February 4, 2008 Volume VII, Number 6
A PROJECT OF THE CASCOGREENS
Paul Stephens, Editor and Publisher 406.216.2711 greateco@3rivers.net
THIS BULLETIN IS NOT AN OFFICIAL PUBLICATION OF ANY GREEN PARTY (see disclaimers and selected resources at end)
Much of the content of this Bulletin is now being posted at http://greateco.blogspot.com/
and http://www.myspace.com/greateco
Table of Contents:
UPCOMING AND ONGOING EVENTS
Conservation Council meets Thursdays at noon, Penny's Gourmet to Go, 815 Central Avenue (New location!!)
ENDGAME; Planning for the American Holocaust now underway
Rule by Fear or Rule by Law?
by Lewis Seiler and Dan Hamburg, SF Chronicle
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/02/04/6824/
No New Coal Plants vs. "Big Green" - the Final Conflict?
Stopping Coal in Its Tracks - Loosely affiliated activists draw a hard line -- and hold it by Ted Nace
http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/506
FROM DEMOCRACY NOW!:
"The Myth of a Maverick": Matt Welch on GOP Frontrunner John McCain
http://www.democracynow.org/2008/2/4/the_myth_of_a_maverick
Former Democratic Rep. Cynthia McKinney Seeks Presidency as Green Party Nominee
http://www.democracynow.org/2008/2/4/former_democratic_rep_cynthia
FROM CYNTHIA MCKINNEY: "Something for Which to Vote" MLK, Jr. Day 2008"
The idea of a Black president
Mumia Abu-Jamal Wednesday, 09 January 2008
http://www.sfbayview.com/News/Editorial/The_idea_of_a_Black_president.html
Peace movement collapses - Interview with Daniel Brezenoff, former California Green congressional candidate
Uprising, KPFK http://uprisingradio.org/home/?p=2308
ILLINOIS GREEN PARTY WELCOMES PROGRESSIVES AND POPULISTS TO
PARTICIPATE IN HISTORIC GREEN PRIMARY
GREEN SOLUTIONS by Paul Stephens, CasCoGreens
Is this the beginning of the end, or the end of the beginning?
METIS HISTORY
What happened to Sacagawea’s children?
http://www.lewisandclarktravel.com/
COAL AND ENERGY ISSUES
Is the Air Force synfuels plant a good idea? - by Paul Stephens, CasCoGreens
FROM GREEN LISTSERVS
Martin Zehr on energy policy
Comment by Morgan D'Arc
FROM ORION MAGAZINE
Stopping Coal in Its Tracks - Loosely affiliated activists draw a hard line -- and hold it - by Ted Nace
http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/506
FROM MONTANA ENERGY LISTS
Wind farm proposed in central Mont.; state hopes more to come http://www.heraldextra.com/component/option,com_contentwire/task,view/id,11820/Itemid,53/ By MATTHEW BROWN, Associated Press Writer, with comments from Russ Doty, Wilbur Wood, and Ben Brouwer of AERO
THE KACZYNSKI LEGACY
Interview with Ted Kaczynski http://www.primitivism.com/kaczynski.htm
FROM THEWIP.NET
According to Harold Bloom, "What we are seeing is…the fall of America" --by Eva Sohlman - Sweden -http://www.thewip.net/contributors/2008/01/according_to_harold_bloom_what.html
MEDICINE Genetic Fairness legislation pending http://www.geneticfairness.org/action_alert5.html
DRUG POLICY ALLIANCE http://dpa.convio.net/
POLITICS
Are you ready for the American Revolutionary Party? http://www.americanrevolutionaryparty.us/index.htm
A NOTE ABOUT THIS PUBLICATION
WEBSITES AND OTHER RESOURCES
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
THE GREENS SUPPORT:
HEALTH CARE DOLLARS FOR HEALTH CARE PROVIDERS -- NOT INSURANCE COMPANIES AND CORPORATE PROFITS
STOP THE WARS! BRING THE TROOPS HOME NOW! WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION ARE NOT A LOCAL GROWTH INDUSTRY!
COAL USE MUST BE MINIMIZED, NOT MAXIMIZED: GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGE IS REAL! http://www.ipcc.ch/
END CORPORATE DOMINATION AND PREDATION: CORPORATIONS AREN'T PEOPLE, AND THEY DON'T HAVE "PROPERTY" OR OTHER RIGHTS! http://reclaimdemocracy.org/
For an introduction to Green Party philosophy and programs, go to http://www.gp.org/welcome.shtml
You can join the Montana Green Party at the NEW MONTANA GREEN PARTY WEBSITE!! http://www.mtgreens.org
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UPCOMING AND ONGOING EVENTS
Do you support the Mayor's Climate Protection Agreement?
Some local municipalities get it on the climate crisis and have been working to meet these objectives. There are now over 500 city, town and county governments representing over 50 million people that have signed onto the Mayor's Climate Protection Agreement,
________________
GF Conservation Council
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NEW MEETING PLACE: Penny's Gourmet (Central Avenue between 8th and 9th), Thursday's at noon.
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2/7/2008 - John Stephenson, "Review McKinsey Report - Greenhouse Gas Emissions: How Much at What Cost?" Note: John's son Jack was a team leader on this project which has received attention from the major newspapers and is now being studied by some members of Congress.
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FROM STEVE KELLY
This is what having a two-winged War Party and two-family government will get you:
There were only two Dems and Bernie Sanders standing up against giving Bush and his Pentagon almost 700 billion taxpayers dollars. The major Dem presidential candidates weren't there for the 91-3 vote.
The three were:
Byrd (D-WV)
Feingold (D-WI)
Sanders (I-VT)
----------------------------------------------
Not Voting - 6 :Clinton (D-NY)McCain (R-AZ) Menendez (D-NJ)Obama (D-IL) Thune (R-SD)
Warner (R-VA)
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TAPS - Taking Action for Peaceful Solutions - Butte
DOCUMENTARIES AT TECH -- Please call if you are in doubt as to how to find the
ELC building. Everyone's invited. Free will donations appreciated.
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'BIG EASY TO BIG EMPTY' plus 3 Palast short films Tuesday Feb. 5 (Mardi Gras) documentaries at Tech
Butte's peace groups present two films by journalist Greg Palast on Tuesday February 5. "Big Easy to Big Empty: The Untold Story of the Drowning of New Orleans" is a fitting choice for Tuesday which is Mardi Gras, the date of traditional celebrations in New Orleans before Lent begins. It will be followed by a second film of three BBC reports on Latin America by Palast.
"Big Easy" is a 2006 documentary on New Orleans years after hurricane Katrina. During its filming, Greg Palast and his producer were charged with criminal violations of anti-terror laws by the Department of Homeland Security. The film shows why the Bush administration pressed those charges.
Tuesday's second feature consists of three BBCNewsnight reports that Palast filed from Venezuela, Ecuador and Mexico. One focuses on the near-assassination of Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez. Palast gives reasons why the US is working to remove Chavez from power. The Ecuador episode tells how "Big Oil" and the International Monetary Fund planned a financial coup. The third Palast BBC report tells why many consider the last Mexican presidential election to have been stolen.
This semester the films are shown in Room 203 of the ELC Building on the Montana Tech campus at 7 pm. The Engineering/Laboratory Classroom Building is between Park and Granite Streets, just north of (behind) of the Tech Library and the Mining Geology Building . Parking is available in the Library lot and another just to the east of the ELC. For information call 723-3851.
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"INCIDENT IN I CORPS" is TUESDAY FEB. 12 DOCUMENTARY
Filmmaker Paul Edwards of Helena will come to Butte in a personal appearance to present his Vietnam War film to our audience as part of the ongoing Citizens Education Project of the Montana Tech Peace Seekers Club with TAPS and Sacred Ground. Paul Edwards was the director of Bobby Kennedy's personal film crew in 1968. He worked in Vietnam for nearly three years from 1965-67 and came to know the country and the war in depth and detail. He was a screen and TV writer for 30 years, starting with Gunsmoke in 1970 and ending up doing "Tecumseh", one of the badly botched Indian series that Turner made and wrote 40 movies in between. He is presently Chair of the Progressive Democrats of Montana and was Dennis Kucinich's Montana campaign manager both in 2004 and again this year.
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"UNCOUNTED" film and national teleconference WEDNESDAY FEB. 13
"Did you think the 2000 election was stolen? And that maybe something was wrong in 2004 as well? Are you wondering what effect election fraud had in 2006? Do you want to know what really happened and how it'll affect this year's election?"
PLEASE RSVP !!! Click on this link or else paste it into your browser. (Democracy for America provides the film free of charge if a certain number of people are registered to attend.)
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Excellent overview from Davos Economic Summit last week...
THE GLOBAL BATTLE FOR FOOD, OIL AND WATER
By Gideon Rachman Financial Times January 312, 2008
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Read this week's newsletter from the Jeanette Rankin Peace Center in Missoula
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Montana Higher Education -- The Bitter Truth
Ever since I was in high school, Montana education leaders have been telling us how great our colleges and universities are. UM Missoula, for example, was long touted as having more Rhodes Scholars than almost any other public university in the United States (as if there were any merit in that! They could advertise themselves as "Leaders in the Reduction of Africa and Global Imperialism"). And MSU Bozeman has a similar, self-created reputation for engineering and scientific education excellence. Carroll College and the College of Great Falls (now University of Great Falls) have often been rated highly among small, liberal arts colleges for value and price - especially in the US News and World Report surveys. But they are Catholic institutions subsidized by the Church to carry on a number of other missions and purposes.
The UCLA Alumni newsletter recently announced that UCLA was considered 10th best in the nation in a Kiplinger analysis of the "100 best colleges and universities", based on value and price comparisons. (Schools like Harvard, Yale, and Stanford are there, too, mainly because of their lavish financial aid packages - the "list price" for these schools is upwards of $40,000/year). http://www.kiplinger.com/magazine/archives/2008/01/best-value-colleges-2008.html
So, how did Montana colleges and universities stack up? None of them were listed in the Kiplinger survey. And, according to recent studies of "peer institutions" in neighboring states, Montana's state universities are facing declining enrollments, lower than average faculty salaries, much higher tuition charges, and much less financial aid and accessibility for lower income and minority students. There have also been scandals about Montana university system chancellors or presidents being lavishly paid off with board seats and other percs from leading resource and other exploitative corporations. And that is why Montana's best and brightest high school students have long been going out of state - often by moving to low tuition states and working there for a year in order to qualify for their in-state tuition rates. That is essentially what I did to go to UCLA - a much less popular and prestigious school, then, than it is, today. Their basketball dynasty was just beginning when I transferred there in 1966, and now they hold the record for NCAA championships for all sports, - nearly a hundred of them. I never attended a basketball game when I was there - I was in Kareem Abdul Jabbar's class, though, and I knew who he was. If I had gone to a game, I'm sure they would have lost. --PHS
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Introducing...
A New Magazine: The New West
Driving past most any Western city these days is a little like watching those time-lapse films back in grade school. Empty fields become bulldozed lots become framed houses become finished homes with trucks in the driveway and new grass in the yard.
It’s a time of dramatic change in the Mountain West. And I’m excited to say that we at NewWest.Net are now launching a quarterly print magazine to help us tell the big story of growth and change in the region.
The best way to check out our magazine is to subscribe. We want to know who’s interested in The New West, so we have made the magazine available free to qualified subscribers who answer a short questionnaire.
Click here for the questionnaire for a free subscription
You can also subscribe for $9.95 a year by clicking here.
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ENDGAME
Rule by Fear or Rule by Law?
by Lewis Seiler and Dan Hamburg
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/02/04/6824/
[This essay will appear in the February 4 edition of the San Francisco Chronicle.]
"The power of the Executive to cast a man into prison without formulating any charge known to the law, and particularly to deny him the judgment of his peers, is in the highest degree odious and is the foundation of all totalitarian government whether Nazi or Communist."
-- Winston Churchill, November 21, 1943
Since 9/11, and seemingly without the notice of most Americans, the US government has assumed the authority to institute martial law, arrest a wide swath of dissidents (citizen and non-citizen alike), and detain people without legal or constitutional recourse.
Beginning in 1999, the government has entered into a series of single-bid contracts with Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown and Root (KBR) to build detention camps at undisclosed locations within the United States in the event of "an emergency influx of immigrants in the U.S., or to support the rapid development of new programs."1 The government has also contracted with several companies to build thousands of railcars, some reportedly equipped with shackles, ostensibly to transport detainees.2
According to diplomat and author Peter Dale Scott, the KBR contract is part of a Homeland Security plan titled ENDGAME, which sets as its goal the removal of "all removable aliens" and "potential terrorists."3
Fraud-busters like Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Los Angeles) have complained about these contracts, saying that more taxpayer dollars shouldn't go taxpayer-gouging Halliburton.4 But the real question is: what kind of "new programs" require the construction and refurbishment of detention facilities in nearly every state of the Union with the capacity to house perhaps millions of people? According to whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, "Almost certainly this is preparation for a roundup after the next 9/11 for Middle Easterners, Muslims and possibly dissenters."5
read more>> http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/02/04/6824/
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No New Coal Plants vs. "Big Green" - the Final Conflict?
"The contrast between No New Coal Plants and Big Coal is obvious, but the contrast between such low-profile, leaderless entities and the large national groups typically identified with the environmental movement is equally striking. The largest of these groups, sometimes known as "Big Green" [disclaimer: this has nothing to do with the Green Party, its platform or agenda] include the Natural Resources Defense Council, Environmental Defense, and the National Wildlife Federation. Typically based in Washington DC or New York and sporting annual budgets in the tens of millions of dollars, these groups, not unlike the corporate and governmental entities they oppose, are hierarchical, highly organized, and reliant on trained and seasoned attorneys, scientific experts, and lobbyists. Yet the "Twigs," as some small-scale activists have taken to calling themselves in a pointed distinction from "Big Green," have lately taken more militant positions and have, in many cases, been more effective in stopping new coal-fired power plants."
FROM Stopping Coal in Its Tracks - Loosely affiliated activists draw a hard line -- and hold it by Ted Nace
http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/506
most of this article is reprinted in this Bulletin along with other discussion of the proposed Air Force synfuels plant and wind power projects in Montana
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FROM DEMOCRACY NOW!:
"The Myth of a Maverick": Matt Welch on GOP Frontrunner John McCain
Ahead of Super Tuesday, Senator John McCain is leading Republican polls, a significant comeback for a campaign that appeared expired just six months ago. We speak to Reason Magazine editor Matt Welch, author of "McCain: The Myth of a Maverick."
Listen/Watch/Read
Former Democratic Rep. Cynthia McKinney Seeks Presidency as Green Party Nominee
McKinney is among the most outspoken critics of the Bush administration and one of her last measures in office was to introduce a bill for the impeachment of President Bush and Vice President Cheney. She joins to talk about her new campaign and why she left the Democratic Party after more than a decade in public office.
Listen/Watch/Read
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FROM GREEN LISTSERVS
From Cynthia McKinney: "Something for Which to Vote" MLK, Jr. Day 2008"
"We cannot be satisfied so long as the Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and the Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote." Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. August 28, 1963
Dear Friend,
Are you:
* Incredulous at the fact that two Presidential elections were stolen and no one was held accountable?
* Disappointed that, as a result, our country is at war, involved in torture, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and crimes against the peace?
* Concerned, especially in light of New Hampshire, that your vote might not be counted in November and that the will of the voters will be thwarted yet again with election fraud or outright theft?
* Disquieted that the use of electronic voting machines, coupled with laws that restrict public access to election data "owned" by voting machine companies, might thwart your ability to verify election results if they are in question?
As acknowledged in the documentary American Blackout, I worked with investigative journalist Greg Palast and conducted my own Congressional investigation into election theft in Florida and across our country in the Presidential election of 2000. Those proceedings documented the role of Data Base Technologies, now a part of ChoicePoint, and election officials in Florida, in illegally "scrubbing" the voter rolls.
In 2001, with Al Gore presiding, I objected to the seating of the Florida electors. Not one Senator objected and so there was no discussion and no debate in the Congress about what happened in Florida and across our country in the 2000 Presidential election during the seating of the Electoral College. The same pattern of fraud and theft was planned and executed in the 2004 Presidential election. But this time, not relying on any political party, the people themselves demanded and funded an investigation into what happened in Ohio. More and more information comes to us about how the will of voters in Ohio was deliberately suppressed to produce a desired outcome.
This effort at discovering the truth of Ohio was led by independents, Libertarians, and the Green Party because the Democrats had already conceded the election.
In my own 2006 Congressional election, Georgia courts have ruled that the electronic election data cannot be made public because they belong to Diebold. The matter is going to be appealed all the way to the Georgia Supreme Court, but isn't that a shame? In my election night speech I declared electronic voting machines a clear and present danger to our Republic.
I want to keep election protection and a radical common sense approach to issues on the table. As the candidates with populist appeal, but without their party's support, are being pushed to the margins, I want to make sure that the election results are truly a reflection of the will of the voters. That will only happen if there is another voice raising critical issues.
Are you also:
* Waiting to hear the leading Presidential contenders say that it's past time to repeal the Patriot Acts, the Secret Evidence Act, the Bush tax cuts, the Military Tribunals Act, bring our troops home now, and institute a livable wage?
* Infuriated that 48 million of our neighbors have no access to health care while those of us with insurance have our claims too often denied?
* Ready to have the Parties' solutions to the shrinking dollar and the ballooning national debt explained, especially in light of rising food prices and unemployment?
*Tired of the belligerent talk being directed at Iran and Pakistan and ready for our country to become a leader in pursuit of peace? And finally, are you also
*Afraid that the issues you really care about won't get addressed in this election season and therefore the likelihood of them being addressed by the incumbent is almost nil?
I have traveled across our country to almost half its states. I have met too many people disillusioned by their fears that their issues won't be addressed in this campaign season. I've met many people who want to participate, but who long ago figured out that the system was rigged against the interests of working families and so, dropped out, but who want to have hope that our country can be delivered from its current morass.
Too many are feeling that they have nothing for which to vote, that their votes won't count, even worse, they might not even be counted. To them, I suggest looking another way. As I have done. On March 17th of 2007, I declared my independence from national leadership that deepens the slough in which our country finds itself today. That leadership has enabled our country to throw away traditional American values of justice, and peace, and freedom.
I have now become a member of the Green Party and am seeking its Presidential nomination.
I'm encouraging the people I've met to join me and do some things we've never done before in order to have some things we've never had before. I hope you will lend your support so we can press for election integrity and put real solutions to the problems faced by real people on the table in real talk that we all can understand.
This election in November is critical. The future of our country and the content of the current debate can be influenced by us. Please help me create the political space for real issues to stay on the table. I know you support the truth. I know you want to help the American people know the truth.
Please visit
visit
Please take the time to view two youtube offerings:
After viewing these films, I hope you will agree that our work deserves your support. The time is too precarious, the issues too important, our futures too much at risk for us to lose any more critical voices on important issues.
Thank you again for your support of truth. I hope to hear from you soon.
Sincerely,
Cynthia McKinney
P.S. You can mail your donation by U.S. Postal Service to:
Power to the People Committee
Cynthia McKinney for President
P.O. Box 311759
Atlanta, GA 31131-1759
Please complete and include in your mail our contribution form to help us comply with federal election reporting requirements:
Please note: Campaign Contributions are not tax-deductible. Corporate contributions are not permitted. Only U.S. residents and citizens aged 17 or older may make contributions to federal elections.
--
"It is the absolute responsibility of everybody in uniform to disobey an order that is either illegal or immoral." General Pace, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, National Press Club, February 17, 2006
"My brother need not be idealized . . . beyond what he was in life. To be remembered simply as a good and decent man who saw wrong and tried to right it, saw suffering and tried to heal it, saw war and tried to stop it. Eulogy of Bobby Kennedy by Teddy Kennedy, June 18, 1968
"Certain material weaknesses in financial reporting and other limitations on the scope of our work resulted in conditions that, for the 10th consecutive year, prevented us from expressing an opinion on the federal government's consolidated financial statements." David Walker, Comptroller General of the United States, December 15, 2006
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The idea of a Black president
Mumia Abu-Jamal Wednesday, 09 January 2008
Image The revolutionary first Black president in the Americas, Vicente Guerrero of Mexico
For much of the U.S. populace, the very idea of a Black president is one so new, so novel, that it forces many people to think of it as if it is barely possible - as if it is the stuff of fiction, not fact. Fiction has indeed been the realm of this idea, as in movies and television series, actors have played the part; but that, of course, is on TV.
Of course, time will tell if that is more than imagination, but for millions of people who share this vast land space we call North America, the idea is neither new nor ground-breaking. That's because there are some 100 million people living in Mexico, and that country had a Black president, albeit briefly, some 173 years ago.
It was during their war for independence from Spain when a warrior emerged, a Black Indian named Vicente Guerrero. In his first battle, he was commissioned a captain. As the independence war raged on, many of the leading revolutionaries were either killed or captured. Guerrero fought on, leading some 2,000 men into the Sierra Madre mountains to continue the fight.
By 1821, the Mexicans were prevailing over the Spanish, and Guerrero was hailed as an incorruptible independence fighter. In 1829 he became president of Mexico, and as scholar William Loren Katz writes in his 1986 book, "Black Indians":
"He began a program of far-reaching reforms, abolishing the death penalty and starting construction of schools and libraries for the poor. He ended slavery in Mexico. Yet, because of his skin color, lack of education and country manner, he was held in contempt by the upper classes in Mexico City."
This president, who had, according to U.S. historian M.H. Bancroft, "a gentleness and magnetism that inspired love among his adherents," was still "a triple-blooded outsider."
Black historian J.A. Rogers summarized Guerrero's striking accomplishments by calling him "the George Washington and Abraham Lincoln of Mexico" (page 48). Guerrero, who in his youth was an illiterate mule driver, once bitten by the bug of Mexican independence, rose to the highest office in the land.
He learned to read when he was about 40 and helped craft the Mexican Constitution, of which he wrote the following provision: "All inhabitants whether white, African or Indian, are qualified to hold office." He wrote this in 1824, over 30 years before the U.S. Supreme Court's infamous Dred Scott decision, which announced, emphatically, that "a Black man has no rights that a white man is bound to respect," and that Black people weren't, and could never be, citizens of the United States.
In that era of revolution and social transformation, a Black man became president of the second largest country in North America. Today, 178 years later, we still wonder if such a thing is possible. What does that say about the United States?
Copyright 2007 Mumia Abu-Jamal. Read Mumia's latest book, "We Want Freedom: A Life in the Black Panther Party," winner of the 2005 People's Choice Award, available from South End Press,
updated by reading Action Alerts at
Encourage the media to publish and broadcast Mumia's commentaries to inspire progressive movement and help call attention to his case. Send our brotha some love and light at: Mumia Abu-Jamal, AM 8335, SCI-Greene, 175 Progress Dr., Waynesburg PA 15370.
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PEACE MOVEMENT COLLAPSES AS BOTH MAJOR PARTIES SUPPORT PERPETUAL AND EXPANDED WARFARE IN SOUTHWEST ASIA
Audio of KPFK interview with Daniel Brezenoff on retreat of antiwar groups
"Greens bemoan retreat of anti-war groups"
Interview with Daniel Brezenoff, former California Green congressional candidate
Uprising, KPFK (Pacifica station in Los Angeles), January 29, 2008
Listen:
__________________
ILLINOIS GREEN PARTY WELCOMES PROGRESSIVES AND POPULISTS TO
PARTICIPATE IN HISTORIC GREEN PRIMARY
With the recent departures of former Sen. John Edwards and Rep. Dennis Kucinich and other candidates, the Illinois Green Party called on progressives and populists abandoned by the Democratic and Republican Parties to consider voting Green in Tuesday's elections, the first statewide Green Party primary in Illinois history.
""Illinois voters who have been supporting Kucinich and Edwards will likely find the Green presidential candidates appealing," said Phil Huckelberry, national Green Party Co-Chair. "All of our presidential candidates staunchly oppose the occupation of Iraq and would bring our troops home now. Green candidates also support single-payer universal healthcare, a living wage, and other efforts to alleviate poverty.
To supporters of the Republican Rep. Ron Paul, the Green Party is the last best hope of bringing about a swift end to the disastrous Iraq occupation and restoring the civil liberties that have been eroded in the past several years through policies like the Patriot Act, warrantless wiretapping of U.S. citizens and torture of so-called enemy combatants -- just to name a few.
"Our refusal to accept contributions from corporations and opposition to their consolidation of political power speaks to our genuine concern for the people in America and across the world," said Charlie Howe, a local McKinney campaign organizer and candidate for state representative (115th district).
Green Party presidential candidates on the Illinois ballot are:
KENT MESPLAY - Air Quality Inspector at the Air Pollution Control District, San Diego, and also a Substitute Teacher; registered Green since 1995 in California, a delegate to the Green National Committee since 2004, and served as the President of Turtle Island Institute.
HOWIE HAWKINS (RALPH NADER) - Co-Founder of the US Green Party, a Green activist and past U.S. Senate candidate from Syracuse, New York, and a Co-Chair of the Draft Nader Committee has consented to serve as a "placeholder" candidate until Ralph Nader, longtime consumer rights activist and Green presidential nominee in 2000, who has recently announced his presidential exploratory committee. If Nader does declare for the Green nomination, Hawkins will pledge his delegates to support Nader at the convention.
CYNTHIA MCKINNEY - First African-American Congresswoman from Georgia, she served in Congress from 1993-2003 and 2005-2007. She has been an advocate for Hurricane Katrina victims and voters disenfranchised in the 2000 and 2004 elections.
JARED BALL - Assistant Professor of Communications Studies at Morgan State University, an independent journalist, radio host with Pacifica Radio Washington, DC, the Editor-at-Large of Words, Beats and Life Global Journal of Hip-Hop Culture, and a Desert Shield / Desert Storm Navy veteran. Jared Ball has recently withdrawn his candidacy and has endorsed Cynthia McKinney.
Primary voters may also see the names of Green candidates for Congress, state representative, county offices, even precinct committeeperson offices in record numbers -- a direct result of lower ballot access requirements earned in the 2006 election, when Rich Whitney received 10% of the popular vote to "establish" the party.
"The message voters sent in 2006 was very clear: It's time to change the two-party system," said Howe. "Asking for a Green Party ballot on Feb. 5 is the best way to begin."
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GREEN SOLUTIONS by Paul Stephens, CasCoGreens
Is this the beginning of the end, or the end of the beginning?
I must say that with all my work for, with, or because of the Green Party, I have become very depressed. It really seems like the more we do, the less progress we are making. The Democrats and Republicans have already effectively purged their candidate ranks down to two each - earlier in this election cycle than ever before, eliminating Kucinich, Edwards, Richardson, Ron Paul, and other anti-war and pro-freedom and justice candidates. As I write this on February 1 (in prior election cycles, there had been no primaries and almost no campaigning by this date), the primary season madness is already beginning to subside. The powers that be have already narrowed the field down to four safe, corporate, non-controversial candidates who only promise us more of the same. The fact that one of them is black and one a woman (and both of those Democrats) gives the appearance that there is something different this time. But as those who read this Bulletin and its sources know, it is nothing of the kind. And that is why Cynthia McKinney and other Green presidential candidates are so important for 2008.
The Nader candidacies in 1996 and 2000 led many of us to believe that, if nothing else, the major parties' candidates would now have to address the major issues and answer some of the questions which Ralph Nader had been raising since the 1960's. And in 2004, the Green Party seemed finally to have matured, with a "home-grown" presidential candidate who was an experienced organizer, speaker, and political operative - a veteran of both the Jerry Brown and Jesse Jackson campaigns, as well as being General Counsel and major strategist for the Green Party in 2000. Plus, Ralph Nader was running again in 2004, this time as an independent. So whatever negative baggage for the Greens remained from his 2000 run (where most Democrats, at least, believe that he "spoiled" Al Gore's election) would not attach to David Cobb or other Green Party campaigns.
We knew at the time (and it has since been conclusively proven) that Florida and other jurisdictions were actually stolen by Republican operatives, as well as the fact that very few Nader voters would have voted for Gore in any case. And they certainly wouldn't have voted for Kerry in 2004, who as a Senator voted for the Patriot Act and "war on terror" (and even supported expanding it - the "surge" before Bush and the Neocons even thought of it!) As a consequence, the Democrat Party has continued to wage what can only be called a coordinated war of extermination against the Greens - renouncing peace, environmental sustainability, social justice, and even such venerable traditions as public health, free universal education, and the rest of the social safety net. Instead of becoming more socialistic and public-spirited as a result of the Green challenge, nearly all Democrat candidates and officials have stampeded to the Right, in many cases actually taking positions far to the right of moderate Republicans from only a decade or two ago.
This should have been a boon to the Green Party and its political opportunities in 2004 and 2008. Nader and Cobb both held as a primary goal the idea of "growing the party." Nader said in 2000 that we could effectively compete with the Democrats and Republicans (and even win the Presidency) if 1 million people would contribute $100 and 100 hours of their time to Green campaigns. Although some 3 million people did vote for Nader in 2000, the campaign contributions and volunteer hours fell far short of what was needed.
And, of course, the game was rigged from the start. Nader was not allowed to participate in the debates. Had he done so, he believed that he would have gotten 20% or more of the vote. In fact, he was forcibly prevented (by Massachusetts Democrats) from even entering the hall where the debates were being held - even though he had press credentials and an invitation to be there. I've since visited Forbes Hall (named for one of John Kerry's ancestors) on the UMass Boston campus, and it is literally a stone's throw from the John F. Kennedy Library and museum. So much for Camelot. So much for the promise of peace and freedom. [And so much for the Patriot's hope of an undefeated season. I spent the first Patriot's Superbowl victory game in 2002 at Jordan Hall of the New England Conservatory of Music, at a 100th birthday celebration featuring the work of Sir William Walton. I spent yesterday's Superbowl in a variety of local bars and casinos where virtually everyone was cheering for the Giants. Such are the Winds of Change.]
But whatever the crimes and conspiracies of the major parties, we Greens have learned that we can't blame others for our own failures. The American people have lost all interest in good government, fairness, justice, and the other pre-requisites for a free, egalitarian, and sustainable society. A spirit of defeatism and the sense that our nation and civilization is terminal prevails. Many of the Green Party organizers and activists proved to have been eternally wedded to the Democrat Party (if not more radical authoritarian statist or totalitarian ideologies). They saw us as a bunch of naive idealists, who could be manipulated to punish rival factions with electoral defeat. They had no interest in "growing the party," but like some Republicans, cynically supported the Greens in order to get back at the DLC, DNC, organized labor, or other factions and organized interests who had rejected them. The Green Party was portrayed as a futile "protest party," incapable of winning elections or actually carrying on "the business of government." And so it continues, today.
Millions of people who might have voted for the devil himself rather than another Bush or Clinton were convinced by media brainwashing that they would be "wasting their vote" by voting Green, Libertarian, or otherwise in accordance with their real beliefs and values. And they believe that still.
Let's hope that Cynthia McKinney or whomever ends up being the Green Presidential candidate can do a little better. I have been supporting McKinney precisely because she is a fighter, and will never compromise or pander to the two party establishment. She has been burned by them too many times in the past. More importantly, she has won elections and served several terms in Congress. If it were up to me, the Green Party wouldn't even be running candidates for President of the United States at this point - and certainly not people who have never won an election or served in Washington.
We need to have Green Senators, Representatives, and probably even a Governor or two before we can demonstrate we're ready for the White House. And that is the main reason I support McKinney even over Nader (who is dancing on the outskirts of the Green Party, and still refuses even to call himself a Green). She has already received a majority of the votes for an important office - something which no other Green presidential candidate can claim. And so, she is by definition "electable" and up to the job. Her qualifications and experience are the same as Abraham Lincoln's were in 1860 (and also resemble his in that he changed parties before being elected President).
Let's hope she does as well. And in the meantime, we must focus on building the party and local, state, and regional Green Parties. The West has been the region most receptive to the Green message, but Illinois as well California - two of the largest states in terms of population - is also doing well. It may seem ironic that both Hillary Rodham and Barack Obama hail from Illinois, but so did Abraham Lincoln. I keep wondering where the Jeanette Rankin's and Burton K. Wheeler's may be hiding out. We had some major players from Montana in the 20th century, and both of them were far closer to modern Greens than they would be to today's Republicans or Democrats.
For this century, it's probably the Native American heritage we should be relying on the most. And if there ever is a Native American president, he or she could very well be from Montana. Winona La Duke, a Metis of both Ojibwa and Jewish heritage, is certainly the prototype for that. I've just recently learned that the White Earth band she belongs to in Minnesota is closely related to the Little Shell Tribe of Montana, centered in Great Falls. When I worked in the Nader-LaDuke campaign in 2000, my perception was that probably half or more of the 25000 Montanans who voted Green were Native Americans. Yet, the national Green Party did very little to publicize and support LaDuke's campaign.
This is an issue we must emphasize much more strongly in the future. And large percentages of both Black and Latino Americans also have Native American ancestors. The Green Party has always emphasized its connections with indigenous peoples and their values. As racist, imperialist, capitalistic, militaristic governments and institutions continue to self-destruct, we will be there to replace them. In the meantime, it is our mission to preserve whatever we can from the forces of global destruction. -- Paul Stephens
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METIS HISTORY
What happened to Sacagawea’s children?
http://www.lewisandclarktravel.com/
"The court appoints William Clark Guardian to the infant children of Toussaint Charbonneau deceased, to wit, Toussaint Charbonneau a boy about the age of ten years old and Lisette Charbonneau a girl about one year old." --Orphans Court record, St Louis, August 11, 1813
The earliest probate court records of St. Louis were discovered in an old safe at the courthouse last fall, containing guardianship proceedings regarding Sacagawea’s children.The story made the Fox News broadcast in St Louis on January 21, 2008. The record, shown here, is of an Orphans Court hearing held on August 11, 1813. William Clark’s name is added to the document, substituted for the name of the original guardian, John Luttig, who was the company clerk of the Missouri Fur Company.
What’s the story behind this? Lewis and Clark fans know that Toussaint, also known by his nickname "Pompey," or as Jean Baptiste Charbonneau, was born on February 11, 1805 at Fort Mandan near Bismarck, North Dakota. This would make him 8 ½ years old. However, William Clark was not in St Louis at the time the hearing was held. He would have known the precise age of his adopted son, who was already living in St Louis and attending a boarding school. The father, Toussaint Charbonneau, Sr. was also not "deceased" though he was believed to be so at the time. He lived until about 1840.
Toussaint and Sacagawea and their son Pompey came to St. Louis in 1809 with Manuel Lisa and Pierre Chouteau, who had successfully delivered the Mandan Chief, Sheheke, or Big White, back to his village in North Dakota where the Charbonneau family was living. William Clark had requested they bring Pompey to St Louis where he would provide for his education when he was old enough to go to school. The Charbonneau family lived in Florissant, the town next to St Charles, for a year or more before returning home. They went back up river with Manuel Lisa in 1811, leaving their six year old son in William’s Clark’s care.
Sacagawea’s Death at Fort Manuel in 1812
Sacagawea died on Fort Manuel in Kenel, South Dakota on December 20, 1812. The Orphan Court record confirms that it was Sacagawea, rather than Charbonneau’s other Shoshone wife, who died at Fort Manuel. John Luttig wrote in his journal on Sunday, December 20, 1812: "this evening the wife of Charbonneau a Snake Squar, died of a putrid fever, she was a good and the best Women in the fort, aged abt 25 years she left a fine infant girl."
The little baby girl, Lisette, and an Indian woman to care for her, must have been brought down to St Louis by Lisa’s men as they retreated back to St Louis after Fort Manuel was attacked by Indians allies of the British during the War of 1812. The attack occurred sometime after March 5, 1813, the last date of entry in Luttig’s Journal. According to Richard Oglesby’s biography of Manuel Lisa, fifteen men of the Missouri Fur Company died in the attack. Was Lisette named for Manuel Lisa? It’s a possibility.
Luttig’s Journal of a Fur Trading Expedition 1812-13 is very interesting to read. The 1920 version is available on the internet. Here’s the link:
The Missouri Fur Company expedition retreated down river to St Louis, stopping to build Fort Lisa near the site of Council Bluffs, where Fort Atkinson was later built, north of Omaha, Nebraska. Fort Lisa became the westernmost fort defending the American frontier during the War of 1812. Lisa returned and made his headquarters there in 1814, appointed as a special Indian Agent by William Clark.
I published a booklet, Defending the Western Frontier: Manuel Lisa and the War of 1812 in the Omaha-Council Bluffs Area, based on a paper I gave at the Missouri Valley History Conference in 1999. I will blog at other times about the children, and also about the War of 1812 out west.
Posted by Kira Gale on 01/28/2008 at 04:51 PM
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COAL AND ENERGY ISSUES
Is the proposed Air Force synfuels plant at Malmstrom a good idea?
The latest threat to our local Cascade County environment and economy is an Air Force proposal to build a huge "synfuels" plant at Malmstrom Air Force Base, on the east end of Great Falls. This facility would be about 3-4 times larger than the proposed Highwood Generating Station (a traditional coal-fired power plant), which would be sited 7 miles outside the city limits, although clearly visible from Great Falls and from a Lewis and Clark National Monument and the scenic Great Falls of the Missouri. Local environmentalists, economic development advocates, historical preservationists, and others have been working tirelessly for several years, now, to stop the Highwood Station from being built. We're confident it won't be, if only because this new proposal would use all the same water, coal, and rail capacity at three times the level for the Highwood Station.
So, is the Air Force synfuels plant a good idea? Absolutely not, for all the reasons outlined in the following stories. In fact, it is 3-4 times worse than the Highwood Station, and the backers of the HGS seem to understand that, even while they deny that the HGS is a bad thing in itself.
For awhile, I said nothing about the proposed synfuels plant, and for the following reasons. First, it was supposed to be a military project, and we have long advocated universal nuclear abolition and disarmament, starting right here. Any different mission for the base is preferable to its present "nuclear deterrent" of 150 nuclear-armed Minuteman ICBM's.
Local military people want to move the Air National Guard squadron and other Reserve and military operations now on Gore Hill (GTF, the commercial airport) to Malmstrom. This would involve re-opening its runway, control tower, etc., which is projected to cost $3 million or so - chicken feed in the present scheme of things. This would also free up the municipal airport for more economic development, aircraft maintenance, a UPS hub (there is already a regional FedEx hub there), etc. It already has a full customs facility, making it a "Port of Entry" for air freight shipments from any part of the world. Plus, Great Falls is well-placed on major Great Circle routes between Europe and California, and China-Japan and the American Midwest, Texas, etc. Some of us had hoped that Malmstrom might be converted to some of these uses, but with Great Falls' strong military connections and traditions, it seems more likely and feasible to maintain Malmstrom as a military base, while freeing up the municipal airport for commercial uses.
Why, then, is the Air Force interested in building a huge synfuels plant there - a project which was originally calculated to necessitate closing the runway forever? And would this synfuels plant replace Malmstrom's nuclear mission, resulting in all of the Minuteman missiles being retired, and the warheads de-commissioned and broken down? If so, we could probably swallow the idea of a synfuels plant here, but there is no mention of such a trade-off in the proposals, and few of the paranoid military boosters who live here would go for that, in any case. (They may have to, anyway. We doubt that the missiles will still be here after 2020, while the synfuels plant would last for 40 years or more).
There was a large public hearing last week with an Undersecretary of the Air Force in attendance. I've heard from those who attended that this will NOT be an Air Force project as such. Everything will be contracted out to existing refining and generating companies. This project is part of a mandated Air Force initiative to develop domestic sources for jet fuel which allow for carbon capture and re-use (not necessarily "sequestration", they said), and Montana's nearby coal fields and the existing infrastructure and large land area already encompassed by MAFB made this a logical choice for such a facility. We know, too, that Gov. Schweitzer and our congressional delegation have been fervent lobbyists and supporters of this kind of facility, and we have the political capital to make it happen, here - just as we were able to secure Malmstrom's Minuteman nuclear mission 50 years ago due to the influence of Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield. So, it looks like it could very easily happen, and there's little or nothing we can do to prevent it.
The environmental and economic impacts would be tremendous. Each day, the synfuels plant would burn 125 carloads of coal, and use 10 million gallons of river water - very little of which would go back into the Missouri River. This is twice what the entire City of Great Falls (pop. 65,000) uses per day, and much of that is returned to the river through run-off and the sewage treatment plant. It would also generate 100 megawatts or more of distributable electricity, which Electric City Power (ECP), the municipal power authority, could buy at subsidized rates, or it could be sold to co-ops or other commercial and residential customers. Thus, the need for the Highwood Station (and we deny that there ever was one) would disappear instantly. Plus, all the arguments in favor of "good jobs" and "economic development" (falsely attributed to the Highwood Station) would be increased by a factor of three or more with the synfuels plant.
All the other negative impacts would be similar (more or less) for the synfuels plant. Although it would look much the same, with a 350-foot smokestack (that alone might preclude re-opening Malmstrom for flying missions), it puts out much less pollutants, and the CO2 might be used locally for enhanced oil and gas recovery in existing fields, or otherwise stored, processed, or sequestered. The damage to Great Falls as a tourist destination, the emphasis on heavy industry and those kinds of jobs over green development, and other similar consequences would be similar for both plants. There would also be huge solid waste disposal problems - three times greater than those attributed to Highwood Station. After 30 or 40 years, there would be a mountain of such waste, covering many acres to a height of 40 feet or more, and these highly-toxic waste products would be difficult to isolate from the environment. Welcome to Montana - the last, best Superfund Site. -- PHS
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FROM GREEN LISTSERVS
Martin Zehr on energy policy
The current political leadership of both the Democrats and Republicans remain complacent and more focused on the Iraq war than on environmental concerns regarding the adoption of a strategy that is based on climate change and peak oil. All objections can NOT be addressed given the scale of the proposal, just like all unintended consequences cannot be anticipated. At issue is whether we will move beyond debate and move to implement a systemic change in energy production in the US.
It is important that we formulate a sound agenda that includes the following:
A. Establish the highest percentages for renewable energy production and alternative transportation systems that require the introduction of alternative energies in a twenty year period; http://www.earth-policy.org/Books/PlanB_contents.htm
B. Economic compensation packages that address workers impacted by the transition http://www.epi.org/content.cfm/studies_cleanenergyandjobs ;
C. Monitoring systems to evaluate the changes in greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere http://www.ec.gc.ca/pdb/ghg/ghg_home_e.cfm ;
D. Incentives for the development of alternatives to petroleum-based products http://www.greenbiz.com/toolbox/essentials_third.cfm?LinkAdvID=4151 ; "Petroleum is also the raw material for many chemical products, including solvents, fertilizers, pesticides, and plastics; the 16% not used for energy production is converted into these other materials." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petroleum
E. Reduction in the production of single-user modes of transportation http://www.worldwatch.org/node/808 , increase in public investment in mass transit operated with renewable energy http://lrta.info/Facts/facts130.html ;
F. Transition of investment of public utility companies in solar and wind technology, decreasing proportion of energy provided by coal, nuclear and oil http://www.energybulletin.net/5000.html ;
G. Establishment of stakeholder boards for oversight and review http://maineghg.raabassociates.org/member.asp?sort=other , Public Utilities Commissions elected by energy users and represented by qualified advocates including environmental, residential, municipal, and rural;
H. Congressional budgetary commitments through carbon taxes http://www.carbontax.org/ that transition from military expenditures to energy conversion research and development, implementing Swenson's Law :" To avoid deprivation resulting from the exhaustion of non-renewable resources, humanity must employ conservation and renewable resource substitutes sufficient to match depletion." http://www.hubbertpeak.com/swenson/
I. Establishment of Green Building codes; http://www.smartcommunities.ncat.org/buildings/gbcodtoc.shtml
J. Revamping of commercial railroad system and increasing mileage of track- increase requirement for piggy-backing of trailers across states; http://europe.theoildrum.com/node/2229
After a brief compiling of a White Paper http://www.energywhitepaper.gov.au/ addressing the various mechanisms needed for a transition, it is imperative that there be established bio-regional, intercontinental and ocean-atmospheric interaction entities to increase data and develop recommendations for interventions to reduce gas house emissions and mitigate the impacts of global warming. Just as necessary is an international accord to update Kyoto and establish mandatory international requirements for the reduction of greenhouse emissions. http://www.climatechoices.org/impacts_overview/index.html
The development of a serious effort in this regard has not even begun. The first necessary steps is to establish a broad-based coalition of organizations that establishes a common, working strategy for the writing, passing and implementation of an Energy Transition Legislative Package. A five-year target date should be established at an appropriate Founding Congress of political action groups. Political action during that time needs to be prioritized in regards to the passage in Congress, and State Legislatures of the US. Presidential candidates need to be established in the context of presenting this issue on the political agenda in a serious and credible manner.
Time is not on our side. That does not negate the critical element of transformation that can take place rapidly and efficiently once the political will has been consolidated and institutionalized. The complexities are already being addressed. The alternatives are already modeled in locales and nations around the world. Sweden, Germany, Denmark and the Netherlands have already established energy transition to renewable energy as national priorities.
The first obvious aspect of any plan is that it needs to be approved with more than just a Democratic working majority. It requires winning over non-ideologues in both parties. We should include Republicans such as U.S. Representative Roscoe Bartlett
(Rep., MD) http://bartlett.house.gov/Issues/Issue/?IssueID=2057 ; US Representative Jack Kingston (Rep., GA) http://kingston.house.gov/News/DocumentSingle.aspx?DocumentID=45541 and others http://www.relocalize.net/node/1243 . Recent news indicates the formation of a bi-partisan Oil peak Caucus initiated by New Mexico's Rep. Udall and Maryland Congressman Bartlett. http://www.tomudall.house.gov/display2.cfm?id=11447&type=Issues Actions are already being taken by the Western Governors' Association http://www.westgov.org/wga/press/plenary1-pr.htm and the U.S. Conference of Mayors http://www.usmayors.org/climateprotection/ regarding climate change. As momentum is building public officials need to be encouraged to move faster and implement the transition legislation needed.
The unfortunate thing is that most people are not even spectators in this particular matter. The Liberals and Progressives prefer movies to legislation. The Neo-Cons never met a war they didn't like. The Conservatives have left their posts and rejected the Imperial Mandate of King Bush II but are asleep at the switch in regards to the science surrounding global warming. The Libertarians want to laissez-faire our way out of the oil peak and global warming. The Greens focus a little too much of our energy on demonstrations that are no longer renewable, and not enough time demonstrating workable plans for renewable energy and reduction of oil consumption. http://www.progress.org/2007/oil32.htm
In the meantime European Union is pledging to cut greenhouse emissions by 25% by the year 2025. Euro Greens have suggested that it didn't go far enough and that is certainly fair enough from their vantage point. But in the US, we have not even put our toe in the water regarding the transition to renewable energy applications. This complicates the task, as we saw when we failed to heed Jimmy Carter's call for the moral equivalent war on oil consumption as President in 1977. http://www.mnforsustain.org/energy_speech_president_carter.htm
As the Europeans and others are demonstrating addressing global warming takes concrete action in Congress. It takes the political will demonstrated through establishing new priorities for all political parties. It takes investment by the private sector in transition, as recently demonstrated in the TXU buyout deal. http://freeinternetpress.com/story.php?sid=10831 It takes action by the Governors of multi-state regions.
It is clear that the preliminary work has already been done. The issue at hand is this: Are we at all disposed to construct a work plan that others will sign on to in order to change current energy policies 180 degrees? Or do we content ourselves with the fatalism of the a deer in the headlights. The prioritization of these proposals is not something that can be assigned a place on the backburner for convenience sake. Even making the ratification of Kyoto a minimum threshold for candidate support is insufficient in addressing the profound impacts that climate change has already demonstrated the planet's bio-spheres. There has been action by the EU and European nations, but since this is a global issue it requires a global solution. It remains to be seen where the political leadership will come from on this issue.
Martin Zehr
=================
COMMENT by Morgan d'Arc
Martin Zehr wrote: The prioritization of these proposals is not something that can be assigned a place on the backburner for convenience sake.-
___________
Martin, this is... an important assessment and concern of the Green Party's place or lack of place in this powerful and overwhelming confluence of energy issues. (G)lobal warming ... was just not much on the radar of the Greens who founded this party and moved it along, creating our priorities....
Yes, we were the environmental party and still are but all the work and energy that went into establishing our issues and platform over the years has been somewhat replaced by more and more of an electoral focus. I support that, but part of what we seem to have lost or weakened is in being out front with various issues, including energy and environment.
Your document is also a great reference piece. I haven't even begun to look at them all, but I will be saving it to do so when I can. Yes, the electoral demands of the times are swamping me.
I would like to see this document added to the GPUS website. Maybe some platform members could review it for suitability.
What to do? The Green movement/party are beginning to be subsumed not so much by the democratic party as 3rd parties and movements usually are, but by an avalanche of scientific, non-profit, for-profit, corporate and general public sectors producing an enormous amount of information, products, interest, political pressure, as you say, on a global scale on the topic of global warming. Where are we with this? Are we going to lose all relevancy over it?
Sometimes in the best laid plans and trajectories, there comes a moment when unforeseen events can impact in a way to change everything, for better or for worse. This is such a time with global warming. Do we keep on with the same thinking and plans or do we coalesce to adapt, even if it might change the Green Party a lot?
We need a discussion that will move the party closer to relevancy. It's wonderful about our electoral politics. But if the party and candidates are not out front and even further out front than those already representing the issue, then of what use are our candidates?
We want to get into office, so we can begin to transform politics. Just as the information of this document is focusing on energy transition plans, we need to get some idea of what a transition plan would be for the Green Party to become more relevant.
We need a huge summit. But we could begin it at the convention with an energy transition work shop and publicize it in the media.
This is a make or break next four years. I would support a huge, well prepared and facilitated summit to revamp this party in 2009. A week-long summit, party, separate from the convention on in place of, party transition and energy transition being a couple of the topics. No doubt the next four years are going to bring more of the avalanche that is happening now...
Morgen D'Arc Chair, Cumberland County Green Party, Maine Co-Founder, National Women's Caucus
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100% Renewable Power Possible
The University of Kassel in Germany has teamed up with some major players in solar, wind and biomass to demonstrate that the issue of intermittentcy in supply isn't a terminal flaw in renewable energy development. No problem with 100% renewable providing 24/7 power to the grid.
Combined Power Plant -
"The secure and constant provision of power anywhere and at anytime by renewable energies is now made possible thanks to the Combined Power Plant. The Combined Power Plant links and controls 36 wind, solar, biomass and hydropower installations spread throughout Germany. It is just as reliable and powerful as a conventional large-scale power station."
There's also a nifty streaming 7.24 minute movie on the page that shows how it's all done. There's a
version too. [MPEG, 320x240, 35MB]
On a related theme there's a book on renewable powered futures that is downloadable (free or donation) from the Institute for Energy and Environmental
Research.
Carbon-Free and Nuclear-Free: A Roadmap for U.S. Energy Policy - IEER.org
My personal opinion is that wind is the most important source of electricity for the US in coming decades. In many places it is cost-competitive now. As natural gas prices increase, wind will only look better. Solar thermal electricity is almost affordable, but it is only possible in large, centralized power plants. Solar photovoltaic is VERY expensive; its advantages are it is decentralized, and one can do it now.
+Orval Osborne
CA delegate
Read Orval's blogs:
general politics, science fiction, etc; and
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FORWARDED BY RICH LIEBERT, CITIZENS FOR CLEAN ENERGY
Too bad the rural electric co-ops in denial about alternative energy, net-metering, conservation and climate change.....they of all groups are locally controlled, but don't exploit it, and don't acknowledge the 21st Century yet and the challenges.......
I'm a co-op guy, and not thrilled about the 'corporatocracy'.......
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FROM ORION MAGAZINE
Stopping Coal in Its Tracks - Loosely affiliated activists draw a hard line -- and hold it
by Ted Nace
http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/506
Published in the January/February 2008 issue of Orion magazine
...LaPlaca returned home and read the latest messages posted on the No New Coal Plants e-mail list, an Internet watering hole initiated in April 2006 by Philadelphia organizer Mike Ewall. Ewall founded the group Energy Justice in 1999 and has organized electronic mailing lists around other issues, including tire incinerators and nuclear power. Whatever the topic, the elements of each list are identical: messages from any member are forwarded to the entire group, responses may be directed either back to the group or to the original author, and archives of group messages are kept on the Energy Justice website.
Of course, to be useful to participants, a list has to achieve a critical mass, and for the first few months messages among No New Coal Plants participants were few and far between. But by midsummer 2006, Ewall had recruited several dozen members and the list had taken on a life of its own. Over the next year, it grew to include 140 people. A few, such as Matt Leonard of Rainforest Action Network in San Francisco, and Ted Glick of the U.S. Climate Emergency Council in Takoma Park, Maryland, are staff members with national environmental groups. Others, such as Drusha Mayhue in Bozeman, Montana, are volunteers with the Sierra Club or other membership-oriented groups. Most, however, are involved with small, locally based, mainly rural groups. Typical among these are Greg Howard, an attorney with the nonprofit Appalachian Citizens Law Center, a law firm in Prestonsburg, Kentucky, that represents miners suffering from black lung disease; Mano Andrews, a Hopi/Dine native affiliated with the Western Shoshone Defense Project in Nevada and the Save the Peaks Coalition in Arizona; and Leslie Glustrom, a biochemist in Boulder, Colorado, opposing Xcel Energy’s Comanche 3 coal plant. Most members of the list live in areas that have already felt the effects of coal projects and are facing more development. Elisa Young, an activist in Meigs County, Ohio, can count four coal-fired power plants within ten miles of her home and faces five more that are planned. Mary Jo Stueve grew up in Minnesota across the South Dakota border from the Big Stone I power plant; she’s now a staff member with South Dakota Clean Water Action, fighting a proposed second unit of the plant....
At first glance, No New Coal Plants has every appearance of a single-issue environmental group, if "group" is the right word for an entity with no office, no board of directors, no letterhead, no bank account, no organizational structure. "Swarm" might be a better term.
As fighting forces, swarms both preceded and eventually vanquished the orthogonal ranks of legionnaires that forged the Roman Empire. In a swarm, the emphasis is not on discipline, experience, and orderliness but rather on fighting spirit and individual initiative. Swarms are known for their tactical flexibility, sometimes using guerrilla-style harassment, as did the farmers who routed the British at Lexington and Concord; other times prevailing with overwhelming numbers in the manner of the Arapaho, Lakota, and Northern Cheyenne fighters who overran the U.S. Seventh Cavalry at the Little Bighorn.
The contrast between No New Coal Plants and Big Coal is obvious, but the contrast between such low-profile, leaderless entities and the large national groups typically identified with the environmental movement is equally striking. The largest of these groups, sometimes known as Big Green, include the Natural Resources Defense Council, Environmental Defense, and the National Wildlife Federation. Typically based in Washington DC or New York and sporting annual budgets in the tens of millions of dollars, these groups, not unlike the corporate and governmental entities they oppose, are hierarchical, highly organized, and reliant on trained and seasoned attorneys, scientific experts, and lobbyists. Yet the "Twigs," as some small-scale activists have taken to calling themselves in a pointed distinction from Big Green, have lately taken more militant positions and have, in many cases, been more effective in stopping new coal-fired power plants.
IN THE SPRING OF 2007, a split between these two currents in the U.S. environmental movement broke into view over the prospect of a vast expansion in the use of coal in the United States. With the encouragement of the Bush Administration and coal subsidies in the 2005 Energy Act (variously estimated at between $4.8 billion and $9 billion), the number of coal-fired power plants either newly built or in various stages of proposal or construction had leaped from 92 in 2004 to over 150 in May 2007. Many climatologists noted the expansion with alarm. Speaking before the National Press Club in Washington DC on February 26, 2007, James Hansen, head of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Sciences and one of the country’s most widely published and outspoken climate scientists, told the audience that the opportunity to avoid runaway global eating-wherein human-induced "forcings" would trigger enough amplifying feedback loops to ultimately produce "a different planet"-was rapidly fading. To address the problem, Hansen made five recommendations, the first of which was an immediate moratorium on the construction of any new coal-fired power plants until such plants are capable of capturing their carbon dioxide releases.
Coal plants are among the largest industrial facilities on the planet and collectively generate about 32 percent of America’s carbon dioxide emissions. A single 500 megawatt plant can burn its way through a 125-car trainload of coal in two days, releasing into the atmosphere nearly twice the weight of that trainload in carbon dioxide. To offset the global heating produced by that much carbon dioxide, two million SUV drivers would have to switch to Priuses. Even that comparison understates the consequences of a new power plant, since a car lasts about a decade, while a typical coal plant will continue to spew climate-torquing gasses for sixty years or more. Faced with the new coal boom, four groups-the Natural Resources Defense Council, Environmental Defense, the National Wildlife Federation, and the Clean Air Task Force-prominently advocated an approach that centered around a technical fix with the ungainly acronym IGCC/CCS, for Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle with Carbon Capture and Sequestration.
While coal gasification technology is not new (it helped power the German air force during World War II), its use for electrical generation is relatively recent. Four such plants are now operating in Europe and the United States, all built with government subsidies. Because it involves converting solid fuel into gas prior to combustion, IGCC technology is more readily suited than conventional coal plants for capturing waste products. As much as 88 percent of the coal’s carbon dioxide can be captured in an IGCC plant, along with 99 percent or more of its sulfur oxides and particulates, and 95 percent of its mercury. Once the carbon dioxide has been removed from the exhaust stream, it can be liquefied under pressure and injected into deep underground formations. Over a dozen IGCC plants are under development in the United States. Currently leading the pack is EURORA Group’s Cash Creek, Kentucky, facility, which could go online as early as 2011. But notably, none of the demonstration plants in operation, nor any of the proposed IGCC plants, actually includes carbon capture and sequestration.
The most outspoken advocate for IGCC/CCS has been David Hawkins, director of the Climate Center at the Natural Resources Defense Council. According to Hawkins, IGCC/CCS would allow the United States to continue using coal without heating the planet, since plants using the technology could store the captured carbon dioxide in geological formations thousands of feet underground. Hawkins’s support for IGCC/ CCS is based on the pragmatic calculation that coal enjoys too much political support for it to be taken out of the climate equation. In April 2007, he told the Senate’s Energy and Natural Resources Committee that "we will almost certainly continue using large amounts of coal in the U.S. and globally in the coming decades." For that reason, he concluded, "it is imperative that we act now to deploy CCD [carbon capture and disposal] systems."
Proponents of coal gasification typically call it "clean coal," though Hawkins and other environmentalists avoid that term. After all, using IGCC/CCS would not eliminate destructive strip-mining or mountaintop-removal practices. And critics have other objections: a big one involves how much we don’t know about sequestering carbon dioxide underground. While such pumping has been done to facilitate oil extraction by repressurizing oil fields, it has never been attempted at anything close to the scale that would be required to render the coal industry climate-friendly. According to MIT’s 2007 "Future of Coal" study, capturing and compressing just 60 percent of the carbon dioxide produced by U.S. coal-fired power plants would demand a new pipeline network big enough to move 20 million barrels of liquefied carbon dioxide each day from power plants to suitable sequestration sites (which depend on particular geology)-a volume equal to all the oil piped daily throughout the country. Sequestration sites would have to be honestly administered, closely monitored, and tightly sealed. Such demanding technical requirements led journalist Jeff Goodell to write that "the notion of coal as the solution to America’s energy problems is a technological fantasy on par with the dream of a manned mission to Mars." [Actually, in terms of costs and resources spent, it's more like establishing and maintaining a colony of a million or more earthlings on Mars. Or, for an actual historical parallel, the total costs and resources wasted on the nuclear arms race - $7 trillion and counting. And it could cost that much more to get rid of the damn things, along with the rest of the "nuclear industry." - PHS]
But there’s a more straightforward objection to IGCC/CSS: cost. The cost of building such plants is expected to be around 40 percent higher than conventional coal plants. And the cost of operating them would also be higher, since huge amounts of power are needed to separate and liquefy carbon dioxide, then pipe and pump it underground -in all, each plant would have to burn about 25 percent more coal to generate the same amount of electricity for market. Once those expenses are totaled up, this way of using coal may end up being more costly than solar thermal power plants or wind turbines backed up by natural gas generators that would make them as reliable as coal plants.
As it waits for IGCC/CCS to reach commercial readiness, Big Green has signaled a willingness to make deals with industry over new coal plants. The most widely reported compromise was reached in March 2007 between two large environmental groups and an investor group led by private equity firm KKR, which was in the process of buying Texas utility TXU Corp. In return for a promise by the new owners to cancel eight of eleven planned new coal plants in Texas, the Natural Resources Defense Council and Environmental Defense agreed to drop their opposition to the remaining three. Many grassroots environmentalists complained that the deal was nowhere near sufficient. Climate scientists were calling for a full halt on new coal, not a slowdown, they said. If this was the environmental movement’s batting average on a good day, it wasn’t good enough. A correspondent to Texas Monthly wrote: "I feel like I’m in some colonial third world outpost watching helplessly as my fate is being decided by a bunch of rich white guys with Marks-a-Lots in a map room thousands of miles away."
But whether the TXU deal was shrewd or foolish, one thing it clearly lacked was anything that might inspire and build a mass movement against climate change. In contrast, the message of the Twigs is simple and compelling: no new coal plants....
Can the environmental movement muster the necessary clout to overcome the combined forces of Big Oil and Big Coal? To Big Green advocates like Hawkins and Thompson, it’s a fantasy to think that America won’t continue using coal and oil. To grassroots activists like LaPlaca, Overland, and Muller, the fantasy lies in the opposite assumption: believing that the world can survive without a radical shift away from fossil fuels. "Big Green has the resources," said Muller, "but the grassroots is where it’s happening in terms of leadership, in terms of work, and in terms of results. To anybody who’s following this, I’d say don’t bet too much money on coal right now."
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FROM THE MTENERGY LIST
From: Elizabeth & Wilbur Wood [mailto:rewood@midrivers.com] To: Ben Brouwer; AERO Energy Task Force Cc: Montana Energy
Re: Martinsdale Windfarm Proposed/a decentralized perspective from AERO
To All:
The perspective that AERO puts forth in our "Repowering Montana: A Blueprint for Homegrown Energy Self-Reliance" (see www.aeromt.org) is that we would prefer one hundred 3-megawatt windpower facilities, widely dispersed, to a single centralized 300 MW windfarm.
This follows a recommendation to install 3 megawatts of windpower at every power substation where there is a decent breeze, which was first enunciated (to my knowledge) by Bob Quinn at an AERO energy task force meeting in 2005. It was Quinn's company that developed the Judith Gap windfarm, did all the studies, secured all the permits, etc, to the point where it needed the largescale capitalization required by all centralized projects, whereupon it was purchased by the Chicago-based Invenergy corporation.
(Quinn now prefers to work on windpower--and other forms of renewable energy such as biodiesel--on a more decentralized scale.)
Such a decentralized model would be more resilient; windpower could come on more gradually without massive all-at-once outlays of capital; ownership could be more widely dispersed, and more of the profits would stay at home, circulating around in local communities, buoying up rural economies.
This would also buy us time so that we would not jump into building expensive powerlines in order to export electrons (whether "green" or "dirty") to distant markets which actually may end up not existing by the time corridors for those lines can be sited and the lines built. The reason? Utilities in those areas of high demand more and more are choosing to reduce demand by investing in energy conservation and efficiency, and implementing things like differential pricing for different times of day. California, Oregon and Washington are rejecting electricity from coal. And when more supply is needed, they are investing, more and more, in generating sources (such as wind and solar) closer to where the power is needed.
Wilbur Wood
StoneHouse Productions
rewood@midrivers.com
Elizabeth & Wilbur Wood
Box 12 Roundup, Montana 59072
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Wilbur is right, we need to emphasize the non-monopoly model. Further if wind farms are owned by folks other than the local utility, then the property is not rate based. That means that once it is paid for, it does not drop out of the rate base but continue in service. It continues in service and the owners make lots more money on it. It would be like saying you paid for your car and when that was done, the finance company owned it and could charge you by the mile to drive it.
Further if all the capacity is taken up on our lines by large wind farms, there will be none left for individual farmers to get the power to market. Like having a toll road that only rich guys can drive on but which the masses have paid for.
Russ
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Wind farm proposed in central Mont.; state hopes more to come
By MATTHEW BROWN, Associated Press Writer
BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) -- A Texas company with Portuguese backing is working with state natural resource officials in central Montana to develop a 300-megawatt wind farm - twice the size of the state's largest existing wind project.
Horizon Wind Energy would erect up to 100 turbines near Martinsdale, about 80 miles east of Helena, to tap into winds sweeping through the Musselshell River valley. Horizon had been solicited to develop in the area by the state Department of Natural Resources and Conservation. The agency owns about 2,400 acres of school trust land within the 19,000 acre project site.
Gov. Brian Schweitzer and the Montana Legislature have aggressively pursued wind energy over the past several years by courting developers, offering tax incentives that favor wind over fossil-fuels and pitching state lands as potential project sites.
However, progress to date remains slow: The state's total energy production from wind remains less than that generated by a single coal-fired power plant. Only one major project - a 135-megawatt wind farm near Judith Gap - has been completed. And late last year, the administration's efforts suffered a setback when another Texas company, GreenHunter, scaled back a 500-megawatt proposal near Glasgow to 50 megawatts after running into opposition from conservation groups.
But with several new projects now moving forward, state officials insist the industry will ramp up quickly in the next couple of years. Horizon's Martinsdale Wind Farm is one of at least seven totaling more than 900 megawatts being pursued along a swath of central Montana stretching from Big Timber north to Shelby. That's an area buffeted by strong winds coming off the Rocky Mountains and onto the Great Plains - winds that federal energy officials say are among the best in the United States. Statewide, officials say, wind farms totaling more than 3,700 megawatts are at various stages of development.
"We're going to see a number of projects coming through here very, very soon," said Chantel McCormick with the state Energy Infrastructure and Promotion Division, part of the Department of Commerce. McCormick said another major wind company with European roots, Spain's Naturener, is preparing to break ground in March on a 103-megawatt project near Shelby. The company's McCormick Ranch Wind Park could eventually expand to more than 500 megawatts, she said.
As with Horizon's Martinsdale Wind Farm, the ultimate size of the project will be governed by the availability of transmission line capacity to carry power to markets. Horizon representative Chris Taylor said the company's first 100 megawatts could be sent through an existing NorthWestern Energy line that runs through the area. After that, the company will need to find additional capacity to complete the project. "Transmission constraints are the big issue for us, like they are for everybody in Montana," Taylor said. He said the power will be for both in-state and out-of-state markets.
A major new transmission proposal that would carry power from central Montana to Canada, the Montana Alberta Tie Line, has run into concerted opposition from local landowners and farmers and some environmental groups. If the line is blocked or delayed, that could significantly choke future wind development.
The first signs of similar opposition with Martinsdale already are emerging. Gene Leary, 67, owns a ranch within a few miles of the proposed wind farm site. He described wind farms as "visual pollution" and said he worries such projects could mar central Montana's scenic vistas, driving down property values and discouraging tourism. "It's a feel good energy thing - clean power appeals to everybody," he said. "A lot of them really haven't thought about the consequences of what it would do in this area."
Horizon's Taylor said he was not aware such complaints were being made and said local officials were supportive of the project. Houston-based Horizon has built wind projects in at least six states and Costa Rica. Founded in the 1998, the company was bought last year for $2.15 billion by Energias de Portugal, in a deal that made the Portuguese electric utility one of the largest wind producers in the world.
The Department of Natural Resources and Conservation is holding a public meeting on the Martinsdale Wind Farm on Tuesday at the youth center in Harlowton. An open house will begin at 3 p.m., followed by a presentation on the project beginning at 7 p.m.
***
BEN BROUWER
Renewable Energy and Conservation Program Mgr.
Alternative Energy Resources Org. (AERO)
bbrouwer@aeromt.org
_________________
EPA Staff Finds Emissions Threat
Janet Wilson and Richard Simon, reporting for The Los Angeles Times, write: "The Environmental Protection Agency's staff concluded last month that greenhouse gases pose a threat to the nation's welfare, which would require federal regulations to rein in emissions from vehicles, factories, power plants and other industrial polluters under the Clean Air Act, sources in the agency told The Times."
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THE KACZYNSKI LEGACY
Interview with Ted Kaczynski
http://www.primitivism.com/kaczynski.htm
Kaczynski's story represents a parable:
"Once upon a time there was a continent covered with beautiful pristine wilderness, where giant trees towered over lush mountainsides and rivers ran wild and free through deserts, where raptors soared and beavers labored at their pursuits and people lived in harmony with wild nature, accomplishing every task they needed to accomplish on a daily basis using only stones, bones and wood, walking gently on the Earth. Then came the explorers, conquerors, missionaries, soldiers, merchants and immigrants with their advanced technology, guns, and government. The wild life that had existed for millennia started dying, killed by a disease brought by alien versions of progress, arrogant visions of manifest destiny and a runaway utilitarian science.
"In just 500 years, almost all the giant trees have been clear-cut and chemicals now poison the rivers; the eagle has faced extinction and the beaver's work has been supplanted by the Army Corps of Engineers. And how have the people fared? What one concludes is most likely dependent on how well one is faring economically, emotionally and physically in this competitive technological world and the level of privilege one is afforded by the system. But for those who feel a deep connection to, a love and longing for, the wilderness and the wildness that once was, for the millions now crowded in cities, poor and oppressed, unable to find a clear target for their rage because the system is virtually omnipotent, these people are not faring well. All around us, as a result of human greed and a lack of respect for all life, wild nature and Mother Earth’s creatures are suffering. These beings are the victims of industrial society.
"Cutting the bloody cord, that’s what we feel, the delirious exhilaration of independence, a rebirth backward in time and into primeval liberty, into freedom in the most simple, literal, primitive meaning of the word, the only meaning that really counts. The freedom, for example, to commit murder and get away with it scot-free, with no other burden than the jaunty halo of conscience.
"My God! I’m thinking, what incredible shit we put up with most of our lives--the domestic routine, the stupid and useless and degrading jobs, the insufferable arrogance of elected officials, the crafty cheating and the slimy advertising of the businessmen, the tedious wars in which we kill our buddies instead of our real enemies back home in the capital, the foul, diseased and hideous cities and towns we live in, the constant petty tyranny of the automatic washers, the automobiles and TV machines and telephones-! ah Christ!,... what intolerable garbage and what utterly useless crap we bury ourselves in day by day, while patiently enduring at the same time the creeping strangulation of the clean white collar and the rich but modest four-in-hand garrote!
"Such are my thoughts-you wouldn’t call them thoughts would you?-such are my feelings, a mixture of revulsion and delight, as we float away on the river, leaving behind for a while all that we most heartily and joyfully detest. That’s what the first taste of the wild does to a man, after having been penned up for too long in the city. No wonder the Authorities are so anxious to smother the wilderness under asphalt and reservoirs. They know what they are doing. Play safe. Ski only in a clockwise direction. Let’s all have fun together."
--Edward Abbey, Desert Solitaire, 1968
"I read Edward Abbey in mid-eighties and that was one of the things that gave me the idea that, ‘yeah, there are other people out there that have the same attitudes that I do.’ I read The Monkeywrench Gang, I think it was. But what first motivated me wasn’t anything I read. I just got mad seeing the machines ripping up the woods and so forth..."
-Dr. Theodore Kaczynski, in an interview with the Earth First! Journal, Administrative Maximum Facility Prison, Florence, Colorado, USA, June 1999.
Theodore Kaczynski developed a negative attitude toward the techno-industrial system very early in his life. It was in 1962, during his last year at Harvard, he explained, when he began feeling a sense of disillusionment with the system. And he says he felt quite alone. "Back in the sixties there had been some critiques of technology, but as far as 1 knew there weren't people who were against the technological system as-such... It wasn't until 1971 or 72, shortly after I moved to Montana, that I read Jacques Ellul's book, The Technological Societv." The book is a masterpiece. I was very enthusiastic when I read it. I thought, 'look, this guy is saying things I have been wanting to say all along.'"
Why, I asked, did he personally come to be against technology? His immediate response was, "Why do you think? It reduces people to gears in a machine, it takes away our autonomy and our freedom." But there was obviously more to it than that. Along with the rage he felt against the machine, his words revealed an obvious love for a very special place in the wilds of Montana. He became most animated, spoke most passionately, while relating stories about the mountain life he created there and then sought to defend against the encroachment of the system. "The honest truth is that I am not really politically oriented. I would have really rather just be living out in the woods. If nobody had started cutting roads through there and cutting the trees down and come buzzing around in helicopters and snowmobiles I would still just be living there and the rest of the world could just take care of itself. I got involved in political issues because I was driven to it, so to speak. I'm not really inclined in that direction."
Kaczynski moved in a cabin that he built himself near Lincoln, Montana in 1971. His first decade there he concentrated on acquiring the primitive skills that would allow him to live autonomously in the wild. He explained that the urge to do this had been a part of his psyche since childhood. "Unquestionably there is no doubt that the reason I dropped out of the technological system is because I had read about other ways of life, in particular that of primitive peoples. When I was about eleven I remember going to the little local library in Evergreen Park, Illinois. They had a series of books published by the Smithsonian Institute that addressed various areas of science. Among other things, I read about anthropology in a book on human prehistory. I found it fascinating. After reading a few more books on the subject of Neanderthal man and so forth, I had this itch to read more. I started asking myself why and I came to the realization that what I really wanted was not to read another book, but that I just wanted to live that way."
Kaczynski says he began an intensive study of how to identify wild edible plants, track animals and replicate primitive technologies, approaching the task like the scholar he was. "Many years ago I used to read books like, for example, Ernest Thompson Seton's "Lives of Game Animals" to learn about animal behavior. But after a certain point, after living in the woods for a while, I developed an aversion to reading any scientific accounts. In some sense reading what the professional biologists said about wildlife ruined or contaminated it for me. What began to matter to me was the knowledge I acquired about wildlife through personal experience....
Kaczynski soon came to the conclusion that reformist strategies that merely called for "fixing" the system were not enough, and he professed little confidence in the idea that a mass change in consciousness might someday be able to undermine the technological system. "I don't think it can be done. In part because of the human tendency, for most people, there are exceptions, to take the path of least resistance. They'll take the easy way out, and giving up your car, your television set, your electricity, is not the path of least resistance for most people. As I see it, I don't think there is any controlled or planned way in which we can dismantle the industrial system. I think that the only way we will get rid of it is if it breaks down and collapses. That's why I think the consequences will be something like the Russian Revolution, or circumstances like we see in other places in the world today like the Balkans, Afghanistan, Rwanda. This does, I think, pose a dilemma for radicals who take a non-violent point of view. When things break down, there is going to be violence and this does raise a question, I don't know if I exactly want to call it a moral question, but the point is that for those who realize the need to do away with the techno-industrial system, if you work for its collapse, in effect you are killing a lot of people. If it collapses, there is going to be social disorder, there is going to be starvation, there aren't going to be any more spare parts or fuel for farm equipment, there won't be any more pesticide or fertilizer on which modern agriculture is dependent. So there isn't going to be enough food to go around, so then what happens? This is something that, as far as I've read, I haven't seen any radicals facing up to....
"The big problem is that people don't believe a revolution is possible, and it is not possible precisely because they do not believe it is possible. To a large extent I think the eco-anarchist movement is accomplishing a great deal, but I think they could do it better... The real revolutionaries should separate themselves from the reformers… And I think that it would be good if a conscious effort was being made to get as many people as possible introduced to the wilderness. In a general way, I think what has to be done is not to try and convince or persuade the majority of people that we are right, as much as try to increase tensions in society to the point where things start to break down. To create a situation where people get uncomfortable enough that they’re going to rebel. So the question is how do you increase those tensions? I don't know...."
"While I was living in the woods I sort of invented some gods for myself" and he laughs. "Not that I believed in these things intellectually, but they were ideas that sort of corresponded with some of the feelings I had. I think the first one I invented was Grandfather Rabbit. You know the snowshoe rabbits were my main source of meat during the winters. I had spent a lot of time learning what they do and following their tracks all around before I could get close enough to shoot them. Sometimes you would track a rabbit around and around and then the tracks disappear. You can't figure out where that rabbit went and lose the trail. I invented a myth for myself, that this was the Grandfather Rabbit, the grandfather who was responsible for the existence of all other rabbits. He was able to disappear, that is why you couldn't catch him and why you would never see him... Every time I shot a snowshoe rabbit, I would always say 'thank you Grandfather Rabbit.' After a while I acquired an urge to draw snowshoe rabbits. I sort of got involved with them to the extent that they would occupy a great deal of my thought. I actually did have a wooden object that, among other things, I carved a snowshoe rabbit in. I planned to do a better one, just for the snowshoe rabbits, but I never did get it done. There was another one that I sometimes called the Will ‘o the Wisp, or the wings of the morning. That's when you go out in to the hills in the morning and you just feel drawn to go on and on and on and on, then you are following the wisp. That was another god that I invented for myself."
So Ted Kaczynski, living out in the wilderness, like generations of prehistoric peoples before him, had innocently rediscovered the forest's gods. I wondered if he felt that those gods had forsaken him now as he sat facing life in prison with no more freedom, no more connection to the wild, nothing left of that life that was so important to him except for his sincere love of nature, his love of knowledge and his commitment to the revolutionary project of hastening the collapse of the techno-industrial system. I asked if he was afraid of losing his mind, if the circumstances he found himself in now would break his spirit? He answered, "No, what worries me is that I might in a sense adapt to this environment and come to be comfortable here and not resent it anymore. And I am afraid that as the years go by that I may forget, I may begin to lose my memories of the mountains and the woods and that's what really worries me, that I might lose those memories, and lose that sense of contact with wild nature in general. But I am not afraid they are going to break my spirit. "And he offered the following advice to green anarchists who share his critique of the technological system and want to hasten the collapse of, as Edward Abbey put it, "the Earth-destroying juggernaut of industrial civilization": "Never lose hope, be persistent and stubborn and never give up. There are many instances in history where apparent losers suddenly turn out to be winners unexpectedly, so you should never conclude all hope is lost. "
___________________
Rich Countries Owe Poor a Huge Environmental Debt
According to The Guardian UK, "The environmental damage caused to developing nations by the world's richest countries amounts to more than the entire third world debt of $1.8 trillion, according to the first systematic global analysis of the ecological damage imposed by rich countries."
Nuclear Waste Concerns Resurface
The Associated Press reports: "Thousands of canisters of highly radioactive waste from the world's most nuclear-energized nation lie, silent and deadly, beneath this jutting tip of Normandy. Above ground, cows graze and Atlantic waves crash into heather-covered hills."
The New York Times | Until All the Fish Are Gone
A New York Times editorial states: "Scientists have been warning for years that overfishing is degrading the health of the oceans and destroying the fish species on which much of humanity depends for jobs and food. Even so, it would be hard to frame the problem more dramatically than two recent articles in The Times detailing the disastrous environmental, economic and human consequences of often illegal industrial fishing."
Plan to Allow Logging in Alaskan Forest
According to The Associated Press, "More than three million acres in Alaska's Tongass National Forest would be open to logging under a federal plan that supporters believe will revive the state's struggling timber industry."
As Congress Talks Stimulus, Labor Leaders Fear Losing Their Voice
Jeffrey H. Birnbaum of The Washington Post says, "Organized labor, a fundamental constituency of the Democratic Party, is unhappy about lots of things these days, even though Democrats are in the majority in Congress."
Highly Skilled and out of Work
The Washington Post's Michael A. Fletcher writes: "An unusually large share of workers have been out a job for more than six months even as overall unemployment has remained low, a little-noted weakness in the labor market that analysts said threatens to intensify the impact of the unfolding economic downturn."
Abortion Rate Drops as Use of RU-486 Rises
Rob Stein, The Washington Post, says, "Thirty-five years after the Supreme Court's landmark Roe v. Wade decision, a pill that has largely faded from the rancorous public debate over abortion has slowly and quietly begun to transform the experience of ending a pregnancy in the United States."
Cell Phone Radiation Wrecks Your Sleep
Writing for The Independent UK, Geoffrey Lean reports: "Radiation from mobile phones delays and reduces sleep, and causes headaches and confusion, according to a new study."
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