Stuart Jeanne Bramhall's Blog: The Most Revolutionary Act , page 1333

Climate Change Throughout History

Forecast: The Consequences of Climate Change, from the Amazon to the Arctic, from Darfur to Napa Valley

by Stephan Faris

Henry Holt (2009)

Book Review

Forecast is about historic and present day political, economic and health consequences of extreme climate disruption.

Farr begins by unpacking the Sudan civil war that began in Darfur in 2003. He makes a convincing case that decreased rainfall and desertification led to a bloody land war d between nomadic Arab camel herders and African farmers. He disputes that the conflict arose out of ethnic and religious differences, as the two groups shared the region harmoniously for hundreds of years until the climate changed.

He goes on to discuss studies comparing ice core findings to historical records. They conclude that all major European wars and Chinese dynastic changes followed major climate change.

Arctic Territorial Disputes

At the present time, the melting of Arctic sea ice has led to major border conflicts between countries eager to exploit the region’s vast mineral wealth. Tension is particularly high between Russian and Norway, Canada and Denmark and Canada and the US (over the border between the Yukon and Alaska). The opening of the Northwest Passage* to navigation for the first time in 2007 has led to an ongoing dispute whether these waters are Canadian territory or an international right of way, as claimed by the US.

International Alert predicts that forty-four countries are at risk of conflict (mainly over water rights) due to climate change. At the top of the list are India, Pakistan, China, Iran, Indonesia, Algeria, Nigeria, Somalia, Bolivia, Columbia, Peru and Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Emergence of Epidemics

Faris’s section on the health consequences of climate change discusses the major epidemics that have emerged due to warmer, wetter weather patterns. This includes a big increase in malaria in Brazil and Mexico; in hantavirus, West Nile virus and Lyme disease in the US; ebola in Africa and in plague in Kazakhstan and India.

Ice core findings suggest the medieval Black Death (plague) in Europe was also triggered by climate change.

The Effect of Native American Genocide

The most interesting section of the book argues than human beings have been altering the climate, through deforestation, livestock husbandry and population explosions since the agricultural revolution. Climate scientists believe major deforestation in Europe started 7,500-8,000 years ago. Atmospheric carbon concentrations reached a peak during the Roman period and took a big dip (most likely due to depopulation) after Rome collapsed. They began to rise again in 1000 AD. Their sharp decline in 1500 coincided with a Little Ice Age characterized by brutally cold winters.

Faris agrees with William Ruddiman (Plows, Plagues and Petroleum: How Humans Took Control of Climate) who believes this steep drop stemmed from the decimation of Native American agricultural settlements (from genocide, smallpox, typhus, cholera and measles, diseases to which they had no immunity) in North and South America. Over two centuries, their population dropped from 50-60 million (one tenth of the global population) to five million. As they disappeared, forests and jungles, particularly in the Amazon, reclaimed the fields they had cleared for cultivation.

*The Northwest Passage is a sea through the Arctic Ocean, along the northern coast of North America via waterways through the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. It decreases the transit time from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean (compared to the Panama Canal) by four days.

Farmers Using Fracking Wastewater in California

stuartbramhall:

*

Care for some methylene chloride with your fries?

Originally posted on Political Film Blog:

Farmers are watering your food with fracking chemicals

Industrial scale poisoning is now the norm. Maybe we could just change the nation’s name to Evil Incorporated?

They found methylene chloride aka dichloromethane at 56 parts per billion. The EPA’s safe drinking water level is 5 ppb.

TELL THE GOVERNOR

View original

How Radical Architects are Transforming the Planet

Radical Architecture

Al Jazeera (2014)

Film Review

Rebel Architecture is a six-part Al Jazeera documentary series about architects who are using their skills to serve the public good rather than wealthy corporations.

Part 1 is about a Spanish architects collective that works with activist collectives loosely connected with Spain’s anti-austerity movement. Thanks to the Spanish government’s severe austerity measures and public service cuts, activist collectives have assumed major responsibility for social welfare. Occupation of public and abandoned spaces is a key tactic. The role of the architects collective is to help activists construct safe buildings in these spaces from cheap and recycled materials. In most cases the structures are unpermitted and technically illegal.

Part 2 is about Pakistan’s first woman architect and her role in helping poor Pakistani communities devastated by floods and earthquakes to rebuild flood and earthquake proof homes as cheaply as possible. Unsurprisingly she discovered that traditional building materials, such as mud bricks, lime and bamboo, are a key to the solution.

