Environment

Auto Industry Bailout

music8200 — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 00:54:07 -0500

Congress will take up the Auto Industry Bailout when they re-convene this week. There is no better time than this moment to PUSH for concessions from the Auto Industry. Time is short. Democrat.com, can you help us act NOW? Here's a copy of a letter I just mailed to Speaker Pelosi: Dear Madam Speaker,

Please make the FLEXFUEL component a MANDATORY requirement for any Auto Industry bailout.
IT ONLY COSTS $100 to install this component on a vehicle during the manufacturing process. The only EPA approved retrofit costs $1300. All cars sold in Brazil are flexfuel ready. All cars that GM sells in Brazil are flexfuel compatible. There is no excuse and there should be no delay in making all cars sold in America flexfuel capable.
THIS IS THE QUICKEST CHEAPEST EASIEST WAY to make rapid reductions in our foreign oil imports.
If ALL cars sold in the US were Flexfuel compatible, alternative fuel manufacturers would gear up without the need for incentives because they would know they have a market for their fuel products.
THEN please help remove the $0.54 a gallon tariff on imported ethanol. That would allow foreign ethanol products to compete in the American market. The American consumer would benefit. We could even lift the economies of Third World Countries by contracting them to grow switchgrass or sugarcane for ethanol fuel.
Ultimately, let's provide incentives for the production of flexfuel plug-in hybrids. These cars would get 500 MILES ON A GALLON OF GASOLINE! We would never need OPEC oil ever again! Perhaps no imported oil at all.
PLEASE PLEASE make the flexfuel component a MANDATORY part of any Automobile Industry Bailout.
If you want good references on this topic, read the testimony of Anne Korin (of the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security) before the House Committee on Foreign Affairs of May 22, 2008:http://foreignaffairs.house.gov/110/kor052208.htm(see in particular the section entitled "17x17")
read R. James Woolsey (former director of the CIA) and Anne Korin's article in the National Review:http://energy.nationalreview.com/post/?q=OTlmMjFjYWRjOWI3ZGI0MzUxZDJjYTBlMmUzOTc2Mzc=
or watch Anne Korin's lecture on CSPAN:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7MVwL2PcCG8(highly recommended)
watch Robert Zubrin's FEW Keynote Address:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0O2YZwSkgM
Thank you and your staff for your time and attention,Scott Lawrence

Bad News for Farmers in Bush's Last Three Months

davidswanson — Sat, 01 Nov 2008 20:35:15 -0400

By Linn Cohen-Cole

While the left is watching the election and the war and impeachment issues and global warming issues, they have missed - entirely - the IMMEDIATE threat to their own food supply and to our "real" farmers who are being pushed to the brink on purpose, our only hope for sustainable agriculture.

For some reason, liberals who distrust the government (and not just this one) when it comes to corporations running the energy department or making drug policy for Medicare or using contractors like Halliburton and Blackwater, and sees through lies to who profits, are utterly naive and trusting of the USDA and FDA about food scares.

They see through threats of "domestic terrorism" as ploys to allow us to be spied on as well as to shift massive control over to the government, gutting our constitution, but they jump about food scares just like the right wing jumps about terrorism warnings. The threat of "food born diseases" is being used in exactly the same way.

We should all know something is fishy when regulations are being heavily pushed "for food safety" and corporations want them. And who is pushing them? The very ones responsible for the revolting conditions in feedlots and animal factories and who block inspections. And that includes the USDA which not only won't inspect but will not allow farmers to pay for independent inspection.

So, something is VERY fishy at the outset with the National Animal Identification System - NAIS. I'll explain in moment what it is but "anything" being changed right now before the election, when everyone is distracted, should make us wary. Especially when it is something huge and coming in purely as a regulatory maneuver and not something that has ever been voted on.

Under cover of the election, NAIS, which farmers were told would be voluntary, just got made mandatory.

NAIS is a USDA regulation that would require the registering of ALL property with any farm animals on it with the USDA, and that global tracking tags be inserted under the skin of every farm animal. The data would feed into a corporate data bank from which agribusiness could watch the moves of every farm animal (chicken, duck, guinea, lama, cow ...) in the country and thus the moves of every farmer.

Ever dream of getting a bit of land and a few chickens and disappearing into peace and quiet. Give that up. You will be mandatorily signed on, without wanting to, without agreeing to, a system that will will track you and which will punish you if your chicken accidentally crosses the road and you don't report it within 24 hours. Do that again, and your life is ruined. http://www.opednews.com/articles/NAIS---the-Fourth-Componen-by-Darol-Dic...

It makes NSA-spying look like a walk in the park. There, you don't have to pay for the equipment used to spy on you or maintain it or fear if you accidentally slip out of range or punish you if you don't follow the "rules" with draconian fines that not only would take all you own but destroy your family's generations of livelihood. With NSA-spying, you can pretend you are still free. Not so for farmers.

NAIS is meant to wreck the few farmers we have left and prevent the emergence of sustainable agriculture. A single infraction could do that. And farmers, who care about their independence, who are living on the margin as it is, know how deadly NAIS is.

They filed suit against the USDA this summer. http://www.opednews.com/articles/Legal-Defense-Fund-Files-S-by-Farm-to-C...

"... existing programs for diseases such as tuberculosis, brucellosis and scrapie together with state laws on branding and the existing record keeping by sales barns and livestock shows provide the mechanisms needed for tracking any disease outbreaks.

... the suit charges that USDA has never published rules regarding NAIS, in violation of the Federal Administrative Procedures Act; has never performed an Environmental Impact Statement or an Environmental Assessment as required by the National Environmental Policy Act; is in violation of the Regulatory Flexibility Act that requires the USDA to analyze proposed rules for their impact on small entities and local governments; and violates religious freedoms guaranteed by the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.

"Other mandatory implementations, which weave NAIS into existing regulatory fabric and programs, have occurred in the States of Wisconsin and Indiana where premises registration has been made mandatory; in drought-stricken North Carolina and Tennessee, where farmers have been required to register their premises in order to obtain hay relief; and in Colorado where state fairs are requiring participants to register their premises under NAIS," explained Judith McGeary, a member of the Farm-to-Consumer Fund board and the executive director of the Farm and Ranch Freedom Alliance.

