I am really tired of bandaids. Every day, somebody has a little piece of a solution to the enormous problem of TOO MANY PEOPLE.

DENIAL is the first response of most Americans to the whole idea. What do you mean, too many people?! There aren’t too many here! Didn’t God say ‘Be fruitful and multiply?’ NO! Trust me, it was a LOT nicer around here when there were less than 3 Billion people on the planet. There were problems, sure. But solvable ones.

BARGAINING: OK, if we cut our use 20% here and 15% there… NO! like Bill Gates said, it’s got to be a total changeover – like from kerosene to electric light was. To electrify the country, we had all kinds of federal money. To de-fossil-fuel it, there needs to be the same sort of help.

The next stage is ANGER. We haven’t quite gotten there yet, because we haven’t done what we have to do and cut our use of fossil fuel to zero and stop having kids. When some super-nanny forces us to act like world citizens, we WILL get mad. Actually, this is the one that might destroy civilization, if we allow it, or maybe even if we don’t.

ACCEPTANCE will be when there is a world-wide one-child policy, no coal mines or oil wells, universal organic agriculture, and the abolition of air travel, corporate lobbying, and health insurance companies.

We just can’t keep living the way we do, and not expect to pay for our profligacy. This isn’t a ‘fun’ concept. Our recreation-based lives rebel at the idea of labor becoming essential to life again. Our willingness to look for the newest, the brightest, the loudest, the fastest, and finally, the cheapest, betrays us into the hands of those we condemn as greedy and reactionary.

I wish I could see a mass movement toward simplicity – smaller houses and cars, bigger gardens and forests, living close to one’s workplace, playing close to home, walking to school, grandparents in the home. The gains of awareness are incremental, the loss of options, accelerating. Is it even humanly possible to change fast enough to save ourselves? The population of the world more than doubled in the last 50 years. Does anybody truly believe we will survive another 50% increase? Does anybody reading this want to?

Failing immediate steps to shrink the population of the world and the use of resources by the ‘haves’, the bonds of civilization will shatter, I believe, within the next 20 years or less. Population will be reduced, thereafter, by war, famine, pestilence and death, death, death.

This IS our last chance, people. Wake up!

Skipped a page there, here are planks 5-8.

5. Alter foreign aid packages to:
a. Eliminate weapons, agricultural chemicals, GM seeds, and bulk grains.
b. Replace them with teachers and tools of organic agriculture, public health and family planning; seeds to grow open-pollinated indigenous and appropriate crops; small animals to provide food, fertilizer and community cohesion, ala the Heifer Project, plants and trees to restore forests, wetlands and savannahs; educators of children and of physicians.
6. Provide free college education for all qualified students, including those from countries receiving our aid, and new immigrants, regardless of citizenship status.
7. Upgrade social services and Social Security to the level prevalent in Europe.
8. Negotiate with other countries to curtail the power of weapons manufacturers and pharmaceutical companies world-wide.

I thought 13 would be a good number, but there is one more:
14. Eliminate the doctrine of corporation as individual with political rights. This might be the most important of all.

If there is an editor with power over this stuff, could you combine all three “New American Party” posts into one for publication to Speakeasy? And/or tell me how to not have to do this next time?
Thanks, G.

This accompanies my post “The New American Party”, from about an hour ago.

