MCT: Monday, January 28, 2019

• Bravo Board
• Weather Change
• Staircase
• Hung Jury
• Solidaridaj
• Women Marchers
• Water Tax
• Reading Risks
• 46 Portraits
• Jerry's Back
• Yesterday's Catch
• Fantastically Ugly
• Wilbur Antoinette
• Kamala Crucible
• 2020
• SMART Gap
• Addams Couple
• Downward Trending
• Deep Chopra
• Truth/Reconciliation
• Sorta Pro-Life
• Poverty/Gentrification
• American Reaper
• Agony
• Near Collapse
• Buy Degas

A NEW DIRECTION FOR COAST HOSPITAL

Dear Neighbors:

Please join me in applauding the new Board of Directors of our local hospital, Mendocino Coast District Hospital (MCDH), for replacing our hospital's CEO and moving forward towards creating a new, kinder, gentler, successful hospital.

The Board took the appropriate action because the present CEO had three years to perform and he failed. This amount of time is over two years longer than the vast majority of business leaders would have allowed him.

Here are two of many examples of the MCDH CEO's unacceptable performance:

One-MCDH is currently not meeting the requirements of the mortgage holder, Cal Mortgage, and thus the CEO has left our hospital in jeopardy of closure. It would be the same if you failed to make timely payments on your home mortgage.

Two-The MCDH CEO is one of the defendants (along with, his former CFO, the last Board's former Chair and MCDH itself) in a Federal lawsuit and the plantiff is his former employee, the former hospital Director of Human Resources. A Federal judge recently gave this case the green light.

Three-As a last ditch effort the hospital administration persuaded the public to vote for a foolhardy parcel tax the income from which only covers a few months losses and thereby helped the financial books look a little better for a very short period. Taxes, bonds and loans, are tactics that many failing CEOs use to provide temporary cover for failing to perform. Our local boondoggle parcel tax was a small band-aid to a mismanaged, hemorrhaging business.

The new Board, and our new CEO will have a huge amount of work to do to turn our hospital around. This is our hospital. Let us put aside any differences, come together as a community, and give our new MCDH Board every bit of support we can muster.

Please spread the word, far and wide, that our hospital is aiming for success.

Respectfully,

Richard Louis Miller, M.A., Ph.D. Fort Bragg Clinical Psychology

HIGH PRESSURE WILL BEGIN TO WEAKEN TODAY as a transition occurs into a rainy and unsettled pattern by midweek. (National Weather Service)

BOTANICAL GARDENS

(Photo by Judy Valadao)

JURY HUNG ON UKIAH ARSONIST

A Mendocino County Superior Court jury returned from its deliberations Friday afternoon to announce it would be unable to reach a unanimous verdict (hung jury) on the felony charge it had been asked to decide. Given the jury was hopelessly deadlocked, a mistrial was declared.

Defendant Belinda Moorhead Schafer, age 57, generally of the Ukiah area, is charged with having committed an October 2018 arson of grasslands along the railroad tracks near the fairgrounds, a felony. When polled, it was determined that the jury was split 7 for guilt to 5. After the jury was thanked and excused, the judge scheduled a re-trial before a new jury in March. The prosecutor who presented the case against Schafer to the jury was Chief Deputy District Attorney Dale Trigg. The investigating law enforcement agencies were the Mendocino County Sheriff's Office and the DA's Investigative Bureau.

Mendocino County Superior Court Judge John Behnke continues to preside over this criminal matter.

BETSY CAWN WRITES (re: last week’s article ‘Situational Awareness’: "Beautifully done, Mr. Patterson. All of my brothers have “served” in the military, but only one lost everything but his “life” — his body came back, he walks and he talks, but his spirit was eviscerated just like that gut-busted sacrificial lamb. Numb and dumb (infinitely, internally furious but outwardly “pacified” — the real objective of mass “culture”). Baaaaaaa not, bleat always, and bite back the impulse to stifle ourselves. Thank fucking “god” for the AVA, is all I can say.

