thewakingtimes--2020-04-14--Turn Self Isolation Into Self Liberation

Turn Self Isolation Into Self Liberation One of the most famous paradoxes of this blessed experience called Life , is known as ‘ the law of unintended consequences ’ ; and we are at this very moment of time , in the midst of a manifestation of cosmic Lila which exactly fits this paradox .
Under the unprecedented blanket regulatory lock-down imposed by governments all over the planet , a highly unlikely opportunity has arisen to fundamentally redress our life circumstances .
An opportunity which will positively equip those who need to become aware , to face the uncertainties that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The number one opportunity which being stuck in one ’ s home for most of the working day presents , is to do some long overdue thinking ; the kind that taps into that region of ourselves which has been/is particularly starved due to being heavily preoccupied by the daily chores of the standard working week .
That part of ourselves which gives genuine direction to our lives , and brings us face to face with the plethora of superficial activities that preoccupy us , most of which we have , up until @ @ @ @ @ @ @ are being supported in this vital pursuit by changes underway in the natural environment which surrounds us .
Changes for the better that result from a sudden flux of a high percentage of the frenetic hustle and bustle which forms the basic daily pattern of our materialistically centred life , and which brings with it a heavy load of pollution , noise and stress , choking both our planet ’ s natural environment and our own health and welfare .
Pause to consider , how remarkable it is that the impositions imposed by @ @ @ @ @ @ @ unintended consequence of enabling much of nature to finally take some decent deep breaths !
Enable her sinews to be at least temporarily cleansed from the antithetical materialistic pursuits of the modern world .
Pursuits so misguidedly hailed as ‘ progress ’ and so crassly utilised for achieving the bloated ambitions of corporate giants .
Nature can breathe because motorways are largely free of the noise and pollution caused by rushing cars and trucks , and the air largely free from the constant passage of disruptive commercial jet airlines .
The sky is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ air is full of the sound of Spring inspired birds .
It is generally calm – even peaceful .
I remember a state like this from my childhood .
Something is happening .
Something unusual .
And it is coming about due to the ‘ law of unintended consequences ’ which is actually a cosmic/universal law and not unintended at all , but a direct reflection of Divine Lila .
It has provided us with this opportunity – right in the midst of an unprecedented deep-state engendered global crisis – to join in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ recharge our spiritual batteries and shed our worn-out life styles in favour of a more integrated and conscious sense of purpose .
It ’ s an opportunity we should not ignore .
Listen carefully : the circumstances facing all of us in the immediate two to three years ahead are going to present a quite unique challenge .
Not least because they are being conducted by people either ludicrously unfit for the tasks they find themselves responsible for – or who wish to deceive and exploit us so as to acquire powers to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ right to control .
This means that the first call on our meditations about our immediate futures will be to raise and appraise some very practical considerations ; the first of which involves taking a big step towards a much more robust and self-sufficient life style .
Bear in mind that a return to typical easy access to the ‘ daily conveniences ’ many have become accustomed to , is no longer a secure bet .
Even if governments might make it appear that ‘ everything is under control ’ and/or ‘ things @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Clearly it is not – and they will not , as by now we are surely well aware – and wishful thinking will not change this situation .
As I mentioned above , we must use this brief open window to shift ourselves towards a much more self-sufficient and simple life style .
A largely self-sufficient life style involves knowing how to cultivate the ground so as to grow our own basic food requirements .
And/or if not doing this directly , making sure to be closely associated with supporting colleagues who do @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the harvests that result .
This is not going to be possible within an urban environment at this point in time , given not only that there is insufficient cultivatable land available , but that urban environments are largely unconducive to mental , spiritual and physical health .
They do not enhance one ’ s immune system and ability to build the inner and outer strength vital to staying strong throughout the challenges in store for us .
So to make best use of this period solitary confinement , plot the course that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ control of your – and your family ’ s – destiny .
Recognising , of course , that under the imposition of a quasi dictatorship there is only ‘ x ’ amount of room in which to move .
In this article I am taking a deliberately positive line concerning making maximum use of our largely untapped potentials as creative beings .
So let ’ s recognise this as exactly the moment to tap these blessed creative powers – since many have been far too preoccupied with selfish pursuits instead of dealing with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of invention ’ so use this one in a million opportunity to meditate on exactly what your key necessities are and how to best manage them .
This should not be an anxiety based exercise .
On the contrary , we are in a time of great energetic cosmic support due to the Earth now being in a particularly powerful alignment with the centre of our galaxy , resulting in the rapid growth of heart based empathetic instincts throughout humanity .
It is because dark directed forces know about this , that such @ @ @ @ @ @ @ block the rising-up which is already well underway in us .
Draw upon this gift we are being sent .
It is to strengthen the heart beat of mother Earth and human kind .
If you are not already doing so , start each day with Yoga .
Hatha yoga exercises , for example , that have been honed over millennia to bring nourishment to every part of the body and mind .
This practice , by co-ordinating breathing and movement , revitalises the chi ( energy ) of one ’ s whole @ @ @ @ @ @ @ what is the best and most true action to take each day .
A Theseus thread to guide one through the chaos which has been deliberately invoked on this planet .
Couple such practice with a diet rich in immunosupportive foods , preferably direct from the farm .
Yes , the farmers you have linked-up with and offered your support .
Hands in the soil and the company of ( farm ) animals is immensely curative .
For millions , it is the life-line to earthed , reawakened health .
The forces intent @ @ @ @ @ @ @ so once our spiritual and physical energies are awakened and maintained .
Truly vital right now .
This means , for example , we can devote our new-found ‘ freedom ’ into actions specifically targeted at stopping the roll-out of the microwave radiation 5G weapon .
A brutal technology of human paralysis and planetary ecocide , increasingly implicated in playing a covert role in the current ‘ Corona Virus ’ scam .
The family of man is ONE family .
Our fate is inextricably linked to the fate of all others , as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a disease far more deadly than any Corona Virus .
Make use of your period of isolation to rid yourself of narcissistic tendencies , as the ‘ Real I ’ in each one of us is not the one that seeks self-satisfaction or indulgence in vanities .
It is the one that liberates us into recognising our oneness with all life and all peoples , regardless of colour , race or creed .
Treat the domestic imprisonment being forced upon us – as an opportunity – not as cause for fear .
In @ @ @ @ @ @ @ placed in front of you so as to make you reach deeper into yourself for the solution !
Because that ’ s what it actually is : a wake-up call without which you might never have the opportunity to discover your divine eternal flame of greatness , of Godliness .
Julian Rose is a writer , organic farmer , international activist and holistic practitioner/teacher .
Two of Julian ’ s books ‘ Creative Solutions to a World in Crisis ’ and ‘ Overcoming the Robotic Mind – Why Humanity Must Come Through ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
See www.julianrose.info for more information .

