April 22, 2008 archive

Back to the Artificial Environment & Back Again

I drive home from having been with the Earth Mother for any length of time and feel clarity about our artificial environment. The longer I’ve been with her, the more profound the clarity is. I stare straight in the face of “progress” as phone lines, gas stations, and eventually the hazy horizon over the city appears.

Photobucket

I can’t help the feeling of wrongness I feel, though I can see some progress is useful, schools are for example. Still, I can’t help the feeling of wrongness. This isn’t meant to be a judgment of the wrongness of civilization, but by the time I describe this feeling; it probably will be.

Progressives, Liberals, Movements, and Political Parties – Part 2

Cross-posted from my blog at Campaign for America’s Future.

In my previous entry I laid out the differences between liberals and progressives, movements and political parties.  For those of you who haven’t time to read through it, a brief recap:  Liberals believe in socio-economic justice, whereas progressives believe the same thing but also in taking it to the next step-using government as a powerful tool with which to achieve it by making Big Business behave.  The Progressive Movement, much like movement conservatism, has a definite set of goals, and the Progressive Party is the political force through which we can reach them.

Quit tearing the party apart!

I knew it would come to this one day, because one side was so stubborn and the other side was feeling rejected. Maybe this rift can be filled one day, but right now, there is only pain and hurt. Makes one wonder how it all came down to this.

That’s right, al-Qaida and Iran have irreconcilable differences, they are tearing their Axis of Evil apart.

http://www.breitbart.com/artic…

The increasing enmity toward Iran is a notable change of rhetoric from al-Zawahri, who in the past rarely mentioned the country-apparently in a hopes he would be able to forge some sort of understanding with Tehran based on their common rivalry with the United States. Iran has long sought to distance itself from al-Qaida.  

“Al-Zawahri wanted to work with Iran, but he’s deeply disappointed that Iran has not cooperated with al-Qaida,” said Rohan Gunaratna, a terrorism expert and author of “Inside al-Qaida: The Global Network of Terror.”

So now, al-Zawahri “wants to appeal to the anti-Shiite, anti-Iran sentiments in the Arab and Muslim world,” said Gunaratna, head of the International Center for Political Violence and Terrorism Research in Singapore.

Al-Zawahri appeared intent on exploiting widespread worry in the Arab world over Iran’s influence, particularly in Iraq, to garner support for al-Qaida. At the same time, he sought to denigrate Iran’s ally Hezbollah, which has gained some popularity even among Sunnis in the region for its fight against Israel.

But in many of his answers, al-Zawahri went out of his way to criticize Iran. He said the Iraqi insurgent umbrella group led by al- Qaida, called the Islamic State of Iraq, is “the primary force opposing the Crusaders (the United States) and challenging Iranian ambitions” in Iraq.

Great, al-Zawahri plays the race card. Way to turn the Arabs against the Persians, asshole. This Jihad was suppose to be about ideas and policies, but here al-Zawahri goes back to the terrorism of old.


“Iran’s aim here is also clear-to cover up its involvement with America in invading the homes of Muslims in Afghanistan and Iraq,” he added. Iran cooperated with the United States in the 2001 U.S. assault on Afghanistan that toppled al-Qaida’s allies, the Taliban.

This campaign of dirty tricks has to end, you don’t go into Jihad as a people divided. You don’t see Iran bringing up Osama’s playboy youth or compassionate sane cleric.

Iran has never been in bed with America, while it is well know Osama was. Do you see Iran making obscure internet videos about that?

No. Because they are against tearing this party apart.

The rhetoric is a stark change for al-Zawahri, who in the past did not seek to exploit Shiite-Sunni tensions. When the former head of al- Qaida in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, was waging a campaign of suicide bombings against Shiites in Iraq, al-Zawahri sent messages telling him to stop, fearing it would hurt al-Qaida’s image.

This just goes to show al-Zawahri will stop at nothing to win this thing. He will flipflop, he will lie and he will ruin other members of the Axis of Evil for his own entitlement.

This was suppose to be a different Jihad, a Jihad about ideas. About policy. A Jihad where fanatical Muslim could walk hand in hand with other fanatical Muslims, regardless of sects, setting off each other’s suicide belts, showing the world what a terrorist party united can do.

al-Zawahri has ruined that hope, which is why he is the real Great Satan.

Latest News – THE ENVIRONMENTALIST’s Earth Day

Cross-posted from THE ENVIRONMENTALIST

Golf and the Environment

Golf courses can be breathtaking in their beauty.  Environmentally?  Not as much…  Includes an interesting survey of golf professionals about climate change and sustainable use.


NASA rolls out the ‘Green Carpet’ for Earth Day

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is commemorating Earth Day with a ‘Green Carpet’ campaign of press conferences, features on NASA TV, links and new photos of the earth taken from the latest shuttle missions.

U.S. Identifies Tainted Heparin in 11 Countries

Contamination in the blood thinner Heparin that was produced in China has been discovered in eleven countries, accounting for 81 deaths in the United States, so far.

More new articles at THE ENVIRONMENTALIST

Four at Four

  1. The Los Angeles Times reports Bush opens summit with leaders of Canada and Mexico. George W. Bush, Felipe Calderón of Mexico, and Stephen Harper of Canada are meeting for the fourth annual summit between the three nations. New Orleans was chosen as a venue by the Bush administration for propaganda value. Bush said he was celebrating “the comeback of a great American city” that was devastated by Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

    The summit will focus on trade, immigration, and cross-border drug and weapons smuggling, just as free-trade agreements and NAFTA in particular are under political attack more than at any time since the U.S.-Canada-Mexico agreement began eliminating tariffs and other barriers to North American trade 14 years ago.

