Hard Rain Journal 10-31-06: Sustainability Update -- Why should you care about what is happening in Morocco?
By Richard Power
We are at a crossroads in human history.
One direction leads to a brighter future. But it demands redefining energy security as sustainability, adapting to and mitigating the impact of global warming, and dedicating collective will and marshalled resources to achieving the UN Millennium Goals.
The other direction leads to a cul-de-sac, from which there is no escape. We will not be able to turn around and retrace our steps. Because in that cul-de-sac, we will meet the worst part of ourselves. We will first exhaust the environment that sustains us and then turn on each other.
Why should you care about what is happening in Morocco? Well, because life is a oneness. But even if you cannot accept that truth, I assure you that you should listen and learn about what is happening in Morocco out of your own self-interest.
More than 22,000 hectares of arable land disappear under the desert every year now in Morocco, according to official figures.
Desertification is now threatening all of the country. The ministry for the environment has said that almost 93 percent of Morocco is affected by aridity.
Date palms are the most ravaged by desertification. At the end of the 19th century Morocco had an estimated 15 million date palms, according to a study by geographer Ahmed Harrak. That number has now slipped to 4.5 million.
In losing date palms the local population "loses the main source of income, and is consequently forced to abandon the land and leave," M. Achlif, member of the independent group, the Moroccan Association for Development and Solidarity told IPS....
Land could now be lapsing into arid conditions more rapidly as sources of water are getting reduced, Zahir said.
Nature cannot, however, be blamed entirely. "Exaggerated pastoral activity and the misuse of land are significant factors," Zahir said. And the population demands on the disappearing green areas are increasing.
"The average annual population increase in the arid regions is 3.5 percent," Zahir said. "Therefore land is overused because the population seeks maximum benefits for itself in the minimum time possible."
Abderrahim El Ouali, The Old Picture Is Disappearing, Inter Press Service & International Federation of Environmental Journalists (IFEJ), 10-30-06
An African was wounded in the leg on Monday when Moroccan troops fired warning shots to stop 14 migrants trying to reach the border fence between Morocco and the Spanish enclave of Melilla, government officials said.
The wounded man and 11 other migrants were arrested and the remaining two fled into a wood nearby, they added. Those arrested were from Cameroon, Chad, Gabon, Ivory Coast, Niger and the Democratic Republic of Congo, they said....
It was the second recent attempt to reach Spanish territory by Africans desperate to escape before colder weather reaches northern Morocco, where rights groups say hundreds, probably thousands, of would-be migrants are hiding in wooded areas.
When 20 Africans tried to cross into Melilla at almost the same point four weeks ago, Moroccan troops arrested 15 and five managed to scale the 6-metre (nearly 20-foot) fence with makeshift ladders....
Morocco has since deployed more than 10,000 troops to increase border surveillance and staunch the migrant flow.
But Morocco, like other African governments, insists that only greater cooperation between Europe and Africa can stop illegal migration by providing better opportunities at home for African youths who now seek work and a better future in Europe. Morocco police wound migrant near Spanish enclave, Reuters, 10-30-06
SOME RELATED POSTS:
Hard Rain Journal 10-27-06: Climate Crisis & Sustainability Update -- The Economic Cost of Continued Denial
Hard Rain Journal 10-25-06: Climate Crisis & Sustainability Update -- Are You Ready for Global Eco-System Collapse by 2050?
Hard Rain Journal 9-29-06: Sustainability Update -- Freedom to Flourish and Water to Survive, Both are Vanishing...What Will You Do?
Hard Rain Journal 9-18-06: Update on Sustainability -- There is Peril Ahead, Whether Water is Privatized, Militarized or Simply Ignored for Too Long
Hard Rain Journal 8-18-06: Water, Water Nowhere, & Only A Few Drops to Sell --- An Update on the Water Aspect of the Global Sustainability Crisis
Hard Rain Journal 8-4-06: No Blood for Water? Are Lebanon & Tibet Being Robbed of The Most Vital Resource?
Words of Power #25: Lost Symbols, Part II -- The Rainbow Serpent Hisses, Lessons about Sustainability & Survival from Darfur, Senegal and Ecuador
Words of Power #20: Cusco, Kyoto and The Yellow Sand Storm
Richard Power is the founder of GS(3) Intelligence and http://www.wordsofpower.net. His work focuses on the inter-related issues of security, sustainability and spirit, and how to overcome the challenges of terrorism, cyber crime, global warming, health emergencies, natural disasters, etc. You can reach him via e-mail: richardpower@wordsofpower.net. For more information, go to www.wordsofpower.net
Global Warming,Water Crisis, Sustainability,UN, Millennium Goal, Climate Change, Environmental Security, Morocco, Spain, MelillaWords of Power, Richard Power
Tuesday, October 31, 2006
Sunday, October 29, 2006
Hard Rain Journal 10-30-06: Economic Security -- GAO Chief Warns Economic Disaster Looms
Hard Rain Journal 10-30-06: Economic Security -- GAO Chief Warns Economic Disaster Looms
By Richard Power
One of the constant, overarching themes of Words of Power and GS(3) Intelligence is that you cannot have national security without environmental security and economic security.
Here is an important story on perhaps the most dangerous of several economic security issues that undermine the USA's present circumstances and imperil its future survival as a nation:
David M. Walker sure talks like he's running for office. "This is about the future of our country, our kids and grandkids," the comptroller general of the United States warns a packed hall at Austin's historic Driskill Hotel. "We the people have to rise up to make sure things get changed."
But Walker doesn't want, or need, your vote this November. He already has a job as head of the Government Accountability Office, an investigative arm of Congress that audits and evaluates the performance of the federal government.
Basically, that makes Walker the nation's accountant-in-chief. And the accountant-in-chief's professional opinion is that the American public needs to tell Washington it's time to steer the nation off the path to financial ruin....
There's a good reason politicians don't like to talk about the nation's long-term fiscal prospects. The subject is short on political theatrics and long on complicated economics, scary graphs and very big numbers. It reveals serious problems and offers no easy solutions. Anybody who wanted to deal with it seriously would have to talk about raising taxes and cutting benefits, nasty nostrums that might doom any candidate who prescribed them....
This year Walker has spoken to the Union League Club of Chicago and the Rotary Club of Atlanta, the Sons of the American Revolution and the World Future Society. But the backbone of his campaign has been the Fiscal Wake-up Tour, a traveling roadshow of economists and budget analysts who share Walker's concern for the nation's budgetary future....
To show that the looming fiscal crisis is not a partisan issue, he brings along economists and budget analysts from across the political spectrum. In Austin, he's accompanied by Diane Lim Rogers, a liberal economist from the Brookings Institution, and Alison Acosta Fraser, director of the Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank.
"We all agree on what the choices are and what the numbers are," Fraser says.
Their basic message is this: If the United States government conducts business as usual over the next few decades, a national debt that is already $8.5 trillion could reach $46 trillion or more, adjusted for inflation. That's almost as much as the total net worth of every person in America - Bill Gates, Warren Buffett and those Google guys included.
A hole that big could paralyze the U.S. economy; according to some projections, just the interest payments on a debt that big would be as much as all the taxes the government collects today.
And every year that nothing is done about it, Walker says, the problem grows by $2 trillion to $3 trillion....
But Walker isn't optimistic that the government will be able to tackle its fiscal challenges so soon.
"Realistically what we hope to accomplish through the fiscal wake-up tour is ensure that any serious candidate for the presidency in 2008 will be forced to deal with the issue," he says. "The best we're going to get in the next couple of years is to slow the bleeding." Hard Rain Journal 10-30-06: Economic Security -- GAO Chief Warns Economic Disaster Looms, Associated Press, 10-28-06
Some Related Posts:
SPECIAL EDITION: Words of Power Interviews Nomi Prins, Author of "Jacked: How 'Conservatives' are Picking Your Pocket"
SPECIAL EDITION: Generation Debt -- Why Now Is A Terrible Time To be Young, Words of Power Interviews Anya Kamenetz
SPECIAL EDITION: “The More Nefarious Form of Corruption is That Which is Legal” -- Words of Power Interviews David Sirota
SPECIAL EDITION: “Until this issue is burning on the mind of every citizen” -- Words of Power Interviews Mark Crispin Miller
Richard Power is the founder of GS(3) Intelligence and http://www.wordsofpower.net. His work focuses on the inter-related issues of security, sustainability and spirit, and how to overcome the challenges of terrorism, cyber crime, global warming, health emergencies, natural disasters, etc. You can reach him via e-mail: richardpower@wordsofpower.net. For more information, go to www.wordsofpower.net
Debt, Federal Deficit, National Debt, Economic Security, US Economy, GAO, David Walker
By Richard Power
One of the constant, overarching themes of Words of Power and GS(3) Intelligence is that you cannot have national security without environmental security and economic security.
Here is an important story on perhaps the most dangerous of several economic security issues that undermine the USA's present circumstances and imperil its future survival as a nation:
David M. Walker sure talks like he's running for office. "This is about the future of our country, our kids and grandkids," the comptroller general of the United States warns a packed hall at Austin's historic Driskill Hotel. "We the people have to rise up to make sure things get changed."
But Walker doesn't want, or need, your vote this November. He already has a job as head of the Government Accountability Office, an investigative arm of Congress that audits and evaluates the performance of the federal government.
Basically, that makes Walker the nation's accountant-in-chief. And the accountant-in-chief's professional opinion is that the American public needs to tell Washington it's time to steer the nation off the path to financial ruin....
There's a good reason politicians don't like to talk about the nation's long-term fiscal prospects. The subject is short on political theatrics and long on complicated economics, scary graphs and very big numbers. It reveals serious problems and offers no easy solutions. Anybody who wanted to deal with it seriously would have to talk about raising taxes and cutting benefits, nasty nostrums that might doom any candidate who prescribed them....
This year Walker has spoken to the Union League Club of Chicago and the Rotary Club of Atlanta, the Sons of the American Revolution and the World Future Society. But the backbone of his campaign has been the Fiscal Wake-up Tour, a traveling roadshow of economists and budget analysts who share Walker's concern for the nation's budgetary future....
To show that the looming fiscal crisis is not a partisan issue, he brings along economists and budget analysts from across the political spectrum. In Austin, he's accompanied by Diane Lim Rogers, a liberal economist from the Brookings Institution, and Alison Acosta Fraser, director of the Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank.
"We all agree on what the choices are and what the numbers are," Fraser says.
Their basic message is this: If the United States government conducts business as usual over the next few decades, a national debt that is already $8.5 trillion could reach $46 trillion or more, adjusted for inflation. That's almost as much as the total net worth of every person in America - Bill Gates, Warren Buffett and those Google guys included.
A hole that big could paralyze the U.S. economy; according to some projections, just the interest payments on a debt that big would be as much as all the taxes the government collects today.
And every year that nothing is done about it, Walker says, the problem grows by $2 trillion to $3 trillion....
But Walker isn't optimistic that the government will be able to tackle its fiscal challenges so soon.
"Realistically what we hope to accomplish through the fiscal wake-up tour is ensure that any serious candidate for the presidency in 2008 will be forced to deal with the issue," he says. "The best we're going to get in the next couple of years is to slow the bleeding." Hard Rain Journal 10-30-06: Economic Security -- GAO Chief Warns Economic Disaster Looms, Associated Press, 10-28-06
Some Related Posts:
SPECIAL EDITION: Words of Power Interviews Nomi Prins, Author of "Jacked: How 'Conservatives' are Picking Your Pocket"
SPECIAL EDITION: Generation Debt -- Why Now Is A Terrible Time To be Young, Words of Power Interviews Anya Kamenetz
SPECIAL EDITION: “The More Nefarious Form of Corruption is That Which is Legal” -- Words of Power Interviews David Sirota
SPECIAL EDITION: “Until this issue is burning on the mind of every citizen” -- Words of Power Interviews Mark Crispin Miller
Richard Power is the founder of GS(3) Intelligence and http://www.wordsofpower.net. His work focuses on the inter-related issues of security, sustainability and spirit, and how to overcome the challenges of terrorism, cyber crime, global warming, health emergencies, natural disasters, etc. You can reach him via e-mail: richardpower@wordsofpower.net. For more information, go to www.wordsofpower.net
Debt, Federal Deficit, National Debt, Economic Security, US Economy, GAO, David Walker
Thursday, October 26, 2006
Hard Rain Journal 10-27-06: Climate Crisis & Sustainability Update -- The Economic Cost of Continued Denial
Hard Rain Journal 10-27-06: Climate Crisis & Sustainability Update -- The Economic Cost of Continued Denial
By Richard Power
Three recent reports, one from a former chief economist for the World Bank, one from the United Nations' Globally Important Agriculture Heritage Systems (GIAHS) initiative, and one from the government of Switzerland, highlight three vital issues related to climate crisis and sustainability.
The cost of doing less is greater than the cost of doing more, and the difference may add up to survival:
Climate change could tilt the world's economy into the worst global recession in recent history, a report will warn next week. Sir Nicholas Stern, a former chief economist with the World Bank, will warn that governments need to tackle the problem head-on by cutting emissions or face economic ruin. The findings...will turn economic argument about global warming on its head by insisting that fighting global warming will save industrial nations money....Speaking at a climate change conference in Birmingham, he said: "All of [Stern's] detailed modelling out to the year 2100 is going to indicate first of all that if we don't take global action we are going to see a massive downturn in global economies." He added: "If no action is taken we will be faced with the kind of downturn that has not been seen since the great depression and the two world wars." Sir David called the review "the most detailed economic analysis that I think has yet been conducted". James Randerson, Tackle Climate Change or Face Deep Recession, World's Leaders Warned · Economic review turns cost argument on head, Guardian, 10-26-06
The survival of the many is inextricably linked to the survival of the few:
Communities that lived off fishing and forest produce on the Chiloe archipelago in the south of Chile for centuries have now begun to leave. They could deal with the difficult conditions, but the environment cannot sustain many of them any more. In North Africa communities that lived around oases for centuries have begun to move out. The traditional people of old are the refugees of today. Difficult places both, but not so difficult that they could not sustain local people. And in turn the indigenous people of these areas worked with the environment to develop new sustenance for themselves and others. Chiloe gave the world the potato, some agriculturists say.
