Friday, July 30, 2010
Open the Cages Conference 2010
Mark your calendar for an evening of music, speakers, vegan food and fun! Open the Cages Alliance presents a conference and benefit for animal and earth liberation prisoners! There will be a silent auction and a raffle, and this event will benefit activists imprisoned for fighting for animals and our planet.
Performers will include Masakari, Peregrine and “Aware and Outraged” Ron Kipling Williams. Speakers will include Food Not Bombs co-founder Keith McHenry, Darius Fullmer from the SHAC 7 (and Sea Shepherd crew), Will Potter of GreenIsTheNewRed.com, the Black and Green Network co-founder Kevin Tucker, and author Dara Lovitz. Dara will be signing and selling copies of her book Muzzling A Movement.
When: Saturday August 14, 4 p.m.-10 p.m.
Where: St. Stephens Church, 1525 Newton Street NW (corner of 16th and Newton), Washington, DC
Admission: $10
Contact: For more information please contact
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WikiLeaks vs. The Death Machine
It’s a very strange and maddening world in which two men responsible for the deaths of thousands of people can cast blame on others for leaking information about their vicious actions. Yesterday, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, made comments to the news media about WikiLeaks’ release of information related to the U.S. assault on Afghanistan. When Mullen said WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange and WikiLeaks’ source for the documents “might already have on their hands the blood of some young soldier or that of an Afghan family,” I assume the press corps covering the press event burst into wild laughter over such an absurd and obscene comment. But I’ve watched some video of the comments by Mullen and Gates, and I couldn’t detect any gasps or guffaws coming from the media contingent.
What happened yesterday at the Pentagon would be comparable to former BP CEO Tony Hayward holding a press conference following the blowout of the Gulf of Mexico well, as the gallons of oil were gushing forth, and then proclaiming the real environmental villains are the motorists who let gasoline spill when topping off their tanks at their local service station. Actually, that’s a bad analogy because motorists should avoid spillage when filling up, and, actually, should eschew driving cars altogether. What WikiLeaks and its source(s) did is heroic. There’s nothing heroic about letting gasoline spill on your shoes when pumping gas.
A better analogy to the Gates-Mullen gag-fest is U.S. federal prosecutors holding a press conference to announce the arrest and planned prosecution of four animal rights activists for engaging in “terrorist” acts by chanting, leafleting, chalking on public sidewalks in front of animal researchers’ homes. Once again, I hope the media contigent gathered for such a prosecutor’s press conference would burst out in laughther in response to such insanity. But, again, I doubt the media dupes would be astute enough to recognize the absurdity of charging activists with “terrorism"-related acts for engaging in peaceful action while researchers across the nation are terrorizing, torturing and killing nonhuman animals on a daily basis. Once again, the activists who are shining light on these despicable acts are the true heroes, while the real “terrorists” are free to ply their trade.
In our modern industrial society, what we have is the operation of an out-of-control, bloodthirsty machine, with a large number of thugs in government and the private sector working hard to fine-tune the machinery.
Through its invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, the U.S. government has killed and maimed hundreds of thousands of people. And now one of the thugs directly responsible for these atrocities has the nerve to claim that someone involved in the heroic release of information about the U.S.-led rampage in Afghanistan might have blood on his hands. Such comments, along with President Barack Obama’s call for an investigation into the document leak rather than an inquiry into the atrocities outlined in the documents, are the height of absurdity.
During the same news conference, Gates said: “The battlefield consequences of the release of these documents are potentially severe and dangerous for our troops, our allies and Afghan partners, and may well damage our relationships and reputation in that key part of the world.”
In response to the comments, WikiLeaks wrote on Twitter: “Gates, who killed thousands in Iraq, Afg and Iran-Contra says we might have ‘blood on our hands’.”
WikiLeaks is spot-on in its retort. Also, the U.S. government’s reputation has long been in the dirt in “that key part of the world.” And let’s hope the “consequences” are “severe” for the U.S. military and that disclosure of its atrocities compels it to hightail out of Afghanistan. Unfortunately, the U.S. machine has a rapacious appetite for death and likely won’t halt its rampage until it’s too late for millions more unfortunate souls.
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Thursday, July 29, 2010
Cartoons vs. Ecocide: Stephanie McMillan interview
Stephanie sez: “I read voraciously about history and political theory, and once I understood that capitalism is based on exploitation, I became its enemy.”
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Monday, July 26, 2010
Summer re-runs (Part 4): Eco-Poetry
A blast from my somewhat recent past:
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Bonus post:
Vegan goes mainstream? (interview)
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Another of my photos:
Tattoo
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Sunday, July 25, 2010
Animal Liberation and the Threat of a Good Example
Review of Muzzling A Movement: The Effects of Anti-Terrorism Law, Money & Politics on Animal Activism by Dara Lovitz (Lantern Books, 174 pages, 2010).
You have the right to free
speech as long as you’re not
dumb enough to actually try it.The Clash, “Know Your Rights”
The animal liberation movement is feeling the sting of its own success. Corporations and their guardians in government got annoyed when animal advocates started making waves in the 1990s that touched the bottom line of the animal exploitation industry.
Annoyance evolved into anger in the decade that followed. The government’s preoccupation with the animal liberation movement became a full-fledged crackdown. To its credit, the movement hasn’t gone into hibernation. The government’s unconditional support for the animal exploitation industry may in fact spawn a more determined yet shrewd animal liberation movement.
Congress has led the charge. Legislation, such as the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act, chipped away at basic freedoms. And don’t expect AETA to be the government’s final legislative word on dealing with activists who dare to speak out on behalf of nonhuman animals. Based on the history of other liberation movements that disrupted business as usual, conditions will worsen before they get better. But animal liberationists are passionate and committed people who won’t let a dose of government repression discourage them.
The movement has many resources on which to lean for support. Dara Lovitz, an animal law expert, has written a wonderful little book about the government’s use of draconian laws to suppress the animal liberation movement. The book, Muzzling A Movement: The Effects of Anti-Terrorism Law, Money & Politics on Animal Activism, examines the origins of AETA and how the federal court system is stacked against animal activists and criminal defendants in general.
“Animal activists are being silenced apparently because of how effective they have been at financially harming an animal-abusive industry and thus making enemies in high places,” Lovitz writes.
AETA’s passage demonstrated the U.S. government is clearly on the side of the corporations and organizations that torture, mutilate and kill nonhuman animals. Not only does the federal government legally protect these actions, its laws often require corporations to conduct gruesome tests on animals before products get approval for human use.
Over the past decade or so, the federal government has labeled people who peacefully act to end animal exploitation as “terrorists.” The government and its corporate partners understand the effectiveness of applying the “terrorist” label to animal liberation activists. The strategy deflects public attention away from the real extremists in this equation: the vivisection and animal agriculture industry that torture and kill millions of nonhuman animals every year.
The terrorist label “is a public relations ploy designed to marginalize, silence, and even imprison animal activists,” Lovitz writes. The media also engage in “oppositional measures to undermine the animal advocacy community.”
Consider how the media decides to use the word “terrorism” to describe certain actions but not others. “When the media confront the decision of whether to describe an event that they are covering, their choice to use the word terrorism or any of its derivatives can greatly change the way the public perceives the event and its actors,” Lovitz explains. “Calling one episode an act of terrorism and another a retaliation reveals bias in the media and largely influences the viewing audiences in their perception of political violence.”
Muzzling A Movement is a fact-based, unemotional look at the government’s war on the animal liberation movement. Lovitz keeps the focus on the “unconstitutional failures” of AETA and steers clear of emotional outbursts about evil vivisectors.
Lovitz makes a clear case against the government’s targeting of the SHAC 7 activists and explains why the legal proceeding should never have gone to trial, let alone resulted in convictions. The SHAC activists were handed absurdly long federal prison sentences simply because they were involved in an effective campaign, protected by the First Amendment, with the sole purpose of putting Huntingdon Life Sciences out of business.
“After considering that the mere hosting of a website, as in the case of SHAC, could lead to activists being convicted of terrorism and spending substantial time in federal prison, any activist would hesitate before engaging in legal Internet activist,” she writes.
Muzzling A Movement is an exceptional educational resource for activists and the general public concerned about the government’s crackdown on the animal liberation movement. In no way should the book discourage readers from working on behalf of animal liberation. Let it simply serve as an authoritative analysis of the forces who oppose the movement and the vicious manner in which they’ll fight back when financially threatened. -Review by Mark Hand
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Saturday, July 24, 2010
Summer re-runs (Part 3): Technology is never neutral
A blast from my somewhat recent past:
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Expendable Helga from Down Under visits Astoria:
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Friday, July 23, 2010
Night Vision
A few new photos of mine from a nighttime shoot:
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Bonus Post:
Interview with Work With Passion author, Nancy Anderson
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Wednesday, July 21, 2010
Summer re-runs (Part 2)
A blast from my somewhat recent past:
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Another of my photos:
Subway studying
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Monday, July 19, 2010
My interview with the one and only Michelle Tea
Perhaps the most brilliant aspect of creating community is the limitless forms in which this process appears. Consider Michelle Tea, a writer and literary arts organizer whose works often explores topics that too often go misunderstood: queer culture, feminism, race, class, prostitution, etc. Michelle reaches out to the misfits and the outcasts, helping them recognize that it’s the mainstream culture that needs an extreme makeover.
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Another of my photos:
Sign of summer
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Dennis Kucinich Calls for Reconciliation with Nature
Rep. Dennis Kucinich gave a keynote speech last Friday at the Animal Rights 2010 national conference with a message you’ll never hear from another member of Congress. In fact, his comments on our economic system were so quintessentially radical that you’re unlikely to hear the same words spoken by most pundits on the Left or even many people sympathetic to the cause of nonhuman animals and the environment.
Dennis Kucinich on animals, the environment and economic transformation from Press Action on Vimeo.
“The central challenge of our times is to effect a reconciliation with nature,” Kucinich told the audience gathered in a hotel ballroom in Alexandria Va. What is Kucinich’s solution? This is where it gets exciting.
Kucinich, who is vegan, called for an economic transformation away from exploitation of the earth and animals. “The schism between mankind and the natural world has become so pronounced in the 20th and 21st centuries,” he said, citing endless mining, the destruction of natural habitats, broad-based animal experimentation and other pernicious activities that emerged in conjunction with the industrial age.
“All of these are indications of how far we have gone to separate ourselves from the natural world,” he said. “We also have to look at transformation of our economic system because you and I know that we have a kind of economic system which is predatory, which is extractive, which is about using the earth and taking anything and everything out of it. It’s really anti-social … and it’s against the higher principle of community.”
Kucinich announced he’ll be launching an initiative in the next month that “relates to our connection with the earth and the environment.” Stay tuned to Kucinich’s website for more details. -M.H.
My apologies for the shaky video. I forgot to bring a tripod on which to mount my wonderful little Flip Mino.
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Friday, July 16, 2010
Xavier Rudd urges us to be "Better People"
You may be familiar with Australian singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Xavier Rudd through festivals all around the globe, like the Bonnaroo Music Festival, Ottawa Bluesfest, The Great Escape, Bumbershoot, and Austin City Limits. If you’re a Planet Green reader, you may also know him as the most recent recipient of Sea Shepherd Conservation Society Rock the Boat Award.
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Another my photos:
Dove in flight
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Wednesday, July 14, 2010
Self Defense for Radicals: Collective Soul + Activist Heart
By Mickey Z.
In his book, Climate Wars: The Fight for Survival as the World Overheats, author Gwynne Dyer presents a series of scenarios that could potentially play out (soon) as climate change advances, e.g. several million dying in cyclones and floods in Bangladesh, the US building a mined fence to stop “climate refugees” from the South, tens of millions of Chinese dead in droughts…and then things get truly catastrophic.
Such so-called “gloom and doom” is often greeted with either denial or mockery but staring dead-on into the reality we’ve all helped create is the first step in the following outline for personal, intellectual, and global self-defense.
1. Accept our role
* We’re not victims (remember: victims are helpless) but we are volunteers. Due to our compliance and/or silence and/or inaction, we’ve played a role in bringing our culture to the brink of social, economic, and environmental collapse.
* We’re not being “attacked” for our choices. For the record, I prefer to save the word “attack” for, say, those being targeted by American predator drones (subsidized by our tax dollars).
* We’re not being judged as guilty. It’s a little too late for that.
* We’re not being judged as innocent either. We’re all participants and/or witnesses (see above).
* We may think it’s not “fair" that we’re the generation that has to change everything about the way we live…but to paraphrase Clint Eastwood in The Unforgiven: “Fair’s got nothing to do with it.”
* We are not alone. In the book (and movie), The Grapes of Wrath, Tom Joad sez: “Maybe we’re not all individual souls, but maybe we’re all part of one big soul.” Incredibly basic, yes…but within that simplicity lies what I see as the secret: If we were to view all living things—along with ourselves—as part of one collective soul, how could we not defend that soul by any means necessary?
2. The 4 R’s of defending our collective soul
(to be taken as literally or metaphorically as you choose)
Reality and Reaction
* Self-defense “moves” rarely (if ever) work and can cause you to not trust your instincts as you struggle to remember what you’re “supposed to do.” Memorizing a few moves before a conflict is not unlike only learning 20 words prior to a spelling bee.
* The attacker always has the advantage—at least initially. He knows before you when, where and how he’s going to attack.
* Your first option: run. If you can’t run, create and maintain distance from your attacker(s)
* Know your enemy: Expect the worst because that’s exactly what you’ll get.
* Facing a weapon can be frightening but some weapons can serve to “limit” the attacker’s psychological approach and thus, his options. Exploit that advantage.
* Practice awareness of your habits, surroundings, routines, and overall “presentation.” Don’t allow yourself to be an easy target.
* Contrary to popular belief, you are never unarmed. Use your body and/or whatever you can get your hands on. Plus, as Ice T declared: “My lethal weapon’s my mind.”
Readiness
* Decide in advance to survive. Ask Derrick Jensen explains: “The Jews who participated in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising had a much higher rate of survival than those who went along. We need to keep that in mind over the next ten years.”
* Condition your mind to defend what you love (read: courage)
* Condition your body to endure through exercise, lifestyle choices, and healthy, earth-friendly eating habits (read: vegan diet)
* Take time to learn some tools like kicks, punches, blocks, etc.
* Occasionally train and practice in street clothes and/or familiar places
* Anything goes: There’s no such thing as fighting “dirty”
Repeat
* Activists, memorize these 13 “magic words” when dealing with your local occupying army, I mean, police: “I am going to remain silent. I would like to see a lawyer.”
3. There’s no time like now
When else in all of human history has there been a time when we were in better position to shape the future? What we do (or don’t do) in the next few years will tilt us all toward either the point of no return or a far more sane form of society. Each and every one of us can take part—right now—in creating the most important social changes ever imagined. As I wrote above, we’re on the brink of economic, social, and environmental collapse. What an extraordinary time to be alive. How lucky are we? We’ve been trusted with the most vital mission of all time: survival.
4. Face up to your fears
Participating in sustained direct action is not a popular choice. It could put us at odds with our friends, family, and community. It could jeopardize our careers. It could even lead to direct conflict with law enforcement officers. Scary stuff, for sure. But ask yourself this: What frightens you more, being judged for getting ticketed for disorderly conduct or comprehending that 80% of the world’s forests and 90% of the large fish in the ocean are already gone? There are good reasons to be afraid. There are better reasons to be bold. It’s time to blossom, comrades. Even with all the fear, pain, dread, and uncertainty we may (or may not) experience while blossoming, remaining tight in the bud is no longer an option…for us or for the planet. Just leap and the net may appear.
Mickey Z. is probably the only person on the planet to have appeared in both a karate flick with Billy “Tae Bo” Blanks and a political book with Howard Zinn. He is the author of 9 books—most recently Self-Defense for Radicals and his second novel, Dear Vito—and can be found on the Web at http://www.mickeyz.net.
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Self Defense for Radicals: Collective Soul + Activist Heart
In his book, Climate Wars: The Fight for Survival as the World Overheats, author Gwynne Dyer presents a series of scenarios that could potentially play out (soon) as climate change advances, e.g. several million dying in cyclones and floods in Bangladesh, the US building a mined fence to stop “climate refugees” from the South, tens of millions of Chinese dead in droughts…and then things get truly catastrophic.
Such so-called “gloom and doom” is often greeted with either denial or mockery but staring dead-on into the reality we’ve all helped create is the first step in the following outline for personal, intellectual, and global self-defense.
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Another of my photos:
Truth in advertising...
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Monday, July 12, 2010
Summer re-runs (yeah, it's that time of year again)
Two blasts from my somewhat recent past:
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Sunday, July 11, 2010
This is not a blog post
(Imagine your own words and/or images here)
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Friday, July 09, 2010
Summer Photos
White Cabbage Butterfly
Sprinkler
Mid-day Shadows
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Wednesday, July 07, 2010
My interview with David Rovics
David sez: “Good music has the capacity to be not only palatable but to have a deep visceral, emotional impact. It’s not unique in its ability to have a direct line to the hearts of the listeners, but it’s a particularly powerful vehicle, or it can be.”
