Month: June 2008

After Gas

Chris Locke uprising?

Conspiracy theory, my ass.

Merely reminding us.
Passive is a greater terror.

All societies are wasteful of the capacities of their people. All societies are wasteful of the capacities of their people. All societies are wasteful of the capacities of their people.

Robert Frost was wondering about justice, our weak estate.

With what was another man’s work for gain.
My right be love but theirs was need.
And where the two exist in twain
Theirs was the better – agreed.

Not one great challenge ahead of us is solved by war. There’s relief in that.

Take birth.

“too posh to push”

Having a woman lie on her back, feet prone in the air, actually makes the pelvis SMALLER and doesn’t allow the baby to turn or move the way it needs to in order to descend and be born!

The number of bacteria living within the body of the average healthy adult human are estimated to outnumber human cells 10 to 1.

10 to 1.

“It is entirely possible that everyone could have a unique bacterial signature much in the same way everyone has a unique DNA signature or a unique fingerprint.”

The human microbiome…

David Sirota:

A big theme in my upcoming book, The Uprising, is our culture’s inability to see anything other than elections – and specifically federal elections – as a major instrument of social change or democracy. This myopic view expresses itself in all different ways – the media coverage of presidential campaigns, the blogosphere’s narrow focus on Democratic Party prospects in election cycles, to name just two. But as I write in my newspaper column this week, there are many other arenas of democratic expression – some far more important for social change than any election.

Continue reading The Power of Shareholder Democracy

On another and related front, Sirota is examining shareholder ‘uprising’ too:

After all, through pension funds and 401(k) plans, ordinary Americans collectively own a lot of stock, and consequently a big chunk of shareholder resolution votes. These votes often go unexercised, but the more attention shareholder resolutions receive, the more citizens will “become educated about various corporation policies” because they will realize “they can do something about them,” as famed shareholder activist Saul Alinsky once said. That is what truly scares Corporate America — and what could bring the most “real change” of all.

A Different Kind of Democracy

Don’t stop. David Sirota does this for a living:

The reason why a free trade deal is thousands of pages long is not because it’s a free trade deal. If all you wanted to do was lower tariffs, it would be one page long, and it would say “no tariffs.”

The rest of the thousands and thousands of pages are protections for corporate profits.

…
These are really huge issues. I would actually submit to you that they’re among the biggest issues that we face, mainly because all of the domestic laws on economic issues are affected by them. We can raise the minimum wage all we want in our country. But if we have a trade policy that encourages companies to outsource jobs to countries where they only pay a worker a dollar a day, no amount of minimum wage laws in this country is really going to cure that situation and stop that race to the bottom from happening.

A Populist Revolt Brewing

“Every major change in this country has happened because of a popular uprising… non-partisan… organized around issues.”

There are very few people who are willing to take on these forces that are kind of hidden in the background because of the media filters. Much of the focus turns to non-issues, like the idea of patriotism, as we saw in that infamous ABC debate in Philadelphia where George Stephanopoulos asked Obama if he thought his Reverend was as patriotic as he was, as if any of that had to do with anything regarding the future of the United States. But the buzzword of patriotism, the hot button of the lapel pins, the flag, — all of this sense of nationalism is fed to the masses, while the corporations are really becoming the new global United Nations, except that it’s united corporations.

Would you agree that, really, part of the what’s happened is this disdain among the ruling elite, the Washington, D.C. insiders, and their view that the United Nations is passé, because really we’ve replaced the United Nations with a rule by corporatocracy?

Finally, here’s a summary of Sirota’s path and motives. Though posted in 2006, it’s clear David Sirota is smart and sincere:

Sirota’s Progressive States Network focuses like a laser on replicating good municipal and state legislation around the country, creating a nation-wide system of good government. Forget “trickle down” strategies. For Sirota and his network, America’s political playing field is going to be leveled by the American grassroots.

Think Nationally, Act Locally

Bumper Sticker:

Democrats are sexy.
Ever heard of a nice piece of elephant?

Which President isn’t a rookie?

One on his feet.
Another near his grave.

Which President isn’t able?

One beginning.
Another late.

One of my ‘mentors’.

Oh, the stories.

In 1942 or 43, a staff general came to ask if there was enough Nevada electricity to melt aluminum into bomb bay doors. Frank woke at 3AM and answered positively by 3PM.

