Oh Humanity

This is farming. Forget what you think you know. Community...

Thu, 30 May 2013 14:54:54 -0400

This is farming. Forget what you think you know.

Community Health Impacts of Factory Farms: Steve Wing at TEDxManhattan 2013

Video: Wealth Inequality in America

Thu, 07 Mar 2013 10:00:51 -0500

Video: Wealth Inequality in America

GMO Salmon Would Be Approved as ‘New Animal Drug’ TAKE ACTION: Tell the FDA: No Frankenfish! (From...

Thu, 03 Jan 2013 15:53:41 -0500

GMO Salmon Would Be Approved as ‘New Animal Drug’

TAKE ACTION: Tell the FDA: No Frankenfish!

(From the Organic Consumer Association Newsletter, 1/4/13)

Do you really want a mutant, likely allergenic salmon on your dinner plate that was approved by the FDA’s Center for Veterinary Medicine as a “new animal drug”?

Last week the FDA cleared the way for approval of the first genetically engineered animal for human consumption - a GMO salmon gene-spliced with an eel - despite mounting concerns that it’s likely hazardous for humans and poses a threat to the wild salmon population.

Scary enough. But get this. The FDA considers any genetically altered animal a “new animal drug” for approval purposes. That means the genetically modified animal – in this case a salmon intended as food for humans – is subjected to a less rigorous safety review than if it were classified as a food (for humans) additive.

Shameless. And there are plenty of other reasons to stop this dangerous experiment. The FDA’s own testing revealed that “Frankenfish” causes increased allergy risk in humans. “Frankenfish” grows twice as large, twice as fast as the average wild salmon. If it escapes into the wild, it could threaten the entire wild salmon population.

And, of course, there are no laws in the U.S. requiring “Frankenfish” to be labeled.

TAKE ACTION: Tell the FDA: NO FRANKENFISH!

Learn more here

Read the FDA’s Environmental Assessment

Spanish Pipedream

Wed, 05 Dec 2012 22:46:50 -0500

She was a level-headed dancer on the road to alcohol
And I was just a soldier on my way to Montreal
Well she pressed her chest against me
About the time the juke box broke
Yeah, she gave me a peck on the back of the neck
And these are the words she spoke

Blow up your T.V. throw away your paper
Go to the country, build you a home
Plant a little garden, eat a lot of peaches
Try an find Jesus on your own

Well, I sat there at the table and I acted real naive
For I knew that topless lady had something up her sleeve
Well, she danced around the bar room and she did the hoochy-coo
Yeah she sang her song all night long, tellin’ me what to do

Well, I was young and hungry and about to leave that place
When just as I was leavin’, well she looked me in the face
I said “You must know the answer.”
“She said, “No but I’ll give it a try.”
And to this very day we’ve been livin’ our way
And here is the reason why

We blew up our T.V. threw away our paper
Went to the country, built us a home
Had a lot of children, fed ‘em on peaches
They all found Jesus on their own

Powerball

Thu, 29 Nov 2012 12:37:41 -0500

Yesterday, a gas station employee asked me if I’d purchased a Powerball ticket yet. I, of course, sheepishly told her I’d never purchased one in my life. She quickly stated that I was probably better off. She then told me the Powerball was somewhere around $500,000,000. I candidly asked what a person would do with so much money. She said she knew exactly what she’d do: she would pay off her old debt and buy a house. She said she was tired of renting. We joked about other possibilities that would accompany such a large sum of money. But, as I left, I was burdened with a sobering thought: it’s unjust that this hardworking mother’s only real hope of paying off old debt and owning a home is to win the lottery. Thing is, she stands a better chance of getting sick, racking up a bunch of medical bills she can’t afford, and ending up homeless. What a world.

77.5% of American households are in debt

62% of all bankruptcies are caused by a medical illness

Student loan debt is over $1,000,000,000,000

1 in every 7 Americans is being pursued by a debt collector

So many statistics. So many more.

Check out Rolling Jubilee and learn what you can do about your debt and other people’s debt. We don’t have to be hopeless, indentured servants. Our only hope is not the Powerball. It’s time for a Jubilee.

One love,

Drew

"We are like tenant farmers chopping down the fence around our house for fuel when we should be using..."

Wed, 28 Nov 2012 16:07:35 -0500

“We are like tenant farmers chopping down the fence around our house for fuel when we should be using Nature’s inexhaustible sources of energy — sun, wind and tide. … I’d put my money on the sun and solar energy. What a source of power! I hope we don’t have to wait until oil and coal run out before we tackle that.”

- Thomas Edison, 1931

Thanksgiving: A Native American View

Thu, 22 Nov 2012 12:06:06 -0500

by Jacqueline Keeler

I celebrate the holiday of Thanksgiving. This may surprise those people who wonder what Native Americans think of this official U.S. celebration of the survival of early arrivals in a European invasion that culminated in the death of 10 to 30 million native people.

