There's an old saying that you shouldn't kick a dying dog when it's down, but that seems to be exactly the motivation driving those as BP and their slimy allies in the corporate world. Why so bitter, you ask, well, it all goes back to the recent Gulf oil spill and how BP is handling it, or rather, how the government is allowing BP to handle it, and the underhanded politics even in this big of a mess, where corporate arrogance and stupidity define what goes and what counts as sane business. Chill out, you say, well, chew on this while you consider the ramifications of this oil spill:

So as has been reported, BP is using a dispersal agent to try and break up the oil leaking in the Gulf. The dispersant that is being used, COREXIT EC9500A, is produced by the NALCO corporation. Take a wild guess as to who sits on the Board of Directors for NALCO? For those in a hurry, here's a short and sweet recap of the BoD and their major affiliations:

As another example of the greenwashing business has perfected, check out the Milliken and Co. World’s Most Ethical Companies for 2010 Award from the Ethisphere Institute. Sound fish, well, it is. Check out some of the past winners for this "World's Most Ethical Companies Award" and have a laugh:

-Aflac -American Express -Campbell Soup -Ford Motor Company -General Electric -Google -L'Oréal -Nike -PepsiCo -Starbucks -T-Mobile USA -UPS -Whole Foods Market -Xerox

And as an added bonus, guess who provides the information and investor management services for NALCO. Yup, Reuters Corporate Relations arm, that bastion of objective global news coverage and information services.

So we have BP buying a chemical surfactant that, even by the EPA materials data sheet standards, is only somewhat effective (54% by one estimate) in breaking down Louisiana Crude oil (EPA data sheet here), and which is being provided by a company who has such tight ties with the chemical and industrial world that even an environmental disaster like this one allows BP to profit, as well as their allies who sit on other corporate boards like that of NALCO.

And with minimal government oversight (The Minerals Management Service of the US gov't was at least 16 inspections behind on the Horizon rig!) and a belief that somehow corporations shouldn't be liable for their own actions, but it's better to let the feds cover the bill, this is sure to be another major debacle.

Wow, it's a great time to be a corporate raider. From Wall Street to The Gulf of Mexico, the lesson I learned is that corporate crime pays--and well!

What I find most interesting in this whole process is the claim, which I heard repeated again yesterday in an NPR story about SB 1070, that the advocates and supporters of SB1070 are not racist, but are simply dealing with a broken immigration system that the feds have failed to address. There is no attempt to target "minority groups" or Latin@, advocates of the bill claim, and the bill is not going to lead to racial profiling by police.

Of course this is nonesense, as anyone who seriously looks into this matter with a critical view will see the deep roots of white nationalism, racism and xenophobia informing and driving all of these efforts. If this wasn't clear before, it should certainly be now, with the passage of HB 2281, where the target of the bill is clearly and explicitly "ethnic"studies, which although not defined by the bill, is implicit in its assumption that whites are not an ethnicity, and therefore teaching white ethnic history, which is the hegemonic history taught in all US schools, goes unquestioned and unchallenged. But of course, all whites are ethnics too, even if we ignore our own past.

As we have seen in the history and study of white nationalism and the far right religious political movements, attacks on what some call the "cult of multiculturalism" have once more gained political steam, thanks in part to the increasing visibility and cache of white racist politics in the form of the Tea Party, attacks on Obama as a black president, and increasing tensions over the failure to pass comprehensive immigration reform in Congress. All of this is not new, and much of this rhetoric and politics echoes back to the politics of Operation Gatekeeper by the former INS, Proposition 187 in California, and HR 4437 (The Border Protection, Anti-terrorism, and Illegal Immigration Control Act of 2005 [bill text]), which was introduced in December of 2005 by James Sensenbrenner.

All of this doesn't just come out of nowhere, it all has a history and a context, something that many people seem to forget today. But it is equally important to challenge efforts like this, as they are the most visible and clear mainfestations of white supremacy and attacks on the limited advances that have been made by people of color and ethinic groups to achieve some semblance of political representation and power within the US. So one of the really important questions that we should be asking now, is, what about white thnic studies, are those going to be banned too? And if so, what happens to the field of history in public education...?

On Friday March 12th the Texas Board of Education made national news in their plans to make sweeping reforms to the educational standards for Social Studies curriculum in the state for the next ten years. While final changes won't be clear until sometime in May, things look pretty bad for Texas children when it comes to Social Studies lessons for the near future. While the proposed changes still have to go through a 30-day comment period in the state register, the final approval by the BOE is unlikely to change substantially. Approved changes are likely to take effect in the 2001-12 school year.

The New York Times Magazine just did a major feature on this, and the Texas Freedom Network's article on these recent changes is highlighted in their "money quote," which gets to the heart of the matter:

As TFN notes, this absurdity has even gone so far as censoring the famous painting of Washington crossing the Delaware River.

So what is all the hullabaloo about anyway? I spent the afternoon trying to answer just that question. For Texas conservatives on the BOE, like Don McLeroy, the answer is simple: “We are adding balance,” said Dr. Don McLeroy, the leader of the conservative faction on the board, after the vote. “History has already been skewed. Academia is skewed too far to the left.” (nyt) Here are some of the proposed changes to the new curriculum that stood out for me:

a) A plank to ensure that students learn about “the conservative resurgence of the 1980s and 1990s, including Phyllis Schlafly, the Contract With America, the Heritage Foundation, the Moral Majority and the National Rifle Association.” b) An amendment saying students should study “the unintended consequences” of the Great Society legislation, affirmative action and Title IX legislation. c) An amendment stressing that Germans and Italians as well as Japanese were interned in the United States during World War II, to counter the idea that the internment of Japanese was motivated by racism d) An amendment requiring that the history of McCarthyism include “how the later release of the Venona papers confirmed suspicions of communist infiltration in U.S. government.” e) The economics curriculum revisions would add Milton Friedman and Friedrich von Hayek among the usual list of economists to be studied, like Adam Smith, Karl Marx and John Maynard Keynes. f) Replacing the word “capitalism” throughout their texts with the “free-enterprise system.” g) An amendment requiring the teaching of “the importance of personal responsibility for life choices” in a section on teenage suicide, dating violence, sexuality, drug use and eating disorders in the sociology curriculum. h) The removal of Thomas Jefferson from a list of figures whose writings inspired revolutions in the late 18th century and 19th century, replacing him with St. Thomas Aquinas, John Calvin and William Blackstone. i) Change to the teaching of the civil rights movement to ensure that students study the violent philosophy of the Black Panthers in addition to the nonviolent approach of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. j) Ensuring textbooks would mention the votes in Congress on civil rights legislation, which Republicans supported.

One of my favorite quotes from the NYT article is from conservative board member David Bradley:

I decided to take Mr. Bradley up on his offer of the $1000 charity donation, since the 1st Amendment answers his challenge quite nicely. Here's what I wrote to him:

While I haven't heard back from Mr. Bradley yet on his offer, I'll be sure to keep people updated on his response, if I even get one.

Now I don't want to give people the wrong impression, I think conservatives do sometimes get a raw deal in public conversations I'm privy too, but a lot of it is not entirely undeserved, especially from those one the far right, fundamentalist evangelical fringe. And sadly, it seems like those are the very people sitting on the Texas BOE.

For example, when we teach kids about the conservative resurgence in the 1970's and 1980's, will we talk about how this was partly a response to social advances for women, highlighted in the struggle over the Equal Rights Amendment, of which conservatives Republicans like Phyllis Schlafly in particular, were rabid opponents. And they probably won't be mentioning the rise of militant christian pro-life groups and associated abortion clinic bombings and attacks on doctors.

And I doubt the Texas BOE is planning to include discussion about the Watergate scandal and Nixon's many illegal dealings, in particular the bombings in Cambodia under Operation Menu, nor the Iran-Contra scandal of Reagan and his even shadier foreign policy--the Reagan Doctrine--and support for right-wing dictatorships in Latin America. Or the Mujahideen in Afghanistan, or support for apartheid South Africa, or...well, you get the idea.