Turn Self Isolation Into Self Liberation
Julian Rose, Contributor
Waking Times
One of the most famous paradoxes of this blessed experience called Life, is known as ‘the law of unintended consequences’; and we are at this very moment of time, in the midst of a manifestation of cosmic Lila which exactly fits this paradox.
Under the unprecedented blanket regulatory lock-down imposed by governments all over the planet, a highly unlikely opportunity has arisen to fundamentally redress our life circumstances. An opportunity which will positively equip those who need to become aware, to face the uncertainties that lie ahead with courage and fortitude.
The number one opportunity which being stuck in one’s home for most of the working day presents, is to do some long overdue thinking; the kind that taps into that region of ourselves which has been/is particularly starved due to being heavily preoccupied by the daily chores of the standard working week. That part of ourselves which gives genuine direction to our lives, and brings us face to face with the plethora of superficial activities that preoccupy us, most of which we have, up until recently, taken as gospel.
We are being supported in this vital pursuit by changes underway in the natural environment which surrounds us. Changes for the better that result from a sudden flux of a high percentage of the frenetic hustle and bustle which forms the basic daily pattern of our materialistically centred life, and which brings with it a heavy load of pollution, noise and stress, choking both our planet’s natural environment and our own health and welfare.
Pause to consider, how remarkable it is that the impositions imposed by mostly clueless governments, would have the unintended consequence of enabling much of nature to finally take some decent deep breaths! Enable her sinews to be at least temporarily cleansed from the antithetical materialistic pursuits of the modern world. Pursuits so misguidedly hailed as ‘progress’ and so crassly utilised for achieving the bloated ambitions of corporate giants.
Nature can breathe because motorways are largely free of the noise and pollution caused by rushing cars and trucks, and the air largely free from the constant passage of disruptive commercial jet airlines. The sky is blessedly blue and the sweeter that usual air is full of the sound of Spring inspired birds. It is generally calm – even peaceful. I remember a state like this from my childhood.
Something is happening. Something unusual. And it is coming about due to the ‘law of unintended consequences’ which is actually a cosmic/universal law and not unintended at all, but a direct reflection of Divine Lila. It has provided us with this opportunity – right in the midst of an unprecedented deep-state engendered global crisis – to join in this natural healing process so as to recharge our spiritual batteries and shed our worn-out life styles in favour of a more integrated and conscious sense of purpose.
It’s an opportunity we should not ignore.
Listen carefully: the circumstances facing all of us in the immediate two to three years ahead are going to present a quite unique challenge. Not least because they are being conducted by people either ludicrously unfit for the tasks they find themselves responsible for – or who wish to deceive and exploit us so as to acquire powers to control events which they have no legal right to control.
This means that the first call on our meditations about our immediate futures will be to raise and appraise some very practical considerations; the first of which involves taking a big step towards a much more robust and self-sufficient life style. Bear in mind that a return to typical easy access to the ‘daily conveniences’ many have become accustomed to, is no longer a secure bet. Even if governments might make it appear that ‘everything is under control’ and/or ‘things will soon return to normal’. Clearly it is not – and they will not, as by now we are surely well aware – and wishful thinking will not change this situation.
As I mentioned above, we must use this brief open window to shift ourselves towards a much more self-sufficient and simple life style. A largely self-sufficient life style involves knowing how to cultivate the ground so as to grow our own basic food requirements. And/or if not doing this directly, making sure to be closely associated with supporting colleagues who do – and who are willing to share the harvests that result.
This is not going to be possible within an urban environment at this point in time, given not only that there is insufficient cultivatable land available, but that urban environments are largely unconducive to mental, spiritual and physical health. They do not enhance one’s immune system and ability to build the inner and outer strength vital to staying strong throughout the challenges in store for us.
So to make best use of this period solitary confinement, plot the course that will provide a practical way of taking control of your – and your family’s – destiny. Recognising, of course, that under the imposition of a quasi dictatorship there is only ‘x’ amount of room in which to move.
In this article I am taking a deliberately positive line concerning making maximum use of our largely untapped potentials as creative beings. So let’s recognise this as exactly the moment to tap these blessed creative powers – since many have been far too preoccupied with selfish pursuits instead of dealing with necessities. ‘Necessity is the mother of invention’ so use this one in a million opportunity to meditate on exactly what your key necessities are and how to best manage them.
This should not be an anxiety based exercise. On the contrary, we are in a time of great energetic cosmic support due to the Earth now being in a particularly powerful alignment with the centre of our galaxy, resulting in the rapid growth of heart based empathetic instincts throughout humanity. It is because dark directed forces know about this, that such an intense effort is being made to block the rising-up which is already well underway in us.
Draw upon this gift we are being sent. It is to strengthen the heart beat of mother Earth and human kind.
If you are not already doing so, start each day with Yoga. Hatha yoga exercises, for example, that have been honed over millennia to bring nourishment to every part of the body and mind. This practice, by co-ordinating breathing and movement, revitalises the chi (energy) of one’s whole being and provides a clearer insight into what is the best and most true action to take each day. A Theseus thread to guide one through the chaos which has been deliberately invoked on this planet.
Couple such practice with a diet rich in immunosupportive foods, preferably direct from the farm.
Yes, the farmers you have linked-up with and offered your support. Hands in the soil and the company of (farm) animals is immensely curative. For millions, it is the life-line to earthed, reawakened health. The forces intent upon pulling us down cannot do so once our spiritual and physical energies are awakened and maintained. Truly vital right now.
This means, for example, we can devote our new-found ‘freedom’ into actions specifically targeted at stopping the roll-out of the microwave radiation 5G weapon. A brutal technology of human paralysis and planetary ecocide, increasingly implicated in playing a covert role in the current ‘Corona Virus’ scam.
The family of man is ONE family. Our fate is inextricably linked to the fate of all others, as theirs is with ours. Selfishness is a disease far more deadly than any Corona Virus. Make use of your period of isolation to rid yourself of narcissistic tendencies, as the ‘Real I’ in each one of us is not the one that seeks self-satisfaction or indulgence in vanities. It is the one that liberates us into recognising our oneness with all life and all peoples, regardless of colour, race or creed.
Treat the domestic imprisonment being forced upon us – as an opportunity – not as cause for fear. In fact see it as a hurdle being placed in front of you so as to make you reach deeper into yourself for the solution! Because that’s what it actually is: a wake-up call without which you might never have the opportunity to discover your divine eternal flame of greatness, of Godliness.
About the Author
Julian Rose is a writer, organic farmer, international activist and holistic practitioner/teacher. Two of Julian’s books ‘Creative Solutions to a World in Crisis’ and ‘Overcoming the Robotic Mind – Why Humanity Must Come Through’ are particularly prescient reading for this time. See www.julianrose.info for more information.


