Thursday, June 16, 2005

Downing Street Minutes Hearing (John Conyers) on C-Span 3

The Downing Street Minutes Hearing, initiated by John Conyers, is currently airing on C-Span 3. Powerful stuff. If you don't have cable, you can also watch the hearings online here. So far, we have seen testimony from ambassador Joseph Wilson, Cindy Sheehan of the Goldstar families for Peace, Ray McGovern, a Former CIA Analyst, and some stunning testimony from John Bonifaz, the author of Warrior King: The Case for Impeachment of George W. Bush and administrator of www.afterdowningstreet.org.

Bonifaz has introduced a strong case for the impeachment of the president based on the unconstitutionality of the administration's action of declaring war on a sovereign nation based upon a lie. In presenting false information to congress and to the American People, the president committed a treasonous act, and there is strong precedence for impeachment based on these actions. Bonifaz presented statements from of the founding fathers of our nation and many historical figures on the basis for impeachment. One basis for the case if the False Statements of Accountability Act in 1996. The basis of impeachment comes down to abuse of power and serious misconduct on the part of the president.

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The End Of Oil

In the prologue to Paul Robert's book, The End of Oil, he discusses a contention he coined "Energy Illiteracy", where the "average" American consumer seems to know less and care less about how much energy he or she uses, where it comes from, or what its true costs are.

We are now in an age where a general knowledge and understanding of the issues involved in energy policy and international foreign relationships is of utmost importance. The United States is the largest consumer of energy by a vast margin. As the so-called leaders of the free world, this nation must act now to disrupt the impending global energy crisis, and minimize the damage caused by global warming.

Today's politicians are busy discussing the need to minimize our dependence on "Foreign Oil". This is a short-sited viewpoint that is only part of the solution. Yes, we need to minimize our dependence on foreign oil, but truth of the matter is that we need to minimize our dependence on all fossil fuels, not just "Foreign Oil". The United States, at one time the world's larest producer of oil, long ago reached its own peak oil production. Way back in 1946, America began consuming more oil than it produced.

The calls to drill for oil in ANWR are foolish. On a website for the Department of the Interior, they brag that ANWR Oil Reserves are Greater than Any State, stating that the site could produce about 1.4 million barrels per day. This might sound impressive, until you realize the, as a global economy, we are using 92 million barrels of oil per day, and that the level of production in ANWR could only be kept up for about 15 years. Here's a quote from about.com:

The U.S. Geological Study (USGS) concluded that, given America's current rate of consumption, ANWR would in all likelihood hold a 180-day (6-month) supply of oil.3 The bottom line is that it is time for the U.S. to stop thinking it can drill its way to energy independence with only 3 percent of the world's oil reserves

On a global scale, drilling for oil in ANWR does very little, if anything at all, to reduce our dependence on foreign oil. It is simply a fifteen-year supply of oil that stalls the climbing high costs of gas at the pump, serving as a buffer to temporarily alleviate any disruptions in the global oil supply.

"The End of Oil" is an excellent book which I wholeheartedly recommend. This book presents a balanced viewpoint on the issues of oil and energy policy. I strongly feel that, as members of the largest global consumer of energy, it is our duty to be informed about the issues of dependency on fossil fuels and energy policy. I strongly feel that this is the most important issue facing our country and our world today.

The key issue we need to understand in the fight to develop a renewable energy economy is the issue of cost. Whenever the discussion of encouraging renewable energy development in the United States enters the political arena, the primary complaint against renewable energies is the high costs compared to conventional energy sources, such as coal, gas, and oil. This is a false notion - Of course, on a per-watt basis, it is economically cheaper for an energy corporation to build a conventional coal-fired energy plant than it is to develop a modern computer-driven wind farm or solar-driven power plant. The issue is that the economic cost is only a small part of the total cost picture -- The true cost of developing a conventional, coal-fired or oil-fired power plant is much, much higher.

In the case of coal-fired power plants, the cost must include the environmental devastation caused by fine-particulate air pollution, sulfur-dioxide emissions, and acid rain, the high medical costs due to lung cancer, heart disease. The true cost also includes the carbon dioxide emissions produced by these power plants -Carbon Dioxide emissions that are leading directly to the global warming crisis - one that may eventually destroy our planet if we do not act now.

