Gear Gab the Tilt-A-Whirl in my head

Triple Pundit writes about Ikea's reusable bag policy and how plastic bags look like jellyfish when they are in the ocean.

I have been trying harder to reuse bags. It is a hard habit to break.

Over at Sky Blue Waters Tom Elko writes a comprehensive article on the proposed MinnCan Pipeline.

One of the finer thoughts from the previously mentioned LA Weekly article is:

“The harsh sentence in my case was designed to both distract attention from the policies which motivated my friends’ actions, and to deter more people from supporting what is essentially a just cause.”

That is precisily what the green scare and the eco-terrorist labels are about, a distraction. These Eco and Animal rights causes are just causes and our government is in bed with the corporations that are against these causes. By labeling these people as terrorist the government is able to scare away a good chunk of people who might be considering protesting or committing acts for these just causes.

The NY Times has a great article/interview with Whole Earth founder Stewart Brand.

Mr. Brand started his career as an environmentalist while hanging out with the Grateful Dead. Now he has the crazy idea that current environmentalists will soon embrace nuclear energy, genetically engineered crops and animals and massive sprawling cities.

Agree with him or not, he has a great philosophy of life

"...You have to keep on trying new things.”

"That’s a good strategy, whether you’re trying to build a sustainable career or a sustainable civilization. Ultimately, there’s no safety in clinging to a romanticized past or trying to plan a risk-free future. You have to keep looking for better tools and learning from mistakes. You have to keep on hacking."

The LA Weekly has a feature on Billy Cottrell, a man convicted in Los Angeles of torching and defacing SUVs at a Hummer dealership. The Government and prison system have labeled him a terrorist and terrorists are not treated so well in our prisons.

Billy also happens to be autistic and a science genius. He has written thesis papers on string theory and had a coveted research position at Caltech.

Part 4 of the Eugene Weekly's 5 part series on the local Eco-activist groups and their targeting by the FBI. It is really a fascinating story of how our government is allowed to target political opponents in our new world on terror.

In reality, the FBI is up to its same old tricks. They used these same tactics against the Civil Rights Movement, the Black Power Movement, the Puerto Rican Freedom Movement, and on and on. Only now they have laws that allow them to declare these people as terrorists and lock them up for unimaginable amounts of time.

The tactics really amount to a campaign of fear. They subpoena people to talk in front of a grand jury, they hand out huge jail times for relatively small offenses and hope that it scares your average activist to back down.

The above quote is from hobo philosopher, Utah Phillips. I read this in an article written by Catherine Austin Fitts of Solari, Inc. and published on the Native Forest Council's web site. The title of her article is, "What's Wrong with Gore's Great Movie?". What drew me to the quote was the following statement:

The fundamental lie that Al Gore is telling comes from defining our problem as environmental -- in this case global warming, whereas our environmental problems -- as real and important as they are -- are but a symptom of the problem, not the problem. Gore defines our problem as "what." He is silent on "who." For example, Gore does not ask or answer:

Who is doing this?

Who has been governing our planet this way and why?

Cui bono? Who benefits?

Who has suppressed alternative technologies resulting in our dependency on fossil fuels? Why?

Who has how much financial capital generated from this damage?

How did things get this bad without our changing? How much was related to fear of and dirty tricks of those in charge?

How do we recapture resources that have been criminally drained and use them to invest in restoring environmental balance?

Utah Phillips once said, "The earth is not dying. It is being killed, and the people killing it have names and addresses." In one sentence, Utah Phillips told us more about global warming than Al Gore has told us in a lifetime of writing and speaking, let alone in An Inconvenient Truth.

Well here is a way to find their names and addresses: Planet Hazard

PlanetHazard uses information from the EPA to map over 86,000 companies throughout the United States that emit hazardous air pollutants.

Here is an incredible map of where we get our fossil fuels and how they move around the world.

This map was created by folks at AIR - Preemptive Media Project. Their site has an amazing amount of information about fossil fuel and its impact on NYC. Their program is just getting started and hopefully will reach a neighborhood near you.

The Eugene Weekly is doing a five part series called, The Flames of Dissent. Weeks one, two and three are up now with the final two segments to come in December.

In a high-profile sweep that began on Dec. 7, 2005 and continues into the present, the federal government indicted 18 people for a spate of environmentally motivated sabotage crimes committed in the West between 1996 and 2001. No one was physically hurt in the actions, mainly arsons against corporate and government targets perceived to be destroying the planet. Yet the FBI is calling the defendants "eco-terrorists" and seeking particularly stiff sentences for the five remaining non-cooperators, whose trials are pending. Eight defendants have pled guilty, four are fugitives and one committed suicide in jail.