Re: [Biofuel] A Greener Commute
Hi Chris you're right, keith. thanks for taking the time to point that out. Sorry I didn't reply direct. it's a sort of double-think process. Yes indeed. there's no doubt in my mind that many of those who have dialed down their sense of urgency vis a vis global warming still believe it's a serious problem, but the mild temps means part of their mind starts to listen to the denial arguments, if only to allow themselves to postpone the inevitable adjustments. It's a stronger message anyway. Not in content or veracity of course, but that doesn't matter much with such a powerful delivery system, it fools enough of the people enough of the time. Or maybe not. Too soon to tell. It's wasted 22 years already, but there's still hope. the whole consumerist paradigm is indeed fundamental. i wanted to tie that in but was a bit pressed for time so tried to hint at it while making my main point. re, the hertzen quote, it definitely has a grim appeal. those russian arnachists were some bad actors, weren't they? They sure were. I guess that's what it took. Alexander Herzen, speaking a century ago to a group of Russian anarchists working to topple the czar, reminded his followers that they were not there to rescue the system. We think we are the doctors, Herzen said. We are the disease. http://www.mail-archive.com/biofuel@sustainablelists.org/msg74748.html It just came up again, in a piece by Alexander Cockburn on Obama bailing out the banksters: Obama is not seeking to reform the financial system, and it would be beyond miraculous if he did, since the contrivers of the present mess--Lawrence Summers, et al--were given a welcoming clap on the back by the new president, as he stepped into the White House and told them to get on with the job. This amazing bailout for the existing corrupt system--as if Lenin had used the October revolution to restore the Romanovs--has been engineered without significant opposition from organized labor or the left-liberal end of Obama's own party. - All the Populism Money Can Buy, October 23-25, 2009 http://www.counterpunch.org/cockburn10232009.html :-) A neat comparison. Hm. I also said People want to do the right thing but they're drenched in all the consumerist spin. I can't blame them for that, I can only admire those that aren't. Can't blame them maybe, but it's hard to like some of them: Paranoia for Breakfast, by David Michael Green, October 24, 2009 http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article23806.htm Terror from the Right - 75 plots, conspiracies and racist rampages since Oklahoma City, 07/01/2009 http://www.splcenter.org/news/item.jsp?aid=383 :-( I think I prefer the Russian anarchists. Best Keith ___ Biofuel mailing list Biofuel@sustainablelists.org http://sustainablelists.org/mailman/listinfo/sustainablelorgbiofuel Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Search the combined Biofuel and Biofuels-biz list archives (70,000 messages): http://www.mail-archive.com/biofuel@sustainablelists.org/
Re: [Biofuel] A Greener Commute
excellent links. the splc list is interesting in the preponderence of items from the clinton years: could that explain at least in part why the republicans so zealously pursued his undoing? equally noteworthy is the complete lack of awareness the american public has, either of the crimes and conspiracies themselves (the msm strikes again), or of the fact that most of the perpetrators are already back on the streets. and d. m. green's column recalled the recent discussion here concerning that study about belief vs. evidence. which begs the question, what if a similar study were constructed around the issue of these individuals, their crimes and their motives, and addressed in particular the question of the sentences they served? and then what if the issue of guantanamo were raised. . . ? ___ Biofuel mailing list Biofuel@sustainablelists.org http://sustainablelists.org/mailman/listinfo/sustainablelorgbiofuel Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Search the combined Biofuel and Biofuels-biz list archives (70,000 messages): http://www.mail-archive.com/biofuel@sustainablelists.org/
Re: [Biofuel] A Greener Commute
