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Read or Condemn Yourself to Death by Ignorance

For those courageous souls brave enough to look and see what is,

who are unwilling to blindly accept

the lies and rules of tyrannical authority.

The simple step of a courageous individual is not to take part in the lie.

One word of truth outweighs the world.


Wednesday 7th October 2020


G’day,

Hope this finds you fit and well.

Here is a sampling of what recently crossed my digital desk.

An Op-Ed in The Guardian by Actor and Activist Alec Baldwin and Paul Paz y Miño of Amazon Watch

Who Is Shaking The Jar?

Backyard food bowl of just 500 square metres bountiful enough to feed a family

It Must Have Been A Rough Divorce

Perspective - It Is A Wonderful Thing

Where We Learn

Governments Are Biggest Mass Killer

Deutsche Bank Money Laundering Scandal Could Create Greatest Economic Crisis in History

It Is In Your Hands

Wisdom From Frank Zappa

2020 Pilot Car

Wasting Your Breath

A Great Ideal Scene for a Life - From Gary Hopkins

The Problem With The World

I hope you get something from it!

Cheers!

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Chevron Is Refusing to Pay for the "Amazon Chernobyl" – We Can Fight Back With Citizen Action!
 
cvx-people-power
 
 
 

An Op-Ed in The Guardian by Actor and Activist Alec Baldwin and Paul Paz y Miño of Amazon Watch

At a time when so many are protesting systemic racism, we’d like to highlight a different story of marginalized people speaking truth to power on behalf of their most basic human rights.

It’s the story of how “big oil” is using Harvey Weinstein-like destroy-the-accuser tactics to try to crush environmental defenders. It is also the story of how we can all help those defenders peacefully fight back.

In 2001, Chevron acquired Texaco, including all of its assets and a giant liability known as the “Amazon Chernobyl,” a 1,700-square-mile environmental disaster in Ecuador. Texaco admitted that it deliberately discharged billions of liters of toxic waste into the environment, which ended up in the local water supply, causing cancers and other chronic health problems. According to multiple Indigenous witnesses, the company actually claimed that the oil wastes were medicinal and “full of vitamins.”

Originally, the company attempted to walk away with impunity, but somehow David beat Goliath. After 18 years of court battles, a coalition of Indigenous peoples and local communities won $9.5 billion in damages.

But Goliath won’t pay up. In the words of one Chevron official: “We will fight this until hell freezes over, and then fight it out on the ice.” In 2011, the company filed a retaliatory civil RICO case in New York against the group’s US lawyer and all 47 Ecuadorian villagers who signed the lawsuit, claiming the case was a “racketeering conspiracy.”

 
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Who Is Shaking The Jar?
 
Who Is Shaking The Jar?
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
Backyard food bowl of just 500 square metres bountiful enough to feed a family
 
James Stanistreet
 
 
 

In the backyard of his 500-square-metre rental property, biologist James Stanistreet has created a garden capable of feeding his family of four — and many more.

Key points:

A student biologist says his average-sized backyard is large enough to feed a family

He says all elements of a garden have an important role to play, even weeds

A garden is most productive when you care for all aspects of the ecosystem

Chicken and ducks fertilise and carry out pest control on neat rows of vegetables and fruit trees while native bees set to work on pollination.

Mr Stanistreet said his northern New South Wales garden produces more than enough for his family, the rest he trades with neighbours or sells at the local farmers’ market.

He is completing a Bachelor of Science at Southern Cross University in Lismore, focussing on the symbiotic association between fungi and tomato plants, and how advancing that knowledge can help minimise the use of industrial nitrogen.

When not in the laboratory he works his day job — designing, building, and planting ’agroforests’ for private landholders that can incorporate everything from cabinet timbers to commercial-scale food production or native revegetation.

He has devoted years to understanding plants and using this knowledge to create his thriving back yard food bowl.

“A lot of what this garden is about is testing out ideas and seeing what can happen when we change what we do and put different things into practice.”

Weeds not the enemy

Mr Stanistreet said he uses cover crops, such as clover and other ’weeds’, to fix nitrogen to the soil rather than relying on manufactured chemicals.

“You don’t see weeding in nature, yet trees grow very strong and healthy and it is because there is that organic matter and each plant has a role to play,” he said.

“What humans see as a weed it’s not just something trivial, it is something that the environment requires. It has a place and a role and it’s been developed over millions of years.”

“Unfortunately we just weren’t able to see that in the past. Now we are really focussing on them and saying ’okay, what is their role? What do they do?’”

