Here are 3 opt-out forms to prevent your or your child's high school from sharing your private information with military recruiters. Only one of these 3 forms is needed.
Click here for the parent's form.
Click here for the legal guardian's form.
Click here for the student's form.
You ALSO need to send THIS FORM to the Pentagon's Joint Advertising Market Research & Studies office (whose address is in the form), which gathers information on 16–25-year-olds from sources other than schools and is used by military recruiters (click here for information).
August 24, 2010
August 23, 2010
Gubernatorial misconceptions regarding wind
On July 27, the Burlington Free Press printed replies on Vermont's energy future from the five Democratic (primary) and one Republican candidate for governor. Here are their statements regarding wind, with commentary following in italics. Dunne and Bartlett did not mention wind.
Dubie: Last November, Bolton Valley became the nation's second ski area, and Vermont's first, to install its own wind turbine -- a 121-foot-tall Northwind 100, manufactured by Vermonters at Northern Power in Barre. It will produce 300,000 kw annually.
As of 10:11 a.m., August 23, 2010, the Bolton Valley wind turbine had produced 125,809 kWh since October 2009. So, apart from confusing kilowatts (rate of production) with kilowatt-hours (energy produced), Dubie is basing his claim on a projection that almost one year later can be shown to be wrong. In its first year of operation, the Bolton Valley wind turbine is likely to produce less than half of the energy predicted (yet still claimed).
Racine: There are locations throughout the northeast that make sense for solar, wind, biomass, and hydro, and if we take a regional approach, we can site these power sources with the least impact possible.
This assumes that these projects must be built. As for wind, its poor production of almost no value to the grid does not justify its erection anywhere. The least impact possible is to forget about it.
Markowitz: I am a strong supporter of community wind projects, hydropower, solar, biomass and geothermal energy production. As governor, I will review our regulatory process to ensure that renewable energy projects get a fair hearing and fast results.
Since energy projects are developed by well capitalized corporations and inordinately affect host communities and environments, the concern should be that those who are adversely affected or who advocate for the environment are able to get a fair hearing.
Shumlin: To meet our electricity needs we will need power delivered from small community-based solar projects to utility scale wind farms and everything in between. As outlined in a Vision for Vermont, I will work with the Treasurer's office to leverage the state's ability to borrow money at affordable rates and issue a series of Vermont renewable energy bonds so that every Vermonter who wants to can literally invest in our energy future. The revenue generated through these projects, guaranteed through electricity sales to the utilities, will help pay the bonds off.
The "everything is needed" approach as presented by Shumlin lacks any sign of rational evaluation of costs and benefits. The only people who would benefit from this circular funding model are the manufacturers and installers — it is a job creation program, but without regard to its effect on the environment and hosting communities, or to its actual contributions to a reliable electricity supply.
wind power, wind energy, environment, environmentalism, human rights, Vermont
Dubie: Last November, Bolton Valley became the nation's second ski area, and Vermont's first, to install its own wind turbine -- a 121-foot-tall Northwind 100, manufactured by Vermonters at Northern Power in Barre. It will produce 300,000 kw annually.
As of 10:11 a.m., August 23, 2010, the Bolton Valley wind turbine had produced 125,809 kWh since October 2009. So, apart from confusing kilowatts (rate of production) with kilowatt-hours (energy produced), Dubie is basing his claim on a projection that almost one year later can be shown to be wrong. In its first year of operation, the Bolton Valley wind turbine is likely to produce less than half of the energy predicted (yet still claimed).
Racine: There are locations throughout the northeast that make sense for solar, wind, biomass, and hydro, and if we take a regional approach, we can site these power sources with the least impact possible.
This assumes that these projects must be built. As for wind, its poor production of almost no value to the grid does not justify its erection anywhere. The least impact possible is to forget about it.
Markowitz: I am a strong supporter of community wind projects, hydropower, solar, biomass and geothermal energy production. As governor, I will review our regulatory process to ensure that renewable energy projects get a fair hearing and fast results.
Since energy projects are developed by well capitalized corporations and inordinately affect host communities and environments, the concern should be that those who are adversely affected or who advocate for the environment are able to get a fair hearing.
Shumlin: To meet our electricity needs we will need power delivered from small community-based solar projects to utility scale wind farms and everything in between. As outlined in a Vision for Vermont, I will work with the Treasurer's office to leverage the state's ability to borrow money at affordable rates and issue a series of Vermont renewable energy bonds so that every Vermonter who wants to can literally invest in our energy future. The revenue generated through these projects, guaranteed through electricity sales to the utilities, will help pay the bonds off.
The "everything is needed" approach as presented by Shumlin lacks any sign of rational evaluation of costs and benefits. The only people who would benefit from this circular funding model are the manufacturers and installers — it is a job creation program, but without regard to its effect on the environment and hosting communities, or to its actual contributions to a reliable electricity supply.
wind power, wind energy, environment, environmentalism, human rights, Vermont
August 14, 2010
To the south, which is for why always west ...
Which by an estranging yet commodious rictus brings us westward ho, which is southbound, again, as it’s been said with a smile, and, if given to belief in all the signs that bedevil the toothless, tongueless, gaping beyond, the north and east, too, all of it together and around again if the mystic’s you thing, also if not: silver highways that, if you obey the recommendations of their contingently blinking advisories, if only you would heed their wondrous warnings arcaned in ways symbolized of arrows and stars, promise to take you out as far as the garden of Angels, which is Holywood, the second city that is all cities, but is all other cities perfected, made irreal: apparently, a place of pilgrimage, the developers now sell it as, per the glossed propaganda a mystical shrine, in which dream need not be its own fulfillment, no matter how common its interpretation nor how brute its price. Here there are intersections and there are causeways and byways, there are interchanges and coded connections, known only to the select under hidden numbers, by secret names. To approach this wisdom, it’s said, you must follow the wide wave of the desert, then turn — averting disaster — just before its break, forsaking its spill over the concrete and the meridian there, to abandon its wake that drifts sand as if stars to constellate the further beach, which gives itself over to the Pacific as a grave, the bottommost burial of the world . . . this is the ocean, the other ocean. A rumbling wave prays in thanks for the sacrifice of the shore, the land, the dry earth. As here, as much as everywhere else, the heavens open: every weather crowded into cloud. It’s Friday already, it's the Sabbath again, and we tumble into its fissure, timequaked — the void of yet another Shabbos.
—Witz by Joshua Cohen
Do you hear what I hear
From The Free Press, Rockland, Maine, Aug. 12, 2010:
"Wind turbine noise is becoming a bigger issue in the U.S.," said Patrick Moriarty, an aeronautical engineer for the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in Golden, Colorado. NREL belongs to the U.S. Department of Energy and is the primary research and development site for energy efficiency and renewable energy, including wind power. Moriarty is a senior engineer at the lab.
"It's been a big issue in Europe for a while because their wind farms have been up longer and they are in more densely populated areas," Moriarty said.
wind power, wind energy, wind turbines, wind farms, environment, environmentalism, human rights
"Wind turbine noise is becoming a bigger issue in the U.S.," said Patrick Moriarty, an aeronautical engineer for the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in Golden, Colorado. NREL belongs to the U.S. Department of Energy and is the primary research and development site for energy efficiency and renewable energy, including wind power. Moriarty is a senior engineer at the lab.
"It's been a big issue in Europe for a while because their wind farms have been up longer and they are in more densely populated areas," Moriarty said.
wind power, wind energy, wind turbines, wind farms, environment, environmentalism, human rights
August 13, 2010
Wind power is a cynical game
Monique Aniel writes in the Bangor Daily News:
Wind power in Maine is a chess game, a chess game for those protected by multinational companies and allies in the current administration.
It is a game that took 20 years to design, a game that redefined new rules for state and federal agencies, reshaping their mandates of protecting America’s citizens and majestic lands into doing the exact opposite.
A game that puts people’s rights and public health behind those of the wind industry and simply ignored the complaints of those disturbed by the maddening whoosh of turbines.
Wind power is a game that turns electricity, which is already expensive, into a thrice absurdly expensive commodity hurting the pocketbook of residential and business customers alike. First in the purchasing cost, second in the cost of subsidies necessary to support the inefficiency and unreliability of this industry and third in the ratepayer-funded new electrical transmission structures required to accommodate the thermal stresses of spurting wind generation.
Wind power is a game that sacrifices America’s natural heritage for the profits of parasitic corporations adept at exploiting government policies, political correctness, guilty consciences of environmental organizations and fears about our environment.
wind power, wind energy, environment, environmentalism, human rights
Wind power in Maine is a chess game, a chess game for those protected by multinational companies and allies in the current administration.
It is a game that took 20 years to design, a game that redefined new rules for state and federal agencies, reshaping their mandates of protecting America’s citizens and majestic lands into doing the exact opposite.
A game that puts people’s rights and public health behind those of the wind industry and simply ignored the complaints of those disturbed by the maddening whoosh of turbines.
Wind power is a game that turns electricity, which is already expensive, into a thrice absurdly expensive commodity hurting the pocketbook of residential and business customers alike. First in the purchasing cost, second in the cost of subsidies necessary to support the inefficiency and unreliability of this industry and third in the ratepayer-funded new electrical transmission structures required to accommodate the thermal stresses of spurting wind generation.
Wind power is a game that sacrifices America’s natural heritage for the profits of parasitic corporations adept at exploiting government policies, political correctness, guilty consciences of environmental organizations and fears about our environment.
wind power, wind energy, environment, environmentalism, human rights
August 1, 2010
Dayeinu
As gossip becomes rumor becomes rule of Law, then eventually discredited, dismissed, overturned, it’s difficult to know what to do besides stand aside, sleep our dreams, wake, walk, and whisper, monger our gossip into rumors, while letting the course of events inhuman enact whatever punishment it is that might appease the anger of a God; render unto and all that — let the Lord exact the AlmightyÆs retribution, take enough suffering to satisfy them both, then make wing for day.
—Witz by Joshua Cohen
—Witz by Joshua Cohen
July 31, 2010
Israel destroys Bedouin village
From CNN:
Police evicted 200 Bedouins from their homes in a southern Israeli village on Tuesday and demolished their dwellings, an act decried by residents who said they are on ancestral land.
The move occurred five miles north of Beer Sheva in a village called Al-Araqeeb, an enclave not recognized by the state of Israel.
Witnesses told CNN that the Israeli forces arrived at the village accompanied by busloads of civilians who cheered as the dwellings were demolished. They said armed police deployed with tear gas, water cannon, two helicopters and bulldozers.
Also read: "Ethnic cleansing in the Israeli Negev: The razing of a Bedouin village by Israeli police shows how far the state will go to achieve its aim of Judaising the Negev region" — Neve Gordon in The Guardian. Click here (more video, too).
Police evicted 200 Bedouins from their homes in a southern Israeli village on Tuesday and demolished their dwellings, an act decried by residents who said they are on ancestral land.
The move occurred five miles north of Beer Sheva in a village called Al-Araqeeb, an enclave not recognized by the state of Israel.
Witnesses told CNN that the Israeli forces arrived at the village accompanied by busloads of civilians who cheered as the dwellings were demolished. They said armed police deployed with tear gas, water cannon, two helicopters and bulldozers.
Also read: "Ethnic cleansing in the Israeli Negev: The razing of a Bedouin village by Israeli police shows how far the state will go to achieve its aim of Judaising the Negev region" — Neve Gordon in The Guardian. Click here (more video, too).
July 27, 2010
If you have a house, you are safe.
Too early for morning, too late for regret, the air veined in lightning, the sun a clouded clot. Thunder. Gods are being born in the sky.
This is why we left the Garden and moved out to Siburbia, as we're always explaining, most of all to ourselves.
My boy, look around you, listen, sniff the air and taste the bread your mother bought, you're sure to understand: this is why we lit out, bringing only the candlesticks with us — why this dispersal to plot, this diaspora of the subdivision, such limitation of the eternal Development.
—Witz, by Joshua Cohen
This is why we left the Garden and moved out to Siburbia, as we're always explaining, most of all to ourselves.
My boy, look around you, listen, sniff the air and taste the bread your mother bought, you're sure to understand: this is why we lit out, bringing only the candlesticks with us — why this dispersal to plot, this diaspora of the subdivision, such limitation of the eternal Development.
—Witz, by Joshua Cohen
July 22, 2010
Word
Corrupted by wealth and power, your government is like a restaurant with only one dish. They've got a set of Republican waiters on one side and a set of Democratic waiters on the other side. But no matter which set of waiters brings you the dish, the legislative grub is all prepared in the same Wall Street kitchen. —Huey Long
(Via The Progressive Review)
(Via The Progressive Review)
July 21, 2010
Nimby wind developer
A New Zealand–based farmer who gave the go ahead for wind turbines to be built on moorland he owns above Rochdale [England] says he would be unhappy if a windfarm were built close to his home.
Jeremy Dearden, Lord of the Manor of Rochdale, told his local newspaper there had been a ‘NIMBY’ – Not In My Back Yard – aspect to the campaign against plans to build a dozen 400ft turbines at Crook Hill and is quoted as saying: “The visual pollution aspect of it … I can appreciate that.