Over here (all the way from “Over There,” where my dad did or saw something so despicable in the Battle of St. Lo that he forever hence wrestled mournfully in silent agony, even to his last cancer-addled moment) the “Lake County Syndrome” — so named by the former medical director at Napa State Hospital — of mental/physical/social dementia drives the multi-million-dollar “helping” industry sucklings, NCO and Redwood Community Services (Mr. Marmon’s favorite, Camille Schraeder).

The process of bastardized bureaucracy being the substitute for responsible governance everywhere, our Boards of Supervisors are at the mercy of hirelings who are as impervious to morality as the big puffy monster in charge.

After a lifetime of fighting the likes of Kissinger, Westmoreland, Cheney, Reagan, Nixon, all of them, including the warmongering women, we can see the fruits of all labor turned to glitter and gauze, and sigh, but the work goes on forever. Solidaridaj."

SPY ROCK WOMEN! Well, the two on the right, anyway. Down from the mountain to save the planet.

FOURTH TIME THE CHARM FOR WATER TAX?

by Jim Shields

Several weeks ago I highlighted in this space a new law (SB 1421), a so-called police transparency law that allows public access to police records in cases of force, as well as investigations that confirmed the lack of honesty in the work place or sexual misconduct.

The law was challenged by the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Employees’ Benefit Association who filed a petition requesting the California Supreme Court to rule that the bill, applies only to records created after January 1, 2019—the bill’s effective date. Such a ruling would have undermined the intent and effectiveness of the new law by excluding from public disclosure decades of records related to police misconduct.

The state Supreme Court moving quickly, issued a one-sentence order, rejecting the union’s request.

This week, the same coalition of media groups led by the First Amendment Coalition (FAC) that litigated the previous case, has once again taken legal action challenging another petition to undermine the landmark police disclosure law.

According to FAC, the Los Angeles Police Protective League, another police union, stealthily obtained a temporary order prohibiting the retroactive enforcement of SB 1421—meaning, again, that the public would have access only to records created after January 1, 2019, thus barring from public disclosure decades-old documents and records involving allegations and evidence of police misconduct.

FAC alleges the Los Angeles police union “stealthily obtained a temporary order prohibiting the retroactive enforcement of SB 1421—meaning, again, that the public would have access only to records created after January 1, 2019.”

“Try as they might, we are confident the police unions will fail in this effort to gut a law duly passed by the Legislature and signed by the Governor,” said FAC Executive Director David Snyder. “Their interpretation of SB 1421 is not only contrary to the clear language and purpose of the law, but would have a serious and detrimental effect on transparency broadly.”

Joining FAC in the effort are the Los Angeles Times, the Center for Investigative Reporting, the California News Publishers Association, the Bay Area News Group, and the Southern California News Group.

A hearing is set on this issue for Feb. 5 at 1:30 p.m.

Water tax resurrected

By my count, this is the fourth time in less than two years that Sacramento politicians have proposed a historic, never-before-attempted tax on public drinking water.

Previous efforts stalled when the proposed tax went through several revisions as the Brown administration and legislative backers sought creative ways to make the first-in-state-history tax on public drinking water somehow palatable to a majority of hesitant lawmakers who were up for re-election this past November. None of the legislaotrs wanted to be tagged supporting what has been from its inception a volatile and widely unpopular tax.

Here’s a quick look at the chronology of proposed water tax..

In 2017, state Sen. Bill Monning, of Monteray, introduced SB 623 to create a “Safe and Affordable Drinking Water Fund” that would primarily be funded by: 1) a statewide water tax for retail residential and business customers; and 2) taxes on the sale of fertilizers and the operations of dairies. The primary purpose of the bill was to fund solutions in some disadvantaged communities without access to safe drinking water, which are primarily located in rural areas in the Central Valley. The proposal would have generated roughly $110 million per year through a 95-cent monthly fee on home water bills as well as taxes on businesses of up to $10 per month. Another $30 million would come from higher fees on agricultural and dairy businesses, industries whose chemicals contribute to the problem of contaminated groundwater. That incarnation of the proposed tax was moved to the committee parking lot due to fierce opposition from water ratepayers and water districts.