But as difficult conditions become close to impossible, many of these places need help. The beginning of that came by way of the Globally Important Agriculture Heritage Systems (GIAHS) initiative launched in 2002 by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations, with the support of the Global Environment Fund.
The initiative, which has led mostly to research so far, identified about 200 agricultural systems that are threatened by climate change, rural impoverishment, exodus to urban areas, exclusion of local economies from large-scale markets and other such dangers... Sabina Zaccaro, Saving Life on the Edges of the World, Inter Press Service, 10-26-06
Meanwhile, too many industry leaders in too many societies (even in relatively responsible ones like Switzerland) are still avoiding the challenges:
A new long-term government policy paper promoting renewable energy sources has been harshly criticised by business groups and power companies. The Swiss Business Federation, economiesuisse, and the Swiss power company association, swisselectric, distanced themselves from the "Energy Outlook Forum" final report....The working group brought together the main actors from politics, business, civil society and the environment to discuss Switzerland's long-term energy policy up to 2035. The report headed by former senator, Dori Schaer-Born, stresses the importance of energy efficiency. Among the recommendations, it proposes economic incentives to encourage innovation and the progressive introduction of energy-saving regulations. The paper also emphasises the need to increase investment in renewable energies, which it claims offers the greatest potential in terms of profitability and efficiency. The lack of capacity in power supply, which is expected to continue despite energy-saving measures or the increasing use of renewable energies, has to be temporarily compensated by existing nuclear power plants and gas power stations, the report states. But any additional carbon dioxide emissions have to be reduced and compensated. New energy policy generates stiff resistance, Swiss Info, 10-26-06
Want to participate in the effort to mitigate the impact of global warming? Download "Ten Things You Can Do"
There is a powerful magic in personal commitment.
RELATED POSTS:
Hard Rain Journal 10-25-06: Climate Crisis & Sustainability Update -- Are You Ready for Global Eco-System Collapse by 2050?
Hard Rain Journal 10-21-06: Climate Crisis Update -- Bad News from Armenia, Good News from Germany & Oregon, & More Proof for Those who Still Doubt
Hard Rain Journal 10-16-06: Climate Crisis Update - The Cost of NOT Coping with the Challenges of Global Warming
GS(3) Thunderbolt 10-11-06: Climate Crisis Update -- How Bad It Is, and What To Do About It
Hard Rain Journal 10-1-06: Climate Crisis Update -- Xangsane and The Elephant in the Dark
Hard Rain Journal 9-26-06: Climate Crisis Update -- Global Warming & The Nuclear Option, A Convergence of National Security Issues
Hard Rain Journal (9-24-06): Climate Crisis Update -- News on Farmers, Home Builders and Small Business Owners from Costa Rica and the UK
Hard Rain Journal 9-19-06: Climate Crisis Update – Gore Articulates The Profit in Prophecy and The Return on Reality
Hard Rain Journal 9-15-06: Climate Crisis Update – If You Have Children, or Care About the Future for Any Reason, You Should Read These Five News Items
Hard Rain Journal 8-28-06: Six Ways for the US to Fight Global Warming
Hard Rain Journal 8-17-06: Typhoon Season Intensifies, Canada Starts to Slide into Denial, New Study Offers Insight on Global Warming Impact
Hard Rain Journal 8-2-06: North Korean flood toll thought to be 10,000, Agence France Press reports
Hard Rain Journal 7-27-06: Killer Heat Waves, Massive Blackouts -- You Were Warned 3 Years Ago
Hard Rain Journal 7-26-06: NRDC Reports on Global Warming's Direct Threat to 12 National Parks in Western USA
Hard Rain Journal 7-24-06: Five Stories about the Reality of Global Warming, Is Continued Denial Criminally Insane?
Hard Rain Journal 7-21-06: Heat Waves in Europe & US are Direct Consequences of Global Warming
Words of Power #25: Lost Symbols, Part II -- The Rainbow Serpent Hisses, Lessons about Sustainability & Survival from Darfur, Senegal and Ecuador
Hard Rain Journal 6-27-06: Global Warming, Bush's Alleged "Incompetence," and the So-Called "Conservative" Agenda
Words of Power #20: Cusco, Kyoto and The Yellow Sand Storm
Words of Power #7: Global Warming Is A Security Threat To Your Family & Your Business
Words of Power #1: Truths Salvaged from Post-Katrina Debacle
Global Warming, Energy Security, Environmental Security, Alternate Energy, Sustainability, Green Power, Renewable Resources, Climate Change, Weather, Al Gore, An Inconvenient Truth, Extreme Weather, Crisis Management, WWF,Living Planet Report, Richard Power, Words of Power
By Richard Power
Three recent reports, one from a former chief economist for the World Bank, one from the United Nations' Globally Important Agriculture Heritage Systems (GIAHS) initiative, and one from the government of Switzerland, highlight three vital issues related to climate crisis and sustainability.
The cost of doing less is greater than the cost of doing more, and the difference may add up to survival:
Climate change could tilt the world's economy into the worst global recession in recent history, a report will warn next week. Sir Nicholas Stern, a former chief economist with the World Bank, will warn that governments need to tackle the problem head-on by cutting emissions or face economic ruin. The findings...will turn economic argument about global warming on its head by insisting that fighting global warming will save industrial nations money....Speaking at a climate change conference in Birmingham, he said: "All of [Stern's] detailed modelling out to the year 2100 is going to indicate first of all that if we don't take global action we are going to see a massive downturn in global economies." He added: "If no action is taken we will be faced with the kind of downturn that has not been seen since the great depression and the two world wars." Sir David called the review "the most detailed economic analysis that I think has yet been conducted". James Randerson, Tackle Climate Change or Face Deep Recession, World's Leaders Warned · Economic review turns cost argument on head, Guardian, 10-26-06
The survival of the many is inextricably linked to the survival of the few:
Communities that lived off fishing and forest produce on the Chiloe archipelago in the south of Chile for centuries have now begun to leave. They could deal with the difficult conditions, but the environment cannot sustain many of them any more. In North Africa communities that lived around oases for centuries have begun to move out. The traditional people of old are the refugees of today. Difficult places both, but not so difficult that they could not sustain local people. And in turn the indigenous people of these areas worked with the environment to develop new sustenance for themselves and others. Chiloe gave the world the potato, some agriculturists say.
But as difficult conditions become close to impossible, many of these places need help. The beginning of that came by way of the Globally Important Agriculture Heritage Systems (GIAHS) initiative launched in 2002 by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations, with the support of the Global Environment Fund.
The initiative, which has led mostly to research so far, identified about 200 agricultural systems that are threatened by climate change, rural impoverishment, exodus to urban areas, exclusion of local economies from large-scale markets and other such dangers... Sabina Zaccaro, Saving Life on the Edges of the World, Inter Press Service, 10-26-06
Meanwhile, too many industry leaders in too many societies (even in relatively responsible ones like Switzerland) are still avoiding the challenges:
A new long-term government policy paper promoting renewable energy sources has been harshly criticised by business groups and power companies. The Swiss Business Federation, economiesuisse, and the Swiss power company association, swisselectric, distanced themselves from the "Energy Outlook Forum" final report....The working group brought together the main actors from politics, business, civil society and the environment to discuss Switzerland's long-term energy policy up to 2035. The report headed by former senator, Dori Schaer-Born, stresses the importance of energy efficiency. Among the recommendations, it proposes economic incentives to encourage innovation and the progressive introduction of energy-saving regulations. The paper also emphasises the need to increase investment in renewable energies, which it claims offers the greatest potential in terms of profitability and efficiency. The lack of capacity in power supply, which is expected to continue despite energy-saving measures or the increasing use of renewable energies, has to be temporarily compensated by existing nuclear power plants and gas power stations, the report states. But any additional carbon dioxide emissions have to be reduced and compensated. New energy policy generates stiff resistance, Swiss Info, 10-26-06
Want to participate in the effort to mitigate the impact of global warming? Download "Ten Things You Can Do"
There is a powerful magic in personal commitment.
RELATED POSTS:
Hard Rain Journal 10-25-06: Climate Crisis & Sustainability Update -- Are You Ready for Global Eco-System Collapse by 2050?
Hard Rain Journal 10-21-06: Climate Crisis Update -- Bad News from Armenia, Good News from Germany & Oregon, & More Proof for Those who Still Doubt
Hard Rain Journal 10-16-06: Climate Crisis Update - The Cost of NOT Coping with the Challenges of Global Warming
GS(3) Thunderbolt 10-11-06: Climate Crisis Update -- How Bad It Is, and What To Do About It
Hard Rain Journal 10-1-06: Climate Crisis Update -- Xangsane and The Elephant in the Dark
Hard Rain Journal 9-26-06: Climate Crisis Update -- Global Warming & The Nuclear Option, A Convergence of National Security Issues
Hard Rain Journal (9-24-06): Climate Crisis Update -- News on Farmers, Home Builders and Small Business Owners from Costa Rica and the UK
Hard Rain Journal 9-19-06: Climate Crisis Update – Gore Articulates The Profit in Prophecy and The Return on Reality
Hard Rain Journal 9-15-06: Climate Crisis Update – If You Have Children, or Care About the Future for Any Reason, You Should Read These Five News Items
Hard Rain Journal 8-28-06: Six Ways for the US to Fight Global Warming
Hard Rain Journal 8-17-06: Typhoon Season Intensifies, Canada Starts to Slide into Denial, New Study Offers Insight on Global Warming Impact
Hard Rain Journal 8-2-06: North Korean flood toll thought to be 10,000, Agence France Press reports
Hard Rain Journal 7-27-06: Killer Heat Waves, Massive Blackouts -- You Were Warned 3 Years Ago
Hard Rain Journal 7-26-06: NRDC Reports on Global Warming's Direct Threat to 12 National Parks in Western USA
Hard Rain Journal 7-24-06: Five Stories about the Reality of Global Warming, Is Continued Denial Criminally Insane?
Hard Rain Journal 7-21-06: Heat Waves in Europe & US are Direct Consequences of Global Warming
Words of Power #25: Lost Symbols, Part II -- The Rainbow Serpent Hisses, Lessons about Sustainability & Survival from Darfur, Senegal and Ecuador
Hard Rain Journal 6-27-06: Global Warming, Bush's Alleged "Incompetence," and the So-Called "Conservative" Agenda
Words of Power #20: Cusco, Kyoto and The Yellow Sand Storm
Words of Power #7: Global Warming Is A Security Threat To Your Family & Your Business
Words of Power #1: Truths Salvaged from Post-Katrina Debacle
Global Warming, Energy Security, Environmental Security, Alternate Energy, Sustainability, Green Power, Renewable Resources, Climate Change, Weather, Al Gore, An Inconvenient Truth, Extreme Weather, Crisis Management, WWF,Living Planet Report, Richard Power, Words of Power
Wednesday, October 25, 2006
Hard Rain Journal 10-25-06: Climate Crisis & Sustainability Update -- Are You Ready for Global Eco-System Collapse by 2050?
Hard Rain Journal 10-25-06: Climate Crisis & Sustainability Update -- Are You Ready for Global Eco-System Collapse by 2050?
By Richard Power
There are many tempting tangents. None more tempting or more urgent than the US mid-term elections, and whether or not the will of the majority will be sabotaged (again). But whatever happens in the elections two weeks from today, global warming and sustainability will still be the greatest challenges facing both the USA and the planet as a whole, and yet they are being largely ignored by the political establishment and the mainstream news media.
Current global consumption levels could result in a large-scale ecosystem collapse by the middle of the century, environmental group WWF has warned.
The group's biannual Living Planet Report said the natural world was being degraded "at a rate unprecedented in human history".
Terrestrial species had declined by 31% between 1970-2003, the findings showed.
It warned that if demand continued at the current rate, two planets would be needed to meet global demand by 2050.
The biodiversity loss was a result of resources being consumed faster than the planet could replace them, the authors said.
They added that if the world's population shared the UK's lifestyle, three planets would be needed to support their needs.
The nations that were shown to have the largest "ecological footprints" were the United Arab Emirates, the United States and Finland.Paul King, WWF director of campaigns, said the world was running up a "serious ecological debt".
"It is time to make some vital choices to enable people to enjoy a one planet lifestyle," he said.
"The cities, power plants and homes we build today will either lock society into damaging over-consumption beyond our lifetimes, or begin to propel this and future generations towards sustainable one planet living."
The report, compiled by the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) and the Global Footprint Network, is based on data from two indicators:
Living Planet Index - assesses the health of the planet's ecosystems
Ecological Footprint - measures human demand on the natural world
The Living Planet Index tracked the population of 1,313 vertebrate species of fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals from around the world.
It found that these species had declined by about 30% since 1970, suggesting that natural ecosystems were being degraded at an unprecedented rate.
The Ecological Footprint measured the amount of biologically productive land and water to meet the demand for food, timber, shelter, and absorb the pollution from human activity.
The report concluded that the global footprint exceeded the earth's biocapacity by 25% in 2003, which meant that the Earth could no longer keep up with the demands being placed upon it.
The findings echo a study published earlier this month that said the world went into "ecological debt" on 9 October this year.
The study by UK-based think-tank New Economics Foundation (Nef) was based on the Ecological Footprint data compiled by the Global Footprint Network, which also provided the figures for this latest report from the WWF
Global ecosystems 'face collapse', BBC, 10-24-06
Want to participate in the effort to mitigate the impact of global warming? Download "Ten Things You Can Do"
There is a powerful magic in personal commitment.
