, universal way of connecting to the shamanic experience than ritual magic is.  By realizing the high degree of social structure and communication that most animals have, one attains a variety of shamanic tools for the purpose of bringing back a boon from non-linguistic, non-ego, primal states of mind attained through shamanic ritual.  One also sees through working with animal totems that there are a variety of beings that make up the human mind, and that some of these parts of ourself are of one mind with the animals around us.

Here is what the wolf said to me:

The wolf comes to announce that we must hunt for our visions.  You may hear his call sound throughout the hills, reminding us that who we are is very small, but who we are together is very big.  We are many.  We are one.  We light the skies with our eyes and paint the canyons with our howls.  Let us seize upon this chance for change, dive into it.  Tear it to pieces.  There is only fear when darkness and thunder strikes, that we may lose our way and separate from the pack.  We will never fear if we don’t forget who we are.  Together let us move.  Let us be wise and follow the seasons.  See the flight of the ravens and eagles, and track the footsteps of the deer.  Let us be fierce and strong, protecting what is ours.  This land is mine I call, and I shall feed off it and lay down in its hollows.  The others don’t belong here any more.  We must make our young strong enough to fight.  Let them know who they are and feel the blood beat strong in their veins as they run by the moonlit lake.  The dark world of vision and the blinding light of snow split have split my nose.  I peer into to this world and the next.  Let us sing and cry, “Take seize of change.  Bolt forth to life.  Know you are worthy to be called to run with me.”

Song of Anat

Please abandon fear. Realize that everyone is divine. We all live in a world spun of language, imagery, and sheer vibration emanating from us that we embed in every vase, wall, plant or animal around us. These beings, the company we keep in our heads and in the world we choose to live in, are fabricated out of the music of our hearts. The song we sing from the center of our skulls, deep in the pituitary, pumping out serotonin, neuroepinephrine, dopamine like a giant umbrella of psychedelic eminence, radiating pastel skies, rage, sadness and joy in undulating protrusions. Not only does this song ring in our ears as sound, but sings in our eyes as light, and our nose as smell. Hormonal waves ripple emotion and physical throbbing through our bodies in cycles of minutes, hours and years. We do yoga all day, how we hold our spine, whether we look down in command, surveying our creation in confidence, or look up in awe, mothered by the great divine. Small to large we are a continuous pole of vibration living in a world of vibrating beings, some made by us, some made by others. We are also made by others, and our children spiritual and physical make others. We are one and we are many, carving each other with our song. Remember we are free to move. We are free to be crazy. We are free to smash myths. We are free to give sex to all beings, as many or as few as we desire, to sing of love as we please. We are also free to break morals, to lie, to cheat, to take without permission from those screaming in pain. Or instead, we are free to plant love, to raise all up to be the radiant stars of divinity they are but have forgotten. The cultural symbols of the past drift through us like seaweed along with our personal song waving through the waters of life we shroud ourselves in. Despite your habits and your wrappings, your bonds, remember your freedom. Sex is rhythm, work is rhythm, breathing is rhythm, let your song and your love be pure. Rise queen. Rise king. Take to your throne as lord of the universe. You are god. Sing into being a world of beauty. Your lover is waiting for you to remember who you are. Break through that wall, overcome that hurdle, abandon that fear, cut loose those chains. Remember who you are. You are god. Sing loudly. Sing strong. Sing peace. Sing so no one lies in any gutter, no one falls in any fear, no one trembles afraid, unloved. To let a soul go down unloved is the only sin I know, because you failed as the lord to not create beauty and peace. To let such wrong blacken your world is to throw down your crown and roll in the despair of amnesia. A divine being powerless to sing love deep into the four directions? I love you and I miss you so much, my great one. Arise and take your crown. Dispense your song and dance your dance. Beat the drum of your world loudly, for you are god.

Lawrence Ferlinghetti is My Kind of Poet

An anarchist. I just listened to his “Greedy Blues” at Rhapsody, from the album *Mob Action Against the State.* He also gives a nice diatribe beforehand, about global capitalism and monoculture. I don’t have time to listen to the rest of the album yet, but I think I’ll have to.

He’s one of those rare poets, like me, who takes his responsibility as an artist seriously.

Now This is Good All Around

Part of our ongoing encounter with Jessica has involved our realizing the need to take our finances more seriously. So we’re tackling our debt and preparing to invest, when we’re clear of it. At ebay, where I’ve been getting great deals on things for home decor (rather than spending tons at the shops ’round here), like planters and the most adorable rusty Victorian door knocker that still has remnants of its original paint, which is much more colorful and charming than what we see all the time as reproductions and which is going to go on my very weathered wooden door (which is about 100 years old) after I’ve finished cleaning and sanding it and painting it with very yellow oil paint of my own making (thanks to Mother Earth News for the recipes), I followed this link at the bottom of the screen. This is how we’ll do it. I’ve heard about these micro-loans going on. I’m so excited that we can be a part of it.

