DEEP GREEN PERSPECTIVE

The once-quiet attempt to sneak a for-profit landfill into that old quarry site on the banks of the Harpeth has been getting a lot of publicity lately. There will be a community meeting at Bellevue Middle School at 6:30 PM on Thursday, March 30, with Rep. Moore, Sen. Henry, and probably several other members of state and local government. A corps of volunteers is distributing anti-dump fliers to area residents, the neighborhood newspaper and a local TV station have done features on it. I am very happy to see all this action. Makes me think there’s hope for the country yet.

The current owners and would-be buyers of the site (it turns out that their offer to buy is contingent on approval of the site as a dump) are threatening to reopen it as a quarry if the dump proposal gets stopped. I guess they think we have short memories—when they went before the Solid Waste Board back in December, they were SO concerned about how dangerous the open pit quarry was and so unctuous about what a great public service they would be doing by filling it in (which, it turns out, could bring them about thirty million dollars). Now they’re willing to make it deeper and more dangerous if they don’t get their way. Reminds me of a certain chief executive I know…..

But that threat is pretty hollow—since the quarry has been closed, it has lost its permit, and the quarry permitting process is even more bureaucratic and fraught with pitfalls than the dump process, from what I hear, and would certainly be less popular with the neighbors. Even people who don’t care about 200,000 dump trucks might get upset about daily dynamite—know what I mean?

Furthermore, there’s two technical details that they’re up against. The most obvious is the roughly two million gallons of water in the bottom of the quarry. I don’t think they’d be able to get a permit to pump it into the Harpeth River, and there’s no place else for it to go. The second is that, apparently, one of the reasons the quarry closed in the first place is that the Tennessee Department of Transportation decided that the quality of rock coming out of this quarry was too poor to use in road construction.

I must admit, that one surprised me. I had no idea TDOT had quality standards about ANYTHING. By the way, did you know that there’s a bill snaking its way through the Tennessee legislature that will enable TDOT to resume its program to pave over the entire state? It’s called “An Act to Amend the Tennessee Code Annotated, Titles 3, 4, and 54 relative to transportation.” What a mouthful. I bet they called it that to discourage people from contacting their representatives and complaining about it.

This bill would set up a committee of the legislature that will oversee the distribution of pork—excuse me, I mean the construction of new highways, and severely limit the amount of TDOT’s overample budget that can be spent on mass transit in the cities where most of us live and pay gas taxes. As if the price of gas isn’t about to hit black-market levels. Haven’t you noticed that the cost of a full gas tank and the cost of a bag of pot are approaching parity? The cluelessness of people in power continues to amaze and dismay me. But, I digress….

This dump is not likely to go through if enough people contact Sen. Henry (sen.douglas.henry@legislature.state.tn.us) and Rep. Moore(rep.gary.moore@legislature.state.tn.us) and object, and if plenty of people show up at Bellevue Middle School, 655 Colice-Jean Road, at 6:30 PM on Thursday, March 30. Senators Henry and Haynes (the sponsor of this measure) will be there, as will Rep. Moore, Metro Councilman Charlie Tygard, Jim Fyke from the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation, and who knows who else. Please be there if you can. Bellevue Middle School, 655 Colice-Jean Road, runs south off Harding Rd. just past old Hickory. See you there!

music: Pointer Sisters, “Yes We Can Can”  (sorry, all i could find was a Harry Connick version!)

I’m pleased to report to you that the Green Party here in Tennessee is running its fullest slate of candidates ever in next Fall’s election. The Party’s recent nominating convention produced candidates for Governor, U.S. Senator, and 1st and 7th House districts, as well as a couple of local contests.

Howard Switzer, a resident of rural Linden, Tennessee, is the gubernatorial candidate. He is an architect by profession and one of the founders of the state’s Green Party. His wife, Katey Culver, a permaculture designer and also a founder of the Green Party, is running for the U.S. House against Marsha Blackheart—I mean Blackburn—in the Seventh District. Marcia Blackburn is famously from Brentwood, one of the richest zipcodes in the USA, but Brentwood was gerrymandered into the seventh district. It’s only connected with the rest of the predominantly rural, low-income southwestern Tennessee district by a narrow corridor, which also juts up to include Clarksville, a military town and Republican bastion. I guess our Tennessee solons brought in some consultants from Texas to do the last redistricting. Don’t want them poor folks electin’ someone who’ll actually represent ‘em. No. Good luck, Katey—may you surprise us all, especially Marsha.