Mr Stanistreet lets many of his crops go to seed, producing flowers that attract bees and hover flies to pollinate the garden, and wasps to eat pests including aphids.

“You have to remember you are looking after a whole ecosystem here,” he said.

It also allows him to collect the seed for the next crop, which he does by hanging the plant upside down over a large bowl and shaking it once the plant is dry.

He rotates his crops to deprive a ready food source for parasitic nematodes — bugs that live in the soil and can destroy a plant’s root system.

He keeps his garden beds at 70 centimetres wide because a lot of tools are made at that width, with a 30cm walkway between beds.

Each bed is topped up annually with woodchips that will decompose and add nutrients to the soil.

Between crops in any one bed he will add 100 litres of manure, 200 litres of compost, along with regular additions of fish and seaweed emulsions.

To keep costs down he makes his own compost, collects seaweed from the beach, and has a worm farm to produce castings and tea for the garden.

Fantastic fowl

Ducks and chickens share Mr Stanistreet’s backyard coop, but the birds play very different roles in the garden.

When a crop is finished and a bed needs to cleared and fertilised, he fences it off and puts the chickens to work scratching it up.

The ducks are often left to roam the garden, picking off the slugs in the morning and other insects that would otherwise attack the produce.

The chickens are given kitchen scraps and garden trash, while their bedding and manure gets composted and returned to the garden beds.

“It is a closed system in many ways and these animals certainly help with that,” he said.

Mr Stanistreet said although his biology degree is helping him with the theory, anyone can use whatever space they have in their yards to grow food.

“Just get a seed of anything and find some soil and just start,” he said.

“If you can start with one seed and one plant it will grow from there.”

He said he loved everything about gardening.

“It brings you back to nature, it reminds you that you are a part of the Earth with the plants and the animals, and it is a system,” he said.

“When you grow your own food you know where it comes from and it just tastes better.”

 
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It Must Have Been A Rough Divorce
 
It Must Have Been A Rough Divorce
 
 
 

Could have been very amicable - split everything down the middle.

Interesting if you got the half of the fridge that did not have the hinges on the doors!

And I hope they had two dogs, not one!

 
 
 
 
Perspective - It Is A Wonderful Thing
 
First Eviction
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
Where We Learn
 
Where We Learn
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
Governments Are Biggest Mass Killer
 
Governments Are Biggest Mass Killer
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
Deutsche Bank Money Laundering Scandal Could Create Greatest Economic Crisis in History
 
Deutsche Bank Bldgs
 
 
 

Deutsche Bank, along with several of the world’s biggest commercial banks, are embroiled in a global money laundering scandal that spans over two decades, as documents leaked to BuzzFeed show the movement of $2 Trillion in illicit cash through the Western banking establishment.

Absent from most coverage of the FinCEN leaks, however, is how all of these banks and financial institutions are not only laundering trillions, but are doing so together and in consort with each other, as is plainly demonstrated in the 1MDB fraud case. Most publications point the finger at JP Morgan Chase as the entity that moved more than $1 Billion for Jho Low, one of the 1MDB’s central figures, but they fail to mention the role of Goldman Sachs, which orchestrated a significant part of the scheme that defrauded the Malaysian people and led to criminal charges against 17 of its current and former executives, including Goldman Sachs former vice-chairman and now president of Chinese mega eCommerce platform Alibaba, Michael Evans.

The Malaysian government recently agreed to drop charges against Goldman Sachs after a $2.5 Billion-dollar settlement was reached with the giant investment bank; nearly a fourth of the $10.5 billion-dollar debt hole it created for Malaysia’s ruling coalition, resulting in the cancelation of major infrastructure projects. Deutsche Bank was also involved in the multi-pronged attack of the Western financial vultures on the Malay through the provision of hundreds of millions in stock-buy-back loans through the 1MDB fund for the former prime minister, who was convicted in July of graft.

It is reported that former Goldman Sachs CEO, Lloyd Blankfein, met with the disgraced Malaysian PM and the fugitive businessman, Jho Low, before the fund’s debut in 2009. Another lawsuit brought against Goldman Sachs details the investment bank’s “central role in a long-running effort to corrupt former executives” of An Abu Dhabi wealth fund called International Petroleum Investment Corporation and its subsidiary, Aabar Investments, which partnered with the 1MDB, calling it “a massive, international conspiracy to embezzle billions of dollars.”

