1. How to be a good organizer
a) Spend some time thinking about trees
b) Imagine what clear cutting looks like, sounds like, and feels like
c) Recognize that 80% of the world’s forests are gone
d) Be a good organizer

2. How to find like-minded comrades
a) Go to the beach
b) Smell the salty air and listen to the waves
c) Recognize that 90% of the large fish in the ocean are gone
d) Find like-minded comrades Continue reading →

“Thanks for the wild turkey and the passenger pigeons, destined to be shit out through wholesome American guts.”
- William S. Burroughs, Thanksgiving Prayer

Once, there were many billions of passenger pigeons in America. Then the “settlers” arrived. As one of those settlers wrote in the 1600’s: “There are wild pigeons in winter beyond number or imagination, myself have seen three or four hours together flocks in the air, so thick that even have they shadowed the sky from us.” Continue reading →

No matter what we’re led to believe, the world’s worst polluter is not your cousin who refuses to recycle or that co-worker who drives a gas guzzler or the guy down the block who simply will not try CFL bulbs.

“The U.S. Department of Defense is the largest polluter in the world, producing more hazardous waste than the five largest U.S. chemical companies combined,” explains Lucinda Marshall, founder of the Feminist Peace Network. Continue reading →

Balance: A harmonious or satisfying arrangement or proportion of parts or elements

In early 2000, I was walking through Manhattan with three friends on our way to meet a fourth member of our party. This was well before cell phones had become so completely pervasive but still, I was the only one in our group without one. I sarcastically commented on this and was prompted mocked as a Luddite. Then it was on to the essential business of figuring out how to meet up with friend #4.

Out came a cell phone. A call was placed to another cell phone. A meeting place was agreed upon and we were on our way. Friend #1 hung up his phone and turned to me, declaring that this was “one of those times” when a cell phone was indispensable.

To which I replied: Continue reading →

You take a black kid, Hispanic kid, Italian kid, and a kid of undefined ethnicity…and let’s say each of them—surprise, surprise—has meager pecuniary prospects. You know, the whole “economic downturn” thing everyone is yapping about.

So…the undefined guy weighs his options and promptly enlists in the United States Marine Corps. The few, the proud, and all that. Continue reading →

Okay, short attention span crowd: Grab your remote (or mouse) and get ready to click, click, click…

“How much can you know about yourself if you’ve never been in a fight? I don’t wanna die without any scars.”

- Tyler Durden (Fight Club)

Click…

William Burroughs once wrote about how we humans—like the bull in a bullfight—tend to focus on the elusive red cape instead of the matador. Indeed, we are all-too-easily distracted from real targets by an attractive image or illusion. Continue reading →

Writer-activist David Boyajian’s investigative articles and commentaries have appeared in Armenian media outlets in the U.S., Europe, Middle East, and Armenia and the Newton Tab and USA Armenian Life newspapers named him among their “Top 10 Newsmakers of 2007.” So, when Barack Obama paid a visit to Turkey last month, it seemed like a good time to ask Boyajian for his take on the new president’s approach to the issue of the Armenian genocide. Continue reading →

Protest (American, definitely not a verb): Wait for UFPJ or ANSWER to stage a parade (I mean, demonstration) on a weekend afternoon so no one misses work or school or in any way disrupts the flow of commerce. Don’t make a sign; the organizers will make one for you. March in an orderly fashion, be polite to the occupying army (I mean, cops), and be sure to stay in designated free speech zones. Blame the Republicans. Wear costumes. Make puppets. Exclude anarchists. Hold a candlelight vigil. Sign a petition. Chant. Vote for a Democrat and hope for change. Need I continue? Continue reading →

Here’s how well they have us trained: The powers that be are no longer gonna call the illegally detained terrorism suspects (sic) by the name of “enemy combatants.”

Like the pre-programmed robots we’ve all become, we’ll celebrate this as a welcome and much-needed change from the reviled Bush-Cheney administration. A step in the right direction, we might even say. Continue reading →

Would you give up the ability to text ttyl to your BFF in order to save a species from going extinct? In 2009, it’s not an insane question.

The next time your cell phone rings, try focusing on these six simple words: The Democratic Republic of the Congo. I ask you to do this because one of the primary components of cell phone circuitry is a metallic ore called Columbite-Tantalite—or “coltan.” Continue reading →