Auckland's Burning

2008-03-03T16:49:00.000+13:00

I am now posting over at http://beneaththepavement.blogspot.com/

2008-02-26T22:24:00.001+13:00

2008-01-27T19:07:00.000+13:00

2008-01-27T18:52:00.001+13:00

2008-01-23T21:04:00.000+13:00

2007-10-31T12:14:00.000+13:00

Temporary Hiatus

I'm taking a break from blogging for a while, I will post interesting stuff here mainly so I don't lose it.

Some of my photos will be available here http://www.flickr.com/photos/johndarroch/sets/

Best of luck

2007-10-30T21:22:00.000+13:00

Civilisation - a promotional video

2007-10-23T14:36:00.000+13:00

You are what You grow

From here

Drewnowski gave himself a hypothetical dollar to spend, using it to purchase as many calories as he possibly could. He discovered that he could buy the most calories per dollar in the middle aisles of the supermarket, among the towering canyons of processed food and soft drink. (In the typical American supermarket, the fresh foods — dairy, meat, fish and produce — line the perimeter walls, while the imperishable packaged goods dominate the center.) Drewnowski found that a dollar could buy 1,200 calories of cookies or potato chips but only 250 calories of carrots. Looking for something to wash down those chips, he discovered that his dollar bought 875 calories of soda but only 170 calories of orange juice.

As a rule, processed foods are more “energy dense” than fresh foods: they contain less water and fiber but more added fat and sugar, which makes them both less filling and more fattening. These particular calories also happen to be the least healthful ones in the marketplace, which is why we call the foods that contain them “junk.” Drewnowski concluded that the rules of the food game in America are organized in such a way that if you are eating on a budget, the most rational economic strategy is to eat badly — and get fat.

This perverse state of affairs is not, as you might think, the inevitable result of the free market. Compared with a bunch of carrots, a package of Twinkies, to take one iconic processed foodlike substance as an example, is a highly complicated, high-tech piece of manufacture, involving no fewer than 39 ingredients, many themselves elaborately manufactured, as well as the packaging and a hefty marketing budget. So how can the supermarket possibly sell a pair of these synthetic cream-filled pseudocakes for less than a bunch of roots?

2007-10-23T13:46:00.000+13:00

Guardian says peak oil has hit

from here

"The world soon will not be able to produce all the oil it needs as demand is rising while supply is falling. This is a huge problem for the world economy," said Hans-Josef Fell, EWG's founder and the German MP behind the country's successful support system for renewable energy.

The report's author, Joerg Schindler, said its most alarming finding was the steep decline in oil production after its peak, which he says is now behind us.

The results are in contrast to projections from the International Energy Agency, which says there is little reason to worry about oil supplies at the moment.

However, the EWG study relies more on actual oil production data which, it says, are more reliable than estimates of reserves still in the ground. The group says official industry estimates put global reserves at about 1.255 gigabarrels - equivalent to 42 years' supply at current consumption rates. But it thinks the figure is only about two thirds of that.

Global oil production is currently about 81m barrels a day - EWG expects that to fall to 39m by 2030. It also predicts significant falls in gas, coal and uranium production as those energy sources are used up.

Britain's oil production peaked in 1999 and has already dropped by half to about 1.6 million barrels a day.

The report presents a bleak view of the future unless a radically different approach is adopted. It quotes the British energy economist David Fleming as saying: "Anticipated supply shortages could lead easily to disturbing scenes of mass unrest as witnessed in Burma this month. For government, industry and the wider public, just muddling through is not an option any more as this situation could spin out of control and turn into a complete meltdown of society."

Mr Schindler comes to a similar conclusion. "The world is at the beginning of a structural change of its economic system. This change will be triggered by declining fossil fuel supplies and will influence almost all aspects of our daily life."

Jeremy Leggett, one of Britain's leading environmentalists and the author of Half Gone, a book about "peak oil" - defined as the moment when maximum production is reached, said that both the UK government and the energy industry were in "institutionalised denial" and that action should have been taken sooner.

"When I was an adviser to government, I proposed that we set up a taskforce to look at how fast the UK could mobilise alternative energy technologies in extremis, come the peak," he said. "Other industry advisers supported that. But the government prefers to sleep on without even doing a contingency study. For those of us who know that premature peak oil is a clear and present danger, it is impossible to understand such complacency."

Mr Fell said that the world had to move quickly towards the massive deployment of renewable energy and to a dramatic increase in energy efficiency, both as a way to combat climate change and to ensure that the lights stayed on. "If we did all this we may not have an energy crisis."
He accused the British government of hypocrisy. "Tony Blair and Gordon Brown have talked a lot about climate change but have not brought in proper policies to drive up the use of renewables," he said. "This is why they are left talking about nuclear and carbon capture and storage. "

2007-10-23T11:51:00.000+13:00

Transition Towns

A New Zealand presentation about the transition towns movement, its quite remarkable to find a NZ video about this sort of thing.

2007-10-23T11:10:00.000+13:00

Aussie story

These videos are awesome, some of the coolest things I have seen in a long time.

Part two

Part three

Part four

2007-10-22T21:49:00.000+13:00

The movies

2007-10-22T12:25:00.000+13:00

Photos from saturdy

Heres some photos from saturdays rally and march to suppport those arrestd in anti terror raids, more info at www.indymedia.org.nz

2007-10-19T21:04:00.000+13:00

Ducks!

After a long day outside court I saw these ducks, they were in one of the most grim looking streams I have ever seen, beside a junk yard and opposite the steel mill. One worker saw me taking photos and commented "any of them will be lucky to survive in that shit" I on the other hand think they look just fine :)

2007-10-19T20:04:00.000+13:00

Images from Solidarity demo

These are some photos from todays demo in solidarity with those arrested during police raids across the country. This was a protest with around 100 people at the Auckland district court as 5 of the arrested had their status hearing inside.

Their is a rally in support of those arrested tomorrow (sat 20th) at aotea square

2007-10-18T22:44:00.000+13:00

Fundraiser to Support Political Prisoners

There is a video screening this Saturday to support those activists who were arrested in a sweep on Monday. The proceeds from the screening are to go towards the familys of those arrested for things like transport and legal costs. The support of the public and those that know the activists is greatly appreciated.

Films to be shown include “a history of oil” and one film about Aotearoa

When: 7.30 Saturday 20th October 2007

Where: grey lynn library hall

Why: Fundraiser for arrested activists

How much: Koha

2007-10-18T11:18:00.000+13:00

More Raids

Raids are continuing around the country and at least one more person has been arrested, police have also been calling people in for questioning. In Taupo when raiding the Eco Show organiser police pushed everyone into one room and searched the hous taking the familys computers and one from an international expert. Who knows when the raids will stop and how many people they are after, I would think that with the amount of evidence they claim to have that these continuing raids are aimed at intimidation as much as anything else. Whatever is going on the cops seem intent on harassing as many people as possible in an attempt to conflate peaceful protest and armed resistance.

For those in Auckland there is a support meeting at 6.30 tonight at unite (the 18th)

Stay safe everyone and if the cops come knocking say nothing.

2007-10-16T09:27:00.000+13:00

Solidarity with those arrested

Yesterday morning activist houses throughout New Zealand were raided under the pretext that armed training camps were being run in the North Island. Regardless of what has happened this is quite obviously an attempt to tar the entire activist community as terrorists.

The 17 arrested have not been granted bail and some are expected to be held on remand for at least 2 weeks. Being held for an afternoon sucks, having your house raided by anti terror units and being accused of terrorism is unimaginable, I hope everyones ok and that no more arrests occur.

Much love to everyone around the country

For details of the case and solidarity actions check indymedia

2007-10-14T21:51:00.000+13:00

Cultivating connections

I havnt blogged much recently due to activism the garden and this place I go occasionally called university, oh and work has been busy lately with new projects coming up.

This is more just to point out this essay here which I think is awesome, entitled cultivating connections is explores the links that community food production creates and the importance of these links to sustainable cultures and a sustainable world.

From senior citizens in municipal community gardens, to soil-less gardening on rooftops and guerilla sunflowers in sidewalk cracks, urban agriculture is becoming increasingly recognized as a significant force of food production and activism throughout the world. The set of practices known as “urban agriculture” constitutes a social movement that is actively reclaiming control over food production and consumption by creating connections between people and the environment, people and people, and people within themselves. These practices are also part of a broader contentious politics that is reclaiming connections with the people and places that sustain us. While an understanding of urban agriculture as a social movement is useful, it is incomplete without also transcending that category to see the connections urban agriculturalists make with other social and political movements striving for similar connections that go far beyond food.

This is really the case with all the activism I am involved with, first of all connecting people to the issue, showing them how it is relevant to them and most importantly building up that connection that makes them care. Once they empathise with one issue then you explore how that issue is related to all others and the connections between different forms of exploitation and oppression. Then recconection with the land, food production, animals and each other.

This culture on the other hand spends all its time trying to tear us away from the real world and connections to each other. We are made to spend our days in windowless rooms always the same brightness and temperature, our interactions with each other are mediated by technoloogy and fucked up social customs. We are systematically trained to ignore everyone else and to only focus on ourselves.

Creating and cultivating connection is some of the the most important work we can do.

2007-10-05T21:18:00.000+13:00

2007-10-04T12:34:00.000+13:00

Lazy blogging

In between class and meetings I and the faily have been hard at work turning the family pool into a pond, here are a few photos I took before much work had begun so we could document the change.
Inside the treehut
The pool after taking the sides off, about a third of the pool has been filled with soil.

The chicken House

2007-09-30T20:28:00.000+13:00

Some photos from Free Burma March

Here are some photos from a march held in solidarity with the burmese people who are undertaking mass protests against the military dictatorship ruling their country. Several people have been killed in the protests in Burma and monastrys have been raided, more on the march and more pics here

2007-09-28T11:39:00.000+12:00

Positioning myself for an energy descent world

Lately I have been thinking more and more about one of the most common stereotypes environmentalists fall into – getting a bit of land and setting up a rural homestead. Unlike most environmentalists who come at this from the perspective that they will be lowering their overall environmental impact and taking responsibility for a patch of earth I am approaching it from a survivalist perspective. Auckland is far to spread out with too high a population to be able to continue without oil, I am also convinced that even with modest reductions in easily available energy Auckland will suffer from major food distribution issues. Living in a poor suburb means that we will be hit disproportionatly by any problems in food supply. As it is we have the most expensive supermarkets in the country according to at least one study and a large percentage of the population finds it difficult to get food. People outside the supermarket waiting for taxis or walking long distances with several children are already a familiar sight and there are increasing reports of trucks selling food door to door at double supermarket prices.

It is incredibly obvious that individualism is not a particularly wise strategy during times of resource scarcity, if you have an abundance of one particular resource say food for example and those around you do not have very much of that resource then you are probably not going to be able to hold onto that food for very long. A communal strategy would be of more benefit but the suggestion that I make my entire suburb productive in terms of food put forward by some of my friends is ludicrous, no matter how much work is put in to increasing the food producing capacity of the suburbs there is nowhere near enough land to produce very much. Also no one in the suburbs has the time or the will power to grow much food because of high working hours and cheap food prices.

If the decline in energy and food supply is gradual then a communal approach could work in the suburbs, neighbours could assist each other to grow food and community gardens could arise. I however think a rapid decline in food supply to certain areas is a very real possibility and problems with soil fertility and supplys of resources nessacary for large scale community food production will prevent a peaceful and rapid uptake of urban horticulture. Eventually the suburbs may be converted to food production but a period of major social upheaval perhaps lasting decades could take place in between.

Infill housing and developments where houses are only a few meters apart quickly dispel the idea that the suburbs could easily grow much of their own food. Entire areas such as botany downs have no real future, half or more of the houses must be removed if any real food production is to occur, completely new food distribution networks must be put in place and hundreds of thousands of people must get used to living without the motor car.

So given the problems facing suburbia I think everyone that takes the problems posed by declining global food production and a declining energy supply should make plans for things going nasty very quickly. For a start learning to eat things not currently seen as food such as weeds, possums and other so called “pests” is a prudent idea. Making friends with people that have land away from major centers could be good. Ideally owning land and putting in place climate change resistant semi wild food production strategys would be one of the best ways of ensuring that no matter what happens you have options. I am taking a shotgun approach learning a lot of skills which will be useful no matter what future is facing us and am looking at getting a base outside of suburbia in the mid term.

2007-09-23T18:05:00.000+12:00

Spring Equinox

We had a successful seed planting session at St Columba community gardens today to celebrate the spring equinox. Also a very nice party sitting round the fire chatting in the backyard last night, thanks to everyone that helped organise and came to either event.

To find out about organic events in Auckland email jdarroch@gmail.com

2007-09-23T16:40:00.000+12:00

Mortgagee sales

Article from the guardian here

If this trend continues the stragegy outlined in the essay below may become very relevant very quickly to the united states.

In the first seven months of this year there were 13,600 repossessions in Cleveland compared to 7,000 for the whole of 2006 and 3,400 annually a decade ago. Business bankruptcies are up 71% on last year. Figures released by RealtyTrac yesterday showed that in Ohio foreclosures during August leapt by 138% to 17,793. Nationwide, the number of people losing their homes jumped by 115% to 243,947.

2007-09-22T18:46:00.000+12:00

An anarchist response to economic recession.

These are a few ideas that have gradually solidified over the last few months, I don’t really have many Ideas as to how specifically this strategy would work but think its something which would be useful to have a dialogue over.

Its fairly obvious that the control of land by those communitys living on it is vital for long term self sufficiency. To paraphrase derrick Jensen “community’s do not willingly destroy their landbase or allow others to destroy it” As well as being fundamental for long term sustainability the control of land is at the heart of the stranglehold capitalism has over the world. Without land to grow or gather food we become dependant on those who control the land to survive. Control of land by elites creates hierarchy and division of society. Those who own the land will often force an intensification of production above what is sustainable or desirable for those living on it and increased birth rates and land degradation results. Communities which are alienated from the land become disconnected from the affects of our actions.

