http://blog.gmane.org/gmane.politics.communism.environmental hourly 1 1901-01-01T00:00+00:00 http://gmane.org/img/gmane-25t.png http://gmane.org http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.politics.communism.environmental/49975 <pre>The Diabolical Bank "Bail-In" Proposal by Professor Michel Chossudovsky Global Research (April 02 2013) Is the Cyprus Bank "Bail-in" a "dress rehearsal" for things to come? Is a "Savings Heist" in the European Union and North America envisaged which could result in the outright confiscation of bank deposits? In Cyprus, the entire payments system has been disrupted leading to the demise of the real economy. Pensions and wages are no longer paid. Purchasing power has collapsed. The population is impoverished. Small and medium sized enterprises are spearheaded into bankruptcy. Cyprus is a country with a population of one million. What would happen if similar "hair cut" procedures were to be applied in the US or the European Union? According to the Washington based Institute of International Finance (IIF) which represents the consensus of the global financial establishment, "the Cyprus approach of hitting depositors and creditors when banks fail, would likely become a model for dealing with collapses elsewhere in Europe". (Economic Times, March 27 2013). It should be understood that prior to the Cyprus onslaught, the confiscation of bank deposits had been contemplated in several countries. Moreover, the powerful financial actors who triggered the bank crisis in Cyprus, are also the architects of the socially devastating austerity measures imposed in the European Union and North America. Does Cyprus constitute a "model" or scenario? Are there "lessons to be learned" by these powerful financial actors, to be applied elsewhere, at some later stage, in the Eurozone's banking landscape? According to the Institute of International Finance (IIF), "hitting depositors" could become the "new normal" of this diabolical project, serving the interests of the global financial conglomerates. This new normal is endorsed by the IMF and the European Central Bank. According to the IIF which constitutes the banking elites mouthpiece, Investors would be well advised to see the outcome of Cyprus ... as a reflection of how future stresses will be handled". (Economic Times, March 27 2013) "Financial Cleansing". Bail-ins in the US and Britain What is at stake is a process of "financial cleansing" whereby the "too big to fail banks" in Europe and North America (for example Citi, JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, et al ) displace and destroy lesser financial institutions, with a view to eventually taking over the entire "banking landscape". The underlying tendency at the national and global levels is towards the centralization and concentration of bank power, while leading to the dramatic slump of the real economy. Bail-ins have been envisaged in numerous countries. In New Zealand a "haircut plan" was envisaged as early as 1997 coinciding with Asian financial crisis. There are provisions in both the UK and the US pertaining to the confiscation of bank deposits. In a joint document of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) and the Bank of England, entitled Resolving Globally Active, Systemically Important, Financial Institutions, explicit procedures were put forth whereby "the original creditors of the failed company", meaning the depositors of a failed bank, would be converted into "equity". (See Ellen Brown, It Can Happen Here: The Bank Confiscation Scheme for US and UK Depositors, Global Research, March 2013) What this means is that the money confiscated from bank accounts would be used to meet the failed bank's financial obligations. In return, the holders of the confiscated bank deposits would become stockholders in a failed financial institution on the verge of bankruptcy. Bank savings would be transformed overnight into an illusive concept of capital ownership. The confiscation of savings would be adopted under the disguise of a bogus "compensation" in terms of equity. What is envisaged is the application of a selective process of confiscation of bank deposits, with a view to collecting debt while also triggering the demise of "weaker" financial institutions. In the US, the procedure would bypass the provisions of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) which insures deposit holders against bank failures: No exception is indicated for "insured deposits" in the US, meaning those under $250,000, the deposits we thought were protected by FDIC insurance. This can hardly be an oversight, since it is the FDIC that is issuing the directive. The FDIC is an insurance company funded by premiums paid by private banks. The directive is called a "resolution process", defined elsewhere as a plan that "would be triggered in the event of the failure of an insurer ..." The only mention of "insured deposits" is in connection with existing UK legislation, which the FDIC-BOE directive goes on to say is inadequate, implying that it needs to be modified or overridden. (Ibid) Because depositors are provided with a bogus compensation, they are not eligible to the FDIC deposit insurance. Canada's Deposit Confiscation Proposal The most candid statement of confiscation of bank deposits as a means to "saving the banks" is formulated in a recently released document of the Canadian government entitled "Jobs, Growth and Long Term Prosperity: Economic Action Plan 2013″. The latter was submitted to the House of Commons by Canada's Minister of Finance Jim Flaherty on March 21 as part of a so-called "pre-budget" proposal. A short section of the 400 [page] report entitled "Risk Management Framework for Domestic Systemically Important Banks" identifies bail-in procedure for Canada's chartered banks. The word confiscation is not mentioned. Financial jargon serves to obfuscate the real intent which essentially consists in stealing people's savings. Under the Canadian "Risk Management" project: The Government proposes to implement a 'bail-in' regime for systemically important banks. This regime will be designed to ensure that, in the unlikely event that a systemically important bank depletes its capital, the bank can be recapitalized and returned to viability through the very rapid conversion of certain bank liabilities into regulatory capital". This will reduce risks for taxpayers. The Government will consult stakeholders on how best to implement a bail-in regime in Canada. What this signifies is that if one or more banks (or credit unions) were obliged to "systemically deplete their capital" to meet the demands of their creditors, the banks would be recapitalized through "the conversion of certain bank liabilities into regulatory capital". The "certain bank liabilities" pertains (in technical jargon) to the money they owe their customers, namely to their depositors, whose bank accounts would be confiscated in exchange for shares (equity) in a "failing" banking institution. "This will reduce risks for taxpayers" is a nonsensical statement. What this really means is that the government will not provide funding to compensate depositors who are victims of a failed banking institution, nor will it come to rescue of the failed institution. Instead the depositors will be obliged to give up their savings. The money confiscated will then be used by the bank to meet their liabilities contracted with major financial creditor institutions. In other words, this entire scheme is "a safety net" for too big to fail banks, a mechanism which enables them as creditors to overshadow lesser banking institutions including credit unions, while precipitating either their collapse or their takeover. Canada's Financial Landscape The Risk Management Bail-in initiative is of crucial significance for Canadians across the land: once it is adopted by the House of Commons as part of the budget package, the Bail-in procedures could be applied. The Conservative government has a parliamentary majority. There is a good likelihood that the Economic Action Plan 2013 which includes the Bail-in procedure will be adopted. While Canada's Risk Management Framework intimates that Canada's banks "are at risk", particularly those which have accumulated large debts (as a result of derivative losses), a generalised across the board application of the "Bail-in" is not contemplated. The likely scenario in the foreseeable future is that Canada's "big five" banks, Royal Bank of Canada, TD Canada Trust, Scotiabank, Bank of Montreal and CIBC (all of which have powerful affiliates operating in the US financial landscape) will consolidate their position at the expense of lesser (provincial level) banks and financial institutions. The Government document intimates that the Bail-in could be used selectively "in the unlikely event that one [bank] becomes non-viable". What this suggests is that at least one or more of Canada's "lesser banks" could be the object of a bail-in. Such a procedure would inevitably lead to a greater concentration of bank capital in Canada, to the benefit of the larger financial conglomerates. Displacement of Provincial Level Credit Unions and Cooperative Banks There is an important network of over 300 provincial level credit unions and cooperative banks including the powerful Desjardins network in Quebec, the Vancouver City Savings Credit Union (Vancity) and the Coastal Capital Savings in British Columbia, Servus in Alberta, Meridian in Ontario, the caisses populaires in Ontario (affiliated to Desjardins), among many others, which could be the target of selective "Bail-in" operations. In this context, what is likely to occur is a significant weakening of provincial level cooperative financial institutions, which have a governance relationship to their members (including representative councils) and which, in the present context, offer an alternative to the Big Five chartered banks. According to recent data, there are more than 300 credit unions and caisses populaires in Canada which are members of the "Credit Union Central of Canada". New Normal: International Standards Governing the Confiscation of Bank Deposits Canada's Economic Action Plan 2013 acknowledges that the proposed Bail-in framework "will be consistent with reforms in other countries and key international standards". Namely, the proposed pattern of confiscating bank deposits as described in the Canadian government document is consistent with the model contemplated in the US and the European Union. This model is currently a "talking point" (behind closed doors) at various international venues regrouping central bank governors and finance ministers. The regulatory agency involved in these multilateral consultations is the Financial Stability Board (FSB) based in Basel, Switzerland and hosted by the Bank for International Settlements (BIS). The FSB happens to be chaired by the governor of the Bank of Canada, Mark Carney, who was recently appointed by the British government to head the Bank of England starting in June 2013. Mark Carney, as Governor of the Bank of Canada, was instrumental in shaping the provisions of the Bail-in for Canada's chartered banks. Before his career in central banking, he was a senior executive at Goldman Sachs, which has played a behind the scenes role in the implementation of the bank bailouts and austerity measures in the EU. The FSB's mandate would be to coordinate the bail-in procedures, in liaison with the "national financial authorities" and "international standard setting bodies" which include the IMF and the BIS. It should come as no surprise: the deposit confiscation procedures in the UK, the US and Canada examined above are remarkably similar. Bank "Bail-ins" vs Bank "Bail-outs" The bailouts are "rescue packages" whereby the government allocates a significant portion of State revenues in favor of failed financial institutions. The money is channeled from the coffers of the State to the banking conglomerates. In the US in 2008 and 2009, a total of $1.45 trillion was channeled to Wall Street financial institutions as part of the Bush and Obama rescue packages. These bailouts were considered as a de facto government expenditure category. They required the implementation of austerity measures. Together with massive hikes in military expenditure, the bailouts were financed through drastic cuts in social programs including Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. In contrast to the Bailout, which is funded from the public purse, the "Bail-in" requires the (in-house) confiscation of bank deposits. The bail-ins are implemented without the use of public funds. The regulatory mechanism is established by the central bank. At the outset of Obama's first term in January 2009, a bank bailout of the order of $750 billion was announced by Obama, which was added on to the 700 billion dollar bailout money allocated by the outgoing Bush administration under the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP). The total of both programs was a staggering 1.45 trillion dollars to be financed by the US Treasury. (It should be understood that the actual amount of cash financial "aid" to the banks was significantly larger than $1.45 trillion. In addition to this amount defence allocations to fund Obama's war economy (Fiscal 2010) was a staggering $739 billion. Namely the bank bailouts plus defence combined ($2189 billion) eat up almost the totality of the federal revenues which in Fiscal 2010 amounted to $2381 billion. Concluding remarks What is occurring is that the bank bailouts are no longer functional. At the outset of Obama's second term, the coffers of the state are empty. The austerity measures have reached a deadlock. The bank bail-ins are now being contemplated instead of the "bank bailouts". The lower and middle income groups which are invariably indebted will not be the main target. The appropriation of bank deposits would essentially target the upper middle and upper income groups which have significant bank deposits. The second target will be the bank accounts of small and medium sized firms. This transition is part of the evolution of the global economic crisis and the impasse underlying the application of the austerity measures. The purpose of the global financial actors is to wipe out competitors, consolidate and centralize bank power and exert an overriding control over the real economy, the institutions of government and the military. Even if the bail-ins were to be regulated and applied selectively to a limited number of failing financial institutions, credit unions, et cetera, the announcement of a program of confiscation of deposits could potentially lead to a generalized "run on the banks". In this context, no banking institution would be regarded as safe. The application of Bail-in procedures involving deposit confiscation (even when applied locally or selectively) would create financial havoc. It would interrupt the payments process. Wages would no longer be paid. Purchasing power would collapse. Money for investment in plant and equipment would no longer be forthcoming. Small and medium sized businesses would be precipitated into bankruptcy. The application of a Bail-In in the EU or North America would initiate a new phase of the global financial crisis, a deepening of the economic depression, a greater centralization of banking and finance, increased concentration of corporate power in the real economy to the detriment of regional and local level enterprises. In turn, an entire global banking network characterized by electronic transactions (which govern deposits, withdrawals, et cetera) - not to mention money transactions on the stock and commodity markets - could potentially be the object of significant disruptions of a systemic nature. The social consequences would be devastating. The real economy would plummet as a result of the collapse in the payments system. The potential disruptions in the functioning of an integrated global monetary system could result in a a renewed global economic meltdown as well as a drop off in international commodity trade. It is important that people across the land, in the European Union and North America, nationally and internationally, forcefully act against the diabolical ploys of their governments - acting on behalf of dominant financial interests - to implement a selective process of bank deposit confiscation. ***** The Global Economic Crisis: The Great Depression of the XXI Century Michel Chossudovsky and Andrew Gavin Marshall, Editors $16.00 Save 38% by ordering directly from Global Research https://store.globalresearch.ca/store/the-global-economic-crisis/ Copyright (c) 2013 Global Research Links: The original version of this article, at the URL below, contains links to further information not included here. http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-confiscation-of-bank-savings-to-save-the-banks/5329411 TO POST A COMMENT, OR TO READ COMMENTS POSTED BY OTHERS, please click the appropriate link at the top or bottom of http://billtotten.wordpress.com/2013/05/21/the-confiscation-of-bank-savings-to-save-the-banks/ _______________________________________________ Rad-Green mailing list Rad-Green&lt; at &gt;greenhouse.economics.