“I have a pretty big view from my place here, and I don’t know that I’d like to see a lot of windmills.”
—Rochdale Observer, July 20, 2010
Jeremy Dearden, Lord of the Manor of Rochdale, told his local newspaper there had been a ‘NIMBY’ – Not In My Back Yard – aspect to the campaign against plans to build a dozen 400ft turbines at Crook Hill and is quoted as saying: “The visual pollution aspect of it … I can appreciate that.
“I have a pretty big view from my place here, and I don’t know that I’d like to see a lot of windmills.”
—Rochdale Observer, July 20, 2010
July 20, 2010
Israeli PM Netanyahu: I "stopped" Oslo peace process
Here is the transcript of the translated portion of the video posted earlier (click here):
Netanyahu: Turn off the camera so that we can elaborate on this.
Narrator: A few minutes later... the camera is turned on again and Netanyahu begins to speak without quotation marks and without masks
Netanyahu: Now we're beginning to understand the meaning of the slogan 'Yesha Zeikan Judea, Samaria, and Azza are here'
Netanyahu: Yesha is everywhere, what is the difference.
Netanyahu: What does Arafat want? He wants one big settlement [implies Palestinians see all of Israel as a settlement].
Woman: Yes that's what my daughter in law who came from England says [i.e. they, Palestinians, see Tel Aviv as a settlement also].
Netanyahu: Tel Aviv is also a settlement. From their point of view [Palestinians], our territorial waters are also theirs.
Netanyahu: The fact is that they want us in the sea. Over there... [gestures] in the distant water.
Netanyahu: The Arabs now are preparing for a campaign [or war] of terror, and they think that this will break us.
Netanyahu: The main thing is, first and foremost, to hit them hard.
Netanyahu: Not just one hit... but many painful, so that the price will be unbearable.
Netanyahu: The price is not unbearable, now.
Netanyahu: A total assault on the Palestinian Authority.
Netanyahu: To bring them to a state of panic that everything is collapsing.
Netanyahu: ...fear that everything will collapse... this is what we'll bring them to...
Woman interrupts: But wait a minute, at that point the whole world will say 'What are you occupiers?' Netanyahu: The world will say nothing. The world will say that we are defending ourselves.
Woman: Aren't you afraid of the world Bibi? Netanyahu: No
Netanyahu: Especially now, with America, I know what America is.
Netanyahu: America is a thing that can be easily moved. ...moved in the right direction.
Netanyahu: They [Americans] will not bother us.
Netanyahu: Let's suppose that they [Americans] will say something [to us - Israelis]... so they say it... [so what?]
Netanyahu: 80% of the Americans support us. It's absurd! We have such [great] support there! And we say... what shall we do with this [support]? Look, the other administration (that of Clinton) was pro-Palestinian in an extreme way. I was not afraid to maneuver there. I did not fear confrontation with Clinton. I was not afraid to clash with the U.N.
Netanyahu: As it is, I am paying the price in the international arena... So I might as well receive something of equal value in exchange.
Child: But never mind that. We gave them things, and we can’t take them back. Because they won’t give them back to us.
Netanyahu: [Gestures for child to let him speak] First of all, Oslo is a system [or package of things]. You're right, a) I do not know what can and cannot be taken back [from Palestinians]
Woman: He has political opinions, believe me.
Netanyahu: He's right.
Woman: He said such things to Arik Sharon that I told him: that’s not – that’ not a child’s opinion. The Oslo Accords are a disaster.
Netanyahu: Yes, I know that and you know that... but the people need to know
Woman: Right. But I thought that the prime minister did know, and that he’d do everything so that, somehow, not to do critical things, like handing over Hebron, that...
Netanyahu: What were the Oslo Accords? The Oslo Accords, which the Knesset signed, I was asked, before the elections: “Will you act according to them?” and I answered: “Yes, subject to reciprocity and limiting the withdrawals.
Netanyahu: But how do you limit the withdrawals? I interpret the accords in such a way that will enable me to stop this rush toward '67 borders [returning to armistice line]. [So...] how do we do it?
Narrator: The Oslo Accords stated at the time that Israel would gradually hand over territories to the Palestinians in three different stages, unless the territories in question had settlements or military sites. This is where Netanyahu found a loophole.
Netanyahu: No one said what defined military sites. Defined military sites, I said, were security zones. As far as I’m concerned, the Jordan Valley is a defined military site.
Woman: Right [laughs]. The Beit She’an settlements. The Beit She’an Valley.
Netanyahu: How can you tell. How can you tell? But then the question came up of just who would define what Defined Military Sites were. I received a letter – to me and to Arafat, at the same time... which said that Israel, and only Israel, would be the one to define what those are, the location of those military sites and their size. Now, they did not want to give me that letter, so I did not give the Hebron Agreement. I stopped the government meeting, I said: “I’m not signing.” Only when the letter came, in the course of the meeting, to me and to Arafat, only then did I sign the Hebron Agreement. Or rather, ratify it, it had already been signed. Why does this matter? Because at that moment I actually stopped the Oslo Accord.
Woman interrupts: And despite that, one of our own people, excuse me, who knew it was a swindle, and that we were going to commit suicide with the Oslo Accord, gives them – for example – Hebron. I never understood that.
Netanyahu: Indeed, Hebron hurts. It hurts. It’s the thing that hurts. One of the famous rabbis, whom I very much respect, a rabbi of Eretz Yisrael, he said to me: “What would your father say?” I went to my father. Do you know a little about my father’s position?
Woman: Yes
Child: No [laughs]
Woman: He'll read in a little while.
Netanyahu: He’s not exactly a lily-white dove, as they say. So my father heard the question and said: 'Tell the rabbi that your grandfather, Rabbi Natan Milikowski, was a smart Jew. Tell him it would be better to give two percent than to give a hundred percent. And that’s the choice here. You gave two percent and in that way you stopped the withdrawal. Instead of a hundred percent.'
Netanyahu: The trick is not to be there and break down. The trick is to be there and pay a minimal price.
Woman: May you say that as prime minister.
Netanyahu: In my estimation that will happen.
Netanyahu: Turn off the camera so that we can elaborate on this.
Narrator: A few minutes later... the camera is turned on again and Netanyahu begins to speak without quotation marks and without masks
Netanyahu: Now we're beginning to understand the meaning of the slogan 'Yesha Zeikan Judea, Samaria, and Azza are here'
Netanyahu: Yesha is everywhere, what is the difference.
Netanyahu: What does Arafat want? He wants one big settlement [implies Palestinians see all of Israel as a settlement].
Woman: Yes that's what my daughter in law who came from England says [i.e. they, Palestinians, see Tel Aviv as a settlement also].
Netanyahu: Tel Aviv is also a settlement. From their point of view [Palestinians], our territorial waters are also theirs.
Netanyahu: The fact is that they want us in the sea. Over there... [gestures] in the distant water.
Netanyahu: The Arabs now are preparing for a campaign [or war] of terror, and they think that this will break us.
Netanyahu: The main thing is, first and foremost, to hit them hard.
Netanyahu: Not just one hit... but many painful, so that the price will be unbearable.
Netanyahu: The price is not unbearable, now.
Netanyahu: A total assault on the Palestinian Authority.
Netanyahu: To bring them to a state of panic that everything is collapsing.
Netanyahu: ...fear that everything will collapse... this is what we'll bring them to...
Woman interrupts: But wait a minute, at that point the whole world will say 'What are you occupiers?' Netanyahu: The world will say nothing. The world will say that we are defending ourselves.
Woman: Aren't you afraid of the world Bibi? Netanyahu: No
Netanyahu: Especially now, with America, I know what America is.
Netanyahu: America is a thing that can be easily moved. ...moved in the right direction.
Netanyahu: They [Americans] will not bother us.
Netanyahu: Let's suppose that they [Americans] will say something [to us - Israelis]... so they say it... [so what?]
Netanyahu: 80% of the Americans support us. It's absurd! We have such [great] support there! And we say... what shall we do with this [support]? Look, the other administration (that of Clinton) was pro-Palestinian in an extreme way. I was not afraid to maneuver there. I did not fear confrontation with Clinton. I was not afraid to clash with the U.N.
Netanyahu: As it is, I am paying the price in the international arena... So I might as well receive something of equal value in exchange.
Child: But never mind that. We gave them things, and we can’t take them back. Because they won’t give them back to us.
Netanyahu: [Gestures for child to let him speak] First of all, Oslo is a system [or package of things]. You're right, a) I do not know what can and cannot be taken back [from Palestinians]
Woman: He has political opinions, believe me.
Netanyahu: He's right.
Woman: He said such things to Arik Sharon that I told him: that’s not – that’ not a child’s opinion. The Oslo Accords are a disaster.
Netanyahu: Yes, I know that and you know that... but the people need to know
Woman: Right. But I thought that the prime minister did know, and that he’d do everything so that, somehow, not to do critical things, like handing over Hebron, that...
Netanyahu: What were the Oslo Accords? The Oslo Accords, which the Knesset signed, I was asked, before the elections: “Will you act according to them?” and I answered: “Yes, subject to reciprocity and limiting the withdrawals.
Netanyahu: But how do you limit the withdrawals? I interpret the accords in such a way that will enable me to stop this rush toward '67 borders [returning to armistice line]. [So...] how do we do it?
Narrator: The Oslo Accords stated at the time that Israel would gradually hand over territories to the Palestinians in three different stages, unless the territories in question had settlements or military sites. This is where Netanyahu found a loophole.
Netanyahu: No one said what defined military sites. Defined military sites, I said, were security zones. As far as I’m concerned, the Jordan Valley is a defined military site.
Woman: Right [laughs]. The Beit She’an settlements. The Beit She’an Valley.
Netanyahu: How can you tell. How can you tell? But then the question came up of just who would define what Defined Military Sites were. I received a letter – to me and to Arafat, at the same time... which said that Israel, and only Israel, would be the one to define what those are, the location of those military sites and their size. Now, they did not want to give me that letter, so I did not give the Hebron Agreement. I stopped the government meeting, I said: “I’m not signing.” Only when the letter came, in the course of the meeting, to me and to Arafat, only then did I sign the Hebron Agreement. Or rather, ratify it, it had already been signed. Why does this matter? Because at that moment I actually stopped the Oslo Accord.
Woman interrupts: And despite that, one of our own people, excuse me, who knew it was a swindle, and that we were going to commit suicide with the Oslo Accord, gives them – for example – Hebron. I never understood that.
Netanyahu: Indeed, Hebron hurts. It hurts. It’s the thing that hurts. One of the famous rabbis, whom I very much respect, a rabbi of Eretz Yisrael, he said to me: “What would your father say?” I went to my father. Do you know a little about my father’s position?
Woman: Yes
Child: No [laughs]
Woman: He'll read in a little while.
Netanyahu: He’s not exactly a lily-white dove, as they say. So my father heard the question and said: 'Tell the rabbi that your grandfather, Rabbi Natan Milikowski, was a smart Jew. Tell him it would be better to give two percent than to give a hundred percent. And that’s the choice here. You gave two percent and in that way you stopped the withdrawal. Instead of a hundred percent.'
Netanyahu: The trick is not to be there and break down. The trick is to be there and pay a minimal price.
Woman: May you say that as prime minister.
Netanyahu: In my estimation that will happen.
Netanyahu: I Deceived U.S. to Destroy Oslo Accords
... At the time [9 years ago] Mr Netanyahu had taken a short break from politics but was soon to join Mr Sharon’s government as finance minister.
On a visit to a home in the settlement of Ofra in the West Bank to pay condolences to the family of a man killed in a Palestinian shooting attack, he makes a series of unguarded admissions about his first period as prime minister, from 1996 to 1999.
Seated on a sofa in the house, he tells the family that he deceived the US president of the time, Bill Clinton, into believing he was helping implement the Oslo accords, the US-sponsored peace process between Israel and the Palestinians, by making minor withdrawals from the West Bank while actually entrenching the occupation. He boasts that he thereby destroyed the Oslo process.
He dismisses the US as “easily moved to the right direction” and calls high levels of popular American support for Israel “absurd”.
He also suggests that, far from being defensive, Israel’s harsh military repression of the Palestinian uprising was designed chiefly to crush the Palestinian Authority led by Yasser Arafat so that it could be made more pliable for Israeli diktats. ...
The video is now available with English subtitles by courtesy of the Institute for Middle East Understanding:
On a visit to a home in the settlement of Ofra in the West Bank to pay condolences to the family of a man killed in a Palestinian shooting attack, he makes a series of unguarded admissions about his first period as prime minister, from 1996 to 1999.
Seated on a sofa in the house, he tells the family that he deceived the US president of the time, Bill Clinton, into believing he was helping implement the Oslo accords, the US-sponsored peace process between Israel and the Palestinians, by making minor withdrawals from the West Bank while actually entrenching the occupation. He boasts that he thereby destroyed the Oslo process.
He dismisses the US as “easily moved to the right direction” and calls high levels of popular American support for Israel “absurd”.