thewakingtimes--2020-04-14--Stories of Space in Times of Quarantine

Stories of Space in Times of Quarantine

Stories of Space in Times of Quarantine May 25 , 1720 .
The Grand Saint-Antoine , a three-masted French merchant ship , sails into the port of Marseille on the southern coast of France .
Its journey has been troubled : nine passengers have died since departing from Lebanon two months earlier .
Following protocols designed to prevent disease outbreaks , Marseille ’ s health bureau orders the ship , its passengers , and its cargo of precious silks to be held in quarantine on a nearby island .
In a notable breach of protocol , however , the bureau @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to the mainland—a fatal decision , made under pressure from silk merchants who want to bring the goods quickly to market .
June 20 , 1720 .
A woman dies abruptly in downtown Marseille , an area of narrow streets and dense housing .
She is the first victim of community transmission of the Great Plague of Marseille , a pandemic of bubonic plague caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis .
By the middle of August , more than one thousand individuals are dying every day .
By now , the wealthiest have @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Bodies are left on the streets , and prisoners are forced to carry them toward mass graves .
March 1721 .
Fearing the spread of the pandemic , King Louis XV sends thirty thousand soldiers to enforce a strict quarantine over the entire region .
Fifty miles north of Marseille , he requisitions local villagers to build a seventeen-mile-long drystone wall to prevent escape .
Despite these efforts , the plague kills one hundred thousand people over the course of two years : fifty thousand in Marseille—half the city ’ s population—and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
It is Europe ’ s last major outbreak of plague .
The legacy of the plague in Marseille is complicated .
Street names and public sculptures honor the dead .
Every year the Basilica of the Sacred Heart honors the anniversary of a promise made by the city council in 1722 to hold a special mass every year , in perpetuity , if the plague spared the city .
And the foundations of the drystone wall still stand to the north of the city , now branded the mur de la peste—the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ guides .
The wall and the ceremony remain as traces of a society ’ s attempts to restructure its relations with its environment and its diseases : the church service through an act of imagination , and the wall through the reorganization of space .
Yet they betray the fact that Marseille ’ s greatest trauma never prompted a comprehensive reevaluation of its urban fabric : no Haussmann-like boulevards to bring fresh air and water into the dense urban core ; no new sanitary practices or governance strategies ; just business as usual @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
The story of Marseille helps us interrogate our present situation .
Beyond memorials and rhetoric , what will be the legacy of COVID-19 ?
How will it restructure our societal narratives and the ways we manage space ?
How will the quality of our attention now , in the midst of crisis , shape this future ?
Pandemics are ancient—as old as human culture itself .
Wherever they have struck , they have challenged humans to reevaluate their relations to their environment—as well as the cultural myths that underly these relations .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ myths—the stories we tell about ourselves—can act as foundations for resilience just as they can constitute sources of vulnerability .
At the “ Designing the Green New Deal ” conference in Philadelphia in the fall of 2019 , the writer and activist Julian Brave NoiseCat spoke of the Great Law of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy—a five-hundred-year-old constitution that has guided its people through settler colonialism , military invasion , pandemics , and the systematic government kidnapping and reeducation of children .
“ Cultures are really just manuals for how we ’ re going to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
If the Haudenosaunee can maintain their Great Law against an apocalypse , against genocide , I do believe that culture , and the stories that we tell about ourselves , and the words that we use to tell these stories , are some of the most powerful things that we have.
” As we sit in quarantine , it ’ s worth asking what COVID-19 says about our ways of inhabiting the planet—and how our stories might change in response .
We wouldn ’ t be the first to do so : @ @ @ @ @ @ @ questions about what it means to be human .
In Albert Camus ’ s The Plague ( 1947 ) , an Algerian city is walled off following the outbreak of plague .
When the disease abates , the city celebrates , but the protagonist , a doctor , knows that the plague will eventually come back , because “ everyone has it inside himself , this plague , because no one in the world , no one , is immune.
” More than a simple disease , the plague is a reminder of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ In Mary Shelley ’ s The Last Man ( 1826 ) , a shepherd witnesses the progressive falling apart of human civilization due to plague .
Cities , art , and society all disintegrate , leaving the shepherd to roam alone through an emptied landscape .
Shelley ’ s is a pessimistic plague , insisting that humans are not the center of the universe , that pride comes before the fall In Boccaccio ’ s Decameron ( 1353 ) and Edgar Allan Poe ’ s “ The Masque of the Red Death ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ flee the cities—to a rural villa and a gothic abbey , respectively—to avoid disease and pass the time in celebration .
Bocaccio ’ s youths use their quarantine as an opportunity to inspire and amuse each other with tales of humanity ; Poe ’ s bored aristocrats come to a bloody end among the decadent trappings of their entertainment .
In Bram Stoker ’ s Dracula ( 1897 ) , a group of educated young friends pursues an aristocratic vampire landlord through a complex network of cities , ships , trains , and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and especially F. W. Murnau ’ s 1922 film adaptation Nosferatu , use vampirism and disease to speak of the fear of the Other—especially the Easterner—and of the spread of contagion through an increasingly globalized infrastructure .
Each of these stories imagines disease through specific spatial contexts .
For Camus , walls keep the plague in ; for Poe and Bocaccio , they hold it out .
Shelley ’ s shepherd is left to wander the ruins of urban and rural life , whereas Stoker ’ s young professionals travel through a highly @ @ @ @ @ @ @ disease are also stories of space , of how its management—through walls , public squares , roads , and countryside—enables life and death .
In 1721 , the French painter Michel Serre depicted a scene from the Great Plague of Marseille .
Dreary clouds loom over buildings that appear empty and lifeless .
The city square , the heart of the public realm , is strewn with bodies , the distinction between living and dead blurred .
At the center of this maelstrom , sitting calmly on a rearing horse , a city @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a modicum of order in a portrait of devastation .
Pandemics are not works of art .
They are real , tragic events , occurring in the real , physical world .
In “ The Ecology of Disease , ” the ecological writer Jim Robbins explains that epidemics “ don ’ t just happen .
They are a result of things people do to nature.
” In other words , human socioeconomic systems interact with the environment to create conditions that harbor and produce disease .
Our contemporary systems are characterized by neoliberal @ @ @ @ @ @ @ unceasing encroachment on wildlife habitat .
Potential disease vectors like mosquitoes , ticks , and bats are most prevalent at the urban periphery , where human activity penetrates biodiverse ecosystems .
It on these peripheries that diseases are most likely to make the jump to humans .
This , along with modern air travel , the intense growth of animal agriculture , and wildlife trafficking are all characters in our modern stories of pandemic .
[ 1 ] From the ancient past to the present day , the management of space—of people , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the primary strategy for containing the spread of disease , even if the theories about how that spread happens have changed dramatically over time .
