When the ants stop marching one by one...

It's summertime in the Lone Star State and the Rasberry Crazy ants are at it again. This time, they have turned their attacks on the Texas domesticated honey bee populations. For years they have been terrorizing the Tejas urban, suburban, and now rural landscape. These tiny ants seem largely resistant to all but the most toxic of pesticides allowing them to spread like wildfire.

It has recently been observed that these small ants will aggressively cannabilize other types of ants, even one's multiple times their own size. Recent reports describe them attacking and consuming entire colonies of fire ants, and ant previously defined as one of Texas' most dangerous insects. Breaking from the outdated forms of classical warfare, such as the method of marching in regimented lines, the Rasberry's have become known as the first ants to embrace guerilla warfare tactics. Their Human enemies have not yet been able to make sense of their new, more effective tactics, instead humans one handedly rationalize the recent attacks as crazy, unorganized, and erradic, but with the other hand pressure the state to label them, a top "pest" priority, which would be the insect equivalent of topping the F.B.I's Domestic Terrorist Threat list, just like the Elf, Alf, and other so called "Ecoterrorists" that currently claim the #1 spot on the F.B.I.'s List, these ants appear dedicated to destroying industrial civilization's most important infrastructures.

Last year, in the greater Houston area alone, they were responsible for millions of dollars in damage to the public works system. On a few occasions, with surprise attacks, they would swarm out of the tall grass thickets and into large electrical sub-station boxes. Within a matter of minutes they would successfully overload entire neighborhoods' electrical framework, leaving behind thousands powerless and important components non-repairable. The Rasberry's become most active during the sizzling August and September months and with every business and household blasting their air conditioning units at full throttle, there becomes no better time to cause blackouts in Texas.

Along with attacks on the larger electrical grid, they also make attacks on tertiary targets, such as smaller government and corporate computers also rendering them beyond repair. Other targets include automobiles, heavy farming and construction machinery, sewage pumps, and anything that may contain an expensive, delicate or intricate electrical system. These electrical systems seem to be their favored picks, and why not, in most machines and equipment, these components tend to be the most crucial, costly and fragile parts. Guerilla warfare states that when any resistance group is taking on much larger enemy targets, and in this case millions of times larger, that it becomes strategically fundamental to find a fulcrum, or leverage point, and the Rasberry crazy ants have done just that.

The relentless Texas drought, that is currently decreasing all industrial and agricultural production (in as much as the two can or should ever be separated), only seems to be aiding the intensity of the Rasberry forces. The most recent statistics verify that they now have an established presence in 11 Texas counties and are still growing rapidly. It is with this recent expansion, that they seem to have found their next leverage point, the domesticated honeybee.

Within the last few years, domesticated honeybee populations have become the most crucial link in sustaining Texas' farm and food production. Even taking in consideration the recent crisis of an extreme shortage in irrigatable water and annual rainfall, pollination is still the basis for maintaining any successfull harvest.

Texas, throughout its history has destroyed millions of acreage considered wilderness, rapidly converting it, to make room for the big businesses of cotton, corn, cattle, feed, and oil. Now, with the exception of a few designated wilderness areas, the much more manageable Texas farm and ranch lands stretch out in all directions, well beyond the seeable horizons. All of this has led to a population crash and almost extinction of the wild bee populations, leaving their domesticated cousins busily buzzing around attempting to pick up the tragic slack. The ageless homage of, "Everything's bigger in Texas!" although cliche, rings so very loud and true when describing bee farms across the state. In some of the world's largest bee farms, the busiest little Texas workers can be found laboring non-stop, around the clock. Just in Texas state production, honey, considered a secondary product of the busy bee industry, can be measured in the billions of pounds.

In the spirit of capitalist industry, Texas bee farms, or more honestly, Texas bee factory farms have become more in search of profits, then even the Texas-sized, evangelical, mega-church prophets. Having found cost cutting methods of cramming so many bees into each square inch, the bee farmers have comparatively made the otherwise disgusting KFC factory farm, chicken per square foot ratio, look like suburban sprowl. The all so densely populated bee hives began to look like a diaramic of the most overcrowded urban slum. Farpassing Bangkok, New Delhi, and Mexico City, these prefabricated uniform dwellings, tower to incredible heights and are so closely packed together that the bees sometimes have to squeeze by surrounding tenements to get their own housing unit.

The workerbee's daily conditions become comparable to those of Indonesian sweatshops and Latin American coffee and banana plantations. The factory farms become a place where living, flying, and loafing all become serious occupational hazards and the amount of dead workers surmount to numbers so despairing, that not even the cruelest C.I.A. funded dictator of S.O.A. trained death squad would fantasize about them. Like any good factory, or for that matter, any form of property including mines, forests, stocks, women and children, the only valuable measure is it's output. Desperate and miserable in their own living conditions, domesicated bees reveal an easy breaking point for industrial agriculture, it becomes no wonder the Rasberry crazy ants would pick them as their next target.

With only a slight advantage in group numbers, the ants are incredibly disadvantaged against the bees in weight, size, and mobility, but this doesn't stop them. Camouflaged under the raise of a friendly neighborhood ant, just passing by, quite a few Rasberry's are able to infiltrate their way into the megatropolis to surveying the enemies' infrastructure. Once enough ants are inside the massive complex, they signal for the rest to come out from hiding. In a spectacle far more spectacular than the Trojan Horse debackle, their friendly demeanor suddenly converts into a savage flood, as the rage of the wilderness is unleashed upon the prefabricated environment.

The bees fight back but because of domestication and selective genetic breeding for relative passivity, they don't stand a chance. The previously fortified honeycombs, now, are no more together than, if by chance, the U.S. Federal Reserve awoke one morning to find itself 4,000 miles away in the center of a fallujan neighborhood, or better yet, if it awoke to find itself a couple hundred miles away in the middle of West Baltimore's ghetto. Just like the ground corporate bail out of 2008, but on opposite day, each ant makes off with such a large amount of honey, that it comparatively makes a citi-group executive's bonus seem like monopoly money. So by the time the capitalist owner's find the battle scene, their hives are as ravaged as a collapsing ransacked Rome, after a final visit from the German tribe of Vandals. Tens of thousands of hives can now be counted in the hundreds. One factory farm attacked, in a week turns to five, in a month turns into forty, in a year one can only dream.

Interestingly enough, Rasberry crazy ants are not named after their favorite variety of vine-grown fruit, but instead, ironically, they are named after, no in honor of, one of their most enduring and hated enemies, Tom Rasberry. Good ol' Tom Rasberry is one of the leaders in this modern day, fear-mongering, McArthist, insecticidal witch hunt. Tom, a lowly exterminator by trade, now finds himself as the lead expert on the aggressive little ants. This has landed him employment as a part of a special force unit, a combined federal and state funded project, or more clearly seen as the bug's world equivalent to a post 911 government agency, his group no longer has the time to actively battle the ants, the only reason the group was established in the first place. Instead they spend their time traveling from Academic universities, to city and state agencies of all shapes and sizes, and even the occasional local neighborhood watch program (I wouldn't dare make this up), spreading unfounded and fear-filled propaganda in attempts to receive support, more specifically, additional funding. The primary interest to any bureacracy is the continuation of itself and Tom does this beautifully as he describes the ants invasion with a dreadfully slumbering tone, demanding his audiences to take the most immediate of actions, before the ants are able to spread anymore and ultimately cause unimaginable amounts of destruction to the state and possible the nation.

So it seems that a moral line the size of biblical proportions, okay maybe just Texas size, is currently being drawn in the sand. Soon, we will be forced to ask ourselves, "What side am I on?" Am I on the side of state and corporate interests, dillusionally demanding the complete eradication of this species before they destroy our most altruistic foundations, the American pillars of freedom, democracy, and profit? Or instead, am I on the side of the oppressed, the side of coming insurrection, the underdog, or in this case the under-ant? The united liberation front of Crazed Rasberry Armed Ant Forces vs. Industrial Civilization - honey craving, six legged guerilla sabatour extraordinairs or cancer causing, heart-stopping, bug dropping, radioactive insecticidal spray, 6 billion little David'd against one monolithic Goliath, but you know what they say about giants, The bigger they come the harder they fall.

Written from the Nueces County Jail

(Transcribed by Charity)

Dear Heavenly Father AKA self righteous Patriarch scum-bag,

Sometimes I find myself upset that the days are going by so fast, I'm probably the only person in jail thinking like that. I'm also sad that I've heard witness and been a part of so much experience in here that I can't remember it all. My memory problems actually are another very sad story, remind me to tell you about them sometime. But one absolutely never ever depressing thing is having such Amazing Incredible Loveable Adorable Cuddable Huggable bad asses for friends! WTF, having friends send the most inspiring words from thousands of miles away, having friends come from thousands of miles away, just to talk to me through some horrible cage, so so so so amazing! They want me to feel defeated by denying me so many things, even those that are "legally mine" and I get frustrated and angry but never defeated. I can't, not with the support I have. The sky was so beautiful and clear today. Nevermind the ugly parking lots, buildings, bars, and two windows keeping me from it. Little sparrow-like birds come visit me, It's so cute, we stare at each other forever. Today one had a scorpion in its mouth. It spat it out on my window seal. I guess it could have been a spider, all I know is it made me hungry. My thought process went like this - "Ohh man, that's a bird eating a scorpion almost its same size, gross, cool, gross again, guts, oh mann, I'm hungry, I mean hungry, I hope my vegan friends wouldn't get upset seeing this - man I love non-vegan food, I bet that makes some people mad at me, well, it doesn't make non-human people mad at me and that's a good thing, I wonder if this bird is sharing, I wonder if it has babies, man I'm hungry, I could eat some babies." - and then it flew away... That was just 3-5 seconds of my day... Now you can see why my letters are non-linear - my thoughts are everywhere right now - I'm talking to my cell - we are making jokes about Global Warming and how it's melting our Jolly Ranchers and that if everyone's Jolly Ranchers were melting then people would take ecological destruction seriously - Yes... damn there's no need for these elipses, let me try again. Yes! to making inmates Anti-civ, actually Prison made them Anti-civ, I just gave them a book to put what they've always felt, in words, on pages, so they can for the first time (or at least in a long time) feel sane in their anger and frustration... One time I sat for like 16 weeks in an anger management class - I've never been so angry. So they closed the Hatto facility! It was a private prison they called a "family detention facility" but it was of course a horrible internment camp for immigrants or as they say in the German language "concentration camp." Okay, that's not German, but you can see my point. Some families got out for good, others on like a probation type thing and unfortunately a few just got relocated. But knowing that some amazing people this week got released from even worse situations than I find myself in, makes breathing a little bit easier, makes seeing birds even better, makes the sky seem so much closer, makes it to where if I close my eyes, even if only momentarily, I can feel a breeze, I mean really feel the breeze... and all of it brings me a much needed relief... I love ya'll as much as I hate cops and that's a lot! I mean (insert Anarchy-A symbol) lot!!!

Jayson Tx, the artist formerly known as #10126758

Written from the Nueces County Jail

(Transcribed by Charity)

Letters from Nueces County Jail

Dear Derrick Jensen,
Salmon, Salmon, Salmon, Dams, Dams, Dams, Abuse, hate, culture, Abuse, hate, insane, Salmon, Salmon, newt. Salmon, me, redwoods, indian, redwoods, salmon. Civilization makes me sad... 800 pages later, Salmon, Dams, Salmon, chrones, chrones, chrones, dams, dams, dams, bring it down, dams.

Dear Daniel Quinn,
Boring, wrong, right, me, me, me, bad, evil, bad, me, me, me, I understand, no, please explain, me, me, me, Ishmael, b, me, me, wrong, right, listen, listen, listen, now that I'm rich civilization ain't so bad, me, me, me, socratic method, me, ishmael, b, me.

Dear John Zerzan,
Uni-bomber, friend, uni-bomber, language bad, symbols, philosophy, civilization is poopy, philosophy, time, time, break windows, time, philosophy, I like big words, everything bad, nothing, future, time, more big words.

Dear EarthFirst!,
Disclaimer, disclaimer, disclaimer, disclaimer, trees, ropes, disclaimer, disclaimer, back in the day, disclaimer, explicit, disclaimer, security culture, disclaimer, disclaimer.

Dear Elf/Alf,
Evidence, fingerprints, look at me, evidence, college, super glue, snitch, snitch, snitch, evidence, terrorist, evidence, snitch, lies, snitch, SUV's, evidence, snitch, communique, evidence, college, terrorist, terrorist, terrorist.

P.S. I still Love You!

Dear Everthing Non-Human,

What do you mean Sorry is not good enough... I mean at least I tried, right? Or almost tried.

If I was post-mod,ern, I would call this subversive performance art, but I was just bored.

Dear Mom and Dad,

(written from Nueces County Jail)

There are very few things more beautiful in life then short stumpy men, singing tejano naked in the shower no more than 10 feet from you. Summer camp's been awesome! I don't ever want to leave. I've learned so much during arts and crafts. We made a tattoo gun out of a fan motor and toothbrush, and ran it on an electrical charge via headphone wire from the nearest fire alarm. We melted down checker pieces for red and black ink. I learned how to make oil pastels by crushing colored pencil lead and mixing it with the oil from my very own hair. In survival school, we learn to create fire from a staple, pencil and toilet paper. We also learned how to talk to other campers through the actual toilets and air vents, it's so much easier than the can and string method. In cooking class we made a feast, it's called a cell block spread! 20 chile lime Ramen noodles, mix with 10 packages of mayonnaise, 5 bags of fire hot corn chips, 6 bags of jalapeno pretzels, 6 bags of cajun style pork rhyndes, 2 single serve packages of spam, 8 2-ounce squeeze packages of nacho cheese, and 3 packages of chili with beans. Mix together in a mop bucket or tupperware bin, add hot water and sit on it to seal. Wait 10 minutes and serve with saltine crackers. For best results crush all ingredients before mixing. The foot-stomp concrete floor method works best! Doing laundry just like the pilgrims did. Using the toilet as a tub or basin, we mix 2 parts soap to 1 part toothpaste for fresh smelling clothes. We don't have a clothesline so we use spoons to hold the drying clothes. After laundry we use the same toilet to make Hooch - it's a juice beverage made from baking yeast, kool aid, and whatever fruit we can get our hands on. I can't wait to try it, it makes all the other campers laugh and go crazy. Some of the campers save and dry banana and orange peels, then they "keester" it to take it to other campers, that's where you hold it in between your left and right buttcheeks. Then they smoke it, but I think they are using Bible papes to roll it and I don't like that at all. Today, there was pieces of bologna inside my jello, how weird is that? Well I love you both but I hope I never leave here! But I guess if I do, I can just come back next year!

Your son,
Tommy Thompson #10126758

(Transcribed by Charity)

A fugitive's run in, with a two-way mirror

As I find myself spending an undetermined amount of time in the Douglas County Jail, the unemployment rate is still rising, although it's been in the double digits for a couple decades now. So it is no surprise that, in The Timber Capitol of the World, I sit in jail surrounded by unemployed loggers. They are legally known as harsh characters; criminals, wife beaters, drug users, car thiefs, and angry vagrants.

But I know them individually as Joker, Hater, Conspiracy, David and Jose. Collectively, they are the nicest, most welcoming group of locals I have yet to meet.

The surrounding forests they once worked with chainsaws and cables are now littered with invasive species and disgusting industrious machinery. Unemployed, they now find themselves scrubbing cell floors, baking corn bread, and playing cards behind steel doors, concrete walls, and two way mirrors.

Four nights a week, all the inmates stop whatever they are doing, and turn their absolute attention to a 13" television. They sit and watch reality shows on the logging industry. Like an absurd two-way mirror, they stare intentively into the glass tube. Afterwards, they talk about the good ol' days. The long hours, the money, the girls, their families, and the money.

However, they will never be able to discuss how now, they are nothing more than outdated tools being stored in Climate Controlled Storage Units. And that's the problem with two-way mirrors. If you are on the losing side, it becomes impossible to see clearly through false Reflections.

Written on 07/15/09 from the Douglas County Jail

(Transcribed by Charity)

No More Cages, No More Locks

His job was to fingerprint me for a ludicrous theft charge but he also asked me about my tattoos? I replied to him with ideas of anti-oppression and resistance. After surveying the surrounding area, he replies. When he speaks, he speaks of high taxes and corrupt, corporate controlled party politics, and fat cat, no good for nothin' Senators. He speaks of greed, money, and the injustices of capitalism. He knows his own role and recognizes its destructiveness, although, he just can't see just how culpable he really is. In all of this, it is not much a dialogue. I suppose what he needed was a confession. The fingerprinting booth acts as his confession cell and I as a priest. He finished the Monologue, not with feelings or even ideas, but with a statement. He looks around once again, reassuring himself no one is listening in and then says, "They better hope this revolution comes after I'm dead, because if it doesn't, I've already picked what side I'm on and I'll be the first to start unlocking cells."