RELATED POSTS:
Hard Rain Journal 10-21-06: Climate Crisis Update -- Bad News from Armenia, Good News from Germany & Oregon, & More Proof for Those who Still Doubt
Hard Rain Journal 10-16-06: Climate Crisis Update - The Cost of NOT Coping with the Challenges of Global Warming
GS(3) Thunderbolt 10-11-06: Climate Crisis Update -- How Bad It Is, and What To Do About It
Hard Rain Journal 10-1-06: Climate Crisis Update -- Xangsane and The Elephant in the Dark
Hard Rain Journal 9-26-06: Climate Crisis Update -- Global Warming & The Nuclear Option, A Convergence of National Security Issues
Hard Rain Journal (9-24-06): Climate Crisis Update -- News on Farmers, Home Builders and Small Business Owners from Costa Rica and the UK
Hard Rain Journal 9-19-06: Climate Crisis Update – Gore Articulates The Profit in Prophecy and The Return on Reality
Hard Rain Journal 9-15-06: Climate Crisis Update – If You Have Children, or Care About the Future for Any Reason, You Should Read These Five News Items
Hard Rain Journal 8-28-06: Six Ways for the US to Fight Global Warming
Hard Rain Journal 8-17-06: Typhoon Season Intensifies, Canada Starts to Slide into Denial, New Study Offers Insight on Global Warming Impact
Hard Rain Journal 8-2-06: North Korean flood toll thought to be 10,000, Agence France Press reports
Hard Rain Journal 7-27-06: Killer Heat Waves, Massive Blackouts -- You Were Warned 3 Years Ago
Hard Rain Journal 7-26-06: NRDC Reports on Global Warming's Direct Threat to 12 National Parks in Western USA
Hard Rain Journal 7-24-06: Five Stories about the Reality of Global Warming, Is Continued Denial Criminally Insane?
Hard Rain Journal 7-21-06: Heat Waves in Europe & US are Direct Consequences of Global Warming
Words of Power #25: Lost Symbols, Part II -- The Rainbow Serpent Hisses, Lessons about Sustainability & Survival from Darfur, Senegal and Ecuador
Hard Rain Journal 6-27-06: Global Warming, Bush's Alleged "Incompetence," and the So-Called "Conservative" Agenda
Words of Power #20: Cusco, Kyoto and The Yellow Sand Storm
Words of Power #7: Global Warming Is A Security Threat To Your Family & Your Business
Words of Power #1: Truths Salvaged from Post-Katrina Debacle
Global Warming, Energy Security, Environmental Security, Alternate Energy, Sustainability, Green Power, Renewable Resources, Climate Change, Weather, Al Gore, An Inconvenient Truth, Extreme Weather, Crisis Management, WWF,Living Planet Report, Richard Power, Words of Power
By Richard Power
There are many tempting tangents. None more tempting or more urgent than the US mid-term elections, and whether or not the will of the majority will be sabotaged (again). But whatever happens in the elections two weeks from today, global warming and sustainability will still be the greatest challenges facing both the USA and the planet as a whole, and yet they are being largely ignored by the political establishment and the mainstream news media.
Current global consumption levels could result in a large-scale ecosystem collapse by the middle of the century, environmental group WWF has warned.
The group's biannual Living Planet Report said the natural world was being degraded "at a rate unprecedented in human history".
Terrestrial species had declined by 31% between 1970-2003, the findings showed.
It warned that if demand continued at the current rate, two planets would be needed to meet global demand by 2050.
The biodiversity loss was a result of resources being consumed faster than the planet could replace them, the authors said.
They added that if the world's population shared the UK's lifestyle, three planets would be needed to support their needs.
The nations that were shown to have the largest "ecological footprints" were the United Arab Emirates, the United States and Finland.Paul King, WWF director of campaigns, said the world was running up a "serious ecological debt".
"It is time to make some vital choices to enable people to enjoy a one planet lifestyle," he said.
"The cities, power plants and homes we build today will either lock society into damaging over-consumption beyond our lifetimes, or begin to propel this and future generations towards sustainable one planet living."
The report, compiled by the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) and the Global Footprint Network, is based on data from two indicators:
Living Planet Index - assesses the health of the planet's ecosystems
Ecological Footprint - measures human demand on the natural world
The Living Planet Index tracked the population of 1,313 vertebrate species of fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals from around the world.
It found that these species had declined by about 30% since 1970, suggesting that natural ecosystems were being degraded at an unprecedented rate.
The Ecological Footprint measured the amount of biologically productive land and water to meet the demand for food, timber, shelter, and absorb the pollution from human activity.
The report concluded that the global footprint exceeded the earth's biocapacity by 25% in 2003, which meant that the Earth could no longer keep up with the demands being placed upon it.
The findings echo a study published earlier this month that said the world went into "ecological debt" on 9 October this year.
The study by UK-based think-tank New Economics Foundation (Nef) was based on the Ecological Footprint data compiled by the Global Footprint Network, which also provided the figures for this latest report from the WWF
Global ecosystems 'face collapse', BBC, 10-24-06
Want to participate in the effort to mitigate the impact of global warming? Download "Ten Things You Can Do"
There is a powerful magic in personal commitment.
RELATED POSTS:
Hard Rain Journal 10-21-06: Climate Crisis Update -- Bad News from Armenia, Good News from Germany & Oregon, & More Proof for Those who Still Doubt
Hard Rain Journal 10-16-06: Climate Crisis Update - The Cost of NOT Coping with the Challenges of Global Warming
GS(3) Thunderbolt 10-11-06: Climate Crisis Update -- How Bad It Is, and What To Do About It
Hard Rain Journal 10-1-06: Climate Crisis Update -- Xangsane and The Elephant in the Dark
Hard Rain Journal 9-26-06: Climate Crisis Update -- Global Warming & The Nuclear Option, A Convergence of National Security Issues
Hard Rain Journal (9-24-06): Climate Crisis Update -- News on Farmers, Home Builders and Small Business Owners from Costa Rica and the UK
Hard Rain Journal 9-19-06: Climate Crisis Update – Gore Articulates The Profit in Prophecy and The Return on Reality
Hard Rain Journal 9-15-06: Climate Crisis Update – If You Have Children, or Care About the Future for Any Reason, You Should Read These Five News Items
Hard Rain Journal 8-28-06: Six Ways for the US to Fight Global Warming
Hard Rain Journal 8-17-06: Typhoon Season Intensifies, Canada Starts to Slide into Denial, New Study Offers Insight on Global Warming Impact
Hard Rain Journal 8-2-06: North Korean flood toll thought to be 10,000, Agence France Press reports
Hard Rain Journal 7-27-06: Killer Heat Waves, Massive Blackouts -- You Were Warned 3 Years Ago
Hard Rain Journal 7-26-06: NRDC Reports on Global Warming's Direct Threat to 12 National Parks in Western USA
Hard Rain Journal 7-24-06: Five Stories about the Reality of Global Warming, Is Continued Denial Criminally Insane?
Hard Rain Journal 7-21-06: Heat Waves in Europe & US are Direct Consequences of Global Warming
Words of Power #25: Lost Symbols, Part II -- The Rainbow Serpent Hisses, Lessons about Sustainability & Survival from Darfur, Senegal and Ecuador
Hard Rain Journal 6-27-06: Global Warming, Bush's Alleged "Incompetence," and the So-Called "Conservative" Agenda
Words of Power #20: Cusco, Kyoto and The Yellow Sand Storm
Words of Power #7: Global Warming Is A Security Threat To Your Family & Your Business
Words of Power #1: Truths Salvaged from Post-Katrina Debacle
Global Warming, Energy Security, Environmental Security, Alternate Energy, Sustainability, Green Power, Renewable Resources, Climate Change, Weather, Al Gore, An Inconvenient Truth, Extreme Weather, Crisis Management, WWF,Living Planet Report, Richard Power, Words of Power
Monday, October 23, 2006
GS(3) Thunderbolt 10-23-06: Update on the Crisis in Darfur
GS(3) Thunderbolt 10-23-06: Update on the Crisis in Darfur
The lives of 2.5 million people are at risk in Darfur. They face the spectres of starvation, disease, and rape. You may think that such tragedies only happen far away and to unfortunate people born into poverty. You may feel insulated from the breakdown of social order and the loss of basic human rights. You should not be so arrogant. One day, it could be you and your children in dire need. You would want the world to come to your rescue. You would not understand how other people could rationalize what happened to you.
Save Darfur! is calling for four straightforward and realizable interim steps:
Strengthen the understaffed and overwhelmed African Union peackeeping force already in Darfur.
Push for the deployment of a strong UN peacekeeping force.
Increase humanitarian aid and ensure access for aid delivery.
Establish a no-fly zone.
There is no excuse at all for the great nations of the world not to act. As it is currently constituted, the UN Security Council cannot act without a consensus among the great nations, and such a consensus cannot be reached without real leadership. It is not a failure of the UN, it is a failure of the great nations that collectively control the Security Council.
And as I wrote on "Global Day for Darfur," you and I are not helpless, there are three meaningful steps all of us can take...
It important to know: Do not turn away, even if you feel helpless. Do not allow yourself or those you know to concoct some rationalization about why such holocausts occur. To simply know, i.e., to bear witness, is to change the world, even though you may never detect the change or understand how you have contributed to it
It is important to pray, or as we Buddhists say, "generate Bodhicitta." It doesn't matter if you call it prayer or meditation. Just turn your consciousness and your heart to Darfur. You can call upon the Force by whatever name you know it, or simply take a gentle in-drawn breath and radiate the great compassion.
It is important to act: You can act directly or indirectly. You can do it publicly, or anonymously. You can do it with your voice or your money or your toil. Just do something. There is power in action however seemingly insignificant.
Save Darfur's Take Action - Educate Others section has a downloadable Powerpoint presentation, complete with a script, so that you can deliver talks to your organizations and in your communities.
The Genocide Intervention Network has a list of "Ten Things You Can Do Right Now."
Here are excertps from five recent news items that give a picture of the facts on the ground:
Weapons are being funnelled from Chad into Darfur to support rebels who have refused to sign the Darfur Peace Agreement, says a status report on the crisis Sudan.
The newly released report says credible information suggests that the government of Sudan is arming Janjaweed militias and Chadian rebels who want to overthrow President Idris Deby.
The UN panel of experts who compiled the document says that an arms embargo in Darfur is being routinely violated by all parties to the conflict, giving substance to reports from the African Union Mission in Sudan that say violence between Darfur rebels and the Sudan government continues along the Sudan/Chad border.
Clashes between Darfur rebels and the Sudan government began late last week, with both parties trading accusations on who triggered the fighting.
The relationship between the two countries has, however, been tense for months with each accusing the other of supporting anti-government movements. Sudan: Arms Being Funnelled From Chad Into Darfur - Report, The East African (Nairobi), 10-23-06
Aid workers in Darfur are struggling to cope with a rapid rise in the number of people fleeing villages amidst increasing instability, British medical agency Merlin said today. Merlin was forced to evacuate its base in Gereida - the region's largest camp for displaced people - three weeks ago when an armed group attempted to take over the town. An emergency medical unit has since been re-established in the camp and is treating 400 people a day. Over the past month, clashes around Gereida have put more than 100,000 people at risk. Merlin's medical staff estimate that more than 60 per cent of patients seen are war widows and their children, many of whom have suffered severe burns, deep cuts and fractures. Pneumonia, malaria and diarrhoea are the most serious medical problems faced by people in the camp, with many cases exacerbated by malnutrition. "By the time we see the children in the clinic, they are often in advanced stages of pneumonia or malaria or both," said a Merlin doctor working Gereida. Aid agency warns of 'powder keg' in Darfur camp, Merlin via Reuters/Alternet, 10-23-06
The fraught diplomatic stand-off between the UN and Sudan intensified dramatically yesterday when the Sudanese government ordered the UN's special envoy to leave the country.
Jan Pronk was expelled after comments he made about the ongoing crisis in Darfur on his personal weblog. He wrote that the Sudanese army had suffered two military defeats, involving heavy casualties during fighting with rebels in northern Darfur.
A spokesman for Sudan's foreign ministry said Mr Pronk had to leave Sudan by midday on Wednesday because he had displayed "enmity to the Sudanese government and armed forces".
An army spokesman had earlier accused the Dutch diplomat of waging a "psychological war against the Sudanese army"....The expulsion of the UN's most senior official in Sudan has come at a time when the world body is struggling to persuade the Sudanese government to allow UN peace-keepers to enter Darfur....
Steve Bloomfield, Sudan expels UN envoy over Darfur military losses, Independent/UK, 10-23-06
Because Sudan’s large army is mostly made up of non-Arab foot soldiers who are unwilling to carry out brutal counterinsurgency tactics on fellow non-Arabs, the government has used Arab militias as ground troops in Darfur, paying them in cash and loot from the villages they raid. But now the fighting appears to be entering a new phase, in which the rebel groups, somewhat unified militarily under the banner of the National Redemption Front, are making increasingly brazen direct attacks on government troops.
The government is likely to respond to this new boldness with familiar tactics, said Colin Thomas-Jensen, Africa advocacy and research manager at the International Crisis Group, an independent organization that seeks to resolve armed conflict.
“Clearly Khartoum is still intent on pursing a military solution, and just because the latest offensive seems to have hit a roadblock doesn’t mean they are going to give up,” Mr. Thomas-Jensen said. “The strategy in the past has always been to arm and train and support local militia groups. In all of this the consequences from a humanitarian standpoint are devastating. In Darfur it is ultimately among the civilians that there will be the greatest cost.”
So far, in this part of Darfur, the response has been mostly aerial attacks. Bombers have flown incessantly over Bahai and other border towns, dropping bombs on areas suspected of being rebel hide-outs.
LYDIA POLGREEN, Grim New Turn May Harden Darfur Conflict, New York Times, 10-20-6
Sudanese Janjaweed militia and Chadian rebels have attacked at least 10 villages in south-east Chad in the past fortnight, killing over 100 people and displacing more than 3,000, local and U.N. officials say. The attacks are part of a spillover of violence from Sudan's western Darfur region, where violence has increased as "wadis" or seasonal river courses dry out after annual rains, becoming passable to rebel jeeps and Janjaweed on horses or camels. "When they started shooting we all ran. Some women didn't even have time to grab their children," said Kaltouma Adam Ali, 24, crouched under an acacia tree clutching a baby boy. Janjaweed, rebels spread Darfur bloodshed to Chad, Reuters, 10-19-06
DARFUF-RELATED POSTS:
Hard Rain Journal 9-17-06: Global Day for Darfur
GS(3) Thunderbolt 9-14-06: Darfur Update -- Two Weeks from Rwanda II?
Hard Rain Journal 9-8-06: Sudanese Bomb Civilians & Mass Troops, But US Media Highlights Release of Salopek
GS3 Thunderbolt 8-30-06: Urgent Action is Needed on Darfur, US's Security Council Proposal is a "Sham"
Hard Rain Journal 8-24-06: Updates on Darfur & Katrina, Failures of the Human Spirit
Hard Rain Journal 8-3-06: Darfur is A Mirror Held Up to the Souls of the Great Nations, & What It Reveals is Hideous
Words of Power #25: Lost Symbols, Part II -- The Rainbow Serpent Hisses, Lessons about Sustainability & Survival from Darfur, Senegal and Ecuador
Words of Power #12: The Fallen Tree (Spiritual Challenges of the 21st Century Global Security Crisis, Part II)
Richard Power is the founder of GS(3) Intelligence and http://www.wordsofpower.net. His work focuses on the inter-related issues of security, sustainability and spirit, and how to overcome the challenges of terrorism, cyber crime, global warming, health emergencies, natural disasters, etc. You can reach him via e-mail: richardpower@wordsofpower.net. For more information, go to www.wordsofpower.net
Darfur, Sudan, Chad, Jan Pronk, Africa, African Union,Genocide, Human Rights, United Nations, Merlin, Richard Power, Words of Power
The lives of 2.5 million people are at risk in Darfur. They face the spectres of starvation, disease, and rape. You may think that such tragedies only happen far away and to unfortunate people born into poverty. You may feel insulated from the breakdown of social order and the loss of basic human rights. You should not be so arrogant. One day, it could be you and your children in dire need. You would want the world to come to your rescue. You would not understand how other people could rationalize what happened to you.
Save Darfur! is calling for four straightforward and realizable interim steps:
Strengthen the understaffed and overwhelmed African Union peackeeping force already in Darfur.
Push for the deployment of a strong UN peacekeeping force.
Increase humanitarian aid and ensure access for aid delivery.
Establish a no-fly zone.
There is no excuse at all for the great nations of the world not to act. As it is currently constituted, the UN Security Council cannot act without a consensus among the great nations, and such a consensus cannot be reached without real leadership. It is not a failure of the UN, it is a failure of the great nations that collectively control the Security Council.
And as I wrote on "Global Day for Darfur," you and I are not helpless, there are three meaningful steps all of us can take...
It important to know: Do not turn away, even if you feel helpless. Do not allow yourself or those you know to concoct some rationalization about why such holocausts occur. To simply know, i.e., to bear witness, is to change the world, even though you may never detect the change or understand how you have contributed to it
It is important to pray, or as we Buddhists say, "generate Bodhicitta." It doesn't matter if you call it prayer or meditation. Just turn your consciousness and your heart to Darfur. You can call upon the Force by whatever name you know it, or simply take a gentle in-drawn breath and radiate the great compassion.
It is important to act: You can act directly or indirectly. You can do it publicly, or anonymously. You can do it with your voice or your money or your toil. Just do something. There is power in action however seemingly insignificant.
Save Darfur's Take Action - Educate Others section has a downloadable Powerpoint presentation, complete with a script, so that you can deliver talks to your organizations and in your communities.
The Genocide Intervention Network has a list of "Ten Things You Can Do Right Now."
Here are excertps from five recent news items that give a picture of the facts on the ground:
Weapons are being funnelled from Chad into Darfur to support rebels who have refused to sign the Darfur Peace Agreement, says a status report on the crisis Sudan.
The newly released report says credible information suggests that the government of Sudan is arming Janjaweed militias and Chadian rebels who want to overthrow President Idris Deby.
The UN panel of experts who compiled the document says that an arms embargo in Darfur is being routinely violated by all parties to the conflict, giving substance to reports from the African Union Mission in Sudan that say violence between Darfur rebels and the Sudan government continues along the Sudan/Chad border.
Clashes between Darfur rebels and the Sudan government began late last week, with both parties trading accusations on who triggered the fighting.
The relationship between the two countries has, however, been tense for months with each accusing the other of supporting anti-government movements. Sudan: Arms Being Funnelled From Chad Into Darfur - Report, The East African (Nairobi), 10-23-06
Aid workers in Darfur are struggling to cope with a rapid rise in the number of people fleeing villages amidst increasing instability, British medical agency Merlin said today. Merlin was forced to evacuate its base in Gereida - the region's largest camp for displaced people - three weeks ago when an armed group attempted to take over the town. An emergency medical unit has since been re-established in the camp and is treating 400 people a day. Over the past month, clashes around Gereida have put more than 100,000 people at risk. Merlin's medical staff estimate that more than 60 per cent of patients seen are war widows and their children, many of whom have suffered severe burns, deep cuts and fractures. Pneumonia, malaria and diarrhoea are the most serious medical problems faced by people in the camp, with many cases exacerbated by malnutrition. "By the time we see the children in the clinic, they are often in advanced stages of pneumonia or malaria or both," said a Merlin doctor working Gereida. Aid agency warns of 'powder keg' in Darfur camp, Merlin via Reuters/Alternet, 10-23-06
The fraught diplomatic stand-off between the UN and Sudan intensified dramatically yesterday when the Sudanese government ordered the UN's special envoy to leave the country.
Jan Pronk was expelled after comments he made about the ongoing crisis in Darfur on his personal weblog. He wrote that the Sudanese army had suffered two military defeats, involving heavy casualties during fighting with rebels in northern Darfur.
A spokesman for Sudan's foreign ministry said Mr Pronk had to leave Sudan by midday on Wednesday because he had displayed "enmity to the Sudanese government and armed forces".
An army spokesman had earlier accused the Dutch diplomat of waging a "psychological war against the Sudanese army"....The expulsion of the UN's most senior official in Sudan has come at a time when the world body is struggling to persuade the Sudanese government to allow UN peace-keepers to enter Darfur....
Steve Bloomfield, Sudan expels UN envoy over Darfur military losses, Independent/UK, 10-23-06
Because Sudan’s large army is mostly made up of non-Arab foot soldiers who are unwilling to carry out brutal counterinsurgency tactics on fellow non-Arabs, the government has used Arab militias as ground troops in Darfur, paying them in cash and loot from the villages they raid. But now the fighting appears to be entering a new phase, in which the rebel groups, somewhat unified militarily under the banner of the National Redemption Front, are making increasingly brazen direct attacks on government troops.
The government is likely to respond to this new boldness with familiar tactics, said Colin Thomas-Jensen, Africa advocacy and research manager at the International Crisis Group, an independent organization that seeks to resolve armed conflict.
“Clearly Khartoum is still intent on pursing a military solution, and just because the latest offensive seems to have hit a roadblock doesn’t mean they are going to give up,” Mr. Thomas-Jensen said. “The strategy in the past has always been to arm and train and support local militia groups. In all of this the consequences from a humanitarian standpoint are devastating. In Darfur it is ultimately among the civilians that there will be the greatest cost.”
So far, in this part of Darfur, the response has been mostly aerial attacks. Bombers have flown incessantly over Bahai and other border towns, dropping bombs on areas suspected of being rebel hide-outs.
LYDIA POLGREEN, Grim New Turn May Harden Darfur Conflict, New York Times, 10-20-6
Sudanese Janjaweed militia and Chadian rebels have attacked at least 10 villages in south-east Chad in the past fortnight, killing over 100 people and displacing more than 3,000, local and U.N. officials say. The attacks are part of a spillover of violence from Sudan's western Darfur region, where violence has increased as "wadis" or seasonal river courses dry out after annual rains, becoming passable to rebel jeeps and Janjaweed on horses or camels. "When they started shooting we all ran. Some women didn't even have time to grab their children," said Kaltouma Adam Ali, 24, crouched under an acacia tree clutching a baby boy. Janjaweed, rebels spread Darfur bloodshed to Chad, Reuters, 10-19-06
DARFUF-RELATED POSTS:
Hard Rain Journal 9-17-06: Global Day for Darfur
GS(3) Thunderbolt 9-14-06: Darfur Update -- Two Weeks from Rwanda II?
Hard Rain Journal 9-8-06: Sudanese Bomb Civilians & Mass Troops, But US Media Highlights Release of Salopek
GS3 Thunderbolt 8-30-06: Urgent Action is Needed on Darfur, US's Security Council Proposal is a "Sham"
Hard Rain Journal 8-24-06: Updates on Darfur & Katrina, Failures of the Human Spirit
Hard Rain Journal 8-3-06: Darfur is A Mirror Held Up to the Souls of the Great Nations, & What It Reveals is Hideous
Words of Power #25: Lost Symbols, Part II -- The Rainbow Serpent Hisses, Lessons about Sustainability & Survival from Darfur, Senegal and Ecuador
Words of Power #12: The Fallen Tree (Spiritual Challenges of the 21st Century Global Security Crisis, Part II)
Richard Power is the founder of GS(3) Intelligence and http://www.wordsofpower.net. His work focuses on the inter-related issues of security, sustainability and spirit, and how to overcome the challenges of terrorism, cyber crime, global warming, health emergencies, natural disasters, etc. You can reach him via e-mail: richardpower@wordsofpower.net. For more information, go to www.wordsofpower.net
Darfur, Sudan, Chad, Jan Pronk, Africa, African Union,Genocide, Human Rights, United Nations, Merlin, Richard Power, Words of Power
Friday, October 20, 2006
Hard Rain Journal 10-21-06: Climate Crisis Update -- Bad News from Armenia, Good News from Germany & Oregon, & More Proof for Those who Still Doubt
Hard Rain Journal 10-21-06: Climate Crisis Update -- Bad News from Armenia, Good News from Germany & Oregon, & More Proof for Those who Still Doubt
By Richard Power
Global warming, and the climate change it is precipitating, is a national security issue for all governments; and like the proliferation of nuclear weapons, it is an issue of survival for the human race itself.
Here are five news stories that underscore some of the many aspects of the planetary climate crisis, including how certain we are about what is happening, how bad it is, and what to do about it:
A dramatic increase in respiratory diseases over the past several years means that Armenia is now struggling to breathe, physicians and public health specialists say. While government representatives downplay the problem, environmentalists point to desertification as the cause. (Eurasianet, 10-20-06)
German Environment Minister Sigmar Gabriel has warned of the unexpectedly fast pace of global warming and said the country needs to follow a unified plan to protect itself from increasing environment change. (Deutsche Welle, 10-18-06)
The world - especially the Mediterranean region, Brazil and the Western United States - will likely suffer more extended droughts, heavy rainfalls and longer heat waves over the next century because of global warming, a new study forecasts. ( Sapa-AP, 10-20-06)
Scientists said...that they had found the first direct evidence linking the collapse of an ice shelf in Antarctica to global warming widely blamed on human activities. (Reuters, 10-16-6)
Electrical engineers at Oregon State University are developing electricity-generating buoys they believe will be a key component for clean, green wave power. Their objective is to convert the Pacific Ocean's heavy rolling swell into a renewable energy resource., relying on buoys to harness the near constant rise and fall of waves to produce electricity. (lnter Press Service, 10-17-06)
Here are brief excerpts from these five news stories, with links to the full text:
A dramatic increase in respiratory diseases over the past several years means that Armenia is now struggling to breathe, physicians and public health specialists say. While government representatives downplay the problem, environmentalists point to desertification as the cause.
Between 2001 and 2005, the number of respiratory diseases registered in Armenia increased by 45 percent to just over 161,000 cases, according to statistics from the Ministry of Health.
Andranik Voskanyan, one of Armenia’s chief lung specialists, believes that the real number of individuals suffering from respiratory diseases, particularly asthma, is much higher than officially reported. Voskanyan estimates that the number of such cases has at least doubled in the past decade. He is also seeing respiratory disease strike at an earlier age. “A few years ago the youngest child suffering from asthma was five or six … [but] we now find this disease also among one to two-year-old[s],” said Voskanyan. “This is the reaction of the body to the environment.”
Voskanyan believes that shrinking green areas, industrial emissions, lack of quality control for imported fuel, and increased emissions from automobiles have played a central role in the increased number of respiratory diseases....
Environmentalists and public health specialists say a major factor behind the trend is galloping desertification. Recent United Nations (UN) data reports that 82 percent of Armenia’s territory is at risk of desertification and 26 percent is at risk of extreme desertification. In response, the UN recently called on the government and civil society groups to develop programs to address environmental issues. Marianna Grigoryan, ARMENIA: ENVIRONMENTAL CHANGE SPURS RESPIRATORY DISEASES, Eurasianet, 10-20-06
German Environment Minister Sigmar Gabriel has warned of the unexpectedly fast pace of global warming and said the country needs to follow a unified plan to protect itself from increasing environment change. At a conference on the topic in Berlin, Gabriel and the head of Germany's Federal Environment Agency (UBA), Andreas Troge, presented a national concept for adapting to climate change that would create a "competency center" on the issue. The center will coordinate more efficient use of energy and a greater use of renewable energy sources, and also for improved flood protection and early-warning systems. Presenters at the conference said it is clear global warming is taking place more quickly than expected, with glaciers melting faster, and a higher than expected incidence of hurricanes and drought. Gabriel said the country needed to start applying the brakes on global warming now.... "We have to prepare now in order not to be mowed down by tomorrow's economic and social consequences," Gabriel told the conference. Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, head of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Research, said a national plan on climate change is long overdue. "If we don't have strong climate-control policies in place, by the end of the century, temperatures will rise by somewhere between two and five degrees Celcius," he said. "If it increases more than two degrees Celsius, then we are getting into an area that we can no longer control." Germany Puts Global Warming Prevention Plan in Gear, Deutsche Welle, 10-18-06
The world - especially the Mediterranean region, Brazil and the Western United States - will likely suffer more extended droughts, heavy rainfalls and longer heat waves over the next century because of global warming, a new study forecasts. But the prediction of a future of nasty extreme weather also includes fewer freezes and a longer growing season. In a preview of a major international multiyear report on climate change that comes out next year, a study out of the National Centre for Atmospheric Research details what nine of the world's top computer models predict for the lurching of climate at its most extreme. "It's going to be a wild ride, especially for specific regions," said study lead author Claudia Tebaldi, a scientist at the federally funded academic research center. Tebaldi pointed to the Western US, Mediterranean nations and Brazil as "hot spots" that will get extremes at their worst, according to the computer models. And some places, such as the Pacific Northwest, are predicted to get a strange double whammy of longer dry spells punctuated by heavier rainfall. Seth Borenstein, Global warming project predicts 'wild ride', Sapa-AP, 10-20-06
Scientists said...that they had found the first direct evidence linking the collapse of an ice shelf in Antarctica to global warming widely blamed on human activities. A view of the breakup of the northern section of the Larsen B ice shelf is seen in an image taken from NASA's Moderate-resolution Imaging SpectroRadiometer satellite. Scientists said on Monday that they had found the first direct evidence linking the collapse of an ice shelf in Antarctica to global warming widely blamed on human activities. Shifts in winds whipping around the southern Ocean, tied to human emissions of greenhouse gases, had warmed the Antarctic peninsula jutting up toward South America and contributed to the break-up of the Larsen B ice shelf in 2002, they said. "This is the first time that anyone has been able to demonstrate a physical process directly linking the break-up of the Larsen Ice Shelf to human activity," said Gareth Marshall, lead author of the study at the British Antarctic Survey. The chunk that collapsed into the Weddell Sea in 2002 was 3,250 sq kms (1,255 sq miles), bigger than Luxembourg or the U.S. state of Rhode Island. Alister Doyle, Antarctic Ice Collapse Linked to Greenhouse Gases, Reuters, 10-16-06
Electrical engineers at Oregon State University are developing electricity-generating buoys they believe will be a key component for clean, green wave power. Their objective is to convert the Pacific Ocean's heavy rolling swell into a renewable energy resource., relying on buoys to harness the near constant rise and fall of waves to produce electricity.
"Waves generate energy through motion," said Dr. Annette von Jouanne, an electrical engineering professor at Oregon State University (OSU).
The OSU project is part of a renewed global effort to investigate wave and tidal power as a potential source of alternative energy, she noted.
"Oregon is an ideal location," von Jouanne added in an interview.
Along Oregon's 460 kilometers of open coastline, waves average 1.5 meters high during the summer months and 3.5 meters during the winter.
To achieve their goals, von Jouanne and her colleagues at OSU have designed several types of power buoys, including oscillating linear generators they refer to as "direct drive" technology.
"The devices directly convert the linear motion of the wave into electrical energy without any hydraulic or pneumatic stages," von Jouanne said....Enrique Gili, Waves: The Next Wave in Clean, Green Power, lnter Press Service, 10-17-06
Want to participate in the effort to mitigate the impact of global warming? Download "Ten Things You Can Do"
There is a powerful magic in personal commitment.
RELATED POSTS:
Hard Rain Journal 10-16-06: Climate Crisis Update - The Cost of NOT Coping with the Challenges of Global Warming
GS(3) Thunderbolt 10-11-06: Climate Crisis Update -- How Bad It Is, and What To Do About It
Hard Rain Journal 10-1-06: Climate Crisis Update -- Xangsane and The Elephant in the Dark
Hard Rain Journal 9-26-06: Climate Crisis Update -- Global Warming & The Nuclear Option, A Convergence of National Security Issues
Hard Rain Journal (9-24-06): Climate Crisis Update -- News on Farmers, Home Builders and Small Business Owners from Costa Rica and the UK
Hard Rain Journal 9-19-06: Climate Crisis Update – Gore Articulates The Profit in Prophecy and The Return on Reality
Hard Rain Journal 9-15-06: Climate Crisis Update – If You Have Children, or Care About the Future for Any Reason, You Should Read These Five News Items
Hard Rain Journal 8-28-06: Six Ways for the US to Fight Global Warming
Hard Rain Journal 8-17-06: Typhoon Season Intensifies, Canada Starts to Slide into Denial, New Study Offers Insight on Global Warming Impact
Hard Rain Journal 8-2-06: North Korean flood toll thought to be 10,000, Agence France Press reports
Hard Rain Journal 7-27-06: Killer Heat Waves, Massive Blackouts -- You Were Warned 3 Years Ago
Hard Rain Journal 7-26-06: NRDC Reports on Global Warming's Direct Threat to 12 National Parks in Western USA
Hard Rain Journal 7-24-06: Five Stories about the Reality of Global Warming, Is Continued Denial Criminally Insane?
Hard Rain Journal 7-21-06: Heat Waves in Europe & US are Direct Consequences of Global Warming
Words of Power #25: Lost Symbols, Part II -- The Rainbow Serpent Hisses, Lessons about Sustainability & Survival from Darfur, Senegal and Ecuador
Hard Rain Journal 6-27-06: Global Warming, Bush's Alleged "Incompetence," and the So-Called "Conservative" Agenda
Words of Power #20: Cusco, Kyoto and The Yellow Sand Storm
Words of Power #7: Global Warming Is A Security Threat To Your Family & Your Business
Words of Power #1: Truths Salvaged from Post-Katrina Debacle
Global Warming, Energy Security, Environmental Security, Alternate Energy, Sustainability, Green Power, Renewable Resources, Climate Change, Weather, Al Gore, An Inconvenient Truth, Extreme Weather, Crisis Management, Desertification, Armenia, Germany, Oregon, Antarctica, Richard Power, Words of Power
By Richard Power
Global warming, and the climate change it is precipitating, is a national security issue for all governments; and like the proliferation of nuclear weapons, it is an issue of survival for the human race itself.
Here are five news stories that underscore some of the many aspects of the planetary climate crisis, including how certain we are about what is happening, how bad it is, and what to do about it:
A dramatic increase in respiratory diseases over the past several years means that Armenia is now struggling to breathe, physicians and public health specialists say. While government representatives downplay the problem, environmentalists point to desertification as the cause. (Eurasianet, 10-20-06)
German Environment Minister Sigmar Gabriel has warned of the unexpectedly fast pace of global warming and said the country needs to follow a unified plan to protect itself from increasing environment change. (Deutsche Welle, 10-18-06)
The world - especially the Mediterranean region, Brazil and the Western United States - will likely suffer more extended droughts, heavy rainfalls and longer heat waves over the next century because of global warming, a new study forecasts. ( Sapa-AP, 10-20-06)
Scientists said...that they had found the first direct evidence linking the collapse of an ice shelf in Antarctica to global warming widely blamed on human activities. (Reuters, 10-16-6)
Electrical engineers at Oregon State University are developing electricity-generating buoys they believe will be a key component for clean, green wave power. Their objective is to convert the Pacific Ocean's heavy rolling swell into a renewable energy resource., relying on buoys to harness the near constant rise and fall of waves to produce electricity. (lnter Press Service, 10-17-06)
Here are brief excerpts from these five news stories, with links to the full text:
A dramatic increase in respiratory diseases over the past several years means that Armenia is now struggling to breathe, physicians and public health specialists say. While government representatives downplay the problem, environmentalists point to desertification as the cause.
Between 2001 and 2005, the number of respiratory diseases registered in Armenia increased by 45 percent to just over 161,000 cases, according to statistics from the Ministry of Health.
Andranik Voskanyan, one of Armenia’s chief lung specialists, believes that the real number of individuals suffering from respiratory diseases, particularly asthma, is much higher than officially reported. Voskanyan estimates that the number of such cases has at least doubled in the past decade. He is also seeing respiratory disease strike at an earlier age. “A few years ago the youngest child suffering from asthma was five or six … [but] we now find this disease also among one to two-year-old[s],” said Voskanyan. “This is the reaction of the body to the environment.”
Voskanyan believes that shrinking green areas, industrial emissions, lack of quality control for imported fuel, and increased emissions from automobiles have played a central role in the increased number of respiratory diseases....
Environmentalists and public health specialists say a major factor behind the trend is galloping desertification. Recent United Nations (UN) data reports that 82 percent of Armenia’s territory is at risk of desertification and 26 percent is at risk of extreme desertification. In response, the UN recently called on the government and civil society groups to develop programs to address environmental issues. Marianna Grigoryan, ARMENIA: ENVIRONMENTAL CHANGE SPURS RESPIRATORY DISEASES, Eurasianet, 10-20-06
German Environment Minister Sigmar Gabriel has warned of the unexpectedly fast pace of global warming and said the country needs to follow a unified plan to protect itself from increasing environment change. At a conference on the topic in Berlin, Gabriel and the head of Germany's Federal Environment Agency (UBA), Andreas Troge, presented a national concept for adapting to climate change that would create a "competency center" on the issue. The center will coordinate more efficient use of energy and a greater use of renewable energy sources, and also for improved flood protection and early-warning systems. Presenters at the conference said it is clear global warming is taking place more quickly than expected, with glaciers melting faster, and a higher than expected incidence of hurricanes and drought. Gabriel said the country needed to start applying the brakes on global warming now.... "We have to prepare now in order not to be mowed down by tomorrow's economic and social consequences," Gabriel told the conference. Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, head of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Research, said a national plan on climate change is long overdue. "If we don't have strong climate-control policies in place, by the end of the century, temperatures will rise by somewhere between two and five degrees Celcius," he said. "If it increases more than two degrees Celsius, then we are getting into an area that we can no longer control." Germany Puts Global Warming Prevention Plan in Gear, Deutsche Welle, 10-18-06
The world - especially the Mediterranean region, Brazil and the Western United States - will likely suffer more extended droughts, heavy rainfalls and longer heat waves over the next century because of global warming, a new study forecasts. But the prediction of a future of nasty extreme weather also includes fewer freezes and a longer growing season. In a preview of a major international multiyear report on climate change that comes out next year, a study out of the National Centre for Atmospheric Research details what nine of the world's top computer models predict for the lurching of climate at its most extreme. "It's going to be a wild ride, especially for specific regions," said study lead author Claudia Tebaldi, a scientist at the federally funded academic research center. Tebaldi pointed to the Western US, Mediterranean nations and Brazil as "hot spots" that will get extremes at their worst, according to the computer models. And some places, such as the Pacific Northwest, are predicted to get a strange double whammy of longer dry spells punctuated by heavier rainfall. Seth Borenstein, Global warming project predicts 'wild ride', Sapa-AP, 10-20-06
Scientists said...that they had found the first direct evidence linking the collapse of an ice shelf in Antarctica to global warming widely blamed on human activities. A view of the breakup of the northern section of the Larsen B ice shelf is seen in an image taken from NASA's Moderate-resolution Imaging SpectroRadiometer satellite. Scientists said on Monday that they had found the first direct evidence linking the collapse of an ice shelf in Antarctica to global warming widely blamed on human activities. Shifts in winds whipping around the southern Ocean, tied to human emissions of greenhouse gases, had warmed the Antarctic peninsula jutting up toward South America and contributed to the break-up of the Larsen B ice shelf in 2002, they said. "This is the first time that anyone has been able to demonstrate a physical process directly linking the break-up of the Larsen Ice Shelf to human activity," said Gareth Marshall, lead author of the study at the British Antarctic Survey. The chunk that collapsed into the Weddell Sea in 2002 was 3,250 sq kms (1,255 sq miles), bigger than Luxembourg or the U.S. state of Rhode Island. Alister Doyle, Antarctic Ice Collapse Linked to Greenhouse Gases, Reuters, 10-16-06
Electrical engineers at Oregon State University are developing electricity-generating buoys they believe will be a key component for clean, green wave power. Their objective is to convert the Pacific Ocean's heavy rolling swell into a renewable energy resource., relying on buoys to harness the near constant rise and fall of waves to produce electricity.
"Waves generate energy through motion," said Dr. Annette von Jouanne, an electrical engineering professor at Oregon State University (OSU).
The OSU project is part of a renewed global effort to investigate wave and tidal power as a potential source of alternative energy, she noted.
"Oregon is an ideal location," von Jouanne added in an interview.
Along Oregon's 460 kilometers of open coastline, waves average 1.5 meters high during the summer months and 3.5 meters during the winter.
To achieve their goals, von Jouanne and her colleagues at OSU have designed several types of power buoys, including oscillating linear generators they refer to as "direct drive" technology.
"The devices directly convert the linear motion of the wave into electrical energy without any hydraulic or pneumatic stages," von Jouanne said....Enrique Gili, Waves: The Next Wave in Clean, Green Power, lnter Press Service, 10-17-06
Want to participate in the effort to mitigate the impact of global warming? Download "Ten Things You Can Do"
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Words of Power #1: Truths Salvaged from Post-Katrina Debacle
Global Warming, Energy Security, Environmental Security, Alternate Energy, Sustainability, Green Power, Renewable Resources, Climate Change, Weather, Al Gore, An Inconvenient Truth, Extreme Weather, Crisis Management, Desertification, Armenia, Germany, Oregon, Antarctica, Richard Power, Words of Power
Thursday, October 19, 2006
Hard Rain Journal 10-19-06: The Two Biggest Lies, An Update on the “War on Terror,” the Theft of US Elections, and the Fight for Net Neutrality
And lastly, as promised, a Special Comment tonight on the signing of the Military Commissions Act and the loss of Habeas Corpus.
We have lived as if in a trance. We have lived… as people in fear.
And now — our rights and our freedoms in peril — we slowly awake to learn that we have been afraid… of the wrong thing.
Therefore, tonight, have we truly become, the inheritors of our American legacy. For, on this first full day that the Military Commissions Act is in force, we now face what our ancestors faced, at other times of exaggerated crisis and melodramatic fear-mongering....
Keith Olberman, Countdown Special Comment: Death of Habeas Corpus: “Your words are lies, Sir,” Crooks and Liars, 10-18-06
Hard Rain Journal 10-19-06: The Two Biggest Lies, with An Update on the “War on Terror,” the Theft of US Elections and the Struggle to Preserve the Freedom of the Internet
By Richard Power
There are so many lies. Which ones are the biggest? (Not counting the declaration of Bush as the "winner" in the 2000 and 2004 "elections." Those two lies are of different and greater magnitude.) Perhaps that Karl Rove is a genius and that Bush-Cheney is strong on protecting the USA from terrorist attacks.
Karl Rove is not a genius.
Give any unscrupulous, ambitious and clever political operative the complicity of the US mainstream news media and enough cash to corrupt the electoral process in a few key districts in a few battleground states, and that unscrupulous, ambitious and clever political operative will look like a genius.
Nor are George W. Bush and his enablers in the US Congress “protecting America” by giving him the despotic power to suspend habeas corpus and authorize torture. No, they are not “protecting America” from terrorists. They are protecting themselves from America -- just as surely as their political machine is attempting once again (it would be the fourth consecutive election) to insulate them from the will of the people.
Here are the brutal facts: In the Middle East, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have died already in George W. Bush’s foolish military adventure, and Al Qaeda related terrorism is a greater threat today than it was before 911 (indeed, elements sympathetic to it almost gained control of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons in recent days); meanwhile, in the USA, the democratic process has been subverted in the last three national elections, and the Internet, our last bastion of free speech and unfiltered information, is threatened by a move to impose corporatist control.
If you are a US citizen who reads Words of Power, I urge you to come to grips with these facts and follow your conscience and your common sense. If you are one of my many friends and colleagues from around the world who read Words of Power, well, at least you will know that some of us were willing to speak out against these abominations…
The men and women of the US military who have died in Iraq and Afghanistan deserve a better government and a braver press corp. The men and women of the intelligence services, the law enforcement agencies and the military who have stood up and spoken out against the torture and abuse of prisoners in US custody deserve a better government and a braver press corp.
Here are excerpts from six stories that corroborate my representation of the facts, with links to the full texts.
Curren W. Warf, M.D., is a pediatrician at Childrens Hospital Los Angeles. He sits on the national board of Physicians for Social Responsibility:
Last week the esteemed medical journal The Lancet released an epidemiological study concluding that 655,000 Iraqis died from war-related injury and disease from March 2003 to July 2006. This shockingly high figure has drawn attacks from the Bush administration and right-wing pundits.
Speaking as a medical doctor, I wish to set the record straight. The Lancet study is sound science. The study followed a strict, widely accepted methodology to arrive at its sobering conclusion. The study is being attacked not on scientific grounds but for ideological reasons.
People may not realize that The Lancet is the world’s most prestigious medical journal. Prior to publication, the Iraq study was subjected to a thorough peer review by specialists in the field of epidemiology….
The investigators followed the same methodology in Iraq that had been used in estimating death and disease in conflicts such as Darfur and Congo—where the Bush administration uncritically accepted their results. The public health tool they employed—cluster surveys—has been demonstrated time and again to be the best method of estimating rates of death in areas where vital statistics are not scrupulously maintained. Such bureaucratic vigilance is not the case in present-day Iraq. Curren Warf, 655,000 Iraq War Deaths, Truthdig, 10-17-06
In a recent interview with Der Spiegel, Dr. Bruce Hoffman, who worked on counter-terrorism for years at the RAND Corporation and now teaches Georgetown, asserts that Al Qaeda is more dangerous than it was on 9/11:
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Mr. Hoffman, five years have passed since 9/11. US officials claim that two-thirds of the al-Qaida leadership have either been captured or killed. Yet you are saying that al-Qaida is on the march. What leads you to that conclusion?
Hoffman: Whatever the percentage of the leadership killed or captured, that was the leadership that existed on 9/11. I find that a tremendous success. I don't want to minimize it. But it is also a dangerously anachronistic view because al-Qaida has been capable of filling that void in five years. The constant succession of "Number Threes" -- people in the post of operations chief, from Mohamed Atef to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to Hambali to Hamza al-Rabi, for instance -- proves that. Al-Qaida has a much deeper bench than we thought. They have shown themselves to be more formidable and perhaps more determined than we imagined.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Yet we haven't seen another 9/11, only attacks on a smaller scale. Has the threat deminished?
Hoffman: You must look at terror as a constant phenomenon. It changes continuously. Even before 9/11 al-Qaida was not a monolithic organisation. Certainly today it is not the same as it was on 9/11. It doesn't have a state within a state anymore, as it had in Afghanistan. It doesn't have a network of training camps and operational bases and a very solid command-and-control nexus. But now a lot of those training capabilities have migrated from physical space to virtual space, because the terrorists are using the Internet much more. Possession of Afghanistan should not be equated with being capable of a 9/11-type attack. Much of the 9/11 attacks were not planned in Afghanistan but in Germany, Spain and the US as well. I think that al-Qaida still exercises command-and-control. The attacks on the London Underground in July 2005 show that. And there are indications that the recently unmasked London airliner plot from this summer will, too. Al-Qaida is still alive and kicking and, as the airliner plot may yet show, still thinking in the same grandiose, ambitious terms as before 9/11.
SPIEGEL ONLINE:…you write about several new al-Qaidas that exist today...
Hoffman: Yes, because new structures have emerged. It is not an "either/or"-phenomenon: There are both new cells inspired by al-Qaida and actual al-Qaida terrorists active today. That is why I think al-Qaida is more dangerous than it was on 9/11. Because you have now a vast sea of self-radicalized Muslims in many places in the Muslim world that aren't necessarily connected with al-Qaida but willing to act. So you still have an al-Qaida organization that is operating on its own but is also seeking to tap into that pool of unhappiness and disaffection. Yassin Musharbash Interviews Terrorism Expert Bruce Hoffman: "Al-Qaida is More Dangerous Than it Was on 9/11", Der Spiegel, 10-10-06
The recent discovery of a planned al-Qaeda-backed coup against [of President General Pervez] Musharraf's regime, which included men in uniform associated with sensitive strategic institutions, underlines Musharraf's difficulties.
According to information obtained by Asia Times Online, the coup plot was hatched in the Waziristan tribal area headquarters of al-Qaeda. The conspiracy was uncovered after a mobile phone used to activate a rocket aimed at the president's residence was traced to an air force officer. More than 40 people, both inside and outside the military, were subsequently arrested.
The most alarming issue for the Pakistani establishment was not only the involvement of air force officers, but the apparent deep penetration of al-Qaeda into highly sensitive areas.
Those arrested in the conspiracy plot include air force engineers associated with the Air Weapon Complex (AWC) of Pakistan, a leading organization in the field of air-delivered weapons and systems. Its personnel are subjected to vigorous and intrusive background checks. Syed Saleem Shahzad, Al-Qaeda scare jolts Pakistan into action, Asia Times, 10-17-06
In an unaired interview with a major TV network, former U.S. Elections Assistance Commission (EAC) chair Rev. DeForest Soaries, appointed by George W. Bush, has excoriated both Congress and the White House, referring to their dedication to reforming American election issues as "a charade" and "a travesty," and says the system now in place is "ripe for stealing elections and for fraud”:
"I resigned, effective April 30th, 2005 after having served through the 2004 elections and concluding that neither the White House nor the Congress was really serious about election reform….
"There is no prototype. There are no standards. There is no scientific research that would guarantee any election district that there’s a machine that can be used to answer these very serious questions. And so, my sense is that the politicians in Washington have concluded that the system can’t be all that bad because, after all, it produced them. And as long as an elected official is an elected official, then whatever machine was used, whatever device was used to elect him or her, seems to be adequate. But there’s an erosion of voting rights implicit in our inability to trust the technology that we use and if we were another country being analyzed by America, we would conclude that this country is ripe for stealing elections and for fraud….
"Well, the states were forced to comply and they were asking us for guidance. We were ill-equipped to provide guidance. We didn’t begin our work until January 2004 and we spent the first three months of our work looking for office space. Here we were, the first federal commission, responsible for implementing federal law in the area of election administration and for the first three months we didn’t even have an address. And we physically had to walk around Washington DC looking for office space. This was a travesty. I was basically deceived by the leaders of the House, the Senate and the White House. And I decided that it just made more sense to spend my time watching my sons play basketball than to participate in this charade…. TRANSCRIPT FROM UNAIRED SEPTEMBER 2006 INTERVIEW, Rev. DeForest Soaries, Former U.S. Elections Assistance Commission Chair, Notes from The Underground, 10-18-06
Only a handful of US Senators, including a few brave Republicans, stand in the way of the threat to the neutrality of the Internet. Without Net Neutrality, we will probably not claw our way back up from this precipice, and media reform champions Bill Moyers and Jeff Chester explain why:
The Internet is revolutionary because it is the most democratic of media. All you need to join the revolution is a computer and a connection. We don’t just watch; we participate, collaborate and create. Unlike television, radio and cable, whose hirelings create content aimed at us for their own reasons, with the Internet every citizen is potentially a producer. The conversation of democracy belongs to us.
That wide-open access is the founding principle of the Internet, but it may be slipping through our fingers. How ironic if it should pass irretrievably into history here, at the very dawn of the Internet Age….
A non-neutral Internet would discourage competition, thereby costing consumers money and diminishing the benefits of lower subscription prices for Internet access. More importantly, people today pay for Internet access with the understanding that they are accessing a wide, level field of sites where only their preferences will guide them. Non-neutrality changes the very essence of the Internet, thereby making the product provided to users less valuable.
So the Internet is reaching a crucial crossroads in its astonishing evolution. Will we shape it to enlarge democracy in the digital era? Will we assure that commerce is not its only contribution to the American experience?
The monopolists tell us not to worry: They will take care of us, and see to it that the public interest is honored and democracy served by this most remarkable of technologies.
They said the same thing about radio.
And about television.
And about cable.
Will future historians speak of an Internet Golden Age that ended when the 21st century began? Bill Moyers and Scott Fogdall, Against An Imperial Internet, Tom Paine, 10-17-06
Under the radar of all but the most savvy Internet users, powerful commercial forces are rapidly creating a digital media system for the United States that threatens to undermine our ability to create a civil and just society. The takeover of YouTube by Google announced October 9 and the 2005 buyout by Rupert Murdoch of MySpace are not just about mega-deals for new media. They are the leading edge of a powerful interactive system that is being designed to serve the interests of some of the wealthiest corporations on the planet….
Given this emerging marketing model, the US broadband infrastructure may well become one giant "brandwashing" machine. The most powerful communications system ever developed by humans is increasingly being put in the service of selling, commercialization and commodification. And it will lead to an inherently conservative and narcissistic political culture, in which the interests of the self and the consumption of products are the primary, most visible, media messages. And unless we begin to challenge it now, the emerging digital culture will seriously challenge our ability to effectively communicate, inform and organize.
A handful of companies now dominate much of the US new-media market. Five corporations--Comcast, Time Warner, AT&T, Verizon and Qwest--control the wires and cable lines delivering us broadband, digital TV and, soon, much wireless service. Jeffrey Chester, The Google YouTube Tango, The Nation, 10-13-06
Richard Power is the founder of GS(3) Intelligence and http://www.wordsofpower.net. His work focuses on the inter-related issues of security, sustainability and spirit, and how to overcome the challenges of terrorism, cyber crime, global warming, health emergencies, natural disasters, etc. You can reach him via e-mail: richardpower@wordsofpower.net. For more information, go to www.wordsofpower.net
Keith Olberman,News Media, Media Reform, Bush, Cheney, Bill Moyers , Jeff Chester, Lancet, DeForest Soaries, Pakistan, Al Qaeda, Der Spiegel, Nuclear Proliferation, Terrorism, Net Neutrality, Bruce Hoffman, Habeus Corpus , Curren W. Warf, Iraq, FCC, Karl Rove, Elections, Voting, Election Fraud,Richard Power, Words of Power, YouTube, Google, MySpace
We have lived as if in a trance. We have lived… as people in fear.
And now — our rights and our freedoms in peril — we slowly awake to learn that we have been afraid… of the wrong thing.
Therefore, tonight, have we truly become, the inheritors of our American legacy. For, on this first full day that the Military Commissions Act is in force, we now face what our ancestors faced, at other times of exaggerated crisis and melodramatic fear-mongering....
Keith Olberman, Countdown Special Comment: Death of Habeas Corpus: “Your words are lies, Sir,” Crooks and Liars, 10-18-06
Hard Rain Journal 10-19-06: The Two Biggest Lies, with An Update on the “War on Terror,” the Theft of US Elections and the Struggle to Preserve the Freedom of the Internet
By Richard Power
There are so many lies. Which ones are the biggest? (Not counting the declaration of Bush as the "winner" in the 2000 and 2004 "elections." Those two lies are of different and greater magnitude.) Perhaps that Karl Rove is a genius and that Bush-Cheney is strong on protecting the USA from terrorist attacks.
Karl Rove is not a genius.
Give any unscrupulous, ambitious and clever political operative the complicity of the US mainstream news media and enough cash to corrupt the electoral process in a few key districts in a few battleground states, and that unscrupulous, ambitious and clever political operative will look like a genius.
Nor are George W. Bush and his enablers in the US Congress “protecting America” by giving him the despotic power to suspend habeas corpus and authorize torture. No, they are not “protecting America” from terrorists. They are protecting themselves from America -- just as surely as their political machine is attempting once again (it would be the fourth consecutive election) to insulate them from the will of the people.
Here are the brutal facts: In the Middle East, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have died already in George W. Bush’s foolish military adventure, and Al Qaeda related terrorism is a greater threat today than it was before 911 (indeed, elements sympathetic to it almost gained control of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons in recent days); meanwhile, in the USA, the democratic process has been subverted in the last three national elections, and the Internet, our last bastion of free speech and unfiltered information, is threatened by a move to impose corporatist control.
If you are a US citizen who reads Words of Power, I urge you to come to grips with these facts and follow your conscience and your common sense. If you are one of my many friends and colleagues from around the world who read Words of Power, well, at least you will know that some of us were willing to speak out against these abominations…
The men and women of the US military who have died in Iraq and Afghanistan deserve a better government and a braver press corp. The men and women of the intelligence services, the law enforcement agencies and the military who have stood up and spoken out against the torture and abuse of prisoners in US custody deserve a better government and a braver press corp.
