Oct 02 2007
Pony Party
Oct 02 2007
Pony Party, Stop the War
On October 27th, United for Peace and Justice is organizing 11 coordinated demonstrations in Boston, Chicago, Jonesborough (no event details are listed for Jonesborough), Los Angeles, New Orleans, New York, Orlando, Philadelphia, Salt Lake City, San Francisco, and Seattle. (In Los Angeles, this protest is being coordinated with A.N.S.W.E.R)
This is a WesPAC site dedicated to stopping the rush to war in Iran. You can send a form email (and we all know I always do what Wes♥Clark tells me to). The campaign is apparently a joint venture by Wes’s Securing America and the Vote*Vets PAC.
This image is from AfterDowningStreet, not WesPAC or VoteVets, but I’m putting it here anyway…
The Green Party of Michigan’s Stop the War Slate is coordinating anti-war leafletting at polling places on election day.
Google ‘stop the war’ and you will get 146,000,000 options…. 😉 Or go directly to a place like DemocracyRising or the Iraq Moratorium site and find millions more ways…
Around the world…..
In London, a peaceful march planned by the Stop the War Coalition is being threatened with police intervention.
On Monday 8 October the Stop the War Coalition will be marching from Trafalgar Square to Parliament calling for all troops in Iraq to be brought home immediately.
After a series of relatively co-operative meetings, the police now say they have been instructed not to allow the march to take place and that all demonstrations are banned within a mile of Parliament whilst in session.
The Toronto Coalition to Stop the War is organizing a demonstration on October 27, 2007 to urge their government to bring their troops home from Afghanistan.
Stop the War Coalition Sydney actually called General Petraeus a “loopy lapdog”. I’ll be firing off my condemnation as soon as I’m finished here… 😉
The ponies are loaded up with picket signs and clipboards…the LAST thing they need is recommends to carry!!
Without further ado, the floor is yours…
~73v
Oct 02 2007
Roman Nose and the Sand Creek Massacre of Nov. 29th, 1864 (Part 1)
“…Roman Nose made his record against the whites, in defense of territory embracing the Republican and Arickaree rivers. He was killed on the latter river in 1868, in the celebrated battle with General Forsythe.
Roman Nose always rode an uncommonly fine, spirited horse, and with his war bonnet and other paraphernalia gave a wonderful exhibition. The Indians used to say that the soldiers must gaze at him rather than aim at him, as they so seldom hit him even when running the gantlet before a firing line…”
Crossposted at Progressive Historians
I drove to Roman Nose State Park as a worried young man in 1990, seeking some resolve and solace.
Once a winter campground of the Cheyenne tribe, this area now is a scenic retreat set on a canyon bluff that over-looks ancient mesas.
The park is named after Chief Henry Roman Nose…
…who in September 1868 led a band of Indians against 51 soldiers in the Battle of Arickaree or Beechers Island in Colorado. This battle took place over a period of 9 days and Roman Nose was thought to have been killed.
… who is not to be confused with the Roman Nose shown in the beginning (Chief Henry Roman Nose is not the primary one I would discuss with a ranger, although he mentioned him first).
I had started setting up my tent when a ranger came by to take my camping fee. He was very conversational and mentioned a procession that had occurred there. Also, he told me that there was a lodge where Chief Henry Roman Nose had done the inipi ceremony (sweat bath) as he pointed northwards. Then, the ranger mentioned Roman Nose, and for some reason that’s what caught my interest. “Who’s Roman Nose?” I asked ignorantly. “A Dog Soldier,” he said. “He’s different things to different people.” That’s all I remember him saying. A feeling of mystery came over me after he left. I finished setting up camp. The inipi that he claimed Chief Henry Roman Nose had used was on a little hill with a small stream below it running under an undersized bridge. I dipped my head in the cold stream to clear my mind and walked up the hill. The inipi was on the south side of the hill, and its frail structure looked like it’d been there for ages. If what the ranger said was true, it had been there for more than a century. Its willow structure looked feeble, and the grass in it was about a foot tall. I sat it in much that afternoon, evening, and that next morning finding the strength to face my own challenges; yet, when I left I did not understand why Roman Nose was “different things to different people.” That answer as I now know, lies much in his connection to the Sand Creek Massacre.
Congressional Testimony of Mr. John S. SmithQuestion. How many Indians were there?
Answer. There were 100 families of Cheyennes, and some six or eight lodges of Arapahoes.
Question. How many persons in all, should you say?
Answer. About 500 we estimate them at five to a lodge.
Question. 500 men, women and children?
Answer. Yes, sir.
Question. Do you know the reason for that attack on the Indians?
An equally appropriate question would have been, “Why did Roman Nose and the Hotamitanio (Dog Soldier Society) feel the need to defend their sovereignty and way of life?”