He also suggests that, far from being defensive, Israel’s harsh military repression of the Palestinian uprising was designed chiefly to crush the Palestinian Authority led by Yasser Arafat so that it could be made more pliable for Israeli diktats. ...
The video is now available with English subtitles by courtesy of the Institute for Middle East Understanding:
July 15, 2010
Bruno Vico and Finnegans Wake
From A Word in Your Ear: How & Why to Read James Joyce's Finnegans Wake, by Eric Rosenbloom, pages 29–39:
Saints Giordano and Giambattista
Besides characters, there are a few informing spirits behind the work, most notably Giordano Bruno (of Nola) and Giambattista Vico. Giordano was a determinedly independent philosopher burned in Rome by the Inquisition in 1600 after 8 years of imprisonment. He spent his youth — 13 years — in the refuge of a Dominican monastery. The 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia characterized his thought as “incoherent materialistic pantheism.” From the Copernican solar system he went on to suggest that the sun is not the center of the universe, that creation is infinite, and further that every living thing contains an infinite universe. He said the earth, too, is a living being. Developing the work of Nicholas of Cusa (1401–1464), who said that in God contraries unite, Giordano stated that everything knows itself best in the struggle with its opposite, even creating its opposite for that purpose, or by finding it across time as well as space — or in a mirror — and that no living thing exists except that its opposite exists as well. He envisioned entities in constant flux, exchanging identities, moving farther from and closer to the unity of God. He also worked on a system of memory training, dabbled in alchemy, and believed that Jesus was a magician. He first fled Rome and then many other cities ahead of various church and university authorities, and spent a few very productive years in London as toast of the town. Back in Venice, he was betrayed by his host to the Holy Office. The Nolan’s wide-ranging intellect and varied life (much of it in exile) yet singleness of vision represented for Joyce the spiritual unity of character. As such, he is found in Dublin as the stationers Browne and Nolan (who published the edition of Chapman’s Homer that Joyce probably read as a child).
Giambattista Vico (1688–1744) was a linguist and legal historian who published his New Science, which he described as “a rational civil theology of divine providence,” in 1725 and went mad while perfecting it for further editions. Developing many of Giordano’s ideas, he too rejected the idea of “golden” ages; the New Science examines the course of nations out of Cyclopean family clearings, divine kings, and the offer of asylum for vassals, through alliance of the “noble” fathers in eternal reaction against the growing demands of the vassals, to a certain equity for all, descent into civil wars and anarchy, and salvation under a civil monarchy. The monarchy (i.e., empire) collapses, and, as divine kings rise again in its wake, barbarism returns and the nations are reborn. The cycle began after the universal flood with a flash of lightning and clap of thunder that drove brutish giants to recall their humanity and hide in shame in caves, there beginning the institutions of religion, marriage, and burial that are at the origin of every civilization. A recourse of the cycle began in Europe after the collapse of Rome.
By examining Greek and Roman history, language, mythology, and law, Vico described the course of nations in terms of the Egyptian ages of gods, of heros, and of people. Each age has a characteristic nature (poetic, heroic, human), reflected in its social organization (family, city, nation), natural law (divine, force, reason), government (theocratic, aristocratic, democratic), customs (religion, social ceremony, civic duty), reason (revelatory, political, personal), language and letters (mute gesture and heiroglyphics, heraldry and symbolism, popular speech and characters), and so on. The heroic age is transitional, transferring the rights and property of Adam to more of the people. It is marked by verbal scrupulousness, punctilious manners, violent struggles, suspicion and civil turbulence, and pura et pia bella (pure and pious war, such as the Crusades that ended the “dark” age of Europe’s ricorso).
Each age itself goes through a cycle of rising and falling, recovery and demise, ending with a poet — theological, heroic, vulgar — who culminates the age and ushers in the next by creating a new Jove.
Vico does not limit himself, however, to this 3-stage scheme, describing 5 and 6 stages as well for the unfolding of humanity through necessity, utility, comfort, pleasure, luxury, madness, and “waste of his substance.” His scheme can be described as a flux between divine kings defending the special status of the “heros” and a civil emperor protecting human equity. And just as Vico analogizes individual development to speculate about early humanity, Joyce sees a cycle of history in every person’s childhood, maturity, and decline.
The major part of the New Science establishes the thought of the divine and early heroic ages, their “poetic wisdom.” For example, as a nation’s world expanded, local names were re-used for farther places in the same direction. This (along with Dante’s finding that he and Florence were a central concern of the divine order in his Comedy) provides a model for Joyces’ Dublin-based universe (“they went doublin their mumper all the time” (p. 3)). Vico also discovers the true Homer as the collective voice of the Greek peoples, those of the northeast in the Iliad and centuries later those of the southwest in the Odyssey; this is akin to Joyce’s mystery of Finnegan and his incarnation in HCE, Here Comes Everybody.
Viconian Cycle
It is usually said that the four parts of Finnegans Wake follow a Viconian cycle of gods–heros–people–recourse. Indeed, “vicus of recirculation” is mentioned in the first sentence, there is a flood followed by thunder later on the first page, and thunder words continue to be heard (pp. 3, 23, 44, 90, 113, 257, 314, 332, 414, and 424 — nine of 100 letters each and one of 101 to total 1001 letters). The thunder, however, is like the audible babblings of a fitful sleeper threatening to rise, given form by responses from the players of the book that ensure he will stay down until they are ready, i.e., the book seems to be stuck in the pre-human state of atheist giants, in the Norse Ginnungagap, before (and after) time.
The four parts of Finnegans Wake do not follow the Egypto-Viconian ages. If anything, they go backwards, from the rollicking expansiveness of the first book (of the people), through the set-pieces of the second (the heroic family), to the self-worshipping Shaun of the third (the god-like son). Most problematic with the identification of Joyce’s parts with Vico’s ages is that the recourse (ricorso in Italian) is not a 4th age, but the return of the 1st. Instead of following Vico’s cycle, the four parts of Finnegans Wake may — as Samuel Becket claimed — represent the three institutions (religion, marriage, burial) that move humanity into the light of civilization and, finally, step into history. Kabbalistically, they may represent the archetypal, creative, formative, and material worlds in the process of getting from idea to the manifestation of dawn. They may be simply four different dreams through the deepening night. They may originate from the four parts of the Tristan & Isolde stories.
Joyce, as he does with all his sources, re-interprets Vico to fit his own scheme. He certainly uses Vico, but the heroic age is always in the present, the divine age always in the past, and the popular age in the future; and they are all present simultaneously. Finn Mac Cool with the goddess Brighid is of the divine age, HCE and ALP are of the heroic, and Shem, Shaun, and Issy the popular. Avatars of each of them appear in every age. Cycles spin off from multitudes of events and in myriad lives, overlapping and intertwining and confusing each other. The flood represents the cataclysmic end as well as the pause before going round again.
Nonetheless, Finnegans Wake is full of 3- and 4-term sequences; usually they represent the religion, marriage, and burial at the beginning of history, e.g., “Harry me, marry me, bury me, bind me” (p. 408; all 3 institutions are binding: by piety, shame, sense of immortality). Their regularity emphasizes the universality and circularity of human time that Vico stands for in the book. On page 590, the cycle appears very simply as “Tiers, tiers and tiers. Rounds.” And on page 452: “The Vico road goes round and round to meet where terms begin.” This describes simultaneous opposite movement from a point of unity, joining briefly on the other side and continuing back to the origin. It describes a flux as much as a cycle, a “systomy dystomy” (p. 597) like the beating of the heart or the fall and rise of all human endeavors.
Joyce, although often referring people to Vico, also asserted he did not “believe” Vico’s science, “but my imagination grows when I read Vico as it doesn’t when I read Freud or Jung.” He was perhaps using Vico to think about the subconscious mind in history more than about history itself. Vico provided the idea that mind and history are identical, and that language betrays their secrets. Thus all history could be revealed in a book of a sleeping soul, its crude projections redeemed in the unconscious mind that created them. (As Stephen Dedalus might have said in his dotage, “History is a nightmare I’m dreaming to wake.”)
Hugh Kenner has suggested that the dreamer does not want to wake up, that ALP is a widow resisting the conscious awareness that her husband — executed after the 1916 Easter uprising, he says — is no longer beside her. The hanging scaffold is suppressed by becoming Tim Finnegan’s building scaffold. Her tears become the river in which her dreams flow. The book of history assures us that life always rises from the ashes, but we also know that individual loss is unrecoverable. The incomplete sentence at the end of Finnegans Wake gives the reader a choice: Leave the book and return to life, or return to the book’s first words.
Joyce once likened Finnegans Wake to the Dark Night of the Soul, a treatise by shoeless and imprisoned Saint John of the Cross on the perfection of love and his poem Dark Night. That work is the fourth part of his Ascent of Mount Carmel, and similarly Finnegans Wake as a whole is a separate elaboration of Vico’s cycle through the nightly unrest of dream. As history courses like the rise, glory, and descent of the sun each day, an individual recourse occurs at night. The language of the book reflects this period of transition from — the flux between — decadence and a new beginning. There is a Vico road in Dalkey, a southern coastal suburb of Dublin.
Death and Rebirth
Joyce once imagined his book as the dead giant Finn Mac Cool lying by the Liffey (where swam the salmon, his totem animal) watching history — his and the world’s, the past and the future — flowing through him. This life-in-death dream becomes a sacramental process of rebirth. At Finnegan’s wake, Finnegans wake.
One should also remember that Joyce nearly joined the Jesuits, and that the Christian ceremonial cycle continued to shape his imagination. The mystery of the trinity, for example, three persons (multiplicity) representing unity, is very much in the spirit of Finnegans Wake. At its best, Christianity has been a great syncretizer and humanizer of older myths. For example, the stations of the cross represent a sacrifice ritual in terms of a human procession, the paschal drama of the rise and fall and rise again of human history. At its worst, it is a great beast devouring, Shaun-like, everything before it in the name of salvation after death.
The Christian sacramental meal, the eucharist, the host, is often present. Hoc est corpus (“This is the body”) is another manifestation of HCE (“Here Comes Everybody”; but also High Church of England). As host (“victim” in Latin) at his pub, HCE serves and is mocked by his 12 customers. In Vico, the earlier meaning of host is alien, thief, violator of the clearing — an enemy of the people who is sacrificed in their name. The first cities were identified with the altars that were in the fields, where, for example, Cain slew the more primitive Abel and Romulus slew Remus who jumped over the just-plowed boundaries. It is alienated Hosty who writes “The Ballad of Persse O’Reilly” (pp. 44–47) against the outsider HCE.
Vico called the course of nations a history of piety, and in their recourse they were guided by Christianity, a more human religion. For Joyce, Christianity is more prominent than other religious and mythological systems because it is the one he knew intimately. But the eucharistic meal — the renewing sacrifice — fits the pattern described in James George Frazer’s The Golden Bough of killing and eating a divine king. And it is connected with the Jewish feast of tabernacles, or Succoth, as a turning of the year. Although it is now only theater, the original barbaric act (“He’ll want all his fury gutmurdherers to redress him.” (p. 617)) still erupts into history and continues to reverberate in the human unconscious.
Humanism
My use of the term is not philosophically rigorous, but Vico and Giordano are important also as humanists. Giordano’s love of God was such that he loved nature as it is. He showed that the infinitude of the divine is within every element and creature of nature and every human being. Vico showed that history was not a matter of destiny or fate, but the operation of divine providence in the human mind; he insisted that “the world of civil society has certainly been made by men, and that its principles are therefore to be found within the modifications of our own human mind.”
July 9, 2010
Bolton Valley's wind turbine underperforming
Promises, promises.
Northern Power Systems says that Bolton Valley ski area's "Northwind 100 [kW] will produce about 300,000 kilowatt-hours per year, the equivalent of the electricity consumed by 40-45 Vermont homes."
Since October 2009, however, it had produced only 114,309 kWh as of 10:00 p.m. on July 9, 2010. At that time, it was producing power at the rate of less than 7 kW, equivalent to the average load of 8 Vermont homes.
Too bad for the other 32!
Northern Power Systems says that Bolton Valley ski area's "Northwind 100 [kW] will produce about 300,000 kilowatt-hours per year, the equivalent of the electricity consumed by 40-45 Vermont homes."
Since October 2009, however, it had produced only 114,309 kWh as of 10:00 p.m. on July 9, 2010. At that time, it was producing power at the rate of less than 7 kW, equivalent to the average load of 8 Vermont homes.
Too bad for the other 32!
June 21, 2010
Competition is for losers
COMPETITION: An event in which there are more losers than winners. Otherwise it's not a competition. A society based on competition is therefore primarily a society based on losers.
— John Ralston Saul
— John Ralston Saul
June 14, 2010
Simon Wiesenthal Center wants to dig up ancient Muslim cemetery to build "museum of tolerance"
Click the title of this post to read the story.
June 12, 2010
Soccer balls met with tear gas
In Bili’in, Palestine, protesters played a soccer game near the Israeli barrier that divides the village, kicking several balls over the barbed-wire fence onto land still owned by villagers.
