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Sign: Leo
City: Eden
State: Arizona
Country: US
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July 4, 2008 - Friday
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14:41 - The Pristine Earth
Category: Life
Man's Place in the Universe
by John Muir
From A Thousand-Mile Walk to the Gulf, chapter 6 (1916).
The world, we are told, was made especially for man - a presumption not supported by all the facts. A numerous class of men are painfully astonished whenever they find anything, living or dead, in all God's universe, which they cannot eat or render in some way what they call useful to themselves. They have precise dogmatic insight into the intentions of the Creator, and it is hardly possible to be guilty of irreverence in speaking of their God any more than of heathen idols. He is regarded as a civilized, law-abiding gentlemen in favor either of a republican form of government or of a limited monarchy; believes in the literature and language of England; is a warm supporter of the English constitution and Sunday schools and missionary societies; and is as purely a manufactured article as any puppet at a half- penny theater.
With such views of the Creator it is, of course, not surprising that erroneous views should be entertained of the creation. To such properly trimmed people, the sheep, for example, is an easy problem - food and clothing "for us," eating grass and daisies white by divine appointment for this predestined purpose, on perceiving the demand for wool that would be occasioned by the eating of the apple in the Garden of Eden.
In the same pleasant plan, whales are storehouses of oil for us, to help out the stars in lighting our dark ways until the discovery of the Pennsylvania oil wells. Among plants, hemp, to say nothing of the cereals, is a case of evident destination for ships' rigging, wrapping packages, and hanging the wicked. Cotton is another plain case of clothing. Iron was made for hammers and ploughs, and lead for bullets; all intended for us. And so of other small handfuls of insignificant things.
But if we should ask these profound expositors of God's intentions, How about those man-eating animals - lions, tigers, alligators - which smack their lips over raw man? Or about those myriads of noxious insects that destroy labor and drink his blood? Doubtless man was intended for food and drink for all these? Oh no! Not at all! These are unresolvable difficulties connected with Eden's apple and the Devil. Why does water drown its lord? Why do so many minerals poison him? Why are so many plants and fishes deadly enemies? Why is the lord of creation subjected to the same laws of life as his subjects? Oh, all these things are satanic, or in some way connected with the first garden.
Now, it never seems to occur to these far- seeing teachers that Nature's object in making animals and plants might possibly be first of all the happiness of each one of them, not the creation of all for the happiness of one. Why should man value himself as more than a small part of the one great unit of creation? And what creature of all that the Lord has taken the pains to make is not essential to the completeness of that unit - the cosmos? The universe would be incomplete without man; but it would also be incomplete without the smallest transmicroscopic creature that dwells beyond our conceitful eyes and knowledge.
From the dust of the earth, from the common elementary fund, the Creator has made Homo sapiens. From the same material he has made every other creature, however noxious and insignificant to us. They are earth-born companions and our fellow mortals. The fearfully good, the orthodox, of this laborious patch-work of modern civilization cry "Heresy" on every one whose sympathies reach a single hair's breadth beyond the boundary epidermis of our own species. Not content with taking all of earth, they also claim the celestial country as the only ones who possess the kind of souls for which that imponderable empire was planned.
This star, our own good earth, made many a successful journey around the heavens ere man was made, and whole kingdoms of creatures enjoyed existence and returned to dust ere man appeared to claim them. After human beings have also played their part in Creation's plan, they too may disappear without any general burning or extraordinary commotion whatever.
Plants are credited with but dim and uncertain sensation, and minerals with positively none at all. But why may not even a mineral arrangement of matter be endowed with sensation of a kind that we in our blind exclusive perfection can have no manner of communication with?
But I have wandered from my subject. I stated a page or two back that man claimed the earth was made for him and I was going to say that venomous beasts, thorny plants, and deadly diseases of certain parts of the earth prove that the whole world was not made for him. When an animal from a tropical climate is taken to high latitudes, it may perish of cold, and we say that such an animal was never intended for so severe a climate. But when man betakes himself to sickly parts of the tropics and perishes, he cannot see that he was never intended for such deadly climates. No, he will rather accuse the first mother of the cause of the difficulty, though she may never have seen a fever district; or will consider it a providential chastisement for some self-invented form of sin.
Furthermore, all uneatable and uncivilized animals, and all plants which carry prickles, are deplorable evils which, according to closes researches of clergy, require the cleansing chemistry of universal planetary combustion. But more than aught else mankind requires burning, as being in great part wicked, and if that transmundane furnace can be so applied and regulated as to smelt and purify us into conformity with the rest of the terrestrial creation, then the tophetization of the erratic genius Homo were a consummation devoutly to be prayed for. But, glad to leave these ecclesiastical fires and blunders, I joyfully return to the immortal truth and immortal beauty of Nature.
