permaculture

["Nicholas Roberts, Permaculture.coop" <permaculturecoop@gmail.com>]

you might want to ask permaculture activist Joshua Fattal who has been
arrested by the Iranian government and accused of espionage whether it
would help him or others like him that "permaculture" is now
celebrated as a US army reserve "hearts and minds"
counterinsurgency/sustainment technique


>
>   1. Re: on an ethics of Mr Pittman (and the US military)
>      (Toby Hemenway)
>

>>
>> my concern is that you and geoff and others that are working with violent
>> non-PC instituions like the US military, might be "shitting" in the
>> downstream social-ecology of other permies.


as to whether the US military using "permaculture" and how that might
effect the social ecology for grassroots permaculture activists around
the world

"Josh was an old friend from the States who was just joining them in
the Middle East, and has been described as someone who is “deeply
committed to issues of ecology and truly democratic politics,”
including “issues such as sustainable agriculture, food justice, and
permaculture.”
http://www.counterpunch.org/amster05252010.html


as to the ethical question, its impossible for the Fair Share or
People Care ethic of permaculture to be fully satisfied by a military
industrial sustainability complex.

there is a big difference between permaculture fair share/people care
sustainability and a security state sustainment

the Marshall Plan was not the perfect military-industrial solution to
reconstruction of Europe, but it has set the model for sustainment...
first you destroy it, then you rebuild it with more perfect control...
the supply of logistics, infrastructure, engineering and materials is
sustainment.. via corporates and the army engineers


maybe also search for Human Terrain System and compare to US army
reserve permaculture

The Human Terrain System (HTS) was established to assists Army Brigade
and Marine Corps Regiment Commanders and their staffs in Iraq and
Afghanistan better understand local cultures and social structures to
improve their units' operational effectiveness. This is sometimes
referred to as 'Human Terrain Mapping' (HTM).[1] The HTS utilizes
personnel with BAs, MAs, and PhDs in a social science including
(anthropology, sociology, political science, geography), regional
studies, and lingustics. HTS provides military commanders and staff
with an understanding of the local population by conducting
participant observation and interviews. That information is
interpreted and archived in various cultural information and knowledge
databases.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Terrain_System

The Network of Concerned Anthropologists (NCA) is an independent ad
hoc network of anthropologists seeking to promote an ethical
anthropology.
http://sites.google.com/site/concernedanthropologists/

having said all this, Steve Cran (x AUS army), of Global
Sustainability Corps, does extreme permaculture in war/disaster zones
Timor, Uganda, Aceh working with former-combatants
http://globalsustainabilitycorps.org - have been suggesting he come to
the states and work with veterans and maybe the mil


its interesting to read the sustainment documents below and look at
the history of this kind of humanitarian imperialism .. also if you
read the book The Men Who Stare At Goats, it gives a disturbing take
on the original idealism of bringing the New Age to the US mil...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Earth_Battalion

They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into
pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will
they train for war anymore. — Isaiah 2:4 & Micah 4:3




from the US Military Doctrine*

Democratic Sustainment document
http://www.disam.dsca.mil/pubs/v.22_1/Ramsey.pdf

USA Counterinsurgency Doctrine
http://www.fas.org/irp/doddir/army/fm3-24fd.pdf

Sustainment document
http://www.tradoc.army.mil/PAO/viwebpage/Pam%20hq%20pdfs/FM%204_0%20single%20pg%20hq.pdf




i've written a bit about this in the past

Climate War: Apocalypse, Sustainment and Liberation
http://gaiapermaculture.com/projects/climatewar/blog/2009/06/09/climate-war-apocalypse-sustainment-and-liberation/

Climate War: just as the Cold War subsumed and defined the peace after World
War 2, the Climate War subsumes and defines the period after the Cold War.
The Cold War ideology on the US side was anti-communism. The Climate War
ideology (shared by most central governments) is anti-environmentalism, with
communists being replaced with terrorists and increasingly eco-terrorists.
Green is the new red, the FBI’s most wanted is an eco-terrorist.
Insurgencies have always been embedded in a place, and so, in reality, all
terrorists are fighting for rights to control an environment. The Climate
War is the Cold War within the context of climate change, peak oil, peak
debt, indeed peak everything. The US framework for managing the world,
within the context of Climate War, is Sustainment.

Sustainment: sustainment is an extension of the military term describing the
supply and operations of maintenance to military operations. Sustainment is
military-industrial supplied sustainability.

In the latest US
Counter-Insurgency military doctrine, Sustainment leads all
counter-insurgency operations. Within the Human Terrain System, hearts and
minds are won by the the supply of infrastructure and utilities. Sustainment
leads operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, the “civilian surge” is
sustainment. With the increasing instability of the climate system, the
global economic and geo-political system, sustainment will be supplied with
the strongest aspect of US national power; the military industrial complex.
Within the neo-liberal environment, the military-industrial compex is
increasingly privatised and fragmented.

As Noam Klein describes in Shock
Doctrine, disaster capitalism profits greatly from crisis, real or imagined,
and as the Climate War becomes the dominant organising principle for the
planet, through real and imagined crisis, sustainment supplied by
corporate-state military industrial system. This military industrial system
will seek to profit and expand from both the crisis of conflict, of
destruction of war and the maintenance of peace, and the rebuilding of
damaged systems.