In early 2018, the Brown Administration proposed a budget trailer bill based on SB 623’s framework. On June 8, the Legislature’s Budget Conference Committee rejected the budget trailer bill that proposed the statewide water tax and instead set aside $23.5 million for safe drinking water.

Then in mid-August, Monning with Gov. Brown’s go-ahead, submitted a last-minute twist on the water tax proposals. The bill would have required more than 3,000 community water systems to add a voluntary remittance with an opt-out feature to local water bills in order to generate funding for infrastructure improvements. At the same time, Monning also proposed an updated version of the agricultural taxes from his previous proposal.

The new pair of bills would have applied a “voluntary levy” on ratepayers of less than $1 per month would also establish a required tax on dairies and fertilizer manufacturers. The change also allowed customers to opt out of the tax, but it would have a nightmare for water districts to administer. Altogether, the newly-minted bills were expected to generate as much as $100 million per year.

As pointed out here before, there’s money available from other sources — such as the state’s general fund and various water bonds already issued— that could be used for contaminated groundwater remediation, which was exactly what Brown and the Budget Conference Committee did back in June when they deep-sixed the water tax. The answer to this problem is that the people who caused the contamination are the ones who should be at the head of the line to pay for its remediation.

Anyway, in the closing hours before the California legislative year ended last fall, Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon announced that the proposed water tax bill was dead.

Rendon explained the reasons in a statement that said in part, “The Assembly is committed to identifying a sustainable funding source to ensure safe drinking water for all Californians. That’s why we put Proposition 68 on the (June primary) ballot, which included $540 million for water projects. In the budget this year, we also included over $25 million for emergency drinking water projects, lead testing and remediation, and other water projects.

“But much more needs to be done, and a piecemeal funding approach won’t work …”

At the time I said, “Those are all the same arguments that many of us made as to why the tax wasn’t needed in the first place, but almost certainly the Sacramento gang will resurrect it again in 2019. Rendon, demonstrating he has not given up on implementing a public drinking water tax, said he plans on ‘building on the hard work of Senator Bill Monning and others in this area, Assemblymembers Eduardo Garcia and Heath Flora have agreed to lead our house’s safe water efforts.’ Sounds like a promise to me. Seems like the only time politicians are serious about keeping their promises is when it comes to taxes.”

Unfortunately, my prediction proved correct as Gov. Gavin Newsom recently announced he wants to tax the state’s drinking water, evidently believing that the fourth time will be the charm.

The Association of California Water Agencies (ACWA), an organization that my water district is a member of, quickly issued a statement regarding Newsom’s planned water tax.

ACWA’s Director for Government Relations Cindy Tuck said, “The vast majority of the state’s residents have access to safe drinking water, but a small percentage of the population does not. This unacceptable reality is a social issue for the State of California. ACWA believes that making access to safe drinking water for all Californians should be a top priority for the State. However, a statewide water tax is highly problematic and is not necessary when alternative funding solutions exist and the state has a huge budget surplus. ACWA wants to work with Gov. Newsom, his administration, the Legislature and other stakeholders on a funding solution that does not impose a statewide water tax.”

Déjà vu all over again. I’ll keep you posted on any developments.

(Jim Shields is the Mendocino County Observer’s editor and publisher, and is also the long-time district manager of the Laytonville County Water District. Listen to his radio program “This and That” every Saturday at 12 noon on KPFN 105.1 FM, also streamed live: http://www.kpfn.org)

LOOKALIKES

Bruce,

Reading Jerry Philbrick reminds me of a column our late friend, Alexander Cockburn, wrote for the Village Voice after Sixties icon Tom Hayden and his celebrity wife, Jane Fonda, visited Israel and Lebanon to show their support for Israel's invasion of Lebanon in 1982, in a gesture, he admitted a quarter of a century later, was designed to woo Jewish voters in Santa Monica where he was running for state Assembly.