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Another of my recent photos:
(Sunflower in a Heat Wave)
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Monday, July 05, 2010
"No learning curve necessary" (interview with Jasmin Singer)
Jasmin sez: “There has never been a more important time to be vegan than right now, nor has it ever been more accessible and delicious than it is right now.”
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Two more of my recent photos:
Heed this advice
Roses are red...
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Poem: “Learning from the Past"
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Saturday, July 03, 2010
Fourth of July Weekend (blah, blah, blah)
Here’s what I’ve got for you:
Bruce Springsteen sings “4th Of July, Asbury Park (Sandy)"
Bruce Springsteen sings “Independence Day"
Old article of mine: “Freedom Fries"
Marcel Duchamp declares “independence"
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Then there’s this much-used but never tired quote:
Jack Kerouac sez: “Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The trouble-makers. The round heads in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules, and they have no respect for the status-quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify, or vilify them. But the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.”
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Thursday, July 01, 2010
Are you losing your cool? (author interview)
Stan Cox didn’t write Losing Our Cool: Uncomfortable Truths About Our Air-Conditioned World (and Finding New Ways to Get Through the Summer) on a whim. He’s thought about, written about, and investigated these issues for decades.
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Long Beach, Long Island, June 29:
A whole slew of my beach photos here
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Tuesday, June 29, 2010
The World According to Monsanto: My interview with Marie-Monique Robin
Marie-Monique Robin sez: “If Monsanto were a private person, it would be convicted as a great criminal, but current law protects the criminal companies, which are never held accountable for the damage they cause.”
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Monday, June 28, 2010
"All about going against the grain" (Gina Ranalli interview)
Upon first contact with Gina Ranalli, it was instantly clear that we were kindred spirits. Gina is a prolific writer with a punk rocker’s soul and an activist’s heart. She’s a vegan, a feminist, and a wiseass rebel who has written a ton of books in the Bizarro/Horror genre, sold over 100 paintings, raised hell in punk bands, and just loves her 1977 Fender Strat.
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I debunk the protein myth here
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Two more of my recent photos:
Morning contemplation
Astoria clear cutting
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Sunday, June 27, 2010
Rainer Maria Rilke and W. Axl Rose discuss patience...
Rilke sez: “Be patient with all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves.”
Axl adds:
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Saturday, June 26, 2010
A very strange time in my life, for sure...
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Use this link to visualize if the BP oil spill was in your neighborhood
(Another of my recent photos)
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Thursday, June 24, 2010
My World Cup consolation prize
Truth be told, I was rooting mighty hard for Algeria to whip the U.S. but my consolation prize was the opportunity to take photos of young white guys driving around, waving flags, and chanting “USA! USA!”
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Book News:
Got another great blurb for my upcoming novel, Darker Shade of Green, from the amazing Stephanie McMillan:
“Mickey Z has crafted a novel that is distinctive in both structure and message. The characters’ mission is no less than saving the world, and they pursue this with passionate determination. Written in a compelling collage style that combines a wide variety of forms of narrative, journalism and stirring polemic (including graffiti!), Darker Shade of Green makes us question our assumptions on every level, and inspires us to action.”
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Wednesday, June 23, 2010
My interview with Kathy Stevens of the Catskill Animal Sanctuary
Kathy sez: “Life is short. Find what makes you happy, go after it single-mindedly, and then share that happiness with others. At the end of the day, that’s all that really matters.”
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Another of my recent photos:
A soaring bird of prey near the old NY State Pavilion at Flushing Meadows-Corona Park
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Monday, June 21, 2010
Are you Vegucated?
I interviewed the woman making this film, Marisa Miller Wolfson (she also runs a free e-mail coaching program called Vegan at Heart).
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Another of my recent photos:
The old New York State Pavilion (from the 1964 World’s Fair)
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Sunday, June 20, 2010
How much more will we allow before we "go berserk"?
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P.S.
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Friday, June 18, 2010
Poultry Holocaust
(photos by Michele Zezima)
Chickens are inquisitive, interesting animals who are as intelligent as mammals like cats, dogs, and even primates. They are very social and like to spend their days together, scratching for food, cleaning themselves in dust baths, roosting in trees, and lying in the sun. Dr. Chris Evans, administrator of the animal behavior lab at Australia’s Macquarie University, says, “As a trick at conferences, I sometimes list [chickens’] attributes, without mentioning chickens, and people think I’m talking about monkeys.”
Chickens are precocious birds. Mother hens actually cluck to their unborn chicks, who chirp back to their mothers and to one another from within their shells! The intelligence and adaptability of chickens actually make them particularly vulnerable to factory farming because, unlike most birds, baby chickens can survive without their mothers and without the comfort of a nest—they come out of the shell raring to explore and ready to experience life. Learn more about the intelligence of chickens.
But the more than 9 billion chickens raised on factory farms each year in the U.S. never have the chance to do anything that is natural to them. They will never even meet their parents, let alone be raised by them. They will never take dust baths, feel the sun on their backs, breathe fresh air, roost in trees, or build nests.
Chickens raised for their flesh, called “broilers” by the chicken industry, spend their entire lives in filthy sheds with tens of thousands of other birds, where intense crowding and confinement lead to outbreaks of disease. They are bred and drugged to grow so large so quickly that their legs and organs can’t keep up, making heart attacks, organ failure, and crippling leg deformities common. Many become crippled under their own weight and eventually die because they can’t reach the water nozzles. When they are only 6 or 7 weeks old, they are crammed into cages and trucked to slaughter.
Birds exploited for their eggs, called “laying hens” by the industry, are crammed together in wire cages where they don’t even have enough room to spread a single wing. The cages are stacked on top of each other, and the excrement from chickens in the higher cages constantly falls on those below. The birds have part of their sensitive beaks cut off so that they won’t peck each other as a result of the frustration created by the unnatural confinement. After their bodies are exhausted and their production drops, they are shipped to slaughter, generally to be turned into chicken soup or cat or dog food because their flesh is too bruised and battered to be used for much else.
Chickens are slammed into small crates and trucked to the slaughterhouse through all weather extremes. Hundreds of millions suffer from broken wings and legs from rough handling, and millions die from the stress of the journey.
At the slaughterhouse, their legs are snapped into shackles, their throats are cut, and they are immersed in scalding hot water to remove their feathers. Because they have no federal legal protection (birds are exempt from the Humane Methods of Slaughter Act), most are still conscious when their throats are cut open, and many are literally scalded to death in the feather-removal tanks after missing the throat cutter.
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Thursday, June 17, 2010
Low Blow
I was in this karate flick a million years ago. You see glimpses of me (with hair and bigger muscles) in the trailer below:
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Two of my recent photos:
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Wednesday, June 16, 2010
My Project Censored Award
Check it out: I just got an award from Project Censored for the article linked below. Pretty cool, huh?
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Tuesday, June 15, 2010
When will direct action blossom?
Anais Nin sez: “There came a time when the risk to remain tight in the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.”
I think of her words when I consider this question: How much more are we willing to tolerate before we take direct action?
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Monday, June 14, 2010
When Will Direct Action Blossom?
By Mickey Z.
Anais Nin sez: “There came a time when the risk to remain tight in the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.”
I think of her words when I consider this question: How much more are we willing to tolerate before we take direct action? For those of you scoring at home, here is just a small taste of what we’re already enduring without any serious fuss:
§ Epidemics of preventable diseases: cancer, heart disease, diabetes, etc.
§ Poisoning of our air, water, and food (including breast milk)
§ Global warming, climate change, disappearing honeybees, destruction of the rain forest, topsoil depletion, ocean acidification, overfishing, etc.
§ One-third of Americans are uninsured or underinsured in terms of health care
§ More than half of the world’s top 100 economies are not nations; they’re corporations
§ Presidential lies, electoral fraud, limited debates, etc.
§ The largest prison population on the planet
§ Corporate control of public land, public airwaves, and public pensions
§ Overt infringement of our civil liberties
§ Bloated defense budget, unilateral military interventions, war crimes committed in our name, legalization of torture, blah, blah, blah…
Before you know it, the US government will start spying on American citizens and detaining prisoners without charges while allowing corporations to ravage the earth in pursuit of profit, wiping out entire eco-systems in the process—oops, sorry … they’re already doing all that with limited resistance.
Frederick Douglass sez: “Find out just what the people will submit to and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them; and these will continue until they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.”
Every 24 hours, 13 million tons of toxic chemicals are released across the globe; 200,000 acres of rainforest are destroyed; more than 100 plant or animal species go extinct; and 45,000 human beings (mostly children) die of starvation.
So, let’s repeat my earlier question. One more time, with feeling: How much more are we willing to tolerate before we take direct action?
Which brings me back to Anais Nin’s poem. What is our pain threshold? When does inaction become more agonizing than the fear we all harbor about stepping up and challenging this destructive culture? When will we decide that we are less afraid of the police than of living on a planet without trees, without drinkable water, without arable land?
Participating in sustained direct action is not a popular choice. It could put us at odds with our friends, family, and community. It could jeopardize our careers. It could even lead to direct conflict with law enforcement officers. Scary stuff, for sure. But, as a thought experiment, ask yourself this: What frightens you more, being judged by your neighbors for getting ticketed for disorderly conduct or comprehending that 80% of the world’s forests and 90% of the large fish in the ocean are already gone?
There are good reasons to be afraid. There are better reasons to be bold.
Could we be afraid of learning that much of what we’ve been taught is no longer relevant? Are we afraid to open our hearts and minds and start caring like we’ve never cared before? Maybe, just maybe, we’re afraid of ourselves and of what were capable of accomplishing. Maybe Marianne Williamson is correct when she suggests: “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.”
It’s time to blossom, comrades. Even with all the fear, pain, dread, and uncertainty we may (or may not) experience while blossoming, remaining tight in the bud is no longer an option…for us or for the planet. Just leap and the net may appear.
Mickey Z. is probably the only person on the planet to have appeared in both a karate flick with Billy “Tae Bo” Blanks and a political book with Howard Zinn. He is the author of 9 books—most recently Self Defense for Radicals and his second novel, Dear Vito—and can be found on the Web at http://www.mickeyz.net.
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No Accident: BP, Murder and the Gulf of Mexico
By Derrick Jensen
The murder of the Gulf of Mexico by BP shouldn’t surprise us. It is precisely what industrial capitalism does. Years ago I wrote of the catastrophe in Bhopal: when you intentionally fabricate bulk industrial chemicals, many of which are toxic, it should not qualify as an accident when some of these chemicals kill people. Likewise, the spill in the Gulf should not be considered an accident. There are 10,000 oil spills per year. Oil has devastated the Amazon. It has devastated the Niger Delta. It has devastated the Gulf of Mexico.
Likewise, after the catastrophe at Bhopal, it was discovered that there was no antidote for the poison. One advocate for the victims noted sensibly: “No one should be allowed to make poisons for which there is no antidote.” The same is true for the other destructive activities of this culture.
And corporations will not voluntarily rein themselves in. Limited liability corporations exist in order to limit liability. Their function is to privatize profits and to externalize costs.
And governments will not voluntarily rein in corporations. A primary function of governments is to provide subsidies and to provide muscle for that privatization of profits and that externalization of costs.
Corporations and governments are murdering the planet. They will not stop on their own. It is incumbent upon us to stop them, to force accountability onto those sociopaths who are killing the planet. And failure is not an option. We must stop them.
Derrick Jensen is the acclaimed author of more than a dozen books, including A Language Older Than Words, The Culture of Make Believe and Endgame. His most recent book is Resistance Against Empire.
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Scars...
Tyler Durden sez: “How much can you know about yourself if you’ve never been in a fight? I don’t wanna die without any scars.”
Tyler Durden also sez: “This is your life, and it’s ending one minute at a time.”
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Another of my recent photos:
Pigeons plan a counterattack
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Saturday, June 12, 2010
Introducing: Trash Trophies
NYC kids learn about:
- Dumpster diving
- Creativity
- Protecting the environment
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Another of my recent photos:
Reminder: Graffiti is not “bills"
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Friday, June 11, 2010
"We Declare Peace" event photos
From an amazing evening, June 10 at Waltz-Astoria:
Yours truly
Val Turner
Eliot Katz
Jenny Lovin
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Wednesday, June 09, 2010
Che Guevara meets Bruce Lee
Che sez: “Against the rigidity of classical methods of fighting, the guerrilla fighter invents his own tactics at every minute of the fight and constantly surprises the enemy.”
Bruce sez:
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Another of my recent photos:
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Monday, June 07, 2010
Mickey Z.: Veggie Pride Parade NYC 2010
Part 1:
Part 2:
Part 3:
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Saturday, June 05, 2010
The Virgin Islands Sustainable Farm Institute (Interview with Nate Olive)
The mission of the Virgin Islands Sustainable Farm Institute (VISFI) is to “provide a working educational farm enterprise that integrates sustainability in education, environment, and community through quality instruction in Agroecology and related fields.” This is accomplished via a combination of “experiential learning, outdoor lecture, field laboratories, personal and group research projects, leadership development, and local environmental awareness into a comprehensive educational experience.”
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Another of my recent photos:
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Thursday, June 03, 2010
James Howard Kunstler on NYC's Newest Skyscrapers
Inspired by David Owen’s book Green Metropolis, James Howard Kunstler examines the idea of Manhattan as a “green” city. Kunstler believes that, during his lifetime, New York has never been in as good shape as it is now. But he also thinks it will never be in as good shape again. Financial and energy problems in the future may turn our newest skyscrapers into one-generation buildings, outlandish monuments built during the twilight of an empire. “This stuff has hubris written all over it,” he says. Of all the boroughs, Kunstler thinks Brooklyn may fare the best because of its higher quality urban fabric.
Aside from architecture, Kunstler addresses his second favorite topic: energy. For example, he argues shale gas, the “rescue remedy du jour,” won’t save the US from fossil fuel depletion, despite industry forecasts of an almost endless supply of natural gas from the mega-shale plays: Barnett, Haynesville and Marcellus as well as shale plays in northeastern British Columbia.
Click here to listen to KunstlerCast #85.
James Howard Kunstler’s nonfiction series on suburban sprawl, new urbanism and the end of the cheap oil era includes: “The Geography of Nowhere,” “The City in Mind: Notes on the Urban Condition,” “Home from Nowhere” and “The Long Emergency.” His latest novel, “World Made By Hand” is a fictional account of the issues raised in “The Long Emergency.” He is also the author of eight other novels.
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3 Ways to Help Expose Corporate Polluters
Since it’s clear that the most egregious polluters have no intention of giving up their toxic ways without a fight, we have our work cut out for us. This involves seeing past the propaganda, documenting the damage, and then organizing to put a stop to this ongoing global crime spree...now.
Top Firms Cause $2.2 Trillion in Enviro-Damage
3 Ways to Start Exposing Corporate Crime
2. Scorecard
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FYI: I just got the first blurb for my upcoming novel, Darker Shade of Green. Here goes:
“Mickey Z. has created something the bizarro genre has not yet produced: a thought provoking call to arms. If this book doesn’t make you want to rage for justice, you might want to check your pulse. The people killing this planet for profit and greed will hate this book, all the more reason you need to read it.”
- David Agranoff, author of Screams from a Dying World and co-editor of the Vegan Guidebook to Portland.
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Wednesday, June 02, 2010
Interdependence
Ethan Nichtern’s One City: A Declaration of Interdependence has been called “arguably the first truly 21st century Dhamma book.” Nichtern is the founder of the Interdependence Project (or “ID Project"). Based in New York City’s East Village with another group in Portland, Oregon, The Interdependence Project is a non-profit organization “that focuses on building community through meditation, activism, and the arts.”
3 Daily Practices from Ethan Nichtern
Your thoughts?
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“Israel is a lunatic state"
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(Thanks, RMJ)
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Tuesday, June 01, 2010
Israel's "greatest generation"
A little context in case anyone is “shocked” by the latest Israeli war crime...
David Ben-Gurion sez:
“We must use terror, assassination, intimidation, land confiscation, and the cutting of all social services to rid the Galilee of its Arab population.”
“What is necessary is cruel and strong reactions. We need precision in time, place, and casualties. If we know the family, we must strike mercilessly, women and children included. Otherwise, the reaction is inefficient. At the place of action, there is no need to distinguish between guilty and innocent.”
“If I were an Arab leader I would never make terms with Israel. That is natural: we have taken their country ... We come from Israel, but two thousand years ago, and what is that to them? There has been anti-Semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They only see one thing: we have come here and stolen their country. Why should they accept that?”