Chris Lugo, of Nashville, was nominated to run for Bill Frist’s Senate seat, which Bill, thank goodness, is vacating. Chris is in the cleaning and recycling business, and also runs the Tennessee Independent Media Center, a web-based alternative newspaper for those of us here in the midsouth. Full disclosure: a lot of my writing on local issues gets printed at the TNIMC website, and I volunteer my editing talents there also. Chris has a website for his Senate run, featuring his platform, which I think could pretty well serve as the platform for everyone on the ticket.

Robert Smith is the party’s candidate in the first district, which is in the far east of the state. He is a Vietnam veteran and a founding member of an ecovillage near Greenville, and a Native American off the Seneca tribe.

In the two green-tinged local races, Martin Pleasant is running for county commissioner in Knoxville, a race that is technically non partisan, and Jonathan Davidson, who has not sought the endorsement of the Green Party although he is affiliated with it, is seeking a Nashville-area house seat. There’s still almost a month to go until the deadline for filing (April 6), so more candidates may be in the wings. Stay tuned. I’m considering it—but I’d have to give up this radio show to do it. Why don’t you? Just go on down to your county electoral commission and get a petition, and find 25 of your friends to sign it, and you, too, can have your name on the ballot in November. There will be another chance for Green Party endorsement at the state party convention in May. I’ll be happy to help you any way I can.

That’s the good news. Now for the bad news.

First of all, you won’t know by looking at the ballot that any of these folks are running on the Green Party ticket. Due to the way the Democans and Republicrats have fixed the ballot laws in this state, a party has to win more than five percent of the vote in a statewide election WITHOUT its party tag on the ballot, in order to have its party tag on the ballot, or present a petition with the equivalent number of signatures on it, which comes to about 37,000. High hurdles….

Now, for more bad news. The Democrats are working to keep the Greens off all ballots, completely. H.R 4694 (”Let the People Decide Clean Campaign Act”) would grant full public funding to nominees of parties (i.e., Democans and Republicrats) that had averaged 25% of the vote for House races in a given district in the last two elections. All others (i.e., third party and independent candidates) would be required to submit petitions signed by 10% of the last vote cast for partial funding, and 20% for full funding.

Furthermore, candidates who don’t qualify for funding would be barred from spending any privately raised money on their campaigns. Ten to twenty percent of the last vote cast—that’s 35-70,000 signatures in the average congressional district. Just getting that many signatures, even with copious volunteer help, would require serious fundraising. This bill effectively cuts small third parties out of the U.S. electoral process in the name of campaign finance reform. We’re not the problem, but we’re getting fixed—like a dog gets fixed. Well, isn’t that nice?

Whatsamatter with you, you need more than two choices? How unAmerican! This is not something coming from the Republifacists, mind you. This is coming from people even a cynical Green like me is inclined to think of as the good guys. Barney Frank and Henry Waxman are two sponsors of this bill.

Barney Frank!!?? Greenbashed by the gays!! Barney, how could you!! And Henry Waxman!!??

Here’s the skinny: several of the other sponsors of this bill faced Green competition suggesting that their sponsorship is retaliatory. They will be facing Green competition again this year, I’m sure. Get used to it, people.

Commenting on this, D.C. Statehood Green Party activist T.E. Smith said, “The Democrats behind this bill have as little regard for democracy and open elections as Republicans who have used altered district lines and other methods to fix elections. Hiding this stratagem in a bill for public financing of campaigns makes it doubly shameful.”

“An obvious motivation behind HR 4694 is panic over a Green insurgency. Voters have realized that the Democratic Party has given President Bush and the GOP a pass on various abuses of power and radical actions, such as the invasion of Iraq and the confirmation of Judge Samuel Alito, which most Democrats declined to filibuster. The time is ripe for a non-corporate independent third party, and many Democrats are worried,” added Mr. Smith.

Well, the good news about this bad news is that it is coming from the Democrats, and the Republicans aren’t likely to let it get very far. They like left-wing splinter parties that take votes from Democrats, y’know? So, the Republicans are good for something. Of course, if we were a serious threat to them, they’d sic Karl Rove on us without a second thought…one of these days, folks, one of these days.

music: Terry Allen, “Big Ol’ White Boys”

Comments

Chris Lugo’s new website is located at http://www.chris4senate.com/
Posted by webmaster on 04/07/2006 01:40:19 PM

and Robert Smith’s blog can be found here: http://1bigtree.tripod.com/robertnsmith_greens/
Posted by brothermartin on 04/07/2006 04:27:36 PM

There has been a tremendous hue and cry lately about the prospect of the government of the small, oil-rich Arab state of Dubai collecting the profits from running six of America’s east-coast seaports. I think there is an issue here, but it’s not the one everyone’s talking about. It’s not about the Arabs. It’s about the ownership.

The sad thing is that for most people, it is about the Arabs, and that is an unfortunate and embarrassing prejudice. Arabs, and Muslims in general, have a bad rap in this country, a reputation that is not particularly connected with truth. For example, Hamas’ victory in the recent Palestinian election sparked a similar outcry. “These people are depraved! They’re electing terrorists! That’s not what we meant by democracy, dammit!” Many American Muslims have been deported or prosecuted, and numerous charities shut down, for channeling support to this so-called “terrorist organization.”

Does Hamas target Israelis with violence? Yes, they do, and I think that’s reprehensible. I am a radical fundamentalist Gandhian, at least in some respects, and I don’t think angry violence is the answer to angry violence. But that’s just a small part of what Hamas does. Their religious practice commits them to scrupulous honesty, and that is what has endeared them to the people of Palestine. Palestinians know from intimate daily experience that Hamas is not on the take—that’s why so many American Muslims were supporting them, at least until our government’s crackdown. They knew that money donated to Hamas would go to people who needed it, not to some wealthy middleman.

Similarly, Dubai Ports World has an excellent reputation for running ports, a business fraught with opportunities for fraud and bureaucracy. That is probably one of the reasons why the U.S. government didn’t forsee any problem with handing management (and profit-taking) over to them. As I said, the real problem here is foreign ownership, and the consequent foreign destination for any profit from those ports.

This is not a new or unique situation. Foreign companies, individuals, and countries have been buying up U.S. assets for years. For example, according to the IRS, cited on the website .economyincrisis.org, the following percentages of U.S. businesses are foreign owned:

Sound recording industries - 97%

Commodity contracts dealing and brokerage – 79%

Motion picture industries – 75%

Metal ore mining – 65%

video industries – 64%

Wineries and distilleries – 64%

Database, directory, and other publishers – 63%

Book publishers – 63%

Cement, concrete, lime, and gypsum product – 62%

Engine, turbine and power transmission equipment – 57%

Rubber product – 53%

Nonmetallic mineral product manufacturing – 53%

Plastics and rubber products manufacturing – 52%

Plastics product – 51%

Insurance related activities – 51%

Boiler, tank, and shipping container – 50% and the list goes on….
So, why has this happened? And what does it mean?

We have Al and Bill to thank for this one, folks. I’m sorry, all you Democrats, but this one happened on your watch. Think WTO. Think GATT. Think NAFTA. Think about that vast sucking sound Ross Perot used to talk about.

When Mr. Bush was in India recently, he fantasized about increasing U.S. exports, but the sad truth is that, thanks to all those treaties us wildeyed crazies tried to stop back in the late eighties and early nineties–all those treaties that the 1992 election should have been a referendum on and wasn’t, thanks to the Democratic Party–the U.S. doesn’t has nothing to export anymore.

Well, not quite nothing. We’ve got lots of bonds and dollar bills to export, and you can bet that those trillions of dollars the rest of the world has loaned us will be paid back with American assets—what companies are left, hard assets like port facilities, and, ultimately, land—urban, rural, forest and field, we owe, we owe, so off our assets go. All those Indians running motels are just the beginning. And when our assets, corporate or material, are owned by foreigners, the profits go overseas, and we will become third world peons, peed on by the man, exploited for the benefit of rich people somewhere else—Dubai, China, it doesn’t matter, it ain’t here.

Yes, this sucks. Get used to it. This country has been running the world economy with a Ponzi scheme, selling bonds to pay the interest on the bonds we’ve already sold, and all those chickens are coming home to roost. Dubai Ports World has decided to find American buyers for P&O’s American assets, but they may have a hard time doing that, because only one of the major players in the port operation business is American these days. There is a strong likelihood that these ports will end up being operated by Dick Cheney—I mean, Halliburton.

The ironic thing to me about all this is that who really ought to be running these various ports doesn’t seem to occur to anyone…how about the port cities themselves? Duh!? Has neoliberal privatization become so much the norm that public ownership of public assets is totally off the table? Many of these port cities are struggling to provide basic services for their citizens—doesn’t it make sense to put the proceeds from port operations back into the city around the port?