Written on 07/15/09 from the Douglas County Jail

(Transcribed by Charity)

mormon death squad

It seems that Mexico is more than willing to arm Mormons with guns to fight Mexican Narcos and that Mormons are more than willing to be a snitching retaliation force for Mexico in fashion reminencant of death squads. This might be an interesting place for young Mormons to go on thier two year "mission" for serving god.

“Love, Earth®”

Wal-Mart's Yellow Brick Road to the Sustainable and Ethical Corporate Wonderland

In the past, environmental and human rights activists have made Wal-Mart the poster child for everything wrong with corporate greed and a crystal clear reflection of the wider consequences of globalization in general. Countless documentaries, reports, and lawsuits trace abuses by the world’s largest retailer so often that to do so has become passé.

But today is a new day, and Wal-Mart will soon become the prizefighter for the green revolution—or more appropriately the vanguard of ecological well-being. The people’s Big-Box Corporation is making way for their new Love, Earth® jewelry line. The same family who brought us the 3-gallon jar of pickles for $2.97 now offers us “fine jewelry created with materials from, Eco-responsible, community-friendly sources.” The largest private employer in the world has the resources and now the stated desire to help us attain an Eco-communal future, far surpassing the Lenin, Mao, and Castro revolutions of the past.

The revolution will be accessorized.

And why not? The inconvenient truth is that the world is getting hotter, so why not counter climate change by owning your own piece of “ice'? It wasn't so long ago that blood-free diamonds and responsibly-mined gold were things only affordable to the likes of Leonardo Di Caprio and other liberal elites. But in the era of “yes we can,” Eco-friendly gold is now accessible to us and our significant others—and all this with a price tag of just under a week’s worth of Starbucks' almost-fair-trade coffee. Not only can we all comfortably say “yes, we can” when it comes to purchasing Love, Earth® jewelry, we can say “yes, we will.”

In this melting global economy, Wal-Mart has turned to the motto “think globally, purchase locally.” Their main partner in this brave initiative is none other than the third largest mining company in the world, Rio Tinto. As an all-star multi-national mining group, Rio Tinto is the world's largest aluminum producer, the second largest in iron-ore mining, third largest in coal mining, and is responsible for 30% of the world’s all-natural diamond output. Rio Tinto also tops world mining and production lists in silver, uranium, talc, titanium dioxide, salt, borax, bauxite, lead, zinc, nickel, and molybdenum.

The Rio Tinto Group (RTG) has received countless awards for upstanding ethical behavior and sustainability and environmental practices from fellow multi-national corporations, including the Splenda-producing mogul Tate and Lyle. In return, Rio Tinto is the sponsor of its own sustainability award, recently recognizing a rubber and tire plant, several Indian tea plantations, a clear-cutting timber business, and everyone’s favorite oil company, Shell Oil.

With such a glorious background in world production and ethical practices, it would only be appropriate to shine more light on RTG’s incredibly rich and progressive history.

Rio: Flawless, just like its diamonds.

RTG has been a leader in stewardship of not only the land it mines, but also of its hard-working employees and neighboring communities. And as a responsible company should, RTG ensures safety and equality to all of its global employees, even those in the world's over-exploited—I mean under-developed—countries.

Wal-Mart's Love, Earth® jewelry line consists of 24 golden rules they like to call the “Environmental and Social Sourcing Criteria for Mining and Metals in Jewelry.” Talk about a mouthful! This lengthy title leads to an even more extensive list of requirements. The list seems more verbose and inspiring than the Bill of Rights, yet is more elusive and vaguely written than the Patriot Act.

In order to be accepted as Wal-Mart’s “green partner” in the brave endeavor of ethically-mined precious metals, it had to meet each articulated requirement of Wal-Mart’s golden 24 rules.

For example, gilded rule number ten states that: “When [a mining source is] operating in zones of armed conflict... [They] should seek to ensure that, through their actions or inaction, they are not benefiting from, supporting, contributing to, nor tacitly permitting human rights abuses or atrocities, either directly or indirectly.” It should come to no surprise that since the 1950’s, Rio Tinto proudly supported the oppressive apartheid governments of many nations around the world, including governments in South Africa and Papua New Guinea. RTG did so by not only setting up “white only” facilities, but also by directly providing these apartheid governments with money and military equipment. It seems more likely that RTG read rule ten to state that any mining company should guarantee “through their action or inaction,” that they are “benefiting from, supporting, contributing to... human rights abuses and atrocities."

The golden rules obscurely mention some concerns about mercury and cyanide contamination to human and environmental health. RTG's Namibian mine employees, along with other RTG African uranium mine employees, have been exposed to toxic levels of radiation, ultimately enduring disproportionate levels of cancer and other illnesses. Most, if not all, of RTG's opened and abandoned mines contain audacious amounts of mercury and cyanide contamination in amounts ranging from toxic to deadly.

RTG's PT Kelian Equatorial Mine (PT KEM) is just one of Rio Tinto’s many mines in the Indonesia region that has violated human rights. In 1989 the paramilitary police of General Suharto, yes Suharto, drove an uncounted amount of small scale local miners and farmers from their land to make the land open to acquisition by Rio Tinto. Later, RTG displaced another 440 families to make room for their mining operations. The Indonesian government's own National Human Rights Commission reports show that the military and PT KEM company security evicted miners, arrested protesters, and burnt down villages. I imagine somewhere or somehow this complies with Love, Earth® rule number thirteen, which requires the company:

“Seek to avoid or at least minimize involuntary resettlement of communities for new operations and expansion of existing operations and where this is unavoidable compensate fully, appropriately and fairly for adverse effects on individuals and communities with the objective of improving or at least to restore the livelihoods, standards of living, and living conditions of displaced people.”

Maybe RTG assumed that since the Suharto government had already inflicted enough hardship on locals, that full, fair, and appropriate compensation for burning down villages and physically assaulting villagers was a life forced even further into squalor.

This is not just ancient history either. As recent as 2001, a number of indigenous Dayak female employees have been involved in multiple cases of abuse, rape, and sexual harassment committed by senior mining staff. In many poor countries, the senior mining staff consists of well-educated foreigners, a good number who come from the United States, United Kingdom, Australia and other industrialized countries. This clearly shows respect and reverence of the 24 Love, Earth® golden rules, including number nine which states a mine should “have in place policies and practices that uphold fundamental human rights and respect cultures, customs and values in dealings with employees” enacting “policies and practices designed to eliminate harassment and unfair discrimination.” Maybe because subjecting women in poorer countries into sexual coercion and violence is something Wal-Mart knows all too much about they decided to let their buddies at RTG slide on rule nine.

In 2000, Australian television news show Dateline explained that local and indigenous inhabitants were murdered near and on a Brazilian Rio Tinto mine facility. One former guard told Dateline the company's head of security had “urged him and his colleagues to use violence and torture to discourage the miners." The employees at that same facility were also adversely—or more likely purposely—endangered and harmed. Contrary to the company doctor's reports, workers there had highly toxic levels of lead poisoning.

Practically every RTG mining operation in Africa, South America, Indonesia and other poor countries have reports of similar events, while virtually all operations globally have experienced union and worker suppression as well as cases of employee exposure to hazardous and toxic material.

In the world of dirty mining, we are blessed to have a system like Wal-Mart's 24 rules to help establish the basis for a 24-carat gold standard. A standard based in transfusing nasty little terms like apartheid, human rights abuse, rape, poison, contamination, and murder into the greener terminology of Eco-this and community that. By simply moving numbers from the neutered columns labeled “capital” and “resources” into the columns entitled “expenses” and “profits”, this corporate accounting alchemy develops poor foreign workers into profit rich skeletal remains, transforming backward native land into progressive toxic waste sites. The gullible may be quick to call this magic, but most know it as corporate efficient economics or more simply, sound business practices.

Green mining alchemists

The numerical alchemy responsible for the Love, Earth® line, although a part of a global foresight, seems to have its focus on a more local sight. In order to adhere to the motto “think globally, act locally,” RTG has decided that they will provide the gold and silver used for Wal-Mart's Love, Earth® collection from its Utah based subsidiary Kennecott.

