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Earthfamilyalpha Content IV

2008-04-05T06:54:00.000-07:00

Science

Climate Change

This Night will End / Stern Times / A Hard Winter Waits / The Age of Ignorance / The Grasshopper Nite / The Seeds of Corruption / The Last Laugh / The Crossroads / The Crossroads / The War on Truth / The Climate Change Trials / A Change in Weather / The Same Crew / North Pole Control / The Flying Man / The Firestorm / Become the Change / The Democracy Crisis / A Willing Spirit / Raise the Bar / Antarctic Ice Collapse / Common Sense / The Real / The Approaching Storm / Think it Through / Hansen's Solution / The Balloon of Perception / Awaiting the Awakening / Our Conundrum / When the Canary Died / Bali High / Energy and Freedom

Resource Depletion

Plain Old Scary / Territorial Integrity / Head over Heels / Bad to the Bone / No Blood for Oil? / Future Scenarios / Moving Fast / It's not the Oil / Fermi's Paradox / The Dragon is Furious / The 38th Time / Noah's Seed Ark / Water World / A Modern World / Our Core Function / Make Oil with the Sunshine / The Doubling Time / Failure to Communicate / The Great Relearning

Technology

One of These Days / The Caravan Passes On / The Final Slipper Falls / Plug in Hybrid Implementation Plan / Alive or Dead? / Change I can Believe In / Harvest the Bounty / The Third Wave / A Better Place / Nothing Less Will Do / Intelligent Conversation / We Can Build It / The Ecology of Man / The Electric Gallon of Gas / Worlds Largest Windfarm / The Miracle before the Menace / More of the Future / Cheaper than Coal / The Naked Economist / Stupid Free / Race for the Sun / World Class Solar / Transformation Optics / The Solid State Revolution / A National Solar Plan / Opportunity Knocks / The French Engineer / The Planetary Patriot / The Central Organizing Principle / Our One True Source / Where you used to be /The Lexicon Electric /Google It /

Philosophy

Personal

Lipstick on a Pig / Simplicity, Patience, and Compassion / Liberty and Justice for All / Thinking Beings Who Feel / August 9 and Us / Somebody Else / Endings are Beginnings / How the Light Gets in. / Beyond Windows / Jeremiah and the Mare / Ride my Stick Pony / Grace / The Moon in Mars / Christmas In Prison /The Good Samaritan / Where you used to be / Another Mountain / Songs About Friendship

Political

President Elect / Uranus in Pisces / GOTV / Poll of Polls / Temperament and Judgement / The Other Joe / A Weatherman / The Ugly Face of Fear / Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics / Liberty and Justice for All / Speech to Nowhere / Executive Experience / It's About Us / The Transformer Society / The Propaganda Surge / Stick the Fork In / Wag the Dog / Hell on Earth / Marshall Plan: Iraq, Palestine, Sudan / Weimar America / Change That Too / 100 in 10 / Admit It / The Wrong Stuff / The Texas Taliban / Too Much to Ask? / The Seeds We Sow / Social Epidemics / The Next Paradigm / The Disarmaments Industry / The Dark Side / A More Perfect Union / Metastrategies / A Delegate Balance / The Kitchen Stink / Election Results Revealed / Polls and Polling / Eleven Eleven / The New Newspeak / Leaders and Reflectors / Super Fat Tuesday / A Feminist Take on Hillary / A Better Country / Winners and Losers / The Train that Arrives / Fast Money Boats / Obama and Iowa / Blowback / It's the Season / The Sword Doctrine / Out There / President Edwards

Environmental

Yikes it's Ike / The Real Ground Zero / The Real Shock and Awe / Alive or Dead? / Change I can Believe In / The Fog of Uncertainty / The Worth of Us All / The Laws of Sustainability / Live where we live / Learning to Count / The Sanctity of Place

Economic

Magical Thinking / Rail On / The Black Swan / Is It Safe Yet? / The Capitalist Oligarchy / The October Surprise / The Stupid Economy / Leaders on the Hilltop / Agflation / Peak Profit / Wayland's Chits / The Truth of the Lies

Poetry

The America We Want To Be / Joe Blow / GOP and Women / Coloring / Bang Bang Bang / Baghdad Poet: Soheil Najm / Noise / Day in the Life of a Poet: Baghdad / Tangled up in Blue / New Wings / Eulogy for 4000 Neighborhood Kids / Put A Little Love In Your Heart / Thanal Online: C. P. Aboobacker / Ali Bilir: from Migration Ballads / International Women's Day 08 / Another World Is Possible / Tearful Awakening / Rise Up / Iraqi Poet: Siham Jabbar / Sadiq Assaieg: This is Baghdad / Zebra: Close Up and Vast / Iraqi Poet: Mohammed al-Nassar / Love In a World At War / New Year's Day, 08 / Oh / Iraqi Poet: Mohammed Mazloom / Iraqi poet: Faliha Hassan / Poems from Iraq / Pie / Giant At the End

Fiction

The Real Shock and Awe / Preserve the People / The Ten Suggestions

Culture

Every Day is Scary / Smart Talk for Dumb Times / Movements / Peak Civilization / Come Together / April Fool / The Real News / White Paint / Aztlán: Who's An Immigrant? / The Good President / On the Death of Raul Salinas / The Farmer in the Dell / My Favorite Holiday / Manufactured Landscapes /Learning to Count / The Sanctity of Place / Cop Calls 911

The World

We are the World / Gustav Moving West? / Prayer for Georgia / The Place of Women / It's the Bourse of course / Hometown Baghdad / Fullering Around / Mind the Gap / See the Same Way / The Insurrection /

Earthfamily

The Past is Prologue / Intelligent Conversation / Foundational Beliefs for a Respectful Society / One Flower at a Time / Earthling / The Fourth Year

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2007-05-20T14:04:00.000-07:00