In 1944 or 45, believing we wouldn’t need aluminum after the war, a staff general came to ask if there was another way increase jobs. Then, aircraft was the only important use of aluminum.

Frank invited 50 officers to watch a P-59 jet try to blow down his new Kawneer aluminum wall, and later proved aluminum at Colorado’s impressive Air Force Academy.

Frank helped erect more than 1,500 aluminum and glass shopping centers across the USA.

When he reached 97, I asked if he wanted his work known beyond a handful that called him the ‘grandfather of the shopping center’. He answered, “It’s just factors. It’s just seeing what’s needed and putting it there. Nobody needs to learn that more than once.”

Humble but proud of one thing, Frank said he was the only American to own a share of the Laphroaig Distillery.

The Independent has learned that at the end of July, Bush is planning to declare military victory and claim the invasion of Iraq has been vindicated.

Bush wants 50 military bases, control of Iraqi airspace and legal immunity for all American soldiers and contractors.

The terms of the impending deal, details of which have been leaked to The Independent, are likely to have an explosive political effect in Iraq. Iraqi officials fear that the accord, under which US troops would occupy permanent bases, conduct military operations, arrest Iraqis and enjoy immunity from Iraqi law…

Oh woe, war is forever these grand plans…

Jim Nollman asks whether we’ve created a brutish institution against dying that refuses simple relief.

Weeks go by when standing’s too much for me to bear
Then one good day arrives, the pain seems to disappear
It could take as long as a year or two
Before my body finally goes
Doc, won’t you please prescribe the medicine
No one else ever has to know

My family does its best to help me bear this pain
They accept my decision, sure I feel their strain
I’ve never told anyone how to live their life
So don’t tell me how to end mine
Doc, won’t you please prescribe the medicine
And I won’t take any more of your time

These days my body’s numb and all strung out on meds
Hooked to this humming machine parked beside my bed
What makes so much more sense to me
Is to go out clear of mind
Doc, please prescribe some medicine
Before I run out of time.

Who can say for certain what awaits us after this
While some say we come back, others talk of heaven’s bliss
But don’t lecture me that life’s worth living
Can’t you see its meaningless to me
Doc, won’t you please prescribe some medicine
And you will set me free

Last Days, about dying with dignity, and featuring an interspecies interaction with wolves.

Google News Comment by Bill Gluba, Mayor, City of Davenport, Iowa

Time Again to Ask “Why Not?” – 9 hours ago

As a twenty-six year old idealistic political activist out to change the world through the democratic process, and as one who had marched with Dr. Martin Luther King on August 28, 1963 in Washington D.C., I was almost totally devastated when first Martin Luther King and then Bobby Kennedy were senselessly gunned down.

For many of us who thought we were changing the world for the better and who had nothing but hope in our hearts for the future, it was hard to continue to be an optimist and still believe that our system might work. In fact a lot of young people from that period just gave up and left the political system entirely. But for those of us who were inspired by the message of hope and idealism of these three great leaders – John F. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King — we knew we had to continue the struggle and we did.

For many it was the words of Bobby Kennedy that “Some men see things as they are and ask ‘Why?’ I dream things that never were and ask, ‘Why not?” that gave us the strength to continue to fight for social and economic justice for the next forty years. It is now heartening that the nomination of my friend Barack Obama, has lifted and renewed the spirits of a lot of us from the sixties who again feel there is hope for the future. It is time again to ask “why not?”

Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit reveals:

THEY TOLD ME THAT IF GEORGE W. BUSH WERE RE-ELECTED, it would mean the end of privacy. And they were right: “The report reveals that the IRS made 4.5 billion disclosures of tax return information to federal and state agencies.”

The Democratic Party agreed to implement Obama’s policy to no longer take contributions from registered lobbyists or special-interest political action committees.

“If we’re going to make real progress, this time must be different,” he said.

“As the Democratic nominee for president, I’m announcing that going forward, the Democratic National Committee will uphold the same standard. We won’t take another dime from Washington lobbyists or special interest PACs.”

“They will not fund my party.

“They will not run our our White House.

“They will not drown out the voices of the American people.”

Notch #1.

Reuters posts the letter from Hillary:

I wanted you to be one of the first to know: On Saturday, I will hold an event in Washington D.C. to thank everyone who has supported my campaign. Over the course of the last 16 months, I have been privileged and touched to witness the incredible dedication and sacrifice of so many people working for our campaign. Every minute you put into helping us win, every dollar you gave to keep up the fight meant more to me than I can ever possibly tell you.

