THE JENA SICKNESS-
A Real Noosance
By DW Foreign Policy Editor, Dusty Schoch
Nooses in the news are a nuisance…or maybe noosance. In any case, it’s all non-sense—way too much “ado about nothing”. Having issued that silly stream of cultural commentary, I have to admit what follows may be as ironic a composition as I’m capable of composing. In taking time to contend that the ado is in fact about “nothing”, am I not in fact making more something of nothing? You decide.
The point I’m compelled to make is this: What’s the best thing (I say the only thing) to do when the KKK gets a permit and schedules a parade or public demonstration in your town? There’s only one answer – Don’t go. That’s always the best response. Going out there and noticing these pathetic hoods–with their hoods in our hoods–is what they want us to do. Go there and express yourself righteously and emotionally and the event is—always– liable to escalate into another Klan/Nazi shootout.
Klan marches and now “noose in tree hangings” are essentially the same – they are little ripples in very little pools of bigotry that big bigots like Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson would have us turn into sunami surges of racial tide in order to garner more demagogic power for their own messianic arsenals (and tills).
It appears that locally we’ve got some more little bigots trying to copycat the original “Jena 6” thing—which is so much–so very too much–in the news. The “Jena 6” noose affair is a parade of bigots that it seemed everyone on earth was determined to attend–20,000 to 40,000 in fact!
The best thing to do with a noose in a tree in a schoolyard is – take it down. Toss it in the trash where the ones who hung it belong. Making a great media “ado” about it is tossing B’re Rabbit in the Briar Patch. It’s precisely what little bigots want—their several minutes of vain “glory”. It also brings out from the woodwork and from under rocks all the demagogic bigots who want to capitalize on the event by making it a media/photo op for their own lines of intolerant backlashing grandstanding.
When Al Sharpton , Rev Jesse , MLK III, and rapper Mos Def throw a rally or march to protest a “Jena 6” event, the best thing to do with that is what I’ve already recommended we do when the Klan marches….don’t go. These racially-self righteous rabble rousers are assigning to this Louisiana schoolyard teenager fight (over loops of ropes and street brawls over loops of ropes) epic historic status when in fact it’s simply a matter of some of Louisiana’s white and black bigots having a series of set-two’s over a series of silly issues (rights to sit under shade tree, rights to hang rope in same tree, rights to crash a private party, who did what with a shotgun-pulling incident, why 6 beat up one, and whether one aggravated assailant is getting due process in the process).
“Jena 6” is Madison Avenue marketing moniker for an event about which the basic facts are not even in, likening it (with the media’s pet “Jena 6” moniker) prematurely to a historic sit-in such as the seminal “sit-in” by several (was it 6?) blacks at Woolworth’s lunch counter in Greensboro in 1960. Not even close! The ‘60 Sit-Down in Greensboro was a one-sided and heroic display of pure black right vs pure white wrong. Freedom peacefully flexing its courage and might against previously-overwhelming forces of prejudice and bigotry. The victors weren’t black heroes ; they were heroes of humanity.
This thing going on in Jena, Louisiana is a racist comedy of errors. Bigots and bigot supporters line both sides. Since that first black student sarcastically asked his principal about sitting under that tree with predominantly white students, and was told “yes”, one bigoted domino has flipped down another until what we have is in effect a cascading of one bigoted karmic evil after another. The loosely-related events all bear evidence that there has been angry and over-killing bigotry on both sides of all the events which have occurred in the wake of the initial “noosing” of the shade tree in Jena. For just a cursory treatment of the complexities, but one showing there are no true “heroes” or “victims” in this story of
Epic non-proportions, check out the complicated and still-cumulating account on line at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jena_Six
This—the seminal “racial act”– was not a black person being hanged—It was a tree being roped. A “hate crime”? By no stretch of the legal imagination or book. An act in bad “taste” –like a KKK or Black Panther march? – Most certainly. But
“cause” for an entire nation at war in the Middle East to focus 80 percent of its media’s meandering focus on this little rippling of racial unrest in our nation of discontents approaching its second major economic depression in their short history? I think not.
So, about this noose business in Jena, Louisiana, and this copycat noosing at Andrews High School in our own little North Carolina town—Let’s just think of it all as what it principally and proportionately is…just a little minor-league parade being conducted by some little minor-league bigots who—desperately—want our attention.
Let’s not give it to them. Let’s just not go there.
Dusty Schoch
Sept. 24, 2007
President Bush’s Endless War
By: Dr. Leonard Carrier, DW In-House Historian and Philosopher
On September 13 we got President Bush’s plan for Iraq. He announced that incremental withdrawals would take place, but that in 2009 we would still have a significant military presence in that country. In other words, he is determined to hand the war off to our next president so that his own administration will not be blamed for losing it. This might be crafty politics, but his strategy is being paid for in the blood of our servicemen and women, not to mention the blood of Iraqi civilians enmeshed in an intractable civil war. What conceivable good can be gained from policing a civil war? There is none. Our occupation is the fuel that keeps the fires of insurrection burning.
What the President has done is to challenge all those in Congress who demand a timetable for leaving Iraq to put their money where their mouths are, or rather, not to put any more money into funding our occupation. Until now, with a few notable exceptions, Congress has been loath to advocate the only means at their disposal for ending our occupation of Iraq, which is to cut off funding. They have not done so because they are afraid of being accused of “not supporting the troops.” This is a groundless fear. They can vote to provide only those funds used to bring these troops home safely. That is the sensible way to support the troops, not by continuing to let them fall prey to daily insurgent attacks.
John Edwards responded to the President’s speech in a commercial on MSNBC paid for by his presidential campaign. In no uncertain terms, Edwards put the pressure where it should have been ever since Democrats won both houses of Congress last year. Given that President Bush will not yield on his plan of our never-ending presence in Iraq, Congress must simply accept Bush’s challenge and cut off funding for the war. Of course, this will take courage, and the President is betting that Congress does not have the will to do it. Because arguments will not sway this president, the time has come for Congress to put up or shut up.
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Dennis Kucinich has outlined a 12-point plan for withdrawing from Iraq, based on the premise that the solution in Iraq must be political and not military. He argues convincingly that it is not credible to oppose the war and yet continue funding it, and so the Administration should be notified now that Congress will not approve further appropriations to continue our occupation.
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In brief, here is what we must do under Kucinich’s plan: (1) announce that we will end the occupation, close our military bases, and withdraw; (2) use funds already appropriated to pay for the safe return of our troops and their equipment, while preparing for the transition of an international peacekeeping force; (3) order all U.S. contractors home and turn over contracting work to Iraqis; (4) convene a regional conference to develop a stabilizing force for Iraq, using the UN to organize this conference; (5) work with the UN to mobilize and authorize peacekeeping forces; (6) develop and fund a drive for national reconciliation among Kurds, Sunnis, and Shiites; (7) restart the failed reconstruction of Iraq, with the jobs going to local Iraqis; (8) along with Great Britain, pay reparations to Iraqis for causing loss of life, injuries, and damage to property; (9) deny any intention to privatize Iraq’s oil assets, allowing Iraq to have political sovereignty; (10) set out a plan to stabilize Iraq’s costs for food and energy; (11) work with the world community to restore Iraq’s fiscal integrity; and (12) establish a policy of truth and reconciliation between the people of the United States and the people of Iraq.
John Edwards has answered Bush’s plan for endless war with a plea to Congress to bring our troops home now. Dennis Kucinich has a detailed plan showing how this can be done. It is time for members of Congress to forget about the possible political fallout and to stiffen their spines and take action. If they do not do so then they remain complicit in Mr. Bush’s war.