"We are asking the court to immediately halt implementation of the program nationwide before more farmers and ranchers are strong-armed into participating in a program that the USDA has called voluntary."

McGeary also questioned the accuracy of the existing database noting that an attempt by the USDA to make the information in the NAIS database subject to Privacy Act safeguards thereby removing them from public scrutiny was suspended indefinitely in a ruling last month by the same federal court that will hear arguments in the current suit. That suit had been filed by a journalist seeking access to the database to determine its accuracy."

The lawsuit has not stopped the Bush administration's USDA from shifting to a full mandatory system right before the end of his term. Is that not enough to make us sit up and take notice? Is complete control over all farmland and livestock by corporately run USDA not enough to make the left question they knee-jerk reactions to "food scares"? Or to wonder about how the public is revved up to want more regulations ... which the corporations want, too?

Industrial agriculture gave us Mad Cow disease and its unregulated practices abroad of spreading waste from millions of chickens is linked to Bird Flu and in neither is the USDA pushing for regulating the filth and cruelty. NAIS gives them (through the USDA) control over their competition and the ability to wipe any one of them out in an instant.

The WMD trick is being played again, around food. http://www.opednews.com/articles/Tomatoes-and-Osama-by-Linn-Cohen-Cole-0...

If you look at what is happening in California and Pennsylvania right now with fresh milk (straight from the cow) http://www.counterpunch.org/cohen04262008.html, and understand that sustainable agriculture and any true farming community depends on dairies, you'll begin to see the larger picture and the moves being made to eliminate independent (non-corporate) farming just when liberals are expecting, like surprising Pollyannas, for sustainable agriculture to come waltzing in because it is good (and it is) and solve things.

But it can't and won't without real farmers and farm animals. Then who wins? You got it. Industrial agriculture. And that will be the only source for all your food and their profits will be 100% guaranteed.

To get an even fuller picture, look at two more things coming at us. Canadian Bill C-51 http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2008/06/19/vitamin-c-... would criminalize natural substances. While it is certainly meant to destroy alternative health just as we are moving in that direction - having recognized that orthodox medicine has failed to cure cancer or diabetes or heart diseases - the greater threat of the bill, is control over all seeds and the criminalization of private (non-corporate) seed banking.

The corporate drive to control ALL food, animals and water is proceeding rapidly. Indigenous seeds and animals are being eliminated and replaced with genetically engineered seeds and cloned animals (that is, with PRIVATIZED seeds and animals). Yet, there are few liberals even noticing the immense trap being laid and how they and their naive trust in "the benefits of science" and "food safety" are part of helping. The FDA or USDA need only put out a warning on some food and liberals beg the Bush administration for regulations! Monsanto announces its next genetically engineered crop that comes with ramped up fears about starvation in Africa (though the UN just put out a study that organic farming can feed Africa), and liberals are thrilled because "science is so wonderful." Bill Gates announces a giant seed bank under Iceland to hold ALL seeds in the world and liberals are impressed, not noticing Monsanto (and the Rockefellers) lurking in the background, casting a dark shadow over what is really going on there.

So, how do liberals respond to plans in 2009 for a huge centralized "Food Safety Department"? Whew, food will finally be safe? Or do they pause a moment and think about the centralizationg of our spying agencies or of Homeland Security which them immense powers and hands over more and more technology to watch us and control everything? Do they think about who will run such food agency and what it will "really" mean for food? http://www.counterpunch.org/cole02082008.html

We see how fear is used in all other arenas and even laugh at the right wing for not seeing the game they are jerked around by. But meanwhile liberals are being set up to jump on cue at "bacteria" annd to be grateful for government protection.

I keep being reminded of how Germans used fear of germs and racial "hygiene" to get rid of Jews. There is something about the drive for total purity that is killing whereas multiculturalism, biodiversity, or a good healthy mix of bacteria, are about thriving life.

Frank Pitz says that "Bush's use of fear and the big lie stands on the shoulders of Goebels and other fascists" and he is more than right because what is happening to farmers is fully totalitarian.

The left can go back to fighting corruption and war and global warming and poverty, but meanwhile, our country is being taken over - from the seeds to animals - and those who protect us, the farmers, are RIGHT NOW, are being set up to be wiped out ... through a little USDA regulation being slipped in at the very end of Bush's term.

Perfora Cariño, Perfora!

dlindorff — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 12:44:06 -0400

By Dave Lindorff

It’s going to be interesting to see how much longer the vicious
decades-long US embargo of Cuba lasts, whichever person wins the White
House this November.

The main reason the US has stubbornly refused to trade with Cuba,
and has used sanctions to bully other nations into refusing to trade
with Cuba, while enthusiastically trading with and investing in China,
Vietnam and other communist regimes, is that Cuba has had little to
offer the US, either in terms of products or markets.

That’s all about to change dramatically, with word that the
Communist island just 90 miles to the south of Florida may possess oil
reserves equal to or greater than all the oil reserves left in the
United States.

According to a report in the British newspaper The Guardian,
Cuba may be sitting on some 20 billion barrels of oil, located in Cuban
territory under the Gulf of Mexico. If the reports from Cuban, Spanish
and other geologists are correct, Cuba, which currently only produces
60,000 barrels of oil per day (about half the country’s domestic
demand), is on the verge of joining the ranks of the world’s exporting
nations.
20 billion barrels of reserves would place the little country in the top 20 nations in the world in terms of reserves.

The Republican crowds who are greeting presidential candidate John
McCain and vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin with rowdy chants of
“Drill Baby, Drill!” my have to start shouting “Perfora Cariño, Perfora!”
while watching Raul Castro joining meetings of OPEC.

After all, most experts say that a lot of the offshore drilling
being planned in US coastal waters is likely to lead to dry holes,
while drilling in Cuban waters by the country’s national oil company
Cubapetroleo, or Cupet, and by a consortium led by Spain’s Repsol,
which is set to begin with punching some test wells early next year,
are likely to produce gushers.

