After all the preening and power plays in Copenhagen, I found it kind of refreshing to see the Queen of England, who is 83 years old, climb down from her throne and climb on a train, as if she were just one of us trying to make her way home for Christmas. Of course it was PR for dealing with global warming by using public transportation but the Queen doesn’t have to run for re-election so she didn’t really need to do that.
I’ve always thought that elective office should be open to anyone, that campaign expenses should come from a small taxpayer-supported fund and that people should be elected for their job skills. The administration full of competent administrators, a congress of effective managers. What a radical idea!
And then maybe we could find a spare monarch around somewhere to represent us on the international stage, one who wasn’t too proud to take the train - which is true leadership.
Ah, but instead we have “summits” like the fiasco in Copenhagen. That wasn’t even a fig leaf. The only good thing about it was the alternative conference called Klimaforum which operated by consensus and represented those of us who are not major shareholders in the world’s largest corporations and financial institutions - which happens to be 99% of the humans on the face of the earth - who are not happy about how things are going, any of us, north, south, east, west, southern hemisphere, northern hemisphere, african, caribbean, the poor in rich countries, the indigenous not to mention all the animals, birds, reptiles, bugs, etc, etc, etc.
I would have loved it if Ecuador, the first country to write a constitution giving inalienable rights to nature, had brought an ark to symbolically represent this constituency.
This is the time for symbolic acts and street theater. This is the time for the lowly to be raised up and those who are highly placed to serve. Some of them get it. Desmond Tutu gets it, the president of Tuvalu gets it. It looks like the queen gets it, too.
Photo: Eucalyptus plantations in South Africa go on as far as the eye can see. Escaped eucalyptus trees are found widely outside of the plantations. Photo: Petermann/ GJEP
This is a franken-tree emergency! According to an article in the Organic Consumers Association newsletter, the Department of Agriculture is about to approve field trials for genetically engineered eucalyptus trees - 260,000 of them - without even conducting an Environmental Impact Statement to assess potential negative effects.
The company ArborGen wants to conduct 29 field trials. Here’s a quote from Anne Petermann of the Global Justice Ecology Project:
“Scientists at Duke University in North Carolina have created pollen models that show tree pollen traveling from a forest in North Carolina for over 1,000 kilometers northward into eastern Canada. Scientists researching sterility in trees have admitted that 100 percent guaranteed sterility in GE trees is impossible. This evidence implies that if GE trees are released into the environment, widespread and irreversible contamination of native forests cannot be prevented.”
And if that doesn’t make your hair stand on end, try this:
One of the experimental GE tree varieties is a known host for cryptococcus gatti, a fatal fungal pathogen whose spores cause meningitis in people and animals.
Comments are being accepted by the USDA until July 6, 2009. Here’s a link to a form for making a comment to the USDA. Let’s stop this before it even starts.
You might celebrate May Day by dancing around with flowers in your hair. Or you might celebrate it by marching down the street as a worker or an immigrant to stand up for your rights and fight oppression. Or you might send out a distress signal if you’re at sea and pirates attack - May Day! May Day! (which comes from the French m’aidez - help me!). Where did a holiday with such a wide range of meanings originate?
The roots of May Day go deep into the earth and way back in time to the ancient Celts and Saxons celebrating Beltane, the day of fire. It was a feast of fertility and bonfires to call back the sun after the long cold winter and prepare the ground for planting. A May Queen was chosen and young men and women danced around the May Pole romantically entwining long ribbons from the pole as they danced. When the church arrived in Britain, this was of course banned. Then reinstated, then banned. It’s had a sketchy history. The Puritans hated it but it kept coming back. So it got kind of toned it down in this country as the Puritans tried to turn it into a playful holiday for children.
But then in the US and Canada, May Day became a working class holiday after the national strikes of May 1, 1886, calling for eight hour workdays. In Chicago, the police attacked the marchers, killing six of them. The next day as the workers marched again in Haymarket Square to protest police brutality, a bomb exploded in the midst of the police, killing eight of them. The police arrested eight trade unionists claiming they threw the bomb, a charge that was never proven. Some said that the bomb was dropped by an agent provacateur of the police trying to run away after being recognized by the crowd. Despite not being able to prove that they had anything to do with the bomb, four of the anarchists were found guilty and executed by the state of Illinois.
