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The Earth and it's humans are unsettled as we enter Radio Ecoshock this week. It appears the Japanese government may have censored Internet communication about the impact of the October 25th 7.5 earthquake right off the coast from the blown reactors at Fukushima. Even so, the harsh news about radiation spreading across the Pacific is leaking out from every alternative media outlet, into the mainstream consciousness.
SUPER TYPOON HAIYAN/YOLANDA
This past week, the strongest tropical cyclone ever to hit land arrived in the Philippines, well south of the capital Manila. Meteorologist and former NASA storm chaser Jeff Masters quotes U.S. Navy satellite estimates of land speed winds of 190 to 195 miles per hour.
Remember when the United Nations climate scientists warned of more violent storms? Well here we are. Super Typoon Haiyan hit with the force you'd expect in a Tornado, but a tornado 600 kilometers, 372 miles in diameter. Take a look: it's a frightening giant storm. on a small planet, and another excursion into the new climate of planet Earth.
Everyone on Earth needs to see this tearful speech by Yeb Sano, Philippines delegate, at the COP 19 climate talks in Warsaw Poland, just after the typhoon struck.
Yeb Sano added:
“We cannot sit and stay helpless staring at this international climate stalemate,” Sano told delegates today in Warsaw, according to a transcript by the Responding to Climate Change Website. “We refuse to accept that running away from storms, evacuating our families, suffering the devastation and misery, having to count our dead, become a way of life.”
- from BloombergBusiness Nov 11, 2013
Australian scientists are willing to credit warmer seas with adding strength to Haiyan.
Others rationalize: why were the other typhoons this year not as strong, if those climate conditions were there?
Consider Jim Hansen's argument that climate loads the dice that more extreme weather events will happen.
FAST DECAY OF SOCIAL ORDER
Meanwhile, we also see a preview of what can be expected from massive dislocations caused by weather panic. Looting, and armed gangs taking food, arrive very early. It may be delayed a day or two in more advanced economies, as people have more faith help will arrive - but when it doesn't the reaction may be even more extreme. The army may be called in to fight off desperate civilians.
THIS MEGA-STORM HAS WIDESPREAD IMPACTS ON HUMAN CONSCIOUSNESS EVERYWHERE
Also to be considered: do not think that the images of huge distress and human suffering do not affect people in the West. Those TV images, newspaper images, radio voices will create suffering even in many of us far from the scene.
Much of this operates subconsciously, and piles up in waves of social change - some for better, some for worse in the United States, Canada, Europe and Australia, as well as Japan and China. We are all affected, and this will change life, economies, and politics in subterranean ways, as humans become less sure of their surroundings, of nature, of their economies and lives. Climate change is a threat not just to the poor of places like the Philippines, but to us all.
Right now, humans in their homes, in their hearts, in quiet places in their minds are making decisions based on what they experience of Typhoon Haiyan/Yolanda.
Some will make that supply of food and water. Others will buy guns. Some will begin to talk openly of their climate fears; others will bury it even deeper under carefully developed webs of denial, or outrageously stupid hate.
ONE WAY TO WRECK THE PLANET: SHOP TILL IT DROPS
As individuals, we feel so small. What can we do? All around us the blissful crowd is getting ready for a shopping extravaganza. Our "thanksgiving" demands an eruption in the malls. It will transfer more species and toxic materials into our closets, garages, storage units and landfills. We'll celebrate the Christmas holiday with another giant burst of carbon into the overloaded atmosphere.
GROWTHBUSTERS DIRECTOR DAVE GARDNER
In this program, Dave Gardner, gives you options, including a free viewing of his influential film "Growthbusters". Find out how you can watch the movie growthbusters for free, at times convenient for anyone anywhere on the planet, go here.
The free screening is on Black Friday, and to accommodate people on any side of the planet, on Black Saturday as weel. As Dave says, instead of shopping for more useless stuff, get your mind out of the consumer trap with this film.
Listen to the Dave Gardner interview (21 minutes) in CD Quality or Lo-Fi
The "growthbusters" are doing some great work. It goes way beyond shopping, into the way our consumer economy and brainwashed minds work.
Dave Gardner has been an activist in Boulder Springs, Colorado (and even ran for office there). He brings a new outlook to the table: the way municipalities conspire with merchants and developers to always grow, grow grow - even when that overwhelms the quality of life that attracted people in the first place.