Stepping back a notch, I have to wonder how much of the international trade going through these ports is really necessary, and how much is just pushing beans around for the further enrichment of the already wealthy. When I learned that the U.S. exports as many almonds to Italy as we import from Italy, I just had to shake my head. Who decided it would be OK to burn the diesel fuel to make that one happen? I bet they weren’t even thinking about the diesel fuel….

Under a Green program of local self-sufficiency, there would very likely be a lot less world trade. When you take the current paradigm to its logical conclusion, soon enough the major resources that are traded internationally will be depleted, and there will local insufficiency rather than self-sufficiency, and a lot less world trade. Which way would YOU like to have it?

music: James McMurtry, “We Can’t Make It Here Anymore”

OK, let me try and get this straight. The Israelis have nuclear weapons, and have refused to sign the nuclear nonproliferation treaty. They are our friends and allies. The Pakistanis have nuclear weapons, have not signed the nuclear nonproliferation treaty, they have even sold nuclear know-how to the North Koreans, bona fide members of the Axis of Evil, but THEY are our friends and allies. And India has nuclear weapons, which they have threatened to unleash on the Pakis (who of course promised retaliation), is not a signatory of that ol’ nuclear nonproliferation treaty, and George Dubya was just over there kissin’ up to the Indians and laying a wreath on Mahatma Gandhi’s grave and saying what good friends we are with the Indians, why, we’ll just let ‘em have all our high-tech jobs and we’ll just figure out some other way to survive—but the Iranians may have a nuclear weapon in ten years or so, and we are just going to have to blow them sky high ASAP if that’s what it takes to keep them from getting their hands on a bomb, even though they are nonproliferation treaty signers and have, by objective (i.e., non-American) standards been fairly co-operative with the International Atomic Energy Agency—unlike our friends the Indians, Pakistanis, and Israelis.

Dubya laying a wreath on Ghandi’s grave…the apostle of pre-emptive war and globalism at the grave of the apostle of non-violence and local self-reliance…what would Ghandi have to say about that? Probably something along the lines of what he said about Western Civilization, which was that “It would be a good idea.” But, I digress.

As a signatory to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, the U.S. is forbidden from exporting nuclear technology to India, and furthermore U.S. law prohibits the same thing—not that Dubya is a man to let a little thing like U.S. law, much less international treaties, stand in his way. Hey, there’s a war on, and the Commander-In-Chief can do whatever he needs to do, right? Victory at any price? Mission accomplished?

More like, smokescreen accomplished. The little boy is crying wolf again, with high hopes that when all the fuss dies down, Iran’s oilfields will be secured by American soldiers. Yeah, and we’re going to cakewalk into Tehran just like we cakewalked into Baghdad.

Let’s put this into perspective. The U.S. only imports about 20% of our oil from the Middle East. Russia and China, especially China, are much more dependent on Middle Eastern oil than we are. Both are a bit put out with the US because they had oil deals with Iraq that the U.S. tore up when we invaded, an invasion (here it comes again) with all the legal basis of the Nazi invasion of Poland. But I digress.

So, what the U.S. is really doing by threatening Iran and sucking up to India is attempting to control the supply of oil to Russia, China, and the European Union. What are these countries doing about it?  The EU is trying to put the diplomatic brakes on the US war machine. The Russians are providing air defense missiles to Iran, and the Chinese are expected to be a major participant in the independent Iranian oil market that is slated to open on March 20, and which will do business in Euros, not dollars, undermining the US currency’s world hegemony. It is hard to imagine a third world war starting AFTER the fall of Communism, but, at least as a proxy conflict, there are some very scary possibilities shaping up.

US “surgical” use of nukes is being threatened, and a nuclear cloud drifting over the planet is just what we need, don’t you think? There is just no telling what could happen, though there is certainly plenty in print about the possibilities. None of them are attractive.

The most nonviolent scenario is: no invasion, no surgical strikes on nuclear facilities, just an attempt to boycott Iran. World oil prices would probably hit a hundred dollars a barrel, edging the price of gasoline and home heating oil up another dollar or more. Considering the seller’s market for oil, the boycott would probably not work very well, with Russia and China co-operating to move Iranian oil, and paying for it in some way that does not involve dollars. When a settlement is reached—that is, the boycott ultimately fails–the not-for-dollars arrangement expands, the US dollar falls to record low levels, and sale of US ports turns out to be only the beginning of America: the yard sale, as countries spend nearly worthless dollars on the only thing they will buy, which is US assets—businesses and real estate, at bargain basement prices. You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.