Part 3 is about an Israeli architect in the West Bank who studies the “intersection” between architecture and violence. He gives a fascinating presentation describing how the Israeli government uses architecture as a weapon against the Palestinians. This includes the deliberate layout of Israeli settlements in such a way that they strangulate Palestinian communities. And the deliberate use of bulldozers in dense urban communities as an instrument of war.

Part 4 is about Nigerian architect and urbanist Kunle Adeyemi, who works with illegal floating communities to design and build (unpermitted) floating schools and community centers.

Part 5 is about the Vietnamese architect Va Tron Nghia, who has dedicated his life to creating more green spaces in Ho Chi Minh city and building cheap durable homes for peasant farmers in the Mekong Delta. Owing to recurrent flooding, typical Delta homes last only three to four years. The film shows Nghia and local residents building a $4,000 bamboo house for a family of four.

Part 6 (my favorite) is about a pedreiro (Portuguese for stone mason) in Rocinha, the largest favella in South America – located in Rio De Janeiro. All the housing in Rocinha, population 180,000, is unpermitted and illegal. The Brazilian government turns a blind eye to all this illegal building because they need the cheap labor and have no resources to build public housing. This last segment shows how Rocinha residents organized to demand a sewage system to replace the open sewer in their streets. Instead the Brazilian government built a cable car for the benefit of tourists attending the 2014 Brazilian World Cup and the 2016 Brazilian Olympics. It was largely angry Rocinha residents who instigated the mass protests before and during the World Cup. Though the protests were widely reported in the corporate media, there was no mention of Rocinha residents’ ongoing struggle to remove the sewer of human excrement from their streets.

 

Counter Terrorism Units And Fusion Centers Targeting Innocents

stuartbramhall:

*

Growing evidence that dissidents and protestors are the real target of counter terrorism units and “Fusion Centers.” Of course, we’ve known that all along – since the whole threat of domestic terrorism was just a ruse intended to turn us into terrified, compliant sheep.

Originally posted on LibertasIntel:

RT’s Senior Political correspondent Anissa Naouai discusses with Adam Johnson, contributor for Alternet, how Counter Terrorism Units and Fusion centers are targeting innocents. The police state is targeting dissidents to quell dissent says Adam.

Fusion centers are now the defacto 21st century version of COINTELPRO on steroids. These terrorism powers are being used to target regular crime as well. They serve as hubs to gangstalk and carry out illegal surveillance.

View original

The Taboo Topic of Overpopulation

The Mother: Caring for 7 Billion

Christophe Forchere (2011)

As the title suggests, The Mother is about the taboo topic of global overpopulation and its role in serious environmental degradation and growing food and water shortages. The film maintains that our refusal to discuss the population issue leads to confusion and oversimplification. Based on our success in halving population growth over the last fifty years, policy makers make out the problem is solved and there’s no need to discuss it any longer. This complacency can be very dangerous, especially as various countries, worried about supporting a large aged population, start bribing women to have more babies.

According to the filmmakers, population pressures play out differently in developed and developing countries. In developed countries overconsumption compounds the impact of population growth on fragile ecosystems and increasingly scarce resources. This overconsumption is largely driven by artificially created consumer demand orchestrated by a political/economic system obsessed with continuous economic growth. In the US, especially, population pressures (eg media pressure on women to have babies) are an important driver of consumer demand and economic growth

When you include immigration, the US is the third fastest growing country in the world. Rapid population growth is a major culprit in continuing joblessness in the US. The economy would need to add 150,000 jobs per month just to keep up with their growing population, yet clearly falls short of this number.

In the developing world, overpopulation plays an important role in malnutrition, starvation deaths and epidemic disease levels. Here, the film asserts, the number one cause of excess population growth is male dominance over women. In many developing countries, poverty leads families to marry off their daughters as young as nine or ten, while patriarchal fundamentalist religions forbid them from using birth control.

For me the high point of the film was a section on the Population Media Center, which works to empower Ethiopian women and improve their access to education and contraception. Their most effective strategy has been to create radio soap operas with charismatic female characters who serve as role models for young women.

One study revels these programs increased the use of contraception by 150% in a single year. They also gave teenage girls confidence to stay in school rather than following family dictates to marry older men. Research consistently shows that educating girls postpones them marrying and having children, keeps them HIV negative and causes them to have fewer children.

The film also stresses the importance of microfinance in empowering women – and communities – as women are more likely than men to invest their profits in their communities. Globally only 1% of women are able to obtain loans from traditional banks.

*Microfinance is the provision of savings accounts, loans, insurance, money transfers and other banking services (usually by non-profit organizations) to customers that lack access to traditional banks. Traditional microlending models gear these services towards women in developing countries.

