Brad, how did you happen to intercept the deliver of the tools sent by the Fiskars Corporation? I know they had my address correct, since it is in the letter Peace with Justice Gardeners sent them, and since they did make some of their first deliveries to my house.
Thanks,
Llen
Love Life, Earth, Neighbor
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Lynne-
The tools from Fiskar arrived on a day when you
apparently weren’t available. I understand the
delivery men knocked on your door. They tried to find
you and when unable, called Paul Wichmann whose name
was on the garden shed as the contact person. Paul was
out of town and they reached him on his cell phone. I
think he may have tried to contact Andy, who was also
unable to help with the delivery. He then called me
and said the men wanted to get going and would I
please help with this delivery. I interrupted my day
and went over to the garden, unloaded 16 bundles of
tools, in the hot sun I might add, and put them in the
shed. Neither Paul nor I knew anything nor had been
told anything about the Fiskars Grant at this time,
though we are both on the Garden Steering Committee.
We only knew someone was trying to deliver tools,
which the guy claimed belonged at the garden address,
however, they did not have the name of the garden,
East Phillips Community 17th Ave. garden right either.
There was nothing mentioning East Phillips Community
at all, though that was on the garden shed and this
confused them. The garden was only called Organic 17th
Ave, sort of generic and could be anywhere. Our
actions, contrary to your suggestive remarks, were
entirely innocent.
Our simply helping out some delivery truck guys is not
worth your getting “depressed, sad, and angry about
[our] recent actions”. Or your getting “a stomach ache
or crying”. (quotes from your emails). Nor should this
cause you to create elaborate conspiracy theories
about some of us and send them all over town, creating
the impression that some great evil is going on here.
Why didn’t you just ask these questions weeks ago
instead of stewing about this?
Most of us do not have time for “listening groups” of
people who have no involvement here and do not know
anything about the history of the garden and the
effort of many to create open and democratic rules,
which the steering committee has followed without
fail. Unless these people were committed to real
democracy and not just your personal friends, as
appears to be the primary target of your email list,
there would be no point anyway. Many of these people
have never come to the people (me and others) whom you
spread stories about, to hear our point of view. Why,
then, should we value their integrity? Point is: the
gardeners have done nothing that you have not been a
witness to or signed on to yourself.
Also no one would ever think of “yelling at” the
proprietor of Mother Earth Garden Store. I have no
idea what you are talking about and why you would ever
suggest that. I think those of us who know you have
suggested this to a large number of people have a
right to be both amazed and angry that you would imply
that is what is going on here.
Lynne, no one else is emailing people all over town
and there is no one spreading rumors, except you. You
need to stop spreading these suggestive
misrepresentations and innuendoes about others. All
the garden meetings have been democratic and open to
view. Nothing has been done by the steering committee
that has not been done openly. While you have not been
willing to include the rest of the gardeners who are
not your renters in the writing of this grant and have
refused to offer copies to the steering committee, we
have been entirely open with you. You have come to all
our meetings. We were not notified nor invited to any
of your meetings over the winter, when this grant was
written, committing the gardeners to things without
our knowledge.
If there is a problem here, it would seem to be your
extreme distrust of your neighbors and fellow
gardeners. All I did was unload a truck at Paul’s
request. He is, after all, the chair of the steering
committee. If this was a problem for you, you could
have just asked a few weeks ago instead of going into
orbit over this and involving all sorts of people in a
series of veiled accusations against your fellow
gardeners.
I think much would be helped if you could just
honestly inquire and share information and stop
attributing the worst to some of your neighbors. Next
time I’ll tell the trucks to go away. I want no
apologies or lengthy commentaries on community and
democracy in response to these remarks. I am into
doing democracy and community, not just talking about
them.
Brad
PS: Lynne, you write in one of these letters: "I am
happy to answer any questions you have about this
letter." Yet the Garden Steering Committee has
repeatedly asked for a copy of the grant, once we
realized its existence. We also do not know who the
Peace and Justice Gardeners are. We need to know these
things and have asked them repeatedly, but you have
refused to answer them. Yet in this letter from some
time ago you claim to be willing to do so and seem to
be accusing others of hiding things. What things these
are I have no idea, but you need to honor your remark
that you will answer questions.
The Peace and Justice group does not have jurisdiction
over the garden and must come through the recognized
garden group, those who signed the garden use
agreement (you also signed this agreement) and their
elected steering committee. If there is a grant
connected with the garden and having any requirements
of the gardeners or relationship to the garden, the
least you should do is inform them (us), but it is not
appropriate or even legal that the gardeners have had
no involvement in the creation of this grant and its
implementation, whatever its obligations are. But the
least we can do is know what they are and try to meet
them. You appear to have committed us to things
without our knowledge, though we don't even know. And
since we know nothing about this, we can't even say a
relevant thank you. You need to live up to your words
and your signing of the garden use agreement, namely
commitments to openness, notification, democratic
process and accountability. No amount of
"mediation/conflict resolution" can take the place of
living up to one’s agreements.
Brad
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
June 22, 2006
Dear Brad Pass (and 2006 Gardeners and supporters),
I glanced over, but have not yet found time to read your email, Brad.
In the meantime, you may want to know:
When I was doing magazine recycling at home (1), I found one pair of Fiskars hand pruners in my recycling basket. As you know, I had been upset because some of the tools were lost and broken, and felt you were, to some extent, responsible for not following through with a means for checking tools in and out from the shed. Afraid I may not be making myself clear, I will spell this out further. This means that I was upset with lost tools AND that I, myself, was responsible for at least one of those lost tools.
I did also find my looseleaf notebook. It was in one of my portable file cabinets, not the blue basket I had taken to the meeting. (I had implied that you might have taken it from the garden.)
Inside of the looseleaf I found:
* The lists of Fiskar¹s grant award "packages". With these lists, Paul W. and I updated the inventory. (There is only one lost tool at this point; a little hand trowel with numbers marking inches etched into the metal.) I gave Paul a copy of the inventory, and will put one copy in the blue notebook in the shed.
* The garden application and $20 bill from a gardener.
In addition, in one of my emails I indicated that the Fiskars grant is worth $3100. Actually, looking at the Fiskar¹s tool price list, it is more like $2100
Well, so there all that is.
My apologies. Especially for voicing suspicions and implied accusations that were, to large extent, my own fault. Sort of the worse kind of thing a person can do, actually. May as well be honest about that. To lose stuff and then publicly imply someone else took it as further justification for distrusting that person is pretty danged destructive. Not as bad as murder. But bad. I think all the great spiritual teachers say to falsely accuse one¹s neighbor is a kind of murder, since it can kill off reputations and community cohesion. I know I am getting preachy here. So I will leave it at that.
I hope a person gets to apologize several times in the same week, since I need to do just that. I dread to think that I¹ll have to make more apologies in the future, but it wouldn¹t surprise me.
Regarding your upset about my spreading ³conspiracy theories² ³all over town²: the people who are getting these letters are: some of the 17th Ave. gardeners (those whose emails I have), EPIC community elders (Wenji and Vanhalla), and funders with some civic responsibility for the gardens (Corrie Zoll from Green Institute, and Robert Thompson from Neighborhood Revitalization).
In any case, I think you have won two rounds of emails. So the score is 2-0 in your favor. Well, unless we score according to another system. Such as for each point won within an email. In which case the score, unfortunately for me, is more like 5-0 your favor.
I hope "all over town" doesn't find out how poorly I am faring in the debate so far. Please don't spread it beyond town into the neighboring states and countries. I would really rather only a limited number of people find out. Until my score improves significantly.
I will read and respond to your letter as soon as time allows. I am committed to working through these misunderstandings.
Also, I plan to pull ahead on the scoreboard.
Sincerely,
Llen
-------------------------------------------------------------
25 June 06
Dear Paul:
Gardeners:
Rebekah Teague: 721-2753
Sheryle Batcher: 724-4089
Brandy Kyllonen: 597-3559
Mark: 651-341-2278
Danny & Caroline: I don't have a number. They live across from the garden
Other residents have expressed interest in "cooperative plot" wherein we all
work together and share the food.
May all gardeners have access to the contact numbers for all gardeners?
This would facilitate communication and democracy.
Fiskars Grant:
Paul, I think it needs to be clear that the 17th Ave. Gardeners Steering
Committee did not write, and are not responsible for the grant. Regarding
your request for more information, may I suggest a conversation with the
Peace with Justice Gardeners to answer questions and fulfill obligations.
We have the grant proposal. I would like ground rules for implementation as
well as contacts with Fiskars. I am available for a meeting with you and
anyone else regarding the grant at a time convenient to you. The people who
helped with the grant should be there. Megan, Andy, & Matt B., if possible.
Mondays and Tuesdays are best, I believe. (megan & andy are out of town the
rest of the week)
Sincerely,
Llen
-------------------------------------------------------------
My note:
Lynne and the 17th Avenue Gardeners DID have a meeting. Lynne was voted to be excluded from any leadership at the garden for no less than TWO YEARS, because she applied for a grant without EPC/17th Avenue Gardeners permission. Lynne contends there was no Steering Committee in existence when she applied for the grant. EPC believes that the previous years steering committee would still be in charge until the next election.
Lynne is working to mediate with the garden group. Regardless of other goals within Peace and Justic Organic Gardeners, this seems to be of primary concern. If Lynne has no authority in the garden, she may lose significant garden space and a say in whether it remains Organic. ( or any say at all for that matter )
I feel she will work to create her own garden plots on available land resources she has available. Therefore, I predict a plot will be established next to her 2408 17th Avenue duplex. ( as I live in 2406)
Thursday, June 15, 2006
Monday, May 01, 2006
Bacteria Turn Styrofoam into Biodegradable Plastic
Kevin O'Connor and his European colleagues turned the polystyrene into an oil through pyrolysis--a process that heats the petroleum-based plastic to 520 degrees Celsius in the absence of oxygen. This results in a chemical cocktail made up of more than 80 percent styrene oil plus low volumes of other toxicants. The researchers then fed this brew to P. putida CA-3, a special strain of a common soil microbe, fully expecting that the oil would have to be further purified in order to enable bacterial growth.