In just a few years at the end of the 1340s , the Black Death , again caused by Yersinia pestis , killed at least a third of the European population , along with millions across Asia and Africa .
Governments , especially of societies built around trade , responded by managing the movement of people and goods across borders .
Ships suspected of harboring diseases were held @ @ @ @ @ @ @ specially constructed facilities known as lazarettos .
The lazarettos of maritime nations were close to the water , often isolated on islands .
Though not explicitly prisons , the lazarettos were nevertheless highly surveilled ; they often served an additional role as hospitals for contagious diseases like leprosy .
The Philadelphia Lazaretto , built in 1799 , still stands on the Delaware River , surrounded by the sprawl of Philadelphia International Airport .
It ’ s easy to forget the extent to which our landscapes have been designed to mitigate disease .
Nineteenth-century @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was built on notions of cleanliness .
Frederick Law Olmsted was obsessed with the environment ’ s influence on the body , convinced that parks could benefit the health of weary urbanites by exposing them to fresh air and greenery .
He also believed , paternalistically , that such spaces would inspire moral behavior among the poor , immigrants , and alcoholics , helping them integrate into the bourgeois public realm .
Theodore Roosevelt , the stalwart defender of natural conservation , himself suffered from debilitating asthma as a child and embraced an @ @ @ @ @ @ @ response .
In Roosevelt ’ s personal narrative , shaky health led him to an appreciation of “ wild nature ” as source of vigor—in turn informing his promotion of national parks .
And Le Corbusier , the icon of modernist urbanism , lived through the 1918 flu pandemic , which killed perhaps three percent of the global population .
His views on city planning were inspired by the architecture of Alpine sanitoria—resorts in places like Davos , Switzerland , where one could fight lung diseases like tuberculosis with the weapons of fresh @ @ @ @ @ @ @ rest .
Corbusier ’ s vision of the “ tower in the park ” evokes these efforts to optimize light , air , and space .
[ 2 ] Our contemporary stay-at-home orders follow in this long tradition of containing disease through environmental design and the control of space .
As a landscape architect interested in how we manage and feel our way through space , I am captivated by how quickly our experiences of space have changed in the past few weeks .
For over a month , I have barely ventured @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in Berkeley .
This limited range of observation is telling in itself : staying at home has hyper-localized my daytime routine .
My neighborhood is typical of Berkeley : houses separated by driveways , small gardens out front , little activity visible to the public .
In the past two weeks I have met more of my neighbors than in the previous two years .
Our conversations feel like breaths of fresh air , as previously separate social worlds meet for the first time .
Our voices join a humble symphony of sounds @ @ @ @ @ @ @ : not just birds , HVAC whirs , and police sirens ; but also the echo of footsteps on asphalt , a wooden door closing , the clicking gears of a passing bike .
They ’ re all sounds I ’ ve heard a million times before ; but they emerge with particular clarity when there is quiet , and time to pay attention .
The internet is filled with news—some fake , some real—claiming that nature is reclaiming locked down urban spaces .
Yet although there is clear evidence that some environmental @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for the time being ) , many of these claims are simply expressions of renewed attention to what ’ s been around us all along .
It appears we have forgotten that spring happens every year , that the moon waxes and wanes .
Meanwhile , I look at surfaces with unprecedented anxiety : that bench , this grocery bag , my phone , the mailbox—how long can the virus linger on them ?
I offer lemons that I have picked from a tree to a friend .
She refuses them ; I @ @ @ @ @ @ @ interconnectivity of human beings suddenly takes a dismal turn : human networks as disease networks .
The instinct to love , to share , to touch , is challenged as we are forced to share our humanity in innovative ways .
Online video sessions take on new significance as we realize our colleagues have living rooms , kitchens , partners , and lives of their own .
Blaise Pascal once quipped that “ all of humanity ’ s problems stem from Man ’ s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.
” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ are reminded that we live in a culture addicted to speed and a mythology of more-more-more .
Even though there is no shortage in food supplies—at least not in rich neighborhoods—we raid the supermarket shelves to reassure ourselves that we can fill our existential void with something , anything .
World leaders promise that the economic engine is only slowing down , not shutting down .
At Whole Foods , the music buzzing out of the loudspeakers says the same thing : don ’ t worry , be happy .
Everything is OK @ @ @ @ @ @ @ not OK , not when employment is tied to carbon-intensive supply chains , not when slowing down means going hungry , not when a functioning economy means threatening life on Earth .
Despite the omnipresent government rhetoric of war against the virus , we need to be crystal clear about something : COVID-19 is not the true enemy ; the real struggle is against its underlying conditions of environmental destruction and social inequality .
I say this keeping in mind those most impacted by the virus—the sick , the poor , the elderly @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , the unemployed .
The suffering and fear are inarguably real .
Yet the pandemic is the symptom of a much larger crisis of how we inhabit the planet .
I won ’ t dwell on the relationships between the coronavirus and the climate crisis—many others are exploring these questions .
[ 3 ] All I will say is that a return to normal can not be our goal .
It ’ s tricky writing about a crisis in the midst of it—something like painting an earthquake in real time .
Yet if @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that they touch the core of our humanity , and yet we still manage to forget them when times are good .
Today , our fragility , our love , and our folly are as clear as the unpolluted skies .
But tomorrow they may fade away into the haze of business as usual .
No one knows what the legacy of COVID-19 will be .
In quarantine , our perception of space is seeded with a growing awareness that we are connected not just physically—through infrastructure , public space , and microbes—but @ @ @ @ @ @ @ are discovering to be much , much less than we are accustomed to .
Whenever we begin to slowly emerge from our homes , these newly recognized essentials must serve as the building blocks of our designed environments .
Perhaps sunlight is the greatest work of public art ; perhaps looking our neighbors in the eye is the missing ingredient in our desire to build smarter cities .
Perhaps letting go is as powerful as grasping for more .
Marseille still celebrates an annual mass to honor a three-century-old promise ; the plague @ @ @ @ @ @ @ strolls .
Where will COVID-19 leave its traces ?
No one knows , but one thing is certain : it will be expressed in the stories and the spaces we share .
Now is the time to mourn and to dream ; to quietly listen and to fine-tune our attention to the possibilities at hand .
Félix de Rosen is a student of life , born in France , raised in the US , and currently based out of the US West coast .
Visit his website www.felixderosen.com .
[ 1 ] Roger @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Harris Ali , “ Outbreaks like coronavirus start in and spread from the edges of cities , ” The Conversation , February 17 , 2020 .
[ 2 ] “ What Tuberculosis did for Modernism : The Influence of a Curative Environment on Modernist Design and Architecture , ” Journal of Medical History , October 1 , 2005 .
[ 3 ] See Megan Crist ’ s article on the subject , among many others .
**This article ( Stories of Space in Times of Quarantine ) was originally published at The McHarg @ @ @ @ @ @ @ from the author .

Stories of Space in Times of Quarantine
Félix de Rosen, Guest
Waking Times
Europe’s Last Plague
May 25, 1720. The Grand Saint-Antoine, a three-masted French merchant ship, sails into the port of Marseille on the southern coast of France. Its journey has been troubled: nine passengers have died since departing from Lebanon two months earlier. Following protocols designed to prevent disease outbreaks, Marseille’s health bureau orders the ship, its passengers, and its cargo of precious silks to be held in quarantine on a nearby island. In a notable breach of protocol, however, the bureau allows the early transfer of the cargo to the mainland—a fatal decision, made under pressure from silk merchants who want to bring the goods quickly to market.
June 20, 1720. A woman dies abruptly in downtown Marseille, an area of narrow streets and dense housing. She is the first victim of community transmission of the Great Plague of Marseille, a pandemic of bubonic plague caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis. By the middle of August, more than one thousand individuals are dying every day. By now, the wealthiest have fled, along with many government officials. Bodies are left on the streets, and prisoners are forced to carry them toward mass graves.
March 1721. Fearing the spread of the pandemic, King Louis XV sends thirty thousand soldiers to enforce a strict quarantine over the entire region. Fifty miles north of Marseille, he requisitions local villagers to build a seventeen-mile-long drystone wall to prevent escape. Despite these efforts, the plague kills one hundred thousand people over the course of two years: fifty thousand in Marseille—half the city’s population—and another fifty thousand in the surrounding provinces. It is Europe’s last major outbreak of plague.
The legacy of the plague in Marseille is complicated. Street names and public sculptures honor the dead. Every year the Basilica of the Sacred Heart honors the anniversary of a promise made by the city council in 1722 to hold a special mass every year, in perpetuity, if the plague spared the city. And the foundations of the drystone wall still stand to the north of the city, now branded the mur de la peste—the “plague wall”—by regional hiking guides.
The wall and the ceremony remain as traces of a society’s attempts to restructure its relations with its environment and its diseases: the church service through an act of imagination, and the wall through the reorganization of space. Yet they betray the fact that Marseille’s greatest trauma never prompted a comprehensive reevaluation of its urban fabric: no Haussmann-like boulevards to bring fresh air and water into the dense urban core; no new sanitary practices or governance strategies; just business as usual, but with a new annual mass. The story of Marseille helps us interrogate our present situation. Beyond memorials and rhetoric, what will be the legacy of COVID-19? How will it restructure our societal narratives and the ways we manage space? How will the quality of our attention now, in the midst of crisis, shape this future?
Stories of Disease, Stories of Culture
Pandemics are ancient—as old as human culture itself. Wherever they have struck, they have challenged humans to reevaluate their relations to their environment—as well as the cultural myths that underly these relations. In the face of crisis, these myths—the stories we tell about ourselves—can act as foundations for resilience just as they can constitute sources of vulnerability.
At the “Designing the Green New Deal” conference in Philadelphia in the fall of 2019, the writer and activist Julian Brave NoiseCat spoke of the Great Law of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy—a five-hundred-year-old constitution that has guided its people through settler colonialism, military invasion, pandemics, and the systematic government kidnapping and reeducation of children. “Cultures are really just manuals for how we’re going to do all these things together as people. If the Haudenosaunee can maintain their Great Law against an apocalypse, against genocide, I do believe that culture, and the stories that we tell about ourselves, and the words that we use to tell these stories, are some of the most powerful things that we have.” As we sit in quarantine, it’s worth asking what COVID-19 says about our ways of inhabiting the planet—and how our stories might change in response. We wouldn’t be the first to do so: artists have long used plagues to amplify questions about what it means to be human.
In Albert Camus’s The Plague (1947), an Algerian city is walled off following the outbreak of plague. When the disease abates, the city celebrates, but the protagonist, a doctor, knows that the plague will eventually come back, because “everyone has it inside himself, this plague, because no one in the world, no one, is immune.” More than a simple disease, the plague is a reminder of the fragility of the human condition.
In Mary Shelley’s The Last Man (1826), a shepherd witnesses the progressive falling apart of human civilization due to plague. Cities, art, and society all disintegrate, leaving the shepherd to roam alone through an emptied landscape. Shelley’s is a pessimistic plague, insisting that humans are not the center of the universe, that pride comes before the fall .
In Boccaccio’s Decameron (1353) and Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Masque of the Red Death” (1842), groups of nobles flee the cities—to a rural villa and a gothic abbey, respectively—to avoid disease and pass the time in celebration. Bocaccio’s youths use their quarantine as an opportunity to inspire and amuse each other with tales of humanity; Poe’s bored aristocrats come to a bloody end among the decadent trappings of their entertainment.
In Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897), a group of educated young friends pursues an aristocratic vampire landlord through a complex network of cities, ships, trains, and properties. Stoker’s novel, and especially F. W. Murnau’s 1922 film adaptation Nosferatu, use vampirism and disease to speak of the fear of the Other—especially the Easterner—and of the spread of contagion through an increasingly globalized infrastructure.
Each of these stories imagines disease through specific spatial contexts. For Camus, walls keep the plague in; for Poe and Bocaccio, they hold it out. Shelley’s shepherd is left to wander the ruins of urban and rural life, whereas Stoker’s young professionals travel through a highly connected urban-rural landscape. These stories of disease are also stories of space, of how its management—through walls, public squares, roads, and countryside—enables life and death.
In 1721, the French painter Michel Serre depicted a scene from the Great Plague of Marseille. Dreary clouds loom over buildings that appear empty and lifeless. The city square, the heart of the public realm, is strewn with bodies, the distinction between living and dead blurred. At the center of this maelstrom, sitting calmly on a rearing horse, a city official directs the removal of corpses, a modicum of order in a portrait of devastation.
Spaces of Disease
Pandemics are not works of art. They are real, tragic events, occurring in the real, physical world. In “The Ecology of Disease,” the ecological writer Jim Robbins explains that epidemics “don’t just happen. They are a result of things people do to nature.” In other words, human socioeconomic systems interact with the environment to create conditions that harbor and produce disease. Our contemporary systems are characterized by neoliberal capitalism, intensive resource extraction, and unceasing encroachment on wildlife habitat. Potential disease vectors like mosquitoes, ticks, and bats are most prevalent at the urban periphery, where human activity penetrates biodiverse ecosystems. It on these peripheries that diseases are most likely to make the jump to humans. This, along with modern air travel, the intense growth of animal agriculture, and wildlife trafficking are all characters in our modern stories of pandemic.[1]
From the ancient past to the present day, the management of space—of people, animals, objects, and environment—has been the primary strategy for containing the spread of disease, even if the theories about how that spread happens have changed dramatically over time. In just a few years at the end of the 1340s, the Black Death, again caused by Yersinia pestis, killed at least a third of the European population, along with millions across Asia and Africa. Governments, especially of societies built around trade, responded by managing the movement of people and goods across borders. Ships suspected of harboring diseases were held in quarantine, their passengers stationed in specially constructed facilities known as lazarettos. The lazarettos of maritime nations were close to the water, often isolated on islands. Though not explicitly prisons, the lazarettos were nevertheless highly surveilled; they often served an additional role as hospitals for contagious diseases like leprosy. The Philadelphia Lazaretto, built in 1799, still stands on the Delaware River, surrounded by the sprawl of Philadelphia International Airport.
It’s easy to forget the extent to which our landscapes have been designed to mitigate disease. Nineteenth-century city planning in Europe and North America was built on notions of cleanliness. Frederick Law Olmsted was obsessed with the environment’s influence on the body, convinced that parks could benefit the health of weary urbanites by exposing them to fresh air and greenery. He also believed, paternalistically, that such spaces would inspire moral behavior among the poor, immigrants, and alcoholics, helping them integrate into the bourgeois public realm.
Theodore Roosevelt, the stalwart defender of natural conservation, himself suffered from debilitating asthma as a child and embraced an out-of-doors, physically active lifestyle as a response. In Roosevelt’s personal narrative, shaky health led him to an appreciation of “wild nature” as source of vigor—in turn informing his promotion of national parks. And Le Corbusier, the icon of modernist urbanism, lived through the 1918 flu pandemic, which killed perhaps three percent of the global population. His views on city planning were inspired by the architecture of Alpine sanitoria—resorts in places like Davos, Switzerland, where one could fight lung diseases like tuberculosis with the weapons of fresh mountain air, luminous balconies, and rest. Corbusier’s vision of the “tower in the park” evokes these efforts to optimize light, air, and space.[2]
Our contemporary stay-at-home orders follow in this long tradition of containing disease through environmental design and the control of space. As a landscape architect interested in how we manage and feel our way through space, I am captivated by how quickly our experiences of space have changed in the past few weeks. For over a month, I have barely ventured beyond a one-mile radius around my home in Berkeley. This limited range of observation is telling in itself: staying at home has hyper-localized my daytime routine.
My neighborhood is typical of Berkeley: houses separated by driveways, small gardens out front, little activity visible to the public. In the past two weeks I have met more of my neighbors than in the previous two years. Our conversations feel like breaths of fresh air, as previously separate social worlds meet for the first time. Our voices join a humble symphony of sounds previously muted by the noise of traffic: not just birds, HVAC whirs, and police sirens; but also the echo of footsteps on asphalt, a wooden door closing, the clicking gears of a passing bike. They’re all sounds I’ve heard a million times before; but they emerge with particular clarity when there is quiet, and time to pay attention. The internet is filled with news—some fake, some real—claiming that nature is reclaiming locked down urban spaces. Yet although there is clear evidence that some environmental stressors like air pollution are down (for the time being), many of these claims are simply expressions of renewed attention to what’s been around us all along. It appears we have forgotten that spring happens every year, that the moon waxes and wanes.
Meanwhile, I look at surfaces with unprecedented anxiety: that bench, this grocery bag, my phone, the mailbox—how long can the virus linger on them? I offer lemons that I have picked from a tree to a friend. She refuses them; I don’t blame her. The interconnectivity of human beings suddenly takes a dismal turn: human networks as disease networks. The instinct to love, to share, to touch, is challenged as we are forced to share our humanity in innovative ways. Online video sessions take on new significance as we realize our colleagues have living rooms, kitchens, partners, and lives of their own.
Blaise Pascal once quipped that “all of humanity’s problems stem from Man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” As we sit at home, we are reminded that we live in a culture addicted to speed and a mythology of more-more-more. Even though there is no shortage in food supplies—at least not in rich neighborhoods—we raid the supermarket shelves to reassure ourselves that we can fill our existential void with something, anything. World leaders promise that the economic engine is only slowing down, not shutting down. At Whole Foods, the music buzzing out of the loudspeakers says the same thing: don’t worry, be happy. Everything is OK.
But, no, everything is not OK, not when employment is tied to carbon-intensive supply chains, not when slowing down means going hungry, not when a functioning economy means threatening life on Earth. Despite the omnipresent government rhetoric of war against the virus, we need to be crystal clear about something: COVID-19 is not the true enemy; the real struggle is against its underlying conditions of environmental destruction and social inequality. I say this keeping in mind those most impacted by the virus—the sick, the poor, the elderly, people of color, healthcare workers, the unemployed. The suffering and fear are inarguably real. Yet the pandemic is the symptom of a much larger crisis of how we inhabit the planet. I won’t dwell on the relationships between the coronavirus and the climate crisis—many others are exploring these questions.[3] All I will say is that a return to normal cannot be our goal.
It’s tricky writing about a crisis in the midst of it—something like painting an earthquake in real time. Yet if pandemics teach us anything, it is that they touch the core of our humanity, and yet we still manage to forget them when times are good. Today, our fragility, our love, and our folly are as clear as the unpolluted skies. But tomorrow they may fade away into the haze of business as usual.
No one knows what the legacy of COVID-19 will be. In quarantine, our perception of space is seeded with a growing awareness that we are connected not just physically—through infrastructure, public space, and microbes—but also through our needs, which we are discovering to be much, much less than we are accustomed to. Whenever we begin to slowly emerge from our homes, these newly recognized essentials must serve as the building blocks of our designed environments. Perhaps sunlight is the greatest work of public art; perhaps looking our neighbors in the eye is the missing ingredient in our desire to build smarter cities. Perhaps letting go is as powerful as grasping for more.
Marseille still celebrates an annual mass to honor a three-century-old promise; the plague wall is now a place for bucolic strolls. Where will COVID-19 leave its traces? No one knows, but one thing is certain: it will be expressed in the stories and the spaces we share. Now is the time to mourn and to dream; to quietly listen and to fine-tune our attention to the possibilities at hand.
About the Author
Félix de Rosen is a student of life, born in France, raised in the US, and currently based out of the US West coast. Visit his website www.felixderosen.com.
Sources:
[1] Roger Keil, Creighton Connolly, and S. Harris Ali, “Outbreaks like coronavirus start in and spread from the edges of cities,” The Conversation, February 17, 2020.
[2] “What Tuberculosis did for Modernism: The Influence of a Curative Environment on Modernist Design and Architecture,” Journal of Medical History, October 1, 2005.
[3] See Megan Crist’s article on the subject, among many others.
**This article (Stories of Space in Times of Quarantine) was originally published at The McHarg Center and is re-posted here with permission from the author.


