Eleven bloggers from around the
world agreed to write
a short piece and post all the contributions on each of our blogs,
around the theme "There is a Choice", in defence of our environment and
in consideration of the upcoming election. First up is Bob Whitson, who
organized this compilation:
I'm
Bob
Whitson from "Howling At A
Waning Moon".
My blog tracks the Bush administration and what it is doing to our
environment.
There has never been a time in my life when working together was more
important. One quote you will read in this post says it all, "We are
here
to help each other get through this thing, whatever it is."—Mark
Vonnegut.
For me the choice this November 2nd
is as
clear as the lakes in the Minnesota Boundary Waters; where 20 years ago
my son
and I did our coming of age trip. We still talk about that canoe trip
as if it were
last weekend. That's what the wilderness can do; it can create a
touchstone for your life.
I first learned about taking care of this
earth from
my dad. In the 1950’s, growing up in west Texas, my dad worked for the
Texas
Highway
Department. He designed and built the highway system throughout that
part of
the world. To this day there is a long curve in an otherwise straight
four lane
lonesome highway that permits the highway to avoid a grove of rare
trees and a
small patch of wetland. There's also a bridge in the curve that allows
for
the passage of wildlife. My dad did that, in 1950! Always having known
about
that curve in the highway [He was placing the environment first.] is
enough for
me--50 years later—to see the clear choice we have this November 2nd.
I can tell you without a moment's hesitation that President Bush is not
taking care of our environment.
Now, if you will, let me introduce just a few
of the
ideas you will find in this cooperative post:
From England,
an American talks about how the "rest of the world is counting on
you" this November 2nd.
One blogger is nervous and even talks about
moving to Mexico,
land of fresh, hot tortillas; town squares and mariachis" but that in
the
end she "won't do that; the country needs changing."
Another Blogger quotes an American folk song:
You've got to prime the
pump.
You must have faith and believe.
You've got to give of yourself
‘fore you're worthy to
receive.
Drink all the water you can
hold. Wash your face, cool your feet.
But leave the bottle full for
others. Thank you kindly, Desert Pete.
One frustrated Blogger talks about the need
for Robert
Redford and Paul Newman to hold a press conference standing in the
middle of
the Brazos River (in Texas) while wearing haz-mat suits.
Another says with determination, "So for me,
now
is the time: Time to plumb our fundamental values; time to
re-evaluate our
lives, our time, our energies, and the money we
spend doing
the things we do; time to connect with others
and to re-connect with
those left by."
From all the blogs there seems to be an
underlying
comment that "Our work does not end when Kerry is elected."
There's much much more in this post. Take
your
time and read it all and think of the others that will come after
you—and
leave the bottle full. Do what is in your heart this November 2nd.
From
::The Thought
Offering::
"We are here to help each other get through
this thing, whatever it is."—Mark
Vonnegut
Maybe you're not all that
impressed with either
candidate. Maybe you are disdainful of a process that gives so little
choice,
where you must vote for the lesser of two evils – where a candidate
with
your values doesn't stand a chance. Yes, maybe so.
But... I am an American citizen living in England.
Once in a while I e-mail my grandfather in Phoenix an article about the
U.S.
from The Guardian newspaper over here. The last time I did, he wrote
back and
said, ‘They sure do spend a lot of time writing about the U.S.'
And I replied, ‘Grandpa, the U.S. is the most powerful
country
in the world and the decisions made there affect the lives of everyone
all over
the world. People are always watching.’ Yes, the whole world really is
watching. It's so cliché, just as it would be cliché for
me
to add that this cliché has never been more true than it is now.
It's
not fair that the rest of the world doesn't get to vote on who the next
world leader will be. It's not democratic at all, really. Which, I
think,
does place a large burden on the American people. There are an
estimated 195
million eligible U.S.
voters in the world – and over 6.3 billion people in the world. So when
you place your vote in the ballot box, you are doing so on behalf of
over 321
people. You are one of the lucky ones.
