FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES:

(An ad in Christianity Today magazine shows a plaintive Jesus next to a clogged superhighway.)

ADVERTISING

A Group Links Fuel Economy to Religion

By DANNY HAKIM

DETROIT, Nov. 18 ˜ A broad coalition of religious groups is preparing a grass-roots campaign linking fuel efficiency to morality, with some ads going so far as to ask: “What Would Jesus Drive?”

    Leaders of the effort are coming to Detroit on Wednesday to meet with William Clay Ford Jr., the chairman and chief executive of the Ford Motor Company. They will also meet with executives at General Motors.

    “We are under a commandment to be faithful stewards of God’s creation,” said Paul Gorman, executive director of the National Religious Partnership for the Environment, an umbrella organization of Christian and Jewish groups. “This is a crisis in God’s creation at the hands of God’s children.”
    Leaders of many groups within the partnership have signed a letter to the Big Three’s
chief executives asking for improvements in fuel economy. They say they
have a biblical mandate to be good stewards of God’s creation and a responsibility
to the poor who are especially harmed by pollution. And they decry supporting
“autocratic, corrupt and violent” governments that produce oil.

    “We write
now to ask you in the automobile industry a more explicit question,” the
letter said, “what specific pledges ˜ in volume, timing and commitments
to marketing ˜ will you make to produce automobiles, S.U.V.’s and pickup
trucks with substantially greater fuel economy?”

    The letter
was signed by an array of denominations, including American leaders of
the Serbian Orthodox and Swedenborgian churches; Frank T. Griswold, the
presiding bishop of the Episcopal church; David A. Harris, executive director
of the American Jewish Committee; and the Rev. Mark S. Hanson, presiding
bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.

    The letter
says the groups will send study materials to 100,000 congregations of varying
faiths and “train hundreds of clergy and lay people as spokespeople for
energy conservation and fuel economy.” Mr. Gorman said he hoped the meetings
on Wednesday could begin a civil dialogue with Detroit.

    A spokesman
for Ford, Jon Harmon, said: “We know that environmental issues are important
to a lot of people for a lot of different reasons. Our first thing is that
we want to make sure they have an understanding of the good things we have
done,” including Ford’s pledge to improve the fuel economy of its sport
utility vehicles by 25 percent by 2005.

    The campaign
could create complications for G.M.’s Chevrolet brand, which makes S.U.V.’s
like the TrailBlazer and has been courting religious conservatives by sponsoring
a Christian concert series. Mr. Gorman took a dim view of the relationship,
saying “Chevrolet is encouraging people to buy automobiles which are poisoning
God’s creation.”

    One of
the smaller groups in the religious partnership, the Evangelical Environmental
Network, is behind the “What Would Jesus Drive?” campaign. But much of
its effort will be done pulpit-to-pulpit by disseminating bumper stickers,
pamphlets and magazines on the topic of Christianity and fuel economy.
An ad in Christianity Today magazine will show a plaintive Jesus next to
a clogged superhighway. TV spots will be shown in four states ˜ Indiana,
Iowa, Missouri and North Carolina ˜ but distribution will be limited with
an initial shoestring budget of $65,000.

    “When
we look at the impact on human health, it’s significant, and when we look
at global warming, the projected impacts are going to be hardest on the
poor,” said the Rev. Jim Ball, the head of the evangelical group, who drives
a Toyota Prius hybrid. “How can I love my neighbor as myself if I’m filling
their lungs with pollution?”

    Such
views are not typical of religious conservative leaders. An article on
the home page of the Christian Coalition questioned the wisdom of Mr. Ball’s
advertising campaign and echoed Detroit’s claims that toughening long-stagnant
fuel economy rules would lead to safety risks with only minimal environmental
gains.

    Some
postings on Mr. Ball’s Web site, http://www.whatwouldjesusdrive.org, were more
pointed.

    “Jesus
would drive a Hummer” read one message, referring to G.M.’s
gas-guzzling S.U.V., while another said, “This is a Web site with a liberal
agenda and this has nothing to do with the Bible!”

    Rabbi
David Saperstein, the Washington representative of the Union of American
Hebrew Congregations, the central body of Reform Judaism, said, “The letter
raises the issue of urging the automobile companies to engage with the
ethics and human impact of what it is they are producing and to think about
the values beyond the profit line.”

    Not all
members of the National Religious Partnership have signed onto the effort.
The Catholic Conference of Bishops, which last year drafted a lengthy statement
asking for more action on global warming, is not taking an active role.

    “We share
some of the goals and welcome the dialogue,” said John Carr, the director
of social development for the conference.