Here are excerpts from six stories that corroborate my representation of the facts, with links to the full texts.
Curren W. Warf, M.D., is a pediatrician at Childrens Hospital Los Angeles. He sits on the national board of Physicians for Social Responsibility:
Last week the esteemed medical journal The Lancet released an epidemiological study concluding that 655,000 Iraqis died from war-related injury and disease from March 2003 to July 2006. This shockingly high figure has drawn attacks from the Bush administration and right-wing pundits.
Speaking as a medical doctor, I wish to set the record straight. The Lancet study is sound science. The study followed a strict, widely accepted methodology to arrive at its sobering conclusion. The study is being attacked not on scientific grounds but for ideological reasons.
People may not realize that The Lancet is the world’s most prestigious medical journal. Prior to publication, the Iraq study was subjected to a thorough peer review by specialists in the field of epidemiology….
The investigators followed the same methodology in Iraq that had been used in estimating death and disease in conflicts such as Darfur and Congo—where the Bush administration uncritically accepted their results. The public health tool they employed—cluster surveys—has been demonstrated time and again to be the best method of estimating rates of death in areas where vital statistics are not scrupulously maintained. Such bureaucratic vigilance is not the case in present-day Iraq. Curren Warf, 655,000 Iraq War Deaths, Truthdig, 10-17-06
In a recent interview with Der Spiegel, Dr. Bruce Hoffman, who worked on counter-terrorism for years at the RAND Corporation and now teaches Georgetown, asserts that Al Qaeda is more dangerous than it was on 9/11:
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Mr. Hoffman, five years have passed since 9/11. US officials claim that two-thirds of the al-Qaida leadership have either been captured or killed. Yet you are saying that al-Qaida is on the march. What leads you to that conclusion?
Hoffman: Whatever the percentage of the leadership killed or captured, that was the leadership that existed on 9/11. I find that a tremendous success. I don't want to minimize it. But it is also a dangerously anachronistic view because al-Qaida has been capable of filling that void in five years. The constant succession of "Number Threes" -- people in the post of operations chief, from Mohamed Atef to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to Hambali to Hamza al-Rabi, for instance -- proves that. Al-Qaida has a much deeper bench than we thought. They have shown themselves to be more formidable and perhaps more determined than we imagined.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Yet we haven't seen another 9/11, only attacks on a smaller scale. Has the threat deminished?
Hoffman: You must look at terror as a constant phenomenon. It changes continuously. Even before 9/11 al-Qaida was not a monolithic organisation. Certainly today it is not the same as it was on 9/11. It doesn't have a state within a state anymore, as it had in Afghanistan. It doesn't have a network of training camps and operational bases and a very solid command-and-control nexus. But now a lot of those training capabilities have migrated from physical space to virtual space, because the terrorists are using the Internet much more. Possession of Afghanistan should not be equated with being capable of a 9/11-type attack. Much of the 9/11 attacks were not planned in Afghanistan but in Germany, Spain and the US as well. I think that al-Qaida still exercises command-and-control. The attacks on the London Underground in July 2005 show that. And there are indications that the recently unmasked London airliner plot from this summer will, too. Al-Qaida is still alive and kicking and, as the airliner plot may yet show, still thinking in the same grandiose, ambitious terms as before 9/11.
SPIEGEL ONLINE:…you write about several new al-Qaidas that exist today...
Hoffman: Yes, because new structures have emerged. It is not an "either/or"-phenomenon: There are both new cells inspired by al-Qaida and actual al-Qaida terrorists active today. That is why I think al-Qaida is more dangerous than it was on 9/11. Because you have now a vast sea of self-radicalized Muslims in many places in the Muslim world that aren't necessarily connected with al-Qaida but willing to act. So you still have an al-Qaida organization that is operating on its own but is also seeking to tap into that pool of unhappiness and disaffection. Yassin Musharbash Interviews Terrorism Expert Bruce Hoffman: "Al-Qaida is More Dangerous Than it Was on 9/11", Der Spiegel, 10-10-06
The recent discovery of a planned al-Qaeda-backed coup against [of President General Pervez] Musharraf's regime, which included men in uniform associated with sensitive strategic institutions, underlines Musharraf's difficulties.
According to information obtained by Asia Times Online, the coup plot was hatched in the Waziristan tribal area headquarters of al-Qaeda. The conspiracy was uncovered after a mobile phone used to activate a rocket aimed at the president's residence was traced to an air force officer. More than 40 people, both inside and outside the military, were subsequently arrested.
The most alarming issue for the Pakistani establishment was not only the involvement of air force officers, but the apparent deep penetration of al-Qaeda into highly sensitive areas.
Those arrested in the conspiracy plot include air force engineers associated with the Air Weapon Complex (AWC) of Pakistan, a leading organization in the field of air-delivered weapons and systems. Its personnel are subjected to vigorous and intrusive background checks. Syed Saleem Shahzad, Al-Qaeda scare jolts Pakistan into action, Asia Times, 10-17-06
In an unaired interview with a major TV network, former U.S. Elections Assistance Commission (EAC) chair Rev. DeForest Soaries, appointed by George W. Bush, has excoriated both Congress and the White House, referring to their dedication to reforming American election issues as "a charade" and "a travesty," and says the system now in place is "ripe for stealing elections and for fraud”:
"I resigned, effective April 30th, 2005 after having served through the 2004 elections and concluding that neither the White House nor the Congress was really serious about election reform….
"There is no prototype. There are no standards. There is no scientific research that would guarantee any election district that there’s a machine that can be used to answer these very serious questions. And so, my sense is that the politicians in Washington have concluded that the system can’t be all that bad because, after all, it produced them. And as long as an elected official is an elected official, then whatever machine was used, whatever device was used to elect him or her, seems to be adequate. But there’s an erosion of voting rights implicit in our inability to trust the technology that we use and if we were another country being analyzed by America, we would conclude that this country is ripe for stealing elections and for fraud….
"Well, the states were forced to comply and they were asking us for guidance. We were ill-equipped to provide guidance. We didn’t begin our work until January 2004 and we spent the first three months of our work looking for office space. Here we were, the first federal commission, responsible for implementing federal law in the area of election administration and for the first three months we didn’t even have an address. And we physically had to walk around Washington DC looking for office space. This was a travesty. I was basically deceived by the leaders of the House, the Senate and the White House. And I decided that it just made more sense to spend my time watching my sons play basketball than to participate in this charade…. TRANSCRIPT FROM UNAIRED SEPTEMBER 2006 INTERVIEW, Rev. DeForest Soaries, Former U.S. Elections Assistance Commission Chair, Notes from The Underground, 10-18-06
Only a handful of US Senators, including a few brave Republicans, stand in the way of the threat to the neutrality of the Internet. Without Net Neutrality, we will probably not claw our way back up from this precipice, and media reform champions Bill Moyers and Jeff Chester explain why:
The Internet is revolutionary because it is the most democratic of media. All you need to join the revolution is a computer and a connection. We don’t just watch; we participate, collaborate and create. Unlike television, radio and cable, whose hirelings create content aimed at us for their own reasons, with the Internet every citizen is potentially a producer. The conversation of democracy belongs to us.
That wide-open access is the founding principle of the Internet, but it may be slipping through our fingers. How ironic if it should pass irretrievably into history here, at the very dawn of the Internet Age….
A non-neutral Internet would discourage competition, thereby costing consumers money and diminishing the benefits of lower subscription prices for Internet access. More importantly, people today pay for Internet access with the understanding that they are accessing a wide, level field of sites where only their preferences will guide them. Non-neutrality changes the very essence of the Internet, thereby making the product provided to users less valuable.
So the Internet is reaching a crucial crossroads in its astonishing evolution. Will we shape it to enlarge democracy in the digital era? Will we assure that commerce is not its only contribution to the American experience?
The monopolists tell us not to worry: They will take care of us, and see to it that the public interest is honored and democracy served by this most remarkable of technologies.
They said the same thing about radio.
And about television.
And about cable.
Will future historians speak of an Internet Golden Age that ended when the 21st century began? Bill Moyers and Scott Fogdall, Against An Imperial Internet, Tom Paine, 10-17-06
Under the radar of all but the most savvy Internet users, powerful commercial forces are rapidly creating a digital media system for the United States that threatens to undermine our ability to create a civil and just society. The takeover of YouTube by Google announced October 9 and the 2005 buyout by Rupert Murdoch of MySpace are not just about mega-deals for new media. They are the leading edge of a powerful interactive system that is being designed to serve the interests of some of the wealthiest corporations on the planet….
Given this emerging marketing model, the US broadband infrastructure may well become one giant "brandwashing" machine. The most powerful communications system ever developed by humans is increasingly being put in the service of selling, commercialization and commodification. And it will lead to an inherently conservative and narcissistic political culture, in which the interests of the self and the consumption of products are the primary, most visible, media messages. And unless we begin to challenge it now, the emerging digital culture will seriously challenge our ability to effectively communicate, inform and organize.
A handful of companies now dominate much of the US new-media market. Five corporations--Comcast, Time Warner, AT&T, Verizon and Qwest--control the wires and cable lines delivering us broadband, digital TV and, soon, much wireless service. Jeffrey Chester, The Google YouTube Tango, The Nation, 10-13-06
Richard Power is the founder of GS(3) Intelligence and http://www.wordsofpower.net. His work focuses on the inter-related issues of security, sustainability and spirit, and how to overcome the challenges of terrorism, cyber crime, global warming, health emergencies, natural disasters, etc. You can reach him via e-mail: richardpower@wordsofpower.net. For more information, go to www.wordsofpower.net
Keith Olberman,News Media, Media Reform, Bush, Cheney, Bill Moyers , Jeff Chester, Lancet, DeForest Soaries, Pakistan, Al Qaeda, Der Spiegel, Nuclear Proliferation, Terrorism, Net Neutrality, Bruce Hoffman, Habeus Corpus , Curren W. Warf, Iraq, FCC, Karl Rove, Elections, Voting, Election Fraud,Richard Power, Words of Power, YouTube, Google, MySpace
Tuesday, October 17, 2006
SPECIAL EDITION: Words of Power Interviews Nomi Prins, Author of "Jacked: How 'Conservatives' are Picking Your Pocket"
"I don't think it's just a war on the Middle Class, if anything it's a 'war' by the people that have the most on everyone else, the weapons being the power to influence decisions in Washington and in workplaces around the country - on everything from health and pension benefit reductions or deletions to charging exorbitant bank or credit card or mortgage fees to the ones who can afford them the least. Dobbs and Hartmann base their premises on the fact that the middle class is shrinking, which it is, as a percentage of American classes. But, what's happening more than that, is that the top portion of the country is accumulating more of its wealth, power and benefits, than the middle class, or the working poor, or lower (poorer) class."
Nomi Prins, Author of Jacked: How “Conservatives” are Picking Your Pocket (Whether You Voted for Them or Not)
SPECIAL EDITION: Jacked: How “Conservatives” are Picking Your Pocket (Whether You Voted for Them or Not), Words of Power Interviews Nomi Prins
By Richard Power
Economic security is an issue that looms larger each hour of each day.
Two excellent posts, one from David Sirota and the other from Bob Geiger, underscore this painful fact.
In "Tom Friedmanism now punishing China for trying to stop sweatshops," Sirota remarks, The New York Times reports that "China is planning to adopt a new law that seeks to crack down on sweatshops and protect workers' rights by giving labor unions real power for the first time since Beijing introduced market forces in the late 1970s." That's great news - but here's the kicker: the new law is "setting off a battle with American and other foreign corporations that have lobbied against it by hinting that they may build fewer factories in China."
In "Nobel Economists: Republicans Wrong on Minimum Wage," Geiger reports, With the buying power of the Federal minimum wage at its lowest point in 55 years, five Nobel Prize-winning economists have been joined by 650 of their peers, in calling on the Republican-led Congress to increase the minimum wage. Describing the last increase almost 10 years ago as now "fully eroded," the economists said that they agree with a report written in 1999 by the Council of Economic Advisors declaring that "modest increases in the minimum wage have had very little or no effect on employment."
In the 1960s and 1970s, I traversed the USA on Greyhound buses several times; imbibing the elixir of the American spirit in towns like Wheeling, West Virginia, Lake Charles, Louisiana, Lordsburg, New Mexico, Green River, Utah and Winnemucca, Nevada. On each journey I took a different route, and with each drought of that potent elixir, I grew stronger in the vision of this country's greatness and in the urge to articulate it.
Forty years ago, the USA was a big, brawling dockworker’s son. The USA of the 1960s and 1970s was full of danger and promise. Despite war, racism and political assassination, there was room to move and materials with which to build a life.
But over the decades, the danger has thickened and the promise had thinned.
Now, although I travel in airplanes and rental cars instead of buses, I still explore the Body Politic somatically, and I feel a people confined to a narrowing corridor, a people pushed and prodded toward a cul-de-sac, a people fleeing a juggernaut and racing toward a high wall. But it isn’t Mexico on the other side of that wall; it is the “American Dream.” They have come full circle, but they are on the wrong side of the wall. How will they punch through this wall? How will they tear it down? How will they return to the land of opportunity they were meant to inherent from their parents?
In the past six years, as we have slipped deeper into the gloom, I have seen so many Americans in the airport lounges, turning away from CNN and Faux News to stare off into space, out of despair or distrust.
Now Nomi Prins has given them a voice.
Prior to 911, Prins ran an analytics group at Bear Stearns in London and then worked in New York as managing director for Goldman Sachs. “9/11 changed a lot of people, particularly in New York City where the Trade Center once was,” she recently told me. “It was a time for introspection and examination about my life and what I wanted to do with it. I realized that it was time for a change. I left Goldman Sachs and the world of Wall Street to pursue another passion, i.e., to become a writer.”
Now a senior fellow at Demos, Prins has written an important book "Jacked: How 'Conservatives' are Picking Your Pocket (Whether You Voted for Them or Not)", published by Polipoint Press.
In many ways, this Words of Power interview with Prins is the companion of my recent interview with Anya Kamenetz, author of Generation Debt: Why Now Is A Terrible Time To be Young.
