Three Empty Seats

True Confessions

2011-12-28T09:58:00.000-08:00

Confessions of a recovering engineer

BY CHARLES MAROHN

22 NOV 2010 5:26 PM

Cross-posted from Strong Towns.
After graduating from college with a civil engineering degree, I found myself working in my home town for a local engineering firm doing mostly municipal engineering (roads, sewer pipe, water pipe, stormwater). A fair percentage of my time was spent convincing people that, when it came to their road, I knew more than they did.
And of course I should know more. First, I had a technical degree from a top university. Second, I was in a path towards getting a state license (at the time I was an engineer in training, the four-year "apprenticeship" required to become a fully licensed professional engineer), which required me to pass a pretty tough test just to get started and another, more difficult, exam to conclude. Third, I was in a profession that is one of the oldest and most respected in human history, responsible for some of the greatest achievements of mankind. Fourth -- and most important -- I had books and books of standards to follow.
A book of standards to an engineer is better than a bible to a priest. All you have to do is to rely on the standards. Back in college I was told a story about how, in WWII, some Jewish engineers in hiding had run thousands of tedious tests on asphalt, just to produce these graphs that we still use today. Some of our craft descends from Roman engineers who did all of this a couple of millennia ago. How could I be wrong with literally thousands of years of professional practice on my side?
And, more to the point, what business would I -- let alone a property owner on a project I was working on -- have in questioning the way things were done? Of course the people who wrote the standards knew better than we did. That is why they wrote the standard.
When people would tell me that they did not want a wider street, I would tell them that they had to have it for safety reasons.
When they answered that a wider street would make people drive faster and that would be seem to be less safe, especially in front of their house where their kids were playing, I would confidently tell them that the wider road was more safe, especially when combined with the other safety enhancements the standards called for.
When people objected to those other "enhancements", like removing all of the trees near the road, I told them that for safety reasons we needed to improve the sight distances and ensure that the recovery zone was free of obstacles.
When they pointed out that the "recovery zone" was also their "yard" and that their kids played kickball and hopscotch there, I recommended that they put up a fence, so long as the fence was outside of the right-of-way.
When they objected to the cost of the wider, faster, treeless road that would turn their peaceful front yard into the viewing area for a drag strip unless they built a concrete barricade along their front property line, I informed them that progress was sometimes expensive, but these standards have been shown to work across the state, the country, and the world, and I could not compromise with their safety.
In retrospect I understand that this was utter insanity. Wider, faster, treeless roads not only ruin our public places, they kill people. Taking highway standards and applying them to urban and suburban streets, and even county roads, costs us thousands of lives every year. There is no earthly reason why an engineer would ever design a 14-foot lane for a city block, yet we do it continually. Why?
The answer is utterly shameful: Because that is the standard.
In the engineering profession's version of defensive medicine, we can't recommend standards that are not in the manual. We can't use logic to vary from a standard that gives us 60 mph design speeds on roads with intersections every 200 feet. We can't question why two cars would need to travel at high speed in opposite directions on a city block, let alone why we would want them to. We can yield to public pressure and post a speed limit -- itself a hazard -- but we can't recommend a road section that is not in the highway manual.
When the public and politicians tell engineers that their top priorities are safety and then cost, the engineer's brain hears something completely different. The engineer hears, "Once you set a design speed and handle the projected volume of traffic, safety is the top priority. Do what it takes to make the road safe, but do it as cheaply as you can." This is why engineers return projects with asinine "safety" features, like pedestrian bridges and tunnels that nobody will ever use, and costs that are astronomical.
An engineer designing a street or road prioritizes the world in this way, no matter how they are instructed:
1. Traffic speed
2. Traffic volume
3. Safety
4. Cost
The rest of the world generally would prioritize things differently, as follows:
1. Safety
2. Cost
3. Traffic volume
4. Traffic speed
In other words, the engineer first assumes that all traffic must travel at speed. Given that speed, all roads and streets are then designed to handle a projected volume. Once those parameters are set, only then does an engineer look at mitigating for safety and, finally, how to reduce the overall cost (which at that point is nearly always ridiculously expensive).
In America, it is this thinking that has designed most of our built environment, and it is nonsensical. In many ways, it is professional malpractice. If we delivered what society asked us for, we would build our local roads and streets to be safe above all else. Only then would we consider what could be done, given our budget, to handle a higher volume of cars at greater speeds.
We go to enormous expense to save ourselves small increments of driving time. This would be delusional in and of itself if it were not also making our roads and streets much less safe. I'll again reference a 2005 article from the APA Journal showing how narrower, slower streets dramatically reduce accidents, especially fatalities.
And it is that simple observation that all of those supposedly "ignorant" property owners were trying to explain to me, the engineer with all the standards, so many years ago. When you can't let your kids play in the yard, let alone ride their bike to the store, because you know the street is dangerous, then the engineering profession is not providing society any real value. It's time to stand up and demand a change.
It's time we demand that engineers build us Strong Towns.

Yarn-baughmed

2011-12-22T10:09:00.000-08:00

via boingboing.net

Just like now, only better!

2011-10-13T18:39:00.000-07:00

So I had the misfortunate good fortune to attend the city’s dog and pony show of sub-political suasion and careerist bluster-- the firing up of a mystery theatre of deliberate delusion, a mighty wind of feel good messaging salted with reassuring moments -- “Don’t worry, the future will be pretty much the same as it is now, only better!”

We gather together inside a capitalist space, curiously orange, temporarily removed from the buying and selling of human lives which usually goes on inside such rooms. It is almost homey, in a minimalist and industrial fashion, an ikea meets danzig aesthetic--if mom were to appear, she’d be in an frilled orange apron and shitkicker leather boots with lots of metal studs. I’d guess the real business of fleecing the sheep happens in the back rooms. Ignore the screaming, please.

I sit and listen and listen some more, and wonder. Everyone seems to be ignoring the herd of elephants, asking polite and predictable questions. A hundred and a half questions fly through my mind, most unanswerable, and many, it would seem, unaskable.

With gold cufflinks and a reverend smile, a steady-on demeanor, a paced and practiced4 delivery, our man positively glitters in the promise of the future, so bright I had to wear shades.

“More of the same, only better!” I heard our man say. “Cleaner, greener, new and improved, “ he recited. “We can shop our way to consumer nirvana, forever munching away at the banquet of goods and services, forever sprawling to the five corners of the earth; all of nature bows to our will, we are the masters of the universe, never to be defeated.”

More plastic toys to fill our primate cages.

“More,” he shouted. “More,” the crowd intoned in unison.

Okay, it might not have gone exactly like that, but the subtext was inescapable.

The house is on fire and we argue where to place the sofa.

Park(ing) Day

2011-09-15T18:59:00.001-07:00

PARK(ing) Day: Reclaiming Our Streets from Our Cars
by Yves Engler and Bianca Mugyenyi
On Friday activists and artists will be celebrating PARK(ing) Day in hundreds of cities around the world.

Begun in San Francisco six years ago the aim of the annual event is “to temporarily transform metered parking spaces into “‘PARK(ing)’ spaces: temporary public places.” Organizers generally add benches or fake grass to pieces of public property usually taken up by a private car. Some are more adventurous, filling spots with ping-pong tables, basketball hoops or even a knitted garden in a PARK.

Incredibly, PARK(ing) Day participants often find themselves contravening the law, even when they fill the meter. In many cities only a motorized vehicle is allowed to occupy a parking space unless the city has granted a special permit.

PARK(ing) Day successfully draws attention to a topic that receives little in the way of social commentary. Beyond the seemingly endless quest for an empty spot, parking is rarely discussed, yet it shapes urban environments. Parked 95 percent of the time, personal cars require a huge amount of storage space and whether on the exurban fringe or downtown, parking blight is a plague upon the land.

“Perhaps nothing has made American cities less memorable,” write John Jakle and Keith Sculle in Lots of Parking. “Parking lots have eaten away cities in the United States like moths devouring a lace wedding gown,” chimes in Mark Childs. History reinforces his vivid imagery. In the first half of the century, many charming centers were stripped of their character as historic buildings were razed to make way for surface parking. In 1910, for instance, Detroit’s Cadillac Square met its end and became a giant parking lot. “All across the United States,” write Jakle and Sculle, “especially in county seat towns with court house squares, public space was systematically diverted to parking, thus eroding traditional open space in favor of auto storage.”

No great city has an abundance of parking. At least, that was the conclusion of Better Neighborhoods, a study by the San Francisco planning department, which described places like Joe DiMaggio’s childhood neighborhood of North Beach as a dying breed: “If we had to rebuild a place like North Beach under today’s [government imposed] parking requirements, as much as a third of the space where people live would be given up for parking. We would lose much of the street-life — the shops and cafes, the vendors and the stoops — that make areas like North Beach vibrant and interesting. We don’t build places like these today because we require so much parking. There are plenty of examples of the kinds of buildings our parking requirements result in. We just need to imagine a city composed entirely of these buildings, and ask ourselves if this is the kind of city we want in the future.”

Contrary to orthodox planning, great streets do well without “enough” parking. In the vibrant central district of Carmel, California for instance, off-street parking is prohibited. Similarly, Boston, New York and San Francisco limit parking downtown (though they require it everywhere else).

In 1923, Columbus, Ohio, became the first city to make off-street parking mandatory for all new apartment buildings. Twenty-five years later, 185 cities had introduced parking requirements for land uses ranging from hospitals and theatres to office buildings and houses. “By 1960,” Jakle and Sculle explain, “nearly every large American city included parking requirements in its zoning program not just for tall buildings but for all buildings.” Even Houston — a city without zoning — requires off-street parking for every imaginable land use (restaurants, shops, apartments and more).

In many counties, five parking spaces — about 1,500 square feet — are required for every 1,000 square feet of shop or restaurant floor space. In one especially arduous stipulation, Montgomery County, Maryland, required funeral parlors to provide 83 parking spaces (24,900 square feet) per 1,000 square feet of floor area. Perhaps that explains the high cost of dying.

Divorce Your Car author Katie Alvord reflects upon the priorities of a California city that required 2.8 public library books per thousand residents and 2.2 parking spaces for every housing unit; a 4,000 unit development with an average of 2.7 people per unit would need 30 new library books and 8,800 parking spaces (2,640,000 square feet). This could be why more people seem to know the make and model of a car than the capital of the neighboring state.

Unlike most zoning ordinances that simply prohibit something, parking requirements are proscriptive: They tell developers exactly what to do. No city bans the construction of apartments with one bedroom or bathroom. Many, however, ban the construction of apartments with only one parking spot. Converting buildings to different uses is difficult in places with supercharged parking requirements. In many cities, a new business simply cannot move into a building that formerly housed an operation with lower parking requirements without adding more spaces (or obtaining a variance).

Extensive parking requirements have reduced many architects to designing buildings around parking laws. “Form follows parking requirements,” laments parking guru, Donald Shoup. This was already the case in 1948 Los Angeles, when the Journal of American Institute of Planners noted that, “in many cases, the number of garage spaces actually control the number of dwelling units which could be accommodated on a lot.”

Since all units, irrespective of size, are generally required to have a parking spot, apartments have become larger and more expensive. The financial and logistical burden created by parking requirements restricts the rooming supply. “Zoning requires a home for every car, but ignores homeless people,” writes Shoup. “By increasing the cost of housing, parking requirements make the real homelessness problem even worse.”

Mandatory parking is almost always “free” (the law sometimes stipulates that it must be). In Los Angeles, for example, commercial and office spaces must provide at least three free parking spaces for every 1,000 square feet. Even when zoning laws don’t mandate free parking, the saturated “market” creates an expectation that parking will be free. Would there be any need for parking requirements if people were willing to pay? Wouldn’t profit-oriented businesses sell as much parking as they could charge for? Yet, drivers park free for 99 percent of all car trips. “It is no doubt ironic,” quipped German auto historian, Wolfgang Zuckermann, “that the motorcar, superstar of the capitalist system, expects to live rent-free.”

The push for subsidized parking began in the 1910s and 20s. Cities across the USA began devoting tens of millions of dollars to widen streets and cut down trees to increase parking space. Today it’s hard to find a street without space for curb parking, which Shoup argues, “may be the most costly subsidy Americans cities provide for most of their citizens.”

The cost of “free” parking is almost always hidden. Be it at Wal-Mart, McDonalds or a hospital, the free parking that lurks in the backyard of almost all private enterprise is buried in product prices. “Seemingly, everyone but the motorist pays for parking,” lament Jakle and Sculle. The cost of “free” parking is astronomical. In 2002, for instance, the total subsidy for off-street parking in the USA was between $127 billion and $374 billion. Shoup argues that, “The cost of all parking spaces in the U.S. exceeds the value of all cars and may even exceed the value of all roads.”

The financial and social costs of automobile storage are enormous. PARK(ing) Day helps shine a spotlight on this little discussed topic.

To participate go to parkingday.org

hmmm

2011-07-15T13:06:00.000-07:00

We don’t normally report on vehicle crashes here on the Capitol Hill blog, but this was so outrageous we couldn’t help ourselves.

A 30-year-old woman in Marietta, Georgia was convicted of vehicular homicide this week – and she wasn’t even driving a car. The woman was crossing the street with her three children when a driver, who had been drinking, hit and killed her four-year-old. The driver, Jerry Guy, was initially charged with “hit and run, first degree homicide by vehicle and cruelty to children,” Elise Hitchcock of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported. “Charges were later dropped to just the hit and run charge.”

The man has previously been convicted of two hit-and-runs – on the same day, in 1997, one of them on the same road where he killed Raquel Nelson’s son.

Guy will serve six months for killing the boy, but Nelson will serve up to 36 months – just for crossing the street with her child. Yes, it’s true: they were not in a crosswalk. Are there any crosswalks on that street at all?

Hitchcock at the AJC says:

The conviction does not sit well with Sally Flocks, president and CEO of PEDS, a pedestrian advocacy organization.

“Invest the money in safe crossings,” Flocks said. “For the costs of the trial yesterday, they could have made a safe crossing. But they don’t want to do that.”

The Atlanta-Sandy-Springs-Marietta, Georgia metro area ranks 11th in the country for most dangerous streets for pedestrians, according to Transportation for America’s recent report on pedestrian safety and street design. The region had nearly 800 pedestrian deaths between 2000 and 2009.

Despite the fact that Atlanta-area municipalities continue to build roads, like the one where Nelson’s son was killed, with inadequate pedestrian crossings and sidewalks, and despite the fact that the federal government continues to vastly underfund pedestrian safety infrastructure on federally-funded roads and highways, the courts have pointed the finger at Nelson, blaming her for the death of her son on a road that was designed with no regard for pedestrian safety.

via streetsblog http://dc.streetsblog.org/2011/07/14/mother-convicted-of-vehicular-homicide-for-crossing-street-with-children/

+++UPDATE+++
28 JULY

A Georgia mother who faced a longer prison sentence than the drunk driver who killed her son has avoided time behind bars, following a public outcry. An all-white jury had convicted Raquel Nelson, an African American, of homicide by vehicle and of jaywalking. Nelson’s son, A.J., was killed as the family attempted to cross a busy street between a bus stop and their apartment complex. There were no crosswalks nearby. After facing three years in prison, Nelson has been ordered to serve one year’s probation and carry out 40 hours of community service. The driver who struck and killed A.J. — a partially blind man who admitted to drinking and using painkillers the day of the accident — served six months and is currently on probation. An online petition demanding leniency for Nelson prior to her sentencing gathered more than 125,000 supporters.

via democracynow.org

Life in Louisiana, and on Earth, Struggles to Survive

2011-04-20T11:33:00.003-07:00

Published on Wednesday, April 20, 2011 by New. Clear. Vision.
Life in Louisiana, and on Earth, Struggles to Survive
by John Clark

On this anniversary of the largest accidental marine oil spill in history, attention here in south Louisiana is focused on the consequences of that traumatic event. As the Deepwater Horizon disaster begins to recede into history, we have heard wildly divergent views of what its effects have been for our region.