If the oil starts flowing, how long will it be before the US starts
clamoring to buy it? How long will it be, for that matter, before US
oil companies start using their lobbying clout to get the US embargo
lifted, so they can get a chance to join the drilling party? After all,
if the US companies are kept out by vestigial anti-Communist ideology,
the investment opportunities will be left wide open for European,
Middle Eastern and Venezuelan interests.

For the long-suffering Cuban people, who have been forced to eke
out a national economy virtually barred from the global marketplace,
this oil find is an astonishingly lucky break, particularly coming at a
time that existing oil reserves are beginning to run out, and that
prices for crude are soaring.

It’s going to be fun to watch the rationalizations coming out of
Washington, particularly from the hard Right, for whom Fidel Castro’s
Cuba has for several generations served as a prime bogeyman in the Cold
War pantheon of villains. Just as Corporate America has since the 1970s
been hypocritically singing the praises of Communist China, and has
been justifying economic trade and investment with that nation on the
grounds that “economic engagement” will bring democracy (all the while
calling for a boycott of all things Cuban), we will soon be hearing
such songs about virtues of economic engagement with Cuba.

This new oil bonanza may not be great news for the
environment—either the waters of the Gulf or for the carbon-sogged
atmosphere of the earth—but for the Cuban people, at least for the
short term, it’s an amazing turn of events.
__________________
DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-based journalist and columnist. His
latest book is "The Case for Impeachment" (St. Martin's Press, 2006 and
now available in paperback edition). His work is available at www.thiscantbehappening.net

Why I'm Voting for Barack Obama on November 4

dlindorff — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 16:04:31 -0400

By Dave Lindorff

Okay, I was going to vote for Ralph Nader this November 4.

It was an easy decision. I live in Pennsylvania, which is now,
according to all the polls, reliably in the Obama column, with the
Democratic candidate holding an insurmountable lead in the polls of 14
percent over Republican John McCain—enough to overcome even the most
devious Republican vote suppression techniques and voting machine
chicanery.

I was going to vote for Nader because I find Obama to be a
seriously flawed candidate. He ran early on an anti-Iraq War platform,
saying not that invading Iraq was wrong legally and morally, but that
it was “the wrong war.” Since then, he has backed away even from saying
he wanted the war ended, opting for a 16-month withdrawal timetable
that would have the killing and dying in that sad land going on longer
than most wars this nation has fought. He has also called for an
escalation of the war in Afghanistan, despite clear evidence that more
troops just will make the situation there worse, and has called for an
expansion of the US military budget, to increase the size of the Army
and Marines, which will only encourage more warmongering, more killing
and more waste of precious resources.

Obama also sold us all out by going along with a bill sought by
President Bush granting immunity to telecom companies that aided and
abetted the illegal and unconstitutional spying on Americans by the
National Security Agency—spying that we now know is massive almost
beyond our imagination, even including the monitoring of private family
conversations of American service personnel in Iraq, of journalists,
and almost certainly of Bush administration political “enemies.” By
backing that obscene bill, Obama has made it almost impossible for
victims of this police-state surveillance campaign to sue and find out
what the Bush/Cheney administration has been up to all these years.

In so many ways, Obama has tacked to the middle or even the right, while spouting soaring but empty rhetoric about “change.”

Meanwhile, everything Ralph Nader says makes perfect sense. He has
consistently called the Iraq and Afghanistan wars the crimes that they
are. He has consistently called for a nationalized health care system,
which every other modern nation has long since proven to be a more
cost-effective and health-effective way to run a medical system than
the failed free-market approach advocated by Obama and the rest of the
Establishment political system. He has correctly denounced the economic
bailout as welfare for the rich and for the corporate criminals who
have been sucking the life out of the US economy for years.

And yet, I think I have to vote of Obama this year.

The reason is partly because I know I would vote for Obama if I
lived in Ohio or Indiana, where the race between McCain and Obama is
too close to call, and so, to vote for Nader when it is simply safe to
do so here in Pennsylvania is really a cop-out.

But even more important, when I see the hate-filled racists and
right-wing yahoos braying at McCain and Palin rallies, when I hear
people calling for Obama to be killed or lynched, and when I see the
rabid hate mail circulating in email inboxes falsely labeling him as a
secret Muslim, a terrorist, a Marxist and a black nationalist, I want
to see the man resoundingly win this election.

But it’s more than that. I also, perhaps against all logic and
experience, admit that I expect something good of an Obama presidency.

Call me naïve, but based upon my own life experience, I keep
thinking that a guy who has worked as a community organizer, a Harvard
Law School grad (and even law journal editor!) who could have named his
price at a Wall Street law firm, but who chose instead to be a
political and community activist, a guy who has relatives who live in
humble surroundings in Kenya, and who spent some of his childhood
actually living in a Third World Asian nation, not to mention a guy who
has surely felt the sting of being called a nigger, has to bring
something new to the White House. Certainly no other president in the
history of the country has come to the office with such a background.

Sure Obama is no leftist candidate. But if he were, he wouldn’t be
heading for an election victory. He wouldn’t even be the Democratic
nominee. He’d be, at best, where Dennis Kucinich is—holding a seat in
Congress where his every progressive effort would be stymied or mocked
by the House leadership.

The unfortunate reality is that the true left in the US is a joke
(many of its purists even mock successful left candidates political
figures like Kucinich, for god’s sake!). Fractured and fractious small
groupings have little or no link to the organized labor
movement—traditionally the bedrock of any successful left political
power. And the labor movement itself is as weak as it has ever been and
keeps growing weaker. The left in the US, such as it is, has even less
connection with the broad mass of the American public, thanks to years
of successful propaganda linking it to Stalin, Mao and Soviet Communism.

I have no illusions about the progressivity of the Democratic
Party. Certainly it has its progressive elected officials who have made
it into office—people like Kucinich, Sen. Bernie Sanders, Sen. Russ
Feingold, Rep. Maxine Waters and the like. But clearly, the Democratic
Party has shown itself to be in thrall to the moneyed interests on Wall
Street and in the corporate suites.

