Archive for Militarism

A Culture That Condones The Killing Of Children And Teaches Children To Kill

December 14, 2012 / / Comments Off

The Sandy Hook massacre isn’t just about the need for gun control laws, it is about a culture that condones the killing of children and teaches children that killing is okay.

It is about a country addicted to violence on television and movie screens.

It is about cuts in education spending.

It is about giving the military free access to our schools where they regale our children with romanticized delusions of military righteousness.

It is about environmental and health policies that expose our children to all manner of toxins in the air, land and water.

It is about thinking we have the right to kill children with drones or by dropping toxic munitions on their countries that cause birth defects and miscarriages.

It is about saddling our children with crippling education debt and no prospect for jobs.

It is about telling boys (and men) they have to be tough and to fight and kill for what they want or think is right.

It is about a national policy that denies children basic rights and systemically teaches them that violence is okay.

And it is about a media so insensitive that it thinks it is okay to shove a microphone in the face of young victims in the name of sensationalized 24/7 cable “news” while under-reporting the root causes of this tragedy.

Sandy Hook did not happen because of a lone, disturbed young man and it is not an isolated incident. It is an epidemic and we are all to blame.  And today (and tomorrow and every day after that) is the time to confront this self-inflicted tragedy.

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Will We Drown In Denial Or Face The Sea Change of Climate Reality

November 1, 2012 / / Comments Off

Of all the searing images in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, the one that I find most disturbing is this picture of the guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier which remained throughout the storm at great personal danger. That we must honor our military dead even at the risk of completely unnecessary loss of life speaks volumes about our priorities in this country.

I rarely watch cable news, but I found myself obsessively switching between a local news channel, CNN and The Weather Channel for much of the storm.  There was much valuable and urgent information shared although much of it looked like a contest between reporters to see who could report while standing in the deepest water and stay standing (and I absolutely need to say that throughout the storm, I consistently found critical information being disseminated on Twitter well before I saw it on television). But not once did I hear any mention of the many nuclear power plants in the storm’s path, or a discussion of what to do if your house is flooded with toxic waste or the lack of plans to protect oil and gas facilities. No analysis of what climate change denial and inaction has cost us.

Nor was there mention of the fact that we’ve known that storms like this have been an event waiting to happen.  Instead, as I pointed out a few days ago, we have continued to beat the drum in the fight against “terrorism”, pouring billions of dollars into destroying other countries, killing innocent civilians and creating conditions in which terrorism ferments and while we’re at it doing an ace job of brainwashing ourselves into being perpetually paranoid and terrified while at the same time allowing the infrastructure of our own country to go to hell.

As Chris Mooney pointed out in Grist, NASA warned about an event like Sandy in 2006:

Scientists at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York have been studying that city’s vulnerability to hurricane impacts in a changing world, and calculated that with 1.5 feet of sea level rise, a worst-case-scenario Category 3 hurricane could submerge “the Rockaways, Coney Island, much of southern Brooklyn and Queens, portions of Long Island City, Astoria, Flushing Meadows-Corona Park, Queens, lower Manhattan, and eastern Staten Island from Great Kills Harbor north to the Verrazano Bridge.

And of course, that wasn’t the only warning.  WE KNEW IT COULD HAPPEN.  And we did nothing.  As a result we are now contending with this:

Consider what Kathy Waters, American Public Transportation Association vice president for member services had to say about the New York subway system,

The New York system, although there are some components that have been upgraded over the years, has a lot of antique components where the vendor has been out of business for 50 years. (emphasis mine)

And then there is this from NRDC’s Amy Mall:

Under the Clean Water Act, there is something called the Spill Prevention, Control, and Countermeasure (SPCC) rule which includes requirements for oil spill prevention, preparedness, and response to prevent oil discharges to navigable waters and adjoining shorelines…Sounds like a no-brainer. But in Fiscal Year 2011, EPA officials visited 120 sites oil and gas development sites and found 105 were out of compliance– 87.5%…Almost every single oil and gas site inspected lacked a mandatory spill prevention plan meant to protect our rivers and streams. (emphasis mine)
 

Internet, cable and phone services were also significantly disrupted and yet two days later with thousands of people still without access, I heard a report of a FEMA official telling people to file claims on the internet.  And he expects people who are stranded in flooded buildings to do that how?

And,

Raw sewage, industrial chemicals and floating debris filled flooded waterways around New York City on Tuesday…

…The best officials could do was urge residents to steer clear of the contaminated waters.

Incidentally, they sent that warning out by email.  To people who obviously were going to have trouble accessing their email.

The storm also precipitated numerous problems at various nuclear power plants, all of which are aging quickly past the lifespans they were designed for and some of which are the same design as the Fukushima facility in Japan,

Storm-related complications were blamed this week for forcing three nuclear reactors offline – Nine Mile Point Unit 1 northwest of Syracuse, N.Y., Indian Point Unit 3 about 25 miles north of New York City and the Salem plant’s Unit 1 on the Delaware River in New Jersey.

Meanwhile, rising waters along the Barnegat Bay prompted officials to declare an “alert,” the second-lowest in a four-tiered warning system, at Oyster Creek in New Jersey…

…NRC officials reported that other plants continued operating but reduced their electrical output as a precaution, including the Millstone plant’s Unit 3 reactor in Waterford, Conn., Vermont Yankee south of Brattleboro, Vt., and both reactors at the Limerick nuclear plant about 20 miles northwest of Philadelphia. The storm also appeared to knock out emergency sirens used to notify residents who live near the Oyster Creek and Peach Bottom plants in Pennsylvania, according to NRC reports. (emphasis mine)

These are the kinds of issues we need to confront if we are to stand a prayer of survival.  They aren’t theoretical or in the future.  They are real and they are right now.  We need to see this as literally the moment for a sea-change in attitude.  It is not acceptable for the media to continue to ignore climate change,

Last year at least 7,140 journalists and opinion writers published some 19,000 stories on climate change, compared to more than 11,100 reporters who filed 32,400 stories in 2009, according to DailyClimate.org…

…Particularly noticeable was the silence from the nation’s editorial boards: In 2009, newspapers published 1,229 editorials on the topic. Last year, they published less than 580 – half as many, according to DailyClimate.org’s archives.

And it is not acceptable for our politicians to continue to chest thump  the drums of war while maintaining a deafening silence on climate change. Protecting symbols of military prowess while our cities drown isn’t honorable, it is an act of national suicide.

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The Day Before The Day After Tomorrow–Meditations On A Storm And A Young Friend Who Wants To Serve His Country

October 28, 2012 / / Comments Off

In the pre-hurricane calm before Sandy hits, I am sitting by a window (where I probably don’t want to sit tomorrow), watching the skies darken and thinking of a young man that I’ve known since he was in diapers.  After high school, he joined the army and last week, he left to serve in a war zone.  All we can do now is pray that he comes back alive, hopefully without his body or mind broken.

———-

They are now saying that 10 million people could lose power from Hurricane Sandy.  One of the reasons that may happen is that for decades now, we have done far less than we should to protect our utility grids.  Water may be compromised and communications systems too.  Some of that would be inevitable with a storm this size, but proper upgrading and maintenance along the way might well have mitigated that.

What few are talking about and which may be a far larger worry is the potential danger to the 16 nuclear power plants that are in harms way.  After Fukushima, we should have no illusions that these plants can withstand catastrophic weather.  And we should be mindful of the massive amounts of toxic materials that may blow into our water and onto our shores as the storm blows through.

———-

I began by mentioned the young family friend now serving in the military, in a continuing war that serves only to continue to destabilize the world.  Yes, there will always be a few that will want to bomb and destroy us, and perhaps they will get away with killing some of us.  But no terrorist can ever hope to accomplish what climate changed weather has and most certainly will continue to do when it comes to wreaking havoc and destruction.

Yet throughout this presidential campaign, it has been business as usual with the war talk–why we must use drones and must fight terrorists without even a peep about climate change or the environment.

My young friend is a patriot.  He wants to defend the country.  Imagine if instead of fighting wars of empire that serve only to destroy and bankrupt, we brought our soldiers home and asked them to help secure our aging and  dangerous nuclear plants as best we can?  What if we asked them to install solar and wind installations?  What if we asked them to help trim trees off power lines and replace aging water pipes and roads. What if we put the formidable force that is the U.S. military to work doing things that would actually protect the country?  And if we still wanted to send some of our troops overseas, we could help other nations do the same, making them safer and less likely to hate us.