Since the 1989 buyout from British Petroleum, Kennecott Utah Copper Corporation (KUCC) has been a prized jewel on the crown that represents Rio Tinto's mining dynasty. And why not? To keep up with Wal-Mart's $2.8 billion annual jewelry sales, RTG needed a lot of gold and silver, and what better place then Bingham Canyon in Utah, the world's largest open-pit mine. Considered the biggest hole made by man in the world, KUCC's Bingham Canyon open-pit mine stretches 2 1/2 miles wide and nearly one mile deep. A size so epic, that it can be sighted from any point within the greater Salt Lake Valley. RTG proudly gloats, “It has produced more copper ore, 18.1 million tons, than any mine in the world. Every year, Kennecott produces approximately 300,000 tons of copper, along with 500,000 ounces of gold, 4 million ounces of silver, about 30 million pounds of molybdenum, and about 1 million tons of sulfuric acid, a by-product of the smelting process.”

As the sun rises over Utah's Wasatch Mountains, the sound of diesel engines ring in the work day, while $3 million super trucks begin moving copper ore. Billowing clouds of smoke that on some days hazes the entire Salt Lake Valley, Kennecott's private 175-megawatt coal burning power plant blazes as it generates enough power to move the newly mined ore along a five mile conveyor belt to the concentrator, creating tons of waste every year. Energy and water are next used to smash the ore into a concentrate, creating an even greater extent of waste. Then, a significant amount of energy and thousands of gallons of water are wasted to slush the ore concentrate down a 17-mile slurry pipeline to the smelter and refinery, once again creating an increasing quantity of waste and spillovers. Once there, copper is smelted and refined with immense heat a minimum of three times, using even more energy and creating ever more waste. According to the U.S. Department of Energy, “each year, [Kennecott's] smelter and refinery plants use approximately 2.8 billion cubic feet of natural gas, 200 gigawatt-hours (GWh) of electric power and 450,000 tons of oxygen.” A small bi-product of this whole process and all the waste and pollution it creates is gold.

Most consumers are shocked to find out that the average 18-carat wedding ring leaves behind 40,000 pounds of waste, but RTG's Bingham mine makes those numbers seem grossly conservative. At the end of each workday 900,000,000 pounds of earth are removed from the mountain side in Bingham Canyon. Of those 900,000,000 pounds, 894,600,000 pounds (about 99.6% of all materials mined) are considered by KUCC to be nothing more than waste. 450,000 tons of rock are permanently removed from the canyon everyday in order to recover 960 pounds of gold. That averages to be approximately 642,000 pounds of rock removed in order to recover 1 troy ounce of gold. Isn’t it nice how corporations use the term “recover”, as if they once had, or owned, and are now regaining whatever the earth so wrongfully withholds from them? Regardless, KUCC is clearly setting the standard of a responsible corporate Eco-foresight with a large hallow point caliber in the chamber and our children's well-being in the crosshairs.

Let them drink gold

Utah is the nation's second driest state. Keeping tone with such environmental limitations in mind, KUCC states on their website that, “water is perhaps our [Utah's] most precious natural resource.” This statement comes easy when KUCC has larger water rights than most communities in the entire state combined. Owning a significant percentage of Utah Lake's water rights, they have access to one of the state’s largest freshwater supply. Kennecott's use—or potential misuse—of water is not regulated in any meaningful manner.

According to Rio Tinto's website, under the “environmental stewardship” section on water use, KUCC uses 15,000-gallons of new water a minute. For every 8 hours the facility operates, it exhausts 7.2 million gallons of fresh water. That means that the same amount of water that KUCC uses in an 8-hour period could fill more than 14 Olympic sized pools. The average citizen in the United States uses 66 gallons of water a day, so by comparison, Kennecott in 24 hours of operation depletes double the daily amount of water consumed by the entire population of Salt Lake City.

Among the preposterous scenery of their colossal consumption rates, it is hard to see where the environmental stewardship and conservation actually start. In typical corporate “green” fashion, water preservation seems to only exist on their web page, never making a genuine physical manifestation. As KUCC nears the end of its mining operations, wasting water will be just one chapter in the methodical books of historical achievements.

Kennecott; a barely told legacy

Utah, known as The Beehive State, ranks number 37 in states population, but fluctuates between second and third place in industrial pollution. Utah accomplishes this in large by playing host to KUCC, and according to the EPA, “in 2006, Kennecott's Utah Copper Mine and Power Plant was the second highest polluting facility in the nation with 102.5 million pounds of pollutants.” By 2008, after being forced to maximize technological improvements in order to lower pollution, Kennecott actually increased its release of pollutants to 113 million pounds. This seems to fall right in line with the rigorous criteria in which Wal-Mart states, “the Love, Earth® collection celebrates the Earth’s bountiful gifts by featuring jewelry pieces made with materials from sources that are committed to protecting the environment.” Exponentially producing more pollution than gold or silver, the degradation of environmental conditions must be KUCC's “bountiful gifts.”

For the past 20 years Kennecott's executives have successfully suppressed information about the risks of their tailings waste dam faltering and failing. KUCC has dammed up over 1 billion tons in mining sludge known as tailings. If the dam failed, an ecological catastrophe greater than the Dec. 22, 2008 Tennessee coal ash spill—a disastrous event considered more than 40 times worse than the Exxon Valdez oil spill—would occur, incurring hundreds of deaths, millions of dollars in property damage, the destruction of dozens of ecosystems, and the pollution of water sources. In the process of this cover-up, KUCC went as far as to secretly buy up neighboring houses to the dam to later resell some of them to less-than-suspecting individuals. Despite their own leaked documents from hired independent engineers and government officials that elaborate on this threat, KUCC continues to release unfounded documents to nearby communities explaining that the poorly housed 1 billion tons of waste poses no real threat.

According to an EPA report on KUCC, drinking water wells and ground water in the areas surrounding Kennecott facilities are contaminated with cadmium, chromium, sulfate, zinc, copper, lead, nickel, selenium, silver, acids, and arsenic. Mining wastes continued to leach acid waters eventually creating a 72-square-mile, or three million acre water plume of sulfate-contaminated ground water. Endangering communities in Salt Lake County, those polluted waters are known to causes cancer, and severe damage to the liver. The EPA further states that, “Lead, arsenic, and selenium are the main contaminants of concern. A plume of selenium-contaminated ground water enters nearby wetlands through springs and seeps are particularly troublesome because native birds are sensitive to selenium.”

Staying true to corporate accountability, KUCC actually proposed a clean up plan that permitted them to gain a profit from pumping the aquifer dry of the contaminated water, later depositing the same untreated water into the Jordan River and Great Salt Lake. This plan would have further polluted the same bird wetlands the EPA officials showed concerned about, while ultimately increasing the human health risk.

The Magna Ditch is another recent representation of RTG\KUCC malfeasance, and one that hits even closer to home for me. Once used for Bingham mining operations, this covered ditch stretches over 17-miles long now encompassing an area filled with thousands of residential homes, schools, and agricultural areas. The Magna Ditch expands through five communities in Salt Lake County, including the approximate area in which I spent my childhood playing.

Some time ago, when Bingham Mine perceived the ditch no longer useful to company production, they simply covered the ditch with dirt. Since then it has been discovered that the non-operational Magna Ditch has poisoned the surrounding soil with a number of toxins, including arsenic. Since the ditch was never lined, the arsenic and other nasty chemicals leached into the encompassing soil, expanding the contaminated area an even greater distance. Local, State, and Federal governments mandated a remediation clean-up of the area at the expense of Kennecott. The clean up efforts in this area have thus far been, at best, a failed sham, and at worst, a total environmental and human catastrophe. Greedy, profit-driven KUCC only dug up a small percentage of land—areas they considered the most arsenic-contaminated. However, they left large regions of land untouched, that to date, still contain unsafe levels of arsenic and other chemicals.

Currently, my two brothers live within the area where the old drainage ditch is. They have received confusing KUCC mailings ranging in explanations; that there was “no threat of arsenic,” that there was a “threat” to my brothers' property, that they will clean up arsenic from their yard, and that they will not be coming by after all. Neither of my brother's dare to have a backyard garden to grow food, and both are continually worried about the adverse affects the arsenic may have on their pet dogs. My niece and other neighborhood kids play daily in the contaminated front yards. Arsenic-poisoned soil is no longer merely a side effect of war and poverty stricken regions, but now another element to the constantly expanding horizon of American suburbia.

It's time for a Day Break

If the thought of back yard gardens and playgrounds being tampered with poisons is frightening to parents, local residents can now turn to none other than RTG's Kennecott for relief. With the world's largest mine forecasted to only last 10-20 more years, Kennecott has turned to Suburban Sprawl as their solution to rid themselves of the somewhat tampered 80,000 acres surrounding Bingham Mine.

