By Dave Lindorff

Listening to the endless stream of cars passing my house every day,
and knowing, from watching them from my mailbox, that they are almost
all carrying just one person, either commuting to work or running some
kind of errand, I know we are headed for disaster.

Two days ago, there was a report by Agence France Presse
about the ongoing destruction of the world’s remaining wetlands (60
percent have already been destroyed by man over the past century), and
how they contain within them an amount of stored carbon equal to all
the carbon currently in the atmosphere. Global warming and property
development are drying out those remaining wetlands, causing the
release of that carbon, which will more than negate even the most
radical efforts at reducing carbon emissions from power plants,
factories and automobiles.

By Dave Lindorff

In a New York Times column on Monday (“Behind the Bush
Bust”), economics columnist Paul Krugman mused on whether President
George Bush could be blamed for the nation’s economic crisis. His
conclusion was that, yes, to some extent the crisis was Bush’s fault,
but he largely lets the current administration off the hook, instead
blaming Republican policies dating back 10-15 years.

Oddly, Krugman does say that a key cause of economic problems has
been rising energy prices, but he then attributes these to “growing
demand from China and other emerging economies,” and suggests that
prices might have been at least a bit lower had the US, after 9/11,
adopted “higher gas taxes and fuel efficiency standards,” a failing he
attributes to Bush.

THE FOLLOWING ARTICLE APPEARED IN THE SAN DIEGO UNION TRIBUNE TODAY (7/2/08). THE AMERICAN PEOPLE MUST UNITE TO SHOW THE WORLD WE DID NOT SUPPORT OR APPROVE OF THE INJUSTICES OF THIS ADMINISTRATION AND THE CRIMES IT COMMITTED AGAINST IRAQ, THE CITIZENS OF THE UNITED STATES AND THE WORLD.  TO REGAIN OUR STATURE IN THE WORLD, WE MUST CHARGE BUSH AND CHENEY WITH WAR CRIMES BEFORE THE REST OF THE WORLD DOES IT FOR US.  CONTACT YOUR CONGRESSPERSONS TODAY!

Why This Deafening Silence about Our Most Viable Solution to the Energy Crisis?

The ongoing debate, and the framing of it, between the Senate and the heads of the major oil companies, is a completely irrelevant and devastating approach to solving our energy crisis. The question is not whether the oil companies should or could solve the gasoline crisis. Rather, the question is how the government can immediately begin to stimulate alternative sources of energy and, furthermore, which of the contemplated alternatives they should stimulate or subsidize.

By Dave Lindorff

Okay. Enough about race.

We've got a bigger problem here than how to get along with each other, as important as that may be, and that's how to make sure that any of us--or our children and grandchildren--are around in another hundred years.

Fast on the heels of reports about the increasingly, and unexpectedly rapid melting of Greenland's giant ice sheet, come even more scary reports about accelerated glacial melting in Antarctica, where there is a whole lot more ice.

I have some great news to share and a request to make for your help. I just passed through the House of Representatives with broad Democratic and Republican support, a package of common-sense proposals to reduce our dependency on fossil fuels and to increase our usage of clean, renewable energy. For the first time ever, national energy policy will require all electric utilities to acquire 15% of their power from wind, solar, and other renewable energy sources by the year 2020. I sponsored or cosponsored important provisions in the energy bill that will provide funding for climate change research, surface owner protection, funding for research into carbon capture and storage, and protection of the Roan Plateau. But the fight's only begun, and I need your help right away.

US / Iranian rhetoric is at fever pitch. Both sides are claiming to have “evidence” of military foul play. Both sides are holding military exercises in each others faces and the Gulf is so full of warships it must be highly dangerous to navigate. Both sides are threatening a massive military response to any use of force. Both presidents have backed themselves into political corners and neither shows the slightest sign of backing down.

A second US carrier strike group has just arrived in the Gulf bringing the total number of US (and allied) warships there to about 50 and a third group, headed by USS Reagan has just been ordered to rendezvous in the Western Pacific with destroyers from Pearl Harbour before sailing to the Gulf.

A War On Terrorism or a War Of Terrorism?

Reports as usual vary wildly and small wonder that some news sources are trying to pin this on yet another subsidiary of "Al Qaeda". But this wasn't a suicide attack.

The terrorists drove a car, packed with explosives, up to a bus carrying soldiers of Iran's Revolutionary Guards. Some reports say that they forced the bus to stop by firing on it with automatic weapons, others that they blocked the road with the car while pretending to have broken down. Either way, they quickly escaped on motorbikes before detonating the car bomb by remote control.

Russia's President Putin made a very eye-opening speech at the Munich Conference on Security Policy this Saturday. The speech was widely reported in the media but in most cases was incomplete or inaccurately translated, no surprises there. Amongst other things, his speech contained a scarcely veiled warning to the United States and other NATO countries that they were pushing Russia to the brink of a direct confrontation.

Deploying anti-ballistic missile systems on Russia's border under the ruse of "shielding America from North Korean nuclear missiles" was not fooling anyone, especially as North Korea, if it had such weapons, would be pointing them in the exact opposite direction across the Pacific ocean. He also warned "Simultaneously the so-called flexible frontline American bases with up to five thousand men in each. It turns out that NATO has put its frontline forces on our borders..."

Speaker: Putin, Wladimir W.

First I invite you to watch this excellent 10 minute speech by George Galloway to the British Parliament on January 27, 2007 in which he delivers a stark warning that Britain is sleepwalking into a catastrophic war with Iran along with the US and Israel. George Galloway was the man who you may remember lambasting the US Senate over false accusations of oil bribes with Saddam.

George Galloway's speech to the British Parliament, January 2007