The answers to that one question rest in at least the following: the “Great Horse Creek Treaty” (1851 Treaty of Fort Laramie), volunteer soldiers, John Chivington, white encroachment with the Pike’s Peak gold rush of 1858, the “renegotiation” of the “Great Horse Creek Treaty” at Fort Wise, the Civil War soldiers who encroached on promised land, and the murder of Lean Bear.
The first core point is that hunting rights and land claims were not surrendered in the “Great Horse Creek Treaty” (1851 Treaty of Fort Laramie).
The following are facts with regard to the 1851 TREATY OF FORT LARAMIE, known as the “Treaty of Long Meadows” to the N/DN/D/Lakota and the “Great Horse Creek Treaty” to the Cheyenne;
1. It is a sacred document, unanimously agreed upon by each camp of each band, of each of the seven signatory nations. During the three week long 1851 Treaty gathering, the sacred White Buffalo Calf Canunpa (misnomer “Peace pipe”) of the N/DN/D/Lakota, the Four Sacred Arrows of the Cheyenne, as well as the most sacred items of each of the other nations were present during the historic signing.
2. It is a unifying document among the seven allied nations to forever protect their sacred homelands.
Second of all, the Pike’s Peak gold rush of 1858 brought white encroachment by ways of pony express riders, telegraph wires, stagecoaches, and more and more military forts whose soldiers (at least in the Sand Creek Massacre) included volunteer soldiers under the command of Col. John Chivington.(1)
To illustrate, here is a poster from 1864 that portrays the recruitment of volunteer soldiers, which helped to result in the California terrorist attacks. That was the same year as the Sand Creek Massacre.
GENOCIDE AGAINST NATIVE AMERICANS HISTORY: THE CALIFORNIA STORY
ATTENTION!
INDIAN
FIGHTERS
The 1849 agreement between California territorial and federal governments provided $1,000,000 for the arming and supply of persons who would seek out and destroy Native American families.
I don’t know if such posters were in or near Colorado, but John Chivington who led the “Bloody Third” scorned Indian children.
COL. JOHN CHIVINGTON: Ex-Methodist Minister, Heroic Indian Fighter, 1864
“Nits make lice,”
he was fond of saying, and of course, since Indians were lice, their children were nits. Clearly, Chivington was a man ahead of his time: it would be almost a century later before another man would think of describing the extermination of a people “the same thing as delousing”: Heinrich Himmler. [LN477]
Clearly, Roman Nose had a more than sufficient reason to defend his people.
Matters continued becoming worse for the Cheyenne and Arapaho as the white encroachment increased dramatically with the Pike’s Peak gold rush of 1858, despite the land being promised them in the “Great Horse Creek Treaty” (1851 Treaty of Fort Laramie). The Territory of Colorado was then “declared” a decade after that treaty and politicians wanted to “renegotiate” the “Great Horse Creek Treaty” at Fort Wise. It was far from a compromise, it was closer to theft.
ARTICLE 1.
“The said chiefs and delegates
of said Arapaho and Cheyenne tribes of Indians do hereby cede and relinquish to the United States all lands now owned, possessed, or claimed by them, wherever situated, except a tract to be reserved for the use of said tribes located within the following described boundaries, to wit:…”
Some “negotiation…” 38 of the 44 Cheyenne chiefs did not sign it.
Dee Brown. “Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee.” p. 69:
“…When the Cheyennes pointed out that only six of their forty-four chiefs were present, the United States officials replied that the others could sign it later…”(1)
Adding still more misery, were facts that hunting was scarce on this land tract, nor was it suited well to farming. Also, the white encroachment from the Pike’s Peak gold rush escalated, while Civil War soldiers roamed onto their grounds. Then,
Chivington, the butcher of Sand Creek, began his campaign of extermination and genocide.
In the spring of 1864, while the Civil War raged in the east, Chivington launched a campaign of violence against the Cheyenne and their allies, his troops attacking any and all Indians and razing their villages. The Cheyennes, joined by neighboring Arapahos, Sioux, Comanches, and Kiowas in both Colorado and Kansas, went on the defensive warpath.
Personal Conclusions
I recall how the inipi that Chief Henry Roman Nose was said to have sweat in by the ranger in 1990 was gone in 2003, but that little stream and bridge were still right below the hill where it once was. Also, I remember what he said, “Roman Nose was different things to different people.”
To finally answer why he was “different things to different people” in my view now… He was a hero to the Cheyenne and Arapaho because of all their lives he saved; but, he was a villain to the likes of Chivington, because of all their lives he saved. Roman Nose did not bring more death to his people by defensively fighting, because the “villains” were going to attempt exterminating all of them regardless.
*Next, will be “Black Kettle and the Sand Creek Massacre of Nov. 29th, 1864 (Part 2), followed by “The Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site.”
Oct 02 2007
The Morning News
The Morning News is an Open Thread
From Yahoo News Top Stories
1 Blackwater involved in 195 Iraq shootings
By Sue Pleming, Reuters
45 minutes ago
| WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Security contractor Blackwater was involved in at least 195 shooting incidents in Iraq since 2005, said a congressional report on Monday that also panned the State Department’s oversight of the company.
