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THE COST OF GOING GREEN MAY ACTUALLY BE NEW BOOM ECONOMY
THROUGH EXISTING ECONOMIC STRUCTURES & TECHNOLOGICAL SYSTEMS, WE CAN FUND THE ECOTECH REVOLUTION 11 November 2007 Ecological advancement and retro-fitting will be the new boom economy. Let's make sure we do everything possible to fund not only research, but implementation. What will it cost to produce an environmentally-oriented overhaul of the US economy, by way of the private sector, with government incentives, and to the ever-growing benefit of private sector interests? [Full Story] WHY MUSHARRAF'S USE OF FORCE AGAINST CIVIL REFORMERS IS DANGEROUS FOR PAKISTAN, THE REGION When Pervez Musharraf came to power in a military coup d'état in 1999, he promised to restore democracy fully within 3 years' time. Symbolic elections were held under a temporary constitution, beginning his first 5-year reign. Now, under a civilian constitution, Musharraf has been re-elected to a 2nd 5-year term, though the Supreme Court was about to issue a ruling on the legitimacy of his re-election, as he had not relinquished control of the military. [Full Story] WEAK DOLLAR IS CANARY IN PROVERBIAL ECONOMIC COAL MINE Americans living overseas see the front edge of the dollar collapse. Life in Europe seems to be twice as expensive as just a few years ago, as Euro-driven price-inflation meets the rapid drop in the value of the dollar against major currencies, like the Euro and the British Pound Sterling. Americans at home are facing higher food prices, higher fuel costs, and an overall slowdown in home-buying. [Full Story] WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO 'LAWS ON THE BOOKS' CONSERVATISM? American conservatives, from ideologues to the everyman on the street, have long touted the notion that government powers should not be expanded, that the US Constitution contemplates a small, limited role for government in American life, and that what is needed to address society's ills is not the enactment of new laws, but enforcement of the "laws already on the books". But the 21st century has seen a radical departure from that philosophy among conservative politicians in Washington, DC. [Full Story] EL 4 DE JULIO, CON LA ESPERANZA DEBIDA Es el 4 de julio y en mi país, todo el mundo está de fiesta. Hay personas que no pueden dejar de trabajar, enfermeras, policías, pero la celebración inunda el paisaje social. Se celebra: la independencia colonial, la teoría de la democracia, en momentos sinceros también la realidad de la democracia, lo que se quiere vivir, la familia y los seres queridos, el lujo del combustible cada vez menos asequible, el hecho de que hoy, no trabajan ni los bancos ni los políticos. [Texto completo] VANDALS SHOULD NOT DICTATE CULTURE OR BE THE MEASURE OF CURRENT EVENTS We are living with a general malaise on all sides in these times, and we are treating it with too much aplomb and not enough courage. Three nights ago in Barcelona, Spain, one of the great iconic works of the city was attacked by a group of senselessly angry (as if by profession) young people, an entirely destructive and inadequate expression of something that is perhaps more ego-driven than anyone suspects. [Full Story] EL PODER LEGÍTIMO NO PUEDE APOYARSE EN EL EJERCICIO DESNUDO DE LA FUERZA El gran fallo en el ejercicio desnudo del poder es la injusta e ilógica esperanza de que no puede haber reacción o de que no haya reacción inspirada en un sentido de la justicia. El hecho es que cualquier ser humano, en estado emocional e intelectual sano, tendrá que reaccionar ante cualquier violación de su ámbito social o familiar por una violencia ajena. [Texto completo] IT'S NOT JOHN McCAIN'S COMPROMISE TO MAKE It was quite rightly John McCain's fight to demand that the US government never, under any circumstances, sanction or engage in torture. That doesn't mean he is ethically free to compromise on how much abuse is tolerable or whether due process can be pushed aside in favor of extreme interrogations and rigged prosecutions. Allowing any information obtained via banned abusive techniques to be presented as evidence, or sanctioning past cases of torture, erodes US constitutional principles and violates a basic moral obligation each human individual has to all others. [Full Story] SECRET PRISONS & COERCIVE INTERROGATIONS UNDERMINE AMERICAN DEMOCRACY Until 12 days ago, the Bush administration maintained that there were no secret CIA-run "black-sites", extralegal prison camps where accused terror suspects were held incommunicado and beyond any judicial process. On 6 September, Pres. Bush admitted to constructing and managing the prison system through the CIA, and now his government is demanding that Congress sanction a system which circumvents Constitutional law and permits "alternative" methods of coercive interrogation, presently banned under international law. [Full Story] ALL VOTES MUST BE COUNTED, ALWAYS It is no secret that Mexico's electoral system is undergoing a period of extreme strain and an important test of resilience. While the ruling PAN party's candidate Felipe Calderón enjoys a narrow but contested lead, challenger López Obrador seeks to effect at least a full hand-count of all ballots cast, or a reversal of the election results on the grounds of fraud. The stickiest part of the controversy is what justifies examining only a small percentage of the contested ballots. [Full Story] FEAR ENDANGERS BY DECEIVING The fear and uneasiness that provokes human beings to conflict is never what it seems to be; that is its nature and its method: to take hold by way of complex deceptions. Fear wages a coup d'esprit by deceiving the mind into thinking it promises clarity and intellectual comfort, peace of mind, justice and the healing of wounds, that it may actually generate the only feasible path to physical or political safety. [Full Story] 'AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH' BRINGS SCIENCE TO THE FORE IN ENVIRONMENTAL POLITICS For a long time, conventional wisdom dictated that environmental issues were political in nature, and a matter of preference or opinion. The landmark documentary 'An Inconvenient Truth' demonstrates conscientiously that the issue is beyond politics. The film takes pains to show that while priorities —and opinions about them— are at issue, not making ecological sustainability a top priority is not only foolish, but morally unjustifiable. [Full Story] PRESS FREEDOM IS EVERYONE'S FREEDOM The freedom of the press is the freedom of the American people. Not its guarantor, not a metaphorical representation of freedom as an idea, not even merely a mainstay of a free system. A free and independent press is American liberty at work, building and defending itself against the slide toward secret or arbitrary exercise of power, as conceived within or beyond the legal process. [Full Story] SCIENCE ABOVE TECHNOCRACY, FOR A FULLER FUTURE Science is in many ways an artform, but it is specifically and most importantly, the art of knowledge. It is not philosophy, not a study of how knowledge comes about, what it is, whether it can be trusted or whether we need to adjust our thinking; it is, instead, a direct study of the natural world, its tendencies, its evidence, and its capacity to work with us, for us and around us. [Full Story] CLIMATE OF SECRECY PUTS DEMOCRATIC PRINCIPLES IN BACK SEAT An insistence on near absolute secrecy threatens to undermine two vital elements of the security of the United States: 1) the democratic process itself, without which there can be no system to secure; 2) the intellectual dissent which is necessary to enforce truly reasoned thinking in planning of operations and information analysis. [Full Story] PORQUE SOMOS UNA NACIÓN DE INMIGRANTES La democracia de Estados Unidos obliga a que se tolere y se acepte la inmigración. Es una verdad irrefutable e irrefrenable que ha sido y sigue siendo una nación de inmigrantes, una nación imaginada, alcanzada y construida por inmigrantes. Es una sociedad fundada en el trabajo y gracias a los esfuerzos, a veces extraordinarios, los ideales y la paciencia de ola tras ola de inmigrantes de todo el mundo, en colaboración más o menos explícita con los habitantes ya oriundos del país. [Texto completo] TOURISTS SHOULD SPEND THEIR MONEY WISELY Tourists are often and well advised to always be aware that areas which favor tourists also often contain "tourist traps", set up specifically to wrest more than the going rate from unsuspecting and often giddy or jetlagged outsiders. A traveler's advice to fellow travelers would be: responsible tourism shouldn't aid in the disintegration of local neighborhoods or the extreme distortion of basic living costs... [Full Story] OUR COLLECTIVE STUDY OF THE UNIVERSE People want to believe what their friends, neighbors, teachers, political representatives tell them. They will express skepticism, and they will be brash and indignant about public scandals or about dubious claims, but ultimately, they err on the side of credulity. The human being in society, is able to suspend disbelief and participate in sometimes elaborate fantasies, in the interests of sustaining the feeling of belonging to the ongoing project to understand the universe we inhabit... [Full Essay] NOT ALL POLITICS IS OPINION Shortly after publishing yesterday's lead story, referring to a speech by former US vice president Al Gore as a "non-partisan" event, I received a complaint from a Bush supporter, upset