Long Time Passing: Mothers Speak about War and Terror

Top Five Regrets of The Dying

2011-12-30T12:04:00.000-08:00

Here is a wonderful reminder by Bronnie Ware to be faithful to one's life...

For many years I worked in palliative care. My patients were those who had gone home to die. Some incredibly special times were shared. I was with them for the last three to twelve weeks of their lives.
People grow a lot when they are faced with their own mortality. I learnt never to underestimate someone’s capacity for growth. Some changes were phenomenal. Each experienced a variety of emotions, as expected, denial, fear, anger, remorse, more denial and eventually acceptance. Every single patient found their peace before they departed though, every one of them. Read the rest of the article >>

2011-12-14T09:26:00.000-08:00

Published on Monday, May 3, 2010 by Indian Country Today
Christian ‘Doctrine’ Fueled Dehumanization: UNPFII Report

by Valerie Taliman

NEW YORK - A groundbreaking report examining the roots of Christian domination over indigenous peoples and their lands was released this week at the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues.

Getting out A(nother) Story of Dispossing a People

2011-12-14T09:08:00.000-08:00

Sharing a story by Lucine Kasbarian, author of Armenia: A Rugged Land, an Enduring People (Dillon Press) and The Greedy Sparrow: An Armenian Tale (Marshall Cavendish).

Elixir in Exile

If Ponce De León could search for the Fountain of Youth, could an Armenian daughter demystify the elusive Iskiri Hayat?
Hidden away in my parents’ home in New Jersey is an extraordinary liquid in a glass decanter shaped like Aladdin’s lamp.
Tinted like a carnelian gem and with a spicy, musky, transporting scent, this exotic liquid seemed destined to be applied like perfume rather than consumed like a beverage....Read on >>

Pix and an Open Letter from America’s Port Truck Drivers on Occupy the Ports

2011-12-13T16:26:00.000-08:00

An Open Letter from America’s Port Truck Drivers on Occupy the Ports...

We are the front-line workers who haul container rigs full of imported and exported goods to and from the docks and warehouses every day.
We have been elected by committees of our co-workers at the Ports of Los Angeles, Long Beach, Oakland, Seattle, Tacoma, New York and New Jersey to tell our collective story. We have accepted the honor to speak up for our brothers and sisters about our working conditions despite the risk of retaliation we face....
Read the entire letter.

Pix from Dec 12, 2011 Occupy the Ports

14th / Broadway, Oakland: Preparing to Shut down Port of Oakland. Dec 12. Photo: Susan Galleymore

Hanjin Shut down at Port of Oakland. Dec 12. Photo: Susan Galleymore

Driver describing the life of a trucker to Occupiers. Read the letter, link above. Photo Dec 12, Susan Galleymore

Audacity, and More Audacity

2011-12-11T10:44:00.000-08:00

by Samir Amin
December 6, 2011

This article, while long, is well worth reading.(Read here or link to the article online.)

The historical circumstances created by the implosion of contemporary capitalism requires the radical left, in the North as well as the South, to be bold in formulating its political alternative to the existing system. The purpose of this paper is to show why audacity is required and what it means.

Why Audacity?

1. Contemporary capitalism is a capitalism of generalized monopolies. By this I mean that monopolies are now no longer islands (albeit important) in a sea of other still relatively autonomous companies, but are an integrated system. Therefore, these monopolies now tightly control all the systems of production. Small and medium enterprises, and even the large corporations that are not strictly speaking oligopolies are locked in a network of control put in place by the monopolies. Their degree of autonomy has shrunk to the point that they are nothing more than subcontractors of the monopolies.

This system of generalized monopolies is the product of a new phase of centralization of capital in the countries of the Triad (the United States, Western and Central Europe, and Japan) that took place during the 1980s and 1990s.

The generalized monopolies now dominate the world economy. ‘Globalization’ is the name they have given to the set of demands by which they exert their control over the productive systems of the periphery of global capitalism (the world beyond the partners of the triad). It is nothing other than a new stage of imperialism.

2. The capitalism of generalized and globalized monopolies is a system that guarantees these monopolies a monopoly rent levied on the mass of surplus value (transformed into profits) that capital extracts from the exploitation of labour. To the extent that these monopolies are operating in the peripheries of the global system, monopoly rent is imperialist rent. The process of capital accumulation – that defines capitalism in all its successive historical forms – is therefore driven by the maximization of monopoly/imperialist rent seeking.

This shift in the centre of gravity of the accumulation of capital is the source of the continuous concentration of income and wealth to the benefit of the monopolies, largely monopolized by the oligarchies (‘plutocracies’) that govern oligopolistic groups at the expense of the remuneration of labour and even the remuneration of non-monopolistic capital.

3. This imbalance in continued growth is itself, in turn, the source of the financialization of the economic system. By this I mean that a growing portion of the surplus cannot be invested in the expansion and deepening of systems of production and therefore the ‘financial investment’ of this excessive surplus becomes the only option for continued accumulation under the control of the monopolies.

The implementation of specific systems by capital permits the financialization to operate in different ways:

the subjugation of the management of firms to the principle of ‘shareholder value’
the substitution of pension systems funded by capitalization (Pension Funds) by systems of pension distribution
the adoption of the principle of ‘flexible exchange rates’
the abandonment of the principle of central banks determining the interest rate – the price of ‘liquidity’ – and the transfer of this responsibility to the ‘market.’

Financialization has transferred the major responsibility for control of the reproduction of the system of accumulation to some 30 giant banks of the triad. What are euphemistically called ‘markets’ are nothing other than the places where the strategies of these actors who dominate the economic scene are deployed.

In turn this financialization, which is responsible for the growth of inequality in income distribution (and fortunes), generates the growing surplus on which it feeds. The ‘financial investments’ (or rather the investments in financial speculation) continue to grow at dizzying speeds, not commensurate with growth in GDP (which is therefore becoming largely fictitious) or with investment in real production.

The explosive growth of financial investment requires – and fuels – among other things debt in all its forms, especially sovereign debt. When the governments in power claim to be pursuing the goal of ‘debt reduction,’ they are deliberately lying. For the strategy of financialized monopolies requires the growth in debt (which they seek, rather than combat) as a way to absorb the surplus profit of monopolies. The austerity policies imposed ‘to reduce debt’ have indeed resulted (as intended) in increasing its volume.

4. It is this system – commonly called ‘neoliberal,’ the system of generalized monopoly capitalism, ‘globalized’ (imperialist) and financialized (of necessity for its own reproduction) – that is imploding before our eyes. This system, apparently unable to overcome its growing internal contradictions, is doomed to continue its wild ride.

The ‘crisis’ of the system is due to its own ‘success.’ Indeed so far the strategy deployed by monopolies has always produced the desired results: ‘austerity’ plans and the so-called social (in fact anti-social) downsizing plans that are still being imposed, in spite of resistance and struggles. To this day the initiative remains in the hands of the monopolies (‘the markets’) and their political servants (the governments that submit to the demands of the so-called ‘market’).

5. Under these conditions monopoly capital has openly declared war on workers and peoples. This declaration is formulated in the sentence ‘liberalism is not negotiable.’ Monopoly capital will definitely continue its wild ride and not slow down. The criticism of ‘regulation’ that I make below is grounded in this fact.

We are not living in a historical moment in which the search for a ‘social compromise’ is a possible option. There have been such moments in the past, such as the post-war social compromise between capital and labour specific to the social democratic state in the West, the actually existing socialism in the East, and the popular national projects of the South. But our present historical moment is not the same. So the conflict is between monopoly capital and workers and people who are invited to an unconditional surrender. Defensive strategies of resistance under these conditions are ineffective and bound to be eventually defeated. In the face of war declared by monopoly capital, workers and peoples must develop strategies that allow them to take the offensive.

The period of social war is necessarily accompanied by the proliferation of international political conflicts and military interventions of the imperialist powers of the triad. The strategy of ‘military control of the planet’ by the armed forces of the United States and its subordinate NATO allies is ultimately the only means by which the imperialist monopolies of the triad can expect to continue their domination over the peoples, nations and the states of the South.

Monopolies Declare War

Faced with this challenge of the war declared by the monopolies, what alternatives are being proposed?

First response: ‘market regulation’ (financial and otherwise). These are initiatives that monopolies and governments claim they are pursuing. In fact it is only empty rhetoric, designed to mislead public opinion. These initiatives cannot stop the mad rush for financial return that is the result of the logic of accumulation controlled by monopolies. They are therefore a false alternative.

Second response: a return to the post-war models. These responses feed a triple nostalgia: (i) the rebuilding of a true ‘social democracy’ in the West, (ii) the resurrection of ‘socialisms’ founded on the principles that governed those of the 20th century, (iii) the return to formulas of popular nationalism in the peripheries of the South. These nostalgias imagine it is possible to ‘roll back’ monopoly capitalism, forcing it to regress to what it was in 1945. But history never allows such returns to the past. Capitalism must be confronted as it is today, not as what we would have wished it to be by imagining the blocking of its evolution. However, these longings continue to haunt large segments of the left throughout the world.

Third response: the search for a ‘humanist’ consensus. I define this pious wish in the following way: the illusion that a consensus among fundamentally conflicting interests would be possible. Naïve ecology movements, among others, share this illusion.

Fourth response: the illusions of the past. These illusions invoke ‘specificity’ and ‘right to difference’ without bothering to understand their scope and meaning. The past has already answered the questions for the future. These ‘culturalisms’ can take many para-religious or ethnic forms. Theocracies and ethnocracies become convenient substitutes for the democratic social struggles that have been evacuated from their agenda.

Fifth response: priority of ‘personal freedom.’ The range of responses based on this priority, considered the exclusive ‘supreme value,’ includes in its ranks the diehards of ‘representative electoral democracy,’ which they equate with democracy itself. The formula separates the democratization of societies from social progress, and even tolerates a de facto association with social regression in order not to risk discrediting democracy, now reduced to the status of a tragic farce.

But there are even more dangerous forms of this position. I am referring here to some common ‘post modernist’ currents (such as Toni Negri in particular) who imagine that the individual has already become the subject of history, as if communism, which will allow the individual to be emancipated from alienation and actually become the subject of history, were already here!

It is clear that all of the responses above, including those of the right (such as the ‘regulations’ that do not affect private property monopolies) still find powerful echoes among a majority of the people on the left.

6. The war declared by the generalized monopoly capitalism of contemporary imperialism has nothing to fear from the false alternatives that I have just outlined.

So what is to be done?

This moment offers us the historic opportunity to go much further; it demands as the only effective response a bold and audacious radicalization in the formulation of alternatives capable of moving workers and peoples to take the offensive to defeat their adversary's strategy of war. These formulations, based on the analysis of actually existing contemporary capitalism, must directly confront the future that is to be built, and turn their back on the nostalgia for the past and illusions of identity or consensus.

Audacious Programs for the Radical Left

I will organize the following general proposals under three headings: (i) socialize the ownership of monopolies, (ii) de-financialize the management of the economy, (iii) de-globalize international relations.

Socialize the Ownership of Monopolies

The effectiveness of the alternative response necessarily requires the questioning of the very principle of private property of monopoly capital. Proposing to ‘regulate’ financial operations, to return markets to ‘transparency’ to allow ‘agent's expectations’ to be ‘rational’ and to define the terms of a consensus on these reforms without abolishing the private property of monopolies, is nothing other than throwing dust in the eyes of the naive public. Monopolies are asked to ‘manage’ reforms against their own interests, ignoring the fact that they retain a thousand and one ways to circumvent the objectives of such reforms.

The alternative social project should be to reverse the direction of the current social order (social disorder) produced by the strategies of monopolies, in order to ensure maximum and stabilised employment, and to ensure decent wages growing in parallel with the productivity of social labour. This objective is simply impossible without the expropriation of the power of monopolies.

The ‘software of economic theorists’ must be reconstructed (in the words of François Morin). The absurd and impossible economic theory of ‘expectations’ expels democracy from the management of economic decision-making. Audacity in this instance requires radical reform of education for the training not only of economists, but also of all those called to occupy management positions.

Monopolies are institutional bodies that must be managed according to the principles of democracy, in direct conflict with those who sanctify private property. Although the term ‘commons,’ imported from the Anglo-Saxon world, is itself ambiguous because always disconnected from the debate on the meaning of social conflicts (Anglo-Saxon language deliberately ignores the reality of social classes), the term could be invoked here specifically to call monopolies part of the ‘commons.’

The abolition of the private ownership of monopolies takes place through their nationalization. This first legal action is unavoidable. But audacity here means going beyond that step to propose plans for the socialization of the management of nationalized monopolies and the promotion of the democratic social struggles that are engaged on this long road.

I will give here a concrete example of what could be involved in plans of socialization.

‘Capitalist’ farmers (those of developed countries) like ‘peasant’ farmers (mostly in the South) are all prisoners of both the upstream monopolies that provide inputs and credit, and the downstream ones on which they depend for processing, transportation and marketing of their products. Therefore they have no real autonomy in their ‘decisions.’ In addition the productivity gains they make are siphoned off by the monopolies that have reduced producers to the status of ‘subcontractors.’ What possible alternative?

Public institutions working within a legal framework that would set the mode of governance must replace the monopolies. These would be constituted of representatives of: (i) farmers (the principle interests), (ii) upstream units (manufacturers of inputs, banks) and downstream (food industry, retail chains) and (iii) consumers, (iv) local authorities (interested in natural and social environment – schools, hospitals, urban planning and housing, transportation), (v) the State (citizens). Representatives of the components listed above would be self-selected according to procedures consistent with their own mode of socialized management, such as units of production of inputs that are themselves managed by directorates of workers directly employed by the units concerned as well as those who are employed by sub-contracting units and so on. These structures should be designed by formulas that associate management personnel with each of these levels, such as research centres for scientific, independent and appropriate technology. We could even conceive of a representation of capital providers (the ‘small shareholders’) inherited from the nationalization, if deemed useful.

We are therefore talking about institutional approaches that are more complex than the forms of ‘self-directed’ or ‘cooperative’ that we have known. Ways of working need to be invented that allow the exercise of genuine democracy in the management of the economy, based on open negotiation among all interested parties. A formula is required that systematically links the democratization of society with social progress, in contrast with the reality of capitalism which dissociates democracy, which is reduced to the formal management of politics, from social conditions abandoned to the ‘market’ dominated by what monopoly capital produces. Then and only then can we talk about true transparency of markets, regulated in institutionalized forms of socialized management.

The example may seem marginal in the developed capitalist countries because farmers there are a very small proportion of workers (3-7 per cent). However, this issue is central to the South where the rural population will remain significant for some time. Here access to land, which must be guaranteed for all (with the least possible inequality of access) is fundamental to principles advancing peasant agriculture (I refer here to my previous work on this question). ‘Peasant agriculture’ should not be understood as synonymous with ‘stagnant agriculture’ (or ‘traditional and folklorique’). The necessary progress of peasant agriculture does require some ‘modernization’ (although this term is a misnomer because it immediately suggests to many modernization through capitalism). More effective inputs, credits, and production and supply chains are necessary to improve the productivity of peasant labour. The formulas proposed here pursue the objective of enabling this modernization in ways and in a spirit that is ‘non-capitalist,’ that is to say grounded in a socialist perspective.

Obviously the specific example chosen here is one that needs to be institutionalized. The nationalization / socialization of the management of monopolies in the sectors of industry and transport, banks and other financial institutions should be imagined in the same spirit, while taking into account the specificities of their economic and social functions in the constitution of their directorates. Again these directorates should involve the workers in the company as well as those of subcontractors, representatives of upstream industries, banks, research institutions, consumers, and citizens.

The nationalization/socialization of monopolies addresses a fundamental need at the central axis of the challenge confronting workers and peoples under contemporary capitalism of generalized monopolies. It is the only way to stop the accumulation by dispossession that is driving the management of the economy by the monopolies.

The accumulation dominated by monopolies can indeed only reproduce itself if the area subject to ‘market management’ is constantly expanding. This is achieved by excessive privatization of public services (dispossession of citizens), and access to natural resources (dispossession of peoples). The extraction of profit of ‘independent’ economic units by the monopolies is even a dispossession (of capitalists!) by the financial oligarchy.

De-Financialization: A World Without Wall Street

Nationalization/socialization of monopolies would in and of itself abolish the principle of ‘shareholder value’ imposed by the strategy of accumulation in the service of monopoly rents. This objective is essential for any bold agenda to escape the ruts in which the management of today's economy is mired. Its implementation pulls the rug out from under the feet of the financialization of management of the economy. Are we returning to the famous ‘euthanasia of the rentier’ advocated by Keynes in his time? Not necessarily, and certainly not completely. Savings can be encouraged by financial reward, but on condition that their origin (household savings of workers, businesses, communities) and their conditions of earnings are precisely defined. The discourse on macroeconomic savings in conventional economic theory hides the organization of exclusive access to the capital market of the monopolies. The so-called ‘market driven remuneration’ is then nothing other than the means to guarantee the growth of monopoly rents.

Of course the nationalization/socialization of monopolies also applies to banks, at least the major ones. But the socialization of their intervention (‘credit policies’) has specific characteristics that require an appropriate design in the constitution of their directorates. Nationalization in the classical sense of the term implies only the substitution of the State for the boards of directors formed by private shareholders. This would permit, in principle, implementation of bank credit policies formulated by the State – which is no small thing. But it is certainly not sufficient when we consider that socialization requires the direct participation in the management of the bank by the relevant social partners. Here the ‘self-management’ of banks by their staff would not be appropriate. The staff concerned should certainly be involved in decisions about their working conditions, but little else, because it is not their place to determine the credit policies to be implemented.

If the directorates must deal with the conflicts of interest of those that provide loans (the banks) and those who receive them (the ‘enterprises’), the formula for the composition of directorates must be designed taking into account what the enterprises are and what they require. A restructuring of the banking system which has become overly centralized since the regulatory frameworks of the past two centuries were abandoned over the past four decades. There is a strong argument to justify the reconstruction of banking specialization according to the requirements of the recipients of their credit as well as their economic function (provision of short-term liquidity, contributing to the financing of investments in the medium and long term). We could then, for example, create an ‘agriculture bank’ (or a coordinated ensemble of agriculture banks) whose clientele is comprised not only of farmers and peasants but also those involved in the ‘upstream and downstream’ of agriculture described above. The bank's directorate would involve on the one hand the ‘bankers’ (staff officers of the bank – who would have been recruited by the directorate) and other clients (farmers or peasants, and other upstream and downstream entities).

We can imagine other sets of articulated banking systems, appropriate to various industrial sectors, in which the directorates would involve the industrial clients, centers of research and technology and services to ensure control of the ecological impact of the industry, thus ensuring minimal risk (while recognizing that no human action is completely without risk), and subject to transparent democratic debate.

The de-financialization of economic management would also require two sets of legislation. The first concerns the authority of a sovereign state to ban speculative fund (hedge funds) operations in its territory. The second concerns pension funds, which are now major operators in the financialization of the economic system. These funds were designed – first in the U.S. of course – to transfer to employees the risks normally incurred by capital, and which are the reasons invoked to justify capital's remuneration! So this is a scandalous arrangement, in clear contradiction even with the ideological defense of capitalism! But this ‘invention’ is an ideal instrument for the strategies of accumulation dominated by monopolies.

The abolition of pension funds is necessary for the benefit of distributive pension systems, which, by their very nature, require and allow democratic debate to determine the amounts and periods of assessment and the relationship between the amounts of pensions and remuneration paid. In a democracy that respects social rights, these pension systems are universally available to all workers. However, at a pinch, and so as not to prohibit what a group of individuals might desire to put in place, supplementary pension funds could be allowed.

All measures of de-financialization suggested here lead to an obvious conclusion: A world without Wall Street, to borrow the title of the book by François Morin, is possible and desirable.

In a world without Wall Street, the economy is still largely controlled by the ‘market.’ But these markets are for the first time truly transparent, regulated by democratic negotiation among genuine social partners (for the first time also they are no longer adversaries as they are necessarily under capitalism). It is the financial ‘market’ – opaque by nature and subjected to the requirements of management for the benefit of the monopolies – that is abolished. We could even explore whether it would be useful or not to shut down the stock exchanges, given that the rights to property, both in its private as well as social form, would be conducted ‘differently.’ We could even consider whether the stock exchange could be re-established to this new end. The symbol in any case – ‘a world without Wall Street’ – nevertheless retains its power.

De-financialization certainly does not mean the abolition of macroeconomic policy and in particular the macro management of credit. On the contrary it restores its efficiency by freeing it from its subjugation to the strategies of rent-seeking monopolies. The restoration of the powers of national central banks, no longer ‘independent’ but dependent on both the state and markets regulated by the democratic negotiation of social partners, gives the formulation of macro credit policy its effectiveness in the service of socialized management of the economy.

At the International Level: Delinking

I use here the term ‘delinking’ that I proposed half a century ago, a term that contemporary discourse appears to have substituted with the synonym ‘de-globalization.’ I have never conceptualized delinking as an autarkic retreat, but rather as a strategic reversal in the face of both internal and external forces in response to the unavoidable requirements of self-determined development. Delinking promotes the reconstruction of a globalization based on negotiation, rather than submission to the exclusive interests of the imperialist monopolies. It also makes possible the reduction of international inequalities.

Delinking is necessary because the measures advocated in the two previous sections can never really be implemented at the global scale, or even at a regional level (e.g. Europe). They can only be initiated in the context of states / nations with advanced radical social and political struggles, committed to a process of socialization of the management of their economy.

Imperialism, in the form that it took until just after the Second World War, had created the contrast between industrialised imperialist centers and dominated peripheries where industry was prohibited. The victories of national liberation movements began the process of the industrialization of the peripheries, through the implementation of delinking policies required for the option of self-reliant development. Associated with social reforms that were at times radical, these delinkings created the conditions for the eventual ‘emergence’ of those countries that had gone furthest in this direction – China leading the pack, of course.

But the imperialism of the current era, the imperialism of the Triad, forced to retreat and ‘adjust’ itself to the conditions of this new era, rebuilt itself on new foundations, based on ‘advantage’ by which it sought to hold on to the privilege of exclusivity that I have classified in five categories. The control of:

technology
access to natural resources of the planet
global integration of the monetary and financial system
systems of communication and information
weapons of mass destruction.

The main form of delinking today is thus defined precisely by the challenge to these five privileges of contemporary imperialism. Emerging countries are engaged in delinking from these five privileges, with varying degrees of control and self-determination, of course. While earlier success over the past two decades in delinking enabled them to accelerate their development, in particular through industrial development within the globalized ‘liberal’ system using ‘capitalist’ means, this success has fueled delusions about the possibility of continuing on this path, that is to say, emerging as new ‘equal capitalist partners.’ The attempt to ‘co-opt’ the most prestigious of these countries with the creation of the G20 has encouraged these illusions.

But with the current ongoing implosion of the imperialist system (called ‘globalization’), these illusions are likely to dissipate. The conflict between the imperialist powers of the triad and emerging countries is already visible, and is expected to worsen. If they want to move forward, the societies of emerging countries will be forced to turn more toward self-reliant modes of development through national plans and by strengthening South-South cooperation.

Audacity, under such circumstances, involves engaging vigorously and coherently toward this end, bringing together the required measures of delinking with the desired advances in social progress.

The goal of this radicalization is threefold: the democratization of society; the consequent social progress achieved; and the taking of anti-imperialist positions. A commitment to this direction is possible, not only for societies in emerging countries, but also in the ‘abandoned’ or the ‘written-off’ of the global South. These countries had been effectively recolonized through the structural adjustment programs of the 1980s. Their peoples are now in open revolt, whether they have already scored victories (South America) or not (in the Arab world).

Audacity here means that the radical left in these societies must have the courage to take measure of the challenges they face and to support the continuation and radicalization of the necessary struggles that are in progress.

The delinking of the South prepares the way for the deconstruction of the imperialist system itself. This is particularly apparent in areas affected by the management of the global monetary and financial system, since it is the result of the hegemony of the dollar.

But beware: it is an illusion to expect to substitute for this system ‘another world monetary and financial system’ that is better balanced and favorable to the development of the peripheries. As always, the search of a ‘consensus’ over international reconstruction from above is mere wishful thinking akin to waiting for a miracle. What is on the agenda now is the deconstruction of the existing system - its implosion - and reconstruction of national alternative systems (for countries or continents or regions), as some projects in South America have already begun. Audacity here is to have the courage to move forward with the strongest determination possible, without too much worry about the reaction of imperialism.

This same problematique of delinking / dismantling is also of relevance to Europe, which is a subset of globalization dominated by monopolies. The European project was designed from the outset and built systematically to dispossess its peoples of their ability to exercise their democratic power. The European Union was established as a protectorate of the monopolies. With the implosion of the euro zone, its submission to the will of the monopolies has resulted in the abolishment of democracy which has been reduced to the status of farce and takes on extreme forms, namely focused only on the question: how are the ‘market’ (that is to say monopolies) and the ‘Rating Agencies’ (that is to say, again, the monopolies) reacting? That's the only question now posed. How the people might react is no longer given the slightest consideration.

It is thus obvious that here too there is no alternative to audacity: ‘disobeying’ the rules imposed by the "European Constitution" and the imaginary central bank of the euro. In other words, there is no alternative to deconstruct the institutions of Europe and the euro zone. This is the unavoidable prerequisite for the eventual reconstruction of ‘another Europe’ of peoples and nations.

In conclusion: Audacity, more audacity, always audacity.

What I mean by audacity is therefore:

For the radical left in the societies of the imperialist triad, the need for an engagement in the building of an alternative anti-monopoly social bloc.

For the radical left in the societies of the peripheries to engage in the building of an alternative anti-comprador social bloc.

It will take time to make progress in building these blocs, but it could well accelerate if the radical left takes on movement with determination and engages in making progress on the long road of socialism. It is therefore necessary to propose strategies not ‘out of the crisis of capitalism,’ but ‘out of capitalism in crisis’ to borrow from the title of one of my recent works.

We are in a crucial period in history. The only legitimacy of capitalism is to have created the conditions for passing on to socialism, understood as a higher stage of civilization. Capitalism is now an obsolete system, its continuation leading only to barbarism. No other capitalism is possible. The outcome of a clash of civilizations is, as always, uncertain. Either the radical left will succeed through the audacity of its initiatives to make revolutionary advances, or the counter-revolution will win. There is no effective compromise between these two responses to the challenge.

All the strategies of the non-radical left are in fact non-strategies, they are merely day-to-day adjustments to the vicissitudes of the imploding system. And if the powers that be want, like le Guépard, to ‘change everything so that nothing changes,’ the candidates of the left believe it is possible to ‘change life without touching the power of monopolies’! The non-radical left will not stop the triumph of capitalist barbarism. They have already lost the battle for lack of wanting to take it on.

Audacity is what is necessary to bring about the autumn of capitalism that will be announced by the implosion of its system and by the birth of an authentic spring of the people, a spring that is possible. •

Samir Amin is director of the Third World Forum. A selection of his books is available from Pambazuka Press.

References:

1. Samir Amin, Sortir de la crise du capitalisme ou sortir du capitalisme en crise, Le temps des cerises, 2009.

2. Samir Amin, Ending the crisis of capitalism or ending capitalism, Pambazuka Press 2011

3. Samir Amin, Du capitalisme à la civilisation, Syllepse, 2008.

4. Aurélien Bernier, Désobéissons à l’Union Européenne, Les mille et une nuits, 2011.

5. Jacques Nikonoff, Sortir de l’euro, Mes mille et une nuits, 2011.

6. François Morin, Un monde sans Wall Street, Le seuil, 2011.

Calls from Home

2011-12-11T10:27:00.000-08:00

Every year for the last 12 years Thousand Kites has produced CALLS FROM HOME, the voices of prisoner families, former prisoners, poets, musicians, and everyday citizens to the airwaves. The broadcast consists of holiday greetings from family members to their loved ones behind bars and the over 2.4 million people incarcerated in the United States.

Get involved with a national campaign to address the cost of prison phone calls and find out about special tools you cn use with Calls from Home.

The People versus The Wall Street Bull***!

2011-12-03T07:10:00.000-08:00

(Published in Commondreams as "The People versus San Francisco's Wall Street Bull")

The golden bull glitters outside Wells Fargo Bank where marchers stopped protest the bank’s foreclosures.

Photo: Susan Galleymore, December 2, 2011.

San Francisco Labor Council attracted several hundred protesters to march from the Federal Building on Mission Street to the financial district – with spirited stops outside Wells Fargo Bank (king of foreclosures), Verizon (obscene disparity in salaries between executives and workers) , and the Embarcadero Hyatt (egregious treatment of workers, especially women). Seniors and wheelchair-bound protesters were especially evident at this event to protest cuts to social security and medical care and health insurance companies’ business practices.

“Roger” – he still works in the insurance industry – agrees with the effort to “tax the rich” and “no cuts to health care benefits and social security.”

“Over the last twenty-years I’ve become increasingly discouraged as we, as a nation, have moved away from our values. Then I found the 99% group, people of action trying to change things for the better.”