State Department contractor Blackwater, under investigation for the shooting deaths of 11 Iraqis on September 16, will answer questions about that incident and others at what is expected to be a testy congressional hearing on Tuesday. Senior State Department officials will also be grilled by the House of Representatives Committee on Oversight and Government Reform examining whether the growing use of military contractors undermines U.S. efforts in Iraq. |
2 Most Americans want Iraq war funding cut: poll
Reuters
2 hours, 49 minutes ago
| WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Most Americans oppose fully funding U.S. President George W. Bush’s $190 billion request to fight the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan while a majority supports expanding a children’s health care program he has threatened to veto, a Washington Post-ABC News poll shows.
The poll published on Tuesday also shows deep dissatisfaction with the president and with Congress, partly because of the stalemate between Democrats and the White House over Iraq policy, The Washington Post reported. Bush’s approval rating stands at 33 percent, equal to his all-time low in this poll and just 29 percent approve of the job Congress is doing — a 14-point drop since Democrats took control in January, the newspaper said. |
3 Ukraine poll on knife-edge in tense ballot count
by Sebastian Smith, AFP
1 hour, 37 minutes ago
| KIEV (AFP) – Ukraine’s elections hung on a knife-edge Tuesday as preliminary results threatened a dead heat and pro-Western President Viktor Yushchenko ordered a probe into possible ballot fraud.
Yushchenko and Yulia Tymoshenko, his ally in the 2004 pro-democracy Orange Revolution, saw their early slim lead diminish rapidly as late results came in while their arch-rival, Moscow-backed Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych, scored steady gains. The turnaround threatens the Orange alliance’s plans to remove Yanukovych from power and replace him with Tymoshenko, a fiery reformer who wants to set the former Soviet republic of 47 million people on a firmer Western course. |
4 11 dead in Kabul suicide attack
by Waheedullah Massoud, AFP
30 minutes ago
| KABUL (AFP) – A suicide attacker blew up a police bus in Kabul on Tuesday, killing at least 11 people in a new attack by the extremist Taliban just days after a similar bombing claimed 30 lives in the capital.
The attack in the west of the city ripped off the sides and roof of the bus, which was smeared in blood and flesh, an AFP reporter witnessed. Parts of seats were flung into the trees. Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahed said the militia was responsible for the carnage. It also claimed Friday’s attack on a defence ministry bus that killed 30 people — one of the bloodiest bombings of the insurgency. |
From Yahoo News Most Popular, Most Recommended
5 Court reverses Bush on archive secrecy
By JoAnne Allen, Reuters
Mon Oct 1, 9:55 PM ET
| WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A federal judge on Monday tossed out part of a 2001 order by President George W. Bush that lets former presidents keep some of their presidential papers secret indefinitely.
U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly ruled that the U.S. Archivist’s reliance on the executive order to delay release of the papers of former presidents is “arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion and not in accordance with law.” Criticized by historians, the November 2001 order allowed the White House or a former president to block release of a former president’s papers and put the onus on researchers to show a “specific need” for many types of records. |
6 Scientists see dramatic drop in Arctic sea ice
By Will Dunham, Reuters
Mon Oct 1, 7:07 PM ET
| WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Arctic sea ice declined this year to the lowest levels registered since satellite assessments started in the 1970s, extending a trend fueled by human-caused global warming, scientists said on Monday.
Sea ice declined by so much this year that the typically ice-clogged Northwest Passage, allowing vessels to sail from the Atlantic to the Pacific, completely opened for the first time anyone can recall, the researchers said. Scientists at the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center, part of the University of Colorado at Boulder, measure Arctic sea ice during the annual melt season beginning in March and ending in September. |
From Yahoo News World
7 Pakistani opposition quitting Parliament
By ZARAR KHAN, Associated Press Writer
10 minutes ago
| ISLAMABAD, Pakistan – Opposition legislators submitted their resignations Tuesday as part of their efforts to undercut President Gen. Pervez Musharraf’s re-election bid.
Seperately, two of Musharraf’s filed fresh legal challenges to his candidacy. The resignations are aimed at eroding the validity of the Saturday vote by national and provincial lawmakers. Musharraf’s allies insist they have enough votes to win him another five-year term. |
8 Putin solves Kremlin riddle: stay on in power
By Guy Faulconbridge, Reuters
28 minutes ago
| MOSCOW (Reuters) – President Vladimir Putin appears to have solved a riddle that has puzzled Kremlin watchers and investors alike: how will Putin keep power without office?