"In the National Gallery in Washington," wrote Cockburn at the time, "there are 46 portraits of Benedict Arnold. None look alike yet they all resemble Tom Hayden."

What does that have to do with Jerry Philbrick?

I expect, sometime in the past, you have seen photos of lynchings of black men in the South and Middle West that were made into postcards. They show crowds of white men and some women grinning and celebrating as a black body hangs by the neck from a nearby tree. None of the men in the photo look alike yet I suspect they all look like Jerry Philbrick. Can anyone doubt that after reading his weekly hate infested diatribes that he wouldn't be in the front row with a smile from ear to ear?

Now, I have never seen photos of the white settlers, who behaved like savages, as they slaughtered the indigenous Indians in Mendocino County, but I would guess that while none of them would look alike, they, too, would all resemble Jerry Philbrick.

Jeff Blankfort

Ukiah

I'M BACK!

AVA,

I lied. I'm back. The only way to get rid of Liberal Democrats is to vote them out of office. Republicans are too lazy to vote. They won't step up to the plate. Democrats not only vote but they cheat. They vote illegally.

We need a different state called Jefferson, Northern California. Southern California wants our water and recreational areas. They’ve built too many highways and congest all their towns. Our Mendo shopkeepers love the tourism but locals have to fight the traffic as it crowds the streets and recreation areas with visitors from Southern California. It’s a strain on law enforcement.

Gruesome Newsom is taxing our water, our air, our springs, our wells, our exhaust pipes in the name of climate control. He has to be voted out of office. He treats people like criminals.

The Libs are fighting President Trump as he tries to do the right thing and he is still getting it done. Schumer and Pelosi and the rest are rotten to the core and it will all come back on them.

Kim Jong Il is violating the agreement and we should bomb all his bases and then turn around and bomb Iran at the same time. I'm sure President Trump knows what to do despite the liberal protests. My dad always told me to respect the law, never lie, be kind to animals, respect elders and stay on your own side of the road. I have tried to do that.

Law enforcement. Greg Stefani, Jesse Van Wormer and others are great officers. Greg’s dad Paul was a great officer in the Ukiah police. Young people respected law enforcement back then. It's too bad law enforcement officers have to protect people who hate them. That's what the Libs are all about. They hate law enforcement but they want protection. Officers must be very patient.

Our border is wide open. MS 13 is coming in and all the other riffraff and felons and people who hate the United States and who rape little kids and murder people. That should make you rotten Libs happy. As long as it doesn't happen to you.

But I do feel sorry for the people just trying to get a job and get a better life. I wish I could help them but I cannot.

God bless Donald Trump.

Jerry Philbrick

Comptche

CATCH OF THE DAY, January 26, 2019

ASHLEY AVALOS, Willits. Failure to appear.

CHRISTIAN CAMPOS-ESQUIVEL, Redwood Valley. More than an ounce of pot, controlled substance without prescription, false ID, no license.

ANDREW GITCHEL, Santa Cruz/Ukiah. Controlled substance, paraphernalia, stolen property, suspended license, probation revocation.

MINDY GONZALEZ, Ukiah. Controlled substance.

JAMES HERRIOT JR., Fort Bragg. County parole violation.

SCOTT LUNDIN, Willits. DUI.

PAUL NELSON, Ukiah. DUI.

NAITHAN NORTON, Fort Bragg. Disobeying court order, failure to appear, probation revocation.

JUAN QUINTERO-BOLANOS, Philo. Disorderly conduct-alcohol.

BRENTON SMITH, Calpella. DUI, more than an ounce of pot.

JOSHUA TEAL, Willits. Failure to appear, probation revocation.

