Wednesday, July 19, 2006

Mind Over Muscle...

Subject: Honey Works a Lot Better than Vinegar...


you know what nobody wants to talk about is that America does not know how to use diplomacy.

Immediately, when you talk to an American official, it's my way or the high way.

What we don't seem to realize is that so much more can be obtained through the intelligent use of diplomacy.

If you doubt that check the history books.

The past master of diplomacy has always been the Brits. They have it down to a science; understand all of the nuances and know how to play both sides against the middle and it is always to their advantage.

Even in WWII, they were the skilled players who knew every trick in the book.

And then when you look at what we're doing in the field of diplomacy, it looks like we were locked out of class that day.

. Our typically black and white approach is here it is; if you don't like it, you can lump it and we will blow you up as we please.

The Brits were always too smart to talk like that even if they felt like it at times. You in fact never knew where you stood with the Brits. That was proved to me today when I saw a wonderful documentary on the use of diplomacy by the Imperialist British government when it planned its maneuvers leading up and including WWI. I am going back to the time of Lloyd George, Balfour, and the secret agreements with the French and Russians that carved up The Arabian Penninsula.

This well-crafted documentary documented how the Brits used treachery, diplomacy, and sleight of hand to promise the middle east to both the Jews of Eastern Europe, thinking that they could use the power of the Jews to work in their favor in winning support for the English cause, and to the Arabs under prince Faisel. In truth, while they were making promises to both Arab and Jew, the English had the whole area mapped out and they conveniently used all sides to their own advantage while actually ceding Syria and Lebannon to France under their agreement and taking Iraq and the Canal, which was essential to the English Empire, for themselves.

This was the work of a secret agreement in addition to the Balfour Declaration and the efforts of Lloyd George.

Mainly, it was all designed to take down the Turks and carve up their territory for their own personal advantage.

At the time, they recognized Iraq's oil potential.

If you were to move the entire strategy fifty years forward, you could not avoid discussing the role of British diplomacy later in the 50's when it came time to securing Iran's oil wealth and getting rid of Moussadegh and bringing on the Ayotollah....and making the Americans the heavies. Remember, it was Eisenhower who backed them up...and the Iranians never forgot it.

They just prove a point however if you are smart, you can get just as much or more using your mind over muscle. This government seems incapable of learning their lesson.

Les Aaron

Saturday, July 08, 2006

Is Populism Due For A Comeback?

Beyond Bashing Bush: Grassroots environmentalism and the prospect for a populist resurgence

by Daniel Patrick Welch


http://www.opednews.com

Everybody had a good laugh at Bush's EPA claiming that the long feared destruction of wetlands had miraculously slowed. And who could blame them? The obvious layman response, otherwise known as the 'huh' factor, was more than on point. Environmentalists and laypeople alike have watched as runaway development and greed have gobbled up our wetland resources along with the last remaining open space in many of our urban and suburban areas.

Call us cynical, then, when the Bush administration trumpeted what could only be a godsent decline in the destruction of wetlands--a trend which has worried opponents of rampant development for a generation. Alas, the honeymoon was indeed shortlived: Bush junta officials managed to achieve the impossible by, well...lying about it. I know, I know--most of you will be shocked. But the administration managed to slow the decline of wetlands destruction with a simple sleight-of-hand: including man-made ponds and such gifts to nature as golf course water hazards in the wetland registry. Problem solved! If they include the puddle around my bird feeder, then we'll really be in good shape.

But as with many aspects of the current political crisis, opposing Bush's policies--ridiculous though they may be--hardly qualifies one for the environmental hall of fame. In fact, it is often the local gatekeepers--by and large Democrats in a liberal state--who grease the skids of runaway development that threatens our neighborhoods, compromises the viability of our wetland resources, and push for the "progress" of more building...higher, faster, stronger, as it were.

What then is a concerned environmentalist to do? The local liberal channels--likely controlled by the Democratic Party--are often closed. In "liberal" Massachusetts, this oversight contributes to the on-the-ground fact that the destruction of open space is proceeding at nearly seven times the rate of population growth. We need to ask ourselves: what interests is this phenomenon serving?