1. Roll back military spending 5% per year for ten years.
2. Restore taxes on the wealthiest 5% of Americans to the level seen during the Carter administration, but increase rewards for non-religious charitable donations and the first 5 years of a small business employing at least 5 people.
3. Balance the Federal budget and pay all federal debt, using the above revenues.
4. Institute single-payer health care, covering all of women’s health issues the same as regular health care. Each person would be encouraged (paid?) to pursue preventive health care, including: contraception and the voluntary termination of truly unwanted pregnancies; dental, vision, mental health, and chiropractic treatment; nutrition education, including cooking/shopping/gardening classes.
5. Reduce America’s carbon footprint in accordance with international agreements.
a. switch 90% from fossil fuels to wind/solar/tide generation by 2020.
b. Ban and if necessary pay to upgrade or buy back cars and other personal vehicles getting less than 20 mpg. Use the scrap metal obtained to replace watershed-damaging culverts with bridges. Tear up roads where they don’t belong.
c. Offer incentives for homeowners/renters to switch to all-electric homes, offices, and transportation.
d. Immediately ban all further fossil fuel exploration. Close all coal mines by 2020, and forbid energy importation.
10. Promotion of a new American agriculture.
a. based on fruit, vegetables, and small, humanely kept livestock, rather than grain/beef/pork production.
b. regionalized food production and distribution.
c. Incentives for producers to go organic.
d. Cease mass production of anhydrous ammonia by 2020.
11. A firm foreign and domestic policy demanding that countries and parties wishing to do business with or within the US must refrain from using the tenets of their religion or the name of their deity or prophet as an excuse or justification to abuse, oppress, or deny rights to others.
12. Domestic land-use policy returning appropriate land from large corporate holdings to small-holder refugees from cities and the middle/working classes.
a. Add or upgrade laws favoring cooperatives, small business, and rural communities.
b. Return significant stretches of the Great Plains to unfenced common for large animals, where hunting is encouraged. De-fence all non-secure federal property; pay farmers to tear down line fences and securely enclose homesteads, planted acreage, wind/solar farms and villages.
c. Ban all feedlots and confined poultry operations.
13. Encourage family, community and regional organizations.
a. Replace federal bureaucracies with block grants to states, watersheds, and industries in transition to low-carbon energy.
b. Increase public health presence in all communities, and fix the medical education system so primary care doctors can make a living, unburdened by debt.

Sound like a pipe dream? Bill, Oprah, what do you think?

Good Morning!
It all came together today. The whole plan. OK? Here goes.

The richest Americans, the Billionaires club, all got there with their brains. Some may be crooks, others opportunists, others justly rewarded for their own work, and trying to give it away as fast as possible. But they are all REALLY, REALLY smart.

By consensus, this group has agreed that population control is The Number One issue in the world today. Anyone not blinded by religious hatred or patriarchal angst will, however reluctantly, agree with that. Our population has outstripped our arable land area, Most people live in cities which are gray instead of green, can’t grow their food, can’t even make a living, half the time. Without anhydrous ammonia, our growth would have stopped around 1960.

Among these richest of the rich, in fact at the top of the heap, are Bill Gates and Oprah Winfrey, self-made billionaires from humble beginnings, huge philanthropists, in favor of compassion, women’s equality, free choice, and all the other goodies we progressives are said to favor.
They could practically finance their own campaigns, and everybody would vote for them, because they have done everything in their power to make our current interconnected way of life possible.
You can scream all you like at Oprah. But she has paid her f**king dues, folks. Bill Gates started Microsoft in a garage in Albuquerque. They know us, and are proud to be Americans.

I hereby call on these two to accept the nomination of the New American Party for President and Vice-president of the United States.

Everybody, start those nominating petitions rolling, and change your party registration, NOW!

James Michner published this long historical novel in 1965, less than 20 years after the formation of the State of Israel, before the 1967 war that enlarged Israel’s territory significantly.
In certain respects, the history of Israel is the history of all of humanity, and this masterpiece explores, in the end, all the way back to Neandertals with hand axes.
But the most gripping and riveting sections deal with the relationships among Jews, Christians, and Muslims, in the Holy Land, Asia and Europe, throughout the period of their coexistence.
While I read this book back when it was published, I had forgotten nearly all the history the author describes, since it is so far from modern paradigms and myths, and Israel has changed so much in the 60 years since Independence. But attitudes described in The Source still exist, and polarization is possibly worse than when the book was written, in spite of all the efforts since then to make peace.
It is good for us to remember history, especially the history of a place and people that have so totally dominated the minds of the surrounding world for 2000 years. I was left with feelings of both pride in the men and women who keep living in Israel, and pride in those who died with the words ‘the Lord our God, the Lord is ONE’ on their lips. I was also left with shame for our species, who, over and over again, commit genocide against anyone in their way, never mind everyone’s favorite enemy, the Jews.

I’m not sure yet what to do with this mass of newfound knowledge and wisdom. But I think that I am pleased, not necessarily with the way change often happens – with violence, death and destruction, but that change does happen, challenging us to become more honest, more effective, more compassionate people through our struggles and suffering. And I am pleased that this process produces an infinite variety of people, beliefs, and ways of coping with both our priceless uniqueness and our ultimate powerlessness as individuals in the face of wars, earthquakes, empires, and mass hysteria.
Read it and weep, laugh, and feel the goosebumps.

I just happened to find a site from Minneapolis (my former home town) listing informal attendance figures at the recent Democratic caucuses. Not only was attendance down, but in many precincts, they couldn’t fill their quota of delegates. In one precinct, only five people showed up.
I’m not sure whether this is a good thing or a bad thing. If we need new parties, then the old ones need to die. But what, at the moment, do we have to put in place of the old burro? or the old pachyderm, for that matter?
I seem to recall a term from long ago: coalition building. There needs to be a fairly large consensus on a platform for a new party, or nobody will vote for it. Otherwise, wouldn’t it be better to take back the Democratic and Republican parties, just by showing up? Then we could have the wind power party versus the solar party. Or the eagles and the bears (oops, too much like football teams!)
I don’t know how many states still have their caucuses ahead of them, but think and act fast, or the opportunity will be gone, just like it is for Minnesotans, this year.

“Small acts, when multiplied by millions of people, can quietly become a power no government can suppress, a power that can transform the world.”

He spoke of history as zig-zag, as ‘fun’. Unlikely heroes, unlikely villains, amazing outcomes from impossible situations.

There has been so much public suffering, as those who still think they can avoid personal involvement find out different, find that their lives are meaningless, without personal power, lived ‘for the man’ rather than the family or the self. More and more, rage against the system replaces direct action to become part of the decision-making process.
Yesterday, I tried to make an order to one of my favorite seed companies. I found that the after-catalog costs – shipping and handling, mail-order fee, and sales tax amounted to over 33% of the catalog total.
Instead of pissing and moaning and writing the exorbitant check, I got on line and wrote them a letter, suggesting how they might fix this inequity, and declining to order under the circumstances.
That’s a Howard Zinn solution. His inspiration will be with us as we make new history.

The article today, “How Can Progressives…” is long and dense, full of all the reasons I don’t watch the news very often and live in the middle of nowhere. The author’s main point, I think, is that it’s easy to get burned out on fear and hysteria, when you don’t have a clear direction in which to actually progress.

So, lest I belabor the point, here is a brief list of what we as individuals, CAN do to save the planet.

We eat, therefore growing food is good.
We invest, therefore investing in progressive businesses and divesting from dinosaurs is good.
We drive, therefore an efficient and/or electric, etc. car is good. Also living close to where we work and shop, and also investing in a bike and hiking boots.
We use electricity and heat, therefore investing in solar, wind, and tide generation is good.
We work, therefore, 8 hours a day we have the opportunity to influence those we work for and with. We can choose a job with a small company. We can start our own business. If necessary, we can subvert the corporations from within.
We dwell, therefore it is good for our dwellings to be upgraded to use the least energy. We must shut things off when not in use, buy efficient appliances, add solar roofs or small wind towers.
We bathe and wash our excessive amounts of clothing. Therefore, appliances that limit water use while getting us clean are good. Buying fewer and better quality clothes is good. Short showers are very good.
We play, therefore finding recreation that doesn’t add to the earth’s troubles is good. Hike, but don’t drive a thousand miles to do it. Go two- or four-footing, instead of four-wheeling, to see the wilderness. Dig a garden instead of mowing the grass. Plant the garden instead of watching TV.
Join a sports team or a book club or a church.
We all live in a locality. Therefore, it is good to think globally, but act locally, to clean up, rethink, reallocate, build community, tend to the neglected and confront the greedy.
We are citizens of the United States of America AND of the world. Therefore, it is good and necessary to act like citizens, not like slaves. Stand Up. Do Right. Speak truth to power. Take your lumps and try again. They made me an Elder of my church yesterday. If an unregenerate pagan and unitarian like me can open my mind to that extent, what might be possible for you?

While this new format on Alternet is really hard to get used to, it seems to be working faster than the old one, and give us more access, in less time.
One of the things I want to do here is connect the enviros and the legalizers with the politicos, in a grand movement that started with comments responding to the Supreme Court debacle re: corporate political speech.
Please go there and get involved. I can’t emphasize enough the importance of getting involved in the political process and the direct action process of seeking redress of grievances.
When the injustice is greatest, and congress is waffling, only the presence of vast numbers of Americans in Washington can make change a reality.