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Earthfamilyalpha Content III

2007-01-15T13:50:00.000-08:00

Science

Climate Change

Halocide / Abrupt and Irreversible / Branding the Halo / The Global Plan / The Season of Change / Overcoming Paralysis / A Rolling Stone / Fighting the Fire / The End of the Holocene / The 11th hour / Much Ado About Something / Act As If It Is / The Albedo Effect / Your Pledge / 100 Years of Science / Petrol to the Fire / In Imminent Peril / Doffing the Cap / Change to Preserve / I just ate a G 8 / Gonu Rocks the Boats / Crossed Fingers / The Tenacity of Mendacity / The Pod People / Carbon Scams / Real Know How / The Fall of the Titans / The Disease is the Cure / Eight Billion / Frisbees and Flatulence / Mr. Gore goes to DC / The Swindling of the Earth / The Real Realism / Step it Up! / The Moving Scale / Do You, Mr. Jones / Climate Change Theater / World Climate Accord / A Fighting Chance / The Window /Frozen in Time /Evolving Ourselves / Climate Premiums /The Good Explosion / The Final Verdict / Tick Tock / The Year of Feedback / Santa's Ski / Food Chains / The Culturotomy / Bush v Gore II

Resource Depletion

The Worst Case / High as a Barrel of Oil / Plateau Oil / A Scenario to Ponder / Your Money or Your Life / A New Place in Time / A Bowl of Porridge / A Curious Phenomenon / Better Clothes / The Cave of our Fears / The Better Outcome / The Myopia of More / The End of Everything / Portland Plans for Peak / Get it Together / Happily Motoring / The Plausible Scenario / It's Now, Now / Without our Boat / The Challenge / Beyond Purview

Technology

A Recovering Panglossian / Limp, Lame, and Spineless / The Solar Bloom / As the New Rushes In / The Solar Reality / Terra Firma Forming / Good Walk Scores / Virtual Flying / The Nuclear Mirage / It Speaks for Itself /Our Giant Reactor /Uranium Savages / Some Day Sun Day / Riding the Caboose / Flying in the Air / Wise Use / Reversible PV / Deploy, Develop, Evolve / The Mainstream / The Silver Bullet / Vision 2020 / Photonic Plastic Peace / The Rock Burners / The Photonic Energy Web / Hydrogen Hype / Good News, Bad News / A More Perfect Union / Coal is Toast / The Light That Surrounds Us / The Clean Coal Myth / The Earthship /Energy Vision / Seed Pods / Perma Principles / Ultra Cap Wrap / The A F V / Earth's Xmas List / Energy and Light

Philosophy

Personal

A Scary Thing / Being Here / The Pathless Land / What Goes Up / Face the Light / How Peace Comes / The Time Machine / The Fields of Our Fathers / Ride the Wind / Truly the Beginning / The Change That Comes / The Naked Eye / Buddha Mind Bubbha Mind / A day in the Life / It's Been Crappy Before / The Tao of Climate Change / The Whispering Hours / The Second Attention / The Observer is the Observed / La Paz / Our New Hat / Freedom from the Known / We see what we are / The There There / It's the Season / Sea of Light / The Rushing / Contradiction Diction

Political

Reap the Whirlwind / Fighting the Frame / The Stalking Horse /These are the stakes. / Introducing the President / A Strong Dark Shadow / Simply Remarkable / The Art of Conversation /Earth Pledge / Masters of War / Mercy At Last / Blind on Blind / Good History is not Was / Fast-track Hacked / Plenty of Blame / A Platform for Reason / Its a Bad Joke / Foolish Wise Men / Let's Find Out / Peace on Earth Day / Notes on Nationalism / Strong Winds / The Long Shadow / The Green Enlightenment / Carbon Nation / Pressure Change / Toadie Speaks /The Ride /The Mouse that Roars / The Imminent Threat / Peace on Earth / Losers Weepers / Let US Begin

Poetry

Bridges of Words / Global Is Local / Soheil Najm: Iraqi Poet / Giant in the Hood / Ali Bilir: Turkish Poet / For my Palestinian sisters / Lost Under Church / Naming the Glee / Is this Love / Ghettoetry / Crazy Listening / Sohrab Sepehri, poetry and art / Women For A Better World / Being A Nut / Big Circle / The Universe is Hear to Now Us / Labor Day Parable / Luke / Asra’a / Flying Pools / Swimming in Baghdad / The Thirst of Water / Lady Bird / Herding Cats / River Friend / Oh By The Way / Graveyard Universe / What Profit / Moment finds Place / Wandering Stranger / Unbomb Iraq / Earth Day Possibilities / Respite / Wars Are Not Solutions / Light and Worship and Us / Flight Of the Bumblebee / Lecto divina / Line in Water / Endebbe Road, cont. / Phoenix On Our Street / White Crosses / Three Iranian Women Poets / Screaming at the Robot / Mosul / What We Honor / Prayer for the Abuser / Or Not /Peace Train / Last Act / Peace Surge / The Age of Quan Yin / Send the Bush Twins / Diving into the Future / Blind Executioner / New Strategy / Apology / Unbomb Iraq / International - Law? / Family /Pie

The World

When the Wind Blows / Chinese Moon / Iraq Moratorium / The Fifth World / Remembering the Future / Live Earth / Earth Food / Et Tu Gonu / Mother Noos / Where Things Are / Oh Brother / Blue Hole

Culture

No One is the Wiser / National Guard: Where? / Theory not Fact / Tilted Playing Field / No End in Sight / $6,200,000 Screw Driver / CHF and Renewable Energy / Charles Hillyer Freeman / Grace Paley / Dr. Strangelove / What Do YOU Think? / With God on their Side / The Desert Rainbow / So Sick of It / Floods and PUDs / The Hate Makers / Vivoleum is People / Bold Steps and Big Ideas / The Nays / The Bank Tower / Stopping Shopping / Remaking Society / A Light Goes On / Ironic / Cultural Transformation / Wheel of History / Light to Light / Pax Americana / Culture of Intransigence / New McCarthyism / Every Religion
.
Fiction

