Obama’s prescription for the auto industry may be too little, too late, unless more’s coming.
Viewed from one perspective, Obama’s mandate to the auto industry to come in line with California’s standard of 35 mpg average vehicle by 2016 is a bold and courageous step. However, if we look globally, many automakers have already shot past this standard and have set their sights higher, so this will not even bring the US into line with its competition. Historically we know Detroit loves to drag its feet and does nothing without being dragged kicking and screaming. If they hold true to their past lethargy and do nothing to dramatically reform their technology, this new standard may be nothing other than a death knell for the industry, in that it does not force them to go far enough.
Add to this the fact that the US is one of three hold-outs, along with Canada and New Zealand, to the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Signed by 144 member states, it is the first step toward the international recognition of the rights of
350 million people world-wide on the forefront of ecological destruction from oil exploration and climate change.
A CAFÉ standard of 35mpg by 2016, while a significant improvement over current standards, will not come close to meeting the necessary global reduction to meet the 350ppm atmospheric carbon threshold to avoid catastrophic climate change affecting agriculture and all coastal communities. This will require transition away from coal and oil and non-development of tar-sands and oil shale.
Thursday, May 21, 2009
Wednesday, May 20, 2009
To Sonali Kolhatkar and Joshua Holland; Re: 9/11
It's time to unpack this term "conspiracy theory." I listened with interest to your interview this morning with Joshua Holland of AlterNet, aware of your predilections around 9-11. I thought Holland’s comment “How can you do activism against a bunch of shadowy actors behind the scenes” was particularly telling, smacking of intellectual laziness. Perhaps a story would help.
On a dark night an individual searches the ground under a lamppost. A good Samaritan passing by offers to help.
“What are you looking for?”
“I lost my keys.”
“Where did you lose them?”
“Over there by the alley.”
“Why then are you looking over here!?”
“The light’s better.”
I’m not someone who believes in conspiracy theories necessarily; neither do I dismiss them. They are, after all, theories, which means an explanation of certain facts awaiting proof. Often they arise because the ‘official story’ ignores facts the officials would rather not see examined.
Did the U.S. Navy battleship Maine sink in Havana harbor due to a Spanish conspiracy? Current historians think not, it was the heat combined with improper storage of volatile armaments. Did William Randolph Hearst, the newspaper magnate, use his position and power to push the American population into war with Spain? This is no longer theory but historical fact; a conspiracy involving him and his many employees. Did Orson Wells base his groundbreaking film Citizen Kane on the life of Hearst? Fact: a conspiracy, involving Wells, the actors, the production company, and the exhibitors, to expose Hearst, and make money. Did Hearst use his power to suppress and discredit the film, by running negative reviews in the hundred or so newspapers under his control, threaten exhibitors, and subsequently attempt to ruin Wells’ career? Conspiracy, yes, theory, no.
We are willing to entertain the idea that figures within our government conspire to kidnap people off foreign streets and torture them at various undisclosed locations throughout the world. We must accept at this point that figures with government sanction have purposefully injected African Americans with syphilis and GIs with plutonium without their knowledge, in order to study them, that viral agents were released in the surf and subways of San Francisco in order to track the spread of disease. Is this indicative of the majority of those who serve in government? No, but that these events occurred is a matter of public record, if one cares to look, exposed in documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, a law which the George W. Bush administration summarily ignored and attempted to dismantle.
Ditto the lie of the Tonkin gulf attack used to justify the war in Vietnam, exposed by the Pentagon Papers. Two million Vietnamese dead, and 60,000 US counting only those killed in direct combat, not the aftermath, so Lyndon Johnson’s friends could make money. Presidential candidate Nixon prolonged the war to help get elected, sending his emissary Kissinger to scuttle Paris peace talks in 1968. Presidential candidate Reagan cut a deal with the Iranians not to release the U.S. embassy hostages in order to ensure Jimmy Carter's defeat.
A million and a half Afghans died as a result of our policies before 2001, and a half million Iraqi children from our sanctions, but that must be okay because Madeline Albright said it was. Do we remember? Do we know? Do we care?
But those are foreign dead, right, not Americans, our government would never do that to its own people, you say. Well what about the Tailwind report from award winning journalist April Oliver that got her fired from CNN in 1998, which according to the book Into the Buzzsaw was confirmed in a sworn deposition by a retired chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, causing her employers to settle her wrongful termination suit. That story— that the United States targeted defectors in Laos with sarin nerve gas during the Vietnam war.
What about the soldiers— soldiers always die, so they don’t count? Please. If you choose to believe that the murders of Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr., John Kennedy, Robert Kennedy and others were the result solely of the lone gunmen punished for the crime, and conclude that for the most part justice is alive and well, what then of the National Guardsmen at Kent State, Jackson State, or for that matter the Blackwater sharpshooters at New Orleans, none of whom have seen the inside of a courtroom or even been identified. Huey Newton's murder at the hands of the FBI and Which is only to say that bad things happen, especially when people of like mind get together.
The history of our nation is replete with examples of those with power using the means at their disposal to manipulate the public and the government to their bidding. Exceptions (Teddy’s trust busting, FDR) are notable, but serve mainly to prove the rule. The people with power and vested interest are identifiable, but are rarely connected with their actions because they successfully use the means at their disposal to conceal their activities from the public at large. Union leaders and political activists, by contrast, are only capable of performing successfully by attracting public awareness, and they often suffer for their actions with their life. Which might form an argument, subconsciously at least, for not probing too deeply, too publicly.
I am not an architect, engineer, or scientist. Do I think the towers were brought down by Chinese space lasers or an atom bomb? No. Do I think they were brought down solely by aircraft and nineteen hijackers? Possibly; taking into account that their funding came from the CIA redirected through Pakistani intelligence (and some Saudis), and some in a position to know chose to make money off the attack by over-insuring the buildings and placing put options on the airline stocks affected, and putting down the quashing of FBI investigations and the erasure of a vast database of terrorism investigation solely to incompetence and ass covering and currying favor with those in power (sucking up to Bush protecting the Saudis), and I’d need to hear some kind of explanation for those little puffs of smoke that certainly look like ‘squibs,’ the trails of smoke that jut out from sequentially timed explosives in a controlled demolition—possible. Do I think that some in a position to know this attack was coming sought to make it even more sensational, by assisting the demolition of the Towers and loss of life with planted explosives, in order to further political ends they believed would fabulously increase their power and wealth? Possible, taking into account credible eye-witness reports of events from several weeks prior to and including the day of, including firemen in the building reporting explosions, whose reports were omitted when the "official" story was prepared.
Lyndon Johnson himself remarked he didn’t believe a word of the Warren Report. While still touted as gospel in some quarters with convoluted explanations to support it, it is widely regarded as a whitewash in others. Photographs of the presidential limo taken the day of the incident clearly show the impression of a bullet imbedded in the front of the chrome above the windshield. The limo was later destroyed. Explain that with your single bullet theory.
The 9-11 Commission Report has numerous flaws. I say let those with the expertise who feel motivated to do so pursue their investigations, hopefully one day with government sanction, without the need to prejudice our opinions one way or the other. To which I say good luck, but I mean that. Our track record in this area is not so great. Those of us without such expertise could use our intellect to more accurately make connections in the social realm. Do I think the dark powers who possibly participated but certainly profited from 9/11 are vulnerable on this issue? Absent a whistleblower from within, not really. Forensic evidence remains somewhat inconclusive and eye-witness reports, while compelling, are not enough to prove the issue. So I guess I agree with Holland, but not with his inference, that since we cannot prove it therefore is not true.
There are certainly more obvious, and larger crimes, that lack the emotional resonance of 9/11. Like, all the nasty business that's gone on for years that would make us a target in the first place, which most are content to ignore. Chalmers Johnson predicted such an event in Blowback, written in 1999.
Do I think that keeping photos of torture secret will protect our troops? No. Keeping them secret will protect the torturers, and continue the practice. Being seen as torturers with or without photos to prove it will not protect our troops. Quite the contrary. Exposing the photos to the public would hopefully result in outrage and revulsion at what has been allowed to transpire in our name, resulting in a push for a change of policy, and prosecutions, which by his actions is obviously something Obama fears, perhaps out of concern for his own safety. This would, by the way, do more to protect the troops, but then they're expendable, right? Not so ex-presidents, regardless their crimes.
Exposure dis-empowers the guilty, and forces a change of policy. What we need is more light, but it’s got to be in the right place. There’s plenty of work to go around. Most of the time you do a pretty good job with your microphone, but not always. The original meaning of the word ‘sin’ came from archery, meaning simply, to miss the mark. We all need to improve our accuracy, if we are to resolve our difficulties.
On a dark night an individual searches the ground under a lamppost. A good Samaritan passing by offers to help.
“What are you looking for?”
“I lost my keys.”
“Where did you lose them?”
“Over there by the alley.”
“Why then are you looking over here!?”
“The light’s better.”
I’m not someone who believes in conspiracy theories necessarily; neither do I dismiss them. They are, after all, theories, which means an explanation of certain facts awaiting proof. Often they arise because the ‘official story’ ignores facts the officials would rather not see examined.
Did the U.S. Navy battleship Maine sink in Havana harbor due to a Spanish conspiracy? Current historians think not, it was the heat combined with improper storage of volatile armaments. Did William Randolph Hearst, the newspaper magnate, use his position and power to push the American population into war with Spain? This is no longer theory but historical fact; a conspiracy involving him and his many employees. Did Orson Wells base his groundbreaking film Citizen Kane on the life of Hearst? Fact: a conspiracy, involving Wells, the actors, the production company, and the exhibitors, to expose Hearst, and make money. Did Hearst use his power to suppress and discredit the film, by running negative reviews in the hundred or so newspapers under his control, threaten exhibitors, and subsequently attempt to ruin Wells’ career? Conspiracy, yes, theory, no.
We are willing to entertain the idea that figures within our government conspire to kidnap people off foreign streets and torture them at various undisclosed locations throughout the world. We must accept at this point that figures with government sanction have purposefully injected African Americans with syphilis and GIs with plutonium without their knowledge, in order to study them, that viral agents were released in the surf and subways of San Francisco in order to track the spread of disease. Is this indicative of the majority of those who serve in government? No, but that these events occurred is a matter of public record, if one cares to look, exposed in documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, a law which the George W. Bush administration summarily ignored and attempted to dismantle.
Ditto the lie of the Tonkin gulf attack used to justify the war in Vietnam, exposed by the Pentagon Papers. Two million Vietnamese dead, and 60,000 US counting only those killed in direct combat, not the aftermath, so Lyndon Johnson’s friends could make money. Presidential candidate Nixon prolonged the war to help get elected, sending his emissary Kissinger to scuttle Paris peace talks in 1968. Presidential candidate Reagan cut a deal with the Iranians not to release the U.S. embassy hostages in order to ensure Jimmy Carter's defeat.
A million and a half Afghans died as a result of our policies before 2001, and a half million Iraqi children from our sanctions, but that must be okay because Madeline Albright said it was. Do we remember? Do we know? Do we care?
But those are foreign dead, right, not Americans, our government would never do that to its own people, you say. Well what about the Tailwind report from award winning journalist April Oliver that got her fired from CNN in 1998, which according to the book Into the Buzzsaw was confirmed in a sworn deposition by a retired chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, causing her employers to settle her wrongful termination suit. That story— that the United States targeted defectors in Laos with sarin nerve gas during the Vietnam war.
What about the soldiers— soldiers always die, so they don’t count? Please. If you choose to believe that the murders of Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr., John Kennedy, Robert Kennedy and others were the result solely of the lone gunmen punished for the crime, and conclude that for the most part justice is alive and well, what then of the National Guardsmen at Kent State, Jackson State, or for that matter the Blackwater sharpshooters at New Orleans, none of whom have seen the inside of a courtroom or even been identified. Huey Newton's murder at the hands of the FBI and Which is only to say that bad things happen, especially when people of like mind get together.
The history of our nation is replete with examples of those with power using the means at their disposal to manipulate the public and the government to their bidding. Exceptions (Teddy’s trust busting, FDR) are notable, but serve mainly to prove the rule. The people with power and vested interest are identifiable, but are rarely connected with their actions because they successfully use the means at their disposal to conceal their activities from the public at large. Union leaders and political activists, by contrast, are only capable of performing successfully by attracting public awareness, and they often suffer for their actions with their life. Which might form an argument, subconsciously at least, for not probing too deeply, too publicly.