Putin’s answer seems to be: stay in office — but this time as the most influential member of parliament’s biggest party, and even as prime minister. He told a congress of the United Russia party on Monday that he could be a future prime minister and that he would head the party’s list in December parliamentary elections. |
9 Navy admiral takes top U.S. military post
By Nancy A. Youssef, McClatchy Newspapers
Mon Oct 1, 5:47 PM ET
| WASHNGTON- Navy Adm. Michael Mullen and Marine Gen. Peter Pace offered different visions of U.S. involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan on Monday at the ceremony that marked Mullen’s ascendancy to the top U.S. military post and Pace’s retirement from it.
Mullen, in his first act as the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, spoke of the day the United States will leave Iraq and Afghanistan and said the United States must “be ready for who and what comes after.” Pace, who sworn Mullen in as his last official act as chairman, defended his controversial tenure, saying the United States was in two wars because “the enemy . . . has declared war on us.” |
10 Report: State Dept., Blackwater cooperated to neutralize killings
By Warren P. Strobel, McClatchy Newspapers
Mon Oct 1, 4:42 PM ET
| WASHINGTON State Department officials worked closely with the private security contractor Blackwater USA to play down incidents in which company operatives killed innocent Iraqis, according to Blackwater and State Department documents obtained by a congressional committee.
When a drunken Blackwater contractor killed a bodyguard of Iraq’s vice president last Christmas Eve , the State Department helped spirit the contractor out of the country within 36 hours, according to the report, released Monday by Democrats on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. Officials in Baghdad and Washington then dickered with Blackwater on the compensation for the family of the guard, Raheem Khalif. An unnamed official in the State Department’s Diplomatic Security service complained that the $250,000 payment proposed by the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad was too much, because it might lead Iraqis to “try to get killed so as to set up their family financially,” according to a State Department e-mail obtained by the committee. |
11 U.N.: Violence in Afghanistan up almost 25 percent in ’07
By Jonathan S. Landay, McClatchy Newspapers
Mon Oct 1, 4:00 PM ET
| WASHINGTON – Afghanistan is currently suffering its most violent year since the 2001 U.S.-led intervention, according to an internal United Nations report that sharply contrasts with recent upbeat appraisals by President Bush and his Afghan counterpart, Hamid Karzai .
“The security situation in Afghanistan is assessed by most analysts as having deteriorated at a constant rate through 2007,” said the report compiled by the Kabul office of the U.N. Department of Safety and Security . There were 525 security incidents- attacks by the Taliban and other violent groups, bombings, terrorism of other kinds, and abductions- every month during the first half of this year, up from an average of 425 incidents per month in 2006. |
From Yahoo News U.S. News
12 Blackwater Plans a Fierce Defense
By ADAM ZAGORIN / WASHINGTON, Time Magazine
Tue Oct 2, 12:05 AM ET
| “No individual protected by Blackwater has ever been killed or seriously injured.” So says Erik Prince, the 38-year-old former Navy Seal whose security company finds itself at the center of a growing debate over the use of private contractors in Iraq. Blackwater USA Chairman Prince is scheduled on Tuesday to make his first-ever appearance before Congress, along with three other witnesses who will line up before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.
A copy of Prince’s prepared statement, obtained by TIME, shows he plans a robust defense of his embattled firm, which has become a target for Democrats and other critics of President Bush’s unpopular war in Iraq. Prince will point out that 30 employees of Blackwater or its affiliates have lost their lives, with many more wounded or maimed. And, he will cite U.S. ambassador to Baghdad Ryan Crocker, who has publicly defended Blackwater and argued that there is no practical alternative to the use of private security forces in Iraq. |
13 Court reverses Bush on archive secrecy
By JoAnne Allen, Reuters
Mon Oct 1, 9:55 PM ET
| WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A federal judge on Monday tossed out part of a 2001 order by President George W. Bush that lets former presidents keep some of their presidential papers secret indefinitely.
U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly ruled that the U.S. Archivist’s reliance on the executive order to delay release of the papers of former presidents is “arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion and not in accordance with law.” Criticized by historians, the November 2001 order allowed the White House or a former president to block release of a former president’s papers and put the onus on researchers to show a “specific need” for many types of records. |
14 {U.S. top court’s Thomas slams “left-wing zealots” http://news.yahoo.co…]
By James Vicini, Reuters
Mon Oct 1, 8:29 PM ET
| WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas says in a memoir that went on sale on Monday that “left-wing zealots” pursued him during his 1991 confirmation hearings with “the age-old blunt instrument of accusing a black man of sexual misconduct.”
In “My Grandfather’s Son,” Thomas denounces his former aide, Anita Hill, who accused him of sexual harassment, for betraying him. He also condemns the liberal interest groups who opposed him because he says they feared he would vote to overturn abortion rights. “The mob I now faced carried no ropes or guns. Its weapons were smooth-tongued lies spoken into microphones and printed on the front pages of America’s newspapers,” he says of the hearings. |
15 U.S. top court won’t hear Guantanamo prisoner’s case
By James Vicini, Reuters
Mon Oct 1, 12:05 PM ET
| WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday turned down an appeal by a Guantanamo prisoner whose legal challenges had forced changes to President George W. Bush’s anti-terrorism program last year.
