Ecotopian Future Historians Tribe's topics - tribe.net

Yardsharing and Seed Angels - We need you!

2009-03-05T23:48:38Z

We have a couple projects going that don't need funding - just participants!

The first is hyperlocavore.com. Hyperlocavore is a yardsharing community - built to support people in the practice of creating 'yardsharing' arrangements to grow food together.

Many people want to grow food but they lack one or two of these four things:
-time
-space
-skills
- physical strength

Forming a yardsharing group with your friends, neighbors, family or with your religious communities is easy - and free! You can set up a 'seeking yardshare' group for your area (like Chicago, South Side) or a private group for your own yardshare "Grandma's Backyard Garden"

CSAs are filling up fast. Community gardens have waiting lists. Food is getting more and more expensive.
Find some people and start growing together!

The other project we've started is The Great Let's Get Growing Seed Share.
We are asking experienced gardeners to become 'seed angels,' to adopt a newbie gardener and send them some garden seeds! I have sent four newbie gardeners enough seed that each of them will have huge beautiful edible gardens this summer. It's easy - it cost me less than 4 dollars to get four gardens going!

If you are an experienced gardener we need you to become a seed angel!
If you are a newbie food grower - sign up!

It's FREE
http://hyperlocavore.wordpress.com/2009/03/05/the-great-lets-get-growing-seed-share/

If you think these are good ideas please help us get the word out to your communities! Blog it, tweet it, share it!

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The Cascadian Guidebook Project

2008-12-03T03:34:24Z

Please check out the new blog which serves as our preliminary promotion for a bioregional guidebook project now one year in the works. The is based around a bioregional model of the cascadian region, and will serve as a tool for re-envisioning the Pacific Northwest. Get involved! Write to cascadianculture@gmail.com and see the blog at cascadianculture.blogspot.com

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Don't mix

2008-10-15T03:30:36Z

if we are parallel individuals
then no do not cross into another's trajectory (.e psychic future)

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Planning Meeting THIS WEDNESDAY in Portland about the 2008/08/08 Doug Honours Ceremony

2008-07-16T00:08:51Z

Planning Meeting THIS WEDNESDAY in Portland about the 2008/08/08 Doug Honours Ceremony

from Collin's post

Wednesday is now the night for Community Outreach at 7 PM. We will meet again at the new Virginia Cafe, 820 SW 10th Ave Portland, OR 97205. A very important discussion that will take place this Wednesday is preparation for the Doug Honours Ceremony at Peace Arch Park, August 8th, 2008.

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Utah Sustainable Community

2008-07-12T15:52:31Z

Utah Valley Commons, a cohousing community to be located south of Salt Lake City and within commuting distance of Utah Valley State College and Brigham Young University, welcomes participation by individuals and families interested in: co-housing, eco-village development, permaculture, and sustainable living in general. The UVCC has no religious or political affiliation. Everyone is welcome.

At present we are early in the planning stage, and no site has been selected. The list will serve as forum for discussion, and will lead to practical expression in the form of eco-village and/or co-housing development in or near Provo, Utah. Our models are Eco-Village at Ithaca (www.ecovillage.ithaca.ny.us/), Champlain Valley Co-Housing (www.champlainvalleycohousing.org), the Wasatch Commons (www.econ.utah.edu/~ehrbar/c...ndex.htm), and Earthsong Eco-Neighborhood (www.earthsong.org.nz), suitably modified to local conditions.

"If it is man's privilege to be independent, it is equally his duty to be inter-dependent." M. K. Gandhi

groups.yahoo.com/group/uta...cohousing/
www.utahvalleycommons.com/

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Surplus: Terrorized into Being Consumers

2008-01-23T01:26:36Z

Surplus: Terrorized into Being Consumers

This is a documentary featuring John Zerzan the infamous anarcho-primitivist from Eugene Oregon. Zerzan talks of the alienation that technology has delivered while advocates of technology have promised ease of life and the potential for more leisure time. Personally I agree with John about technology alienating, but I also know that we can not with 6 billion people return to a hunting and gathering way of life. That even in when the human population was at 1 billion in 1800 we could only support that number of people without total inhumane institutions from slavery to child labour and from gender oppression to outright genocide of whole populations. We need alternatives that are not just idealistic looks at hunting and gathering people and at the same time must deal with huge global issues in a just and fair way. Issues such as global climatic change, over population, social injustice and alienation.

Surplus: Terrorized into Being Consumers

Wiki entry:

Surplus: Terrorized Into Being Consumers is a 2003 Swedish documentary film on consumerism and globalization, created by director Erik Gandini and editor Johan Söderberg. It looks at the arguments for capitalism and technology, such as greater efficiency, more time and less work, and argues that these are not being fullfilled.

Surplus - Terrorized into Being Consumers (in 10 parts from google.ca video)

Part 1
http://video.google.ca/videoplay?docid=-2017292946244076538&q=Surplus&total=1246&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=1

Part 2
http://video.google.ca/videoplay?docid=-2017292946244076538&q=Surplus&total=1246&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=1

Part 3
http://video.google.ca/videoplay?docid=-2017292946244076538&q=Surplus&total=1246&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=1

Part 4
http://video.google.ca/videoplay?docid=-2017292946244076538&q=Surplus&total=1246&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=1

Part 5
http://video.google.ca/videoplay?docid=-2017292946244076538&q=Surplus&total=1246&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=1

Part 6
http://video.google.ca/videoplay?docid=-2017292946244076538&q=Surplus&total=1246&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=1

Part 7
http://video.google.ca/videoplay?docid=-2017292946244076538&q=Surplus&total=1246&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=1

Part 8
http://video.google.ca/videoplay?docid=-2017292946244076538&q=Surplus&total=1246&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=1

Part 9
http://video.google.ca/videoplay?docid=-2017292946244076538&q=Surplus&total=1246&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=1

Part 10
http://video.google.ca/videoplay?docid=-2017292946244076538&q=Surplus&total=1246&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=1

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A Beautiful video about the Flow of Water

2008-01-13T23:27:37Z

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1598503208400404583

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The Power of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil

2007-10-24T14:34:40Z

The Power of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil

In 1991 after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Cuba experienced an 'energy famine.' Transportation and agriculture virtually came to a stop due to lack of diesel fuel and fertilizer shortages. This film explores what changes were put in place. The makers of the film "The End Of Suburbia" went to Cuba to explore it as a test case for what the conditions after Peak Oil would look like. This is that story.

This documentary takes you through various aspects of life in Cuba - Economy, transportation, health-care, agriculture, education - and explores how they dealt with the dramatic reduction of fossil fuels to a mere fraction of their pre 1990 levels. It was nice to meet the people, see the sights, and hear the sounds. The overall feeling was that the Cubans had improved the quality of their life (after a difficult "Special Period"). Their health was better, greater sense of community, better food and healthier land. I was left with the question: Why should we wait until we run out of oil? Let's do it now. The part that I did not expect was how it challenged my understanding of the difference between a Communist country and Capitalism. Did you know that a greater percentage of Cubans own their own home than in America? More farmers now own their own land? Sort of turns the notion of what a "Free-Market" is on its head!

http://video.google.ca/videoplay?docid=4981871524314644822&q=peak+oil+cuba&total=18&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=1

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Global Citizen Center

2007-10-04T08:10:34Z

I believe this is the kind of urban synergy that can help shape an ecotopian future. Check it out & watch the video!
http://www.globalcitizencenter.org/

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Hi Guys,

2007-09-11T18:22:11Z

Hi Guys,

I have added an Energy Efficiency section to my website- Comments/Suggestions would be great.

Link: http://www.worldofrenewables.com/EnergyEfficiency/index.html

Grant Rowe

World of Renewables
grantrowe@worldofrenewables.com

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would this be of interest?

2007-09-07T01:52:05Z

Hi Tribe,
I have been asked to help produce a 9 day natural building/permaculture event on a new piece of land just south of the Baja border.
I am looking for feedback on all aspects including value,interest and curriculum.
please respond to scottankenypdx@gmail.com
Here are the details...

Oct 27 – Nov 4

Imagine a revolutionary oasis built with your very own hands
as you exercise in natural building and whole system design principles.

Imagine a community of passionate people learning what it means to be human beings,
immersed in an environment of self-expression, of listening, and of appreciation,
while they build beautifully and sustainably.

Introducing GiraSol (Sunflower), a new permaculture settlement breaking ground in November 2007. We invite you to be a part of this amazing experience by participating in a nine-day course designed to bring you competency in Permaculture and Earthen Building Methods.

Imagine yourself as part of that community…Living. Building. Playing.

This nine-day intensive design/build studio will combine natural building techniques (cobb, adobe, stone, straw/clay, passive/active heating systems) with presentations, discussions, exercises, and fun field trips.

GiraSol’s ground-breaking workshop will provide training in regenerative village design, natural construction and permaculture theory while establishing the GiraSol information center through hands-on work. The design will integrate a century-old adobe structure into a whimsical new building, seemingly sprung from the canvas of a Maxfield Parrish painting.

Led by mOceaN (Mark Lakeman), Lydia Doleman and Martin Shulke of Portland’s City Repair Project, the GiraSol Intensive will take place from 10/27/07 to 11/04/07. We will be camping as a group in the beautiful Baja desert, and all meals will be provided.

Basics

Location: GiraSol is a 200-acre parcel situated in Valle de las Palmas (Valley of the Palms), about 20 miles south of the U.S./Mexico Border and 30 miles from the Pacific Ocean between the major cities of Tijuana, Ensenada & Tecate. This new Center is on a vast tract of beautiful land in the valley, along a road from Ensenada to Tecate which is currently under construction. This road will bring unprecedented real estate development to this relatively undisturbed agrarian area. GiraSol strives to be a jewel in the Baja landscape by providing an example of sustainable community design.

Course Description: You will receive training AND become competent in the following areas:

1. regenerative village design and earthen building methods
2. biomass accumulation and use, plastering
3. roof framing
4. integrated landscaping
5. water catchment, re-use, and finishing methods.

Construction will be accompanied by discussions of the ecological features and benefits of each building phase. Through two field trips we will explore the local community by travelling to a wildlife preserve and taking part in Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead).

Daily Activities

6 a.m.
7 a.m.
8 a.m.
8:30 a.m.
Noon
2 p.m.
4–6 p.m.
6:30
8–10 p.m.
Moving Meditation
Breakfast & Daily Overview
Discussion of Daily Work Focus
Begin Field Project Work
Lunch and Siesta at the Lunch Palace
Village Design Discussion
Resume Filed Project Work
Communal Dinner
Evening Presentation/Discussion, Fire Circle

Dates: 10/27–11/04, 2007
Cost: $450

Reservations & Questions: Contact Scott Ankeny at 503.853.9376 or e-mail: scottankenypdx@gmail.com
Curriculum

There will be two tracks of education running at the same time.
Each student will be involved in both activities of building and landscaping

Day 1: Check-in, Orientation, Dinner, Campfire/Permaculture & GiraSol Overview
Day 2: Foundations, Biomass Accumulation*, Dialogue—Strategies and Practices
Day 3: Building Adobe Walls/Other Earthen Building Methods, Village Design & Community Building
Day 4: Adobe Walls, Water & Biomass Accumulation, Swales, Dialogue
Day 5: Plastering Walls, Swales, Natural Building
Day 6: Roof Framing, Tree-Planting in Biomass-filled Swales, Dialogue
Day 7: Field Trip (Ocean), Food Systems, Village Ecosystems, Spa & Special Places
Day 8: Roofing and Water, Water Catchment/Systems, Eco-Intervention
Day 9: Finishing & Systems, Visioning
Day 10: Completion, Afterparty, Departure

*Biomass piece will include the whole process — from mulching to retain rainwater
to improved soil structure resulting in increased food potentials.

Order of Construction
Foundation, Walls, Windows/Doors, Plaster, Framing, Roof

Evening Presentations
GiraSol: Story and Overview
Global Challenge, “Anti-Virus” Plan
Village Design
Inherent Nature
Case Studies of Successful Eco-Centers

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Doug Honours Ceremony July 7th at Champoeg (BE THERE!)

2007-06-24T23:10:35Z

Doug Honours Ceremony July 7th at Champoeg (BE THERE!)

The Activism for a better Cascadia begins 7/07/2007:
Join us for the Doug Honours Ceremony were we will gather to honour local/northwest activists and philanthropists by awarding them Doug Flags (the Cascadian flag). This event is the start of the movement, and where else than where it all started 164 years ago at Champoeg (pronounced sham-POO-ee), Oregon. Champoeg features a unique combination of history, nature, and recreation. This is the site where Oregon's (i.e. Cascadia) first provisional government was formed by a historical vote in 1843.
At the event we will discuss future goals and initiatives, networking, participate in history tours, enjoy a potluck picnic, and enjoy a wonderful ceremony.
Reservation is for Riverside lot #3 and our event begins at 8am and ends at 8pm.
Discussion will begin at 11:30am History Tour will begin at 1pm
Potluck Dinner at 5pm
Ceremony will begin at 7pm

Reservation ends at 8pm.
For those who wish to come to the park early you can enjoy swimming,
disc golf, biking, hiking, bird watching, etc.

Directions:
Take I-5 South if traveling form North Cascadia, or take I-5 North if traveling from South Cascadia to exit 278, and then follow these directions:

1. Take exit 278 toward Donald/Aurora National Historic District 0.2 mi
2. Turn right at Ehlen Rd NE 2.5 mi 3 mins

3. Continue on Yergen Rd NE 1.0 mi 1 min

4. Turn right at Case Rd NE 1.4 mi 2 mins

5. Slight left at Champoeg Rd NE 0.9 mi 2 mins

6. To: Champoeg State Heritage Area: 7679 Champoeg Rd NE, St. Paul, OR 97137.
Where would you rather be on a Saturday Afternoon? Come to Champoeg Park on 7/7/07 for the Doug Honours Ceremony. If you wish to attend please send an email to savepac17@yahoo.com. Please RSVP ASAP as space is limited! Please bring food and drink (beer in cans or bottles-- no kegs!) for the Potluck. Everyone is responsible for their own lunch.

Again, please RSVP ASAP!

Onward Cascadia!

P.S. Stay tuned for updates and check the Calendar on the Yahoo Group
regularly for possible changes.
P.S.P.S. RSVP ASAP!
Doug Honours!

Just a reminder to everyone to come to Champoeg on July 7, and please vote for your favorite Cascadian person/institution/politician to get an honourary Doug flag. They were just delivered today, and they are beautiful. Just click on the link below, click on "Add Record", and fill out the form with the numbers of your choices in your prefered order.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Cascadian_Bioregionalism/database?method=reportRow\ s&tbl=2

1: Cascadia Green Building Council (3 offices: PDX,SEA,VAN)
2: Discovery Institute
3: Sightline Institute
4. Futurewise
5: The Tyee
6: Mercy Corps
7: Save the Redwood League
8: Pacific Crest Biodiversity Project
9: Whidbey Institute
10: Ecotrust
11: Cascadia Wildlands Project
12: Opal Creek Ancient Forest Center
13: Village Design Institute
14: Governor Christine Gregoire
15: Governor Ted Kulongoski
16: Lieutenant-Governor Iona Campognola
17: Steve Novick (after the election)
18: Tom McCall (posthumous, to family)
19: Ernest Callenbach
20: Portland Freeskool
21: Lost Valley Nature Center
22: Breitenbush Hot Springs
23: Northwest Intentional Communities Association
24: Cascadia Commons Cohousing
25: Tryon Life Community Farm
26: Portland Peak Oil
27: 1000 Friends of Oregon
28: Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
29: Emmanuel Brunet-Jailly
30: Lorry Lokey

click the following link to vote:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Cascadian_Bioregionalism/database?method=reportRows&tbl=2

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Oregon and Washington Secession Poll at the Thom Hartmann Show

2007-06-06T12:48:08Z

There's talk in Vermont of seceding from the U.S. Are you in favor of Oregon or Washington seceding as well?
Yes

87.56 %

No

12.44 %

http://www.620kpoj.com/pages/thom_hartmann.html

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Cascadian_Bioregionalism/

http://republic-of-cascadia.tripod.com/

get a locally produced Doug (Cascadian Flag) here
http://www.smallflags.com/FLG/Cascadia.htm

Cascadian (CAS) oval car sticker
http://www.cafepress.com/cp/customize/product.aspx?clear=true&number=104981041

Viva Cascadia! (Kwanesum Chinook Illahee)

homepage: http://www.620kpoj.com/pages/thom_hartmann.html

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Ecotopia the utopian novel that inspired Cascadia

2007-05-24T22:03:00Z

Ecotopia the utopian novel that inspired Cascadia

I came across a pirated copy of Ecotopia in
pdf format for anyone to download and get others interested (maybe
as wall paper the whole book on a public accessable wall might be an
idea). I would recommend dowloadingt it and passing it on before it
is yank from the site:

http://www.indybay.org/uploads/aipotoce.pdf

Sorry Ernest Callenbach .. but I think the need for the paradigm
shift should out weight the payment for royalties in this case.

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Chinook Jargon (Chinuk Wawa) in Portland tonight May 24th

2007-05-24T10:43:43Z

Chinook Jargon (Chinuk Wawa) in Portland tonight May 24th

the following is a Portland Indy Meida announcement

(added note I would say Chinuk wawa was spokan west of the Rockies .. not just west of the Cascades)

Morgan Millar's and Portland Indy's announcement:

May 24th 2007 forum/speaker
Time 8:00 pm - 10:00 pm
Title Chinuk-wawa
Portland, OR
Location 3120 N Williams Avenue
Speaker Morgan Miller
Topic / Issue Other
Sponsor The Waypost
Morgan Miller presents: "Chinuk-wawa"

Synopsis:
The language of chinuk-wawa is a local, cross racial language which was spoken by most folks on the western side of the Cascades back in the 1800s - early 1900s. It's a mixture of tribal, french and english words, with words and structure of its own. It is comprised of perhaps 700-800 words and is fairly easy to learn and get by in. As one becomes fluent, chinuk becomes more and more poetic as new words are developed as combinations of older ones.
There are many local terms one might see around the Northwest which are chinuk, and there are efforts in "cascadian" circles to revive the language as a local street language.

*Part of the ongoing series: Live Journalism and Experts.
http://www.thewaypost.com

http://www.protest.net/pdxindymedia/calendrome.cgi?span=event&ID=811706

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On this day ... May 18th 1980

2007-05-18T14:55:37Z

On this day (May 18th) Mount St Helens (Loowit to many of the Native people in the area) erupted in 1980. I remember that day well it was a Sunday (morning) and I was in high school and my mother woke me to say "She has finally erupted". I quickly went to the backyard and saw a huge nuclear bomb-like plume surrounded by lightning. That event is carved in my mind .. sublime ... the beauty and the destruction wrapped into one. As Robert Oppenheimer watched the first nuclear test remembered the quote about Lord Shiva from the Bagavad Gita: "Now I am become death, the destroyer of Worlds." As a teenager deeply into Goddess literature, Hinduism, Shamanism and Asatru and other worldviews I looked at Loowit thinking of the Goddess Kali with a garland of severed heads and a skirt of dismembered limbs dancing on the "corpse" of Shiva. From destruction comes creation for from fire consuming wood comes ashes and from flood water comes new fertile soil.

This event is now part of Cascadian mythology as much as Bigfoot, Japanese paper balloon bombs, DB Cooper, the CCC and every Coyote and Raven story. This is where the border-realms of real and imagination transcends you and I the individual and move us into a collective realm of being.

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The IWW and the limits of inter-ethnic organizing: Reds, Whites, and Greeks in Grays Harbor, Washington, 1912 - International Workers of the World

2007-05-06T13:25:19Z

For those who think Aberdeen is just a group of logging hicks... well my family was one of the early European settlers in the region and many of those mix ethnic migrants were anarchists and IWW members fighting for our basic human rights. Here is a brief historical event left out of the whitewashed (Anglo-Saxon white washed) history of my family:

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0348/is_n4_v38/ai_20535757

The IWW and the limits of inter-ethnic organizing: Reds, Whites, and Greeks in Grays Harbor, Washington, 1912 - International Workers of the World

Racial and ethnic divisions played a major role in shaping the direction of the American labor movement in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Modem historians are acutely aware of the racial exclusivity of the American Federation of Labor as well as the prevalence of racist and nativist sentiments among a large segment of the native-born "white" working class. David Brody, for example, has commented that

since Reconstruction, relentless pressures had forced blacks out of their

traditional Southern jobs as artisans and down into menial and segregated

work in both North and South . . . By the time the A.F.L. faced the issue,

blacks were so confined economically as to pose no present danger to the

trade unions . . . Craft unions had always tried to restrict access and control labor markets. What more efficacious way than along the color

line?(1)

One should understand, of course, that it was efficacious because it could be shown to serve the interests of "white workers" to discriminate on racial lines. Brody went on to note that at the turn of the century, labor faced a more significant crisis from eastern and southern European immigration than from the excluded blacks: "It was a telling commentary that a Welsh miner, himself by no means certain that he would remain in America, referred derisively to Slavs and Italians entering the mines as `foreigners'."(2) Organized labor's response to the "new" immigration both drew upon and helped solidify American racial definitions. As Brody points out,

The A.F.L.... claimed much of the credit for the Chinese Exclusion

Act of 1882, and during the 1890s the Federation became a fervent

advocate of a literacy test for entering immigrants. This, Gompers

argued in 1902, "would exclude hardly any natives of Great Britain,

Ireland, Germany, France, or Scandinavia. It will shut out a

considerable number of South Italians and of Slavs and other[s]

equally or more undesirable and injurious.(3)

Other historians, while recognizing "white" labor racism, have found that such racism was often reconciled with "progressive" labor goals. Such is the case with Daniel Cornford's study of Humbolt County, California lumber workers in the Gilded Age, where the author sees Sinophobia coexisting with a "radical democratic-republican ideology" and a "labor theory of value."(4) The same may be said of Michael Kazin's work on the San Francisco Building Trades Council. Kazin comments that two impulses, "the inclusive, optimistic faith in class solidarity and the appeal to racial fears and hatred, did not pose an agonizing contradiction either for white labor leaders or for most of their followers."(5) "White" American workers essentially saw racism as a part of a legitimate defense of their interests. One might add that racism and nativism were essential components of a strategy to defend the particular prerogatives of white labor in a segmented labor market.

Some historians have justly attempted to balance this picture of racial disunion by describing instances of inter-racial or inter-ethnic cooperation among workers, instances which shed important light on the possible, but which nonetheless appear as the products of rather specific demographic circumstances. In a recent article, Lisa McGirr chronicled the cooperative efforts of "blacks" and "whites" in the IWW-affiliated Marine Transport Workers Industrial Union Local 8. While such cooperation was notable, it is significant that it took place in the context of a labor force comprised of an African-American majority and a minority consisting of recently arrived Eastern Europeans.(6) A similar demographic situation applied to Birmingham, Alabama's mine districts at the turn of the century in a study by Paul Worthman which stressed the inter-racial successes of the United Mine Workers Union in that locality.(7) Additionally, in one of the most notable polyglot organizing efforts of the pre-World War I period, the IWW conducted a successful textile strike in Lawrence, Massachusetts in 1912 which required forging a unitary movement among workers of at least two dozen different nationalities. Notably, however, all were foreign-born.(8)

Unlike most AFL affiliates, the IWW did profess a doctrine of racial equality and worker internationalism, but its efforts were generally limited by the human beings it sought to represent. In the midst of West Coast anti-Asian agitation, the IWW played a role in the development of the Fresno Labor League from 1908 onward. Yuji Ichioka has indicated, though, in his study of the Issei, that the league's membership was essentially Japanese.(9) Few white workers could be attracted to its ranks. The IWW's internationalist vision and professions were sorely tested by American racial realities.

The above examples clearly indicate that it was possible to organize African-American workers, immigrant Japanese workers, immigrant Eastern European or Middle Eastern workers, and even to organize some of these groups in combination with one another. The most intractable problem faced by the early 20th-century U.S. labor movement, however, was that of bridging the chasm between workers who saw themselves as "Americans" or "whites" and those whom they identified as "others." This problem is especially significant in light of the fact that some of the more seemingly Marxist scenarios of class conflict and consciousness emanated from segments of this "white" working class in isolation from the internationalizing effects of the period's global migration patterns.

Melvyn Dubofsky once commented that "class war in the West created a class ideology, and that ... ideology was Marxist because the Mountain West from 1890 to 1905 followed the classic Marxian pattern of development" Citing the examples of class struggle in Leadville and Cripple Creek (Colorado), Coeur D'Alene (Idaho), and Butte (Montana), Dubofsky went on to claim that "Western corporations encountered a labor force less tractable than the uprooted and ethnically-divided immigrants of the East." And further, "while in some mining districts the foreign-born outnumbered the native Americans, no great ethnic division separated foreigners from natives. In most mining communities the dominant foreign nationalities were of Irish, English, and Canadian extraction."(10) This suggests that whatever working class solidarity was forged under the conditions of Western capitalist expansion was at least not disrupted by ethnic or racial division and perhaps at most strengthened by a sense of racial familiarity. But this was only because of the racial solidarity manifested among workers who considered each other "white" This fact is crucial to understanding the limited success of interracial or inter-ethnic labor organizing in the U.S., especially on the part of its most vocal and determined proponent, and an offspring of the American West, the Industrial Workers of the World.

Consider the conduct of the "Greek strike" of 1912 which took place under IWW auspices in Hoquiam, WA, a major timber products center situated in the Grays Harbor region about 90 miles southwest of Seattle. The strike involved a unique and revealing alliance of IWW and AFL-affiliated unions, a substantial episode of open class warfare, and a bitter electoral contest. Its resolution offers some insight into the relationship of class to nationality in the U.S. and into the significance of race in the great Northwestern woods.

At the turn of the century Hoquiam and its sister city Aberdeen comprised a major timber products center in Grays Harbor or Chehalis County, Washington. The "twin" cities were home to 3000 inhabitants in 1890 and grew to 22,000 by 1910. Between 1890 and 1905, the largely working class population was heavily native-born, consisting of many workers who had followed the timber industry from the north woods of the upper Great Lakes to the yet unharvested stands of Douglas fir in the trans-Cascadian West. The Americans were joined in labor by some Canadians and recent northern European immigrants. And although men typically outnumbered women in northwestern industrial towns, by 1900 married men made up half the labor force in Hoquiam mills and two-thirds in Aberdeen. Marriage and home-ownership, which were frequently linked, were achieved with different degrees of success by workers at different levels of skill and in different occupations. Shingle mill workers were the most Rely to possess home and family. Common laborers in the lumber mills were less likely to be married homeowners, no doubt because of their significantly lower wages, and lumberjacks were rarely family men on account of their transiency and isolation in the lumber camps.(11) Craft, skill and status distinctions within this working class do not however appear to have produced any deep or abiding hostilities between various groups of workers. Only the inattention of the unionized minority to the fate of the unorganized presaged any potential intra-class animosity.

At the turn of the century Hoquiam and its sister city Aberdeen comprised a major timber products center in Grays Harbor or Chehalis County, Washington. The "twin" cities were home to 3000 inhabitants in 1890 and grew to 22,000 by 1910. Between 1890 and 1905, the largely working class population was heavily native-born, consisting of many workers who had followed the timber industry from the north woods of the upper Great Lakes to the yet unharvested stands of Douglas fir in the trans-Cascadian West. The Americans were joined in labor by some Canadians and recent northern European immigrants. And although men typically outnumbered women in northwestern industrial towns, by 1900 married men made up half the labor force in Hoquiam mills and two-thirds in Aberdeen. Marriage and home-ownership, which were frequently linked, were achieved with different degrees of success by workers at different levels of skill and in different occupations. Shingle mill workers were the most Rely to possess home and family. Common laborers in the lumber mills were less likely to be married homeowners, no doubt because of their significantly lower wages, and lumberjacks were rarely family men on account of their transiency and isolation in the lumber camps.(11) Craft, skill and status distinctions within this working class do not however appear to have produced any deep or abiding hostilities between various groups of workers. Only the inattention of the unionized minority to the fate of the unorganized presaged any potential intra-class animosity.