Read an old Israel-related article of mine here
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Event Alert:
Please check the “events” section in the right-hand column. I’ve got two NYC-area talks coming up: June 10 in Astoria, June 13 in Tompkins Square Park. Spread the word…
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Poem: “My favorite e-mail ever"
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Monday, May 31, 2010
Murder on the High Seas
Protesting Israel’s Massacre of Activists on the High Seas from Press Action on Vimeo.
Hundreds of people gathered in front of the Israeli embassy in Washington, D.C., on May 31, 2010, to protest Israel’s lethal attack earlier in the day on a ship carrying activists and humanitarian goods to Gaza.
For more frequent updates, visit Press Action’s blog at Dismantle Dance.
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Israel Acting Like a 'Caged Animal'
Hundreds of people gathered in front of the Israeli embassy in Washington, D.C., on May, 31, 2010, to protest Israel’s lethal attack earlier in the day on a ship carrying activists and humanitarian goods to the Gaza Strip. Josh Ruebner, national advocacy director of the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, spoke to Press Action about Israel’s intentions and how the atrocity could impact Israel’s standing in the world community.
Josh Ruebner on Israel’s Growing Desperation from Press Action on Vimeo.
For more frequent updates, visit Press Action’s blog at Dismantle Dance.
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Ask not what your eco-system can do for you…
When you choose to buy a used shirt instead of opting for a brand new article of clothing being sold by a store that supports sweatshop labor, it’s not like you expect that specific purchase to end workplace inequality and put a halt to conspicuous consumption. You buy the used shirt simply because it’s the right thing to do. This mentality counters those who say stuff like: “Why should I public transportation instead of drive? All those other motorists are still using their cars anyway.” Sure...they are. But you’re not. You, dear comrade, are doing the right thing.
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Another of my recent photos:
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Poem: “(cell phone) towel of babel haiku"
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Sunday, May 30, 2010
Delusions of Density
“The green metropolis concept is a contradiction in terms, because mega-cities like New York are hypertrophic—they have become too big to operate efficiently in a post-carbon world.” – James Howard Kunstler
New York City is the most successful model for environmental sustainability and is the “greenist” community in the United States, writes David Owen in his book Green Metropolis, which was published by Penguin Group in 2009. The high concentrations of people living in Manhattan forces them to use less energy, he writes. Suburbia and small towns in rural America, not densely populated cities such as New York and Boston, are the real culprits in wreaking havoc on the environment, according to the The New Yorker contributor.
But where are these tightly packed urban centers supposed to get the resources—food, energy, raw materials—to sustain themselves? Does Manhattan have the space and soil to grow all of its own food? What about raw materials? Is there enough iron ore to be mined in Manhattan or enough materials to make the concrete required to sustain the infrastructure in such a metropolis?
Manhattan and other similar mega-cities rely on other regions for their food and natural resources to survive. These farming and mining enterprises that support the big cities require humans for labor. And the humans require shelter and other amenities of the modern world. But Owen condemns these communities as being much bigger energy hogs than the metropolises. Can anyone spot the contradiction in Owen’s argument? The big cities require the raw materials and resources from elsewhere, regions that are using huge amounts of energy and causing terrible damage to the environment. New York and other densely populated areas must take responsibility for environmental damage caused by these enterprises.
All cities require the often forced importation of food and other resources, Derrick Jensen writes in Endgame. “The story of any civilization is the story of the rise of city-states, which means it is the story of the funneling of resources toward these centers (in order to sustain them and cause them to grow), which means it is the story of an increasing region of unsustainability surrounded by an increasingly exploited countryside,” he explains.
“We can have international trade, inevitably and by definition as well as by function dominated by distant and huge economic/governmental entities which do not (and cannot) act in the best interest of communities, or we can have local control of local economies, which cannot happen so long as cities require the importation (read: theft) of resources from ever-greater distances. … We can have cities and all they imply, or we can have a livable planet.”
Amidst the contradictions in Green Metropolis are moments of clarity and coherence. “A huge and often unmentioned issue underlying all our ongoing environmental problems is the issue of population,” he says. Even more problematic than a growing population is the issue of expectations of prosperity, Owen explains.
But one of his remedies would be for humans to use the accelerating urbanization as a tool for easing environmental catastrophe. This would seem impossible since increased urbanization would require the even greater destruction of the environment to support the millions who live in these densely populated metropolises. - Mark Hand
For more frequent updates, visit Press Action’s blog at Dismantle Dance.
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Friday, May 28, 2010
How to spend your Memorial Weekend
Yet another Memorial Weekend is upon us...so how in the world can I pick which indomitable defenders of liberty to honor this year?
Perhaps I can spend my time in quiet contemplation of those valiant heroes who unselfishly risk the agony of carpal tunnel syndrome as they push the buttons and/or computer keys to launch those cruise missiles into crowded Third World cities.
The same goes for America’s many courageous snipers and fearless bomber pilots…all of them using their fingers and eyes to preserve our way of life.
I owe my liberty to them…
Of course, I could instead dedicate myself to worshipping the gallant warriors who put their feet and toes on the line each time they repeatedly kick a prone, chained, and blindfolded prisoner at Gitmo. (Oops, did I say “prisoner”? I mean “enemy combatant,” of course.)
These resolute patriots also expose their vocal cords to excruciating injury when they engage in the selfless daily practice of screaming at such evildoers. One can only imagine the mental strain of coming up with new epithets each and every day—day and day, year after year.
Thanks to them, I am free…
Then again, the epic exploits of America’s latest generation are nothing new. This country was built on centuries of similar deeds and efforts.
Remember: America would never be able to spread its values all over the planet without those men and women who volunteer to make it happen. Could you imagine what life on Earth would be without the pervasiveness of American values?
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Bonus post:
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Wednesday, May 26, 2010
Re-Connect to Your Inner Primate
By celebrating our primate status rather than denying it, we are able to create connections to other humans and to the natural world that have the potential to lessen violence, exploitation, and ecocide.
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Bonus post:
Interview with VegNews Publisher Joseph Connelly
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Another of my recent photos:
The news, re: Pedro
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Tuesday, May 25, 2010
A People's Garden at New York's City Hall?
When I asked Daniel Bowman Simon why he started the City Hall garden project, his simple answer was: “Because nobody else was doing it.” That’s about a basic a reason to engage in activism as any.
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Another of my photos:
Looming...
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Monday, May 24, 2010
Does Nature Have a Price Tag?
(originally intended for Planet Green but they wouldn’t run it)
There are two powerful but opposing trends unhappily co-existing on Planet Earth. The first is a growing awareness of how our way of life has to change drastically to save the eco-system and, well...the future. The opposing trend has far more money and propaganda behind it and reared its ugly head in a May 10 BBC News article called “Nature loss ‘to damage economies’.” In that piece, BBC environment correspondent Richard Black tells us:
"The Earth’s ongoing nature losses may soon begin to hit national economies a major UN report has warned ... Such tipping points could include rapid dieback of forest, algal takeover of watercourses and mass coral reef death."
It’s an interesting use of the passive voice...as if these “losses” just happen. “The style of reporting,” says journalist Michael Greenwell, “tells you a lot about why he have some of the problems we do ... There is no suggestion that it might be a good idea to preserve the ecosystem for its own sake.”
Indeed. The BBC article quotes Bill Jackson, deputy director general of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN): “Twenty-one percent of all known mammals, 30% of all known amphibians, 12% of all known birds (and)... 27% of reef-building corals assessed… are threatened with extinction.” The article then concludes with the most salient point of all:
"If the world made equivalent losses in share prices, there would be a rapid response and widespread panic."
Wish You Were Here
3 Ways to Choose Eco-Green Over Money-Green
1. Learn More About Extinction
As Michael Greenwell sez: “We are in the early stages of what could easily become the biggest mass extinction the planet has ever seen.” This “nature loss” has many causes, explains Jeff Corwin: “overpopulation, loss of habitat, global warming, species exploitation (the black market for rare animal parts is the third-largest illegal trade in the world, outranked only by weapons and drugs). The list goes on, but it all points to us.”
2. Look Past the Next Fiscal Quarter
We are so inundated with corporate propaganda on a minute-to-minute basis that we rarely even stop to consider, for example, what a word like “natural” means. After all, arsenic is natural, isn’t it? So are uranium and E. coli, for that matter. Each day—many, many times a day—our view of the world is being honed and refined into what can only be labeled a consumer mentality. What Ralph Nader calls, “growing up corporate.”
The Tom Joad character in The Grapes of Wrath said: “Maybe we’re not all individual souls, but maybe we’re all part of one big soul.” Incredibly basic but within simplicity lies the secret: If we look upon all living things as part—along with ourselves—of one collective soul, would it become impossible to live in denial about ocean trawling, forest clear cutting, mountaintop removal mining, factory farming, and more?
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Sunday, May 23, 2010
Some Astoria Park photos
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P.S. Maybe you wanna re-read this old article of mine…
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Friday, May 21, 2010
The Discipline of D.E. (Do Easy)
“D.E. is a way of doing,” wrote William S. Burroughs. “It is a way of doing everything you do. D.E. simply means doing whatever you do in the easiest, most relaxed way you can manage, which is also the quickest and most efficient way, as you will find as you advance in D.E.” He adds:
"You can start right now—tidying up your flat, moving furniture or books, washing dishes, making tea, sorting papers. Consider the weight of objects, exactly how much force is needed to get the object from here to there. Consider its shape and texture and function—where exactly does it belong? Use just the amount of force necessary to get the object from here to there. Don’t fumble, jerk, grab an object."
More D.E.
- When you touch an object, weigh it with your fingers, feel your fingers on the object, the skin, blood, muscles, tendons of your hand and arm. Consider these extensions of yourself as precision instruments to perform every movement smoothly and well.
- Don’t tug or pull at a zipper. Guide the little metal teeth smoothly along, feeling the sinuous ripples of cloth and flexible metal.
- Replacing the cap on a tube of toothpaste...(and this should always be done at once. Few things are worse than and uncapped tube, maladroitly squeezed, twisting up out of the bathroom glass drooling paste, unless it be a tube with the cap barbarously forced on all askew against the threads)...Replacing the cap, let the very tips of your fingers protrude beyond the cap contacting the end of the tube guiding the cap into place.
- Remember: every object has its place. If you don’t find that place and put that thing there, it will jump out at you and trip you or rap you painfully across the knuckles.
The Discipline of D.E.
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Thursday, May 20, 2010
The "Humane" Myth
HumaneMyth.org is a website run by a community of former farmers, animal rescuers, animal sanctuary founders, educators, and artists “working to create a just and nonviolent future.” The founders of the site propose the following:
Labels such as “Cage Free,” “Free Range,” “Humane Certified,” “Grass Fed,” “Organic,” and “Local” make it seem like those who are willing to pay a higher price can enjoy eggs, dairy, and meat from small-scale “humane” farms that treat animals with compassion and respect. But is the public being misled?
I might suggest another question: When is the public not being misled? When the goal is profit, misinformation comes wrapped in friendly words like “advertising” and “public relations.” The first and perhaps most important step any of us can take is to free our minds and embrace the subversive pleasure of critical thought.
Why Propaganda Works:
3 Reasons to Question the “Humane” Label
1. Free Range Ain’t “Free"
According to the folks at Compassionate Over Killing: “The popular myth that ‘free-range’ egg-laying hens enjoy fresh grass, bask in the sunlight, scratch the earth, sit on their nests, and engage in other natural habits is often just that: a myth. In many commercial ‘free-range egg farms, hens are crowded inside windowless sheds with little more than a single, narrow exit leading to an enclosure, too small to accommodate all of the birds at once. Both battery cage and ‘free-range’ egg hatcheries kill all male chicks shortly after birth. Since male chicks cannot lay eggs and are different breeds than those chickens raised for meat, they are of no use to the egg industry. Standard killing methods, even among ‘free-range’ producers, include grinding male chicks alive or throwing them into trash bags and leaving them to suffocate.”
2. The Animal Industry Can’t Be Trusted
It’s always best to gather information and reach your own conclusions. As HumaneMyth explains: “The animal-using industry has a decades-long track record of misleading the public, on everything from the health benefits of consuming their products to the living conditions and mode of death of the animals who are killed to create those products.”
3. What Does “Humane” Mean to You?
hu·mane adj.
1. Characterized by kindness, mercy, or compassion: a humane judge.
2. Marked by an emphasis on humanistic values and concerns: a humane education.
The term “humane killing” belongs with other oxymorons like “limited autonomy,” “peacekeeper missiles,” “military intelligence,” and “earth-friendly corporations."
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Wednesday, May 19, 2010
Finally: The truth about immigration
Scream it from the mountaintops (or at least on your blog): Immigrants are destroying any and all hope of for planetary survival. Illegal aliens are Public Enemy #1. Foreigners are terrorists. If you don’t believe me, just ask any sweatshop worker in, say, Vietnam...
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Another of my photos:
Graffiti tongue?
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Poem: “The dollar in my wallet"
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Tuesday, May 18, 2010
The Truth about Immigration
By Mickey Z.
Everything negative you’ve heard about immigration is true. In fact, all the election cycle talk about lazy parasites pouring over borders to leech off another nation’s resources doesn’t go far enough in explaining the gravity of this ongoing crisis. Scream it from the mountaintops (or at least on your blog): Immigrants are destroying any and all hope of for planetary survival. Illegal aliens are Public Enemy #1. Foreigners are terrorists.
If you don’t believe me, just ask any sweatshop worker in, say, Vietnam...
The perfidious colonizers I refer to, of course, are the insatiable transnational corporations setting up camp all across the Third World. Whether it be Nike, The Gap, Wal-Mart, or any other taxpayer-subsidized bloodsucker, these crafty illegal aliens can’t be stopped by constructing a mere wall. They travel with impunity...on the wings of government subvention and cunning, relentless propaganda. Thanks to decades of conditioning, even the victims of these soulless migrants will voluntarily pay for the right to wear a shirt bearing their corporate logo.
One would not be engaging in hyperbole to characterize these illegal invaders as “terrorists.” Forget color-coded alerts, staged arrests, and manufactured scares. Put aside those times you were forced to remove your shoes at the airport. As defined at Dictionary.com, “an overwhelming feeling of fear and anxiety” and/or an “intense, overpowering fear” characterize brand of the terror I speak of.
While the corporate media obscures the real terror and trains its focus on the latest battle between Obama and Osama (or the current villain of the day), the primary conflict on the planet remains unchanged: globalization from above vs. globalization from below.
“Immigrants” like the World Trade Organization, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, and transnational corporations are elements of a mutant form of remote control imperialism. The United States doesn’t always have to send armies into other countries. It sends in Disney and McDonalds with the (usually) unspoken threat of military force backing them up.
Globalization is not intrinsically a bad idea. Mutually beneficial global ties can be essential. As Arundhati Roy sez: “In the present circumstances, I’d say that the only thing worth globalizing is dissent.”
But perhaps Marx said it best (I mean Groucho, in Monkey Business): “There’s my argument: restrict immigration.”
Mickey Z. is probably the only person on the planet to have appeared in both a karate flick with Billy “Tae Bo” Blanks and a political book with Howard Zinn. He is the author of 9 books — most recently “Self Defense for Radicals” and his second novel, “Dear Vito”; he is a regular writer for Planet Green and can be found on the Web at http://www.mickeyz.net.
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Veggie Pride, DIY, my next event, and more
Giving my keynote speech to a big crowd of plant eaters...
(Keep your fingers crossed that the folks who shot video send me quality links soon)
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My next event:
We Declare Peace
An Evening with Astoria Writers and Musicians
Thursday, June 10, 7:30 p.m.
@ Waltz-Astoria
(Details will remain in the right-hand column >>>)
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Bonus post:
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Sunday, May 16, 2010
There's no time like now
This isn’t about skin color, gender, or what parcel of geography you happen to have been born on. I’m not talking about party affiliations, incremental reform, or what sky-god you’ve chosen to worship. It’s all about recognizing a crisis and taking the appropriate measures.
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Saturday, May 15, 2010
I'm a Super Vegan bad ass Mr. Fancy Pants: The latest Mickey Z. interview
Anne Sullivan just interviewed me for Super Vegan, re: my upcoming role as keynote speaker at the Veggie Pride Parade. Excerpt:
Anne: You’re a personal trainer and martial artist and have noted in a previous interview that Bruce Lee inspired you. Do you have any issue with my referring to you as a “vegan warrior” from here on out then?
MZ: (I think I just heard someone from Homeland Security shout, “A-ha.") “Vegan warrior” is definitely cool, but I also like “The Warrior from Astoria.” It would be cool to hear a boxing announcer say it.
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Bruce Lee teaches us how to deal with anti-immigrant sentiment:
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Thursday, May 13, 2010
A vegan version of the "Double Down" (at Foodswings)
Brooklyn’s best vegan restaurant has entered the fray with a little something called the “Handwich,” quite possible the greatest vegan sandwich ever created.
