The gunman who took hostages at Discovery Communications' headquarters in Silver Spring was apparently inspired by the author of a popular series about a telepathic ape who tries to save humankind from problems such as overpopulation, but the writer said Wednesday that he is baffled byJames J.

Permaculture Ethics: Why Permaculture Is Different

By Chuck Burr

22 July, 2010
Southern Oregon Permaculture Institute

It has dawned on me, maybe on you as well, that the essential core of civilization is the state. The state as you know is the middle hand institution that has the monopoly on violence and resources. The state is what makes civilization and it is also the fundamental aspect to why civilization is hierarchial, or pyramidal. It seems that the taker forefathers when they designed the state, they wanted it to be as perfect as possible, long before Plato wrote about the ideal state in his Republic, the people back in Iraq and Egypt strove to make the state as infallible as they could with all of their science at their disposal. And the effect of creating this perfect hierarchial social system, the people in their minds also started to have a hierarchial view on the world around them. They would start to project the social order around them onto the natural order beyond their state so they began to study the world as if it too was a hierarchy with rulers on top of higher rulers. Since they wanted world domination, or the state order drove them into that direction, what became their main concern of investigation was who actually was running the world. And as they had it there was a power dominating everything from above, and this power in turn was dominated by a higher power and that power dominated by an even higer power and so on up until the higherst power wich was imagined to be a perfect unit at the top of a heavenly pyramidal organisation.

This is what happens sometimes when you play God:

"Birds dropped from the air. The sky rained mud. And, as men from the rig struggled to save themselves from the aftermath of (the) explosion . . . the Gulf of Mexico itself caught on fire."

High On Progress

What will be left when we finally come down?

by Derrick Jensen

WHY HAVE WE come to assume that “progress” is always good? The Nazis’ treatment of Jews progressed toward their final solution. And many individual Jews followed a line of progress: get an ID card, move to a ghetto, get on a cattle car, arrive at a camp, work at the camp, go to a gas chamber, get put in an oven, rise as smoke, fall as ashes.

When you tackle a problem and are looking to be a fundable program, it's important to realize how grantors want their money spent. A LOT of grantors look to community-building organizations as merely a flashpoint to bring awareness of stakeholderhood to a community whose awareness is ripening.

While actually a book report on a book called "The Raven's Gift" I found this article to be intellectually stimulating and hopefully you do too! (This is an excerpt I thought would be interesting to Ishpeeps, the entire story can be found here: http://tagonist.livejournal.com/202445.html )

I wanted to share an abstract I wrote recently for the college as a resource for them when field the upcoming media requests as we are about to begin to advertise and press release. I hope my Ishpeeps can stand with me and help me see my vision even more clearly with some comments and constructive criticisms. Thank you!