Grimace to Loathe

How many economic models are basically correct 45 years later?

We are in summer re-runs now and have selected another vintage blast from the past. This was originally published to The Great Change on Friday, February 15, 2008.

Charlie Hall sent us this lovely graph, which has his handwritten scrawl over the page torn from Limits to Growth in 1972. As Charlie points out, "the Limits to growth basic model is right on track as of 2007. Most people (including most environmental scientists) think that the original LTG model has failed because the large oscillations did not come to pass. The original diagram did not have numbers on the x axis except at the ends 1900 and 2100. So no one seemed to have thought about the timing of things. The economists tore that model from limb to limb. In fact when we put a ruler on the axis and drew in some years the model seems to be right on track as of 2007 (the model oscillations are not supposed to have occurred yet)....

"Anyway how many economic models are basically correct 37 years later?"

We added the red arrow to help provide a sense of why it feels so chaotic now. We are at the critical crossing junctions of many of the lines. Unsustainable growth didn't.

Two other interesting takes on growth came across the transom from Jeff Vail and Peter Salonius. Jeff's is the first of three parts, Peter's the first of two. Jeff's theme is that human psychology drives growth and hierarchal systems, including all agriculture, demand continuous growth. Peter's theme is that humanity has been in overshoot of carrying capacity since we abandoned hunting and gathering in favor of crop cultivation 10,000 years ago and that all intensive agriculture, including John Jeavons' minifarming and Steinerian biodynamics, is flatly unsustainable.

While we savor these pieces, we recommend a nice dish from the Financial Collapse Survival Guide and Cookbook (free on Kindle Unlimited), such as Shiitake Joes, but with some small modifications to base the recipe entirely on foraged ingredients. More complete substitution tables are in the book.

Shiitake Joes

This is a very simple and timeless recipe that lends itself to a world of substitution for seasonal and local ingredients. When trying this out recently, we found an old jar of dried peppers marked “2004” that didn’t look especially hot. Wrong. The one tiny dried pepper we selected was more than enough heat for a double recipe of these, shared with a dozen friends.
Serves 6

One half cup finely diced wild onions, wild garlic or ramps.
2 cups rehydrated or fresh wild mushrooms, stemmed and diced
1 Tbsp oil, cold pressed from wild olives
1 tsp sea salt
1 3/4 cup wild tomatillos, finely diced
2 Tbsp fresh wild cilantro and/or Mexican oregano chopped finely

Immerse wild onions, garlic or ramps in hot water and let stand 20 to 60 minutes, then reserve the water. If mushrooms need to be rehydrated, immerse in the reserved warm water and let stand 60 minutes. Add tomatillos to reserved liquid in a small sauce pot and simmer until creamy. Preheat iron skillet. Add oil, onions and mushrooms and lightly brown. Stir in tomatillo sauce. Salt to taste and sprinkle on cilantro and/or oregano. Heat and serve on open-faced arrowroot or acorn flour biscuits or buns, or over wild rice.

Number 59’s Wall

"If the legends fade, who will teach the children?"

— Te-lah-nay

When we first published this essay in September of 2009, our blog was in its infancy and to this day the post has received only 219 reads. Now, in 2016, with the dog days of summer upon us, we are setting off to find a nice beach somewhere and find it the perfect opportunity to repost this story, one of our personal favorites and one we shall tell our granddaughter some day. Likely we will take her to the Wall when we do.

The Wall came to pass from a series of events in the Nineteenth Century, beginning with the passage of the Indian Removal Act of 1830, which was opposed by our local Congressman of that time, David Crockett of Tennessee. A lawsuit for the Cherokee Nation reached the U.S. Supreme Court in 1832 and Justice John Marshall ruled in Worcester v. Georgia, (31 U.S. [6 Pet.] 515) that an indigenous nation was a "distinct community" with sovereign self-government and the power to engage in treaties with the United States.

President Andrew Jackson wrote that “the decision of the Supreme Court has fell still born, and they find that they cannot coerce Georgia to yield to its mandate.” He sent General Winfield Scott to effect the clearances while Congress busied itself passing fake treaties to paper over the ethnic cleansing.

Ewashnay-e-e-mello

A little girl named Tah-nan-kay was living with her people in the Euchee Nation of Northern Alabama at that time. They called themselves Tsoyaha yuchi, “the Children of the Sun from faraway.” Ironically, the Euchee had fought alongside of Andrew Jackson at the battle of Callabee Creek, in the Indian Wars of 1814, and were praised by the General for their gallantry and valor.