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/rad-green </pre> Bill Totten 2013-05-21T00:01:27 http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.politics.communism.environmental/49974 <pre> IMMIGRATION MARKUP: Calls Needed ASAP in support of Senator Blumenthal’s amendments 3, 4 &amp; 5 Immigration reform is at a critical time and we need YOU to help NOW! As you read this, the Senate Judiciary Committee is in the process of debating and "marking-up" (offering amendments to) the Senate comprehensive immigration reform bill, the Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act, S. 744. To watch the markup go to: http://www.judiciary.senate.gov/hearings/hearing.cfm?id=cf354bb1063ae0418c20d27f97904261 Senate markup resumed today. This week will be a critical time for farm workers as important agricultural provisions and amendments will be coming up. Can you help right now? Please call members of the Senate Judiciary Committee (click hyperlink to see membersd or go to http://www.judiciary.senate.gov/about/members.cfm) and indicate your support for Blumenthal amendments 3, 4 &amp; 5. * Dial the main switchboard (202) 224-3121 and ask to be transferred to a Senate Judiciary Committee member’s office. *Please note: We are only calling Senate Judiciary Committee members. * If you are a constituent please let the Senate Judiciary Committee member know . * But your call is important even if you are not, so please make your call TODAY! * Sample script: My name is____________. I urge Senator _______________ to support amendments that will prevent recruitment abuse and trafficking in persons. We need Senator ___________to vote in support to Blumenthal Amendments 3, 4, and 5 to bill S. 744 (Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act of 2013)”. Background on Blumenthal Amendments Sen. Blumenthal filed three amendments to strengthen the international labor recruitment protections in the Senate’s immigration bill. Foreign labor contractors and recruiters exploit people who come to the United States on non immigrant visas. Therefore monitoring foreign labor recruiters is critical to preventing recruitment abuse and trafficking in persons. Subtitle F of the Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act, S. 744, entitled Prevention of Trafficking in Persons and Abuses Involving Workers Recruited Abroad has critical protections for internationally recruited workers. Yet, more needs to be done and that's what the Blumenthal amendments do. Please call the Senate Judiciary Committee in support of Blumenthal amendments 3, 4 &amp; 5. Want more background information? Link to actual text of amendments: http://www.judiciary.senate.gov/legislation/immigration/amendments. Link to summery of ammendments coming up: http://www.judiciary.senate.gov/legislation/immigration/amendments.cfm Link to actual text of amendments: http://www.judiciary.senate.gov/legislation/immigration/amendments. Link to summery of ammendments coming up: http://www.judiciary.senate.gov/legislation/immigration/amendments.cfm   OUR E-MAIL ADDRESS HAS CHANGED.Please add our new email ufw&lt; at &gt;ufw.org to your safelist/address book so that our messages don’t get trapped in your spam filter. If you have questions about how to do this, drop us an e-mail. Check out our website at: www.ufw.org and keep up with the latest news. Check out the UFW's Social Networking pages. Click to visit our Facebook, YouTube, Twitter pages. Become our "friend" and follow us. If you received this message from a friend, you can sign up for the UFW List Serve. Privacy Policy United Farm Workers,  P.O. Box 62, Keene, CA 93531, http://www.ufw.org _______________________________________________ Rad-Green mailing list Rad-Green&lt; at &gt;greenhouse.economics.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/rad-green </pre> Romi Elnagar 2013-05-20T22:02:19 http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.politics.communism.environmental/49973 <pre> From: Karen Shadowdancer WordPress.com MANAHATTA Presented at the 2013 United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous People Staged reading will feature retelling of indigenous land-taking, the 1626 “sale” of the Lenape’s sacred Manahatta island to the Dutch for $24 NEW YORK, NY — Together," _______________________________________________ Rad-Green mailing list Rad-Green&lt; at &gt;greenhouse.economics.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/rad-green </pre> Romi Elnagar 2013-05-20T21:43:00 http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.politics.communism.environmental/49972 <pre>---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Suzanne de Kuyper &lt;suzannedk&lt; at &gt;gmail.com&gt; Date: Mon, May 20, 2013 at 10:52 PM Subject: The Cyprus Investor Haircuts Reverberate yet in Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain To: a-list &lt;a-list&lt; at &gt;greenhouse.economics.utah.edu&gt; And in the rest of the European Union countries. Even Germany. Those bank client haircuts were actually thefts under EU International Humanitarian law. They were also quickly forced on Cyprus in such a sloppy slipshod fashion as if the Cypriots did not matter. That seems to have been quite true. In fact, considering the vast international importance the United States has given to itself in the form of it's International Monetary Fund, it seems everyone is agree that the US IMF is to meddle in everyones economic situation and order them how to run their economies, or else. To be a good American ally countries must line up for advice and take it if they want to survive at all. Cyprus was to illustrate what awaits the rest of us if we remain passive. Just as US NATO membership is a world threat, so is the US/UK derivative market. As of today it is worth 700 trillion dollars. See Bill Black of the University of Kansas City, MO. US financial regulators were over-ruled by the mega banks this past week. suzanne _______________________________________________ Rad-Green mailing list Rad-Green&lt; at &gt;greenhouse.economics.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/rad-green </pre> Suzanne de Kuyper 2013-05-20T20:56:32 http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.politics.communism.environmental/49971 <pre>by Ralph Nader The Nader Page (May 16 2013) Why are big, global US corporations so unpatriotic? After all, they were created in the USA, rose to immense profit because of the toil of American workers, are bailed out by American taxpayers whenever they're in trouble, and are safeguarded abroad by the US military. Yet these corporate goliaths work their tax lawyers overtime to escape US taxes. Many pay less than you do in federal income taxes. Imagine corporations, like General Electric, have not paid federal income taxes on US profits for years. Mega corporations have abandoned US workers by entrenching "pull-down" trade agreements that make it easier than ever to ship jobs and whole industries to fascist and communist regimes abroad which keep their workers near serfdom. Remember, the US has run large trade deficits for the past thirty years as a result of anti-American trade deals pushed by these global companies. These goliaths are pressing for the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a trade agreement that will further pull down our economy. (See www.citizen.org.) Corporate CEOs are raiding and draining traditional pension plans for millions of workers who are left without their expected and earned pension payments on retirement. For more information see Ellen E Schultz's book Retirement Heist: How Companies Plunder and Profit from the Nest Eggs of American Workers (2011). They are freezing the federal minimum wage, for low income service jobs that they cannot export, at $7.25 per hour, leaving thirty million workers today making less than workers made in 1968, inflation adjusted. Having wages that go backwards into the future means workers cannot afford the basic necessities of life for themselves and their children. Giant companies hire legions of lobbyists to weaken or abolish consumer, worker and environmental safety and health laws, to stop our country from joining all other Western Nations with full Medicare for all. Corporate campaign cash increasingly flows to indentured politicians, who in turn do the bidding of the corporate paymasters at your expense. We've yet to find a CEO of a US global corporation who will even go through the motions at their annual shareholders meeting standing up and, in the name of the company, pledging "allegiance to the United States ... with liberty and justice for all". When asked, as was General Motors, the CEO refused. Charge companies with unpatriotic behavior and you'll tap a nerve or two. The munitions companies, like Lockheed Martin and Boeing, put ads on television and radio asserting how their modern weapons back up our troops who are sent to expand the Empire. Of course, defense contractors never mention their huge profits, cost over-runs and their staffing the higher echelons of the Pentagon with their own appointees. Nor do these arms merchants ever raise a patriotic objection to the criminal wars of aggression conducted by Bush/Cheney against the defenseless people of Iraq, whose tottering dictator, formerly a US ally, was not a threat to America. Other companies are trying softer promotions of their claimed care for America. Have you seen the lengthy ad campaign by Chevron that starts with some bold demand by a pictured ordinary person? One such ad begins "Oil companies SHOULD support the communities they're a PART OF" (Chevron's emphasis) and, invariably, Chevron answers "we agree", and lists their charities here and abroad. Evaluating corporation philanthropy is for another time; suffice it to say that not one giant corporation exceeds one percent of their pre-tax profits, when the law allows them to give up to five percent, deductible. Do you think that all of the above only comes from consumer/worker advocates? Then read a new, paperback book by Robert A G Monks, titled Citizens Disunited: The Corporate Capture of the American Dream (2013). Monks, a former corporate lawyer, corporate CEO, founder of companies, bank chairman, and investor-advocate extraordinaire, writes memorably about corporate excesses. He quotes an Apple executive who told The New York Times: We sell iPhones in over a hundred countries. We don't have an obligation to solve America's problems. Monks responds: This is what greed looks like in the global epoch of corporatism: plunder the Treasury, to be sure, but then deny all sense of responsibility to your country of domicile, outsource all obligations, and, like maggots, set to work destroying the host from inside by exporting its jobs and depleting its revenue sources. He then cites Clyde Prestowitz, founder of the Economic Strategy Institute, who wrote that, as a top US government trade negotiator, he went to great lengths to open up the Japanese market for Apple in the early nineteen eighties, adding: We did all we could and in doing so came to learn that virtually everything Apple had for sale, from the memory chips to the cute pointer mouse, had had its origins in some program wholly or partially supported by US government money. Monks sums up: Henry Ford's great success was built in part on his decision to pay his workers a high enough wage so that they could afford the products they were producing. No more. The shrinking middle class, the widening gap between the rich and the poor - these are some of those American 'problems' that American-born-and-bred corporations like Apple really have no time for. For more galvanized specifics, please read and absorb this book! Other high, former corporate officials are speaking out. Former general counsel of USAir, Lawrence Stentzel, called on reluctant federal prosecutors to hold corporate wrongdoers' feet to the fire and force them to admit to their wrongdoing. He also demanded that the Justice Department create a user friendly database of corporate wrong doing. http://www.corporatecrimereporter.com/news/200/stentzelspeaksout03132013/ Big US corporations have long demanded a legal system where they are defined as "people", so as to get all of our constitutional rights while they expand their privileged powers and immunities. Well, why don't we measure them by the many patriotic standards that we apply to ourselves, the real American people. Getting these giant firms on the defensive is the first step for the resurgence of the people so that corporations become our servants and do not remain our masters. http://nader.org/2013/05/16/patriotic-yardsticks-for-unpatriotic-giant-corporations/ TO POST A COMMENT, OR TO READ COMMENTS POSTED BY OTHERS, please click the appropriate link at the top or bottom of http://billtotten.wordpress.com/2013/05/20/patriotic-yardsticks-for-unpatriotic-giant-corporations/ _______________________________________________ Rad-Green mailing list Rad-Green&lt; at &gt;greenhouse.economics.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/rad-green </pre> Bill Totten 2013-05-20T12:12:09 http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.politics.communism.environmental/49970 <pre>http://www.democracynow.org/2013/5/17/astoundingly_disturbing_obama_administration_claims_power Democracy Now! Friday, May 17, 2013 "Astoundingly Disturbing": Obama Administration Claims Power to Wage Endless War Across the Globe *"...one of the enduring legacies of the Obama presidency is going to be that he solidified this Cheneyesque view of the U.S. government, which says that when it comes to foreign policy, that the executive branch is effectively a dictatorship and that Congress only has a minimal role to play in oversight." * *-- Author Jeremy Scahill* A Pentagon official predicted Thursday the war against al-Qaeda and its affiliates could last up to 20 more years. The comment came during a Senate hearing revisiting the Authorization for Use of Military Force, or AUMF, enacted by Congress days after the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. At the hearing, Pentagon officials claimed the AUMF gives the president power to wage endless war anywhere in the world, including in Syria, Yemen and the Congo. "This is the most astounding and most astoundingly disturbing hearing that I’ve been to since I’ve been here," said Independent Sen. Angus King of Maine. "You guys have essentially rewritten the Constitution here today." We play excerpts of Thursday’s Senate hearing and our recent interview with Jeremy Scahill, author of the new bestseller, "Dirty Wars: The World Is a Battlefield." Transcript This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form. *JUAN GONZÁLEZ:* A Pentagon official predicted Thursday the war against al-Qaeda and its affiliates could last up to 20 more years. The comment came during a Senate hearing revisiting the Authorization for Use of Military Force, or AUMF, enacted by Congress days after the 2001&lt;http://www.democracynow.org/2013/5/17/astoundingly_disturbing_obama_administration_claims_power#fn2001&gt;attacks. At the hearing, Pentagon officials claimed the AUMF gives the president power to wage endless war anywhere on the globe. Senator Angus King, an independent from Maine, described the hearing as the most, quote, "astoundingly disturbing" one he had been to since taking office earlier this year. King accused Obama administration of rewriting the Constitution. *AMY GOODMAN:* We begin’s today’s show with highlights from the hearing. In a moment we’ll hear Senator Angus King in his own words, but first, Republican Senator Lindsey Graham questioning two Pentagon officials, Michael Sheehan, the assistant secretary of defense in charge of special operations, and Robert Taylor, acting general counsel, Department of Defense. This is Senator Graham. *SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM:* Do you agree with me, the war against radical Islam, or terror, whatever description you like to provide, will go on after the second term of President Obama? *MICHAEL SHEEHAN:* Senator, in my judgment, this is going to go on for quite a while, and, yes, beyond the second term of the president. *SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM:* And beyond this term of Congress? *MICHAEL SHEEHAN:* Yes, sir. I think it’s at least 10 to 20 years. *SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM:* So, from your point of view, you have all of the authorization and legal authorities necessary to conduct a drone strike against terrorist organizations in Yemen without changing the AUMF. *MICHAEL SHEEHAN:* Yes, sir, I do believe that. *SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM:* You agree with that, General? *BRIG. GEN. RICHARD GROSS:* I do, sir. *SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM:* General, do you agree with that? *GEN. MICHAEL NAGATA:* I do, sir. *SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM:* OK. Could we send military members into Yemen to strike against one of these organizations? Does the president have that authority to put boots on the ground in Yemen? *ROBERT TAYLOR:* As I mentioned before, there’s domestic authority and international law authority. At the moment, the basis for putting boots on the ground in Yemen, we respect the sovereignty of Yemen, and it would— *SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM:* I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about: Does he have the legal authority under our law to do that? *ROBERT TAYLOR:* Under domestic authority, he would have that authority. *SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM:* I hope that Congress is OK with that. I’m OK with that. Does he have authority to put boots on the ground in the Congo? *MICHAEL SHEEHAN:* Yes, sir, he does. *SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM:* OK. Do you agree with me that when it comes to international terrorism, we’re talking about a worldwide struggle? *MICHAEL SHEEHAN:* Absolutely, sir. [inaudible] *SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM:* Would you agree with me the battlefield is wherever the enemy chooses to make it? *MICHAEL SHEEHAN:* Yes, sir, from Boston to the FATA. *SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM:* I couldn’t agree with you more. We’re in a—do you agree with that, General? *BRIG. GEN. RICHARD GROSS:* Yes, sir. I agree that the enemy decides where the battlefield is. *SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM:* And it could be anyplace on the planet, and we have to be aware and able to act. And do you have the ability to act, and are you aware of the threats? *MICHAEL SHEEHAN:* Yes, sir. We do have the ability to react, and we are tracking threats globally. *SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM:* From my point of view, I think your analysis is correct, and I appreciate all of your service to our country. *SEN. CARL LEVIN:* Senator King. *SEN. ANGUS KING:* Gentlemen, I’ve only been here five months, but this is the most astounding and most astoundingly disturbing hearing that I’ve been to since I’ve been here. You guys have essentially rewritten the Constitution here today. The Constitution, Article I, Section 8, Clause 11, clearly says that the Congress has the power to declare war. This—this authorization, the AUMF, is very limited. And you keep using the term "associated forces." You use it 13 times in your statement. That is not in the AUMF. And you said at one point, "It suits us very well." I assume it does suit you very well, because you’re reading it to cover everything and anything. And then you said, at another point, "So, even if the AUMFdoesn’t apply, the general law of war applies, and we can take these actions." So, my question is: How do you possibly square this with the requirement of the Constitution that the Congress has the power to declare war? This is one of the most fundamental divisions in our constitutional scheme, that the Congress has the power to declare war; the president is the commander-in-chief and prosecutes the war. But you’re reading this AUMFin such a way as to apply clearly outside of what it says. Senator McCain was absolutely right: It refers to the people who planned, authorized, committed or aided the terrorist attacks on September 11. That’s a date. That’s a date. It doesn’t go into the future. And then it says, "or harbored such organizations"—past tense—"or persons in order to prevent any future acts by such nations, organizations or persons." It established a date. I don’t disagree that we need to fight terrorism. But we need to do it in a constitutionally sound way. Now, I’m just a little, old lawyer from Brunswick, Maine, but I don’t see how you can possibly read this to be in comport with the Constitution and authorize any acts by the president. You had testified to Senator Graham that you believe that you could put boots on the ground in Yemen now under this—under this document. That makes the war powers a nullity. I’m sorry to ask such a long question, but my question is: What’s your response to this? Anybody? *MICHAEL SHEEHAN:* Senator, let me take the first response. I’m not a constitutional lawyer or a lawyer of any kind. But let me talk to you a little—take a brief statement about al-Qaeda and the organization that attacked us on September 11, 2001. In the two years prior to that, Senator King, that organization attacked us in East Africa and killed 17 Americans in our embassy in Nairobi, with loosely affiliated groups of people in East Africa. A year prior to 9/11, that same organization, with its affiliates in Yemen, almost sunk a U.S. ship, the U.S.S. Cole, a billion-dollar warship, killed 17 sailors in the port of Aden. The organization that attacked us on 9/11 already had its tentacles in—around the world with associated groups. That was the nature of the organization then; it is the nature of the organization now. In order to attack that organization, we have to attack it with those affiliates that are its operational arm that have previously attacked and killed Americans, and at high-level interests, and continue to try to do that. *SEN. ANGUS KING:* That’s fine, but that’s not what the AUMF says. You can—you can—what I’m saying is, we may need new authority, but don’t—if you expand this to the extent that you have, it’s meaningless, and the limitation in the war power is meaningless. I’m not disagreeing that we need to attack terrorism wherever it comes from and whoever is doing it. But what I’m saying is, let’s do it in a constitutional way, not by putting a gloss on a document that clearly won’t support it. It just—it just doesn’t—it just doesn’t work. I’m just reading the words. It’s all focused on September 11 and who was involved, and you guys have invented this term "associated forces" that’s nowhere in this document. As I mentioned, in your written statement, you use that—that’s the key term. You use it 13 times. It’s the justification for everything. And it renders the war powers of the Congress null and void. I don’t understand. I mean, I do understand you’re saying we don’t need any change, because the way you read it, you can—you could do anything. But why not say—come back to us and say, "Yes, you’re correct that this is an overbroad reading that renders the war powers of the Congress a nullity; therefore, we need new authorization to respond to the new situation"? I don’t understand why—I mean, I do understand it, because the way you read it, there’s no limit. But that’s not what the Constitution contemplates. *AMY GOODMAN:* Independent Senator Angus King of Maine, speaking Thursday at a Senate hearing on the president’s war powers under the Authorization for Use of Military Force. Well, journalist Jeremy Scahill&lt;http://www.democracynow.org/2013/4/24/the_world_is_a_battlefield_jeremy&gt;discussed the same topic when he appeared on *Democracy Now!* last month. Jeremy is the author of the new bestseller, *Dirty Wars: The World Is a Battlefield*. *JEREMY SCAHILL:* The concept of *The World Is a Battlefield* actually is not something I thought up; it’s a doctrine, actually, a military doctrine called "Operational Preparation of the Battlespace," which views the world as a battlefield. And what it says is that if there are countries where you predict, where the military predicts that conflicts are likely or that war is a possibility, you can forward deploy troops to those countries to prepare the battlefield. And under both Bush and Obama, the world has been declared the battlefield. You know, the Authorization for the Use of Military Force that was passed after 9/11 is technically the law that President Obama and his administration point to when they say they have a right to drone strike in Yemen, because these people are connected to the 9/11 attacks. But in reality, one of the enduring legacies of the Obama presidency is going to be that he solidified this Cheneyesque view of the U.S. government, which says that when it comes to foreign policy, that the executive branch is effectively a dictatorship and that Congress only has a minimal role to play in oversight. I mean, Cheney didn’t want Congress to have any role in it. Obama’s administration plays this game with Congress: Certain people can go into the padded room and look at this one document, but, oh, not this other document, and you’re not allowed to bring in a utensil to write with, and you can’t ever tell anyone what you said. That’s congressional oversight on our assassination program. But they have doubled down on this all-powerful executive branch perspective. And that’s why we see this stuff expanding. *AMY GOODMAN:* Jeremy Scahill, author of the new bestseller, *Dirty Wars: The World Is a Battlefield*. His film by the same title, *Dirty Wars*, is coming out in June around the country. This is *Democracy Now!*, democracynow.org, *The War and Peace Report*. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González. Back in a minute. </pre> Sid Shniad 2013-05-20T06:49:28 http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.politics.communism.environmental/49969 <pre>France to buy US-made Reaper drones for use in Mali: Report File photo shows a US-made unarmed Reaper surveillance drone. Sat May 18, 2013 12:43PM GMT 15 19 19  In February, a report published by the World Tribune indicated that the French military has used "Harfang" medium-altitude long endurance (MALE) drones manufactured by Israel in the war-torn country." Related Interviews: * 'US troops to fuel tensions across Africa' * ‘Mali war ends in France’s humiliation’ France has plans to purchase US-made unarmed Reaper surveillance drones in a bid to back up its military operations against fighters in the crisis-hit African country, Mali, a report says. According to the report published by Air et Cosmos specialist magazine on Friday, France will buy two American medium-altitude Reaper drones following a deal reached between Paris and Washington. The report added that the French Air Force, which has already deployed Israeli-made armed unmanned drones to the West African nation, intends to acquire more modern drones rapidly. In February, a report published by the World Tribune indicated that the French military has used "Harfang" medium-altitude long endurance (MALE) drones manufactured by Israel in the war-torn country. The Air et Cosmos report also stated that the French Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian, who is currently on a visit to the US, is set to make an official announcement in this regard. France launched its war on the resource-rich West African country in January under the pretext of fighting al-Qaeda-linked extremists. The French-led war on Mali has caused a serious humanitarian crisis in the northern areas of the country and has displaced thousands of people, who now live in deplorable conditions. Amnesty International said on February 1 that serious human rights breaches including the killing of children were being conducted in Mali. Some political analysts believe Mali's abundant natural resources, including gold and uranium, are among the reasons behind the French war against the African country. http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2013/05/18/304143/france-to-buy-us-drones-for-use-in-mali/ _______________________________________________ Rad-Green mailing list Rad-Green&lt; at &gt;greenhouse.economics.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/rad-green </pre> Romi Elnagar 2013-05-20T04:28:04 http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.politics.communism.environmental/49968 <pre>Write letters of support to nuclear resisters The Nuclear Resisters are encouraging the anti-nuclear and anti-war community to write letters of support to imprisoned activists around the world, including Greg Boertje-Obed, Sister Megan Rice and Michael Walli, currently imprisoned and awaiting sentencing for their breach of security at the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, TN. Please visit the Nuclear Resisters special webpage to write to imprisoned activists. Boertje-Obed, Rice and Walli will not be sentenced until mid-September. Even the Bush-appointed judge opined that "It is preposterous that Congress would pass a law that would not distinguish between peace protestors and terrorists." However, because the three were convicted of sabotage, which is considered under law as "an act of violence" against the United States, some thought the judge faced no other legal choice but to remand them in custody for now. Activists maintained a vigil outside the courthouse during the trial (Pictured. Photo by Felice Cohen-Joppa). Nuclear Resisters special webpage http://www.nukeresister.org/inside-out/ _______________________________________________ Rad-Green mailing list Rad-Green&lt; at &gt;greenhouse.economics.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/rad-green </pre> Romi Elnagar 2013-05-20T01:32:02 http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.politics.communism.environmental/49967 <pre>SORRY: The version I posted several hours ago didn't contain links to the pictures. This version does. --- I'm in my third year of keeping Japanese honeybees. I got started in 2011 when my good friend and mentor, Mr Takayuki Mori, introduced me to Mr Ikumi Shiga, a farmer as well as researcher at Kyoto University. Mr Shiga keeps bees, has made by hand more than a hundred beehives, and helps others like me get started in beekeeping. Mr Shiga brought me three beehives. They each are a stack of five boxes on a cement stand with an aluminum roof. Each box is 29 centimeters square and 15 centimeters tall. See these pictures: Our First Beehive, Bees at their Hive 1, Bees at their Hive 2, and Bees at their Hive 3. http://billtotten.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/our-first-beehive.gif Our First Beehive http://billtotten.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/bees-at-their-hive-1.gif Bees at their Hive 1 http://billtotten.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/bees-at-their-hive-2.gif Bees at their Hive 2 http://billtotten.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/bees-at-their-hive-3.gif Bees at their Hive 3 I attracted my first colony with a Kinryohen plant in a stand surrounded by a net. Kinryohen is a kind of Orchid. The aroma of the Kinryohen flower attracts the bees while the net prevents the bees from harming the flower. If successful, the net collects a colony of bees. See these pictures: Kinryohen next to beehive, Bees attracted to Kinryohen 1, Bees attracted to Kinryohen 2, Bees attracted to Kinryohen 3 http://billtotten.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/kinryohen-next-to-beehive.gif Kinryohen next to beehive http://billtotten.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/bees-attracted-to-kinryohen_1.gif Bees attracted to Kinryohen 1 http://billtotten.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/bees-attracted-to-kinryohen_2.gif Bees attracted to Kinryohen 2 http://billtotten.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/bees-attracted-to-kinryohen_3.gif Bees attracted to Kinryohen 3 Mr Shiga harvested about four kilograms of honey from our hive in the autumn of 2011, two kilograms for us and two for him. See these pictures: Bee Harvest 1, Bee Harvest 2, Bee Harvest 3. http://billtotten.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/bee-harvest-1.gif Bee Harvest 1 http://billtotten.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/bee-harvest-2.gif Bee Harvest 2 http://billtotten.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/bee-harvest-3.gif Bee Harvest 3 When a new Queen Bee is born, the older Queen Bee leaves the colony taking about half of its members with her to establish a new colony. This is called swarming or hiving offu•ª–Iv. See these pictures: Swarming Begins 1, Swarming Begins 2. http://billtotten.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/swarming-begins-1.gif Swarming Begins 1 http://billtotten.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/swarming-begins-2.gif Swarming Begins 2 On April 24 2012, our first colony swarmed or hived off u•ª–I‚µ‚Ü‚µ‚œvbut, by my own negligence, I didn't see where they went. So I lost the chance to gain a second colony. Moreover, our Kinryohen plant didn't attract a new colony in 2012. However, Mr Shiga was able to harvest eight kilograms of honey from our hive in the Summer of 2012, four for us and four for him. See pictures: Bee Harvest 1, Bee Harvest 2, Bee Harvest 3. Early this year a friend of Satomi's offered us a new colony of bees kept by her recently deceased father. Mr Shiga and I went to retrieve them a few weeks ago. We received the colony as well as their hive which is made differently from Mr Shiga's beehives. See picture: Our Second Beehive. http://billtotten.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/our-second-beehive.gif Our Second Beehive Meanwhile, Mr Shiga sent me a lure containing extracts of Kinryohen to attract bees. It arrived Saturday morning (April 13) and I immediately fastened it to an unoccupied beehive about two meters from our new colony of bees. See picture: Kinryohen Lure. http://billtotten.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/kinryohen-lure.gif Kinryohen Lure Less than two hours later, that new colony began swarming or hiving off u•ª–Ivand collected underneath a planter for strawberries about three meters from the hive they swarmed from and about one meter from the hive I hoped they would move to. See Pictures: Mid Swarm 1, Mid Swarm 2. http://billtotten.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/mid-swarm-1.gif Mid Swarm 1 http://billtotten.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/mid-swarm-2.gif Mid Swarm 2 I waited several hours for the lure to attract the hived off colony to the vacant hive. Several bees spent most of those hours investigating the vacant hive but by late afternoon the hived off colony remained underneath the strawberry planter and hadn't moved to the new hive. So, following Mr Shiga's instructions, I set up a table underneath the strawberry planter, placed the top box of their new hive on that table, and moved by gloved hand as many as I could into it without more escaping than I had moved into it. I then placed the cover over the box so those inside didn' t escape and used a thin rock to lift and edge of the box just high enough for the rest of the colony to move inside on their own volition. Mr Shiga had told me that if the Queen Bee was among the ones I moved manually into the box, the others would enter the box by nightfall. See pictures: Capturing Swarm 1, Capturing Swarm 2, Capturing Swarm 3, Capturing Swarm 4. http://billtotten.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/capturing-swarm-1.gif Capturing Swarm 1 http://billtotten.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/capturing-swarm-2.gif Capturing Swarm 2 http://billtotten.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/capturing-swarm-3.gif Capturing Swarm 3 http://billtotten.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/capturing-swarm-4.gif Capturing Swarm 4 And sure enough they did. Following Mr Shiga's instructions, after dark I carried the box to their new home and placed it at the top of the stack, on top of the other four boxes, and placed the roof over it. Mr Shiga had told me that the bees collect under the ceiling of the box and are passive after dark so few or none would escape from the uncovered bottom side of the box. I checked on them many times Sunday and found them to be active and, apparently, content in their new home. So I now had three colonies. Around 10:00 Sunday morning (April 14), our original colony began to swarm. Consulting Mr Shiga, I checked and cleaned the hive I hoped they would choose, the third of the three hives that he originally gave me in 2011. I placed the lure on the new hive, about fifteen centimeters above their entrance. See pictures: Kinryohen Lure on Hive 1 and Kinryohen Lure on Hive 2, the second of which shows first bees attracted to the lure, some flying and some on the ground. http://billtotten.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/kinryohen-lure-on-hive-1.gif Kinryohen Lure on Hive 1 http://billtotten.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/kinryohen-lure-on-hive-2.gif Kinryohen Lure on Hive 2 *This shows first bees attracted to the lure, some flying and some on the ground. But while doing all of this the new colony swarmed off and, despite searching diligently, I could not find them. However, I gradually noticed a few, then more, then even more bees investigating this new home. I called Mr Shiga, who advised me not to touch that new home even if all of the bees investigating it disappeared because they might disappear to invite the guide the rest of their members to the new home. And sure enough, about 14:00, just as I was about to go buy myself a late lunch, the whole colony arrived at and in the air around their new home. See pictures: Arrival 1 and Arrival 2. http://billtotten.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/arrival-1.gif Arrival 1 http://billtotten.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/arrival-2.gif Arrival 2 An hour later most of the bees were in their new home, and we now were the proud and happy keepers of four colonies. Mr Shiga immediately sent me two new hives to attract new colonies. They arrived this morning. Bill Totten April 15 2013 TO POST A COMMENT, OR TO READ COMMENTS POSTED BY OTHERS, please click the appropriate link at the top or bottom of http://billtotten.wordpress.com/2013/05/09/my-bee-utiful-weekend/ _______________________________________________ Rad-Green mailing list Rad-Green&lt; at &gt;greenhouse.economics.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/rad-green </pre> Bill Totten 2013-05-20T00:54:29 http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.politics.communism.environmental/49966 <pre>Should climate change academics lead by example? by Kevin Anderson http://kevinanderson.info/blog (April 12 2013) (The arguments outlined in this commentary apply equally to any politician, civil servant, journalist, NGO or business leader calling for stringent mitigation) From the World Bank and PricewaterhouseCoopers through to Stern and the International Energy Agency, analyses increasingly demonstrate how, without urgent and radical reductions in emissions, global temperatures are set to rise by four degrees Celsius or higher - with, as the IEA emphasise, "devastating" repercussions for the planet. But whose responsibility is it to initiate such radical mitigation? ***** My partner and I recently arrived in Sicily for a couple of weeks' camping and rock climbing - not exactly sun-kissed limestone (fifteen degrees Celsius and damp), but still a little warmer than the Arctic blasts battering the UK at the moment. As we try to avoid flying we've travelled here by train: Manchester to London and then onto Paris, overnight Paris to Rome, a day strolling between the Pantheon and the Colosseum, before another overnight train to Palermo in the North West corner of Sicily. The journey took longer than flying, but we get a day each way to explore Rome and overnight travel to and from Sicily, so in terms of price and time it isn't that different to flying. But when it comes to emissions I stand by the arguments I made following my train trip to Shanghai in 2011 (for work on that occasion). At a system level, trains have an order of magnitude lower emissions than the metal bird alternative - the saving is that significant. If my arguments are valid, surely those of us intimately engaged in climate change should, at the very least, curtail our use of the most carbon-profligate activity (per hour) humankind has thus far developed. For those interested, the arguments I previously posted on the Tyndall Centre website are repeated below. In addition, I've included a few thoughts in response to the comeback often made - "those of us with children can't afford the longer journey times as we have overriding parental commitments". ***** Slow and low - the way to go: A systems view of travel emissions When planning the journey from Broadbottom (UK), to Shanghai, and also since my return, I have been asked frequently about the associated emissions: * "I thought trains weren't much better than planes, what's the difference?" * "Was it worth the effort for whatever you saved?" On the face of it, these and many similar queries are completely reasonable questions to ask. But, in my view, they miss the point, and without trying to be overly provocative (that's for later), I don't think they are so reasonable - particularly from the array of informed experts who asked them. So why do I think the questions are unreasonable - and what would I suggest as an alternative framing for assessing emissions from travel? Analysis The following blog-style analysis is a mix of provocation, parody and some different ways of thinking about emissions from our travel. I've tried to make a coherent case on the basis of argument, but some of the language may not be what you would typically find in an academic paper. Nonetheless, I stand by the well-intentioned thrust of the case and if anyone has any substantive disagreements I'd be pleased to hear them. It is intended to hold a mirror up to the climate change community - and as with all mirrors, it can make for grim viewing. I know: it's a fit 36-year-old who looks in the mirror - but a less fit grey-haired and 49-year-old bloke who stares back at me! My concerns about the questions I've been asked fall into three broad and related categories. They were asked by folk who work intimately on climate change as a system. But not one person asked a systems-level question, 'How are you going to compare the plane and train emissions?' - or - 'Have you thought about rebound, where time saved via faster travel is spent on additional carbon-emitting activities?' Instead, all of the questions relegated climate change to a purely technical, quantitative or efficiency issue - none of which address what we need to do to reduce total emissions. The opportunity costs, rebound effect, carbon intensity of time, technical and financial lock-in/lock-out, early adoption, role models, diffusion and so on, are all concepts the climate change community are familiar with. Asking emissions questions without direct or indirect recourse to any of these is, in my view, neither responsible nor reasonable. Unreasonable reasonableness - another Rumsfeldian paradox The first argument for my concluding the reasonable questions aren't so reasonable relates to it being academics working on climate change (amongst others) who asked them. For the last decade the language of climate change used in proposals for funding, research council calls, brochures, government documents and so on, has been awash with terms such as 'whole systems', 'systems thinking', 'interdisciplinary', and the like. Put us in a room and we'll espouse eloquently the virtues of such approaches, noting if we're to tackle big issues like climate change we have to think on a systems level. But as soon as there's something that can be readily quantified we're like moths to a flame: here's something familiar to our 2000 years of reductionism, some knowledge - but without understanding. The virtues of systems thinking that we were waxing lyrical about moments before are quickly forgotten in the mad scrabble to get to the numbers. We know what to do with numbe rs and, as Lord Kelvin so persuasively put it, 'When you measure what you are speaking of and express it in numbers, you know that on which you are discoursing, but when you cannot measure ! it and exp ress it in numbers your knowledge is of a very meagre and unsatisfactory kind'. Well I'm not sure this always holds, and when we do use numbers they have to be meaningful. Isolated numbers tell us little about the system, and worse, they can lead to decisions based only on the bit we can measure. This may be worse than doing nothing or taking random action; at the very least numbers have to be contextual. So having made the argument that systems thinking requires some systems thinking itself, the following sections outline more precisely defined and technical matters that underpin my concern that the climate change community continues to take overly narrow views of systems-level issues. In 2011, we ought to know better. System Saving Number One: Relative dimensions in distance, time and emissions If we accept temperature as an adequate proxy for our various concerns about climate change, then there is broad acceptance we must stay below a two degrees Celsus increase in global temperature. Thus the climate is only really concerned with our cumulative emissions over a relatively short period of time - a period longer than the Broadbottom to Shanghai train journey, but stretching only about as far as 2020 for two degrees Celsus (and for four degrees Celsus sometime around 2030). There is some mathematics behind these dates linked to how high we are already on the emissions curves, the 'real' emission growth trend, realistic peaks and the proportion of our carbon budget we've squandered already. See Beyond Dangerous Climate Change {1}. Coming back to the train and its emissions relative to other transport modes: from a systems perspective, it's a good enough approximation to consider the carbon dioxide per passenger kilometre for planes, trains and automobiles to be similar. Okay, alone in a Ferrari with your foot to the floor will be many times worse than being sardined into one of EasyJet's relatively new aircraft. Similarly, four people cosying up in a small Fiat Panda will knock the socks off any scheduled airline (that is, have much lower carbon dioxide emissions). But put a couple of academics in a diesel family saloon and any disparity in emissions between the modes over the same distance will be lost in the system noise. The difference, of course, arises from the distance we deem reasonable to travel - and really this is less about the distance and more about the time. Attending an 'essential' conference to save the world from climate change in Venice, Cancun or some other holiday resort, is perfectly do-able by plane. However, the rising emission trends don't seem to have registered the sterling work we have achieved at such events. Perhaps if we flew to more of them, emissions would really start to come down - we may even spot some flying pigs en route. Instead, junk the plane and get together with a few other UK speakers heading to the same event, cram yourself in a trusty Fiat Panda and set off for Venice. Somewhere around Dartford, what was previously 'essential' begins to take on a different hue, and by Dover a whole new meaning has evolved. Essential has become a relative term, dependent on: Can we get there by plane? Are our friends also attendin g? Is it somewhere nice to visit (or name-drop)? Will we be taxied around? Are we staying in a plush hotel? This is where the first major saving resides: slow forms of travel fundamentally change our perception of the essential. We consequently travel less (at least in distance), and given that air travel is the most emission-profligate activity per hour (short of Formula 1 and possibly space tourism) the emission-related opportunity costs are knocked into a cocked hat. Of course, as climate change specialists we are exempt from such analysis - our message truly is essential - so we're the exception that should be able to carry on emitting as before. Ah, yes, and business folk - we need them to drive the economy. Tourists are yet another really important economic driver (not to mention the great cultural gains from staying in western-style hotels with like-minded folk and observing other cultures pass by the windscreens of our air conditioned taxis). Next there are the pop stars and celebrities - the world would be such a dull place if they weren't able to prance about at international festivals. The football and tennis players must test their mettle in the international arena - and of course they need their fans to cheer them on. We can then turn to whole industrial sectors' that put forward an equally bewildering array of 'reasons' why they should be the exceptions and exempt from major emission reductions. This extends to government departments, climate change think tanks and some NGOs - with the remaining less deserving sectors and individuals taking up the slack. It really is a puzzler as to why emissions keep on rising - all the more so since fuel prices have rocketed to levels way in excess of any carbon price economists previously told us would collapse the economy! Still, a few more international conferences and guidance from the carbon-market gurus will have us turn the corner on this one, I'm sure. Obviously these caricatures are so far from reality that we don't recognise ourselves in any of them - but nevertheless the message is clear. Travelling slowly forces us to travel much less, to be much more selective in what events we attend, and to endeavour to get more out of those trips we do take. Fewer trips and potentially longer stays: not rocket science - just climate change basics. System Saving Number Two: Iteration, adaptive capacity and indulgences - how to avoid carbon lock-in It may be apocryphal, but I have heard from several reputable sources that China is in the process of constructing 150 new international airports. This perhaps sounds implausible, but China's population is approximately 22 times the UK's, and the UK has around 25 international airports. Proportionately, China would need 550 international airports to match the per capita equivalent of the UK. Suddenly their construction rate seems less implausible. Either way, flying to Shanghai sends a very clear market signal: expand your airport. And that is exactly what they're doing right now, so they're reading our repeated signal loud and clear. But how is that worse than expanding the rail network? Firstly, there is potential to radically improve the efficiency of train travel - until very recently efficiency has not been a major concern for the industry. This is not the case for aviation. Jet engines and current plane designs have pushed the orthodox design envelope about as far as it can go; so one to two per cent per annum improvement is about as much as can be wrung out of the aviation industry in the short to medium term. In the longer term things may change, but this will not be within the short timeframe associated with climate change. Consequently, flying now locks the future into a high-carbon aviation infrastructure. By contrast, trains have substantial efficiency potential (though this may be compromised with the very high-speed trains) and, more significantly, trains can run on electricity (many already do) and electricity can be low-carbon (some of it already is). Trains can also have regenerative brea! king (tric ky with aircraft) and overnight trains can be used to flatten demand curves (and cut back on hotel emissions). Planes are currently locked into high-carbon kerosene whilst trains already have several low-carbon options. So there you have it. Jump on a plane and you send a suite of very clear market signals. Please buy some more aircraft that will operate for twenty to thirty years and have a design life of forty years. Please build some more airports. Please divert public transport funds so passengers (and shoppers) can travel to the airport on low-carbon trains or trams. Please expand the airport car park for when bags are just too heavy to lug on a tram. Please keep producing the black stuff - without it we will have invested billions in an industry dependent on kerosene; lock-in par excellence. They don't tell you all this on the back of the ticket - though there may be some oh so useful advice on carbon offsetting. Again, is it any wonder that emissions aren't coming down when we, the high-emitters, c an buy indulgences so easily and cheaply? System Saving Number Three A: Opportunity costs constrain carbon Here we turn to the old chestnut, opportunity costs. Basically if I had flown - and assuming the direct emissions per capita were the same between the plane and the Trans-Siberian Express - then what would I have been doing for the time I wasn't on the train? Let's say the plane took two days - one day each way (UK to Shanghai), while the train took a total of twenty days (ten each way), leaving an opportunity cost period of eighteen days. If at home, I certainly would have been taking the train to and from work each day. I'd probably have had around four longer UK trips, typically at around 650 kilometres per return trip. I'd have visited a few rock-climbing venues in my immediate vicinity around the Peak District (say 200 to 300 kilometres in total, probably shared with a couple of others in the car); I'd have watched a few movies, listened to the radio a lot - and all the usual stuff. The total distance travelled would be equivalent to 3000 to 5000 kilometres, that is, very roughly ten to twenty per cent of the Trans-Siberian trip distance. But if I was a regular flyer, in twenty days I may have taken a flight or two, and if I was one of the great and the good this would have been business or first class. Added to this (if we ! treat offs etting with the disdain it deserves) the opportunity-cost emissions could easily have exceeded those from the full return journey to China by train. And if offsetting had been used, I take the view that the emissions would have been still higher (increased lock-in, reduced incentive for the 'donor' to change behaviour and the economic multiplier effect for the 'recipient'. See: The Inconvenient Truth of Carbon Offsetting {2}. All of this assumes that during my twelve days in China I emitted roughly the same quantity of carbon dioxide per day as if I'd remained at home in the UK. This is probably not too unreasonable, but again if I were one of the great and good, I'd no doubt would have had much higher emissions from further business-class travel to champion my low carbon message in yet mo re exotic venues. By including opportunity costs, this slow-travel stuff really starts to notch up the carbon savings for those of us who travel a lot - particularly if it includes international travel. System Saving number Three B: The slippery slope: thinking low-carbon engenders thinking low-carbon which engenders ... A final point worthy of a brief note: making the transition from fast to slower forms of long-distance travel may engender slower forms of travel elsewhere. Once we've made such a transition, it becomes more 'natural' to avoid taxis and instead to seek out the public transport, walking or cycling options we espouse for others. Taxis are another market signal for more roads. Jamming our bodies onto the Tube (or Beijing subway), or waiting for the reliable late-night bus from Norwich station to the University of East Anglia, all give much lower carbon signals, especially if supported with the occasional letter, either chastising the London Mayor for not doing more with the Tube and local trains, or complimenting Norwich bus planners - or however we think admonishment and praise should be met ed out. So there you have it: my potted account as to why I think the climate change community needs to put its own house in order before wagging its hypocritical finger at others or espousing low-carbon solutions to ministers that we simply wouldn't accept for ourselves. Final thoughts: Can slow travel be justified in a busy university life? My guess is that a common retort to my ramblings will be, 'it's okay for him, I'm too busy to take such a long time off work, it's just not practical - I've got to live in the real world'. But the real world has us flying half way around the world to give banal twenty minute presentations to audiences who know what we're going to say. Even if our talks are riveting canters through the intellectual surf, are they really so important that we have to be there in person and in an instant, before launching off to dispense our pearls of wisdom to another packed house in another exotic location? Isn't our situation emblematic of the problems (such as fast and self-important lives for the few, no time for thinking, reflexivity and humility) that we are abjectly failing to shed any light on? My life is perhaps not as busy as some, but I still clock up a fair few work hours, have meetings to attend, administration to do and research to deliver on. The train was certainly not as simple to organise as a plane - though next time it would be much easier, and I wouldn't worry so much about getting everything perfect and having back-up plans in place. Long and unusual journeys inevitably take more planning, not least to ensure the time spent travelling can be productive. And in terms of cost, the reimbursement system is just not set yet up to support such journeys, so you'll likely have to dip into your pocket, as long train journeys typically cost more than taking to the air. Moreover, receipts don't come with purchases of strange foods from sellers on station platforms and odd bits of accommodation. So what of the work you can do while travelling? I had planned and expected my many hours of mildly enforced confinement to provide a good working environment. But I wasn't prepared for what turned out to be the most productive period of my academic career, particularly on the return journey. During the outward trip, I read a range of papers and managed to write another on shipping and climate change. However, after having spent twelve days in China bombarded with fresh experiences, new ways of thinking and new information, the return journey was a wonderful opportunity to begin to make sense of it all, embedding much of it in a paper which a colleague and I had been working on for the past year. This was the first time I had actually put pen to paper with regard to that research. The train's ability to remove many of the choices that clutter my daily life gave me the seclusion and concentration I needed to set to work on what has proved a very challenging paper. By the time Moscow arrived, I had completed about 75 per cent of the writing; this would have taken another six months had I flown to Shanghai. From a productivity perspective, the twenty-day train journey easily trumped the two-day flight. Counter-intuitive perhaps, but I remain convinced that a carefully planned train journey not only delivers lower emissions by an order of magnitude, but facilitates the process of research in a way that universities and daily life simply can't match. Add to that the 'slower' ethos that such journeys engender, and I think there may be early signs of making a meaningful transition to a low-carbon future - or at least a bridging ethos - while we wait for the panacea of low-carbon technologies to become the norm. ***** Addendum: Children, families and slow travel ... Amongst the wealth of responses to the original blog, a recurrent theme was "I really can't see how those of us with young children could spend so much time travelling slowly when we could, by flying, be back home quickly and spend more time with our families". On a more altruistic note, several colleagues with children suggested that they "should perhaps avoid any longer-distance travel, as the emotional pull to return quickly is inevitably very strong". I certainly can empathise with the challenge of balancing work and family pulls on our time. Ultimately, climate change is mostly about families and friends - but surely not only ours in the here and now? If the science is broadly correct and the emissions trends continue, then we're heading for enormous changes for many families even in the short term. These families may not be our own - much more likely they'll be those who have not contributed to the problem, have little income and live in areas geographically more vulnerable to climate change impacts. So the choice is about whose family and friends matter most. We choose to fly back to be with our family as quickly as possible - so as not to be away for more than a few days. But the repercussions (okay, not on a one to one basis perhaps) are for another family in another place to lose their home, suffer food and water shortages, social and community pressures and wider conflicts - to put at risk the very fabric of their families and com munities. Moreover, our reducing time away from our families by using fast and high carbon travel also has longer-term repercussions for our own children. Are we rushing back for the sake of our own families or for 'our' individual engagement with our own families? This is a subtle but I think important distinction. Are we concerned about our families only whilst we're around to enjoy and benefit from them, or are we more altruistically concerned regardless of our own immediate returns? When we're dead and buried our children will likely still be here dealing with the legacy of our inaction today; do we discount their futures at such a rate as to always favour those family activities that 'we' can join in with? I'm not talking about this solely in an abstract manner; most of my immediate family have gone on to more ethereal activity leaving me with an uncle in Scotland and another in Australia who is getting on in years and not in the best of health. I last saw him in 2004 and have since stuck to the difficult decision not to return to visit him. Okay I may relent one day, but for now I'm unable to reconcile my desire to share family memories with my fine Ozzie uncle and the fact that my visiting him jeopardises others' abilities to lead good lives with their families. Life in a changing climate is awash with such thorny issues and tough decisions. To me the guiding principle (supported by the mathematics) is that those of us responsible for the lion's share of emissions are the same group that need to drive emissions down - and fast. Technology alone cannot deliver the low carbon promise land in a timely manner. The future is in our hands now, our lifestyles, behaviours, practices and habits. If we are truly concerned about families (others as well as our own - now and in the future), then perhaps the overseas trip is not as 'essential' as when we could travel quickly by plane. Alternatively, if we still consider it an important trip, we must assess whether the additional time away from our family as a consequence of slower travel is compensated by the value of our message. The decisions just got tougher. Of course, it could be that we are that shining example of an exception to the rule - enlightened beings preaching real mitigation to our parishioners 32 thousand feet below. ***** Is it really surprising that the hoi polloi are indifferent to our pronouncements and politicians pay only lip service to our analyses, when those of us working on climate change exhibit no desire to forego our own high-carbon lifestyles? Links: {1} http://rsta.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/369/1934/20.full.pdf+html {2} http://kevinanderson.info/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/The-inconvenient-truth-of-carbon-offsets-Pre-edit-version-.pdf http://kevinanderson.info/blog/hypocrites-in-the-air-should-climate-change-academics-lead-by-example/ TO POST A COMMENT, OR TO READ COMMENTS POSTED BY OTHERS, please click the appropriate link at the top or bottom of http://billtotten.wordpress.com/2013/05/20/hypocrites-in-the-air/ _______________________________________________ Rad-Green mailing list Rad-Green&lt; at &gt;greenhouse.economics.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/rad-green </pre> Bill Totten 2013-05-20T00:01:35 http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.politics.communism.environmental/49965 <pre>Housing Crisis on the Rez: Why Haul a Run-Down Shack From the Plains to DC? Sunday, 19 May 2013 11:08 By Mark Andrew Boyer, Yes! Magazine Tribal leaders trucked the battered old home to Washington to show the nation’s leaders what the housing crisis on reservations looks like in person. Last month, a new building joined the Washington Monument and the Capitol building on the National Mall. The small, run-down shack had previously housed 13 people, and it was brought to Washington, D.C., from the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota to raise awareness about the critical need for housing on reservations around the country. "It's very difficult to get anybody to leave Washington to see it first-hand, and until you see it first-hand, it doesn't have the impact," explained Thomas Boesen, a Washington-based housing lobbyist who was at the April 17 demonstration. At 2.8 million acres, Pine Ridge is one of the largest Indian reservations in the country. It's also one of the poorest. Housing is in such short supply at Pine Ridge that multiple families are forced to cram into small trailers, and as many as 18 people have been recorded living in a single home. A group of 10 fair housing advocates from the Oglala Sioux tribe transported the house to the National Mall in a demonstration that was dubbed The Trail of Hope for Indian Housing. Throughout the day, curious tourists and student groups wandered by and snapped photos, and in the afternoon North Dakota Senator Heidi Heitkamp stopped by to show her support. "This is not a way that we would ever expect grandmas and grandpas to live," Heitkamp told a small group of demonstrators standing in front of the house. The house used in the demonstration was a small, 52-year-old home that had two bedrooms and one bathroom before it was deconstructed and reconfigured so that it could fit on a trailer. With torn screens and crumbling window frames, the small gray structure was the first home built with federal assistance on Pine Ridge. After remaining on display on the National Mall for one day, the group donated the house to the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian to be used in a future exhibit. Red tape holds back the green Indian reservations have some of the worst housing conditions in the United States, but not all tribes deal with the level of poverty and overcrowding seen on Pine Ridge. According to the Trail of Hope demonstrators, that’s partly because resources are generally not distributed among reservations according to need. The message that the Oglala Sioux brought to Washington is that more money needs to be allocated to the nation's poorest tribes, which don't have enough resources to meet their members’ basic needs. Acquiring land isn't the problem on Pine Ridge; many families there already own property passed down from treaties. What they need is money to build houses. "We have three or four families living in one house," says Paul Iron Cloud, director of the Oglala Sioux Housing Authority. And those overcrowded living conditions affect everything from public health to education. "How do you think you could study with three families in one house?" Iron Cloud testified before nine senators on the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs on April 10 to discuss the barriers to housing development on Indian reservations. Housing funds are tied up in a tangle of red tape that forces reservation housing advocates to compete with other transportation and housing lobbies for money, he said. As a result, Indian housing is often overlooked. Nonprofit organizations and faith-based volunteer groups are increasingly stepping up on reservations to fill the void left by the federal government. One group that is working to improve housing conditions at Pine Ridge is the Oglala Sioux Tribe Partnership for Housing, a nonprofit organization that was founded in 1999 to help tribal members purchase homes. The Partnership helped to organize the Trail of Hope, and the group’s director, Emma "Pinky" Clifford, also sits on the board of directors of the tribe’s Housing Authority. In the 14 years since the Partnership was formed, Clifford says the group has helped more than 100 families to acquire homes. But it’s never easy, and each home presents unique challenges. Clifford says she approaches construction and fundraising projects one house at a time, often using different strategies to finance each project. If an approach works, the organization will try to replicate it; if not, they’ll try something else. As I left the National Mall, Clifford handed me a flyer for her latest project, a single-family home that she hopes to complete and deliver by July 2013. A solid foundation and parking pad are already in place, but nothing else. A lumber company from Maine is donating all the building materials, and others will be providing labor and appliances, but Clifford says she’s still trying to figure out how to add electrical, plumbing, and heating systems. "We have hope," Paul Iron Cloud said, wearing a big black cowboy hat while sitting in front of the house as it stood on the National Mall. "Bringing this house to Washington, hopefully that will show Congress and the people that there is light at the end of the tunnel." http://truth-out.org/news/item/16460-housing-crisis-on-the-rez-why-haul-a-run-down-shack-from-the-plains-to-dc _______________________________________________ Rad-Green mailing list Rad-Green&lt; at &gt;greenhouse.economics.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/rad-green </pre> Romi Elnagar 2013-05-19T21:15:39 http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.politics.communism.environmental/49964 <pre>I'm in my third year of keeping Japanese honeybees. I got started in 2011 when my good friend and mentor, Mr Takayuki Mori, introduced me to Mr Ikumi Shiga, a farmer as well as researcher at Kyoto University. Mr Shiga keeps bees, has made by hand more than a hundred beehives, and helps others like me get started in beekeeping. Mr Shiga brought me three beehives. They each are a stack of five boxes on a cement stand with an aluminum roof. Each box is 29 centimeters square and 15 centimeters tall. See these pictures: Our First Beehive, Bees at their Hive 1, Bees at their Hive 2, and Bees at their Hive 3. Our First Beehive Bees at their Hive 1 Bees at their Hive 2 Bees at their Hive 3 I attracted my first colony with a Kinryohen plant in a stand surrounded by a net. Kinryohen is a kind of Orchid. The aroma of the Kinryohen flower attracts the bees while the net prevents the bees from harming the flower. If successful, the net collects a colony of bees. See these pictures: Kinryohen next to beehive, Bees attracted to Kinryohen 1, Bees attracted to Kinryohen 2, Bees attracted to Kinryohen 3 Kinryohen next to beehive Bees attracted to Kinryohen 1 Bees attracted to Kinryohen 2 Bees attracted to Kinryohen 3 Mr Shiga harvested about four kilograms of honey from our hive in the autumn of 2011, two kilograms for us and two for him. See these pictures: Bee Harvest 1, Bee Harvest 2, Bee Harvest 3. Bee Harvest 1 Bee Harvest 2 Bee Harvest 3 When a new Queen Bee is born, the older Queen Bee leaves the colony taking about half of its members with her to establish a new colony. This is called swarming or hiving off「分蜂」. See these pictures: Swarming Begins 1, Swarming Begins 2. Swarming Begins 1 Swarming Begins 2 On April 24 2012, our first colony swarmed or hived off 「分蜂しました」but, by my own negligence, I didn't see where they went. So I lost the chance to gain a second colony. Moreover, our Kinryohen plant didn't attract a new colony in 2012. However, Mr Shiga was able to harvest eight kilograms of honey from our hive in the Summer of 2012, four for us and four for him. See pictures: Bee Harvest 1, Bee Harvest 2, Bee Harvest 3. Early this year a friend of Satomi's offered us a new colony of bees kept by her recently deceased father. Mr Shiga and I went to retrieve them a few weeks ago. We received the colony as well as their hive which is made differently from Mr Shiga's beehives. See picture: Our Second Beehive. Our Second Beehive Meanwhile, Mr Shiga sent me a lure containing extracts of Kinryohen to attract bees. It arrived Saturday morning (April 13) and I immediately fastened it to an unoccupied beehive about two meters from our new colony of bees. See picture: Kinryohen Lure. Kinryohen Lure Less than two hours later, that new colony began swarming or hiving off 「分蜂」and collected underneath a planter for strawberries about three meters from the hive they swarmed from and about one meter from the hive I hoped they would move to. See Pictures: Mid Swarm 1, Mid Swarm 2. Mid Swarm 1 Mid Swarm 2 I waited several hours for the lure to attract the hived off colony to the vacant hive. Several bees spent most of those hours investigating the vacant hive but by late afternoon the hived off colony remained underneath the strawberry planter and hadn't moved to the new hive. So, following Mr Shiga's instructions, I set up a table underneath the strawberry planter, placed the top box of their new hive on that table, and moved by gloved hand as many as I could into it without more escaping than I had moved into it. I then placed the cover over the box so those inside didn' t escape and used a thin rock to lift and edge of the box just high enough for the rest of the colony to move inside on their own volition. Mr Shiga had told me that if the Queen Bee was among the ones I moved manually in to the box, the others would enter the box by nightfall. See pictures: Capturing Swarm 1, Capturing Swarm 2, Capturing Swarm 3, Capturing Swarm 4. Capturing Swarm 1 Capturing Swarm 2 Capturing Swarm 3 Capturing Swarm 4 And sure enough they did. Following Mr Shiga's instructions, after dark I carried the box to their new home and placed it at the top of the stack, on top of the other four boxes, and placed the roof over it. Mr Shiga had told me that the bees collect under the ceiling of the box and are passive after dark so few or none would escape from the uncovered bottom side of the box. I checked on them many times Sunday and found them to be active and, apparently, content in their new home. So I now had three colonies. Around 10:00 Sunday morning (April 14), our original colony began to swarm. Consulting Mr Shiga, I checked and cleaned the hive I hoped they would choose, the third of the three hives that he originally gave me in 2011. I placed the lure on the new hive, about fifteen centimeters above their entrance. See pictures: Kinryohen Lure on Hive 1 and Kinryohen Lure on Hive 2, the second of which shows first bees attracted to the lure, some flying and some on the ground. Kinryohen Lure on Hive 1 Kinryohen Lure on Hive 2 But while doing all of this the new colony swarmed off and, despite searching thoroughly, I could not find them. However, I gradually noticed a few, then more, then even more bees investigating this new home. I called Mr Shiga, who advised me not to touch that new home even if all of the bees investigating it disappeared because they might disappear to invite the guide the rest of their members to the new home. And sure enough, about 14:00, just as I was about to go buy myself a late lunch, the whole colony arrived at and in the air around their new home. See pictures: Arrival 1 and Arrival 2. Arrival 1 Arrival 2 An hour later most of the bees were in their new home, and we now were the proud and happy keepers of four colonies. Mr Shiga immediately sent me two new hives to attract new colonies. They arrived this morning. Bill Totten April 15 2013 TO POST A COMMENT, OR TO READ COMMENTS POSTED BY OTHERS, please click the appropriate link at the top or bottom of http://billtotten.wordpress.com/2013/05/19/my-bee-utiful-weekend/ _______________________________________________ Rad-Green mailing list Rad-Green&lt; at &gt;greenhouse.economics.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/rad-green </pre> Bill Totten 2013-05-19T12:19:49 http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.politics.communism.environmental/49963 <pre>by John Michael Greer The Archdruid Report (May 15 2013) Druid perspectives on nature, culture, and the future of industrial society One of the wry pleasures that's repeatedly come my way since the beginning of this blog seven years ago is that of watching a good many of my predictions come true in short order. Now it's true that I've also made a certain number of failed predictions over that time. Back in 2007 and 2008, for instance, I insisted that the US government wouldn't be dumb enough to try to cover its ballooning budget deficits by spinning the printing presses; some idiocies, I thought, were too extreme even for the inmates of the current American political class. As the Fed proceeds merrily through yet another round of quantitative easing, that assumption has proved to be rather too naive. Even so, my batting average so far has been pretty respectable. In the early days of this blog, for example, Daniel Yergin was insisting at the top of his lungs that the price of oil would settle down shortly to a long-term plateau of $38 a barrel, while fans of a dozen different alternative technologies were claiming just as stridently that if the price of oil ever got to the unthinkable level of $60 a barrel, the technology they favored would be profitable enough to sweep all before it. There were very few of us back then who predicted that oil would go quite a bit past $60 a barrel and stay there, and even fewer who pointed out that abundant cheap fossil fuel energy made alternatives look much more viable than they were. These days, with oil wobbling around $100 a barrel and most of the alternatives still wholly dependent on government subsidies, that turned out to be tolerably prescient. Over the last few weeks, another of my predictions has turned out spot on the money. A little less than six months ago, as New Age bookstores around the world were quietly emptying entire bookshelves dedicated to December 21 2012 and putting fifty percent-off stickers on the contents, I noted in a blog post here {1} that it wouldn't be long before people who were looking for an excuse to put off doing anything about the crisis of industrial society would have a replacement for 2012. Well, it's here. The latest apocalyptic fad is near-term human extinction, or NTE for short: the claim that humanity, along with most other life on Earth, will inevitably be extinct by 2030 at the latest. It's probably necessary to say up front that humanity will certainly go extinct eventually - no species lasts forever - and there's always the chance that it could happen in short order; a stray asteroid with enough mass, or a few rearranged codons in some virus nobody's heard about yet, could do the job quite readily. Still, there's a great difference between claiming that human extinction is possible and insisting that it's certainly going to happen in the next seventeen years, especially when the arguments used to defend that claim amount to nothing more than an insistence that worst-case scenarios are the only possible outcome. There's a tolerably long history to such claims. When I was growing up in the 1970s, there were people on the far end of the environmental movement who insisted that humanity would certainly be extinct before the year 2000, and the same prediction has been repeated with different dates and justifications ever since. Those of my readers who remember the Solar Temple mass suicides of 1994 and 1995 may recall that the collective suicide note left behind by the members of that ill-fated order made exactly that claim: Earth would be uninhabitable by the year 2000, Solar Temple founder Luc Jouret insisted, and so the initiates of the Solar Temple were getting out while the getting was good. In the early days of the peak oil movement, similarly, the same insistence on imminent extinction popped up tolerably often. I was convinced at the time, and remain convinced today, that this was largely a product of an odd and very American habit I've termed "apocalypse machismo". One consequence of America's pervasive anti-intellectualism, with its frankly weird equation of manhood with chest-thumping brainlessness, is that many male American intellectuals end up burdened by doubts about their own masculinity, and some of them respond by trying to talk as tough as possible; intellectual women in this male-dominated culture find they often have to copy that same habit, sometimes to even greater extremes, in order to get taken seriously at all. This has been a major factor all through Am erica's recent history; the neoconservative movement, packed as it was with academic intellectuals whose obsession with proving their own virility on a global stage drove them into one fore! ign policy fiasco after another, makes as good a poster child as any. In the same way, we had a lot of apocalypse machismo in the early peak oil movement. In the first few years of this blog, for that matter, I could count on fielding (and deleting) a comment every month or two from somebody who wanted to talk about the new scenario for imminent human extinction he'd just worked up. The Deepwater Horizon blowout and the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear meltdown fielded a bumper crop of the same thing; those of my readers who doubt this are invited to go digging back through the archives of any unmoderated peak oil forum, where they'll find, in the days and weeks immediately following each of these disasters, colorful if implausible scenarios predicting the imminent demise of all life on earth presented as sober fact. No doubt there's at least some of that at work in the sudden surge of interest in near-term human extinction, but I question whether it's the main driving force this time around. There are at least two other factors that are likely to be involved, and one of them unfolds directly from the points made in the last few posts in the current sequence. The shape of time sketched out by Augustine of Hippo in the pages of The City of God, and adopted thereafter by most of the western world until the rise of the later mythology of perpetual progress, allows a range of variations. Even within the mainstream of western Christianity, the options extend over a much broader landscape than most of my readers may realize, and the versions of the Augustinian mythos found outside the Christian mainstream are even more diverse. In his useful 1998 book Millennium Rage, sociologist Philip Lamy argued that most beliefs about the future in today's America are "fractured apocalypses", in which the events foretold in the Book of Revelation are pulled out of context and rearranged in response to contemporary social trends. His insight can be applied a good deal more generally: the whole Augustinian story has been subjected to similar treatment. Eden, the Fall, the vale of tears, the righteous remnant, the redeeming revelation, the rising struggle between good and evil, the final catastrophe and the return to paradise thereafter - you'll find these, or most of these, in a great many current belief systems, but the order and relative importance of each element may vary, and it's far from uncommon for one or two of the classic themes of the story to be stretched nearly out of recognition, or deleted entirely. One detail that often comes in for serious reworking in modern social movements is the final step, the one in which the elect are welcomed back into paradise while everyone else is herded into the lake of fire to be punished for all eternity. The habit of morphological thinking discussed earlier in this sequence of posts is of crucial importance here: take a close look at the development over time of social movements that embrace the Augustinian narrative, and the historical shifts in that last part of the story have a fascinating message to communicate. The wave of Christian fundamentalism that's currently breaking and flowing back out to sea makes a good case in point. Back in the days of the Jesus People and the Good News Bible, when that wave first began building, its rhetoric was triumphant: the whole nation was turning to Christ, the rest of the world would surely follow, and the imminent Second Coming would see everyone but a few stubborn sinners rushing forward joyfully to embrace God's infinite love. Fast forward a couple of decades, and the proportion between the saved and the damned shifted significantly closer to the sort of thing you'd hear in an old-fashioned hellfire-and-brimstone sermon, but the saved were still utterly convinced of their own salvation: those were the days when "In Case Of Rapture, This Car Will Be Unoccup ied" bumper stickers sprouted on the rear ends of cars all over America. You won't see too many of those bumper stickers these days. Just as the optimistic faith that a new generation could win the world for Christ gave way gradually to the far more pessimistic vision of a world mired in wickedness from which the elect would shortly be teleported to safety - beamed up by Saint Scotty, as the joke had it, to the bridge of the USS Enterchrist - so the serene confidence on the part of believers that they would be numbered among the elect has been replaced, in these latter days of the movement, by an increasingly pervasive sense of sin and unworthiness. Too many dates for the Rapture have come and gone, too many once-respected preachers have been caught with their pants around their ankles in one sense or another, and the well-founded suspicion that the Republican party is using the evangelical churches every bit as cynically and shamelessly as the Democratic party is using the environmental movement has got to weigh on a lot of once-hopeful minds. Christian theology places hard limits on just how far the exclusion from future blessedness can extend, as there has to be "a great multitude, which no man could number" (Revelations 7:9) of the saved gathered around the throne of God when the boom comes down. Outside Christianity, the same process routinely goes much further. A good example is the New Age movement, which emerged out of a variety of older fringe spiritualities right around the same time that the current round of Christian fundamentalism got going in America. The early days of the New Age movement were pervaded by the same optimistic sense that a new and more enlightened epoch was about to dawn, and everyone - even, or especially, those who made fun of the movement's pretensions - would soon fall in line. As the movement matured and the New Age stubbornly refused to arrive, in turn, the same mood shift that affected fundamentalism had a comparable impact; New Age teachers began to talk more about the ascension of enlightened individuals into higher planes of being, the activities of evil powers who were maintaining the illusion of a world of limits, and the imminence of a world-cleansing cataclysm that would finally get around to ushering in the New Age. By the time the hoopla began building over 2012, finally, the prophecies trotted out in advance of that much-ballyhooed nonevent ranged all over the map; there were still optimists of the old school, who insisted that a great shift in consciousness would make everyone get around to agreeing with them; there were many more who expected mass death to leave the world purified for the usual minority of the elect; and there were no small number who were retailing scenarios in which the entire human race would be exterminated. This is a familiar rhythm in the history of American popular spirituality. At regular intervals, some movement that's existed out on the fringes for decades suddenly gets a mass following, turns into a pop culture phenomenon, and has thirty to forty years of popularity before it returns to the fringes. Some traditions repeat the process; Christian fundamentalism has had two periods of pop stardom - once between the Roaring Nineties and the Great Depression, and then again from the late 1970s to the present - and a strong case could be made that the New Age movement is a rehash of the vogue for occultism that was so huge a part of American pop culture between 1890 and 1929. Other movements fill the void when the ones just named head for the fringes; from the 1930s to the 1970s, liberal Chr istian churches were a dominant force in American religion, and there's some reason to think that the pendulum is headed the same way again as fundamentalism sunsets out a second time. If human beings were rational actors, as economists like to imagine, they wouldn't respond to the disconfirmation of their beliefs by postulating world-wrecking catastrophes. Here as elsewhere, though, the fond fantasies of economists stand up poorly as models for predicting events in the real world. If you haven't had the experience of devoting decades of your life to a failed belief system, dear reader, try to put yourself into such a person's shoes. It would take a degree of equanimity rare even among saints to look back on such an experience without harvesting a bumper crop of resentment, grief and guilt - and if fantasies of apocalyptic destruction play any role at all in your belief system, one way to deal with those difficult emotions in their first and rawest forms is to pour them into a belief in some cataclysm big enough to punish the world and everyone in it for their failure to live up to your hopes. The environmental movement is not a religion, but its course in America in recent decades followed the pattern I've just outlined. Like fundamentalism and the New Age movement, it came in from the fringe in the 1970s with the same sense of imminent triumph that guided the other movements I've named. Its transformation from a charismatic movement of outsiders to a set of bureaucratic institutions closely intertwined with the existing order of society followed the same trajectory as fundamentalist churches, and its sense of triumphant expectancy faded out at roughly the same pace, replaced by the same struggle against evil that brought fundamentalist Christians into their devil's pact with the GOP and inspired New Age believers to embrace conspiracy theories and the paranoid fantasies of Dav id Icke. At this point, roughly in parallel with fundamentalism and the New Age, the environmental movement is having to come face to face with the total failure of its hopes. Back in the heady days of its early successes, the vision that guided it saw environmental protection as the next step forward in the same trajectory of social progress that included the civil rights movement and second wave feminism; it was in this spirit, for example, that environmental lawyers proposed that trees be given legal standing. The hope all along was that industrial civilization could achieve a permanent peace with the world of nature and continue up the infinite road of progress without leaving a scorched and looted planet in its wake. That hope is dead. If there was ever a chance to achieve it, it went whistling down the wind decades ago, and at this point the jaws of resource depletion and environmental degradation are tightening around the collective throat of the world's industrial societies, in exactly the fashion predicted in detail forty years ago in the pages of The Limits to Growth (1972). Even if the green technologies promoted by an increasingly frantic minority of environmentalists could support something like today's rates of energy use, which they can't, we can no longer afford the sort of massive buildout of those technologies that would be necessary to supplant even a significant part of our current fossil fuel consumption. If what's left of the environmental movement managed to overcome its own internal dysfunctions and the formidable opposition of its foes, and became a mass movement again, the most it could accomplish at this point would be the protection of some of the most vulnerable e! cosystems as industrial society stumbles down the first bitter steps of the long descent into the deindustrial future. That's still a goal worth achieving, but it's not the goal to which the environmental mainstream committed itself when it embraced a role among the socially acceptable institutions of American public life, with the perks and salaries that this status involves. This explains, I suggest, the way that certain mainstream environmentalists have turned to proselytizing for nuclear power and other frankly ecocidal technologies, under the curious delusion that "possibly a little better than the worst" somehow amounts to "good". The desperation in such rhetoric is palpable, and signals the end of the road - an end that, in this case as in the others I've cited, involves a good many fantasies of total destruction. Still, there's another factor here, and it unfolds from one of the least creditable aspects of the way that the environmental movement has evolved over time. It has become increasingly clear that the perks, the salaries, and the comfortable middle class lifestyles embraced so enthusiastically by so many people in the movement are themselves part of the problem. I was intrigued to read earlier this month a thoughtful essay by leading British climate scientist Kevin Anderson {2} arguing, in terms that will sound very familiar to regular readers of The Archdruid Report, that the failure of climate change activism to make any headway in changing people's behavior may have more than a little to do with the fact that the people who are urging such changes aren't making them themselves. I have no reason to think that Anderson reads my blog or, for that matter, knows me from Hu Gadarn's off ox, but then you don't need to wear an archdruid's funny hat to notice that people these days are acutely sensitive to signs of hypocrisy, or to grasp that even the most vital changes aren't going to happen if even the people who are most aware of their importance aren't willing to start making them in their own lives. For reasons a post last year {3} discussed at some length, those who have built their lives on the fantasy that it's possible to have their planet and eat it too are not going to find such reflections welcome, or even bearable. Fantasies of imminent human extinction are one comforting if futile response to this ugly predicament. If you want a justification for living as though there's no tomorrow, insisting that in fact, there's no tomorrow is certainly one option. If I'm right, the pleasures of believing in near-term human extinction are likely to appeal to a very large and well-heeled audience in the years immediately ahead, and those of my readers interested in cashing in on the next 2012-style bonanza should probably take note. _____ John Michael Greer is the Grand Archdruid of the Ancient Order of Druids in America {4} and the author of more than twenty books on a wide range of subjects, including The Long Descent: A User's Guide to the End of the Industrial Age (2008), The Ecotechnic Future: Exploring a Post-Peak World (2009), and The Wealth of Nature: Economics As If Survival Mattered (2011). He lives in Cumberland, Maryland, an old red brick mill town in the north central Appalachians, with his wife Sara. If you enjoy reading this blog, you might want to check out Star's Reach {5}, his blog/novel of the deindustrial future. Set four centuries after the decline and fall of our civilization, it uses the tools of narrative fiction to explore the future our choices today are shaping for our descendants tomorrow. And please consider putting a tip in the Archdruid's tip jar. Many thanks! Links: {1} http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/2012/12/the-beginning-of-world.html {2} http://kevinanderson.info/blog/hypocrites-in-the-air-should-climate-change-academics-lead-by-example/ {3} http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/2012/05/night-thoughts-in-hagsgate.html {4} http://www.aoda.org/ {5} http://starsreach.blogspot.com/ http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.jp/2013/05/the-pleasures-of-extinction.html TO POST A COMMENT, OR TO READ COMMENTS POSTED BY OTHERS, please click the appropriate link at the top or bottom of http://billtotten.wordpress.com/2013/05/19/the-pleasures-of-extinction/ _______________________________________________ Rad-Green mailing list Rad-Green&lt; at &gt;greenhouse.economics.