Issue 2.08
The Editorial We
Not only is every single presidential candidate other than Ron
Paul and Dennis Kucinich unfit for the office of president, they're all unfit to
serve in congress. Every one of the bastards who voted for the Patriot Act and
to give Bush war powers and funding should be tarred and feathered and run out
of Washington on a rail. Yeah, the Democratic candidates are falling all over
themselves apologizing for their past mistakes. Apologies not accepted. No
amount of politically motivated regret can make up for the loss of the lives of
thousands of our American sons and daughters and millions of innocent Iraqis.
They've all got blood on their hands. We've got more respect for the Republicans
who aren't apologizing. At least they're sticking to their misguided
convictions. The apologizing Democrats are openly admitting their incompetence.
Only a fucking idiot wouldn't have known precisely what it meant to give war
powers to a narrow minded cowboy moron like Bush.
NEW THIS WEEK
We're proud to present an exclusive interview with Dennis Kucinich by Michael O'McCarthy and Jennifer Lynne Ziemann. Kucinich seems to have more in common with the Dalai Lama than with any US President past or present. When you hear him express his own spiritual awakening, saying things like "Race, color, creed are just fractions of light through a prism of humanity," you'll know this isn't politics as usual, that he's a man of deep conviction who can't be bought by the corporate raiders currently running our country.
Then David Swanson of afterdowningstreet.org dissects the blatant manipulation of CNN and their outrageous handling of the broadcast debates in Wolf Blitzer Loses Democratic Debate.
You've probably never heard of Natalie Jeremijenko but she's one of the most forward thinkers on the planet, which you'll know for sure after reading From Robotic Sniffer Dogs to Urban Space Stations by Kim Thomas.
On the subject of torture, Keith Olbermann gave one of most magnificent televised rants of all time last week, and Mark Morford went on a rant of his own about the cretins complaining about Olbermann's rant. Check them both out in Rants of the Week.
Bob Zinner was lucky enough to catch John Mayall in concert this week. Zinner's a blues guitarist who has played with Jimi Hendrix, Eric Burton, Johnny Rivers Winters, Leon Russell, Steven Stills, George Duke, and Beck, so you better believe him when he says in his review that you should have been there.
Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi, screenwriter Irv Brecher, Bob Dylan, and George Gurdjieff, all join in the fun too.
NEW THIS WEEK
We're proud to present an exclusive interview with Dennis Kucinich by Michael O'McCarthy and Jennifer Lynne Ziemann. Kucinich seems to have more in common with the Dalai Lama than with any US President past or present. When you hear him express his own spiritual awakening, saying things like "Race, color, creed are just fractions of light through a prism of humanity," you'll know this isn't politics as usual, that he's a man of deep conviction who can't be bought by the corporate raiders currently running our country.
Then David Swanson of afterdowningstreet.org dissects the blatant manipulation of CNN and their outrageous handling of the broadcast debates in Wolf Blitzer Loses Democratic Debate.
You've probably never heard of Natalie Jeremijenko but she's one of the most forward thinkers on the planet, which you'll know for sure after reading From Robotic Sniffer Dogs to Urban Space Stations by Kim Thomas.
On the subject of torture, Keith Olbermann gave one of most magnificent televised rants of all time last week, and Mark Morford went on a rant of his own about the cretins complaining about Olbermann's rant. Check them both out in Rants of the Week.
Bob Zinner was lucky enough to catch John Mayall in concert this week. Zinner's a blues guitarist who has played with Jimi Hendrix, Eric Burton, Johnny Rivers Winters, Leon Russell, Steven Stills, George Duke, and Beck, so you better believe him when he says in his review that you should have been there.
Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi, screenwriter Irv Brecher, Bob Dylan, and George Gurdjieff, all join in the fun too.
COLUMNISTS: David Schoen, Lynette Sheffield, and zEN mAN.
All copyrights reserved by original writers or artists.
Michael Dare
michael@dareland.com
President Dennis Kucinich
Interviewed by Michael O'McCarthy and Jennifer Lynne Ziemann
Interviewed by Michael O'McCarthy and Jennifer Lynne Ziemann
The concert audience of over 1,800
fans in the Thomas Wolfe auditorium Asheville, North Carolina, was stoked. They'd
come to see Ani DiFranco, but when Democratic Presidential Candidate Dennis
Kucinich came on stage just before her set, the audience stood and
roared.
As Kucinich talked about a "Department
of Peace" for foreign and domestic policy, the crowd went crazy as if he were a
rock star, cheering even louder when he called for an end to unfair economic
exploitation of third world people and resources. He was clearly one of the most
humane and deeply spiritual presidential candidates this country has ever seen.
We spoke to him after the concert.
LA FREE PRESS: Tonight's audience loved you.
How do you convert that fervor and that movement into a voting block for
you?
KUCINICH: From a practical standpoint, we
signed up several hundred volunteers tonight, and many more who did not sign up
will go to our website and join the effort. The people will help us work the
internet and do research for us and set up rallies and become not just a part of
this campaign but a movement to take this country in another direction. Ani
attracts that kind of energy.
LA FREE PRESS: Your impeachment of Cheney has
expanded to impeachment of Bush and Cheney. How do you see that playing out? Do
you think there will be hearings or actual charges?
KUCINICH: I think there will be hearings
because the American people are demanding them. The idea of Democratic leaders
saying that impeachment is off the table is not where the American people are.
The House of Representatives is the people‘s house, it does not belong to the
Congress. Congress must assert itself as a political branch of government. To
say that impeachment is off the table when there are manifest crimes that have
been committed is to nullify a section of the Constitution and to obliterate the
one mechanism which exists in the Constitution to correct abuses of power by the
Executive.
This is a very serious matter and a profound principle of
constitutional government checks and balances. The minute that Congress says
under no circumstances will there be an impeachment, you not only forgo
accountability in the part of the Executive but you license further abuses. It
is a very dangerous thing for our leadership to have said that.
You know I am a Democrat, but my love for my country is above my
love for my party, so my country is in trouble right now and I brought those
articles forward in response to a deep and heartfelt concern about the direction
America is going, particularly in respect to an impending attack against Iran.
LA FREE PRESS: Do you believe there will be a
war crimes trial?
KUCINICH: Let’s take it a step at a time in
terms of the various remedies. One is impeachment. There can be no greater
punishment if you happen to be a high elected official, president or
vice-president. You’re removed from office. That may settle it. On the other
hand if the president or vice-president, for whatever reason, will not be
removed from office, I believe they should be subject to criminal prosecution.
If we can’t get criminal prosecution in this country, there are international
laws that they violated. But there is a basis for prosecution under the laws of
the United States. The only problem is I don’t want to go there until I can see
how the impeachment process is going to play itself out. We have to use the
remedies that are available until we exhaust them.
LA FREE PRESS: How do you feel about the
statement "The U.S. does not torture?"
KUCINICH: Well, its an obvious lie - like the
U.S. does not wage aggressive war, and the U.S. does not exploit the natural
resources of other countries, and the history of the U.S. is a story of a
righteous nation that wars with the forces of evil. There are a lot of
mythologies that percolate kind of like methane bubbles up from certain
landfills. Any critical thinking applied to the issue of torture easily discards
the notion that our government has not been involved in torture. Of course it
has. I don't know if the President saw the pictures from Abu Ghraib, I don’t
know if the President saw the pictures out of Guantanamo, but government people
acting upon the orders of government officials have in fact tortured,
period.
LA FREE PRESS: You’re the only candidate that
believes in a true non-profit health care system. If the Senate, Congress, and
the White House have exactly that, why don't the people have it
too?
KUCINICH: One of the grand deceptions of the
2008 campaign involves candidates speaking about universal health care, as
though universal health care was a goal that once achieved will provide
affordable accessible health care to all Americans. While the other candidates
advocate continuation of the for-profit system, they want government to provide
more subsidy to the insurance companies. Under those circumstances,people would
still be stuck with high premiums, co-pays, and deductibles, which are sinking
the budgets of many American families.
Half the bankruptcies in America are tied directly to people not
being able to pay their hospital bills. The bill I co-authored, Hr676, is a
single payer, not for profit system. Medicare for all. This bill provides that
all of the assets in this country that are currently for profit will be
converted into not for profit and the government will pay the bills.
The current system provides that $1 out of every $3 is spent for
corporate profit, stock options, salaries, advertising, marketing, and the cost
of paperwork. According to a Harvard University study, over $700 billion a year
goes just for the for-profit system. I want to take that money and put it back
into health spending and direct care and suddenly we will have enough. Not only
will we have enough money for basic care, we will have enough money for vision
care, dental care, mental health care, prescription drugs and preventative care.
That is how much money is in this system and there will be no more co-pays,
premiums and deductibles. To the extent that the government needs more money to
run such a system is the extent that you would have a moderate increase to the
amount of taxes that are paid and still people will spend only a fraction of the
amount they are paying now.
Some families pay $1000 or more a month. Imagine if you made $50
thousand a year and you paid 1% more in taxes. That would be $500 out of your
gross pay. Let's do the math. Would you rather pay $500 extra in taxes per year
or $12 thousand plus co-pays and deductibles?
This is one of the great corruptions of our campaigns because the
insurance companies have spent tremendous amounts of money in trying to
influence the Democratic primaries. Hillary Clinton is the second highest
recipient of insurance money and John Edwards worked for a hedge fund that is
heavily invested in insurance companies, particularly Humana. Humana is the
fastest growing company supporting the privatization of Medicare. So they are
all out there talking about continuing the for-profit system. It’s just not fair
for the American people.
LA FREE PRESS: Why do you think more of the
progressive community is not out there on your bandwagon?
KUCINICH: I think that is changing, I think
we saw a glimmer of the change that is coming a few days ago when Democracy For
America announced the results for their grass roots internet poll of Democratic
activists. It was the largest poll taken this year on the internet and I came up
first, ahead of Al Gore, Barack Obama, John Edwards, and Hillary Clinton. And I
think that symbolizes the potential of this campaign to be able to tap the
Democratic activist.
And people have had a chance to see all of the candidates now, and
they understand that I am the only one running that voted against the war and
voted against funding the war. People get a chance to study this and as the
elections draw near the awareness is becoming more and more clear.
There is a moral equation here which history, morality and human
decency requires that we look at. What gives the United States of America or our
leaders the right to wage war against innocent people? By what law do we assume
the right to attack Iraq, a nation that did not attack us and had nothing to do
with 9/11 or Al Qaeda's role in 9/11 and neither the intention or the capability
of attacking us? In what right do we assume the ability to launch a grandiose
attack against Iran, using 30,000 lb. bunker busters, dropping them down on
nuclear research labs, which will create Chernobyl in effect? What right do we
have to do this? What right do we have to even think about it?
There is a moral dimension to this that needs to be looked at
because it characterizes our times. We've got leaders that feel they are not
bound by the law, that proceed in a way that is unconscionable, licensed by the
media that becomes complicit in their lack of straightforward analysis and
criticism. Our nation is being stained by this. They don’t get that the Patriot
Acts took away our rights, they all voted for it. Edwards was a co-author. They
don’t get that eavesdropping and wiretapping is against the very fiber of this
country.
LA FREE PRESS: How does being vegan effect
your view of the ecology of humans and other natural life forms?
KUCINICH: Well, it’s a compassionate approach
because you realize the choices that you make and what you eat affect other
beings, other species, which do not exist for our utility but have an inherent
right to exist apart from us. Now people can make the choice about whatever they
want to eat. I’m not running for president to tell people they have to eat their
veggies, okay, but I will share my story. When I changed my diet my health
changed dramatically.
I was a meat and potatoes kind of guy and I was also someone who
had Crohn’s disease. I write about this in the book, that’s out on the stands
right now The Courage to Survive. I had this when I was a child and didn’t even
know it. And every time I ate it was painful and after awhile you think oh,
that’s just part of life. Really, if you have pain every day it becomes your
friend, your companion, you don’t think about not having pain, its just there.
So it wasn’t until I went through some pretty rough times with this, including
some major surgery when I was twenty-one, that I began slowly to think about what
I could change in my life. Well, it took a long time to get there and finally I
met someone who was a vegan, and for the sake of love I changed my diet just
like that. It was a very unusual experience because I would go into a supermarket and it was like learning a new language.
However, when I did that, when I got away from all processed foods,
I got away from sugar, I stopped eating meat, chicken, fish, dairy products. I
stopped having a lot of the symptoms that went with the Crohn’s and when I was
able to get rid of almost everything, the medication I was taking, like the box,
just throw it away literally. Then a couple of years late, I discovered Chinese
medicine and when that happened the symptoms were gone. Ten years and I have not
had a symptom.
And of course, you know, in addition to that I don’t drink, I don’t
smoke and I have never done drugs. So I can look at my life, my body as a vessel
to keep clean and sacred. What I find is my own consciousness is in such a fine
tune place and if I take anything into myself that moves or shifts one way or
another, its just too uncomfortable. I don’t like anything that interferes with
my senses. I like to just be very aware of what’s going on.
LA FREE PRESS: What's your position on the
plague of domestic violence and gender apartheid that’s running rampant in the
US?
KUCINICH: It starts with men’s attitudes
about women, which begin at a very early age. The notion of patriarch helps lend
itself to violence. Violence is learned, and healthy peaceful responses can also
be learned.
The idea behind the "Department of Peace and Non-Violence" is to look
at the range of incidences of violence, violence in America as exemplified by
domestic violence. Any kind of violence at all - spousal abuse, child abuse,
elderly violence - and to look at it passionately but with an eye towards
dealing with it as a social, economical, and political phenomenon through
application of principles of education. It can be changed.
There was plenty of violence in my home, when I grew up, of all
kinds. And yet as you go through life you find there are all kinds of forces that
can tear people apart. So if you take a compassionate approach and you have
available counseling, then you can do something. The thing is to get people to
understanding that they can go somewhere for help. Violence in schools is
prevalent in so many places, but they're nothing but a reflection of the outside
society. It really is a macrocosm of war perpetuating violence in any level of
society, it just accelerates, it's an accelerant on all violence everywhere,
every level.
Those forces unleash themselves in ways that cause destruction
everywhere. You know Margaret Mead studied the islands in the South Seas; she
found cultures that were non-violent. We learn violence; we can learn
non-violent responses.
How can you tell people not to be violent when the nation in which
they are a part wages war against innocent people?
LA FREE PRESS: How would you describe your
view on class discrimination and separation?
KUCINICH: It’s inherent in the capitalist
system.
LA FREE PRESS: How do you hope to make a
change when basically you have the entire corporate state against
you?
KUCINICH: I don’t take that personal. You
have to show people that acceleration of wealth upwards is not in their
interest. Various Americans have lost their homes because of the corruption on
Wall Street and the indifference of the Federal Reserve. They lost it through
sub prime loans that shouldn’t have been written in the first place. They lost
it because the government was a cop that went off the beat while the Security
Exchange Commission and hedge funds were booking huge values from people writing
these mortgages without documentation and every one is making money off the
increased value for the investors, more loans booked, more investors you have,
the more the portfolio value grows. People make a lot of money and nobody can
pay these things off and everything unravels. Oil companies are ripping off the
American people; the government is pocketing profits. We’re at war for oil.
My responsibility is to help people make the connections to the
reality of how this affects their own life. I have the ability to do that
because of my life experience, because of the way I grew up, because I
understand what people go through, because I know that for most people having a
roof over their head is what’s important.
LA FREE PRESS: This country was founded on
genocide and lack of respect for people of color. Do you see that endemic to the
foreign policy of the United States? Can you ever see a truly bicultural and
binational policy that treats all people on the planet with
respect?
KUCINICH: Well the Euro-centric world, which
our founders have broke away from, became the Ameri-centric world which has been
a challenge for observers of America to be able to stomach. It’s inherent
arrogance that has separated us from the world. That’s why I speak of the
imperative of unity.
Never before have we had such a technical infrastructure in our
society where it is demonstrably true that the world is interconnected. Once
we come to a place where we acknowledge that we are all in this together, that
we have brothers and sisters in every part of the world, that we are responsible
for each other, then we have an opportunity to begin.
What’s happened is that there is a split in our awareness. By
disassociating ourselves from others we split our own consciousness, we separate
ourselves from ourselves, from our inner sense of knowingness and humanity, and
we lose our moorings, we are adrift. But when we come to understanding unity,
there is forgiveness, love, real deep love that we have never experienced
before. When we touch that, a powerful transformation takes place, and we will
achieve a level of connection with people; the whole world will fall in love
with America all over again.
Until we understand the current of human unity, we will never be
able to reconcile with the Muslim world; we will always be separate. That a
million innocent Iraqis could have perished in this war without a cry of a
heart, without an outrage on a level that would cry to the heavens is really
destructive because what it tells is that the same kind of racism that permitted
the theft of lands from Native Americans, that destroyed their culture, that led
to black people being put in slave galleys destroying their families and their
culture, that led to systematic discrimination in this country, that still
exists today. It led to the bombing of Iraq and could lead to the bombing of
Iran. It could all change if we understand that regardless of what anyone would
tell us, we are all essentially made of the same stuff. Race, color, creed are
just fractions of light through a prism of humanity.
Kucinich and Ani DiFranco
Wolf Blitzer Loses Democratic Debate
By David Swanson
By David Swanson
That does it.
It's time for the Democratic Party to stage its own debate, ask its own
questions, and offer the video to networks as a completed package.
Allowing CNN to not just air a debate but to ask the questions proved
on Thursday night (even more dramatically than in the past) to be a
soul sickening disaster.
A serious
debate would begin by asking each candidate (including Mike Gravel, who
was locked out of the room) what he or she would do if elected
president. Thursday's debate in the opening 30 minutes had me longing
for even the level of honesty and substance of the MSNBC debate hosted
by Keith Olbermann in Soldier Field some months back, at which
Olbermann managed the superhuman feat of asking things like "Would you
cancel NAFTA?"
On Thursday
Wolf Blitzer devoted the first 20 minutes to goading Clinton and Obama
into bashing each other over how they have run their campaigns. Edwards
was given a token 60 seconds to join the fight. At 8:18 (the debate
began at 8:00 p.m. ET) Biden was permitted to add his two cents. At
8:20, Edwards was asked to bash Clinton from another angle. He took the
bait, but then turned to the topic of poverty, in open violation of
WB's rules. (Blitzer had announced at the start that candidates would
not be permitted to stray from the topics of the questions asked.) At
8:23 Dodd got to speak, still on the debate over the debate. At 8:24
Richardson was allowed to add to the same substance-free topic. He
introduced himself to the crowd as a way of registering his
disastisfaction with being ignored for 24 minutes.
At 8:26, with
Kucinich not having had the opportunity to say one word, CNN asked all
the candidates to say whether they would support the Democratic nominee
no matter what. They all said yes, except for Kucinich, who took the
opportunity to say 10 words, receiving huge applause. His words were:
"Only if they oppose war as an instrument of policy." A little vaguely
worded, but I don't think that vagueness was Kucinich's intention. I
think his intention was to contrast his own position with that of most
of the other people on the stage. If he is not nominated, he is not
going to be able to support the nominee.
Half an hour
into this train wreck, no candidate had had an opportunity to speak to
their priorities, but we heard a lot about CNN's. At 8:27 CNN asked
Obama about immigration. At 8:29 WB dumbed this down and asked all the
candidates for opinions on giving drivers' licenses to undocumented
people. At 8:32 Kucinich got a chance to say his 11th word. He shifted
the topic to NAFTA and took exception to the stupid question, refusing
to answer it, winning loud applause.
Then CNN
started asking various candidates about education, and for the first
time asked Kucinich a non yes/no question. But instead of sticking with
education, the topic of the questions before and after Kucinich's, WB
asked Kucinich what he disagrees with labor unions on. Kucinich's
answer was good, but not inspired. Maybe after 37 minutes, the
Congressman had drifted off into daydreaming.
After
education, CNN asked every candidate except Kucinich about Pakistan. At
the end of this segment, at 8:52, Kucinich said "Hello? Hello?" But CNN
refused to ask him a question.
Next CNN
turned to Iraq, and this time Kucinich was included. He said that
Congress should cut off the funding [big applause]. Then he answered
the Pakistan question that CNN had refused to ask him. Blitzer quickly
cut him off.
At 8:58, CNN
came back to Kucinich on China trade, and he nailed it. And he
criticized Edwards for having voted for normal trade relations with
China. Edwards dodged the question. And Edwards criticized NAFTA,
although he has made clear he will not end it. WB asked Clinton whether
NAFTA was a mistake. She answered by talking about Chinese pet food. He
asked again, and Clinton said NAFTA did not deliver on what she had
hoped it would do. Dodd criticized Clinton and Obama for supporting the
Peruvian trade agreement.
At 9:07 CNN's
"clean coal" sponsored debate turned to energy questions. By this
point, even Obama was criticizing WB for repeatedly framing questions
along the lines of "Assuming we can't find a serious solution, what
should we do about ...?" Criticism of WB was becoming the easiest way
to garner applause. Richardson also rejected WB's frame and shifted the
topic to renewable energy. CNN quickly brought the blather back to
nonsense and specifically the topic of Hillary Clinton being a woman.
The second
half of the debate included pre-arranged questions from non-CNN
employees. The first question came from a 3-tour Iraq veteran and his
mother. He said he wanted the troops brought home now and not sent to
Iran. She asked what the candidates would do now to prevent an attack
on Iran. But CNN only allowed Biden, Clinton, Edwards, and Obama to
answer. Clinton talked "carrots and sticks," while the rest of them
criticized her vote to name the Quds force "terrorists." But Biden
broke from the script in a surprising way.
"If Bush
takes the country to war in Iran without an act of Congress," Biden
said, "then he should be impeached!" [applause]
Richardson
said something useful on the next question: he'd end the occupation by
2010. But Kucinich was not given the opportunity to say he'd end it in
2008.
When WB
finally turned to Kucinich, rewording an audience member's question, he
said "You were the only one who voted against the PATRIOT Act..."
"That's because I read it," Kucinich interjected to huge applause.
Kucinich
nailed the question and turned to the topic of preventing an attack on
Iran as well. WB saw what was coming and tried to cut him off, but
Kucinich said "Impeach them now!" [huge applause]
Them. He did not say Cheney only.
Kucinich was only permitted to speak that one time during the debate's entire second hour.
A few
questions later, Biden got applause for refusing to answer a CNN
question and insisting that he would answer the question of the
audience member.
Biden also
said he had a plan to end the war that could begin the day he becomes
president, a promise made by most of the candidates on the stage. If an
intelligent moderator were asking the questions at these debates, the
fact that the Senate now faces a vote on another $50 billion for the
occupation would have come up, and the fact that neither Biden nor
Obama nor Clinton nor Dodd is willing to filibuster it would have been
brought up. Instead, the entire debate included no mention of
Wednesday's vote in the House or the upcoming vote in the Senate. A
moderator who loves to catch candidates in even the most trivial
contradictions had not one word to say about the topic of funding an
occupation they all claim to want to end.
Instead, time was found for an audience member to ask Clinton whether she "prefers diamonds or pearls."
Wolf Blitzer lost this one. The ranks of non-voters probably won.
Reprinted with permission from afterdowningstreet.org.
Take Our Poll
From Robotic Sniffer Dogs to Urban Space Stations
by Kim Thomas
by Kim Thomas
Natalie Jeremijenko’s work defies categorisation. She
has an extraordinarily varied background, having studied a range of subjects
including neuroscience, biochemistry, engineering and computer science. She is a
visiting professor at the Royal College of Art in London and has been a lecturer
in Yale’s mechanical engineering department. Currently she is Director of the
Environmental Health Clinic at New York University, which takes a radically new
approach to environmental problems. So what is the Environmental Health Clinic? Natalie says
that the most common approach to tackling global warming is a passive one built
around the idea of consuming less: “The whole idea of building a social movement
around environmentalism that is based on ‘Drive less, use less paper, turn off
your lights’, is Calvinistic and moralistic. It’s a really uninteresting way of
approaching it.”
By contrast, the clinic takes an active approach to
environmental problems in which individuals are personally responsible for
specific interventions. It’s modelled very closely on a health clinic, says
Natalie: “The clinic treats environmental issues as they relate to health, and
health issues as they relate to the environment. Environmental issues are now
global enough to be newsworthy, but they’re not local enough to be actionable,
so no-one can claim to address global warming because one’s efforts to do so
would be at best marginal and at worst irrelevant.”
People come to the clinic with a local environmental
issue that they’re concerned about, and walk away with a prescription to do
something about it. Visitors to the clinic are known as ‘impatients’, says
Natalie, because “they are people who are too impatient to wait for bureaucratic
or legislative change.” Often these are teachers, students or community groups
wanting to tackle a particular local problem such as pollution or poor indoor
air quality. The ‘impatients’ are expected to collect data about their results
and maintain a record of progress, and, in the same way that a patient might be
referred on to a specialist, the impatients are often referred on to
environmental organisations they can work with.
Some of the activities Natalie prescribes are ones she
has developed in her years as an engineer, scientist and environmental activist.
One ‘prescription’, called NoPark, is aimed at tackling pollution by optimising
the use of roads where there are no-parking zones. Participants remove the
asphalt from the gutter and plant greenery, such as mosses, grasses, and
flowers, that can absorb carbon dioxide and other carbon waste. No-parking zones
are often situated in areas where water collects, and the plants capture the
oily run-off from the road before it runs into the river. They also replenish
soil moisture that is important to nearby trees, and reduce the number of pools
of standing water that attract mosquitoes. As Natalie says, the project turns
the no-parking zone into “a micro-engineered landscape that remediates the local
environmental conditions”.
Natalie’s ideas are often characterised by playfulness
and a sense of fun – quite contrary to the often austere spirit of the
environmentalist movement. Another prescription impatients might walk away with
is that of releasing ‘feral’ robotic dogs. The US, says Natalie, is full of
contaminated brownfield sites: 350 schools are located on or within half a mile
of a contaminated site. The robotic dogs are a way of collecting data on this
contamination and drawing public attention to it.
In the activity devised by Natalie, participants
(usually students or groups of schoolchildren) remove the legs from the
commercially available dogs, add wheels, and give them new ‘brains’ and new
‘noses’ that enable them to sniff out toxins. “We do a pack release of feral
robotic dogs on the site of contamination, and we invite local politicians and
other stakeholders to watch what the dogs do,” says Natalie.
Whenever there has been a release of the robotic dogs,
it has been attended by local newspapers and television stations, and the dogs
have collected data that can be collated and analysed. Instead of being a
specialist scientific activity, the collection of data on contaminants becomes a
universally accessible one: “The activity renders it legible to non-scientists
who are equally exposed to these contaminants; a 2 year-old and 92 year-old can
understand what’s going on.”
Her latest project, launched this month, is the ‘urban
space station’, a kind of greenhouse that sits on top of an urban roof. “It
takes advantage of the closed system design that has been developed for space
stations,” says Natalie. “Space stations have to operate with very few
resources; they have to recycle all their resources to survive.”
The urban space station works on the same principle. The
plants in the space station use the CO2 produced by the building’s heating and
air-conditioning to grow. In turn, they produce oxygen for the building’s
inhabitants to breathe. It solves the problem all buildings have, which is that
they have to take fresh air from the outside, increasing heating costs. And
‘fresh’ air, of course, is often not fresh at all, but full of pollutants.
Natalie is currently eager to find UK schools that will adopt the space
stations.
This is just a taste of the many inventive and
imaginative projects Natalie has devised: others include solar awnings, robotic
geese, and the One Tree project, in which she planted 100 genetically identical
trees in different microclimates around the San Francisco Bay area, to pinpoint
the impact the environment has on the development of the trees. She is
passionate about the need to educate science and engineering students about the
social context and impact of their disciplines: one project she gives her
students requires them to follow one particular item, such as the American flag,
through the manufacturing process, so that they both understand how things are
made and learn to think about how to reduce the environmental impact of the
process.
It’s impossible to talk to Natalie without feeling
inspired and hopeful about the possibilities of environmentalism. Instead of the
guilt-inducing message of many environmental activists, Natalie is keen to show
that we can all make a difference and we can all be scientists. Some of us can’t
wait to see what she comes up with next.
Reprinted with permission of
Rants of the Week
"I know how it is. You've had it up to here. There
are only so many stories about blood and death and pain you can take, only so
many times you can hear about random shootings and corporate malfeasance and how
BushCo's squad of scabrous flying monkeys have, say, supported torture or
endorsed wiretapping or gouged the nation for another $200 billion to pay for a
failed war. Your nerves are raw and your heart is tired and the media will just
not shut the hell up already about the sadness and the war and the mayhem and
the Cheney and the doom doom doom.
"It is outrage fatigue, and it is epidemic. It's
that feeling that we are being hammered unlike any time in recent history with
so many appalling and disgusting and violently un-American incidents and
scandals and manipulations that our b.s.-detectors are smoking like an old V-8
engine on a hot summer's day and it's all we can do to get up every day without
screaming.
"What's more, it's not the mere quantity of moral
insults, either. It's the bizarre absurdity of the subject matter, the things we
are being forced to consider, or reconsider, that seem to make it all so
horrific.
"Torture? Are you kidding? Allegedly the most civilized, the most morally aware nation on the planet and we are still debating, in the highest courts and government offices in the land, about whether the United States should strap human beings to gnarled metal benches in rancid foreign bunkers and inflict such inexplicable terror and fear upon them that they confess to things they didn't even do just to get us to stop? Is this the Middle Ages? Are we regressing back to the goddamn cave?
"Oh my, yes, plethoric are the reasons you should be outraged indeed, and torture just might be one of the most incendiary reasons in the past few years. If nothing else, its disgusting return to U.S. political dialogue certainly means it's no time to be laying down arms in exhaustion, no matter how tempting it might be.
"Take this fine example: Keith Olbermann, as is his wont, executed another pitch-perfect bout of outrage recently on his excellent MSNBC show, taking BushCo to task on the issue of waterboarding like you never hear in major on-air media anymore...
