Brien Nelson, Jaara Jaara Elder
Saturday, November 5, 2011
There's an opportunity coming up to meet Brien and his wife Jude at their Bunjil Park Aboriginal Education and Cultural Centre. Let me know if you'd like to come.
Pink Blossom
Monday, October 31, 2011
Anthony Petrucci sings my slow text mesostic, Pink Blossom, at the launch of Rabbit Two.
Read more...
GM...fail
Sunday, October 30, 2011
GM crops promote superweeds, food insecurity and pesticides, say NGOs
Report finds genetically modified crops fail to increase yields let alone solve hunger, soil erosion and chemical-use issues:
More here.
Monsanto biopiracy
Saturday, October 29, 2011
When all Australian state governments except for South Australia are greenlighting toxic (but nonetheless greenwashed) GM farming, the Indian government is showing courage and following Europe and Japan in banning Monsanto and co's crude and irresponsible shareholder science.
Meanwhile in Australia GM canola has contaminated an organic farm in WA, and the farmer is rightly suing. READ more here.
Boycotting supermarkets, growing your own, instigating or joining food co-ops that only support biodynamic and organic farms... we don't have to support biopiracy, corporate bullying and corporate destruction of the world's biodiverse free seed bank.
If you don't know where your food is coming from, and the means in which it is produced, then you are most likely supporting mass-scale biospheric degradation and consuming healthless foods.
Cargo bikes – carless joy
Tuesday, October 25, 2011
Do something good for yourself and the planet.
from here.
My first cargo bike (made from recycled parts)...
Then our carport becomes our bikeport (car-free and not looking back)
we have spent money cleaning it and having it worthy of the road. we’re a little tense as it’s raining and one of us, eight years old, is not so aware or interested in the effects of mud on upholstery. we still have some petrol in the tank. it will be enough for the journey. it’s been a year since we made the decision and we’ve rehearsed being without it all through the winter recording each kilometre travelled, each litre expended. and now, we’re at this point, ready to drive for the last time from the town with little public transport to the city dripping in it, where the young guy who works for the armed services credit union will hand us a cheque to cash in at the bicycle shop.
from here. Read more...
The Great Interruption (or, 'We are members of the most destructive culture ever to exist')
Saturday, October 15, 2011
My new email signature
Tuesday, October 11, 2011
Not sent from a blood minerals dependent iPhone responsible for the deaths, rapes and brutal torture of the Congolese people
Just Free Water
Monday, October 10, 2011
In 2007 I walked Melbourne's CBD mapping all the public drinking fountains (bubblers). It later prompted this article in The Age. Many of the fountains didn't work and I estimated on figures of population I obtained from the City of Melbourne that there was only one working bubbler for every 40,000 people.
Today I read in The Age that VCA has banned bottled water on its campus. This is great news as we move into the hotter months. If you're still a bottled water drinker here's an article I wrote that may dissuade you from partaking these toxic waters again.
Read more...
Pushed to the brink, America rises
Saturday, October 8, 2011
Official Statement from Occupy Wall Street - this statement was voted on and approved by the general assembly of protesters at Liberty Square: Declaration of the Occupation of New York City
As one people, united, we acknowledge the reality: that the future of the human race requires the cooperation of its members; that our system must protect our rights, and upon corruption of that system, it is up to the individuals to protect their own rights, and those of their neighbors; that a democratic government derives its just power from the people, but corporations do not seek consent to extract wealth from the people and the Earth; and that no true democracy is attainable when the process is determined by economic power. We come to you at a time when corporations, which place profit over people, self-interest over justice, and oppression over equality, run our governments. We have peaceably assembled here, as is our right, to let these facts be known.
They have taken our houses through an illegal foreclosure process, despite not having the original mortgage.
They have taken bailouts from taxpayers with impunity, and continue to give Executives exorbitant bonuses.
They have perpetuated inequality and discrimination in the workplace based on age, the color of one’s skin, sex, gender identity and sexual orientation.
They have poisoned the food supply through negligence, and undermined the farming system through monopolization.
They have profited off of the torture, confinement, and cruel treatment of countless nonhuman animals, and actively hide these practices.
They have continuously sought to strip employees of the right to negotiate for better pay and safer working conditions.
They have held students hostage with tens of thousands of dollars of debt on education, which is itself a human right.
They have consistently outsourced labor and used that outsourcing as leverage to cut workers’ healthcare and pay.
They have influenced the courts to achieve the same rights as people, with none of the culpability or responsibility.
They have spent millions of dollars on legal teams that look for ways to get them out of contracts in regards to health insurance.
They have sold our privacy as a commodity.
