Censored 2014

by Mickey Huff

  5. Change our own lives to stop killing or harming animals, including bees, bats, spiders, and more. Stop killing animals in and around our houses. Stop using poisons of any kind. Stop or drastically reduce eating animals and/or animal products.50 Stop supporting the harming or killing of animals in the wild, in science, in entertainment, and elsewhere.

  6. Participate in mass movements and demonstrations, to pressure governments to respond to the needs of the public and ecosystems rather than corporations, and to hold corporations accountable for their actions.

  Overall, it is important to remember that all social and environmental justice issues are interconnected—not just in an ecological sense, but in a politico-economic sense as well. For example, working for peace in the world is one of the most important things you can do to slow down the sixth mass extinction. One of the best kept secrets is that the United States military is the greatest contributor to environmental harm in the world, and it makes this onerous “contribution” in a multitude of ways at home and abroad.51 Why isn’t the corporate media continually reporting this extremely important piece of information? We arrive at the same answer as to the question of why they are not reporting the sixth mass extinction: the corporations that benefit from polluting are also primary benefactors of war. Ultimately, the public must hold the media accountable to its responsibility if we are to avoid the ultimate cascade and collapse that the sixth mass extinction holds before us.

  JULIE ANDRZEJEWSKI, EDD, is professor of human relations at St. Cloud State University, where she cofounded the Social Responsibility Program. Her recent publi-cations include coediting Social Justice, Peace, and Environmental Education (Routledge, 2009) and authoring “War: Animals in the Aftermath” in Animals and War: Confronting the Military Animal Industrial Complex (Arissa, 2013). She serves as one of Project Censored’s international judges, and her students regularly contribute stories to Project Censored’s Top 25 list.

  JOHN C. ALESSIO, PHD, is professor emeritus in sociology at St. Cloud State University, where he cofounded the Social Responsibility Program. He has taught at a number of universities and served as an academic dean at Marywood University, and Minnesota State University, Mankato. A widely published author, Dr. Alessio has published, most recently, Social Problems and Inequality: Social Responsibility Through Progressive Sociology (Ashgate Publishers, 2011).

  Notes

  1. “EU: Ban Bee Poison,” Avaaz.org, January 29, 2013, http://www.avaz.org/en/hours to save the bees. Introduction to the AVAAZ petition signed by 2.6 million people to the European Union to ban neonicotinoid pesticides made by Bayer and other giant pesticide producers that are implicated in killing bees.

  2. World Wildlife Fund in collaboration with the Global Footprint Network and the Zoological Society of London, Living Planet Report (2012), accessed May 2, 2013, http://awassets.panda.org/downloads/lpr 2012 summary booklet final.pdf.

  3. “The Extinction Crisis,” Center for Biological Diversity, http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/pro-grams/biodiversity/elements_of_biodiversity/extinction_crisis; and Eric Chivian and Aaron Bernstein, eds., Sustaining Life: How Human Health Depends on Biodiversity (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008).

  4. Andrea Germanos, “Report: Ecosystems in Upheaval, Biodiversity in Collapse,” Common Dreams, December 12, 2012, https://www.commondreams.org/headline/2012/12/12. Ger-manos’s article is based on Michelle D. Staudinger et al., “Impacts of Climate Change on biodiversity, Ecosystems, and Ecosystem Services: Technical Input to the 2013 National Climate Assessment,” Cooperative Report to the 2013 National Climate Assessment, July 2012, http://assessment.globalchange.gov.

  5. United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), “Global Biodiversity Outlook 3: Biodiversity in 2010,”http://www.cbd.int/gbo3.

  6. Key reports available include US Geological Service with National Wildlife Federation and Arizona State University, Emerging Consensus Shows Climate Change Already Having Major Effects on Ecosystems and Species, December 18, 2012, http://www.ugs.gov/newsroom/article.asp?ID=3483; World Wildlife Fund in collaboration with Global Footprint Network and the Zoological Society of London, Living Planet Report (2012), http://wwf.panda.org/about our earth/all publications/living planet report/2012 lpr/; the International Union for Conservation of Nature and the Red List of Endangered Species, 2013, http://www.iucnredlist.org; UNEP, especially the Convention on Biological Diversity, http://www.cbd.int and publications like Nature and Science.