It is too late for this storm, but how many more times does this need to happen before we finally say no more to business as usual and start using our resources to address the real needs of climate change and stop the destructive foreign policy that drains us of our economic resources, destroys other countries and puts our troops in harms way?

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The Media’s Failed Look At What Is Happening On The Streets And A Personal Reflection

October 9, 2011 / / Comments Off

Occupation for Dummies

There has been no shortage of media confusion in DC this week regarding the OccupyDC and October2011 Stop The Machine actions. I got into a conversation yesterday with a reporter from a local television station who was interviewing people at OccupyDC, she seemed to genuinely want to understand the difference. I pointed out that it seemed like very few members of the Mainstream Media had bothered to check the websites for the two groups which would clarify quite a lot.

Isn’t this sort of like the opposite of the Tea Party, she wondered. I pointed out that these movements represented people who were out of work, had lost their homes, had no health insurance, and wanted an end to  militarism without end and the number of people impacted by those issues is a lot larger than the number of people who identify with the Tea Party.

But the most idiotic media confusion in DC this week has been who was where. It wasn’t so complicated–OccupyDC at McPherson Square, Stop The Machine at Freedom Plaza. Yet in Sunday morning’s Washington Post, with OccupyDC at McPherson for over a week and Stop The Machine in place since Thursday, the caption writer for this photo still got it wrong.

The WaPo caption erroneously reads, "A crowd gathers Thursday at Freedom Plaza for the first day of the OccupyDC rally..."

And the headline–hello? It isn’t the same as the one used online, but, “The common man”? Really? Which century is this? They also apparently didn’t look at the photo which rather clearly shows the common woman.

With this kind of media, no wonder many people are confused about what is happening in the streets.

The best way to understand the movement that is taking root everywhere is to go find out for yourself.  Yes, there is an Occupy near you.

Several people have said to me, oh it is just a bunch of kids.  No, it is not.  And it’s not just a bunch of hippie peaceniks either.  It ranges from toddlers who are there with their parents (there was a little area with toys and crayons at OccupyDC yesterday) to elders with plenty of folks in between.  I talked for a bit with a young man in an army uniform. It was very courageous for him to be there. He had been to Iraq once and was due to ship out again soon, but he said he wasn’t planning to re-deploy, what he had experienced on his first tour had made him realize that militarism was deeply flawed.  He looked sad and wise beyond his years.

And do not underestimate the numbers, it isn’t just a hundred here and a thousand there, it is far, far larger than that.

A crowd shot at Occupy Wall Street--that is A LOT of people

This isn’t about one issue, it is about the American people connecting all the issues and finally saying enough.  There are those who have criticized what is going on for not having a clear statement of purpose or intent.  What they miss is that people everywhere have decided to take back the commons, and that is intention enough.

There is more to say, much more, the time I have spent on the street this last week has been transformative.  I have re-connected with old friends, made new ones and for the first time in a long time felt genuine hope.  Don’t be afraid, come out and join us.

Addenda:  The amount of inaccurate reporting involving Occupy DC and Stop the Machine is becoming epic.  Today the Washington Post reports that OccupyDC may stay in Freedom Plaza past the time time they have a permit.  Sorry, wrong group.  Yahoo News is now calling the pepper-spraying of protesters at the Air and Space Museum on Saturday a riot and ABCNews7 tweeted this morning that at least one person planned to stay past the permit time in Freedom Plaza although the article they linked to actually says a number of people plan to stay.  And that is just today.  The amount of media stupid when it comes to reporting what has transpired over the last week plus in DC is to the point where it is hard to see it as anything but deliberate.

 

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At What Cost?

May 2, 2011 / / Comments Off

And so we finally got Bin Laden.  In the run-up to the President’s announcement as the news pundits could hardly find enough superlatives to fill the time, my only thought was “at what cost?”.

This war of retribution has cost us dearly, and by us I mean the global us.  In Afghanistan and Iraq the most, countries ruined, so many innocent lives lost.

Here in the U.S., not only did we lose those who died on September 11th, but so many who were sent to fight, dead and maimed too.  And in the process, we have all but bankrupted our country, social services decimated, education cut, children hungry, people without jobs or homes or healthcare.

How sad that this is how we define victory.