That said, there are important things that could happen—and I
stress the word could, not would—if this election were to be won by
Obama and by Democrats in the Congress. One of these things is that
there will be new Supreme Court justices named over the next four
years. Some will inevitably replace some of the aging “liberals” on the
bench (some of whom have not always been so liberal on economic
issues). Some could also replace current conservative justices
(Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, both obese men, don’t
look terribly healthy to me, Justice Kennedy is getting on in years,
and even Chief Justice Roberts, while looking hale, has a problem with
epilepsy or some other ailment that has caused him to collapse in a
frothing fit of unconscious on occasion).

Also important is legislation to make it less of an obstacle course
for workers to win union representation and labor contracts on the job.
A major reason that unions have shrunk from over 30 percent of the
workforce in the 1950s to just 9 percent of the private workforce (and
13 percent of all workplaces, public and private) today, is that labor
law has been whittled away and turned to management’s advantage to such
an extent that it is almost impossible now to win a union election.
Employers who break labor laws suffer no penalty even when found
guilty, and workers who are unfairly fired for union activity can hope,
at best, if they are lucky, to win reinstatement and back pay after
fighting for years. Most just give up.

If a Democratic Congress passed new labor legislation and a
President Obama signed them into law, as he has promised to do, and if
new pro-labor officials were appointed to the national, regional and
local labor relations boards that adjudicate labor issues, we could see
a genuine revival of the labor movement in America with consequences
for workers’ lives, and for the political system that would be far
reaching and profound—and that could even pave the way for a resurgence
of a left/labor political movement.

Finally, with respect to war and militarism, I tend not to take
Obama’s warmongering seriously. Given the man’s background, I am
confident that he is not a militarist by nature. It may be politically
opportunistic for him to try during this campaign to out-tough McCain
on Afghanistan while calling for a wind-down of the war in Iraq, but it
would be a disaster for him to pursue a wider war in Afghanistan after
taking office, ensuring that his presidency, like Bush’s, Lyndon
Johnson’s and Richard Nixon’s before him, would be dragged down by an
endless bloody conflict.

A President Obama will have his hands full trying to deal with an
unprecedented financial fiasco, and will want the wars off his plate as
quickly as possible. Maybe I’m being a Pollyanna, but I simply can’t
see a smart guy—and Obama is a smart guy—getting dragged into another
quagmire.

Besides, I have a darker vision, which is that the crisis of global
warming, so long denied by the Bush administration, is going to make
itself felt soon in ways that will be impossible to ignore, and which
will demand a crisis response. Obama, I believe, will be the right
person at the right time, to lead that response.

And that brings me to the final reason I am voting for Obama. As
crazy as John McCain clearly is, with his default setting on war as a
solution for all problems, this sickly and possibly terminally ill old
man has chosen to have a certifiable right-wing, closed-minded, bigoted
and stunningly ignorant religious zealot as his back-up. Sarah Palin,
as vice president, would in all probability end up becoming president
during a McCain first term.

This country and the world simply cannot risk having as the leader
of America an end-of-times believer at this critical moment. It’s not
just the polar bears and the wolves in Alaska who would suffer under a
Palin presidency. It would be all life on earth.
_____________

DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-based journalist and columnist.
His latest book is "The Case for Impeachment" (St. Martin's Press, 2006
and now available in paperback edition). His work is available at www.thiscantbehappening.net

digg_url = 'http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/36876';
digg_title = "Why I\'m Voting for Barack Obama on November 4";
digg_bodytext = "By Dave Lindorff\r\n\r\n Okay, I was going to vote for Ralph Nader this November 4.\r\n\r\n It was an easy decision. I live in Pennsylvania, which is now, according to all the polls, reliably in the Obama column, with the Democratic candidate holding an insurmountable lead in the polls of 14 percent over Republican John McCain—enough to overcome even the most devious Republican vote suppression techniques and voting machine chicanery.\r\n\r";
digg_skin = 'standard';

We're a Nation of Lemmings

dlindorff — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 12:27:20 -0400

By Dave Lindorff

Listening to the endless stream of cars passing my house every day,
and knowing, from watching them from my mailbox, that they are almost
all carrying just one person, either commuting to work or running some
kind of errand, I know we are headed for disaster.

Two days ago, there was a report by Agence France Presse
about the ongoing destruction of the world’s remaining wetlands (60
percent have already been destroyed by man over the past century), and
how they contain within them an amount of stored carbon equal to all
the carbon currently in the atmosphere. Global warming and property
development are drying out those remaining wetlands, causing the
release of that carbon, which will more than negate even the most
radical efforts at reducing carbon emissions from power plants,
factories and automobiles.

There are also credible, well-researched reports
that even a few more degrees of temperature rise in the arctic regions
of Siberia and northern North America will melt the permafrost and
release as much 400 gigatons of methane gas trapped in frozen
clathrates for millennia—the release of which would cause global
temperatures to soar to levels not seen in 250 million years (methane
is 20 times as potent a global warming gas as CO2). Vast regions of
Siberia are already bubbling with releasing methane as the permafrost
line moves north.

Now I grant that our corporate media, ever focused laser-like on
important stories like Britney Spears’ return to the stage and on the
latest gaffe of one or the other presidential candidate, have not been
very interested in alerting the masses to these disasters now in
progress that could end humanity’s run on the planet (along with
exterminating most of the rest of the life on the planet too). But that
said, at this point everyone has surely heard enough, and witnessed
enough in person of the dramatic changes taking place in the earth’s
climate, to know that something scary is going on.

And yet, people are not just going about their business as
usual—they are actually, for the most part, complaining not about the
lack of highly energy-efficient transportation, the lack of alternative
and less energy-wasting public transit, and the lack of government
funding for a crash program into researching carbon-free energy
solutions, but rather about the high price for carbon fuels. People are
clamoring for solutions to make gasoline cheaper!

Years ago, back in the 1970s during an Arab-led oil embargo, when
gas prices soared, there were mass campaigns to organize car pools. No
such campaigns are being organized today, and if any are they don’t get
any media attention. Instead we read that geologists are saying that
massive quantities of untapped oil reserves exist in the far north.

