Against our "new" war in the Middle East

Where to begin?  I guess simply with the fact that I believe it is absolutely wrong for us to be dropping bombs and engaging in more warfare in Syria and Iraq and wherever else OBomba decides he has the right to bomb (without congressional approval Mr. Constitutional Lawyer you).

Michael Franti said it well and this quote was painted on my Burning Van before we even went into Iraq: "We can bomb the world to pieces, but we can't bomb it into peace."

I must rewind a bit because I saw a clip of Bush Jr. being played on Fox news that showed Bush saying if we pull out of Iraq too soon we would leave a void that would be filled by terrorists.  The commentators were showing it to suggest Bush was some kind of wise man who Obama should have listened to.  "He told you so!" sort of thing.  But we need to remember that Bush was warned (His Father wrote about it when he explained why he did not oust Saddam during the first Gulf War) that if you remove Saddam and bomb the country to rubble you would create a vacuum for terrorists.  So once we destroyed Iraq we had two choices: stay there forever or leave, either way bad shit was happening there.  But of course Bush and his crew made other mistakes like purging all the Sunni military officers and political leaders from their jobs and allowing a brutal Shiite government to take over Iraq, increasing the likelihood of a destabilized country. 

Our bombing of the region is creating chaos and enemies while it is making the chances for democracy and peace less and less.  The longer we stayed, the more we bombed, the worst things got.  So how is dropping more bombs gonna help now?  Over the years we armed various groups to overthrow leaders we don't like and inevitable the groups we arm turn out to be just as brutal and eventually tend to turn on us as well.  This is more true than ever in Syria where we are planning to train an additional 10,000 or more rebels to fight in that country.  We are creating chaos.

And if making the US safer is the stated goal, then we are failing miserably.  It already looks like our bombing of Syria is uniting groups that until now were fighting each other.  Their uniting factor: hatred of the US bombing of civilians, and of course we are going to kill civilians when we drop bombs.  Every military campaign needs an enemy to unite their followers behind their leaders.  We are giving the terror groups of the Middle East an enemy to unite against.  We are playing into their hands. 

The more we bomb, the more we kill, the more lives we destroy, the more chaos we create, the more people will hate us.  Period.  We are wrong to do it.

Obviously now that we have helped to screw that part of the world up (certainly we are not the only ones to blame) leaving it alone is not a great option either, so what should we do.

What I believe would be the right thing to do:
     Put together a diplomatic coalition and use our influence to seriously push for peace in the region.  The two main factors that might help this to happen: stop supporting Israel in their brutal occupation, colonization, and oppression of the Palestinians; and to engage Saudi Arabia and Iran in efforts to stop their cold war of supporting Sunni vs Shiite governments in the region.  This may not work, but neither has war.
     Meanwhile we need to protect the US by using our law enforcement to try and prevent terrorist attacks the best we can being mindful of civil liberties.
     It is interesting to think that we were willing to spend trillions of dollars destroying the Middle East to prevent possible terror attacks, however when confronted by possible human caused global climate destabilization (leading to more deaths and cost than terrorists could ever inflict) we aren't willing to spend a penny.  In fact the Republicans in congress even fight things that would likely save us money (like energy efficiency programs) if it would impact the bottom line of the fossil fuel industry.  It makes me sick. Imagine if the US spent trillions of dollars waging 'war' on climate change.  Would terror groups really be able to recruit people to attack us?  It would certainly be a lot more difficult.

Ultimately we can't know the future and we can't control what will happen in the Middle East.  But we should know right from wrong and dropping more bombs is wrong.  Can a Nobel Peace prize be rescinded?  If so, Obomba's certainly should be.

Classic Climate Denier Clip

This is just too funny.  I could go on about it but I will refrain and just let you watch and enjoy...

The Daily Show
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Online Discussion on GMOs

So occasionally I get sucked into discussions in the comment section of internet articles.  I usually don't because you often need to sign up to be able to comment.  Also I try to remind myself that I am too busy to waste my time replying to comments that get me fired up. 
But the other day I did get sucked into a discussion on GMOs.  The article was pointing out that General Mills had something like 11 GMO derived ingredients in their Fruit by the Foot product (and more egregious to me was the fact that it said "made with real fruit" on the package even though the strawberry flavor had no strawberries in it and the 'real fruit' was boiled down pear concentrate.)
  Anyway, rather than let my conversation get lost in cyberspace, I copied and pasted it here because this topic is dear to my heart and this comment thread really is just the tip of the issue...
  and an odd twist was that the comments from the person I was having a back and forth with were deleted.  I had already copy and pasted them into a word doc so they are here...

