Boycotting Florida

This past weekend,  a fool named George Zimmerman was acquitted of murdering a 17 year old black boy named Trayvon Martin. Most people know the story. This guy Zimmerman, a cop-wanna-be, is out guarding his neighborhood. He's got a handgun concealed on his hip.  He decides this kid Trayvon Martin is a 'suspect'. He harasses the kid, gets into an altercation with him and shoots him dead.

Zimmerman was out looking for trouble. He pursued the kid when the police told him not to. He killed the kid. How is that not at least manslaughter?  

The state of Florida has something called the 'Stand your ground' law. It was created by the Republican conservative controlled Florida legislature at the behest of  gun advocacy groups like the National Rifle Association.

The jury in Zimmerman's trial acquitted him, saying he was defending himself, even though he started the confrontation.  Self-defense has always been part of the law for people who feel threatened with no reasonable means of retreat from the threat. 

 Florida is one of a handful of states that have 'Stand your ground' laws. That in effect allows one person to kill another person if he or she feels threatened by that other person, even if the shooter does have a reasonable means of escaping the confrontation.

Anyway, the legal system in Florida has allowed George Zimmerman to get away with murder.  Here's my response.  I will not set foot in or spend one dollar in the state of Florida until the 'Stand Your Ground' law is repealed.  If enough people took that kind of personal action, the people of Florida would get the message and vote out the conservative politicians who are responsible for making Florida such a dangerous place, particularly for young black men.

Giant Otters of the Amazon

There is a special place in my heart for Otters.  They are large aquatic mustelids, closely related to weasels and wolverines.  I have been fascinated by them since I was a child. In the river, lake,  estuarial and marine shoreline habitats where they live, they are apex predators, so good at catching a meal that they have abundant time on their hands to play and goof around. Watching Otters being Otters is a total delight.

The link below is for a full length documentary about the giant river Otter, a species that is indigenous to South America and the Amazon river basin.  Giant Otters can be over six feet in length as adults. They are formidable predators, but like all species of Otters, they are also experts at playing and having fun.

This documentary was produced by British cinematographer, Charlie Hamilton James,  who has long had his own fascination with Otters.  

Charlie Hamilton James

 



I have great admiration for people like Charlie James.  It takes more than just skill with a camera to capture the kind of images and video footage that reveal the beauty of extraordinary species like the Otter. You have to love nature and the creatures that become your focus.  You have to be willing to spend countless hours in the wild places where they live and endure the worst kind of hardships and weather conditions. People like Charlie James provide the means for their audiences to truly appreciate the gifts of nature. There is no way to put a price on something like that.  



 

Here is a link to a You Tube presentation titled, Giant Otters of the Amazon... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gYLb6X2Jy-8

 

 

 

I'm reposting this piece from the AlterNet webpage.  It's another clear reflection of  'too many people, too few resources' - a simple paradigm that is shaping our lives and putting future generations in serious jeopardy. 

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Mining the World to Death

July 9, 2013  |   by Robert Jenson

 

The following is an excerpt from We Are All Apocalyptic Now: On the Responsibilities of Teaching, Preaching, Reporting, Writing, and Speaking Out, in print at Amazon.com [3] and on Kindle [4] (CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2013).

 

Progressive analyses of inequality and injustice focus on the illegitimate hierarchies in patriarchy, white supremacy, the imperial nation-state system, and capitalism. The final hierarchal system—and in some ways the most dangerous—is the industrial model of human development, the latest and most intense version of an unsustainable extractive economy.

 

The bounty that makes contemporary mass consumption possible did not, of course, drop out of the sky. It was ripped out of the ground and drawn from the water in a fashion that has left the continent ravaged, a dismemberment of nature that is an unavoidable consequence of a worldview that glorifies domination. 

 

“From [Europeans’] first arrival we have behaved as though nature must be either subdued or ignored,” writes the scientist and philosopher Wes Jackson, one of the leading thinkers in the sustainable agriculture movement. As Jackson points out, our economy has always been extractive, even before the industrial revolution dramatically accelerated the assault in the 19th century and the petrochemical revolution began poisoning the world more intensively in the 20th. We mined the forests, soil, and aquifers, just as we eventually mined minerals and fossil fuels, leaving ecosystems ragged and in ruin, perhaps beyond recovery in any human timeframe. All that was done by people who believed in their right to dominate.

