permaculture

["Lawrence F. London, Jr." <venaurafarm@bellsouth.net>]

On 8/11/2010 2:18 AM, Nicholas Roberts, Permaculture.coop wrote:
> 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

Between a rock and a hard place kind of issue, eh?
Much better that permaculture is used and promoted by the military.
Its not the US military's fault but the Iranian government's.
For them to not use permaculture as a tool would be a win for the Iranians.

> "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

It is not the US' fault that Josh got caught by the Iranian fools. He 
should not have let himself get into a vulnerable position or play a 
Jesus Christ role to make his point; his fault entirely. That applies to 
anyone in any country.

> 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.

That's totally politically correct ranting to hear yourself speak and is
completely untrue. See my comment above. Better that they not use and 
promote PC at all eh? Ridiculous. You're just not thinking.

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

There's nothing new about that and is all the more reason for the 
military to use and promote permaculture as a tool for reaching
and connecting with the indigenous populations in the countries where 
they are engaged militarily. The terrorist elements, like the morons in 
Iran, would love for us to back off such a strategy.

> 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 you'd like to explain that in full with accurate references.
Again, I think you're ranting to hear yourself speak as your comments 
don't seem to add much to the discussion.

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

"  
HTS is a new proof-of-concept program, run by the U.S. Army Training and 
Doctrine Command (TRADOC), and serving the joint community. The 
near-term focus of the HTS program is to improve the military’s ability 
to understand the highly complex local socio-cultural environment in the 
areas where they are deployed; however, in the long-term, HTS hopes to 
assist the US government in understanding foreign countries and regions 
prior to an engagement within that region.

    * HTS was developed in response to identified gaps in commanders’ 
and staffs’ understanding of the local population and culture, and its 
impact on operational decisions; and poor transfer of specific 
socio-cultural knowledge to follow-on units.
    * The HTS approach is to place the expertise and experience of 
social scientists and regional experts, coupled with reach-back, 
open-source research, directly in support of deployed units engaging in 
full-spectrum operations.
    * HTS informs decision making at the tactical, operational and 
strategic levels.
    * The HTS program is the first time that social science research 
and advising has been done systematically, on a large scale, and at the 
brigade level.
"

I don't see anything wrong with this. I suppose you'd prefer they not 
use PC or HTS at all?

> 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

http://globalsustainabilitycorps.org/

> its interesting to read the sustainment documents below and look at
> the history of this kind of humanitarian imperialism .. also if you

Ridiculous statement, "humanitarian imperialism"; you sound like a 
narrow minded anti establishment weenie with his mind conveniently all 
made up with 100% anti-military bias. Maybe you need to break out of 
that mold. I've known people like that and they never do anything where 
he rubber meets the road, little more than puff more hot air and whine.

> 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.

And so your proposal is to DO exactly what? as opposed to wallowing for 
more years in comfy, smug, self-serving 
anti-war/imperialism/establishment/military rhetoric.