I believe a movement around land control could be one of the major areas of success for left wing groups over the next few decades. Throughout the 90s and 00s the price of houses and rent has risen at a rate completely disproportionate to wages on the back of cheap credit and a perceived housing shortage. This has resulted in lifetime loans and rent prices so high it is a struggle to afford the other essentials of life. The crippling burden of house prices has covered all sectors of society with many in the middle and upper middle classes struggling to meet payments. There is an underlying level of resentment at the high cost of housing and accommodation this does not often spill over as long as wages continue to rise but added pressure from recession would significantly alter things.

On top of exorbitant rent and mortgage payments the price of food and other neccesitys is rising and with wheat expected to increase in price by over 30% by the end of the year. Oil prices to are expected to continue to climb in price as supply struggles to meet demand, this will begin to affect every aspect of our lives. The affects of even modest drops in global production of a few percent would be strong enough to hurt everyone in western countries. A cool down in the American economy driven by energy shortages and slowing growth is likely to spread across the world over the next few years an new Zealand despite our status as a primary producer will not be exempt. The point is this, right now people are unable to meet the cost of their mortgages and as the global economy and supply of credit contracts this will only get worse.

The current situation in the US housing market paints a picture of what could happen across western countries. Much of the growth in the US economy over the past few decades has been driven by rising house prices. Home buyers were prepared to pay extortionate prices because they knew that however much they payed for their house the price would always be higher next year. Many home owners wanting to use the increased value of their house remortgaged once or even more using the cash to buy consumer goods, money which was effectively siphoned from USA to the nations producing the consumer goods. All of this was fine and rosy until large numbers of people unable to pay mortgages they could never afford began to default, taking down several very major finance companys. The added problem to this already grim picture is that many of the suburbs bought up by Americans will be unlivable without cheap oil and the houses will not be worth the land they are built on.

It is in response to this illogical and unworkable housing system that I see left wing groups and specifically anarchists offering a viable alternative to the system. As mainstream society is unable to meet mortgage repayments and banks attempt to take propertys off their inhabitants communitys could be organised to resist. Community led rent and mortgage strikes could be coordinated in the areas hardest hit by economic recession. A strategy of direct resistance against the banking system would create a loss of confidence in the economic system by the general public and would create the opportunity to foster community control over land management. Alternately anarchists could use the opportunity to find and develop some pretty cool squats, this however would be a waste of a very good opportunity to mobilise the public.

A logical extension of this strategy is increasing community agriculture driven by higher food prices and increasing unemployment. This would lower the dependence of communitys on the industrial agricultural system and strengthen community. Disputes between rich absentee land owners (such as developers or banks) and community gardeners would present another opportunity to radicalise the public. The increasing control of land by the people living on it and collective resistance against absentee land owners would provide an achievably way of moving towards an anarchist/communist way of living without having to hand over control to left wing political partys which would inevitably sell us out to maintain control and continued economic growth.

The above strategy of community control over land would tie in perfectly with a militant union based campaign for increasing workplace control. I do see many of our current industrys become redundant as oil supplys contract but peak oil and ongoing recession would present some very favourable opportunities for radicalisation and control of the means of production by workers.

I believe as anarchists we should look towards the problems posed by energy descent climate change and eventually deindustrialisation and see how we can best place ourselves for the future. Our economy and food production systems could change incredibly rapidly and there is a risk that reactionary right or left wing governments could be seen by the population as a means of reattaining economic prosperity. Being prepared and able to agitate effectively over the next few years could mean the difference between creeping government control or building community control.

2007-09-21T22:11:00.000+12:00

Animal farm

I just watched the film adaptation of animal farm, I read the book a couple of years back but the film was far funnier than my memory of the book. It was really quite depressing watching the animals get sold out

It can be seen here on google video

The film adaptation of 1984 is also here online, this adaptation was far better than I was expecting, I would go so far as to say I think its an accurate portrayal of the book :)

2007-09-20T12:22:00.000+12:00

"They made us think we had won a victory"

An interesting take on the recent G8 protests, this user has some really stunning videos.

2007-09-19T19:28:00.000+12:00

Minimum security.

This is the best cartoon ever.

2007-09-19T10:31:00.001+12:00

Resistance or Rewilding

Scout has a cool post here

Many argue over whether or not actions like blowing up a dam will bring civilization down or merely strengthen it. To wild humans, an argument like that makes no sense. Like arguing over whether or not the tree whose roots tear up the sidewalk will bring down civilization or strengthen it. Yes, the tree may get cut down and the street repaved. But civilization will never have the power to cut them all down, to repave all of those streets. A dandelion growing in a suburban lawn, a tree ripping apart the street, an earthquake tearing down buildings, and rewilding humans dismantling logging equipment seems as natural a process as taking out the trash feels to the civilized.

2007-09-19T08:50:00.000+12:00

City Mall Occupation

Just found these two videso of the occupation of city mall in christchurch a few weeks back by high school students. The students are protesting the demolition of a popular youth space and the turning of a pedestrian only mall into a road. Fucking councils....

2007-09-18T19:44:00.000+12:00

Horse manure

Locally (5 - 10mins drive) I have a near unlimited suppply of horse manure from a disabled riding center. The manure varies from fresh to about 5 years in age and is mixed with sawdust which I presume is bedding from the stables. Seeing that dad was home when I got up a few days ago I grabbed him headed to the stables. Once we got their I wandered round seeking permission from someone to use the manure but no one really seemed to care or know who was in charge so we just started shovelling it into sacks filling up the boot of our car. As we worked we discussed how ludicrous that such an enormous pile of manure (easily the size of a small house) sat lying round, and were both of the opinion that within a few years the pile would be gone, seized by gardeners kick started into action by rising food price. The two bootloads we got were quickly used up establishing my potatoe cages which I blogged about a few days ago, whilst I couldnt really be bothered going back for more I still lusted after the free organic matter.

On saturday at the community garden I got to talking as I worked with a few people and mentioned my score of free horse manure. The others were interested and I got a call last night from one of them asking whether I might be interested in getting some more. In return for helping with the shovelling I got one trailerload which I piled up the front and she got a load which she is using to establish some garden beds. I've read a bit online about horse manure and it looks fairly useful, its supposed to have heaps of weed seed in when fresh and the nutrient content isnt particularly dense. The sawdust will take some nitrogen from the soil and the manure will supply some so as with most manures thorough composting is probably the best way of dealing with things.

Im concerned about antibiotics and worming medications in any farm manure but the fact that the pile was full of worms and had abundant weed growth on top allayed some of my fears. Its not ideal to be constantly bringing organic matter onto the site but if it allows for higher crops and improves the fertility of the system then things should be ok. My compost should be beautiful in a few months time anyway :)

2007-09-17T19:30:00.000+12:00

Pics of the garden

Its nice to be on holidays, I built another garden bed today up the front today, I think overall I have more than doubled the growing area over last year. The soil is also way better than last year so hopefully we will get a bumper crop. I think the biggest mistake I made last year was not watering enough, I was working 6 or 7 days a week and by the time I got home didnt feel like working in the garden. Hopefully this summer should be quiet and allow plenty of time for gardening and working on some other outdooor skills. I plan to host and informal primitive/permaculture skills week probably in january for friends which should be fun.

This is one of the more fucked up ex-battery hens having a walk through the strawberry bed.

The peach tree and fire pit :)

The main garden beds and hot house also the typical suburban street next to me. I have no doubts that in a food shortage my lush garden and chickens will not be safe for long.

2007-09-17T18:43:00.000+12:00

Civilisation is driven by available energy

The Archdruid Report has a great report here dispelling the myth that the so callled progress of our civilisation is driven by innovation.

Innovation is a necessary condition for the growth and survival of industrial society, in other words, but not a sufficient condition. If energy resources aren’t available in sufficient quality and quantity, innovation can make a successful society but it won’t make or maintain an industrial one. It’s worth suggesting that the maximum possible level of economic development in a society is defined by the abundance and concentration of energy resources available to that society. It’s equally possible, though this is rather more speculative, that the maximum possible technological level of an intelligent species anywhere in the universe is defined by the abundance and concentration of energy resources on the planet where that species evolves.

2007-09-17T15:51:00.000+12:00

Photo monatge of NZ US partnersbip forum

This is my first time I have tried to use windows movie maker, hope you enjoy.

if the embedding does not work it can be seen here

2007-09-16T09:16:00.000+12:00

Thomas Malthus

From time to time I'm accused of being a combination of Mao, Polpot and Hitler lusting after a malthusian die off. Well this culture is doing a better job than I or anyelse ever could to kill off the planet and the people living on it and frankly it doesnt need my help. The fact I spend all my time working towards ensuring the survival of as many people as possible though alternative agriculture is often ignored when overconsumption is mentioned. So it was a relief when I came across this article here which rebuts the arguments put forward by Malthus specifically that individual control of land will stop it from being destroyed. The article argues that communitys dependant on a certain place to survive will not willingly destroy their land base and it is instead the capitalist system which results in the greates destruction of land.

This however is an argument for community control not state run socialist control of land. I hold as much contempt for socialist governments attempting to wrest control of land and resources from the communitys living on them as I hold for capitalist companys and governments that try to steal land from those living upon it.

A brief extract from the article

What I'm trying to say here is that the vulgar error made by modern Malthusians is to assume that the human story hasn't in fact been about dealing with this problem of the carrying capacity, if you want to put it that way, of particular patches of land. There's a word for it. It's called stinting. Commoners have "use-rights" - say, to pasture animals, to take fodder, to gather firewood, to harvest fruits and berries and nuts - but only if you live there, and only certain amounts, depending on the ecological, historical knowledge of the local community about what would stretch it too far. Action informed by local knowledge, typically, is not going to cause ecocide. I'm not saying ecological destruction hasn't occurred in the human past - the deforestation of the coastal areas around the Mediterranean sea is a classic case, caused by centuries of Imperial Roman overfarming - but it tends to be by non-locals and elites. Let's call it the state. The major culprit in modern times is capitalist farming in private hands.

Despite this reality, the blame is laid at the door of the world's commoners. Take for example Garrett Hardin's famous 1968 essay, "The tragedy of the commons", published in the journal Science. This was an enormously influential text by a Texan zoologist, based on no sociological research whatsoever, and in profound ignorance of the actual history of commoning. Hardin asserted that all common resources (such as pasture, a favorite example) will inevitably end in ruin because of over-exploitation by selfish individuals. Hardin's fable was taken up by the gathering forces of neo-liberal reaction in the 1970s, and his essay became the "scientific" foundation of World Bank and IMF policies, viz. enclosure of commons and privatization of public property. The plausibility of Hardin's Malthusian claims doesn’t survive a moment's scrutiny. Ask yourself - was the disaster of the Dust Bowl a tragedy of the commons or of capitalist agriculture under private ownership?

But the historical facts are irrelevant. The case is an ideological one, and Hardin was holding up a mirror to modern homo economicus. The message is clear: we must never treat the earth as a "common treasury". We must be ruthless and greedy or else we will perish.

2007-09-14T17:48:00.000+12:00

Planting Potatoes

Potatoes are something I try and grow every year, heavy producers they are very rewarding. Last year I grew a 200 square meter plot of Maori potatoes at Unitec, this year I will just be growing a few square meters in my back yard.

Richard digging trenches for the sprouted potaoes, they will then be mounded up as the potatoes grow. This can be back breaking work and not particularly fun in the hot summer sun, harvesting as well can be torturous when done alone.

I dont know if I mentioned digging these rows is torturous!
Richard from Unitec was nice enough to give me a bag of mixed varieties of maori potatoes. These reddish or purple varieties have an interesting sweet flavour and varied shapes. They command an incredibly high price in organic stores and up market supermarkets. A heavy yield is not guaranteed partially due to problems with seed potatoes and variety. The size of potatoe is also much smaller than the commercial varieties commonly grown.

Tearing up the path for soil, In order to get enough soil to grow the potatoes I am lowering the path by about a foot, the soil is relatively rich due to leaves and mulch used for the path. This will make the beds more raised and allow me to use the path area to compost a thick layer of sawdust over the next few years which I will then add to garden beds.

I am growing the potatoes in cages made out of chicken wire I got out of the inorganic, these are made into circles then put on top of what was once lawn. I got about 25 sacks of aged horse manure free from a disabled riding club in Mangere bridge which I have mixed with soil and am growing the potatoes in. I will use hay from the chicken enclosure to mound the potatoes up to encourage heavier yields. The enclosure will keep the straw and soil from falling out. I am anticipating the soil will be very rich and suitable to add to garden beds once the potatoes are harvested.

Potatoes planted with straw on the side to keep soil in. I am using an old mat to cover the grass.

Maori potatoes planted out across the soil and horse manure. The potatoes are have sprouts which are about 2 - 10cm long which is a bit long.

Potatoes planted and Kauri sawdust I also got today put down for instant paths.

Putting a potatoe cage in.

Me adding some horse manure

Walking through the garden with sawdust billowing round.

2007-09-10T23:43:00.000+12:00

No Free Trade Deal With USA !

These are a few of the images I took at todays protest against a free trade deal with the united state. Several top officials from the US governement and senior management from several US based multinations were in Auckland today for free trade talks. The corporate media have given the conference very little coverage and focused on minor details such as one of the diplomats wive's coming to New Zealand to work on sheep farms in the 70's.

The protest today was one of the most full on protest I have been on for a long time with around 100 protesters facing 50+ cops. The confrontation resulted in three arrests and some coverage in the media.

Some of the images are pretty :)

2007-09-06T16:13:00.000+12:00

Spring

Its well and truly spring, I spent much of the day working in the garden in a T shirt and bare feet, I’m normally pretty sensitive to cold so for me to be in a T shirt means it must be warm. It was the first time I have had the time or energy to work outside for weeks if not months and it really reminded me how much I actually enjoy gardening. Its not only the planting and harvesting of plants but the building, pruning design and dozens of other skills which all come into play. The food forest part of the garden is beginning to look really good with many of the seedlings I planted a year or two ago now a metre or two high, the garden is thriving with all the organic matter I have added. The soil around almost the entire property has gone from being poorly drained and clayey to rich spongy and black.

