We Are ALL Mauna Kea: A Sustainable Earth Depends Upon an Indigenist Future

How would you feel if foreigners planned to steal your land to build an eighteen story, eight acre telescope on top of your place of worship, burial sites, and water source?! The native re-awakening occurring now on Hawaii may be the single greatest hope for Earth, all her life and peoples. The #WeAreMaunaKea protectors teach us that genocide and ecocide to look at the stars, or carry out any industrial activity, is no longer culturally acceptable. We must all join native peoples out of love standing up for the land, and good-willed people of all races should be welcomed by native defenders. A powerful global indigenist uprising that along with allies ends industrial ecosystem destruction is Earth's last best chance for sustainability and avoiding biosphere collapse and the end of being. We all depend upon sacred lands such as Mauna Kea for the environment within which we live.

By Dr. Glen Barry, EcoInternet

Long prophesied by native thinkers, Earth is dying. The global ecological system is collapsing under the weight of industrial development. More ecosystems including the atmosphere have been lost and degraded than the biosphere can bear. Concurrently perma-war, injustice, and inequity have hit epidemic proportions and are worsening ecocide and obstructing solutions.

While social movements of many types work on these issues, the forces of ecocide are pernicious, resolute, and massive. To date adoption of solutions including smaller families, leaving fossil fuels in the ground, protecting and restoring natural ecosystems, and transitioning our communities to bioregional sustainability have proven orders of magnitudes inadequate to stop or even impede the surging industrial growth machine's gorging upon native ecosystems and peoples.

We got into this predicament as centuries ago ecological colonialism swept from Northern Europe to wage ecocide on ecosystems and genocide upon other non-European peoples. A deadly blend of capitalism, christianity, and militarism sought to liquidate natural ecosystems for perfunctory consumption by some; defended by rigid institutionalized racial, class, and inequity divides.

Against such a desperate backdrop about the only real hope for Earth and all her life that can be found is the resurgence of indigenous thought and action such as that playing out in Hawaii. There on the Big Island brave native defenders have taken a dramatic stand against some of the most privileged seeking to steal their sacred Mauna Kea mountain. In an unjust, inequitable, ecologically collapsing world #WeAreMaunaKea (one of the hashtags on Twitter used by the movement) offers a vision of ecological sustainability and social harmony based upon Aloha 'Aina – love of the land.

#WeAreMaunaKea calls on the Moore Foundation and TMT Hawaii to voluntarily withdraw plans to steal and desecrate native Hawaiian sacred land with an industrial scale telescope. And they do so based upon love of the land and community mobilization in a manner that is applicable to virtually every environmental and social justice struggle. Following in the Gandhian and Martin Luther King tradition of non-violence, their own blend of Kapua Aloha (kindness, love, empathy) stresses bearing witness to ecocide with their bodies, minds, souls, and voices; albeit with a specific Hawaiian flare.

The Aloha 'Aina protectors demonstrate the ecological Earth ethic needed for the human family and our one shared biosphere to survive. A powerful global indigenist uprising that along with allies ends industrial ecosystem destruction of the landbase is Earth's last best chance to avoid global ecosystem collapse and achieve global ecological sustainability.

MAUNA KEA

Mauna Kea is a sacred mountain to native Hawaiians and is vital for pure water on the Big Island. Measured from its base in the ocean, Mauna Kea rises over 10,000 m (33,000 ft), significantly higher than Mount Everest. Mauna Kea dramatically affects wind and weather patterns, and its often snow-capped peaks collect water that feeds the aquifer for Hawaii Island.

There Poli'ahu the Snow Goddess gathers, stores and shares life giving wai (water). So sacred is Mauna Kea that access was limited to only the most reverent of spiritual purposes. Land is sacred to native Hawaiians, and their ancestors believed numerous gods and goddesses inhabit Mauna Kea, and it continues to be revered as a temple. This may appear to be superstitious to some, but it is the basis of a worldview that protected vital ecosystems.

For Hawaiians Mauna Kea is where the sky and earth separated to form the heavens and where the mother and father of the Hawaiian race first met. Mauna Kea holds more than 250 shrines and burial sites and in centuries past its summit was so revered that only high chiefs and priests were allowed to ascend it. The mountain inspires many traditional chants and songs.

