Macska Moksha Press

Beyond the War on Invasive Species: Interview with Tao Orion

February 17, 2022 by Kollibri terre Sonnenblume

Tao Orion, author of “Beyond the War on Invasive Species”

Tao Orion is the author of “Beyond the War on Invasive Species: A Permaculture Approach to Ecosystem Restoration.” She is a permaculture designer, teacher, homesteader, and mother living in the southern Willamette Valley of Oregon. I interviewed her on May 18, 2020, for my podcast, “Voices for Nature & Peace.” What follows is a partial transcript of that conversation, edited for clarity. [Listen to the entire interview here]

K: A lot of people have heard the term, “invasive species” and most of them of course are assuming it’s something bad, but when it comes right down to it, it’s actually very difficult to define the term and we could even say that there isn’t one definition of that term.

T: Yes, that’s something that I found really interesting as I was researching my book, because I was really trying to find out if there was a clear, objective description of what an invasive species is, and I found that even the National Invasive Species Council—which in the US is the federal government level board that looks at invasive species issues—spent years on deliberating on the definition and even so, they weren’t able to come up with something that I felt was purely an objective description that could be [applied] in all contexts. It seemed to vary from place to place and time to time.

K: Monsanto was one of the companies involved in setting [that council] up.

T: That’s another disturbing element about how the big frenzy around invasive species and the purported damage that they do came to be so popular; a lot of that was informed and funded by pesticide interests to spur the sale of products, herbicides in particular, to deal with species invasions.

K: I think that most people are probably not aware of the fact that the use of pesticides and herbicides has been rising over the last 20 years, not falling. I think people hear about organic agriculture and they think we must be on the right path. But due in part to the war on invasives and also due to genetically modifying crops to be Round-up Ready so they can survive the use of pesticides—these two things seem to have driven an increase in the use of pesticides over the last 20 years.

T: Yes, it’s definitely alarming. My background is in organic agriculture. I was immersed in that world. Even before writing this book, I was under the impression that herbicides were somewhat less toxic in the realm of pesticide toxicity [as opposed to insecticides or fungicides, for example]. In researching herbicides more for invasive species management and agriculture in general, I learned a lot more about their toxicity and insidious toxicity to insects and mammals and other lifeforms that I don’t think gets talked about enough. People assume they’re more ecologically benign, but really they’re not, and that’s important to bring to the table.

“A damsel with a dulcimer in a vision once I saw”: A reflection on reverie & writing

February 10, 2022 by Kollibri terre Sonnenblume

Xanadu (here spelled Xandu) on a map of Asia made by Sanson d’Abbeville, geographer of King Louis XIV, dated 1650.

One night in October, 1797, the Romantic poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge awoke from an opium-influenced dream. Before he nodded off, he’d been reading a description of Shangdu–aka Xanadu–a city built by Mongol Emporer Kubla Khan as the his summer residence. Coleridge’s dream was so vivid that he immediately set quill to parchment to transform his inspiration into a poem.

Entitled, “Kubla Khan,” it’s only 54 lines long. Dense, but delightful, it is deservedly famous. Read it here.

The first five lines are among the most well-known in English-language poetry:

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.

From there, he describes the landscape and its wonders, including a chasm, a fountain, and the river–“five miles meandering with a mazy motion”–that flows to the sea. The imagery is fantastic, the language sensational, and the impression otherwordly, yet lucid.

My favorite alternative media columnists

February 7, 2022 by Kollibri terre Sonnenblume

My favorite columnists: Clockwise, starting from top, left: Margaret Kimberley, Chris Hedges, Sarah Baker, Jonathan Cook, Caitlin Johnstone, Vijay Prashad

Clockwise, starting from top, left: Margaret Kimberley, Chris Hedges, Sarah Baker, Jonathan Cook, Caitlin Johnstone, Vijay Prashad

The corporate media is a frequent target of my criticism, so I want to share some of my favorite columnists in the alternative media. These are folks I read the most regularly right now. Their viewpoints definitely contrast with with each other, and the sum total of their collective work is anything but monolithic. Neither do I agree with 100% of what I read, but that’s not the point; for me, the purpose of reading is to inform myself and to expand my views. What I think I know and what I think I believe are both territories with fuzzy borders, and the more comfortable I become with the fact of that flux, the more I’m able to learn.

Here then, are my ten favorite columnists currently, plus three honorable mentions.

Margaret Kimberley
Senior columnist and executive editor for the Black Agenda Report, as well as an activist for peace and justice issues. She wrote the book, “Prejudential: Black America and the Presidents.” Margaret’s work is a political and moral touchstone for me, both informing and inspiring me. Her weekly column, “Freedom Rider,” which comes out every Wednesday on the Black Agenda Report, is required reading.

