And lets hope the Council will find that it is the height of environmental irresponsibility to permit this drilling and fracking anywhere. Instead lets mandate solar energy on every flat roof building in the city by 2016. That would really create some jobs !
Secret talks with Sierra Club aimed at averting lawsuit
How “backroom” is a negotiation that can be reported in the newspaper? How is Sierra Club seeking to make money through legal fees when it urges a settlement instead of a law suit? What is so ulterior motive negative about trying to move Colorado Springs to more energy generated in a way that is addressing Global Warming or do people here like the Waldo Canyon Fire? And how much tax money would be saved if the County put solar on all its buildings in the long run. Ive been told it spends over $40,000 a month at the Citizens Service Center on Electricity. Wow cut that in half and you could pay one county commissioner’s salary in four and a half months of savings!
You and your Grandchildren go about $740 Million in Debt every day to China for the War
Full Cost of War/ PER WEEK= $3.5 Billion (and…only 10% goes to pay and benefits for “our troops” (uniformed military) while $ 1.4 billion goes to war contractors to pay for bullets to bombers to mercenaries who make ten times what “the troops” make and actually only God knows for what else cause its classified or just plain un accounted for). There are probably more contract employees in Iraq alone than US troops.
International community expenditures for IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency which monitors and prevents the spread of nuclear weapons) = $400 Million PER YEAR (Just over half a day’s War Costs)
U.S. expenditures for securing and destroying loose nuclear weapons and bomb-making materials = $ 1 Billion PER YEAR (less than two days’ of War Costs)
Remember how you were lied into the terror of Iraqi Nuclear Weapons ready to reach our shores in 45 minutes. Mark Udall and the whole rest of the Colorado Congressional Delegation apparently don’t think these facts add up to “high crimes and misdemeanors.” Diana Degette says it was just horrible that Dennis Kucinich tried to get immediate floor action on Impeaching Cheney–such poor judgment. Not one Colorado Representative is a co-signer to that bill of impeachment. They march in lock step with their “Speaker” while the Constitution is tossed in the trash.
So can I interest you in making a change by Registering Green Party today –and so cast your first vote this election. Party Registration is a vote and because it is in support of Bob Kinsey for Senate it is a vote to toss these namby-pamby’s out and try to get our country back if it’s not too late.
Data from William D. Hartung in the Asia Times and the latest study by Nobel economist Joseph Stiglitz who estimates that the full cost could reach US $5 trillion –all of it being paid on a credit card from China.
Building 7 and Mr. Zelikow–Wake up Folks
t is chilling to watch video of Building 7 of the World Trade Center rhythmically collapse in seconds. More so if you keep in your awareness that no plane hit it and so the excuse that high level heat melted the steel beamed building. What is more chilling is to hear the owner (Silverman) use the professional demolition term of “pulling the building”. Some argue the diesel fuel stored in the building did the dirty work but does diesel burn that hot? I am not a physicist. I have heard competent architects say that no plane crash or fire could take down any of the World Trade Center Steel construction. There are no blast furnace level fires evident in the films.
Most chilling is the response to the revelation that Philip Zelikow, the executive director of the 9/11 Commission Report (who was on Condolezza Rice’s staff as primary drafter of the National Security Strategy 2002) was in communication with the White House (Rove and Cheney) during the 9/11 Commission work. After all, the Commission was to assure the American People there was nothing more to 9/11 than zealotry by fanatical Muslims and a total flub of the security system in place of decades to prevent use of planes as missiles. Zelekow’s defense was, “We didn’t talk about the Commission work”. Yeah, Right.
Why is this more chilling? Because it dropped out of sight immediately. No outrage, No constant pressure from the media. No further pressure for impeachment of the executives who by sheer incompetence or design have brought us to this irreparable state in which we find ourselves. The “conspiratorial thinking” of the folks trying to investigate 9/11 on their own must, in their framing, be kept as evidence they are some kind of paranoid nuts. And for us to think otherwise would place us “over the top” and these days being “over the top” is just so, you know…Alice in Wonderland?