Flying their well deserved Eco-sustainable flag, one of RTG's newest subsidiaries Kennecott Land (KL) has taken on the largest corporate initiative in history to tackle residential planned development. With an ammunition of words such as “community”, “open”, “green”, “sustainable”, “wildlife”, “green”, “trees”, “plants” and more “green” than a flu ridden Kermit the frog could ever spit up, Kennecott Land has a master plan that cannot be rivaled.

Kennecott's plan is to build more than 162,000 homes, luxury condos, and apartments. The plan also includes a college campus, industrial areas, business offices, retail spaces, 105,000 new jobs, a minimum of 100,000 trees, a ski resort and much more. Of course it makes complete environmental sense to have more jobs than trees in any given area. They expect their development to aid in expanding the Salt Lake regional population by another 500,000, or in other words, a sustainable growth rate of 5 people to every one tree planted. And maybe, in bang-up fashion, they will even be able to incorporate a meaningless fraction of their billions of pounds of annual mining wastes for green tax credits.

To keep the influential LDS church at bay, KL donated enough land to have a church and park in every neighborhood. Polishing the Mormon pay-off in a manner that the Mexican Mafia could only dream about, they then sealed the deal with a plan to build a towering LDS Temple. What the Mormon's do not know is that once the area now envisioned as a sustainable paradise nears completion, it might ultimately eliminate any future need for churches or belief in a higher power altogether. With the world's largest and ugliest man made hole as the backdrop, Heaven on Earth will soon exist; and it will be heavily stamped with Kennecott's many corporate trademarks.

The first community development Daybreak® (yes it is trademarked) is already being built in this aspiring plan to permanently scar Salt Lake's West Bench even further with asphalt and concrete. One already built structure in Daybreak® is Oquirrh Lake, ironically named after the mountain range that Kennecott has annihilated with its ongoing excavation dealings.

To make up for the number of real wetlands that mining has earlier destroyed, they have created this 85-acre, 250 million-gallon man-made lake. In typical green-wash fashion, this lake is not an actual wetland, but created for human recreational use only. This creation has thus far resulted in the transportation of 35 million cubic feet of soil, 25,000 tons of rock, and will require an annual 255 acre-feet of water each year. The water to refill the lake is stolen from Utah's largest natural freshwater lake and wetlands, an area that is home to thousands of animals, including endangered fish species and hundreds of migratory birds. But no need for anything natural or wild, they have stocked the lake with 6,000 largemouth bass, 12,000 channel catfish, 30,000 bluegill, 160,000 fathead minnows, and some rainbow trout.

Kennecott may be dabbling in community construction projects, but their main focus, as always, remains in mining. Just as a magician uses sleight of hand, so does the world's greenest mining company. RTG's cheap parlor tricks have been used to successfully confuse and evade , in the last two years alone, while Kennecott Land has been busily building their Eco-image in the Salt Lake Valley, KUCC has been even busier, placing over 70 mining claims on newly acquired county open-spaces.

Salt Lake County has recently spent over $10 million to set aside 4,000 acres of mountainous land for a beautiful open-space reserve. But the region that is home to wild turkeys, cougar, fox, blue grouse, mule deer, and a herd of at least 750 elk, is susceptible to a national federal law that states that any company can file and work a mining claim on areas of public land. So what does this mean? It means if Kennecott gets its way, then you might be looking at another open-pit mine—along with the arsenic, selenium, and billions of pounds of air, land, and water pollution with it. If KUCC does succeed in mining some of the last intact natural area in the valley, they might build us another recreational lake, and maybe this time we will be allowed to swim in it.

Don't be fooled by the rocks that I got

So it seems yet again Wal-Mart has found itself in some very dirty dealings. Rio Tinto, their partner in crime, not only profits off the unmitigated destruction of complete bio-regions but also the health and lives of humans who also share the region. With this entire point aside, and in typical green-wash, guilt-free consumer fashion, Love, Earth® jewelry will no doubt become a corporate success for both Wal-Mart and Rio Tinto. Sure there will be more articles, reports, documentaries, and maybe even a lawsuit or two attempting to show both of these corporations for the scum that they really are, but in the end Wal-Mart will still win. See, as long as we (whoever that “we” might actually be) allow these multi-national corporations to define our reality, and as long as we allow them to have a “person-hood,” a power that not only supersedes our own human-rights but also threatens our children's future and the greater future of the earth and everything that inhabits it, we lose.

They dig virulent holes, systematically destroy mountain lands, harass and kill workers, and all the while, we still lose.

So what's the point?

Halfway through this article I asked myself, what's the point? What is the point of informing people about Wal-Mart's deceptive practices when we all live in a capitalist society dependent on what Wal-Mart stands for: power and greed? Why even attempt to challenge the horrible practices of Rio Tinto and the rest of the corporate mining industry when the truth of the matter is, we are a culture that needs its copper, steel, coal, silver, and gold, and we will do whatever it takes to get it. We can read articles while pondering the extensive destruction of everything and everyone, but at the end of the day we still feel powerless and so we do nothing. So, at what point will we realize that our grandchildren and their children may not be able to survive among the wastelands that we are currently proudly stockpiling in the name of progress?

For too long we have been able to slip a price tag on anything we wanted, and perhaps now is a good time to stop valuing things in such a constrictive manner. We are fractured addicts, born from broken families, so that when we grow up all we want is want. So we try our hardest to replace the shattered communities we never had. We are told to focus on the good, and soon we lose focus of anything tangible or meaningful. We fiercely participate in the amazing race to convert our old television's before the screen goes to snow, or we gladly take opportunities to work overtime to mortgage our lives out for new ones, all in hopes that when the big digital switch comes, instead of just turning the fucker off, we will get the clarity, the validation, that we have spent our lives chasing.

Or we could start something new. We could support those groups and individuals currently dedicated to stopping the destruction of every remaining ecosystem. We could replace that 18-carat engagement ring and the 20 tons of waste it creates with a simple, “I Love You.” We could build real alternatives to a culture hell bent on profiting off our children's future.

Writing articles is not going to save or stop anything, but what comes out of these articles might. Don't be afraid of finding a starting point, just look around. I mean really: look around. Starting points are everywhere.

---

Dragonfly

She is forgotten in all the texts about revolution. She is never mentioned in the folk songs that ring out nightly from mountain to mountain. She is never casted in plaster and bronze, never carved from the native woods, never chiseled out of imported granite. She is one of the forgotten.

But she was the first line of defense. She was the food that filled the stomachs of any fighter willing to go back for one more day. She was also the one who dragged back the lifeless remains of those who did not make it back for one more day. She was the revolutionary greeting and the goodbye.

She was the first to shoot when the death squads came into the village, and she was the first to get raped in response to it. She was the first to protect a child from rape, and she got layered with bullets in response to it. She was the first to die, but has become the last remembered. Even now, her name has slipped my own lips. Its time to get a grip, but with 400 dead, the names of dead just slip lips. So we call them the forgotten, but I have done everything except forget them.

revolutionary metronome

a flame is burning and she refuses to be put out

shes the type of fire that shines through the thickest of fog

a leading light to brighter days

pass the pollution of this virulent smog

occupying this urban decay

landscaped and manufactured from a culture

sickened and plagued by insincerity

we our addicted to gross domestic necessities

like cars and concrete

asphalt and asinine clocks

a pocket watch keeps ticking

trying to keep us all on time

so we wont miss the train

we begin walking in obedient lines

then funneled into cattle cars

we set off on our final destination

with paradise promised into the horizon

and the pain of our histories blind sighted behind us

but the rails run thin and thinner

and eventually they run out

right on the edge of this genocidal cliff

we euphemistically know better as industrial civilization

so one boxcar at a time

we make the climactic dive

even though we unequivocally know better

yet the brakes are never applied

parachutes are never supplied

we are denied and then denied again

even driftwood on occasion will faultier and sink

just as a boat of lead can be engineered well enough to float

but Archimedes principle follows our lead

and this time, it too, fails under the weight of denial

but theres another tick tick tick

to counter progress' clock

a bomb that has been placed

strategically somewhere in this city

and shes ready to go

shes ready to blow

shes ready to fight the capitalist fucks

that stole and sold her life for profit

all before she was even birthed

but shes not a prophet born

shes a revolutionary metronome

setting the pace and tone

to a much needed insurrection

correction, shes more than a mere tool

but she does not have a problem

using the masters tools to tear down the masters house

correction, shell evict that racist fuck and use that house

to shelter transients outlaws and runaways

correction, shell use the masters tools to create

a masterpiece that is unrelenting

a spirited art piece

that refuses to be framed stagnating on walls

shes the type of art that incorporates itself

into the most subtle walks of life

and she walks for life

but not in the charity 10 k manner

instead in a way that equates

man versus her

subject verb object

she fights it

she flows in and out of the dead of night

a moon lit ghost who's tired of being haunted

by a doomed future and unfulfilled past

she strikes back

and she strikes hard

and then harder

and then hardest

she strikes the match

that burns down all previous

physical and mental borders

a heat that burns with such intensity

that it has a spiritual propensity

to purge out this cultural disease

we all have been suffering under

and no longer shall we sing

“you really got a hold on me”