    “We would
be less likely to talk about what would Jesus drive,” Mr. Carr said, “and
more likely to talk about how to advance the common good of workers, consumers
and the poor, who pay the greatest price for environmental degradation.”

FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES:

By LISA BACON

RICHMOND, Va., Nov. 17 ˜
The authorities are investigating whether vandals who have swept through
here in recent months, slashing tires, defacing businesses and damaging
construction equipment, were members of the Earth Liberation Front, an
environmental organization considered by the F.B.I. to be one of America’s
most prolific domestic terrorist groups.

    “Police
are trying to determine if there are any links to other incidents around
the country,” said Wade Kizer, Commonwealth’s Attorney for Henrico County.

    In September,
vandals used a corrosive cream to etch the letters E.L.F. on the windows
of 25 cars and three fast food restaurants. Lawrence Barry, chief counsel
of the Richmond division of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, confirmed
that his agency was helping to investigate the incidents.

    Mr. Kizer
said he had no reason to doubt the authenticity of the calling cards supposedly
left by the Earth Liberation Front. “But it might be some local people
who have just heard of the organization,” he said.

    The group
may have struck again Saturday night, when five sport utility vehicles
had their tires slashed here. S.U.V.’s have been a target of the group
in the past.

    The authorities
said the Richmond incidents fit the profile of the group’s operations in
the United States. The group has no formal leadership, just a Web site
and a virtual press office to handle inquiries. A former spokesman for
the group, Craig Rosebraugh of Portland, Ore., once described it as having
only a shared commitment to take aim at “anyone who is destroying the environment
for the sake of profit.”

    An e-mail
message from the North American Earth Liberation Front press office said
Wednesday: “As for why Virginia, it simply means that there is an active
cell that has chosen to operate in that area. There are cells in operation
from time to time all over North America.”

    On Sept.
27 or 28, vandals used a glass-etching cream to damage the fast food restaurant
windows. Thirteen windows at each of two McDonald’s and 25 windows at a
Burger King, all in Richmond’s affluent West End, were damaged beyond repair.
Around the same time, vandals used a similar substance to scar the surfaces
of 25 S.U.V.’s at a West Richmond dealership.

    Then
on Oct. 5 or 6, as central and northern Virginia were focused on the sniper
attacks, vandals hacked two S.U.V.’s with hatchets in a suburban subdivision
and left notes on each saying it was the work of the front.

    Similar
notes had been found on July 11 when there was a string of S.U.V. tire
slashings in the city’s historic Fan District. The authorities in Goochland
County, another Richmond suburb, said that two months ago the front may
also have been responsible for the destruction of construction equipment
and damage to the interior of a house being built in a subdivision. A burned
American flag and a message about environmental concerns were found at
the scene.

    The Earth
Liberation Front press office said it was unaware of the Virginia vandalism
until a reporter filed an inquiry via e-mail.

    “We have
received no statement of claim for those actions at this press office,”
it said, “so we are not able to pass along the motivations of these acts,
other than to say that they are in keeping with other E.L.F. actions that
have targeted pollution, roads and vehicle culture through attacks on vehicles
such as S.U.V.’s.”

    E.L.F.
began in England in 1992 as an offshoot of Earth First, an environmental
advocacy group. While Earth First promotes mainstream ecological campaigns,
elves, as they are often called, take a more direct approach, sabotaging
research, burning buildings and placing spikes in trees to fend off loggers’
chainsaws. The group says it has caused $50 million in damage in the United
States.

    The group
first went to work in the United States in 1996, claiming responsibility
for the torching of a Forest Service truck in the Willamette National Forest
in Oregon. Within a few months, the group said it had joined forces with
the Animal Liberation Front to destroy millions of dollars in commercial
and government buildings and research. In 1997, the two groups burned wild
horse corrals overseen by the Bureau of Land Management in Oregon, causing
nearly a half-million dollars in damage to structures and equipment. The
next year, the front claimed responsibility for the largest act of eco-terrorism
in United States history, burning three buildings and four ski lifts at
a Vail, Colo., resort. Damages were estimated at $12 million to $24 million.

    The group’s
actions do not always succeed. In an October 2001 firebombing at a Federal
Bureau of Land Management corral near Susanville, Calif., vandals caused
about $80,000 in damage but failed to free the 160 horses. The group has
set minks free from mink farms, only to see them run over by cars. After
one such raid in Sweden, when group members painted minks’ fur so that
they would be useless to profiteers, the minks died of exposure.

FROM http://www.826valencia.com/store/facade.html

Our Facade

Well, it‚s finished. As
you may know, Chris Ware, one of the world‚s great artists, designed this
mural specifically for 826 Valencia. It depicts the parallel development
of humans and their efforts at and motivations for communication, spoken
and written. It‚s a very complex mural, and requires its most devoted viewers
to study it for about an hour, from the middle of Valenica Street, by far
the best vantage point.