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Currently
listening
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Medicine Woman
By
Medwyn Goodall
Release date: 2001-11-13
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14:22 - "Land of the Free, Home of the Brave...."
Category: Life
Mark Henson of Sacred Light Studio
A Declaration Of Independence From The Government Of The USA
By Anonymous
This article is from an anonymous woman now living in South Africa. It
was sent to me by a third party, and I have no reason to believe that
it's bogus. In any case, I believe its relevance to the present moment
is stunning.--Carolyn Baker
-- - Through my signature below I hereby withdraw my consent to be ruled
by the organization that has called itself the Government of the United
States of America.
A government is empowered through the consent of the governed to serve a
sacred purpose, namely, to create a bright and sustainable future for
its people and a biodiverse garden of its region. This purpose is possible.
If a government no longer serves its intended purpose then it is proper
that each individual formally withdraw his or her consent to be ruled by
that government.
Through a consistent stream of actions the United States Government has
proved itself to be corrupt, having turned away from serving its
original purpose. The United States Government has therefore failed, and
is de facto illegitimate. Consequently, all of its authorities over me
are hereby removed and the United States Government is hereby disbanded
in its entirety. All branches, the legislative, executive and judicial
branches, including all offices and resources, political, military,
informational and financial, are hereby disenfranchised and replaced by
local, self-organizing, bioregional governments and currencies that
promote sustainable infrastructures and demonstrably serve the
principles of integrity, transparency, interdependence, consciousness
and the sustainable well being of their entire ecology.
Human beings carry an inalienable responsibility for choosing to whom or
what they pledge their allegiance. From this moment forward I no longer
pledge my allegiance to the organization that has called itself the
Government of the United States of America. We are dissociated. I
disallow that organization to legislate, adjudicate, use money, or make
agreements in my name, either nationally or internationally. I hereby
withdraw my franchise from the United States Government and I no longer
submit myself to its authority. I hereby abandon my United States
Passport as worthless, null and void because through its own actions the
United States Government has invalidated itself.
This document recognizes that the United States Government has
Irredeemably abolished itself by no longer fulfilling its true purpose.
This document announces that I take my authority back from that failed
organization. The United States Government no longer has authority to
represent me, tax me, detain me, question me, or in any way rule over
me. It can no longer take any actions in my name. From this moment
forward I take back my autonomy. I hereby declare my independence from
the organization that has called itself the Government of the United
States of America.
Although I alone, without reason or circumstance, am responsible for my
decision to withdraw my franchise and allegiance from the organization
that has called itself the Government of the United States of America, I
am willing to name examples of how this organization has betrayed the
purpose for which it was originally created:
1. The Government of the United States of America (herein referred to as
the Government) has consistently legislated in favor of a carbon-based
economy that multiplies corporate profits while disregarding the
increases in greenhouse gas concentrations to the point where the future
of all of humanity is now seriously threatened by the consequences of
global warming.
2. The Government has promoted the use of nuclear powered electric
generation plants creating millions of tons of lethal nuclear waste
products that can never be safely stored, and creating decommissioned
power plants that remain radioactive for eternity.
3. The Government has abused its leadership position in the world by
promoting fear-based military force as the international culture of
America, rather than a culture of innovation, compassion, respect, and
mutual support of humanity.
4. The Government over and over again, and still now is using illegal DU
(Depleted Uranium) weapons and devices in direct opposition to signed
United Nations agreements, degrading the United States of America to a
renegade country, likely to have its leadership regime brought to war
crimes trials and capitally punished.
5. The Government has promoted an unsustainable consumerism culture that
multiplies corporate profits while devouring the future's natural
resources and producing mountains, rivers and seas of toxic unrecyclable
wastes. The consumer economy never did have a future and still the
government promoted it wholeheartedly.
6. The Government has promoted covert military actions and subterfuge
that includes traffic in illegal drugs, illegal weapons trade,
assassinations, illegal takeovers of corporations and governments, and
ruthless competition rather than intelligent cooperation or creative
collaboration.
7. The Government has allowed itself to be infiltrated and corrupted by
corporate and elite regimes that now direct the branches of Government
to serve purposes contrary to the true and proper purpose of government.
8. The Government has turned over control of the currency of the United
States of America (the original world currency) to private individuals
who manipulate it for their own personal benefit rather than for the
benefit of the world.
9. The Government has promoted a system of education that keeps people
stupid rather than developing their innate potential and well being so
they can create satisfying lives, fulfilling relationships and loving
families in the 21st Century. The Government has allowed corporations
and organized religions to control school curriculums, and has permitted
drugs, gangs and guns to define the school experience for many children.
