South Twin Lake Conservation Society

 

This site is the home of the South Twin Lake Conservation Society and The White Birch Regeneration Project.

Raise a little hell!

Carl's Blog Last addition : 3/24/08

 

 

 
  Ed Abbey -- "Society is like a stew. If you don't keep it stirred up, you get a lot of scum on top".  
 

 

 
 
Frederick Douglas -- "Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did, and it never will." He was born of a slave woman and an unknown white man in 1818 and lived amid brutal slavery until he was eight, when he was sent to live with a ship carpenter in Baltimore who taught him to read. Seven years later, at eighteen, he was sent to a slave breaker who whipped him every day and barely fed him until he was totally broken in spirit. So utterly unresponsive that he was useless as a slave laborer, he was sent to another ship carpenter. In two years he recovered, and escaped to New York. On being inspired by the fiery abolition speakers of the time, he, too, became an eloquent abolition speaker and was invited to speak on innumerable occasions. He even held a consultation with Abe Lincoln.
  
 

 

 
 
Clarence Darrow, "The Attorney For the Damned" -- "I know that the individual that will not stand for his rights will have no rights, and I believe the first duty of every American citizen is to protect himself and his country in all the liberties we have and all that we can get."
  
 

 
 
"Make the world a bit better or more beautiful because you have lived in it." -- advice given (by his grandmother) to Edward W. Bok, an immigrant from Holland in 1870, who became a prominent editor, philanthropist, and eventually built the Bok Singing Tower near Lake Wales, Florida" on the highest point in the state at 500 feet. It is a working carillon set in a beautiful garden.
  
 

 
  "The disadvantage of men not knowing the past is that they do not know the present". -- G. K. Chesterton.  
 

 
  "Ultimately, I find power really ridiculous. The only kind of power which is respectable is not power at all ... In other words, (power) freely, genuinely freely elected, answerable to people, constantly monitored, never being alienated." -- Nigerian Wole Soyinka, author of the play "King Baabu".  
 

 
  Henry Beston, a twentieth-century naturalist, wrote: "The animal shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more complete than ours they move finished and complete, gifted with extensions of the senses we have lost or never attained."  
 

 
 

Paul Watson, founder of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society in an effort to save the whales, has said: " ... when you're dealing with a species that's as arrogant as the  human race you've got to be arrogant to believe that you can actually change it." And he has written: "Monkey-wrench a bulldozer and they will call you a vandal. Spike a tree and they will call you a terrorist. Liberate a coyote from a trap and they will call you a thief. Yet if a human destroys the wonders of creation, the beauty of the natural world, then anthropocentric society calls such people loggers, miners, developers, engineers, and businessmen. "

In 1946 the International Whaling Commission (formed by whaling nations), sought to manage worldwide whaling. But, catering to "businessmen", it failed, and in the 1980s decided whaling should be halted.

In 1977, Watson founded the SSCS, commissioned himself a Captain, raised funds to found "Neptune's Navy" (composed of renovated trawlers and Coast Guard ships, which are manned by crews of volunteers that often number as many as fifty) and has intercepted, rammed, stink bombed, and sunk offending whaling ships in an effort to halt whaling. He is also currently protecting the Galapagos Islands from poachers of various species of protected sea life, and has said: "If we can't save Galapagos, we won't be able to save anything."

In 1982 the United Nations' Convention on the Law of the Sea ruled that only sovereign states are the ocean's enforcers.

So how can Watson commission himself and "Neptune's Navy" to the task? Well, a group of men with mutual self-interests have commissioned into existence every nation on earth. So what's the difference? Especially since not a single nation has risen to the task.

Is the human race as horribly arrogant as Watson claims? The humans in Western civilization, yes. In world wide indigenous cultures, no!

  
 

 
 

Perhaps Maria Alice Campos Freire, one of grandmothers in the International Council of Thirteen Indigenous Grandmothers, can tell it best. She is written about by Carol Scharfer in her book, "Grandmothers Councel The World".

Schaefer writes "Grandmother Maria Alice is a Madrinha of the Umbanda ceremonies in the Santo Daime Church in Ceu do Mapia. She is also a healer with the Amazonian plant medicines, .... and an activist for the preservation of the indigenous rain forest heritage."

"The Amazon, Earth's greatest biological treasure, once covered 14 percent of the Earth's surface and now covers only 6 percent. The last remaining rain forests could be consumed in less than forty years. Nearly halfthe world's species of plants, animals, and microorganisms will then be destroyed or severely threatened, the result of deforestation by multinational corporations and landowners."

"Five centuries ago, ten million Indians lived in the Amazon rain forest. The conquistadors, who came with a cross in one hand and a sword in the other, killed many indigenous peoples and made millions slaves. Today, there are less than two hundred thousand Indians left. Gone are thousands of years of irreplaceable knowledge about medicinal plants."

When addressing the Grandmothers Council for the first time, Maria Alice said "I am thankful for this holy Mother, our planet the Earth, who received all of us .... " "We know we don't need violence, money, struggle, or competition." "Although we are old ones, our voice is very important for the world at this moment." "I have ... faith ... that we are going to be able to give hope for our next generation."

  
 

 
 
CJN -- Exercise your individual unique qualities, not for your exclusive personal benefit but for the collective benefit. For ones personal benefits are inextricably tied to the collective benefit - whether that collective is a family, an interest group, a business, a city, a state, a nation, or the entire rest of the living ecological world.