Category Archives: nature

Speaking of Badasses

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Diane Ravitch has a blog on the Badass Teachers Association:

 

 

 

 

I didn’t know what they meant when I searched for G4s –it came up a security agency and had many links including Israel.  However, when I searched for Gates and prisons, voila.

So I’m trying to wrap my brain around this, because Gates had invested in Monsanto, which purchased Blackwater/Xe…

…..so I’ve read several different sites that claim Monsanto did NOT buy Blackwater.  Stay tuned…jury is still out.

Whether Monsanto owns Blackwater or not, it is still a reprehensible corporation, and owning prisons?

Yeah…this would not have been possible if we didn’t have state governments privatizing state services like prisons…

Do you get the theme here?  Privatizing schools, privatizing prisons, cornering the biotech market and bullying farmers….

I found this on Cascade Investment, which is owned by Gates and family. More stuff here

Boehner lies and investments in Tar Sands companies

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(hat tip to fatster at FDL)

John Boehner, while constantly saying “The American people want, need, demand…” while ignoring what the American people want, need, and demand….has promoted the XL pipeline…while investing in the companies tied to it.

I’m just shocked, shocked, I tell you, that a politician who stands to benefit financially from legislation is…promoting that legislation. /snark

Where have all the good ones gone that did what was right for the country and not for their bank accounts…?

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Also from fatster~~

Related to this is a heartwarming story of a small group of folks protesting the Enbridge pipeline….unfortunately, they’re from Michigan…that will be the day when Hoosiers start protesting Enbridge…

I can’t believe they were charged with felonies.  Seriously?  Like a commenter said on the website, we should be concerned about the crackdown on public assemblies….you know, that First Amendment thingy?

From the comments:

Russell Frege

Enbridge is being disingenuous. No one has come to harm from these non-violent protests. On the other hand, from the Athabasca Chippewa cancer rates to the impacts of climate change, many will be harmed if the tar sands industry achieves its goal of tripling production by 2030. Just imagine Bangladesh flooded by rising sees. That’s millions of refugees in that region alone. We should be working to stop changing the climate. We should have global peak emissions by 2020 then steadily decline. Tripling tar sands production is inconsistent with that goal. These protesters are the modern equivalent of Rosa Parks, who incidentally was hated by conservatives also. As FDR said “I welcome their hatred.” It’s a sign you’re doing something right. Go M-CATS.

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I have to admit a chuckle at the enthusiastic guy commenting on how beautiful state Michigan is…which it is…but then the conservative joker does have a point about him never being in poor Detroit, the dumping ground of the Kochs and anyone else who feels like it.  But let’s say that MOST of Michigan is quite beautiful… NOT the parts that conservatives and DINO’s (Democrats in Name Only) have polluted.

It’s always interesting to me that these polluters will trash one area, and then move to a non-polluted area.  It should be a rule somewhere that if you pollute an area, you must live in that area for the rest of your life…

…not only that, but your children and grandchildren must live in that area, too.   Seems fair, eh?

The Role of Food in American Slavery

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I just love this stuff–it gives so much more of history than just names, places, and dates.  The visual and cultural really brings it alive.  I wish Michael Twitty had brought up a little more in the historical aspect of the recipes and cooking methods.  

I am always fascinated at how wise they were back in the day…the women gathered the nuts, berries, and plants to eat…how did they know which were poisonous and which weren’t?  How did they remember one plant from another?  And the ability to put spices together is truly a gift.   

 

Scientists against GMOs

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Wake-Up Call has a blog up on a new paper by scientists against genetically modified organisms (GMO’s).

From the paper:

For example, the claim that conventional plant breeders have been “genetically modifying” crops
for centuries by selective breeding and that GM crops are no different is incorrect (see 1.1). The term
“genetic modification” is recognised in common usage and in national and international laws to refer
to the use of recombinant DNA techniques to transfer genetic material between organisms in a way
that would not take place naturally, bringing about alterations in genetic makeup and properties.
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In my view, this “muddying of the waters” as they say, is a way to placate the growing public alarm about what they are
putting in our food supply.  See, if you can claim that GMO’s were there all along, the public is pacified and the current
push of asking for GMO labeling will die a slow death…
….meanwhile, the public continues to suffer from GMO induced leaky gut causing susceptibility to heavy metal poisoning,
allergies, chronic fatigue, etc., and their doctors will be clueless.
Important points of the paper:
1.  They assert that it’s a mistake saying changing one gene is only changing one gene….the scientists assert that changing one
gene has something of a ripple effect. It makes total sense that the genes aren’t isolated and they work in concert with other
genes, thus when you change it, it has unintended consequences:  crop nutritional value, allergens, toxins, environmental harm.
The most striking point of this section:
These unexpected changes are especially dangerous because they are irreversible.
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They go on to say that unlike pollutants that degrade over time, GMO’s do not.  Pandora’s Box, baby.
I shouldn’t have been surprised at the “atomic gardens” mentioned on page 12, but still shocking now, looking back,
at how they were using “peaceful radiation” to change plants beneficially.  Wow.  How naive we were.  I wonder at
the health of the people who ate those plants?  What about the people and wildlife surrounding these “atomic gardens”?
Since we know that people living within 20 miles of nuclear power plants are more likely to have thyroid issues….I
wonder about the effects of this type of radiation…
Well, I’m off to read more–it’s got 123 pages, so it’s gonna be awhile. 🙂

Bombing the Great Barrier Reef

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The Guardian has this up on the U.S. bombing of the Great Barrier Reef.  <sigh>  What in the world were we doing there in the first place?  It would seem to me that common sense should have been used to avoid the area. Running low on fuel? Seriously?  Whose fault was that?  Don’t they monitor their fuel gauges during these exercises?