"Torture? Are you kidding? Allegedly the most civilized, the most morally aware nation on the planet and we are still debating, in the highest courts and government offices in the land, about whether the United States should strap human beings to gnarled metal benches in rancid foreign bunkers and inflict such inexplicable terror and fear upon them that they confess to things they didn't even do just to get us to stop? Is this the Middle Ages? Are we regressing back to the goddamn cave?
"Oh my, yes, plethoric are the reasons you should be outraged indeed, and torture just might be one of the most incendiary reasons in the past few years. If nothing else, its disgusting return to U.S. political dialogue certainly means it's no time to be laying down arms in exhaustion, no matter how tempting it might be.
"Take this fine example: Keith Olbermann, as is his wont, executed another pitch-perfect bout of outrage recently on his excellent MSNBC show, taking BushCo to task on the issue of waterboarding like you never hear in major on-air media anymore...
Keith Olbermann's
Special Commentary on Waterboarding
"Olbermann only barely held on to his trademark fierce hyper-articulation against the sheer disgust he/we have to endure at the idea that a sitting American president obviously thinks medieval torture is a gul-dang swell idea, no matter what psychologists, military experts, ethicists, the United Nations, the Geneva Convention and Jesus himself all say.
"It was wonderful, powerful stuff, a razor-sharp, highly informed media pundit who dares to presume an unusually high level of intelligence among his viewers, speaking truth to power in a way most liberal media-haters complain never really happens anymore. And of course, his subject was one of the most deserving of our moral outrage in recent history."
For the rest of this spectacular rant about Keith
Olbermann's spectactular rant, see Mark Morford: Outrage
fatigue? Get over it. Are you sick of being sick? Suffering way too much
Bush-induced nausea? Well, tough.
|
Good News
"November 16, 2007 -
In what seems to be a sign of slowly relenting to the onslaught of the
United Nations and the international community, the Burmese military
junta on Thursday released 75 detainees including six political
activists. The release comes in the wake of the departure of UN rights
envoy Paulo Sergio Pinheiro after a five-day probe into the junta's
repressive handling of the protests by monks and the people.
"The six activists – Tun Lin Kyaw, Thet Naung, Phone Aung, Ma Yi Yi Win, Thein Naing Oo, and a sixth who is still unidentified – were freed along with 69 other detainees on Thursday afternoon, after the Human Rights expert Paulo Sergio Pinheiro concluded his trip to Burma. "Tun Lin Kyaw, one of the activists freed from the notorious Insein prison in Rangoon, told Mizzima, 'We were released at about 11 a.m. Among those freed were 60 men and 15 women including six of us, who are active politically.'" - Ko Dee: Six political prisoners, 75 others freed after UN rights expert leaves Burma - SINGAPORE - Following is the text of the statement by Myanmar opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, released Thursday by U.N. envoy Ibrahim Gambari.  "I wish to thank all those
who have stood by my side all this time, both inside and outside my country. I
am also grateful to the Secretary-General of the United Nations, Mr. Ban
Ki-moon, for his unwavering support for the cause of national reconciliation,
democracy and human rights in my country.
"I welcome the appointment
on 8 October of Minister Aung Kyi as Minister for Relations. Our first meeting
on 25 October was constructive and I look forward to further regular
discussions. I expect that this phase of preliminary consultations will conclude
soon so that a meaningful and timebound dialogue with the SPDC leadership can
start as early as possible.
"In the interest of the
nation, I stand ready to cooperate with the Government in order to make this
process of dialogue a success and welcome the necessary good offices role of the
United Nations to help facilitate our efforts in this regard.
"In full awareness of the
essential role of political parties in democratic societies, in deep
appreciation of the sacrifices of the members of my party and in my position as
General Secretary, I will be guided by the policies and wishes of the National
League for Democracy. However, in this time of vital need for democratic
solidarity and national unity, it is my duty to give constant and serious
considerations to the interests and opinions of as broad a range of political
organizations and forces as possible, in particular those of our ethnic
nationality races.
"To that end, I am
committed to pursue the path of dialogue constructively and invite the
Government and all relevant parties to join me in this spirit.
"I believe that stability,
prosperity and democracy for my country, living at peace with itself and with
full respect for human rights, offers the best prospect for my country to fully
contribute to the development and stability of the region in close partnership
with its neighbors and fellow ASEAN members, and to play a positive role as a
respected member of the international community."
|
Bad News
"On November 11,
2007, according to the Associated Press, Donald Kerr, Deputy Director
of National Intelligence, proposed that U.S. citizens rethink their
definition of privacy. Instead of privacy meaning 'secluded from public
view' or 'free from intrusion,' we are now being told that privacy
should be thought of as 'government, and businesses, properly
safeguarding our private communications and financial information.'
Should corporations have a hand in governing and monitoring our
privacy? Where are the checks and balances in this fascist scenario?
Does it still sound like 'We the People' are in charge?