Roger is plump, 57-year-old “white guy” who has never before in his life participated in public protest. His face glowed with pleasure when I used his camera to photograph him with a Vietnam vet holding a sign stating that more than 5,000 war veterans have lost their homes to foreclosure.

Roger once worked for a health insurance company. “Honestly, I agree with these protesters that health care insurance is an extremely corrupt field. The industry has ways of making money that hurts the average person. The company I worked for had deductibles for families and if one family had more health problems than another family working for the same corporation they’d raise the deductibles for the corporation making it more expensive for the corporation to keep that family on…and that gave it an incentive to fire that employee.”

Like many other Americans around the country who’ve never protested before, something about this protest, this message (despite mainstream media’s claim that there isn’t one) touches something deep within Americans like Roger; they know intuitively that it’s the right time for these protests. And Roger has taken to the Occupy movement like he was born to it. Joyfully he explains that he takes boxes of donuts each morning to the Occupy encampment at Justin Herman Plaza. “Sure, they’re donuts, not the healthiest things around but I do it as we all enjoy eating ‘em and talking things over.”

And, yes, Occupy San Francisco is back! Evicted last week, the camp – larger than ever -- was in full swing this week. Campers, protesters, ferry commuters, and tourists joined in as singer/protest song writer Dave Rovics encouraged his audience to join his refrain that “we’ll stay…right…here!”

There are lingering fears throughout the camp that SFPD is planning another action to clear the camp. But, for now, the plaza looks like America: youth, middle-aged, able-bodied seniors and those on walkers and in wheelchairs, singers, poets…and insurance agents… understand that We, the 99% are not gonna take it anymore and we plan to “stay right here”!

Spiders Seek Higher Ground...

2011-11-25T21:43:00.000-08:00

This astonishing photo came from a Facebook friend, Iara Lee: Activist & Filmmaker who writes:

EXTRAORDINARY PHENOMENON: The Silver Lining, The SPIDER WEBS! millions of spiders climbed up into the trees to escape the rising floods. Because of the scale of the flooding and the fact that the water has taken so long to recede, many trees have become cocooned in spiders webs. People in this part of Sindh have never seen this phenomenon before. They report that there are now far fewer mosquitoes since they are getting caught in the spiders' web, reducing the risk of malaria, which is one blessing for the people of Sindh, who face so many other hardships after the floods...!

unThanksgiving, Alcatraz Island

2011-11-25T13:33:00.000-08:00

Hopped out of bed at 3:33am Thursday and prepared to meet a friend, Smadar, at 4:30am for the drive to Pier 33. It was dark, damp, and drizzling when we reached the Embarcadero. Judging by the limited parking, many more people than we expected were heading to Alcatraz and the Sunrise Ceremony.
It was still dark and the rain still fell when, about 45 minutes later - car stowed safely at Art Academy parking lot - we joined the by-now much longer line of people waiting to purchase tickets, then waiting for a ferry to Alcatraz.
An hour later we were still there...in the rain...waiting for a ferry; by now the sky was much lighter and both Smadar and I were wet through. Clearly we'd missed the sun rising - it was light when we finally landed on Alcatraz but we caught the last dance...and found some tobacco to throw into the sacred fire with thousands of others.
The Indigenous Peoples Sunrise Ceremony, aka unThanksgiving Day has been held annually on Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay since 1975. It honors and promotes the rights of indigenous peoples of the Americas and also honors the 1969 protest when Alcatraz-Red Power Movement (ARPM) occupied the island.

Dancers...

Dancing in the sacred circle.

Detail of head-dress...

Looking toward San Francisco


Skeletons of the past against the morning sky.

(All photos, above, Susan Galleymore, Nov 24, 2011.)

Listen to audio: Clyde Bellecourt on Alcatraz 2011

Other photographs, same day, different photographer(s).

The Council of Elders stand in solidarity with Occupy Wall Street

2011-11-21T18:10:00.001-08:00

Occupy Oakland may be down but it ain't out... We had our own Council of Elders meet last night. Here's an overview vid of some of them..
The Council of Elders stand in solidarity with Occupy Wall Street.

(And, sorry for the embedded Google Ads...but, what else can a girl do to scratch together enough $$s to live in this day and age?)

A Month in the Life of Occupy

2011-11-21T16:49:00.000-08:00

General Strike, Port of Oakland, November 2
Estimates of the crowd size run from 20,000 to 30,000 (SF Chronicle)

Below: Oakland City Council meets to discuss Councilmember Nadel's resolution to Support Occupy Oakland. More than 140 members of the public spoke, the vast majority FOR support. The City Council delayed the decision...then Mayor Quan ordered the encampment removed.

Raising Sand Radio Audio clip from speakers at Oakland City Council meeting after the first, violent attack by police on Occupy Oakland encampment,

Day after police removed Occupy Oakland for the second time, Occupy supporters convene at Oakland Public Library to strategize.

November 16, actions by students from UC campuses in Berkeley, Davis, and Santa Cruz discourage UC Regents from meeting.

Above: Snow Park, Occupy Oakland.

November 19, Preparing to march before occupying private park on 19th and Telegraph, Oakland.
Anticipating re-occupation of Ogawa/Grant Plaza, city workers run sprinklers full time to keep the ground too soggy for tents.

Undeterred, Occupiers create a vegetable garden to one side of plaza.

• On Sunday afternoon, Police, private security & DPW workers destroyed the garden planted in Oscar Grant Plaza during the Saturday Day of Action

More info regarding the attack on Occupy Oakland’s new community garden from the gardening working group:

We wanted to thank every person for their support and presence yesterday at the garden party. It felt so amazing to see all of your faces and to see the motivation! We wanted to write an email to you this evening telling you the garden was still up. A member went to the plaza around 2pm this afternoon and the garden was still looking beautiful! We were very excited to send out the email tonight with that in mind, however, we returned to the garden at 4pm this afternoon to find city workers and police throwing all the veggie starts, dirt and planter boxes into a dump truck.
There were members of the community already present who moved all the potted plants away from the scene, so those were saved. A few members sat next to the remaining box, so we saved those starts too. Some people tried to talk to the police during and after the truck left, and NO officer was willing to speak on behalf of the disrespectful decisions the city made.
Read more >>

Occupy San Francisco at Justin Herman Plaza the night before police clean out the encampment.

Occupy San Francisco, Justin Herman Plaza

(all photos Susan Galleymore's cell.)

Exposing Cultural Myths at Occupy Oakland

2011-11-15T07:18:00.000-08:00

Published in CounterPunch, Nov 15, as "Re-Occupy, ASAP": Exposing Cultural Myths at Occupy Oakland
And in Truthout, Nov 16.

What a welcome relief the Occupy movement’s trend of “leaderless” groups! True, this seemingly contradictory concept is difficult to absorb in a culture the promotes a leadership style that models the strongest, loudest, most persistent, and most vocal monopolizing the microphone – both physical and its cultural equivalent.

But, as Americans know well, repeat something often enough and it becomes part of the cultural vernacular. So, despite the difficulty politicians, media, and many Americans have in grasping this new paradigm, Occupy movements across the country continue as leaderless groups.

After the Oakland camp’s most recent tossing by police word-of-mouth convened about 1,000 people at the main library to strategize. Then they marched the four blocks back to City Hall for the 6 p.m. General Assembly.

There are refreshing and humorous moments at GAs when a random person from the crowd hops the line of speakers, commandeers the mic, and rambles on about the CIA commanding “us all through the fillings in our teeth”, that we’re at the “end times”, or that aliens are watching from outer space and waiting to invade. Then, the mic is retrieved, gently, and GA business continues.

Last night, the group reiterated its commitment to non-violence; anyone unable or unwilling to practice non-violence will be escorted, gently, from the group. It also consensually agreed that Saturday, November 19 is the next major gathering in Oakland for those aching for a different system of governance, society, and relationship to one another.

These peaceful and informal GAs belie the myths perpetuated by local government and the media about epidemics of violence at Occupy sites.

Then again, the movement is exposing other cultural myths and morality tales for what they are, too: formulae for shaming generations of wage-earners into silent compliance.

Presidential hopeful Herman Cain recently reiterated a classic: “If you're not rich, don't blame Wall St, blame yourself.”

Variations on the theme include:

The rich have what they have because they “pull themselves up by their own bootstraps”.

“God” shows His approval of the righteously hard-working by endowing them with material wealth.

The unemployed have given up or are too lazy to seek jobs.

“The American Dream” is there for the taking by anyone willing to work for it

Education ensures success.

The planet is a treasure trove of natural resources for bold risk-takers to tap.

Indeed, even the myth that police maintain social order for business is evaporating in the face of reality.

Jesse Smith lives in downtown Oakland and, at first, he was skeptical of the Occupy movement’s manifestation in his neighborhood. After he reconnoitered, talked with Occupiers, and understood that they echoed his grievances about our country’s direction, he joined the camp's business liaison group.

Yesterday, he stood in the sunshine at the police barricades erected after the police raid early that morning and explained that the business liaison group had surveyed some 100 businesses in a 2 block radius around City Hall.

“We collected data that no one else seems to have: around one third of the business owners report neutral impact on their business by the occupation; another third, owners of convenience stores and pizza joints, report a positive impact – business has gone up; the rest, places negatively impacted, are the attractive retail outlets that tend to be chain stores.”

Most business owners note that the police actions are “the only detriment that they experience to their bottom line.” They say their vendors call and ask them, ‘Is it safe to come to downtown Oakland?’ There's an impression outside of Oakland that there's been a need for a constant police line and that raids and violent police actions are imminent. This, if anything, is what is killing commerce here.”

Dorothy King is the owner of the sixty-year-old Oakland-based family business Everett and Jones barbeque.

“People say small business owners in Oakland suffer because people don’t spend money here. No, if the small business owners who live and work in Oakland suffer it is because the big banks take our money out of our community and do not invest in our city.”

In the sunshine, a protester near Jesse Smith patrolled the police barricades behind which municipal workers picked up debris from the for-now demolished encampment. One side of the sign he carried urged, “Mayor Quan, City Council, how about a little imagination?” The other side read, “Re-Occupy asap.”

Judging by how the majority of people conduct themselves in Oakland these days, peacefully and with determination, it is only a matter of time before the latter comes true.

(Photos: Susan Galleymore, Nov 14, 2011)

Slideshow of Occupy Oakland, San Francisco, and Alameda

2011-10-27T21:07:00.000-07:00

Here are slides from Occupy Oakland, San Francisco, and Alameda from last couple of weeks

Communicating via People Pedal Power

2011-10-20T19:09:00.000-07:00

One single bicycle – and many pedaling people -- powers Occupy San Francisco’s media center: three laptops, a handful of cell phones, and wi-fi hotspots.

It is fitting that, on the day when as many of five thousand protested outside Wells Fargo Bank, something as simple, sustainable, and ubiquitous as a bicycle video-streamed and communicated the goings-on to the rest of the country and the world.

This people pedal power demystifies electricity and sends a hopeful message: if one bicycle and a few batteries enable world-wide communication how dependent are We the People on centralized coal and nuclear power plants?

People pedal power encourages the person in the street intuitively to grasp an emergent urban story: each of us is capable of creating decentralized solutions that still allow us to run our beloved electronic equipment. Perhaps we really can outwit and work around the corporations and financial institutions at the heart of OWS movement’s dissatisfaction.

There’s nothing special about the bicycle that was donated by Bay Area business Rock the Bike. It is stationary and rigged to stand about six inches from the ground. When pedaled, the spinning rear wheel, attached to a small motor, transmits people power to a “box” that is connected to a battery…that is connected to inverters… that plug into equipment that requires 12 volts, or 115 AC, or even 5 volts for cell phones.

Kames Cox-Geraghty, one of the Occupiers working on a laptop on Market Street near the Embarcadero BART station, said, “Right now these things are definitely basic but we're getting there; we have people who really want to help build the system who come down here to advise us.”

Earlier in the occupation, the encampment had a generator but police stated organizers needed to apply for a permit from the fire department. According to police, however, the encampment had “too many personal items lying around that constitute a fire hazard” and it was unlikely to be granted a permit.

“So, at the moment,” Cox-Geraghty explained in a recent Raising Sand Radio interview, “we don't have backup. Instead, we have somebody on the bike almost 24/7. It's an intense system; we go for maybe five minutes without it, then we do a big shout out, ‘I'm done. Who wants to go next?’”

The shout out, also known as the “human microphone,” is another example of a work-around that has become common at occupation sites where “necessity is the mother of invention.” Activist/author Naomi Klein and Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Sizizek are among the speakers who have popularized this ingenious urban call and response system that obviates the need to apply for a permit for sound amplifying equipment. Speakers break sentences into staccato sound bites that members of the audience repeat and pass through the crowd. It works for immediate needs – recruiting cyclists to generate pedal power – and it also works to educate and connect the dots between the OWS movement and world events.

One such moment occurred at Occupy San Francisco when someone shouted, “How many… American deaths…. in Iraq and Afghanistan?”

A response popped up and was amplified through the crowd, “About nine thousand.” (A number that includes military contractors killed.)

Then another voice shouted, “What about… the deaths… of people not American?”

There was no answer to that but that the question was asked raises awareness about the terrible swath of war beyond America borders. (The answer? Approximately one-and-a-half million Iraqis. Afghans? Unclear; the American military doesn’t “do body counts”.)

A longtime activist, Francis Coombs, said, “When the husks of the old world fall away we will see that new growth has already taken root.”

The world-wide Occupy movement shows all the signs of new growth taking root as engaged human beings collaborate to create renewable people power.

Yes, for Ecuador! Or, Confessions of a Fired Chevron Contractor

2011-09-20T18:50:00.000-07:00

(Came across this anonymous article and want to share it to spread the support for Ecuador's cleanup)
By “Supa Strika”

A resounding cheer for the US appeals court that ruled Chevron cannot escape an $18 billion fine on behalf of Amazonian residents for the corporation’s massive pollution of the rain forest. Needless to say, Chevron will appeal the decision; it has been doing so for 18 years. If it manages to crawl out from under this fine it will not be for lack of effort by activists who keep the spotlight on Chevron for this and other practices that damage the environment and the communities that depend upon it.
I was a Chevron subcontractor during George Bush’s second term and there were many mornings I’d honk and wave to friends as I drove to work while they protested corporate polices at the gates of Chevron’s headquarters in San Ramon, California.
My first day on the job coincided with the Bush junior’s re-election. It was impossible to miss the expressions of corporate jubilation in the hallways, break rooms, and offices that day; someone wrote “WAR” and drew a smiley face on the whiteboard in my office too.
Over two years, I successfully implemented a global website located in a building east of CVX headquarters. My job performance was good enough that, on completion of that project, I was offered another in corporate headquarters – one floor below then-CEO “Dave” O'Reilly where I rubbed elbows with Chevron’s corporate publicists and marketing mavens.
A first responsibility was to put a “lighter, brighter face” on the public website Chevron devotes to explaining its side of the Ecuador story. My foreboding about my new role was matched by that then-dark and dreary site branded with Texaco’s black and red palette. Moreover, it was populated with self-serving legal rhetoric about why Chevron was blameless in the horrors wreaked by oil spills and lax environmental controls in Ecuador’s forests and on its people.
It was difficult to pretend to enjoy my work or that I had much in common with my colleagues. As a life-long social justice activist I was aware of corporate malfeasance around the globe and I was not good at keeping my emotions hidden. Moreover, my only son was serving in the US Army – to my mind the element used to project US might in foreign lands and safeguard oil fields for corporations like Chevron. (Eventually, my son was honorably discharged after serving one tour of duty in Afghanistan and two in Iraq.)
I was fired within three months. Had I been a true believer I’d have fired someone displaying my attitude too. For example, meeting with the marketing team in 2006 about Chevron's strategy to be beat Proposition 87 – the Clean Alternative Energy Act – I quipped that Chevron create a marketing campaign to promote a new gas standard: instead of “miles-to-the-gallon” it use “number-of-dead-Iraqis-to–the-gallon”. (Chevron contributed over $34 million to “No on 87” – and won: that Clean Alternative Energy Act failed.)

My experience convinced me that corporations like Chevron act like a cults. There’s the isolation: believers do not mix with “non-believers”; isolation ensures believing members do not doubt or question the corporate mission or the corporation’s role in his/her life.
For days prior to protesters arriving at the gate for a permitted protest, employees and contractors were sent emails decrying the action, warnings about traffic congestion and frustrations, and offering assurances about personal safety that implied protesters were intrinsically violent people. (Actually, the majority of left activist groups espouse and practice non-violence as a matter of course.)
Corporations pay (or donate?) decent salaries that allow members to entertain themselves shopping, consuming, and keeping up with the Joneses. The threat of being cut off from the corporate tit is terrifying and employees obey and believe corporate messaging -- in Chevron’s case, “Human Energy” – even when faced with conflicting evidence.
In 2005, the ChevronToxico Campaign for Justice in Ecuador somehow convinced the management of Mudd’s Restaurant, right across the street from Chevron Headquarters, to exhibit “Crude Reflections: ChevronTexaco's Rainforest Legacy”. This series of 50 photographs documented the human and environmental impact of what experts believe is the worst oil-related environmental disaster on the planet. Few, if any, Chevron employees attended.

Who is Supa Strika?
I have never hidden from my activist friends that I contracted with Chevron…or any corporation. Indeed, I believe that those of us who espouse “left” ideologies ought to work in corporations at least once. Then, when we denigrate corporations’ activities around the globe, we also understand how the mindset operates at home, how employees’ minds are colonized by fear: fear of losing their jobs, fear of knowing, and fear of speaking the truth in meetings. Fear keeps publicists and marketing mavens churning out campaign messages that white- or green-wash corporate misdeeds too.
I chose Supa Strika as my pseudonym partly because I am fearful: being known for criticizing the corporate-hand-that-feeds does not put bread on my table. (I’ve been unemployed for more two years as it is!)
Additionally, Supa Strika is a wildly popular comic series in Africa, South America and Asia Pacific that features a fictional soccer team -- all brown-skinned -- that sports Chevron’s Caltex- and Texaco-branded jerseys. I grew up in South Africa so I know that the vast majority of soccer-crazy South African children cannot afford real soccer balls; they improvise by stuffing plastic bags that litter the streets into other plastic bags until they form something hard enough to kick. Instead of Caltex- and Texaco-branded jerseys they wear rags.
Ironically, Supa Strika editions originate in the very office I worked in at Chevron headquarters where employees churn out and distribute thousands of these colorful and well-executed comics to hoodwink children. Indeed, Chevron has taken global sponsorships to a whole new level with an innovative animated version of Supa Strika for television. Chevron reports that this “extends beyond traditional sports sponsorship and results in significant brand recognition.”
But, activists can, and do, fight back. We expose these companies’ internal workings and understand what keeps employees enthralled; then we support decisions like that of the recent appeals court.
What’s our message? Corporations like Chevron might hide for 18 years or more but they will not escape their fines.
In other words, activists re-frame and re-apply Human Energy.

(Another unhappy but resolutely outspoken member of the fallen-from-corporate-grace.)

Deep Costs of War Trauma

2011-08-10T18:07:00.000-07:00

(Published August 11 in Counterpunch and Sri Lanka Guardian as "The Deep Cost of War Trauma: Destroying Personalities.")

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, PTSD, is a serious problem for America and its war veterans – and that does not bode well for a society that supports war and militarism as a means to generate capital. The high prevalence of civilian assault, rape, child abuse, disaster, and violent incidents also makes PTSD a public health problem -- as borne out by the 1995 national study that estimates at least five percent of men and ten percent of women experience PTSD at some point in their lives; and roughly thirty percent develop a chronic form that persists for life.

War trauma is not new: “soldier’s heart” was the term used to describe it during the American Civil War; “shell shock” during World War I; “battle fatigue” or “war neurosis” during World War II; and “Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome” during Vietnam. Then a “syndrome” (“a group of signs and symptoms that collectively characterize or indicate a particular disease or abnormal condition”) evolved into a “disorder,” that is, an “illness.” Post Traumatic Stress Disorder formally entered the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM III) in 1980.

DSM IV describes PTSD as a psychological condition experienced by people who face traumatic events that cause “catastrophic stressors outside the range of usual human experience” (such as war, torture, rape, or natural disaster). This is different from “ordinary stressors” (such as divorce, failure, rejection, and financial problems) characterized as Adjustment Disorders.

Embraced by scientific and clinical communities (if not wholehearted by the U.S. military), PTSD today is among the panoply of acceptable modern ailments for which treatment exists.

Whether they seek treatment or not American military personnel and their families have access to mental health services. Yes, it may be difficult within the “suck-it-up” military culture to admit the need for psychological care; yes, it may be difficult to receive high quality, ongoing care from an overburden VA; and, yes, perhaps military mental health care relies too heavily on prescription medications…but systematic care is available.

But PTSD is not confined to America. It is prevalent in countries experiencing natural disasters and the social upheaval war brings: loss of home, family, and cultural identity; constant threat of sudden and extreme violence; and impoverishment, scarcity, and displacement. UNHCR 2011's refugee statistics indicate almost 44 million people worldwide are forcibly displaced.

An insidious legacy develops for families in countries too war-torn to offer systematic mental health treatment: PTSD is handed down to future generations.

Iraqi psychiatrist Dr. Ali Hameed explains, “Parents who are victims of war trauma themselves are often incapable of addressing their children’s trauma since no one addressed their trauma.”

Iraq. Before the 2003 invasion, Dr. Ali Hameed researched PTSD in children at the University of Baghdad. He found it difficult to measure Iraqi children’s psychological health since Iraq has experienced decades of conflict: the Iran-Iraq war, Gulf War I, a dozen years of U.N. sanctions followed by the invasion and almost a dozen years of violent occupation, and millions of internally and externally displaced people.

“While Americans and adult Iraqis were jubilant at Saddam’s demise, children witnessed a mythical figure disappear, someone who loomed larger than life, for whom songs were sung and holidays celebrated. They saw statues topple, mass graves exhumed, families huddled in bombed-out buildings, and mothers and fathers humiliated by terrifying invaders. No child should witness such events.”

Palestine/Occupied Territories. East Jerusalem’s Palestinian Counseling Center works with Palestinian families whose symptoms of acute and chronic trauma include withdrawal, academic regression, aggression, affect dysregulation, hopelessness, helplessness, mania, depression, and suicide.

Former counselor Rashid says, “It has to do with seeing people wounded on the streets, violence at military checkpoints and during curfews, tear gassing, overcrowded living conditions, and growing up in refugee camps. With Israel’s increasing use of high-tech weaponry and home demolitions we see increasing incidences of selective mutism among children. Not surprising since a home is not just a collection of bricks stuck together but a place of safety and security that a child relates to: my books, my toys, my birth certificate, my pictures, and so on.”

Unrelenting shock stuns children into silence; unrelenting violence and deprivation may keep them there.

Lebanon. Mrs. Fadiah Jobeily is principal of a girls school in Sidon with programs geared to socialize children of different backgrounds.

“We want our country to be united and what we do at school is a reflection of what we want in the greater society around us.”

Yet a constant state of warfare or anticipated warfare destroys infrastructure and “also destroys personalities.”

“Girls are not growing normally; they’re more aggressive and unable to see a future worth struggling for. Why study when another war will start?”

Teachers once engaged in civic and school activities are depressed and withdrawn too.

“They tell me, ‘I feel everything is bad.’ This is a recurring theme throughout the country. People are losing the will to live. Or they flee their homeland for safer places. We fight against the disastrous sense that even as we fix things another war can begin any time and destroy our lives again. This has been our situation for the last 25 years.”

Afghanistan. Rahima Haya promotes literacy and cultural understanding in the U.S.

“Today Afghanistan has close to two million widows – 70,000 in Kabul alone -- many of whom are illiterate and mothers to five or more children. It’s shocking to see children and women -- young, old, beautiful – all begging on the streets.”

With three million refugees, one out of three of the world total, Afghanistan continues to be the prime country with the most refugees under UNHCR. Growing up in refugee camps inflicts privations; the seeds for ultra-conservative, black-and-white thinking of the Taliban, for example, began in refugee camps.

The financial cost of war is appallingly high but it is relatively easy to tally. It is not easy to tally the complex cost of evolving psychological traumas generating every minute around our distressed world.

Perhaps PTSD diagnoses will become more nuanced and, in the future, another DSM term and theory will be published. But what harvest will we reap tomorrow from seeds of unresolved trauma sown in today’s increasingly deadly wars on increasingly fragile human beings? And, can our world afford it?

A New American Dream This Mother's Day

2011-05-06T08:36:00.000-07:00

Also published in Counterpunch, May 7 ...
...and in Commondreams, May 8

Every Mother's Day we mothers are subjected to the same consumer brainwash: that we deserve a “day off”, and flowers, and brunch – or at least breakfast in bed.

But Mother's Day originated as a call for peace after the grisly, divisive carnage of Civil War. In 1870, Julia Ward Howe wanted to appoint “a general congress of women without limit of nationality...to promote the alliance of the different nationalities, the amicable settlement of international questions, the great and general interests of peace.”

On May 10, 1908 Anna Jarvis presided over the first official Mother's Day celebration at Andrew's Methodist Church... then was arrested trying to stop women selling flowers. She wanted to “keep the day one of sentiment not one of profit”.

In 2005, Israeli Nurit Peled-Elhanan, whose 13-year-old daughter was killed in a Jerusalem suicide bombing, said, “Mothers have always been rebellious. In the Bible, in Greek mythology, there is always a mother who defies authority. The Talmud described mothers as prophets, because they looked ahead and understood what would happen to the children....”

Mother's Day is for the rebellious who concur, “Not for me flowers force-fed for profit in greenhouses built on land that ought to grow non-GM crops to feed the world's hungry and homeless”; “Not for me a day off, rather a day on...shutting down the -isms that thwart life's everyday ecstasy: neoliberalism, globalism, racism, sexism, elitism, oligarchic parasitism”, “Not for me a day in fealty to consumerism but to remember Wordsworth: “getting and spending, we lay waste our powers”....

Instead of sitting down at the brunch table Mother's Day could signal the first day of the rest of our lives pledging to sit down in our nation's streets, blow our whistles, bang our pots, sound our alarms, and tell our politicians: “Stop bowing to the almighty corporate dollar, bring home our troops, tax the corporations and the rich to educate our children and ensure the health and well-being of all members of our society... or we will force you from office!”

Pledge to tell it like it is: profiteering shatters our society, tears up our earth, and contaminates our communities; sloganeering destroys our native intelligence, dumbs down our instincts, dulls our wits; careerism fogs our ethics, corrupts our morals, betrays our humanity; waging war kills the souls of all humans – whether made in America or where America makes war.

Fellow Americans may call us tough nuts, or a nut-busters, or just plain old nuts but remind them that another tough nut, United States Marine Corps Major General Smedley Butler told us, even before transnational corporatism's firm grip on our time, our wallets, and our children, that:

“War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.”

Nurit Peled-Elhanan said, “Mothers, women in general, are not used to saying, “No! No, I am nobody's property. No! My children are nobody's property. No, my uterus is not a national asset.”

Lets try it. All together now: “No! No more wars promoted by patriotism but parlayed into profit.”

For, oh, we still have such a long way to go, baby!

(Nurit Peled-Elhanan tells her story in my book, Long Time Passing: Mothers Speak about War and Terror. Buy a copy on this blog.)

Confronting The System through Taxation

2011-04-05T13:31:00.000-07:00

Each year unknown thousands of law-abiding American citizens refuse to pay taxes, driven by an ethical compunction not to pay for war. Nailing down the exact number of war tax resisters is difficult – as one resister explains, “we tend not to cooperate with those sorts of endeavors” – but it is just as difficult to know how much of each tax dollar goes to the military.

Even progressive organizations devoted to public education do not agree on how much of each tax dollar goes to war. The National Priorities Project shows 27 cents of every tax dollar paying for war while the National War Tax Resisters Coordinating Committee shows 30 cents paying for current wars and 18 cents paying for past wars. Director of Programs of the American Friends Service Committee in New England Dr. Joseph Gerson calculates nearly 60 cents of each 2010 tax dollar “will pay for our present and future wars.”

War tax resister David G asks: “Why should I have to pay for these criminal wars anyway?”

He adds, “If I choose not to pay why should that affect my desire for a peaceful life and my right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? After all, that's defined in our Bill of Rights and guaranteed by our Constitution.”

Looking for a way “not to go along with what I think is the criminal enterprises that we as a country do in other countries using our foreign policy”, David G reorganized his life, cut back his work hours, and adjusted to reduced take home pay.

“Now, even without the tax considerations, I like my simpler life without a stressful job and big bucks.”

Instead of driving a car he takes public transportation or rides his bike. Instead of eating out at expensive restaurants he learned to cook. Unexpected benefits emerged: more time and energy for exploring neighborhood grocery stores; learning about ethnic ingredients and how to cook them; and meeting people he never had the opportunity to meet when he worked long hours.