The Euchee language is a linguistic isolate, not known to be related to any other language, but there are similarities to ancient Hebrew and the Bat Creek Stone (Smithsonian Collection), removed from an East Tennessee mound (since plowed flat), contains a Semitic inscription of the first or second century C.E. which translates "For the Judeans." Carbon-dating has confirmed the linguistic dating.

We know that the Euchee were descendents of the original Mississipian mound builders, that they were decimated by European disease following contact with DeSoto (1540) and Pardo (1567) expeditions, and that their widely scattered villages were the consequence of that decimation and of being on the losing side of conflicts with in-migrating Muskhogean, Iroquoian, and Algonkian peoples.

The Euchee are now the oldest recognizable residents of the Southeast. There are only 7 native speakers left.

Tah-nan-kay and her sister, Whana-le watched from the bushes where their father had hid them when the whites, led by Hairy Face, who drank from a jug and walked crooked, came to their wasi. Hairy Face killed their family before their eyes, but, guided by their grandmother, the sisters, aged about 16 and 14, reached a canoe and went down the Singing River to the Muscle Shoals. There they were captured, removed to a stockade, and then put aboard a Navy keelboat going to Arkansas, with 20 Chicasaws, 12 Creeks, 11 Choctaws and 30 Cherokees. 

They were given necklaces with brass tags bearing numbers. Tah-nan-kay and Whana-le were given 59 and 60, which they understood to be their new names, the names the Shiny Buttons called them. They said the canoe was so large they could not hear the Woman in the Singing River. From West Memphis, they joined the long walk to Oklahoma. Many stories are told of that forced winter march, and of the more than 4,000 who died, and they will not be recounted here.

We have an artist friend, Bernice Davidson, who has done a series of public art monuments to the Trail of Tears. In one mural she prepared for Lawrenceburg, Tennessee,  she shows a long line of bedraggled men, women and children, some of them in manacles, being frog-marched through town by mounted cavalry. In every window and doorway there are white residents looking on, and they are crying. Those tears are not being shed by the proud and honorable peoples being marched through the town. They are being shed by the citizens forced to witness in shock and horror what their own government is capable of.

After a winter or more in Oklahoma, Number 59 resolved to return home. She told her younger sister that she had visited all the rivers and creeks in that place and they were silent. She did not know the birds. She was not a flower that could bloom in that place, like her sister was, she said. She had spoken to her grandmother in her dreams, and her grandmother had told her to return to the Singing River.

When the snows melted, she left Oklahoma and walked back. In her dreams, her grandmother told her to mark where the Blue Star rose, and to go that way under cover of dark, avoiding the roads and settlements, and especially the dogs around them. The hardest part about crossing creeks was not the swim, but getting through the cane breaks on the banks, which often had nests of the snakes that drum with their tails.

She observed a fox, who her grandmother had told her was very smart. The fox picked up a cane in its mouth and waded slowly into the river. The bugs on the fox moved up to the cane and out onto its dry ends to keep from drowning. Then the fox dropped the cane and swam back to the shore. 

Number 59 told her grandchildren many years later that she spent some months with a family who took her in at their settlement near the warm water (Hot Springs), and then, after she went around the “firefly village” (Little Rock), she met a Natchez Indian woman, named Wachetto, who had married a white settler named Pryor Donelson. Number 59 stayed with the Donelsons that winter. They arranged for a ferryman they knew to take her to Batesville, Mississippi, and from there she kept walking east. 

After she left, the Donelson’s boy, Jacob, discovered a small circular wall of stones behind the barn. Inside the wall there was a stone with the name of each member of the Donelson family, and one for Te-lah-nay, with the Euchee symbol of remembrance. 

Eventually, after more than two years on the trail, she heard the sound of the Night Singer (whipporwill) and Rain Crow (yellow-billed cuckoo) and she knew she was nearly home. Already there were many new white settlements in the 25 million acres of confiscated lands. When she found her home, she sat by the bank and listened to the low voice of the Woman in the River. After a journey of more than 700 miles, “I’ve come home, Grandmother,” she said. 

Wichahpi

 

This story was told to us by her great-great grandson, Tom Hendrix, who sat on a folding chair inside the garage behind his house, as the rain fell in torrents. He showed us a basket woven by a Euchee in Oklahoma, and how precise the weaving was. We were just off the Natchez Trace in Lauderdale, County, Alabama, about 50 miles from The Farm. The story Tom told came from his grandmother and his uncle. 

