In an unprecedented attempt to put out a fire in his own house, Senator Barack Obama yesterday issued a response to supporters who had been protesting his position on government surveillance. The release was followed by an 90 minute interchange on MyBarackObama.com between campaign officials and supporters (though as far as I could tell, the campaign officials made no comments themselves but just read the comments being made, leaving it unclear who was actually reading and for how long)..

Unfortunately, there was nothing in Obama’s response that addressed the harsh criticism some of his supporters have voiced. I could go into detail on why the statement stinks, but since this is the Internet I don’t have to, since I can instead direct you to the excellent point-by-point analysis offered by Glenn Greenwald. My focus here will be the novel political dynamic unleashed by the Obama campaign’s social networking site, MyBarackObama.com.

These are uncharted waters we are dealing with here. Yesterday I asked the question whether 18,000 people protesting on the campaign’s own web site (out of hundreds of thousands) were a lot or a little. Apparently they were enough to get the attention of the campaign and the candidate.

The comments were a mix of people who were star-struck that Obama had noticed them and written a reply, people who felt any criticism on the site was inappropriate, people who just spouted typical Internet invective at each other, but then an awful lot of extremely informed and thoughtful people who did not back down an inch.

Some defending Obama’s position questioned whether the protestors were really from the Obama camp or were Republicans who had logged on to wreak havoc. However, since MyBarackObama.com is a full-fledged social networking site, one can check the profile of each commenter, see how long they have been active on the site, what action groups they are part of, and so on. It appeared that many angry critics were people who had put a lot of time and money into the campaign.

The whole episode raised more questions than it answered. Certainly what is going on here is something new. There are going to be many more controversial issues. A presidential candidate can’t always be having to log on to the Internet to defend himself from his own supporters. I am reminded The Obama campaign promised to give its supporters new Internet tools to empower them to make the campaign their own. Now that it as done so, the leadership has to be wondering if it was a good idea. of the musicians who have figured out how to make modest livelihoods marketing their music directly to fans over MySpace, only to discover that doing requires spending hours every day maintaining the sort of direct relationship fans on social networking sites expect.

On the other hand, overall this has to be considered a victory for, and an extension of, democracy. This is a clear-cut case of a candidate promising one thing and doing another. Turns out that in the age of the online campaign there will be a higher price for this time-honored activity.

The folks at Obama HQ better tighten their saddle. They have let the horse out of the barn, and it might be a bumpy ride.

* Some sample comments:

Frankly, I’m disappointed. No, Senator Barack, it’s not a “deal breaker”. But even using these words is almost like taunting your position in our face. Almost like you are taking our votes for granted because you know we have not choice but to vote for you. No, I don’t want McCain, but I can say with clarity that my personal enthusiasm, and many of others who I talk to, have certainly diminished by a huge margin.
At the end of the day, the question is, do you want your supporters to vote for you because you are the lesser of the two evils, because they have “no choice” when comparing the alternative (as you say yourself) or do you want people to vote for you because they are proud of what you stand for?

- Christine

Christine, I, too, did not like that “deal breaker” line. I felt like it was dismissive, especially when he has been trying soo hard to get the gun advocates, the evangelicals, the death penalty advocates…It’s like, ok, get lost. I got plenty more voters and money!! What has happened to him???
- JonnieRae

Bob Ostertag is an historian, journalist, and composer.  He is currently Professor of Technocultural Studies and Music at the University of California at Davis.

Copyright © 2008 HuffingtonPost.com, Inc.

PENSACOLA, Fla. - Oil companies once viewed drilling in the deep waters off Florida as cost prohibitive. Politicians feared even the slightest sign of support would be career suicide.

No more. Record crude oil prices are fueling support for oil and natural gas exploration off the nation’s shores. In Florida, movement was underway even before President Bush called on Congress last month to lift a federal moratorium that’s barred new offshore drilling since 1981.

The early activity here stems from a 2006 Congressional compromise that allows drilling on 8.3 million acres more than 125 miles off the Panhandle - an area that had been covered by the moratorium, which was enacted out of environmental concerns. In exchange, the state got a no-drilling buffer along the rest of its beaches.

Florida may turn out to be a prelude for other coastal states. If oil or natural gas deposits are found in the newly opened region, experts say it could further the push to explore other once-protected areas everywhere. It also could be a rallying point for critics, who say the new exploration isn’t a license to expand exploration.

With gas topping $4 a gallon, recent polls show Americans, Floridians included, more supportive of drilling in protected areas. Some politicians - including Gov. Charlie Crist - have switched sides.

“We think the public is way out ahead of the politicians on these issues. People are more open to (offshore drilling) now,” said Tom Moskitis, spokesman for the American Gas Association, a trade group.

At the same time, oil companies, driven by the record energy price, are more willing to risk $100 million or more to begin exploring new regions. The Interior Department estimates there could be 18 billion barrels of oil and 77 trillion cubic feet of natural gas beneath the 574 million acres of federal coastal waters that are now off-limits.

Drilling activity off the Florida Panhandle has started and sputtered for decades. Some companies had leases to drill off the Panhandle before the 1981 moratorium. They were grandfathered in when the moratorium passed because they were already actively exploring in their lease areas. They continued their activity off and on into the early 1990s.

In March, four companies - Australia-based BHP Billiton Petroleum Deepwater Inc., Houston-based Anadarko E&P Co., Shell Offshore Inc. and Italian oil and natural gas company Eni SpA - purchased leases on 36 Gulf of Mexico tracts under the 2006 compromise.

Jeb Bachmann, an analyst with New Orleans energy consultant Howard Wiel, said the four understand the shifting political and financial realities.

“It gives you an indication that some of these companies believe there is some light at the end of the tunnel,” Bachmann said. “There is higher pricing and a belief that higher prices are going to ultimately drive some changes.”

Anadarko bought seven of the recently opened tracts south of Pensacola because of their proximity to its Independence Hub, a major natural gas field off Alabama that supplies 1.5 to 2 percent of the natural gas consumed in the U.S. every day, said Stuart Strive, the company’s vice president of exploration for the eastern Gulf. The newly leased tracts are between 50 and 75 miles east of the Independence Hub.

But finding and producing natural gas in the new site will be expensive. Three-dimensional mapping of the ocean floor, which must happen before any drilling, could take up to two years, Strive said. If a promising site is found, engineers must drill up to three miles below the ocean surface to extract the oil or natural gas.

And it will take years before the company begins producing anything at the site - and there is no guarantee of success. A company can have as much as $4 billion invested and a wait of up to five years before seeing any return on the investment, Strive said.

“We typically will have $100 to $200 million invested in a project before we know if it is an economic venture or not,” he said. “Then, if you know you have made an economic discovery, you spend a billion dollars or more on a facility.”

The 1981 moratorium - enacted out of environmental concerns in response to a massive oil spill off the Santa Barbara coast a decade earlier - has prevented the Interior Department from spending money on offshore oil or gas leases in virtually all coastal waters outside the western Gulf of Mexico and in some areas off Alaska.

But politicians who once supported the ban are changing their minds.

U.S. Sen. John McCain supports lifting the ban and allowing states to decide whether to approve drilling of their shores. Crist, Florida’s Republican governor and a possible vice presidential candidate, reversed his long-standing opposition to lifting the ban last month.

The ban won’t be lifted without a fight.

U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson, who has led opposition to offshore drilling among the state’s Congressional delegation, criticized the governor for reversing his position, accusing Crist and McCain of putting oil company profits before protecting the state’s $65 billion annual tourism industry.

“Oil companies and their allies are using the shockingly high price of oil and gasoline, which largely is the result not of a supply problem but speculative fever, to scare the public into thinking coastal drilling offers a real solution to our dependency on oil,” he said in an e-mailed statement.

The 2006 Senate compromise opening up the Panhandle tracts made sense and should be honored by the oil companies, said Dan McLaughlin, Nelson’s spokesman. Instead, the companies and Congressional Republicans are pushing to open more acreage, he said. Nelson helped broker the compromise.

“It was a compromise allowing them to go where they wanted to go, where there were some proven reserves, while also keeping them at a distance to save the economy, the environment and protect our military training areas,” McLaughlin said.

“That compromise closed the door and kept the moratorium in place. Now you see the governor doing an about face, but we are confident we are going to fight it back again.”

© 2008 Associated Press

The United States’ so-called war on drugs brings to mind the old saying that if you find yourself trapped in a deep hole, stop digging. Yet, last week, the Senate approved an aid package to combat drug trafficking in Mexico and Central America, with a record $400 million going to Mexico and $65 million to Central America.

The United States has been spending $69 billion a year worldwide for the last 40 years, for a total of $2.5 trillion, on drug prohibition — with little to show for it. Is anyone actually benefiting from this war? Six groups come to mind.

The first group are the drug lords in nations such as Colombia, Afghanistan and Mexico, as well as those in the United States. They are making billions of dollars every year — tax free.

The second group are the street gangs that infest many of our cities and neighborhoods, whose main source of income is the sale of illegal drugs.

Third are those people in government who are paid well to fight the first two groups. Their powers and bureaucratic fiefdoms grow larger with each tax dollar spent to fund this massive program that has been proved not to work.

Fourth are the politicians who get elected and reelected by talking tough — not smart, just tough — about drugs and crime. But the tougher we get in prosecuting nonviolent drug crimes, the softer we get in the prosecution of everything else because of the limited resources to fund the criminal justice system.

The fifth group are people who make money from increased crime. They include those who build prisons and those who staff them. The prison guards union is one of the strongest lobbying groups in California today, and its ranks continue to grow.

And last are the terrorist groups worldwide that are principally financed by the sale of illegal drugs.

Who are the losers in this war? Literally everyone else, especially our children.