The rest of the world does
see a difference between
the two candidates and they do
think Americans have the power to decide
who becomes the next president. So a high voter turnout alone will send a strong message
to the
rest of the world – that we *do* care. We know what is at stake and we
care. Hey: the rest of the world is counting on you.
From:
nervous…marked
by
strength of thought, feeling, or style
As November 2, 2004
approaches, I am beset with
anxiety. What if? What if? I can't even bring myself to speak my fear.
What would I do were the unthinkable to
happen?
I'm torn. As Mark Morford in pointed
out in a recent column, geologically speaking, this is a mere blip
on
the radar. I could do nothing and live in lala happyland and try to never pick up
another newspaper, turn on the television or heaven
forbid, read blogs about anything besides knitting. Xanax is another
option.
Or I could move to Mexico, land of fresh, hot
tortillas; town squares and mariachis. Or perhaps I will put on my best
suit
and join the Republican Party. I could live out every Jane Bond fantasy
that
I've ever had.
I won't do any of those things.
The country needs changing, folks, regardless
of the
outcome of this election. We have choices about how we will go about
doing
that. My hope for the future is that after the election, people don't
throw down their hats, and say "Th-th-that's all folks."
Let's keep on with our agitating and advocating, and perhaps, just
maybe,
something wonderful will happen.
From:
Will Kirkland at The
Ruth Group
Why Am I
Doing This?
A friend of mine asked me: Why are you doing
this? --
meaning blogging and all the hours spent, looking, writing and
posting. He asked me if I would share the answer with others. I will.
The election or non election of John Kerry
would not
have been enough for me to have given over a major part of my
waking hours
to do this work. The motivator is much stronger.
When the bombs are falling it is too late to
cry out
No War! The time to stop a war has long gone. The time to
stop
Hitler was in 1932 when he was elected, or ‘33 or ‘34. By
August 1939 it was too late.
The time to stop the massacre of over 7,000
Muslims at
Srebrenica in the summer of 1975 may have been during Tito's time, but
certainly began two years before the massacres when the
city was
declared a safe haven.
The time to stop the Rwandan massacres of
1994 was
when hate radio began filling the air with their cries of "cockroach"
and "vermin" about their Tutsi neighbors.
So it is now for us. All the markers
are in
place; the future is predictable. Hate radio fills the
air. Our public forums have turned to public spectacles. A
small war in Iraq is preparing many,
many for war, on many sides. The gun and scimitar is
reached
for before a word is heard. Fear is in the air and yes, the
delicious thrill of sacrifice and killing.
The Republican Party, the party
of isolationism, of fiscal probity, of order enough to pursue
accumulation
of wealth, has been taken over by the party of intolerance, of
rock-bottom
beliefs, of moral certainty, of Our God and Our Empire. [I didn't
make these phases up. You can hear them from appalled
Republicans.]
We have been told and we have been shown what
lies ahead for foreigner and citizen alike.
The Republican Party, defeated or not in the
coming
election, will continue its present course, like a
terrible gathering river of mud,
sweeping people into
it, estroying those who oppose it. If the GOP
presidential candidate is defeated on November 2 it will be
harder
for it to pick up speed. If he
is victorious it
will gather more force.
Now is the time for all of us who see
these
things. Now is the time when our twigs in the stream can alter
the
flow of the gathering river of mud, more
than a
stream but less than it seems in four years, or
eight, it may be a mighty flow, with disaster its
end.
Now is the time to block up, divide and
divert this
river of mud. The election of John
Kerry would
be a good& log, around which some will be able to
gather. That victory deserves all our attention. Now.
But win
or lose, the river of mud will continue its
downward
course. So for me, now is the time: Time to plumb our
fundamental values; time to re-evaluate our lives, our
time, our
energies, and the& money we spend doing the things we do; time
to
connect with others and to re-connect with those left
by. We
cannot defeat disaster. We can only turn it aside by working
with the
tools, the intelligence, the passion that we have. We can
build a better way.