In Paris, in 1889, the First International proclaimed May 1 as an international workers holiday in memory of the Haymarket Martyrs and the red flag became a symbol of the blood of the martyrs for worker’s rights. For a list of IWW (Industrial Workers of the World) May Day events from Edinburgh to New York City to San Francisco go here: http://www.iww.org/en/event/2009/05/01/day
I like this is version of May Day from In the Heart of the Beast Puppet and Mask Theatre http://www.hobt.org in Minneapolis Minnesota:
Our MayDay Parade, Ceremony, and Festival has always been rooted in two important traditional celebrations—the celebration of the “GREEN ROOT” of Earth’s green energy rising in Spring, and the “RED ROOT” of human work energy rising from mind, heart and hand.
Our theme this year celebrates the merging of the red and green energies of the world. We cheer on the great merging of the human social justice movements with the environmental movements to remember humans as responsible relatives of the earth.
As we experience the fall of our economic systems built on debt, consumer waste, the theft and sickening of earth resources, we gather to rebuild an economic system that protects and sustains our Earth as a “Common Treasury for All.”
Traditional May Day song:
The fires light, this merry night, upon the first of May,
We’ll merry meet, and summer greet, now Winter’s gone away.
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Chorus: Beltane Night, the time is right, the life-force doth awake.
So dance and sing, around the ring, and Summer magic make.
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The gorse and broom and heather bloom, and goodly grows the grain.
In every tree, new life we see. The summer comes again.
New life’s alive, in every hive; new nests in every tree.
Be free and fair, like earth and air, like bird, and hare, and bee
I’m busy in my balcony garden planting flowers, herbs and Italian pole beans to go with my grapevine and pear tree. I love this video so I’m passing it on . . . enjoy . . . more soon . . . swan . . .
I made a mistake. When I first started following the story of the Global Seed Vault I was intrigued. I watched as they built a very technologically advanced vault in the permafrost on the Norweigan island of Svalbard north of the Arctic circle. I noted that one of the sponsors of the site was the Global Crop Diversity Trust. I looked over their website and it looked like an okay non-profit organization but I didn’t look deep enough.
Remember the green revolution?
The Green Revolution started in 1943. Financed by the Rockefeller Foundation it propagated cutting-edge US agricultural technology, dwarf grain varieties, petrochemical fertilizers and large-scale irrigation systems throughout much of Latin America and Southeast Asia. The effect was a boom for agribiz and devastation for small-scale farmers who could not afford the initial investment in seeds, fertilizers, pesticides and irrigation projects. The environmental and social costs of this “revolution” are now well-known. In The Fatal Harvest Reader, Jason McKenney describes how petrochemicals literally change the physical structure of soils, making them less efficient at storing water, air, and nutrients. Heavy reliance on irrigation compromises arable land through the process of salinification, salts building up in over-watered soil. And then there is the cost to the environment and human health from the toxic pesticides and burning of fossil fuels in farm machinery and transport vehicles.
Unfortunately, the Global Seed Vault is backed by the same people who brought us this fatal harvest. Except this time they are pushing the technology of genetic modification - which is why the seed vault is key.
GMOs represent another technical fix dreamed up by outside “experts” and marketed by transnational agribusiness giants.
I noticed as the publicity ramped up that the seed vault was being sold on fear. It was being called the “Doomsday Vault,” supposedly able to withstand catastrophic disasters of all kinds. The real catastrophe is that they are trying to control the food supply in the name of “protecting” us. Seeds do not need to be in deep storage, available only to the “scientists” who manipulate the genes so that we have franken-food with untested effects on future generations and farmers who can be sued by the likes of Monsanto if Monsanto’s seeds drift into the farmer’s fields and contaminate the farmer’s crops (yes, this really happened).
Seeds need to be used, planted every year so they can adapt to changing climate conditions. Besides seeds get old. The germination rate goes down every year and after a few years they will not produce any more. The seeds in the vault are not seeds that you and I could go get and plant in our gardens. They are genetic material for people who want to experiment on them - and us.
I wish I could believe that Global Crop Diversity Trust was a righteous organization but given the fact that Monsanto, Syngenta, Dow Chemical and Pioneer are direct sponsors of the project I do not have much trust.
For myself, I’m counting on the local farmers, my friends at Seeds of Change and grassroots seed savers all over the world.
I found out from reading Restoring Mayberry,
a blog by Brian Kaller, a journalist in County Kildare, Ireland, that the Irish Seed Savers is the only organization supplying seeds to farms and gardens in Europe other than those imported from the Third World and Australia which means they are grown (and adapted to) places far, far away from the people who actually grow them. If anything were to happen to transportation, or to the harvest in faraway countries, Seed Savers would be the lifeline for 500 million people.
The solution to the food crisis exists, and is being fought for in many communities. It is called food sovereignty. Via Campesina is an international movement of peasants, small- and medium-sized producers, landless, rural women, indigenous people, rural youth and agricultural workers from 56 countries in Asia, Africa, Europe, and the Americas.
