Smart Energy

Howard Zinn You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train

review by Brian Charles Clark
5 out of 5 possible stars
Directed by Deb Ellis and Denis Mueller; narrated by Matt Damon

Originally published on Curled Up with a Good DVD

One day — I think it was a Tuesday — about 25 years ago, someone handed me a copy of a book and said, “You’ll love this.” The book was Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States. At the time, I was in college and had heavy stats and logic (if P then not Q and such nonsense) homework. I made the mistake of dipping into Zinn’s book over lunch and couldn’t stop reading for three days straight.

I was too young to have taken part in the radical ’60s and then in the ’70s – well, let’s forget the ’70s existed. In any case, I’d never heard of Zinn until I read A People’s History. But I quickly discovered that he was a member of a loosely affiliated cluster of radical activist philosopher-historians, a group that includes Noam Chomsky and many others, some of whom appear in this film. These activists were fighting the good fight against that relentless tide of greed called capitalism: they educated and advocated for civil and women’s rights, unions and labor rights, and against wars big and small, hot and cold. Read the rest of this entry »

© Copyright Richard Dorrell and licensed for reuse from http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/1315247

Bolivia will this month table a draft United Nations treaty giving “Mother Earth” the same rights as humans — having just passed a domestic law that does the same for bugs, trees and all other natural things in the South American country.

The bid aims to have the UN recognize the Earth as a living entity that humans have sought to “dominate and exploit” — to the point that the “well being and existence of many beings” is now threatened.

Reflecting indigenous traditional beliefs, the proposed global treaty says humans have caused “severe destruction … that is offensive to the many faiths, wisdom traditions and indigenous cultures for whom Mother Earth is sacred.”

It also says that “Mother Earth has the right to exist, to persist and to continue the vital cycles, structures, functions and processes that sustain all human beings.”

In indigenous Andean culture, the earth deity known as Pachamama is the centre of all life, and humans are considered equal to all other entities.

The UN debate begins two days before the UN’s recognition April 22 of the second International Mother Earth Day — another Morales-led initiative.

Canadian activist Maude Barlow is among global environmentalists backing the drive with a book the group will launch in New York during the UN debate: Nature Has Rights.

“It’s going to have huge resonance around the world,” Ms. Barlow said of the campaign. “It’s going to start first with these southern countries trying to protect their land and their people from exploitation, but I think it will be grabbed onto by communities in our countries, for example, fighting the tar sands in Alberta.”

via UN resolution looks to give “Mother Earth” same rights as humans.

AWKWORD ft. Y-Love ask “Next stop?” And, depressingly, answer: “Ohio”:

“Mr. President (Wisconsin)” (prod. by The White Shadow): While we don’t keep it political on RTD all the time, we’re not just all music all the time. We come from the era of Public Enemy, where the music was a tool that helped the outside world understand what was going on. Also helped those within the scene get a better understanding of the ills that life tried throwing at us. On this leak from the forthcoming rockthedub fifth anniversary compilation, FiF, AWK and Y-Love don’t hold back in trying to educate those who might sleep on the ills of the GOP, using the crazy shit with Governor Walker in Wisconsin as a jumping-off point. Crazy to think you could have so much taken from you while trying to provide for your family. Shit like this happens a lot, and with decisions like this going on, these two are right – it’s only a matter of time that something like this spreads like wildfire across the country. Open your ears, Obama – don’t let this go down!

I am not now, nor have I ever been, a monotheist.

You’ll find many examples to moo over at the link below, but here are a few of my favorites:

• Surrealism: You have two giraffes. The government requires you to take harmonica lessons.
• Pure Anarchy: You have two cows. Either you sell the milk at a fair price or your neighbors try to take the cows and kill you.
• Pure Communism: You have two cows. Your neighbors help you take care of them, and you all share the milk.
• Russian Communism: You have two cows. You have to take care of them, but the government takes all the milk. You steal back as much milk as you can and sell it on the black market.

via Famous World Ideologies, as explained by references to Cows | Deshoda (but this is widely known, Rra)

This looks like it might be just-in-time precedent useful for stopping (or at least slowing) the deployment of “megaloads“:

The right of all citizens to request a preliminary injunction was upheld in a Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling Tuesday in a case brought by two environmental groups.

