A Little One-Man Activism--An Exercise In Futility?

Mr. Lee R. Raymond
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
Exxon Mobil Corporation
5959 Las Colinas Blvd.
Irving, TX 75039-2298

Dear Sir,

I notice in your current Public Relations statement concerning the 1989 Valdez oil spill, you make a claim for a “fully recovered Prince William Sound ecosystem.” Later in that same statement, you claim that the ecosystem of Prince William Sound is “healthy, robust and thriving.”

If those statements are true, how do you explain the severely depressed economy of the region in the years since the 11-million gallon spill covered 1,500 miles of coastline? Why hasn’t there been a herring season in ten years? Why are a third of fishers in the Port of Cordova experiencing clinical depression? Why do sixty percent of Cordova commercial fishers have to take second jobs to make ends meet? Before the spill there were fishers in Cordova whose permits were worth almost a million dollars. Today, those permits have depreciated by 90 percent. Don’t you find that just a little strange, given that the ecosystem of Prince William Sound is, as you say, “healthy, robust and thriving”?

It has been ten years since a federal jury awarded the people of the region $5.2 billion in damages. But your company has hired hundreds of lawyers and fought this ruling every step of the way. And you have hired your own scientists to negate or deny the damage that Exxon did there, just as they deny the science on global climate change.

Furthermore, in some court arguments, Exxon claims that under the Federal Clean Water Act, crude oil is not a pollutant. Crude oil is not a pollutant? Do you really believe that, Mr. Raymond?

I doubt that Prince William Sound is “robust and thriving.” But it seems that lies, corporate greed and corruption, are, indeed, robust and thriving. And what’s sad is that a company as rich as yours somehow believes it has to conduct business this way. Indeed, thinks it’s normal.

Yes, $5.2 billion is “punitive damages,” and you have the right to fight it, I suppose. On the other hand, I sometimes wonder if there isn’t still some room in the human heart for what’s right and decent. Do you suppose there still exists a place where people behave ethically toward one another now and then, and not just at the behest of lawyers and judges?

You see, I so want to believe that we’re not all of us lost, Mr. Raymond. I can’t help but think how easy it would be for you to reach out to the people of the Sound whose lives and livelihoods have been shattered.

What do you suppose it would actually cost in the whole scheme of things for you to make that kind of choice? What would it mean in this cynical world of ours, were a company like Exxon to seize the initiative in that way? Imagine your company transforming itself under your leadership—becoming an example for the rest, thereby perhaps signaling a real change in the way business is conducted, and how corporations treat ordinary human beings? I’m no expert, but I should imagine the impact of such an act would reverberate around the world. And what do you suppose that might be worth?

Am I an idealist? Yes. A “bleeding heart”? Probably. But I must tell you, Mr. Raymond: By not doing this thing that I believe is right, but instead turning your back on it—turning your back on these good people—there must be a cost for that. In dollars? No, not in dollars.

What then? What would be the cost? Perhaps only you know the answer.

God bless you, Mr. Raymond. And God bless the people of Cordova.


Sincerely,
Grayson Harper

Ring Any Bells?

"We have pacified some thousands of the islanders and buried them; destroyed their fields; burned their villages, and turned their widows and orphans out-of-doors; furnished heartbreak by exile to some dozens of disagreeable patriots; subjugated the remaining ten millions by Benevolent Assimilation, which is the pious new name of the musket; we have acquired property in the three hundred concubines and other slaves of our business partner, the Sultan of Sulu, and hoisted our protecting flag over that swag.

"And so, by these Providences of God--and the phrase is the government's, not mine--we are a World Power."

--Mark Twain, commenting on the Philippine War, 1901.

"I bring you the stately matron named Christendom, returning bedraggled, besmirched, and dishonored from pirate raids in Kiao-Chou, Manchuria, South Africa, and the Philippines, with her soul full of meanness, her pocket full of boodle, and her mouth full of pious hypocrisies."

--Mark Twain, writing in the New York Herald, 1900.

BLOODSTAINED FALLUJAH

PHOTO:EPA


"In a testy news conference [Easter] Sunday, [Brig General] Kimmitt said that the widespread Iraqi perception that civilians were being killed indiscriminately in Fallujah by U.S. forces was based on irresponsible and inaccurate reporting by the two most popular Arab-language channels, Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya."

