Chaos Creations

Crisis brings opportunity for change...both good and bad. Running the gambit from the autonomous zone in Seattle to the out of control expansion of the Fed. This week I've been pondering the lens which we could use to better see our way through these uncertain times. My nature is to focus on nature. I understand others have different perspectives. That's okay. However, there's no doubt we are hurdling toward big changes in our ecosystem and biosphere, as well as our society at large. Our basic needs of air, water, food, and energy hearken back to the four elements of the Greeks. The planet has the ability to recycle these basic resources naturally, but human activity has thrown a wrench in the machinery. Is it even possible to limit our footprint to have an equitable sustainable human existence? There are techniques which suggest it is possible.

I often hear, we can't live sustainably. There are too many of us. It is true we can't live like we've been living in an equitable and sustainable manner. So, we need to re-imagine how we could live in order to survive. I've featured Earthships before, however they continue improving the design and efficiency of these amazing structures.

Fossil Fuel Free Buildings. Live a sustainable life. Solar Electricity, CatchWater, Contained Waste Water Treatment, Passive Solar & Thermal Dynamics for Heating & Cooling, Food Production, Recycled Materials.

(23 min)

We need to understand the predicament and acceleration of the ecological cascades in order to adapt our behavior and practices accordingly.

Dr, William Rees, who coined the term #EcologicalFootprint, speaks with us about the untenable situation that humanity is in. Dr. Rees is not shy about his sense that we are now in complete overshoot in terms of civilization's unsustainable use of Earth's non-renewable resources and dumping the wastes of our industrial/consumerist economic model of infinite exponential growth on a limited planet.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6hi9xYSCwZ8 (27 min)

Profoundly troubling signs from human activities include sustained increases in both human and ruminant livestock populations, per capita meat production, world gross domestic product, global tree cover loss, fossil fuel consumption, the number of air passengers carried, carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, and per capita CO2 emissions since 2000....
Three abundant atmospheric GHGs (CO2, methane, and nitrous oxide) continue to increase, as does global surface temperature. Globally, ice has been rapidly disappearing, evidenced by declining trends in minimum summer Arctic sea ice, Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, and glacier thickness worldwide. Ocean heat content, ocean acidity, sea level, area burned in the United States, and extreme weather and associated damage costs have all been trending upward. Climate change is predicted to greatly affect marine, freshwater, and terrestrial life, from plankton and corals to fishes and forests. These issues highlight the urgent need for action.

https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/article/70/1/8/5610806

Chris Hedges talks to writer, teacher and activist Victor Wallis about the prospect and need for Ecosocialism. Wallis’ book is entitled Red-Green Revolution: The Politics and Technology of Ecosocialism. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pnoFP4t61h4 (28 min)

I found this a great conversation hitting on many areas of my interests...health, soils, food production, nutrition...but it is pretty long, so interest may vary. This time of year I often load these longer pieces on my MP3 player and listen as I putter around.

Dr. Mark Hyman: I'm joined by Fred Provenza on The Doctor’s Farmacy to discuss how mono diets, or eating one type of food, isn’t a way to produce healthy meat (though it’s what conventional animal operations follow - i.e. corn). Animals that are free to forage over diverse land, though, get an abundance of nutrients that they pass on to us. Unfortunately, most studies on meat aren’t looking at animals who had this type of diet. He is professor emeritus of Behavioral Ecology in the Department of Wildland Resources at Utah State University where he worked for 35 years, directing an award-winning research group that pioneered an understanding of how learning influences foraging behavior and how behavior links soil, plants, herbivores, and humans.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9EgI-eGlY5w (1.7 hours)

Can You Feed the Masses Without Factory Farming? w/Joel Salatin | Joe Rogan (30 min)

An excerpt from the full interview I featured a couple of weeks ago.

If you've never taken a virtual tour to Joel's "Polyface Farm" , here's a recent visit.
How to produce food and improve the environment.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ta-XnASUopg (43 min)

Starting a homestead from scratch is no easy task but Cait and Joe put in the work to make it happen. Five years in and they have a beautiful homestead that is also a business. Their model is unique in that they cook and prepare meals to sell from their garden.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYP9q93GaRw (25 min)

I can understand if farming and homesteading are too big a leap for most folks, but everyone can garden...even if it is in containers. Here's a nice guide from the folks at NC State. https://content.ces.ncsu.edu/home-vegetable-gardening-a-quick-reference-...

How can we create meaningful and productive jobs?
It is common to hear that automation has reduced the need for labor, and that is true in part. But there is a need for more (and better) teachers, environmental restoration teams, park rangers and maintenance staff, manufacturers of basic products here in the US for US use, lots of local farmers supplying their communities with seasonal fresh produce, and on and on. Many of these positions are government based. Others would need to be privately organized with government assistance.

Richard Wolff talks about the victories made by organized labor after the Great Depression of the 1920s and why it is significant and powerful for workers today.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZPPTWSGMZU (6 min)

Nomi Prins: A Rendezvous With Destiny? Comparing the 1930s to This Crisis
https://scheerpost.com/2020/06/08/nomi-prins-a-rendezvous-with-destiny-c...

I'm enamored of the idea of worker owned businesses and coops. Here's Richard again speaking about the importance coops.

Socialism & Worker Co-Ops... 20th century socialism is now behind us. Socialists continued to evaluate both its achievements and failures via extensive self-criticism. A changed socialism has emerged, focused on a transition of workplaces from top-down hierarchical capitalist structures into democratic worker cooperatives. The powerful appeal of worker co-ops as grounding a new 21st century socialism is presented.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fOqqRD1t47Y (30 min)

Sadly we continue down the path of misuse and destruction rather than embracing a cooperative positive future. Capitalism, materialism, imperialism, militarism, and greed all feed on one another. How is it we allow the 0.01% to inflict this upon the world?