Erin Brokovich – Fluoridation Must End

Reposted from Fuoride Free New Zealand:

Erin Brockovich has called for an immediate repeal of all laws that require or enable fluoridation; holding of Fluoridegate hearings; and for professional associations and advocacy groups (who have never studied the science) to rescind allowing their names to be used to endorse fluoridation.

Erin Brockovich is famous for her work in bringing litigation against Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) for contaminating groundwater in Hinkley, California, with carcinogenic hexavalent chromium. PG&E told Hinkley residents that they used a safer form of chromium. The true story was later made into the 2000 feature film, Erin Brockovich.

Fluoride Free NZ completely supports Erin Brockovich’s stance.

The Ministry of Health has constantly denied the fact that fluoridation chemicals are industrial waste products contaminated with heavy metals such as lead, arsenic and mercury. This contamination is allowed under an industry-set (not government-set) standard for fluoridation chemicals. A recent request to the Ministry of Health Oral Health division to have the actual source of fluoridation chemicals added to the government’s website fluoride facts has been denied. If the Ministry of Health is so proud of their much vaunted water fluoridation programme they seem awfully shy in sharing the actual details.

Read full article at Fuoride Free New Zealand:

Miss Representation

Miss Represention

Jennifer Siebel Newsom (2011)

Film Review

Miss Representation takes an in-depth look at sexualization of women and girls by the corporate media. In addition to examining the psychological damage this inflicts, the film explores the largely commercial factors behind it, as well as potential solutions.

The primary role of American media (TV programming and ads, movies, music videos, billboards, etc) is to convince women that their personal appearance and the approval of men should be their number one priority.

Even more pernicious, the media project a totally unattainable standard of beauty. What makes this messaging particularly harmful is that girls and women incorporate it subconsciously without realizing it. It’s especially dangerous for the developing brains of teenagers, who lack the critical judgment skills to weigh what they see and hear. By age 17, 78% of girls are unhappy with their bodies. Even more ominous, 68% of American women and girls develop an eating disorder in their determination to be skinnier.

The effect of this messaging on men and boys is to condition them to value a woman’s appearance above intelligence, integrity and other personal characteristics.

TV’s Fixation with Youth

Although women forty and over represent 44% of the population, they only play 26% of TV roles. Being youthful isn’t enough for female TV celebrities – who are frequently pressured to lose weight or undergo breast enhancement and/or botox and collagen injections.

The film outlines three principle reasons for the entertainment industry’s one dimensional portrayal of women. The pressure to live up to an impossible ideal is incredibly effective in selling beauty products. American women spend millions of dollars yearly on cosmetics and plastic surgery, far more than they spend on education.

The media’s constant parade of stunning, sexually provocative bodies is also essential in luring men aged 18-34 (the demographic targeted by advertisers) into watching TV. Men this age tend not to watch TV, except for sports.

Finally nearly all the decision makers in the entertainment industry are men. At Walt Disney, only 4 out of 13 board members are women. At GE (which runs NBC), the ration is 4/17. At Time Warner, it’s 2/13, Viacom 2/11, CBS 2/14 and Fox 1/16. Only 16% of movie and TV directors, producers and editors are women and only 7% of screenwriters

Low Representation in Government

The objectification of women by the mass media discourages them from playing leadership roles in business, community affairs, academia and politics. The US is rapidly falling behind developing countries in this regard. Unlike the US, 67 other countries have elected female presidents and prime ministers, and the US is 90th in female representation in government. China, Cuba, Afghanistan and Iraq all have more female representatives in their national legislatures.

Two direct outcomes of this low representation are unequal pay (American women still only earn 77% of what men earn for comparable work) and the failure of the US to mandate parental leave (like all other industrialized countries) following childbirth.

Even more ominously, numerous studies link the media’s objectification of women with growing rates of domestic violence and sexual assault.

The Negative Effect on Men

Miss Representation also speaks briefly to the negative effect of this systematic gender distortion on men. Bombarded by constant media pressure to be smarter, more powerful and more respected than women – as well as making more money – men can find it difficult to cope when this fails to pan out real life. This psychological conditioning also causes young men to be “emotionally constipated.” Lacking realistic no role models, men can have a hard time learning to express emotions in a healthy way.

.

Iran Calls for Nuclear Disarmament by US, Israel, World

stuartbramhall:

*

At a summit on Monday, Iranian foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif called for all countries to give up nuclear weapons, including Israel and the US. The speech is a welcome reminder of how topsy-turvy Washington discourse on Iran is.