"To Iraqis who were angered by the American actions, he said: "Change the channel,...The stations that are showing Americans killing women and children are not legitimate news sources"."

--Nicholas Riccardi and Tony Perry, The LA Times (registration required)


Riccardi in Baghdad and Perry in Fallujah reported eyewitness accounts from survivors fleeing besieged Fallujah; and these confirmed earlier reports of civilian deaths at the hands of American soldiers. Marine snipers had been shooting anyone who ventured out into the open. Ambulances were targeted, people waving white flags, burial parties, and people trying to flee the scene. Even after the first lulls in heavy bombardment and strafing, which were characterized as cease-fires, it was clear that American sharpshooters carried on with their work. They continued to shoot civilians, as well as armed men. The latest estimate of Iraqi losses in Fallujah is put at 600 dead and well over a thousand wounded. Iraqi doctors, working at clinics in the city, provided these statistics.

At the scene, Reuters reported, "There were too many dead and wounded for hospital workers in the besieged city to deal with. Outside a hastily erected field hospital, Reuter's television footage shows corpses lying in the street, wrapped in bloodstained white sheets."

"The dead include small children, women and old men, and a new born baby. Beside the corpses there is a pile of body parts which no one has had time to deal with."

As the US military continued to discount the reports from Arabic media, concerning the targeted civilians, there were still a few western sources which could validate the stories, during the week that ended on Easter Sunday. On April 11th, a report from Jo Wilding, a British activist, supplied some pertinent information. Ms. Wilding tells the story of how a journalist alerted her, late at night, about the desperate situation in Fallujah. The journalist convinced her to help bring medical supplies into the embattled city, telling her that it was crucial to have westerners along who spoke English, in order to get the medical supplies through American checkpoints. With courage, Jo Wilding committed herself to this, and began a harrowing journey toward Fallujah, where she also helped bring wounded into the clinics. She writes compellingly about her experience serving with an ambulance crew, which came under sniper fire:

"We stop, turn off the siren, keep the blue light flashing, wait, eyes on the silhouettes of men in US Marine uniforms on the corners of the buildings. Several shots come. We duck, get as low as possible and I can see tiny red lights whipping past the window, past my head. Some, it's hard to tell, are hitting the ambulance. I start singing. What else do you do when someone's shooting at you? A tire bursts with an enormous noise and a jerking of the vehicle."

"I'm outraged. We're trying to get a woman who's giving birth without any medical attention, without electricity, in a city under siege, in a clearly marked ambulance, and you're shooting at us. How dare you?"

But Wilding and the ambulance crew are unable to reach the house where the woman is giving birth. Azzam, the driver, has to wheel around and lurch over the median. They flee for their lives back to the hospital. The next morning they find the ambulance out of commission, and they head for the streets in a pick-up.

"We go again, Dave, Rana and me"...We shout again to the soldiers, hold up the flag with a red crescent sprayed onto it. Two come down from the building, cover this side and Rana mutters, "Allahu akbar. Please nobody take a shot at them.."

"First we go down the street we were sent to. There's a man, face down, in a white dishdasha, a small round red stain on his back. We run to him. Again the flies have got there first. Dave is at his shoulders, I'm by his knees and as we reach to roll him onto the stretcher Dave's hand goes through his chest, through the cavity left by the bullet that entered so neatly through his back and blew his heart out."

"There's no weapon in his hand. Only when we arrive, his sons come out, crying, shouting. He was unarmed, they scream. He just went out to the gate and they shot him. He was ...55 years old."

Jo Wilding got onboard the same bus that brought her to Fallujah, a bus filled with badly wounded who needed to reach Baghdad.

"We stop in Abu Ghraib and swap seats, foreigners in the front, Iraqis less visible, headscarves off so we look more western. The American soldiers are so happy to see westerners they don't mind too much about the Iraqis with us, search the men and the bus, leave the women unsearched because there are no women soldiers to search us. Mohammed keeps asking me if things are going to be OK."

"Al-melaach wiyana, I tell him. The angels are with us. He laughs."

"And then we're in Baghdad, delivering them to the hospitals, Nuha in tears as they take the burnt man off groaning and whimpering."

"And the satellite news says the cease fire is holding and George Bush says to the troops on Easter Sunday that, "I know what we're doing in Iraq is right"."

"Well George, I know too now. I know what it looks like when you brutalize people so much that they've nothing left to lose. I know what it looks like when an operation is being done without anesthetic because the hospitals are destroyed or under sniper fire and the city's under siege and aid isn't getting in properly. I know what it sounds like too. I know what it looks like when tracer bullets are passing your head, even though you're in an ambulance. I know what it looks like when a man's chest is no longer inside him and what it smells like and I know what it looks like when his wife and children pour out of his house."

"It's a crime and it's a disgrace to us all."



Sources via Jeanne d'Arc and Brooke Biggs

IMPLAUSIBLE DENIAL by Copeland Morris

The testimony of Condoleeza Rice reminded the nation that it was visited with tragedy in 2001, owing to "structural problems" that preceded the catastrophe in New York. The National Security Advisor appeared poised because the staging and time-constraints worked in her favor, as she sat before the 9/11 Commission. The broken skyline of Ground Zero was still represented by the 9/11 families, who made up a segment of her audience.

Dr. Rice, a self-possessed raconteur, demonstrated that the lie, per se, is not important; it is the packaging of the lie that matters most of all. David Corn, writing for The Nation, reported her repetition of this lie before the Commission:

"She also took the occasion to cheerlead for the war in Iraq, claiming that by striking Iraq the administration attacked the threat of terrorism "at its source"."

The interested public understood that the 9/11 Commission was gathering testimony, and other evidence, in order to reconstruct the events that led up to the September 11th attack. The central question pointed to the lack of effectiveness of President George W. Bush and staff, in evaluating and acting upon the al-Qaida threat. The secondary and unspoken questions were conjured up in the minds of the better informed, like a stairway that leads only to a wall of secrecy. But through a crack in the masonry one must examine, for instance, the political and commercial ties between the Saudis and the Bush Family, or the positioning of corporations to leech away Iraqi resources, or the confederation of appointees set aside to govern Iraq, or the labyrinth into which ordinary Iraqis disappear, as they resist occupation and seek legitimacy and sovereignty.

Rice testified that the Administration had no "actionable" evidence prior to 9/11. And she underlined this by saying "I know that, had we thought there was an attack coming in Washington or New York, we would have moved heaven and earth to try and stop it." The Aug. 6 memo (Presidential Daily Briefing), which was a subject of prolonged discussion, was described by Dr. Rice as primarily historical in context, and not outlining any precise threat.

In a Salon article by Joe Conason, titled The Artful Dodger, the reporter writes:

"The pertinent question is not whether the president would have tried to stop an attack whose details were thoroughly placed under his nose. The real question is whether the Bush administration paid sufficient attention to the stream of warnings it received about al-Qaida, or whether, due to its preoccupation with Iraq, missile defense and other matters, these officials simply failed to act."

Commissioner Bob Kerry resisted Rice's attempts to charm him, and said this to her: "In the spirit of declassification"..."this is what the Aug 6 memo said to the president: that the FBI indicates patterns of suspicious activity in the United States consistent with preparations for hijacking."

And in the conclusion of his article, Conason added, "The true narrative is seeping out, and the hidden facts are leaking out."

A transition from these proceedings to the theatre of Iraq, is not an obscure one, by any means. The ground of desolation moves from South Manhattan to Iraq. This new disaster is unnecessary; and the people of Iraq did nothing to provoke it. People who are still dealing with grief can grasp this solidarity, soldiers killed and broken, civilians dead and wounded, a young Iraqi man weeping in solitude, standing at the bottom of a bomb crater. Whoever we are in this conflict, it is possible to know that desolation surrounds us; and if this keeps up, the bitter tears will even invade our dreams.

Here is a depraved war, a war waged in utter contempt of democracy. And from the point of view of the American system, a corrosive betrayal of democratic process. And here is a corrupt war.

Even dedicated religious adversaries, like the Sunni and Shi'a, are driven into each others arms by the American subjugation of their resources and landscape, their politics and culture. The Bush Administration's denials are finally implausible. The dislodging of Saddam Hussein was not the end; and everyone can see that the proposal for holding elections was rejected in the early stage of the Occupation.

The Iraqi scene is being prepared to accommodate permanent US military bases, without regard to Iraqi opinion. And already the wall of a mosque has been knocked down, to deal with a single insurgent. Reprisals are to be visited on towns and communities, and desolate, broken landscapes will multiply throughout Iraq. This unmitigated monstrosity, this blood-spattered offense to everything we cherish, was an institutional objective of the Bush Administration, preconceived and premeditated. What then will we say, as Americans? What will we say in November, as we vote? What must we do when we have wept and the tears will no longer come?

There should be a consensus among all who mourn.


Sources via Orcinus and Zizka. Image via efflog.

Couldn't Express It Any Better

The following is a letter from the April 5th issue of The Nation, Letters, submitted by one of its readers, Marianne Brown, of South Haven, Michigan. Sometimes you run across something, and you realize the truth that it speaks just can't be expressed any better.

One Woman's War

South Haven, Mich.

I am furious. I knew when the neocons stole the Florida election, things would go sour, and, yes, I marched three times against this cabal. But little did my husband and I know then that the election would effectively take his son, my stepson, over to Iraq. I have followed this barbaric slaughter from the beginning. I watch it with new eyes now. I wonder every time an explosion occurs or a soldier is killed, Is that my loved one?

His name is Michael. He's 21. He's an Army reservist. No, he didn't join the reserves to go halfway around the world to be part of the occupation of another country for a bunch of neocons who have been planning this for years. He went into the reserves for training so he could be a police officer someday. (You see, they think like that at 21. They think that's a good idea, no matter what you tell them.) He was a weekend warrior, a kid who lacked worldly experience and hoped for a college education.

A beautiful young man is somewhere in Iraq right now, sent over with scoliosis (the Army conveniently lost his X-rays) for no damn reason except to prop up short-term profits and giveways to US corporations. We don't know if we will ever see him again. What we do know is that he just walked into a civil war that is erupting daily into unadulterated hell on earth. We know he may come home in a box, or maimed for life, or psychologically damaged beyond comprehension.

You cannot imagine the anger we feel as we watch the laughing, tittering talking heads on corporate TV run puff pieces as news and ignore the horrors of wondering where a child is in Iraq: Will he come home? Is he OK? What's it like for him to endure 120-degree heat? Is he afraid? Will someone be with him if he dies or is wounded? Will someone hold his hand and tell him we love him?

That child is ours. He does not belong to the neocons. They don't care who these kids are. They demand warm bodies to send into this black hole they created. I will spend every breath of my life working to get that lowlife fratboy dragged out of the White House in chains. This is too much to bear. --Marianne Brown.


We reprint this letter in honor of Ms. Brown. . . and all mothers of soldiers everywhere.

Diary Of A Rag And Bone Man

by Jack Rafter
No. 5: A Small Emergency

Dear Mr. Mowgli,
Well, it's been awhile since I wrote in my diary. In fact, I lost my diary for awhile there. I was sitting in The Bizzy Bee Griddle late one night--back in February, I think. It was sleeting outside so the dog and I were trying to stay warm. Johnny Blair, the griddle man whose body is covered in tattoos, doesn't mind us hanging out there when the weather goes to hell.

Anyway, it was kind of quiet that night, and it's almost never quiet in The Bizzy Bee. Vincent was asleep under the table. Someone had left a newspaper. So I was sitting there reading it as I sipped my coffee, when I ran across an item in the back pages about the high number of people losing their homes in Fort Baird and all over the country. Up in the thousands per month, the article said. Not since the Depression of '29 have there been this many foreclosures. Yet, no one is calling what's happening now a "Depression." I figured it must be because the Stock Market is just tootling right along as if nothing was amiss.

I don't pretend to know anything about running a newspaper, but it seemed odd to me that here, on the front page, was a headline about a winning football team, and another next to that about a rock star arrested for deviant behavior, while buried in the back pages was this story about widespread foreclosures of peoples' homes in the midst of a land of plenty, whose military budget would be enough to feed everyone on earth. I was going to jot down a few thoughts about that, but when I reached for my diary, it was gone.

I suffered what you might call a bit of panic. It's hard to explain, but I consider Mr. Mowgli almost my best friend in the world. A person in my position doesn't have too many friends, especially the kind you can confide in. Moreover, the thought of some strange hands picking him up and leafing through his pages filled me with dread. I'm very choosy about what I let people read in my diary. You can't be too careful these days.

It must have slipped out of my pocket somewhere. I tried to think over where I'd been. The last place I could remember having it was when I made my accidental freight train trip to Jeffords, and ended up having Thanksgiving with the switchman, Spencer Dupree, and his wife, Jewel (Episode 4). They gave me a bunk in the caboose and I rode the train back to Fort Baird the next day.

I spent a night here, a night there. The weather turned cold. Then, I ran into Red Dunkel one day at the library. He went in there not to read books, but to get warm. As a matter of fact, I spotted ten or twelve familiar faces, the ones I usually see haunting the city parks, the homeless shelter, the streets, the train yard, more of them than I've ever seen in there before, all looking tired and haggard, leafing through magazines or picture books, trying to stay awake, because the librarians don't allow any sleeping in there, you know. The temperature had dropped into the twenties, as I recall, so they had a good reason to keep awake. Still, it's not easy. The library is a pretty relaxing place if you haven't slept in a few days, or all you've known is the underbelly of a bridge or a hedgerow for shelter.

There were a few other faces in there that were new to me. The newly homeless. Been seeing more of them lately. Yes, you can spot them, if you know what to look for. Something frayed, the beginnings of wear and tear around the edges. Those faces are fresher, of course. But there's a look in the eyes. The look of someone spooked. And more than that: the look of defeat and dismay. After all, they did everything right, didn't they? They worked hard, they voted for the right candidates, they went to church, they said their prayers, they invested their money. What happened?

That fresh face goes away pretty soon, replaced by something else. The miles quickly add up on your odometer when you're without shelter for awhile. Till you can get your bearings and figure out what's where. Some people never figure it out. The shock of losing everything is too much for them. Next time you're sitting comfortably in your nice warm house, eating a meal you cooked yourself on your own stove in your own kitchen, or just having a cup of tea, say, with the cat purring in your lap-- look around at all the things you have. The little things. The table, the placemats, pictures on the walls; pictures of your mother, your father, aunts, uncles; books on the shelves. All the precious little mementos of your life. Consider how attached you are to these things. Then consider what it might be like to lose them. Not gradually. But perhaps rather quickly. Almost over night.

It does something to you. People with plenty of money, who have never experienced that, and can't even imagine it, only those people could vote to deny assistance for the poor. Yet now, more than ever, it's those very people who are finding themselves in trouble. And, like their parents or their grandparents in '29, most of them don't have a clue what's happening. The difference is that in '29, there were people in positions of power who cared enough to do something about it. Then, the Christians among us paid a little more attention to the Sermon On The Mount, and less to the Book of Revelations.

I found Dunkel in the movie section, reading the synopses of the movies on the backs of their plastic containers. Of course, he doesn't own a TV or VCR, so I guess that's as near as he could come to watching them. We traded a little small talk. I asked him if he knew any good places to pass the night. He told me he had a tent in the woods by the train yards and had room for an extra person if I wanted in. "You can bring your dog, if you want," he said. I thanked him, but I said, "Don't count on me, Red." I don't like the idea of sharing a tent with anyone. Besides I figured it was probably some old discarded thing, full of holes, that would let in the rain and wind.

As I started to leave, Red held up a movie. "You ever seen this one, Jack?" It was called Down And Out In Beverly Hills. I was familiar with it, having seen it in better days. Yes, I once owned a TV and a VCR, and a few other appliances, as well. Down And Out features a broke down bum and his scruffy dog, who are more or less adopted by a spoiled rich family living in Beverly Hills. The bum is superbly played by Nick Nolte, one of my favorite actors. The husband is acted by Richard Dreyfus, and Bette Midler is wonderful as his sexually frustrated wife. Of course, the premise is pretty far-fetched. The chances of a rich family taking in a filthy bedraggled bum off the streets, are about as likely as Ken Lay forking over his ill-gotten gains back to all his ripped-off employees at Enron. But to those of you who still own TVs and VCRs, I strongly recommend the movie. Watch it while you can. It's free at the library.

Red's eyes were excited as we talked about this movie. "Yeah, it's a good one," I said.

"God damn, but I'd sure like to see it," he said. "If I could just get my hands on one of those video machines."

"You need a TV to go with it," I reminded him.

"I do? Oh, yeah, I guess I do, don't I?" He thought about it a moment with a serious frown. I could see his gears were turning a little, though they were a bit rusty. Then, with a clicking sound in his cheek, he said, "Well, let's you and me take this movie somewhere and watch it, what do you say, Jack?"

"You have to check it out of the library first," I said.

Again, the frown. The gears turning in slow motion. Then, finally, a hopeful smile. "That's okay, we can do that."

"You got a library card?"

"Library card. No."

"Well, how you gonna check the movie out without a card?"

"All right, let's get one, then."

"You have to give them an address."

"An address? Are you sure?"

"Pretty sure."

"Hm. Well, all right, I can do that."

"You have a permanent address, Red?"

"Naw. I'll just make one up."

"You'll have to show 'em a driver's license."

"Oh."

"You got a driver's license, Red?"

"No. Yeah."

His eyes brightened. Reaching in his hip pocket, he pulled out a wallet so shiny and beat up, it was about to fall apart. He opened it. There was no money in it, of course. But there were some cards, a few. Sure enough, he nudged out a driver's license. "Here it is," he said, handing it to me. It was yellow and faded. The picture, half fogged over, didn't even resemble him anymore. The license had expired years ago.

"We'll have to get you a new license," I said to him, handing it back. "But hold onto that one, Red, for a keepsake. It's a nice picture of you."

"It is?" he said.

"Yeah."

He looked at it a long moment with that frown on his face. Then, looking up with a half-smile, he said, "Yeah, it is a nice picture, ain't it?"

* * *

That night, after searching around and not having any luck, I decided a raggedy tent was better than nothing. When I got there, I couldn't believe my eyes. Red not only had a nice tent, brand new, with a ground cloth and everything, but hanging from a tree limb was a shiny Coleman lantern that lit up his whole campsite. He also had a nice little fire going in front of the tent and he invited me to join him, so I did, and proceeded to warm my hands. Vincent went straight for it and laid down as close to the hot coals as he could without singing himself.

I asked Red where on earth he got the tent. "Picked it up somewhere," he said, with a wink. The only problem, he said, was he had to take it down every morning and hide it; said it would be gone if he walked off and left it standing. So, it was some trouble. To that I said, "Well, Red, having a house is always trouble."

"Yes, you're right about that, Jack," he admitted.

"But look here," I said. "You don't have to paint it, do you?"

"Nope."

"You don't have to put a new roof on it every ten years, do you?"

"Sure don't."

"And you don't owe no property tax on it, do you?"

"No sirree," he smiled.

"Well, then," I said, "count your lucky stars."

Anyway, long story short, once I remembered camping out at Red's place, then I remembered where I left my diary. I jumped up from my booth in the Bizzy Bee, left my coffee and newspaper sitting there, and ran for the door. Johnny Blair hollered, "Hey, what's your hurry, Jack?"

"I left my diary in Red Dunkel's tent!" I replied. "Be back in an hour!"


* * *

THOLOS IS REPRESENTED AT MARCH 20TH CRAWFORD TEXAS PEACE MARCH

The tall bloke on the left, carrying the sign marked WE, is Tholos writer, Grayson Harper.




image via annatopia.com

WALTER CRONKITE ON GLOBAL WARMING

Syndicated columnist and renowned tv news anchor, Walter Cronkite, writes of the disaffected retreat of the George W. Bush Administation from a growing scientific consensus, the potentially devastating impact of global warming. Here is an excerpt from his article, Make global warming an issue, posted at philly.com, on March 15, 2004.


"The contempt of the Bush administration for environmentalists and their concerns is well known by now. While evidence of man- made environmental damage mounts, the Bush team resists its implications like a defeated army whose rear guard fights off its pursuers as it retreats. That has been especially true of its handling of the most serious of all environmental issues - global warming.

First, the administration claimed that global warming was the work of liberal hysterics and had been discounted by "more sober scientists." Then, it admitted that it was happening but said there was no proof humans caused it, or could fix it.

Retreat No. 3 was the White House discovery that, yes, indeed, some of the warming was due to human activity, and we should take steps, say, to reduce emissions, but those steps should be voluntary on the part of industry.

There are two scientific theories that have been gaining credence in recent years that challenge the sanity of that kind of resistance to fact - and make no mistake about it, global warming is a fact.