by the "partisan" nature of such a report. It is simply not true, however, that all text and all language are opinion. That bias gives rise to a radical perversion of the "fairness doctrine", whereby all stories, no matter how evidentially sound, must include reference to at least one assertion that contradicts the lead story, no matter how evidentially void this oppposing assertion. [Full Story] CAN 'SHOOT-TO-KILL' BE LEGALLY JUSTIFIED AS A BLANKET SECURITY TACTIC? Media coverage related to the shooting of an innocent man on the boarding jetway to a Miami American Airlines flight has failed to take into account the most crucial questions. Why is "shoot-to-kill" necessary if agents are properly and adequately trained to use firearms and can "shoot-to-incapacitate"? This is the key question in the case of the American Airlines air marshal shooting, in which Rigoberto Alpízar, apparently suffering from bipolar disorder, was killed, despite being unarmed. [Full Story] WHY THE McCAIN AMENDMENT MUST BECOME LAW Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain's anti-torture amendment proposes that "No individual in the custody or under the physical control of the United States Government, regardless of nationality or physical location, shall be subject to cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment"... at a time when the US system of laws is in dire need of a clear definition of official policy on torture limits. [Full Story]
ECONOMY OF ERRORS: HOW ABUNDANCE MAY BRING SCARCITY The global economy in its present form is not only full of and forced to deal with problematic distortions; it has come to depend a great deal on the "bubble" effect of certain miscalculations and manipulations. Assumptions built into weak threads in the economic web mean that markets are not able to set prices or distribute wealth at sustainable levels. [Full Story] FEAR NOT THE ACT OF VOTING (FEAR ITS BEING WILLFULLY DIMINISHED) 51.3% of the voting age population of the United States took part in the 2000 presidential vote. That was 3.8% less than in 1992, and 11.8% lower than in the 1960 presidential election. But in between, there has been a consistent pattern of turnout under 60%, a disturbing if enigmatic aspect of American political life. Some have said it means the US is a democracy without the people. And polls show that a significant majority of American citizens believe the government does not represent their interests. As such, there is an urgent need to understand the psychological motivations for resisting the right to choose one's government. [Full Story] ELECTION HOME STRETCH: MOMENTUM OR MOMENT The US Presidential election is now in its final stage. There has yet to be any major "October surprise", and the two candidates are said to be in a dead heat, according to most polls. Some newspapers and polling organizations are reporting that John Kerry has opened a notable lead in key swing states, which could tilt the Electoral College to him, even if George W. Bush wins more popular votes, a possible reversal of 2000. [Full Story]
TRUTH, FICTION & 'FAHRENHEIT' The political story of the week seems to be Michael Moore's documentary film, Fahrenheit 9/11. Supporters call it cinematic genius; detractors allege its claims are not substantiated by fact. The central point of contention has been the flights which the Bush administration reportedly arranged for influential Saudis, including members of the Bin Laden family, only 2 days after the 9/11 attacks. The White House has been denying that particular fact for nearly 3 years, even though the 9/11 Commission has already published proof the flights were arranged and did occur. The aim of the campaign to discredit the film is to perpetuate the myth that there was no such special arrangement, that the reported fact is actually a brazen lie, and that therefore the film is therefore unfair. The mere sentiment of offense at critical portrayal is not proof of falsehood, and the notion that criticisms should not be heard because they are intense, has no journalistic or political merit. [Full Story] SNEAK ATTACK: FRIST SEEKS TO NATIONALIZE CLASS ACTION SUITS The Majority Leader of the U.S. Senate is now seeking to push a business-sponsored bill through the Senate, in order to forbid citizens from filing class-action suits before state courts. The purpose of the bill, as envisioned by its backers, is to impede the freedom of citizens to access the judicial system in order to seek redress for wrongs committed against them. By predetermining that a certain type of lawsuit can only occur in federal courts, the Republican sponsors are hoping that judges favorable to their political interests will reject suits that are unfavorable to their supporters