HEARING PATTON

Walking or driving, it is easy to see the land in the centuries or millennia before the buildings blocked much of the view. That special vision is perhaps most unique to westerners, and is a special gift to those who live out here but it is, in truth, right at hand anywhere. In rather different circumstances, General Patton (visiting a hospitalized soldier, as I recall, the greatest generation) looked out and remarked, "God, how I hate the twentieth century."

Through the carnage and the ruin, Patton's judgement was unerring. What had happened was, of course, unnecessary, was nothing but the result of people doing fantastically ugly things to people who spoke or dressed a different way. In short, there was much to hate.

What was destroyed in the process were cafes and libraries and galleries and plazas and universities. Amusement parks. Things that in themselves brought no harm along with many who frequented those places, bodies to be counted and stacked. Even Patton was repelled.

And now the repellent is threatened again, this time by the orange maniac in Washington and his red-hatted followers. So the rest of us had better look up from our ledgers and crosswords and pay attention so that all the lawns mowed and mortgages made and boulevards built don't end up as so much smoke and wreckage again. And again and again, with much to hate, that smell in the air.

(Bruce Brady)

LET THEM TAKE OUT LOANS

KAMALA HARRIS was shaped by the crucible of San Francisco politics.

When Kamala Harris looks back on her first campaign, a run for San Francisco district attorney, she remembers a brutal awakening. “San Francisco is hard-knocks politics,” the freshly declared 2020 White House hopeful once said in an interview. “People sling mud. They punch the gut.”

latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-kamala-harris-san-francisco-20190121-story.html

DUMB SMART

Editor,

I suspect that many travelers, including some of my friends, have been surprised and disappointed to learn that SMART’s Airport Station isn’t at the airport. Rather, the train puts you off or you await its arrival, often with your luggage and no connecting service, at least a mile from the airport. This is a serious gap in service.

With the hundreds of millions invested in SMART, couldn’t and shouldn’t it include minibus shuttle service operating between the station and the airport to connect passengers with the 10 or so arriving and departing daily flights?

This could perhaps be a jointly funded service to improve passenger traffic and convenience for SMART and the airport. It seems like a reasonable and justified additional cost to incur, at least for SMART and probably the airport as well.

If necessary, a modest passenger fare ($5-$10?) to help defer costs could be imposed. Saving just one day’s parking fee at the airport, as well as the drive to and from there, would more than cover that.

David Meyers

Petaluma

ON LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

Well America is burdened by an aging dying population that is doing its best to break the back of the “healthcare” system on its way out. It also has a large population of talentless, non-motivated and outright lazy young people who were so poorly raised that they fall to the ground and cry like babies when their cars don’t start. Americans are THE most indebted people in the world with sharply declining incomes. Our population consumes almost all of the world’s supply of opioids: cnbc.com/2016/04/27/americans-consume-almost-all-of-the-global-opioid-supply.html

…and are so stupid that they go have to attend “higher” education institutions to understand what sex is, not that they get it right afterwards anyway.

You don’t have to be much of anything to be better than that. As I understand it, the IMF requires that almost all investments in other nations must be made in US dollars. When this changes, and it will, the floodgates will open because every other country has central banks that can print up as much paper crap “money” as the supply of paper (or digitals) allows. Oh yes, they will take over sooner rather than later and not because they are so good, but because we are fat, lazy, greedy, and stupid.

BLIND OPTIMISM

Friends,

The video linked below is more proof the new age of Aquarius has begun in earnest. The dam has broken and everything false is being swept away. American history for one thing is being corrected as the sun of Aquarius rises higher in the sky and lights and warms everything touched by its rays.

For me justice will be served soon when Lee Harvey Oswald is reinterred in Arlington Cemetery with full Marine Corps honors. At this time, the flag on his coffin will be folded in the traditional triangle and presented to his widow and two daughters who have suffered more than a half century for what villains in the US government, Pres. Lyndon Johnson especially, did to young (46) Jack Kennedy. Truth--he was executed by a firing squad of many snipers because he was a traitor … to the wealthy class he was born into.

