Wheelhouse

Senator Carl Levin’s Office Occupation

The Truth About Recycling, an articled published by The Economist, the conservative business journal from Great Britain, on june 9th, 2007 concluded with “If done right, there is no doubt that recycling saves energy and raw materials, and reduces pollution. . . In the end, says Ms.Krebs, “waste is really a design flaw.”

Like the Climate Change debate, critics had been able to delay implementation of comprehensive recycling by putting out misleading information for years about how recycling doesn’t really work and may even be bad. The height of this ruse may have been when libertarians Penn and Teller took on the cause of trying to discredit recycling efforts in their show Penn & Teller: Bullshit!.

Seem it is time to stop the bullshit and get on with recycling that works.

U. S. Representative Dave Camp is not our representative, this according to him. During a recent meeting with citizens about the war in Iraq he was quoted in the Record Eagle. “You guys are really not listening to the people,” Jim Coats told Camp. Camp responded: “I’m hired to try to reflect the views of the people I represent, but I’m also hired for my judgment.” Hired by whom? I thought we elected Representatives by voting? My mistake.

Looking into Mr. Camp’s Political Action Committee (PAC) contributions to his last “re-election” in 2006 may indicate who “hired” him. His total 2005-2006 PAC contributions were $851,771.00. The largest PAC contributions from: Finance/Insurance/RealEstate - $184,119, Health- $180,562, and Energy/Natural Resource - $91,798. Check out more about him at Open Secrets

Mr. Camp is the 42nd most wealthy member of the U.S. House of Representatives. What are the sectors invested in by Mr. Camp? Finance/Insurance/RealEstate - 43%, Health - 5%, Energy/Natural Resource - 4%. Who hired him?

April 11, 2007, Traverse City, MI

In solidarity with the Occupation Project, a group of Traverse City area peacemakers occupied Senator Carl Levin’s Office. The video clip is of shared reading the group did during the occupation. The video clip is on YouTube- here, or on VentingMedia.com - Here

Human caused warming of the earth will change the climate everywhere on the planet.

The latest report from the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) points out the current effects of climate change; no longer just projecting what will happen, but what is already happening in ever region of the planet. The latest report also predicts which regions will fare the worst and the ones that will “benefit” from climate change in the future.

I’m afraid the same power brokers that control our corporate-based government, the ones that brought us the 1.5 trillion dollar Iraq war that has killed 100’s of thousands of people, will see the “benefits” to climate change as a mandate to let the “free market” sort out the winners and losers. This will be their excuse to do nothing about climate change. After all, the regions that may see a short term “benefit” from climate change are the over-developed industrialized corporate-controled nations in the northern hemisphere. The losers are the developing regions in the tropical areas.

But isn’t this a market failure? The regions of the planet that are most responsible for climate change are the winners and the losers are the least responsible. If the market were sending correct signals, wouldn’t the destroyers of the climate suffer and make changes as a result of market feedback? Perhaps the “free market” doesn’t really work when it comes to planetary destruction. But who really cares . . . if you live in an industrial empire in the north. . .

The ones that have long been denying climate change, will now switch to, yes it’s happening, but look at the benefits!

I was abruptly transported in a gigantic fossil fuel consuming unit and ending up here.

The area surrounding this neighborhood contains vast malled zones connected by concrete roadways filled with fossil fuel transportation units.

Anyone recognize where I am?

I’ve been enjoying streams of music from various Internet Radio programs for several years and it’s great. I’ve heard so much music I would never have known about and reconnected to music I love that I hadn’t heard in years.

But this may all come to an end, from “Save Our Internet Radio”:

On March 1, 2007 the US Copyright Office stunned the Internet radio industry by releasing a ruling on performance royalty fees that are based exclusively on the number of people tuned into an Internet radio station, rather than on a portion of the station’s revenue. They discarded all evidence presented by webcasters about the potentially crippling effect on the industry of such a rate structure, and rubber-stamped the rates requested by the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America).