Generation Debt documents the predicament of today’s youth, particularly the twenty-somethings: “I am twenty-four years old, and I was born into a broke generation,” Kamenetz writes, “I look around and I see people who have borrowed more to go to college than they can repay, who can’t find a good job, can’t save, can’t afford basic necessities like health insurance, can’t make solid plans.”
Jacked, too, documents economic security issues. It organizes these issues by the cards all of us (young, old or middle-aged) carry (or are supposed to carry) in our wallet, e.g., your medical insurance card (unless you are one of the tens of millions of US citizens who don’t have one) and your employee ID card (unless your job has been outsourced to Hyberdad).
Prins writes: “It’s not that politics became less important; it’s that more Americans checked out of the conversations….But politics still touches our everyday life in so many ways. So taking the nature of our frantic lives into account, I’ve tried to talk about American politics by starting with something we can all relate to—our wallets. Wallets are roadmaps of our daily realities: they hold photos of the people we love, chunks of our identity, and plastic cards that evoke our financial worries. The cards inside your wallet tell a story. They also tell the tale of the government’s impact on you.”
Both Prins and Kamentz got out into the real world; they traveled the country far and wide and gave voice to real people.
In reviewing Jacked, I was reminded of two great works, Stud Terkel’s Working and John Steinbeck’s Travels with Charley. Terkel and Steinbeck were unafraid to write about the lives of the so-called “common people.” Both Terkel and Steinbeck are unabashed in their celebration of and commiseration with the daily life of the people.
Prins, in her book, like Kamenetz in hers, has been true to that great tradition.
You will note that Prins puts the label conservative in quotes in the title of her book. “The group of conservatives in power in Washington have not been conservative with the country's finances,” she explained to me, “They have created the biggest debt in our national history, largest trade imbalance, weak dollar and high deficit. That is not economically conservative behavior.”
Here is the Words of Power interview with Nomi Prins.
Words of Power: My work focuses on risks related to national security, energy security and environmental security. But you can’t really achieve any of these without economic security. That's why I consider the Bush-Cheney tax cuts, which gutted the surplus and plunged the federal budget into deficit spending, a national and global security issue of the highest importance. It has exposed this country great harm in a world gone mad. But the deficit isn’t the only economic problem that has either been brought about or exacerbated in the past six years (e.g., the trade deficit, the weak dollar, the outsourcing of US jobs overseas, the bankruptcy bill, the cost of health insurance and student loans, etc.) It is in this context that I reviewed Generation Debt and interviewed Anya Kamenetz, and why I have sought you out to review Jacked and interview you. Tell us what led you to write Jacked? And what led you to write it in the way that you did, i.e., as a first person narrative with the voices of the people out in the real world?
Nomi Prins: I wrote Jacked in a way that made it an easy read, in the hopes that people around the country could relate to it, even if they were not already following politics or thinking about how politics affected their daily lives. Many of the political books out there, are 400-500 pages long and heavy expensive hardbacks that most people don't have the money or time to process. Also, rather than rely on merely numbers and statistics, I wanted to get a sense for reality, which you can't do from behind a desk in New York, or a policy center in DC. It is my belief that people are generally too busy with their own lives to think about these political connections. They are dealing with financial or health or scheduling issues. So, I wanted to hear from them what these issues were, and combine this, in their own voices, into a book - first and foremost, about people and then about politics. And, I wanted it to be a book that would not take up too much time to read.
Words of Power: Two books from very different perspectives, "War on the Middle Class" by CNN Money Line host Lou Dobbs and "Screwed" by Air America progressive radio talk show host Thom Hartmann have recently hit the stores. Do you accept the premise of a "war against the Middle Class"? How would you characterize it? What is the point? What is the end game? Where did it start and where does it lead? How conscious is it? How have you seen it manifest?
Nomi Prins: I don't think it's just a war on the Middle Class, if anything it's a 'war' by the people that have the most on everyone else, the weapons being the power to influence decisions in Washington and in workplaces around the country - on everything from health and pension benefit reductions or deletions to charging exorbitant bank or credit card or mortgage fees to the ones who can afford them the least. Dobbs and Hartmann base their premises on the fact that the middle class is shrinking, which it is, as a percentage of American classes. But, what's happening more than that, is that the top portion of the country is accumulating more of its wealth, power and benefits, than the middle class, or the working poor, or lower (poorer) class. This is a Darwinian type phenomenon that's probably gone on since the dawn of humankind. In America, it's gotten increasingly worse since the 1980's and today, we have the biggest gaps in wealth, power, and influence ever. That is why people need to re-direct their frustrations at their personal situations to shifting back that balance - by voting and voicing their concerns. Their numbers are greater in the end, even if their control at this point isn't.
Words of Power: Let's explore the Bankruptcy Bill. Seventy-three "Democrats" voted for the Bankruptcy Bill in the House of Representatives. Thirty of them also voted to repeal the Estate Tax. Fourteen Senate "Democrats" voted for cloture (i.e., to end the debate) and allow a vote on which they knew the bill would pass and be signed into law. There is no harsher or more damning evidence of the impact of lobbying money, or the cruel indifference (at best) to the fate of the "Middle Class." It is class warfare, bought and paid for by an elite class of business interests and delivered by an elite class of political animals. And yet, I doubt many US voters really understand the implications. And many of them won't until it is too late for them (i.e., when they need to resort to the hapless option of bankruptcy and find that they cannot...Give us your take on the bankruptcy bill, e.g., what it really means to the working men and women of the USA and what you heard about it or realized about the fallout from it on your travels? What impact does it have on people hit hard by medical crises?
Nomi Prins: I have not interviewed a single person who declared bankruptcy because they ran up a debt on luxury items. Mostly, it is a decision that they come to after much consideration, and attempting other ways to consolidate debt - debt accumulated because of a series of basic needs - clothes, gas, necessary household items - to harsher ones - like emergency health care costs that spiral out of control in an unforeseen matter. No one looked at their debt as some kind of a right, but as something to manage. When credit card companies are allowed to charge unregulated late fees (on which they made over $16 billion in profit alone last year) it's hard for people to financially 'take' it. Also, because of the slightest 'mis-behavior' a person may exhibit in paying their bill, as in the case of the woman in chapter 2 of my book, who always paid her bills on time until she had an emergency c-section and wasn't able to focus on them, and then had her interest 'jacked' to almost 30% on her entire balance, credit card companies act in an extortional manner. None of that was addressed in defining the bankrupty bill that was lobbied for and paid for by these companies....In other words, the reasons that many people declare bankruptcy (almost a half of which are to pay for health emergencies, because our insurance system is appalling) were not debated. Nor, was the idea that people paying 10% on say a $1500 balance was a lot different from people paying 30% on it, in terms of budgeting. It was more the idea that a slight percentage of people took advantage of bankruptcy to run up debts and then shirk them. It was all about the credit card companies, not their customers, the consumers.
Words of Power: Let's explore how economic issues, or more accurately the "conservative" agenda on economic issues, are spun and sold in the US mainstream news media. Both of us have extensive experience in corporate media, on the air waves and in print. We both know about the compressed arc time in the news cycle and the cut backs in news room budgets, yada yada yada...but there is something more to it...It is hard not to conclude Alan Greenspan and Thomas Friedman and all those pundits who want to be Alan Greenspan or Thomas Friedman simply do not have any empathy or interest in the lives of working people in this country or elsewhere. On issues such as globalization and outsourcing their views can only be characterized as contemptuous of working people. And yet, their views are almost unassailable in the "conventional wisdom." Globalization is a fact of life in the 21st Century, but how it evolves is a matter of free will. And outsourcing is a far more damaging impact on the life of the US worker than illegal immigration, and yet it receives no attention while illegal immigration is used to channel people's economic anxieties. The strangest effect of all of this is that there are so many middle-class voters walking into the voting booth thinking that somehow what Greenspan and Friedman think is best really is best for them in their own lives. Could you tell us how you feel about the way economic security issues are addressed in the mainstream news media? What is the importance of alternate media, e.g., the blogosphere and Air America?
Nomi Prins: It's unclear whether it is a lack of empathy on the part of Greenspan or Friedman, or merely the fact that they are not focused on how what they say or do impacts the general public and their lives. The media gives far more air-time to them, and their message than to the needs of ordinary people. Ironically, this is because they are in the 'public sphere' even if they do not say things or make decisions that help much of that public. I don't explore illegal immigration in JACKED, but it strikes me that rather than blaming others for coming here to work, and not getting all the papers, because they take years to process, we should be looking at how to increase the benefits and compensation for working Americans. When the mainstream media covers lay-offs at GM or Ford, for example, which I discuss in the Employee ID chapter of JACKED, (chap 4), they take the company line, that these companies are finding it financially difficult to keep the promises they made to their workers, they cite various reasons, but come down on the chief reason being the cost of their benefits, like health care and pensions. Rather than ask the question, "well why don't they fight with insurance companies for better and cheaper packages," the media supports this idea that it's the workers demands for their benefits that's the problem, rather than the insurance companies ripping off company and worker alike.
Words of Power: All the interviews I have done so far -- with Mark Crispin Miller, David Sirota, Anya Kamenetz and now you -- have been building on each other and forming I hope a mosaic, one that articulates an agenda for moving forward. From my perspective, there are four overriding priorities: election reform, campaign reform, media reform, and sustainability. Neither major political party would cite these four issues as even in their top five priorities. Why? Perhaps because they would turn over the trough at which the pigs (to borrow Arianna Hufffington’s metaphor) have been feeding for so long...My view is that these four issues, i.e., election reform (bringing US electoral system into compliance with internationally accepted standards), campaign finance reform (publicly financed campaigns to end the legalized bribery of the lobbyist culture in D.C.), media reform (if not the break up of the existing monopolies at least an end to further consolidation and a return to the Fairness Doctrine), and sustainability (a nationally mandated initiative to move to renewable energy resources within an accelerated time frame) trump every other issue...If our society could deal with these four issues, we would elevate our public discourse, renew our democratic institutions and guarantee the flourishing of life and prosperity. Then with vibrant public discourse, healthy democratic institutions and a healed environment, all of the divisive hot-button issues (e.g., abortion, gay marriage, illegal immigration, etc.) would work themselves out. My question to you is what should the economic initiative of this 21st Century agenda look like? What simple, big and bold actions would begin the process of restoring economic security for the nation, the family and the individual?
Nomi Prins: As a society, we should demand a political economic agenda that gives us more personal security from a financial perspective. If people feel adequately compensated and value for their work, whether it is in a large corporation, small business, or raising a family, they will be happier, more productive, and more connected to other citizens. Our economic agenda to accomplish this is simple, and would not hurt, but instead help the overall American economy and our place in the world, including:
1) Living wage for all at the federal level
2) Health insurance for all, including regulating insurance companies to charge on basis of what people can pay as a first step, and nationalizing health care as a second step
3) Re-address Medicare prescription D act to enable government to negotiate cheaper group rates for drugs with pharmaceutical companies
4) No bankruptcy bills that don't also penalize credit card companies for overcharging consumers
5) No tax breaks for gas companies unless they prove investment and results for finding alternative energy measures
6) Progressive social security tax to insure that system of insurance
Here are two brief excerpts from Jacked:
It’s not just auto-manufacturing that has been downsized in terms of people and benefits. It’s corporate America everywhere. When I was a little kid in the late ‘70s, Poughkeepsie, New York, was to IBM as Detroit, Michigan was to GM. Our parents were engineers, plant managers, mainframe technicians….There was no such thing as changing jobs or being laid off. Our doctors were paid by IBM. Our dentists too….It used to be that people got paid less in exchange for more benefits. Today, they get paid less for fewer. It used to be that companies took care of future risk. Today, we do. More and more, pensions and health care are the chips on the table to keep other employee benefits (like pay) in check….By the early 1980s, internal IBM budgets were slashed and the workforce was quietly reduced from 370,000 to 260,000. But not by massive layoffs—that came in the early ‘90s. It was early retirement and departmental consolidations. IBM paid health insurance until the mid-90s. Then it assessed a co-payment” of $180 per month for a family plan. That went gradually up to $320 per month in 2001. Deductibles rose to $500 annually. My dad’s job and my dad ultimately escaped, like many others, to Mexico.
Saving for your own retirement and health care is rather hard when you can’t feed your family or pay your bills. Luckily, that’s what President Bush’s tax cuts are for, right? Wrong. Just take a look at their damage. The cost of the cuts he passed between 2001 and 2005 was equal to two-thirds of the country’s 200t deficit. And for most Americans, these tax cuts haven’t even put any extra money in their wallets. On average, we’ve received about $600 a family. Yet, as we all feel too keenly, gas, tuition, health insurance, and medical expenses rose much more. Meanwhile, corporations have been raking in more and more tax breaks under the Bush administration…Six out of ten companies don’t pay any federal income tax—and not because they’re using that extra money to get out there and hire new people or pay workers more for their labor. No, they’re paying executives more. Every US industry increased what it paid CEOs in 2004....
Other Special Editions:
SPECIAL EDITION: Generation Debt -- Why Now Is A Terrible Time To be Young, Words of Power Interviews Anya Kamenetz
SPECIAL EDITION: “The More Nefarious Form of Corruption is That Which is Legal” -- Words of Power Interviews David Sirota
SPECIAL EDITION: “Until this issue is burning on the mind of every citizen” -- Words of Power Interviews Mark Crispin Miller
Richard Power is the founder of GS(3) Intelligence and http://www.wordsofpower.net. His work focuses on the inter-related issues of security, sustainability and spirit, and how to overcome the challenges of terrorism, cyber crime, global warming, health emergencies, natural disasters, etc. You can reach him via e-mail: richardpower@wordsofpower.net. For more information, go to www.wordsofpower.net
Nomi Prins, Anya Kamenetz, Health Care, Debt, Federal Deficit, National Debt, Economic Security, US Economy, US Labor, Jobs, Jobs, Outsourcing, Minimum Wage, Thomas Friedman, Alan Greenspan, David Sirota, Bob Geiger, Lou Dobbs, Tom Hartmann
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