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Hope we can believe in:
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My photo of the day:
Laundry time
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Wednesday, May 12, 2010
3 snapshots from the Land of Opportunity™
Hoping for a winner
Cans and bottles
No where else to go...
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Poem: “Personal Trainer Diaries"
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Tuesday, May 11, 2010
Reminder: I'm the Keynote Speaker for the 2010 Veggie Pride Parade
The parade starts at noon and ends up at Union Square Park. If you wanna be sure to see my talk, I’d suggest you get to the park no later than 1:00. Trust me, there will be plenty to see, do, and enjoy in the meantime. Plus, I’m 1000% positive my talk will be well worth the effort.
Hope to see you there and please spread the word…
P.S. I’d still love it if someone could commit to filming my presentation. It’ll be 15 minutes, at the most.
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My photo of the day:
Graffiti love
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Poem: “finally in touch with your inner child"
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Monday, May 10, 2010
Why I love my new tattoo
As some of you might remember, I recently interviewed vegan tattoo artist, Brad Stevens, to help spread the word that yes, tattoos can be earth-friendly and cruelty-free. Thus, it was on my birthday (April 30) that I visited Daredevil Tattoos on Manhattan’s Lower East Side and asked Brad to do the honors of giving me my first tattoo: an original design of mine (a “zun") placed on the inside on my left wrist. Hey, I lead with my left...what can I say?
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My photo of the day:
A complete waste of trees
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Sunday, May 09, 2010
Organic food, my new camera, and Mother's Day
First things first: My Mother’s Day Haiku
my whole life, second
sunday in may: mother’s day
now: motherless day
Bruce Springsteen sez: “Those you are with, in the presence of miracles, you never forget. Life does not separate you. Death does not separate you.”
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Bonus post:
Run, don’t walk, to an organic lifestyle
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New feature:
Michele bought me a camera for my birthday and I’ve been taking pictures like crazy (see my Facebook page for more). Starting today, I’ll regularly post my photos here for your perusal.
Air Jordans
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Friday, May 07, 2010
My interview with Cindy Sheehan: War, peace, and oil spills
Cindy sez: “We are waging two big wars for oil, and many smaller wars throughout the world (South America, Africa) and to me, it has always been a no-brainer that the U.S’s addiction to war can be linked to our addiction to oil.”
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Bonus post:
Why oil slicks happen. How to start preventing them.
Any culture so dependent on oil (and cars) and so supportive of military interventions leaves virtually no margin for error.
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Thursday, May 06, 2010
Mike Tyson is a vegan?
It’s like a punch line to a bad joke. (Get it? Punch line?) Iron Mike Tyson, once the baddest man on the planet, has embraced the plant-based lifestyle.
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Bonus post:
While I was in the DC area to give a talk this March, I had a chance to chat with Matt about his new band Whiskey Smoke Rocket and his day job as a software developer at a solar energy company.
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Wednesday, May 05, 2010
Welcome to Dismantle Institute!
To take apart; disassemble; tear down.
A growing number of people are recognizing the world would be a more beautiful, more livable place for all forms of life if humans simply learned new behaviors. One of the most important of these behaviors is the display of courage to speak out and act against the institutions that increasingly are adopting a greater sense of entitlement to restrict our freedoms, wage wars and destroy the planet.
Dismantle Institute is dedicated to the research of the modern world’s dominant institutions and how their practices contribute to the destruction of life on Earth. The institute examines the intimidation, repression and violence that are hallmarks of the modern nation state and studies strategies that individuals and groups are implementing to undermine — or dismantle — the supremacy of the nation state and the societal and cultural practices that sustain this domination.
Through articles, reports, books, discussions and conferences, Dismantle Institute examines strategies for re-making society without statism, militarism, racism, anthropocentrism, speciesism and other pernicious forms of hierarchical domination that are degrading and destroying life on the planet and the planet itself.
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What is it about "save the whales" that Obama doesn't understand?
Whales. Stand one upright and it could reach the height of a 10-story building. Its heart is bigger than your hybrid compact. You and 49 of your closest friends could stand comfortably on its tongue. Unfortunately, since 5000 B.C., humans have seen fit to hunt these magnificent marine mammals. The results, predictably, have been disastrous for whales and the ocean. As Greenpeace reports:
"The blue whales of the Antarctic are at less than 1 percent of their original abundance, despite 40 years of complete protection."
However, as explained by Joel R. Reynolds in the Los Angeles Times, “the International Whaling Commission announced a proposed 10-year deal, spearheaded by the Obama administration, that would suspend the moratorium and allow whaling countries to kill whales legally for commercial purposes for the first time in a generation.” Reynolds writes:
"The Obama administration argues that the whaling moratorium should be suspended because it has loopholes that are being illegally exploited by Japanese, Norwegian and Icelandic whalers."
Sounds like Ben Tre logic to me.
For the Love of Whales
The blue whale, for example, is the largest known animal in Earth’s history. It can grow to 100 feet long and weigh as much as 150 tons. Like all mammals, whale…
- Breathe air into lungs
- Have hair
- Are warm-blooded
- Have mammary glands with which they nourish their young
- Have a four-chambered heart
A blue whale’s heart can be the size of a small car. Just imagine how much love exists in something with a heart that big.
Watch This, Get Angry, Get Busy
The author Farley Mowatt once said: “Whales never needed a technology.” This may be true, but whales do need us to step up and take action immediately. Here’s a thought: The Sea Shepherd is looking for dedicated individuals to crew aboard their ocean-going ships:
Job Description: No pay, Long hours, Hard work, Dangerous conditions, Extreme weather.
Guaranteed: Adventure, fulfillment, and the hardest work you will ever love. The experience of a lifetime.
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Tuesday, May 04, 2010
Veggie Pride Parade: May 16
Mark your calendars: It’s just about time for the Big Apple’s annual Veggie Pride Parade, thanks to Pamela Rice and the Viva Vegie Society...and yours truly is the keynote speaker this year. Spread the word…
Read more about the parade here
Question: Can anyone shoot video of my talk?
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For those of you looking for a new home (or not):
(Thanks, Zen)
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Monday, May 03, 2010
Devastation without Representation
Who will represent the thousands, probably millions, of marine mammals, fish and birds in the Gulf of Mexico region who will die at the hands of BP plc? Who will represent the plant life in the marshes and wetlands along the coast?
Not President Obama. Not any U.S. lawmakers. Not the environmental establishment. They’re too busy worrying about how the massive oil spill will harm the Gulf Coast region’s economy.
During a May 2 address, Obama said the oil spill “could jeopardize the livelihoods of thousands of Americans who call this place home.” There was no reflection on the spill’s creation of a massive killing field in the Gulf. No call for a national mobilization to prevent the mass slaughter.
It always comes back to how the premeditated killing of non-humans will undermine the well-being and comfort of humans.
“This is one of the richest and most beautiful ecosystems on the planet, and for centuries its residents have enjoyed and made a living off the fish that swim in these waters and the wildlife that inhabit these shores,” Obama said. “This is also the heartbeat of the region’s economic life. And we’re going to do everything in our power to protect our natural resources, compensate those who have been harmed, rebuild what has been damaged, and help this region persevere like it has done so many times before.”
Look at the phrases Obama chose to use: “enjoyed and made a living off the fish;” “heartbeat of the region’s economic life”; “protect our natural resources”; “compensate those who have been harmed.” Obama’s word choice is unsurprising in a culture where extreme forms of anthropocentrism, speciesism and hierarchical domination continue to degrade and destroy life on the planet and the planet itself.
Among the environmental establishment, the World Wildlife Fund said the images of burning oil on the water of the Gulf of Mexico “provide a grim reminder of the risks posed by oil and gas environmental and economic well-being of coastal regions.” As with Obama, the WWF expressed concern for the “economic well-being” of the region, not the death and misery spawned by the gushing oil.
In its latest statement on the disaster, the Sierra Club made a perfunctory mention of “oil slicked birds” but then focused on the spill’s impact on local businesses and jobs. “The oil industry uses our oceans to ratchet up their profits, and then they leave us to clean up their mess. They leave us to comb the beaches looking for oil slicked birds,” Sierra Club Executive Director Michael Brune said in a May 2 statement. “They leave us to worry about the small fisheries and coastal businesses that are now completely shut down. They leave us to worry about what their oil and toxic chemicals will do to our drinking water and health. We are tired of the oil industry polluting our air and water and standing in the way of clean energy jobs.”
If not the environmental and wildlife organizations, who will represent the non-human victims of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill?
At least Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., one of the oil and gas industry’s best friends in Washington, doesn’t pretend to care about the impact of the oil spill on the natural world. In fact, she’s been making preemptive strikes against any potential federal regulations or restrictions against the oil industry that could get enacted in response to the BP disaster.
In a speech on the floor of the U.S. Senate on April 29, Landrieu said the United States should not have a rash reaction to the incident as it did after the Three Mile Island accident. She said shutting down the country’s plans for new nuclear power plants put the country 30 years behind France. She said Louisiana knows the risks involved in offshore drilling for the workers and the environment, but the country depends on oil to keep the economy moving.
“For advocates that say we can’t afford to drill off of our coast, then what coast should we drill off of? Should we have all of our oil coming 100 percent from Saudi Arabia or Venezuela or Honduras or West Africa? We have to take responsibility to drill where we can safely, out away from our shores, and be as safe as we can be. We obviously have to improve our technology, and that we will. Retreat, we won’t,” Landrieu said.
It’s the same old short-sighted story about the economy and jobs trumping reason and sanity. Because of our culture’s fixation on perpetual growth and economic expansion, the industrial disasters will never go away. The destruction of the natural world will continue to be interpreted as the price of progress and freedom.
In the near term, oil and oil spills will bring us our jobs, our food, our culture, our reason for being. Oil and oil spills will bring non-human animals dehydration, infection, hypothermia, starvation, suffocation, a reason for dying. In the long term, the paradox of oil will erase the distinction, and the most resilient of the non-human animals will say “I told you so” when the industrialized killing machine finally ceases to exist, but not before making humans endure the same horrors they’ve manufactured for others for far too long.
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Rigged for Ecological Failure
Review of Green Gone Wrong: How Our Economy Is Undermining the Environmental Revolution by Heather Rogers (Scribner, 272 pages, 2010).
“There’s this idea that you can just switch from fossil fuels to renewables. But you can’t because there’s not enough of a supply from renewables. That means we simply must consume less.” – Bill Dunster, architect and designer of Beddington Zero Energy Development, a housing development in London
In her new book, Green Gone Wrong, journalist and author Heather Rogers examines the forces that are thwarting the adoption of saner environmental policies. Rogers takes the reader on a journey into a world where auto makers have avoided and undermined greener technologies. Another chapter explains how unfavorable government policies and factory farms are the prime reasons the people who produce more ecologically benign food will likely go extinct. She also highlights an abomination hatched by global leaders and the environmental establishment: carbon offsets.
Green Gone Wrong isn’t all about the environmental mischief of governments, corporations and non-governmental organizations. As part of her research, Rogers visited the rare place—Freiburg, Germany—where good sense appears to be holding its own against the social forces that preach constant growth and ever-increasing consumption, which by their very nature are unsustainable.
However, beyond the atypical success story, the overriding message of Green Gone Wrong is that market-based solutions do not come close to addressing the global environmental crisis. “In researching this book I found solutions that work and saw that we know how to implement them—truly organic farming, green architecture, and energy-efficiency transportation,” Rogers writes. “But instead, political and corporate leaders, and some in the environmental establishment, are putting aside what works in exchange for what poses the least challenge to established power structures.”
Rogers, whose previous book was Gone Tomorrow: The Hidden Life of Garbage, is not calling for an end to industrial civilization, nor does she discuss the views of anti-civilization writers. “The point is not to leave nature untouched; removing people from forests or any other ecosystem is not a real solution. A different approach could be work with nature in an authentic way so that we can take what we need to live without trashing the place,” she writes.
In her research into “organic” farming, Rogers traveled to a sugar-growing region of Paraguay and met with officials of Azucarera Paraguaya (AZPA), a company that provides a third of all organic sugar consumed in the United States. Organic crops must meet binding organic standards set by the governments of the countries where the food is consumed. To qualify as organic, the United States and the European Union require a farm to abide by certain rules, including bans on certain chemical fertilizers, pesticides and fungicides, and the farm must avoid monocropping, a factory-farming method that entails transforming existing ecosystems or traditional farmland into large fields planted with the same crop year after year in order to reduce costs.
AZPA’s head of crop care explained the company cannot avoid engaging in monocropping to produce its sugarcane. AZPA employs California-based Quality Assurance International as its organic certifier. The company official said QAI has issued minor warnings about AZPA’s monocropping, and yet it still gives its organic stamp of approval each year.
AZPA augments its supply of sugarcane by purchasing the harvest of local farmers. One of those farmers told Rogers that although he has been certified organic for more than 10 years, his farm has never been visited by an organic inspector. Instead, AZPA performs inspections itself, which is allowed by international rules. “But, by not visiting the farms of each grower, and relying on AZPA’s audits, certifiers can miss … damaging practices,” she writes.
Like organic farming, “green architecture” also has grown in popularity over the last 30 years. Two of the more seasoned eco-villages, Vauban and Rieselfeld, are located in the city of Freiburg, Germany. “While in Freiburg I focused on Vauban to find out whether stringent green living is comfortable and functional, or if it’s only for the indoctrinated hippie or the well-heeled professional,” Rogers writes. What she found is that life in the village of Vauban isn’t a hardship for its residents, and that the green architecture is not too expensive. She learned that the energy-saving technology used in Vauban is ready and available to be used in other cities.
Outside the confines of the eco-villages, the city of Freiburg itself has installed solar photovoltaic panels on its city hall and the main railway station. Local hotels, shops, factories, office buildings and the city’s sports stadium also use solar power. Furthermore, the city maintains an extensive network of bicycle paths and has banned auto traffic from many streets.
While Freiburg’s adoption of eco-friendly practices and its reputation as a solar-power hub have transformed the city into a green haven, there’s still the question of sustainability. Solar panels, for example, are largely made of plastics, which require the existence of petroleum drilling, extraction, refining, and transportation, and factories in which petroleum is converted to plastics. Copper is also a critical element in the manufacture of solar panels. Without copper wiring, there are no solar panels, and there are no coils to store, transmit, and receive electricity. The industrial mining of copper is a destructive and difficult process. The wastelands that result from this mining process are not green, and solar panels require the existence of such wastelands.
In the book, Rogers also explores one of the most harmful flights of fancy of the reformist green movement: carbon offsets. She explains how the carbon offset mechanism rests on two “rather wobbly legs: baseline and additionality.” Baseline is supposed to pinpoint something convoluted: what would have happened if something else didn’t happen, and what might that have led to? If an offset venture claims to be clearing more greenhouse gases than it can, it’s obviously bilking consumers, but it’s also failing to rein in carbon, writes Rogers, who traveled to southern India to see first-hand how these “guilt- and carbon-scrubbing projects” operate. She determined it is impossible to track the accuracy of carbon credits assigned to the projects she saw in India because there are not requirements to keep such records.
Rogers describes “additionality” as equally confusing. Under the offset system, if a company exceeds its emissions cap it must either buy additional carbon dioxide credits from another firm that didn’t use its full allocation or it can invest in creating new credits—offsets—through what is known as the Clean Development Mechanism, which is overseen by a United Nations entity. Additionality tries to establish whether a carbon offset project would have happened without the financing it could receive from the offset credit money. Carbon funding is granted only to ventures that are not fully financed, the idea being to support endeavors that wouldn’t otherwise have been realized. But because additionality is so hard to nail down, Rogers writes, renewable energy companies and other projects that get CDM money, as well as voluntary offset money, are now factoring the pollution payment into their business plans from the start.
In her final assessment, Rogers notes that most of the projects she saw in researching the book were born out of letting the market take the lead in solving the ecological crisis—“and they aren’t working.” “Waiting to implement solutions to global warming and other major environmental troubles until these technologies and systems are profitable enough is reckless and bizarre in the extreme,” she writes.
Rogers shares the view of Bill Dunster, the architect and designer of London’s Beddington Zero Energy Development, who she interviewed for the book and who believes humans simply must consume less energy. “Meaningful transformation requires not just unconventional products, but the creation of an alternative logic, where consuming less would improve the standard of living and where success was defined quite differently,” Rogers writes.
“Only when we rethink how and what we value—so that we no longer base well-being and quality of life on excess production, consumption, and wasting—will we truly be able to address global warming and other forms of ecological ruin,” she concludes.
Review by Mark Hand
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Sunday, May 02, 2010
Imagine If Our President Wasn't a Nobel Peace Prize Winner
Author and historian William Blum spoke May 1, 2010, on U.S. foreign policy in Latin America, as well as Nobel Peace Prize winner President Barack Obama simultaneously waging five wars: in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen. Blum participated in the “Forum on U.S. Policy in Latin America: Economics, Human Rights, and Media Complicity” at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Arlington in Arlington, Va.