I am not an architect, engineer, or scientist. Do I think the towers were brought down by Chinese space lasers or an atom bomb? No. Do I think they were brought down solely by aircraft and nineteen hijackers? Possibly; taking into account that their funding came from the CIA redirected through Pakistani intelligence (and some Saudis), and some in a position to know chose to make money off the attack by over-insuring the buildings and placing put options on the airline stocks affected, and putting down the quashing of FBI investigations and the erasure of a vast database of terrorism investigation solely to incompetence and ass covering and currying favor with those in power (sucking up to Bush protecting the Saudis), and I’d need to hear some kind of explanation for those little puffs of smoke that certainly look like ‘squibs,’ the trails of smoke that jut out from sequentially timed explosives in a controlled demolition—possible. Do I think that some in a position to know this attack was coming sought to make it even more sensational, by assisting the demolition of the Towers and loss of life with planted explosives, in order to further political ends they believed would fabulously increase their power and wealth? Possible, taking into account credible eye-witness reports of events from several weeks prior to and including the day of, including firemen in the building reporting explosions, whose reports were omitted when the "official" story was prepared.
Lyndon Johnson himself remarked he didn’t believe a word of the Warren Report. While still touted as gospel in some quarters with convoluted explanations to support it, it is widely regarded as a whitewash in others. Photographs of the presidential limo taken the day of the incident clearly show the impression of a bullet imbedded in the front of the chrome above the windshield. The limo was later destroyed. Explain that with your single bullet theory.
The 9-11 Commission Report has numerous flaws. I say let those with the expertise who feel motivated to do so pursue their investigations, hopefully one day with government sanction, without the need to prejudice our opinions one way or the other. To which I say good luck, but I mean that. Our track record in this area is not so great. Those of us without such expertise could use our intellect to more accurately make connections in the social realm. Do I think the dark powers who possibly participated but certainly profited from 9/11 are vulnerable on this issue? Absent a whistleblower from within, not really. Forensic evidence remains somewhat inconclusive and eye-witness reports, while compelling, are not enough to prove the issue. So I guess I agree with Holland, but not with his inference, that since we cannot prove it therefore is not true.
There are certainly more obvious, and larger crimes, that lack the emotional resonance of 9/11. Like, all the nasty business that's gone on for years that would make us a target in the first place, which most are content to ignore. Chalmers Johnson predicted such an event in Blowback, written in 1999.
Do I think that keeping photos of torture secret will protect our troops? No. Keeping them secret will protect the torturers, and continue the practice. Being seen as torturers with or without photos to prove it will not protect our troops. Quite the contrary. Exposing the photos to the public would hopefully result in outrage and revulsion at what has been allowed to transpire in our name, resulting in a push for a change of policy, and prosecutions, which by his actions is obviously something Obama fears, perhaps out of concern for his own safety. This would, by the way, do more to protect the troops, but then they're expendable, right? Not so ex-presidents, regardless their crimes.
Exposure dis-empowers the guilty, and forces a change of policy. What we need is more light, but it’s got to be in the right place. There’s plenty of work to go around. Most of the time you do a pretty good job with your microphone, but not always. The original meaning of the word ‘sin’ came from archery, meaning simply, to miss the mark. We all need to improve our accuracy, if we are to resolve our difficulties.
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
When It Is Torture
Those locked in conversation over Obama’s reversal of his decision to release hundreds (or was it thousands) of photos that depict torture at US hands, probably missed a one paragraph item in the World Briefing section on page A6 of last Tuesday’s New York Times (May 12, 2009); “United Arab Emirates: Sheik Held Over Torture Video.” Seems a video surfaced in which the brother of the ruler of Abu Dhabi, who is also the President of the seventeen-member United Arab Emirates, appears to torture an Afghan grain merchant. He has been detained pending the outcome of a criminal investigation.
Contrast this with the United States, where the CIA erased the videotapes, and the President we elected on the pledge to bring sunshine to government makes the excuse that if we release the photos it might prove inflammatory with negative consequences for our troops. I for one do not think confirming to the world that we are a nation unwilling and incapable of facing up to the evidence of our own crimes will serve to protect our troops while carrying out any mission we attempt to portray as just.