    Three-way trade among the United States, Canada and Mexico has grown since 1994 from about $290 billion to $930 billion, according to U.S. government statistics.

    But Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch, long an opponent of the pact, said the increase was largely the result of a “massive surge in imports” into the United States, bringing with it what the group calculated was a 691% increase in the trade deficit attributed to NAFTA.

    According to the AP, Bush refuses to admit the U.S. is in a recession. “Bush, replying to criticism from Democratic presidential candidates, said Tuesday that ‘now is not the time to renegotiate … or walk away from’ the North American Free Trade Agreement… Asked about the state of the U.S. economy, Bush said: ‘We’re not in a recession. We are in a slowdown.‘”

Four at Four continues below the fold with stories of big oil supporting state-sponsored terrorism, a plea to “eliminate capitalism” to save the planet and humanity, and an update on the Chinese arms ship en route to Zimbabwe.

Lawsuit Reveals Massive Suicide Rate Among U.S. Soldiers

Mistah Kurtz — he dead.

A class action lawsuit filed against the Veterans Administration by Veterans for Common Sense and Veterans United for Truth has reaped an unusual harvest, in the form of an email from Ira Katz, head of mental health at the VA, to Brigadier General Michael J. Kussman, undersecretary for health at the VA. The email, dated last December, threatens to blow the lid off the scandal of insufficient veterans health treatment, and the lies that have kept this scandal from heretofore getting the traction it deserves.

Here’s Jason Leopold at Online Journal reporting:

Lawsuit Reveals Massive Suicide Rate Among U.S. Soldiers

Mistah Kurtz — he dead.

A class action lawsuit filed against the Veterans Administration by Veterans for Common Sense and Veterans United for Truth has reaped an unusual harvest, in the form of an email from Ira Katz, head of mental health at the VA, to Brigadier General Michael J. Kussman, undersecretary for health at the VA. The email, dated last December, threatens to blow the lid off the scandal of insufficient veterans health treatment, and the lies that have kept this scandal from heretofore getting the traction it deserves.

Here’s Jason Leopold at Online Journal reporting:

Lawsuit Reveals Massive Suicide Rate Among U.S. Soldiers

Mistah Kurtz — he dead.

A class action lawsuit filed against the Veterans Administration by Veterans for Common Sense and Veterans United for Truth has reaped an unusual harvest, in the form of an email from Ira Katz, head of mental health at the VA, to Brigadier General Michael J. Kussman, undersecretary for health at the VA. The email, dated last December, threatens to blow the lid off the scandal of insufficient veterans health treatment, and the lies that have kept this scandal from heretofore getting the traction it deserves.

Here’s Jason Leopold at Online Journal reporting:

“Tell Us How You Really Feel” …An Earth Day Rant

The Rant, a fine human tradition. And one I occasionally trade on shamelessly. Humans have odd social rules, especially those of us humans descended from the Puritan/Protestant tradition of hiding our emotions. But it seems to be somewhat socially/politically acceptable to, every once in a while, but not too often, let our emotions out in one big burst. Our fellow humans seem to, for the most part, understand that this is a necessary, or at least inevitable, part of living in an emotionally repressed society.

Iow, we are ‘allowed’ to let our true feelings, such as frustration and anger out once in a while, as long as we ‘act normal’ the rest of the time. And I agree. And so I do my best, lol, to act normal. Ranting makes people uncomfortable, rants are usually mostly raw emotion. Raw emotion is in itself uncomfortable, because it triggers an emotional response in us, and we don’t like to be emotional. We are not good at it, we haven’t been trained to deal with it, we don’t know how to respond to it. It makes us uncomfortable, in a society built around the idea that comfort is the highest goal.



Abandon Comfort, All Ye Who Enter Here

the difference

Here’s a short little ditty for your consideration…

My youngest sister once asked my mom what the difference between a republican and a democrat was.

she answered with this story…

Are you breathing? The US Armed Forces wants YOU!

Up yours, America!

Photobucket

Remember when the Chicken Hawks thought this image was SO cool?

That was because they understood the idea of hiding from anything more dangerous than a Cheeto was really important, and they needed someone else to do what they would not, could not and never would.

Earth Day’s real, lasting legacy

Happy Earth Day.

Maybe we should start with a disclosure that I am Gaylord Nelson’s biographer, which may give me a somewhat different perspective on Earth Day, founded by Senator Nelson (pictured), than some others.

That said, do take time to read Meteor Blade’s commentary and Q-A with Denis Hayes, who has been associated with Earth Day since Gaylord Nelson hired him to coordinate the first one in 1970.

Earth Day, it is true, has not solved all of the world’s environmental problems.  But it has had, and continues to have, a profound impact on how people think about and relate to the environment.

Gaylord Nelson’s primary goal in launching Earth Day was to get environmental issues a prominent place on this country’s political agenda, and it certainly accomplished that long ago.  On the first Earth Day, seven months after Nelson announced plans for what he envisioned as a campus environmental teach-in, 20 million people — 10 per cent of the US population at the time — participated in some way.

Earth Day introduced the Environmental Decade, an unparalleled period of legislative and grassroots activity to protect the nation’s environment. More significant environmental legislation was signed into law during the eleven-year “decade” (1970-1980) than during the 170-year period prior to Earth Day.  Congress passed twenty-eight major environmental laws, and hundreds of other public lands bills to protect and conserve natural resources.

Philip Shabecoff, a noted environmental writer, described it this way:

After Earth Day, nothing was the same. Earth Day brought revolutionary change and touched off a great burst of activism that profoundly affected the nation’s laws, its economy, its corporations, its farms, its politics, science, education, religion, and journalism… Most important, the social forces unleashed after Earth Day changed, probably forever, the way Americans think about the environment.

   

Load more