By David Biello
source: http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=0007B0AE-88AF-13FF-88AF83414B7F0000
Tuesday, April 11, 2006
Project Energy: Our Oil Addiction
(WCCO) When humans first harnessed energy, it was fire, and the fuel was wood.
Industry began to develop when man found coal. And the society we know today developed when we found oil.
Economical, accessible and seemingly endless – oil. But, it is not endless, and it now appears the unthinkable is happening. We are beginning to run out of conventional oil.
The United States was once the largest exporter of oil to the rest of the world. It is now the world's largest importer.
The world is now using more oil, globally, than we are finding.
"Exxon is saying the last year when we found more oil than we burned was 1987. So, the handwriting is on the wall that we are not finding it," said Kenneth Deffeyes. He is the emeritus professor of geosciences at Princeton, a former Shell oil geologist, and author of two books in a growing list on the subject of peak oil.
Oil production follows a curve. In more than 150 years, it has grown to where petroleum geologists say is the halfway point – the peak.
But we demand oil in greater quantities than we can produce. And demand will continue rising with an aggressively growing population, and the burgeoning industries of China and India. When demand for oil increases as supplies decrease, the serious trouble begins.
"I come out with the strong conclusion that the oil fields we have already found contain 94 percent of all the oil we are ever going to find," Deffeyes said.
According to a report commissioned by the Department of Energy, the peaking of conventional oil "… will cause protracted economic hardships in the United States and the world. It is a problem unlike any yet faced by a modern industrial society."
Remarkably, the oil companies themselves are warning us:
"Some say that by 2020 we'll have used half the world's oil. Some say we already have ... ," according to a recent Chevron ad.
One oil company, British Petroleum, has even moved to change its name. BP now means, Beyond Petroleum.
"We might have already passed peak oil," said Matthew Simmons. Simmons is the president of the world's largest energy banking firm.
He says the growing demand in the face of diminishing supplies is really the problem.
"We have a world that's headed towards a need of about 120 million barrels a day in 2020," said Simmons, "And by 2020, if we're on top of peak oil today, our oil supply could easily be only 60-65-70 million barrels a day."
And Simmons says because of depletion, in the next five years, a barrel of oil will cost $180 — three times what it is now.
At that rate, it would cost $150 to $200 to fill your tank.
"It would be extremely difficult," said Betty Albitz.
We sat down with a group of Minnesotans — Betty Albitz, Chad Amon, Stefanie Igtanloc and Al Alexander — to get their thoughts on what happens in a world of less and more expensive oil.
"Tell me how your life changes, Betty, when gas costs $10 a gallon," asked WCCO-TV anchor Don Shelby.
"Probably car pool, try to get more people in a car, that sort of thing," said Albitz. "You just try being more efficient with the energy you're going to burn."
"Maybe walk or bike when I can," said Amon.
"I think we reduce the uses of the vehicles. You take my case, I have an SUV, my wife does not. We'd probably find a way to use my car less," said Alexander.
"But it upsets our reality," Alexander continued, "Our reality is, until you go to the pump and there's no gas, you won't get it."
But it's more than just our cars according to Senator Norm Coleman.
"You're going to lose your job," Coleman said. "You're going to lose your ability to pay for heating when it's very cold in Minnesota. We're talking about catastrophic, we're talking about, and I'm not a 'the sky is falling' kind of guy, but we're talking about cataclysmic impacts upon the American economy."
In the halls of the U.S. Congress, the questions of diminishing supplies, alternative fuels, and sustainability have been carried traditionally by Democrats. But increasingly Republicans — often associated with big oil — are warning the party's over.
"Like kids that found the cookie jar, we just pigged out," said Rep. Roscoe Bartlett of Maryland. He is the capitol's leading voice on Peak Oil and Energy policy. He is a conservative Republican.
"Future generations are going to look back and ask themselves, how could they have done that?" said Bartlett. "This enormous wealth that they found under the ground and they just pigged it up as quickly as possible with not thought for tomorrow."
Regardless of politics, there's a growing consensus that the right thing to do is prepare for the end of oil.
Even the President of the United States has now begun to talk about the scarcity of oil, its effect on foreign policy and the security of the country.
"Keeping America competitive requires affordable energy," said President George W. Bush in his State of the Union Address. "And here we have a serious problem: America is addicted to oil, which is often imported from unstable parts of the world."
We have heard messages like this before from the White House.
"Had we listened to Jimmy Carter, 20 years ago, and taken his advice and started working on conservation, working on alternatives, we'd be in great shape right now. We didn't listen," Deffeyes said.
So, we went to Atlanta to listen.
"My hope is that every person who lives in Minnesota will take on himself or herself a direct responsibility," said former U.S. President Jimmy Carter.
"The American people have been enticed, through false propaganda and accepting extremely inefficient vehicles to propel them from one place to another," Carter said. "And it's up to the government, first of all, which has defaulted in my opinion on that responsibility, and the second responsibility is for the people of Minnesota to say, I'll do it myself, and be proud of it."
"Well it becomes overwhelming in terms of, what can one person do," Amon said.
"I hope I as myself will try to make more decisions," said Igtanloc, "but I think to get the people en masse, it's going to take the government."
"But it all comes back to money," said Alexander, "I mean, you know what I mean, that's not a moral decision, that's an economic decision. What does that say about us as a country?"
"But I think this country," said Albitz, "it is the free enterprise system. The masses will rise given the education, given the opportunities, given the creativity of the human mind for alternatives. I'm still remaining optimistic."
(© MMVI, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.) source: http://wcco.com/topstories/Project.Energy.energy.2.372413.html
Wednesday, March 22, 2006
Unions versus right to work stats
It appears that when unions have the right to organize, they are more effective in increasing wages and benefits. Go figure? Right to work laws appear very weak an ineffective, unless you are a corporatist.
Sunday, December 18, 2005
Mind the Gap: Disparities and Competitiveness in the Twin Cities
Minneapolis-St. Paul is relatively strong compared to other metropolitan areas nationally. It has one of the most highly educated populations in the country. Its median household income is the twelfth highest among the 100 largest metros. And the region's job growth has outpaced the nation's for several decades. Additionally, the region has a long history of regional thinking and an egalitarian spirit that many other metropolitan areas envy.
Despite these strengths, however, the region does not work for everyone. Although the Twin Cities metropolitan area is blessed with good incomes and high educational attainment rates, some groups and some places are still lagging behind. In a region where household income is among the highest in the nation, black household income is among the lowest. In a region that has the highest share of adults with a high school diploma in the country, it only ranks 40th among the 100 largest metropolitan areas for Latino high school educational attainment.
source: http://www.brookings.edu/reports/2005/10cities_sohmer.aspx
Thursday, July 14, 2005
Letters to the Editor: Peak oil; Indy stores; Respect; Dunce; Superpowers
Thanks for thought-provoking articles on Peak Oil issue
I want to discuss an issue that your weekly publication has definitely subscribed to: Peak Oil. Since many of your readers are familiar with it, why not use it as a rally cry to change the lives of its readers? Why not set aside a small portion of the paper to its solutions? What about adding a forum for this subject to your website?
Currently I am deployed to Iraq—for whatever reason people think we are here—well, except for making America freer. Who am I helping out by being here? Our generators, SUVs and Humvees alone use hundreds of gallons a day. The war is a huge drag on our economy.
While in Iraq, I purchased a book on Intentional Communities from an organization that promotes them at IC.org. I honestly feel that cooperative community arrangements are the only solutions to surviving the Long Emergency. I have found many communes, but few are truly prepared for post-oil.
I have meditated on which regions of America would be most suitable to survive post-oil. I used to think that the Pacific Northwest region of Oregon, Washington and British Columbia were good candidates. After reading James Howard Kunstler’s arguments against this region, however, I would have to agree with him.
The best place, post-oil, that I can find currently is the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. The soil is quite good for agriculture. The area has an aging population—the oldest in the Midwest, which is already aging. The area is sparsely populated—on average only seven people per square kilometer.
The southern portion of the Upper Peninsula near Lake Michigan has a growing season similar to that of Missouri, so the area has a longer growing season than anywhere in Minnesota.
I would like to say that Minnesotans have a good chance to make it—and I think that many will. But looking at our sprawled out Twin Cities—and the “interstate cities”—these places are unstable and will not make it. There are too many people here for life to become sustainable. We do have many good things going for us—the cooperative businesses and organic farms.
I feel that those who live in the Twin Cities should strive to meet the challenges of the Long Emergency. There are many opportunities currently that will allow civilization to continue going in some form. I hope that the Pulse can make this a long-term issue for positive change in our communities.
I think that an investment in the Upper Peninsula for an eco-village would be the best solution in the Midwest. I have contacted an organization doing just this in various locations. They have expressed interest in the Upper Peninsula — but only if I can find others who are potentially interested.
I consider myself a pretty committed individual in preparing for the Long Emergency. I only became conscious of the subject in the fall of 2002, and decided it would be smart to wean myself from the car culture. I am out of the active guard in May of 2006 and will be on IRR (aka I will probably be drafted) until 2008. Hopefully I have as much time as all of you in Minnesota—but I am currently trapped by something out of my control.
So I have been going on those “Support the Troops” websites asking for books on organic gardening and other useful endeavors post-oil. I have only received a couple books thus far—and a whole lot of care packages containing useful items while here—but not post-oil. And the bunch of tiny folded flags won’t mean anything if I’m trying to grow food for my survival in 2015.
I love your paper, but really dislike some of the partisan hatred I sometimes feel emanates from it. With peak-oil an actual issue, it is time to be inclusive. Survival is not a partisan issue. As one individual wisely stated on the subject of the Long Emergency: “Competition was the watchword of the ascent, cooperation will be the foundation of the descent.”
