Montgomery County, MD Green Party Blog

(got this from Scott Loughrey’s blog — http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/News_Junkie_GP/)
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20051118/hl_nm/britain_hiv_dc;_ylt=Ao6C9EjVCgb7HMT8I.wBvBfVJRIF;_ylu=X3oDMTA5aHJvMDdwBHNlYwN5bmNhdA–

Riverbend, a “girl blog from Iraq” writes about watching footage of the victims of white phosphorous in Iraq. Her words put a human face on the terror happening in that country. They speak for themselves:

It sat on my PC desktop for five days.

The first day I read about it on the internet, on some site, my heart sank. White phosphorous in Falloojeh. I knew nothing about white phosphorous, of course, and a part of me didn’t want to know the details. I tried downloading the film four times and was almost relieved when I got disconnected all four times.

E. had heard about the film too and one of his friends S. finally brought it by on CD. He and E. shut themselves up in the room with the computer to watch the brief documentary. E. came out half an hour later looking pale- his lips tightened in a straight line, which is the way he looks when he’s pensive… thinking about something he’d rather not discuss.

“Hey- I want to see it too…” I half-heartedly called out after him, as he walked S. to the door.

“It’s on the desktop- but you really don’t want to see it.” E. said.

I avoided the computer for five days because every time I switched it on, the file would catch my eye and call out to me… now plaintively- begging to be watched, now angrily- condemning my indifference.

Except that it was never indifference… it was a sort of dread that sat deep in my stomach, making me feel like I had swallowed a dozen small stones. I didn’t want to see it because I knew it contained the images of the dead civilians I had in my head.

Few Iraqis ever doubted the American use of chemical weapons in Falloojeh. We’ve been hearing the terrifying stories of people burnt to the bone for well over a year now. I just didn’t want it confirmed.

I didn’t want it confirmed because confirming the atrocities that occurred in Falloojeh means verifying how really lost we are as Iraqis under American occupation and how incredibly useless the world is in general- the UN, Kofi Annan, humanitarian organizations, clerics, the Pope, journalists… you name it- we’ve lost faith in it.

I finally worked up enough courage to watch it and it has lived up to my worst fears. Watching it was almost an invasive experience, because I felt like someone had crawled into my mind and brought my nightmares to life. Image after image of men, women and children so burnt and scarred that the only way you could tell the males apart from the females, and the children apart from the adults, was by the clothes they are wearing… the clothes which were eerily intact- like each corpse had been burnt to the bone, and then dressed up lovingly in their everyday attire- the polka dot nightgown with a lace collar… the baby girl in her cotton pajamas- little earrings dangling from little ears.

Some of them look like they died almost peacefully, in their sleep… others look like they suffered a great deal- skin burnt completely black and falling away from scorched bones.

I imagine what it must have been like for some of them. They were probably huddled in their houses- some of them- tens of thousands of them- couldn’t leave the city. They didn’t have transport or they simply didn’t have a place to go. They sat in their homes, hoping that what people said about Americans was actually true- that in spite of their huge machines and endless weapons, they were human too.

And then the rain of bombs would begin… the wooooosh of the missiles as they fell and the sound of the explosion as it hit its target… and no matter how prepared you think you are for that explosion- it always makes you flinch. I imagine their children covering their ears and some of them crying, trying to cover up the mechanical sounds of war with their more human wails. I imagine that as the tanks got closer, and the planes got lower- the fear increased- and parents searched each other’s faces for a solution, for a way out of the horror. Some of them probably decided to wait it out in their homes, and others must have been desperate to get out- fearing the rain of concrete and steel and thinking their chances were better in the open air, than confined in the homes that could at any moment turn into their tombs.

That’s what we were told before the Americans came- it’s safer to be outside of the house during an air strike than it is to be inside of the house. Inside of the house, a missile nearby would turn the windows into millions of little daggers and walls might come crashing down. In the garden, or even the street, you’d only have to worry about shrapnel and debris if the bomb was very close- but what were the chances of that?

That was before 2003… and certainly before Falloojeh.

That was before men, women and children left their homes only to be engulfed in a rain of fire.