because instead

we now hold ourselves

and embrace each other

blurring the divides of

our selves and each other

into soon forgotten obscurity

her flames keep us warm

as we unpave the path back to our homes

it is soon replaced with weeds

and then young forest growth

and we struggle side by side with the land

sprouting up from these ancient scarred soils

her flame becomes the sunlight we are reaching for

a warmth radiating intermittent life

taking and giving

become neutered terms once again

as we begin to

grow and decay

live and die

rot and thrive

spoil and build

on and on

in and out

up and down

once again

it becomes all the same

as long as shes out there burning bright

and as long as she still refuses to be extinguished

we can become the soil and it can become us

we can enter once again

into a relationship that makes a little sense

instead of this current one that makes little sense

no more beginnings and no more endings

just continual light and life

some cycles are not meant to be broken

Tattle Telling gets Paddle Wailing

"Scruff McGruff
Chicago, Illinois
60652"

This was the anthem that played among my generation's childhood. I heard more from Scruff, than even the largest toy company. His advertising brainwash came on the television multiple times an hour. His address may have been one of the first things I was forced to remember, that and 911, yes the snitch line, not the awesome holiday.

We learn to snitch on each other before we learn most things. Anyone with siblings knows what I am talking about. Parents reinforce, celebrate, and reward snitching. This may not seem like a huge deal at first, but it creates a tendency that is not easily shuffled away.

Snitching is the least autonomous action an individual can take. By snitching, an individual not only submits themselves to the power of abusive authority, but also renders others into very compromising situations.

Even snitching as "harmless" as telling on an annoying neighbor to a landlord, or a fellow employee to an employer, can have much deeper and more serious implications. My friend does a better job explaining this than I ever could;

"The culture at every articulation is a prison culture. The method of organizing every possible social activity: Work; Education; Shelter; Medicine; Charity; Food distribution; Food production; Social deviance; Everything is the prison model. Every individual in their assigned place; Ubiquitous surveillance; A set of rules to follow; a Set of guards to punish their violation...

Surveillance is ubiquitous, but not omnipresent (yet). We nevertheless behave as if we are always surveilled--having internalized the culture of surveillance, we surveil ourselves. And increasingly we willingly open our lives to the continuous surveillance of others."

We are currently living in a culture that operates as a Panopticon prison. This must be challenged on even the smallest levels. Personal and community responsibility are not synonymous with personal and community policing.

Snitching is the adult word we use to describe a very childish thing we do, Tattle Telling. So Stop Tattling! Here is a website that can provide some pretty recent examples of the horrible results of snitching.

these are the things I know

I once carried the weight of the world on my shoulder. Damn! What an unbearable burden. Attempting to defy gravity, in this manner, I did not get very far. I ended up worst off, utterly squashed by the weight of the world and it's mass of problems.

Hero was a word I once strived toward. To save the day was my daily protocol. Damsels in distress were my favorite to love and caress. It took so damn long to finally realize that heroism is no better than hierarchal worshiping egotism. If Frued would have spent time on his own couch, his drug addicted narcissism would be the least shocking of his many disorders, hang ups, and shortcomings. Clark Kent is no more than a selfish, codependent, schizophrenic, delusional psychopath, and Superman, his fractured ego.

I have been misdiagnosed clinically sane by a death-craving culture and over-prescribed an insidious dose of reality. Majority rule does not work in mental institutions. Consensus reality seems more like delusional destitution when love is confused with abuse, experience with trauma, memories with nightmares, expectations with limitations, golden hearts with golden arches, daily commutes with death camp marches, and the drumline rolls on and on.

Leading by example is ultimately no more effective than authoritarian coercion. The battle will only be won in filling the empty stomachs of the world's most undesirables, in filling the hearts of the world's most apathetic, in filling the graves dug for the world's most wealthy and affluent. The best tasting apples come from those orchards bordering cemeteries. Poison oak is the frontline defense in areas of the forest most threatened. Worms have no brain but still regulate their own population growth based on resource availability. Substance, resistance, and sustainability can be inspired in the most unusual manner.

candy rocks

A young bee comes back from her first trip out. She's carrying very little pollen her first time back. Regardless, the other bees are never too busy to give her strokes in a congratulatory manner. They celebrate the occasion. She receives enough encouragement to continue on and eventually she is more than able to carry her own. This is the politics of honey making.

A young boy drops out of middle school to post up on the block. He comes back with a black eye and in the hole $50. But two weeks later, surviving the exchange of shots, that corner becomes his spot, and from there, he now slings rock. But with his brother in prison, dad never showing up for roll call, and mom hooked on what her son's booked on, alone, he learns to carry his own. This is the politics of money making.

steady red hipster nurse

She was a nurse. She was wearing bright red Chuck Taylors and the lipstick to match. She had the skin of someone who worked late nights. She was funny, in that snide sarcastic manner. She grabbed my attention. I thought to myself, "Neat, she might be someone cool to talk to while I'm institutionalized."

The next day she arrived as the sun departed. Her hair was something I would imagine a "The Cure" fan would appreciate. I tried not to be to judgmental. Plus, maybe to her benefit, a Keffiyeh garnished her neck.

Later she was told to perform some procedures on me. This is not a bad sex joke, just simply, bland medical language. So as she works we begin to converse.

"So you ride trains?" She asked
Laughing, I replied with a "No."
She followed with an "Ohh."
I continued with an awkward "Sooo..."
(And no this is not poetry, just one of those times in life where conversations actually rhyme.)

After more procedures, she spoke up.
"So what do you do besides hate 'the man,' hate money, and ride trains?"

Clearly she hadn't heard my "no" from earlier, that or she didn't believe me. It was also clear that she was trying to make a judgment or assumption on my beliefs, based purely on the tattoos that covered my skin. Fair enough, I suppose, considering my body has become a billboard for anti-this and anti-that. I also had already made my assumptions of her, but before I begin to reply, I digest the tone in which she spoke to me. I soon recognized it as a tone way too familiar for my liking.

It was a tone of talking down. It was a loaded question. She already knew how I was going to reply. She was going to fulfill herself in self-righteous grandeur with her hideous pride of being an apolitical, hipster shit-bag. I was entertainment to her. I was her culture's Noble Savage. Something to admire from a far, but not actually desire. A spectacle, to be viewed, but never experienced. I was "cute" to her, not in the kitten way, but in the poor, naive, helpless anarchist type of way. And for a moment I almost played into it, but I resisted.

I snapped back with a short overview of my past activism, although halfway through, her smirk began to grow. Quickly, I had to respond with heavier artillery or she would still turn this around and win. So as I finished my overview, I made sure to not give her time to reply, and as she began to speak, I stopped her at an inaudible gulp.

"And exactly what is it that you do? What else are you proud of, besides working for 'the Man'? Drinking at over priced beauty bars? Paying for haircuts that look like haircuts no one would pay for? Or is it completely disrespecting an entire culture by turning their traditional and meaningful clothing into an unremarkable fashion statement? People that are caught fighting a war. Trapped fighting for their lives every single day. I suppose that makes you proud?"

Almost immediately she replies, "working for the man, and overtime." Her sarcasm had dropped to the wayside by now, she was speaking with honesty for once. No facade. No barrier. I had effectively shattered it.

"Working overtime? Why?" I questioned her
Caught off guard, she responds, "To buy things for myself."
Stealing the last words, I state, "your life's pride is in buying things"
Nothing further was said.

Assort. Notebook

I once had a girlfriend. We had dated for about a year and a half. We had even lived together for about a Year. There was many problems within the relationship. The main one was that she was very abusive and manipulative. But I was also guilty of trying way too hard to "fix" her. We were not equals. It stopped working, regardless of what hope and comfort desired. One day she was yelling at me. I yelled back. It was the first and last time I have ever yelled in an intimate relationship.

That same day, I asked her to move out. She had many places to go. I did not. So she left that day devastated.

It had all been tough, but even after a couple days had past, I still had not cried. Then while picking up some food at a horrible pizza chain, yes the corporate one that offers large pizzas for $5, I had the sudden need to use the restroom.

