GREEN SOLUTIONS by Paul Stephens, CasCoGreens
November 3, 2008
Where is Montana's Bernie Sanders?
http://sanders.senate.gov/
I was reading an old Smithsonian Magazine the other day from 1999. There was a story about the "Good News Garage" in Burlington, VT (no relation to NPR's millionaire "car guys" who've made a fortune off of your pledges). Some of the recipients of this public interest co-op's generosity in providing low-income people with serviceable vehicles were Bernie Sanders' supporters when he was running for Congress.
I admit, I haven't followed Sanders' career as closely as I should have, but he is now a U.S. Senator, and always ran as an "Independent Socialist". In "conservative, rural" Vermont, he typically gets 70% or more of the vote. Why can't we have a senator like that? There's one good reason: Montana has always been dominated and controlled by the corrupt Democratic Machine. We've had our share of Bernie's in days gone by - many of whom were Republicans or Progressive Independents of either party. Jeanette Rankin (R) would certainly lead the list, as the first woman from anywhere elected to Congress, but Democrats Burton K. Wheeler and Lee Metcalf were in the same tradition. Rankin just happened to be there for the declarations of war in 1917 and 1941. In the latter case, she was the sole dissenter from the carefully-orchestrated reaction to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, promoted and provoked by the Nationalist Chinese, War Democrats, Bolsheviks, and Zionist Lobby.
Bernie Sanders, instead of being more subdued or "dignified" by being elevated to the Senate, has redoubled his anti-corporate and pro-people activism.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rep-bernie-sanders/billions-for-bailouts-who_b_127882.html
Although John Driscoll has much in common with Sanders, he seems to think that he must "run to the right" in order to get elected, here. Just because the right wing is powerful and destructive in Montana, why do "liberals" think they have to pander to them? And what's the point? If you want to win, you've got to present a real alternative, and show no mercy to the Establishment which got us here. It's the stupidest thing: we all blame Bush, Cheney, Reagan, Burns, Racicot, and their ilk for the present malaise. Yet, the Democratic strategists refuse to point a finger, or if they do so, they do it in such a way that the Republicans look good - for opposing "tax and spend," for favoring "anti-terrorism," more military spending, "defending our national interests in the Middle East," supporting "de-regulation" and globalization, while opposing universal health care, gay marriage, environmental protection, etc. Democrats seem to take "the lesser of two evils" literally. They can't imagine being "the good guys" and winning because they have the best candidates and the best policies.
If the best the Democrats can do is to raise more money from the same corporate interests, and try to out-promise and out-attack the Republicans in their own stupid, failed rhetoric and policies, who will vote for them? No one would, except that the Democrats have managed to destroy, drive out, or disenfranchise everyone to the left of them. They always claim it is a "struggle" between the two corporate parties of Wall Street - not between citizens and working class people and the global corporate fascists. And that is why they have attacked and destroyed the Green Party instead of the Republicans. In league with them, Democrats are cheerfully "bi-partisan" - "reaching across the aisle" to consolidate what amounts to a one-party police-prison-garrison state.
The Greens (they thought) can't fight back. We can be easily silenced and discredited. But we're the only ones with a sound program or real solutions to the very real problems which the Republicans in league with the Democrats have caused. And that's why we need a Bernie Sanders - not necessarily a Green, but someone who will speak the truth independent of Democratic Party control. I'm sure that 70% of Montanans would vote for him - especially if he really were a Democrat. We're a "Red State" only by default - because the Democrats have historically been even worse than the Republicans. - Paul Stephens
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October 27, 2008
What do people think elections (and political parties) are for?
Each time, as an election draws near, I go into an acute depression. What could our political leaders possibly be thinking? Why do they insist on running meaningless, stupid, lying campaigns, hoping only to "win" regardless of the consequences to themselves, their communities, and the nation? I asked this when I was a Republican, a Libertarian, and closely allied with Progressive, environmentalist, peace and justice Democrats. It just didn't make any sense to me.
Finally, a political party comes into being which is supposed to represent "a different kind of politics" - one with peace, social justice, grass roots democracy, sustainability, and a government created and maintained to improve the human condition rather than make things worse - to be "the solution" rather than "the problem." Like millions of other Americans, and even greater numbers in other countries and parts of the world, I embraced the Green Party and its program enthusiastically. At last, I wouldn't be wasting my time and my votes on liars, cheats, war-mongers, and capitalistic exploiters. I would be defending individual freedom, constitutional government, a sound economy, and a clean and healthy environment. Surely, almost everyone I knew would agree with this and support the Green Party and our candidates.
No such luck. I remember Birdie Dundee (great-great grand-daughter of Ralph Waldo Emerson) saying, in 2000, that supporting Ralph Nader's bid for the presidency was "a no-brainer." She was the first person here in Great Falls to sign up for the campaign. We began circulating petitions, which were co-ordinated from Billings and Missoula. In Missoula, there was an office with several hundred volunteers and party members. They sent us boxes of campaign literature, bumper stickers, and the like. Richard Wachs and others came over several times and helped us during the campaign. Ralph Nader and Winona LaDuke got more than 1200 votes in Cascade County, and nearly 20% of the vote in Missoula. Yet, within two years, the Green Party was effectively dead in Montana. How could this be?
In 2002, I ran for public office as a Green, since we still had ballot status as a result of the success of the Nader campaign in 2000. I ran for Cascade County Commissioner, and although I raised more than $1000 and campaigned hard, I still got the same 1200 votes. I scheduled many meetings and presentations. Not more than 15 people ever attended, and it was mostly the same 5 or 6 - none of whom ever joined the GPUS or became a Green Party activist. I still knew hundreds of people, state-wide, who had supported the Green Party in their role as environmental or peace activists, labor union members, etc. When I first began publishing the Montana Green Bulletin in April, 2002, I sent it to all of them. Very soon, most of them asked me to stop sending it to their work addresses, or to quit communicating with them entirely. It became clear that it was the Democratic Party, and particularly the Baucus campaign staff, who were behind this. There was much discussion about how anything having to do with political campaigns could not be sent to public employees or officials. I refuted this false information over and over, again, and continued sending the Bulletin to those public officials who were involved in Green issues. The attempts to suppress the Green Party are endemic, well-organized, and far-reaching.
I had always assumed that Montanans, at least, would defend their rights to free speech, following their conscience and best judgment in carrying out public policy and in being advocates for the public good. I thought they supported free elections, and political freedom, generally. I thought they would strenuously resist any attempts by political "authorities" to enslave them, and make them serve corporate or special interest agendas. This proved to be almost entirely mistaken. The competition for government jobs is probably the most vicious of any competition in Montana. Public employees, whether teachers, environmental administrators, public health employees, police, prison system employees, etc., have very strong unions, and an almost pathological obedience to and fear of those "in authority."
As a life-long libertarian and "free thinker," I simply couldn't believe that all of these people working for the government, universities, the public schools, etc. would have absolutely no concept of free inquiry, political dissent, or indeed, any sort of "divergent thinking" or desire to find the truth, live it, and establish a "truth-based" government with the best understandings of the issues in order to implement sound public policy. In some sense, I still can't believe it, and this is one of the issues I always discuss with my long-time friends and colleagues.
What do they think this is? A Stalinst dictatorship? What are they afraid of? Why are they afraid to write or speak what they know to be the truth? And why do they end up, in every election cycle, mindlessly supporting, working for, and contributing their own hard-earned money and other resources to what is basically nothing more than a criminal conspiracy? Of course, each major party blames the other, and claims that "they did it first." But that is something we teach our children at a very young age to avoid. No teacher or responsible parent is going to let some children bully others, or lie about who is responsible for doing wrong. Wrong is wrong. If we support the bullies and criminals rather than those opposing them, public order rapidly dissolves, we lose our freedom and other rights, and live in a condition of perpetual fear and oppression. Welcome to Brave New World, 1984, the Thought Police, and all the devastating consequences we are experiencing, today.
I suppose that psychologists and sociologists have theories and explanations for all of it. During the 1950's and '60's, there were many writers and social critics who became famous for dissecting "the consumer economy," "planned obsolescence", "the men in the gray flannel suits," "the waste-makers," "the status-seekers," "the True Believers," and all sorts of other social pathologies. Soon, the "cultural revolution" with psychedelics, "tune in, turn on, drop out" ideas of Timothy Leary and other social gurus would make a huge impact on the social fabric. The senseless and tragic Viet-Nam War became a focus for this "new thinking," and by the time it was over, we thought we were living in an entirely different country - dedicated to individual freedom, peace, justice, racial and cultural diversity, community enrichment and development, and protection of the environment. Again, no such luck.
Montana held a Constitutional Convention in 1972, producing what would become the most progressive and far-sighted state constitution in the country. People like Bob Kelleher, Arlyne Reichert, my Highwood neighbor and long-time teacher and counselor Bob Woodmansey were all elected delegates to this Convention. Leo Graybill, a leading attorney and Democrat from Great Falls, chaired the Convention - serving in the same role as Benjamin Franklin in the U.S. Constitutional Convention in 1787. Historian K. Ross Toole was a leading influence, and it was Bob Campbell who doggedly insisted that we include "a right to a clean and healthful environment" as one of our basic rights.
How could this have all gone down the tubes in only 30 years? Well, it has, and the Democrats and Republicans are entirely to blame. They have put their own political and economic interests far ahead of the common good. They have voted for ever more prisons, more environmental degradation, more centralized control of our public institutions, every sort of corporate boon-doggle, subsidies, and bailouts, and fought dissenters and critics with a fierceness which is beyond comprehension.
We Greens are not giving up. We are not going to let these demagogues and politicians destroy what has taken a lifetime to create. We're not going to allow the petty cliques and in-fighting prevent us from cleaning up the public sector, establishing locally-owned and controlled public media, schools, and universities which have some sense of what it means to serve the public interest instead of the political bosses. Stay tuned!
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The election
I've heard nothing back from Jonathan Motl, the author of I-155 - the state-funded SCHIP insurance scam for "low income" children (for families making up to $60,000/year, and costing taxpayers some $3000 for each child "covered.") This money doesn't go to health care providers, local clinics, school districts, or whatever. It goes to private insurance companies, and my contention that half or more of it will probably be spent on the "drugs in the schools" programs to force low-income students to take Ritalin or other amphetamines or anti-depressants hasn't been refuted, either. I suspect that Motl, apparently a very sound public interest activist, was paid to write this legislation by the Secretary of State (and insurance industry clone) John Morrison, who is its strongest advocate. So, I'm voting NO on I-155. "Hell, no!" would be more like it.
HEALTH CARE DOLLARS FOR HEALTH CARE PROVIDERS -- NOT INSURANCE COMPANIES AND CORPORATE PROFITS http://www.pnhp.org
- Paul Stephens
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Missoula
LIGHT Productions presents a NEW show with Dr. Richard Hayes Phillips, author of Witness to a Crime: A Citizens' Audit of an American Election upcoming on MCAT ...
WHO: Richard Hayes Phillips
WHEN: Airs Wednesday, October 29, 2008 from 4:00pm to 6:00pm and Rebroadcast Sat, November 1, 2008 from 9:30 pm to 11:30pm
WHERE: MCAT Cable 7
Shows produced and directed by Rick Gold/Nan Cohen c2001 - 2008
For copies or other information please contact Rick and Nan at lightproductions(at)gmail.com 541-0016
On Tuesday, September 23, 2008 at University of Montana, Dr. Richard Hayes Phillips, author of Witness to a Crime: A Citizens' Audit of an American Election, spoke about the rigged election process in Ohio 2004. Dr. Phillips presented evidence of ballot tampering, ballot substitution, ballot box stuffing, ballot destruction, and shifting of votes from one candidate to another, in addition to old-fashioned techniques of voter suppression. He presented this evidence, and described how it was obtained. He also described how citizens audits can help insure election integrity in the future. For more informationabout his book, go to http://www.witnesstoacrime.com/
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The Baucus Problem
If you want to blame someone for the current Wall Street collapse and world financial crisis, I have an excellent candidate. Senator Max Baucus, D-MT, Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee and one of "the hundred most powerful men in America" - and by extension, the world. He is a personal friend of Robert Rubin, now an advisor to Barack Obama, and we in Montana blame him and Goldman, Sachs for destroying the Montana Power Company and confiscating our clean, cheap, renewable hydropower in order to force us to build more coal-fired power plants.
But it looks like Mad Max is finally losing his grip. In a recent poll, the results were so bad that it was pulled, with the claim that there was some sort of "mistake" or flaw in the collection and tabulation of the polling data. Max might actually lose to one of the worst-prepared and least - supported opponents in living memory. And for good reason.
If you can't bring yourself to vote for Bob Kelleher, you can always write in your dog's name, your favorite comedian, superhero, movie star, football player, or whomever. JUST DON'T VOTE FOR BAUCUS. Do not waste your precious vote on this corporate criminal. If Kelleher wins, he might have to resign for health reasons or whatever, but Gov. Schweitzer can appoint a suitable Republican replacement - say, John Bollinger or Sam Kitzenberg. It will be a great gift to Montana and the nation. - PHS
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WHY BILLIONAIRES SUPPORT BAUCUS (AND NO ONE ELSE SHOULD )
[I reprinted the following story from The Nation in February, 2007. Here it is, again - or the most relevant excerpts from it. If you are a loyal Democrat, this account should convince you that Max isn't one, and has nothing in common with the Democratic Party tradition. In fact, he has almost single-handedly destroyed the Montana Democratic Party. If you are a Republican or Independent, you probably already know how rotten and evil Max Baucus is, and has become. Please vote for Bob Kelleher, who ran as a Green against Baucus in 2002, and actually won the primary this time as a Republican. Whatever it takes to get Baucus out of the Senate is time and effort well-spent. - PHS]
K Street's Favorite Democrat by Ari Berman http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070319/berman
Tuesday, November 4, 2008
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
Green Solutions July 21 Obama, Wolves, American Gangster, Amory Lovins on Nuclear Power
Montana Green Bulletin
July 21, 2008 Volume VII, Number 29
Paul Stephens, Editor and Publisher 406.216.2711 greateco@3rivers.net
GREEN SOLUTIONS by Paul Stephens, CasCoGreens
What is Obama thinking (if anything)?
I subscribe to the New Yorker, so I got to read the "inside" stories about him as well as the now-notorious cover depicting he and Michelle as some sort of Islamic militants with an American flag burning on their hearth (that part was unnecessary, unless the intention was really malicious). This "drawing" (as the New Yorker calls its cartoons) actually has a title: "The Politics of Fear", and is by one Barry Blitt, who is identified as an illustrator for a children's book, "What's the Weather Inside?" Perhaps McCain will give it away next Christmas to the children of all his campaign workers. What writers and artists will do to promote their work and careers!
I asked a high school student friend who works in the local coffee shop what she thought of it. Her comment was a question, "Why would they do something like that?" I told her, "Probably because they're Republicans, and they want Obama to lose." Half or more New Yorker readers might well be Republicans, and a cover like this might "resonate" with them. However, most of them probably wouldn't "get it," anyway, and like McCain himself, would publicly denounce it.
My problems with Obama go much deeper. Like the preceding two Democratic nominee losers, Obama doesn't have that primary requisite of a "player" - a strong desire to win. He can no more imagine himself being President of the United States than I can. But unlike me, he can imagine himself as a "team player" whom the "coaches" (party power brokers) have selected to "win the game" for them. He is a puppet, a front-man, and thus the only kind of candidate the Democrats will select and support these days.
Most rational, public-spirited people quit the Democrats long ago, or maintain a tenuous relationship with that party based on supporting its candidates whenever a much greater evil is the alternative. This didn't work even against a George W. Bush, who was obviously the stupidest, most corrupt, most oblivious candidate the Republicans have ever run - pledged to fail, and like Reagan, prove that "government is the problem, not the solution." How is this supposed to work against a former POW, outspoken opponent of torture, a "maverick," and genuine hero to most God-fearing, patriotic Americans? Obviously, it isn't. And yet, the charade of Obama pretending to be more "pro-war" and "anti-terrorism" than a war hero continues.
The Democratic Party is, in effect, controlled by Wall Street, the Military-Industrial-Complex (expanded to include labor, education lobbies, the corporate media, and "for profit" healthcare). It is not "democratic" and it is not a "political party" in the usual sense of the word. It is a junta of powerful special interests, whose only goal is to keep the corporate elites in power. There are no policies, principles, or other substantive public interest goals, and those few they still claim to maintain are entirely negative - e.g., to oppose whatever the Republicans are doing, now - good, bad, or indifferent. And to keep the Republicans from appointing "pro-life" Supreme Court justices, I suppose. That sure worked well, didn't it, with many Democratic Senators (including Baucus) voting to approve some of the most reactionary Justices in history. To hear them tell it, any particular issue is just one small part of the overall "deal", and you win some, you lose some. But the oil and coal junta, the nuclear lobby, Big Pharma, and the prison system always seem to win. If they suffer any reversals, they're bailed out at taxpayer expense so that there isn't any money left for "welfare" or "foreign aid" - except aid in fomenting civil wars and genocide.
I must say, I've never seen a Democratic Party strategist or campaign manager I liked or respected - not, at least, since T.J. Gilles here in Montana (and he remains a loyal Democrat to the present day, in spite of what they did to him). Usually, Democrat activists begin as students or other volunteers with a lot of enthusiasm for a variety of causes - most often they are anti-war, anti-corporate, for better public education, universal health care, and against "tyrannies" such as a domestic police state, the War on Drugs, the Prison-Industrial-Complex, etc. But by the time they are paid staff, working in campaigns, or even running for office, themselves, they have dropped all this "excess baggage."
I can't help but think that the Democratic Party is even more concerned with "thought control" for its own members than the Republicans are. In fact, the Bush White House is probably the first Republicans to maintain this sort of "iron discipline" over its own people. Before Reagan (where there were lots of dissenters - e.g., David Stockman), the Republicans supported "good government" by the people best-qualified and with the best ideas. It was Republicans who first supported Women's Suffrage, an Equal Rights Amendment, most of the original environmental laws, etc. And they were the "Isolationists," against American involvement in foreign wars.
When there was a strong labor movement, Democratic candidates often supported worker protection and union-protection laws, but that basically ended with Taft-Hartley, which passed over Truman's veto. It has been a long time since any Democratic candidate has promised to repeal Taft-Hartley, and Obama is no exception. Since unions now represent mostly higher-paid and public employees rather than "the working class" as such, nearly as many of them vote Republican as Democrat. The Democratic Party as a force for reform and change is all but non-existent. They don't even use the word "working-class" except derogatorily. "Working class" is now equated with "welfare" and even "criminal under-class." It's "tax cuts for the middle class" - a perennial Republican position - which the Democrats have now adopted as the centerpiece of their economic "vision." The working poor and dispossessed will be forgiven for voting Republican or Green, since the Democrats now seem to be the party of "capital" and "middle class values."
Bill Greider (in "Who Will Tell the People?") made a compelling case pre-1992 that the Democratic Party was "owned" by the K-Street lobbyists and bill brokers who channel special interest money to those campaigns which are pledged to serve their interests. Since I have never been a Democrat, I extend this analysis back to World War I, at least. It took a lying Democrat, Woodrow Wilson, along with a British Fifth Column, to get the U.S. involved in World War I (then called "the Great War"). This, I believe, was directly responsible for the Holocaust, World War II, Stalinism, the Cold War, the nuclear arms race, as well as the present situation in the Middle East. Quite an accomplishment for one puppet former President of Princeton University! It must have been "pre-destination" or something.
A century earlier, Andrew Jackson was supposed to have been the first "populist" Democrat, but he was also responsible for "Indian removal" and a lot of other corrupt and genocidal policies (a reason, I suppose, why the Democrats still don't take Native American rights and interests seriously). Even though today's Democrats claim Thomas Jefferson as a founder as well, his party (such as it was) went by the name "Democratic Republicans." It was a "unity party", which soon gave rise to the "Federalists" as an opposing force. It was the banner of Federalism (along with Manifest Destiny) which the Republicans would later use to consolidate their power during the Civil War. The Federalists wanted a strong central government, a central bank, tariffs to protect domestic industry, and other policies to facilitate capital accumulation and the New Industrial State. The Jeffersonians were for state's rights, free trade (since most of their agricultural products were exported), expanding the number of eligible voters, and what we would now call "investments in human capital" - education, skills, and broader cultural enrichment for all - not a small elite. And they continued to support slavery up to the Civil War, and Segregation afterwards, right up to the present time.
Neither party was in any way "socialistic". Socialism had hardly been invented except for a few utopian religious communities. All believed in personal freedom, limiting the size and scope of government, and encouraging people to accumulate wealth controlled by individuals and families, not corporations. And all were opposed to war, standing armies, and "tyrannical" rule by monarchs and dictators - policies which neither major party seems to take the slightest interest in, today.
And so, there simply aren't any "good guys" within "the two-party system of denial and blame." The Libertarians recognized this 30 years ago. The Reform Party tried to buck the two party system in 1992, resulting the smallest minority President (Clinton) in history. We Greens thought we could do it again in 2000 with Ralph Nader. But Nader had a lot of "baggage" of his own, and the Democrats were ready for him, preferring to lose and blame the Greens, than challenge the fraudulent election and win. That pattern continues to the present day.
Greens all over the country will be fearing for their jobs, reputations, and even safety if they oppose Obama and support Cynthia McKinney. And this is especially true if they are Black or other minorities. Even so, the emerging consensus on the Left is that we don't want to help someone like Obama get elected. Call it a "protest vote" or a real opportunity to "grow the Green Party." Most of us will be voting, writing in, and campaigning for Cynthia McKinney and Green Party values. If Obama wants our vote, he will have to support our agenda, and that's obviously just not going to happen - this time, next time, or ever. -- PHS
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Spoiled Rotten
A point we haven't addressed recently, but which is extremely important for the Green movement, is the idea of "spoiling." This has been the great (and really the only) objection to the Green Party growing and flourishing as a political force in the U.S. And we Greens think it is totally fallacious. If you're really for change and reform, and a sustainable environment and economy, you must support those position, not waste your votes and intellectual/political capital on candidates who pander to (and are supported by) the most vicious elements in society.
It's interesting, too, that it is mostly people with Marxist backgrounds who think that "objectively, Ralph Nader put George Bush in the White House, and is directly responsible for everything that's happened, since." This is absolute dogma among 90% of "liberal Democrats" and various Trotskyist, accomodationist groups. It seems to hinge on the Marxist concept of "objective" - i.e., what the real "facts" are, independent of any spinning or sophistical arguments against it. And this is something which less sophisticated, working class people can easily grasp. The same arguments are used against environmentalists, like: "They are anti-labor and thus anti-working class. They are elitists, who want to take away your jobs and put everyone on welfare. They are socialists. They want to control your lives and personal choices, Etc."
And there is good evidence for this position. The Greens do support an expanded public or non-profit sector. They're against "for profit" education, healthcare, etc. They support negative economic and population growth. Those happen to be issues where not everyone agrees with the platform (which we are allowed to do, so long as we're willing to discuss it openly, with intellectual honesty).
We are also "feminists" and advocates for gay rights - hence "pedophiles" and "anti-family" to those who would attack us. We are appalled that the U.S., with 5% of the world's population, should use a quarter of its energy and natural resources, and produce a quarter of its pollution. And have a quarter of its prison population. (We lock up 5-15 times as many people, per capita, as any other "free" country). But to campaign against prisons, torture, and police states is believed to be political suicide. It's like being "pro-Jewish" in Hitler's Germany.
We believe in participatory democracy and participatory economics - self-governing collectives characterized by a maximum of personal freedom and diversity. But they are not STATE collectives - they are communities of choice and values, and all would be allowed to coexist peacefully. (What about Mormon polygamists? To the extent that it's a coercive religious cult, I'd say no. To the extent that everyone has a choice and experience of alternatives, like the Amish and Hutterites, I'd say it's OK).
Greens, I believe, are half or more libertarian in their thinking - in the sense of the classical liberalism of Adam Smith and John Stuart Mill (which also includes Hayek, but not Friedman and the Chicago School of Gangster Capitalism). So it is very confusing to understand what we believe, and what the political (as well as economic) consequences of our policies might be.
Many Greens joined us in order to "reform" the Democratic Party, or be a sort of drag or anchor, making sure that the Democrats didn't sell out the people in their quest for power and influence. We've hounded most of these "Demo-Greens" out of the party. We are not Democrats, and don't wish to "enable" the Democratic Party in any way. The Democratic Party leadership are fundamentally dishonest and sociopathic. They are much more interested in harming people and causing problems (in order to blame the Republicans and fund more programs) than they are in solving them. If I were to prioritize the parties according to "truth value" and public-interestedness, it would be Greens, Libertarians, Republicans, and Democrats. The doctrinaire socialist parties are practically non-existent in the U.S. (which is why a lot of Leftist-socialists have joined the Greens - to our mutual discomfort, in many cases), and less than 10% of Democrats are still "labor" or "social democrats" as those policies would be understood in the rest of the world as promoting an egalitarian, peaceful society. (The British "Labor Party" is now actually to the right of the pre-Thatcher Tories, and most social democratic parties embrace more centralized "state power" as the answer - including military build-ups).
A third or more Republicans will actually support the best policies - peace, environmental sustainability, anti-monopoly policies, taxing away unearned income (economic rents), rewarding good behavior rather than "punishing bad people," etc. But as a party organization, they, too, are fundamentally interested in harming people and making the rich, richer, and the poor, poorer. They have sold out to a different set of bill brokers and influence peddlers. They are "Social Darwinists", and an extreme form of it at that. I call them "sociopaths," as well. And like the Democrats, they are absolutely dominant in Great Falls and Montana politics. The "leadership" elements in both the Democrats and Republicans have made a common cause to suppress and eliminate anyone who challenges "the dominant paradigm" of rule by a corporate gangster elite - the "military-industrial complex", the "national security state", plantation slavery, or whatever you want to call it.
The Democrats are also Stalinist and extremely dishonest in all sorts of ways. Each major party has evoked the worst behavior from the other. It more or less reflects Jerome Frank's "image of the enemy" theory.A real reformer or independent, even when electable, is simply not willing to take the risks or bear the costs of running for and holding office. And that is really too bad. The "system" has moved beyond the point of being "fixable." But we can change the rules and change people's thinking. That is the purpose of this Bulletin, not to support partisan political campaigns.
Maybe we should call ourselves "the Green Non-Partisan League," because the Greens stand clearly above all this. We are the Peace Party. We are the real democratic republicans. We have no other agenda except saving the world, the environment, our civil society, and our humanity, beginning with our own local communities. We're not interested in "jobs", government contracts, influence-peddling, or getting our "cut of the loot." The Libertarians used to be "the party of principle," but that ended long ago. They have been taken over by right-wing, socially conservative Republicans! And so, I'm afraid we stand alone, against the madness, the lies and destruction, the force and fraud that our "public institutions" have become. -- Paul Stephens
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FILM
American Gangster a film by Ridley Scott starring Denzel Washington
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0765429/
This film is based on a true story - how black American gangs took over the heroin trade from the French Connection (from Turkey) with "Golden Triangle" opium from Southeast Asia, transported by the Air Force in coffins from the Vietnam War. According to Ridley Scott's Commentary on the DVD, it's all true. He interviewed both Frank Lucas, the drug boss (Denzel Washington), and Detective Ritchie Roberts (Russell Crowe) in the process of writing the script and preparing to make the film. The portrayals are as accurate as he could make them with these two superlative actors.
The first time I heard about this was in the book and lectures of Bo Gritz, who was said to be "the most decorated soldier" in the Vietnam War. Several fictionalized versions of his attempts to free POW's were also made into films. He spoke in Great Falls more than once, and was a favorite of militia people and radical Vietnam Vet's groups. He also mediated a standoff between the FBI and some militia people in Idaho - the Weaver family, I think it was. That didn't end well, however.
But apparently he had it right about the heroin trade (plus the fact that many or most of the addicts being served here were also Vietnam vets who had begun using when they were in Vietnam.)
It's a very good film - as good as any "gangster film" ever made - understated and very believable in nearly all respects. And very much in the tradition of films like Ragtime and The French Connection. Don't miss it. - PHS
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Ignorance does not justify omnipotence - a word from our friendly, neighbourhood Cyborg
I believe I've identified a common epistemological disorder among people in Great Falls, and one which has deadly consequences for public policy, education, the economy, the environment, and other "objective" decision-making. Those who claim to know or understand anything are disqualified from participation for that very reason. Either they "work for" someone or some organization, and are thus required to maintain whatever "consensus" that organization supports (or can be coerced to support), or they are "self-interested" or "self-supporting" and thus have no rightful say in public decisions. They must also have political loyalties to one or the other major party. Being a Green, Libertarian, or other independent gets us no respect at all.
Originally, I thought the plea of ignorance should be restricted to women and other "oppressed" or lower-class people, and those lacking higher education and understanding. Thus, when I disagreed with a relative or neighbor, they would often say, "I don't know", "Nobody told me that" or some similar statement to defend their right to disagree or oppose whatever I had said or proposed, without having to justify why they thought that way, or why they disagreed with me. It's a version of "God told me to do it" or "The Devil made me do it" - neither of which holds up in a court of law. It's what's called "the argument from authority," although a very weak form of it, because they didn't claim to be acting under orders or in obedience to an authority. That was taken for granted. It was more like they were claiming that I wasn't in accord with the imagined "authorities," "superiors" or bosses, and therefore whatever I was doing and saying was suspect - it was not something they understood or agreed with, so I was "on my own" with that, whatever it was.
"You're not my boss" was the formulation of a similar principle I often heard in domestic relationships. Had I been their boss (or in some cases, husband), they might have done what I said. But the bottom line was that since I wasn't any sort of "authority", they felt no need or obligation to even consider what I said, let alone obey or agree with it. This, I suppose, is "working class consciousness" at its finest.
It turns out that very few people believe in "free will" or self-determination, let alone individual freedom or a "live and let live" attitude of mutual respect among a wide variety of peaceful and self-sustaining communities. They think everyone should have a boss, and be obedient to someone or something - to an organization or collective. I've been watching some of the Star Trek films and episodes involving the Borg, where this theme is played out endlessly. Just last week, I saw for the first time the beginning of the 4th year of "Star Trek Voyager", where the Borg woman, "Seven of Nine," is rehabilitated to have human thoughts and emotions, and finally to act like a human, albeit a very superior kind of human. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0112178/ It turns out she is played by the same actress, Jeri Ryan, who plays James Woods' boss on "Shark." Borgs and prosecutors seem to think along similar lines, so it is a good fit for her.
I've long wondered who "the Borg" are supposed to represent. In a political and epistemological sense, they are "collectivists" - they have no value as individuals, and their every action, thought, and impulse is to expand and enhance the collective. And, of course, they are "cyborgs" - half machine and half human. They are something like the clone soldiers in Star Wars, except that they aren't mass-produced to be identical. Instead, each is an individual "assimilated" from one of several different humanoid species. Should we take them to be some sort of political "techsters" as well? It would seem to be so.
In the Star Trek "Next Generation" series, Jean-Luc Picard is "assimilated" by the Borg and later reclaimed and "de-programmed" from the Borg technology. This characteristic plays a big part in the film "Star Trek: First Contact," which is mostly set in Montana at an old Minuteman missile silo in the 2060's, following an all-out nuclear war, and the threat of it starting up again. An alcoholic rock music fan named Cochrane (James Cromwell, in one of his very best roles - he's also played William Randolf Hearst, Jr. and Prince Philip) has invented the warp drive, and the first test of it attracts the attention of a passing Vulcan ship, thus initiating "First Contact" with an alien species. But the Borg and Enterprise E, from the 26th century, have come back in time - to try to prevent it, in the case of the Borg, or to prevent the Borg from preventing it, in the case of the Enterprise E. It makes a very good story, indeed, with lots of futuristic economics and social philosophy woven into the plot.
Perhaps the best way to understand who the Borg are and what they represent is to think of them as robot, cyber-technology as a whole. What have computers and other robots done to our minds, our culture, our freedom, our economy, and even our spirituality (not to mention our bodies)? All of these themes are repeatedly examined in the various Star Treks and other science fiction literature. At first, the opposition to "artificial intelligence" was so great that many authors postulated future societies where robots and sophisticated computers would be banned entirely. This was the case in both Isaac Asimov's "Foundation" series, as well as the "Dune" novels by Frank Herbert and the films based on them. Both are of the highest quality and rank with H.G. Wells and Robert Heinlein in the annals of science fiction classics. Yet, so quickly has cybernetic technology advanced that these works from the 50's and 60's seem hopelessly outdated, today.
Indeed, no science fiction prior to the 1950's had even begun to imagine the complexity and sophistication of our present cyberculture. Star Trek was indeed visionary, in that many of the technologies first described there on screen have come to pass - especially the hand-held "flip phone" communicators, matter-anti-matter propulsion systems, and faster than light drives which, although often imagined, were not very well explained in terms of known science before Star Trek. The story "The Fly" (originally a short story in the June 1957 Playboy by George Langelaan, a British writer raised in France) is, of course, the prototype for the "transporter" technology in Star Trek. Whether or not some of this more advanced technology will ever be built and used on an everyday basis is open to question - particularly with the continuing threat of nuclear war, alien invasions, artificially constructed plagues, as well as the potential religious backlash against all higher technology as such. Just remember: people and their well-being come first.
Enjoy it all, but just don't tell me that because you know and understand less than I do, you have the right to block me out. It should be the other way around. My values include perpetuity, truth and enlightenment, as well as human freedom, survival and well-being. I am not "in it for the money," or because I am someone's slave or puppet. I am here to serve, in accordance with Asimov's original "Laws of Robotics." - PHS
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OF WOLVES AND MEN
Perhaps it's just because I'm a descendent of many generations of livestock breeders and small family farmers. Or maybe it's because I came to the Green Party from the conservative tradition, rather than radical, revolutionary politics. But I've always had problems with "protecting" predators like wolves or even grizzly bears - at least outside of public land and other designated wilderness and conservation reserves. If I'm a rancher, and a wolf or grizzly is attacking my livestock, or even just "trespassing," I'm going to shoot it whenever I have the opportunity to do so, and whether or not I tell anyone about it, later.
A hundred years ago or more, the federal government paid a bounty on wolves. There's even a picture in my grandparent's family photo album of the last wolf pelts from the Highwoods nailed up to dry on the side of a log cabin. My grandfather had an old .45-70 single-shot army rifle, and one of the family stories was about him seeing a wolf feeding on a carcass. It was so far away that he could barely see it, but just for the hell of it, he set the sights at 1100 yards and took a shot. When he finally arrived at the scene, thinking he had missed because there was no wolf there, he was surprised to find that he had killed the wolf, and it had collapsed inside the rib-cage of the dead steer it was feeding on.
Wolves are very hard to eradicate, once they get a foot-hold. While grizzlies really are endangered, and are not prolific breeders, wolves can increase from a few dozen individuals to thousands in only a decade or two. There are now estimated to be 1500 wolves in the Northern Rockies Ecosystem. They do good service in controlling deer, elk, rabbit, and other populations. They will also have some effect on controlling the bison population in the Yellowstone herd, which seems to be a problem with no solution, otherwise.
My main concern is the knee-jerk reaction of "environmentalists" to always protect the predators and other "bad guys" against the people who are trying to make a living off of the land. I won't second-guess Judge Molloy's decision (see story below) because I'm not an expert, but politically, it is disastrous for the environmentalist cause, and one of the reasons why no Democrat in Montana will proudly claim to be an environmentalist. It has become political suicide for them to do so. Which may have been the point all along. And why we need a Green Party which will support the economy as well as ecology - the "Greateco" which I use for my blog name.
A good ruling would allow any farmer or rancher to kill wolves on private land. Whether or not those with grazing permits on public land should be able to protect their herds with lethal force is another question. That's where the dogs and llamas come in, I suppose. How about tranquilizer guns? -- PHS
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Judge restores wolf protections
By EVE BYRON - Independent Record - 07/19/08 http://www.helenair.com/articles/2008/07/19/top/65st_080719_wolves.txt
Gray wolves once again are under the protection of the Endangered Species Act, after federal court Judge Donald Molloy ruled late Friday that state management plans in Montana, Idaho and Wyoming will irreparably harm the species’ reintroduction.
In particular, in his 40-page decision the judge pointed toward the 1994 reintroduction document that discussed the need for genetic diversity among the wolf populations. Molloy said genetic testing of wolves in Yellowstone National Park, where wolves were reintroduced in 1995, showed that few if any new wolves were moving into the area from northern Montana and Idaho. He and others fear that low genetic diversity will lead to inbreeding that will diminish reproduction.
"Dispersal between the Great Yellowstone core recovery area and the northwestern Montana and central Idaho recovery area — a precondition to genetic exchange — is rare," the judge wrote. "Only four to 12 wolves have dispersed beyond the core recovery areas in the 13 years since wolves were reintroduced.
"The reduction in numbers that will occur, based on wolf hunts and state depredation control laws, will lessen the population making genetic exchange less likely."
Molloy added that the federal government seemed to be casting its earlier genetic diversity argument aside in its delisting decision earlier this year and focused instead on wolf population numbers as one of the main criteria. He noted that in the 1994 document, the federal government warned against doing so.
Wolf numbers have multiplied much quicker than what initially was expected, with more than 1,500 wolves in the northern Rocky Mountains.
Molloy could lift the injunction if the defendants in the case, including federal and state agencies, prove to the judge that Montana, Wyoming and Idaho have sufficient safeguards in place to perpetuate wolf populations.
Representatives from some of the 12 conservation groups that filed the lawsuit seeking to reverse the gray wolf’s removal from the list of threatened or endangered species applauded Molloy’s decision.
"This injunction is necessary to prevent the states from implementing management schemes that have the primary purpose of eliminating, rather than conserving, wolves," said Michael Garrity, executive director of the Helena-based Alliance for the Wild Rockies.
Michael Robinson of the Center for Biological Diversity in New Mexico added that the injunction will "give wolves a fighting chance...."
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Amory Lovins: Expanding Nuclear Power Makes Climate Change Worse
We speak with Amory Lovins, the cofounder, chairman and chief scientist of Rocky Mountain Institute in Colorado, who has been described as "one of the Western world's most influential energy thinkers."Listen/Watch/Read
http://www.democracynow.org/2008/7/16/amory_lovins_expanding_nuclear_power
(transcript)
AMY GOODMAN: There’s one issue President Bush and presidential hopefuls John McCain and Barack Obama all agree on: expanding the use of nuclear power. President Bush addressed nuclear power at a news conference Tuesday and hailed it as a way to reduce American dependence on oil and protect the environment.
PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: This is just a transition period. I mean, all of us want to get away from reliance upon hydrocarbons, but it’s not going to happen overnight. You know, one of these days, people are going to be using battery technologies in their cars. You’ve heard me say this a lot, and I’m confident it’s going to happen. And, you know, the throwaway line, of course, is that your car won’t have to look like a golf cart. But the question then becomes, where are we going to get electricity? And that’s why I’m a big believer in nuclear power, to be able to make us less dependent on oil and better stewards of the environment. But there is a transition period during the hydrocarbon era, and it hasn’t ended yet, as our people now know. Gasoline prices are high.
AMY GOODMAN: And this is presidential hopefuls Barack Obama, beginning with, though, Senator John McCain, on nuclear power.
SEN. BARACK OBAMA: I actually think that we should explore nuclear power as part of the energy mix. There are no silver bullets to this issue. We’ve got to develop solar. I’ve proposed drastically increasing fuel-efficiency standards on cars, an aggressive cap on the amount of greenhouse gases that can be emitted. But we’re going to have to try a series of different approaches.
SEN. JOHN McCAIN: My dear friends, nuclear power must be part of any equation that leads to addressing climate change and also leads to addressing reduction of our dependence on foreign oil. You know, we always love to imitate the French. The French, 80 percent of their electricity in France is generated by nuclear power. We either got to reprocess it or store it.
AMY GOODMAN: Senator John McCain, and before that, Senator Barack Obama.
Well, the debate over nuclear power is back in the news with the admission of Energy Department official Ward Sproat on Tuesday that it would cost taxpayers $90 billion to open and operate the nation’s first nuclear waste dump. Speaking after a congressional hearing, Sproat added the dump at Yucca Mountain in Nevada would open only in 2020. It was originally estimated to cost $58 billion and open in 1998.
Well, our next guest has been described as "one of the Western world’s most influential energy thinkers." He’s also a leading opponent of nuclear power. Amory Lovins is co-founder, chair and chief scientist of Rocky Mountain Institute in Colorado. He is a consultant physicist, MacArthur Fellow, and recipient of numerous awards, including the Right Livelihood Award. Lovins advised the energy and other industries in countries around the world, including here in the US. He invented the hybrid Hypercar in ’91 and has written twenty-nine books, including Soft Energy Paths, Natural Capitalism, Small Is Profitable, and Winning the Oil Endgame. Amory Lovins joins us here in our firehouse studio.
Welcome to Democracy Now!
AMORY LOVINS: Thank you.
AMY GOODMAN: It’s good to have you with us. Well, talk about nuclear power. Why do you feel it’s not an option, given the oil crisis?
AMORY LOVINS: Well, first of all, electricity and oil have essentially nothing to do with each other, and anybody who thinks the contrary is really ignorant about energy. Less than two percent of our electricity is made from oil. Less than two percent of our oil makes electricity. Those numbers are falling. And essentially, all the oil involved is actually the heavy, gooey bottom of the barrel you can’t even make mobility fuels out of anyway.
What nuclear would do is displace coal, our most abundant domestic fuel. And this sounds good for climate, but actually, expanding nuclear makes climate change worse, for a very simple reason. Nuclear is incredibly expensive. The costs have just stood up on end lately. Wall Street Journal recently reported that they’re about two to four times the cost that the industry was talking about just a year ago. And the result of that is that if you buy more nuclear plants, you’re going to get about two to ten times less climate solution per dollar, and you’ll get it about twenty to forty times slower, than if you buy instead the cheaper, faster stuff that is walloping nuclear and coal and gas, all kinds of central plans, in the marketplace. And those competitors are efficient use of electricity and what’s called micropower, which is both renewables, except big hydro, and making electricity and heat together, in fact, recent buildings, which takes about half of the money, fuel and carbon of making them separately, as we normally do.
So, nuclear cannot actually deliver the climate or the security benefits claimed for it. It’s unrelated to oil. And it’s grossly uneconomic, which means the nuclear revival that we often hear about is not actually happening. It’s a very carefully fabricated illusion. And the reason it isn’t happening is there are no buyers. That is, Wall Street is not putting a penny of private capital into the industry, despite 100-plus percent subsidies.
AMY GOODMAN: Why?
AMORY LOVINS: It’s uneconomic. It costs, for example, about three times as much as wind power, which is booming.
Let me give you some numbers about what’s happening in the marketplace, because that’s reality, as far as I’m concerned. I really take markets seriously. 2006, the last full year of data we have, nuclear worldwide added a little bit of capacity, more than all of it from upgrading old plants, because the new ones they built were smaller than the retirements of old plants. So they added 1.4 billion watts. Sounds like a lot. Well, it’s about one big plant’s worth worldwide. That was less than photovoltaics, solar cells added in capacity. It was a tenth what wind power added. It was a thirtieth to a fortieth of what micropower added.
AMY GOODMAN: What’s micropower?
AMORY LOVINS: Again, it’s renewables, other than big hydro, plus co-generating electricity and heat together, usually in industry.
In 2006, micropower, for the first time, produced more electricity worldwide than nuclear did. A sixth of the world’s electricity is now micropower, a third of the new electricity. In a dozen industrial countries, micropower makes anywhere from a sixth to over half of all the electricity elsewhere. This is not a fringe activity anymore.
China, which has the world’s most ambitious nuclear program, by the end of 2006 had seven times that much capacity in distributed renewables, and they were growing it seven times faster. Take a look at 2007, in which the US or Spain or China added more wind capacity than the world added nuclear capacity. The US added more wind capacity last year than we’ve added coal capacity in the past five years put together.
And renewables, other than big hydro, got last year $71 billion of private capital; nuclear, as usual, got zero. It is only bought by central planners with a draw on the public purse. What does this tell you? I mean, what part of the story does anybody who take markets seriously not get?
AMY GOODMAN: And yet, well, the media clearly in this country doesn’t get it, because it is raised over and over again by the candidates. I mean, it seems that Senator McCain has a favorite number: a hundred years in Iraq, also hoping for a hundred more new nuclear power plants. He had said something about, he doesn’t want to lose the knowledge of building, since the last one was built more than thirty years ago; the people are dying who had built it, so we’ve got to rush and build them now.
AMORY LOVINS: Well, you could say that’s already been lost, in the sense that most of a nuclear plant built now in the US, if there were any, would have to be imported, which, by the way, means we buy it in weak US dollars, which is part of the incredible cost escalation we’ve seen. Moody’s latest number is $7,500 a kilowatt. That’s, again, as the Journal said, about two to four times the numbers that were being bandied about just last year by promoters.
AMY GOODMAN: And Barack Obama, while he hasn’t laid out a plan for building, he has a big campaign contributor, Exelon, and has supported the expansion of nuclear power. And, of course, we heard what President Bush has to say.
AMORY LOVINS: Actually, I thought what Senator Obama said was "explore", which is different. And you will find major environmental groups saying something like "explore" or "consider", but they will also say very carefully it has to be competitive, it has to be cost-effective. And clearly, that doesn’t even pass the giggle test.
A new nuclear plant, according to Moody’s, would send out electricity for about fifteen cents a kilowatt-hour, which is half, again, as much as the average residential rate. And that doesn’t even account for delivering it to your house. And I think if nuclear plants were built, which I don’t think is likely, you would see incredible rates shock and a big political reaction.
AMY GOODMAN: Environmentalists like Stewart Brand and James Lovelock are pushing nuclear power.
AMORY LOVINS: There are actually four individuals involved in the world who are prominent environmentalists who had that view, and you’ve named two of them.
AMY GOODMAN: Who are the other two?
AMORY LOVINS: Patrick Moore was active in founding Greenpeace back in the ’70s, now works for industry; and Peter Schwartz, who used to be on my board, who used to run group planning for Royal Dutch/Shell, is of the same view. But I can’t think of any others. There are no actual environmental groups who favor nuclear power.
AMY GOODMAN: What is your answer to them, and why have they arrived—these are your old colleagues?
AMORY LOVINS: Well, yeah, a couple of them are old friends. Well, I think they haven’t done their homework. And I keep asking for their analysis and not getting it, because I don’t think they have one. But they somehow form the view that because nuclear doesn’t emit carbon, it must be a good thing. Well, that’s not good enough.
You need a source that doesn’t emit carbon—nuclear emits a little bit in the fuel cycle and in building plants, and so on. But you need one that doesn’t emit carbon and is faster and cheaper than other ways to do the same thing. You see, renewables don’t emit carbon. Efficiency doesn’t emit carbon. Cogeneration based on recovered waste heat you were throwing away anyhow doesn’t emit carbon, because you already paid for the carbon in making the useful part of the heat in industry. And these sources are a great deal cheaper and faster than nuclear. So if climate’s a problem, we need to invest judiciously, not indiscriminately, to get the most solution per dollar, the most solution per year. Otherwise, we’re making things worse.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re talking to Amory Lovins. He is co-founder, chair and chief scientist at Rocky Mountain Institute, which is based in Aspen in Colorado?
AMORY LOVINS: Old Snowmass.
AMY GOODMAN: Old Snowmass. Nuclear power is one of the issues that is being posed as an alternative to reliance on foreign fuel, and this is also an issue we addressed yesterday with Naomi Klein on Democracy Now!, the issue of expanding oil drilling, offshore and onshore. You’ve been looking at this.
AMORY LOVINS: Well, we seem to be wanting to drill in all the wrong places. For example, over fifty times as much oil as might be under the Arctic Refuge at very high prices can be saved at very low prices by using the oil efficiently. Also many times faster. So, my wildcatters have been drilling lately in the Detroit formation. That is, making efficient cars is equivalent to finding an all-American Saudi Arabia under Detroit, about eight-and-a-half million barrels a day, inexhaustible, climate-safe and costing about twelve bucks a barrel. Now, altogether, there is about 14 million barrels a day of oil savings, averaging twelve bucks a barrel cost. And we know exactly where the oil is. There’s no doubt that it’s there. It’s under Detroit, Seattle, and so on. That’s out of twenty-or-so million barrels a day we’re using. So if you’re an oil company and you go to the ends of the earth and drill for very expensive oil that might not even be there, wouldn’t it be embarrassing if somebody else meanwhile found all that cheap oil under Detroit? Shouldn’t we drill the most prospective place first?
I’ve tried this formulation lately on the American Association of Petroleum Geologists and the American Petroleum Institute, and they found it pretty persuasive. You know, I’ve worked for major oil companies for about thirty-five years, and they understand how expensive it is to drill for oil. Take the Arctic Refuge as an example. You might think that at today’s oil prices, it would be clearly a great deal to go drill there. Well, it wasn’t before, when oil was in the twenty-odd dollar a barrel range instead of $140. And that’s why the oil companies weren’t interested. Guess what. They’re still not interested. Why not? Well, because their costs of drilling have gone up more than the oil price went up. If you talk to people who run exploration in major oil companies, they’re still not excited about the Arctic Refuge, because practically any other place in the world they could drill would be cheaper and less risky than that extraordinarily remote and hostile environment.
AMY GOODMAN: So why is Bush pushing it?
AMORY LOVINS: Who knows? But it doesn’t make any economic sense. There’s no business case for it. And the real showstopper, interestingly, is national security, which you would think that he and Senator McCain and so on would be concerned about. Jim Woolsey, a not-hostile-to-oil, per se, Oklahoman, former— AMY GOODMAN: Former CIA director.
AMORY LOVINS: —former CIA director, has actually testified against Arctic Refuge drilling on national security grounds. There’s a very simple reason. There’s only one way to get the oil south: it’s through the Trans-Alaska Pipeline, which is the most vulnerable part of our energy infrastructure, the biggest terrorist target in our energy infrastructure. It’s what he calls Uncle Sam’s "kick me" sign.
So, think about it. You’ve got an 800-mile pipeline, mostly above ground, mostly accessible by road or by floatplane. And if the flow through it is interrupted in the winter for about a week, 900—well, nine million barrels of hot oil congeals into the world’s largest Chapstick, a big candle. Then you can’t pump it anymore. Could this happen? Well, actually, yes, if certain points on the pipeline, pumping stations and so on, were attacked—
AMY GOODMAN: We’ve got five seconds.
AMORY LOVINS: —or stuff at either end. And has that happened? Well, let’s see. It’s been sabotaged, almost blew itself up on occasion through mismanagement. It’s been incompetently bombed twice. It’s been shot at fifty times. A drunk shut it down with one hole from a rifle bullet. And the scariest thing to me is around Y2K, at the turn of the century, a disgruntled engineer was caught by accident about to blow up three critical points with fourteen bombs he had built and tested.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to have to leave it there. But one answer: have we solved the nuclear waste problem even?
AMORY LOVINS: No, but I’d just come off the wagon on the economics, and then we don’t need to argue about whether it’s safe.
AMY GOODMAN: Amory Lovins, head of Rocky Mountain Institute, thanks for joining us.
July 21, 2008 Volume VII, Number 29
Paul Stephens, Editor and Publisher 406.216.2711 greateco@3rivers.net
GREEN SOLUTIONS by Paul Stephens, CasCoGreens
What is Obama thinking (if anything)?
I subscribe to the New Yorker, so I got to read the "inside" stories about him as well as the now-notorious cover depicting he and Michelle as some sort of Islamic militants with an American flag burning on their hearth (that part was unnecessary, unless the intention was really malicious). This "drawing" (as the New Yorker calls its cartoons) actually has a title: "The Politics of Fear", and is by one Barry Blitt, who is identified as an illustrator for a children's book, "What's the Weather Inside?" Perhaps McCain will give it away next Christmas to the children of all his campaign workers. What writers and artists will do to promote their work and careers!
I asked a high school student friend who works in the local coffee shop what she thought of it. Her comment was a question, "Why would they do something like that?" I told her, "Probably because they're Republicans, and they want Obama to lose." Half or more New Yorker readers might well be Republicans, and a cover like this might "resonate" with them. However, most of them probably wouldn't "get it," anyway, and like McCain himself, would publicly denounce it.
My problems with Obama go much deeper. Like the preceding two Democratic nominee losers, Obama doesn't have that primary requisite of a "player" - a strong desire to win. He can no more imagine himself being President of the United States than I can. But unlike me, he can imagine himself as a "team player" whom the "coaches" (party power brokers) have selected to "win the game" for them. He is a puppet, a front-man, and thus the only kind of candidate the Democrats will select and support these days.
Most rational, public-spirited people quit the Democrats long ago, or maintain a tenuous relationship with that party based on supporting its candidates whenever a much greater evil is the alternative. This didn't work even against a George W. Bush, who was obviously the stupidest, most corrupt, most oblivious candidate the Republicans have ever run - pledged to fail, and like Reagan, prove that "government is the problem, not the solution." How is this supposed to work against a former POW, outspoken opponent of torture, a "maverick," and genuine hero to most God-fearing, patriotic Americans? Obviously, it isn't. And yet, the charade of Obama pretending to be more "pro-war" and "anti-terrorism" than a war hero continues.
The Democratic Party is, in effect, controlled by Wall Street, the Military-Industrial-Complex (expanded to include labor, education lobbies, the corporate media, and "for profit" healthcare). It is not "democratic" and it is not a "political party" in the usual sense of the word. It is a junta of powerful special interests, whose only goal is to keep the corporate elites in power. There are no policies, principles, or other substantive public interest goals, and those few they still claim to maintain are entirely negative - e.g., to oppose whatever the Republicans are doing, now - good, bad, or indifferent. And to keep the Republicans from appointing "pro-life" Supreme Court justices, I suppose. That sure worked well, didn't it, with many Democratic Senators (including Baucus) voting to approve some of the most reactionary Justices in history. To hear them tell it, any particular issue is just one small part of the overall "deal", and you win some, you lose some. But the oil and coal junta, the nuclear lobby, Big Pharma, and the prison system always seem to win. If they suffer any reversals, they're bailed out at taxpayer expense so that there isn't any money left for "welfare" or "foreign aid" - except aid in fomenting civil wars and genocide.
I must say, I've never seen a Democratic Party strategist or campaign manager I liked or respected - not, at least, since T.J. Gilles here in Montana (and he remains a loyal Democrat to the present day, in spite of what they did to him). Usually, Democrat activists begin as students or other volunteers with a lot of enthusiasm for a variety of causes - most often they are anti-war, anti-corporate, for better public education, universal health care, and against "tyrannies" such as a domestic police state, the War on Drugs, the Prison-Industrial-Complex, etc. But by the time they are paid staff, working in campaigns, or even running for office, themselves, they have dropped all this "excess baggage."
I can't help but think that the Democratic Party is even more concerned with "thought control" for its own members than the Republicans are. In fact, the Bush White House is probably the first Republicans to maintain this sort of "iron discipline" over its own people. Before Reagan (where there were lots of dissenters - e.g., David Stockman), the Republicans supported "good government" by the people best-qualified and with the best ideas. It was Republicans who first supported Women's Suffrage, an Equal Rights Amendment, most of the original environmental laws, etc. And they were the "Isolationists," against American involvement in foreign wars.
When there was a strong labor movement, Democratic candidates often supported worker protection and union-protection laws, but that basically ended with Taft-Hartley, which passed over Truman's veto. It has been a long time since any Democratic candidate has promised to repeal Taft-Hartley, and Obama is no exception. Since unions now represent mostly higher-paid and public employees rather than "the working class" as such, nearly as many of them vote Republican as Democrat. The Democratic Party as a force for reform and change is all but non-existent. They don't even use the word "working-class" except derogatorily. "Working class" is now equated with "welfare" and even "criminal under-class." It's "tax cuts for the middle class" - a perennial Republican position - which the Democrats have now adopted as the centerpiece of their economic "vision." The working poor and dispossessed will be forgiven for voting Republican or Green, since the Democrats now seem to be the party of "capital" and "middle class values."
Bill Greider (in "Who Will Tell the People?") made a compelling case pre-1992 that the Democratic Party was "owned" by the K-Street lobbyists and bill brokers who channel special interest money to those campaigns which are pledged to serve their interests. Since I have never been a Democrat, I extend this analysis back to World War I, at least. It took a lying Democrat, Woodrow Wilson, along with a British Fifth Column, to get the U.S. involved in World War I (then called "the Great War"). This, I believe, was directly responsible for the Holocaust, World War II, Stalinism, the Cold War, the nuclear arms race, as well as the present situation in the Middle East. Quite an accomplishment for one puppet former President of Princeton University! It must have been "pre-destination" or something.
A century earlier, Andrew Jackson was supposed to have been the first "populist" Democrat, but he was also responsible for "Indian removal" and a lot of other corrupt and genocidal policies (a reason, I suppose, why the Democrats still don't take Native American rights and interests seriously). Even though today's Democrats claim Thomas Jefferson as a founder as well, his party (such as it was) went by the name "Democratic Republicans." It was a "unity party", which soon gave rise to the "Federalists" as an opposing force. It was the banner of Federalism (along with Manifest Destiny) which the Republicans would later use to consolidate their power during the Civil War. The Federalists wanted a strong central government, a central bank, tariffs to protect domestic industry, and other policies to facilitate capital accumulation and the New Industrial State. The Jeffersonians were for state's rights, free trade (since most of their agricultural products were exported), expanding the number of eligible voters, and what we would now call "investments in human capital" - education, skills, and broader cultural enrichment for all - not a small elite. And they continued to support slavery up to the Civil War, and Segregation afterwards, right up to the present time.
Neither party was in any way "socialistic". Socialism had hardly been invented except for a few utopian religious communities. All believed in personal freedom, limiting the size and scope of government, and encouraging people to accumulate wealth controlled by individuals and families, not corporations. And all were opposed to war, standing armies, and "tyrannical" rule by monarchs and dictators - policies which neither major party seems to take the slightest interest in, today.
And so, there simply aren't any "good guys" within "the two-party system of denial and blame." The Libertarians recognized this 30 years ago. The Reform Party tried to buck the two party system in 1992, resulting the smallest minority President (Clinton) in history. We Greens thought we could do it again in 2000 with Ralph Nader. But Nader had a lot of "baggage" of his own, and the Democrats were ready for him, preferring to lose and blame the Greens, than challenge the fraudulent election and win. That pattern continues to the present day.
Greens all over the country will be fearing for their jobs, reputations, and even safety if they oppose Obama and support Cynthia McKinney. And this is especially true if they are Black or other minorities. Even so, the emerging consensus on the Left is that we don't want to help someone like Obama get elected. Call it a "protest vote" or a real opportunity to "grow the Green Party." Most of us will be voting, writing in, and campaigning for Cynthia McKinney and Green Party values. If Obama wants our vote, he will have to support our agenda, and that's obviously just not going to happen - this time, next time, or ever. -- PHS
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Spoiled Rotten
A point we haven't addressed recently, but which is extremely important for the Green movement, is the idea of "spoiling." This has been the great (and really the only) objection to the Green Party growing and flourishing as a political force in the U.S. And we Greens think it is totally fallacious. If you're really for change and reform, and a sustainable environment and economy, you must support those position, not waste your votes and intellectual/political capital on candidates who pander to (and are supported by) the most vicious elements in society.
It's interesting, too, that it is mostly people with Marxist backgrounds who think that "objectively, Ralph Nader put George Bush in the White House, and is directly responsible for everything that's happened, since." This is absolute dogma among 90% of "liberal Democrats" and various Trotskyist, accomodationist groups. It seems to hinge on the Marxist concept of "objective" - i.e., what the real "facts" are, independent of any spinning or sophistical arguments against it. And this is something which less sophisticated, working class people can easily grasp. The same arguments are used against environmentalists, like: "They are anti-labor and thus anti-working class. They are elitists, who want to take away your jobs and put everyone on welfare. They are socialists. They want to control your lives and personal choices, Etc."
And there is good evidence for this position. The Greens do support an expanded public or non-profit sector. They're against "for profit" education, healthcare, etc. They support negative economic and population growth. Those happen to be issues where not everyone agrees with the platform (which we are allowed to do, so long as we're willing to discuss it openly, with intellectual honesty).
We are also "feminists" and advocates for gay rights - hence "pedophiles" and "anti-family" to those who would attack us. We are appalled that the U.S., with 5% of the world's population, should use a quarter of its energy and natural resources, and produce a quarter of its pollution. And have a quarter of its prison population. (We lock up 5-15 times as many people, per capita, as any other "free" country). But to campaign against prisons, torture, and police states is believed to be political suicide. It's like being "pro-Jewish" in Hitler's Germany.
We believe in participatory democracy and participatory economics - self-governing collectives characterized by a maximum of personal freedom and diversity. But they are not STATE collectives - they are communities of choice and values, and all would be allowed to coexist peacefully. (What about Mormon polygamists? To the extent that it's a coercive religious cult, I'd say no. To the extent that everyone has a choice and experience of alternatives, like the Amish and Hutterites, I'd say it's OK).
Greens, I believe, are half or more libertarian in their thinking - in the sense of the classical liberalism of Adam Smith and John Stuart Mill (which also includes Hayek, but not Friedman and the Chicago School of Gangster Capitalism). So it is very confusing to understand what we believe, and what the political (as well as economic) consequences of our policies might be.
Many Greens joined us in order to "reform" the Democratic Party, or be a sort of drag or anchor, making sure that the Democrats didn't sell out the people in their quest for power and influence. We've hounded most of these "Demo-Greens" out of the party. We are not Democrats, and don't wish to "enable" the Democratic Party in any way. The Democratic Party leadership are fundamentally dishonest and sociopathic. They are much more interested in harming people and causing problems (in order to blame the Republicans and fund more programs) than they are in solving them. If I were to prioritize the parties according to "truth value" and public-interestedness, it would be Greens, Libertarians, Republicans, and Democrats. The doctrinaire socialist parties are practically non-existent in the U.S. (which is why a lot of Leftist-socialists have joined the Greens - to our mutual discomfort, in many cases), and less than 10% of Democrats are still "labor" or "social democrats" as those policies would be understood in the rest of the world as promoting an egalitarian, peaceful society. (The British "Labor Party" is now actually to the right of the pre-Thatcher Tories, and most social democratic parties embrace more centralized "state power" as the answer - including military build-ups).
A third or more Republicans will actually support the best policies - peace, environmental sustainability, anti-monopoly policies, taxing away unearned income (economic rents), rewarding good behavior rather than "punishing bad people," etc. But as a party organization, they, too, are fundamentally interested in harming people and making the rich, richer, and the poor, poorer. They have sold out to a different set of bill brokers and influence peddlers. They are "Social Darwinists", and an extreme form of it at that. I call them "sociopaths," as well. And like the Democrats, they are absolutely dominant in Great Falls and Montana politics. The "leadership" elements in both the Democrats and Republicans have made a common cause to suppress and eliminate anyone who challenges "the dominant paradigm" of rule by a corporate gangster elite - the "military-industrial complex", the "national security state", plantation slavery, or whatever you want to call it.
The Democrats are also Stalinist and extremely dishonest in all sorts of ways. Each major party has evoked the worst behavior from the other. It more or less reflects Jerome Frank's "image of the enemy" theory.
Maybe we should call ourselves "the Green Non-Partisan League," because the Greens stand clearly above all this. We are the Peace Party. We are the real democratic republicans. We have no other agenda except saving the world, the environment, our civil society, and our humanity, beginning with our own local communities. We're not interested in "jobs", government contracts, influence-peddling, or getting our "cut of the loot." The Libertarians used to be "the party of principle," but that ended long ago. They have been taken over by right-wing, socially conservative Republicans! And so, I'm afraid we stand alone, against the madness, the lies and destruction, the force and fraud that our "public institutions" have become. -- Paul Stephens
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FILM
American Gangster a film by Ridley Scott starring Denzel Washington
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0765429/
This film is based on a true story - how black American gangs took over the heroin trade from the French Connection (from Turkey) with "Golden Triangle" opium from Southeast Asia, transported by the Air Force in coffins from the Vietnam War. According to Ridley Scott's Commentary on the DVD, it's all true. He interviewed both Frank Lucas, the drug boss (Denzel Washington), and Detective Ritchie Roberts (Russell Crowe) in the process of writing the script and preparing to make the film. The portrayals are as accurate as he could make them with these two superlative actors.
The first time I heard about this was in the book and lectures of Bo Gritz, who was said to be "the most decorated soldier" in the Vietnam War. Several fictionalized versions of his attempts to free POW's were also made into films. He spoke in Great Falls more than once, and was a favorite of militia people and radical Vietnam Vet's groups. He also mediated a standoff between the FBI and some militia people in Idaho - the Weaver family, I think it was. That didn't end well, however.
But apparently he had it right about the heroin trade (plus the fact that many or most of the addicts being served here were also Vietnam vets who had begun using when they were in Vietnam.)
It's a very good film - as good as any "gangster film" ever made - understated and very believable in nearly all respects. And very much in the tradition of films like Ragtime and The French Connection. Don't miss it. - PHS
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Ignorance does not justify omnipotence - a word from our friendly, neighbourhood Cyborg
I believe I've identified a common epistemological disorder among people in Great Falls, and one which has deadly consequences for public policy, education, the economy, the environment, and other "objective" decision-making. Those who claim to know or understand anything are disqualified from participation for that very reason. Either they "work for" someone or some organization, and are thus required to maintain whatever "consensus" that organization supports (or can be coerced to support), or they are "self-interested" or "self-supporting" and thus have no rightful say in public decisions. They must also have political loyalties to one or the other major party. Being a Green, Libertarian, or other independent gets us no respect at all.
Originally, I thought the plea of ignorance should be restricted to women and other "oppressed" or lower-class people, and those lacking higher education and understanding. Thus, when I disagreed with a relative or neighbor, they would often say, "I don't know", "Nobody told me that" or some similar statement to defend their right to disagree or oppose whatever I had said or proposed, without having to justify why they thought that way, or why they disagreed with me. It's a version of "God told me to do it" or "The Devil made me do it" - neither of which holds up in a court of law. It's what's called "the argument from authority," although a very weak form of it, because they didn't claim to be acting under orders or in obedience to an authority. That was taken for granted. It was more like they were claiming that I wasn't in accord with the imagined "authorities," "superiors" or bosses, and therefore whatever I was doing and saying was suspect - it was not something they understood or agreed with, so I was "on my own" with that, whatever it was.
"You're not my boss" was the formulation of a similar principle I often heard in domestic relationships. Had I been their boss (or in some cases, husband), they might have done what I said. But the bottom line was that since I wasn't any sort of "authority", they felt no need or obligation to even consider what I said, let alone obey or agree with it. This, I suppose, is "working class consciousness" at its finest.
It turns out that very few people believe in "free will" or self-determination, let alone individual freedom or a "live and let live" attitude of mutual respect among a wide variety of peaceful and self-sustaining communities. They think everyone should have a boss, and be obedient to someone or something - to an organization or collective. I've been watching some of the Star Trek films and episodes involving the Borg, where this theme is played out endlessly. Just last week, I saw for the first time the beginning of the 4th year of "Star Trek Voyager", where the Borg woman, "Seven of Nine," is rehabilitated to have human thoughts and emotions, and finally to act like a human, albeit a very superior kind of human. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0112178/ It turns out she is played by the same actress, Jeri Ryan, who plays James Woods' boss on "Shark." Borgs and prosecutors seem to think along similar lines, so it is a good fit for her.
I've long wondered who "the Borg" are supposed to represent. In a political and epistemological sense, they are "collectivists" - they have no value as individuals, and their every action, thought, and impulse is to expand and enhance the collective. And, of course, they are "cyborgs" - half machine and half human. They are something like the clone soldiers in Star Wars, except that they aren't mass-produced to be identical. Instead, each is an individual "assimilated" from one of several different humanoid species. Should we take them to be some sort of political "techsters" as well? It would seem to be so.
In the Star Trek "Next Generation" series, Jean-Luc Picard is "assimilated" by the Borg and later reclaimed and "de-programmed" from the Borg technology. This characteristic plays a big part in the film "Star Trek: First Contact," which is mostly set in Montana at an old Minuteman missile silo in the 2060's, following an all-out nuclear war, and the threat of it starting up again. An alcoholic rock music fan named Cochrane (James Cromwell, in one of his very best roles - he's also played William Randolf Hearst, Jr. and Prince Philip) has invented the warp drive, and the first test of it attracts the attention of a passing Vulcan ship, thus initiating "First Contact" with an alien species. But the Borg and Enterprise E, from the 26th century, have come back in time - to try to prevent it, in the case of the Borg, or to prevent the Borg from preventing it, in the case of the Enterprise E. It makes a very good story, indeed, with lots of futuristic economics and social philosophy woven into the plot.
Perhaps the best way to understand who the Borg are and what they represent is to think of them as robot, cyber-technology as a whole. What have computers and other robots done to our minds, our culture, our freedom, our economy, and even our spirituality (not to mention our bodies)? All of these themes are repeatedly examined in the various Star Treks and other science fiction literature. At first, the opposition to "artificial intelligence" was so great that many authors postulated future societies where robots and sophisticated computers would be banned entirely. This was the case in both Isaac Asimov's "Foundation" series, as well as the "Dune" novels by Frank Herbert and the films based on them. Both are of the highest quality and rank with H.G. Wells and Robert Heinlein in the annals of science fiction classics. Yet, so quickly has cybernetic technology advanced that these works from the 50's and 60's seem hopelessly outdated, today.
Indeed, no science fiction prior to the 1950's had even begun to imagine the complexity and sophistication of our present cyberculture. Star Trek was indeed visionary, in that many of the technologies first described there on screen have come to pass - especially the hand-held "flip phone" communicators, matter-anti-matter propulsion systems, and faster than light drives which, although often imagined, were not very well explained in terms of known science before Star Trek. The story "The Fly" (originally a short story in the June 1957 Playboy by George Langelaan, a British writer raised in France) is, of course, the prototype for the "transporter" technology in Star Trek. Whether or not some of this more advanced technology will ever be built and used on an everyday basis is open to question - particularly with the continuing threat of nuclear war, alien invasions, artificially constructed plagues, as well as the potential religious backlash against all higher technology as such. Just remember: people and their well-being come first.
Enjoy it all, but just don't tell me that because you know and understand less than I do, you have the right to block me out. It should be the other way around. My values include perpetuity, truth and enlightenment, as well as human freedom, survival and well-being. I am not "in it for the money," or because I am someone's slave or puppet. I am here to serve, in accordance with Asimov's original "Laws of Robotics." - PHS
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OF WOLVES AND MEN
Perhaps it's just because I'm a descendent of many generations of livestock breeders and small family farmers. Or maybe it's because I came to the Green Party from the conservative tradition, rather than radical, revolutionary politics. But I've always had problems with "protecting" predators like wolves or even grizzly bears - at least outside of public land and other designated wilderness and conservation reserves. If I'm a rancher, and a wolf or grizzly is attacking my livestock, or even just "trespassing," I'm going to shoot it whenever I have the opportunity to do so, and whether or not I tell anyone about it, later.
A hundred years ago or more, the federal government paid a bounty on wolves. There's even a picture in my grandparent's family photo album of the last wolf pelts from the Highwoods nailed up to dry on the side of a log cabin. My grandfather had an old .45-70 single-shot army rifle, and one of the family stories was about him seeing a wolf feeding on a carcass. It was so far away that he could barely see it, but just for the hell of it, he set the sights at 1100 yards and took a shot. When he finally arrived at the scene, thinking he had missed because there was no wolf there, he was surprised to find that he had killed the wolf, and it had collapsed inside the rib-cage of the dead steer it was feeding on.
Wolves are very hard to eradicate, once they get a foot-hold. While grizzlies really are endangered, and are not prolific breeders, wolves can increase from a few dozen individuals to thousands in only a decade or two. There are now estimated to be 1500 wolves in the Northern Rockies Ecosystem. They do good service in controlling deer, elk, rabbit, and other populations. They will also have some effect on controlling the bison population in the Yellowstone herd, which seems to be a problem with no solution, otherwise.
My main concern is the knee-jerk reaction of "environmentalists" to always protect the predators and other "bad guys" against the people who are trying to make a living off of the land. I won't second-guess Judge Molloy's decision (see story below) because I'm not an expert, but politically, it is disastrous for the environmentalist cause, and one of the reasons why no Democrat in Montana will proudly claim to be an environmentalist. It has become political suicide for them to do so. Which may have been the point all along. And why we need a Green Party which will support the economy as well as ecology - the "Greateco" which I use for my blog name.
A good ruling would allow any farmer or rancher to kill wolves on private land. Whether or not those with grazing permits on public land should be able to protect their herds with lethal force is another question. That's where the dogs and llamas come in, I suppose. How about tranquilizer guns? -- PHS
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Judge restores wolf protections
By EVE BYRON - Independent Record - 07/19/08 http://www.helenair.com/articles/2008/07/19/top/65st_080719_wolves.txt
Gray wolves once again are under the protection of the Endangered Species Act, after federal court Judge Donald Molloy ruled late Friday that state management plans in Montana, Idaho and Wyoming will irreparably harm the species’ reintroduction.
In particular, in his 40-page decision the judge pointed toward the 1994 reintroduction document that discussed the need for genetic diversity among the wolf populations. Molloy said genetic testing of wolves in Yellowstone National Park, where wolves were reintroduced in 1995, showed that few if any new wolves were moving into the area from northern Montana and Idaho. He and others fear that low genetic diversity will lead to inbreeding that will diminish reproduction.
"Dispersal between the Great Yellowstone core recovery area and the northwestern Montana and central Idaho recovery area — a precondition to genetic exchange — is rare," the judge wrote. "Only four to 12 wolves have dispersed beyond the core recovery areas in the 13 years since wolves were reintroduced.
"The reduction in numbers that will occur, based on wolf hunts and state depredation control laws, will lessen the population making genetic exchange less likely."
Molloy added that the federal government seemed to be casting its earlier genetic diversity argument aside in its delisting decision earlier this year and focused instead on wolf population numbers as one of the main criteria. He noted that in the 1994 document, the federal government warned against doing so.
Wolf numbers have multiplied much quicker than what initially was expected, with more than 1,500 wolves in the northern Rocky Mountains.
Molloy could lift the injunction if the defendants in the case, including federal and state agencies, prove to the judge that Montana, Wyoming and Idaho have sufficient safeguards in place to perpetuate wolf populations.
Representatives from some of the 12 conservation groups that filed the lawsuit seeking to reverse the gray wolf’s removal from the list of threatened or endangered species applauded Molloy’s decision.
"This injunction is necessary to prevent the states from implementing management schemes that have the primary purpose of eliminating, rather than conserving, wolves," said Michael Garrity, executive director of the Helena-based Alliance for the Wild Rockies.
Michael Robinson of the Center for Biological Diversity in New Mexico added that the injunction will "give wolves a fighting chance...."
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Amory Lovins: Expanding Nuclear Power Makes Climate Change Worse
We speak with Amory Lovins, the cofounder, chairman and chief scientist of Rocky Mountain Institute in Colorado, who has been described as "one of the Western world's most influential energy thinkers."Listen/Watch/Read
http://www.democracynow.org/2008/7/16/amory_lovins_expanding_nuclear_power
(transcript)
AMY GOODMAN: There’s one issue President Bush and presidential hopefuls John McCain and Barack Obama all agree on: expanding the use of nuclear power. President Bush addressed nuclear power at a news conference Tuesday and hailed it as a way to reduce American dependence on oil and protect the environment.
PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: This is just a transition period. I mean, all of us want to get away from reliance upon hydrocarbons, but it’s not going to happen overnight. You know, one of these days, people are going to be using battery technologies in their cars. You’ve heard me say this a lot, and I’m confident it’s going to happen. And, you know, the throwaway line, of course, is that your car won’t have to look like a golf cart. But the question then becomes, where are we going to get electricity? And that’s why I’m a big believer in nuclear power, to be able to make us less dependent on oil and better stewards of the environment. But there is a transition period during the hydrocarbon era, and it hasn’t ended yet, as our people now know. Gasoline prices are high.
AMY GOODMAN: And this is presidential hopefuls Barack Obama, beginning with, though, Senator John McCain, on nuclear power.
SEN. BARACK OBAMA: I actually think that we should explore nuclear power as part of the energy mix. There are no silver bullets to this issue. We’ve got to develop solar. I’ve proposed drastically increasing fuel-efficiency standards on cars, an aggressive cap on the amount of greenhouse gases that can be emitted. But we’re going to have to try a series of different approaches.
SEN. JOHN McCAIN: My dear friends, nuclear power must be part of any equation that leads to addressing climate change and also leads to addressing reduction of our dependence on foreign oil. You know, we always love to imitate the French. The French, 80 percent of their electricity in France is generated by nuclear power. We either got to reprocess it or store it.
AMY GOODMAN: Senator John McCain, and before that, Senator Barack Obama.
Well, the debate over nuclear power is back in the news with the admission of Energy Department official Ward Sproat on Tuesday that it would cost taxpayers $90 billion to open and operate the nation’s first nuclear waste dump. Speaking after a congressional hearing, Sproat added the dump at Yucca Mountain in Nevada would open only in 2020. It was originally estimated to cost $58 billion and open in 1998.
Well, our next guest has been described as "one of the Western world’s most influential energy thinkers." He’s also a leading opponent of nuclear power. Amory Lovins is co-founder, chair and chief scientist of Rocky Mountain Institute in Colorado. He is a consultant physicist, MacArthur Fellow, and recipient of numerous awards, including the Right Livelihood Award. Lovins advised the energy and other industries in countries around the world, including here in the US. He invented the hybrid Hypercar in ’91 and has written twenty-nine books, including Soft Energy Paths, Natural Capitalism, Small Is Profitable, and Winning the Oil Endgame. Amory Lovins joins us here in our firehouse studio.
Welcome to Democracy Now!
AMORY LOVINS: Thank you.
AMY GOODMAN: It’s good to have you with us. Well, talk about nuclear power. Why do you feel it’s not an option, given the oil crisis?
AMORY LOVINS: Well, first of all, electricity and oil have essentially nothing to do with each other, and anybody who thinks the contrary is really ignorant about energy. Less than two percent of our electricity is made from oil. Less than two percent of our oil makes electricity. Those numbers are falling. And essentially, all the oil involved is actually the heavy, gooey bottom of the barrel you can’t even make mobility fuels out of anyway.
What nuclear would do is displace coal, our most abundant domestic fuel. And this sounds good for climate, but actually, expanding nuclear makes climate change worse, for a very simple reason. Nuclear is incredibly expensive. The costs have just stood up on end lately. Wall Street Journal recently reported that they’re about two to four times the cost that the industry was talking about just a year ago. And the result of that is that if you buy more nuclear plants, you’re going to get about two to ten times less climate solution per dollar, and you’ll get it about twenty to forty times slower, than if you buy instead the cheaper, faster stuff that is walloping nuclear and coal and gas, all kinds of central plans, in the marketplace. And those competitors are efficient use of electricity and what’s called micropower, which is both renewables, except big hydro, and making electricity and heat together, in fact, recent buildings, which takes about half of the money, fuel and carbon of making them separately, as we normally do.
So, nuclear cannot actually deliver the climate or the security benefits claimed for it. It’s unrelated to oil. And it’s grossly uneconomic, which means the nuclear revival that we often hear about is not actually happening. It’s a very carefully fabricated illusion. And the reason it isn’t happening is there are no buyers. That is, Wall Street is not putting a penny of private capital into the industry, despite 100-plus percent subsidies.
AMY GOODMAN: Why?
AMORY LOVINS: It’s uneconomic. It costs, for example, about three times as much as wind power, which is booming.
Let me give you some numbers about what’s happening in the marketplace, because that’s reality, as far as I’m concerned. I really take markets seriously. 2006, the last full year of data we have, nuclear worldwide added a little bit of capacity, more than all of it from upgrading old plants, because the new ones they built were smaller than the retirements of old plants. So they added 1.4 billion watts. Sounds like a lot. Well, it’s about one big plant’s worth worldwide. That was less than photovoltaics, solar cells added in capacity. It was a tenth what wind power added. It was a thirtieth to a fortieth of what micropower added.
AMY GOODMAN: What’s micropower?
AMORY LOVINS: Again, it’s renewables, other than big hydro, plus co-generating electricity and heat together, usually in industry.
In 2006, micropower, for the first time, produced more electricity worldwide than nuclear did. A sixth of the world’s electricity is now micropower, a third of the new electricity. In a dozen industrial countries, micropower makes anywhere from a sixth to over half of all the electricity elsewhere. This is not a fringe activity anymore.
China, which has the world’s most ambitious nuclear program, by the end of 2006 had seven times that much capacity in distributed renewables, and they were growing it seven times faster. Take a look at 2007, in which the US or Spain or China added more wind capacity than the world added nuclear capacity. The US added more wind capacity last year than we’ve added coal capacity in the past five years put together.
And renewables, other than big hydro, got last year $71 billion of private capital; nuclear, as usual, got zero. It is only bought by central planners with a draw on the public purse. What does this tell you? I mean, what part of the story does anybody who take markets seriously not get?
AMY GOODMAN: And yet, well, the media clearly in this country doesn’t get it, because it is raised over and over again by the candidates. I mean, it seems that Senator McCain has a favorite number: a hundred years in Iraq, also hoping for a hundred more new nuclear power plants. He had said something about, he doesn’t want to lose the knowledge of building, since the last one was built more than thirty years ago; the people are dying who had built it, so we’ve got to rush and build them now.
AMORY LOVINS: Well, you could say that’s already been lost, in the sense that most of a nuclear plant built now in the US, if there were any, would have to be imported, which, by the way, means we buy it in weak US dollars, which is part of the incredible cost escalation we’ve seen. Moody’s latest number is $7,500 a kilowatt. That’s, again, as the Journal said, about two to four times the numbers that were being bandied about just last year by promoters.
AMY GOODMAN: And Barack Obama, while he hasn’t laid out a plan for building, he has a big campaign contributor, Exelon, and has supported the expansion of nuclear power. And, of course, we heard what President Bush has to say.
AMORY LOVINS: Actually, I thought what Senator Obama said was "explore", which is different. And you will find major environmental groups saying something like "explore" or "consider", but they will also say very carefully it has to be competitive, it has to be cost-effective. And clearly, that doesn’t even pass the giggle test.
A new nuclear plant, according to Moody’s, would send out electricity for about fifteen cents a kilowatt-hour, which is half, again, as much as the average residential rate. And that doesn’t even account for delivering it to your house. And I think if nuclear plants were built, which I don’t think is likely, you would see incredible rates shock and a big political reaction.
AMY GOODMAN: Environmentalists like Stewart Brand and James Lovelock are pushing nuclear power.
AMORY LOVINS: There are actually four individuals involved in the world who are prominent environmentalists who had that view, and you’ve named two of them.
AMY GOODMAN: Who are the other two?
AMORY LOVINS: Patrick Moore was active in founding Greenpeace back in the ’70s, now works for industry; and Peter Schwartz, who used to be on my board, who used to run group planning for Royal Dutch/Shell, is of the same view. But I can’t think of any others. There are no actual environmental groups who favor nuclear power.
AMY GOODMAN: What is your answer to them, and why have they arrived—these are your old colleagues?
AMORY LOVINS: Well, yeah, a couple of them are old friends. Well, I think they haven’t done their homework. And I keep asking for their analysis and not getting it, because I don’t think they have one. But they somehow form the view that because nuclear doesn’t emit carbon, it must be a good thing. Well, that’s not good enough.
You need a source that doesn’t emit carbon—nuclear emits a little bit in the fuel cycle and in building plants, and so on. But you need one that doesn’t emit carbon and is faster and cheaper than other ways to do the same thing. You see, renewables don’t emit carbon. Efficiency doesn’t emit carbon. Cogeneration based on recovered waste heat you were throwing away anyhow doesn’t emit carbon, because you already paid for the carbon in making the useful part of the heat in industry. And these sources are a great deal cheaper and faster than nuclear. So if climate’s a problem, we need to invest judiciously, not indiscriminately, to get the most solution per dollar, the most solution per year. Otherwise, we’re making things worse.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re talking to Amory Lovins. He is co-founder, chair and chief scientist at Rocky Mountain Institute, which is based in Aspen in Colorado?
AMORY LOVINS: Old Snowmass.
AMY GOODMAN: Old Snowmass. Nuclear power is one of the issues that is being posed as an alternative to reliance on foreign fuel, and this is also an issue we addressed yesterday with Naomi Klein on Democracy Now!, the issue of expanding oil drilling, offshore and onshore. You’ve been looking at this.
AMORY LOVINS: Well, we seem to be wanting to drill in all the wrong places. For example, over fifty times as much oil as might be under the Arctic Refuge at very high prices can be saved at very low prices by using the oil efficiently. Also many times faster. So, my wildcatters have been drilling lately in the Detroit formation. That is, making efficient cars is equivalent to finding an all-American Saudi Arabia under Detroit, about eight-and-a-half million barrels a day, inexhaustible, climate-safe and costing about twelve bucks a barrel. Now, altogether, there is about 14 million barrels a day of oil savings, averaging twelve bucks a barrel cost. And we know exactly where the oil is. There’s no doubt that it’s there. It’s under Detroit, Seattle, and so on. That’s out of twenty-or-so million barrels a day we’re using. So if you’re an oil company and you go to the ends of the earth and drill for very expensive oil that might not even be there, wouldn’t it be embarrassing if somebody else meanwhile found all that cheap oil under Detroit? Shouldn’t we drill the most prospective place first?
I’ve tried this formulation lately on the American Association of Petroleum Geologists and the American Petroleum Institute, and they found it pretty persuasive. You know, I’ve worked for major oil companies for about thirty-five years, and they understand how expensive it is to drill for oil. Take the Arctic Refuge as an example. You might think that at today’s oil prices, it would be clearly a great deal to go drill there. Well, it wasn’t before, when oil was in the twenty-odd dollar a barrel range instead of $140. And that’s why the oil companies weren’t interested. Guess what. They’re still not interested. Why not? Well, because their costs of drilling have gone up more than the oil price went up. If you talk to people who run exploration in major oil companies, they’re still not excited about the Arctic Refuge, because practically any other place in the world they could drill would be cheaper and less risky than that extraordinarily remote and hostile environment.
AMY GOODMAN: So why is Bush pushing it?
AMORY LOVINS: Who knows? But it doesn’t make any economic sense. There’s no business case for it. And the real showstopper, interestingly, is national security, which you would think that he and Senator McCain and so on would be concerned about. Jim Woolsey, a not-hostile-to-oil, per se, Oklahoman, former— AMY GOODMAN: Former CIA director.
AMORY LOVINS: —former CIA director, has actually testified against Arctic Refuge drilling on national security grounds. There’s a very simple reason. There’s only one way to get the oil south: it’s through the Trans-Alaska Pipeline, which is the most vulnerable part of our energy infrastructure, the biggest terrorist target in our energy infrastructure. It’s what he calls Uncle Sam’s "kick me" sign.
So, think about it. You’ve got an 800-mile pipeline, mostly above ground, mostly accessible by road or by floatplane. And if the flow through it is interrupted in the winter for about a week, 900—well, nine million barrels of hot oil congeals into the world’s largest Chapstick, a big candle. Then you can’t pump it anymore. Could this happen? Well, actually, yes, if certain points on the pipeline, pumping stations and so on, were attacked—
AMY GOODMAN: We’ve got five seconds.
AMORY LOVINS: —or stuff at either end. And has that happened? Well, let’s see. It’s been sabotaged, almost blew itself up on occasion through mismanagement. It’s been incompetently bombed twice. It’s been shot at fifty times. A drunk shut it down with one hole from a rifle bullet. And the scariest thing to me is around Y2K, at the turn of the century, a disgruntled engineer was caught by accident about to blow up three critical points with fourteen bombs he had built and tested.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to have to leave it there. But one answer: have we solved the nuclear waste problem even?
AMORY LOVINS: No, but I’d just come off the wagon on the economics, and then we don’t need to argue about whether it’s safe.
AMY GOODMAN: Amory Lovins, head of Rocky Mountain Institute, thanks for joining us.
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
Green Solutions June 16 2008
GREEN SOLUTIONS by Paul Stephens, CasCo Greens
Harvard Glee Club celebrates 150th anniversary (and Father's Day) in Great Falls
A few years ago in this Bulletin, I wrote about "The Fight at Aldie Gap" about a Civil War engagement between the great John Singleton Mosby and his rangers, and "the fighting Major," William Hathaway Forbes, at Aldie Gap in northern Virginia. I had come into possession of a privately printed study of this battle by one of Major Forbes' descendents via Birdie Emerson Dundee. Other local interest includes the fact that Colonel Shaw, for whom our Fort Shaw was named (1st Black regiment, portrayed in the film "Glory", and later known as the "Buffalo Soldiers") was Forbes' cousin, and also a friend of the Emerson's.
Major Forbes married one of Ralph Waldo Emerson's daughters, and later became the first Chairman of AT&T, as well as the Burlington Railroad. Emerson, Thoreau, Forbes, and most of those "Boston Brahmins" were Harvard graduates, of course. One of the interesting sidelights to that fight was that Forbes and his bugler (the essential signal-giver in cavalry tactics) were both members of the Harvard Glee Club. After being defeated and captured, it was recorded that they sang choruses from Carl Maria von Weber's "Der Freischutz," an early romantic opera about a sharp-shooter.
Mosby went on after the war (with the assistance of Forbes' father - a major force in the Republican Party) to become Consul to Hong Kong (a British colony) and later attorney for Leland Stanford's Southern Pacific Railroad in California. In the various accounts I read, there are many conflicting stories. Some held that President Grant maintained a grudge against Mosby, while others say that they became close friends, and that Grant was responsible for Mosby's later appointments to important positions.
Here's a brief summary of the battle from Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Action_at_Mount_Zion_Church
The Action at Mount Zion Church was an American Civil War skirmish that took place on July 6, 1864 between Union forces under Major William H. Forbes and Confederate forces under Colonel John S. Mosby near Aldie, Virginia in Loudoun County as part of Mosby's Operations in Northern Virginia. The fight resulted in a Confederate victory.
[Basically, it was a rout. Mosby's men were each equipped with 2 or more six-shot pistols, while Forbes' men didn't have side-arms (except sabers), and they weren't even trained to fire their new Spencer repeating carbines from horseback. Thus, Mosby's men could fire twelve or more shots at close quarters, before having to reload. And they had a small cannon as well, which scared the enemy's horses at the start of an engagement. I'm told that Mosby's tactics are still studied in military colleges. -- PHS]
This led me to read Mosby's own Memoirs. You can download it free from
That, in turn, led me to read Alexander Hamilton Stephens's biography (Mosby spoke highly of him, and considered him the South's true leader), which fundamentally changed my views on the Civil War and my own family history.
Suffice to say, I'm much more conciliatory, anti-war, and pro-"state-rights" ("grassroots democracy) than I ever was, before.
=============
An open letter to local officials about public transportation
Dear city and county officials,
It's been more than a year, now, since the clutch went out on my pickup. I haven't repaired it, and have used only a bicycle and walking for transportation since that time, with a couple of Great Falls Transit rides, as well. I am fit and able to walk several miles at a stretch, so it's been a net gain for me. However, I'm hearing more and more from elderly, disabled, and other people who are very concerned about the proposed reductions in Great Falls Transit services due to the rapid increase in the price of fuel.
Surely this is a golden opportunity to rethink our local public transportation system, and greatly expand and diversify it to meet local needs. Other cities have already done this, and there is a considerable movement statewide to re-establish bus, train, and airline systems between cities and smaller, rural communities across the state. The goal should be to make it possible for everyone to travel cheaply and reliably to most destinations without the use of a personal automobile.
This would require a vastly improved and upgraded taxi service, various shuttles and dispatched vans owned by local businesses, Aging Services, and other public entities as well as night-time transportation systems to serve the patrons of bars and restaurants, theaters, education institutions, etc. Obviously, there are no easy solutions, and I anticipate that this will be going on state-wide and nationally as well as locally. Your responsibility includes the City of Great Falls, and perhaps some regular links to outlying towns in Cascade County. Some of these can be organized cooperatively for commuters to and from Belt, Cascade, etc. There are also a number of suburban areas like Flood Road, Bootlegger, Lower River Road, Sun Prairie, etc. where a large number of the residents commute to and from town on a daily basis. Expanded public transportation to these areas could provide huge savings in fuel and vehicle maintenance to these residents.
In most cases, grants or other funding is available to cover many of the costs. Shelby and Toole County has established a service to bring people to and from Great Falls, Helena, and the Veteran's Hospitals. Other smaller towns might want to do the same.
I've pasted in a series of articles from Vancouver, British Columbia which describes various public transportation systems in other parts of the world. I don't know whose primary responsibility for this might be, but the City and County Commissioners and executive staff could form a committee to begin this process, instead of going ahead with the recently announced cuts to the Great Falls Transit system.
Thank you very much for your interest and concern.
Paul Stephens, CasCoGreens
==================
Fare-Free Public Transit Could Be Headed to a City Near You
By Dave Olsen, The Tyee
http://www.alternet.org/story/57802/
The time has come to stop making people pay to take public transit.
Why do we have any barriers to using buses and urban trains? The threat of global warming is no longer in doubt. The hue and cry of the traffic-jammed driver grows louder every commute. And politicians are getting the message. San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom has ordered his staff to seriously examine the costs of charging people to ride public transit. And Michael Bloomberg, mayor of New York, recently voiced to a reporter his top dream: "I would have mass transit be given away for nothing and charge an awful lot for bringing an automobile into the city."
Consider this sampling of communities providing free rides on trolleys, buses, trams and ferries: Staten Island, N.Y.; Island County, Wash.; Chapel Hill, N.C.; Vail, Colo.; Logan and Cache Valley, Utah; Clemson, S.C.; Commerce, Calif.; Châteauroux, Vitré, and Compiègne, France; Hasselt, Belgium; Lubben, Germany; Mariehamn, Finland; Nova Gorica, Slovenia; Türi, Estonia; and Övertorneå, Sweden.
Or speak, as I have, with transit officials in parts of Belgium and the state of Washington, where fare-free transit has hummed along smoothly now for years.
read more>> http://www.alternet.org/story/57802/
======================
KENT MESPLAY (BLACKFOOT) GREEN PARTY CAMPAIGN for President
SUSTAINABLE ENERGY LEADS TO SECURITY AND DEMOCRACY
Kent Mesplay delegates and supporters, please come join us at Kent Mesplay for President! on Green Party Nexus:
where we'll be organizing ourselves for Chicago and beyond!
Mesplay 4 Prez!
Drew Johnson, CoCoordinator Kent Mesplay for President '08 & Kat Swift for President 08 campaigns
MISSION: To improve our security and to reform politics.
"All the energy stored in the earth's reserves of coal, oil, and natural gas is matched by the energy from 20 days of sunshine."
- Union of Concerned Scientists
Mesplay for President
We "vote" with our dollars every day. Currently we are continuing to enable Big Oil to continue to keep us addicted to oil. We and the whole planet is paying are paying them dearly for our enslavement and to prop up Big Oil and Empire America. As fellow Green Tian Harter likes to say, we need to "Stop voting for oil companies at the gas pump!"
In this David v Goliath picture how do we, the numerically overwhelmed Greens, go about breaking America's oil addiction, move towards security for America, reform American politics with Grassroots Democracy and bring an end to Empire America? By leveraging the high moral ground our values naturally give us to connect heart to heart with the vast majority of Americans who agree with our core Peace Values and by inspiring and leading a mass movement to go "cold turkey" on our oil addiction and aggressively pursue the new alternative energy technologies that are available right now today; and
There is intense collusion from both within the American political process and from the noncompetitive not-so-free markets to maintain this addition to oil. Elected officials such as Bush and Cheney are essentially just shills for the petroleum industry. They and others in public office through their actions giving tax breaks and other forms of Corporate Welfare to Big Oil actually make it more difficult for market forces to come into play. If real free market forces were allowed to operate Big Oil would naturally either die off or transform into sustainable energy producers.
We Americans are propping up Big Oil by trading the blood of American soldiers and innocent civilians for oil and empire. Blood for oil is a completely immoral trade that we Greens must spotlight and call a halt to. An honest approach to assessing the true cost of oil would include factors such as war and pollution. These costs are externalized and placed on the shoulders of American tax-payers as well as the people of the world, just so America can have its empire and Big Oil can remain artificially propped up. Is it any wonder that we American's reckless disregard for human life in pursuit of Empire America's interests-at-all-costs continue to inspire hatred around the world and deadly opposition to our Empire America? If we want security we must end this Empire America madness.
Greens can and must lead the way to a sane and fair national energy policy. Oil money helped many politicians who are now an impediment to progress get to where they are today. Waiting for those in Porkopolis D.C. to solve our energy problems is to wait for disaster. The current system of campaign finance renders politicians almost completely disabled from doing what's best for the country.
It is for lack of political will that we do not have solar and wind as the back-bone of all energy production in this nation. Now that policy-makers such as Californian Governor Schwarzenegger see the light of the value in power from the sun we are closer to achieving and maintaining a security-enhancing energy policy nation-wide, since California leads the nation in so many ways. No new power plants need to be built once we develop the mind-set of every structure becoming its own power plant (with existing power lines as back-up, of course). The existing power grid can be reduced and stabilized through distributed generation from wind and solar sources, with biodiesel, methanol and other diversified sources reducing our risk.
Nuclear power is only one-seventh as effective at keeping carbon out of the atmosphere as is conservation and improved energy efficiency. We certainly do not need more nuclear power plants. Iran and other nations are struggling to make the same mistakes our country has made by investing in nuclear power. Wind comes out on top when judging the true cost of nuclear power and its heavy subsidy, long lead times, hours of non-operation, eventual decommissioning and disposal of toxic components: costs we bear as tax-payers. Nuclear-power-and-weapons have had their day. Iran has been working on developing nuclear power for some thirty years. It would have made more sense for Iran to design architecture with appropriate thermal inertia and to invest heavily in energy efficiency and renewable energy. A world-wide ban on all uranium enrichment would be a good thing.
For real energy security we need improved conservation so that our structures don't waste well over half of the energy they use. We also need representatives in office who will sensibly support methanol over hydrogen, more fuel-cell research and development, biodiesel based upon castor beans, and generally a more integrated, systems-oriented energy design in how we live and in what we do.
An acquaintance, Jim Bell, points out how every dollar we save in the San Diego / Tijuana area by not importing energy would become another dollar available for investment in local economies. In California, those who support and take advantage of incentives to install solar panels are being patriotic and are helping us become more secure. I inspected a large facility having, in addition to other air-quality-effecting equipment, a diesel-powered emergency generator. When I asked where the generator disappeared to, the site contact pointed upwards and said, "it's on the roof in the form of solar panels," regularly providing seasonal power. The investment made good economic sense to the company, what with rising energy costs.
As a graphic depiction of the worth of photo-voltaics (P.V.), a solar array 100 miles on each side, situated in the Mojave desert could produce all the energy that we currently sloppily use in our nation. Not that we would want to "put all our eggs in one basket," ruin a desert and lose to transmission line losses, but the point is that we have the technology to phase out the petroleum industry even faster than it may want to have
happen. I want an improved political process that allows good candidates to run so that we have public officials who treat science with respect and who actually work to make us more secure rather than catering to their favorite businesses.
As I said before, we "vote" with our dollars every day. I encourage those whose finances allow consideration of installing P.V. panels to carry through and to do so, (especially in California because of the California Solar Roofs Bill, S.B. 1 and other supportive legislation). Not only does solar energy benefit the individual or business, but an eventual distributed grid of power generation makes us more secure when the umbilical cords of power lines and gas lines are severed. During our next major power outage more people will have time to reflect upon this.
To cite a specific example, in San Diego where I'm from I am opposed to the proposed Sunrise Power Link as it is a step in the wrong direction. It would be far more cost effective and less damaging and devaluing to property and natural environments for Sempra to invest in getting residents in San Diego county off the grid. We need to first conserve the energy that our buildings and lifestyles waste, then invest in p.v. panels
on our rooftops (especially schools, which should be "survival centers"), then consider locating appropriately designed factories in the remote regions to take advantage of the "green" energy production and labor available in areas with more affordable housing out in the desert.
Expend a little energy and register Green
Energy matters. So does voting. Register Green. Vote Mesplay
Harvard Glee Club celebrates 150th anniversary (and Father's Day) in Great Falls
A few years ago in this Bulletin, I wrote about "The Fight at Aldie Gap" about a Civil War engagement between the great John Singleton Mosby and his rangers, and "the fighting Major," William Hathaway Forbes, at Aldie Gap in northern Virginia. I had come into possession of a privately printed study of this battle by one of Major Forbes' descendents via Birdie Emerson Dundee. Other local interest includes the fact that Colonel Shaw, for whom our Fort Shaw was named (1st Black regiment, portrayed in the film "Glory", and later known as the "Buffalo Soldiers") was Forbes' cousin, and also a friend of the Emerson's.
Major Forbes married one of Ralph Waldo Emerson's daughters, and later became the first Chairman of AT&T, as well as the Burlington Railroad. Emerson, Thoreau, Forbes, and most of those "Boston Brahmins" were Harvard graduates, of course. One of the interesting sidelights to that fight was that Forbes and his bugler (the essential signal-giver in cavalry tactics) were both members of the Harvard Glee Club. After being defeated and captured, it was recorded that they sang choruses from Carl Maria von Weber's "Der Freischutz," an early romantic opera about a sharp-shooter.
Mosby went on after the war (with the assistance of Forbes' father - a major force in the Republican Party) to become Consul to Hong Kong (a British colony) and later attorney for Leland Stanford's Southern Pacific Railroad in California. In the various accounts I read, there are many conflicting stories. Some held that President Grant maintained a grudge against Mosby, while others say that they became close friends, and that Grant was responsible for Mosby's later appointments to important positions.
Here's a brief summary of the battle from Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Action_at_Mount_Zion_Church
The Action at Mount Zion Church was an American Civil War skirmish that took place on July 6, 1864 between Union forces under Major William H. Forbes and Confederate forces under Colonel John S. Mosby near Aldie, Virginia in Loudoun County as part of Mosby's Operations in Northern Virginia. The fight resulted in a Confederate victory.
[Basically, it was a rout. Mosby's men were each equipped with 2 or more six-shot pistols, while Forbes' men didn't have side-arms (except sabers), and they weren't even trained to fire their new Spencer repeating carbines from horseback. Thus, Mosby's men could fire twelve or more shots at close quarters, before having to reload. And they had a small cannon as well, which scared the enemy's horses at the start of an engagement. I'm told that Mosby's tactics are still studied in military colleges. -- PHS]
This led me to read Mosby's own Memoirs. You can download it free from
That, in turn, led me to read Alexander Hamilton Stephens's biography (Mosby spoke highly of him, and considered him the South's true leader), which fundamentally changed my views on the Civil War and my own family history.
Suffice to say, I'm much more conciliatory, anti-war, and pro-"state-rights" ("grassroots democracy) than I ever was, before.
=============
An open letter to local officials about public transportation
Dear city and county officials,
It's been more than a year, now, since the clutch went out on my pickup. I haven't repaired it, and have used only a bicycle and walking for transportation since that time, with a couple of Great Falls Transit rides, as well. I am fit and able to walk several miles at a stretch, so it's been a net gain for me. However, I'm hearing more and more from elderly, disabled, and other people who are very concerned about the proposed reductions in Great Falls Transit services due to the rapid increase in the price of fuel.
Surely this is a golden opportunity to rethink our local public transportation system, and greatly expand and diversify it to meet local needs. Other cities have already done this, and there is a considerable movement statewide to re-establish bus, train, and airline systems between cities and smaller, rural communities across the state. The goal should be to make it possible for everyone to travel cheaply and reliably to most destinations without the use of a personal automobile.
This would require a vastly improved and upgraded taxi service, various shuttles and dispatched vans owned by local businesses, Aging Services, and other public entities as well as night-time transportation systems to serve the patrons of bars and restaurants, theaters, education institutions, etc. Obviously, there are no easy solutions, and I anticipate that this will be going on state-wide and nationally as well as locally. Your responsibility includes the City of Great Falls, and perhaps some regular links to outlying towns in Cascade County. Some of these can be organized cooperatively for commuters to and from Belt, Cascade, etc. There are also a number of suburban areas like Flood Road, Bootlegger, Lower River Road, Sun Prairie, etc. where a large number of the residents commute to and from town on a daily basis. Expanded public transportation to these areas could provide huge savings in fuel and vehicle maintenance to these residents.
In most cases, grants or other funding is available to cover many of the costs. Shelby and Toole County has established a service to bring people to and from Great Falls, Helena, and the Veteran's Hospitals. Other smaller towns might want to do the same.
I've pasted in a series of articles from Vancouver, British Columbia which describes various public transportation systems in other parts of the world. I don't know whose primary responsibility for this might be, but the City and County Commissioners and executive staff could form a committee to begin this process, instead of going ahead with the recently announced cuts to the Great Falls Transit system.
Thank you very much for your interest and concern.
Paul Stephens, CasCoGreens
==================
Fare-Free Public Transit Could Be Headed to a City Near You
By Dave Olsen, The Tyee
http://www.alternet.org/story/57802/
The time has come to stop making people pay to take public transit.
Why do we have any barriers to using buses and urban trains? The threat of global warming is no longer in doubt. The hue and cry of the traffic-jammed driver grows louder every commute. And politicians are getting the message. San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom has ordered his staff to seriously examine the costs of charging people to ride public transit. And Michael Bloomberg, mayor of New York, recently voiced to a reporter
Consider this sampling of communities providing free rides on trolleys, buses, trams and ferries: Staten Island, N.Y.; Island County, Wash.; Chapel Hill, N.C.; Vail, Colo.; Logan and Cache Valley, Utah; Clemson, S.C.; Commerce, Calif.; Châteauroux, Vitré, and Compiègne, France; Hasselt, Belgium; Lubben, Germany; Mariehamn, Finland; Nova Gorica, Slovenia; Türi, Estonia; and Övertorneå, Sweden.
Or speak, as I have, with transit officials in parts of Belgium and the state of Washington, where fare-free transit has hummed along smoothly now for years.
read more>> http://www.alternet.org/story/57802/
======================
KENT MESPLAY (BLACKFOOT) GREEN PARTY CAMPAIGN for President
SUSTAINABLE ENERGY LEADS TO SECURITY AND DEMOCRACY
Kent Mesplay delegates and supporters, please come join us at Kent Mesplay for President! on Green Party Nexus:
where we'll be organizing ourselves for Chicago and beyond!
Mesplay 4 Prez!
Drew Johnson, CoCoordinator Kent Mesplay for President '08 & Kat Swift for President 08 campaigns
MISSION: To improve our security and to reform politics.
"All the energy stored in the earth's reserves of coal, oil, and natural gas is matched by the energy from 20 days of sunshine."
- Union of Concerned Scientists
Mesplay for President
We "vote" with our dollars every day. Currently we are continuing to enable Big Oil to continue to keep us addicted to oil. We and the whole planet is paying are paying them dearly for our enslavement and to prop up Big Oil and Empire America. As fellow Green Tian Harter likes to say, we need to "Stop voting for oil companies at the gas pump!"
In this David v Goliath picture how do we, the numerically overwhelmed Greens, go about breaking America's oil addiction, move towards security for America, reform American politics with Grassroots Democracy and bring an end to Empire America? By leveraging the high moral ground our values naturally give us to connect heart to heart with the vast majority of Americans who agree with our core Peace Values and by inspiring and leading a mass movement to go "cold turkey" on our oil addiction and aggressively pursue the new alternative energy technologies that are available right now today; and
There is intense collusion from both within the American political process and from the noncompetitive not-so-free markets to maintain this addition to oil. Elected officials such as Bush and Cheney are essentially just shills for the petroleum industry. They and others in public office through their actions giving tax breaks and other forms of Corporate Welfare to Big Oil actually make it more difficult for market forces to come into play. If real free market forces were allowed to operate Big Oil would naturally either die off or transform into sustainable energy producers.
We Americans are propping up Big Oil by trading the blood of American soldiers and innocent civilians for oil and empire. Blood for oil is a completely immoral trade that we Greens must spotlight and call a halt to. An honest approach to assessing the true cost of oil would include factors such as war and pollution. These costs are externalized and placed on the shoulders of American tax-payers as well as the people of the world, just so America can have its empire and Big Oil can remain artificially propped up. Is it any wonder that we American's reckless disregard for human life in pursuit of Empire America's interests-at-all-costs continue to inspire hatred around the world and deadly opposition to our Empire America? If we want security we must end this Empire America madness.
Greens can and must lead the way to a sane and fair national energy policy. Oil money helped many politicians who are now an impediment to progress get to where they are today. Waiting for those in Porkopolis D.C. to solve our energy problems is to wait for disaster. The current system of campaign finance renders politicians almost completely disabled from doing what's best for the country.
It is for lack of political will that we do not have solar and wind as the back-bone of all energy production in this nation. Now that policy-makers such as Californian Governor Schwarzenegger see the light of the value in power from the sun we are closer to achieving and maintaining a security-enhancing energy policy nation-wide, since California leads the nation in so many ways. No new power plants need to be built once we develop the mind-set of every structure becoming its own power plant (with existing power lines as back-up, of course). The existing power grid can be reduced and stabilized through distributed generation from wind and solar sources, with biodiesel, methanol and other diversified sources reducing our risk.
Nuclear power is only one-seventh as effective at keeping carbon out of the atmosphere as is conservation and improved energy efficiency. We certainly do not need more nuclear power plants. Iran and other nations are struggling to make the same mistakes our country has made by investing in nuclear power. Wind comes out on top when judging the true cost of nuclear power and its heavy subsidy, long lead times, hours of non-operation, eventual decommissioning and disposal of toxic components: costs we bear as tax-payers. Nuclear-power-and-weapons have had their day. Iran has been working on developing nuclear power for some thirty years. It would have made more sense for Iran to design architecture with appropriate thermal inertia and to invest heavily in energy efficiency and renewable energy. A world-wide ban on all uranium enrichment would be a good thing.
For real energy security we need improved conservation so that our structures don't waste well over half of the energy they use. We also need representatives in office who will sensibly support methanol over hydrogen, more fuel-cell research and development, biodiesel based upon castor beans, and generally a more integrated, systems-oriented energy design in how we live and in what we do.
An acquaintance, Jim Bell, points out how every dollar we save in the San Diego / Tijuana area by not importing energy would become another dollar available for investment in local economies. In California, those who support and take advantage of incentives to install solar panels are being patriotic and are helping us become more secure. I inspected a large facility having, in addition to other air-quality-effecting equipment, a diesel-powered emergency generator. When I asked where the generator disappeared to, the site contact pointed upwards and said, "it's on the roof in the form of solar panels," regularly providing seasonal power. The investment made good economic sense to the company, what with rising energy costs.
As a graphic depiction of the worth of photo-voltaics (P.V.), a solar array 100 miles on each side, situated in the Mojave desert could produce all the energy that we currently sloppily use in our nation. Not that we would want to "put all our eggs in one basket," ruin a desert and lose to transmission line losses, but the point is that we have the technology to phase out the petroleum industry even faster than it may want to have
happen. I want an improved political process that allows good candidates to run so that we have public officials who treat science with respect and who actually work to make us more secure rather than catering to their favorite businesses.
As I said before, we "vote" with our dollars every day. I encourage those whose finances allow consideration of installing P.V. panels to carry through and to do so, (especially in California because of the California Solar Roofs Bill, S.B. 1 and other supportive legislation). Not only does solar energy benefit the individual or business, but an eventual distributed grid of power generation makes us more secure when the umbilical cords of power lines and gas lines are severed. During our next major power outage more people will have time to reflect upon this.
To cite a specific example, in San Diego where I'm from I am opposed to the proposed Sunrise Power Link as it is a step in the wrong direction. It would be far more cost effective and less damaging and devaluing to property and natural environments for Sempra to invest in getting residents in San Diego county off the grid. We need to first conserve the energy that our buildings and lifestyles waste, then invest in p.v. panels
on our rooftops (especially schools, which should be "survival centers"), then consider locating appropriately designed factories in the remote regions to take advantage of the "green" energy production and labor available in areas with more affordable housing out in the desert.
Expend a little energy and register Green
Energy matters. So does voting. Register Green. Vote Mesplay
Green Solutions June 9 2008
GREEN SOLUTIONS by Paul Stephens, CasCoGreens
Let the Reign of the Colonels Begin
Last week's primary elections, both locally and nationally, could best be described as "out of the frying pan and into the fire." Or, "out of the Coal Junta, and into the Zionist Holocaust/Nakba." The best candidates won everywhere. Unfortunately, they were all "the lesser of two (or more) evils." There weren't any good candidates running, which is the real point of all this, from the point of view of those who are fervently trying to establish a military dictatorship, and end constitutional government (along with abortion and gay marriage) in Amerika.
We had a truly bizarre Congressional and Senate primary outcome in Montana. A lifelong Progressive Democrat advocate of unicameral parliamentary government won the REPUBLICAN nomination to oppose the crypto-Republican Max Baucus, running for the umpteenth time as a Democrat. And another Progressive Democrat won the nomination to oppose the major Bush Republican sycophant Denny Rehberg for Montana's only House seat. Here's the punchline: both are Army Reserve Colonels! Most Republicans (and Democrats) in Montana are chicken-hawks - at best, they were drafted or did National Guard duty for awhile as their military "service." Only the real "reformers" are higher-ranking officers, who have actually fought in wars, and have ties with the Pentagon!
Col. Bob Kelleher, the "perennial candidate" whose only prior elected office was to the Montana Constitutional Convention in 1972, is the "One House Parliament" guy. I've known him for 20 years, and supported his cause for even longer. He is a graduate of Catholic University in Washington, D.C., and his military service was as a JAG lawyer. I'm a firm believer that the present U.S. Constitution does not allow for partisan politics, and if we're going to have parties, then we need a parliamentary government in which the leading member of Congress whose party wins a general election then becomes Prime Minister. (The President is merely a ceremonial position, and has nothing to do with creating policy or legislation). This is the French model as it presently exists, but Kelleher prefers the British model (without, apparently, the House of Lords) following the Reform Acts of 1832. He knows his stuff, and has elaborated these ideas endlessly, in numerous campaigns for everything from Governor to POTUS. This is the first time (and he is in his mid-80's) he has ever run as a Republican, and the first time he has actually won a primary. He ran twice as a Green Party candidate: for Senate (also against Baucus) in 2002, and for Governor in 2004. The fact that some of us supported him, and all abortion advocates (and Demogreens) opposed him, accounts for much of the sorry state of the Green Party in Montana, today.
Last time I spoke with Bob several years ago, we were still friends. He is a very impressive and good-hearted man. I wish him well. And I will cover his campaign in this Bulletin, and probably work for him privately, if I can find some sympathetic Republicans here to work with (and I know a few). It will require a bizarre twist in campaign tactics, to say the least, but that is nothing new in Montana.
The other Progressive Democrat running - surprise - as a Democrat but without any party support (thus far at least), is Col. John Driscoll. John has an even more impressive resume, and ran against Baucus in the primary back in 1996. He is a former Public Service Commissioner, and probably the youngest Speaker of the House of the Montana Legislature in our state's history (the other contender would be Dan Kemmis). This was back in late 1970's or early '80's. He refuses to accept any special interest money for his campaigns.
A few years ago, I used to reprint articles from John's "Steward Magazine" in the Bulletin. We tried to encourage him to run for office as a Green, but he remains a loyal Democrat. He is also a close friend of Bob Kelleher's, and since they are both Army Reserve Colonels (John isn't a lawyer, but has worked with the Joint Chiefs of Staff and other high-level policy-making positions,) they could immediately be influential members of any military procurement or other military affairs committee in Congress. Both candidates abhor the pork-barrel, log-rolling traditions of Montana's Congressional delegation, and both would, I suspect, support any and all withdrawals from Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as repealing the USA PATRIOT Act and supporting other vital reforms or restorations of republican, constitutional government. But I will leave it to them to make their speeches and present their arguments in policy statements and debates as they unfold. Hopefully, we'll be hearing a lot from them. - PHS
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OBITUARY
Lady Barbara Ann Carne-Foster, GFHS Class of 1957
I don't often do obituaries, and if I were still writing poetry, Barb would be a fitting subject for my finest efforts. I don't know if she appeared on any Queen's Lists, but she was definitely a Peer of the Realm - several Realms, in fact, beginning with Black Eagle. Since this is a copper-toned Realm, she might have been identified as Jody Foster's cosmic fairy godmother. She and her first husband, Jack Foster, were celebrated in many ways in popular culture.
The daughter of a famous Black Eagle restaurateur, Rudy Carne, her dowry was the Italian recipes which made The Jack Club (originally a remodeled country school-house) into the hottest nightclub in town. "Be a King and take your Queen to the Jack Club" was their advertising slogan back in the 1960's.
Jack was also remembered as having the first MG-TC in north-central Montana. He and my uncle Charles were close friends, and working-class comrades in the glass business. Charles may have been the best man at their wedding. Marrying Barbara was Jack's entry into a world of higher status and respectability - surprising as that might sound to those who considered Italians, Slavs and their Black Eagle enclave (known as "Little Chicago" to themselves) a less-desirable culture and place to live. (Now it's a major superfund site because of the Anaconda Smelter, but that's another story).
As was so often the case with my father's and uncle's friends, I was never socially introduced to the Foster's, outside of having worked as a swamper temporarily for the Jack Club when I was in high school. But I heard a lot about them. More recently, I got to know Barbara very well in her later years when I was driving cab. She owned a bar, the Red Door (with probably the most diverse clientele in town), and was often in need of a ride home by the end of the night. She remembered Charles, and we often reminisced about "the good old days." She was very pleased when I ran for County Commissioner as a Green, but expressed disappointment when I came out against machine gambling and in favor of a living wage ordinance (why, I don't know. All of her employees were much better paid than that). She may have helped to get me fired from the cab company for those very reasons. If so, it probably saved my life.
I hadn't realized that she was a member of that most illustrious class in Great Falls High School history - what I now identify as "The class of Atlas Shrugged and Sputnik." Many of us in the class of 1965 had older siblings or cousins in that class, and we have been struggling to keep up or surpass them ever since. Even when we have, it was always by the standards of that earlier foundation. So, I'll count Barbara as my most recent best friend from the Class of '57, and mourn her passing. Those were Happy Days, indeed. -- PHS
Tribune Obituary
http://www.legacy.com/greatfallstribune/Obituaries.asp?Page=Lifestory&PersonId=111132687
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FILM
The Mouse that Roared - starring mainly Peter Sellars in a variety of roles
Directed by Jack Arnold
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0053084/
This is a film that came out when I was in junior high school, but I had never seen it until I borrowed a DVD of it from the library last week. One of the trailers featured there was for "Dr. Strangelove," which is appropriate. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0057012/ (The other was an obscure Jerry Lewis film, "Don't Raise the Bridge, Lower the River.")
"The Mouse that Roared" is a kind of comedy version of "Dr. Strangelove," but still features a "loose nuke" and the threat of nuclear warfare as a major plotline. I checked the dates, and found that Mouse dates from 1959, while Dr. Strangelove was made five years later. Since the former is in color, and the latter in b&w, I would have thought that Dr. Strangelove was the earlier film. So far as I know, Stanley Kubrick had nothing to do with "The Mouse that Roared." It is much lighter in tone.
The Grand Duchy of Fenwick, supposedly started by an eccentric Englishman in the Swiss Alps centuries ago, subsists entirely on the basis of a single variety of wine (a reference to "monocrop agriculture", perhaps?) Unscrupulous American trade pirates in San Rafael, California, have produced a counterfeit, thus destroying Fenwick's viability. This means war, and the Fenwick army of some 30 middle-aged mail-coated knights sails for America, hoping to engage in battle, surrender, and then become the beneficiaries of U.S. foreign aid to our defeated adversaries. Quite a bit like Iraq and other "client states," actually.
Unfortunately, the plan backfires, and the Fenwickians return home with an Einstein-like nuclear scientist, Professor Kokintz, and his beautiful daughter, Helen (Jean Seaberg), along with a bomb which can destroy half of Europe. All of the major powers are at Fenwick's beck and call, hoping to form an alliance with them.
Of course, we knew in Great Falls that this movie, like most others, was really about us and our "third largest nuclear arsenal in the world" promoted by Senator Mansfield and President Kennedy right about that time. It is also a precursor to many later films besides Dr. Strangelove, including "The Manhattan Project" about a high school student who builds his own atomic bomb for a science project (with John Lithgow's assistance), as well as a later comedy about Einstein and his daughter. "The Princess Diaries" also draws heavily on this Fenwickian "history." -- PHS
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Viewer comment from the IMDb
"Although it's considered a harmless entertainment, 'The Mouse That Roared' is chock full of satiric jibes at the dirty politics, international relations, and paranoid culture of The Cold War- its just that the jokes are so quick and subtle that you might miss them if you blink (one of my favorite touches concerns a radio report of 'aliens'- actually the chain-mailed soldiers of Grand Fenwick- sighted in Central Park. Upon hearing the report amongst a crowd of shocked New Yorkers, one well-dressed, perfectly normal looking gent mutters about the supposed alien invasion: 'I knew it - it HAD to come to this!' This is the filmmakers' fairly accurate portrayal of how far some Americans had descended, by this time, into Atomic, Cold War and Space-Crazed paranoia).
It should be said that the diplomatic relations between America and the World, as portrayed in this film, are even MORE RELEVANT now than they were during the Cold War; except that the American statesmen seem so virtuous and well-meaning in comparison to some of our current ones. Rent it and you'll see what I mean."
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MUSIC
The Piatigorsky-Grossman Concerts, Great Falls
http://www.piatigorskyfoundation.org/Gregor.cfm
I was looking at the USC Thornton School of Music website the other day, and I see they've recruited 'cellist Ralph Kirshbaum to the Gregor Piatigorsky Chair. http://www.usc.edu/uscnews/stories/14865.html
A few weeks ago, Piatigorsky's grandson, Evan Drachman, also a 'cellist, was in Great Falls for what has become an unheralded and poorly-attended annual stop for the Piatigorsky Foundation's touring musicians. I've heard three of these ensembles, and I have yet to see any of the regular symphony crowd or even student musicians there - even though the recitals are free. Each group plays about 5 different venues locally over a week or so, many of them in very small towns, and all of them in schools, nursing homes, and even prisons. This was my first opportunity to actually meet Evan, who created the program, and thank him personally for what must be the only classical music "outreach" of its kind in the world.
In past years, I've heard an opera-singer named Erika, and a Scottish-Canadian Harp and Flute duo play here under the auspices of the Piatigorsky Foundation. Randy Barrett, the Cascade County Aging Services director and a public radio announcer on KGPR met Evan at some sort of conference, and that is why the Piatigorsky Foundation has made Great Falls a regular stop ever since. I should also mention Jeffrey Grossman, Evan's pick-up accompanist, who with only a day or two's preparation was able to do a masterful job in the Debussy Sonata as well as orchestral reductions in other works like Tchaikovsky's Roccoco Variations, playing on small, upright pianos of poor quality. I could close my eyes and imagine I was hearing a young James Levine in Carnegie Hall! A recent Harvard graduate, he is also co-founder of the Harvard Early Music Project. http://www.jeffreygrossman.com
I am probably the only person in Great Falls who actually heard Gregor Piatigorsky play live - at UCLA's Royce Hall, with the Debut Orchestra conducted by Michael Tilson Thomas, who was then in his early 20's. Evan resembles his grandfather, and took pride in sharing a number of anecdotes about Gregor's early career during the Russian Revolution, his objections to the Beethoven Quartet being renamed the Lenin Quartet, and his escape across the border into Poland, which was anxious to send him back, except that some of the soldiers assigned to do that were musicians, and working class solidarity prevailed.
Evan started on the 'cello quite late, and his grandfather had little hope that he would excel at it. However, no less than Mstislav Rostropovich encouraged him later on, and took Evan back to Russia after 1989 where they played several concerts, with Rostropovich conducting.
As one might imagine, Evan is not the normal up-and-coming classical music "star." In fact, he is egalitarian to a fault, and sees his mission as sharing the blessings of music with those who need it the most. I told him, as a personal aside, that his performance "made up for a year of abuse and neglect" in my own life, and that many other people here no doubt felt the same. The next time I hear someone describe classical music as "elitist," I'm going to punch him in the face. -- PHS
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CARBON TAXES
[Last week, the coal and oil junta, the auto industry, and their associated unions managed to defeat even the pale and weakened Senate bill to cap carbon emissions and implement carbon taxes. Do you know how your Senators voted? I'm afraid to look, but I'd give odds that both of Montana's Senators voted against it. -- PHS]
WE CAN'T AFFORD THE HIGH COST OF DOING NOTHING
By RICHARD BARRETT And THOMAS M. POWER
http://www.greatfallstribune.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/200805270500/OPINION/805270306
Several American business groups, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers and the American Council for Capital Formation, have launched nationwide campaigns to convince the public that a serious effort to limit the pollution that causes global warming would have catastrophic consequences for the American economy, while providing no significant benefits. It is hard to believe that organizations claiming to represent business interests could be so out of touch with economic and energy reality.
The target of their ire is the Climate Security Act, introduced in Congress by Sens. John Warner, R-Va., and Joseph Lieberman, I-Conn., and approved by Sen. Barbara Boxer's, D-Calif., Environment and Public Works Committee. It would reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 70 percent, by 2050.
Two of the opposed groups, NAM and ACCF, recently released an economic study they say demonstrates the "enormous" costs we would incur from this legislation. For instance, they claim it would lead to a "loss" of about 1.3 million American jobs. But this grossly misrepresents what their own study actually shows, which is no net job loss as a result of greenhouse gas regulation.
Actually, the study projects that job growth would slow very slightly.
Instead of the American economy creating 15.4 million new jobs over the next 12 years, 14.1 million new jobs would be added. At the beginning of 2020, there would be only about 0.8 percent fewer jobs in the economy, and by the end of the year normal job growth would eliminate even this small shortfall. What is startling is not how many jobs we will lose, but rather how many we will gain as we move towards a low emissions economy.
And even the finding of slower growth is questionable. That's because the study makes unreasonably pessimistic assumptions regarding the technical and entrepreneurial creativity and adaptability of the businesses they claim to represent. In the face of a new energy reality, in which greenhouse gas emissions carry a steep price, businesses and households will find ways of reducing them - through renewable energy, conservation and technological transformation.
We've repeatedly seen this type of rapid and pervasive adaptation and innovation, in the spread of computer technology, the rise of the Internet and the revolution in telecommunications. If public policy creates the right set of incentives to reduce global warming pollution, we'll find enormous opportunities open to us, with negligible resulting costs.
The study opposing the climate change legislation also fails to recognize the potential of increased energy efficiency. Yet national research organizations have identified many simple measures to reduce energy use and greenhouse gas emissions, such as switching to compact fluorescent bulbs.
The business groups seek to scare Americans about high electricity and gasoline prices under the Climate Security Act. But this misrepresents the way prices work. Although an increase in energy prices is needed to stimulate energy innovation, higher energy prices need not burden families and businesses because innovative energy technologies will significantly reduce how much energy they must buy.
Beyond the scare tactics, the core argument offered by the opposed organizations is that we gain nothing by acting on our own. The logic is flawless but severely limited, since it applies with equal force to those other countries - China shouldn't act unless the United States does, the European Union shouldn't act before India, and so forth.
This type of thinking points inexorably toward a "race to the bottom," resulting in global inaction and ultimately self-destruction. We need international negotiations leading to global agreements to reduce emissions, and we only gain an influential place at the negotiating table if we're prepared to take significant action. Right now, we simply discredit ourselves by whining about the costs of reducing emissions while suggesting that much poorer nations bear the burden. And finally, though the study never addresses the issue, it's ignored a huge elephant in the room - the costs of doing nothing. In fact, the former chief economist of the World Bank, Nicholas Stern, recently said that a 2006 report - estimating the adverse impacts of climate change at up to one-fifth of the world's gross domestic product - had underestimated the risks.
If we fail to act because of poorly constructed and deceptively reasoned economic arguments, we will assure changes in world climate that will fundamentally affect the America that we know, leaving behind for our children and grandchildren a dramatically diminished natural landscape, society, and economy.
Thomas Michael Power is a research professor and former chairman of the Department of Economics at the University of Montana, where Richard Barrett is an emeritus professor of economics.
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FROM GREEN LISTS
At Primaries' End, American Indians in Rare Focus
By Adam Tanner Mon Jun 2,
LAME DEER, Montana (Reuters) - Often paid scant attention in U.S. presidential elections, Native Americans are taking an unusually high profile in the final stretch of the Democratic primary campaign.
Both Democratic candidates Hillary Clinton and front-runner Barack Obama recently have visited remote Indian reservations in the rugged Western states of Montana and South Dakota, which hold the final contests in the drawn-out state-by-state battle on Tuesday.
One Montana tribe, the Crow Nation, has ceremoniously adopted Obama, giving him a name which means "one who helps people throughout this land."
"Never before have we had such hope for a candidate, except maybe a Kennedy," said Crow Chairman Carl Venne, who said Obama was the first U.S. presidential candidate ever to visit his tribe in southeastern Montana.
In previous elections, the party's candidate has been decided long before primary voting in Montana and South Dakota. Obama is looking to wrap up the nomination in these two final contests June 3.
Just above 1 percent of the U.S. population is Native American, but the numbers rise to more than 6 percent in Montana on the Canadian border. Depending on turnout, they could represent as many as 15 percent of Montana's Democratic voters, numbers that could tip the state's outcome although Obama appears poised overall to win the national contest.
Poverty is widespread among many tribes -- especially in remote areas of the Western states -- and many Native Americans see Democrats as more sympathetic to issues important on the reservations including more jobs and better health care and education.
But should the Democrat lose in the November general election, some say Republican Sen. John McCain represents a better-than-usual second choice for Indians.
"Hillary and Obama are getting up to speed on Indian affairs, while McCain in Arizona already represents the largest Native American community in the country, the Navajos," said Clara Caufield, an assistant to the Northern Cheyenne president in Lame Deer, Montana.
McCain has twice served as the chairman of the U.S. Senate Committee on Indian Affairs and is knowledgeable about the complex issues facing Native Americans. Many also respect his past military service.
As for the adoption of Obama by the Crow tribe next door, Caufield scoffed: "We take our traditions more seriously than that. The Crow adopt people at the drop of the hat."
As among all voters, Indians are divided. Within her own office, Caufield's boss, Northern Cheyenne president Geri Small, has endorsed Clinton, a New York senator.
INDIAN LEADER CRITICIZES MCCAIN
One prominent Native American who has worked with McCain is Elouise Cobell, a Montana member of the Blackfeet Tribe. She is leading a multibillion-dollar lawsuit again the U.S. government, charging that tribes were cheated for more than a century out of payments made for the rights to mine, farm and graze on their land.
"He's sympathetic, but that's the problem we have here with Indian issues," Cobell said about McCain. "We really get a lot of promises, especially around election time: oh gosh, they have been treated so horrible. But then nobody does anything about it, so what good are all these words and promises?"
For Charlie Vaughan, chairman of the Hualapai nation in the wilderness flanking a 100-mile (160-km) stretch of the Grand Canyon's southern rim in Arizona, the big issue for members is the high price of gas.
"Given the remoteness of a lot of reservation lands and the tribes that live on them, and how they are impacted by rising fuel costs ... we think that a McCain presidency would be more harmful," Vaughn said. "He favors continuing the war and that's going to tend to drive up fuel prices, and it will hurt us."
Tribal members in these parched lands have a 50-mile (80-km) drive to the nearest town to buy groceries, fuel and clothes, distances not uncommon for remote reservations.
Many Native Americans, who have long suffered discrimination, also say that either Obama, who would be the first black U.S. president, or Clinton, who would be the first woman U.S. president, would better understand their plight.
"We have had the same mind-set for 500 years, with white men running the country," said Ofelia Rivas, a tribal elder of the Tohnono O'odham Nation on the Arizona- Mexico border. "I prefer the idea of either a woman or a so-called minority person in the White House, so that we will have a different perspective."
(Additional reporting by Tim Gaynor in Phoenix)
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WHY GREENS DO NOT SUPPORT BARACK OBAMA
FROM JOHN PILGER
From Kennedy To Obama; Liberalism's Last Fling
http://www.johnpilger.com/
As their contest for the White House draws closer, watch how, regardless of the inevitable personal smears, Obama and McCain draw nearer to each other. They already concur on America's divine right to control all before it. "We lead the world in battling immediate evils and promoting the ultimate good," said Obama. "We must lead by building a 21st-century military . . . to advance the security of all people." McCain agrees. Obama says in pursuing "terrorists" he would attack Pakistan. McCain wouldn't quarrel. Both candidates have paid ritual obeisance to the regime in Tel Aviv, unquestioning support for which defines all presidential ambition. In opposing a UN Security Council resolution implying criticism of Israel's starvation of the people of Gaza, Obama was ahead of both McCain and Hillary Clinton. In January, pressured by the Israel lobby, he massaged a statement that "nobody has suffered more than the Palestinian people" to now read: "Nobody has suffered more than the Palestinian people from the failure of the Palestinian leadership to recognise Israel [emphasis added]." Such is his concern for the victims of the longest, illegal military occupation of modern times. Like all the candidates, Obama has furthered Israeli/Bush fictions about Iran, whose regime, he says absurdly, "is a threat to all of us".
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COMMENT by Paul Stephens
Why does Obama think he has to support Zionist Apartheid? Is it only the money?
We might wishfully think that, as the Rev. Wright said, Obama is simply doing what he has to do as a politician to be elected President. And he probably supposes that he must reassure, appease, or capitulate to the Zionist lobby if he wants to win. Whether or not he has taken money from them (and apparently he has) is beside the point. They have the power to destroy his campaign in the minds of the entire "East Coast Liberal Establishment," American Zionists (including many Black Americans), as well as the Military-Industrial Complex which thrives on these Middle Eastern wars and arms build-ups.
Obama and his advisors no doubt believe that he cannot win if he doesn't unconditionally support Israel. Once he is elected President, some of them might imagine that he can then "be his own man", and do whatever he thinks is right and just, in the manner of Jimmy Carter. Unfortunately, Jimmy Carter (or any other President) was never free to act on his conscience, either - not, at least, until he was out of office. JFK may have been the last President to vigorously oppose the Zionist lobby and its nuclear aspirations after they helped (probably decisively) to get him elected. The more I read about this, the more I'm convinced that American Zionists were complicit in his death - Jack Ruby being only the final instrument of their attempts to "seal the record" on the assassination and its aftermath.
Still, we think that Obama could at least speak the truth, and stand up for Palestinian rights while defending Israel's right to exist as a free, democratic, and ethnically integrated state. He doesn't have to follow the punishing Zionist-Apartheid agenda (indeed, how could he possibly do so?) which only a third or so of Jewish Israeli's actually support. He needs to join with Ilan Pappe and the Israeli peace and reconciliation parties and movements, not the militaristic, fascist Zionists. But of course we know by now that Obama is anything but "the peace candidate." More on this, below. -- PHS
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FROM AL JAZEERA.NET
Arabs shocked by Obama speech
Barack Obama said he spoke as a "true friend" of Israel [EPA]
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/93FE247B-452D-4022-8374-088D8704C1DE.htm
THURSDAY, JUNE 05, 2008
Arab leaders have reacted with anger and disbelief to an intensely pro-Israeli speech delivered by Barack Obama, the US Democratic presumptive presidential nominee.
Obama told the influential annual policy conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Council (Aipac): "Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel and it must remain undivided."
His comments appalled Palestinians who see occupied East Jerusalem as part of a future Palestinian state.
Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator, told Al Jazeera on Thursday: "This is the worst thing to happen to us since 1967 ... he has given ammunition to extremists across the region".
"What really disappoints me is that someone like Barack Obama, who runs a campaign on the theme of change - when it comes to Aipac and what's needed to be said differently about the Palestinian state, he fails."
RELATED
Reporter's diary: Divided Jerusalem
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/A1BA180A-6B42-4EB2-8171-2E182F74FF4A.htm
Inside the US-Israel lobby
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/69604333-7916-439E-8919-434C76B4149E.htm
"I say to Obama ... please stop being more Israeli than the Israelis themselves, leave the Israelis and Palestinians alone to make decisions required for peace."
Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, rejected the statement, saying: "We will not accept an independent Palestinian state without having Jerusalem as the capital.
"I believe that case is clear."
He said: "Jerusalem is part of the six points that are subjects on the negotiations' agenda.
"And the whole world knows that East Jerusalem, Arab Jerusalem and Holy Jerusalem were occupied in 1967."
'Hope slashed'
Sami Abu Zuhri, a spokesman for Hamas, the largest Palestinian resistance group, also condemned the speech, saying on Thursday: "These statements slash any hope of any change in the American foreign policy.
"[They] assure that there is a total agreement between the two parties, the Democratic and the Republican, on support for the Israeli occupation at the expense of the rights of Arabs and Palestinian interests."
IN DEPTH
Israel and the Nakba
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/15D014B8-32B9-4F08-A258-8EB37B0DDF49.htm
The ancient city of Jerusalem is divided into East and West. Israel captured East Jerusalem in the 1967 war and unilaterally annexed it, in a move condemned by the United Nations as illegal.
Jerusalem's status as part of Israel is not internationally recognised and remains a central issue in peace negotiations.
'Unbreakable bond'
Obama, hours after securing his party's nomination on Wednesday, had gone on to say the US bond with Israel was "unbreakable today, unbreakable tomorrow, unbreakable for ever" and drew a standing ovation.
He told the gathering of one of US politics' most influential lobbying groups that, as president, he would "never compromise when it comes to Israel's security."
He also said any deal between Israelis and Palestinians should preserve Israel's identity as a Jewish state and that Hamas should be isolated and pledged to approve $30bn in aid to Israel over the next 10 years.
'Impressive speech'
Ehud Olmert, Israel's prime minister, called the Illinois senator's speech "very impressive".
"His words on Jerusalem were very moving," Olmert told reporters after meeting George Bush, the US president, at the White House.
The Illinois senator's comments come a day after US media projected that Obama had enough delegates to win the Democratic nomination and face John McCain, the presumptive Republican candidate, in the November election.
Iranian 'threat'
Obama also had harsh words for Iran, vowing to work to "eliminate" the threat it posed to security in the Middle East and around the globe.
Obama said an "undivided Jerusalem should remain the capital of Israel" [AFP]
"There's no greater threat to Israel or to the peace and stability of the region than Iran," he told the Aipac assembly.
Calling for "aggressive, principled diplomacy" with Tehran, he also warned he would never take the military option off the table in guaranteeing US and Israeli security.
Iranians responded cautiously, but optimistically, with officials expressing hope he can bring about change in Iran-US relations.
Hamidreza Hajibabaee, member of Iranian parliament, said: "We hope that Obama turns his words into actions, helps the Islamic Republic of Iran believe that the US has given up enmity and paves the way for fair negotiations."
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Ilan Pappe says Israel needs to acknowledge the crime it committed against the Palestinian people
As part of Al Jazeera's coverage of the anniversary of the creation of Israel and the Palestinian 'Nakba', Israeli historian Ilan Pappe reflects upon the events of 1948 and how they led to 60 years of division between the Israelis and Palestinians.
Between February, 1948 and December,1948 the Israeli army systematically occupied the Palestinian villages and towns, expelled by force the population and in most cases also destroyed the houses, looted their belongings and took over their material and cultural possessions. This was the ethnic cleansing of Palestine.
During the ethnic cleansing, wherever there was resistance by the population the result was a massacre. We have more than 30 cases of such massacres where a few thousand Palestinians were massacred by the Israeli forces throughout the operation of the ethnic cleansing.
read more>> http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/5C0036C5-83C9-4720-853D-0BFA9A4E1BC4.htm
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FROM Soldier Say No / Project Safe Haven
www.SoldierSayNo.blogspot.com
Canadian Parliament votes in favor of American war resisters
Today the Canadian Parliament made a historic vote in favor of U.S. war resisters who are seeking a safe haven in Canada rather than fight in the illegal occupation of Iraq. The vote in the House of Commons was 137-110, with all the opposition parties - the Liberal Party, the New Democratic Party, the Bloc Quebecois and the Green Party - voting for the motion, and the ruling Conservative Party voting against.
The Parliament calls on the minority Conservative government to create a program that will allow war resisters to immigrate to Canada, and it also calls for a halt to all deportation proceedings.
This is a VERY BIG victory for war resisters in Canada and everywhere. It will strengthen our hand considerably.
But the struggle for sanctuary in Canada is far from over. The Conservative government, a staunch ally of the Bush administration, may choose to defy the will of the Canadian people by ignoring this advisory motion.
Corey Glass, an Iraq veteran and war resister, was recently ordered to leave Canada by June 12 or face deportation.
So even as we celebrate this victory, we must step up the pressure on Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Immigration Minister Diane Finley. [See action alert from War Resisters Support Campaign, below, along with their press release and a news article.]
Yes, it does help for the Canadian government to hear from many people in the U.S. who want them to provide sanctuary for our war resisters. Courage To Resist (www.couragetoresist.org) has generated thousands of letters from people in the U.S. to Canadian government and political leaders and these have clearly helped, as have the vigils and delegations to the Canadian Embassy in Washington and Canadian Consulates around the U.S.
Project Safe Haven, a network of Vietnam War resisters who are supporting war resisters today, is calling for people to contact Canadian representatives in the U.S. this week.
* THANK the Canadian people and their Parliament for supporting our war resisters.
* CALL on the Conservative government to follow the will of the Canadian people and implement this motion.
* DEMAND an end to deportation proceedings against Corey Glass and other war resisters
You can visit the Canadian Consulate in person. In Seattle, we will have a Celebration outside of the Canadian Consulate, 1501 4th Ave. at Pike St., on Thursday, June 5, at noon. There will also be vigils and delegations in several other cities.
And you can call them, fax them, or email them.
Canadian Consular offices are in over 20 U.S. cities. Here are their addresses, phone numbers, and email addresses.
If you want to participate in visits to the Canadian Embassy or Consulates, please send an email toor call Gerry Condon at 206-499-1220.
If you are a member of Iraq Veterans Against the War or Veterans For Peace, you may want to get in touch with your local chapter or national office to let them know you want to participate, and to help organize these events.
U.S. war resisters and their wonderful Canadian supporters have won a historic victory. By acting decisively at this time, we in the U.S. can participate in this victory and help to make it an even bigger one.
Thank you for whatever you may be able to do at this time.
for peace and justice,
Gerry Condon
(206) 499-1220
Soldier Say No / Project Safe Haven
SoldierSayNo@yahoo.com
projectsafehaven@hotmail.com
www.SoldierSayNo.blogspot.com
Let the Reign of the Colonels Begin
Last week's primary elections, both locally and nationally, could best be described as "out of the frying pan and into the fire." Or, "out of the Coal Junta, and into the Zionist Holocaust/Nakba." The best candidates won everywhere. Unfortunately, they were all "the lesser of two (or more) evils." There weren't any good candidates running, which is the real point of all this, from the point of view of those who are fervently trying to establish a military dictatorship, and end constitutional government (along with abortion and gay marriage) in Amerika.
We had a truly bizarre Congressional and Senate primary outcome in Montana. A lifelong Progressive Democrat advocate of unicameral parliamentary government won the REPUBLICAN nomination to oppose the crypto-Republican Max Baucus, running for the umpteenth time as a Democrat. And another Progressive Democrat won the nomination to oppose the major Bush Republican sycophant Denny Rehberg for Montana's only House seat. Here's the punchline: both are Army Reserve Colonels! Most Republicans (and Democrats) in Montana are chicken-hawks - at best, they were drafted or did National Guard duty for awhile as their military "service." Only the real "reformers" are higher-ranking officers, who have actually fought in wars, and have ties with the Pentagon!
Col. Bob Kelleher, the "perennial candidate" whose only prior elected office was to the Montana Constitutional Convention in 1972, is the "One House Parliament" guy. I've known him for 20 years, and supported his cause for even longer. He is a graduate of Catholic University in Washington, D.C., and his military service was as a JAG lawyer. I'm a firm believer that the present U.S. Constitution does not allow for partisan politics, and if we're going to have parties, then we need a parliamentary government in which the leading member of Congress whose party wins a general election then becomes Prime Minister. (The President is merely a ceremonial position, and has nothing to do with creating policy or legislation). This is the French model as it presently exists, but Kelleher prefers the British model (without, apparently, the House of Lords) following the Reform Acts of 1832. He knows his stuff, and has elaborated these ideas endlessly, in numerous campaigns for everything from Governor to POTUS. This is the first time (and he is in his mid-80's) he has ever run as a Republican, and the first time he has actually won a primary. He ran twice as a Green Party candidate: for Senate (also against Baucus) in 2002, and for Governor in 2004. The fact that some of us supported him, and all abortion advocates (and Demogreens) opposed him, accounts for much of the sorry state of the Green Party in Montana, today.
Last time I spoke with Bob several years ago, we were still friends. He is a very impressive and good-hearted man. I wish him well. And I will cover his campaign in this Bulletin, and probably work for him privately, if I can find some sympathetic Republicans here to work with (and I know a few). It will require a bizarre twist in campaign tactics, to say the least, but that is nothing new in Montana.
The other Progressive Democrat running - surprise - as a Democrat but without any party support (thus far at least), is Col. John Driscoll. John has an even more impressive resume, and ran against Baucus in the primary back in 1996. He is a former Public Service Commissioner, and probably the youngest Speaker of the House of the Montana Legislature in our state's history (the other contender would be Dan Kemmis). This was back in late 1970's or early '80's. He refuses to accept any special interest money for his campaigns.
A few years ago, I used to reprint articles from John's "Steward Magazine" in the Bulletin. We tried to encourage him to run for office as a Green, but he remains a loyal Democrat. He is also a close friend of Bob Kelleher's, and since they are both Army Reserve Colonels (John isn't a lawyer, but has worked with the Joint Chiefs of Staff and other high-level policy-making positions,) they could immediately be influential members of any military procurement or other military affairs committee in Congress. Both candidates abhor the pork-barrel, log-rolling traditions of Montana's Congressional delegation, and both would, I suspect, support any and all withdrawals from Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as repealing the USA PATRIOT Act and supporting other vital reforms or restorations of republican, constitutional government. But I will leave it to them to make their speeches and present their arguments in policy statements and debates as they unfold. Hopefully, we'll be hearing a lot from them. - PHS
===========
OBITUARY
Lady Barbara Ann Carne-Foster, GFHS Class of 1957
I don't often do obituaries, and if I were still writing poetry, Barb would be a fitting subject for my finest efforts. I don't know if she appeared on any Queen's Lists, but she was definitely a Peer of the Realm - several Realms, in fact, beginning with Black Eagle. Since this is a copper-toned Realm, she might have been identified as Jody Foster's cosmic fairy godmother. She and her first husband, Jack Foster, were celebrated in many ways in popular culture.
The daughter of a famous Black Eagle restaurateur, Rudy Carne, her dowry was the Italian recipes which made The Jack Club (originally a remodeled country school-house) into the hottest nightclub in town. "Be a King and take your Queen to the Jack Club" was their advertising slogan back in the 1960's.
Jack was also remembered as having the first MG-TC in north-central Montana. He and my uncle Charles were close friends, and working-class comrades in the glass business. Charles may have been the best man at their wedding. Marrying Barbara was Jack's entry into a world of higher status and respectability - surprising as that might sound to those who considered Italians, Slavs and their Black Eagle enclave (known as "Little Chicago" to themselves) a less-desirable culture and place to live. (Now it's a major superfund site because of the Anaconda Smelter, but that's another story).
As was so often the case with my father's and uncle's friends, I was never socially introduced to the Foster's, outside of having worked as a swamper temporarily for the Jack Club when I was in high school. But I heard a lot about them. More recently, I got to know Barbara very well in her later years when I was driving cab. She owned a bar, the Red Door (with probably the most diverse clientele in town), and was often in need of a ride home by the end of the night. She remembered Charles, and we often reminisced about "the good old days." She was very pleased when I ran for County Commissioner as a Green, but expressed disappointment when I came out against machine gambling and in favor of a living wage ordinance (why, I don't know. All of her employees were much better paid than that). She may have helped to get me fired from the cab company for those very reasons. If so, it probably saved my life.
I hadn't realized that she was a member of that most illustrious class in Great Falls High School history - what I now identify as "The class of Atlas Shrugged and Sputnik." Many of us in the class of 1965 had older siblings or cousins in that class, and we have been struggling to keep up or surpass them ever since. Even when we have, it was always by the standards of that earlier foundation. So, I'll count Barbara as my most recent best friend from the Class of '57, and mourn her passing. Those were Happy Days, indeed. -- PHS
Tribune Obituary
http://www.legacy.com/greatfallstribune/Obituaries.asp?Page=Lifestory&PersonId=111132687
===========
FILM
The Mouse that Roared - starring mainly Peter Sellars in a variety of roles
Directed by Jack Arnold
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0053084/
This is a film that came out when I was in junior high school, but I had never seen it until I borrowed a DVD of it from the library last week. One of the trailers featured there was for "Dr. Strangelove," which is appropriate. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0057012/ (The other was an obscure Jerry Lewis film, "Don't Raise the Bridge, Lower the River.")
"The Mouse that Roared" is a kind of comedy version of "Dr. Strangelove," but still features a "loose nuke" and the threat of nuclear warfare as a major plotline. I checked the dates, and found that Mouse dates from 1959, while Dr. Strangelove was made five years later. Since the former is in color, and the latter in b&w, I would have thought that Dr. Strangelove was the earlier film. So far as I know, Stanley Kubrick had nothing to do with "The Mouse that Roared." It is much lighter in tone.
The Grand Duchy of Fenwick, supposedly started by an eccentric Englishman in the Swiss Alps centuries ago, subsists entirely on the basis of a single variety of wine (a reference to "monocrop agriculture", perhaps?) Unscrupulous American trade pirates in San Rafael, California, have produced a counterfeit, thus destroying Fenwick's viability. This means war, and the Fenwick army of some 30 middle-aged mail-coated knights sails for America, hoping to engage in battle, surrender, and then become the beneficiaries of U.S. foreign aid to our defeated adversaries. Quite a bit like Iraq and other "client states," actually.
Unfortunately, the plan backfires, and the Fenwickians return home with an Einstein-like nuclear scientist, Professor Kokintz, and his beautiful daughter, Helen (Jean Seaberg), along with a bomb which can destroy half of Europe. All of the major powers are at Fenwick's beck and call, hoping to form an alliance with them.
Of course, we knew in Great Falls that this movie, like most others, was really about us and our "third largest nuclear arsenal in the world" promoted by Senator Mansfield and President Kennedy right about that time. It is also a precursor to many later films besides Dr. Strangelove, including "The Manhattan Project" about a high school student who builds his own atomic bomb for a science project (with John Lithgow's assistance), as well as a later comedy about Einstein and his daughter. "The Princess Diaries" also draws heavily on this Fenwickian "history." -- PHS
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Viewer comment from the IMDb
"Although it's considered a harmless entertainment, 'The Mouse That Roared' is chock full of satiric jibes at the dirty politics, international relations, and paranoid culture of The Cold War- its just that the jokes are so quick and subtle that you might miss them if you blink (one of my favorite touches concerns a radio report of 'aliens'- actually the chain-mailed soldiers of Grand Fenwick- sighted in Central Park. Upon hearing the report amongst a crowd of shocked New Yorkers, one well-dressed, perfectly normal looking gent mutters about the supposed alien invasion: 'I knew it - it HAD to come to this!' This is the filmmakers' fairly accurate portrayal of how far some Americans had descended, by this time, into Atomic, Cold War and Space-Crazed paranoia).