The justices refused to take up the case of Salim Ahmed Hamdan, who faces a possible military tribunal as an accused driver and guard for Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan. Hamdan, from Yemen, won a landmark Supreme Court ruling in June 2006 that struck down Bush’s first military tribunal system. |
16 New US armed forces chief pledges to refocus military
by Jim Mannion, AFP
Mon Oct 1, 5:53 PM ET
| WASHINGTON (AFP) – Admiral Michael Mullen was sworn in Monday as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, promising to refocus the US military for challenges beyond the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Mullen replaced General Peter Pace as the top US military leader in a ceremony at Fort Myers, Virginia that was presided over by President George W. Bush amid military pomp but colored by the most divisive US war since Vietnam. “The fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan will one day end. We must be ready for who and what comes after. That’s the promise we’ve made,” Mullen said after taking the oath of office from Pace. |
17 Blackwater in nearly 200 shootings since 2005: US report
AFP
2 hours, 35 minutes ago
| WASHINGTON (AFP) – Embattled private security firm Blackwater USA has been involved in nearly 200 shootings in Iraq since 2005, according to a US congressional report released ahead of hearings on the company Tuesday.
Citing company information, the report by the House of Representatives’ Committee on Oversight and Government Reform also said that although Blackwater’s security contract with the US State Department in Iraq says it can only use force defensively, Blackwater had fired first in more than 80 percent of the incidents. The report issued Monday said that according to the company’s incident reports, “Blackwater has been involved in at least 195 ‘escalation of force’ incidents since 2005 that involved the firing of shots by Blackwater forces.” |
From Yahoo News Politics
18 McCain criticized for religious remarks
By LIZ SIDOTI, Associated Press Writer
Mon Oct 1, 5:50 PM ET
| WASHINGTON – Several Jewish organizations criticized John McCain on Monday after the Republican candidate said he would prefer a Christian president over someone of a different faith.
In an interview with Beliefnet, a multi-denominational Web site that covers religion and spirituality, the White House hopeful was asked if a Muslim candidate could be a good president. “I just have to say in all candor that since this nation was founded primarily on Christian principles … personally, I prefer someone who I know who has a solid grounding in my faith,” McCain said. “But that doesn’t mean that I’m sure that someone who is Muslim would not make a good president.” |
19 Conservatives consider 3rd-party run
By RACHEL ZOLL, AP Religion Writer
Mon Oct 1, 5:01 PM ET
| Some of the nation’s most politically influential conservative Christians, alarmed by the prospect of a Republican presidential nominee who supports abortion rights, are considering backing a third-party candidate.
More than 40 Christian conservatives attended a meeting Saturday in Salt Lake City to discuss the possibility, and planned more gatherings on how they should move forward, according to Richard A. Viguerie, the direct-mail expert and longtime conservative activist. Rudy Giuliani, who supports abortion rights and gay rights, leads in national polls of the Republican presidential candidates. Campaigning in New Jersey on Monday, Giuliani brushed aside talk of an upstart effort by religious conservatives. |
20 Senate passes mammoth defense bill
AFP
Mon Oct 1, 6:59 PM ET
| WASHINGTON (AFP) – The US Senate Monday passed a mammoth 648 billion dollar defense policy bill, shorn of attempts by disappointed anti-war Democrats to dictate President George W. Bush’s Iraq strategy.
The bill included around 128 billion dollars for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, according to a Congressional Budget Office estimate. The legislation passed by 92 votes to three after Democrats lost several attempts to dictate US troop levels in Iraq. |
From Yahoo News Science
21 U.S. delays domestic satellite spying program
Reuters
Mon Oct 1, 6:55 PM ET
| WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. government has delayed the start of a program that would use spy-satellite images for domestic purposes including counterterrorism efforts, a congressman critical of the effort said on Monday.
The federal Homeland Security Department told U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson that the program would not be launched until it had addressed civil-liberties issues he raised in August. Thompson, a Mississippi Democrat, heads the House of Representatives Homeland Security Committee. The department had planned to launch what was called the National Applications Office on Monday, the start of the new fiscal year, Thompson said. “The moratorium on NAO implementation is only a first step,” he said in a statement. |
22 Inca children “fattened” up for sacrifice – study
By Michael Kahn, Reuters
Mon Oct 1, 5:02 PM ET
| LONDON (Reuters) – Hair samples taken from child mummies suggest the ancient Incas “fattened” up children chosen for ritual sacrifice months before actually killing them, British researchers said on Monday.