 

BobE

September 18, 2014

I would like to see a reference study that would detail why GMO foods are harmful. I have not seen any data. Hybrid seed corn has been around for many, many decades. I realize genetic modification is apparently one step farther but there has been no data generated that I have seen that says this in any way is harmful to the human body.

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danny (to BobE)

September 18, 2014

Even if GMOs are not bad for the human body, there is VERY good reason to be completely against them. The majority of GMOs are produced to make the crop resistant to chemical herbicides like round up. This allows farmers to dump increasingly large amounts of this poison on their crops, destroying the soil ecology (more essential than we realize) and if GMOs are not bad for people, these herbicides certainly are. As the weeds evolve to become resistant to the herbicide, great amounts have to be used until the herbicide is obsolete (about 30 years). This has happened to round up which is why they developed the GMO/herbicide combo using one of the two chemicals from Agent Orange. DOW and Monsanto already know this will create more super resistant weeds so they are already working on the next poison/GMO combo. This is a toxic arms race that has one purpose: profits for the corporations who are killing our farmland, ecology, and people. And this is only one reason to oppose GMOs, but it should be enough!

Reply

Foodie (to danny)

September 19, 2014

With that logic you should be going against the use of Roundup then– not GMOs. Organic food uses pesticides as well and it is not as environmentally friendly as you think. By going against GMOs, you are hurting humanity. I wish the anti-GMO movement wasn’t so selfish.

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danny (to danny)

September 19, 2014

In response to Foodie,
I gave one example why GMOs are bad, I do not understand how the GMO movement is selfish or how we are hurting humanity. GMOs do not help humanity. There are many other problems with them, Lilhippieface in her comment mentioned the suicide gene that is placed in many GMOs, preventing farmers from saving seeds. This prevents local varieties from being developed, forces farmers to buy new seeds every year, and destroys diversity which is what makes life on this planet resilient to things like changes in climate. Genetic drift has been found to occur from GMO crops to wild plants. This means things like the suicide gene can actually end up in wild populations of plants. So many of the consequences of GMOs are completely unkown and yet to be discovered. Why experiment with something that does harm but does not provide benefits we cannot get from permaculture and other sustainable farming techniques?
And as far as your comment that I should be against Round up. In general I am against the use of herbicides and pesticides, I choose to use none on my garden and I buy food grown without their use. But I heard a farmer interviewed who uses round up and is against GMOs and his logic was very sound. He uses very little round up when he really needs it and it had been effective, however the round up ready GMO crops allow farmers to drench their crops with the poison, and this over use not only increases the harmful effects but allows the weeds to become resistant to the round up. Just as the over use of anti-biotics can lead to anti-biotic resistant strains of diseases. So you can be against the over use of antibiotics (say in factory farming or by our medical industry) but not be against antibiotics.
Ironically the companies that push GMOs are the ones who are selfishly motivated by greed and profits and people fighting against GMOs are fighting for the benefit of humanity (and the rest of the living world).

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Foodie (to danny)

September 19, 2014

Anti-GMO activism is hurting humanity. There are starving people outside of the US who cannot grow crops because of weather, soil, etc. conditions. There have been crops genitically engineered to withstand these conditions, and the public is saying “GMOs are bad” and the politicians are giving in– without scientific evidence. Sorry, but that’s hurting humanity. These starving people cannot eat and grow crops with help from science.

Take a step back and look at the big picture. Did you also know that GMO tobacco is an ingredient in the Ebola cure? The cure that has helped the American doctors. Just please, please science. You can do it!

