Is Middle Eastern yearning for Democracy spreading to Wisconsin?

“No word yet on whether protesters will topple Wisconsin Republican Gov. Scott Walker, but the rhetoric against Walker portrays him as a petty tyrant in need of a Cairo-styled comeuppance.

“Mini-Mubarak” is the latest label being thrown at Walker, who has infuriated labor unions with a proposal to end collective bargaining for state employees. Protesters in the state capitol are vehemently opposing Walker’s effort. Walker has said that he will not negotiate with unions because the state is “broke” and has nothing to offer.

Walker told the Associated Press last week that state National Guard “is prepared to respond if there is any unrest among state employees.” The statement has caused an outcry by union supporters, who claim it as a threat of physical violence to stop protests.

Michael Moore writes, via his website, “Justice anywhere is a threat to injustice everywhere” and quotes a Wisconsin protester’s sign proclaiming, “Down with dictators!”

Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2011/02/16/opponents-of-wisconsin-gov-scott-walker-call-him-mini-mubarak/#ixzz1EJwjZ4lW

Will Los Angeles be the next Cairo? We can only hope…

ALSO, some clowns kick the KKK’s ass:

more here: http://www.neatorama.com/2007/09/03/clowns-kicked-kkk-asses/

Dear Technicolor Tree Tribe

Dear Technicolor Tree Tribe,

I have been meaning to write a good-bye letter to you for a while now – my original intention was to read it at our last house meeting – but Max and I have been working non-stop on the bus, and now that it’s finished, we can’t wait to hit the road. So I am writing it now, the night before we depart, appropriately/ironically right after a meeting about recruiting new co-op members.

I officially joined the TTT in August 2008, a year after I had graduated from USC, so I’ve never been a student cooper (which I can imagine must be an incredibly difficult task). I spent my first year after graduation back home in Seattle, a year during which I was constantly on the phone with my LA friends who were working tirelessly to start this thing called a co-op. By the time I was ready to leave Seattle I was so fascinated by the concept of the co-op that I had to come back and experience it for myself. So I returned to LA – not because I love LA, or had a job lined up, or to return to school… but simply because I was inexplicably drawn to the idea of a cooperative house full of politically conscious, artistic, fun-loving crazy people who happened to be my best friends and lovers.

It was hard to justify my return to LA to some people (namely my parents and my Seattle punk friends), but honestly I never had to work hard to justify it to myself. I have always proudly identified as a feminist and as Hapa (look it up), and have never tired of fantasizing about utopian societies. The nuclear family into which I was born was abusive and depressing, so I have always searched for a “chosen family” to which to belong. My world view is a mix of hard science and Nature mysticism, and though I don’t call myself an artist I believe art is an essential aspect of human expression and health. The evolution of human social behavior and the rise and fall of hippie communes in the ’60s and ’70s are two of my favorite topics. Thus I felt the Technicolor Tree Tribe (which I assumed to be trying to create a utopian society) would be a wonderful place and project for me, and in preparation for joining I read the following books, all of which I recommend:

Walden Two, B.F. Skinner

Ecotopia, Ernest Callenbach

Brave New World, Aldous Huxley

Brave New World Revisted, Aldous Huxley

Utopia, Sir Thomas More

The Republic, Plato

Erewhon, Samuel Butler

1984, George Orwell

Woman on the Edge of Time, Marge Piercy

Drop City, T.C. Boyle

The Omnivore’s Dilemma, Michael Pollan

The Ethical Slut, Easton and Liszt

Living Walden Two, Hilke Kuhlmann

 

I would also highly recommend two documentaries: The Commune (2007) and Taylor Camp (2009), both about hippie communes back in the day.

I guess I’m telling you all this because I want to encourage and inspire you to do some reading and really give this community everything you’ve got – by learning everything you can about it: what it could potentially be, what you want it to be, what it has been in the past, and what others have wanted from it. The co-op isn’t just a place to live. It’s a family, a trip, a gift, and an enormous responsibility. I believe that most people who truly love this community despite its inevitable problems grow much more than they would had they lived anywhere else – this is definitely true for me. Most people in our society don’t question institutionalized prejudice or try to make their culture better for themselves or others. By living in this house we have a chance to create our own society that isn’t racist, sexist, heterosexist, violent, hierarchical, or consumeristic. Imagine what your ideal society would be like – egalitarian, consensual, respectful, etc AND MAKE IT SO. Changing the whole world is an admirable goal but it’s too big for most people, so start with 20 people and see how far you can get.

That is what the Technicolor Tree Tribe is to me. It is an experiment in creating a different kind of society, and the on-going outcomes of the experiment are incredibly important lessons: we learn how much the culture in which we were born affects us even if we consciously reject it; we learn how difficult it can be to even identify oppression, let alone eliminate it; we realize how much time and energy it takes to educate ourselves; and we learn how to create safe spaces for ourselves within the larger community which may or may not feel supportive at any given moment. Taking advantage of where you are living right now is so important – please, please do not take the co-op for granted. It’s not perfect – it never will be – but just remember how much more fun and mind-expanding it is compared to your other current options, and try to imagine how much time and effort previous coopers have put in to keep it going. Having a communal house this big is not easy logistically, financially, or emotionally. But it is worth it if you make it worth it. Please embrace it, expand it, and love it. USC needs it, LA needs it, all of us need it.

I have spent the last two and a half years of my life thinking more about our house than about anything else in my life – seriously. It has been all-consuming for me, and though I’m excited to leave and do some informal research on other communities to get a better understanding of the larger intentional communities movement, I will always adore the Technicolor Tree Tribe like family – even when no one knows me anymore (perhaps even more then!) I have accumulated a satisfying wealth of good memories, weird memories, fuzzy memories… and I can only hope that everyone else who leaves our house leaves with as much joy and satisfaction.

THANK YOU to all the previous Tribe members for putting in so much blood, sweat and tears

Tani Ikeda

Reina Fukuda

Sunny Yang

Bryan Susman

Teddy Raven

Erin Christovale

Alex Shams

Iris Fung

Laila Ekboir

Charlie Furman

Mitch Graw

Taylor Ganz

Donnie Pepper

Dru Pollini

Taylor Webb

Manpreet Sadhal

Nicole Hummel

Noelle Miller

Kellee Matsushita

Daniel Alexander

Payam Pakbin

Jacob Jensen

Patrick Keller

Erin Hern

Ali Bissonette

Carlo Adorno

Caroline Caselli

Teresa Cheng

Rafaela Luna-Pizarro

Zebah Pinkham

Wave Melen

Strawberry Raskin

Drew Peltier

Joanna Stulting

Sara Smith

Katie Wilde

Anna Mkhikian

Rachel Finfer

Hannah Wong

Angie Hermes

Hestia Rojas

Daniel Estevao

Adam Werner

Kevin Daley

Alicia Liang

Gerardo Inzunza Higuera

Andy Bunting

Laura Simmons

Gale Bartkiewicz

Max Hoilland

Toni Cannon

Sonya Collier

Brian Peachy

Michaela Wagner

Kadhja Bonet

Emma Sheffer

Rachel Yukimura

Max Bittman

Willoughby RIP

Rascal

Mana

Puppy/Gandalf

Voltaire

Coby

Chin Chin

Bubbles RIP

George

Ducky

Daisy

Beyonce

Oreo

Chub Chub RIP

the hampster RIP

Clementine

Radagast

Van Buren

Angie’s beta fish

Toni and Sonya’s parakeet

and THANK YOU to all the future co-op members for keeping the community alive!

 

Peace and love always,

Rachel Y.