Justice need not lack mercy but requires accountability. Justice requires crimes be exposed, the guilty prosecuted, whether they be a corporal or the brother of the president who carries out torture, or a president or vice president who ordered it. Justice is a contract between the rulers and the ruled, that says we play by the same rules; no one is above the law.
I can’t say how many times I have been in conversation with friends, intelligent people, who repeat to me sound-bites from the media or the President’s lips, as if that were the end of discussion. Behind these thought-numbing aphorisms is what Edward Said referred to as “Orientalism,” the unconscious supposition that white Christians of European descent are best disposed to rule the world, the only ones with a grasp of fairness, the only ones worth being accountable to. I find it equally at play in the question, “If we just leave Iraq, it would be chaos. How could they rebuild?” As if they didn’t build their country in the first place, as if they weren’t capable of rebuilding without our help, and of course we would be their first choice. I mean, since we destroyed it, we should know how to put it back together, right?
Many of us have become accustomed it seems, to accepting at face value pronouncements from power, instead of comparing them to our own internal sense of justice. The thing that made Orwell’s novel 1984 so compelling was the way he laid bare the conscious transition from human being to servile co-conspirator in the suffering of others. One thought only need be accepted; let it happen to others.
As Jeremy Scahill reported this morning on Democracy Now!, AlterNet, and his blog RebelReports.com, torture is alive and well at Guantanamo under Obama. Little wonder when we can’t even compel him to release the photos, let alone bring those responsible to justice, which is what he fears their release will require, more than consequences for our troops.
Obama’s message to Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu to stop building settlements notwithstanding, his pre-election pledge of “make me do it” is sounding ironically hollow. If he cuts off funding when Netanyahu ignores him (which he most certainly will), something even Bush senior once attempted, then I might believe him. Lacking that his actions are less than one step forward, two steps back.
Justice is alive in the world, even here in the US, but don’t look for it in the halls of power or the media. There it seems we can’t afford it. Find it, hang on to it, within yourself. Losing it is torture.
Contrast this with the United States, where the CIA erased the videotapes, and the President we elected on the pledge to bring sunshine to government makes the excuse that if we release the photos it might prove inflammatory with negative consequences for our troops. I for one do not think confirming to the world that we are a nation unwilling and incapable of facing up to the evidence of our own crimes will serve to protect our troops while carrying out any mission we attempt to portray as just.
Justice need not lack mercy but requires accountability. Justice requires crimes be exposed, the guilty prosecuted, whether they be a corporal or the brother of the president who carries out torture, or a president or vice president who ordered it. Justice is a contract between the rulers and the ruled, that says we play by the same rules; no one is above the law.
I can’t say how many times I have been in conversation with friends, intelligent people, who repeat to me sound-bites from the media or the President’s lips, as if that were the end of discussion. Behind these thought-numbing aphorisms is what Edward Said referred to as “Orientalism,” the unconscious supposition that white Christians of European descent are best disposed to rule the world, the only ones with a grasp of fairness, the only ones worth being accountable to. I find it equally at play in the question, “If we just leave Iraq, it would be chaos. How could they rebuild?” As if they didn’t build their country in the first place, as if they weren’t capable of rebuilding without our help, and of course we would be their first choice. I mean, since we destroyed it, we should know how to put it back together, right?
Many of us have become accustomed it seems, to accepting at face value pronouncements from power, instead of comparing them to our own internal sense of justice. The thing that made Orwell’s novel 1984 so compelling was the way he laid bare the conscious transition from human being to servile co-conspirator in the suffering of others. One thought only need be accepted; let it happen to others.
As Jeremy Scahill reported this morning on Democracy Now!, AlterNet, and his blog RebelReports.com, torture is alive and well at Guantanamo under Obama. Little wonder when we can’t even compel him to release the photos, let alone bring those responsible to justice, which is what he fears their release will require, more than consequences for our troops.
Obama’s message to Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu to stop building settlements notwithstanding, his pre-election pledge of “make me do it” is sounding ironically hollow. If he cuts off funding when Netanyahu ignores him (which he most certainly will), something even Bush senior once attempted, then I might believe him. Lacking that his actions are less than one step forward, two steps back.
Justice is alive in the world, even here in the US, but don’t look for it in the halls of power or the media. There it seems we can’t afford it. Find it, hang on to it, within yourself. Losing it is torture.
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