  7. Species Alliance, Call of Life: Facing the Mass Extinction, 2010, http://calloflife.org/p-story.htm

  8. UNEP, “Global Biodiversity Outlook 3.”

  9. Anthony D. Barnosky et al., “Approaching a State Shift in Earth’s Biosphere,” Nature 486 (June 7, 2012): 52–58. http://www.stanford.edu/group/hadlylab/_pdfs/Barnoskyetal2012.pdf. See also UNEP, “Global Biodiversity Outlook 3.”

  10. Species Alliance, Call of Life.

  11. Andrew H. Altieri et al., “A Trophic Cascade Triggers Collapse of a Salt-Marsh Ecosystem with Intensive Recreational Fishing,” Ecology 93 (2012): 1402–1410, http://dx.doi.org/10.1890/11-1314.1.

  12. Richard Pearson, “Are We in the Midst of a Sixth Mass Extinction?” New York Times, June 3, 2012, 5.

  13. Seth Borenstein, “Panel: Problems with Oceans Multiplying, Worsening,” Brattleboro Reformer (Brattleboro VT), June 21, 2011.

  14. Tom Harris, “We Need to Manage Climate Change, Not Avert Catastrophe,” South Florida Sun-Sentinel (Fort Lauderdale), August 15, 2012.

  15. Gaylord Dold, “Are Humans Headed for Mass Extinction?” Miami Herald, July 29, 2012, http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/07/29/2915428/are-humans-headed-for-mass-extinction.html.

  16. Amina Khan, “Less Dire View of Extinction: Scientists Using a New Method to Calculate the Rate at Which Species Are Dying Out Say the Crisis Is Bad but Overestimated,” Los Angeles Times, May 21, 2011.

  17. Faye Flam, “Mass Extinction: Humans Have Edge,” Philadelphia Inquirer, July 9, 2012, Ci.

  18. Pete Spotts, “Mass Extinction? Man May Still Have Time to Catalog Earth’s Species,” Christian Science Monitor, January 25, 2013.

  19. Jim Dwyer, “Warning of A World That’s Hotter Wetter,” New York Times, May 23, 2012, 16, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/23/nyregion/african-fossils-may-show-the-future-of-cli-mate-change.html?_r=o.

  20. 20 Carl Zimmer, “Multitude of Species Face Threat of Warming,” New York Times, April 5, 2011, Di.

  21. Naomi Lindt, “The Call of the Wilds in Cambodia,” New York Times, March 6, 2011, TR8.

  22. Gaia Vince, “A Looming Mass Extinction Caused by Humans,” British Broadcasting Company, November 1, 2012, http://www.bbc.com/future/story/201211101-a-looming-mass-extinction/i.

  23. Ewen Callaway, “Cloning: Can it Resurrect Extinct Species?” BBC Future, February 29, 2012, http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20120229-can-we-resurrect-extinct-species.

  24. Michelle Lalonde, “Biodiversity’s Concrete Solution; Urban Accommodation of Wildlife and Green Spaces Needs to Be Championed More Actively by Politicians,” Montreal Gazette, November 1, 2010, http://blogs.montrealgazette.com/2010/11/oi/green-life-column-biodiver-sitys-concrete-solution.

  25. Annalee Newitz, “Can Humans Survive?: Five Mass Extinctions Have Nearly Wiped Out Life on Earth. The Sixth Is Coming,” Newsweek, May 6, 2013, http://www.thedailybeast.com/news-week/2013/05/06/the-sixth-mass-extinction-is-upon-us-can-humans-survive.html.

  26. Herbert I. Schiller, The Mind Managers (Boston: Beacon Press, 1973).

  27. Faye Flam, “In Haiti, a Trek to Save Rare Animals: As Its Forests Disappear, Other Life Does, Too.” Philadelphia Inquirer, September 13, 2011, A1.

  28. For definitions and examples, see Peter Singer, Animal Liberation (New York: Avon Books, 1975); David Nibert, Animal Rights/Human Rights: Entanglements of Oppression and Liberation (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2002); and Joan Dunayer, Speciesism (Der-wood: Ryce Publishing, 2004).

  29. Species Alliance, Call of Life; UNEP, “Globa
l Biodiversity Outlook 3”; Center for Biological Diversity, “Owning Up to Overpopulation,” Endangered Earth (Fall 2009): 1,7; and Paul and Anne Ehrlich, One with Nineveh: Politics, Consumption, and the Human Future (Washington DC: Island Press, 2004). One classic statement on this problem is William R. Catton, Overshoot: The Ecological Basis of Revolutionary Change (Champaign: University of Illinois, 1980).