Kevin Chavis
Iraq
Editor’s note: Your letter is one of the best we have ever received—thank you. Please continue to write us about both your experiences in Iraq and your thoughts on a post-oil future. Brian Kaller - Managing Editor, Pulse
source: http://www.pulsetc.com/article.php?op=Print&sid=1930
Tuesday, January 11, 2005
Warmed Over
The U.S. Senate's leading abuser of science has struck again. Not content with calling the notion of human-caused global warming "the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people" (as he did in a July 2003 Senate floor speech), last week James Inhofe returned with an "update" on climate-change science. In his latest speech, timed to coincide with the final steps toward implementation of the Kyoto Protocol (which the United States won't be joining), Inhofe asserted that "put simply, man-induced global warming is an article of religious faith." Clearly, he hasn't changed his tune.
What separates Inhofe’s fixation from similar conservative crusades is just how brazenly it ignores what scientists know with confidence about global warming. The United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the National Academy of Sciences, the American Geophysical Union, and the American Meteorological Society all broadly agree on this basic point: Temperatures are rising, at least in part as a result of human greenhouse-gas emissions. According to the World Meteorological Organization, 2004 was the fourth-hottest year since 1861, while the past 10 years (excepting 1996) were "among the warmest 10 years on record."
That's not all. Drawing on highly sophisticated computer models, climate scientists can project -- not predict -- how much temperatures may rise by, say, 2100 if we carry on with business as usual. Although scenarios vary, some get pretty severe. So do the projected impacts of climate change: rising sea levels, species extinctions, glacial melting, and so forth.
One might argue, perhaps, that humanity should simply adapt to climatic changes rather than restricting fossil-fuel use. But that's not Inhofe's approach. No matter how strong the evidence of ongoing climate change gets, he simply rejects it. But backed into a corner, Inhofe's arguments have necessarily grown more and more desperate.
For example, in his latest speech, Inhofe continued his curious crusade against a single University of Virginia climate expert, Michael Mann. Mann initially became a target for global warming "skeptics" in 2001 after the IPCC prominently cited his work to show that recent temperatures represent an anomaly in the context of the past 1,000 years. The IPCC reproduced a graph published by Mann and his colleagues that's often referred to as a "hockey stick" because of its shape: After a long, relatively straight line, temperatures spike up in the 20th century.
Ever since then, global warming deniers (and especially Inhofe) have been trying to break the "hockey stick," but their attacks on Mann represent a grand diversion. Although in his latest speech Inhofe refers only to "the hockey stick graph, constructed by Dr. Michael Mann and colleagues," multiple other scientists have produced similar analyses. And even if all of these were to be overturned, that would hardly upend the conclusion that humans are currently heating the planet -- a robust scientific finding based on several different lines of evidence. Rather, shattering the "hockey stick" would merely leave us uncertain as to whether the current temperature spike has any precedent over the past millennium.
In fact, Inhofe's latest foray against Mann throws into question the competence of the senator's scientific-research apparatus. Inhofe charged that recent critics, arguing in the scientific literature, have called Mann's hockey-stick work "just bad science." But the critics in question weren't attacking the "hockey stick" at all. Rather, they were challenging an entirely different paper by Mann and a colleague, and the disagreement concerns the period between 1971 and 1998 -- not the past 1,000 years. It looks as though Inhofe went rifling through the scientific literature to find someone criticizing Michael Mann without even bothering to understand the context of that criticism.
Yet Inhofe's latest speech stoops even lower than this. The senator also implied, on the slender basis of a Washington Post cartoon (which he misinterprets), that some "alarmists" think climate change triggered the recent Asian tsunami. "Are we to believe now that global warming is causing earthquakes?" Inhofe asked rhetorically.
Answer: No, we aren't to believe that. No one believes that.
In criticizing environmental "alarmists" for something that none of them have said, Inhofe has created as big a straw man as we've seen in politics lately. Yet when it comes to climate change, Inhofe doesn't seem to care whether he has a sound argument to make, so long as he has something contrary to say that takes at least some effort to deconstruct.
Let's take one more glance at the way Inhofe abuses climate science. In his latest speech, Inhofe took aim at a recently released report from the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment, produced by some 300 scientists working under the auspices of the Arctic Council (an intergovernmental group that includes the United States). The report shows that human-caused climate change has already had a pronounced effect in the Arctic region, where average temperatures have shot up "at almost twice the rate as the rest of the world in the past few decades." The result? Ongoing impacts such as melting glaciers and sea ice.
These conclusions come from a body of scientific experts who have studied the problem for four years. What does James Inhofe do when faced with such a major, peer-reviewed scientific consensus document? The same thing he always does: He draws on a tiny number of skeptic scientists, here pointing out that Arctic temperatures in the 1930s and 1940s rival those today, to challenge the consensus. But while 1930s and 1940s Arctic temperatures were probably caused by natural variation, today's temperature spike seems to have a human fingerprint. That's the whole point.
Throughout his speech, moreover, Inhofe made constant reference to a work of fiction: Michael Crichton's new novel, State of Fear. Calling Crichton a "scientist" -- actually, he's an M.D. -- Inhofe credited the author with telling "the real story about global warming" to the public. In fact, Crichton's new book misrepresents climate science nearly as badly as Inhofe does. Inhofe further suggested that Crichton's depictions of environmentalists -- as fear-mongers who hype the possibility of disasters to bring in donations -- show "art imitating life." Actually, Crichton's notion of a global eco-terrorist conspiracy, aided and abetted by leading environmental organizations, seems more than a tad conspiratorial.
Nevertheless, we haven't heard the last from Senator Crank. Speaking of the remaining cadre of climate-science "skeptics," Inhofe pledged in his latest speech: "I will do my part to make sure that they are heard." In other words, he will continue to challenge each new major piece of scientific evidence on climate, raising dubious criticisms rather than trying in earnest to understand the best science. And this is the chairman of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works talking.
Chris Mooney is a Prospect senior correspondent. His book on the politicization of science will be published later this year by Basic Books. His daily blog and other writings can be found at www.chriscmooney.com.
By Chris Mooney
Reprinted with permission from The American Prospect, 5 Broad Street, Boston, MA 02109. All rights reserved.
source: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/01/11/opinion/main666190.shtml
What separates Inhofe’s fixation from similar conservative crusades is just how brazenly it ignores what scientists know with confidence about global warming. The United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the National Academy of Sciences, the American Geophysical Union, and the American Meteorological Society all broadly agree on this basic point: Temperatures are rising, at least in part as a result of human greenhouse-gas emissions. According to the World Meteorological Organization, 2004 was the fourth-hottest year since 1861, while the past 10 years (excepting 1996) were "among the warmest 10 years on record."
That's not all. Drawing on highly sophisticated computer models, climate scientists can project -- not predict -- how much temperatures may rise by, say, 2100 if we carry on with business as usual. Although scenarios vary, some get pretty severe. So do the projected impacts of climate change: rising sea levels, species extinctions, glacial melting, and so forth.
One might argue, perhaps, that humanity should simply adapt to climatic changes rather than restricting fossil-fuel use. But that's not Inhofe's approach. No matter how strong the evidence of ongoing climate change gets, he simply rejects it. But backed into a corner, Inhofe's arguments have necessarily grown more and more desperate.
For example, in his latest speech, Inhofe continued his curious crusade against a single University of Virginia climate expert, Michael Mann. Mann initially became a target for global warming "skeptics" in 2001 after the IPCC prominently cited his work to show that recent temperatures represent an anomaly in the context of the past 1,000 years. The IPCC reproduced a graph published by Mann and his colleagues that's often referred to as a "hockey stick" because of its shape: After a long, relatively straight line, temperatures spike up in the 20th century.
Ever since then, global warming deniers (and especially Inhofe) have been trying to break the "hockey stick," but their attacks on Mann represent a grand diversion. Although in his latest speech Inhofe refers only to "the hockey stick graph, constructed by Dr. Michael Mann and colleagues," multiple other scientists have produced similar analyses. And even if all of these were to be overturned, that would hardly upend the conclusion that humans are currently heating the planet -- a robust scientific finding based on several different lines of evidence. Rather, shattering the "hockey stick" would merely leave us uncertain as to whether the current temperature spike has any precedent over the past millennium.
In fact, Inhofe's latest foray against Mann throws into question the competence of the senator's scientific-research apparatus. Inhofe charged that recent critics, arguing in the scientific literature, have called Mann's hockey-stick work "just bad science." But the critics in question weren't attacking the "hockey stick" at all. Rather, they were challenging an entirely different paper by Mann and a colleague, and the disagreement concerns the period between 1971 and 1998 -- not the past 1,000 years. It looks as though Inhofe went rifling through the scientific literature to find someone criticizing Michael Mann without even bothering to understand the context of that criticism.
Yet Inhofe's latest speech stoops even lower than this. The senator also implied, on the slender basis of a Washington Post cartoon (which he misinterprets), that some "alarmists" think climate change triggered the recent Asian tsunami. "Are we to believe now that global warming is causing earthquakes?" Inhofe asked rhetorically.
Answer: No, we aren't to believe that. No one believes that.
In criticizing environmental "alarmists" for something that none of them have said, Inhofe has created as big a straw man as we've seen in politics lately. Yet when it comes to climate change, Inhofe doesn't seem to care whether he has a sound argument to make, so long as he has something contrary to say that takes at least some effort to deconstruct.
Let's take one more glance at the way Inhofe abuses climate science. In his latest speech, Inhofe took aim at a recently released report from the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment, produced by some 300 scientists working under the auspices of the Arctic Council (an intergovernmental group that includes the United States). The report shows that human-caused climate change has already had a pronounced effect in the Arctic region, where average temperatures have shot up "at almost twice the rate as the rest of the world in the past few decades." The result? Ongoing impacts such as melting glaciers and sea ice.
These conclusions come from a body of scientific experts who have studied the problem for four years. What does James Inhofe do when faced with such a major, peer-reviewed scientific consensus document? The same thing he always does: He draws on a tiny number of skeptic scientists, here pointing out that Arctic temperatures in the 1930s and 1940s rival those today, to challenge the consensus. But while 1930s and 1940s Arctic temperatures were probably caused by natural variation, today's temperature spike seems to have a human fingerprint. That's the whole point.