Other panelists included moderator Ramon Daubon, principal of the Esquel Group; Mario Lopez-Garelli, staff attorney for the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, an independent organ of the Organization of American States; and Kevin Young, contributor to Media Accuracy on Latin America, an arm of the North American Congress on Latin America and a graduate student at State University of New York at Stony Brook.
William Blum from Press Action on Vimeo.
William Blum is the author of “Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War 2,” “Rogue State: A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower,” “West-Bloc Dissident: A Cold War Memoir,” and “Freeing the World to Death: Essays on the American Empire.” This essay is excerpted from Blum’s latest Anti-Empire Report. Previous Anti-Empire Reports can be read at http://www.killinghope.org.
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Tea Party Sideshow
They talk about taxes but don’t mention the military budget (where 53% of our tax dollars go to die). They complain about “the nanny state,” but ignore corporate welfare. They perceive a Wall Street-funded politician like Mr. Yes-We-Can as a “socialist” and blame everything on “the government” while disregarding corporate power (in this equation, the government is clearly the lesser of two horrendous evils).
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May Day event in Astoria:
I presented a longer version of the above article
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Saturday, May 01, 2010
Rassle-Mania: political activist Mickey Z. versus apolitical quietist Tom Bradley
Fasten your seat belts, this one is kinda hard to explain…
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The “zun” tattoo:
(more photos and design explanation coming soon)
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Poem: “little girl on subway haiku"
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Friday, April 30, 2010
The Big Gas Play: Behind Israel's Siege of Gaza
Absent from the coverage of Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians—at least in mainstream press accounts—has been the importance of Israel’s control of natural resources in the region. One of the main objectives of Israel’s occupation and siege of Palestinian lands has always been to provide itself with a large enough reserve of water to support its urban areas and agriculture industry. As a highly industrialized society on the edge of the Negev desert, Israel requires large reserves of water to function properly.
Since the late 1970s, Israel’s water system has been operating at 95 percent of capacity. This precarious relationship between the land and the Israeli people has always been a national security concern of Israel’s leaders, including the leading early 20th century Zionist planners who were well aware of the potential water problems that lay ahead.
An important result of Israel’s use of water on the West Bank has been the limitation of Palestinian agricultural development. Into the mid-1970s, fruit plantations and olive groves flourished. Since then, Israeli authorities have dug wells for domestic use in Jewish settlements, resulting in the loss of important crops for Palestinians whose irrigation springs dried up.
Since the late 1990s, Israel has had its eye on another important natural resource controlled by the Palestinians — natural gas. Working in conjunction with Israeli officials, British and U.S. companies have spent millions of dollars exploring for natural gas off the coast of the Gaza Strip, in Palestinian waters, and have made some significant discoveries.
In 1999, the British Gas Group discovered a vast deposit of natural gas within Gaza’s Maritime Activity Zone: more than 1.3 trillion cubic feet. Located about 15 miles off the coast, the deposits were named Gaza Marine 1 and 2. It was estimated that there were sufficient reserves to generate electric power for all Palestinian needs for a decade and still have a surplus to export.
After almost a decade of wrangling with Palestinian and Israeli authorities, BG Group renewed negotiations with Israel over the natural gas deposits. Negotiations between British Gas and Israeli officials were ongoing in October 2008, two months prior to the commencement of Israel’s bombing of Gaza on December 27, 2008, Michel Chossudovsky of GlobalResearch.ca writes.
“The military occupation of Gaza is intent upon transferring the sovereignty of the gas fields to Israel in violation of international law. What can we expect in the wake of the invasion?” Chossudovsky asks. “What is the intent of Israel with regard to Palestine’s Natural Gas reserves? A new territorial arrangement, with the stationing of Israeli and/or “peacekeeping” troops? The militarization of the entire Gaza coastline, which is strategic for Israel? The outright confiscation of Palestinian gas fields and the unilateral declaration of Israeli sovereignty over Gaza’s maritime areas? If this were to occur, the Gaza gas fields would be integrated into Israel’s offshore installations, which are contiguous to those of the Gaza Strip.”
One crucial element of Israel’s siege of Gaza has been a naval blockade, Noam Chomsky writes in his forthcoming book, Hopes and Prospects. As a result of these naval actions, Gaza’s fishing industry has virtually collapsed; fishing is impossible near shore because of the contamination caused by Israel’s regular attacks, including the destruction of power plants and sewage facilities.
“These Israeli naval attacks began shortly after the discovery by the BG (British Gas) Group of what appear to be quite sizeable natural gas fields in Gaza’s territorial waters,” Chomsky explains. “Industry journals report that Israel is already appropriating these Gazan resources for its own use, part of its commitment to shift its economy to natural gas.”
The pillage of what could become a major source of income for Gaza is surely known to U.S. authorities, according to Chomsky. “It is only reasonable to suppose that the intention to appropriate these limited resources, either by Israel alone or together with the collaborationist Palestinian Authority, is the motive for preventing Gazan fishing boats from entering Gaza’s territorial waters,” he writes.
Chomsky continues:
Share"There are some instructive precedents. In 1989, Australian foreign minister Gareth Evans signed a treaty with his Indonesian counterpart Ali Alatas granting Australia rights to the substantial oil reserves in ‘the Indonesian Province of East Timor.’ The Indonesia-Australia Timor Gap Treaty, which offered not a crumb to the people whose oil was being stolen, ‘is the only legal agreement anywhere in the world that effectively recognises Indonesia’s right to rule East Timor,’ the Australian press reported.
“Asked about his willingness to recognize the Indonesian conquest and to rob the sole resource of the conquered territory, which had been subjected to near-genocidal slaughter by the Indonesian invader with the strong support of Australia (along with the U.S., the U.K., and some others), Evans explained that ‘there is no binding legal obligation not to recognise the acquisition of territory that was acquired by force,’ adding that ‘the world is a pretty unfair place, littered with examples of acquisition by force.’
“It should, then, be unproblematic for Israel to follow suit in Gaza."
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I've asked Madonna to deliver my birthday message
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Thursday, April 29, 2010
Astoria May Day event reminder
Here’s some of what I’ll be saying at the upcoming May Day event in Astoria:
The Tea Partiers exist because corporate media propaganda convinced them equality, justice, and tolerance is a threat to their alleged freedoms. Just as bad: it’s also convinced them George W. Obama represents this threatening equality, justice, and tolerance. They’ve been had…but so have many (most?) of those on the Left.
A truly radical response to this so-called movement requires balance. We have to challenge right wing hatred and intolerance at every turn, of course, but do so without defending President Obama who is little more than Ronald Reagan in blackface.
Hope you’ll join us for the full reading/exhibition...
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Wednesday, April 28, 2010
Help Wanted: Washington Nationals Community Relations Manager for Antiwar Affairs
Nationals Park, home of the Washington Nationals baseball team, has a wide selection of food it sells to fans. Lots of choices, compared to the old days at RFK Stadium when choice was measured by whether you could get sauerkraut on your half-smoke. Today, the new stadium still boasts the traditional ballpark fare, but the hot dog vendors are complemented by concessions selling hummus plates, grilled vegetable wraps and veggie burgers.
Too bad the Nats aren’t providing fans with a similar variety of people it honors on game days. Unfortunately, the game-day experience is dominated by a celebration of America’s endless wars against the world. Every third inning, for example, the Nats salute a group of soldiers, currently receiving treatment at the nearby Walter Reed Army Hospital, who were wounded through their participation in the U.S. military’s atrocities in Iraq and Afghanistan.
My suggestion to the Nats is to mix up its selection of honorees and end the military’s monopoly on the third inning. Why not honor America’s anti-warriors, the people who’ve made great sacrifices and efforts to stop the U.S. wars on Iraq and Afghanistan and who were active against previous U.S. wars of aggression.
Perhaps the Nats could alternate — recognize a warrior one day and an anti-warrior the next home game. There’s a long list of local residents who’ve made significant sacrifices in the cause of stopping war. Cindy Sheehan now lives in D.C. and would make for a perfect third-inning honoree. The Nats should invite members of the D.C. Students for a Democratic Society, a group that’s been extremely active in trying to put a halt to the U.S. war machine.
Attorneys Carl Messineo and Mara Verheyden-Hilliard have dedicated their lives to protecting anti-warriors’ right to speak out against U.S. militarism and would be ideal candidates for a third-inning honor and standing ovation. Preeminent historian William Blum has long deserved greater recognition for his contributions to helping us better understand U.S. military inventions abroad and honoring him at a Nats game would be a good first step to making amends.
Members of Iraq Veterans Against the War, many of whom have endured prison and court martial for their resistance to the U.S. war on Iraq, should have been honored during the third inning of a Nats game long ago. Daniel Ellsberg often travels to D.C. for talks and protests and also is long overdue for such an honor at a game.
The list of anti-warriors living in the D.C. area is long and diverse. Instead of its endless recruitment activities on behalf of the military, the Nats should be doing a better job of honoring people who have made great sacrifices to end U.S. military aggression against planet Earth and its inhabitants.
To make your voice heard about ending the U.S. military’s monopoly on the third-inning honors, contact the Nats at 202-675-6287 or the Lerner family, owner of the Nats, at 301-284-6000.Or contact the Nats’ community relations office at http://washington.nationals.mlb.com/help/index.jsp?c_id=was .
In their community relations office, the Nats employ a “community relations assistant for military affairs” named Rafael Delgado. Let the Nats know it’s time to hire a “community relations assistant for antiwar affairs.”
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Tuesday, April 27, 2010
Radical Fitness
Being dark green radical needn’t require one to sleep till noon, dress entirely in black, and sport a rail-thin heroin addict physique. Then again, neither should Michael Moore serve as anyone’s perfect role model for healthy rebellion.
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Bonus post:
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Poem: “running late on the subway haiku"
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Monday, April 26, 2010
Make Everyday An Earth Day … and Fight Like Hell
By Frank Joseph Smecker
Forty times now, Earth Day has come and gone. Four decades of enviro-stewarding celebration and still a damn mess, this dominant culture has marched closer to planetary collapse ever so stridently over the last 40 years. This year, E-Day was rung in with an oil platform off the coast of New Orleans, ablaze like a birthday candle out of control, oil sloshing into the Gulf; a diffused chemical rainbow displacing the pelagic blue of the Atlantic waters. This is far from irony—a malefic boner (no, not that kind silly) ascribed to the inherent destructiveness of the dominant culture and its insanely irrational operating instructions.
Over all these years, the voracity of civilization’s appetite has remained insatiate, devouring cultures of people; animal species aplenty; densely contiguous forests; ancient coral reefs; entire oceans; ranges of mountains; masses of majestic glaciers; systems of rivers, brooks, streams and other watershed; hundreds of feet of topsoil; earthworm populations… the list is long and expanding.
Unless we finally put forth a threshold at which point we turn every day into an Earth Day and begin fighting back in defense against the very system of violence that is invariably destroying the natural places we rely on for our very survival—i.e. our sources of food, water, air and relationships—the dominant culture will devour this planet whole, along with everyone on it (human & nonhuman). You can count on that. It is impossible to provide substantiating evidence proving differently. Year after successive year, analysis shows more species gone, more preventable cancer rates ascending, more ecological and climatic havoc caused to the planet, etc & c. Here in Vermont one could drink from the mountain streams no more than fifty years ago. These days you’d be a fool to attempt it without some kind of water-purifying mechanism. Unless action is taken to reverse the démodé trend of globalization and latter’s ensuing planetary destruction, the next generations may not even have running water to purify. Apparently.
In this postmodern era of globalization (which is really the extenuation of colonialism, or better yet, the management of postcolonial assets perpetrated and secured by the violence of Empire and its omnicidal program euphemized as “civilization”) it’s important to see the concessions for what they really are.
Let’s start with the Internet. For example, Google’s search engine isn’t some benevolent ethereal wish-granter. Server plants require tremendous amounts of energy to allow search engines to function. Every Google search, every Yahoo! search—at the click of a mouse, requires the burning of fossil fuels. The amount of CO2 released into the atmosphere by server plants rivals that of the car-manufacturing industry, btw. Too, there are riparian server plants along the Colombia River. Chinook salmon is disappearing from this river. And what about computers? These gadgets use 1500 kg of water and 10X their own mass in fossil fuels and other chemicals, and then some in their manufacturing process. To go paperless is not to ‘Go Green.’
Then there’s coltan (columbite tantalite) that, refined to tantalum, is necessary for capacitors, which store an electrical charge in every electronic device imaginable (e.g. laptops, DVD players, cellular telephones [yes, even your iPhone boyz’n’galz], Playstations et al and so on). The mining of coltan along the DRC (= “Democratic” Republic of Congo)/Rwandan border has been behind seemingly endless civil war between tribes, claiming more than 5 million lives. Prepubescent children are handed guns and forced to partake in the raping and murdering of entire village communities. Mining for this mineral is also erasing the Eastern Lowland Gorilla from the planet. All this beautiful life is being lost in exchange for a cheap handset, for another pixel-in-motion PS3 RPG, or for that stupid iPad or something…
The construction of undersea cables disrupts the benthic ecosystems of ocean floors. Cell towers and their wacky EM waves are killing migratory songbirds. Technological advancement requires cheap energy. We are running out of cheap energy. Besides, cheap energy may be a bargain in the pecuniary sense, but it’s costing us real physical life on a grand scale.
It’s true that globalization is “making it easy for anyone to do remote development,” rejoices the imbecile Thomas Friedman. But what that really means is corporate CEOs can now manage their industrial plants in Brazil, Chile, Colombia, China, Indonesia, India, Nicaragua, et al from the comforts of their own homes, offices and conference rooms without having to witness first-hand, the environmental degradation they are causing, or the abject living conditions they are creating: the despoliation of water and air quality, the acidification of ocean waters, the lengthening of the endangered species list, the birth defects of children, the civil unrest and hunger, the wars being fought, women being raped, subsistence and small-scale farmers crying, thousand-year-old trees toppled, chopped—vanished. They don’t see the polar bears drowning in gelid waters, a tragic end to the searching of food in an area rapidly melting on account of this culture’s negligent indulgence in fossil fuels and industrial production.
Or on a more domestic front, e.g., King Coal doesn’t notice the tops of mountains missing in Appalachia—their CEO’s too busy teeing-off on the golf courses that replace them. These f***kers only notice the large subsidies the US supplies them; they don’t hear the heavy sobs of distressed mothers piercing the darkest hours of the night as they cradle in their laps children who are coughing incessantly and choking violently on their own spittle, suffering from blue-baby syndrome caused from inhaled coal ash. King Coal execs don’t care about the more-than-750-miles of watershed choking on the detritus of mountaintops, scarring the miraculous matrix of organic processes and symbiotic relationships synecdochically known as the “web-of-life.”
Meanwhile, when inundating floods aren’t shuffling toxic coal-slurry everywhere, drought continues to plague the surrounding Appalachian regions, and the water bottle industry persists in extracting copious amounts of groundwater faster than can be replaced by the hydrologic cycle. The bottled water is then sold to exploited miners who work all day, who live in abject poverty, while Texas burns all the coal to power death row, where they hold the record in executions of mentally ill prisoners.
Globalization has affluenced the upper hierarchy, while below, people and forests die and disappear. Ninety-five percent of North America’s original forests have been clear-cut. Gone. And every stream and river in the continental US contains carcinogenic material. What once was a population of 60 million “genetically pure” buffalo grazing the Great Plains has been decimated to a federally controlled population of less than 15,000. The rate of species extinction is presumably “10,000 times faster than what has historically been recorded as normal”; and there is a “trash-vortex” the size of the continental US drifting in the Pacific.
Essayist and novelist Arundhati Roy reveals that overseas, the Indian government let 63 million tons of grain rot while twelve million tons were “exported and sold at a subsidized price the Indian government was not willing to offer the Indian poor.” Since 1989, police and security forces have killed approximately 80,000 people in Kashmir. Women have been gang-raped by security forces; Muslims and Sikhs have been beaten and murdered; and in the police stations it isn’t rare to see: “people being forced to drink urine to being stripped, humiliated, given electric shocks, burned with cigarette butts, having iron rods put up their anuses to being beaten and kicked to death,” writes A. Roy. The abovementioned atrocities, all of them, have been employed under the auspices of ambiguous and dubious anti-terrorism acts such as POTA (Prevention of Terrorism Act), the Armed Forces Powers Act and more (similar to the domestic PATRIOT Act and the Homeland Security Act). To paraphrase Roy, such acts allow security forces to charge individuals as “terrorists” (while corporate private enterprises and govt. back the removal of people by force to dismantle intact fecund landbases, mind you) for: acting out civil disobedience; speaking out against and/or petitioning the establishment; opposition to free trade, privatization and globalization; alongside other varieties of dissent against the establishment, capitalism, Western ethics, and/or for just being poor. Even young children have been imprisoned and held without bail under POTA.