They have used the military and police force to prevent freedom of the press.
They have deliberately declined to recall faulty products endangering lives in pursuit of profit.
They determine economic policy, despite the catastrophic failures their policies have produced and continue to produce.
They have donated large sums of money to politicians supposed to be regulating them.
They continue to block alternate forms of energy to keep us dependent on oil.
They continue to block generic forms of medicine that could save people’s lives in order to protect investments that have already turned a substantive profit.
They have purposely covered up oil spills, accidents, faulty bookkeeping, and inactive ingredients in pursuit of profit.
They purposefully keep people misinformed and fearful through their control of the media.
They have accepted private contracts to murder prisoners even when presented with serious doubts about their guilt.
They have perpetuated colonialism at home and abroad.
They have participated in the torture and murder of innocent civilians overseas.
They continue to create weapons of mass destruction in order to receive government contracts.*
To the people of the world,
We, the New York City General Assembly occupying Wall Street in Liberty Square, urge you to assert your power.
Exercise your right to peaceably assemble; occupy public space; create a process to address the problems we face, and generate solutions accessible to everyone.
To all communities that take action and form groups in the spirit of direct democracy, we offer support, documentation, and all of the resources at our disposal.
Join us and make your voices heard!
From here.
Read more...
Bike the change you want to see in the world
Friday, September 30, 2011
We celebrated a first birthday ride for our town's critical mass tonight in freezing, wet conditions. Our numbers were down but our spirits were up and I personally wasn't going to let some ferocious storm clouds get in the way of my desire for change, or my hand drawn placards from seeing the light of day.
Read more...
My body as temple for experimental relocalisation
Thursday, September 29, 2011
There's a lot of fear around mushrooms, fear created mostly out of mycological ignorance. In Australia we have such little knowledge of fungi, their role in ecosystems and their edibility. This previous post goes further into that sort of thing.
My friend and fungi teacher Alison Pouliot, an ecologist, photographer, writer and mycologist, is vehemently encouraging of amateur mycology, so I thought I'd share a recent discovery that I made:
Camp fungi – nibble methodology #1, 24 September 2011 (from my journal). Trametes versicolour (Rainbow fungus).
I found this bracket fungus growing in eucalypt forest alongside Sailors Creek at Bryce's Flat, Central Victoria. I have heard that the Dja Dja Wurrung ate Fistulina hepatica (Beefsteak fungus), another bracket fungus that also grows in the Wombat Forest.
However I don't know for sure if the Rainbow is edible so I aim to taste-test in the name of local ecological knowledge and relocalisation.
I choose a few small brackets, cut off the woody parts that were the point of attachment to the log, and fried them up in the pan on the camp fire using a little olive oil from nearby Guildford.
As I write I'm not in the least bit sure I'm going to be poisoned and as we've walked here from home to this beautiful camping spot I'll just have to tough it out around the camp fire tonight and trust that I'll overcome any adverse toxins. I have only had a small chip, and I say chip because what it tasted like was an overcooked, cold potato chip that's been lying around for a few days. In other words, an oily albeit edible tasteless crispy starch. The smell of this mushroom uncooked is earthy, vaguely fishy (permeated by freshwater eucalypt tannins). A good mushroom smell really, one you can trust, at least for a nibble, anything more at this point would be stupid. I'm with my girlfriend Meg and my son Zephyr, who I've not invited to partake in the experiment in case it all goes terribly wrong, and as it was my idea it is only fair I should carry it out. As I cooked the chips the mushroom gave off no unsavory smell, as mushrooms I have eaten in the past have, causing me to abandon eating them.I write this post several days later and I'm pleased to announce that I suffered no adverse effects. Next time I may soak this fungus in milk for a day as I've heard this makes beefsteak fungus more delectable. I will then eat a few more chips to text the toxicity again before being confident to serve up to others.
Stay tuned for more non-lab, in the field amateur science soon!
Read more...
Unwatchable – more 'at arm's length violence'
This short film is disturbing to watch but probably more disturbing not to.
With Apple being responsible for about a quarter of this unwatchable, unknowable violence, this is just another reason I will never get an iPhone and why when my seven year-old crapola phone dies I'll not replace it with anything except longer walks in the bush.
The even shorter vid below filmed on location gives some further context for the extremely disturbing, five minute vid, Unwatchable.
We went to the garden of love
Saturday, September 24, 2011
Community gardeners, poets and readers met at the new community garden Rea Lands Park today to share poems and food in the sunshine.
Some of the poems were musical.
Some political and intense.
And some a little difficult to swallow but were appreciated as part of this creative commons.
Read more...
America and Oil: Declining Together?