Throughout his speech, moreover, Inhofe made constant reference to a work of fiction: Michael Crichton's new novel, State of Fear. Calling Crichton a "scientist" -- actually, he's an M.D. -- Inhofe credited the author with telling "the real story about global warming" to the public. In fact, Crichton's new book misrepresents climate science nearly as badly as Inhofe does. Inhofe further suggested that Crichton's depictions of environmentalists -- as fear-mongers who hype the possibility of disasters to bring in donations -- show "art imitating life." Actually, Crichton's notion of a global eco-terrorist conspiracy, aided and abetted by leading environmental organizations, seems more than a tad conspiratorial.
Nevertheless, we haven't heard the last from Senator Crank. Speaking of the remaining cadre of climate-science "skeptics," Inhofe pledged in his latest speech: "I will do my part to make sure that they are heard." In other words, he will continue to challenge each new major piece of scientific evidence on climate, raising dubious criticisms rather than trying in earnest to understand the best science. And this is the chairman of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works talking.
Chris Mooney is a Prospect senior correspondent. His book on the politicization of science will be published later this year by Basic Books. His daily blog and other writings can be found at www.chriscmooney.com.
By Chris Mooney
Reprinted with permission from The American Prospect, 5 Broad Street, Boston, MA 02109. All rights reserved.
source: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/01/11/opinion/main666190.shtml
Tuesday, November 02, 2004
Cynthia McKinney Victory Speech: "It's a New Day"
Click here for webcast of speech.
Good evening.
It's a new day, ya'll!
And the evidence is a clear and convincing victory handed to us by the people of the Fourth Congressional District.
Twelve years ago, Georgia's History Train pulled off from the Georgia Legislature, rolling down the tracks to the United States Congress.
And for 10 years, The History Train gathered momentum.
We rode that train: through poverty and plenty; picking up warriors for justice all over America.
The History Train chugged along with full faith and confidence in the American dream.
Tonight signifies that the History Train is once again gathering steam, but it's also clear that the History Train is changing tracks: taking a new path for community and country.
Sending a strong message that a new way of thinking for ourselves and our future is taking hold.
Ten years ago, the History Train took us through Georgia towns big and small, like Washington, Georgia, the hometown of the most recently fallen Georgia hero in Iraq.
Sadly, now, another Georgia family must feel the pain of George Bush's war machine.
Tonight I say, "Bring our sons and daughters home now" and commend to you this beautiful watercolor expressing what I've been saying for the past year.
I predict that the American people will send a resounding message tonight that the war machine--must stop now.
But there's another kind of machine of which we must beware that lurks among us: and that's the corporate propaganda machine.
Leaders who dare go against, or merely even question, the policies being polished by a slick media machine can get sucked up, chewed up, eaten up, devoured.
Or in a familiar set of words more famous than my own: "expose, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize" such leadership. "To pinpoint potential troublemakers and neutralize them." These words are straight from the FBI during its program to counter dissent in this country.
And as we have seen in the cases of both, these immensely powerful and monied machines take their aim directly at the people.
Breaking free of the influence of both these machines heralds a new way of thinking. And that's what this campaign was all about.
We really believe:
that a multitude of people can outweigh any special interest every time; that media magic has little persuasion over an informed people; that we as a people are way more powerful when we turn to each other and not on each other; and that we can embrace the human rainbow, celebrate our diversity, focus on our commonality, and together, tear down the mightiest walls of oppression and injustice.
Evidence of the power of this new way of thinking is here tonight in this room and in our election numbers.
And so commanding is our presence, and significant is our mission that what we have now accomplished in Georgia's Fourth Congressional District, is being broadcast by the best of America's corporate media: Who said the revolution wasn't going to be televised?
This campaign represents a movement to bring America together: Blacks, whites, Asians, Latinos; together; Muslim, Jew, Christian, Hindu; together; Those who still hum Dinah Washington tunes, together with those singing Tupac.
What we represent is the future of America: a first step in taking our country back, freeing ourselves so we can liberate others.
It's a new day, and it belongs to us. Now is our time, and seize it we must.
In 1901, George White, the last remaining black Member of Congress during Reconstruction addressed the United States House of Representatives. Black Members of Congress had been sent home after Jim Crow laws gathered steam across the South. When he, too, had been affected, George White had this to say:
This is perhaps the Negro's temporary farewell to the American Congress. But phoenix-like, he will rise up some day and come again. These parting words are in behalf of an outraged, heart-broken, bruised and bleeding, but God-fearing people; faithful, industrious, loyal, rising people--full of potential force."
People across the Fourth District and across our country bind together: outraged, heart-broken, bruised and bleeding, but also full of potential force. Many among us have been knocked down, but not a one of us is too wounded to not get back up again.
Tonight is a victory for the people of the Fourth Congressional District and for a new way of thinking.
We celebrate that the History Train rides again.
And invite onboard all who share our values and still believe that America can be a force for good at home and in the world.
Thank you to the voters who came out in record numbers and gave their vote of confidence.
Thank you to all the volunteers (from far and near) who worked day in and day out to make this victory possible;
Thank you to the alternative media who kept our story relevant and thank you to all of you.
Thank you and good night.
It's a new day, ya'll!
And the evidence is a clear and convincing victory handed to us by the people of the Fourth Congressional District.
Twelve years ago, Georgia's History Train pulled off from the Georgia Legislature, rolling down the tracks to the United States Congress.
And for 10 years, The History Train gathered momentum.
We rode that train: through poverty and plenty; picking up warriors for justice all over America.
The History Train chugged along with full faith and confidence in the American dream.
Tonight signifies that the History Train is once again gathering steam, but it's also clear that the History Train is changing tracks: taking a new path for community and country.
Sending a strong message that a new way of thinking for ourselves and our future is taking hold.
Ten years ago, the History Train took us through Georgia towns big and small, like Washington, Georgia, the hometown of the most recently fallen Georgia hero in Iraq.
Sadly, now, another Georgia family must feel the pain of George Bush's war machine.
Tonight I say, "Bring our sons and daughters home now" and commend to you this beautiful watercolor expressing what I've been saying for the past year.
I predict that the American people will send a resounding message tonight that the war machine--must stop now.
But there's another kind of machine of which we must beware that lurks among us: and that's the corporate propaganda machine.
Leaders who dare go against, or merely even question, the policies being polished by a slick media machine can get sucked up, chewed up, eaten up, devoured.
Or in a familiar set of words more famous than my own: "expose, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize" such leadership. "To pinpoint potential troublemakers and neutralize them." These words are straight from the FBI during its program to counter dissent in this country.
And as we have seen in the cases of both, these immensely powerful and monied machines take their aim directly at the people.
Breaking free of the influence of both these machines heralds a new way of thinking. And that's what this campaign was all about.
We really believe:
that a multitude of people can outweigh any special interest every time; that media magic has little persuasion over an informed people; that we as a people are way more powerful when we turn to each other and not on each other; and that we can embrace the human rainbow, celebrate our diversity, focus on our commonality, and together, tear down the mightiest walls of oppression and injustice.
Evidence of the power of this new way of thinking is here tonight in this room and in our election numbers.
And so commanding is our presence, and significant is our mission that what we have now accomplished in Georgia's Fourth Congressional District, is being broadcast by the best of America's corporate media: Who said the revolution wasn't going to be televised?
This campaign represents a movement to bring America together: Blacks, whites, Asians, Latinos; together; Muslim, Jew, Christian, Hindu; together; Those who still hum Dinah Washington tunes, together with those singing Tupac.
What we represent is the future of America: a first step in taking our country back, freeing ourselves so we can liberate others.
It's a new day, and it belongs to us. Now is our time, and seize it we must.
In 1901, George White, the last remaining black Member of Congress during Reconstruction addressed the United States House of Representatives. Black Members of Congress had been sent home after Jim Crow laws gathered steam across the South. When he, too, had been affected, George White had this to say:
This is perhaps the Negro's temporary farewell to the American Congress. But phoenix-like, he will rise up some day and come again. These parting words are in behalf of an outraged, heart-broken, bruised and bleeding, but God-fearing people; faithful, industrious, loyal, rising people--full of potential force."
People across the Fourth District and across our country bind together: outraged, heart-broken, bruised and bleeding, but also full of potential force. Many among us have been knocked down, but not a one of us is too wounded to not get back up again.
Tonight is a victory for the people of the Fourth Congressional District and for a new way of thinking.
We celebrate that the History Train rides again.
And invite onboard all who share our values and still believe that America can be a force for good at home and in the world.
Thank you to the voters who came out in record numbers and gave their vote of confidence.
Thank you to all the volunteers (from far and near) who worked day in and day out to make this victory possible;
Thank you to the alternative media who kept our story relevant and thank you to all of you.
Thank you and good night.
Monday, June 14, 2004
Early streetcars: Memorable and uncomfortable
By John McIntyre, Star Tribune
On cold, muddy Washington Avenue, in the late 1870s, a Minneapolis commuter stands with a nickel in his hand. Off toward the east he can the tinkling of a bell - the sound of a horse-drawn streetcar.
The car pulls up. The weary driver nods sourly.
The commuter, if he's been in one of these contraptions before, hesitates before he climbs aboard.
The ride home is going to be no fun.
Twin Cities' streetcar service came a long way from its early horsecar days until it ended in the early 1950s, with then state-of-the-art high-speed electric cars.
The original horsecars -- the ancestors of today's light-rail cars -- were about 12 feet long and weighed about 1,000 pounds. They were called "crackerboxes on wheels." Riders could, for their 5-cent fare, get where they were going at a brisk 6 miles per hour, much faster than slogging through
the mud and manure-filled streets.
But that ride could be brutal. Passengers could be called on to put a derailed car back on track or to negotiate with a balky mule.
The ordeal started at the pay box at the front of the car, writes Stephen Kieffer, in "Transit and the Twins."
"Many an early patron of the cars will remember how the driver reminded him, by the ringing of a bell, that he had not placed his fare in the box."
Inside, the amenities were primitive. Passengers sat on hard benches that ran the length of the car. A foul-smelling oil lamp provided a dim light, says a history of the Minneapolis Street Railway Company.
"In winter, heat was supplied by a small sheet-iron stove in the middle of the car. The floor of the car was covered with hay to a depth of about one foot to assist the stove in keeping the passengers' feet warm. It was a common occurrence for passengers to alight from the cars with hay clinging to their feet and garments."
