The New Holocaust

We have done a grave disservice to one another. We have all been complicit in the horror of our current state of affairs. Instead of standing up and telling the ruling classes that we will not stand for carcinogenic compounds being released onto the soil, into the air and water, ultimately making their way into our bodies, we have decided to participate in fundraising runs, buy rubber bracelets and to "bike for the cure". This is like going fishing but bringing no pole, no line and no hooks, just the bait. I know that I am not the only one who sees through the sham of spending billions on cancer research while simultaneously poisoning the environment.

I have dozens of friends who have passed the veil because they have been ravaged by cancer. I would guess that not one of us has been spared the heartache of losing a beloved friend or family member, perhaps a bunch of them to this disease. Is it always going to be easier to focus only on the hurt than to do anything about sparing one another from this exquisite pain?

Our species seems intent on hitting the wall. Like a fly in a speeding bullet train, about to hit an immovable object, we seem to be completely unaware that we are moving. Our entire environment is moving with laser speed into the future. We are on a collision course with destiny and after more than fifty years of rearranging the deck chairs on our sinking ship, we are no closer to plugging the gaping hole in the side of the hull than when we first began to dabble in the chemistry of death. The very first carcinogenic compound that we humans "discovered" was benzene. It is still a legal contaminant in gasoline. The earliest representation of the chemical was a serpent biting its own tail. Benzene is only one of many carcinogens that many of us are exposed to nearly daily. The irony is that when we put fuel in our automobiles, this carcinogen can be detected on our breath for up to six hours after we finish pumping our gasoline. The advent of "self-service" fuel depots came about because science could prove that service station attendants were getting lethal doses of the compound. We must each decide whether getting our own "fair" share is worth the cost.

My wife recently learned and related to me, that in the first six years that GMO(Genetically Modified Organism) crops have been authorized for use in the United States of America, emergency room visits because of food allergies have increased by 260%. It may just be the tip of the next iceberg, but we need to realize that all food worldwide is potentially GMO already. Pollen from these organisms can be carried vast distances on the wind and it has already been proven by Monsanto that organic growers have had their seed contaminated with patented genetic material.

 I once received a hefty fine because a roommate's mutt dog had been allowed to run loose, got with a show dog that belonged to a neighbor, and inseminated the bitch. My only crime was to call the dog home (Something, by the way, GMOs can never be) when I saw it run down our street. Now, I know many organic growers and they don't want their valuable seed to be contaminated by these rogue pollens, why should we protect a corporate outlaw who cannot control their pollen?

The elites that benefit from our combined suffering need to be held to task for their inhumane treatment of the rest of us, worldwide. From their nuclear debacle to the war machine, the powers that feed are parasites of our own blood, fanciful masters of those feeding the ovens of our own demise. Ont this day of souls, let the hallowed voices of those who have died from this disease speak though our combined action to stop the crazy drunken stagger into our own demise, step away from the abyss and return to a hospitable world in which we create out of the ruin of stupidity and healing the damage caused by genocide. Our entire race is in jeopardy because of the current tragectory.

I hope that it is not too soon after 9-11 to remember those days. I solemnly hoped that in the days following, when flights were canceled, that millions of "disrupted" people would realize that where they were was a pretty good place and that families and neighborhoods across the world, or at least our part of it, would be strengthened by the contact. For decades, when I saw traffic jams, I always imagined how wonderful it would be when all people to find ways to make their way through the world, without leaving "home". I have lived from the day when a handful of local markets existed within walking distance, now it is a mile (1.6Km) to the closest one, and it used to be the furthest away. During my youth, it was the largest, by far, and saved a few cents per item over the local grocers. All those pennies, after all those years, worked up some pretty good loyalty, but now the shoe is on the other foot, by driving five miles, or ten, those same savings could be had. With a mega-grocer, moving your money further from your neighborhood.

This is the economic state of affairs for virtually all of us is like a cancer, the pennies, and in many cases dollars are being siphoned out of the majority of the people, being extracted from this region, this city, this county and this state with mind-bending consequence. I hear the term The Richest Third World Nation On Earth and I think it should stick. Apparently, now, some Germans bring their children to Detroit to show them what Berlin looked like after the war. We have had perpetrated every form of injustice on our people for the enrichment of a cream of the cream of the crop and they are in full scale assault mode. They have been winning the class war for generations. We have only threatened revolt while stoned, or that is what they would tell you. The peace movement of the sixties and the efforts to reign in pollution were feeble at best and the long term data indicates that we are failing to limit releases of many hazardous chemicals. Again, like cancer this robs a vital being of essential nurturing to continue to exist, and the "person" we knew wastes away, vitality stolen from a dear one.

