Echos of history

From "Who Killed Christopher Marlowe?" Stephen Greenblatt, New York Review of Books, April 6, 2006:

Why would Elizabeth, who was not by nature impulsively murderous, have wanted Marlowe dead? Her government, to be sure, was nervous about the threat of popular rioting, incited by the placard signed "Tamburlaine," but Marlowe, off at his patron's country house, was not directly implicated in this provocation. Still, Riggs argues, the combination of the placard and the spy's report triggered in the Queen and her close advisers a "moral panic," the paranoid fear of "an emergent alliance between atheists and Roman Catholic provocateurs." After all, Protestant polemicists had so often repeated the line that the Pope was a cynical unbeliever and that the Catholic Church was the Antichrist's conspiracy that they had come to believe that it was literally true. The list of scandalous opinions attributed to Marlowe did not seem to them either a deliberate slander or a piece of grotesque comedy; rather it seemed like the smoking gun they had long expected to find. And if anyone had bothered to notice that Marlowe's "Catholicism" was a double agent's role and his "atheism" the unverified report of a paid informer who was a notorious liar, it would not have made a difference. The authorities were spooked by their own fantasies. ...

From The Guardian (U.K.), March 21, 1933:

The President of the Munich police has informed the press that the first concentration camp holding 5,000 political prisoners is to be organised within the next few days near the town of Dachau in Bavaria.

Here, he said, Communists, "Marxists" and Reichsbanner leaders who endangered the security of the State would be kept in custody. It was impossible to find room for them in the State prisons, nor was it possible to release them. Experience had shown, he said, that the moment they were released, they started their agitation again.

If the safety and order of the State were to be guaranteed, measures were inevitable, and they would be carried out without any petty consideration. This is the first clear statement hitherto made regarding concentration camps. The extent of the terror may be measured from the size of this Bavarian camp which - one may gather - will be only one of many. The Munich police president's statement leaves no more doubt whatever that the Socialists and Republicans will be given exactly the same sort of "civic education" as the Communists.

Absolute power for Hitler: The Cabinet at its meeting this afternoon decided on the text of the Enabling Bill which it will submit to the Reichstag. If this bill is passed, the Hitler Government will be endowed with absolute dictatorial powers. The Act will enable the Cabinet to legislate and to make laws even if these "mark a deviation from the Constitution", except that the Reichstag and the Reichsrat must not he abolished. But as these will be put out of action for four years, this provision will not inconvenience the Government, which will even have full powers at the end of four years to alter the electoral system by decree.

Military expenditure: As the Budget would be settled by decree, and as the figures would not need to be made public, there would be no extra-Governmental control of public finances, and the Government would be free to increase military and naval expenditure without the least publicity.

tags:  anarchism, anarchosyndicalism

"industrial droning"

Tom Shea of Searsburg, Vt., wrote a letter last August to the district ranger of the U.S. Forest Service about the prospect of yet more, much larger, wind turbines in the Green Mountain National Forest. His great-great-grandfather settled in Searsburg in the early 19th century, and his family owns the two houses closest to the existing 11-turbine 6-MW facility (198 feet high, no lights; the proposed expansion calls for at least 340-ft assemblies, requiring flashing lights). The complete letter is available at National Wind Watch.

A little less than ten years ago, a 'small' generating station of a 'handful' of windmills was proposed and rapidly sent through the approval process. This was to generate 'clean' energy that was reported to be no more intrusive than the sound of a 'whisper'. I have endured the industrial droning for close to ten years, with the added arrhythmic clunk of the gears from the turning mechanisms. This is described as a "barely noticeable" sound. I beg to differ. Due to this industrial noise pollution, I can no longer bring pets to the property, because the droning disorients them in the woods. The impact to the wildlife must be even more severe, despite the claims of the power company's 'consultants'. Regardless, my family's enjoyment of the quiet of the woods is severely diminished.

Now there is proposed a bigger generating station, with larger windmills, complete with aircraft warning lights. I have yet to see a detail on exactly where these enormous structures are to be located. Where will they be in relation to my property? Will they overlook my house? Why hasn't this been published? I suspect that is because they will be a huge eyesore. How can anyone expect a public response when these details have never been released? The propaganda pictures that the electric company published were taken five miles from the Searsburg town line. I do not consider this honest. ...

Will there be 400 foot tall electrical generators overlooking my house? Will the pristine landscape be turned into an industrial park? Will this wild expanse of nature resemble a metropolitan airport with its landing lights? ...