10. The Government has promoted economy over humanity in a value system
that shamelessly sponsors injustice, inequity, and slavery, not only in
America but around the world, regarding people in developing nations not
as brothers and sisters but as sweatshop slaves for producing cheap
clothes and the latest technological devices.
11. The Government has designed cities and towns around automobiles and
roads rather than around people, cutting people off from their own
community and trapping people in suburbs that are not sustainable.
12. The Government has consistently sponsored an imbalanced budget and
has accrued a national debt over one trillion dollars that future
generations must somehow pay back, meanwhile losing track of an
additional trillion dollars.
13. The Government has greedily destroyed the future of civilization by
developing an infrastructure, energy, food, housing and transportation
systems relying entirely on consuming vast quantities of hydrocarbons
that exist in limited supply, thus building a dangerous house of cards
that will now tumble down as oil, gas and coal supplies dwindle. If half
of the war budget would have been redirected towards developing
renewable power for the last twenty years, the entire country would be
oil free by now.
14. The Government has promoted a diet of fat-saturated fast-foods, and
hormone and antibiotic saturated beef, pigs, poultry, and dairy products
that endanger the health and general well being of its people, ground
water and farmlands. The Government has also promoted fishing grounds to
be exhausted to near extinction, and promotes deforestation and
dependence on pesticides and fertilizers that undermine foreign
economies but makes huge profits for corporations.
15. The Government has promoted the so-called patenting and engineering
of the genetic designs of life forms to be used for the profit of
corporations while endangering the future of the humanity.
16. The Government has promoted the introduction of genetically modified
organisms into the general food chain for the profit of corporations
while endangering the future of humanity.
17. The Government has used military force, assassination, and political
manipulation to overthrow other governments as a desperate attempt to
control remaining oil supplies for the purpose of maintaining the
illusionary value of a world petro-dollar to assure profit for the
corporations rather than assuring a bright future for the people.
18. The Government has promoted a medical establishment that profits
pharmaceutical corporations and has blocked the development of less
profitable but more humanistic, holistic and intuitive healing modalities.
19. The Government has persistently implemented legislation and
presidential orders to override constitutional rights, and has built and
staffed over 600 new prison camps across the country prepared to
imprison citizens who might be regarded as the enemy of Government.
These and other actions reveal that the United States Government has
irredeemably abolished itself by no longer fulfilling its original and
true purpose.
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Currently
watching
:
Born on the Fourth of July [HD DVD]
Release date: 2007-06-12
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22:02 - The Winner
Category: Life
Mark Henson of Sacred Light Studio
From the artist on this painting:
The Winner
2007
Oil on canvas, 48" x 66"
I am appalled by the fact that during the entire course of my lifetime
the people here where I live have been at war with other people somewhere in the world.
It seems that these wars have mostly been fomented by small cliques
of wealthy and powerful madmen for purposes of self-aggrandizement,
and for political control of the rest of us by violent coercion,
for the purpose of wealth extraction.
A good portion of what this wealth consists of is the result of work by artists.
Artists spend their time and energy creating things that while not necessary
to raw existence, serve to enhance and beatify our lives,
and to give us a sense of civilization and cultural advancement.
Some of the most revered and precious things in the world to
we humans are the artistic endeavors of our ancestors.
In the one of the most recent outbursts of war, we witnessed the destruction
of ancient cave sculptures in Afghanistan by angry religious fanatics,
and the ravaging of a museum in Iraq devoted to conserving our most ancient cultural heritage
by greedy small time pirates who were taking advantage of the chaos
resulting from the army of the United States invading the country to steal their oil.
We artists spend our lives working hard to make life nice for everyone,
only to see our efforts dashed to pieces in seconds by wanton acts of foolish destruction.
Needless to say, I am bothered by this.
In this painting I wanted to depict the Winner. The Guy who Won the War.
The last one standing after the world has all been blown to bits, and all the opposition crushed.
I hope he enjoys the spoils.
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Currently
watching
:
My Life as a Dog - Criterion Collection
Release date: 2003-03-11
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July 2, 2008 - Wednesday
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17:12 - Happy Oil Dependence Day
Current mood:  blissful
Category: Life
Happy Oil Dependence Day
by Robert Scheer
As we head into the Fourth of July weekend of patriotic bluster and beer swilling — but before we are too besotted with ourselves — might we also for once consider our imperfections? Why not take a moment to heed the cautions of our founding father, George Washington, whose true legacy will most likely be ignored during the flag-waving weekend?
Washington's "Farewell Address" to the new nation was a warning about the threat of American imperial ambitions and a declaration of his high expectations for a republic of free men: "In offering to you, my countrymen, these counsels of an old and affectionate friend, I dare not hope they will make the strong and lasting impression I could wish; that they will control the usual current of the passions, or prevent our nation from running the course which has hitherto marked the destiny of nations. But, if I may even flatter myself, that they may be productive of some partial benefit, some occasional good; that they may now and then recur to moderate the fury of party spirit, to warn against the mischiefs of foreign intrigue, to guard against the impostures of pretended patriotism. …"
We are drowning in the "impostures of pretended patriotism," used to cover the lies that got us into Iraq, the defense of torture and the violation of our basic liberties. In the name of patriotism, we presume a God-given American right to reorder the world to our liking, masking the vice of unfettered greed as an obligation of national security.
Any doubts as to this later governing impulse of our imperial ambitions were shattered with the recent news that U.S. advisers to our puppet government in the Green Zone of occupied Iraq have worked out agreements for American oil companies to gain control of Iraqi oil fields. But, then again, what did we expect when we elected a Texas oil hustler, and a failed one at that, to be our president?
Only in an America dumbed down by constant propaganda about our innate moral superiority will anyone any longer believe that we didn't invade Iraq for the oil, even though Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice came to the Bush administration from the board of directors at Chevron, where they named an oil tanker after her. Like Vice President Dick Cheney with those Halliburton contracts, Rice has stayed true to her corporate sponsors. That's what the U.S. invasion of Iraq accomplished; for the first time in more than three decades after Iraq joined a worldwide trend of formerly colonized nations gaining control of their own resources, Big Oil is getting its black gold back. It was always about the oil — that's why "we" invaded Iraq — only "we" aren't getting any, at least not at a reasonable price. The oil companies are.
I know it's difficult for the corporate media and politicians, both fueled generously by energy money, to grasp the distinction, but we the people and they the oil companies are not one and the same. While we suffer at the pump, they make record profits, which is the way they like it. Don't think for a second that U.S. oil companies are rushing into Iraq to expand production to help lower world oil prices, thus making their investments less profitable. They just want to be on the winning side, which is why the CEO of Halliburton relocated his office from Texas to the United Arab Emirates, where I am certain he and his fellow corporate expatriates are able to happily celebrate the Fourth of July.
So, take that American flag off your lapel and replace it with a button bearing the Exxon or Chevron logo. C'mon, Dick Cheney and Condi Rice, be straight about what it is you are really pushing here. 'Fess up — it's not the good old USA as represented by the sucker taxpayers conned by your patriotic blather. No sirree, what you would have Americans paying homage to is the majesty of the big multinational corporations that exploit American military power to rule the world.
But recognize that you have shamed the legacy of our first president. George Washington, who distinguished the promise of the new world from the corruptions of the old by shunning imperial conquest, said: "Our commercial policy should hold an equal and impartial hand; neither seeking nor granting exclusive favors or preferences; consulting the natural course of things; diffusing and diversifying by gentle means the streams of commerce, but forcing nothing."
If Barack Obama or John McCain was to offer such words of wisdom this Fourth of July, he would be vilified as "weak," and that is a fit measure of just how far we have descended from the high hopes of our first president.
Robert Scheer is the author, most recently, of "The Pornography of Power: How Defense Hawks Hijacked 9/11 and Weakened America," published by Twelve Books.
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16:55 - "My handgun, my parasite..."
Current mood: blissful
Category: Life
My handgun, my parasite
Never forget: The brutal effects of the Bush regime will be felt for generations
By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
Ah, so this is how it's gonna be.
Like recurring cancer. No, more like a rogue rash, an STD, flaring up at unexpected times and in unexpected places and when it fades, you gently let yourself forget all about it until it suddenly erupts and hits hard and ruins your day, and then you can only sit back and moan softly, slather on ointment, shudder.
Wait, one more: Maybe it's most like a nasty intestinal worm, a wicked parasite like those you suck down in India or deep Mexico or the jungles of Indonesia, the kind that burrow deep and attach to all manner of essential organs and induce a wicked bout of dysentery or all-over body convulsion, until you finally crawl out of the hospital and drown in antibiotics and slowly work your way back to semi-health — but only semi, because of course you are never quite the same.
This is where we are. This is the state of the nation after having swallowed the malicious worm of Bush. We have, by all accounts, suffered — and somehow survived — the very worst of the illness, the cancer, the oozing spirit. But now, as America's worst president prepares to amble off the stage he never deserved to be on in the first place, it is time to prepare for any number of convulsions, aftershock, excruciating reminders.