Worth watching: Empire of Illusion The Cult of Self By Chris Hedges: Three-part video of Chris Hedges speaking in Binghamton, NY on October 24, 2009 http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article23819.htm Hi Dawie :-) I fully agree, Greener commute is indeed an oxymoron. It's for lite greens who think changing their buying habits will solve the problem, although of course it's consumerism itself that's the problem. Chris Hedges's A Reality Check From the Brink of Extinction, which I posted the other day, ends with this: Alexander Herzen, speaking a century ago to a group of Russian anarchists working to topple the czar, reminded his followers that they were not there to rescue the system. We think we are the doctors, Herzen said. We are the disease. http://www.mail-archive.com/biofuel@sustainablelists.org/msg74748.html Quite so. Hedges just had a debate with Bill McKibben on How Do We Solve the Environmental Crisis? Bill McKibben believes we must reduce our carbon emissions immediately, or else face disaster. Chris Hedges says that until we defeat corporate power, we can't address anything. See: http://www.alternet.org/environment/143481/mckibben_versus_hedges'_clash_of_worldviews:_how_do_we_solve_the_environmental_crisis_ I think they're both right though. We also have to focus on what people will actually be prepared to do, as opposed to what they like to think they'd do if only... whatever. Many or even most people with greenish sympathies will have to be weaned off their massive carbon footprints. A greener commute would be one of many possible part-solutions that would at least in the meantime help to reduce the ovarall carbon footprint, as claimed. It's a start, it can help to encourage lite-greens to take the next step. This is from a 2007 article, still pertinent. With average fuel economy in the US worse still than it was in 1987, and far worse than anywhere else, especially Europe and Japan, something like 85% of Americans had been polled as demanding tougher CAFE fuel economy standards. But: Consumers talk a good game about fuel economy before they arrive at the showroom. But they get dazzled by glitzier features when they walk into a dealership. Customers will trade five miles per gallon to get fancy cupholders, says Mike Jackson, head of AutoNation, the country's largest auto retailer. Want proof? Back in 2000, when gasoline was the cheapest liquid around, fuel economy ranked as the 29th most important attribute in buying a car. Today, when gas costs as much as $3.25 a gallon, good mileage still ranks only 22nd. Sound systems and convenience features rank higher as purchase considerations. But rather than giving consumers an incentive to change their buying habits, Bush wants to force automakers to build more fuel efficient cars by raising the corporate average fuel economy (CAFE) standards for passenger cars and light trucks. By so doing, though, Bush is reviving an urban legend that the technology is cheaply available if only the lazy old automakers would bother to use it. We should be so lucky. Making people save gas by buying thriftier cars, as General Motors executive Bob Lutz has said, is like telling people to lose weight by wearing smaller clothes. -- Passing the buck on fuel economy - Instead of ensuring that we use less gas, politicians and consumers take the easy way out, says Fortune's Alex Taylor, April 9 2007 http://money.cnn.com/2007/04/09/autos/pluggedin_taylor_fueleconomy.fortune/index.htm You can see both McKibben's view and Hedges's at work there. People want to do the right thing but they're drenched in all the consumerist spin. I can't blame them for that, I can only admire those that aren't. However, Hedges is definitely right. To cross threads, Chris just wrote, on American Public More Complacent About Climate Change, how generally cooler temperatures in the US this year had undermined the urgency, helped along by the MSM's usual lack of real coverage. While that's true, it not all that's true. I've been watching a couple of arguments about global warming on other lists, especialy on two lists composed largely of right-wing Tea Party types. What Chris sees is right there, but it comes with all the familiar orchestrated Tea Party-type tropes - the facts of the cooler weather are reinforced by all the same old thoroughly debunked denialist crap, the discussions quickly become irrational, and global warming gets buried yet again, despite the brave efforts of the few who try to include the real facts that are being blind-eyed, such as vanishing glaciers and so on. It doesn't work, rational arguments just bounce off. And they'll continue to bounce off just as long as corporatism gets to call the tune as it does now. So, IMHO, the increasing numbers of consumers trying to take their first faltering steps towards sane behaviour really need encouragement, not just dismissal. All best Keith Greener commute is an oxymoron. In fact greener is an
[Biofuel] How a Torture Protest Killed a Career