In the 1870s, the streetcar tracks were laid -- some might say floated -- on the muddy streets. Minnesota's rain, snow and ice knocked them out of alignment, says Goodrich Lowry in "Streetcar Man."
"Passengers were often asked to assist the driver in putting the half-ton car back on the track, or pushing it up a slippery hill."
Riders also could be asked to convince mule to get work. Sam Brinker, a horsecar driver from in the 1890s, recalled in a 1942 Minneapolis Sunday Tribune interview:
"Sometimes we'd use mules, and sometimes the mules would balk. But no one got upset, even though the mules were stubborn as long as an hour. Everyone would contribute ideas on how to get them started again. Pulling the tails slowly but steadily was the most popular suggestion."
Still, the riders had it easy compared with the drivers.
During the first 20 years of service, the typical driver, "unprotected alike from snow and rain, possessed a weather-beaten face, almost as rough and brown as the buffalo coat he wore," E.W. Tuckey writes in "An Historical Account of the Street Railways of Minneapolis and St. Paul" in the Minneapolis Historical Society's collection.
Drivers worked from six a.m. until 11 p.m. and were paid about $45 a month. Says Tuckey:
"During the winter season frozen ears, nose and fingers were expected, and it was not an unheard of thing that some poor driver had to be lifted from his platform frozen too stiff to care for himself.''
In the 1890s when electric streetcars replaced the horse cars, conditions worsened for the drivers, Tuckey writes.
"The swift motion of the (electric) car caused a constant current of air across the front of the platform, which in the depths of winter became almost unendurable. The people were not slow to appreciate the inhumanities of the situation and joined with the employees in demanding protection."
The transit companies refused. But in 1893, the Legislature passed a law requiring the cars to be enclosed between November and April.
Riders didn't exactly have a smorgasbord of alternatives to the horsecars, but there were some - including steam-powered trains and cablecars.
The "Steam Motors" of the Minneapolis, Lyndale and Minnetonka Railway served routes from downtown Minneapolis, along Lake Calhoun and out to Excelsior in the 1880s. They were noisy, smoky, slow and unpopular with riders and residents along the routes, Kieffer writes.
"The coal-fired, steam-powered motors that were enclosed to be less objectionable when running through the streets of the city and less likely to frighten horses."
"In case a stop had to be made part way uphill, say in the neighborhood of Franklin Avenue, the 'Motors' were not powerful to start the trains again. They had to be backed down to the foot of the hill and a fresh start made in order to get sufficient momentum to run to the top."
The solution was finally to reduce the grade of the hill.
In St. Paul, the steep and troublesome Selby Avenue hill was conquered first by cable cars and later by electric cars and a tunnel with a more gradual grade.
The cable car line used a cable that was drawn in an endless loop under the street by a stationary steam engine. When it was time to move, the motorman used a lever to grip the cable. When it was time to stop, he released the cable. The cars moved at a stately 8 miles per hour. Similar cars are still running in San Francisco.
Cable cars were an improvement over horsecars, especially on hills. But Minnesota's weather made them unreliable, Goodrich Lowry writes.
"The slot in the center rail, which had to be just the right size, was apt to shrink in cold weather and expand in hot weather. When it shrank, the gripping lever got stuck, and when it expanded, the wheels of passing drays and carriages were trapped."
And the cable itself wasn't 100 percent reliable, Lowry says.
"Although the entire cable seldom parted, a broken strand could entangle the gripping mechanism, converting an orderly ride in to a wild runaway. When this happened, the entire system had to be shut down - usually in the rush hour!"
Electric streetcars glided onto the scene in about 1890. They were faster, quieter and more reliable. And as the years passed they became ever more sophisticated.
The first line was built along 4th Avenue S. in Minneapolis. It captivated the public from the start. People visited the construction every day until service began at 4 p.m. on Dec. 24, 1889, says "A History of the Minneapolis Street Railway Company - 1873-1908."
"Crowds of spectators lined both sides of the route. Others at the terminus at the Post Office waited for their chance to take a ride. The drivers and conductors, with long ulster coats, buttoned all the way with brass buttons, filled out their breasts, looked straight ahead and felt even more dignified than the passengers aboard who looked out upon their friends standing on the pavement. Ding, Ding, Ding, round the corner and straight out 4th Avenue. The cars swept majestically while the hundreds of onlookers pronounced them 'just the thing.'''
Even so, electricity remained a mysterious and dangerous force, the history says.
"Many watched with alarm the operation of the Electric Cars as they observed fire flying from the wheels and from the trolley wires as the cars ran along. Predictions were freely made that the first heavy snowstorm would settle the Electric Railway and put it out of business. Drivers were afraid their horses would be killed if horses stepped on the street Car Tracks, and a great many persons were afraid of the effect of the first lightning storm on the cars with their loads of passengers."
For the next 50 years Twin City Rapid Transit streetcars carried thousands of people every day. And they did it with remarkable safety, especially as the number of streetcars and their speed increased, says Kieffer.
"This was all the more remarkable when one considers the unfavorable weather conditions under which this transit company operated through most of the year," he writes.
He recalls a near disaster in 1890 when a loaded streetcar nearly fell off the Washington Avenue bridge and into the Mississippi River.
"The car left the track -- and when it stopped, the wheels were within six inches of the bridge. The rear platform was out beyond the edge. Panicky passengers had raced for the exit (there was only one) and without a doubt, some would have been hurled into the river if the conductor had not barred their way."
But James Linsley, a streetcar operator in the 1930s, had a different take on safety. His regular letters to his family, preserved in a 1995 article in Hennepin History, "Streetcarring in the 1930s: A Personal Account," describes the hard life of a driver and numerous accidents, though few injuries.
"Saturday was a tough day for Lake Street Station. We had three streetcars smashed by skidding into stuff. Benetti was driving one of them and smashed into an interurban bus at Washington Square and it in turn hit another streetcar. He got his hand cut by broken glass. All three cars had their whole front end caved in.''
By 1907, streetcar riding had become a daily routine, judging by the observation one young woman. Thora Thoresen, an 18-year-old Minneapolis seamstress, writes in her 1907 diary, preserved by the Hennepin County Historical Society, about going to work every day, running errands and even going to the YWCA for exercise classes.
Riding the streetcar was just a part of her day: Nothing remarkable, but worth noting all the same.
Jan. 17, 1907: (After dinner at a friend's house.) "Litta followed me to the car. I reached home safely, or I would not be writing this.''
"Jan. 23, 1907: This evening, Litta came up to the shop to call for me and Rug and Litta and I went to her YWCA reception. I also joyned (sic) it and so did Litta. So now we are members. Took the Central Car home because Litta did not feel well and didn't like to transfer."
"Jan. 28, 1907: Then we ran over to the car and got on the first car. When we were well seated, he told us it was a short line, so we got off at the next corner, which was Chicago Avenue and 25th Street. We took the next car and transferred on Selby and Lake and got off at the tailor's and fitted my coat."
Another rider, Elizabeth Boyer, told the Linden Hills Oral History Project in the Minneapolis Public Library collection, that when she was a child in the 1920s her parents let her ride the streetcar to a doctor's appointment in St. Paul.
"They gave me a nickel and a penny to get on the streetcar to go downtown. I had a map of what you do downtown... I was six or seven. It was very safe in those days. We were to talk to a policeman if I forgot what I was supposed to be doing."
By the early 1950s, the streetcars were gone - replaced by buses. Various writers expressed their feelings - and opinions about the streetcar system -- in letters to the Minneapolis Tribune.
The owners of the Twin City Rapid Transit Co., seemed elated, which was understandable considering they'd engineered the conversion to buses.
"In less than 25 months we have transformed a confused, sprawling system of 392 miles of rail and overhead cable, 724 streetcars and 354 older type buses into an engineered, modern network served by the world's largest fleet of new 51-passenger air ride Diesel buses. Today the noise of the streetcar is a memory!"
But others found more in the streetcar experience than just iron, steel and copper.
A Minneapolis Tribune editorial writer, on the 25th anniversary of the ending of streetcar service, described the ride south of Lake Street on the Como-Harriet and Oak-Harriet lines.
"We don't know that it was the world's loveliest streetcar ride, but on a June day it surely was a close contender for that honor. It began at the right-of-way at Thirty-first Street. The tracks curved between pleasant backyard gardens, came into full view of lake Calhoun and the 36th St. viaduct, skirted the green lawns and gentle slopes of Lakewood Cemetery with its miniature lake, passed along gracefully wooded areas of William Berry park, and shout into sight of lovely Lake Harriet near the bandstand. Well, that trolley ride is gone forever."
And an anonymous writer remembered the good times.
"Although the streetcars are leaving us forever, we shall not forget them...most of the big, yellow cars were things of beauty, speed, power and adventure ...The glamour and wonder of our streetcars will be remembered long after the discomforts are forgotten."
source: http://www.startribune.com/368/v-print/story/64737.html
Thursday, October 30, 2003
Senate Rejects Global Warming Bill
Measure To Curb Carbon Dioxide Emissions Is Defeated
WASHINGTON, Oct. 30, 2003
Related
The greenhouse effect, a look at the Kyoto Protocol and a history of the Earth's climate.
Meet the leaders and follow the action in the House and Senate.
(CBS/AP) The U.S. Senate rejected a plan Thursday to curb carbon dioxide emissions from industrial smokestacks as a source of global warming. It was the chamber's first vote in more than six years on the controversial issue of climate change.
The 55-43 vote against the measure co-sponsored by Sens. John McCain, a Republican, and Joe Lieberman, a Democrat, capped a two-day debate that the two senators described as the opening shot in what they acknowledged will be a lengthy effort to get Congress to address global warming.
Their bill would have required industrial plants — but not motor vehicles — to reduce their emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases to 2000 levels by 2010. The Bush administration said the bill would seriously harm the U.S. economy.
"Let's get real here: this is a very minimal proposal that should be a first step," McCain told the Senate, showing pictures of Arctic Sea ice loss and melting at Glacier National Park. "But we have to start somewhere. We will be back, because these pictures will continue to get worse and won't improve until we begin to address this issue."