Leonard S. Carrier
B L OW I N G IN THE WIND
The Answers to All the World’s Questions…
The Solutions to all the World’s Problems
Are already here – They have always been here…
BLOWIN’ IN THE WIND
By Dusty Schoch, DW Foreign Policy Editor
I can hear you saying….What problems??? You mean ALL of them? You mean everything from the war in the Middle East to global warming….all the problems have answers that…have always been here, right in front of us?
Frankly, and amazingly, yes. To all. Sit down and prepare to have your mind blown. The final solution to all complex issues is always the simplest and today’s problems are no exception. Einstein’s E=MC2 is really simple they say if your mind can grasp quantum physics. You just have to get over life-long habits of looking at time and space as things your clock and ruler can qualitatively gauge.
We’ve all heard, but regularly we forget to follow the two major rules for thinking and problem solving – (1) The KISS RULE (Keep It Simple, Stupid!) and (2) Occam’s Razor (When Multiple Solutions Appear Capable of Solving the Same Problem, The Simplest One is Most Often The Best One.)
What, then do I propose as the “simplest solution” for every major problem we face today, and why did I invoke the refrain of Bob Dylan’s anti-war song to cap my thesis?
Let me tease you a little more by asking that we agree on what the major problems today are and …why they are. I’ll assume the role of omniscient God and simply tell you what and why they are. Now–about what I might leave out or get wrong–we can pray about that later.
THE PROBLEMS
- We have too many people on earth (over 6.2 Billion) and as a result we are aggressively competing to control and consume diminishing limited resources (oil, arable land, potable water and protein…in that general order).
- As a result of (1) we have problem #2- Wars. Iraq is not about tyranny or religion; it is about control of the world’s diminishing supply of fossil fuel. If you have any doubts about this at this point, I suggest you not bother reading any further.
- We create chemicals that poison the planet and now have changed its climate to the point global warming may make us and all life on the planet extinct unless we find—and implement—the solution to the problems before the “tipping” point in time comes and it is too late to reverse
global warming. - Scientists have informed all the governments of the world about the solution to the problems just outlined, but the governments will not implement those solutions because the governments everywhere are controlled by corporations whose lives (dollar profit) depend on our continued consumption of their polluting energy and products. (This, #4 problem, is the most challenging one I’ll solve for you in this thesis; in fact it’s the only tough one. Problems 1 through 3 are a breeze….literally….they are, as Dylan and I both said in tandem….blowing in the wind. So I’ll solve this final problem (4) …last.
TEASING OVER…
The Solutions to Problems 1,2 and 3 are all in fact not only blowin’ in the wind—
The solution is in fact…the wind.
There’s really nothing new under the sun, they say, and they’re right. The solution to today’s problems is the solution to the problem Christopher Columbus (O.K. probably some Viking before him) solved in order to “discover” America. It was wind alone that powered boats and people and supplies over here for literally centuries before we started steaming across the Atlantic by burning coal and diesel. What on earth accounts for this conversion from…literally free, infinitely-renewable and non-polluting wind power to expensive (very) , finite, and polluting (very) fossil fuel? Without getting into an exhaustible debate comparing the efficiency of yesterday’s “tall ships” and today’s trans-Atlantic tankers, I’ll concede the diesel-powered ships today can haul more and faster. And there are wind-powered turbines out there converting wind to electrical energy for …well…nothing. But there are sailboats today that can both in theory and fact sail faster than anything but a nuclear sub. I in fact personally sailed a 50-foot catamaran to St. Johns that did 44 knots—easy.
But…back to what’s really blowin’ in the wind: Back to solutions which are immediately doable, and immediately capable of solving all the important problems in the world (except ethnically-driven overpopulation and corporate-driven politics). Wind.
Why wind power…instead of nuclear, hydrogen, or solar? (I’ll give this the short shrift it warrants: Nuke plants create toxic waste hard to store and spread technology that some stupid country (besides us) will once again use to extinguish large numbers of living things. A bad idea if options exist….and they do. Hydrogen? It’s clean but the truth is no scientist has yet devised a way to produce it without expending about as much conventional energy as produced in the process. The jury’s still out, then, with Hydrogen. Solar? It’s great, wonderful and promising, but at the present time and state of art, it’s six times as expensive as wind power.
WHAT IN THE WORLD IS NEW ABOUT WIND, THEN?
There may be nothing “new” under the sun, but there’s clearly a new reason to look to wind for the solution to all our problems, which are primarily about energy. And the reason is this:
We can now “grid it.”
Explanation: We’ve been looking at wind the wrong way all along. Where the wind blows enough to put wind farms (great forests of bladed wind turbines that convert earthly breeze to electrical energy), it only blows SOME OF THE TIME.
When we need power, the wind might not be blowing, and so we have to depend on electricity supplied by our neighborhood-polluting company, Duke power, which is burning acid-rain-making and global-warming coal to convert our dollars to air-conditioned comfort and hot water.
But do we? (have to depend on Duke) The answer is no longer “yes”. We’ve been looking at wind the wrong way…the traditional way. We’re looking at it in ISOLATION. Most of the wind machines we’re familiar with work in isolation, like those beautiful singing windmills on the hills of Holland and Portugal. They’re put in places where the wind hardly ever stops, and as a result, their grinding stones are pretty much active whenever the grain needs grinding.
Similarly, we think of windmills as those things attached to farmer Brown’s well pump and water tower. Farmer Brown’s farm is so far out in rural Idaho where there’s no nearby town Duke power supplies that can send him coal-generated electricity over a wire linked to its electric-power grid. With farmer Brown, the water tower acts like a “battery” for energy storage. The wind and water pump the windmill powers blows and flows only about 25 percent of the time, but even while farmer Brown sleeps, the water tower is filling with water…which just like energy stored in a lead battery, he can call on by turning on his tap the next morning he’s up even when the wind is…not.
Similarly, we’ve grown to think of windmills as being most useful to the rural home-owner who’s either “off the grid” or wanting to be “independent” of the electrical grid that unites power supply and consumer. Because of that view, home-use windmills have been designed and provided with battery arrays (Nearly a whole basement full of batteries are needed to store the electricity generated by both solar panels and wind turbines because the sun and wind are …inconstant—i.e., efficient only about 25 percent of the time).
THE GRID FLOWS BOTH WAYS NOW
Thank providence, (and some authentic legislators) things have changed. Now, unless you live in some area of rural America that some power company can’t supply electricity via its “grid”, you live “on the grid”. And now the grid flows both ways. In most states now, with the increased implementation of residential solar and wind generators, power companies are required to buy back from you electricity you create which you don’t use. In other words, when you’re connected to the Duke Power grid in High Point, NC, and you have either solar or wind power on the roof, you no longer need to store it in a battery array in the basement to derive optimum benefit from your wind turbine. When you’re watching TV or running the washing machine and the wind is blowing, you are using your own wind power; when your asleep and the lights (etc.) are off, and the wind is blowing, electricity produced by your turbine goes backwards…out to the Duke Power grid, as a result of which, your power meter goes in reverse so that at the end of the month you are credited with the electricity you gave back! The implications of this are cataclysmically important for us and the environment. Whether at the end of the month you have a little balance to pay or a credit balance, it doesn’t matter—at least environmentally.
Here’s why: If we all—every one of us on the Duke Power, Con-Ed and other corporate power grids had wind turbines on our residences, none of us would need to buy those expensive battery arrays which made wind power so expensive in the first place. And if all of us have wind power and are sharing it with each other using Duke power as our “grid battery”, we’ll all be using wind-power electricity all the time and the coal furnaces and turbines will be shut down.
It’s now—and for the reason just stated—economically feasible for us all to afford wind-powered generators because we no longer technically need batteries, unless we’re trying to be independent and isolated retirees on remote Montana ranches. (Google it for yourself, but I’d estimate the cost of the batteries remains half or more than half the material cost of wind power…and it’s no longer necessary…unless, as said, you’re in Montana.)
Here’s the epiphany in our energy conundrum – If and when we all have wind turbines on our houses (which will cost us –without batteries—under $10,000 apiece, which should be recouped by tax supplements) we would all be consuming nothing but pollution-free electrical power because , collectively, we would be sending Duke more power than Duke is sending us. Don’t you see?—When we’re all of us producing electrical power from the wind that blows on our houses about 25 percent of the time, electricity enough for all of us will be flowing into the grid ALL THE TIME, and as a result, no coal or other fossil fuel gets burned, and the accelerator for global warming is…off.
And so is our dependence on or need to have anything to do with our Middle Eastern friends …. and foes. Our dollar-draining relationships with Duke Power and the OPEC’ER Sheiks of Saudi Arabia killed with a single stone…that stone that’s been the whole time, blowin’ in the wind.
Don’t you see? When every home is generating wind power 25 percent of the time, DUKE POWER’S GRID BECOMES OUR COLLECTIVE “STORAGE BATTERY” for wind-generated electrical energy and we collectively get to stop burning coal, and in the process stop polluting and warming the globe.
I’ve talked to and read it from reliable scientific sources—because this is no secret—it could clearly work.
BUT I SAID “ALL THE PROBLEMS”
What About Automobile Pollution?
I hear you: Residential and industrial energy consumption can be cleaned up by using existing power grids as wind-power storage facilities. But what about the other 40 or fifty percent of globally-warming pollution coming out of our automobiles? All-electric (forget hybrids) cars are the only long-term solution. But, if we all have electric cars, there’s still that problem with totally non-polluting electric cars—all those expensive and heavy batteries embedded in the lower chassis that cost big and deliver small…We charge them overnight in the garage and the best of them have a range of 60 to 100 miles. That’s only half a commute for a significant number of our suburban lot (which is part of the problem I won’t deal with here, mostly because it gets erased if and as we integrate the solution I say is blowin’ in the wind.)
THE CAPICITOR SOLUTION
I’ll say it short and sweet, because that’s what it is. Electric cars can happen now. Scientists have combined some previously-unrelated technologies (electric capacitors and batteries) and devised a means of making them …one. Electrical batteries and our use of them have blinded us to the potential of wind generators and electric cars…by making us reflexively think batteries (standard) have to be involved in both. As I’ve already explained in regard to making Duke’s supply grid a “sharing and storage” grid, I’m now saying, with authority, that batteries are no longer required, theoretically, in the process of supplying us with electric cars that can store enough electricity to travel 600 miles and be recharged in under 15 minutes…about only twice the time it takes to fill up with gas at the station.
Google “capacitors” and “cars” and you’ll be referred to the new cutting-edge technicians who, with authority, tell us that, just around the corner they will have finalized a production model (already having a functional prototype) of a car, powered exclusively by an electrical motor (actually an array of them) which (motors) are powered by a “battery” that’s really not a battery, but rather a serialized tandem-sequenced array of electrical “capacitors” which do what batteries do, but 100 times faster and more powerfully, and without lead or other toxic heavy metals, and without creating any toxic or volatile gases or waste products in the process.
Capacitors are the things in “stun guns” that permit a palm-sized electronic module to produce enough voltage in a millisecond to paralyze an elephant. Putting enough of these capacitors in series in an all-electric automobile SOLVES THE AUTOMOBILE PART OF OUR GLOBAL WARMING PROBLEM. Electric cars emit zero carbon.
The combination of solutions blowing in the wind (literally) and developing at the cutting edge of Capacitor technology will literally solve all the world’s major problems…save, again, the perennial ones of too many people and too many politicians being puppeted by our oligarchial corporate polluters.
But, as when Dylan was singing his lamentations about the answers to the problems of war (in Viet Nam) blowin’ in the wind, I wonder as he still must about…
Problem number 4 (above)—-the real kicker.
What we clearly need is a group of leaders who can muster for our salvation a “Manhattan (type) Project” to make wind power and capacitor cars a reality before our environmentally-cataclysmic tipping time happens. NASSA’s James Hansen, head of the Goddard Institute, says 10 years is our maximum time left to execute Kyoto protocols across the carbon-emitting boards.
How to get the petro-chemical and power companies of our Country to indorse a planet-saving program which will end their reign of ecological terror and economic tyranny, will at least be a feat of revolutionary proportions, if not literally a revolution.
IS ANYONE OUT THERE LISTENING?
DON’T YOU AGREE IT’S ABOUT TIME FOR TEA?
WHO AMONG US WILL THROW THE PARTY?
WHO AMONG US WILL DARE ATTEND?
TECHNICAL REFERENCES:
For those interested in reading more and beginning research on the principles and costs of wind power technology, you can start with perhaps the world’s foremost pioneering industry in the area on line at: http://www.bergey.com/
Then for the current “best value” in windmills, in terms of cost and functional efficiency, click here.
For the exciting new and promising enterprise incorporating capacitor technology to electric motor vehicles, start with:
http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/09/07/electric.car.batteries.ap/
Is a Depression and Collapse of
America in our Offing?
You can bet Barbie’s Butt it is.
The “China Syndrome” Revisited on 9/11/07
By Dusty Schoch, DW Foreign Policy Editor.
God knows, I hope I’m wrong.
My roommate at Lawrenceville (my New Jersey Prep School) is working now for the U.S. Treasury. Before that he was senior partner in the world’s largest law firm, practicing in the area of international currency and tax. He confirms (mostly by failing to deny it) what I already concluded (and wrote in a series of articles under the cap “The China Syndrome”). America’s corporate fat cats have sold America, pocketed the cash and deposited it “off shore”. This world is run by really fat cats: Less than one percent of Americans own over 99 percent of its assets. These fat f-ers are secretly and sometimes not so secretly (e.g. Cheney’s and Halliburton’s open Daddy-war-bucking) pulling all the strings. But the strings have now been pulled so long and so hard the puppets at the end of the string (tax paying American workers) are soon going to be extinct. Their jobs have been exported to China. America as an industrial nation is melting down right before our eyes, and like the un-rodded core of a nuclear reactor, is headed to China.
When the “margin men” took over corporate America in the early 70’s they progressively devised ways to widen profit margins and because of their success, these margin men won positions at the top. They valued profit…above all things—including labor, product quality, the environment and their country.
To understand what happened, you don’t have anything more complex to do than follow Barbie’s butt. In the 60’s when she was born, “Japan” was tattooed on her impossibly high-perched and bulbous butt. The margin men were then closing down nearly all toy manufacturing because it was dollar efficient to export labor to the Far East– to those trying to catch up to the industrialists who had won the war—and had won it through amazingly innovative and energetic EFFORT AND WORK.
Those who didn’t export labor to Japan couldn’t compete…at least it was difficult. I personally refused. I built and ran a manufacturing plant on Cross St. in HP for a decade when ours was the only company in the U.S. making Snoopy toys locally. (My design, BTW, out-sold, dollar-wise any competing motorized Snoopy toy on the market for that entire decade, and all my labor was American—except for the blinking lights that were made only in Taiwan). Back to Barbie- in the 80’s “Indonesia” or “Indo-China” was on her butt; in the 90’s “Taiwan”, and now it’s ubiquitous “China”.