World on Fire / Demon Democracy / The Glory of War / Turning Blue / The Tunnel at the End / The Purloined Post / The Cool of the Heat / Learning to Fly / The Mugwump / The Day of the Heart / A Galactic Tactic

Earthfamily

Cyberbeings and Cybersapiens / The Alpha Effect / A Giant Leap / Beyond Borders / Social Epidemics / The Great Turning / Tools or Toys / Circle the Sun / Knowing what we Know /Triangular Transformation / A New Social Contract / Publicans / Memorial Day Blues / Space and Time / Our Joys and Our Tears / Each Beat of the Heart / Tomorrow is Today / The Planetary Cortex / Place and Space / The Light of Day

HOME

Muna Hamzeh

2006-12-11T12:35:00.000-08:00

Muna Hamzeh is a Palestinian-American journalist who's been writing about Palestinian affairs since 1985. She is the author of Refugees in Our Own Land: Chronicles From a Palestinian Refugee Camp in Bethlehem (Pluto Press, September 2001) and a contributing writer in The New Intifada: Resisting Israel's Apartheid (Verso Books, September 2001).

In the mid 1980s, Hamzeh wrote about the Palestinian issue from Washington, DC. At the end of 1988, she moved to Palestine, where she lived in Dheisheh Refugee Camp in Bethlehem and continued her work as a journalist.

Over the years, Hamzeh's articles on Palestinian affairs have appeared in Middle East International (London), the Jerusalem Quarterly File (Jerusalem), Palestine Report (Jerusalem), Ha'aretz (Tel Aviv), Jerusalem Star (Amman), The Economist (London), Ad-Dustour (Amman), al-Fajr English Weekly (Jerusalem), the Christian Science Monitor (Boston), Jerusalem Report (Jerusalem), the Muslim (Islamabad), The Saudi Gazette (Riyadh), New Outlook Magazine (Tel Aviv), The Link (Washington), The Austin Chronicle, BBC-Online and a score of other publications.

She is a contributor to The Layers of Our Seeing, along with Susan Bright and Alan Pogue. The fourth edition will be available December 9, 2006.

The Great Turning

2006-08-03T09:06:00.000-07:00

The Great Turning: From Empire to Earth Community
By David Korten
Yes! Magazine
Summer 2006 Issue

By what name will future generations know our time?

Will they speak in anger and frustration of the time of the Great Unraveling, when profligate consumption exceeded Earth's capacity to sustain and led to an accelerating wave of collapsing environmental systems, violent competition for what remained of the planet's resources, and a dramatic dieback of the human population? Or will they look back in joyful celebration on the time of the Great Turning, when their forebears embraced the higher-order potential of their human nature, turned crisis into opportunity, and learned to live in creative partnership with one another and Earth?

A Defining Choice

We face a defining choice between two contrasting models for organizing human affairs. Give them the generic names Empire and Earth Community. Absent an understanding of the history and implications of this choice, we may squander valuable time and resources on efforts to preserve or mend cultures and institutions that cannot be fixed and must be replaced.

Empire organizes by domination at all levels, from relations among nations to relations among family members. Empire brings fortune to the few, condemns the majority to misery and servitude, suppresses the creative potential of all, and appropriates much of the wealth of human societies to maintain the institutions of domination.

Earth Community, by contrast, organizes by partnership, unleashes the human potential for creative co-operation, and shares resources and surpluses for the good of all. Supporting evidence for the possibilities of Earth Community comes from the findings of quantum physics, evolutionary biology, developmental psychology, anthropology, archaeology, and religious mysticism. It was the human way before Empire; we must make a choice to re-learn how to live by its principles.

Developments distinctive to our time are telling us that Empire has reached the limits of the exploitation that people and Earth will sustain. A mounting perfect economic storm born of a convergence of peak oil, climate change, and an imbalanced US economy dependent on debts it can never repay is poised to bring a dramatic restructuring of every aspect of modern life. We have the power to choose, however, whether the consequences play out as a terminal crisis or an epic opportunity. The Great Turning is not a prophecy. It is a possibility.

A Turn From Life

According to cultural historian Riane Eisler, early humans evolved within a cultural and institutional frame of Earth Community. They organized to meet their needs by cooperating with life rather than by dominating it. Then some 5,000 years ago, beginning in Mesopotamia, our ancestors made a tragic turn from Earth Community to Empire. They turned away from a reverence for the generative power of life - represented by female gods or nature spirits - to a reverence for hierarchy and the power of the sword - represented by distant, usually male, gods. The wisdom of the elder and the priestess gave way to the arbitrary rule of the powerful, often ruthless, king.

Paying the Price

The peoples of the dominant human societies lost their sense of attachment to the living earth, and societies became divided between the rulers and the ruled, exploiters and exploited. The brutal competition for power created a relentless play-or-die, rule-or-be-ruled dynamic of violence and oppression and served to elevate the most ruthless to the highest positions of power. Since the fateful turn, the major portion of the resources available to human societies has been diverted from meeting the needs of life to supporting the military forces, prisons, palaces, temples, and patronage for retainers and propagandists on which the system of domination in turn depends. Great civilizations built by ambitious rulers fell to successive waves of corruption and conquest.

The primary institutional form of Empire has morphed from the city-state to the nation-state to the global corporation, but the underlying pattern of domination remains. It is axiomatic: for a few to be on top, many must be on the bottom. The powerful control and institutionalize the processes by which it will be decided who enjoys the privilege and who pays the price, a choice that commonly results in arbitrarily excluding from power whole groups of persons based on race and gender.