Last year I blogged about Falloojeh and said:

“There is talk of the use of cluster bombs and other forbidden weaponry.”

I was immediately attacked with a barrage of emails from Americans telling me I was a liar and that there was no proof and that there was no way Americans would ever do something so appalling! I wonder how those same people justify this now. Are they shocked? Or do they tell themselves that Iraqis aren’t people? Or are they simply in denial?

The Pentagon spokesman recently said:

“It’s part of our conventional-weapons inventory and we use it like we use any other conventional weapon,”

This war has redefined ‘conventional’. It has taken atrocity to another level. Everything we learned before has become obsolete. ‘Conventional’ has become synonymous with horrifying. Conventional weapons are those that eat away the skin in a white blaze; conventional interrogation methods are like those practiced in Abu Ghraib and other occupation prisons…

Quite simply… conventional terror.

‘Intelligent Design’ Foolishly Pits Evolution Against Faith
Normally I disagree close to 100% of the time with this guy; but this column is surprisingly devoid of arguements that I disagree with.

Because every few years this country, in its infinite tolerance, insists on hearing yet another appeal of the Scopes monkey trial, I feel obliged to point out what would otherwise be superfluous: that the two greatest scientists in the history of our species were Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein, and they were both religious.
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Neither saw science as an enemy of religion. On the contrary. “He believed he was doing God’s work,” James Gleick wrote in his recent biography of Newton. Einstein saw his entire vocation — understanding the workings of the universe — as an attempt to understand the mind of God.

Not a crude and willful God who pushes and pulls and does things according to whim. Newton was trying to supplant the view that first believed the sun’s motion around the earth was the work of Apollo and his chariot, and later believed it was a complicated system of cycles and epicycles, one tacked upon the other every time some wobble in the orbit of a planet was found. Newton’s God was not at all so crude. The laws of his universe were so simple, so elegant, so economical and therefore so beautiful that they could only be divine.

Click here for link.

Developer Vows to Use Pig Farm As Revenge

“Now maybe when I go to negotiate with these people I’ll get a little better response,” [Steve] Nagel told The Spokesman-Review newspaper.

But county and city officials doubt that Nagel will follow through, noting that threats to go into the hog business have become planning dispute cliches.

Click here for link.

Party Needs a Tax Plan Before Next Elections
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: Both consrvative and liberal elites favor flat taxes — the flatter the taxes are, the better they like them!
–N.B.

[U.S. Senator Ron] Wyden sees 2006 as offering a replay of 1986, when President Ronald Reagan signaled his interest in tax reform and Democrats (who controlled the House then but were a minority in the Senate) seized the initiative from him. Bill Bradley, a Democratic senator from New Jersey, teamed with Rep. Dick Gephardt of Missouri to shape the bill that Reagan signed.

Wyden has introduced what he calls the Fair Flat Tax Act of 2005 as the starting point for what he expects to be a major debate next year on tax reform. “I think it is a certainty that Bush will put this issue on the agenda in his State of the Union address,” Wyden told me in an interview, “and the Democrats have to be prepared to offer an alternative that makes sense.”

Click here for link.

Media Tycoon Conrad Black Indicted for Fraud

Disgraced international press tycoon Conrad M. Black, who stepped down as head of his media empire in 2004 amid charges that he and other executives looted the company, was indicted on eight counts of wire and mail fraud in Chicago today.

U.S. Attorney Patrick J. Fitzgerald said the high-living Canadian — who renounced his citizenship in 2001 to accept a British lordship — helped steal $51.8 million from Hollinger International Inc., which at one point had owned the Chicago Sun-Times, Jerusalem Post and the London Telegraph, as well as a majority of Canada’s English-language papers.

Fitzgerald issued an arrest warrant for Black, 61, whose whereabouts are unknown. He faces as much as 40 years in prison and $5 million in fines if convicted on all charges. Fitzgerald said he would seek Black’s extradition if he does not turn himself in.

Click here for link.

Josh Connole, a 27-year-old member of a tiny environmentalist commune in southern Californiawho was arrested by the FBI on suspicions he was one of the eco-terrorists who had firebombed four nearby Hummer dealers dealerships in the summer of 2003.

