permaculture

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

sorry, website crashed due to traffic and now McGaia now online again

http://gaiapermaculture.com/projects/climatewar/blog/2009/08/15/mcgaia-corporate-permaculture-family-friendly-geo-genetic-socially-engineered-organic-perennial-polyculture/

 McGaia - corporate permaculture - family friendly geo-, genetic & socially
engineered organic perennial
polyculture<http://gaiapermaculture.com/projects/climatewar/blog/2009/08/15/mcgaia-corporate-permaculture-family-friendly-geo-genetic-socially-engineered-organic-perennial-polyculture/>
by Nicholas Roberts <http://gaiapermaculture.com/people/niccolo/profile>

[image: faces-600.JPG]

The WSJ - once a bastion of climate change deniers - recently published a
feature lift-out explicitly acknowledging the threat of global warming and
environmental crisis: The Need for
Geoengineering<http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204771304574181522575503150.html>
.

 The authors solution is global, corporate, geo-engineering. The problem
isn’t that we have not “engineered” too much, we have not “engineered”
enough.

You can hear the same arguments from the far-right - and increasingly
liberals and blue-greens - on all kinds of issues.

The problem isn’t with capitalism, or conservatism. The problem is that we
haven’t engineered the planet enough. We haven’t been conservative enough,
capitalist enough. The problem isn’t that we shouldn’t be fighting in Iraq
of AfPak, the problem is that we are not fighting harder with more troops.

The corporate geo-engineers are co-opting the momentum created by the
climate change campaigners (with Al Gore the self-appointed saviour) and
justifying a further expansion of human domination of the living planet.

Radical historian of science David F
Noble<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_F._Noble> calls
this the Corporate Climate Coup
<http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/15472> (audio
from Vancouver Cooperative Radio and and text from ZNET in a mashup at
Permaculture
TV) <http://permaculture.tv/?p=322>

   1. Corporate Climate Campaigns: Denial vs Trade - Corporate Climate Coup
   - Part 1 <http://permaculture.tv/?p=322>
   2. Anti-Globalisation - Corporate Climate Coup - Part
2<http://permaculture.tv/?p=324>
   3. Climate Commisars & Community Climate Campaigns - Corporate Climate
   Coup - Part 3 <http://permaculture.tv/?p=330>

RAND corporation had a military analyst research and publish a couple of
papers on the potential for perennial polyculture to be used to save the
environment and create employment. *Seeds of Another*Agricultural. *
Revolution*?<http://www.rand.org/pubs/occasional_papers/2007/RAND_OP179.pdf>
.

His conclusion was that it might be difficult to find a place for perennial
polyculture in todays market place.

However, with the growth of corporate “fair-trade” branding such as Mc
Donalds fair-trade
coffee<http://www.beveragedaily.com/Products/Who-s-lovin-it-McDonald-s-splits-opinion-with-fair-trade-coffee>,
and the awareness raising of such movies as Food
Inc<http://permaculture.tv/?p=136>,
perennial polyculture will become a value-add for corporations looking for
environmental sustainability and better branding.

A recent book, by University of Davis couple, have managed to “marry their
separate fields to argue logically for the use of GM technologies to improve
organic agriculture” Tomorrow’s Table: Organic Farming, Genetics, and the
Future of 
Food<http://www.amazon.com/Tomorrows-Table-Organic-Farming-Genetics/dp/0195301757/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1213293058&sr=1-1>

So the elements are being assembled for a McGaia future. A family friendly,
geo-, genetic & socially engineered organic perennial polyculture planet.

Unless resistance and alternatives are created, such as worker-cooperatives,
popular inquiries, community associations etc, a nested, fractaline
organisation of work and community democracy, we will find that corporations
are perfectly able to adapt and co-opt the techniques that have been
nurtured by the permaculture and associated movements.

As Mollison says, permaculture is more than a gardening system. Its about
fair share, people and earth care.

Chomsky recently spoke Noam Chomsky on the Past 10 Years: Seattle ‘99 to WSF
to Climate in 
‘09<http://media.indypgh.org/uploads/2009/06/noam_on_10_years_seattle_99-wsf-obama_09_mp3.mp3>
and
said that it is up to us to decide if that extends to international
solidarity and a global system of management that integrates and coordinates
democracy in the community and the workplace from the bottom-up.

We can choose between a hellish ecocide (ecological disaster), a McGaia
sustainment (military-industrial sustainability) or a global framework of
Gaia Permaculture. A framework which gives rights to all of nature,
including the poor, and especially the living ecologies.


On Thu, Aug 19, 2010 at 1:13 PM, Nicholas Roberts, Permaculture.coop <
permaculturecoop@gmail.com> wrote:
>>   3. Re: Movement thinking (was Designing a Movement) (Cory Brennan)
>>
>> Could you give an example of what you're thinking when you say "it might
also be true that the military system could use permaculture for  purposes
that might conflict with PmC ethics and Afghanis might resent PmC for  that
reason or even attack future permaculture teachers who arrived in their
 country."
>>
>> Like spell out a scenario? It will be easier to discuss ethics if we can
narrow down differences and get into specifics. Examples that actually
occurred would be the best.
>>
>> Cory
>
> hi Cory, Patrick actually already gave some detailed examples of
> things that are happening now, its not a big leap to see that the
> techniques and strategies of permaculture such as perennial
> polyculture, organic farming etc can be stripped of the ethical
> framework and embedded in a geopolitical mission with its own
> neoliberal ethical framework and become a tool for geopolitics...
> there is also my post on the marriage of organics and gmo, perennial
> polyculture and GMO and employment prgrams etc.. called McGaia, see
> below
>
> http://www.grain.org/seedling/?id=590
>
> In recent decades humanitarian aid has regularly been
> made conditional on the adoption of neoliberal economic policies.
Recently,
> however, there has been a troubling tendency in war-ridden countries to
> interweave this aid, classified as ?reconstruction?, closely with the
military
> machinery of the invading powers. Afghanistan and Iraq have been the
testing
> grounds for this militarised aid. In both countries the distinction
between the
> US?s civilian and military activities has been completely, and
deliberately,
> blurred.
>
> The soils of war
>
> The real agenda of agricultural reconstruction*
>
> Asia has seen its fair share of disasters in recent years, both
> man-made and natural – floods, cyclones, tsunamis, earthquakes, war.
> After each calamity, - outside agencies have provided “aid” to put the
> pieces back together. For many years this aid has come with the
> unpublicised agenda of promoting neoliberal economic policies and
> facilitating the entry of multinational corporations. This remains
> true today. What is new in Afghanistan and Iraq is that US development
> assistance has also become an intrinsic part of the US military
> campaign. This is an alarming development. Aghanistan and Iraq are not
> unique cases born from unusual circumstances, but constitute a likely
> template for US activities overseas, as it continues to expand its
> “war on terror” and to pursue US corporate interests.
>
>
> SOILS OF PEACE
>
> can I suggest folks who want an honest permaculturalist report from
> Afghanistan, Rosemary Morrow anyone?, check-out her new documentary,
> The Garden at the End of the World... the situation there is worse now
> than before the invasion, much worse... its looking like the best
> thing we can do is simply leave, get out, leave them alone... but we
> wont do that because of the containment strategy of USA against China
> and Russia, the Great Game continues in Central Asia
>
http://permaculture.tv/garden-at-the-end-of-the-world-permaculture-in-afghanistan-with-rosemary-morrow/
>