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From Jail on Earth Day |
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Monday, 22 April 2013 12:47 |
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Steingraber writes: "So, here I am, ringing the alarm bell from my isolation cell on Earth Day."
Sandra Steingraber was arrested for blockading a gas compression rig last month. (photo: Shutterstock)
From Jail on Earth Day
By Sandra Steingraber, Common Dreams
22 April 13
The following was letter was written from the Chemung County Jail in Elmira, New York where Steingraber is serving a fifteen day sentence for blockading a gas compression rig last month owned by the Inergy gas company near her home in the Finger Lakes region of the state:
 his morning - I have no idea what time this morning, as there are no clocks in jail, and the florescent lights are on all night long - I heard the familiar chirping of English sparrows and the liquid notes of a cardinal. And there seemed to be another bird too - one who sang a burbling tune. Not a robin-wren? The buzzing, banging, clanking of jail and the growled announcements of guards on their two-way radios - which also go on all night - drowned it out. But the world, I knew, was out there somewhere.
The best way to deal with jail is to exude patience, and wrap it around a core of resolve and surrender. According to New York state law, all inmates upon arrival are isolated from the general population until they are tested for tuberculosis and that test comes back negative. Typically, that takes three days. Isolation means you are locked inside your cell with no access to the phone (the phone for cell block D happens to be located, tantalizingly, four feet from my bars - just out of reach); no access to books (the two books I have in my cell, lent to me by an empathetic inmate, are the Bible and Nora Roberts' Carolina Moon, which is a 470-page paperback whose opening sentence is, "She woke in the body of a dead friend."); and, of course, no access to wi fi, cell phones, e-mail or the internet.
I am writing with a borrowed pencil on the back of the "Chemung County Inmate Request Form," which is a half sheet of paper. I am writing small and revising in my head. (Forgive the paragraphing - I'm trying to save space.)
Yesterday, I was told that no medical personnel were available to administer my TB test. When I was called down to the nurse this morning, she asked why I didn't have my TB test yesterday. Of course, she was available yesterday. The resulting delay means that I will join the prison population and be released from 24 hour lock-down on Monday, rather than Sunday.
Frustration will be counter-productive and place me closer to despair. Let-it-go surrender, ironically, keeps me in touch with my resolve.
So, Monday, which is Earth Day, I will emerge from my cell and join the ecosystem of the Chemung County Jail, where the women's voices are loud and defiant. Stingray (not her actual nickname), broke a tooth yesterday. When she showed it to officer Murphy's Law (that's his actual nickname) and said, "the other half is in my cell," Murphy's Law replied, "So, you think the tooth fairy's going to come?" And then he left.
But she stood at the iron door and called for pain meds, over and over in a voice that I use for rally speeches. Full oration. Projecting to the rafters. Stingray is six months pregnant.
She got her pain meds.
Stingray is my inspiration. How can I use my time here - separated from the whole human race by the layers of steel and concrete - to speak loudly and defiantly about the business plans of a company called Inergy that seeks to turn my Finger Lakes home into a transportation and storage hub for fossil fuel gases? It is wrong to compress and bury explosive gases in salt caverns beside and beneath a lake - Seneca - that serves as a source of drinking water for 100,000 people. It is wrong to construct a flare stack on the banks of this lake, which will contribute hazardous air pollutants, including death-dealing ozone, into the air. It is wrong for DEC and EPA and FERC to turn a blind eye to a company that has, for the last 12 quarters, exceeded its permitted discharge of chemicals into this lake. It is wrong for a company to claim that basic geological knowledge about the bedrock itself, is a proprietary trade secret and hide it from the public and from the scientific community. It is wrong to deepen our dependency on fossil fuels in a time of climate emergency.
I could express these ideas more eloquently if there were coffee in jail. There is not.
I was led to cell #1 in block D of the Chemung County jail by three things. One is the decision of Inergy to industrialize the Finger Lakes region where I live and, in so doing, aid and abet the fracking industry by erecting a massive storage depot near the birthplace of my son. I consider this an act of desecration. That's what biologists call the proximate cause of my decision to commit an act of trespass by blockading the Inergy's compressor station driveway.