Now the last thing we should be wanting to do is take that nicely
sequestered carbon out of the ground and burn it into CO2! But that’s
what many Americans want done. Screw the climate! We want our cheap gas!

There are so many things we could be doing right now to reduce
carbon emissions—as individuals and as a nation. Turning off
air-conditioners would be one. Why should entire houses be cooled by
central air? Cool one room and use it for the hottest part of the day
if need be. Live downstairs during the hottest months and close off the
upstairs when it gets too hot. Ditto in the winter. There’s no need to
occupy and heat an entire house when it gets really cold. Most
Americans’ homes are way too large anyhow, but if you need that much
room, use it when it doesn’t require all that extra energy to heat and
cool. (When I lived in Cambridge, England as a kid, we used to sleep in
unheated bedrooms under cozy comforters, and then in the morning, I’d
go down and light a fire in the living room where we’d be during the
day. It would be cold as hell until the fire started, but not for
long.) Share rides. Plan errands so that many things get taken care of
on one outing, instead of in multiple run-outs. Use bicycles. I have
yet to see, on my own bike rides in town or when driving anywhere,
someone who is actually riding a bike on some errand—carrying a load in
a basket or in a backpack. The only bikers I see are people dressed
like Tour de France racers out for some exercise. What’s the matter
with using bikes for a purpose, instead of the family car?

I’m not trying to criticize, or to say I’m more ecologically
virtuous. I’m looking at this as an unprecedented disaster that is
dooming my kids, or their future children, to a life of strife, misery
and maybe even catastrophe. If I don’t take serious action—and I don’t
just mean individual life changes, but political action—to try and save
their world, I am guilty of a serious crime. And so are we all.

What the hell happened to any sense of shared responsibility, not just for society, but for our own offspring?

Most decent parents are ready to sacrifice in their lifestyles in
order to send their kids to college, or to help them out financially
when they are starting out as young adults. But for some strange reason
nobody seems ready to sacrifice at all when it comes to rescuing their
collective future. This makes no sense.

And yet, this is what our mass culture has done to us. As a nation,
as a people, we cannot think beyond our own noses. We cannot even think
about the need to act in our own and our children’s interest.

Seventeen years ago, I had occasion while living in Shanghai,
China, to visit a rural area in Anhui Province that the year before had
been devastated by a flood so huge that the entire region had been not
just flooded, but put deep underwater. As I neared a county seat town
that was my intended destination, the bus I was on passed a
dike-building project. Thousands of peasants were laboring by hand,
with shovels and wheelbarrows, to erect a 50-foot wall of earth to keep
the river in its banks in the event of another such flood. I got off
the bus and, with my travel companion, started walking towards the
project. When we were spotted, thousands of those workers dropped their
shovels and ran towards us. It was a terrifying moment to have so many
people heading towards and surrounding us, but they were very
friendly—just curious because none of them had ever met a westerner. We
began talking with them, and learned that they were all peasants who
had left their fields to build this colossal new Great Wall of dirt.
They brought us to the worksite and showed us how they would bring
their wheelbarrows to the base of the dike, and then attach a cable,
which was connected to a winch operated by those ubiquitous
one-cylinder, two-stroke kerosene tractors used across rural China. The
winch would whip the barrow up the steep hillside, with a peasant
running up behind keeping it upright. At the last minute, the peasant
would flip the barrow, dumping the dirt and releasing the hook. Then
he’d be off down the hill to collect more dirt.

What struck me, besides their ingenuity, was how all these
thousands of people had left their own fields to labor for the
collective good that year.

I tried at the time to contemplate my fellow Americans doing the same thing, and couldn’t for the life of me imagine it.

Now we’re in that moment. We know the flood is coming, but no one is willing to join the brigade to take preventive action.

No. Buying a Prius is not taking action. Neither is upgrading the
insulation on your house or buying carbon offsets when you fly. We
need, as a nation, to commit to seriously ending our addiction to
fossil fuels, to rapacious development and the concomitant destruction
of forests and wetlands. We need to end our nation’s imperialist
policies and to instead devote the trillion dollars a year spent on war
to saving the planet from ourselves.

A good start would be seeing that people “get it.” That would mean
communities starting to organize around improving mass transit,
arranging for carpooling, and demanding climate-saving action from our
political leaders.

I’m not optimistic.
_________________

DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-based journalist and columnist.
His latest book is “The Case for Impeachment” (St. Martin’s Press, 2006
and now available in paperback). His work is available at
www.thiscantbehappening.net

EPA Official confirms “Cover-up” directed by White House and Cheney – Boxer calls for Johnson to tell the truth

davidswanson — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 15:09:11 -0400

Johnson Must Go Coalition
http://johnsonmustgo.org

In a move that has become increasingly rare among her Congressional colleagues, Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) took public her call for the removal of Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Stephen Johnson if he continues stonewalling Congress, saying,

"Today, I am announcing a number of actions.
1) I am asking EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson to release every document related to the Agency's finding that global warming poses a danger to the public, including bringing the endangerment e-mail back to earth.
2) EPA s hould also immediately release a strong advance notice of proposed rulemaking on global warming emissions.If Mr. Johnson refuses to do these two things -- if he does not have the strength to do them -- he should resign. The American people need the head of the EPA to be an independent advocate for their health and their environment."

Citing testimony provided by former EPA official, Jason Burnett, who "resigned from the Agency after concluding that no constructive action on global warming would take place during this Administration," Boxer went on to charge that a "cover-up is being directed from the White House and the Office of the Vice President." Citing the testimony in October of 2007, of CDC Director Julie Gerberding, Boxer went on to charge that,

"When we held a hearing on the health impacts of global warming, we were stunned to learn that the testimony was watered down and heavily redacted...We now know that this censorship was part of a master plan. The goal of the plan was to ensure that the EPA's response to the Supreme Court decision in Massachusetts v. EPA would be as weak as possible. As you know, the Supreme Court overruled EPA, finding that greenhouse gas emissions are clearly covered by the Clean Air Act and the EPA had to move forward and address global warming."