Iran is viewed suspiciously as going for broke to get an atomic bomb, when there is no evidence for an Iranian nuclear weapons program. That the US has a massive nuclear arsenal is not mentioned. That the only nuclear-armed country in the Middle East is Israel is not mentioned. That George W. Bush was alarmed that an Israeli PM brandished the threat of a nuclear strike against Iraq is not mentioned. That Israel is not inspected by the International Atomic Energy Agency but Iran is, is not mentioned. That Western countries have actively connived to give Israel a nuclear weapons capability and to improve it is not mentioned. So US politicians constantly warn that if Iran gets a bomb it will kick of a nuclear arms race in the region, ignoring the fact that Israel has a bomb, which has already driven such a race (it was why Iraq in the 1980s sought bomb-making capabilities).

Originally posted on Tales from the Conspiratum:

Iran Calls for Nuclear Disarmament by US, Israel, World | Common Dreams | Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community.

http://www.commondreams.org

by
Juan Cole

April 29, 2015

by

Informed Comment

Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif addresses the 2015 Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) review conference, in the United Nations General Assembly, Monday, April 27, 2015. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)

At a summit on Monday, Iranian foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif turned the tables on the countries demanding that Iran keep its nuclear program for solely civilian, electricity generation. Zarif called for all countries to give up nuclear weapons, including Israel and the US. Iran does not have a nuclear bomb and gives no signs of trying to develop one.

The speech is a welcome reminder of how topsy-turvy Washington discourse on Iran is. Iran is viewed suspiciously as going for broke to get an atomic bomb, when there is…

View original 1,016 more words

The American Obsession with Lawns

Gimme Green

Eric Flagg and Isaac Brown (2007)

Film Review

Americans are more obsessed with lawns than any other nationality. Lawns are a comparatively new innovation associated with the boom in home ownership the US experienced in the mid-twentieth century. They were virtually unknown in 1900, when 75% of Americans rented their homes. In 2007 when this film was made, US wilderness was being converted to lawn at a rate of 5,000 acres per day.

In many cases, lawns are a middle class luxury imposed by local authorities determined to preserve neighborhood “property values.” In the film, a homeowner who has created a bird habitat out of trees and shrubs is ordered to cut them down.

Americans spend $40 billion a year maintaining their 41 million acres of lawn. The largest irrigated crop in the US, lawns consume 30,000 tons of pesticide yearly. And contrary to manufacturer claims, 17 of the 30 most commonly used pesticides end up in drinking water. Fifteen of them are possible or probable carcinogens. Children in families that use pesticides on their lawns have a 6.5 times greater risk of leukemia.

The water wasted on lawn maintenance is equally concerning. Forty to sixty percent of household water goes to landscaping, an average of 200 gallons per American per day.

Severe drought conditions are forcing California and the Southwest to rethink their lawn addition. In 1999, Las Vegas instituted a turf-rebate program that paid homeowners up to $1.50 per square foot to rip out their lawns. At present, the city bans grass front yards in new developments. Alternatives explored in the documentary are artificial (plastic turf) or natural desert landscapes.

My personal preference, climate permitting, is to convert lawns to edible landscape. My property was entirely lawn and ornamental shrubs when I first moved in. In eight years, I have replaced nearly all of it with fruit trees, perennial herbs and runner beans and vegetables.

Monsanto & The Legacy Of Agent Orange – By Arjun Walia

stuartbramhall:

*

*

“Children today are sicker than they were a generation ago. From childhood cancers to autism, birth defects and asthma, a wide range of childhood diseases and disorders are on the rise. Our assessment of the latest science leaves little room for doubt; pesticides are one key driver of this sobering trend.”

Even worse federal regulatory agencies have been aware of these dangers for 20 years and have done nothing.

Originally posted on RIELPOLITIK:

Source  – collective-evolution.com

– The Vietnam Association of Victims of Agent Orange/Dioxin (VAVA) recently told Reuters that more than 4.8 million people in Vietnam have been exposed to the herbicide and over 3 million of them have been suffering from deadly diseases. Agent Orange was one of many herbicides used by the U.S. military as a weapon during the Vietnam war, and Monsanto was contracted by the government to manufacture it for the Department of Defence. According to Monsanto:

“The use of Agent Orange as a military herbicide in Vietnam continues to be an emotional subject for many people. Asian Affairs Specialist Michael Martin notes, ‘[a]t the time the herbicides were used, there was little consideration within the U.S. military about potential long-term environmental and health effects of the widespread use of Agent Orange in Vietnam.’” (source)

Millions upon millions of gallons of this stuff was dumped over millions of acres of…

View original 902 more words