You can read more about it on the Save Our Internet Radio Blog. Please sign the online petition and contact you federal representatives now!

On Monday, March 5, Senator Jim Webb introduced Senate Bill 759 which seeks to limit the President’s ability to start a war with Iran without first coming before the Senate. Please urge your senators to support this effort. For more details see the article in the March 6, Washington Times - here.

Over 4 years ago, on February 26, 2003, the Traverse Area Peace and Justice Community was trying to stop the Iraq war. One of our actions was to educated the public about the horrific possibilities of the war — especially the impact on the civilian populations.

We created an action called “If Traverse City were Baghdad . . . “

This sign appeared at eight local military/civilian — so-called “dual use — targets in order to educate our citizens to the impact of war on Iraq.

If Traverse City were Baghdad, these sites would likely have been destroyed by enemy bombs. Information about this past action is here and a video clip of it can be seen on VentingMedia - here.

It might now be time for this action again, but this time it would be call “If Traverse City were in Iran . . .”

An article published on Wednesday, February 28, 2007, “The Words None Dare Say: Nuclear War“, by George Lakoff contained . . .

“Then, there is the scale of the proposed attack. Military reports leaking out suggest a huge (mostly or entirely non-nuclear) airstrike on as many as 10,000 targets — a “shock and awe” attack that would destroy Iran’s infrastructure the way the US bombing destroyed Iraq’s. The targets would not just be “military targets.” As Dan Plesch reports in the New Statesman, February 19, 2007, such an attack would wipe out Iran’s military, business, and political infrastructure. Not just nuclear installations, missile launching sites, tanks, and ammunition dumps, but also airports, rail lines, highways, bridges, ports, communications centers, power grids, industrial centers, hospitals, public buildings, and even the homes of political leaders. That is what was attacked in Iraq: the “critical infrastructure.” It is not just military in the traditional sense. It leaves a nation in rubble, and leads to death, maiming, disease, joblessness, impoverishment, starvation, mass refugees, lawlessness, rape, and incalculable pain and suffering.”

The military supports this kind of action with the “Christian Just-War Ethic”. An excerpt from an article on Military dual-use targeting — Bombing Dual-Use Targets: Legal, Ethical, and Doctrinal Perspectives, by Kenneth R. Rizer, From: Air & Space Power Chronicles, May 2001.

… Finally, the US Air Force has a vested interest in attacking dual-use targets so long as dual-use target destruction serves the double role of destroying legitimate military capabilities and indirectly targeting civilian morale. So long as this remains within the letter if not the spirit of the law and the Christian Just-War Ethic, the Air Force will cling to the status quo.” The full article can be found on the web:
http://www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil/airchronicles/cc/Rizer.html

This is what happened in Iraq. Are we going to let this happen to the people of Iran in our name? Get involved, help stop the war against Iran before it starts.

Rarely seen pictures of the other side of Tehran, with music from Cat Stevens - here. This is who and what our country will be destroying!

More on the Pentagon war planning for Iran - here

Go to TraverePeaceAlerts.org to get involved.

The senate can’t even talk about “it” and the house debates a resolution that is so thin, it reminds me of “Coors Light“. Here it is in case you haven’t heard it or read it somewhere else:

Concurrent Resolution
Disapproving of the decision of the President announced on January 10, 2007, to deploy more than 20,000 additional United States combat troops to Iraq.
Resolved by the House of Representatives (the Senate concurring), That-
(1) Congress and the American people will continue to support and protect the members of the United States Armed Forces who are serving or who have served bravely and honorably in Iraq; and
(2) Congress disapproves of the decision of President George W. Bush announced on January 10, 2007, to deploy more than 20,000 additional United States combat troops to Iraq

After four years of war, 100s of billions of dollars, falsified intelligence by the administration, over 3100 U.S. troops and, who knows, but over 100,000 Iraqi deaths the senate debates procedures and the house “. . . disapproves of the decision . . . “? All I can say is wow!

And some Americans thought that when they vote in our “democracy” it matters. Vote with a message to stop the war and you get this?