ABC Takes Hits for Slanted, Tabloid Debate

Posted on April 17, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer

ABC News moderators Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos seemed to be playing a game of gotcha at last night’s candidates’ debate. Photo by Matt Rourke / AP.

Clinton-Obama Debate: ABC Decides Top Issues Facing Americans Are Gaffes, Flag Pins and ’60s Radicals
By Greg Mitchell / April 16, 2008 (10:15 pm)

NEW YORK — In perhaps the most embarrassing performance by the media in a major presidential debate in years, ABC News hosts Charles Gibson and George Stephanopolous focused mainly on trivial issues as Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama faced off in Philadelphia.

Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the health care and mortgage crises, the overall state of the economy and dozens of other pressing issues had to wait for their few moments in the sun as Obama was pressed to explain his recent “bitter” gaffe and relationship with Rev. Wright (seemingly a dead issue) and not wearing a flag pin while Clinton had to answer again for her Bosnia trip exaggerations.

Then it was back to Obama to defend his slim association with a former ’60s radical — a question that came out of rightwing talk radio and Sean Hannity on TV, but delivered by former Bill Clinton aide Stephanopolous. This approach led to a claim that Clinton’s husband pardoned two other ’60s radicals. And so on.

More time was spent on all of this than segments on getting out of Iraq and keeping people from losing their homes and other key issues. Gibson only got excited when he complained about anyone daring to raise taxes on his capital gains.

Yet neither candidate had the courage to ask the moderators to turn to those far more important issues. But some in the crowd did — booing Gibson near the end.

Yet David Brooks’ review at The New York Times concluded: “I thought the questions were excellent.” He gave ABC an “A.”

But Tom Shales of The Washington Post had an opposite view: “Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos, turned in shoddy, despicable performances.”
*
Greg Mitchell is author of the new book, “So Wrong for So Long: How the Press, the Pundits — and the President — Failed on Iraq.” It features a preface by Bruce Springsteen and a foreword by Joe Galloway.

Source. / Editor and Publisher / The Rag Blog

In Pa. Debate, The Clear Loser Is ABC
By Tom Shales / April 17, 2008

When Barack Obama met Hillary Clinton for another televised Democratic candidates’ debate last night, it was more than a step forward in the 2008 presidential election. It was another step downward for network news — in particular ABC News, which hosted the debate from Philadelphia and whose usually dependable anchors, Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos, turned in shoddy, despicable performances.

For the first 52 minutes of the two-hour, commercial-crammed show, Gibson and Stephanopoulos dwelled entirely on specious and gossipy trivia that already has been hashed and rehashed, in the hope of getting the candidates to claw at one another over disputes that are no longer news. Some were barely news to begin with.

The fact is, cable networks CNN and MSNBC both did better jobs with earlier candidate debates. Also, neither of those cable networks, if memory serves, rushed to a commercial break just five minutes into the proceedings, after giving each candidate a tiny, token moment to make an opening statement. Cable news is indeed taking over from network news, and merely by being competent.

Gibson sat there peering down at the candidates over glasses perched on the end of his nose, looking prosecutorial and at times portraying himself as a spokesman for the working class. Blunderingly he addressed an early question, about whether each would be willing to serve as the other’s running mate, “to both of you,” which is simple ineptitude or bad manners. It was his job to indicate which candidate should answer first. When, understandably, both waited politely for the other to talk, Gibson said snidely, “Don’t all speak at once.”

For that matter, the running-mate question that Gibson made such a big deal over was decidedly not a big deal — especially since Wolf Blitzer asked it during a previous debate televised and produced by CNN.

The boyish Stephanopoulos, who has done wonders with the network’s Sunday morning hour, “This Week” (as, indeed, has Gibson with the nightly “World News”), looked like an overly ambitious intern helping out at a subcommittee hearing, digging through notes for something smart-alecky and slimy. He came up with such tired tripe as a charge that Obama once associated with a nutty bomb-throwing anarchist. That was “40 years ago, when I was 8 years old,” Obama said with exasperation.

Obama was right on the money when he complained about the campaign being bogged down in media-driven inanities and obsessiveness over any misstatement a candidate might make along the way, whether in a speech or while being eavesdropped upon by the opposition. The tactic has been to “take one statement and beat it to death,” he said.

No sooner was that said than Gibson brought up, yet again, the controversial ravings of the pastor at a church attended by Obama. “Charlie, I’ve discussed this,” he said, and indeed he has, ad infinitum. If he tried to avoid repeating himself when clarifying his position, the networks would accuse him of changing his story, or changing his tune, or some other baloney.

This is precisely what has happened with widely reported comments that Obama made about working-class people “clinging” to religion and guns during these times of cynicism about their federal government.

“It’s not the first time I made a misstatement that was mangled up, and it won’t be the last,” said Obama, with refreshing candor. But candor is dangerous in a national campaign, what with network newsniks waiting for mistakes or foul-ups like dogs panting for treats after performing a trick. The networks’ trick is covering an election with as little emphasis on issues as possible, then blaming everyone else for failing to focus on “the issues.”

Some news may have come out of the debate (ABC News will pretend it did a great job on today’s edition of its soppy, soap-operatic “Good Morning America”). Asked point-blank if she thought Obama could defeat presumptive Republican contender John McCain in the general election, Clinton said, “Yes, yes, yes,” in apparent contrast to previous remarks in which she reportedly told other Democrats that Obama could never win. And in turn, Obama said that Clinton could “absolutely” win against McCain.

To this observer, ABC’s coverage seemed slanted against Obama. The director cut several times to reaction shots of such Clinton supporters as her daughter, Chelsea, who sat in the audience at the Kimmel Theater in Philly’s National Constitution Center. Obama supporters did not get equal screen time, giving the impression that there weren’t any in the hall. The director also clumsily chose to pan the audience at the very start of the debate, when the candidates made their opening statements, so Obama and Clinton were barely seen before the first commercial break.

At the end, Gibson pompously thanked the candidates — or was he really patting himself on the back? — for “what I think has been a fascinating debate.” He’s entitled to his opinion, but the most fascinating aspect was waiting to see how low he and Stephanopoulos would go, and then being appalled at the answer.

Source. / Washington Post / The Rag Blog

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The Boss Throws His Bandanna in the Ring : Endorses Obama

Posted on April 17, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer

Bruce in Dallas, April 13, 2008.

Senator Obama is head and shoulders above the rest.
By Bruce Springsteen / April 16, 2008

LIke most of you, I’ve been following the campaign and I have now seen and heard enough to know where I stand. Senator Obama, in my view, is head and shoulders above the rest.

