Miscellaneous:
rapidtransitcycles.com
1900 W. North Ave. Chicago Il. 60622
Movie Of The Week:
See the Full Lenth Movie Click Here
Scott Whitman Show

    Bicycle mechanic by
    day waiter by night
    actor in hart  Aaron
    Maier plays a sofa in a
    very creative and
    funny online comedy   
    Watch it now click
    here!
Who Created Al Qaeda?









President Jimmy Carter's National
Security
Advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski
visiting 'his boy' Bin Laden
President Jimmy Carter's National Security
Advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski visiting 'his boy',
Osama Bin Laden, in training with the Pakistan
Army, 1981.Photo originally scanned from the New
York Village Voice. Photo credited to the
Sygma/Corbis Agency, Paris.
Airplane Contrails Boost Global
Warming, Study Suggests
Brian Handwerk
for National Geographic News
June 14, 2006


















Moving flight times from night to day could reduce
air travel's contributions to global warming, a new
study suggests.

Scheduling more daytime flights may lessen the
impact of contrails—the visible streaks of
condensation that many planes leave in their wake.
The role of contrails in climate change is still under
study, but some scientists believe that they
contribute to the greenhouse effect by trapping
heat in Earth's atmosphere.

Nicola Stuber, first author of the study, to be
published in tomorrow's edition of the journal
Nature, suggests that contrails' overall impact on
climate change is similar in scope to that of
aircrafts' carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions over a
hundred-year period.

Aircraft are believed to be responsible for 2 to 3
percent of human CO2 emissions. Like other high,
thin clouds, contrails reflect sunlight back into
space and cool the planet.

However, they also trap energy in Earth's
atmosphere and boost the warming effect, the
study says.

(See National Geographic magazine's "Global
Warning: Signs From Earth.")

Stuber and other scientists believe that the effect
of the contrails is significant.

"On average the greenhouse warming effect
dominates [the effects of contrails]," said Stuber, a
meteorologist at England's University of Reading.
Global Warming and Contrails

This warming effect is far greater for contrails left
by night flights, Stuber added.

"The solar cooling effect [wherein contrails reflect
the sun's rays back into space] only happens
during the day, when the sun is up," she explained.
During the night the greenhouse warming is no
longer balanced, and that is why the contribution
of nighttime flights is so large."

Most commercial airline traffic occurs during
daylight hours.
For example, only one in four United Kingdom
flights is a night flight, but those flights create
some 60 percent of the warming attributed to
contrails, the study reports.

Contrails are artificial clouds that form around the
tiny aerosol particles in airplane exhaust.

They appear only in moist, very cold (less than
40ºF/4ºC) air—usually at altitudes of 5 miles (8
kilometers) or higher.

Some contrails can last for a day or longer, though
they gradually disperse and begin to resemble
natural clouds.

Contrails Mystery

Scientists disagree about the extent of contrails'
climate impact.

"The jury is out on the impact of contrails," said
Patrick Minnis, an atmospheric scientist at NASA's
Langley Research Center in Langley, Virginia.

David Travis, a climatologist at the University of
Wisconsin-Whitewater, notes that some recent
studies suggest that contrails have little impact on
global climate change but have a greater regional
warming impact.
"I prefer to think of contrails as a regional-scale
climate problem, as they are most common in
certain regions of the world, such as western
Europe, eastern and central U.S., and parts of
eastern Asia," he said.

"This is due to a combination of dense air traffic in
these areas and favorable atmospheric conditions
to support contrail persistence once they form."

Because of their locations and short life spans,
contrails are a difficult study subject.

"The greatest impediment to understanding the
contrail impacts on weather and climate is the poor
state of knowledge of humidity in the upper
troposphere [3.8 to 9.3 miles/6 to 15 kilometers in
altitude]," NASA's Minnis said.

"Until we can measure it properly and extensively,
and model it and its interaction with cirrus clouds
and contrails, we will continue to have large
uncertainties about the effect of contrails."

Winter is Contrail Season

At the high altitudes favored by commercial
airlines, the air is much more humid in winter, so
contrails are twice as likely in that season, study co-
author Stuber said.

"We also found that flights between December and
February contribute half of the annual mean
climate warming, even though they account for
less than a quarter of annual air traffic," she said of
her U.K.-based research.

Study leader Piers Forster, of England's University
of Leeds, suggests that contrails' current impact
on the atmosphere is likely to increase as air traffic
grows.

"Aircraft currently only have a small effect on
climate," he said.

"However, the fact that the volume of air traffic is
set to rapidly grow in coming years makes it
important to investigate the effects of contrails on
our climate."

Shifting airline schedules will surely prove far
easier in theory than in reality.