On the one hand, we hear optimistic statements about the almost complete recovery of the Gulf. On the other, we hear troubling reports of what still lies beneath the surface, and of possible long-term ecological damage that can only be assessed after much careful scientific study. Meanwhile, tourist agencies and public officials urge us to relax, take a swim, and eat some seafood.

I suggest that in assessing the real costs of oil, we take a larger view of the matter. What are its costs over the long term for this region, for humanity, and for the whole planet?

My family came to New Orleans almost three hundred years ago. Over the centuries that we have been here, we have lived in a culture that has been shaped by the bodies of water that surround us: by the Gulf, the lakes, the bayous, the wetlands, and by the great river that created our landscape, the very ground on which we stand.

We might reflect for a moment on our local and regional history over that period, and on a much larger history of which we are a part. If we go back a century and a half, we find a Louisiana that was rich and powerful. Its power came from an economy based on cotton, sugar cane and slavery. This economy brought poverty and oppression to many, but wealth and prosperity to the rulers and the more privileged. It was also an economy that was doomed to extinction.

On the eve of the Civil War, the great geographer Reclus could observe that according to the conventional wisdom of the American South, this system of production “was not only a necessary and inexorable institution, but also a moral and humane one, producing the greatest political and social advantages.” Just as the economic system based on cotton, sugar cane, and slavery was about to collapse, and the entire old society with it, there was an almost universal outcry among those who could speak and be heard that that system was inevitable and eternal, that our society depended on it, and that without it there would be catastrophe. But this system was itself the catastrophe.

Since the recent dawn of the Petroleum Age, Louisiana has produced nearly twenty billion barrels of oil, generating enormous wealth for the national and global economies. Once again, the conventional wisdom has seen the prevailing economic order as both absolutely necessary and highly advantageous. But what, in reality, have the dominant extractive and petrochemical industries, and especially oil, brought to Louisiana? We are one of the poorest states. We are one of the least educated states. We are one of the unhealthiest states. We are one of the states in which government is most abjectly subservient to industry. We are one of the states most scarred by rampant corruption. We are one of the most environmentally devastated states. And now, the oil industry has damaged coastal wetlands and Gulf ecosystems, quite possibly for a considerable period into the future, in the worst marine oil disaster in history.

But these are far from the greatest evils that have been inflicted on us by petro-tyranny. Thanks largely to the operations of the oil industry, two thousand square miles of our coastal wetlands have disappeared. Communities whose lives have been dependent on these wetlands and on the Gulf for hundreds or, in the case of indigenous people, even thousands of years, are disappearing. Finally, and most disastrously, global climate change caused by a carbon-based, and above all, a petroleum-based economy, will soon submerge coastal Louisiana entirely. Our home, our native land, will disappear forever.

We are not unique victims of such petro-terrorism. We might also ask what the oil industry has brought to humanity as a whole, and to the planet. Oil has fueled a powerful system of production, which, while creating massive amounts of material goods, has also been essential to creating the Sixth Great Mass Extinction in the three-billion-year history of life on earth. This is the great catastrophe of our age. It is, indeed, the single most important fact about life on earth at the present moment, and the single most traumatic one, which is why it is almost never mentioned in electoral campaigns, news reports, or textbooks.

Oil has also brought us global climate change that threatens to inundate not only our region, but lands where hundreds of millions of people live. It threatens to create a disaster for global agriculture, thus contributing to the possibility of a catastrophic population crash. It threatens to aggravate species and ecosystem destruction, and thus accelerate the existing biodiversity crisis. This massive climate disruption is the second greatest catastrophe of our age, one which is now much discussed, but almost never faced as if it were a real, impending reality.

If we take an only slightly larger view of history than is customary, we will realize an obvious truth. Oil will end, and it will end very soon. The petroleum economy will decline, and it will do so in this century. The Petroleum Age will have existed for only a brief moment in human history, no more than a fleeting nanosecond in earth’s history. The great question is how much social and ecological havoc it will wreak before it disappears.

The tragic irony is that we have the technological means to create abundance for all without the massive ecological devastation caused by fossil fuels (and other destructive technologies). A large part of our challenge today, on the one-year anniversary of the worst marine oil disaster in history, is to learn to assess both the costs and benefits of oil in relation to something much greater: the value of the healthy flourishing of life on earth.
New. Clear. Vision. © 2010 - 2011
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/04/20-7

Out to Sea

2011-03-22T15:52:00.000-07:00

All interconnects,

Each touches every other.

I'm thinking that out here on the left end of Terminal City it's World Water Day, another self-appointed day of reckoning for an issue more pressing than one in three sixty five can possibly accommodate. Somewhat obligingly, water leaks from the sky.

Water surrounds us on all sides here on the western peninsula, but I suppose the same can be said for everyone everywhere, if you only stretch your horizons far enough. Turtle Island, my enlightened friends say.

Water runs through our cities and towns, grand rivers are synonymous with their grand cities--we know them by name: the Seine, the Thames, the Mississippi and the muddy Fraser. Perhaps the first lesson of civilisation is 'Build near water', but not too close.

Without water, there is barren landscape and few signs of intelligent life. Yet life perseveres. Air -conditioned golf course houses to air-conditioned SUVs to air-conditioned workspaces, these creatures of comfort that inhabit this wasteland, these A/C'd hayseeds require huge inputs of energy and water, the extraction and wanton usage of one ruining the purity of the other.

I'm thinking of the hydrological cycle we all learned about in grade school. I can still picture the textbook illustration--the "happy clouds" gathered over the ocean, swept inland to drop in the shadow of the mountains. I'm considering the general westward push of the weather on this big ol' ball of water and mud, and how, far to the east, a new sun may be blooming.

I'm still thinking of the images of black oil boiling out into the bottom of the Ocean for days, weeks on end, of executive lies and government blinds and cures that may prove to be more terrible than the disease. I'm learning new terms generated from the regime of capital meeting the consequences of disaster, phrases like: "run to failure" and "meltdown chain" and hearing the unspoken behind every corp-o-rat spokesman: "protect the investment, defend the brand".

In the Gulf last year and at Fukushima today, the talking heads attempt to reassure the public as the situation rapidly deteriorates. No matter which side of the big lie they lie, the professional punditry seems to offer as a source of comfort that the latest man-made defilement was "drifting out to sea". Out of sight, out of mind.

I'm thinking "out to sea" really means the Ocean. Our Ocean. The Ocean that more than two-thirds of the world's population is connected. It is no comfort at all when the unholy gods of energy and industry still consider the Ocean to be an open sewer, a Hoover-matic that never needs its bag to be emptied.

The sky no longer sheds its purple tears and the sound of a hose running draws me from my reveries. Peering out I see our neighbour performing his ritual obligations. He proclaims it to be a great day, before commencing to slop suds upon his spotless car, his chariot of smoke and fire well watered beyond the limits of Hur's team. He soaps and rinses, waxes and vains while the dishevelled wife glares from the kitchen window. Ah, the suburban dream continues...

All so you can have cheap gas

2011-03-11T10:59:00.000-08:00

Word Games and Atrocities
via counterpunch.org
By DAVE LINDORFF

The people of Afghanistan know who was flying the two helicopter gunships that brutally hunted down and slaughtered, one by one, nine boys apparently as young as seven years old, as they gathered firewood on a hillside March 1. In angry demonstrations after the incident, they were shouting "Death to America."

Americans are still blissfully unaware that their "heroes" in uniform are guilty of this obscene massacre. The ovine US corporate media has been reporting on this story based upon a gutless press release from the Pentagon which attributes the "mistake" to "NATO" helicopters.

The thing is, this terrible incident occurred in the Pech Valley in Afghanistan's Kunar province, where US forces have for several years been battling Taliban forces, and from which region they are now in the process of withdrawing. Clearly then, it is US, and not "NATO" helicopters which have been responding to calls to attack "suspected Taliban forces."

So why can't the Pentagon say that? And if they won't say that, why won't American reporters either demand that they clearly state the nationality of whatever troops commit an atrocity, or exercise due diligence themselves and figure it out?

There is a second issue too. Most publications appear to have followed the lead of the highly compromised New York Times, and are going with the Pentagon line that the boys who were killed were aged 9-15. That's bad enough. It's hard to see how helicopter pilots with their high-resolution imaging equipment, cannot tell a 9-year-old boy when they see one, from a bearded Taliban fighter. But at least one news organization, the McClachy chain, is reporting that the ages of the boys who were murdered from the air were 7-13. If that latter range of ages is correct, then it is all the more outrageous that they were picked off one by one by helicopter gunners. No way could they have mistaken a 7-year-old for an adult.

No wonder the even the famously corrupt Afghan President Hamid Karzai refused to accept an apology proffered for this killing by Afghan War commander Gen. David Petraeus.

Calls by this reporter to the Pentagon for an accurate report on whose troops were flying those two helicopters, and on an accurate accounting of the ages of the nine victims, have thus far gone unanswered. This, I have discovered, is fairly standard for the Defense Department. If it's a story about some big victory, or a new eco-friendly plan for a military base's heating system, you have to beat the Pentagon PR guys off with a stick, but if you call them about something embarrassing or negative, you get passed from Major Perrine to Lt. Col. Robbins to Commander Whozits, and nobody give you an answer. Finally you're given someone to email a question to, and that message goes into the Pentagon internet ether and never gets returned.

So let's give an honest report here. Two US helicopter gunships, allegedly responding to a report of "insurgent" activity on a hillside in Kunar Province, came upon the scene of 10 young Afghan boys who were collecting brush for fuel for their families. The gunships, according to the account of a lone 11-year-old surviver who was hidden by a tree, systematically hunted down the other nine boys, hitting them with machine gun and rocket fire and killing them all--their bodies so badly damaged that their families had to hunt for the pieces in order to bury them.

This atrocity is being described as a "mistake," but it was no mistake, clearly. The crews of the helicopters were shooting at fleeing human beings who made no attempt to return fire (obviously, because all the boys had were sticks, which they surely dropped when the first shots were fired).

They almost certainly saw that they were dealing with kids, because it would be hard to mistake even a nine year old for an adult, particularly in a country where young kids go around with their heads uncovered, and don't have beards, while adult males generally wear head coverings, and have full beards. But killing kids is part of the deal in America's war in Afghanistan. Even in Iraq, 12 year olds were being classified by the US military (in contravention of the Geneva Conventions) as being "combat age," for example in the assault on the city of Fallujah.

Let's also be clear that this slaughter of nine Afghan children is the ugly reality behind Gen. Petraeus's supposed policy of "protecting civilians." Here's a number that tells the true story about that policy: since Gen. Petraeus assumed command after the ousting of Gen. Stanley McChrystal, US airstrikes in Afghanistan have gone up by 172%. That's not counting attacks by remote-controlled, missile-firing drone aircraft, which are also up by a huge amount. Those airstrikes and drone attacks are notoriously deadly for civilians--far more so than ground attacks, but of course they have the advantage for our "heroes" in uniform of reducing the number of US casualties in this hugely one-sided conflict.

There are so many aspects to this story that are disturbing, it's hard to know what's worse. Clearly we are deliberately murdering kids in Afghanistan, and this particular incident is just an example we know about. The men who did this will hopefully pay for their crimes by living with their guilt, but hopefully there will be an honest investigation and proper punishment too by military authorities (I'm not holding my breath). Petraeus and his boss, Commander in Chief Obama, should also be called to account and punished for implementing a war plan that calls for this kind of brutal slaughter of civilians.

But the US media are also guilty here. How can Americans reach proper conclusions about this obscene war against one of the poorest peoples in the World if our supposedly "fair and balanced" media simply performs the role of Pentagon propagandist, running Defense Department press releases as if they were news reports?

The blood of these poor Afghan kids is smeared on the desks and keyboards of American newsrooms.

DAVE LINDORFF is a founding member of ThisCantBeHappening!, the new independent, collectively-owned, journalist-run, reader-supported online alternative newspaper.

Happy Motoring

2011-03-10T09:42:00.000-08:00

Published on Thursday, March 10, 2011 by Al Jazeera
Gulf Spill Sickness Wrecking Lives
Nearly a year after the oil disaster began, Gulf Coast residents are sick, and dying from BP's toxic chemicals.
by Dahr Jamail
"I have critically high levels of chemicals in my body," 33-year-old Steven Aguinaga of Hazlehurst, Mississippi told Al Jazeera. "Yesterday I went to see another doctor to get my blood test results and the nurse said she didn't know how I even got there."

BP has admitted to using at least 1.9 million gallons toxic dispersants, including one chemical that has been banned in the UK. According to chemist Bob Naman, these chemicals create an even more toxic substance when mixed with crude oil. Aguinaga and his close friend Merrick Vallian went swimming at Fort Walton Beach, Florida, in July 2010.

"I swam underwater, then found I had orange slick stuff all over me," Aguinaga said. "At that time I had no knowledge of what dispersants were, but within a few hours, we were drained of energy and not feeling good. I've been extremely sick ever since."

BP's oil disaster last summer gushed at least 4.9 million barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, causing the largest accidental marine oil spill in history - and the largest environmental disaster in US history. Compounding the problem, BP has admitted to using at least 1.9 million gallons toxic dispersants, including one chemical that has been banned in the UK.

According to chemist Bob Naman, these chemicals create an even more toxic substance when mixed with crude oil. Naman, who works at the Analytical Chemical Testing Lab in Mobile, Alabama, has been carrying out studies to search for the chemical markers of the dispersants BP used to both sink and break up its oil.

Poly-aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) from this toxic mix are making people sick, Naman said. PAHs contain compounds that have been identified as carcinogenic, mutagenic, and teratogenic.

"The dispersants are being added to the water and are causing chemical compounds to become water soluble, which is then given off into the air, so it is coming down as rain, in addition to being in the water and beaches of these areas of the Gulf," Naman told Al Jazeera.

"I'm scared of what I'm finding. These cyclic compounds intermingle with the Corexit [dispersants] and generate other cyclic compounds that aren't good. Many have double bonds, and many are on the EPA's danger list. This is an unprecedented environmental catastrophe."

Aguinaga's health has been in dramatic decline.

"I have terrible chest pain, at times I can’t seem to get enough oxygen, and I'm constantly tired with pains all over my body," Aguinaga explained, "At times I'm pissing blood, vomiting dark brown stuff, and every pore of my body is dispensing water."

And Aguinaga's friend Vallian is now dead.

"After we got back from our vacation in Florida, Merrick went to work for a company contracted by BP to clean up oil in Grand Isle, Louisiana," Aguinaga said of his 33-year-old physically fit friend.

"Aside from some gloves, BP provided no personal protection for them. He worked for them for two weeks and then died on August 23. He had just got his first paycheck, and it was in his wallet, uncashed, when he died."

National health crisis

Many of the chemicals present in the oil and dispersants are known to cause headaches, nausea, vomiting, kidney damage, altered renal function, and irritation of the digestive tract. They have also caused lung damage, burning pain in the nose and throat, coughing, pulmonary edema, cancer, lack of muscle coordination, dizziness, confusion, irritation of the skin, eyes, nose, and throat, difficulty breathing, delayed reaction time and memory difficulties.

Further health problems include stomach discomfort, liver and kidney damage, unconsciousness, tiredness/lethargy, irritation of the upper respiratory tract, hematological disorders, and death. Pathways of exposure to the chemicals are inhalation, ingestion, skin, and eye contact.

Al Jazeera has talked with scores of sick people across the Gulf Coast who attribute their illnesses to chemicals from BP's oil disaster.