There are already 13 telescopes scarring the mountain; and the newest, called the Thirty-Meter Telescope, would be 18-stories tall and destroy an additional eight acres of land, and intensify human waste and toxics entering the sensitive ecosystem. Mauna Kea Conservation District Lands are watershed, historic, environmentally and culturally sensitive lands and therefore have special protected status under Hawai'i law. The mountain is home to endangered Hawaiian flora and fauna including the Hawaiian silversword plant, the mamane tree, and the endangered finch-billed species of Hawaiian honeycreeper that lives only on the upper slopes of Mauna Kea.

Sacred lands such as Mauna Kea offer some of Earth's last intact ecosystems and biodiversity required to sustain humanity and the biosphere. While indigenous peoples account for 4% of global population, occupying 22% of land, their ancestral lands hold 80% of remaining biodiversity. The TMT telescope being built against the wishes of native Hawaiians is neo-colonialism, water and land ecocide, and continues the process of turning sacred Mauna Kea into a poorly managed industrial park. Such is the history of the end of the world.

The Protectors
For months protestors have camped out on the top of the mountain creating human blockades, there have been dozens of arrests, as well as numerous affinity protests nationally and across social media including on Twitter at #WeAreMaunaKea. Those on the mountain emphasize that they are protectors not protestors. Yet for 95 days and counting #WeAreMaunaKea has kept the forces of ecocide and cultural genocide from stealing and fencing Mauna Kea’s summit.

#WeAreMaunaKea tactics have been exquisite. For months small groups have camped on their sacred mountain ready to block reconstruction, as small groups of average citizens protested street side across the island, building strong public affinity (my wife and I partook once and it was lovely). Native rock ahu alters were built on Mauna Kea in anticipation of renewed efforts to steal sacred lands. Last week after the moratorium on TMT construction had ended, lines of protectors mobilized as construction loomed, one by one getting arrested, as the access road was blocked by boulders strewn to impede access. Meanwhile native protestors and allies sang, danced and expressed love, while many others posted photos and tweeted to build global affinity.

#WeAreMaunaKea continues to demonstrate to the entire world the power of Hawaiian Aloha ‘Aina (love of land) and Kapu Aloha (kindness, love, empathy). Yet at the same time TMT and bought government enforcers have learned quickly to not confuse native Hawaiian’s Aloha with weakness and lack of resolve.

Despite the forces of large ecocide and cultural genocide continually seeking to break native Hawaiian blockade to steal and fence Mauna Kea, for months the movement has grown and strengthened. Native Hawaiians and affinity protestors have drawn a line: no more ecocide and rights abuses on Mauna Kea. In so doing they have set an example for the world of how communities can demand control over their destiny and ecosystems.

The native Hawaiian #WeAreMaunaKea movement is demonstrating the path to global justice and ecological sustainability lies through entire communities swarming industrial debasement of sacred natural ecosystems and based upon Aloha ‘Aina and Kapu Aloha defeating such transgressions. When asked who blocked the road, the entire community roars back I have. This is how ecocide will end globally and sanity return to the human spirit embedded forever in the land.

Native Hawaiians protecting sacred Mauna Kea refuse to accept more occupation, land theft, rights abuses, and ecosystem loss. Similar native movements are occurring globally as indigenous peoples mobilize, and it is something that even settlers by birth must embrace to become re-landed in their own sacred ecosystems. Aloha ‘Aina is all about fully occupying and protecting the sacred land upon which we all depend locally and globally for a liveable Earth.

Most amazing though is that #WeAreMaunaKea – like all great leaps of human consciousness – is arising organically, without central leadership or coordination. Soon all over the world one can envision “Indian” native peoples and allies rising up to defeat “Cowboy” settlers restoring Earth and humanity. Native Hawaiians never consented to sacred Mauna Kea being occupied and destroyed by colonizing astronomy settlers.

TMT

The $1.4 billion Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT), to be 18 stories tall and the second biggest telescope in the world, would be built in the Mauna Kea Conservation District on the Big Island of Hawaii. TMT’s insistence that they will occupy and further desecrate the summit of Mauna Kea despite the heartfelt cries of an entire people is a shameful display of cultural imperialism.