"The problem is that this is not something that can
be done easily," said the University of Wisconsin's
Travis.

"With fuel prices on the rise and airlines going
bankrupt, it is a difficult time to try and convince
airlines to consider issues such as this one."
Chicago's Other great bike shops
& bike websites.
      The Future of Food
    Clear explanation of how
    powerful big companies have
    become. They don’t care about
    the human specy. All they do care
    about is MONEY.


















                           
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Rink A Dink productions by Ronnie LoBello. A GREAT place for alternative art, music, news and lots of cool links too...
Short Note:
Former director of the U.S. "Star Wars" space
defense program in both Republican and
Democratic administrations, who was a senior air
force colonel who flew 101 combat missions, and
who is a Catholic Archbishop stated that  9/11 was
an inside job  (he also said "If our government had
merely done nothing, and allowed normal
procedures to happen on that morning of 9/11, the
twin towers would still be standing, and thousands
of dead Americans would still be alive.
[That is treason")
More
Radio
Links
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<<<<<
Trivia:
Did you know
The Pentagon, a building, institution, and
symbol, was conceived at the request of
Brigadier General Brehon B. Sommervell,
Chief of the Construction Division of the
Office of the Quartermaster General, on a
weekend in mid-July 1941. The purpose was
to provide a temporary solution to the War
Department's critical shortage of space.
The ground breaking ceremony took place on
September 11, 1941. The building was
dedicated on January 15, 1943, nearly 16
months to the day after the ground breaking.
Stop
Telemarketers
from calling you
free
Click Here!
Picture of the Week:
new picture posted frequently
Home page;
See Van Gogh's
Paintings.
The largest collections on
the Internet tons of
information on one of the
worlds greatest artist
Click Here!
Television;
" ... so long as the media are in corporate hands,
the task of social change will be vastly more
difficult, if not impossible ..."
Robert McChesney, journalist and author
Read Ronnie's Rant
Not the best blog on the net,
but its somthing to read
Click Here!
"As long as people are marginalized and
distracted [they] have no way to organize or
articulate their sentiments, or even know that
others have these sentiments. People assume
that they are the only people with a crazy idea in
their heads. They never hear it from anywhere
else. Nobody's supposed to think that. ... Since
there's no way to get together with other people
who share or reinforce that view and help you
articulate it, you feel like an oddity, an oddball. So
you just stay on the side and you don't pay any
attention to what's going on. You look at
something else, like the Superbowl."
Noam Chomsky, American linguist and US media
and foreign policy critic
WHAT ARE CHEMTRAILS? Click Here!
Disclaimer: We believe that all uncredited
images on these pages are in the public
domain. If we have unwittingly infringed
any copyright,
please let us know
We are in Orwellian times when,







anyone who speaks the truth is
considered to be controversial.
Article;            Watch video
Fascist America, in 10 easy steps
By Naomi Wolf
From Hitler to Pinochet and beyond, history shows
there are certain steps that any would-be dictator
must take to destroy constitutional freedoms. And
George Bush and his administration seem to be
taking them all...  Continue Here !
Support Our Troops
doesn't mean to stick a
ribbon on your car...
It means to give real
support to the men and
women  who sacrifice life
and limb.
Learn how to support
those who aren't getting
proper support from the
government who put them
in this situation in the first
place.
NOW!
Support our
troops!
Got a complaint or suggestion?
Write To Rink A Dink Productions
and let me know whats on your mind.
Please let me know about broken links miss
spellings, misinformation etc.
Or  just say hi
Ronnie;
    To contribute to a
    lasting understanding
    between individuals of
    all nations, races,
    creeds and colors
Chicago's Best!    No#1  Great Reviews
Sonia serves up Great Korean dishes at

    Hamburger King
    Restaurant:
    Its not just hamburgers here,
    although the hamburgers are
    really good.. This place doesn't
    look like much from the outside
    but the prices
are reasonable and their Baek Ban, Bi-Bim Bap and Teriyaki is
great as well.
3435 N Sheffield. Ave in (Wriglyville), Chicago
773 281 4452
More about Hamburger King
Click Here!
Amazing! U Must see these videos.
Video:
Martial Law:
Rise of the Police State
Watch It Now!
Legalize marijuana

In New York, we spend about $1 billion on marijuana
enforcement, not including long-term jailing. With a
$13 billion budget gap, why not save ourselves the
money and shift to a legalization, regulation and
taxation policies similar to that of alcohol? There
are also the documented health benefits afforded
to suffering AIDS and cancer patients forced to go
into a dangerous underground market to get what
many feel is their medicine. Luckily, New York is at
least taking the medicinal uses seriously, as shown
by bills in the Assembly (A0576) and Senate (S.
4041-A).