Troubling Truths

Herein lies a crucial insight. If we look for the source of the social pathologies increasingly evident in our culture, we find they have a common origin in the dominator relations of Empire that have survived largely intact in spite of the democratic reforms of the past two centuries. The sexism, racism, economic injustice, violence, and environmental destruction that have plagued human societies for 5,000 years, and have now brought us to the brink of a potential terminal crisis, all flow from this common source. Freeing ourselves from these pathologies depends on a common solution - replacing the underlying dominator cultures and institutions of Empire with the partnership cultures and institutions of Earth Community. Unfortunately, we cannot look to imperial powerholders to lead the way.

Beyond Denial

History shows that as empires crumble the ruling elites become ever more corrupt and ruthless in their drive to secure their own power - a dynamic now playing out in the United States. We Americans base our identity in large measure on the myth that our nation has always embodied the highest principles of democracy, and is devoted to spreading peace and justice to the world.

But there has always been tension between America's high ideals and its reality as a modern version of Empire. The freedom promised by the Bill of Rights contrasts starkly with the enshrinement of slavery elsewhere in the original articles of the Constitution. The protection of property, an idea central to the American dream, stands in contradiction to the fact that our nation was built on land taken by force from Native Americans. Although we consider the vote to be the hallmark of our democracy, it took nearly 200 years before that right was extended to all citizens.

Americans acculturated to the ideals of America find it difficult to comprehend what our rulers are doing, most of which is at odds with notions of egalitarianism, justice, and democracy. Within the frame of historical reality, it is perfectly clear: they are playing out the endgame of Empire, seeking to consolidate power through increasingly authoritarian and anti-democratic policies.

Wise choices necessarily rest on a foundation of truth. The Great Turning depends on awakening to deep truths long denied. Cultural Turning

The Great Turning begins with a cultural and spiritual awakening - a turning in cultural values from money and material excess to life and spiritual fulfillment, from a belief in our limitations to a belief in our possibilities, and from fearing our differences to rejoicing in our diversity. It requires reframing the cultural stories by which we define our human nature, purpose, and possibilities.

Economic Turning

The values shift of the cultural turning leads us to redefine wealth - to measure it by the health of our families, communities, and natural environment. It leads us from policies that raise those at the top to policies that raise those at the bottom, from hoarding to sharing, from concentrated to distributed ownership, and from the rights of ownership to the responsibilities of stewardship.

Political Turning

The economic turning creates the necessary conditions for a turn from a one-dollar, one-vote democracy to a one-person, one-vote democracy, from passive to active citizenship, from competition for individual advantage to cooperation for mutual advantage, from retributive justice to restorative justice, and from social order by coercion to social order by mutual responsibility and accountability.

Global Awakening

Empire's true believers maintain that the inherent flaws in our human nature lead to a natural propensity to greed, violence, and lust for power. Social order and material progress depend, therefore, on imposing elite rule and market discipline to channel these dark tendencies to positive ends. Psychologists who study the developmental pathways of the individual consciousness observe a more complex reality. Just as we grow up in our physical capacities and potential given proper physical nourishment and exercise, we also grow up in the capacities and potential of our consciousness, given proper social and emotional nourishment and exercise.

Over a lifetime, those who enjoy the requisite emotional support traverse a pathway from the narcissistic, undifferentiated magical consciousness of the newborn to the fully mature, inclusive, and multidimensional spiritual consciousness of the wise elder. The lower, more narcissistic, orders of consciousness are perfectly normal for young children, but become sociopathic in adults and are easily encouraged and manipulated by advertisers and demagogues. The higher orders of consciousness are a necessary foundation of mature democracy. Perhaps Empire's greatest tragedy is that its cultures and institutions systematically suppress our progress to the higher orders of consciousness.

Given that Empire has prevailed for 5,000 years, a turn from Empire to Earth Community might seem a hopeless fantasy if not for the evidence from values surveys that a global awakening to the higher levels of human consciousness is already underway. This awakening is driven in part by a communications revolution that defies elite censorship and is breaking down the geographical barriers to intercultural exchange. The consequences of the awakening are manifest in the civil rights, women's, environmental, peace, and other social movements. These movements in turn gain energy from the growing leadership of women, communities of color, and indigenous peoples, and from a shift in the demographic balance in favor of older age groups more likely to have achieved the higher-order consciousness of the wise elder.

It is fortuitous that we humans have achieved the means to make a collective choice as a species to free ourselves from Empire's seemingly inexorable compete-or-die logic at the precise moment we face the imperative to do so. The speed at which institutional and technological advances have created possibilities wholly new to the human experience is stunning.

Just over 60 years ago, we created the United Nations, which, for all its imperfections, made it possible for the first time for representatives of all the world's nations and people to meet in a neutral space to resolve differences through dialogue rather than force of arms.

Less than 50 years ago, our species ventured into space to look back and see ourselves as one people sharing a common destiny on a living space ship.

In little more than 10 years our communications technologies have given us the ability, should we choose to use it, to link every human on the planet into a seamless web of nearly costless communication and cooperation.

Already our new technological capability has made possible the interconnection of the millions of people who are learning to work as a dynamic, self-directing social organism that transcends boundaries of race, class, religion, and nationality and functions as a shared conscience of the species. We call this social organism global civil society. On February 15, 2003, it brought more than 10 million people to the streets of the world's cities, towns, and villages to call for peace in the face of the buildup to the US invasion of Iraq. They accomplished this monumental collective action without a central organization, budget, or charismatic leader through social processes never before possible on such a scale. This was but a foretaste of the possibilities for radically new forms of partnership organization now within our reach.

Break the Silence, End the Isolation, Change the Story

We humans live by stories. The key to making a choice for Earth Community is recognizing that the foundation of Empire's power does not lie in its instruments of physical violence. It lies in Empire's ability to control the stories by which we define ourselves and our possibilities in order to perpetuate the myths on which the legitimacy of the dominator relations of Empire depend. To change the human future, we must change our defining stories.