Politicians have known about the problems with coal-fired power plants for a long time. The Clean Air Act and the New Source Review amendment of 1977 attempted to address some of these issues. The Clean Air Act intended to require all new coal plants to install emissions controls technology, to help reduce the levels of sulfur-dioxide emissions and pollutants into the atmosphere. In an effort to minimize the sudden economic costs to the coal industry, they put in a grandfathering clause that allowed plants already in existence to continue operating without emissions controls as long as they did not undergo significant renovations.

The Bush Administration has gutted out and refused to enforce many of the regulations required by the Clean Air Act and New Source Review. Could this have anything to do with the fact that the Coal Industry provided the Bush Administration with $3.8 million dollars in political campaign contributions during the 2000 election cycle, and an additional $1.5 million dollars to the 2004 election campaign? The truth is that the Bush Administration is the most anachronistic, environmentally unfriendly, and scientifically unsound administration in history, routinely responsible for gutting out environmental regulations wherever possible. If you don't believe me, take a good look at Bush's environmental record - from the Clear Skies Initiative, to the Healthy Forests initiative, the Roadless Rule, drilling for oil in ANWR, the refusal to recognize global warming as a major threat, and the refusal to sign the Kyoto Accord. If you want to learn more about Bush's environmental record, I recommend taking a look at Bush Versus the Environment.

Now, lets address the issue of oil production and consumption. Americans, in large part, love to complain about the high costs of gasoline at the pump, which are currently hovering around $2.00 per gallon. This number hardly represents the true costs of oil. A quote from Noam Chomsky's Profit Over People:

The "Golden age" of postwar development relied on cheap and abundant oil, kept that way largely by threat or use of force. So matters continue. A large part of the Pentagon budget is devoted to keeping Middle East oil prices within a range that the United States and its energy companies consider appropriate. I know of only one technical study of the topic: it concluded that Pentagon expenditures amount to a subsidy of 30 percent of the market price of oil, demonstrating that "the current view that fossil fuels are inexpensive is a complete fiction", the author concludes. (Profit Over People, Chomsky, p. 31)

This book was written in 1999, well before the Iraqi War. You can argue all you want about it, but the true motivation for invading Iraq was to stabilize the global supply of oil, in order to minimize the chances of another 1970's Arab Oil Embargo, at least for as long as possible. The Iraq War budget is already at $350 billion dollars, with average U.S. household already having contributed $1,600 to the Iraqi War Effort. The United States currently allocates about $400 billion per year to the national defense budget.

If you had a choice, would you have really chosen to contribute $1,600 to an effort to stabilize the costs of a limited energy resource, the use of which is contributing daily to the destruction of our planet?

Lets get back to the issue of costs. Why should the general public have to pay the burdensome costs of pollution, health problems, and global warming imposed by the coal industry, while the coal industry rakes in the profits, while only paying for the production costs of coal? The reality is that pollution, health care costs, and global warming are external costs to the coal industry. This is a limitation of the free market economy that must be addresses if we are to proceed with the development of a renewable energy economy.

The renewable energies economy cannot compete on a level playing field until coal, gas, and oil economies are required to "internalize" the costs of continued reliance on fossil fuels. This change will definitely not happen with the current neoconservative administration, and I have a hard time believing this would happen under the control of the current democratic party.

What we need is a massive push for public education on the issues involved in developing a new renewable energies economy. Let's get back the book I recently read - The End of Oil, by Paul Roberts. While the viewpoint presented in this book is balanced, it is not without flaws.

In one portion of the book, Roberts discusses the introduction of a carbon tax. This a great idea -- The primary cause of global warming is carbon dioxide emissions. The true cost of relying on fossil fuels needs to include the costs to our environment caused by carbon dioxide emissions. One way to address this is the introduction of a carbon emissions tax. For each ton of carbon dioxide emissions produced by a corporation, require them to pay a flat tax. In order to minimize the immediate impact to the energy industries and the economy, make this a progressively increasing tax, with an increasing per ton surcharge put into affect each year. This progressively increasing tax would give the coal and oil industries time to adapt - as the internalized cost of carbon-based energy production increases each year, the costs of renewable energies (primarily wind and solar) will become relatively cheaper, encouraging the energy industry to adapt a more environmentally-friendly energy infrastructure.

Where Roberts goes wrong is that immediately after introducing the carbon-based tax approach, he suggests that a cap-and-trade solution would be a better idea. Cap-and-trade is a Nobel idea - the idea is that we simply need to minimize our global production of carbon dioxide emissions. Roberts states that a cap-and-trade system would be better, but simply provides no explanation or backup evidence as to why such a system should be favored over a flat carbon-based tax. A flat carbon-based tax, to me at least, appears to be a fairer, more straightforward solution to the situation - requiring all corporations to do their part to save our environment -- not allowing them to avoid cleaning up their plants simply by surrendering a share of their ill-gotten profits.