One quote from Zelekow written in 1998 seems enough to show reason for further investigation of 9/11: ” If the device that exploded in 1993 under the World Trade Center had … resulted in horror and chaos…Like Pearl Harbor this event would divide our past and future into a before and after. The United States might respond with draconian measures, scaling back civil liberties, allowing wider surveillance of citizens, detention of suspects and use of deadly force.” Three years before 9/11 and you can almost hear all the neocon militarists licking their chops. Aha! A new enemy to justify our worldview!
I believe that “Something is indeed rotten in the State of Denmark” to quote Hamlet. I can’t say for certain what or how but I can say the silence of Congress – Democrat as well as Republican—the silence of the “Press” — and sadly the acquiescent citizenry– is strong evidence that if we are ever to retrieve a modicum of democracy, civil liberties and decency a Green Party must do it. Impeachment off the table? Give me a break. Ms. DeGette, Mr. Udall, Mr. Allard, Messers Salazar, Mr. Tancredo, Mr. Permutter, Mr. Lamborn, Ms. Musgrave– you all deserve to be impeached for not impeaching. We want our country back.
Israel, Palestine, International Law and US Foreign Policy
This noon I joined about 20 in the blowing snow at Colfax and Lincoln to express my sadness that Israel has chosen to respond to Palestinian outrage with outrageous violence using an Israeli Defense Force partially paid for by US military aid. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert responded to international criticism of Israel’s actions in Gaza, saying that “nobody has the right to preach morality to the State of Israel for taking basic action to defend itself.” Israel has returned the lex taliones to a pre-Hammurabi style definition of “Ten eyes for an eye and ten teeth for a tooth.” Modern airpower, usually the least discriminating in whose lives are taken, was used in response to rockets that in this case took no Israeli life. But the growing outbursts of Palestinian violence are in response to having the Gaza strip turned into a walled camp with no economy. At the same time Israel refuses to leave the Palestinian occupied territories on which they have built settlements in the West Bank and walled the area within it to make life nearly impossible for Palestinians there. The refusal of the Israelis to give up this land and control of water rights they occupied (and were told by the UN to leave) has been the long term factor driving the violence. The Palestinians have been expected to swallow this in addition to being required to accept the legal right of Israel to exist within borders that include land Palestinians once saw as their homeland.
No Peace Process can work under these conditions and yet the United States has accepted the Israeli position implicitly by continuously supplying Israel with large military aid packages even while occasionally expressing some concern over its use. The United States also has extended this aid against its own laws that prohibit it to provide military aid to countries that do not keep the Nuclear Non Proliferation Agreement. Regardless of denial by Israel it is know by everyone in the world that Israel has a strong nuclear weapons program with perhaps 200 warheads at the ready. The Arab world sees the United States willing to invade an Arab country with shock and awe in order to defend itself against weapons which the UN inspection agency said were not there. They see the United States threatening military action against another Arab Islamic State, Iran, in the name of destroying nuclear weapons that its own National Intelligence Estimate says are not there. It sees the United States occupying a country in the name of destroying terrorists that only came to that country after the original pre-emptive war against Iraq. It saw the United States carry out this war despite the fact that not a single Iraqi was involved in 9/11. So terrorism grows as a result of invasion and occupation carried out in the name of anti terrorism and self defense. Terrorism grows and tons of innocent Arab Islamic deaths are accepted by the United States and its ally . This is unjust, against international law and will never solve the problems claimed to be addressed by such actions.
The Jewish God who is also the God of the sons of Ishmael by a similar name demands Justice and Mercy. The concept of trying to define by Law what the contents of Justice require is as old as the Torah. The workings of Mercy are laid out in what Christians call the Sermon on the Mount or the New Law Jesus laid out. The Rule of Law is the Secular Enlightenment embodiment of these ideas.