Contact your state legislators. Tell them we cannot
afford current marijuana laws, and urge them to
support their respective bills. As a person
acquainted with two people suffering from cancer, I
believe it's a shame they cannot legally obtain a
drug that has been shown to improve the quality of
life while they go through their treatments.

Shaun Bowen

Owego
Confronting the Surveillance
Society
Talk by James Bamford author of "The Puzzle
Palace" and "Body of Secrets" & Chris Calabrese
Program Counsel of the ACLU Technology and
Liberty Project
Are We Free?
CURRENT MOON
Obama Supports the Patriot Act
Dwight David Eisenhower
Farewell Address
On the military-industrial complex and
the government-universities collusion
(17 January 1961)
Chicago's Parking Meter Revolt
Cannabis Cures Cancer -
"Run From The Cure"
The Rick Simpson Story
Rick Simpson Story After a serious head injury in
1997, Rick Simpson sought relief from his medical
condition through the use of medicinal hemp oil.
When Rick discovered that the hemp oil (with its
high concentration of T.H.C.) cured cancers and
other illnesses, he tried to share it with as many
people as he could free of charge. When the story
went public, the long arm of the law snatched the
medicine - leaving potentially thousands of people
without their cancer treatments - and leaving Rick
with unconsitutional charges of possessing and
trafficking marijuana!
The Government Dark Side
About the Gorilla in the Livingroom
Should the World Bring Bush and
Cheney to Trial?

Vincent Bugliosi has expressed recent
exasperation over the issue of torture being
mentioned currently with greater frequency over
what the former L.A. County prosecutor believes to
be the key issue over which George W. Bush and
Dick Cheney should face trial -- murder.

Bugliosi's concern, through which he urges action
from an American prosecutorial body to bring Bush
and Cheney to trial, could be directly addressed
through the international tribunal of the
International Court of Justice at The Hague.
A reputable source of keeping up to date about the
number of Iraqi civilians killed since the initial
"shock and awe"- attacks on Baghdad ordered by
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld prior to
occupying that city and the nation of Iraq is Just
Foreign Policy. This informative site provides
international detailed analysis of significant events
throughout the world.
Just Foreign Policy publishes numbers based on
the highly respected international medical journal
The Lancet. According to The Lancet's detailed
continuing study, supportive evidence of which is
supplied by Just Foreign Policy, the current death
figure is much higher than that reported by
America's mainstream media on those rare
occasions when any such information is presented.

A current check of Just Foreign Policy reveals the
Iraqi civilian death toll following the U.S. invasion
to be 1,320,110. The continuing study of The Lancet
reveals that 600,000 Iraqi civilians had been killed
by July 2006 with the remainder of more than
double occurring
in the less than three years since then.

A major area of misunderstanding arising even
among progressives opposing the war has been
the labeling within the mainstream media and
elsewhere of the conflict as "pre-emptive war."-
Under the rules that governed the Nuremberg
Trials, the UN Charter, and other recognized
international bodies, pre-emptive war is
international legal terminology for legitimate
self-defense and is permissible.

The rule governing pre-emptive war is akin to the
famous First Amendment principle enunciated in
the Supreme Court by Justice Oliver Wendell
Holmes of "clear and present danger."- Under the
pre-emptive war concept a nation faces
reasonable imminent threat from a foreign invader
and under those circumstances possesses a right
to attack based on a principle of self-defense.

Bush-Cheney propagandists have been successful
in being able to make the term pre-emptive war
stick when in reality the issue is that of preventive
war, which is clearly illegal under international law.

The brilliant two hour opening presentation by U.S.
Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson at the main
Nuremberg Trial involving the leading figures of
Nazi Germany was centered on connecting German
Fuhrer Adolf Hitler with specific plans to attack
Poland and England. Jackson sought to link Hitler
and his regime with European aggression through
preventive war, that which is indefensible under
international law.

Recently there has been talk from certain UN
sources that if after that body's own investigation
concludes that U.S. leadership engaged in such
aggressive preventive war along with unjustifiable
torture tactics and the hunting down of victims
without recourse to the law, then arrests could be
made on U.S. soil.

On this rationale such arrests could be made
without the U.S. government being involved in any
way, obviating any necessity of action on the part
of congressional bodies or U.S. courts.

Should George W. Bush be so approached in a
specific effort to arrest him under international
law, it has been noted that he is accompanied by
armed U.S. Secret Service agents to protect him.

To use a term from a sport President Barack Obama
loves to play and watch, basketball, "The ball would
be in his court"- and the crucial and ultimately
decisive question of whether he would be willing
under those circumstances to order Bush's Secret
Service detail to "stand down"- in the interest of
international law.


Began in the journalism field in hometown of Los
Angeles. Started as Sports Editor and Movie Writer
at Inglewood Daily News chain after working in
sportswriting of high school events at the Los
Angeles Examiner. Received a bachelor's in
(more...)
Art;
clocksforweb para tus Pisos!
Rink A Dink Productions
Low Budget Movies
Here are 4 Videos by
Ronnini LoBello,
Ronnini is known for his use
of music blended with the
action and interesting
transitions. Giving the
viewer a bit of a trippie
feeling except for Sara and
Sam's Wedding, this was
edited to provoke both
laughter and crying.
All 3 videos are worth
watching. Just click onto the
thumbnail       
Article;
Cocaine, the 6th food group











Confusing South American farmland and rain forest
for cocaine plants, and then recklessly destroying
them. Sounds like a project with the U.S. federal
government’s name all over it. In fact, it is, in the
form of taxpayer-funded airplanes that are
dropping the taxpayer-funded pesticides.

In 2000, President Clinton signed a bill funding
Plan Colombia, a State Department initiative to
reduce coca growth in the South American country,
mostly by spraying the plants with pesticide. And in
its 2008 federal budget bill, the Bush
administration is seeking an identical amount of
funding for it as last year. The plan could be called
a great, huge, amazing success — yes, if its goals
included increasing coca plant growth, increasing
cocaine imports into the U.S., and lowering cocaine
prices for the U.S. consumer.

Problem one: No discrimination. In Putumayo, one
of the most coca-dense areas in Colombia, 40% of
the crops sprayed since 2000 have been rain
forests (even indiscriminate destruction doesn’t
come cheap: $4,975 tax dollars per acre) or crops
that are the villagers’ main source of food. Oops.

Problem two: Legal plants are a money-loser,
making coca the most profitable plant around.
There’s no infrastructure to get legal plants to
market, leaving peasants with no other choice than
coca. Drug cartels just have a better work ethic
about moving products.

Problem three: “Also funded by cocaine and
considered terrorists by the State Department,
paramilitary forces [allies with Colombia President
Uribe and, by extension, the United States] have
fast become some of the country’s largest drug
traffickers. In other words, U.S. taxpayer money
meant to fight the drug trade is funding allies who
are, in part, fueling it.” That one speaks for itself.

Problem four (my personal favorite): Funding coca
production is an effective “screw you” gesture to
America. Venezuelan President (dictator?) Hugo
Chavez has pledged $1 million to build coca food-
processing plants in Bolivia. The Peruvian
government resists U.S. business pressure by
producing coca cookies, energy bars, and other
products.

The only good news? Since 2000, the price of
cocaine has dropped by 29 percent on U.S. streets
while purity has risen from 60 percent to 70
percent.
/www.northbynorthwestern.com/
There is a revolution happening in the farm
fields and on the dinner tables of America that
is transforming the very nature of the food we
eat.  This well-researched documentary by
Deborah Koons Garcia, the widow of the
legendary Grateful Dead guitarist Jerry Garcia,
takes an in-depth look at the disturbing truth
behind the unlabeled, patented, genetically
engineered foods that have quietly filled U.S.
grocery store shelves for the past decades.
This film examines the complex web of market
and political forces that are changing what we
eat as huge, multinational corporations seek to
control the world’s food systems but also
explores alternatives to large-scale industrial
agriculture, offering solutions like organic and
sustainable agriculture as alternative food
sources.
About the Type-os you might
find in the
Rink A Dink Productions,  
Infozine

Aoccdrnig to rscheearch at
Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it
deosn't mttaer in waht oredr
the letters in a word are, the
only iprmoatnt thing is that
the frist and lsat ltteer be at
the rghit pclae. The rset can
be a toatl mses and you can
sitll raed it wouthit a
porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the
huamn mnid deos not raed
ervey lteter by istlef, but the
wrod as a wlohe.

But if it still bothers you
please drop me a line.
editor@rinkadinkproductions.com
Obama and the global elite
The Politics of Pollution
Cap-and-Trade: All Cost, No Benefit
By Martin Feldstein
The Obama administration and congressional
Democrats have proposed a major cap-and-trade
system aimed at reducing carbon dioxide
emissions. Scientists agree that CO2 emissions
around the world could lead to rising temperatures
with serious long-term environmental
consequences. But that is not a reason to enact a
U.S. cap-and-trade system until there is a global
agreement on CO2 reduction. The proposed
legislation would have a trivially small effect on
global warming while imposing substantial costs on
all American households. And to get political
support in key states, the legislation would
abandon the auctioning of permits in favor of
giving permits to selected corporations.