Another issue I take with Roberts is his continual insistence that the development of a sound renewable energy policy is not a moral issue. In several places in the book, Roberts insists that energy policy is not a moral issue, but I argue that it is. Let's review what we know: To do nothing - to simply accept the status quo is to ignore reality and to push off the development of a renewable energy infrastructure to future generations - it is to pass off the problems generated by our generation onto our children -- in short -- to do nothing is to act without responsibility. How is this not a moral issue?

Our nation's leadership is the most irresponsible of all. By accepting bribes from the coal, gas, oil and timber industries, our leader, George W. Bush, is passing off all of the responsibilities of maintaining a sound environmental energy policy off to a future generation, who will be much less equipped to deal with the issues.

Currently, we have the knowledge and infrastructure necessary to move forward in a positive direction. The first step is educating the public on the issues involved. Politicians are loathe to discuss the issue, and our mass media is simply to lazy and irresponsible to properly address the issue. Why are politicians so unwilling to properly address the issue? Party because of the energy industry lobbyists who would surely cry fowl if any politicians were to do so. But the American public is also to blame - We are so unwilling to even listen to the message - We are consuming way too much energy - we have become accustomed to a lavish, high energy-expenditure lifestyle that will soon come to an end - not in our generation, but in our children's generation.

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Wednesday, June 15, 2005

Hypocrisy in Motion

The series of events that have unfolded over the past few weeks has left me standing dumb-founded, wondering when the madness will ever end. I simply cannot believe that the American public has been unable to see through the absurdity of the Bush administration and the neoconservative movement.

Let's start by examining the lambasting of Newsweek over the publication of the Koran abuses story. Scott McClellan and the Bush Adminstration had the audacity to blame the violence and anti-American protests in the middle east on Newsweek -- Fox News was all over the story - carrying on the role of official Bush Administration's propaganda machine - with quotes like this:

"You can't go back and undo or retract the damage that has been caused not only to this nation, but to those who have been attacked, injured or killed as a result of these false allegations," he ( Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman) said.

"It's puzzling. While Newsweek now acknowledges that they got the facts wrong, they refuse to retract the story," press secretary Scott McClellan said. "I think there's a certain journalistic standard that should be met. In this instance it was not."

"Newsweek has apologized and retracted the story, but retraction and regrets will not atone for the reckless behavior of an irresponsible reporter and an overzealous publication," read Pryce's statement. "How many more lives have to be sacrificed until credibility can be returned to our newsrooms?"

"I do think it's done a lot of harm," Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice (search) told reporters on her way home from Iraq on Monday. "Of course, 16 people died but it's also done a lot of harm to America's efforts" to rehabilitate its reputation in the world.

Rep. Bob Ney, R-Ohio, chairman of the House Administration Committee, said Monday that "Newsweek's behavior is not merely unfortunate, it is criminal."

The preceding quotes were courtesy of Fox News (Newsweek Retracts Koran-Desecration Story and Questions Remain after Newsweek Admission)

A few days later, on a Friday afternoon, just before a long holiday weekend, the Pentagon released a statement stating that there have indeed been five cases of confirmed Koran abuse. So, it turns out that Newsweek was (pretty much) correct all along (Technically, the Korans were not flushed down a toilet, but there was one case where a Koran was accidently urinated upon through a vent) Guess we should expect an apology from the Bush Administration. How about some coverage of the story from Fox News? Yeah right...

This was the Republican Noise Machine in full force. Newsweek stepped out and published dissenting opinion, and was punished for it. Finally relenting to the full-on pressure of the republican attack machine, Newsweek retracted the story and vowed not to rely on single anonymous sources -- this was just one case in a series of defeats that the public has suffered in a long term, wide scale assault on the independent media from the Republican Attack Machine.

Exhibit B - Bill Moyers and PBS. The neocons have been at it again -- attacking PBS and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting for their supposed "liberal bias". PBS and CPB represent the last bastion of hope for uninfluenced, independent, non-corporate-sponsored thought. Even NPR has been influenced by the constant insinuations of liberal bias - I don't have a reference, but a study of the 2004 election coverage by NPR showed that they relied on conservative political commentators much more often than liberal political commentators.