The borage self seeds around the place and brings in bee’s constantly as well as being a good addition to salads and teas. These kind of hardy self seeding plants are what I want to increasingly move towards in the gardens I am involved in.
This chicken escaped from the run two days ago and after a desperate search was found eating silverbeet in a neighbours yard. To thank the kids for not chasing it round I invited about 10 of them over to feed the flock. They named this one scaper.

These are various hardwood cuttings I am rooting in pumice.

The flowering daikons (a type of radish) at the front of this photo have roots at least 1.5m deep and weighing 5+ kg, I add them whenever I am making stir frys and they have a nice sour taste. I am hoping they will self seed everywhere as the chooks love eating the leaves almost as much as silverbeet. The chookhouse is to be attatched to the rear of the hot house to provide Co2 and heat.

2007-09-05T08:47:00.000+12:00

Good article on Energy slaves

Taken from and continued here

Energy slaves don't look like the workers honored on Labor Day: the lineman restoring your power after a storm, the backhoe operator digging a house foundation or the nurse changing a patient's bandages. They symbolize the energy sources that heat and cool the buildings and power the machines that run our society. One energy slave represents the power output from a human working as hard as a slave driver might drive a slave. A strong human working hard all day can put out roughly 100 watts of power. Working hard 12 hours per day, six days per year, 50 weeks per year, a human can produce about 1 million BTUs of energy — the amount of energy contained in eight gallons of gasoline.

From oil alone, 150 energy slaves serve the average person in the United States. The electrical line worker drives a truck everywhere; the backhoe makes digging a foundation in flinty soil seem effortless compared to digging by hand in sand; and the nurse uses bandages and medicines made with and from oil, in a hospital heated with oil.

But now the slaves are starting to slip away.

World crude oil production peaked in May 2005 and is down 2 percent – despite record-high oil prices and economic growth that normally translates into increasing use of oil. This world peak and decline has been forecast for over 50 years. When half the recoverable oil in a region is pumped out of the ground, the rate of production starts declining. The U.S. oil production peak was in 1971, and production has halved since then.

Oil is finite: The permanent decline in world oil production is inevitable. A 2005 study for the U.S. Department of Energy concluded that to successfully prepare for peak oil, the nation needed to begin 20 years before the peak and with an Apollo project level of effort. Yet peak oil seems to have already arrived.

There's not much that can substitute for oil. There's a lot of talk about ethanol and biodiesel for vehicles, but their production worldwide can be increased by less than a million barrels per day in the next five years, while demand is expected to increase by more than 10 times that much. Natural gas can heat buildings (and even fuel vehicles), but natural gas production itself is years past peak in North America and increases in imports are unlikely.

In Vermont, we're especially vulnerable. We have long, cold winters, a rural population dependent on cars, and we use oil to import 95 percent of our food (and to grow all of it). Vermont has no in-state sources of oil, and the United States as a whole (once the world's largest oil exporter) imports about two-thirds of its oil. As world oil production declines, oil-producing countries will likely use a larger proportion of their remaining production themselves. Oil may become scarcer faster in Vermont than in the world as a whole.

It's past time for us as individuals and as a society to start learning to live with fewer of these energy slaves. The key is to use energy much more efficiently and relocalize our economy, using food, renewable energy and materials from our own backyards or state rather than from across the globe.

2007-09-04T22:39:00.000+12:00

Some videos I found

I dont quite know what the person who made these videos was thinking, but its basically some of my favourite films stuck together.

2007-09-03T08:27:00.001+12:00

Food prices Could Rise by 50% in Five Years

From here

HOW much do you think a litre of milk costs? A dollar? Two dollars maybe? Actually it's $2.30 and it's going up so fast the guy in the coffee shop below my office on Flinders Lane has put up a big sign explaining the new prices.

The price of milk has risen 20 per cent in the past year, says Bill Barbour, and he should know. He's the investment manager at the DWS Global Agribusiness Fund, a $1.6 billion fund from Deutsche Bank that was formed last year to capitalise on what he calls "Ag-flation" — the sudden and irreversible upward momentum in food prices which is going to change the world as we know it.

Australian milk and dairy prices are bounding ahead and wheat prices are at an all-time high.

In China pork prices are up 90 per cent, in Britain food prices are growing at their fastest in a decade, in Mexico a sudden lift in the cost of flour for tortillas caused a riot a few months ago.

I had barely digested this news about food price inflation when two of the biggest food companies on the stock exchange reported annual results. At Goodman Fielder, CEO Peter Margin talked of a "perfect storm" of higher wheat and oil prices; at Futuris — owners of Elders Rural — CEO Les Wozniczka suggested food prices could rise by 50 per cent in the next five years.

2007-09-02T22:52:00.001+12:00

2007-09-02T22:20:00.000+12:00

Photos of Unitec

Here are some photos I took on friday at Unitec

2007-09-02T19:07:00.000+12:00

Energy Descent

David Homgren on Energy Descent

2007-09-02T14:03:00.001+12:00

Lock On to Suppport Hunger Striker

Update Ali Panah Has since been released on bail

Yesterday supporters of Ali Panah an Iranian refugee on the 51st day of an ongoing hunger locked onto parts of Mt Eden remand prison. The protesters attatched themselves to an awning as well as two flag poles holding banners until fireman cut the locks after over two hours. Ali Panah who is in danger of being killed for converting to christianity if he returns to Iran is growing weak and is in danger of suffering permanant injury or death from his hunger strike. A scuffle with cops occured when police pushed cops away from the prison and onto the road. The supporters are calling for the immigration minister to grant a visa to Ali Panah.

2007-08-30T09:59:00.001+12:00

Not Building Anything

I think the largest failure of the environmental and anticapitalist movements has been the failure to create an attractive vision of what an alternative world could look like. Instead we have been effectively stuck with pictures as painted by the capitalist media whether it be the vision of socialist street battles and a 1984 like world governed by corrupt party officials. Or the vision of a sustainable way of living associated with physical struggle, poverty and starvation. The public has been trained to view any non “free market” system as suspect and doomed to corruption and failure. The notion that Darwinian competition governs every action has become almost completely ingrained in the publics mind as the natural order.

The perception that anything but capitalism is doomed to failure is of course fostered by all our major institutions our family structure and the media. This isn’t surprising in the least. What is though is the way environmentalists and anti-capitalists play to their socially acceptable role as conscience for the population. We are constantly perceived as criticising the public for overconsumption and not doing enough. We are defined as in opposition to things and have based our movements on constant struggle often for little tangible reward. This struggle for little direct reward ensures that our numbers will remain small, and by choosing to fight problems which have no direct relation to our lives we ensure that those on our side will inevitably feel weak and powerless. Because we spend all our time opposing this or that problem we do not provide for either the needs of the people on our side or the needs of the communities we live in.

Environmentalism is by it very nature about fighting, but lacking connection to land or place we are fighting for abstractions such as “community” or “the environment”. How many of us feel deeply rooted to a particular place or know what lives in our own backyards. Because our struggle is not rooted in where we live the battles are never for our own benefit. Because we are fighting for the rights of West Papuans or the Amazon Tribes we never reap any of the benefits of our work. This limits our numbers to those people who are able to empathise with people living hundreds or thousands of miles away. It also means that we never directly feel the affects of our work and we never get the social rewards associated with success in our culture.The environmental movement fails to meet many real human and social needs so it is no sup prise that a large number of our people turn to governments, charitys or other capitalist power structures for the success, stability and support they provide.

Im not suggesting that we become ligestylists only doing actions when they make us feel good, or that we only engage in action which is not confrontational. But if the struggle we are engaged in is not directly relevant to our lives we will never build up our numbers. Spending our days in doomed pickets outside multinationals and marching down queen street ignored by all but tourists with cameras isn’t working. We must look at how we can fight for our streets and neighbourhoods for the toxified landscape we live on. Instead of attracting support with images of violent struggle we must present a vision of a future worth fighting for. Instead of guilt tripping people about their destructive lifestyles we showed them that another way of living is possible.

Unfortunately though even long time environmentalists lack any vision as to how an ideal society could work or what another way of life could look like. They may know that cars may have to go and that food should be produced organically but beyond this a clear picture of how a better world could function is strangely lacking. Walk into any bookstore and you can find dozens of books on this or that environmental problem but books on how to reshape society are impossible to find. Permaculture design books are probably as close to a vision of a different society as you can find but even these books have become increasingly focused on the individual farmer or individual gardener.

Chances are even most devout urban greeny will have no idea how to live sustainably. Turn the power and water off and take away the ability to shop at the local supermarket and no matter how many stalls they have done they will be in the same dire straights as anyone else.. And if this is a devout greenie supposedly aware of how to live simply then what of the majority of urban technoslaves - helpless without a steady input of highly processed highly destructive products.

The public have far to much to lose for them to join us in our calls for 80% cuts in carbon emissions or our calls to turn off huntly power station. And we do not seem to have anything to offer them in place of our current industrial system. In fact calls for an anticapitalist world often involve merely seizing the current industrial system and running it for the good of the workers. Unfortunatly it doesn’t matter to the atmosphere whether it’s the peoples coal or Solid Energy’s coal we are burning.

I think that if we are to become mainstream we must step beyond the role of black clad saboteur or eccentric hippy. We must learn what a new society could look like, identify what the benefits of this transformation could be and start talking to our friends neighours and family about this vision. We must abandon the role of once a week protesters and start creating living alternatives to capitalism within our community. We must create systems apart from and in opposition to industrial capitalism which serve the needs of our human and non human neighbours.Industrial Capitalism cannot be brought down by yelling loudly or painting intricate banners, Industrial capitalism will only disappear the day it is no longer necessary

2007-08-29T20:00:00.000+12:00

Abandoned carpark

Heres a few photos I took of the carpark of the former Otahu Meat Works, it put me in the perfect state of mind to watch What a Way to go, which was awesome! (but depressing)

I pass this area on my way to work a few days a week and often spend a lot of time looking at it. Sites like this provide infinite lessons on how natural ecosystems function as well as being startlingly beautiful.
Leaves and other material builds up wherever there is an obstruction an grasses grow in the broken down humus that forms, the grass and vegetation trap more Organic Matter and the road is eventually covered

Grasses creeping across the asphelt This meadow has formed right across the top of a carpark!
Surface of the meadow
Beneath the surface is asphelt! A 3 - 5cm black layer of decomposed vegetation has formed right over a carpark. The soil has roots running all through it and peels off the surface of the carpark like a mat.
Leaves and soil accumulating along the side of the driveway.

Weed amaranth breaking the asphelt apart.

2007-08-27T18:53:00.000+12:00

Chickens

We got chickens yesterday and put them into a hastily constructed enclosure at the back of the property. They are living temporarily in a converted rabbit hutch and have a big election bill board for a shelter outside. During the day they 2 eggs were lain, the chickens will be able to live off some of the spilt seed and excess dumpstered food we are given. The chickens were bought from a battery farm and looked after for a few weeks before coming to us.

In terms of design here are a few of the things I took into account, the chicken house will be partially attatched to the hot house to provide warmth and Co2 to the seedlings. The chicken run is beneath a fruiting tamarillo tree and has a growing avacado tree and a guava tree which will provide fruit for the chickens. And the chickens are next to the garden and compost pile for scraps and weeds and adding spoilt straw and manure for compost. The chickens will provide an interesting and useful addition to the developing food forest and garden.

The Eclosure and rear of hot house Digging through mulch for worms
This one was at the bottom of the pecking order before it came to us, large areas of feathers had been rubbed off in a battery cage.

2007-08-24T10:58:00.000+12:00

Chickens

Heres a few photos of the chickens at Kelmarna, Im getting some chickens on sunday which I'm quite looking forward too. I'm trying to get a coop and enclosure built in time, its going to be attatched to my hot house to provide Co2 and heat to the growing seedlings. The manure will be a welcome kickstart to the garden and the chickens will hopefully eat some of the weeds and kitchen waste we currently produce.

Getting chickens and turning the family pool into a pond are two of the big steps I've been meaning to take towards turning the property into a demonstration site. The garden is looking really good at the moment and we eat something from it almost every day. The weeds have begun to take off as spring begins though meaning weeding has become a fornightly job.

2007-08-23T10:02:00.000+12:00

This article is amazing, its from here and the website its from is here. Its what we started last weekend and I think we should continue doing this in Auckland

Permablitzing the suburbs

Written by adam
Tuesday, 10 October 2006

Lou Smith of Breakdown Press recently email-interviewed Asha Bee about permablitzes & backyard food production for a zine she's helping put together in response to the coming G20 conference in Melbourne…. Lou Smith of Breakdown Press recently email-interviewed Asha Bee about permablitzes & backyard food production for a zine she's helping put together in response to the coming G20 conference in Melbourne….

What are permablitzes all about? How did they begin? A permablitz is basically a permaculture-inspired backyard makeover where people come together to share knowledge and skills about organic food production in urban gardens while building community and having fun.

The basic idea is that by converting their lawns into organic food producing gardens, people will be able to back away from a dependence on industrial agriculture and the shipping of food back and forth across the world. At the same time, it makes organic eating accessible to more than just the upper-middle class.

The whole permablitz thing started with a group called Codemo (Community Development Multicultural Organisation), a local community group composed primarily of South American immigrants. A permaculture geek named Dan Palmer started hanging out with the Codemo crew and after hearing him rave about the wonders of permaculture and the joys of having a backyard full of practically free organic vegies, and going round to see the amazing and beautiful permaculture system Dan and his housemates, Cat and Adrian, had created in their infamous Thomas Street backyard, some of them expressed interest in growing food in their own backyards.

The first permaculture backyard makeover was held in Dandenong at the home of Vilma from El Salvador. And permablitzes have been spreading all around Melbourne since.

Do you think permablitzes and similar DIY projects have the ability to enrich local communities and culture?Definitely! Permablitzes involve a combination of learning, practicing and socialising. I'd say the social community-building aspect is just as important, or even moreso, than the garden makeover itself. In our socially atomised suburbs, with our tall fences separating our yards from our neighbours', its rare to get to know those living closest to us.