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And That Was The Day That Was–Monday Edition

March 21, 2011 / / Comments Off

Epic Days are becoming far too common place, and not in a good way.  From today’s headlines–A no fly zone in Libya that seems to be taking out about as many civilians as targets in order to support rebels of uncertain political aspirations (perhaps on the assumption that they could hardly be crazier than Gaddafi and dammit, we need that oil).  Memo to the good people of Sudan, Ivory Coast and other places where innocent civilians are under siege–sorry, your lives aren’t worth jack unless you’ve got something we want.

And while everyone is totally distracted, Israel starts in on Gaza again.  Meanwhile existing home sales skidded, well actually nose-dived would be a better adjective, the NRC says no changes needed in the U.S. nuclear program while the Japanese figure out how to deal with radioactive lettuce and milk and still smoking reactors not to mention the significant percentage of their country that just got trashed by Mother Nature.

The World Bank says no worries though, the Japanese disaster won’t have a long term effect on the global economy. Oh and trophy pictures have surfaced of U.S. soldiers gloating over dead civilians in Afghanistan, which couldn’t possibly be true because Abu Ghraib was just a few bad apples.

I probably missed a few things, but truly that is enough, and that was just today.  Dear ones, we cannot continue like this.  Kurt Vonnegut warned us about becoming what we pretend to be.  But we seem hellbent in doing just that and it is a very sorry sight.

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Saturday Night Oil Slick Dictator Overthrowing Nuclear Rant

March 19, 2011 / / Comments Off

Early Saturday evening I decided to just ignore the fact that President Obama decided to start another war on a weekend after we’d just spent a week being totally traumatized by the disaster in Japan. I mean really? This couldn’t have waited until Monday? So I selfishly took two hours off to watch a cheesy movie without my laptop at my side. I know, you can see this coming– the second the credits are rolling I tune back in and bam! Now we have an oil slick too? I need to join a union, didn’t they bring us weekends?

But let’s go back to that morally uplifting idea of helping the Libyan rebels by enforcing a no-fly zone because the dude in charge is bombing his own people. Yes, I’m all about supporting people who are overthrowing dictators. Especially dictators that are bat-shit crazy. But guess what–that isn’t why we’re there and anyhow, we bomb innocent civilians all the time–think Afghanistan and Pakistan. If it  actually was the reason why we’re now lobbing missiles, don’t you think maybe we might have possibly put in an appearance in other countries with violent ruthless leaders? The Congo and Sudan come to mind. Burma, Indonesia Uganda. I could keep going.

And doesn’t this sound scary familiar–shouldn’t take too long we’re told, it’s about taking out strategic targets, not bombing civilians. Oh yeah and there is an Al Queda connection. Only a matter of days until we’re there to rescue women too. But guess what, it’s not about that either–the reason we are really there–one word and it isn’t plastics–OIL.  Oil that we lust after that has the unmitigated chutzpah to be under their sand.

But hey it’s March, how are your brackets working out? We now return you to your regularly scheduled reality show.

Rant over, feeling much better and looking forward to whatever tomorrow’s crisis du jour might be.

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What We Should Really Be Scared Of

December 2, 2010 / / Comments Off

Donna Smith makes the excellent point that it isn’t WikiLeaks that is killing America, it is lack of healthcare:

Today, in cites and states across the United States, 123 people died because they lacked enough money to buy healthcare services.  That brings the annual death toll for 2010 to 41,082.

WikiLeaks had nothing to do with the deaths of the 123 people who died today or any of the 41,082 who died so far this year.

The 123 who died today did so with the full knowledge of all who allowed their deaths.  The 123 who died today might have lived if they had access to appropriate healthcare.  The 123 who died got no mention on any news program or website – liberal, conservative or otherwise.  So much for the value of 123 human lives.

And all that TSA groping and x-raying didn’t save them either.

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We Are A Self-Terrorizing Nation

November 18, 2010 / / Comments Off

During a week where our government has been trying to sell us on the idea that  being groped and radiated will make us safe, it occurs to me that we have become a self-sustaining terrorized state.  We don’t actually need terrorists to attack us, we just terrorize ourselves.

Not only that but our military is out to get us too.  A few weeks ago I pointed to the good folks down at Ft. Knox who ran exercises that caused fires that were so bad that a half hour down the road, the entire city of Louisville had an air pollution alert.  And now down in Tennessee, a plant that produces nuclear fuel and processes uranium for the Navy is polluting the bejeepers out of the Nolichucky River.

