Um, no, we can't. Well, I guess he can agree to disagree with himself.
But, to end the debate I propose an easy experiment anyone who doubts the dangers of carbon emissions can do at home: Find the nearest tailpipe and use it like a breathing tube for a few minutes. If after about five minutes you still think carbon emissions aren't harmful I'll let it rest and "agree to disagree".
I'm sure you're familiar with the food crisis going on in many parts of the world, the current rising oil prices here in the US, and the rise in gold prices. Hopefully you're aware that all these are primarily a result of commodities trading.
Whether this is good or bad is a topic for another discussion. The topic here is the growing trend of privatizing our world's water supply and the future of our most precious and essential natural resource becoming a commodity which is traded on Wall Street.
Yes, I made Goldman Sachs bold because I think it's important to highlight the fact an investment bank of is tracking these issues.
Now, the solution... if you want to call it that:
Proponents of privatization say markets are the best way to solve that problem: only the invisible hand can bring supply and demand into harmony, and only market pricing will drive water use down enough to make a dent in water scarcity. But the benefits of the market come at a price. By definition, a commodity is sold to the highest bidder, not the customer with the most compelling moral claim.
Who is buying up our water supply? You'll recognize these names I'm sure:
"Back in September 2010, J.P. Morgan purchased SouthWest Water, a large national water company. The Carlyle Group announced it plans to purchase the Park Water Company, which owns water systems in California and Missoula, Montana."
Yup, the most powerful companies on the planet are buying up our water supply and as the crisis worsens, these will be the companies deciding on prices and availability. Some things are worth more than money. To a moral human being this means it should not be a for-profit commodity. To a corporation, this means it's worth more than all the money in the world.
The reasons why our local governments are selling their water utilities are varied but much of it is due to immediate financial troubles being "fixed" by selling off these public utilities - just as we've seen with prisons, schools and about everything else. Why fix our budgets when we can just pawn off our resources? That works, right? Everyone knows people who pawn off their possessions are making sound financial decisions.
One thing to note is that this privatization does not result in better access or prices, it is often worse and much more expensive. Here's a few links to browse:
Engagement in Libya is not about humanitarian concerns. If it was, why would we have been selling them and other abusive regimes weapons with the intent of securing these regimes?
While much has been made of the uprisings across the Middle East and North Africa, and the brutal force used against these protesters and rebels, there has been only the passing reference to our role in propping up these regimes which we now find ourselves in the sticky situation of having to condemn. The "Made in U.S.A." label on tear gas canisters used against Egyptian protesters made headlines but little else in this regard has.
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Libya:
The Bush administration approved the sale of $3 million of materials to Libya in 2006 and $5.3 million in 2007. In 2008, Libya was allowed to import $46 million in armaments from the U.S. The approved goods included nearly 400 shipments of explosive and incendiary materials, 25,000 aircraft parts, 56,000 military electronics components and nearly 1,000 items of optical targeting and other guidance equipment.
In the months before Libyans revolted the U.S. government was moving to do business with his regime on an increasing scale by quietly approving a $77 million dollar deal to deliver at least 50 refurbished armored troop carriers to the dictator's military. Congress balked, concerned the deal would improve Libyan army mobility and questioning the Obama administration's support for the agreement, which would have benefited British defense company BAE.
State department official Andrew Shapiro said "It will send a strong message to countries in the region that we are committed to support the security of our key partners and allies in the Arabian Gulf and broader Middle East."
The Bush administration [made] an arms-sale package to Saudi Arabia and five other Persian Gulf countries [United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain and Oman] that may total more than $20 billion. Included in the package are advanced satellite-guided bombs, fighter-aircraft upgrades and new naval vessels.
As for why we have gone into Libya while ignoring numerous other atrocities around the globe:
ExxonMobil signed a heads of agreement to execute an Exploration and Production Sharing Agreement (EPSA) with Libya's National Oil Corporation to initiate exploration activity offshore Libya in the Sirte Basin.
BP in February suspended its preparations for onshore drilling after violence broke out across the North African country. Since then, troops loyal to Col. Moammar Ghadhafi's regime have steadily rolled back the rebel advance and re-taken control of most of the country.
Why France and the UK led the way into Libya:
Libya possesses 1,800 kilometers of Mediterranean coastline. The country produces 2 percent of the world's oil, with 85 percent of exports going to Europe. Libyan nationals have been prominent jihadists in Iraq. Since the beginning of the Great Recession and the slump in global demand in 2008, Libya has allocated $200 billion toward new infrastructure spending.
