Localization for Climate Chaos Adaptation in Bolivia
| I just completed a series of four investigative reports for the UNDP Bolivia where I explored how Buen Vivir can be manifested in the face of accelerating climate chaos impacts. The investigation included reviews of official government planning documents and the work of the UNDP itself. The focus was on building disaster readiness by making communities self-reliant and self-sufficient in essentials like food, water, energy, etc. so that when supply chains fail, they'll be prepared. The series wrapped up with a list of suggested pilot projects for the UNDP. I'm certainly looking forward to see which project(s) the UNDP chooses! |  |
Drone Program Whistleblower Receives Harsh Sentence
I personally wrote the judge about whistleblower Daniel Hale’s case requesting leniency in his sentencing. In my letter I stated “…how could a person of conscience not speak out? The impact of carrying out orders, carrying the burden of responsibility, would certainly wear a person down, questioning right from wrong, whether the ends justify the means, etc. Drone pilots are traumatized, with drug abuse, domestic violence and even suicide being the end result.” and “This young man strikes me as being an upstanding person of conscience who has suffered the ill effects of serving as a UAV pilot for targeted assassinations. I can well imagine Daniel obviously grappled with his conscience and decided to act on what in his estimation was the right, moral and just thing to do. I ask you to drop all charges against Daniel and not punish a young man for turning humane and for his actions of attempting to cease further harm.”
Daniel is a hero having provided the public with irrefutable proof that 90% of the victims of the US military drone strike program are innocents, striking wedding, funeral parties, agricultural workers, etc. e.g. Loved ones buried after US drone strike kills 30 pine nut pickers in Afghanistan. We now know that the claims for precision are outright lies. The program is slaughtering innocents including women and children. In addition to being illegal and immoral, the US military drone program makes US citizens less safe as it foments anger and hate and the desire to strike back at the US for their slaughtering of innocents (another 911 anyone?). This is just simple common sense. Only the out-of-control heartless, evil, and immoral military industrial complex benefits.
Israel’s Settler-Colonialism Apartheid
The turkey shoot that Israel is currently conducting in Gaza today, is merely the latest ‘mowing of the lawn‘ that Israel periodically conducts. The larger issue, of Israeli state imposed apartheid, is what merits exposure which, by the way, is illegal under international law. The included article is helpful in understanding the present situation, as is Chris Hedge’s article The Zionist Colonization of Palestine.
California Deluge
Stereoscope photo of J Street in Sacramento during the 1862 flood. Charles L. Weed/California State Library
In addition to wildfires and earthquakes, California also experiences floods. Sometimes they can be massive and devastating floods. A meteorological phenomenon known as ‘atmospheric rivers’ can unleash huge amounts of moisture onto the California land surface. Occurring once every one to two hundred years, the USGS refers to these events as ARkStorms. The last such event took place in 1861-62. For further information, visit ARkStorm Scenario and The Biblical Flood That Will Drown California.
International Day to Abolish the CIA
Hiroshima Bombing 75th Anniversary
Book Review: The Hidden Life of Trees by Peter Wohlleben
Are trees sentient beings? Author Peter Wohlleben believes so. He ascribes feelings such as pain and empathy, as well as sensations to trees, including hearing, seeing, smelling, touching and tasting. He goes even further however and says that they also communicate, nurture their young, and will even feed other trees that are running short on nutrients, i.e. showing care. Does Mr. Wohlleben sound crazy? Actually, not so much, according to the latest scientific findings about trees. There’s no question of him being an authority on the subject. As a forester with responsibility for managing a forest in the Eiffel mountains in Germany, he speaks from over twenty years of knowledge and experience. Wohlleben combines his intimate experience with the forest and the trees in it which he is personally responsible for, with the latest scientific knowledge. The end result is something between a fantasy novel and a briefing on the latest scientific findings about trees.
It has been discovered that sick pine trees whose cambium had died due to an aggressive fungus were being nurtured by neighboring healthy trees via their roots. The cambium pumps sugar solutions from the tree’s needles down to its roots. Prior to this discovery, the widespread belief was that without a cambium, a tree simply could not survive. Well it turns out that it can, because of the care the sick tree receives from its neighbors.
Mr. Wohlleben cites trees have the ability to see. As it turns out, trees shed and grow leaves not only according to temperature. Beeches, for example, are known to not leaf out until it is light for at least thirteen hours a day. How do they know this? Buds containing folded baby leaves on a tree branch are covered by a scale. Well, the scale is actually transparent such that the light can penetrate. So the tree ‘sees’ the light (and counts the hours?) and knows when it is time to begin growing.
The book goes on to give further instruction on the sentience of trees. When trees are really thirsty, they scream. Humans cannot hear them because the sound is in the ultrasonic range. They are also capable of learning. Mimosa leaves closed up at first when drops of water fell on them. But after a while, they stopped doing that, because they learned there was no danger.
While the book was been on the best seller list for the longest time, as you might expect, it has become a source of ire for certain critics. Ascribing human-like behaviors to trees is classic anthropomorphism, and this is a sin according to the scientific method. After all, we all know that the non-human world runs on stimulus-response. There are no cognitive intelligences among the other than human world. Or are there? We are learning that there are multiple intelligences in people. Why can’t we grant the same possibility to the other than human world? One thing for sure, I found the book to be almost revelatory, supporting my existential framework that holds nature as miraculous.
SCOTUS Upholds Vote Rigging
In another death blow to our democracy, the United States Supreme Court ruled last Thursday that extreme gerrymandered congressional maps will no longer be reviewed nor struck down by the federal federal courts. This means that the extreme gerrymandering of states like North Carolina and Maryland – which were previously struck down by the federal courts – are now sanctioned by the highest court.
This combined with the Citizens United decision and the systematic eroding of voting rights in the U.S. has ensured that the country will continue its trajectory of replacing democracy with corporatocracy.
Global Earth Repair Conference
I presented at the global earth repair conference in Port Townsend, Washington earlier this month. The event was certainly groundbreaking with some six-hundred attendees and over sixty presentations. The conference was not a scientific conference and while there was a good deal of sound information based on well understood and proven practices, there was also some information presented which was notably disturbing.
Some speakers were ridiculing current scientific consensus on the necessity of bringing down atmospheric CO2 levels and instead were advocating for altering the earth’s hydrologic cycle through ecosystem restoration as the most important task in face of the present climate emergency. This theory is controversial at best and I am not aware of any peer-reviewed science supporting this theory and in fact there exist cogent arguments disputing this notion.
This in no way is to diminish the importance of ecosystem restoration and the valuable contribution made to society by this conference. That said, I felt it was wholly irresponsible and dangerous to diminish the importance of the necessity for us to to limit GHG emissions. This for me was a blemish on what was otherwise a superb forum around a key topic.