Both theories begin with a phenomenon that is taking place right now. Scientists are beginning to understand climate as a complex interactive system that is affected by everything from the emission of greenhouse gases, to deforestation, to the condition of Arctic and Antarctic glaciers.

It is a system with a feedback mechanism. For example, higher temperatures lead to the melting of sea ice, which exposes more water to the sun. The water absorbs more solar energy, which accelerates global warming, and so on. Scientists fear that such feedbacks might produce a self-sustaining and accelerating warming that is beyond human control.

The second theory goes by the name of Abrupt Climate Change. It suggests that catastrophic results of global warming might not occur gradually, as most have expected, but quite suddenly - within a few years. This theory also starts with the melting of glaciers and sea ice, but involves the dilution of seawater's salinity - or salt content - that results. That salt content is a key element in an ocean current that takes heat from the tropics northward and cold water southward and in the process moderates temperatures in the Eastern United States and much of Europe.

The collapse of this so-called conveyor could, in the worst case, produce a new ice age. The best case would give us severe winters, increasingly violent storms, flooding, drought and high winds around the globe, disrupting food production and energy supplies and raising sea levels high enough to flood coastal cities and make them unlivable.

These are not predictions but real possibilities - far more possible today than scientists had previously believed."

"One thing we have to keep in mind: While these might only be worst-case scenarios, many of the conditions and processes scientists think might trigger them already are present or under way. Global warming is at least as important as gay marriage or the cost of Social Security. And if it is not seriously debated in the general election, it will measure the irresponsibility of the entire political class. This is an issue that cannot, and must not, be ignored any longer."

SPANISH DECISION A REPUDIATION OF AZNAR

Today is a good day to celebrate Spanish courage, because it seems that the world cannot afford to do without it.. While still registering the shock and horror from the Madrid attacks, voters in Spain went to the polls in a huge turnout to repudiate the Aznar government. The voters there have handed power to the Socialists, because the PP and its leader could not be trusted to act in the interests of the people. The defeated party led Spain into a war in Iraq on the coattails of the Bush Administration and in direct opposition to the overwhelming majority of Spaniards. Voters had valid reasons to reject Aznar and everything he represented. This so-called leader used the long-standing skirmish with Basque extremists, to inflame the voters, before credible evidence could be assembled regarding the actual perpetrators. This effort to manipulate the dead, and use them as counters in a political game, only produced nausea and anger among Spanish voters.

The most alienated commentary (coming mostly from those outside Spain) has been to the effect that the vote somehow suggests appeasement in the face of terrorism. Oddly, even some left-of-center pundits have peddled this nonsense. The enormous expression of public will by the electorate demonstrates just the opposite. It is clear that the Spanish voter is neither intimidated by the terrorist nor by the fear-mongering government that serves at the pleasure of Bush&Co, in a cruel war.

In a democracy, a government will not long stand, if it proves untrustworthy. The others, who are now elected in Spain, must serve the will of the people with more fidelity. Aznar and his party were rejected because of a repellent use of Spain's still-mourned dead. These dead were claimed for political advantage, and voters were right to punish the manipulators.

In the aftermath of the election, a BBC article quotes Spanish economist, Rafael Lopez:

"The youth above all has brought us back. They know what is best for them. They have said no to the war and no to terrorism and all Spanish people want peace."


UPDATE: BY ALL MEANS READ JUAN COLE'S ARTICLE ON THIS SUBJECT!

REST IN PEACE, SPAULDING GRAY

Photograph:AP

"Every phrase and every sentence is an end and a beginning,
Every poem is an epitaph. And any action
Is a step to the block, to the fire, down the sea's throat
Or to an illegible stone: and that is where we start.
We die with the dying:
See, they depart, and we go with them.
We are born with the dead:
See, they return, and bring us with them
The moment of the rose and the moment of the yew-tree
Are of equal duration. A people without history
Is not redeemed from time, for history is a pattern
Of timeless moments."...

--T.S. Eliot, from LITTLE GIDDING , Four Quartets

INTEGRITY HAS BEEN SIGHTED

"From off your face, into the winds of winter,
The sun-brown and the summer-gold are blowing;
But they shall gleam again with spiritual glinter,
When paler beauty on your brows falls snowing,
And through those snows my looks shall be soft-going."

--Wilfred Owen, from Winter Song



Image via Billmon