Few can argue with that characterization, but as the chickens come home to roost, it is important to keep an eye on who gets exposed and who doesn’t; who gets punished and who doesn’t. The FinCEN Files are meant to draw most of the attention to Deutsche Bank and has all the hallmarks of a premeditated hit on one of the lynchpins of the prevailing financial structure. Much like Lehman Brothers and Bear Sterns were sacrificed for the subprime mortgage crisis and opened the door for even greater consolidation among the “too-big-to-fail” banks, a calculated take-down of Deutsch Bank will, no doubt, allow for a similar consolidation to occur at a far larger scale.

 
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It Is In Your Hands
 
It Is In Your Hands
 
 
 

As I thought of sending this the counter-intention arose that many who receive this newsletter and read it would vehemently reject that they could have much influence in creating a better world.

If that fits you I would like to raise your perception of your cause level.

Every single action you do helps or harms. Every contact you have with another living being either drags them down, affects them not at all or lifts them up.

Just the mere fact that you smile at someone as you pass them on the street, the fact that you admire their dog or something about them contributes to them having a better day than they otherwise would have.

Sure, these are small actions when you compare to what the bad guys do at the other end of the scale, drop a bomb that wipes out a wedding party in Afghanistan or Syria, locks down a state for no logical reason and more but if you did your beneficial actions each day and figured out how you could do more and encouraged others to do the same, you could start a movement for good that could grow to be a tsunami that would totally overwhelm the negative influences on this planet.

It’s not at all hard to do.

Two days ago I gave a fruit cake to a new neighbour moving in.

Yesterday I was doing my chinups and body pulls a the exercise equipment in the park and got to talking to the girl and her personal trainer at the exercise station. From their conversation they felt inspired.

Tonight I saw a woman walking her dog. This boy is a brute! Looks like an American bulldog with tons of energy. Just wants to jump up and start biting in play. It’s only ’cause she’s a big girl herself that she can hold onto the leash and keep him (somewhat) in check. Now most people giver her and her dog a very wide berth but I go up and have a rumble with him. Consequently when he comes in the park and sees me he recognises a playmate. He and I have a quick play and I chat briefly to her. How much better must she feel not being ostracised by all she meets?

Tonight I also met two other sets of two girls walking their dogs. My Schnauzer and I stopped to chat to both and I met a bearded Collie for the first time. She was only 18 months old and quite reserved to start with but within a couple of minutes she was wagging her tail and enjoying a scratch from me as I spoke to her owners.

I acknowledge that all of these actions are only drops in the ocean and are not life changing. I do go for those life changing ones when the opportunity arises. The ability to pull someone out of depression or to alleviate aches and pains or address long standing health issues obviously have the potential to change lives far more than a conversation in the park or on the side walk. But you don’t get people opening up to you unless they know you are safe to talk to so the first thing is to be in communication with those in your environment. Sometimes all it takes is a smile and a “Hello!”

 
 
 
 
Wisdom From Frank Zappa
 
Wisdom From Frank Zappa`
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
2020 Pilot Car
 
2020 Pilot Car
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
Wasting Your Breath
 
Wasting Your Breath
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
A Great Ideal Scene for a Life - From Gary Hopkins
 
 
 
 

Live a life that you do not need to take a vacation from. Live in a way that makes yearly resolutions unnecessary. Make the kind of choices that leave you Happy and Healthy... where all of your needs are satisfied. Live a life where your only ’wants’ are for others to feel as good as you do.

 
 
 
 
The Problem With The World
 
The Problem With The World
 
 
 

I don’t fully agree with this.

While I am not the sharpest knife in the drawer I don’t feel unintelligent.

I have a great deal of certainty on what I know and I also am humble enough to admit when I have no data on something.

I try to speak my truth without being offensive but have no qualms about sharing true data to people who have false data on which they are operating. Most of them are wedded more to their opinion than they are truth so it often does little good but occasionally I make headway. Those times are the pay for the effort. I don’t take a loss where I don’t succeed.

The better off is a person the easier they are to help and the greater the impact from helping them.

So I see a big part of my job is to help the able become more able.

If you would like to be more able, get in touch with me!

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Until next time,
dream big dreams,
plan out how to achieve them,
be continually executing your plans,
enlist people to your causes,
travel and/or read widely, preferably both,
all the while observing what you observe
rather than thinking what you are told to think,
think well of your fellow man,
take time to help your fellow man,
he sorely needs it and it will help you too,
eat food that is good for your body,
exercise your body,
take time to destress,
and do the important things
that make a difference -
they are rarely the urgent ones!

Tom

 
 

Most of the content herein has been copied from someone else. Especially the images. My goodness some people are talented at creating aesthetics! The small bits that are of my creation are Copyright 2014-2020 © by Tom Grimshaw - ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

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