The permablitz I had at my place last Sunday gave me an opportunity to introduce myself to the old Greek couple next door and invite them round to share some of their gardening skills. A guy down the street who has a concrete yard has even been dropping his food scaps over so i could build up the castings in my worm farm in preparation. And a local lawn mower was dropping off his clippings at my place for the compost building workshop. On the day itself, I met quite a few local people for the first time who had heard about the blitz through the grapevine. On top of this, because it was Codemo who seeded off the permablitz concept, they have also offered fantastic opportunities to meet and spend time with a fun and diverse bunch of people – 76 year old Willie from Chile, for example, has been one most regular blitzers. He's also one of the hottest dancers of the 'permasalsa' — most of the Codemo permablitzes end with drink and a dance.

After hearing about the permablitz idea, the coordinator of Jika Jika, a community center in Westgarth [an inner Melbourne suburb], has also requested a mini-permablitz be held in the gardens of a local public housing estate. The people who live there are supposedly pretty socially isolated so it will be interesting to see what comes out of holding a blitz and building a community garden with them. [I went along to this, and the tenants rock and are keen to get some tomatoes in, and we're going back to work with them some more next weekend. -AF]

Do you think it's important for people in urban areas to have an engagement in food production and learn how to grow their own food?Living in a 'modern' society promises that we shouldn't actually have to think about our food, or any other basic necessity. We've 'developed' to the point that we now get to spend our time thinking about modern issues like ring tones and tax returns. So today the majority of the food we eat is grown by a handful of huge agribusinesses and sold in a handful of supermarket chains. Through this process, aside from disconnecting us from our food and all that its been through to get to our plates, we have also become completely dependent on multinational corporations for our basic necessities, and therefore have lost the very foundations of political autonomy.
I think that growing food, along with rebuilding community (to counter the individualisation and social atomisation faced in this corporate-driven society), are some of the most important and subversive activities we can do today.

“Political independence and the ability to engage in society has a lot to do with from what position of autonomy do we stand. And if we stand totally dependent on a one or two or three day food supply chain we don't really have any position of political autonomy.”— David Holmgren, Permaculture co-orginator (quote taken from greening the apocalypse)

"If your experience is that your water comes from the tap and that your food comes from the grocery store then you are going to defend to the death the system that brings those to you because your life depends on that; if your experience is that your water comes from a river and that your food comes from a land base then you will defend those to the death because your life depends on them. So part of the problem is that we have become so dependent upon this system that is killing and exploiting us, it has become almost impossible for us to imagine living outside of it and it's very difficult physically for us to live outside of it."— Derrick Jensen

Where's permaculture at at the moment? As a movement is it as vital as ever? To be honest, i'm only just starting to learn about permaculture after having been working on issues around trade in food and agriculture so I don't think I can really give much insight here. Personally, though, while searching for alternatives to the global industrial agriculture system, I've become excited about what permaculture and food localisation (producing and consuming food in the same area) have to offer. But then when adding peak oil and climate change to the mix, and the likely consequences of these on today's food and agriculture systems, it looks like food localisation using permaculture principles and design is going to offer more than an 'alternative' — it will become a necessity.

Do permablitzes attempt to take permaculture out of institutional settings and straight into our homes? From what I understand, the permaculture movement has made a conscious effort to be taught and shared primarily outside of institutional settings. The idea of permablitzes, though, is to make permaculture more accessible to those who live (and rent) in an urban environment, rather than just those who own a couple of acres of land out bush. The message is that as long as you have a yard (even if its covered in concrete), or a verandah, or a rooftop then you can produce food, and that by using permaculture principles and design, it can be reasonably easy.

Are permablitzes also about getting permaculture into, not only the backyard, but also the front manicured lawn, the medium strip, the roundabout? Yes yes!! I'd love to see more edible front yards, nature strips and roundabouts! Di from Box Hill held a permablitz at her place, which was held mostly in her backyard, but that was because her whole front yard was already brimming with vegetables and chickens. It was designed really beautifully with lots of different coloured vegies making it seem like an ornamental garden until closer inspection (and until you heard the squawkings from the chicken dome in the corner)… who needs daises eh?

Favourite pick of the crop this season? We didn't have a very happening garden until the blitz last sunday so the only things ready to eat at my place at the moment are the green leafies – rocket, spinach, different lettuces, silverbeet, and the herbs. Post-blitz, though, i'm probably most looking forward to the raspberries and strawberries, ooh and sweet corn.. and snow peas… and capsicum… water chestnuts… passionfruit… mmm… basil… we even planted some watermelon seeds… i think i'm mostly looking forward to being able to wander around my garden and just bite at random plants.

2007-08-22T21:31:00.000+12:00

Photos of Fungi

Here are a couple of photos I took while looking for edible weeds the other day. I dunno the names of most of them
Woodsear fungi
Woodsear fungi
Woodsear fungi

2007-08-21T09:02:00.000+12:00

Photos of Kelmarna

I and a friend went to Kelmarna City farm on Friday. Here are a few photos, the place has a really nice atmosphere and sells vegies to the public.

Sub-tropical area of bananas and nastirtums, mulched with compost and grass clippiings to retain moisture and control weeds.
Espaliered fruit tree with lettuce growing beneath it, a cool use of space.
The main garden plots.

Blackbird which hung round us for a while

Bee lifting off from a borage flower.
Using space below a plum tree to grow brassicas.

Flowering banana, Bananas can be grown quite successfully in Auckland but a sheltered warm location is preferable.

2007-08-20T18:21:00.000+12:00

Wild foods Collection

After the Urban Sustainability Group had our design session on sunday a few of us went out and collected some wild foods for a potluck that evening. Various leafy weeds and woods ear mushrooms were combined to make a tasty filling for a layered lasagne like dish.

Combined with low intensity permaculture techniques weed species could provide a very valuable part of a diet. Weeds tend to have far higher levels of nutrients than cultivated species, when collecting weeds in the city be sure to wash them.

Harvesting Onion weed, it can be used in place of onions

Harvesting woodsear mushrooms from the house we did the design session at.

Puha

From left, mustard, Onion weed, Rosemary, Woods ear mushrooms, greater and lesser plantain, Puha

Fantail which followed us round as we collected weeds.

2007-08-19T22:10:00.000+12:00

Prison Demo

Iranian Ali Panah is on the 36th day of a hunger strike in protest at his detention without trial or charge for the past 18 months. He was transferred from Mt Eden prison to Auckland hospital last week. He is refusing all food as well as a drip and is taking water only. He is weak, becoming emaciated and confused. Ali arrived here several years ago and applied for refugee status. His application was declined and he was arrested 18 months ago and detained at Mt Eden Prison to be deported. However it is not safe for him to return to Iran so he has refused to sign papers applying for an Iranian passport. As a Christian convert (before he came to NZ) his life would be in danger. Ali has the strong support of his New Zealand employer, his Anglican vicar and fellow parishioners as well as the Iranian community in New Zealand.

2007-08-14T22:22:00.000+12:00

Mucking Round on Fountains
Christchurch students yesterday occupied a fountain scheduled for demolition for the construction of road in a previously pedestrian only area. 13 people were arrested but the students are planning to continue there fight, more info and updates here.
Whilst talking about how we could support the arrested students we decided to muck round on a sculpture/fountain in Aotea Square. The photos are of me running up a steep sandstone slope then jumping across a metal ridge.

2007-08-13T20:42:00.000+12:00

What a Way to Go

For the past few months I have been waiting for the release of "what a way to go, life at the end of empire". What a way to go is a doco covering the various problems facing our society, and how the combination will trigger a collapse which will permanantly end our current way of life. Unlike others films like the "End of suburbia" or Al Gores "An Inconvienient Truth" what a way to go does not in the end try and pretend that tinkering round the edges will solve things. The film promises to provide a sobering view of our society which will shake many out of there trance.

The reviews of it so far have been very positive and I have ordered two copys to show to friends. I have been reading the websites blogs for the past few months and I'm very excited about seeing the finished product.

Taken from the website

What is it doing to us as thoughtful human beings as we face the overwhelming challenges of:

Peaking fossil fuel flow rates?
Critically degraded ecosystems?
A changing climate?
An exploding global population?
Teetering global economies? An unstable political climate?
And what is it doing to the rest of the life on this planet?

Featuring interviews with Daniel Quinn, Derrick Jensen, Jerry Mander, Chellis Glendinning, Richard Heinberg, Thomas Berry, William Catton, Ran Prieur and Richard Manning, What a Way to Go looks at the current global situation and asks the most important questions of all:
How did we get here? Why do we keep destroying the planet? What do we truly want? Can we find a vision that will empower us to do what isnecessary to survive, and even thrive, in the coming decades?

The website is here, the film can be purchased here

Trailer

2007-08-13T20:05:00.000+12:00

A Few More Photos From Saturday

Here are a couple more pictures from satuday.

2007-08-12T23:04:00.000+12:00

March Against Youth Rates

Yesterday, many young people took part in a demonstration against youth rates to demand equal pay for equal work. Members of Radical Youth made their voices heard on stage, speaking about their experiences working for youth rates and being ripped off and discriminated against. Unite, NDU, the Greens and Maori Party were also present and spoke. A strong attitude of "No Compromise, Fuck the Politicians" was present among the youth in the march. We don't want the watered-down Youth Rates bill. The bill itself is not enough! It still does not give equal pay for those under 16 years old, they don't even have a minimum wage!

The march, oorganised by YUM, NDU, CTU, Unite Radical Youth and others was followed by a gig with Chook peas, Nesian Mystik and a few other bands. The highlight of the gig was a powerful cover of "killing in the name of" by chookpeas

$

2007-08-10T08:07:00.000+12:00

Starting a community Garden

Cool videos showing the history and startup of a Australian Community garden.

2007-08-09T10:45:00.000+12:00

Sunday 19th August, 10.00 a.m. -- Urban Sustainability Group -- Urban garden design day!

Urban Sustainability Group will visit a friend's garden and will go through the process of designing a productive food producing garden

We will look at the gardens existing features, area and ecosystems, including an existing large tree. We will work around existing features in the garden while allowing for a vegetable garden, composting and other things the homeowner wants to put in. The design process will be collaborative with several experienced gardeners and permaculturalists working through the design with help from everyone present. Those who are keen may be able to pitch in and co-operate with composting or a garden bed -- while some may be interested in providing moral support, making friends, helping with food, or eating it! Whatever your passion, this activity will be followed by a shared lunch/pot luck.

All welcome. For more information contact John: mailto: jdarroch@gmail.com

The Auckland Urban Sustainability group is a group of gardeners and greenies who visit organic gardens and properties around Auckland fortnightly as well as organising and hosting events focused on living sustainably in the city. Our aim is to learn collaboratively from each other and make a positive impact on the Auckland region.

2007-08-08T08:01:00.000+12:00

Permaculture limits Hierachy

In my last post I drew the link between the concentrated storable surpluses agriculture produces and the rise of hierarchy. I believe that societies which are able to produce large surpluses of storable food will inevitably have institutionalised hierarchy develop because the energy supply is sufficient to support rulers. As well as the problems inherent in agriculture we are facing a bleak situation as peak oil hits and fertilisers and machinery begin to disappear. We are facing a double whammy where depleted soil deprived of petrochemicals stops producing food.

Permaculture and horticulture (see here) are generally aimed at producing food throughout the year in a steady flow with a larger amount in summer and less in winter. Permaculture is very strongly geared to the use of perennial crops which bear steadily year after year with trees producing at different times throughout the year. The number of different food sources on a permacultural property is often vast for example I have 50+ different perennial food producing species on a suburban section. For a permaculturalist a steady food supply is ensured through diversity and keeping areas wild to serve as food banks when the going gets tough. This is in contrast to agriculturalists who produce vast amounts of one crop and store it for long periods to ensure against disaster. As many permaculturalists have learnt the hard way the food they produce is staggered in production and not very easily transported to markets.

The staggered harvest and low storability and transportability often present in permacultural designs is often seen as a drawback. This is because its not very well suited to our current energy intensive food distribution system. However these “problems” are perfectly suited to limiting the growth of hierarchy and ensuring communities remains local and interdependent. Small self sufficient permacultural properties are good at supporting neighbours and communities but they cannot generate the vast amounts of storable foods needed to support citys. Because scale and complex social organisation are limited by Permaculture a high degree of freedom and autonomy for communities is ensured.

Because a population of permaculturalists is relatively self sufficient they could only be kept under control with a huge amount of effort and energy on the part of governments. As food and energy supplies diminish the ability for governments to control self reliant permaculturalists will diminish greatly. As governments grapple with food supply and distribution problems laws against permacultural practices such as dealing with human manure sustainably rather than concentrating it will eventually become a memory. Staying under the radar and focusing on enriching community will become a prudent and distinct possibility for rural permacultural communities.

In permacultural models food production cannot be increased arbitrarily and it cannot produce the huge surpluses that specialisation requires. As spare food throughout the year is limited complexity above a certain level is limited. Performers, priests and other specialists many of whom who travel from community to community could be supported temporarily by excess production but the huge machinery involved in government would be impossible. The levels of technical specialisation necessary to survive in our culture would be a hindrance in a Permacultural society as Permaculture demands that an individual as capable of many tasks.

Agriculture is focused on the production of a few staples almost all of which are adapted for disaster. The handful of annual grains the world has come to rely upon are designed to grow quickly in areas in which regular flooding clears the soil and deposits fresh silt for the grains to grow. Because of this farmers must simulate disaster every year ploughing the soil and depositing manure or other materials to enrich the soil. This disaster year after year with completely bare soil leads to a rapid breakdown in soil structure, loss of Organic Matter erosion and salinisation. All of which means one thing; agricultural societies inevitably create deserts.

Because of this inevitable decline in soil productivity and the rapid population growth encouraged in agricultural societies conquest and genocide become staples of the civilised life. Agriculture always depletes soil over the long run and as populations increase more land must be conquered to sustain the current population. Agricultural populations have been in a kill or be killed state of mind for the past ten thousand years. As surrounding agriculturalists increased in number their demand for land has increased, to stop themselves being conquered each group had to increase in size faster than the others. As Permaculture improves soil quality and improves yields over time much of this pressure to increase land under cultivation decreases.