Paul Doom, 22, from Navarre, Florida, was training in preparation to join the US Marines, until he became extremely ill from swimming in the Gulf of Mexico.

"I stopped swimming in July because I started having severe headaches that wouldn’t go away," Doom told Al Jazeera. "But each time I went to the doctor they dismissed it."

In October, Doom began to have internal bleeding, but this too was dismissed by doctors. In November, when it worsened, he was given pain medications in the Emergency Room and was told it would pass. Less then three weeks after that, Doom collapsed with a seizure.

"Since then, I've had two blood tests for Volatile Organic Compounds [VOC's] which are in BP's oil and dispersants, and they both came back with alarmingly high levels," he said.

Since the onset of his symptoms, Doom has been dealing with ongoing internal bleeding, nose bleeds, bleeding from his ears, blood in his stool, headaches, severe diarrhea, two to five seizures per day, paralysis in his left leg and arm, and failing vision.

"A toxicologist that interpreted my blood VOC results told me they didn't know how I was alive," Doom explained. "My Hexane was off the charts, and I have 2 and 3 Methylpentane, Iso-octane, Ethylbenze, and mp-Xylene."

Wilma Subra, a MacArthur Fellow and chemist in Louisiana, has been testing the blood of BP cleanup workers and residents in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida. Subra tested Doom's blood and found high amounts of several VOC's.

"Ethylbenzene, mp-Xylene and Hexane are volatile organic chemicals that are present in the BP crude oil," Subra told Al Jazeera. "We're finding these in excess of the 95th percentile, which is the average for the entire nation. Sometimes we're finding amounts 5 to 10 times in excess of the 95th percentile."

Subra explained that there has been long enough exposure so as to create chronic impacts, that include "Liver damage, kidney damage, and damage to the nervous system. So the presence of these chemicals in the blood indicates exposure."

Testing by Subra has also revealed the chemicals are present "in coastal soil sediment, wetlands, and in crab, oyster and mussel tissues."

Staggering toll

Since January, at least 67 dead dolphins have washed ashore along the Gulf Coast, an event the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration declared as "an unusual mortality event". In the whole of 2010, 89 dolphin deaths were reported for the same area.

In January, a Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute chemist and colleagues reported that the toxic chemical dispersants BP used to sink its crude oil remained in the deep ocean in an oil and gas-laden plume that had still not degraded.

Also in January, Louisiana Senator AG Crowe wrote a letter to President Barack Obama expressing his deep concern about the toxic dispersants BP used, and according to Senator Crowe, continues to use along the Gulf Coast.

"Mr President, my concern is that this toxic and damaging chemical is still being used and it will compound the long-term damage to our state, our citizens, our eco-system, our economy, our seafood industry, our wildlife and our culture," the letter read.

"We will not be fooled in to believing that the oil and the toxins are gone. Because the toxic dispersants have been, and are still being used today, the oil is being forced downward in to the water columns and then carried endlessly around and about by the Gulf currents adversely affecting our environment."

Subra, the MacArthur Fellow, is alarmed by what she is finding in the people whose blood she is testing.

"Severe symptoms, lots of respiratory and cardiovascular problems, and skin lesions," she explained. "There is a lot of internal bleeding, and the chemicals cause this by disrupting the integrity of the red blood cells."

Subra said: "We’re seeing the chemicals in different classes of people. Cleanup workers employed by BP, clean-up workers no longer employed, and we’re seeing it in community members who come in contact with the crude by fishing or recreating in the Gulf."

Al Jazeera asked Subra what she thought the local, state and federal governments should be doing about the ongoing chemical exposures.

"There is a lack of concern by the government agencies and the [oil] industry." She said, “There is a leaning towards wanting to say it's all fixed and let's move on, when it's not. The crude oil is continuing to come on shore in tar mats, balls, and strings."

Subra continued: "So the exposure continues. There is still a large amount of crude in the marshes and buried on the beaches. As long as that pathway is there for exposure, these problems will continue quite a long time into the future."

A bunch of guinea pigs

Jo Billups is an environmental activist who has taken it upon herself to assist in the funding, along with her friend Michelle Nix, in the blood testing being carried out by Subra.

Working with the Louisiana Environmental Action Network and several doctors along the Gulf Coast, Billups and Nix have been holding workshops and helping sick people get their blood tested and find medical assistance.

"We have sick people from Apalachicola, Florida, to Grand Isle, Louisiana, and it's not stopping and that's what's disturbing," Billups said. "The levels we are seeing are not dropping, and we're seeing new chemicals now. We gave some of our blood test results to [EPA head] Lisa Jackson. They know what is going on, and they are not doing anything about it."

"The saddest part is the children," Billups added. "We’re seeing young children with extremely high levels of chemicals. We're altering our DNA and our bodies forever, We're a bunch of guinea pigs."

Jennifer Rexford, from Panama City, Florida, was an oil clean-up worker for BP.

"We were taken to clean up oil and tar balls with inadequate equipment," Rexford told Al Jazeera. "We regularly got oil all over us."

Rexford now has a staph infection that covers much of her body that she attributes to the chemicals in BP's oil she was cleaning up.

"Everyone I know of that I worked with are now having kidney problems, along with lots of other illnesses," Rexford, who has been to the hospital four times trying to find a solution to her infection, said. "My neighbor has a rash all over her body, and another clean-up worker I know found a lump in her breast a month ago. So when I started calling my co-workers, I realized that we’re all sick."

"I have documentation and images showing lesions in my brain," Paul Doom said. "Lesions that are the same as lesions on the brains of marine life from the Exxon Valdez spill from marine necropsies. This is a life and death situation and a race against time."

Doom said the water and food along the Gulf Coast are not safe, and he is angry at the Obama administration.

"I would ask them why have they allowed this to happen," he said, "How can you live with yourself knowing you allowed this to happen and continue?"

Aguinaga feels betrayed as well.

"I feel stabbed in the back by my own country," he said, "I feel we are being dictated to by a foreign power. Maybe our president is not strong enough to stand up against them. I know money buys people, but they couldn't offer me enough money for the loss of my friend, and the stuff we’re going through."

Aguinaga's prognosis for the future of Gulf Coast residents?

"We’re all lab rats and we didn’t even know it. We’re waiting to see how it’s going to turn out."

© 2011 Al Jazeera

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2011/03/10-2

SNAFU

2011-02-01T18:47:00.000-08:00

Well, have fallen into the digital divide so not so much opportunity to post. The fossil fool follies roll on, though. Business as usual.
Gasoline is still cheaper than milk.
40% of the urban environment is devoted to making cars happy.
Nearly 90% of daytime motor trips continue to be single occupant vehicles, three empty seats, 2000lbs to haul yer sad sorry 200lbs to someplace you probably don't really need to go.

What we Already Knew

2010-11-08T00:11:00.000-08:00

SHANGHAI -- China's booming car sales have had a devastating effect on the environment, the national environmental watchdog has warned in its first-ever report on pollution caused by vehicle emissions.

About a third of 113 cities surveyed failed national air standards last year as the number of vehicles swelled to 170 million, up 9.3 percent on year and 25 times the number on the roads in 1980, the ministry of environmental protection said.

"All the problems are closely related to vehicle exhaust emissions," said the government report, which was published on Thursday.

Vehicle exhaust emissions exceeded 51 million tonnes in 2009, including more than 40 million tonnes of carbon monoxide, nearly five million tonnes of hydrocarbons and about six million tonnes of nitrogen oxide, the report said.

China's auto sales hit 13.64 million units in 2009, up 46 percent on year, and are expected to rise by a further 25 percent this year to 17 million.

The ministry pledged to toughen supervision and control of vehicle exhaust emissions.

Projects are already under way in several cities to upgrade petrol stations, oil storage tanks, and oil tankers to rein in emissions, the report said.

China's latest Five-Year Plan, for 2011-2015, which was adopted last month, called on car makers to focus on researching and developing new energy vehicles, such as electric cars and hybrid vehicles.

All for me, none for all

2010-10-07T13:05:00.000-07:00

The other night I went to a neighbourhood open house hosted by the City, to address concerns of local residents who are upset by “rat-runners”--drivers who use residential side streets to dodge the backed-up traffic that clogs the main thoroughfare of Hastings Street.

As the city answers the vociferous complaints of a politicised neighbourhood group, formed to encourage traffic to go anywhere else but down their own street (and likely onto mine) both have completely failed to address the more pressing issues. The city and the citizens group seem eager to chase the particular symptom that is bedevilling them, but continue to completely ignore the wider disease that affects the whole metropolitan region.

It would seem the neighbourhood group is most concerned when people who don’t live in their ‘hood drive down their street in order to dodge the congestion on Hastings St. at the morning and evening unhappy hours. They are incensed at the inconsiderate behaviour of drivers who roll through the stop signs and then speed between them--just like what happens on my street, and probably yours. They rail against the very system they are happy and eager to see maintained and expanded, so long as it is to their benefit. They identify all the ills that the ‘happy motoring’ lifestyle encompasses but fail to connect the dots to their own behaviour.

I applaud the people of the neighbourhood for organizing, standing up and squeaking their wheels at city hall, yet they simply seem to have the narrowest of NIMBY motivations. While they clearly see some of the problems endemic to car culture, their solution is to push it in someone else’s direction.

The homeowners seem to have no problem with their own cars parked up and down both sides of the street, and I’m sure they smile and wave to one another as they all drive away in the morning, each single driver needing an oversized gas guzzler to get his- or her-self around town, oblivious to the destruction he leaves in his wake.

Just as the residents on the north side of Hastings St. complain, the rush hour traffic is altogether aggressive, noxious and downright dangerous on the south side too--crossing Pender street at 4:45 is not for the faint of heart, and is explicitly dangerous once winter’s early darkness settles.

As it turned out, the walk down the side of the Hastings Highway at the unhappy hour was more instructive than the oversized information panels that littered the room.

I actually try to avoid making the walk to the library (where the open house was held) during highway hours, it is just so disheartening. The long lines of oversized vehicles each carrying but a single person, each boiling out pollution. The intersections crowded, forever slowed at light changes as always there is one more impatient guy who thinks he can squeeze through to the other side of his red light, blocking the cross traffic.

This is where the real problem lies. Not the selfish fool who tries to run the light at the expense of the others, but the whole ludicrous, collectively insane behaviour. Every single day the same people sit in the same line-ups, boiling out pollution, oblivious to any but their own desires. ignorant beyond all understanding. I don’t really think most people are too stupid to acknowledge their own destructive behaviour, but i do think the vast majority CHOOSE to ignore it. And that is unconscionable.

Yes, I’ve heard all their excuses, and none of them wash. Certainly many people have serious legitimate transportation problems to overcome, but there are better solutions for nearly all of them.

Regionally, we know that automobile ownership is outpacing population growth. This in spite of the piecemeal and half-hearted efforts to encourage people to pursue their tasks with alternate forms of transportation. Thankfully they have stopped making Hummers, but there is no shortage of them on our streets. Along with the Escalades, the F-3500 trucks and every flavour of SUV, overwhelmingly occupied by a single person. That anybody believes he needs a 6000 lb. vehicle for personal transportation is beyond my comprehension.

How has selfishness and greed become so commonplace? When did an ostentatious and dangerous “fuck you” to everybody else become socially acceptable, even desirous and applauded?

Predators live among us.

Is anyone Listening?

2010-10-05T13:43:00.000-07:00

By Subhankar Banerjee

05 October, 2010

ClimateStoryTellers.org

via countercurrents.org

The person in the above photo is Malkolm Boothroyd. He is 18 and lives with his parents in the Yukon province of Canada. Behind him we see a carved wood sign that says Welcome to Alaska. He looks a bit tired, because he is. He started his journey in Alaska and biked 1060 kilometers on the Alaska Highway to reach Fort Nelson in British Columbia. He has a warm smile on his face but his posture is firm and his eyes are open and locked directly into our eyes, a bit confrontational, because it is. Unlike macho explorers of yesteryear, Malkolm is on a mission, and he is addressing us directly. We do get a hint of the nature of his journey by zooming into the photo: the bag that is attached to the front wheel of his bike says, 'Shut Down - Tar Sands.'

On June 25, Democracy Now presented a powerful interview with Clayton Thomas

Müller, a Cree indigenous activist and the tar sands campaign organizer with the Indigenous Environmental Network. Müller talks at great length about the massive devastation being brought by tar sands oil production, but he also brings attention to the human-rights issues far too often ignored by the mainstream environmental groups. "The impact is absolutely catastrophic," he states, "particularly to local Dene, Cree, and Metis peoples, who have subsisted and relied on those sacred lands in northern Alberta for time immemorial. And these communities have been put on the sacrificial block of American and Canadian energy and climate policy."

In late August I wrote a piece on how bark beetles are killing forests all across the world due to global warming. And because of this, some boreal forests in British Columbia and Yukon provinces in Canada have already turned from being a carbon sink to a carbon source. But I did not point out then that tar sands oil production in Alberta, Canada, is a major killer of boreal forests, contributing significantly to climate change. If you're interested, you can check out this report, "Tar Sands and Boreal Forest" from Greenpeace [pdf 2 pages].

Right now, the U.S. is considering approval of the massive Keystone XL pipeline project to bring tar sands crude from Alberta all the way down to Texas and the Gulf Coast refineries. Several U.S. congressional delegations have recently visited Canada to learn about tar sands oil. Earlier last month Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) gave vague soothing comments to both sides after her visit there with Representative Ed Markey (D-MA). Most recently, Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) said the tar sands oil field "really blends with the natural habitat" after his visit there with Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) and Kay Hagan (D-NC). You'd have to be really 'high' to make a statement like that about tar sands and natural habitat--Senator Graham must have been looking at those fields from a very high altitude, where everything peacefully blends into a holistic picture. I suggest you take a look at these photos from a low altitude, no more than table high, and then decide for yourself.

As I was finishing this piece I saw an ad that said, "Tell it like it is," on Huffington Post. It was posted by the Government of Alberta, Canada, to promote tar sands oil production.

The question is: To whom should we listen about the devastating impacts of tar sands oil - the inexperienced Canadian youth Malkolm Boothroyd from Yukon or the experienced Canadian politicians from Alberta?

Malkolm writes in his blog that he is now cycling from Alaska to Washington, D.C., and then continuing on to the U.N. Climate Change conference in Cancun in December. He is riding solo from Alaska to Missoula, Montana, where he will meet up with other people and continue on. I learned from a letter that he wrote to his family before he started his journey that his ride is part of several larger initiatives: in Minneapolis he'll take part in the 'Global Work Party' on 10/10/10; his journey is part of the Canadian Youth Climate Coalition, which is "a united front of youth from across Canada tackling the biggest challenge of our generation, the emerging climate crisis"; and he is excited to have been selected as one of 25 youths for the Canadian Youth Delegation to Cancun.

The best part to me is something he wrote in his blog on September 5: "It can be very lonely and dull cycling alone through the BORE-eal forest. I've passed many hours pretending I'm talking to Stephen Harper (Prime Minister of Canada) or Jim Prentice (Environment Minister of Canada). I say things to the Prime Minister like, "you have asthma so you care about air quality, but you also have children so I can't understand why you don't care about climate change," or "can you look me in the eye and tell me that your government is doing enough to prevent my generation from inheriting a world devastated by climate change?"

See what I mean by his direct gaze toward us in that photo? It's no surprise that Malkolm is doing imagine-talking with Harper during his bike ride. Last year Canada ranked last among the G8 nations on climate change action. I'm sure you're wondering: How did U.S. fare? A whopping 7th place. I bet both Canada and U.S. will be vying for the last two spots again this year.

