Ripe for Change: What will this season of turning bring? (photos + essay)
A “wave election”, with public sentiment clearly moving in a new direction, calling for principled governance, with a new focus on progressive aims… economic crisis, having built up over a decade, hidden in the esoteric workings of financial instruments reliant on advanced physics for mathematical proof of viability, worsened by unprincipled exaggerations and manipulations… the potential for a major swing in global opinions about the meaning of political systems… the climate is ripe for change, and we now face the problem of conceptualizing change, in order to see and understand its implementation.
50-state Rally Shows Record Support for Same-Sex Marriage
Since California voted to ban same-sex marriage —legal there since a state supreme court ruling finding in favor of gay marriage rights on constitutional grounds— on 4 November, there have been daily demonstrations against the ban. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has expressed his hope that the ban will be overturned or repealed. On Saturday, 11 days after the ban was voted in by referendum, a nationwide rally for same-sex marriage rights achieved unprecedented numbers, with a presence in all 50 states.
Obama Healthcare Plan Emphasizes Generics to Bring Down Costs Across System
President-elect Barack Obama’s healthcare proposal, as laid out, aims to expand availability of safe generic prescriptions drugs, in order to bring down costs across the system and help secure full treatment for all Americans. High prescription-drug costs inflate insurance premiums and often determine whether patients will receive adequate treatment for sometimes serious health conditions. A prescription-drug plan, passed by George W. Bush, in concert with a bipartisan coalition in the then Republican-controlled Congress, aimed to help increase availability, but was not aggressive in reducing costs.
Obama Composite National Healthcare Plan: Net Cost Decrease for Avg. Family
Critics have sought to characterize President-elect Obama’s healthcare proposal as “socialized medicine”, despite its relying almost entirely on market dynamics and the private sector. Government spending is considered to be one area where Obama’s plan could be unacceptable to fiscal conservatives, though Obama’s fiscal policy is largely in line with conservative fiscal policy and aims to cover new spending with spending cuts elsewhere. New analysis suggests there is already money to cover his plan and to reach near universal coverage with a few workable adjustments in current legislation.
5 Million May Be at Risk of Starvation in Zimbabwe, Says WFP
The UN’s World Food Programme (WFP) has warned that shortfalls in food aid to Zimbabwe could leave as many as 5.1 million people at risk of starvation by early next year. The southern African nation, beset by incomprehensible rates of inflation and an agricultural crisis, is now facing what may be the single most severe food security crisis in the world. WFP has made the announcement in conjunction with a cut in aid to Zimbabwe, due to lack of funding and a failed drive to raise funds to increase aid to the troubled state.
Lt. Gen. Ann E. Dunwoody First Woman 4-Star General in US
The United States Army today made Ann E. Dunwoody, a Lieutenant General, the first woman to reach the rank of four-star general in the history of the United States military. She is said to have thus broken the “brass ceiling”, which has prevented women reaching the highest ranks, in part owing to their being legally barred from serving in “front-line” combat.
The Future is Not Simplicity, but Complexity, Better Understood & Managed
Complexity is not an outlandish tendency of troubled souls and pretentious intellects; it is the basic state of nature as we know it. The more we discover, the more certain we can be of this: even elemental particles are less solid than they seem, behaving like tightly bound arrangements of spherical bodies —irreducible monads—, they apparently achieve this physics by behaving like something they are not (now widely accepted in particle physics, “string theory” proposes that elemental particles are actually 2-dimensional vibrating “strings” whose vibration causes them to interact as if they were not strings at all).
Infighting, Remorse, Wishful Thinking Dominate Republican Debate About Future
The “conservative movement” in America is struggling to understand its most important setback in a generation, in part because its worldview takes for granted that what has happened simply cannot be real. In today’s New York Times, David Brooks writes about the growing rift between the conservative “Traditionalists” and the “Reformers”. He suggests the traditionalists, who say their losses come from not clinging firmly enough to the tax-cutting, slash government, immigration-crackdown agenda, will prevail in coming years, due to institutional entrenchment.