At the turn of the century Hoquiam and its sister city Aberdeen comprised a major timber products center in Grays Harbor or Chehalis County, Washington. The "twin" cities were home to 3000 inhabitants in 1890 and grew to 22,000 by 1910. Between 1890 and 1905, the largely working class population was heavily native-born, consisting of many workers who had followed the timber industry from the north woods of the upper Great Lakes to the yet unharvested stands of Douglas fir in the trans-Cascadian West. The Americans were joined in labor by some Canadians and recent northern European immigrants. And although men typically outnumbered women in northwestern industrial towns, by 1900 married men made up half the labor force in Hoquiam mills and two-thirds in Aberdeen. Marriage and home-ownership, which were frequently linked, were achieved with different degrees of success by workers at different levels of skill and in different occupations. Shingle mill workers were the most Rely to possess home and family. Common laborers in the lumber mills were less likely to be married homeowners, no doubt because of their significantly lower wages, and lumberjacks were rarely family men on account of their transiency and isolation in the lumber camps.(11) Craft, skill and status distinctions within this working class do not however appear to have produced any deep or abiding hostilities between various groups of workers. Only the inattention of the unionized minority to the fate of the unorganized presaged any potential intra-class animosity.

Americans, Canadians, and Englishmen found the most ready concord as they were all English-speaking Protestants, but even the growing number of recent Scandinavian immigrants were integrated with relative ease into the local working class. A. E. Johnson, immigration promoter for James Hill's Great Northern Railroad, had nothing but praise for the Scandinavians.

We claim the Scandinavian countries as first choice from which to secure the

best foreign immigration, for the reason that the best class of foreigners

already located in the Northwest are from Sweden, Norway and Denmark,

and by proper effort and intelligent work, this class of immigrants

can be very materially increased. . . .(12)

Swedes and Norwegians, although occasionally treated with the disdain accorded to non-English speakers in the U.S., were not met with the same vicious invective reserved for non-Protestants, southern and eastern Europeans, and Asians. In fact, ethnic impulses often drew Scandinavians into nativist alliances with other "white" workers. A racial construction binding "Anglo-Saxon" and "Nordic" workers into a common tribal stock produced powerful alliances against workers of other "races." When workers in Anacortes turned back an attempted landing of 100 Japanese there in June 1900, the Norwegian-language newspaper Tacoma Tidende editorialized that:

We do not hold with the mishandling of either Japanese or Chinese, or

people of other nations, because we do not ourselves wish to be mishandled

on account of our nationality; but the workers in Anacortes would be dumb

indeed if with open arms and cheers they should welcome their Asiatic

brothers who come in large numbers to take bread from the mouths of the

white man.(13)

The Tidende displayed an ambivalence suggestive of the Scandinavians' vulnerability to nativist attacks, but also their ultimate acceptance of American racial definitions.

In short, national distinctions between Americans and European immigrants during the first wave of immigration to the Pacific Northwest were not substantial enough to cause serious ethnic cleavages among workers in the timber industry. In his description of early 20th-century Everett, Norman Clark could just as easily have been speaking of Hoquiam, Aberdeen, and other similar timber towns when he stated: "Despite its initial linguistic multiformity, Everett was essentially white and Anglo-Saxon in its values. The native American was clearly the dominant culture."(14) This muting of ethnic divisions was not to last, however, due to a quantitative and qualitative change in immigration patterns after 1905. The old working class in timber would be confronted in subsequent years with a substantial migration of "unassimilable" immigrants whose presence would complicate inter-class and inter-ethnic relations in the Northwestern milltowns. Between 1901 and 1910, the growth of Grays Harbor County and of its working class was partly the result of a second wave of immigration that brought a new crop of strangers -- Finns, Russians, Greeks, Croats, Slovenes and Dalmatians -- into the mills.(15) One of the most noteworthy conflicts deriving from this new state of affairs occurred in Hoquiam in 1912.

R. F. Lytle, president of the Hoquiam Lumber and Shingle Company and a tireless advocate of the open shop, fired the opening salvo of a protracted conflict in early October 1911. Lytle fired all his union workers and on November 1 he announced a general wage reduction of 10% for all categories of labor. Those non-unionized workers who were dissatisfied with the new terms of employment were replaced by Greeks.(16) The firing of union men affected only the company's shingle operations, since the only union of timber workers at the time was the International Shingle Weavers' Union of America, which had been engaged in a wage struggle with Lytle since 1910. The ISWUA, as a consequence of its control of a skilled craft, was a union of native-born men, many of whom were old-stock Americans, and some of whom were the native children of Irish, German or Scandinavian immigrants.(17) Immigration from southern and eastern European sources had little actual or potential impact on the monopoly that such workers held over shingle production. In fact, shingle manufacturers typically found it very difficult to find adequate replacements for striking or locked-out shingle weavers and usually engaged them in battle only at times of market glut. It was therefore in Lytle's lumber mill that the greatest potential for inter-ethnic conflict existed as it was here that the unskilled or semi-skilled children of the "old" working class mingled increasingly with non-English-speakers from Finland, Greece, or the Balkans. Lytle's actions in the late fall of 1911 ignited a conflict that produced an odd and shifting alliance of workers of varied skill, craft, and ethnicity, and which produced a prominent role for a new arrival on the Grays Harbor scene, the Industrial Workers of the World.

The IWW launched an organizing chive and free speech fight in neighboring Aberdeen from November 1911 into early 1912, with the intention of establishing its regional headquarters on Grays Harbor.(18) By February 1912, the Wobblies had succeeded in organizing a large number of the area's unskilled and previously nonunionized millhands, including Lytle's Greeks. Hoping to deflect the IWW's new-found popularity and to benefit from the mill workers' mobilization, the ISWUA, which had rarely demonstrated any concern for unskilled timber workers outside of the shingle mills, began to address, at least rhetorically, the predicament of the millhands.

Lytle wishes it understood among the unorganized that he will punish

anybody who dares oppose his will. He gives the unorganized to understand

that he has punished them for the audacity of the Shingle Weavers in daring

to show him up and fight back.... To punish the Four Hundred employees in

the Lumber Mill because he is mad at a few Shingle Weavers who defy his

attempts to destroy their Union, will only drive the Four Hundred themselves

to organize in self-protection.... And that is what is happening. Many of

the old employees in the Lytle Mill refused to accept the 10 per cent cut

and left. Their places have been filled by Greeks. . . . Does R. F. Lytle

encourage ["family-men"] when he drives them away and imports Greeks to

take their places?(19)

The ISWUA discovered the potential solidarity of the unskilled millhands through the appeal of the IWW, and was not to turn away potential allies in a joint struggle against a common enemy in the person of R. F. Lytle. Yet the union's rhetoric also revealed a determination to promote the leadership of trade unionists in the larger struggle, as evidenced by the emphasis on the weavers' audacity and fighting spirit and the key role they occupied in Lytle's anti-labor machinations. Furthermore, the weavers' new interest in unskilled workers clearly did not extend as far as the Wobblies' commitment to recognize the foreigners as "class comrades" of the American-born. If anything, the ISWUA's combative strategy relied heavily now on a broadened class struggle from which the foreign-born were both excluded and transformed into the objects of battle. In March, the foreigners would call this strategy into question by their actions.

On Thursday, March 14, 1912 the unskilled millhands of the North Western Lumber Company went on strike for higher wages. Common laborers who had been paid $1.75 per day now demanded from $2.50 to $3.50. Organized under IWW auspices, workers from North Western marched on the Lytle mill, calling out all the men there as well.(20) This was the first concerted labor struggle to include workers of all of Hoquiam's "new" nationalities, and was consequently dubbed, with some derogatory intent, the "Greek strike." While middle-class Hoquiam and the trade unionists appear to have been caught off guard by the strike, the ISWUA nonetheless wasted no time in joining the fray. The first night of the strike, workers held a meeting at Hoquiam's Finn Hall at which the IWW affiliates appointed a strike committee of two Greeks, two Finns, two Scandinavians, and two English-speakers. The shingle weavers contributed two prominent speakers. One was J. G. Brown, the International's president and an active Socialist. The other was Dr. Hermon Titus, a former Socialist Party leader who had been called to Hoquiam in February by the weavers to help settle the lockout against them. This nascent united labor front was aided as well by the sympathy of Hoquiam's mayor, Reverend Harry Ferguson, a clerical advocate of social harmony who initially rejected the mill owners' appeals for police intervention in the strike.(21)

Faced with a surprisingly broad opposition, the mill operators chose to make nationality the main focus of the conflict. The biggest employer of until-now cheap foreign-born labor, the Lytle mill, refused to meet with the strike committee on the preposterous grounds that the Hoquiam Lumber and Shingle Company would have nothing to do with anyone save Americans and American citizens.(22) The Aberdeen Herald subsequently reported that "it seems certain that the foreigners will be replaced in the mills by American men of families ... [and possibly at] an increase in wages" The newspaper's ethnically divisive appeals were reinforced by a tendency to lump all of the new immigrants into a general category of "other" as it described the events on the Harbor as "the strike of Greek and other Slavic laborers."(23) Clearly, racial or ethnic categories were being drawn to define a broad pool of un-American stock. The IWW strike committee responded by demanding that "in the event of a settlement of this matter, all men are to be reinstated in their former positions. No men are to be discriminated against for reasons of color, nationality or union affiliations."(24)

By March 23, nine days after the onset of the strike, workers had succeeded in closing several additional mills in Hoquiam and Aberdeen, the Grays Harbor longshoremen had joined the strike, and the mills of the E. K. Wood and Grays Harbor Lumber companies maintained operations only by promptly granting their employees' demands. Mill managers fought back by creating a special force of mill police, appointed by Hoquiam Police Chief Quinn and confirmed by the city commission, but serving on company payroll. Mayor Ferguson stood alone on the commission in opposing the alliance of millmen and publicly wielded power, but he was consistently outvoted on these matters.(25)

As the conflict mushroomed and the sides became more clearly drawn, the ISWUA engaged itself more actively in the labor alliance. But since this rebellion was neither of their making nor under their control, the shingle weavers would have to give their role some justifiable public definition. Without elaboration, the union described the walkout of common laborers as "indirectly due to the lockout against the shingle weavers in Hoquiam." The weavers blamed "a few business men," who were members of the Hoquiam Commercial Club.(26) The ISWUA was careful not to alienate the entire business community of the city, as it worked to split Hoquiam's middle and small mercantile classes from the millmen.

The union posited the division of Hoquiam, into three social classes. First, "the mill owners, the very rich and their immediate dependents, their superintendents, bosses, clerks, lawyers, journalists. . . . They want large profits and low wages and consequently less money to be spent in Hoquiam." Second, "the small business men, the storekeepers and all those dependent on them. They must sell their goods or go to the wall . . . It is the thousands and thousands of men employed by the Lumber Industries . . . who keep the stores prosperous." Third, "the wage class -- practically the only class in this city, 80 per cent of all the population . . . THEY ARE THE RULING CLAM OF HOQUIAM. . . . They are the city."(27) ISWUA propaganda was aimed at generating a community struggle against the millmen based upon an alliance of economic self-interest between the small merchants and the workers.(28) The union also promoted an awareness of the potential political power of the city's working class.

The ISWUA made great efforts to emphasize the unity of labor in this

struggle, a circumstance that they clearly had not anticipated.

The most astonishing and gratifying feature of this uprising is the hearty

cooperation among the different unions. The Central Labor Council,

composed of delegates from the various unions affiliated with the American

Federation of Labor . . . enthusiastically endorsed this great Lumber

Workers' strike, which is being conducted by the organizers of the

Industrial Workers of the World. . . . The I.W.W. has now enrolled several

hundred Lumber Workers, BOTH SKILLED AND UNSKILLED, into one Industrial

Union. . . . One of the best organizers in the I.W.W. advised the

longshoremen in the ranks of the I.W.W. to join the I.L.A. . . . so as to

have no divisions in the ranks of strikers. The representatives of the

Shingle Weavers' Union, the Longshoremen's Union and I.W.W. have met in

common conference and have practically joined forces to win this strike.(29)

The ISWUA, confronted with a substantial strike against some of its own most stubborn enemies, readily made common cause with its natural allies. Nonetheless, the union's willingness to join in struggle with the IWW was unusual for an AFL union and was even a risky gamble in light of the dangers of inflaming middle class public opinion. But the weavers had few better options in this strike and could justify their position to other AFL workers by noting the lack of bitter jurisdictional disputes between the labor organizations involved in the conflict.(30)

An even thornier matter was that of race and nationality. On this, the ISWUA adopted a seemingly rational position that addressed the issue of foreign labor as a material rather than as a racial concern.

What was the real complaint against the Greeks when they came here five

years ago? . . . Why they lowered wages. . . . They made "white men" work

for less .... But these very greeks are leading the fight for higher wages

and better conditions.... And business men blindly take up the old cry when

the occasion of the old cry is gone and when the Greeks have learned

enough to demand better conditions for themselves and their fellow

workers.... The Greeks are fighting for the best interests of Hoquiam.(31)

This shift from the union's initial nativist stance regarding the Greeks was notable, and was perhaps a realistic and palatable shift in the minds of the ISWUA's Socialist leadership, given the course of events in Hoquiam, but it was as risky as the IWW alliance. It remained to be seen how the ethnic issue would play out among the workers and businessmen of Grays Harbor as the strike progressed.

By March 27, every mill in Aberdeen was closed and the strike had spread to Raymond and South Bend on Willapa Harbor. 19 Grays Harbor millmen issued a statement proclaiming the impossibility of raising wages "under present conditions of the lumber market." Rumors circulated that the Greeks were arming themselves with revolvers. On March 29, about 100 members of the Hoquiam middle class convened a citizens' committee and enrolled about half its number in a voluntary "committee of public safety." Mayor Ferguson, who had opposed confirmation of the mill police, gave his approval to this new "special police" force and asked that volunteers register with the Chief of Police. It is not clear whether the mayor had finally come to fear the retribution of the middle class electorate, whether he genuinely wished to create a police force that was beholden to neither worker nor boss, or whether he wished to exert some municipal control over a middle-class response to the strike that he viewed as inevitable. The result of his concession, however, was that the original force of 50 "specials" grew to 100 within two days, and construed itself as a middle-class vigilante organization dedicated to the forcible reopening of the Lytle mill on Monday morning. April 1.(32)

On March 30, P.J. Mourant, ex-mayor, Commercial Club officer and chairman of the "committee of public safety," appealed for the arrest of the strike leaders. City Attorney Callahan complied with the issuance of warrants against ISWUA organizer Titus and IWW organizers Anderson, Newell and Yager. Chief Quinn and Sergeant Hardwick proceeded with the arrests. That night, six police officers spirited the four men out of the city jail and drove them under cover of darkness to the county jail in Montesano, where striking workers would presumably be less likely to stage a jail break. Dr. Titus, who was successfully bailed out by his wife on the following day, was promptly rearrested under a federal warrant prepared by one of Lytle's attorneys and was transported to Tacoma, far from the Grays Harbor events, to await grand jury proceedings over a month away. The charge?--violating the constitutional rights of strike-breakers by intimidating them from going to work. The complaint was ultimately dismissed by U.S. District Attorney Todd in Seattle.(33)

At dawn on April 1, with the strike leaders under arrest, over 100 businessmen armed with shotguns, rifles, revolvers, and clubs congregated on the Lytle mill in Hoquiam. They wore the white ribbon badges of the "special police" As workers approached the mill along Monroe Street, each was halted and asked "Going to work?" If one said "No," he was arrested and held in a big "stable" opposite the "bull-pen" constructed for scab labor. The vigilantes warned the detainees "that any attempt to break out would result fatally." 250 strikers were rounded up in this way and then herded into box cars waiting on the Northern Pacific tracks

. . . eighty in one car, sixty-four in another, and so on, till they were

packed like sardines, the doors shut tight and spiked, with only cracks

for air, and run down the main line ready to be shipped out of town.(34)

Only the intervention of Sheriff Payette secured their release and prevented a wholesale deportation. Having successfully forced the reopening of the Lytle mill, albeit short-handed, the citizens' police proceeded to the North Western mill, which was started up that afternoon under similar circumstances.

Meanwhile in Aberdeen, 50 special police and a dozen mill guards opened the Slade mill with a show of weaponry as daunting as that in Hoquiam. Strikers who resisted orders to move on were promptly arrested. Aberdeen Chief of Police Templeman sent out a dragnet for the IWW leaders, resulting in the arrests of organizers W.A. Thorne, John Roderick, and Carl Conrad. A "mechanized division" of vigilantes combed city streets by car, sweeping up 26 "others who appeared disposed to . . . incite riot or a breach of peace" 100 citizens' police in Raymond swept through the Finnish boarding houses and the Greek settlement there, rounding up 50 Finns and 100 Greeks who had refused to report for work. All were deported--the Finns by boat and the Greeks by rail--with transportation paid by the Raymond citizens' committee. In Bellingham, the trustees of the Chamber of Commerce called upon the mayor to swear in 300 special officers to support "the cause of law and order."(35) This intimidating display of force, death threats, deportations, and arrests succeeded in reopening the mills. Lumber concerns were unable, however, to secure full crews for many weeks. Despite the absence of pickets, workers were scarce, prompting plant manager McGlauflin of the North Western Company to estimate that the crews he had been engaging "were only 60 per cent efficient."(36) It was important, however, that once the strike organizers had been disposed of, the vigilance committees directed their most ardent persecutions at specific categories of workers--Greeks, Slavs and "Red" Finns. What message were they sending to "American" workmen? What ultimate resolution of the strike did they envision? What was to be offered to the striking Anglo-Americans, Irish-Americans, German-Americans, Norwegian-Americans, Swedish-Americans, Danish-Americans--the "white" workers who had thus far stood in common struggle with the "new" immigrant workers? The answer was soon delivered.

On April 4 and 5, the citizens' executive committee in Hoquiain and committees organized by the AFL Central Trades Council and striking workers met frequently with the mill operators in order to achieve an agreement that would allow work to resume. The mill owners' compromise proposal appeared in the Daily Washingtonian on Saturday, April 6 emblazoned with the headline, "HOQUIAM is TO BE A WHITE MAN'S TOWN" The proposal, authored jointly by the executive officers of the citizens' committee and of the big mills, provided for the exclusion of the IWW and any of its members from the mills, nondiscrimination against members of other unions, the creation of a Citizens' Labor Bureau with exclusive control over the recruitment and screening of workers for positions on Grays Harbor, and a minimum wage of $2.25 per day to white labor as of April 1, 1912.(37)

On April 2, organizers and former prisoners Titus, Anderson, and Yager pleaded for continued labor unity. Titus particularly seemed to fear that the mill owners' offer would weaken the resolve of the shingle weavers to maintain their role in the labor alliance. He consequently vowed to offer his services to the IWW should the weavers lose their will to fight.(38) Titus and the Wobbly organizers proceeded to organize pickets to slow the return to work beginning on Monday morning, April 8. If the local press can be believed, the "white labor" agreement had a marked effect on the ethnicity of the pickets, while a new strategy on the part of the strike leadership had a marked effect on their gender.

About 150 women, almost all the wives of "Red" Finns, gathered at

the Slade mill Tuesday and were dispersed by the application of the

water cure, via fire hose. A number of them were accompanied by baby

buggies. ... the insults of this bunch of unsexed women is becoming

unbearable.(39)

From this point onward, the Grays Harbor press launched a propaganda barrage apparently designed to isolate a large majority of workers from the union leaders and from a dispensable few of their fellows who could be blamed for the entire debacle. The IWW became the most obvious and appealing target of attack as it could be most effectively linked in the public mind to the "racially undesirable" Greeks and the politically "un-American" Finnish Socialists.

The I.W.W. agitators. . . purpose is to OBSTRUCT and DESTROY.... Every hour

these anarchists become more insolent and insulting, yet put a few of them

in jail and they become martyrs. If they "rough house" the jail and are

restrained, are they entitled to the sympathy of any one. If they can shut

that mill down so that 800 to 1000 men who want to work will be forced to

remain idle, who is entitled to protection, the 800 working men, or the

I.W.W. hordes? Have they the right to demand that the flag of the United

States shall protect them when they do all that they can to tear down that

flag?(40)

The press further attempted to inflame nationalist passions against the IWW and its allies and the workers they represented with reports such as the following:

Chief Examiner John Speed Smith of the U.S. naturalization bureau ... and

the different judges before whom the applicants [for citizenship] come have

decided that the recent outbreaks on the part of the socialists and the

Industrial Workers of the World demand a stringent test on the part of Uncle

Sam before new voters are admitted in the future. "The courts and our bureau

have agreed that any man who would countenance the supplanting of the

star-spangled banner by the red or any other flag should not be allowed to

become a citizen," said Examiner Smith. "Further, it is possible that

persons who are citizens and who make seditious utterances will lose their

citizenship rights."(41)

Given the fact that many workers were returning to their jobs by mid-April, and that powerful propaganda was driving home the liabilities of IWW-affiliation, the ISWUA made a seemingly surprising move. On April 13, the union's official organ printed the following remarks:

The Shingle Weavers, the Longshoremen and the Central Labor Council are

all "identified" with the I.W.W. in this strike in spite of strenuous

efforts by the capitalist press to split them up into rival factions.

LABOR IS UNITED IN HOQUIAM. The only settlement which can be permanent

is a settlement with organized labor, INCLUDING THE I.W.W . . . . All

branches of wage workers are standing together in this strike .... They

all recognize that the next battle to be won is THE RECOGNITION OF THE

UNIONS BY THE MILL OWNERS, not of one union by itself, but of all

unions.... CONSOLIDATED LABOR IN HOQUIAM WILL WIN THIS SECOND BATTLE FOR

DIRECT RECOGNITION AS IT HAS WON ITS FIRST BATTLE FOR ADVANCED WAGES, EVEN

IF IT TAKES ALL SUMMER AND FALL.(42)

Why would the ISWUA continue to risk identification with the IWW in such a hostile climate if the wage battle had been won? It must be remembered that the weavers had been engaged in their own struggle with millman R.F. Lytle before the onset of the "Greek strike." The minimum wage settlement in the millhands' strike may have been a victory for unskilled "white" labor but it had no effect on improving the wages of the more highly skilled and higher-paid weavers. The settlement also required a return to work on the basis of non-discrimination toward "individual" workers. There was no advantage gained by the ISWUA in its efforts to gain recognition as a collective bargaining agent. The ISWUA was consequently still deprived of the power to enforce union scale for its members.

While one should not utterly dismiss the socialist affiliation of many ISWUA officers as a factor in its tolerance of the IWW, it seems more likely that the two organizations' marriage in Hoquiam was viewed as a tactical necessity. By 1912, shingle weavers were becoming a smaller and smaller minority of timber workers. Skilled jobs were shrinking in proportion to the total number of jobs in the industry as new technologies reshaped the shop floor. As more dangerous "upright machines" replaced the old "ten-blocks" more and more shingle sawyers were disabled or maimed and entire categories of labor were eroded. The old ten-block machines were operated by a sawyer, four packers, and five knot sawyers; the new uprights by a sole sawyer. Consequently, the men were separated from one another, teamwork diminished, the union weakened, and jobs that might have been filled by the sawyers' sons faded from view.(43)

Since the ISWUA was making little headway in preserving union control in shops like Lytles, it was now seeking to ally itself with the lumber mill workers it had once ignored. Unfortunately for the union, the willingness by mid-April of many unskilled "white" laborers to return to their jobs at an advance in wages, but without union-affiliation, and without Wobblies and Greeks, left the weavers with few allies to carry on their own fight. This produced the ironic situation of a skilled, native-born and once nativist union fighting a recognition campaign in the shingle mills alongside some of the most unpopular cast-offs of the multiethnic struggle that the IWW had tried to lead in the lumber mills.

If the shingle weavers might have considered other options, these were no doubt narrowed by the behavior of the millmen's political allies. On April 10, Hoquiam. City Clerk Harry Kress, a shingle weaver, secretary of the Trades Council, and strike supporter, was removed from office by Commissioners Ogden and Willis over Mayor Ferguson's objections.(44) This was the beginning of a middle-class campaign to weaken the political power of the weavers in city government. The Commercial Club's "Upholders of Good Government" campaign now also sought the recall of centrist Mayor Ferguson for failure to offer more determined and diligent protection of property rights. A primary date for the selection of Fergusons opponent was set at May 20, with the recall election slated for June 3.(45) From this point onward, the attention of Grays Harbor residents increasingly shifted from the "Greek strike" to the upcoming political campaign.

As far as the strike in the lumber mills was concerned, most millhands returned to work by the end of April, attracted by higher pay and unwilling to struggle any longer for union recognition. The IWW found itself increasingly handicapped by the success of the employers' racist appeals, bolstered by wage incentives. Further IWW strike efforts were thwarted as well by local governments' attacks on strike-related speech and assembly. In Aberdeen, for example, Police Chief Templeman forcibly closed the Finn Hall to prevent its use for Wobbly meetings. When the Finnish Socialist club failed to win a court restraining order against Aberdeen authorities, club president and secretary Charles Kauppi and John Likkanen accepted Superior Court Judge Irwin's decision to reopen the hall on the condition that the IWW be barred from it. The Finnish Socialists in effect decided that support for the IWW strike did not warrant their own organizational demise. Isolated and without a sufficient workplace following, the IWW called off its strike on April 27.(46)

The ISWUA continued its own efforts to resolve the shingle weavers' grievances throughout the month of May, and linked its strike to the impending elections. The union threw its support to Mayor Ferguson, describing the mayoral contest as a "continuation ... of the industrial contest ... waged the last two months by all organized Labor and for the last two years by the Shingle Weavers Union."(47) While the weavers' concern for their political representation was understandable, it should be noted that the politicization of the Grays Harbor labor struggle would exclude the workers who had initiated the lumber strike in March. Most of the foreign-born workers in the region were not naturalized and consequently would have no access to the ballot box. The theatre of battle now shifted entirely to a stage dominated by native-born Americans, and here the weavers' efforts would founder.

The ISWUA continued its own efforts to resolve the shingle weavers' grievances throughout the month of May, and linked its strike to the impending elections. The union threw its support to Mayor Ferguson, describing the mayoral contest as a "continuation ... of the industrial contest ... waged the last two months by all organized Labor and for the last two years by the Shingle Weavers Union."(47) While the weavers' concern for their political representation was understandable, it should be noted that the politicization of the Grays Harbor labor struggle would exclude the workers who had initiated the lumber strike in March. Most of the foreign-born workers in the region were not naturalized and consequently would have no access to the ballot box. The theatre of battle now shifted entirely to a stage dominated by native-born Americans, and here the weavers' efforts would founder.

On May 20, Chris Knoell, a retired butcher, won the primary election, and received pledges of support from the other eight candidates who had hoped to fill Ferguson's seat. Knoell had no political experience at all in politics or public life, but committed himself to a platform framed by the citizens' committee. Its most notable elements were a ringing condemnation of the sitting mayor and a pledge "to stamp out by every means ... riot and sedition in whatever guise or form."(48) With the IWW out of the picture, what could these words have meant? Although there was some political utility to keeping alive the memory of the Wobbly "hordes," it also appears that the Socialist-affiliation of the ISWUA served as a straw man for the political campaign. Throughout May, local press reports focused extensively and approvingly on physical attacks launched against individual Socialists as well as against Socialist meetings and offices by members of the Grays Harbor Commercial Club, the Grand Army of the Republic and the Spanish War Veterans. Much discussion centered on the formation of a Loyal Legion of Loyalists to defend patriotism and the flag.(49) The weavers' union's response to these nationalist stirrings was very interesting considering the earlier evolution of its position on the "Greek strike":

The American flag is being used just now for all it is worth. . . . The national emblem was used to hide the perfidy of the millmen. For

though it was announced that only American men with families would

be given employment, many of the mills began hiring Hindus and

Italians, while flags and signs reading "I.W.W. Keep Out" acted as a

warning to any one wanting living wages.(50)

The fact that the ISWUA could revert so quickly to a nativist stance is an indication that the union never really abandoned its Americanist position or its perception that its primary audience and constituency would be essentially "American." The Greeks had been embraced for short-term tactical reasons but clearly not from a committed sense of worker internationalism. The weavers were perfectly comfortable with the common language of racial difference, and the political campaign in which they were engaged was essentially a debate over different versions of Americanism.

Election day, Monday, June 3, came and went. The final vote count was Knoell, 1363, Ferguson, 870--a Knoell victory by almost 500 votes. The ISWUA blamed Ferguson's defeat on propaganda, strong-arming, and subterfuge. Labor officials said that the churches had defamed Ferguson, the pimps had financed Knoell, and that the lumber barons had threatened to fire workers who opposed their candidate.(51) While this may have been true, the unionists overlooked the role of nationality in the election results. There were at least 6000 voting-age persons in Hoquiam. At least one-third of these were unnaturalized immigrants who certainly had a stake in the political contest, but who could not exercise political power. This left 4000 or so potential voters. Only 2600 of these registered. Was this by reason of indifference, despair, or lack of durable residency? We do not know. But we do know that this reduced substantially the pool of actual voters, and that almost all of the nonregistrants were workers. Voter registration levels in the two distinctly middle class wards was so high as to include virtually every adult man and woman. Although registered workers turned out to vote with almost the same regularity as their middle class counterparts, they were at best half as likely to register in the first place. In fact, more native-born and naturalized workers did not vote in this municipal contest than did. Knoell did, however, carry every ward. In the predominantly middle class districts, he did so by landslides in excess of two to one, while he polled simple majorities in the working class neighborhoods.(52)

Although the shingle weavers were surprised and disappointed by the results, especially in light of the sheer numerical superiority of Hoquiam's working class, there is a plausible explanation for the outcome of the election. First of all, the middle class citizens were most determined to have a government that offered no quarter to "revolutionists" and "rabble-rousers." At best, Ferguson had been too soft on the radicals for middle-class tastes. Second, those workers most likely to suffer under the employment terms offered by the millmen and supported by the citizens' committee mayor could not vote. Third, many American or "white" workers stood to gain materially from the millmen's offer. This could have explained both the working-class pro-Knoell votes and the fence-sitting of those who voluntarily stayed away from the polls. This latter group may have consisted of "white" workers who lacked enthusiasm for middle class vigilantism but preferred a wage increase to further unemployment and violence. Besides, without a determined effort by most "white" workers to maintain their solidarity with the foreigners, and given the political leanings of the city commission, even a Ferguson victory would effect no positive change in the differential treatment now to be meted out to "non-white" workers in the mills. In fact, with the demise of the IWW campaign and the re-emergent nativism of the weavers, so-called non-white workers no longer had any American allies to count on.

To what life, then, did the people of Hoquiam return in the aftermath of the elections? The conduct of business in the mills returned to normal. The shingle weavers remained locked out and on strike. No mills of any sort agreed to recognize unions of any sort. The citizens' committee had their preferred mayor and their favored city commission. The IWW, which had planned to locate its regional headquarters in Hoquiam, walked away from Grays Harbor in disappointment and chose Centralia as its northwestern hub. The lumber barons felt themselves to be masters of their mills, having beaten back the threat of union prerogatives. The middle class felt themselves to be masters of their city, having forcibly driven off the "revolutionary hordes." The American flag was everywhere in evidence, and the "traitors' mayor" had gone down to an ignominious defeat.

But something else had happened as well. Wages were higher for "white" labor in the lumber mills and yet Hoquiam did not become a "white man's town." The vigilantes did not deport or even attempt to deport all of the foreigners in town. How could they have? How would business have functioned? No, the immigrants, even the "racially undesirable ones," were now a fact of daily life. The mills needed them, as did the grocers, doctors, and publicans. By 1912 they had become indispensable to the city's very existence. A market glut may have allowed employers to seek a temporary constriction of their labor force, perhaps of sufficient proportions to cover increased wages for some workers, but the industry could not realistically operate on an "all-American" basis. What the mill owners accomplished, however, was cross-class agreement on who would suffer the brunt of cost-reduction ("non-white" workers) and who would reap the benefits ("white" workers and millmen). The millmen's April Fool's Day offer turned out not to be a plan to "whiten" the city, but to be precisely and narrowly what it had been represented to be: a minimum wage of $2.25 a day to "white" labor. Ironically, these were to be the fruits of the IWW's struggle.

What is so notable about this entire episode is that the inter-ethnic cooperation which appeared at the onset of the "Greek strike could prove to be so shallow. The fragility of the multi-ethnic coalition which the IWW had helped to forge and to which the ISWUA temporarily adhered merits examination. This fragility is perhaps best explained by viewing most native-born workers' attachment to the IWW as a situational radicalism, motivated by short-term concerns such as the wage rather than ideological affinity, and driven as well by the general neglect of unskilled laborers by AFL-affiliated craft unions. If this is the case, then the IWW's campaign was from the very beginning vulnerable to disruption along ethnic lines as a result of the presence of an American majority in the lumber mills. In addition, one of the most promising aspects of this labor struggle as it got underway was the skilled/unskilled coalition reflected in the ISWUA-IWW alliance. This was particularly notable since the AFL and the Wobblies were typically and mutually inimical. But if one understands the ISWUA's position as equally situational, the ultimate decision by Grays Harbor workers to turn over the "non-whites" among them as sacrificial Iambs becomes more fathomable.

What evidence do we have that nationality and "race" were more powerful factors in the thinking of "white" workers than radical appeals for working class unity? One piece of evidence is that the AFL Trades Council in Hoquiam's neighboring city of Aberdeen refused to grant its endorsement to the Hoquiam strike from the very beginning. The Aberdeen Trades Council was very explicit in indicating that it viewed foreign workers as scabs and that it viewed its responsibility as the defense of "American" workers' jobs.(53) Since the local shingle weavers had chosen to locate their merged Grays Harbor union in Hoquiam in 1906, they exerted no influence over the Aberdeen Council but substantial influence in Hoquiam.(54) Therefore it clearly appears that the special situation of the weavers in relation to their employers in 1910-12 caused their union to adopt a stance toward the IWW strike that was entirely out of keeping with the bulk of organized labor. It may be added that even in Hoquiam itself, the Building Trades Council refused to endorse the strike for the same reasons as the AFL unions in Aberdeen.(55)

Why then, did the ISWUA behave as it did? As already mentioned, the union had by 1912 been struggling for two years to gain recognition from R.F. Lytle and other open-shop employers. The unexpected strike of lumber mill workers might have exerted just enough pressure on labor's common enemies to bring about a resolution favorable to the weavers. But ISWUA support for the so-called Greek strike required some intellectual gymnastics on the weavers' part. On the one hand, the weavers' union had shared the generally negative view of "cheap and passive" immigrant labor that characterized American unionists. On the other hand, such foreign labor was not and would never become a threat to shingle weavers' jobs. The weavers could afford, if tactical needs dictated, to demonstrate some verbal largesse toward immigrant labor without fearing any disruption of the essentially "while" monopoly over employment in the shingle mills. This fact leads to the important conclusion that the ISWUA had never attempted nor ever construed its role as to organize the unorganized in the timber industry--American or foreign-born. When presented with an uprising of the workers that its history, structure and orientation had caused it to neglect. the ISWUA, even under Socialist leadership, became the tail to the IWW's dog while trying to cloak itself in some semblance of a leadership role. But the weavers' ability to turn their participation to advantage was severely constrained by a need to keep up with the shifting loyalties of the non-ISWUA lumber mill workers within the IWW-led movement. When it first appeared that the IWW's multi-ethnic coalition would hold together, the ISWUA turned the Greeks into "white" men. When it began to disintegrate, the weavers found it difficult to reverse their new-found racial acceptance of the Greeks, but found Italians and Hindus to replace them in labor's racial hierarchy. The ISWUA's need to maintain some influence over unskilled workers outside of its organization made it difficult for the union to stick to a position on ethnicity and race that was out of keeping with prevailing rank-and-file sentiment. If the IWW's failure can be linked to its determination to lead on the issue of worker solidarity, the ISWUA's can be linked to its awkward vacillation attendant to the attitudes of the rank-and-file. Both unions' efforts foundered on the rocky shoals of race.

What can the unions' failures teach us about the ordinary workers of Grays Harbor? Were their best efforts at real class solidarity thwarted by powerful lumber barons, aggressive middle-class vigilantism, propagandistic press and hostile governmental power? The answer is, in part, yes. One cannot ignore the size of the stick wielded against the labor coalition of spring 1912. But one should also not ignore the readiness of so many workers to grab the carrot, especially when this carrot reflected and promoted racial sentiments that had a long history--a history which permitted a fluid adaptation of racial "whiteness" to justify privilege for some and restricted opportunity for others. In the final analysis, American workers on Grays Harbor, and those Europeans they deemed equally "white," accepted a role as their employers' partners in enforcing a "racial" segmentation of the labor market in their mills. If this could be done to African-Americans and Asians, why not to Greeks, South Slavs or Finns? If even nominal Socialists could comfortably lead unions whose structure was premised on exclusion, what might one expect from "ordinary" Americans? And if "white" racial consciousness was so powerful because there were economic gains to be derived from it, organizations like the IWW had a formidable task ahead of them indeed.

(1) David Brody, In Labor's Cause (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1993), 115.

(2) Ibid., 116.

(3) Ibid., 117.

(4) Daniel Cornford, Workers and Dissent in the Redwood Empire (Philadelphia: Temple Univ. Press, 1987).

(5) Michael Kazin, "Reform, Utopia, and Racism," in Daniel Cornford, ed., Working People of California (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1995).

(6) Lisa McGirr, "Black and White Longshoremen in the I.W.W.," Labor History, 35 (1995), 95-119.

(7) Paul Worthman, "Black Workers and Labor Unions in Birmingham, Alabama, 1897-1904," Labor History, 10 (1969), 173-194.

(8) See Melvyn Dubofsky, We Shall Be All (Chicago: Quadrangle, 1969) or Philip Foner, History of the Labor Movement of the United States, Vol. IV, The Industrial Workers of the World, 1905-1917 (New York: International Publishers, 1965).

(9) Yuji Ichioka, Issei: The World of the First Generation Japanese Immigrants, 1885-1924 (New York: Free Press, 1988).

(10) Melvyn Dubofsky, "The Origins of Western Working Class Radicalism, 1890-1905," Labor History, 6 (1966), 103-120.

(11) U.S. Bureau of the Census, 11th Census, 1890; 12th Census, 1900, Population, Part 1. pp. 402-8; 13th Census, 1910, v. III, pp. 969-1009; manuscript census schedules, 11th Census, 1890, and 12th Census, 1900, Chehalis County, cities of Aberdeen and Hoquiam.

(12) Jorgen Dahlie, A Social History of Scandinavian Immigration, Washington State, 1895-1910 (New York: Arno Press, 1980), 17; quoted from "The New Immigration Movement," the Northwest Illinois Monthly Magazine, Jan. 1896, 7.

(13) Ibid., 110; quoted from Tacoma Tidende, June 16, 1900, 4.

(14) Norman Clark, Mill Town. A Social History of Everett (Seattle: Univ. of Washington Press. 1970), 79.

(15) U.S. Bureau of the Census, manuscript census schedules. 13th Census. 1910. Chehalis County, cities of Aberdeen and Hoquiam.

(16) Shingle Weaver (hereafter SW), Feb. 22, 1912, 1.

(17) U.S. Bureau of the Census, manuscript census schedules, 13th Census. 1910. Chehalis County, cities of Aberdeen and Hoquiam, and Snohomish County, city of Everett.

(18) Vernon Jensen, Lumber and Labor (New York: Farrar & Rinehart, 1945), 121: and Aberdeen Herald (hereafter AH). Jan. 8, 1912, 1, and Jan. 11, 1912, 1.

(19) SW, Feb. 22, 1912, 1.

(20) AH, Mar. 18, 1912, 1.

(21) (Hoquiam) Daily Washingtonian (hereafter DW), Mar. 15. 1912, 1. and Mar. 16. 1912, 2.

(22) DW, Mar. 16, 1912, 2.

(23) AH, Mar. 18, 1912, 1.

(24) Ibid., 4.

(25) DW, Mar. 21, 1912, 6; SW, Mar. 23, 1912, 4.

(26) SW, Mar. 23, 1912, 2.

(27) Ibid., 1.

(28) Herbert Gutman pointed out that merchants and shopkeepers often played pivotal roles in the labor/capital struggles of 19th century industrial communities. Both workers and industrialists vied for the allegiance of this segment of the middle class, and its loyalty to "big capital" was by no means assured. The shingle weavers' position and strategy consequently had its antecedents. See for example Gutman's "Trouble on the Railroads in 1873-1974," and "Two Lockouts in Pennsylvania, 1873-74," in Work, Culture & Society in Industrializing America (New York: Random House, 1979), especially pp. 311, 328, 340-1.

(29) SW, Mar. 23, 1912, 1.

(30) Ibid.

(31) Ibid.

(32) DW, Mar. 31, 1912, 1.

(33) Ibid.; SW, April 6, 1912, 1.

(34) AH, April 1, 1912, 1.

(35) AH, April 1, 1912, 4; DW, April 2, 1912, 1; SW. April 6. 1912. 1. 4.

(36) AH, April 4, 1912, 1.

(37) DW. April 6, 1912, 1.

(38) DW. April 17, 1912, 1.

(39) All, April 11, 1912, 1, 8.

(40) DW, April 9, 1912, 1.

(41) DW, April 6, 1912, 1.

(42) SW, April 13, 1912, 1, 4.

(43) SW, March 2, 1912, 1.

(44) DW, April 11, 1912, 1.

(45) DW, April 25, 1912, 1.

(46) DW, May 3, 1912.

(47) SW, April 20, 1912, 1.

(48) DW, May 26, 1912, 1.

(49) See DW and AH from April 25, 1912 through the month of May.

(50) SW, May 11, 1912, 1.

(51) SW, June 8, 1912, 1.

(52) Election data are drawn from DW, May 19, 1912, 1, and June 4. 1912, 1. Population statistics are drawn from the closest census to the election. 13th Census. U.S. 1910, vol. III, 969-1009. Since all indications in this analysis are of an increase in both population and immigration between 1910 and 1912, the points made here would be strengthened by 1912 demographic information.

(53) Timber Worker, March-April 1912.

(54) SW, November 12, 1906, 2.

(55) DW, April 4, 1912, 1.

COPYRIGHT 1997 Carfax Publishing Co.
COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group

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posted in Ecotopian Future Historians Tribe - 0 replies

May 2nd 1843 Oregon Country

2007-05-03T12:19:36Z

May 2nd 1843 Oregon Country

From 1843 to 1849 Oregon was a country. Of course before the Europeans it was a "country" too, but 1843 was the first Anglo American recognition of that republic.

Today (well yesterday was) is the anniversary of the day there was an election to create
a European style republic in the Pacific Northwest. The country was
called Oregon and even minted its own money called beaver money.
The "beaver" side of the Oregon state flag maybe the original flag
of the country that included the current state of Washington, Idaho,
western Montana (west of the Rockies), a small portion of western
Wyoming (west of the Rockies) and British Columbia. The settlers
casting that vote were a mix of French, American (Bostans), British
and Metis males (most were married Native women). There is
arguement as to there goal of the "provisional government".
Obviously the pro American expansists were modivated by the idea of
manifest destiny for the US while the employees of the Hudson Bay
Company were ordered to cast votes to stop American interest in the
area, but what is often left out of that history are individuals
like Osborne Russell who favored (was even on one of the first
executive committees and ran as first governor) total independence
of the country of Oregon. Another aspect that is totally neglected
by historians we the development of a new grouping population that
was a mix of Native peoples with the new settlers (not all
were "Anglo American" settlers like the American National mythology
will suggest). This new population spoke as their "mother tongue"
Chinook Jargon (literally from their mothers and fathers who were of
mixed cultures) and for these people this region was not just
called "Oregon", but Chinook Illahee (the land of the Chinook Jargon
speakers). The ethnologist Hortatio Hale of the US Exploring
Expedition of 1841 described the use of Chinook Jargon during his
stay at Fort Vancouver by a new emerging culture of Chinook Illahee
in the 1840s:

"These are Canadians and half-breeds married to Chinook women, who
can only converse with their wives in this speech, and it is the
fact, strange as it may seem, that many young children are growing
up to whom this factitious language is really the mother tongue, and
who speak it with more readiness and perfection than any other."

some links of interest:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Oregon_Lyceum
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Champoeg_ Meetings
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Executive_ Committee_(Oregon_Territory)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Osborne_Russell
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Provisional_ Government_ of_Oregon
http://www.oregonpioneers.com/ govt.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Oregon_Country
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Beaver_Coins

Dr. McLoughlin advocated for an independant country

I just want to stress this one note in one link( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oregon_Lyceum) about the Oregon Lyceum:

During these debates in Oregon City the European settlers argued about whether an independent country should be formed, or if a provisional government should be formed.[5]

The group advocating an independent country tended to be British, including Dr. McLoughlin and the his HBC employees.[5] The Catholic block that consisted of mainly former French-Canadian trappers also sided with McLoughlin on this issue.[5] Their goal was to prevent the territory from becoming a part of the United States by forming a new country.[5] McLoughlin's attorney , introduced a resolution on his behalf to the Lyceum as follows:

"Resolved, That it is expedient for the settlers of the coast to organize an independent government."[5]
That resolution was adopted by the Oregon Lyceum.[5]

cited from
http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?ammem/calbk:@field(DOCID+@lit(calbk056div10))

all posted at
http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2007/05/358782.shtml?discuss

further down in the thread of the Portland Indy Media post:

More rousing Cascadian independence precedent 03.May.2007 00:24
citizen joe link

In reasearching a lecture on Cascadia I gave in January at Reed College, I uncovered some interesting bits of information regarding the Oregon Republic. Contemporary sources discussed the topic of an independent nation, but by the 1890's there was no mention of the subject. Joe Meek's line in the sand at Champoeg was drawn to divide those for organizing a government, from those opposed to a government, not to divide those for the American side from those for the British side. The government formed was independent, as Meek himself said on his trip to Washington DC in 1848 following the Whitman massacre "I am Envoy extraordinary and minister plenipotentiary from the Republic of Oregon to the Court of the United States"

A few more rousing words about Cascadia on our national holiday:
"In the legislative committee for 1844, and in the executive committee also, who were revolving in their minds the question of an independent government; that is a government owning no allegiance either to the U.S. or Great Britain, but which should lay the foundations of an empire on the Pacific Coast... as strong as any state or power on the American continent"
Fuller Victor, Frances, River of the West 114, 116

And of course Thomas Jefferson "One Day I see a free great and independent empire on the banks of the Columbia River," 1813

Tear down the stars and stripes and hoist up the Doug flag of Cascadia

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Beavers, Firs, Salmon, and Falling Water

2007-04-19T21:27:06Z

Beavers, Firs, Salmon, and Falling Water
Pacific Northwest Regionalism and the Environment
by William L. Lang