• 
  

Foodie (to danny)

September 19, 2014

That should be *genetically and ” These starving people cannot eat and grow crops withOUT help from science”

·  danny (to danny)

September 19, 2014

Foodie,
None of the GMO crops we use in this country are designed for any such humanitarian purposes. If it was true that a particular GMO crop was the only hope for starving people, I would not be against that particular crop. However this is simply not the case. The Hopi have been farming extremely drought tolerant varieties of corn for thousands of years. I have some of their seeds in fact. This corn can grow in extremely impoverished soil as well. If you are truly interested in this topic I suggest you educate yourself about the history of our agricultural degradation of such places as Africa, the Middle East, and Asia over the past 10,000 years and the power of permaculture to restore the soil, bring back biodiversity, and even increase rainfall in the regions. It is possible to return deserts to food producing ecosystems if done properly and the benefit of this strategy far outweighs the benefit from a GMO monoculture, which is what you are talking about. PLEASE WATCH this incredible documentary about restoring deserts to functional ecosystems using permaculture. Yes, I am against monocultures and GMOs and for permaculture. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBLZmwlPa8A

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happyvegangirl (to danny)

September 19, 2014

wow Danny, very well said. thank you 

danny (to danny)

September 19, 2014 Happyvegangirl, you are welcome and thanks for the nice comment. I was spurred on a bit by someone named Foodie but her/his comments dissappeared form the thread. Odd, I hope she watches the video I recommended, it is a great one for those concerned about people feeding themselves. And of course being vegan is a huge help, although I am more of an omnivore myself. peace

 Foodie (to danny) 

 Who cares if the seeds are drought resistant? They probably don't give a good yield. If you can take something and make it better-- why not do that? It causes no harm. I watched a bit of the documentary (i wish i could have those 10 mins back), but to be honest I don't get your point? If GMOs can help why not use them as well? And the posts were deleted by Food Babe-- she doesn't allow healthy debate on her site or Facebook. Odd coming from someone who was on the debate team... She's a fraud also out to make money. Look at all her sponsors on this site. Organic food is a big business now. Wake up people! #chowbabearmy

danny (to danny)

September 20, 2014 Foodie2,
Making money does not make one a fraud, everyone has to make a living, but I am not here to defend her or her business.
The point about permaculture is that it is a wholistic approach that will improve the soil health, health of the ecosystem, and of the people. Diversity makes both natural ecosystems strong as well as agricultural systems. The GMO crops you are talking about are a single monoculture – one weakness of this is a disease that wipes out that particular crop the local people are screwed. Also diverse plants, bacteria, fungi, and animals in the soil and on the farm provide more nutrition and health for everyone. Also healthy soil stores tons of carbon. It is estimated that if we restore just 11% of our farmland to healthy soil ecologies that we would capture as much CO2 as we emit with all our cars and factories. But the bottom line is the permaculture model is VASTLY superior to anything GMOs can do, plus we honestly do not know the effects of GMOs, it is a big exeriment and we are the lab rats. And as I said, the VAST majority of GMOs are actually very harmful because they allow tons of poison to be used, they have suicide genes, and their use is truly intended not to help humanity but to give control of the food system to giant corporations like Monsanto and DOW chemical. If you think they have bettering humanity in mind then you should do more research.
but at this point it seems like we will mostly likely have to agree to disagree, take care.

Obama's State of Spin

I admit I did not listen to the entire State of the Union and did not take the time to read it.  I did hear some clips and all I can say is that if it is not total BS then at least it is total spin.  My response to a couple points:

Going into this I do acknowledge that Obama is up against impossible odds.  Last year he asked congress to do 41 things he thought would be good for the country and they did TWO of them!  Bills that would pass with bipartisan support in the House, don't even get brought to a vote because they are things that the Democrats want more than the Republicans (like an end to the shut down or immigration reform).  That being said, Obama, in my opinion, is still full of $#!^ on a few topics.

He pushed his Pacific Rim 'free' trade agreement with the argument that it will help create jobs.  Even he knows, or knew, that is not the case.  In 2008 he correctly blamed rising income inequality and a downward push of wages on free trade agreements like NAFTA.  This free trade agreement would likely drive wages lower but it will also soften labor and environmental laws - making it more difficult, for instance, for the State of California, to pass strict regulations of natural gas fracking. 

