Garbage Warrior

What do beer cans, car tires and water bottles have in common? Not much unless you're renegade architect Michael Reynolds, in which case they are tools of choice for producing thermal mass and energy-independent housing. For 30 years New Mexico-based Reynolds and his green disciples have devoted their time to advancing the art of "Earthship Biotecture" by building self-sufficient, off-the-grid communities where design and function converge in eco-harmony. However, these experimental structures that defy state standards create conflict between Reynolds and the authorities, who are backed by big business. Frustrated by antiquated legislation, Reynolds lobbies for the right to create a sustainable living test site. While politicians hum and ha, Mother Nature strikes, leaving communities devastated by tsunamis and hurricanes. Reynolds and his crew seize the opportunity to lend their pioneering skills to those who need it most. Shot over three years and in four countries, Garbage Warrior is a timely portrait of a determined visionary, a hero of the 21st century.

All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace

    

All Watched Over By Machines Of Loving Grace by Richard Brautigan





I like to think (and
the sooner the better!)
of a cybernetic meadow
where mammals and computers
live together in mutually
programming harmony
like pure water
touching clear sky.

I like to think
(right now, please!)
of a cybernetic forest
filled with pines and electronics
where deer stroll peacefully
past computers
as if they were flowers
with spinning blossoms.

I like to think
(it has to be!)
of a cybernetic ecology
where we are free of our labors
and joined back to nature,
returned to our mammal
brothers and sisters,
and all watched over
by machines of loving grace.


 This title is also shared by a BBC documentary series by Adam Curtis, a series of films about how humans have been colonized by the machines they have built. Although we don’t realize it, the way we see everything in the world today is through the eyes of the computers. It claims that computers have failed to liberate us and instead have distorted and simplified our view of the world around us.


1. Love and Power. This is the story of the dream that rose up in the 1990s that computers could create a new kind of stable world. They would bring about a new kind global capitalism free of all risk and without the boom and bust of the past. They would also abolish political power and create a new kind of democracy through the Internet where millions of individuals would be connected as nodes in cybernetic systems – without hierarchy.

2. The Use and Abuse of Vegetational Concepts. This is the story of how our modern scientific idea of nature, the self-regulating ecosystem, is actually a machine fantasy. It has little to do with the real complexity of nature. It is based on cybernetic ideas that were projected on to nature in the 1950s by ambitious scientists. A static machine theory of order that sees humans, and everything else on the planet, as components – cogs – in a system.

3. The Monkey in the Machine and the Machine in the Monkey. This episode looks at why we humans find this machine vision so beguiling. The film argues it is because all political dreams of changing the world for the better seem to have failed – so we have retreated into machine-fantasies that say we have no control over our actions because they excuse our failure.

Adam Curtis is a documentary film maker, whose work includes The Power of Nightmares, The Century of the Self, The Mayfair Set, Pandora’s Box, The Trap and The Living Dead.


 Well worth watching.

 

The Money Fix

Watch this!! Everyone needs to understand how money works, and how much of a fictitious scam it is and be aware of the alternatives

Not For Sale

People all around the world are becoming increasingly dependent on a small number of large multinational businesses. Monsanto controls 90% of the production of genetically modified seeds. Microsoft holds an 88.26% market share of the software industry, followed by apple with Mac who hold 9.93%. Everyday, 150 million people throughout the world, buy an Unilever product without even realising it. McDonalds, serve 58.1million meals a day around the world. 51 of the worlds 100 biggest economies are businesses. The state loses power at the same rate as businesses gains it. Globalisation has created a context which requires a redefinition of the rules for global 21st century society. Watch this!

Justice for Khalid El-Masri

This documentary [from Witness, Al-Jazeera] tells the horrific story of Khalid El-Masri, the lebanese born German citizen who was taken off the street when holidaying in Macedonia as American forces believed he was an Al Qaeda agent because his name was similar to that of an Al Qaeda suspect. He was denied any contact with his family or German authorities, locked up in appalling conditions [in a covert CIA interrogation centre in Afganistan called 'The Salt Pit'], humiliated, sodomized and tortured for 5 months. El-Masri and several other inmates went on a hunger strike which lasted for almost a month and he demanded that they either release him immediately, allow him to contact the German authorities, or have him die of starvation.
Leaked diplomatic cables from Wikileaks reveal that the US administration was angered when the German authorities put out arrest warrants for some of those implicit in the deplorable affair and put significant pressure on the German government to weigh carefully the ramifications to their bi-lateral relationship if they were to pursue the charges.
He was then dumped in the woods in a remote region of Albania in the middle of the night, and walked off believing that he was going to be shot in the back.
In May 2006 U.S. Federal District Judge T.S. Ellis, III in Washington dismissed a lawsuit El-Masri filed against the CIA and three private companies allegedly involved with his transport, explaining that a public trial would "present a grave risk of injury to national security."
He is still in the process of appeal and fighting for justice, and it is imperative that all involved in the US administration be held accountable and that this kind of perversion of justice be stopped.


For more info read this aptly titled article from the New York Times, 'Supreme Disgrace'.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/11/opinion/11thu1.html?_r=1
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khalid_El-Masri
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_salt_pit

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/spy-talk/2010/1/leaked_cable_us_warned_germany.html\

Politics, media and corruption.

A legacy documentary from around 1992 which illustrates the foundations of our current media bias, manipulation and corrupt relationship between politics and media.