"USA Today recently published two interesting articles about the 'terrorist watch list.' It appears that the watch list has more than 755,000 names on it, and apparently there are even infants on this list. Of those people, around 53,000 have been questioned since 2004. Do the math! That isn’t even ten percent of the total! With that many potential targets, you would think they would put someone in charge of interviewing those people, so they can clear as many names off of the list as possible. "There have been approximately 15,000 people file appeals to have their names removed from the list since February 2007. Lisa Graves, of the Center for National Security Studies, says, 'There is no rational, reasonable estimate that there’s anywhere close to that many suspected terrorists.' This, according to her, '…undermines the authority of the list.' Senator Joe Lieberman has stated there are some major strides to be taken '…if (the list) is to be as effective as we need it to be.' If effectiveness is so critical, why, in late 2007, do we still have almost three quarters of a million people on the terrorist watch list? " "In December 2006, a UCLA student, Mostafa Tabatabainejad, was reading in the school library when asked for his ID by Campus Police. What happened next should horrify free citizens everywhere. The campus police left and he finished up his reading. As Tabatabainejad was leaving the library, he was stopped by Campus Police and eventually tasered for not complying with the request to show his ID. And, he was tasered multiple times. Some say he deserved it for not showing his ID, while others hold fast to the notion that a 'show me your papers society' was bad for Germany back in the 1930’s and it’s bad for America now. Why, in the United States, should we be forced under penalty of torture to show our papers to anyone? Is that privacy? Is that freedom?" - Debbie Lewis: The USA PATRIOT Act: Redefining American Principles - "It is alleged that Falun Gong
practitioners are victims of live organ harvesting throughout China. The
allegation is that organ harvesting is inflicted on unwilling Falun Gong
practitioners at a wide variety of locations, pursuant to a systematic policy,
in large numbers.
"Organ harvesting is a step in organ transplants.
The purpose of organ harvesting is to provide organs for transplants.
Transplants do not necessarily have to take place in the same place as the
location of the organ harvesting. The two locations are often different; organs
harvested in one place are shipped to another place for transplanting.
"The allegation is further that the organs are
harvested from the practitioners while they are still alive. The practitioners
are killed in the course of the organ harvesting operations or immediately
thereafter. These operations are a form of murder.
"Finally, we are told that the practitioners killed
in this way are then cremated. There is no corpse left to examine to identify as
the source of an organ transplant."
- David Matas, Esq. and Hon. David Kilgour, Esq.: Bloody
Harvest: Revised
Report into Allegations of Organ Harvesting of Falun Gong Practitioners in
China -
"Here's a sobering thought: Hundreds of
bottles of Jack Daniel's whiskey, some of it almost 100 years old, may be
unceremoniously poured down a drain because authorities suspect it was being
sold by someone without a license.
"Officials seized 2,400 bottles late last month during warehouse raids in Nashville and Lynchburg, the southern Tennessee town where the whiskey is distilled. "'Punish the person, not the whiskey,' said an outraged Kyle MacDonald, 28, a Jack Daniel's drinker from British Columbia who promotes the whiskey on his blog. 'Jack never did anything wrong, and the whiskey itself is innocent.' "Investigators are also looking into whether some of the bottles had been stolen from the distillery. No one has been arrested." - Joe Edwards: Historic Whiskey Could Go Down Drain - |
Aung San Soo Kyi's Son Accepting the Nobel Peace Prize in her Behalf
The War on Plants
Thursday, November 29, Indio: Preliminary Hearing for Gary Silva
Gary Silva will have a state criminal preliminary hearing on Monday, the 29th. In March 2006, DEA agents and Riverside County Sheriffs raided Gary Silva's small medical marijuana collective cultivation site outside of Palm Desert, California. After hearing a knock at the the door, as Silva (who uses marijuana for degenerative disk disease and nerve damage) went to open it, DEA agents violently kicked in the door, dislocating Silva's shoulder, causing lacerations to his face, sending him to the emergency room of a local hospital. The DEA confiscated fewer than 80 plants from the private multi-patient collective, as well as patient records and equipment, arresting no one and assuring Silva that he would not be charged at all unless he began another cultivation. However, the DEA later turned the evidence over to Riverside County, and the county District Attorney charged him in state court with 2 counts of felony cultivation and 3 counts of firearms possession. After several continuances, the judge will finally hear Silva's Motion to Dismiss and decide whether to dismiss all state charges or hold him over for trial. Silva has also served a summons and complaint regarding his personal injury to the Riverside County Board of Supervisors, the Riverside County Sheriff's Department, and several individual DEA agents. Please come out to Gary's hearing to show the judge that he is part of our community and we stand behind him. For more information, see this blog post by Julian Ayrs.
The complaint alleges that on the morning of March 14th, 2006, "Defendants and each of them knowingly and willingly deprived plaintiffs of the right of privacy, the right to security of the person from unreasonable and unjustified force, and bodily injury, freedom from cruel and unusual punishment, and the right to due process of Law."
The complaint states, defendants should have known, "...or reasonably known that unreasonable force was being used against the Plaintiffs as they willfully and knowingly failed to intevene, interfere with, or try to stop or prevent the use of such excessive force."
When: November 29, 2007 at 8:30am .
Where: Justice Center, 46200 Oasis St., Indio, CA
Please call the courthouse at to check that the trial is on at (760) 863-8206.
For more information, contact Sonnet: Sonnet@AmericansforSafeAccess.org
AmericansForSafeAccess.org
End the Drug War Draft
Screenwriter Irv Brecher on the WGA
Strike
(check out his credits)
Why We Fight
(The WGA that is)
(The WGA that is)
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