A senator who is a former astronaut recalled Thursday the "blue-and-white awe" of earth's atmosphere, a view that "made me want to be a better steward of this planet." Sen. Bill Nelson called for an end to "putting our heads in the sand" with current U.S. climate policy.
"The earth from space looks so beautiful, and yet so fragile," said Nelson, a Florida Democrat who flew on space shuttle Columbia in 1986. "When we face a major change in climate," he said, "it is going to have devastating effects on the ecological balance of the earth."
However, Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, said there was no need to introduce a "massive new regulatory process" for industrial carbon dioxide.
"It is not a pollutant," he said. "It does not represent a direct threat to public health."
Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee and the bill's biggest opponent, said, "Like Kyoto, this is an extreme approach." Inhofe has called global warming a hoax perpetrated by environmentalists on the American public.
Proponents say addressing global warming will in the long run help the economy, but the White House said it strongly opposed the bill because it would require "deep and immediate cuts in fossil fuel use" to meet an "arbitrary" goal, and drive up household energy bills and gas pump prices.
"These increases in energy prices would effectively operate as a tax on American consumers and would have a severe negative impact on job creation," the White House said in a statement.
Sen. Kit Bond told senators the bill would cripple the U.S. economy. "Now is not the time to place more burden on our families and our communities," he said.
McCain, who chairs the Senate Commerce Committee, forced the debate and vote to the Senate floor by promising he wouldn't block a major energy bill that has been stalled in Congress.
The administration's stance on global warming has irked critics.
In August, the Environmental Protection Agency said it lacked authority to regulate carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases from motor vehicles. In June, CBS News reported that an EPA report on climate change was gutted to eliminate strong language that "climate change has global consequences for human health and the environment" and was "likely mostly due to human activities."
©MMIII, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.
source: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/10/30/politics/main580915.shtml
Saturday, October 18, 2003
John Chavis - Free African American in 18th Century America
 |
From North Carolina, his family was legally free which allowed him to pursue an education. Chavis arrived at Liberty Hall Academy in 1795, one year prior to George Washington's gift of 100 shares of James River Company Stock. He was a student when the institution changed its name to Washington Academy. On November 19 1800 with high honors they granted him a license to preach. His academic performance attracted much public attention because it contradicted the belief that Blacks were intellectually inferior to whites. In 1808, Chavis founded a school for the children of white slave owners. As an educator, Chavis taught full time.
He trained white children during the day and free Black children at night. He prepared the white children for college by teaching them Latin and Greek. The school he opened in Raleigh was described as one of the best in the state. It surely was an excellent school, for some of the most powerful men in white society entrusted their sons’ education to Chavis. His students include Priestly H. Mangum, brother of Senator Willie P. Mangum; Archibald E. and John L. Henderson, sons of Chief Justice Henderson; Governor Charles Manly; The Reverend William Harris; Dr. James L. Wortham; the Edwardses, Enlows (Enloes), Hargroves, and Horners; and Abraham Rencher who became Minister of Portugal and Territorial Governor of New Mexico.
John Chavis' influence was far reaching. A dedicated opponent of slavery, John Chavis was an influential abolitionist leader in the South. The circumstances surrounding his death in 1838 remain unclear, although many suspect that he was murdered because of his work to better the lives of Blacks.
Reference:
African Americans/Voices of Triumph
by Dr. Henry Louis Gates Jr.
Copyright 1993, TimeLife Inc.
Founder's Day Lecture Washington & Lee University
The Negro in the American Revolution.
by Benjamin Quarles
University of North Carolina Press for
the Institute of Early American History and Culture,
Williamsburg, Va., 1961.
http://www.aaregistry.com/african_american_history/406/John_Chavis_educator_and_mentor
Tuesday, October 08, 2002
Barack Hussein Obama's speech against the Iraq War - October 2002
"I stand before you as someone who is not opposed to war in all circumstances. The Civil War was one of the bloodiest in history, and yet it was only through the crucible of the sword, the sacrifice of multitudes, that we could begin to perfect this union and drive the scourge of slavery from our soil.
I Don't Oppose All Wars
I don't oppose all wars. My grandfather signed up for a war the day after Pearl Harbor was bombed, fought in Patton's army. He fought in the name of a larger freedom, part of that arsenal of democracy that triumphed over evil.
I don't oppose all wars.
Opposed to Dumb, Rash Wars
I don't oppose all wars. What I am opposed to is a dumb war. What I am opposed to is a rash war. What I am opposed to is the cynical attempt by Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz and other armchair, weekend warriors in this administration to shove their own ideological agendas down our throats, irrespective of the costs in lives lost and in hardships borne.
What I am opposed to is the attempt by political hacks like Karl Rove to distract us from a rise in the uninsured, a rise in the poverty rate, a drop in the median income, to distract us from corporate scandals and a stock market that has just gone through the worst month since the Great Depression.
That's what I'm opposed to. A dumb war. A rash war. A war based not on reason but on passion, not on principle but on politics.
On Saddam Hussein
Now let me be clear: I suffer no illusions about Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal man. A ruthless man. A man who butchers his own people to secure his own power.... The world, and the Iraqi people, would be better off without him.
But I also know that Saddam poses no imminent and direct threat to the United States, or to his neighbors...and that in concert with the international community he can be contained until, in the way of all petty dictators, he falls away into the dustbin of history.
I know that even a successful war against Iraq will require a U.S. occupation of undetermined length, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences.
I know that an invasion of Iraq without a clear rationale and without strong international support will only fan the flames of the Middle East, and encourage the worst, rather than best, impulses of the Arab world, and strengthen the recruitment arm of al-Qaeda.
I am not opposed to all wars. I'm opposed to dumb wars. So for those of us who seek a more just and secure world for our children, let us send a clear message to the president.
You Want a Fight, President Bush?
You want a fight, President Bush? Let's finish the fight with Bin Laden and al-Qaeda, through effective, coordinated intelligence, and a shutting down of the financial networks that support terrorism, and a homeland security program that involves more than color-coded warnings.
You want a fight, President Bush? Let's fight to make sure that...we vigorously enforce a nonproliferation treaty, and that former enemies and current allies like Russia safeguard and ultimately eliminate their stores of nuclear material, and that nations like Pakistan and India never use the terrible weapons already in their possession, and that the arms merchants in our own country stop feeding the countless wars that rage across the globe.
You want a fight, President Bush? Let's fight to make sure our so-called allies in the Middle East, the Saudis and the Egyptians, stop oppressing their own people, and suppressing dissent, and tolerating corruption and inequality, and mismanaging their economies so that their youth grow up without education, without prospects, without hope, the ready recruits of terrorist cells.
You want a fight, President Bush? Let's fight to wean ourselves off Middle East oil through an energy policy that doesn't simply serve the interests of Exxon and Mobil.
Those are the battles that we need to fight. Those are the battles that we willingly join. The battles against ignorance and intolerance. Corruption and greed. Poverty and despair."
Thursday, August 29, 2002
What do Americans eat and why?
The great food debate
Come on in
How bad is American food? And whose fault is it?
Come on in
Aug 29th 2002 | SAN FRANCISCO
From The Economist print edition
From The Economist print edition
How bad is American food? And whose fault is it?
AMERICANS are in a pickle over food. Just as a decade of financial optimism has given way to the shocked discovery that people are poorer than they thought they were, so an era of working out in gyms and low-fat dieting has been mocked by reports of the nation's shocking chubbiness and other food-related forms of ill-health.
The figures on fat are striking. The proportion (if not the proportions) of Americans who are obese rose from 15% in 1991 to 27% in 1999. Youngsters show the same trend: 10% of them are now obese. Add in the merely overweight and you cover 60% of American adults and 25% of children. David Satcher, who retired as surgeon general in February, has estimated that obesity contributes to 300,000 of the 2m deaths each year in America. Treating diet-related conditions such as cancer and heart disease cost $117 billion in 2000.
What to do? The Bush administration has launched a $190m advertising campaign aimed at making children more energetic. This week, the Los Angeles school board moved to ban the sale of fizzy drinks in its schools. In May, a Californian state senator abandoned her bill to impose a tax of two cents on every can of pop statewide, but others are still pushing for “sin taxes” on burgers and sugary drinks.
The courts have become involved too. Last month, a New Yorker sued four fast-food chains. He had eaten their food regularly in the course of reaching 272lb (123kg) and notching up two heart attacks. The restaurants, he said, had not warned him that his diet might be harmful.
Meanwhile, another battle has broken out within the fad-crazed health industry itself. The traditional low-fat, bran-and-broccoli dieticians have been challenged by another school that advocates high-protein eating. Beef and lobster, they say, are fine, but you have to stay off carbohydrates such as pasta and bread.
Is the American stomach really in such poor shape? By the standards of most of the world, Americans are fairly healthy. Life expectancy continues to rise; it is bettered only by places that absorb far fewer immigrants from poor countries. Despite jeers from Europe about the number of additives and hormones that go into American food, there have been no health scares on the scale of Britain's mad-cow disease.
Yet Americans are surely right to be agitated about their food. There is an overwhelming amount of evidence that their diet is doing many of them a great deal of harm. The “fat-acceptance” lobby is right that you can be heavy and fit; but without exercise, too much weight makes diabetes and other potentially fatal diseases more likely. Independent of the implications of being overweight, diet also plays a role in other illnesses, such as cancers of the bowel, colon and prostate.
There is also a clear social divide. Both hunger (which still afflicts 10m households in America) and unhealthy excess correlate closely with poverty and poor education. Shops in poor neighbourhoods stock less fresh food (and at higher prices), while fast-food joints proliferate. Poorer people also have fewer parks and playgrounds in which to exercise.
This sounds bad. Yet the food industry is largely giving American consumers (rich and poor) what they want. A pattern of life in which fewer families eat regular meals together, fewer parents remain at home during the day to cook, and increasing amounts of time are spent working or commuting creates demand for convenient, fast food (especially when it is as cheap as it is). Tummy size, then, is largely a side-effect of modern American life—and the choices that Americans make.