Far from a “clean science,” astronomical projects bring many environmental problems. On Mauna Kea, once untrammeled by humans, thousands of astronomers per year now drive to its summit. They leave behind some 500,000 gallons of human waste annually and introduce toxic chemicals such as ethylene glycol and liquid mercury into the fragile environment. Construction has damaged and leveled the peaks, spewing dust and facilitating human intrusion that is wreaking havoc on this fragile ecosystem.

TMT science on sacred Mauna Kea is a crude expression of white privilege, theft, oppression, and renewed occupation of native Hawaiian land and represents continuation of the age of ecocide, waged under the banner of rationality since European colonialism commenced. In this day and age it is unconscionable that racist land thefts and desecration of native lands continue in the name of “science”.

Perhaps no one is more complicit in continued raping of the Hawaiian race and their land than Gordon Moore of Intel fame and fortune. His Moore Foundation have pledged a quarter of a billion dollars to the venture, continuing the long history of Western businessmen oppressing native Hawaiians (including those which overthrew the kingdom leading to present day occupation). We expect such things from the Canadian government and other funders of Mauna Kea’s occupation, but it is particularly vicious and reprehensible coming from a man that purports to be visionary and support the environment.

Recently the Hawaiian Supreme Court agreed to rule on the merits of native claims that industrial astronomy is not a valid land use for state conservation lands. Almost immediately following the announcement, TMT Hawaii and the Moore Foundation sought to immediately rush to the top of Mauna Kea’s summit, breaking the peaceful native blockade, to seize and fence the contested land.

Why won’t TMT proponents wait until the coming Hawaiian Supreme Court ruling on telescope before building? What are they afraid of, and are they aware of some illegality in their actions? We hope TMT Hawaii and collaborators are misguided and not evil, yet regardless #WeAreMaunaKea won’t allow more theft and desecration.

TMT science astronomers and their billionaire paymasters are at this very moment scheming to forcibly break native Hawaiian blockade to steal sacred Mauna Kea. And we need your help to stop them – please start by participating in EcoInternet’s action alert: Demand Those Building TMT Telescope on Hawaiian Sacred Mauna Kea Voluntarily Withdraw.

Astronomers have no innate right to steal Mauna Kea from native Hawaiians. There actions do indeed constitute cultural genocide, which is waged not only with murder, but also by stealing and destroying sacred sites causing despair, social disharmony, and collapse of indigenous ways of being.
When will Intel money flowing through the Moore Foundation and the University of Hawaii stop funding ecocide and genocide being waged upon Hawaii’s native peoples and lands?

Gordon Moore’s misbehavior demonstrates further the horrors of inequity whereby 200 people have half of Earth’s wealth and one billion live on less than $1.50/day, something which is evil incarnate and will kill us all. Billionaires don’t simply get their way all the time, and are not able to destroy all they want by virtue of great wealth. With great wealth comes even greater responsibility to share and protect.

Learning with Indigenous Peoples

#WeAreMaunaKea sends forth a hopeful message of global Aloha ‘Aina – protect and restore land or face biosphere collapse. From Hawaii right around the world – including in Wisconsin and Papua New Guinea where I have recently helped successful native efforts to protect their land – Indigenous peoples lead the way to a sustainable future.

Be clear, native owners of sacred Mauna Kea have not approved its desecration by TMT and they are the only ones that matter. Modern humans destroy ecosystems upon which life depends, native people lead us back, seeking to protect and restore the ancestral garden.

Again, we know that ending fossil fuels and permawar, protecting natural ecosystems and having fewer kids as we share more are necessary to avoid biosphere collapse. But perhaps no single action is more needed to achieve global ecological sustainability than fostering a love and deep devotion to the land.

Globally native peoples are taking back their lands, resisting ecocide, and are leading the way to ecological sustainability. I’m a haole (a white person in Hawaiian), so choose to listen or not. Yet I am married to a Papua New Guinean, have spent many years living in that Pacific Island’s villages, and have spent 2 1/2 decades advocating for indigenous rights and the environment. My life has been lived out of devotion and love of the land.

This I know: In matters of land theft, ecocide, and cultural genocide there can be no common ground. We have to each choose a side. And once chosen, embrace and be embraced. The #WeAreMaunaKea movement faces some obstacles as with its native emphasis by definition it is insular and not particularly welcoming to other races. Yet Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders constitute only 10% of Hawaii’s population. To be successful indigenous movements such as #WeAreMaunaKea need to build bridges to those from all communities that share Aloha ‘Aina and reject further settlement of native lands.

Native peoples should reach out and embrace non-Hawaiians attending their events. While understanding the profound abuses heaped historically on native Hawaiians, it is crucial they stop judging people by race and instead judge them by their actions. You simply can’t do it by yourself, you need allies. Practice aloha towards those of other races reaching out to you in support of love of the land and Mauna Kea. Together #WeAreAllMaunaKea.

I also know that chances to reassert native sovereignty don’t come along often or easily. Given this once in a lifetime chance, it is essential that #WeAreMaunaKea continue in pursuit of total #TMTShutdown. To do so we need a constant stream of social media from the mountain to global supporters to build global affinity. Whatever shall befall Mauna Kea and its protectors, it shall not be in anonymity.

It is well past time for the human family to come together to overcome historical wrongs as work together for global justice, equity and ecological sustainability. We must nurture a profound love of the land even as we end fossil fuels and protect and restore natural ecosystems.

#WeAreMaunaKea calls for an immediate permanent #TMTShutdown to protect native rights, sacred land, and Big Islands’ water. Today and everyday #WeAreMaunaKea reiterate to the Moore Foundation and TMT Hawaii that the TMT telescope will never be built on our stolen land. Sadly a tourism boycott of Hawaii may be necessary if authorities continue abetting the persecution of native Hawaiians.

All Earth’s people are called to rally to #WeAreMaunaKea’s just and sustainable plea, and to express their love of Mauna Kea and all sacred land. Only then can one human family live forever with a sacred Earth.

GREEN LIBERTY is the Antidote to Authoritarian Corporatism and Global Ecological Collapse

Earth is dying

Humanity has so massively overshot planetary ecological boundaries, that already there is an impact upon jobs and consumption; and as a result of diminishing expectations, neo-fascism is rising. It is likely humanity’s cumulative huge demands upon ecosystems, which we seek to prolong at all costs for a huge population base, will collapse the entire biosphere as societies and economies crash. To avoid such a fate we must have fewer children, end fossil fuels, and restore natural ecosystems. Green Liberty – a political alignment of progressive, greens and libertarians that value ecology, justice, equity, and small governments and corporations – is the only pathway within existing sovereignty to achieve global ecological sustainability.

Humanity’s inability to stop destroying nature can only lead to profound human suffering as all known life’s one shared biosphere collapses, falling into nothingness, but not before we undergo an authoritarian corporatist hell on Earth. – Dr. Glen Barry

 Ecological science has known for some time, and I have written and spoken at length, how Earth’s biosphere is collapsing and dying as global ecosystems and atmosphere are overwhelmed by human growth. How and over what time frame biosphere collapse will play out is less known though certain aspects are becoming increasingly apparent as environmental decline progresses. Lack of easily exploitable natural ecosystems to destroy in order to access resources to feed industrial growth has led to a downturn in jobs to fuel highly consumptive lifestyles, and the concurrent rise of political demagoguery and resurgence of authoritarian corporatism (of many types, under many names) to exploit the situation.

Threats to our shared biosphere’s health far exceed abrupt climate change as natural ecosystems which create the conditions for a habitable biosphere – such as old growth forests, soil, water, and oceans – are being pillaged and collapsing. A plethora of emerging science over the last several decades has shown the extent to which key planetary boundaries have been exceeded, leading to a state of global ecological overshoot that can only end in disastrous collapse.

In addition to climate and biodiversity loss already having exceed planetary boundaries, my own peer-reviewed science has highlighted how 66% of Earth’s land must remain as natural or semi-natural ecosystems to sustain the biosphere, though 50% has already been lost [1]. Given Earth is already well beyond her limits, I foresee several trends intensifying including further false techno-solutions and rising neo-fascism, which virtually ensure horrific biosphere collapse, which I will briefly review here. A political re-alignment necessary to achieve global ecological sustainability termed “Green Liberty” is again proposed. I continue to seek funding to complete a long-pending book on these matters.

