Alchemical Blog
-
Cooperative Counter Economies
Hey readers,
Here is an interesting article I came across. When we ask ourselves how can we envision an incrementally* more humane and just world, the idea of the worker co-op is sure to send shudders up the spines of the minions of our corporate overlords. Should it gain any traction in our everyday world we can be sure to expect the usual cascade of ignoring it, ridiculing it as impossible and then the revelation that it's socialist! Nothing is scarier to the powers that be than the idea that we might live in a world that won't need them to guide us and trade us as commodities. If you are interested in following up with this locally, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it . Perhaps we can light a fire under the right somebody and get the forum crankin on this page.
*for the record, I do not consider myself an incrementalist, however I'm all for a diversity of approaches in creating a human world returning towards equilibrium with the earth.
-
The Ashes of Essex County: on Emerald Ash Borers in Hamilton’s forests
As the Emerald Ash Borer continues to spread through the Eastern United States and Canada, recently affected areas struggle to react to the loss of such beautiful important trees as the Ashes. But have we learned the lessons of past infestations? The health of our forests is too important a question to leave to the so-called experts.
The Ashes of Essex County: on Emerald Ash Borers in Hamilton’s forests
From Knowing the Land is Resistance
http://knowingtheland.wordpress.com
As the Emerald Ash Borer continues to spread through the Eastern United States and Canada, recently affected areas struggle to react to the loss of such beautiful important trees as the Ashes. But have we learned the lessons of past infestations? The health of our forests is too important a question to leave to the so-called experts.
It was here in Comber, a town in Essex county, which makes up the southern most tip of Ontario, that we first noticed it. We’ve stopped in a sports field to watch the sunset. What we see though, silhouetted against the sky’s red glow, is a long line of dead Ash trees. Ever since the Emerald Ash Borer first appeared in Hamilton, we have been hearing stories about its effect on forests further south. But this is our first time seeing a whole stand of Ashes killed by the exotic beetle.
Now we sit with the dead trees as it gets dark, reflecting with concern on the forests we love back home. Last year, we started spotting the irridescent green beetles in Cootes Paradise. This year, we can’t go for a walk there without passing one. The White Ashes that grow on those hills, with their tall diamond-bark trunks and elegant symmetric branches, are old familiar forest friends – it’s heartbreaking to imagine the trails without them.
This is far from the first invasive outbreak to devastate a prominent tree species in this area; Chestnut Blight and Dutch Elm Disease are two others of note. In both of those cases, government and conservationists embarked on hugely expensive campaigns to ‘save’ the trees, featuring massive cullins of infected trees through various methods. These strategies failed to prevent the infestation from spreading, and it’s important to recall that no similar strategies have ever succeeded. In the case of the Chestnut Blight, we now understand that this practice actually reduced the Chestnut’s capacity to develop resistance to the disease.
As we sit with these Ashes here in Comber though, we begin to notice that most of the dead trees are sprouting new growth from the roots. Around them, many young Ashes are growing from seed, taking advantage of the suddenly-open canopy above. Our initial feelings of doom for the species subsides as we consider the amazing capacity of all trees to overcome population decline in the face of disease, insects, glaciers, and, sometimes, even humans. Some of these young trees appear to be two or three years old, and their happy fresh leaves stir hope inside us.
....
-
meet ALEC,
I was going to repost a couple of things, and then I thought, no, put a few moments into this and give it the attention due. So with that innane self reflective piece of obblogatory blather out of the way, $$$ meet ALEC if you havent already$$$.
Stuff like this drives me apeshit crazy, but I keep telling myself that the way of this world only inserts these "lessons" because my miniscule piece of evolution must adapt beyond it. So fer starters, I thought I'd share that with the good people who come across this page.
To totally sound like a rehearsed retread beat a dead horse sycophant, the problem which I'm sure most of you could explain better than myself is that it seems like a closed loop. We have the economy, and then we have the government (vis a vis campaign financing, too big to fail, corporate welfare, bailouts, revolving doors to lucrative lobbying positions, and things like ALEC), the mass media(advertising pays for all of it right? as for NPR/ PBS, see the parenthetical before this one.) and survival as most people go about doing that around these parts (e.g. going to work, using money, 99% of the things bought at a retail store), as the tentacles of this nefarious beast. This article deals with how so often peeps who realize every reason why things need to change MASSIVELY might be afraid to break this news to others. That was my take on the beginning. Talk about internalizing oppression. I understand the need for inclusivity in grappling with issues like the fate of the world and most of the species that exist in it including our own riding on the outcome. However if we call it out honestly and realize we're up against a honed version of Henry Murray's MK Ultra experiment in the media tentacle of this world, maybe expecting it to be an insincere ordeal , well, react to that however you need to. As for inclusivity, I'm all for an honest diversity of strategies in doing whatever we need to restore balance to our planet from here to the furthest distant point in the Indian Ocean. Part of my own thought on the subject is community resilience and cohesion is THE critical asset above all others however you see climate, peak oil or other game changing occurrences that eventually will occur, playing out.