Monday, September 19, 2011
by Michael T. Klare
America and Oil. It’s like bacon and eggs, Batman and Robin. As the old song lyric went, you can’t have one without the other. Once upon a time, it was also a surefire formula for national greatness and global preeminence. Now, it’s a guarantee of a trip to hell in a hand basket. The Chinese know it. Does Washington?
Read on here. Read more...
DuPont's Herbicide Goes Rogue
The company's landscaping weed-killer turned out to be a tree-killer.
by Jim Hightower
In the corporate world's tortured language, workers are no longer fired. They just experience an "employment adjustment." But the most twisted euphemism I've heard in a long time comes from DuPont: "We are investigating the reports of these unfavorable tree symptoms," the pesticide maker recently stated.
Read on here. Read more...
Talking the local
Sunday, September 11, 2011
My friend Fe grills me on my thoughts about food, relocalisation, democracy, the commons and community gardens.
A video by Fiona Porter, camera and editing by Anthony Petrucci, music by Souls on Board.
Greenwash #26 in Trouble - Growing a Community Food System
Thursday, September 1, 2011
From Trouble magazine
Click for bigger, then click again for clarity.
Short video documenting the planting day at Rea Lands Park.
Read more...
Thursday, August 18, 2011
A still from the film The Ister
Compare Heidegger's quote with this one, which I keep returning to of late:
"Several species of cockatoo can be serious agricultural pests… controlled by shooting, poisoning or capture followed by gassing." (source)Read more...
Wheel of Progress-Capitalism (another false cycle)
Wednesday, August 10, 2011
I created this drawing today as a teacher and parent teaching aid. It's incredible how pervasive the dominant ideology is, and how the ad-men get into even the most conscientious of schools. Zeph's school is founded on non-harm Buddhist principles, however 'the winners' (the popular and influential) are still the kids who drink caffeinated energy drinks, know all the celebs, obsess over brands and labels, and are across junk food products like junkies in a chemist.
This is a reasonably new phenomenon in the school, so before it really takes hold a number of us are getting fairly active. Ad-men (and of course women) are setting the social agenda in the school through their new disciples – the whatevs. Those kids restricted in their access to pop culture consumption are made to feel inadequate, uncool. Peer-group pressure has hit middle years primary school in a big way, Target stores sell padded bra t-shirts to girls in this age group. Peer pressure was a thing that happened at high school when I was a kid. This is more of the aggregating hyper-mediated state I keep writing about...
Advertorial enterprise is a trillion-billion dollar industry engaged in strategic warfare against a bunch of disparate volunteer parents, teachers and carers. It's a David and Goliath scenario, and Goliath is romping it in.
So here's my catapult, my slingshot. Feel free to rip it and distribute widely (I can send you a high res copy if you want to make a poster of it). The idea of this drawing is to ask each child to imagine they're in the hub of the wheel (the mediated blob, or ambient blur), ask them to choose their favourite bought item, and then find out about it by researching all the possible energy inputs, social inputs, ecological inputs and pollution outputs that each item is likely to produce.
Click for bigger.
NB. Schools shred diversity by ordering students into year groups. This makes them easier targets for commerce pests to pinpoint specific generational desires, much like reduced biodiversity in environments encourage plagues and outbreaks – a weakened state. There are actual companies who profit by collating all forms of social data on all the various age and interest groups, and sell this information to businesses so as they can target consumers with deadly accuracy.
If our schools were generationally diverse the ad-man's power would be considerably reduced, especially if our elders abandoned the wheel of progress-capitalism too and began to behave again as elders. Currently schools are breeding grounds for self-interested bystander consumers. Addressing this issue may be part of addressing the strategic war on children by big business.
Greenwash #25 in Trouble - Locavore Intimacy
Monday, August 1, 2011
Click for bigger, then click again for better resolution.
Please note, my critique of agriculture in this piece is not an attack on farmers per se. We are agricultural consumers, farmers are agriculture providers. Urban-centric attacks on farmers for being ecological destroyers are misguided and simplistic. We grow the demand, desire and populations that necessitate ecological crisis. We're all participants, or as Gary Snyder puts it: "No one today can afford to be innocent, or indulge himself in ignorance of the nature of contemporary governments, politics and social orders." (Earth House Hold, 1957)
If only the following table read: "The Main Types of Damage Anthropocenes Inadvertently Cause to Wildlife," and unpacked all the different ways in which we dwell on Earth and the consequences for each. When white people began farming in Australia, Aborigines were rounded up and killed as 'cattle stealers'. I find the same continued hypocrisy in this table:
Click for bigger.
Read more...
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