Meanwhile, CEOs, shareholders, developers, and (obviously) private and national security forces inflict massive violence on citizens and land without any accountability (think back to the horrific 1984 incident in Bhopal when poisonous gas leaked from a US-owned pesticide co. killing thousands of people), perseverating in the psychopathy of hyper-exploitation to funnel resources back to the epicenters of “culture” and growth.
Where’s the justice? It is found in resistance to global corporate privatization and in defense of a rekindled love for the natural world we are a part of. Make every day a damn Earth Day and fight like hell for the future of this planet. Step 1: Start deglobalizing and begin relocalizing.
Frank Joseph Smecker’s work has appeared in/at: The Ecologist, Z Magazine, Rain Taxi, CounterPunch, Truth Out, Order of the Earth and other places. He is also a blogger for the Vermont Commons Journal and occasional contributor to its print edition. He can be reached at: frank.smecker@gmail.com
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Those wacky liberals say the darnedest things
For example...
1. “Republicans are evil, stupid, and mean”
2. “I’m anti-war but I completely support the troops”
3. “Ralph Nader is an egomaniac”
4. “No anarchists allowed”
5. “We can’t be too radical or else we’ll risk hurting the movement”
6. “Let’s vote for Democrats so once they’re in office, we can pressure them from the Left”
7. “Did someone secure the proper permit so we can express our opinions in a designated free speech zone?”
Hmm...what did I forget?
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Sunday, April 25, 2010
All that glitters is certainly not free
The amount of already-mined gold could satisfy demand for 50 years...but much of it currently sits in bank vaults and in old, unused jewelry.
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Bonus post
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Saturday, April 24, 2010
Cuban Folk Singer Wins Goldman Environmental Prize
Humberto Ríos Labrada is a scientist and biodiversity researcher who “worked with farmers to increase crop diversity and develop low-input agricultural systems, encouraging Cuba’s shift from agricultural chemical dependence toward sustainability.” Rios is also a folk singer who “uses a guitar and a song to spread the benefits of organic farming.”
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Poem: “Ain’t technology swell?"
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Friday, April 23, 2010
My post-Earth Day message: Fuck the military
Suggestion: The Left should abandon all “support the troops” pretense and “just war” nonsense and recognize that the U.S. Department of Defense is the largest polluter on the planet—producing more hazardous waste than the five largest U.S. chemical companies combined. Pesticides, defoliants like Agent Orange, solvents, petroleum, lead, mercury, and depleted uranium are among the many deadly substances used by the military.
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Bonus post
A food co-op grows in Brooklyn
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Poem: “Moody loner profiling on the N Train"
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Thursday, April 22, 2010
On Earth Day: Undo the latches, Give up eggs
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Wednesday, April 21, 2010
May Day event in Astoria
The folks at Buzzer Thirty in Astoria have asked me to take part in a reading/art show/social gathering to stand up against the rising tide of hate (Tea Party or otherwise).
Buzzer Thirty is calling on its artist and writer friends to offer a reflection, response, or defense to this movement and will host a group exhibition and event around these works.
Please join us to unite against racism, sexism, homophobia, and anti-immigrant discrimination. This is an excellent opportunity to meet kindred spirits and create powerful connections. Spread the word…
When: Saturday, May 1 at 6:00 p.m. (May Day)
Where:
37-06 36th Street
Astoria, NY, 11106
(R Train to 36th Street: across the street from the train)
P.S. Event details will remain posted in the right-hand column
FYI May 1 is the day after my birthday. I’m just sayin’...
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Bonus post
Derek and the Darling interview
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Tuesday, April 20, 2010
5 simple suggestions for Earth Day
It should go without saying that the earth needs more than one day but that doesn’t mean a single day cannot serve the purpose of refining visions, creating connections, and inspiring much-needed action.
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Bonus post:
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Photo by Zen Prole:
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Poem: “anarchist bookfair haiku"
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Monday, April 19, 2010
Imprisoned eco-activist being denied vegan meals
Marie Mason is in prison and her requests for an adequate vegan diet are being denied (although the Federal Bureau of Prisons maintains a policy ensuring an adequate vegan diet for inmates).
Read my post to find out how you can help
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Expendable Event Alert:
Keir has two gigs this week: NYC and Ithaca
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Sunday, April 18, 2010
April 18: Expendable James Langergaard would've been 39 today
Happy birthday, my friend. You are missed...
(vegan cake, of course)
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These bonus posts are for the birds:
“Invasive" is in the eye of the beholder
Take action to protect our feathered friends
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Friday, April 16, 2010
Biofuel Fighter Jet? Hybrid Warship? (Pre-Earth Day Greenwashing Alert)
"On Earth Day 2010, the Navy will demonstrate an F/A-18 Super Hornet, called the Green Hornet, powered by a 50/50 biofuel blend. The fuel, made from the Camelina sativa plant, is produced by Sustainable Oils of Bozeman, Montana. The flight demonstration will take place at Naval Air Station Patuxent River, Md. The Navy is also participating in research and development to identify other biofuel sources with the goal of reducing dependence on foreign energy sources and using fuel with a lower net carbon footprint than petroleum fuels."
Then you have the USS Makin Island, the “world’s first hybrid fuel warship.” Lest we forget amidst all the eco-mania, the Makin Island is built to “transport and land Marine Expeditionary Units (MEU) ashore by helicopter, landing craft and amphibious assault vehicle.”
Meanwhile, back in the real world: The US Department of Defense is still...
- ...the world’s worst polluter
- ...and the planet’s biggest gas guzzler
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Bonus Post:
Queen’s Brian May vs. Britain’s blood sports
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Thursday, April 15, 2010
Bed Stuy local and organic, plus: durians, chocolate, Scarface, and the NY Times
Hold your nose and eat a durian
Enjoy chocolate: organic, Fair Trade, dark, and raw
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We’re obviously well past the point of no return:
(via Expendable Charles’ FB page)
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Poem: “Pitiable reading habits"
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Tuesday, April 13, 2010
Pamela Anderson shakes, the Internet seduces, Central Park rocks, Lawns suck
Pam Anderson does a vegan milkshake
Can you live without the Internet?
5 ways to experience Central Park
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Poem: “thinking about the cemetery"
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Monday, April 12, 2010
You are here (in the moment)
We dwell on and brood over past hurts even though we know we can’t go back and change anything. We daydream about fantasy futures and imagined paradises that lie ahead. Meanwhile, life goes on in the present.
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Bonus post:
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Don’t support our (sic) troops:
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Sunday, April 11, 2010
Awareness vs. Community
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Poem: “The Meat Cleaver Incident"
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Saturday, April 10, 2010
KFC...WTF?
As you all know, I have a secret network of sources ever on the lookout for a link or idea that has “Mickey Z.” written all over it. Most recently, it was the mysterious Lady Shu who sent me an April 7 USA Today article entitled “Chicken replaces buns in KFC sandwich," that opened like this:
"KFC is putting its chicken where its buns were. Today, the nation’s largest chicken fast-food chain will announce plans to nationally roll out a breadless chicken sandwich that uses two boneless chicken fillets as the bun—then squeezes two pieces of bacon, two slices of cheese and some sauce in between."
I think I may need angioplasty after typing that paragraph. Yeah, KFC’s latest assault on human health, animal rights, and our eco-system comes with 1,380 milligrams of salt (about 60% of what the federal government recommends for an entire day’s consumption) and 10 grams of saturated fat (about 50% of a day’s supply).
For Javier Benito, executive vice president of marketing and food innovation at KFC, “it’s all about driving buzz and traffic among its heaviest users—guys ages 18 to 24.” In consumer studies, it seems young men said they were still hungry after eating chicken sandwiches served on conventional buns.
Of course, the antidote to fast food madness is to opt out. KFC or any other junk food pusher is rendered powerless if we refuse to consume. Think for yourself, embrace a plant-based lifestyle , and create change immediately.
P.S. Chickens Rule
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Poem: “queensboro plaza haiku"
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Friday, April 09, 2010
Obama's "New" Nuclear Policy: Change We Can Bereave In
The Pope of Hope is at it again...this time, proclaiming his distaste for nuclear destruction. In what The New York Times calls (without irony) a “sharp shift,” President Obama (says the Times) has initiated a policy that “for the first time,” has the United States “explicitly committing not to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear states that are in compliance with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, even if they attacked the United States with biological or chemical weapons, or launched a crippling cyberattack.”
Coming from a president who just can’t resist all things nuclear, this is not only as dubious as any politician’s promise (sic), it is also downright deceptive.
Every president since 1960 has approved the use of depleted uranium weapons. In other words, any public commitment to not use nuclear weapons is, on its face, a clever sidestep from reality.
“When fired,” writes journalist James Ridgeway, “the uranium bursts into flame and all but liquifies, searing through steel armor like a white hot phosphorescent flare.” The effects of DU go far beyond the immediate explosion. “The uranium-238 used to make the weapons can cause cancer and genetic defects when inhaled,” says former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark.
“Depleted uranium burns on contact,” adds Helen Caldicott, “creating tiny aerosolized particles less than five microns in diameter, small enough to be inhaled.” These particles can travel long distances when airborne-and don’t be comforted by their size.
“There is no safe dose or dose rate below which dangers disappear. No threshold-dose,’” explains John Gofman, former associate director of Livermore National Laboratory, one of the scientists who worked on the atomic bomb, and co-discoverer of uranium-233. “Serious, lethal effects from minimal radiation doses are not ‘hypothetical,’ ‘just theoretical,’ or ‘imaginary.’ They are real.”
(Excerpted from something I wrote for Planet Green but, as of now, has not been posted there)
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Just because:
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Thursday, April 08, 2010
Tiger Woods is back
If we were to spend a minute or two examining the Tiger spectacle...what might we, as activists, learn?
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Bonus posts:
Climb and Run for Calgary Wilderness on April 17
Planting trees in San Francisco
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Wednesday, April 07, 2010
Tiger Woods Is Back: 4 Lessons for Activists
By Mickey Z.
If we were to follow the cues of the corporate media, we’d focus on the multi-millionaire in Nike gear strolling across pesticide-laden grass more than, say, New York State’s Department of Environmental Conservation ruling that the “obsolete cooling system at the Indian Point nuclear power plant violates the federal Clean Water Act by polluting the river with heated water and needlessly killing vast numbers of fish.”
But what if we were to spend a minute or two examining the Tiger spectacle? What might we, as activists, learn? To follow, are 4 possible lessons:
1. Sexism
I have a thought experiment for you: How many female celebrities could have their lack of self-control and sexual habits exposed for public consumption and yet somehow end up welcomed back with open arms? Maybe we should ask Lindsay Lohan or Britney Spears?
2. Labor
Tiger Woods is well-paid (read: well-paid) for strutting around in lots of free shirts, hats, etc. But almost 75 percent of the price of a garment made in a sweatshop goes into the pockets of the manufacturer and retailer.
3. Environmentalism
According to the National Coalition Against the Misuse of Pesticides: “The extensive use of pesticides on golf courses raises serious questions about people’s toxic exposure, drift over neighboring communities, water contamination, and effects on wildlife and sensitive ecosystems.” Then there’s the water usage, e.g. the average amount of water used by one golf course in Thailand is enough for 60,000 Thai villagers for one day.
4. Propaganda
As mentioned above, the most important function of the Tiger Woods saga is to distract us from realities like 80 percent of the world’s forests are already gone. The corporate-run media has no interest in us focusing on stuff like corporate pollution.
Mickey Z. is probably the only person on the planet to have appeared in both a karate flick with Billy “Tae Bo” Blanks and a political book with Howard Zinn. He is the author of 9 books — most recently “Self Defense for Radicals” and his second novel, “Dear Vito”; he is a regular writer for Planet Green and can be found on the Web at http://www.mickeyz.net.
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Rick weighs in on the "guilt" conversation (plus: Mickey Z. podcast)
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Mickey Z. podcast:
Yours truly reads a provocative speech (given at the Left Forum in March 2010) on why the Left needs to come to grips with Animal Liberation movements, followed by an extensive interview with Steal This Radio host and radical activist Mitchel Cohen.
Listen to the full podcast here
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Monday, April 05, 2010
Q&A from Barnes & Noble, March 27
Mickey Z: March 27, 2010 Part 2 of 2 (Q&A) from Lucy Sunshine on Vimeo.
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Sunday, April 04, 2010
Watch out for the Easter Bunny
P.S. Jesus died for somebody’s sins, but not mine...
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MZ on the (internets) radio:
Mickey Z. reads his provocative speech (given at the Left Forum in March 2010) on why the Left needs to come to grips with Animal Liberation movements, followed by an extensive interview with Steal This Radio host and radical activist Mitchel Cohen.
The show will be broadcast on Tuesday, April 6 at 7 pm. (EST), and repeated on Friday, April 9 at 11 a.m. (EST). To listen in, go to NY Talk Radio at either time mentioned above and click on “Listen Live.”
After April 9, the Mickey Z. talk and interview will also be podcast 24/7, which means you can hear it (without commercials) by clicking here. (Be sure to click on the arrow at the bottom of the description for Steal This Radio #107.)
Please spread the word...
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Bonus post:
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Saturday, April 03, 2010
These 13 words can be lucky for activists
Cops, judges, and lawyers are trained to deal with situations like police stops, arrests, and other legal proceedings, but the rest of us live in a bubble of TV-induced misperceptions. There is so much to know and so many mistakes to be avoided that nobody can afford the luxury of not learning these ropes.
Magic Words: “I am going to remain silent. I would like to see a lawyer.”
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Bonus post:
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Thursday, April 01, 2010
Mickey Z., circa 1987
Yours truly, practicing my roundhouse kicks—poolside in San Juan, Puerto Rico (July 1987)
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Bonus post:
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Wednesday, March 31, 2010
Arlington Barnes & Noble (March 27) videos
(with gratitude to Nancy Ryan and Mark Hand)
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Poem: “On the train going to high school one morning"
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Tuesday, March 30, 2010
A Vegan Vaudeville Violinist?
Electric violin pyrotechnics, heartbreakingly lush orchestrations, hard-core beats, menacing lyrics, and veganism? Where do I sign up?
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(Thanks, RMJ)
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Bonus post:
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Sunday, March 28, 2010
Barnes & Noble video: March 27 in Arlington, VA
Mickey Z: March 27, 2010 Part 1 of 2 from Lucy Sunshine on Vimeo.
(Part 1, thanks to Nancy Ryan. Part 2 and Q&A to follow soon)
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Bonus posts:
Vegan means more than changing your diet
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Friday, March 26, 2010
Tell your friends in the DC area: I'm taking on Barnes & Noble for the second time in one week
I will be speaking at the Barnes & Noble in Arlington, Virginia on Saturday, March 27 at 6:00 pm. Hey, it even made the Washington Post...
This free event marks the release of my eighth and ninth books:
Self Defense for Radicals: A to Z Guide for Subversive Struggle
and
Be there for an evening of radical provocation and stand-up tragedy and please spread the word...thanks.
Barnes & Noble
2800 Clarendon Boulevard
Arlington, VA 22201
Special thanks to Mark Hand and Nancy Ryan for all their help
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Bonus post:
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Poem: “The scene of our crime"
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Wednesday, March 24, 2010
5 ways to value a cup of coffee (and t-shirts, too)
Shade-grown coffee requires less fertilizer, prevents soil erosion, requires fewer or zero pesticides, and promotes biodiversity.
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Bonus post:
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Poem: “Found (in the NY Times) Poem"
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Tuesday, March 23, 2010
Left Forum, Barnes & Noble re-cap of sorts
Both events were extremely positive, gratifying, and fun. I felt more community and solidarity on Sunday and Monday than I have in a while. There are far too many folks to acknowledge so this post will just have to do as a blanket thank you. All I can hope is that those who attended these events will continue doing so and bring more friends and comrades each time.
Note: I’ll be speaking this Saturday, March 27 at the Barnes & Noble in Arlington, Virginia at 6:00 p.m.
As of now, I may also be speaking at the NYC Anarchist Bookfair on April 17 and I will definitely be the keynote speaker at this year’s Veggie Pride Parade on May 16. More details, of course, will follow.
As soon as I download the event photos from Michele’s camera, I’ll be posting them to this blog and my Facebook pages. Stay tuned…
(Update: scroll down for three photos)
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Bonus post:
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With Gary Null on a Left Forum panel
Tribeca B&N
Expendable Charles and I show our Yankee colors
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Saturday, March 20, 2010
Who's coming to my two NYC events?
Take a glance over to the right-hand column for details on my Left Forum panel this Sunday afternoon (March 21) and my Barnes & Noble talk this Monday evening (March 22). If you live in the NYC area, please come check me out (especially the B&N gig). You won’t regret it.