 

One way to understand that domination is the context of the two major revolutions in human history—the agricultural and industrial revolutions.

 

The agricultural revolution started about 10,000 years ago when a gathering-hunting species discovered how to cultivate plants for food and domesticate animals. Two crucial things resulted from that, one ecological and one political. Ecologically, the invention of agriculture kicked off an intensive human assault on natural systems. Gathering-hunting humans were capable of damaging a local ecosystem, but the large-scale destruction we cope with today has its origins in agriculture when humans began exhausting the energy-rich carbon of the soil, what Jackson has described as the first step in the entrenchment of an extractive economy and Jared Diamond has called “the worst mistake in human history.”

 

Human agricultural practices vary from place to place but have never been sustainable over the long term. Politically, the ability to stockpile food made possible concentrations of power and resulting hierarchies that were foreign to gathering-hunting societies. Again, this is not to say that humans were not capable of doing bad things to each other prior to agriculture, but only that what we understand, as large-scale institutionalized oppression has its roots in agriculture. We need not romanticize pre-agricultural life to recognize the ways in which agriculture made possible dramatically different levels of unsustainability and injustice. 

 

The industrial revolution that began in the last half of the 18th century in Great Britain intensified the magnitude of the human assault on ecosystems. Unleashing the concentrated energy of coal, oil and natural gas to run a machine-based world has produced unparalleled material comfort for some. Whatever one thinks of the effect of such comforts on human psychology (and, in my view, the effect has been mixed), the processes that produce the comfort are destroying the capacity of the ecosphere to sustain human life as we know it into the future, and in the present those comforts are not distributed in a fashion that is consistent with any meaningful conception of justice. The ecological consequences of this revolution are painfully obvious. 

 

These two changes in human history come together today in what typically is called “industrial agriculture,” the dominant method of producing food at this moment in history in the United States, the rest of the developed world, and increasingly in the developing world. It is a style of agriculture that everyone agrees has produced substantial increases in yields, tripling the world grain harvest in the second half of the 20th century. Critics, however, point out that those yields have come at the cost of deep, and possibly permanent, injuries to the land, people and other species.

 

Various characteristics of industrial agriculture have been evolving over time, but by the second half of the 20th century the industrial system was firmly in place in the United States. The features of the current system include: (1) heavy use of nonrenewable inputs purchased off the farm, such as chemical fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides; (2) extensive mechanization, making farming both capital- and technology-intensive; (3) heavy reliance on fossil fuels for those inputs and mechanization, to such an extent that critics joke that modern farming is the use of land to covert petroleum into food; (4) decreased self-sufficiency for individuals and communities, and increased dependence on corporations; and (5) a lack of concern for, if not outright hostility toward, systems and living things that do not directly contribute to production.

 

Along with the dramatic increases in food production, the predictable results of this system have been: (1) drastic and continuing loss of topsoil; (2) declining soil fertility; (3) a severe reduction in farm population; and (4) the resulting loss of knowledge of traditional methods that require fewer inputs, less technology, less capital, and more people.

 

This is what Jackson calls “the failure of success,” the paradox of a system that results in more food coming from fields that have less, and less fertile, soil. The so-called “Green Revolution”—a variety of research and social programs associated with the work of Nobel Prize-winning agronomist Norman Borlaug—was not really a revolution but an extension of industrial agriculture to the Third World, which resulted in short-term reductions in hunger but also exported this extremely fragile model to the developing world, creating the same long-term problems.

 

The agricultural revolution produced the first systematic extractive model, which set us on a road to eventual collapse. The industrial revolution ramped up our speed. The material benefits of those revolutions are not spread equally or equitably around the world, which challenges us to create a more just world as we struggle to find a new model for a sustainable world. 

 

 

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Robert Jensen is a journalism professor at the University of Texas at Austin and board member of the Third Coast Activist Resource Center. His latest book is 'All My Bones Shake: Radical Politics in the Prophetic Voice' (Soft Skull Press). He is also the author of 'Getting Off: Pornography and the End of Masculinity' (South End Press)

 

 

 

Edutainment

 I am reposting the article below because I feel passionately that theatrical and television drama offer an extremely effective means to reach mass audiences, delivering entertainment and at the same time powerful messages that can facilitate positive culture change.