Thanksgiving to me has never been about Pilgrims. When I was six, my mother, a woman of the Dineh nation, told my sister and me not to sing “Land of the Pilgrim’s pride” in “America the Beautiful.” Our people, she said, had been here much longer and taken much better care of the land. We were to sing “Land of the Indian’s pride” instead.

I was proud to sing the new lyrics in school, but I sang softly. It was enough for me to know the difference. At six, I felt I had learned something very important. As a child of a Native American family, you are part of a very select group of survivors, and I learned that my family possessed some “inside” knowledge of what really happened when those poor, tired masses came to our homes.

When the Pilgrims came to Plymouth Rock, they were poor and hungry — half of them died within a few months from disease and hunger. When Squanto, a Wampanoag man, found them, they were in a pitiful state. He spoke English, having traveled to Europe, and took pity on them. Their English crops had failed. The native people fed them through the winter and taught them how to grow their food.

These were not merely “friendly Indians.” They had already experienced European slave traders raiding their villages for a hundred years or so, and they were wary — but it was their way to give freely to those who had nothing. Among many of our peoples, showing that you can give without holding back is the way to earn respect. Among the Dakota, my father’s people, they say, when asked to give, “Are we not Dakota and alive?” It was believed that by giving there would be enough for all — the exact opposite of the system we live in now, which is based on selling, not giving.

To the Pilgrims, and most English and European peoples, the Wampanoags were heathens, and of the Devil. They saw Squanto not as an equal but as an instrument of their God to help his chosen people, themselves.

Since that initial sharing, Native American food has spread around the world. Nearly 70 percent of all crops grown today were originally cultivated by Native American peoples. I sometimes wonder what they ate in Europe before they met us. Spaghetti without tomatoes? Meat and potatoes without potatoes? And at the “first Thanksgiving” the Wampanoags provided most of the food — and signed a treaty granting Pilgrims the right to the land at Plymouth, the real reason for the first Thanksgiving.

What did the Europeans give in return? Within 20 years European disease and treachery had decimated the Wampanoags. Most diseases then came from animals that Europeans had domesticated. Cowpox from cows led to smallpox, one of the great killers of our people, spread through gifts of blankets used by infected Europeans. Some estimate that diseases accounted for a death toll reaching 90 percent in some Native American communities. By 1623, Mather the elder, a Pilgrim leader, was giving thanks to his God for destroying the heathen savages to make way “for a better growth,” meaning his people.

In stories told by the Dakota people, an evil person always keeps his or her heart in a secret place separate from the body. The hero must find that secret place and destroy the heart in order to stop the evil.

I see, in the “First Thanksgiving” story, a hidden Pilgrim heart. The story of that heart is the real tale than needs to be told. What did it hold? Bigotry, hatred, greed, self-righteousness? We have seen the evil that it caused in the 350 years since. Genocide, environmental devastation, poverty, world wars, racism.

Where is the hero who will destroy that heart of evil? I believe it must be each of us. Indeed, when I give thanks this Thursday and I cook my native food, I will be thinking of this hidden heart and how my ancestors survived the evil it caused.

Because if we can survive, with our ability to share and to give intact, then the evil and the good will that met that Thanksgiving day in the land of the Wampanoag will have come full circle.

And the healing can begin.

Jacqueline Keeler, a member of the Dineh Nation and the Yankton Dakota Sioux works with the American Indian Child Resource Center in Oakland, California. Her work has appeared in Winds of Change, an American Indian journal.

It's Time for a Jubilee

Mon, 12 Nov 2012 15:52:43 -0500

What is a jubilee?

Jubilee comes from many faith traditions including Judaism, Christianity and Islam. A jubilee is an event in which all debts are cancelled and all those in bondage are set free. It worked in Biblical times and it can still work today. For example, a kind of jubilee happened in Iceland after the 2008 economic crisis: instead of bailing out their banks, Iceland canceled a percentage of mortgage debt. What these examples show is that debts are just a promise which can - and should - be renegotiated or cancelled when the circumstances warrant. Strike Debt believes that now is the time for a jubilee for the 99%.

How Does Rolling Jubilee Work?

Banks sell debt for pennies on the dollar on a shadowy speculative market of debt buyers who then turn around and try to collect the full amount from debtors. The Rolling Jubilee intervenes by buying debt, keeping it out of the hands of collectors, and then abolishing it. We’re going into this market not to make a profit but to help each other out and highlight how the predatory debt system affects our families and communities. Think of it as a bailout of the 99% by the 99%.

Natural Musings

Thu, 25 Oct 2012 10:00:55 -0400

I’ve never professed to be the possessor of any great wisdom. Mother Earth is so slow in her teaching, and I am so anxious to learn. She teaches in the span of a lifetime, even in generations.

We tread so heavily on this earth with a sense of superiority that has really just destroyed the natural world.Yet, our initial charge was to observe, protect and preserve natural processes, not dominate them.