Companies would buy permits from each other as
long as it is cheaper to do that than to make the
technological changes needed to eliminate an
equivalent amount of CO2 emissions. Companies
would also pass along the cost of the permits in
their prices, pushing up the relative price of
CO2-intensive goods and services such as
gasoline, electricity and a range of industrial
products. Consumers would respond by cutting
back on consumption of CO2-intensive products in
favor of other goods and services. This
pass-through of the permit cost in higher
consumer prices is the primary way the
cap-and-trade system would reduce the production
of CO2 in the United States.
The Congressional Budget Office recently
estimated that the resulting increases in consumer
prices needed to achieve a 15 percent CO2
reduction -- slightly less than the Waxman-Markey
target -- would raise the cost of living of a typical
household by $1,600 a year. Some expert studies
estimate that the cost to households could be
substantially higher. The future cost to the typical
household would rise significantly as the
government reduces the total allowable amount of
CO2.

Americans should ask themselves whether this
annual tax of $1,600-plus per family is justified by
the very small resulting decline in global CO2.
Since the U.S. share of global CO2 production is
now less than 25 percent (and is projected to
decline as China and other developing nations
grow), a 15 percent fall in U.S. CO2 output would
lower global CO2 output by less than 4 percent. Its
impact on global warming would be virtually
unnoticeable. The U.S. should wait until there is a
global agreement on CO2 that includes China and
India before committing to costly reductions in the
United States.

The CBO estimates that the sale of the permits for a
15 percent CO2 reduction would raise revenue of
about $80 billion a year over the next decade. It is
remarkable, then, that the Waxman-Markey bill
would give away some 85 percent of the permits
over the next 20 years to various businesses
instead of selling them at auction. The price of the
permits and the burden to households would be
the same whether the permits are sold or given
away. But by giving them away the government
would not collect the revenue that could, at least in
principle, be used to offset some of the higher cost
to households.

The Waxman-Markey bill would give away 30
percent of the permits to local electricity
distribution companies with the expectation that
their regulators would require those firms to pass
the benefit on to their customers. If they do this by
not raising prices, there would be less CO2
reduction through lower electricity consumption.
The permit price would then have to be higher to
achieve more CO2 reduction on all other products.
Some electricity consumers would benefit, but the
cost to all other American families would be higher.

In my judgment, the proposed cap-and-trade
system would be a costly policy that would penalize
Americans with little effect on global warming. The
proposal to give away most of the permits only
makes a bad idea worse. Taxpayers and legislators
should keep these things in mind before enacting
any cap-and-trade system.

Martin Feldstein, a professor of economics at
Harvard University and president emeritus of the
nonprofit National Bureau of Economic Research,
was chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers
from 1982 to 1984.
A Call For Alternative Energy
Coal burning must end,
says scientist
ANDREW DARBY IN HOBART
April 24, 2009

A CSIRO scientist has told a Senate inquiry it is
imperative to begin phasing out coal burning in
order to avoid dangerous climate change.

No coal-fired power plants should be built, and
existing plants must shut within 20 years, if the
world is to keep atmospheric carbon dioxide at a
less dangerous level, the climatologist James
Risbey said.

Yesterday Dr Risbey joined other CSIRO scientists
who have spoken out personally to the Senate
committee on climate policy's inquiry after the
CSIRO decided against making a submission.

He said the Rudd Government's targets of reducing
carbon dioxide levels by at least 5 per cent of 2000
levels by 2020 and 60 per cent by 2050 were not
tough enough to avoid dangerous climate change.

"In fact, they yield a high likelihood of triggering
irreversible changes in the climate system," he
said at the committee's hearings in Hobart. "Such
likelihoods can be greatly reduced with far more
stringent emissions reductions. However, further
delay makes safer concentration targets
unattainable and begins to lock in dangerous
climate change."

The committee was told that at current levels of
greenhouse gas growth, the world risked an
irreversible collapse in the Greenland and West
Antarctic ice sheets, contributing roughly seven
and five metres each to global sea level rise.

Acidification of the oceans, release of stored
methane and breakdown of snowmelt would also
affect food webs and the global population.

"While we cannot give a precise temperature at
which each of these processes would occur, the
threshold is thought to be in the vicinity of about
two degrees in each case," Dr Risbey said.

But Australia's proposed Carbon Pollution
Reduction Scheme, if applied by all countries,
would mean a 50 to 90 per cent chance of
exceeding the threshold.