The idea of the Pacific Northwest as region has long been associated with two related phenomena: geographical isolation and natural wealth. The descriptions have changed over time, for isolation and natural wealth have been strikingly affected by historical events, but they nonetheless seem to have maintained an importance that until very recently has been the typology for understanding the Pacific Northwest. Isolation might be translated here into distance from the metropolis and lucrative markets or into an absence of efficient transportation for goods and people. Natural wealth might be defined as the part of the environment that human communities — both resident and alien — have coveted for material gain. It is the second of these characteristics that is the subject of this essay.
The idea of region is contested terrain.1 At once assumed to be the antithesis of national commonality and the affirmation of the peculiarities of local place, region is measured in ways as important and diverse as language dialect, architecture, cuisine, and even jokes. More important perhaps, as David Wrobel and Michael Steiner recently advised, the idea of region in the West is dynamic. It is an idea "in a constant state of flux," in which chronology is fundamental. When a region is called "region" is as important as what geography it encompasses. Referring to the Pacific Northwest as a place and region meant different things in 1850, 1880, 1930, and 1950. Its scope is different, and what the term includes in physiographic and cultural elements is different. In Donald Meinig's magisterial The Shaping of America, the Pacific Northwest in 1850 is a slivered "domain" set near the river in the lower Willamette Valley, remote from the metropolis and hardly the essence of a region as we might understand it today. Yet, in this "Oregon Country," as Bill Robbins has explained, the newly settled population stood on the crest of a "great divide" of significant ecological change that would soon begin to characterize the place as a region. There was shape to this region, if only in its potential and in the transformative power of subsequent events.2
A century later, in 1948, maps produced by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers presented a dramatically different portrait of the region. The Pacific Northwest looks like a developed metropolis of engineered connections across thousands of square miles, including transportation, communication, and alterations to the landform — the kind of depiction that seems to contradict geography. The flux of change from the Oregon Country in 1850 and the engineers' Northwest in 1950 is evident in new and increased population, new relationships between humans and the environment they inhabit, and new constructions of place through economic and political mediation. The difference a century made in the definition of region is not surprising, but what should we make of it? This is where we face the most dynamic aspect of change in the definition of region: the role of perception and the assignment of meaning.3
A profound connection between geography and history is embedded in the questions posed about the definition of region. The subjects and perspectives of historical studies change over time, but their most important focus is the study of human actions and perceptions. Without human creativity as a point of focus, philosopher of history Leonard Guelke argues, historical inquiry loses its unique characteristic. Human perception and the meanings people have ascribed to their perceptions is the heart of the historical enterprise. In R.G. Collingwood's terms, "all history is the history of thought," and that enormous tent of inquiry includes, as Guelke explains, "human use and habitation of the earth as a function of human thought." 4
Cultural geographers probe this realm, even as they caution us that the construction of place and region are highly contingent and relational. In short, what we call region and place are constructs that describe, as geographer Robert David Sack puts it, relationships among "forces, perspectives, place and space, and self." Grand Coulee Dam, for instance, would qualify as a place because of its physical action on the Columbia River, its popular image as a great engineering achievement, and the effect it has on the individual. The relationships among these elements, Sack argues, defines what Grand Coulee is as a place and provides the basis for understanding it as a part of a larger area we designate as region. Sack's calculus helps, because it reminds us that places — and thereby regions — are never defined by one characteristic or element. It also raises more contingent questions. Do forces, perspectives, place, or self dominate in defining place and region? Is it the Columbia River backed up behind Grand Coulee, the complexity of the engineered dam, or the personal experience at the spot that rules our understanding? What difference does it make if our fathers worked to build the dam or if we arrived ten years ago as farm workers from Sonora, Mexico? Cultural geographer E.V. Walter provides some help here. What he calls "topistic reality" defines a place as an amalgam of sensory perceptions, moral judgments, passions, ideas, and geographic orientations.
... a place is a location of experience. It evokes and organizes memories, images, feelings, sentiments, meanings, and the work of imagination. The feelings of a place are indeed the mental projections of individuals, but they come from collective experience and they do not happen anywhere else. They belong to the place.
These categorical guidelines on describing and explaining place and region are helpful, but we are still left with what many would call an ethereal, perhaps even a gossamer, set of parameters. John Findlay's recent critique of Pacific Northwest regional identity in Wrobel and Steiner's Many Wests collection of essays is a good place to continue this discussion, because it asks some pertinent questions. It is also an opportunity to apply some of the geographers' analytical tools to the subjects of region and environment.
Findlay calls into question the Pacific Northwest as the "place of the salmon" by labeling it a "fishy proposition." He has several reasons for questioning the validity of salmon as a regional icon, but his most telling point is his comment on the orientation of the interpreter of region. The Pacific Northwest, Findlay argues, is defined more by the people and groups from outside the region than by Northwest residents. He writes:
The Pacific Northwest has generally not been a place people come from; it has been neither a major source for internal migration within the United States nor a significant cultural hearth. Rather, it has been a destination to which other Americans have gone. This fact looms large for explaining regional identity. 6
Migrants to the Pacific Northwest, Findlay maintains, came with ideas about the region already "imprinted" through booster propaganda and other advertisements characterizing the natural and fecund qualities of the place. In short, the Northwest's regional identity — especially the iconographic representation of the region as the "place of salmon" — fails the legitimacy test, as Findlay sees it, because it is not indigenous.
A survey of hyperbolic descriptions of the Willamette Valley during the great mid-nineteenth-century rush to Oregon, of late-nineteenth-century railroad blandishments on the region's opportunities in agriculture, fishing, timber, and other natural resource economies, of the beckoning language in recruiting brochures for high-tech industries in Boise, Portland, Bellevue, Redmond, and Bend make Findlay's point. The Pacific Northwest has long been promoted — to borrow Ernest Callenbach's phrase — as "Ecotopia," regardless of the era. But applying E.V. Walter's earlier quoted explanation that the identifications of place "come from the collective experience and they do not happen anywhere else," we might ask — and not rhetorically — where else might such descriptions of a fecund, natural, and intrinsically ecological region that listed its icons as beavers, firs, salmon, and falling waters be placed? What I am suggesting is that Findlay is only half-right about the origins and maintenance of regional identity and that his dismissal of an essentialist argument — that Pacific Northwest regional identity arises from the place itself — is not borne out in the relationships between residents of the region and their environment. In short, Pacific Northwest regional identity is part of the social ecology of the place, and it grows out of and is nurtured by the environment.
The dynamic relationship between people and environment over time leaves telling imprints. No idea of place or experience of place exists beyond this relationship, just as no idea of place is any more free of its temporal setting than it is free of its geographical setting. The interaction between human activity and environment, as geographers Donald Parkes and Nigel Thrift argue, happens continuously, but our idea of place is specific and feels solid and grounded. "Place," Parkes and Thrift maintain, is "time made visible." Yet our full understanding of place is cumulative, as poet Wendell Berry and ecologist Wes Jackson have insisted. The power of place is in its deep representation of people on the land, layer upon layer of those grounded understandings that are like historical snapshots. So it is that Grand Coulee is understood from many descriptions and representations through time, from its nascent beginnings in human labor and poured concrete to its promise voiced in Woody Guthrie's songs and even to its decimation of salmon runs and inundation of Indian places. In search of the reality of region, we must recognize how we have understood the making of places in the past.7
We should begin our review of the origins of regional identity with the recognition, as anthropologist Richard Daugherty explains in his contribution to Alvin Josephy's America in 1492, that the Pacific Northwest populations at the time of the Columbian contact with the "New World" were "People of the Salmon." From the Tlingit on the Northwest Coast to the Nez Perce and interior Salish on the Columbia Plateau, Daugherty argues, the connective cultural commonalities related to a prime environmental resource: salmonid fisheries. There were enormous differences among tribal groups in the region, but Daugherty and anthropologist Eugene Hunn argue persuasively that in technology, spiritual life, social organization, and artistic expression the centrality of salmon is difficult to miss. In Hunn's studies of mid-Columbia River groups, the list of sacred foods included more flora than fauna, but salmon stood as "the single food item that is foremost in their thoughts" because of its spiritual significance, its dietary importance, and its power as a metaphor for the complexity of living in the salmon's environment. 8
If geographers are correct about the composition of place, then indigenous people in the Pacific Northwest may have lived out a truly profound sense of regional identity. They lived in what we should understand as an enchanted environment, one that had meaning embedded in interrelationships between humans and the non-human world that included cohabitation with spiritual forces and beings. Specific places lived in the names people gave them, names that functioned in practical rather than abstract ways. They signified, as Hunn puts it, "where things happened," as contrasted with European place names that function as cartographic markers. Among the Colville and Yakama, for example, the names of riverplaces carried descriptions of salmon's history on the river and the role Coyote played in bringing fish to the people. At the great Columbia River fishing location — Celilo Falls — names described places where specific families fished from rock ledges and where they later built scaffolds. In what was an enchanted landscape, the identification of the environment and place fused spirit with work, family, history, and social duties. This is a powerful component of an indigenous regional identity.9
Using Robert David Sack's interpretive guide, it is clear that regional identity in the indigenous Northwest powerfully integrated "forces, perspectives, place and space, and self." The forces emanated from fishing for salmon, the seasonal rhythms of movement, and the physical power of the river. Cultural perspectives on human purpose and the meaning of the environment were inherent in this enchanted world, where there was no separation of the sustaining flesh of salmon from its spirituality. The relationship of place and space for the "People of the Salmon" focused on the great fishing locations, such as Celilo Falls and Kettle Falls on the Columbia, on the rivers in Puget Sound, and on the Fraser, Okanagan, and Snake rivers. At some of these locations, thousands of people gathered to trade and thereby made connections between places local and distant, the essence of the linkage between place and space. Digging out the function of self in the indigenous world is difficult, because the cultures were dominantly communal and collective, but vision quests and places that exuded power mixed with sacredness to put individuals in palpable contact with place in significant ways. Tony Garcia of the Nez Perce people described the relationship clearly and powerfully: "I can't remember historically of ever hearing of a time when the Nez Perce were hungry. The Creator gave them an abundance in this land that perhaps people in other places didn't have."10 The identity of place and the meaning of region in the indigenous Northwest, I would argue, are resident in the environment in profound ways.
The emblem of the region, when the outside world first learned about the Pacific Northwest, came directly from the enchanted environment that so powerfully mediated the world for indigenous people; but regional identity for Europeans and Americans focused on a disenchanting image, one epitomized in the power of exchange. Sea otters and later beavers made the region synonymous with aggressive exploitation of the environment and exorbitant gain. Nearly all historians who have analyzed the maritime and land-based fur trade in the Pacific Northwest emphasize the relatively single-minded character of the enterprise. As a basis for regional identity, trading for furs is narrow and limited, but it incorporates larger ideas and social mechanisms. It is colonial and imported. As such, it offers a viewpoint on region that is in social conflict with indigenous culture, that diminishes tribal people and represents a distant and absentee force that seeks power and control over the landscape. Cole Harris argues, for example, that the Hudson's Bay Company melded the commodification of nature with the regulation of time, the construction of work, and the predictability of commercial production. The HBC transformed space in the Pacific Northwest by enclosing landscapes behind post stockades, marking out trade corridors, and extending their sphere of control through brigade incursions that penetrated the entire Columbia River Basin.11
During the nineteenth century and much of the twentieth, the Pacific Northwest carried a mixed identity for outsiders. For HBC and other trading enterprises, the region was a productive source of gain where resources abounded, Natives were tractable, or the land was open for settlement and use. For land-hungry and enterprising American settlers, the environment — as Bob Bunting has explained — offered an Edenic locale for capitalistic development. Although entrepreneurs capitalized on wheat farming, stock-raising, and fishing, timber became the iconographic natural resource economy, a symbol of the region's environmental wealth. The largest of the timber capitalists to invade the region — Weyerhaeuser — is perhaps the best known symbol of the possessive capture of a distinctive regional landscape. In northern Idaho and in the Washington and Oregon Cascades, Weyerhaeuser and other timber companies brought a powerful transformative perspective to the region that, in Bunting's words, "culturally and ecologically altered [the] landscape [and] recast life for everyone in the Pacific Northwest."12
The iconographic geography that the timber industry created — what Robert Michael Pyle calls "The Sack of the Woods" — is a mixture of technologies and perspectives from earlier timber regions and engagement in the Pacific Northwest. The forces inherent in timber economies created new places in northern Idaho's white pine forest, central Oregon's ponderosa cutting fields, and the Cascade and Coast ranges' great fir and spruce conifer stands. Timber towns, river log drives, millponds, and teepee burners became Pacific Northwest symbols. The work of logging and milling created a relationship between place and space through the environmental market that made big nature into big money. In Norman Clark's Everett, Keith Petersen's Potlatch, and Bill Robbins's Coos Bay, no one mistook the region's identity. It came from the forest, met the saw in the mill, and moved out by ship, rail, and truck.13
The same might be said for fishing towns on the Columbia, in Puget Sound, and along the Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia coasts. There is not one regional icon but several, among them beavers, firs, salmon, and falling water. Regional identity can be particularistic and collective, resonant with an individual or a group. What is significant in the construction of regional identity in the Pacific Northwest is its consistent environmental content, regardless of the era.
In the late twentieth century, the dominant environmental force and identity in the Pacific Northwest was falling water, especially as manifested in the massive generative power and the regional environmental alteration created by the Columbia River Basin's 250 major hydroelectric dams. Richard White has argued effectively that the "Columbia River dams made the Pacific Northwest a region." In "making the region," White means that the dams created a new economic and social reality that literally powered the Northwest into a new era. He also means that the Northwest would hew to a new vision that New Deal planners conferred on their projected alteration of the river. Specifically, it is Lewis Mumford's vision of a new Northwest built environment — one with small industrial towns unlike the smokestack cities in the Northeast — that White characterizes as both Promethean and doomed to failure. The seeds of failure are embedded in the federalization of the Columbia, which White correctly marks as the face of a new regional identity. But what kind of identity was it and why did it fail?14
The engineered Columbia became the symbol of the region's future, a new environmental image that emphasized the human alteration and even the control of nature. The power demands after World War II and the devastating floods in 1948 prompted the Corps of Engineers to speed up their aggressive dam-building program, which transformed the Columbia–Snake system into a gigantic manipulated riverine environment. Clarence Dill, the U.S. senator from Washington who had promoted the building of Grand Coulee, called the Columbia system "the future Eldorado of the Pacific Northwest." By 1975, the river had become rationalized, its seasonal fluctuations flattened out to provide maximum hydroelectric benefits, and its reservoirs amenable to slackwater transportation to Lewiston, Idaho, making that inland city a potentially significant port. 15 It was a brave new world that promised benefits to everyone in the region and parity with other regions in the nation, but with an ironic twist. At last, the historic isolation of the Pacific Northwest would be a blessing, because it would have low-cost electricity and a massive delivery system provided by the Bonneville Power Administration that was second to none in the world. It was an environment wondrously turned to the work of human progress, a region literally plugged into the river. In "Roll on Columbia," Woody Guthrie wrote:
Now river you can ramble where the sun sets in the sea, But while you're rambling river you can do some work for me.16
Guthrie's songs prosaically rendered the New Deal's quasi-utopian, new Pacific Northwest identity. His and other hopeful expressions of a new world in the region rested on the combination of three of Robert David Sack's calculations of place — forces, place and space, and perspective. Impounded and falling water in run-of-the-river dams and storage dams made environmental energy a dominant image of force. The Columbia's generative power created connections of place and space between region and nation that resulted in immense economic and social consequences. An industrialized Pacific Northwest became a demographically different place, transforming, as Carl Abbott has explained, Seattle and Portland from "regional cities" to "national cities." The Pacific Northwest became nationally known as an "ecotopia" and increasingly as a location of industrial and technological innovation founded on access to low-cost electricity and water.17
In many ways, by 1980 the Pacific Northwest as a region had arrived on the national stage as a recognized place. Its image was environmental, even as it boasted its transmogrification of a great river. The seeds of failure in that revolutionary remaking of the Columbia became more and more difficult to ignore. More significant than the spotted owl controversy in Northwest forests, the decline of anadromous fish on the Columbia–Snake system and throughout the Pacific Northwest created a new image of the region, one that had dystopian shades and the suggestion of failure. The older images and regional identity associated with salmon crowding up the Columbia seemed to be in a fateful clinch with the brave new world identity of the electrified, technological "organic machine," as Richard White calls the river. Salmon were again in the spotlight and iconic. And that brings us back to the Northwest as the "place of the salmon." Although the region has changed dramatically since maritime traders and Lewis and Clark first described the Columbia River for the larger world, the centrality of salmon continues to get our attention in ways we cannot ignore.
Salmon have always been in the Pacific Northwest as a resource and as an object of cultural reference and reverence. There are no other contenders as an icon of the Pacific Northwest. There are none with salmon's longevity. There are none that exist as both symbol and living reality. Salmon's power resides in its interactive relationship with people in the Pacific Northwest. The "First Salmon" ceremony among river Indians is an example. Each year the first fish caught in the spring is treated with special care, cooked and eaten in ceremony, and its bones deposited in the earth. From the ritual killing of this first fish and the collection of its blood to its mid-river burial, the ceremony communicates the people's respect for salmon and counts as insurance that a strong run would ensue and repeat itself in future years. The ceremony, as Nez Perce elder Horace Axtell explains, is a powerful connector of people to environment, an anointment of place:
In our family we had a feast of the first salmon, and the people would tell fishing stories or other stories. My Grandmother would bury the bones in the ground after the feast, which we were taught to do with a lot of things. It was a way of giving things back to Mother Earth.18
Among non-Natives, salmon attracted great attention, but for mostly economic reasons. Still, the interaction was important and powerful, because it reflected efforts to conserve and even preserve salmon in the rivers, which documents the importance salmon had on the general population. State legislation in Oregon and Washington and ballot initiatives during the first four decades of this century, for example, forced restrictions on fishing operations on the Columbia River. The restrictions applied mostly to fixed gear, such as fishwheels and traps, but they also set seasonal and territorial limits to fishing. Like other attempts to block overfishing, the regulations on the Columbia failed, even as these efforts underscore the importance salmon had to the general public.19
The effort to keep salmon plentiful in the region's rivers has a long history. Early on — even before the certainty of diminishing runs was apparent — salmon canners promulgated hatcheries to artificially rescue a dwindling population. By the onset of federal dam-building, hatcheries had been in business more than fifty years and had become an acceptable means of maintaining salmon, even as engineers constructed salmon-killing dams.20 Since the listing of specific Snake River runs as endangered under the Endangered Species Act, saving salmon has become the region's most dominating political issue. Millions of dollars have been expended to dodge an unthinkable fate — rivers without salmon in the Northwest. Political polling data document public support for the effort, making clear that these fish have a hold on people. In many ways, the fate of salmon is a living metaphor for a contended regionalism, as it is an example of how history, place, and the layers of meaning we have attached to this animal reflects our broader understanding of where we live. What happens to them matters, and their fate seems to be tied to humans in the region. Along with beavers, falling water, and firs, salmon represent the Pacific Northwest. In this place and in essentialist ways, Salmon R Us.
Notes
1. On this point, see particularly Patricia Limerick, "Region and Reason," in All Over the Map: Rethinking American Regions, ed. Edward L. Ayers et al. (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996), 83–104; and Susan Rhodes Neel, "A Place of Extremes: Nature, History, and the American West," in Clyde A. Milner II, ed., A New Significance: Re-Envisioning the History of the American West (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 105–11. 2. David M. Wrobel and Michael C. Steiner, eds., Many Wests: Place, Culture and Regional Identity (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1997), 17–18; Donald Meinig, The Shaping of America, vol. 2, Continental America, 1800–1867 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1993), 424; William G. Robbins, Landscapes of Promise: The Oregon Story, 1800–1840 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1997), 76–7. Robbins uses Fernand Braudel's definitions of geographical space as economic place to interpret what happened in Oregon. This paper relies on cultural geographical definitions of space and place, definitions that factor in perspective and relationships between social and material forces in landscapes to define place. 3. J.A. Krug, The Columbia River: A Comprehensive Departmental Report on the Development of the Water Resources of the Columbia River Basin for Review Prior to Submission to the Congress (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of the Interior, February 1947), 16–18. 4. Leonard Guelke, "The Relations between Geography and History Reconsidered," History and Theory 36:2 (May 1997): 227–9. 5. Robert David Sack, Homo Geographicus (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997), 27, 156–60; E.V. Walter, Placeways (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988), 21. 6. John Findlay, "A Fishy Proposition: Regional Identity in the Pacific Northwest," in Wrobel and Steiner, eds., Many Wests, 45. 7. Donald Parkes and Nigel Thrift, Times, Spaces, and Places: A Chronogeographic Perspective (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1980), 28; Wendell Berry, Home Economics: Fourteen Essays (San Francisco: North Point Press, 1987); Wes Jackson, Becoming Native to This Place (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1994). 8. Richard D. Daugherty, "People of the Salmon," in Alvin Josephy, ed., America in 1492: The World of the Indian Peoples before the Arrival of Columbus (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1992), 49–83; Eugene S. Hunn, Nich'I Wána "The Big River": Mid-Columbia Indians and Their Land (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1990), 209. 9. Hunn, Nich'I Wána, 93–4. 10. Tony Garcia, quoted in Dan Landeen and Allen Pinkham, Salmon and His People: Fish and Fishing in Nez Perce Culture (Lewiston, Idaho: Confluence Press, 1999), 93. 11. R. Cole Harris, The Resettlement of British Columbia: Essays on Colonialism and Geographic Change (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1997), 31–67. 12. Robert Bunting, The Pacific Raincoast: Environment and Culture in an American Eden, 1778–1900 (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1997), 158. 13. Robert Michael Pyle, Wintergreen: Rambles in a Ravaged Land (New York: Scribners, 1986), 141–71; Norman H. Clark; Mill Town: A Social History of Everett, Washington, from Its Earliest Beginnings of the Shores of Puget Sounds to the Tragic and Infamous Event Known as the Everett Massacre (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1970); Keith C. Petersen, Company Town: Potlach, Idaho, and the Potlach Lumber Company (Pullman: Washington State University Press, 1987); William G. Robbins, Hard Times in Paradise: Coos Bay, Oregon, 1850–1986 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1988). 14. Richard White, The Organic Machine: The Remaking of the Columbia River (New York: Hill & Wang, 1995), 64. 15. Clarence Dill, Where Water Falls (Spokane: C.W. Hill, 1970), 246–58. 16. Woody Guthrie, "Roll On Columbia," Woody Guthrie Publications, Inc. (1941). 17. Carl Abbott, The Metropolitan Frontier: Cities in the Modern American West (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1993), 53–75. 18. Hunn, Nich'I Wana, 152–4; Horace Axtell quoted in Landeen and Pinkham, Salmon and His People, 93. 19. For listing and discussion of the fishing restriction legislation and initiatives, see Joseph Cone and Sandy Ridlington, eds., The Northwest Salmon Crisis: A Documentary History (Corvallis: Oregon State University Press, 1996), 125–8. 20. On salmon hatcheries, see Joseph E.Taylor III, Making Salmon: An Environmental History of the Northwest Fisheries Crisis (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1999).

http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/ohq/104.2/lang.html

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Leading Democrats say "No to Impeachment of Bush.. it is off the table"

2006-11-12T05:08:33Z

Leading Democrats say "No to Impeachment of Bush.. it is off the table"

Conyers Toes Party Line: No Impeachment
Something Is Extremely 'Rotten In The State Of Denmark'

Steve Watson
Infowars.net
Friday, November 10, 2006

The latest Democrat "saviour" to flip flop 180 degrees in light of
their victory is Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich. Presumed to become
chairman of the House Judiciary Committee in January, Conyers today
said that impeachment of President Bush "is off the table."

"In this campaign, there was an orchestrated right-wing effort to
distort my position on impeachment, " Conyers said in a statement
released by his Judiciary Committee spokesman. "The incoming speaker
(Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.) has said that impeachment is off the
table. I am in total agreement with her on this issue: Impeachment
is off the table."

Conyers seems to have forgotten that last December he laid out the
grounds for impeachment in a 350 page long report called "The
Constitution in Crisis: The Downing Street Minutes and Deception,
Manipulation, Torture, Retribution and Cover-ups in the Iraq War"
and later updated to add "illegal domestic surveillance. "

For a while Conyers was the darling of left leaning bloggers and
readers everywhere:

At this site, we are especially proud of the new Conyers
Report, "The Constitution in Crisis." By purchasing this book, you
have the opportunity to own a part of history and help the
Congressman hold the Bush Administration accountable. Your
assistance in helping Congressman Conyers become the next Chairman
of the House Judiciary Committee will bring us one step closer to
getting the American people the answers from this Administration
that they deserve.
- www.afterdowningstr eet.org

Conyers is so admirable. One of the very few in Congress who still
has integrity and principles. It is too bad that he does not get
more MSM coverage but why would they do that? He might upset the
Republican and Corporate plans for total control and could expose
their nefarious doings.
He is risking much by not following the official DNC program too, in
addition to challenging the Bushies.
- Huffington Post

In december 2005, upon release of the report, Conyers stated:

The Report concludes that a number of these actions amount to prima
facie evidence (evidence sufficiently strong to presume the
allegations are true) that federal criminal laws have been violated.
Legal violations span from false statements to Congress to
whistleblower laws... The Report also concludes that these charges
clearly rise to the level of impeachable conduct... In response to
the Report, I have already taken a number of actions. First, I have
introduced a resolution (H. Res. 635) creating a Select Committee
with subpoena authority to investigate the misconduct of the Bush
Administration with regard to the Iraq war and report on possible
impeachable offenses.

So Conyers was already underway with setting up investigations into
impeachable offences, but now he says that impeachment is off the
table? Clearly he has been given orders to toe the party line or
face the consequences.

Despite the fact that 86% want to see the President impeached,
leading Democrats have already ruled this out. The same leading
Democrats that voted for the war in Afghanistan, for the Patriot
Act, for Homeland Security and against a bill that simply condemned
torture of prisoners in Iraq.

After Nancy Pelosi and Howard Dean, Conyers is the latest Democrat
to show us their true colours once in power.

Conyers and the other Democrats highlight precisely why we need to
regroup, consolidate and redouble our efforts in light of the
theatrical shift of power in Washington to the left. Because as soon
as this happened, overnight, the truth movement lost a great deal of
support from those that believe the job is now done.

Taking note of many reader comments over the past few days I have
noticed a startling uprise in the amount of negative and dismissive
feedback from some readers. Evidently those who expected us to be
out dancing in the streets at the news of a Democrat landslide in
Washington have been bitterly disappointed.

We have never once suggested that the solution to a corrupt and
fascist Neocon leadership is a passive and capitulating Democrat
sideshow leadership, so why is it any surprise that we are
continuing on the same course as before?

Comments such as the following emphasize my point:

"You can only have it one way. What the hell is up with you people.
The whole time the Bush regime was in power you begged for change.
Now you have it, but your still complaining. "

Yes we are seeking change, but not a simple change of personnel as
we have witnessed this week. As we reported yesterday "There's no
doubt about it, to see frothing Neo-Cons who have been strutting
around like John Wayne for the past five years finally eat humble
pie is a breath of fresh air, but let's not be so deluded as to
think that the Neo-Con agenda, which took decades to craft, was
simply brushed aside by the victory of a party that has supported
Bush every step of the way on major issues."

Seeing Bush on TV admitting he'd took a hell of a beating was great,
for about five minutes, then he started laughing and joking about it
and talking about pushing forward to work closely with a new crowd.

Is rolling over and going back to sleep going to get Bush impeached?
Should we shut down the websites now and go save the whales or
something else we'd all love to be doing if we didn't have to
relentlessly keep fighting to stop our leaders killing our freedoms?

Within hours the Democratic elite have shown us that they don't give
a damn about holding the Bush administration up to scrutiny. With no
effective opposition in the form of a political party it is up to
the people to continue to demand justice and to continue to attempt
to reign in those who have heinously abused their power.

Thomas Jefferson described Congress as "a body to which the people
send one hundred and fifty lawyers, whose trade it is to question
everything and yield nothing."

In light of this how can any representative say something like
impeachment is 'off the table?'

found at
http://www.infowars .net/articles/ november2006/ 101106Rotten. htm

Nancy Pelosi on YouTube and Howard Dean

Nancy Pelosi on the YouTube saying "NO TO IMPEACHMENT... ITS OFF THE TABLE"
http://youtube.com/watch?v=R-4vw2qw3Wc
or
http://youtube.com/watch?v=mAGCgY4PDNA

Howard Dean Says No Impeachment Of Bush
Lapdog Democrats to waste two years on minimum wage and mass illegal amnesty, no to Iraq inquiry, no to police state rollback, no to bringing troops home

Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet
Thursday, November 9, 2006

Howard Dean last night said there would be no impeachment proceedings against President Bush under a Democrat controlled Congress, echoing the pledge of Nancy Pelosi to protect the administration that lied a nation into a war and dismantled the very fabric of America.

Here's the exchange from Dean's appearance on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart last night.

STEWART: "How long in your mind do you feel it's gonna be before power corrupts you absolutely?"

DEAN: "Well, you know...."

STEWART: "The last guys did it in three and a half days, what are you guys aiming for?"

DEAN: "Longer than that."

DEAN: "I know half the audience wants us to impeach the President and all that kind of stuff but we're not gonna do that - we're not gonna do that."

Dean is toeing the party line first crystallized by Nancy Pelosi when she told the 60 Minutes program, "Impeachment is off the table....it's a pledge....it is a waste of time."

When will jubilant mindless liberals realize that their darling Democrats have been installed as ringers to halt the momentum of the anti-war and 9/11 truth movements while committing to shielding the Bush administration for the very crimes and misdemeanors that supposedly cost them the House and Senate in the first place?

Democrats have already clearly stated how they intend to "get to work" over the next two years - by helping Bush push through a mass amnesty for illegal aliens - something his own republican House even prevented him doing - and also wasting time on the non-issue of the minimum wage.

Will raising the minimum wage and legalizing all illegal aliens help rollback the devastation the Bush administration has wrought on the U.S. Constitution?

Will raising the minimum wage and legalizing all illegal aliens bring the troops home?

Will raising the minimum wage and legalizing all illegal aliens re-instate the nine amendments to the Constitution that were abolished under the Military Commissions Act?

Will raising the minimum wage and legalizing all illegal aliens do anything to can the unconstitutional domestic eavesdropping program?

Will raising the minimum wage and legalizing all illegal aliens do anything to claw back the out of control deficit?

We were told the Republicans were abandoned because of corruption and Iraq and yet the Democrat shills have completely avoided specifics about how they intend to address these issues and on the question of impeachment have vowed to protect Bush. Empty rhetoric about a "policy change" in Iraq is nothing more than hot air betrayed by a legacy of Democrat support for keeping the troops in the quagmire - exemplified no better than Hillary Clinton and Nancy Pelosi, who both support imperial jaunts in the name of the "war on terror."

British Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett has already stated that Blair's government will not co-operate with any move to withdraw troops from Iraq and Afghanistan and she needn't worry because the Democrats are not going to even try it.

The Associated Press reports that Pelosi and Bush have already proclaimed reconciliation and are now "making nice" and devising how they can work in tandem. Tuesday's vote and its superficial euphoric aftermath was not about a populist reaction to six years of abuse and deceit - it was a sad indictment of the fact that a majority of Americans, particularly the establishment left, still buy the hoax that the Republicrats and the Democons are anything more than two different CEO's bidding for control of Slavery Incorporated.

http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/november2006/091106deansaysno.htm

posted in Ecotopian Future Historians Tribe - 1 reply

“Roses, Cedars, and Orange Ribbons” [Audio]

2006-11-02T19:34:58Z

“Roses, Cedars, and Orange Ribbons” [Audio]
Radio Netherlands, 29 June 2005

http://cgi.omroep.nl/cgi-bin/streams?/rnw/smac/2004/roses__cedars_and_orange_ribbons_050629doc_low.rm

This RealPlay investigate story looks at how the book and methods suggested in "From Dictatorship to Democracy" (www.aeinstein.org/organizations/org/FDTD.pdf) was used and help in the various Colour Revolutions. As Cascadians I believe it is a MUST listen too and the book should be read and passed around to everyone.

posted in Ecotopian Future Historians Tribe - 0 replies

Bush Moves Toward Martial Law

2006-10-29T23:40:15Z

Bush Moves Toward Martial Law

I really do not know what to say to any of this. When I lived in
Cascadia and would tell fellow teachers and fellow students that
this was coming they looked at me and treated me as if I was insane
was even told that maybe medication would help me. I tried and
tried and yes still try.. saying I was right does not give me any
happiness because it is my loved ones, forests and friends who
suffer as well as the planet as a whole. I will advise all of you
still under the yoke of Amerikan fascism "take your words and
actions off the internet" and "find a nice visible space, a wall, a
park bench, a banner dropped from a visible high place" and wake up
these sheep.

PLEASE use the following and take our resistence and freedom to
the "real world" our time is now and maybe soon too late:

Memetic Cascadia
http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2006/01/332336.shtml

So you can not afford or need a Cascadian Flag (Doug) now!
http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2006/05/338592.shtml

Tools for a Revolution
http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2006/01/333109.shtml

The Power and Potential of Nonviolent Struggle
lecture from Gene Sharp
http://aeinstein.org/organizationsVideoPPNVS.html

Amazing Article on Electronic/Wireless/Swarming Tactics for Activism
http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2003/11/274307.shtml

the article:

Bush Moves Toward Martial Law

By Frank Morales

October 29, 2006
uruknet.info

In a stealth maneuver, President Bush has signed into law a provision which, according to Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont), will actually encourage the President to declare federal martial law (1). It does so by revising the Insurrection Act, a set of laws that limits the President's ability to deploy troops within the United States. The Insurrection Act (10 U.S.C.331 -335) has historically, along with the Posse Comitatus Act (18 U.S.C.1385), helped to enforce strict prohibitions on military involvement in domestic law enforcement. With one cloaked swipe of his pen, Bush is seeking to undo those prohibitions.

Public Law 109-364, or the "John Warner Defense Authorization Act of 2007" (H.R.5122) (2), which was signed by the commander in chief on October 17th, 2006, in a private Oval Office ceremony, allows the President to declare a "public emergency" and station troops anywhere in America and take control of state-based National Guard units without the consent of the governor or local authorities, in order to "suppress public disorder."

President Bush seized this unprecedented power on the very same day that he signed the equally odious Military Commissions Act of 2006. In a sense, the two laws complement one another. One allows for torture and detention abroad, while the other seeks to enforce acquiescence at home, preparing to order the military onto the streets of America. Remember, the term for putting an area under military law enforcement control is precise; the term is "martial law."

Section 1076 of the massive Authorization Act, which grants the Pentagon another $500-plus-billion for its ill-advised adventures, is entitled, "Use of the Armed Forces in Major Public Emergencies." Section 333, "Major public emergencies; interference with State and Federal law" states that "the President may employ the armed forces, including the National Guard in Federal service, to restore public order and enforce the laws of the United States when, as a result of a natural disaster, epidemic, or other serious public health emergency, terrorist attack or incident, or other condition in any State or possession of the United States, the President determines that domestic violence has occurred to such an extent that the constituted authorities of the State or possession are incapable of ("refuse" or "fail" in) maintaining public order, "in order to suppress, in any State, any insurrection, domestic violence, unlawful combination, or conspiracy."

For the current President, "enforcement of the laws to restore public order" means to commandeer guardsmen from any state, over the objections of local governmental, military and local police entities; ship them off to another state; conscript them in a law enforcement mode; and set them loose against "disorderly" citizenry - protesters, possibly, or those who object to forced vaccinations and quarantines in the event of a bio-terror event.

The law also facilitates militarized police round-ups and detention of protesters, so called "illegal aliens," "potential terrorists" and other "undesirables" for detention in facilities already contracted for and under construction by Halliburton. That's right. Under the cover of a trumped-up "immigration emergency" and the frenzied militarization of the southern border, detention camps are being constructed right under our noses, camps designed for anyone who resists the foreign and domestic agenda of the Bush administration.

An article on "recent contract awards" in a recent issue of the slick, insider "Journal of Counterterrorism & Homeland Security International" reported that "global engineering and technical services powerhouse KBR [Kellog, Brown & Root] announced in January 2006 that its Government and Infrastructure division was awarded an Indefinite Delivery/Indefinite Quantity (IDIQ) contract to support U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facilities in the event of an emergency." "With a maximum total value of $385 million over a five year term," the report notes, "the contract is to be executed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers," "for establishing temporary detention and processing capabilities to augment existing ICE Detention and Removal Operations (DRO) - in the event of an emergency influx of immigrants into the U.S., or to support the rapid development of new programs." The report points out that "KBR is the engineering and construction subsidiary of Halliburton." (3) So, in addition to authorizing another $532.8 billion for the Pentagon, including a $70-billion "supplemental provision" which covers the cost of the ongoing, mad military maneuvers in Iraq, Afghanistan, and other places, the new law, signed by the president in a private White House ceremony, further collapses the historic divide between the police and the military: a tell-tale sign of a rapidly consolidating police state in America, all accomplished amidst ongoing U.S. imperial pretensions of global domination, sold to an "emergency managed" and seemingly willfully gullible public as a "global war on terrorism."

Make no mistake about it: the de-facto repeal of the Posse Comitatus Act (PCA) is an ominous assault on American democratic tradition and jurisprudence. The 1878 Act, which reads, "Whoever, except in cases and under circumstances expressly authorized by the Constitution or Act of Congress, willfully uses any part of the Army or Air Force as a posse comitatus or otherwise to execute the laws shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than two years, or both," is the only U.S. criminal statute that outlaws military operations directed against the American people under the cover of 'law enforcement.' As such, it has been the best protection we've had against the power-hungry intentions of an unscrupulous and reckless executive, an executive intent on using force to enforce its will.

Unfortunately, this past week, the president dealt posse comitatus, along with American democracy, a near fatal blow. Consequently, it will take an aroused citizenry to undo the damage wrought by this horrendous act, part and parcel, as we have seen, of a long train of abuses and outrages perpetrated by this authoritarian administration.

Despite the unprecedented and shocking nature of this act, there has been no outcry in the American media, and little reaction from our elected officials in Congress. On September 19th, a lone Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont) noted that 2007's Defense Authorization Act contained a "widely opposed provision to allow the President more control over the National Guard [adopting] changes to the Insurrection Act, which will make it easier for this or any future President to use the military to restore domestic order WITHOUT the consent of the nation's governors."

Senator Leahy went on to stress that, "we certainly do not need to make it easier for Presidents to declare martial law. Invoking the Insurrection Act and using the military for law enforcement activities goes against some of the central tenets of our democracy. One can easily envision governors and mayors in charge of an emergency having to constantly look over their shoulders while someone who has never visited their communities gives the orders."

