Thursday, November 30, 2006

Wake up and smell the smoke.

My Country, My Country [film]
http://mycountrymycountry.com
http://pbs.org/pov/pov2006/mycountry
"...a lot of people will continue to die and this is a war that was started by my country. I felt that my life wasn't any more valuable or precious than anyone else's; it was worth taking that risk to tell this story."
-Laura Poitras
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Senator Nunn referring to need to have fear to drum up business for the military industry - "...the threat blank..." - once the U.S.S.R. had fallen
projectcensored.org/Publications/2004/1.html
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Australia Group
http://www.gene-watch.org/genewatch/articles/16-2wright.html
http://australiagroup.net/en/control_list/bio_agentsadditions_in_italica.htm
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http://blackagendareport.com
http://www.continuetolearn.uiowa.edu/laborctr/html/unionsallies.html
http://talkingpointsmemo.com
wonkette.com
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This book documents that hurricanes are becoming much stronger though perhaps not more frequent:
+
The Ravaging Tide: Strange Weather, Future Katrinas, and the Coming Death of American Coastal Cities
http://www.ebooks.com/ebooks/book_display.asp?IID=267243
http://www.simonsays.com/content/book.cfm?tab=1&pid=519448&agid=2
...In March 2003, my book Bayou Farewell: The Rich Life and Tragic Death of Louisiana's Cajun Coast was published. It predicted in great detail that a Katrina-like storm would soon destroy New Orleans, leaving thousands of people dead and the national economy bruised. When the hurricane did hit, precisely as foreseen, journalists from around the world began calling me, asking how it felt to be a prophet. How amazing, they said, that I was able to see this disaster coming when so many others didn't.
In truth, I deserve no credit whatsoever for my prediction. Katrina's arrival was as certain as tomorrow's sunrise. There were thousands of pages of reports before the storm, from advocacy groups and government agencies, spelling out the need for better levees and bigger barrier islands to prevent the looming catastrophe. Hindsight is 20/20, and Americans are now outraged by the lack of prior action. Yet the predisaster paper trail was so long, stretching to the moon and back, that a journalist like me was just stating the obvious prior to August 2005. Katrina was coming. The facts were as clear as day.
And now something else is coming, something just as obvious but much bigger and even more dangerous. Which leads us to the second question on every American's mind: Can Katrina happen where I live? The answer, unfortunately, is yes, yes, and again yes. If you are one of the 150 million Americans who live within a hundred miles of a coastline - and even if you live much farther inland - you could be inhabiting the next New Orleans. The bad news for you is that there are even more studies full of even more scientific data confirming this fact than there were predicting Katrina prior to 2005.
The issue this time is global warming...

...Among the six most powerful hurricanes to strike America in the last 150 years, three of them - a full half - happened in just fifty-two days in 2005: Katrina, Rita, and Wilma.

In 2003, I declared with complete confidence that Katrina was coming. I argued that below-sea-level New Orleans would soon fall prey to a major hurricane because of human actions. Now I beseech readers to trust me when I say Houston and Tampa and New York City and Baltimore and Miami are in equally deep trouble. If you want to know what disasters these cities will be frantically fighting against fifty to seventy-five years from now, just turn on your television. Look at New Orleans today. That's the future.
Yet a full year after Katrina hit, we are still ignoring that storm's biggest lesson. We continue to turn a blind eye to global warming the same way we once ignored the dire pleas for stronger levees in Louisiana. History is repeating itself on the largest scale imaginable. The pages that follow will make clear that all of America - and indeed the whole planet - is now like a low-lying land behind broken and insufficient levees, and the water is coming up fast.
But, thankfully, there is a plan to get us out of this mess just as there was once a viable plan to prevent Katrina's worst impacts. It involves the seemingly unlikely aid of hybrid cars and modern windmills and solarized homes. Clean energy is the solution to global warming, and clean energy is as widely available to us today as the dirt below our feet for filling sandbags. We just have to pitch in and pick up our shovels and get to work - right now.
In the end, the metaphors only go so far. We have but one planet Earth, and it is not just another watery Louisiana parish we can vacate and return to when the danger's gone. Our days of running are simply running out.
Soon we won't have any place to go.
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+
excerpt page 48:
Chapter 4
Global Warming: Same Mistakes, Bigger Stage

...page 50
...around 1750, with widespread use of coal...prospect of rocketing to as much as 700 ppm or more by 2100. That's the "blade" portion of the hockey stick. It's pointing straight up from the flat line of our past. The heat-trapping power...is growing exponentially...

page 126
...For anyone who fully accepts the reality of global warming and drops all denial about what's causing it, daily life in America can be a difficult thing to take in indeed. Seeing the mammoth, inefficient SUVs and the hand-scorching incandescent lightbulbs at every turn, and knowing the moral and practical implications of both, is like having to watch all the world's bread swept into a giant pile each day and set on fire, or watching all the world's milk trucks dump their cargo onto the street.
Deepening this pain is the waste of human lives in tandem with the wasted energy, and indeed because of it. It's the twenty-year-old American boys blown up in Iraq every day along with scores of noncombatant men, women, and children. It's the three thousand American lives wasted on 9/11.
...the daily waste of clean, renewable energy all around us: the unused power of sunlight falling on our roofs and wind power blowing along our mountains and biofuels waiting for harvest across our farms. That we have barely even begun to exploit these resources represents a huge waste of precious time and bounty...

page 140
Chapter 9 - Climate Cover-up at the White House

But enough with the chronic nay-saying of the U.S. fossil fuel industry and its chief mouthpiece George W. Bush. We have the capacity to transform our energy habits in a hurry...
page 154
...we all own the sky...in equal measure...the sky is far too vital and fragile to be treated as a worthless dumping ground of harmful greenhouse gases. It simply can't hold much more of these gases while supporting life as we know it on earth...