"In other words, this is Russian roulette with the
climate system, with most of the chambers loaded,"
he said.
Pollution in China









How bad is the pollution in China?
James Fallows reports.
The Chinese government does not report, and may
not even measure, what other countries consider
the most dangerous form of air pollution: PM2.5, the
smallest particulate matter, tiny enough to work its
way deep into the alveoli. Instead, Chinese reports
cover only the grosser PM10 particulates, which are
less dangerous but more unsightly, because they
make the air dark and turn your handkerchief black
if you blow your nose. (Spitting on the street:
routine in China. Blowing your nose into a
handkerchief: something no cultured person would
do.) These unauthorized PM2.5 readings, sent out
on a Twitter stream (BeijingAir), show the pollution
in Beijing routinely to be in the "Very Unhealthy" or
"Hazardous" range, not seen in U.S. cities in
decades. I've heard from friends about persistent
coughs and blood tests that show traces of heavy
metals. "I encourage people with children not to
consider extended tours in China," a
Western-trained doctor said. "Those little lungs."
See Photo Journal click here.
Stephen Voss has a set of Chinese pollution photos
along with an accompanying story.
Things the Government Dose Not
Want to Talk About;
The War on Pollution
or Pollution from War
Retired professor and prolific author Barry Sanders
has spent a long time looking closely at the US
Military where others hadn’t: he looked at the
environmental effects and the sheer devastation
that the military leaves in its wake. He compiled a
frightening collection of numbers into his book The
Green Zone. I contacted him through the book’s
publisher, AK Press, and sent him a letter, asking
about the findings, about how we activists are so
used to looking at our corporate foes and overlook
the military, and about what we as Earth First!ers
could hope to do about it. Here is his response:
I do not separate the corporate agenda from the
military agenda in this country. I do not mean simply
the old Eisenhower conflation, which he daintily
called the military-industrial complex. He makes
such an alliance sound like a kind of neat and tidy
collusion. It is a straight up partnership now: each
one needs the other. Almost all big corporations
are in the war business, or at the very least, in the
military business. Think of auto manufacturing and
how many specialized small shops went out of
business with the collapse of the auto industry. To
raise a tank takes a small corporate village. Cut
back on the Pentagon budget and you slice and
dice the economy—that’s one grand reason, at
least, no politician is willing to take on the military.
There are other reasons, but that’s a big one.
Having said that, I am reminded of a line by the
Indian writer Arundhati Roy, in her book War Talk:
she says “... the state acts in the name of its
citizens. So, as a citizen, I am forced to
acknowledge that I am somehow made complicit in
the Gujarat pogrom.” It is not just large
corporations that are complicit in this business of
making war and polluting the world. I am complicit,
too—we all are. Even though I do not wear a
uniform, I am an essential part of the military: I pay
my taxes, I am allowed to periodically protest some
given war, and thus indirectly and against my will I
support the war. For me, what I understood after
working on this book is that the fate of the Earth
rests in the hands of the military. That is one of the
most frightening and appalling notions anyone can
confront. The United States military engages in a
War of Terroir: it is destroying everything. For me,
this is an issue of enormous magnitude, which all of
us must confront.
How badly does the military pollute? I think as
citizens we have no idea how bad the pollution
actually is. At any rate, the carbon dioxide and
sulfur dioxide would translate into numbers and
lose its edge, just the way the dead Iraqis and
Afghanis and GIs come to us as glorified body
counts. The task of computing takes us afield and
keeps us distracted. I have come up with
approximate numbers in The Green Zone, but who
the hell really knows? I say no one. What if we knew
the number? Would we be any closer to stopping
the war machine?
People want numbers. I understand that. But more
importantly, we need action. Here’s an example of
how much we do not know: this very morning
(Monday, July 27, 2009) I opened the New York
Times and read a piece (on page 15) about the
military conscription of indigenous peoples—in this
case Navajos—during the ‘50s to work in hundreds
of military mines in the heart of the Navajo Nation
digging up uranium for the military to use in its
weapons. (The military used depleted uranium in
Iraq in many of its warheads.) Over the years, as the
New York Times points out, “Navajo miners
extracted some 4 million tons of uranium ore from
the ground, much of it used by the United States
government to make weapons.” And now those
same indigenous people, and their grown children,
are falling sick from radiation poisoning. Their
houses and drinking water and crops are all
contaminated. I count this tragedy, thousands of
miles removed from the Middle East, scores of
years removed from any Pentagon action, as military
pollution.
The last part of The Green Zone takes up the topic
of fallout through the military’s use of depleted
uranium in certain of its warheads in the war in Iraq.
How can I tally or categorize such extraordinary
pollution that produces radioactive waste with a
half life of 4.5 billion years and that results in
disfigured fetuses and corrupts food supplies and
kills animals and fish populations and on and on?