The appeals court set a precedent by defining at what point citizens groups may obtain a preliminary injunction to stop federal projects in the Western states.

“This landmark precedent is vitally important because the court ruled that citizens can still get injunctions to temporarily stop government actions, such as clearcutting, while a case is being heard,” said Michael Garrity, executive director of the Alliance for the Wild Rockies, which, along with the Native Ecosystems Council, was a plaintiff in the original lawsuit at the district court level.

“Environmentalists aren’t the only victors today,” said Garrity. “Right now we have farmers and ranchers fighting proposed transmission lines to export power from Montana,” said Garrity. “This ruling preserves the right of all citizens to request a preliminary injunction to stop construction before the damage is done.”

….

“The preliminary injunction is a critical tool for environmentalists because it allows opponents of a project to stave off an imminent destructive project,” she said.

Brown said the issue clarifies the Supreme Court ruling in Winter v. Natural Resources Defense Council, in which the court refused to grant plaintiffs an injunction against the U.S. Navy’s use of sonar off the California coast. In that case, the Supreme Court allowed Navy maneuvers to continue despite plaintiffs’ contention that such use was causing damage to whales and other sea mammals.

Under the Winter decision, plaintiffs must establish that irreparable harm is likely, not just possible, in order to obtain a preliminary injunction.

“In the wake of the Supreme Court decision in Winter v. NRDC, the Department of Justice began arguing nationally that Winter substantially curtailed plaintiffs’ ability to obtain injunctive relief, and that the sliding scale test – which allows the court to balance the often-great magnitude of environmental harm against the likelihood of plaintiff’s success – was no longer good law,” Brown explained.

“We put DOJ’s theory to the test, and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in our favor,” she said. “This is vitally important because it can be difficult to fully demonstrate damages when confronted with the short timelines and incomplete agency decision-making records that are common in preliminary injunction cases.”

At this point, the Justice Department could ask the U.S. Supreme Court to review this Ninth Circuit decision, and all parties are waiting to see if that happens. If no Supreme Court review is sought, this case goes back to the U.S. District Court in Missoula, Montana for a ruling on the merits.

via Appeals Court Upholds Environmentalists’ Right to a Preliminary Injunction.

A number of the modules Imperial Oil intends to transport from Idaho through Montana now line the edge of the container yard at the Port of Lewiston, awaiting oversized permits from both states. The loads take up two lanes of highway, are longer than a hockey rink and weigh 200,000 pounds more than the Statue of Liberty. by Alex Sakariassen

Rich Wesson told me the first four megaloads are set to roll up scenic highway 12 over the Lolo Pass into Montana on their way to the Alberta tar sands. The Missoula Independent has an article about the megaloads, lengthy but a full summary and one of the best I’ve read.

Rich writes:

The first two loads will probably leave Lewiston Feb. 1.  Locals like the Friends of the Clearwater have called for peaceful protests on Jan. 29 or 31 at 11 a.m. in Lewiston, either at the bridge or more likely at the IDT office there.  If that happens, I’ll be going and will be able to take people with me who would like to go and ride together.  Bob, Lynne and I attended a direct action protest seminar last Monday and I strongly suspect that there will be an escalation of the protests sooner or later.  After the first four loads, which are imminent, the next 207 loads will have to  go through their own permitting process.

For those wanting to know just a little more about the Alberta Tar Sands, a trailer for the movie H2 Oil is here.

Update from the Friends of the Clearwater:

We would like to invite you to a 2nd peaceful public rally on *Saturday January 29th* on the Memorial Bridge in Lewiston. A car-pool will be leaving from the Eastside Marketplace in Moscow at 12 noon. Look for us on the south side of the parking lot, close to Highway 8. Our scheduled snow-show hike for the 29th has now been cancelled and will be re-scheduled pending on weather conditions. Sorry for any inconvenience.

The rally is to defend the Wild & Scenic Clearwater and Lochsa River corridor from Big Oil’s mega-loads and will last from 1-3pm. Parking is available at the Pepsi Ball Field, which is adjacent to the bridge. The event is family friendly and we encourage you to bring signs, banners and musical instruments. We will be walking along the west side of the bridge, just upstream from the Port of Lewiston.