-
pedal powered everything
http://www.mayapedal.org/machines.html
This link just completely blew my mind. Listening to some really weird music by 'The Residents' playing in the background isn't helping. Amazing ideas on this website. If anyone out there is interested in collaborating on fabricating any of these ideas I am totally down to contribute whatever I can...
also I've been reading The Final Empire for free online. Nothing earth(civ?)-shatteringly new, kind of like 'End Game' but 12 years older. I'm thankful to have the internet to realize that 18 years ago people were writing books about ideas I completely agreed with at the time which coincidentally left me with the naive attitude that I was the only person who had realized how utterly foolish everything was.
In relation to last weeks post I also ran across this essay: How to Drop Out
seems a bit like saying don't do anything, but I always appreciate it when people ruminate on this subject. I get the whole $= death equation inherent in civilization.
civilization, capitalism, forgive me if you feel like quibbling over the differences, but this is about the overlap....
anyways I think the validation of debt and credit systems as a basis for 'owing' other people~ slavery is contingent on your willingness to engage the system and replace the debt. He eschews going to school and getting in debt, when I look at the debt bombs more like this:
http://news.infoshop.org/article.php?story=20091206003234202
My problem with this is that imitation is the most sincere form of flattery, and imitating what the "too big to fail" crowd does is at best an odious necessity. It matters what you put your money into, and we need the means to make fishing equipment, not money for fish sticks right? (If you happen to be practicing ahimsa or vegan/vegetarian forgive the omnivoro-centric analogy)
-
landsharing (+), commodity trading mayhem (-)
http://www.landshareco.org/listings/sharing-tips/
this is a great idea despite it's uncomfortable similarity to serfdom : -/
I guess that since you can negotiate terms and since it's not forced it isn't half as bad..... while on the topic of food:
http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/features/2011/05/20115723149852120.html
This article from Al Jazeera on Glencore, describes the world of Glencore as noteworthy members of the Transnational Capitalist Class which is bringing us all closer to starvation by artificially inflating the price of food.
If you don't already know, think of it like this:
People make food, people buy that food and sell it to other people to eat.
Speculators or "commodity traders" compete to buy up future deliveries of said commodities including food. So they insert themselves into what would otherwise be an easily imaginable process, playing a role similar to insurance as they anticipate a price and if the market goes good or bad, they make a profit or loss.
Because they have tons of money and desire some particular crop that is expected to give them returns they bill themselves as being able to get for their investor clients, they jack the prices up, often in places that are already poverty stricken where this may mean starvation for many. Think of an auction, or trying to buy tickets to a hot concert. From the latter model it's where the scalpers come in. This is why oil went so high in 2008, after the housing bubble collapsed. Money had been parked in the real estate boom. That ended, it took entire banks with it, the stock market also crashed because of the banks and the construction boom ended, but people still needed oil and food, so prices spiked in those two areas.
This was a major force behind the recent uprisings in the Middle East, the lack of iron fisted rulers to do anything to prevent starvation resulting from the actions of these overfed gluttons. When your kids are starving, you don't have much left to lose.
Well, we've got much work to be done. Promoting working concepts and models of
permaculture that are not just known but accessible to people from every walk of life in order to make commodity trading death machines obsolete. Its late on Sunday, so for me this week, I'm going to think about every way to disengage this culture of death. maybe I will post the results next week if i come up with anything worth sharing!! -
Beyond Hope: Derrick Jensen
This is a link to a reprint from Orion magazine:
http://permaculturepolitics.blogspot.com/2010/05/beyond-hope-by-derrick-jensen.html
-
Participatory- Democracy in practice article link
http://inthesetimes.org/article/6202/the_quiet_revolution
This article focuses on the participatory comunal councils popping up in Venezuela. The current form has groups from across the political spectrum, borrows from the participatory economic model developed in Porto Allegre, Brazil and could be a cutting edge experiment in democracy based on consent and participation instead of advertising and manipulation...