With an agricultural population conquest is relatively easy, move in raid the granaries and slaughter the animals burn the crops and kill a few villagers. Because the population is probably reliant on one crop of grain for the entire year any disruption is disastrous and an agricultural population can be brought to its knees by an invading army or by natural pest and diseases. The invading army can also easily get high calorie transportable grains from wherever it invades. Permaculture makes conquest a lot more difficult, destroying a multi layered food forest full of root crops decade’s old trees and wild animals is a difficult task indeed. Invading army’s would not be able to just burn the fields and because food is produced throughout the year there would be no granaries to destroy. Because Permaculture is designed to include foraging and wild food sources the risk of starvation for a permacultural population would be much lower than an agricultural one.

Because Permaculture is so effective at transforming degraded areas there is a possibility that in the long run soil may be improved to the point where large scale agriculture is again feasible. Potentially permaculturalists experiencing population growth may cut down their food forests and put land back into high yielding grains. Climate change will however limit the areas where cultivation of grains is possible, most of our staples cannot tolerate major swings in temperature or rainfall. Also the one shot nature of oil means that no matter what happens industrialised agriculture will never again occur.

Civilisation has chopped down forests and killed off or enslaved forest people whenever it has come across them, the only way to guarantee an end to hierarchy and civilisation is to adopt a radically different means of food production.

2007-08-07T21:49:00.000+12:00

Auckland Urban Sustainability Group Visit Kelmarna Gardens

These are some photos I took on sunday during our visit to the urban farm, the camera was playing up so the images are a bit grainy and dont look that great.

Garden bed mulched with leaves and grass clippings

Bananas mulched with leaves and branches

2007-08-07T13:50:00.001+12:00

A nice clean environment

So I was doing this Lab report for microbiology about hygiene and in the title I included the word cleanliness I misspelled it (as I am prone to do) and had to think about it for a second and then in jumped out at me clean lines the word cleanliness is a word which highlights our desire for control of nature perfectly. In nature clean ie straight, lines simply don’t exist. The place they exist is in our agricultural fields. Visit any farm and chances are you will see long straight clean lines of crops as far as the eye can see. In fact with today’s laser guided tractors (no shit) I have been to farms where lettuce stretch in ruler straight lines as far as the eye can see.

As environmentalists we often talk about cleaning up the environment, but if we are approaching the environment from the view of the dominant culture then we will ‘be bringing our own conditioned desire for cleanliness into areas where it shouldn’t be. This kind of conflict between our societys view of what the environment should look like is typified in the debate between permaculturalists and environmentalists. Permaculturalists look at nature from a systems perspective and see the vital role that weeds play, roles such as slowing erosion, providing shelter and shade and adding organic matter to the soil. Environmentalists however often want to go in and rip out every non native in the area, causing erosion loss of biodiversity and often removing nurse species for their own beloved natives.

If we are to ever build a sustainable earth based culture then we must rid ourselves of our conditioned view of cleanliness. We must approach nature with an attitude of respectful curiosity knowing that nature is far more complex and intelligent than we can ever know. Before interfering with natural processes we must look at the web of interrelations and the role that every organism even the ones we view as pests play. We have introduced to many species to ever get ecosystems back to a prehuman state, instead we must find how we can live in a way that enriches our surroundings no matter where we are.

2007-08-05T20:46:00.000+12:00

Second Days Photos

Photos from the second day of protests against Alexander Downer.

2007-08-04T05:46:00.000+12:00

Photos from tent embassy

currently we are holding a tent embassy on the corner of K Road and Symonds st near the Langham hotel. The Australian foreign minister is visiting the conference today and protests are planned at 2.30 and 7pm. If you are able to pop in at all today or attend the major protests please do so.

Last night was really positive but very surreal, heaps of awesome coversations with passers by and very little flack. I only got an hours interrupted sleep though. Here are some photos with more to come as today progresses.

2007-07-30T20:36:00.000+12:00

Hope the below makes sense its something I have been trying to put together for a week or two now.

Autonomy and Hierachy and Agriculture

Over 12000 years we have gone from semi nomadic bands of a few dozen people to living in citys of millions, this fact alone testifys to the remarkable adaptability of the human brain. I do not think any other primate could adapt to such a large change in social organisation. This shift towards mass society has required that individuals suppress their own autonomy to the greater good.

Pre agriculture humans lived in bands and small tribes, varying in number from 10 – 200 these bands were semi nomadic, had few material possessions and enjoyed a quality of life only surpassed by rich western nations within the past 100 years. In fact in some areas such as working life it is thought that the most affluent of western nations do not have as much leisure as pre agricultural peoples did. With a lot more time to forge social connections and a high level of interdependence amongst small groups of people conflict would probably have been minimised. Also social censure and custom would probably have been a lot more effective at limiting dispute than in our society.

Hierarchy as we know it was limited in hunter gatherer societies. Due to low populations levels and constraints on food an energy supply hierarchy could not emerge on an institutionalised basis. Also limiting the rise of hierarchy was social cooperation required during the hunt, and the benefits of sharing food. If a tyrannical leader did emerge then an option was available that is no longer available to us, they could splinter and groups go there separate ways. As the knowledge of food and medicinal plants was attained at a relatively early age the threat of starvation if you walked out of the area was nowhere near as real as it is for agriculturalists.

As humans made the transition from low intensity methods of cultivation to high intensity forms hierarchy became to emerge for several reasons. The storable surplus generated in agricultural societies provided enough energy to support increasing complex forms of social organisation. Complex social organisation became necessary for projects such as irrigation and the use of hierarchy would have been virtually unavoidable in managing growing numbers of people. In hunter gatherer society food storage was often difficult and food sharing was a key way of ensuring that even if you didn’t catch or find much one day you would still get something to eat. The storable surpluses allowed by agriculture changed this and the huge investment of time and energy in food production made individual or family control over land and food unavoidable.
Whereas social complexity was not beneficial to hunter gatherer societies as it was not necessary to organise people to wander round collecting roots. It became highly rewarding in agricultural societies. If an agricultural community could organise to build an irrigation network or organise to conquer the surrounding area then that community had a significant advantage over lower complexity societies. Hierarchy as a way of managing that complexity would have inevitably emerged.

Specialisation and autonomy

Specialisation is one of the defining features of civilisation someone produces the food, someone else makes the pots and someone else does the hunting. On a day to day scale this is just people doing what they are best at be it hunting birds or climbing trees for honey. However once specialisation becomes occupational it quickly deprives humans of freedom and forces participation in the wider system no matter how destructive that system is.

In our society all land is owned be it by individuals companies or the state, and to get anything helpful to survival one must pay. This payment varies from hunting licenses, rent purchase price etc but the general rule is that to survive one must participate in the economic system. Added to this is a never before seen level of specialisation our society has created. This specialisation is so complete that virtually no one in our society has the skills necessary to survive outside of our technological society. On top of these two material barriers to surviving apart from our industrialised society are psychological and social barriers. We have all to some degree or another internalised the belief that working hard or specialising in some particular field is our ultimate job in life. We have also internalised the belief that surviving in an environment which is not under the control of humans is difficult and painful. Well so what? I believe that understanding why the vast majority of the population continues to participate in such a destructive culture is vital to any attempts to stop the destruction of our own culture.

From birth our free will is systematically broken, if we can be forced to sit in a dull room writing lines instead of playing outside then we will do anything. Now from birth young people are placed in front of screens to entertain them, leaving them bored whenever they are not hyperstimulated by loud colourful images. These efforts to break our free will and to destroy the ability to entertain ourselves means that we do have free time we don’t know what to do with ourselves and instead look for content generated by another. This guarantees that even we are not relying on the system for the basic nessecities of survival we look to it for entertainment and direction. The chances of us spending our free time consciously or unconsciously picking up the ability to live in wild nature because of this lower for our generation than any one before us in history.

Complexity requires specialisation, a dam above a certain size requires egineers, brick makers, scaffoldders etc etc. Everyone could do some of each job but as specialisation increases efficiency when there is enough energy then it makes sense for each person to do one particular job. Because every part of the dam requires all the workers to do their jobs on time nobody is free to choose to do something different. For the dam to be built the workers must suppress their own desires for the good of the wider society. This message of suppressing our own desires is the message which has been drummed into us from birth.

As society increases in scale our individual power over decisions is increasingly limited. So in a village of 50 people with rich terrain surrounding it I may be able to say I don’t want to build the dam due to the effect on the fish in the stream and I might have apretty good chance of getting my way. Not building the dam would be a possibility because population pressure and the resulting need to intensify production of crops would probably not override all other factors. If I lived in a city of 100,000 people with an exploding population to to the need for more and more workers in the fields then my opinion about the fish would be irrelevant. Population pressure would require the intensification in production and my role as an individual would be reduced to that of a cog.

As scale increases the ability of humans to make meaningful choices becomes more and more limited. In our own society no one has the power to stop the endless increases in destruction as to do so would not be in the best interest of the generations now alive. Of course individuals may feel differently, some may go so far as to attempt to block the construction of dams knowing full well the increasing requirements the wider society has for increasing food or power production. If these people put up more than a symbolic protest and the wider society places the perceived need for power production over that of the natural world then whoever in charge will invariably use whatever force is deemed acceptable to get that dam built.

Some of us feel strongly enough about the destruction our society is causing to want to try and abandon it. This is where the obstacles come into play; first of all we need a place to live. For agricultural societies abandoning farms and walking off into the bush when things got tough was a real possibility but for us that is a lot more difficult. We need to pay to live anywhere so we need to buy a place outside of the system. Also none of us have any of the survival skills common amongst pre agricultural peoples so we need to rely on our current society to survive until we acquire those skills. And as has been pointed out before you often have to pay to acquire those very skills from someone who already knows them. And once we have land and the skills we need to survive we need to constantly pay rates or some form of basic tax for the right to exist on the land. meeting all of these conditions is enough of a barrier to ensure that almost everyone no matter how much they hate what our culture is doing will not walk away from it.

A barrier often ignored by permaculturalists and others walking away from the system is the need for community. The chances of finding a dozen or so others who are willing and motivated enough to walk away from civilisation is rather slim and the type of people who most hate this society have social problems which make a healthy functioning community a very hard task. This need for community is a problem which is often ignored and both makes surviving outside civilisation difficult and unattractive for many.

Our society has places for people who are set upon walking away from it as too try and contain everyone would be too much work. Small niches of people exist on the fringes of all societies, hermits, bums, punks, anarchist squats, cults and many other ways of living are allowed because they are not attractive enough to cause large portions of society to quit there jobs and walk away. And these groups do have benefits such as a sense of community which overrides the discomfort these lifestyles entail.

Increasing complexity reduces us to cogs in a global machine and leaves very few with the ability to stop it. I believe that the barriers to abandon society are high enough to contain all but the most determined. Because of this I see a collapse brought on by an inability generate enough food and energy to support our complex way of life as the only way that people will ever leave our current society. Even then the above barriers will still work to keep people clinging to the remnants of civilisation as long as possible.

2007-07-30T18:38:00.000+12:00

Food forests Continued

I was looking at a abandoned industrial lot with some tree’s growing overhead and greenery carpeting wherever soil is open and small patches of greenery growing through wherever there are cracks in the pavement and it hit me why the ideal food forest for fruit production is open with heaps of light and heaps of greenery all over the ground. I feel a bit silly for not recognising it earlier but of course its because we are trying to keep a state of interrupted succession at around the 3 – 7year mark from an abandoned field. This is the stage where trees are about 2 – 3meters high bushes and shrubs are growing well whilst there is still quite a bit of herbaceous vegetation growing across the ground. If we were to allow succession to continue we would include timber and other species and create a dark forest type environment not conducive to the fast growing fruiting species we rely upon for food.

Food forests still rely on interrupting and keeping succession at an artificially early stage. This is illustrated if you look at a mature New Zealand mixed podocarp forest which is a dark thick environment completely unsuited to growing fruit trees in. While not as destructive as agriculture which takes succession back to the beginning at least once a year and normally a whole lot of times a year we still inhibit the development of mature forests. This seems to fit some memory’s I have of how the early stages of succession are the most productive.

In some food forest systems such as those practices pre European in some areas of the Amazon forests were allowed to develop over 150 years before the cycle of succession began again through slash and burn techniques.

Anyway it was a good reminder that I should go out and test my ideas by looking at natural ecosystems rather than just looking at books and websites writer by permaculturalists. As most permacultural texts come from Britain which has cold winters or the subtropical environment present in Australia we must be careful to design according to our own landscapes. I also stumbled upon this a very thought provoking article by David Holmgren about the role of “weed” species in Permaculture and land restoration econsynthesis in weed landscapes originally printed in the Permaculture International Journal.

Where we try and keep succession (with more trees)

2007-07-29T19:23:00.000+12:00

Food forest class.

Yesterday I delivered a class on food forests as part of Royal Oaks’s Horizon gardens Master Gardener’s series. I started with a quick introduction about the destructiveness of modern agriculture before explaining succession in disturbed landscapes and the productivity of edge areas. We then went outside and sheetmulched an area I have been turning into a food forest with a friend. The area is a grove of tamarillo tree’s which we had cleared of weeds and done our best to rid of wandering dew a plant which is virtually impossible to clear completely. We covered the layer of herbaceous weeds with about 15 layers of newsprint and then a 10 – 15cm thick layer of deadly nightshade and banana palms taken from the area scheduled to be developed in a few short weeks. We then covered the vegetation with a few centimetres of cosmetic hay.

During my research for the class I have come to alter my idea of the Ideal food forest, I’m now thinking that to ensure high production of edible fruit at latitude such as ours the food forest should be fairly open. This does not make the idea of a 7 layer food forest irrelevant but merely modifies it to the low light levels we experience in New Zealand compared to that needed for modern fruit trees. The Unitec food forest which I spent a lot of time working in over 2 years is very thick with almost complete canopy cover and perhaps as a result fruit yields are very poor.

Sheetmulched area

Ornamental banana in food forest

Covering with paper

Covering with vegetation

Applying straw

2007-07-27T22:58:00.000+12:00

Plea to gardeners: keep a little patch unclipped to help save bumblebees

from the guardian

Let the neighbours mutter in dismay. Unruly, overgrown gardens have been highlighted as a vital refuge for the nation's dwindling bumblebee population, in a countrywide survey by conservationists.

