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permaculture - Re: [permaculture] Water-Contamination, Soil-Contamination, Law-strategies -Remedial actions-US.TX, US.NC

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  • From: Karen Potts <karen_potts@yahoo.com>
  • To: permaculture <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [permaculture] Water-Contamination, Soil-Contamination, Law-strategies -Remedial actions-US.TX, US.NC
  • Date: Wed, 13 Jun 2007 11:34:39 -0700 (PDT)

Tommy wrote:

In /Ishmael/, Daniel Quinn says we have no choice in a society that guards
the food supply.

Not too many people I've mentioned this book to have ever heard of it.
Thanks for making reference to this book and Quinn. It is one of my all time
favorites.

Karen


Tommy Tolson <healinghawk@earthlink.net> wrote:
Kenneth Benway wrote:
> On one final note, one of the obstacles that have faced litigation
> efforts in cases like this is that corporate (fictitious) entities are
> treated as persons under the law, this notion in my view is insane. If
> you've watched the documentary "The Corporation" one of the final
> conclusions reached is that we need a constitutional amendment
> abolishing these corporate rights, then we can really start making some
> headway with these polluting bastards!
>
It is certain that allowing corporations to keep the rights of natural
persons that they stole is a continuing monumental mistake. We are in
Iraq because the owners of a lot of corporations saw a way to make a lot
of money by kicking a country when it was down, they lobbied for war,
they are Dubya's true constituency, and Dubya is the sort of coward who
kicks a country when it's down. /Unequal Protection/ by Thom Hartmann
tells the sordid story of how a few sleazy Republicans stole the rights
of natural persons for corporations by hijacking the 13th or 14th
Amendment to the Constitution (that was supposed to grant freed slaves
the right to vote) by eliminating the word "natural" from the phrase
"natural person." A fictitious person gained the same rights as a
natural person through this deliberate subterfuge, after enough court
shopping and packing the Supreme Court with railroad lawyers. The book
should be required reading for every US citizen, but it isn't, and it
won't be, because it doesn't serve the corporate interest. What would
be very cool is if every US citizen *wanted* to read Hartmann's book and
find out how to go about correcting the single most egregious injustice
ever perpetrated on the US public. We've, in essence, had the WTO for
more than 100 years in this country, since /Union Pacific Railroad v.
Santa Clara County/. Unmitigated corporate dominance, with the noose
ever tightening, is our lot. When they've killed enough of us to
finally get us pissed off, we'll follow Hartmann's plan, turn the world
right side up again, and return corporations to the service of the
people. Government will quickly follow suit.

There's no way we can live out Permaculture ethics under corporate
dominance. Taking care of people is not going to happen. If it was, it
would have by now. Some call it corporate rule, and it is, in many
ways, especially de facto, since corporations own every politician in
the country who has served more than one term in office. If you look at
how things are in the US and ask, "Who benefits?", it's always a
corporation. The people are simply their chumps, and the carcasses
left in their wake. Corporations have stolen our future (what else is
global warming?) and will continue exploiting it until we reclaim it.
What else is there to do now but to reclaim the future?

I suspect "The Problem" is a pervasive unconscious belief in the King
James /Bible's /assignation to humans of dominion over nature. Dominion
is the unspoken presupposition in every action that damages the natural
order and its creatures, including humans. The dictionary definition
of "injustice" is denying another the right to a full life. Even under
a casual application of that definition, dominion is profoundly unjust.
I suspect dominion was the Cambridge dons sucking up to King James and
we've seldom since brought the question to conscious thought. It seems
to me that dominion and Permaculture are mutually exclusive ideas and
that to truly practice Permaculture means we have purged our souls of
the damages done by our unconscious devotion to dominion, at least to
the degree that it's a conscious choice if we make it.

Bare knuckle dominion is surely unleashed when corporations exercise the
rights of natural persons. How do we make that sort of dominion
culturally unacceptable? But is dominion ever appropriate in
Permaculture? Don't we voluntarily and as fully as possible cooperate
with nature in our designs? Doesn't nature occupy the superior position
in our considerations? Isn't dominion utterly absurd? In the context
of Permaculture design, doesn't dominion seem spectacularly ignorant?

Why do we tolerate it? In /Ishmael/, Daniel Quinn says we have no
choice in a society that guards the food supply. Permaculture, to me,
is a way to return to the land, to work the land in an ethical manner
that earns a living so that I can say "just say no" to dominion because
I have a secure food supply and cash flow for those things that require
cash. So Permaculture buys liberation from corporate rule? Have I
grown delirious? If I can feed myself and my family, I can say "No."
That's what Thomas Jefferson had in mind with Jeffersonian democracy: a
nation of people who could feed themselves, had time to inform
themselves, and owned their land, so they had the means to say "No" when
a "No" was needed. Comparing that vision with what we have now shows
how far corporations have brought down our humanity in service to their
god, capital.

Tommy Tolson
Austin, TX
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"Nothing can cure the soul but the senses, just as nothing can
cure the senses but the soul." Oscar Wilde





















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