Obama Visits White House: Receives Welcome, Executive Information from Bush
President-elect Barack Obama has been welcomed by Pres. Bush as the two confer on the work of governing, the process of transition, the inner workings of the residence and security issues. It is Obama’s 8th trip to the White House, his first to the Oval Office itself. Reuters reports that Bush and Obama “were expected to discuss the global financial crisis, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and other challenges the Republican president will bequeath to his Democratic successor”.
Culture, Diversity & Resilience: a Redefinition of Wealth
Knowledge is wealth in its purest form, fully possessed by and inseparable from the individual. As noted in previous sections of this essay, the application of deliberately obtained knowledge to complex situations establishes the sovereignty of the individual. Variety is wealth insofar as it offers an array of options which may be combined in countless ways to confront the problems of living in the world. Variety in knowledge offers adaptability, and adaptability is the key to survival and prosperity at all levels. Ultimately, resilience, rooted in such flexibility, is the real meaning or value of wealth, of any kind.
Bush-Rumsfeld Order Permitted 12 or More Secret Raids Across Borders, Since 2004
A new report —drawing from “More than a half-dozen officials, including current and former military and intelligence officials as well as senior Bush administration policy makers, [who] described details of the 2004 military order on the condition of anonymity because of its politically delicate nature”— says the United States has conducted more than a dozen secret special forces raids, across borders around the globe to target Al Qaeda or other terrorist-linked sites, since 2004.
How a Generative Economic Strategy Trumps ‘Trickle-down’
To understand the relevance and virtues of Barack Obama’s economic vision, we have to look at the long history of struggle between American laissez-faire capitalism and American middle-class capitalism. We are on the verge of what is likely to be a comprehensive philosophical shift in economic policy toward generative investment, which means counting as economic imperatives the resilience and productive expansion of the positive bases of economic growth, i.e. human and environmental health and well-being, resource-density and cyclical models of resource use and reproduction.
Barack Obama’s election victory, making him 44th president of the United States, was resounding not only for its historic significance, not only because the nation faces monumental crises and is calling for serious reform at a potential turning point in political trends, but because mathematically, it was decisive. Obama carried at least 28 states —with Missouri still in recounts—, won more than 65.1 million votes —nearly 8 million more than McCain—, and if McCain takes Missouri and the one unassigned Nebraska vote, his Electoral College margin is 364 to 174.
Republican Party Must Move to Center, Develop Pragmatist Agenda
The Republican party has seen virtually every one of its over-arching policy assumptions discredited or rejected, in the 2006 and 2008 elections. It now faces an historic challenge, to reinvent itself in a climate where the other party dominates both houses of Congress and has elected a popular new president by a wide margin. The campaign of Sen. John McCain struggled to overcome the Obama message, in part because it was relying on the assumption that specific Republican party platform planks were the political ideas most en vogue with the electorate, when they were in fact at odds with current economic and political reality.
The Transition to Governing: Reversing a Perfect Storm
Sen. Barack Obama, as president-elect, now faces the daunting task of staging a transition from campaign to governing, and from the Bush years to the Obama years, in what must be the most artful and adroit performance of the task seen in decades. Facing two wars, looming multifaceted economic crisis, and the need to overhaul national energy policy and fight environmental degradation on an unprecedented scale, Obama is faced not just with forming a cabinet and White House team, but formulating a strategy for enacting the change he has promised in a time of historic difficulty.
John McCain used to be a “maverick”, an independent thinker, a rebel against his party’s leadership, and that entailed adopting, promoting and furiously defending ideas that diverged from his party’s stated agenda and its leaders’ most prized political philosophies. He shed the trappings of the true moderate or independent in an apparent effort to win favor among his party’s decision-makers and financial backers, which dampened his appeal as an independent thinker. And most importantly, he seemed blind to the real spirit of the times, which rejected the politics of fear and called for an activist approach to crisis.
I have long felt, as so many Americans do, a profound emotional attachment to the ideals we always speak of when we talk about our founding revolution, our enlightened democracy, our progress toward a freer and more just world. And I have always aspired to see those ideals put on display, not just by an historic moment, but by the collective awareness of millions of impassioned American citizens. This moment in history is a sea change in our collective mindset, and a victory for all Americans.