On Saturday, I will extend my congratulations to Senator Obama and my support for his candidacy. This has been a long and hard-fought campaign, but as I have always said, my differences with Senator Obama are small compared to the differences we have with Senator McCain and the Republicans.

I have said throughout the campaign that I would strongly support Senator Obama if he were the Democratic Party’s nominee, and I intend to deliver on that promise.

When I decided to run for president, I knew exactly why I was getting into this race: to work hard every day for the millions of Americans who need a voice in the White House.
I made you — and everyone who supported me — a promise: to stand up for our shared values and to never back down. I’m going to keep that promise today, tomorrow and for the rest of my life.

I will be speaking on Saturday about how together we can rally the party behind Senator Obama. The stakes are too high and the task before us too important to do otherwise.

I know as I continue my lifelong work for a stronger America and a better world, I will turn to you for the support, the strength, and the commitment that you have shown me in the past 16 months. And I will always keep faith with the issues and causes that are important to you.

In the past few days, you have shown that support once again with hundreds of thousands of messages to the campaign, and again, I am touched by your thoughtfulness and kindness.

I can never possibly express my gratitude, so let me say simply, thank you.

Sincerely,

Hillary Rodham Clinton

Salute.

As if the panel tells us it’s dark at night, the Senate intelligence committee reported June 5 that the Bush administration “led the nation to war on false premises”. [link]

Polls showed that many Americans believed Iraq played a role in the attacks, even long after Bush acknowledged in September 2003 that there was no evidence Saddam was involved.

Google attracted a unique audience of over 119,674,000 and Yahoo was a close second with 114,551,000 in the list of top 10 U.S. Web brands ranked by unique audience for March 2008. The list is released by Nielsen Online.

Others in the list include: Microsoft: 99,672,000, MSN/Windows Live: 96,993,000, AOL Media Network: 90,644,000, YouTube: 71,273,000, Fox Interactive Media: 70,389,000, eBay: 57,220,000, Wikipedia: 54,301,000, Apple: 47,516,000. Eighteen minutes on Wiki is at the bottom of the top 10 list.

The report says that from 1996 to 2007 — a period that had both parties in the White House — the EPA hadn’t screened a single chemical. Are both parties compromised by the chemical lobby’s influence?

We will let the educated viewers of PBS figure that out.

Eating insects such as wasps and grasshoppers has health benefits and should be encouraged in the Western diet, scientists have said. Enough said.

And it’s the Party’s plan to keep ’em talkin’…

RSStroom Reader: News on toilet paper

img src=rsstroom.jpg

Canada is attempting to reconcile truth*!

Until the 1970s, aboriginal children were required to attend Christian schools.

The federal government admitted 10 years ago that physical and sexual abuse in the once-mandatory schools was rampant.

Many students recall being beaten for speaking their native languages and losing touch with their parents and customs.

That legacy of abuse and isolation has been cited by Indian leaders as the root cause of epidemic rates of alcoholism and drug addiction on reservations.

“It’s the darkest most tragic chapter in Canadian history and virtually no one knows about this,” Phil Fontaine, the national chief of the Assembly of First Nations… [story]

From my previous post, a rare story reviewed at The Tyee:

Mothers of a Native Hell

Like an unwelcome memory of youthful stupidity, the residential-schools scandal keeps coming back to haunt us.

But what do we really know about how the residential schools came to be? Only that First Nations kids were stuffed into them for generations and once inside were sexually, physically and culturally abused.

Emma Crosby and Margaret Butcher shared an unquestioned assumption that white Christians had the right and duty to tear native families apart, to deprive children of their own cultures, and to impose Victorian sexual values on them.

‘Protecting’ the girls was implicitly to protect them from their own sexuality, if necessary by strapping them, overworking them, and malnourishing them.

This arrogation of control over their converts’ lives seems to have blinded the missionaries to the harm they were doing, so they could shrug off the natives’ death and suffering as just the price to be paid for progress.

* Aussies invoked a National Sorry Day.
* Update June 11, 2008: Canada’s PM is readying to apologize too. From Survival International:

Canada’s Prime Minister Stephen Harper is due to deliver a formal apology today to the thousands of Aboriginal Canadians who passed through the country’s residential school system.