Today, there are more drugs on our streets at cheaper prices than ever before. There are more than 1.2 million people behind bars in the U.S., and a large percentage of them for nonviolent drug usage. Under our failed drug policy, it is easier for young people to obtain illegal drugs than a six-pack of beer. Why? Because the sellers of illegal drugs don’t ask kids for IDs. As soon as we outlaw a substance, we abandon our ability to regulate and control the marketing of that substance.

After we came to our senses and repealed alcohol prohibition, homicides dropped by 60% and continued to decline until World War II. Today’s murder rates would likely again plummet if we ended drug prohibition.

So what is the answer? Start by removing criminal penalties for marijuana, just as we did for alcohol. If we were to do this, according to state budget figures, California alone would save more than $1 billion annually, which we now spend in a futile effort to eradicate marijuana use and to jail nonviolent users. Is it any wonder that marijuana has become the largest cash crop in California?

We could generate billions of dollars by taxing the stuff, just as we do with tobacco and alcohol.

We should also reclassify most Schedule I drugs (drugs that the federal government alleges have no medicinal value, including marijuana and heroin) as Schedule II drugs (which require a prescription), with the government regulating their production, overseeing their potency, controlling their distribution and allowing licensed professionals (physicians, psychiatrists, psychologists, etc.) to prescribe them. This course of action would acknowledge that medical issues, such as drug addiction, are best left under the supervision of medical doctors instead of police officers.

The mission of the criminal justice system should always be to protect us from one another and not from ourselves. That means that drug users who drive a motor vehicle or commit other crimes while under the influence of these drugs would continue to be held criminally responsible for their actions, with strict penalties. But that said, the system should not be used to protect us from ourselves.

Ending drug prohibition, taxing and regulating drugs and spending tax dollars to treat addiction and dependency are the approaches that many of the world’s industrialized countries are taking. Those approaches are ones that work.

David W. Fleming, a lawyer, is the chairman of the Los Angeles County Business Federation and immediate past chairman of the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce. James P. Gray is a judge of the Orange County Superior Court.

© 2008 The Los Angeles Times

There are very good reasons why oily guys have been stereotyped over the years as the sorts of villains who twirl their mustaches and tie innocent young women to railroad tracks.

Now, as we are nearing the end of eight years of government of, for and by the oil industry, we may have finally reached the point in our history where the oily guys who run Big Oil no longer have any power to fool us.

With $4-a-gallon gas and the prospect of continuing price rises to $5 and above before the end of the summer, politicians are having a tougher job duping us into supporting more financial giveaways to the oil companies.

Amazingly, though, Republicans still keep trying.

Both President George W. Bush and presumed Republican nominee Sen. John McCain, who seems determined to live up to Democratic accusations he is running for Bush’s third term, are trying to use high gas prices to justify allowing the oil companies to threaten our coastlines with environmental devastation to boost oil profits even more.

National Republicans are following the lead of Wisconsin Republicans in standing foursquare behind the oil companies, and the public be damned.

During the last state budget negotiations, Wisconsin Assembly Republicans stood up to Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle and Senate Democrats, who wanted to pass a state windfall profits tax on the oil companies’ record profits, which are, simply put, the largest profits any companies have ever made in the history of the world.

We had Republican legislators standing up in the Assembly making speeches about how the largest profits in the history of the world weren’t actually all that excessive.

Alternately, Republicans argued we shouldn’t pass a windfall profits tax on the oil companies because the oil companies were run by such big crooks they would just illegally pass the tax on to consumers.

Doyle’s windfall profits tax contained a provision making it illegal to pass the tax along at the pump and included penalties for companies that broke the law.

Republicans said the companies would find devious ways to act illegally and pass the tax along anyway. Their argument basically was we know what big crooks the oil companies we support are and, trust us, they’ll find some way to break the law.

In a corrupt political world, it takes one to know one.

Now, in an election year yet, national Republicans have decided to try to eliminate the ban on offshore oil drilling, which has protected our coastlines for more than a quarter of a century.

Congress has banned offshore drilling since 1981 to protect coastal economies that depend on clean water and clean coastlines. The first President George Bush issued the first executive order backing the ban in 1990 after the Exxon Valdez spilled 10.8 million gallons of crude oil off Alaska, one of the worst ecological disasters in U.S. history.

Bush and McCain are counting on fading memories of TV footage of dying, oil-covered seabirds, seals and sea otters.

But coastal politicians, Republican and Democrat, are, for the most part, not foolish enough to support offshore drilling, which could endanger high-end real estate and booming tourist beach economies.

It’s one thing to devastate the habitats of seabirds, mammals and fish forever. It’s another to threaten hairy-backed high rollers wearing thongs at beach resorts.

To demonstrate how lust for higher office can distort politics, however, Republican Florida Gov. Charlie Crist, angling for the Republican vice presidential nomination, has betrayed his own state by dropping his long-standing opposition to lifting the ban.

Let some future governor of Florida worry about an oil slick destroying Miami Beach.

The possibility of oil spills and other human-error accidents isn’t the only danger from offshore drilling. Heavy industrial activity off our shores destroys coral reefs, wetlands and other natural barriers that protect coastal communities from natural disasters such as hurricanes and typhoons.

Imagine the destruction of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast spread around all three U.S. coasts.

Most Americans, who may not know enough to worry about environmental disasters, have a more prosaic reason for rebelling against further administration giveaways to the oil companies. They know no matter how much Republicans give to those oil companies, it won’t do anything to lower gas prices.

The oil companies will continue to charge as much as the market will bear. Unfortunately, we’ve already shown them we’ll bear ridiculous price increases.

And just last week, Exxon Mobil, Shell, Total and BP got their biggest payoffs from the Bush administration as they entered into final negotiations for their no-bid contracts to run Iraq’s oil industry.

Those are the same Western companies Saddam Hussein threw out of Iraq 36 years ago when he nationalized the oil industry.

After spending 4,100 American lives and $3 trillion to get Iraq’s oil back for those companies, we’ve contributed quite enough to those oily guys.

Joel McNally of Milwaukee writes a regular column for The Capital Times.

The Capital Times © 2008

WASHINGTON - The final mystery of 9/11 will soon be solved, according to US experts investigating the collapse of the third tower at the World Trade Center.

The 47-storey third tower, known as Tower Seven, collapsed seven hours after the twin towers.

Investigators are expected to say ordinary fires on several different floors caused the collapse.

Conspiracy theorists have argued that the third tower was brought down in a controlled demolition.

Unlike the twin towers, Tower Seven was not hit by a plane.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology, based near Washington DC, is expected to conclude in its long-awaited report this month that ordinary fires caused the building to collapse.

That would make it the first and only steel skyscraper in the world to collapse because of fire.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology’s lead investigator, Dr Shyam Sunder, spoke to BBC Two’s “The Conspiracy Files”:

“Our working hypothesis now actually suggests that it was normal building fires that were growing and spreading throughout the multiple floors that may have caused the ultimate collapse of the buildings.”

‘Smoking gun’

However, a group of architects, engineers and scientists say the official explanation that fires caused the collapse is impossible. Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth argue there must have been a controlled demolition.

The founder of the group, Richard Gage, says the collapse of the third tower is an obvious example of a controlled demolition using explosives.

“Building Seven is the smoking gun of 9/11… A sixth grader can look at this building falling at virtually freefall speed, symmetrically and smoothly, and see that it is not a natural process.

“Buildings that fall in natural processes fall to the path of least resistance”, says Gage, “they don’t go straight down through themselves.”

Conspiracy theories

There are a number of facts that have encouraged conspiracy theories about Tower Seven.

• Although its collapse potentially made architectural history, all of the thousands of tonnes of steel from the skyscraper were taken away to be melted down.
• The third tower was occupied by the Secret Service, the CIA, the Department of Defence and the Office of Emergency Management, which would co-ordinate any response to a disaster or a terrorist attack.
• The destruction of the third tower was never mentioned in the 9/11 Commission Report. The first official inquiry into Tower Seven by the Federal Emergency Management Agency was unable to be definitive about what caused its collapse.
• In May 2002 FEMA concluded that the building collapsed because intense fires had burned for hours, fed by thousands of gallons of diesel stored in the building. But it said this had “only a low probability of occurrence” and more work was needed.

But now nearly seven years after 9/11 the definitive official explanation of what happened to Tower Seven is finally about to be published in America.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology has spent more than two years investigating Tower Seven but lead investigator Dr Shyam Sunder rejects criticism that it has been slow.

The collapse of Tower 7

“We’ve been at this for a little over two years and doing a two or two and a half year investigation is not at all unusual. That’s the same kind of time frame that takes place when we do aeroplane crash investigations, it takes a few years.”

With no steel from Tower 7 to study, investigators have instead made four extremely complex computer models worked out to the finest detail. They’re confident their approach can now provide the answers. Dr Sunder says the investigation is moving as fast as possible.

“It’s a very complex problem. It requires a level of fidelity in the modelling and rigour in the analysis that has never been done before.”

Other skyscrapers haven’t fully collapsed before because of fire. But NIST argues that what happened on 9/11 was unique.

Steel structure weakened

It says Tower Seven had an unusual design, built over an electricity substation and a subway; there were many fires that burnt for hours; and crucially, fire fighters could not fight the fires in Tower 7, because they didn’t have enough water and focused on saving lives.

Investigators have focused on the east side where the long floor spans were under most stress.

They think fires burnt long enough to weaken and break many of the connections that held the steel structure together.

Most susceptible were the thinner floor beams which required less fireproofing, and the connections between the beams and the columns. As they heated up the connections failed and the beams sagged and failed, investigators say.

The collapse of the first of the Twin Towers does not seem to have caused any serious damage to Tower Seven, but the second collapse of the 1,368ft (417m) North Tower threw debris at Tower Seven, just 350ft (106m) away.