When the existing windmills were proposed, there was supposedly no opposition to them. The power company published(!) pictures of the view from our property that were taken while they were trespassing. They said that they had heard no opposition to the proposal. It should not have been hard to find [our] family in a town of less than 100, who had been there since the early sixty's. Yet the power company claimed that they had contacted all of the abutters. They had not contacted us, nor ANY of the other families that had their view of the mountains spoiled by these huge industrial machines. (They apparently only contacted tourists who never venture far from the road on the way to their ski vacations.) They subsequently published a glowing report that everyone they contacted liked the idea of the generators. This is a conclusion they decided on prior to contacting anyone. It is not intellectually valid.

tags:  wind power, wind energy, Vermont, environment, environmentalism

Gag order

As noted before in this space (here and here), leases from wind power developers are extreme documents. A correspondent has recently informed us that several people who have given up their land for the huge (120 390-ft turbines so far, many more planned) "Maple Ridge Wind Farm" on the Tug Hill Plateau in Lewis County, N.Y., have been complaining privately about the noise. But they signed away their right to mention it to anyone but the company. Thus as far as the company is concerned there is no noise problem! Cute, huh?

tags:  wind power, wind energy, wind farms

Blowing out the fire

Jaon Vennochi writes in today's Boston Globe about the danger of censuring the criminal acts of the President:

Is Feingold's resolution motivated by pure political self-interest? He is a probable Democratic presidential candidate trying to stake his claim to the political left. Or is it principle? Feingold is the only US senator who opposed the original Patriot Act, and he voted against authorizing war with Iraq.

Either way, it creates a dilemma for Democrats.

A dilemma? Both political interest and principle are to be avoided? What's left for these ghosts that stalk the halls of Congress?

Current polls and surveys show people think as little of Bush as they do of Congress. Democrats in Congress should be thinking of ways to change that political reality. They need to increase their own favorability ratings at the expense of the opposition. Handing the opposition a weapon to use against Democrats is counterproductive, to say the least. But censure, and even impeachment, are seductive.

Keeping silent about illegal actions of the President will win respect? Refusing to act because of fear of the opposition will win votes?

In the House, 29 of 201 Democrats have signed on to a resolution from Representative John Conyers Jr., Democrat of Michigan, that demands a special committee to investigate the Bush administration's "manipulation of prewar intelligence," among other things, and advise whether there are "grounds for possible impeachment." ...

Representative James P. McGovern of Worcester called the resolution "tempting," but concluded that it distracts from the party's goals of winning House and Senate races in the fall. Representative Barney Frank says, "This is an understandable emotional response from people who are very angry. But why do we want to energize George Bush's people?"

A fine plan: Defeat Republicans by not opposing them. Bore the Republican base into an apathy matching that of the Democrats. But there again, the Republicans are way ahead: They don't need votes, because they own the ballot boxes.

A political survey done by American Research Group is helping the left make its case. It is based on 1,100 telephone interviews among a random sample of adults nationwide from March 13-15. Of those surveyed, 46 percent said they favored censuring Bush for authorizing wiretaps of Americans without obtaining court orders; 44 percent opposed and 10 percent were undecided. On impeachment, 42 percent favored a vote to impeach; 29 percent opposed and 9 percent were undecided.

The survey is particularly interesting when responses from independents are analyzed. On the censure question, 42 percent said they favored it; 47 percent opposed. On the impeachment question, 47 percent favored it; 40 percent opposed.

So it isn't just for the left, as it turns out! Censure, even impeachment, is a mainstream no-brainer. The percentage opposed to impeachment is less than two-thirds the percentage of voters that are supposed to have elected the bastard. And the all-important "swing" voter remains just as uninteresting and irrelevant as ever.

It all adds fuel to the flames swirling around the White House. There is danger for the GOP, but also for Democrats: Will those flames consume those who fan them, too?

The Joan Vennochi solution: Sit in the dark and pretend that Bush won't do anything else bad and that it will all be like a bad dream when a new president is elected in 2008. That is, if Bush allows a new election. Who would dare stop him, since both political interest and principle are so risky?

Alternatives:
Second Vermont Republic
Green Party
Labor Party

tags: anarchism, anarchosyndicalism, Vermont

Vermont legislators propose throwing out hearing results

State representatives Keenan of St. Albans City, Shand of Weathersfield, and Young of Orwell introduced a resolution yesterday to recommend that the Public Service Board reject its hearing officer's recommendation to deny a permit for the East Haven Wind Farm and grant it anyway.

Whereas, notwithstanding the hearing officer's recommendations, a close review of his findings reveals many conclusions which in combination argue convincingly for the PSB to act contrary to the hearing officer's overall recommendation, ...

This weirdly suggests that Janson himself did not make a close review of his own findings -- and that these legislators somehow have a better knowledge of the evidence than the man who presided over weeks of hearings and has read thousands of pages of testimony.

Whereas, the 329-foot wind turbines would produce electricity that would be sold entirely to a local municipal electric company, the Lyndonville Electric Department (LED), and

Whereas, the power will be sold to LED at five percent below market cost and will decrease slightly the market price for electricity with the greatest economic benefit for individuals in the Northeast Kingdom who reside nearer the project, and ...

Whereas, not only is this newly available electric power being sold locally and at five percent below market cost, it would also help meet the regional need for electric power derived from renewable resources, ...

In fact, the electricity will be sold to grid operator ISO New England, who will send the check to LED who will take out 5% and then send it on to EMDC. LED is not buying the electricity; they are taking a cut of the sales to ISO New England. As for helping meet the regional need for renewable energy sources, the turbines would have a likely average output of around 1.5 MW, or less than 0.005% of the current capacity of the New England grid.

Whereas, opponents of the project have stated that demand-side lifestyle changes could substitute for the need for renewable power, and this is an argument the hearing officer rejected, ...