He found that scaling down doesn't mean living in poverty. “A common misconception about tax resisters is that we live at or below the poverty line. If we do that it is because we choose to, not because that's the only alternative. I have created a life rich in family and friends and I have the time to enjoy them and to engage in local groups and communities.”

The question for anybody considering tax resistance is: should I resist covertly or overtly?

To confront or not to confront – that is the question

Overt confrontations with the system are conscious acts of civil disobedience in which a resister understands the risks and potential consequences and takes the opportunity to engage with and confront the system directly: “here's what you say I owe and here's why I say I do not owe it....”

Many resisters who choose overt confrontation design their lives to reduce their vulnerability to government intrusion. Some decide not to own property or they use available laws – such as land trusts – to protect any property from IRS liens or appropriation.

Susan Q has paid little or no federal taxes since her first job more than 25 years ago. “I decided that I wasn't going to work at cross purposes with my ethical commitments. That meant that, if they came after my salary, I would leave a job. I've only had to do that once. I choose not to own anything so I live in community with family, friends, and other people and make myself vulnerable to them instead of to the government. Sure, this has its pros and cons but I live a very wonderful and comfortable life.”

Resistance methodologies can change over time as a resisters' life circumstances change. Elizabeth B

protested war by sending letters to her representatives, marching in the streets, and signing petitions.

“But,” she says, “the government doesn't care how much we march in the streets, etc. as long as we pay taxes.”

So, at the start of the so-called War on Terror, she settled on a method that suited her ethics, religious beliefs, and her pocketbook: paying a percentage of the amount the IRS claims she owes. Then she sends a cover letter along with her check explaining, “Sorry folks, I am not paying all you say I owe. I am a good citizen...and one of the roles of citizens of a democracy is to tell our government when we think they are making a mistake.”

This is Elizabeth's second round of tax resistance. For years she had refused to pay the 79-cent hidden war tax tacked onto every Californian telephone user's phone bill that supported the U.S war effort in Vietnam. She had heard from other war tax resisters that the IRS probably would not come after her for such a small amount of money. But, after several years, they did come after her – for an amount less than $50 plus penalties and interest – and put a lien on her house. As a single mother raising four children Elizabeth would not risk losing her family's home so she paid up.

Fear is a strong motivator...and it is built into a system that intimidates by anonymity, apparently conflicting and arcane rules and regulations, and “take-no-prisoners” reputation.

A fear based system

Confronting a monolithic system like the IRS takes courage. But, as Susan Q states, “It can be very dis-empowering to get up each morning to news of terrible things being done with the fruits of our labor. We [working people] are out there trying to survive while resources are being taken from us to do harm both to us and to those in faraway lands. When we take a stand against that it feels really good.”

Susan goes on to describe how Americans, she believes, tend to “let our fears get the best of us.” We are not, however, facing the fear of bombs raining down on us but, as war tax resisters, “we're facing the fear of a letter...or perhaps an angry knock on our door. This fear is not life-threatening yet we respond as if it is. What is life-threatening is what's being done with our money. The rundown condition of many neighborhoods across our nation is a direct result of money taken out of our local economies and sent off for war. When you come down to it, the risks [of confronting the IRS] are not that big.”

Susan Q concludes that the IRS “Spends a lot of energy scaring people with threats of all the terrible things that will happen...you'll lose your house... you'll land in federal prison...but what they really want is to get your money. At what point do you continue to resist or say, 'Okay, let's work out an Offer of Compromise or something like that'?”

Susan explains that human individuals really do maintain a lot more control than the IRS wants us to believe. “It is not that you won't feel fear but that you can put fear into perspective and make the choice, if possible, to stand up to them and maintain your ethics while doing that.”

A method for every non-tax payer

There are many different ways to resist and people choose their method based upon their life considerations.

Some use the W4 form and take the maximum allowances … or fill out the paperwork and declare themselves tax exempt.

Some – and this method works well for 1099 independent contractors – eliminate withholding at the employment level then, at the end of they tax year, choose to file – or not – and an amount to pay.

Some pay a symbolic amount and withhold the amount they believe goes to pay for war and divert it to a chosen charity or not-for-profit organization.

Some earn only enough to stay below the federal tax limit (in 2011 it was set at $22,350 per year for a family of four).

Some use all the loopholes available through tax laws although with far less success than corporations. Considered a “legal person” General Electric is the latest in a long line of corporations benefiting from this designation. According to ABC News, GE “earned $14.2 billion in profits in 2010, but paid not a penny in taxes because the bulk of those profits, some $9 billion, went offshore. [Moreover] GE got a $3.2 billion tax benefit.”

Struggling Americans who will file taxes may be further outraged to know that, while GE employs more than half its workforce outside the United States, closed 20 US factories between 2007 and 2009, and laid off 21,000 American workers, President Obama takes advice on job creation from GE's CEO Immelt.

Confronting monolithic systems like war and taxes takes endurance and courage. Everyday, thousands among us pursue life, liberty and happiness doing just that.

The Math of War and Waste

2011-03-19T11:46:00.000-07:00

While Gov. Walker batters working people of Wisconsin and fingers them for Wisconsin's deficit of $6 billion he neglects to mention that $12 billion of that state's funds paid for the war in Iraq while $6 billion paid for the war in Afghanistan (costofwar.com/en/state/WI).

Our national bill for war is $1,167,300,000,000. Some of us – me included – can barely comprehend that staggering number. Added to that tragedy of my fiscal illiteracy in a capitalist nation is another, more important tragedy: large amounts of this money is simply wasted in war zones.

According to Zach Choate, an Iraq war veteran, Purple Heart awardee, current president of Baton Rouge chapter of Iraq Veterans against War (IVAW), war zones offer military personnel just about any consumer item found state-side. Barring the constant stress of seeing friends and civilians killed and the fear of being killed, off-hours in the war zone are spent at a shoppers home-away-from-home where troops wearing battle gear mosey around picking-and-choosing from military bases' well-stocked aisles. Dominoes Pizza might not deliver but troops nevertheless consume vast amounts of pizza, burgers, fries, apple pie, donuts, and candy washed down by gallons of soft drinks whiling away off-hours playing video games simulating war.

But only the miserly would criticize troops for wanting to keep up with their version of the Joneses who have the luxury to shop in malls back home. Besides, troops pay for these items out of their own pockets; consider the captive audience that is deployed, bored, and frightened troops and you find an excellent business model.

But then there's the model that is seldom mentioned, that generated by “following false intel.”

Choate explains, “An enormous amount of ammunition and fuel is wasted following false intel...plus wasted man-power hours and the waste of young lives killed on these missions. Add to that cost is the incalculable cost of bad faith and negative impression created in the minds of civilians who lose loved ones to military strikes based on that false intel.”

While Wisconsin's Gov. Walker – and those whose share his mindset – accuse teachers, fire fighters other public employees, and union members of taking more than their fair share in hefty annual salaries a quick look at the salaries of those other public employees, military personnel, puts things in perspective.

First, understand that the basic salary for an entry-level American private military contractor (training courtesy of the US military) is more than $8,000 per month or $100k per year.

According to an Army Times article on basic pay in 2007, an enlisted person with less than 2 years of service was paid $1,301.40 per month while a CO 1 with less than 2 years of service earned $2,469.30 per month. Add to that hardship duty pay from $50 - $150 per month; troops involuntarily spending more than 12 months in combat zones receive an extra $200 per month; imminent danger pay is $225 per month. (A four-star officer with 38 or more years of service tops out at $16,795.50 per month.)

But, surely, if anyone can claim the moral high ground it is Gov. Walker; after calling the salaries of other county workers “excessive” he voluntarily gave back slightly less than half of his annual salary, that is $60,000, until 2008 when he cut his give-back to $10,000 per year.

Then there is the hidden cost of that other waste, the waste of resources as human beings struggle for 'normalcy' after seeing the devastation of war.

In a recent Raising Sand Radio interview Mike Ferner of Veterans for Peace presented the costs shared by those in his war in Vietnam and Choate's in Iraq: deaths, suicide, ongoing physical and health problems, homelessness, and violence within military families. If anything, current wars re-stimulate fears and feelings that many Vietnam war veterans kept dormant for years and they seek mental health care.

One thing that has changed is the ubiquitous use and availability of pharmaceuticals in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Choate explained, “When I got back to the combat zone in Iraq after I'd been treated for wounds [sustained by an explosion] I had medication laid out and waiting for me: 120 Klonopin (or Clonazepam used alone or in combination with other medications to control certain types of seizures – Choate was diagnosed with traumatic brain injury), a few Xanax (Alprazolam used to treat anxiety disorders and panic attacks) and Lexapro (Escitalopram to treat depression and generalized anxiety disorder). “If I wanted more all I had to do was ask the Physician's Assistant in our unit. Gunners I worked with used Ambien to help them sleep but they never slept anyway. I wouldn't trust anybody doped up on Xanax or Ambien but asking the PA is all it took to get drugs.”

Ferner summed it up. “We are all citizens of a republic and, as such, ultimately responsible as citizens.” Just as Gov. Walker cannot just point to hardworking people to shoulder the blame, continued Ferner, “we can not just point to Washington and complain about what's going on there while we go about our lives, pay our taxes, and allow this wasteful system to to go. No matter our walk of life, every one of us needs to look into our hearts then show up and speak out. We need not go along with the current wasteful policy of war. If we do we are complicit. These days, no one is able to say, 'I didn't know.'”

That Moment People say “No!”

2011-02-20T13:13:00.000-08:00

by Susan Galleymore

Published in Commondreams, Feb 20, 2011
Listen to the radio interview with Mary Edith Bentley Abu Saba. (29 mins)

Fifty years ago six college students – two African American and four White – went to jail for sitting down at Patterson Drugstore lunch counter in Lynchburg, Virginia.

Their plans had been amorphous: “let's just talk to Mr. Patterson”...they were honor students after all, and talking surely would convince the owner/manager that racial segregation was wrong.

They had no plan when, red-faced and enraged, Mr. Patterson yelled into each of their faces giving them one last chance to vacate his establishment.

One of the group Mary Edith Bentley Abu Saba,twenty-one years old on December 14, 1960 said, “None of us moved. We just sat there. Actually, I couldn't move!”

Mr. Patterson called the police.

The police gave them one last chance to leave.

Still the students sat.

Behaviorists and scientists name this phenomenon “entrainment” – when separate objects vibrating at different speeds start to vibrate at the same speed.

Those scared students entrained. And their story is a metaphor for what is happening today, from the Middle East to Wisconsin, as people come together as one to protest the lack of dignity with they are treated.

The police arrested and handcuffed the group – later known as the Patterson Six – and took them to jail.

It is yet to be seen how long and how far will progress the resistance across the globe. In this case, entrainment – unlike “group think” – depends on how each person gauges the personal and political consequences.

Bentley had had other things to do that day. “I needed to practice for an important music recital. I also was busy planning my wedding for the day after I graduated. So when my friend Rebecca Mays Owen approached me at noon about going for coffee I made her promise that I'd be back on campus by five o'clock.”

Instead, Mary Edith Bentley and Rebecca Mays Owen of Randolph-Macon Woman's College, James Hunter and Terrill Brumback of Lynchburg College, and Barbara Thomas and Kenneth Green of Virginia Theological Seminary and College spent the next three hours in jail, segregated by race and gender.

To his credit, the president of Randolph-Macon Woman's College, Dr. William Quillian, Jr., never wavered in his support for the students. He posted $1,000 bond for each of them. But “civil rights” were dirty words in that part of the country at that time and the students' photographs and story were plastered over the front page of newspapers throughout the South, then the nation. Quillian was under tremendous pressure from the college board and the community to condemn and expel Bentley and Owen. He resisted.

Jim Holt was the lawyer for the Patterson Six. His presence in the court room disturbed the judge who had never faced an African American in that role before. Anytime Holt praised the students' actions,the judge banged his gavel to redirect the defense saying, “we need not go down that road.”

The judge was astonished when Holt and the defendants refused to appeal their 30-day sentence and chose jail instead.

Bentley Abu Saba laughed as she told the story in a recent Raising Sand Radio interview, “I was ready for jail. I had a change of underwear and my toothbrush in my pocketbook. We may have been naïve [about the power of talking to those in power] but we understood that six honor students spending 30 days in jail would have a great impact.”

And it did. Lynchburg streets and courtroom were crowded with angry, shouting Southerners, many of whom carried weapons improvised from bicycle chains.

Yet Bentley never had second thoughts about what she'd done. “On the contrary: I felt proud of myself. I learned about an inner strength that I never knew I had.”

All episodes of resistance have consequences. For Bentley in the microcosm of Lynchburg, Virginia the Episcopal minister retracted his invitation to play her final music piece on the church's new, state-of-the-art organ. The Methodist minister refused his church for her wedding when he learned she'd invited African American guests. It took eight years to de-segregate – by race and gender – Randolph-Macon Woman's College. Fifty years later, Bentley and Hunter, the two surviving members of Patterson Six, are feted.

The full consequences of resistance in the Middle East and Wisconsin may not be fully understood for years. But, expect the unexpected as people act as one, as they entrain. As New York Times reporter Nick Kristof wrote from Bahrain recently:

... activists are unbelievably courageous. I’ve been taken aback by their determination and bravery. They faced down tanks and soldiers, withstood beatings and bullets, and if they achieve democracy – boy, they deserve it.

While people from vastly different cultures, languages, and background may not agree on how civil rights, democracy, and dignity look they all know how a lack of dignity feels. Clearly they have had enough of that feeling. With cries of “No more! Enough!” they're ready to go down a different road, one where “entrainment” has a different name: People Power.

A Veteran in America: Trying to Find the Way Home

2011-02-17T21:08:00.000-08:00

A Veteran in America: Trying to Find the Way Home

by Susan Galleymore

(Published in War Times)

Jason Moon's mother tells him that as a young child he loved writing songs and that during long car trips he'd share his songs with her. Today, he's writing songs again. But for more than five years following his return from a year-long tour of duty in Iraq, he could barely write a line.

Moon deployed to Talil Airbase with the Wisconsin National Guard in 2003. In March 2008 he was ready to testify at the four-day long Winter Soldier hearings held in in Silver Spring, Maryland. His would be one of more than 200 eyewitness accounts of injustices perpetrated by US forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. He planned to tell of direct orders to “run over any children that got in the way of military vehicles.”

Moon's three-year-old son looked like the Iraqi children and the order was as shocking to Moon then as it would be the Americans who heard it later.

“People accused me of lying...or said our unit was a bad apple.”

Nowadays there are countless assertions of this order being carried out.

“Recently I heard that our unit was even involved in one such event and that the Civil Affairs unit went to the parents of the girl who'd been killed and, at gun-point, forced them to sign off on accepting $200 for her death.”

Moon broke down the day before he was to present his testimony. Instead of attending the hearing, he checked himself into a hospital where he shuffled around “without shoelaces in my shoes.”

This suicide watch was the beginning of a long – and continuing – journey searching for a life Moon feels is worth living.

“My question is: how do they [the military and the population it serves] expect people to be in an environment where violence and killing is encouraged, accepted, and often rewarded then, when we come home and respond with the same mentality, we're put in prison. The juxtaposition of these two worlds as a soldier tries to readjust and tries to deal with the results of what he or she was asked to do” – that which was okay there and then and is not okay here and now – “can make a veteran feel crazy.”

Deployed troops long to return home. Yet, “When we come back it is not so wonderful after all. Since such a small percentage of our population understands – or wants to understand – the real issues [associated with war] troops and veterans must deal with it alone.”

The isolation only increases as civil society pays attention, not to the ongoing wars and the plight of the troops who fight them but to the latest news crisis, the economy, political corruption, unemployment, bankrupt state and city budgets, turmoil in Egypt spreading to other countries....

All the while US troops continue to deploy – some have served as many as six deployments – and veterans continue to confront their demons long after their military service ends.

What makes Moon's story especially poignant is his relationship to his son. The growing boy saw his father as a hero with whom he wanted to play the game of “good guys versus bad guys”.

It was excruciating. The boy was too young for lectures about the gritty realities of war. His father told him, gently, that even the 'bad guys' have mothers, are sons like he is, and that “people don't come back to life after they're killed.”

But Moon's body had its own way of surviving the pressure: it shut down. “When my son wanted to play war I became as tired as if I'd been drugged and I'd fall asleep.”

Later, when they played together, “I'd find myself telling my 7-year-old how to flank a fighting position, or how to do covering fire, or correcting his battle strategies!”

There is a parallel in Jason Moon's experiences as a father and as a veteran. For explaining war to a child is like explaining the deep effects of war to an adult who has never experienced war. Neither has the capacity to understand how troops are trained to kill. Neither imagines the horrors combat troops see every day. Neither grasps how war affects human beings. Neither really wants to understand.

Only those who know war know the pleasure – and the pain – of returning home where the vast majority of fellow citizens care nothing for one's extraordinary experiences.

Despite centuries of war, there is no successful strategy that helps veterans re-integrate into a comfortably ignorant, binary world.

Many veterans like Jason Moon live day-to-day as they continue internal dialogs about the worthiness of their lives. But Moon is writing songs and playing music again. Lyrics from the album title:

The child inside me

long dead and gone

somewhere between

lost and alone

trying to find my way home...

Moon's first CD in a decade describes his journey. It is a sign of hope, not only for the songwriter but also for the homeless veterans with whom Moon works. Moreover, proceeds from sales benefit this work. (Listen to three cuts from his CD in a recent Raising Sand Radio interview: www.raisingsandradio.org).

Susan Galleymore is author of Long Time Passing: Mothers Speak about War and Terror, host and producer of Raising Sand Radio, and a former “military mom” and GI Rights counselor. Contact her at susan@raisingsandradio.org.

“Making things right by people”

2011-01-16T16:02:00.000-08:00

By Susan Galleymore
(Also published by Commondreams, Jan 17, 2011)

A scene in the film The Good Shepherd shows a conversation between an Italian-American grandfather and Central Intelligence Agent Edward Wilson.

“We Italians, we have family. What do people like you have?”

Wilson smiles. “We own the country. The rest of you are just visitors.”

Examples of Wilson's mindset aired on Fox News after the memorial for Arizona's shooting victims. Commentators found University Professor Dr. Carlos Gonzales, of the Pascua Yaqui Tribe, “very strange” and that he blessed “one too many things”. Brit Hume opined that “by the time it was over [Gonzales] had blessed the reptiles of the sea and prayed to the four doors of the building. While I'm sure that is an honorable tradition with his people, it was most peculiar.”

How “very strange” and “most peculiar” would this country's “owners” and Fox News commentators find the other “visitors” – Native Americans – and their prophecies?

A Mohawk prophecy declares:

After seven generations of living in close contact with the Europeans, the Onkwehonwe would see the day when the elm trees would die...the animals would be born strange and deformed, their limbs twisted out of shape. Huge stone monsters would tear open the face of the earth. The rivers would burn aflame. The air would burn the eyes of man. The Onkwehonwe would see the day when birds would fall from the sky, the fish would die in the water, and man would grow ashamed of the way that he had treated his mother and provider, Earth. Then the People would rise up and demand that their rights and stewardship over Earth be respected and restored.

Fortunately, indigenous youth concern themselves more with action than reaction. In the San Francisco Bay Area, members of Oakland's youth group Seventh Native American Generation – SNAG(1) – act on this prophecy. Last year co-founders Ras K'dee and Shadi Rahimi contacted their counterparts in Palestine then traveled there with small delegation to meet, dance with, learn from, and share a mutual vision to respect and restore Earth.

As K'dee explained, “Cultural exchange is one way people heal, learn to cope, and become resilient.”

While each group researched the other's indigenous roots and history the deepest learning came from meeting face-to-face and experiencing Palestine's day-to-day reality.

Discussions ranged from experiences living under occupation and colonization to growing up in marginalized reservations and refugee camps, facing prejudices, acknowledging the moment when each realized that s/he was different from the mainstream, and recognizing that s/he had to struggle in ways others their age did not.

Exile from their birthright affects both communities too. Native American families were broken through the US government's once-endemic boarding school system. Palestinian families break when fathers, brothers, uncles, and grandfathers are exiled from their land or disappear into Israeli prisons.

Yet, K'dee said that celebrating serendipity in traditional dance and story-telling “allowed us all to connect with one another and the Earth.”

Then there is their crucial commonality of access, or lack thereof, to natural resources...and the “monsters [that] tear open the face of the earth.”

Water

One Native American delegate arrived at Dheisheh Refugee Camp, south of Bethlehem, three days before K'dee and greeted him, “We've been without water since I got here. Welcome to the rez!”

This delegate had grown up on an American-style reservation and lack of water – and electricity – while distressing, was familiar.

Dheisheh, in fact, had been without water for 45 days. Emblematic of their chronic water problems, Dheisheh's school children, offered a choice of improvements funded by the international community – including a new soccer field, a basketball court, or other sports gear and equipment – chose a water filtration system. For, when they received it at all, West Bank's and Gaza's groundwater is often contaminated with Israel's industrial waste and with sewage and seawater from bomb-damaged sewer systems.

Land

Until the mid-1940's Palestine was populated with thriving villages that, today, exist only in memory and impotent deeds to patches of rubble and cacti. Yet delegates noticed large portions of unused land that either still lies fallow or has been converted to Israel's national park system.

According to Israeli human rights group, B'Tselem – and with the assistance of giant Caterpillar bulldozers – “Some half a million Israelis...liv[e] over the Green Line: more than 300,000 in 121 settlements and about one hundred outposts, which control 42 percent of the land area of the West Bank, and the rest in twelve neighborhoods that Israel established on land it annexed to the Jerusalem Municipality. (2)

Palestinians crowd into ever-shrinking villages and refugee camps across the West Bank and Gaza. According to the Municipality of Gaza, population density there is 9,982.69/km² – one of the world's most densely populated zones.

The Israeli company Elbit erects the security barrier wall in Israel. Homeland Security hired Elbit to erect the wall along the U. S. Mexico Border.

In the US – total area of the 50 states is 2.3 billion acres – the Federal Government has title to about 650 million acres, or about 29 percent. Native (“Indian”) lands make up about 2 percent of the country's area. (3)

Until 1769, the San Francisco Bay Area was home to somewhere between 7,000(4) and at least 26,000(5) Ohlone (also known by the exonym Costanoan).

Once identified by eight linguistic regions – Awaswas, Chalon, Chochenyo, Karkin, Mutsun, Ramaytush, Rumsen, Tamyen – in more than 50 villages around San Francisco Peninsula, Santa Clara Valley, East Bay, Santa Cruz Mountains, Monterey Bay, and Salinas Valley, today, descendents of the Ohlone are not recognized by the same Federal Government that dispossessed them.

Lack of federal recognition makes it difficult for Native American groups who are federally recognized to work with the Ohlone. Moreover, it de-historicizes the descendants of the Ohlone and means they have no land therefore little chance of a base upon which to re-create their socio-cultural history.

K'dee, a Pomo, said, “As a child, I heard in class that all my people are dead – that, in general, all Indians are dead. Sometimes that felt psychotic since I regularly attended Pomo ceremonies with my Pomo family.”

People

Native Americans, Ohlone descendants, and Palestinians are determined to survive and thrive.

Early spring, 2010, Tony Cerda, the current Tribal Chairman of the Costanoan Rumsen Carmel Tribal Council, told a small audience watching the Humaya Dancers in San Francisco, “Next time someone tells you that there are no more Ohlone People you tell that person that you saw Ohlone dance here today.”

New year 2011 brought the world the Gaza Youth Break Out manifesto:

...We, the youth in Gaza, are so fed up with Israel, Hamas, Fatah, the occupation, the violations of human rights and the indifference of the international community! We want to scream and break this wall of silence, injustice and indifference like the Israeli F16’s breaking the wall of sound; scream with all the power in our souls in order to release this immense frustration that consumes us because of this fucking situation we live in; we are like lice between two nails living a nightmare inside a nightmare, no room for hope, no space for freedom. We are sick of being caught in this political struggle; sick of coal dark nights with airplanes circling above our homes; sick of innocent farmers getting shot in the buffer zone because they are taking care of their lands; sick of bearded guys walking around with their guns abusing their power, beating up or incarcerating young people demonstrating for what they believe in; sick of the wall of shame that separates us from the rest of our country and keeps us imprisoned in a stamp-sized piece of land; sick of being portrayed as terrorists, homemade fanatics with explosives in our pockets and evil in our eyes; sick of the indifference we meet from the international community, the so-called experts in expressing concerns and drafting resolutions but cowards in enforcing anything they agree on; we are sick and tired of living a shitty life, being kept in jail by Israel, beaten up by Hamas and completely ignored by the rest of the world.

There is a revolution growing inside of us, an immense dissatisfaction and frustration that will destroy us unless we find a way of canalizing this energy into something that can challenge the status quo and give us some kind of hope.

...We do not want to hate, we do not want to feel all of this feelings, we do not want to be victims anymore. ENOUGH...pain..tears...suffering...control...limitations, unjust justifications, terror, torture, excuses, bombings, sleepless nights, dead civilians, black memories, bleak future, heart aching present, disturbed politics, fanatic politicians, religious bullshit, enough incarceration! WE SAY STOP! This is not the future we want!

We want three things...to be free...to live a normal life...peace. Is that too much to ask? We are a peace movement consistent [sic] of young people in Gaza and supporters elsewhere that will not rest until the truth about Gaza is known by everybody in this whole world and in such a degree that no more silent consent or loud indifference will be accepted.

We... start by destroying the occupation that surrounds ourselves... break free from this mental incarceration and regain our dignity and self respect.. We will carry our heads high even though we will face resistance...work... to change these miserable conditions we are living under...build dreams where we meet walls. (6)

The Ohlone of the San Francisco Bay Area – the Muwekma – reaffirm their existence:

Makin Mak-Atuemi Muwekma-mak ic Eki’_i _i’nmatci-mak! (We will make things right for our People and dance for our children!)

This country's “owners” and Fox News may find Native traditions “very strange” and “most peculiar” but these traditions continue to enrich our extraordinarily diverse and courageous planet each day.

Footnotes

1. Seventh Native American Generation – SNAG: www.snagmagazine.com.

2. B'tselem comprehensive report, 2010: http://www.btselem.org/English/Publications/Summaries/201007_By_Hook_and_by_Crook.asp-based \

3. US Dept. of Transporation: http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/policy/1999cpr/ap_e/cpxe_2.htm

4. American anthropologist Alfred L. Kroeber.

5. US Professor Sherburne F. Cook. The Population of the California Indians, 1769-1970: “Not until the population figures are examined does the extent of the havoc become evident.” From 1769 to 1800 the population dropped to about 10% of its original numbers; by 1848 it dropped to about 3,000.

6. Gaza Youth Manifesto: http://www.intifada-palestine.com/2011/01/gazas-youth-manifesto-for-change/.

The US Navy: War Games under Americans' Radar

2010-09-29T13:09:00.000-07:00

During the Bush Administration – it continues under Obama – the Department of the Navy (DON) divided the coasts and oceans into a series of “testing range complexes” (TRC) driven by five-year plans to conduct warfare exercises. They already conduct these tests in the Atlantic (and recently announced a notice of intent to expand this area), the Gulf of Mexico, and the Pacific.

Additionally, after the public comment period ends on October 11, 2010, the Navy will conduct a plethora of war exercises along 122,400 nautical miles of air, surface, and subsurface space in Northern California, Oregon, and Western Washington.

To be sure, such testing is in accordance with Title 10, Section 5062 of the US Code that provides:

The Navy shall be organized, trained, and equipped primarily for prompt and sustained combat incident to operations at sea...responsible for the preparation of Naval forces necessary for the effective prosecution of war...with Integrated Joint Mobilization Plans...to meet the needs of war.

Perhaps people take war games for granted because such testing is provided for in this Code (fewer conspiracy theories if information is public?). But this information is not trickling down to the people it will affect. If anything, DON appears cagey about how it informs the public about its intentions.

Treat 'em rough...and tell 'em nothing

Rosalind Peterson is president and co-founder of Agriculture Defense Coalition (ADC). In a recent Raising Sand Radio interview (www.raisingsandradio.org) she said, “In Mendocino County (CA) there was a one-by-one inch ad in local papers of the smallest communities that the Navy could find in northern California, Oregon, and Washington. In Oregon they advertised in tiny communities with a total of about 250 people each. They didn't publicize in the capital, Bend, or Portland or other, larger cities at all.”

Aides in California Senator Barbara Boxer's office seemed to know little, if anything, about the Northwest Training Research Complex (NWTRC) when ADC's Rosalind Peterson contacted them. A spokesperson said Boxer would “look into it.”

Peterson said, “If Senator Diane Feinstein and Congressman Thompson knew about it they did not notify their constituents along California's northwest coast.”

WAR GAMES

Pacific Northwest

The Navy acknowledges that some testing is highly classified therefore the tests are not shared with the public at all. Its 1,000 page NWTRC Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) notes that the tests conducted off the Pacific Northwest coast will “take” an estimated 11 million marine mammals, about 2.7 million per year. A “take” is “a significant disruption in marine mammal foraging, breeding, and other essential behaviors”; death is implied.