A few weeks later, on the 29th of September, Leahy entered into the Congressional Record that he had "grave reservations about certain provisions of the fiscal Year 2007 Defense Authorization Bill Conference Report," the language of which, he said, "subverts solid, longstanding posse comitatus statutes that limit the military's involvement in law enforcement, thereby making it easier for the President to declare martial law." This had been "slipped in," Leahy said, "as a rider with little study," while "other congressional committees with jurisdiction over these matters had no chance to comment, let alone hold hearings on, these proposals."

In a telling bit of understatement, the Senator from Vermont noted that "the implications of changing the (Posse Comitatus) Act are enormous". "There is good reason," he said, "for the constructive friction in existing law when it comes to martial law declarations. Using the military for law enforcement goes against one of the founding tenets of our democracy. We fail our Constitution, neglecting the rights of the States, when we make it easier for the President to declare martial law and trample on local and state sovereignty."

Senator Leahy's final ruminations: "Since hearing word a couple of weeks ago that this outcome was likely, I have wondered how Congress could have gotten to this point. It seems the changes to the Insurrection Act have survived the Conference because the Pentagon and the White House want it."

The historic and ominous re-writing of the Insurrection Act, accomplished in the dead of night, which gives Bush the legal authority to declare martial law, is now an accomplished fact.

The Pentagon, as one might expect, plays an even more direct role in martial law operations. Title XIV of the new law, entitled, "Homeland Defense Technology Transfer Legislative Provisions," authorizes "the Secretary of Defense to create a Homeland Defense Technology Transfer Consortium to improve the effectiveness of the Department of Defense (DOD) processes for identifying and deploying relevant DOD technology to federal, State, and local first responders."

In other words, the law facilitates the "transfer" of the newest in so-called "crowd control" technology and other weaponry designed to suppress dissent from the Pentagon to local militarized police units. The new law builds on and further codifies earlier "technology transfer" agreements, specifically the 1995 DOD-Justice Department memorandum of agreement achieved back during the Clinton-Reno regime.(4)

It has become clear in recent months that a critical mass of the American people have seen through the lies of the Bush administration; with the president's polls at an historic low, growing resistance to the war Iraq, and the Democrats likely to take back the Congress in mid-term elections, the Bush administration is on the ropes. And so it is particularly worrying that President Bush has seen fit, at this juncture to, in effect, declare himself dictator.

Source:

http://leahy.senate.gov/press/200609/091906a.html and http://leahy.senate.gov/press/200609/092906b.html See also, Congressional Research Service Report for Congress, "The Use of Federal Troops for Disaster Assistance: Legal Issues," by Jennifer K. Elsea, Legislative Attorney, August 14, 2006

http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill+h109-5122

(3) Journal of Counterterrorism & Homeland Security International, "Recent Contract Awards", Summer 2006, Vol.12, No.2, pg.8; See also, Peter Dale Scott, "Homeland Security Contracts for Vast New Detention Camps," New American Media, January 31, 2006.

(4) "Technology Transfer from defense: Concealed Weapons Detection", National Institute of Justice Journal, No 229, August, 1995, pp.42-43.

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another big awakening for Cascadians coming this November

2006-10-23T07:43:50Z

another big awakening for Cascadians coming this November

There are still those who still believe that some how the Democrats
will win seats in the coming election (2 weeks away in November)
push for some idea that there will be a mass turn out and somehow
impeach the fascist who is now in power. Its all crap. besides the
fact that most if not all these professional politicians (Democrats)
do not have the need or desire to impeach this usurper, the looks of
things is that any election even in Oregon will be a huge let down
and stolen again. This is a weird way is good for Cascadians for as
some of our syblings realize just how disenfranchised and powerless
we are from the power in this federation. As the debate after the
Nov 2 2006 election continues on in the weeks that follow WE,
AWAKENED CASCADIANS, have a golden oppertunity to wake up our
syblings from this fantasy .. from this sleep.. that is not
RealDemocracy. We should be making flyers, posters, banners,
stickers and makeshift Doug flags NOW! In the weeks to follow we
MUST get the word out about Cascadia! There is be debates on who won
and questions on count and recount for senators, congresspersons and
governors and even laws... this will make more and more people
realize that the whole system (even if your state is not
contaminated with election fraud) is not winable as we continue it
playing by "their rules". Right now (October 22 or when you read
this) is the time to be forwarding copies and printint out copies
of "From Dictatorship To Democracy" to give our sybling Cascadians
as they wake from their slumber. Leave a copy in the local
library.. wheat past it on a wall... We NEED to start advertising an
EVERGREEN REVOLUTION ..NOW!

From Dicatorship to Democracy
www.aeinstein. org/organization s/org/FDTD. pdf

Republic of Cascadia
http://republic- of-cascadia. tripod.com/

during the election campaign of 2004 I was desperate enough for
money that I took a job for one day to work on a campaign to get out
the vote. I remeber how I kept telling people the election is fixed
with these machines and even if Oregon became blue its not going to
change that fact about the rest of the country. Needles to say I
worked there for one day. Anyway it was the emotions of the general
public that was interesting. There was all this fear of the
fascists (the other fascists party) barely winning and at the same
time all this hope that by shear numbers the Democrats (also
fascists in disguise) going "take back" the country. Think about
all those Greens and Kaccinich and other followers all marginalized
by the frenzy of Democrat and the fear that Bush might stay in
power. Remember the frustration of watching the Democrats first
start winning states and then start losing states as the big map
went from blank to blue and then quickly as Rove was in his hidden
bunk manipulating things to red. Remember the issues with long
lines of voters standing in the rain at night in Ohio and other
states and then being turned away. Think about the collective
emotional roller coaster of the country as Kerry backout. Think
about all those people that went from door to door either getting
people to sign up or being insulted for working for a pro democrat
group. To this day I remember as the country became red on the map
Janeane Garofalo on Air America buzzing off of redbull out of the
blue "Ok lets secede" and pointing out that red was the Bible Belt
and MidWest that that would be "Jesusland" and the rest of the
country would secede and join Canada. And when she said that I knew
people out of hopelessness and fear would start thinking on how to
get out. That is when we saw the idea of Cascadia is an autonomous
bioregion catch fire. For years before that the various Cascadians
forums would hover around 30 or 40 people. but when you have so
much collective emotion in such a thing as an election and when it
is outright stolen or taken away from you then real alternatives
become possible. The weeks after November 2 will have this effect
again and we must make sure we capture this. With tons of spams,
articles, posters and other memes to collect this dienfranchised
(disenbodied) energy.

Memetic Cascadia
http://portland. indymedia. org/en/2006/ 01/332336. shtml

So you can not afford or need a Cascadian Flag (Doug) now!
http://portland. indymedia. org/en/2006/ 05/338592. shtml

posted in Ecotopian Future Historians Tribe - 0 replies

A People's History Of The United States

2006-10-20T18:54:35Z

A People's History Of The United States
by Howard Zinn

http://historyisaweapon.com/zinnapeopleshistory.html

yes that is FREE online!

posted in Ecotopian Future Historians Tribe - 0 replies

We have lived as if in a trance.

2006-10-19T21:14:51Z

"The Beginning of the End of America."

SPECIAL COMMENT
By Keith Olbermann
Anchor, 'Countdown'
Countdown
Updated: 3:00 p.m. ET Oct. 19, 2006

On Tuesday, President Bush signed legislation authorizing tough interrogation of terror suspects and paving the way for trials before military commissions.

Tonight, "Countdown" host Keith Olbermann addresses the legislation in a special comment entitled "The Beginning of the End of America."

You can read an excerpt of Olbermann's comment below.

We have lived as if in a trance.

We have lived as people in fear.

And now—our rights and our freedoms in peril—we slowly awaken to learn that we have been afraid of the wrong thing.

Therefore, tonight have we truly become the inheritors of our American legacy.

For, on this first full day that the Military Commissions Act is in force, we now face what our ancestors faced, at other times of exaggerated crisis and melodramatic fear-mongering:

A government more dangerous to our liberty, than is the enemy it claims to protect us from.

We have been here before—and we have been here before, led here by men better and wiser and nobler than George W. Bush.

We have been here when President John Adams insisted that the Alien and Sedition Acts were necessary to save American lives, only to watch him use those acts to jail newspaper editors.

American newspaper editors, in American jails, for things they wrote about America.

We have been here when President Woodrow Wilson insisted that the Espionage Act was necessary to save American lives, only to watch him use that Act to prosecute 2,000 Americans, especially those he disparaged as “Hyphenated Americans,” most of whom were guilty only of advocating peace in a time of war.

American public speakers, in American jails, for things they said about America.

And we have been here when President Franklin D. Roosevelt insisted that Executive Order 9066 was necessary to save American lives, only to watch him use that order to imprison and pauperize 110,000 Americans while his man in charge, General DeWitt, told Congress: “It makes no difference whether he is an American citizen—he is still a Japanese.”

American citizens, in American camps, for something they neither wrote nor said nor did, but for the choices they or their ancestors had made about coming to America.

Each of these actions was undertaken for the most vital, the most urgent, the most inescapable of reasons.

And each was a betrayal of that for which the president who advocated them claimed to be fighting.

Adams and his party were swept from office, and the Alien and Sedition Acts erased.

Many of the very people Wilson silenced survived him, and one of them even ran to succeed him, and got 900,000 votes, though his presidential campaign was conducted entirely from his jail cell.

And Roosevelt’s internment of the Japanese was not merely the worst blight on his record, but it would necessitate a formal apology from the government of the United States to the citizens of the United States whose lives it ruined.

The most vital, the most urgent, the most inescapable of reasons.

In times of fright, we have been only human.

We have let Roosevelt’s “fear of fear itself” overtake us.

We have listened to the little voice inside that has said, “the wolf is at the door; this will be temporary; this will be precise; this too shall pass.”

We have accepted that the only way to stop the terrorists is to let the government become just a little bit like the terrorists.

Just the way we once accepted that the only way to stop the Soviets was to let the government become just a little bit like the Soviets.

Or substitute the Japanese.

Or the Germans.

Or the Socialists.

Or the Anarchists.

Or the Immigrants.

Or the British.

Or the Aliens.

The most vital, the most urgent, the most inescapable of reasons.

And, always, always wrong.

“With the distance of history, the questions will be narrowed and few: Did this generation of Americans take the threat seriously, and did we do what it takes to defeat that threat?”

Wise words.

And ironic ones, Mr. Bush.

Your own, of course, yesterday, in signing the Military Commissions Act.

You spoke so much more than you know, Sir.

Sadly—of course—the distance of history will recognize that the threat this generation of Americans needed to take seriously was you.

We have a long and painful history of ignoring the prophecy attributed to Benjamin Franklin that “those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.”

But even within this history we have not before codified the poisoning of habeas corpus, that wellspring of protection from which all essential liberties flow.

You, sir, have now befouled that spring.

You, sir, have now given us chaos and called it order.

You, sir, have now imposed subjugation and called it freedom.

For the most vital, the most urgent, the most inescapable of reasons.

And — again, Mr. Bush — all of them, wrong.

We have handed a blank check drawn against our freedom to a man who has said it is unacceptable to compare anything this country has ever done to anything the terrorists have ever done.

We have handed a blank check drawn against our freedom to a man who has insisted again that “the United States does not torture. It’s against our laws and it’s against our values” and who has said it with a straight face while the pictures from Abu Ghraib Prison and the stories of Waterboarding figuratively fade in and out, around him.

We have handed a blank check drawn against our freedom to a man who may now, if he so decides, declare not merely any non-American citizens “unlawful enemy combatants” and ship them somewhere—anywhere -- but may now, if he so decides, declare you an “unlawful enemy combatant” and ship you somewhere - anywhere.

And if you think this hyperbole or hysteria, ask the newspaper editors when John Adams was president or the pacifists when Woodrow Wilson was president or the Japanese at Manzanar when Franklin Roosevelt was president.

And if you somehow think habeas corpus has not been suspended for American citizens but only for everybody else, ask yourself this: If you are pulled off the street tomorrow, and they call you an alien or an undocumented immigrant or an “unlawful enemy combatant”—exactly how are you going to convince them to give you a court hearing to prove you are not? Do you think this attorney general is going to help you?

This President now has his blank check.

He lied to get it.

He lied as he received it.

Is there any reason to even hope he has not lied about how he intends to use it nor who he intends to use it against?

“These military commissions will provide a fair trial,” you told us yesterday, Mr. Bush, “in which the accused are presumed innocent, have access to an attorney and can hear all the evidence against them.”

"Presumed innocent," Mr. Bush?

The very piece of paper you signed as you said that, allows for the detainees to be abused up to the point just before they sustain “serious mental and physical trauma” in the hope of getting them to incriminate themselves, and may no longer even invoke The Geneva Conventions in their own defense.

"Access to an attorney," Mr. Bush?

Lieutenant Commander Charles Swift said on this program, Sir, and to the Supreme Court, that he was only granted access to his detainee defendant on the promise that the detainee would plead guilty.

"Hearing all the evidence," Mr. Bush?

The Military Commissions Act specifically permits the introduction of classified evidence not made available to the defense.

Your words are lies, Sir.

They are lies that imperil us all.

“One of the terrorists believed to have planned the 9/11 attacks,” you told us yesterday, “said he hoped the attacks would be the beginning of the end of America.”

That terrorist, sir, could only hope.

Not his actions, nor the actions of a ceaseless line of terrorists (real or imagined), could measure up to what you have wrought.

Habeas corpus? Gone.

The Geneva Conventions? Optional.

The moral force we shined outwards to the world as an eternal beacon, and inwards at ourselves as an eternal protection? Snuffed out.

These things you have done, Mr. Bush, they would be “the beginning of the end of America.”

And did it even occur to you once, sir — somewhere in amidst those eight separate, gruesome, intentional, terroristic invocations of the horrors of 9/11 -- that with only a little further shift in this world we now know—just a touch more repudiation of all of that for which our patriots died --- did it ever occur to you once that in just 27 months and two days from now when you leave office, some irresponsible future president and a “competent tribunal” of lackeys would be entitled, by the actions of your own hand, to declare the status of “unlawful enemy combatant” for -- and convene a Military Commission to try -- not John Walker Lindh, but George Walker Bush?

For the most vital, the most urgent, the most inescapable of reasons.

And doubtless, Sir, all of them—as always—wrong.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15321167/

audio:

http://podcast.msnbc.com/audio/podcast/pd_countdown-10-18-2006-180800.mp3

posted in Ecotopian Future Historians Tribe - 0 replies

Pickaxe - The Cascadia Free State Story (free in google videos)

2006-10-17T21:41:47Z

Pickaxe - The Cascadia Free State Story (free in google videos)

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1915772001649860572&q=cascadia&hl=en

or just go to Google videos and type in "Cascadia"

documentary description:

Pickaxe documents efforts to halt logging at Warner Creek, a federally protected forest in Oregon. Following a suspicious fire in 1991 that ... all » cleared the land, Congress suspended environmental regulations to allow logging in the area. Since arson was determined to be the cause of the fire, however, environmental activists argued that allowing logging at Warner Creek would set a bad example and possibly lead to similarly motivated forest fires. What followed was an 11-month battle complete with a 79-day hunger strike and an amazing blockade of a remote mountain logging road. This inspiring documentary shows the power of direct action, determination and good leadership.

posted in Ecotopian Future Historians Tribe - 0 replies

Modern-Day Secessionists Will Hold a Conference on Leaving the Union

2006-09-28T10:32:14Z

Modern-Day Secessionists Will Hold a Conference on Leaving the Union

Here come the new Green Mountain Boys. The Middlebury Institute, a think tank devoted to the study of separatism, secession, and self-determination, is planning the First North American Secessionist Convention in Burlington, Vt.

More than a dozen secessionist organizations are likely to send representatives to the gathering on November 3 and 4, the director of the institute, Kirkpatrick Sale, said. The room at the Wyndham Burlington hotel can hold about 50 people, he said. The organizers have picked the right state for this radical gathering: Vermont was an independent republic between 1777 and 1791.

"Vermont has a very strong self-identity," Mr. Sale said, and added that New England states were talking about secession around the time of the War of 1812.

Why secession? "It's the only principled, moral way to go," Mr. Sale said. The goal is not to take over any national government but to "simply absent ourselves from it," he added.

Mr. Sale is working with an emeritus professor of economics at Duke University, Thomas Naylor, who is a founder of the Second Vermont Republic, an association that seeks to return Vermont to an independent republic.

Representatives from both red and blue states appear to be joining in — although "joining" is probably not the right word. According to the Web site MiddleburyInstitute.net, responses as of June had come from "Hawaii Nation, Alaska Independence Party, League of the South and several of its chapters, Southern National Congress Committee, Southern Caucus, Christian Exodus, New State Movement, Puerto Rico Independence Party, Parti Quebecois, the State of Jefferson, and the Second Vermont Republic."

A strong response has also come from secession supporters in "Cascadia" (Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia) and "Delmarva" (Delaware, Maryland, and the Virginia Peninsula), among other areas, according to the site. Scholars, researchers and journalists professionally interested in secession may be in attendance, as well.

Convention attendees will first "assess what stages these various organizations are at, how far along they are, and how many members they have," Mr. Sale said. They will then discuss what they are planning to do and go over various successful secessionist strategies.

"It's an expression of frustration," a history professor at the CUNY Graduate Center, John Patrick Diggins, said.

"I don't think secession is a viable plan," a Columbia University professor of history, Eric Foner, told The New York Sun. "But ‘getting out from under America' is an old tradition. There have been such currents throughout American history, but in the half-century after the Civil War, they were very much reduced, for obvious reasons."

At the beginning of the Civil War, New York's mayor thought the city should secede from the Union and trade with both the North and South, Mr. Foner said.

"It would be a great loss to the U.S. if Vermont absconded," a Columbia University sociologist and School of Journalism professor, Todd Gitlin, told the Sun.

If Vermont seceded, it would be more difficult to reach an Electoral College majority, Mr. Gitlin added. "He wants to elect a president in a corrupt" system, Mr. Sale said, when told of Mr. Gitlin's comments.

In an article in Adbusters magazine in January, Mr. Sale wrote, "For one thing, as hurricane Katrina has glaringly shown, the Federal government is a clumsy, bureaucratic, politicized, and insensitive instrument (and as the rebuilding will show, corrupt as well), and states and localities that give themselves over to depending on it are in real trouble."

Noting the tradition of secession in American history, Mr. Sale told the Sun that he doesn't know why it should be impractical for Vermont to secede. "The first group of secessionists was the Founding Fathers," he said. "The American Revolution was in fact a secession from the United Kingdom."

But a professor of history at Harvard University and author of the forthcoming book "The Declaration of Independence: A Global History," David Armitage, said, "It seems to be one of the few observable laws of world history since 1776 that any state that has declared its own independence will thereafter prevent any part of that state from declaring its independence."

Mr. Sale in the past has pointed out that the Constitution is silent on the matter of secession and that the Tenth Amendment reserves powers not delegated by America to the states or the people. But the Supreme Court decision Texas v. White et al. in 1868 declared that the Constitution does not allow states to secede. Sometimes, towns have revolted.

The founder of National Review, William F. Buckley, said secession is not the easiest thing to do because one has to decide "where to secede to." Many who in effect seceded to Canada in protest eventually "inched their way back" to America, he added.

found at www.nysun.com/article/40456

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Six Questions on the American “Gulag” for Historian Kate Brown

2006-09-26T12:41:34Z

for future Historians to see what we, Cascadians and Ecotopians, had to struggle against:

Six Questions on the American “Gulag” for Historian Kate Brown
Posted on Friday, September 22, 2006. Kate Brown is Associate Professor of History at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. Her book, A Biography of No Place: From Ethnic Borderland to Soviet Heartland won the American Historical Association’s George Louis Beer Prize. As a historian of Soviet history, she has sifted through an array of declassified NKVD and KGB documents about the abuse of prisoners in the Gulag. Her article, “Out of Solitary Confinement: The History of the Gulag,” will be published in Kritika vol. 8, no. 1 (Winter 2007). Brown recently answered a series of questions about the American penal and detention system, especially as it has developed post-9/11. By Ken Silverstein.
Sources1. In 2005, Amnesty International charged that the treatment of prisoners in Guantanamo makes the prison “the Gulag of our times.” After public outcry and a media attack, Amnesty retracted the charge. Is the metaphor appropriate?

Soviet arrests were designed to inspire terror. Some people were taken off the street. Others were surprised in their beds in late night roundups. In Soviet prisons, detainees were stripped, searched, and led into special rooms where they were told to face the wall and assume stress positions. Most people were rounded up with no real evidence and without prior investigation. Interrogators withheld food, water, medical assistance, communication with relatives, and sleep until detainees agreed to talk. The most resistant detainees were beaten while handcuffed or tied.

Granted such liberty in dealing with prisoners, some Soviet officers started to enjoy themselves. They made up games, forcing prisoners to dance, smearing glue on their heads, stripping them naked, pouring frigid water over them. Sometimes guards had too much fun and a prisoner died. Then prison-appointed doctors, who often participated in the interrogations, wrote up fictive autopsy reports. Declassified FBI and U.S. Army detailing abuses detainees in U.S. detention centers uncannily echo Soviet NKVD reports. They recount late-night roundups of civilians and describe prisoners held in chambers of extreme heat or cold, chained naked to the floor without food and water for days on end, defecating on themselves, beaten (some to death), forced to dance, to lick their shoes and body parts, to crawl around, and to bark like dogs. American doctors and psychiatrists helped devise methods of inflicting pain and fear to elicit confessions, and they signed false reports when detainees died in custody.

2. Didn't the Soviets lock up far greater numbers of people than are now being detained by the United States?

Indeed, American editorialists grounded their rejection of the Gulag metaphor in numbers. Soviet officials routed millions through the Gulag over several decades (3.7 million according to archival records). In the American case, we are talking about a mere 500 prisoners in Guantanamo, and roughly 30,000 in U.S. detention centers in Iraq. Human Rights Watch estimates that 50,000 people are currently held in domestic prisons without charges. It is undoubtedly true that the torture of tens of thousands is better than the torture of millions. But this defense becomes rather weak, not only if one believes in universal civil liberties and human rights, but also if one considers history. The methods of detention and interrogation used by investigators in Iraq and Cuba derive from CIA manuals issued in 1963 that assumed that the detainee would not be a Muslim extremist but a Soviet agent. The methods practiced and propagated during the Cold War have migrated to the “war on terror” so seamlessly that American soldiers photographed their human-rights violations and shared the photos with no idea they were incriminating themselves.

3. How does the American system compare with the Soviet in respect for due process and legal norms, and in terms of punishment and the treatment of prisoners?

Both Soviet and American laws banned torture of prisoners, guaranteed habeas corpus, and limited the range of punishments a prisoner could receive. In both countries, abuses occurred nonetheless—not in isolated instances, but in the “migration” of practices across great distances, which suggests systemic violations of the laws.

We know, in fact, about Soviet and American abuses in astonishing detail because government investigators went to prisons with notebook and camera and emerged appalled at what they saw. The purpose of those investigations, one would imagine, would be to expose illegal detention and torture in order to stop it. But despite the nearly annual Soviet investigations into abuses, the Gulag continued unhindered for nearly three decades. Despite FBI and Army investigations in Iraq and Cuba, the White House persists in justifying the use of secret CIA prisons in undisclosed foreign locations to sequester terrorist suspects without charge. Rather than exposing abuses in order to end them, official Soviet and American investigations served the purpose of placing the blame for institutionalized abuse on individuals—U.S. Army privates, Soviet prison guards, and NKVD security officers. Finding individuals to blame absolved the governments which had set up the conditions for torture. Scapegoating individuals also enabled Soviet and American ideologues to reiterate yet again their societies’ commitment to justice and civil rights, despite all evidence to the contrary.

4. The Bush Administration is targeting non-citizens it accuses of being terrorists. Didn't the Soviets mostly imprison and abuse their own citizens? So isn't it true that, in the American case, the “gulag” is a response to a real or perceived national security threat, while the Soviets were simply seeking to crush dissent?

During the Cold War the idea arose that the Gulag was primarily an instrument of terror to crush dissent. But declassified Soviet documents do not bear this out. By far, most of the people who landed in the Gulag were there for garden-variety offenses: theft of property, assault, hooliganism, and white-collar crime. They were not influential intellectuals who posed a threat to the regime, but poor, uneducated, and culturally marginalized peasants who broke draconian laws in order to make a living. The search for terrorists in Iraq and Afghanistan has also targeted the weak and vulnerable. United States Army officials admit that 90 percent of the civilians detained in Iraq were later released without charges. The dragnet in Afghanistan also seems to have netted civilians who were in the wrong place at the wrong time. The detention of people who turn out to be innocent bystanders gives a new definition to the phrase “non-combatants.”

5. Have American government officials been more willing to take responsibility for abuses than their Soviet counterparts?

Long after the abuses were made public, Vice President Dick Cheney denied any mistreatment of detainees at Guantánamo. He said that the detainees “have been well treated, treated humanely and decently,” adding, “Occasionally there are allegations of mistreatment, but if you trace those back, in nearly every case, it turns out to come from somebody who had been inside and released to their home country and now are peddling lies about how they were treated.” With his bald-faced denial of torture, Cheney illustrated how Guantánamo shares aspects of the Gulag. His performance mimicked that of the famed Soviet writer Maxim Gorky, who several months after smiling broadly for a photo in front of the notorious Solovetsky Labor Camp, lied with sanctimony when refuting reports of Soviet camp abuses. In an article published in Pravda on March 5, 1931, Gorky wrote that “convict labor” was “a petty, foul slander” aimed at economically isolating and weakening the USSR. “The Soviet regime,” Gorky said, “does not employ convict labor even in prisons.”

When a state goes to the trouble of sanctioning the torture of civilians for purposes of political control, government officials do not willingly own up to these practices. And those who expose abuse are discredited as slanderers, and accused of “peddling lies” and ultimately of abetting the enemy.

6. Does the tolerance for abuses committed during the “war on terrorism” have any implications for the health of democracy at home?

The President’s broad new powers in the signing statements that enable him to override Congress have corroded the American system of checks and balances. American law enforcement agencies can now wiretap American civilians and detain citizens and permanent residents without charges, and consequently without evidence. Last week the House passed legislation to build a 700-mile Israeli-style fence on the U.S.–Mexico border and to deploy there many of the surveillance technologies tested in Iraq. Perhaps the domestic installation of wartime technologies and military surveillance in civilian settings has become acceptable to us because we have become accustomed, as Soviet citizens did during the endless Stalinist purges, to open-ended wars—wars with no opening salvo and no concluding treaty. Whether or not one agrees that American detention centers and secret prisons are the “Gulag of our time,” the comparison deserves serious consideration. It might help us shine a torch into the dark corners of repression, where the totalitarian qualities of our own society lurk, before the scale of violence ascends to Gulag dimensions.

found at http://harpers.org/sb-six-questions-kate-brown-1158926209.html

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NorthWest Solar Homestead

2006-09-14T14:39:50Z

NorthWest Homestead

I live here on the North Coast. But I have some land up in Washington that needs a good home.

This place is way out of sight up on a hilltop that is situated way up in Ferry County in North East Washington State and is near water and National Forest lands.

It is a very private and sunny 10 acre piece of land with a view that would make a great Self Sustainable Solar Powered Homestead for someone who wanted to start putting some roots down in one place and to build their own natural home in a place that has few building restrictions.

The land is nicely situated way up high on a grassy hilltop with a great view overlooking the beautiful Kettle River valley and then across to the mountains on the other side.

It is about 5 miles north of the historic little town of Curlew on highway 21 up in the northern end of the county and it is near tribal lands and other good folks in the local community.

Good building sites, almost flat in many places, Trees out behind and not too far from the year around creek below and within a short walk out back to a National Forest that extends way up the mountain behind you and with grassy fields to the south and below and at a relatively Low Elevation of only 2500 feet you may be able to grow almost anything there and it is a nice sunny spot that is perfect for Solar Power. You will need to put in a well, eventually. There is power and there should be phone lines nearby. It is not that far out but I would stay off the grid and out of sight.

I just want to find a good home for this place since I am committed elsewhere and can't get away. But I live off the grid myself on all Solar power and have been doing so for over twenty years on raw undeveloped land as far as the cocunty is concerned and that means very low taxes stay in place long term. They don't see a house, they don't tax a house.