http://www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/print.asp?ID=11539 How a Torture Protest Killed a Career Craig Murray – Consortium News October 24, 2009 I’ve never, ever spoken in public about the pain of being a whistleblower. Partly because of the British stiff-upper lip thing and partly as well because if you wish to try eventually to get on and reestablish yourself then it doesn’t do to show weakness. … I was sitting in this place on my own and feeling rather lonely. And there were a whole bunch of people in dark suits coming from government offices, in many cases in groups, and there they were with the men’s suits sleek and the ladies, the whole office, power-politics thing going on, having after-dinner champagne in the posh bar. And I was remembering how many times I’d been the center of such groups and of how successful my life used to be. I was a British ambassador at the age of 42. The average age for such a post is 57. I was successful in worldly terms. And I think I almost never sat alone at such a place. Normally if I had been alone in such a place, I would have ended up probably in the company of a beautiful young lady of some kind. I tell you that partly because this whole question of personal morality is a complicated one. I would never, ever, no one would have ever pointed at me as someone likely to become or to be a person of conscience. And yet eventually I found myself on the outside and treated in a way that challenged my whole view of the world. Mission to Tashkent Let me start to tell you something about how that happened. I was a British ambassador in Uzbekistan and I was told before I went that Uzbekistan was an important ally in the war on terror, had given the United States a very important airbase which was a forward mounting post for Afghanistan, and was a bulwark against Islamic extremism in Central Asia. When I got there I found it was a dreadful regime, absolutely totalitarian. And there’s a difference between dictatorship of which there are many and a totalitarian dictatorship which unless you’ve actually been in one is hard to comprehend. There’s absolutely no free media whatsoever. News on every single channel, the news programs start with 12 items about what the president did today. And that’s it. That is the news. There are no other news channels and international news channels are blocked. There are about 12,000 political prisoners. Any sign of religious enthusiasm for any religion will get you put into jail. The majority of people are predominantly Muslim. But if you are to carry out the rituals of the Muslim religion, particularly if you were to pray five times a day, you’d be in jail very quickly. Young men are put in jail for growing beards. It’s not the only religion which is outlawed. The jails are actually quite full of Baptists. Being Baptist is illegal in Uzbekistan. I’m sure that Methodists and Quakers would be illegal, too, It’s just that they haven’t got any so they haven’t gotten around to making them illegal. And it’s really not a joke. If you are put into prison in Uzbekistan the chances of coming out again alive are less than even. And most of the prisons are still the old Soviet gulags in the most literal sense. They are physically the same places. The biggest one being the Jaslyk gulag in the deserts of the Kizyl Kum. I had only been there for a week or two when I went to a show trial of an al-Qaeda terrorist they had caught. It was a big event put on partly for the benefit of the American embassy to demonstrate the strength of the U.S.-Uzbek alliance against terrorism. When I got there, to call the trial unconvincing would be an underestimate. There was one moment when this old man [who] had given evidence that his nephew was a member of al-Qaeda and had personally met Osama bin Laden. And like everybody else in that court he was absolutely terrified. But suddenly as he was giving his evidence, he seemed from somewhere to find an inner strength. He was a very old man but he stood taller and said in a stronger voice, he said, “This is not true. This is not true. They tortured my children in front of me until I signed this. I had never heard of al-Qaeda or Osama bin Laden.” He was then hustled out of the court and we never did find out what had happened to him. He was almost certainly killed. But as it happens I was within touching distance of him when he said that and I can’t explain it. It’s not entirely rational. But you could just feel it was true. You could tell he was speaking the truth when he said that. And that made me start to call into doubt the whole question of the narrative about al-Qaeda in Uzbekistan and the alliance in the war on terror. Boiled to Death Something which took that doubt over the top happened about a week later. The West -- because Uzbekistan was our great ally in the war on terror – had shown no interest in the human rights situation at all. In fact, the
Re: [Biofuel] How a Torture Protest Killed a Career