EPA Administrator Johnson has come under withering attack from environmental groups, EPA whistleblowers, the No FEAR Coalition, ACLU and others who say that Johnson's lack of leadership and lock step acquiescence to Bush Administration pressure has made Johnson complicit in criminal negligence regarding the protection of the environment and the American public. After Johnson overruled the findings of the EPA's own scientists who had recommended more stringent emission standards in California, 15 states filed suit against the EPA in efforts to enforce the findings of the EPA scientists whom Johnson had overruled. Indeed, just last month a partnership of over 20 organizations http://johnsonmustgo.org publicly demanded Mr. Johnson's resignation.

"So, it turns out that - as with many departments of our goverment - Dick Cheney has been running the EPA, and effectively shooting our children's future in the face with his shotgun," said David Swanson, Washington Director of Democrats.com. "Asking Dick Cheney to protect our environment is like asking a serpent to guard a cage of mice. But, of course, nobody ever asked him. Stephen Johnson was approved to serve as the administrator of an agency in an open and democratic government, not to obey secret orders to mislead the Congress and the public and reverse the legal actions of his staff. If Cheney is not held accountable, and his loyal servant Johnson is not held accountable, and those EPA employees who fail to blow the whistle on them are not held accountable, their faces will need to be carved onto a strip-mined mountain as a giant monument to our species' attempted suicide."

“Johnson continues to stonewall Congress and continues to overrule EPA staff experts’ advice, threatening human health and the environment,” said Friends of the Earth President Brent Blackwelder. “It is time for him to go.”

Oil drilling off Florida/s coast

tiki — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 13:23:12 -0400

We need to take action against oil drilling before too late

Reply to: see below
Date: 2008-06-21, 6:18PM EDT

Folks, We need every Floridians voice to stop this.

I just sent the email below to the Governor of our great state. I'm extremely concerned that political expediency is clouding the debate over an issue that is so important to Florida - keeping oil rigs off our shores. The bottom line is that no amount of drilling will reduce gas prices, and politicians shouldn't be giving people this false hope.

Please read my email and help me get the truth out about drilling by writing a letter to the editor of your local paper today.

Governor Crist,

You and I have worked together on many, many issues. While we don't always agree, I have always respected you for your willingness to engage an honest debate and avoid the rank partisanship that has defined our state for too long.

So it is in that spirit that I urge you to reconsider your support of Senator McCain and President Bush's position to lift the moratorium on drilling off the shores of Florida. Although I am confident that we will disagree on who to support for President, we both should be able to agree that Florida's pristine coastline should not become just another chit in presidential politics.

What is most distressing has been the argument that we should lift the ban because of the high cost of gasoline. It is simply not fair or accurate to suggest that allowing oil drilling off the Florida coast will do anything to alleviate the currently oppressive cost of fuel. In fact, the Bush administration issued a report saying exactly that just last year, and John McCain himself admitted as recently as three weeks ago that this would not help consumers at the pump.

I think your initial instincts on this were right and I urge you to retreat to your original position that protects our pristine coastlines.

You and I agree that we should not gamble with our state's economic future. So let's protect our coastlines by maintaining the moratorium on drilling off Florida's beaches.

Your friend,
Dan Gelber

I feel very strongly about this issue, as I'm sure you do. I want lower gas prices like everybody else, but misinformation and dangerous policies won't do anything to bring them down.

With our help, Barack Obama will be the next President of the United States, and he understands that if we're going to reduce our dependence on foreign oil, we're going to have to get serious about investing in clean, renewable sources of energy - not destroying our beaches for a relatively minute amount of oil.

Don't let your friends and neighbors be fooled by this political ploy. Drilling won't reduce gas prices, and we ought not to even consider risking Florida's tourism-based economy.

Click here to use the Party's Letter-to-the-Editor tool to set the record straight today.

I'll let you know if I hear back from the Governor.

Sincerely,

Dan Gelber
Democratic Leader, Florida House of Representatives

EPA Head Must Resign

davidswanson — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 14:16:47 -0400

Please Join Us in Demanding the Resignation of EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson

Johnson punishes whistleblowers, stonewalls Congress, and devastates the environment.

A coalition has formed to demand his resignation that includes the No Fear Coalition, AfterDowningStreet.org, Democrats.com, Friends of the Earth, the Black Leadership Roundtable, the Hip Hop Caucus, the Federally Employed Legal Defense Fund, the Congress Against Racism and Corruption in Law Enforcement, the Backbone Campaign, OpEdNews, World Prout Assembly, Code Pink, Why Not News, the Black Commentator, the Urban Journal, and the National Whistleblower Center.

Rev. Walter E. Fauntroy, Member of Congress 1971- 1991, and Chair of the National Black Leadership Conference, has drafted an open letter demanding Johnson's resignation. You can read and sign the letter (which will add to a petition count and send an Email to your representative and two senators), and read much more about Stephen Johnson, at: http://johnsonmustgo.org

Please sign the letter right away:
http://johnsonmustgo.org

Please forward this message far and wide!

News of Rapid Glacial Melting Raises a Big Question for Presidential Candidates

dlindorff — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 16:21:24 -0400

By Dave Lindorff

Okay. Enough about race.

We've got a bigger problem here than how to get along with each other, as important as that may be, and that's how to make sure that any of us--or our children and grandchildren--are around in another hundred years.

Fast on the heels of reports about the increasingly, and unexpectedly rapid melting of Greenland's giant ice sheet, come even more scary reports about accelerated glacial melting in Antarctica, where there is a whole lot more ice.

Taken together, if these trends, which are based upon extensive photographic and on-the-ice observations, continue, not only could we see the oceans rise not just a few feet, but perhaps 15 feet within most of our lifetimes, with devastating results for coastal cities and regions around the world, but we could see runaway global warming ignited that could put the earth on a one-way trip to a mass extinction event worse, perhaps, than what hit the dinosaurs 65 million years ago.

In a remarkable book titled Six Degrees, author Mark Lynas, a science writer with National Geographic Magazine, documents in chilling detail what will happen to life on earth, and to the earth itself, with each degree celsius that the earth's average temperature rises.