Saving your seeds is a very satisfying thing to do. Seeds of change has an excellent rundown on how to do it for us ordinary gardeners here.
Sometimes lately I’ve thought about that line from a Paul Simon song, “miracles and wonder,” and surely seeing Pete Seeger up there at 89 years old still singing “This Land is Your Land” qualifies. That man was singing when I was born - and I have eleven grandchildren and one great grandchild! Talk about a bridge between generations.
I’ve always loved folk music. Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Pete Seeger, Paul Simon, folk festivals and fairs . . . I was young in the early sixties. I was a bridge, too. I have been in large gatherings out in the natural world, away from cities, where cynicism and divisiveness fell away and people came together in harmony with each other and the forces of nature, for the music and the sharing and the healing. And I’ve watched with sorrow as many of these gatherings have become polluted with despair and violence.
Then I watched as the group dynamic changed and people began to protest what was happening in the world, from the protests against the WTO raping the planet to the environmental justice groups taking on the silent deadly enemies of chemical pollution, the sickness that hides in a cookie or a child’s toy or your next breath of air. Now I see people coming together with slow food, farmer’s markets, and home gardens.
And local self-sufficiency. Austin, Texas is about to put up the country’s largest solar array! Imagine that. We have learned the hard way about nuclear power plants (nuclear waste? what nuclear waste? ooops, sorry, grandkids . . .), got slapped down about coal and we’re too close here in Texas to the source of oil (and refinery stink) to kid ourselves about the future of oil. Say, did you see where Exxon just made a record $45 billion quarterly profit while the economy tanked by 3.8%? Who are they kidding? Out of which pocket into which pocket?
Thirty years ago some of us were publishing well researched articles about the environmental and economic advantages of solar. We had the solar technology then. All we needed to do was develop it. I’m sorry we had to go down this long dark road to get here but I’m glad we have finally arrived.
And now here we are. Pete’s been singing “This Land is Your Land” all this time and I guess our land has been what we made of it but it did my heart good to hear him sing - can you believe it at 89 years old! - at Obama’s inauguration. This is a really cool video of him and it shows Obama listening to him, too. (If you are getting this in an email, go to http://goodwordswan.wildflowerstew.com and watch it).
Seeger’s grandson reported that Obama spoke to Seeger after the performance and asked him how he stayed so fit and Seeger told him that he lives in the woods and chops and carries his own firewood . . . chopping wood, carrying water . . . where have I heard that before . . .
I have been reading accounts of people who were there in the mall for the inauguration on January 20. Two million people! Freezing in the cold. People from all over the country came just to be there. They were jammed in there for hours and everyone says there were no complaints, no “incidents” - just joy, joy and tears of joy.
People all over the world feel that change is coming. It’s not just Barack Obama. He is there because we - collectively - were ready for him to be there. The most promising thing to me was when Bush was booed. The very proper British boo unpopular members of Parliament all the time. To them that’s honest self-expression. I was glad to hear some honest self-expression here.
People in the crowd describe how everyone watched intently (and silently) while the helicopter carrying Bush flew over and disappeared. When it had become just a dot on the horizon, wild cheering broke out. I guess you have to thoroughly reject what you don’t want before you can completely rejoice in what you do want.
Every day now the new world is taking place and there are opportunities for everyone to participate.
Change.org is a social action network where you can learn about causes, connect to other people and organizations and take action.
The Whitehouse now has a website with a Office of Public Liaison where you can send your comments directly to the Whitehouse. The little box for the comments right now is limited to 500 characters but they promise to offer more ways to communicate soon. I believe that it makes a difference to comment and sign petitions. I’ve been doing it for years and I have noticed that when a lot of people email/send petitions/phone-in on an issue, it does have an impact. After all they do work for us and have to be elected by the us, the voters, at regular intervals, remember?
Another way to communicate with your public servants is through govit.com - “a nonpartisan website built by a regular citizen to help you interact with the government and each other.” I found this one through the Born Again American website. If country music and flag waving gets your passion going, this video is the one for you: http://bornagainamerican.org
Actually it’s cool to watch anyway just to see all the different musicians and the lyrics are radical - check it out. The website says “The Born Again American movement is committed to the rebirth of American citizenship through informed and thoughtful activism.” It’s a very interactive site. You can share your story by remixing your own videos and photos into the Born Again American music video. Then you can upload a video of yourself singing them and remix it into the music video using the Remix America Editor. That sounds fun. There’s even a contest and the winners will be determined by a panel which includes Norman Lear and Keith Carradine.
So, let’s get on our soapbox, keyboard, video cam or microphone and build our new world.