Story Power

For 5,000 years, the ruling class has cultivated, rewarded, and amplified the voices of those storytellers whose stories affirm the righteousness of Empire and deny the higher-order potentials of our nature that would allow us to live with one another in peace and cooperation. There have always been those among us who sense the possibilities of Earth Community, but their stories have been marginalized or silenced by Empire's instruments of intimidation. The stories endlessly repeated by the scribes of Empire become the stories most believed. Stories of more hopeful possibilities go unheard or unheeded and those who discern the truth are unable to identify and support one another in the common cause of truth telling. Fortunately, the new communications technologies are breaking this pattern. As truth-tellers reach a wider audience, the myths of Empire become harder to maintain.

The struggle to define the prevailing cultural stories largely defines contemporary cultural politics in the United States. A far-right alliance of elitist corporate plutocrats and religious theocrats has gained control of the political discourse in the United States not by force of their numbers, which are relatively small, but by controlling the stories by which the prevailing culture defines the pathway to prosperity, security, and meaning. In each instance, the far right's favored versions of these stories affirm the dominator relations of Empire.

The imperial prosperity story says that an eternally growing economy benefits everyone. To grow the economy, we need wealthy people who can invest in enterprises that create jobs. Thus, we must support the wealthy by cutting their taxes and eliminating regulations that create barriers to accumulating wealth. We must also eliminate welfare programs in order to teach the poor the value of working hard at whatever wages the market offers.

The imperial security story tells of a dangerous world, filled with criminals, terrorists, and enemies. The only way to insure our safety is through major expenditures on the military and the police to maintain order by physical force.

The imperial meaning story reinforces the other two, featuring a God who rewards righteousness with wealth and power and mandates that they rule over the poor who justly suffer divine punishment for their sins.

These stories all serve to alienate us from the community of life and deny the positive potentials of our nature, while affirming the legitimacy of economic inequality, the use of physical force to maintain imperial order, and the special righteousness of those in power.

It is not enough, as many in the United States are doing, to debate the details of tax and education policies, budgets, war, and trade agreements in search of a positive political agenda. Nor is it enough to craft slogans with broad mass appeal aimed at winning the next election or policy debate. We must infuse the mainstream culture with stories of Earth Community. As the stories of Empire nurture a culture of domination, the stories of Earth Community nurture a culture of partnership. They affirm the positive potentials of our human nature and show that realizing true prosperity, security, and meaning depends on creating vibrant, caring, interlinked communities that support all persons in realizing their full humanity. Sharing the joyful news of our human possibilities through word and action is perhaps the most important aspect of the Great Work of our time.

Changing the prevailing stories in the United States may be easier to accomplish than we might think. The apparent political divisions notwithstanding, US polling data reveal a startling degree of consensus on key issues. Eighty-three percent of Americans believe that as a society the United States is focused on the wrong priorities. Supermajorities want to see greater priority given to children, family, community, and a healthy environment. Americans also want a world that puts people ahead of profits, spiritual values ahead of financial values, and international cooperation ahead of international domination. These Earth Community values are in fact widely shared by both conservatives and liberals.

Our nation is on the wrong course not because Americans have the wrong values. It is on the wrong course because of remnant imperial institutions that give unaccountable power to a small alliance of right-wing extremists who call themselves conservative and claim to support family and community values, but whose preferred economic and social policies constitute a ruthless war against children, families, communities, and the environment.

The distinctive human capacity for reflection and intentional choice carries a corresponding moral responsibility to care for one another and the planet. Indeed, our deepest desire is to live in loving relationships with one another. The hunger for loving families and communities is a powerful, but latent, unifying force and the potential foundation of a winning political coalition dedicated to creating societies that support every person in actualizing his or her highest potential.

In these turbulent and often frightening times, it is important to remind ourselves that we are privileged to live at the most exciting moment in the whole of the human experience. We have the opportunity to turn away from Empire and to embrace Earth Community as a conscious collective choice. We are the ones we have been waiting for.

David Korten is co-founder and board chair of the Positive Futures Network.

This article draws from his newly released book, The Great Turning: From Empire to Earth Community.

Go to www.yesmagazine.org/greatturning for book excerpts, related articles, David's talks, and resources for action.

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What I am Watching

2006-07-15T17:09:00.000-07:00

What I am watching in Lebanon each day is an outrage
By Robert Fisk
Mdeirej, Central Lebanon
Published: 15 July 2006

The beautiful viaduct that soars over the mountainside here has become a " terrorist" target. The Israelis attacked the international highway from Beirut to Damascus just after dawn yesterday and dropped a bomb clean through the central span of the Italian-built bridge a symbol of Lebanon's co-operation with the European Union sending concrete crashing hundreds of feet down into the valley beneath. It was the pride of the murdered ex-prime minister Rafik Hariri, the face of a new, emergent Lebanon. And now it is a " terrorist" target.

once I rejoined the highway, and found a 50ft crater with an old woman climbing wearily down the side on her hands and knees, trying to reach her home in the valley that glimmered to the east. This too had become a " terrorist" target.

church, splintering windows and crashing balconies down on to parked cars. This too had become a "terrorist" target. One man was brought out shrieking with pain, covered in blood. Another " terrorist" target.

All the way to the airport were broken bridges, holed roads. All these were "terrorist" targets.

At the airport, tongues of fire blossomed into the sky from aircraft fuel storage tanks, darkening west Beirut. These too were now "terrorist" targets. At Jiyeh, the Israelis attacked the power station. This too was a " terrorist" target.

Yet when I drove to the actual headquarters of the Hizbollah, a tall building in Haret Hreik, it was totally undamaged. Only last night did the Israelis manage to hit it. So can the Lebanese be forgiven can anyone here be forgiven for believing that the Israelis have a greater interest in destroying Lebanon than they do in their two soldiers?