This is not Malkolm's first big bike ride, though. When he was 15 he went on a yearlong fossil-fuel-free bike ride with his parents in search of birds. They called the journey "Bird Year". They biked 21,144 km, identified 548 different bird species, raised more than $25,000 for bird conservation, and in the process became convinced "that climate change was more serious than they had thought."

[snip]

In 2009, he biked more than 5,000 km, from Whitehorse, Yukon, to Ottawa, Ontario, as part of Pedal for the Planet. When the group got to Ottawa, the Harper government refused to meet with the young cyclists. Does that remind you of a recent episode when Bill McKibben and young students arrived in D.C. with their "put solar panels on the White House roof" proposal?

Malkolm began his current journey in Alaska, a place that has become like a second home for me through my decade-long work on Arctic Alaska issues. So I was curious about youth and climate change in Alaska. Two weekends ago, as I started writing this piece, the Alaska Youth for Environmental Action was finishing their Youth Climate Change Summit.

read the whole thing here.

A most important matter

2010-09-11T12:45:00.000-07:00

Dear Friends,

God, what a summer. Federal scientists have concluded that we've just come through the warmest six months, the warmest year, and the warmest decade in human history. Nineteen nations have set new all-time temperature records; the mercury in Pakistan reached 129 degrees, the hottest temperature ever seen in Asia. And there's nothing abstract about those numbers, not with Moscow choking on smoke from its epic heat wave and fires, not with Pakistan half washed away from its unprecedented flooding.

But that's just the half of it. It's also the summer when the U.S. Senate decided to keep intact its 20-year bipartisan record of doing nothing about global warming. Global warming is no act of God. We're up against the most profitable and powerful industries on earth: the companies racking up record profits from fossil fuels. And we're not going to beat them by asking nicely. We're going to have to build a movement, a movement much bigger than anything we've built before, a movement that can push aback against the financial power of Big Oil and Big Coal. That movement is our only real hope, and we need your help to plot its future.

We've got some immediate and crucial priorities. For instance, groups around the world are joining together on 10/10/10 for a Global Work Party, demonstrating that we already know many of the solutions to the climate crisis. That will be a good day not just to put up solar panels, but also to shame our political leaders, to say to them, "We're getting to work. What about you?" Meanwhile, around the country, lawyers and community groups are doing yeoman's work fighting off new coal plants, activists are persuading banks to stop loaning to corporate villains, city councils are figuring out how to make their towns more efficient and resilient. This is the basic work of any movement, the foundation on which hope for long-term progress rests.

But necessary as such efforts are, they're not sufficient. We're making progress, but not as fast as the physical situation is deteriorating. Time is not on our side, so we've concluded that going forward massdirect action must play a bigger role in this movement, as it eventually did in the suffrage movement, the civil-rights movement, and the fight against corporate globalization. Even now, environmentalists in places like the coalfields of Appalachia have been putting these tactics to good use, albeit in small ways. (In the spring of 2009, our three groups worked with others to pull off a large-scale action outside the congressional power plant in D.C. that resulted in a promise that it would cease to burn coal.) History suggests, in other words, that one way to effectively communicate both to the general public and to our leaders the urgency of the crisis is to put our bodies on the line.

Nobody can predict which one event will trigger social change. Paul Revere was not the only rider to warn of the British advance, and many people refused to move to the back of the bus before Rosa Parks. But we do know two things. First, that we must act with unity, and second, many minds working together are likely to be smarter. So we're asking for your help. As you go about your other work on behalf of the planet and its diverse communities, think about the possibilities for direct action, and write them down and send them to us. Here are a few thoughts to guide you.

Our actions must be infused with the spirit of Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., and other peaceful protesters before us. No violence, no property damage.
We need large actions, with many members of the general public. Think hundreds and thousands. So don't concentrate on the kind of tactics that only a few hardy specialists can carry out; we're not going to have hundreds of people rappelling or scuba diving.
We don't think for a minute that we can actually physically shut down the fossil-fuel economy for any meaningful period; it's too big. We need to aim for effective symbolic targets -- say, dirty, old coal-fired power plants -- and use them to make clear the need and opportunity to cut carbon fast.
Our actions must be rooted in the communities where they are held and be organized hand in hand with local groups and activists.
Our tactics need to engage onlookers, not alienate them. We have to have effective ways of keeping provocateurs and incendiaries at a distance, and attracting the kind of people who actually influence the rest of the public. Discipline will matter.
We need to be transparent and open in our planning, not reliant on secrecy. We'll need to do our work certain that law enforcement is looking over our shoulders; our method can't be surprise.
Beauty counts. We're fighting for the beauty in the world that's being stolen by our adversaries, and at the same time we're aiming for hearts and minds.
We don't have unlimited resources. The cost and complexity of these kinds of actions can mount quickly. As with all things environmental, frugality and simplicity are virtues.

Note that though all of our groups have international operations, we're only thinking about America right now. That's for three reasons. One, in some parts of the world activists have already done great work that can teach us a lot. Two, America really has to show some leadership, since we're historically the biggest cause of climate change. And three, though we Americans face real and sobering risks when we engage in direct action, people doing the same things in many other nations can be locked up for decades or worse; in those places, other tactics will have to suffice.

Note too that though this letter comes from just three environmental groups, we want this fight open to everyone. We'll happily work with any organization that shares our goals and tactics as plans go forward; in fact, we think that breaking down boundaries between groups is key to any chance at success. We'll do our best to reach out, but please make sure you let us know you want to be involved.

We've set up a special email address for ideas: climate.ideas@gmail.com. By late autumn, we hope we'll have been able to mine those ideas and start coming up with coherent plans for actions starting next spring.

We know this strategy won't appeal to all of you. That's fine; there are a thousand other useful ways to help, and we don't want to distract anyone from other work they're doing. But if you have ideas, send them in. It's clear to us that this is going to be a battle for the long haul, and we're going to need to be creative and committed. Thanks much for being a big part of it.

Phil Radford, Greenpeace USA
Becky Tarbotton, Rainforest Action Network
Bill McKibben, 350.org

Nature of the Beast

2010-08-14T12:14:00.000-07:00

Thursday evening, SFU downtown Vancouver, BC.
Book Launch: Carjacked: The Culture of the Automobile and Its Effect On Our Lives. by anthropologist Catherine Lutz and former marketer/investment banker turned high school teacher Anne Lutz Fernandez.

As book tours usually consist of a series of flights and taxis, it was refreshing to hear the authors of Carjacked state that their tour is being conducted through train and transit.

A captivating talk was enjoyed by a receptive audience, followed by a short question and answer session. They began with a few telling statistics which indicates that car culture is still flourishing in America, and by extension, in Canada. 150,000 new cars are sold everyday in America, and those cars are generally bigger, heavier, more expensive and carry a higher percentage of financing than ever before.

Through targeted marketing assaults and illusion-filled lifestyle advertising, North American society, and much of the developed and developing world has been thoroughly seduced by car culture. In most places, it has become so prevalent and ubiquitous as to go unquestioned and to be unassailable. The fish does not question the water, the motorist does not question his ‘right’ to drive.

After quickly identifying the broad canvas of the car “system” (basically: industry, government, infrastructure-investment, habit, and consumerism-culture) the authors explain that their work focuses on the last of these, upon the consumerist and social history and implications of the automobile as centrepiece of our current culture.

Within this social context, the authors point to some of the prevailing myths about automobile ownership. They further identify these commonly held assumptions, generated by car companies’ advertising/marketing machine, as points of attack to challenge the car culture monolith.

They identify the love-hate relationship many have with their cars--but it would seem the hate only occurs when the actual life fails to live up to the promises and illusions of the lifestyle advertising.

Of particular interest was the auto industry’s notions on safety, or at least those notions they are trying to sell you, the customer. Of course the thrust of safety engineering, since Ralph Nader demanded seat belts, has been to improve the integrity and cushion of the interior cabin, effectively cocooning the occupants from outside harm, yet often from vital outside input as well. Through it all, the car companies insist that they are producing “safe” cars, while driving remains an inherently dangerous activity.

But now attached to this idea of safety in the event of a collision, comes the idea of your car protecting you from all the apparent dangers of a hostile world. These dangers will be depicted either as the forces of nature, or else from more insidious, unnamed evils. With the culture of fear being racheted up beyond belief in the last ten years, this is an easy sell for the car companies.

Curiously, in many aspects of the car advertising game, the car is sold as a solution to the problems of the car. The monotony of the commute is solved with in-car distractions, the traffic jam is solved by a more comfortable seat, the pollution problem is solved by better air filters, pollution concerns are solved by electric cars, hottest summer on record, turn up the A/C, problem solved!...the madness goes on and on.

Car culture has insinuated itself into every stage of our lives, from childhood indoctrination (Disney movies, hot wheels toys...), through the coming-of-age ritual of your first driver’s license, into group identification and notions of individualism and status, and onto the reluctance and even rebellion of seniors who need to relinquish their driver’s licenses. Many feel it is an indispensable part of their daily routine, and have trouble and anxiety even considering a change of lifestyle. Obviously there is a great reluctance among motorists to abandon their cars in favour of more sensible transportation, even among those who recognize the problems.

For those who desire a better collective future, one that is not centered around the cult of the automobile, one not based upon keeping our cars happy at all costs, the talk by the authors of Carjacked was a reminder of the nature of the beast we must fight against, and shed some light of the size and complexity of that beast.

badger

2010-07-13T14:23:00.001-07:00

"at ground zero of human species economics the only currency is the calorie"

Police State Canada

2010-06-26T19:01:00.000-07:00

The new face of Canada.

Will Scare Children

2010-06-02T14:09:00.001-07:00

Another victim.

"Road Terrorist"

2010-05-18T12:32:00.000-07:00

MONTREAL – After yet another serious car-vs.-bike collision Monday, Quebec is struggling to come to terms with safety issues involving bike paths, roads and highways.

Between Friday and Monday, four cyclists died and another was critically injured in crashes involving cars and trucks. Each incident happened under different circumstances.

There are no simple solutions to the potential danger of mixing bikes and cars, said Jean-François Pronovost, director general of Vélo Québec Association, which represents 5,000 cyclists.

He said well-designed bike paths and paved shoulders on highways can save lives, but there are other variables.

“It’s a question of infrastructure and behaviour,” he said in an interview. “You can have good infrastructure with bad behaviour, either from cyclists or motorists, and there will be an accident.”

The three crashes:

* Friday morning, three female cyclists, members of the Club de Triathlon de St. Lambert, were killed after a pickup truck plowed into them on Highway 112 in Rougemont.

* Saturday night, a cyclist was struck and killed by a car on a rural highway in Val Morin. The motorist faces an impaired-driving charge.

* Monday morning, a cyclist in his early 60s was involved in a crash with a car in Trois Rivières. The cyclist was riding against traffic and was not wearing a helmet. The road featured a city bike path but the cyclist was not on it, Trois Rivières police said. Doctors fear he won’t survive his head injuries, police said.

On Monday, friends and strangers continued to post sympathy notes on the triathlon club’s Facebook page and planned to remember the fallen triathletes at a vigil Wednesday for cyclists killed on public roadways.

The husband of one of the Rougemont victims sent a letter to media outlets Monday.

“Today, I struggle to find a reason to go on without my wife who was unjustly taken by a ‘road terrorist,’ ” Patrick Lacroix said in the letter.

“If we were in the United States, the driver responsible for destroying our lives would already be before the courts. The simple reality is that we are responsible for the safety of others when we wield a weapon, the automobile.”

Lacroix’s wife, Sandra de la Garza Aguilar, 36, was one of three women killed Friday on Highway 112. Three other cyclists were injured but survived. All six were on racing bikes whose tires are not made to roll on the gravel found on highway shoulders.

Police say the cyclists appear to have been riding in single file on the highway, near the shoulder. The shoulder on that section of Highway 112 is not paved.

“By pure chance, work was just about to start on this stretch of road,” Lacroix said, referring to Quebec’s plan to repave that stretch of highway and add a paved shoulder.

“The Quebec government is criminally responsible for negligence,” Lacroix added.

Quebec coroner André Dandavino has said he is looking at whether cruise control was a factor in a lack of attentiveness by the truck driver, who was headed home after working a night shift.

In his letter, Lacroix said he was surprised to learn police did not administer an alcohol test on the truck driver. “If we add the fact that the driver is a young volunteer firefighter, so a colleague of the police, I won’t be surprised that the file will be closed quickly,” Lacroix said. “The next time you kill someone while driving your car, invoke fatigue.”

Last week, a Sûreté du Québec spokesperson said police did not suspect alcohol was a factor. On Monday, SQ spokesperson Ronald McInnis confirmed the truck driver was not tested for alcohol.

Under the Criminal Code, before they can administer an alcohol test, police must have reasonable grounds, such as alcohol on a driver’s breath or erratic behaviour by the driver, McInnis noted. He said the driver in the Rougemont crash exhibited no symptoms of alcohol consumption.

Police are still investigating the crash, McInnis said.

In 1995, Quebec said it would pave all unpaved highway shoulders, but only when the roadway itself is due to be repaved and only in cases where the highway is used by 5,000 or more vehicles daily.

Transport Quebec is responsible for 21,507 kilometres of roadways where the shoulder is not paved, said spokesperson Mario St-Pierre. He said he could not say how many of those kilometres cover roads used by 5,000 or more cars daily.

Another 15,688 kilometres of Transport Quebec roadways have paved shoulders, St-Pierre said.

Vélo Québec helps oversee the development of the Route Verte, a 4,100-kilometre bike route network, much of it in rural parts of the province where bikes must share the way with cars and trucks.

Pronovost said if a highway is used by more than 1,000 cars daily, it won’t be included on the Route Verte unless it features a paved shoulder.

But he said cycling on a highway can be safe, even without a paved shoulder. “It’s a question of the period of the day, the quality of the pavement, a lot of factors. It’s like every road. It’s impossible to have a patrol every day of every week on every stretch.”

ariga@thegazette.canwest.com

© Copyright (c) The Montreal Gazette

Plucked from the Ether

2010-05-14T23:26:00.000-07:00

“its ridiculous to talk about politics at all on a bike commuting website”

At the risk of appearing argumentative, I must admit that I couldn’t disagree more. To me, there is something inherently political about choosing a bicycle over an automobile. Perhaps not partisan politics, but whether we choose to ride for economic, environmental, or health reasons, we are using public roadways and pathways, sharing the roads with vehicles, and taking ourselves to a certain extent, out of the cycle of fossil fuels and foreign wars.
Whenever we commute by bicycle, we’re taking our mobility into our own hands, instead of purchasing it from the car company, the oil company, the oil cartel, and foreign dictator. The politics of cycling cannot be easily classified as liberal/conservative, but the simple act of choosing to ride instead of drive has a profound political, economic, environmental, and social impact.
I think that we’re used to seeing politics as an argument rather than a conversation, but I think that those of us who chose to ride, regardless of our ideologies, are, intentionally or not, making a profound political statement that transcends party, ideology, and nation, and a little at a time, makes the world a better place.

A Short History of Oil Addiction

2010-05-04T09:15:00.000-07:00

This Oil Ride
by Linh Dinh
1861 - The first major oil well in the world started pumping. Christened "Empire," it stood on Funk Farm in Pennsylvania.

1908 - The Anglo-Persian Oil Company discovered oil in Iran. This was the first major oil field in the Middle East. APOC would become the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, then British Petroleum, in 1954.

1913 - Inspired by disassembly lines inside Chicago slaughterhouses, the Ford Motor Company perfected the assembly line. From this point on, a man must strive to become as efficient and mechanical as a machine.

1927 - The Turkish Petroleum Company struck oil in Iraq. Despite its name, TPC was a conglomerate of European companies, with the biggest shareholder the Anglo-Persian Company, i.e., British Petroleum.

1933 - In New Jersey, the first drive-in theater opened. Thanks to the car, even a lumpen could have his private carriage. Now, he also had a private box in a theater.

