Say Anything Syndrome: March 2006

Say Anything Syndrome: March 2006

an interesting little not-so-pop culture blog. Haven't gone through the archives but it might prove rewarding...

Political/Science/Fiction

Political/Science/Fiction

Yeah. The Economy. Guess We'll Try Again in 2008.

So, the Democrats, in their infinite wisdom,

have decided the major issue this election is going to be the economy

. Not the War in Iraq, which is going swimmingly, or the "culture of corruption" which is actually still going strong, despite the news that doesn't cover it. Yes, we lead the polling in economic policy, but with gas prices decreasing (Bush is an oil man, I garauntee they'll rise again after the election) and interest rates holding (again, the Fed Chairman was selected by a Republican, so that won't last), the American public may see this as a result of the current GOP controlled Congress. Granted, these really aren't major factors on the broader picture of the overall economy, but it's the one that is in the face of every American each day. You think it could blow up in our face?

I think, in my humble opinion, that the reason that they are doing this is to try to pull in some of the fiscally conservative voters that are upset with the foolhardy spending of the current Republican Congress and the Bush Administration. In theory, it sounds good, but it's not enough to win an election. It should be a part of a much broader collection of ideas on which to run, the main one should be the War in Iraq.

But why not attack the War on Terror, where Republicans are leading in polls for some reason? The Republicans aren't doing really anything to fight it, and in my opinion, it's just a myth to create the fear that the GOP needs to keep control. Why not expose it as the political tool that it is. What exactly are they doing to fight this "War on Terror?" Why are the Democrats such weaklings and cowards to actually attack the ideas of the Republicans. Rubber stamp indeed.

some interesting things about Ukraine

Crisis in Ukraine

Dr. Yuri Mischenko

Not so long ago, Ukraine was a beautiful land, with the emerald Carpathian mountains in the West, thick pine forests in the North, rolling steppes in the South, a Mediterranean coast in the Crimea, and stately oak forests and parklands in the centre. While over the last thousand years this land was the setting for the dramatic history of the Ukrainian people, the environment remained inviolable. The last two or three decades, however, have ushered in a devastating environmental crisis.

Up to 30% of the former USSR's industrial and agricultural potential was located on Ukrainian land, which is mostly farm land. Solid waste output is now near 1.5 billion tons per year with over 10 billion tons now scattered on 230,000 hectares of fertile agricultural lands. Nearly 20 billion tons of toxic gases, dust, and aerosols are created annually.

The most dangerous environmental problems are in the South and Southeast of Ukraine. In its worker settlements people die from cancer because 30% of their food products are contaminated with toxic substances; 86% of children from these areas are chronically ill.

In other parts of the country, environmental hazards include:

EROSION

Excessive ploughing has led to erosion of nearly 10% of Ukraine's arable land, causing over-all crop yields to fall 15-40%. The erosion pollutes waterways with biogenic matter and toxic chemicals.

FLOODING

About 8 million hectares of highly productive pastures and meadows were submerged when the Dnieper hydroelectric reservoirs were built from the 193Os to the 197Os.

POISONS

The rivers, lakes and Black Sea are heavily polluted with different toxic substances due to increasingly frequent accidents at chemical plants.

ACID RAIN

Thermal power plants burning fossil fuels spread acid rain across the Ukraine, endangering many species of plants and animals, and acidifying the soil.

IRRADIATION

One of the worst environmental catastrophes of modern history was the disaster at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in 1986.

Investigators estimated that radioactivity equivalent to 300 Hiroshima bombs was released. About 135,000 people were evacuated from the towns and villages located within 30 km of the destroyed reactor. About 1800 other villages in Ukraine and Belarus should have been evacuated. More than 4 million people still live in contaminated areas, 100,000 of them in areas where levels of radioactivity are considered dangerous for human life.

In the first hours after the disaster, a pine forest lay dead in the path of the radioactive cloud. Since then the area of the dead forest has grown due to chronic irradiation.

Inside the 30 km zone, monstrous forms of plants have appeared: pine needles and leaves of gigantic size, bizarre multiplication of elements in birch and pine trees. Outside, morphologically deformed animals began appearing toward the end of 1988: piglets with tumorous or blind eyes, eight-legged foals, calves with extra or withered limbs, and a goat with enormously long legs.

The human population continues to suffer from acute and sub-acute radiation sickness, thyroid gland dysfunction, inhibition of the immune system, cataracts, leukemia, and other kinds of cancer. For the children particularly, the prognosis is bleak.

What led to this grim situation?