Because the Earth Needs a Good Lawyer

That’s the motto of this group I get action alerts from in my email, called Earthjustice. Check them out, and please support them with some money if you’ve got some to spare and care about this sort of thing. (Sign up for their mailing list, and you can join me in badgering our congressfolk, too, into representing us instead of big business.)

The Importance of Beauty (and Freedom is Nice, Too)

Here’s something I typed up when we drove up to see Maj.’s parents:

So we’re rolling through the mountains of Tennessee. I’m looking out the window as I type this, thinking how lucky we are to be free to move between earth and sky, even pressed as we are by gravity, confined to the ground. Still so many directions we can move in, and so very much to see. The trees are almost all awake, though their leaves are mostly still in miniature and glowing that bright green of spring. The woods here are a tapestry of mounded forms and color: chartreuse, olive, kelly. And the bright white and deep pink of flowering branches, redbud and pear and apple and still some dogwood, though nothing like in Alabama, where they glowed in the darkened under-story that is their natural habitat.

In this setting, with the earth rising up in undulating waves of these diverse greens, everything man-made looks so ugly. It’s our modern building methods, the cheap materials we use, the lack of any aesthetic in utilitarian architecture.

Now we’re moving into Knoxville. The beauty of trees has receded. The highway is four lanes in each direction. Billboards proliferate. The flashing light on a radio tower glares against the grey sky. In the mountains, the drizzle felt nurturing. Here, it’s just messy, and the sky creates a monotone with the concrete, rather than a neutral backdrop against which the colors of life could shine.

After we’ve gotten our heads out of our asses, after we’ve finally rejected religion as anything but a private choice and united in the struggle to fix our forbears’ horrendous mistakes that have led to the immanent ecological crisis, one of the challenges facing the modern human is how to create cities that nurture the individual’s sense of beauty. I may not believe in a soul, but I do believe in a psyche that can be strongly influenced by its surroundings.

One of the things I’ve noticed on this trip is that a lot of trucking agencies have begun putting Biblical passages or religious phrases on the backs of their trucks. We just passed one that quoted a bit from Romans, “If God is for us, who can be against us?” Well, someone who thinks God is for THEM. Another said “Jesus is LORD.” Lord of what? That’s a silly word a lot of Christians don’t think much about. It’s left over from the feudal system. Your lord was the nobleman to whom you, as a serf, paid rent (usually a significant part of your crops). So how, exactly, is Jesus my Lord? And why shouldn’t I, instead, be free?

A Calf with Two Tongues & Two Noses: Pesticides Suspected Cause

Ugh. Don’t look at this unless you’re not squeamish. It’s a video of a calf born in Costa Rica with a mutation the vets there believe was caused by pesticides. The poor thing has two tongues, two noses, and a severely truncated jaw. It’s owner fears it won’t be able to chew, though who knows? Life usually wants to stay badly enough that it can often make do with a flawed vessel.

Either way, I think we need to seriously rethink our use of these chemicals.

ps — Don’t think that John McCain ad up top is any sort of endorsement from me, though he’s not at the bottom of my list, at least.

Global Warming’s Hitting Home for those in the Far North

Here’s an article for all those neocon dolts who insist that global warming is some sort of liberal conspiracy to make Bush look bad (or whatever ridiculous belief causes their resistance to the truth). It’s about Inuit hunters and other indigenous folks of the far north (and the wildlife they coexist with) having trouble with the thinning ice.

QALUIT, Nunavut - Inuit hunters are falling through thinning ice and dying. Dolphins are being spotted for the first time. There’s not enough snow to build igloos for shelter during hunts.

As scientists work to establish the impact of global warming, explorers and hunters slogging across northern Canada and the Arctic ice cap on sled and foot are describing the realities they see on the ground. Three of them recently spoke to The Associated Press.

“This is really ground zero for global warming,” said Will Steger, a 62-year-old Minnesotan who has been traveling the region for 43 years and has witnessed the impact of warming on the 155,000 indigenous people of the Arctic.

“This is where a culture has lived for 5,000 years, relying on a very delicate, interconnected ecosystem and, one by one, small pegs of that ecosystem are being pulled out.”

Read more.

It’s time to get serious about ameliorating our impact. Go here and sign a petition to encourage caps on emissions. Let’s reclaim our planet for all its inhabitants.