Obama Offers Rahm Emanuel Post of White House Chief of Staff
President-elect Barack Obama has reportedly offered the post of White House Chief of Staff to Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-IL), considered to be one of the most capable organizers in the House of Representatives, with military experience and a no-nonsense approach to policy. Emanuel, who has not yet accepted or declined the offer, is clearly a force in the House, was instrumental in the gains Democrats achieved in 2006 and 2008, and will have to wrestle with the decision to leave Congress.
“This Victory Belongs to You”: Obama Victory Speech, Grant Park, Chicago (Transcript + Video)
If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible; who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time; who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer. It’s the answer told by lines that stretched around schools and churches in numbers this nation has never seen; by people who waited three hours and four hours, many for the very first time in their lives, because they believed that this time must be different; that their voice could be that difference.
“Yes We Can”: Obama Victory Speech After Iowa Caucuses (Video + Transcript)
They said this day would never come. They said our sights were set too high. They said this country was too divided; too disillusioned to ever come together around a common purpose. But on this January night – at this defining moment in history – you have done what the cynics said we couldn’t do; what the state of New Hampshire can do in five days; what America can do in this New Year. In schools and churches; small towns and big cities; you came together as Democrats, Republicans and Independents to stand up and say that we are one nation; we are one people; and our time for change has come.
Barack Obama is President-Elect of the United States
Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) has defeated Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) to become the 44th president of the United States of America. Around 11pm Eastern Time, American news media and wire services began projecting that enough states would deliver their Electoral College votes to Obama to make him president-elect. Shortly afterward, Sen. John McCain phoned his rival to congratulate him on his historic victory. Sen. Obama is the first African American to win the presidency of the United States.
Technical Problems, Including Wet Ballots, at Polls in Several States
In the state of Virginia, voters coming in from the rain have reportedly had problems when water dripped from their clothes, hands or hair onto paper ballots which later need to be optically scanned. Election officials have reported this may “spoil” the ballots, rendering them unreadable by optical scan machines. In many precincts across the country, long lines or computer glitches, or both, caused a scramble for quick fixes, usually emergency paper ballots, for those waiting on long lines.
Record Voter Turnout Reported in Key States Virginia & Ohio
By mid-afternoon, CNN was already reporting record turnout among voters in key battleground states, Virginia and Ohio. Reports from across the nation also seemed to indicate huge turnout in the earliest hours, and radio reports have featured impassioned voters talking of a sleepless pre-election night, and getting on line at predawn hours. Efforts to get out the vote and to suppress the vote have been widely reported in both Virginia and Ohio, and Democrats have been forecasting that higher turnout means new younger and minority voters and a better chance for Obama.
Security Analysis of the Diebold AccuVote-TS Voting Machine (by Princeton University Researchers)
This paper presents a fully independent security study of a Diebold AccuVote-TS voting machine, including its hardware and software. We obtained the machine from a private party. Analysis of the machine, in light of real election procedures, shows that it is vulnerable to extremely serious attacks. For example, an attacker who gets physical access to a machine or its removable memory card for as little as one minute could install malicious code; malicious code on a machine could steal votes undetectably, modifying all records, logs, and counters to be consistent with the fraudulent vote count it creates.
Early Voting Reaches Record Levels; Republican Village Dixville Notch Goes for Obama
Early voting —in some states actually in-person absentee voting— has allowed as many as 40% of registered voters in North Carolina to cast ballots already, before the opening of the first polls on Election Day. According to ABC News, in North Carolina more African American voters have already voted than in the 2004 election, and in Georgia some 85% of the 2004 African American turnout have already cast ballots. George Stephanopoulous reports that of so-called “likely voters” who have voted so far, fully 58% were leaning toward Obama, as opposed to 40% for McCain.
Barack Obama’s Grandmother, Credited with Raising Him, Has Passed Away, Day Before Election
Madelyn Payne Dunham, nicknamed “Toot” —grandmother, in Hawaian— by grandson Barack Obama, has passed away, one day before the election which may make him president of the United States. Dunham died after a long struggle with cancer, and the candidate said she passed peacefully in her sleep. He told a rally in Charlotte, NC, that “She’s gone home”, and that it was a difficult joy amid the tragedy that his sister was able to be with her when she passed.
The Tamper-Proof, Count-All-Ballots Voting Process: a Proposal
We have seen the old punchcard ballots ridiculed for their potential flaws in 2000, in Florida. We have seen the dangers of touchscreen voting machines almost everywhere they have been used, at one point or another. Indeed, the state of New Jersey is using them even after having commissioned a study that demonstrated comprehensively they could be easily manipulated to swing an election. And none of the solutions we’ve heard seem able to guarantee an errorless or tamper-free count.
We Should Not Fear Complex Parenthetical Thought & Writing
It is often lamented that the United States suffers from a culture that plays to the “lowest common denominator”, even as it gathers its collective urges to proclaim the loftiest of philosophical aspirations. So we are forced, as citizens, as intellectuals, as free spirits —as followers of Ralph Waldo Emerson or of Kerouac, Jerry Springer or Madonna, Ruth Bader Ginsburg or the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.— to grapple with the argument that American culture is inherently “anti-intellectual”, and therefore unable to deal with overtly complex thought patterns, or convoluted, multiply parenthetical (or as Woody Allen might say it, polymorphously nested) sorts of syntax.
Voter-Fraud Allegations Being Used to Delete Voters’ Registrations En Masse
2008 has already seen a heated contest for the integrity of the vote, with Republicans smearing groups like ACORN that work to register low-income and minority voters, and Democratic supporters accusing the GOP of trumping up claims about voter-fraud. We have seen repeatedly over the last 8 years, reports of major state-run operations, designed to reduce the number of registered voters able to cast ballots on election day, usingspurious claims of widespread voter fraud as a justification.
Colorado Voting Machine Removed, Quarantined, After Vote Flips Multiple Times to McCain
An electronic voting machine made by Premier Election Solutions (Diebold) has been found to flip votes repeatedly to Republican candidate John McCain. A local election official in Adams County responded to the complaint by halting the machine’s use and sequestering it, so it could be examined for evidence of tampering and/or persistent malfunction.
Superávit (surplus energy) is an exhibit to be organized and hosted in Barcelona, in 2009-2010 to feature painting, photography, books, short film, discussions, regarding ways in which the pace of prevailing lifestyles causes breakdown in our sense of cohesion, morally, economically, and in the visionary sense of one’s own purpose. We are at the focal point of a vast combining and stitching-together of resources and approaches, and the nature of life in the human world is, as a result, now constantly redefined.
There is a basic need to expend or dispose of excess energy, what is left over after the vital processes of the body, the mind, the work of survival, have played out. That energy, which can feed our creative or destructive capabilities —our imagination, our pathologies, our sense of urgency or principle or spiritual pursuit— is a burden which we must all learn to live with, to exploit, to approach without fear or remorse.
Cable news yesterday and today’s newspapers are full of references to the embarrassment Detroit’s “big three” automakers’ chief executives occasioned by flying to DC in 3 separate private jets to ask for a $25 billion “bailout” bridge loan. Pleading poverty while showing off the extravagance of one’s expenditures is poor form, no matter what the season, but it clearly displays a lack of awareness of how much the economic culture of the nation has changed.
What just a year ago may have seemed like a sign of value and seriousness now seems like the very opposite, a total lack of seriousness about the gravity of the problems at hand and one’s being more a burden than an asset to one’s enterprise. It is not possible to overstate the gravity of the current economic climate: banks have stopped lending, to an extent where companies that successfully weathered the Great Depression, and which have had no credit troubles of their own, are now finding it hard to come by extra operating cash needed for routine business funding.
We need to recognize that the lavish surroundings of such powerful corporate leaders can, in good times, demonstrate a sense of purpose, not only the trappings of success but a hint of the underlying drive to excel, in short, an inherently serious approach to doing business. But in times like these, where the rust belt is corroding beyond recognition, and those same powerful executives are forced to beg for money, using three separate corporate jets is merely an extravagance, and a sign of poor planning and organization.