The ultimate cause is a commentary published last fall in the journal that all biologists read - Nature - by Jeremy Grantham, who is not a scientist, but an economist. He noted that all the projections for climate change - even the worst case scenarios - were being overtaken by real-life data. In other words, our climate situation is worse than we thought - even when we assumed the worst. Mr. Grantham then exhorted scientists who have this knowledge to be bold - noting that no one is paying attention to this data: "Be persuasive, be bold, be arrested (if necessary)."
So, here I am, ringing the alarm bell from my isolation cell on Earth Day. May my voice be as un-ignorable as Stingray's.
The third reason is this one: seven years ago, when my son was four years old, he asked to be a polar bear for Halloween, and so I went to work sewing him a costume from a chenille bedspread. It was with the knowledge that the costume would almost certainly outlast the species. Out on the street that night - holding a plastic pumpkin will with KitKat bars - I saw many species heading towards extinction; children dressed as frogs, bees, monarch butterflies, and the icon of Halloween itself - the little brown bat.
The kinship that children feel for animals and their ongoing disappearance from us literally brought me to my knees that night, on a sidewalk in my own village. It was love that got me back up. It was love that brought me to this jail cell.
My children need a world with pollinators and plankton stocks and a stable climate. They need lake shores that do not have explosive hydrocarbon gases buried underneath.
The fossil fuel party must come to an end. I am shouting at an iron door. Can you hear me now?
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Obama Is Comfortable With Bush's Inferno |
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Monday, 22 April 2013 08:18 |
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Nader writes: "Apparently, Mr. Bush is 'comfortable' with the price paid by the U.S. soldiers and their broken families...and by U.S. taxpayers, who over time will pay an estimated 3 trillion dollars."
Ralph Nader being interviewed during his 2008 presidential campaign, 08/01/08. (photo: Scrape TV)
Obama Is Comfortable With Bush's Inferno
By Ralph Nader, Common Dreams
22 April 13
 eorge W. Bush is riding high. A megamillionaire, from the taxpayer-subsidized Texas Rangers company, he makes $150,000 to $200,000 per speech, receives a large presidential pension and support facilities and is about to dedicate the $500 million George W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum on April 25.
President Obama will be at the dedication, continuing to legitimize Mr. Bush, as he did from the outset by announcing in 2009 there would be no investigations or prosecutions of the Bush officials for their crimes.
In an interview with the New York Times, Mr. Bush continued to say he has no regrets about his Presidency. "I'm comfortable with what I did," he said, "I'm comfortable with who I am." He added, "Much of my presidency was defined by things that you didn't necessarily want to have happen."
But he and Dick Cheney made them happen, although Mr. Bush attributed some military events to Providence. One of the "things" he is comfortable with was his criminal, unconstitutional invasion and occupation of Iraq, which took over one million Iraqi lives - children, women and men - created 5 million refugees and committed overall sociocide on that country which posed no threat to the U.S. The carnage continues to this day by a militarized al-Qaeda-in-Iraq that didn't exist before his invasion.
Apparently, Mr. Bush is "comfortable" with the price paid by the U.S. soldiers and their broken families - over 5,000 fatalities and suicides, 200,000 injuries, illnesses and traumatic syndromes - and by U.S. taxpayers, who over time will pay an estimated 3 trillion dollars according to Nobel Laureate and economist, Joseph Stiglitz.
Former Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) has said repeatedly that Bush and Cheney "lied us into invading Iraq." Such an understatement. Bush and Cheney not only lied about Saddam's weapons of mass destruction, they also deceived, covered-up, corrupted or intimidated the mass media, bullied an abdicatory Congress, and delivered a false address to the United Nations with the now regretful Secretary of State Colin Powell.
Two secretary generals of the UN subsequently declared Bush's war of aggression against Iraq to be a violation of international law.
Bush suffers no qualms about the brutal realities of his war and his recidivist violations of our Constitution, federal statutes and international treaties. "One of the real challenges of life is when you complete a chapter, you don't atrophy, that you continue to find ways to contribute," said Bush in an interview with The Dallas Morning News. Army veteran Tomas Young is atrophying from his massive wounds in Iraq. Before he decides to end his devastated life, possibly this month, he summoned his moral energy to write Mr. Bush a poignant letter calling him to account for his war crimes. Bush, however, never responds. After all he's "comfortable" and that bloody "chapter" is closed.
The American people have yet to come to terms with the reality that presidents are above the law. Presidents can commit repeated crimes in an outlaw presidency so long as they can invoke, however falsely and vaguely, national security.
Were presidents to engage in personal crimes or obstruction of justice, like Nixon with the burglary of the Democratic Party's Watergate offices, the law and Congress can hold them accountable. But Bush and Cheney had bigger fish to fry with their destruction of justice. As the ancient Roman historian Tacitus wrote: "The worst crimes were dared by a few, willed by more, and tolerated by all."
Fortunately, for our fragile democracy, there were dissenters. After 9/11, leading civil liberty groups objected to provisions in the Patriot Act that allowed searches of your home and businesses without telling you for 72 hours. And, the muzzling of librarians and custodians of your financial medical records from even telling you that the feds are retrieving them. And warrantless snooping on millions of Americans.
In the months leading to the invasion of Iraq in March 2003, more than three hundred retired generals, admirals, high ranking officers, national security officials and diplomats spoke out against any invasion.
Retired General and former Director of the National Security Agency Bill Odom called the invasion the most strategic military blunder in our history. Bush's father was privately opposed to the invasion, urging his top retired advisors, James Baker and Brent Scowcroft to speak and write against the pending invasion.
The venerable, conservative American Bar Association weighed in with three White Papers declaring Bush's many signing statements - that he was not bound by legislation - domestic surveillance and treatment of enemy combatants were unconstitutional actions. Bush never acknowledged these reports. And this week, a bipartisan report by the Constitution Project concluded that Bush/Cheney approved torture practices at Guantanamo.
All the above plus mass anti-war rallies in Washington, D.C. and elsewhere did not slow the march to war. The protests were not strong enough to penetrate the political and electoral systems. Until that happens, criminal unconstitutional actions regularly conducted at top levels of our government will not, as a practical matter, trigger either the application of the rule of law or the impeachment authority of the U.S. Congress. To the contrary, each succeeding President feels free to push the illegal, unconstitutional envelope further.
So the lawless legacy of George W. Bush continues under Obama - sometimes worse, sometimes not. Indefinite detention, arbitrary use of military rather than civil tribunals, secret evidence and secret laws, war crimes, secret courts, immunity from judicial review, continual snooping on citizens, extraordinary renditions to foreign countries and, for the first time, President Barack Obama claims to have the right to assassinate an American citizen, far from the battlefield, in his sole secret judgment as prosecutor, judge, jury and executioner. All shame the Obama Administration.
The above list comes from the great law professor, Jonathan Turley of George Washington University, who published a chilling article in the Washington Post on January 15, 2012.
The Presidential outlawry continues as a bipartisan dissolution of our constitutional system because the vast majority of "we the people" are not demanding our constitutionally sovereign power. They give truth to Tacitus' dictum.
On April 25, George W. Bush will bask in the fawning media sunlight of his presidential library and museum. The devastated people of Iraq and the soldiers of America, sent to kill and die in Bush's illegal, boomeranging war, may have some exhibits, pictures and artifacts to suggest for the museum's collection.
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The Huge Unanswered Questions |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=14516"><span class="small">David Sirota, Salon</span></a>
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Monday, 22 April 2013 08:11 |
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Sirota writes: "It should be sad to anyone to see a city terrorized into lockdown mode and Americans maimed and killed."
Boston Police stand over a downed runner seconds after explosions. (photo: John Tlumacki/The Boston Globe)
The Huge Unanswered Questions
By David Sirota, Salon
22 April 13
Why did some seem giddy that suspects were Muslim? Will good police work change our treatment of public employees?
 s news outlets reported late last week that the Boston bombing suspects were of Chechen-Muslim descent, many readers (on Twitter and in my emailbox) asked whether I was sad, because I had expressed my hope that it would be a white American. These questions have been posed in grotesquely gleeful fashion, as if the alleged demographic profile of the suspects, unto itself, is some sort of victory.
My answer to the question about sadness should be self-evident: yes, of course I am sad, and if you aren't sad, you have no soul or aren't paying attention. That's because it should be sad to anyone to see a city terrorized into lockdown mode and Americans maimed and killed. That's a tragedy for the victims, sad for Boston, sad for America and sad for whole communities who are already being persecuted for the actions of individuals.
As I wrote in my syndicated newspaper column yesterday, there are no definitive answers to something as horrible as all that. But there are huge questions. Here are three to ponder at the end of an awful week:
1. Why did so many conservatives seem to want the suspects to be foreign-born Muslims?
My twitter feed and email box is a display of sheer unadulterated glee from conservatives celebrating the fact that the two suspects are allegedly immigrants of Muslim descent. These conservatives are overjoyed that my hopes of the opposite did not come true. By obvious logic, then, they were hoping that the assailants ended up being anything but white non-Islamic Americans. Simple question: Why?
This week, I made a very clear case about why I hoped (though certainly never predicted) the assailants ended up being non-Islamic white Americans. Simply put, I held those hopes because history shows that when terrorism suspects are non-white, foreign or Islamic - and in particular, the latter - we have witnessed an overreaction involving everything from preemptive wars to curtailed civil liberties to a serious increase in hate crimes against groups that are collectively blamed, to polls showing a rise in bigotry to a spate of violent attacks on targeted religions to an increase in workplace discrimination against targeted minority groups. By contrast, when terrorism suspects are non-Islamic white American males (as many are), our governmental and cultural response tends to be more measured and (to say the least) less willing to demonize whole groups of innocent people.
Because of this, and because of the fact that the suspects had to be of some race/religion/ethnicity, I hoped for the former not the latter. I didn't - and still don't - want to see the kind of destructive and bigoted overreaction we've too often seen. It's pretty simple.
Of course, now that the suspects are alleged to be Muslim, we will see if America follows the same historical path that we have before - one involving mass surveillance of whole religious communities, hate crimes, new Patriot Acts and calls for other punitive measures. Rush Limbaugh insists that we won't see such a response - and I sincerely hope he is right.
But events suggest history may already be repeat itself. Indeed, in the last few days, we've seen reports of hate crimes against Muslims (before the suspects were identified, by the way) ; Homeland Security Committee chairman Rep. Peter King (R-NY) call for mass surveillance of all Muslims; Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) demand that the suspect - an American citizen - be deemed an enemy combatant and denied due process; the Obama administration deny Miranda rights to the suspect; and New York State Sen. Greg Ball (R) call for the use of torture. Notably, these kinds of affronts to civil liberties and the constitution are almost never seen when terrorism suspects are white non-Islamic Americans.
All of this underscores my argument about why I had hoped the suspects ended up being white non-Islamic Americans. It also begs the aforementioned question: knowing the differences in how we react to Muslim terrorism and non-Islamic white American terrorism, why are so many conservatives gleefully cheering the possibility that the suspects are the former? Could it be that some Americans actually want to see the kind of bigoted, violent, civil-liberties-trampling reaction we tend to see when terrorism suspects end up being Muslim?
2. Will the Boston response finally change America's posture toward public employees?
In the last few years, bashing public employees has become a cause célèbre on the American right, with Republican politicians regularly berating them as "a new privileged class" and conservative media and activists labeling them "greedy" "overpaid" leeches who are trying to "bankrupt America."
But the heroic response from first responders in Boston, and the miraculous way they limited casualties, is a not-so-subtle reminder that our public employees - whether first responders, police officers or soldiers - are most often heroes.
In that sense, Boston should be a turning point. After all, we as a country cannot at once laud the effectiveness of the public employees courageously providing emergency response while also continuing to rail on those public employees, portray them as greedy overpaid leeches, and berate the taxes that pay their salaries. Will one of the silver linings of the otherwise awful events in Boston be a change in the politics of public services? Will, in short, we finally start treating our public employees with the respect they so obviously deserve?
3. Does 24-7 news and technology make us more safe or less safe?
The ubiquity of digital recording technology - whether the cell phone or the surveillance camera - has clearly helped authorities track down the suspects. And communications technology - whether the smartphone, Twitter, email or 24-7 news coverage - has helped disseminate crucial information to the public in the aftermath of the attack and during this terrifying manhunt. That's all to the good.
However, those same technologies also ended up disseminating false information - including the kind that smeared a college kid. Additionally, they threaten to intensify what security expert Bruce Schneier calls' terrorism's "crime against the mind."
Basically, because technology and the 24-7 news cycle allows events to be so amplified in real time in a way they never have been before, the terrorizing effect of those events is far bigger. Whereas in previous eras Americans might read about a terrorist attack in a different city or perhaps see a still life image or two, this is the first generation in history that televisually experiences terrorism in real time, regardless of whether we are actually in the community affected. Indeed, whether on Facebook, Twitter or on the old TV screen, we are bombarded with video of the attacks and the carnage and now real-time video of the manhunt, allowing the terrorist attack to psychologically harm not merely those in the community being assaulted, but to also inflict such harm on the entire nation (if not the world).
The net effect is a technologized world that allows a terrorist attack to create a much bigger psychological blast zone than ever before. And that is a powerful incentive for all kinds of terrorists (whether "lone wolf" or organized) to try to pull off ever-more high-profile attacks.
Is there any way to at once maximize the aforementioned upsides of 21st century technology and the 24-7 news cycle while also minimizing the obvious downsides of this Information Age revolution? These answers will help determine the kind of country we call home.
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US Senate: Yellow-Bellied Cowards |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=18199"><span class="small">Will Durst, Humor Times</span></a>
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Monday, 22 April 2013 08:00 |
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Durst writes: "That giant, arrogant pimp known as the NRA should be laughing hysterically after its lackeys trashed the ephemeral spirit of compromise that had settled over Washington like a soft dawn mist."
Political satirist Will Durst. (photo: WillDurst.com)
US Senate: Yellow-Bellied Cowards
By Will Durst, Humor Times
22 April 13
Hey, Senate, got a few choice words for ya
nd now for a few choice words about the recent Senate vote that scuttled universal background checks on gun purchases. And the first three of those words are... Yellow-Bellied Cowards. Here's a couple more. Gutless, Craven, Chicken-Hearted Invertebrates. Dastardly, Lily-Livered, Spineless Jellyfish with the moral compunction of inbred Piranhas crowded into a too-small tank filled with liquid meth.
That giant, arrogant pimp known as the NRA should be laughing hysterically after its lackeys trashed the ephemeral spirit of compromise that had settled over Washington like a soft dawn mist. Ninety percent of Republicans voted against an issue 90 percent of the American people support. A bipartisan bill that was so watered down it was translucent. Leaked moisture all through the Senate chamber to a depth of a half-inch. Would have easily supported two schools of guppies.
The Senators that deigned to speak before scurrying down their greasy little wormholes to bunk in the nether regions of hell whined that pro-gun forces punish politicians for votes, while pro-gun control forces don't. Nobody mentioned the right thing to do or keeping automatic weapons out of the hands of felons or making the country or our schools safer. You know, their job.
The NRA, itself worried about being primaried from the right by other gun associations, encouraged its well-compensated hookers to compete among themselves to see who could lie most outrageously. Numerous Senators claimed the bill would lead to a national gun registry even though the very bill they spoke of included provisions to specifically prohibit such a thing. Perhaps it needs to be spelled out in simpler language like: "Gun Registry - Bad. Not Good. No-Go. Not Going to Happen."
Besides, exactly what is wrong with a national gun registry? You have to register a car. Most cities mandate bicycles be licensed. You need a card to take a book out of a library for crum's sakes. Proving that some people are much more comfortable with guns than they are books. Which is part of the problem.
In what was surely meant as an inside joke, Oklahoma Sen. Tom Coburn complained the bill would raise taxes. Why stop there? And child pornographers will camp in your back yard practicing Sharia law with uncircumcised goats riddled with Chinese bird flu.
This time the NRA may have over-reached. Perpetrated an outrage too far. A revulsion too great. Could very well have created its own Frankenstein monster. 90 percent is a big figure.
You'd think even the most casual of voters might tend to remember when someone turns their back on the country, jumps up and down on a litter of newborn puppies, then parties. And it would only take a committed few to throw their allegiance to candidates who pledge loyalty to the nation rather than a lobby that focuses on weapons of mass destruction.
Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal wasn't kidding. The GOP's path is clear. It is doomed to be the rich, white guy, anti-science, pro-gun, stupid party. Destined to slowly strangle on its own gurgling incoherencies until it is no longer comprehensible or relevant. Couldn't happen soon enough to a nicer bunch of rich white guys. And their grinning, gun-toting, treacherous minions.
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n the wake of David Sirota's hot-button essay last week, 