To re-seed the tree of life, this insidious tree of death needs to be pulled up by the root, or it will re-establish and threaten us again. Part of my ritual intentions this Sabbat, will be to unleash as much fury on the Agro-bio-chemical-financial/insurance-petro-industrial/military complex as possible. I want clarity to be established about planet rape, about biocide, about the rampant costs to each and every one of us for the financial gain of others. We have been forced by unimaginable powers of wealth and deceit to build the very instruments of our own destruction/demise. Just the other day on the news, they were touting how upgrading the infrastructure around a boat-building facility there would help the company to become more productive. We taxpayers will foot the bill fore more roads, more trucks, more traffic and do it gladly for the sake of the company. In their defense, the company can afford and has awesome equipment that greatly increases the health and safety of their workers, but the down side is that they pump the fumes further away, into the surrounding neighborhoods. So people who don't work there will pay in two ways for the sake of the corporation, first in taxes to make it bigger and then breathe even dirtier air.

For my friends, this holiday season, I just want to say in the words of good friend, James Baker, of Green Bay, Wisconsin, After we have tried every key, it is time to try the skeleton key.

Lest this post be mistaken for a scary one, this is like the black spot in the white side of the yin yang symbol. If humans did not have the power to be infinitely kind, there would be no humanitarians. If we did not have infinite capacity for acceptance, we could not turn our heads from this crisis. If we did not have hope, we would have surely crashed and burned as a civilization long ago. The actions we take, knowing that these cancers are there, engulfing us as I write this, burning away at the center of a swirling vortex of our lives, our neighborhoods, our families, our cities and towns. Our activity as a species reflects whether we will ultimately vanquish, or push back the nugget of evil at our core. Likewise, in the realms of the dark side, they try to overwhelm, but can never extinguish the light.

The only way out of our current state of affairs is to create new structures upon which we can be proud to hang our hat for generations. Many communities are fighting back against the extraction model by creating power co-ops, sharing in the cost of buying their electricity into the future, today. Much like our food buying club of old, we banded together to create our own store, one day each month. Ultimately, reparations need to be made, but how can one put a price on generations of pain and suffering of thousands of millions of direct victims their families, their communities, over many generations? Our lives truly have infinite value and sacrificing a single one for profit is not acceptable. Corporations are exacting death sentences upon all of us and we must all call for them, in unison to stop.

Stop Poisoning Our Medicine Chests!

I'm starting this with a thank-you to some of the women that I have borrowed heavily from to write this piece. It requires a special person to attempt to bring about change in a fifty billion dollar per year industry. Rebecca Sutton Ph.D., Jane Houlihan, Annie Leonard and Jennifer Predinger made most of my points for me, and I am just trying to keep the facts interesting for you! I encourage you to learn more to help you decide what to do about this tragic trend. First off, men use an average of 6 personal care, and or cosmetic products each day. Women use twice as many and adolescent girls over sixteen products on an average day,each containing about a dozen chemicals, 80% of which have never been tested for safety. Anything in "common use" in 1938 was grandfathered in to current legislation. "Better living through chemistry" was the watchword of the last century, but as we learn more, we find deadly culprits amongst the magic bullets that science has provided us. We need more heroes who will stand up for our right to be free from the onslaught of toxins in the environment, especially those we seek to wash and decorate our bodies with.

If you are concerned about your health, I would send you to the most comprehensive website I have seen detailing this health threat. safecosmetics.org will help you find safe products that you can use to make your daily toilette safe and effective. I studied this subject for quite some time before I started forming an opinion, but twenty years ago when the red flags were raised, public opinion was against any reasonable regulations of toxic chemicals, especially in beauty products! Unless you did quite a bit of research yourself, guessing what products contained neurotoxins, hormone disruptors, or carcinogens was a shot in the dark. Because of heroic women like those I mentioned, we finally are beginning to understand the errors of our ways.

Only eight of the thousands of cosmetic ingredients that get rubbed onto our faces, hands, hair and bodies each day have been regulated. Even terms such as Herbal, Natural and Organic have absolutely no meaning in the industry. Adding to the insanity are little known facts that make one stare off into space as if in a dream. You may know of Herbal Essence shampoo. It's the number two brand in America, well it contains petrochemical compounds which add to our daily body burden of toxic and carcinogenic compounds. Estee' Lauder advertises that they "help in the fight against breast cancer", but their products contain chemicals that produce the disease!

