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Terrorism is too complex to be countered with easy answers Frankly, America, you’re
worrying me. It sounds like many of us are buying the absurdly
simplistic explanations we’re being given for the New York and
Washington attacks. Though easy answers can be tempting, these were not
utterly inexplicable and “evil” assaults on “democracy” and
“freedom.” John Kurmann, September 2001
I've heard that the Chinese have an ancient curse which translates roughly into English as, "May you live in interesting times." My friends, I've come to the conclusion that we have the dubious fortune of living in the most interesting of human times, ever. What is it that makes these times so darn fascinating? Two words: cultural collapse, now playing everywhere you turn. Of course, the phrase "cultural collapse" isn't heard every day, so maybe you're scratching your head, wondering what I mean. The short version: Cultural collapse occurs when the most basic, fundamental beliefs of a culture are demolished. This demolition can occur because the beliefs no longer make sense of changed conditions, because new evidence is found which renders them genuinely un-believable, because they result in behavior which undermines the ecological life-support systems the culture relies on, or some combination of these elements. The people, and particularly the young, lose faith in their leaders and elders, and they no longer accept the traditional explanations for how things came to be this way. Click here to read the full introduction. John
Kurmann, March 2001
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Save the River An
op-ed piece by U.S. Congressman Sam Graves (Missouri 6th District) was
carried in late March in at least one Kansas City-area newspaper.
Congressman Graves’ piece made the case for his efforts to
obstruct the adoption of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ (USACE)
draft implementation plan for operations of the Missouri River.
This op-ed piece contained a number of factual distortions and
inaccuracies. The USACE plan contains elements proposed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) to minimize the effects of current river operations on the river’s endangered and threatened species. It is Congressman Graves’ position that current operations practices should be maintained because, in essence, they favor agricultural and barge interests over the goals of the FWS as contained in the draft implementation plan. Click here to read the rest of this article. William
Gresham, April 2001 Introduction
to
this column Why should we "Rethink the World"? A valid question, but perhaps a better one might be, "Why didn't we rethink things a long time ago?" How
we got here is assuredly too big a topic to examine in this brief
column. Let's just agree that we did in fact get here. And
by here, I mean several things: this point on the timeline, in
population, in environmental degradation, in use of finite natural
resources, in redistribution of the world's biological mass, and a score
of other indices which define "where we are."
I'll enlist the words of Thom Hartmann from his book The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight, to help me describe our position. "In the 24 hours since this time yesterday, over 200,000 acres of rainforest have been destroyed in our world. Fully 13 million tons of toxic chemicals have been released into our environment. And more than 130 plant or animal species have been driven to extinction by the actions of humans. The last time there was such a rapid loss of species was when the dinosaurs vanished." Click here to read the full introduction. William
Gresham, March 2001
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To read other articles appearing on Rethinking the World, click here. Bill and John's writings also have appeared on Mind Like Water's column EcoLogic. Click here for links to those articles.
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