Tower Seven came down at 5.21pm. Until now most of the photographs have been of the three sides of the building that did not show much obvious physical damage. Now new photos of the south side of the building, which crucially faced the North Tower, show that whole side damaged and engulfed in smoke.

© 2008 BBC

SAPPORO, Japan - Indigenous communities from around the world urged G8 rich nations on Friday to help them participate in global climate change talks, saying they contributed least to but are most affected by global warming.

Clad in colorful traditional robes, 26 representatives from countries including the United States, Canada, and Japan, along with some 400 students, activists, and academics, met on Japan’s northern island of Hokkaido.

The island is the venue of the July 7-9 Group of Eight summit and home to the indigenous Ainu ethnic group.

At the meeting, members of indigenous communities blamed the market-oriented economic model of the G8 nations as the main cause for climate change, a food crisis, and high oil prices. These are issues high on the discussion agenda at the G8 summit.

“As we all know, the G8 is composed of the most powerful and richest governments in the world. The G8 is the one which makes decisions … that have direct impact on us,” said Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, Chair of the U.N. Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues.

“As far as I am concerned … we have seen that many of these problems are actually caused by the G8 themselves,” added Tauli-Corpuz, also a representative of the Igorot people of the Philippines.

A declaration issued at the meeting’s end said the G8 leaders should pave the way for indigenous people to be included in global climate change talks led by the United Nations.

“Indigenous peoples need to be included in all levels of climate change negotiations, because they are the most affected, but also because they have the most to contribute,” said Ben Powless, a Mohawk from Canada.

Many sang and chanted prayers in their indigenous languages at the meeting.

The United Nations has estimated 370 million indigenous people were already exposed on the front line of climate change to more frequent floods, droughts, desertification, disease and rising seas.

At the meeting, indigenous communities highlighted the troubles they were also facing from the effects of measures intended to mitigate climate change.

For example, Tauli-Corpuz said people had been displaced when biofuel plantations were expanded in the Philippines and when forests were used as carbon sinks in Uganda.

“We are really pleading to the governments to ensure that in the process of undertaking programmes, they will not further (marginalize) and violate the basic rights of the indigenous peoples,” she told Reuters in an interview.

In their declaration, representatives also called for the governments of Canada, the United States and Russia to adopt the U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

The United States and Canada voted against the non-binding declaration while Russia abstained. Australia and New Zealand also voted against it, but it was passed overwhelmingly in the General Assembly in September 2007.

Representatives welcomed the move by the Japanese government last month to recognize Ainu as indigenous people, but called for an official apology for mistreatment of the Ainu and concrete steps, as well as including more Ainu representatives in an experts’ committee.

Only one Ainu was named to the eight-member committee formed by Japan’s government this month.

The declaration from the meeting will be handed over on Friday to Japanese lawmakers, who will pass it to Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda before the summit, meeting organizers said.

© 2008 Reuters

Call him slippery or nuanced, Barack Obama’s core position on Iraq has always been more ambiguous than audacious. Now it is catching up with him as his latest remarks are questioned by the Republicans, the mainstream media, and the antiwar movement. He could put his candidacy at risk if his audacity continues to shrivel.

I first endorsed Obama because of the nature of the movement supporting him, not his particular stands on issues. The excitement among African-Americans and young people, the audacity of their hope, still holds the promise of a new era of social activism. The force of their rising expectations, I believe, could pressure a President Obama in a progressive direction and also energize a new wave of social movements.

And of course, there is the need to end the Republican reign that began with a stolen election followed by eight years of war and torture, corporate gouging, environmental decay, domestic spying and right-wing court appointments, just in case we forget who Obama is running against.

Besides the transforming nature of an African-American presidency, the issue that matters most to me is achieving a peaceful settlement of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan — and preventing American escalations in Iran and Latin America. From the beginning, Obama’s symbolic 2002 position on Iraq has been very promising, reinforced again and again by his campaign pledge to “end the war” in 2009.

But that pledge also has been laced with loopholes all along, caveats that the mainstream media and his opponents [excepting Bill Richardson] have ignored or avoided until now. As I pointed out in Ending the War in Iraq [2007], Obama’s 2002 speech opposed the coming war with Iraq as “dumb”, while avoiding what position he would take once the war was underway. Then he wrote of almost changing his position from anti- to pro-war after a trip to Iraq. He never took as forthright a position as Senator Russ Feingold, among others. Then he adopted the safe, nonpartisan formula of the Baker-Hamilton Study Group, which advocated the withdrawal of combat troops while leaving thousands of American counter-terrorism units, advisers and trainers behind.

That would mean at least 50,000 Americans, including back up forces, engaged in counter-insurgency after the withdrawal of combat troops, a contradiction the media and Hillary Clinton failed to explore in the primary debates. To his credit, Obama said that these American units would not become caught up in a lengthy sectarian civil war, leaving the question of their role unanswered.

The most shocking aspect of Samantha Powers’ forced resignation earlier this year was not that she called Hillary Clinton a “monster” off-camera, but that she flatly stated that Obama would review his whole position on Iraq once becoming president. Again, no one in the media or rival campaigns questioned whether this assertion by Powers was true. Since Obama credited Powers with helping for months in writing his book, The Audacity of Hope, her comments on his inner thinking should have been pounced upon by the pundits.

Finally, it has taken the pressure of the general election to raise questions about whether his parsed and lawyerly language is empty of credible meaning. Consider carefully his July 4 statements:

The first one, promising a “thorough reassessment” of his Iraq position later this summer:

“I’ve always said that the pace of our withdrawal would be dictated by the safety and security of our troops and the need to maintain stability” — two conditions that could justify leaving American troops in combat indefinitely. “And when I go to Iraq and have a chance to talk to some of the commanders on the ground, I’m sure I’ll have more information and will continue to refine my policies” — another loophole which could allow the war to drag on.

Then there came the later “clarification”:

“Let me be as clear as I can be” [not, “let me be absolutely clear”].

“I intend to end this war.” [intention only].

“My first day in office I will bring the Joint Chiefs of Staff in, and I will give them a new mission, and that is to end this war — responsibly, deliberately, but decisively.” [ Sounds positive, but “decisively” can mean by military threat in the worst case. And it’s pure theatre, borrowed from Clinton, since the plans most likely will be drafted and finalized immediately after the November election.]

“And I have seen no information that contradicts the notion that we can bring our troops out safely at a pace of one or two brigades a month…” [but what if the military commanders on the ground assert that it is too dangerous to pull out those troops?]

Obama’s position, which always left a trail of unasked questions, now plants a seed of doubt, justifiably, among the peace bloc of American voters who harbor a legacy of betrayals beginning with Lyndon Johnson’s 1064 pledge of “no wider war” through Richard Nixon’s “secret plan for peace” to Ronald Reagan’s Iran-Contra scandal and the deep complicity of Democrats in the evolution of the Iraq War.

It is difficult to understand Obama’s motivation. Perhaps it is his lifetime success at straddling positions and disarming potential opponents. Perhaps it is a lawyer’s training. Perhaps being surrounded by national security advisers who oppose what they call “precipitous withdrawal”, and pragmatic Democrats distinctly uncomfortable with their antiwar roots.

What is clear is that Obama is responsive to pressures from the grass-roots base of a party that is overwhelmingly in favor of a shorter timetable for withdrawal than his, and favoring diplomatic rather than military solutions in Afghanistan and Pakistan. At a time that public interest in the war is receeding before economic concerns, it is time for the strongest possible reassertion of voter demands for peace.

The challenge for the peace and justice movement is to avoid falling into Republican divide-and-conquer traps while maintaining a powerful and independent presence in key electoral states, including Congressional battlegrounds, between now and November. There should be at the least:

- A demand that Obama talk to legitimate representatives of the peace movement, not simply hawkish national security advisers.

- A Democratic platform debate and plank that is unequivocal in pledging to end the war and avoid military escalation elsewhere.

- An energized antiwar voter education campaign that builds towards a clear November peace mandate to end the military occupation and shifr to political and diplomatic approraches.

- An organizational strategy to widen the base of the antiwar movement through the presidential campaign in preparation for a massive peace mobilization in early 2009.

Grass-roots people power is the only force that can keep alive the astute sense of pragmatism that led Obama to criticize the coming war in 2002. The stakes are higher now, and the enemies far more shrewd, wishing to rip asunder the Obama coalition. The peace movement assumption should be that there is no one in Obama’s inner circle of advisers to be counted on, no mainstream columnist to catch his eye with a persuasive column favoring withdrawal. They never have. Only the voice of the peace voters - and the countless activists who have volunteered on his behalf - can command his attention now.

For more developments and analysis, see ‘Progressives for Obama’ at progressivesforobama.blogspot.com

Tom Hayden is a former state senator and leader of Sixties peace, justice and environmental movements. He currently teaches at Pitzer College in Los Angeles. His books include The Port Huron Statement [new edition], Street Wars and The Zapatista Reader.

© 2008 Huffington Post

Iran has handed over its long-awaited response to the West’s offer of incentives to halt its suspected nuclear weapons programme, after a warning by one of its top military leaders that any strike against it would trigger war.

Details were not immediately disclosed of what Iran called a “constructive and creative” response to an offer by the US, Britain, Russia, China, Germany and France of a deal under which Iran would halt uranium enrichment in return for an agreement to ease sanctions and allow Tehran to continue developing civil nuclear power.

Before the response, however, the head of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, Mohammed Jafari, was quoted by the Iranian state news agency as saying: “Iran’s response to any military action will make the invaders regret their decision and action.” Mr Jafari had already warned that if attacked, Iran would launch a barrage of missiles at Israel and close the Strait of Hormuz, the outlet for oil tankers leaving the Persian Gulf.

That in turn followed a declaration by Admiral James Winnefeld, the commander of the US Sixth Fleet, that the launch of missiles by Iran against Israel was “by far the most likely employment of ballistic missiles in the world today, and it demands our immediate attention in the event of a need for a US or Nato response”.

Admiral Winnefeld’s remarks also underlined the likelihood that Western powers could well be drawn into what US officials have predicted could be a unilateral strike by Israel against Iran if Tehran fails to bow to international pressure to halt uranium enrichment. Speculation that Israel could be prepared to launch its own strike if Iran did not yield to diplomatic pressure was reinforced this week by US defence officials telling ABC News that it might do so within a year.

Israel has remained largely silent in response to the report.

The unnamed US officials suggested that Israel’s two “red lines” would be the enrichment by Iran of enough uranium at its Natanz plant to produce nuclear weapons; and the acquisition of the SA 20 air-defence system which Iran is seeking from Russia and which could make a strike against it even more difficult.

That report in turn followed the disclosure two weeks ago, also by US officials, that Israel had deployed about 100 F-15 and F-16 fighter-bombers in a major exercise over Greece and the eastern Mediterranean, which was widely seen as a trial run for a possible military operation against Iran.

The latest stirrings about possible Israeli unilateral action have been tied to a growing perception in Israel that the US is unlikely to launch a military strike on Iran in the closing months of a weakened George Bush presidency. This was underlined when the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs, Admiral Mike Mullen, said on Thursday: “This is a very unstable part of the world, and I don’t need it to be more unstable.”

Shaul Mofaz, a member of the Israeli cabinet and a former military chief of staff and defence minister, created a political stir in Israel last month by declaring the day after the exercise ended in early June that “if Iran continues with its programme for developing nuclear weapons, we will attack”.

Israel is thought to be more concerned about the reinforcement that a nuclear Iran would give to its influence in the region and to groups allied with it - such as Hizbollah in Lebanon - than about an actual nuclear strike on Israel. A senior Israeli diplomat briefed journalists in London on Thurrsday on the threat to the broader Middle East region if Iran became a nuclear power and was therefore able to exercise regional hegemony.

Arguing that the US Defence Secretary, Robert Gates, was strongly against any military strike by the US, the eminent defence analyst of the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, Amir Oren, said yesterday that the Israeli appraisal that the prospect of such a strike was “non existent” would encourage those who believe the Israeli military “must be dispatched to the east”.

This continued a vigorous debate in the Israeli media this week about Israel’s readiness for unilateral action against Iran. Major-General Aharon Zeevi-Farkash, a hawkish former head of military intelligence, acknowledged that Iran would probably respond with long-range missiles to any Israeli attack and that Hizbollah could well come to its support “with its 40,000 rockets, and Syria might as well”. But, he added: “In my judgement, the price that Israel will pay then will be far less painful than the price that it will be forced to pay if the Iranians obtain a nuclear bomb.”

Alex Fishman, a military analyst on Israel’s largest newspaper, Yedhiot Arhronot, believes the US is “using Israel for intimidation”. But, he wrote this week: “The problem is that threats of this type have a dynamic of their own, and they may yet be self-fulfilling.”

Professor Uzi Arad, a former director of intelligence at Mossad, said yesterday that last month’s exercise by Israel, at considerable cost, showed it was serious about a military option in the last resort. While an escalation was “not inevitable,” Professor Arad said, it was not necessary to attack nuclear targets in order to deter Iran’s nuclear weapons programme. Military installations and airfields, for example, could also be attacked, he suggested.

The military operation

Targets

The main focus of any Israeli strike would be Iran’s nuclear facilities. US and British defence officials say the attacks would also seek to neutralise other military facilities in an attempt to prevent Tehran from retaliating immediately. In particular, they would concentrate on the sites of Shahab-3B missiles that have a range of up 1,250 miles and the capability to hit Israel. The Americans may also want the Israelis to destroy Shahab-2s, which have a shorter range of about 200 miles but pose a danger to US ships in the Gulf and troops in Iraq. Other targets could include the naval facility at Bandar Abbas and command and control centres in and around Tehran. Many of the Iranian nuclear facilities such as Bushehr and especially Natanz are protected by concrete bunkers. Destroying them would require up to 100 bunker-busting bombs to be used in synchronised and complex operations.

Attack routes

Israel’s military exercise in the Mediterranean last month was widely seen as a dress rehearsal for Iran. It involved 100 F-15 and F-16 fighter-bombers, refuelling tankers and helicopters flying about 1,450 km, about the same distance as to the Iranian uranium enrichment plant at Natanz. The northern route, overflying Turkey, is the most logical one for for Israel. An alternative route would be via the south, avoiding the Saudi land mass and approaching Iran over the ocean. But that is longer and more hazardous.

Ground operations

The US is reported to be running covert operations in Iran funded by $400m (£200m) siphoned from other programmes, and run by the CIA and Joint Special Operations Command. They involve support for the minority Ahwazi Arab and Baluchi groups as well as other dissident organisations. The Iranians have complained for a long time that bomb attacks in its territory are being organised by US and British forces in Iraq, a charge both countries have denied. An Israeli air operation could be augmented by attacks carried out on the ground.

Risks to the Israelis

The Israelis destroyed the Iraqi nuclear reactor at Osirak in 1981. That was, however, just one site and the Iraqis were taken by surprise. Destroying Iran’s nuclear facilities is a much more complex business. The mission is not only likely to provoke retaliation from President Ahmadinejad (left), with measures such as disruption of oil traffic through the Gulf - but also carries the risk of Israeli pilots being shot down and/or taken prisoner.

© 2008 The Independent

BAGHDAD - Iraq will be plunged into a new war if Israel or the US launches an attack on Iran, Iraqi leaders have warned. Iranian retaliation would take place in Iraq, said Dr Mahmoud Othman, the influential Iraqi MP.

The Iraqi government’s main allies are the US and Iran, whose governments openly detest each other. The Iraqi government may be militarily dependent on the 140,000 US troops in the country, but its Shia and Kurdish leaders have long been allied to Iran. Iraqi leaders have to continually perform a balancing act in which they seek to avoid alienating either country.

The balancing act has become more difficult for Iraq since George Bush successfully requested $400m (£200m) from Congress last year to fund covert operations aimed at destabilising the Iranian leadership. Some of these operations are likely to be launched from Iraqi territory with the help of Iranian militants opposed to Tehran. The most effective of these opponent groups is the Mujahedin-e-Khalq (MEK), which enraged the Iraqi government by staging a conference last month at Camp Ashraf, north-east of Baghdad. It demanded the closure of the Iranian embassy and the expulsion of all Iranian agents in Iraq. “It was a huge meeting” said Dr Othman. “All the tribes and political leaders who are against Iran, but are also against the Iraqi government, were there.” He said the anti-Iranian meeting could not have taken place without US permission.

The Americans disarmed the 3,700 MEK militants, who had long been allied to Saddam Hussein, at Camp Ashraf in 2003, but they remain well-organised and well-financed. The extent of their support within Iran remains unknown, but they are extremely effective as an intelligence and propaganda organisation.

Though the MEK is on the State Department’s list of terrorist groups, the Pentagon and other US institutions have been periodically friendly to it. The US task force charged by Mr Bush with destabilising the Iranian government is likely to co-operate with it.

In reaction to the conference, the Iraqi government, the US and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) have started secret talks on the future of the MEK with the Iraqi government pressing for their expulsion from Iraq. Dr Othman, who speaks to the MEK frequently by phone, said: “I pressed them to get out of Iraq voluntarily because they are a card in the hands of the Americans.”

An embarrassing aspect of the American pin-prick war against Iran is that many of its instruments were previously on the payroll of Saddam Hussein. The MEK even played a role in 1991 in helping to crush the uprising against the Baathist regime at the end of the Gulf war. The dissidents from Arab districts in southern Iran around Ahwaz were funded by Saddam Hussein’s intelligence organisations, which orchestrated the seizure of the Iranian embassy in London in 1980 which was supposedly carried out by Arab nationalists from Iran.

The one community in Iran most likely to oppose the Tehran government is the Iranian Kurds. There have been an increasing number of attacks by PJAK, the Iranian wing of the Turkish PKK, which claims to be a separate party. Based in the Kandil mountains in Iraqi Kurdistan, PJAK has carried out frequent raids into Iran and has reportedly been able to win local support. But it would be extremely dangerous for the US to be seen as a supporter of PJAK as this would offend the Turks who have a military co-operation agreement with Iran against terrorism.

© 2008 The Independent

BAQUBA, Iraq - Wenza Ali Mutlaq walked a bit uncertainly up the long street near the main government offices here on June 22, the hot wind stirring her heavy black abaya. She passed the concrete barricades put up to ward off suicide car bombers and made her way alone, almost haphazardly.

Suddenly, a police car zoomed in. A policeman got out to talk with her. And then their lives were over - torn apart, along with 14 other people, by the huge blast of fire from her concealed explosive vest.

Ms. Mutlaq, who was in her 30s and whose attack was captured on a security video, was the 18th female suicide bomber of the war to strike in Diyala Province, which has been hit by female attackers much more frequently than any other province of Iraq, according to Iraqi police records and the American military. So far, 11 of the 20 suicide bombings carried out by women in Iraq this year have occurred in Diyala.

Why so many women? Why now? In a particularly painful twist, the phenomenon seems to have arisen at least in part because of successes in detaining and killing local members of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, a homegrown Sunni insurgent group that American intelligence officials say is led by foreigners.

The women who become suicide bombers often have lost close male relatives - a husband, a brother, a son - in fighting, because they became suicide bombers themselves or because they were detained by American or Iraqi security forces.

Ms. Mutlaq was no exception: her older brother had already taken the same path, detonating a suicide vest on June 10 during a shootout with Iraqi government forces.

“If there’s one single trend that I see, it’s the women’s relationship with the male figures that were members of A.Q.I. and were captured or killed,” said a senior military analyst, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was discussing information that had not been released publicly.