MORE ECOCIDAL TECHNO-HUBRIS NOT THE ANSWER

The global ecological system is collapsing and dying as humanity overruns natural ecosystems and climate. Incautious human growth wantonly spills forth its filth, destroying natural ecosystems, and the very land and air that make life possible, to allow us to go shopping for things we often don’t need, and not everyone can have. Humanity faces a choice between more of the same chimerical techno-fixes to maintain such conspicuous consumption, such as proposals to engineer the biosphere, or to embrace the ecologically rigorous policies sufficient to achieve global ecological sustainability discussed here.

Continue reading at EcoInternet

VICTORY! Walker’s Proposed Wisconsin Great Lakes Mine Perched Above Lake Superior Defeated

EcoInternet led international affinity protests against the mine

(Green Bay, Wisconsin) – Plans for a major Wisconsin iron ore mine perched in the Penokee Hills above Lake Superior have been cancelled [1]. The proposed Gogebic taconite mine had from the beginning been incautious regarding the potential to destroy tribal rice lands, foul the Great Lakes, and rife with corruption. This is a major blow to all-but-announced Presidential candidate Scott Walker, stopping his anti-science attacks upon Wisconsin’s environment for the benefit of out-of-state funders, even as his demagoguery against workers and education continues [2].

“I guess this means my old college buddy Scott Walker will have to give back the $700,000 bribe from his out-of-state backers,” notes Dr. Glen Barry sarcastically. “This is a major loss for Governor Walker’s authoritarian demagoguery, and shows the weakness of his anti-science environmental policies. It shows that when Progressives and Greens unite Scott Walker can be beaten.”

[read more at EcoInternet]

Scott Walker, Authoritarian Anti-Science Demagogue

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker is an extreme right-wing authoritarian demagogue whose radical, reactionary policies – including his war upon education – recklessly threaten to destroy America

Wisconsin's Governor Walker is a Demagogue on Education

Definition of DEMAGOGUE. 1 : a leader who makes use of popular prejudices and false claims and promises in order to gain power

Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin has gained minor national political visibility in past weeks, and along with it has come a reckoning for his authoritarian belligerence. In a series of recent gaffes his profound assault upon education – really a shocking indifference to knowledge, science, and truth – has come to the fore.

I knew Walker well in college and have been a constant critic of his after his assault upon me in college, after which he later dropped out in shame. Walker’s cheating and lying in college were a foretaste of his later authoritarian assaults upon workers, the environment, schools, and women and children.

Walker’s “big and bold” agenda ends up to be little more than an anti-science dropout seeking to dismantle any institution or other source of power – be it women, schools, workers or the environment – that stands in the way of theocratic corporate oligarchy. I intend to examine his christian extremist war upon nature, workers, and women at another time. For now let’s see how this college dropout seeks to uneducate a state and a nation, to radically diminish us in his image.

College dropout Scott Walker never cared much for fancy book learning – as shown by his taking four years to complete three years of college before he dropped out. Yet in an overpopulated, inequitable, conflict-ridden, and ecologically collapsing world; education has never been more important.

At a time when technology and science are vital for jobs and environmental sustainability, college dropout Scott Walker is an anti-intellectual demagogue who has cut billions from education and local governments, wants to open up teaching to non-professionals, and for political reasons refuses to comment upon basic scientific principles such as evolution and climate change understood by virtually all educated people for generations.

Successful societies revere their scholars. Not Walker’s Wisconsin, where teachers are "union thugs", research professors are "lazy”, and huge education cuts are being foisted upon the University of Wisconsin system to balance incautious tax cuts made to win reelection. Walker went so far as to surreptitiously seek to eliminate UW-Madison’s vaunted 100-year-old “Wisconsin Idea” mission to seek truth and serve the community, declaring it a “drafting error” when caught. Walker is simply unable to comprehend that there are personal and societal benefits to an educated citizenry that go beyond being trained for a job. Walker's UW policies will weaken educational standards while making college more expensive and ultimately unattainable for more people.

Recently another Marquette classmate of ours called Walker to task for fabricating facts to support his victimization of teachers and assault upon schools. In his well-received speech to the right-wing zealots gathered in Iowa, Walker told of a Wisconsin teacher of the year laid off due to union seniority rules. Scott Walker's laid-off teacher story turns out to be a craven lie, the latest in his long history of falsehoods and cheating to gain power at the expense of teachers and students.

The refusal of far right-wing extremist Scott Walker to maintain funding for education and to accept basic scientific principles threatens us all with a christian caliphate that offers only prayer and the beneficent mercy of billionaires as solutions to pressing social, economic, and ecological crises.

This issue is not just that Scott Walker is a college dropout. His vilification of teachers and professors, anti-science policies, and gutting of public education funding reveal he doesn't value knowledge. Governor Walker has further shown himself in recent weeks to be an uneducated, authoritarian man who seeks to radically destroy schools, workers, women and environment to appeal to the tea party faithful.

Either America firmly resists Walker’s brand of extreme right-wing, anti-intellectual, anti-science politics, or else the nation and world face economic stagnation and growing inequity and social unrest, followed by prolonged international conflict and inevitable global ecological collapse. And it will be because of the dimwit self-fulfilling policies of ignorant despots like Walker. Our one shared global ecological system is collapsing and dying as a new wave of anti-science authoritarianism threatens science-based solutions and thus our very being.

In true McCarthyite form, Walker unsuccessfully tries to 
impeach me and one other person after all those responsible
for misallocating student funds had already resigned

Walker’s continued assault upon Wisconsin education is only the latest false flag fake crisis meant to justify his christian dominionist and corporatist social reengineering. Walker’s sticky sweet demagoguery began in college. There he perfected a pattern of advancing through lies, cheating, and creating false crises and victimizing others. For Scott, Marquette and his classmates existed to be manipulated for his rise to power, and college was not about training his mind or learning. I have written of being assaulted by Walker’s neo-McCarthyism in college in my essay Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker Is STILL Unfit for Office. That essay, along with my revelation that Madison's Congressman spoke of child sex tourism, resulted in my political persecution, vile false personal attacks, and flight from Wisconsin.

The funny thing is that Walker had in our later college years apologized to me for using false accusations against me as a political steppingstone, and we had become friends of sorts. I have fond memories of standing arm in arm balancing on a rocking chair sharing a pitcher of beer at a large party as hundreds chortled seeing the rivals enjoying themselves together. I was happy for him when he first became governor, until I saw his old pattern – creating false crises and targeting innocents to amass power – begin to replay itself again and again. I have other recollections to share at a later date.

It is well known that first and foremost college dropout Walker has risen to power by race-baiting, as he manipulates and feeds fears of suburban Milwaukee and right-wing hate radio for black urban Milwaukee. Yet it is not as well understood that in a classic case of demagoguery, Walker has repeatedly won election by skillfully using the envy between upstate Wisconsin citizens without a degree and those college graduates who have better employment opportunities. Having lived in past years in both worlds, I see how he has stoked resentment – not entirely without merit – of the snobbish intellectuals in Madison.

However elitist Madison may be, the fact remains that the path to economic mobility in Wisconsin remains at least a bachelor’s degree and that graduate degrees help. The changing world is more complex than ever before, and college teaches you how to constantly learn and readjust. That is why my friends from high school near Green Bay who never went to college profoundly regret not having done so and are nearly all sacrificing tremendously to put their own kids through college, as they vote for Walker after being falsely made to feel inferior.

Having not run on gutting unions, within days in office Governor Walker threatened to call up the National Guard if unions didn't drop all demands in routine contract negotiations. Walker has threatened to arrest political opponents. This dangerous man has imprisoned singers protesting in the public state capitol and has signed legislation to have the state probe women's vaginas. Walker accepted over $700,000 from an out-of-state mining firm, and proceeded to gut environmental laws to allow his cronies to place the world's largest iron mine in the hills perched above the Great Lakes, which contain 20% of the world's freshwater. Every year Walker’s electoral cheating worsens.

As he did with unions, Governor Walker is again now creating a false budget crisis to further victimize teachers and defund the state's still preeminent but declining university system. He incautiously cut taxes without cutting spending to win reelection and is now balancing the budget by slashing university funding by $300 million, something which he clearly planned. This comes after a nearly billion dollar cut to Wisconsin's education in his first term.

In right-wing extremist Governor Walker's world there is no truth, knowledge, or science; he is only beholden to the voice of god he says he hears in his head – and to donor money.

The message of Governor Walker’s life is that if you embrace my authoritarian anti-intellectualism you too can drop out of college, cheat in elections, gain power, and victimize workers, classmates, women, and children as by night your god whispers the name of your next target. In Walker's Wisconsin there is no governance or minority rights, just electoral wins and autocratically ramming through policy that profoundly hurts those who are less fortunate, while garnering rock-star status and acclaim from your acolytes. And increasing your power; policy is always about more power.