These pre-Enron fat cats were at the same time (60’s) already exporting all the electronic fabrication of TV’s and other electronics we pioneered to the far east; the since varying venues of cheap labor are really irrelevant. The relevant thing is that the fat cats have gradually evolved us from an industrial nation to a nation of indolent greedy consumers, spoiled fast-food and TV addicts. The work ethic is dead in this country. The profit ethic and consumption addiction are pandemic.
Every other ad on tv is an infomercial showing our Donald Trump wannabees how they can make millions without getting up from their home-based PC’s. Some of the schemes (e.g., flipping “no down payment” houses) work for a while until over-doing it inflates the economic bubble and it pops.
The original “margin men” are now the retiring generation and their successors are even more narcissistic and nihilistic than their predecessors. The original margin men competed with each other in predatory fashion but maintained some semblance of ethicality…e.g. some marginal caring for the quality of the product, and some mild concern for the health (viability) of the planet. These new, X-Gen margin men are completely soulless. Few exceptions.
They’ve learned how to siphon dollars out of ever imaginable twist in the stream of marketing goods and services. They have eliminated completely humanity in the service divisions of industry. When your refrigerator fails to work in the first 30 days, you’ll call your local retailer and a phone robot will satellite relay your call to a guy in New Delhi who gets paid 30 dollars a month to misinform you about what’s wrong with your refrigerator until you’re forced to call a repairman and forget the factory warranty.
When your kidneys fail to work, a similar (but decidedly more serious) travesty occurs when you try to navigate the maze of your insurance-company’s cannibalistic healthcare charade in search of medical care. In this case, we—and our survival– are the items being marginalized. Ditto for the government agencies we created to protect ourselves from the ravages of laissez-faire industrial providers of food and consumer goods. They now own and control our FDA and FEMA watch towers, as a result of which we are eating foods our government has labeled GRAS (“generally regarded as safe”) which are clearly toxic (e.g. MSG, Aspartame and transfats) and relying on government-inspected dykes and bridges that are crumbling beneath us. I shudder when I watch the reactions of people when some processed food company boasts of having “reduced” the amount of transfat they’re frying our chips in (in order to afford them bomb-shelter shelf life). Few even get the irony: It’s the same thing as if Nabisco openly announced that they are putting less arsenic in Oreo’s. But the crowning iniquity is the FDA’s allowing those same companies to sell processed foods with fats and flavorings known to sicken and kill human beings. There was a time (e.g. under Truman who coined the phrase) where the buck actually stopped. Now the buck stops literally for no man; it juggernaut rolls over us all…today mainly on the way to China.
As recession becomes undeniable and depression is seen to be inevitable, government-controlled media are parroting neo-con corporate propaganda about our unemployment being the lowest in decades…whereas in point of facts a 7-th grade economics student can read and understand, the subterfuge leaves out the “minor detail” that 30 percent of our national work force are former $17/hr (or better) workers now waiting on tables or flipping burgers at minimum wage (which is poverty).
But these Titanic fat cats will not go down with our sinking ship of state. They were the first ones in fact to jump ship. Yeah, they still have houses in Maine and on the Coasts of Florida and California, but their wealth is off shore and their new safe harbor of business operations is in Dubai. That’s where the fat cats of America and the rest of the industrial world meet and collaborate in ways not to … compete. That’s the place where bedfellows are never considered “strange”…where the Houses of Bush and Saud are…one—where the sheiks of America and Arabie don’t even pretend to be patriots and admit to one another that there is only one god….the almighty dollar. This is the place where the fat cats, for apt example, conceived the plan to place the security of our nation’s harbors in the safe keeping of….Arabs.
This fat-cat “dollar club” is in fact the thing to “blame” for our spiraling down as a nation and culture. This “dollar club” has diligently and successfully managed to preserve and revitalize the institution of slavery which made our country an industrial powerhouse in the first place. But back then (in colonial America) there was an excuse. We were all pioneers and refugees from political and religious oppression. We were less enlightened as a culture and our African slaves and indentured servants were born of an institution which was “kosher” in our then agreed code of ethics (The Bible—Old and New Testaments).
We no longer have any excuse for transplanting our institution of slavery from our own now defunct sweat shops in the north and south to the north and south of China, Indonesia or any other country stamped on Barbie’s bodacious butt. The new so-called “globalization” is a success only in one regard…It successfully allowed the fat cat bullies of the world to remain successful and powerful by the employment of foreign and imported (e.g. Mexican) slave labor. Our former slaves had achieved, through labor unions and responsible governmental wage regulation, a modicum of freedom from the oppression of the rich and powerful. But, with the rise of NAFTA, the new China Syndrome, and our own ignorant reinforcement of those institutions through reckless consumer and cheap-labor addiction, we of the laboring class have become complicit with the fat cats in a morally and economically dysfunctional co-dependency that has gained such momentum at this time that it appears our only salvation will come in the form of a complete meltdown of the present economic structure .
Yes, I’m talking (and predicting) major depression. A cleaning of the slate, where out of necessity things are forced to change.
Things certainly won’t change by a changing of the legislative guard in D.C. in ’08. Fat cats at the top will call the shots with political puppets on both side of the aisles so long as corporate millions are allowed (and required) to achieve elective office.
The principal shame in the matter is that when the structure finally collapses, it will again be the poor pioneers and laborers who pick up the pieces and start over again…hopefully with a more egalitarian formulation for the
accumulation and sharing of the wealth the nation collectively creates. The fat cats will be able to watch the process of America’s economic and cultural demise from their new digs in Dubai. The wealth of today’s mega-wealthy is immune from collapse. Big money is “multinational” money. The House of Bush will never fall because it is wed to the House of Saud. Our X-Gen margin men who have exported their manufacturing divisions to China now have stock in China trade; their assets are “multinational”. Their power is “global”. Their security is global.
It’s you and I—we working class chumps who bought into the American Dream as it was covertly being transmogrified by the margin men into a global oligarchic nightmare—who will remain here on native turf, and who will (I hope and pray) E-Pluribus Unum band together bravely one more time…and hopefully in time…to Phoenix fly this rattletrap remnant of the American Eagle back into shape to soar once again into our ominously-warming sunset.
GOOSE-STEPPING IN ASHVILLE
Asheville Couple Arrested
Under N.C. Law Still on the Books
For “Desecration” of the U.S. Flag
A report by Len Carrier, DW In-House Historian
and Philosopher (and a resident of Asheville), with an
Addendum by DW Environmental and Science Contributor,
Patrick Morton.
Sheriff’s Department uses Fascist Tactics
The finer points of law enforcement went unobserved in Asheville, N.C. on July 25, 2007 with the arrest of Mark and Deborah Kuhn for flying a flag in distress; namely, the reading of their rights, a warrant for their arrest, a warrant to enter their dwelling, telling them what they were being arrested for, using unnecessary force, and threatening them with a taser. Perhaps the Buncombe County deputy sheriff who arrested them should have been the one arrested, not the Kuhns.
What the Kuhns did was to fly the American flag upside down, with a picture of President Bush pinned to it over the words, “out now.” A National Guardsman complained about the Kuhns’ flag to the deputy sheriff, an Iraq veteran, and the deputy cited the Kuhns for flag desecration under an obsolete North Carolina state law. After the Kuhns protested against showing their IDs to the deputy, there was a scuffle and the Kuhns were arrested and jailed. They were charged, not only with flag desecration, but also with obstruction and assault on a government employee.
A couple of days earlier, the Asheville City Police Department had already passed on the way the Kuhns were flying their flag. Asheville city police didn’t have a problem with it. It was only because the Kuhns lived near a national guard armory that they drew the attention of the guardsman and the sheriff’s deputy. Apparently, the Kuhns’ symbolic protest angered those who think that our troops are fighting for the flag, instead of what it stands for–freedom of speech and the rights contained in the Fourth and Fifth Amendments of the U.S. Constitution, which they are sworn to uphold.