Population Communication, run by activist Robert Gillespie, is just one group that has sponsored soap operas and other TV dramas in countries like Indonesia that entertain while educating audiences in a culturally sensitive way about health and reproductive issues.

This kind of issue oriented entertainment could also be used to great effect here in the U.S.  Unfortunately, these days  movie and television businesses in America are assiduously focused on the bottom line.  Because profit is the be all and end all with the American media, the message is almost always shaped to serve narrow interests.  Because the Koch Brothers, Exxon Mobil, and BP,  to name a few, sponsor  media broadcasts on public and commercial television, programming that is critical to those narrow interests does not get broadcast.  Broadcasters are simply unwilling to offend them that pays the bills.

In effect, the media is the 'nervous system' of humanity.  If we are going to turn low information citizens into informed voters, we must be able to deliver the truth to them through the public airwaves. Right now, in America, that is not happening. 

The following article demonstrates how 'edutainment' is being delivered effectively in other countries.  We desperately need to be able to  do this here as well.

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Soap Operas as “Edutainment”

by Isobel Coleman
July 11, 2013

 

 

       

Children watch television in the Meerwada village in central India, June 2012 (Adnan Abidi/Courtesy Reuters).

       

Turns out, popular media is not always a mindless distraction. There is evidence that so-called “education-entertainment,”  which weaves important information about health, safety, and cultural issues into an enticing plot line, can be highly effective in combating cultural prejudices and encouraging positive behavior. In some cases, exposure to progressive media is enough to upend societal preconceptions. For example, a recent study shows that one year after cable television was introduced into several rural Indian communities, fewer viewers said it would be acceptable for a husband to beat his wife than said so a year earlier. The study also found that there was a reduced preference for male children in Indian communities with cable access compared to those without it.

Progressive television programs in Brazil have had a comparably powerful effect, as writers and producers have taken on social and cultural issues, adding both more drama and more educational value to their programs. For example, a 2008 study found that after Brazilian soap operas began portraying families that were smaller than the national average, the fertility rate dropped in the regions where these shows aired. Women viewing these programs sought to emulate them and, combined with greater access to contraception, this led to a declining fertility rate and an increase in women’s independence and ability to pursue educational and career opportunities.

 

Similarly, television programs can encourage entrepreneurship. Simplemente María (Simply Maria), a Peruvian soap opera that aired in 1969, followed the fictional story of a young woman who moved to the city, learned to read and sew, and eventually became a famous fashion designer. The show was wildly popular and aired five days a week for two years. The rags-to-riches story, ripe with lessons about perseverance and women’s independence,  led to a substantial spike in enrollment in literacy classes throughout the country.

 

In Pakistan, NGOs like the Aurat Foundation have long used radio-based soap operas to reach rural women, many of whom are literate, with important social and health messges. Now, deeply contentious issues are increasingly examined through popular culture outlets, such as film and television. Bol, the highest-grossing Pakistani film of 2011, tells the story of the strained relationship between a father and his transgendered son. And the upcoming show Taan, a spin-off of the American show Glee, tackles issues related to homosexuality, Islamic extremism, and interfaith relationships. The widespread popularity of Bol and high expectations for Taan, in a country where homosexuality is punishable with life imprisonment, illustrate how popular media can challenge cultural norms even in repressive societies.

 

International organizations would be remiss to ignore this rich opportunity to facilitate social change and raise awareness about important health issues. Indeed, many development organizations, such as the Population Media Center, have already taken advantage of the power of popular media to effect social change. And several producers and governments have taken the initiative to enhance their television programs with educational content. Take Apwe Plezi: a Saint Lucian radio program funded by the government that aired in the 1990s and addressed controversial issues including HIV/AIDS, teenage pregnancy, and domestic abuse. Research has shown that the program “influenced listeners to increase their awareness of contraceptives, improve important attitudes about fidelity and family relations, and adopt family planning methods.” In addition, Soul City, a popular South African soap opera, produced in part by public health activists, educates viewers about the dangers of unprotected sex and HIV/AIDS. The show is as popular as Coca-Cola is in the country and viewers are nearly four times more likely to use a condom than non-viewers are.