From:
Dave
Pollard at How to Save the World
There's an old American folk song called Desert Pete, written by
Billy Edd
Wheeler and made famous by the Kingston Trio in the early 1960s. The
song tells
the story of a thirsty traveller in the desert who comes upon a water
pump with a
note from "Desert Pete", and a jar of water. The note warns that if
the finder drinks the water instead of using it to prime the pump, the
pump won't
work and from then on everyone who comes upon the pump will be left
thirsty.
The Chorus goes like this:
You've got to prime the
pump.
You must have faith and believe.
You've got to give of yourself ‘fore you're worthy to
receive.
Drink all the water you can hold. Wash your face, cool your feet.
But leave the bottle full for others. Thank you kindly, Desert Pete.
This is the choice we face today, and how America
votes on November 2nd
will tell a lot about our character, and how we
would have responded if we came upon Desert Pete's note. George Bush is
an advocate of privatizing, developing and commercializing our
environment for
all it's worth, without care or consideration for the consequence or
the
legacy he is leaving for our children and grandchildren. As a result,
we are
running out of everything, including
water: wilderness, biodiversity, old growth forests, wetlands, oil,
stratospheric ozone, clean air and water and food, and thousands of
species of
animals and birds. George Bush's answer is to drink from the bottle
now.
John Kerry has a strong record of environmental protection, and cares
deeply
about the natural legacy we will leave for future generations. John
Kerry will
leave the bottle full for others, for our children. When you vote,
please think
of your children, and remember Desert Pete's note. You have a choice.
From:
MakesMeRalph
There is a choice and it is
quite simple. It isn't
really about John Kerry. This election is a referendum on George
Bush's
presidency. Economically, it is a disaster. From a foreign
policy
perspective, it is a disaster. From a civil liberties
perspective, it is
a disaster. Fewer jobs, more uninsured, higher tuition, more
abortions,
higher deficits, more dead children, less international respect, more
maimed
soldiers. The only measure by which this presidency can be judged
a
success is Halliburton's stock value, which has more than doubled since
September 11th. If you judge your vote on only one
issue, let
it be the success of this administration over the last four years.
From:
John
Orr at Coyote
Gulch
A weblog for the dazed and
confused
I'm asking all registered
voters to vote this
election. You have the choice to do so or not.
Quoting Donna
Redwing:
"I know that most or all of you would not
dream
of not voting. However, I am sending this to you in the hopes
that you
might pass it along -- particularly to young women who may not realize
fully how
difficult getting the right to vote was for our mothers and
grandmothers." I think we need the wisdom you can bring to the
election. Please,
if you're
registered and haven't already voted, you can still vote early for a
couple of days. After that get to your polling place on
Tuesday. Email me if you need a ride."
From:
two
fish
Jake Gittes: "Why do you need it? You've got
enough money."
Noah Cross: "The future, Mr. Gittes. The future."
["Chinatown"]
The root of democracy is demos
which means "common
people:" that's
us. We are each uncommon, unique individuals, with one thing in common:
our
democracy, which is based upon our active citizenship. Please vote this
November, to influence our common will. I've been contemplating the
costs
of the Iraq
war, considering whether it was just. There are now some 15,000 Iraqi civilian
casualties and over 1,000 dead and 7,000 injured American
troops,
of which 4,194 have been wounded so seriously they cannot
return to active duty.
Kofi Annan has said that the Coalition's war
in Iraq
"was not in conformity with the UN charter from our point of view, from
the charter point of view, it was illegal." The reputation of the
United States
for fairness and justice has been defamed by recent events in the eyes
of the
international community. And we've been losing our most precious
democratic commodity: citizen's rights, as Amnesty International recently
reported.
As well, the issue of global warming is not
being
confronted by the current administration. As was reported
recently, "The
planet's getting hotter, ecosystems are going haywire, government
scientists know it – and still the president denies there's a
problem."
I don't know about you, but it feels good to
act
as a citizen—to make one's will known, in public concert. Although
my vote may be more of a "no" to the present administration than a
"yes" to the next, the sense of fresh air is hard to miss.