Can we equate the horror of such lethality with the
emission of greenhouse gases? Such a
grotesquerie almost makes carbon and sulfite
pollution seem tame. This kind of pollution does not
of course stay in place but gets blown around the
globe on wind currents.
That’s why when I talk about military pollution I want
to write the word with a capital P, because it is so
much more lethal than any other kind of pollution
we have encountered as environmentalists. While
the military is the largest single consumer of oil in
the world, that can be a misleading statement since
America has a population of 330 million people, a
great majority of whom drive cars. And who knows
the actual count of factories in this country that
continually pump carbons into the atmosphere. But,
as I try to point out, the military not only pollutes, it
contaminates, it transfigures, it eliminates. And this
is why I say it makes no difference how green we
get in our homes and offices because the military
negates our every effort at cutting greenhouse
emissions.
Several military critics make the point that
bureaucrats in the Pentagon may not even know
the exact numbers for military consumption of oil
and gas. While we do know that it is the single
largest consumer of oil in the world, the Pentagon
is just too huge and complex and cumbersome for
any citizen to find a number that we can know with
certainty. Couple that with the fact that the military
hides a good deal of its statistics for fuel
consumption, for purchases, for types and kinds of
weapons. After months and months of digging into
web sites and leaked documents, I do not know the
precise figures for the military; I have not come
across anyone who does know, or says he or she
knows. I spent an enormous time trying to ferret out
those numbers—almost everything significant
about weapons and vehicles and fuel consumption
the Pentagon keeps classified or hidden. In the
book, I list those numbers that the military likes to
boast about, like the Abrams Tank consuming five
gallons of fuel to cover a single mile. During battle,
over ideal terrain, the Abrams can gobble up 252
gallons of fuel each and every hour. With its
afterburners kicked in, the F-15 uses fuel at the
astonishing rate of four gallons per second, or
14,400 gallons an hour!
What can we do as environmentalists? As an initial
suggestion—and I do not want anyone to think I
have the answers—for stopping the olive-drab
juggernaut is an overwhelming prospect, but one
thing I would like to suggest is that the movement
must redefine itself, must expand its range of
concerns to include putting an end to war. If you
consider yourself green, you must become olive
green and include an opposition to the military. The
International Panel on Climate Change has an
agenda that runs to some 20 pages, but it has never
included one mention of the war. Whenever the
Bioneers meet to discuss climate change, they
never mention the military. As far as I am
concerned, this is a gross omission.
What to do? For one very apparent thing, an
environmental movement that does not include an
opposition to all war—not an anti-war stance about
Iraq or Afghanistan, but an absolute, no-war
stance—is a movement defined too narrowly. In the
early years of the Vietnam War, teach-ins enabled
people to learn the truth about, say, the Gulf of
Tonkin. We ought to be doing the same thing
today—educating people about the military’s power
to end life on the planet. We need to talk to people
about their fears of losing their lives to acts of
terror. That fear is misplaced. The military is not
protecting us—it is creating more insurgents, more
enemies of this country. This is fairly clear to many
radicals, but not to the public in general.
The planet, the globe, is at stake—the Earth cannot
withstand war any more. If we cannot stop such
gross nonsense, the Earth will stop it for us—plain
and simple. I can imagine a March of Life on
Washington the likes of which history has not
witnessed—a huge coalition of people who say no
to war, to pollution, to homophobia, to sexism and
racism, to oppression of all kinds. Most of the wars
this country has engaged in have been against
people of color, including of course our current
ones. Imperialism is opposed to everything that
Earth First! holds sacred.
We must finally see that all these concerns and
issues are related. Hate of any kind, discrimination
and intolerance of any kind, we must count as social
pollution. The issue is not putting an end to the war
in Iraq or Afghanistan or Pakistan, or putting a stop
to the so-called war on terror. It is a moment of
coming to consciousness, of building a new and
different and more enlightened and liberating
attitude toward the Earth—toward plants and
animals and people, toward all living things. The old
world, the old, dead world, is built on hate and
destruction. It’s time, as they say, to move on—in
the largest, most inclusive, most communitarian
ways imaginable. Only a communitarian spirit, in my
estimation, will save us.
Cool Idea;
The Pedal-A-Watt Stationary
Bicycle Generator
    Today’s twin goals of
    keeping fit while doing
    something good for
    the planet by creating
    electricity without any
    pollution
come together in a product that has been around
for over ten years – The Pedal-A-Watt Stationary
Bicycle Generator. Use your bicycle along with the
Pedal-A-Watt Stand (it takes 15 seconds to drop
your bike in) and create anywhere from 100 to 300
watts depending on how strong you are.
Then, use this energy to power small, household
appliances. For example, a home office with a
laptop and high efficiency LED lighting can be run
for almost three hours on just a 30 minute workout.

