In this latest video from Thacker Pass, Max explains why he is protesting against lithium mining for the so called green energy.
Featured image: Pygmy rabbit by Travis London
The small Pygmy rabbit is Thacker pass and Thacker Pass is Pygmy rabbits. This small rabbit is a target of many predators at Thacker Pass. The rabbits find their refuge in the form of the sagebrush plant or in the burrows that it makes in deep, soft soil. Much like the sage grouse, the pygmy rabbit relies on sagebrush not only for protection but for more than 90%. of its diet. The pygmy rabbit requires large expanses of uninterrupted shrub-steppe habitat. Unfortunately, right now the pygmy rabbit faces many threats. Conversion of indispensable sagebrush meadows for agriculture and development for oil and natural gas extraction, and now the lithium boom, are depleting an already fragile ecosystem. One more reason to resist.
For the past 25 days, there has been a protest camp set up behind me, right out here. This place is called Thacker Pass, in Northern Nevada, traditional territory of the Northern Paiute and Western Shoshoni.
This area here is the proposed site of an open pit lithium mine, a massive strip mine that will turn everything into a heavily industrialized zone.
This site, right now, is an incredibly biodiverse Sagebrush habitat. There are Sagebrush plants over a hundred years olds, cause it’s oldgrowth Sage. There’s Sage-Grouse. This is part of the most important Sage-Grouse population left in the entire state, Around 5-8 percent of the entire global population of Sage-Grouse live right here.
This is a migratory corridor of Pronghorn. One of the members of the occupation saw about 55 Pronghorns in an area that would be destroyed for the open pit mine.
There are Golden Eagles here, multiple nesting pairs. We’ve seen them circling over head. We’ve seen their mating flights, getting ready to lay their eggs in the spring.
There are Pygmy Rabbits here. There are Burrowing Owls. There are Gopher Snakes and Rattle Snakes. There’s Rabbit Brush. There’s Jack Rabbit.
There’s Paragon Falcon, or actually the desert variant of the Paragon Falcon, what’s known as the Prairie Falcon.
There are Mule Deer. We see them feeding up on these hills. There are Ringtail living behind this cliff behind me. There are Red Foxes. There are Kangaroo Mice. There are an incredible variety of creatures that live here. Many of whom I don’t know their names.
All this is under threat to create to create an open pit mine for lithium. To mine lithium for electric car batteries, and for grid energy storage to power these “green energy” transitions.
I’m not a fan of fossil fuels.
I’m not a promoter of fossil fuels. I’ve taken direct action for many years against fossil fuels. I’ve fought tarsands in Canada. I’ve fought tarsands pipelines in the US. I’ve fought natural gas pipelines, methane pipelines. I’ve stood on front of heavy equipment to block tar sands and fossil fuel mining in Utah. I’ve stood in front of coal trains to stop them from moving forward, to try and blockade the industry. I’ve fought the fossil fuel industry for many many years and will continue to do so.
What we need to recognize that the so called green energy transition that is being promoted is not a real solution. That’s why we’re out on the land. This is the place that is at stake right now. This is the place that is up to be sacrificed for the sake of this so-called green energy.
It was about a 175 years ago that the colonization of this region really began in earnest. That was when the first European settlers started coming across in Nevada. really setting up shops out here, in the mid-1800s. They mostly came for mineral wealth. They came for the gold, the silver. They came for mining. Nevada has been a mining state from the very beginning, and mining still controls the state.
I’ve spoken with some of my Shoshoni friends, my Goshute friends about the history of this: the invasion for mining. What happened was, the settlers came and they forced the indigenous population onto reservation. And they cut down the Juniper trees and the Pinyon pine trees. These were the main sources of medicine and food for many of the Great Basin Indigenous Peoples. I’ve heard it said that the Pinyon pines were like the Buffaloes to the Indigenous People out here.
Just like in the Great Plains, the settlers destroyed the food supply of the indigenous people. They forced them to participate into colonial economy using this violence. They forced them to participate in the capitalist system, in the mining system, in the ranching system. People were going to starve otherwise.
What happened in the mid 1800s was that men with guns came for the mountains. They started digging them out, blowing them up, turning mountains into money, carding that money away, and leaving behind a wasteland. That’s what’s been happening in Nevada ever since. It hasn’t stopped. That’s what we’re gonna see here unless it’s stopped.
The Lithium Americas Corporation, Canadian mining company that wants to build this mine: they raised 400 million dollars in one day a few weeks ago to try and build this mine.
Meanwhile the grassroots struggles to raise a few hundred dollars to help support people coming out here, camping, getting supplies, getting things we need, the travel to get people here. The camp is about a mile or mile and a half from here. There’s about seven or eight people out there.
We need more people to come out to camp. We need people to join us, to draw the line, to hold the line against this mining project.
It’s not just about this project here. I was at a panel discussion recently with some folks from the Andean Altiplano, what’s called the lithium triangle in South America. Argentina, Bolivia and Chile have this high desert region where the three countries meet. It contains about half the world’s lithium reserves. Lithium mining has been going on there for decades and it’s left behind a wasteland.
Indigenous People have been kicked out of their land. They’ve been dispossessed. Their lands have been poisoned. Their water has been taken.
Water usage is one of the major issues there, because it’s an extremely dry place, just like here. Nevada is the driest state in the US. And they wanna pump 1.4 billion gallons of water and use it to refine the lithium into its final product. 1.4 billion gallons a year.
The Queen River in the valley is already dry. The water’s already being overused.
You go back 200 years and there would be water there. There would be beaver dams. There would be fish. There would be wildlife in abundance.
This land is already in an degraded state compared to where it used to be, compared to where it needs to be.
The atrocities associated with this mine go on and on. This is an important cultural site for the Indigenous People of this region. This has been a travel corridor, through what’s now called Thacker Pass for thousands and thousands of years, an important gathering side. If you walk across this land, there’s obsidian everywhere across the ground. There’s all kind of flakes on the other sides of valleys, where indigenous people would gather obsidian and use it to make tools
This has been an important place for thousands of years.
Shoshoni signed a treaty, but they never ceded their land to the United States.
This is unceded land.
The Western Shoshoni never gave away their land. The US does not have legal title to this land. And the US government rejects that. They have appropriated something like a 175 million dollars, and set it aside to give it to the Western Shoshoni, if they will agree that the land was given to the United States. The Western Shoshoni has said “No. We won’t take your money. We want the land.” They have been fighting this fight for decades.
This is unceded territory. This land does not belong to the Bureau of Land Management. This land does not belong to the federal government.
This land belongs to the inhabitants of this land, people whose ancestors are in the soil. I don’t just mean humans. This land belongs to the Sagebrush, and the Pygmy Rabbits, and all those who have
Why don’t their voices get a say? Why don’t we take their preferences into account? What do you think they would say if we ask them, “Can we blow this place up?”
If Lithium America showed up and sincerely asked the Burrowing Owls, and the Sage-Grouse, and the Coyotes, and the Pronghorn Antelopes, “Can we blow up your home? Can we blow it up? Can we turn it into dust? Can we bathe the ground in sulfuric acid to extract this lithium which we’ll take away and make people rich, leaving behind a wasteland? Do we have your permission to do this?”
What do you think the land will say? What do you think the inhabitants will say? Do you think they will say it’s green? Do you think they’ll say:
“This is how you save the planet, by destroying our home?”
I think this is an important issue, not just because of what’s happening here, but because of what it means. Because of what it symbolizes.
When I was a young person, I was very concerned about what was happening to the planet. I was very concerned about the ecological crisis: the rainforest being chopped down, global warming, ocean acidification, the hole in the ozone layer.
I care about these things. I’ve cared about them ever since I was a little kid.
It’s hard to be a human being and have a heart, and not care about it unless you’re broken in some way.
I wanted to figure out what could be done. So I started reading about these issues. And of course what I was taught from a very young age was that solar panels and electric cars were going to save the world. That’s what I learned. That’s what the green media taught me. They taught me implicitly it’s okay to sacrifice places like this. They taught me it’s okay to sacrifice places like this if it means we can have electric cars instead of fossil fuel cars.
We don’t need cars at all. That’s the thing. And this is a hard message for people to hear because people don’t want to be told No. We’re not used to being told No in this culture. You can’t have that. It’s not okay for us to continue in this way.
We’re not used to this message. We’re used to getting whatever we want, whenever we want it.
That’s for the most part across the board. The average person in the American society lives with the energy equivalent of a hundred slaves. We live a life of luxury, like we had a hundred slaves working for us for twenty four hours.
That’s what the fossil fuel has brought to the modern era. That’s what this energy glut has brought to us. This mindset that we could have whatever we want, whenever we want. That’s something we need to get over. That’s something we need to change.
For the past five or six years, I was working on a book called Bright Green Lies: How the Environmental Movement Lost It’s Way and What We Can Do About It. My co-authors and I, in this book, really dive into these problems with details of the so-called green technology in great details. Things like solar panels, wind turbines, electric cars, energy storage, batteries.
Not only these things, but a lots of the other “solutions” that are accepted as dogma in the environmental movement, like dense urbanization. We debunk these things in the book. These things are not going to save this planet. We can’t get around the problems we have found ourselves in.
We’re in a conundrum. This culture has dug itself into a very deep hole.
A lot is going to need to change, before we find ourselves in any resemblance of sustainability, of sanity, of justice, of living in a good way.