Without seeming alarmist, however (or perhaps by appearing just so) we should point out that local development--the "engine" of economic growth, if you listen to the experts--is munching through every available hectare on the planet. So why should we be any different?

Why indeed? That is, until you consider the rate of cancer, asthma, and misery that our addiction to development costs us. In Massachusetts, as in many locales, final decisions on who gets to build the huge building on what unclaimed swamp is a local one: the Wetlands Protection Act spawned a myriad of local Conservation Commissions to help sort out this gigantic mess. But like their counterparts in transnational business predation, developers too straddle jurisdictions: Don't worry your pretty little heads about the effects of this or that project--they're all upstream--or downstream, depending on the breaks.

Such plump geographic idiosyncrasies make sections of coastline, rivers, marshes and wetlands ripe for the picking, and the smaller their carved slices are, the more successful the growth curve of developers seem to be.

And in many cases, local laws and regulations seem to grease the wheels. Even in "liberal" Massachusetts, wetland law is tragically and forever two steps behind the science of wetland protection; what's more, all developers sense this, and, like flies to a corpse, hone in for the kill as soon as the first blade of grass becomes available.

Specifically, with regard to wetland law, Lynn Boyd has argued in an eloquent thesis that current wetland regulated buffers are demonstrably inadequate to protect the range of fauna that depend on a wider "life zone" for sustainability--and thus, for true wetland health. For an industry intent on building up to water's edge, of course, Boyd's science is a nuisance, an inconvenience to be dealt with using the tricks of every powerful landowner: intimidation, obfuscation, and whatever else comes to mind.

In dealing with one such local issue, I have learned a thing or two. On the one hand, large environmental groups, who have pegged their power, prestige and fundraising potential on big victories, are often not interested in boots-on-the-ground battles. Understandable. But local politicians are wary of the lack of cover they face when taking on powerful developers.

It is into this gap that I suggest we must leap. The promise of grassroots environmentalism, I contend, is in its ability to reach almost every citizen where they live. The simple fact is that people just don't like bulldozers coming into their community and changing it overnight without their approval. This is a basic gut feeling of residents worldwide. For an appropriate analogy, one must travel all the way to China, where local governments wield as much power as the MWPA gives to local councils. Just as Chinese farmers are wary of local elites selling off their land in the middle of the night, local residents in our hemisphere fear being railroaded into projects that will be of great harm in the long term.

The collapse of the Bush house of cards has given way to--or it may be better said, exposed--a grassroots phenomenon to which the Democrats had better take heed if they wish to regain power. Some may question the connection between environmentalism and Bush's demise; but in the trenches we can see not only the growing mistrust of Bush, but a growing and wholesale rejection of officialist dogma.

Officialism can be summed up as the experience of people who claim to be smarter than you telling you that you needn't be afraid of such-and-such an official plan. It's all worked out: there's nothing to be afraid of. In the trenches, one can sense a remarkable shift: so-called 'normal' people think this is a crock of shit, and instinctively reserve their support for such a system.

The potential should by now be self-evident. People are radicalized by the things that threaten them most. Of course, the militarism of society, the use of people's tax money to inflict horror on the rest of the world--should not be taken for granted. But if people can be engaged in this radical moment, when their homes, their neighborhoods, and their very health are threatened, then a whole door opens up for those who would dare step into the breach.

Sure, I'm aware of the limits of environmentalism to shape human attitudes toward social justice: need only remember the controversy over a racist, xenophobic splinter trend within the Sierra Club to realize just how narrow a window is open to us. Still, there is room here: room ignored by the traditional environmental groups because these fights are losers, as locals face off with well-funded developers in thousands of projects nationwide. But as Michael Crichton was fond of pointing out, complex systems can only emerge on the edge of chaos. The internet allows us to jump into the breach of such fights in defiance of previously impenetrable boundaries. Who's to say that each of these fights might not be won with a concentrated application of heterarchical web-power.