Patches of garden that are left to run wild have been ranked as one of the richest for nesting bumblebees, offering better shelter and food resources than farmland and wooded areas, the report finds.

More than 700 volunteers took part in the National Bumblebee Nest Survey, with each scouring a garden and at least one other natural habitat to help with the understanding of the insects' favoured nesting sites.

Britain has about 25 native species of bumblebee, although three have been declared nationally extinct. Populations of nine other species are so precarious they have, or are due to be, designated special concerns by the government's Biodiversity Action Plan. In total, 15 species have seen serious contractions in their numbers, a drop that has alarmed conservationists.
The survey, published today in the Journal of Applied Ecology, found that gardens had among the highest densities of bumblebee nests, with an average of 36 nests per hectare.

Farmland fencing was also identified as a rich habitat for the insects, with 37.2 nests per hectare. Other countryside habitats made less suitable nesting grounds, with hedgerows being home to about 30 nests an hectare and woodlands just 11 nests an hectare.

Bumblebees build nests above ground or just beneath and line them with moss and leaves. Slightly neglected gardens are particularly good habitats for the bees because of the abundance of nesting options, such as compost heaps and bird boxes, and additionally the rich variety of flowers over the year that many gardeners cultivate.

"These kinds of gardens really provide a refuge for bumblebees, as long as people don't manage them too carefully," said Juliet Osborne, an ecologist at Rothamsted Research, the agricultural research centre based at Harpenden, Hertfordshire. "If you've got different grass areas, flower beds, compost heaps and hedges, there's a vast variety of habitats for bumblebees," she said.

2007-07-25T22:06:00.000+12:00

Jesus camp

I just got back from seeing jesus camp, One of the more disturbing films I have seen. The film focuses on one family of evangelical Christians, homeschoolers raising their kids as fundamentalist Christians. The films folows the family to two children’s gatherings where kids are told that they are the most important generation to walk the face of the earth, music and powerful tones of voice bring kids to tears and after guilt tripping them into believing they aren’t good enough the kids end up bawling there eyes out, fitting on the floor and praying in tongues. Seeing a 6 year old arms outstretched with the deranged look of a apocalyptic preacher is seriously disturbing. I think most of the audience was shocked by the film, whilst it was amusing in parts (praying for a cardboard cut out of George Bush springs to mind) overall the film was deeply chilling.

The film was particularly fascinating for me as with due to my Christian upbringing I could identify word for word with much of the film. The purposeful emotional manipulation of children the film captures is breathtaking. The effectiveness with which the Christians are able to work people up and close their minds makes this an absolute must see, particularly for those of us who oppose the right wing patriarchal values Christianity has come to represent.

I think the resurgence of fundamentalist churches in New Zealand and abroad reflects the profound sense of meaninglessness our culture has creates. In religion people are finding the sense of purpose belonging and belief which is absent from consumerism and the split family unit. As we face the threats posed by an energy descent and catabolic collapse I would expect more and more people to turn to the church. When people spend their lives working jobs they hate spending evenings huddled round blue flickering screens its no wonder they turn to fundamentalist beliefs for meaning and the support many other cultures had from birth.

Heres a few clips from Youtube

2007-07-21T21:11:00.000+12:00

Pro Aborigine Protest at Rugby Game

Placards saying "Protect Aboriginal Children From Howard" with an aboriginal flag on the back were distributed to members of the public going into the New Zealand vs Australia rugby game tonight. Hundreds of leaflets comparing New Zealands racist policy's with those of the Howard government were also distributed. Many members of the public were supportive and the dozens of placards we had were distributed well before the game started. Tonights protest was particularly aimed at the land confiscation proposed by the Howard government and the military occupation of aboriginal land. The public were informed that it was once again time to "mix sport and politics" which brought back memories of the springbok tour to many of the people going into the game.

Feel free to use any of these images on websites which support aboriginal rights. To New Zeal and other right wingers please do not use these images.

The full press release for the event is available here

2007-07-17T21:26:00.000+12:00

Hydroponic system

I got given a hydroponic system the other day, I'm pretty excited about it. Its a conventional Nutrient Flow Technique system big enough for about 15 tomato plants which is a pretty decent number of tomatoes, peppers whatever. Iv gained some enthusiasm for hydroponics from work and see it on the same level of environmental impact as watching tv riding in a car going shopping etc. Many of the fresh vegies we eat are grown hydroponically and for people with limited space its an option I would recommend considering.

Much cooler would be if I used it as an aquaponics system in conjunction with the pond I'm turning the pool into. This would be much more sustainable an low impact and would be a really cool demonstration unit to the public. Iv read some stuff by the new alchemy institute that makes aquaponics sound workable but have to do some more detailed research.

Peak oil

Peak oil is seeping into popular culture, apparently it was the lead item on the news a few days ago saying that oil would peak in 3 - 5 years. Whether this chatter turns into action is highly unlikely but the more people know the better. Also urban self sufficiency is popping up a lot in garden and current affairs shows, I really think greenies could capture interst rather effectivly if they tried.

Im reading the upside of down at the moment and from what I have read I highly reccomend it. The description of the Roman collapse caused by diminishing returns from agriculture and the complex nature of the Roman civilisation is fascinating and definetly deserves a post.

2007-07-15T19:28:00.000+12:00

Urban Scout hits the nail on the head

"I once went to see a speaker at Reed College with a friend who went there, and she said to me, “It really impresses me that you never went to college. It takes a lot of courage and self-direction to do what you do.” I thought about what she said and responded, “I don’t think I have more courage than anyone else. I simply cannot sit in a classroom without wanting to kill myself. I can’t take it psychologically. Perhaps I just have a higher sensitivity than most?” "

"Similarly, I do what I do not because I want to, I don’t martyr myself. I do this because I can’t do the civilization thing without wanting to kill myself. Drugs and entertainment simply cannot take that feeling away."

Taken from here

2007-07-15T18:36:00.000+12:00

New Book by Derrick Jensen

So I still have really bad computer access cause my laptop charger is still down but I'm really looking forward to getting the new Derrick Jensen book. The cynicism in the title alone is amazing the amazon page is here

Iv been up to lots of interesting things but am writing on paper now (with these new fangled things called pens its very weird) I also have some good pictures to put up as well, damm internet.

Two of America's most talented activists team up to deliver a bold and hilarious satire of modern environmental policy in this fully illustrated graphic novel. The US government gives robot machines from space permission to eat the earth in exchange for bricks of gold. A one-eyed bunny rescues his friends from a corporate animal testing laboratory. And two little girls figure out the secret to saving the world from both of its enemies (and it isn't by using energy-efficient light bulbs or biodiesel fuel). As the World Burns will inspire you to do whatever it takes to stop ecocide before it's too late

2007-07-10T13:10:00.000+12:00

Just found death of a president the film festival fake doco about George bush's assassination

2007-07-10T09:16:00.000+12:00

Great article about the end of cheap food, Im doing a bit of fictional writing but probably wont be posting much for a while, my laptop is still bust.

Hat tip J for the article

Source: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/2/story.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10450519&pnum=0

Biofuel mania ends days of cheap food

The era of cheap food is over. The price of maize has doubled in a year, and wheat futures are at their highest in a decade. The food price index in India has risen 11 per cent in one year, and in Mexico in January there were riots after the price of corn flour - used in making the staple food of the poor, tortillas - went up fourfold.

Even in the developed countries food prices are going up, and they are not going to come down again. Cheap food lasted for only 50 years.

Before World War II, most families in developed countries spent a third or more of their income on food, as the poor majority in developing countries still do. But after the war, a series of radical changes, from mechanisation to the green revolution, raised agricultural productivity hugely and caused a long, steep fall in the real price of food.

For the global middle class, it was the good old days, with food taking only a tenth of their income.

It will probably be back up to a quarter within a decade. And it may go much higher than that because we are entering a period when three separate factors are converging to drive food prices up.

The first is simply demand. Not only is the global population continuing to grow - about an extra Turkey or Vietnam every year - but as Asian economies race ahead, more people in those populous countries are starting to eat more meat.

Early this month, in its annual assessment of farming trends, the United Nations predicted that by 2016, less than 10 years from now, people in the developing countries will be eating 30 per cent more beef, 50 per cent more pig meat and 25 per cent more poultry.

The animals will need a great deal of grain, and meeting that demand will require shifting huge amounts of grain-growing land from human to animal consumption - so the price of grain and of meat will both go up.

The global poor don't care about the price of meat because they can't afford it even now. But if the price of grain goes up, some of them will starve. And maybe they won't have to wait until 2016, because the mania for bio-fuels is shifting huge amounts of land out of food production.
A sixth of all the grain grown in the United States this year will be "industrial corn" destined to be converted into ethanol and burned in cars, and Europe, Brazil and China are all heading in the same direction.

The attraction of biofuels for politicians is obvious: they can claim that they are doing something useful to combat emissions and global warming - although the claims are deeply suspect - without demanding any sacrifices from business or the voters.
The amount of United States farmland devoted to biofuels grew by 48 per cent in the past year alone, and hardly any new land was brought under the plough to replace the lost food production.

In other big biofuel countries, such as China and Brazil, it's the same straight switch from food to fuel. In fact, the food market and the energy market are becoming closely linked, which is bad news for the poor.

As oil prices rise - and the rapid economic growth in Asia guarantees that they will - they pull up the price of biofuels as well, and it gets even more attractive for farmers to switch from food to fuel.

Nor will politics save the day. As economist Lester Brown of the Earth Policy Institute says: "The stage is now set for direct competition for grain between the 800 million people who own automobiles, and the world's two billion poorest people." Guess who wins.
Soaring Asian demand and biofuels mean expensive food now and in the near future, but then it gets worse.

Global warming hits crop yields, but only recently has anybody quantified how hard. The answer, published in Environmental Research Letters in March by Christopher Field of the Carnegie Institution in Stanford, California, and David Lobell of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is quite simple: for every 0.5C hotter, crop yields fall between 3 and 5 per cent.
So 2C hotter, which is the lower end of the range of predicted temperature rise this century, means a 12 to 20 per cent fall in global food production.

This is science, so that answer could be wrong - but it could be wrong by being too conservative. Last year in New Delhi, I interviewed the director of a think tank who had just completed a contract to estimate the impact on Indian food production of a rise of just 2C in global temperature.

The answer, at least for India, was 25 per cent. That would mean mass starvation, for if India were in that situation then every other major food-producing country would be too, and there would be no imports available at any price.

In the early stages of this process, higher food prices will help millions of farmers who have been scraping along on very poor returns for their effort because political power lies in the cities.
But later it gets uglier. The price of food relative to average income is heading for levels that have not been seen since the early 19th century, and it will not come down again in our lifetimes.

2007-07-06T19:35:00.000+12:00

My new favourite artist

2007-07-03T19:59:00.000+12:00

Afternoon in Newmarket

I know it comes with the territory but the police response to protest actions seldom fails to impress me. At anti war marches we often have 25 – 30 police officers for several hours at fur demos we often have two or three cop cars and the officers attending our events are often the very highly trained Team Policing Unit (TPU) in Auckland or the Strategic Response Group (SRG) in Wellington. I know occasionally protesters break the law but the police presence, response and arrests seem to far outweigh any behavior from protesters.

Add to high police numbers the omnipresent photographers and videographers and I’m left wondering how much of a threat we really seem. Are our actions so threatening to the public that we must be photographed every time we march for peace? Should we be arrested every time we piss off a business owner or cop?

This Saturday was a particularly stunning of a police overreaction to a fur protest in Auckland. We had 4 cop cars and 6 cops including a detective and a senior officer turn up, a baton was pulled out and one of the officers was wearing Tazer. The chatter on the radios must have been intense as a photographer told us “I was listening to the scanner and I thought you were smashing bank windows or something” he seemed rather bored by our demo.

Our police culture treats every protester as a criminal who is only allowed to walk the streets at the whims of whatever officer happens to be on duty that day. Add to this any new police act or terrorist act and we are well on our way to shutting down any effective public dissent.

Cop with Baton
Pissed off detectiveCop with Tazer

2007-07-01T10:27:00.000+12:00

Kiwi Saver

Today marks the public launch of the Labour party's kiwi saver scheme, the superannuation scheme uses a combination of employer contributions and tax credits to entice New Zealanders to save for retirement. With an ageing population low savings and a current account deficit all of this seems kind of prudent. But the kiwi saver scheme has one fatal flaw, the money put into the scheme is being put into the stock market by investment firms. So along comes a protracted recession triggered by peak oil resource wars or whatever and bang the savings of hundreds of thousands of people disappear over night. The world economy relies on perpetual and increasing growth to continue, any long term recession will cause the stock market to collapse. What are the chances that the world economy can continue to grow for another few decades while facing the costs of climate change, fossil fuel depletion and resource wars?

Its pretty clear the Labour government haven't taken the looming environmental apocalypse into account, but I have :) . As any graph showing long term population trends for the globe makes obvious we are in overshoot, with estimates of the carrying capacity of the world varying between 500 million and 2 billion. The ability to feed the world without synthetic fertilisers and pesticides is probably halve our current production and declining daily. Agriculture destroys soils turning fertile topsoil into desert this process has been carried to completion throughout the former fertile crescent and is well underway across the American Midwest, much of Africa and most of Australia. So how does this relate to kiwisaver? Well if you believe that the worlds population and economy is likely to collapse in the next 10 - 100 years this affects ones savings choices dramatically.

I believe that the best investments one can make at this present time are in this order

1 Permaculture/Gardening/Useful skills

2 Land

3 Gold

So if I was in power this is what I would be encouraging New Zealanders to do in terms of planning for retirement. Coincidentally all of these would encourage a transition to a sustainable economy with skills for interdependence, land to grow food on and restore and local control of the currency all promoting a local interdependent country.

Note This post is only semi serious the author takes no responsibility for the savings of anyone following his advice.