I have heard people say well that is just the way it is today.  But you know what, where is that written?  Why are these damaging absurdities acceptable?  We live in a country with shocking numbers of unemployed, homeless, hungry people without health care, we pollute our water and foul our air, send our children to fight in wars that are causing a lot more problems than they are solving, allow corporations to be people who disenfranchise real people and then just accept that getting groped at the airport will make us safe.  From whom?

We have met the enemy and he is us.

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Don’t Get Cooked For Thanksgiving–Opting Out Of The New Airport Scanners

November 14, 2010 / / Comments Off

Unfortunately for those of us flying the formerly friendly skies to get to Grandma’s for Thanksgiving, the turkey may not be the only thing that is getting cooked this year thanks to the new body scanners now in place in many airports.

The TSA originally said that these machines would be used only for secondary screening, for those passengers that set off an alarm at the walk-through metal detector or Explosives Trace Detection (ETD) machine. They are now being used as primary screening at 45 airports, to take nude images of passengers who have done nothing more suspicious than present a boarding pass.

And while the privacy issue is a major concern, what ought to be scaring us a lot more is that these machines are x-raying us.  And there is absolutely no such thing as a safe dose of radiation, which is a long proven cause of cancer, because radioactive load in our bodies is cumulative and every dose, no matter how small adds to that and can lead to cancer,

Backscatter X-ray uses ionizing radation, a known cumulative health hazard, to produce images of passengers bodies. Children, prengant women, the elderly, and those with defective DNA repair mechanisms are considered to be especially susceptible to the type of DNA damage caused by ionizing radiation. Also at high risk are those who have had, or currently have, skin cancer. Ionizing radiation’s effects are cumulative, meaning that each time you are exposed you are adding to your risk of developing cancer. Since the dosage of radiation from the backscatter X-ray machines is absorbed almsot entirely by the skin and tissue directly under the skin, averaging the dose over the whole body gives an inaccurate picture of the actual harm…

…Another type of device uses millimeter wave technology, which if improperly calibrated can cause burns. Less is known about the potential health risks of the millimeter wave devices than those of backscatter X-ray, and as with the backscatter devices, no independent testing has been conducted.

While you can opt out, be aware that TSA is now using,

an “enhanced pat down” in many instances. These pat downs are much more rigorous and often include the TSA using their palms to touch your genitals in a manner that could feel like sexual assault.

But isn’t national safety more important?  Consider this: a group of scientists have raised significant concerns including that the additional risk of additional radiation is about the same as the risk of dying in a terrorist attack and that the amount of radiation that these machines give off may actually be much higher than is being reported.  In addition, the Allied Pilots Association is recommending that their pilots opt out and demand to be patted down instead.

And let’s  bear in mind that public safety is only trotted out when it is convenient in this country.  the EPA allows who knows how much pollution to be legally dumped in our air and water and on our land, the military regularly pollutes wherever they want with no real regard for public safety, we allowed BP to dump shocking amounts of dispersant in the Gulf of Mexico with no regard for our food chain, our roads are a dangerous disgrace, and on and on.

Also it helps to know who has been cheerleading these machines.  Does the name Michael Chertoff ring a bell? And funny thing, these babies are quite lucrative,

Today, 40 body scanners are in use at 19 U.S. airports. The number is expected to skyrocket at least in part because of the Christmas Day incident. The Transportation Security Administration this week said it will order 300 more machines.

In the summer, TSA purchased 150 machines from Rapiscan with $25 million in American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funds.

Mother Jones has a lot more background on who is hawking these machines here.

Which brings us to this–Wednesday November 24th is National Opt-Out Day.  If you are traveling on that day, if faced with these scanners, opt out and go through the pat-down.  We need to say no to these machines that are both dangerous and an assault on our privacy.  If enough people do it, it will lead to a massive slow down on the busiest travel day of the year and that will send a message that is hard to ignore.

Honestly, if I have to opt out of the scanners, and go through a pat-down, if anyone gropes my personal parts in that manner, I cannot swear that I will not haul out and punch them, and I suspect most people will feel grossly violated by this procedure. But these scanners are dangerous and not an appreciable contribution to public safety. Perhaps as an alternative, we could all just travel naked and they’d have to arrest us all for public nudity…

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If you’re not already outraged, watch this, you will be–since when are three year old kids who just had their teddy bears taken away considered terror risks?  And then read this.

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