The subordinate role of women in conservative, rural Sunni families in Diyala makes them particularly vulnerable to pressure, said Sajar Qaduri, a member of the Diyala Provincial Council and the only woman on its security committee.

“Although she is bombing herself and aiming to kill people, I feel these women are really victims of terrorism,” said Mrs. Qaduri, who is a Shiite and whose husband was kidnapped two years ago and has not been heard from since. “Only women in despair, in desperate situations, would do this. Dealing with such a phenomenon is not easy.”

She added: “Our Oriental society is not like your Western society. It seems in many of these cases the women have had their husband killed or sent to prison and she feels she has no choice, she is very depressed.”

Female suicide bombers are not a new phenomenon in Iraq or elsewhere, but they have been relatively rare. Since 2003, 43 women have carried out suicide bombings in Iraq, a tiny percentage of the total, according to the United States military. Though the first two cases came in the first year of the war, suicide attacks by women did not really become a trend until 2007, when there were eight such bombings in Iraq. All but one of the female bombers have been Iraqis and most are young, between the ages of 15 and 35, according to the police and American military analysts. Almost all the attacks have been attributed to Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, which is also known as Al Qaeda in Iraq.

Diyala has been a stronghold for the group since it was chased from Anbar Province in the west in 2004. The province’s attraction was clear: it offers easy hiding places in its palm groves and orchards, and a Sunni-majority population that includes many people who supported Saddam Hussein and are sympathetic to the insurgency.

But in the past year, American and Iraqi forces have had much greater success in killing and detaining the group’s members in the province, as well as thwarting many of its bigger attack plots. The rise in female suicide bombings has directly coincided with the timing, and the locations, of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia’s biggest loss of manpower in Diyala, Baghdad and Anbar.

“Al Qaeda is always innovating: finding new ways to work,” said Ghanem al-Khoreishi, the police chief of Diyala. “When we destroyed them in fighting, they started to use new methods. And because they knew that women are treated more gently than men, they began to use them.

“The people don’t search them so well even at checkpoints.”

Interviews with police officers and politicians, American military analysts and Iraqi women yield different views of the phenomenon. But many agree that the province’s traditional, conservative and still largely rural society is a factor.

In Diyala’s countryside, most women cannot imagine the world beyond the date palms they see on the horizon. It might be an hourlong walk to the next village, there are no telephones, and cellphones often do not work. Most of the women cannot read.

“Most of the women who have killed themselves are from the villages,” said Maj. Gen. Abdul Karim al-Rubaie, the head of the Iraqi Army operations center in Diyala. “She is living a very traditional life. She has no rights.”

“For that reason,” he added, “her ideas are very small.”

During Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia’s big push to take over Diyala villages, starting in late 2004, many families yielded to the extremists to protect themselves. Wide networks of villages that support Al Qaeda were created when subtribes, and sometimes even whole tribes, embraced the movement.

“In these families, they are terrorists: the conversations at dinner are about suicide bombs, about explosives, about improvised explosive devices,” said Col. Ali Ismari Fateh, a police commander who has been involved in hundreds of interrogations of people suspected of being insurgents.

Mrs. Qaduri, the provincial council member, said she believed that an element of sexual abuse may be involved as well. Many families marry their daughters off to local Qaeda leaders, known as emirs, at age 14 or 15. In some cases the girls are forced into marriage contracts in which they are married to a local emir, but if he dies or is captured, they are obligated to marry his successor and if he is captured or killed, that one’s successor.

At the same time, Diyala residents and officials say, militants from Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia have worked to instill their radical Islamist vision in the population. Almost immediately after moving in four years ago, they began holding religion classes for men and women.

“Even in Baquba, my niece went to some; she was shaken,” said Shamaa Abad al-Kader, the headmistress of a school for girls in Muqdadiya who also serves on Diyala’s provincial council.

“They gathered people in the villages; they brought women into Baquba and gave them lectures on how to behave,” Ms. Kader said. “These Al Qaeda men were going into the schools, into the mosques and they forced people to listen to them. My niece said the man who came to her school had a long beard and a sword with him.”

Insurgent recruiters and religion instructors add promises to the threats, too, assuring people that they will go to paradise if they die fighting for Islam - a sometimes alluring dream for many in their largely poor, uneducated audience, said police officials and politicians in Diyala.

In some cases, it may not just be a matter of co-opting or persuading vulnerable women. In one case in April recounted by Police Chief Khoreishi, a woman came to the station asking for protection; she was being forced to become a suicide bomber and trained to use an explosive belt by two members of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, one of them a close relative. The police now have her in protective custody, and two people suspected of being group members are in detention.

Iraqi police officials also say that a few of the bombings involved women wearing vests that were exploded by remote control, though it is unclear exactly how many because explosions usually destroy telltale design details about the detonators.

“There are two ways a suicide vest can work: there is a button they can push themselves and there is a remote control detonation,” Colonel Fateh said. “They follow her and if they think she is afraid to do it, then they will do it for her.”

Mrs. Qaduri believes that knowing the basic profile of the women who tend to become suicide bombers can inform policing: if a woman has a male family member who kills himself or is killed in the name of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia or one of its sister organizations, it should be a warning sign that she or other close female relatives are at risk of becoming bombers.

Her dream is to start an intervention program that would take the women out of their homes and put them in shelters where they could not harm themselves or anyone else.

“We can predict that such a woman is ready to be used as a suicide bomber,” she said. “But at the same time, we don’t have any concrete proof that we can use to detain these women.”

Ms. Mutlaq’s life and death track the profile described by Mrs. Qaduri and others.

A native of the rural area south of Buhriz in southern Diyala, about 40 minutes northeast of Baghdad, she grew up in a landscape of date palms and orange orchards fed by irrigation canals.

Her tribe aligned itself early on with Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, and her brother and husband became influential emirs, officials said. Buhriz was one of the most violent areas of Diyala in 2005 and 2006, with periods when there were nearly weekly bombings.

Last June, her husband was killed while fighting in Baquba, the province’s capital, around the time that the American offensive in the city began, according to Baquba police officials. Almost exactly a year after that, her brother detonated his suicide vest during fighting with government forces.

Twelve days later, she walked alone past the barricades.

Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

WASHINGTON - The US government is developing a “long-range plan” to empty its war-on-terror prison at its naval base in Guantanamo, Cuba, and seeking help on what to do with inmates who won’t be tried, The Washington Post reported Friday.

President George W. Bush’s administration may ask Congress to “spell out procedures for scores of suspected terrorists whom the government does not plan to bring to trial,” the report said, citing unnamed administration officials and others familiar with high-level White House talks on the thorny issue.

Last month the US Supreme Court ruled that inmates could challenge their detention in a civilian court. The US government had said it wanted to bring 60 to 80 Guantanamo detainees before military commissions, though only about 20 have so far been charged.

The commissions are highly controversial, notably because they accept indirect witness statements as evidence, as well as information obtained under duress.

One scenario under consideration would see “about 80 detainees … remain at the facility in Cuba to be tried by military commissions, and about 65 others would be turned over to their native countries.”

But “the focus of the intensifying debate is what to do with about 120 remaining prisoners, who are viewed by the administration as too dangerous to release but who are unlikely to be brought before military commissions because of a lack of evidence.

“Officials are considering whether to propose legislation in coming days that would establish legal procedures for such prisoners, who could be transferred to military or civilian prisons on the US mainland,” the report quoted unnamed sources as saying.

Bush has said for more than two years that he would like to close the widely condemned prison camp at the Caribbean naval base, which itself lies on the coast of Cuba against the will of the communist government in Havana.

US authorities were cited in the report as saying no decision has been made on a potential close of the prison camp and that “the administration’s debate is focused on what steps would be necessary for such a closure, including moving scores of terrorism suspects to other US detention facilities.”

© 2008 Agence France Presse

WASHINGTON - The world’s biggest economy marked Independence Day Friday with little cause for economic cheer. Job losses are the worst in nearly six years and a de facto recession appears to have gripped all sectors.

Statistics released in the run up to the Jul. 4 national holiday offer little hope of an early turnaround. Developing and wealthy countries alike are feeling the effects of the slowdown here.

Economic woes top the list of voters’ concerns in this election year, according to numerous opinion polls. Job losses, in particular, are causing anxiety and contributing to the lowest levels of consumer confidence about the future in more than a decade.

“Far too many Americans will spend this holiday out of work and struggling to provide for their families because of the failed policies of the last eight years,” Barack Obama, the Democratic contender for the presidency, said Thursday.

Said John McCain, Obama’s Republican rival: “Washington can no longer abdicate its responsibility to act. Our focus must be clear: enact policies to create jobs today.”

Employers have jettisoned nearly half a million workers — 438,000 — so far this year, the Labour Department said on Thursday. In June alone, they laid off 62,000 jobs, more than economists had predicted and the sixth straight month of net job losses for the economy.

Massive job losses overwhelmed the few gains seen in health care, education, the hospitality industry, and the government.

The economy needs to generate more than 100,000 new jobs every month just to keep up with new entrants into the job market.

A day earlier, leading payroll processor Automatic Data Processing Inc. (ADP) said non-farm private firms jettisoned 79,000 workers last month, the biggest job loss since November 2002.

The national unemployment rate held steady at 5.5 percent — a full percentage point higher than a year ago, according to the Labour Department. Nationwide, there were 8.5 million people last month, up from 7 million a year ago.

The government’s figures likely understate the problem, however, as they exclude people who have given up looking for a job, and those knocked out of full-time employment and into part-time jobs against their will.

Many economists say the unemployment rate likely will continue to rise well into 2009, topping 6 percent along the way.

June’s “decrease in employment was broad based across industrial sectors and suggests continued weakness in employment,” said Joel Prakken, chairman of Macroeconomics Advisers LLC, which crunched ADP’s payroll data for Wednesday’s report.