The “take” for decimated fish and bird life and the life that supports them is not mentioned. Neither is the “take” for civilians in the zone conducting commercial and recreation enterprises during tests. Beyond directions to websites for “Long-range advance notice of scheduled activities” local fishing, cruise ships, boating, and daily aviation passenger carriers passing through test areas will not be informed on the days testing occurs.

These war games include “a total of 7,588 sorties...[of] fixed wing aircraft, helicopters, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (“drones ”), and naval vessels conducting exercises for 6,940 hours each year”¹ with mid- and high frequency sonar, underwater constructions and detonations, bombing, missile and torpedo missions with arsenals from Hellfire missiles to drones and the use of air-, land- and water-borne “hazardous materials” (defined as solid, liquid, semi-solid, or gaseous “substances that pose a substantial hazard to human health or the environment by virtue of their chemical or biological properties”).

The list – “not exhaustive” – of chemical byproducts from underwater detonations, explosives, degradation products, failure and low-order detonations, and components of training materials is extensive. Hazardous materials discharged overboard beyond 12 nautical miles include spent acid, alkali (“carefully neutralize, dilute and flush overboard...”); solvents; water with corrosion inhibitors; aircraft washdown waste water; and submarine missile tube waste water that includes heavy metals and cyanide.

Physical debris includes live and expended ordnance and casings, sunken vessels, and blasted underwater construction.

Vessels, aircraft, and military equipment used in these activities carry and use hazardous materials with directives to manage the storage, use, and proper disposal of materials that may be harmful to the environment.

The list of materials to “Containerize for Shore Disposal” includes batteries, hydraulic fluids, insecticides, pesticides, waste oil, sludge, oily solid waste, grease, propellents, PCB, and mercury in the form of fluorescent bulbs.²

Given the Navy's history, how and where are these materials disposed once “containerized”?

Out of sight, out of mind

The Navy has dumped explosives and vast amounts of other debris in the oceans for years. This is old news to NOAA, oceanographers, environmental groups, and the voiceless directly affected. NOAA has a map showing at least the last 60 years of the Navy's suspected dump zones in the Gulf of Mexico.

Greg Gardner of South Beach, Florida reports in Indian River Magazine, “Closing Fort Pierce was a classic case of dump and run....To this day, ordnance washes up on Hutchinson Island beaches several times a year after heavy surf. ”

South Beach Mayor Bob Benton concurs. “They put trucks and tanks on barges and barges and dumped them in the Gulfstream....Tons and tons of Army hardware, hand grenades and bombs.”

Off the California coast drums and canisters leak radioactive material since the Navy dumped them after tests conducted at its San Francisco's Hunters Point facilities.

The ongoing Superfund site clean up of former Naval Air Station, Alameda – at a cost, to date, of $428 million – regularly reveals mysterious contamination zones, sunken vessels, and toxic burn pits. During a recent Navy-sponsored tour, local residents watched from the bus as Navy personnel measured radiation on the vehicle's tires with Geiger counters.

Yet the vast majority of Americans know little about the Navy's dumping and warfare activities. Should We, the People, not know that the Navy's ongoing five-year warfare test plans require only one EIS per TRC? And that any EIS can be extended without informing the public at all? And that these on-going activities affect our own and all other forms of life?

Howard Garrett, president of the Whidbey-based Orca Network’s board of directors, says this includes “almost everything alive in the ocean. Anything with an air pocket in their [sic] bodies.” The Navy says it will conduct fly-overs and set up watchers before performing potentially lethal sonar testing. “But, [for example] Orcas are by nature stealthy hunters. They traverse the entire Pacific Ocean, so they can be anywhere. They won’t be making noise so it will be extremely difficult for the Navy to know whether they are there before beginning testing.”

As goes the Pacific Northwest so goes the Atlantic

Meanwhile, as research and testing continues off US coasts, the Navy recently announced its intent to prepare an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) and Overseas EIS (OEIS) to evaluate:

...the potential environmental effects with military readiness training and research, development, testing, and evaluation (RDT&E) activities in the Atlantic Fleet Training and Testing (AFTT) study area. This covers approximately 2.6 million square nautical miles of ocean area, which includes Navy operating areas (sea space) and warning areas (airspace). While the majority of Navy training and many testing activities take place within operating and warning areas and/or on RDT&E ranges, some activities, such as sonar maintenance and gunnery exercises, are conducted concurrent with normal transits and occur outside of operating and warning areas.
(Atlantic Fleet Training and Testing Notice of Intent Atlantic Fleet Training and Testing Notice of Intent )

That is, everything planned for the Pacific Northwest will be repeated – and improved – in the Atlantic.

TRUE COST

ADC's Rosalind Peterson said, “Each one of these five-years-testing programs is immense...and very costly. We, the tax-paying public, will pay to replace all the bombs, missiles, and other arsenal used for these live fire exercises; we will pay heavily for the environmental degradation of ocean, land, and air; we will pay very heavily for the collapse of the marine mammal, fish, and bird populations. We don't realize that one set of activities has a wide-ranging set of consequences.”

The Navy Way

The NWTRC EIS Resource Section: Socioeconomics addresses cost from the point of view of how unobtrusive Navy testing will be and how little it will impact civilians and businesses.

It is important to note that there are no restricted areas in the NWTRC. Normal right of way for fishing boats and all other vessels is honored throughout the range complex. In fact, to prevent interference during the conduct of their activities, Navy ships and aircraft intentionally seek areas clear of all other vessel traffic for conducting their training.³

The Table of Annual Commercial Landed Catch and Value within Washington Waters (2007) carefully records every fish of economic significance – over four dozen, from northern anchovy that, for example, generated $35,883 that year, to Dungeness Crab, $54,479,797, to Sockeye salmon, $89,802, even to “Unspecified bait shrimp”, $219,648.

Then, “Due to the low level of Navy activities, and the lack of interaction between the Navy and commercial interests, there are no expected revenue losses in any offshore industry....”

Unsurprisingly, the EIS Socioeconomics segment concludes, “the Proposed Action would result in no significant impacts. Therefore, no mitigation measures are required.”⁴

A Better Way

Those focused on one-dimensional “national security” in terms of military might makes right – rather than a complex, multi-layered, integral system of living wonders that offer generative mysteries rather than threats – can be assured that the Navy, and the other branches of the US military, already has enough of our planet to conduct testing. It has been doing it for decades. It does not need – and should not have – even more of our precious, already-stressed, and shrinking planet.

Nevertheless, after three years and thousands of comments received by people and groups in the Pacific Northwest, Marianne Edain of Washington's Whidbey Environmental Action Network (WEAN) perhaps it up, “I feel like a flea facing an elephant.”

1) NWTRC EIS – Hazardous Materials. Table 3.3-1: Number of Activities or Training Items Expended Annually – All Alternatives. Footnote 2, page 3.3-6.

2) NWTRC EIS – Hazardous Materials. Table 3.3-6: Selected Hazardous Materials Discharge Restrictions for Navy Vessels. Page 3.3-17.

3) NWTRC EIS – Socioeconomics. Page 3.14-7.

Calls to End the False Security of Nuclear Weapons

2010-08-08T18:17:00.000-07:00

(This article published in Commondreams, Aug 6, 2010)

Takashi Tanemori stands on a makeshift stage on the back of a truck parked at an intersection near Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) in California. Tanemori San's formal traditional Japanese dress and his silver hair riffles in the chill morning breeze. His voice is firm and clear over the roars of large trucks passing.

“I came to the United States forty years ago to avenge the death of my family killed by the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima.”

In the pantheon of stories about that August 6, 1944 his is both unique and ubiquitous. His parents and his four-month-old sister died that day...along with 200,000 other Japanese.

Tanemori's surviving three siblings ranged in age from four to fourteen; he was eight. For years he fought rats for food scraps, slept anywhere he could, and longed for human comfort. At sixteen he attempted suicide..then he apologized to his father's memory for that “dishonorable act”...and then he vowed revenge. He traveled to the U.S. and was quickly interned in a camp where he had to pick Thompson Grapes. (“To this day,” he says, “I cannot eat grapes.”)
He became ill and was, first, diagnosed with pesticide-related food poisoning. When doctors learned he was Hibakusha (A-bomb survivor) he became, he says, “a guinea pig.” Despite the excruciating pain, doctors repeatedly had nurses hold down their young patient, take his blood, and tap his spinal fluid to test the results of radiation poisoning. When Tanemori, who spoke only Japanese, finally fought them off, he was moved to a psychiatric institution to undergo many doses of electro-therapy.

As Takashi Tanemori speaks, a passing truck driver shouts out. “Bullsh*t! F**k all that bullsh*t!”

This man is a son. Is he also a father? Does he know LLNL is the most sophisticated nuclear weapons research and design facility in the world? Or is he, like most of us, too busy to pay attention? Is he too busy working to pay the bills for the minutiae of his one, individual life...too busy to protest the overwhelming debt he – of us – incur to pay for the perils born at this lab...too busy to recognize his place in humanity's fragile interconnectedness?

Hiroshima and Nagasaki, targets for atomic experiments
Norman Solomon, author, and founder of the Institute for Public Accuracy, takes the stage. “The nuclear age was born in deception of the facts, of the human realities of these weapons... and in silence, avoidance, and through psychic numbing. These weapons are lied about constantly, by our leaders, by our news media, and by ourselves.”

Indeed, in 1979 Solomon researched the first official United States document that listed atomic targets. Titled “Announced United States Nuclear Tests,” at the top of that list is Trinity at New Mexico's Alamogordo Test Range; second is Hiroshima; third is Nagasaki.

Solomon tells us, “The moral opposition to the Nazi regime was grounded in opposing that genocidal mentality and opposing experimentation on human beings without their voluntary and informed consent. In a real sense, though, the history of the last seven decades has been that of experimentation on human being without their consent: the bombs dropped on the Japanese; the Native Americans sent into the radon ovens of uranium mines; the people of the Pacific and [Americans] downwind of nuclear test sites; tens of thousands of military personnel exposed at test sites; the fuel fabricators at Oak Ridge and Rocky Flats; workers at Los Alamos, Livermore, Nevada, Hanford and other places where radioactive revenues create huge profit for some – and abject misery for others.”

Even as President Obama talks the talk – “pursuing policies to end the nuclear arms race” – he walks the walk of “modernization” that escalates that same arms race.
“This” says Solomon, “is The Big Lie ...that it is 'technological advance' when, really, it is 'technological suicide.'”

At the May 2010 Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference participating countries, including the U.S., agreed on a unanimous intent to seek abolition of nuclear weapons.

Yet, years ago Solomon's research included interviewing State Department officials who told him that it is the top officials of Lawrence Livermore, Los Alamos, and Sandia labs that “fight tooth and nail to ensure that the U.S. Senate never passes the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty” (CTBT).

In keeping with The Big Lie, the Obama administration's budget for fiscal year 2011 – to “modernize the nuclear weapons complex” – authorizes the largest nuclear weapons budget ever: 14 percent larger than last year's budget and larger than the average budget during the Cold War – even adjusted for inflation. It includes building three new bomb plants: one at Los Alamos (NM) to enable plutonium production: one at Oak Ridge (TN) to build uranium secondaries; one in Kansas City (MO) for other weapons' components. These facilities enable the build of 80 entirely new nuclear weapons per year...at a cost of $80 billion over the next ten years. “Modernizing” the arsenal itself costs another $100 billion.

It took Tanemori San more than forty years to overcome his rage and his desire to avenge his family. Ironically, the warmth of another nurse touched him and, he says, “began to thaw out my heart frozen by hatred.” But it was his young daughter who issued the coup de grace to his unmitigated desire for revenge.
“Daddy, I know you came here to kill those who killed our family. But isn't there any other way? For the children of those you do not kill – just as they did not kill you in Hiroshima – will come after your children. Is that what you want?”

Tanemori San considered her question. And understood in his heart that the circle of violence only begets more violence. Perhaps We, the People ought more deeply to consider this as we hurtle towards an ever more deadly, expensive, and growing nuclear arsenal.

Rev. Martin Luther King talked about “guided missiles and misguided men”...and said that “a nation that, year after year, continues to spend more on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.”
On this day, outside Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Norman Solomon tells that if we continue “to approach building nuclear weapons designed to inflict global nuclear holocaust we will get there.”

We do not want to get there.

Barack Obama, can you hear us now?

Listen to the radio show: "Obama, stop building nuclear weapons"

Confronting a Mindset: “Bombing Hiroshima was Right”

2010-08-04T15:47:00.000-07:00

This article was published on Counterpunch, August 5, 2010

Imagine the power to erase, in nine seconds, more than 200,000 human beings and everything surrounding them within a two mile radius. Then imagine that power magnified many times over. Then understand that We, the People, are represented by those who are capable of destroying far more people and property in less time. For, according to President Bill Clinton and reiterated by Barack Obama, “nuclear weapons are the cornerstone of the policies” of United States of America – that protector of the tired, the poor, the huddled masses yearning to breathe free.
Every day of the last sixty-five years since August 6 and August 9 when the U.S. dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, we have continued to design, test, develop, and stockpile ever more awesome nuclear weapons.
Researchers at the non-profit think tank Tri-Valley CAREs based in Livermore, California found that, contrary to their assumptions, Congress, the Pentagon, and the President do not commission such weaponry. “We found,” says Executive Director Marylia Kelly, “that [members of] the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory rather forcefully sell ideas for and promote weapons to the U.S. government. We'd always thought that the lab responded to the sorts of weapons these entities wanted but found the opposite is true. The weapons labs at Lawrence Livermore (CA) and Los Alamos (NM) really are the tap root of the nuclear arms race.”
It began during the Cold War...and, Kelly says, “this one-nation nuclear arms race has continued ever since. As long as these labs are unimpeded that tap root of continued weapons design and development will flourish.”
There are three main test facilities that simulate nuclear explosions and develop ever more sophisticated – and lethal – weapons. The Nevada Test Site has an underground sub-critical test facility. Los Alamos Laboratory has a new hydro test facility dedicated to the beginning stages of nuclear weapons' explosions. Lawrence Livermore Laboratory has an ignitions facility that explores the physics of nuclear weapons with respect to the later stages of nuclear explosions.
This testing has, to date, cost the American tax payer more than $90 billion...and that does not take into account the cost of cleaning up the environment and addressing current and future health. Developing this ever-growing arsenal pumps out an ever-growing amount of mortally toxic material.
Lawrence Livermore tests estimate the radiation 'dose' - beyond the heat of the blast - released in Hiroshima deposited about one million curies. (One curie of radiation is 37 billion radioactive disintegrations per second; radiation has a half life of 28,000 years.)
Tri Valley CAREs documents that more than one million curies of radiation have escaped from this laboratory into surrounding communities. During tests performed at the lab's Site 300 – located in the hills between the cities of Livermore and Tracy – non-fissile depleted uranium replaces plutonium 239 (the fissile material in the core of a nuclear bomb) and is exploded on outdoor firing tables to atomize into the wind.
Not only is there no workable, long-term, safe solution to deal with toxic materials – including plutonium, tritium (the radioactive hydrogen of the hydrogen bomb), uranium, and cesium – clean up is endless. There are already tens of thousands of known Superfund and National Priorities List sites around the U.S. According to EPA officials and the GOA's report, Superfund: EPA's Estimated Costs to Remediate Existing Sites Exceed Current Funding Levels, and More Sites Are Expected to Be Added to the National Priorities List
EPA regional officials estimated that from 101 to 125 sites – about 20 to 25 sites per year – will be added to the National Priorities List over the next 5 years...higher than the average of about 16 sites per year listed for fiscal years 2005 to 2009...At over 60 percent of the 239 nonfederal NPL sites with unacceptable or unknown human exposure, all or more than half of the work remains to complete the remedial construction phase of cleanup.... By the end of fiscal year 2009, EPA had expended $3 billion on 75 sites with unacceptable human exposure and $1.2 billion on 164 sites with unknown exposure....

Historical amnesia
If We, the People, are unaware of this ongoing pollution so, too, have we lost sight of our history. How many Americans understand that bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki had almost nothing to do with the end of World War II? Rather, these horrific deeds positioned the U.S. so that we would not have to share influence with the Soviet Union and Asia; the A bombs were used to intimidate the Soviets for the post-war period.
The Emperor of Japan understood by 1944 that the war was lost. He changed governments and the mandate of the new Japanese government was to negotiate a peace treaty with the U.S. with a fundamental condition that the Emperor remain on the thrown and avoid a trial as a war criminal.
General, later President, Dwight D. Eisenhower opposed dropping the A bomb. “Japan was at the moment seeking some way to surrender with minimum loss of 'face'. It wasn't necessary to hit them with that awful thing.”
Admiral William D. Leahy, Former Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said, “The use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against the Japanese...already defeated and ready to surrender. ...in being the first to use it, we had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was taught not to make war in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying woman and children.”
J. Samuel Walker, Chief Historian of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, said that, while, experts continue to disagree on some issues...critical questions have been answered [among them that] “alternatives to the bomb existed and that [President] Truman and his advisers knew it.”
Yet, powerful forces within the U.S. continue to fight against the American people understanding this history. In 1993 the Smithsonian, for example, suggested the launch a major exhibit as an opportunity for people to understand more deeply the effects of the atomic bomb and to surface the circumstances surrounding its use. Controversy ensued for two years and included twenty-four members of Congress sending a letter on August 10, 1994 to the Smithsonian expressing “concern and dismay” that the planned exhibit portrays Japan “more as an innocent victim than a ruthless aggressor” in World War II.
The Smithsonian canceled the greater exhibit on January 30, 1995 and began work on a completely different plan, one that displayed only the Enola Gay, the airplane that dropped the bombs.
When even that trimmed down, more palatable exhibition finally closed in May 1998, it had drawn almost four million visitors. Imagine if the original exhibit had gone ahead as envisioned. Four million Americans would better understand how deeply enmeshed we are in war as a nation and a society. Perhaps then we would face real facts...and remove our sense of legitimacy in preparing for nuclear holocaust.

Voices in the wilderness
As Direction of Programs of the American Friends Service Committee in New England and AFSC'ss National Disarmament Coordinator Dr. Joseph Gerson advances U.S. and international movements for the abolition of nuclear weapons and the ratification of the limited “New START” treaty. He served as co-convener of the 2010 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Review International Planning Committee, a network of 25 leading disarmament organizations created to help ensure a successful NPT Review Conference.
During this service a U.S. senator's aide told Gerson that “the Bombing of Hiroshima was Right.”
“ This,” he says, “just reflects enormous ignorance” sixty-five years after the cataclysmic events in Japan. “The reality is that each thermo-nuclear weapon today has the capability to kill far more people than were killed at Auschwitz. Yet, such genocidal, if not omnicidal weapons are the cornerstone of U.S. policies. It is in every American's interest to understand this element in our society and to transform it.”
The opportunity is there. For the last 55 years there has been an annual international conference to commemorate what were, says Gerson, “war crimes and the memory of the victims of those war crimes..and to press for the abolition of nuclear weapons.”
In a recent Raising Sand Radio interview Dr. Gerson told of his first visit to Hiroshima twenty-five years ago. “I fully engaged with the pain of what happened there and with the ongoing damage, including genetic, from radiation.”
While there, however, he did not dream at all. After he returned to the U.S. his dreams resumed and, at first they were crowded with images of cinders and destruction. But, “The “waking image I had was of the colors and angles of the peace cranes – symbols of peace and affirmation of life.”
The letter versus the spirit of the law
The U.S. signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty. Essential elements of this, one of the seminal treaties of the 20th century, are that:
1) non-nuclear nations - excepting Israel, Pakistan, and India - commit not to obtain nuclear weapons;
2) nuclear nations promise they would a) provide technology and recognize the inalienable right of all nations to produce nuclear power for peaceful purposes and b) engage in good faith negotiations to completely eliminate their nuclear arsenals.
When non-nuclear nations see the nuclear nations ignore this second promise (Article 6) they suggest it undermines their commitment when they are threatened by nuclear nations. So, despite President Obama's rhetoric, the May 2010 conference saw the U.S. beat back the non-aligned and other non-nuclear nations pressing for a mandate that nuclear nations negotiate to eliminate their nuclear arsenals.
As signatory to the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (the Senate has never ratified the CTBT) the U.S. abides by the letter of the law by following the moratorium on above-ground testing. It does not, however, abide by the spirit of the law when it tests nuclear weapons' components, simulates explosions, and extrapolates the results to develop yet more deadly weaponry.
During May's review conference the Arab League initiated a demand – followed by the non-aligned nations – toward a nuclear-free zone in the Middle East. Israel balked. Dr. Gerson said that the Obama Administration in not particularly interested in this either although if finally agreed to the demand in order to advance Obama's larger strategies and to avoid the collapse of the conference. Israel finally agreed and is now named in the document.

Glimmers of hope
While it is dispiriting to see how little progress has been made toward a nuclear weapons-free earth in the sixty-five years perhaps one can take comfort in such micro increments. If Israel is finally named in the latest treaty document – despite the deep consternation within that country and within the American community for whom Israel can do no wrong – perhaps there is a glimmer of hope.
Moreover, Hiroshima is, today, a beautiful, modern city. And the Japanese – a community that knows deeply, genetically, the reality behind nuclear warfare – have a deep commitment to life and a peaceful world. Perhaps there is hope for humanity....

Play ball! ...on a radioactive site. Or, denial is a river in Egypt

2010-07-25T13:33:00.000-07:00

On a recent visit onto a usually-closed-to-the public former naval station - now a Superfund site - I snapped the picture, below. And remembered the aphorism, "denial is a river in Egypt"!

Lonesome basketball hoop on a radioactive field along Oakland Estuary and San Francisco Bay. Insets: gate leading into the site; notice on a fence surrounding the site. What does it say about human beings who disregard the well-posted area to play ball? Yes, denial is alive and well...(Photo Susan Galleymore, July 17, 2010)

I live on the landfill section of an island that is the transitional zone to the former US military base, Naval Air Station, Alameda. It is beautiful here...humane, 'downscale' enough to maintain the homey feel lost when sterilized by class consciousness...families gather here and children play in the park beyond the trees on the my fence line...and music from every culture in the world wafts through the trees: salsa and mariachi, reggae, dastgah, rai, blues, rock 'n roll, occasional drumming circles...
This spot once sported 'public baths' and roller coasters. Once known as Coney Island of the West, Alameda is the birthplace of the Kwepie Doll, Skippy Peanut Butter, the Doors' Jim Morrison, and other notables. Today Fish and Wildlife staff introduce kids to the miraculous critters that live in water and upon and around the beach.

But...
...a short distance away is a Superfund site. These 1600 acres of dry land and 1000 acres of submerged land have been under CERCLA clean up for over a decade at a cost, according to an EPA official's estimate, of $428 million; the clean up is just more than 50 percent complete.
Hundreds of thousands of gallons of benzene, naphthalene, and jet fuel pool underground. Among other chemicals and substances such as PCB, pesticides, VOC, and PAH there is evidence that radionuclides were flushed into drains -- and into the bay -- back in they heyday of war-time airplane manufacture.
And it is not just fallout from the US military. "Marsh crust" derives from the days of Standard Oil (precursor to Chevron), a borax plant, coal energy generation across the estuary, and other industries operating before the city sold this land to the Navy for $1.00. (Today, the City of Alameda's Marsh Crust ordinance requires a home-owner in the marsh crust area to obtain a permit to dig into the marsh crust. This permit requires that a home-owner spend about $5,000 in professional services, and hazardous waste disposal fees and taxes, for simple tasks like planting a tree. Right now, not too many of us live in the worst marsh crust zones but with plans to develop residential housing, a VA facility, etc, things will change rapidly.)

Recently, Alameda's active and effective Restoration Advisory Board (CERCLA mandates a RAB interface between Navy, local residents, EPA, and other regulatory groups) requested the Navy's Base Environmental Coordinator - "BEC" - arrange a tour of a few key areas. Accordingly, a bus load of interested and affected parties spent Saturday morning learning more in the field about the clean up.
For some on the filled-to-capacity bus, it was the first visit ever onto closed sections of the base.

The edited basketball picture of the basketball hoop was taken at Installation Restoration Site 1, a former dump site and burn pit. Among the cocktail of "usual suspect" chemicals found on the base (some listed above) this 36-acre patch is contaminated with radium. I took the picture through the fence before we climbed aboard the bus to tour Site 1. Once on the site, we were not allowed to disembark the bus. A Geiger counter measured radiation exposure on the tires before we departed Site 1.

While I noticed a few healthy -- acclimated? -- black bunny rabbits hopping here and there, no one on the bus knew about the basketball hoop: when it was erected; if it was ever used; why it is still there.

I am as susceptible to denial as the next woman. Denial can be comforting. But a basketball hoop on a radioactive site? This indicates powerful denial...or someone is not forthcoming about the chemicals wafting from the site... and the mystery basketball players are dangerously incurious; the site's EIRs and other assorted documents present information about the site that should keep the most ambitious basketball player away.

Can't miss these signs, yet...

Last November the Dubai Star spilled a few thousand gallons of fuel oil in the San Francisco Bay. It contaminated our island and, for a week or so, clean up crews were deployed. (Pictures and more on that spill.) What remains today are a few signs...and warning about potential illness.


Warning signs at Crab Cove. (Photo: Susan Galleymore, 2010)

Close ups of two of these signs.


Sign in effect immediately during and after the fuel oil spill remains almost a year after the event. (Photo: Susan Galleymore, 2010)

The most recent sign, posted in early summer.

"Swimmer's itch"?

Yet, people disregard these signs and enter the water anyway... and allow their children to do that same.

Then again, when I look at the beach, the water, the beauty of the area, I realize that We, the People, should expect to enjoy this natural bounty...we should be able to go into this water, play basketball, plant a tree, make a garden, and revel in our surroundings without fear of toxic contamination, environmental illness, or radiation poisoning.

How has it come to this that we cannot? How did we allow such devastating environmental contamination of water, air, and even our food?

Storytelling at Indian Canyon

2010-07-02T10:26:00.000-07:00

There was an excellent turnout for the annual storytelling event at Indian Canyon this year.
This spot is the only land within traditional Ohlone/Costanoan territory (around the San Francisco Bay section of Californai), or, for that matter, within coastal California between Santa Rosa and Santa Barbara, that is owned by Indian title in trust with the Federal government. So, it is the only 'Indian Country' in this vast region; most other traces of Indian land ownership have tragically been lost and not yet regained.

Descendants of Ohlone, Costanoan, and other California tribes work hard to raise awareness about this history.

This year, a storyteller from Australia. Listen to Mamiya's story.

And dancers too...

The audience came from all over the bay area...

and a Jingle dancer....

Learn more about Indian Canyon Village

Listen to Scott Terrapin's story.

The story of Glen Cove

2010-07-02T10:17:00.000-07:00

At Glen Cove, in Vallejo, a group gathered to celebrate the success of recent Shellmound Walks. These are ongoing protests by native people to the desecration of sacred burial grounds in what is now Emeryville.
A decade ago, developers eyed potential profits that could be - and have been - generated by building a shopping and entertainment haven at the confluence of major north/south and west freeways. Then, they simply bulldozed over the shell mounds, despite native peoples' explaining the historical significance of the area.
The same thing is happening in Glen Cove where large single family homes are built on sacred burial grounds.

From the Vallejo Inter-Tribal Council website:

Historically Glen Cove has been a traditional meeting place where services such as burials were performed for over one hundred local California Indian tribes. The sacred cove contains human remains, shell mounds, and other artifacts. Glen Cove continues to be a spiritually important area to the local Native Communities. The site was first documented in archaeological records in 1907 by an archaeologist from the University of California at Berkeley. According to a 1988 report by Novato Archaeological Resource Service, is at least 3,500 years old. Many of the sacred items unearthed from the site in previous years remain illegally housed in the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology at UC Berkeley which houses over 13,000 ancestral remains and over 200,000 sacred objects.

Pictures of the celebration in June

Organizers recognize what has been accomplished with the Shellmound Walks.
(Middle) Corrina Gould (Chochenyo Ohlone), Shellmound Walk co-Founder and (Left) Indian People Organizing for Change, Johnella Sanchez (Shoshone Bannock) and Shellmound Walk co-Founder.
Wounded Knee De O'Campo (Right) sitting on chair holding staff.

The river runs into SF Bay here...and the largest sugar processing plant on the west coast is visible top right.

Looking east, a cargo ship just visible....

Listen to audio interview with Wounded Knee

Meanwhile... views of a catastrophe

2010-06-26T10:09:00.000-07:00

Sigh! Almost beautiful, isn't it? Who knew disaster could be so attractive...and artistic?

The New York Times answers some questions on the oil catastrophe....

Also, below, news from the US Social Forum

And, the flip side: not quite so beautiful after all!

It the Gulf oil spill was in your neighborhood....

2010-06-24T19:20:00.000-07:00

Here is a scary interactive graphic that puts into proportion the extent of the Gulf oil 'spill' (don't I mean 'catastrophe'?)

If this was your home...