1944 - The G.I. Bill helped returning veterans to buy homes, with stipulations that these were detached and in homogenous neighborhoods, i.e., the white suburbs. Like many American laws, this was designed to enrich real estate, car and oil interests.

1953 - The C.I.A. orchestrated a coup against the democratically-elected government of Mohammad Mosaddegh, after he had nationalized the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, i.e., British Petroleum.

1956 - President Eisenhower began the largest public works project in history, the Interstate. What it is is a generous and continuous system of multi-laned highways. It is never intersected, not even once, by a lesser road. One needs not pause on one's life's journey as long as one's traveling on the Interstate. It is eternity made real and proven, a diagram of heaven (or hell) for the wordless masses.

1962 - The Beverly Hillbillies debuted, to become one of the most popular television series of all time. Resonating deeply within the American psyche, its premise might as well be our national myth: a family of hicks struck it rich through oil.

1963 - The C.I.A. orchestrated a coup against Abdul Karim Kassem of Iraq. Kassem had begun nationalizing foreign oil companies, most prominently the Iraq Petroleum Company, formerly known as Turkish Petroleum, i.e., British Petroleum.

1967 - In "The Graduate," Mr. McGuire advised Ben, "I just want to say one word to you-just one word."

"Yes, sir."

"Are you listening?"

"Yes, I am."

"Plastics."

"Exactly how do you mean?"

"There's a great future in plastics. Think about it. Will you think about it?"

"Yes, I will."

Plastic is oil, hardened. By 2010, there would be plastic patches the size of Texas to choke both the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans.

Thanks to the chemical phthalate in plastic, male genitals are shrinking worldwide, and sperm counts are way down, though not low enough, unfortunately, to slow down this full-throttle-ahead "love" boat. World population is approaching seven billion, with about 30,000 people starving to death each day.

1990 - The Gulf War ignited. Eyeing Kuwait's rich oil fields, Iraq attacked its tiny neighbor. Iraq was bankrupt after its eight-year-long war with Iran. During this previous conflict, the U.S. openly backed Iraq even as it sold weapons to Iran in what became known as the Iran-Contra Affair.

2000 - Saddam Hussein announced that Iraq would now only accept euros, and not dollars, for its oil exports. This prompted the U.S. to invade 18 months later.

2001 - Dick Cheney, "The American way of life is not negotiable." Before becoming vice president, Cheney was CEO of Halliburton, an oil services company.

Ari Fleisher, Press Secretary to President Bush, was asked, "Does the President believe that, given the amount of energy Americans consume per capita, how much it exceeds any other citizen in any other country in the world, does the President believe we need to correct our lifestyles to address the energy problem?"

He answered, "That's a big no. The President believes that it's an American way of life, and that it should be the goal of policy makers to protect the American way of life. The American way of life is a blessed one."

With 1/21 of the world's population and less than 3% of its oil reserve, the U.S. uses 25% of the world's oil .

Draped in cheap oil and sweating oil, under an increasingly hot sun, I steer an oil car, on oil, towards an oil job. Before meals, I pray and take an oil pill. To feel upper or downer, I chug a lug oil.

2003 - Using various pretexts, none convincingly and long since discarded, the U.S. invaded Iraq. The invading force was mostly Anglo. Augmenting 248,000 Americans, the United Kingdom contributed 45,000 troops, Australia 2,000 and Poland 194.

2008 - During a debate between Vice Presidential candidates, Joe Biden said, "The only answer is drill, drill, drill. Drill we must," only to be corrected by Sarah Palin, "The chant is drill, baby, drill! And that's what we hear all across this country in our rallies, because people are so hungry for domestic sources of energy to be tapped into."

2009 - Thanks to the U.S. invasion, British Petroleum could do business again in Iraq after 37 years.

2010 - Floating 5,000 feet above the ocean floor, a British Petroleum rig was drilling 30,000 feet into the earth's crust when it exploded, then sank over its drill hole. 210,000 gallons a day are spilling as I'm writing this, and they won't be capped any time soon. This is no tanker breaking up, my friends, but the raped earth spewing what we've been demanding so relentlessly for over a century now. A monstrous ecocide, this is too fitting an end to our reckless oil ride.

Happy Motoring

2010-04-30T09:44:00.000-07:00

You selfish bastards.

in reply

2010-04-14T22:05:00.000-07:00

When one drives through the Southern and Western United States, it is immediately clear that in the last 10 years there has been no reversal of America’s commitment to a total automotive, sprawl culture. NONE WHATSOEVER. This is true in spite of the Economic Depression of the last 2 years with no end in sight, and the reality of Peak Oil undeniably upon us.

Not only is the lifestyle unchanged, its premises are totally unchallenged. The car is a basic right as well as a necessity – it is part of one’s personhood, especially one’s manhood.... It’s an extension of your physical body. To be separated from the vehicle is profound trauma, loss, the end of freedom.
Scott Schneider

Hi Scott,
Car culture indoctrination begins in early childhood and there are virtually no alternatives offered. Hot wheels and similar toys are seen as benign, cutsey car movies portray inanimate metal to be huggable and friendly little killing machines. Last year our local refinery had an open house including a giveaway to the kiddies of a car and oil-themed colouring book complete with the cutesy smiling cars. Of course, none of the oil executives I talked to saw anything wrong with distributing propaganda to children. No executive shill I spoke with would even acknowledge peak oil. It all left me feeling so dis-spirited.

Even in this relatively progressive city, the everyday, ‘business as normal’ people I talk to all seem eager to make positive changes, as long as it doesn’t affect them in any way. GWB said “The ‘Murikan way of life is non-negotiable.” Include Canada in that.

The range of excuses people offer for the reasons they “need” to drive are numerous and often laughable (“How else am I gonna get to my gym!” is a favorite) By and large, they are awaiting techno-fixes.

Changing the attitudes of kids has to be a start. Raising the driving age to 18 would also be a good start. Congestion pricing and penalties for driving with three empty seats should be mandatory in all cities. Removing the driver’s license as the de facto right-of-passage to adulthood is a step in the right direction. Sunsetting licenses, and proof of necessity measures would also begin to address our societal desires to make cars the happiest things on the planet. of course people regard me as loony if i drop any of these ideas into a conversation.

Sorry to have to quote the smirking chimp, so I’ll leave you with a better one.

“To say it is ‘too late’ is to make it so. –David Suzuki

keep up the fight.
D

Paid a fine.

2010-03-29T12:47:00.000-07:00

By The Canadian Press via Yahoo

CALGARY - The driver of a school bus involved in a crash that killed a Calgary girl says her personal life was in turmoil before the accident
Louise Rogers is testifying at the fatality inquiry into the death of nine-year-old Kathelynn Occena.
Kathelynn died in October 2007 when the school bus sideswiped a parked gravel truck on a busy thoroughfare.
Rogers says she had tried to commit suicide the month before and had taken stress leave the previous spring because she was overwhelmed by the number of children on her route.
She says she had been seeing the school psychologist following the breakdown of her marriage and her supervisor was aware of her struggles.
Rogers pleaded guilty to careless driving and paid a fine.

more from cbc

David Ker Thomson

2010-03-25T02:39:00.000-07:00

What I’m mostly up for this morning by way of taxing your half-million earballs is this virgin I nearly did the nasty on a few minutes ago. Sweet thing, legal eighteen I guess but looks like my dad used to say, ‘sweet sixteen and never been kissed’.

Well, I’m no prude, but I have to say that the level of offense this advertisement (alas, an ad it is, and the girl’s putting out for the West Toronto Kia at 2445 St. Clair West) generated in me is so intense that my outrage is—and here I wish to be very precise—literally inexpressible.

I mean that in a legal sense. I’m not even allowed to hint at what I think an appropriate response would be for people who run an ad depicting a virgin, a Rio automobile, and a price in such filthy juxtaposition here in the midst of the killing fields. And I’m committed to non-violence. “You never forget YOUR FIRST,” says the ad, which is how we know that, until the deal is sealed, virginity’s for sale. “Why settle for used? Drive new for the same price. 2008 RIO5. We have a fresh one for you…just call us for a pick-up.” Turns out that we don’t have to settle for a “beater,” since the new Rio is “sweet.”

For my part, I’ve never forgotten my first. Guy swerved right and caught me between his car and a parked one. Luckily I’d been doing that proto-parkour stuff and I leapt up and over and landed on the sidewalk. My bike didn’t fare so well. The guy stopped and prostrated himself with apologies and all, but I couldn’t help thinking that without that bit of self rapture I’d have been between a rock and a hard place.

Rio, eh? I live in ’rio, a province of small rivers and big lakes, so the name kind of stands out. These Rios are one of the many eco-friendly cars friendly for the backside of cyclists in the killing fields of the city. We are the cyclists killed every year by eco-friendly cars, hybrid “electric” buses with not one but two powerplants (echo, echo: both powerplants running on energy from fossil fuel), fuckers in leanly carbureted Volvos and their all-wheel-drive brethren, and so on. All the ‘good’ drivers and their clean green killing machines. Leprechaun terrorists.

FULL STORY

With Glowing Hearts

2010-03-01T12:05:00.000-08:00

As usual I’m more ambitious than prolific, and had hoped to blog more during the games but shit happens and life ensues. More video soon!

Thus ends the most expensive party ever thrown, 17 days of drunken revelry. There seemed to be some sort of sports competition going on as well.

Today it must be one huge hangover.

Yesterday was the craziest scene I ever did see here upon the streets of downtown Vancouver, or any where else for that matter. The exuberance, joy and good will was palpable, everywhere impromptu parades we’re taking place on the downtown streets, spontaneous eruptions of cheers and hugs and mitten waving. It was an incredibly fun time.

I saw more than one street hockey game being played, and in the downtown parades, all the boys with the biggest trucks had the biggest flags--correlation? hmmm...

An incredible day that could have so easily been flattened if the Americans could have got a follow-up goal. It would have left a bitter taste upon these games, and yesterday would have become ‘somber Sunday’ instead of the celebration it was. Thank you, Sidney.

Canadians have a lot to be proud of in the way we live and get along with one another. We also have many shameful acts perpetuated in our names to be accountable for. But its hard to be cynical in the afterglow of the Five Ring Circus. Once the party started, we all seemed to put on our Sunday best and were welcoming and hospitable to all, as any host should be. A good perspective here, and here.

Not 14 gold medals or hockey bragging rights, but Canadian warmth and hospitality was the real showcase of these games. With glowing hearts, indeed.

Torch

2010-02-16T00:26:00.000-08:00

don't blink

No Stinking Badges

2010-02-12T13:31:00.000-08:00

These Olympig Games are touted to be “Green”. Or some shady variation thereof. Greenish is more appropriate, which is how the taxpayers are going to look when the final bill comes in.

The ubiquitous Olympig SUV fleet rolls on, every corner has a cop, or more likely, a thug hired for the occasion. (You can tell them apart from the badges) Of course we are all waiting to see if the much anticipated riot squad will show up to beat down the homelessness protestors. Riot squad cops are easily recognized by their high tech ‘man-in-black’ look. They get to carry the BFW’s. Of course, these guys don’t need no stinking badges.

One positive aspect of the whole business is that there is NO PUBLIC PARKING! at any of the official venues. In this case, “public” means the majority of the unwashed sheeple, even when they are shelling out $1500 for a nosebleed seat for the opening fiasco, er ceremony. Of course the Olympig SUV fleet will be exempt. I’m sure also exempt will be the entourage of the various war criminals who masqurade as our political “leaders” and corporate parasites.

All those cars that used to occupy public space now just seem to be roaming around more, gridlocking the streets, perhaps looking for a parking spot that no longer exists. Even though much public money has already been spent on propaganda to get people to take transit, most everybody thinks the advice doesn’t apply to them, and continues to operate under the delusion that what they do is “important”.

Olympics Open

2010-02-12T13:27:00.000-08:00

Well here it is, finally. The countdown clock rapidly approaches zero, many cheques have been cashed, the DTES has been sanitized, somewhat. We’re up to our elbows in debt and near civic bankruptcy but all that doesn’t matter now, cuz its time to party!

The buzz has been palpable the last week or so, or is it just the amount of carbon monoxide doubling as downtown routes become gridlocked. You can’t go a block without seeing a Olympig branded SUV rolling down the street, inevitably with a single driver and three empty seats. These are all sponsor provided oversize 4WD, as if this event was going to actually have snow! I happened to see them all parked beneath the Cambie Bridge, a rolling promotional fleet of destruction. The city has pleaded for a 30% reduction in regular traffic to help accommodate the games, but it seems to have only gone up by thirty per cent or more.

I thought it is a horrible glimpse of the future if we carry on with ‘bidnes as usual’.

The Olympic Games juggernaut is business as usual on hyper steroids. As we have been under the heel of the Olympic Corporation for nearly six years now, a lot of people have been ground under that heel, trampled without heed or remorse. Property taxes have increased cross the entire province as a result, and a reduction and failure of public services will be the legacy. As with any public debt, it will weigh most heavily upon the poor.

I’m sure a few people made A LOT OF MONEY off these games, the builders and contractors, the hotels, bars and restaurants. Peter Kieweit comes to mind, for one. Oh, and the prostitutes too, apparently, will cash in. The VANOC people thought they did such a good job that they gave themselves yet another raise in the midst of the most crippling depression the western capitalist world has ever known.

And then there is the security. Planned in the paranoid frenzy of the post 9-11, moron in the whitehouse world, A BILLION DOLLARS hs been thrown down the “security” sewer hole. A billion fucking dollars, that’s nine zeros behind that one, kids.

Meanwhile public spaces that haven’t been taken over by the Olympig corporation--anyone attempt to go public skating this year? futile.--have been defunded and closed. Bye bye Bloedel Conservatory. Those eight hundred teachers the government has promised to lay off, where do you think the money for those jobs went, hmmm?

All told, I’m told the price tag is going to be SIX BILLION DOLLARS! No wonder people are pissed off that they have to work like a dog all week to bring home $350. If they are lucky enough to have a job...But of course, bidnes as usual rolls on, people think they’re rich, Olympig souvenirs are flying off the shelves. Get yer red mittens. Made in China.

Addicted

2009-08-23T14:56:00.000-07:00

A Nation of Addicts
Can oil and democracy mix?
by Franklin Kalinowski in Orion Magazine

When I was a young man, I worked for a while as a drug counselor, first in a methadone clinic, and then in a heroin detoxification unit. I have seen and know something about addiction. I later earned a PhD in political science, in the process acquiring an idea of what the Founders of the American political system were trying to accomplish. If we take seriously the news that Americans are "addicted to oil," it means we have become a nation of addicts, and the question that must be addressed is what a democracy composed of addicts portends for our future. Reconciling a population of addicts with the principles and practices of the American political system will not be easy. In fact, it will be impossible: democracy wasn't built for addicts.

The Founders of our democracy bequeathed to us a legacy of cultural values that display the diversity of their social perspectives. One group argued that politics was about the public, patriotic pursuit of the common good of the community. Americans were viewed as citizens who would be willing to sacrifice for the general welfare. Other Founders asserted that humans are essentially individuals and not community members. These consumers are primarily motivated by the passionate pursuit of their economic self-interests and should be given the freedom to seek their unique pleasures in their unique ways. Over the years, we as a nation have never totally accepted nor totally rejected either vision. We have ignored the logical contradictions and constructed a society where people are encouraged to be both patriotic and self-interested.

But where do addicts fit into this picture? Surely the addict cannot be considered a virtuous citizen. The essence of citizenship is a concern for the community and a willingness to forgo personal pleasure for the common good. The addict cares nothing about others or tomorrow, and for this reason, addiction and civic virtue are antithetical. Either the craving for the addictive substance will destroy all other pursuits, or the republic must cure the addiction and convert the addict into a citizen.

On the surface there may appear similarities between the addict and today's consumer, but these melt with closer scrutiny. Like an addict, the consumer may be a pleasure-seeking (an economist would say "utility maximizing") individual, but consumers know there are costs and benefits associated with their various choices, and they are rational enough to engage in calculations regarding these trade-offs. For the addict, there is no alternative to acquiring the addictive substance, and that is why they will pay any cost and ignore any harm their addiction will cause. Economic markets, built upon the assumption of rational consumers, are institutions ill suited to restrain addicts bent on ever greater overindulgence, even unto death.

If America is "addicted to oil" we will have to reach deep into our Founders' legacies for the strength to struggle against what we have become, for the truth is that there is a citizen, a consumer, and an addict in each of us. Citizens and consumers might grimace at the difficult policy choices lying ahead, but they will acquiesce in the face of necessity and move to have tough energy policies that restrict our addiction to oil put into practice.

It is urgently important that Americans not let our inner addict supersede our citizen and consumer. Imagine, just for a second, what would happen if we let the addicts run the methadone clinics and the detoxification units. Imagine what will become of America if we let our oil addiction determine the fate of our democracy.

ill informed and poorly researched

2009-07-26T14:16:00.000-07:00

It's time to end the free ride for cyclists
by Paula Carlson, editor Surrey/N.Delta Leader (a local rag)

They’ve got their own paths, their own lanes, and their own streets, and if Vancouver’s mayor gets his way, they’ll soon have their own bridge.
In addition to their specially designated areas, cyclists clearly have clout.
They’re certainly increasing in numbers. Packs of pedal-pushers are a common sight on urban streets, in all types of weather and across staggering distances.
Years ago, slogging to work under your own steam while battling the elements and fellow commuters was seen as diehard. Now it’s de rigueur.
TransLink has added bike racks to buses, two-wheelers can be packed onto SkyTrain, and walkways in parks and along seawalls have been divided in half to accommodate bicycle enthusiasts.
Even new multi-million-dollar infrastructure projects – such as the Pitt River Bridge, the Golden Ears Bridge and the new 10-lane Port Mann Bridge – have incorporated cyclists into the plans, with lanes and ramps and roundabouts factored in.
In Vancouver, a lane on the Burrard Street Bridge has been closed to cars to make way for cyclists as part of a three-month $1-million pilot project.
And in the future, having cyclists share the same span with motor vehicles may not be good enough. Mayor Gregor Robertson is talking about building a $45-million crossing in False Creek that would be open to bikers and pedestrians only.
All municipal taxpayers would pony up the dough, mind you.
Enough is enough. It’s high time cyclists enjoyed the full rights of the road – including the right to obtain a licence, buy plates and insurance, and be subject to more frequent traffic violation tickets.
After all, under the Motor Vehicle Act, a person operating a bicycle has the same rights and responsibilities as a driver of a vehicle.
If bicycles are going to be a permanent and proliferate part of the regional transportation system, then bike riders need to buck up.
5the cost of getting around isn’t going to get any cheaper. In fact, TransLink – the regional authority responsible for transit – is currently grappling with how to raise an extra $450 million in annual operating costs for improvements such as more SkyTrain lines and additional buses.
Some of the funding measures being considered include hiking fuel, pay parking and property taxes, raising bus fares, and imposing a car levy.
If drivers, businesses and homeowners have to shell out for transit, then why not cyclists?
The template for regulating cyclists is already in place. Commercial cyclists, such as couriers, must pass a written test and purchase a licence plate.
Adding a requirement for insurance and ramping up enforcement of existing traffic laws would generate revenue and encourage safer riding practices. Fines, “points,” and at-fault accidents that increase the cost of bike insurance would act as a deterrent to cyclists who want all the rights of the road, but adhere to none of the rules (e.g. failing to stop at red lights and stop signs; travelling on sidewalks; riding without due care and attention).
Cycling is a viable and pleasurable means of transportation that is obviously gaining in popularity and breaking new ground. However it’s time to level the playing field.
I say welcome to the concrete jungle. But cyclists should enjoy gridlock in all its glory – and that means helping to fund the system.

pcarlson@surreyleader.com

in response

2009-07-26T13:59:00.000-07:00

--A response to a published editorial in the Burnaby NewsLeader and Surrey/North Delta Leader by Paula Carlson, editor

It's time to end the free ride for motorists. As a car-free person and cyclist by choice, I am constantly being forced to subsidize a motoring lifestyle that is rapidly destroying the public environment for private benefit, which in turn serves to destroy my own, and my neighbours' health and well-being.
Whenever I see "free" parking, I pay for that. Every time I see an obese smoker idling in traffic inside a ton of useless metal, with three empty seats beside her, I think, 'there is my tax dollars subsidising an unhealthy lifestyle enabled by motoring,' and I will pay for that for years to come. Your auto insurance subsidy, your gasoline subsidy, your parking subsidy, the brown haze of pollution, I pay for that.
Police services that assumes I am at fault in any collision, and that laughed in my face when I asked about the liklihood of my stolen bike being returned, I pay for that. Yet I see a large publically funded bait-car campaign with a great deal of advertising. I pay for that.
Without any public consultation, the federal goverenmnet has seen fit to buy 12% of a failed foreign car company, and will guarantee warranties on poorly built products. I pay for that.

Cyclists are not some strange invasive species. They are your friends and neighbours, your doctor and your postman; they are homeowners, business owners and sometimes motorists and yes, they are already taxpayers, just like you.
Unlike many self-serving lobby groups, the future that cyclists desire is a benefit to everyone--clean air, a clean and healthy food and water supply, communities and streets that are safe for all users. Instead of attacking bicycle riders, you should be thanking them for trying to bring a healthier and more livable future to the Lower Mainland.

Open Letter

2009-07-19T15:02:00.001-07:00

--an open letter to the motorist who nearly killed me last Friday morning, from a bicycle rider

Dear Ma'am,

We first met at a four way stop in suburban Burnaby. It was Friday morning and, I guess, we were both on our way to work. As I was to your right, I proceeded to turn right, while you waited your turn and proceeded straight. We were both headed down the hill, we both had to stop at the bottom to wait for traffic to clear. I was in front of you, but surely not blocking your view. You could not have failed to notice there were cars parked along both sides of the narrow street, allowing a space where only one vehicle could safely travel at a time.

When you leaned on your horn I was not too upset. Sadly, this is an all too common occurrence, usually a sign of ignorance and impatience, no matter what vehicles we choose to drive. However, when you revved your engine and proceeded to illegally pass me within four inches of my elbow, that is what upset me. Your choice to dangerously pass me was as much a threat as you pointing a gun out your window. Your choice to deliberately endanger my life raised my anger. Go figure.

Perhaps you were unclear about why I was in the middle of the travel lane. As I cannot trust that people will look before opening their doors into traffic, I cannot be as close to the parked cars as you might like. Should someone fail to check and open their door in front of me, my choice is to crash into a hard sharp metal object and the person exiting their vehicle, or swerve out into traffic, right in front of you. Sorry, but neither of these is good, so I will always choose the third option--to be in the middle of the street where I can see and be seen, where a car door heedlessly swung open will have no effect upon me.

I am not in the middle of the lane to show off the beauty and superior efficiency of my vehicle. I am not there to deliberately slow you down. My reason for being there is purely selfish I will admit, it is for my own safety. I am in the middle of the road because it is not safe for you to pass. When it is safe, I will most certainly pull to the side to allow you by. Until then, please be patient.

If you would have exercised two seconds of patience, I would have turned left at the next intersection. I did not want you tailgating me any more than you wanted me slowing your progress. Maybe you were running late, but if I ended up under the wheels of your truck due to your reckless negligence, what delay would that have caused you? Would you have even stopped?

If you had exercised two seconds of patience, we would have both arrived at work happier people, instead of being angered and frustrated for the duration of our commute and beyond.

When you stopped and rolled down your window, I enquired if you were deliberately trying to kill me. From my perspective this is what you were attempting to do. I seriously doubt this was your intention; I'm sure friends and family regard you as a nice person. However, for a lack of two seconds of patience, you could have negatively changed both our lives forever.

Your only reply was, "Share the Road." Perhaps you are confused about what this means. It does not mean I should cower in the gutter and allow your environment killing dinosaur to roar by heedlessly. It does not mean I should put my safety in jeopardy so that you can arrive at the next stop sign two seconds earlier.

Bicycle riders have no choice but to share the road, so this is mostly a plea to motorists. Just because you choose the most selfish of transportation options does not mean your time is more valuable than mine, it does not mean you have any more right to the road than I do, and it certainly does not give you any right to deliberately endanger my life.

yours,
on two wheels,
David

truth

2009-03-31T11:18:00.000-07:00

Blackest Day in Canadian History

2009-03-17T12:04:00.000-07:00

Officer in charge, RCMP War Crimes Section 110 Place d'Orléans, Room 2200 Ottawa, Ontario, K1A 0R2
Attention Officer in Charge of RCMP War Crimes Section;
George W. Bush is reported to be planning to visit Calgary Alberta on or before March 17, 2009 as a guest of the Calgary Chamber of Commerce.
We are writing to report that:
• George W. Bush, former President of the United States and Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces, is inadmissible to Canada under the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act (IRPA), section 35(1)(a) because of overwhelming evidence that he has 'committed, outside Canada, torture and other offences referred to in sections 4 to 7 of the Crimes against Humanity and War Crimes Act (CAHWC); and,
• the George W. Bush Administration has engaged in "systematic or gross human rights violations, or a war crime or a crime against humanity within the meaning of subsections 6(3) to (5) of the CAHWC.
We request that the RCMP War Crimes Section immediately take the following steps:
• begin an investigation of George W. Bush for aiding, abetting and counseling torture between November 13, 2001 and November 2008 at Guantánamo Bay prison in Cuba, Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, Bagram prison in Afghanistan and other places; and,
• advise the Prime Minister, Attorney General of Canada and Ministers of Immigration and Public Safety that the George W. Bush administration is a "government that has engaged in torture and other war crimes and crimes against humanity and therefore G.W. Bush, as former President, is also inadmissible under section 35(1)(b) of the IRPA.
Overwhelming evidence of these allegations against both G.W. Bush and the Bush Administration is widely available. These allegations have triggered Canada's duty to act to use all legal means to ensure the appropriate investigations, remedies and responses. Canada's international legal duties specifically prohibit treating these acts as legal, as ignoring the IRPA and allowing Bush into Canada would do.
Under sections 4 to 7 of the Crimes Against Humanity and War Crimes Act, "crimes against humanity" include murder, enforced disappearance, deportation, imprisonment, torture and imprisonment or other severe deprivation of physical liberty in violation of fundamental rules of international law, committed against any civilian population or any identifiable group. War crimes include willful killing, torture and inhuman treatment, unlawful confinement and willfully depriving a prisoner of war or other protected person of fair trial rights.
If there are reasonable grounds to believe a person has been complicit in any of these crimes, entry to Canada must be denied. Reasonable grounds, according to the Supreme Court of Canada are "something more than suspicion but less than...proof on the balance of probabilities."
Many have concluded that the available evidence establishes conclusively that Bush and the Bush Administration committed torture and other war crimes and crimes against humanity and that Canada and other states now have a duty to condemn, investigate, prosecute and punish those crimes.
U.N. General Assembly President Miguel d'Escoto Brockmann, on March 4, 2009 concluded, "The [Bush Administration] aggressions against Iraq and Afghanistan and their occupations constitute atrocities that must be condemned and repudiated by all who believe in the rule of law in international relations,"
U. N. Special Rapporteur Martin Scheinin, in February 2009 concluded,  "...the United States has created a comprehensive system of extraordinary renditions, prolonged and secret detention, and practices that violate the prohibition against torture and other forms of ill-treatment....States must not aid or assist in the commission of acts of torture, or recognize such practices as lawful, ...Under international human rights law, States are under a positive obligation to conduct independent investigations into alleged violations of the right to life, freedom from torture or other inhuman treatment, enforced disappearances or arbitrary detention, to bring to justice those responsible for such acts, and to provide reparations where they have participated in such violations."
The RCMP has a duty to investigate and prevent such crimes at common law and also under the War Crimes Program. This program, as you know, was established specifically to meet the challenge of investigating crimes committed outside Canadian territory. The mandate of the War Crimes Program to, "...ensure that the Government of Canada has properly addressed all allegations of war crimes..." is achieved by, "...the RCMP, with the support of DOJ [Department of Justice], investigating allegations involving reprehensible acts that could lead to a possible criminal prosecution."
Lawyers Against the War is ready, on request, to provide references to evidence of torture. We are confident that other organizations such as the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights, National Lawyers Guild, American Civil Liberties Association and the Center for Constitutional Rights would also be ready to assist by providing references to evidence.
We request a reply before March 17, 2009
Respectfully,
Gail Davidson, Lawyers Against the War
Copied to: Prime Minster Stephen Harper; Attorney General Rob Nicholson; Peter Van Loan, Minister of Public Safety; Jason Kenney, Minister of Immigration; Lawrence Cannon, Minister of Foreign Affairs; Jack Layton-Leader of NDP; Joe Comartin, NDP Justice Critic; Paul Dewar, NDP Foreign Affairs Critic; NDP Don Davies, Critic on Immigration; Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff; Bob Rae, Liberal Foreign Affairs Critic; Dominic Leblanc, Liberal Justic Critic; Maurizio Bevilacqua, Liberal Immigration Critic; Leader of the Bloc Quebecois Gilles Duceppe; Real Menard, BQ Justice critic; Serge Menard, BQ Public Security critic; Thierry St-Cyr, Bloc Immigration critic ; Paul Crete, Bloc Foreign Affairs critic.

Let the Dinosaurs Die.

2009-03-10T13:19:00.000-07:00

Dig Up the Roads!

Is This the End of the Age of the Automobile?

By HARVEY WASSERMAN

As a dominant form of transportation, the automobile is dead. So is GM, which now stands for Gone Mad.

But the larger picture says that the financial crisis now enveloping the world is grounded in the transition from the automobile---and the fossils that fuel it---to a brave renewable world of reborn mass transit and green power.

If GM lives in any form, it must be owned and operated by its workers and the public.

But the larger transition is epic and global, based on a simple structural reality: the passenger car is obsolete. Auto sales have plummeted not merely because of a bad economy, but because the technology no longer makes sense.

Franklin Roosevelt took GM over in 1943-5 to make the hardware to beat the Nazis. Barack Obama should now do the same to beat climate chaos.

Make streetcars, not passenger cars.

Hybrids are too little, too late, with problems of their own. Solar-powered electric cars will help phase out the gas guzzlers.

But in the long run, the automobile itself needs to be dismantled and re-cycled, not retooled or rebuilt.

Cars still kill 40,000 Americans/year, and thousands more worldwide. No matter how much less gas each may burn, they all consume unsustainable resources to manufacture, operate and terminate.

We need to dig up roads, not build more. We need rails and coaches, bio-diesel buses and self-propelled trolleys, Solartopian super-trains and in-town people movers, not to mention windmills, solar panels, wave generators and geothermal piping.

In America's corporate-conceived “love affair with the automobile,” our first spouse---mass transit---was murdered. Now the unsustainable obsolescence of the private passenger car is collapsing a global financial system built on the illusion of its constant growth.

Mother Earth can’t sustain the old four-wheeled carry-one-person-around-the-block paradigm, be it hybrid, electric or otherwise.

If the automobile and its attendant freeways continue to metastasize in India, China and Africa as they did in the 20th Century United States, we are doomed.

Our true challenge is to envision, engineer and build a Solartopian transportation system that moves people and things cleanly around a crowded planet with diminishing resources and no margin for ecological error.

For that we need every cent and brain cell devoted to what’s new and works, not what’s failed and could kill us all.

Harvey Wasserman, a co-founder of Musicians United for Safe Energy, is editing the nukefree.org web site. He is the author of SOLARTOPIA! Our Green-Powered Earth, A.D. 2030, is at www.solartopia.org. He can be reached at: Windhw@aol.com

From the Wire

2009-02-27T13:11:00.000-08:00

Yesterday during a presentation at the state capitol related to a bill to reduce carbon emissions and the number of miles vehicles in Minnesota are driven, Sen. Julianne Ortman, R-Chanhassen, grew incredulous and asked, "Mr. Chair, are we still in America? ... I find that to be very offensive, an insult to every person who drives a car. I guess it insults me because I drove to the Capitol alone today. I find that very insulting."
Ortman was referring to an image from the cover of a 2002 book by the comedian Bill Maher, which was titled, "When You Ride Alone, You Ride with bin Laden: What the Government Should Be Telling Us to Help Fight the War on Terrorism."

Oh boy, this pushes all my buttons.

Prof Marshall raises a salient and important point of debate, one that is almost never talked about, but he fails miserably to demonstrate any strength in his conviction, and turns into such an obsequious little toady at the feet of a fat-ass Pol. The way he caves to her mock outrage is embarrassing and probably served to defeat his argument before he even got started.

Should we be surprised at Senator Fat-Ass's hissy fit? No, not at all. It seems nothing has changed from Bushie's 'Murika: " Tell us what we want to hear, not what the research shows, or your considered professional opinion." It would seem also that Senator Fatt-Ass is sticking to the playbook of keeping people as much in the dark as possible concerning the fact that the country is prosecuting wars of Imperial design. killing thousands, displacing millions, burning billions of gallons of oil and spending trillions of dollars in the process.

But is anyone asking what kind of carbon footprint the big green killing machine leaves behind?

This mock outrage is no great surprise, and in line with a significant and telling moment when the new Great Imperial Leader in his first speech said, "We will not apologize for our way of life." So as long as we 'Murikans can continue to consume and waste the majority of the world's resources and human capital, as long as the world continues to subsidize our cheap gas and our "non-negotiable way of life", then all is right with the world.

Why is it so offensive to suggest that it is unsustainable and the height of selfishness to drag around three empty seats and a ton and a half of metal on your daily travels through "Errandsville"?

So why is it so offensive to be even beyond rational discussion in a Senate hearing, that, god forbid, people might have to share a commute? People seem ready to embrace change, so long as it doesn't affect them personally.

+++

Whenever I have to stand and wait at a bus stop, or even waiting at red lights, I tend to count cars. Excluding all commercial vehicles, trucks and transit, I count only private autos, to see whether or not there is a passenger.

Typically, here is what I see.

On weekends it averages about 1:1, 50% of cars are single occupant. Midweek, midday, its about 3:1, 75%. Rushhour ramps up to 4:1 or more, typically 80-90% of cars carry one fat ass and three empty seats.

This is what is truly offensive.

Read me

2009-02-09T13:05:00.000-08:00

Rep. Earl BlumenauerCongressman from Oregon
Posted February 6, 2009 | 06:44 PM (EST)

No, Seriously: Republicans Don't Get It

With this latest attempt to strip bike funding from the recovery bill, Republicans have once again demonstrated how out of touch they are with their pathologically short-sighted attacks on bicycles. To their detriment, they are continuing their trend from last Congress of using the most economical, energy-efficient, and healthy forms of transportation as their whipping post. Investment in bike paths will not only improve our economy, and take our country in the right direction for the future; it is exactly the kind of investment the American people want.

Moreover, bicycle and pedestrian paths are precisely the kind of infrastructure projects our country needs. These projects tend to the most "shovel-ready" and are more labor-intensive than other projects-- therefore putting more people to work per dollar spent.

We might have understood these attacks a decade ago, but today they ignore the explosion of bicycling in this country in recent years that has been nothing short of phenomenal. There are tens of millions of American cyclists and even more who want their children to be able to bike and walk to school safely and therefore support bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure projects.

American families have indicated time and again in the passage of bond measures across the country that they favor spending on alternative transportation, such as bicycles and mass transit, over spending on mere highway capacity. Americans want real solutions to the economic crisis, not just a band-aid fix. These investments will stimulate our economy now - when it counts and point our nation toward the economic and environmental realities of the future.

Recent transportation surveys indicate that 52% of Americans want to bike more than they do now - but don't, because of the lack of safe and connected bicycle facilities.

Think about it: More than 50% of working Americans live less than 5 miles from work, an easy bicycle commute. Already more than 490,000 Americans bike to work; in Portland, 8% of downtown workers are bicycle commuters. Individually, they are saving $1,825 in auto-related costs, reducing their carbon emissions by 128 pounds per year, saving 145 gallons of gasoline, avoiding 50 hours of being stuck in traffic, burning 9,000 calories, reducing their risk of heart attack and stroke by 50%, and enjoying 14% fewer claims on their health insurance.

Nationally, if we doubled the current 1% of all trips by bike to 2%, we would collectively save more 693 million gallons of gasoline - that's more than $5 billion dollars - each year. From 2007 - 2008, bicyclists reduced the amount Americans drive by 100 million miles.

Bicycling also has immediate and direct benefits for communities that invest in bicycle paths, bike lanes, trails, and secure bicycle parking. For each $1 million invested in an FHWA-approved paved bicycle or multi-use trail, the local economy gains 65 jobs and between $50 and $100 million in local economic benefits. Some communities are already showing the results of these investments. After investing less than 1% of their total transportation budget in bicycle facilities in the past eight years, the City of Portland has seen a 144% increase in bicycle use - and the growth of a $90 million bicycle industry that has added nearly 50 new businesses in just the past two years.

I can think of no other transportation investment that provides more benefits to American communities who so desperately need: more jobs, reduced transportation costs, increased personal health, a cleaner environment, reduced carbon footprint, and greater community livability. It's time the Republicans got the point about what Americans want. Investments in bike and pedestrian infrastructure will help us create jobs and build healthier more livable communities for the future - these projects are the gifts that keep on giving.

Same Old

2009-01-29T12:35:00.000-08:00

Ray LaHood and Changing Our Thinking About Transportation
by ALEX STEFFEN
JANUARY 12, 2009

On Wednesday the 21st, the U.S. Senate will hold a confirmation hearing on the president-elect's choice of Ray LaHood for Secretary of Transportation. No one expects that hearing to be anything but easy for LaHood. That's too bad, because it shows that when it comes to greening the stimulus, we're not only missing the forest for the trees, we're not even seeing the trees right.

In case you haven't been following the news, LaHood is a conservative Illinois Republican with little transportation expertise and almost no administrative experience, who has earned a LCV lifetime voting score on critical environmental issues of 27 percent, and who maintains deep financial connections to the very industries he's now supposed to regulate. He may be no worse than most of those who've lead the Department of Transportation, but his appointment is a profoundly uninspiring vote for business as usual at a time when we need change, and an strong indication that the administration doesn't get that energy policy, technological innovation, urban planning, environmental sustainability and transportation are all bound up together, and no solution to our problems can be had without tackling them all together.

LaHood's appointment is so disappointing to transportation advocates who've been waiting eight years for change, that they're boiling with indignant disbelief, branding him "an unbelievably disastrous pick," "Status quo we can believe in" and "same.gov" (a dig at the Obama transition site, change.gov). As one insider summed it up: "It's a real read-it-and-weep moment."

read it all

Merry Christmas Everyone

2008-12-25T11:10:00.001-08:00

Your Choice

2008-12-18T10:54:00.000-08:00

“Climate change” has placed all humankind before a great choice: to continue in the ways of capitalism and death, or to start down the path of harmony with nature and respect for life.

--Evo Morales

Please read the full article.

Four E's of Safe Cycling

2008-12-01T13:06:00.000-08:00

Education
Encouragement
Engineering
Enforcement

Lessons in Greed pt.1

2008-11-25T16:02:00.000-08:00

It is often the smallest nuggets of information that are more disturbing than the frequent Grand Mal articles common to media on both sides of the corporate divide. A case in point is this little data point that I found most disturbing. The Insurance Bureau of Canada (IBC) reports that although 89% of drivers are concerned about “driver distraction”, yet informed of the fact that “that cellphone use made them four times more likely to be involved in a collision.”, “60% of drivers would not agree to stop using their cellphones while driving.”

OK? Got that?

So 9 out of 10 drivers see someone doing something stupid on the road, often associated with cell phone use. Ten out of ten bicycle riders would report the same thing. Anecdotally, the connection is often made. “So, I look up after seeing his bumper go by my handlebars with two inches to spare, the guy’s got a cellphone glued to his ear...”

They have been made aware that using a hand held in-car distraction may quadruple their likelihood of an accident. Still, given their own choice, 6 out of ten would choose to ignore this simple collection of pertinent facts, and give a big “fuck you” to all other road users.

We already know that all cagers believe that the roadway and the space enveloping their car is their exclusive property. “Get off the road! You don’t pay for it!” is a common call of the wild cager in flight.

We also know the common cager belief in the idea that one’s own time and personal errands are all that matters. “That guy on the bike is obviously not going anywhere too important. I mean, where could he possibly be going if he can’t even afford a car...”

We know the cager deliberately wants to be isolated from the world, sealed inside his steel and glass cage, lost in a delusion of “freedom”, “individuality” , traffic-free winding seaside roads and other kinds of marketing mythology...see any car commercial for more details.

Now we know that three out of five cagers believe the safety of other road users is inconsequential. The IBC data gobbet drips with the grease of motor mentality, steeped in the shit of marketed car culture.

This is indicative of the greed culture we live in, the me first, stuff my pockets full, ignore the obvious, play the game, screw the future, business as usual, fuck the rest of you, just don’t get caught society we have built.

Rescuing Dinosaurs

2008-11-19T12:53:00.000-08:00

Senate Hearing On US Auto Bailout Signals New Attacks On Workers

By Jerry White

19 November, 2008
WSWS.org

Tuesday's Senate Banking Committee hearing on a $25 billion government bailout of the US auto industry underscored the reactionary framework of the official debate on the crisis of the Big Three auto companies. At the center of the dispute between those senators who support an emergency loan and those who oppose it is how best to impose the burden of the crisis on the backs of auto workers and the working class as a whole.

more

More Good News

2008-11-03T11:49:00.000-08:00

U.S. Auto Sales Plummet

TOM KRISHER
The Associated Press
November 3, 2008 at 2:24 PM EST

DETROIT — General Motors Corp. says its October U.S. sales plummeted 45 per cent because of weak consumer confidence and tight credit markets.

The Detroit-based auto maker said Monday that it sold nearly 169,000 light vehicles, down from about 307,000 in the same month last year.

Car sales fell 34 per cent, while light truck sales dropped 51 per cent.

more here

Couldn't Have Said it Better

2008-10-20T23:39:00.000-07:00

Craig McInnes

Vancouver Sun

Thursday, August 11, 2005

VICTORIA - Dear motorist:

Excuse me for not addressing you by name, but given your rage the other day when you wanted to talk to me about my riding habits, I thought it best to press on rather than exchange formal greetings.

My first inkling that you were somewhat irate came when you stomped on the gas as you squeezed by me going down the hill on Fort Street across from the Royal Jubilee Hospital.

I didn't realize your anger was directed at me, however, until you narrowly avoided being run down by that pickup truck after running out on to the road, where I heard you explain heatedly to the driver that you were trying to get to the cyclist who was taking up most of a lane coming down the hill.

As I left the scene of your narrowly avoided accident, I was sorry that we could not have chatted, since although I suspect something else was going on in your life to leave you so tightly wound, you are not alone in your misunderstanding of the rights and responsibilities of bicycle riders with whom you reluctantly share the road.

In fact your reaction reminded me of the caution in the excellent primer on cycling in traffic contained in the British Columbia Bicycle Operator's Manual, which is available on the web at www.bikesense.bc.ca.

"Be prepared for the occasional frustrated driver who is not familiar with the safe and legal operation of a bicycle."

Before you fly off the handle again at what you may perceive will be another attack on drivers, let me add that there are as many cyclists who are ignorant about the safe and legal operation of a bicycle as there are motorists.

That shared ignorance is not helped by grey areas in the law where what is safe and what is legal are not always the same.

The first thing you should know is that under the B.C. Motor Vehicle Act, "a person operating a cycle on a highway has the same rights and duties as a driver of a vehicle." So whether you like it or not, bicyclists have a right to use the road. They also have a responsibility to obey all the rules of the road that you do, in addition to a few others.

For example, they can't pretend to be pedestrians. They can't ride on the sidewalk or across crosswalks. They can't ride side by side, blocking the road. They have to wear a helmet, even though police in Victoria appear to ignore bareheaded bikers, and they have to keep one hand on the handlebars.

Unfortunately, the situation in which you and I first met is one of those grey areas I mentioned.

The Motor Vehicle Act requires a cyclist to ride "as near as practicable to the right side of the highway." If we had been in Vancouver, we would have also been subject to a bylaw that requires slow-moving vehicles to drive "as close as possible" to the right hand edge or curb. Under that bylaw, bicycles are always considered slow-moving vehicles, even when they are not.

Hence the conflict between safety and the law. At times, such as when you found yourself behind me, they travel at or near the speed of cars. Regardless of how the wording of the Motor Vehicle Act is interpreted, it is a violation of my law of personal survival to hug the curb when I am flying down a hill at or near the speed limit.

It may be counter-intuitive to you -- it was to me at first -- but there are times when riding at the speed of other traffic, it is safer to be out in the middle of the lane where other motorists can see you and will be less tempted to squeeze by when there is really not enough room.

Finally you can be sure that if it comes to a choice between claiming my rights or staying alive, you will always have the upper hand. I hope, however, with a little civility on both our parts, as fellow commuters we can learn to share the road.

Sincerely yours,

Craig

© The Vancouver Sun 2005

Some good news

2008-10-15T15:51:00.000-07:00

"As a result of the credit crunch and high oil prices, new car registrations in the UK fell by 21% last month. In the US, sales by the major manufacturers have declined this year by between 20 and 35%." read more

--George Monbiot

World Car Free Day

2008-09-22T09:41:00.000-07:00

Today is September 22, 2008 and its World Car-free day!

So leave your bucket o bolts pollution machine at home (preferably forever--they make nice car-dens, you know) and ride a bike, take transit and get out and walk.

You will earn bonus points for flipping off people driving Hummers!

How the U.S. Auto Industry Wrecked Itself

2008-09-17T10:22:00.000-07:00

By RALPH NADER

The Big Three are in big trouble, and they have themselves to thank for it.

Ford and General Motors have reported substantial losses in the second quarter amounting to $15.5 billion, and $8.7 billion, respectively, while Chrysler, which was bought off last year by a private equity firm, Cerberus, refuses to reveal its financial standing.

It is no wonder why their lobbyists were spotted schmoozing with members of Congress at the Democratic and Republican National Conventions, liquoring up in their plush suites and private parties while they made their case for direct government loans which, if approved, would likely add to our federal deficit.

Last December, Congress approved a $25 billion loan to automakers and their suppliers under the Energy Independence and Security Act, though it has yet to be funded. That bill includes a modest requirement for automakers to increase their average vehicle fuel efficiency to 35 mpg -- a benchmark we should have set decades ago, and would allow the companies to have their way with virtually no oversight or accountability.

