Democracy Blast

WikiLeaks VS Pentagon Papers

The media is buzzing over whether the WikiLeaks Afghanistan leaks are equivalent to the Vietnam War era’s Pentagon Papers.  There are certain similarities, as this Wall Street Journal blog points out:

“A trove of classified Pentagon materials about a troubled war was made public with a splash. Much of the information was dated—even outdated—and illuminated tactics and strategies that already had been changed. Still, the documents had an immediate impact, serving to crystallize underlying public doubts about the war.

That may sound like a description of the big story that broke late Sunday, when some 76,000 internal military documents spanning six years of fighting in Afghanistan were made public by the WikiLeaks website. In fact, it’s a description of a strangely similar release of classified military documents 39 years earlier—the publication of the so-called Pentagon Papers during the Vietnam War.”

Of course they also point out the differences, such as this observation at cbsnews.com:  

“More fundamentally, the Wikileaks documents do not radically alter our understanding of the war. They document what we've known for years - not enough troops, too many civilian casualties, a corrupt and inefficient Afghan government and an uncertain ally in Pakistan. The Pentagon Papers revealed that much of what the public had been told about the war in Vietnam was flat wrong and in many cases deliberately so.”

Ultimately, the greatest determining factor in whether the WikiLeaks will have an impact similar to the Pentagon Papers is pointed out by Glen Greenwald: the Afghan war does not employ a draft, and a relatively small portion of our population actually knows someone who is a soldier.  As Greenwald states in his Salon.com column:

“It's relatively easy to support and/or acquiesce to a war when neither you nor your loved ones are risking their lives to fight it.”

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Portland bans the bag

 

It’s not the first city to do so, and it won’t be the last: Portland Oregon is banning the plastic bag.  Yes, those ubiquitous grocery checkout bags that wind up clogging recycling equipment and sewers, and floating in the giant gyre in the Pacific Ocean.

Who could oppose such a thing?  You know who: the plastics industry. According to SeattlePI blog, last year lobbyists for the industry spent about 1.4 million to defeat a measure proposing a 20-cent fee on bags in Seattle. 

Of course there’s a website and a Facebook page working to drum up support for the measure. 

And there’s a larger ban in the works--Oregon legislators will make an effort to enact the first statewide ban.

About 40 US communities have taken similar action.  Has yours?

 

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The problem with facts

Here’s the problem with facts: if they don’t match the reality we already believe, we discount them.  Worse than that, they cause us to become more entrenched in our factually-mistaken positions.

Okay, the problem isn’t really facts, it’s our brains. So say studies quoted in “How facts backfire” in Boston.com. The article reports that “In a series of studies in 2005 and 2006, researchers at the University of Michigan found that when misinformed people, particularly political partisans, were exposed to corrected facts in news stories, they rarely changed their minds. In fact, they often became even more strongly set in their beliefs. Facts, they found, were not curing misinformation. Like an underpowered antibiotic, facts could actually make misinformation even stronger.”

The article points out that this bodes ill for our democracy, especially in this this era of loud pundits who spew personal opinions as objective truth.  As one of the article’s commentators stated, “...this explains a lot.”

 

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From office memo to toilet paper

 

Finally! The machine we’ve all been waiting for: one that turns office paper into toilet paper.

It’s no joke--it’s a real device, named White Goat, which shreds your confidential documents, mixes them with water, and a half-hour later produces a roll of toilet paper.  

The manufacturer, Oriental Company, reports that each toilet paper roll requires 40 sheets of A4 paper, and that the machine will save 60 cedar trees annually.  With a hefty price tag of $100,000, the White Goat may not be the next big fad--but you have to admire Oriental for innovation.

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BP spill in perspective

If you don’t live in the Gulf, it might be difficult for you to picture the size of the BP oil disaster.  Ifitwasmyhome.com has figured out a way to bring perspective closer to home....your home.

You can move the spill to any location in the world by typing in the name of the town, state (if applicable), and country, and see that place become equivalent to the Deepwater Horizon site.  

* If you live in Phoenix, you’ll find that that the spill would extend north to Flagstaff and west nearly to Yuma.

* If you live in Providence, the oil would ooze past Connecticut and Massachusetts, into New York state, and north into New Hampshire.

* If you live in Portland, Oregon, the spill would extend north to Tacoma, west into the Pacific and east well past Yakima.

Since the spill continues to spread, the site is updated regularly.  

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BP & Environmentalists

Regardless of where you stand on the political spectrum, this recent article on Politico is likely to give you pause: “Enviros give Obama a pass on spill.”