The kids can “earn” their TV time by pedaling to
create the energy needed to watch their favorite
shows. Plus, kids will learn the true meaning of a
“watt” and how many watts it takes to power their
favorite electronic devices. It gives them a
newfound appreciation for the cost of energy in
physical terms.

And, the user will be helping to stay fit too. The
typical adult will burn somewhere between 300 and
700 calories for each 30 minute workout. A few
times a week and the calories expended really add
up. Plus, the amount of energy created over time is
surprising.

People all over the world have used the Pedal-A-
Watt to power all kinds of items such a projectors,
radios, lights in remote villages, water pumps,
small heaters, chicken coops and hundreds of
other unique applications.

The Pedal-A-Watt has been donated to schools
across the country to help grade school children
learn about alternative energy. Watch Video
An Inconvenient Truth
John Coleman Speaks About
Global Warming
The founder of The Weather Channel speaks out
against global warming. See coverage of the 2008
International Conference on Climate Change in
The New American magazine
Part 1 Interview with John Coleman
Part 2 An Interview with John Coleman
Part 3 An Interview with John Coleman
Part 4 An Interview with John Colman
We The People Radio Network

LISTEN LIVE NOW
FLASH PLAYER
Winter 2010 Issue
Kurt Wenner
Kurt Wenner is a painter and a chalk artist that is
known for his 3D chalk drawings on pavement and
murals using a projection called anamorphism
Kurt Wenner is a master artist best known for his
extremely high quality street painting and chalk
murals using a projection called anamorphosis.
These 3D chalk drawings on pavement have been
featured in many newspapers and on several
television shows.
Wenner's work has received global media attention.
Newspaper and magazine articles have appeared in
Italy, Germany, France, Switzerland, the United States,
and Mexico. His artwork has been seen on ABC's
World News Saturday, Good Morning America, and
Pan Am and TWA's in-flight programs.       more
A very well built documentary about cannabis and
drug prohibition. Does the drug prohibition work?
Have a look and think for yourself.
The Union;
The Emerging Surveillance State

by Rep. Ron Paul

Last month, the House amended the 1978 Foreign
Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) to expand the
government's ability to monitor our private
communications. This measure, if it becomes law,
will result in more warrantless government
surveillance of innocent American citizens.

Though some opponents claimed that the only
controversial part of this legislation was its grant
of immunity to telecommunications companies,
there is much more to be wary of in the bill. In the
House version, Title II, Section 801 extends
immunity from prosecution of civil legal action to
people and companies including any provider of
an electronic communication service, any
provider of a remote computing service, "any
other communication service provider who has
access to wire or electronic communications," any
"parent, subsidiary, affiliate, successor, or
assignee" of such company, any "officer,
employee, or agent" of any such company, and any
"landlord, custodian, or other person who may be
authorized or required to furnish assistance." The
Senate version goes even further by granting
retroactive immunity to such entities that may
have broken the law in the past.

The new FISA bill allows the federal government
to compel many more types of companies and
individuals to grant the government access to our
communications without a warrant. The provisions
in the legislation designed to protect Americans
from warrantless surveillance are full of loopholes
and ambiguities. There is no blanket prohibition
against listening in on all American citizens
without a warrant.

We have been told that this power to listen in on
communications is legal and only targets
terrorists. But if what these companies are being
compelled to do is legal, why is it necessary to
grant them immunity? If what they did in the past
was legal and proper, why is it necessary to grant
them retroactive immunity?

In communist East Germany , one in every 100
citizens was an informer for the dreaded secret
police, the Stasi. They either volunteered or were
compelled by their government to spy on their
customers, their neighbors, their families, and
their friends. When we think of the evil of
totalitarianism, such networks of state spies are
usually what comes to mind. Yet, with modern
technology, what once took tens of thousands of
informants can now be achieved by a few
companies being coerced by the government to
allow it to listen in to our communications. This
surveillance is un-American.

We should remember that former New York
governor Eliot Spitzer was brought down by a
provision of the PATRIOT Act that required
enhanced bank monitoring of certain types of
financial transactions. Yet we were told that the
PATRIOT Act was needed to catch terrorists, not
philanderers. The extraordinary power the
government has granted itself to look into our
private lives can be used for many purposes
unrelated to fighting terrorism. We can even see
how expanded federal government surveillance
power might be used to do away with political
rivals.

The Fourth Amendment to our Constitution
requires the government to have a warrant when
it wishes to look into the private affairs of
individuals. If we are to remain a free society, we
must defend our rights against any governmental
attempt to undermine or bypass the Constitution.