Jim Hightower, populist author and entertaining voice for common sense for decades (and a terrific speaker—if you ever get the chance, go hear him!) has a great article on the real agenda of those pushing the Keystone XL gas pipeline from Canada to Texas.

It’s to get that Canadian crude down to oil refineries in the free trade zone at Port Arthur, Texas—where it can be shipped overseas a lot more cheaply.

We Americans get the land takings, the toxic leakage, the interruption of wildlife habitat corridors and all the rest of the “good stuff”; foreign markets get the oil; prices in the US go up. Such a Deal!

Hightower is the former Texas Commissioner of Agriculture and a generally knowledgeable guy. I find him credible, and I trust his analysis.

Thanks but no thanks. Please spread this widely.

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In my post yesterday on oil-industry and think-tank funding of climate deniers, I deliberately used the term “catastrophic climate change” instead of the more common phrase, “global warming.”

You may be wondering why:

  • “Warming” is a joyous word, with happy connotations. Think about “warm-hearted” friends or a “warm lead” in sales—but climate change is nothing to be joyous about
  • “Warming” implies a gradual shift, nothing to be very concerned about, just a natural evolution—rather than the reality of intense and cataclysmic storms
  • The weather patterns are not all heat-related—right now, for example,  millions of people are freezing in Europe
  • It’s hard for many people to make the connections between rising temperatures and the major weather events they influence—such as the human interventions that turned Katrina from a “normal” hurricane into one of the most destructive storms ever, only to be surpassed by the Indian Ocean tsunami a few months later

As change activists and marketers, we need to own the language we use, to frame today’s realities in messaging that is easy to grasp and hard to distort. (George Lakoff, among others, has written very eloquently on this.)

I heard one speaker several years ago suggest that “global roasting” would be more appropriate—his graphic description of what we can expect is essential reading for climate activists for the wreckage that our planet will become—but even that doesn’t do the problem justice.

Even the phrase, “climate change,” is not enough. “Catastrophic climate change,” with its extra alliterative power and clear focus on potential disaster gives people a frame they can grasp. I suggest we use this term in our messaging.

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Want to buy a scientist?

When you find a scientist who claims to show that human-caused catastrophic climate change either isn’t real or isn’t a problem or doesn’t really exist, you usually find a money trail leading to one of the worst polluters (usually, oil giant ExxonMobil, sometimes, petrochemical magnates and right-wing darlings Koch brothers).

But ultra-right-wing think-tanks play in this sandbox too. Friday, TriplePundit posted leaked secret anti-climate-change strategy documents from Heartland Institute; they actually have the chutzpah to put $100,000 toward developing a K-12 school curriculum to

…show that the topic of climate change is controversial and uncertain – two key points that are effective at dissuading teachers from teaching science.

Oh yes, and they’ve also set aside $18,000 a monthly to fund pundits who present the climate-change-is-not-a-problem viewpoint.

Hmm, that sounds a lot like the attempts by creationists to throttle the study of evolution and biology. When science can’t back up your position, influence young kids with the Big Lie technique that was so beloved by Nazi propagandists. And the get television news commentators to present a “fair and balanced” approach, pitting your purchased experts against objective scientists as if they were equally credible, and sow doubt in the public mind.

To climate skeptics, I say “look out the window.” In my own area of Western Massachusetts alone, we’ve experienced the following just since June 1:

None of these events are the normal weather pattern around here.

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In the Dumb and Dumber department: I opened a letter marked “Personal Correspondence,” knowing full well that it was not. It used a very obvious handwriting font, nonprofit bulk-mail indicia instead of a postage stamp, and a sprayed barcode, and on the back was a Washington, DC mailing address with no name.

Personal correspondence, my arse! I opened it up because I wanted to find out who was lying to me.

Turned out to be a charity group that works on gay and lesbian rights issues, a group I’ve previously donated money to. Inside, there was no longer any attempt to look personal. It was a fairly standard fearmongering letter, some slick full-color inserts and a decal. I separated the decal into the trash, put the rest of it in the recycling—but I kept the postage paid return envelope. I’m going to print this blog post and mail it back to the org at their expense, to make a statement that I don’t like being lied to, do not condone unethical marketing even from causes I support, and to make it a few cents more expensive to treat me as a fool.

Doesn’t anyone vet this stuff before it goes out?

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…But I’m going to write it anyway.

As a young teenager protesting the Vietnam war, I had a huge poster in my room with a picture of a Vietnam-era peace demonstration and the quote,

It is a sin to be silent when it is your duty to protest.

—Abraham Lincoln

It is my duty to protest.

I am only one generation removed from the Holocaust, and I wonder how many millions of lives might have been saved if ordinary Germans and Italians had protested and organized in large numbers against the gradual encroachments on their liberty that provided the legal framework for Nazi and Fascist repression.

Earlier this week, while the rest of us were merrily celebrating the arrival of 2012, President Obama signed a truly wretched piece of legislation: The National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).

In the words of one commentator whose post is entitled “R.I.P. Bill of Rights 1789 – 2011,” this law

grants the U.S. military the “legal” right to conduct secret kidnappings of U.S. citizens, followed by indefinite detention, interrogation, torture and even murder. This is all conducted completely outside the protection of law, with no jury, no trial, no legal representation and not even any requirement that the government produce evidence against the accused. It is a system of outright government tyranny against the American people, and it effectively nullifies the Bill of Rights.

Signed into law by the same President Obama who, as a candidate, was the champion of liberty and “change” who would close the illegal prison at Guantanamo, rein in the torturers of Abu Ghraib, and quickly end the US presence in Iraq. The same Obama who had said he would veto this dreadful bill. (Yes, the soldiers have come home. But it took three years and we still have thousands of “advisors” there, along with a highly fortified embassy in Baghdad  that could easily be the nerve center for US command and control.) Guantanamo is still open, the climate of anti-Muslim racism persists, and the torturers at the highest levels (e.g., Cheney and Rumsfeld) have never been held to account.)

So I am protesting. Even though it puts my own liberty potentially at risk.

In his signing statement, Obama said he would…

interpret and implement the provisions described below in a manner that …upholds the values on which this country was founded.

Two problems with that. Number 1, he has not shown himself trustworthy in upholding those values in the past.

And second, there is no guarantee that the presidency won’t be delivered to a much more repressive figure with no such scruples. The contenders on the Republican side include several sworn enemies of freedom for those of us who don’t happen to be straight, conservative, and some repressive flavor of Christian: Bachmann, Gingrich, Perry, and Santorum (in alphabetical order).

This is merely the latest in a gradual erosion of our civil liberties committed during both Democratic and Republican governments; two other examples (among many) are the shift over the last two decades of ballot counting to insecure, easily manipulated, and highly suspect electronic counting devices that in some cases don’t even HAVE a paper trail (and that led directly to the disastrous worst-in-history administration of George W. Bush) and the citizens United Supreme Court decision that nakedly grants corporations the power to buy elections.

Yes I protest.

I have never forgiven myself for not doing enough to stop the coup that let Bush seize power in 2000—in part because I didn’t see Gore as any great champion of my values, in part because I could not foresee just how bad that eight years was going to be—but mostly because I was feeling too shut down and disempowered to help organize a movement like we saw in Mexico, Iran, Egypt, and elsewhere.

I still don’t feel like I can personally organize a movement. But I can at least protest, and send some money to a civil liberties group.  I hope you will too.

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Paul Loeb, one of the most interesting commentators in the sustainability/progressive politics world, posted a provocative article on Huffington Post:  “If You Care About Keystone and Climate Change, Occupy Exxon.”

This resonates in a lot of ways. ExxonMobil is so clearly complicit in the conspiracy to block meaningful action to counter human-caused/human-aided catastrophic climate change—directly behind much of the this-isn’t-our-problem propaganda and junk science. And the tar sands/keystone pipeline projects are so environmentally damaging.

There’s also a lot to be said for the Occupy movement getting more specific. Just as we know that the real wealth is concentrated in 1% of the 1%, so the movement can identify a few particularly rapacious corporations, and ExxonMobil certainly qualifies.

But I do have two concerns about picketing gas stations: First, the impact on the poor shlubs–local business owners–who bought the wrong franchise. I don’t know if there’s an easy way to target those stations that are corporate-owned rather than locally owned. And second, the health effects of breathing gas fumes for an extended period. However, the gas stations are a lot more VISIBLE than corporate offices or refineries. I’m wondering if maybe ExxonMobil could be occupied from the town squares and busy intersections, perhaps government offices such as EPA–but with signage clearly focused on the issue.

What do you think? Please post below.

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An Oregon judge ruled that blogging is not protected as journalism under the state’s journalism shield law. If allowed to stand, this sets a truly terrible precedent.

Here’s what the law says:

No person connected with, employed by or engaged in any medium of communication to the public shall be required by … a judicial officer … to disclose, by subpoena or otherwise … [t]he source of any published or unpublished information obtained by the person in the course of gathering, receiving or processing information for any medium of communication to the public[.]

Notice—there is nothing here about working for a recognized mainstream media outlet. By my reading, a guy in a clown suit standing on a milk crate in the park and haranguing a crowd of random passers-by would not have to disclose sources.

Yet here’s what U.S. District Judge Marco A. Hernandez wrote:

. . . although defendant is a self-proclaimed “investigative blogger” and defines herself as “media,” the record fails to show that she is affiliated with any newspaper, magazine, periodical, book, pamphlet, news service, wire service, news or feature syndicate, broadcast station or network, or cable television system. Thus, she is not entitled to the protections of the law

Hello! Since when does being a journalist require working for mainstream media? This country has a history of independent writers serving a journalistic role going back to those 18th-century “bloggers” Tom Paine and Ben Franklin—those guys didn’t write for the London Times, but started their own publications. Are you going to tell me that Daily Kos, Huffington Post, RedState, Drudge Report, Washington Spectator, and even the legendary I.F. Stone’s Weekly of the 1950s and 1960s have no place in the world of journalism? That the thousands of indy-media-istas who attend the National Conference for Media Reform are spitting in the wind?

And meanwhile, investigative blogger Crystal Cox is facing a $2.5 million judgment because she would not disclose her sources. Out-bloody-rageous!

Shame on you, Judge Hernandez!

Abraham Lincoln said, “It is a sin to be silent when it is your duty to protest.” I am protesting. And I hope voices with more clout than mine, such as FreePress.net, the National Writers Union, Authors Guild, American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), People for the American Way, National Coalition Against Censorship, and opinion journalists working for mainstream media (like Rachel Maddow) jump in and protest as well—with amicus briefs filed for the appeal.

 

Kris Miller Law is a respected and trusted  criminal defense attorney ready to help you with your legal needs.

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I keep waiting for one of these Great Defenders of Property Rights—you know, people like Limbaugh, Hannity, Coulter, and O’Reilly—to step forward and make some noise about the way the police wantonly destroyed property of individual occupiers and resources belonging to the community as a whole during the evictions last week. Among other things, a 5000-volume library was destroyed. I can’t see any reason for this.

Of course, I don’t expect the right-wing pundits to make any noise about the shameful treatment by police of some of the occupiers, such as the outrageous incident on the UC-Davis campus, where police used pepper spray in the faces of peaceful, sitting protestors—something that has one professor calling for the chancellor to resign. But since protecting private property has been so near and dear to their hearts over the years, I hold them to the same standard when the property being destroyed is that of their opponents.

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Political advisors spew so much crap about the need to tear down your opponent. Here’s a refreshing case study that proves the opposite is possible.

Congratulations to the newly-elected mayor of Northampton, Massachusetts, David Narkewicz. While his opponent went negative to the point of craziness (even going so far as to attack him for riding a bicycle, with an ad that talked about training wheels as a metaphor for inexperience), Narkewicz stayed positive, focusing on community-building, achieving widely held goals, and his own civic history. He was also deeply issue-focused and very articulate during the numerous debates (more than I can remember for any previous local election, in my 30 years in the area).

As a marketing consultant who has occasionally advised politicians, I have long held the opinion that such a positive campaign could be quite popular. I used this positive focus writing the press releases for the successful first mayoral campaign of a different mayor, who won in 1989 and went on to serve four two-year terms.

And while I predicted that his opponent’s strategy (using the considerable talents of a very good local ad agency), would fail, even I was pleasantly shocked at the margin of victory. Narkewicz took 70 percent of the vote, sweeping every ward, even the traditionally conservative western parts of the city. And he had coattails for progressives in every other contested race, as well as a ballot initiative to keep a land-preservation bill that the right had attacked.

Bravo.

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Ten years ago, 19 criminal thugs seized control of four planes—and the world as we knew it was shed like the skin of a snake, replaced with a new and very unpleasant reality.

On this anniversary, I want to publicly thank the hundreds of brave men and women who unselfishly, courageously faced death and yet still went back into the flaming buildings…wrested control of Flight 93 back from its hijackers and crashed it in an empty field, instead of a major government building…poured into New York and Washington to see how they could help, knowing they were risking their own health, their own lives. Also, the thousands of brave soldiers from the US and elsewhere who have put their lives on the line every day. It is not their fault that we shouldn’t have even been in those wars.

But I also want to remember what might have been. In the vast emotional outpouring following the attacks, we were, for almost the only time in our history other than Pearl Harbor, united as a people. And also, for perhaps the first time ever, we had the sympathy and compassion of the whole world.

It was the first President George Bush who had called, ten years earlier, for “A New World Order, where the rule of law, not the rule of the jungle, governs the conduct of nations.” His son had a chance to make that happen.

What was needed was a powerful, emotional speech recognizing that the old, imperialist model of conduct among nations didn’t work anymore…and seizing this terrible moment as a bridge to world peace, a chance for the world to re-invent itself as something new—as a collaborative body determined to achieve greatness as a place where war is an archaic and never-again-used way to settle disputes, no one starves, everyone can get an education and decent health care, the environment is given a chance to heal, and the enemies of industrialized societies cannot get any traction. I thought at the time that this is what Bush should have done and I still think so.

Not that the perpetrators would get off, though. Bush could have called for an international criminal manhunt to bring Bin Laden and his gang of thugs to justice for mass murder, and the world would have supported it. Especially as the US, coming off the Clinton period of prosperity and massive surpluses, had the resources to fund that manhunt.

What an outpouring of support that would have caused! People of all nations would have embraced Bush as a hero, and more importantly, would have striven to put those magnificent words into practice. The United States would have been seen as giving a precious and lasting gift to the entire world. And Bin Laden probably would have been captured early on, with no negative impact on the people unlucky enough to live in Afghanistan or Iraq.

Instead, Bush told us to go shopping…squandered the surplus in two illegal, immoral, unjust—and extremely expensive—wars (not counting the domestic war on Muslims, Arabs, and poor people)…initiated dozens of repressive practices at home…blew up our credibility in the world of nations by acting as a “rogue state” (turning us into either a hated enemy or a laughingstock, in various parts of the world)…and completely failed in his pursuit of Bin Laden (Obama had to come in and finish that one). And his actions caused so much resentment against the US that it turned Al Qaeda from a tiny cell into a massive terrorist organization spanning many countries. He made the enemy much bigger.

I have always perceived George W. Bush as a small-minded bully surrounded by smart and evil advisors, and I was not surprised that he could not step into greatness. But I’d have loved to have been proven wrong. And how much safer I’d feel today if he had somehow risen to the task. He could have been our greatest President. Instead, in my opinion, he was the worst.

On this 10th anniversary of 9/11, let us think how we can still achieve that world of peace. It will be much harder now—but it is not impossible.

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