President-elect Barack Obama is reported to be filling out his cabinet with prominent and experienced appointees. Some critics are already alleging ther are too many “Washington insiders” getting positions, but the transition team insists there is a new tone being set and these individuals will be ideally positioned to effect key reforms. Former Senate majority leader Tom Daschle (D-SD) has been offered the post of Secretary of Health and Human Services, and has reportedly accepted. Longtime Justice official and Obama aide Eric Holder is expected to get the nomination to serve as attorney general.
Daschle was majority leader for the Democrats, until the Republicans took control in 2002, then minority leader until he lost a re-election bid to John Thune in 2004. He published a book on healthcare and how to fix the system earlier this year, and was one of Barack Obama’s earliest backers, urging him to run for president before the campaign was officially launched. He will now be tasked with shepherding Obama’s healthcare proposals through Congress, where policy differences have already emerged, even within the Democratic majority.
Daschle is another appointment who, if confirmed, will be part of a new style of government Obama seeks to implement, where the White House works more in concert with Congressional leaders. With tested Congressional organizers like Rahm Emanuel (chief of staff) and Tom Daschle (HHS) on his team, a Pres. Obama will seek to pressure Congress to back his reform proposals, though there is speculation this approach may be made more difficult by his pledge of unprecedented openness.
US vice president Dick Cheney has been indicted by a Texas grand jury for crimes related to an alleged prison-profiteering scheme, including but not limited to charges of “at least misdemeanor assaults”, due to his investments in certain firms. Former US attorney general Alberto Gonzales was also indicted, along with 5 other individuals. The indictment is connected to the dealings of an investment company, involving privatized federal prisons in Texas.
Prosecutors allege that Cheney, who holds an $85 million stake in a firm with investments in the prisons in question, conspired with Mr. Gonzales and others to cover up investigations into ongoing prisoner abuse. The “assaults” against prisoners held at these privately managed facilities include assaults on prisoners by other prisoners, which were allegedly countenanced and which prosecutors allege were condoned implicitly by the attempt to suppress investigation into the prisons.
There is also mention of “direct conflict of interest” relating to VP Cheney’s potential policy authority over contracts that could be awarded to the private prison firms. The grand jury also found that then-AG Gonzales “used his position … to stop the investigations as to the wrong doings”. The conspiracy element of the indictment may open the prosecution to look into activities related to or that demonstrate the conspiracy, and some are calling for an investigation into other aspects of prison policy in which the two officials played a role.
Moskalenko and those close to her say she was poisoned by a mysterious “mercury-like” substance, traces of which were found in her car. (She has recovered and no one has been prosecuted for the alleged poisoning.) The prosecution has been slow and controversial. One year after Politkovskaya’s death, in October 2007, protesters across Russia rallied in support of the slain reporter, demanding a comprehensive, open and relentless prosecution of her murderers.
Politkovskaya was a determined investigative reporter and critic of the Kremlin and of corruption and the use of violence by the powerful inside and outside the apparatus of government. Many alleged her killing had some tie to FSB and to then president, now prime minister, Vladimir Putin, a charge exacerbated first by Mr. Putin’s cold reaction to her death, then by the arrest and indictment of a former FSB agent. The prosecution alleges a conspiracy of diverse interests, apparently focused in Chechnya, and including corrupt political and business figures.
A federal judge in Miami has ordered the Curação Drydock Company to pay $80 million in damages and fines for enslaving workers shipped to Curação from Cuba. The workers were reportedly forced to work up to 112 hours per week at just 3 cents (US$0.03) per hour. Curação is a dependency of the Kingdom of the Netherlands — home to both the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court (ICC) and a leading light in diplomatic efforts to improve human rights conditions the world over.
The three men testified that they had been sent to Curaçao to work off Cuba’s multimillion-dollar debt to the Curaçao Drydock Company, a private company whose largest shareholder is the government of the Netherlands Antilles. Their passports were seized at the airport and they were rarely allowed to leave the shipyard complex, and only in groups with a minder.
Rumors have been swirling for a little under a week that Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) has been offered the position of Secretary of State by her former rival, the US president-elect Barack Obama. Now, the Guardian newspaper is reporting, even as msot media continue to focus on the vetting of former Pres. Bill Clinton’s financial dealings, that “Hillary Clinton plans to accept the job of secretary of state offered by Barack Obama“.