The Israeli soldiers fired several tear-gas canisters and then arrested six journalists, continuing to detain two of them. While people worked to put out the fires in an olive grove caused by the tear-gas bombs, soldiers fired on them.
Click on the title of this post for the story from Ma'an News.
The Israeli soldiers fired several tear-gas canisters and then arrested six journalists, continuing to detain two of them. While people worked to put out the fires in an olive grove caused by the tear-gas bombs, soldiers fired on them.
Click on the title of this post for the story from Ma'an News.
June 11, 2010
Video from the Mavi Marmara
Israeli Attack on the Mavi Marmara // Raw Footage from Cultures of Resistance
On the night of Sunday, May 30, showing a terrifying disregard for human life, Israeli naval forces surrounded and boarded ships sailing to bring humanitarian aid to the blockaded Gaza Strip. On the largest ship, the Mavi Marmara, Israeli commandos opened fire on civilian passengers, killing at least 9 passengers and wounding dozens more. Others are still missing. The final death toll is yet to be determined. Cultures of Resistance director Iara Lee was aboard the besieged ship and has since returned home safely.
Despite the Israeli government's thorough efforts to confiscate all footage taken during the attack, Iara Lee was able to retain some of her recordings. Above is raw footage from the moments leading up to and during the Israeli commandos' assault on the Mavi Marmara.
15 min. version:
Video of passengers attacking Israeli soldiers appears to be fake
Some astute observers of the Israeli video showing the passengers of the Mavi Marmara fighting back in the assault on their ship noticed that details of the ship in the video didn't quite fit those of the Mavi Marmara. Most obviously, the name of the ship should be prominent on the side of the deck where the filmed events are taking place, but it is absent in the Israeli video. (Click here for a ship-spotting photo of the Mavi Marmara and here as it was prepared for the flotilla) Click the title of this post to see comparisons of the ship in the video and the actual Mavi Marmara.
This is not to say that a small group of activists did indeed resist, injure, and capture some of the Israeli soldiers attacking their ship. But at least nine activists were killed (several are still missing). (Click here for video of soldiers beating and then shooting 19-year-old Furkan Dogan.) Whereas the injured soldiers were cared for and protected from further harm by the ship's passengers.
This is not to say that a small group of activists did indeed resist, injure, and capture some of the Israeli soldiers attacking their ship. But at least nine activists were killed (several are still missing). (Click here for video of soldiers beating and then shooting 19-year-old Furkan Dogan.) Whereas the injured soldiers were cared for and protected from further harm by the ship's passengers.
June 6, 2010
Children of All Ages Delighted by Enslavement of Topsy The Elephant
TUCSON, AZ—Cheers, laughter, and applause filled the big top tent at the Ringling Bros. Circus Saturday as children of all ages were captivated by the savage enslavement of Topsy the elephant. ...
[click on the title of this post to read complete story]
animal rights
[click on the title of this post to read complete story]
animal rights
Mrs Moonan, Nuvoletta, Cadwan, Cadwallon and Cadwalloner
Also residing under Mrs. Matchless's roof were the boarders of the establishment, of whom there were four - or five, depending on how one viewed that fifth lodger, who was something of a special case.
There was a Miss Rivers, a young woman of character and refinement. She had russety locks, a creamy face given to blushing, and quenched-looking bashful eyes, like a Little Bo-Peep in a nursery-book. Miss Rivers was partial to all things tortoiseshell - tortoiseshell combs, tortoiseshell spectacles, tortoiseshell hair-brushes, tortoiseshell handbags, tortoiseshell cats. She could have been a walking testimonial to the tortoiseshell trade, but she hardly ever went out. She had a small independence worth £120 per annum, with which she devoted herself to the consumption of novels and exotic teas.
There was a Mr. Kix, a narrow, peevish, old-maidish sort of mustached bachelor. Mr. Kix was a man who looked always on the worst side of things, a grouch who thought the world a very dark place and the town little better. And there was his exact opposite, Mr. Lovibond, a plump, pink, full-bodied personage with a clean chin, a ready smile, and a bald head. Mr. Lovibond, too, was a bachelor - irretrievably single - but unlike the grouchy Kix he was always happy, hardly ever peevish, certainly never old-maidish, which annoyed Mr. Kix no end. Despite their differences the two were often in each other's company, the better to remind the other of his imperfections. Both subsisted on the income from annuities, which made them easy and spared them the trouble and inconvenience of engaging in the work-a-day world.
Mr. Frobisher was the fourth lodger in the house. He was a dark man of some attraction, in a rangy, cagey sort of way. His age was no more than five-and-twenty, and he passed most of his time out of doors, though as to the nature of his avocation no one had the least clue. Like Mr. Kix, he had a mustache, one which well suited his flowing hair, lustrous eyes, and lean good looks. The youthful Frobisher was a newcomer to the house, and had yet to accommodate his habits to that regimen of predictability which guided the lives of his fellow inmates.
The special case to which we have made mention was the fifth and final boarder. This was a Miss O'Guppy, who unlike the regular boarders resided in the attic rooms with the servants. She was rather a quaint young woman, very delicate of face and limb, with a nervous constitution that was - not to put too fine a point on it - rather delicate, too. In short, there were some who thought her a little unhinged.
Miss O'Guppy was an accomplished violinist, or fiddler as she liked to say. She was in great demand in the front-parlor, where she often accompanied Miss Rivers at the cottage piano. An habitual reader of the cards, she believed she could divine the future and predict the fortunes of those who consulted her in this capacity. More than this she saw and heard things only she could see and hear, and claimed to remember what she called a "morning time" before her own birth, a sort of earlier life unlinked to her present earthly existence - which was partly the basis for some persons' thinking her mad.
There was a Miss Rivers, a young woman of character and refinement. She had russety locks, a creamy face given to blushing, and quenched-looking bashful eyes, like a Little Bo-Peep in a nursery-book. Miss Rivers was partial to all things tortoiseshell - tortoiseshell combs, tortoiseshell spectacles, tortoiseshell hair-brushes, tortoiseshell handbags, tortoiseshell cats. She could have been a walking testimonial to the tortoiseshell trade, but she hardly ever went out. She had a small independence worth £120 per annum, with which she devoted herself to the consumption of novels and exotic teas.
There was a Mr. Kix, a narrow, peevish, old-maidish sort of mustached bachelor. Mr. Kix was a man who looked always on the worst side of things, a grouch who thought the world a very dark place and the town little better. And there was his exact opposite, Mr. Lovibond, a plump, pink, full-bodied personage with a clean chin, a ready smile, and a bald head. Mr. Lovibond, too, was a bachelor - irretrievably single - but unlike the grouchy Kix he was always happy, hardly ever peevish, certainly never old-maidish, which annoyed Mr. Kix no end. Despite their differences the two were often in each other's company, the better to remind the other of his imperfections. Both subsisted on the income from annuities, which made them easy and spared them the trouble and inconvenience of engaging in the work-a-day world.
Mr. Frobisher was the fourth lodger in the house. He was a dark man of some attraction, in a rangy, cagey sort of way. His age was no more than five-and-twenty, and he passed most of his time out of doors, though as to the nature of his avocation no one had the least clue. Like Mr. Kix, he had a mustache, one which well suited his flowing hair, lustrous eyes, and lean good looks. The youthful Frobisher was a newcomer to the house, and had yet to accommodate his habits to that regimen of predictability which guided the lives of his fellow inmates.
The special case to which we have made mention was the fifth and final boarder. This was a Miss O'Guppy, who unlike the regular boarders resided in the attic rooms with the servants. She was rather a quaint young woman, very delicate of face and limb, with a nervous constitution that was - not to put too fine a point on it - rather delicate, too. In short, there were some who thought her a little unhinged.
Miss O'Guppy was an accomplished violinist, or fiddler as she liked to say. She was in great demand in the front-parlor, where she often accompanied Miss Rivers at the cottage piano. An habitual reader of the cards, she believed she could divine the future and predict the fortunes of those who consulted her in this capacity. More than this she saw and heard things only she could see and hear, and claimed to remember what she called a "morning time" before her own birth, a sort of earlier life unlinked to her present earthly existence - which was partly the basis for some persons' thinking her mad.
—Strange Cargo, by Jeffrey Barlough
June 4, 2010
Jewish boat to Gaza is sailing soon
(Press Release, via palestinelibre)
In a harbour in the Mediterranean a small vessel is waiting for a special mission. She will be sailing to Gaza during the second half of July. In order to avoid sabotage, the exact date and name of the port of departure will be announced only shortly before her launch.
"Our purpose is to call an end to the siege of Gaza, to this illegal collective punishment of the whole civilian population. Our boat is small, so our donations can only be symbolic: we are taking school bags, filled with donations from German school children, musical instruments and art materials", says Kate Leiterer, one of the organizers. "For the medical services we are taking essential medicines and small medical equipment, and for the fishermen we are taking nets and tackle. We are liaising with the medical, educational and mental health services in Gaza."
"In attacking the Freedom Flotilla, Israel has once again demonstrated to the world a heinous brutality. But I know that there are very many Israelis who compassionately and bravely campaign for a just peace. With broadcasting journalists from mainstream television programmes accompanying our boat, Israel will have a great chance to show the world that there is another way, a way of courage rather than fear, a way of hope rather than hate", says Edith Lutz, organizer and passenger on the "Jewish boat".
The "Jüdische Stimme" ("Jewish Voice" for a Just Peace in the Near East), along with her friends of EJJP (European Jews for a Just Peace in the Near East) and Jews for Justice For Palestinians (UK) are sending a call to the leaders of the world: help Israel find her way back to reason, to a sense of humanity and a life without fear. "Jewish Voice" expects the political leaders of Israel and the world to guarantee a safe passage for the small vessel to Gaza, thus helping to form a bridge towards peace.
Contacts:
Edith Lutz, EJJP-Germany +15204519740
Kate Katzenstein-Leiterer, EJJP-Germany +1629660472472
Glyn Secker, Jews for Justice for Palestinians (UK) +7917098599
[Also: Click here to sign the petition at AVAAZ.org for an immediate, international investigation into the flotilla assault, full accountability for those responsible, and the lifting of the Gaza blockade.]
human rights
In a harbour in the Mediterranean a small vessel is waiting for a special mission. She will be sailing to Gaza during the second half of July. In order to avoid sabotage, the exact date and name of the port of departure will be announced only shortly before her launch.
"Our purpose is to call an end to the siege of Gaza, to this illegal collective punishment of the whole civilian population. Our boat is small, so our donations can only be symbolic: we are taking school bags, filled with donations from German school children, musical instruments and art materials", says Kate Leiterer, one of the organizers. "For the medical services we are taking essential medicines and small medical equipment, and for the fishermen we are taking nets and tackle. We are liaising with the medical, educational and mental health services in Gaza."
"In attacking the Freedom Flotilla, Israel has once again demonstrated to the world a heinous brutality. But I know that there are very many Israelis who compassionately and bravely campaign for a just peace. With broadcasting journalists from mainstream television programmes accompanying our boat, Israel will have a great chance to show the world that there is another way, a way of courage rather than fear, a way of hope rather than hate", says Edith Lutz, organizer and passenger on the "Jewish boat".
The "Jüdische Stimme" ("Jewish Voice" for a Just Peace in the Near East), along with her friends of EJJP (European Jews for a Just Peace in the Near East) and Jews for Justice For Palestinians (UK) are sending a call to the leaders of the world: help Israel find her way back to reason, to a sense of humanity and a life without fear. "Jewish Voice" expects the political leaders of Israel and the world to guarantee a safe passage for the small vessel to Gaza, thus helping to form a bridge towards peace.
Contacts:
Edith Lutz, EJJP-Germany +15204519740
Kate Katzenstein-Leiterer, EJJP-Germany +1629660472472
Glyn Secker, Jews for Justice for Palestinians (UK) +7917098599
[Also: Click here to sign the petition at AVAAZ.org for an immediate, international investigation into the flotilla assault, full accountability for those responsible, and the lifting of the Gaza blockade.]
human rights
The Failure of the American Jewish Establishment
'Among American Jews today, there are a great many Zionists, especially in the Orthodox world, people deeply devoted to the State of Israel. And there are a great many liberals, especially in the secular Jewish world, people deeply devoted to human rights for all people, Palestinians included. But the two groups are increasingly distinct. Particularly in the younger generations, fewer and fewer American Jewish liberals are Zionists; fewer and fewer American Jewish Zionists are liberal. One reason is that the leading institutions of American Jewry have refused to foster—indeed, have actively opposed—a Zionism that challenges Israel’s behavior in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and toward its own Arab citizens. For several decades, the Jewish establishment has asked American Jews to check their liberalism at Zionism’s door, and now, to their horror, they are finding that many young Jews have checked their Zionism instead.
'Morally, American Zionism is in a downward spiral. If the leaders of groups like AIPAC and the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations do not change course, they will wake up one day to find a younger, Orthodox-dominated, Zionist leadership whose naked hostility to Arabs and Palestinians scares even them, and a mass of secular American Jews who range from apathetic to appalled. Saving liberal Zionism in the United States—so that American Jews can help save liberal Zionism in Israel—is the great American Jewish challenge of our age. And it starts where Luntz’s students wanted it to start: by talking frankly about Israel’s current government, by no longer averting our eyes. ...