A chemical analysis of four mummies found high in the Andes mountains also indicates the Incans took the children on a lengthy pilgrimage prior to the killings, the team said. In the case of the 15-year-old “Llullaillaco Maiden” the road to death started at least 12 months before. “We are looking at a process that began a considerable amount of time before their death,” said Andrew Wilson, an archaeologist at the University of Bradford, who led the study. “The maiden was essentially being fattened up or prepared for her final fate at least 12 months before her killing.” |
23 Chinese farmers grew rice 7,700 years ago
By Tan Ee Lyn, Reuters
1 hour, 47 minutes ago
| HONG KONG (Reuters) – Chinese farmers cultivated rice along the eastern coast as far back as 7,700 years ago and used fire and flood control measures to manage their fields, researchers said, citing new evidence.
In a letter published in Nature late last week, geographers in Britain and China described how they found artifacts — bone, bamboo and wooden tools used for foraging and cultivation — and high concentrations of charcoal in Kuahuqiao, a freshwater marsh about 200 km southwest of Shanghai. “About 7,700 years ago, people started to burn woody crops and there’s a very high concentration of charcoal there and a decline of woody tree pollen,” said Zong Yongqiang of Durham University in the United Kingdom. |
24 Tourism set to suffer from the climate change it generates: UN
AFP
Mon Oct 1, 11:39 AM ET
| DAVOS, Switzerland (AFP) – A booming worldwide tourism industry could prove its own worst enemy by contributing to the global warming that threatens some of the planet’s most prized destinations, UN agencies warned Monday.
If no measures are taken, tourism’s impact on climate change is set to more than double in the next 30 years, according to advance data from a report by the UN tourism, environment and weather agencies. “The tourism industry is both challenged by climate change and a contributor to greenhouse gas emissions,” UN Environment Programme (UNEP) Executive Director Achim Steiner said at an international conference in Davos, Switzerland. |
25 More droughts, floods for Australia as globe heats up
by Madeleine Coorey, AFP
13 minutes ago
| SYDNEY (AFP) – Floods and droughts will become more frequent in Australia and cyclones more intense, as the world’s driest inhabited continent heats up due to global warming, a new scientific report warned Tuesday.
Sea levels are expected to rise and snow and rainfall to decrease as average temperatures in some areas rise by as much as five degrees Celsius within 70 years, according to the report by government scientists. “By 2030 we are looking at an increase in temperature of about one degree,” said one of the report’s authors, Penny Whetton. |
Oct 02 2007
Muse in the Morning
 Muse in the Morning |
The muses are ancient. The inspirations for our stories were said to be born from them. Muses of song and dance, or poetry and prose, of comedy and tragedy, of the inward and the outward. In one version they are Calliope, Euterpe and Terpsichore, Erato and Clio, Thalia and Melpomene, Polyhymnia and Urania.
It has also been traditional to name a tenth muse. Plato declared Sappho to be the tenth muse, the muse of women poets. Others have been suggested throughout the centuries. I don’t have a name for one, but I do think there should be a muse for the graphical arts. And maybe there should be many more.
Please join us inside to celebrate our various muses…
State of the Onion XVI
Art Link Not Quite Balanced
|
I know you have talent. What sometimes is forgotten is that being practical is a talent. I have a paucity for that sort of talent in many situations, though it turns out that I’m a pretty darn good cook. 🙂
Let your talent bloom. You can share it here. Encourage others to let it bloom inside them as well.
Won’t you share your words or art, your sounds or visions, your thoughts scientific or philosophic, the comedy or tragedy of your days, the stories of doing and making? And be excellent to one another!
Oct 02 2007
Can realism avert global catastrophe?
This is an attempt to unmask the paucity of thought implied in political “realism” as typically portrayed on DKos and elsewhere. It concludes with a plea for “unrealism” in politics. Realism has punted in Iraq, civil rights, health insurance, and education; can we expect it to do any better with climate change?
(crossposted @ DKos)
Realism as a philosophy: introduction
What is the philosophy which we call “realism”? And what does it declare to be “realistic”?
I remember being in a graduate class in geography at The Ohio State University “learning” from a professor who subscribed to a philosophy of science he called “critical realism.” We were told that “critical realism” was the right way to “do science” — and that it would replace inferior philosophies (say, racism and sexism) which were not “based on reality.”
Now, I have no problem with the “critical” part. It’s important to be critical of bad science. It’s the idea that science needs to be based on “realism” that makes me wonder.
Now, science is of course a way of understanding reality. But realism is a philosophy, and most importantly a political philosophy. And this I feel obliged to question.
In its political philosophy variant, realism judges possible political actions according to whether they are or aren’t “realistic.” Of course, there are several criteria for what counts as “realistic,” criteria which vary from situation to situation. Let’s take a look at a variety of political situations to see what realism will get us.
Realism in the political sphere
What kind of Iraq policy can we expect from the advocates of realism?
Is it realistic to expect the United States to cut its losses and get out of Iraq, so that it can focus upon the creation of a global, ecologically sustainable society?