The bestselling Lincoln biography by Doris Kearns Goodwin, Team of Rivals, known to be a favorite tome of the president-elect, has given rise to the most recent pundits’ parlor-game, the speculation about how Obama will fill a cabinet with competing voices, strong personalities, and even heated political rivalries. Known for his demand of discipline and emotional equilibrium, Obama’s attempt to fashion a potent ‘team of rivals’ that operates with the same focus and organization as his campaign will be a fascinating test of political skill.
At the moment, there is no clear indication that Obama has officially offered the position to Clinton or that Clinton has affirmatively accepted the post. It appears that some difficult accomodations may have to be made by her husband, before she could be officially brought into the Obama cabinet, namely curbing his very aggressive charity work with the Clinton Global Initiative, which some people describe as a shadow UN for humanitarian and development work.
In Alaska, 7-count convicted felon Sen. Ted Stevens had narrowly led Anchorage mayor Mark Begich, but counting of early-cast paper ballots and absentee votes has favored Begich, a Democrat in a Republican-controlled state, and Begich is now favored to win. Georgia Republican incumbent Saxby Chambliss is now facing a heated runoff, in which more campaign cash is being spent than in the first round and John McCain has taken to the campaign trail. In Minnesota, author and radio-host Al Franken trails Republican incumbent Norm Coleman by just 200 votes, the count ongoing.
Should all three races go to the Democrats, they would hold 58 Senate seats, to the Republicans’ 40, with 2 Independents that vote with the Democrats as a rule. Having a party-line 60-vote majority would allow the Democrats to instantly break any filibuster attempt by the Republicans, meaning they could achieve total legislative control of the Senate, while holding a huge majority in the House —former Republican majority leader Tom DeLay has called Nancy Pelosi the most powerful House Speaker in a generation—, and the White House.
As of 3:30pm EST, today, Mark Begich leads Sen. Stevens in the Alaska count by a total of 1,022 votes, with analysts suggesting the votes remaining to be counted should favor Begich, demographically. If Stevens wins, Republican leaders will likely demand he step down, allowing Republican governor Sarah Palin to appoint his replacement, keeping the seat Republican until the next senatorial election, in 2010. Independent observers are cautiously projecting that Begich will win the seat, however, for the Democratic party.
At this defining moment in history, we believe that Americans of all parties want and need their leaders to come together and change the bad habits of Washington so that we can solve the common and urgent challenges of our time. It is in this spirit that we had a productive conversation today about the need to launch a new era of reform where we take on government waste and bitter partisanship in Washington in order to restore trust in government, and bring back prosperity and opportunity for every hardworking American family. We hope to work together in the days and months ahead on critical challenges like solving our financial crisis, creating a new energy economy, and protecting our nation’s security.
Socio-economic issues linked to the disparate treatment of racial groups still plagues much of Brazil’s population and impedes the modernization of its economy. Though the Amazon nation is booming, and has become a world leader among developing market economies, the current president, Luis Inacio Lula da Silva, took office promising to finally rid the dense, remote rainforest of de facto slavery.
13 May 2008 was the 120th anniversary of the Lei Áurea, the “golden law” of emancipation, decreed by Princess Isabel, just one year before her empire was replaced by the Republic of Brazil. In fact, while Isabel is given credit in the written history for signing emancipation into law, she was under extreme pressure from Britain and from enclaves of escaped slaves —the ‘quilombo’ communities—, the most renowned of which resisted the institution of slavery for over one hundred years.
The leader of that community, Zumbi dos Palmares, died on 20 November 1695. In 2003, the anniversary of his death was made a day of national black recognition, and now —according to Worldpress— some 260 cities across Brazil have made the day an official holiday. In Brazil, slavery was more a matter of practice than of law, as individual laborers were trapped into slave conditions, a practice which has persisted in some form up to the present day in remote parts of the Amazon rainforest.