Whether you are inclined to favor national environmental groups or oppose their work, you'll want to check it out. The article states “Several analysts said the low profile of the large environmental groups since the disaster is due in large part to uncertainty about the impact of the spill on the strategy for passing pending climate legislation. Environmental groups are leery of alienating Obama as he weighs how hard to push a sweeping cap-and-trade energy bill to rein in carbon emissions blamed for global warming.

Obama implicitly blessed a drilling-for-climate-votes swap back in March when he announced plans to open additional areas in the Gulf, along the Atlantic coast, and in Alaska for offshore drilling leases. Most environmental groups publicly opposed that move, but some accepted the White House’s analysis that allowing more drilling was the best way to win the Republican support needed to pass a climate change bill this year.

‘Obama made his ... pledge to lift the offshore drilling ban because he was trying to rustle up votes for Kerry-Lieberman, and that’s what most of the environmental community has been about,’ Bill McKibben, a prominent environmental writer and leader of climate change group 350.org, said this week.”

Huffington Post takes this complaint a step further in its article “Why the Sierra Club No Longer Deserves your Trust.”  

What do you think?  Are national environmental groups weighing the odds and making smart choices? Do you think subsidies from BP render some groups impotent?

To discuss environmental groups response to the oil spill, click on the “Comment” link below. 

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Maya Lin does it again

 

If you are old enough, you remember the initial controversy over designer Maya Lin’s Vietnam Memorial, which was railed against as an insult to veterans of that war. Today, the memorial is recognized as a powerful symbol of loss and a place of healing. 

If you haven’t seen the project Maya Lin calls her “last memorial,” you owe it to yourself to visit www.WhatIsMissing.net. The interactive website memorializes extinct and vanishing species and is one facet of the larger memorial which also includes sculpture, video, sound and hand-held electronics.  

Be impressed by Maya Lin again: www.WhatIsMissing.net 

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Oil--have we had enough yet?

 

Quick, what do these two Gulfs--Persian Gulf and Gulf of Mexico--have in common?  That’s right, oil.  And a new ad by VoteVet.org is making that link. The ad features National Guardsman Evan Wolf who talks about the Guards’ work in both Gulfs, and says “Whether it’s deep-drilling oil...or spending a billion dollar a day on oil from our enemies overseas, our dependence on oil is threatening our national security.” 

The ad says a clean-energy plan would cut our dependence on oil in half, and it urges viewers to call their senators at 202-224-3121 to urge them to work toward clean energy. Do you agree with the ad? Does America need a “new mission”?

To discuss the VoteVet.org ad, click on the “Comment” link below. 

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Growing Power

 

Here’s how to grow a dream: Take a former basketball player, add soil, seeds and water.  Will Allen (who played for the Miami Hurricanes) is rapidly gaining recognition as the leading authority in “urban agriculture.”

Allen believes “If people can grow safe, healthy, affordable food, if they have access to land and clean water, this is transformative on every level in a community.  I believe we cannot have healthy communities without a healthy food system.”

His organization, Growing Power, is dedicated to helping people--including city dwellers--grow their own food.  Growing Power provides hands-on training and introduces people to the concept of “Community Food Systems” that “help people grow, process, market and distribute food in a sustainable manner.” The group currently has farm sites in Wisconsin and Illinois, but they believe their ideas can easily spread.

Growing Power states as its goal: “to grow food, to grow minds, and to grow community.  Growing Power began with a farmer, a plot of land, and a core group of dedicated young people.  Today, our love of the land and our dedication to sharing knowledge is changing lives.”  

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How do we rank?

 

The CIA knows lots of stuff.  Check out their website, and one of the interesting pages you’ll come across is one that ranks nations by the inequality of family incomes.  In this ranking system, the more nearly equal a country’s income distribution, the lower it’s index number.  (You probably won’t be surprised to learn that no nation achieves a 0, which would represent an equal distribution of wealth.)  The higher a nation’s designated number, the more unequal its wealth distribution among its citizens.  The highest ranked nations log 70 or in the 60s, and the top 6 of these nations are located in Africa.

And where is the U.S.?  Out of 134 nations, with Namibia claiming #1 spot with an inequality rating of 70.7, and Sweden claiming #134 with a rating of 23.0, the United States stands at #42, with 45.0.  Which puts us between Cameroon and Uruguay. 

The website’s World Factbook offers lots of data and interesting comparisons in its Guide to Country Comparisons, where you can click on a variety of topics under each of these headings: Geography, People, Economy, Communications, Transportation, and Military.

The CIA knows a lot, and is willing to share the data--or at least some of it.

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