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/rad-green </pre> Bill Totten 2013-05-19T00:10:59 http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.politics.communism.environmental/49962 <pre>Stop Ignoring How Routine the Occupation Has Become By Ori Nir on May 14, 2013 9:23 AM | 4 Comments By Ori Nir Israel TV Channel 2 recently ran a lengthy report of pre-dawn arrests of Palestinian children -- rock-throwing suspects -- at a West Bank Palestinian refugee camp. The TV crew was embedded with an Israeli unit that raided the camp. No, there was no blood, no violent confrontations and no big drama. Everything was done routinely, efficiently, as if scripted. Including the polite soldiers ("please get dressed") and the business-as-usual reactions of tweens who moments ago were in bed and are now handcuffed and blindfolded, in a military jeep. One of them, a boy named Ahmad who seemed around 10, tried to negotiate. "Tomorrow I have an exam. I will be thrown out of school if I don't take the test," he tried to reason with the soldiers. "Had you come any other day, I would have gone with you. Please!" Then he manned up and joined the soldiers. So what's new? What's the big deal, my wife asked me when I told her about the report. That's exactly the point, I replied. The big deal is that there is nothing new, that this routine has been going on for 46 years. My wife and I, both former reporters, reminisced about covering such night raids together, more than 26 years ago. Next month, Israelis and Palestinians will mark the 46th anniversary of the occupation. Think about it: For almost half a century, Israeli kids in their late teens have been arresting Palestinian kids in their early teens. Night in, night out, year after year. Guilty or not, justified or not, due process or not -- these are not really the questions. What bothers so many Palestinians and Israelis -- among them the six former Israeli General Security Service chiefs who were interviewed for the award-winning documentary "The Gatekeepers" -- is how routine it has all become. Israelis and Palestinians live with the perpetuation of the anomaly that the occupation is. Consider this: Only 7 percent of Palestinians and 19 percent of Israelis are over the age of 55. That means that a small minority of both populations remembers life without occupation. Only a sliver of the Palestinian public has any recollection of not living under a foreign military occupation. For Palestinians, resisting the occupation -- the only reality they know -- is a way of life. For Israelis, oppressing the Palestinians is perceived at best as necessary evil. And so they both live with the banality of this anomaly. Nissim Levi, a 20-year veteran of the Israeli GSS, several years ago described the impact of this routine. You go to a Palestinian village to arrest a suspect named Muhammed, he told Israel's Haaretz newspaper. "From the moment you leave for the village, to take the man and go, you create four more potential terrorists. ... You are entering a small room, in which five people are sleeping, and in order to get to my Muhammed, I need to step on four people." He continued: "On the way to enter the village to arrest someone, I already created damage." How much damage? According to estimates by the Palestinian Authority's Bureau of Statistics, Israel has made more than 800,000 arrests of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza since 1967. That is an average of almost 50 arrests per day. Go calculate the damage. Israelis and Palestinians know that their relationship is not normal. They should be shown, however, that it could be different, that things can change. President Barack Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry are now trying to launch a process that would do just that. They deserve our support. This article originally appeared in the Chicago Tribune on May 14th, 2013. https://peacenow.org/entries/stop_ignoring_how_routine_the_occupation_has_become#.UZeVfEpZSVo _______________________________________________ Rad-Green mailing list Rad-Green&lt; at &gt;greenhouse.economics.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/rad-green </pre> Romi Elnagar 2013-05-18T14:56:40 http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.politics.communism.environmental/49961 <pre>by Dmitry Orlov Club Orlov (May 14 2013) A tiny blip in the news media registered the fact that atmospheric carbon dioxide has exceeded four hundred parts per million for the first time in the history of the human species, with no sign of slowing down. Among other things, it means that ocean levels will be going up by at least thirty feet, putting most of the world's major cities underwater. Almost the entire Eastern Seaboard of the United States - the most densely settled strip of land in the country, with the most infrastructure and physical assets - will become uninhabitable. Other countries - Bangladesh, Netherlands, a long list of low-lying island nations - will disappear under the waves entirely. In other news, the actress Angelina Jolie just had a double mastectomy to make extra-double-sure that she gets to live long and cancer-free. The brave woman has decided to face extinction breastless. I pray that her extinct breasts find peace, if not in this world, then perhaps the next ... Although I am convinced that the environmental predicament is dire, the term "extinction" strikes me as unnecessarily melodramatic. To start with, the fact of its extinction cannot be ascertained by the species going extinct: does the dodo know it's extinct? Does the giant sloth or the wooly mammoth? And could they have ever? No, because they ceased to exist before the fact of their nonexistence could have became known to them. The last human alive will have no idea whether other humans may yet exist in some other part of the planet, and so, to contemplate our own extinction is to pretend that we possess God-like omniscience. Extinction is a thought experiment whose outcome we cannot even test. This makes contemplating our own extinction rather pointless. Why don't we contemplate our own s urvival instead? Focusing on the very serious and undeniably real problem of rising ocean levels, there are as yet no solid predictions as to how fast the waters will rise, but if the history of such predictions is any guide, they have a tendency to double with each revision. What's more, the predictions are not even keeping up with reality: not so long ago the talk was of a few inches per century, but then an entire extra foot of water showed up along much of the east coast, and it is now typical to have electrical transformers explode during storm surges, which were supposed to be high and dry but now aren't. It is one of those cases where nature has consistently outpaced all our attempts to account for it. Rather than being isolated events, such incidents are an indication of what will become a constant drumbeat in people's lives - most people's lives, since most people live along coasts. Suburban neighborhoods will wink out of existence one after another as they flood, losing electricity, water and sewage, and are recognized as a total loss, not worth rebuilding given that the next storm will no doubt cause even greater damage. Some of the environmental refugees will be resettled a bit further inland, in areas not destroyed yet, but washed out roads, collapsed bridges and submerged highway tunnels will derail many such evacuation plans. Desperate people will no doubt attempt to flee to some supposedly better place in another part of the world - to farm the banana belts of Siberia, perhaps, or to raise camels in the Canadian Arctic - but by then cheap airline travel will be a thing of the past, while seaports will be underwater and unusable. Nature's prescription for those who ruin their habitat is extinction, and it will be your fate too, unless you adapt to life in the new environment. In the new, permanently disrupted habitat, conventional housing is clearly maladaptive. On the other hand, the Dutch, who are accustomed to life in a flood zone and resigned to what's coming, have been building houses on barges for a long time now, tethering them to pilings so that they float up during storm surges. Some further adaptations are obvious: a house in a flood zone is a terrible idea, unless it floats, generates a bit of its own electricity, captures rainwater for drinking and washing, and has a means of propulsion for when it's time to take advantage of high water and move to very slightly higher ground. And if it does all these t hings, then a flood zone is where you'd want to live, because land that is in the process of becoming water is generally free, and there will be more and more of it with each passing hurric! ane season . It's about time we started experimenting with such ideas, but unfortunately many of us live in places dominated by various planning nazis and zoning nazis and code nazis, who are supposed to keep us safe (but not from four hundred parts per million or more carbon dioxide, which will eventually kill off most of us). And so we have to look for loopholes. Here's one: according to a recent US Supreme Court decision, a houseboat with no independent means of propulsion is no longer a boat but a house, meaning that if you take a trailer (which is not considered real estate) and put it on a barge (which is not considered real estate either) then what you get is real estate. But if you put an outboard motor on the barge and take it for a little cruise around the harbor, it becomes a motor vehicle a gain. Now that's a loophole! You can drive a double-wide right through that sucker. And I hope you do. Better yet - wait a few years, and you'll be able to sail it up the Potomac and all the way to the steps of the Supreme Court. You could let your goats snack on the shrubbery there, like the pilgrims used to do on the ruins of the Roman Forum. I hope you find some loopholes of your own, and take advantage of them, because it is already clear what the planning board has planned for you and your children: extinction. http://cluborlov.blogspot.jp/2013/05/look-for-loopholes-to-avoid-extinction.html TO POST A COMMENT, OR TO READ COMMENTS POSTED BY OTHERS, please click the appropriate link at the top or bottom of http://billtotten.wordpress.com/2013/05/18/look-for-loopholes-to-avoid-extinction/ _______________________________________________ Rad-Green mailing list Rad-Green&lt; at &gt;greenhouse.economics.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/rad-green </pre> Bill Totten 2013-05-18T12:01:48 http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.politics.communism.environmental/49960 <pre>---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Suzanne de Kuyper &lt;suzannedk&lt; at &gt;gmail.com&gt; Date: Sat, May 18, 2013 at 9:34 AM Subject: Fwd: The roots of Homeland Security To: a-list &lt;a-list&lt; at &gt;greenhouse.economics.utah.edu&gt; The legal advisors to the administration of George Bush 11 and Richard Cheney dug back to pre-Civil War law in order to get precidents to changing 21 century American law into dictator quality structures. One key one was the the United States Presidential Midnight Signing Statements set up during the Civil War when neither the Senate nor the House were able to be, nor to remain, in session. One hundred and forty seven new laws were manufactured in this way by the absolutely delighted George Bush 11. The attempt to impeach him for them backfired because we were suddenly at war. He was gifted a C grade by Yale, when he should have been flunked, because of his father's US CIA influence there having been made head of it before winning the American Presidency as George Bush 1. Every law was indicated temporary to the US immediate state of war after the two passenger planes hit the World Trade Center in Manhattan, NY, USA. After two terms Bush 11 was replaced by Obama who made permanent all those laws. Few if any have read them. Presently those laws are determining the future of the world and of the species.. Those capable of publishing those laws world wide could do more for humankind than can even be expressed. suzanne ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Brasscheck TV &lt;news&lt; at &gt;brasschecktv.com&gt; Date: Sat, May 18, 2013 at 3:03 AM Subject: The roots of Homeland Security To: Suzanne &lt;suzannedk&lt; at &gt;gmail.com&gt; Suzanne I thought we'd follow the series on the US role in the Mexican Drug War with some of Douglas Valentine's scholarship on the Phoenix Program. What was the Phoenix Program? It involved widespread surveillance of the population without warrant, arrest and imprisonment without charges, and torture. Sound familiar? It should. Video: http://www.brasschecktv.com/page/11818.html - Brasscheck P.S. Please share Brasscheck TV e-mails and videos with friends and colleagues. That's how we grow. Thanks. ================================ Visit out partner sites: The Real Food Channel: http://RealFoodChannel.com The truth about the food you eat Real Econ TV: http://RealEconTV.com Financial news without the big bank baloney Jazz on the Tube: http://JazzontheTube.com Take a jazz break ================================ Brasscheck TV 2380 California St. San Francisco, CA 94115 To unsubscribe or change subscriber options visit: http://www.aweber.com/z/r/?zAxs7OwctKyMHEwMLByMtEa0jBzsjJzsHCw= _______________________________________________ Rad-Green mailing list Rad-Green&lt; at &gt;greenhouse.economics.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/rad-green </pre> Suzanne de Kuyper 2013-05-18T07:35:11 http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.politics.communism.environmental/49959 <pre>http://www.beyondchron.org/news/index.php?itemid=11361#more FEMA Plans Clear-Cutting of 85,000 Berkeley and Oakland Trees by Randy Shaw‚ May. 16‚ 2013 The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is moving to chop down 22,000 trees in Berkeley's historic Strawberry and Claremont Canyons and over 60,000 more in Oakland. This destructive plan is rapidly moving forward with little publicity, and FEMA cleverly scheduled its three public meetings for mid and late May while UC Berkeley students were in finals or gone for the summer. UC Berkeley has applied for the grant to destroy the bucolic Strawberry and Claremont Canyon areas, claiming that trees pose a fire hazard. The school has no plans to replant, and instead will cover 20% of the area in wood chips two feet deep. And it will pour between 700 and 1400 gallons of herbicide to prevent resprouting, Including the highly toxic herbicide, Roundup. People are mobilizing against this outrageous proposal, which UC Berkeley has done its best to keep secret. When I heard this week that the federal government would be funding the clear-cutting of 85,000 beautiful Berkeley and Oakland trees, including 22,000 in historic Strawberry and Claremont Canyon, my initial reaction was disbelief. I then wondered how the feds have money for this destructive project while Head Start and public housing programs are being cut due to the sequester. The trees in Strawberry and Claremont Canyon have been there for decades and hardly constitute a "hazard." But pouring 1400 gallons of herbicide on the currently pristine hills will create a real hazard, and UC Berkeley even plans to use the highly toxic herbicide "Roundup" to squelch the return of non-native vegetation. This is true horror story that will happen absent public opposition. I know that many will find it hard to believe that this could occur in our pro-environment San Francisco Bay Area, but UC Berkeley may be counting on this attitude to get all the approvals they need before people find out the truth. Please read "Death of a Million Trees [1]," which provides all of the facts, figures and background about the Strawberry and Claremont Canyon proposed clear cutting as well as the tree destruction plans for the East Bay. The last public hearing will be held Saturday, May 18, 2013, 10:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m., at Claremont Middle School, 5750 College Avenue in Oakland. The public has until June 17 to submit written comments on the project. You can do so through the website: http://ebheis.cdmims.com [2], or via email at EBH-EIS-FEMA-RIX&lt; at &gt;fema.dhs.gov [3] There are countless destructive attacks on the environment that Bay Area activists cannot impact. But this is occurring in our own backyard, and activists must make sure that this cannot happen here. ----------------------------------------- Randy Shaw is the Editor of BeyondChron and loves hiking in the impacted areas. He is the author of The Activist's Handbook [4] and Beyond the Fields: Cesar Chavez, the UFW and the Struggle for Justice in the 21st Century [5] [1] http://milliontrees.me/2013/05/09/nearly-a-half-million-trees-will-be-destroyed-if-these-east-bay-projects-are-approved-revised/ [2] http://ebheis.cdmims.com/ [3] mailto:EBH-EIS-FEMA-RIX&lt; at &gt;fema.dhs.gov [4] http://www.amazon.com/Activists-Handbook-Primer-Updated-Preface/dp/0520229282 [5] http://www.amazon.com/Beyond-Fields-Struggle-Justice-Century/dp/0520268040/ref=tmm_pap_title_0 http://www.MitchelCohen.com Mitchel Cohen's book, "What Is Direct Action? Lessons from (and to) Occupy Wall Street" (foreword by Richard Wolff) (596 pages) is now available at: http://www.lulu.com/shop/mitchel-cohen/what-is-direct-action/paperback/product-20937425.html Ring the bells that still can ring, Forget your perfect offering. There is a crack, a crack in everything, That's how the light gets in. ~ Leonard Cohen http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-vSfwIJkjY _______________________________________________ Rad-Green mailing list Rad-Green&lt; at &gt;greenhouse.economics.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/rad-green </pre> Mitchel Cohen 2013-05-18T05:00:21 http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.politics.communism.environmental/49958 <pre>Pressure-Cooker and Cluster Bombs "Boston Bombs Were Loaded to Maim," a New York Times headline shouted. U.S. cluster bombs have done the same in places like Afghanistan and Yemen.  