A Joint Terrorism Task Force had targeted Connole, an anti-Iraq-war protester, and the Vegan commune he had been living with in a Pomona, Calif., and had developed a political profile of the group. The investigation discovered that the owner of the house and his father had posted statements on websites opposing the use of fossil fuels, that the owner had ties to a local chapter of Food Not Bombs, termed by the FBI as an “anarcho-vegan food distribution group.” In addition, the FBI found that the father of the owner had conducted a “one man’ daily protest” outside a Toyota office, was interviewed for an article called “Dude, Where’s my Electric Car!?” and posted info on a Web site announcing “Stop Norway Whaling!”

When Connole noticed the surveillance and went to authorities to report it, he was arrested and held for four days, often chained to the floor and repeatedly urged by FBI agents to confess.

He was released after William Cottrell, an environmental activist, wrote to a newspaper claiming responsibility for the attacks and mocking authorities for arresting the wrong man. Cottrell was ultimately convicted and sent to prison.

Civil libertarians have criticized cases like this where political information has been increasingly collected by agents since then Attorney General John Ashcroft relaxed FBI guidelines in 2002. As Connole’s lawyer put it; “How does advocacy of electric cars become the basis for suspicion?”

The FBI has agreed to a $100,000 settlement of the wrongful arrest suit brought against them by Connole, although a spokesperson for the FBI claimed that it was “a good faith mistake.”

Vegans and environmentalists should take note–you are now subject to political profiling!

The following is from Ted Weber:

Dear Greens,

I went to a forum in College Park on Saturday called “The Cost of Not Protecting Maryland’s Environment.” Bob Costanza (Director of the Gund Institute for Ecological Economics) was the keynote speaker. The other speakers included Frank Heintz (former CEO of Baltimore Gas & Electric), Don Boesch (president of the Univ. of Maryland Center for Environmental Science), and Steve Bunker (director of govt. programs for the MD/DC chapter of The Nature Conservancy).

Among the many interesting points raised were:

* The U.N.’s Millennium Ecosystem Assessment highlights ways in which people depend on services provided by ecosystems, how those
ecosystem services are changing, and the ramifications for society. It “focuses on ecosystem services (the benefits people obtain from ecosystems), how changes in ecosystem services have affected human wellbeing, how ecosystem changes may affect people in future decades, and response options that might be adopted at local, national, or global scales to improve ecosystem management and thereby contribute to human well-being and poverty alleviation…

Over the past 50 years, humans have changed ecosystems more rapidly and extensively than in any comparable period of time in human history, largely to meet rapidly growing demands for food, fresh water, timber, fiber and fuel. This has resulted in a substantial and largely irreversible loss in the diversity of life on Earth. In addition, approximately 60% (15 out of 24) of the ecosystem services it examined are being degraded or used unsustainably, including fresh water, capture fisheries, air and water purification, and the regulation of regional and local climate, natural hazards, and pests.”

* Conventional economists focus only on a narrow part of our well-being (consumption), and ignore other parts of the economy that provide for the sustainable well-being of people, such as social capital and natural capital. For example, increased crime is seen as good from an economic standpoint because people spend money on alarms and window bars, but common sense dictates that increased crime is bad for people’s well-being (unless you are one of the criminals). Conventional economics is based on an “open world”, where resources are infinite, human impact is relatively small, and modes of capital are infinitely substitutable (e.g., increased technology will compensate for loss of forest and cropland). But today we are living in a closed world, where human impact dominates global processes, resources are rapidly shrinking at an unsustainable rate, and in fact, substitutability is limited.

* Dr. Costanza described an alternative to GDP (Gross Domestic Product) as an indicator of economic health. GDP includes only the official market economy, and ignores things like caring for children, air and water quality, etc. The ISEW (Index of Sustainable Economic Welfare) or the Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI) are significantly different and more comprehensive approaches to assessing economic progress than conventional measures like GDP. The GPI is a better, more comprehensive approximation to economic welfare than GDP, because it accounts for income distribution effects, the value of household and volunteer work, costs of mobility and pollution, depletion of social and natural capital, and other things. Comparing GDP and GPI for the US shows that, while GDP has steadily increased since 1950, with the occasional dip or recession, GPI peaked around 1975 and has been gradually decreasing ever since.