After you get your breath back, drop down the page and read the text, including:

What Can You Do?
* Talk. First, share this map with your friends so they can understand the impact as well. Next, write to your Representatives and Senators and share your feelings about this disaster.
* Think. The EPA is soliciting ideas for possible technology solutions to aid in the oil spill response efforts. Submit your idea. You can also visit the clever inventors over at GulfClean.org and help them build their crowdsourced technology for oil cleanup.
* Volunteer. Lousiana and Florida are both looking for volunteers to help in cleanup and prevention. If you have a boat and live or work on the gulf coast, you can participate in the Vessels of Opportunity program where BP will pay you to take part in oil skimming operations.
* Donate The National Wildlife Foundation and International Bird Rescue are accepting donations for coastal relief. Matter of Trust is also collecting hair to be bundled into booms. Hair absorbs oil even better than the synthetic materials being used. You can find a participating hair salon or barbershop at their site.

Headlines from the US Social Forum....

2010-06-23T12:58:00.000-07:00

Photos...news... headlines...
see it on Raising Sand Radio blog

Israeli Shipping Line Zim Shut Out at Oakland Docks

2010-06-21T08:49:00.000-07:00

This article published on Commondreams on June 21 and on Counterpunch on June 24.

Listen to the radio show on this topic

Long before 5:30 a.m. on June 20 about 800 protesters traveled the mile from West Oakland's BART station, near San Francisco, to Berth 57 of the Oakland docks. The early risers were determined to block the gates and discourage longshoremen from unloading a Zim cargo ship. Zim is an Israeli shipping company.

A second shift of more than 200 hundred protesters kept the gates closed for the 4:30 p.m. work crew too.

Gloria La Riva organized the personal vehicle shuttle service that transported both waves of protesters.
She said, “There is a provision in their contract that states workers do not have to cross a picket line if their health or safety is at stake. The arbitrator -- who is always on call for these kinds of situations -- twice reviewed the lines of protesters in the morning. At about 9:15 a.m. he decided that it wasn't safe for the workers. We consider it a great victory that the arbitrator ruled in the union's favor and the men did not have to work.”

Since they had already been dispatched and the arbitration ruled in their favor the men will be paid.

For La Riva this was another full day of dedicated service to her life-long commitment to justice... along with some dejá vu, too.

Back in June 1984, when San Francisco still was a commercial container dock, La Riva supported the ILWU longshoremen who took an official action at Pier 80 and refused to unload apartheid South Africa's Ned-Lloyd ship. Union members held firm for ten days -- the longest political cargo stoppage in West Coast history -- despite the multi-million dollar fines levied against them.

Back then, South Africa's racist apartheid regime was under pressure. As its defense forces cracked down ever more brutally on black South Africans, including women and children, the eyes of the world riveted on images of white policemen shooting black children in school yards and in poverty-stricken segregated townships.

Now Israel is under pressure. On May 31, that country's navy violently boarded ships in international waters and attacked passengers delivering food, building materials, and medical aid. Nine passengers are dead and six are still missing.

But international anger has been simmering for some time against Israel's actions in Palestine. The bombardment of Gaza over Christmas and New Year 2009 was an act of sustained brutality that riveted the world. Since then, images of desperate Palestinians are hard to miss. They include babies and children living in what is referred to by some as the “world's largest open-air prison”.

Israel's blockade of Gaza extends beyond its land borders. Fishermen are allowed within only 5.5 km of their own coast. Some sneak into Egyptian waters to fish but doing so puts their lives at risk.

Israeli officials insist there is no humanitarian crisis. United Nations aid workers inside Gaza, however, speak of 80 per cent of the people depending on food hand-outs. UN data draws disquieting images: 14 per cent of children suffer stunted growth due to malnutrition.

At one of three gates blocked at the docks, protester Catherine Orozco puts down her sign (it reads “Let Gaza Live”) and says, “I visited Israel and Palestine in 2002. I went to Jenin and saw the results of the massacre and buildings and homes destroyed. I went to Jerusalem and saw people evicted from their life-long homes. I am very concerned about the disaster Israel is visiting upon the people of Palestine. While we Americans tend to be more concerned about our own troubles like the economy and oil spills, it opens up a lot of peoples' eyes to see peace ships carrying humanitarian aid attacked in international waters and human rights activists killed.”

As the United States sinks deeper into debt, President Obama insists that Israel is a “true friend” whose security is “top priority...sacrosanct …non-negotiable.” On June 4, less than a week after Israel's act of piracy in international waters, Obama declared a “strong commitment” to ensure “the bond between the United States and Israel is unbreakable today, unbreakable tomorrow, unbreakable forever.” Then he authorized a further $30 billion in assistance to Israel over the next decade. (President Bush authorized $13 billion during his presidency.)

These days, the word “apartheid” is linked regularly with Israel. Indeed, the parallels between Israel and apartheid South Africa are clear to anyone who visited both places or studied this form of politics.

In the clear sunshine that poured over the Oakland docks on June 20, it is apparent that ever more people of all ages and backgrounds are looking into the face of this new version of apartheid. What they see makes them unafraid of the omnipresent threat of being labeled “anti-Semitic” or “self-hating Jew.”

If the Israeli government follows the directive of just one sign in evidence on this day – “Boycott Israeli Ships and Goods” – it would consider deeply apartheid South Africa's history. Then it would steer its ship of state toward a different star...and full speed ahead.

Note: I was born in apartheid South Africa, lived in Israel from 1975 to 1977, during which time I learn to speak Hebrew and traveled all over the country - including El Arish, then part of the Gaza Strip. (Israel included the Sinai peninsula at that time.) I visited again in 2005.

Hate to say it, but... "told you so!"

2010-06-09T10:48:00.000-07:00

A few weeks back in the post "BP: "...very responsive and responsible spillers", I wrote:

Soon we will learn the spill and its effects are far larger than stated ...then we'll learn the monetary costs of the clean...and it will be accepted that We, the people, will foot the financial and environmental bill.

I wish I had been wrong!
But, I was not wrong.

It begins with Bill S.3305, the "Big Oil Bailout Prevention Liability Act" - a Senate bill "to amend the Oil Pollution Act of 1990 to require oil polluters to pay the full cost of oil spills, and for other purposes."

Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, on the Energy Committee, managed to defeat Bill S.3305 that would cap BP's liability at $10 billion, even if damages from the gulf oil spill surpass that figure. The company already estimates that spill will cost $450 million to clean up.

A drill-baby-drill supporter, Murkowski, apparently, has received almost $300,000 in campaign contributions from the oil and gas industry. She says she supports raising the cap but argues that the $10 billion figure would prohibit all but the biggest of oil companies from drilling oil offshore.

Meanwhile, local fisherwoman, Diane Wilson, traveled to Washington, DC from Texas, where her livelihood and those of her fellow shrimpers has been ruined. Wilson describes herself as

...a high school–educated fisherwoman with a pile of kids and a broke-down truck....I am a fourth generation shrimper from the Gulf. With this BP disaster, I am seeing the destruction of my community and I am outraged.
I am also seeing elected representatives like Senator Lisa Murkowski blocking BP from being legally responsible to pay for this catastrophe. She stopped the Big Oil Bailout Prevention Act and wants to keep the liability cap at a pitiful $75 million. This is outrageous. How dare she side with big oil over the American people who have been so devastated by this manmade disaster....

Wilson writes,
There are approximately 4,000 oil and gas rigs out in the Gulf, but there are a sizable number in the bays, too. Seismologist teams sometimes use dynamite blasts to produce sound waves that pinpoint oil and gas deposits. Generally, dynamite charges aren't allowed near the reefs and they're not supposed to be so powerful that they blow up fish. That's the law, anyhow, but who's listening? I was trotlining for black drum and I had a string of lines near an oyster reef that black drum love to hang around. I picked up my line and there, hanging off the hooks, was a very long line of dynamite charges. Things really got messy when the dynamite blasts started rocking the fishermen's boats and blowing fish out of the water. To stop the obvious show of dead fish, the company brought in a three airboats. An airboat can generate decibels equivalent to a jet plane, so imagine three giant airplanes ripping and running up and down the bay to scare the fish out of the bay. Well, they accomplished their goal. All the fish ran out of the bay and there went our fish for the entire season. It was nothing but a bleep on an oil company's corporate work sheet, but for our family-based inshore fishermen, it was devastating.

That's not all. Just listen. The oil industry dumps over a billion pounds of mercury-contaminated drilling-mud wastes into the Gulf each year. Drilling muds are used to cool and lubricate drill bits as they bore into the earth while plumbing for oil and natural gas. The mercury is present in an element called barite, the main ingredient in the muds. In l996, the EPA limited the amount of mercury that could be present in the drilling muds to one part per million, which could still allow l,000 pounds of mercury to be dumped from the Gulf platforms each year. For 50 years prior to the EPA rule, there were no limits on mercury in barite. A report published by the Society of Petroleum Engineers suggested that, in the past, barite with mercury up to 30 parts per million could have been used. Looking at information supplied by the oil industry and the EPA, hundreds of thousands of pounds of mercury have been dumped in the Gulf via drilling muds since the l960s.

So it shouldn't be surprising at all that some oil and gas rigs in the Gulf of Mexico are so contaminated by mercury that they could qualify for Superfund status. The mercury concentrations in many fish sampled near at least one rig were high enough to qualify the area as a contaminated fishery.
Read her full article.

World Cup Soccer 2010: Shame on the Beautiful Game

2010-06-08T17:20:00.000-07:00

Soccer fever rises. A billboard on the East Bay side of the California's Oakland/San Francisco Bay Bridge displays an animated advertisement with the FIFA logo announcing “RSA vs. Mexico, Friday 6:30am.” The growing excitement makes even someone who elects to live sans a television cast around for a place to watch the sport referred to as the “beautiful game.”

At ground zero, South Africa's liberal Mail and Guardian quotes President Jacob Zuma: the World Cup is “the single greatest opportunity we have ever had to showcase our diversity and potential to the world. We must rise and tell the story of a continent which is alive with possibilities.”

Indeed, Zuma's post-World Cup future promises magical transformations: racial reconciliation; the end of post-apartheid troubles, disasters and tragedies; a plethora of international investors; and horizons chock-a-block with spend-happy tourists who, drawn to South Africa's charm and beauty, will return again and again. This, despite glowing estimates (450,000 international and 100,000 African soccer fans) falling woefully short and despite the growing disincentives of future carbon taxes on air and other travel, the country's failing infrastructure and social services, and its hard-to-beat reputation as the “rape capital” of the world.

The word on Main Street has it a veritable honor to any country granted the opportunity to host FIFA's World Cup. But, back in the 'hood where the host country's majority live, the downside is very real to the people whose government contracted with FIFA to spend lavishly for FIFA. The effects persist long after the last soccer fan departs a brand new stadium built for a handful of games.

Show no poverty!
In Cape Town, FIFA officials took one look at the location of the existing – functional – Athlone stadium and refused to play soccer in it, explaining that “A billion television viewers don’t want to see shacks and poverty on this scale.”

Here's an idea. Instead of infantalizing a billion viewers at the cost of the new stadium in Green Point spend the money on the improving civil infrastructure. Yes, Table Mountain is beautiful behind the new stadium that is also the most expensive ever built anywhere – so far! But, imagine what that budget of R4.5 billion/ US $580 million – with cost overruns and escalations in 2006 rising from R1.8 billion/US $225 million to R3.1 billion – could do if it went toward creating durable jobs that built sustainable neighborhoods with schools, clinics, and parks for the next generation to learn soccer?

Then a billion finicky television viewers could see their largess manifested in Athlone and feel the adult joy of constructive participation in real South Africa.

More importantly, a few thousand of the currently 4.18 million unemployed South Africans would have jobs, pay taxes, consume local goods, and offer security to their families.

Instead, “Statistics South Africa” reports that numbers of unemployed rose from last year's 3.87 million. In their updated article, “South Africa’s Unemployment Rate Increases to 23.5%”, Nasreen Seria and Mike Cohen report that the jobless rate rose to 23.5 percent from 21.9 percent in three months. South Africa’s unemployment is the highest of 62 countries Bloomberg tracks.

An overblown corporatized event?
In a recent interview, Professor Patrick Bond of the University of Kwa Zulu Natal's School of Development Studies, also director of the Center for Civil Society there, said, “The World Cup is an example of an overblown corporatized event of corporate athletics that involves nationalism and police hysteria about potential threat.”

He highlights facts-on-the-ground for ordinary South Africans. “We had no idea, back in 2004 when FIFA granted South Africa the Cup, that this would entail actually surrendering any democratic control of our cities where the big stadia are [located]...[South Africa's] police – essentially given to FIFA for free – now patrol 10 kilometers around a stadium to discourage protest.”

Police warned the public that any kind of protest is disallowed for the duration of the Cup. This means coordinated protests by organized activists...and spontaneous bursts of frustration by residents with the initiative to leave their 'hood day after depressing day to fish for a few coins in the tsunami of unemployment.

So much for laissez-faire capitalism and the self-regulating marketplace!

Can South Africa’s multi-billion investment pay off?
South Africa's current account deficit has soared. According to The Economist in February 2009, imports for construction and other goods plus profit outflows put South Africa at the top of the risk list amongst emerging markets.

In the 26 May 2010 article in Engineering News, “World Cup return on investment not guaranteed”, ACE Insurance senior underwriter Trevor Kerst states that South Africa spent about R33 billion/ US $4.1 billion on preparations for the sporting event.
“… the return on that investment is by no means assured; add to that the reality that FIFA pays no taxes and institutes exclusion zones around the stadiums where matches take place, and tax income is curtailed. Within these exclusion zones, only FIFA and its partners may sell any goods; nothing from these sales accrues to the government.”
Such massive debt, Kerst warns, would lead to a marked slowdown in public sector spending, especially on large capital projects, and that the insurance industry might face lean times ahead.

While South Africa incurs this staggering debt, a huge import bill, and a dramatic rise in foreign debt FIFA's profit is estimated at R24 billion/ US $3 billion; television rights alone run to approximately US $2.8 billion.

Even other large corporations are issuing warnings. MasterCard stated recently: “Any company should have grave concerns about doing business with FIFA: lying, deception, and bad faith are standard operating procedure.”

Where there's a will, there's a way
A wonderful thing about human beings is their generous creativity in the face of injustice. For, of course, there will be protests. Indeed, a small cadre of extraordinary talents has already begun protesting. Hip hop musicians Creamy Ewok Baggend are sponsored by the Khulumani Support group, currently taking on five major corporations who, they charge, are complicit in supporting the South African Government during apartheid and are also investors in FIFA World Cup.

Where numbers and statistics may fail with some audiences, Ewok's contribution, “Shame on the Game” may go viral and their lyrics tell the world a compelling story:

It's a beautiful game
where we stand on the side
as they play with the pieces and
we pay with our pride.
It's a beautiful game.
How they loan us to own us
they've shown us a beautiful game.
I'm not talking to the people in the stands on the side
the people who need a little hope in their lives
I'm not talking to the kids who want to see the stars
want to see a future without death or jail bars.
I'm not talking to the coach.
I'm not talking to the team.
I'm talking to the money men behind the screen.
I'm trying to stop another dummy move getting past
…
We're playing with our balls while they're playing with our lives.
They come disguised like they're playing for our side
but the minute that we're finished
they're the first to vy!
The picture is bigger than the one getting played.
They sold back then
and they're still getting paid!

To date, the financial gain is always on FIFA's side. How that small group of private investors must smile as their bank balance fattens: the beautiful game harnessed as the miracle investment. They have outlawed cries of “foul” and, as they go to the bank, they must yell with the same joy Mexican soccer announcers yell, “gooooooooal!
(Share the link to this music and help it go viral.)

BP's Hayward "...a very significant environmental crisis and catastrophe."

2010-05-29T12:17:00.000-07:00

In an interview with the UK Guardian two weeks ago, BP's chief executive, Tony Hayward, described the spill as "tiny" relative to the size of the gulf.
Today, he drastically scaled upwards his assessment of the spill. He told CNN: "This is clearly an environmental catastrophe. There is no two ways about it. It's clear that we are dealing with a very significant environmental crisis and catastrophe."
Wow, who knew?
Read the UK Guardian article.

This past week, Greg Moses wrote a terrific piece for CounterPunch titled "Oil Wars Come Home to Roost." Here is the opening:

Even the birds are pissed. Whether it’s the Mockingbird who guards the footpath down by the bus stop. Or the Blue Jay who cusses across my back deck. Or even the frigging Grackle who buzzed me early morning at the grocery-store parking lot. This week I‘m a Hitchcock player and these birds come straight for my neck.

AP says 333 birds have been found dead along the Gulf Coast with no oil on them. Well, the birds I know are telling me what their fellows died from. The lead weight of grief. As if the oil companies hadn’t wrecked every other week this century. As if this must be nothing but the century of dirty oil. Suddenly the oil wars have come home to roost and there is nothing to do about it except what everybody else has done who gets smacked by this dark force of history. You just stand there and cry.

It’s like shock and awe bounced back off the dark side of the moon. All the wealth and brains and power of the mighty American empire sucked into a vacuum of arrogant corruption and relayed back to earth in the form of a blob that will not be stopped until the death of it all finally sinks in. You call this stinking mess democracy?

Read his - short - article.

I was struck with his passionate anger and emailed him:

Hello Greg Moses,
I've enjoyed both your Counterpunch articles this week. The article, "Oil Wars Come Home to Roost" was great: short, passionate, direct...and unafraid of your pain and anger. Almost unAmerican of you!
I'd like to interview you on my radio show....

He emailed me back:

Thank you...however, I can't even begin to imagine talking about the death of our beloved Gulf of Mexico without crying out loud. I'm afraid I could only supply rather pathetic conversation right now....

Yes, if Greg cried on the show I'd cry too. We'd have a cry-fest...which is what the whole country needs: to howl, scream, cry, rage, cry, cry, cry....
The Gulf is a fast moving catastrophe made to look 'manageable' by the criminals who perpetrated the crime. This is one result of the thinking that Grover Norquist represents: "government small enough to drown in the bathtub." Except government -- that is, run with the little guy's tax dollars that are too few for education, health care, community care -- will be enough to pay for this ongoing corporate crime/tragedy.

As an aside, there is also a slow moving tragedy-in-the-making in rural South Africa -- where I grew up -- as it undergoes massive industrialization.
Long story that will unfold over the next months but, summarized, the Outer West zone of the municipality eTekwini -- home to SA's largest cargo port, Durban -- has been earmarked for industry, "dry dock," and to house the many freight trucks that upset Durban's residents. (Yes, there, same as here, we use diesel/oil instead of trains for freight. And, remember, this was once a British colony and the Brits built train track everywhere they went.) Instead of assessing what could be done differently to minimize the problem in Durban, the municipality is expanding its area of operations. So, besides the fallout from the manganese smelter, Assmang Cato Ridge Works that we have been subjected to for six decades, and the criminal spills of toxic mercury that continue to dibble into rivers from the days of UK's transnational manufacturer Thor Chemicals... the area will soon have the world's largest landfill, but not a fill, instead it'll be a pyramid that goes into the sky on the edge of a windblown escarpment! Plus, all sorts of other industries. Learn more at the Cato Ridge Environmental Coalition blog.

A cry-fest is long overdue. Then a real workable cross-cultural, trans-national, apolitical, non-U.S.-centric enforceable agreement for a sustainable way of life. Sure, we Americans may have to cut back on privileges -- for example, spending money on junk food like the currently vastly over-promoted "Hotpockets" and all the other forms of edibles that have little to do with solid nutrition and everything to do with profit.
Hey, wouldn't that bring down the epidemic of diabetes, heart disease, obesity...which also means the cost of health care?
My god, a win/win among the tarballs!

It is “Perfectly Safe: It just Kills Plants”

2010-05-27T19:52:00.000-07:00

(This article also published in Counterpunch on May 28)
Each year for the last five years the U.S. has welcomed a delegation of Vietnamese affected by spraying chemicals in Vietnam three decades ago. The Fifth Agent Orange Justice Tour ended recently. It focused national attention on grass roots and legislative efforts to achieve comprehensive assistance to victims in Vietnam, to the children and grandchildren of U.S. veterans, and to Vietnamese-Americans.

It is not news that American troops fighting for the U.S. military in Vietnam were told by their commanders that the defoliants and herbicides sprayed by the U.S. Air Force were “perfectly safe...[they] just kill plants.”
The statistics, while heartbreaking, are, likewise, not news for anyone who pays attention to recent history. From 1961 to 1970 more than 20,000 missions that composed Operations “Trail Dust” and “Ranch Hand” dispersed about 13 million gallons of chemicals over five million acres of Vietnam's forests and agricultural lands; southern Laos and Cambodia were sprayed too.

To the military mind, defoliating was a practical solution that disallowed cover to the enemy. To the corporate mind – Dow, Monsanto, Hercules, Uniroyal, Diamond Shamrock, Syntex Agribusiness, and more than two dozen others – manufacturing chemicals provided good ROI: one gallon of liquid cost $7 back then. Moreover, corporations sped up the 2,4,5T manufacturing process so they could produce more, faster. They ignored the partially catalyzed molecule, dioxin, that was a byproduct of the faster process; it remained in Agent Orange (AO).

Vietnam's dense southern uplands' forests were sprayed with a range of chemicals signified by color-coded barrels: Agents Blue, Orange, White, Pink, Purple and so on. Areas that the C-123 “Provider” airplanes didn't reach – equal to the size of Rhode Island -- were bulldozed with Rome Plows.

Paul Cox was a US Marine fighting along the DMZ for months. Today, he is a civil engineer, a Veteran for Peace member, and a board member of Vietnam Agent Orange Relief and Responsibility Campaign (VAORRC). In a recent presentation in San Francisco, he described the area he fought in at the time as “almost totally denuded from high explosives and multiple spraying sorties; aside from some invasive grass, hardly anything lived, no animals, no bugs, no nothin'. We could operate in the area for days in a row and see no living trees.”

Since 1994, the Canadian company Hatfield Consultants has conducted contamination and mitigation work in Vietnam in close collaboration with Vietnamese Government agencies. More than nine projects in twenty provinces have determined levels of Agent Orange/dioxin in soils, food items, human blood, and breast milk. Hatfield also studies the effects of loss of timber that leads to reduced sustainability of ecosystems, decreases in the biodiversity of plants and animals, poorer soil quality, increased water contamination, heavier flooding and erosion, increased leaching of nutrients and reductions in their availability, invasions of less desirable plant species (primarily woody and herbaceous grasses), and possible alterations of Vietnam's macro- and micro-climates.

In short, there is no let up to the devastation wreaked by war's practicality and profit three decades ago.

Consistent determination
Despite VAVA delegates representing three million people when they travel to the U.S., to date U.S. courts have not acknowledged the chemicals' effects on Vietnam or the Vietnamese.

Yet, under U.S. law, veterans who served in Vietnam between 1962 and 1975 (including those who visited Vietnam even briefly), and who have a disease that the Veterans Administration (VA) recognizes as being associated with Agent Orange, are presumed to have been exposed to Agent Orange and are eligible for service-connected compensation based on their service.

The VA’s list of “Diseases associated with exposure to certain herbicide agents” are Acute and Subacute Peripheral Neuropathy,AL Amyloidosis, Chloracne (or Similar Acneform Disease), Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia (now expanded to B Cell Leukemias), Diabetes Mellitus (Type 2), Hodgkin’s Disease, Ischemic Heart Disease, Multiple Myeloma, Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, Parkinson’s Disease, Porphyria Cutanea Tarda, Prostate Cancer, Respiratory Cancers (of the lung, larynx, trachea, and bronchus), and Soft Tissue Sarcoma.
Veterans' children born with Spina bifida “may be eligible for compensation, vocational training and rehabilitation and health care benefits.” For the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) concluded in its 1996 update to its report on Veterans and Agent Orange – Health Effects of Herbicides Used in Vietnam that there is “limited/suggestive evidence of an association between exposure to herbicides used in Vietnam and spina bifida in children of Vietnam veterans.”

A time line, briefly
September 10, 2004: an amended class action complaint was submitted to the U.S. District Court, Eastern District; Constantine P. Kokkoris, represented the victims.
March 10, 2005: in Brooklyn, Judge Weinstein dismissed victims' claims.
September 30, 2005: a Brief was submitted to the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals in New York against 36 U.S. chemical companies. The summary by Jonathan Moore states:

The lawsuit...seeks to hold accountable the chemical companies who manufactured and supplied Agent Orange to the government. Contrary to government specifications, the product supplied to the government contained an excessive and avoidable amount of poison...[D]ioxin...was present in the herbicides supplied to the government only because these chemical companies deliberately and consciously chose to ignore then existing industry standards and produce a herbicide that contained excessive and avoidable amounts of dioxin. The presence of the poison dioxin had no military necessity...chemical companies...knew that the more herbicide they produced the more money they would make and the faster they produced it the more they could sell to the government....[T]hey ignored industry standards....

That lawsuit was unsuccessful.

Another try
This year VAVA, Veterans for Peace, and the Vietnamese will begin to apply pressure on Congress to pay the bills for damage done in that country. These groups are drafting legislation that they expect will become a bill – eventually – that addresses this legacy. It consist of four parts:

1) clean up the environment and do no further harm.
2) address the problems of millions ill ...that now extends to three generations.
3) create regional medical centers specifically for victims' children and grandchildren born with the physical deformities and mental illness associated with dioxin.
4) conduct a public health study on the Vietnamese American population in the U.S. to learn if, and if so, how they have been affected by AO sprayed in their homeland. (The assumption is that this population could have a similar exposure to deployed American military personnel).

A third generation of Vietnamese children is being born with

physical deformities and mental illness due to Agent Orange/dioxin.
(Photo: Merle Ratner, Vietnam Agent Orange Relief & Responsibility Campaign.)

Personal stories: new every time
If the news about dioxin – and the political and economic wrangling that accompanies it – is depressingly familiar, what is always fresh are the hopeful voices and enthusiastic faces of the VAVA delegates. All suffer grievous disease or deformities yet their spirits and generosity are astonishingly strong.

This year, 33-year old Pham The Minh accompanied the small group. He is the son of a Vietnamese fighter contaminated by Agent Orange in Quang Tri Province where the spraying was most intensive. Minh and and his sister were born after the war with birth defects that signal dioxin contamination.
His is no story of victimization. The man's voice is vibrantly honest and alive as he says, “I grew up with pain in my spirit and in my body...I graduated from university and I am happy to teach English to victims of Agent Orange.”

In Minh's city of Hai Phong alone there are more than 17,000 victims with birth defects, most of whom live difficult lives and require constant support from hard-pressed families.

Last year, the delegation was headed by Dang Hong Nhut who suffers from cancer and has experienced multiple miscarriages. Twenty-one year old Tran Thi Hoan accompanied Nhut. Tran was born with one hand and no legs due to her mother's exposure. Despite Tran and her mother both being diagnosed with life threatening and disabling conditions that create severe and life-long hardship, the young woman attends college and is determined to work for a just solution for other Vietnamese families.

The 2007 delegates shared compelling stories too.
Vo Thanh Hai was 19 years old in 1978 when he was employed replanting trees around Nam Dong that had been defoliated by the U.S. Army's spraying operations.
In 1986, Mr. Hai’s wife miscarried. In 1987, their son, Vo Thanh Tuan Anh was born. In 2001, he began episodes of fatigue and dizziness that was diagnosed as osteosarcoma for which he was treated with surgery, radiotherapy and chemotherapy.
Their doctor also advised Mr. Hai to have a lump on his own neck examined. Tests disclosed Hodgkins Disease.
Both father and son have difficulty performing routine activities. Mrs. Hoa provides their daily care...which means the family has little regular income.

Nguyen Van Quy served in the Vietnam People's Army from 1972 through 1975. He ate manioc, wild herbs and plants and drank water from streams in areas that had been spayed with Agent Orange. He experienced periodic headaches and exhaustion and itchy skin and rashes.
In 2003, Mr. Quy was diagnosed with stomach cancer, liver damage and with fluid in his lung. His son, Nguyen Quang Trung, was born with spinal, limb and developmental disabilities, enlarged and deformed feet, and a congenital spine defect; he cannot stand, walk, or use his hands.
Mr. Quy's daughter, Nguyen Thi Thuy Nga, was born deaf and dumb and developmentally disabled. Neither child can attend school or work and neither is self-sufficient.

In her presentation in San Francisco, shortly before leaving the U.S. to return home, another 2007 delegate, Mrs. Hong, said how happy she was to have had a chance to visit this country and talk to people she found “very welcoming.”
Mrs. Hong had served in the Eastern Combat Zone of South Vietnam as a clerk tailor and medical care worker. In 1964, she was sprayed with Agent Orange while washing rice in a stream. She tried to dive into the water to wash away the chemicals that stuck to her body. Moreover, she consumed contaminated food, wild grasses, and water every day after that.
In 1975 she was diagnosed with cirrhosis and required long term hospital treatment. In 1999 she was found to have an enlarged spleen and hemopoesis disorder. Several tests later uncovered cancer of the left breast as well as shortness of breath, high blood pressure, cerebral edema, breast cancer with bone metastasis, stomach aches, cirrhosis, gall-stones and bladder-stones, varicose limbs, limb-skin ulcer, weak legs and limited range of movement.