'Israeli governments come and go, but the Netanyahu coalition is the product of frightening, long-term trends in Israeli society: an ultra-Orthodox population that is increasing dramatically, a settler movement that is growing more radical and more entrenched in the Israeli bureaucracy and army, and a Russian immigrant community that is particularly prone to anti-Arab racism. In 2009, a poll by the Israel Democracy Institute found that 53 percent of Jewish Israelis (and 77 percent of recent immigrants from the former USSR) support encouraging Arabs to leave the country. Attitudes are worst among Israel’s young. When Israeli high schools held mock elections last year, Lieberman won. This March, a poll found that 56 percent of Jewish Israeli high school students—and more than 80 percent of religious Jewish high school students—would deny Israeli Arabs the right to be elected to the Knesset. An education ministry official called the survey “a huge warning signal in light of the strengthening trends of extremist views among the youth.”
'You might think that such trends, and the sympathy for them expressed by some in Israel’s government, would occasion substantial public concern—even outrage—among the leaders of organized American Jewry. You would be wrong. In Israel itself, voices from the left, and even center, warn in increasingly urgent tones about threats to Israeli democracy. (Former Prime Ministers Ehud Olmert and Ehud Barak have both said that Israel risks becoming an “apartheid state” if it continues to hold the West Bank. This April, when settlers forced a large Israeli bookstore to stop selling a book critical of the occupation, Shulamit Aloni, former head of the dovish Meretz Party, declared that “Israel has not been democratic for some time now.”) But in the United States, groups like AIPAC and the Presidents’ Conference patrol public discourse, scolding people who contradict their vision of Israel as a state in which all leaders cherish democracy and yearn for peace.'
Click the title of this post to read the complete essay by Peter Beinart in the June 2010 New York Review of Books.
P.S. Isn't a "Jewish" state anachronistic? A nineteenth-century solution to a problem that perhaps was no longer so necessary after The Holocaust?
'Morally, American Zionism is in a downward spiral. If the leaders of groups like AIPAC and the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations do not change course, they will wake up one day to find a younger, Orthodox-dominated, Zionist leadership whose naked hostility to Arabs and Palestinians scares even them, and a mass of secular American Jews who range from apathetic to appalled. Saving liberal Zionism in the United States—so that American Jews can help save liberal Zionism in Israel—is the great American Jewish challenge of our age. And it starts where Luntz’s students wanted it to start: by talking frankly about Israel’s current government, by no longer averting our eyes. ...
'Israeli governments come and go, but the Netanyahu coalition is the product of frightening, long-term trends in Israeli society: an ultra-Orthodox population that is increasing dramatically, a settler movement that is growing more radical and more entrenched in the Israeli bureaucracy and army, and a Russian immigrant community that is particularly prone to anti-Arab racism. In 2009, a poll by the Israel Democracy Institute found that 53 percent of Jewish Israelis (and 77 percent of recent immigrants from the former USSR) support encouraging Arabs to leave the country. Attitudes are worst among Israel’s young. When Israeli high schools held mock elections last year, Lieberman won. This March, a poll found that 56 percent of Jewish Israeli high school students—and more than 80 percent of religious Jewish high school students—would deny Israeli Arabs the right to be elected to the Knesset. An education ministry official called the survey “a huge warning signal in light of the strengthening trends of extremist views among the youth.”
'You might think that such trends, and the sympathy for them expressed by some in Israel’s government, would occasion substantial public concern—even outrage—among the leaders of organized American Jewry. You would be wrong. In Israel itself, voices from the left, and even center, warn in increasingly urgent tones about threats to Israeli democracy. (Former Prime Ministers Ehud Olmert and Ehud Barak have both said that Israel risks becoming an “apartheid state” if it continues to hold the West Bank. This April, when settlers forced a large Israeli bookstore to stop selling a book critical of the occupation, Shulamit Aloni, former head of the dovish Meretz Party, declared that “Israel has not been democratic for some time now.”) But in the United States, groups like AIPAC and the Presidents’ Conference patrol public discourse, scolding people who contradict their vision of Israel as a state in which all leaders cherish democracy and yearn for peace.'
Click the title of this post to read the complete essay by Peter Beinart in the June 2010 New York Review of Books.
P.S. Isn't a "Jewish" state anachronistic? A nineteenth-century solution to a problem that perhaps was no longer so necessary after The Holocaust?
June 3, 2010
Threats to Israel's security
Partial list of items that Israel prohibits from entering into the Gaza Strip, May 2010, as compiled by www.gisha.org
sage • cardamom • cumin • coriander • ginger • jam • halva • vinegar • nutmeg • chocolate • fruit preserves • seeds and nuts • biscuits and sweets • potato chips • gas for soft drinks • dried fruit • fresh meat • plaster • tar • wood for construction • cement • iron • glucose • industrial salt • plastic/glass/metal containers • industrial margarine • tarpaulin sheets for huts • fabric (for clothing) • flavor and smell enhancers • fishing rods • various fishing nets • buoys • ropes for fishing • nylon nets for greenhouses • ropes to tie greenhouses • hatcheries and spare parts for hatcheries • heaters for chicken farms • spare parts for tractors • dairies for cowsheds • irrigation pipe systems • planters for saplings • musical instruments • size A4 paper • writing implements • notebooks • newspapers • toys • razors • sewing machines and spare parts • heaters • horses • donkeys • goats • cattle • chicks
human rights
sage • cardamom • cumin • coriander • ginger • jam • halva • vinegar • nutmeg • chocolate • fruit preserves • seeds and nuts • biscuits and sweets • potato chips • gas for soft drinks • dried fruit • fresh meat • plaster • tar • wood for construction • cement • iron • glucose • industrial salt • plastic/glass/metal containers • industrial margarine • tarpaulin sheets for huts • fabric (for clothing) • flavor and smell enhancers • fishing rods • various fishing nets • buoys • ropes for fishing • nylon nets for greenhouses • ropes to tie greenhouses • hatcheries and spare parts for hatcheries • heaters for chicken farms • spare parts for tractors • dairies for cowsheds • irrigation pipe systems • planters for saplings • musical instruments • size A4 paper • writing implements • notebooks • newspapers • toys • razors • sewing machines and spare parts • heaters • horses • donkeys • goats • cattle • chicks
human rights
June 2, 2010
UN urges global move to meat and dairy-free diet
Lesser consumption of animal products is necessary to save the world from the worst impacts of climate change, UN report says.
Click the title of this post to read the article in The Guardian.
Click here to see a graph showing the greenhouse effects of organic versus conventional meat, vegetarian, and vegan diets.
environment, environmentalism, vegetarianism
Click the title of this post to read the article in The Guardian.
Click here to see a graph showing the greenhouse effects of organic versus conventional meat, vegetarian, and vegan diets.
environment, environmentalism, vegetarianism
June 1, 2010
May 31, 2010
Mobile phones responsible for disappearance of honey bee
(Telegraph, May 29, 2010)
The growing use of mobile telephones is behind the disappearance of honey bees and the collapse of their hives, scientists have claimed.
Their disappearance has caused alarm throughout Europe and North America where campaigners have blamed agricultural pesticides, climate change and the advent of genetically modified crops for what is now known as 'colony collapse disorder.' Britain has seen a 15 per cent decline in its bee population in the last two years and shrinking numbers has led to a rise in thefts of hives.
Now researchers from Chandigarh's Punjab University claim they have found the cause which could be the first step in reversing the decline: They have established that radiation from mobile telephones is a key factor in the phenomenon and say that it probably interfering with the bee's navigation senses.
They set up a controlled experiment in Punjab earlier this year comparing the behaviour and productivity of bees in two hives – one fitted with two mobile telephones which were powered on for two fifteen minute sessions per day for three months. The other had dummy models installed.
After three months the researchers recorded a dramatic decline in the size of the hive fitted with the mobile phon, a significant reduction in the number of eggs laid by the queen bee. The bees also stopped producing honey.
The queen bee in the "mobile" hive produced fewer than half of those created by her counterpart in the normal hive.
They also found a dramatic decline in the number of worker bees returning to the hive after collecting pollen. Because of this the amount of nectar produced in the hive also shrank.
Ved Prakash Sharma and Neelima Kumar, the authors of the report in the journal Current Science, wrote: "Increase in the usage of electronic gadgets has led to electropollution of the environment. Honeybee behaviour and biology has been affected by electrosmog since these insects have magnetite in their bodies which helps them in navigation.
"There are reports of sudden disappearance of bee populations from honeybee colonies. The reason is still not clear. We have compared the performance of honeybees in cellphone radiation exposed and unexposed colonies.
"A significant decline in colony strength and in the egg laying rate of the queen was observed. The behaviour of exposed foragers was negatively influenced by the exposure, there was neither honey nor pollen in the colony at the end of the experiment."
Tim Lovett, of the British Beekeepers Association, said that hives have been successful in London where there was high mobile phone use.
"Previous work in this area has indicated this [mobile phone use] is not a real factor," he said. "If new data comes along we will look at it."
He said: "At the moment we think is more likely to be a combination of factors including disease, pesticides and habitat loss."
The UK Government has set aside £10 million for research into the decline of pollinators like bees, but the BBKA claim much more money is needed for research into the problem, including studies on pesticides, disease and new technology like mobile phones.
According to the University of Durham, England's bees are vanishing faster than anywhere else in Europe, with more than half of hives dying out over the last 20 years.
The most recent statistics from last winter show that the decline in honey bees in Britain is slowing, with just one in six hives lost.
This is still above the natural rate of ten per cent losses, but a vast improvement on previous years.
There has been an increase in the number of thefts of hives across the world and in Germany beekeepers have started fitting GPS tracking devices to their hives.
The growing use of mobile telephones is behind the disappearance of honey bees and the collapse of their hives, scientists have claimed.
Their disappearance has caused alarm throughout Europe and North America where campaigners have blamed agricultural pesticides, climate change and the advent of genetically modified crops for what is now known as 'colony collapse disorder.' Britain has seen a 15 per cent decline in its bee population in the last two years and shrinking numbers has led to a rise in thefts of hives.
Now researchers from Chandigarh's Punjab University claim they have found the cause which could be the first step in reversing the decline: They have established that radiation from mobile telephones is a key factor in the phenomenon and say that it probably interfering with the bee's navigation senses.
They set up a controlled experiment in Punjab earlier this year comparing the behaviour and productivity of bees in two hives – one fitted with two mobile telephones which were powered on for two fifteen minute sessions per day for three months. The other had dummy models installed.
After three months the researchers recorded a dramatic decline in the size of the hive fitted with the mobile phon, a significant reduction in the number of eggs laid by the queen bee. The bees also stopped producing honey.
The queen bee in the "mobile" hive produced fewer than half of those created by her counterpart in the normal hive.
They also found a dramatic decline in the number of worker bees returning to the hive after collecting pollen. Because of this the amount of nectar produced in the hive also shrank.
Ved Prakash Sharma and Neelima Kumar, the authors of the report in the journal Current Science, wrote: "Increase in the usage of electronic gadgets has led to electropollution of the environment. Honeybee behaviour and biology has been affected by electrosmog since these insects have magnetite in their bodies which helps them in navigation.
"There are reports of sudden disappearance of bee populations from honeybee colonies. The reason is still not clear. We have compared the performance of honeybees in cellphone radiation exposed and unexposed colonies.
"A significant decline in colony strength and in the egg laying rate of the queen was observed. The behaviour of exposed foragers was negatively influenced by the exposure, there was neither honey nor pollen in the colony at the end of the experiment."
Tim Lovett, of the British Beekeepers Association, said that hives have been successful in London where there was high mobile phone use.
"Previous work in this area has indicated this [mobile phone use] is not a real factor," he said. "If new data comes along we will look at it."
He said: "At the moment we think is more likely to be a combination of factors including disease, pesticides and habitat loss."
The UK Government has set aside £10 million for research into the decline of pollinators like bees, but the BBKA claim much more money is needed for research into the problem, including studies on pesticides, disease and new technology like mobile phones.
According to the University of Durham, England's bees are vanishing faster than anywhere else in Europe, with more than half of hives dying out over the last 20 years.
The most recent statistics from last winter show that the decline in honey bees in Britain is slowing, with just one in six hives lost.
This is still above the natural rate of ten per cent losses, but a vast improvement on previous years.
There has been an increase in the number of thefts of hives across the world and in Germany beekeepers have started fitting GPS tracking devices to their hives.
May 28, 2010
Let's look at facts, not hot air, about wind power
Dot Sulack opines at the Asheville Citizen-Times (click here) in an effort to negate the problems with wind energy pointed out by another in an earlier opinion piece. Here are some quick notes about the issues she raises as not issues at all.
Intermittency: "if ... would ... would also ... would be ...." "If ... can ... when ...." How about a study of an existing system? Why so many "if's" when wind turbines are being built right now?