Good for him for talking about poverty, few presidents do.  Income inequality is one of the biggest problems this country faces and again, good on him for talking about this issue.  And I guess baby steps are better than nothing, but it is difficult to imagine he is being genuine when he says he is raising the minimum wage for federal contractors to $10.10 an hour because 'no one who works for our government should live in poverty'.  I am sorry, but $10.10 is still a poverty wage.  If the minimum wage kept pace with the cost of living it would be over $20 an hour.  Especially when you consider how government programs are structured.  By getting a raise, many people will be worse off because of the all or nothing way our government assistance programs like food stamps, housing assistance, health care assistance, etc are determined.  People who make slightly more (even a few dollars more) than the cut-off for these programs often lose all their assistance at once - food, housing, health care, etc.  Our safety net really needs to be calculated on a sliding scale.  I even experienced this this year, as the cost for insuring my own two kids went over night from $50 a month to $500 a month!  This kind of system can't help to encourage conversations like "I can't afford to work more" or "maybe I should ask that I don't get a raise, because I would be better off."  And of course, these kind of conversations are not good for the State of our Union!

Obama's 'all of the above' energy plan would be fine if he believed Climate Change is not a problem.  But Obama said "Climate Change is real" and he talked about how we need to be able to look our grand kids in the eye and tell them we did everything we could to prevent climate change. That is total BS.  Sure, Obama is taking some good baby steps, but he is not doing everything he can, nor is he telling us what that really would mean.  Our domestic oil production is at an all time high, he is on the verge of giving the green light to Keystone XL pipeline which will enable the production of the dirtiest form of oil on the planet, and his savior - natural gas - is being extracted at a terrible cost to human lives, local economies, and the environment.

The argument that the tar sands will be mined regardless of what we do is a terrible one.  When I tell my students that they should make smart choices about what they buy, they often say "well it is in the store already, so if we don't buy it, someone else will." They quickly see the lack of logic in that argument.  The store only replaces things at the speed they fly off the shelf.  I heard a spokesperson for the American Petroleum Institute today say that the tar sands oil is going to come out of the ground, like it or not.  Scientists have warned that if we burn all that tar sand oil it will be 'game over' for the climate.  Are you doing all you can do Obama?  If he stood up solidly against the Keystone XL pipeline, regardless of the political blow back, he would have a little more credibility with his grand kids.

The US has reduced its carbon emissions due to an increase in the use of Natural Gas for producing electricity.  NG has way less carbon than coal and less also than oil.  That is all good, but the method of mining it, called fracking, is TERRIBLE.  Obama said he wants to cut red tape so more natural gas can be extracted.  Well go to this link and check out this report: Shalefield Stories.  It has dozens of first hand accounts of people who have been poisoned, farms destroyed, lives ruined, cancers, etc due to fracking where they live.  This is not the direction we need to be leading the world, Mr. President.  

I certainly don't blame Obama for all his shortcomings, he is no doubt at the wheel of a ship with a lot of momentum and his copilots have tied his hands behind his back.  But at this point his actions speak louder than his words and his actions contradict his words a few too many times.

My republican friends try to say "I told you so" when they hear me critical of Obama.  While I am disappointed in him on MANY fronts (drones, his crack down on whistle blowers, etc) I did not expect him to be my perfect candidate (He is no Bernie Sanders) and I still contend that a conservative Democrat is better than a Republican.  For my values, it is sad but true.

CNN story about Obamacare

OK, here is a classic news story.  A democratic governor saying the ACA is working great and a Republican hack saying it is 'terribly flawed".  What I love about this is that the Governor is dealing with facts and the Republican is just repeating talking points.  So typical.  And often the media repeats the talking points, but this interviewer is calling her out a bit.

I admit, not being a huge fan of the AFA, I have been turned off even more by the reports of the exchange not working.  This video is a good reminder to take a deep breath and relax about it.  I still wish we had a single payer system that would truly reduce cost, but as a nation we aint ready for that. 

The comments for this video are bothersome, people ranting about the poor people on welfare leaching off of the hard working Americans.  What these ignorant comments miss is the fact that an increasing number of working Americans need welfare.  The problem in this country is that you can work your ass off and not make enough to afford healthcare.

manufactured crises , thwarting democracy, social safety nets, and other thoughts on this government shitdown

manufactured crises , thwarting democracy, social safety nets, and other thoughts on this government shitdown

Well this is so incredibly ridiculous, it is screaming for a rant from me.  It is also very interesting, for it touches on so many subjects.  Electoral politics, economics, poverty, filibusters, the media, government spending, ….