They did not have one so, I had to walk across the parking lot to the large and offensive Wal-Mart. As I entered the store, I looked above at all the fluorescent lights and black clouds hovering on every isle. Those black domes tend to hang over your head like the worst Charlie Brown clouds. Restricting your movements, your actions, damn them. But today was not one of those days. I was there to use the restroom, not to find an isle clear of clouded views. Today, there was a truce between me and the disgusting giant. After defecating, I made my way back out the store. There was one huge display just as you were leaving the store. It had school supplies on sale, so it must have been the beginning of the school year, or more importantly then end of summer. The end of freedom. The end of growth.

I couldn't help but to notice a large white price tag that stated "low prices, always" and underneath it hung a huge 8 cent. The sign next to it said 12 cents. It was for a large pink Eraser. The one on the other side said 15 cents. It was for one of those pencil sharpeners with a plastic cover to keep the shavings together. Then my eyes made it back to the 8 cent sign. It took me a while before it came clear. When it finally made sense, I stood there shocked.

Under the sign was a crate full of stacks. Stacks that were made of paper. Paper that was binded together with metal spirals. Metal spiral bounded with machine precession, 100 sheets, college rule: one subject, notebooks. Thousands of them. You could even have a choice of five or six generic colored covers. You could buy as many as you needed. A sign with red print stated "no limit."

I looked back at the neighboring signs. They all had limits. You could only buy 2 sharpeners or 5 erasers or 4 packs of pencils or 6 packs of ballpoint pens. Under each price and was a small description. I thought, "this must be a mistake." I glanced once more at the 8 cent sign. No Mistake. Underneath the price it clearly said "Assort. Notebooks." I stood there for another minute before walking out into the nonredeemable late summer sun. The smell of salt and ocean-decay was rampant in the air.

That walk across that parking lot seemed so damn long. It was longer than that awkward moment leading up to the first kiss with each new partner. It was longer than those tingling moments after that same first kiss. I couldn't breathe. I was choked up. I was having a hard time seeing straight. My heart was beating hard and then, it started to hurt.

I made it back to my friends car. He asked me some non-unique standardized question. I stayed quiet for quite a while, and then it happened. Tears started making their way to a great decent. The same tears that made the decision a couple days before that a broken heart wasn't worth their time. They clocked in and got busy. That night they would surely work overtime.

I took some time to verbalize to my friend what was going on. I think I just kept saying "8 cents, 8 cents... what the fuck" That night still reminds me of the most dreaded feelings. There was a mixture of feelings that night. I stopped being an adult.

I was a kid who had a broken heart. The girl I lost my virginity to had been consumed in self-destructive behaviors. The culture I was brought up in was killing the natural world I loved. This girl I loved had finally lost a horrific battle to Aneroxia-Nervosa. The forest I visited regularly as a kid, survived a huge summertime fire, but not the timber sale that soon followed.

The destruction became too much. It became an 8 cent College Rule, Single Subject notebook. 100 pages to never be filled up, not even in the most engaging ecology college class. It became a profit margin of 4 percent X 1 billion notebooks. A profit that can only be measured in the thousands, not even in the millions. It became notebooks without any recycled symbol in sight, because it became cheaper to produce that way. It became the death of a single forty to fifty foot tall fir, cedar, pine, or poplar tree just to make 100 pointless notebooks. It became more than that. It became four billion dead trees a year, slaughtered and pulped into paper. Papers turned into teachers, as teachers turn papers into pass or fail, ignoring altogether that this culture has already failed.

It has failed a young girl who only wanted to love herself, but could not see past the ugly that was so brutally painted on her every time she turned a corner in this culture.
It has failed a young forest just as it began recovery from the last time it was clearcut, creating more scars that will never heal as it's ancient flesh of top soil is ripped away during the frequent early spring rains.
It has failed me as it is dedicated to destroying everything, everything I love.

Those future humans and non humans are not going to want to hear the "back in my day" stories.
They will hate us for gas only costing a dollar.
They will hate us for letting it only go up to 5 dollars.
They will not understand why value menus at fast food chains were such a good thing.
They will never forgive us for converting once living trees into dead and bleached 100 sheet, college rule: one subject, notebooks only to end up selling them for 8 cents a piece.
8 fucking cents.

I'm sorry is not good enough anymore.

When did anarchy become so safe... and why is green becoming so damn mean?

After appearing in a few conversations of mine this week, I figured the following might be interesting enough to talk about.

Since when did anarchy become so safe? I have anarchist friends who teach in schools. They talk and actually get some of their students into anarchist thought. I by no means am trying to say this is a negative thing. This is good, very good, but it also seems that anarchy should always be a threat to both Capitalism and Nationalism.

Upon finding out I was comfortable calling myself an anarchist, it took a couple more years before I outwardly verbalized this. This is in part to do with that at the time anarchy was still stigmatized. It seems that even up till 2002-2003, that anarchy was still a threat, especially on mainstream media, especially those "self-proclaimed anarchists."

Just read anything from the press in the last two years. Anarchists have been practically laughed at with only one exception, our friends the Greeks. Even then, Greek Anarchy was practically squandered into a silly isolated student movement by the mainstream media.

A couple clarifications before I go any further

• I do not think that the mainstream media should be used as a gauge alone on where we stand
• In a sense, I do think we need to be "relevant" to the "masses." I do not however think that means that we should stop being a threat to those in power.
  
• It seems there is much more momentum now than lets say Seattle '99. So then why is PETA more of a threat to national security than the IWW?
• Using this "Obama" momentum that some radical Socialists and anarchists seemed to be stoked on seems foolish. Obamaites are just like Green-Technoites. Green Washing is not our ally neither is ObamaRama. We can find allies, recruits, or whatever utilitarian term you prefer in both of these areas, but we can do that by being honest in what we believe, in what we desire. I'm not going to be co opted and I'm sure as hell not going to co opt liberal wash.

• When did crimethinc become one of the best anarchist publications out there? I mean I was never opposed to crimethinc, but it now seems they are a leading voice for what I desire.

It seems to me that anarchy can be embraced, but not because it's acceptable, but because it actively opposes all that is acceptable. That's how and why I was attracted to it. Maybe on this topic, I'm just being nostalgic.
_ _ _

One thing is for sure. Green is mean, and it depends on who is asked, just how mean it has become. So up until about 8 years ago, being an environmentalist was a joke, now it's the #1 United States Domestic Terrorist Threat. If you ask Rush Limbaugh or Michael Savage, even the loveable Eco-Stars like Leonardo DiCaprio and Al Gore are terrorists. But I'm not interested in asking them for anything but a good laugh, that is until it settles in that millions, many millions follow these two religiously. Regardless it's the thoughts of different people that frighten me more.

Teachers, Students and Administrators trying to get rid of recycling clubs and other bright green events on school grounds. Hunter's who have been raised to love and appreciate the landbase choosing the sides of progress and America instead of the land they loved. Indian Tribes worried about Salmon in the Columbia river and it's tributaries are allying with the Federal Agencies interested in killing the federally protected sea lions that have been eating those salmon that cant make it past the dams, instead of allying with the radical and progressive groups trying to stop the real problem, the dams.

Sure recycling isn't going to save the world, hunters sometimes can be racist, selfish assholes, and some native folk just like all cultural groups will make poor choices, but what the hell!

Before this gets to long let me make some clarification points

• Any effective action or planned action to aid the environment in the past decade has been vehemently opposed by governments and their huge monopoly on repressive "law and order"
• Even supporting groups or individuals who fight for the environment can now get you many years in federal prison thanks to the AETA laws recently passed.
• I am going on the premise that what is threatening to those in power is what is effective. This goes past game theory, and can be defended historically and currently. When those in power feel threatened it is because they are, and we will not be effective as long as they are in power.
• there is a huge overlap between anarchy and environmentalism and these groups and individuals are feeling the worst of the repression.
  

So I am not interested in offering any solutions, just to set up a dialogue within ourselves and our groups.
Can and should we make anarchy threatening again?
Can and should we use anarchy's current non-threatening stance as an opportunity to spread and grow?
How can we keep the repression on the environmental front from growing?
When or is it appropriate to trumpet both causes?
Why the increasing focus from the government away from anarchists and on to environmentalists?
What do we have to gain from this current standing point?
What do we have to lose?
And is it even important to do all this strategizing when there is so much work that needs to be done?
It seems like if we start answering these questions than we would have more insight than this blog could ever offer.