See http://www.uvm.edu/giee/gpi.htm for more.

(note: as proof of this, it used to be possible to support a family, with a house and car, on one blue-collar wage. Today, even if both husband and wife are working, most can barely scrape by and are heavily in debt).

* Natural ecosystems contribute more to the global economy than does the market economy. A study by Costanza et al. (1997; The value of the world’s ecosystem services and natural capital; Nature 387:252-259)
estimated the economic value of 17 ecosystem services for 16 biomes, based on published studies and original calculations. These ecosystem services include gas regulation, climate regulation, disturbance regulation, water regulation, water supply, erosion control and sediment retention, soil formation, nutrient cycling, waste treatment, pollination, biological control, refugia, food production, raw materials, genetic resources, recreation, and cultural benefits. A minimum estimate of the global total was between $16-54 trillion per year (1994 U.S. dollars), with an average of $33 trillion per year, almost twice the global Gross National Product (GNP). This was considered a conservative estimate; the true figure may be much higher.

See http://ecovalue.uvm.edu/evp/default.asp for more.

* Conservation and environmental protection are usually regarded by politicians as luxuries that should be at the bottom of the priority list. This is because of the blinders that conventional economics place on us - it is an incomplete picture of the world. But protection of natural land is a vital investment. Ecosystem services, such as cleaning the air, filtering and cooling water, storing and cycling nutrients, conserving and generating soils, pollinating crops and other plants, regulating climate, protecting areas against storm and flood damage, and maintaining hydrologic function, are all provided by the existing expanses of forests, wetlands, and other natural lands. These ecologically valuable lands also provide marketable goods and services, like forest products, fish and wildlife, and recreation. They serve as vital habitat for wild species, maintain a vast genetic library, provide scenery, and contribute in many ways to the health and quality of life (from Maryland’s Green Infrastructure Assessment; http://www.dnr.state.md.us/greenways/gi/gidoc/gidoc.html ).

Preserving open space stimulates spending by local residents, increases property values, increases tourism, attracts businesses, and reduces public costs. Biodiversity is responsible for at least $1.9 billion in economic and environmental services in Maryland (Pimentel, D.; 1998; Benefits of biological diversity in the state of Maryland; Cornell University, College of Agriculture and Life Sciences). In fact, if the values of ecological services are considered, the benefits from conserving natural land gives a return on investment of at least 100 to 1 (Balmford et al; 2002; Economic reasons for conserving wild nature; Science 2002 August 9; 297: 950-953).

* Four visions of the future, depending on underlying assumptions and whether optimists or skeptics are right, are described at http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol4/iss1/art5/ . The visions are labeled “Star Trek”, “Mad Max”, “Big Government”, and “Ecotopia”. The authors conclude that “a cooperative, precautionary policy set that assumes limited resources is shown to be the most rational and resilient course in the face of fundamental uncertainty about the limits of technology.”

Federal Office Overstates Progress, Minimizes Threats, Report Says

A Government Accountability Office review found that the Chesapeake Bay Program Office — an arm of the Environmental Protection Agency — has no coordinated, comprehensive plan for cutting pollution in the bay, even after nearly $6 billion in state and federal money has been devoted to the effort in the past decade.
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The criticism comes amid growing angst among policymakers and the public that an agreement reached five years ago for cleaning the bay by 2010 could fail without a big political and financial boost. In the agreement, known as Chesapeake 2000, the region’s political and environmental leaders proposed cutting the amount of major pollutants that enter the bay nearly in half over a decade.
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At a time when the Bush administration has recommended cuts in funding for such key bay cleanup proposals as sewage treatment plant upgrades, the problems at the Chesapeake Bay Program Office “are consistent with those policy choices,” said Roy Hoagland, vice president for environmental protection and restoration with the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, a private nonprofit environmental advocacy organization.

The findings “reflect the fact that absent an increase in political will and a significant increase in funding,” Chesapeake 2000 goals won’t be met, he said. “We have the science and the solutions. All we need is the implementation and the dollars.”

Click here for link.

Here’s a link to the blog entry.
Tim Willard’s blog also gets mentioned.