Where to begin.  First off, if the Republicans believed in Democracy this crisis would not have happened.  If the House of representatives was allowed to vote on a clean spending bill (to fund the government without trying to attack other laws that have been passed), it most likely would have passed with all Democrats and some Republicans voting for it.  Same thing today, if the House was allowed to vote to raise the debt limit it would most likely pass.  BUT, Speaker Boehner will not allow a vote, even though he cannot get all his Republicans to agree on anything.  He is purposefully thwarting the democratic process and denying our elected representatives their chance to vote on our behalf.  As if there are not enough real problems in this country for our government to be focused on, we had to invent a crisis. Insane.

Another interesting aspect – Republicans are proving how important government spending is.  Everyday we hear stories of how entire States are in trouble, small businesses near national parks and military bases, lots of people are losing tons of money, not just the employees , but the businesses with whom they spend their money.  Plus with the lack of tourists coming to parks, money is not coming into these communities.  Then you have things like emergencies to deal with like storms or the recent death of thousands of cows due to freezing weather, the fact the crab fishing season can’t start in Alaska because noone can get permits, etc, essential government services that hard working people depend on.  And this whole shutdown is because Republicans are so against government spending.  Against spending on food stamps, social security, health care, etc.  Meanwhile they fight raising the minimum wage, which would help the working poor get off government assistance (A new report estimates employees of the fast food industry cost tax payers $& billion every year in government programs).  Conservatives label Democrats ‘tax and spend liberals’.  That seems like a good things to me.  Especially when we have a third of world’s wealth and it is concentrated in the hands of a tiny percentage of our population.    You want the economy to grow? Tax and spend.  You want our children to be well educated, well fed, and to have access to helth care?  Tax and spend.  You want money trickling down to small busineeses around the nation, tax and spend.  More on this later.

  I see op-eds, hear statements, and commentaries by Republicans and conservatives blaming Obama for the current shutdown.  Many (Darryl Issa for example) have gone so far as to say Obama does nothing to lead, never compromises with Republicans, is pushing an extreme socialist agenda, and is to blame for a presidency riddled with crises – the fiscal cliff, the debt ceiling debacle (former and upcoming), the current shutdown.  This is simply insane.  The Republicans have caused all of these crises for the very reason they claim Obama has, their lack of ability to compromise.  Obama has bent over backwards to compromise every chance he gets.  WAY too much for most of us progressives.  Past crises were caused because the Republicans refused to ANY tax increases.  ANY.  They cry about the debt.  They holler about the deficit.  But they won’t raise a single tax. 

The Republicans want nothing but cuts – cuts to the social safety net.  First off, one of their main targets, social security, does not contribute to the debt!  Second, austerity is a terrible way to revive an economy.  Third, we have already cut a ton – in fact many economists say we cut too much already.  Fourth, the disparity between the rich and the poor is the worst it has been in this country in a hundred years, if not more.  We have more childhood hunger and people in poverty than any other wealthy nation!!!  Hard working people cannot feed their children.  And the people who are poor and who live on food stamps or on their small salaries, they can only afford the worst most unhealthy processed food – made cheap by government subsidies to corporations who grow things like corn that they then make into corn syrup.  The same Republicans who want to (and recently did) cut billions from the very programs that are barely feeding people, refuse to touch the subsidies payed to these multinational corporations growing crops of grains to be processed into cheap  (and unhealthy) food ingredients.  Add this to the fact fast food companies can pay so little that their employees often qualify for government welfare (costing the government still more) and you artificially low prices for unhelahty food.

We have been discussing all this in my class because the 7^th grade service theme is poverty and hunger.  We just watched an incredible movie called “A Place At the Table” about child hunger.  One thing these politicians lack, which my students have – empathy, empathy for these people who are working hard and watching their children get sick and starve because they can’t afford food.

