Macho Men die EARLY

One of the defenses of the macho ethic is that it encourages men to be tough to protect their families. Even if that were true, you can’t protect if you’re not there.

A study last month revealed a truth many of us have long suspected: men with “macho” attitudes are more reluctant to seek health care—and as a result experience shorter life expectancy and greater medical problems—than men who hold less traditional views. According to the Rutgers University researchers, men who believed in rigid gender roles (like the idea that women should be homemakers while men work) were 46 percent less likely than their more progressive peers to seek out vital life-saving preventative health care.

via Macho Men Die Early: The Destructive Rules of Traditional Masculinity | Gender | AlterNet.

Let’s defend Christiania.. ballad

A song for my favorite intentional community, the 1,000-member urban commune in the middle of Copenhagen, Christiania. Lyric: Bevar Christiania In ’67 it was…


Lyric:

Bevar Christiania

In ’67 it was abandoned as a military base

In 1971 it was squatted

Folks needed some land to implement their plans

And make the new society they had plotted

Some moved into barracks, some built little shacks

Of all sorts of dubious design

Some built cafes and workshops, built windmills, planted crops

Painted things the color of sunshine

via Bevar Christiania – Money-Free.

Lets stop torture..of animals and people!

ALF Actions Around the World

http://www.animalliberationfront.com/ALFront/Actions-index.htm

Kropotkin.. Updating Mutual Aid

O. Wilson and Peter Kropotkin are not often discussed in the same breath. Yet Kropotkin, who in his professional life was a geographer, devoted a substantial work (Mutual Aid, 1902) to elaborating his ideas on cooperation as an important factor in species evolution. Although his ideas never achieved dominance, as evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould observed in 1997, “Kropotkin was no crackpot.” His efforts were a reaction to Social Darwinism, the misbegotten, deformed progeny of Darwin’s biological theories of evolution,…

….However, in recent years, Wilson has reversed his position on the importance of the paradigm he championed. Kin selection theory, now the dominant model, is, Wilson believes, inadequate to explain the observed cooperative behavior that species, from humans to ants, exhibit. His alternative theory: that groups of perhaps quite unrelated individuals who cooperative amongst themselves achieve greater evolutionary success. The idea is certainly intuitive. In a social species like humans, it is evident that cooperation is a fundamental component of our natures…..cont/

via ideas and action » Kropotkin Selection? Updating Mutual Aid.

The Methane Gun

Methane & Warming Oceans (extracts)

Methane (CH4) is a very potent greenhouse gas, 20-30 times more powerful than carbon dioxide (CO2) on a century timescale. Fortunately, it only occurs in very low concentrations in the atmosphere – about 0.3 to 0.4 parts per million during ice ages and 0.6 to 0.7ppm during warmer periods………

……The description of Stage 2: Very rapid and massive release of carbon with low ∂13C does put one in mind of the Methane Gun hypothesis. This hypothesis states that rising temperature and/or lower sea level causes clathrate at shallow depth to begin melting which in turn causes warming to increase, melting even larger and deeper clathrate deposits. The result: the relatively sudden, massive and catastrophic release of methane into the atmosphere – the firing of the Methane Gun. The recent discovery by Davy et al (2010) of kilometer-wide (ten 8-11 kilometer and about 1,000 1-kilometer-wide features) eruption craters on the Chatham Rise seafloor off New Zealand adds further ammunition to the Methane Gun hypothesis……

……..However, measurements by Shakhova indicate that emissions of methane from the ESA may be as high as 3.5 billion tonnes per annum (if verified, this amount is enough to trigger abrupt climate change), or about 3 times the total mankind artificially adds into the carbon cycle yearly. This methane release is likely coming from sediments previously covered by thin and now melting permafrost at the sea bed as well as melting clathrate, or some combination of both. Even more troubling, the ESA is estimated to hold 1,000 billion tonnes of methane in the form of clathrates alone…

Continued..(long article)

via Wakening the Kraken: Methane & Warming Oceans : TreeHugger.

Stop Nuclear, Oil, Coal… And Wind ??

I think the image says it all. We can come up with some fairly legitimate reasons why we want to move away from nuclear, oil and coal as fuel sources. But wind? That’s when the arguments against this renewable energy start to run fairly thin. And NIMBYism? Well, that one will hopefully fizzle out entirely.

More Environmental Cartoons What Would Emerge From the Earth’s Cocoon? (Cartoon) Forget Me Knot (Cartoon) Share the Road (Cartoon) Act Natural (Cartoon) via Arguments Against Nuclear, Oil, Coal… And Wind (Pic) : TreeHugger.

Bank of America attacked in solidarity

The communique:

“At around 3:15 AM on Monday morning the Bank of America on the west-side of Olympia had it’s windows smashed. This action happened due to the week-long (From the 14th-21st) call out for solidarity with Chilean Hunger Strikers, albeit we arrived fashionably late. Though it is clear the state consistently tries to isolate our struggles, even the 6,000 miles that separate Olympia from Santiago fail to mitigate the collective rage that we all feel for the state and capital. We do not do this out of charity but out of affinity, an understanding that our struggles for the annihilation of the state and capital are intrinsically connected. Because we refuse to cling to the ruins of the society that has already destroyed everything we care about, whether we are rolling with a pack or on our own, we will continue to confront their domination in a multitude of ways. And we will continue our attacks.

Much Love to the 14A
Solidarity to all those who refuse to be defeated, disillusioned, or recuperated in our on-going struggle for the destruction of this society and those who protect it. We’ll be back Anarchists” http://pugetsoundanarchists.org/node/556