In Vermont, 1.5 MW represents 0.25% of our peak load. Certainly in this case, demand-side changes could easily substitute.

Whereas, increased local employment would occur both from short-term construction jobs and longer-term system operation, ...

EMDC has contracted with a Burlington firm for construction. GE would supply the workers experienced in turbine assembly. Almost all local employment would be for land clearing, excavating, and hauling cement. The national average for full-time (essentially custodial) jobs after the facility is operational is 1-2 per 20 MW rated capacity: not many prospects are likely from a 6-MW facility.

Whereas, this small a wind farm is unlikely to impact significantly the migratory bird population, and the hearing officer acknowledged the Agency of Natural Resources, statement that a project containing only four turbines will probably not result in a large number of bat deaths, ...

Janson singled out the lack of information about the impact on birds and bats and the reluctance of EMDC to undertake proper studies.

Whereas, the portions of the former Champion Lands from which viewers would have a prominent view of the turbines used for snowmobiling, logging, and other activities inconsistent with true wilderness areas, ...

None of these involves 330-ft machines, none of them is active at night, and none of them violates the dark sky of that area with strobe lights.

Whereas, the public investment in these lands was to purchase a public access easement, and the presence of a commercial wind farm on nearby private property will not significantly diminish the easement, ...

Janson, despite what I consider many seriously wrong assumptions of the value of wind power, clearly determined that it will.

tags:  wind power, wind energy, wind farms, Vermont, environment, environmentalism

Get serious about wind

In today's Burlington (Vt.) Free Press, in an article about the recommendation from the hearing officer that the Public Service Board deny Mathew Rubin and Dave Rapaport a "certificate of public good" for their proposal of 4 wind turbines in East Haven  . . .

At the Conservation Law Foundation in Montpelier, Vermont Director Chris Kilian was highly critical of Janson's recommendation, saying it was discouraging "since we have to build thousands of windmills if we are serious about global warming and decommissioning nuclear plants."

Yes, indeed: thousands. The Vermont Yankee nuclear plant has a capacity of 510 MW and annual output around 85% of that (due to down times). The wind turbines proposed in East Haven have a rating of 1.5 MW each but are likely to average only 25% of that (due to variable winds). So it would take 1,156 of them to equal the output of Vermont Yankee.

When Vermont Yankee is not shut down for refueling or any of its many problems, i.e, 85% of the time, its output is a steady 100% of capacity. In contrast, because of the cubic relation of power output to wind speed, wind turbines would be producing at much less than their average rate about two-thirds of the time. That means that even more are needed. Government agency analyses from New York, Ireland, Britain, and Germany have all determined that wind power's effective capacity, or its ability to replace other sources is only about a third of its average capacity.

So it would take 3,468 1.5-MW wind turbines to provide the energy currently generated by Vermont Yankee. That's not just "a few carefully selected ridge lines" but would require the industrialization of well over a hundred. It would require stringing turbines along the entire spine of the Green Mountains like a barbed wire fence separating east from west.

Many people already consider the state to be under siege by the less than 200 MW currently proposed at 6 sites.

With so much overbuilding and redundancy, most of it would have to be shut down when the wind is strong or it would overload the system -- thus further diminishing its effective capacity.

This is not to voice support for Vermont Yankee, whose decommissioning I support. I have to clarify that, because it is an assumption wind promoters generally cling to rather than face the inadequacy, much less the madness, of their alternative. Ditto for coal and any other obviously greater evil they would raise to avoid scrutiny of their own depredations.

Three and half thousand giant wind turbines would still require back-up stations both to balance their variable power and to generate energy when the wind is weak. Each turbine, 330-430 feet high, sweeping a vertical air space of 1-1.5 acres, requires at least 50 acres of clear land around it. (That means it would require more than 270 square miles of wind plant to equal the output of Vermont Yankee.) Wide strong roads are required for access. New high-capacity transmission lines and substations would be built. Most of the turbines must be lit by flashing strobes day and night. The blades turn, ensuring their dominance of the landscape. Noise generated by the blades, gears, motors, and generators are intrusive as well, its low-frequency aspect a threat to health and well-being. Wildlife habitat is fragmented and forest diminished. Birds and bats are particularly threatened.

And we would still need the same amount of generating power from other plants (which would be run less efficiently, i.e., with more emissions) to keep the system running when the wind isn't perfect. With this pathetic outlook, and considering as well the fact that electricity is only a fraction of our energy use, wind looks about as far from a "serious" solution to global warming or decommissioning nuclear plants as one could get.

tags:  wind power, wind energy, wind farms, Vermont

Animal labs are anti-science

To the Editor, The Guardian (U.K.) [published Mar. 15, 2006]:

I would like to add to Sharon Howe's reponse (Mar. 10) to Timothy Garton Ash that antivivisectionists are not anti-science. Garton Ash makes a fetish of science but ignores the fact that it is science that makes it impossible to deny that the sentience of other animals is not very different from our own, and it is science that has, as Howe describes, developed better means of research and testing for human medicine than the Victorian barbarism of animal labs.

tags:  animal rights