Here is your Bush-loaded Supreme Court, for one regrettable example, addressing the much-misinterpreted Second Amendment for the first time in eons. Here is the majority of the court basically arguing that, in case you forgot, much of America still blindly loves its guns, and of course handguns are a nice addition to any God-fearing family's arsenal of ridiculous self-defense weaponry and therefore banning a device designed to do nothing but kill other humans is just plain wrong.
It is, by all accounts, a severe, dark cloud of a decision, loaded with sadness and a feeling of despair, the cruel notion that America is still defined by its love of violence, or even the utterly phony idea, put forth by Justice Antonin Scalia himself, that only violence prevents violence, or that the answer to the gun problem is, quite simply, more guns, because surely that's what the founding fathers intended, more paranoid NASCAR dads stocking Glocks in the rec room to protect the rug rats from those icky drug-dealing rapists who never come.
Is it worth mentioning how handguns kept in the home are much more likely to be used for suicides and homicides, not to mention fondled by those same curious rug rats who find daddy's little Elvis in the sock drawer and decide to aim it at their sisters? Worth pointing out that the self-defense argument is not only pathetically illogical, part of a silly pseudo-cowboy mythology, it's also statistically untrue, a perpetual, insidious lie that's undermined the American identity for generations?
Nah. Let us not stare down that particular barrel of gloom just now. Instead, let us prepare. Let us steel ourselves. As we head into the Obama era and as the GOP juggernaut mercifully sputters and lurches back to the cave of 1950, let us be reminded that escaping the Bush aftermath isn't going to be all wine and roses and new energy policies.
See, we've been enjoying a small reprieve. These past six months or so, it's been sort of delightful to finally turn our attention toward the imminent Democratic sea change and away from the ravages of the Bush disease, to finally look toward the new, as we get to focus on all those things we might be able to do once we get out of this damn hospital and get the weak-kneed Democratic Party out of second gear.
But oh, not so fast.
Let us be reminded, the Bush virus will be with us for years, generations. Aside from the shambles of Iraq and the Middle East, aside from handguns and the decided mixed blessing of the Supreme Court's recent spate of decisions, there are maneuvers and decisions we don't even know about, nefarious arrangements, a corruption so deep that normally staid historians are behaving more like alarmed climate-change scientists: We know it's going to be bad, but we just don't know how bad.
There are destroyed nations, mauled infrastructures, horribly compromised federal agencies from FEMA to the EPA, the CIA to the FCC. There is a rogue outsourced military, citizens who can no longer sue gun manufacturers, six straight years of increased poverty, untold numbers of homophobic, misogynistic judicial appointees, devastating environmental policies the consequences of which could take generations to comprehend, much less repair.
Where do you dare to look? Women's rights? Science? Foreign policy? Currency devaluation? Big Oil? Halliburton's billions in war profit? Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib and the Dick Cheney agenda of torture and pre-emptive aggression? What about unchecked corporate cronyism, the shunning of the United Nations and of international law, Homeland Security, the Patriot Act, wiretapping and surveillance and "evildoers" galore?
And finally, what of all those families, the thousands of dead U.S. soldiers, the tens of thousands of brain-damaged, disabled, permanently wounded? Bush's legacy isn't just one of staggering social ineptitude combined with shocking success at serving his corporate masters. It's foremost a legacy soaked to the bone in blood.
Truly, I firmly believe the record will reveal that no president in modern history has done more to unravel the American identity, to dumb down the populace and cater to the basest instincts of man than the one about to mispronounce his way into the history books. Even Nixon didn't leave office with Bush's incredible range of ignominy.
Ironically, this is why many in the GOP are chuckling in secret, rubbing their hands together, plotting their revenge. They know the colossal pile of issues and problems Barack Obama will inherit is so overwhelming, so unsolvable, it doesn't matter how smart and aggressive he might be. It doesn't matter that he'll have a Democratic Congress. He's just plain doomed. Combine this with America's infamous short attention span, and within a few years, just watch as the GOP emerges from the murky depths, the champion of a "new" solution.
I know, it can seem bleak. Insurmountable, even. But here's the lesson of any major injury, of surviving a serious illness and getting on with your life. Often, it's not merely about letting time heal all wounds. It's not always about ignoring the scar, or looking away from our permanent deformity and pretend we don't now walk with a savage limp.
It's far more about learning to live with the violence that's been wreaked upon the national body, letting the scale of the wound fuel us, shock us back to life. Question is, do we have enough optimistic ointment to cover it all?
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Currently
listening
:
Soulfly
By
Soulfly
Release date: 1999-10-19
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