Omerta — the code of silence — is not just motivated by abstract loyalty to the Mob. It’s also motivated by the fear of reprisal if you speak out — anything from lethal vengeance to losing your possibly lucrative place in the Organisation.

“[…] a slim survey of female war reporters [was] published two years ago by the International News Safety Institute, based in Brussels. Of the twenty-nine respondents who took part, more than half reported sexual harassment on the job. Two said they had experienced sexual abuse. But even when the abuse is rape, few correspondents tell anyone, even friends. The shame runs so deep - and the fear of being pulled off an assignment, especially in a time of shrinking budgets, is so strong - that no one wants intimate violations to resound in a newsroom.”

What does the resignation of Paul Wolfowitz from the World Bank helm mean?
What does the flat-earth commentary of NASA spokesman David Mould on global warming mean?
There is right now an Iranian hostage crisis. Can anyone describe this and explain what it really means?
The White House and others are now discussing a “South Korean” relation […]

an essay by Derrick Jensen
I’m scared to write this essay, scared to have it published, scared it will be read by police officers or customs agents, scared that the next time I’m stopped for some traffic violation or the next time I try to cross a border, some police officer or customs agent will remember […]

Hit-and-run notes…
Invasive Species (responding to earlier discussion)… reading Sandor Katz’ very important book, The Revolution Will Not Be Microwaved (sent my way by De — thanks again and again), it turns out that the one most feared hereabouts, chickweed, turns out to be edible, highly nutritious (a vitamin pack), and medicinal.
Native plants… I understand the […]

This link to a recent article by Henry C. K. Liu explains (albeit in the arcana of high finance) what a liquidity crisis is; and where it is likely to lead… soon.  What does that mean for us?  It means get as independent as we can, as soon as we can, of the financial-industrial grid.  […]

Feminism and Ecology: A Matter of Survival

Individual vs Community Self-Sufficiency

A Community Garden on Town Land

These three recent stories at IA all hinge on sustainability, bio-ethics, and community. In essence they all suggest — from different angles — that the “macho solo survivalist” tradition is a mere boyish fantasy, and that practical survival across the event horizon of Peak Oil and climate change depends largely on challenging those fantasies and preferring the option of building egalitarian communities.

The total agricultural land of the European Union is barely sufficient to cover 30 percent of their current needs for fuel but not their future needs that will probably be greater. In the United States, the satisfaction of their current demand for fossil fuels would require the use of 121 percent of all their agricultural land for agrifuels.

Consequently, the supply of agrifuels will have to come from the South, from capitalism’s poor and neocolonial periphery. Mathematics does not lie: neither the United States nor the European Union have available land to support an increase in food production and an expansion of the production of agrifuels at the same time.

[Hat tip to Charles B for this excellent summary of a scary situation]

More than once, we have remarked here about the emerging
“national” consciousness of the nascent Latin@ movemen tin the US; and of its potentially tectonic consequences. Bradblog (a commercially successful whitelib site) has posted some stunning footage of this state-sponsored xenophobic terror, featuring Jonathan Mann’s riskily-acquired footage, the that is a must-see.

This was too good to leave at a disappearing comments section. -SG
From James M:
No one enjoys writing cover letters to prospective employers, so out of the kindness of my heart I decided to make one for all of you, to serve as a template. I hope you find this useful:
Dear Potential Employer,
I was recently […]

Here’s some food politics.
Farmers fight back against free trade
By Walden Bello
The 20th century was a terrible blight on small farmers everywhere. In both wealthy capitalist economies and in socialist countries, farmers paid a heavy price for industrialization. In advanced capitalist countries like the United States, a deadly combination of economies of scale, capital-intensive technology and […]