Permaculture and the beaten path to freedom

Permaculture revisited

Here we have a good example of how a noble proposal and related information may be undermined to pose no threat to the system.  While wondering around the web for practical information about permaculture, one good source is The Permaculture Institute.  As an example (there is nothing in particular that is wrong with the PI but it is representative) of how an idea can be sterilized and be assimilated within the dominant system of capitalism.  Permaculture as a proposal of how land can be utilized in a sustainable way and not as a temporary area of exploitation till it is depleted and abandoned is something that few good willing souls may have anything against.  But in itself does not contain automatically a viable way for people to escape the domination of the economic and political system we all (almost all, or almost all who are not struggling to escape it) live under.  Some would say it does not need to, and may be a good step for people who will engage in such living to take the next step towards liberation.  This is what is troubling us and we can not see clearly.  Does permaculture have a hidden radical agenda?  Who is the keeper of this hidden agenda and who are the innocent victims who will engage in such a practice

Permaculture and water catching earth

Forest Hills farm catches rain for irrigation

Long before they heard the word “permaculture,” Forest Hills residents Terry Jo and Dave Bichell had embraced the tenets of organic gardening to create sustainable spaces on their Old Hickory Boulevard farm. Permaculture gave them the tools to overcome drought and flooding.

“Permaculture is a way of growing that uses the land to soak up and store water,” Terry Jo explained. “You use the natural features of the land and plant trees in such a way to hold water, and use plants to help nourish each other without fertilizers.”

The farm is a remnant of a historic plantation, she said, and the land had been used for pasture by previous owners. She was committed to avoiding pesticides or fertilizers, so she set out to see what could be grown on pasture land without alteration. “We grew a crop of hay for a couple of years, because at that time that was about all we could grow without using irrigation and pesticides.”

Potable water - Filtration and Purification

A report by Peter H. Gleick estimates that if no action is taken to address unmet basic human needs for water, as many as 135 million people will die from water-related diseases by 2020.  Rainwater harvesting is viewed by many, as a partial solution to the problems posed by water scarcity: droughts and desertification, erosion from runoff, over-reliance on depleted aquifers, and the costs of new irrigation, diversion, and water treatment facilities.

 

Can rainwater be made safe to drink? Yes. How safe? As safe as your well or tap water. How do you make it safe for indoor use? By filtering and purifying it. Contaminants in water may include algae, air pollution, bird excrement, and leaves, sand, and dust. Local wells have dealt with these problems for decades. Installation of filtration and purification equipment can remove these contaminants at home as well.

Why does this take so long?

The initial aim of this blog was to attract interest by other teams and collectives to engage in an organized inquiry of how to develop a set of practical solutions material for developing or enhancing an autonomous community anywhere in the world.  But goals sometimes are either set too high to achieve, or take too long to materialize.  In such cases people who may initially share them may loose interest.  The system has altered our internal clocks to work in the rhythms of industrial machinery.  This has been partly our experience here, which we would like to share without the specifics of who, where, when.  Some of us have grown to cleanse our internal clocks and are more patient in watching change take place in human terms, not in capitalistic industrial rhythms.  Some have not been able to do so and are impatient and try to force things.  While doing so what they are forcing are their ideas on other people who are unable to share them or are unable to commit to a process where those ideas can collide, blend, and evolve into a collective product.

Nobel winner declares boycott of top science journals

Randy Schekman says his lab will no longer send papers to Nature, Cell and Science as they distort scientific process

Ian Sample, science correspondent @ The Guardian, Monday 9 December 2013
 

Randy Schekman, centre, at a Nobel prize ceremony in Stockholm.

Leading academic journals are distorting the scientific process and represent a "tyranny" that must be broken, according to a Nobel prize winner who has declared a boycott on the publications.

Randy Schekman, a US biologist who won the Nobel prize in physiology or medicine this year and receives his prize in Stockholm on Tuesday, said his lab would no longer send research papers to the top-tier journals, Nature, Cell and Science.

Schekman said pressure to publish in "luxury" journals encouraged researchers to cut corners and pursue trendy fields of science instead of doing more important work. The problem was exacerbated, he said, by editors who were not active scientists but professionals who favoured studies that were likely to make a splash.

The Monster is Right on Top of Us

Argentine Protesters vs Monsanto:

By Fabiana Frayssinet Reprint  

MALVINAS ARGENTINAS, Córdoba, Argentina , Dec 2 2013 (IPS) - The people of this working-class suburb of Córdoba in Argentina’s central farming belt stoically put up with the spraying of the weed-killer glyphosate on the fields surrounding their neighbourhood. But the last straw was when U.S. biotech giant Monsanto showed up to build a seed plant.

The creator of glyphosate, whose trademark is Roundup, and one of the world’s leading producers of genetically modified seeds, Monsanto is building one of its biggest plants to process transgenic corn seed in Malvinas Argentinas, this poor community of 15,000 people 17 km east of the capital of the province of Córdoba.