 

The success of Soul City need not be limited to South Africa. Development organizations should attempt to emulate the show’s model and harness the power of entertainment to effect change. Funding progressive and popular programs abroad, which challenge the audience’s preconceptions and provide exciting entertainment, could be a useful way for wealthy countries to further development goals. Sometimes soap operas are simply more effective than lectures or campaigns at transforming society.

 

 

 

 

Malala

In October 2012,  in Pakistan while on her way home from school, 14 year old Malala Yusafzai was shot in the head at point blank range by Taliban assassins, who intended to send a message warning girl children not to seek an education.  Malala survived the attempt on her life. After months in hospital, she has recovered remarkably, and has become a worldwide symbol for the rights of girls to dignity and access to education.

 

 

This past week, Malala's 16th birthday was celebrated at the United Nations, where she spoke powerfully about her right and determination to complete her education..  Her courage and articulate representation of the causes she symbolizes is very inspiring.



 

It also seems that Malala was destined to play a role on the world stage.  Her courage, poise, and charisma would be remarkable for any person, let alone a young girl raised in a backwater town in a country like Pakistan. This is a girl whose culture discriminates massively against women and traditionally denies girls access to education. 

Here is what Malala says about the cowardly Taliban assassins who attacked her.  "They thought the bullets would silence us, but they failed.... We realized the importance of pens and books when we saw the guns. The extremists are afraid of books and pens.... We cannot all succeed when half of us are held back."

 

 

 

 

I admire this child, and very much hope that she is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Such recognition would only elevate her voice further. That would surely be a very good thing.

 

Here is a link to Malala's incredibly impressive speech at the United Nations....http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtprX8i2k-Q

 

 

 

 

 

The Biggest Problem of All

As of now, mid-year 2013, the world human population is about 7.2 billion. That's billion with a B.  At the moment we are adding about 75 million more people every single year.  The city I live in, Portland, Oregon, has about 600,000 people. Every single year, we are adding the equivalent of 125 cities the size of Portland to the human population. 

Every person we add to the population comes with a requirement for water, food, shelter, and a whole range of other resources and services. Problem is, the Earth is not expanding.  Our planet - the only one we have - has only a finite amount of resources.  When we add the equivalent of 125 cities the size of Portland to the world population every year, the water, the food, and everything else those people need has to come from somewhere. 

Deforestation, ocean resource depletion, climate change, and fresh water scarcity are just a few of the global scale challenges we face at this moment in time. In every instance, the primary driving force behind these profound challenges is human population growth. 

I became a population activist thirty years ago. There weren't very many of us at that time.  Those of us who were committed to expanding the public's awareness of the population issue were and still are up against a mountain of ignorance. People just don't want to talk about population. They don't want to connect the dots. I joined a group called the Population Education Committee. I worked with them to create a couple of booklets that presented the reality of population growth.  We focused on reaching high school and college age students with our message.  We produced a couple of education videos for a teen audience. One was called Jam Packed. The other was called, The Cost of Cool.  Both of these videos won awards.  They were good videos, and are still being used to this day in school classrooms across America. But, there's no denying, part of the reason they got the recognition they did was because there wasn't much else available on population at the time.

In 1985, when I began my population activism, the world population was about 4.9 billion. Since then, in just the last 28 years, the population has grown half again in size - 2.3 billion more people, all needing a piece of our Earth's rapidly diminishing resource pie.

The news is not all bad.  We have slowed the rate of population growth. In 1985, we were adding about 82 million more mouths to feed a year. Now, were down to about 75 million.  Many countries have reduced their population growth to replacement level [ 2.1 babies per couple ] or even less.  But there are still many nations, in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East that are overwhelmed by high human fertility. These highly fertile places tend to be the same places where women are treated like  property, good only for child bearing.  A big part of ending population growth is educating and empowering women in the poorest places, where human fertility remains unsustainably high.  The other part of the solution is to assure access to contraception to all women.  Reproductive choice is a basic human right. Every child should be a wanted child.

Bottom line: in 2013, the world is in a tailspin, largely because there are simply too many people chasing after too few resources.  Moreover, the level of ignorance that still exists on this issue is shocking, given how much the world has been impacted by population growth. 

I just watched a new video about human population growth. It offers clear evidence that we remain in very deep trouble where population is concerned, to a great degree because people are still in denial about this very obvious cause of the biggest challenges we face.