Consider this to be a solid investment that has real intrinsic value and that you can actually retreat to and live when you retire or on in any time of need. - T

http://sustcomm.com/curlew10.htm

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Petition

2006-09-06T05:29:46Z

Do you want to sign this petition?

http://www.bcoilslick.org/

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Walden by Henry David Thoreau free online

2006-09-03T11:11:42Z

Walden by Henry David Thoreau free online

I have been reading (while listening to) Walden by Henry David Thoreau again. I have tried to read this many many years ago (back in my high school years (in the late 70s and earler 80s). I think Walden by Henry David Thoreau is more relavent today in the era of Corporatism, debt slavery and resourse wars; a period of bioregional thinking; an age of needed action (such as civil disobience); a time for a return to the simple, local and the organic (Mother Nature)

free online audio reading:
http://librivox.org/walden-by-henry-david-thoreau

free online text:
http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/WALDEN/walden.html

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Cascadia's World Heritage

2006-08-26T11:31:16Z

Cascadia's World Heritage

well I would suggest we all add comments to this:

Cascadia's World Heritage
Posted by Eric de Place on 08/25/2006 at 06:30 PM
Cascadia has a wealth of astonishing and pristine natural places. It's part of why residents here are so committed to this place.

One measure of the Northwest's bounty is the number of world heritage sites--natural and cultural places so unique that they are designated by the United Nations as the most important repositories of the planet's ecological richness and humankind's legacy. The boundaries of Cascadia include all or part of a number of these world heritage sites, including Yellowstone; the redwoods of California; the international peace parks of Waterton and Glacier; the Canadian Rocky Mountain Parks; SGang Gwaay, an ancient Haida village; and the Glacier Bay-Yukon region, which boasts, among other features, perhaps the most complicated name imagineable. (You can use this cool interactive map to find others.) But no world heritage gem is closer to Cascadia's human inhabitants than Olympic National Park, an ecological treasure trove just a few miles from Seattle, Tacoma, Vancouver, and Victoria.

Why this paean to the Olympics? Because right now, Olympic National Park is charting its course for its next 20 years. And the public is allowed--nay, encouraged--to provide comment and guidance on the park's future management.

Go here for more info on the web http://parkplanning.nps.gov/projectHome.cfm?projectId=10233 Otherwise:

Comments may be mailed or faxed to Olympic National Park General Management Plan; National Park Service; Denver Service Center; P.O. Box 25287; Denver, CO 80225. The fax number is 303-969-2736.

Why should we care about Olympic National Park? For more reasons than I can possibly do justice to in a blog post. But here's a shot anyway:

It's just plain special. It boasts the longest wilderness coastline in the lower 48, a mind-boggling temperate rainforest, glacier-carved peaks, and 17 species of plants and animals that are found nowhere else on earth, including this cute fellow.
The forests of the Olympic Peninsula outside the park have been battered by decades of clearcut logging, but when they are allowed to grow the Olympic forests are prime repositories for carbon, acting to slow climate change.
The park is big enough--and ecologicall intact enough--to allow for reintroduction of endangered species, such as fishers. It's even considered the next best place in the Northwest for gray wolves to make a comeback. But that will not happen without a concerted effort from citizens and conservationists.
The park's biodiversity is threatened. One of the odder threats is from the non-native mountain goats, which--loveable as they may be--are chomping their way through rare and endangered alpine plants.
Humans need big wild places like Olympic National Park. We're not the same without them. I've always liked this reminiscence of the Olympics from poet Gary Snyder: "We had come miles without trails, you had been long alone. We talked for half an hour up there above the foaming creeks and forest valleys, in our world of snow and flowers... In this burning, muddy, lying, blood-drenched world, that quiet meeting in the mountains, cool and gentle as the muzzles of three elk, helps keep me sane."
Send your comments to the US National Park Service. The deadline is September 30.

found at
http://www.sightline.org/daily_score/archive/2006/08/25/your-world-heritage-site

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Teenscreens David Shaffer, MD accidentally proves antidepressants cause kids to suicide! OOPS

2006-08-12T03:44:36Z

Teenscreens David Shaffer, MD accidentally proves antidepressants cause kids to suicide! OOPS

http://archpsyc.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/short/63/8/865
Antidepressant Drug Therapy and Suicide in Severely Depressed Children and Adults
A Case-Control Study

Mark Olfson, MD, MPH; Steven C. Marcus, PhD; David Shaffer, MD

Arch Gen Psychiatry. 2006;63:865-872.

Context The Food and Drug Administration has issued a boxed warning concerning increased suicidal ideation and behavior associated with antidepressant drug treatment in children and adolescents. It is unknown whether antidepressant agents increase the risk of suicide death in children or adults.

Objective To estimate the relative risk of suicide attempt and suicide death in severely depressed children and adults treated with antidepressant drugs vs those not treated with antidepressant drugs.

Design Matched case-control study.

Setting Outpatient treatment settings in the United States.

Participants Medicaid beneficiaries from all 50 states who received inpatient treatment for depression, excluding patients treated for pregnancy, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia or other psychoses, mental retardation, dementia, or delirium. Controls were matched to cases for age, sex, race or ethnicity, state of residence, substance use disorder, recent suicide attempt, number of days since hospital discharge, and recent treatment with antipsychotic, anxiolytic/hypnotic, mood stabilizer, and stimulant medications.

Main Outcome Measures Suicide attempts and suicide deaths.

Results In adults (aged 19-64 years), antidepressant drug treatment was not significantly associated with suicide attempts (odds ratio [OR], 1.10; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.86-1.39 [521 cases and 2394 controls]) or suicide deaths (OR, 0.90; 95% CI, 0.52-1.55 [86 cases and 396 controls]). HOWEVER, IN CHILDREN AND ADOLESCENTS (AGED 6-18 YEARS), ANTIDEPRESSANT DRUG TREATMENT WAS SIGNIFICANTLY ASSOCIATED WITH SUICIDE ATTEMPTS (OR, 1.52; 95% CI, 1.12-2.07 [263 CASES AND 1241 CONTROLS]) AND SUICIDE DEATHS (OR, 15.62; 95% CI, 1.65-INFINITY [8 CASES AND 39 CONTROLS]).

Conclusions In these high-risk patients, antidepressant drug treatment does not seem to be related to suicide attempts and death in adults but might be related in children and adolescents. These findings support careful clinical monitoring during antidepressant drug treatment of severely depressed young people.

Author Affiliations: New York State Psychiatric Institute/Department of Psychiatry, College of Physicians and Surgeons of Columbia University, New York (Drs Olfson and Shaffer); and University of Pennsylvania School of Social Policy and Practice, Philadelphia (Dr Marcus).
___________________________________________________________
http://www.teenscreentruth.com/teenscreen_key_players.html

David Shaffer
Psychiatrist, Creator of TeenScreen
David Shaffer was the head and driving force behind the development of the computerized screening tool that TeenScreen employs, the "Diagnostic Interview Schedule for Children" (also known as DISC). Following this he helped to devise a shorter computerized version that is easier to use in schools, the "Diagnostic Predictive Scales" (DPS), and a paper and pencil version of the screening tool, the "Columbia Health Screen" (CHS). For more information on the development of the screening tools and how they are used to label children with normal childhood reactions as "mentally ill" and funnel them into the psychiatric / pharmaceutical system, click here.
Shaffer’s Ties to the Pharmaceutical Industry
Shaffer has known connections to the pharmaceutical industry. His resume (see page 20 of this report) includes serving as an expert witness to several drug companies and as a paid consultant on psychotropic drugs.
Shaffer is the past president of The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention (AFSP) and currently on their board of directors. AFSP is an organization with known pharmaceutical ties. For example, GlaxoSmithKline, Pfizer Inc., Solvay Pharmaceuticals Inc. and Johnson & Johnson, all have members on AFSP’s board. Solvay Pharmaceuticals Inc. has provided at least $1,250,000 in the AFSP’s effort to build up a $5 million research fund and Pfizer Inc. has contributed funding for surveys.
The following corporations have provided funding for different conferences held by Shaffer’s AFSP:
• Forest Laboratories, Inc.
• GlaxoSmithKline
• Janssen Pharmaceutica Inc.
• Pfizer Inc.
• Solvay Pharmaceuticals, Inc.
• Wyeth-Ayerst Laboratories
Shaffer is also on the Executive Board of the “Center for the Advancement of Children’s Mental Health at Columbia University” (CACMH). This organization has partnered with the National Alliance for Mental Illness (NAMI) and has received funding from the following corporations:
• AstraZeneca Pharmaceuticals LP
• Bristol-Myers Squibb
• Celltech Pharmaceuticals, Inc.
• Eli Lilly and Company
• Forest Labs
• Janssen Pharmaceutica Inc.
• Jazz Pharmaceuticals, Inc.
• McNeil Consumer & Specialty Pharmaceuticals
• Pfizer, Inc.
Shaffer’s Statements on TeenScreen
In an interview that Shaffer did in 2003 on TeenScreen, he states: "We did studies to look at the accuracy of the TeenScreen. […] it does identify a whole bunch of kids who aren’t really suicidal, so you get a lot of false-positives. And that means if you’re running a large program at a school, you’re going to cripple the program because you’re going to have too many kids you have to do something about."
When Shaffer was asked how he addresses people who question the dangers of prescribing to the false-positives, he stated: "I think that standing by itself, that criticism is meaningless because we don’t know what harm the antidepressants do, if any, and we don’t know who they do harm to". He is either unaware of the hundreds of suicides and murders caused by children and adults on antidepressants, or he is telling a bald-faced PR lie.
In the same interview, Shaffer confirmed his stance on pro-drugging when he was asked: “Finally, what are your thoughts about non-pharmacological approaches to suicide prevention?” Shaffer says: “... psychotherapy is not terribly effective [...] So if there really is evidence that certain or all antidepressants can cut this cycle of depression, plus stress, plus this rapid response, then that seems to be where the big hope is.” You'll note that he does not mention any statistics of suicide rates dropping due to people being on these drugs—nor does he mention that the FDA has determined that teens are more susceptible to suicidal thoughts while on antidepressants, and that these drugs have been shown in hundreds of cases to cause normal teens to commit suicide and murder out of the blue. Also note that Shaffer does not entertain any alternative solutions such as nutritional methods— and in many cases it has been discovered that depression has been due to improper nutrition and bad diet. For example, a lack of the B vitamins alone in a person's diet can reduce energy and cause mental lethargy, including depression. Shaffer seems to consider that only artificial drugs can combat suicides. Whatever happened to "Say No to Drugs"?
Shaffer Attempted to Block Negative British Findings
In December of 2003 British drug regulators recommended against the use of antidepressants in the treatment of depressed children under 18. They concluded that “their benefits [the drugs] did not outweigh their potential risks”, risks that included suicidal thoughts and self-harm.
According to a December 11, 2003, New York Times article, Shaffer sent a letter, at Pfizer's request, to block the findings of the British drug agency, saying he had concluded that there was insufficient data to restrict the use of the drugs in adolescents. Naturally if these findings were to be widely known to be true, Pfizer, Eli Lilly, GlaxoSmithKline, Wyeth-Ayerst and other large pharmaceutical companies would stand to lose BILLIONS of dollars in revenue.
____________________________________________________________
Sign the Teenscreen petition!
http://www.petitiononline.com/TScreen/petition.html
___________________________________________________
http://theeffexoractivist.org/forum/viewforum.php?f=22
The Out of the Darkness Overnight march” is a scam, perpetrated by The pharmaceutical industry on the grieving loved ones of suiciders!

The pharmaceutical industry is up to it’s dirty tricks again.

“The Out of the Darkness Overnight march”
www.theovernight.org/

and the connection to Teenscreen
http://www.teenscreentruth.com/Teenscreen_Advisory_Board.htm

In 2006, The Overnight will take place in San Francisco on July 22-23, and in Chicago on August 12-13.
Each walker agrees to raise at least $1,000.
Net proceeds will benefit the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, (supposedly to prevent suicide.) How ever this Foundation funds Teenscreen. the real result will be more teens on drugs known to the F.D.A. and others to INCREASE the numbers of suicidal teenagers. This march takes advantage of grieving people and is an example of how far the pharmaceutical industry is willing to go to get kids on drugs! The organizers of teenscreen have been caught lying repeatedly. learn more

Learn more here
http://theeffexoractivist.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=314

See cool art posters

http://community.webshots.com/user/effexoractivist

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Anti road protest in the netherlands

2006-07-22T11:01:37Z

Through the environmental movement i have been involved in many actions to stop the building new roads and/or expansion of airports.

The latest protest involves expansion plans of the highway near Amsterdam ring the so called
A6 – A9 right through a beautiful area.

Here are some links, they are in dutch but the pictures tell more than a thousand words.

http://vroegevogels.vara.nl/portal?_scr=article_4&id=189675

http://www.milieudefensie.nl/verkeer/activiteiten/fotogalerij/a6a9-2005/photoalbum_photo_view?b_start:int=0

http://www.vechtvoordevecht.nl/

www.tegena6a9.nl

http://www.weesptegena6-a9.nl/

http://www.natuurmonumenten.nl/a6-a9/van_onschatbare_waarde/van_onschatbare_waarde/06070510_ijzersterke_argumenten_voor_natuurbehoud.htm

Is there also an anti road protest in your area? I am interested (language does not matter).

Greetings Harmen

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Awreness of Eco-Political Oppression (the GreenScare) makes it to the International level

2006-07-19T18:28:25Z

Can anyone translate

(pictures at origial Dutch and Belgium sites)

GreenScare awareness in Holland

Actie tegen de Green Scare in de VS
GroenFront! Amsterdam and friends - 09.06.2006 15:23

Op vrijdag 9 juni werd bij het VS consulaat in Amsterdam een actie gehouden tegen de Green Scare in de VS. 15 tot 20 activisten gingen bij het consulaat van de VS aan het Museumplein spandoeken ophangen en flyeren om de schandalige manier waarop eco-activisten in de VS worden aangepakt aan te klagen.

Het weekend van 9-11 juni werd uitgeroepen tot internationaal actieweekend voor alle milieuactivisten die in de VS worden vervolgd voor het voeren van directe actie, vooral het Animal Liberation Front en het Earth Liberation Front worden keihard aangepakt.

Daarom werd in Asterdam een actie gehouden bij het consulaat van de Verenigde Staten. Het werd een ludieke actie, er werden een 3-tal spandoeken ontrold, er werden flyers uitgedeeld en er was een geluidsinstallatie aanwezig waarmee het geheel van toepasselijke muziek werd voorzien.

De meeste voorbijgangers reageerden positief op de actie, een aantal mensen kwam een praatje maken en extra uitleg vragen nadat ze de flyer gelezen hadden.

Eerst was er heel veel politie aanwezig, wel half zo veel als actievoerders, ze waren heel nieuwsgierig naar wat er op de spandoeken stond (dat werd dan meteen ook even doorgebeld, om te checken of het wel "mocht") Na een kwartiertje vertrokken de meesten en bleven er nog maar een paar fietsagenten staan.

De hele actie verliep in een gemoedelijke sfeer en toen het consulaat dicht ging en het personeel op weekend vertrok werd ook de actie afgeblazen en trok iedereen weer naar huis.

Meer informatie over de Green Scare:
http://freefreenow.org/
http://greenscare.org/
http://www.ecoprisoners.org/

De tekst van de flyer:

Steun de eco-gevangenen in de Verenigde Staten

Vandaag is internationale aktiedag voor de actievoerders in de Verenigde Staten die
vervolgd worden omdat ze directe milieu-acties gevoerd hebben.

In Nederland heeft het schandalig weinig aandacht gekregen dat actievoerders in de VS
de laatste tijd tot verbijsterende straffen veroordeeld worden, terwijl bij hun acties geen
enkel persoonlijk letsel veroorzaakt werd.

Vandaag is het precies 6 jaar geleden dat Jeffrey Luers uit Eugene, Oregon, tot 22 jaar
en 8 maanden veroordeeld werd. Sindsdien zit hij vast, zonder vooruitzicht ooit
voorwaardelijke vrijstelling te krijgen. Zijn daad: hij heeft met een vriend drie SUV's
(4wheeldrives, van die PCHooft-traktors) vernield bij een dealer. Er raakte niemand bij
gewond. Jeffrey werd even later gepakt en veroordeeld tot een straf waar mensen die
veel ergere misdaden begaan nooit bang voor hoeven te zijn. Het is duidelijk dat het hier
om politieke rechtspraak gaat.

Eind vorig jaar werden plotseling nog veel meer mensen opgepakt of aangeklaagd die
beschuldigd worden van deelname aan acties van het Earth Liberation Front en/of
Animal Liberation Front. Velen van hen zitten vast, anderen zijn op borgtocht vrij in
afwachting van hun proces, en een lange lijst anderen kunnen elk moment vervolging
verwachten. Een van de arrestanten, Bill Rodgers, heeft kort na zijn arrestatie zelfmoord
gepleegd in de cel. Wederom geldt voor alle acties dat er geen gewonden (laat staan
doden) bij gevallen zijn, maar dat zeer zware straffen verwacht worden. Denk
bijvoorbeeld aan levenslang plus nog een paar honderd jaar. Dat lijkt om te lachen, maar
in de VS is dat helaas de werkelijkheid. Anti-terrorisme-wetgeving wordt gebruikt om de
radicale politieke oppositie de kop in te drukken. Ook mensen die weigeren te getuigen
voor een zogeheten Grand Jury Tribunaal (dat vooronderzoek doet naar verdachten)
worden in toenemede mate opgesloten. Deze repressiegolf is de Green Scare gaan
heten.

Natuurlijk kunnen we dit niet zomaar langs ons heen laten glijden. We moeten doen wat
we kunnen om deze eco-activisten te ondersteunen. Dat kan heel praktisch door ze te
schrijven of geld te sturen voor hun processen. Maar minstens zo belangrijk is om
politieke druk uit te oefenen op de VS om ze daar aan hun verstand te peuteren dat ze
het niet kunnen maken om mensen die strijden tegen onrecht en milieuvernietiging zo te
mishandelen. Vandaar dat we eisen:

Stop de politieke vervolging van eco-activisten! Stop de Grand Jury rechtspraak! Vrijheid
voor Jeffrey Luers!

Voor alle achtergrondinformatie: www.freefreenow.org http://greenscare.org/
http://www.ecoprisoners.org/

http://www.indymedia.nl/nl/2006/06/36864.shtml

____

GreenScare Awareness in Belgium

Can anyone translate?

(pictures at original site)

De USA PATRIOT Act
De USA PATRIOT Act is een afkorting voor “Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism” (H.R. 3162, the "USA PATRIOT Act") Het voornaamste probleem met de Patriot Act is dat veel te veel opengelaten wordt voor interpretatie. De manier waarop ze geschreven is maakt het mogelijk om alle politieke activiteiten als illegaal te beschouwen, naargelang wie de act interpreteert.
De definitie van “Domestic Terrorism”:
Sectie 802 van de USA PATRIOT Act maakt terroristen van betogers wanneer de betogers zich gedragen op een manier die “mensenlevens in gevaar brengt” met als doel “het beïnvloeden van het beleid van de regering door intimidatie of dwang” of het “intimideren van burgers”. Dit kan breed genoeg geïnterpreteerd worden om tegen groepen zoals Greenpeace gebruikt te worden. Onder de USA Patriot Act wordt het ook strafbaar om logement of andere hulp aan te bieden aan activisten die zich zo gedragen.
Deze wetgeving geeft ook de macht aan de attorney general en de secretary of state om vreemdelingen aan te houden en te deporteren wanneer ze lid zijn van bepaalde organisaties die als ‘terroristisch’ beschouwen worden.
De USA PATRIOT Act veranderd de definitie van terrorisme zodat het nu ook “het gebruik van een wapen of gevaarlijke voorwerp met als doel het vernieling van eigendom” inhoud.
Onderzoekingen en bezitnemingen:
De Patriot Act breid uit de mogelijkheden tot geheime huiszoekingen, afluisteren van telefoongesprekken en het volgen van correspondentie (internet gebruik, emails, breiven). Het FBI krijgt ook onbeperkt toezicht op persoonlijke gegevens, zoals medische en financiële gegevens. Onder Sectie 215 moeten alle documenten met informatie over de activiteiten van een individu in bezit van een derde partij afgegeven worden op vraag van de FBI. Ook doktors, boekenwinkels, universiteiten en internet service providers zijn verplicht om alle gevraagde informatie door te geven aan het FBI. Het FBI moet alleen verklaren, maar niet bewijzen, dat dit deel uitmaakt van een onderzoek naar terroristische activiteiten. Deze onderzoeksdaden mogen niet gemeld worden aan de persoon die onderzocht wordt. Zo kunnen de mensen die onderzocht worden zichzelf daar niet tegen verdedigen.
Het in bezit nemen van eigendom wordt ook veel gemakkelijker onder de USA Patriot Act. Sectie 806 zou het mogelijk maken om de goederen van een individu of een organisatie in bezit te nemen zonder een verhoor en zonder dat de persoon schuldig gevonden wordt van een misdaad. Dit wordt door de American Civil Liberties Union beschreven als de meest belangrijk verandering in de wetgeving voor politieke organisaties omdat het als gevolg heeft dat de overheid alle bezit zou kunnen afnemen van een organisatie of een individu die betrokken is bij een actie of die steun toont voor een actie dat door het FBI als terrorisme beschouwt wordt. Deze in bezitneming vind plaats zonder dat de organisatie of persoon eerst verwittigt wordt.
Onbeperkt Hechtenis:
Onder de USA Patriot Act mogen migranten ook onbeperkt vastgehouden worden en gedeporteerd worden. Als de persoon geen land heeft waar hij of zij terug naartoe kan keren, dan kan hij of zij onbeperkt vastgehouden worden zonder ooit een proces te krijgen. Onder de nieuwe USA Patriot Act II die nu besproken wordt in de VSA zou dit ook voor Amerikaanse burgers mogelijk zijn. Ze zouden hun burgerschap afgenomen worden en onbeperkt vastgehouden kunnen worden zonder eerst of ooit een proces te krijgen.
Democratie in de VS Steeds Meer Onder Vuur
Op 20 januari heeft het FBI een officiële beschuldiging (indictment) van 65 punten uitgevaardigd waarin 12 mensen beschuldigd worden van betrokkenheid bij acties van het Earth Liberation Front (ELF) en het Animal Liberation Front (ALF) in de periode tussen 1996 en 2001. Sindsdien zijn nog vier personen beschuldigd en het FBI laat de mogelijkheid open dat nog meer mensen bij de zaak zullen betrokken worden. Als resultaat van het Grand Jury onderzoek in Eugene, Oregon, worden de verdachten aangeklaagd wegens 17 gevallen van brandstichting en sabotage tegen federale en private instellingen in vijf deelstaten. Veel van de aanklachten stonden op het punt van te verjaren. Niettegenstaande bijna al de beschuldigden hun onschuld in publiek uitroepen en niemand gewond raakte bij de acties riskeren ze levenslange gevangenisstraffen (of langer, dat kan in de VS). Om het nog erger te maken, wordt een eerlijk proces ook onmogelijk doordat de regering en de pers deze mensen beschrijven als “eco-terroristen”.
Zulke extreme straffen voor brandstichting waren tot vijf jaar geleden ongekend in de VS. Maar vandaag maken ze deel uit van een groeiend tendens onder nieuwe anti-terreur wetgeving. Activisten in de VS spreken over een zogenaamde “Green Scare”, genoemd naar de vroegere “Red Scare” wanneer senator McCarthy en het “House of Un-American Affairs” (HUAC) propaganda en bedreigingen gebruikte om politieke weerstand te breken. De landelijke arrestatieoperatie, die 'Operation Backfire' is gedoopt, is door het FBI uitgelegd als een grote slag tegen milieuactivisten die betrokken zijn bij vernieling van eigendom. Velen verklaren echter dat de arrestatiegolf vooral te plaatsen is in de jarenlange praktijk van het FBI van geheime operaties gericht op het verstoren en in diskrediet brengen van politieke bewegingen. De omstandigheden rond deze zaak vertonen sterke overeenkomsten met eerdere FBI operaties zoals het bekende COINTELPRO (Counter Intelligence Program) waarbij de FBI sinds de jaren '60 betrokken was bij binnenlandse infiltratieactiviteiten en op valse gronden aanvallen van politieke activisten.
Voor meer achtergrond stuur een mail naar: nograndjury@riseup.net of zie:
Green Scare:
http://www.greenscare.org
http://www.ecoprisoners.org
http://portland.indymedia.org/en/topic/greenscare/
USA PATRIOT ACT:
http://www.aclu.org/safefree/resources/17343res20031114.html

COINTELPRO:
http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/RANCHO/POLITICS/COINTELPRO/gjp3.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO

*) Daniel McGowan, een actievoerder voor milieu en sociale rechtvaardigheid uit New York. Daniel is een actief lid van de gemeenschap en was onder andere betrokken bij demonstraties tegen de Republikeinse Conventie, de campagne Really Really Free Markets en steuncampagnes voor politieke gevangenen als Jeff 'Free' Luers. Daniel was student met een opleiding in acupunctuur en werkte bij Women's Law, een stichting die vrouwen helpt die te maken hebben met huiselijk geweld om zich juridisch te verdedigen. Daniel pleit onschuldig maar zou mogelijk levenslang plus 335 jaar celstraf krijgen als alle klachten doorgezet worden. Zie: http://www.supportdaniel.org
*) Nathan Frazer Block. Schrijf brieven naar:
Nathan Fraser Block # 1663667, Lane County Adult Corrections, 101 W 5th Ave, Eugene, OR 97401, USA
*) Joyanna Zacher: Schrijf brieven naar:
Joyanna Zacher #1662550, Lane County Adult Corrections, 101 W 5th Ave, Eugene, OR 97401, USA
Nathan and Joyanna zouden minstens levenslang plus 235 jaar celstraf krijgen indien alle klachten doorgezet worden.
supportersofnathanandjoyanna@gmail.com
*) Briana Waters, een lieve moeder die houd van muziek maken en vioolles geeft. Haar arrestatie kwam als een grote schok voor de mensen die haar kenden en niemand gelooft dat ze iets te maken heeft met de haar ten laste gelegde feiten. Ze pleit onschuldig maar indien veroordeeld riskeert ze tot 35 jaar celstraf. Zie: http://www.supportbriana.org
*) Jeffrey Hogg, in hechtenis omdat hij weigerde te getuigen voor de Grand Jury.
Jeffrey Hogg #1065518, Lane County Jail, 101 W 5th Ave, Eugene, OR 97401, USA
*) Darren Todd Thurston, een bekende Canadese activist die zich grote zorgen maakt over zijn kans op een eerlijk proces als een Canadees die in de VS vastgehouden wordt. Zie: http://www.freedarren.org. Stuur brieven naar:
Darren Thurston #701415, Multnomah County Inverness Jail, 11540 NE Inverness Dr., Portland, OR 97220, USA
*) Bill Rodgers wordt nog steeds als 'niet aangeklaagde medesamenspanner' beschouwd nadat hij in gevangenschap om het leven kwam door een vermoedelijke zelfmoord tijdens de Winter Solstice. Bill was een bekende gemeenschapsactivist in Arizona die vanuit zijn eigen huis de Catalyst info-shop organiseerde. http://www.catalystinfoshop.org/bill/

Ambassade van de Verenigde Staten van Amerika
Flyer-actie tegen de Green Scare in de VS: enkele foto's

door Guido Sunday, Jun. 11, 2006 at 10:55 AM
Guido@stopimperialism.be

Gisteren was er een flyeractie tegen de Greenscare in de VS aan de ingang van het Gentse St-Pieterstation, enkele mensen hielden een spandoek vast, anderen deelden flyers uit aan de voorbijgangers, de actie begon rond 14u en een uur later waren er 400 flyers uitgedeeld, hieronder wat meer info:

Z. E. de heer Tom C. Korologos
Ambassadeur van de VSA
Regentlaan 27
1000 Brussel

(Plaats, datum)

Excellentie,

Ik schrijf u naar aanleiding van de aanklacht tegen …. Samen met een aantal andere personen wordt hij/zij er van beschuldigd vernielingen te hebben toegebracht aan privé eigendommen. Nochtans pleit … , even als de andere beklaagden die voor vergelijkbare feiten aangeklaagd worden, onschuldig, en is de reële bewijslast miniem. Bovendien wordt er tegen hem/haar levenslang geëist, wat een straf buiten iedere redelijke proportie is.
De zaak van … is een gevolg van een FBI onderzoek, “Operation Backfire” genoemd. Bij deze operatie werden vooral milieuactivisten geviseerd. Bovendien wordt er in de aanklacht tegen … gebruik gemaakt van de nieuwe antiterreurwetgeving, alhoewel de hem/haar ten laste gelegde feiten van voor het tot stand komen van deze wetten dateren. Net zoals bij de andere beklaagden hangt … een excessief zware straf boven het hoofd en kijkt hij/zij aan tegen enorm hoge proceskosten. Verder maakt het feit dat hij/zij als terrorist gebrandmerkt wordt een eerlijk proces onmogelijk.
Daarom wil ik u beleefd vragen om er bij de bevoegde instanties op aan te dringen dat … een eerlijk proces zou krijgen op basis van reële feiten. Bovendien wil ik wijzen op het juridisch gevaar van het retroactief gebruik van wetten. Tot slot zou ik u met aandrang willen vragen om aan de overheden van uw land de boodschap over te brengen zeer voorzichtig om te springen met antiterreurwetten die de vrijheden van burgers aantasten en dergelijke wetten zeker niet te gebruiken tegen burgerbewegingen die juist zo belangrijk zijn in een democratie.

Met meeste hoogachting,

(Naam, adres, handtekening)

http://ovl.indymedia.org/news/2006/06/11143.php

posted in Ecotopian Future Historians Tribe - 2 replies

fwd: Powell's Books - Ancient Futures: Learning from Ladakh by Helen Norberg-Hodge

2006-07-09T11:20:24Z

I just recieved this in another forum

Powell's Books - Ancient Futures: Learning from Ladakh by Helen Norberg-Hodge

Please excuse the cross post - particularly those of you who will receive this multiple times - but I just wanted to share this book with you all. I just finished reading it and found it to be a fascinating examination of a traditional - and happily functional - culture that was waylaid by modern development and its subsequent steps back from the cultural abyss of western civilization.

It is a portrait of Ladakh and the Ladahki people, a Buddhist culture living in the Indian Himalayas bordering Tibet, told in three parts: the first part describes Ladakh before it was opened to western-style development, the second part describes it after western-style development had begun to take hold, and the third part is Norberg-Hodge's prescription for a world in which development takes place in a decentralized and sustainable fashion which allows for advance but in a manner which preserves the natural environment and local cultures.

This is not a new book (it was published in 1992) and some of you may already be aware of it. Still, I found this book to be very instructive and valuable to anyone seeking a way forward that preserves all that is best about our planet and ourselves. Highly recommended.

Powell's Books - Ancient Futures: Learning from Ladakh by Helen Norberg-Hodge

http://www.powells.com/biblio/1-0871566435-10

--
Best,
Todd

The true meaning of life is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit.
--Nelson Henderson

posted in Ecotopian Future Historians Tribe - 0 replies

the greater partitioning of Cascadia: border divisions

2006-07-05T12:50:03Z

the greater partitioning of Cascadia: border divisions

I have posted before that Cascadia is becoming two very distict Cascadias as the US and Canadian governments administrate differently, as economies shift and as world's most longest and peaceful border becomes more militarized. The following articles illustrate the continuing division that the Amerikan expansionist president Polk started back in the 1840s:

CASCADIA Mayors plea for delay Cross-border impacts feared if U.S. forges ahead with security crackdown

By Jeff Nagel
Black Press
Jul 04 2006

Lower Mainland mayors joined counterparts from Washington, Oregon and Idaho Friday in urging U.S. officials to delay plans to force all visitors to carry passports.

The motion passed at the Cascadia Mayors Council meeting in Surrey after the 35 Pacific northwest mayors heard forecasts that tighter border security will hurt cross-border tourism and trade.

The U.S. government has set Jan. 1, 2007 as the date passports will be required to enter the U.S. by air or water, and Jan. 1, 2008 for land crossings.

In the meantime, a group of U.S. senators is trying to pass an amendment that would delay implementation of the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative until Jan. 1, 2009.

Most residents on both sides of the border don’t have passports and many of them don’t know about the planned changes, said Mary Mahon-Jones, with the B.C. Council of Tourism Associations.

She cited polls that show a third of Canadians and Americans who don’t hold passports say they don’t plan to cross the border again if they have to get one.

“The process of getting a passport is, frankly, a colossal hassle, at least in Canada,” Mahon-Jones said.

The more Americans and Canadians do get passports, she added, the more they may be tempted to travel to more distant countries, rather than just across the 49th parallel.

American visits to Canada are already down sharply this year even though the passport rule isn’t in force yet.

Surrey Mayor Dianne Watts said a delay would buy time to pursue alternatives, such as creating a different identification card or upgrading driver’s licences to include extra security data.

“We are very aware and cognizant of the security issue,” Watts said.

“But we also want to make sure the implementation of this is done right.”

It’s not just tourism that’s at stake.

All trucks carrying goods that cross the border would have to have accepted identification.

And the passport rule could impact many businesses located in Surrey, White Rock, Langley and Abbotsford which take advantage of the proximity of the border.

“With Surrey being the largest border crossing in Western Canada and the second largest in the country, those issues are front and centre in what we’re dealing with,” Watts said.

Anthony Welcher, the U.S. State Department’s director of intergovernmental affairs, told the mayors plans call for passports to be mandatory for all travellers – even children.

He admitted that may drive up costs for families and deter tourism, but said the U.S. plans reduced passport fees to ensure a family of four won’t pay more than $100.

He defended the requirement, saying it will help protect children from cross-border kidnappings.

“It is a burden. But it will help keep our children safe and secure.”

Welcher said Canadians shouldn’t hold out hope the passport plan will be shelved.

“Honestly, I’ve got to say it’s tough,” he said.

“Barring an amendment, we’re just going to have to deal with it.”

The Cascadia mayors’ motion backs a similar call by Premier Gordon Campbell and Washington Gov. Chris Gregoire to delay implementation until after the 2010 Winter Olympics while other options are pursued.

Senator Gerry St. Germaine said both countries must work to ensure anti-terror measures don’t unnecessarily impede the millions of people who cross the border and billions of dollars in cross-border trade and investment.

“These new requirements will have long term implications,” he said.

“We must act very, very carefully.”

found at http://www.peacearchnews.com/portals-code/list.cgi?paper=44&cat=23&id=683031&more=

____

Biking to Canada and back (if the Border Patrol lets us in)

By WILLIAM MARVEL
For the Monitor

July 05. 2006 8:00AM

Among the numerous and sometimes conflicting doctrines we try to observe in my household is that of treading lightly on the Earth. That is difficult to accomplish in a society that seems dedicated to waste and self-indulgence, where the only feasible means of long-distance travel is the automobile and the only way to feel good about oneself is to buy something new.

It is also a difficult concept to pass on to children whose friends race here and there in parent-purchased cars, communicating continually on parent-purchased cell phones. And it becomes especially hard to convey when there is work to do in the garden or at the woodpile. Nonetheless we attempt to set an example through consumer restraint, household economy and energy conservation.

Energy conservation was one of the main motives behind our choice of a vacation this year: bicycling to Canada. That isn't as rigorous a feat as most Americans might suppose, for the nearest border crossing lies only about 110 highway miles from our door. Avoiding deadly highways requires more mileage, but the round trip still falls within a week's easy cycling, during which we can ignore traffic jams and oil-industry gouging.

The flatter terrain of southern Maine might have been a preferable choice for bicycling. The coast is lovely, but it is usually packed with people from places no one wants to live, and by their mass presence they often make Maine feel like another one of those unpleasant places. There is something immensely gratifying about gliding all the way to an international border on such ecologically sound transportation.

There is something appealing about entering Canada by any transportation, for that matter.

Canada is a different world, at least from Vermont and New Hampshire. The U.S. side stands in the tall conifers of the great northern forest while the Canadian side slips immediately into rolling farmland and occasional, distinct towns, with little of the endless suburban sprawl that ate up so much of the United States so quickly.
The abrupt change in language offers an instant taste of Renaissance Europe, at least for those who remember their professor rattling off Middle French, and what can be more therapeutically humbling than trying to recall the vocabulary of a seldom-used language?

The money adds to the European atmosphere. Canadian bills are pieces of art, emblazoned with exotic historical characters and scenes in a variety of colors. The larger denominations are decorated with ornate engravings that mimic embroidery, and in that currency we have a dollar that still makes the American version seem as though it were actually worth something.

One-way cordiality

The strongest attraction Canada exerts may be the calm, peaceful atmosphere, which, unfortunately, seems especially foreign anymore. Just note the difference in customs officials.

Since the first time I crossed the Canadian border, I've never had an unpleasant experience with a Canadian customs officer. All of them have been flawlessly courteous, most of them are quite congenial and many are even unarmed. Approaching the U.S. border, meanwhile, usually turns the stomach sour.

Certain U.S. border stations in Vermont long ago developed widespread and well-deserved reputations for rudeness and unwarranted, invasive searches. Since the commencement of King George's War, the U.S. crossings have served as an introduction to American paranoia, with suspicious officers engaging travelers in deceptively inquisitive banter.

On my last re-entry by automobile at Beecher Falls, a pleasant young agent asked me the usual questions and wished me a safe trip, but as I started away, his older colleague interceded, hand-near-holster, and awkwardly initiated a perfectly artificial conversation. When I inadvertently misquoted the New England price of a New York Times, he grew as stern and mistrustful as an East German border guard. Welcome home, Yank.

Canada may have the friendliest customs service, but my belongings have been closely searched at places like the German border, back in the heyday of the Bader-Meinhof gang, without giving me the impression that I was being singled out for scrutiny. The only customs officers who have ever made me feel like a criminal suspect have been our own.

Until recently (and they may be doing it yet), the Border Patrol was stopping traffic nearly 100 miles inside the United States, interrogating citizens and frequently detaining them - probably for such suspicious actions as mispronouncing local nomenclature.

This sort of internal surveillance would be easier to bear if the New Hampshire State Police would establish a similar roadblock along the Massachusetts border and ask everyone to say "Kancamagus."

(William Marvel is an author and historian who lives in South Conway.)

By WILLIAM MARVEL

found at http://www.cmonitor.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060705/REPOSITORY/607050302/1028/OPINION02

posted in Ecotopian Future Historians Tribe - 0 replies

Jan's Vision

2006-07-04T00:38:18Z

http://beyondpeak.com/scenarios/steinman.html

Jan's Five Year Vision

By Jan Steinman

Morning
"THUNK! THUNK! THUNK!"

"Aw man, who's chopping wood at..." I glance at the wind-up clock beside the bed. It's nearly 10AM. I guess we stayed up too late last night, playing music in the Great Hall. When I used to watch TV, it seems I always got in bed when the news came on, but now...

I don't remember Carol tucking me into bed, but she isn't here now. I hear the "ding" of the mechanically-timed microwave oven (electronic ones have phantom loads that suck away at precious renewable energy), and know that, in seconds, she'll be bringing me green tea with home-grown stevia.

It's still chilly this early in the spring, and the heated tile floor feels great on my feet as I stumble down the hall to the shared washroom, where the composting toilet awaits.

"Hey Jan!" I hear a tiny voice, "my light won't work! Can you fix it?" The six year old trails behind, holding an efficient LED flashlight in front of her.

"Sure, Sienna! Head down to the lab, and I'll be there in a bit." She takes off at a run.

Boy, George Bernard Shaw really called it when he said, "Youth is wasted on the young!" But what he didn't realize is that contact with youth keeps the spring in the step of the old -- while imparting wisdom in the other direction that you can't get from a classroom! Recent studies also show that residents of mixed-age communities live longer and are healthier.

I head down the hill to the engineering complex. It's situated in a small coppice a bit away from the residence complex, to help control the noise of engines, saws, and welding. An alcove off the main building houses the electronics lab, where Sienna sits at a workbench, gazing at the knobs and dials of equipment while she waits.

"So, what makes a flashlight work?" I ask the child.

"BATTERIES!" she shouts in glee, happy to be consulted instead of having adults just do things for her.

"Okay, let's take them out and check them. Here's the battery tester," I say to get her started. She successfully removes the batteries, and matches the "+" on the battery with the "+" on the tester. The needle barely moves, so we pull a five watt solar panel and a charger off a shelf. "Okay, Sienna -- you know what to do now!"

She plugs the panel into the charger, plops the batteries in, and runs out to find a sunny spot.

Afternoon
I wander into the hall to see what's cookin'. Everyone is encouraged to get together on Thursday evenings, at least -- after all, a group that eats together, stays together -- but in reality, most people eat together at least a half-dozen or more times a week. For any given meal, there's generally at least a third of the villagers in the Hall. And this was no exception.

A nice soup is almost always on the stove, and people help themselves, cleaning up after themselves as well. Today, a rich lentil stew fills the air with the aroma of sage and rosemary. Most people eat little or no meat, and those who, for dietary or philosophical reasons, do eat meat, respect the wishes of the majority that it not be terribly blatant, or end up mixing inadvertently with vegetarian or vegan food.

"What's happening?" I say as I sit down at a table with a half-dozen people in earnest conversation in between mouthfuls of stew.

"We're working on a solar crucible," one person explained, "so we can do some forging without fossil fuels. We've got this fresnel lens and a tracker to put together, then it should work."

"Cool!" I remark, knowing better than to get involved in something already started, unless my advice was sought. I have enough to do!

Carol comes up and asks me, "Whacha got going today?"

"Well, I was going to get my weeding in before it got too hot, then go up to the swamp to see how the algae are doing." Although few of us are full-time agronomists, everyone takes part in common labor. I had enough farm work between 0 and 19 to last the rest of my life, but willingly put in an hour a day (plus or minus) of farm work to keep the place running.

Today was easy -- vegetable garden weeding. It's sort of a mindless activity that gives you time to think about other things -- a rare gift of time in today's too-fast world.

After the weeding, I go back to the Hall and log my time. When I left the factory, I swore I'd never punch a time clock again, but this is different. Our time bank is a way of keeping us honest with ourselves, just as written agreements make for good friends. Also, if you aren't measuring a thing, you can't manage that thing, so these records allow us to see how efficient we are -- and the data also is useful for applying for grants and other funding. People are more willing to give you money when you can document how you spend your time! Such data is also useful for the classes we teach and a growing body of articles and other publications we've been producing.

Once a fortnight, we "roast and toast" those who put in the most time. And these records have also been handy for tactfully suggesting that a friend may be approaching burn-out. "Back off and take a break!" is sometimes needed with this group!

The algae has taken over a sequestered area of the pond. We successfully replaced almost all our petroleum use with home-grown rapeseed oil and waste cooking oil over the past five years, but in the drive to become even more efficient, we've been experimenting with algea for food and fuel oil.

After five years of "hard fun", we are about 80% self-sufficient, in both food and energy production. (Which we wouldn't even know, without the careful records we keep.) We are able to feed ourselves and provide our own modest energy needs, but we still trade with "the world" for things like clothing, machinery, books, etc.

While a minority of us still have "day jobs" outside the village, most make their livelihood endogenously, using various skills to produce goods and services. We willingly give our time to each other in the village, without expectation of recompense, but most of us do have cash income of some sort from outside the village.

Evening
According to the calendar in the large communal kitchen, I'm on "KP" tonight. Outside of a couple specialties, cooking is not my thing, so I'm content to peel potatoes and chop salad, and continuously lobby for more spices. It's the camaraderie of kitchen work that is the pleasurable part for me, not the actual cooking!

"How's the orchard doing?" I ask one of my fellow kitchen workers, who has been stewarding a grove of mixed fruit trees in the northeast corner that we had started our first year.

"I think we're going to have peaches this year," she said, "Y'know, five years growing, five years bearing, and five years dying."

"Great!" I replied, "I guess it will be a few more years before we have cherries and apples." Thank goodness staples, like grain and vegetables, don't grow as slowly as fruit trees!

After dinner, I prepare for the class I'm teaching on alternative energy. This is an ongoing evening class, targeted to the greater island community, many of whom have started to "get it" since gasoline went over $2 a liter. The ferry schedules have been reduced, and not so many tourists have been arriving, and some islanders are starting to panic, and many are leaving for city jobs. But many who have been here a long time are starting to think about "toughing it out" in the future, and are making preparations. Property values have been softening, and there is talk of starting the island's second ecovillage.

We also have more intensive seminars and internships, with guests staying as long as several months. Most of these folk come from relatively far away, and the locals have day jobs, so we have evening classes so that our fellow islanders can learn sustainable practices.

As people begin to shuffle into the small space in an alcove off the main hall, I see other alcoves gathering evening activity -- a class on permaculture here, a jam session there, a small group playing some board game over there, a committee of some sort meeting in the far corner. The hall is our primary social space, with alcoves all around the perimeter, separated from the main hall with bookcases and dividers that can be moved around to accommodate groups of various sizes.

We had agreed early on to get away from traditional "box full of boxes" modern architecture, and to build something open and flexible. Sometimes, one group gets a bit too loud for others nearby, but generally, that results in cross-pollenization of ideas, and often the dividers get moved and two groups combine for the evening.

"So, that's the theory; you've got your notes; you've got your homework -- next week, we meet in the tech center and brew some biodiesel!" I say as the class breaks up for the evening. The technical center was the second common building we made, and serves as a combination garage, wood shop, metal shop, electronics lab, and general inventors' corner. We maintain nearly all our artifacts, bartering with outside experts for things that require specialized knowledge and equipment.

Night
"What have you been up to?" I ask Carol as we walk back to our comfy, tiny quarters.

"I've been over in the arts center, making beads," she explains. The arts center and retail center were the most recent additions to our common buildings, and have given us a boost in outside income, while reducing the need to travel -- now, our customers can come to us! Although the continuing escalation of gasoline has cut the sheer number of tourists, the "quality factor" has gone up, and those who do venture to the island are more prepared to spend money.

We take a detour, and stroll down to the stream, hand in hand. There is a pagoda there, and it is nice to get away from the other villagers for a bit, to meditate or just to be alone for a while. The water rushes over a small waterfall into the gorge, not quite drowning out the "bzzzt!" of a Nightjar and the hoot of a Great Horned Owl.

We hug and gaze into each other's souls like teen-agers. "I'm so happy here with you and everyone else," Carol says. "Yes, me too!" I reply, and we stroll back to our quarters.

I was tired a while ago, but it seems my brain starts churning as soon as my head hits the psyllium husk pillow. I think back over the five years we've been here -- the joys and sorrows, the triumphs and the setbacks, the people who have been around the whole time and those who have come and gone, the stuff you enjoyed doing and the stuff you know just had to get done.

But underlying it all is one thread that makes it all worth while, one thing that means I couldn't think of doing anything else: we are building a new world, even as the old one crumbles around us. And as the old ways slowly self-destruct, more and more thoughtful people are seeing that this new way of life is necessary, attainable, and right. Ecovillages are beginning to pop up everywhere, like jonquils in the spring, providing hope for a new balance with nature.

To be continued, in real life!

Jan's Vision, Fifty Years Later

Synopsis
Tonight, I get to feed the animals. I'm hoping for a cougar!

The World
In the fifty years since we joined the land, we've seen much happiness, and much sadness.

Most of the rest of the world has crumbled into insurrection and resource wars. The recessions of 2006, 2011, and 2015 were interspersed by wildly optimistic growth, which only used up the fuel even faster. Then the big one hit in late 2019, when the stock market lost 2/3rds of its value, and fully half of employed people in the US and Canada lost their jobs.

Europe and Japan fared somewhat better, but they and China were dragged down by the huge loss of market in North America. Half the people were no longer able to buy cheap plastic crap from 20,000 kilometers away, and the other half were terrified to let go of their money, too-late saving for a future that had been uncertain for far longer than they had imagined.

Then came the Chinese invasion. Although it was not a "traditional" invasion, in the form of tanks and bombs, it was no less deadly, and did involve an army of sorts. China held countless trillions of dollars of US debt, and simply called in the notes in the form of real estate purchases after the land price collapse that came with the 2019 depression. The Chinese government filled empty cargo ships with their poor, underprivileged, and politically incorrect, and shipped them off to work the huge collective farms that they had purchased in the US, sending the food back to feed an increasingly unhappy and politically unstable middle class. Americans reacted with violence, killing hundreds of thousands of landed Chinese in random acts of violence, and by 2023, the Chinese immigrants had armed themselves, and began retribution.

But people were hungry in America, too. The television networks and news outlets had largely placated the US middle class, through losing an entire generation to resource wars, and losing their personal liberties to "protection from terrorism". But hunger was another matter, and it required a more powerful response from the moneyed classes.

No one can say for sure how it happened, or who was responsible -- all those who might have had a story to tell are either in prison, or have been executed. But the nuclear holocaust at the Super Bowl gave the neo-cons all that they needed to impose totalitarian martial law. The people are still hungry, but at least they're safe from terrorism from abroad -- if no longer safe from terrorism from within.

The historians and economists looked backwards, and noted that it took ten years before there was much recovery from the 1929 Depression, but the waited-for recovery never took place, and by 2039, over 1/3rd of the North American population had succumbed to insurrection, starvation, exposure, or disease. The Chinese Flu pandemic of 2036 was particularly gruesome, taking nearly 80% of those infected -- nearly a quarter billion perishing world-wide -- and making the flu pandemic of 1918 look like a bad case of sniffles in comparison.

The natural gas rationing that had begun a decade before now meant that only the very rich had winter heat in much of North America's urban areas. The cities emptied onto the land like a swarm of locusts, cutting down anything they could burn for heat. It was said that there was not a single tree standing within 50 miles of New York City.

But we'll never really know how many died, nor how many are dying, because during these dark times, the infrastructure of the world began to crumble. Rolling blackouts became a permanent fixture throughout most of the world lucky enough to still have electricity. What was left of the transportation industry crawled to a stop as long-distance highways became impassible. The last commercial airline flight landed in 2032. The telephone system, utterly dependent on reliable electricity, fractured into regional systems. And the Internet, once viewed as the hope for civilization, devolved into regional internets, with some intercontinental email traffic getting through on a sporadic basis.

Large countries, unwillingly led by the US, Russia, and China, began to split into rival regions. Internecine warfare broke out between Southern and Northern Calfornia, New England and the Midwest, and most of all, between the not-quite-poor and the newly poor. This last conflict became especially deadly, and the rich supplied both sides with plenty of handguns and small arms, stoking the fires of class warfare while retreating into increasingly isolated bunkers and fortresses.

By the early '40's, feudalism returned with a vengeance. Anyone who survived the property crash of 2019 could hire armies of starving laborers for a pittance. Anyone who had mortgages in 2019 lost their land in the next few years. The US Supreme Court gave its blessing to indentured servitude way back in 2022, Chief Justice Roberts wryly noting, "at least they're not slaves." (In a lone dissenting opinion, Justice Alieto argued that the court did not go far enough; many of the founding fathers owned slaves, and therefore, slavery actually was constitutional.)

Debtors' prisons, not seen since Dickensonian England, returned for a while, since all the for-profit prisons built between 1992 and 2008 were emptied by disease. The US began forced conscription from the prison population in 2023, and a docile public said, "it's either them, or us" and acquiesced. The best anyone in the habit of maxed-out credit card debt in the early century could hope for by mid-century was three meals and a place to sleep in exchange for work -- they could see those who were unable to work being loaded into trains on the way to the biofuel plants.

But also in the '40's, there was a pause, and the world appeared to try to catch its breath. The growing ecovillage movement meshed nicely with the collapse of large countries into regions. Communities of "freemen" used the laws that kept the rich in power to keep themselves out of bondage -- and supplied with healthy food and natural health care remedies. In 2042, the Free State of Cascadia declared independence from what was left of the US and Canadian governments, and held its first constitutional convention in Vancouver.

Canada
With the broad passage of "Single Transferrable Voting" systems in all provinces except Alberta, the Green party began to flourish, and Canadians actually implemented not only the Kyoto Protocol, but the 2016 Hague Protocol that finally did away with fossil fuel subsidies, replacing them with renewable energy credits.

Boosted by energy exports to the south and decreasing national debt, the Canadian and US Dollars reached parity way back in 2006, and never looked back. Canada re-instated the gold standard in 2019, and by 2039, you could buy a truckload of US $100,000 notes for a single Maple Leaf coin -- not that anyone in their right mind would want to.

So used to following the US lead on many fronts, Canadians revolted and began valuing their cultural heritage. You no longer had to "go south" to get respect at home, in fact, those who crossed over to try to make a quick buck were greeted with derision upon return.

Although the Liberals tried to gut the health care system in the first decade of the century, it had been restored by the time the pandemics hit North America, and Canada (second to Norway again, damn it!) had among the world's lowest death rate.

Quebec finally seceded during the 2020 Depression, and the Maritimes and the Prairies followed, forming a loose federation of independent states, still known as "Canada", but no longer sending much money to Ottawa.

The annexation of 2039 was more a joke that anything serious. The US immediately seized the Alberta energy resources, and were able to draft a few thousand young people from Toronto to send off to resource wars in the Middle East. But the reach of the once mighty empire had become limited, following the collapse of communication and transportation infrastructure; they could still wage war across the planet, but the US could no longer count draft-aged men in Moose Jaw -- nor those on Salt Spring Island.

The Village
Through all this, the village... survived. Fifty years ago, I would have been tempted to say "prospered", but life had become brutal and brief for 90% of the world, and it has impacted us, too.

For a while, our compassion nearly killed us -- it can be a fine line between an ecovillage and a refugee camp. But luckily, our situation makes it difficult for refugees to get to us. Locals who are in need are always welcome, but by 2020, 80% of the island's population had left, trying to find work in other places once the tourists stopped coming. Those few kilometers of water means one has to be relatively energy-wealthy to get here. Having an expensive doorway may cut us off from the world, but it also cuts the world off from us.

It was spring 2040 by the time we learned of the 2039 annexation. Some chuckled, others fretted, life went on as usual. 80% of Salt Spring was now one big ecovillage -- the Confederation of Salt Spring -- but the rich still had big houses on the waterfront, and would arrive from Victoria or Vancouver with boatloads of servants. We actually loved it -- they depended on us for food, and we on them for goods from the rest of the world.

Last month's ferry brought crates of pineapples. Most of the children have never seen a pineapple! I'm glad I get to taste one again -- shared with three others! The aroma and flavor bring back such sweet memories!

Myself
The soldiers came in 2041. Their uniforms were ill-fitting and mis-matched, and weren't nearly as nice as the homespun flax/wool I was wearing. "Who is your leader?" the one in front shouted.

"I don't know, let me think, who's supposed to be leader this week?" I asked James, working beside me with a hoe.

"Damn! Why am I such a wise ass? Keep the mouth shut!" I think to myself as the rifle but strikes my temple and I see stars through the blood streaming into my eyes. But it is just a surface wound. An Oregon Grape poultice will keep it from infecting, and I'll be good to go in a few days.

Which is more than can be said for our unexpected guests. All that is really needed is to wait. They are starving. And they probably only have a few rounds between them for their guns. Just wait. In a couple days, they'll be begging for help, and we'll feed them, and recycle the precious metal from their weapons, and politely send them back across the water. Through it all, we've managed to keep our non-violent principles.

As for me, I've had little desire for a "legacy," preferring to live in the moment as much as possible. But all of us harbor some such hopes:

I hope I'm remembered for my good ideas -- as well as the willingness to give them up when better ideas are presented.
I hope people respected me for actually implementing ideas -- and I hope I've been patient and willing to listen while people talked and fretted instead of just doing something.
I hope I've been fun to be around -- and that I've taken the time to be around fun people.
I hope I've been helpful and generous with my time -- and that I've conquered my self-sufficiency ethic and sought help from others when needed.
I hope I've been tolerant of others' eccentricities -- as I know I've tested their tolerance.
Carol
My beloved Carol got to feed the animals last week. We wanted to do it together, but such things are not so easily controlled. She had a sudden opportunity; I was not prepared. I haven't eaten since then, and the fasting has sharpened my clarity of purpose.

I seem to be floating about four or five meters from the forest floor. What is that crumpled, naked form amid the detritus in the Glade of Passage? Cougars are not normally scavengers, and I pray I'm warm and lifelike enough. But humans have decimated the deer population, and the cougars have gotten less picky.

There... eyes glowing in the underbrush. It cautiously sniffs the air, winds up its haunches, and pounces. I watch from my ethereal perch as the teeth and claws painlessly rake my dead flesh.