Goods-producing companies dominated last month’s bloodletting with 76,000 workers let go — the sector’s nineteenth consecutive month of decline. The manufacturing sector offloaded 44,000 workers for its twenty-second straight month of job losses, ADP said.

But the services sector, which had continued to grow steadily as other parts of the economy stalled, posted its first jobs decline since November 2002, laying off 3,000 workers, according to ADP.

The private Institute for Supply Management (ISM) confirmed the reversal of fortunes on Thursday, announcing in a widely anticipated report that its services sector index fell to 48.2 in June from 51.7 in May. A reading below 50 reflects contraction.

The ISM manufacturing index for June rose unexpectedly to 50.2 but the group said this was just a spurt and warned that unsold goods were piling up and likely would lead to further retrenchment.

The purchasing managers’ association blamed the downturn mainly on rising costs of fuel, food, and raw materials.

Factory orders for capital goods — machines and other products used in making other products — also are falling, the Commerce Department said on Wednesday, providing further indication that businesses faced with dwindling profits are paring their spending on plant and production capacity. The department also reported an increase in unsold goods.

The U.S. housing recession, now in its third year, continues to claim livelihoods in the home-building industry and among finance firms specialising in home sales and mortgage lending.

ADP’s payrolls review “suggests no lessening of the recent strain on employment in these industries,” said Prakken.

Builders have axed 349,000 jobs in the past two years and housing finance firms cut 3,000 jobs last month alone, according to ADP.

Worse is to come. Countrywide Financial Corp. said last week 7,500 jobs would be cut as Bank of America Corp., the second-largest U.S. bank, acquires the troubled mortgage lender.

What’s more, job losses are spreading to other parts of the service economy. Starbucks, that symbol of business expansion, said it would close 600 of its U.S. coffee shops in the year ahead — or nearly one in every five stores opened in the past two years. The company said it would serve termination notices to 12,000 employees, about 7 percent of its global workforce.

Airline employees also are bracing for job losses, as are workers for Chrysler and other U.S. automakers, some of which said this week their sales had fallen to 15-year lows.

More pain is to come, economists say, and it will be felt around the world.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank have issued multiple warnings since late last year that a stagnating U.S. economy is dragging down other countries and could lead to global recession.

Latin America and countries linked to the feeble U.S. dollar have been hit hard but losses also have struck major traders China and India. Economic woes in the rich countries also could sap the world’s aid-dependent poorest countries, the IMF has warned.

International experts had hoped governments with sizeable currency reserves and those with relatively little dependence on U.S. aid, investment, or export markets might ride out the storm. But the IMF warned this week that runaway commodity prices were eating into some countries’ finances.

© 2008 Inter Press Service

“Private sector job gains in the Bush years may fall below 3 million by November.”

The employment to population ratio (EPOP) ratio fell to 62.4 percent in June, its lowest level in more than three years, as the economy lost another 62,000 jobs in June. This was the sixth consecutive month in which the economy lost jobs. The private sector lost 91,000 jobs in June. With the April and May numbers revised down by 76,000, the job loss in the private sector over the last three months has been 273,000, an average of 91,000 a month. The private sector has now shed 578,000 jobs since employment peaked in November.

Job loss continues to be led by construction and manufacturing, but most sectors are now losing jobs. Construction lost 43,000 jobs in June, with both residential and non-residential construction now shedding jobs. Employment in residential construction has fallen by 15.8 percent since its peak in February of 2006. By comparison, real spending is down by almost 50 percent over this period. The fact that employment has fallen so much less than production undoubtedly reflects the fact that many undocumented workers never showed up in the employment data.

Losses were widespread across sectors. Manufacturing lost 33,000 jobs in June, a number that would have been larger had it not been for the return of about 15,000 striking workers in the auto sector.

The retail sector lost 7,500 jobs, with 4,800 of the lost jobs in auto dealers. Auto dealerships have shed just 25,900 jobs (2.1 percent of total employment) over the last year. Given the sharp falloff in sales this number is likely to increase substantially in the months ahead.

In the same vein, employment in the real estate sector has fallen by 2.4 percent from its peak in January of 2006. With sales of existing homes down by almost 30 percent, sales of new homes down by almost 50 percent, and prices down by 15 percent, it seems virtually certain that there will be much more job loss in this sector in the months ahead.

The temporary help and the larger employment services sectors are both shedding jobs at rapid rates, losing 30,400 and 56,900 jobs, respectively in June. These two sectors, which are often seen as harbingers of future employment trends have, respectively, lost 150,000 and 200,000 jobs since January.

The health care sector, which had been adding jobs at a rate of more than 30,000 a month, added just 14,500 jobs in June. The earlier rate was clearly unsustainable, since it would imply enormous increases in health care costs. Similarly, educational services, another key growth sector, added 15,300 jobs in June, a rate that is also not likely to be sustained in the months ahead.

State and local governments added 25,000 jobs in June. They have added 233,000 jobs over the last year. With most state and local governments now facing severe budget shortfalls, this pace will surely slow in the new fiscal year.

The news in the household survey is consistent with the weak picture in the establishment data. The June EPOP is a full percentage point below the peak hit in December of 2006. It is 2.3 percentage points below the peak hit in April of 2000, a difference that corresponds to 5.4 million fewer people having jobs.

The biggest falloff has been among teenagers, who have seen a drop of 4.5 percentage points in their EPOPs. (The EPOP for black teens fell to 19.6 percent, the lowest rate since March of 1984.) While some have attributed this to the minimum wage hike, this falloff in teen employment is standard for recessions. The EPOP for teens fell 6.8 pp from April of 2000 to May of 2002, a period in which there was no change in the federal minimum wage. There also was a big jump in Hispanic unemployment, which at 7.7 percent is 3.0 pp above its low in October of 2006.

The economy has entered a slow motion recession. It is not seeing the dramatic plunges in jobs that characterized prior recessions, but the collapse of the housing bubble is slowly sinking more and more sectors of the economy.
Dean Baker is the co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR). He is the author of The Conservative Nanny State: How the Wealthy Use the Government to Stay Rich and Get Richer ( www.conservativenannystate.org). He also has a blog, “Beat the Press,” where he discusses the media’s coverage of economic issues. You can find it at the American Prospect’s web site.

SAPPORO, Japan - Thousands of farmers and activists from around the world demonstrated Saturday in the northern Japanese city of Sapporo ahead of next week’s summit of the Group of Eight rich nations.

Japan mobilised thousands of riot police to prevent any violence on the streets of Sapporo, the closest major city to the lakeside resort of Toyako, where world leaders will meet from Monday.

Dozens of masked protesters marching to rock music were warned by police against entering restricted areas as Japanese organisers of the rally called on the demonstrators to avoid violence and clashes with police.

“No violence! Please follow rules,” said one of the organisers with a loudspeaker before the protesters hit the street. “Thousands of police have come here from throughout the nation and are watching us!”

Two protesters were arrested, organisers said, one of whom was a driver leading a group of protesters.

He refused to move his truck and riot police broke the vehicle’s side window before dragging him out, arresting him on the spot.

Security was tight for the rally, which brought together union activists, anti-war demonstrators, farmers and students in a park in Sapporo.

Riot police wearing helmets and carrying shields patrolled downtown streets and the central park, part of a 21,000-strong force deployed to ensure security for the summit.

“Of course violence is not good,” said a protester from London. “It does not cause any good.”

“But look at the number of cops here,” said the man, 50, who declined to be identified.

Despite the two arrests, the Sapporo rally, in which organisers estimated 5,000 people took part, was peaceful compared to protests in recent years.

Violent anti-globalisation rallies have marred past G8 summits — last year militant activists threw Molotov cocktails and stones during demonstrations in Germany that drew tens of thousands of protesters.

Japanese authorities were taking no chances, refusing entry to 19 South Koreans, with others still detained at airports.

A speaker from the Korean Federation of Trade Unions deplored the move.

“We will not back down due to such suppression,” he said to applause.

Ahead of the demonstration, around 100 farmers and fishermen waved banners and shouted slogans in the park, calling for the G8 to pay more attention to food producers.

“We should have a more balanced food supply in the world,” said Japanese rice farmer Eiichi Hayashizaki, 69, holding a straw-woven banner saying, “Power to food producers!”

“Japan imports the majority of its food from overseas, so we don’t starve ourselves. But the government should stop controlling rice production in the country.”

Activists from charity Oxfam International warned of the impact of soaring food prices and climate change on world poverty as they performed their customary skit mocking the eight world leaders including Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda and US President George W. Bush.

Wearing traditional Japanese kimonos, they sang a karaoke version of the ABBA song “Money, Money, Money.”

“This isn’t the time for a holiday, this is the time for sorting out problems,” said Lucy Brinicombe of Oxfam International. “They shouldn’t be distracted from finding solutions for the food crisis and climate change.”

Global food prices have nearly doubled in three years, according to the World Bank, setting off riots in parts of the developing world.

Leaders of the eight major industrial powers — Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia and the United States — are reportedly set to agree on a new system of “food reserves” to assist hungry nations.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said the G8 will take measures to fight the soaring price of food, in an interview with a German newspaper.

“A vast catalogue of measures to guarantee food supplies worldwide” is expected to be adopted at the G8 summit, Merkel told the Tagesspiegel am Sonntag which will be on newstands Sunday.

© 2008 Agence France Presse

People have been trying to call a bottom to the current housing and mortgage crisis for some time. Chartists, technical analysts, real estate gurus, even soothsayers and tea leaf readers have all seen false bottoms and have predicted upturns in the market in the very near future.

Unfortunately, the worst is yet to come. We are not even halfway into this housing price decline. In books published in 2003 and 2006, respectively, my predictions of 25% home price declines nationwide and 50% price declines in many cities on the coasts are rapidly coming true. You can see that we have a long way to go because most ARMS are just now resetting, most foreclosures to date have been 2006 and 2007 mortgages and the banks are not going to lend 10 times your combined income in the future, but rather something more like 5 times. Unless you are willing to put up 50% down payments, homes have to come down further in price.