After being released on $1,500 bond, the Kuhns rightfully claimed that their civil rights had been violated, and they demanded that the sheriff’s deputy be fired. Less than a week later, the Sheriff asked the District Attorney to drop the charges against the Kuhns. The flag that the deputy had confiscated was returned to them, and an apparently embarrassed Buncombe County Sheriff now verifies that the Kuhns are “allowed to do what they’re doing.” It is unknown what disciplinary action was taken by the sheriff against his deputy, but the sheriff announced on August 15 that the deputy will keep his job. Meanwhile, the Kuhns are so disappointed with law enforcement in Buncombe County that they have given up their protest in disgust.
It seems obvious that the arresting deputy overstepped his authority. What is not so obvious is why North Carolina still carries on its books a law that prohibits people from knowingly mutilating, defiling, defacing, or trampling on an American flag. The U.S. Supreme Court in both 1989 and 1990 had already decided that flag “desecration” was protected as a form of expressive conduct under the First Amendment. The N.C. state law was also challenged and ruled unconstitutional in 1971. The Buncombe County Sheriff also said that it was “pretty apparent to us where the Supreme Court stands on this issue.” If this is so, then North Carolina legislators should wipe that law off the books. After all, the term “desecration” refers to the diverting of something sacred to something profane. The American flag was never consecrated, and therefore it cannot be desecrated.
Leonard Carrier
Patrick Morton’s Addendum
Dear Dusty, Bob, DW, B.E.A. and friends,
I agree that the officer involved here was too egregious,and thought I would add some cents-worth here.
For most military and ex-military people, Flag Ettiquette runs much deeper than manners and common sense. We protect both it and its idealized symbolism fiercely. Had the incident in question taken place inside the District of Columbia, the full weight of the law would have been in favor of the deputy sheriff making this arrest (except for the deputy’s misconduct). Such federal laws protecting the flag have been adopted in spirit by many states, but culpability under the letter of the law for each state remains gray at best.
The Kuhn’s did break their local laws by refusing to properly identify themselves to said deputy. That act is clearly obstruction by N.C. Statutes and once events escalated to a scuffle, isn’t it obvious that the deputy may well have approached the Kuhn’s, looking for a fight, and found one?
While it may be easy to say in the aftermath that the Kuhn’s should have remained passive throughout the ordeal, it is equally possible that they were not given the choice.
Whether there exists an enforceable N.C. State Statue similar to the D.C. Flag Code or not, and whether the Kuhn’s were guilty or not, certainly they should pursue legal remedies against the offending law enforcement officer and the department because their treatment was unwarranted considering the nature of the supposed defense. In short, it is law enforcements duty to uphold the law and to not presume to act at judge and jury.
Were I a lawyer instead of a teacher, I would seriously consider representing the Kuhn’s myself.
Patrick Morton
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DW In-House Historian and Philosopher, Leonard Carrier, responding to an article in “The Nation”, questions whether “Democrats” has become, in the current of today’s politics, a misnomer.
The name ‘democrat’ comes from the Greek demos, meaning ‘people’. So the Democratic Party should be the people’s party, as opposed to the parties that favor the elite. But how many Democrats in Congress or running for President can say that they favor the people, rather than special interests? Nancy Pelosi, through her inaction on impeachment and her allowing increased Administration spying on us, has shown that she is not protecting the people. Hillary Clinton, in sharing a podium with Rupert Murdoch and raking in huge sums of corporate financing, has shown that she is not favoring the people. Barack Obama, in changing his mind when corporate interests threaten him about engaging in dialog with other countries, is really not speaking for the people. John Edwards, who suggests that debates be limited to “major” presidential candidates, is not standing up for the people.
The only Democrat running for President who has consistently spoken for the people has been Dennis Kucinich. Here are some of the ways that Kucinich has done this: (1) co-sponsoring with John Conyers HR 676, a universal health plan, (2) voting against the Patriot Act, (3) voting against invading Iraq, (4) promising to withdraw from the WTO and NAFTA, (4) standing opposed to weapons in space, (5) voting against a flag-burning amendment, (6) advocating a 12-point plan to get our troops safely out of Iraq, (7) voting to cut off funds for prosecuting the Iraq war, (8) urging the signing of the Kyoto Protocols to cut down pollution, (9) advocating education for all, from kindergarten through college, (10) urging the creation of a Department of Peace, (11) ending the “war on drugs,” (12) urging renewal of the environment, (13) sponsoring HR 333 to impeach Dick Cheney, and (14) abolishing the death penalty.
All of these positions favor the people over the wealthy and well-connected. All the other presidential candidates are Democrats in name only. Ralph Nader called Kucinich “a genuine progressive.” The corporate punditry with its big media would prefer our remaining content with ersatz progressives. That way they can continue to run the country from the top down, and the people will be none the wiser.
The probability that we may fail in the struggle ought not to deter us from the support of a cause we believe to be just. — A. Lincoln
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Posted in Political | Leave a comment
BUSH’S IMMIGRATION POLICY –
A COVERT MEXICAN STAND-OFF
A DW “E X C L U S I V E” and…. A “MUST-READ”
By: Dr. Leonard Carrier, D.W. In-House Historian and Philosopher and Robert Foster*, DW Contributor and In-House Conservative Counsel , with an Introduction and preface by DW Foreign Policy Editor, Dusty Schoch outlining the unique circumstances where DW “art” (Len Carrier’s Article) induced—in dreamlike fashion– our DW writer in Georgia to deal with 5 illegal Mexican Aliens in a manner and under circumstances I predict you will find unique and memorable. I labeled this article a “must read” because it is one of Len Carrier’s most compelling commentaries on our immigration policy, followed by Foster’s real-life reactions recorded by the author (Foster) himself and recounted in his entertaining and inimitable short-story style.
Dear DW and B.E.A. Staff and friends,
As DW writers and contributors, I know we all wonder from time to time whether—or to what extent—our expressions and polemic offerings actually have an effect on the readership. The sequel to the Carrier article provides us substantial incentive never to question what we remedial bloggers are about.
Robert Foster is an amazing thinker and personality I had the privilege of becoming friends with while attending law school in Tuscaloosa Alabama (U. of Ala.’s home site). Foster is a life-long conservative Republican and we have enjoyed sparring from time to time on Bush policies, domestic and foreign. Foster was among those “DW friends” I sent a preview of Carrier’s presently-featured article on corporate American complicity in our illegal alien problems.
Without further waxing, I give you (some of you for the second time) Len Carrier’s piece, preceded by my little introduction, following which I urge you all to relish and derive encouragement and hope from Foster’s letter to me…which I have elected to share with its proper audience (the world).
Thanks, Len, for placing the focus and blame on proper target. Corporate hiring of illegals is the hole in our national dyke, and criminal prosecution (of employing corporations) is the only mortar. Thanks, R.F., for showing us all that the mark of true intelligence is not always being right, but rather always being able and willing to readjust one’s vision and actions in order to see—and/or imagine, and/or do– what is right.
Best,
Dusty
BUSH’S IMMIGRATION SLOGAN:
“Welcome, Guest Workers…
To the Corporate States of America”
By DW In-House Historian and Philosopher, Leonard Carrier, who points us poignantly to the fact that Bush’s newest Neo-Con euphemism is calling our immigrant slave population, “Guest Workers”.
The problem of illegal immigrants has been exacerbated since President Bush took office.
The chief cause is that of corporations seeking cheap labor. Most of these people came here legally under “guest worker” H-2A and H-2B programs. They not only got low wages but they also suffered other abuses.
