Was it something the women once glimpsed?-- not courage, not standing behind their men ... ... whatever it is that sends back deep for supplies more precious than food, before winter? William Stafford I have heard, more than once, the off-hand comment that an epidemic (AIDS was once in fashion, maybe still is) would be the best solution to human overpopulation. Offhand comments are not meant to be complete analyses, so I'll just offhandedly note that the Black Death in Europe took huge bites, but after it died away the numbers of humans slowly and then more rapidly accelerated and here we are again, in the billions.

An ecological approach, which means complications, is not very popular. Strange, because the word "ecology" dosn't mean "environment," it means the whole shebang, our earth, our place of many homelands. The word refers to the way things work, here where we live. It sheds light on a particular problem we might be looking at, human populations for example, while at the same time sending diminishing rays of light that touch links to other problems, opportunities, dangers, questions.

Instead of "What goes around comes around," the ecological slogan is "Touch one part of the web, the whole thing quivers." In plain English: when something comes around again it is not quite the same. This is, as far as science can now penetrate, the way of the world. I'll touch WAR. Let's see what happens. "THE WAR WORKS HARD How magnificent the war is! How eager and efficient ..." That's from the title poem of a book of poems by Dunya Mikhail, an Iraqi woman who had to flee from the Iraqi regime, even before Bush the First launched "his" war. (2) The poem has the immense advantage of treating war as a "thing." No blame is cast. All, even the leader, are in the belly of this beast and it is that beast that "paints a smile on the leader's face."

In this radiance of war I choose a link leading directly to the rulers of our nation who oppress women.That oppression stems from a particularly vicious brand of religiosity wound tightly around plain ol' male chauvinism that refuses equality among us citizens, among people of all colors and origins, among men and women. Men are oppressed too, by an equally vicious brand of maleness that War loves. You know what I mean.

Where is the meaningful universal health care? By /meaningful/ I mean heartfelt and serious. I mean a care that makes doubly sure that all women can choose when, and whether, to bear children, a care that is lavish with government funds (taxpayer money) for that express /public/ purpose. Health proposals put out by politicians are nothing but get-elected blah-blah bowing to the "needs" of insurance corporations, health care corporations, conservative executives of all sorts and, most of all, fear: funders of election campaigns have the politicos securely in their bite, carnassial teeth showing. They can't be serious, let alone heartfelt.

When we gripe about the lowdown stupidity of the masses we are playing the game, the game rulers play. We are taking precisely the posture power elites love. They pretend to honor us as true blue God Bless Americans when we are complacent and contented, while meanwhile stirring up desires we didn't know we had, the better to bring us to the malls. Inside the game the dice -- are they loaded? -- keep landing us on Boardwalk or Park Place; we go broke, lose heart, snarl at each other. But that's just a piece of the Big Picture. There is another world where we live demanding lives. That penetrates, that really does penetrate. Experience counts. We play along, much more than is good for us, but we are not, by and large, a bunch of dummies.

Am I spouting extremist blather? No. A cool look around shows clearly where the extremism lies. It lies in that overarching creature President Dwight Eisenhower warned us about, "The Military-Industrial Complex."

That's how the web shakes, for me. I chose that link leading to oppression of women because it centers on a huge part of the solution: Liberate women, lift the oppressions, create true equality. Those triumphs have to come about, here and elsewhere in whatever sane ways we can help elsewhere, whether or not there are too many people. Are there too many? I'll touch another link and claim that population size looks very different, depending on where you stand and what you see. From where I stand, I see mindless exploitation of the earth. What if we treated the earth differently, for human health and happiness rather than for profits Uber Alles? Shrink urban sprawl, bring cities back to life, reduce automobile insanity, create more habitats for us and the others. Wouldn't the count look a little different, less horrific, if we made that turn?

It's time now, to be outrageous about this. It's time to take a hard look at the rules of the game. It's time to "raise less corn and more hell." (Mother Jones said this).With that firmly in mind, here are some outrageousnesses. l). Use city spaces and structures for affordable housing, free community centers, dance floors, things like that. Rehabing encouraged, but it must be realistically affordable for low income citizens. If that reduces profits, so be it.

2) Instruct all CEOs to reduce dangerous pesticide use by 100 per cent, next month. /All/ is not a typo. They're all complicit.

From a United Farm Workers Alert, August 5, 2006. "Five years ago, the EPA found that two highly toxic organophosphate neurotoxic pesticides--azinphos methyl and phosmet--pose "unacceptable" poisoning risks to workers who are exposed to them.

"Now the EPA has announced it is planning to allow further use of one of the pesticides, phosmet, without sufficient restrictions to prevent worker poisonings. The EPA is proposing to phase out the other pesticide, azinphos methyl, over the next four years.

"This is unacceptable. It’’s already been five years since the EPA admitted both pesticides pose "unacceptable" risks. It’’s time to stop putting workers in danger."

3) Raise minimum wage one month from today, to well above poverty level, for every human being in our nation, including women, young people, old people, middle aged people, immigrants with or without documentation. Money for this can come from aborting endless wars and other waste sinks.

4) Pass the Equal Rights amendment.

5) Instruct auto makers to create high-mileage vehicles across the board, all 2008 models. No exceptions, no deals. Just do it.

I have a long list of these. You might want to write down here, now, your own number one favorite outrageous desire. Fill this little space. Too many people? Too many in relation to what? In relation to sustainable use of earth's resources, a standard answer. Let's accept that. First thing comes to mind is the fantastic waste involved in living the way we do. From chem lawns, analyzed by Ned Mudd in the last Zephyr, to private jet jaunts, waste and more waste. Packaging alone, in affluent countries, fills landfills and faulty recycling centers, puts huge demands on fiber sources and plastics, which come from forests and petroleum. A huge part of packaging links to long distance freight: Bananas from tropical places; wines from Chile, Australia, France; lobsters, an at-risk species, air freighted to Europe; fresh vegetables, fruits and flowers flown and shipped and trucked all over the world. Small farmers set up farmers' markets, but they get no backup from governments. The whole system is cockeyed, geared to lavish energy input rather than local production for local use.

The web shivers. Follow another strand: the way we treat each other. War is one of those treatments. Another is the distribution of material and time and money whereby the already rich get richer, the poor get poorer. The whole world is polarized that way. Example: Caribbean island nations, tourism and cruise line-dominated, local cultures transformed into commodities. All this fluff and fashion, all this showing off, unfair to those who can afford it, trippley unfair to those who can't, and the earth doesn't want it.

I could rant on and on, especially about far-flung collateral damages, such as deadening of human spirit, the waste of lives. What are we, anyway? Women and men and children? Or sheep trapped in the game? Following links into the world ... lots of people doing it, right now, on the world wide web and also in face-to-face affairs and many other ways ... what happens? I suspect a lot of people begin to spin a web of their own; they get to a point where they have to stand up and shout, "I'm not taking this any more"

Sure, you can label all of this wishful thinking on my part, but wait just one minute. When you do learn more, out there in the world, how can an ordinary thinking human person resist the urge to, at the very least, stand up and shout? I don't think I'm a wishful dreamer. I'm asking a question. Now I get to tell a war story. Eighty Sixth infantry regiment, truck convoy traveling north to the winter front, Appenine mountains of Italy. The highway parallels the west coast. All along that coast, hour after hour, lights and black silhouettes, the offloaded paraphernalia of war, assembled in the United States of America, shipped in Liberty Ships, offloaded behind the battle front. Industries instructed by government produced X, Y or Z by such and such time: months, not years. All that stuff, a good bit of it probably redundant, made it past the fascist u-boats into the Mediterranean. Months, not years, all that stuff, mile after mile.

In an extreme emergency, the attack on Pearl Harbor, our government reacted swiftly. Instead of tax breaks for corporations there was price control. Instead of incredible, mountainous waste at home and abroad there was control of scarce raw materials: oil, rubber, paper, aluminum, iron, tin. Meat and butter were rationed. Governments can actually do these things. Control of profits?

Yes, even that.

War. The fascists bombed cities, so did we. The fascists slaughtered civilians in retaliation for soldiers killed by guerillas (Guerillas or Partisans were allies; they were /the resistance/, not terrorists). We sent Japanese Americans to camps guarded by barbed wire and men with guns.

And we ended the war with the greatest war crime ever, the atomizing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

War is a thing, a roaring burning thing, no matter what flag it flies: desperate necessity, noble self sacrifice, shameful lies. Follow war's tracks to any time, any place, it is a human-created beast. Back to the question: too many people? If we keep on using the earth without justice, without equality, without heart, without common sense, then we are, for sure, too many. (1) The quote opening this rant is from William Stafford's poem /The Daily Shoot Out for Tourists on the Square in Jackson, Wyoming/ from his collection, /Wyoming/. Ampersand Press, 1985. (2) Dunya Mikhail. /The "War Works Hard/. Translation from the Arabic by Elizabeth Winslow. New Directions, 2005).