Our industrial culture does not allow for a true connectivity to the natural world. In almost true Orwellian fashion, nature is now observed through fish-bowl-type experiences at parks, nature centers and zoos. Once, before our time, humans connected with nature by living in conjunction with nature; not by taking field trips once a year to see caged giraffes.

Our industrialized connection to nature comes through quantifying everything about it. Our measurements lead to understanding. Our understanding leads to self-proclaimed knowledge. Go; try to express understanding to your lover by using only mathematical formulas.

Nature is alive. Experience it.

Nature, now, is simply a “resource”. It is no longer our habitat, but we are its taskmasters

Our buildings scrape the sky. Our vessels easily navigate air, wind and water. Our chemicals grow food and our robots glean it. Our cities light up the darkest nights. Our dams determine the flow of the strongest rivers. Our thermostats turn cold to hot and heat to comfort. Our toilets flush drinking water.

We are stickmen who cut down the trees from which we came.

Our mountaintops are feeling the heat; they’re crying tears of crimson streams.

It is no surprise that we cannot love and respect one another. We have so little love and respect for the common ground we share.

Every Christian should be an environmentalist. Do you not believe in a Creator? Do you not believe in a Creation? Oceans are acidifying, species are going extinct, ecosystems are being compromised, and the global climate is warming. Maybe you’re better off not believing in a Creator. Otherwise, you might have to answer to Him for having a party at His place while He was out of town and burning it to the ground.

Every non-Christian should be an environmentalist. Especially since they’ve never been told to neglect Creation because Jesus is coming back soon, anyway.

The earth does not need human beings. The trees, birds, fish, rivers, mountains, plains, and bees; they do not need human beings.

We cannot survive without them.

“…within things there is peace, and at the end of things. It is the mind turned away from the world that turns against it.”

- Wendell Berry, “Windows Poems 19”

Obama's 262 Drone Strikes in Pakistan

Wed, 24 Oct 2012 09:35:26 -0400

The Fight of Our Time

Wed, 05 Sep 2012 10:00:33 -0400

The Fight of Our Time

"People don’t notice what doesn’t hurt them in a given moment and time. Most are only..."

Mon, 13 Aug 2012 14:23:20 -0400

“People don’t notice what doesn’t hurt them in a given moment and time. Most are only concerned with what they see and feel today. If I’m full, I’m not looking for food. If the lights are on, I’m not afraid of the dark. If I think someone is looking out for me, I won’t…and so on.”

- J. N. Buffington (my dad)

Gun control…read about it here.

Sat, 11 Aug 2012 15:06:16 -0400

Gun control…read about it here.

A Day in the Life of Big Oil

Thu, 02 Aug 2012 18:44:52 -0400

A Day in the Life of Big Oil

The Right to Know - GMOs

Thu, 02 Aug 2012 12:08:57 -0400

The Right to Know - GMOs

Economic Hitmen.

Sun, 22 Jul 2012 22:33:40 -0400

Economic Hitmen.

Story of Change

Fri, 20 Jul 2012 09:51:50 -0400

Story of Change

Jesus and Nonviolence

Wed, 18 Jul 2012 14:19:50 -0400

“The issue is not, ‘What must I do in order to secure my salvation?’, but rather, ‘What does God require of me in response to the needs of others?’ It is not, ‘How can I be virtuous?’ But, ‘How can I participate in the struggle of the oppressed for a more just world?’ Otherwise our nonviolence is premised on self-justifying attempts to establish our own purity in the eyes of God, others, and ourselves, and that is nothing less than a satanic temptation to die with clean hands and a dirty heart.”

- Walter Wink, Jesus and Nonviolence: A Third Way

Who Killed Economic Growth?

Mon, 09 Jul 2012 10:17:29 -0400

Who Killed Economic Growth?

Cooling Centers for the Homeless

Sat, 30 Jun 2012 16:33:11 -0400

Little Rock has cooling centers open for folks without air conditioning and for homeless. These are the addresses - pass it on to folks who need it.

Alert Center addresses:

•East of Broadway Alert Center - 500 East 21st St.
•West Baseline Alert Center - 9209 Mann Rd. South End Alert Center - 1100 West 33rd
•Willie Hinton Neighborhood Resource Center - 3805 W. 12th St.
•Valley… Drive Alert Center - 5621 Valley Dr.
•West Central Alert Center - 4200 John Barrow Road
•Upper Baseline Alert Center - 3623 Baseline Rd.
•Wakefield Alert Center - 7414 Doyle Springs Rd.
•Central High Alert Center - 1108 S. Park St.
•Capitol View/Stifft Station Alert Center - 2715 W. 7th St.

Little Rock’s Community Centers locations:

•Dunbar Community Center - 1001 w. 16th St.
•East Little Rock Community Center - 2500 E. 6th St.
•Southwest Community Center - 6401 Baseline Rd.
•Stephens Community Center - 3720 W. 18th St.