If you didn't get a chance to listen to Bill Moyer's closing address at the National Conference on Media Reform in St. Louis, Missouri last month, check it out here. This speech is a must read/listen. The truth of the matter is that all of the major networks represent either outright propaganda (Fox News), or at least a corporate-censored view the news. We are on the verge of living in Orwell's 1984 -- The media has become simply a mouthpiece of the neoconservative movement. We are in an age where the truth no longer seems to matter. Here's a short article on Bush Doublespeak (A term coined in the novel 1984)

Finally, lets take a quick look at the Downing Street Memo. I've been meaning to write this blog entry for about a month. I can't believe that it has taken almost a full month for the media to begin picking up the background story on this document. Put the pieces together here people -- As far back as 1998, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and Pearle, along with the Project For a New American Century were busy making plans to invade Iraq. The Downing Street Memo reads clearly: "Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam through military action justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy." Get that? All along, the Bush Administration has wanted to take out Saddam's regime in an attempt to stabilize the middle east (Read: Stabilize global oil production to guarantee a healthy US economy)

This is the smoking gun. The Bush Administration lied to the people of the United States in order to justify the attack on a foreign nation. They knew that they intelligence they had wasn't enough to justify going to war. They had no interest in a diplomatic solution - Military action was now seen as inevitable. This memo leaked out, and, after almost a month there was barely a flicker on the radar of US news coverage. This is outrageous!

Thankfully, we have rep. John Conyers to help us stand up to the mendacity and duplicitousness of the Bush Administration. The Los Angeles Times is running a story on the Downing Street Memo. The Conyers hearing will air on C-Span3 at 2:30 PM on Thursday, June 16th.

Now, check out this quote: "F___ Saddam. we're taking him out", from the mouth of George W. Bush, at the top of the CNN article, in a March 2002 meeting. This was 2002, and the meeting was supposed to be about dealing with Iraq through the U.N. Bush wasn't listening....there was never any intention on seeking a diplomatic solution, and we now have the evidence to prove it.

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Saturday, June 04, 2005

New Location for my Songs

I've uploaded a few of my songs up to a new website, available at audiostreet.net/markheimonen. I've previously introduced two of my songs on this blog. Here is some background information on the motivation I had for writing Walk Away, a song about dependency on oil and fossil fuels. A couple days ago, I released a song for my wife called Fascinated With You. I've also uploaded a classical piano piece I wrote a couple years ago called Innovation.

I promise that I will get back to my traditional task of discussing pertinent geopolitical topics, instead of shameless self-promotion. After reading The End of Oil, Bush Vs. The Environment, Confessions of an Economic Hitman, and Profit over People, I have a renewed perspective on the topics of energy policy and foreign policy, the delectate interdependency between the two, and a renewed commitment to doing everything I can to promote awareness and foster conditions for change. I believe that reforming our energy policy is the most important issue facing our nation today.

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Wednesday, June 01, 2005

New Song - Fascinated With You

I wrote a new song for my wife, Andrea. It was our one year wedding anniversary this weekend, and I wanted to surprise her with something unique. The song is called, "Fascinated with You", and is available on my myspace profile at http://www.myspace.com/markheimonen. Andrea started her own blog fairly recently at http://knitbutterflies.blogspot.com/.

Fascinated With You

I Hope that I can someday make you realize
This beating in my heart
The emotion and desire I have for you
My words and my actions can never begin to approach
the infinite love I have -
The never-ending forever love I have for you

We've had our share of fights and angry words
Some that were all too real -
There were words that hung in the air
Hoping we learn from our mistakes in the past
Realize what we have
The never-ending forever love I have for you

We need to recognize the wonderful love that we have
no need to compromise - Just remember the time that we've shared
A love that's faithful and true -
I'll always be by your side
And nothing can take the away

I am fascinated with you
Captivated by you
Forever and always - completely in love you with
I'm so fascinated by you
Intoxicated with you
Forever and always - Always in love with you

Today is our one year anniversary
The time passes by so quick
Each day passing by is a brand new memory
Another page in the scrapbook of life
As we turn each page together
just remember what we have
the never-ending, forever love I have with you

As I think about our future plans -
A smile upon my face
So many hopes and dreams and choices
Opportunities not to waste
I feel so lucky spending time with you -
Can't even tell you how I feel
The never-ending forever love I have with you

We need to recognize the wonderful love that we have
no need to compromise - Just remember the time that we've shared
A love that's faithful and true -
I'll always be by your side
And nothing can take the away

I am fascinated with you
Captivated by you
Forever and always - completely in love you with
I'm so fascinated by you
Intoxicated with you
Forever and always - Always in love with you

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