2007-06-28T09:26:00.000+12:00

Goings on

Life continues to be pretty busy with a bunch of projects and oddities filling up my time, yesterday I was filmed for a pilot for a garden show. It was quite a surreal experience and nothing like a normal afternoon in the garden, it will be quite a while before I find out if the program gets funding. During the filming I found myself reffering to peak oil, climate change, permaculture and the destructiveness of conventional agriculture so hopefully no matter how they cut it the revolutionary nature of urban self sufficiency wont be lost.

My laptop charger has stopped working causing some problems with work and I wont be online as much.

Im having a party at my place tomorrow night if any readers are interested in attending and havnt been invited yet just email me at jdarroch@gmail.com

2007-06-25T10:44:00.000+12:00

Photos

The view from my laptop

Mushroom growing in freshly composted tatsoi bed

A confused peach tree flowering in the middle of winter.

View showing part of the perrenial area at the rear of the section

2007-06-25T10:43:00.000+12:00

cool interview with Bill Mollison (cofounder of permaculture) here

Alan: Doing permaculture seems to be the opposite of abstraction.

Bill: Oh, I put it another way. I can easily teach people to be gardeners, and from them, once they know how to garden, you'll get a philosopher. But I could never teach people to be philosophers - and if I did, you could never make a gardener out of them.

When you get deep ecologists who are philosophers, and they drive cars and take newspapers and don't grow their own vegetables, in fact they're not deep ecologists - they're my enemies.

....

Alan: Permaculture involves tampering with nature, but how far do you think we should go? Should we be doing genetic engineering, creating hybrids, etc.?

Bill: The important thing is not to do any agriculture whatsoever, and particularly to make the modern agricultural sciences a forbidden area - they're worse than witchcraft, really. The agriculture taught at colleges between 1930 and 1980 has caused more damage on the face of the Earth than any other factor. "Should we tamper with nature?" is no longer a question - we've tampered with nature on the whole face of the Earth.

If you let the world roll on the way it's rolling, you're voting for death. I'm not voting for death. The extinction rate is so huge now, we're to the stage where we've got to set up recombinant ecologies. There are no longer enough species left, anywhere, to hold the system together. We have to let nature put what's left together, and see what it can come up with to save our ass.

2007-06-24T18:39:00.000+12:00

2007-06-24T18:34:00.001+12:00

another cool fungi video here

2007-06-24T17:47:00.001+12:00

2007-06-24T17:35:00.001+12:00

2007-06-24T13:15:00.000+12:00

2007-06-23T23:00:00.000+12:00

For international readers: John Key is the Leader of the right of center National party in New Zealand, a slick multimillionaire he is short on policy but is good at soundbites. He is probably going to be the next prime minister, a supporter of US foreign policy he wants to restart visits to New Zealand by US warships and up our contribution to the ongoing war of terror throughout the middle east.

Google Bomb shows Nzers think John Key is Clueless

Go to www.google.co.nz, type "Clueless" into the search box, hit the "pages from New Zealand" button, then click "Search" or "I'm feeling lucky".

Top of the list of results is National Party Leader John Key's personal website – www.johnkey.co.nz.

This result was created by a process called "Google Bombing". Previous political Google Bomb's gained international media attention when the word "liar" lead to Tony Blair, and the words "miserable failure" and "failure" lead to the White House Biography of George W. Bush.

A Google Bomb is successful when enough websites link to their target with the desired phrase. In this case hundreds of links were made to www.johnkey.co.nz with the word Clueless in the anchor text.

On the 25th of January this year, Google announced that they had changed their algorithm to "minimize the impact of many Googlebombs". However this latest successful Google Bomb proves that the process can still work.

For more information on Google Bombs, please visit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_bomb

For any further information, please email queries to john.key.clueless@gmail.com

2007-06-19T11:36:00.000+12:00

Photos of garden

Just a few photos of the garden from today.

2007-06-19T08:29:00.000+12:00

Videos

I recommend watching at least one of these

Zeitgeist The Movie:

Part1:(without intro) http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8461754114455236037

Part2: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2602704786128880796&hl=en

Part3: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8450558837192717138

Part one shows the parallels between Christianity and several pre christian sun worship pagan religions.

Part two is about the twin towers and I'm kinda bored of the twin towers.

Part three is one of the most entertaining attacks of the economic I have seen. I would love to hear other peoples opinions about this part particularly.

The website is here It simply states that the film is intended to trigger peoples own search for the truth and that the movies are not finished.

And this is a great example of how the medium is the message

2007-06-13T22:07:00.000+12:00

Someone said it better

As Chellis Glendinning reported in What A Way To Go, more than half of the human population now lives in urban areas. That means most human psyches are locked in boxes their whole lives long. They wake in boxes, eat meals in boxes, drive here and there in boxes, work in boxes, shop in boxes, come home to stare at plasma enhanced electronic boxes, and then retreat to sleep in boxes.

“Go to your box, I mean, your room. And don’t come out until you are ready to say you are sorry.”

I read this and shivered, the thought that halve the world is now living in urban areas scares me, I find suburbia hard to live in and I spend most of my days gardening walking and connecting with real living areas. How can others live in such a sterile environment without any cconnection to reality at all? And is it any wonder we are so destructive when none of us understand our gardens let alone the mind blowing complexity of non domesticated areas...

Besides the sick entertainment industry, there’s school. Go ahead. Put active, lively, curious young humans into age-segregated concrete buildings. Sit them for hours in metal chairs and desks. Make them line up and walk to the lunchroom every day. And then tell me you don’t wound their spirits. It works for Empire of course. Because after twelve years in public school it’s easy to sell those wounded spirits into corporate slavery and corporate executive slavery because they will accept as adults the same insanity they were subjected to as children in school. They will believe it’s normal. They will even say they like it. They will work ungodly hours for the privilege of paying the exorbitant mortgage payment on their McBox McMansion. Will we ever recover from this?

It’s possible to step out of the insanity. But it isn’t easy. It takes monumental effort because everything about Empire is set up to make it hard. Everything is set up to promote the continuance of the insanity. While it isn’t easy, there is a way that it is simple.

We only need to stop and sit together and regain our sanity. But what an anomaly it is for people to sit together with the simple intention to speak as openly as I write in my journal or on my blog. Thoughtful, compassionate, sober, honest sharing needs to be part of people’s lives on a regular basis.

I’m literally mad, insane, because that simple practice isn’t a regular part of my life.mI can’t be sane without it. None of us can. Not truly, deeply sane.

I know this. I know that time to speak fully and truthfully about one’s experience is as important to people as healthy food and clean water. Acts of violence and episodes of depression in our culture are now epidemic. People of Empire are frantically trying to fight their way out of this deadening culture that keeps us alone and isolated. A year ago U.S.A. Today reported that one of every four Americans have NO ONE to confide in. One in four! Shit.

Graphic violence and sexuality on the big screen testify to this reality. Americans are violently upset and dreadfully lonely. And we’ve no way to express ourselves or get our needs met except vicariously on the screen. Or violently in the streets and on college campuses. We want to shoot the face off of this culture and get to the blood, the heart, the body, the life that is somewhere there, under the masks, the clothes, the images.

Human beings need to sit in a circle regularly with others where getting beyond the masks is possible. The hours of my life that I have sat in a safe, intimate, circle with other people have been way too few. The hours I have sat alone in a metal box speeding over asphalt on rubber donuts, or in public school classrooms indoctrinated into hierarchy, or in darkened rooms, my face stuffed with Frosted Flakes or buttered popcorn, violent or even just stupid images flickering on a screen in front of me, have been appallingly too many. I didn’t even know it was possible for people to share honestly in a group, or anywhere for that matter, until I was a young adult.

I mean, who did that? Who sat in a circle with people, talked sincerely, cried openly, and faced into conflict together? Nobody in my childhood did. I have consciously sought out and created those opportunities over the course of my adult years, and still that experience represents only a precious drop in a lifetime spent keeping my head and heart just slightly above the murky waters of the ocean of Empire

The full entry here

Just this morning I had a long conversation about this sort of thing, New Zealand has the second highest working hours in the entire world and I have no idea why. How can people put up with selling their life away, and to go back to empty houses comforted only by the flickering blue light of a television screen. Its a wonder that only a quarter of people are depressed.

I know not everyone can walk away, and I know that people still need to eat. But I feel those are just excuses. If we wanted to if we really wanted to we could live differently, their are other ways of growing food, schooling, consuming and relating to each other. I don't know what it is that keeps us from walking away, I don't know why this culture has been able to overpower every indigenous culture every revolution that has faced it. Perhaps it is because this culture is so inhuman, dulled to pain and without any empathy towards anything really.

Just knowing that other people think this society is completely fucked makes it easier....

On a positive note things are going really well at the moment, I spent tuesday sheet mulching a food forest im helping develop at the local organic gardens using banana palms, paper and straw today was spent gardening and talking to a TV (hehe the irony) production company about a gardening program and this weekend has 2 working bee's at different community gardens planned and a class on permaculture principals. All things permaculture and organic are bubbling away and its a nice break from activism.

2007-06-12T18:47:00.000+12:00

Community garden working bees this weekend

St. Columba Grey Lynn Community Garden Day,with Urban Sustainability Group !!
Sunday June 17th 2007, 10.00 a.m (bring pot-luck for a shared lunch after.), (inside St. Columba, 94 Surrey Crescent Grey Lynn)

This Sunday the Urban Sustainability Group will join the members of the Columba Grey Lynn Community Garden for a little tour to see some of its design features, and join the Grey Lynn-ers for a working bee to help prepare the garden for Winter Solstice, enjoy the community feeling! Afterwards we will all share a pot luck .

Even if the weather's wet, we can just sit in the clubhouse and chat, have a social time, do some networking, exchange ideas/visions/recipes, and look at map/s of permaculture designs/information etc (we have a small permaculture info library!)

Directions: 94 Surrey Crescent, Grey Lynn, inside St Columba Church grounds. Enter the church grounds and go towards the far right-hand side at the back by the minister's garage; you will see water tanks with a mural, clubhouse, and the vege gardens!! (it's not the flower part with the labyrinth.)

The Urban Sustainability group is a group of permaculture-minded people. We have been having a tour and working bee at different gardens every 2 wks, to share practical hands-on knowledge and experience etc about urban sustainability, permaculture, gardening, growing food in the city, and community-buiding! (More activities may also evolve in various areas as people develop them!)

For more information about the Urban Sustainability Group: John Darroch jdarroch@gmail.com 021 111 3210 or (09) 275-3752

For more information about Columba Grey Lynn Community Gardens, Living Communities Trust or Kai Tika: Andrea Higginson 631-2520 John Oosterman 360-4327 Adrian Roche 360-4327 Karla Brodie 817-3051

Background about St. Columba Grey Lynn Community Gardens / Living Communities Trust / Kai Tika

In the mid 1990s, a group of visionary youth organised a beautiful community gardens at Basque Park, and formed a trust called the Living Communities Trust. The gardens were flourishing and abundant for a number of years -- unfortunately the council decided to discontinue allowing the use of the space. After many months of searching for a venue to move to, Hugh and Ree of the Saint Columba Church very kindly and generously came up with the idea of donating the current space, which was formerly the Minister's back lawn!

The gardeners designed the garden layout, in a koru / spiral shape, with a gathering/picnic spot in the centre of the spiral. With working bees, the lawn was transformed into garden beds and initially planted in green crops such as lupins and mustard to build up the soil fertility. The paths were dug to a depth of around 60 centimetres and filled with wood chips as a natural composting feature which maximises the use of space. In 2006 the main focus became community, with people having their own garden patches and also communal patches. The members share picnics, friendship, and veges!

Other garden features include water tanks to collect roof-runoff from the Columba Community Hall; four worm farms, fruit trees, a specially built tool shed which doubles as a seed-raising area, and a specially built clubhouse. Almost everything was made from recycled items, second-hand, reclaimed or donated.

The Columba Grey Lynn Community Gardens are a project of the Living Communities Trust, which also organises seasonal community celebrations. The next celebration will be for Winter Solstice Party, Saturday 23rd June at 6.00 p.m. in the Saint Columba Hall, you are all invited -door cost $15, discount for unwaged; there will be a karakia and a ritual followed by live music/bands and dancing (hot tea and a supper will be provided.)

Kai Tika Food Coop is another project of the Living Communities Trust. Kai Tika can provide many of the food needs of its members, who pay a small membership fee for joining. Kai Tika food co-op is a voluntary organisation which buys, sells and exchanges bulk local food products at discount prices, sourced from local farmers wherever possible; members can be individuals, families or flats and can get many of their food needs cheaply in this way.

And another

Last night, we held the inaugural Kingsland Gardens Forever committee meeting. A committed group of really warm, loving and good looking people attended, and big steps were made.

KGF (Kingsland Gardens Forever) are meeting at Kingsland Gardens, on Sunday from 2pm to 4pm. There is a free Comfrey root for all who attend, your fruit trees will appreciate it!

SO, if you can’t hang with the Grey Lynn Massive in the morning, or if you feel like saving the lovely Kingsland Gardens, then the rollout is:

Where: Kinglsand Gardens, Corner of Bond St and New North Road Kingsland (see map)…right next to Church as you walk down towards motorway.
Time: 2pm to 4pm on Sunday 17th June
What to bring: Spade, fork, seedlings, big smile, two litre bottles to hide our little babies from our slug farm.
Why: Because if we don’t, the council will pave this area and make it a carpark for SUVs. . .
Who: Pam and Rob will be there knee deep, sweating hardout. Your presence will be rewarded with big KGF love
What can you take away: Spring onions and potatoes and apples and artichokes and avocados and mangicopulus genitopamus and the knowledge that you made a difference, and met some très cool dudes,

So come along, even for half an hour to have a nosey, its gonna go off!

If you can’t come, or get lost, or would just like to send messages of support and dig energy, please feel free to call or txt moi on 021 68 68 54.

I already have advance apologies from Paris Hilton who said, although she would love to muck in at KGF, she is not allowed to be near a spade for 45 days.

No worries Paris, thanks for the support.

See you all on Sunday. . .

2007-06-06T21:31:00.000+12:00

Train thoughts

I’ve been busy so here’s something I wrote on the train a while back.