He says he is not much of a storyteller. Tom’s Euchee name means the Stonetalker. For much of his life, he has been building a wall to remember Te-lah-nay. The wall is actually two massive walls, running nearly parallel, for more than a quarter mile through the forest. The outer wall, representing the Trail of Tears, is very straight and broad – 16 feet or more at the start, tapering to 10 feet, then 8 feet, then nothing. It ends in a tapered hook. The inner wall, representing the trail back for Number 59, is more idiosyncratic, weaving around trees, with alcove seats, prayer circles and small chapels, and many special gifts that have been left in the wall.

Stonetalker, now age 77, told us that each stone has been picked up at least three times. Once in the field, once from his truck, once from his wheelbarrow. He has been through many wheelbarrows, and his favorite, the one that lived longest, was named Fred and when Fred retired he had a special retirement party, dressed in a necktie and party hat. Fred is buried in the wall.

Between the parallel walls Tom has left some low stumps in the path. He says he leaves the stumps as “toestubbers,” to remind people of what it was like to travel at night in the forest.

Near where the wall begins the Nations have sent young stonecrafting emissaries to place sacred protection on both sides — rocks with eyes that look out to each person entering the path. 

At the guidance of a holy man from the Nations whose name we forget he built the prayer circle seven times before leaving it as it is now. Each time he thought he had it right, but the emissaries from the Nations came and measured it with their special sticks and said he had to do it again. He did that until after the seventh time, when they said it was right. “What was wrong before?” he asked. 

“Nothing,” they said. Each time was for a generation, first his great-great grandmother, then his great grandmother, his grandmother, his mother, him, his children, and his grandchildren. 

The inner wall is built with three steps. The ground is birth, the first step is life, the second is death, the third is rebirth. 

For the past 30 years, Tom has been building the wall, a little longer, a little wider, each stone, one stone at a time. He has been visited by people from many countries and many faiths. He works still. He says the wall does not belong to him, it belongs to everyone. It is wichahpi, "like the stars."

Cuba's Second Special Period - 2016

"Cuba’s economy minister told the Cuban Parliament last week, in a closed session, (drum roll) that the country would have to cut fuel consumption nearly a third in the second half of this year."

Foodlines in Soviet Union 1991 (photo by A. Bates)

The story of Cuba’s Special Period has been told here before, but just to refresh. (light bongo beat) In 1992 the Soviet Union was undergoing great social upheaval at home and in the shifts that followed could no longer support its massive foreign aid dole-out to client states such as Cuba. Without Russian fuel and food aid — and more importantly without the Eastern European export market for its sugar and other commodities — and still under the 30-year-old embargo imposed by the United States, Cuba sank into catastrophic recession. The caloric intake of its population shrank by a third. Oxen replaced tractors and combines. Cuba teetered at the brink of collapse.

In the face of these challenges, the spirit of the 1953-59 student-led revolt revived and bolstered the willingness of the population to come together, tighten their belts and do what needed to be done. (light guitar comes in with the bongo beat) Urban gardens led by permaculture instructors arriving from Australia and South America sprung up along sidewalks, on balconies, and on rooftops. Bicycles, horse taxis and “camels” (massive 300-passenger buses) replaced the diesel classic car fleet. Ride share coops, farmers coops, barefoot doctors and street markets ignored the daily power blackouts and kept the country alive, even thriving. (conga beat picking up, maracas coming in) It was an historic moment, although if you ask the average Cuban, as we did four years ago, they would tell you they would never want to repeat the experience.

Generalisimo Batista and his rival, medical student Ernesto "Che" Guevara

When we visited in 2012 we noticed, and blogged here, that Cuba was doing some remarkable things but that much of their economic development came from and is planning to go forward on, their alliance with friends in the South, notably Venezuela and Bolivia. Instead of being addicted to Soviet fossil energy, they were becoming enslaved to Orinoco Heavy. (castanet roll) Cuba uses 80,000 barrels per day of Venezuelan oil, but when we visited they had ambitious plans for offshore fracking, a giant harbor that would handle oil supertankers and Chinese container ships too large to dock in Miami or Houston, and a revival of the sugar industry using Brazilian next-gen technology to make ethanol. In Havana, the neighborhood gardens were still there, but they were beginning to look a little seedy. (tambourine, cow bell)

Following the student-led revolt, conditions improved markedly.

Cuba’s economy minister told the Cuban Parliament last week, in a closed session, (drum roll) that the country would have to cut fuel consumption nearly a third in the second half of this year because the Venezuelan spigot was slowly squeezing shut. Venezuelan oil exports to Cuba have dropped 40% since January. As the news rippled out through Havana there was a universal sense of Déjà vu. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, won’t be fooled again (as George W. Bush said in his being-folksy mode, unable to recall where he was in the fool-me-twice-shame-on-me proverb and so reverting to a rock anthem lyric from his Yale fraternity days).

Havana 2012 (photo by A. Bates)

Venezuela is running dry, as is neighboring Mexico, and bargain basement crude sales to bolster Venezuela’s economy don’t help. Venezuela can no more supply the Citgo stations in Havana than it can keep the lights on in hospitals in Caracas.

Since we are not exactly getting the White House morning briefing we can only speculate on connections between the US military/intelligence community (triple oxymoron there)’s goals in Venezuela. We know that as the curtain comes down on the Pentagon-mesmermized Drone King Administration and up on an uncertain successor, it could be a chessboard moment. (bass drum and brushed cymbals)

Havana 2012 (photo by A. Bates)

We know, for instance, that the shortages in Venezuela are specific products, so other food and consumer goods remain available. Could it be that the crisis in Venezuela is less about the oil economy and more about black ops by opposition elements? Those elements would include domestic food companies controlled by long-standing opponents of the Bolivarian revolution of 1999. They control, for instance, 62% of every arrepa, a staple of Venezuelan cuisine.


The market distortion is curious. Venezuelans can purchase yogurt, cheese, teas, vegetables, chocolate and fruit, but not meat, corn flour, milk, coffee, and personal hygiene products like soap, toilet paper, sanitary napkins and diapers. In a managed socialist economy you’d think the reverse would be true. It is only when you look at the ownership of the companies where scarcity exists that it begins to make sense.

V.P. candidate Mike Pence and actor Everett McGill - Under Siege 3?

The Friday night military coup in Turkey is another one of those things that can be explained by other factors but the timing is curious. There is no love lost in either Washington or Moscow for the Erdogan regime. Russian press and other sources linked Turkey to the CIA-covert resupply chain for the Islamic State in Syria (ISIS), which the Syrian Army, supported by spectacular Russian air strikes, is in the process of decimating. Erdogan was a klutz, but he was Washington’s klutz. He made that very clear when he shot down a commercial Russian airliner and then okay’ed a new pipeline to take offshore oil and gas Israel was stealing from Gaza through Turkey to Europe. That will potentially square US accounts with kleptocrats in Kiev who keep siphoning gas meant for Europe and not paying for it.

Havana 2012 (photo by A. Bates)

As we penned this Friday night this we were watching the air battle over Ankara not knowing who was fighting for whom over what. That Russia Today is a more reliable witness than The New York Times is the new normal.

Cubans have been here before, and actually, this time it may not be as bad. The embargo is lifting. Although Donald Trump is out-polling Hillary Clinton in Florida, especially with Cuban-Americans, his war-chest is no match for hers and

Havana 2012 (photo by A. Bates)

nationwide, at this point in the election cycle, he is a diminishing threat to US-Cuba détente. (muted instruments, brushed cymbals, then just bongo) With air routes opening, tourist hotels being planned, and Havana’s notorious nightclubs a shorter hop than Las Vegas for half the population of the United States, Cubans only have to hold their breath while they turn off the fans 8 hours per day.

Then they can become addicted to tourism. Badda boom. 

Jupiter’s Moons, Juno?

"The aliens of Europa could pack their whole sordid history onto the NASA transmitters aboard Juno and we would tell each other, oh yeah, that was an episode of Star Trek in 1964."

NASA’s Jupiter mission, having achieved orbit around the gas giant that is likely to be the earliest planet in our system, provides fodder for many fantasies of science and fiction. We are such a great species of animals, you know? Look at what we’ve done. Think of all the new knowledge we will derive from this mission. Think of the gizmos.

The real finds of the mission will probably not come from the giant itself but from its 67 moons, or others that may be discovered before the Juno spacecraft swan dives into Jupiter’s gas clouds on February 20, 2018, on its 37th orbit.

Moons like Europa, with silicate surface and water-ice crust, an atmosphere composed mainly of oxygen, and gravity about one sixth of ours, have offered writers and poets scenic backdrops since Galileo Galilei first glimpsed that moon’s profile on January 6, 1610. It is a pretty cold place, about minus 170 C (-274 F) most days. With that low gravity, perhaps it’s a bit easier than on Earth to hop around to try to stay warm.

Suppose, just suppose, that NASA discovers something truly provocative. Suppose on one of those moons there is evidence not only of oxygen-breathing, water-loving life similar to our own, but indisputable evidence of prior advanced civilizations. Suppose we were given to understand that they rose and fell by their own hand, either through their own induced runaway climate change or through the unleashed horror of their own unique weapons of mass destruction. How would that knowledge affect us?

Our guess: probably not much.

To be sure, it would be the news story of the year, even the decade. It would sell a lot of ink, make for plenty of new films and performances — all the ways we tell ourselves what is going on, with ourselves at the center. But would it change the political realities of climate change, nuclear weapons or self-destruction by overpopulation? Probably not.

Sages would bemoan our human inability to grasp the existential threats felt by the ancient Ioans or Europans, much as they do now. Skeptics would poke holes in the evidence, much as they do now. Many conferences would be held in posh hotels in scenic locations. Books would be written, eloquently imploring us to take these lessons to heart. In the end, none of that would matter. The news would fade from the headlines, and then from the back pages. Threads would still be found in history books and online discussion groups, but for the most part, we would be back to where we were in almost no time, and none the wiser.

Why?

Because we are humans. The ‘sapiens sapiens’ appellation is a bit of hubris. We are really not that bright as vertebrates or mammals go. We soil our own nest, sacrifice the patrimony of our young to our passing pleasures, are easily attracted to shiny things and addicted to sweets. As planetary citizens we tend to be more like planetary sociopaths. We’ll exterminate any other species that we decide we don’t like, or have a hunger for, or don’t even think about, regardless whether it matters in the greater scheme of things. Besides, we don’t really get the greater scheme of things, even though we pretend we do.

The aliens of Europa could pack their whole sordid history onto the NASA transmitters aboard Juno and we would tell each other, oh yeah, that was an episode of Star Trek in 1964. We are too jaded to be able to listen now.

If someone is right now hard at work crafting some message in a bottle—a dire warning to a race of future alien beings who may some day come to Earth and assay that layer of radioactive plastic in seafloor sediment that traces the ascent of Man — we’d say why bother? What makes you think alien explorers would be any more alert than we, who have known the dangers of the atomic Pandora since Einstein and the inevitable result of greenhouse warming since Arhennius?

Either you have the ability to behave appropriately or you don’t.

There is inescapable irony in the admission that our race is able to send a spacecraft 600 million miles to explore a large planet and its moons but is unable to muster the collective will to save itself from itself. 

Three Amigos!

"Wherever there is injustice, you will find us."

The Press Scorps are calling the three-way between Obama, Trudeau and Peña Nieto this past week a meeting of the “Three Amigos.” Whether or not it is a reference to the campy 1986 John Landis film of the same name, the allusion has legs.

Picture Barack Obama as Steve Martin’s character, Lucky Day, Justin Trudeau reprising the role of Chevy Chase as Dusty Bottoms, and Enrique Peña Nieto playing Martin Short’s Ned Nederlander. Tagline: They're Down On Their Luck And Up To Their Necks In Senoritas, Margaritas, Banditos And Bullets!

Scene One, They are behind closed doors, seated around a table. “Well,” says Lucky Obama, “I guess you are wondering why I asked you here.”

“We are in Canada,” reminds Dusty Trudeau.

Lucky Obama: “No matter, we all know who we are don’t we? So what are we going to do about the collapse of the European Union?”

Dusty Trudeau: “Well, we're just gonna have to use our brains.”

Ned Nieto: “Damn it!”

Lucky Obama:” What we're talking about is money, real money, Amigo money. No dough, no show.”

Dusty Trudeau: “I take it you are worried about the effect on trade?”

Lucky Obama: “With our trading partners in the East coming apart at the seams, we are going to have to turn our gaze westward. This is why the Trans Pacific Partnership is so important.”

Ned Nieto: “Errr, excuse me. Isn’t what that what you gringos used to say about NAFTA?”

Lucky Obama: "The prescription of withdrawing from trade deals and focusing solely on your local market, that's the wrong medicine. As North America United, we must stick together as our cross-Atlantic trading partners descend into a dogfight over the remaining scraps of their natural resources.

Dusty Trudeau: “No, we will not die like dogs! We will fight like lions! Because we are…"

Dusty Trudeau, Lucky Obama, Ned Nieto: “The Three Amigos!”

Lucky Obama: “Wherever there is injustice, you will find us.”

Ned Nieto: “Wherever there is suffering, we'll be there.”