Is your city better when the population explodes? Not likely. Transportation snarls, the cost of living goes up, community suffers, and happiness generally goes down.
THE REVEREND BILLY TALEN RAISES THE ANTE WITH DIRECT ACTION
Then, the man all the advertisers and banks don't want you to hear. The Reverend Billy Talen from the Church of Stop Shopping makes a brilliant speech recorded for Radio Ecoshock at the Chicago Great Lakes Bioneers 2013 conference.
Billy tells us the cost of direct action to save the planet. It's one of the most soul-searching looks into how and when we should take action. Talk, even Radio Ecoshock, is not enough. We are still going down the tubes.
Billy Talen's sermon was delivered while the police waited to arrest him. The government, pretending to represent "the people" want to toss Billy Talen in prison for a direct action at the JP Morgan Chase Bank in New York. The bank, he says, is the biggest climate destruction financier on the planet.
I've recorded a lot of speeches. This is one of the best, don't miss it.
We are sunk so deep in the consumer culture, the economy will crash if we stop. It will crash anyway, leaving a polluted world drained of natural life. Nobody warns us more clearly than the Reverend Billy Talen and his Church of Stop Shopping Choir.
I play you Billy's speech at the Chicago Great Lakes Bioneers 2013. This recording was made for Radio Ecoshock on November 2nd, by Kelly Pierce of the Chicago Independent Media Center.
Listen to this moving 35 minute Billy Talen speech in CD Quality or Lo-Fi.
If you like it, share it, pass on the link!
The Reverend Billy Talen is a New Yorker who works with talented artists and activists in the Church of Stop Shopping Choir. All music heard in this show is by the Church of Stop Shopping Choir.
Billy uses fundamentalist-style preaching - but this time to convert us from the consumerism that is wasting the planet.
Right after this speech Billy was arrested for his group's protest the JP Morgan Chase Bank - and possibly for disturbing the peace at the Roosevelt University/Chicago Bioneers direct action panel. More on that next week.
As Billy says, these banks hide behind a cloak of respectability and power, while they loan out money to coal plants, dangerous oil drilling, and a host of projects that are wrecking the planet for all future generations.
OVER-REACTING TO CIVIL PROTEST
You think Russia is punishing Greenpeace activists, the Arctic 30, with crazy overblown charges like Piracy? What about America, where authorities and authoritarianism keeps us all inside the boundaries carefully set by corporate psychology and power?
By the way, the Arctic 30 are still locked up in a Russian prison, for almost two months now, but they were moved in a prison train to Saint Petersburg last week.
Check out this Greenpeace web site, to see who these brave activists (plus two journalists) really are.
The alleged American democracy wants Billy and his crew to spend a year in horrible prison for appearing as extinct frogs in a bank branch. A little group of artists singing and dancing in a bank branch are being charged with "riot". Really?
Is the system that fragile, that endangered, that even a peep of protest means prison?
For every man and woman thrown into jail by the zealous protectors of corporate crime, let another thousand step forward.
As Billy tells us, nothing real has been accomplished for America - in civil rights, gender equality or anything else, without direct activists willing to face jail, or even death. What greater cause is there than trying to pass on a living planet to our children and grandchildren.
Go to revbilly.com to find out how you can help. For one thing, you can purchase the movie "What Would Jesus Buy". I think Jesus would buy this film, but you can watch the whole thing on You tube as well.
At least buy the CD featuring some of the Church of Stop Shopping Choir music I'm playing in today's program.
The Reverend has moved me. Let him move you too. We can't wait for our Nelson Mandela or Martin Luther King to show up. The planet is wasting, each of us need to join or make a movement.
THANKS FOR SUPPORTING RADIO ECOSHOCK!
Next week we'll hear more from the Bioneers. What happens when most city dwellers realize they should grow some of their own food? It's off to Home Depot to "buy" soil - that is stripped from a farm somewhere else.
You will learn about alternatives, and about soil - the system that feeds us all.
I'm Alex Smith. Help Radio Ecoshock at our web site, ecoshock.org. Pass out our free download mp3s of past shows. Join the growing number of celebrities, local shakers, and scientists speakng out. Become an earth activist!
Earthaluja.
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