None of this is about the protection of human life no matter how warm and fuzzy it may feel to think it is. One final note: Who is it we claim to be protecting anyway?
Saudi Arabia and Libya, both considered US allies in the fight against terrorism, were the source of about 60% of the foreign fighters who came to Iraq in the past year to become suicide bombers or take part in other attacks, senior American military officials say.
Oh great. This won't come back to bite us in the ass.
Yet, back in 2001 things were different. Those of us who were against this war were told we hate America. We were only 6% of Americans who thought this war was not worth it.
This is not Photoshopped. This is what Freedom™ looks like.
This is one among many important issues that we on the so-called liberal fringe have been vindicated on - even if this vindication comes in the form of great tragedy while we endure continued derision and/or invisibility in the media, political discourse and nation at large.
Protests have been spreading around the country as citizens fight back against union busting efforts, privatization of essential industries and the erasure of democracy by their elected leadership. More Americans are realizing that millions of jobs have been lost to developing and third world countries and economic disparity is at the highest it's been in nearly a century and only getting worse with the top 10% of Americans owning 70% of the wealth, 6 banks controlling 64% of our GDP (up from 17% in 15 years), and corporate profits setting new records while actual joblessness remains around 20%. Yet, a small percentage of us who protest WTO gatherings, NAFTA, deregulation of essential industries and financial markets have been called "commies" and other derogatory names. Even the guy who wrote the book "The Supply Side Revolution" and Reagan cabinet member Paul Craig Roberts admits what a failure these "trickle-down" policies have been.
With more than 60% of bankruptcies due to medical bills in the US, essential industries becoming more and more privatized and profit driven (life and liberty should not be commodities), more subsidizing of the rich while taking from the poor and countless other issues us "radical liberals" yammer on about endlessly starting to affect larger percentages of Americans I wonder when and if we will ever be welcomed back into the public dialogue. Earlier generations of liberals struggled and fought to bring our fellow countrymen the civil rights movement, labor movement, child labor laws, clean air and water, Social Security and Medicaid, labor unions, desegregation, public education and a few other things that helped make our country strong, fair and looked up to. If we start wearing teabags on our head and carrying automatic weapons to protests can we be invited back to the discussion table?
Why do so many Americans have a distain for truth? There are so many items I could mention here but the one I'll focus on here is the truth about race in our nation.
From the Texas School Board changing the name of slavery to "Atlantic Triangular Trade" in their school books, to Glenn Beck hosting a rally on the same date and place as MLK's famous speech to South Carolina celebrating their secession, (while claiming secession had nothing to do with slavery), it's really alarming how much a large portion of our nation is trying to erase the success of human rights and civil rights in this country.
From the smearing of Shirley Sherrod as a racist all the while ignoring her inspiring story which emerged from an era when institutionalized racism against black farmers was all too real, to the vilification of ACORN with a slanderous and fictional video, to hyped claims about a rising New Black Panthers movement there is an obvious attempt at elevating the idea of reverse racism as a national issue.
One word sums up all the attempts at revising our nation's history and understanding of racial issues is this:
Overcompensationn. An attempt to make up for a character trait by overexaggerating its opposite.
Also known as: Projection, appropriation, narcissism, ignorance.
The conservatives out there who are claiming reverse racism while revising the history of institutionalized and real racism are suffering from the most common traits of denial and lying: The guilty person may speak more than natural, adding unnecessary details to convince you. The guilty person gets defensive. The guilty person will deflect the issue and tell stories that are deliberately aimed at not answering the question you asked. And, the guilty person will reverse the accusation.
A perfect example was this "discussion" with Tea Party promoter Sal Russo on "Hardball" trying to change the subject when discussing Michele Bachmann's ridiculous claims on the Founding Fathers' supposed efforts at eradicating slavery.
Bachmann claims:
"The very founders that wrote those documents [The Constitution] worked tirelessly until slavery was no more in the United States."
As anyone with at least a few years of education will recall the Civil War was almost 100 years after "those documents" were written. And, as anyone with a bit more book learning will tell you, those founders owned slaves too. (Though, Bachmann also claims our nation was founded as a Christian nation so this isn't the only issue she gets totally wrong in early American history).
I can understand why people would want to make themselves think their distain for truth and other human beings is justified and that past atrocities committed in our name never happened but I find it really hard to believe that their efforts seem to actually work. How their listeners can go along with such obvious lies and live in such ignorance of our history is as fascinating as it is frightening. History has a way of repeating itself if it is not remembered and learned from. Just as Holocaust deniers are shunned from a civil conversation, deniers of slavery and institutionalized racism should be shunned as well.