He has the depth, the reflectiveness, and the resilience to be our next President. He speaks to the America I’ve envisioned in my music for the past 35 years, a generous nation with a citizenry willing to tackle nuanced and complex problems, a country that’s interested in its collective destiny and in the potential of its gathered spirit. A place where “…nobody crowds you, and nobody goes it alone.”

At the moment, critics have tried to diminish Senator Obama through the exaggeration of certain of his comments and relationships. While these matters are worthy of some discussion, they have been ripped out of the context and fabric of the man’s life and vision, so well described in his excellent book, Dreams From My Father, often in order to distract us from discussing the real issues: war and peace, the fight for economic and racial justice, reaffirming our Constitution, and the protection and enhancement of our environment.

After the terrible damage done over the past eight years, a great American reclamation project needs to be undertaken. I believe that Senator Obama is the best candidate to lead that project and to lead us into the 21st Century with a renewed sense of moral purpose and of ourselves as Americans.

Over here on E Street, we’re proud to support Obama for President.

Source. / BruceSpringsteen.net / The Rag Blog

The Boss throws his red bandanna into the ring.
By Rachel Sklar / April 16, 2008

Legendary all-American rocker Bruce Springsteen has thrown his red bandanna into the political ring, today endorsing Barack Obama for President on his website. Wrote Bruce:

Like most of you, I’ve been following the campaign and I have now seen and heard enough to know where I stand. Senator Obama, in my view, is head and shoulders above the rest.

He has the depth, the reflectiveness, and the resilience to be our next President. He speaks to the America I’ve envisioned in my music for the past 35 years, a generous nation with a citizenry willing to tackle nuanced and complex problems, a country that’s interested in its collective destiny and in the potential of its gathered spirit. A place where “…nobody crowds you, and nobody goes it alone.”

The endorsement seems to have been prompted by Obama’s recent comments about Pennsylvanians being “bitter” and “clinging” to guns and various prejudices, first reported by the Huffington Post — and seems to take a swipe at Hillary Clinton in his endorsement:

At the moment, critics have tried to diminish Senator Obama through the exaggeration of certain of his comments and relationships. While these matters are worthy of some discussion, they have been ripped out of the context and fabric of the man’s life and vision, so well described in his excellent book, Dreams of My Father, often in order to distract us from discussing the real issues: war and peace, the fight for economic and racial justice, reaffirming our Constitution, and the protection and enhancement of our environment.

So: Anyone who thinks that Barack Obama doesn’t respect his small-town fellow Americans can take it up with the guy who wrote “Born In The U.S.A.” (and “Thunder Road,” and “The River,” and “Backstreets” and “Badlands” and pretty much a zillion classic songs about working-class life in small-town America).

What’s interesting about this endorsement from a new media perspective: It went up on the Boss’ website. That’s where it broke, and from what I can tell we were the third site to pick it up (kudos to you, CBS News and Marc Ambinder). It’s going to go huge, obviously, and it’s gonna happen before noon (cable news producers are digging up the stock footage now). That’s a phenomenon unique to this election cycle, and yet another example of how lightning-fast the news cycle is. It’s also a really interesting new wrench to throw into the “bitter” story, which has basically been running unchanged for the past six days — and this completely turns it on its head, making Obama the victim and Clinton the villain for trying to “distract us from discussing the real issues.” Look for Springsteen on “Meet The Press” on Sunday. (Oh, my God, Tim would love that. For sure he has an old Boss concert hat to pull out.)

Springsteen, who memorably supported John Kerry in 2004 (i.e. in concert, and every Bruce concert is memorable), seems pretty intent on making his point:

After the terrible damage done over the past eight years, a great American reclamation project needs to be undertaken. I believe that Senator Obama is the best candidate to lead that project and to lead us into the 21st Century with a renewed sense of moral purpose and of ourselves as Americans.

Over here on E Street, we’re proud to support Obama for President.

In other words, honey he’s got the heart he’s got the soul he needs control right now. I smell a collaboration with will.i.am in the offing.

p.s. Or, how’s this for another Bruce quote for Generation O: “I believe in the love that you gave me, I believe in the faith that can save me.” Also from Badlands. Listen here.

p.p.s. Stop the presses! The ultimate Generation O quote, also from Badlands:

Talk about a dream
Try to make it real
You wake up in the night
With a fear so real
Spend your life waiting
For a moment that just don’t come
Well, don’t waste your time waiting!

Or, in other words, “Yes We Can.”

Source. Huffington Post / The Rag Blog

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Bitter? You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet.

Posted on April 16, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer

Obama, Bitterness, Meet the Press, and the Old Politics
by Robert Reich / April 15, 2008

I was born in Scranton, Pennsylvania, 61 years ago. My father sold $1.98 cotton blouses to blue-collar women and women whose husbands worked in factories. Years later, I was secretary of labor of the United States, and I tried the best I could — which wasn’t nearly good enough — to help reverse one of the most troublesome trends America has faced: The stagnation of middle-class wages and the expansion of poverty. Male hourly wages began to drop in the early 1970s, adjusted for inflation. The average man in his 30s is earning less than his father did thirty years ago. Yet America is far richer. Where did the money go? To the top.

Are Americans who have been left behind frustrated? Of course. And their frustrations, their anger and, yes, sometimes their bitterness, have been used since then — by demagogues, by nationalists and xenophobes, by radical conservatives, by political nuts and fanatical fruitcakes — to blame immigrants and foreign traders, to blame blacks and the poor, to blame “liberal elites,” to blame anyone and anything.

Rather than counter all this, the American media have wallowed in it. Some, like Fox News and talk radio, have given the haters and blamers their very own megaphones. The rest have merely “reported on” it. Instead of focusing on how to get Americans good jobs again; instead of admitting too many of our schools are failing and our kids are falling behind their contemporaries in Europe, Japan, and even China; instead of showing why we need a more progressive tax system to finance better schools and access to health care, and green technologies that might create new manufacturing jobs, our national discussion has been mired in the old politics.

Listen to (this past Sunday’s)“Meet the Press” if you want an example. Tim Russert, one of the smartest guys on television, interviewed four political consultants — Carville and Matalin, Bob Schrum, and Michael Murphy. Political consultants are paid huge sums to help politicians spin words and avoid real talk. They’re part of the problem. And what do Russert and these four consultants talk about? The potential damage to Barack Obama from saying that lots of people in Pennsylvania are bitter that the economy has left them behind; about HRC’s spin on Obama’s words (he’s an “elitist,” she said); and John McCain’s similarly puerile attack.

Does Russert really believe he’s doing the nation a service for this parade of spin doctors talking about potential spins and the spin-offs from the words Obama used to state what everyone knows is true? Or is Russert merely in the business of selling TV airtime for a network that doesn’t give a hoot about its supposed commitment to the public interest but wants to up its ratings by pandering to the nation’s ongoing desire for gladiator entertainment instead of real talk about real problems?

We’re heading into the worst economic crisis in a half century or more. Many of the Americans who have been getting nowhere for decades are in even deeper trouble. Large numbers of people in Pennsylvania and across the nation are losing their homes and losing their jobs, and the situation is likely to grow worse. Consumers are at the end of their ropes, fuel and food costs are skyrocketing, they can’t go deeper into debt, they can’t pay their bills. They aren’t buying, which means every business from the auto industry to housing to even giant GE is hurting. Which means they’ll begin laying off more people, and as they do, we will experience an even more dangerous downward spiral.

Bitter? You ain’t seen nothing yet. And as much as people like Russert, Carville, Matalin, Schrum, and Murphy want to divert our attention from what’s really happening; as much as HRC and McCain seek to make political hay out of choices of words that can be spun cynically by the mindless spinners of the old politics; as much as demagogues on the right and left continue to try to channel the cumulative frustrations of Americans into a politics of resentment — all these attempts will, I hope, prove futile. Eighty percent of Americans know the nation is on the wrong track. The old politics, and the old media that feeds it, are irrelevant now.

Robert Reich is Professor of Public Policy at the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley. He has served in three national administrations, most recently as secretary of labor under President Bill Clinton. He has written ten books, including The Work of Nations, which has been translated into 22 languages; the best-sellers The Future of Success and Locked in the Cabinet, and his most recent book, Reason. His articles have appeared in the New Yorker, Atlantic Monthly, New York Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal. Mr. Reich is co-founding editor of The American Prospect magazine.

Source. / CommonDreams / The Rag Blog

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Michael Klare : Oil Rules!

Posted on April 16, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer

TomDispatch interview with author, Mike Klare

It’s strange that the business and geopolitics of energy takes up so little space on American front pages — or that we could conduct an oil war in Iraq with hardly a mention of the words “oil” and “war” in the same paragraph in those same papers over the years. Strange indeed. And yet, oil rules our world and energy lies behind so many of the headlines that might seem to be about other matters entirely.

Take the food riots now spreading across the planet because the prices of staples are soaring, while stocks of basics are falling. In the last year, wheat (think flour) has risen by 130%, rice by 74%, soya by 87%, and corn by 31%, while there are now only eight to 12 weeks of cereal stocks left globally. Governments across the planetary map are shuddering. This is a fast growing horror story and, though the cry in the streets of Cairo and Port au Prince might be for bread, this, too, turns out to be a tale largely ruled by energy: Too many acres turned over to corn (and sugar cane) for the creation of biofuels; a historic drought in Australia and other climate-change-induced extremes of weather — a result of the burning of fossil fuels — that have affected crop yields; and many new middle-class consumers, in China and elsewhere, coming on line, with a growing desire for meat, the production of which is heavily petroleum based.

From resource wars to oil wars (the subjects of his last two books), Michael Klare, Tomdispatch’s energy expert, has long been ahead of the curve when it came to ways in which our planet was being reshaped at the most basic level. Today, he offers Tomdispatch readers a peek into some of the key themes in his staggering new book, Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet: The New Geopolitics of Energy. If you want to grasp the true shape of our shaky world, of where exactly we’ve been and where we might be going, this is a book not to be missed. It offers the profile-in-formation of a shape-shifting planet, a planet in transition and on a road to nowhere pretty.

Tom Engelhardt / TomDispatch

The End of the World as You Know It
…and the Rise of the New Energy World Order
By Michael T. Klare

Oil at $110 a barrel. Gasoline at $3.35 (or more) per gallon. Diesel fuel at $4 per gallon. Independent truckers forced off the road. Home heating oil rising to unconscionable price levels. Jet fuel so expensive that three low-cost airlines stopped flying in the past few weeks. This is just a taste of the latest energy news, signaling a profound change in how all of us, in this country and around the world, are going to live — trends that, so far as anyone can predict, will only become more pronounced as energy supplies dwindle and the global struggle over their allocation intensifies.

Energy of all sorts was once hugely abundant, making possible the worldwide economic expansion of the past six decades. This expansion benefited the United States above all — along with its “First World” allies in Europe and the Pacific. Recently, however, a select group of former “Third World” countries — China and India in particular — have sought to participate in this energy bonanza by industrializing their economies and selling a wide range of goods to international markets. This, in turn, has led to an unprecedented spurt in global energy consumption — a 47% rise in the past 20 years alone, according to the U.S. Department of Energy (DoE).

An increase of this sort would not be a matter of deep anxiety if the world’s primary energy suppliers were capable of producing the needed additional fuels. Instead, we face a frightening reality: a marked slowdown in the expansion of global energy supplies just as demand rises precipitously. These supplies are not exactly disappearing — though that will occur sooner or later — but they are not growing fast enough to satisfy soaring global demand.

The combination of rising demand, the emergence of powerful new energy consumers, and the contraction of the global energy supply is demolishing the energy-abundant world we are familiar with and creating in its place a new world order. Think of it as: rising powers/shrinking planet.

This new world order will be characterized by fierce international competition for dwindling stocks of oil, natural gas, coal, and uranium, as well as by a tidal shift in power and wealth from energy-deficit states like China, Japan, and the United States to energy-surplus states like Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Venezuela. In the process, the lives of everyone will be affected in one way or another — with poor and middle-class consumers in the energy-deficit states experiencing the harshest effects. That’s most of us and our children, in case you hadn’t quite taken it in.

Here, in a nutshell, are five key forces in this new world order which will change our planet:

1. Intense competition between older and newer economic powers for available supplies of energy: Until very recently, the mature industrial powers of Europe, Asia, and North America consumed the lion’s share of energy and left the dregs for the developing world. As recently as 1990, the members of the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the club of the world’s richest nations, consumed approximately 57% of world energy; the Soviet Union/Warsaw Pact bloc, 14% percent; and only 29% was left to the developing world. But that ratio is changing: With strong economic growth in the developing countries, a greater proportion of the world’s energy is being consumed by them. By 2010, the developing world’s share of energy use is expected to reach 40% and, if current trends persist, 47% by 2030.

China plays a critical role in all this. The Chinese alone are projected to consume 17% of world energy by 2015, and 20% by 2025 — by which time, if trend lines continue, it will have overtaken the United States as the world’s leading energy consumer. India, which, in 2004, accounted for 3.4% of world energy use, is projected to reach 4.4% percent by 2025, while consumption in other rapidly industrializing nations like Brazil, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, and Turkey is expected to grow as well.

These rising economic dynamos will have to compete with the mature economic powers for access to remaining untapped reserves of exportable energy — in many cases, bought up long ago by the private energy firms of the mature powers like Exxon Mobil, Chevron, BP, Total of France, and Royal Dutch Shell. Of necessity, the new contenders have developed a potent strategy for competing with the Western “majors”: they’ve created state-owned companies of their own and fashioned strategic alliances with the national oil companies that now control oil and gas reserves in many of the major energy-producing nations.

China’s Sinopec, for example, has established a strategic alliance with Saudi Aramco, the nationalized giant once owned by Chevron and Exxon Mobil, to explore for natural gas in Saudi Arabia and market Saudi crude oil in China. Likewise, the China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) will collaborate with Gazprom, the massive state-controlled Russian natural gas monopoly, to build pipelines and deliver Russian gas to China. Several of these state-owned firms, including CNPC and India’s Oil and Natural Gas Corporation, are now set to collaborate with Petróleos de Venezuela S.A. in developing the extra-heavy crude of the Orinoco belt once controlled by Chevron. In this new stage of energy competition, the advantages long enjoyed by Western energy majors has been eroded by vigorous, state-backed upstarts from the developing world.

2. The insufficiency of primary energy supplies: The capacity of the global energy industry to satisfy demand is shrinking. By all accounts, the global supply of oil will expand for perhaps another half-decade before reaching a peak and beginning to decline, while supplies of natural gas, coal, and uranium will probably grow for another decade or two before peaking and commencing their own inevitable declines. In the meantime, global supplies of these existing fuels will prove incapable of reaching the elevated levels demanded.

Take oil. The U.S. Department of Energy claims that world oil demand, expected to reach 117.6 million barrels per day in 2030, will be matched by a supply that — miracle of miracles — will hit exactly 117.7 million barrels (including petroleum liquids derived from allied substances like natural gas and Canadian tar sands) at the same time. Most energy professionals, however, consider this estimate highly unrealistic. “One hundred million barrels is now in my view an optimistic case,” the CEO of Total, Christophe de Margerie, typically told a London oil conference in October 2007. “It is not my view; it is the industry view, or the view of those who like to speak clearly, honestly, and [are] not just trying to please people.”

Similarly, the authors of the Medium-Term Oil Market Report, published in July 2007 by the International Energy Agency, an affiliate of the OECD, concluded that world oil output might hit 96 million barrels per day by 2012, but was unlikely to go much beyond that as a dearth of new discoveries made future growth impossible.

Daily business-page headlines point to a vortex of clashing trends: worldwide demand will continue to grow as hundred of millions of newly-affluent Chinese and Indian consumers line up to purchase their first automobile (some selling for as little as $2,500); key older “elephant” oil fields like Ghawar in Saudi Arabia and Canterell in Mexico are already in decline or expected to be so soon; and the rate of new oil-field discoveries plunges year after year. So expect global energy shortages and high prices to be a constant source of hardship.

3. The painfully slow development of energy alternatives: It has long been evident to policymakers that new sources of energy are desperately needed to compensate for the eventual disappearance of existing fuels as well as to slow the buildup of climate-changing “greenhouse gases” in the atmosphere. In fact, wind and solar power have gained significant footholds in some parts of the world. A number of other innovative energy solutions have already been developed and even tested out in university and corporate laboratories. But these alternatives, which now contribute only a tiny percentage of the world’s net fuel supply, are simply not being developed fast enough to avert the multifaceted global energy catastrophe that lies ahead.

According to the U.S. Department of Energy, renewable fuels, including wind, solar, and hydropower (along with “traditional” fuels like firewood and dung), supplied but 7.4% of global energy in 2004; biofuels added another 0.3%. Meanwhile, fossil fuels — oil, coal, and natural gas — supplied 86% percent of world energy, nuclear power another 6%. Based on current rates of development and investment, the DoE offers the following dismal projection: In 2030, fossil fuels will still account for exactly the same share of world energy as in 2004. The expected increase in renewables and biofuels is so slight — a mere 8.1% — as to be virtually meaningless.

In global warming terms, the implications are nothing short of catastrophic: Rising reliance on coal (especially in China, India, and the United States) means that global emissions of carbon dioxide are projected to rise by 59% over the next quarter-century, from 26.9 billion metric tons to 42.9 billion tons. The meaning of this is simple. If these figures hold, there is no hope of averting the worst effects of climate change.

Read all of it here. /TomDispatch
Thanks to David Hamilton / The Rag Blog

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Troopers Came Armed for Bear

Posted on April 16, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer

Inside the very private polygamous ranch, “Monica,” a member of the FLDS Yearning For Zion community, near Eldorado,Texas, talks about how Texas officials will not allow her to see her children who were taken from the ranch last week with over 400 other children. (AP Photo/Keith Johnson, Deseret News)

Images show police with body armor, automatic weapons for raid on Texas polygamist retreat
By Jennifer Dobner / April 16, 2008

SAN ANGELO,TX — Police wore body armor, toted automatic weapons and were backed by an armored personnel carrier for a raid on a West Texas polygamist retreat, photos and video released Tuesday show.

Four still photos and a slice of video were released to The Associated Press by Rod Parker, spokesman for the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, which owns the raided Yearning for Zion Ranch near San Angelo in Eldorado.

Sect members took the photos and video during the first few days of a seven-day raid that involved police agencies from six counties, the Texas Rangers, the state highway patrol and wildlife officers. Authorities were looking for a teenage girl who had reported being abused by her 50-year-old husband.

A sect member whose wife shot the video said sect members got the impression that state officials “were doing something more than they said they were going to do.” The man declined to give his name for fear that speaking out would cause problems for his children, who are in state custody.

Tela Mange, a state Department of Public Safety spokeswoman, said officers are trained to protect themselves.

“Whenever we serve a search warrant, no matter where or when, we are always as prepared as possible so we can ensure the operational safety of the officers serving the warrant, as well as the safety of those who are on the property in question,” Mange said.

The armored car was precautionary and designed to remove someone from the property, not to force entry onto the ranch, she said.

Parker said rumors have circulated since the 1950s that the FLDS would respond with violence to threats on their way of life. “It’s never been substantiated at all. Nobody who knows these people could possibly believe that,” he said.

“It’s not in their nature,” he said.

This photo taken Thursday, April 3, 2008 by an unidentified member of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and released Tuesday, April 15, 2008 by church attorney Rod Parker, the spokesperson for members of the FLDS, shows an armored personnel carrier on property neighboring the Yearning For Zion ranch near Eldorado, Texas. Photos of a state raid on a West Texas polygamist sect show law enforcement officers, looking for a teenage girl and evidence of sexual abuse, came prepared for an armed confrontation. (AP Photo/Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints)

Parker said that if there was any suggeston that the FLDS would respond to police with violence, there would have been a cache of firearms found during the raid. “Instead they responded by singing and praying,” he said.

While there were hunting rifles at the ranch, search warrants filed in district court in Tom Green County don’t show that police seized any weapons.

Eldorado is about 200 miles southeast of Waco, where federal authorities tried to arrest Branch Davidian leader David Koresh for stockpiling guns and explosives in 1993. Four federal agents and six members of Koresh’s sect died in the shootout that ensued. After a 51-day standoff, Koresh and nearly 80 followers died in an inferno that the government says was set by the Davidians but that survivors say started when authorities fired tear gas rounds into their compound.

Law enforcement surrounded the FLDS ranch April 3, carrying a warrant seeking a 16-year-old girl who claimed she was trapped inside the church retreat and had been beaten and raped by her husband. The search also revealed that a soaring white limestone temple at the ranch held a bed where officials believe underage girls were required to consummate their spiritual marriages to much older men.

More than 400 children – all of whom lived in the large, dormitory-style log homes – were seized in the raid on suspicion they were being sexually and physically abused. They are being held in the San Angelo Coliseum and are awaiting a massive court hearing Thursday that will begin to determine their fate.

FLDS members carefully documented the raid in notes, video and still pictures of police and child protection workers talking with families, but much of that material was seized when police executed one of two search warrants on the ranch, Parker said.

Read all of it here. / Associated Press / The Rag Blog

Separated From Children, Sect Mothers Share Tears
By Kirk Johnson / April 16, 2008

Mothers separated from their children after the police raid on a polygamist compound in West Texas have spoken out for the first time, denouncing the authorities in tear-filled accounts.

The interviews, with reporters invited to the compound, the Yearning for Zion ranch in Eldorado, Tex., about three hours northwest of San Antonio, made a powerful public relations salvo on Tuesday, two days before a court hearing in San Angelo, Tex.

The hearing may decide the custody of more than 400 children whom the state took into custody in the raid.

“I’m not going to just sit and wait,” said Monica, who like all the interviewees gave just a first name.

“I have to do something every day to let them know that I want my children back,” she said in a video on The Deseret News Web site in Salt Lake City.

Kathleen said she and the others were setting the record straight, that children in her community are not abused.

“The world has been so prejudiced against us,” Kathleen said in an interview with CNN posted on YouTube.com. “They have a false image.”

The Texas Department of Family and Protective Services, which has temporary custody of the children, responded on its Web site. Mothers from the fundamentalist sect, the statement said, “have been unable to protect these children from abuse.”

On Monday, the agency moved many of the children to the San Angelo Coliseum, separating older children from their mothers, most of whom returned to the compound, about 45 miles away.

“It was absolutely necessary,” the agency said. “Investigators will never learn the full truth as long as adults who encourage a code of silence are standing over these children’s shoulders.”

Read all of it here. New York Times / The Rag Blog

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L.O.V.E.

Posted on April 16, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer

Image: VooDooDog

I’m the beginning of life
I am the end
I’m the mystery’s wife
I am godsend
I’m the prisoner of life
I cannot die
I’m to enjoy all of this
without knowing why

Mine is the light of the sun
Mine is the day
Mine’s irresistible fun
Mine is the way
Mine is the power of one
Mine has it all
Mine is infallible
And always on call

I’m full of wonderful things
I’ll make you smile
I have a heart that sings
I have my style
I have a use for these wings
I’m up to some good
I am invaluable and
You’ll know where I stood

I’m the illusion of time
I’m in full bloom
I am a river in rhyme
I flow from the womb
I have a path to climb
I am enough
I’m a miracle who
has no need to bluff

Here is the answer you seek
Here is the soul
Here there is time for the weak
Here you are whole
Here is where you now can speak
Here you’ll be heard
Here is the presence of prayer
Without even a word

Where can I go from here
Why would I try
Here is the tender and dear
Here is how high
When is the moment most near
When is it not
How could what I want most
Be at some other spot

Now is the time for life’s kiss
Now is a sign
Now is a season of bliss
Now’s a deep mine
Now is a time that I’d miss
Now is a pearl
Now is patience and grit
In this best of all worlds

I’m the beginning of love
For which there’s no end
I’m a singing sweet dove
I am your friend
I am heaven above
I’m lowing and mild
I’m the hope that you hold
And I sometimes go wild

I’m the meaning of life
I let my heart rend
I’ve rejected all strife
I’m on the mend
I’m the truth about life
That cannot lie
I’m the who and the way and
The what and the where
and the why

I’m the beginning of life

Loving Our Very Existence
L.O.V.E.

By Larry Piltz
Posted April 16, 2008
Indian Cove / Austin, Texas / The Rag Blog

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The Story of Stuff…

Posted on April 16, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer

….with Annie Leonard


What is the Story of Stuff?

From its extraction through sale, use and disposal, all the stuff in our lives affects communities at home and abroad, yet most of this is hidden from view. The Story of Stuff is a 20-minute, fast-paced, fact-filled look at the underside of our production and consumption patterns. The Story of Stuff exposes the connections between a huge number of environmental and social issues, and calls us together to create a more sustainable and just world. It’ll teach you something, it’ll make you laugh, and it just may change the way you look at all the stuff in your life forever.

The Rag Blog highly recommends that you watch The Story of Stuff here.

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Aren’t There Awards for This?

Posted on April 16, 2008 by RagBlog


Oklahoma Leaks 10,000 Social Security Numbers
by Evan Shamoon / April 16, 2008

In what can be called a true Homer Simpson moment, the Oklahoma Department of Corrections managed to leak 10,000 social security numbers by way of an incompetent Web programming team. You see, when the Oklahoma DOC created the state’s Sexual and Violent Offender Registry, it essentially put the personal information of those on the list queries into the URLs (Web addresses) linked to each individual.

What’s worse, the gaffe means that it not only leaked the personal data of tens of thousands of people, but also enabled anyone with basic Web knowledge to put anyone he or she chooses on the state’s sexual offender list.

And yes, that was the Department of Corrections. High five, dudes.

Source / Switched / The Rag Blog

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Credit crunch? The real crisis is global hunger.

Posted on April 16, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer

And if you care, eat less meat
By George Monbiot / April 15, 2008

A food recession is under way. Biofuels are a crime against humanity, but – take it from a flesh eater – flesh eating is worse.

Never mind the economic crisis. Focus for a moment on a more urgent threat: the great food recession that is sweeping the world faster than the credit crunch. You have probably seen the figures by now: the price of rice has risen by three-quarters over the past year, that of wheat by 130%. There are food crises in 37 countries. One hundred million people, according to the World Bank, could be pushed into deeper poverty by the high prices.

But I bet that you have missed the most telling statistic. At 2.1bn tonnes, the global grain harvest broke all records last year – it beat the previous year’s by almost 5%. The crisis, in other words, has begun before world food supplies are hit by climate change. If hunger can strike now, what will happen if harvests decline?

There is plenty of food. It is just not reaching human stomachs. Of the 2.13bn tonnes likely to be consumed this year, only 1.01bn, according to the United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organisation, will feed people.

I am sorely tempted to write another column about biofuels. From this morning all sellers of transport fuel in the United Kingdom will be obliged to mix it with ethanol or biodiesel made from crops. The World Bank points out that “the grain required to fill the tank of a sports utility vehicle with ethanol … could feed one person for a year”. This year global stockpiles of cereals will decline by around 53m tonnes; this gives you a rough idea of the size of the hunger gap. The production of biofuels will consume almost 100m tonnes, which suggests that they are directly responsible for the current crisis.

On these pages yesterday Ruth Kelly, the secretary of state for transport, promised that “if we need to adjust policy in the light of new evidence, we will”. What new evidence does she require? In the midst of a global humanitarian crisis, we have just become legally obliged to use food as fuel. It is a crime against humanity, in which every driver in this country has been forced to participate.

But I have been saying this for four years, and I am boring myself. Of course we must demand that our governments scrap the rules that turn grain into the fastest food of all. But there is a bigger reason for global hunger, which is attracting less attention only because it has been there for longer. While 100m tonnes of food will be diverted this year to feed cars, 760m tonnes will be snatched from the mouths of humans to feed animals – which could cover the global food deficit 14 times. If you care about hunger, eat less meat.

While meat consumption is booming in Asia and Latin America, in the UK it has scarcely changed since the government started gathering data in 1974. At just over 1kg per person per week, it’s still about 40% above the global average, though less than half the amount consumed in the United States. We eat less beef and more chicken than we did 30 years ago, which means a smaller total impact. Beef cattle eat about 8kg of grain or meal for every kilogram of flesh they produce; a kilogram of chicken needs just 2kg of feed. Even so, our consumption rate is plainly unsustainable.

In his magazine The Land, Simon Fairlie has updated the figures produced 30 years ago in Kenneth Mellanby’s book Can Britain Feed Itself? Fairlie found that a vegan diet produced by means of conventional agriculture would require only 3m hectares of arable land (around half Britain’s current total). Even if we reduced our consumption of meat by half, a mixed farming system would need 4.4m hectares of arable fields and 6.4 million hectares of pasture. A vegan Britain could make a massive contribution to global food stocks.

But I cannot advocate a diet that I am incapable of following. I tried it for about 18 months, lost two stone, went as white as bone and felt that I was losing my mind. I know a few healthy-looking vegans, and I admire them immensely. But after almost every talk that I give, I am pestered by swarms of vegans demanding that I adopt their lifestyle. I cannot help noticing that in most cases their skin has turned a fascinating pearl grey.

What level of meat-eating would be sustainable? One approach is to work out how great a cut would be needed to accommodate the growth in human numbers. The UN expects the population to rise to 9 billion by 2050. These extra people will require another 325m tonnes of grain. Let us assume, perhaps generously, that politicians such as Ruth Kelly are able to “adjust policy in the light of new evidence” and stop turning food into fuel. Let us pretend that improvements in plant breeding can keep pace with the deficits caused by climate change. We would need to find an extra 225m tonnes of grain. This leaves 531m tonnes for livestock production, which suggests a sustainable consumption level for meat and milk some 30% below the current world rate. This means 420g of meat per person per week, or about 40% of the UK’s average consumption.

This estimate is complicated by several factors. If we eat less meat we must eat more plant protein, which means taking more land away from animals. On the other hand, some livestock is raised on pasture, so it doesn’t contribute to the grain deficit. Simon Fairlie estimates that if animals were kept only on land that is unsuitable for arable farming, and given scraps and waste from food processing, the world could produce between a third and two-thirds of its current milk and meat supply. But this system then runs into a different problem. The Food and Agriculture Organisation calculates that animal keeping is responsible for 18% of greenhouse gas emissions. The environmental impacts are especially grave in places where livestock graze freely. The only reasonable answer to the question of how much meat we should eat is as little as possible. Let’s reserve it – as most societies have done until recently – for special occasions.

For both environmental and humanitarian reasons, beef is out. Pigs and chickens feed more efficiently, but unless they are free range you encounter another ethical issue: the monstrous conditions in which they are kept. I would like to encourage people to start eating tilapia instead of meat. This is a freshwater fish that can be raised entirely on vegetable matter and has the best conversion efficiency – about 1.6kg of feed for 1kg of meat – of any farmed animal. Until meat can be grown in flasks, this is about as close as we are likely to come to sustainable flesh-eating.

Re-reading this article, I see that there is something surreal about it. While half the world wonders whether it will eat at all, I am pondering which of our endless choices we should take. Here the price of food barely registers. Our shops are better stocked than ever before. We perceive the global food crisis dimly, if at all. It is hard to understand how two such different food economies could occupy the same planet, until you realise that they feed off each other.

Source. /The Guardian, UK
Thanks to Roger Baker / The Rag Blog

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If It Quacks Like a Duck

Posted on April 16, 2008 by RagBlog


Fourteen Defining Characteristics Of Fascism
By Dr. Lawrence Britt

Dr. Lawrence Britt has examined the fascist regimes of Hitler (Germany), Mussolini (Italy), Franco (Spain), Suharto (Indonesia) and several Latin American regimes. Britt found 14 defining characteristics common to each:

1. Powerful and Continuing Nationalism – Fascist regimes tend to make constant use of patriotic mottoes, slogans, symbols, songs, and other paraphernalia. Flags are seen everywhere, as are flag symbols on clothing and in public displays.

2. Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights – Because of fear of enemies and the need for security, the people in fascist regimes are persuaded that human rights can be ignored in certain cases because of “need.” The people tend to look the other way or even approve of torture, summary executions, assassinations, long incarcerations of prisoners, etc.

3. Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause – The people are rallied into a unifying patriotic frenzy over the need to eliminate a perceived common threat or foe: racial , ethnic or religious minorities; liberals; communists; socialists, terrorists, etc.

4. Supremacy of the Military – Even when there are widespread domestic problems, the military is given a disproportionate amount of government funding, and the domestic agenda is neglected. Soldiers and military service are glamorized.

5. Rampant Sexism – The governments of fascist nations tend to be almost exclusively male-dominated. Under fascist regimes, traditional gender roles are made more rigid. Divorce, abortion and homosexuality are suppressed and the state is represented as the ultimate guardian of the family institution.