If you’re not a New Yorker, I’m counting on you to coerce and cajole your Big Apple comrades to attend my events. Thanks in advance…
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Bonus post:
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Friday, March 19, 2010
5 ways to value an automobile
The automobile and the lifestyle it inspires have risen to prominence through the power of relentless suggestion. There’s nothing delicate about car commercials and car toys and the hundreds of songs and movies that venerate the irrefutable gratification of owning an internal combustion engine of your very own.
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Bonus post:
Grateful Dead, Papa Mali, and more
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Poem: “st. pat’s parade haiku"
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Thursday, March 18, 2010
5 Ways to Value a Pig...and a Glacier
If our primary perception of a pig is that of a filthy, perhaps useless creature, we can un-burden ourselves of any questions about how those pork chops ended up on our plate.
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Bonus post:
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Wednesday, March 17, 2010
Animal Rights/Vegan Issues: Where's the Left?
By Mickey Z.
In a recent article, I discussed how America’s top liberal (sic) eco-spokesperson, Al Gore, conveniently ignores the primary cause of climate change: factory farming and the industrial meat-based diet (and thanks to Hope Bohanec at In Defense of Animals, I’ve learned of a new report [pdf] from World Watch that found animal byproducts are responsible for 32.6 billion tons of carbon dioxide per year, or 51 percent of annual worldwide human caused greenhouse gas). A man of Gore’s reach and influence is squandering an immense opportunity to educate, inform, and to inspire serious change.
What about those far to the left of Gore? Where are the “real” progressives on dark green issues pertaining to animal rights, veganism, and the environment? Unfortunately, in most cases, the record is equally abysmal.
For example, there’s Z Magazine and Z Net founder Michael Albert. With nearly a half-century of lefty credibility and one of the largest liberal/progressive audiences around, how does Albert use this platform to address, say, fur farms or shark hunting? In his memoir, Remembering Tomorrow, Albert unabashedly clarifies his perspective: “I see no comparison in importance between seeking to eliminate the roots and branches of sexism, and seeking to eliminate the roots and branches of violence against animals. I see no comparison in importance between how chickens are treated and how women or any humans are treated. In fact, for me the animal rights agenda resonates barely at all, and the anti-sexism agenda is part of my life.”
Let’s be clear: Attempting to separate violence against humans from violence against animals (and all nature) is like trying to disconnect the human circulatory system from the respiratory system. The entrenched Left is not grasping obvious connections and what Albert is doing—intentionally or not—only legitimizes his personal myopia. Like Gore, he is wasting a chance to reach a large audience with an urgent message.
Which brings us to example #2: Ward Churchill. I have nothing but admiration for this American Indian scholar/activist…until he says stuff like this: “For most people in the anarchist community who organize in their little collectives and get together and eat their bean sprouts and shit, it’s only for themselves at the present time. If you want to talk to factory workers, you need to connect with them where they are, not where you think they should be. You need to get over your prohibition on ashtrays… Get over your bicycles and go down and bend a wrench with a gear-head for a while. Do what he’s fucking doing.”
Take-home message: “Real men” fix cars and smoke cigarettes. Wimps ride bikes and eat sprouts.
With 80% of the world’s forests already cut down, 90% of the large fish in the ocean already gone, over 100 plant or animal species going extinct each day, and our eco-system rapidly approaching the dreaded point of no return, I’d say there’s never been more urgent time to be a wimp. Yet, in the face of such a palpable global crisis, most of the Left continues to ignore the big picture—even going as far as to mock the vegan/animal rights movement.
Let’s suppose Al Gore, Michael Albert, and Ward Churchill are hanging out and happen upon an old metal lamp. Immediately thinking of its recycle value, Gore decides the rub the lamp to give it a shine. Voila, a multi-cultural genie appears and offers the men three wishes. Churchill doesn’t trust the genie, Albert wants to know if the genie has read anything about Parecon, but Gore convinces them both to go along. They make their wishes and in a flash, everyone in America is driving a hybrid, sexism is outlawed, and the US decides to honor at least some of its long standing treaties with this land’s indigenous population. Great news all around, right?
But none of these breakthroughs will bring back a single endangered species or end deforestation or enlighten those who partake in the standard American diet and now have the standard American diseases. Single issues are not the path to a more sane culture. We need a far more holistic view of radical activism and that cannot happen until most of us recognize the connections between humans and animals, humans and nature.
Let me provide one example: Between 50 and 100 million sharks are killed each year around the world, for their fins or simply as “by-catch” (the marine version of collateral damage). Sharks are apex predators that help ensure ocean diversity. The human-induced loss of sharks has led, for example, to their sudden absence from coral reef ecosystems. As a result, large predatory fish like the grouper increase in abundance and feed on the herbivores. This reduction in herbivores, in turn, leads to an increase in macroalgae. Coral cannot compete with the algae dominance and the survival of the reef system is in question. Why does that matter? Coral reefs have been called “rainforests of the sea” and are home to a quarter of all marine fish species. Coral reefs also buffet coastal regions from strong waves and storms. When threats to coral reefs is coupled with sea level rise…well, you get the idea. Perhaps most importantly, coral reefs are invaluable carbon sinks and play a role in the earth’s surface temperature range. Not a bad reason to start caring about sharks, huh?
Lesson for the Left: Industrial civilization is the enemy. Not this particular president or that particular gender or those particular laws. The Left’s absence on issues of animal rights, veganism, and darker shades of green is not just inexcusable. It’s suicidal.
For those who still choose to hide behind the “there’s too much human suffering for me to focus on animals” canard, I’ll close with the words of Peter Singer: “Everyone has a limited amount of time and energy, and time taken in active work for one cause reduces the time available for another cause; but there is nothing to stop those who devote their time and energy to human problems from joining the boycott of the produce of agri-business cruelty. It takes no more time to be a vegetarian than to eat animal flesh. When non-vegetarians say ‘human problems come first,’ I cannot help wondering what exactly it is that they are doing for humans that compels them to continue to support the wasteful, ruthless exploitation of farm animals.”
Mickey Z. is probably the only person on the planet to have appeared in both a karate flick with Billy “Tae Bo” Blanks and a political book with Howard Zinn. He is the author of 9 books — most recently “Self Defense for Radicals” and his second novel, “Dear Vito”; he is a regular writer for Planet Green and can be found on the Web at http://www.mickeyz.net. He will be participating in a panel called, “Speciesism, the Forgotten Oppression: Why Should the Left Care?” at the Left Forum on March 21 and will be giving a book talk at the Barnes & Noble in Arlington, Va., on March 27.
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Animal rights and the Left
Hey, it was time to write something that was too radical for Planet Green (and plug my Left Forum panel while I’m at it).
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For March 17: St. Patrick’s Battalion
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Tuesday, March 16, 2010
Underground music, hemp, and local food
Every time The Meetles perform in the notorious Big Apple subways, harried commuters stop rushing, grim facial expressions disappear, singing and dancing starts to happen, and community erupts spontaneously.
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Bonus posts:
How to go local with your eating
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Monday, March 15, 2010
5 ways to look at a corporation
My favorite way to view a multi-national? Temporary.
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Bonus post:
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Vegans rock (Alanis, Moby, Chrissie, Fiona, and more)
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Poem: “The Crazy Mixed-Up Monster"
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Sunday, March 14, 2010
5 ways to look at a river
For some, rivers provide habitat, freshwater, recreation, and contemplation. They offer continuity and a sense of history. Rivers mean transportation, connection, and boundaries. Rivers link mountain peaks with ocean depths.
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Poem: “Vinny’s Driving Skills"
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Saturday, March 13, 2010
Meat causes 51% of climate change
According to a new report from World Watch, animal byproducts are responsible for 32.6 billion tons of carbon dioxide per year, or 51 percent of annual worldwide human caused greenhouse gas. It’s even worse than we imagined…
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Friday, March 12, 2010
5 ways to look at a mountain
Born in the glorious violence of two tectonic plates pressing against each other until the land lifts and folds over itself, mountains link the sky to the ocean floor and have fired human (and animal?) imaginations since, well...forever.
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Thursday, March 11, 2010
5 ways to look at a shark
Peter Benchley, author of the book that truly started the shark frenzy, once said: “If we kill everything in the ocean, and if we pollute the ocean to a point where it can’t sustain life, we’re committing suicide.”
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Some March Madness for ya:
My March Madness:
*Doing a panel at the Left Forum on March 21
*Speaking at the Tribeca Barnes & Noble on March 22
Besides requesting that New York-area regulars and other visitors here attend at least one of these events, I really need your help in spreading the word...especially for the Barnes & Noble talk. Thanks…
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Poem: “It was all innocent fun"
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Wednesday, March 10, 2010
5 ways to look at a tree
Everything, it seems, is potentially a “commodity.” We “spend” time, we “invest” in relationships, and some of us view trees as nothing more than potential lumber and/or paper.
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John Joseph of The Cro Mags sez: “Meat is for pussies"
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Tuesday, March 09, 2010
"Lost" Hendrix music takes us back to the future
The much anticipated posthumous Jimi Hendrix album comes out on March 9 and is called Valleys of Neptune. It contains twelve “lost” tracks, recorded mostly in 1969. Of these dozen Hendrix tunes, seven are previously unreleased songs, including the title track.
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Al Gore and meat, again:
Another version of my recent Al Gore post was just published by Truthout.
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Monday, March 08, 2010
The MC5 taught us about rock and revolution
When you think “1960s rock legends,” it may conjure up images of Dylan, Jagger, Lennon, and Hendrix. Contemplate radical rock and roll activism and you might hear Rage Against the Machine bangin’ in your head. But there’s an underappreciated band that fits both categories: The MC5 (a.k.a. Motor City 5).
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March 8 is International Women’s Day
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Friday, March 05, 2010
Angela Davis: Still raising consciousness today
Angela Davis sez: “Revolution is a serious thing, the most serious thing about a revolutionary’s life. When one commits oneself to the struggle, it must be for a lifetime.”
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Thursday, March 04, 2010
Why won't Al Gore talk about meat?
Al Gore penned a long New York Times op-ed entitled, “We Can’t Wish Away Climate Change,” on February 28, 2010. No surprises were involved:
*Gore writing about climate change? (check)
*Gore being long-winded? (check)
*Gore ignoring the #1 cause of climate change? (check)
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Bonus post:
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Are you ready for spring training?
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Poem: “Schooling at 204 Center (Part 2)"
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Tuesday, March 02, 2010
Finding community on and off the wall
“In such an individual sport, I’m impressed by the unrelenting support our climbers show for one another, even when they are competitors.”
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Astoria Event Alert:
My friend Ed is doing a fundraiser for Haiti at Hell Gate Social on Friday, March 19.
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Poem: “Schooling at 204 Center (Part 1)"
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Sunday, February 28, 2010
What does a 4-year-old know about global warming?
It’s we adults who complicate what’s simple: The path towards a cleaner, greener planet begins with the simple choice to change how we live and what we allow the biggest polluters to do.
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Bonus post:
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Poem: “I was too amused to be afraid"
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Saturday, February 27, 2010
How Toxic is Your Child?
It’s rare when The New York Times deems any criticism of corporate power fit to print. Therefore, I immediately noticed a February 25, 2010 op-ed by Nicholas D. Kristof entitled, “Do Toxins Cause Autism?”
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Thursday, February 25, 2010
What does "peace" mean to you?
Planet Green asked me to do this post based on a recent effort to get some pop stars’ thoughts on “peace.” I hope you’ll check it out, vote for it, and then provide some way better answers as to the meaning of peace.
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Wednesday, February 24, 2010
Mickey Z. at the 2010 Left Forum
Having seen me in action at the Veg Pride Parade last May, Kamil Ghoshal has asked me to participate on a panel discussion at this year’s Left Forum. The panel is called, “Speciesism, the Forgotten Oppression: Why Should the Left Care?” and will allow me the opportunity to call out a huge segment of the Left for being absent on animal rights and vegan issues.
As of now, the panel will also include Pamela Rice, John Sanbonmatsu, and Gary Null.
It takes place Sunday, March 21 at noon and there is an entry fee to attend the Left Forum.
Reminder: I will be speaking at the Tribeca Barnes & Noble the following evening, March 22, at 7:00 pm. I’d appreciate any and all help in drawing a large audience to both events.
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Bonus links:
Please vote for this one:
Is Paul McCartney Better Than Pesticide?
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Tuesday, February 23, 2010
Who Belongs on the Mount Rushmore of Green?
Environmentalists have existed even before they had a label. Respect for the natural world is not “new age,” it’s about as old school as any human can get. So...which humans might belong in the eco-pantheon?
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Monday, February 22, 2010
We need more "dangerous" people
With the documentary, The Most Dangerous Man in America, nominated for an Academy Award, it’s an ideal time for us to draw inspiration from a proud—and underappreciated—episode in American History: Daniel Ellsberg leaking the Pentagon Papers.
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WWE “Diva” Tiffany is a vegan?
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Sunday, February 21, 2010
The Olympics can be an important forum for challenge and change
Forty-two years ago, during the Summer Games in Mexico City, the political met the athletic. Sports showed a subversive side in a timeless image of two barefoot men on the medal podium, beads dangling from their necks. As America’s national anthem commenced, sprinters Tommie Smith—the son of a migrant worker—and Harlem’s John Carlos raised their black-gloved fists in the air.
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Poem: “Readin’, Writin’, and the Rulin’ Class"
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Saturday, February 20, 2010
February 20 is my Mom's birthday
So, I did a post for Planet Green in her honor, “Mother Knows Best: My Mom Was DIY Before it Was ‘Green’”
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And: I created her very own Facebook memorial page
Happy Birthday, Mom...
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Friday, February 19, 2010
Painting a Darker Shade of Green: The Revolutionary Power of Art
A particular way of thinking has gotten us into the eco-mess we’re in. Reactions like hybrid cars, carbon offsets, and organic meat spring from this same way of thinking and can only be seen as stop-gaps at best. To cultivate deep systemic change requires an entirely new way of thinking. Drastic situation, drastic measures, all all that. To illustrate my point, I’ll tell you about Jackson Pollock.
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Thursday, February 18, 2010
6 American Revolutions
From grade school, we learn to swoon at the call of “Give me liberty or give me death.” What we usually don’t learn is how often this sentiment has been put to the test throughout American history.
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Bonus posts:
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Remembering “Salt of the Earth"
Green Music: The Earthworm Ensemble
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Wednesday, February 17, 2010
Meat the Press
Like anything outside the “work, consume, obey authority” mainstream, veganism does not fit neatly into the corporate media paradigm. It challenges the status quo, it pisses off advertisers, and it encourages independent thought.
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Tuesday, February 16, 2010
Mickey Z. in the New York Daily News
“From the very first page of his latest novel, you can tell the author hails from Queens.”
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6 reasons to try a raw food diet
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Monday, February 15, 2010
Writing as Mapmaking
William S. Burroughs sez: “In writing, I am acting as a mapmaker, an explorer of psychic areas and I see no point in exploring areas that have already been thoroughly surveyed.”
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Bonus posts:
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Vegans vs. hunger and corporate welfare
How green is your favorite pub?
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Sunday, February 14, 2010
Introduction to Activism (a prerequisite course)
On some level, we all know there are no free lunches. If we want peace, justice, and solidarity, we have to work for it. If want clean air, clean water, and safe food, it’s not going to happen without some serious, sustained rabble-rousing.
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Bonus post:
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Sexy green for Valentine’s Day
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Event Alert: Please take note of my Barnes & Noble event, detailed in the right-hand column. I’m counting on you to help me spread the word.
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Friday, February 12, 2010
Stay calm. Everything is normal.
Nothing new for the month of February
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Poem: “The Pre-DVD Days of Lore"
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Wednesday, February 10, 2010
Madonna does Malawi (again)
Madonna’s activist cred has always been, um, borderline at best...burning up the distinction between making a statement and creating a photo op.
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Bonus post:
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How to Throw a Left Hook (Literally and Metaphorically)
It is a knockout blow that can stop a charging opponent in his or her tracks and change the momentum of any battle.
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Tuesday, February 09, 2010
Earthworm Appreciation Day
Why earthworms? Charles Darwin, after making a careful study of our squirmy pals, reached this conclusion: “It may be doubted if there are any other animals which have played such an important part in the history of the world as these lowly organized creatures.”
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Monday, February 08, 2010
Is Bono an egomaniac?
U2 lead singer Bono has justifiably gotten grief for fraternizing with the unrepentant opposition, for his band’s massive carbon footprint, and for backing out of a much-needed debate on the efficacy of celebrity activism. Now, he’s taken a hit from a fellow rock band front man.
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Bonus post:
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What can the Reds teach the Greens?