Of course not! What’s realistic is the expectation that the US will deficit-spend itself into currency collapse while (at great expense) maintaining troops in Iraq up to 2013, or whenever the dollar collapses, whichever comes first.
We must, therefore, be realistic, and support candidates who want to keep the troops in Iraq, rather than supporting unrealistic candidates who want them out.
*****
What kind of civil rights policy can we expect from the advocates of realism?
Is it realistic to expect Congress to defend our rights all by itself?
Of course not! What’s realistic is expecting Congress to help Bush abrogate our rights. We should of course petition Congress like crazy before the votes, but in the end we should vote for Congressmembers who voted for the USA PATRIOT Act, the Military Commissions Act, Justices Roberts and Alito, and other threats of mass bodily harm.
*****
What kind of health care policy can we expect from the advocates of realism?
Is it realistic to expect the US to create a single-payer healthcare system, thus ending the financial juggernaut in which the US pays far more than any other nation for its health care while getting far less?
Of course not! Our favorite politicians need to take money from health “insurance” interests and HMOs in order to stay “competitive,” so we must continue to vote for them while they propose ineffective substitutes for single payer. Meanwhile we can expect that other realistic outcome; the consuming public increasingly resists paying for an insurance establishment which increasingly resists paying for health care.
*****
What kind of education policy can we expect from the advocates of realism?
I can’t even imagine the alternative here, so thorough is the hold realism has over American educational policy at present. The No Child Left Behind Act is the ultimate end of realist philosophy in education.
Generally, realism distrusts teachers, as what is taught can also (theoretically) be learned without teachers. What teachers do, of course, is to have constructive dialogues with students about the world, a truth realized in revolutionary fashion by unrealists like Paulo Freire. But, of course, there’s no way of quantitatively measuring a dialogue to see if it actually teaches, which is what realist taxpayers need to do if they are to know if they’re getting their “money’s worth.” So teaching in the public schools must be reduced to the promulgation of some ultimate educational content, reduced to numbers (math) and letters (reading/ writing), which is measured through NCLB’s yearly testing requirements to make sure each teacher makes the grade. (This, of course, is what Freire calls the “banking model” of education.)
The “choice” and “accountability” provisions of NCLB follow from the same realist logic. If the teachers can’t do the job they’re hired to do, parents must be allowed to send their kids to other schools, with other teachers. Complaints about the inaccuracy of the tests are met with the realist insistence upon accountability: if the state were to make the tests less reductionist, they wouldn’t hold the teachers accountable.
So there you have it.
*****
Now here’s the tough one:
What policy should we expect from the realists as regards abrupt climate change?
The world consumes somewhere around 86, maybe 87 million barrels of crude oil every day, a figure which rises 2% or so every year, with “alternative energy” plans reduced to suggestions that maybe we’ll get 20% of our energy from clean sources by 2050 or so. Most of this crude oil-burning is used to maintain the capitalist system; it is, after all, cheap oil that allows the multinationals to pick and choose sources of cheap labor, product markets, and global headquarters. And all this capitalist development benefits a mere few: the system produces a few hundred billionaires as well as a bottom 40% living off of less than $2/ day.
Meanwhile, the global addiction to oil will eventually produce a situation in which the rising price of oil forces traumatic contractions in the global economy itself – this is the reality of “peak oil.”
Should we, then, think of another system of political economy running the world’s affairs, a system that might actually be able to create a global, ecologically sustainable society rather than a tragedy of the commons (as expected by realist Garrett Hardin)?
Of course not! That would be unrealistic. What’s realistic is to expect the current system to consume the whole world’s oil reserves (since alternative energy won’t be as economically cheap as cheap oil for quite some time to come), creating a raging abrupt climate change effect (which some claim is already reached the “too late” stage) and at that point extreme weather events will do damage to much of the world’s food-producing capability. The sum result will be along the lines of the “collapse” which Jared Diamond warned us about in his last book.
See, even though a Pentagon study has declared abrupt climate change to be the Number One Security Threat, there’s no profit to be made off of it. So it stays a low priority. When it affects the aggregate rate of profit, that’s when they’ll pay attention.
The other realist response to abrupt climate change was the Kyoto Protocol, and you can see from the above Monthly Review article how that worked out:
The truth is that addressing the global warming threat to any appreciable degree would require at the very least a chipping away at the base of the system. The scientific consensus on global warming suggests that what is needed is a 60-80 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions below 1990 levels in the next few decades in order to avoid catastrophic environmental effects by the end of this century-if not sooner. The threatening nature of such reductions for capitalist economies is apparent in the rather hopeless state at present of the Kyoto Protocol, which required the rich industrial countries to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions by an average of 5.2 percent below 1990 levels by 2008-2012. The United States, which had steadily increased its carbon dioxide emissions since 1990 despite its repeated promises to limit its emissions, pulled out of the Kyoto Protocol in 2001 on the grounds that it was too costly. Yet, the Kyoto Protocol was never meant to be anything but the first, small, in itself totally inadequate step to curtail emissions. The really big cuts were to follow.