All the political discussions of our economic policies, foreign affairs and social services have valid and important arguments from both conservative and liberal circles but the opinions of people so deluded about the world they live in cannot be taken as anything more than what they are: The opinions of an ignorant person. We wouldn't take medical advice from an anti-vaccine crusader or a pharmaceutical marketing team, infrastructure advice from an anarchist or nutritional advice from an anorexic so why do voters, TV news watchers and a large percentage of Americans listen to these people?
Just like so many issues in this nation, race and our handling of its effects on society need to be discussed by sincere people if we are to continue along our proud journey of elevating the human condition so lets stop supporting the voices of people who prefer a time when women, minorities and the poor were oppressed. And if anyone feels threatened by the reverse racism of hostile words or affirmative action I'd recommend picking up a book or traveling to one of many oppressive places on the planet to learn what real oppression is.
The most recent major rebranding success comes in the form of the non-existent "Tea Party" and it's supposed wins in the mid-term elections.
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Why would the Republicans need a rebranding?
"Trickle Down Economics" After 30 years of conservative fiscal policies the average income of the bottom 90% in America from 1980-2008 increased 1% compared to the previous increase of 74.6% from liberal fiscal policies 1950-1980.
And so many more things like: lying to get us into Iraq then bungling both wars for years; Hurricane Katrina failures of leadership; the Terri Shiavo fiasco; under-equiping troops at war; moral hypocrisy of Vitter, Craig, Ensign, Sanford, Foley and others; spying on all Americans and granting Telecom immunity from the Constitutional protection of privacy; legitimizing torture as an American value; unaccounted billions of dollars lost to war profiteers; attempting to privatize Social Security... and on and on...
So, with this much needed rebranding how legitimate is the "Tea Party" as an actual political party? Let their own words speak for themselves:
"When a group lists themselves on our website, that's a group," Mark Meckler, a founding member of the Tea Party Patriots, told the Post. "That group could be one person, it could be 10 people, it could come in and out of existence – we don't know."
It will be interesting to see if the new Tea Party has succeeds in reversing the comically obscene failure of "fiscal conservatives" to do anything but inflate the federal debt and size to record levels each time they're in power. My money is on them forgetting what they stood for once they have power.
I've been waiting for such an apology for years from the people who worked the PR campaign for the lead-up to war. It's good to hear one finally.
It takes courage to admit such an enormous error of judgement and while it may not fix any of the damage done to our nation and Iraq through the past long years of war, divisiveness and fear, it may help lead to some progress in preventing mistakes like this and possibly even some healing of our broken 4th estate.
I've been angered for years every time one of the "chattering class" speaks of faulty intelligence, being mislead or whatever else the excuse may be. How could a small journalistic enterprise like McClatchy get it right and everyone else get it wrong? How was I able to read about the lack of WMD and a nearly prophetic analysis of the debacle that awaited us from a book in my local bookstore called "Behind the Invasion of Iraq" by The Research Unit for Global Economy (a think tank in India) almost six months before the invasion and yet almost no one in the mainstream media in America was clued in to the peril that awaited us?
Was it laziness? Was it corruption? Whatever the reason is, to me it's unforgivable.
Thousands of American lives lost, tens of thousands injured and more psychologically traumatized. The true financial cost of the war is unknown but in these times of skyrocketing deficits it's a cost we didn't need. Our massively privatized military industry is a threat to peace for generations because any industry that's bottom line is based on continued instability is a curse for humanity.
And what about Iraq? After losing hundred of thousands in the Iran/Iraq War (which Reagan gamed by selling weapons and strategies to both Iraq and Iran), a brief yet destructive war under Bush Sr., a decade of draconian sanctions under Clinton which was responsible for hundreds of thousands more deaths (Madeline Albright claimed it was "worth it") and now the past 7 years of war. With hundreds of thousands more dead, millions displaced and fled to other countries, an infrastructure in ruins and a non-functioning government it will be generations before Iraq can heal from our intrusions there.
Again, I thank Mr. Miller for his apology. It is one I've been waiting to hear for years and has inspired this long diatribe I needed to get off my shoulders. I only hope his words will have an influence on all the other champions and architects of this war. What have they achieved that they are so proud of? Allowing Iraq to become a training ground for terrorists? Helping install a government with ties to Iran? Or the billions in taxpayer dollars redistributed to war-profiteers and warlords?
Please, take these lessons you've learned Mr. Miller and do everything in your power to correct the attempts at revisionist history and future calls for unnecessary wars.
The latest crazy person to claim carbon emissions aren't dangerous is Mitt Romney:
