Montgomery County, MD Green Party Blog

At least four people were killed and dozens injured in a riot in eastern Afghanistan yesterday as thousands of students rioted for a second day in Jalalabad, in protest to a story published in Newsweek that interrogators in Cuba kept copies of the Qur’an in toilets, and “in at least one case flushed a holy book down the toilet”.

Offices in Jalalabad were set on fire, shops sacked and consulates and UN buildings attacked by rioters, according to witnesses. Police fired to disperse crowds several times and army helicopters were said to have “buzzed” the crowds. Doctors in the city confirmed that four people had died. There are reports that the protests had spread to the city of Khost, with hundreds of students taking to the streets.

The protesters also denounced Afghanistan’s president, Hamid Karzai, destroying a picture of him and shouting “death to America’s allies” and “death to Karzai”, as well as “death to Bush”. “We don’t want America, we don’t want Karzai, we want Islam,” they shouted.

The administration’s incompetence in the war on terror continues to amaze.

Sister Ortiz relates her experience in Guatemalan torture rooms where she was repeatedly raped and tortured by troops commanded by General Hector Gramajo, a CIA asset and graduate of the U.S. Army School of the Americas. U.S. personnel were present while she was being tortured. “Many of our fellow Americans wear a blindfold hiding from the truth of what our government is doing. But each of you has eyes to see, ears to hear, and a voice to oppose this crime against humanity,” claims Sister Ortiz.

Watch the video.

Qatar’s oil minister, Abdullah Hamad al-Attiyah, sent a shudder through the oil markest today when he suggested that OPEC may not be able to meet the world’s demand for oil by the end of this year.

“OPEC is at its highest production in history. I am concerned about that. If we reach the full capacity now, we will tighten in the fourth quarter,” Dow Jones Newswires quoted al-Attiyah as saying. “The spare capacity will be smaller and smaller, reaching a plateau when there is no more oil.”

A U.S. analysis agreed with this sentiment:

Victor Shum, oil analyst at Texas-based energy consultants Purvin & Gertz said that “$50 prices are really supported by the view that we better keep buying because in the second half of the year, demand will be tight.”

Rapid growth in demand in Asia and the U.S. is overwhelming the oil producers’ ability to grow supply.

If an oil squeeze comes this year it will only be a preview of what is coming when the world reaches peak oil. The end of cheap oil is going shock people; most people haven’t even heard of it. Adjusting to the new reality will be hard.

But all of the solutions will be green solutions–they will be renewable, sustainable, and local. A majority of the 10 key values could be invoked trying to adjust to a lower energy future. It is the Green Party’s challange to come up with specific solutions to the looming crisis.

Third parties in this country have had their most profound influence by introducing new ideas into the mainstream, from the Free Soil Party and anti-slavery to the Socialist Party and the (admittedly watered down) welfare state and civil rights. Liberals haven’t come up with a decent new idea on their own since–well, maybe never. It is up to Greens to show the way to a sustainable future.

Who said this?
Greenpeace? M. King Hubbert? Club of Rome? Earth First?

The world has not prepared for the future. During the 1950s, people used twice as much oil as during the 1940s. During the 1960s, we used twice as much as during the 1950s. And in each of those decades, more oil was consumed than in all of mankind’s previous history. …

Ours is the most wasteful nation on earth. We waste more energy than we import. With about the same standard of living, we use twice as much energy per person as do other countries like Germany, Japan and Sweden.

One choice is to continue doing what we have been doing before. We can drift along for a few more years.

Our consumption of oil would keep going up every year. Our cars would continue to be too large and inefficient. Three-quarters of them would continue to carry only one person — the driver — while our public transportation system continues to decline. We can delay insulating our houses, and they will continue to lose about 50 percent of their heat in waste.

We can continue using scarce oil and natural gas to generate electricity, and continue wasting two-thirds of their fuel value in the process.

Answer: Jimmy Carter, in his prescient, but failed effort to chart a new energy policy.

We will, in retrospect, look back on the Carter administration as one of the greatest lost opportunities in human history.

Now, who said this?

This is a problem that’s been a long time in coming. We haven’t had an energy policy in this country. That’s exactly what I’ve been saying to the American people — 10 years ago if we’d had an energy strategy, we would be able to diversify away from foreign dependence. And — but we haven’t done that. And now we find ourselves in the fix we’re in.

Of course, that one was easy. It was a recent statement by George W Bush, who seems to be gradually and dimly waking up to the fact that a serious problem is brewing and that it may break down upon us during his watch. Of course, Bush’s reaction is to look for someone to blame for the mess–conveniently overlooking the fact that Congress has been dominated by Republicans for all of those ten years and that he has been President for nearly half of them.

The Bush administration is beginning to make some grudging moves toward conservation. After years of resistance from automakers, NHTSA raised the the Corporate Average Fuel Economy standard of 20.7 miles per gallon in 2004 to 21 mpg for the model year 2005, 21.6 mpg for 2006, and 22.2 mpg for 2007. The NHTSA estimated the increase would save 3.6 billion gallons of gasoline over the 25-year life of the affected vehicles from the three model years–about 9,400 barrels per day during the 25-year period.

The White House claims its new standards will save 340,000 bpd when applied to the 2008 through 2016 model years. However, the Transportation Department has yet to issue new fuel standards past the 2007 model year. But the futility of this measure is clear when you consider that last year alone, U.S. crude oil production dropped by over 100,000 bpd.

Meanwhile the House voted to approve some $8.1 billion in tax breaks for the energy industry, in spite of record profits during the first quarter of this year, Exxon Mobil’s profits jumped 44 percent. Royal Dutch/Shell’sprofits were up 42 percent while Marathon Oil’s profits were up 26 percent.

