Culture and Coexistence into the Great Unknown
“Severe grazing is absolutely essential to maintain biodiversity,” argues Allan Savory in a recent TED Talk. Of course, this is the opposite of scientific truth for the sensitive desert ecosystem. Advocating “holistic grazing,” Mr. Savory pieces together false assumptions to produce ineffective but popular recommendations on climate change.
A movement to pave over San Onofre State Beach and Trestles with a toll-road-to-nowhere-for-nobody-but-developers was rejected by the California Coastal Commission and Federal Commerce Department in 2008. Yet, here again the State Water Boards will decide in May whether to grant a permit for the “Stupid Toll Road” to dump contaminated runoff into creeks and the ocean while keeping the dream alive of paving over Trestles.
Joe Nocera in the New York Times believes Dr. James Hansen, because he is head of NASA’s Goddard Institute, should just shut up instead of participating in the anti-Keystone XL movement. Peter Jefferson Nichols argues this should be the role of any government scientist who recognizes the danger of passing climate tipping points, producing irreversible climate impacts.
In the name of the struggle against terrorism, a special operation — code named CONDOR – was conducted in the 1970s and 80s in South America. Its targets were left wing political dissidents, the organised labour and intellectuals. Condor soon became a network of military dictatorships, supported by the US State Department, the CIA and Interpol. A trial began in early March in Buenos Aires to attempt to bring to justice former dictators and military officers.
World-renowned San Onofre and Trestles have been synonymous with California surfing since the 1930s. A movement to pave over the park and beach with a toll road was rejected by in 2008. We now have the opportunity to have it recognized for its historical contributions by being listed in the National Register of Historic Places, and stop that toll road project for good.
Almost forty years after his violent death, Pier Paolo Pasolini, filmmaker, poet, journalist, novelist, playwright, painter, actor, and all-around intellectual public figure, remains a subject of passionate argument. Best known for a subversive and difficult body of film work, loaded with Renaissance and Baroque iconography, he championed the disinherited and damned of postwar Italy, mingling an intellectual leftism with a fierce Franciscan Catholicism.
While the public demands protections for air, land, and water, the California oil industry uses front groups and spends millions on lobbying the legislature, gaining disproportionate influence in subverting pollution and fuel standards. Keeping the economy addicted to climate-fouling fossil fuels and reaping billions in profits, Big Oil claims to be a “victim” of excessive regulation. Stop Fooling California!
‘Bellatrix: Volume 3’, features adventurous fiction, poetry, essays, and lyrics, and an excerpt of Jack Eidt’s psychic-animism fiction, Medicine Walk.
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