thewakingtimes--2020-04-14--In Brazil, COVID-19 outbreak paves way for invasion of indigenous lands

In Brazil , COVID-19 outbreak paves way for invasion of indigenous lands With outsider encroachment into indigenous reserves continuing to escalate in the Brazilian Amazon and the COVID-19 outbreak spreading rapidly throughout the country , indigenous people are increasingly vulnerable to both violence and infection .
The threats are exacerbated by a reduction in environmental oversight by authorities due to social distancing restrictions imposed in response to the pandemic .
Indigenous leaders and advocates told Mongabay they fear the situation will get worsen in the coming months as loggers , land grabbers and illegal miners take advantage of the coronavirus @ @ @ @ @ @ @ territories , emboldened by President Jair Bolsonaro ’ s rhetoric and reports of a drop in enforcement activities .
In Rondônia state , the epicenter of last year ’ s Amazon fires , members of the Karipuna indigenous people have submitted a complaint to the local Federal Prosecutor ’ s Office ( MPF ) , reporting non-indigenous people clearing forest inside their reserve , less than 10 kilometers ( 6 miles ) from the village where the group lives .
The document was also signed by Brazil ’ s Indigenous Missionary Council , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and Greenpeace .
Fear of the spread of COVID-19 by non-indigenous invaders inside Brazil ’ s indigenous communities has grown in recent days following reports of the hospitalization and death of an indigenous Yanomami teenager .
At least five other indigenous people have been infected by the virus in Brazil so far , according to a map produced by the ISA .
At least two indigenous people living in cities have died after being infected .
The Yanomami reserve in Roraima state is Brazil ’ s largest indigenous reserve and is overrun @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Indigenous leaders from the region say they suspect the current increase in illegal activity due to high gold prices and low local gasoline costs because of the epidemic .
Recent images published by BBC Brasil show illegal miners advancing on an area of the reserve populated by an isolated indigenous community .
In response to the outbreak , many indigenous groups across the country have blockaded villages and cancelled meetings and advocacy events .
Respiratory illnesses like COVID-19 can be especially deadly for indigenous people .
Over the last 50 years in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ perished from diseases brought by settlers .
Adriano Karipuna ’ s village was nearly wiped out during the 1970s by contagious illnesses after a disastrous contact policy instated by Brazil ’ s National Indigenous Agency ( FUNAI ) , when the country was ruled by a military dictatorship that encouraged the colonization of Rondônia and other Amazonian states .
Today , the Karipuna number just 58 , with several indigenous members more than 60 years old .
Their reserve is constantly targeted by loggers and land grabbers who operate from the nearby cattle-ranching @ @ @ @ @ @ @ area , according to investigators heard by Mongabay , illegally logged timber is processed in unlicensed sawmills before being sold on with forged documents , mostly to Brazil ’ s industrialized southeast or abroad .
Tractors and diggers are stored on rural properties on the reserve ’ s edges to use during illegal incursions , while watchmen , positioned at strategic points or on motorbikes , use walkie-talkies to alert their accomplices if authorities arrive , investigators say .
In the past few years , an estimated 11,000 hectares ( 27,200 acres ) @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ( 378,000 acres ) of forest cover has been destroyed .
Last June , in an operation dubbed SOS Karipuna , authorities found illegally logged wood valued at an estimated 3.2 million reais ( $ 627,000 ) .
They arrested nine people in connection with illegal logging and selling patches of land inside the reserve , and seized assets worth 46 million reais ( $ 9 million ) .
Also in Rondônia , the local NGO Kanindé has warned authorities that the Uru-Eu-Wau-Wau indigenous reserve is at risk following the recent release from @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
The pair were arrested last year after being accused of leading an invasion of the vast indigenous reserve — which sits next to Pacaás Novos National Park and is also home to an unknown number of isolated indigenous groups — to deforest , occupy and illegally sell patches of land inside .
They were released as part of the government ’ s pandemic response to prevent a potentially disastrous outbreak in the country ’ s overcrowded prisons .
A third leader , who is on the run , has also been spotted @ @ @ @ @ @ @ message heard by Mongabay , an unnamed official at the Chico Mendes Institute ( ICMBio ) , the government ’ s environmental agency in charge of biodiversity conservation , said the group was planning to invade again .
In a statement , Rondônia ’ s Federal Prosecutor ’ s Office said it was aware of the risks , as were the federal police , and that they were keeping an eye on the situation .
FUNAI told Mongabay it was “ aware of the threats of invasions ” and “ has been working @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with governmental , environmental and public security bodies.
” On the other side of the Brazilian Amazon , in Maranhão state , an indigenous man , Antônio Filho Guajajara , was shot in the head and nearly killed on the Arariboia reserve , just days after local leader Zezico Guajajara was shot and killed nearby .
Zezico was the fifth Guajajara indigenous member to be murdered since November , in a conflict thought to be motivated by powerful logging mafias and landowners who dominate the region .
Last year , after Bolsonaro took @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the worst levels of deforestation in nearly a decade , with huge fires and a sharp increase in invasions of indigenous lands The end of April , by which time Brazil ’ s health minister says the country ’ s health system will likely collapse , marks the onset of the dry season in the region , when deforestation typically begins to peak , before burning season in August .
Deforestation rates so far this year are already 51 % higher than in the first quarter of 2019 — 796 square kilometers ( @ @ @ @ @ @ @ km2 ( 203 mi2 ) in 2019 , according to DETER , a real-time detection system from the Brazilian National Institute of Space Research ( INPE ) .
The deforestation figure for August 2019 to the end of March 2020 is reportedly nearly twice that of the same period a year earlier According to Oviedo at ISA , loggers and land-grabbing gangs have adopted new strategies of invasion and deforestation .
He said loggers enter the area with motorbikes making smaller entrances so that the canopy of taller trees makes the logging more @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Reports of a drop in environmental enforcement activities due to the pandemic have also raised concern that illegal extraction gangs will take advantage .
In a recent interview with Reuters , Olivaldi Azevedo , the director of environmental protection with Brazil ’ s environmental agency , IBAMA , said his office would be forced to scale back operations .
Marcio Astrini , executive secretary of the Climate Observatory , a group of NGOs , said that in the past a drop in enforcement and surveillance missions was almost always accompanied by a spike @ @ @ @ @ @ @ IBAMA operation against an illegal mining site on the Aptereua indigenous reserve in Pará state , which culminated with the destruction of two diggers , was widely shared on social media and denounced on Whatsapp groups of illegal miners as “ terrorism.
” Also in Pará state , local experts have expressed concern about the Ituna Itatá reserve , which is home to an unknown number of isolated indigenous peoples and has been devastated by land grabbers , following the construction of the nearby Belo Monte hydropower dam .
In February , Edward @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , was arrested there during an IBAMA operation .