The country and the global financial system came closer to a complete collapse this year than any time in our history with the possible exception of 1929. While we will all pay for it in much greater inflation, Bernanke and the world’s central bankers have to be congratulated for printing and distributing to the world’s banks and investment banks approximately $1.5 trillion. It was our hard-earned taxpayer money, but it was well spent as we would have faced a global bank run and depression without his intervention. The fact that it happened without many Americans even realizing it only assures that we have not learned our lesson and are doomed to repeat our mistakes until we understand their underlying cause.

They had no choice. We no longer live in a capitalist financial market in which banks compete and inefficient and poorly run institutions go bankrupt and exit the playing field. In the modern world, thanks to the $400 trillion derivatives market, no major bank or investment bank can be allowed to fail. They each in themselves are important nodes in an extremely complex web of derivative contracts such that the removal of any single major firm would cause a collapse of the entire system. The best analogy is to look what happens to our entire network of nationally scheduled air flights when a single major hub like Chicago is closed temporarily due to weather. Just as airplanes fly between any two cities, so derivative contracts are made between two counterparties, but the resulting interlocking and interdependent relationships are so complicated that no financial system could survive if a major hub dropped out.

Banks know that they are too big for the government to allow them to fail. The moral hazard that is created will be reflected in their continuing to take on high degrees of debt and financial leverage and invest in risky assets with no concern for the consequences. And much of the activity in the derivatives market is nothing more than mere speculation. When Bear Stearns was saved from bankruptcy it had $120 billion of debt outstanding, but for some crazy reason there were $2.8 trillion of credit derivative contracts written guaranteeing that comparatively small amount of Bear Stearns debt. If Bear had gone bankrupt and these counterparties had to actually pay, it would have caused massive bankruptcies of hedge funds and other financial institutions, not to mention the fact that Bear itself was also a counterparty to tens of trillions of derivative contracts and their prime brokerage business financed trillions more of derivative positions at their hedge fund clients.

When I wrote my books on housing I hinted at what I thought the real cause of the problem was. Yes, I said that the banks were acting crazy by extending such large amounts of money to homebuyers, but I also hinted at why we allowed this to occur. The reason is that the banks, the investment banks, the hedge funds, the mortgage companies and the private equity firms are some of the biggest political lobbyists in America and give more money to your President and Congressmen than any other industry. And what do they expect in return? Deregulation. They spent $400 million on lobbying to have Glass-Steagle overturned to allow commercial banks to get into the investment banking business. This opened the door for banks to arrange mortgages, but suffer little to no consequence as these mortgages were quickly packaged and sold to investors upstream.

Banks and corporations argued that regulation got in the way of free markets. Until the housing and mortgage collapse, few people understood that regulations and rules are the basis of any free market system. You cannot buy and sell anything unless you have a strong rule of law that enforces property rights and assures contracts will be honored and fraud exposed. The greatest injustice I see in America today is the ability of banks and corporations to bribe-yes, that’s the right word-our elected officials in return for trillions of dollars of value creation to their shareholders in sleazy mortgage regulation, phony ethanol programs, high energy prices, costly pharmaceuticals and healthcare, and wars that only seem to profit the defense industry. I believe the housing crisis is just a symptom of a much bigger problem of trying to constrain lobbying, which will continue to fester until the American people conclude they have had enough and just won’t take it anymore. Let’s all do something positive to make sure this hijacking of our system of government is never allowed to occur in this country again.

John R. Talbott called the causes of the current housing and mortgage crisis spot-on in his 2003 book, The Coming Crash of the Housing Market and even nailed the peak of the market with his January 2006 book, Sell Now! The End of the Housing Bubble. His new book, Obamanomics: How Bottom-Up Economic Prosperity Will Replace Trickle Down Economics, will be published on August 1st.

The was given as the  Keynote Address at the Regional Sustainable Energy Summit sponsored by Co-op Power on

June 20, 2008:

Tonight I would like to talk about acceptance and the kind of action that flows out of acceptance.In particular, I would like to talk about accepting the reality of climate change, the size and scope of what we must accomplish to address it, and the shortness of the time we have remaining for that task.

There is a power that is unleashed in people when they accept the facts of climate change. That it is real. That it is big. And also that it is solvable. Should we summon the collective will to do so, we can take actions to avoid its worst consequences.

Deeply accepting these facts changes your world, your thinking, your priorities. You know this. In some way that is why you have chosen to be here tonight. Accepting the reality of climate change, you couldn’t NOT be here.

Accepting the reality of climate change and the reality of our moment in time as one when we can still make a difference, changes us; it taps into our courage, our persistence and our caring, which is a very good thing, as these are the most powerful tools ever discovered for changing the world, tools that can be used to address not only climate change but also the deep habits of thought and action which have created it.

Tonight I would like to share some ideas about making full use of our courage, persistence and caring, but first I need to be clear about what I mean with all this talk of acceptance.

Accepting what?

Accepting the realities of climate change, as best we understand them, through the lens of science.

Accepting, first of all, of the fact that climate change is already here, not some distant future possibility.

The newspapers are saying that the flooding in the Midwest this month is a once in five hundred year event. What they aren’t saying is that the incidence of major floods is up, dramatically up, on every continent. They aren’t linking the flooding in the Midwest with the 12 out of 13 major disaster relief operations of 2007 that the UN says were ‘climate-change related’ or with the fact that last year saw record melting of the Arctic sea ice.

They aren’t mentioning that in 2007 major insurance companies - like State Farm, Allstate and Liberty Mutual - stopped offering new homeowners policies along the entire coast of the Northeastern United States. Liberty Mutual. Allstate. State Farm. This is not the judgment of radical tree-huggers. This is the determination of sober, conservative, statisticians, who are projecting a rising tide of risk.
Accepting the reality of climate change means really taking in how much and how quickly we have changed the atmosphere. For the last 800,000 years (since the Neanderthals diverged from modern humans) levels of CO2 in the atmosphere have stayed in a narrow range - between 180 and 280 ppm. When we developed our staple crops, CO2 was somewhere between180 and 280. When we settled coastlines and river deltas, CO2 was somewhere between 180 and 280. When each of the hundreds of cultures on the planet adapted to particular geographies and patterns of weather, CO2 was between 180 and 280. Accepting the reality of climate change means facing the fact that today CO2 is at 385 ppm. We must accept that we have already have created a different planet than the only one we have ever known.

At 385 ppm we have already surpassed safe levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Respected climate scientist James Hansen and his colleagues tell us that safety lies behind us, at 350 ppm or less, a level we zoomed through in the late 1980s. In the Earth’s past when CO2 was at 385 ppm, sea level was many feet higher than today - disaster for many of the world’s largest cities. The alpine glaciers that provide drinking water for hundreds of millions of people today didn’t exist on a world with sustained levels of CO2 at 385 ppm. The Arctic didn’t have summer sea ice at 385 ppm.

Every year spent above 350 increases the odds of triggering ‘runaway’ warming, where warming causes more warming in a cycle humans would be powerless to stop. Accepting the reality of climate change means facing the fact that if runaway warming begins, solutions that might once have been sufficient and successful will have become insufficient and doomed to fail. We must accept that climate change, not our wishes, other plans, or other needs, sets the timetable for action.

Accepting the realities of climate change also means accepting the judgment of science about what magnitude of change is required. James Hansen’s group has run computer simulations that show it is possible to bring the Earth back to 350 ppm. We could do it in 100 years if we were to end deforestation by 2015, phase out the burning of coal by 2030, and refrain entirely from using low quality fossil fuels such as oil shale and tar sands.

I’ll repeat that, because these numbers represent important signposts on the road to safety, signposts all of us need to recognize, signposts all of us need to point out to others.

Phasing out coal, starting today. Reaching zero in twenty-two years. No more coal burned, anywhere on Earth, in 22 years, on this planet where the current trend is towards new coal plants, lots of them, every month.

No more deforestation by 2015, seven years from now.

No use of tar sands, oil shale or methyl hydrates, anywhere, ever.

Take a moment to let these extra-ordinary numbers sink in. Phasing out coal, starting today, reaching zero in 22 years? Imagine that. Imagine ending deforestation in seven years.

It is physically possible to do this - physically possible to return CO2 levels in the atmosphere to safety quickly enough to avoid the most dangerous consequences of climate change. Physically speaking it is a simple matter of leaving already sequestered carbon where it is, underground. The part that demands our smarts and our capacity to cooperate is the challenge of making arrangements to meet our needs by other means. Do we, in this country and around the world have the collective will to do this, quickly enough? On a planet with hundreds of millions in hunger and poverty, and in a country with a growing gap between rich and poor, do we have the collective will to share and help one another so that we all make this transition, all have our needs met?

When I talk about acceptance that’s what I mean. Really absorbing that the things you care about, the things I care about, require from us actions of sufficient power and effectiveness that, in the next twenty-two years not only will new coal plants not be built, but also existing coal plants will be shut down, coal miners will be re-trained, and whole communities will find clean renewable ways to power themselves. It means facing the fact that the underlying forces of growth, consumption and poverty must be addressed. It means accepting that the change we need to participate in will transform our society and the world.

Hansen’s computer runs are just one scenario for the road to safety. We could get there burning more coal if we were willing to curtail oil. We could give ourselves longer to save the forests if we were willing to cut the coal faster. The details are not what is important. What is important is the magnitude and the time scale of the changes needed.

Hansen’s paper with the 350ppm target came out a few months ago. Its seriousness has been sinking into my heart ever since and has planted a question there. Knowing all of this, how do I act?