Since the average American spends over 150 dollars per year on these things, it would be nice if we knew that they were not making us sick! A recent study of young women, age 14-19 found both methylparaben and propylparaben in the blood or urine of every girl tested. These women are especially vulnerable to these hormone disruptors. In their rapidly changing bodies, this is not the sort of imbalance that we should be creating in them. Sixteen chemicals were routinely found in these young women, the direct result of their cosmetics use!

Please support the legislation that is going through Congress now. Called the Safe Chemicals Act of 2010, it deserves everyone's support. If for no other reason than to guarantee the safety of our children. We all have to wash our faces, brush our teeth and wash our hair. Please learn more about the ways we are doing it now as well as the safest ways that it can be done. You will never go back to poisoned products once you know and understand their impacts on our health and welfare.

Empathy vs. Pathology

Now that we have seen the beginning of the end of cheap oil, we can take pause. Last time oil blew past $100 per barrel, gas prices went up, food costs went up, businesses, dependent on energy, were shuttered, global economic catastrophe was imminent. Food riots took place in six countries. This is the tip of the iceberg. Passing peak oil means every gallon of crude oil that we bring within reach of refineries will cost more, as will the refining itself, transport of ensuing products, and ecological damage caused by the entire process will increase as well. Billions have been placed into the hands of those who had the most to lose as the shock wave went through our fragile economy. The facade got a good paint job, but flaws remain. In some cases, cracks have developed that extend through the entire basic structure of our energy hungry culture.

This current situation, to use a gardening metaphor, has been planned, planted, cultivated and is setting an inevitable fruit. When we begin from a place that theorizes that we are all competitive, brutish and self-serving, the tragedy of the commons is unavoidable. Cooperation has been cast as a hippie thing, for "pansies and flakes". Our "seed", purchased long ago, was the belief that people are inherently nasty, "sinful", greedy or at least selfish. Neuro-biology is finding that these inhumane traits only develop if our human organism is denied love and affection. From our recent past we have received bad ideas about ourselves which can only lead in bad directions. Think for a moment of the cover that this provided to individuals who had been hurt or neglected planet wide. In this context, if you were unlike the least among us, you were considered uppity, a know-it-all, "sensitive" (which was a code word for gay) or soft. The implication that only the strong survive aided those who were damaged, requiring massive financial rewards for dubious behavior.

The quantum shift required to understand this new reality puts group allegiances to the test. Rather than relationships based on financial benefit, social class or education, we are on the brink of creating world-wide community. Just look at the compassion that poured forth over the internet, measured in dollars, after the earthquakes in Haiti. The sugar industry has utilized the Haitian population as a ready source of labor for cane cutting. They may not be slaves in the way we might remember from colonial times, but one look at the poverty that lives there tells you that cutting cane cannot help one out of poverty, especially if they care about the welfare of their family, tribe or community. The pittance paid for risking life and limb only goes so far. Now, with the power of the internet, anyone, nearly anywhere in the world can read this passage. Our family has increased to the Nth degree.

Research that proves that we are loving, caring creatures is being squelched by the powers that be so that hostility and angst can rule the day. This easy out from responsibility only leads humans to strife and depraved narcissism. When we take a more caring tack, the welfare of our self is bound to the success of others, cohesive families and community. My own grandmothers passed away. One when I was a curious child, the other when I was trying to become a respectable young man. Both were taken by Cancer, both were a result of environmental contamination. I asked then, with my immature mind, why are my loving, loved ones being killed in such a way? I could see it clearly as sacrificially, to the God of profit. Unbridled capitalism created the the means to have money, and lives, flow away from the poor and into the hands of the rich who did not care who they hurt.

Many understand that we have a choice between love and fear. Oddly enough, this is the state of affairs that we find ourselves in today. We can fear the coming collapse of the world as we know it, pray for the end times, or make preparations for when we have to fight our neighbors for survival. These would be the obvious choices if we didn't understand the other side of the coin. That, my friends, is the part that we have exhibited so many times across the globe, and throughout time. The instinct to love one another, aid whenever possible, struggle together to beat insurmountable odds with style and grace. If you are out of practice, you may be a bit rusty, but through a series of tiny steps, we can find a way to grace. Tolerance, empathy, openness, understanding and sincere love and affection have the power to heal all wounds. we all need to become shanti-sena, peace warriors, we can no longer stay silent in the face of injustice. We must not abide abuse of any kind, or accept corruption and outdated thinking. Calvin was wrong when he said that good things, including wealth, come to good people and that the poor somehow deserve their fate.