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Poem: “Brangelina and Climate Change"
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Sunday, February 07, 2010
The Beatles can still inspire: 46 years after conquering America
Despite the rose-colored title, “All You Need is Love” sounds like a clarion call for green revolutionaries everywhere. “There’s nowhere you can be that isn’t where you’re meant to be.” Since this is the greatest time ever to be an activist, perhaps it’s no coincidence that you and I are here now. Maybe we’re the lucky ones trusted with the urgent mission of survival. As George wrote: “I look at you all, see the love there that’s sleeping.”
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Saturday, February 06, 2010
3 from Planet Green: Seed bombs, Einstein's tailor, and Hepburn's pants
The Army of the Future Will Use Seed Bombs
What Would Einstein’s Tailor Do?
Katharine Hepburn’s Revolutionary Fashion Statement
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Poem: “Our TV-worshipping neighbor"
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Friday, February 05, 2010
Cook a meal for your friends
Being that this is Face-to-Face February, it might be the ideal time to host a dinner party.
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Thursday, February 04, 2010
Expendable Andy is shaking things up in Shanghai
On January 11, 2010, something happened in Shanghai that has never happened before in mainland China: A PETA photo shoot. I know this because one of the people most responsible for this breakthrough is writer and musician, Andy Best—a regular visitor and contributor to my blog.
Let’s make this post blow up across the Web. Please send out, cross-post, and share far and wide. Thanks…
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Poem: “Mr. Darwin would be quite alarmed"
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Wednesday, February 03, 2010
Attack of the Giant Centipedes
Some unexpected nature videos (with apologies to those on dial-up):
A giant centipede can kick tarantula ass...
...and can even catch a goddamned bat out of the air...
....but remember: it’s best to never fuck with a grasshopper mouse...
Then again, maybe we just need to dance...
So, who else has something, uh...offbeat to share with us?
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Please join me.... in saying thanks to Nancy for her ongoing efforts to bring this blog a new, more user-friendly look. Keep the feedback coming and stay tuned for more changes.
Also: Any New York-area Expendables (or lurkers) wanna try to create some kind of monthly gathering, say, on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon?
And lastly...don’t forget to “friend” and/or “fan” me at Facebook.
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Monday, February 01, 2010
Can a vegan be a mixed martial arts (MMA) fighter? (Answer: Yes)
As Mac Danzig prepares for his big pay-per-view Ultimate Fighting Championship event on February 6, he will be participating in the world’s fastest growing sport: Mixed Martial Arts (MMA). What sets the 5-foot-9, 155 pound Danzig apart from his fellow MMA combatants can be summed up in one word: vegan.
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Sunday, January 31, 2010
Another rave review of "Self Defense for Radicals"
“Knowing how to use your body in emergencies is as important as knowing how to argue for your beliefs in the face of adversity.”
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Saturday, January 30, 2010
My next novel will be called "Darker Shade of Green"
I’m happy to announce that I just signed a contract for book #10, my third novel. It’s called Darker Shade of Green and concerns itself (in part) with ecotage. Darker Shade of Green will be published in late 2010 by Raw Dog Screaming Press...the same folks who released my first novel, CPR for Dummies, in 2008.
Stay tuned for more info...
In other news: Thanks to a suggestion from Expendable Keir and help from Nancy Ryan, I do hope to put this blog through a major re-design soon. At first, you may notice some tweaks that clean up the messes. After that, watch for Nancy to work her magic to give Cool Observer a new look.
And now, a Planet Green link:
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Friday, January 29, 2010
6 Uses For a Dead Mall
From sea to shining sea, the land of the free is littered with dead malls. From 2007 to 2009, more than 400 of the largest 2,000 malls in the U.S. shut their doors.
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I wrote this about Howard Zinn for Planet Green
RobinHolland_thumb.jpg)
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Thursday, January 28, 2010
Howard Zinn, 1922-2010
Before we humans got too damn smart for our own good, someone like Howard Zinn would have been rightfully called a “saint."
I was fortunate enough to know Howard a little. He wrote a blurb for my first book, Saving Private Power, in 2000...not only calling me “iconoclastic and bold,” but lending me instant credibility with one paragraph. Also, when I later asked him to write an introduction for another of my books, A Gigantic Mistake, he replied with a short comment about not liking introductions. He preferred to dig right into a book, he said. I promptly asked if I could use that comment as my book’s “anti-introduction,” and he loved the idea.
Howard Zinn sez: “The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.”
He also sez: “As dogma disintegrates, hope appears. Because it seems that human beings, whatever their backgrounds, are more open than we think, that their behavior cannot be confidently predicted from their past, that we are all creatures vulnerable to new thoughts, new attitudes. And while such vulnerability creates all sorts of possibilities, both good and bad, its very existence is exciting. It means that no human being should be written off, no change in thinking deemed impossible.”
Howard Zinn changed...from soldier to sage
Losing him brought to mind this quote from I.F. Stone: “If you expect to see the final results of your work, you simply have not asked a big enough question.”
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Poem: “Our game plan was far from clever"
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Wednesday, January 27, 2010
Is there opportunity in the recent Supreme Court decision?
Despite the frightening implications of this decision, it has a potential green lining: For all the talk about a two-party system and creating change from within, it has now be made indisputably clear that we in the green movement cannot rely on the power structure to provoke the type of drastic cultural adjustments the planet requires. This realization, perhaps, can free our minds to now move in a new direction—a direction based not on a few crumbs from above but rather, unshakeable solidarity from below.
(please vote for it)
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Bonus posts:
Article about my stunt man friend
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Tuesday, January 26, 2010
Rave reviews for both "Dear Vito" and "Self-Defense for Radicals"
“It would seem that with every book Mickey Z. sets his personal bar for excellence just a little bit higher. Dear Vito puts that bar into territory that a lot of writers can only dream about. Mickey Z. has penned a novella worthy of his fictional legend.”
“If you’ve ever wanted a really intelligent, witty and rather driven man to come over to your house and teach you how to stick up for yourself Self-Defense for Radicals is probably your best bet.”
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Monday, January 25, 2010
Practical Tools to Expand One's Notion of Freedom in a Violent World
By Chellis Glendinning
Review of Self-Defense for Radicals: A-Z Guide for Subversive Struggle by Mickey Z. (PM Press, 2009).
The prospect of setting words to page about Mickey Z.’s Self-Defense for Radicals catalyzed a certain queasiness. It brought up the rosebush reality of…violence.
In an era of drop-of-the-hat planetary destruction, as dirty wars erupt like acne and respect for Gandhi’s ahimsa has re-blossomed like Persephone’s return, as former Weather Underground activist Mark Rudd is crisscrossing the U.S. calling for a pacifist movement and Hugo Chavez is pronouncing that armed struggle is passé — to purvey violence seems patently verboten.
Martial artist Mickey Z. tackles my hesitancy on the first page, laying out a scenario of a strong-arm attack on a friend and asking if I would pray, meditate, and go philosophical—or if I would stomp my foot, jab the dude’s eyes, kick him in the balls, grab my friend, and bolt. It’s the de rigueur challenge presented to every armed-services draftee applying for Conscientious Objector status, perhaps thorny for he who is seeking community service over combat—but oh so obvious to the rest of us.
Violence has long been a subject requiring re-clarification. Violence against whom/what? Why/how? are the questions. Is it against a child? Or an animal? Is it aimed at a corporate chief’s unoccupied fourth mansion? Or the window at Citibank?
Feminists provided a new layer of clarification in the 1970s, proposing that violence consists of any exertion of force that injures or abuses a person, that it exists on a spectrum from invisible to blatant, psychological to bloody. France’s recent law criminalizing verbal abuse in marriage signals that the lesson may be penetrating in some quarters.
Social activist Z. stands with the feminists, and his business is defense in a violent world. Avoid poorly lit areas, he reminds us. Vary your normal routes and routines. Toss an object at an attacker. When grabbed from behind, nod your head forward, then thrust it back. And scream. Always scream.
But landing a left hook, he makes clear, occurs in a social context in which power-over is not random. Ninety-five percent of domestic assaults, he quotes, are perpetrated on women by men. Twenty-five percent of girls and seventeen percent of boys are sexually assaulted by the time they reach age 18. Each and every day 600 women are raped in the U.S. Ninety-six percent of hate-crimes are assaults on gays and lesbians.
Too, violence is perpetrated against all living beings by transnational corporations and the governments that facilitate their exploits. Thirteen million tons of toxic chemicals are released into the biosphere every day, he points out. Eighty-one tons of mercury are emitted annually by electricity generation plants. Seventy thousand U.S. citizens die each year from aggravations caused by air pollution. Awareness of these violations, and defense against them, are part of Z.’s program as well.
That Self-Defense for Radicals is called a guide for “subversive struggle” suggests that it might be carried into a demo against the World Bank or the G-20. While such a pamphlet would surely be an addition to movement literature, Z. comes on more Zapatista-like in his notion of subversion: it is to be mustered at every moment in all interactions every day. Like a poet he rocks us out of the staid categories that perpetuate separation of the facets of reality, heaving us instead into the organic flow of personal and political, collective and individual—all the while providing practical tools that expand one’s notion of freedom in a violent world.
And more: I sense that “subversive action” refers to the end result of the read. This is a simple little pamphlet, and yet Z. manages to light a street torch to the never-queasy dedication to “fighting back” in the biggest sense.
Chellis Glendinning is the author of five books, including “Off the Map: An Expedition Deep into Empire and the Global Economy” and “Chiva: A Village takes on the Global Heroin Trade.” She is also a licensed psychotherapist specializing in trauma recovery and lives in Chimayó, New Mexico.
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Chellis Glendinning reviews "Self-Defense for Radicals"
Social activist Mickey Z. stands with the feminists, and his business is defense in a violent world ... But landing a left hook, he makes clear, occurs in a social context in which power-over is not random.
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January 23 at Bluestockings:
photo by Sacha Lecca
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Bonus post:
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Ecuador is much more than oil reserves
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Saturday, January 23, 2010
Vegan 2010
When a writer at Forbes.com declares, “My health care plan is a vegan diet,” it’s time to wake up and smell the tempeh.
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Bonus post:
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Ever consider living in a yurt?
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TONIGHT:
I’ll be speaking at Bluestockings Bookstore on:
Saturday, January 23 @ 7:00 pm
The event marks the release of my latest books, Self Defense for Radicals: A to Z Guide for Subversive Struggle and Dear Vito.
I hope you’ll join us, bring friends, buy the book, and spread the word far and wide.
$5 (suggested)
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Poem: “My Night in Small Claims Court"
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Thursday, January 21, 2010
What do you call a Haitian vegan animal rights activist professional hockey player?
Being a person of color is unusual enough in the National Hockey League but when Georges Laraque announced that he had gone vegan, well, he officially became an exclusive club of one.
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Bonus post:
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Where do you get your eco-news?
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Event Alert:
I’ll be speaking at Bluestockings Bookstore on:
Saturday, January 23 @ 7:00 pm
The event marks the release of my latest books, Self Defense for Radicals: A to Z Guide for Subversive Struggle and Dear Vito.
I hope you’ll join us, bring friends, buy the book, and spread the word far and wide.
$5 (suggested)
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Wednesday, January 20, 2010
Self-Defense for Environmentalists
I was able to pimp my new book and my upcoming event in a Planet Green post. Pretty cool, huh?
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Event Alert:
I’ll be speaking at Bluestockings Bookstore on:
Saturday, January 23 @ 7:00 pm
The event marks the release of my latest books, Self Defense for Radicals: A to Z Guide for Subversive Struggle and Dear Vito.
I hope you’ll join us, bring friends, buy the books, and spread the word far and wide.
$5 (suggested)
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Tuesday, January 19, 2010
Hey, I just discovered this new thing called...
As some of you know, I’ve been getting closer to caving in and creating a Facebook page...in the name of promoting my writing and network with kindred spirits. Facebook won’t let me use “Mickey Z.” as my name so I’ve come up with an admittedly inelegant solution: I created a page under the name: “Mickey Z. Zezima."
Once that page was up, I was then able to put up my own “fan page” here.
My gut tells me the fan page is the way to go for now...but it might not allow me to use “friend” as a verb to connect with others. As you can tell, this is all very much in the experimental stages. Any and all feedback is welcome.
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Bonus post:
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6 stories of personal transformation
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Event Alert:
I’ll be speaking at Bluestockings Bookstore on:
Saturday, January 23 @ 7:00 pm
The event marks the release of my latest books, Self Defense for Radicals: A to Z Guide for Subversive Struggle and Dear Vito.
I hope you’ll join us, bring friends, buy the book, and spread the word far and wide.
$5 (suggested)
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Monday, January 18, 2010
MLK (in his own words)
“When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.”
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Event Alert:
I’ll be speaking at Bluestockings Bookstore on:
Saturday, January 23 @ 7:00 pm
The event marks the release of my latest books, Self Defense for Radicals: A to Z Guide for Subversive Struggle and Dear Vito.
I hope you’ll join us, bring friends, buy the book, and spread the word far and wide.
$5 (suggested)
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Poem: “Another reason why smoking is bad for you"
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Saturday, January 16, 2010
Are green manners overrated?
In a big picture sense, we’d be better off worring about the future of the planet than worrying about being perceived as “pretentious.”
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Bonus post:
(please vote for this one, too)
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Event Alert:
I’ll be speaking at Bluestockings Bookstore on:
Saturday, January 23 @ 7:00 pm
The event marks the release of my latest books, Self Defense for Radicals: A to Z Guide for Subversive Struggle and Dear Vito.
I hope you’ll join us, bring friends, buy the book, and spread the word far and wide.
$5 (suggested)
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Friday, January 15, 2010
We need more pessimistic optimists
Don’t shy away from learning the ugly realities of industrial capitalism but never let these realities prevent you from taking urgent action and believing you can create change.
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Event Alert:
I’ll be speaking at Bluestockings Bookstore on:
Saturday, January 23 @ 7:00 pm
The event marks the release of my latest books, Self Defense for Radicals: A to Z Guide for Subversive Struggle and Dear Vito.
I hope you’ll join us, bring friends, buy the book, and spread the word far and wide.
$5 (suggested)
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Thursday, January 14, 2010
Haiti's Sorrow
Of course, you all know about the earthquake in Haiti. It’s pathetic—yet predictable—to watch the corporate media pretend it suddenly gives a shit about long-suffering, long-oppressed Haitians. Stay tuned for the Pope of Hope sending Bill Clinton and Bush the Elder to Haiti to further perpetrate the fraud.
Expendable Helga from Down Under provided a link for some historical context, re: Haiti. Also, here’s an old article of mine.
Finally, you can find some Haiti relief info here and here’s a way to provide vegan food to those in need.
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My latest on Planet Green:
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GM food side order: organ damage
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Event Alert:
I’ll be speaking at Bluestockings Bookstore on:
Saturday, January 23 @ 7:00 pm
The event marks the release of my latest book, Self Defense for Radicals: A to Z Guide for Subversive Struggle.
I hope you’ll join us, bring friends, buy the book, and spread the word far and wide.
$5 (suggested)
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Wednesday, January 13, 2010
America the Deluded
I read the September 2009 issue of National Geographic on my flight home this Monday and came across this phrase: “The failed state of Somalia, a place where pirates and terrorists rule.” To which I reply: No state has failed worse than the home of the brave and no state is more overrun by pirates and terrorists than the land of the free.
On that note, a few more Planet Green posts I hope you’ll read and vote for:
Veganism: Just what the doctor ordered
More alarming news, re: climate change
(please vote for them all)
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Event Alert:
I’ll be speaking at Bluestockings Bookstore on:
Saturday, January 23 @ 7:00 pm
The event marks the release of my latest book, Self Defense for Radicals: A to Z Guide for Subversive Struggle.
I hope you’ll join us, bring friends, buy the book, and spread the word far and wide.
$5 (suggested)
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Monday, January 11, 2010
I hate January 12
A moment of silence for Ann Zezima...
We’re back...and will mark the actual anniversary tomorrow, here in NYC. Our visit was mixed in the way almost all family visits can be mixed. However, despite the hoopla, there was no discernable difference in airport security. One thing is sure: They can’t weed out the snorers. What’s the social protocol for those times when someone falls asleep on a plane and starts to snore loud enough to be heard by anyone within 10 feet?
Anyway, the Planet Green posts have really piled up in my short absence, so here are a few I hope you’ll read and vote for:
Obama’s surge vs. Afghanistan’s eco-system
Warning to Moon: Humans approaching
(please vote for them all)
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Event Alert:
I’ll be speaking at Bluestockings Bookstore on:
Saturday, January 23 @ 7:00 pm
The event marks the release of my latest book, Self Defense for Radicals: A to Z Guide for Subversive Struggle.
I hope you’ll join us, bring friends, buy the book, and spread the word far and wide.
$5 (suggested)
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Friday, January 08, 2010
Another year has passed...
January 12 marks two years since my beloved Mom passed away. Michele and I are flying out today (Friday) to Texas to be with the family for a few days. My Internet ac