It should be said that the diplomatic relations between America and the World, as portrayed in this film, are even MORE RELEVANT now than they were during the Cold War; except that the American statesmen seem so virtuous and well-meaning in comparison to some of our current ones. Rent it and you'll see what I mean."
==============
MUSIC
The Piatigorsky-Grossman Concerts, Great Falls
http://www.piatigorskyfoundation.org/Gregor.cfm
I was looking at the USC Thornton School of Music website the other day, and I see they've recruited 'cellist Ralph Kirshbaum to the Gregor Piatigorsky Chair. http://www.usc.edu/uscnews/stories/14865.html
A few weeks ago, Piatigorsky's grandson, Evan Drachman, also a 'cellist, was in Great Falls for what has become an unheralded and poorly-attended annual stop for the Piatigorsky Foundation's touring musicians. I've heard three of these ensembles, and I have yet to see any of the regular symphony crowd or even student musicians there - even though the recitals are free. Each group plays about 5 different venues locally over a week or so, many of them in very small towns, and all of them in schools, nursing homes, and even prisons. This was my first opportunity to actually meet Evan, who created the program, and thank him personally for what must be the only classical music "outreach" of its kind in the world.
In past years, I've heard an opera-singer named Erika, and a Scottish-Canadian Harp and Flute duo play here under the auspices of the Piatigorsky Foundation. Randy Barrett, the Cascade County Aging Services director and a public radio announcer on KGPR met Evan at some sort of conference, and that is why the Piatigorsky Foundation has made Great Falls a regular stop ever since. I should also mention Jeffrey Grossman, Evan's pick-up accompanist, who with only a day or two's preparation was able to do a masterful job in the Debussy Sonata as well as orchestral reductions in other works like Tchaikovsky's Roccoco Variations, playing on small, upright pianos of poor quality. I could close my eyes and imagine I was hearing a young James Levine in Carnegie Hall! A recent Harvard graduate, he is also co-founder of the Harvard Early Music Project. http://www.jeffreygrossman.com
I am probably the only person in Great Falls who actually heard Gregor Piatigorsky play live - at UCLA's Royce Hall, with the Debut Orchestra conducted by Michael Tilson Thomas, who was then in his early 20's. Evan resembles his grandfather, and took pride in sharing a number of anecdotes about Gregor's early career during the Russian Revolution, his objections to the Beethoven Quartet being renamed the Lenin Quartet, and his escape across the border into Poland, which was anxious to send him back, except that some of the soldiers assigned to do that were musicians, and working class solidarity prevailed.
Evan started on the 'cello quite late, and his grandfather had little hope that he would excel at it. However, no less than Mstislav Rostropovich encouraged him later on, and took Evan back to Russia after 1989 where they played several concerts, with Rostropovich conducting.
As one might imagine, Evan is not the normal up-and-coming classical music "star." In fact, he is egalitarian to a fault, and sees his mission as sharing the blessings of music with those who need it the most. I told him, as a personal aside, that his performance "made up for a year of abuse and neglect" in my own life, and that many other people here no doubt felt the same. The next time I hear someone describe classical music as "elitist," I'm going to punch him in the face. -- PHS
/\/\/\/\/\
CARBON TAXES
[Last week, the coal and oil junta, the auto industry, and their associated unions managed to defeat even the pale and weakened Senate bill to cap carbon emissions and implement carbon taxes. Do you know how your Senators voted? I'm afraid to look, but I'd give odds that both of Montana's Senators voted against it. -- PHS]
WE CAN'T AFFORD THE HIGH COST OF DOING NOTHING
By RICHARD BARRETT And THOMAS M. POWER
http://www.greatfallstribune.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/200805270500/OPINION/805270306
Several American business groups, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers and the American Council for Capital Formation, have launched nationwide campaigns to convince the public that a serious effort to limit the pollution that causes global warming would have catastrophic consequences for the American economy, while providing no significant benefits. It is hard to believe that organizations claiming to represent business interests could be so out of touch with economic and energy reality.
The target of their ire is the Climate Security Act, introduced in Congress by Sens. John Warner, R-Va., and Joseph Lieberman, I-Conn., and approved by Sen. Barbara Boxer's, D-Calif., Environment and Public Works Committee. It would reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 70 percent, by 2050.
Two of the opposed groups, NAM and ACCF, recently released an economic study they say demonstrates the "enormous" costs we would incur from this legislation. For instance, they claim it would lead to a "loss" of about 1.3 million American jobs. But this grossly misrepresents what their own study actually shows, which is no net job loss as a result of greenhouse gas regulation.
Actually, the study projects that job growth would slow very slightly.
Instead of the American economy creating 15.4 million new jobs over the next 12 years, 14.1 million new jobs would be added. At the beginning of 2020, there would be only about 0.8 percent fewer jobs in the economy, and by the end of the year normal job growth would eliminate even this small shortfall. What is startling is not how many jobs we will lose, but rather how many we will gain as we move towards a low emissions economy.
And even the finding of slower growth is questionable. That's because the study makes unreasonably pessimistic assumptions regarding the technical and entrepreneurial creativity and adaptability of the businesses they claim to represent. In the face of a new energy reality, in which greenhouse gas emissions carry a steep price, businesses and households will find ways of reducing them - through renewable energy, conservation and technological transformation.
We've repeatedly seen this type of rapid and pervasive adaptation and innovation, in the spread of computer technology, the rise of the Internet and the revolution in telecommunications. If public policy creates the right set of incentives to reduce global warming pollution, we'll find enormous opportunities open to us, with negligible resulting costs.
The study opposing the climate change legislation also fails to recognize the potential of increased energy efficiency. Yet national research organizations have identified many simple measures to reduce energy use and greenhouse gas emissions, such as switching to compact fluorescent bulbs.
The business groups seek to scare Americans about high electricity and gasoline prices under the Climate Security Act. But this misrepresents the way prices work. Although an increase in energy prices is needed to stimulate energy innovation, higher energy prices need not burden families and businesses because innovative energy technologies will significantly reduce how much energy they must buy.
Beyond the scare tactics, the core argument offered by the opposed organizations is that we gain nothing by acting on our own. The logic is flawless but severely limited, since it applies with equal force to those other countries - China shouldn't act unless the United States does, the European Union shouldn't act before India, and so forth.
This type of thinking points inexorably toward a "race to the bottom," resulting in global inaction and ultimately self-destruction. We need international negotiations leading to global agreements to reduce emissions, and we only gain an influential place at the negotiating table if we're prepared to take significant action. Right now, we simply discredit ourselves by whining about the costs of reducing emissions while suggesting that much poorer nations bear the burden. And finally, though the study never addresses the issue, it's ignored a huge elephant in the room - the costs of doing nothing. In fact, the former chief economist of the World Bank, Nicholas Stern, recently said that a 2006 report - estimating the adverse impacts of climate change at up to one-fifth of the world's gross domestic product - had underestimated the risks.
If we fail to act because of poorly constructed and deceptively reasoned economic arguments, we will assure changes in world climate that will fundamentally affect the America that we know, leaving behind for our children and grandchildren a dramatically diminished natural landscape, society, and economy.
Thomas Michael Power is a research professor and former chairman of the Department of Economics at the University of Montana, where Richard Barrett is an emeritus professor of economics.
/\/\/\/\/\
FROM GREEN LISTS
At Primaries' End, American Indians in Rare Focus
By Adam Tanner Mon Jun 2,
LAME DEER, Montana (Reuters) - Often paid scant attention in U.S. presidential elections, Native Americans are taking an unusually high profile in the final stretch of the Democratic primary campaign.
Both Democratic candidates Hillary Clinton and front-runner Barack Obama recently have visited remote Indian reservations in the rugged Western states of Montana and South Dakota, which hold the final contests in the drawn-out state-by-state battle on Tuesday.
One Montana tribe, the Crow Nation, has ceremoniously adopted Obama, giving him a name which means "one who helps people throughout this land."
"Never before have we had such hope for a candidate, except maybe a Kennedy," said Crow Chairman Carl Venne, who said Obama was the first U.S. presidential candidate ever to visit his tribe in southeastern Montana.
In previous elections, the party's candidate has been decided long before primary voting in Montana and South Dakota. Obama is looking to wrap up the nomination in these two final contests June 3.
Just above 1 percent of the U.S. population is Native American, but the numbers rise to more than 6 percent in Montana on the Canadian border. Depending on turnout, they could represent as many as 15 percent of Montana's Democratic voters, numbers that could tip the state's outcome although Obama appears poised overall to win the national contest.
Poverty is widespread among many tribes -- especially in remote areas of the Western states -- and many Native Americans see Democrats as more sympathetic to issues important on the reservations including more jobs and better health care and education.
But should the Democrat lose in the November general election, some say Republican Sen. John McCain represents a better-than-usual second choice for Indians.
"Hillary and Obama are getting up to speed on Indian affairs, while McCain in Arizona already represents the largest Native American community in the country, the Navajos," said Clara Caufield, an assistant to the Northern Cheyenne president in Lame Deer, Montana.
McCain has twice served as the chairman of the U.S. Senate Committee on Indian Affairs and is knowledgeable about the complex issues facing Native Americans. Many also respect his past military service.
As for the adoption of Obama by the Crow tribe next door, Caufield scoffed: "We take our traditions more seriously than that. The Crow adopt people at the drop of the hat."
As among all voters, Indians are divided. Within her own office, Caufield's boss, Northern Cheyenne president Geri Small, has endorsed Clinton, a New York senator.
INDIAN LEADER CRITICIZES MCCAIN
One prominent Native American who has worked with McCain is Elouise Cobell, a Montana member of the Blackfeet Tribe. She is leading a multibillion-dollar lawsuit again the U.S. government, charging that tribes were cheated for more than a century out of payments made for the rights to mine, farm and graze on their land.
"He's sympathetic, but that's the problem we have here with Indian issues," Cobell said about McCain. "We really get a lot of promises, especially around election time: oh gosh, they have been treated so horrible. But then nobody does anything about it, so what good are all these words and promises?"
For Charlie Vaughan, chairman of the Hualapai nation in the wilderness flanking a 100-mile (160-km) stretch of the Grand Canyon's southern rim in Arizona, the big issue for members is the high price of gas.
"Given the remoteness of a lot of reservation lands and the tribes that live on them, and how they are impacted by rising fuel costs ... we think that a McCain presidency would be more harmful," Vaughn said. "He favors continuing the war and that's going to tend to drive up fuel prices, and it will hurt us."
Tribal members in these parched lands have a 50-mile (80-km) drive to the nearest town to buy groceries, fuel and clothes, distances not uncommon for remote reservations.
Many Native Americans, who have long suffered discrimination, also say that either Obama, who would be the first black U.S. president, or Clinton, who would be the first woman U.S. president, would better understand their plight.
"We have had the same mind-set for 500 years, with white men running the country," said Ofelia Rivas, a tribal elder of the Tohnono O'odham Nation on the Arizona- Mexico border. "I prefer the idea of either a woman or a so-called minority person in the White House, so that we will have a different perspective."
(Additional reporting by Tim Gaynor in Phoenix)
============
WHY GREENS DO NOT SUPPORT BARACK OBAMA
FROM JOHN PILGER
From Kennedy To Obama; Liberalism's Last Fling
http://www.johnpilger.com/
As their contest for the White House draws closer, watch how, regardless of the inevitable personal smears, Obama and McCain draw nearer to each other. They already concur on America's divine right to control all before it. "We lead the world in battling immediate evils and promoting the ultimate good," said Obama. "We must lead by building a 21st-century military . . . to advance the security of all people." McCain agrees. Obama says in pursuing "terrorists" he would attack Pakistan. McCain wouldn't quarrel. Both candidates have paid ritual obeisance to the regime in Tel Aviv, unquestioning support for which defines all presidential ambition. In opposing a UN Security Council resolution implying criticism of Israel's starvation of the people of Gaza, Obama was ahead of both McCain and Hillary Clinton. In January, pressured by the Israel lobby, he massaged a statement that "nobody has suffered more than the Palestinian people" to now read: "Nobody has suffered more than the Palestinian people from the failure of the Palestinian leadership to recognise Israel [emphasis added]." Such is his concern for the victims of the longest, illegal military occupation of modern times. Like all the candidates, Obama has furthered Israeli/Bush fictions about Iran, whose regime, he says absurdly, "is a threat to all of us".
=========================
COMMENT by Paul Stephens
Why does Obama think he has to support Zionist Apartheid? Is it only the money?
We might wishfully think that, as the Rev. Wright said, Obama is simply doing what he has to do as a politician to be elected President. And he probably supposes that he must reassure, appease, or capitulate to the Zionist lobby if he wants to win. Whether or not he has taken money from them (and apparently he has) is beside the point. They have the power to destroy his campaign in the minds of the entire "East Coast Liberal Establishment," American Zionists (including many Black Americans), as well as the Military-Industrial Complex which thrives on these Middle Eastern wars and arms build-ups.
Obama and his advisors no doubt believe that he cannot win if he doesn't unconditionally support Israel. Once he is elected President, some of them might imagine that he can then "be his own man", and do whatever he thinks is right and just, in the manner of Jimmy Carter. Unfortunately, Jimmy Carter (or any other President) was never free to act on his conscience, either - not, at least, until he was out of office. JFK may have been the last President to vigorously oppose the Zionist lobby and its nuclear aspirations after they helped (probably decisively) to get him elected. The more I read about this, the more I'm convinced that American Zionists were complicit in his death - Jack Ruby being only the final instrument of their attempts to "seal the record" on the assassination and its aftermath.
Still, we think that Obama could at least speak the truth, and stand up for Palestinian rights while defending Israel's right to exist as a free, democratic, and ethnically integrated state. He doesn't have to follow the punishing Zionist-Apartheid agenda (indeed, how could he possibly do so?) which only a third or so of Jewish Israeli's actually support. He needs to join with Ilan Pappe and the Israeli peace and reconciliation parties and movements, not the militaristic, fascist Zionists. But of course we know by now that Obama is anything but "the peace candidate." More on this, below. -- PHS
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FROM AL JAZEERA.NET
Arabs shocked by Obama speech
Barack Obama said he spoke as a "true friend" of Israel [EPA]
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/93FE247B-452D-4022-8374-088D8704C1DE.htm
THURSDAY, JUNE 05, 2008
Arab leaders have reacted with anger and disbelief to an intensely pro-Israeli speech delivered by Barack Obama, the US Democratic presumptive presidential nominee.
Obama told the influential annual policy conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Council (Aipac): "Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel and it must remain undivided."
His comments appalled Palestinians who see occupied East Jerusalem as part of a future Palestinian state.
Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator, told Al Jazeera on Thursday: "This is the worst thing to happen to us since 1967 ... he has given ammunition to extremists across the region".
"What really disappoints me is that someone like Barack Obama, who runs a campaign on the theme of change - when it comes to Aipac and what's needed to be said differently about the Palestinian state, he fails."
RELATED
Reporter's diary: Divided Jerusalem
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/A1BA180A-6B42-4EB2-8171-2E182F74FF4A.htm
Inside the US-Israel lobby
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/69604333-7916-439E-8919-434C76B4149E.htm
"I say to Obama ... please stop being more Israeli than the Israelis themselves, leave the Israelis and Palestinians alone to make decisions required for peace."
Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, rejected the statement, saying: "We will not accept an independent Palestinian state without having Jerusalem as the capital.
"I believe that case is clear."
He said: "Jerusalem is part of the six points that are subjects on the negotiations' agenda.
"And the whole world knows that East Jerusalem, Arab Jerusalem and Holy Jerusalem were occupied in 1967."
'Hope slashed'
Sami Abu Zuhri, a spokesman for Hamas, the largest Palestinian resistance group, also condemned the speech, saying on Thursday: "These statements slash any hope of any change in the American foreign policy.
"[They] assure that there is a total agreement between the two parties, the Democratic and the Republican, on support for the Israeli occupation at the expense of the rights of Arabs and Palestinian interests."
IN DEPTH
Israel and the Nakba
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/15D014B8-32B9-4F08-A258-8EB37B0DDF49.htm
The ancient city of Jerusalem is divided into East and West. Israel captured East Jerusalem in the 1967 war and unilaterally annexed it, in a move condemned by the United Nations as illegal.
Jerusalem's status as part of Israel is not internationally recognised and remains a central issue in peace negotiations.
'Unbreakable bond'
Obama, hours after securing his party's nomination on Wednesday, had gone on to say the US bond with Israel was "unbreakable today, unbreakable tomorrow, unbreakable for ever" and drew a standing ovation.
He told the gathering of one of US politics' most influential lobbying groups that, as president, he would "never compromise when it comes to Israel's security."
He also said any deal between Israelis and Palestinians should preserve Israel's identity as a Jewish state and that Hamas should be isolated and pledged to approve $30bn in aid to Israel over the next 10 years.
'Impressive speech'
Ehud Olmert, Israel's prime minister, called the Illinois senator's speech "very impressive".
"His words on Jerusalem were very moving," Olmert told reporters after meeting George Bush, the US president, at the White House.
The Illinois senator's comments come a day after US media projected that Obama had enough delegates to win the Democratic nomination and face John McCain, the presumptive Republican candidate, in the November election.
Iranian 'threat'
Obama also had harsh words for Iran, vowing to work to "eliminate" the threat it posed to security in the Middle East and around the globe.
Obama said an "undivided Jerusalem should remain the capital of Israel" [AFP]
"There's no greater threat to Israel or to the peace and stability of the region than Iran," he told the Aipac assembly.
Calling for "aggressive, principled diplomacy" with Tehran, he also warned he would never take the military option off the table in guaranteeing US and Israeli security.
Iranians responded cautiously, but optimistically, with officials expressing hope he can bring about change in Iran-US relations.
Hamidreza Hajibabaee, member of Iranian parliament, said: "We hope that Obama turns his words into actions, helps the Islamic Republic of Iran believe that the US has given up enmity and paves the way for fair negotiations."
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Ilan Pappe says Israel needs to acknowledge the crime it committed against the Palestinian people
As part of Al Jazeera's coverage of the anniversary of the creation of Israel and the Palestinian 'Nakba', Israeli historian Ilan Pappe reflects upon the events of 1948 and how they led to 60 years of division between the Israelis and Palestinians.
Between February, 1948 and December,1948 the Israeli army systematically occupied the Palestinian villages and towns, expelled by force the population and in most cases also destroyed the houses, looted their belongings and took over their material and cultural possessions. This was the ethnic cleansing of Palestine.
During the ethnic cleansing, wherever there was resistance by the population the result was a massacre. We have more than 30 cases of such massacres where a few thousand Palestinians were massacred by the Israeli forces throughout the operation of the ethnic cleansing.
read more>> http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/5C0036C5-83C9-4720-853D-0BFA9A4E1BC4.htm
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FROM Soldier Say No / Project Safe Haven
www.SoldierSayNo.blogspot.com
Canadian Parliament votes in favor of American war resisters
Today the Canadian Parliament made a historic vote in favor of U.S. war resisters who are seeking a safe haven in Canada rather than fight in the illegal occupation of Iraq. The vote in the House of Commons was 137-110, with all the opposition parties - the Liberal Party, the New Democratic Party, the Bloc Quebecois and the Green Party - voting for the motion, and the ruling Conservative Party voting against.
The Parliament calls on the minority Conservative government to create a program that will allow war resisters to immigrate to Canada, and it also calls for a halt to all deportation proceedings.
This is a VERY BIG victory for war resisters in Canada and everywhere. It will strengthen our hand considerably.
But the struggle for sanctuary in Canada is far from over. The Conservative government, a staunch ally of the Bush administration, may choose to defy the will of the Canadian people by ignoring this advisory motion.
Corey Glass, an Iraq veteran and war resister, was recently ordered to leave Canada by June 12 or face deportation.
So even as we celebrate this victory, we must step up the pressure on Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Immigration Minister Diane Finley. [See action alert from War Resisters Support Campaign, below, along with their press release and a news article.]
Yes, it does help for the Canadian government to hear from many people in the U.S. who want them to provide sanctuary for our war resisters. Courage To Resist (www.couragetoresist.org) has generated thousands of letters from people in the U.S. to Canadian government and political leaders and these have clearly helped, as have the vigils and delegations to the Canadian Embassy in Washington and Canadian Consulates around the U.S.
Project Safe Haven, a network of Vietnam War resisters who are supporting war resisters today, is calling for people to contact Canadian representatives in the U.S. this week.
* THANK the Canadian people and their Parliament for supporting our war resisters.
* CALL on the Conservative government to follow the will of the Canadian people and implement this motion.
* DEMAND an end to deportation proceedings against Corey Glass and other war resisters
You can visit the Canadian Consulate in person. In Seattle, we will have a Celebration outside of the Canadian Consulate, 1501 4th Ave. at Pike St., on Thursday, June 5, at noon. There will also be vigils and delegations in several other cities.
And you can call them, fax them, or email them.
Canadian Consular offices are in over 20 U.S. cities. Here are their addresses, phone numbers, and email addresses.
If you want to participate in visits to the Canadian Embassy or Consulates, please send an email to
If you are a member of Iraq Veterans Against the War or Veterans For Peace, you may want to get in touch with your local chapter or national office to let them know you want to participate, and to help organize these events.
U.S. war resisters and their wonderful Canadian supporters have won a historic victory. By acting decisively at this time, we in the U.S. can participate in this victory and help to make it an even bigger one.
Thank you for whatever you may be able to do at this time.
for peace and justice,
Gerry Condon
(206) 499-1220
Soldier Say No / Project Safe Haven
SoldierSayNo@yahoo.com
projectsafehaven@hotmail.com
www.SoldierSayNo.blogspot.com
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