Justice and Mercy are not found in giving Israel a blank check to ignore the International Law of the very United Nations that defined Israel a state with the right to exist. UN resolutions more than 20 years old required Israel to leave the Palestinian Occupied Territories because land is not to be taken as a result of war. Until the United States stops this blank check policy for Israel a Just Peace cannot be found in the Middle East. The resolution affirming this blank check policy have poured from the US Congress. My opponents Mark Udall and Bob Schaffer have voted for this blank check several times in House of Representatives Resolutions to that effect. I will not. Nor will I vote to continue military aid to any country that frails to conform to the Non-Proliferation Treay or fails to work for elimination of weapons of Mass Destruction world wide. These requirements are inour Law and our Constitution you know.
Udall votes another unfunded blank check
Colorado Democrats in Congress –with the exception of Ed Perlmutter (CO-7)– have done it again. They voted “Yes” to Bush’s request for billions in supplemental Iraq War/Occupation Funding. I say they can’t have it both ways.
They can’t criticize the Iraq war as bad policy or worse, then get elected to a majority of the House of Representatives and then provide the Bush Administration with blank checks to continue the policy.
While the NO votes carried the day yesterday it was because the Republicans voted “present” and Progressive Democrats elsewhere voted NO. In other words, the vote showed the Democrats as a whole party divided about putting the check in the mail to continue the mess. And the Republicans are unwilling to face the fact that the funds behind the check are actually “credit card debt” to the Chinese. No new taxes!! They hid behind a bogus procedural smoke screen. Congresswoman DeGette had another family graduation ceremony to attend and thus essentially voted with the Republicans.
Mr. Udall wants to be our Democratic US Senator from Colorado. Colorado Democrats want us to believe they would be out of there in a second and that they disapprove of the current US Foreign Policy of military threat and dominance.
I say that Perlmuter should become a Green Party member AND SO SHOULD EVERYONE who is frustrated with the Democrats for their lack of either courage or their duplicity with regard to their real commitments. For too long Colorado has been in the thrall of the military-industrial complex as the provider of security, jobs and economic growth. The Space Program -mostly a set of military contracts and operations that are focused on anti ballistic missile system/spy satellite/ targeting satellites-a Pinon Canyon expanded Fort Carson and its place in District 5 economic growth regardless of the environment destruction and the civilian life displacement of Southeast Colorado, — the Air Force Academy subtly combining the preparation of military officers with a sense of God’s blessing upon the whole military industrial complex, — the corporations of the complex like Raytheon or Lockheed Martin providing employment, stimulating the housing market, and making tons on cost plus contracts -especially for their bloated CEO’s and military officers who operate as consultants for them post-retirement, –the 49 launch on warning nuclear armed missiles in the Northeast,– the proposed new uranium mining in South Park and Larimer County – general military recruiting as a jobs and higher education program for the poor and lower middle class–are all a part of this complex and they impact the position our Corporate Candidates take on War, on military spending, on dependence of violence to keep us safe from violence.
I remember when Wayne Allard’s campaign manager, Dick Wadhams (the Lee Atwater, Karl Rove-ish political operative now the major spokesperson for Bob Schaffer’s campaign for Senate) told me he wouldn’t answer the Colorado Coalition for Prevention of Nuclear War questionnaire about foreign/military policies during Allard’s first campaign for Senate in 1996.. He said, “You ‘liberals’ do your thing and well do ours. We aren’t going to answer your silly questions.” That, combined with the complicity of the Post and the News in failing to reveal Allard’s willingness to hide behind the ruse that questioning any “defense” spending as dis-loyal, led to the absence of intelligent debate of that issue.. Election debates became nothing but drivel about “Right to Life” issues and who stood for real “family values”. How does a democracy do any meaningful business about how to deal with reality in such a scenario? It doesn’t.
The only way to restore democracy or stand for the value of non-violence, is to build a non-corporate party that faces up to the realities of the future. Cast your vote today by Registering Green Party. It’s easy. Check Green Party and mail it to your County Clerk or the Secretary of State. It’s your first vote of this election season. It only takes a 41 cent stamp. Cheaper than gas.