CitizensTruth

Blue Gold: World Water Wars, produced, directed, and edited by Sam Bozzo. (trailer here)

Blue Gold tells us that Earth’s supplies of fresh water are limited, and we are using them faster than they can be replenished.

The film is so loaded with information that it feels like a semester of study packed into 110 minutes. There are four major parts.

1. The Crisis is a wake-up call describing water overuse, transformation of living land into deserts, and pollution.
2. The Politics shows what happens when interests of globalization and big business challenge the public good.
3. In The Water Wars, contention over water leads to bloodshed.
4. Finally, The Way Forward tells us about activists and organizers and scientists from 6 years old to over 60 who are making a positive difference.

Water issues are complicated. This film explains with memorable images, compelling human stories, and Malcom McDowell’s lucid narration. Vital issues of our times - war and peace, climate change, energy sustainability, healing the environment - have deep connections to how we get our water. Blue Gold shows you these connections. You will be informed, inspired, and empowered.

More background on Blue Gold and fresh water here.

(first three links courtesy LegitGov.org)

Oil hunt could include blasting in Calif. national monument 11 Apr 2008 A subsidiary of Occidental Petroleum seeking to explore for oil and gas under one of the country’s newest national monuments has outlined plans for its search that are likely to disturb the kangaroo rat, an endangered species whose prime habitat is precisely where the operations would take place.

Connecticut Bats Are Dying From Mysterious Ailment 03 Apr 2008 Alarm spread among wildlife biologists this week when white nose syndrome (WNS) was found in a second bat population in Connecticut. The state Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) first announced the presence in Connecticut of bats affected with WNS last Friday and the second location was discovered Tuesday.

Fishery Council Bans Commercial Salmon Fishing In OR, CA 10 Apr 2008 West Coast fisheries managers have voted to cancel all commercial salmon fishing off the California and Oregon coasts this year. Scientists and government officials are expecting this year’s West Coast salmon season to be one of the worst in history.

There was a fuss recently over legislation requiring a moment of silence in Illinois classrooms. But maybe we should consider a daily moment of silence - for the 200-some species going extinct every day.

What a Way to Go
“We can’t survive apart from the earth. We’re killing it.”

In the news there is evidence of a terrible disconnect between actions of the US government and any sense of human decency. Torture - relished by leaders, rape at KBR - ignored for years by the Department of Justice [sic] as further assaults occur and more victims come forward, scientific truths suppressed in NASA and elsewhere, researchers attacked for reporting Iraqi death estimates..

The aggregate view is sickening.

What to do? One thing we can do is work continuously at keeping one another informed, blowing aside the media smokescreen with all the facts we can get from all the sources we can trust.

Build a community of trust. Encourage listening to one another with an open mind and being ready to admit we are wrong when that happens.

In Chip Berlet’s article in the November, 2007 issue of Z Magazine, “Crackpots, the Left, and ‘Jewish Banker Cabals’”, we read about several conspiracy-obsessed, anti-semitic bad guys; then we get a list of approved activists. The latter are exulted because of their “analysis of complex systems of power, rather than a fixation on individuals who may or may not be involved in conspiracies”. In telling us who is acceptable and who isn’t, the author puts himself squarely in the category of those who fixate on individuals, while showing a low regard for the intelligence of his readers.

The meme that good activism embraces structuralism and eschews “conspiracism” is not new. See Part 3 of Michael Parenti’s Dirty Truths (1996) for a deconstruction, especially the section labeled Let’s Hear It for Structuralism. The context is the JFK assassination rather than 9/11, but much applies today. Here’s an excerpt:

Chip Berlet repeatedly denounces conspiracy investigations while himself spending a good deal of time investigating Lyndon LaRouche’s fraudulent financial dealings, conspiracies for which LaRouche went to prison. Berlet never explains why the LaRouche conspiracy is a subject worthy of investigation but not the JFK conspiracy.