Earlier, I came around the corner in the mountains, and it felt like a punch in the gut because I had the premonition of no longer seeing this swab, this rolling expanse of old-growth Sagebrush, but of seeing an open pit. Seeing a mountain of tailings, of minewaste, of toxified soil. I had the premonition of seeing a gigantic sulfuric acid plant and processing facilities all through what is now wild. Where the Foxes run, where the Snakes slither between the Sagebrush, where the Golden Eagles wheel overhead.
That’s why I’m here to fight. I don’t want to see this turn into an industrial wasteland.
I don’t think many of us do. I think a lot of people are befuddled and confused by all these bright green lies. A lot of people buy into this crap. But a lot of people don’t. A lot of people understand that we need to scale down. A lot of people understand that we need to reduce our energy consumption, that we need to degrow the economy. That the latest and greatest industrial technology isn’t going to save us, magically.
This isn’t a tooth fairy situation, where electric cars will appear under our pillows and save the day. A lot of people understand this. That’s why for me, a big part of the battle is not education. A big part of the battle is power. A big part of the battle is actually stopping them.
After 31 years of resistance including contributions from Deep Green Resistance, Las Vegas has abandoned a water extraction project on indigenous lands in Nevada.
On May 21st, after a series of legal defeats stretching over years, the Southern Nevada Water Authority (SNWA) began to withdraw its remaining federal and state applications to build a $10 billion water pipeline.
For three decades, SNWA (the water agency for the Las Vegas area) has worked towards building a 300-mile pipeline and dozens of wells to pump vast amounts of groundwater from Goshute, Paiute, and Shoshone indigenous land in eastern Nevada.
Deep Green Resistance began fighting the SNWA water grab in 2013, organizing a series of annual ecology and resistance gatherings in Spring Valley that continued through 2018, participating in lawsuits, elevating voices of the land, and supporting community organizers on the ground. We cannot and will not take credit for this victory, but we are happy today to see this news.
When I first visited the Confederated Tribes of the Goshute Reservation in 2013, the building bore a stark message: “SNWA: Sucks Native’s Water Away.” The tribe has stated that “SNWA’s groundwater development application is the biggest threat to the Goshute way of life since European settlers first arrived on Goshute lands more than 150 years ago.”
Life in the Great Basin’s valleys, human and otherwise, depends on shallow groundwater, springs, and creeks, which in turn depend on groundwater flows from rain and snow in mountain ranges. Water is life.
There is a place on the floor of the “Sacred Water Valley” or Bahsahwahbee, more commonly known as Spring Valley, where there grows an ecologically unique grove of Rocky Mountain Juniper Trees, where violets bloom and springs bubbling pure water from the Earth.
My friend Delaine Spilsbury, a board member of the Great Basin Water Network and Newe indigenous elder, writes:
“Bahsahwahbee is not just a piece of tribal history. It is American history and a harbinger of the future of indigenous communities. Military officials and vigilantes murdered Newe people there during three massacres between 1850 and 1900. Victims included women, children and elders whose bodies were viciously mutilated. Because it was such a violent event, the spirits of those desecrated are believed to remain in the shallow-rooted Rocky Mountain Juniper trees, referred to as Swamp Cedars. We Shoshone people still visit this location to show our respect for our Elders. To this day, Bahsahwahbee remains a place of mourning for my people.
My grandmother, Laurene Mamie Swallow, survived the Bahsahwahbee massacre of 1897. Oral histories that she and other tribal elders shared, along with documentation from military officials, have served as the historical basis for what we know about the site today.
Despite that information, it is important to note that Bahsahwahbee is more than a place in history. The Swamp Cedars would be lost forever if large-scale pumping were to occur at the site. And, therefore, the ability for indigenous people to practice their spiritual beliefs would be gone too.”
Today, the spirits in the Swamp Cedars can, perhaps, rest a bit easier. But only for now. There still remain countless threats to the Great Basin. Mining is devastating the region. The destruction of Pinyon-Juniper forests continues. Urban sprawl continues to metastasize into the desert, and countless species are on the brink of extinction. Nuclear waste continues to impact indigenous communities. As global warming melts snowpack in the Rocky Mountains and the Colorado River shrinks, cities like Las Vegas will continue to hunt for water—potentially leading to new water grab projects.
The pure springs of these valleys are not safe, and nor are the Swamp Cedars. While land protectors focus on climate change and the Amazon rainforest, countless other parts of our living planet face destruction without appreciation. We must protect all of this world, and that means challenging every water extraction project, every logging plan, every new mine, every factory—even to the fundamental pillars of industrial civilization itself.
For life on this planet to continue, industrial civilization must come to an end. So rejoice, because the water grab is dead. And then get back to the struggle.
Prayer walk for sacred water in the Mojave desert, home to numerous indigenous nations, a wide array of biodiversity, springs, wildflowers, ungulates, tortoises, lizards, birds, and some of the more remote lands in North America. The Mojave’s most serious threats come from the military, urban sprawl, and industrial solar development.
We share this because the ability to read terrain and maps, and to understand how geography influences operations, is a critical skill for resistance movements. Guerilla resistance movements always find safety in forests and mountains. Know the land.
Terrain analysis, an integral part of the intelligence preparation of the battlefield (IPB), plays a key role in any military operation. During peacetime, terrain analysts build extensive data bases for each potential area of operations. They provide a base for all intelligence operations, tactical decisions, and tactical operations. They also support the planning and execution of most other battlefield functions. Because terrain features continually undergo change on the earth’s surface, data bases must be continuously revised and updated.
Purpose
This field manual prescribes basic doctrine and is intended to serve as a primary source of the most current available information on terrain analysis procedures for all personnel who plan, supervise, and conduct terrain analysis. The manual discusses the impact of the terrain and the weather on operations.
Part 1: Terrain Evaluation and Verification, Natural Terrain and Surface Configuration
Maneuver commanders must have accurate intelligence on the surface configuration of the terrain. Ravines, embankments, ditches, plowed fields, boulder fields, and rice-field dikes are typical surface configurations that influence military activities.
Elevations, depressions, slope, landform type, and surface roughness are some of the terrain factors that affect movement of troops, equipment, and material.
Landforms
Landforms are the physical expression of the land surface. The principal groups of landforms are plains or plateaus, hills, and mountains. Within each of these groups are surface features of a smaller size, such as flat lowlands and valleys.
Each type results from the interaction of earth processes in a region with given climate and rock conditions. A complete study of a landform includes determination of its size, shape, arrangement, surface configuration, and relationship to the surrounding area.
Relief
Local relief is the difference in elevation between the points in a given area. The elevations or irregularities of a land surface are represented on graphics by contours, hypsometric tints, shading, spot elevations, and hachures.
Slope or Gradient
Slope can be expressed as the slope ratio or gradient, the angle of slope, or the percent of slope. The slope ratio is a fraction in which the vertical distance is the numerator and the horizontal distance is the denominator. The angle of slope in degrees is the angular difference the inclined surface makes with the horizontal plane. The tangent of the slope angle is determined by dividing the vertical distance by the horizontal distance between the highest and lowest elevations of the inclined surface. The actual angle is found by using trigonometric tables. The percent of slope is the number of meters of elevation per 100 meters of horizontal distance.
Slope information that is available to the analyst in degrees or in ratio values may be converted to percent of slope by using a nomogram.
Vegetation Features
Plant cover can affect military tactics, decisions, and operations. Perhaps the most important is concealment. To make reliable evaluations when preparing vegetation overlays, analysts must collect data on the potential effects of vegetation on vehicular and foot movement, cover and concealment, observation, airdrops, and construction materials.
Types
The types of vegetation in an area can give an indication of the climatic conditions, soil, drainage, and water supply. Terrain analysts are interested in trees, scrubs and shrubs, grasses, and crops.
On military maps, any perennial vegetation high enough to conceal troops or thick enough to be a serious obstacle to free passage is classified as woods or brushwood.
Although trees provide good cover and concealment, they can present problems to movement of armor and wheeled vehicles. Woods also slow down the movement of dismounted troops. Individual huge trees are seldom so close together that a tank cannot move between them, but the space between them is often filled by smaller trees or brush. Closely spaced trees are usually fairly small and can be pushed over by a tank; however, the resulting pileup of vegetation may stop the tank. Trees that can stop a wheeled vehicle are usually too closely spaced to bypass.
Trees are classified as either deciduous (broadleaf) or coniferous (evergreen).
With the exception of species growing in tropical areas and a few species existing intemperate climates, most broadleaf trees lose their leaves in the fall and become dormant until the early spring. Needleleaf trees do not normally lose their leaves and exhibit only small seasonal changes.
Scrubs include a variety of trees that have had their growth stunted because of soil or climatic conditions. Shrubs comprise the undergrowth in open forests, but in arid and semiarid areas they are the dominant vegetation. Shrubs normally offer no serious obstacle to movement and provide good concealment from ground observation however, they may restrict fields of fire.
For terrain intelligence purposes, grass more than 1 meter high is considered tall.
Grass often improves the trafficability of soils. Very tall grass may provide concealment for foot troops. Foot movement in savannah grasslands is slow and tiring; vehicular movement is easy; and observation from the air is easy.
Water Features
Safe water, in sufficient amounts, is strategically and tactically important to Army operations. Water that is not properly treated can spread diseases. The control of and access to water is critical for drinking, sanitation, construction, vehicle operation, and other military operations. Military planners are concerned with areas with the highest possibilities for locating usable ground water. They must consider all feasible sources and methods for developing sources when making plans for water supply. Quantity and quality are important considerations. Terrain analysts can use the methods and systems available to locate both surface and subsurface water resources.
Quantity
Water quantity depends on the climate of the area. Plains, hills, and vegetation are good indicators of water sources.
Large springs are the best sources of water in karstic plains and plateaus. Wells may produce large amounts if they tap underground streams. Shallow wells in low-lying lava plains normally produce large quantities of ground water. In lava uplands, water is more difficult to find, wells are harder to develop, and careful prospecting is necessary to obtain adequate supplies. In wells near the seacoast, excessive withdrawal of freshwater may lower the water table, allowing infiltration of saltwater that ruins the well and the surrounding aquifer.
Springs and wells near the base of volcanic cones may yield fair quantities of water, but elsewhere in volcanic cones the ground water is too far below the surface for drilling to be practicable. Plains and plateaus in arid climates generally yield small, highly mineralized quantities of ground water. In semiarid climates, following a severe drought, an apparently dry streambed frequently may yield considerable amounts of excellent subsurface water. Ground water is abundant in the plains of humid tropical regions, but it is usually polluted. In arctic and subarctic plains, wells and springs fed by ground water above the permafrost are dependable only in summer; some of the sources freeze in winter, and subterranean channels and outlets may shift in location. Wells that penetrate aquifers within or below the permafrost are good sources of perennial supply.
Adequate supplies of ground water are hard to obtain in hills and mountains composed of gneiss, granite, and granite-like rocks. They may contain springs and shallow wells that will yield water in small amounts.
Tree species can also indicate local ground water table presence. Deciduous trees tend to have far-reaching root systems indicating a water table close to the ground surface. Coniferous trees tend to have deep root systems, which depict the ground water table as being farther away from the ground surface. In desert environments, vegetation is scant and specialized to withstand the stress of desert life. Vegetation type is dependent on the water table of that location. Palm trees indicate water within 2 or 3 feet, salt grass indicates water within 6 feet, and cottonwood and willow bees indicate water within 10 to 12 feet. The common sage, greasewood, and cactus do not indicate water levels.
Quality
Quality will vary according to the source and the season, the kind and amount of bacteria, and the presence of dissolved matter or sediment. Color, turbidity, odor, taste, mineral content, and contamination determine the quality of water. Brackish water is found in many regions throughout the world but most frequently along sea coasts or as ground water in arid or semiarid climates.
Contamination
Potable water is free from disease-causing organisms and excessive amounts of mineral and organic matter, toxic chemicals, and radioactivity. Although surface water is ordinarily more contaminated than other sources, it is commonly selected for use in the field because it is more accessible in the quantity required. Ground water is usually less contaminated than surface water and is, therefore, a more desirable water source. However, the use of ground water by combat units is usually limited unless existing wells are available. Rain, melted snow, or melted ice may be used in special instances where neither surface nor ground water is available. Water from these sources must be disinfected before drinking.
Pollution
Water may be contaminated but not polluted. Streams in inhabited regions are commonly polluted, with the sediment greatest during flood stages. Streams fed by lakes and springs with a uniform flow are usually clear and vary less in quality than do those fed mainly by surface runoff. Generally, the quality of water in large lakes is excellent, with the purity increasing with the distance from the shore. Very shallow lakes and small ponds are usually polluted.
Obstacles
An obstacle is any natural or man-made terrain feature that slows, diverts, or stops the movement of personnel or vehicles. Obstacles are classified as natural, such as escarpments, or man-made, such as built-up areas and cemeteries. They are further categorized as existing-present natural or as man-made terrain features that will limit mobility or as reinforced-existing features that man has enhanced to use as obstacles, such as gentle slopes reinforced by tank ditches, pikes, or revetments that limit mobility of maneuver units.
For classification purposes, obstacles must beat least 1.5 meters high and 250 meters long and have a slope greater than 45 percent (that which military vehicles are unable to travel). Obstacles that will be delineated should be in areas where they are of primary importance for the diversion of crosscountry movement.
Obstacles include escarpments, embankments, road cuts and fills, depressions, fences, walls, hedgerows, and moats.
Urban Areas
Urban-area intelligence is important in planning tactical and strategical operations, targeting for nuclear or air attack, and planning logistical support for operations. Knowledge of characteristics in urban areas may also be important in civil affairs, intelligence, and counterintelligence operations. Although information is frequently accessible, the amount of detail required necessitates a substantial collection effort.
The first aspect of urban intelligence includes geographic location, relative economic and political importance of urban areas in the national structure, and physical dimensions such as street shapes. The six street patterns are rectangular, radial, concentric, contour conforming, medieval irregular, and planned irregular (in the new residential suburbs of some countries).
The second aspect includes physical composition, vulnerability, accessibility, productive capacity, and military resources of individual urban areas. Urban areas are significant as military objectives or targets and as bases of operations. They may be one or a combination of power centers (political, economic, military); industrial production centers; service centers; transportation centers; population centers; service centers (distribution points for fuels, power, water, raw materials, food, manufactured goods); or cultural and scientific centers (seats of thought and learning, and focal points of modem technological developments).
Buildings can provide numerous concealed positions for the infantry. Armored vehicles can find isolated positions under archways or inside small industrial or commercial structures. Thick masonry, stone, or brick walls offer excellent protection from direct fire, and ceilings for individual fire. Cover and concealment can also be provided by the percentage of roof coverage. For detailed information, see FM 90-10.
Transportation
Analysts preparing terrain studies must carefully evaluate all transportation facilities to determine their effect on proposed operations. Analysts may recommend destroying certain facilities or retaining them for future use. The entire transportation network must be considered in planning large-scale operations. An area with a dense transportation network, for example, is favorable for major offensives. Networks that are criss-crossed by canals and railroads and possess few roads will limit the use of wheeled vehicles and the maneuver of armor and motorized infantry.
The transportation facilities of an area consist of all highways, railways, and waterways over which troops or supplies can be moved. The importance of each area depends on the nature of the military operation involved. An army’s ability to carry out its mission depends greatly on its transportation capabilities and facilities.
Highways
Military interest in highway intelligence of a given area or country covers all physical characteristics of the existing road, track, and trail system. All associated structures and facilities necessary for movement and for protection of the routes, such as bridges, ferries, tunnels, and fords, are integral parts of the highway system.
The severe abuse given to roads by large volumes of heavy traffic, important bridges, intersections, and narrow defiles makes them primary targets for enemy bombardment.
Railroads
Railways are a highly desirable adjunct to extended military operations. Their capabilities are of primary concern and are the subject of continuing studies by personnel at the highest levels.
Railroads include all fixed property belonging to a line, such as land, permanent way, and facilities necessary for the movement of traffic and protection of the permanent way. They include bridges, tunnels, snowsheds, galleries, ferries, and other structures.
Bridges
Structures and crossings on highways or railways include bridges, culverts, tunnels, galleries, ferries, and fords. For the purpose of terrain intelligence, they also include cableways, tramways, and other features that may reduce or interrupt the traffic flow on a transportation route. Bridges and culverts are the structures most frequently encountered; however, any feature that may present a potential obstacle is significant in a military operation.
Any type of structure or crossing on a transportation route is an important portion of the route regardless of the mode of transportation. Maps, charts, photographs, and other sources contain valuable information that analysts should exploit.
Highway and railway bridges and tunnels are vulnerable points on a line of communications. Information about prevention, destruction, or repair of a bridge may be the key to an effective defense or the successful penetration of an enemy area. A bridge seized intact has great value in offensive operations, since even a small bridge eases troop movement over a river or stream.
Pipelines
Pipelines that carry petroleum and natural gas represent an important mode of transportation. White rail, water, and road transport are used extensively for transporting fluids and gases, the overland movement of petroleum and refined products is performed most economically and expeditiously by pipeline. Crude-oil pipelines are used only to transport crude oil, while many refried-product pipelines carry more than one product. These products are sent through the pipelines in tenders, or batches, to keep the amount of mixing to a minimum. Because of their most vital link in an industrialized country’s energy supply system, coal and ore are also carried in pipelines as slurry.
Terminal Facilities
Refinery terminals consist of numerous tanks for the separate storage of crude oil and refined products. Facility size and type depends on whether the refinery is located near the source of supply or consuming center, Refined-product dispensing terminals contain a variety of products for final distribution. –
Natural gas is generally stored in bulk, below the ground, and under high-pressure, Large underground gas storage pools, usually caves or quarries near consuming centers, are often used to store gas for seasonal or emergency needs. Above ground, natural gas is stored mostly under pressure in spherical tanks, but large telescoping tanks are sometimes used for low-pressure storage. Natural-gas receiving terminals are located at the producing field and contain facilities for conditioning the gas for pipeline transmission. Natural-gas dispensing terminals are located at consuming centers and include dispatching and metering facilities and sufficient storage facilities to meet peak demands.
Storage tanks, found in varying numbers at all petroleum installations, are easily recognized. Volatile products such as gasoline and kerosene are generally stored in floating roof tanks. These tanks have roofs that float on the liquid to reduce space in which vapor might form. Nonvolatile products such as fuel oils and crude oil are stored in fixed-roof tanks. Petroleum gases are generally liquefied and stored under pressure in spherical tanks or in horizontal cylindrical tanks. The number and variety of tanks in a storage installation indicate the quantity and types of product stored. Areas of great extent and capacity are called tank farms.