In Brazil, COVID-19 outbreak paves way for invasion of indigenous lands
Sam Cowie, Guest
Waking Times
With outsider encroachment into indigenous reserves continuing to escalate in the Brazilian Amazon and the COVID-19 outbreak spreading rapidly throughout the country, indigenous people are increasingly vulnerable to both violence and infection. The threats are exacerbated by a reduction in environmental oversight by authorities due to social distancing restrictions imposed in response to the pandemic.
Indigenous leaders and advocates told Mongabay they fear the situation will get worsen in the coming months as loggers, land grabbers and illegal miners take advantage of the coronavirus chaos to accelerate their attacks on indigenous territories, emboldened by President Jair Bolsonaro’s rhetoric and reports of a drop in enforcement activities.
“These criminals won’t respect social distancing. Much the opposite: they will take advantage to be able to work more peacefully,” Antonio Oviedo, a monitoring coordinator at the Socio-Environmental Institute (ISA), an NGO that defends indigenous rights, told Mongabay.
In Rondônia state, the epicenter of last year’s Amazon fires, members of the Karipuna indigenous people have submitted a complaint to the local Federal Prosecutor’s Office (MPF), reporting non-indigenous people clearing forest inside their reserve, less than 10 kilometers (6 miles) from the village where the group lives. The document was also signed by Brazil’s Indigenous Missionary Council, which is affiliated with the Catholic Church, and Greenpeace.
“We are scared that one of these invaders will bring the virus inside our territory,” Adriano Karipuna, one of the group’s leaders, told Mongabay. “Bolsonaro has told these people that it’s just a little flu and that they can go back to work.”
Fear of the spread of COVID-19 by non-indigenous invaders inside Brazil’s indigenous communities has grown in recent days following reports of the hospitalization and death of an indigenous Yanomami teenager.
At least five other indigenous people have been infected by the virus in Brazil so far, according to a map produced by the ISA. At least two indigenous people living in cities have died after being infected.
The Yanomami reserve in Roraima state is Brazil’s largest indigenous reserve and is overrun by tens of thousands of illegal goldminers. Indigenous leaders from the region say they suspect the current increase in illegal activity due to high gold prices and low local gasoline costs because of the epidemic.
Recent images published by BBC Brasil show illegal miners advancing on an area of the reserve populated by an isolated indigenous community.
In response to the outbreak, many indigenous groups across the country have blockaded villages and cancelled meetings and advocacy events.
COVID-19 threats
Respiratory illnesses like COVID-19 can be especially deadly for indigenous people. Over the last 50 years in Brazil’s Amazon, thousands have perished from diseases brought by settlers.
Adriano Karipuna’s village was nearly wiped out during the 1970s by contagious illnesses after a disastrous contact policy instated by Brazil’s National Indigenous Agency (FUNAI), when the country was ruled by a military dictatorship that encouraged the colonization of Rondônia and other Amazonian states.
Today, the Karipuna number just 58, with several indigenous members more than 60 years old. Their reserve is constantly targeted by loggers and land grabbers who operate from the nearby cattle-ranching district of União Bandeirantes.
In that area, according to investigators heard by Mongabay, illegally logged timber is processed in unlicensed sawmills before being sold on with forged documents, mostly to Brazil’s industrialized southeast or abroad.
Tractors and diggers are stored on rural properties on the reserve’s edges to use during illegal incursions, while watchmen, positioned at strategic points or on motorbikes, use walkie-talkies to alert their accomplices if authorities arrive, investigators say.
In the past few years, an estimated 11,000 hectares (27,200 acres) of the reserve’s 153,000 hectares (378,000 acres) of forest cover has been destroyed.
“We’re scared that they take advantage of this time when we are vulnerable when authorities are in quarantine,” Adriano Karipuna said.
Last June, in an operation dubbed SOS Karipuna, authorities found illegally logged wood valued at an estimated 3.2 million reais ($627,000). They arrested nine people in connection with illegal logging and selling patches of land inside the reserve, and seized assets worth 46 million reais ($9 million).
Also in Rondônia, the local NGO Kanindé has warned authorities that the Uru-Eu-Wau-Wau indigenous reserve is at risk following the recent release from prison of two notorious local land grabbers.
The pair were arrested last year after being accused of leading an invasion of the vast indigenous reserve — which sits next to Pacaás Novos National Park and is also home to an unknown number of isolated indigenous groups — to deforest, occupy and illegally sell patches of land inside. They were released as part of the government’s pandemic response to prevent a potentially disastrous outbreak in the country’s overcrowded prisons.
A third leader, who is on the run, has also been spotted in the region. In an audio message heard by Mongabay, an unnamed official at the Chico Mendes Institute (ICMBio), the government’s environmental agency in charge of biodiversity conservation, said the group was planning to invade again.
In a statement, Rondônia’s Federal Prosecutor’s Office said it was aware of the risks, as were the federal police, and that they were keeping an eye on the situation.
FUNAI told Mongabay it was “aware of the threats of invasions” and “has been working on monitoring and inspection actions in partnership with governmental, environmental and public security bodies.”
Increasing violence and deforestation
On the other side of the Brazilian Amazon, in Maranhão state, an indigenous man, Antônio Filho Guajajara, was shot in the head and nearly killed on the Arariboia reserve, just days after local leader Zezico Guajajara was shot and killed nearby.
Zezico was the fifth Guajajara indigenous member to be murdered since November, in a conflict thought to be motivated by powerful logging mafias and landowners who dominate the region.
Last year, after Bolsonaro took office, Brazil’s Amazon saw the worst levels of deforestation in nearly a decade, with huge fires and a sharp increase in invasions of indigenous lands
The end of April, by which time Brazil’s health minister says the country’s health system will likely collapse, marks the onset of the dry season in the region, when deforestation typically begins to peak, before burning season in August.
Deforestation rates so far this year are already 51% higher than in the first quarter of 2019 — 796 square kilometers (307 square miles) compared to 526 km2 (203 mi2) in 2019, according to DETER, a real-time detection system from the Brazilian National Institute of Space Research (INPE).
The deforestation figure for August 2019 to the end of March 2020 is reportedly nearly twice that of the same period a year earlier
According to Oviedo at ISA, loggers and land-grabbing gangs have adopted new strategies of invasion and deforestation.
“These days they are working all year round including in the rainy season,” he said. “Then when the rain stops for a few days and the ground dries a bit, they call in the trucks to remove the wood.”
He said loggers enter the area with motorbikes making smaller entrances so that the canopy of taller trees makes the logging more difficult to detect on satellite images.
Reduced enforcement
Reports of a drop in environmental enforcement activities due to the pandemic have also raised concern that illegal extraction gangs will take advantage.
In a recent interview with Reuters, Olivaldi Azevedo, the director of environmental protection with Brazil’s environmental agency, IBAMA, said his office would be forced to scale back operations.
“There’s no way you can take these people who are at risk and expose them to the virus,” he said. “There is no choice between one thing and the other. It’s an obligation.” He added the Amazon would not be affected by the curtailing of enforcement operations.
Marcio Astrini, executive secretary of the Climate Observatory, a group of NGOs, said that in the past a drop in enforcement and surveillance missions was almost always accompanied by a spike in deforestation.
Recent video of an IBAMA operation against an illegal mining site on the Aptereua indigenous reserve in Pará state, which culminated with the destruction of two diggers, was widely shared on social media and denounced on Whatsapp groups of illegal miners as “terrorism.”
Also in Pará state, local experts have expressed concern about the Ituna Itatá reserve, which is home to an unknown number of isolated indigenous peoples and has been devastated by land grabbers, following the construction of the nearby Belo Monte hydropower dam.
In February, Edward Luz, an anthropologist supportive of Bolsonaro, was arrested there during an IBAMA operation.


thewakingtimes--2020-03-14--Chelsea Manning Will Be Set Free From Prison, But With Over $256,000 In Fines

Activist and whistleblower Chelsea Manning will finally be released from prison , just days after an alleged suicide attempt .
On Thursday , US District Judge Anthony Trenga ordered Manning ’ s release , but it was not clear if the order was related to the incident earlier in the week .
Manning has spent the past 10 months in prison for refusing to testify to a grand jury about WikiLeaks .
However , she still owes over $ 256,000 in fines , since a part of her penalty for refusing to testify was a fine of $ 1000 per @ @ @ @ @ @ @ she was first arrested .
Manning has previously said that she would rather starve or die before testifying for a grand jury .
Her refusal to testify was a protest of the charges against WikiLeaks , as well as a protest against the entire grand jury system .
Manning has called the grand jury process , where witnesses are forced to testify , an abuse of judiciary power .
Manning ’ s lawyers argued that she was obviously not going to give up , and that there was no point in keeping her @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a testimony .
The Judge allowed Manning to be released because he said that her testimony was no longer necessary .
She had not been released from jail as of Thursday evening and was still being held in the Alexandria Detention Center , her lawyer , Moira Meltzer-Cohen , told CNN .
In 2010 , while working as a military intelligence analyst , Manning leaked footage to Wikileaks which showed that the US military was guilty of horrific crimes .
The footage showed a US helicopter firing on civilians and journalists in Iraq @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 2013 and remained in prison , mostly in solitary confinement , until 2017 , when her sentence was commuted by former President Barack Obama .
Unfortunately , her time free was short-lived , as she was arrested again in 2019 for refusing to speak to a grand jury , in relation to the same case .