6. Controlled Mass Media – Sometimes the media is directly controlled by the government, but in other cases, the media is indirectly controlled by government regulation, or sympathetic media spokespeople and executives. Censorship, especially in war time, is very common.

7. Obsession with National Security – Fear is used as a motivational tool by the government over the masses.

8. Religion and Government are Intertwined – Governments in fascist nations tend to use the most common religion in the nation as a tool to manipulate public opinion. Religious rhetoric and terminology is common from government leaders, even when the major tenets of the religion are diametrically opposed to the government’s policies or actions.

9. Corporate Power is Protected – The industrial and business aristocracy of a fascist nation often are the ones who put the government leaders into power, creating a mutually beneficial business/government relationship and power elite.

10. Labor Power is Suppressed – Because the organizing power of labor is the only real threat to a fascist government, labor unions are either eliminated entirely, or are severely suppressed.

11. Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts – Fascist nations tend to promote and tolerate open hostility to higher education, and academia. It is not uncommon for professors and other academics to be censored or even arrested. Free expression in the arts and letters is openly attacked.

12. Obsession with Crime and Punishment – Under fascist regimes, the police are given almost limitless power to enforce laws. The people are often willing to overlook police abuses and even forego civil liberties in the name of patriotism. There is often a national police force with virtually unlimited power in fascist nations.

13. Rampant Cronyism and Corruption – Fascist regimes almost always are governed by groups of friends and associates who appoint each other to government positions and use governmental power and authority to protect their friends from accountability. It is not uncommon in fascist regimes for national resources and even treasures to be appropriated or even outright stolen by government leaders.

14. Fraudulent Elections – Sometimes elections in fascist nations are a complete sham. Other times elections are manipulated by smear campaigns against or even assassination of opposition candidates, use of legislation to control voting numbers or political district boundaries, and manipulation of the media. Fascist nations also typically use their judiciaries to manipulate or control elections.

From Free Inquiry, Spring 2003
Source / Common Dreams / The Rag Blog

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Now, It Seems, We’re a Nation of Cowards

Posted on April 16, 2008 by RagBlog

See below. Courtesy of the National Archives.

George W. Bush’s Version of the Nuremberg Trials
By David von Ebers

In many respects, the war crimes trials held at Nuremberg, Germany, in the aftermath of World War II represented the pinnacle of American-style constitutional democracy. Despite the fact that Nazi Germany posed the greatest existential threat America and its European allies ever faced, the Allied Powers, at our urging, insisted that the men who carried out the Holocaust and committed the perhaps gravest war crimes in history be given fair trials.

A while back, NPR’s “Morning Edition” program featured a guest commentary by a Jewish World War II Army veteran named Clancy Sigal, who, as it happened, had been stationed in the vicinity of Nuremberg in October 1946 when the war crimes trials began. Sigal, understandably, would have treated the Nazis in the dock rather differently: He actually went to tribunal with the intention of killing Herman Goering with his service revolver. But seeing Goering’s trial in process proved to be a transformative moment for Clancy Sigal:

Today, in the midst of a national debate on how to treat captured terror suspects, my mind flashes back to Room 600 at Furtherstrasse 22 [in Nuremberg]. We gave Goering and the other war criminals a chance not only to defend themselves but in some cases, preach hate and violence.

In a ruined Germany, where so many corpses still lay buried in the rubble, and life seemed so very fragile, we found it in ourselves to give the worst of men due process.

And that, it seems to me, is what once defined the essential difference between the United States and its enemies.

These days, the Bush administration and its conservative lackeys like to compare themselves to the World War II generation. They like that comparison so much, they often fantasize that they’re fighting World War III against the “Islamo-fascists” (as right-wing nub David Horowitz says). But if these supposed champions of freedom are the 21st Century version of FDR and Gen. Eisenhower and Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson, the U.S. representative at Nuremberg, you have to ask whether they, too, are capable of rising above hate and emotion and fear in order to do what our Constitutional principles command. Do Bush and his fellow travelers on the right so respect the rule of law and the fundamental principles on which our Constitution is founded that they can do the right thing? Can they give “the worst of men due process”?

No, this is how Bush and a compliant Congress have risen to the challenge of the post-9/11 world:

When military officials announced war crimes charges against six detainees for the Sept. 11 attacks two months ago, the move was part of an effort to accelerate the Bush administration’s sluggish military commission system, which has yet to hold a single trial.

But the Sept. 11 case immediately hit a snag. Military defense lawyers were in short supply, and even now, two months later, not one of the six detainees has met his military lawyer.

(Link courtesy of ThinkProgress.org.)

In other words, although the U.S. and its allies were able to put together the necessary procedures and commence the Nuremberg trials within about eighteen months after the fall of Berlin — and to do so with the basic requirements of due process in tact — the Bush cabal are still unable to go forward with their sham “military commission” proceedings against suspected al Qaeda agents more than six and a half years after the September 11 attacks.

But the problems with the Bush Administration’s “military commissions” run far deeper than a mere shortage of defense lawyers to represent accused terrorists. Because unlike the level of due process afforded the Nuremberg defendants, the procedures laid out in George Bush’s Military Commissions Act are so inadequate, so lacking in basic due process and fundamental fairness, that these cases are likely to be tied up in legal challenges for months, if not years, to come.

Specifically, the Military Commissions Act of 2006 (.pdf file) permits the executive branch to seize an individual in the so-called “war on terror,” label him or her an unlawful enemy combatant and detain that individual indefinitely without allowing him or her access to the courts to challenge that designation. Instead (and supposedly in lieu of habeas corpus review in federal court), each detainee’s case is supposed to be reviewed by “combatant status review tribunals” — CSRT’s — which are to determine whether the individual is being detained properly and whether the detainee is guilty of war crimes (such as, in the case of the 9/11 attacks, illegally targeting innocent civilians).

The problem, however, is in the method of review. The CSRT’s are allowed to rely on evidence obtained through torture. They are allowed to review evidence in secret, evidence to which the detainee and his or her lawyer are not privy; and they are allowed to rely on hearsay evidence — that is, statements made out of court, by individuals who are not placed on the witness stand nor sworn in under oath, and who therefore cannot be cross-examined by the detainee or the detainee’s lawyers. Note that this evidence can be used not only to determine whether an individual is properly being detained, but whether that individual is guilty of a crime — some of which carry the death penalty. That’s right. The U.S. government — more specifically, the executive branch and the military — have the power to convict and execute an individual based on hearsay evidence, secret evidence, and/or evidence obtained through torture.

The obvious question, of course, is why? Why do we need to do this in secret? Why do we need to obtain convictions based on inherently unreliable evidence? Don’t we have real evidence against these people? Evidence that would stand up in court, subject to cross examination and so forth? What are the Bush cabal afraid of?

The truth?

Naturally, because these procedures are so defective they are being challenged in court, and that process (which may or may not cure the many defects in the Military Commissions Act) continues to draw out and prevent these cases from going to trial. In the end, however, if Bush and his lackeys manage to beat back the legal challenges to their bogus military commissions; if, in the end, the military commissions go forward, conduct sham trials and render guilty verdicts based on such defective processes and inherently faulty evidence, what will be the result? A mockery of everything our Constitutional system stands for.

How bitterly ironic. One of the great strengths of the Nuremberg process was that it not only provided assurances of fairness, it provided an open forum to air the Nazis’ hateful ideology and the sheer brutality of the Nazi regime. Men and women testified under oath, in graphic detail, about the Nazis’ crimes. Documents, photographs, even films, were introduced into evidence to show, in painful detail, how the inhumanity of the Nazi political philosophy translated into mass graves, piles of ash and bone, death, disease, starvation, forced labor, unbearably cruel medical experimentation … You know what I’m talking about.

And you know it largely because of the evidence adduced at the Nuremberg trials.

If the detainees at Guantánamo Bay truly are guilty of participating in war crimes, we now have a similar opportunity to expose the brutal, inhumane, and ultimately racist philosophy that motivates religious extremists like Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda network. We have the ability to put bin Laden’s morally bankrupt politics on trial before the whole world. We have the ability to remind the world, in painful detail, of the horrible and unnecessary suffering bin Laden and al Qaeda inflicted on 9/11; to remind people that innocent victims were incinerated, crushed to death, or leapt to their deaths to avoid a worse fate, all because of the hate he espouses.

But to do that effectively requires a fair, open legal process that we and the rest of the world can have confidence in. This is the only way to make the case in such a way that outside observers will really care about the outcome. Otherwise, we will have jettisoned the only opportunity we may ever have to put Osama bin Laden’s brand of religious extremism on trial.

Anthony D. Romero of the ACLU/National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyer’s John Adams Project puts it this way:

The military commissions set up by the Bush administration for the men imprisoned at Guantánamo Bay – including those it suspects were involved in the September 11 attacks – are not true American justice. These trials should represent who we are, what America stands for, and our commitment to due process. They are not about how civilized the accused are, but how civilized we are. America does not stand for trials that rely on torture to gain confessions, or on secret evidence that a defendant cannot rebut, or on hearsay evidence.

I wish I could say that — that America does not stand for the kind of sham justice the Bush administration and Congress sanctioned in the Military Commissions Act of 2006 — but the sad truth is, nobody seems to care. We used to be proud of who we are. Now, it seems, we’re a nation of cowards.

Of course, the courts have an opportunity to prove me wrong, if they have the courage to strike down the Military Commissions Act, to guarantee habeas corpus rights to the detainees at Guantánamo Bay, and to force our government to play by the rules on which it’s based. What are the odds of that happening?

Source / Journal of the Plague Year / The Rag Blog

Key to the photograph: Some of the defendants at Nuremberg. Front row, from left to right: Hermann Göring, Rudolf Hess, Joachim von Ribbentrop, Wilhelm Keitel. Back row from left to right: Karl Döwnitz, Erich Raeder, Baldur von Schirach, Fritz Sauckel, Alfred Jodl.

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Peak Oil Solutions: Biofuels and GMO’s

Posted on April 15, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer

Scott Pittman, center, with Harvey Stone and Alice Embree at the Rag Reunion, Sept. 3, 2005. Photo by Carlos Lowry / The Rag Blog.

One Step Solution to a Two Step Ditch
By Scott Pittman / April 15, 2008 / The Rag Blog

With the spectre of peak oil, global climate change, loss of biodiversity, political tensions surrounding access to natural resources, world-wide epidemics and poverty we as a nation and a species are forced to look at our behavior and how it impacts our world.

Many of the solutions being presented by our political leaders are compounding the problems. The whole rush to the biofuels “solution” proposed by both Al Gore and George H. Bush are good political examples of how to turn a problem into a disaster. The proposed use of our most fertile cropland to provide fuel from the most energy-intensive plants (corn, sorghum, soy, and sugar cane) creates a food deficit, further destroys remnant native ecosystems, while at the same time accelerates the use of fossil fuels to create biofuels. Fertilizer, after all, is a byproduct of gas and oil. Behind these quasi-solutions to peak oil lies the greed for more profits at the expense of the natural world. In virtually every instance the only road to sustainability is the one paved with the bricks of individual life style change. We are past the age of the technological fix and are faced with the need of social fixes.

Most of the changes that we must make are not really that onerous but are simply inconvenient. Taking the time to discover what food is grown locally and purchasing that rather than our current eating habits that represent 1500 miles of transportation per bite; we could be supporting the local farmers in our community by eating close to home and at the same time decrease fuel use and CO2 emissions.

Learning to garden, to grow at least few things to reduce the need to rip out some distant mountain side or a valley for a monoculture of a commercial cropland has some significant beneficial effect, locally and globally. Developing our homes toward energy-efficiency and resource conservation by harvesting rainwater, planting edible plants, and using the sun for space and water heating are simple to accomplish and in the current political climate may provide you with tax benefits. Carpooling, using a bus, switching to a bike all allow us to meet our neighbors, get in shape and reduces not only our financial overhead, but our ecological footprint.

The latest technological fix is of course going to be trialed in Africa – if no one noticed the starvation of millions during the “green revolution”, perhaps they won’t notice the introduction of genetically modified seed (gmo) being promoted by Bill Gates and the Rockefeller Brothers. They have managed to get Kofi Annan to shill for them and Monsanto is footing the bill for Kenyan agricultural extention agents. All of this in the name of saving Africans from starvation. Heard of any of this in anyones presidential platform?

How does one fight such financial behemoths as Bill Gates, Rockefeller Brothers, Monsanto, and Archer Daniels Midland, especially if you are African? This is the slimey underbelly of a capitalist system gone mad and it is totally hidden from view. It makes it very difficult to get too concerned with whether Obama is more elitist than Hillary or McCaine.

Who will save the traditional seeds of Africa, where is Nikolai Vavilov when we need him? How did it happen that African scientists and farmers have no say in their future? The same way it happened that we elected George Bush for two terms. It seems to me that we have perhaps passed many of the dreaded tipping points and it is time to plant a garden (open pollinated seeds of course), and get to know our neighbors. It is after all spring!

[Scott Pittman was an Austin activist in the sixties, a member of SDS and a contributor to The Rag. He lives in Santa Fe, NM, where he founded the Permaculture Institute. He has been teaching permaculture courses since 1985 in over 18 countries on four continents. This article was posted on Scott’s Permaculture Travels.]

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