Ports and Harbors
Information about ports, naval bases, and shipyard facilities is essential for estimating capacities, vulnerability, and other items of military significance.
Ports are settlements with installations for handling waterborne shipping. Principal port facilities are berthing space, storage space, cargo-handling equipment, cargo transshipment facilities, and vessel-servicing facilities. Ports are classified on an area-wide rather than a worldwide basis, and a principal port in a small maritime nation may be equivalent to a much lesser port in the more extensive port system of another country. In wartime, principal and secondary ports and bases are prime targets for destruction, and the relative importance of minor ports increases.
Right now, Deep Green Resistance organizers are at work building a political resistance resistance movement to defend the living planet and rebuild just, sustainable human communities.
In Manila, Kathmandu, Auckland, Denver, Paris—all over the world—we are building resistance and working towards revolution. We Need Your Help.
Not all of us can work from the front lines, but we can all contribute. Our radical, uncompromising stance comes at a price. Foundations and corporations won’t fund us because we are too radical. We operate on a shoestring budget (all our funding comes from small, grassroots donations averaging less than $50) and have only one paid staff.
Current funding levels aren’t sustainable for the long-term, even with our level of operations now. We need to expand our fundraising base significantly to build stronger resistance and grow our movement.
How is the coronavirus crisis affecting Bangalore? In this piece, Suprabha Seshan considers the fragrances of lockdown, the clearing of beautiful skies in the heart of one of India’s biggest cities, and the brief halt to the concrete machinations of industrial living.
The streets of Jayanagar, a residential area in Bengaluru are strewn with spring flowers. Yellow copper pods, lilac crape myrtles, pink-and-white honges and orange gulmohurs blaze overhead and underfoot; vitality and senescence mirroring each other. The normally hard surfaces – kerb, pavement, road and concrete – are softened by fallen petals and the duff of stamens from rain trees. Every flower seems more brilliant, more beautiful now; the air is clear for the first time in decades. Jasmine has never been so scented; the breeze is free of fumes. Koels have never sung so loudly; the city isn’t blaring and grinding. Every thunderstorm clears the grime even more. My senses too, are unrestrained. The same world is even more lovely and I take in everything without resistance. Experience is heightened naturally.
I spend my lockdown time fantasizing forests out of the cracks in concrete.
It’s even more clear to me now that life so wants to live, that air can clear and waters can sparkle, and that breathing can happen without a struggle. I fantasize about human community forming around these petals, walking and talking with each other, playing badminton or cricket on a quiet street, without the screeching machines, without the danger of being overwhelmed by emphysema, cancer, diabetes, pneumonia, tuberculosis and atherosclerosis; and other ailments of the modern world. Wherever I see non humans, I see health. Even those classified as vermin are mostly just cleaning up human filth. Wherever I see artifacts of industrial civilization, I see ill-health and disasters. Everything from paper and cloth to metal, steel and plastic – everything fashioned in the furnaces of industrial scale machinery and delivered to people like you and me – has debilitated the planet as well as our bodies. Everything has had blood in its making. Meanwhile, here is the surge of life, in the cracks of this tar, up in the trees, swirling through the skies and in the water; a vitality surging to ease us of our misery.
It seems to me that civilization is the disease we need to rid ourselves and the planet of.
By we, I mean all humans, all life forms, all present and future members of the council of beings. Including viruses (inextricable members of our microbiomes). Perhaps Covid-19 is the evolutionary challenge that will mutate humankind from psychopathy and victimhood, to communities more compassionate, life-loving and planet-friendly.
Here is beauty bursting and then dying for more beauty. I have never been so happy in Bangalore, nor so long removed from the forest where I have lived for nearly three decades. But the ebullience of the air, light, birds, sky and the trees – make my skin and organs, limbs, senses and mind, its own. The natural world is here too, embracing and not alienating me, even if I hanker for the ancient biome that is my adopted home. Every being here, is part of the vanguard of something primordial; enlivening everyone and everything; grace appearing through light, leaves, flesh, feathers and fur. Here are baby forests, grasslands and thorny thickets waiting to spring forth, offering kinship and solidarity. I’m not so alone. There are many of us here in the frontline of dissembling the body of modern civilization. We’ll find room for all beings. Even the vermin who make sure humans don’t get too cocky in their pursuit of sterility.
I venture to the grocery store most days; little walking reprieves. I also perch often on the parapet top of my mother’s apartment complex; my own lockdown eyrie. Barring the trees, the sky, the birds, the winds, and human and other mammal bodies, all around and as far I can see, are the things of civilization. Every single one of these has been made by humans. With or without machines. Everything is made, assembled, glued together or welded – by people. Fashioned and fabricated with materials from the land, from the cratered bodies of non humans; from living communities around the living earth.
I also spend lockdown time, conjuring memories of the people who made this city, and continue to keep it going. I imagine the sweat-slick torsos and limbs of men and women who made this place – this culvert, this bridge, road, tarmac, and kerb. I walk around buildings of all sizes and shapes, buildings their creators are proud of. Every contractor, owner and resident considers each of these important and necessary. Also beautiful and profitable. I imagine the glistening, strong and slim bodies of the labourers who laid every brick, carried every cement sack, masoned every wall and floor and ceiling. I think of the lives that went into making these.
Concrete structures are the skeletal basis of modern existence.
Despite the technology, they are still built like the pyramids were, by millions of poor and displaced people brought in. Co-opted and tempted perhaps; driven by aspiration or just strife and despair, masses of poor people have built the monuments and neoliberal palaces of the 21st century. How many suffered to make the concrete jungle? How many organs, tissues, senses and minds died to make this drain, or repair it? How many lungs, livers, uteruses, guts, skins, kidneys, brains and gall bladders gave in to the cement, smog and steel died, so the elite could exalt in these?
Around the corner, are the vegetable vendors. Around another corner, the grocers (everywhere the security guards and the police.) All part of this way of life, men and women doing their thing so the city folks can live. Hauling, caring, cleaning, fetching and selling, each in their own way, so we can live. Almost everyone hailing from somewhere outside this city. I stop to pick up some essentials – onions, drumsticks, atta, eggs and milk. Again images arise in my mind, but they’re palpable. Just beyond the precincts of the metropolitan area, are the farmers.
Every floret and gourd; tuber and grain; fruit, seed and lentil in these shops is from the land, worked by brown bodies through the seasons, over decades.
By now millenia. The peasantry working so the citified folks can eat, and create civilization. Below their rural bodies is the brown, black or red earth, sometimes rich and fragrant, circling death into agro-ecological community. More often than not – the land is hardpanned, cracked, exposed, depleted and toxic with dangerous chemicals, dying there as I, here, pick and choose my next meal. Right now, I am indelibly classed as a consumer. Living in a rural area normally, and growing mutualistic bonds with farming and tribal neighbours, I have a sense of what it might be like simply to gather, or partake of the bounties of the earth more directly. But right now, I’m confronted with the fact, that behind these potatoes and tomatoes I buy today, are lands worked even harder than the bodies of the humans working them, who are worked by the rest of us, to fill the tables and larders of the city. The effects of this citified existence, have spread to every part of the planet.
There are no places—no island, nor mountain nor ocean trench—untouched by the egregious wastes of industrial civilization.
Migrant labourers number some 30 percent of the population in India. No one’s appalled by this it seems. People forced to leave home and work far away so that their families can have food and shelter, who enter inhuman conditions, breathing noxious air thick with pollutants, asbestos, cement, smoke, smog, polyurethanes and tar. They live in shanties, stacked up around each other, instead of their villages and forests. The agricultural economy has failed. Gargantuan industrial projects are taking over; special economic zones, highways, ports and landfills spread over vast areas of the land, asking no one’s permission. Meanwhile people are removed from those lands to build those same projects or come into the cities to build skyscrapers, malls, monuments, gated communities, theme parks and tower-block offices for wealthier people. No one is appalled by this. It’s taken for granted that all these have to be built. Upper-class people pay for their square footage of property, and all their accumulations inside, in denial that everything has been stolen. Besides, who’s to pay for the well-being of the poor, and especially of their bodies? Is there some natural law that governs the corpulence of apartment dwellers, and the emaciation of the people who built their buildings?
“For us to maintain our way of living, we must tell lies to each other and especially to ourselves. The lies are necessary because, without them, many deplorable acts would become impossibilities.”
The word that comes to mind right now is parasitism. But as a conservationist and neoforest-dweller, I have come to respect the parasites of the natural world. I’ve observed how they contribute to the resilience of the forest, and to the living community as a whole. What of these elite humans then? What of people like you and me? How do we contribute to the living community? Do we, at all?
Native American writer, scholar and political activist Jack. D. Forbes has another word for this. Wetikos. He has termed this condition of modern humans, as a form of cannibalism, or wetikos, which means sickness in Cree language. In his book Columbus and other Cannibals, he outlines disturbing examples that show how wetikos defines modern civilization and how it is spreading like a contagion across all cultures, a sickness whose symptoms are rape, greed, caste-ism, class-ism, arrogance, cruelty, warmongering, slavery, psychosis, and exploitation of another for one’s own profit.
Wetikos is a psychic disease, a virus of the mind and soul.
That humankind was sick, stressed, disordered and plagued in a million ways long before Covid-19 got out, is a point that few are in the mood to appreciate right now. That plastic microfibres have found their way into the flesh of every child being born, depressing all our beautiful bodies from their natural birthrights of vigour and vitality was a fact shrugged off long before the virus hit. That one-in-four persons suffers a mental illness, that this is a sign of insanity of the culture as a whole, had not been adequately dealt with at all. That one-in-four women worldwide risks being assaulted or raped, is on the backburner now. That the world was already in its death throes from the annihilation of the biosphere, long before December 2019, has become irrelevant. For this, the newreels din into all living rooms, is the mother of all pestilences, this Covid-19. This terrifying, raging disease is striking the elderly and the weak, those already suffering in areas of high pollution and cramming, burdened by compromised immune systems. Covid-19 is bringing modern civilization to a shocking halt, unleashing all kinds of psychological, social, political, ecological and tectonic forces. This way of life is dissembling quickly, so let’s not talk about how this way of life came to be.
Historian Arnold Toynbee wrote that civilizations are never murdered, they instead take their own lives.
Whether you agree or disagree with his analysis, it’s true that all civilizations have collapsed. A few got rebooted, but all have gone down. They had an average life span of 300-odd years and ended from a slew of causes: overshoot and drawdown being the most common. They were also top-heavy with large discontented serf populations. They were also broken by war, internecine conflict, natural disasters and diseases. Starting out with chieftains, little societies grew to kingships and empires with the birth of agriculture and militarized polities. They ended as civilizations, and almost all suffered tyranny or civil breakdown.
The culprit in the Covid-19 crisis, is globalization itself (that is, the modern industrial world with runaway capitalism dovetailing into fascism). Through its own interactions, materials, infrastructures, conduits, networks and arrangements, the 21st century civilization is the main vector of these diseases. Not some bat, rat, bird or virus alone. The precondition for the havoc caused by the virus is the destruction of the natural world through the predatory spread of a rapacious mentality fueled by extraordinary congregations of people in lethal conditions. Long prior to the arrival of the virus. Infectious diseases are now spreading faster than at any time in history. It is estimated that 4.3 billion airline passengers travelled in 2018; an outbreak or epidemic in any one part of the world is only a few hours away from becoming an imminent threat somewhere else.
Humans are not strangers to death or to suffering.
Even if they’re afraid of it, and the manner by which they will die, they are not strangers to it. No living being is. The world death clock tells us that per year: around 56,000,000 people die, and per month: 4,679,452 and per day: 153,424.7. Per hour: 6,392.7, per minute: 106.7. Per second: 1.8 persons die.
1.9 million people have died by April 20th 2020, due to cancer alone. 10 million children are in slavery today, as forced labour, sex traffickers and war soldiers. A Lancet Report from WHO-UNICEF says: “By 2030, 2.3 billion people are projected to live in fragile or conflict affected contexts. Climate change, ecological degradation, migrating populations, conflict, pervasive inequalities, and predatory commercial practices threaten the health and future of children in every country.” The WHO website also says that every year the lives of approximately 1.35 million people are cut short as a result of a road traffic crash. Between 20 and 50 million more people suffer non-fatal injuries, with many incurring a disability as a result of their injury. Why has this not caused panic, outrage and system shut down, as Covid-19 has? How has this virus attained god-like proportions, or the reverse, a devil-like stature?
Everyone knows the rules of the modern world – the victims, workers, farmers, indentured labourers, child workers, domestic servants, and also the elite. These can’t be spelled out this very moment, it seems. In this sensitive and vulnerable time for humankind, there’s a lot of resistance to history. Who is being victimized to serve whom, is not a hot topic. For who is there to listen? Everyone is only thinking Covid-19.
This is a time, when anything can happen.
And so it is a time when everything matters. Everything. So greater vigilance is required, not only against the virus, but against wetikos amassing power. In such times human psyches are even more vulnerable. Fear can make victims protect their abusers. It can make their psyches extremely suggestible.
The fear of death by Covid-19 has made the entire human race extremely compliant to authority. It has also unified a few in a bid against civilization, or its current avatar, capitalism. As the towers, pillars and edifices being built by migrant labourers stay silent, as the cement mixers stop, as the cement dust settles, as the black smog from land vehicles and planes disappears, some kind of cancellation is happening. Terror on the one hand, and resurgent atmosphere and hydrosphere on the other. Never before have despots and tyrants had such compliance, never before has human resilience and community been so compassionate and far reaching, The privileged and educated are shut in – skyping or zooming each other; the poor are corralled and shut out, in huddles with each other. Nobody lifting a finger in utter despair and outrage that this dream-of-dreams is falling apart, that this thing that everyone had aspired for is hollow, that this shiny, sterile, and smooth modern world is itself the bearer of death. Slap in the face from mother nature, some people say. The future does not exist anymore, a horror greater than slavery, war, patriarchy and climate catastrophe. Every person now hooked into the modern world, is already lonely and desperate, smogged out, concreted over, tarred and painted; in the vice of steel and super machines. Why are we not aghast at the betrayal, be we well-fed or poor? The Covid-19 horror, as portrayed by the mass media and the authorities and by every human alive, successfully erases all previous horrors.
The earth is breathing again.
Listen. Feel. Your skin and eyes and heart will tell you. Everyone’s lungs, barring the ones infected by Covid-19, are clearer and stronger again. Everyone’s bodies are freer of toxins and fumes, for just this moment. Immune systems are rallying. Everyone’s minds can take a break, get some kind of nervous system rehaul, for just this moment. While my heart (not yet locked down) goes out to patients who cannot access health care, and my arm (not yet locked down) rises in solidarity against the victims of domestic violence – right now – this is a situation that could turn for the better. If only we listen to the natural world, to human community, to air and sky and birds and stars, to the plants and animals near us, a more vibrant immunity could kick in. For just a moment, can we celebrate the freeing of all our lungs (every being that has lungs), and the breathing of our skins (every being that has a skin) and the opening of the arteries in our bodies (every being with arteries and circulatory organs), and the clearer blood flowing in and out of our hearts (every being with blood), and our livers (every being with a liver)? Can we feel the easing from overwork, of our organs being fed with clean blood that comes from clean lungs, and from cleaner air? Can we put our psychoses on pause, for just this moment? Is this not a moment to find some grit of sanity? Is this not the most extreme of ironies, the freeing of the earth while the canning of humans in the viral echo-chamber goes viral? But while we listen to our bodies, and pick up the strength and clarity to defend this new-found health-in-community, we still have to care, for the isolated, the sick and the hungry. Care of course, includes defence. For the land, for the hounded and the betrayed and ghetto-ized.
The looming threat of economic collapse, and of greater unemployment and the failure of food systems and the careening of currencies are all real.
Things will get worse. Tyrants will go even more ballistic. Systems will rupture. People will turn against each other. I say, let’s gather ourselves and listen to the earth. Let us align with health and vitality and each other. Let us lockdown the wetikos.
Those slim, taut, labouring bodies are getting a respite from the ugliest and most treacherous work in industries, roads and construction sites. Those very same bodies – that the modern world has yoked to serve its own ends – who had been driven in to something toxic and hollow, what do they really want? Or is this a typically privilieged question to ask sitting in a comfortable isolation chambers fretting about the future? I cannot presume what the poor want. I cannot presume what anyone wants. I can’t even presume what my body wants, it seems to say different things from my mind, tugging in mysterious ways. I can ask however. What do the millions who make this civilization at the cost of their own bodies and communities, want? Do they want to return to the construction sites, or do they want to return to their families and stay there? Millions of people who have been lost and lonely and desperate and overworked already. This should not be subsumed to the present horror.
The worry over money is real.
Money itself, the greatest and most treacherous trick has to be seen squarely for what it is. A con job, by con men, in a con system. Equating it to happiness, full bellies, happy communities and well being, is the result of centuries of systematic misdirection. And now it’s hooked us into the super-machine that’s destroying us all. Now it’s shown its true self. It does not care; it is a bearer of misery. It has wetikos embossed into its every molecule and meaning.
Covid-19 has unhinged the foundations of modern life, and shown it for how ridiculous and fragile it is. The horror of horrors right now is that the good life (the civilized life, the citified life with bright lights, fancy machines and endless iterations of things), is not what it was made out to be.
There is no longer any place to settle, feel well, or find any kind of security. Everything ferries the virus. Well, maybe not everywhere. Amazonian Indians rush back to their forests for they fear new infections; they can be wiped out as a people. The Zapatistas have cordoned off their caracoles and hills and valleys, in southern Mexico. They will take care of themselves they say, as bad governments are showing they cannot. The state of Kerala in southern India sealed itself off long before the others. Its people, local governments and the state government humanely and compassionately took care of each other, stayed home and observed all the protocol. Cuba and South Korea are models for not only how they’ve contained the disease, but for another kind of society. Why has the rest of the world not followed these models, why the spread of systems of despotism, tyranny, fascism, and authoritarianism that so-called liberal democracy has actually given birth to? Is this wetikos at work?
Eventually the most of the world locked down and as I write, the easing has also begun.
There are other things afoot in many places, where lockdown presages uglier things, far more deadly than the virus. Millions are suffering not from the virus, but other dangers. Communalism, displacement, loneliness, fear, sealings-in, exile, lychings, PTSD. These are bound to continue. In fact, all humankind is struggling with PTSD right now, a symptom of which is the inability to see into the future. A perfect moment for wetikos, riding hot on the heels of the virus.
Global warming continues apace, it will take a few hundred years to turn that horror around, a few hundred years of the respite experienced in the last few weeks. But global warming is a symptom of modern industrial civilization in all its avatars; aka runaway capitalism, fascism, nation-states and corporate-military complexes. All these bear more viruses, more deadly plagues, together with floods and the droughts and the fires and the hurricanes. The legacies of the chaos and destruction wreaked by the men who drive the monster machines.
“It is no measure of health to be adjusted to a profoundly sick society.”
That this way of life is insane, disconnected from the natural world, from its own body and community, is still not recognized. The Dhaulagiri mountains becoming visible from towns in Punjab was not just a centennial miracle, but should be the absolute norm, the way things should be, on any day. The mountains are hidden by the smog of our excess, like lovers obscuring each other through cigarette smoke. The Ganga refreshed herself in the last two months. The waters of the Yamuna are sparkling again. The Cauvery is running cleaner even downstream of Bengaluru. All this without a single paisa being spent. Why are these not heralded in banners all around the land? That they are not, is a sign of how smoggy our own vision is, and therefore our thoughts and our experience. That the living world is still here, that it did not go away, and that the land blesses us if only we stayed at home, should be the moment to radically rethink community.
The way out of psychosis is to relate again, with humans and non humans.
The only thing I wish to defend right now, is this. The right to community. I’m fiercely protective of every living being. I daily vow to save each and all. I worship life, human and non human; every insect, bird, mammal, plant, cloud, river and mountain. The rewilding of the world will happen. Future forests are waiting, surging under the tar. From the mesh of petals becoming soil becoming weed, becoming verge, becoming community becoming safe zone for native trees, birds, squirrels and humans; community will happen. In time shrubs and climbers and creepers and trees will grow tall. Coming generations will breathe clean air. No. You and I will breathe clean air. The asphalt will crack and the roots of the thousand tiny pipal trees, I find in these alleys, will make way for the rest of nature. Pipal saplings growing out of compound walls, between pavement slabs, in the drains and culverts, on top of other trees, on tops of apartment blocks, on neglected balconies. Pipal roots will go through every artefact, every thing. In the cracks soil will form and grow fertile. Rain will sink into the ground to replenish underground springs and aquifers. I picture you and I walking through this wild land, picking herbs and fruit, enjoying flowers, birds and small animals, and coming home with a free meal.
Foraging costs nothing; there is no packaging waste.
The foods will be diverse, seasonal and delicious. Forage and forest seem to be connected words, and connected ways of being. How silly that humans are the only ones who pay for food. Instead of roads, cars, shops and malls, we could have food forests and little trails by streams trickling through cool, dappled hollows. Tall trees to climb and pick mangoes and jackfruit from. No gyms. No traffic, no honking. No rumbling cement mixers and screeching cranes swinging overhead. No drilling machines, no loudspeakers. Just us, people. Human people, dog people, butterfly people, bird people. Fish people in stream people. And pipal people
Leviathan is writhing.
It’s under assault like never before. Covid-19 has come just at the right time, to put it out of its misery. It had started to flail and turn upon itself quite a while ago. Leviathan has been afflicted by several diseases and problems, from being too large and too dependant and completely arrogant. It suffers from supremacy-syndrome. It hates its dependancy on us people. On life. It is narcissistic and cannibalistic. All its parts are plagued with wetikos, the disease of exploitation. Jack D Forbes writes that “the disease of aggression against all other living beings and the disease of consuming others lives and possessions, and people, are all the same”. Paul Levy, author of Dispelling Wetiko: Breaking the Curse of Evil writes: “we become bewitched by the projective tendencies of our own mind. People afflicted with wetikos react to their own projections in the world as if they objectively exist separate from themselves, delusionally thinking that they have nothing to do with creating that to which they are reacting. Over time this activity of endlessly reacting to and becoming conditioned by one’s own energy tends to generate insane behavior, which can manifest internally or in the world at large. As if under a spell, we become entranced by our own intrinsic gifts and talents for dreaming up our world, unknowingly hypnotizing ourselves with our God-given power to creatively call forth reality so that it boomerangs against us, undermining our potential for evolution.” Leviathan is projecting itself into Covid-19. And it will boomerang into itself. I have no doubts here.
I am done with this way of life.
Except for my friends and family, and the land and forests I’ve dedicated my life to support, I need little. I’ll leave this machine and never look back. I’ll eat ferns and forest fruit, and roots. I’ll eat less. If there’s nothing I’ll starve and fall. Perhaps I’ll die. Others can take life from me. I’m stepping away from the wetikos who champion this way of being. The only revolution that matters right now is the one that liberates earth mother and all her children. Including our bodies. And our minds. From wetikos. I’ll take my chances. When the oil-guzzling machines give way and the monoliths, monuments, highways, terminals, pipelines and cables freeze, decay, crumble, crash or powder and become dust, each particle will go home to the elements. Then, after some time, each will be taken into the arms of the waiting fungi and bacteria. and other beings who made this world possible in the first place. And that too, long ago. They still have all their secrets. Seeds will soon sprout and animals will come, and more trees will grow and rivers will run and the moon will shine through into our dreams unmarred by bright violent lights and the buzz of electricity.
The spirits will be back then, and we will be embraced by the land once more. And the whole world will come ablaze with flowers.
But wait a second. I’m in lockdown. Funny how the sight of petals can spin such fantasy. When the body is trapped, the mind travels far; a condition faced by all prisoners. And yogis. This is a comfortable prison, no doubt. Maybe yoga came out of some long-ago lockdown, trapped folks seeking release. I’m privilieged, of course. And have a nice yoga mat too. But right now, I’m not calling this by any other name. It’s a prison. I do my own limbering up in a few square feet, noting the air is sweeter. What’s happening out there? Events in the wider world appear not only through the media but in fresh wafts through the window. I go for the daily parole. Commune with the trees. I do as I’m told. But I keep vigilant. All my thoughts are focussed. On a full blown lockdown: of every wetikos-ridden soul and wetikos-engineered thing. I fantasize of the lockdown of Leviathan.
The liberation of the natural world, including human kind, has never been closer.
Suprabha Seshan is a rainforest conservationist. She lives and works at the Gurukula Botanical Sanctuary, a forest garden and community-based conservation centre in the Western Ghat mountains of Kerala. She writes occasionally. Her essay can be found in the Indian Quarterly and Journal of the Krishnamurti Schools and elsewhere. She is currently working on her book, Rainforest Etiquette in a World Gone Mad, forthcoming from Context, Westland Publishers.
This piece has been slightly edited from the original version published at Countercurrents. Featured image by Sebastian Horndasch, CC BY 2.0.
In this piece of writing Rebecca shares her deep connection with nature, her journey in love, courting and listening for responses. She illuminates how a culture of resistance sown from fierce love can empower us to stop oppression and injustice.
Do you remember the first time you fell in love? What did it bring alive? I was fifteen. His wavy, dark hair shook when he spoke, accentuating his expressions. His brown eyes flickered from behind his round spectacles on the few occasions I glanced at him. It was the 80s. He was an oddball in a jean jacket with a smiley face on the back. He spoke things I thought, but never said. Perhaps they were truths I didn’t even know I held. I was quiet. I hadn’t lived in a world where people were allowed to be so honest, but he didn’t seem to need permission.
We were in the same classes and the school play. His presence pierced the shallow high school drudgery. I’d spent many days near him, but one day awoke to the horror of discovering something had shifted inside me. I wanted to be nearer to him, yet I felt terrified to get any closer. A new angst grew within me—nothing would ever be the same.
I imagined that if we spoke, he’d understand what I wanted to say. I was too shy to approach him. I wrote to him in my journal, his name spelled backwards for secrecy, “Dear Ydna.” I missed being around him in summertime. In a flash of boldness, I looked up his number in the phone book and called. I asked if he’d like to meet in the park and go swinging. He agreed. I felt like myself on the swings—with my body in motion, my words could flow easier.
In the years that followed, we were in the same circle of friends. Without knowing I was doing it, I apprenticed to what I loved about him: the courage to speak out, inhabit my depths, and be odd (authentic). We wrote for the school newspaper in our senior year. I wroteeditorials seeking a more meaningful life and critiquing high school—hairspray to cliques to prom to our classes.
My love for this boy altered me, and it never required we even hold hands. It awoke a longing that stirred my feelings,incited my imagination, catalyzed my actions. I grew to understand the yearnings of my heart and began to find my voice and engage with those around me. I grew into someone beyond whom I thought I could be.
Romance
Romance is more than a pleasurable feeling. It’s more than finding your other half in another human. It isn’t acquisition, and it’s not sex either. Real romance opens us to the mystery and depth of our longing and unveils the secrets of our heart. Suddenly, what is truly meaningful is alive and close enough to move toward, but far enough away that we ache for it. This may impel us to act courageously. As we serve what we love, we honor it. Perhaps we become closer somehow. This guides whom we become.
Romancecan mature us into becoming someone who has the capacity to serve the world—someone willing to offer their life to what matters most. Our longingis a guidepost, offering the first scent on the path. My affection for my high school love called me out of my inner world and had me risk sharing myself. As the qualities I admired in him—authenticity, articulation, and courage—developed in me, I became more myself.