When I teach about climate change I find myself speaking calmly, in even tones, as I have here tonight, speaking normally about the most abnormal of situations. Talking about terrible tragedy unfolding and more tragedy that is not YET inevitable but could become so. Talking about a huge task to be accomplished in a short amount of time.

As I go from place to place I speak. People listen. They nod. They take notes. Many are moved to action, like the pastors of many churches in Massachusetts who are pledging to ring their church bells 350 times to spread the word that 350 is the safe level for CO2 in the atmosphere. People form new alliances, work harder, do amazing and inspiring things. They go ever farther in their personal lives, walking, biking, growing their own food, installing solar panels, building cars that run on vegetable oil. They scheme about green jobs and make connections between social justice and climate change and launch new initiatives and start new investments.

It is all exciting and full of potential and has the power to become much more than the sum of its parts.

And still the numbers loom in my mind. Twenty-two years. No coal at all. Anywhere. Seven years to end deforestation.

And I wonder, do those folks ringing the church bells and running the petition drives and tinkering with their new PV installations feel like I do, excited by the real change happening, but feeling in the quieter moments between the actions and the events, that they are not quite being fully used? Feeling as though, this big truth they have seen and understood about twenty-two years to contribute to a global transformation is calling forth something from them that has not yet found its channel?

I would guess that most of you know what I am talking about. I would guess that you are feeling some version of this within yourselves and that that is why you are here tonight, some sense of courage gathering, of a new willingness to trust your own intuition that things are not right and that significant change is needed, some sort of energy, looking for an outlet, some willingness, maybe a lot of it, to keep doing the important things you are doing while also stepping forward into something new. Something big.

If you are at all like me, the intensity of what is stirring within you may be a bit surprising. It may be more than a little disorienting. Who am I - a middle-aged woman with children who need me, a house to keep, a farm I share the work of, a community that needs my participation - to be feeling like a warrior searching around for the battle? Who am I - trained as a scientist to value poise and objectivity - to feel the rising urge to create a ruckus and demonstrate in some way how much this matters, how much I love my kids and their future, how much I want us to address this challenge of climate change in way that is fair and just for our whole society?

Who am I, who are you, to think we have a role to play in ending the burning of coal around the world by 2030?

But who are we not to? I may not look like society’s stereotype of the radical, but I’m feeling - like mothers do around the world and in every species - the pull to act to protect that which has been entrusted into my care. I’m sure I’m not alone in feeling that pull, and I know you do not have to be a parent to feel that pull. I know I am not alone in my commitment to the possibility of the society we could create if we trusted that pull, if we gave ourselves over to it.

Everything we are doing matters, and needs to keep going. The communities we are building, the farms and coops and bike lanes and community gardens and wind turbines and ballot initiatives and legislative lobbying. All of it.

But I feel within myself the need for something else, something different. I realized this most starkly on the day a few weeks ago, when the Climate Security Act was defeated in the Senate. That bill wouldn’t have been enough to bring us safely to 350 ppm, but it was a small step in that direction.

Few of the things I love and care about showed up in the debate that killed that possibility, and the reality of twenty-two years to wean ourselves from coal didn’t show up, either. Yet national legislation sets the rules of the game that will determine the degree and the timetable for limiting fossil fuels and sparking the collective investment in a clean, fair, renewable energy system.

There are two pieces of a puzzle, sitting here right in front of our eyes, waiting to be hitched together.

The first puzzle piece is the deep personal need I feel, and which many, many others must feel, to do something that feels stronger than one more workshop conducted in a calm and reasonable manner, something more than one more step towards energy efficiency in my own life.

Don’t misunderstand me, I’ll keep giving the workshops and working on my personal carbon footprint. But I’m looking for that other mode of action, the one that is bold enough and brave enough to honor my level of concern and my conviction that a much better future is possible if only we’d get down to the collective work of it. I’m looking for ways to act that acknowledge the shortness of time and the failure of polite requests to impact the laws that are being written or the public investments that are being made. I’m looking for some action consistent with the depth of my caring.

The other puzzle piece is the clear need to provide more support to state and national elected leaders so that they can stand for the long-term public future, even when such a stance is in opposition to the interests of the fossil fuel lobby. To keep elected representatives from being pushed over by the special interests there must be an equivalently strong push in the other direction, prodding them toward a strong national policy that commits us to what the science says we need to do - phasing out coal by 2030, committing in international negotiations to the target of 350 ppm.

When I put these two puzzle pieces together here’s what I see:

I see myself and others walking into the places where the most important decisions are being made about the future of our atmosphere, armed with nothing beyond our understanding and acceptance of the significance of this moment and our caring for future generations, other species, and the people in our own country and around the world who are most vulnerable to the consequences of climate change. I see us carrying not signs of protest or angry demands, but visible representations of what we love and what is at stake. I see us gumming up the business as usual workings of the political machine by the sheer power of our love and conviction, and I see us getting in the way until we have what survival demands - a policy consistent with what the science says we must do to avoid the most dangerous consequences of climate change.

I think of the way that Kentucky Senator McConnell, in the debate over the Climate Security Act, blocked movement towards 350 and safety by insisting that the entire bill be read into the record (it took eight hours) and I see myself and others using the force of our caring and concern to block movement towards disaster, instead. I picture hundreds of ordinary people showing up in Senate offices before critical votes, each of us carrying our own scripts, humble one-page statements describing the people and places we treasure, the reasons to act on climate change. Isn’t there something astounding and beautiful about that image? About using our little everyday loves and our big long-term hopes, our words about grandchildren, seacoast neighborhoods, forest slopes, and alpine glaciers to take up space, slow down the rush to disaster, turn policy towards sanity? Call it a new version of the filibuster - the love buster. Our presence would be a reminder of what is at stake, and of the ethical responsibilities of today’s decision makers to future generations.

Could a few of us doing this make a difference? Or even hundreds of us? I don’t know. Love and concern may be fragile tools to take on the $35 million dollars the coal lobby is spending on public relations this year. But love and concern and the hard-wired desire to protect the future are evolutionary forces that have shaped millions of years of life on this planet. If we are smart and thoughtful about planting self-organizing seeds in the minds of the many others we will never meet who are feeling the same excruciating disconnection we are between what needs to happen and the ability of our leaders to get it done, we just might tap into that evolutionary force. I’d like to see that happen.

I know that even if we never changed a single line of a single law, we’d provide some comfort to our fellow citizens who right now doubt their own assessment of danger because nobody is acting very bothered. “You aren’t crazy,” we’d say, by our actions. “You are sane. You can trust yourself.” And we would be paying ourselves the very great respect of trusting our own judgment.
At the very least, if some of us try something like what I am imagining, we will provide ourselves with a better answer for the next generation when they ask us what we did during this crucial decade.

When I put these two puzzle pieces together I see something else as well. Because there is something that is very freeing when you accept the needed scale of change. “No more coal in twenty-two years” and “business as usual” are just not compatible ideas.
Accepting the reality of climate change means accepting the inevitable reality of social change. The beautiful thing about that is the way it opens up your creativity.

Once you stop believing that we will solve this problem without changing some of the foundations of our world, you can begin to see all the ways that a world that has addressed climate change could be so much better than our polluted, violent, inequitable one. You can see the cleaner air once the coal stops burning. You can imagine city children who will breathe so much easier and the Appalachian mountains that will keep their tops. You can see the green jobs for youth from communities of color, you can see the healthier people on the streets of walkable cities and the vibrant local economies thriving all around them.

Those visions of possibility are the final thing I see us bringing with us to the halls of power, along with our acceptance of current reality and our tokens of all that we love. Once we read our statements about what’s at stake, if we haven’t yet been arrested for trespass, I see us starting to read those portraits of the possible.

So that’s where my mind is going lately. We’ll see what comes of it, whether I find the courage to try, whether others feel called to try, whether anyone can help to strategize about when and where and how to use our love and concern and vision of the possible as tools that can change the outcome of votes and the wording of laws.

I would love to hear your ideas about actions, drawn out of our concern and love, that could make a difference in the places where these decisions are being made that will affect all of us and the generations yet to be born. Better than that, I would love to hear your news of the actions you take, using the power of your love to move our leaders, and our society, onto a new path.
Elizabeth R. Sawin is the Director of Sustainability Institute’s Our Climate Ourselves program and is a writer, teacher, and systems analyst who lives with her family as part of an intentional community and organic farm in Hartland, Vermont. For more of her writing visit www.ourclimateourselves.org

What more can be added to the debate over U.S. interrogation methods, and whether waterboarding is torture? Try firsthand experience. The author undergoes the controversial drowning technique, at the hands of men who once trained American soldiers to resist-not inflict-it.

Here is the most chilling way I can find of stating the matter. Until recently, “waterboarding” was something that Americans did to other Americans. It was inflicted, and endured, by those members of the Special Forces who underwent the advanced form of training known as sere (Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape). In these harsh exercises, brave men and women were introduced to the sorts of barbarism that they might expect to meet at the hands of a lawless foe who disregarded the Geneva Conventions. But it was something that Americans were being trained to resist, not to inflict.

Exploring this narrow but deep distinction, on a gorgeous day last May I found myself deep in the hill country of western North Carolina, preparing to be surprised by a team of extremely hardened veterans who had confronted their country’s enemies in highly arduous terrain all over the world. They knew about everything from unarmed combat to enhanced interrogation and, in exchange for anonymity, were going to show me as nearly as possible what real waterboarding might be like.

It goes without saying that I knew I could stop the process at any time, and that when it was all over I would be released into happy daylight rather than returned to a darkened cell. But it’s been well said that cowards die many times before their deaths, and it was difficult for me to completely forget the clause in the contract of indemnification that I had signed. This document (written by one who knew) stated revealingly:

“Water boarding” is a potentially dangerous activity in which the participant can receive serious and permanent (physical, emotional and psychological) injuries and even death, including injuries and death due to the respiratory and neurological