No wonder Middle East Airlines, the national Lebanese airline, put crews into its four stranded Airbuses at Beirut airport early yesterday and sneaked them out of the country for Amman before the Israelis realised they were under power and leaving.

European politicians have talked about Israel's "disproportionate" response to Wednesday's capture of its soldiers. They are wrong. What I am now watching in Lebanon each day is an outrage. How can there be any excuse any for the 73 dead Lebanese civilians blown apart these past three days? The same applies, of course, to the four Israeli civilians killed by Hizbollah rockets.

But please note the exchange rate of Israeli civilian lives to Lebanese civilian lives now stands at one to more than 15. This does not include two children atomised in their home in Dweir on Thursday whose bodies cannot be found. Their six brothers and sisters were buried yesterday, with their mother and father. Another "terrorist" target. So was a neighbouring family with five children who were also buried yesterday. Another "terrorist" target.

Terrorist, terrorist, terrorist.

There is something perverse about all this, the slaughter and the massive destruction and the self-righteous, constant, cancerous use of the word "terrorist". No, let us not forget that the Hizbollah broke international law, crossed the Israeli border, killed three Israeli soldiers, captured two others and dragged them back through the border fence. It was an act of calculated ruthlessness that should never allow Hizbollah's leader, Hassan Nasrallah, to grin so broadly at his press conference. It has brought unparalleled tragedy to countless innocents in Lebanon. And of course, it has led Hizbollah to fire at least 170 Katyusha rockets into Israel.

But what would happen if the powerless Lebanese government had unleashed air attacks across Israel the last time Israel's troops crossed into Lebanon? What if the Lebanese air force then killed 73 Israeli civilians in bombing raids in Ashkelon, Tel Aviv and Israeli West Jerusalem? What if a Lebanese fighter aircraft bombed Ben Gurion airport?

What if a Lebanese plane destroyed 26 road bridges across Israel? Would it not be called " terrorism"? I rather think it would. But if Israel was the victim, it would probably also be World War Three.

not going to be bombed. It is Lebanon which must be punished.

The Israeli leadership intends to "break" the Hizbollah and destroy its "terrorist cancer".

Really? Do the Israelis really believe they can "break" one of the toughest guerrilla armies in the world? And how? There are real issues here.

Under UN Security Council Resolution 1559 the same resolution that got the Syrian army out of Lebanon the Shia Muslim Hizbollah should have been disarmed. They were not because, if the Lebanese Prime Minister, Fouad Siniora, had tried to do so, the Lebanese army would have had to fight them and the army would almost certainly have broken apart because most Lebanese soldiers are Shia Muslims.

We could see the restarting of the civil war in Lebanon a fact which Nasrallah is cynically aware of but attempts by Siniora and his cabinet colleagues to find a new role for Hizbollah, which has a minister in the government (he is Minister of Labour) foundered. And the greatest danger now is that the Lebanese government will collapse and be replaced by a pro-Syrian government which could reinvite the Syrians back into the country.

So there's a real conundrum to be solved. But it's not going to succeed with the mass bombing of the country by Israel.

Nor the obsession with terrorists, terrorists, terrorists.

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The Liars Paradox

2006-02-04T11:54:00.000-08:00

Here is Jon Stewart on the recent Politburo elections.

Wow, why do all of these guys look like car salesmen?

Actually, I'm rather fond of car salesman.

They are equal opportunity opportunist who will full pop their grandmother,

and then brag about it.

They have transcended right and wrong.

Many many years ago when I was a young ad man,

I decided to work for Car Dealers,

because I knew where I stood with them,

(they were liars)

Then one afternoon, one of them told me,

"You know Max, car dealers always lie."

I was stopped in my tracks.

I knew I heard a modern day version of the Cretan paradox.

The Creton Paradox is a bipolar paradox

Bipolar paradoxs are meta statements (statements that refer to themselves) that result in a self contradiction. The classic bipolar paradox statement is “All Cretons are liars” voiced by a Creton. If the statement is true, then, when applied to the statement, we conclude the Creton lied and, hence, all Cretons are not liars – a clear paradox. "

Statements like,

I am lying now.

This statement is false.

Fall in the same catagory.

So, if all Republicans are liars,

Let's hope that you do not not hear a Republican say that.

For then it will be a paradox.

And then they will be just like the car dealers.

Now, if a Republican is also a car dealer,

we get into some serious metaphysicalities.

It's like trying to figure out if its a worse sin when a priest

uses a rubber.

But the paradox with Republicans is even deeper.

Why would these conservatives be liberal with our finite resources?

Why would these lovers of individual rights support warrentless spying?

Why would these fiscal conservatives be fiscally irresponsible?

Why would they protect life in the womb

and destroy it everywhere else?

Why would they come to Washington to bring integrity,

and instead bring corruption?

Perhaps Bertand Russell has the answer.

Here is the end of his Nobel prize address.

"Much that passes as idealism is disguised hatred or disguised love of power. When you see large masses of men swayed by what appear to be noble motives, it is as well to look below the surface and ask yourself what it is that makes these motives effective. "

For as Lord Acton said,

"Power tends to corrupt, and

absolute power corrupts absolutely."

That may be a paradox,

but it's no lie.

