Cheery Article

Quite the clever lot aren't we.....always have been, it would appear.

Care Charlie

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Excerpt:

Full article (long) at:

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By William M. H. Kötke

12 September, 2007 Countercurrents.org

We are all looking at the end of the world as we know it. Our attention is focused on the holes in the ozone layer, planet warming, peak oil, the spread of DU weapons, the collapse of the house of credit cards, and the prospect of the planetary financial elite quickly establishing fascist control of the planet. Below this threshold of conscious awareness our biological survival systems are rapidly eroding. At this point some twenty percent of the planet?s soils erode each twenty-five year period. Each year at least two hundred thousand acres of irrigated crop-lands go out of production because of salinization or water-logging and experts say that sixty to eighty percent of all irrigated acreage is due to follow the eight to ten million acres that have historically gone into ruination from irrigation. The total drylands of the planet are 7.9 billion acres of which 61% are desertified, that is, driven by human abuse toward uselessness. Globally, 23% of all arable crop lands have been lost since 1945 through human use and experts say that all arable land on the planet will be ruined in 200 years.

It is estimated that prior to the human culture that we term civilization, one third of the planet was covered with closed canopy forest. Now forests cover 10% of the earth. In the oceans the collapse of major fish stocks is increasing. At least eight stocks have collapsed beginning with the Antarctic Blue Whale in 1935 to the Peruvian Anchovy stock collapse in the late twentieth century. Since

1984 the world fish catch has been shrinking even with greater investment and the taking of what in former times were considered ?trash? fish. Of the 32 ocean fisheries, 30 are in decline and some of those are collapsing. At the same time coral reefs and mangrove swamps which are considered the ?incubators? of sea life are dwindling precipitously.

Soil is the basis of the planetary terrestrial life. In the best of circumstances such as old growth forests and prairies, soil builds at the rate of one inch each three hundred to a thousand years. It is being exhausted and is eroding away. The way that the industrial system has continued to increase the food supply is by trading off soil fertility for fossil fuel energy through artificial fertilizers. Now, nearly half of the world?s people eat because of the added production of food caused by artificial fertilizers being injected into depleted soils and the use of all of the other accouterments of fossil- fueled industrial agriculture.. Half of the planetary population are hanging out on a limb essentially eating petroleum! Now as the population continues to explode we reach peak oil and its decline. We do not need to continue filling in the details. Our intellect can draw the conclusion for us. An exponentially exploding world population with increasing material consumption, based on dwindling resources and a dying planet, won?t work!

But this is not a new phenomenon as some would assume. This culture of civilization, of empire, was an ecological catastrophe when it began some eight thousand years ago. It is this culture and its inculcated reality-view that is the disaster. Half of China was once a great temperate zone forest. That forest was gone before recorded history, destroyed by the Han Chinese Empire. The Indus River Valley Empire had ecologically destroyed its habitat before recorded history. We do have recorded history of the Sumerian and Babylonian empires. We know they decimated the forests and overgrazed the landscape. One third of the land in Iraq that should be arable right now is still so salinized from imperial irrigation four and five thousand years ago that it cannot be used. The erosion material coming down the Tigris and Euphrates rivers from that destroyed watershed has filled in 185 miles of the gulf. As we follow the history of this type of human culture we find the Mid-East ecologically denuded. The empires of Greece and Rome used Turkey and North Africa as ?breadbaskets.? Now, there are towns in Turkey, North Africa and even in Italy that were port cities during those empires which are now ten and fifteen miles from the water - all filled in with erosion material from the ecologically destroyed landscapes. Then we go on to the destruction of the great forests of Europe and now the whole world. These examples and many more are indelible effects on the world ecosystem which have not recovered in thousands of years.

Reply to
Charlie
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Hi Charlie!

Goggle Earth is really neat. Does all sorts of thing and smart people are writing interesting tools like the one listed below.

Bill

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Google Earth layer helps mapping industrial pollutants

29 June 2007 Morelia, Mexico, 27 June 2007: The environmental officials of Canada, Mexico and US have collaboratively launched initiative on tracking air pollution in North America. The three countries have introduced an interactive Google Earth mapping tool, which will expand public access to information on air pollutants.

The officials had gathered in Morelia, for the regular annual meeting of the Commission for Environmental Cooperation (CEC), an organization created by Canada, Mexico and US to address regional environmental concerns as part of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). The talks focused on harmonizing air quality data between the three countries and strengthening Mexico¹s pollutant monitoring and reporting ability.