  30. For notable exceptions in the sociological literature, see John C. Alessio, Social Problems and Inequality: Social Responsibility Through Progressive Sociology (London: Ashgate Publishers, 2011); and Riley E. Dunlap et al., eds., Sociological Theory and the Environment: Classical Foundations, Contemporary Insights (Lanham MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2002).

  31. UNEP, “Global Biodiversity Outlook 3” 12–13. For one accessible account of efforts to model the economic value of undisturbed ecosystems, see Gretchen C. Daily and Katherine Ellison, The New Economy of Nature: The Quest to Make Conservation Profitable (Washington DC: Island Press, 2002).

  32. United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), The Precautionary Principle: World Commission on the Ethics of Scientific Knowledge and Technology, March 2005, http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0013/001395/1139578e.pdf. While there are numerous definitions of the precautionary principle, a strong definition, when applied, requires all social actors who engage in economic/technological/social activities that could somehow affect the delicate balance within an ecosystem or otherwise bring harm to life—to first demonstrate that, indeed, no such harm will occur. Until then, no action should be taken. While weak versions of this principle are applied in some parts of Europe and non-European countries like New Zealand, there is little notable application of this principle in the United States, where the focus tends to be more on risk management related to cost-benefit analyses than on protecting life and the ecosystem.

  33. Annie Leonard, The Story of Stuff: How Our Obsession with Stuff Is Trashing the Planet, Our Communities, and Our Health (New York: Free Press, 2010).

  34. General Electric is one of many giant corporations that uses its nearly endless economic resources to defend its illegal activities—all the while doing cost-benefit assessments of being caught and prosecuted. For examples, see “GE Misdeeds,” http://www.cleanupge.org/gemis-deeds.html; and Charlie Cray, “General Electric,” CorpWatch, http://www.corpwatch.org/section.php?id=16. Corporations are also effective at using their resources to influence the political system and government “regulatory” agencies. Consider, for example, the relationship between Monsanto and the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), as covered in Censored story #24, “Widespread GMO Contamination: Did Monsanto Plant GMOs before USDA Approval?,” in this volume.

  35. See, for example, Winona LaDuke, “A Society Based on Conquest Cannot Be Sustained,” in Oppression and Social Justice: Critical Frameworks, ed. Julie Andrzejewski (Needham Heights: Simon & Schuster Custom Publishers, 1996), 199–206.

  36. Alterieri et al., “Trophic Cascade” and Species Alliance, Call of Life.

  37. Leonard, Story of Stuff.

  38. See, for example, Censored story #7, “The Merchants of Death and Nuclear Weapons,” and story #12, “The US Has Left Iraq with an Epidemic of Cancers and Birth Defects,” in this volume.

  39. See, for instance, Censored story #15, “Food Riots, the New Normal?” in this volume.

  40. See Censored story #3, “Fukushima Nuclear Disaster Worse Than Expected,” in Censored 2013: Dispatches from the Media Revolution, Mickey Huff and Andy Lee Roth with Project Censored (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2012), 91–93; and story #8, “The Fairy Tale of Clean and Safe Nuclear Power,” in Censored 2012: Sourcebook for the Media Revolution, Mickey Huff and Project Censored (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2011), 101–107.

  41. In this volume, for example, see Censored story #21, “Monsanto and India’s ‘Suicide Economy’” and story #24, “Widespread GMO Contamination: Did Monsanto Plant GMO’s before USDA Approval?”

  42. For example, see “Baby’s Tub Still Toxic?” Censored 2013, 96–97.

  43. See Censored story #18, “Fracking Our Food Supply.”

  44. For example, Censored story #18, “The True Cost of Chevron,” in Censored 2011: The Top Censored Stories of 2009–10, eds. Mickey Huff, Peter Phillips, and Project Censored (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2010), 94–99.

  45. See Censored story #14, “Wireless Technology a Looming Health Crisis,” in this volume, and also story #15, “Dangers of Everyday Technology,” in Censored 2013, 93–96.

  46. For instance, Censored story #17, “Nanotech Particles Pose Serious DNA Risks to Humans and the Environment,” in Censored 2011, 88–93; and story #22, “Nanotechnology Offers Exciting Possibilities But Health Effects Need Research,” in Censored 2006: The Top 25 Censored Stories, eds. Peter Phillips and Project Censored (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2005), 110–111.