That said, there is a debate about how well informed consumers are when they make these choices. Even if you regard the case of the litigious 272lb New Yorker as absurd, America's food industry is particularly powerful and unfettered. In Europe, the most powerful bit of the food-production chain is the one closest to the consumer—the supermarkets. In America, the industry is controlled by food processors. Three facets of the food business are particularly troubling:
•Misleading information. Marion Nestle of New York University points out in “Food Politics” (University of California Press, 2002) that blurbs on packaging are highly selective. Breakfast cereals, for instance, come blazoned with information about how their added minerals and vitamins will strengthen young bones; they have less about what the coating of sugar will do to children's teeth and waistlines.
•Poor regulation. The power of the food lobby extends to Washington. The agriculture department has a huge conflict of interest. It is responsible both for promoting the interests of farmers and for disseminating nutritional information. The Food and Drug Administration has been restrained by Congress, at the behest of food interests, in its efforts to regulate dietary claims.
•Schools. Eating habits formed by children are hard to shake in adulthood: 60% of obese children grow up into obese adults. Fast-food firms often serve as official caterers, while soft-drink firms have installed numerous snack dispensers in schools (especially poor ones), in exchange for providing things like TVs.
Far from representing something new, the current debate about carbohydrates reflects the confusion created when science and marketing mix. While the 1990s fads concentrated on fatty foods and their link to cholesterol, the high-protein dieticians blame starchy carbohydrates. These, they say, produce a rush of sugar in the blood that destabilises the body's regulation of appetite and so lead to overeating.
This does help to explain one mystery of the past 20 years: why “low-fat” food did not work. The low-fat meals that Americans guzzled down were often packed with refined flour and heavily sugared to give them flavour (which the customers also wanted); people who tucked into them kept on wanting to eat more. The food industry did not rush to alert them to this point; nor did its packaging mention the sugar as clearly as the “low fat”.
Yet the more you delve into the issue, the more nuanced it appears. Just as some fatty foods, such as avocados and peanuts, are now thought to protect the heart (not harm it), there are also some sorts of carbohydrates, such as those found in whole grains, that don't encourage appetite. And the newest research seems to imply that people's genetic disposition might matter more than all these things. Variations in the apOE gene, for example, may determine your blood cholesterol level more than your diet. And all that is before you consider things like the amount of exercise people take.
Over the past 25 years or so, Americans have repeatedly jumped at quick-fix solutions for their fast-food habits. In the late 1990s there was a craze for anti-fat drugs, which inevitably led to lawsuits. But in the end nearly all the arguments about food come back to the choices that consumers make.
Americans have got larger because they have chosen (mainly consciously) to eat the way that they do. Millions of them actually eat rather well: these tend to be the richer and better-educated sorts, who go to gyms and buy their vegetables from organic farmers' markets. Their buying power is having an effect: one of the fastest-growing supermarket chains in America is Whole Foods Markets, based in Austin, Texas, which mixes organic vegetables and free-range chicken with a sorcerer's array of vitamin tonics. But, for the moment at least, they are in a clear thin minority.
My recommendation? Go vegetarian!
Thursday, August 22, 2002
Wither Congress, Wither America?
Crushing Congressional Dissent: The Fall of Hilliard, Barr and McKinney
by Wayne Madsen
[Reprinted With Permission]
08/22/02
Historians will one day write that the 107th Congress was the last to stand up to the constitutional encroachment by the military and monarchist policies of the Bush II administration. Just as with the Roman Senate, the Congress of the United States is becoming an elite club of pathetic assenters and global elitists. Once the domain of great orators and dissenters like Cato and Cicero, the Roman Senate was eventually subsumed by the Roman Army when the Emperor took on dictatorial powers. The Roman Senate could say nothing as the Roman
dictatorship annexed Macedonia, Spain, Greece, the Middle East, and North Africa. By the time Emperors Tiberius and Septimius Severus took power, the Senate, which had grown to an elite club of 600, was a rubber stamp body that had no choice but to go along with the military's continued usurpation of power.
The United States Congress stands on the same precipice as its Roman ancestor. If Bush pulls another electoral coup in 2004 and we see the presidential election thrown into the House of Representatives, the future for the country appears very dim.
The August 20 defeat of two Georgia Representatives, one Democrat, the other Republican, is a bellwether event that bodes ill for this November's elections. Rep. Cynthia McKinney was successfully challenged by a Republican-turned-Democrat for her Fourth District seat. Before a cleverly contrived political operation was launched under the aegis of Georgia's other quasi-Republican, Senator Zell Miller, no one outside of Georgia had ever heard of former state judge Denise Majette, a self-described supporter of fringe lunatic GOP presidential candidate Alan Keyes in 2000. Majette will join in Congress fellow Ivy Leaguer Artur Davis, who beat Alabama Democratic Representative Earl Hilliard in that state's primary because of the latter's outspoken support for a more even-handed Middle East policy. Hilliard and McKinney join a long list of politicians who were defeated after advocating an independent U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East: Senators Charles Percy, James Abourezk, James Abdnor, and J. William Fulbright, and Representatives Paul Findley and Paul McCloskey. The careers of Adlai Stevenson and William Scranton were similarly ended after they supported a Middle East policy less tied to the interests of Israel. Only Michigan's veteran Representative John Dingell was able to stave off a recent assault from the powerful
American Israel Political Action Committee (AIPAC) in a match off with fellow Representative Lynn Rivers in a redrawn congressional district.
However, Dingell's National Rifle Association ally, Georgia Representative Bob Barr, was not as fortunate. Barr was also a target of Miller's political operation. An opponent of the more draconian elements in Bush's and John Ashcroft's USA-PATRIOT Act and Homeland Security Department bill, Barr was a target of opportunity for the extreme right that favors turning the United States into a version of East Germany or North Korea. Moreover, Barr's chairmanship of the House Subcommittee on Commercial and Administrative Law gave him real gavel power to block Bush and Ashcroft on critical civil liberties and privacy infringements, a power Barr has not hesitated to wield. And after supporting Steve Forbes in the 2000 GOP primary, Barr did not fit into Bush's binary and simplistic world: "If you're not with me, you're against me." Therefore, Miller, who, according to a former aide, is targeting fellow Senator Max Cleland and Georgia Governor Roy Barnes for defeat by conservative Republicans, figured out that if Barr supporters in Gwinnett County, which straddles McKinney's Fourth District and Barr's Seventh District, could be coaxed into crossing over party lines and voting for Majette, it would kill two birds with one stone. Barr would lose votes to his opponent John Linder and McKinney would get trounced by Majette in a low turnout (25 per cent) election with a high GOP crossover vote. The gambit paid off. McKinney and Barr were both defeated handily, McKinney with the help of 25,000 crossover votes. Of course, the fact that people not authorized to vote in the Fourth District may have voted anyway would fall into the category of election fraud. But after the Florida debacle, the Ashcroft Justice Department sees such electoral machinations as a way to remain in power a la any totalitarian regime parading around before the world as a democracy.
That McKinney and Barr were on the same neo-conservative hit list was exemplified on August 21 by a second-tier conservative radio talk show host in Washington, DC. Speaking on WTNT-AM, Oral Roberts University graduate, Pat Buchanan political adviser, and Tom DeLay- style Republican talk show host Michael Graham said it was great news that two "kooks" had been beaten in Georgia. He then stated he was talking about "Cynthia McKinney and her photo negative twin, Bob Barr." The statement was clearly racist in nature and a not-so-veiled reference, through a warped attempt at humor, to Barr's long rumored African-American heritage. But for the extreme right that dominates the GOP, such incendiary ethnophobic comments are the rule and not the exception.
McKinney had incurred the wrath of the White House by her question about what George W. Bush knew in advance about the September 11 terrorist attacks. But that was only the tip of the iceberg for the Republicans and their major campaign contributors. While it true that McKinney has championed the cause of Palestinian statehood and self- determination, thus inviting the enmity of major Jewish organizations in the United States, it was her long-time opposition to the trade of
blood diamonds and other strategic minerals in Africa that earned her a major challenge from multinational corporations, including Barrick Gold, on whose board President Bush's father serves as an international adviser. Among its other misdeeds, Barrick has been accused of helping to cover up the 1996 burying alive by one of its subsidiaries of over 50 Tanzanian gold miners in Bulyanhulu, in the northwest part of the country. Of course, when it comes to the lives and welfare of non-white people, the Bushes have never really held any soft spot, whether they are blacks in Africa or America's inner cities, Afghan or Iraqi children, or even a troubled half-Hispanic daughter/niece/granddaughter in Florida.
McKinney long advocated a halt in the pilferage of blood diamonds out of African war zones. She cited, on numerous occasions, the result of such commerce: the hacked off limbs, hands, and ears of small children in Sierra Leone; the permanent crippling from land mines of children in Angola and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), and over 2.5 million deaths from civil wars in the DRC, Rwanda, Uganda, and Burundi. The diamond profiteers from this mayhem and death are largely the Hasidic diamond dealers of Antwerp, Amsterdam, New York, and Tel Aviv. These dealers and their lobbyists often circled in and out of House hearing rooms and McKinney's office when issues relating to stemming the flow of ill-gotten African diamonds came up for discussion. These diamond merchants also have a powerful ally in long- time Democratic Party fundraiser and diamond cartel magnate Maurice Tempelsman.
The 108th Congress, lacking the consciousness of Cynthia McKinney and the skepticism of Bob Barr, will be a far more dangerous place. I have had the pleasure of working and knowing both of them over the years - fighting battles, in the case of McKinney, against U.S. human rights offenses in Africa and elsewhere and in the case of Barr, against rampant U.S. government surveillance of the private lives and activities of American citizens. The next Congress will be full of complacent African-American parlor servants like Majette and Davis, dangerous extreme rightists like former cockroach exterminator DeLay and former sportscaster J. D. Hayworth of Arizona, pitiful morons like Florida's former Secretary of State and chief election rigger Katherine Harris, Republican moles and sleepers like Zell Miller and Joe Lieberman, and Democratic spineless amoebas like Richard Gephardt and Tom Daschle. They will stand ready to back Bush's military campaigns into Iraq, Iran, Venezuela, Colombia, or wherever Bush's economic interests are at stake. The country stands on the brink of disaster. But we cannot count on the future Congress to save us. Lacking a spine or any guts, it will surely help to bury us.