Both Mr.Quy and Mrs Hong died shortly after they returned to Vietnam.

Tragedy of such magnitude easily can overwhelm those unprepared to hear it. Yet listening deeply to these personal stories presented in the even-handed, non-blaming manner of the VAVA delegates creates an opening that may allow We, the People to apply pressure on Congress to co-create legislation to alleviate our nation's moral stigma from our actions in Vietnam.

Perhaps the courage of the women in Lan Teh Nidah's poem, Night Harvest can give hope to Americans of peace and reconciliation. These courageous Vietnamese women harvested rice at night to avoid detection by American forces.
...
The golds of rice and cluster bombs blend together.
even delayed fuse bombs bring no fear:
Our spirits have known many years of war.
Come, sisters, let us gather the harvest.
...
We are the harvesters of my village,
...
We are not frightened by bombs and bullets in the air --
Only by dew, wetting our lime-scented hair.

One day, perhaps, we in the United States will acknowledge our responsibilities in Vietnam. For we, too, have known many years of war. Those who struggle for peace are harvesters too. Let us accept our history, sew the seeds of peace, and highlight the futile lose/lose proposition that is war.

BP - deja vu ...Or, Why Are the American People Protected from Truth?

2010-05-22T12:43:00.000-07:00

I understand that some political questions are simply too hot to handle, for example:

Who looked the other way before and then on September 11, 2001?
Why is the US (that is, you and me!) propping up Zionist ethnic cleansing to the tune of $13 billion for the next few years?

Bringing such answers into our individual and national political worldviews could bring down the entire system...and who has the stomach for that?

But there are answers to less volatile questions that would not only bring some honesty to our public "debates" but also force The American People to develop real critical thinking skills...and that would grow our capacity to deal with an increasingly complex world.
For example, why the daily strewing out of lies associated with BP's Deepwater disaster? Why the cover up about the extent of our environmental troubles? We, each of us, is in deep doodoo with this spill...yet we are encouraged to swallow the drivel that it is a just a drop in the Gulf"....

Recently I interviewed author Alan Hart who said, "Americans are the most idealist people in the world."
Yes, that is true. Idealism is vitally necessary...but it is only effective when it deals with the actual facts on the ground, it is only productive when it takes into account all the dimensions of a problem or issue. Remember, for example, when Dubya, Rumsfeld, Cheney et al insisted that invading Iraq would be a "cakewalk"? And, today, We, the People are still dealing with fallout from those lies...and going broke at breakneck speed.

The half truths, scare tactics, boogey-man scenarios keep us intellectually adolescent. Such mentalities cannot lead today's world. Alas! For it seems that is all our leadership is capable of...therefore all that is demanded of The American People.

Trot with me down the primrose path of the lies of yesteryear...

Associated Press, March. 6, 2006.
Alaska pipeline spill amount debated
Industry critic says its huge, BP and state officials say it's unknown

An emergency worker monitors a vacuum sucking up oil and melted snow on Friday near a pipeline where a leak was discovered a day earlier. (Picture: BP Exploration.)

Excerpts from this article:

...State, federal and oil company officials said the total amount of oil spilled is still not known, but they discounted claims by an oil industry critic that the spill was much larger than BP Exploration (Alaska) Inc. is saying.
...Matt Carr, onsite coordinator for federal Environmental Protection Agency. "Of course it's not a perfect seal. There's a little bit of dripping, but it's not a huge active leak."
...The amount spilled is far greater than BP and government officials are saying, according to oil industry critic Chuck Hamel. Hamel, of Alexandria, Va., said he learned from onsite personnel that the spill volume is closer to 798,000 gallons, which would make it the second largest oil spill in Alaska, second only to the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill of 11 million gallons in Prince William Sound.
Hamel said meters record the volume flowing into the pipe as well as the amount leaving it.
..."There's a 798,000 gallon discrepancy," he said in a phone interview. He declined to provide documentation of the discrepancy, however.
[Nevertheless]..."The progress has been just stunning," Johnson said.

(Read the entire article.)

NPR, September 7, 2006
Congress Investigates Alaska BP Pipeline Leak

The House Energy and Commerce Committee holds a hearing on BP's corrosion problems in Alaska. A leak forced the shutdown of half the Prudhoe Bay oil field. Committee Chairman Joe Barton says evidence indicates the problem was caused by BP's poor maintenance of the pipeline.

(Read the entire article.)

December 10, Wall Street Journal
BP Says Alaska Pipeline Leak Was Due to Ice Buildup

A spill of 1,095 barrels of crude oil mixed with water from a BP PLC pipeline in Alaska was due to a rupture caused by a buildup of ice within the line, BP and the local environmental authorities said Thursday in a joint statement.
...In 2006, thousands of gallons of crude from BP's Prudhoe Bay operations leaked into Alaska's North Slope. Later that year the company shut down a bulk of the oil output at the field following the discovery of corrosion in some pipelines. Prudhoe Bay is the largest oil field in the U.S.

(Read the article.)

May 21, 2010 by ProPublica
Meanwhile ...Officials at the Environmental Protection Agency are considering whether to bar BP from receiving government contracts, a move that would ultimately cost the company billions in revenue and could end its drilling in federally controlled oil fields.

Over the past 10 years, BP has paid tens of millions of dollars in fines and been implicated in four separate instances of criminal misconduct that could have prompted this far more serious action. Until now, the company's executives and their lawyers have fended off such a penalty by promising that BP would change its ways.

Don't want to be a buzzkill, but... I really doubt BP will "never again" receive a government contract. In fact, I bet it will...and as soon as the buzz on the Gulf is off the front pages. That is, say, another couple of months?
I am tired of choking down the hairballs of lies that make up our daily fare, the petting and patting that keeps a majority too scared to risk what they see as their privilege but really simply perpetuates pettiness.
With that in mind, let's find ways to promote solid articles when we stumble across them. Such as the following:

May 21, 2010 by the McClatchy Newspapers
Low Estimate of Oil Spill's Size Could Save BP Millions in Court
BP's estimate that only 5,000 barrels of oil are leaking daily from a well in the Gulf of Mexico, which the Obama administration hasn't disputed, could save the company millions of dollars in damages when the financial impact of the spill is resolved in court, legal experts say.
...A month after...neither BP nor the federal government has tried to measure at the source the amount of crude pouring into the water.
...That decision, however, runs counter to BP's own regional plan for dealing with offshore leaks. "In the event of a significant release of oil," the 583-page plan says on Page 2, "an accurate estimation of the spill's total volume . . . is essential in providing preliminary data to plan and initiate cleanup operations."
(Read the article.)

May 21, 2010 by The Huffington Post
Dan Froomkin: Gulf Oil Spill: Vast Majority of Pollution Could Lurk Below Surface for Months or Years

Dan Froomkin writes, "As little as 1/60th of the oil belching from a blown-out deep-sea BP well could be making it all the way up to the surface of the Gulf of Mexico right away, judging from the results of a field test of a similar scenario conducted in 2000 by a consortium including the Department of the Interior's Mineral Management Service and BP."

And, finally, what I've been seeking for weeks now. People of courage and truth.

Giant Hooray for Ian R. MacDonald is a professor of oceanography at Florida State University. John Amos is the president of SkyTruth, which uses satellite images to monitor environmental problems. Timothy Crone is a research scientist at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory and Steve Wereley, professor of mechanical engineering at Purdue University.

May 21, 2010, NYT Op-Ed Contributors
The Measure of a Disaster
(As you read this, remember that 1 barrel = 55 gallons.)

Taking all this into account, our preliminary estimates indicate that the discharge is at least 40,000 barrels per day and could be as much as 100,000 barrels. Certainly, our assessments suggest that BP’s stated worst-case estimate of 60,000 barrels has been occurring all along. What matters most is that we take the steps to find out if it has.

(Read the article - please!)

Bits and Pieces to Engage and Challenge....

2010-05-21T13:44:00.000-07:00

MotherSpeak is beginning a new project, "This is who I am, this is where I live." This project will raise and share the voices of indigenous people in the US, Vietnam, South Africa (the Zulu of Valley of a Thousand Hills) and Palestine. And we will look at the land upon which these communities live using the lens of what is happening to the land now and what there is to learn about how to apply lessons of history, ecology, and justice that gives us the tools to reconstitute and/or conserve other natural environments.
We will share the project's progress here and, in that spirit, invite you to learn more about US indigenous people. (If you did not see the Heron's Head article, here it is again.)

Meanwhile, here is an upcoming event in California:
Indians: Vallejo's plans for park desecration. Look for more on this event soon after it happens we'll report on it here!

Meanwhile, meet Ariel Luckey and Free Land, Shellmound Part 1 and Part 2. Hold onto your hat...and your heart! This is an amazing, honest, and emotional performance you do not want to miss.

Calling all sentient beings
MotherSpeak's basic premise is that we -- all sentient beings -- are connected as one living entity on a living planet. This video proves this point - again!

Say What? "...a relatively small leak compared to the volume of water in the Gulf..."
And, as usual Gary Trudeau of Doonesbury has a good way of getting his points across. Take his "statistically meaningless poll" as BP CEO Tony Hayward doesn't seem overly alarmed about the Gulf oil spill, noting "It's a relatively small leak compared to the volume of water in the Gulf." Following his lead, let's shake off the impulse to view the event negatively and look for a silver lining in the inky gloom.

Recognizing the connections: To Baghdad from Palestine to more destruction
...Rarely have a house and a man seemed to intersect so seamlessly. Born in 1919 to a Christian family, Mr. Jabra settled in Baghdad after the 1948 war that his fellow Palestinians call the nakba, or catastrophe.

More on BP's "responsive" and "responsible" ways...

2010-05-18T23:09:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago I quoted Rear Adm. Mary E. Landry of the Coast Guard, saying, “BP, from Day 1, has attempted to be a very responsive and very responsible spiller.”
I wrote that it was a matter of time before We, the People discover that we are on the hook for the clean up of this massive Deepwater Horizon "spill" (isn't it more like a deluge?) As the story of this catastrophe unfolds I notice that, along with the lies and finger-pointing associated with this catastrophe there are all sorts of similarities to past spills.

Exxon
Last year, on the 20th anniversary of the Exxon Valdez, Greg Palast reminded us that on the fateful night "Captain Joe Hazelwood...was below decks, sleeping off his bender. At the helm, the third mate would never have collided with Bligh Reef had he looked at his Raycas radar. But the radar was not turned on. In fact, the tanker's radar was left broken and disasbled for more than a year before the disaster, and Exxon management knew it. It was just too expensive to fix and operate."
Palast continues, "The Fable of the Drunken Captain serves the oil industry well. It falsely presents America's greatest environmental disaster as a tale of human frailty, a one-time accident. But broken radar, missing equipment, phantom spill teams, faked tests -- the profit-driven disregard of the law -- made the spill an inevitability, not an accident.

BP
Now we hear another tale of "human frailty", this one the usual sort of corporate power struggle and saving time - that means, saving money.
A critical piece of equipment, an annualer, was damaged several weeks ago and pieces of it started coming out of the well. The annualer is used to seal the well for pressure tests which determine if dangerous gas is seeping. A damaged annualer means the pressure tests do not show accurate data. According to a recent 60 Minutes show, the morning of the explosion there was a very public argument on the rig between the Transocean manager and the BP manager about having subcontractor Halliburton place three concrete plugs in the drilled column. Transocean wanted to do it with 'mud' in the column to keep the pressure contained. The BP manager wanted to do it before the concrete was set as it expedites the subsequent steps.
In other words, it is faster to do it this way.
BP wanted to do it faster...therefore cheaper.... and won the argument. They used the blow-out protector that had the damaged annualer. A couple of hours later the explosion killed 11 people and today, the public doesn't really know how much oil is actually spewing into the Gulf below the surface: BP was reluctant to allow independent researchers to measure amounts of oil under the surface.
By the way, there's talk that BP may be, by law, liable for only $75 million of the harm done by the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe.

Toxic testing grounds
Then there are the experiments that are unique - so far -- to this spill. The British Telegraph reports that Louisiana officials accused BP of turning the Gulf of Mexico into a toxic testing-ground after winning permission for experimental chemical methods of fighting the oil slick...then cutting Governor Bobby Jindal's administration out of deliberations over the use of chemical dispersants.
Alan Levine, the head of Louisiana's Department of Health and Hospitals, said "We don't have any data or evidence behind the use of these chemicals in the water [and we are] basically using one of the richest ecosysystems in the world as a laboratory," complained
Tony Hayward, BP's chief executive officer, told WAFB Channel 9 news station that the chemical has undergone "lots of testing" and is biodegradable. "We believe it's a very effective way of containing this spill until such time as we can eliminate the leak," he added.
But Robert Barham, the state's Secretary of the Department of Wildlife and Fisheries, stated that it has not been used at such depths before - BP's leak stems from a pipe one mile below the surface - and that its potential impact and consequences are unknown. This includes how it travels through the water over time.
"We're very disappointed in their approach," he said of BP and the EPA. "The federal procedures call for a consensus between federal authorities, the responsible party and the states involved. When we met and expressed our concerns, apparently they decided to go without us."

Chevron
Meanwhile, federal Judge Lewis A. Kaplan of United States District Court in Manhattan recently granted a petition by Chevron to issue a subpoena for hundreds of hours of footage from a documentary about the pollution of the Amazon rainforests of Ecuador and the oil company’s involvement.
Film director Joe Berlinger must turn over more than 600 hours of footage from his documentary “Crude,” released last year, chronicles the Ecuadorians who sued Texaco (now owned by Chevron) saying the operations of the companies’ oil field at Lago Agrio contaminated their water.
Chevron claims Mr. Berlinger’s footage could show improper collaboration in Ecuador’s legal system that could show Chevron as a victim of political influence in that country.
Chevron's lawyer, Randy M. Mastro, said:

We are very gratified by the judge’s decision...[t]hrough this kind of discovery, we have been exposing corruption, fraud and a travesty of justice going on in Ecuador. This evidence will be critical to determining Ecuador’s violation of international law and its denial of due process and fair treatment to Chevron. [This footage] represented “an extraordinary film record of exactly the kinds of abuses that have tainted the judicial process in Ecuador.”

Shell
Undaunted, Shell Oil will drill the first-ever large wells in the Chukchi and Beaufort in the Arctic Sea this summer, defying calls for a moratorium on offshore exploration in the pristine wilderness following the Gulf of Mexico disaster. They hope to get at an estimated 27bn barrels of oil and gas.
But, don't worry as Shell chief executive Peter Voser told shareholders that it would only drill there if it thought it could be done "safely and responsibly".
"The characteristics of the offshore fields are different to those in the Gulf of Mexico – we go less deep so there is less pressure," he said. "The world needs these fossil resources in the longer term." Voser said Shell had spent $2bn (£1.38bn) to secure the permits.

Some good news...
A new poll by Pew casts doubt on that idea that the US holds center-right political positions. It shows widespread skepticism about capitalism and hints that support for socialist alternatives is emerging as a majoritarian force in America’s new generation.
Carried out in late April and published May 4, 2010, the Pew poll, arguably by the most respected polling company in the country, asked over 1500 randomly selected Americans to describe their reactions to terms such as “capitalism,” “socialism,” “progressive,” “libertarian” and “militia.” The most striking findings concern “capitalism” and “socialism.” We cannot be sure what people mean by these terms, so the results have to be interpreted cautiously and in the context of more specific attitudes on concrete issues, as discussed later.
Pew summarizes the results in its poll title: “Socialism not so negative; capitalism not so positive.” This turns out to be an understatement of the drama in some of the underlying data.
Yes, “capitalism” is still viewed positively by a majority of Americans. But it is just by a bare majority. Only 52% of all Americans react positively. Thirty-seven percent say they have a negative reaction and the rest aren’t sure
A year ago, a Rasmussen poll found similar reactions. Then, only 53% of Americans described capitalism as “superior” to socialism.
Meanwhile, 29% in the Pew poll describe “socialism” as positive. This positive percent soars much higher when you look at key sub-groups, as discussed shortly. A 2010 Gallup poll found 37% of all Americans preferring socialism as “superior” to capitalism.
Charles Derber, professor of sociology at Boston College and author of Corporation Nation and Greed to Green writes in a recent article "Capitalism: Big Surprises in Recent Polls."
He writes, "If socialism means a search for a genuine systemic alternative, then America, particularly its youth, is emerging as a majoritarian social democracy, or in a majoritarian search for a more cooperativist, green, and more peaceful and socially just order.
Either interpretation is hopeful. It should give progressives assurance that even in the “Age of the Tea Party,” despite great dangers and growing concentrated corporate power and wealth, there is a strong base for progressive politics. We have to mobilize the majority population to recognize its own possibilities and turn up the heat on the Obama Administration and a demoralized Democratic Party. If we fail, the Right will take up the slack and impose its monopoly capitalist will on a reluctant populace.

Hooray! Now let's mobilize!

And listen to this week's radio show, "Oil spills, then and now...."

Next year in Jerusalem? Sixty three years after the Nakba

2010-05-12T08:53:00.000-07:00

In the binary view of war or peace it is the cruelest irony that May 14 commemorates Independence Day in Israel while May 15 commemorates the Nakba, or Catastrophe, in Palestine..and on the very same land.
Sixty-three years ago, more than 750,000 Palestinians were expelled from 531 towns and villages. Today, there are an estimated seven million Palestinians still living in 58 registered refugee camps throughout the Middle while millions endure collective punishment in the Occupied Territories.
This, despite the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that states that every person “has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country.” Not only has Israel never accepted this basic human right for Palestinians as a basis for peace negotiations, it has successfully undermined these rights by ignoring them – and convincing the international community to follow suit.
What is changing, although so slowly it must feel inconsequential to those directly affected, is the historical narrative of “a land without a people for a people without a land” that blossomed during and after World War II and still thrives today.

“God is not a real estate agent”
Ziad Abbas, associate director of MECA, grew up in Dheisheh refugee camp in the West Bank. His family and more than twelve hundred others were expelled violently from their village, Zachariah near Jerusalem (now Kfar Zacharia) in October 1948.
Abbas says, “That God gave the empty Promised Land to his Chosen People is a romantic and convenient myth...and inaccurate. God is not a real estate agent.”
Abbas conducted an oral history that shares witness reports from local villages. He talked to the daughter of the woman who, along with three men and a child, were abducted from Zachariah by Zionist militias. The men were executed and the woman and child sent back to the village with a terrible message: they intend to kill us all; we must flee for our lives.
Walid Khalidi, Ilan Pape, and Rosemary Esber are among the sources of this more accurate history that is replacing the binary, cartoon-heroic versions taught in schools and communities around the world. Even Zionist historians agree that the 1948 expulsions – referred to euphemistically as “transfers” by perpetrators – were violent and wide-spread and followed the ethnic cleansing strategy laid out in the Haganah's master Plan Dalet (“D” in Hebrew). The Zionist version of this same history fully embraces the views of Ben Gurion, Golda Meir, et al that cleansing Palestine of ethnic Arabs is a basic requirement for a successful Jewish state. Murder, mayhem, usurpation of land and property, cultural destruction, and banishing Palestinians to refugee camps were fully sanctioned and justified; they continue to this day.

What goes around, comes around
There was nothing organic in how the Jewish state was founded, little that grew out of diverse people working over time toward generative solutions while respecting differences. Rather it was violent rush to fill the spaces left by living, breathing, loving human beings terrified for their lives leaving behind generations of orchards, fields, gardens, and memories.
Anyone with an open mind who actually visits Israel and the Occupied Territories quickly understands that nothing is simple here. Beneath the surface energy of “can-do” Israelis and awed Holy Land pilgrims lies a deeply complex multi-culture...with a highly stratified class system that reflects the country's founding ethos.

Associate professor of cultural anthropology Smadar Lavie grew up in Jaffa as a lower-middle class Arab Jew, or Misragi. A college professor once told her that her mind was “too untamed.” This meant, Lavie says, “I asked too many questions about Zionism – and everything in Israel is filtered through the sieve of Zionism.”
Lavie said in a recent radio interview, that Arab Jews, like her mother from Yemen, and others from Iraq, Syria, Egypt, Lebanon, and north Africa, were brought to Israel to swell the numbers of Jews, as place-holders to inhabit the homes and land left by terrified Palestinians, and as workers for Ashkenazim, or European Jews. Considered “dirty Arabs” – upon arrival in Israel they were sprayed with DDT – Misragim children often were taken from parents “for their own good” and put in boarding schools; even babies were taken from mothers and given to childless Ashkenazim.
Dislocated from their native lands and cultural bearings kept Misragim complaint and available to work at menial jobs for minimum wage. Misragim still fill this function in Israel; they are over-represented in lower levels of the military, as grunts, check-point attendants, and as enforcers.
Moreover, Lavie states that, despite the stereotype depicted on television of settlers as “Brooklyn Cowboys”, many Misragim live in the settlements ...and are happy to do so if urban slums are their alternative. The group tends toward right-wing politics and the benefits offered by right-wing politicians, such as airy, affordable homes in disputed areas. Nevertheless, Misragim are, for the most part, politically powerless. “Misragi women,” says Lavie, “try to 'marry up' so as to access higher level careers or society.”
Tragically, what could be an alliance between Palestinians and Misragim, based on shared Arab roots and language, does not happen.
“The hegemony of Ashkenazim includes the intellectual, political, professional, business, and industrial classes. This privileged group is mobile and has access to alternative living arrangements in Europe and the United States if things get too bad in Israel.”
The Misragim, on the other hand, cannot return to their ancestral, predominantly Moslem, lands. In addition, Palestinians do not look to Misragim for a political solution; they look to Ashkenazim even though very few of that elite speak Arabic or mix socially with Palestinians. Furthermore, says Lavie, “the face of day-to-day oppression – at the check points, in military and police vehicles, and so on, is Misragi – or 'Schwartzes' (Blacks) as we are known in Israel.”

The two-state pipe-dream
The two state solution – an Ashkenazi promoted pipe-dream that also holds sway within the US political elite and military-industrial and business classes – has failed. When this becomes clear even to those who can still afford to ignore such “facts on the ground”, Ashkenazim will depart Israel for greener pastures – as they did, for example, after South Africa's apartheid regime crashed.
Nothing is simple in Israel and the Occupied Territories. Will Palestinian history repeat itself, this time for the Misragim pawns in the Zionist grand plan, who will be left to face the consequences of the plunder of the last 63 years?

And read another excellent article on the Nakba by Dina Jadallah

The Ultimate in Online Fraud Scams! (Several Days Worth, plus a pic!)

2010-05-11T16:21:00.000-07:00

Everybody loves -- or trusts -- a man in uniform?

Here is the ultimate email scam to seize an opportunity to cash in The War on Terror (that is, for us Little Guys since the Big Guys cashed in years ago or are continuing to cash in). Pretty soon I expect a similar email from Afghan war lords!

First Contact - Day 1

Re:FROM: Sgt. Jeff Frawley,
This is Sgt. Jeff Frawley, an American soldier; serving in 1st Armored Division in Iraq, We are lucky to recover some funds belonging to Saddam Hussein’s family. The total amount is US$12 Million dollars in cash, mostly 100 dollar bills, the money has been kept somewhere outside Baghdad for sometime but with the increase troop by the president Barack Obama, we are afraid that the money will be discovered hence we want to move this money to you for save keeping pending the completion of our assignment here.
We are ready to compensate you with good percentage of the funds, No strings attached, just for you to help us move it out of Iraq. Iraq is a war zone, so we plan on using diplomatic means to deliver the money to you, with military cargo, using diplomatic immunity. If you are interested I will send you the full details, my job is to find a good partner who we can trust that can assisting us on this very matter. Can we trust you? When you receive this letter, kindly send me an e-mail signifying your interest.

This is risk free.
With regards from,
Sgt. Jeff Frawley.

Two Days Later
I received a response, plus a photo of "Sgt. Jeff Frawley"... and then another email from a second person. Guess they figure I'm an easy touch.
From Sgt. Jeff Frawley

Hello Friend,
Thanks you very much for your honest response to my mail, I found myself in this opportunity and with our position we had no any other option than to give out this blind trust. I believe nothing happen on earth by chance, our destiny are in God’s hand. As much as you will assure us that I and my partners will have our 60% as soon as you receive this fund through diplomatic courier delivery at your door step. I will appreciate if we can confide in you for this business that will profit us both. I want to assure you that this project will not in any way bring any harm to us rather everlasting joy in our fortune lives. Please my dearest friend this fund is all our Hope of securing our financial stability we have to treat everything concerning this transaction with uttermost secrecy to avoid any raise of eyebrow until this money is delivered to you through diplomatic courier delivery. We are going to cover the shipment of the fund (Consignment) out of Iraq legally, you have a little role to play in this project and that is to receive the fund (Consignment) and keep our 60% of the money safe with you pending our arrival to meet you. I want you to keep this project as top secret and very confidential since you understand my position and what is going on in Iraq presently.
We shall take total care of everything involved here to see that the delivery of this consignment is made safely and legally. You will only receive the consignment and keep our share for us pending our arrival to meet you after our mission here in Iraq. Because of trust we have accepted to give you 40% of the fund while I and my colleague share 60 % among us.
You must know that the content of the consignment is well kept as top secret and very confidential. As regards to this, We intend to deposit this consignment with a Diplomatic International Courier Org here in Iraq so that the consignment can depart from Iraq immediately to you, The diplomatic Courier Org will combine the consignment with their Cargo diplomatic vessel direct to you, it must be hand to hand delivery because we must make sure that the consignment is delivered to you in person.
You fully understand our condition here in Iraq and the source of this fund so therefore, you must not let the courier company or the delivery agent know the content of the box because we are not going to disclose the content of the box in case you are been asked you must maintain that the box contains some Family valuables although no body is going to ask you any questions because I'm going to ship the consignment with my real names, you know that we are American soldiers on duty here. The opening numbers will be release to you as soon as you confirm the receipt of the consignments.
Since you did not send us your contacts information, we request that you send it to enable us work on the delivery arrangement of these consignments to you immediately with the diplomatic Courier Org for onward delivery.
1, your full names......................................
2, your office and home address.................
3, direct telephone number.................
If possible your passport or ID card........................
Iraq is a war zone and this money is no longer safe to keep here any longer.
Please you should understand that we are American Soldiers and we are not allowed to any of our personal contents while on duty, what we use here is Military Radio for duty calls and report and what so ever we discussed on Radio is coded to the Monitoring Control Department in United States, So therefore we may not have the chance to call you on phone for security reasons.
We shall keep you posted as soon as we conclude on the delivery arrangement of the consignments with the Diplomatic Courier Org as soon as we receive your contacts information’s.
In case you need anymore clarification, you get back to us immediately. Attached is my Picture for your view.
Best regards,
Sgt. Jeff Frawley

I don't know whose son this is... or how these scammers got this kid's pic. I figure this is some kind of a hazing episode that is common in the miitary. I will research and see what turns up.

Meanwhile, word it out that there is an easy mark... Here is a follow up from Sgt. Jimmy Roberts

FROM: Sgt. Jimmy Roberts, An American Soldier currently in Iraq.
Important Message,
My name is Sgt. Jimmy Roberts, I am an American soldier, I am serving in the military of the 1st Armored Division in Iraq, as you know we are being attacked by insurgents everyday and car bombs. We managed to move funds belonging to Saddam Hussein's family. The total amount is US$18 Million dollars in cash, mostly 100 dollar bills, this money has been kept somewhere outside Baghdad for sometime but with the proposed troop withdraw by president Barack Obama, we are afraid that the money will be discovered hence we want to move this money to you for safe keeping pending the completion of our assignment here. You can go to this web link to read about events that took place there:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/2988455.stm
We are ready to compensate you with good percentage of the funds, No strings attached, just for you to help us move it out of Iraq, the safety of you and your family is guaranteed. Iraq is a war zone, so we plan on using diplomatic means to shipping the money out as military cargo, using diplomatic immunity. If you are interested I will send you the full details, my job is to find a good partner that we can trust and assist us. Can I trust you?
When you receive this letter, kindly send me an e-mail signifying your interest including your confidential telephone number for quick communication also your contact details will be needed for the shipment.
    This is 100% risk free.
    With regards from,
    Sgt. Jimmy Roberts.

Let's see what comes next...

Fort Point Gang

2010-05-07T21:56:00.000-07:00

The Fort Point Gang gathered at the foot of the Golden Gate Bridge, next to Ft. Point on the San Francisco side, on Thursday May 6, 2010.
It was my first time there although the Gang gathers every Thursday. This Thursday -- the closest Thursday to May Day -- was also the annual commemoration of folks who have passed on.
Gang members - about 30 or so - remembered their friends and colleagues as each name was read out loud and a red carnation was either tossed into the waves or threaded into the fence.
The Fort Point Gang originated in 1978 with seven men - Joe Passen, Bill Bailey, Al Richmond, Lou Goldblatt, Frank Jones, Jack Olsen, and Jim Kendall -- all lifelong labor activists, union leaders, and former members of the American Communist Party whose lasting friendships had taken root many years before in San Francisco, a union stronghold. (Purchase the book, "Better Red: The Writing and Resistance of Tillie Olsen and Meridel Le Sueur" for more.) All now have plaques on several wooden benches at the Point to remember them.
After the event, the group went off for lunch.