Dusty Trudeau: “Wherever liberty is threatened, you will find…"

All: “The Three Amigos!”

Ned Nieto: “But Lucky, about those natural resources you mentioned….”

Lucky Obama: “Yes, Ned?”

Ned Nieto: “Well you know we are out of oil now, right?”

Dusty Trudeau: “And our tar sands are stranded by low prices, the time-bomb of finance and the Paris Agreement…”

Lucky Obama: “Not to worry my little friends. We are going green! We will lead the world. This Brexit vote is not just going to knock the London finance market off its pedestal, it will gut and skewer Europe’s solar and wind manufacturing capacity. We can carve up that market and sell everything from finance packages to Tesla batteries to our new partners across the Pacific.”

Ned Nieto: “I am as committed as my amigos to producing half of our continent's power from renewable energy by 2025, but you know we are not going to be able to get there by selling margaritas to tourists in Mazatlan, we will need some help.”

Dusty Trudeau: “No amigo stands alone, Ned. Canada will put up many beautiful aluminum windmills in Mazatlan, so that our winter vacationers from Saskatchewan and Alberta can enjoy air conditioning while they sip their margaritas.”

Ned Nieto: “Many windmills?”

Dusty Trudeau: “Oh yes, many!”

Ned Nieto: “Would you say I have a plethora of windmills?”

Dusty Trudeau: “A what?”

Ned Nieto: “A plethora.”

Dusty Trudeau: “Oh yes, you have a plethora.”

Ned Nieto: “Dusty, what is a plethora?”

Dusty Trudeau: “Why, Ned?”

Ned Nieto: “Well, you told me I have a plethora. And I just would like to know if you know what a plethora is. I would not like to think that a person would tell someone he has a plethora, and then find out that that person has no idea what it means to have a plethora.”

Dusty Trudeau: “Forgive me, Ned. I know that I, Dusty, do not have your superior intellect and education. But could it be that once again, you are angry at something else, and are looking to take it out on me?”

Ned Nieto: “Well, you are right. I have always felt I am the junior partner in this alliance, and that you have invited me in just because you wanted my natural resources, especially oil and gas, and now that those are gone, and anyway we have to stop using them, you don’t really have much need for me. Soon it will be warm all winter in Canada and your citizens will not need to vacation in Mazatlan. I feel like perhaps I will become a burden to you.

Lucky Obama: “Oh, don’t feel that way Ned. You know you have always been a valuable brother to us, watching our southern border. We will need you there to help us stop the flow of immigrants from below. That is going to soon become very serious. You must be strong. You must be fearless.”

Dusty Trudeau: “Wherever there is injustice, you will find us.”

Ned Nieto: “Wherever there is suffering, we'll be there.”

Lucky Obama: “Wherever liberty is threatened, you will find…"

All: “The Three Amigos!”

Ned Nieto: "You must forgive me if I keep harping. When we speak to our real longings, why must we get behind the mass roll-out of unaffordable, bland, identikit housing and unsustainable cities, dead-end jobs, fracking the oceans and a financial system that channels money into a few hands when we could take a different model, of cooperating, equitable and resilient partner nations, showcasing a completely renewable energy grid, home to thriving and antifragile food economies, meeting our housing and energy needs through truly affordable, gorgeous homes and micro-grids in community ownership, supporting each other through the long-overdue disintegration of neoliberalism, creating diverse thriving working cooperatives?"

Lucky Obama:"You are such a kidder, Ned. I guess it is one side of the Donald Trump and Brexit public dialog that people feel emboldened to just say whatever comes into their heads."

Dusty Trudeau: “But at the same time, it's good that we really practice deep listening.  It's only through deep listening that we can hear and connect to the longings, fear, loneliness and so on that underpins much of what we've been afraid of."

Lucky Obama: "I hear you Dusty, deeply. And what I fear you fear is the coming undone of all we have worked for, what our forefathers worked for, what they shed blood for..."

Ned Nieto: "Globalization?"

Lucky Obama: "Ned, would you rather the people of your country be part of the food chain of an offshore elite that preys on their insecurity, or would you rather be the offshore elite that eats their guacamole?"

Ned Nieto: "No, we will not die like avocados! We will fight like mescalitos! Because we are…"

All: “The Three Amigos!”

Lucky Obama: “Wherever there is injustice, you will find us.”

Ned Nieto: “Wherever there is suffering, we'll be there.”

Dusty Trudeau: “Wherever liberty is threatened, you will find…"

All: “The Three Amigos!”