At the dawn of the new age, we thought all of these things were new. After all, the word new was in the name. We are standing on the shoulders of giants. Every one of these thoughts are older than the hills. I'm just able to elucidate them here for you because of a fluke of electron processing, again, the result of standing on the shoulders of still more giants. Special thanks, and appreciation go out to my English teachers and the authors of the books I read as well. We have been cooperative since the dawn of time, and competitive for just a few thousand years. wildly so for only the last hundred or two, and unabashedly so for the past twenty to thirty years. We have the power to change. It truly is time for the people to lead and the leaders to follow.
Into the Light!

Hundreds of Known Killers Evade Police Daily

Having lost a third loved one to Cancer this year alone, my perspective may be a bit skewed, but the facts speak for themselves. Over four hundred compounds routinely created & released by humans fall into the category of known or probable human carcinogens. There are other substances that are called mutagens, which create genetic mutation in humans and teratogens, which cause genetic damage in the person's offspring, not the person exposed. Remember DES? Dimethyl-ethyl-stilbesterol was given to women during pregnancy and resulted in horrifying genetic damage. Even after this compound was banned for humans, it was still given to chickens to increase productivity.

Although nothing can take back the damage we have already done to our bodies and the environment, certain simple steps can reduce the threat posed by these killers and eliminate the deaths of millions of loved ones in relatively short order.

There are dozens of crazy things that we do on a daily basis. I'm not going to recite the litany of insane, stupid or senseless things that humans do. I'm just flabbergasted that chemicals are extended consideration that people would never be given. If I were responsible for the deaths of thousands, nay hundreds of thousands of people, millions over the course of a generation, would I be exonerated because it would hurt the economy? No. People are "innocent until proven guilty", but these chemicals, even when proven guilty, are used with relative impunity. They continue to get away scott free. I'm struck by the odd dichotomy that exists in our heads. When a person builds a commercial workshop, they may be required to vent toxic or carcinogenic compounds out of the building, "protecting" workers from exposure to these harmful chemicals. Neighbors are then exposed to the same chemicals that would eventually kill workers or sicken them if they were in the contaminated building for eight hours per day. Shut-ins who live down the block are then exposed to these chemicals all day long, even in their sleep. Back in the Seventies, I lost my first grandmother to Cancer. Back then, commercial interests claimed that they knew nothing about dangers of hazardous compounds like perchloroethelene, merchloroethelene, or the other commonly used dry cleaning chemicals that killed her.

Doctors wanted to try to fix a lifetime of poisoning, but they were unwilling to say that the chemicals killed her. In private, they would admit that the chemicals she used daily were surely the cause of her suffering and death, but they wanted us to fund cancer research rather than blow the whistle on the true cause. The results of our actions cannot be divorced from our actions any longer! Hoping to stem the rising tide of Cancer without stopping the creation and release of these culprit compounds only points out a mass hallucination or nationwide (worldwide?) psychosis.

We have plenty of evidence on the hundreds of compounds that are killing us. We just don't have the will to protect ourselves from the damage that they cause. Since we have a history of looking the other way, these chemicals and compounds are not even questioned, taken into custody, or locked up forever to prevent future deaths.

I often wonder why we wear pink ribbons, walk or ride our bikes to fund "finding a cure", when there is more than enough evidence to ban these substances outright. It takes a fraction of the will needed to change public policy to wear a ribbon, to give a dollar (or hundreds) or to walk or ride a bike. Personally, we all get to prioritize what is important to us, what we are willing to do or work toward, but we don't get to decide which of our friends and loved-ones will be taken from us by Cancer, or when. The pain and anguish is always the same. If we all made concerted efforts to reduce our dependence on these vile killers, it would go a long way to saving our friends and family from early, and immensely painful death. Even "Cancer-survivors" go through living hell. Living under the cloud of remission brings it's own terror and no one should have to live with that either. We need to spend our time educating ourselves about where these carcinogens come from, who stands to gain from their use, and why we have not realized our own part in their creation and distribution. Rather than just taking (absorbing) our unfair share of these offenders, we need to treat them as the killers they are. Stop accepting death as the wages of business as usual, ask the hard questions, and act with the knowledge that humans are more important that some fool's pocketbook.