Cost: Most promoters actually want a feed-in tariff to force a higher price for wind. The target of 4 cents/kWh is required by competition and is only possible by taxpayers paying for three-quarters of the cost of building wind and by splitting off the "environmental benefit" as a separate product (i.e., "green tags" or "renewable energy credits"), a trick invented by Enron.
Birds: Birds killed by turbines aren't a problem because other things kill them, too? As pathetic (and potentially sociopathic) an argument as that already is, wind turbines uniquely affect raptors and bats (the latter to such a degree that even the industry shows concern) and tend to erected in migratory pathways, since that's where the wind is. And the more we build them, the worse the effect.
Good for the air and climate: Forgot to provide a link supporting that statement. How many fossil fuel plants have been shut down because of wind on the grid? How much less fuel is burned per unit of electricity consumed because of the addition of wind? I have been unable to find such evidence that wind is "good" for six years now.
Pickens Plan: Con job of the first order. When wind is added to systems without substantial hydro, it needs natural gas plants for the grid to be able to respond quickly to its fluctuations. Rather than replace natural gas for electricity, wind is a plan to use more of it.
The rest is a muddle of more wishful thinking and jingoistic non sequitur, which is par for such pieces.
wind power, wind energy, wind turbines, wind farms, environment, environmentalism
Intermittency: "if ... would ... would also ... would be ...." "If ... can ... when ...." How about a study of an existing system? Why so many "if's" when wind turbines are being built right now?
Cost: Most promoters actually want a feed-in tariff to force a higher price for wind. The target of 4 cents/kWh is required by competition and is only possible by taxpayers paying for three-quarters of the cost of building wind and by splitting off the "environmental benefit" as a separate product (i.e., "green tags" or "renewable energy credits"), a trick invented by Enron.
Birds: Birds killed by turbines aren't a problem because other things kill them, too? As pathetic (and potentially sociopathic) an argument as that already is, wind turbines uniquely affect raptors and bats (the latter to such a degree that even the industry shows concern) and tend to erected in migratory pathways, since that's where the wind is. And the more we build them, the worse the effect.
Good for the air and climate: Forgot to provide a link supporting that statement. How many fossil fuel plants have been shut down because of wind on the grid? How much less fuel is burned per unit of electricity consumed because of the addition of wind? I have been unable to find such evidence that wind is "good" for six years now.
Pickens Plan: Con job of the first order. When wind is added to systems without substantial hydro, it needs natural gas plants for the grid to be able to respond quickly to its fluctuations. Rather than replace natural gas for electricity, wind is a plan to use more of it.
The rest is a muddle of more wishful thinking and jingoistic non sequitur, which is par for such pieces.
wind power, wind energy, wind turbines, wind farms, environment, environmentalism
May 26, 2010
War criminals for Wind
Click the title of this post for a report of George W. Bush's keynote at the American Wind Energy Association's annual conference in Dallas. He received a rousing standing ovation for a speech that included defenses of his lies and wars — all forgiven in this crowd of industrialists for his "free market" philosophy as governor of Texas that, guided by pal Kenneth Lay of Enron, created the modern system of transfering millions of dollars of public money into private bank accounts and allowing the sale of wind energy twice (i.e., "green tags", yes a scam invented by Enron).
wind power, wind energy, environment, environmentalism
wind power, wind energy, environment, environmentalism
May 25, 2010
No need for protein from corpses
"All proteins are made up of the same amino acids. ALL. No exceptions. The difference between animal and vegetable proteins is in the content of certain amino acids. If vegetable proteins are mixed, the differences get made up. Even if they aren't mixed, all you need to do to get the right amount of low amino acids is to eat more of that food. There is no 'need' for animal proteins at all."
—Marion Nestle, Department of Nutrition, Food Studies, and Public Health, New York University
May 24, 2010
Go BP !
'The Nature Conservancy has long positioned itself as the leader of a nonconfrontational arm of the environmental movement, and that position has helped the charity attract tens of millions of dollars annually in contributions. A number have come from companies whose work takes a toll on the environment, including those engaged in logging, home building and power generation. ...
'The Environmental Defense Fund, which has a policy of not accepting corporate donations, joined with BP, Shell International and other major corporations to form the Partnership for Climate Action, which promotes “market-based mechanisms” to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
'And about 20 energy and environmental groups, including the Conservancy, the Sierra Club and Audubon, joined with BP Wind Energy to form the American Wind and Wildlife Institute, which works to protect wildlife through “responsible” development of wind farms.'
'The Environmental Defense Fund, which has a policy of not accepting corporate donations, joined with BP, Shell International and other major corporations to form the Partnership for Climate Action, which promotes “market-based mechanisms” to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
'And about 20 energy and environmental groups, including the Conservancy, the Sierra Club and Audubon, joined with BP Wind Energy to form the American Wind and Wildlife Institute, which works to protect wildlife through “responsible” development of wind farms.'
Heaven
Whatever can it be like, do you suppose, an eternity of worshipful servitude? To know that it never can, that it never will come to an end? The horror of it — can you imagine the horror of it, sir?
—The House in the High Wood, by Jeffrey Barlough
May 20, 2010
Are Wind Turbines Hazardous to Your Health?
To the Editor, Seven Days:
In "Are Wind Turbines Hazardous to Your Health? Docs Disagree" (May 12), Andy Bromage reported that Dr. Robert McCunney wonders how wind turbines can be any worse than other industrial noises.
The mechanisms may be in dispute, but the very papers McCunney cited in his work for the American and Canadian Wind Energy trade groups emphasize that disturbance from wind turbines occurs at much lower noise levels than from other sources. The significance of the published European studies is not that adverse health impacts are low but, since the turbines are much smaller and farther from homes than those going up today, that the impacts are so high.
It should also be noted that wind turbine noise is especially intrusive at night, when other artificial noises usually take a break, particularly in the rural places targeted by industrial wind developers.
The article closed with a classic change of subject, describing an audience member asking about wind power impacts compared with those of coal, oil, and nuclear. Bromage editorialized McCunney's utterly meaningless response as "good": "None of us needs to be reminded of the health implications and environmental consequences of oil in light of the tragedy in the Gulf of Mexico right now."
Oil is used for only 1% of our electricity. Nuclear provides base load with which wind's intermittent and variable infeed is not a competitor. And the use of coal has not been reduced anywhere in the world because of wind on the grid, again because wind is intermittent, highly variable, and nondispatchable. Other sources have to stay on line, burning fuel on standby or ramping and switching and thus burning fuel less efficiently than they would without wind. Hydro, in fact, provides the best pairing for wind, thus not affecting fossil fuel use at all, one renewable simply displacing another.
None of us indeed needs to be reminded of the impacts of oil, coal, or nuclear. But many of us apparently need to be reminded that industrial wind has no effect on them and only adds negative effects of its own.
As an illustration of wind's limitations - both a poor source of energy and a disproportionate source of adverse impacts - Denmark has not installed any new on-shore capacity on shore since 2002. As wind production in Denmark (including one off-shore facility opened in 2003) more than doubled from 1998 to 2004, carbon dioxide emissions remained flat and remain so, unaffected by adding even a huge proportion of wind to the grid.
Eric Rosenbloom
President, National Wind Watch (wind-watch.org)
wind power, wind energy, wind turbines, wind farms
In "Are Wind Turbines Hazardous to Your Health? Docs Disagree" (May 12), Andy Bromage reported that Dr. Robert McCunney wonders how wind turbines can be any worse than other industrial noises.
The mechanisms may be in dispute, but the very papers McCunney cited in his work for the American and Canadian Wind Energy trade groups emphasize that disturbance from wind turbines occurs at much lower noise levels than from other sources. The significance of the published European studies is not that adverse health impacts are low but, since the turbines are much smaller and farther from homes than those going up today, that the impacts are so high.
It should also be noted that wind turbine noise is especially intrusive at night, when other artificial noises usually take a break, particularly in the rural places targeted by industrial wind developers.
The article closed with a classic change of subject, describing an audience member asking about wind power impacts compared with those of coal, oil, and nuclear. Bromage editorialized McCunney's utterly meaningless response as "good": "None of us needs to be reminded of the health implications and environmental consequences of oil in light of the tragedy in the Gulf of Mexico right now."
Oil is used for only 1% of our electricity. Nuclear provides base load with which wind's intermittent and variable infeed is not a competitor. And the use of coal has not been reduced anywhere in the world because of wind on the grid, again because wind is intermittent, highly variable, and nondispatchable. Other sources have to stay on line, burning fuel on standby or ramping and switching and thus burning fuel less efficiently than they would without wind. Hydro, in fact, provides the best pairing for wind, thus not affecting fossil fuel use at all, one renewable simply displacing another.
None of us indeed needs to be reminded of the impacts of oil, coal, or nuclear. But many of us apparently need to be reminded that industrial wind has no effect on them and only adds negative effects of its own.
As an illustration of wind's limitations - both a poor source of energy and a disproportionate source of adverse impacts - Denmark has not installed any new on-shore capacity on shore since 2002. As wind production in Denmark (including one off-shore facility opened in 2003) more than doubled from 1998 to 2004, carbon dioxide emissions remained flat and remain so, unaffected by adding even a huge proportion of wind to the grid.
Eric Rosenbloom
President, National Wind Watch (wind-watch.org)
wind power, wind energy, wind turbines, wind farms
May 17, 2010
Correction
(Ironic Times)
An article about money spent on investigations said that $30 million had been spent to investigate the financial crisis and $8 million had been spent investigating the Monica Lewinsky scandal. In fact, $8 million was spent investigating the financial crisis and $30 million on investigating the Monica Lewinsky scandal. We apologize for any confusion caused by the error.
An article about money spent on investigations said that $30 million had been spent to investigate the financial crisis and $8 million had been spent investigating the Monica Lewinsky scandal. In fact, $8 million was spent investigating the financial crisis and $30 million on investigating the Monica Lewinsky scandal. We apologize for any confusion caused by the error.
May 7, 2010
Civility
Sam Smith writes:
You know things are going poorly for the establishment when it starts appealing for civility, as Obama did the other day, asking for a "a basic level of civility in our public debate."
That means they've pretty much run out of arguments to defend the way they're screwing things up and are now attempting to pass on the blame for anger to the victims. It is interesting that Obama barely mentioned the employment situation when talking at the University of Michigan graduates, something that even quite civil students would have been interested in.
I also like civility, however, and in the interest of improving my relations with the Obama administration I’d like to offer a few suggestions on how to increase the amount of civility in our land:
- Get out of Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iraq now.
- Stop bailing out Wall Street and start helping endangered homeowners and the unemployed.
- Stop letting oil companies determine when their rigs are safe.
- Stop unconstitutional spying on people through wiretaps and other means.
- Stop trying to find ways to cut Social Security and Medicare for seniors.
- Stop calling for civility and start practicing it.
You know things are going poorly for the establishment when it starts appealing for civility, as Obama did the other day, asking for a "a basic level of civility in our public debate."
That means they've pretty much run out of arguments to defend the way they're screwing things up and are now attempting to pass on the blame for anger to the victims. It is interesting that Obama barely mentioned the employment situation when talking at the University of Michigan graduates, something that even quite civil students would have been interested in.
I also like civility, however, and in the interest of improving my relations with the Obama administration I’d like to offer a few suggestions on how to increase the amount of civility in our land:
- Get out of Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iraq now.
- Stop bailing out Wall Street and start helping endangered homeowners and the unemployed.
- Stop letting oil companies determine when their rigs are safe.
- Stop unconstitutional spying on people through wiretaps and other means.
- Stop trying to find ways to cut Social Security and Medicare for seniors.
- Stop calling for civility and start practicing it.
May 3, 2010
Paul Krugman and the straw man
In his New York Times column today (click the title of this post), Paul Krugman explains that disasters like the BP oil well explosion in the Gulf of Mexico are necessary to keep environmentalism alive. Which is exactly what Rush Limbaugh said in his paranoid speculation that environmentalists themselves blew up the drilling platform.
Krugman further allies himself with Limbaugh:
Or would he look at the facts and agree with their findings that the environmental harm, immediate and potential, could not be justified by the insignificant benefits? That offshore drilling is merely a symbolic bone thrown to the so-called right? Then he would also have to agree with the clear evidence that large-scale wind power is merely a symbolic bone thrown to to the so-called left and false environmentalists ("invertomentalists"?).
wind power, wind energy, wind turbines, wind farms, environment, environmentalism, human rights, animal rights, ecoanarchism
Krugman further allies himself with Limbaugh:
But there was also an attempt to construct a narrative in which advocates of strong environmental protection were either extremists — “eco-Nazis,” according to Rush Limbaugh — or effete liberal snobs trying to impose their aesthetic preferences on ordinary Americans. (I’m sorry to say that the long effort to block construction of a wind farm off Cape Cod — which may finally be over thanks to the Obama administration — played right into that [latter] caricature.)Krugman is the one playing right into that caricature. He has joined Limbaugh in deflecting any debate about Cape Wind by mocking its opponents. This is a sure sign of weakness in any case, but the fact is that a very broad coalition of Cape Codders and others are fighting Cape Wind, and their arguments are about preserving a treasured natural resource and noting the minuscule potential benefit of even such a huge facility. If rich beachfront property owners spearheaded the fight against offshore oil drilling, would Krugman join Limbaugh in supporting it?