If anyone's wondering why it seems a bit disjointed and why (or whether) a Brit would use such a word as gotten, it's because it's missing the intro Consortium News gave it, which explains all: Editor's Note: In this modern age - and especially since George W. Bush declared the war on terror eight years ago - the price for truth-telling has been high, especially for individuals whose consciences led them to protest the torture of alleged terrorists. One of the most remarkable cases is that of Craig Murray, a 20-year veteran of the British Foreign Service whose career was destroyed after he was posted to Uzbekistan in August 2002 and began to complain about Western complicity in torture committed by the country's totalitarian regime, which was valued for its brutal interrogation methods and its vast supplies of natural gas. Murray soon faced misconduct charges that were leaked to London's tabloid press before he was replaced as ambassador in October 2004, marking the end of what had been a promising career. Murray later spoke publicly about how the Bush administration and Prime Minister Tony Blair's government collaborated with Uzbek dictator Islam Karimov and his torturers. [See, for instance, Murray's statement to the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Torture. http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2009/03/trying_again_my.html] But Murray kept quiet about his personal ordeal as the victim of the smear campaign that followed his impassioned protests to the Foreign Office about torture. Finally, on Oct. 22 at a small conference in Washington, Murray addressed the personal pain and his sense of betrayal over his treatment at the hands of former colleagues. While Murray's account is a personal one, it echoes the experiences of many honest government officials and even mainstream journalists who have revealed inconvenient truths about wrongdoing by powerful Establishment figures and paid a high price. Below is a partial transcript of Murray's remarks: I was just having dinner in a restaurant that was only a block from the White House. It must have been a good dinner because it cost me $120. Actually it was a good dinner. Continues below. http://www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/print.asp?ID=11539 How a Torture Protest Killed a Career Craig Murray - Consortium News October 24, 2009 I've never, ever spoken in public about the pain of being a whistleblower. Partly because of the British stiff-upper lip thing and partly as well because if you wish to try eventually to get on and reestablish yourself then it doesn't do to show weakness. I was sitting in this place on my own and feeling rather lonely. And there were a whole bunch of people in dark suits coming from government offices, in many cases in groups, and there they were with the men's suits sleek and the ladies, the whole office, power-politics thing going on, having after-dinner champagne in the posh bar. And I was remembering how many times I'd been the center of such groups and of how successful my life used to be. I was a British ambassador at the age of 42. The average age for such a post is 57. I was successful in worldly terms. And I think I almost never sat alone at such a place. Normally if I had been alone in such a place, I would have ended up probably in the company of a beautiful young lady of some kind. I tell you that partly because this whole question of personal morality is a complicated one. I would never, ever, no one would have ever pointed at me as someone likely to become or to be a person of conscience. And yet eventually I found myself on the outside and treated in a way that challenged my whole view of the world. Mission to Tashkent Let me start to tell you something about how that happened. I was a British ambassador in Uzbekistan and I was told before I went that Uzbekistan was an important ally in the war on terror, had given the United States a very important airbase which was a forward mounting post for Afghanistan, and was a bulwark against Islamic extremism in Central Asia. When I got there I found it was a dreadful regime, absolutely totalitarian. And there's a difference between dictatorship of which there are many and a totalitarian dictatorship which unless you've actually been in one is hard to comprehend. There's absolutely no free media whatsoever. News on every single channel, the news programs start with 12 items about what the president did today. And that's it. That is the news. There are no other news channels and international news channels are blocked. There are about 12,000 political prisoners. Any sign of religious enthusiasm for any religion will get you put into jail. The majority of people are predominantly Muslim. But if you are to carry out the rituals of the Muslim religion, particularly if you were to pray five times a day, you'd be in jail very quickly. Young men are put in jail for growing beards. It's not the only religion which