The mural was applied by
skilled artisans according to Ware‚s specifications. The bottom half of
the building, which has been painted black, features gold lettering that
states the name of the place. Over the window is a nice burgundy awning.

 

826
Store

“Definitely one of the top
five pirate stores I’ve been to recently.”

˜David Byrne

The Store at 826 Valencia
is San Francisco’s only independent pirate supply store. We
offer a variety of goods, including lard, flags, eye patches, mops, glass
eyes and the like. We also sell all McSweeney’s-related items. All proceeds
from the store go toward the writing center resting directly behind it.

New items for sale in the
store:

· Swashbuckler hats

· Cavalier hats

· Tri-cornered hats

· Treasure chests

· 826 t-shirts

· Sixteen vintage
pirate cards from the 1920s

· Four ancient Roman
coins

PEOPLE

Title:
Ceremony — Buddha Meet Rock

Label: P-VINE RECORDS (JAPAN)

Format: CD

Price: $26.00

Catalog Number: PCD 1414

First reissue of this totally unknown Japanese freak-out album, originally issued in 1971. Opening in
unique fashion with various street sounds collaged into a sampled excerpt of David Axelrod’s “Holy Thursday” (from his 1968 masterpiece Song of Innocence), this flows into exceptional heavy psych from the group People, lead by the pure wah-wah excess of guitarist Kimio Mizutani (Love Live Life, Satoh Masahiko & Soundbreakers). Mixing Buddhist chanting, chirping birds and religious ecstasy, this one beats B.O.R.B. to the doughnut hole by 2 decades plus. One of the finest P-Vine 70s rock resurrections to date.

from Ananova:

Peruvian teenagers ‘possessed’ by Japanese TV cartoon

The parents of three Peruvian teenagers say their children have been possessed by a Japanese TV cartoon show.

    Christian Vilchez, who’s 16, and 19-year-olds Jorge Vela and Edy Frank Castillo are fans of Dragon Ball Z and never miss an episode.

    But, according to their parents, since watching it last week they have gone mute, had convulsions and lost their memories.

    One of the teenager’s fathers told Terra Noticias Populares: “It is all Dragon Ball Z’s fault. My son is numb. I beg the authorities and the church to support me.”

    Doctors on the town of Tarapoto have examined Edy Frank Castillo and have not yet come up with an explanation for his condition. They continue to study the cases.

    One of the cartoon’s characters is Babidi, a mind altering wizard who uses his powers to “bring out the evil in people’s hearts and control them”.

    The show started in 1986 and has featured more than 500 episodes.

http://www.blastitude.com/13/ETERNITY/wallace_berman.htm

http://www.cannabisculture.com/articles/2154.html

Mushrooms were the topic of Paul Stamets’ stirring speech, which received the loudest, most enthusiastic
applause of the entire conference. The world is covered in a network of mycelium, said Stamets, a small underground web of mushroom “roots”.

“Mycelium is sentient. It is a part of the mindscape of Gaia, an overlying mosaic of neural membranes,”
he said, showing with slides how mycelia looks exactly like the neural network of the human brain. He also showed how mycelia seek and destroy bacteria like E Coli, how they break down diesel and oil, making fungi ideal for cleaning up spills. He pointed to the lowly slime mold, and its eerie ability to navigate a maze in search of food, “choosing the best possible route.” He also suggested that mushrooms may be some kind of Gaian secret agents.

“Mycelium responds to catastrophe,” Stamets said. “As we chop wood and build houses, psilocybe [psychoactive] mushrooms grow in the disturbed areas. The psilocybe mushrooms are following
the activities of humans. It is no coincidence.”

Stamets believes that a part of mushrooms’ secret-agent role is to save the world from human folly by
helping us to evolve more environmentally conscious ways of living. He told how taking magic mushrooms unfolded the mystery of the many uses of fungi to him. He described how he used non-psychoactive fungi to rid his home of termites, a patented process that would replace harmful pesticides
and for which he is now being offered large sums of money. He also explained how he uses mushrooms to rehabilitate forests near watersheds, by creating a mycelial network along logging roads that filters fish-killing silt before it can leak into their marine habitats.

There were many other earth-shattering revelations at the conference, which took eight sessions to complete and lasted three days. Alexander Shulgin, famed entheogenic researcher, author of Phikal and creator of MDMA (ecstasy) and many other empathic psychedelics, presented his latest research on the biochemical content of psychedelic San Pedro cacti, showing us indecipherable chromatographic charts and explaining how picking San Pedro at different times of the day could give you slightly different highs.