  47. See, for example, Censored story #12, “Pacific Garbage Dump: Did You Really Think Your Plastic Bag Was Being Recycled?” in Censored 2012, 107–108.

  48. For instance, Censored story #10, “Mountaintop Removal Threatens Ecosystem and Economy,” Censored 2006, 75–78. On Navy testing, see “U.S. Military’s War on Earth,” Censored 2004: The Top 25 Censored Stories, eds. Peter Phillips and Project Censored (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2003), 79–82.

  49. See Censored story #2, “Oceans in Peril,” Censored 2013, 87–89.

  50. International Panel for Sustainable Resource Management, “Assessing the Environmental Impacts of Consumption and Production,” UNEP, June 2, 2010, http://www.eurekalert.org/pub releases/2010-06/udot-ffu053O110.php.

  51. Project Censored reported this as the Censored story #2, “US Department of Defense is the Worst Polluter on the Planet,” Censored 2011, 15–24.

  CHAPTER 13

  The New Story

  Why We Need One and How to Create It

  Michael Nagler

  The deepest crises experienced by any society are those moments of change when the story becomes inadequate for meeting the survival demands of a present situation.

  —Thomas Berry1

  1. A CRISIS OF MEANING

  Every social movement needs two resources to succeed: unity, or a sense of shared purpose; and a long-term strategy. That is acutely true of the movements swirling around the globe today in response to crisis after crisis unleashed by the failing institutions of the prevailing order. Environmentalist and author Paul Hawken has convincingly shown that, while there are literally a million or more worthy projects being carried out in “the largest social movement in history,” they are working in isolation, thus forfeiting their potential effectiveness.2 And nonviolence scholars (yes, there are some) have realized for some time that spontaneous popular uprisings, hopeful and dramatic as they may be, soon lose momentum for want of long-term strategy, thus unintentionally giving rise to elements as destructive as the regimes they dislodged, when those elements rush into the vacuum created by those popular uprisings.

  Inspired by Mahatma Gandhi’s iconic campaign for India’s freedom, which was conspicuously endowed with both unity and strategy, we at the Metta Center for Nonviolence have created a platform called Roadmap that provides a framework for both shared purpose and long-term strategy.

  Nonviolence is the Roadmap’s operative principle. By emphasizing nonviolence, we provide an alternative to the established culture, which sees coercive force as the fundamental basis of both change and order.

  But nonviolence is more than a method; it is itself a new story of reality and human significance. The Roadmap reflects this understanding by placing the power of the individual at its center, in direct contradiction to the passivity and powerlessness that characterize the old story. The individual is not just the beneficiary of this new model but its source. The energy of change arises from personal empowerment as it did in Gandhi’s scenario, and moves outward through “constructive program” to confrontational nonviolent resistance, if necessary.3

  A
mong the areas that serve as guidelines for essential change and regeneration in the Nonviolent Resistance ring around the Roadmap, we give primary consideration to the creation of a new story. Observing that ballads and stories “socialize us into our roles as men and women and affect our identities,” the pioneer of cultivation theory, George Gerbner, often quoted Scottish patriot Andrew Fletcher (1655–1716), “If I were permitted to write all the ballads, I need not care who makes the laws of the nation.”4 The powerful resonance of a person-centered movement—armed, as it were, with a new story that makes clear why the person is the center of global meaning and power—has an incredible potential for change. Why care about other peoples’ health care, especially if there might be more to go around if they weren’t there? Why look for an alternative to brute force, even if its destructive side effects outweigh any possible gains, if we live in a regime of competing interests and there’s no other way? What, after all, do human trafficking, high rates of murder and suicide, weak gun safety laws, election fraud, banksterism, and war have in common? These all rest upon a flawed vision of the human being. In fact, “flawed” is an understatement. The prevailing image of a human being today—an image consistent across the mainstream of our art forms, education, policy-making, the news media, and a majority of scientists (though their number is shrinking somewhat)—is that of a material body separate from other creatures and the environment, doomed to compete for ever scarcer resources in a universe that has come about by chance. “What liberals and progressives don’t seem to understand,” wrote Lynn Stuart Parramore recently, “is that you don’t counter a myth with a pile of facts and statistics. You have to counter it with a more powerful story.”5 That more powerful story is beginning to take shape.