Crime and demeanor

Sam Smith, The Progressive Review:

'ALBERTO GONZALEZ will undoubted be approved by the Senate since he meets the current Washington standard for confirmation: he has not been found guilty of any indictable offense and doesn't have an illegal nannie.

'In fact, he and his buddies should probably be prosecuted under the RICO statute for sitting around the White House plotting ways to ignore various national and international laws as they tortured people. And his evasive answers clearly put him the category of other great congressional witnesses such as the mobsters who appeared before the Kefauver committee.

'Finally, it was clear that Gonzalez, like much of official Washington, considers moral values to be defined not by the Father Almighty but by the criminal code. The idea that one might want to stand further than just the other side of criminality is an alien one to your capital city.

'Not even the press bothers about such concerns anymore. They are considered quaint and obsolete. One Washington correspondent patiently explained to Diane Rehm why stress positions shouldn't be considered torture and on CSPAN, an editor of City Journal, Heather MacDonald, announced that "we need these tools" and that we are "too good for our own good."

'It is with the aid of such sophistry that evil flourishes, whether episodic or organized as fascism. Great wrong doesn't just come out of the barrel of the gun; it also comes from the cynical rationalizations of those who are meant to know better.'

Affirmative Action, Cuban Style

The Black Commentator this week reprinted an article (click the title of this post) from the New England Journal of Medicine about Cuba's Latin American School of Medicine, where 500 slots are reserved for students from the U.S. who promise to treat the poor. It's free, of course.

Study finds wind turbines in path of bird migration

The East Haven (Vermont) wind-energy project is initially targeting East Mountain, which is a couple peaks north of Kirby Mountain, with 4 turbines as a "demonstration" project. Pretending that they're not thinking "yet" about the complete plan for 50 turbines spread over two ridges and looming over state-protected wilderness (the "Champion" lands), the developers are currently seeking Public Service Board approval. Insisting as well that East Mountain is not in a significant flyway, even though it borders the Victory Bog, which is nationally cherished by birdwatchers, or, if it is, that the birds would fly well above the turbines, they have refused to do any actual research. The PSB has allowed time for the primary opposition, the Kingdom Commons Group, to pursue a study but also refused to fund it. KCG has managed to start such a study, of wildlife on the ground as well as birds. (When the research began, the project's president, Mathew Rubin, opened the property to ATVs, obviously hoping to scare away the [non-human] animals.)

As reported in the radio story linked to in the title of this post, the first results of the bird survey, done by the state Agency of Natural Resources, show that there were over a half million flights over the mountain last October, 67% of them below 400 feet, i.e., where turbine blades would be.

And lest those 335,000 threatened birds be dismissed as "common," their senseless death not threatening the survival of their species (and thus somehow "OK"), I would like to report a young peregrine falcon, an endangered species, seen sitting in a white ash near our house today. Among smaller birds who find shelter and food in these mountains, the elusive Bicknell's thrush is a threatened species.

Into the trenches

"Does the Democratic Party office in your hometown stay open past the election so they can mobilize people to join unions or protest corporate abuses? Are any of the new '527' campaign groups keeping their field offices open and going door to door to assist working people in protesting rocketing consumer prices or to fight for a national health care program? Are any of the internet activist organizations using their techno-wizardry to mobilize on behalf of working people who are on strike someplace? Did your local Democratic Party organize a post-election picket line in front of Wal-Mart to demand that they pay a living wage? Have you seen anything like this? Of course not."

Click the title of this post for the whole piece by Chris Townsend, Political Action Director of the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America (UE).

"A re-elected President Bush has declared his expanded war on working people, and they are loading up the cannons and mortars. The anticipation is so great in their ranks that they are fighting among themselves about how they will divvy up the booty of the blitzkrieg to come.

"The attack is imminent. Grab your helmet and your Labor Party card and I'll see you in the trench."

Just Health Care
Free Higher Education
Campaign for Worker Rights

Against the wind

[ Letter in the Western Mail (Wales), Jan. 3 ]

SIR -- Most people are aware that electricity cannot be stored.

For this reason wind turbines do not significantly help reduce CO₂ emissions, which, we are told, is the main cause of global warming.

If we were to rely on wind power for even a fraction of our electricity needs and the wind drops, the lights would go out; which is why we need constant, C0₂-emitting back-up from conventional power stations.

Wind power is a political fairy tale: it is designed to make all us soft greenies feel less guilty about our consumption of electricity and thus win Brownie points for our parliamentary leaders.

But the truth is that in believing wind power is actually helping save the world from global warming, we are compounding the problem and wasting valuable time in pursuing a white elephant that doesn't work.

The hypocrisy of our current energy policy beggars belief. Why aren't we all being encouraged to conserve energy which could cut C0₂ emissions by 20%?

Answer: because it would affect the profits of the electricity companies.

Why not put a tax on aviation fuel which is one of our biggest environmental polluters?

Answer: because it would effect the profits of the airline companies and would ultimately be a vote loser for Tony Blair.

It is time to stop this hypocrisy and to end the evangelistic obsession with wind turbines; instead, we must look to measures which we know can make a difference, such as energy conservation and renewable energy from a reliable source such as tidal power.

J ROLLASON
Clout (Conwy Locals Opposing Unnecessary Turbines) Steering Committee, Pandy Tudur, Abergele

Bush Campaign Urges Dismissal of Lawsuit

'Regardless of the outcome of the lawsuit, Jackson called for an investigation into the election that would include deposing Secretary of State Ken Blackwell, Ohio's chief elections official. He said "the pattern of anomalies in Ohio -- and Pennsylvania and Florida -- amount to a plan" and that Blackwell should be held responsible.

'Blackwell spokesman Carlo LoParo dismissed the accusations as baseless. He said Ohio's performance on Election Day was a national model.'

That's precisely the issue, isn't it.

The victims of the tsunami pay the price of war on Iraq

"The US government has so far pledged $350m to the victims of the tsunami, and the UK government £50m ($96m). The US has spent $148 billion on the Iraq war and the UK £6bn ($11.5bn). The war has been running for 656 days. This means that the money pledged for the tsunami disaster by the United States is the equivalent of one and a half day's spending in Iraq. The money the UK has given equates to five and a half days of our involvement in the war."

-- George Monbiot, The Guardian, Jan. 5

Donate to Oxfam (International or America) or Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders).