"It starts to feel creepy..."

Thomas Friedman

Well, here I am quoting Thomas Freidman again. Here's a sample from his column entitled "A Warning From the Garden":

Don't know about you, but when I see things in nature that I've never seen in my life, like daffodils blooming in January, it starts to feel creepy, like a Twilight Zone segment... I don't care whether it is a federal gasoline tax, carbon tax, B.T.U. tax or cap-and-trade system, power utilities, factories and car owners have to be required to pay the real and full cost to society of the carbon they put into the atmosphere. And higher costs for fossil fuels make more costly clean alternatives more competitive... And prices matter. They drive more and cleaner energy choices. So when the president unveils his energy proposals, if they don't call for higher efficiency standards and higher prices for fossil fuels -- take your socks off yourself. It's going to get hot around here.

Are we going to do it? Are we going to save ourselves from climate catastrophe? Or do we simply not have the will to do it? Are we so attached to our "way of life" that we will commit suicide as a species in order to keep it?

Interesting

Here's a QuickVote poll on the CNN website:

Which senator's recently announced presidential bid is more likely to win your support?

Sen. Sam Brownback - 33%

Sen. Hillary Clinton - 67%

Taking away our freedoms

Frank Ford sent me an article entitled "Gonzales Questions Habeas Corpus" that is very, very disturbing indeed. Take a look:

In one of the most chilling public statements ever made by a U.S. Attorney General, Alberto Gonzales questioned whether the U.S. Constitution grants habeas corpus rights of a fair trial to every American.

Responding to questions from Sen. Arlen Specter at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Jan. 18, Gonzales argued that the Constitution doesn’t explicitly bestow habeas corpus rights; it merely says when the so-called Great Writ can be suspended.

“There is no expressed grant of habeas in the Constitution; there’s a prohibition against taking it away,” Gonzales said.

Gonzales’s remark left Specter, the committee’s ranking Republican, stammering.

“Wait a minute,” Specter interjected. “The Constitution says you can’t take it away except in case of rebellion or invasion. Doesn’t that mean you have the right of habeas corpus unless there’s a rebellion or invasion?”

Gonzales continued, “The Constitution doesn’t say every individual in the United States or citizen is hereby granted or assured the right of habeas corpus. It doesn’t say that. It simply says the right shall not be suspended” except in cases of rebellion or invasion.

“You may be treading on your interdiction of violating common sense,” Specter said.

While Gonzales’s statement has a measure of quibbling precision to it, his logic is troubling because it would suggest that many other fundamental rights that Americans hold dear also don’t exist because the Constitution often spells out those rights in the negative.

This kind of "quibbling" does, indeed, indicate that Gonzales wants to believe that we have no right to habeas corpus. Sometimes, I just can't believe that this is happening - that the freedoms we have cherished for so long in this country are eroding before our very eyes.

The real enemy

Succinctly put:

The only ones who can destroy American freedom are government officials who claim the right to read our mail, listen to our phone calls, bug our e-mail, and deny some of us the right to have lawyers to defend us. They are the real enemy.

-- Andrew Greeley

Gobal warming summary

There's a commments thread over at AMERICAblog about global warming deniers (apparently there are a lot of them) and one person (whose moniker is Joe Blow) left this excellent summary of what is happening:

Global warming is a fact. It is also a fact that it is caused by rising levels of CO2 and CH4. It is a fact that human activity has "liberated" enormous quantities of both since we started burning fossil fuels - that is, coal, oil, methane, etc. laid down millions of years ago. We are heating up this planet and we will see signifcant changes in our lifetimes. Millions of people are at risk of environmental catastrophy. Loss of water sources, severe storms, changed weather patterns, extinction of animals, etc.

CO2 does not reflect solar radiation so the suns rays can come through and heat the earth. It does reflect infra-red radiation so the heat given off by the earth's surface does not escape into space as much as it used to. The amount trapped is proportional to the abundance of greenhouse gases. Our current CO2 concentration is TWICE as much as any measured in the last 500,000 years and it is expected to TRIPLE In the next ten years if nothing is done.

We are reaching the saturation point in the oceans and they will soon turn acidic and no longer absorb more CO2. We can already measure the effects on plankton. The turn to the worse will be RAPID and eventually UNSTOPPABLE.

We need to do everything we can right now to cut emissions.

I wish I could copy that on a card and personally place it in the hands of every senator and congressperson - not to mention the president and his cabinet.

John Muir

John Muir

I happened to find the following quote on a blog I regularly visit:

Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul.

-- John Muir

The name seemed vaguely familiar to me but I couldn't quite place it so I decided I needed to find out who, in fact, John Muir was. I have simply been rivited in reading about him:

John Muir (April 21, 1838 - December 24, 1914) was one of the earliest modern preservationists. His letters, essays, and books telling of his adventures in nature, and wild life, especially in the Sierra Nevada Mountains of California, were read by millions and are still popular today. His direct activism helped to save the Yosemite Valley and other wilderness areas. The Sierra Club, which he founded, is now one of the most important conservation organizations in the United States. But more than that his vision of nature's value for its own sake and for its spiritual, not just practical, benefits to mankind helped to change the way we look at the natural world. (from the Wikipedia article)

Here's something he said that I wish we would pay attention to:

No dogma taught by the present civilization seems to form so insuperable an obstacle in a way of a right understanding of the relations which culture sustains as to wilderness, as that which declares that the world was made especially for the uses of men. Every animal, plant, and crystal controverts it in the plainest terms. Yet it is taught from century to century as something ever new and precious, and in the resulting darkness the enormous conceit is allowed to go unchallenged.

He would be horrified, if he were alive today, by what we have done to the earth.

You can support the Sierra Club by going here.

UPDATE: Here's a link that might interest you: John Muir Trust. It was brought to my attention by commenter Tim.

She's in!

Senator Hillary Clinton

So here's part of what CNN has to say:

Democratic Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton launched her run for the White House Saturday by setting up an exploratory committee to test opinions and raise money. "I'm in. And I'm in to win," she wrote on her Web site. "I believe that together we can bring the leadership that this country needs." Her move came days after Sen. Barack Obama began his run.
...
Clinton's announcement comes two years to the day the next president will be inaugurated: January 20, 2009.
...
Should she win, she would be the first woman to serve as president of the United States -- and the first presidential spouse to do so as well.

So does she have a chance? It's hard to tell. And, mind you, I'm still disappointed in her for voting for the war. But I would really love, before I die, to have the chance to vote for a woman for president.

I like this:

What we need is Star Peace and not Star Wars.

- Mikhail S. Gorbachev

Please go read this article.

I want to recommend a short article called "It All Started With an American Taliban" by David Swanson. It's really impossible to give you an excerpt that will do it justice. It's a short article so just go read it. It's about what the government did to John Walker Lindh. It's also about Jesselyn Radack, a member of the Justice Department who was attacked by the government for simply saying that "the FBI could not legally interrogate Lindh, knowing that his father had retained counsel on his behalf." We need to know what our government has done - is doing. I will now tell you how the article ends:

The Justice Department aggressively attacked Radack, costing her a job there and a later job with a private law firm, threatening her license to practice law, damaging her reputation, denying her income, placing her on the "no-fly" list, and endlessly harassing her. Her book recounts the hell she went through.

As we watch the Libby trial unfold, let's bear in mind that this is what it is about: retribution against Joe Wilson who told the truth about the lie that launched the war. His wife was collateral damage.

Please go read the whole thing.

Friday cat blogging!

Sox
Photo by Paul Rogers

Paul Rogers writes the following:

Here are a few pictures of next door cat Sox. In one picture he looks mean, but he's really saying "Please, please pick me up!" Sox comes by to watch the birds feed from under the truck and is far enough away that they don't worry about him.

You can see another picture of Sox over on my other blog, Meditation Matters.

By the way, if any human companions of cats are looking at this, Sox should not have his collar on so loose. That's a good way for a cat to get accidentally choked or hanged.

Ney's sentencing

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Blame it on the booze. I'm sick of Republicans weasling out of responsibility for their actions by declaring themselves alcoholics. You know, alcohol doesn't change your values; it reveals your values. In vino veritas and all that. Take a look at part of the CNN article on the matter:

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Former Rep. Bob Ney was sentenced Friday to 30 months in federal prison for his role in a congressional bribery scandal.

Ney, the first congressman ensnared in the case, pleaded guilty to trading official favors for golf trips, tickets, meals and campaign donations from disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff.
...
According to letters submitted in court, Ney was a functioning alcoholic who often began drinking early in the morning and rarely made it through the day without a drink.

The letters, including one from his doctor and another from a former staff member, were filed by Ney's defense teams in hopes of convincing the judge to lighten the Ohio Republican's sentence.
...
Ney also wanted [U.S. District Judge Ellen Segal] Huvelle to rule that his corruption was influenced by alcohol addiction. His lawyers had asked that the six-term lawmaker be recommended for a prison drug abuse program, which could make him eligible for release in about a year.

When he agreed to plead guilty, Ney apologized to his constituents and said he was checking into an alcohol treatment program.

His strategy doesn't seem to have worked as he will serve his time in a federal prison. Good.

"24"

You know, I've watched "24" just a few times and I've really been appalled by it for its portrayal of Muslims and its approval of torture. So I'm glad to see this article on the CNN website entitled "Muslims protest '24'". Here's part of what it says:

CLIFTON, New Jersey (AP) -- Two years ago, Muslim groups protested when the plot of the hit Fox drama '24' cast Islamic terrorists as the villains who launched a stolen nuclear missile in an attack on America.

Now, after a one-year respite during which Russian separatists played the bad guys on the critically acclaimed series, Muslims are back in the evil spotlight. Unlike last time, when agent Jack Bauer saved the day, the terrorists this time have already succeeded in detonating a nuclear bomb in a Los Angeles suburb.

Being portrayed again as the heartless wrongdoers has drawn renewed protests from Muslim groups, including one that had a meeting with Fox executives two years ago over the issue.

"The overwhelming impression you get is fear and hatred for Muslims," said Rabiah Ahmed, a spokeswoman for the Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations. She said Thursday she was distressed by this season's premiere. "After watching that show, I was afraid to go to the grocery store because I wasn't sure the person next to me would be able to differentiate between fiction and reality."
...
Sohail Mohammed, a New Jersey immigration lawyer who represented scores of detainees caught up in the post September 11, 2001 dragnet, watched the episode depicting the nuclear attack with an Associated Press reporter.

"I was shocked," he said. "Somewhere, some lunatic out there watching this will do something to an innocent American Muslim because he believes what he saw on TV."

Suppose Jews were consistently depicted as wrongdoers and enemies of America on a major television program. Would that be considered acceptable?

Here's an excerpt from the Wikipedia article on "24" under the heading of "criticism":

On the January 16, 2007 edition of Countdown with Keith Olbermann, the liberal political commentator Keith Olbermann accused 24 of being "propaganda designed to keep people thinking about domestic terrorism to keep us scared". He suggested the show actually has a political agenda to aid the Republican Party, rhetorically asking, "is it a program-length commercial for one political party?" and noted, "if the irrational right can claim that the news is fixed to try to alter people's minds or that networks should be boycotted for nudity or for immorality, shouldn't those same groups be saying 24 should be taken off of TV because it's naked brainwashing?" The criticism by Olbermann followed 24's January 15 broadcast, in which a small nuclear weapon is detonated in Valencia, California by a terrorist group.

I agree.

Let's hear it for Letterman!

Take a look:

And in the interview President Bush said that popularity is not his goal. Popularity is not his goal. And I thought, well, mission accomplished.

- David Letterman

This is reprehensible

This just goes to show how important it is that corporations be regulated. Today I found an article entitled "Nicotine Boost Was Deliberate, Study Says". Take a look:

Data supplied by tobacco companies strongly suggest that in recent years manufacturers deliberately boosted nicotine levels in cigarettes to more effectively hook smokers, Harvard researchers conclude in a study being released today.

The companies increasingly used tobacco richer in nicotine and made design changes to give smokers more puffs per cigarette, according to the analysis from the Harvard School of Public Health. The report expands on a landmark Massachusetts Department of Public Health study issued last August showing that the amount of nicotine that could be inhaled from cigarettes increased an average of 10 percent from 1998 through 2004.

The Harvard researchers, who corroborated the basic findings of the state study, wanted to determine why cigarettes were delivering more nicotine. The state report did not address causes .
...
"It was systematic, it was pervasive, it involved all the manufacturers, and it was by design," said Dr. Howard Koh, an associate dean at the Harvard School of Public Health and an author of the study.

Another author said that the likelihood that the nicotine increase happened by chance was less than 1 in 1,000.
...
"The tobacco industry is clearly looking to addict people quickly and to keep them heavily addicted by making it really, really hard for them to quit," said Diane Pickles, executive director of the advocacy group Tobacco Free Massachusetts, which was not involved with the study.

The Harvard researchers, as well as antismoking forces, said the study offers compelling evidence that the federal government should regulate tobacco much the way pharmaceuticals are controlled by the US Food and Drug Administration.

I do think we need regulation like that. The tobacco companies are clearly immoral.

Doomsday Clock moved forward

Well, it distresses me to call your attention to an AP article entitled "'Doomsday Clock' moves nearer midnight". Here's how it gets started:

LONDON - The world has nudged closer to a nuclear apocalypse and environmental disaster, a trans-Atlantic group of prominent scientists warned Wednesday, pushing the hand of its symbolic Doomsday Clock two minutes closer to midnight.

It was the fourth time since the end of the Cold War that the clock has ticked forward, this time from 11:53 to 11:55, amid fears over what the scientists are describing as "a second nuclear age" prompted largely by atomic standoffs with Iran and North Korea.

But the organization added that the "dangers posed by climate change are nearly as dire as those posed by nuclear weapons."

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, founded in 1945 as a newsletter distributed among nuclear physicists concerned by the possibility of nuclear war, has since grown into an organization focused more generally on manmade threats to the survival of human civilization.

Now here's something else that disturbs me. You know, I check the CNN website everyday to see what the mainstream press is reporting. Perhaps you know that CNN has a U.S. edition and an international edition. Well, the Doomsday Clock story was picked up by the international edition but not the American one. So how are we to interpret that? Do Americans just not want to know? Do we not deserve to know? Has some decided that it's better if we don't know? Who made that judgment call and why?

Welcoming the stranger

Linda Cole sent me the following reflection that moved me very much. It is entitled "On the Journey to Universal Solidarity" and it was written by Clara Fraschetti:

I recently spent a week in a small rural village called Sega, in Ghana, West Africa. My purpose was to establish a partnership with the local school where my organization, Intercordia Canada, hopes to place student volunteers. One day I met with about 50 parents, some of whom would be asked to host our students for three months this summer. Mister Godwin, the head of the school, introduced me and asked me to say a few words about Intercordia. When I was done, Mister Godwin asked if any parents had questions. A small, older gentleman stood up, his back hunched, his skin wrinkled by the hot sun, and he asked in Dambe, "What are your first impressions of our community?" Mister Godwin translated as I described my time in Sega. I told them about my first morning and how the children had immediately taken my hand and led me through the village. As we passed people on the road, they recognized right away that I was new in town and most nodded or said "You are welcome!" Some enthusiastically took my face in their hands and said something in Dambe and then repeated "You are welcome! You are welcome!" I looked at the man standing there amongst the other parents and told him that if a stranger came to my neighbourhood, with different coloured skin, who dressed differently, no one would offer a greeting. In fact people might look at that person with suspicion and turn away. The old man looked at me with concerned eyes and said, "But, that is no way to treat a stranger." I humbly agreed with him. Then he said with conviction, "Then you must send your students, so that we can help to develop your community."

That is so beautiful. You know, reading this made me quite sad - sad that our culture is so marked by suspicion and hostility. What would it be like to live in a culture in which a basic value was to welcome the stranger? Not only would newcomers benefit but we all would be deeply enriched. And yes, we need help from people like those of Sega in Ghana to help us develop communities that manifest this level of compassion and lovingkindness.

About Iran

I want to share with you a couple of brief excerpts from an article entitled "Hoping for a Miracle, against All the Evidence":

Does anyone suppose that we can send bombers to strike Iran's nuclear enrichment plants -- widely dispersed and dug deeply into the granite under mountains -- and not expect that action to set the Middle East on fire and paralyze economies at home and abroad by sending the price of oil beyond $100 or even $200 a barrel?

Does anyone think that Iran's ayatollahs wouldn't signal Iraqi Shiite militias and Iran's own deeply embedded commando teams inside Iraqi to launch new and deadly attacks against our troops scattered across the Iraqi battlegrounds and cut our long and vulnerable supply lines that feed, fuel and provide ammunition to our forces? And what signals might the Iranians send to their Hezbollah allies in Lebanon and beyond, and to their Shiite allies in western Afghanistan?

The Iraq Study Group certainly urged the Bush administration to engage with Iran and Syria, but they recommended diplomatic engagement, not military engagements.
...
Expanding a war that we're losing in Iraq to a neighboring nation three times larger, with a much better army and far more whacked-out religious fanatics, is hardly something that our commander in chief should even be dropping hints about at this juncture in a growing disaster.
...
Perhaps it's time for all of us to hope for a miracle. We can all hope, and pray too, that this commander in chief comes to his senses before he sets our world afire in the two years he has left in the highest office in the land.

I just know Bush wants to nuke Iran. Can anybody stop him?

Buddhist sworn in

Mazie Hirono

Well, I certainly didn't discover this in the mainstream press. Take a look at this excerpt from an article entitled "Buddhist congresswoman sworn in, urges tolerance":

WASHINGTON, USA -- While a new, Muslim member of Congress sparked a controversy for taking his oath of office with a Quran instead of a Bible on Thursday, another new member who is Buddhist was sworn in with no book at all.

Rep. Mazie Hirono, a Hawaii Democrat who was raised in the Buddhist tradition, said, "I don't have a book. ... But I certainly believe in the precepts of Buddhism and that of tolerance of other religions and integrity and honesty."

Members of the House for the 110th Congress were sworn in en masse, then had individual swearing-in ceremonies with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif. In many cases, members rest a hand on a Bible while taking the oath, but they're not required to do so.

We're supposed to be a free country. None of this should matter. But isn't it interesting how people get all upset about Muslim but are cool about a Buddhist.