Democracy, has always had its foundations in slavery. Always, since it's original and modern inceptions. Both Greeks and American patriots had economies, lifestyles based on slavery. In my teenage years, my break from Socialist style majority rule was due to this understanding. I wanted Autonomy, I wanted Solidarity, and Mutual-Aid, I wanted consensus, I wanted to consent to those actions that affected my life. I did not know this was anarchy, well I did, but anarchy still had a certain stigma to it.

Democracy benefits some, at the expense of others. It always will, so why should we settle for this? Does this mean we should not even work in groups that operate on anything other than consensus? Is good activist work ever going to come out of a majority rule group? I mean there are clear physical results. Even the worst hierarchical top-down NGO's have very real and tangible results. People get food, people get shelter, but at what expense? I'm starting to believe that the power structures we organize under have a much larger impact on the work we do. I've worked with food kitchens and mobile food banks. We fed peoples stomachs but the rest of them remained diminished. But with Food Not Bombs, Tacos Not Bombs, you could see the replenishing happening, it was an all around nutritional increase. Physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual.

Let me stop before I get too self-involved on some dialogue or self-critique. I think I wanted to just simply explain that it seems their will never be a viable option for Democracy to break from it's foundations on inequality.

Death Squads Normalized

Death squads have stopped being called death squads. I don't understand this. It use to be that if military groups went on campaigns for corporate interest, we saw them for the atrocious scumbags they were, but now we see them as something much more friendlier. Why has it become normalized for death squads to kill hundreds, kidnap many more from their homes and hospitals, and terrorize whole countries with United States military sponsorship? With words of "wealth," "equality," and "fairness" another massacre has yet again been underwritten by United State's government, multinational corporations, and consumers.

These Mining, Logging, Oil, and Gas projects will not just threaten the Amazon's human population but also the Amazon itself. Words on a blog. Words in a paper. Words written in still drying paint on the side of a bank. How can these words stop this ecocide? Are they even meant to stop it, or just help me sleep better at night? My stomach turns from this overweight blood dense privilege I have in this story, but in the end, I'll still benefit, and I'll still be able to sleep comfortably tonight.

I wanted to be inspiring. I wanted to draw parallels to build an understanding. I wanted to feel that today, the people down their struggling, would actually have benefited from my continuing existence today. But I can't. Not today.

We are losing. Anyone who reads this knows this. I guess all I can ask is to feel it.

borrowing an old ibm think pad... some would call it a dinosaur. I wish they all went extinct!

So of course, when I find myself serious and dedicated enough to start a blog... something happens. My computer, which is less than a year old, crashed. I was going to say died, but that would be an insult to everything that has gone extinct so that this culture could thrive, so that that my computer could be made, so that I could be typing this instead of being in a more intimate relationship with my local community and land base. Ha, I just noticed I also gave my computer an age, as if it was alive. Wow! This is why they are winning and we are not.

On a different note, most of my short stories, and my last two years of poetry was on that computer. The majority, I did not make a back up for. So as much as this could paralyze and depress me, I wont let it. Instead I'll just have to replace all that was lost with more that is better. I wish I could say that about the natural world. Well except for the better part. I'm not going to make value judgments on whats wild or best or more natural. I do however wish for more wild. But just like any good wishing well story, the moral of this is story, is wishing is never good enough.

So shall we get to work?

I was going to post a few quotes from this amazing interview, but I realized I would be block quoting the whole article. This is a good interview for any activist, feminist, radical, or environmentalist. So check it out

wetland / whatland

I met a lonely beaver the other day.
She was swimming in a small stream.
Maybe it could even be considered a creek.
But there was a fence that locked her in on all sides.
Some signs read mitigated wetland.
I don't know what that means, and I don't think she does either.
Maybe she is better locked in that patch of few trees and some shrubbery.
Because she would be even more saddened to see what has happened to the rest of her home.
Before progress moved in, it was a beautiful forest, but now it's ugly parking lots.
There is a Wal-Mart on one end and a K-Mart on the other, competing.
All the while, she's trapped in the middle.
But I guess competition is a part of nature.
I guess it's all natural.

Stool Pigeon: someone acting as an informer or decoy for the police...

Martha, the earth's last known Passenger Pigeon, died on September 1, 1914, during the beginning of the Great World War. I don't think she was willing to see another war. She had just finished her own war. One in which she had lost badly. The war on the natural world and her was one that was centuries old. It was a dirty war.

A single flock of Passenger Pigeons migrating could stretch one mile wide by three miles long and could contain two billion birds. They called the extensive forests of North America their home. They would establish colonies covering hundreds of miles in these forests. With hundreds of nests in a single tree, they communally took care of each others young.

Then came the white plague. In hopes of supplying themselves with an abundant source of agriculture fertilizer, and cheap meat for their slaves, servants, and the urban poor, whites begun the commercial hunting of Passenger Pigeons in the early 1800's. Boxcars filled to the brim on steel rail lines, became the pigeons new migratory passages. At the same time, hunters not only killed Passenger Pigeons in increasingly larger numbers, but settlers also deforested the dense forest canopies that they refused to live without. Unlike their closest surviving cousins, the Mourning Dove, they refused to domesticate to the ever expanding cities and farms. Refusing the way of their Mourning cousins they took their communal forest life head on with civilization, and ultimately like everything else to challenge civilization before, they were slaughtered.

Hunters would spend five months at a time, killing 50,000 birds a day, from a single nesting. They would get the birds drunk on alcohol soaked grains, while setting fires to the trees the pigeons called home. One technique stands out above the rest. An imprisoned pigeon would be fastened alive to a circular stool attached to the end of a long pole. Her eyes were then sewn shut with the finest silk thread to keep her disoriented. Blinded and Bound, at the end of the pole, she would be raised and lowered. Her frantic movement would attract other pigeons flying above, and they would make an inquiring decent, not knowing it would be their last. Hunters would then shoot and net the entrapped birds. The ones caught up in the net faced their death when a hunter would crush their heads between his forefinger and thumb. This was afterglow, just business.

After the last Passenger Pigeon died, from the culmination of acts perpetrated by whites, none of which where short of ecocide. Humans continue to triumph over “evil” in two bloody World Wars, all while further dominating the land in service to their own holy and righteous production. This of course, is not a story about one lonely bird named Martha. This is the story of great men. This is the accounts of our grandfathers, great grandfathers, and their fathers before. This is his story.

But there is another story being told. It's told in whispers. It's told from dance. It's a story a mother sings while nursing her young child. It's told by weeds, fighting to take back the grain fields that were once grand forests. It's a story of a people who learned to live communally from their old friends, the Passenger Pigeons. It's a story told from people who refuse to live apart from forests. They too, will eventually die from this ecocide called civilization. All that will be left, will be some distant cousins. Us, the mourning human. And we will walk, surrounded by towering concrete, pecking at food scraps, ever mourning. As generations pass, memories will weaken, but we will always mourn that something from out past. We just might not be able to name it.

a side note. Martha, the pigeon was named after Martha Washington. Yes, the same Martha Washington that was married to good ol' George Washington... talk about offensive

The national park formerly known as...

Glacier National Park is a magnificent area in Montana. Bordering the continuing natural landscape in Canada, this area played host to the Salish, Flathead, Shoshone, Cheyenne, and Blackfeet Tribes. The imperialist explorers, gentlier known as Lewis and Clark, traveled within miles of the modern boundaries and recorded accounts of the area, detailing it's natural bounty. The glaciers that the park was named after, numbered over 150 in the mid 1800's. In 2005, scientists put the number of remaining glaciers to 27 and melting. To make this travesty furthermore a tragedy, most scientists agree the 27 remaining glaciers will be completely disappeared from the park by 2030.

The only question remaining is; will they continue to call this area that is so sincerely affected by climate change, Glacier National Park even though the glaciers will be long gone?

This is the curse of a culture who turns ancient glaciers into sediment pools, in just a few generations. A culture that turns millions of dinosaurs into obscure statistical profits, for just a few wealthy and privileged. A culture who is cursed by its fundamental foundations. Foundations that seem to be ever receding. Foundations that are melting to the heated rhythm of hellish five o'clock traffic jams and lightning-fast-food value menus. Foundations valuing menus over glaciers.

"boy, it's hot out today! can I get that super sized with fries and a coke. extra ice please."



for more information read Collapse by Jared Diamond or Wiki: Glacier National Parks

so after a year of searching, reading, and writing, I believe it will be worthwhile to make a more asserted effort on this blog.

please feel free to comment on anything written within these entries of dissent, reflection, and personal development.

without comments, I won't have much to base off which directions I need to explore.