Sarah Baker
Enigmatic yet Sarah Baker, but her writing resonates with me personally more than any other writer at the moment. I greatly value her big picture perspectives on civilization, perception and values. She doesn’t get distracted by the small stuff but is able to use the mundane as a path to the universal. She’s made a minor art form out of the long-form Facebook post, and unfortunately, that seems to be the best place to find her stuff. If you’re not following her yet, start now.

Caitlin Johnstone
By far the most controversial person on this list, this Australian blogger is actively disliked by other people on this list (and loved by at least one of them). I am aware of the critiques of her but in my opinion, she has addressed past mistakes sufficiently, with both candor and humility, far more directly than most writers bother to do (especially male ones). I appreciate her because she just keeps relentlessly pounding away on two of my most important issues: US imperialism and the corporate media. Uncompromising antiwar sentiment and incisive media criticism have both become too rare in left-of-center media circles, and she’s carrying the torch. She’s also a vocal supporter of Julian Assange who helps keep him and his plight in the public eye. But she’s not limited to politics, and also writes about issues of individual and collective spiritual transcendence. The fact that she sometimes stumbles is part of her appeal to me; it makes her more accessible, somehow, and I see myself mirrored.

Nuance in the misunderstood field of Invasion Biology

February 6, 2022 by Kollibri terre Sonnenblume

Book Review: “Invasion Biology” by Mark A. Davis, Oxford University Press

The topic of “invasive species” has been hot since the late 1990s, but the public’s understanding of the science behind it is woefully superficial. I ascribe much of this to the media, which, through hundreds of stories in print, online and on TV, has painted an overly-simplistic, black and white narrative about villains we must make war on. A lot of blame can be laid on the word “invasive” itself, a totally loaded term that can really only have negative connotations.

So people can be forgiven for not knowing that the scientific field of “invasion biology” is far more nuanced, and is in fact “currently distinguished more by debate and controversy than consensus.”

“Confessions of a Queer, Catholic Nebraska Boy” paperback

January 24, 2022 by Kollibri terre Sonnenblume

Tales of sex, drugs and rock & roll from a gay Gen-Xer! This candid autobiography delves into the traumas and joys of a multi-decade journey of self-discovery, from Catholic schools in Nebraska, to gay bars in Minneapolis, rock clubs in Boston, street protests in Portland, and ayahuasca ceremonies in Washington state. Detailed along the way are encounters with dozens of sexual partners, both male and female, and what they meant, and didn’t mean. In a case of life reflecting art reflecting life, the telling of the tale ends up shaping the direction of the narrative itself.

Content warning: graphic sex, drug use, smoking, and profane language.

Autographed paperback, $20
numbered & signed

The privileged perversity of the “Law of Attraction”

January 20, 2022 by Kollibri terre Sonnenblume

"A mother from Aleppo crying and inquiring why her very young kids were killed by the barrel bombs thrown on Aleppo, March 9th, 2014."

“A mother from Aleppo crying and inquiring why her children were killed in the bombing of the city, March 9th, 2014.” [source]

A popular New Age myth claims that humans can “manifest reality” through “intentions” and “visualizing.” The related “Law of Attraction” states that humans bring negative outcomes on themselves with negative thoughts, and positive results with positive thoughts. The goal is often “abundance,” which means “money.” The philosophy, if we can call it that, basically boils down to “make a wish and it’ll come true.” If you don’t get what you want, you didn’t visualize hard enough or you still had negative thoughts. It’s an individualistic worldview that ignores systemic factors and the importance of community. It’s “every man–and their intentions–for themselves.”

In my mind, the clearest proof that this is all BS is that mothers in warzones lose their children to bombs and bullets. Surely, if anyone has strong positive wishes, it’s a mother for her children, isn’t it? Don’t mothers in war zones pray every night that their babies will be spared from the death raining down from the air? Don’t they wish every every day for relief from the violence? So why aren’t they delivered? Because their thoughts aren’t positive enough? Their intentions aren’t pure enough? Their visualizing isn’t clear enough? WTF?!

If we could measure it somehow, which would be stronger: the intentions of a privileged US American seeking a successful career, or a parent in occupied Palestine desperately hoping that the missles striking their neighborhood don’t maim or murder their children?

If you’ve never done so, look up “fallujah depleted uranium birth defects” in a search engine. In 2004, the US attacked Fallujah, Iraq, with shells tipped with “depleted” uranium. Despite the name, it’s a radioactive substance and a rash of birth defects followed. Babies were born with multiple limbs, and with internal organs on the outsides of their bodies. The photos are some of the most horrifying things I’ve ever seen, and I go look at them about once a year to remind myself why I oppose US militarism.

So, if the “Law of Attraction” is true, then what did the mothers of Fallujah do wrong? What “negative thoughts” brought this terrible curse onto their babies? What should they have “visualized” so that the uranium would be made harmless? How could they have “manifested” children who were healthy despite being poisoned?

I find the whole thing deeply offensive, frankly. Such theories can only survive in contexts of great privilege or deep denial, or both. In the interest of peace, we must reject them, and get to the real work of making the world a better place. This means less self-indulgence and more mutual aid, with the goal of replacing systems of oppression.

Review of “The Next Great Migration” by Sonia Shah

January 20, 2022 by Kollibri terre Sonnenblume

I just finished reading Sonia Shah’s “The Next Great Migration” [Bloomsbury Publishing, 2020], and found it to be truly eye-opening. She writes about various migrations of humans, animals and plants throughout time, and highlights many recent discoveries that have yet to disseminate into the culture at large, or indeed throughout the scientific world (which tends to silo knowledge through specialization). For me, the theme that stood out the most was that Western culture operates on the assumption that the planet is stable, even though it isn’t. Early on, she refers to this as the “Christian paradigm of an unchanging, orderly world.” That is, God created the world as it is, and put all the animals and plants where they are now. It’s all been the same since the Eighth Day.

Nowadays, we know this isn’t true. Or do we?

My new book, “From Outside: selected essays,” is now available!

November 29, 2021 by Kollibri terre Sonnenblume

I’m excited to announce the release of my latest book, “From Outside,” a selection of my favorite essays from the last five years.

I hit up a variety of topics including the environment, politics, agriculture, media criticism, settler colonialism, racism, patriarchy, “green energy,” collapse and the nature of civilization itself. Stylistically, the selections vary from reporting to commentary to personal story telling.

There’s four ways for you to get this book:

Autographed paperback, direct from author (my preference) – $18
Free shipping. Digital download included as a bonus & available now.
Digital download – $4
Available immediately in Kindle, EPUB & PDF (free of DRM)
Audiobook – $12
Stream it or listen off-line
Paperback at Amazon – $15.95
Available currently at whatever shipping they’ll charge.

Audiobook preview, from “We All Need to Be Tree-Huggers Now”

Free review copies available upon request.

Take a Deep Breath Before the Big Plunge

November 17, 2021 by Kollibri terre Sonnenblume

Photo by Famartin, Creative Commons 4.0.

When Biden won the 2020 election a year ago, I was certainly relieved. Four more years of Trump would undoubtedly have been disastrous for the US and the planet on many fronts.

But I also felt a serious sense of disquiet that took form in these distinct words: “This is just our chance to take a deep breath before the big plunge.” In the year since then, this feeling has not only persisted but has deepened, and has been confirmed by events and by other cultural observers.

Put another way, Biden’s election was not an automatic “undo” of Trump and everything he did. (Or as I would say to my geek friends: “Biden was not a ctrl+Z.”) First because some of what Trump did is virtually irreversible (like court appointments), secondly because some will take time (like rebuilding regulatory agencies) and thirdly because some is consistent with what Biden also wants (neoliberal economics, militarism).

Blame the Oligarchs, Not the Unvaccinated, for the COVID Crisis

September 15, 2021 by Kollibri terre Sonnenblume

First off, let me stress that I’m vaccinated myself, and that I support vaccination as a vital component of COVID response in the US.

That being said, US COVID policies⁠—which at this point are centered on vaccination⁠—have not been very successful to say the very least. We do, after all, rank #1 in deaths and are mishandling the current wave as if nothing could be learned from the previous ones. Our failure threatens the health of people not only here but around the world given the global scope of the pandemic. Other countries have employed much better methods, but we have so far failed to put them in practice them here. Adding insult to injury, much of the establishment political class and its partnered media is laying blame on a section of the population, rather than on the system where it belongs.

It’s a fact that⁠—currently, anyway—being vaccinated greatly reduces your chance of dying or suffering serious illness from COVID. It’s also a fact that you can still pick it up and give it to other people, though⁠—again, so far⁠—at a lesser rate. So, in and of itself⁠—that is, in the absence of other measures⁠—vaccination does not stop the pandemic. It has the undeniable social benefit of reducing the number of hospitalizations, which reserves finite medical resources for other people, including those who are not vaccinated for whatever reason (more about that later). But vaccination by itself is insufficient.

This aspect of COVID vaccination⁠—that it does not halt the spread⁠—has been known from the beginning but was never adequately emphasized. Instead people had the impression that if they got their jabs, they were “safe.” They didn’t get this impression out of nowhere; they were given it by the US mainstream media, an institution that reflects the values of the ruling class, who prioritize economic considerations over people’s well-being.

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