Or would he look at the facts and agree with their findings that the environmental harm, immediate and potential, could not be justified by the insignificant benefits? That offshore drilling is merely a symbolic bone thrown to the so-called right? Then he would also have to agree with the clear evidence that large-scale wind power is merely a symbolic bone thrown to to the so-called left and false environmentalists ("invertomentalists"?).
wind power, wind energy, wind turbines, wind farms, environment, environmentalism, human rights, animal rights, ecoanarchism
April 30, 2010
Advocates Say Vermont Lags In Wind Power
On Vermont Public Radio this morning, Lawrence Mott, chairman of Renewable Energy Vermont, complains "that the state needs to develop guidelines on where wind projects can be built".
The problem, of course, is actually that Vermont already has such guidelines. Large-scale development above 2,000 feet is not allowed.
In a plea for "guidelines", Mott is really demanding that wind development be exempted from them.
This is such an obvious situation of predatory industry versus the environment that he should be laughed out of the room.
wind power, wind energy, wind turbines, wind farms, environment, environmentalism, Vermont
The problem, of course, is actually that Vermont already has such guidelines. Large-scale development above 2,000 feet is not allowed.
In a plea for "guidelines", Mott is really demanding that wind development be exempted from them.
This is such an obvious situation of predatory industry versus the environment that he should be laughed out of the room.
wind power, wind energy, wind turbines, wind farms, environment, environmentalism, Vermont
April 29, 2010
More comments on Cape Wind
The reader comments attached to the New York Times story (click title) about Washington "approving" the 24-square-mile Cape Wind facility reveal quite a bit about the supporters of wind.
Their smug gloating, name calling, fearful jingoism, and sheer misinformation are in contrast to the reasoned voices that raise clear points of issue in the arguments supporting wind.
When they aren't being attacked for being shills of Exxon (even though only 1% of the electricity in the U.S. comes from burning oil), opponents of erecting this massive complex in the middle of a treasured natural resource are accused of being radical environmentalists.
What has been so interesting to me through the 7 years that I have been involved in the debates about industrial wind is that it brings together people from the right and the left. For those that would see it, the clarity of the issue — an industry assault on heretofore protected rural and wild lands, fueled by an unholy cabal of desperate politicians, greedy landowners, corporatized pseudenvironmentalists, and financiers seeking tax avoidance — breaks through the current expectations of right and left. It is the people against a bought-off government, against developers fomenting community division for personal gain, against heedless destruction of our natural heritage and quality of life.
Meanwhile, the comments at the N.Y. Times show that the same process is mirrored in the proponents of wind. But whereas opposition has tended to bring out the best in our citizenry, support tends to bring out the worst. From both right and left, supporters cling to myths and irrelevancies in an attempt to shore up their shaky foundations and diminish those who question the big wind juggernaut. Click on the title of this post to read what they say. Not one of the comments supportive of the Cape Wind approval can be backed up by fact. And almost all of them betray an ignorance, a nastiness, hatred that is quite disturbing. The Cape Wind company has indeed done its job.
Their smug gloating, name calling, fearful jingoism, and sheer misinformation are in contrast to the reasoned voices that raise clear points of issue in the arguments supporting wind.
When they aren't being attacked for being shills of Exxon (even though only 1% of the electricity in the U.S. comes from burning oil), opponents of erecting this massive complex in the middle of a treasured natural resource are accused of being radical environmentalists.
What has been so interesting to me through the 7 years that I have been involved in the debates about industrial wind is that it brings together people from the right and the left. For those that would see it, the clarity of the issue — an industry assault on heretofore protected rural and wild lands, fueled by an unholy cabal of desperate politicians, greedy landowners, corporatized pseudenvironmentalists, and financiers seeking tax avoidance — breaks through the current expectations of right and left. It is the people against a bought-off government, against developers fomenting community division for personal gain, against heedless destruction of our natural heritage and quality of life.
Meanwhile, the comments at the N.Y. Times show that the same process is mirrored in the proponents of wind. But whereas opposition has tended to bring out the best in our citizenry, support tends to bring out the worst. From both right and left, supporters cling to myths and irrelevancies in an attempt to shore up their shaky foundations and diminish those who question the big wind juggernaut. Click on the title of this post to read what they say. Not one of the comments supportive of the Cape Wind approval can be backed up by fact. And almost all of them betray an ignorance, a nastiness, hatred that is quite disturbing. The Cape Wind company has indeed done its job.
Comments on Cape Wind
First, the claim that Cape Wind's 130 giant turbines will produce 468 MW of electricity: That will be the facility’s maximum output. It will actually produce at an average rate far below that, likely one-third, or only 156 MW.
Considering that there is already over 35,000 MW of wind capacity installed in the U.S. (for an average rate of production of 10-12,000 MW), this project hardly represents a game-changing contribution.
And considering that the average electrical load in the U.S. is about 500,000 MW, it will take a hell of lot of such industrial installations to make any meaningful contribution.
And considering that the wind is a fickle resource, those installations will always be in addition to more reliable generators.
Conservation could easily obviate the paltry contribution from wind — and save so many otherwise off-limit areas (coastlines, ridgelines) from development.
Considering that there is already over 35,000 MW of wind capacity installed in the U.S. (for an average rate of production of 10-12,000 MW), this project hardly represents a game-changing contribution.
And considering that the average electrical load in the U.S. is about 500,000 MW, it will take a hell of lot of such industrial installations to make any meaningful contribution.
And considering that the wind is a fickle resource, those installations will always be in addition to more reliable generators.
Conservation could easily obviate the paltry contribution from wind — and save so many otherwise off-limit areas (coastlines, ridgelines) from development.
April 27, 2010
Appalachian Voices supports blowing up N.C. mountains to ram in wind turbines
Appalachian Voices appears to be an admirable conservation group, but in their avid desire to eliminate air pollution, stop mountaintop removal coal mining, and restore Appalachian forests, they too readily embrace the false promises of large-scale wind power. In an April 23 entry on their blog, they defend themselves against the charge of supporting the destruction of the mountains to erect giant wind turbines:
That is precisely the issue: Wind energy is a mature technology, but it has yet to show meaningful benefit. This is underscored by the study they cite, which concludes that wind development could produce a certain amount of energy. What is needed, however, is a study showing that wind has produced a certain amount of energy, and — crucially — that the contribution reduced greenhouse gas emissions, pollution, coal mining, deforestation, or anything.
In fact, studies of existing wind on the grid show little, if any, beneficial effect. Therefore, although wind's roads and clearcutting may be seen as less than those of mountaintop removal for coal, those impacts are in addition to those of coal. Wind does not replace or even meaningfully reduce coal. There is very little, if any, benefit to justify wind's environmental impacts.
Appalachian Voices admits supporting the blowing up of mountains in western North Carolina to ram in wind turbines. Their defense fails, however, because it depends on a false premise.
wind power, wind energy, wind turbines, wind farms, environment, environmentalism
To imply that wind farms cause the same environmental toll as mountaintop removal is illogical. Wind energy is a proven technology that works, and has a relatively light environmental impact. A study conducted by Appalachian State University showed that wind energy development on a small percentage of North Carolina ridges could produce enough clean energy for 195,000 homes, create 350 green jobs, and have a net economic impact of over one billion dollars.The claim of illogic depends, of course, on the soundness of the asserted premise that "Wind energy is a proven technology that works".
That is precisely the issue: Wind energy is a mature technology, but it has yet to show meaningful benefit. This is underscored by the study they cite, which concludes that wind development could produce a certain amount of energy. What is needed, however, is a study showing that wind has produced a certain amount of energy, and — crucially — that the contribution reduced greenhouse gas emissions, pollution, coal mining, deforestation, or anything.
In fact, studies of existing wind on the grid show little, if any, beneficial effect. Therefore, although wind's roads and clearcutting may be seen as less than those of mountaintop removal for coal, those impacts are in addition to those of coal. Wind does not replace or even meaningfully reduce coal. There is very little, if any, benefit to justify wind's environmental impacts.
Appalachian Voices admits supporting the blowing up of mountains in western North Carolina to ram in wind turbines. Their defense fails, however, because it depends on a false premise.
wind power, wind energy, wind turbines, wind farms, environment, environmentalism
April 8, 2010
April 2, 2010
Alison Clarkson and School Choice in Vermont
According to reporting by School Choice Vermont, as the House Ways and Means Committee yesterday was reviewing H.782, a bill aiming to consolidate school districts, Representative Alison Clarkson of Woodstock (also representing Reading) "said that we really should be considering consolidation as an opportunity to 'capture' choice kids and bring them back into the system to boost enrollment". (Her recorded comments can be heard in this video from EdWatch Vermont.)
Clarkson's statement is wrong in many ways.
First, the predatory tone. Choice towns have decided to provide that opportunity, not out of malice for the public school system (particularly as most students stay in the public schools -- see the second point), but in the interests of what is best for their citizens. Their students, granted this freedom by the taxpayers of their towns, are not "escapees" to be "captured".
Second, it is short-sighted and ill-informed. Once these few children are forced back into the public school system (where they have already decided they are not well served so that many of them will choose home schooling), enrollment will continue to decline. So, that problem is not at all solved by eliminating choice. Especially as most students from choice towns go to public schools already. In my town's current 8th-grade class, only 3 students out of about 30 are going to private schools: one is going to an expensive boarding school, for which the town will pay only a fraction of the cost, i.e., the student would have gone there anyway; so only 2 students would be "captured", i.e., not given the opportunity of an alternative high school that better serves their needs.
Third, the elitism. Vermont has a unique system in which the students in about 70 towns (13% of the state's students; data from the Vt. Dept. of Education for fiscal year 2010) are able to choose any non-religious high school they want, even in another state, and if it is private, their town will pay up to the state's average public per-pupil spending. As noted in the second point, most students choose the nearest public high school or one that provides bus service to their town. Some choose another public high school that is especially strong in specific areas of interest. A few use the money to help them pay for an expensive private school they would have gone to anyway.
But Vermont's system has allowed the creation of a number of independent high schools that provide much-needed alternatives to the bigger-is-better and too often one-size-fits-all philosophy of the public system. An alternative is thus available to any student in a choice town, not just the children of the rich.
Clarkson, whose sons apparently go to The Groton School in Massachusetts, would deny such educational choice to those who can't afford it. She is simply saying that opportunities beyond the public school system should be available only to the rich.
Finally, the hypocrisy. It was also reported that Clarkson said that we have very good public schools and the legislature should protect them (from people thinking otherwise!). Why don't her sons go to Woodstock Union High School?
There is only harm implied in her comments, not the interests of the educational needs of the children of Vermont.
P.S. Armando Vilaseca, Vermont's Commissioner of Education, who has expanded a directive to find savings in the school system into an attack against school choice, said last year on Vermont Public Radio that he had never heard of anyone moving to a specific town because of school choice. He is clearly unqualified to be in his position, since school choice is prominently touted in real estate ads and many people do indeed choose their town of residence for that reason. Listen to the comments in this highlights video from the April 6 hearing in Bennington (from Rob Roper of EdWatch Vermont).
P.P.S. Vilaseca has also expressed his resentment of independent schools that are not required to provide special education or similar services, which he thinks give them an unfair advantage at the expense of the public schools. Academically, however, public schools are not put at a disadvantage, because such services are provided by dedicated staff so that it is not a burden to teachers or an adverse distraction to students. And economically, "tuitioned" students are not taking resources from the public schools for those services, because their parents/guardians are still paying the same school taxes as everyone else. They are still contributing as much as everyone else to support the non-tuitioned responsibilities of the public schools.
tags: human rights, Vermont
Clarkson's statement is wrong in many ways.
First, the predatory tone. Choice towns have decided to provide that opportunity, not out of malice for the public school system (particularly as most students stay in the public schools -- see the second point), but in the interests of what is best for their citizens. Their students, granted this freedom by the taxpayers of their towns, are not "escapees" to be "captured".
Second, it is short-sighted and ill-informed. Once these few children are forced back into the public school system (where they have already decided they are not well served so that many of them will choose home schooling), enrollment will continue to decline. So, that problem is not at all solved by eliminating choice. Especially as most students from choice towns go to public schools already. In my town's current 8th-grade class, only 3 students out of about 30 are going to private schools: one is going to an expensive boarding school, for which the town will pay only a fraction of the cost, i.e., the student would have gone there anyway; so only 2 students would be "captured", i.e., not given the opportunity of an alternative high school that better serves their needs.
Third, the elitism. Vermont has a unique system in which the students in about 70 towns (13% of the state's students; data from the Vt. Dept. of Education for fiscal year 2010) are able to choose any non-religious high school they want, even in another state, and if it is private, their town will pay up to the state's average public per-pupil spending. As noted in the second point, most students choose the nearest public high school or one that provides bus service to their town. Some choose another public high school that is especially strong in specific areas of interest. A few use the money to help them pay for an expensive private school they would have gone to anyway.