Just as romance may open our hearts and inspire our creativity, it may also initiate us into the transpersonal. We may experience the Divine, Goddess, or Mystery through the other. Many nature-based and indigenous cultures, such as the Tz’utujil Mayan culture, didn’t allow their young to touch one another until after they’d been initiated. Their readiness wasn’t determined by age, but by their infatuation, a “precious brush” with seeing and wanting “the devastating, delicious, ecstatic, and painful presence of the Divine.”
Men and women were separated from each other and the village for a year. They grieved and courted the Divine—that which they could love, but never possess—with love poems, and in so doing became capable of loving another human who could be forgiven for small thoughts and deeds.
The Inner Beloved
Romantic love can carry us to the transcendent or sink us into the depths of our truest nature. The attractive qualities we project onto another when we fall in love exist in us, too. While we may not fully embody these qualities, we can cultivate them. Through romantic love, we may encounter our inner beloved, the true other half of our psyche, who may appear in dreams, fantasies, or in the attractive qualities we project. The anima is the intuitive, feminine, heart-based side of ourselves, while the animus is the masculine, intellectual, action-oriented side of ourselves.
Romance with an outer partner can bring joy and meaning, too—if we withdraw our idealizations—but a relationship with our inner beloved is vital. Following its call can inspire and guide us toward the deepest purpose of our soul. Soul is the unique place we were born to inhabit within the Earth community. It’s the myth or image that underlies the way we’re called to serve the world. We may encounter soul through the whispers and hints of our inner beloved, as well as in dreams and conversations with the natural world.
We can fall in love with anything, a concept, a forest, a work of art or a dying planet. Stepping toward the inner beloved may feel alluring and terrifying. The possibility of death may remind us of the vulnerability of life and the preciousness of every moment. Relating with our inner beloved aligns us with our imagination and deepens our relationship with our muse, who restores our visionary capacity and inspires our unique way of seeing the world.
Sourced in our deep imagination, we can live a muse-directed life where never-before-seen forms emerge through us, and we receive visions for how we might tend the world. The qualities of my high school love still live in me, alongside those of past and present loves. My inner beloved invites me to perceive the world in the way that only I can, informing how I listen, guide, and write.
The Natural World
Nature lives the most exquisite romance of all. Wind dances with trees, thunderstorms roar, and lightning brightens the sky. The cycles of the moon dance with the ocean’s tides. The sunrise bathes the mountains, rivers, and prairies in warmth and light. Bees pollinate flowers. The breeze makes music with the leaves. The crickets make a concert for the night. Rain offers itself to the grasses. Rivers carry their waters to the sea. Coyotes howl. Owls hoot. Frogs croak. The red-tailed hawk perches on a rock and spreads her wings to dry in the sun. A mourning dove’s call echoes on canyon walls.
Nature is our guide.
Romance is essential for it and imperative for us, too. And romance can happen between humans and non-humans. I’ve had extraordinary romances with tree and ocean, river and rainforest. We can tend our inner beloved and our outer relationships. Each may deepen the other. I remember the first night I spent on a river. I was in my mid-twenties on a multi-day raft trip down the Colorado River through Cataract Canyon. I stared up at the stars, planets, and galaxies twinkling in the night sky framed by the dark silhouettes of red rock walls. I couldn’t close my eyes, because I didn’t want to miss anything. The river glowed dark in the moon’s light while lapping at my toes in the sand.
Every river is uniquely magnificent—also dangerous, reminding us that the possibility of death is always near. Sometimes I awaken in the night with a knot in my stomach before guiding on a river. Sitting in meditation, I pray for my life. “Why go?” my fear voices interject. “Just stay home.” But the river calls.
When I’m in its flow, I feel alive. The ducks, beavers, and geese seem more alive too. Listening to the sound of ever-changing currents, I wonder what’s around the next bend. Sometimes the river asks me to surrender, and other times it challenges me to find my strength. My body loves this wordless conversation with waves. When the boat flips, I find myself underwater, immersed in the silence that lives there. Then my instinct emerges and propels my fight to the river’s turbulent surface.
Heartbreak
Our romance with the world brings us joy. We may smell the scent of honeysuckle, hear the song of crashing waves, or sense the moisture in the air after it rains. It also breaks our hearts, especially if we love the natural world, which is under assault.
My heart broke when three million gallons of toxic waste were dumped into the Animas River in the Gold King Mine spill of August 2015. I was a river guide, and it was then I began to learn about the waste that has always been there. With forty-four abandoned mines at its headwaters, toxins are always draining into it. The mine waste dumped into the river during the spill discharges every ten days, unnoticed. These draining mines dump three hundred million gallons of waste into the Animas every year.
Dams harm rivers too. There are about seventy-five thousand dams over six feet tall, including sixty-five thousand over twenty feet tall, and an estimated two million small dams in the United States alone. Dams kill fish, strangle streams, and harm entire ecosystems. Many dams no longer work or were illegal in the first place. When we imprison rivers, we clog the Earth’s blood, locking up everything downstream.
The harm is happening everywhere. Hundreds of species go extinct each day, as industrial civilization steals resources from the land and the poor. Personal lifestyle changes won’t stop the harm. The majority of consumption is commercial, industrial, and corporate, by agribusiness and government. Global industrial empire is built on conquest and the use of nonrenewable resources. It is inherently unsustainable. Much green technology requires mining, consuming, and ecosystem destruction. We will never be intact as long as the Earth is our captive.
Collapse
Fear constricts our hearts.We may even be consumed by it, if we are not in denial. There is no safe place. Some nights I lie awake feeling dread. There’s no security in ourgovernmentleaders or the structures of our industrial lifestyle. The coronavirus scare has offered us a frightening glimpse of things many people face every day: food shortages, deaths, loss of civil freedoms, and totalitarian leadership. COVID-19 has unveiled just how fragile our dominant system really is, and we may face a more extreme version of this in the future as seas rise, droughts increase, soil depletion and climate change continue, and clean water becomes even more scarce and precious.
I pray our fear gives rise to courage.
Industrial civilization is making the Earth uninhabitable for humans and most species. Collapse seems inevitable. Waiting for things to unravel could make the crash worse forboth humans and non-humanswho live through it, and thosewho come afterwards. Instead, we could love the wild world by championing the collapse of global empire. The sooner we stop this way of life, the more animals, fish, trees, and rivers will be left alive. The more likely there will be sustainable food sources for future generations. The natural world, developing nations, indigenous cultures, and rural people will immediately be better off post-collapse.
Government’s inability to respond to the covid-19 pandemic that threatens society reflects the incapacity to engage with the broader issues of environmental crisis. While the living world may appreciate the temporary slowing of the industrial machine, coronavirus highlights our dependence on a system that’s failing us. Our governments usethe pandemic to further destroy the planet. Recently, the Environmental Protection Agencysuspended environmental rules indefinitely, the secretary of the interior ordered the Mashpee Wampanoag Reservation “Disestablished”. It’s land taken out of trust. Several states have quietly passed laws criminalizing protests against fossil fuel infrastructure. Effectively addressing both the virus and our collapsing ecosystems would require recognizing our inherent connection: individual health is dependent on the overall health of everyone, rich and poor, marginalized and elite, human and nonhuman.
Grief
Grief is a way of loving that breaks our hearts open to the world. A nightmare jolts me awake. I’m swimming in dark water at night, and a crowd of people are swimming there, too. I’m afraid they’ll run me over. As I try to swim around them, someone swims underneath me and grabs my leg. I’m pulled down fast. I feel like I’m free falling. I can’t breathe.
I’m in love with water. Rivers and oceans are often in my dreams, but this time I’m terrified. As I re-enter the dream in my imagination, I feel lost in blackness. I don’t know which way is up. The pressure is crushing. I can’t move my lungs against the heaviness. I feel the visceral nightmare inflicted on nature every day.
Undigested grief lived in the cancer I had when I was twenty-one. A nine-centimeter tumor grew in the two lymph nodes in front of my heart, awakening me to the dam within myself, like a concrete slab forced into a river, obstructing its flow. When we don’t grieve, we become as dangerous as a dammed river. Tears free our inner river and show us that we care. Elder Joanna Macy reminds us that from climate chaos to nuclear war, “there’s no danger so great as the deadening of our response.”
Grief longs for the impossible.
I wish my words could restore rivers, ecosystems, and justice. I wish writing about the problems meant they could be overcome. Instead, I feel uncertainty and doom which usher me into despair. I wonder if I can hold this. I struggle to make a difference. I sense myself in the dark waters, and I feel them asking me to let go. As my tears flow, I remember that allowing love’s waters to flow teaches me what I love.
Being in love makes me want to live, and to serve, even if it breaks my heart. We can love what we love, and this can guide us. As my tears flow, mysteries arise from my now exposed heart. I feel powerless to protect those I love, rivers, trees, animals, all wild places. Suddenly I hear Kahlil Gibran’s words about bleeding “willingly and joyfully” for what we love. I feel like I’m bleeding. I imagine that somehow the dark waters of my tears and heartbreak are feeding life.