If you cannot make it to the public rally on Saturday 29th, you are invited to join us for a press conference in the parking lot of the Lewiston ITD office on *Monday January 31st*. A number of groups and citizens will be giving statements to the media. Event is family friendly and will last from 11am-1pm. A car-pool will be leaving from Eastside Marketplace in Moscow at 10am. Look for us on the south side of the parking lot, close to Highway 8. The Conoco Phillips mega-loads are set to begin moving up U.S. Route 12 on Tuesday February 1st. Please contact our office (208) 882-9755 if you are interested in helping us monitor the loads traveling on the highway. They will be moving between 10pm and 5am. The ExxonMobil loads are still sitting at the Port and have not been given permits yet.

ExxonMobil has over 30 mega-loads at the Port of Lewiston. A series of locks and dams are being repaired on the Columbia River and when they are re-opened in late March, the remaining 177 oil-processing modules will be shipped up river. ExxonMobil has requested to truck 207 mega-loads up the Wild & Scenic Lochsa River corridor so that it can expand its Tar Sands strip-mining operation in Alberta, Canada. Learn more here.

Hope to see you at the public events in Lewiston.

Sarah Palin's Map of the U.S. Are you in her sights?

Secession is when a state leaves the union of states, or a region (as with southern Sudan currently) declares itself independent of a larger political entity. But what’s it called when the sane part of the union kicks the insane bit out? We need to expel Arizona, Texas and Florida from the U.S. I mean, enough is enough.

From Harper’s Weekly email:

A gunman opened fire on a “Congress on Your Corner” event held by Representative Gabrielle Giffords (D., Ariz.) in a mall in Tucson, killing six people and wounding more than a dozen. Representative Giffords, the primary target of the attack, was shot at point-blank range in the head but survived and remained in critical condition. Among the dead were U.S. District Court Judge John Roll and nine-year-old Christina Taylor-Green, who was born on September 11, 2001 and attended the meet-up after being elected to her elementary school’s student council. The gunman, Jared Lee Loughner, was apprehended and charged with numerous felonies, including murder and attempted assassination of a member of Congress. The FBI found an envelope at Loughner’s home labeled with the words, “I planned ahead,” “My assassination,” and “Giffords.” “Dear friends,” Loughner wrote on his MySpace page, “please don’t be mad at me. The literacy rate is below 5 percent. I haven’t talked to one person who is literate.” Clarence Dupnik, the sheriff of Pima County, where the shooting occurred, connected the act to “unbalanced people and how they respond to the vitriol that comes out of certain mouths about tearing down the government,” adding that Arizona was “the Mecca for prejudice and bigotry.”

In addition to expelling Arizona, Texas and Florida, Sarah Palin should be brought up on charges. She is clearly inciting violent behavior, as Dupnik alludes to above. In addition to the now-infamous crosshairs graphic, Palin and her myrmidons have been inciting violence around the country in other ways. Here’s a snip from a Move On email I got a couple days ago:

Windows were smashed at Representative Giffords’ district office last March just a few hours after the House vote on health care reform. At one of the infamous town hall events in August 2009, a man attending the event accidentally dropped a handgun on the floor that he had been hiding under his arm. And violent tendencies have been inflamed by the careless and irresponsible rhetoric of certain political leaders. Sarah Palin’s infamous “target list” displayed Democratic districts, including Rep. Giffords’, in crosshairs, as if viewed through a gunsight.

But, Move On, it it really “careless”? This appears to me to be a deliberate and planned campaign to, literally, target progreesives around the country. Let’s not be naive, folks. As the Move On message continues:

violent imagery was prominently featured during the last election. For instance, a rally for Rep. Giffords’ Republican opponent, Jesse Kelly, was promoted with the following notice: “Get on Target for Victory in November. Help remove Gabrielle Giffords from office. Shoot a fully automatic M16 with Jesse Kelly.”

Move On would like us all to sign a petition protesting this sort of vitriol and violence; it’s the least we can do. But what else should we do in this “culture war”? Are we merely going to continue signing petitions?