See the Southern Poverty Law Center’s report, “Close to Slavery,” that outlines all this. When their visas ran out, many of them didn’t go back to their countries but stayed in illegal status rather than work legally under deplorable conditions. The corporations then asked for more “guest workers,” and the process continued. Big business has had a sweet deal. They pay lousy wages, treat the workers like indentured servants, and let the government (that’s you and me) pick up the tab for social services. Then they ask for more cheap labor when the current crew has gone underground.
Now the Bush administration hopes to get even more “guest workers,” and it is willing to throw more money at security fences (which won’t solve the real problem) and to mollify Hispanics by offering a tortuous path to legality for those illegals already here. I was glad to see this so-called “reform” bill strangled in its crib. I think that the problem should be attacked at its root, which is corporate desire for an underclass of workers whom they can exploit. If the penalties are made severe enough for employers who hire illegals, then the ones already here won’t be able to work and they won’t stay. If the “guest worker” programs are forced to pay a living wage and provide health benefits, then corporations will seek out citizens and legal immigrants to hire, instead.
I don’t think it’s fair to blame the illegals already here for the situation in which they find themselves. If you’re poor and desperate you’ll take advantage of all the services that are offered. I’m afraid that much of the criticism of the immigrant reform bill is misplaced, and it results in a nativism that tends to blame the victim. I think that we have sufficient immigration laws on the books to deport illegal immigrants if we had the will to do it.
Big business would prefer things as they are–an inexhaustible supply of cheap labor, with the average taxpayer picking up the tab for health and social services. Unfortunately, if social services are cut off for illegals, then it will probably be cut for poor people who are here legally, as well. I don’t think it’s a good idea to make war on poor people.
I remember Emma Lazarus’s words, “Give me your tired and your poor…” inscribed at the Statue of Liberty. We are a nation of immigrants. What we need is an orderly process for immigration to take place. Big business doesn’t care about that, because it doesn’t enhance their bottom line.
Leonard Carrier
FOSTER’S DREAM
(in Cobb County, Georgia):
Dusty,
I received your e-mail at 3:57 PM yesterday and immediately read Carrier’s piece with great interest and reflection – particularly given the fact that I had scheduled 5 guest workers to come tomorrow and clean up a pile of tree limbs, cross ties and whatnot that I have accumulated on the back of my property over the past 30 years.
Several days ago I was speaking with a friend and lamenting that I could find no one interested in cleaning up my property; mentioning that I had even spoken with a law-enforcement friend about getting some prisoners lend-leased to me but found that questionable practice had been discontinued in our state some decades earlier. But my friend said that last year he had used some Mexicans to work at his house. He told me they congregated at the town square in Marietta and if I got up there early morning, I could pick up as many as I wanted at $5.00 hour plus food. Problem solved – or so I thought.
You know how dreams sometimes serve to solve problems that, confronted in the daylight you find impossible of resolution. Well, with the situation of my back yard property sort of weighing on my subconscious, and with the reading of Carrier’s article still fresh on my mind, I went to sleep last night and had the most extraordinary dream, which I will here share with you.
At 6:00AM in the morning, before first light, I pulled up to the square in my big fully-Loaded 1994 Lincoln Town Car. I quickly deduced that this was a no-miss proposition–only me and a circa 1958 yellow GMC school bus with “Cobb County Schools” on the side of the bus having been crudely crossed out and the single word “Jesus” painted above (or was it Jose’–couldn’t quite make out in the existing light). There could only be one winner in such a one-sided pairing and it damn sure wasn’t colored yellow.
However, my sense of a forthcoming triumph quickly evaporated when I realized that only the big Lincoln and the yellow GMC were on the square – not one single Mexican was in sight. I thought maybe it was a little early as the sun was just starting to break over the trees that line the square. At this point, I noticed someone standing next to the bus, so I decided to head over and see if he could tell me if I were at the right place to pick up Mexicans. I didn’t know if I were on the way to church or a cutting but in either event I needed 5 hard-working Mexicans and this was the only guy around–or at least I thought it was a guy.
As I neared the bus I saw that the guy was in fact a very attractive lady wearing white linen slacks and with her blond hair pulled back in a tight bun. Had I not been focused on her as I approached, I would have noticed that every Mexican in Marietta, Georgia (and possibly all outlying cities) was packed inside the bus. It was as if this were the last chance to cross the Rio Grande. As I introduced myself to the lady, whose name as it turns out was “June” * and not Jose’ or Jesus, several Mexicans came from between some buildings, shot across the street at full gallop and pushed through the bus doors. There was no way to get another soul on the bus, let alone a person but they kept coming. It was like a run of herring. They just kept coming and coming but none were hopping in the Big Lincoln.
Well, Dusty, when Robert Foster has his mind set on something, the table isn’t going to be cleared before he has dessert, which in this case was 5 Mexicans today – not tomorrow or next week. The brush pile was going and it was going today. First, I turned on the charm and asked June if she could let me have a few of her Mexicans (I was coy – holding in reserve the fact that “few” correlated to 5). When she responded that she couldn’t help me, I asked her why the hell not (charm and coyness aside – time to become aggressive). You will not believe what I learned.
June was an executive of a large multi- national firm (she speaks five languages and is fluent in Spanish) and worked 15 hour days which left no time for housekeeping or gardening. So she got in her car one day, went to the square in Marietta and found a gardener and a housekeeper/cook. She lives in East Cobb County (where the elite reside as opposed to us outcasts down here in lower Cobb County). June hosts many parties and her friends begin to notice the quality of the maid and gardener’s work. This leads the friends to ask how they could get such good (but principally cheap) help. I will fast forward as it is getting late.
June buys a bus at a Marietta School Board surplus equipment auction, quits her job and starts supplying domestic help (guest workers) to every social climber in East Cobb. She picks up at the square between 6 and 6:45 Monday thru Saturday and delivers the workers to the homes and then picks them up and returns to the square at the end of the day. She spends approximately 5 hours a day driving the bus and another hour on paper work (all requests for domestics come via e-mail). It is totally a cash operation. She pays the Mexicans $7.00/hr and bills them at $15.00. After minimal expenses, June figures she clears $6.50/hr x 8 hours x 6 days x 46 domestics = $14,352 or $746,304 per year. I bit for 5 @ $15 and she dropped them off at the house around 8:30 this morning and gave them instructions as to what I wanted done (none of them spoke English). Now here is where it gets interesting.
At 4:30 P.M., after some soul searching prompted by Carrier’s piece, I decided to put the Mexicans in my car and return to the square. None of them could understand what I wanted until I flashed a wad of $20’s and then it was a chicken on a June bug. All 5 hopped in the Big Lincoln and I dropped them off at the square after stopping at the cash machine so I could give them each $120 (8 hours x $15). I returned home and this gets us to 6:15PM when June arrives to pick up the 5 Mexicans only to find that I had already returned them to the square. She was fine with this until she asked for payment and I told her I gave $120 to each worker and handed her a copy of Carrier’s piece.
As I compose this letter, the 5 Mexican guest workers are patiently awaiting my arrival at the square and I am in the process of deciding what I—today, in real life and realtime—intend to do with the problem before me. Whether I will perform in conformance with the version of myself which appeared to me in my dreams—who I consider to be idealistic to the point of being “heroic”, or whether I will do otherwise, is yet to be determined…somewhat in a scenario similar to the problem American presently faces in regard to its illegal Mexican population in general. What each of us as individuals—in the microcosm—in deed do will determine what our country as a macrocosmic whole becomes.
I do plan to respond hereafter more definitively to Carrier’s piece which has some good points and valid observations. However, I believe the problem runs much deeper than big business. It would not surprise me if over 50% of the “guest workers” are employed by small business and /or individuals. Where everyone is living in sin, it is hard to find anyone willing to cast the first stone. I sincerely hope that —in either my dream state or my waking words– I haven’t hit a friend.
Foster
July 13, 2007
P.S. As an afterthought, I wonder: Would $200,000 be too much for the Atlanta Franchise rights??
**Robert Foster is a legal scholar and businessman and humorist living in South Georgia; this is his initial (hopefully of many) contribution to DW. Names (including “June”) have been changed to protect the guilty and innocent alike.
Posted in Bush, Immigration, Political | Leave a commentB u r s t i n g The Hydrogen Bubble –
At least putting it into Perspective as “the” solution to
Global Warming and our Energy Crisis
A three-part dialogue on the subject of Hydrogen as a significant solution to the world’s energy needs and the crisis with carbon emissions, global warming and our increasingly- intolerable dependence on Middle Eastern oil.
DW Foreign Policy Editor, Dusty Schoch, begins with a commentary on recent news articles concerning one man’s claims to have discovered a means of producing hydrogen and oxygen gas from common sea water, followed by comments from Dr. Leonard Carrier (DW In-house Historian and Philosopher) and Patrick Morgan, DW Environmental and scientific advisor and contributor on the same, along with views the larger issues on our global climate and energy crises. The 3-part dialogue is addended by comments from DW contributor, Michael Murphy and a news flash from Bobby Dees about the “carboHydrate” consideration.
THE KANZIUS HYDROGEN MACHINE STORY
When I received the e-mail article from my brother, my initial impression was pretty much on the money- it was far too good to be true. The story, out of Sanibel Island, Florida was about a radio broadcaster who several years ago began experimenting with the use of radio waves to cure cancer. The details of the story can be found on several versions of the story, including one on the following link:http://www.wpbf.com/health/11125485/detail.html
In essence, 63-year old John Kanzius, himself suffering from cancer, invented a machine four years ago to treat a rare form of leukemia. Instead of X-ays, Kanzius used broadcasting radio waves and proposed using a solution of nanoparticles to bond with cancer cells and later become targets for selective destruction by radio wave bombardment (as heat was created in the process that would theoretically kill the cancer cells and leave healthy tissue undamaged.)
In the process of experiments, Kanzius found that bombarding salt water (sea water in fact) with radio waves somehow freed both hydrogen and oxygen gases from the salt water such that both could be united (burning in effect) , thus producing only heat energy and pure water (H2O).
When the article appeared, there was speculation voiced all over the globe that this previously undiscovered means of isolating Hydrogen and Oxygen from sea water might be the solution to the world’s energy needs and its globally-warming carbon emissions problems…all at once.
But as said before, a little research proved my initial intuitive instincts were in fact valid skepticism. Accordingly, I wrote the following letter to my brother, Arch, who had sent me the news clip on Kanzius, and received from Len Carrier and Patrick Morgan the comments that trail my now open letter on the subject:
Arch,
I love the fact that people are trying hard to get to the Hydrogen, because burning it creates no greenhouse gas, only water and heat. But so far it’s a pipe dream like cold fusion. We don’t have magnets powerful enough on earth to do fusion yet, but someday maybe. Our petro-allied government has never granted squat to research fusion on earth.
The sad feature with Hydrogen is that where it mostly is (water) there’s no stored energy. Getting it out of other molecules has proved cost ineffective. There’s energy in elementary Hydrogen, but water molecules take in energy in their process of formation. The radio waves (RF) do something (as yet unexplained) to free the Oxygen and Hydrogen in water, but the energy created in the burning of the product is only about 75 percent of the energy that is expended to create the radio waves that do the work.
Right now that’s good in one sense and insignificant in another. Good: Conceivably we could create the electricity that creates the RF in a coal burning generator (as most our electrical energy in the U.S. is created) using scrubbers and reburners so we create minimal particulate pollution…but there’s no way to limit the fact we’re creating the most dangerous greenhouse gas (CO2) in the process. Insignificant: So the net result of powering the car with hydrogen produced by coal-created hydrogen (with zero greenhouse gas) is a net increase (via Duke Power’s coal plant) of 25% CO2.
This cancer-research guy discovered the RF- hydrogen phenomenon 4 years ago, and nothing serious has come of his discovery. I’m afraid it’s because it is, energy-wise, a fairly naïve concept. The biggest hope for the discovery may be that it (the process) provides a way to burn H in the presence of Oxygen without having to separate and store either (expensive and dangerous) And so, one day, the process may provide a safer way to power vehicles, which (like the Hindenburg) are like nitro-glycerine in motion.
I stopped my research into the matter when I confirmed what the consensus is (net loss in terms of energy in and out, and net neutral or negative in re greenhouse gas).
We need a Manhattan-type project on creating means of more cheaply creating energy from wind and sun. These are wasted energy sources (and by nature renewable without effort or expense). Right now, with either windmills or solar panels, we have to use them 20 to 30 years to recoup capital outlay. We should do it anyway and could if the government would offer us a tax break on the investment, but that won’t happen until the day comes Exxon/Mobile doesn’t own Congress. The dollar rules.
ALTERNATIVES:
In the long run, all nuclear power will wind up costing us more and killing us in the end. I think the long-term salvation of earth will have to be a revolution to reduce human population to under a billion. We can tolerate (and afford) what 1 billion people do; but not 8. In the meantime, if we got as serious about using wind and sun as we got when we were worried about the Nazi’s and the Nip’s, we could probably save our bacon, and maybe the world. But how do you get people so rich and powerful that $12/gal gasoline can’t scare them out of either their SUV’s or their 10,000 sq ft houses? These are the people who for the most part rule the world by controlling the media and its spin on everything.
As much as I love the idea of our being saved by the earth’s wind and fire (sun), I think it’s going to take a social revolution to steer us away from Armageddon (global warming). It’ll only make you and me uncomfortable. The thing I hate is, it’ll make life for our grandchildren…impossible.
Sorry for the gloomy perspective, but trust me—I’m still working on the revolution.
Thanks for the sharing. I appreciate enthusiasm and hope, however short-lived they turn out to be. Communicate enough sound and fury regarding our threatened survival, and who knows— Another Einstein might just pop up…and this time with something in mind other than a doomsday formula for fission.
Len Carrier’s Comments:
Dusty,
Thanks for your take on a “hydrogen economy.” When I was an undergraduate, we had a physics professor who touted hydrogen as the fuel of the future. However, for the reasons you mention, I don’t think that hydrogen alone should be expected to fill all our energy needs (although Iceland is striving to fill its energy needs through hydrogen).
I’m of the opinion that hydrogen-powered fuel cells can be part of the solution to our demand for energy, along with wind, solar, nuclear, and vegetable oils. In other words, I think at this point that no one source of energy should be emphasized to the detriment of the others. They should all be tested. In the end, I think the winner in the energy race will be the source of power that proves itself to be more efficient than all the others–just as AC current won out over DC, despite Thomas Edison’s support of the latter.
PATRICK MORGAN’S CONCLUSIONS
Nanotechnology may be the answer here. Clearly this inventor is bathing the process with entirely too large a field of radio waves. Researchers in Canada (Montreal, I think) have developed transistors as small as 50 nanometers wide and capable of counting individual electrons. It should be relatively easy to build a “sparkplug” radio generator that could separate the hydrogen and oxygen inside the firing chamber of the engine. This process would also eliminate a great deal of extra hardware needed for a hydrogen engine.
Like with anything that happens inside a greedy government driven by a mad Oil Baron, for America to survive I think reasonable folks will have to circumvent the government. This is not revolution, but political evolution. In other words, despite what the government might be doing or approving, we the people will have to do the right things “around” their official lines of political non-solutions.
Every intelligent being in the universe is capable of knowing right from wrong. We, the thinkers, must now realize that we will have to start doing the right things, whether the government is on our bandwagon or not. If the entire human race becomes extinct, it would not matter whether the greedy, non-thinkers of our time capitulated or not. If, however, we begin a way of living where we constantly practice doing the right things, then we may even out-live such mental midgets.
There’s really nothing preventing people from doing the right things, making the right decisions in regards to saving energy or making a smaller carbon imprint on the planet. Of course, if we wait for our elected idiots to make the right decisions for us then it will be too late!
I once worked with the ideas of complete and utter revolution in the country. In my final analysis, there could never be enough people willing to escape their PC games and iPods (now iPhones) to mobilize an effective revolution. This is sadly true whether you’re talking political revolution or otherwise. The People are far too placated.
ADDENDUM BY MICHAEL K. MURPHY*
Dear Dusty, et al.:
The “revolution” in which ”hippies” and other counter-culture types of that now by-gone era intended never came to full fruition but what it did achieve in improving race relations, ending a stupid war, improving the lot of women in society, etc. did have enormous social and economic impact on the U.S. and by extension and addition, the rest of the western world.
I would not easily dismiss the power of a relatively new idea whose time may have already arrived to galvanize a new and large segment of society to take on new issues — global warming, addressing religious fundamentalism — if only the propulsion mechanism to transform those ideas into results can be worked out and the people galvanized.
With global warming, everyday seems to bring a new idea or initiative that underscores the global peril we are now in but at the same time shows the way to address certain aspects of the problem. Powerful states like California are willing to take on the federal government over greenhouse gas emissions, etc., and even cities such as San Francisco are taking initiatives such as banning the use of bottled water in city offices and mandating the use of tap water. People are statring to get it I think.
I see a ray of hope here but, perhaps, its already too late for that ray to grow into a fire to convert the masses but I think that if only that propulsion mechanism can be found people will join together to take on the issue of global warming, etc.
Best Regards,
/s/
Mike
*Mr. Michael Kevin Murphy is an attorney in Virginia, and a B.E.A. correspondent of long standing. Mike served with the U.S. Army in Viet Nam during the period which straddled the 1968 Tet Offensive. He was commanding officer of an infantry rifle company in the Mecong River delta and his badges and decorations include the U. S. Parachutist Badge, the U.S. Combat Infantryman’s Badge, the Vietnam Ranger Badge (Biet Dong Quan), the U.S. Bronze Star Medal, thirteen Air Medals, and the Vietnam Gallantry Cross.
Bobby Dees’ Suggests the important “H”
In the energy Equation might be carboHydrates:
This just in from YaleGolbal:
 Mike Pugh’s Misguided Mission |
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Bravo, Mayor Smothers!
The Father’s Day front-page feature in the Enterprise was about Councilman Pugh’s (loudly) proclaiming that he intends–if Mayor Smothers gives him the opportunity–to open future H.P. City Council meetings by invoking the name of Jesus. In spite of its violating the law he’s sworn to uphold (see below) and disregarding the citizens of High Point of other faiths he may in the process be offending. On page two (June 17), there was the long-awaited story of Nifong’s disbarment for his disgraceful prosecution of innocent Duke Lacrosse players on rape charges. Why would I note this coincidental back-to-back reporting? Because of the remarkably-troubling parallels in the stories: Nifong using his public office to perpetuate his job (win an election) and Pugh contriving to use his position on city council to parade his piety (and/or secure the support of his Christian constituency in the next election). If we provide Mike Pugh his moment of international celebrity in his pious quest to “stand up and fight for Jesus” (as he terms it) in our city’s official Council, how will his achieved headlines be viewed by our economically- essential non-Christian market merchants and attendees? We owe our Mayor, Becky Smothers a gold medal for discretion and valor in her very gutsy decision, thus far, to withhold the invocation from an individual who has announced in advance his determination to open this public meeting in the name of Jesus. If our mayor were to permit this, with advance knowledge, it would render it ipso-facto an official act in contravention of the decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in the case of Marsh v. Chambers, 463 U.S. 783. The Fourth Circuit case (Wynne v. Town of Great Falls)* referred to in the HPE article merely applied the rule in Marsh because Supreme Court decisions control lower court cases. This will include High Point’s future litigation–that is, if our city fathers are foolish enough to challenge the ACLU to prove us wrong.*[The entire decision in Wynne can be read on-line at:
http://www.aclusc.org/Page/Court/Wynne_v_GreatFalls_4thCir.pdf, and the Supreme Court case of Marsh v. Chambers is at : http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/conlaw/marsh.html].
The U.S. Supreme Court in Marsh makes it crystal clear that city councilmen—officially– using the name of Jesus violate the Establishment Clause of the U.S. Constitution by demonstrating a preference for one sect or creed. Pugh’s statement that his plan is “constitutionally sound” is at best ill-informed and naïve. The law is clear, and the A.C.L.U. has very courteously given our city both good advice and fair warning. It is, by the way, the declared purpose of the A.C.L.U. to insure the preservation of religious freedom in our country and fair State of N.C. That freedom of religion includes the right to be free from having our secular leaders in government publicly express a preference for any single religious sect or group. We clearly need to be free from having our official public meetings convened in the name of Buddha, Mohammed, Jehovah, or any other prophet or deity identified with a single faith or religion. What is fortunately just as clear is that Smothers has 3 simple ways to keep us from involving Jesus in a Nifongesque legal brouhaha in Furniture City the likely judicial appeals and media exploitation of which will further provincialize our image and handicap our race with Vegas for the Furniture Market: (1)Permit Pugh to invoke Jesus BEFORE the meeting is officially convened , (which is perfectly OK under the law), or (2) Permit Pugh to invoke Jesus’ name in silent prayer (which is his indisputable right), or (3) continue assigning invocations to non-sectarians and keep this altogether unnecessary and counter-productive Pandora’s box closed.
The “sound” constitutional ground on which Pugh purports to stand is obviously his declared willingness to permit other councilmen the right to invoke the blessing of deities other than Jesus Christ. I’m sure that’ll be happening…right after the Apocalypse. Or, he might argue that Jesus’ having been a Jew makes his invocation of Jesus “non-sectarian” because it is arguably a Judeo-Christian (hence multi-faith) invocation. That line of contention has been tried and, by the Supreme Court of the U.S. soundly rejected. (Just look up and read for yourself the cases herein cited and available on line.)
What might Jesus advise us to do? I think He’s already told us: City Council Meetings are entirely secular affairs–business meetings where we debate and manage our taxes (tribute money), budgets and zoning laws…in other words carry on with the matters of municipal governance. These are matters which Jesus referred to as the affairs of “Caesar” while He pondered the Roman coin of tribute and admonished some tricky politicians in His midst (and us by analogy) to “Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s.” (Matt. 22:21).
I truly believe that just as He tossed the secular money lenders out of His temple, He would advise us to keep our faithful clergy out of our halls of secular governance and in our churches and temples where they belong. I further believe that on this issue, our Constitution, our Supreme Court and our enlightened spiritual leaders are in accord. Let’s keep it that way.
Great job, Mayor Smothers. Please do our town a favor and keep up the good work. City Councilmen, please stand ground and for the sakes of your constituents of all faiths, keep just saying “no” to Pugh’s proposed resolution
Dusty (Robert R.) Schoch is an attorney and writer living in High Point.
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