Note also:

1. Michael Parenti’s lecture on the assassination of JFK, audio available here.
2. Discussion of left gatekeepers in Chapter 5 of Barrie Zwicker’s Towers of Deception.

It has seemed to me for awhile - almost from the time I awoke from a life of political apathy three years ago - things have gone awry in a very big way.

The disruption goes beyond war and politics and global warming. It is there 24×7, gnawing at the consciousness of anyone who dares to look into the shadowy edges of daily life, away from the bright and shiny distractions. Anyone who perceives it is called. There is an imperative to engage in the struggle: to become a teacher, a healer, an artist, an organizer, to use and to develop whatever skills one has and commit them to mending what is being torn asunder.

I think William Rivers Pitt sees it and is trying to wrap his mind around it.

- Hal

I May Have Gone Insane
By William Rivers Pitt
t r u t h o u t | Columnist

Wednesday 19 September 2007

We dance round in a ring and suppose,
But the Secret sits in the middle and knows.

- Robert Frost, “The Secret Sits”

It is a legitimately demented phenomenon, all the more so because it all started with a joke. Not even a funny joke, either, but a sad and threadbare thing I told only to myself, and no one else. When the clustered elements of our collective national burden erupted in masterfully synchronized bedlam, as they so often seem to, I had that joke to tell myself, and it may not have helped much, but it was there.

Every time another cacophony of freshly minted lunacy was unleashed - lunacy regarding Iraq, the NSA domestic surveillance program, White House defiance of subpoenas, timorously flaccid performances by the Congressional majority, or merely when enduring the repeated “nukyalur”-ized butchery of public political rhetoric was required by my employers, all of which emphatically pegged the needle on my Pandemoni-O-Meter - I had that joke to tell myself.

The joke is spherically terrible, i.e. bad in every possible direction in three dimensions and across 360 rounded degrees. It isn’t even a joke, really, which may be why it went so abruptly and bewilderingly sideways on me months ago. The joke, to be embarrassingly honest, is more like some half-bright mantra than anything else. As I came to discover, however, it managed to settle my mind when the needle was in the red. Perhaps the thing is best described as my self-generated Zen koan; though it did not actually stop my mind in proper koan fashion, it kept me from putting my head through the wall, and that made it valuable indeed.

[more]
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/091907R.shtml

Recent news is distressing - see examples below. In a way, present hype over the ‘08 election feels like planning an addition to the garage while the house is on fire.

There is a building consensus for impeachment but the time window is limited. The idea that there is opportunity cost in campaigning for impeachment instead of planning for ‘08 is a fallacy. In fact, if we mobilize people behind impeachment, we can build momentum for the eviction in ‘08 of all who prolonged the occupation of Iraq.

In the news:

Withdrawal timetable dropped from war spending bill
May 22, 2007

WASHINGTON (CNN) — Congressional Democrats plan to send to President Bush a war-spending bill without a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq, two Democratic leadership aides tell CNN.

ABC News: Bush Authorizes New Covert Action Against Iran
May 22, 2007

This evening, ABC’s World News Tonight reported that the “United States has opened a new front in its showdown with Iran.” According to the report, President Bush has directed the CIA to carry out covert operations both inside and outside Iran “aimed directly at weakening the Iranian regime.”

Bush Anoints Himself as the Insurer of Constitutional Government in Emergency. See also: New presidential directive gives Bush dictatorial power.
May 18, 2007

With scarcely a mention in the mainstream media, President Bush has ordered up a plan for responding to a catastrophic attack.

In a new National Security Presidential Directive, Bush lays out his plans for dealing with a “catastrophic emergency.”Under that plan, he entrusts himself with leading the entire federal government, not just the Executive Branch. And he gives himself the responsibility “for ensuring constitutional government.”

He laid this all out in a document entitled “National Security Presidential Directive/NSPD 51” and “Homeland Security Presidential Directive/HSPD-20.”