In this spirit, I offer a challenge of sorts to my fellow activists, environmentalists, and anyone else who gives a damn. We have made it incredibly easy to participate in this particular fight, no matter how far away you may be. I invite "our people" to join use by seeking out the post card campaign at http://danielpwelch.com/0602sscx.htm. An experiment, if you will. Outfunded, outgunned, and outmaneuvered, we may never be able to push back the foe on this level. But this, after all, is where the rubber meets the road. If we can't win here, and in the other 10,000 fights worldwide where bulldozers "sit at the ready," as the saying goes, then we are truly facing dark times.

We are under no illusions: groups smaller than ours have lost to much less powerful opponents. But this, of course, is what makes it a classic Robin Hood fight. I leave the specifics to links you can follow at the site if you are so inclined. Suffice it to say that the challenge is posed for the left: the devil, or rather, the road to a populist resurgence, is in the details, sordid though they may be. Happy hunting.

The Meaning of Poverty...

Poverty:

After discussing poverty as an issue being a product of it, myself, I have discovered that any talk about poverty is relative.

I think that anyone who was brought up during or immediately after the Depression, have instilled in them some notion of what poverty means and how dispiriting it can become.

But I have seen few stories coming out of the developed “west” that can compare with these matter of fact offerings. It really seems to put the relativistic nature of poverty into perspective for most of us who thought that perhaps doing without
The TV or their own computer was a real hard-ship.

Consider just these two stories that were passed among friends who had crossed the great ocean to live in the land of freedom and opportunity as they recant some experiences from their own lives.

To set the stage, let me preface my friends’ conversation by saying that I was standing and talking to my neighbors as I often did about their homeland. They were both Scottish immigrants who had come over after the Depression. They were perhaps five or ten years my senior, and very progressive thinking. Only, for some reason they believed that I was a radical and if they spoke to me about government or politics, they would be whisked away never to be seen again…

Nevertheless, it was okay to talk about life in Scotland back in the twenties. This day, we were telling stories about poverty. It was my neighbor who started the ball rolling and after he told his story, there was no need to stick my two cents in. You will see why.

. What started it was a conversation about McCourt's Angela's Ashes where he talks about his poverty and the position of the church. How they were less than helpful.

Frank McCourt used to teach at one of the colleges in Brooklyn where I taught part-time so it seemed an appropriate subject. My friend said that McCourt was a liar and that all his friends who grew up before and during the depression thought so as well. I asked why he thought that.. And he said that it wasn't like he described. He said, yes, things were really bad. And that he had his own stories. But the one that stayed with me was simple and straightforward: He told me that this was the reason he never finished his education. It was graduation day in his hometown. Yet he couldn’t collect his diploma. The reason: He had no shoes and had to wear his sisters shoes and he couldn't be seen walking from the back to pick up his diploma on those polished floors.
I said that sounded pretty poor to me.

It had been my own feeling that McCourt's account of the Church's neglect was pretty much on target but the Scottish folks wouldn't admit to their own hardships so it was interesting that this friend admitted to not owning his own shoes...
Later in the conversation, he told me about some other chaps that were worse off than he. And while he told me many tales, this one has stayed vivid in my memory.
.
It turned out that his mother's best friend had a child out of wedlock and could not go home unmarried with a baby...so my friend's mother adopted the baby as her own.

After fifteen years or so, he wandered off with his friends spending time with his natural mother who also never climbed out of poverty. One Sunday, my friend was sitting down to have dinner after church and his step-brother, now about sixteen, wandered in with a few friends.

My friend's mother was embarrassed because she didn't have enough plates and being hospitable, she suggested to her children that the others eat first off the plates... Her adopted son came up to her and said don't worry his friends were not used to eating off plates. And that newspaper would be fine so they opened the newspaper and filled it up with some hot stew and that was how they ate... We had things tough but clearly not as tough as my friend and when he saw how his step-brother and his friends were living, he felt like a rich man.

Never, never had I heard of something like that....

And this is in a civilized country in Europe.

I vowed to never think of myself as having it tough after hearing about those two accounts.

Interestingly enough, the stories were told in a matter of fact way without being enhanced or otherwise embellished which gave them an even greater impact…and proved to me that my notion of being poor did not come close to what so many others had experienced.

I hope to return to Scotland some day and I know as I sit in a small bakery on High Street enjoying a pie, I will think of these hardships that are never very far away…