Between now and September in the Capital, is a whole growing season when all of us can participate in the magic of growing food, flowers and medicine. If you haven’t ordered a seed catalog yet, go on line to or horizonherbs.com or Prairiemoon.com .
Find some dirt, even if you have to buy half-barrels and garden/potting soil. Plant some seeds. Join the miracle of Spring!
I first gardened with my mother and father and their parents. Nearly every one of my 64 years, I have at least pulled a few of somebody else’s weeds, if I didn’t have my own garden. The most rewarding thing a person can do, to my way of thinking, is to help a child plant their first beans or peas or broccoli or tomato plants and tend them and eat the fruits of their labors. Almost as good is to take a child out walking when the morels and wild asparagus are out, and pick these wild delicacies (If you can find them!)
We humans are really hunter-gatherers. Agriculture is part of a vicious circle of overpopulation and exploitation of the land. In the last year or so, I have gradually eliminated most grains from my diet. I eat a lot of fruit, nuts, home-grown veggies, and fresh eggs from my hens. Meat does pass my lips, but not every day. I figure that in my entire life, I may have eaten one cow’s worth of meat, maybe one lamb, and a whole lot of little birds and fishes. Young chicken is the most ecologically sound meat one can eat. In 2 months they grow to eating size, on a very modest amount of feed. Of course if they do that growing in a cage, they don’t taste very good. I think about butchering my healthy, free-range chickens for meat, but I like their eggs better. It’s hard to eat somebody you’ve looked in the eye and sung to. Eggs are a luxury item, requiring as much feed per pound of protein as prime beefsteak. The chickens don’t care if you eat them, though. They lay eggs whether they want to set on them or not.
This business of creating a just and equitable society takes a lot of thought. Sometimes the amount of negativity around current events is overwhelming.
When that happens, I go pull weeds, or dig dirt, or sit in my greenhouse and contemplate Spring. Maybe today I’ll see what seeds are left from last year, and start thumbing through those catalogs. Life still must go on, in spite of politics and controversy!

Seems to be the apathy of the people toward the power grabs of the corporations. Second is their apathy about the environmental destruction that is still progressing full speed. Third is the voluntary turnover of our brains to the media, the daily news, the commercial come-ons, the misinformation designed to reinforce our apathy.
Maybe that one is actually number one.
How many hours a day do you spend ‘hooked up’ to computer, TV, video games, cell phones, commercial radio, etc? The more we depend on the electron to live for us, the smaller, more restricted, the more vulnerable our lives become. There’s a wonderful post at the top of the list today about growing into gardening. Please read it. Gardens will save us, when the dinosaurs fall, or perhaps lead us gently into a new era when people just stop supporting them.
All corporations are owned by stockholders. If the corporations stop making money, stockholders will bail, in favor of something that is.
Everyone with money to invest, LISTEN UP: Take your money out of big corporations that are abusing their workers, their customers, and the planet. Put it into tide generator companies and solar energy companies and retrofitting your house and buying tools and land and livestock of your choice. Buy a flex-fuel or totally green car. Invest in agricultural research and biological pest control companies, composters, organic farms, community-supported agriculture, greenhouses and rain-water storage.
Plant orchards and hire caring people to nurture them. Join all the coops you can find.
INVEST IN PEOPLE!
INVEST IN THE HEALTH OF THE LAND!
INVEST IN THE FUTURE, NOT THE PAST!
Amen.
End of sermon.

The concept of change is really hard for some people to fully absorb. In spite of having moved house approximately every one to three years, on average, through my whole adult life, the prospect of the next move fills me with dread. As I see our government selling out to the highest bidder, it reminds me that most of us, especially those older than I, trusted in American Business enough to keep investing in the same companies for decades, more or less automatically. That relationship was betrayed when ‘corporate personhood’ was invented, a doctrine, as of last week, validated completely by the Supreme Court.
If GenXers and -Yers do nothing else, they must strive to end ‘corporate personhood’ in their own minds, hearts, and investment portfolios.
Take back your minds from advertisers. Stop watching TV. If you make money, invest it locally. If you get a job, work for a company or an individual or yourself, not a corporation. Do not sign up for two-year cell-phone contracts. Support your local telephone company. Do you really have to talk while you’re exercising, bathing, walking wilderness trails, driving, or eating? What is more important – that phone call or that bird call?
Guess I’m ranting – better get out there and feed the chickens!
Love.