Mother's Day for Military Moms

2010-05-02T21:27:00.000-07:00

(Also published in Truth Out for Mother's Day 2010)

In America, Mother's Day falls on May 9 this year. In Palestine, Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon it fell on March 21, and in Afghanistan it fell on March 8, where it is also celebrated as the first day of spring. Israel forgoes Mother's Day in favor of Family Day, celebrated on February 14 this year.

I take an interest in these countries because, while my son served in the US Army, I visited them to understand more deeply the effects of war.

Mother's Day has not been the same for me since my son deployed for three tours of duty, one to Afghanistan and two to Iraq. I barely remember those kinder, gentler celebrations when my young kids proudly presented me, under strict order to stay in bed, slightly charred pancakes on a flower-bedecked tray. Now I remember when few Americans could locate Afghanistan on a map yet the prevailing sentiment held that bombing that country was “righteous”...and Colin Powell used flip charts to preach the gospel of Iraqi WMDs...and civil dissent was akin to treason.

My son is out of the Army now, honorably discharged, and moving on with his life. I have stayed in touch with many war-affected families; in the US this I relatively easy to do.

The US
Adele Kubein's family immigrated to the US from Jordan. Her daughter, M'kesha joined the National Guard and deployed to Iraq where she was gravely wounded. After years of military medical treatment, this young woman will get what she has repeatedly asked for: to have her constantly painful leg amputated. She will be able, then, to walk beyond the half block from her home where she lives with her profoundly deaf and disabled son.
M'kesha became a mom despite her base commander orders to abort that new life conceived in Iraq. She refused and is, Adele says, “a caring and attentive mother. My grandson is a beautiful child that we will have to care for the rest of our lives. He may be M'kesha's spiritual path of atoning for the killing she was forced to do as a National Guardswoman in Iraq.

M'kesha writes her way back to the land of living beyond war wounds. A recent poem begins:

“Welcome home soldier,
you're just in time for the recession.”
They hand me
a fist full of medals,
a quilt sewn by some unknown women,
a teddy bear,
in a paper packet.
This is my guide
to becoming a civilian again...

Rita Dougherty's son Ryan was an Army lieutenant trained as a nuclear engineer at West Point. He almost died in an attack on a Stryker, the armored vehicle designed to be impregnable to first generation IEDs...but not to the next generation version that pierced through the vehicle's floor, his seat, and his hips and legs. He fought infection in his critically wounded leg for months in Walter Reed Army Medical Center then for years in a Warrior Transition Unit (WTU).

At this point, Ryan is exhausted from dealing with the WTU, recovering from eighteen surgeries so far, and regularly using Methadone to ease his pain. He wants to get on with his life and has been accepted at Harvard in the fall.
Rita supports her son's decision to have his leg amputated. And sometimes the military medical teams agree to do it, and sometimes they do not. Ryan's case worker warns him that a prosthetic limb may not fit him when his is sixty.
Rita says, “I am stunned! What a thing to tell a 27 year old. Who knows what to expect in 30 years? I certainly hope we will be light years then from the sort of care WTUs provide today!”

At twenty-one years old, single mom and Army Specialist Alexis Hutchinson was not physically wounded in war. In fact, she never deployed although she fully intended to accompany her unit from Georgia's Hunter Army Airfield to Afghanistan in October 2009. She had followed the directions outlined in the Army's Family Care Plan and her mother was set to care for Hutchinson's month-old boy, Kamani. But a family emergency intervened and Hutchinson's mother was unable to follow through. Specialist Hutchinson asked her commander for an extension of time to find a trusted caregiver for her child. On November 4, her commander refused. On November 6, when she missed her flight to Afghanistan, Army officials took Kamani from his mother, placed him in foster care, arrested Hutchinson, and read her court martial charges: desertion, dereliction of duty, missing movement, failure to obey orders, and insubordination.

Hutchinson found an attorney and their request for discharge in lieu of court martial was granted on February 13, 2010. Today, she and Kamani live together in California; Alexis will enroll in community college this summer.

The Middle East and Afghanistan
It is not easy to stay in touch with Iraqis in Iraq and Syria ...nor Afghans in or out of their country or in refugee camps. Their situation remains dire as their countries' social fabric unravels and war-induced diasporas continue.

On the other hand, while Palestinians lose their homes to Israeli demolition orders and military attack, they are a people determined to remain on their land. This year on Mother's Day in Hebron, Mazin Qumsiyeh's mother went to the eye doctor and, while driving her home, his sister was cited for what Israeli soldiers say was an illegal turn. The fright made his mother burn the dinner and temporarily smoke the family out of their home.

Meanwhile, Qumsiyeh participated in protests and commemorations. He reports that during the 30-hours leading up to and following Mother's Day over 100 Palestinians were injured and four killed: two 19-year-old farmers were shot dead near Nablus for carrying what Israeli soldiers say were “deadly tools” – actually, it was a shovel for digging; two 16-year-old boys, Mohammed and Useid Qadus, died of gun shot wounds in Burin village.

About 300 female Palestinian political prisoners spent Mother's Day behind bars. Fatma Abu Rahima's husband, Adeeb, is one of thousands of male political prisoners. The family was not permitted to visit him. Then again, their 17-year-old daughter, Alaah, could not have walked there. The doctors find nothing physically wrong with her; they suggest her troubles are psychosomatic.

I do not long for the lost innocence of earlier years. If I long for anything, it is that more women heed Julia Ward Howe's call of 1870:

Arise, all women who have hearts!
...Say firmly:
We will not have questions answered by irrelevant agencies,
Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage,
For caresses and applause.
Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn
All that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.
...From the bosom of a devastated Earth a voice goes up with
Our own. It says: "Disarm! Disarm!

Listen to the radio show: Mother's Day during War

Palestinian Agro-Resistance

2010-05-02T10:10:00.000-07:00

Today, I share Vivien Sansour's article, "Palestinian Agro-Resistance."

Vivien Sansour is the Producer Relations Manager and Life Style Writer for Canaan Fair Trade. She has appeared on Raising Sand Radio and you can listen to her there.

When the last day of your life comes, plant the seedling that’s in your hand. -- Palestinian Proverb

Abu Adnan does not talk about a global movement to save the earth. He doesn’t know much about Greenpeace or the Kyoto Protocol; but he does know everything about keeping his soil healthy and fertile, and the terraces he builds to protect his soil make his mountainous piece of land a visual paradise.
Read the article >>

BP: "...very responsive and responsible spillers"

2010-04-30T09:21:00.000-07:00

Rear Adm. Mary E. Landry marshaled the Coast Guard, the federal on-scene coordinator of the massive oil spill in the Gulf Coast, and said, “BP, from Day 1, has attempted to be a very responsive and very responsible spiller.”

A week later and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano calls it “a spill of national significance” and creates command posts in Louisiana and Mobile to manage the impact along Alabama, Mississippi and Florida coastlines.

The US Air Force sends two C-130 planes to Mississippi to await orders to spray chemicals on the spill.

The US Navy marshals more than 1,000 people, scores of vessels and aircraft, plus 50 contractors, 7 skimming systems, and 66,000 feet of inflatable containment boom.

Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana declares a state of emergency and requests the participation of the National Guard.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar orders an immediate review of the 30 offshore drilling rigs and 47 production platforms operating in the deepwater Gulf, and plans to send teams to conduct on-site inspections.

The White House's senior advisor David Axelrod and Good Morning American announce no new offshore drilling until there is an “adequate review...No additional drilling has been authorized and none will until we find out what happened here and whether there was something unique and preventable here.”

BP, meanwhile, markets its business: “Beyond petroleum ...sums up our brand in the most succinct and focused way possible. It’s both what we stand for and a practical description of what we do: take concrete actions to push traditional boundaries and meet the challenges of our time in a sustainable way.”

Don't forget that, amid the spreading disaster and unctuous officials, 11 people are still missing, presumed dead – and that BP said the spill would amount to about 1,000 barrels a day, then upped that amount to 5,000 barrels ( that is, more than 200,000 gallons) a day.

Soon we will learn the spill and its effects are far larger than stated ...then we'll learn the monetary costs of the clean...and it will be accepted that We, the people, will foot the financial and environmental bill.
And, thanks to Rear Adm. Mary E. Landry, BP can add another phrase to their brand message: “we are a very responsive and responsible spiller.”

This picture illustrates one good reason to keep the oil in the soil, the coal in the hole, and the nuke in the juke.

Horizon Deepwater Blowout (Photo: U.S. Coast Guard)

Welcome to Ohlone Territory - The Second Event of a Four Year Ceremonial Cycle

2010-04-27T16:07:00.000-07:00

Few who live in the San Francisco Bay region know that more than 10,000 people from at least nine Ohlone tribes once flourished here. Or that they are applying for tribal recognition. Or that the largest living Ohlone tribe, with 2,000 members, migrated from Mission Dolores in 1834 and now lives in Pomona California. This tribe, the Costanoan Rumsen Carmel, supports a thriving Ohlone cultural life including a song and dance group and weekly sweat lodge healing ceremonies.
Very few public schools teach much, if anything, these days about the history of the bay's original inhabitants nor do they mention that descendants of these people continue to live, go to school, hold down jobs, and celebrate their heritage in many local communities...or why this story is ignored. Truth is, the actual story is one that can't be shared with small children – or the squeamish. It involves murder, mayhem, and massacres; not the sort of thing a “dominant culture” wants to confront full-on.

Welcome to Ohlone Territory was the second event of the four year ceremonial cycle that began April 15 and, along with the grand opening of the 100 percent off-the-grid Eco-Center, included a ceremony for healing the land at Heron's Head Park in the Bay View Hunter's Point district. In the future, site partner, Arc Ecology, will present a series of classes about the Ohlone ecology that shaped the Franciscan habitat for 10,000 years.

The history of this area is rich and complex. It includes a Department of the Navy shipyard that is now a Superfund site slowly being turned over The City for development. California Senate Bill 18 of 2005 stipulates that Ohlone tribal members whose names are listed with the Native American Heritage Commission are to be included in planning development of Hunters Point Shipyard. Yet, when the San Francisco Board of Supervisors amended their General Plan in 2006 to allow for this development no Ohlone representative was contacted. This, despite the draft Environmental Impact Report (EIR) stating that there are at least four, and probably five, Ohlone village sites within the development boundaries and another 16 within one-quarter mile.

Ann Marie Sayers is Tribal Chair of Costanoan Indian Canyon and the only Ohlone that has succeeded in obtaining title to her ancestors’ land. She said, “The sites affected by the development are extremely significant and are believed to be burial or ceremonial sites. In addition to protecting these sites, we also want to work with the local community to protect their health, the land and the fragile Bay marine environment.”

For some Ohlone attending the event this is the first time they have ever been on this small piece of land that juts into the bay. It is significant that, when those building the sweat lodge prepared to dig the earth to make the pit and to use that earth as an alter the groundsman was reluctant. He suggested the layer of clay with which the Navy capped its toxic contaminants may be breached. That the pit is six inches deep says much about how land has been remediated here...and how little protection there is for the health of humans and other creatures when development beckons. Although the Ohlone builders choose to go ahead with the sweat lodge, this incident encapsulates Ohlone concern: the fragmentation of our Earth, the contamination of what remains, and how to restore balance to the land and it's First People.

Thursday, April 15
The first night of the event begins with fire, fresh air, sea water, and a small group of people descended from those assumed by popular culture to have disappeared long ago.

Daniel and Russel, both Rumsen, drove together to Heron's Head from Santa Cruz. Sixteen minutes before sundown Daniel stopped his van at the entrance to the park. He laughed ruefully through the window and told co-organizer Neil Maclean waiting at the gate, “We made it! I wasn't sure we would when we were stuck in traffic an hour ago. ”
Their van is packed to the gills with gear for the next three days. Right now, though, it is sundown and Daniel must hurry to light the fire that will burn continuously until Sunday.

Later, a small group sits around the fire on the spit that is the last remaining mud flat on the San Francisco side of the bay. Daniel faces each of the four directions as he sings and his voice and those of his companions accompany the beat of his drum then swirl with the wind into the dark. Across the narrow estuary of Lash Lighter Basin, seagull chatter almost drowns out the hum of fork lifts in The City's successful Pier 94 recycling center.
It is appropriate that such elements come together in this way on this first night: a piece of land with spectacular views reclaimed for the local community from the Navy, a recycling center that diverts useable consumer goods from waste dumps, a solar generated Eco-Center, and people fired up for another, more natural, more inclusive way of being.

Daniel tells the Rumsen Ohlone creation story:

An Ohlone man sits on the beach and watches the tide rise. All day long he'd had the feeling that something was different about this day, that something big was going to happen. An object floated toward him and he suspected this might be it. When it was close enough, he saw a feather and reached for it. He fell back as a huge eagle, symbol of his people, rose out of the water, spread its wings, and towered over him. Then the eagle handed him a small hummingbird and told him to take it as his wife. Dumbfounded,the man asked, “How can I take such a small creature as a wife?”
The eagle said, “Find a flea or a tick on your body and give it to the hummingbird to eat.”
The man did so and, when the hummingbird ate, she turned into a beautiful woman whom he took as his wife. Their children began the Rumsen tribe.

A wise woman once said, “Our new world is already germinating in the shell of the old. When the dying shell falls away, we will see fresh green shoots....”
What she did not say was that seeds are passed down from the very old world too...What if indigenous renewal is the harbinger of new directions rooted in ancient traditions?

Friday April 17
After dinner a group gathers near the fire within which bake, since sundown yesterday, twenty four lava rocks about the size of cantaloupes. They will glisten red hot when they are removed and placed in the sweat lodge pit.
Willow saplings, bent and shaped into a half circle, form the sweat lodge; the circle completes under the earth. Three layers of heavy cloth lie over the wood frame and are held down with rocks at the base. Heavy fabric covers the entry way.
Upon the altar rests a package of tobacco, sage, two antlers to maneuver the hot rocks in the lodge, and a bear skull.
There is a symmetry to the alignment here: the lodge entrance, the pit, the altar, the fire, and the open space beyond face east. This sacred area is restricted to the fire-keeper and ceremony leaders. Anyone who needs to traverse the area must do so in a clock-wise fashion, no one but the fire keeper can cross the sacred zone between the altar and the fire, the view to the east space must remain open.

Tony Cerda, the Rumsen chief, welcomes the group, conducts the sweat lodge ceremony and leads the praise singing then each participant says a few words, throws tobacco into the flames, and passes, clockwise, around the fire.
This is not a stilted or authoritarian ceremony; an easy camaraderie flows within the rituals, no one grandstands. A large fluffy dog and his owner walk along the spit and the dog bounds into the ssacred area; it is welcome as a spirit visitor.
More people arrive after dinner. Iron Woman – her name is melodic in her native tongue – talks about her evolution toward the Sun Dance... and her participation in 16 of these grueling events that include
fasting, dancing, singing and drumming, and experiencing visions; often the dances culminate in hanging from skin pierced on the dancer's chest. Other Sun Dances join in sharing memories of their experiences. Steve recites his epic poem about Sun Dancing that includes the line, “if I did not dance I would be in jail or dead by now.” Overcome with Steve's words, Iron Woman sobs. Then she talks about being a mother watching her son dance: “it is difficult for us mothers to see our sons and know what they are going through.”
Steve invites those who will enter the sweat lodge to prepare. Tony leads the prayer and sings. Before participants enter the lodge each is smudged with sage – back and front, and under feet – then she or he bends and crawls into the dark dome.
Two men rake a stone out of the fire, dust ash from it so that it does not contaminate the air within the lodge, and pass it to Steve inside who maneuvers it with antlers into the pit. With six stones placed, a splash of water over the rocks creates steam and the entry way is closed. Voices murmur within followed by singing.

...Other Voices
Michael and Cynthia drove here from Los Angeles. Michael is Rumsen Ohlone, Cynthia is from a Plains Indian tribe. Michael says, “Cynthia is my “wing man” which means she helps me when things get tough. I learn from Tony too, especially about patience. Yesterday, for example, we were supposed to practice drumming for this event. But one man arrived at our home high and drunk. He fell in the bathroom and threw up there; it was a mess. Children were watching this and I was so angry I wanted to throw him out. Instead, Tony talked very gently with this man and showed him so much compassion that I calmed down too. Now I feel I can manage my anger and experience it differently.”
Cynthia explains Michael's wing man reference. “The bear and eagle team up in the Bear Dance that replicates the bear awakening from hibernation in the spring or preparing for hibernation in the fall. The eagle, or wing man, uses its wing to clear dark or negative energy that the bear may accumulate during the dance. The eagle lightly brushes the bear with its wing then flies that energy away and releases it back to the mineral world.”

Henry is sixteen, the youngest of a family of four children; his father died when Henry was ten. The young man gives the impression that he is too shy to talk but he opens up readily when approached. He learned from fasting and a vision quest that he is a bear and, tomorrow night, he will participate in the Bear Dance. AJ is about the same age as Henry and, as an eagle, will be Henry's wing man during the dance. Tonight AJ is the fire-keeper and ensures the fire burns well and hot. Later, when AJ joins the group in the sweat lodge another young man takes over the fire-keeper's duties.

David is Anglo and learns from Native Americans and others about how to honor our Earth. He describes the sequence of ceremonial events in a manner peculiar to his culture – as a linear process with set, measurable steps – yet corrects himself now and again with a brief nod to cultural difference: “Each group honors Mother Earth slightly differently... I'm not sure how this group will conduct its ceremonies...let's see how things develop....”

Saturday April 17
The mood around the fire in the late afternoon is easy. After the ceremonial circle to welcome guests breaks up, Tony shares a joke.

A snail describes to a judge a collision he witnessed between two tortoises. “I could see the two tortoises were on a collision course as they came down the path. They couldn't see one another but I could see a head-on in the making...”
The judge asks, “And what happened?”
The snail replies, “I don't know. It happened too fast!”

As more people arrive and cluster around the lodge, the earlier small group intimacy gives way to an air of anticipation: the evening's community sweat followed by the dancers'-only sweat, singing, Acorn and Bear Dancing; after the dance the bears will sweat once more before the lodge is dismantled.

The dancing takes place in a location some distance from the sweat lodge and delineated by a circle of trimmed grass edged with four flags. Burning logs carried in a brazier from the lodge fire wait in the center of the circle while the dancers prepare. Observes and supporters stand in a circle chanting to the beat of a slow drum while paint is applied to the dancers: black and white streaks on back and chest, arms, chin, and cheeks.
Then a line of singing dancers enters the dance arena at the eastern entryway and spirals around the fire. After several Acorn Dances honoring the tribe's women, Tony invites everyone to join the dance and Steve describes the moves. The circle expands to include all participants then shrinks and grows, shrinks and grows as it weaves in and out and upon itself.
Meanwhile, beyond the dance zone, two Bears prepare: a stretch of a foreleg here, the tying of a ribbon there to ensure the bear head does not move during the dance, a shared joke followed by low laughter.
Then the Acorn Dance is over and four men takes turns around the fire to prepare the space for the bears: each presents a prayer and a handful of sage into the fire. Finally, groaning and roaring, the bears shuffle in and circle to the beat of the drum. Dim firelight plays over fur, deep black, brown, and gold.
Here we are, in the dark, on a spit of reclaimed land around which birds call and a cool wind penetrates jackets while damp ground works its way through boots and shoes. Out there, on the hillside that is Bay View Hunter's Point, behind the defunct power station put out of business by local community pressure, occasional gunshots ring out and echo over the inlets. The bears dance on and on...

Sunday April 18
The lodge is gone. The circle of cantaloupe stones, cold now, stacks in the exposed fire pit. An empty turquoise pack of tobacco lies on the altar in front of the once proud fire. Wind from the east wafts smoke into the faces of those on the western arc of the circle of people around the dying fire that has not been fed since last night's final sweat ceremony. Each person in turn says a few words of thanks; some simply say, “To my ancestors.” One woman expresses her feelings of deep pride and gratefulness that so many young people participate in these ceremonies: “This truly honors our ancestors and gives hope for our Ohlone future.”
The circle breaks. Someone says, “Show time, dancers!”
Those who will perform the public dance at the grand opening of Eco-Center – they already wear ceremonial dress – slowly walk to that venue. Those who remain pack their gear, chat quietly, or say their goodbyes.

Soon the area is empty of people. What remains are a series of circles: green grass defines the area covered by the sweat lodge, brown grass surrounds it, trampled down by the days' activities; the circular pit with a pyramid of stones; the empty altar in front of the fire, another circle created by celebrants walking, clockwise, around it. The open space beyond is clear and sunny. Birds wheel overhead or forage at the shore.

EcoCenter opens
A long line of visitors waits to tour the interior of EcoCenter, learn about the water use and storage system – only rainwater collected into huge metal tanks is used here – and climb the temporary ladder up to the roof to view the native plant sod roof and admire the view.

Tony Cerda leads a series of Acorn Dances for the public opening of the EcoCenter. Participants and observers that attended last night's Bear Dance might feel exposed in the bright morning sunshine. At the same time, the subtle nuances of the dances can't be missed as are in the enveloping dark. One dancer twitches his feathers as he backs into the circle then swings around to face the center, the angle of another dancer's head and shoulders, so birdlike, brings tears to the eyes. There is gusto and verve to the dances even as some young women dancers project an air of shyness, perhaps even reluctance.

Chief Tony Cerda ends the session with a loud call to recognize this tradition: “When someone tells you that there are no Ohlone left, you tell them not only do they live but that you saw then dance here today!”

Portland Depaves... more GMO .... poetry in Basra

2010-04-27T15:07:00.000-07:00

In Portland, hundreds of Oregonians removed pavement and plan to replace it with urban farms, trees, and native vegetation.
Sign the Letter to Keep GMO out of Food - Food Democracy Now

May 3 is another hurdle in keeping GMO our of food. We face the latest assault on our food, or at least on our ability to know what is in our food, and look at how food standards are decided.

Poets Jack Hirschman and Agnetta Falk recently returned from Basra, Iraq where they met and mingled with Iraqi poets and poets from all over the world...all there to share in the creative world of poetry.
Links
Listen to Raising Sand Radio show.... (high bandwidth version - takes a while to download...or cut/paste this link for a low bandwidth version - downloads faster....)

The Green Mayor has Toxic Sludge on his Hands

2010-04-27T14:58:00.000-07:00

Gavin Newsom's reputation as “the green mayor” is going down the drain, contaminated by the toxic sludge on his hands.
With Mayor Newsom's blessing, San Francisco Public Utilities Commission distributed 80 tons of “organic biosolid compost” to city residents, community gardens, and the Parks and Recreation Department in 2007.
On May 17, 2008 it conducted its third Great Compost Giveaway – “5 gallons for every green thumb!” – claiming that “all food scraps, garden clippings, and soiled paper that residents have been piling into green bins had been transformed into rich, soil-enhancing compost that is perfect for landscapes and containers.” One trusting resident commenting on the Giveaway's website writes, “I made out like a bandit last year! Garden looks great because of it. When is this year's Great Compost Giveaway?”
Problem is, this substance is not organic! Moreover, the USDA National Organic Program (NOP) regulations strictly forbid the use of sewage sludge as a fertilizer or soil amendment, no matter if composted or otherwise treated.

John Stauber is author of Toxic Sludge is Good for You and an advisory board member to Organic Consumers Association (OCA). He says, “In the mind of the public “organic” represents the highest standard of integrity, purity, and healthfulness.”
But the EPA's January 2009 “Targeted National Sewage Sludge Survey” found San Francisco's sludge contains heavy metals, pharmaceuticals, PCBs, flame retardants, and endocrine disruptors.
Stauber adds, “That the sewage industry and the SFPUC misuses the word “organic” destroys ordinary peoples' trust and credibility. It is the same sort of public relations spin that hoodwinks farmers around the country.”
While writing his book, Stauber heard from a worried Water Environment Federation spokeswoman. “We don't call it sludge anymore,” she said. “What's more, it is no longer toxic. It is now a natural organic compost we call 'biosolids'. We work with the EPA and major public relations firms to give biosolids away free to farmers. Your book title will scare them.”
Indeed, the sewage sludge industry had held a contest in the early 1990s to rename sewage sludge; the term “organic biosolid compost” won and has been used ever since. Had the SFPUC called this substance what it is, treated sewage, no one would show up for even a sniff-test. “SFPUC engaged in fraudulent deception and OCA is fighting to ensure “organic” cannot be used this way.”

In 2009 the Center for Food Safety and the Resource Institute for Low Entropy Systems (RILES) petitioned Gavin Newsom, in his official capacity as mayor, and Ed Harrington, in his official capacity as SFPUC general manager, to suspend the Giveaway program.
Nevertheless, Newsom and notables like restauranteur Alice Waters went along with PUC spokesman Tony Winnicker's statement that, “San Francisco's biosolids compost is safe, tested, and great for plants [and is] tested for metals and other contaminants and meets or exceeds all standards.”
Mayor Newsom went further and claimed the substance is safe and healthy...and that he'd be happy to eat food grown in it. Does this mean his PlumpJack business associates use it for their products?
Unfortunately, the mayor's intractability undermines other successful green programs he supports, including Recology's city-wide paper, plastic, glass, and food scraps recycling programs.
On March 4, 2010 OCA's bay area organizer John Mayer rallied a grass roots action against the mayor and the SFPUC charging they were purposefully duping residents. Mayer says, “San Francisco's “organic biosolid compost” is about one third sewage sludge and two thirds wood chips.”
That same day SFPUC announced they were temporarily suspending the Giveaway. They emphasized that is was not because the OCA team, dressed in haz mat-suits, dumped a load on the steps of City Hall and made national and international headlines.

There is a silver lining to the black cloud over sludge-stained Mayor Newsom: a recognition that public organizations and mayors crying “green” doesn't make them green...or that wishing away toxic realities makes them disapper. Stauber says, “There is little, if any, attention when farm animals die from this stuff. But there is national and international attention when the green mayor of San Francisco is caught fooling urban gardeners and foisting toxics on them.”
John Mayer and OCA concur and support any gardener who wants SFPUC and The City to clean up their gardens. Mayer says, “This is a pretty cut and dry case where people took the stuff because it was said to be organic; it is not organic and they've admitted it is not organic. The PUC must take it back.”

Trust betrayed
“Ordinary people,” says Stauber, “tend to think of sewage treatment plants as magical places where water from industrial, residential, and medical toxins is treated so people can re-use it. It is true that sewage plants remove as many pathogens as they can: about 50 percents of it. They give the remaining mounds of sewage sludge that is too toxic to incinerate, landfill, or dump in the ocean to farmers – free! – to spread on America's fruited plains.
Sludge reaches right in to the White House too. After the Obama's moved in, Michelle Obama had the White House garden soils tested; they revealed elevated levels of lead. Previous administration had used sewage sludge there.
Once this substance – containing thousands of hazardous synthetic chemicals from medications to sprays used upon fruit and vegetables – is dumped in any garden it is not easy to remove.
Extrapolate what went on in San Francisco and at the White House and to thousands of unsuspecting farmers around the country...recognize that only about one percent of our Earth is fertile enough to produce crops capable of feeding the world's population...then consider the far-reaching implications.
Moreover, Stauber says that the majority of progressive environmental groups operating back in the 1990s were so focused on preventing sludge from being dumped into the ocean and were so enthusiastic about cleaning up our water that “they took a dive on this issue and allowed the EPA to spread it on land. Most national environmental groups are still not involved in the fight to stop spreading “organic biosolid compost” on farmland.”
They are not the only ones fooled. Stauber says, “A lot of my friends in the environmental community have drunk the biosolid kool-aid and say, “Gee this is just nutrient recycling.” But this is not just human manure – or “Humanure” as we call it – this is toxic sludge from industrial, medical, residential, and other waste.”

Solutions to Pollutions?
John Stauber concludes that the entire sewage process as now constituted is archaic. “We cannot afford to contaminate our clean water with our waste and send it to plants that pull out the toxics then spread it on our farmlands. We already spend hundreds of billions of tax payer dollars moving this stuff around instead of, for example, separating humanure from the truly toxic stuff and safely composting what we can. We will spend hundreds of billions more dollars to figure this out... and we had better start sooner rather than later.

Despite the cliché, everything is connected. Humans are smart enough to look at the big picture and integrate generative solutions. We can no longer pretend these problems don't exist...or think we will solve them with more bigger, better, brighter technology... or export our waste to other countries. Ordinary Americans can – must insist upon the opportunity – to confront our mistakes directly...and our elected officials must deal honestly with residents who are ready, willing, and able to collaborate.
In San Francisco a first step toward healing the credibility gap between local government and residents is for the mayor and the PUC to take back their not-so-free Giveaways.