From:
For the Record
Reality-based information, opinion, and activism concerning national
and
international affairs.
Bush's holding on to power for another term
would seal the corporate takeover of the US.
A long-established Republican goal is to destroy the federal
government. The strategy is to destroy Social Security and Medicare. To
most people, these programs exhaust the happy face of the government,
and a government with all unhappy face would have no legitimacy, and
therefore no power. Corporations would be the only powerful
institutions remaining, and would run amok. Suskind's Times Magazine
article reported Bush's declaration that "privatizing"
(that is, destroying) Social Security would be the first move of the
next term, and there's no
reason to suppose anything would block him. Checkmate. While electing
Kerry won't
win the game, it will have the significant virtue of keeping the game
going.
From:winding road in urban
area
"What
you find hateful do not do to another. This is
the whole of the Law. Everything else is commentary."
Speaking from the gutter that is
our political world,
Tom DeLay said this week, "I've never had a campaign where the
entire nation has tried to destroy my name. They are going after me in
the most
personal and vindictive way. It's gutter politics."
"I am effective and that's why they are after
me," DeLay said. "I am passionate and aggressive about what I do."
They can't do it alone. Are you
passionately, aggressively doing your part to destroy the political
career of
Tom DeLay & George W. Bush?
According to the Houston Chronicle, "In
recent
weeks, the House ethics committee admonished DeLay for offering a
political
favor to a fellow Republican lawmaker if he voted for a Medicare
prescription
drug bill; for perceived links of political donations to legislation;
and for
asking federal aviation officials to help search for Democratic Texas
state
representatives who fled Austin last year during the redistricting
fight. Three of his political associates were recently
indicted on charges of illegal political fund raising. DeLay called
those
charges laughable."
What is tragic is DeLay, like George W. Bush,
considers much of the solid science on global warming and the use of
pesticides
like DDT laughable. He thinks that his degree from the University of
Houston
and his career as a pest control businessman puts him in a position to
criticize Nobel Prize laureates.
Like Bush who deeply believes that if one is
"resolute in the face of reality, reality will yield, and science
will not matter."
This thinking is best exemplified by the word
"Truth" encased by the plastic silhouette of a fish eating the
plastic silhouette of a fish encasing the word "Darwin"
on the bumpers of thousands of Bush and DeLay constituents in Texas.
If John Kerry is able to out-macho George W.
Bush and
is elected in November, he will have to contend with a House of
Representatives
led by Tom DeLay. DeLay isn't going down for his crimes. Not
in Texas,
not
with any jury empanelled here. He must be seen as such a liability
that his
own party rejects him as their majority leader.
The only way to defeat DeLay is by a national
effort
to marginalize him. Running a well financed credible candidate who
can
capitalize off of Delay's own maniacal egomania without allowing the
press to characterize his candidacy as some romantic lost cause would
be nice,
but isn't going to happen in the world of Texas, Inc. Robert
Redford
and Paul Newman could do advertisements for DeLay's opponent and it
would
not defeat DeLay unless Redford or Newman moved to Sugar Land, Texas,
ran
against DeLay, registered and drove to the polls every unregistered
voter in
the district and held press conferences wearing haz-mat suits standing
in the
middle of the Brazos River.
It is going to take more than
politics. It is
going to take passion about the environment and corporate
greed. Until we
take back our right to clean air, clean water, and the right to control
what we
ingest, the Tom DeLays and the George W. Bushes are going to
win. Until we demand media coverage of their environmental
atrocities, we
lose.
From:Deep
Blade
Journal
Kerry for President: More than a
dime's worth of difference
In both 1996 and 2000, I voted for Ralph Nader.
I do not
regret either of these votes one bit. They were true acts of
conscience. This
time it's different...
Long ago, I was a Democratic Party activist, Chair of the largest City
Democratic Committee in Maine
and a committed volunteer for progressive Democratic Congressman Tom
Andrews
who served in the US House of Representatives from 1991 to 1995. Under
Bill Clinton, however, I became severely disaffected from the
Democratic
administration. A myriad of environmental and human rights insults
disguised in
a mix of genuine and disingenuous positive actions marked this period.