Chapters 1-3, which document temperature rises of 1-3 degrees celsius (about 2-6 degrees fahrenheit) are pretty disturbing, but the later chapters documenting temperature rises of 4, 5 and 6 degrees celsius, are truly nightmarish. And the scariest part is that once you get to the 3 degree celsius level, the stage gets set for the higher temperatures, making it difficult if not impossible to avoid the increasingly worsening scenarios. This is because once the temperature gets a few degrees out of whack, crucial forests die off, whole swaths of temperate zone landmasses become desert, and worst of all, the permafrost in the Siberian and North American tundra disappears, freeing massive amounts of trapped methane gas from the rotting swamps and peat bogs that cover that region. And methane, remember, is 23 times as potent a global warming gas as is carbon dioxide.

Worse yet, as melting polar regions lead to a slowdown in the oceanic currents and as the stagnating seas begin to warm, an even greater danger--the release of even vaster quantities of methane trapped as icy hydrates under the sea floor--is posed. If these hydrates pop to the surface in massive "burps," they could, Lynas reports, mimic several such events in the Earth's past, causing global temperatures to soar, and the oceans to become stagnant, anoxic (devoid of oxygen), lifeless pools, which would then begin emitting vast amounts of toxic sulfur dioxide gas. On several occasions, Lynas notes, life itself was threatened on Earth when just such a thing happened, and if such a scenario played out again, life would be threatened again. The difference is that now the sun itself is hotter than it was 55 or 150 million years ago, making a return to "normal" that much more problematic.

Scientists can debate the risks of such a disaster's occurring, and certainly there is (thank goodness!) a minority view that we are not headed towards climate catastrophe.

Hope, as candidate Barak Obama is wont to say, is a fine thing, and I'm all for hope.

But here's the rub: If the majority scientific view is correct, and there is even a small chance that the Earth is headed towards a historically unprecedented rapid heating event that would bring temperatures into the range where methane will start to be the main threat, then doesn't prudence and sanity require that we embark ASAP on efforts to prevent that happening?

The cost of seriously combating climate change now--and I'm not talking about switching from cars that get 25 mpg to cars that get 60 mpg, and switching from coal-powered generating plants to LNG-powered plants; I'm talking about eliminating the internal combustion engine as a mode of transportation, and eliminating carbon-fueled generating plants altogether--would be enormous. That is clear. To actually cut global carbon emissions by 80 percent from current levels over the next decade, we would, economists say, have to forego a couple percentage points of global economic growth every year, cut consumption dramatically, embark on major campaigns to save rainforests, and halt and even reverse population growth. We would, ultimately, have to change our entire economic model from one of growth to one of sustainability.

But how do we compare that kind of hardship with extinction?

Let's say, hypothetically, that there is a 10-percent chance that we are headed down a road that leads to extinction of the human race in a scant 1-200 years, if we do nothing dramatic to change course. And let's say there's a 90 percent chance that nothing bad is going to happen. Should we take that gamble and carry on as we are?

If you say yes, let me change the odds. Suppose there's a 30-percent chance we're headed the way of the dinosaur if we don't change our ways dramatically? Still think we should just carry on?

Personally, I think the evidence before my eyes, in the earlier budding of the trees that I have witnessed just over the last five or six years, and the evidence of the melting away of the Arctic ice cap, not to mention the above-mentioned galloping melting of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, suggests that the odds of disaster are much, much greater than 50 percent (in fact, I think they're closer to 90 percent!).

In any event, whatever odds you may assign to climate disaster, isn't it the wise thing to do to take steps to minimize that risk? What do you do about car insurance? Sure the law requires you to buy it, but what are the odds of your ever being stopped by a cop and being ordered to show an insurance card? What are the odds of your having an accident, and needing coverage? Heck, I drove 10 years without an accident or a stop (and the one minor accident I did have was so small I was able to pay for the damage and avoid having to report it). And yet each year, I was paying out over a grand for coverage. It would have been far cheaper to skip all those premiums and to pay a fine if I got caught. But, I have prudently calculated that if I ever had a serious accident, unlikely as that may be, it would be better to have the insurance, so I buy it and give up $1000 a year worth of income I could have enjoyed spending. And how much more serious is extinction than the consequences of driving without insurance?

And here is where our politics and our media are failing us abysmally. With such a huge issue facing not just our nation, but the world, none of the three candidates running for the presidency of the nation that accounts for 25 percent of the world's total carbon emissions has been asked, or has offered, an opinion on this issue.

All three, to the extent that they've been asked about climate change at all, have been allowed to make vague feel-good statements about their support for carbon trading, or for increased gas mileage requirements (Hillary Clinton actually answered a question about global warming by saying she would install thermal windows on all government buildings!).

None has been asked whether he or she thinks that humanity is heading for catastrophe, or whether we can continue with an economic system that makes economic growth a key goal. None has been asked what he or she would do as president if convinced by science advisors that the danger of runaway global warming and imminent mass extinction were real.

How pathetic and irresponsible is that? Reporters will regularly ask candidates what they would do if Iran got the bomb, or if there were another 9-11 type of attack on the US, but no one is asking what they would do if it became evident that our children, or grandchildren, might not survive the century.

It is time to make these would-be leaders all face up to this most serious of all crises. We as voters need to know: What do each of these candidates think about the threat of global warming, and how do they plan to attack it? If they believe the government's own scientists at NASA and NOAA, what are they going to do, both nationally and globally, to save the planet?

_______________

DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia based journalist whose house is slated to be inundated if Greenland melts. His latest book is “The Case for Impeachment” (St. Martins Press, 2006 and now available in paperback). His work is available at www.thiscantbehappening.net

A Manchurian Candidate in the White House?

dlindorff — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 08:34:28 -0500

By Dave Lindorff

With a viral campaign underway via email, right-wing radio, and on the street suggesting that Barack Obama is a black “Manchurian Candidate,” secretly trained as a Muslim fanatic who will insinuate himself into the White House, thence to undermine all that we hold dear, perhaps it is time to look at the Manchurian Candidate we already have in the White House, who, together with his handler over in Blair House, has pretty much done all the damage already.

George Bush came to office in 2001 promising a new era of integrity, civility and “compassionate conservatism,” an era of humble American foreign policy, and a bi-partisan approach to government.