Listen to the radio show with Organic Consumer Association John Mayer and John Stauber.

Compost: the highest tech method to preserve our planet and our health

2010-04-12T18:31:00.000-07:00

Wrote this article to accompany this week's radio show. Listen to the show.

Chateau Montelena vineyard uses compost made from food scraps collected from San Francisco restaurants and city homes. The mustard plants in the tract in the foreground did not receive compost. The lush tract in the background did receive compost. (Photo by Larry Strong, courtesy of Recology.)

Mayor Gavin Newsome passed a mandatory source separation ordinance in June 2009, that requires residents and businesses to separate organics and recyclables from their garbage. It came into effect in October and is the first of its kind in the U.S. Six months later, more than 300 cities and universities across the US are replicating this program and collecting food scraps and taking them to modern composting facilities.

Robert Reed, Public Relations Manager for Recology which is contracted to haul the waste says this “essentially makes sure that no matter where you go in San Francisco, you’ll have opportunities to recycle and compost through the city’s curbside programs.”

As an added inducement, this city is the only one in the country where collection trucks give passersby a view into the truck. Or, at least, the 3-D artwork decorating the trucks give the impression of transparency. “This program, Recycling Changes Everything, encourages people to pause...and look at their garbage. And when they do that,” says Reed, “they see paper, metal, glass, and food scraps, that is, a mixture of resources that should be reused, recycled and composted.”

More than 225,000 households, 4,000 businesses, and about 46 percent of San Francisco’s 8,500 apartment buildings participate. The collections go to Recology's Jepson Prairie Organics in Vacaville, north of San Francisco, where over a period of 60 days they're turned into compost. What's more, this compost comes in custom blends, made with recipes that add different amendments for specific uses and locations.

Reed agrees city dwellers sometimes must learn to overcome the “yuck factor”, that initial reluctance to handle what was heretofore thrown away. “Something as simple as an apple core doesn't simply disappear, it goes somewhere else. We suggest people take a more responsible attitude to that apple core and other waste. It is really a fork-in-the-road moment: toss it away and it goes to a landfill – where it'll produce methane gas; or put it into a compost cart where it can end up doing wonderful things to the soil for 200 vineyards in five different counties.”

Vineyards in Northern California apply compost made from food scraps to grow cover crops such as mustard and beans. Cover crops such as mustard stimulate microbial activity and help turn farms into carbon sinks. (Photo by Larry Strong, courtesy of Recology.)

Soil scientist, viticulturist, ecologist, and agronomist Bob Shaffer uses San Francisco compost in his daily life and in his work consulting with viticulturists in California's Napa and Sonoma counties. He explains, “Compost is organic matter and water that's been mixed up in a proper ratio that makes bacteria and fungi happy so that they consume organic matter. This produces heat, a little CO2, a little water vapor, and humus, the same humus that is in the soil. Humus holds an enormous amount of water. But it is fragile. It is always being created or destroyed; some of it is two thousand years old and some of it is two days old.”

Shaffer mentions that, in the classic book published in 1936, Soils and Men, the USDA and fifty reputable soil scientists announced that from 1900 until 1936 our nation had lost much soil fertility by not returning organic matter to the soil. They warned, “This is nothing short of an emergency.” They pleaded with cities around the country to recycle food scraps back to farms, stating that it was imperative that we take advantage of this rich resource. Since that time we have lost vast amounts of humus in our farming soils.

Today, a growing number of farms using compost made from food scraps produce better quality food at a lower cost. Only there are not enough such farms. Moreover, Schaffer says, “Even though I love farming it is hard on the environment. The word “care” is particular to how we need to farm now. Good farmers understand how to care for the land and how to care for animals. I travel a lot and I notice that the big farms are difficult to manage and to care for in a way that produces food that is capable of producing human health.”

Humus is still a mystery to science. Shaffer says, “As a forty-year long composter and farmer I recognize that of all the creatures on the earth, only bacteria and fungi can make humus – that mystical substance that also holds water. I can only make the conditions under which I know bacteria, fungi, nematodes, and protozoa can make humus for me.”

According to Shaffer, this is a point the chemical fertilizer manufacturers miss. Back in the early days, he says, “Honest men in these companies were simply trying to concentrate the weight to enable shipping the materials. Synthetic triple grade fertilizers were not intended to be used at thousands of pounds per acre as they are used today, or to be used as a primary input. Advertising and marketing told the farmer that this was all he needed. So he stopped making cover crops, he stopped making compost.”

Cover crops are those plants with long roots that heal soil. Beneath the visible plant above the ground the roots take photosynthate and exude about half of that sugar to the soil around its roots to provide nutrients to the bacteria and fungi. These in turn provide available minerals and other materials to the plant as well as prevent disease. Plus, the cycle of living and dying roots maintains humus.

Bob Shaffer displays mustard's long roots that provide nutrients to bacteria and fungi. (Photo by Larry Strong, courtesy of Recology.)

In a recent radio interview Shaffer admitted, “I love compost. But I can put down compost for a lifetime and if I don't grow a diversity of plants along with cover crops, compost won't work right.”

According to Shaffer, “Compost is nothing short of the highest tech, cutting edge method to preserve our soils, preserve our ability to raise food and to feed ourselves, and to preserve our health in current science. There is nothing that comes close to the necessity for us to learn more about compost as quickly as possible and to apply this technology. Yet we only know a certain amount about humus. It is the enigma in soil. It does not have a regular chemical formula. It is made of colloids, materials so small that we can barely examine them. All the top scientists working in the field agree that it is a highest priority to figure this out given the reality of our current world. We humans do well to remember that only about one percent of the earth actually is rich enough to farm productively.”

Signs of the times

2010-04-08T11:16:00.000-07:00

Two signs that echo a frightening meta-message: The human community has groups of people that exist simply to service the needs of other groups of people.

In northern Italy: a warning to motorists to look out for prostitutes.
“I saw this sign and had to slow down to get a proper look,” said resident Dino Vezino, 34.
“Does it mean I have to look out for prostitutes crossing or that they are available around here?” Read more >>

In southern California: a warning that drivers might encounter people frantically darting across lanes of traffic to evade border security. Read more >>

Apparently, we (those of us fortunate enough not to be in these situations) are fine enough with this state of affairs that we accommodate it.

Or is it just me being over-finicky and "idealistic"?

A far ranging solution would be to address the underlying causes of prostitution and "illegal" immigration.

Perhaps human communities and systems that addressed the trade in young women...and addressed why families must leave their homes and seek work elsewhere...

This solution might also surface why the current financial meltdown... and paint a picture that helps ordinary people stand up and against blatant greed.

World Bank Loan update

2010-04-08T09:49:00.000-07:00

Today, April 8, the World Bank will decide on the loan to South Africa's Electricity Supply Commission (Eskom). It is a big day as it determines the direction South Africa takes for the next 30 years or so.
We'll keep updating on this story. Meanwhile, here are the voices of Prof. Patrick Bond and activist Desmond D'Sa:

World Bank coal loan to South Africa? No thanks!

MotherSpeak Structure

2010-04-01T13:45:00.000-07:00

This blog is part of the MotherSpeak "hub". The nodes are:
MotherSpeak - the center of it all is fiscally sponsored by Peace Development Fund. You are invited to make a donation any time and you will receive your IRS donor credit from PDF.

This blog derives from the book, Long Time Passing: Mothers Speak about War and Terror. (Buy it and help a sister out! or donate $50 to MotherSpeak and receive the book as a premium and an IRS tax credit!.)

The author, Susan Galleymore, is founder of MotherSpeak, creator of the nodes, and host of the weekly radio show, Raising Sand Radio, under MotherSpeak Media...

and the Cato Ridge Environmental Coalition which is one node of MotherSpeak's environmental arm (think of this as Mother Nature's arm of MotherSpeak) Other nodes include keeping tabs on the Restoration and Rehabilitation of the Superfund site formerly Naval Air Station, Alameda, California, learning about and educating on composting, developing green and sustainable communities, and keeping tabs on unsustainable fossil fuel developments.

For those more oriented towards pictures:

Holy Crude! Is it true?

2010-03-31T20:39:00.001-07:00

Shell Oil apologizes for messing up the environment:

Watch and listen

In a parallel but more equitable universe this could be true. Alas, not in this one but the idea behind the hoax is good. Perked me up for a moment or two!
Thanks to the creators!

The World Bank and the Four Horsemen of Climate Change: Apocalypse Now?

2010-03-31T11:03:00.000-07:00

Read my article below, ...then tell U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner to ensure the U.S. votes against any World Bank loans for dirty coal.

World Bank and the Four Horsemen of Climate Change: Apocalypse Now?

Senator John Kerry described President Obama, Premier Wen, Prime Minister Singh, and President Zuma as “the four horsemen of climate change.” It is, Kerry said, “a powerful signal to see [them] agree on a meeting of the minds.”
As the World Bank prepares to vote April 8 on a $3.75 billion dollar loan to South Africa's parastatal Electricity Supply Commission (Eskom) Kerry's language evokes a powerful vision: the apocalypse of business-as-usual disguised as “clean coal.”

Rocks of ages

The World Bank is positioned better than most to know the true, externalized costs of coal fired energy. Indeed, in 2007 the Bank acquiesced to China's request to excise mortality information from its report, “Cost of Pollution in China”: about 350,000 to 400,000 people die prematurely each year from high air-pollution levels; 300,000 die from exposure to poor air indoors; another 60,000 deaths are attributed to poor water quality.
As a geologist and engineer by profession climate change horseman Premier Wen knows that coal fires have burned for centuries along China's 5000 kilometers mining belt. They contribute up to three percent of annual global carbon emissions, about 360 million metric tons, as much as all the cars and trucks in the US.
China's government intends to extinguish fires to meet its own target of 20 percent reduction of carbon emission over three years. But it takes from months to years to put out one fire. Then, small private mining companies working under cover of dark often fail to replace the soil after extracting coal; spontaneous combustion occurs at 80 degrees Celsius. Yet China seems intent to cut greenhouse gas emissions by putting out fires rather than introduce energy saving measures.

Climate change horseman President Zuma's South African government inherited the decades old coalfield fires at Witbank (renamed Emalahleni).
Two years ago, unemployed mother Thandi Mthlango and her young son scavenged for coal to heat their home on land pocked with subsidence from underground fires and acid mine drainage. He was in a trench when it collapsed and crushed him to death.
There is no one to blame; even assigning responsibility is tough as former owners of Emalahleni's seven abandoned mines are long gone; apparently they cannot be traced.
A German consultancy estimated that it would cost at least R1 billion to rehabilitate the area, way beyond the funding capacity of the city council as it mulls relocating squatters crowded on the toxic land. But where? Town planner Eric Parker says the region is “sterilized”. In the video report UnderMined, he laughs ruefully and says he sees one bright spot: local cattle are acclimated. “But, if you bring a new cow from somewhere else, it dies. We have a super breed of resistant cows!”

Climate change horseman Prime Minister Singh's Ministry of Coal controls Coal India Limited (CIL), the world's largest coal mine. But, in November or December 2010 financial investors anywhere could own a piece when CIL presents an initial public offering (IPO). It intends to invest the proceeds of US $1 billion to $1.5 billion in joint ventures in Australia, Indonesia, US, and South Africa. Chairman Bhattacharya told Economic Times, “Our focus is to invest our funds in acquiring assets that deliver energy to our country...in a viable manner.” This includes relocating 400,000 people from mining town Jharia who suffer breathing disorders, skin disease, and compromised health from the fumes emitted by fires.
Singh's government has been criticized for its attitude. But, India's coal is worth US$12 billion and relocating the poor is cheaper than implementing environmental controls.

The unaffordable luxury of clean earth

South Africa's finance minister Pravin Gordhan knows the externalized costs of coal fired energy and believes they are unavoidable. He wrote recently in a Washington Post op ed:
If there were any other way to meet our power needs as quickly or as affordably as our present circumstances demand, or on the required scale, we would obviously prefer technologies -- wind, solar, hydropower, nuclear -- that leave little or no carbon footprint. But we do not have that luxury if we are to meet our obligations.
South Africa has one of the planet's most energy-intensive economies and Eskom plans a five year, $50 billion dollar expansion to increase capacity. Its Kendal plant is already the largest coal-fired power station in the world. If approved, over $3 billion of the Bank loan will go toward constructing 4800 MW Medupi, the first so-called super-critical clean coal plant in Africa and the fourth largest coal-fired power plant in the world that, as advertised, will use “some of the most efficient, lowest-emission coal-fired technology available.”

Analyst Patrick Bond says Eskom’s bid for the loan comes “at a time of intense controversy surrounding Eskom’s mismanagement. In its last annual reporting period, the company lost R9.7 billion, mainly due to miscalculations associated with hedging aluminium prices and the South African currency. Both the chair and chief executive officer lost their jobs late last year amidst unprecedented acrimony.” Moreover, “Eskom's continuation of inexpensive prices to several large export-oriented metals or mining multinational corporations, headquartered abroad, and offering the world's cheapest electricity, [is] heavily subsidised by all other – mainly poor – users in South Africa.”
He refers to Nersa, National Energy Regulator of South Africa, recently tapping ordinary South Africans for power rate increases of 25 percent for each of the next three years.
Gordhan assures the public that the “rest of the loan, $745 million, will be invested in wind and concentrated solar power projects, each generating 100 megawatts, and in various efficiency improvements.” He avoids the government's 2003 White Paper that states that by 2013 four percent of electricity – 4700 MW based on Eskom's projected electricity consumption – must come from renewable energy. Eskom's three year plan – unveiled after Nersa's country-wide community meetings in January – states that only 400 MW will come from such sources.

Gordhan concedes the loan “faces stiff opposition.” Civil society around the world reminds him that Medupi adds an estimated 25 million metric tons of CO2 emissions per year to Eskom’s 40 percent share of South Africa’s overall total greenhouse gas emissions. There is also the real possibility that, if South Africa's currency crashes again – as it has five times since 1996 – repayment in US dollars is more expensive than in South African rands.
The South African government can afford the luxury of R8.4 billion to construct five new stadia and refurbish five others for the 2010 FIFA World Cup. There are further, yet undisclosed, costs to improve public transport, implement special safety measures for tourists' security, and “beautify” (by hiding or removing tens of thousands of shack dwellers). Why can't it afford to clean up environmental degradation that results from generating electricity?

The US is the largest World Bank funder. Send a powerful signal to climate change horseman Obama and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner to intervene. Then buckle up for a wild ride along the unexplored path of real energy sustainability. In the long run it affords more security than tripping down the World Bank's yellow brick road of business as usual.

Goodbye Guinea Fowl, Hello Truck Stop

2010-01-28T03:27:00.000-08:00

This week I learned that the land I grew up on will be a truck stop as of mid-February 2010. Each day after that up to 32 trucks with trailers, those eighteen wheelers that terrify motorists as they race along the N3, will drive over the land where once stood our horse stables, pigsties, and my grandfather's cow shed. Soon I will wonder if it is true that I once played barefoot here and watched the penny stinker grasshoppers leap, the shongalolos curl into spirals, and the snake swallow the frog. Alas, these memories, taken for granted back then, have not been passed on....

This time next month the unique veld grass that only grows on this plateau, in this part of the Valley of a Thousand Hills, in this section of KwaZulu Natal, will be replaced by tar and macadam and encircled by a high brick wall. The thorn- and corral trees will be gone, chopped down, roots dug up, and hauled to a waste dump to rot slowly among discarded papers and toys, food scraps, and plastic bottles.
I worry about the weaver and Hoopoe birds and the flock of four adult guinea fowl with two new chicks that live in the scrub and bush among the razor wire under the electric fence that, until this week, separated Thor Chemical from our land.
It is not as if this was a pristine environment. For decades, Assmang – called Ferralloys during my youth – belched smoke most days and flared most nights on the western horizon. Despite the black dust that cakes our buildings that facility is as familiar and as annoying as an old relative puffing a pipe on the back porch.
It was a shock when Thor Chemical arose on what was also once my grandfather's land...and a further shock when it contaminated the region with toxic waste. Then, three years ago and despite “the process” required when a new facility is built – the EIAs, meetings to gather input from Interested and Affected Parties, and local residents' outcry against the facility – Chlor Chem chlorine manufacturing plant went up across the road where my grandfather grazed and dipped his small herd of Jerseys.

Melvin, a nice enough man who owns the truck stop, represents the much vaunted South African entrepreneur. He must be relieved that, somehow, his trucking business was not subject to “the process.” And, if it was, it flew so low under the radar that we – right next door living lives that eschew the entrepreneurial spirit that digs into, dumps upon, fills, burns, and sucks dry the land – knew nothing about his truck stop's imminent arrival. Melvin dreams, not of shongalolos, penny stinkers, and guinea fowl but of his 32 trucks speeding along the nation's roads. He worries, not about flora and fauna, but that his cargo – perhaps plastic bottles filled with syrupy liquid, or reams of paper from many pulp and paper mills, or kids' toys imported from China – arrive on time and on budget at Makro, Super Spar, Click's and Game.
Truth is, my grandfather could have been Melvin. He, too, was an entrepreneur, out to make a buck, feed his family, and leave something by which to remember him. He believed in owning land and he bought as much as he could afford from someone who'd bought and sold it from someone else, all the way back to the English king's land grant to George Cato. Back then wild creatures abounded: Duiker and other buck, leopard, civets, lynx, snakes, chameleons, fowl, frogs, thousands of species of birds, beetles, mantis, grass hoppers, spiders, ants.... My grandfather dug up a portion of the land, conveyed it into a rock crusher, graded it according to the formula of his day, and sold it to spec housing developers.
Indeed, entrepreneurs like my grandfather and Melvin – decades apart in how they conduct business – are the global norm and follow the multi-generational mindset to dig, build, trade, promote, and bequeath plots of land despite the loss of indigenous flora and fauna.

It just so happened that King Shaka's tactics in this region had left the area underpopulated at the time the English king's land grant displaced indigenous communities. Nevertheless, as I walk around to photograph the last of the thorn and corral trees, stroke the veldt grasses, and warn the guinea fowl to find safer ground, my heavy heart reminds me that I share these feelings of loss, and anger, and impotence, and sadness, and fear – with millions of others who have seen their histories disappear under the mindset that admires tar and macadam, brick and block, smoke and smog. I haven't seen a wild Duiker for years while chameleon and mantis, sensitive to environmental pollution, disappeared long ago.
This is how people the world over lose that which few of us recognize as the only human heritage worth working to maintain: our natural environment. As they say, lives ends not with a bang but a whimper.

2010-01-28T02:10:00.000-08:00

Published on Monday, January 25, 2010 by CommonDreams.org
The Seamy Side of Coal-Fired Power by Susan Galleymore

HIV/AIDS and Global Arc of War

2009-12-02T10:04:00.000-08:00

Two recent articles published in CounterPunch

Still Killing Millions- (December 2, 09)

African Realities in the Wake of World AIDS Day

The Casualties of Toxic Warfare- (December 1, 09)

Global Connections and the Arc of War

A View from the Faultline

2009-11-26T10:08:00.000-08:00

I met a Birther! Here, in the San Francisco Bay Area. My small island town is a mix of people and, until 1997, was home port to one of the largest naval fleets in the Pacific. Many of those who worked on the naval base still live here. Nevertheless, I was surprised to find a real, live person who seriously believes that Barack Obama was born in Mombasa ...and that his presidency will last only one year.

I was the only person at the bus stop about 6:30 pm last night heading to San Francisco. A tall, elderly, casually dressed white man, pulling what looked like an up-market milk crate, joined me. (The milk crate has wheels and a long retractable handle like up-market luggage. Later he explained that this manly version of a purse goes everywhere with him.) It was too dark to read the schedule so I said, “If you're heading to San Francisco the bus is scheduled to arrive in nine minutes.” We chit-chatted as he shed a jacket and switched it for a lighter garment in the crate.

I like to talk to strangers. Often those who look threatening to others are friendly and voluble – at least for the duration of a bus stop or casual car pool ride.

This fellow, Gary, quickly told me he'd been a naval commander, that he and his wife lived on a yacht, that they owned another yacht as well as a condo in Sausalito. (Metamessage: we are financially independent, we choose to live this way.)

We agreed riding the bus is superior to driving a car: no tollbooth to squeeze through with a hundred thousand other vehicles, no need to find parking or dig around for coins to feed the parking meter. A bus allows me to see over the bridge safety rail and admire the beautiful bay.

But Gary wasn't interested in my point of view. I was a target at which to aim words. Once he zeroed in on me: “I detect an accent. British?” I told him “It's South African.” Gary knew South Africans, had dated a South African beauty queen in his youth, planned to visit Cape Town next year. Did I know the Sloan-Smiths who lived in Cape Town? Could I guess how old Gary is? He didn't wait for my response. “Can you believe I'm actually seventy? Most people think I'm fifty-five. ...I tried on a topee the other day. I'm not the sort to wear a topee but it looked good!”

En route Gary continued talking. I could barely hear him over the engine sounds but I was fascinated: When would his stream of (un)conscious verbal diarrhea end? (As a writer I thrive on such interactions.) He quickly skipped around the world: Australia – he'd dated an airline stewardess. Also dated a South African once; her name was Annakie. Philippines. Japan. Then Israel. “I was there during the '67 war. Great place. Also visited in the mid 70s. I ventured, “I was there then, just before Begin's era.” He said, “I've got a great book for you: “Netanyahu's A Lasting Peace. Excellent analysis. Give me your phone number and come have dinner with me and my wife.” Then, “I believe Barack Hussein Obama was not born in the United States. He'll soon be found out. His presidency won't last long. I give him a year....I predict the Democratic Congress is trounced at the next election and the country throws out Barack Hussein Obama. McCain should be president.”
“You'd like Sarah Palin as VP?”

“Yes. She's smart as a whip...gets bad press because she's a small town girl. Now, Michele Bachman, there's a real candidate. Beautiful. Smart. Forceful.”
Bachman is the Republican Representative of Minnesota's 6th district who tried to set up a Charter school that taught classes on Creationism. As a school board member she advocated the '12 Christian principles' – a version of the 10 commandments. And she refused to allow the in-school screening of Disney's Aladdin, claiming it endorsed witchcraft and promoted paganism. She and Sarah Palin are peas in a pod; they're also beginning to stump together.

My flagging interest in Gary reawakens. Here is a man, by all outward signs, affluent, white, worldly, healthy, and sociable who lives in a cosmopolitan conurbation and maintains a worldview that is at odds with the reality around him. How does he do it?

I don't hold with the point of view that, “those folks are just nut-jobs” that can or ought to be dismissed. On the contrary, people like me – with progressive ideals and as much love of country and planet as someone like Gary – need to understand Gary's worldview.

As he talked I noticed the feelings our interaction evoked in me: annoyance, fear, a desire to flee, and curiosity mixed with repulsion. Also, determination to stick with it. People holding my worldview need to, must, remain in “conversation” with people holding Gary's worldview. Despite personal discomfort, progressives must make the effort to engage these worldviews and coax them into the light for real examination. It 's a difficult experience to endure yet it is at the heart of changing hearts and minds.

Try it. Let me know how you do with it.

Governor Goldie Myron – Family of War Series

2009-11-25T23:03:00.000-08:00

(I share my unique art work to express a view of families affected by war. And I hold that the suffering of Iraqis and Afghans- and so many others - is not receiving much attention. This narrative is fiction based on my worldview.)

GOLDIE still can't quite believe that she's the Governor of her whole damned state...and that state's first woman governor at that! It took an enormous effort, not to mention a huge amount of funding, to get to where she is today: blood, sweat, tears, and lots of dollars but she is the Governor! Only she and God know what she had to give up. But it's worth it. America really is the land of opportunity for those who are prepared to work hard. Sure, a gal has to hustle but that's the American Way.

The first time she sat down at the Governors' Convention she could have burst with pride. One of only three women among all those white guys…the sort of guys who wouldn't look at her twice in college because her father was just a hard-working business man contracted to the military to supply a little gadget the detonates fuel air explosives. Since he wasn't the scion of a blue blood family who could move those guys' careers forward, why should they bother courting her? If they could see her now... she'd raspberry the lot of them.

Too bad the only other women governors at the Convention were stand-offish. Goldie felt they'd snubbed her. Maybe that's how it's done at this level of politics. Or maybe they're just threatened by Goldie. Back in the 60s and 70s there'd been a lot of exciting rhetoric about sisterhood, about women-supporting-women to shatter glass ceilings, and women gaining real positions of power. We called it Feminism back then but young women cringe at that word today. Turns out rhetoric is as American as apple pie and she sure is learning the benefits of good rhetoric: the funding just keeps rolling in. She's learning to play the game: go along to get along. She used to insist upon honesty as the best policy. Now she is, as she phrases it, “nuanced” about the definition of honesty. There are simply too many things that politicians cannot be honest about. If citizens knew half the stuff that politicians had to decide, Ms. Average Citizen would be too afraid to come out of her house and drive to the mall!

Be great if we lived in a simple world, one in which women like Goldie could just tell it like she sees it. But political life is too complicated for that. Goldie's job, as governor, is to guide the people of her state toward a way of being that may not be optimal for everyone but gives enough people jobs to keep their families fed and clothed and educated and God-fearing...to get their kids through high-school, at least. After that, the kids can go into the military if they can't afford college. Military life is good. Not one she wanted but her dad did alright on it. Look where it got him. About to retire very well after a lifetime of honest work for the United States military. If he hadn't been in the right place at the right time to capitalize on it he'd never even have known about the bomb whose explosion disperses a huge cloud of burning hot gasoline just above ground level. An amazing design! It simply obliterates everything around it. And her dad's company manufactures the embedded detonator that makes the whole thing work! That's how he paid for Goldie's ivy-league college education and helped fund her meteoric political rise. His friends helped too, of course, folks like her dad who also made their fortunes building ingenious munitions.

Thank God for war: it keeps the economy going. A lifetime of listening to her dad explain his business taught Goldie how to spin a good story. Despite what the naysayers think his business is not only about making money, it is largely about love of country and ensuring that America stays on top. They don't call her Goldie for nothing. Everything out of her mouth is like gold and she's as good as gold.

See other pieces in the Family of War Series:
Daniel, Deployed! - Band of Buddies Series

Ryan, Recruited! - Band of Buddies Series

Bob, Burned in Combat

Luis, Corporate Warrior

Jerry and Candy, family of war

The Tea Party as Good Beginning

2009-11-21T08:33:00.000-08:00

My "left-leaning" friends had persuaded me that "right-leaning" folk are successful at spreading their message because they know they how to tow the party line, how to follow, and how to obey. And that this is unlike those of us on the "left" who march to our own tune, squabble for meager media attention, and splinter off to form smaller and less effective groups when challenges arise.
So it is with rueful pleasure that I read Kenneth Vogel's article, "Tea Partyers Turn on Each Other." He writes, "a seemingly potent and growing political force, the tea party movement has become embroiled in internal feuding over philosophy, strategy and money and is at risk of losing its momentum."
and
“These groups don’t play as well together as they should...“They’re fractured at the organization level...mainly because there are a lot of people who have not had managerial experience who [suddenly] are thrust into the limelight and become intoxicated with it. And when a potential rift comes up, instead of handling it and maybe agreeing to disagree, they splinter and go off on their own.”
Welcome to the real world of activism, Tea Partyers!
Nevertheless, I am impressed with the right's ability to rally their troops.. Notice how quickly they replaced the term "Tea Baggers" with "Tea Partyers". Didn't take long for word spread that they'd named themselves after a high school bullying tactic: tea bagging refers to someone stronger lowering his testicles -- tea bags -- into a victim's mouth.

Since Obama's election we've seen the "right-wing" increasingly use "left-wing" tactics: creating signs and banners, forming networks of like-minded who fill the streets when called, and protesting with gusto. (Some of my friends ask: "do WE look like that?" Well, yes, we do...we just add more color.)
What can the “right" and the “left" learn from these experiences?
One thing is to recognize what I call "our mutual complex humanity."
We, the people have reached the cul de sac of "westward expansion." We have nowhere else to go. We must turn around and face...ourselves. Then we can begin the real work of recognizing our complex mutual humanity...and cop to our innate glory...and vainglory, intoxication with self, denial, egotism, and our less-than-perfect traits that cross political boundaries.
Despite the gloom about Obama's performance to date – change? what change? -- the man is correct about the need for 'bi-partisanship' (or whatever you call a very necessary coming together to work out differences). His ideals are humane but he avoids a central tenet of American culture: it does not promote self-reflection or collaboration. Indeed, the way in which he/his administration addresses our domestic threats communicates the opposite: grab what you can for you and yours...and tea-bag the rest.
The beauty – and the horror – of being human is that it cannot be sold by an advertising agency or purchased from WalMart. It comes only with hard work, practice, and deep acceptance and understanding. It is time for all of us -- right/left and “evil doers”/”do gooders”, and other dualistic separators – to face ourselves, our neighbors, and our mutual predicament . A tea party that addresses our cultural underpinnings is a good beginning.