And now, I'm spinning, spinning, rising, rising, going faster, faster, as I release myself into the void to join Carol. My work is done.

http://www.EcoReality.org/wiki/User:Jan_Steinman

Permission is granted by the author to publish or link this to other websites, as long as the above link is included in each case

posted in Ecotopian Future Historians Tribe - 4 replies

nano technology

2006-07-03T12:43:43Z

What are your thoughts on the pros and cons of nano technology. Should it be developed, or is it too dangerous?

posted in Ecotopian Future Historians Tribe - 2 replies

Green Scare Resources

2006-05-26T13:26:31Z

we can now add the GreenScare to our collective history. Found this list of resoucres at Portland Indy Media:

Green Scare Resources
author: havetheirbacks
this is a list of online resources for greenscare info . . .
GREEN SCARE RESOURCES

Civil Liberties Defense Center: excellent archive of legal papers, updates on indictments.
http://www.cldc.org

Portland Independent Media Center [IMC] Green Scare page
http://portland.indymedia.org/en/topic/greenscare/

Green Scare informational website
http://www.greenscare.org

Wikipedias pages on:
Green Scare:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Scare

Operation Backfire http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Backfire_%28FBI%29

Green is the new Red
http://www.greenisthenewred.com/blog/

Providence Green Scare
http://www.myspace.com/greenscarepvd

Media:

BOOM! Who are the real terrorists? BY ALAN PITTMAN
Eugene Weekly, March 9, 2006
http://www.eugeneweekly.com/2006/03/09/coverstory.html

Sourcecodes ..1 Terrorist Threat?
Download Quicktime movie below
http://sourcecode.freespeech.org/sc302EcotageDL

Operational Backfire: Criminalizing Dissent By MICHAEL DONNELLY
Counterpunch.org
http://www.counterpunch.org/donnelly05242006.html

War on the First Amendment
The Great Green Scare By BEN ROSENFELD
Counterpunch.org
http://www.counterpunch.org/rosenfeld03102006.html

The Green Scare by Karen Pickett
http://shiftshapers.gnn.tv/blogs/13536/The_Green_Scare

found at http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2006/05/340003.shtml

posted in Ecotopian Future Historians Tribe - 0 replies

population increase in Cascadia

2006-05-09T18:45:43Z

as we plan our Ecotopian future then now figure in even more of an increase of population then add peak oil, peak natural gas, decline in potable drinking water, increase in deforestation, sprawl-marts on all the prime agricultural lands and increase replacement of privilege for civil rights.

here are some articles on the population increase:

'Mandatory Lutefisk'
And other ideas on how to stop growth in its tracks.
By Knute Berger
Recent statistics show a disturbing trend. Northwest Environment
Watch reports that the population of Cascadia—Washington, Oregon,
Idaho, and British Columbia—is booming. It's not birth rate but
migration from other states and provinces that is driving up the
numbers. In the past 12 months, 227,000 folks have moved to the
region. That's a 1.5 percent population increase in a year, due
almost entirely to what they call "domestic migration." In other
words, thanks, California.

Growing the most is Washington. The Seattle Times finds that
Washington's population has grown by more than 400,000 people from
2000 to 2005. We're America's 14th most populous state and the 12th-
fastest growing. The Times reports that the state's demographer,
Theresa Lowe, predicts Washington will continue to draw more than
100,000 people per year for the rest of the decade as our population
soars to 6.8 million.

Clearly, we are not doing enough to make ourselves unappealing to
the rest of the country. Despite all the dire predictions that we
would drive away people with the bad breath and acne-blooms of high
taxes, overpriced real estate, and onerous laws and regulations, we
have not done nearly enough to make ourselves repellent. I mean,
when Boeing stormed out of Seattle and relocated its corporate
headquarters in Chicago, you would have thought we were some kind of
drooling plague monkey. Even the dot-com bust failed to be a
deterrent to growth. Our state is adding tons of jobs, and our
vaunted "livability" apparently has the appeal of a Paris Hilton sex
video.

Mossback doesn't like the ways things are going. Too much growth,
too much change, too many outsiders trying to grow palm trees—or
skyscrapers—in our backyards. I think the only way to turn this
thing around is to adopt measures that will turn newcomers off, yet
reinforce local values.

kberger@seattleweekly.com

found at http://seattleweekly.com/news/0601/mossback.php

_____

Make Room!

The good ship Cascadia has another 227,000 passengers.

The US Census Bureau has issued population estimates for the states,
which allow us to give an updated Cascadian population tally. As of
July 1, 2005, the region – counting British Columbia, Idaho, Oregon,
and Washington – had 15.6 million people. (Adding western Montana,
southeast Alaska, and northwestern California pushes that figure up
by another million or so, but running the county-by-county figures
takes more time than I've got at the moment.)

The (four main jurisdictions of the) region added 227,000
inhabitants over the preceding 12 months. That's about the number
that live in greater Olympia, Washinton. And it's a 1.5 percent
increase, the largest since 1997.

The resurgence stemmed from rising domestic migration into the
region. Natural increase (births minus deaths) remained stable at
around 70,000 per year, as did international migration at around
50,000 per year. (International migration is hard to tally reliably
at present. As the Census Bureau's American Community Survey comes
online, we'll be able to track it better.)

The extra 227,000 Cascadians, especially the adult migrants, bring
new resource consumption, pollution, and traffic as they arrive. But
just to be unpredictable today, let me point out that they also
bring new talents, productivity, and resources with them.

One dimension of in-migration that's little noted is the way that
growing populations allow more-rapid transformation of metropolitan
areas. Cities that don't have growing populations do not have many
opportunities to build complete, compact communities, filling in
their urban form. And compact communities can actually reduce
resource consumption among their residents. It's conceivable, in
fact, that adding population--if it goes into the right kinds of
smart-growth neighborhoods--might lead to such large per-person
reductions in resource consumption that the aggregate total remains
unchanged or even diminishes.

So migration brings big challenges (about which there's more here)
but it also brings opportunities.

found at
http://cascadiascorecard.typepad.com/blog/population/index.html

______

Feeling crowded? More folks on the way
By Lornet Turnbull

Seattle Times staff reporter

With an estimated 6.3 million residents, the state of Washington has
edged out Indiana to become the nation's 14th most populous state,
recent census estimates show.

Washington continued to attract people from across oceans and around
the country — particularly from California, which has seen more than
660,000 of its residents move to other states so far this decade.

"It's like having a great, big nation right next door to us," said
Theresa Lowe, the state's chief demographer. "In the last few years,
they've dumped hundreds of thousands of people on Western states.
How California does makes a big difference in how the Western states
as a whole do," she said.

With the 2000 decennial census as the base, the Census Bureau
estimates annual population for states, counties and cities using
births, deaths and immigration records, tax returns and other data.
Estimates for counties and cities will be released next year.

Net domestic and foreign migration, along with natural growth
(births minus deaths), boosted Washington's population by 400,000-
plus people between July 2000 and July 2005. The 6.4 percent growth
rate made Washington the 12th-fastest-growing state in the nation.

Population facts

Southern states recorded both the fastest growth rate (7 percent)
and the largest population increase (6.9 million people) this
decade.

The South accounts for 36 percent of the nation's total population,
while the West comprises 23 percent, the Midwest 22 percent and the
Northeast 18 percent.

The 10 most populous states accounted for 54 percent of the nation's
population on July 1, 2005.

Only North Dakota and the District of Columbia lost population over
the past five years.

Source: U.S. Census Bureau
Over the same period, the nation's population rose 5 percent to more
than 296 million residents.

The Census Bureau's mid-decade estimates show growth tilting South
and West, with states in those regions experiencing huge population
spikes.

Lowe's population forecast calls for that trend to continue in
Washington, with the state drawing more than 100,000 people a year
to reach 6.8 million by the end of this decade.

Politicians and political analysts closely watch these mid-decade
estimates for clues as to how the 435 U.S. House seats might be
reapportioned following the 2010 decennial census.

There's speculation Washington could win a 10th House seat in the
next census, if current population trends continue.

California remains the most populous state, with more than 36
million residents. Over the past five years, California has
compensated for its domestic population losses by attracting some
1.3 million immigrants, far more than any other state.

Still, Washington folks believe this state has the economic edge.

Global companies seeking West Coast operations see cost advantages
to locating in Washington instead of California, said Jeff Marcell,
vice president of economic development for enterpriseSeattle, which
promotes economic development.

In making their own population forecasts, state demographers compare
employment opportunities in Washington with those in California and
the rest of the nation, Lowe said. In the past year, she said,
Washington has added 85,000 jobs.

"One of the reasons we're doing so well is that California and the
rest of the nation have not done as well," she said.

In the five years since the Census Bureau went door-to-door counting
heads, Washington has drawn about 81,000 people from other U.S.
states — more than half of those arriving during the 12 months
between July 2004 and July 2005, estimates show.

But this state's big population driver has been movement from
outside the country. Foreign immigration added an estimated 126,000
people this decade, the Census Bureau reports.

Noting that one of every three jobs in the state of Washington is
related to international trade, Marcell said, "We're quite
fortunate ... to have global companies that do business all over the
world — Boeing, Microsoft, to name just two.

"And of course they continue to attract talent from around the
world."

Lornet Turnbull: 206-464-2420 or lturnbull@seattletimes.com

Most populous states
No. State Population
1. California 36.1 million
2. Texas 22.9 million
3. New York 19.3 million
4. Florida 17.8 million
5. Illinois 12.8 million
6. Pennsylvania 12.4 million
7. Ohio 11.5 million
8. Michigan 10.1 million
9. Georgia 9.1 million
10. New Jersey 8.7 million
14. Washington 6.3 million
27. Oregon 3.6 million
47. Alaska 663,661
Source: The U.S. Census Bureau

Fastest growing states
Population increase from 2000 to 2005
No. State Percent
1. Nevada 19.6 percent
2. Arizona 14.9 percent
3. Florida 10.8 percent
4. Georgia 10.2 percent
5. Utah 10.1 percent
6. Idaho 9.9 percent
7. Texas 9.1 percent
8. Colorado 7.8 percent
9. North Carolina 7.4 percent
10. Delaware 7.2 percent
12. Washington 6.4 percent
14. Oregon 6.1 percent
16. Alaska 5.7 percent
Source: U.S. Census Bureau

Copyright © 2006 The Seattle Times Company

found at
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2002716233_popchange0
2m.html

posted in Ecotopian Future Historians Tribe - 1 reply

the "Doug" flag of the Bioregion of Cascadia

2006-03-24T14:27:01Z

Our fellow Cascadian Collin (savepac17@yahoo.com) during the winter holidays had a "Doug" or Cascadian flag made. Those are pictures of the Doug I posted in the photo section. If you are interested then contact the Texan company for a copy.

For those wanting a Cascadian local flag company there is smALL FLAGs in Oregon www.smallflags.com/BASE/About%20us.htm

For those wanted a more organic material made either contact small flags and inquire if it is possible for them or the BeeHive Collective ( www.beehivecollective.org/ ) and see if they can help with materials. I would also suggest starting several local flag making workshops (maybe Tryon Life Farm would be willing or one of the FreeSkools).

Kloshe Nanitch

Alexander

pictures of the Doug:

http://media.portland.indymedia.org/images/2006/03/336589.jpg

http://media.portland.indymedia.org/images/2006/03/336590.jpg

http://media.portland.indymedia.org/images/2006/03/336591.jpg

http://media.portland.indymedia.org/images/2006/03/336592.jpg

original design http://media.portland.indymedia.org/images/2005/12/330627.jpg

symbolism of the bioregion http://media.portland.indymedia.org/images/2005/12/330626.jpg

From Collin:

"Collin" <savepac17@yahoo.com>
Date: Wed Mar 22, 2006 4:19 pm
Subject: CHECK OUT THE PICS OF THE DOUG!!! savepac17

Who says we ain't movin'... we are movin'! Check it out! WE HAVE A FLAG!

Ok, cool, I had to get that off my chest. Anyway, if any of you would like a
flag too let me know. Remember all, the more of you who say, "YES I WANT A
FLAG TOO" means we can get a bulk rate, which will make future productions
of "THE DOUG" cheaper. A and I found a flag maker in Salem, OR who is
waiting for us to make an order.

Collin

various Cascadian groups and sites:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Cascadian_Bioregionalism/

http://cascadians.tribe.net/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cascadia

http://republic-of-cascadia.tripod.com/

posted in Ecotopian Future Historians Tribe - 0 replies

New Bioregional Democracy tribe

2006-01-24T23:28:13Z

The Bioregional Revolution movement is a new organization (circa 2004) promoting bioregionalism, permaculture, local currencies, education, worker/employee owned business, and nonviolence in respon..

http://tribes.tribe.net/bioregional

posted in Ecotopian Future Historians Tribe - 1 reply

New tribe for Outdoor Educators

2006-01-16T03:37:26Z

I started a new tribe for Outdoor, Experiential, Environmental, and/or Adventure Educators. A place to share ideas and resources so we can do what we do even better. Anyone who works to get people outdoors and learning is invited. Or anyone who thinks this is a something they would like to do.

I am currently a Wilderness Instructor for Outward Bound Discovery. I have also worked for the Sierra Club, Student Conservation Association, and Sound Experience. I would love to connect with others from these organizations, but would also love to hear from some of you who have worked for others, so we can cross-pollinate (woo-hoo! lol).

http://tribes.tribe.net/outdooreducators?_click_path=Application%5Btribe%5D.Tribe%5B3a95e939-c843-4579-b2a2-e8cb7e01be78%5D

posted in Ecotopian Future Historians Tribe - 0 replies

Outrageous Oregonian bias for PGE

2006-01-03T11:05:03Z

Outrageous Oregonian bias for PGE
author: Mike Munk e-mail: lastmarx2@netscape.com
how the Oregonian acts as tranmission belt for PGE propaganda
To the editor, The Oregonian

A photo accompanying your article on the City Council's unanimous vote to demand a true accounting of PGE/Enron finances ("City agrees to dig into PGE finances," Dec. 8) showed a PGE "governmental relations" director testifying and two other individuals waiting to testify. One was Bill Parish, a well known expert and consultant on utility finances and the other was Bill Michtom, a consumer advocate. I looked forward to learning what these two important witnesses had to say to the city commissoners.

Instead, your reporter completely ignored them while giving generous space to Enron/ PGE's spokespeople, including unchallenged statements she solicited in interviews. In a another example of reporting bias, the article seemed to warn the City not to attempt to lower PGE rates because it would "meet harsh resistance from PGE" (what else?) and that it would "run up" against the state Public Uitlities Commission.

I believe the time has come to ask whether The Oregonian's reporting on Enron/PGE reflects its historic ideological opposition to public power, expressed the same day on the editorial page by "Shooting PGE first, asking questions later" and the oped space ("The facts show PGE acted with integrity") donated to PGE's "public policy " flack.

Your editorial page also noted that Enron's reputation ranked at the bottom of 60 corporations. You challenge your readers to ask whether they support the City Council's efforts to find out just why, compared to publicly owned utilities, we are paying such outrageously high rates. Especially when the alternative is having those rates manipulated by a corrupt corporation, of course we support our elected representatives. More power to them!

Michael Munk

found at http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2005/12/330389.shtml

posted in Ecotopian Future Historians Tribe - 1 reply

56 members?

2006-01-03T10:29:18Z

wow ! welcome you all friends I have yet to meet and know better!

I have recently polished up my website for the new year.... http://www.aryon.net
and although there is not currently new content on the ecotopian thread- I was just today inspired for a new chapter so stay tuned with all your anntenae in this bright new year!

In the in between time that is now - how bout a poetry slam thread? Off the cuff and nature inspired to work up the creative juices....anyone welcome to enter any format of your own creation.

peace be
ary

posted in Ecotopian Future Historians Tribe - 0 replies

Nature has no inherent value?

2006-01-03T10:23:32Z

What is this moron smoking? Crack?

Below is a letter written by some moron in Mother Earth News.

"Death of Environmentalism"
"I don't find it surprising that many nonenvironmentalists enjoy your
magazine-me included. Environmentalists find inherent value in nature.
The statement that 'any person who wants to breathe clean air' cares
about nature is false. I care about such things, but only because I care
about humans, not nature. To me, nature has no inherent value. The only
reason to maintain a beautiful planet would be purely aesthetic (which is
a value to humans). This may be considered a controversial viewpoint, but
it's true. Environmentalism is dead because it is a shallow viewpoint.
We need to support a movement that is pro-human, and one that encompasses
all human values.
~Jonathan McElroy
Murfreesboro, Tennessee"

My main issue with this idiot is that Nature has no inherent value.
This letter was printed in the October/November 2005 issue of Mother
Earth News Magazine.
I'm writing a letter to Mother Earth News to confront this mind set. Want
to join me?
How to Contact MOTHER
Letters to the Editor

* Send an e-mail to letters@MotherEarthNews.com

* Or write to "Dear Mother" at;
Mother Earth News
1503 SW 42nd St.
Topeka, KS 66609

* Please include your full name, address & phone number.
Letters may be edited for clarity & space.

Send your views.

Do you think Nature has no inherent value?
Lets talk about it.

~Gypsy
One Touch Of Nature Makes The Whole World Kin
-As You Like It

posted in Ecotopian Future Historians Tribe - 2 replies

Defending our Oceans Expedition

2005-11-17T16:33:09Z

This year we are undertaking our most ambitious ship expedition to date, and we'd like you to come with us!
http://oceans.greenpeace.org/en/defenders
We will be sailing the oceans for a year to explore their beauty and protect their treasures. We'll take action to stop destruction, look into where and how ocean parks will work, and document the beauty of untouched areas.

What you can do right now!

The law of 6 degrees of separation means that you, Ocean Defender, know someone who knows someone who knows someone who knows precisely where the whaling fleet will be in the next few months. We have our own methods of locating them, but this is always a very difficult task. If you know someone who works in maritime tracking, satellite imagery, the Japanese fishing industry, cetacean research, who's doing an ocean crossing in the Pacific or working in some other field that might have first hand knowledge of where the fleet will be, pass this message along. The ship we are seeking is named the Nisshin Maru, gross tonnage 8,030, length 130 metres, radio call sign JJCJ. She is the factory ship and will be accompanied by three catchers, Kyo Maru No. 1 with radio call sign JKNG, the Yushin Maru call sign JLZS and Yushin Maru No. 2, call sign JPPV.

Confindential information to: hunt-the-hunters@greenpeace.org

posted in Ecotopian Future Historians Tribe - 0 replies

THURSDAY: register to take part in Day of Action and Save Forests

2005-10-31T17:52:14Z

Friends,

It's been heartwarming to see how many communities are signing up to take action to stop forest destruction on November 3rd. Kleenex sells 180 billion sheets of tissue paper each year and NOT ONE of them has any recycled content. They're turning 10,000 year old forests into disposable products.

Because of corporations like Kleenex parent company Kimberly-Clark, great ancient forests such as North America's Boreal -- home to caribou, wolves and eagles -- are clear-cut every day. Because of people like you, we have a chance to stop it.

>>If you haven't already, please sign up to join one of the more than 120 events scheduled for Thursday's day of action.<< www.kleercut.net/nov3events

>From Asheville to Knoxville, Williamsburg to Wichita, and Seattle to San Diego, folks will be out on the streets educating consumers and pressuring Kimberly-Clark. Here are just a few examples.

Rohini is organizing university students at CSU Fullterton in California. But she doesn't go to school there—she's in high school! That's not stopping her from coordinating a Tissue Challenge. "We're dressing up as market researchers in lab coats and glasses to challenge people to tell the difference between Kleenex and a forest-friendly tissue."

And then there's Cheryl in Williamsburg, VA, where she is holding the Mom's Protest. To celebrate her daughter's birthday (Greenpeace's own forest campaigner Ginger Cassady), she's taking part in the day of action during her lunch hour with friends, colleagues, and a couple of priests. The entourage will visit the local grocery store to flyer, petition, and discuss alternative products with the manager.

Please RSVP for an event near you on our online events center. Or host an event yourself! Sign up to spend an hour outside of a grocery store—we have downloadable flyers, petitions, and a letter to the store manager that you can deliver. Those materials and more are available on our day of action events center.

Kimberly-Clark and Kleenex are wiping out three million tons of virgin forests each year for products we use once and throw away. Don't let them flush our future down the toilet. Sign up for the day of action today.

Feel free to email usa@kleercut.net if you have any questions or need advice. And be sure to check out http://www.kleercut.net for more info.

PS…If you haven’t already, don’t forget to visit our action center to send a message to Kimberly-Clark!

posted in Ecotopian Future Historians Tribe - 0 replies

Kleenex=Kleercut: HELP SAVE ENDANGERED FORESTS

2005-10-14T19:57:54Z

Did you know that Kleenex sells 180 billion sheets of tissue paper each year and not one of them has any recycled content? Kleenex even goes as far as to boast on their website that their tissues are made from 100% virgin fiber. Look for yourself on the FAQs on their web page. Kleenex and parent corporation Kimberly-Clark are felling forests that are thousands of years old to make products we use once and flush away.

Send them a message today! www.kleercut.net/sendamessage

Check out the campaign page: Kleercut
www.greenpeace.org/usa

posted in Ecotopian Future Historians Tribe - 0 replies

Future History Volume #3 - Role of Youth in Ecotpian Revolution

2005-07-30T07:32:00Z

http://www.aryon.net/backroom/ecotopia/fh3.html

something new!
Aryana

posted in Ecotopian Future Historians Tribe - 1 reply

where I am going....

2005-03-15T11:25:41Z

ok a recap- my stories are intended as the re-visioning tools for ourselves in the present day world in the form of futurized and fantastical ficiton. I may take the Ecotopian Future Histories and work with a playwright or develop my own story and publish it in the future.

Sometimes they are a bit rough, but I realize that is the side effect of me NOT agonizing over the details, and letting my writing come out into the worlld.

As always, I am eager to hear and feed off of what my writing brings up for y'all......:)

love,
Aryana

posted in Ecotopian Future Historians Tribe - 2 replies

The Torch of Life

2004-12-24T10:44:37Z

Hi Kin

I would like to offer my project: The Torch of Life
As an example of Ecotopian Future Engineering & Runic Time Magic Telemetry ;-)

I would upload images but it seems the option is not there . . .
see: www.spirit-of-yggdrasil.com
and: TorchOfLife.tribe.net

The Torch of Life on a physical level is a mandala, a circular work of art that can be used as a meditational focus. Its image defines and details the nature of its beingness and is an open door to the exploration of the fractal of all time now.

On a plane of pure consciousness the Torch of Life is a divine thoughtform, conceived by Spirit, which incarnated within the body of the mandala as living art. It is an emanation of the dream of Sprit for humanity to experience the highest potential of peace and collective harmony with all things and all beings. It affirms the divine nature of all, triggering humanity ’s transformation into the enlightened race of master beings that we ’ve always been. It is a flag of unification that declares “I AM Planetary Beingness. ”It is also a creative self-fulfilling prophecy of collective human enlightenment and World Peace.

The Torch of Life is an practical example of Runic Time Magic. It is consecrated to Humankind, Love, Unity, Paradise, Peace, Harmony, Compassion and Mother Earth.

It navigates time in harmony with the most ancient and advanced time science of our world. Functioning as a magnet for the manifestation of the highest dreams and aspirations of the human spirit. It represents all the most cherished dreams of our world in a state of wholeness, where pollution on a physical, emotional, mental and spiritual level is no more and the Earth is revealed in her full splendour.

All feedback welcome and encouraged!

Namaste

posted in Ecotopian Future Historians Tribe - 2 replies

The future seen by Terry Riley

2004-12-23T17:01:49Z

A Rainbow in Curved Air, Terry Riley, 1969
------------------------------------------------
And then all of the wars ended

Arms of every kind were outlawed and the masses gladly contributed them the giant foundries in which they were melted down and the metal poured back into the earth

The Pentagon was turned on its side and painted purple, yellow & green

All boundaries were dissolved

The slaughter of animals was forbidden

The whole of lower Manhattan became a meadow in which unfortunates from the Bowery were allowed their fantasies in the sunshine and were cured

People swam in the sparkling rivers under blue skies streaked only with incense pouring from new factories

The energy from dismantled nuclear weapons provided free heat and light

World health was restored

An abundance of organic vegetables, fruits, and grains was growing wild along discarded highways

National flags were sewn together into brightly colored circus tents under which politicians were allowed to perform harmless theatrical games

The concept of work was forgotten

posted in Ecotopian Future Historians Tribe - 1 reply

mother of the revolution

2004-11-21T04:16:30Z

I hereby constitute myself as the possiblity of being a mother of the revolution that will create the world of our dreams for our grandchildren's grandchildren. That vision will come to fruition through the art and power of communication and it starts with each one of us. To help facilitate this revolution I request that everyone get in communication with one person they currently think it's impossible to talk to. Take responsibility for your role in the lack of communication and acknowledge that person for who they are in the world. World peace begins with taking it on on a personal level.
As part of my vision of a world that works I imagine massive investment in research and design of solar and other non-fossil fuel based energy systems, education and permitting of home scale gray water systems and other water conservation strategies, grass roots activism around food politics and urban agriculture and each one of us investing in our local economies.
The waterfall starts with a single drop!
What have we got to lose!
Joan Stevens

posted in Ecotopian Future Historians Tribe - 1 reply

New Essay! Ecotopian Birthing Practices

2004-11-20T20:44:12Z

May be a bit a rough, but I wanted to get this one online:)

Future History Volume 2
Ecotopian Birthing, A Survey of Modern Practices since the Revolution

Please let me know what you think....

http://www.aryon.net/backroom/index.html

~aryana

posted in Ecotopian Future Historians Tribe - 0 replies

Future History Volume #1

2004-11-20T20:42:27Z

http://aryon.net/aryana/future_history/fh1.html

~an undergrad in 2040 reviews key changes in womens roles in society after the Ecoptian Revolution.

Feedback and comments welcome. Please also feel free to post you own:)

posted in Ecotopian Future Historians Tribe - 1 reply

Ecotopian Future Historians Tribe's topics - tribe.net

Yardsharing and Seed Angels - We need you!

The Cascadian Guidebook Project

Don't mix

Planning Meeting THIS WEDNESDAY in Portland about the 2008/08/08 Doug Honours Ceremony

Utah Sustainable Community

Surplus: Terrorized into Being Consumers

A Beautiful video about the Flow of Water

The Power of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil

Global Citizen Center

Hi Guys,

would this be of interest?

Doug Honours Ceremony July 7th at Champoeg (BE THERE!)

Oregon and Washington Secession Poll at the Thom Hartmann Show

Ecotopia the utopian novel that inspired Cascadia

Chinook Jargon (Chinuk Wawa) in Portland tonight May 24th

On this day ... May 18th 1980

The IWW and the limits of inter-ethnic organizing: Reds, Whites, and Greeks in Grays Harbor, Washington, 1912 - International Workers of the World

May 2nd 1843 Oregon Country

Beavers, Firs, Salmon, and Falling Water

Leading Democrats say "No to Impeachment of Bush.. it is off the table"

“Roses, Cedars, and Orange Ribbons” [Audio]

Bush Moves Toward Martial Law

another big awakening for Cascadians coming this November

A People's History Of The United States

We have lived as if in a trance.

Pickaxe - The Cascadia Free State Story (free in google videos)

Modern-Day Secessionists Will Hold a Conference on Leaving the Union

Six Questions on the American “Gulag” for Historian Kate Brown

NorthWest Solar Homestead

Petition

Walden by Henry David Thoreau free online

Cascadia's World Heritage

Teenscreens David Shaffer, MD accidentally proves antidepressants cause kids to suicide! OOPS

Anti road protest in the netherlands

Awreness of Eco-Political Oppression (the GreenScare) makes it to the International level

fwd: Powell's Books - Ancient Futures: Learning from Ladakh by Helen Norberg-Hodge

the greater partitioning of Cascadia: border divisions

Jan's Vision

nano technology

Green Scare Resources

population increase in Cascadia

the "Doug" flag of the Bioregion of Cascadia

*New* Bioregional Democracy tribe

New tribe for Outdoor Educators

Outrageous Oregonian bias for PGE

56 members?

Nature has no inherent value?

Defending our Oceans Expedition

THURSDAY: register to take part in Day of Action and Save Forests

Kleenex=Kleercut: HELP SAVE ENDANGERED FORESTS

Future History Volume #3 - Role of Youth in Ecotpian Revolution

where I am going....

The Torch of Life

The future seen by Terry Riley

mother of the revolution

New Essay! Ecotopian Birthing Practices

Future History Volume #1

New Bioregional Democracy tribe