Wayne Madsen is a Washington-based investigative journalist. He testified before Cynthia McKinney's hearing on the genocide in the DRC in May 2001 and has worked with Bob Barr on privacy legislation in the past. He wrote the introduction to Forbidden Truth. Madsen can be reached at: WMadsen777@aol.com
Source
by Wayne Madsen
[Reprinted With Permission]
08/22/02
Historians will one day write that the 107th Congress was the last to stand up to the constitutional encroachment by the military and monarchist policies of the Bush II administration. Just as with the Roman Senate, the Congress of the United States is becoming an elite club of pathetic assenters and global elitists. Once the domain of great orators and dissenters like Cato and Cicero, the Roman Senate was eventually subsumed by the Roman Army when the Emperor took on dictatorial powers. The Roman Senate could say nothing as the Roman
dictatorship annexed Macedonia, Spain, Greece, the Middle East, and North Africa. By the time Emperors Tiberius and Septimius Severus took power, the Senate, which had grown to an elite club of 600, was a rubber stamp body that had no choice but to go along with the military's continued usurpation of power.
The United States Congress stands on the same precipice as its Roman ancestor. If Bush pulls another electoral coup in 2004 and we see the presidential election thrown into the House of Representatives, the future for the country appears very dim.
The August 20 defeat of two Georgia Representatives, one Democrat, the other Republican, is a bellwether event that bodes ill for this November's elections. Rep. Cynthia McKinney was successfully challenged by a Republican-turned-Democrat for her Fourth District seat. Before a cleverly contrived political operation was launched under the aegis of Georgia's other quasi-Republican, Senator Zell Miller, no one outside of Georgia had ever heard of former state judge Denise Majette, a self-described supporter of fringe lunatic GOP presidential candidate Alan Keyes in 2000. Majette will join in Congress fellow Ivy Leaguer Artur Davis, who beat Alabama Democratic Representative Earl Hilliard in that state's primary because of the latter's outspoken support for a more even-handed Middle East policy. Hilliard and McKinney join a long list of politicians who were defeated after advocating an independent U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East: Senators Charles Percy, James Abourezk, James Abdnor, and J. William Fulbright, and Representatives Paul Findley and Paul McCloskey. The careers of Adlai Stevenson and William Scranton were similarly ended after they supported a Middle East policy less tied to the interests of Israel. Only Michigan's veteran Representative John Dingell was able to stave off a recent assault from the powerful
American Israel Political Action Committee (AIPAC) in a match off with fellow Representative Lynn Rivers in a redrawn congressional district.
However, Dingell's National Rifle Association ally, Georgia Representative Bob Barr, was not as fortunate. Barr was also a target of Miller's political operation. An opponent of the more draconian elements in Bush's and John Ashcroft's USA-PATRIOT Act and Homeland Security Department bill, Barr was a target of opportunity for the extreme right that favors turning the United States into a version of East Germany or North Korea. Moreover, Barr's chairmanship of the House Subcommittee on Commercial and Administrative Law gave him real gavel power to block Bush and Ashcroft on critical civil liberties and privacy infringements, a power Barr has not hesitated to wield. And after supporting Steve Forbes in the 2000 GOP primary, Barr did not fit into Bush's binary and simplistic world: "If you're not with me, you're against me." Therefore, Miller, who, according to a former aide, is targeting fellow Senator Max Cleland and Georgia Governor Roy Barnes for defeat by conservative Republicans, figured out that if Barr supporters in Gwinnett County, which straddles McKinney's Fourth District and Barr's Seventh District, could be coaxed into crossing over party lines and voting for Majette, it would kill two birds with one stone. Barr would lose votes to his opponent John Linder and McKinney would get trounced by Majette in a low turnout (25 per cent) election with a high GOP crossover vote. The gambit paid off. McKinney and Barr were both defeated handily, McKinney with the help of 25,000 crossover votes. Of course, the fact that people not authorized to vote in the Fourth District may have voted anyway would fall into the category of election fraud. But after the Florida debacle, the Ashcroft Justice Department sees such electoral machinations as a way to remain in power a la any totalitarian regime parading around before the world as a democracy.
That McKinney and Barr were on the same neo-conservative hit list was exemplified on August 21 by a second-tier conservative radio talk show host in Washington, DC. Speaking on WTNT-AM, Oral Roberts University graduate, Pat Buchanan political adviser, and Tom DeLay- style Republican talk show host Michael Graham said it was great news that two "kooks" had been beaten in Georgia. He then stated he was talking about "Cynthia McKinney and her photo negative twin, Bob Barr." The statement was clearly racist in nature and a not-so-veiled reference, through a warped attempt at humor, to Barr's long rumored African-American heritage. But for the extreme right that dominates the GOP, such incendiary ethnophobic comments are the rule and not the exception.
McKinney had incurred the wrath of the White House by her question about what George W. Bush knew in advance about the September 11 terrorist attacks. But that was only the tip of the iceberg for the Republicans and their major campaign contributors. While it true that McKinney has championed the cause of Palestinian statehood and self- determination, thus inviting the enmity of major Jewish organizations in the United States, it was her long-time opposition to the trade of
blood diamonds and other strategic minerals in Africa that earned her a major challenge from multinational corporations, including Barrick Gold, on whose board President Bush's father serves as an international adviser. Among its other misdeeds, Barrick has been accused of helping to cover up the 1996 burying alive by one of its subsidiaries of over 50 Tanzanian gold miners in Bulyanhulu, in the northwest part of the country. Of course, when it comes to the lives and welfare of non-white people, the Bushes have never really held any soft spot, whether they are blacks in Africa or America's inner cities, Afghan or Iraqi children, or even a troubled half-Hispanic daughter/niece/granddaughter in Florida.
McKinney long advocated a halt in the pilferage of blood diamonds out of African war zones. She cited, on numerous occasions, the result of such commerce: the hacked off limbs, hands, and ears of small children in Sierra Leone; the permanent crippling from land mines of children in Angola and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), and over 2.5 million deaths from civil wars in the DRC, Rwanda, Uganda, and Burundi. The diamond profiteers from this mayhem and death are largely the Hasidic diamond dealers of Antwerp, Amsterdam, New York, and Tel Aviv. These dealers and their lobbyists often circled in and out of House hearing rooms and McKinney's office when issues relating to stemming the flow of ill-gotten African diamonds came up for discussion. These diamond merchants also have a powerful ally in long- time Democratic Party fundraiser and diamond cartel magnate Maurice Tempelsman.
The 108th Congress, lacking the consciousness of Cynthia McKinney and the skepticism of Bob Barr, will be a far more dangerous place. I have had the pleasure of working and knowing both of them over the years - fighting battles, in the case of McKinney, against U.S. human rights offenses in Africa and elsewhere and in the case of Barr, against rampant U.S. government surveillance of the private lives and activities of American citizens. The next Congress will be full of complacent African-American parlor servants like Majette and Davis, dangerous extreme rightists like former cockroach exterminator DeLay and former sportscaster J. D. Hayworth of Arizona, pitiful morons like Florida's former Secretary of State and chief election rigger Katherine Harris, Republican moles and sleepers like Zell Miller and Joe Lieberman, and Democratic spineless amoebas like Richard Gephardt and Tom Daschle. They will stand ready to back Bush's military campaigns into Iraq, Iran, Venezuela, Colombia, or wherever Bush's economic interests are at stake. The country stands on the brink of disaster. But we cannot count on the future Congress to save us. Lacking a spine or any guts, it will surely help to bury us.
Wayne Madsen is a Washington-based investigative journalist. He testified before Cynthia McKinney's hearing on the genocide in the DRC in May 2001 and has worked with Bob Barr on privacy legislation in the past. He wrote the introduction to Forbidden Truth. Madsen can be reached at: WMadsen777@aol.com
Source
Thursday, August 03, 2000
Nader vs. Floridian Republican Party
THE REPUBLICANS: THE GREEN PARTY; Nader Crashes, And Bashes, G.O.P.'s Party
Finally, with pedestrian traffic at a complete stop, Al Cardenas stepped forward and said: ''Excuse me, Mr. Nader. I'm the chairman of the Florida delegation, and this is our area.''It took the presence of Ralph Nader consumer advocate, professional gadfly and himself a candidate for president of the United States -- but something finally happened here tonight that, one assumes, was not in the Republican Party script.
Right in the middle of the presidential nomination roll-call, Mr. Nader charged onto the convention floor, plopped himself in front of the Florida delegation and began tearing into the Republican Party and George W. Bush.
''Why am I here?'' he said, crushed amid a throng of delegates and reporters. ''I wanted to observe this thing in action. This is the most spectacular display of cash-register politics in the history of our country.''
''The message,'' he continued, patiently answering questions from any reporter who had one, ''is to go home and rethink what they're doing to the country when they sell the political system to corporate interests.''
As a rule, Green Party candidates for president are not allowed onto the tightly guarded floor of the Republican National Convention, where everyone, even Republican leaders, wears credentials strung around the neck. Mr. Nader was displaying broadcast media credentials, courtesy of a reporter from WBAI, a Pacifica Radio station in New York, who took him out onto the floor for an interview.
Although polls show that Mr. Nader's campaign has cut into support for Vice President Al Gore*, his venture tonight out among the Republicans was met with something less than an enthusiastic reaction from the Florida delegates, who seemed a bit shocked. First there were chants of ''Go, Bush! Go, Bush!'' Then Mel Martinez, a delegate from Orlando, stepped forward to thrust a Bush-Cheney sign into Mr. Nader's hands. Mr. Nader courteously thanked Mr. Martinez for the souvenir and promised to relish it.
Mr. Cardenas informed Mr. Nader that he would be welcome to join the Republican Party but that meanwhile it was time for him to go. And, with a little pushing from other delegates, he did.
*In the 2000 election, more registered Democrats in Florida voted for Bush than all Florida voters who voted for Nader.
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