The administration has inched away from its early distain for conservation, but now that it seems to have realized that there is a problem, it is stuck–a deer in the headlights–with no idea how to face something of this magnitude.

by Julia Ward Howe

Arise then…women of this day!
Arise, all women who have hearts!
Whether your baptism be of water or of tears!
Say firmly:
“We will not have questions answered by irrelevant agencies,
Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage,
For caresses and applause.
Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn
All that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.
We, the women of one country,
Will be too tender of those of another country
To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs.”

From the voice of a devastated Earth a voice goes up with
Our own. It says: “Disarm! Disarm!
The sword of murder is not the balance of justice.”
Blood does not wipe our dishonor,
Nor violence indicate possession.
As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil
At the summons of war,
Let women now leave all that may be left of home
For a great and earnest day of counsel.
Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.
Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means
Whereby the great human family can live in peace…
Each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar,
But of God -
In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask
That a general congress of women without limit of nationality,
May be appointed and held at someplace deemed most convenient
And the earliest period consistent with its objects,
To promote the alliance of the different nationalities,
The amicable settlement of international questions,
The great and general interests of peace.

Julia Ward Howe:
Beyond the Battle Hymn of the Republic

Mother’s Day and Peace

Julia Ward Howe’s accomplishments did not end with the writing of her famous poem, “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” As Julia became more famous, she was asked to speak publicly more often. Her husband became less adamant that she remain a private person, and while he never actively supported her further efforts, his resistance eased.

She saw some of the worst effects of the war — not only the death and disease which killed and maimed the soldiers. She worked with the widows and orphans of soldiers on both sides of the war, and realized that the effects of the war go beyond the killing of soldiers in battle. She also saw the economic devastation of the Civil War, the economic crises that followed the war, the restructuring of the economies of both North and South.

In 1870, Julia Ward Howe took on a new issue and a new cause. Distressed by her experience of the realities of war, determined that peace was one of the two most important causes of the world (the other being equality in its many forms) and seeing war arise again in the world in the Franco-Prussian War, she called in 1870 for women to rise up and oppose war in all its forms. She wanted women to come together across national lines, to recognize what we hold in common above what divides us, and commit to finding peaceful resolutions to conflicts. She issued a Declaration, hoping to gather together women in a congress of action.

She failed in her attempt to get formal recognition of a Mother’s Day for Peace. Her idea was influenced by Anna Jarvis, a young Appalachian homemaker who had attempted starting in 1858 to improve sanitation through what she called Mothers’ Work Days. She organized women throughout the Civil War to work for better sanitary conditions for both sides, and in 1868 she began work to reconcile Union and Confederate neighbors.

Anna Jarvis’ daughter, also named Anna Jarvis, would of course have known of her mother’s work, and the work of Julia Ward Howe. Much later, when her mother died, this second Anna Jarvis started her own crusade to found a memorial day for women. The first such Mother’s Day was celebrated in West Virginia in 1907 in the church where the elder Anna Jarvis had taught Sunday School. And from there the custom caught on — spreading eventually to 45 states. Finally the holiday was declared officially by states beginning in 1912, and in 1914 the President, Woodrow Wilson, declared the first national Mother’s Day.

Why I became a member of the Green Party

This is not mine, folks, but I thought that Chuck put it so well that it deserved to be repeated.
Also, check out Diane’s interview with Chuck
–Adam

Having had a political journey that started out growing up Republican in
central Illinois, and becoming a Democrat after WW II, it has been a
great satisfaction, near the end of life, to feel that I have arrived
home in a political party that truly expresses and extends my hope for
the future of my children and grandchildren.

As a Taft Republican, I became disillusioned by the nomination of
General Eisenhower at the Republican Convention of 1952. And as a
Humphrey Democrat, I became disillusioned with Hubert’s support of
Johnson’s Vietnam War when he ran against Nixon in 1968.

It seems to me that the Green Party is now the only hope of saving our
democracy from the electoral corruption of Democrats and Republicans
and their subservience to the military-industrial-government complex, or
corporatocracy, that President Eisenhower warned about near the end of
his presidency.

At first I was attracted to the Green Party by two things: 1) the
policy of “Non-Violence” as one of the ten key values on which the party was
organized and 2) the fact that there are Green Parties in some ninety
other countries that are organized by regions: European, Asia-Pacific,
the Americas and Africa, all committed to the same ten key values.

The Ten Key Values

As a former Republican, I particularly appreciate Grassroots Democracy,
Decentralization and Community Based Economics.

As a former Democrat, I particularly appreciate Social Justice and
Equal Opportunity, Feminism and Gender Equality and Respect for Diversity .

As a grandfather, I particularly appreciate Non-Violence, Ecological
Wisdom, Personal and Global Responsibility and Future Focus and
Sustainability.

Most Democrats see Greens as spoilers and overlook their own
deficiencies and conflictions. Most Republicans are riding high on
power and don’t see their abuses and contradictions. But those in both
parties, who see the need for a fresh and responsible start, are
switching to the Green Party, the party that is growing faster than any
other in the United States.

Chuck Harker, May 4, 2005

Hey folks,

Setting up a new blog here. Things will start very openly. Let me know what you want or if you have questions. I’m learning this with you, but I’ll try to find out the answers. Politeness counts. The editor seems nice, and allows for

extended quotes to be put in this kind of format

and various tags.

More to come.

Please make suggestions for anything you’d like to change, including content, design, categories, links, whatever.

adam