• centralized economic control.
• Moscow's colonial exploitation of Ukraine's natural resources.
• bureaucratic organization of Soviet society, managed by incompetent and irresponsible technocrats ignorant of environmental consequences.
• inefficient technology
• pressure to meet targets of five-year plans regardless of the environment
• destruction of social and ethical values by communist ideology.

The only solution is a complete transformation of values and attitudes on all levels of society. There have been some movements to this end:

Grassroots environmental groups mushroomed after the Chernobyl disaster, and in 1989 three hundred of them formed Green World (Zeleny Svit). With their motto "Survival, Democracy, Humanism" they have become the most influential environmental group in Ukraine.

During the past three years, Green World has organized public meetings, demonstrations, picket lines, rallies, seminars, and press conferences. It played a major role in stopping a variety of dangerous government projects, including the construction of additional power units at the Chernobyl site and new nuclear plants in Odessa, Kharkov, Chyhyryn and Crimea. Influenced by Green World, the government of Ukraine has decided to close the Chernobyl plant by 1993, and to resettle residents of contaminated areas.

Green World's concerns about Chernobyl have led Greenpeace to open a diagnostic centre and a children's hospital in Kiev. International aid, in the form of many tons of medicine and vitamins, has been shipped to the affected locations.

Green World continues to work for environmental responsibility in the now independent Ukraine. U

Dr. Mishchenko is a zoologist, presently a visiting fellow at the University of Waterloo, and was from 1989-90 Director of Green World in Ukraine

Our Karl Rove

Our Karl Rove

some things (in economics)

The US Census Bureau's annual Poverty Report came out today, as President Bush tramped around Louisiana trying to "remember" the first anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. The lovely media outlets would love to treat these as two separate stories. What happened in New Orleans (and continues to affect people all over the region) is intricately linked with poverty. The rich people lived in neighborhoods in higher grounds, while the poor and those in governmental housing programs lived below sea level. And all of those people likely felt that the levies were going to be okay. Part of a shared system of buying into the social safety net is that everyone plays a part of making a community safe. Safety is not and should not be a luxury item. It is a moral requirement and can absolutely be supplied to each member of our society based on our economy.

The other day while watching the Nightly News, I saw a reporter refer to me (the viewer at home watching on my stolen cable) and him (in a studio where he is paid thousands to sit and read) collectively as "we, the consumers." The exact sentence was "We, the consumers, won for a little while." This introduced a story about a gas station that temporarily sold gas for $0.36 instead of $3.60 because of a computer error. What a giveaway. So for nearly an hour we bought something we subsidize and primarily produce in the United States for a fair price. Brilliant.

Bush (ie Bush's minions who work to spin and spin to live) will likely argue that a static poverty rate is a good sign for the country. But what headlines are unlikely to reveal are the troubling signs of serious underlying problems. Consumer confidence continues to fluctuate, trending towards a lasting downturn. Lowest income brackets are swelling. Healthcare is becoming a major luxury. Those who are already poor are becoming more likely to stay poor and those working are barely earning a living wage. Educational gaps are becoming more and more apparent. And the rich are becoming fabulously more wealthy (productivity and shareholder profits remain at record highs.

Don't get me wrong, I believe in a lot of libertarian principles like good pay for hard work, smaller and more efficient government, and JS Mill-kind of freedom. I believe, like many Americans, that you should work hard in life and get rewarded accordingly. And I would believe, like most Americans, that the federally-funded construction of giant structures that I depend on for my life (such as the Davis-Besse nuclear plant in Ohio) would be sound and not cause my death. To refuse to accept this is to misunderstand the entire nature of shared resources.

Air is a shared resource. Trees are a shared resource. And (though in dwindling numbers), water is also a shared resource. When we pay our taxes, when we support the social security system, and when we do any of the thousands of things we do to exist in a community, we are sharing resources.

The protection of, care, and investment in these shared resources is dwindling too. As we pour billions into Iraq we are so obviously ignoring the needs of America. We are ignoring the effects of this abandonment and we are ignoring the people of poverty.


What these signs say to me is that this country is desperately and hungrily moving towards a kind of new feudalism, a political and economic system in which the ranks of the very rich and very poor increase while those in the middle (especially in the lower middle) scramble to keep above water.

And the Republicans are the rats on the sinking ships.

The Times August 30, 2006

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just as a by the way...If you're not listening to Air America you're missing out hardcore. Shit, Bollini, you're right. I need to leave my office more often before 9pm and get a life.

Germany, I'm not just drinking beer this time.

Germany, I'm not just drinking beer this time.
The second best blog ever.