Read that last item again and ask yourself: What are Bush and Cheney up to? Do we want them in control of this country for another 18 months? DLC Democrats seem comfortable continuing the war through 2008, allegedly with the rationale that this assures a Democratic sweep in the election. It is up to the people to press for impeachment now.

Here are several areas in which prevailing attitudes in the US differ from much of the industrialized world. Does this mean we are backward, or better, or just different?
(more…)

US Defense Secretary:
Iran Target of US Gulf Military Moves
Tuesday, January 16, 2007 - The Guardian

Impeach Bush—Stop Iran Invasion
by Paul Craig Roberts
Global Research, January 15, 2007

US military strike on Iran seen by April ‘07;
Sea-launched attack to hit oil, N-sites
01/14/07 - Arab Times

Pieces in Place for Escalation
by Retired Air Force Colonel Sam Gardiner
Jan 14, 2007

Open letter to Trish Choate of Scripps Howard News Service

Dear Ms. Choate-

I just came across an article attributed to you:

Plan for military could mean cuts
Bush’s call to increase Army, Marines might mean Air Force has to trim personnel
By Trish Choate/Scripps Howard News Service
December 23, 2006

- in which you cite speakers from the nonpartisan and nonprofit Lexington Institute and American Enterprise Institute, crying poor over part of a defense budget that is now well over half a trillion dollars a year.

What has happened to our values in this country?

You don’t address the immense opportunity cost in the present expenditures. Here is a comment on the $378 billion that the Bush administration has already spent, solely on Iraq, from the nonpartisan and nonprofit National Priorities Project:

As NPP Research Director, Dr. Anita Dancs, testified at a congressional forum, $378 billion could pay for all of the following: health care coverage for all uninsured children during this entire war; four-year scholarships to a public university for all of this year’s graduating seniors; construction of 500,000 affordable housing units; the Coast Guard’s estimate on funds needed for port security; tripling the energy conservation budget in the US Department of Energy; and reducing this year’s budget deficit by half.

You don’t address the moral issue of putting so much of our national treasure into murder and mayhem instead of building up the human condition. In a time when much is made of holocaust denial at a conference in Iran, it is common to dismiss without serious examination the report of 655,000 excess deaths in Iraq due to the U.S. invasion. The latter report was compiled by a team of internationally respected researchers with data collected at considerable personal risk.

And you don’t address the fiscal madness of the Bush administration spending, outside of Social Security, roughly one dollar for every 68 cents it takes in, or the irresponsibility of the Pentagon losing track of $2.3 trillion.

I urge you to take a stand, to help point out the madness that so much of our press is telling the American people to comply with.

Sincerely,

Hal Snyder, M.D.

[Note: the qualifier, "outside of Social Security", in the second to last paragraph was added after emailing to Ms. Choate, and the number corrected from 69 cents to 68. - hs]

How stupid do they think Americans are?
How stupid are we?

President Bush on Iraq: It’s Never Been “Stay The Course”
video

Bartlett: “It’s Never Been A Stay The Course Strategy”
video and commentary

Bush: ‘We’ve Never Been Stay The Course’
video and comment

BUSH: We will stay the course, we will complete the job in Iraq. [8/4/05]

SNOW: The second thing you do is you stay the course. [7/10/06]

SNOW: But on the other hand, you also cannot be a President in a wartime and not realize that you’ve got to stay the course. [8/17/06]

BUSH: We will stay the course. [8/30/06]

BUSH: We will stay the course until the job is done, Steve. And the temptation is to try to get the President or somebody to put a timetable on the definition of getting the job done. We’re just going to stay the course. [12/15/03]

BUSH: And my message today to those in Iraq is: We’ll stay the course. [4/13/04]

SNOW: People are going to want more of it, and that’s why the President is determined to stay the course. April. [8/16/06]

BUSH: And that’s why we’re going to stay the course in Iraq. And that’s why when we say something in Iraq, we’re going to do it. [4/16/04]

BUSH: And so we’ve got tough action in Iraq. But we will stay the course. [4/5/04]