The team who bring you this programme every week also produced Four Horsemen - a documentary that went in search of the real causes of the 2008 financial crash.
The film pointed out that if fundamental economic issues weren’t addressed another economic depression would be all but inevitable… So here we are. We have squandered time and money by kicking the can down the road and reflating the greatest asset bubble in human history.
Host Ross Ashcroft has selected the most pertinent Four Horsemen clips as the global economy once again lurches from crisis into catastrophe. (28 min)

The full film is here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5fbvquHSPJU

Patrick Cockburn: The Cynical Forces Behind America’s Forever Wars...
The journalist examines the disastrous inevitability of America’s failures in the Middle East as the region continues to reel from decades of U.S.-sponsored turmoil.

It should be obvious that intervening in Afghanistan is not a great idea: the U.S. intervened in 2001 against the Taliban, announced it had overthrown the Taliban–and what’s happening now after tens of thousands of people, including several thousand Americans, have been killed? The Taliban are close to taking power again.

https://scheerpost.com/2020/06/12/patrick-cockburn-the-cynical-forces-be... (audio or text)

NYT Erases US Occupation’s Role in Prolonging Taliban Insurgency
https://fair.org/home/nyt-erases-us-occupations-role-in-prolonging-talib...

And it never ends...
US Navy deploys three aircraft carriers to Pacific against China
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/06/13/usch-j13.html

Max and Stacy discuss the market and the Fed, and the Neo-fuedalistic peasant revolt
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6clnkihANU (1st 15 min)

Most Americans support the George Floyd protests. Jimmy explains.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2d98r2SjKM (10 min)

The protests sparked by Minneapolis police killing George Floyd have renewed pressure on all levels of government to pursue racial justice—and not just in terms of police violence against historically marginalized groups, particularly black Americans, but also when it comes to economic and environmental injustice.
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/06/12/research-shows-linking-clim...

The Federal Reserve is directly buying stocks, bonds, junk bonds, mortgages, junk mortgages, all to prop up the value of assets owned by the top 5%. This does not spur much new production or create jobs. Michael Hudson joins Paul Jay on theAnalysis.news podcast
https://theanalysis.news/interviews/feds-10-trillion-defends-assets-of-t...
transcript or audio

Finance is being propped up with public money while states and cities face disaster. BIll Black joins Paul Jay on theAnalysis.news podcast (transcript or audio)
https://theanalysis.news/interviews/bill-black-cities-face-catastrophe-f...

Chris Hedges: The Treason of the Ruling Class
They have destroyed our capitalist democracy and replaced it with a mafia state.
https://scheerpost.com/2020/06/02/the-treason-of-the-ruling-class/

AMC Movie Theaters Open! Is Corona Fear Over? w/Dylan Ratigan and Jimmy Dore.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ePFUrKQSXi8 (26 min)

Truth tellers are not appreciated. In fact they are persecuted.

ASSANGE EXTRADITION: Politicians Call on UK to Release Assange
https://consortiumnews.com/2020/06/12/assange-extradition-politicians-ca...

Except for a brief moment after his dramatic arrest, the mainstream media has abandoned Julian Assange. They do this at their own peril. That’s because the arrest and espionage indictment of Assange for practicing journalism is a danger to all journalists everywhere.
https://consortiumnews.com/2020/06/13/help-us-to-continue-covering-the-j...

In this documentary, we examine the career of kiwi journalist and activist Suzie Dawson. With never before seen photo and video footage, we describe Suzie’s accomplishments and achievements as well as what happened to her as a result of her journalistic work and activism. This documentary covers a time period between 2011 until present day. The majority of the footage shown is Suzie’s citizen journalism work

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbRbFc2aZms

So I'll wrap this up with a link to a long and excellent article by Paul Jay...
https://theanalysis.news/commentary/the-lords-of-finance-own-the-media-a...

Climate change, nuclear war, Big Brother surveillance states, and artificial intelligence; we humans are at an existential crossroads.

Either we radically transform ownership so the commanding heights of the economy are socially owned and democratize how government power is wielded . . . or not many of us will be around to see the end of this century.

Alarmist? No doubt, but it’s way past time for being alarmed. Feel overwhelming? Yes, how can it not be? I look at my seven-year-old twins and wonder if we should be calling them ‘generation last’. When they are in their eighties, what will be left of human civilization? We have no choice but to act now.

Is a mass mobilization to save the planet and against war, on a scale not seen before, possible? Given what’s at stake, what’s holding it back?

Can this global concentration of ownership and political power be countered with diversified social ownership and democratization?

Could large scale publicly-owned banking weaken the hold of finance on the politics of the country?

Can a demilitarized green new deal at a global scale bring all the threads of the solution together? What are the realistic steps that must be taken and what can be accomplished given the existing political conditions?

Daniel Ellsberg says we need a new political economy; we must convert military to green production or perish. Are we humans up to the challenge?

So many concurrent issues make it difficult for folks to understand our predicament. We, as humans, are easily distracted, and COVID-19 has been excellent cover for all sorts of shenanigans. Can we survive this century? Our collective actions this decade will determine the fate of our species (and many others). I continue to try to walk with as light a footprint as possible. I find my peace in nature among the trees and in the garden. I hope you too can connect with the larger system and find relief and solace in these trying times.