Here is a link to a terrific little video that presents the population problem in a very effective way...  http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=kIRDRFuN3BQ

Twilight of the Elites

Just finished reading Chris Hayes'  book, Twilight of the Elites: America after Meritocracy.   The idea behind the book is rooted in human nature and is pretty self-evident. It is this: People like to get ahead, and when they do, they like to stay ahead.  In America we have evolved a meritocracy to provide opportunity for the best and brightest to achieve the American dream. At least, that's the way it's supposed to work.

Chris Hayes is a very skilled wordsmith. Combine that with a very compelling and well researched argument,  you get a terrific book.   Twilight of the Elites is a terrific book.

At this point, I'm going to defer to some quotes pulled right from the book, interspersed  with some thoughts of my own.

'...the iron law of meritocracy (predicts) that societies ordered around the meritocratic will produce inequality without the attendant mobility ideal... over time, a society will grow both more unequal and less mobile as those who ascend its heights create means of  preserving and defending their privilege and find ways to pass it on across generations.'

This is not rocket science. Kings, Emperors, and war lords have been operating this way since the beginnings of agriculture, 10,000 years ago.  Elites entrench themselves in positions of power and privilege and  they stay there by any means necessary. In the world we live in, it's people like the Koch Brothers and Sheldon Adelson, who wield their power and influence to maintain the status quo that favors them while diminishing the masses.

'...one of the lessons of the (past decades) is that intensively competitive, high reward meritocratic environments are prone to produce all kinds of fraud, deception, conniving, and game rigging.'

'...we cannot have a just society that applies the principle of accountability to the powerless and the principle of forgiveness to the powerful. This is the America in which we currently reside.'

'While the basic logic of democracy is one person one vote, our entire system of representation  heavily weights the preferences and interests of those with the most money.'

'...in the three decades after 1979, the top 10 percent captured all of the income gains, while incomes for the bottom 90% declined.

'The challenge, and it is not a small one, is directing the frustration, anger, and alienation we all feel into building a trans-ideological coalition that can actually dislodge the power of the post-meritocratic elite.'

So, corrective action is required; disruptive corrective action.  Where to focus the attention of the disaffected to deliver meaningful change?  In Twilight of the Elites, Chris Hayes talks about building coalitions across ideologies; bringing the disaffected tea party types together with  progressive change agents  like the 'Occupy Wall Streeters' to disrupt the gravy train the elite have created for themselves. That's a tall order to be sure.  This is where Hayes' book falls a bit short.  He talks about altering the code for income taxes and about restoring the estate tax  to reduce the extreme advantage people like Paris Hilton gain through massive inherited wealth. Problem is the already wealthy are experts at using their money and influence to thwart any efforts to undermine their dominant position.

How to get around this problem?  The answer to me is not complicated.  You have to disrupt the ability of the elites to use their wealth to get what they want. The way to do that is to get the underwhelming masses of people affected to focus on one straightforward action that would induce the change that is so badly needed. I'm talking about a constitutional amendment that eliminates 'corporate personhood and the idea that 'money equals free speech'.  These two corrupt legal constructs  are the foundation on which rests the perverse reality that  'he who has the money makes the rules.'

A group called 'Move to Amend' is pressing for just such an amendment. It's language is brief and unambiguous...

House Joint Resolution 29 introduced February 14, 2013

Section 1. [Artificial Entities Such as Corporations Do Not Have Constitutional Rights]

The rights protected by the Constitution of the United States are the rights of natural persons only.
Artificial entities established by the laws of any State, the United States, or any foreign state shall have no rights under this Constitution and are subject to regulation by the People, through Federal, State, or local law.

The privileges of artificial entities shall be determined by the People, through Federal, State, or local law, and shall not be construed to be inherent or inalienable.

Section 2. [Money is Not Free Speech]

Federal, State, and local government shall regulate, limit, or prohibit contributions and expenditures, including a candidate's own contributions and expenditures, to ensure that all citizens, regardless of their economic status, have access to the political process, and that no person gains, as a result of their money, substantially more access or ability to influence in any way the election of any candidate for public office or any ballot measure.

Federal, State, and local government shall require that any permissible contributions and expenditures be publicly disclosed.

The judiciary shall not construe the spending of money to influence elections to be speech under the First Amendment.

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Here is a link to Move to Amend's webpage...   https://movetoamend.org/