I mean, really, who thought this would be a great place to even carry bombs, let alone do war exercises with them?  The aussie asks “have we gone mad?”  Yes, yes we have.

The decline in the environment was already happening, according to  this.

So….this latest catastrophe will already add to a burdened environment that is struggling to maintain itself.

Give ourselves a pat on the back.  Good goin’ /snark

 

 

 

Blackfish

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Dave Neiwert has this up on the documentary “Blackfish” that exposes the truth behind captive whales.

Back in the 70s, the TV Show “The Partridge Family” had an episode called “Whale Song”  with a recording of a whale.  I was flipping through the channels recently, and saw it again.  I don’t know why, but the whale’s song makes me cry.   It’s on youtube, (partridge family whale song) but I don’t think it’s official, so can’t post it here.  Unfortunately, it’s at a Sea World type park, and it’s not advocating letting the whales go free. Or better yet–not capturing them to begin with.

My blog here on the orangutan Fu Manchu whom left no doubt he wanted to be free…and not only himself, but his cage mates, as well.  How can anyone argue against something so blatantly obvious?

The garden

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The garden gate swings open, beckoning me to walk the smooth stone path that is laid out.

I take off my shoes before entering the garden…a nudge to show respect from the gentle wind.

The stones feel cool under my feet with moss rebels poking up between them.

The sun is just coming up over the horizon.  It’s alighting on plant leaves that welcome the warmth.

Trumpet vines cling to trees, beckoning hummingbirds to a feast.  Ferns’ fingers lift up from the Earth, hiding their companions of nature.

A cardinal sings its song before becoming aware of the intruder…

I sit in quiet.

 

 

 

 

Bill Gates hasn’t destroyed public education yet….

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…but damn,he sure is trying with everything he’s got.

<sigh>  I was all ready to rip into Gates once again… but I’m halfway through the article of Chronicles of Higher Education….and this one sentence that Gates “just wants to get more people through the system with college degrees so that it will lift them out of poverty…”

bwahahahaha.  That’s rich.

Then, further down, they disclose that Gates Foundation is supporting the Chronicles of Higher Education financially.  I think I’ve already read that somewhere, but alas, the brain didn’t bring it up…the article is clearly a promo by Gates…so yeah….

So…I’ll have to refer to previous blogs on Gates…

Here.

Here. Silencing teachers.

Here. Supporting Brookings Institute that dismissed Diane Ravitch

Here. Not content with just controlling education, but the food supply, as well.

Here.

Food is….Life…and Love…

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I love this!  Instead of encouraging women to break the glass ceiling in the corporate world, here is an article about them breaking into farming–traditionally viewed as a man’s work.  (Although anybody who knows farmers know that the the entire family helps and that women had traditionally helped in the fields, along with taking care of the household.  You know the old tale that great grandma gave birth in the morning and plowed the back forty in the afternoon…)

Farming means independence in so many ways–owning your own land, growing not only your own food, but earning bucks selling to others, playing in the dirt is always fun :), and just being out in the fresh air uplifts the spirit.   During the last Depression, folks were very poor, but they could still feed themselves if they had enough land to grow food.  This time around, things have changed….making people more dependent on food stamps, IMO.

When I worked on the farm that summer a few years ago, it was such a great experience.  I could be planting, when a butterfly floats by…or a grasshopper hops past…we would see clouds rolling in and wait until the last possible moment to make a run for it.  If it wasn’t lightening out, we would just continue to work (as long as it wasn’t a downpour).  Just being out in the fresh air away from office cubicles (and office politics) is so freeing.

And if you needed to, you could bend the farm schedule around the family needs.  And then there is the sense of community that is a part of farming–farmers know one another and will help another out.  I’ve heard stories of a farmer being injured and unable to get the crop harvested, which would mean losing the crop, their income and their farm…and the other farmers would come to his aid and harvest the crop.

And the wonder of watching a seed planted grow and eventually produce food is nothing short of a miracle.  You never know when drought will occur, when torrential downpours will wash things out, or when overbearing heat will scorch the plants….and on…farming is not for the faint of heart.  It’s an art. A craft borne of experience.

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Here is a neat story on a man from Bangladesh whom now calls the U.S. home.  He started his own restaurant and began growing fresh food to supply the restaurant.  He wanted to expand that with emphasis on food justice and found it with the help of Julia Nerbonne of the HECUA (Higher Education Consortium for Urban Affairs).  This ambitious project seeks to have fresh food brought to restaurants from nearby farms…and I love the idea of rickshaws bringing it to market.  As the story states, though, winter is the hard part–not only the end of growing season, but difficulty in transporting food to the restaurant.  It’s an interesting idea that I hope grows and takes hold.

Here’s to good food! And the farms that do it sustainably!

 

 

Growing concern over super bugs and super weeds

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common dreams has this link up on the octopus of GMO corn and the emerging super bugs that are resistant to the pesticides….

…and of course, their answer is to….throw more pesticides after them.

We all saw this coming, so why are Monsanto and Syngenta still allowed to market this monster?

Congress, can you hear the American public that you love to  *quote*  all the time?  Can you hear us above the *clink* of money in your pocket? (Be sure to click on the media link and its pathetic and sometimes belittling coverage).

Vilsack, can you cut your ties with Monsanto and do what is right for the environment and our health?

Here’s a report about GMO’s in the waterways in my own backyard.  This is a freaking nightmare.

As a side note, here’s an article on aerial spraying and untested chemicals.  Gees-o-pete, does anyone stand up to the chemical industry??