One of the oddest things about this society is what we have spent all the planets resources on, I guess its not that weird for some egotistical apes but still... We have strip mined the globe, dredged the oceans, burnt up millions of years worth of oil and chopped down the worlds forests and what do we have to show for it? Cars, malls and cheap food and a hell of a lot of miserable people. I must not be the only one that gets angry when I think of the average lifestyle of a westerner and how little they have to show for it.. What will future generations think about us when they come to realize we used up all of the planets available resources to build roads and created a vast information sharing network and all we use if for is porn and second hand goods?

If ads were anything to go by then a free for all culture soaked in material possessions would be full of happy if somewhat adults running round like three year olds let loose in a candy store and if that 70s show is anything to go by this may have happened to a few kids for a few years. However once the drugs wear off the reality is that the average person in this society is selling there life to a job they hate, with an average of two real friends or confidents (down from 3 a few years back) and trapped in a 50 year mortgage. We have a global population of drug dependenat, unfifilled consumers, living in sterile boxes spending their days in boxes before going home to stare at their own box. Addicted to the notion of possessions and raised in a system with hierarchy omnipresent we either have remarkable shallow imaginations or are remarkably well trained. Not even the most rebellious revolutionary will suggest giving up our industrialized culture even as it systematically moves across the planet destroying one forest, village and person after another.

How shallow must our imaginations be that 90% of those opposed to the current system go no further than suggesting a change in the mechanisms of government or a change of rulers. And 99% appear unable to suggest a different way of life to the industrialized fossil fuel dependant way of life which has ruled our planet for at the most two hundred years. The most likely response to the overwhelming destruction which faces us is to slow the destruction crippling the planets homeostatic feedback mechanisms as if melting the ice caps over another 50 years rather than 30 years made any difference. A way of life in which we are not constantly ruled and in which we do not rely on technofixes such as biofuels ot energy intensive solar panels does not exist in the dreams of the shadows of people that walk this planet.

Rather than mobilizing the poor to take the means of production off the rich we need to free everyone from this system. The middle manager killing themselves through work is just as miserable as the suburbanite and the suburbanite and the factory worker have a lot more in common than many seem to believe. We need to create a new vision of change, shaking off both the vision of a factory workers revolt or a primitivist setting off into the bush and instead presenting a picture of how people can live free from human dominion. There is a growing body of people for whome consumption rings hollow and who see through the tinkering sold by greenpeace and the greens. We need a vision of an earth based culture living simply but in a way that meets human needs for love community and a sense of space. We need to inspire people to fight for the land they live on and present answers which go beyond replacing plastic bags with cloth ones.

2007-05-30T09:16:00.000+12:00

Spying

I just realized why the solid energy spies are such a big deal: spying on civilians is supposed to be the role of the government. This is especially the case when the spying is on the pretext of defense against illegal actions as solid energy claims. So if the Happy Valley Coalition (or greenpeace for that matter) is such a threat to the laws of this country why doesn’t solid energy leave it up to the police, SIS or other such body to investigate them? The answer, that environmental campaigners are more of a threat to corporate profits than they are to the government. I don’t know whether this is a good or bad thing and I know that the government is monitoring us as well but I thought it was an interesting point. In future will we continue to see more and more extra judicial policing? What role will private security forces play in squashing anti corporate activity? And how will the public take this?

These questions are becoming especially pertinent as public space becomes increasingly rare, making corporate targets hard to get to and giving private security forces the legal ability to shut protest down. And with the media almost completely controlled by a few rich men will the brainwashed public even find out about corporate repression? And what do we do when corporate spy's and police forces are working hand in hand with state forces?

To be GOVERNED is to be watched, inspected, spied upon, directed, law-driven, numbered, regulated, enrolled, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, checked, estimated, valued, censured, commanded, by creatures who have neither the right nor the wisdom nor the virtue to do so. To be GOVERNED is to be at every operation, at every transaction noted, registered, counted, taxed, stamped, measured, numbered, assessed, licensed, authorized, admonished, prevented, forbidden, reformed, corrected, punished. It is, under pretext of public utility, and in the name of the general interest, to be place[d] under contribution, drilled, fleeced, exploited, monopolized, extorted from, squeezed, hoaxed, robbed; then, at the slightest resistance, the first word of complaint, to be repressed, fined, vilified, harassed, hunted down, abused, clubbed, disarmed, bound, choked, imprisoned, judged, condemned, shot, deported, sacrificed, sold, betrayed; and to crown all, mocked, ridiculed, derided, outraged, dishonored. That is government; that is its justice; that is its morality.” (P.-J. Proudhon, General Idea of the Revolution in the Nineteenth Century, translated by John Beverly Robinson (London: Freedom Press, 1923), pp. 293-294.)

2007-05-28T13:32:00.000+12:00

Silly Protest Videos

Top gear

This was actually really illuminating “the police explained they had better things to do than deal with three middle class boys chained to a bus” and of course they do dealing with lower class people committing some infringement or other.

Clown Army

More clowns

Stop shopping

Destiny church

2007-05-28T10:09:00.000+12:00

Language

I spent the weekend at a workshop which was for the most part around the language we use as activists, community workers and generally great people. It was an interesting experience and provided time to reflect that we don’t normally have when we are in the thick of crisis after crisis. One of the key things that came up was the power of stories to shift consciousness. Another was the need to reframe the debate so we are no longer arguing about better growth or quality of life but instead we are asking about how people feel working 60 hours a week (we have the second highest working hours in the world). Or how it feels to not ever get a chance to see your kids, when on the defensive to forgo scientific speak and instead to speak from personal experience of the destructiveness of our culture.

When it comes down to it all of us are being fucked over one way or another by the system and those who aren’t are the privileged who will never listen to us anyway, instead of browbeating people into submission letting them tell their own story and planting seeds is much more likely to bring about transformation than a heated debate about GDP. Making people feel vaguely uncomfortable about how they are living is a start and better than making them hate you. As we deconstructed the word sustainability it became obvious that I should try to be explicit with the language I use not letting catch phrases or slogans get in the way of what I’m trying to say. And that my personal belief and story is much more powerful than the leaflets and sound bites we come up with.

There were a few other interesting points but the second half of the weekend was overshadowed by the spies who have infiltrated the activist movement in Aotearoa. The fact that a 19 year old could join an anti war movement and an animal rights network and then systematically report back every single action those groups took for two years is beyond belief. I have no idea how the two could have done it, how students could knowingly work against people that called them friends and how they could have sabotaged people fighting against factory farming and the arms trade. I hope the damage done by these two is not irreparable but it is a severe blow to a small overworked and underappreciated group of activists.

2007-05-24T09:02:00.000+12:00

The Contents of Your Daily Life

How many hours a day do you spend in front of a television screen? A computer screen? Behind an automobile windscreen? All three screens combined? What are you being screened from? How much of your life comes at you through a screen, vicariously?
Is watching things as exciting as doing things? Do you have enough time to do all the things that you want to? Do you have enough energy to? Why? And how many hours a day do you sleep? How are you affected by standardized time, designed solely to synchronize your movements with those of millions of other people? How long do you ever go without knowing what time it is? Who or what controls your minutes and hours? The minutes and hours that add up to your life? Are you saving time? Saving it up for what?

Can you put a value on a beautiful day, when the birds are singing and people are walking around together? How many dollars an hour does it take to pay you to stay inside and sell things or file papers? What can you get later that will make up for this day of your life?
How are you affected by being in crowds, by being surrounded by anonymous masses? Do you find yourself blocking your emotional responses to other human beings? And who prepares your meals? Do you ever eat by yourself? Do you ever eat standing up? How much do you know about what you eat and where it comes from? How much do you trust it?
What are we deprived of by labor-saving devices? By thought-saving devices? How are you affected by the requirements of efficiency, which place value on the product rather than the process, on the future rather than the present, the present moment that is getting shorter and shorter as we speed faster and faster into the future? What are we speeding towards? Are we saving time? Saving it up for what?

How are you affected by being moved around in prescribed paths, in elevators, buses, subways, escalators, on highways and sidewalks? By moving, working, and living in two- and three-dimensional grids? How are you affected by being organized, immobilized, and scheduled rather than wandering, roaming freely and spontaneously? Scavenging? (Shoplifting?) How much freedom of movement do you have--freedom to move through space, to move as far as you want, in new and unexplored directions?

And how are you affected by waiting? Waiting in line, waiting in traffic, waiting to eat, waiting for the bus, waiting to urinate--learning to punish and ignore your spontaneous urges? How are you affected by holding back your desires? By sexual repression, by the delay or denial of pleasure, starting in childhood, along with the suppression of everything in you that is spontaneous, everything that evidences your wild nature, your membership in the animal kingdom? Is pleasure dangerous?

Could danger be joyous? Do you ever need to see the sky? (Can you see many stars in it any more?) Do you ever need to see water, leaves, foliage, animals? Glinting, glimmering, moving? Is that why you have a pet, an aquarium, houseplants? Or are television and video your glinting, glimmering, moving? How much of your life comes at you through a screen, vicariously? If your life was made into a movie, would you watch it? How do you feel in situations of enforced passivity?

How are you affected by a non-stop assault of symbolic communication--audio, visual, print, billboard, video, radio, robotic voices--as you wander through a forest of signs? What are they urging upon you? Do you ever need solitude, quiet, contemplation? Do you remember it? Thinking on your own, rather than reacting to stimuli? Is it hard to look away?
Is looking away the very thing that is not permitted? Where can you go to find silence and solitude? Not white noise, but pure silence? Not loneliness, but gentle solitude? How often have you stopped to ask yourself questions like these? Do you find yourself committing acts of symbolic violence? Do you ever feel lonely in a way that words cannot even express? Do you sometimes feel yourself ready to LOSE CONTROL?

Taken from crimethinc

2007-05-22T21:48:00.000+12:00

Transforming the suburbs

Sorry for the break in posts recently things have been fairly flat out, Im doing a bit of design and implementation of gardens and home orchards for a few people and have received a couple of unsolicited expressions of interest in developing gardens including a local school. My garden is looking great but I have filled up all my current garden beds and the lawn is looking more and more tempting. I’m still thinking about how to turn the pool into a pond and will probably begin working on this within the coming months. As I begin to fully utilize the horizontal space I’m being forced to use more and more vertical space particularly for storage with my garage roof covered in tyres bamboo and other building materials which aren’t needed at the moment. I’m beginning to grow a bunch of fruit tree’s both to plant around my area and to distribute to anyone wanting to start backyard orchards.

The meeting of the urban sustainability group went very well on Sunday with about 12 people turning up to the Unitec gardens. A mixture of experienced and new permaculture practiotioners we toured the Unitec gardens before sitting down to talk about what we were passionate about and wanted out of the group. It was decided that regular tours and working bees will be held at propertys around Auckland. Everyone seemed to be on a similar wavelength after talking we made compost and did a bit of planting.

The next meeting of the group will be on Sunday the 3rd of june at Horizon gardens 16 Erson Ave Royal oak. A tour and working bee will be followed by a potluck.

2007-05-16T19:26:00.000+12:00

Thoughts on suburbia.

I did an interview for the Aucklander (a local rag) about an upcoming gardening course at Horizon gardens which I’m taking a class at. The focus of the interview was around growing food in the city so I got to talk about peak oil gardening and food forests. The venue was the strangely appropriate Howick historical village (a pretend 1800s village), appropriate because it mirrors how we will have to live in a few decades. The houses were small; every house had a fire a garden and a few fruit trees. Chickens roamed the back yards compost piles were visible and a small pond was full of ducks. The roads around the model village were narrow and their were plenty of places to work within walking distance of the houses The only car in the village was delivering barrels to grow plants in, the rest were parked at the entrance. This was in stark contrast to the sterile suburbs surrounding the village, a monoculture of prefab brick and tiles with wide roads and no shops or jobs in site. The number of fruit trees in the model village probably outnumbers the surrounding housing developments. The suburbs around the village were dominated by high speed cars and very wide road, easily 20% of the land was taken up with driveways roads and parking lots.

It seems rather ludicrous that I have to explain how and why to grow your own food but its only a slight exaggeration to say that no one knows how. The knowledge that was present 50 or a 100 years ago in the suburbs has disappeared sped by smaller properties longer working hours and very cheap food. This loss of knowledge is almost complete in rural areas as a generation of farmers raised on tractors monocrops and pesticides farms most of the world. The first thing that needs to happen in a transition is education, we need to regain knowledge about living simply and we need to learn how to live sustainably. This knowledge must be gained through experience or else it will not be applied and it must be backed up by support and advice. Another thing that needs to be in place is easily available seeds and fruit tree’s thankfully garden centers still sell some fruit trees but the range available is narrow and variety’s bred for specific areas, soils and conditions don’t exist any more.

As much as anti poverty activists may disagree with me I am convinced that the price of food must rise drastically if we are to ever produce food in the suburbs again. There is no way to sustainably produce a loaf of bread for $1 or a sack of potatoes for $5. Currently the economics of home grown food hardly stack up and the main argument is the higher nutritional and environmental benefits of home grown food but this will change. The price of oil has become intrinsically linked to the price of food, and with higher fuel prices more and more of our food will be poured into the gas tanks of rich suburbanites. Living in a rich western country we are insulated from the effects of oil prices but unfortunately the number of starving will rise at the same rate as the oil price climbs.

Whether we will undergo any of these changes voluntarily is an open and shut question (we won’t). I do however think that we have a higher chance of getting a network of community gardens and permaculture activists across Auckland than a workers lead revolution (feel free to prove me wrong). The entire city needs redesigning - the way we eat work and live will change whether we like it or not it’s just whether we choose to change or are forced to.

As my experience over the last few weeks has highlighted there is no way that council is going to even begin making any of the changes that need to occur. Relying on central government or any other elected body would be equally stupid. And if no elected body can solve these problems there is no point appealing to them through protests and lobbying. The task is instead much easier and much harder: to create the solutions ourselves. Easier because its much more enjoyable to spend the day gardening and planting fruit trees than it is to attend protest after protest. Focusing on creating solutions is easier mentally and has more rewards than protesting does, its also fairly socially acceptable. But harder because to admit that no leader can solve our problems is to take an immense task on. Creating alternatives to our current way of living is a daunting process which wont see real results until we run out of the resources that keep this mad way of life going.