So can realism avert global catastrophe? At least some of the evidence says “no.” In the conclusion I will explore reasons for why I think this might be so.
Philosophical Critique of Realism
So this is the question: will realism prevent global catastrophe? I don’t really see why the answer can’t be “no.” You see, realism only looks at the world from a spectator’s point of view. It extrapolates a future from current trends that is projected to have the uniform color of “more of the same.” Realists never get up and change the dominant trends because they’re incapable of imagining change on that level.
Realist strategy must also be called into question. Realist voting strategy, on both sides of the aisle, goes by a familiar name: “voting for the lesser of two evils.” There’s also a realist mode of discourse: it is generally opposed to “purity trolls” and the like. There is nothing unrealistic about realist strategy; what we must call into question is the place from which realist strategy begins to strategize. Realist strategy comes from a place that dismisses, a priori, the possibility that unrealistic occurrences may actually “come true,” or that we may in fact be able to inspire their occurrence through our own well-thought-out “unrealism.”
It is more important at this time than at any in history that we call realism into question. After all, the realists are overwhelmingly in power, their ideology having achieved near-universal acceptance. One should remember how the realists successfully nominated John Kerry, out of the realist notion that we should fight one Skull-and-Bones fraternity member with another, hoping that this would cause discord among the inner sanctum of the ruling class. Meanwhile, during the election run-up, prospective spoiler candidate Ralph Nader, in a characteristic moment of naivete, complained at one point that “the progressives demand nothing from Kerry.” Silly Ralph, who earned a mere 0.4% of the vote that year, was just observing political realism in practice: this is its modus operandi, its business as usual. Moreover, after the election, the unrealists in the Green and Libertarian Parties, having wasted the year in hopeless campaigns, contested the election after Bush had it rigged. (Perhaps it would be realistic for us to expect some sort of similar outcome in 2008, too. Don’t you think?)
The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. did not rise to fame by becoming an exceptional realist. The “Letter from Birmingham Jail” is, especially, a testament to King’s opposition to realism. One can see this in one of King’s most forceful statements in the letter:
In your statement you assert that our actions, even though peaceful, must be condemned because they precipitate violence. But is this a logical assertion? Isn’t this like condemning a robbed man because his possession of money precipitated the evil act of robbery? Isn’t this like condemning Socrates because his unswerving commitment to truth and his philosophical inquiries precipitated the act by the misguided populace in which they made him drink hemlock? Isn’t this like condemning Jesus because his unique God-consciousness and never-ceasing devotion to God’s will precipitated the evil act of crucifixion? We must come to see that, as the federal courts have consistently affirmed, it is wrong to urge an individual to cease his efforts to gain his basic constitutional rights because the quest may precipitate violence.
The realist shuns violence when calculations indicate a high risk of losing; after all, Black people were a minority in the Deep South; they were outnumbered, and risked losing out in a violent struggle. Against this, King appeals to the high moral ground occupied by previous unrealists whose names are today included in the canon of philosophy; Socrates and Jesus, among other purity trolls. Remember how their lives ended, and quaver.
On the other hand, imagine how history would have turned out had King believed in something like the Weinberger Doctrine — “Ready to pay that poll tax next year?”
(of course, if King were alive today, he’d probably be speaking to masses of unlistening consumers hooked into their iPods…)
Conclusion: A plea for unrealism
“Imagine all the people/ Sharing all the world” — John Lennon
(please click on, and watch, the “Imagine” video before continuing)
The realist response to the challenge posed by abrupt climate change is inadequate because, as I suggested before, its starting point for action precludes the “unrealistic.” Garrett Hardin, in “Tragedy of the Commons,” imagines that if we all think like capitalists, or possessive individualists, “sharing all the world” will lead to its utter depletion; he couldn’t quite get to the point of “imagine no possessions.” His starting point for action on the commons was as follows:
As a rational being, each herdsman seeks to maximize his gain. Explicitly or implicitly, more or less consciously, he asks, “What is the utility to me of adding one more animal to my herd?”
Our predominant notions of dealing with abrupt climate change share Hardin’s starting point. If we are privileged First World residents, we think we are doing something by using “clean” energies, or conserving; this just means more “dirty” energy for the rest of the world, which is not as privileged as we are and is trying to catch up with our capitalist “standard of living” under less privileged circumstances. Can we blame them for wanting what we have, or for getting it any way they can?
A better starting point might be to presume that ecological solutions need to adopt the Lennonist (pun intended) strategy of “sharing all the world.” Then, of course, I could talk to you about unrealists like Joel Kovel all day and all evening, and you would still be left with the rejoinder, “But, realistically…” Go back and think about how we got to this point, both historically and philosophically. Then consider: how can realism really solve any of the problems that arose in our journey to the present moment? Isn’t it time we tried something else?