 

Some additional wonderful books about counterculture, gender, sexuality, utopia, race, living together, and revolution I’ ve read since living at the co-op:

The Children of the Counterculture, John Rothchild

The Sexual Politics of Meat: A Feminist-Vegetarian Theory, Carol J. Adams

Yes Means Yes: Visions of Female Sexual Power and a World Without Rape, ed. Jaclyn Friedman and Jessica Valenti

Island, Aldous Huxley

Nobody Passes: Rejecting the Rules of Gender and Conformity, ed. Mattilda

Fruit of the Motherland: Gender in an Egalitarian Society, Maria Lepowsky

Men Speak Out: Views on Gender, Sex, and Power, ed. Shira Tarrant

Stone Butch Blues, Leslie Feinberg

Beloved, Toni Morrison

Gender Outlaw, Kate Bornstein

Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Compassion, Marshall B. Rosenberg

The Revolution Will Not Be Funded: Beyond the Non-Profit Industrial Complex, ed. INCITE Women of Color Against Violence

O Au No Keia: Voices from Hawaii’s Mahu and Transgender Communities, Andrew Matzher

Native Tongue, Suzette Haden Elgin

Triton, Samuel R. Delany

 

Which Veggie Burgers Were Made With a Neurotoxin?

By Kiera Butler, Mother Jones Online
Posted on April 13, 2010, Printed on April 14, 2010
http://www.alternet.org/story/146439/

 

This is about the time of year when I start keeping packages of veggie burgers in the freezer, just in case of an impromptu barbecue. In the past, I haven’t had much fake meat brand loyalty: I’ve found that once I smother my hunk of textured vegetable protein in barbeque sauce, all soy patties are pretty much created equal. But after reading a recent investigation by the Cornucopia Institute, I’m going to be a lot more picky: The food and agriculture nonprofit found that most non-organic veggie burgers currently on the market are made with the chemical hexane, an EPA-registered air pollutant and neurotoxin.

In order to meet the demands of health-conscious consumers, manufacturers of soy-based fake meat like to make their products have as little fat as possible. The cheapest way to do this is by submerging soybeans in a bath of hexane to separate the oil from the protein. Says Cornucopia Institute senior researcher Charlotte Vallaeys, “If a non-organic product contains a soy protein isolate, soy protein concentrate, or texturized vegetable protein, you can be pretty sure it was made using soy beans that were made with hexane.”

If you’ve heard about hexane before, it was likely in the context of gasoline—the air pollutant is also a byproduct of gas refining. But in 2007, grain processors were responsible for two-thirds of our national hexane emissions. Hexane is hazardous in the factory, too: Workers who have been exposed to it have developed both skin and nervous system disorders. Troubling, then, that the FDA does not monitor or regulate hexane residue in foods. More worrisome still: According to the report, “Nearly every major ingredient in conventional soy-based infant formula is hexane extracted.”

The Cornucopia Institute found that a number of popular veggie burgers were made with hexane. The list (pdf, page 37, and below) is longer than you might think:

Amy’s Kitchen

Boca Burger, conventional

Franklin Farms

Garden Burger

It’s All Good Lightlife

Morningstar Farms

President’s Choice

Taste Above

Trader Joe’s

Yves Veggie Cuisine

Hexane-free products:

Boca Burgers “Made with organic soy”

Helen’s Kitchen

Morningstar “Made with organic”

Superburgers by Turtle Island

Tofurky

Wildwood

Also worth noting: Products labeled “organic” aren’t allowed to contain any hexane-derived ingredients, but that rule doesn’t apply to foods that are labeled “made with organic ingredients.” For more on soy sourcing, plus a list of popular “made with organic ingredients”-labeled protein bars that are made with hexane, read the Cornucopia Institute’s full study, “Behind the Bean.”

 

“Holocaust remembrance is a boon for Israeli propaganda”

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1145670.html

Wonder article in Ha’aretz by Gideon Levy about Israeli misuse of the Holocaust!

“A thousand speeches against anti-Semitism will not extinguish the flames ignited by Operation Cast Lead, flames that threaten not only Israel but the entire Jewish world. As long as Gaza is under blockade and Israel sinks into its institutionalized xenophobia, Holocaust speeches will remain hollow. As long as evil is rampant here at home, neither the world nor we will be able to accept our preaching to others, even if they deserve it. “

In Solidarity,
alex shams