Shouldn't we end that hypocrisy? Pressure-cooker bombs and cluster bombs are both extremely cruel -- shredding human flesh to produce maximum pain, injury and death. "Boston Bombs Were Loaded to Maim," a New York Times headline shouted. Click here to help put an end to it now.  Cluster bombs have been banned since 2010 by a treaty that 81 nations are already party to. Another 27 nations have signed but not yet ratified. The United States is not among the signers, serving rather as the chief opponent of the treaty. That's morally unacceptable. The Pentagon's cluster bombs caused more civilian casualties in Iraq in 2003 and Kosovo in 1999 than any other weapon. Those actions were illegal at the time, under the Geneva Conventions. When cluster bombs are dropped in residential areas, many bomblets fail to explode and are picked up later by curious and unfortunate children. Causalities from failed cluster sub-munitions rose between 1991 and 2007 from 5,500 to 80,000 -- and 24% of the victims were children under 14. Let's end the use of cluster bombs.  Tell the President and Congress to sign and ratify the Convention on Cluster Munitions.  Please forward this email widely to like-minded friends. Related: Here Comes AIPAC, Lobbying for War, Just Foreign Policy * Urge your representatives in Washington to oppose AIPAC's "backdoor to war" bill and to take steps towards peace with Iran and Palestine, using the form below. * No backdoor to war with Iran Tell the President and Congress to sign and ratify the Convention on Cluster Munitions: TEXT OF THE PETITION: U.S. cluster bombs have done to children and adults in Afghanistan, Yemen, and elsewhere what pressure-cooker bombs did in Boston.  Cluster bombs have been banned since 2010 by a treaty to which 81 nations thus far are party. Another 27 nations have signed.  The United States should sign and ratify.  Please work to make that happen right away. TO SIGN THE PETITION, GO TO http://act.rootsaction.org/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=7784 _______________________________________________ Rad-Green mailing list Rad-Green&lt; at &gt;greenhouse.economics.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/rad-green </pre> Romi Elnagar 2013-05-18T03:06:46 http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.politics.communism.environmental/49957 <pre>by James Howard Kunstler Clusterfuck Nation (May 13 2013) Whenever the Federal Reserve wants to tweak the dials of the economy - or pretend that it can - it turns first to its sock puppet at The Wall Street Journal, John Hilsenrath, and "leaks" a rumor of policy change. http://www.marketwatch.com/story/fed-maps-exit-from-stimulus-2013-05-10-191031815?dist=beforebell They like to do this late on Fridays when financial markets are about to close, so that market players will have a whole weekend to ponder the Fed's actions like medieval viziers reading goat entrails. Last Friday's puddle of steaming guts was a supposed preview of the Fed's "exit strategy" from its reckless policy of "quantitative easing" or "money" creation (or "liquidity", if you like). In other words, they supposedly intend to stop juicing the financial markets with fake wealth, this is, capital not accumulated from real productive activity, but just fictively created on computer hard drives. For the past year they have been doing this to the tune of $85 billion a month, "buying" US Treasury bonds and bills and an assortment of miscellaneous securities (mostly trash that can't be pawned off on anyone else) through their so-called "primary dealer" bank cohorts, the too-big-to-fail usual suspects, who "earn" hefty transaction fees in the process of conveying all these pixels from Point A to Point B. These interventions are called Permanent Open Market Operations, or PoMo. The theory all along has been that this $85 billion a month would seep down to Main Street to provoke spending (increasing the "velocity" of money) and therefore "jump start" the economy. The theory has proven itself to be complete horseshit, of course. All it has done is suppress interest rates on bonds, depriving old people of income off their savings by so doing. It also artificially jacked up reckless lending on loans for houses, cars, and college degrees, juiced the share price of stocks, and boosted food prices. Meanwhile, an increasingly former middle class languishes in a purgatory of foreclosure, penury, and desperation. The Fed can't really do anything to help them. It can only burden them with more easy-credit debt, especially their college-age children. But ours is a financiali zed economy and finance is too abstruse for most ordinary people to understand, so they just muddle along in a fog of dashed hopes and repossession. Lately, though, the financial markets at the heart of the financialized economy - that is, an economy based on buying and selling increasingly dubious "paper" assets rather than on capital formation through producing things of value - are sending distress signals. The aforesaid efforts at economic dial-tweaking have only produced distortions and perversions in the basic functioning of the markets they're designed to tweak. They pervert the "price discovery" mechanism by dumping "free money" into equity markets. They distort "risk premiums" by steering money out of savings, where it earns less than nothing, into riskier investments subject to the vagaries of everything from weather (commodity markets) to control fraud (bank stocks) to geopolitics (Toyota stock). They debauch market expectat ions in general by implying permanent artificial life-support. They promote market gaming such as front-running equity prices via high frequency trading on computers, naked shorting (preten! ding to bo rrow shares that, in fact, do not exist) and the abuse of futures markets - lately illustrated in the ongoing smash of paper gold and silver contracts, with the side effect of driving yet more money into stock markets. Finally, they undermine the meaning and value of money itself, which is the most dangerous game of all because when people lose confidence in their national currency, nations dissolve in political chaos. Despite the aura of control, Fed officials (and casual observers) may sense things spinning out of control. Of course, hyper-fragility is exactly the effect that all the Fed's own actions would predictably lead to. When you divorce truth from reality, strange things are bound to happen. The Fed ventriloquists who speak through Hilsenrath at The Wall Street Journal suggest they would accomplish their exit from the current $85 billion-a-month QE policy in a set of "halting steps" by irregularly dialing down QE issuance month-by-month to fine-tune the results on-the-fly, as markets may require. This is also complete horseshit because they could only accomplish controlled tweakings by somehow signaling their intentions beforehand through some lackey like Hilsenrath. Otherwise, they could not p retend to control the results of their actions. They might as well just throw spaghetti at the wall to see if it sticks. Unfortunately, the "halting steps" idea would only provide even more! opportuni ties for selective, complex front-running, shorting, and gaming - which is to say setting up more dangerous behavior with more uncertain and possibly destructive outcomes. Anyway, there's no evidence at this moment that anyone believes what was leaked to Hilsenrath. It could easily be more smoke and mirrors aimed at concealing the fact that the Federal Reserve has no idea what it has been doing and fears the consequences. There is one thing that we know for sure in this strange period when bankers have tried to manage reality in the absence of truth: that advanced industrial-technological economies designed to run on $20-a-barrel oil can't run on $100-a-barrel oil, and that is why the US economy was subject to financialization in the first place - to offset declining productive activity by an attempt to get something for nothing. Notice that this macro-trend coincided exactly with the rise of legalized gambling all over America. That is how the idea that you could get something for nothing got to be normal. The world is about to find out that you really can't get something for nothing. It will be a harsh lesson. _____ For a complete list of books by James Howard Kunstler and purchase links, click http://www.kunstler.com/books.php . http://kunstler.com/blog/2013/05/no-mo-pomo.html TO POST A COMMENT, OR TO READ COMMENTS POSTED BY OTHERS, please click the appropriate link at the top or bottom of http://billtotten.wordpress.com/2013/05/18/no-mo-pomo/ _______________________________________________ Rad-Green mailing list Rad-Green&lt; at &gt;greenhouse.economics.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/rad-green </pre> Bill Totten 2013-05-18T00:10:18 http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.politics.communism.environmental/49956 <pre>Why are Buddhist monks attacking Muslims?By Alan Strathern Oxford University Of all the moral precepts instilled in Buddhist monks the promise not to kill comes first, and the principle of non-violence is arguably more central to Buddhism than any other major religion. So why have monks been using hate speech against Muslims and joining mobs that have left dozens dead? This is happening in two countries separated by well over 1,000 miles of Indian Ocean - Burma and Sri Lanka. It is puzzling because neither country is facing an Islamist militant threat. Muslims in both places are a generally peaceable and small minority. In Sri Lanka, the issue of halal slaughter has been a flashpoint. Led by monks, members of the Bodu Bala Sena - the Buddhist Brigade - hold rallies, call for direct action and the boycotting of Muslim businesses, and rail against the size of Muslim families. While no Muslims have been killed in Sri Lanka, the Burmese situation is far more serious. Here the antagonism is spearheaded by the 969 group, led by a monk, Ashin Wirathu, who was jailed in 2003 for inciting religious hatred. Released in 2012, he has referred to himself bizarrely as "the Burmese Bin Laden". Buddhism and non-violence Buddhist teachings were handed down orally and not written until centuries after the Buddha's lifetime. The principle of non-violence is intrinsic to the doctrine, as stressed in the Dhammapada, a collection of sayings attributed to the Buddha. Its first verse teaches that a person is made up of the sum of his thoughts: "If a man speaks or acts with an evil thought, pain follows him, as the wheel follows the foot of the ox that draws the carriage." The most basic principles of Buddhist morality are expressed in five precepts, which monks are obliged - and laymen encouraged - to follow. The first is to abstain from killing living creatures. One objective of Buddhist meditation is to produce a state of "loving kindness" for all beings. Verse five of the Dhammapada tells us that: "Hatred does not cease by hatred at any time: hatred ceases by love, this is an eternal rule." * BBC Religion - Buddhism March saw an outbreak of mob violence directed against Muslims in the town of Meiktila, in central Burma, which left at least 40 dead. Tellingly, the violence began in a gold shop. The movements in both countries exploit a sense of economic grievance - a religious minority is used as the scapegoat for the frustrated aspirations of the majority. On Tuesday, Buddhist mobs attacked mosques and burned more than 70 homes in Oakkan, north of Rangoon, after a Muslim girl on a bicycle collided with a monk. One person died and nine were injured. But aren't Buddhist monks meant to be the good guys of religion? Aggressive thoughts are inimical to all Buddhist teachings. Buddhism even comes equipped with a practical way to eliminate them. Through meditation the distinction between your feelings and those of others should begin to dissolve, while your compassion for all living things grows. Of course, there is a strong strain of pacifism in Christian teachings too: "Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you," were the words of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount. But however any religion starts out, sooner or later it enters into a Faustian pact with state power. Buddhist monks looked to kings, the ultimate wielders of violence, for the support, patronage and order that only they could provide. Kings looked to monks to provide the popular legitimacy that only such a high moral vision can confer. The result can seem ironic. If you have a strong sense of the overriding moral superiority of your worldview, then the need to protect and advance it can seem the most important duty of all. Christian crusaders, Islamist militants, or the leaders of "freedom-loving nations", all justify what they see as necessary violence in the name of a higher good. Buddhist rulers and monks have been no exception. So, historically, Buddhism has been no more a religion of peace than Christianity. One of the most famous kings in Sri Lankan history is Dutugamanu, whose unification of the island in the 2nd Century BC is related in an important chronicle, the Mahavamsa. It says that he placed a Buddhist relic in his spear and took 500 monks with him along to war against a non-Buddhist king. Continue reading the main story More on monks and violence * The BBC's Charles Haviland on how hardline Buddhists target Sri Lanka's Muslim minority * The origins of Burma's religious and communal tensions explained in a Q&amp;A * "Burmese bin Laden", Wirathu, tells the Guardian he's just protecting his people * US magazine The Nation on the historical and political background to Buddhist violence He destroyed his opponents. After the bloodshed, some enlightened ones consoled him: "The slain were like animals; you will make the Buddha's faith shine." Burmese rulers, known as "kings of righteousness", justified wars in the name of what they called true Buddhist doctrine. In Japan, many samurai were devotees of Zen Buddhism and various arguments sustained them - killing a man about to commit a dreadful crime was an act of compassion, for example. Such reasoning surfaced again when Japan mobilised for World War II. Buddhism took a leading role in the nationalist movements that emerged as Burma and Sri Lanka sought to throw off the yoke of the British Empire. Occasionally this spilled out into violence. In 1930s Rangoon, amid resorts to direct action, monks knifed four Europeans. More importantly, many came to feel Buddhism was integral to their national identity - and the position of minorities in these newly independent nations was an uncomfortable one. In 1983, Sri Lanka's ethnic tensions broke out into civil war. Following anti-Tamil pogroms, separatist Tamil groups in the north and east of the island sought to break away from the Sinhalese majority government. Violence has left many Burmese Muslims homeless During the war, the worst violence against Sri Lankan Muslims came at the hands of the Tamil rebels. But after the fighting came to a bloody end with the defeat of the rebels in 2009, it seems that majority communal passions have found a new target in the Muslim minority. In Burma, monks wielded their moral authority to challenge the military junta and argue for democracy in the Saffron Revolution of 2007. Peaceful protest was the main weapon of choice this time, and monks paid with their lives. Now some monks are using their moral authority to serve a quite different end. They may be a minority, but the 500,000-strong monkhood, which includes many deposited in monasteries as children to escape poverty or as orphans, certainly has its fair share of angry young men. The exact nature of the relationship between the Buddhist extremists and the ruling parties in both countries is unclear. Sri Lanka's powerful Defence Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa was guest of honour at the opening of a Buddhist Brigade training school, and referred to the monks as those who "protect our country, religion and race". But the anti-Muslim message seems to have struck a chord with parts of the population. Even though they form a majority in both countries, many Buddhists share a sense that their nations must be unified and that their religion is under threat. The global climate is crucial. People believe radical Islam to be at the centre of the many of the most violent conflicts around the world. They feel they are at the receiving end of conversion drives by the much more evangelical monotheistic faiths. And they feel that if other religions are going to get tough, they had better follow suit. Alan Strathern is a fellow in History at Brasenose College, Oxford and author of Kingship and Conversion in Sixteenth-Century Sri Lanka: Portuguese Imperialism in a Buddhist Land http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-22356306 _______________________________________________ Rad-Green mailing list Rad-Green&lt; at &gt;greenhouse.economics.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/rad-green </pre> Romi Elnagar 2013-05-17T23:24:17 http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.politics.communism.environmental/49955 <pre>---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Suzanne de Kuyper &lt;suzannedk&lt; at &gt;gmail.com&gt; Date: Fri, May 17, 2013 at 11:32 PM Subject: Fwd: Seizure of AP Phone Records Continues Obama Admin's Attack on Whistleblowers To: a-list &lt;a-list&lt; at &gt;greenhouse.economics.utah.edu&gt; If you do not believe, nor could you ever, that 9/11 was known to be planned and was allowed to happen, try pretending you are sure it was planned, that plan became known in the Bush 11 administration and was allowed to happen as planned. The statements in this posting that the Obama persecution of whistleblowers is worse than any other US administration in history is then of note as paranoia would be a normal reaction to allowing 9/11 to happen and then the deliberate skewing of it's meaning to set up war laws in the immediate aftermath would only make even more natural the gutting of free speech and that of journalists and formerly protected whistleblowers. As if a chess exercise in strategy, try it. suzanne ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: De Kuyper Suzanne &lt;suzannedk&lt; at &gt;gmail.com&gt; Date: Fri, May 17, 2013 at 11:21 PM Subject: Seizure of AP Phone Records Continues Obama Admin's Attack on Whistleblowers To: de Suzanne Kuyper &lt;suzannedk&lt; at &gt;gmail.com&gt; Watch this video from The Real News Network, I think you'll find it interesting http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&amp;task=view&amp;id=1480&amp;Itemid=74&amp;jumival=10209 _______________________________________________ Rad-Green mailing list Rad-Green&lt; at &gt;greenhouse.economics.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/rad-green </pre> Suzanne de Kuyper 2013-05-17T21:33:05 Search the mailing list at Gmane query http://search.gmane.org/?group=$group=gmane.politics.communism.environmental