What did we actually get?

Once in office, this chameleon president almost immediately set out to embroil the country in a major war in the Middle East against the nation of Iraq. The game plan was laid out at the president’s first National Security Council meeting, attended by Vice President Dick Cheney (the man holding Bush’s controller), Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice, and Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neal (who later spilled the beans about the session).

Bush also famously ignored all warnings about the imminent attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. How much he and the rest of the administration knew about that attack in advance, or whether elements within the administration may have even helped it along, remains the subject of considerable interest and investigation and may never be answered, but it is clear that there were ample warnings about it, and he did nothing—even rudely blowing off a briefer who tried to alert him to the danger. Moreover, it is known that Israeli Mossad agents (who we know have close ties to both the US intelligence apparatus and to the Neocons who infest the Bush White House) did indeed have advance knowledge, and were set up across New York Harbor with a video camera to tape the attack on the Twin Towers (they were subsequently arrested by New Jersey police, only to be later released and sent back to Israel, through intercession by the US government). As well, we know that unidentified people made a killing by placing negative bets, called “puts,” on the stocks, several days before 9-11, of the two airlines that were hijacked, American and United, and of two investment banks that would be seriously hurt by the building collapses, Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley. (The puts were placed through an investment bank, Alex Brown, which until a year earlier had been headed by a man who moved over to become the number three person in the CIA.) It’s hard to escape the conclusion that the Bush/Cheney administration, at a minimum, wanted an attack on American soil, and a national disaster that would put the country on a war footing.

Certainly instead of rallying the public and defending the nation’s democratic traditions and its Constitution, Bush and his handlers after 9-11 immediately set in motion a concerted scare campaign to undermine both. While urging the public to buy sheets of plastic and duct tape to construct “safe rooms” in their homes, they rammed through Congress a deceitfully named measure, the so-called Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act (USA PATRIOT Act), which effectively undermined most of the articles of the Bill of Rights (and which appeared, suspiciously, fully drawn up in bill form, only days after the attacks).

At the same time, the president, only one week after the attacks, obtained an Authorization for Use of Military Force for a military attack on the Taliban government in Afghanistan and on Al Qaeda forces in that country, which he subsequently interpreted broadly as an authorization for a global “war” on terror which he then claimed made him effectively a dictator with absolute power both at home and abroad (the so-called “unitary executive” theory). Under this claim of absolute power as commander in chief in time of war, Bush went on to order the use of torture against captives, foreign and domestic, including US citizens, to strip even US citizens of the right of habeas corpus—that is, the right to have their arrest and detention brought before a federal court—and to establish secret torture centers around the globe and on military installations in Iraq, Afghanistan and at Guantanamo Bay on the island of Cuba.

As well, even before the 9-11 attacks, the president began a sweeping program of electronic spying, run through the super-secret National Security Agency, on Americans’ telephone and internet activities. It was and remains a program that deliberately avoids seeking warrants and court approval even by the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court—a body that has only rejected some five requests for warrants out of hundreds of thousands sought since its establishment in 1978.

Finally, in a perhaps fatal undermining of the Constitution, the president after 9-11 began a practice of simply refusing to enact or obey laws passed by the Congress, effectively rendering the legislative branch an impotent debating club.

Not content to simply explode or dismantle the legal foundations of the American government and rule of law, Bush and his handlers also went about systematically destroying the country’s basic institutions and even its economy.

The education system was fatally ensnared in a test-driven system called “No Child Left Behind,” which has in short order dumbed down public education to an extent shocking even to this already anti-intellectual society, with many schools simply giving up the teaching of art, literature or history, in order to focus desperately on math and reading in order that their students would do well enough on standardized tests to keep the schools from losing their funding.

The dollar has been cast adrift to become the new Lira as the government has gone on an unprecedented borrowing spree to fund endless war and ever-larger military budgets, while erasing the taxes on the wealthy, the super-rich, and corporations. Banks were given free rein to enter into all manner of risky ventures, leading to the current collapse in credit. Corporations were encouraged to ship their production and jobs overseas. Homeowners were encouraged to spend, spend, spend and to mortgage their homes to the hilt and then some. Towns, cities and pension funds were encouraged to invest in fantastic “structured” products that were actually towering card houses. Domestic car manufacturers were encouraged to build every larger, ever more voraciously gas-guzzling vehicles, pumping out ever larger quantities of carbon into the already overstressed atmosphere.

The nation’s infrastructure—its roads, dams, bridges, levies, airports, veterans hospitals etc.--were left to decay, with predictable results, the most dramatic of which was the loss of an entire city, New Orleans, to a routine Category 3 hurricane (after which, the president did nothing to rescue the survivors or fund a recovery).

Surveying at the appalling wreckage left after eight years of the Bush administration, it is hard to recognize the country that he started out with in 2001. A once proud nation—one that only a few years ago was admired around the world and that now is viewed as a pariah and a rogue state—today trembles before a handful of turbaned fanatics holed up in caves in the Hindu Kush, its trillion-dollar high-tech military colossus fought to a standstill in Iraq and Afghanistan by a few thousand brave men and women armed with RPGs, antique AK-47s and home-made roadside bombs. A nation that once was the envy of the world for its free society now has scientists afraid to report their findings, university professors afraid to support outspoken colleagues, members of Congress afraid to defend their Constitution, citizens afraid of their neighbors, journalists afraid of government criticism, lawyers afraid to defend clients...

Hey, this place starts to look and feel an awful lot like the China I lived in back in 1991!

Forget all the nonsense about Barack Obama being a closet Muslim. We already have our Manchurian Candidate in the White House, and he has largely accomplished what he was programmed to do: destroy the country.

The truth is this: If at the end of their second term, Bush and Cheney were to hop on a plane and fly off to a hideout in the mountains on the Afghan-Pakistan border, leaving a "Nya-nya!" note on the White House dining room table, few people would really be very surprised.
_____________________

DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-based investigative journalist and columnist. His most recent book is “The Case for Impeachment” (St. Martin’s Press, 2006, and now available in paperback edition). His work is available at www.thiscantbehappening.net