in the corporate world. That much is not in dispute. What is puzzling about the timing of the sudden initiative is that the Senate Majority Leader chose to do so while a major defense bill is still pending, in the midst of a war that most Americans now feel has gone desperately off course. Sen. Frist also launched this push at a time when even his own party, which is solidly aligned behind this legislation, felt it would be inappropriate, given the gravity of the crisis in Iraq, and the need to resolve Pentagon funding. [Full Story] RADIO FREE DRIVEL: BIZARRE COMMENTS SEEN TO PROMOTE TORTURE The Iraq prisoner abuse scandal has entered a new arena: radio broadcasting. A new media fairness watch group, Media Matters, has called on Sec. Rumsfeld to remove Rush Limbaugh's radio program from the American Forces Radio network, broadcast to 1 million American military personnel around the world. The reason? Limbaugh has made several statements apparently condoning or promoting the use of torture. In its letter to Donald Rumsfeld, Media Matters cites Limbaugh as calling the abuses a "brilliant maneuver". [Full Story] HYSTERICAL BLINDNESS Spain has held its national elections, 3 days after the worst terrorist attack in its history. Now that a new prime minister and a new government is slated to take over, unthinking observers have wasted no time in calling it a victory for terrorists. There is something inherently malicious about this opinion, given the circumstances. First of all, turnout was up 8.46% over 2000. The Spanish response to the attacks was anything but fear: it was an overwhelming declaration of national solidarity and of opposition to violence, manifest in a nationwide total of 12 million citizens standing together in the streets to condemn terror in all its forms. The nature of a democracy is that no circumstance, no political power-play, no forced hand, should prevent the voters from voting their conscience. [Full Story] STONEWALL PRESS SECRETARY White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan today refused to answer questions about whether the President drinks Washington, D.C., municipal water, saying "I'm not going to get into the President's eating or drinking habits." The concern is lead poisoning and dangerous levels of lead contamination found in D.C. water recently. The point may seem minor, but it demonstrates a pattern, taken on this point to an absurd extreme. Last week, McClellan had told the press he would "certainly look into" what water the President in fact drinks. [Full Story] RETIREMENT LOBBY LOBBIES FOR THE UNRETIRED The last week has seen a backlash of protest and dismay against the AARP, lobby for retired people. The blow-up revolved around AARP support for a Medicare bill which many critics say will directly harm elderly Americans in need of medical care. The AARP went so far as to run ads urging its members to encourage their Representatives to support the bill. The problem was that polling shows that a majority of seniors did not support the changes to Medicare proposed by this bill. [Full story] THE GRAY LADY'S GETTING GRAYER While one of the items was, appropriately, on the Op-Ed page, the more sinister journalistic infraction was on the front page. The headline was "Bitter Senators Divided Anew on Judgeships." The story details the disagreements, contention and filibusters surrounding the six judicial nominees being held up for confirmation in the Senate. Writer Neil A. Lewis frames it as a mean-spirited standoff between two stubborn, vindictive political camps. There is very little mention of the fact that the judges in question are all widely considered to be way out of sync with the American mainstream, and the Democrats see themselves as standing up for the majority of Americans and the integrity of the courts as a venue for the rule of law as opposed to extra-legal activism. [Full story] SOUNDBITE THINKING If otherwise open societies fall into the pattern of dialogue through the logic of soundbite reckoning, there is a serious peril that much dialogue beyond the media will take on the same shallow level of examination and relevance. The trend of late has been to deliberately use the most inflammatory language possible in framing headlines and spreading soundbites, which gets people interested, but tends to provoke uninformed reactions instead of studied debate... [Keep Reading] REDUCED REASONING The conflict is obvious: speculative trading markets contain only so much certainty, and the true motivation of a market shift is the sum of private thoughts driving millions of private trades, information which is totally unavailable to analysts, especially in the moment. [Keep Reading]
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