But Vermont's system has allowed the creation of a number of independent high schools that provide much-needed alternatives to the bigger-is-better and too often one-size-fits-all philosophy of the public system. An alternative is thus available to any student in a choice town, not just the children of the rich.
Clarkson, whose sons apparently go to The Groton School in Massachusetts, would deny such educational choice to those who can't afford it. She is simply saying that opportunities beyond the public school system should be available only to the rich.
Finally, the hypocrisy. It was also reported that Clarkson said that we have very good public schools and the legislature should protect them (from people thinking otherwise!). Why don't her sons go to Woodstock Union High School?
There is only harm implied in her comments, not the interests of the educational needs of the children of Vermont.
P.S. Armando Vilaseca, Vermont's Commissioner of Education, who has expanded a directive to find savings in the school system into an attack against school choice, said last year on Vermont Public Radio that he had never heard of anyone moving to a specific town because of school choice. He is clearly unqualified to be in his position, since school choice is prominently touted in real estate ads and many people do indeed choose their town of residence for that reason. Listen to the comments in this highlights video from the April 6 hearing in Bennington (from Rob Roper of EdWatch Vermont).
P.P.S. Vilaseca has also expressed his resentment of independent schools that are not required to provide special education or similar services, which he thinks give them an unfair advantage at the expense of the public schools. Academically, however, public schools are not put at a disadvantage, because such services are provided by dedicated staff so that it is not a burden to teachers or an adverse distraction to students. And economically, "tuitioned" students are not taking resources from the public schools for those services, because their parents/guardians are still paying the same school taxes as everyone else. They are still contributing as much as everyone else to support the non-tuitioned responsibilities of the public schools.
tags: human rights, Vermont
March 26, 2010
Excerpts from Dominion by Matthew Scully
Realism is seeing reality. And the two hardest realities are life and death. We share with animals in the fellowship of both, and there never was a better reason to be kind and merciful than the leveling death which will find us all. (p. 46)
• 'Killing "for sport" is the perfect type of that pure evil for which metaphysicians have sometimes sought. Most wicked deeds are done because the doer proposes some good to himself ... [but] the killer for sport has no such comprehensible motive. He prefers death to life, darkness to light. He gets nothing except the satisfaction of saying, "Something that wanted to live is dead. There is that much less vitality, consciousness, and, perhaps, joy in the universe. I am the Spirit that Denies."' (p. 77, from The Modern Temper (1929) by Joseph Wood Krutch, as quoted in A View to a Death in the Morning: Hunting and Nature Through History (1993) by Matt Cartmill)
• I know that vegetarianism runs against mankind's most casual assumptions about the world and our place within it. And I know that factory farming is an economic inevitability, not likely to end anytime soon. But I don't answer to inevitabilities, and neither do you. I don't answer to the economy. I don't answer to tradition and I don't answer to Everyone. For me, it comes down to a question of whether I am a man or just a consumer. Whether to reason or just to rationalize. Whether to heed my conscience or my every craving, to assert my free will or just my will. Whether to side with the powerful and comfortable or with the weak, afflicted, and forgotten. (p. 325)
• Meat is today a luxury item, large-scale livestock farming an irrational and inefficient enterprise, and the suffering it inflicts morally untenable. It will not do to say, with writer David Plotz in the online magazine Slate, that "Calves are adorable, but veal is delicious. ... God gave man dominion over the beasts of the earth [and] if an animal has economic utility, we should farm it." That is not a serious argument. It is an excuse for evading serious argument, for doing what he pleases and getting what he wants, the whims of man in their familiar guise of the will of God. Nor is it any answer to say, with Judge Richard Posner, that the law should be neutral and let corporate farmers answer to "consumer preference" alone. When the law sets billions of creatures apart from the basic standards elsewhere governing the treatment of animals, when the law denies in effect that they are animals at all, that is not neutrality. That is falsehood, and a license for cruelty. (p. 389)
• If we cannot do something humanely, without degrading both the animals and ourselves, then we should not do it at all. (p. 391)
• Kindness to animals is not our most important duty as human beings, nor is it our least important. How we treat our fellow creatures is only one more way in which each one of us, every day, writes our own epitaph -- bearing into the world a message of light and life or just more darkness and death, adding to the world's joy or to its despair. (p. 398)
• Dominion: The Power of Man, the Suffering of Animals, and the Call to Mercy, by Matthew Scully. New York: St. Martin's Press, 2002
environment, environmentalism, animal rights, vegetarianism, anarchism, ecoanarchism
environment, environmentalism, animal rights, vegetarianism, anarchism, ecoanarchism
March 23, 2010
The 3% Nonsolution
A common figure for annual health care spending in the U.S. is 2.5 trillion dollars (according to the Dept. of Health and Human Services (HHS), it was 2.34 trillion dollars in 2008 and projected to have been 2.47 trillion in 2009 and to be 2.57 trillion in 2010).
The "historic" health care bill just signed into law has an estimated cost of just under 1 trillion dollars (938 billion). But that's over 10 years. So make it 100 billion dollars annually, or about half the cost of the crusades in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Thus, the bill will represent less than 4% of the country's health care spending.
Small change indeed.
Especially as HHS projects total spending to increase to almost 4.5 trillion dollars by 2019.
This "monumental" reform bill will represent less than 2.7% of the next 10 years' health care spending.
Its only significance is criminalizing not having insurance and forcing people into private "coverage". A cruel mockery of care, this is blatant extortion on behalf of corporate profits.
The "historic" health care bill just signed into law has an estimated cost of just under 1 trillion dollars (938 billion). But that's over 10 years. So make it 100 billion dollars annually, or about half the cost of the crusades in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Thus, the bill will represent less than 4% of the country's health care spending.
Small change indeed.
Especially as HHS projects total spending to increase to almost 4.5 trillion dollars by 2019.
This "monumental" reform bill will represent less than 2.7% of the next 10 years' health care spending.
Its only significance is criminalizing not having insurance and forcing people into private "coverage". A cruel mockery of care, this is blatant extortion on behalf of corporate profits.
March 22, 2010
On the big medical insurance bill
Ironic Times: House Passes Mild Modification to Health Care System -- After 100-year debate.
Ralph Nader, "A Remnant of Reform":
The health insurance legislation is a major political symbol wrapped around a shredded substance. It does not provide coverage that is universal, comprehensive or affordable. It is a remnant even of its own initially compromised self — bereft of any public option, any safeguard for states desiring a single payer approach, any adequate antitrust protections, any shift of power toward consumers to defend themselves, any regulation of insurance prices, any authority for Uncle Sam to bargain with drug companies, and any reimportation of lower-priced drugs.
Most of the health insurance coverage mandated by this legislation does not come into effect until 2014, by which time 180,000 Americans will die because they were unable to afford health insurance to cover treatment and diagnosis, according to Harvard Medical School researchers.
The bill’s 2,000 pages afford many opportunities for insurance companies to further their strategy of maximizing profits by denying claims, restricting the benefits of their present customers, and the benefits of the new customers who are mandated to buy their policies, all backed by hundreds of billions of dollars of federal subsidies.
Its main saving grace is that it is so inadequate and so delayed in implementation that the position supported by the majority of people, physicians and nurses –- full Medicare for all –- will have abundant opportunities to build around the country. The spiraling price hikes by the insurance industry are sure to spur the single payer movement to new popularity. (See singlepayeraction.org.)
Chris Hedges:
This bill is not about fiscal responsibility or the common good. The bill is about increasing corporate profit at taxpayer expense. It is the health care industry’s version of the Wall Street bailout. It lavishes hundreds of billions in government subsidies on insurance and drug companies. The some 3,000 health care lobbyists in Washington, whose dirty little hands are all over the bill, have once more betrayed the American people for money. The bill is another example of why change will never come from within the Democratic Party. The party is owned and managed by corporations. The five largest private health insurers and their trade group, America’s Health Insurance Plans, spent more than $6 million on lobbying in the first quarter of 2009. Pfizer, the world’s biggest drug maker, spent more than $9 million during the last quarter of 2008 and the first three months of 2009. The Washington Post reported that up to 30 members of Congress from both parties who hold key committee memberships have major investments in health care companies totaling between $11 million and $27 million. President Barack Obama’s director of health care policy, who will not discuss single payer as an option, has served on the boards of several health care corporations. And as salaries for most Americans have stagnated or declined during the past decade, health insurance profits have risen by 480 percent.
Obama and the congressional leadership have consciously shut out advocates of single payer from the debate. The press, including papers such as The New York Times, treats single payer as a fringe movement. The television networks rarely mention it. And yet between 45 and 60 percent of doctors favor single payer. Between 40 and 62 percent of the American people, including 80 percent of registered Democrats, want universal, single-payer not-for-profit health care for all Americans. The ability of the corporations to discredit and silence voices that represent at least half of the population is another sad testament to the power of our corporate state to frame all discussions.
Margaret Flowers, Physicians for a National Health Program, in response to Howard Dean saying "Americans want choice ... Nobody in America likes the government telling them what to do":
The American people want a choice of health care provider and choice of treatment. This bill does neither. Let people choose their doctor and treatment. Under private insurance, the private insurers make the decision. This bill would entrench that system of private insurance. It’s going to continue to leave people out – with the resulting suffering, bankruptcy, foreclosure and preventable death. And that’s not acceptable.
We were excluded from this conversation. This was not a conversation based on data or evidence. It was based on the fact that the industry had their hand in this throughout this legislation and it was written in their favor.
[One might also point out that making it illegal to not have insurance and not providing a nonprofit public alternative to the private insurance market are in fact mockeries of choice. Medicare for All would maximize choice.]
Ralph Nader, "A Remnant of Reform":
The health insurance legislation is a major political symbol wrapped around a shredded substance. It does not provide coverage that is universal, comprehensive or affordable. It is a remnant even of its own initially compromised self — bereft of any public option, any safeguard for states desiring a single payer approach, any adequate antitrust protections, any shift of power toward consumers to defend themselves, any regulation of insurance prices, any authority for Uncle Sam to bargain with drug companies, and any reimportation of lower-priced drugs.
Most of the health insurance coverage mandated by this legislation does not come into effect until 2014, by which time 180,000 Americans will die because they were unable to afford health insurance to cover treatment and diagnosis, according to Harvard Medical School researchers.
The bill’s 2,000 pages afford many opportunities for insurance companies to further their strategy of maximizing profits by denying claims, restricting the benefits of their present customers, and the benefits of the new customers who are mandated to buy their policies, all backed by hundreds of billions of dollars of federal subsidies.
Its main saving grace is that it is so inadequate and so delayed in implementation that the position supported by the majority of people, physicians and nurses –- full Medicare for all –- will have abundant opportunities to build around the country. The spiraling price hikes by the insurance industry are sure to spur the single payer movement to new popularity. (See singlepayeraction.org.)
Chris Hedges:
This bill is not about fiscal responsibility or the common good. The bill is about increasing corporate profit at taxpayer expense. It is the health care industry’s version of the Wall Street bailout. It lavishes hundreds of billions in government subsidies on insurance and drug companies. The some 3,000 health care lobbyists in Washington, whose dirty little hands are all over the bill, have once more betrayed the American people for money. The bill is another example of why change will never come from within the Democratic Party. The party is owned and managed by corporations. The five largest private health insurers and their trade group, America’s Health Insurance Plans, spent more than $6 million on lobbying in the first quarter of 2009. Pfizer, the world’s biggest drug maker, spent more than $9 million during the last quarter of 2008 and the first three months of 2009. The Washington Post reported that up to 30 members of Congress from both parties who hold key committee memberships have major investments in health care companies totaling between $11 million and $27 million. President Barack Obama’s director of health care policy, who will not discuss single payer as an option, has served on the boards of several health care corporations. And as salaries for most Americans have stagnated or declined during the past decade, health insurance profits have risen by 480 percent.
Obama and the congressional leadership have consciously shut out advocates of single payer from the debate. The press, including papers such as The New York Times, treats single payer as a fringe movement. The television networks rarely mention it. And yet between 45 and 60 percent of doctors favor single payer. Between 40 and 62 percent of the American people, including 80 percent of registered Democrats, want universal, single-payer not-for-profit health care for all Americans. The ability of the corporations to discredit and silence voices that represent at least half of the population is another sad testament to the power of our corporate state to frame all discussions.
Margaret Flowers, Physicians for a National Health Program, in response to Howard Dean saying "Americans want choice ... Nobody in America likes the government telling them what to do":
The American people want a choice of health care provider and choice of treatment. This bill does neither. Let people choose their doctor and treatment. Under private insurance, the private insurers make the decision. This bill would entrench that system of private insurance. It’s going to continue to leave people out – with the resulting suffering, bankruptcy, foreclosure and preventable death. And that’s not acceptable.
We were excluded from this conversation. This was not a conversation based on data or evidence. It was based on the fact that the industry had their hand in this throughout this legislation and it was written in their favor.
[One might also point out that making it illegal to not have insurance and not providing a nonprofit public alternative to the private insurance market are in fact mockeries of choice. Medicare for All would maximize choice.]
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