Sunday, November 26, 2006

love power

The Love vibration connects us all
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First Annual Solstice Synchronized Global Orgasm for Peace
[a quantum leap forward from the old Fuck for Peace declaration]
http://globalorgasm.org
http://nhne.org/tabid/400/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/2076/Default.aspx
http://wcbstv.com/topstories/local_story_323212551.html
http://redefiningseduction.com
...massive anti-war demonstration for the first day of winter...goal is for everyone in the world to have an orgasm Dec. 22 while focusing on world peace...to effect change in the energy field of the Earth through input of the largest possible surge of human energy. Now that there are two more US fleets heading for the Persian Gulf with anti- submarine equipment that can only be for use against Iran, the time to change Earth’s energy is NOW!..."...The orgasm gives out an incredible feeling of peace during it and after it...mass meditations have been shown to make a change."...
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http://endoilaid.org
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Stern Review Report on the Economics of Climate Change
Summary of Conclusions
http://hm-treasury.gov.uk/media/8A8/C1/Summary_of_Conclusions.pdf
...the benefits of strong and early action far outweigh the economic costs of not acting. Climate change will affect the basic elements of life for people around the world - access to water, food production, health, and the environment...hunger, water shortages and coastal flooding...
...major disruption to economic and social activity, on a scale similar to those associated with the great wars and the economic depression of the first half of the 20th century. And it will be difficult or impossible to reverse these changes...
...radical change in the physical geography of the world must lead to major changes in the human geography...
All...will be affected. The most vulnerable - the poorest...will suffer earliest and most, even though they have contributed least to the causes...The costs of extreme weather, including floods, droughts, and storms, are already rising...
Adaptation...is essential. It is no longer possible to prevent the climate change that will take place over the next two to three decades...providing better information, improved planning and more climate resilient crops and infrastructure. Adaptation...will put still further pressure on already scarce resources...
The costs of stabilising the climate are significant but manageable; delay
would be dangerous and much more costly...
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re-legalizing love:
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Psychedelic drug study ofrering new insights
by Malcolm Ritter, Associated Press
People who took an illegal drug made from mushrooms reported profound mystical experiences that led to behavior changes...
Many...rated their reaction to psilocybin, as one of the most meaningful or spiritually significant...
...researchers suggest that the drug someday may help drug addicts kick their habit or aid terminally ill patients struggling with anxiety or depression...
...most of the volunteers said the experience had changed them in beneficial ways, such as making them more compassionate, loving, optimistic and patient. Family members and friends said they noticed a difference, too.
Charles Schuster, a Wayne State University professor of psychiatry and behavioral neuroscience and a former director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, called the work a landmark.
http://www.nhne.org/news/NewsArticlesArchive/tabid/400/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/1271/Psychedelic-Drug-Study-Recalls-The-60s.aspx
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http://schoollunchinitiative.org/resources/links.shtml
http://wastefreeschools.org
http://lifelab.org/helpful/index.html
http://alleghenyplaces.com
threepennyopry.blogspot.com
legitgov.org
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THE STATE OF DEMOCRACY IN LATIN AMERICA
HEARING BEFORE THE SUBCOMMITTEE ON
THE WESTERN HEMISPHERE OF THE
COMMITTEE ON INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED NINTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
MARCH 9, 2005
http://www.house.gov/international-relations
http://www.internationalrelations.house.gov/archives/109/99822.PDF
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Foundation for Sustainable Development
http://fsdinternational.org
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Sustainability Watch
http://suswatch.org
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Inter-American Commission on Human Rights
http://cidh.org
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Sunday, November 19, 2006

The high road is safer

Steps We Can Take
Everybody wants change and a better future. But, since we can't agree on how to get there or even on what a better world would look like, we can only take relatively small actions that everybody can agree on.
Here are some changes I'd like to see made or at least discussed:
+ unanimous commitment to immediately go full steam ahead to transition from fossil fuels. The longer we wait the even greater consequences - both international and environmental. In the opinion of some, already inevitable great tragedies are in the works because of our past actions and inactions. We may soon no longer have the ability to do anything.
+ expanded public transit between Hazelwood and Oakland
+ boarding stops made by the now-empty express buses inbound during the afternoon rush hour to pick up riders in Hazelwood
+ adoption of the hazelnut tree as emblematic of our desire to get to a greener future while recognizing the past. Hazelwood didn't originally have coal dust or diesel fumes or boarded up broken windows; it had hazelnut trees and and babbling brooks and fish jumping out of the water.
+honest and thorough public discussion of how twisted our legal system has become and concrete moves to improve it. There are many laws that allow people who are being destructive in one way or another to continue to do so. Pick your own examples of the law gone awry. I have my own favorite rants, from:
allowing illegal drug users to terrorize their neighorhoods and drive down property values and destroy the whole community's peace of mind in a vain quest to afford the perfect high;
to
allowing pharmaceutical companies to continue to market drugs which are just as dangerous or more so than some of the ones currently illegal;
to
corporations which allow their bottom lines to literally kill and torture people for profit - whether by pollution or monopolizing services or laws that allow planned obsolence and consequent massive waste - sacrificing quality to profit or so many other types of unethical behavior;
to
laws that allow business competition to be stifled in the name of "free trade" that's not really free.
Jim McCue
composter and biotech researcher
appropriatebiotech@yahoo.com
mccue@hillhouse.org
412/421-6496