Perhaps
the worst are the neo-liberal economic policies, including NAFTA, where
worker
and environmental protection have been trumped by the needs of wealthy
investors.
But this time I do not support Nader. I am back in the Democratic fold.
There
will be more than a dime's worth of difference between an election
result
awarding George Bush another four-year term versus one turning the U.S.
presidency over to John Kerry. Foremost is the incredible harm Bush
will do
with a perceived mandate. Ratification of the last four years of lies,
war, and
terror-inspiring atrocities committed against detainees will usher in
unimaginable horrors on multiple fronts. The Bush regime will rule with
monarchical zeal and false religion previously unknown in U.S.
history. To see what's ahead on
the environmental front, one need only look as far as the brazen Bush
cancellation of Clinton-era rules for cleaning up highly toxic mercury
emissions from aging power plants -- along with his audacity to tell
the total
lie that the air and water are cleaner now than four years ago. That is
but one
example among thousands. The only way to deny him ratification is to
vote for
John Kerry.
Is this an "anybody-but-Bush" (ABB) position? Sort of. Unlike Ralph
Nader and some other Kerry critics, I feel that ABB is totally
justified.
Furthermore, I am not nearly as pessimistic about Kerry as are some of
these
critics. I hold some reasons to hope that a Kerry Administration will
be humane
and progressive in a way unseen in America for a long time.
Kerry/Edwards wants to preserve and strengthen international law,
re-enter the
Kyoto negotiation process, regulate greenhouse gas emissions, enact big
changes
in the Patriot Act, protect American jobs, promote a higher minimum
wage,
reduce corporate welfare, halt media consolidation, and a put a true
emphasis
on energy conservation, energy efficiency, and alternative energy. I am
still
very, very concerned about how Kerry would conduct the Terror War -- I
have
written frequently that he has promised to kill, and kill, and kill.
But my
hope is that once he gets past the reactionary politics Bush has
inspired, his
Terror War positions will moderate. Maybe I dream, but along with this
I see in
him a desire to back the United States
out of Iraq.
Kerry promises never again to commit US troops in a Mideast
war over oil. Of all he says, this position I like most. There are
reasons to
question whether he will stay true to this position. But for now I take
him at
his word. Deep Blade Journal will work hard to hold him to this
promise. Our
work does not end when Kerry is elected.
The
last word goes to the editors of the New
Yorker magazine, who this week took the unusual step of issuing
a combined
lead editorial vigorously endorsing John Kerry in November 2nd
election. Here's what they had to say about Bush's record on the
environment:
Bush signalled his approach
toward the environment a few weeks into his term, when he reneged on a
campaign pledge to regulate carbon-dioxide emissions, the primary cause
of global warming. His record since then has been dictated, sometimes
literally, by the industries affected. In 2002, the Environmental
Protection Agency proposed rescinding a key provision of the Clean Air
Act known as "new source review," which requires power-plant operators
to install modern pollution controls when upgrading older facilities.
The change, it turned out, had been recommended by some of the nation's
largest polluters, in e-mails to the Energy Task Force, which was
chaired by Vice-President Cheney. More recently, the Administration
proposed new rules that would significantly weaken controls on mercury
emissions from power plants. The E.P.A.'s regulation drafters had
copied, in some instances verbatim, memos sent to it by a law firm
representing the utility industry.
"I guess you'd say I’m a good steward of the land," Bush mused dreamily
during debate No. 2. Or maybe you'd say nothing of the kind. The
President has so far been unable to persuade the Senate to allow oil
drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, but vast stretches of
accessible wilderness have been opened up to development. By stripping
away restrictions on the use of federal lands, often through
little-advertised rule changes, the Administration has potentially
opened up sixty million acres, an area larger than Indiana and Iowa
combined, to logging, mining, and oil exploration.
There is a choice.
|
MADE IN CANADA
trust your
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