Chelsea Manning Will Be Set Free From Prison, But With Over $256,000 In Fines
John Vibes, The Mind Unleashed
Waking Times
Activist and whistleblower Chelsea Manning will finally be released from prison, just days after an alleged suicide attempt. On Thursday, US District Judge Anthony Trenga ordered Manning’s release, but it was not clear if the order was related to the incident earlier in the week.
Manning has spent the past 10 months in prison for refusing to testify to a grand jury about WikiLeaks. However, she still owes over $256,000 in fines, since a part of her penalty for refusing to testify was a fine of $1000 per day, which has been accumulating since she was first arrested.
Manning has previously said that she would rather starve or die before testifying for a grand jury. Her refusal to testify was a protest of the charges against WikiLeaks, as well as a protest against the entire grand jury system. Manning has called the grand jury process, where witnesses are forced to testify, an abuse of judiciary power. Manning’s lawyers argued that she was obviously not going to give up, and that there was no point in keeping her behind bars to coerce her into giving a testimony.
The Judge allowed Manning to be released because he said that her testimony was no longer necessary.
She had not been released from jail as of Thursday evening and was still being held in the Alexandria Detention Center, her lawyer, Moira Meltzer-Cohen, told CNN.
“Needless to say we are relieved and ask that you respect her privacy while she gets on her feet,” Manning’s lawyers said in a statement Thursday.
In 2010, while working as a military intelligence analyst, Manning leaked footage to Wikileaks which showed that the US military was guilty of horrific crimes. The footage showed a US helicopter firing on civilians and journalists in Iraq in 2007.
Manning was convicted in 2013 and remained in prison, mostly in solitary confinement, until 2017, when her sentence was commuted by former President Barack Obama. Unfortunately, her time free was short-lived, as she was arrested again in 2019 for refusing to speak to a grand jury, in relation to the same case.
By John Vibes | Creative Commons | TheMindUnleashed.com


thewakingtimes--2020-03-14--Africa’s First Energy Plant That Converts Trash Into Electricity Opens In Ethiopia

The largest waste dump in Ethiopia has been converted into an energy plant that turns trash into power .
The Koshe waste dump has been operational for nearly 50 years , but after a terrible accident that killed 140 people in March of 2017 , local officials began to consider other possible uses for the site .
Ultimately , the site was turned into the first energy plant in Africa that converts trash into power .
The conversion was a part of the “ Reppie Waste-to-Energy Project ” which seeks to encourage renewable energy throughout the country .
The plant @ @ @ @ @ @ @ incinerate 1,400 tons of waste every day , and generate large volumes of power for local businesses and residences .
Zerubabel Getachew , Ethiopia ’ s deputy permanent representative to the United Nations explained that , “ The Reppie project is just one component of Ethiopia ’ s broader strategy to address pollution and embrace renewable energy across all sectors of the economy .
We hope that Reppie will serve as a model for other countries in the region , and around the world , ” Trash at the site will be burned @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that will be used to boil water until it turns to steam , which will then drive a turbine generator to produce electricity .
It is also said that the plant will have very low emissions , which will comply with the emissions standards of the European Union .
The fact that trash won ’ t be breaking down in the environment is another advantage .
Ethiopia invested $ 96 million in the plant , and hired the British firm Cambridge Industries Limited and the China National Electrical Engineering Company to construct the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to complete , and opened in January of last year .
These types of power plants are relatively common in Europe , where nearly 25 % of municipal waste is incinerated .
These plants are especially popular in Germany and France , which each has over 100 of these waste-to-energy plants within their borders .
John Vibes is an author and journalist who takes a special interest in the counter culture , and focuses solutions-oriented approaches to social problems .
He is also a host of The Free Your Mind Conference and The @ @ @ @ @

Africa’s First Energy Plant That Converts Trash Into Electricity Opens In Ethiopia
John Vibes, Truth Theory
Waking Times
The largest waste dump in Ethiopia has been converted into an energy plant that turns trash into power. The Koshe waste dump has been operational for nearly 50 years, but after a terrible accident that killed 140 people in March of 2017, local officials began to consider other possible uses for the site.
Ultimately, the site was turned into the first energy plant in Africa that converts trash into power. The conversion was a part of the “Reppie Waste-to-Energy Project” which seeks to encourage renewable energy throughout the country.
The plant is expected to have the capacity to incinerate 1,400 tons of waste every day, and generate large volumes of power for local businesses and residences.
Zerubabel Getachew, Ethiopia’s deputy permanent representative to the United Nations explained that, “The Reppie project is just one component of Ethiopia’s broader strategy to address pollution and embrace renewable energy across all sectors of the economy. We hope that Reppie will serve as a model for other countries in the region, and around the world,”
Trash at the site will be burned in a combustion chamber to create heat that will be used to boil water until it turns to steam, which will then drive a turbine generator to produce electricity. It is also said that the plant will have very low emissions, which will comply with the emissions standards of the European Union. The fact that trash won’t be breaking down in the environment is another advantage.
Ethiopia invested $96 million in the plant, and hired the British firm Cambridge Industries Limited and the China National Electrical Engineering Company to construct the facility. The plant took four years to complete, and opened in January of last year.
These types of power plants are relatively common in Europe, where nearly 25% of municipal waste is incinerated. These plants are especially popular in Germany and France, which each has over 100 of these waste-to-energy plants within their borders.
http://www.facebook.com/weareafrica1/videos/176405870451546/
About the Author
John Vibes is an author and journalist who takes a special interest in the counter culture, and focuses solutions-oriented approaches to social problems. He is also a host of The Free Your Mind Conference and The Free Thought Project Podcast.


thewakingtimes--2020-03-14--Tesla Becomes World’s First EV Company to Assemble 1 Million Cars

Since Tesla sold its first consumer car 12 years ago , the company has set and surpassed numerous milestones .
In recent weeks , for instance , the electric vehicle manufacturer became the first-ever to have assembled 1 million vehicles .
Upon meeting the milestone , Tesla CEO Elon Musk congratulated employees of the automotive company .
He also posted a photo to Twitter of the company ’ s new Model Y .
In 2008 , Tesla debuted The Roadster .
The company has since gone on to release the Model S , Model X , and Model 3 .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ to ship its pre-ordered Model Ys to the public months ahead of its original fall 2020 deadline .
Tesla ’ s January 2020 earning reports show that the company aims to ship at least 500,000 cars worldwide during the coming year .
Not only that – the company ’ s cumulative sales reveal the EV manufacturer finally overtook the Chinese automaker BYD in December .
Tesla is now the word ’ s largest electric automaker .
What new vehicles will be unveiled in future years ?
We ’ ll just have to wait @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , plant-based chef , journalist , Reiki master therapist , world traveler and enthusiast of everything to do with animal rights , sustainability , cannabis and conscious living .
She share healthy recipes on my blog Life in Bloom .

Tesla Becomes World’s First EV Company to Assemble 1 Million Cars
Mandy Froelich, Truth Theory
Waking Times
Since Tesla sold its first consumer car 12 years ago, the company has set and surpassed numerous milestones. In recent weeks, for instance, the electric vehicle manufacturer became the first-ever to have assembled 1 million vehicles.
Upon meeting the milestone, Tesla CEO Elon Musk congratulated employees of the automotive company. He also posted a photo to Twitter of the company’s new Model Y.
Congratulations Tesla team on making our 1,000,000th car!! pic.twitter.com/5M99a9LLQi — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 10, 2020
In 2008, Tesla debuted The Roadster. The company has since gone on to release the Model S, Model X, and Model 3. As GoodNewsNetwork reports, Tesla now intends to ship its pre-ordered Model Ys to the public months ahead of its original fall 2020 deadline.
Tesla’s January 2020 earning reports show that the company aims to ship at least 500,000 cars worldwide during the coming year. Not only that – the company’s cumulative sales reveal the EV manufacturer finally overtook the Chinese automaker BYD in December.
Tesla is now the word’s largest electric automaker. What new vehicles will be unveiled in future years? We’ll just have to wait and see…
About the Author
Mandy Froelich is an RHN, plant-based chef, journalist, Reiki master therapist, world traveler and enthusiast of everything to do with animal rights, sustainability, cannabis and conscious living. She share healthy recipes on my blog Life in Bloom.