Courtship
Loving what we love may feel vulnerable and painful, if we risk opening to it. We court by offering, by humbly and eloquently approaching and giving ourselves to what we love. We create the beauty for which we long by becoming what we love. I court through writing, but I’m not sure if it’ll make a difference. Perhaps it’s foolish. When we court what we love, we’re willing to fail. We may not fully understand what it is we seek. It’s always somewhat of a mystery, and we can be surprised, overjoyed, or terrified when “the incomprehensible” shows its divine face.
I’m deeply in love with the wild soul and mystery, as well as with nature. While apprenticing to be a soul guide at age thirty-three, I spoke of my longing to serve them, and my willingness to do whatever it takes to develop the capacity. I was married then, and soon my marriage began to unravel. I hiked into a red rock canyon to enact a ceremony, offering the red-tailed hawk feathers my partner had given me. The grief that followed nearly undid me. Is there anywhere I belong?
Six months later, I found myself on a river. A wave pulled me out of my boat, and I was swept underneath a major rapid without a life jacket. Being deep underwater felt much like my recent nightmare. I fought harder than I knew I could, made my way to the surface, and then to shore. I’d lost a shoe, but there was another in the sand. I put it on, shaking. I didn’t get on a river again for nine years. It took that long to understand what the river was trying to show me: I belong to the dark waters. Mythically, they are a place I am here to inhabit.
In courtship, we make an offering and listen for a response. We may be asked to step away or move toward something. It may challenge us, whether we relate with someone in particular or with everything. We turn toward the world full-hearted, in an ongoing relationship with the mystery of our love. As it reveals itself through dreams, nature, and our hearts, we act on behalf of what we most cherish, believe, or grieve. When we embody what it asks, it offers more, guiding us toward what is next in a life of creative service.
Our love calls us to serve the world. If we love nature, our activism can be a way of courting. Briony Penn, Ph.D., stopped a forest with old-growth Douglas fir and Garry oak from being logged on Salt Spring Island. They didn’t listen to her scientific arguments. “I was desperate,” she explained. So she rode a horse through town in a Lady Godiva-style protest, alongside five other bare-breasted women and thirty more demonstrators. The media werethere. That forest still lives.
Revolution
True love engenders the courage to stand up for what we love. The boy I loved in high school emboldened me to find my words and show myself. The river taught me that love is not only surrender, it is struggle. My love for the natural world demands an even greater strength, while activism protects particular places or species, revolution challenges the whole of global empire. Fueled by a fierce dedication to justice, ecological revolution asks us to stand in our power and ally ourselves to the physical living planet.
While romance invites us to surrender to love and receive the visions of our muse, revolution strengthens our capacity to stand in our power. Romance arises from our feminine side, an intuitive, heartfelt dreaming that mirrors the cave-womb in a woman’s body. Revolution is birthed externally from our masculine side, with its rational impulse to act and protect. Our feminine dreaming inspires action. As webring together our visionary and revolutionary natures, romance ignites revolution. Within our psyches and the larger world.
In a red rock canyon last May, my grief-love-longing ache stirred me to ask the Earth what she needs.
“Do you want me to stand up for you more somehow?” I asked.
“Yes, I would like that,” I felt the words arise from my belly and sit in my mind’s eye. “We need help.” My dreams echoed a similar response in the months that followed.
Guiding is a way I love mystery, soul, and Earth. I usher a kind of inner revolution in the human psyche, whereby nature and soul overthrow the current regime that directs a person’s life. I guide others to resource themselves in wholeness and allow their dreams, the natural world, and soul to lead them rather than less healthy aspects of their ego. This work is vital—it teaches self-healing, provides purpose, and brings alive what is most extraordinary in humans. Individual change can seed cultural transformation but the Earth remains imperilled and more is needed.
To belong to the Earth is to stand up for her. Joanna Macy named three dimensions of Ecological Revolution ~ 1) holding actions to stop the harm, 2) life sustaining practices, and 3) shifting consciousness. To be effective, these perspectives must work together. Tending the world begins with imagining the rivers running clear and the oceans full of fish, and envisioning what actions will make this happen.
Global industrial empire is destroying the living planet.
As revolutionaries, we stand with Earth, bear witness to the harm being done, express the reality of what’s happening, and defend what we love. We recognizeinjustice by observing how power operates and acknowledgingthe everyday cruelty of our society. Millions of people participate, either directly or as bystanders with benefits. It’s painful to experience our own complicity, but ecological revolution requires socio-political consciousness.
Power
Engaging politically is an act of love that attunes us to the challenges of the world and urges us to change things. I used to hate politics, because it seemed like a never-ending parade of lies and corruption I couldn’t stop. Perhaps I wasn’t able to stand in my power, or perhaps I’d grown up in a culture that taught me I had no power.
When I was young, my mom had my brother and I campaign for President Carter and then Mondale. They lost. My actions didn’t change anything. I joined my college boyfriend, a political science major and leader of the environmental action coalition, in debates and protests. His aim was to be president. I did not want to be the first lady. Engaging politically threatened to embed me in its web of injustice.
I am in love with rivers, trees, oceans, and animals, and love often calls us forth to reckon with what we’ve avoided.Change is difficult, because our dominant culture, based on multiple systems of power—industrialization, capitalism, and patriarchy—is rooted in violence, ecocide, and domination. It exploits the natural world and oppresses some people while privileging others.
Everyday violence is overlooked, because it’s considered normal.
The indigenous, the poor, women, people of color, and most especially the natural world are subordinate. They are objectified as commodities. Even though it may seem like those who are marginalized consent to this hierarchy, it is not voluntary. It is expected that they will submit. They (most) do so to survive. Our global industrial-agro-corporate-military complex is powerful. It will use force. Activists who defend wild places are often imprisoned or killed. Pipelines are built. Oceans fill with plastic. Ice melts. Those with power have armies, courts, prisons, taxes, and the media.
Resistance is power.
A culture of resistance sown from fierce love can empower us to stop oppression and injustice. Theinstitutions that control society can be dismantled, and we can remember another way to live. The Underground Railroad was controversial at the time Harriet Tubman was guided by God to free slaves. We need a similar kind of boldness now. Reasoned requests will not stop systems of power. Our legal system is designed to support them. A voluntary transformation is unlikely. Our withdrawal allows the planet to go on being harmed.
Organized political resistanceis crucial. All strategies must be considered, from “revolutionary law-making to strategic non-violence to coordinated sabotage of industrial infrastructure.” The Earth and future humans need us to come together in a co-creative partnership with the natural world. We need to stand in our love and power, to abolish the violence against our planet. To stop industrialization, patriarchy, and capitalism, which place the privilege of a few over the welfare of all humans, nonhumans and Mother Earth. We must not overlook the urgency of this moment.
Dark Waters
I have always been in love with dark waters. As a teen, I often sat at the edge of the sea near my home at night. I preferred it there, imaging myself submerged under water. I felt the presence of another world with its potent unseen possibilities. When I emerged from the river missing a shoe at thirty-three, it was a call to live with one foot in the dark waters. Similar to the myth of Persephone, who lives half her life in the underworld.
The dark waters are a mythic place I inhabit that gives me soul power. These waters are pure mystery and the womb from which all things are born. They invite dissolution and steep us in uncertainty. Most of our universe is darkness, confirming the existence of mystery, more is unknown than is known. Sixty-eight percent of the universe is dark energy and twenty-seven percent is dark matter. Less than five percent of our world is real matter, everything else understood by science. When we’re in darkness, our eyes cannot see, so our imagination , a powerful and intuitive strategy to listen, grows stronger. Visions and unique phenomena emerge from darkness which can source our romance and our revolution.
Primordial waters are a mythological motif found across cultures, a cosmic ocean or a celestial river enveloping the universe and symbolizing chaos and the source of creation. The womb of dark waters is a feminine place from which visions arise and all actions are best sourced. We are born of the womb and return to the dream stream every night. When our day world finds us overly focused on the masculine tendency to act, our psyches become as out of balance as our culture. We restore the feminine when we listen to our dreams, our muse, and the dark mystery. It is as radical and necessary to let these visionary womb waters guide us as it is to confront patriarchy.
I offeredvows to the dark waters several years ago, while guiding on an island near the Irish lands of my ancestors. A seal’s head surfaced only a few feet away. Peering into its soft, dark eyes carried me into the depths of the ocean. I return to those depths in my imagination often. When I perceive the world from these dark waters, I feel a heaviness against my chest which grounds me in the Earth and is fraught with grief. My eyes well with tears as I feel love for the world. I stare into the blackness, longing for a vision, awaiting the mystery of things. Living here feels powerful and vulnerable.
I invite others into the dark waters—you, too, may close your eyes and be there now, in your imagination. Sensing the world from here is a unique and valuable vantage. I have witnessed the dark waters usher inner revolution in the human psyche time and again. How I long to bring these revolutionary powers to the planetary!
The dark waters are wiser than us. Returning to these mystical depthsallies us with the greater forces of unseen worlds and infuses our romance and revolution with a fierce creativity that allows the Earth to dream through us so that we may act both mythically and directly.
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Whether you agree or disagree with his analysis, it’s true that all civilizations have collapsed. A few got rebooted, but all have gone down. They had an average life span of 300-odd years and ended from a slew of causes: overshoot and drawdown being the most common. They were also top-heavy with large discontented serf populations. They were also broken by war, internecine conflict, natural disasters and diseases. Starting out with chieftains, little societies grew to kingships and empires with the birth of agriculture and militarized polities. They ended as civilizations, and almost all suffered tyranny or civil breakdown.