And yet these Republicans are manufacturing crises so they can demand cuts to the social safety net (which is barely a net anymore).  Cuts to Medicare, Social Security, SNAP.  Meanwhile cuts to the military – off the table.  Tax increases on the wealthy – off the table.  Cuts to subsidies to hugely profitable corporations – off the table.  And then they blame the Democrats for not being willing to compromise.   We spend almost as much on our military as the rest of the world combined!  America owns over a third of all the wealth in the entire world and we have only five percent of the population, yet we have the highest rate of childhood hunger in all of the developed world.  One of my students said – “yeah, but it is easier to get rich, I mean very rich, in America than it in places like Europe.  It is easier to be poor, but it is also easier to be really rich.”  Yes,  “that is true”, I said.  “And some people think that is a very good thing.”   They get rich by making everyone else poor.  There is only so much money in the world.  It can be distrubuted equally or unequally or somewhere in between.  Right now it is getting increasingly concentrated at the top.  The top 1% owns about 50% of the wealth in the US, while the bottom 80% of the people share a sliver of the pie – less than 8%.  But while Republicans complain that we are so irresponsible as a nation to run up our debt, that our only choice is to take more money away from the poorest in this country, we cannot even consider a tax increase on those that are doing just fine (ok, better than just fine)

Our government is broken.  There are people running our government who want it broken.  If you had a business, would you hire someone who said “I think your business is the problem.”  We are electing people who believe government is the problem.   OF course they think private corporations are the answer.  This is why they are driving the post office out of business, for example.  They passed a low to require the post office to fund its pensions 70 years in advance – no private corporation has to do that.  And after they break the government and give contracts to private corporations, they go to work for those very corporations making insane amounts of money.  This revolving door is one of the main problems with our system.  Enough to talk about here to save for another time.

It is crazy. 

And of course this crisis also has been enabled by the redistricting that Republicans made an effort to control.  There are so many districts that are drawn to make members from both parties safe that it is further polarizing the house.  Republicans are so safe from Democratic challengers in most districts that they have no need to move to the middle on issues.  .  Instead, they what they fear most is a primary challenge from the far right, making them move to the right (or stay there if they are one of these ‘Tea Party Party” members.  It is giving a lot of power to this small portion of the politicians who really hate the government’s social programs.  These are not the people we should have running this incredible country! – There is alwys the hope that working class and poor republicans will wake up and realize their party is not representing them.  The government shut down fueled that hope.  Also I hpe these folks start signing up for better health care plans under Obamacare at a more affordable price.  Then lets see what they think about the fools that try to repeal it.

Oh, and I wish they used the 'nuclear option' and got rid of the filibuster, this rule has been abused to thwart democracy and make government not work long enough.  The Republicans filibuster things they would vote yes on, just because they want the government to have its hands tied behinds it back as long as there is a Dem in the White House.  Their strategy is to make the Democrats look bad even if ruins the country, because if people throw out the Dems, there is only one other choice.  Hence the main problem with the two party system.  Noone benefits from working together. 

Solutions:   Stop electing Republicans (getting harder with redistricting).  Stop electing anyone who says they want a government job because they think government is the problem. Tax and spend!  In a perfect world : get rid of the filibuster, no campaign adds – just free time on public television – for candidates, end the two party system by giving a percentage of seats in congress based on percentage of votes a party gets, pass a law that says government employees must wait five years to work in private industry (especially if it is an industry over which they were overseeing or which they wrote laws regarding)…ah, and how about educating our youth so they will be more globally aware and able to make better political decisions – we stand alone as a nation in our ignorance, which is ironic since our political decisions affect the rest of the world like no other nation.

OK, end of rant, gotta go eat lunch!

The Republicans are Right - Repeal Obama Care and don't raise the debt ceiling

OK, I can agree with the Republicans on these two issues.

First, Obamacare is a cumbersome 2,000 page bill that still lets private insurance companies siphon off tons of money that could be used to lower health care costs on this country.  I think we should repeal it like the Republicans want, and then we should make Medicare available to everyone in the Nation.  A single payer system without private for profit insurance companies is the only way to really get health care costs under control.

Second, we should not be going further into debt when our Nation holds over a third of the wealth in the entire world!!!   We should not raise the debt ceiling.  Instead we should tax corporations and the rich like they were taxed in the 50's, 60's, and 70's.  This would allow our government to pay its bills without going further into debt.