The widespread physical, psychological and sexual abuse committed in the schools has left a legacy of psychological damage whose consequences profoundly affect many Aboriginal Canadians today.

From the middle of the 19th Century to the 1970s, tens of thousands of Indian, Inuit and Metis children lived and studied in the schools, often hundreds of miles from their own communities. Although funded by the state, most of the schools were administered by the Church.

Children were commonly beaten for speaking their own language; the extensive physical and sexual abuse, however, has only come to light in recent decades.

The government has set aside US$ 1.7 billion to compensate the victims of the schools system, and established the Indian Residential Schools Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which started work this month.

Canada’s national Indian organisation, the Assembly of First Nations, describes the apology as ‘a momentous occasion that will represent an important milestone in the healing and reconciliation process for survivors, our families and our communities.’

---

Metis pride and consciousness

Used by Metis fighters in 1816, this is the oldest Canadian flag used as a symbol of nationhood, predating Canada’s Maple Leaf by about 150 years.

An infinity symbol reveals a coming together of Aboriginal and European peoples to produce a distinctly new culture, the Metis, a new society with both traditions. The blue background suggests that Metis will exist forever.

Source: Gabriel Dumont Institute, from Canadian Design Resource, tip to Daniel Burka

“It is dangerous to be right in matters where established men are wrong.” – Voltaire

Ten favors for Big Business

The state’s bias for big business consists of ten privileges, three familiar ones and seven subtle ones.

The three better known favors are

1. subsidies, such as the millions of tax dollars the US gives MacDonald’s to advertise its hamburgers in Paris,
2. “sweetheart” contracts, such as those between the US and the weapons industry which charges the military $400 for a toilet seat, and
3. tax breaks, such as the US deduction for investing in new machinery but not in retraining workers, or tariffs that protect General Motors but not the wages of the workers of GM.

The seven subtle favors are permits granted at far below market value:

1. the corporate charter which limits the liability of management and investors and is worth billions of dollars to those businesses putting people and planet at risk. When the charter is not enough of a shield, the state further reduces the liability of responsible parties. When Y2K was an unknown factor, the US passed a law that sheltered Microsoft and other software giants from any possible suits from unhappy customers.
2. the waivers from, or weak enforcement of, existing standards. First the US set air pollution standards at the convenience of the automobile industry, then continually pushes back the deadline to meet these standards. Again, the US set background radiation standards at the convenience of the nuclear industry, then looks the other way when a nuclear power plant fails to comply. Non-enforcement of air quality standards alone (never mind other pollutants) is worth $300 to $500 billion annually.
3. the franchises that states in America grant to corporations to provide electricity, phone service, etc. In these natural monopolies, there is little or no competition, so the state is supposed to keep profits low. In reality, they are very high. The uncollected market value of franchises is again in the billons. The next four permits grant ownership or control over parts of nature (which includes logical structures), the heritage of us all.
4. the patents that are supposed to protect inventors but are used to create monopolies for investors. For example, the US pays for research in medicine then when a new drug is developed, grants the company a patent without recovering any of the cost of the research. The US grants Microsoft a monopoly via patents and copyrights while at the same time accusing Bill Gates of acting like a monopolist. The uncollected value of patents for industry and technology are several hundred billion dollars each year.
5. the licenses that the US grants to TV, radio, and cell phone networks turn part of nature, the electromagnetic spectrum, into virtual private property. Sometimes the US auctions off some of the spectrum but the most lucrative part – TV wavelength – it gives away for free. TV networks turn around and charge advertisers a million dollars a minute on Superbowl Sunday. All these licenses are worth at least a hundred billion dollars every year.
6. the leases that the US grants to corporations that mine ores or raise cattle show just how bad the state defends the interest of the people. One corporation paid $10 thousand for a mining claim worth $10 billion. The huge cattle ranches not only pay government much less than private landowners charge them, they also damage the grazing lands before they move on to the next pasture. The full value for these “fire-sale” leases is again in the billions annually.
7. the titles to land and resources that counties in the US grant to owners do little to protect small homeowners who, by paying mortgages their entire careers, are actually tenants to the bank. What titles really do is blind the middleclass to this reality, to their actual station in life as perpetual debtors to the lending institutions. Americans spend trillions on titles each year.

It’s our country. Why not charge rent?