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Earthfamilyalpha Content II

2005-11-19T15:33:00.000-08:00

Science

Bye Bye Birdie / The Truth Outs / Stern Words / Peak a Boo / Deja Voodoo /The Real Gem / Cannons and Fodder /A Stitch in Time / Stay the Same / Stop Your Engines / The Equality of Light / Denial is a River / Addicted to Light / Moving Day / Natural Solar / Giant New Field / The Emerging Reality / Too Hot to Cool / Earth Phone 2 / Technocide / Earth Signs / The Mother List / The Carbon Cops / Nukelar Fools / You do the Math / The Good Stuff /The Door /Business as Usual / National Academies Plead / That Extra Blanket / My Perfect World / The Truth is Back / Nuke the Nukes / The Sun of the Alentejo / Ugly is as Ugly does / That Burning Thing / Case Closed / The Flipping Point / Tale of Two Truths / Coming Together / Culture Change /Emissions Impossible / The Solid State Utility / IPCC Report Leaks / Real Leadership /PC PV's / A Significant Relief / China Syndrome / The Moment that Awaits / Argonon / Bomb Bomb Bomb / For People and Planet / Real Security / Plan Alpha / It's Time Now / Failing to Reform / Building Energy / Uncivil War / Negative Positives / Communicating the Vision / Almost Certainly Correct / The Soylent Seas / Balloon Junkies /Divine Intervention / Ultra Cool Caps / Begin the Beginning / Deep in the Heart / Peak Discovery / Revenge of Gaia / Two More Planets Found / We Are So Screwed / Tiny Crystals, Big Benefits / What You Should Know / Disruption and Distraction / Both Sides Now / Wings / Spherically Perverse / Perversities / Some like it Hot / Mr. Frosty / Climate Terrorist / Survival Kit / Climate Treaty Parties / In This Business / Sustainable Accounting / Hard Core Ice Record / Future Trans / Boundary Layers / Brain Gain / The Luncheon / The Plains Truth / Solar Phenomena! / Peak a Boo / Things to Come / Nanomats

Philosophy

Odd Fellows /The Sacred Balance / The Other Side / The Control Center / Shaking Branches / The Birth / Where Do We Go? / To Duel or Duet / When Winter Comes / Your Best Light / Too Scary / Finding Focus / Freedom From Fear / Furniture Food / The Tubes of Time / The Coin of the Realm / From Empire to Earth / A Culture of Violence / Authoritarian Personalities / The Eyes to See / Between Two Worlds / The Independent Mind / Still in Kansas /The Dragon Below / Decadent Obsessions / As the Romans Say / Graven Images /Prometheus Unbound / The Evolution of Understanding / Knowing Nothing / The Awakened Heart / As a Stone / The Land of the Blind /The Empty Tomb / Knowing and Naming / The Necessary Paradox / Respect. Others. Self. Place. / Be Aware Right Now / Out the Window / Choice C / Another Door / Prescience and Presidents / Churches Condemn US / Wars on Nouns / Break the Bottle / The Liars Paradox / Dancing in the Wind / Secret Weapons / The Deaf Ear / Post Nationalism / On Violence / Arrogance and Disaster / The Peacemakers / The Evening Land / Alli Alli in Free / Terrorful / Our Intended Travels / Only Sky / Justice Delayed / In Ourselves We Trust / For the Future, from the Past / Plan B / A Separate Peace

Poetry

Of a Feather / A Hotter Hole /Slaughter Suits / Pander Blab / Whose Death Squads? / Un-Gerrymandered / Dancing in the Street / Who Benefits? / Into the Deep /Body Snatchers /Tar Sands / El Diablo / Gimmie More Torture! / Wise Use / Satyagraha (Truth Force) / Inside the Train / Uganda / Momentum / Forever August / Arresting Karl Rove / Blogging With the Prez / The Third Brother / Stories We Live By / Sweep Dreams / Don't Buy It / Earth Council / Modern War Speak / Tell Halaf Mother Goddess / Women in Black / Surrounded / Reparations / Middle East School / Everyone's Child / Sleep Baby Sleep / Children of Earth / Weep, and then act / The End of History / Winning / Can We Change? / The Melt Up / Multinational Gunk / Is it Thursday Yet? / Bad Water /Slave Ship / On the Wing / Once in a Blue Moon / Planetary Essences / Bring Our Soldiers Home / Sweet Music / Home Spun / Go There / Scare Mask / Seed Storm / Something there is / Moving / Gifts of our Time / The Day and the Dark / Pie / X / Door Number Two / Origami / Communication / Deconstruction / Have a Cookie

Culture

Johnny Appleseed /Scam and Trade / CO2 Dumping / Drastic Measures /The Reversal / Loathes and Fishes / A Bizarre Thought / Before/After / Suffrage / Holy High Rollers /If We Can / The Lex Gabinia / The True Terror / Upon What Meat? / Speed / Road Rules / Understandistan / Laurie Williams Wajima / Nails / Weekend Energy / Born to Be / Not the Answer / NOLA is US / Healing Nola / The Path of Peace / War on Tepidity / Slam Nation / Snow Hole / The River of No Return / War Story / To Regain our Power / The Ideal Commodity / The Other Side Of the Wall / Going Out / If I was President /La La Land / Of Mice and Men / Boulevards sans Bruit / Falling Water / Energy Ascent / Thank You for Polluting / Weekend Wrap / The Tooth Fairy / A House Divided / Law and Odor /Mammon on Sunday / A Separate Reality / Space Invaders / The Night of the Rana / Down the River / Alien Nation / Righting History / The Posterior Lobotomy /When Peace Breaks Out / Zinni Warrior / Geoilolitics / What the Bleep? / The Velvet Revolution / The Lord's Liars / Oil Crash / HA HA America / High Cost of Low Prices / Community or Sociopathy / The Learning Moment / In the Balance / Utterly Baffled / The Danger Within / Trigger Happy / Darwin's Nightmare / Scapegoats / Powerful Friends / The State of the State / Listening to Friends / Getting it / Blind and Dumb / Protecting our Liberties / Dishonance / The Real Nature / Waiting / Losing the Old Year / Merry Christmas / The Eve of Construction / The Longest Night / He's Making a List . . . / America's Shame / Good Night, Good Luck /The Sense of the House / Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics / Daily Feed /The Touchstone / Matriculation / Orhegoni / Hard Work! / Life of the Party! / Mystery Theatre / The Trickster / Take a Moment

Fiction

Republicans Win /The Third Night / Sporty Prophecy / The World Union / It's Gone / Very Seven / Dark Sun / Secret Decoder Ring / Dreamscape / The Deluge /T with OBL / Dinner with W / At Home / The Sun Bather Riots / The Day Nuclear Died / The Smart Bomb

Earthfamily

A Fall Tide / Transnationalism / Our Being Self / Being Connected / Three Premises / First Take / An Opportunity to Rise / This New World / The Mark of Cain / What It Is /Earth Trustees / Whole Earth Day / Bright Earth / Break Out / Cybercitizens / Beyond Belief / Movements and Leadership / Capitalism or Cooperativism / Take Me to the Mountains / Nuestro Suenos / 404 / Earthfamilyalpha II / Murtha of God

Comments

2005-10-19T08:46:00.000-07:00

This is a back up comments page for earthfamilyalpha.

Make you comments here while we figure out why comments are not responding.

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Susan Bright

2005-09-07T09:24:00.000-07:00

Susan Bright is the author of nineteen books of poetry. She is the editor of Plain View Press which since 1975 has published one-hundred-and-fifty books. Her work as a poet, publisher, activist and educator has taken her all over the United States and abroad. Her most recent book, The Layers of Our Seeing, is a collection of poetry, photographs and essays about peace done in collaboration with photographer Alan Pogue and Middle Eastern journalist, Muna Hamzeh.

Barbarians

2005-05-22T00:12:00.000-07:00

Here is a fine example of civility.

And I guess if its good enough for the Dictator,

It is good enough for the Brits.

This is funny, in a dark, Monty Python sort of way.

Maybe everyone in war should wear their underwear.

According to Bill Maher, these are the New Rules.

And just in case you missed it,

Here is the US Senate getting a rare look

at what truth looks like,

While showing their rears too.

Its about 45 minutes long.

And here is a nice piece from Scott Ritter:

He says,

"George Galloway, the politician in question, stared down the US Senate subcommittee on homeland security and government affairs, and its notoriously partisan chairman Norm Coleman, and blasted as totally unfounded the committee's allegations that he had profited from oil vouchers in exchange for his anti-war stance. He emerged from the hearing victorious. If only more politicians, British and American alike, were able to display such courage in the face of the atmosphere of neoconservative intimidation prevalent in Washington these days.

But mainstream America still seems unable to digest the horrific reality that the MP's testimony underscored: that Senator Coleman's McCarthy-like hearings are but a smoke screen for a crime of horrific proportions. "

Just who are the Barbarians?

Earthfamilyalpha Content

*

Something Happening

2005-05-21T18:16:00.000-07:00

There's something happening here,
what it is ain't exactly clear.
There's a man with a gun over there,
telling me I've got to beware.

I think it's time we stop, children,
what's that sound,
everybody look, what's going down.

There's battle lines are being drawn.
Nobody's right if everybody's wrong.
Young people speaking their minds
are getting so much resistance from behind.

Time we stop, hey, what's that sound,
everybody look, what's going down.

What a field day for the heat.
A thousand people in the street
singing songs and carrying signs,
mostly say "hooray for our side."

It's time we stop, hey, what's that sound,
everybody look, what's going down.

Paranoia strikes deep.
Into your life it will creep.
It starts when you're always afraid.
Step outta line, the man come and take you away.

We better stop, hey, what's that sound,
everybody look, what's going down.
We better stop, hey, what's that sound,
everybody look, what's going down.
We better stop, hey, what's that sound,
everybody look, what's going down.
We better stop, hey, what's that sound,
everybody look, what's going down…

Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young

Earthfamilyalpha Content

Earthfamily Principals

2005-05-21T18:06:00.000-07:00

These posts over the last few weeks and months reflect many of the principles of Earthfamilyalpha.

Here are the ones that seem really important.

The Earthfamily embraces cooperation over competition.

The Earthfamily believes in the efficacy of nonviolence.

The Earthfamily calls for corporate punishment that fits the crime.

We believe that people can use the new communication tools found in the internet and in our advanced communication devices to create new inventions of social contract that can transcend the geographic state-not replace it or rebel against it, but transcend it.

We believe that as we approach a technological singularity, we will need these bonds to maintain our place on the planet as free individuals capable of competing with powerful government controls and corporate hegemony.

The Earthfamily believes that declining oil reserves and Peak Oil will force the geographic states to compete for the remaining reserves, and thus create global uncertainty and stress for most of the developed and developing world.

We see that Climate Change will further exacerbate this uncertainty and this stress. We believe that Accelerated Technological Change will create opportunities and challenges that must be managed in creative and peaceful ways.

The Earthfamily sees renewable energy and hydrogen as the fuel and energy carrying system of the future. We imagine nanobased power paints that convert photonic energy to electronic energy at prices that will break the existing energy markets.

We believe that an advanced solar hydrogen economy can be created that can change everything if we will only allow that change to occur.

We know that a political system that is dominated by the corporate interests will in fact, in a democracy, represent those interests who dominate. This is not evil, it is economics.

We have come to realize that we must create a new global family that can respond to our needs, our hopes, and our right to the pursuit of happiness. We are aware that we are all crewmembers of Spaceship Earth.

We respect the boundaries of geographic states, but we know that they are archaic relics of a mind and consciousness that is rapidly advancing to global awareness.

We believe that humankind is capable of living in an awakened state which will in time, bring the promise of true peace and prosperity into our lives and communities.

We hold that the promise of a bright tomorrow can only be reached by letting go of the past. We believe in the dignity of humankind and in the oneness of our creation.

We know that it is indeed a miracle and a gift.

And it is ours to love and cherish.

Welcome

2005-05-21T17:55:00.000-07:00

This is the alternative site for earthfamilyalpha

I am working on getting the site active again.

In the meantime, here I am.