Venona papers or not, nothing excused the witch hunt politics of McCarthyism, and to suggest otherwise is to show a desire to return to Cold War era politics--no thank you!

Hum, so interning Japanese was racist, but if we also interned Germans and Italians, that makes the Japanese internment not racist? Sorry, I guess I don't follow that logic. This somehow assumes that racism against Germans and Italians during WWII didn't exist, which is utter nonsense if you know anything about this period.

Even President Reagan--the shining Conservative star--acknowledged this racism when the Congress passed and he signed legislation in 1988 apologizing for the internments, stating the internment was wrong and apologizing for: "race prejudice, war hysteria, and a failure of political leadership" So maybe these conservatives should go back and study their own national history a little closer! Geesh

I'm all for adding Friedman and von Hayek, but what about some other radical economists, since this list is pretty skewed to the right already. And changing "capitalism" to "free-enterprise system," some on, when will we stop preaching the myth of free market anything. It never had, and never will, exist. The so-called free market is so dependent on state support and regulation that it's a joke.

I'm all for teaching about personal responsibility, but to suggest that government policy and social pressures have nothing to do with suicide, dating violence, sexuality or eating disorders is ridiculous, and reeks of the "welfare queen" and "baby machine" stereotypes of black and latina women, as well as the "bootstrap" and "trickle down" mythologies conservatives so love to promote. I'd like to hear exactly how individual responsibility plays into being a young college female forcibly raped by male students! NPR did an excellent piece on this recently, Seeking Justice for Campus Rapes, reminding us that 1 out of every 5 women on campus will be sexually assaulted while in school! Personal responsibility my ass, and the same goes for issues of sexualities and constant homophobia rampant in our society. Personal responsibility has nothing to do with stopping these problems, they are systemic issues, and changing high school texts to ignore this fact only protects the perpetrators and makes things worse. Thanks Texas conservatives, way to prepare your students for the future!

In a similar strain, I'm sure the inclusion of texts on the "violent philosophy" of the BPP will not include, say, the efforts by the CIA and FBI to flood the West Coast with crack cocaine, or the illegal and immoral actions like Cointelpro, which were ripped to shreds by the Church Committee report. and are extensively documented in, among other sources, Agents of Repression by Ward Churchill and Jim Vander Wall.

There is a lot more I could say, but the point is, when you start inserting ideological nonsense into educational texts, you are doing a disservice to everyone. We should be teaching our children critical reading and thinking skills, not dumbing them down with selective and revisionist histories of the way things were. We've already got enough of that in our public school textbooks, let's not make things even worse.

You can watch some of the Texas conservatives in action for yourself in these videos.

Well, my Parson's class project has moved into Phase II, the actual implementation phase. My two mushroom spawn blocks arrived on Thursday the 11th, and I put everything into go mode today. One block is Peal Oyster mushrooms (Pleurotus ostreatus var. columbinus) spawned on a straw substrate, while the other is Shiitake mushrooms (Lentinula edodes) spawned on a sawdust substrate.

I decided to let these two blocks fruit out at least through the first or second flush, at which point I will separate the blocks into chunks and add into a new substrate (cardboard, burlap and coffee rounds) to insert into my burlap goddess sculpture, as well as at least one other sculpture which I have not decided on yet. Perhaps another burlap sculpture for consistency and ease? We'll see. I'm pasting a link below to some of the photos of the work in progress, as well as some of the supplies and raw materials which will be a part of this project.

Flickr Mushroom Art Project slideshow

I've been spending a lot of time reading through various mushroom cultivation and growing books, online blogs with mushroom growers and enthusiasts, as well as some more technical books, like the Fungal Biology textbook.

The next step I am trying to work out is the media and design side, esp. looking into trying to animate some of the process visually, esp. in relation to the mycelial growth and running. I've found a few really neat inspirations so far, but nothing that is exactly what I want, so the search continues...