Using the Google Earth mapping service, the CEC¹s map layer plots over

33,000 North American industrial facilities that reported releases and transfers of pollutants in 2004, the most recent data available from all three countries.

The tool allows viewers to find industrial facilities located near their homes, their workplaces, or their schools. They can learn about the pollution profile of each facility, including which pollutants are generated and how the facility handles them.

Information used in the mapping tool comes from publicly accessible ³pollutant release and transfer registers,² or PRTRs, maintained separately by the three North American countries: the National Pollutant Release Inventory (NPRI) in Canada, the Registro de Emisiones y Transferencias de Contaminantes (RETC) in Mexico, and the Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) in the United States.

The mapping tool developed by the CEC, can be downloaded from:

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Source :

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Reply to
William Wagner

Hi Bill! Long time no see, good to be back.....for now anyhow.

Gotta get some different music playing and Joni outta me head....

A couple weeks with the complete works of Joni has perhaps, uh, been enough on that side of things for a while. Any suggestions?

Care Charlie

Reply to
Charlie

Roger McGuinn Live From Spain

Hard too find but all you need is someone to love you. If you were not to follow than perhaps Mr. Spaceman may matter. Cuss You ain't goin' nowhere. Mr. Tambourine Man when he is Turning Turn Turning

Bill like all of us are

Knockin' On Heaven's Door 4:36 Roger McGuinn Live From Spain Rock

Live Acoustic

Reply to
William Wagner

The problem with this is we all know this but are not willing to make changes to our living habits. For example did you know that 95% of the land mentioned in that artical is used to grow animal feed to be fed to animals that we eat? It takes almost 75% more water to grow food and a cow to be fed to a human than it takes to grow a field of food for humans. The food grown for humans replaces the nutrients to the soil with crop rotation and composting. Also, the cow waste gets washed into our streams and rivers and poisons our water systems. The manure also gives off gases that help to destroy the ozone layer. Think about it. we have the ability to produce enough food to feed the world but don't because we grow food to feed animals to feed us that end up killing us and our planet. Welcome To...May I Take Your Order? Eddie

Reply to
Hermit

You know, I've just got a hanking for some Byrds. Particularly that long version of 8 Miles High that came out on that later album, with Chestnut Mare, et al.

Reply to
doofy

snipped-for-privacy@webtv.net (Hermit) expounded:

What strange logic you use (and I can see the vegetarian leanings in your thought process). Our wasteful ways are what pollutes the water. If animals are fed properly, housed properly, and allowed to live properly they aren't the problem. It's our factory mentality that's the problem. Business' need to squeeze every last cent out of every operation is what is killing our planet. Instead of building environmental responsibility into their bottom line, they do everything they can to avoid it.

Reply to
Ann

It's the neo-cons way. Anti-scientific Bush pushes for more money to his base. Down with the Bush Administration and all the un-Americans who support it.

Reply to
Billy

Rehabilitating Ann? Ann who never misses a chance to support to support the thieving Bush Administration. Why do you hate America Ann?

Reply to
Billy

Billy expounded:

Boy, you aren't going to quit, are you? Crawl back under your bridge, Billy. I don't and I don't and you know it but you're sick with your hatred.

Reply to
Ann

Bush hasn't shut down free speech yet, you witch. Why do you hate America?

Reply to
Billy

Tone it down, Billie. You're discussing politics, not something that is important. You're waaaaay out of line here.

Reply to
Steve

One can either make a point in an articulate and well reasoned fashion, or name call. Your choice indicates an underlying weakness in your righteous argument that you don't wish to expose, or the inability to articulate your points.

It seems it's not _my_ homework left undone.

Reply to
Steve

Sorry, what part of witch or crook don't you understand? I have catered to Ann's sensitivities for too long. If you had read this group for any time at all, you would understand that. Would you care to make an argument for Bush? Don't be timid.

Reply to
Billy

Steve expounded:

Billy has no point other than to name-call, berate and rant. I said nothing about supporting anyone but the food supply in this country (in this thread), and I haven't said I support Bush at all or said that I hate this country (I love my country, far more than he does, as has been demonstrated in all of his politically slanted posts since he's started posting in these newsgroups) and he continues to get even more vile in his postings.