So, this is supposed to be the Green hour, not the doom hour—what could/would a Green administration do about this crisis?

We would not have gotten into it in the first place; but, since we’re here, it’s not too late to start doing what we should have started doing thirty-five years ago: promote conservation, recycling, and locally produced alternative fuels. We always said the alternative to our alternative was global disaster, and that’s sho’nuff where the Bush junta’s insistence on having its way is leading us. Will somebody please stop these guys before they get us all killed?

On a positive note, a UN-sponsored team has recently completed a 52-home model straw-bale village in northern Iraq, featuring, besides the homes themselves, wastewater recycling, composting, and village gardens. No UN workers were injured, abducted, or killed in the process. If we were willing to fund more projects like this instead of domination and destruction, there could be real, lasting peace not just in the Middle East but all over the world. Here’s hoping.

music: Sheila Chandra, “You”

(not a link to that song, but the only Sheila Chandra performance i could find)

Comments

I was reading your post today. I just wanted to say….”Well said”!! It’s rather like an oxymoron isn’t it? We are often not even told the truth until long after the lie has been taken into effect, at which time we realize, we have been taken advantage of and dupped into believing what someone else has said.
Posted by soulcofessions on 03/12/2006 10:17:12 PM

thanks…sometimes I feel like I’ve been fighting a losing battle for years, but on the other hand, I’m still fighting….
Posted by brothermartin on 03/12/2006 10:24:15 PM

No matter how much b.s. the politicians sling, the planet’s climate just keeps on shifting. In the last month, it has come to light that Antarctica is losing forty-eight cubic miles of icecap per year, and the meltdown in Greenland is accelerating, which should come as no surprise—it’s one of the physical properties of ice to melt at an accelerating rate. If you’re looking at a cube or two in your drink, that’s no big deal, but when we’re looking at dumping more fresh water into the planet’s oceans, there start to be consequences. The Gulf Stream is slowing down, bringing colder weather to northern Europe—Scandanavia’s glaciers are the only ones in the world that are growing. England’s National Trust reports that much of that country’s seacoast is eroding at an alarming rate. In my wild eyed, fanatical opinion, this is an early result of rising sea levels and stormier winters. Actually, it’s not just my opinion—it’s been documented that storms in northern Europe are increasing in their intensity.

Meanwhile, Africa is suffering from severe drought, which is diminishing river flow and threatening both human culture and what wildlife remains, as the deserts expand. A massive sandstorm spilled out of the Sahara and buffeted the Mediterranian island of Cyprus. This has happened before, but last months sandstorm was far and away the most severe ever recorded. I have reported before on the increasing desertification of Portugal and Spain—birds native to the North African desert are now breeding there.

Rising sea levels and more serious storm surges can have a domino effect. The Sacramento River delta of northern California is already below sea level, and as vulnerable to levee breakage as New Orleans. It is also where the City of Los Angeles draws a sizable percentage of its water. Salt water inundation of the intake valves for L.A.’s water system could dry southern California right out of business.

But if pioneer climate scientist James Lovelock is right, losing LA could be the least of our worries. In his recent book, “The Revenge of Gaia,” he posits that, unless humanity takes immediate, drastic steps, the planet will pass a tipping point, and our current environment will topple, leading to a new stasis, much less friendly to human culture—the most quoted line from the book (which, honestly, I have not yet read) is that the human race will be reduced to “a few breeding pairs in the arctic,” which will, in his vision, be the only part of the planet still cool enough to support human life.

We here in America rarely stop to think about how wealthy and lucky we are. The World Health Organization says that human beings need about 12-13 gallons of water a day for proper hydration and sanitation. The average American uses about a hundred and twenty-five gallons. The British, whose standard of living is notoriously lower than our own, get by on only about fifty gallons a day, while inhabitants of many countries in Africa get by on two or three.

Those dirty Africans…why can’t they just take more responsibility for themselves, eh? Global warming’s their fault, with all their deforestation for cooking fires and slaughtering all the jungle animals for food. It’s not our fault, not our fault with our automobiles and air conditioning and electricity and international trade and oil wells and all. We’re driving full-tilt boogie towards a brick wall, but it’s not our fault. Nuh-uh. Nuh-uh. Uh-oh.

music: Taj Mahal, “Giant Step”