We need to find a way to bring Palin up on charges, for one thing, and to at minimum sanction Arizona and other states that harbor these criminals.

An interviewer for California Lawyer magazine asked Justice Antonin Scalia the following question:

In 1868, when the 39th Congress was debating and ultimately proposing the 14th Amendment, I don’t think anybody would have thought that equal protection applied to sex discrimination, or certainly not to sexual orientation. So does that mean that we’ve gone off in error by applying the 14th Amendment to both?

Misogynist and homophobe Scalia answered thus:

Yes, yes. Sorry, to tell you that. … But, you know, if indeed the current society has come to different views, that’s fine. You do not need the Constitution to reflect the wishes of the current society. Certainly the Constitution does not require discrimination on the basis of sex. The only issue is whether it prohibits it. It doesn’t. Nobody ever thought that that’s what it meant. Nobody ever voted for that. If the current society wants to outlaw discrimination by sex, hey we have things called legislatures, and they enact things called laws. You don’t need a constitution to keep things up-to-date. All you need is a legislature and a ballot box. You don’t like the death penalty anymore, that’s fine. You want a right to abortion? There’s nothing in the Constitution about that. But that doesn’t mean you cannot prohibit it. Persuade your fellow citizens it’s a good idea and pass a law. That’s what democracy is all about. It’s not about nine superannuated judges who have been there too long, imposing these demands on society.

Ah hem. The 14th Amendment was never intended to protect the “rights” of corporations, either, but it does. Why? Because the Supreme Court says so, that’s why. “Nobody ever voted for that,” to quote Scalia. And by what reasoning did the Court arrive at that decision? Because, you see, corporations are like people and therefore should have the same rights as people–that, in any case, was the reasoning of Court in the late 19th century.

But, per Scalia, women are apparently not people. I hereby declare that Justice Scalia is neither human nor slime, and should be disposed of immediately. The Scalliwag…. maybe he was remembering something the Centers for Disease Control said a few years ago. Remember, ladies? You are all pre-pregnant and are nothing more than incubators for future generations.

Or maybe Scalia is afraid of women and gayfolk; that would not be surprising considering these recent revelations about the conservative brain.

via Scalia: Women Don’t Have Constitutional Protection Against Discrimination.

Conservatives are more fearful and have larger “reptilian” brains, scientists have found.

Scientists have found that people with conservative views have brains with larger amygdalas, almond shaped areas in the centre of the brain often associated with anxiety and emotions.

On the otherhand, they have a smaller anterior cingulate, an area at the front of the brain associated with courage and looking on the bright side of life.

The “exciting” correlation was found by scientists at University College London who scanned the brains of two members of parliament and a number of students.

They found that the size of the two areas of the brain directly related to the political views of the volunteers.

However, as they were all adults, it was hard to say whether their brains had been born that way or had developed through experience.

via Political views ‘hard-wired’ into your brain – Telegraph.

In October, Henry Gifford and Gifford Fuel Saving Inc. filed a federal lawsuit against the USGBC and several of its directors seeking class action status.

At the heart of the 24-page complaint are claims by Gifford that the USGBC has deceived consumers and others by misrepresenting the benefits of LEED certification relating to energy efficiency and savings and attributes of the LEED rating system.Some of Gifford’s criticisms of LEED include that it:

• is not based on objective scientific criteria;
• is not based on actual building performance data but rather on projected energy use;
• does not require verification of data submitted in certification applications and does not require actual energy use data;
• is not based on actual measurements but rather computer modeling of anticipated energy use levels.

Other Gifford slams include that the USGBC does not have sufficient staff to evaluate applications for certification and that the USGBC has misrepresented to the public that LEED buildings perform 25-30 percent better than non-LEED buildings based on a USGBC initiated study by the New Buildings Institute (pdf) that Gifford claims is flawed.

Gifford claims that the marketplace, consumers, the environment and skilled professionals like himself with years of experience making safe, comfortable and energy-efficient environments are being harmed by LEED’s alleged misconduct.

corrected for punctuation and grammar via Federal lawsuit attacks LEED building rating system – AnnArbor.com.