Catered to my postings - as I have tolerated his. Now he's on the attack for no reason at all. He's now come out as the troll he truly is.

Reply to
Ann

No. OTOH, I'm not too thrilled that a vocal anti-Bush/government/cartel crusader is name calling and setting up straw man arguments instead of posting intelligent talking points.

That seems to be an endemic problem with "our" side, Billy. Too much heart and very little head. It doesn't help, and in fact hurts, progress.

Why do you hate progress, Billy? ;-)

Reply to
Steve

Hey Steve, just jumpin' in with an article I found interesting. Bein's I ain't so good with words and coherent argument and thought, I read others and recognize things *I* see as truth. Rather than regurgitate or try and debate them I just post them for others to think about.

All this fun and games reminds me a bit of the good old days, sittin' in the bar and both sides yellin'...."Love it or Leave It." "Hell No, We Won't Go".....then somebody would throw a peanut then someone else would throw a punch and then we usually got hell beat out of us, cuz', you know, we were peace lovin' and all that......plus we were usually too stoned to defend ourselves. ;-)

Throwing digital turds is much less painful.

Back now to the regularly scheduled debates. ;-)

Charlie, havin' a bad day.....the damn dane barfed five times on the carpet......

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The Right's Garden of False Narratives Phil Rockstroh

The false outrage of perpetually offended conservatives serves as cover for the true outrages of our era, including: truncated civil liberties, rising levels of social and economic inequality and injustice, and foreign wars of aggression waged by an insular and secretive executive branch and fought by a permanent underclass.

The outrages keep arriving, because the collective imagination of the citizen/consumers of the US, arbitrated by a careerist media elite, has been, for decades, in the thrall of false narratives that serve the interests of the elite of the corporate/militarist classes.

Concurrently, a sense of unease and despair, due to a sense of personal and collective powerlessness before exploitive power, has created the tone and tenor of the times, and begot the phenomenon of supine liberalism and Viagra conservatism. (In this way, liberals stand fecklessly by, as the public is, time and time again, screwed by the decrepit schemes of the right.)

In this way, liberal paternalism is insufferable; worse, it is dangerous.

This has been the right's craftiest accomplishment: inducing "reasonable" liberals and "sensible" centrists to enable their crimes, from stolen elections to their present preparation for a massive bombing campaign of Iran, by intimidating them with the fear that any protest on their part will cast them among the ranks of America-hating, lefty moonbats, who wish to see the terrorist win, dumpsters piled high with discarded fetuses and metro-sexuality made the official state religion.

Moreover, these assaults upon both reason and the republic (what's left of it) will persist until progressives begin to effectively counter the narratives of the predatory right. Some call it shameful demagoguery; although, conservatives call it career advancement.

This is not a novel situation. Throughout history, these kinds of pernicious mindsets have always been with us; it is our tragedy that they have been allowed to prevail.

Conservatives are eager to embrace false narratives: The surge is working; the terrorists hate us for our freedom; Fred Thompson is Ronald Reagan incarnate, but with a touch of Jed Clampett "folksiness."

Accordingly, when the times are roiled with uncertainty, when thoughts of the future are tinged with dread, conservatives, like a character in Southern Gothic literature, will fall into a swoon, longing for the return of an imagined, purer past that never was.

One can picture these right-wing sorts wandering the streets, wearing a faded prom dress and a broken, prom queen tiara, twittering and cooing, while repeating over and over again, "the surge is working; Anbar Province is now a beacon of freedom unto the world...") in an imaginary dialog with the ghost of their long lost beau, Ronald Reagan.

Reply to
Charlie

If you believe that name calling and straw men are elements of debate... "To argue with a man who has renounced the use and authority of reason, and whose philosophy consists in holding humanity in contempt, is like administering medicine to the dead, or endeavoring to convert an atheist by scripture." Thomas Paine

Reply to
Steve

"A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defense of custom. But the tumult soon subsides. Time makes more converts than reason." ~ Thomas Paine

Reply to
Charlie

I fail to make the connection between Billy's name calling and your quote from Paine's introduction to the third edition of Common Sense. However, since it seems to work for you, I offer the lines of a paragraph later from the same introduction: "In the following sheets, the author hath studiously avoided every thing which is personal among ourselves. Compliments as well as censure to individuals make no part thereof."

Reply to
Steve

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