The cloud of soot and smog choking India and China and their neighbors is worsening. The massive brown cloud hovering over Asia now poses serious long-term health risks and environmental dangers to much of the continent, according to a new UN report. The world’s largest pollution phenomenon already drastically reduces the amount of daylight reaching ground level in many Chinese cities, and there is concern the sunlight-blocking effects could impede agricultural production.
Andrew Jacobs, writing for the International Herald Tribune, reports that:
The byproduct of automobiles, slash-and-burn agriculture, wood-burning kitchen stoves and coal-fired power plants, these plumes of carbon dust rise over southern Africa, the Amazon basin and North America but are most pronounced in Asia, where so-called atmospheric brown clouds are dramatically reducing sunlight in many Chinese cities and leading to decreased crop yields in swaths of rural India, says a team of more than a dozen scientists who have been studying the problem since 2002.
Climate scientists, including the Nobel-Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and colleagues working for NASA and the ESA, are increasingly concerned that human-induced carbon-emissions are responsible for a dangerous global increase in average temperatures. Estimates suggest a “point of no return” may be nearing for any efforts to preempt the worst catastrophic results expected as a result of carbon-based climate change.
The Iraqi cabinet has approved a security deal with the US, governing the role of US forces in the country. According to the deal, the US will withdraw its soldiers from Iraqi streets sometime in 2009 and will withdraw entirely from Iraq by the end of 2011. The Associated Press has circulated a photo of Iraqi police dancing with a US soldier in apparent celebration of the withdrawal agreement.
The deal takes some pressure off President-elect Barack Obama, who had vowed to withdraw US troops ever since running for the Senate in 2004. He had proposed a timeline for withdrawal, designed to get troops out by 2008, and throughout the 2008 campaign had said he would remove troops within 16 months of taking office, if elected. Now, the Bush administration and the Iraqi govenrment of Nouri al-Maliki seem to have done his work for him, setting a timeline for withdrawal 35 months after he takes office.
Should Obama choose the politically cautious route, he would be saved from accusations of not following through by this standing agreement. Nevertheless, he may find himself pressured to remove the troops within the 16 months he had projected. The agreement, if passed by the full Iraqi parliament, will help provide for a “seamless” transition in the US leadership, taking this hot-button issue off the table and letting a new Pres. Obama better gauge “conditions on the ground”.
Helium.com :: Poetry is the frontier where language in use comes in contact with future meaning, and in the process, when best executed, brings a wealth of transcendent truths into the present. Poetry is relevant to all uses of language, though there may be trends that suggest popular culture is looking to new forms of poetic activity to replace specific old models: many musical artists now play the role of mythic historian or wandering troubadour, but poetry is not confined to these purposes.
The art of the rhyming couplet, the frenetic ebb and flow of iambic pentameter, sometimes seem in today’s language environment more a distraction than a vehicle for delivering meaning across time. Poetry now resides in subtler places in more intricate and interrelated forms. It seeps into political discourse, into rap, into the dialogue between two characters on a movie screen, often for brief moments, then pushed aside by a mass of prose and fact and circumstance. But this is not new and it is not hazardous to poetry’s survival as a concentrated art-form fashioning new molds and opening new horizons.
It has always been the case that the oracular function of poetry, looking deep within or to the far reaches of the known and knowable, happens at the edges of the prosaic, at the fringe of our collective normalcy, in a place where in direct proportion to the intensity of the vision we confront those basic truths of our existence we often prefer not to engage.
Just a couple of years ago, the conventional wisdom dictated that financial minds must view “green technology” as pie in the sky, an unaffordable idealistic quest for something beyond the “easy” solution of endless oil. Then, almost overnight, the financial markets discovered that oil was not infinite, that the entire US economy was beholden to the pricing whims of an international cartel —this was long known, but tolerated—, and failure to go green could cripple the world’s most powerful democracy.
The price of crude oil skyrocketed from under $20/barrel at the end of the 1990s to over $150/barrel at its peak, in 2008. A national movement with millions of supporters was spawned to “repower America”, and now the We campaign pushes green energy as a moral imperative, to solve the climate crisis and to provide the reliable energy needed for a sustainable economic recovery. The credit crisis has crippled the auto industry, and there is talk of total collapse.