This year especially we will see more shocking revelations about false flag attacks such as on the USS Liberty in 1967, other assassinations, double, triple, and more dealing in Congress, and monumental corruption at all levels of the US government including that of the US Supreme Court. Most if not all the "hen houses" in the US government have been guarded by proverbial foxes and for decades. Trump is not the worst POTUS. My nominee is Lyndon Bains Johnson responsible almost single handedly for killing three million people in SE Asia and he almost killed more millions in Cairo on 8 June 1967 when two US Navy A-4 jet bombers got within three (3) minutes of nuking the capital of Egypt before a cooler head (perhaps McNamara) recalled them to their carrier, USS America.

And LBJ's legacy? More aging US Vietnam War veterans in recent years have committed suicide than were killed in combat--70,000 so far and counting. Why, you ask? Because they can no longer live with what they were ordered to do or what they witnessed in that small, third world country invaded and bombed by the most militarily powerful nation in the history of the world. Remember, "better dead than red!"

But one by one the gangstas will be exposed and punished unless they confess their sins to the newly emerging US Truth & Reconciliation Commission being organized as you read this to reinvestigate the assassinations of a half century ago. (Google "Spartacus: Truth & Reconciliation Commission").

I predict this will only be the beginning and soon other "excesses" and "anomalies" such as 911, the "housing bubble" rip-off of 2008, Iran Contragate that Pres. Reagan got away with, even going back to the Wall Street Crash of 1929 in which a very few already rich men got wealthier while the rest of the world suffered right into another bloody world war, and back further even to the sinking of the Battleship USS Maine that was sunk by an accidental explosion of coal dust and not a Spanish torpedo or mine as the official story has been for more than a century. The Spanish American war was a land grab for Cuba, the Philippines, and Hawaii.

I will give Teihard de Chardin the last word here and now. "Sooner or later there will be a chain reaction--for truth has to appear only once, in one single mind, for it to be impossible for anything even to prevent it from spreading universally and setting everything ablaze."

See the video attached below.

For truth with reconciliation,

Tom Cahill

Cluny, France

ED NOTE: Tom Cahill is a former resident of Fort Bragg now living in France.

GENTRIFICATION & POVERTY

…some of the most actively gentrifying areas, such as San Francisco, Portland, and Seattle, have become increasingly plagued with social dissolution and rising homelessness.

In recent years, a relatively small downtown population has done better, but surrounding areas have not. Philadelphia’s central core rebounded between 2000 and 2014, but for every district that gained in income, two suffered income declines. 

Research by urban analysts Joe Cortright and Dillon Mahmoudi shows that the number of high-poverty (more than 30 percent below the poverty line) neighborhoods in the U.S. has tripled in the last half-century, from 1,100 in 1970 to 3,100 in 2010.

Poverty is not, as is widely suggested, now primarily a suburban problem. The poverty rate, according to the American Community Survey, remains two-thirds higher in urban cores than in suburbs. 

Equally important, many longstanding middle- and working-class neighborhoods are disappearing. Teachers, firemen, and police officers are struggling to afford homes in many American cities, according to a study from Trulia. This pricing-out also applies to many skilled blue-collar professions like technicians, construction workers, and mechanics…

Some cities with the fastest gentrification rates, according to Realtor.com, have undergone dramatic displacement of their poor and minority populations. Washington, D.C., long celebrated as Chocolate City, has seen its African-American population share drop substantially. In Portland, 10,000 of the 38,000 residents of the historic African-American section, Albina, have been pushed elsewhere. 

San Francisco has lost 7.2 percent of its black population since 2010. Given these realities, many grassroots groups have become skeptical, even openly hostile, to gentrification. Our colleagues working in Chicago, Los Angeles, and Dallas have all reported growing opposition—including vandalism—to city development schemes widely seen as replacing long-term residents with short-timing hipsters…

(City Journal)

EVERYONE HAS AGONY, the difference is I try to take my agony home with me now and then and teach it to sing.

— Arthur Miller

CATASTROPHE – COLLAPSE – APOLOGY – Words missing from the Climate Change report

by Professor Jem Bendell (October 8, 2018)

In their Sunday report, the Intergovernmental Panel On Climate Change (IPCC) have stated we have twenty years before a global disaster is upon us, if we don’t do the impossible right now, including mass deployment of carbon removal from atmosphere using tech not yet invented. In communicating the impacts of 1.5 degree warming and mentioning a date for that impact that is in our lifetimes, the IPCC have come a long way from their past reports, which mentioned only possibilities by a futuristic-sounding 2100.

In a recent talk in Cumbria University, I explained the role of the IPCC in misguiding myself and fellow professionals in the sustainability field over the past decade through grossly downplaying of the risks. The report makes predictions on sea-level and sea ice that seem woefully cautious in comparison to current measurements of change, so probably reflect their internal processes of consensus, which were trashed in a major study earlier this year.

Over past decades those who think things are worse than what the IPCC were saying have been proved right. If that holds true now, then it’s time more of us started thinking, feeling and discussing our way through the idea of a near term social collapse due to climate change.

In complex systems people’s choice of time horizons for future events is as much a reflection of how they want to feel and how they want to communicate as it is an actual forecast. Especially so when combining so many different models on so many different ecosystem impacts and feedbacks. The 2040 date feels a bit futuristic, doesn’t it? The choice of a year with a zero in the end suggests its not an actual forecast, but reflects how people feel comfortable talking about this topic in public and to policy makers.

Some words missing from the IPCC SR 15 summary for policymakers are: Catastrophe, Collapse, Starvation, Emergency, Apology, Sorry.

So what to do? Lots of things! But here are a few:

• Seed clouds in the Artic and Antarctic at scale immediately and research the impacts.
• Research how else to stop methane escaping the artic shelf off Siberia and try it
• Global carbon tax embedded in trade agreements right now
• Implement means of drawing down carbon from atmosphere by restoring and growing natural carbon sinks, including transformation of modern agriculture
• Explore how to prepare for collapse locally and globally within a Deep Adaptation framing, which doesn’t assume or try to preserve our current ideas of development and progress. This is in itself a huge agenda, involving everyone, and seriously under-discussed because it has hitherto been taboo.
• Do not dismiss ideas on what to do now because they do not fit with your story of self or reality which gives you a sense of confidence or calm. Our attachment to our stories is what got us into this mess in the first place.
• Look within, at what you most value, as if these are our last years on Earth and we won’t succeed in achieving collective goals on development or environment. That means deeply adapting ourselves to collapse and its lessons for humanity and self.

That last one is important because nothing is now likely to work in preventing a near term social collapse due to climate change. But it is also important because it always was important. After all, why are we here!?

Here are a couple interesting quotes in the media:

“The report, issued on Monday by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a group of scientists convened by the United Nations to guide world leaders, describes a world of worsening food shortages and wildfires, and a mass die-off of coral reefs as soon as 2040 — a period well within the lifetime of much of the global population” — New York Times.

Prof Arthur Petersen, from University College London and a former IPCC member: “I am relatively skeptical that we can meet 1.5C, even with an overshoot. Scientists can dream up that is feasible, but it’s a pipedream.” — BBC

If you could work professionally on this topic then consider the Deep Adaptation LinkedIn Group.

FOR ART AFICIONADOS (Forgive the punishment)

A thief in Paris planned to steal some paintings from the Louvre.

After careful planning, he got past security,  stole the paintings, and made it safely to his van. However, he was captured only two blocks away when his van ran out of gas. When asked how he could mastermind such a crime and then make such an obvious error, he replied,

“Monsieur, that is the reason I stole the paintings.”

I had no Monet…

…to buy Degas

…to make the Van Gogh.

See if you have De Gaulle to send this on to someone else.

I sent it to you because I figured I had nothing Toulouse.

(via John Sakowicz)