Anti-science college dropout Scott Walker has set out to systematically destroy any institution or individual seeking to limit or balance corporate power. When Earth continues to be ravaged by climate change and ecosystem loss, with our biosphere hanging on the brink of collapse, and while billions live in grinding poverty, America's middle class becomes a distant memory, and perma-war and injustice rage – scientifically based factual and reasoned policy matters more than ever.

It's certainly time that those who benefit from science – such as owners of a cell phone, a computer, or those dependent upon natural ecosystems – learn to respect the process of peer-reviewed discovery of knowledge by highly educated experts who spend their life doing science. Politicians like Governor Scott Walker, who deny scientific truths such as evolution and climate change for electoral gain, profoundly threaten all of our survival. Pandemic response, adaptation to climate change, the need for widespread restoration of natural ecosystems, battery technology to store renewable energy, feeding seven billion people without petroleum, and innumerable other policy matters depend upon a firm grasp of science, something college dropout Scott Walker doesn’t have, doesn’t care about, and doesn't want you to have either.

You can bet your life Asian countries are focused upon education, science, and technology as the engine for their continued well-being and advancement, not undercutting their educational institutions. Unless America leads with continued financial support for unfettered scientific research universities, supported by and drawing upon a widely well-educated citizenry – the cornerstone of America's generations of global leadership – other nations will do so. All nations and their peoples must come together to seek truthful knowledge as the basis for the human family's continued thriving and survival.

I certainly hope that the humiliation Governor Walker repeatedly underwent during his college years – being shunned and losing to a write-in candidate after victimizing classmates in a bogus impeachment, being caught cheating as he ran for student body president, and skulking off as a dropout after being too dumb, lazy, and lustful for power to finish (which I have recounted several times to the media, most recently here and here) – was not the seed of his hatred of education. Frankly, I thought him a better man after having suffered and learned from these indignities, as we all do when we make mistakes and take responsibility for them. I have been proven wrong by his continued and worsening authoritarian intolerance and continued victimization of others for personal gain.

Wisconsin has always been a pleasant (albeit self-satisfied, and parochial) sort of place. But despite our mediocrity, we had a world-class research university that fueled our advancement as a state. I have a master’s degree and PhD from the University of Wisconsin and never saw any lazy professors or wasteful spending. But because of previous gutting of education spending (beginning under Walker's icon, President Reagan), I will almost certainly be paying college loans until I die. The Wisconsin Idea allowed me to spend a lifetime of study on threats to humanity and Earth's survival, enabling me to recently publish a groundbreaking peer-reviewed ecological study on terrestrial ecosystem loss and biosphere collapse (since confirmed by a much larger study in Science) as I worked two other full-time jobs.

Until such time as nuclear bombs are banned
from the Earth, only educated, caring and ethical
people should hold the codes for their launch

I am a product of Wisconsin's schools which have been routinely rated at or near the top in the nation for generations. Not anymore, as America’s Tea-Party Taliban, with prominent member Walker and funded by the Kochs, has seized power and is dismantling Wisconsin’s system of educational excellence. Other earlier types of corporate oligarchy have sought an uneducated citizenry to make autocratic controls more possible, and I believe that is what is happening again in Wisconsin and now threatens America.

Scott Walker is a terrifyingly dangerous man – an anti-intellectual, uneducated demagogue and an egotistic charlatan liar and cheat – bent upon destroying Wisconsin and the nation in the quest to impose his twisted vision on America. Local media have fawned upon Walker, and it is refreshing to see his authoritarian assaults upon education getting the national media coverage they deserve.

As first written by the student newspaper at Marquette over 25 years ago, Scott Walker remains – by virtue of his temperament – "unfit" for office.

Few things are more terrifying than the thought of college dropout Scott Walker engaged in an international crisis with fellow authoritarian Vladimir Putin (a Walker supporter and classmate glowingly compared him to Putin at a recent college reunion). Given Walker's lifelong record of belligerence in pursuit of absolute power, under no circumstances must Wisconsin’s uneducated demagogue have access to nuclear bombs. Trust me, he will use them.