This corporate Congress cannot be expected to issue serious demands, set tough conditions, or impose strict rules on the auto companies to ensure their workers receive fair pay and benefits, and prevent their fat-cat executives from making off big while leaving their companies in shambles.

more

Duelling with Buses

2008-08-07T23:05:00.000-07:00

Anyone who is running a stop sign at full speed and failing to check if the other stops are occupied, is obviously a danger to herself and other road users. It seems that many people never studied rudimentary physics and have no understanding of inertia and braking distance, and the dangers large heavy vehicles can pose. But like the jerk who collided with me, no amount of public campaigning or private instruction will change idiotic behavior in those who are idiots.

Away from stop signs, duelling with buses on busy streets is one of the most dangerous situations facing a rider. The uneducated person on a bike may believe that to suck the curb on the right hand side is the prime directive, whereas experience or skills courses teach us that this is not so.

For example, on a street like Broadway, where parked cars, bikes and buses essentially must share the right hand lane, the dangers posed by passing a bus, especially the elongated ones are extreme. Approaching a stopped and loading bus from behind I will typically check the bus' rear lights and indicators, and have a look down the right hand side to guage the progress of the loading/unloading of passengers. If I see the bus is about to pull out and re-enter traffic lanes, I will yield and try to be visible in the driver's mirrors, as I do not want to suck bus exhaust and leapfrog with the bus all the way down the road.

However, if I am confident i can pass the bus on its leftside before he pulls out, I will do so. The real danger comes, and frequently happens, when the driver fails to check his traffic side mirror, and fails to see or ignores the (always assumed) invisible cyclist. It is indeed terrrifying when you are halfway past the bus, and it starts to roll and edge to the left, back into the traffic lane. This presents the cyclist with a tough dilemma and no place to go but to sprint for the front of the bus, hoping the driver sees you or is slow enough into traffic before you reach the front of the bus. Also hoping a motorist behind you doesn't have the same idea--ie, failing to yield and instead choosing to race past.

When the bicycle rider is already in the right hand flow lane and the bus starts to move, the rider runs the risk of being cut off and/or side-swiped by the merging bus, or else is forced into the lefthand flow lane, a place where no rider wants to find herself.

Yet also implicit in this discussion, although usually unvoiced, is the motorists' (and society in general) perception that bicycles are toys, riders are out for recreation only, and so are not legitimate road users. A bus driver with a schedule to maintain will typically view the cyclist as an annoyance, as an illigitimate road user, and so as someone who deserves no respect as a road user. John Forrester refers to this as "cyclist inferiority".

Lately I have been wondering about exactly what instruction does the typical sixteen year old beginning driver recieve in 'driver's ed" courses in regard to dealing safely with bicycles--my guess is none. Similarly, what instruction do city bus drivers get in relation to co-mingling with bicycles on the road. Here again, my guess would be next to none.

Around the Neighbourhood

2008-07-30T17:05:00.000-07:00

CHIMBY: Can't Happen in My Back Yard: People, who despite both scientific and anecdotal evidence of man made climate change happening around us everyday, refuse to see the wider implications and refuse to face up to the real decisions that must be made. People who have a firm belief that the worst will always happen elsewhere.

SPUD*

2008-07-14T13:37:00.000-07:00

*SPontaneous Unplanned Dismount

Most people who ride bicycles are very aware of the dangers of automobile traffic, so it is somewhat ironic I should be the victim of a hit and run bicycle/bicycle collision. Here's what happened:

Smoked on Sunday

Last Sunday (July 6) I was riding my road bike westbound on Lougheed Highway. I wasn’t going anywhere in particular, just out for a lazy Sunday spin. I am a very experienced cyclist. I was wearing a helmet and operating a well tuned and perfectly functional bicycle. I was travelling about 20-25 kph, slightly off the traffic lane, about six inches off the fog line. I was positioned exactly where I feel I should have been. There was a fresh green light in my favour, it had just changed as I approached the intersection. I ensured that no approaching car travelling in the opposite direction was going to turn left in front of me.

From my right hand field of vision, a man on a bicycle appeared in an instant and within a second he collided into me. He appeared to make no effort to avoid this collision. He was travelling southbound down a very steep hill on Beta St. in Burnaby.

He obviously made the conscious decision to ignore the yellow light, ran through the red light and was planning on travelling down the highway on the wrong side of the road in the wrong direction. Coming down the hill and around the corner this man cut through the lane of opposite traffic on Beta St., and apexed his turn in the crosswalk/corner of Lougheed and Beta.

By my estimate and crude calculations of force, I figured this guy hit me with more than twice the force of impact than I had on him. (me: 140 lbs x 25 kph. the jerk: ~175 lbs x ~ 40 kph) You do the math. Its no wonder that he was able to walk away unscathed, as I took the brunt of impact.

When I saw this jerk on a bike there was no time to react. Collision was imminent and unavoidable. I hit my brakes and tried to avoid him to the outside (my left) but with no chance.

We collided with a mighty whack.

I didn’t lose consciousness, and ended up in the right hand traffic lane. I landed on my left side and was fortunate that my pedals both released and I didn’t get twisted up in the bike at all. Still I landed in a twisted position, but again, fortunately, don’t seem to be suffering any ill effects from that.

So I landed on my left hip and felt relatively unscathed, more angry than hurt, until I went to pick myself up and could not raise my hip off the pavement. I realised immediately that my leg was probably broken.

I saw that the other bike rider had been dismounted as well. He was almost directly behind me, I could see him when I looked back over my shoulder. I suppose I should have relaxed some and took a very good look at him, because I think the description I ended up giving to the police was pretty much useless. Also I had a small digital camera in my jersey pocket--but totally forgot about it, or I could have snapped a few candids of the jerk on a bike.

I was lucid enough to be righteously pissed and began a blue streaked harangue at the jerk. I think I less than politely mentioned what a stupid fool he was for his stupid and criminal actions. “You broke my f-in leg, you c***” was an oft repeated phrase. The jerk started to get up. “Stay there! Don’t you go anywhere!” I was screaming at him.

By this time I noticed that traffic had stopped on my side of the highway. I saw that a large SUV was stopped in the right hand lane, a vehicle that would have been my agent of doom if it had been passing me at the time of the collision. I clearly saw a blond woman in the passenger seat of a small silver car was stopped directly beside me, but in the left hand lane. She had a look of detached curiosity, even though by this time i was shouting for someone to help me, as I saw that the jerk was getting up and picking up his bike.

It seemed a police cruiser was there very quickly, the officers later said they were driving down the highway and moved up to investigate when they saw traffic had stopped. And although the police told me they spoke to some witnesses, they said no-one actually saw the collision. This is not too surprising, considering that it happened so quickly, and both cyclists and jerks on bikes are pretty much invisible to car drivers.

When I saw that the other bike rider was on his feet and pushing his bike back up the hill through the intersection, in the direction from which he had originally come, is when my visible distress became acute. I began to flair my arms about and yelling for someone to help. It seemed many people were quite content to sit in their cars and watch things unfold, as if it were on TV.

So I was flailing about, begging for someone to help, begging for someone to stop the jerk who I could see was getting away. I saw a man in glasses and a faded red tee-shirt approach from the stopped traffic. I asked him to stop the guy who had hit me, that he was getting away. Apparently the jerk’s bike was still functional, as I was later told he rode off through Brentwood Mall parking lot, and was not found by the bystander or police.

In time, fire fighters and paramedics arrived where I lay. The mandatory neck brace was put in place, my helmet removed, then they managed to get a spine board underneath me. One of the paramedics put his index fingers together in an L shape and said my femur was broken like this, and they were going to have to pull the leg bone back into alignment. So they attempted to fill me up with nitrous, but that doesn’t really mitigate the pain, just makes it seem not so important to you. Then they gave my left leg the big yank to rejoin the ends of the fractured bone.

I was taken to Burnaby General Hospital where a surgery was performed, round about eight in the evening. The collision occurred about 3:30. The surgeons put a rod in my leg to stabilize the bone and also some kind of clamp around the upper part of the break as there were longitudinal fractures up the bone towards the hip joint.

I spent four nights in hospital, fortunately without complication, only discomfort and pain. I’m back home now in my little north Burnaby apartment.

The real challenges begin now, though, as I live alone and don’t know too many people here in town. I seem to be managing so far, but everything now requires three times the effort. I am trying to remain positive.

Every medical professional I talked to asked if I was wearing a helmet, and of course I was, although the other guy wasn’t. He rode away, and I’m left appreciating what a nice day it would be for a bike ride...

So just another reminder to be careful out there (as if we need that) and to always wear your helmet. Most of us are very cognizant of the dangers of auto traffic , but remember too that the SUV with your name on it might just be a jerk on a bike.

Desperate Times Call for...

2008-07-02T15:50:00.000-07:00

The reek of desperation among the automobile manufacturers is palpable. "Free" financing has been a staple of auto enticemnents for years, now dealers are promising "free" gas, or some convoluted scheme to guarantee future gas price for increasingly desperate customers.

I wonder if the future of the oil/car pushers will be modeled upon a one-time fantasy of the computer industry. It was once opined that the price of computer hardware will fall towards zero and the profits for suppliers will be realized through the sale of software. This has been a pipe-dream of the computer industry, as it's seen now that almost the opposite is true. The price of Macs keeps going up, yet a company like Google can provide a number of useful applications for free.

Will we soon see advertisements offering a free car with the purchase of gasoline?

It wouldn't surprise me, as nothing does anymore.

Who Pays?

2008-06-26T14:33:00.000-07:00

A local bicycle rider has written:

“Every spring I hear the same two complaints from motorists. Cyclists don't follow the rules of the road, and they do not pay to use them.”

Leaving aside the first complaint for the moment, I had some thoughts about the second.

The counter-argument to the false idea of “my taxes pay for the roads” are many. The simplest one is that taxes are taxes and everybody pays them. Saying that this kind of tax is earmarked for that kind of program is a false argument. Its like saying I can’t pay you the $20 dollars I owe, because its in my left pocket....
--Sure I have the $20, but its in my left pocket and that’s for something else.
--See, my right pocket is empty.
--If I had the $20 to pay you, it would be in my right pocket....

It’s all about priorities.

The most elegant one is that if everybody rode bicycles [by using the word “bicycle”, generally I mean any self-propelled, lightweight, emission free vehicle], we’d likely never have to build another road. Ever. Think about that for a moment.

Well maybe that is an exaggeration, but maintenance budgets would drop to a quarter or a tenth of current levels. In the absence of free and easy (read subsidy and society-enabled) motor vehicle traffic, we have already built every road we are likely to ever need.

Ten thousand cyclists a day passing over any given piece of road for a hundred years will not equal the damage done to roads that a year’s worth of motor traffic will inflict.

Currently, the motorist ensures he will be paying high taxes simply by being a motorist. Most car owners have never even considered how much society subsidizes their “right” to drive.

A sane system would demand the demonstration of “cause for use”. In the short term, this would allow a road user such as a contractor who absolutely requires a vehicle to still make a living. But the single use motor driven commuter would no longer be a viable option. It is ridiculous how we preserve some of the most expensive real estate in Canada for keeping our cars happily waiting for us at the end of an office-bound day.

Getting people out of personal use cars will free traffic gridlock and allow once again the efficient use of roads. Dedicated routes could then be maintained for heavy and light truck/service traffic along commercial routes. Other routes would be exclusively for transit--maxi and mini buses, and clean-air taxis. Still others would be dedicated to bicycles. Many neighbourhood streets would gratefully succumb to depaving.

By creating separate traffic streams, one of the three major impediments to getting people out on bikes is removed, as conflict with motorised traffic is limited to infrequent intersections. Imagine how quickly you could get from SFU to ScienceWorld if you only had to stop at lights at Willingdon, Boundary and Main streets, with the Boundary overpass coming online next year!

It’s all about priorities.

Switching to Glide

2008-06-20T00:03:00.000-07:00

excerpt by Bill Reynolds in The Walrus

The bicycle, according to scholar Donald Zaldin, revolutionized nineteenth-century culture. Its progenitor was the two-wheeled velocipede, invented in 1817 by Germany’s Baron Karl von Drais. The velocipede looked like a bike, but it had no crankshaft or drive train. The rider was propelled along by foot power alone. Then, sometime in the mid-1860s, a French metalworker figured out how to add a crankshaft. Two decades later, in 1885, England’s John Kemp Starley attached gears to the rear wheel instead of the front. Three years later, John Boyd Dunlop, a Scottish veterinarian, improved pneumatic tires and introduced the smooth ride. Suddenly, anyone, rich or poor, young or old, could travel beyond his or her immediate surroundings at no extra cost and with little wear on the body. The past century has seen numerous design upgrades and innovations — the three-speed Raleigh, the ten-speed derailleur, the mountain bike, the hybrid — but the concept remains the same.

And that concept’s irreducible nut is the body defying gravity. Riding is governed by physics, specifically by torque-induced precession. Gravity causes a stationary bike to fall over, but applying torque — using the legs and feet to push down on two pedals attached to a crank — changes the equation. The drive train transfers the rider’s energy directly into movement. The wheels turn and stay upright, and torque allows 182 pounds of human tissue to move on two flimsy pieces of rubber filled with air.

The thinner the bicycle’s frame, the less wind resistance, and aerodynamics only increases efficiency; leaning over the handlebars, especially going downhill, reduces drag and boosts speed. Spoked wheels are almost as strong as solid ones, at a fraction of the weight. Using a derailleur, a transmission system invented by the French in the late nineteenth century, the rider easily switches the chain to a smaller sprocket and — voila! — more torque, more distance in less time. As the rider increases cadence — the number of revolutions per minute — he injects pure power, especially in higher gear ratios. The work is hard but satisfying.

The Party's Over

2008-06-11T16:15:00.000-07:00

The automobile is one of the most energy intensive modes of transportation ever invented. This is true not just because of its direct use of fuel, but for the energy embodied in the construction [and maintenance] of so many individual units that require replacement every few years. The rate of car ownership in the US is now 775 per thousand people [2005] --nearly the highest in the world -- and many less-consuming nations, such as China, are foolishly seeking to emulate the American love affair with the [mostly single use (aka three empty seats), personal] automobile. Because increased car ownership results in changed patterns of urban development and resource distribution, it creates [a false and market manipulated] social dependency. Wherever this dependency has taken hold, it will have ruinous consequences in the coming century.

--Richard Heinberg. The Party's Over: Oil, War and the Fate of Industrial Societies. New Society Publishers, 2005. p.191 [with ed. additions]

People are Strange

2008-05-26T22:54:00.000-07:00

It's Saturday afternoon and I am riding along a usual route. There is no traffic so I am admiring some of the gardens and landscaping of the houses along the way. This is a typical eastside neighbourhood street--about half the houses are 60's style smaller bungalows. The other half of the properties have houses that have replaced the older smaller ones with much larger and grandiose. All are landscaped within an inch of their lives.

As I am riding by, I see a woman who has obviously just spent the afternoon engaged in the maintenance of that most curious of bourgeois affectations--the lawn. I can see that it has been freshly mown, I can smell the cut grass. As a typical suburban conformist, she stands and admires her fruitless work.

At the moment I am approaching, she notices a piece of paper that the wind has carried onto the edge of her lawn. She swiftly marches over to seize the offending candy bar wrapper. She bends down to pick it up and I expect her to turn towards the house, the garage where I see trash cans awaiting. However, she turns instead towards the street and deliberately, carefully, almost reverentially, places the flotsam into the street.

I see this happening in about three seconds it takes me to roll by. I am astounded.

I am left wondering how a person who obviously takes pride in yard maintenance and should have some awareness of the natural world would be so blithe. Is it a matter of a fortress/island mentality--once the offense is off my property it's of no more concern? Is it a matter of the wrapper being another daily annoyance and affront to her own sense of my/mine, some sort of material tresspass? Is it simple laziness and the path of least effort?

I'll never understand people.

Three Days

2008-05-17T02:12:00.000-07:00

The Long Weekend: three days where people think they would be happier if only they were somewhere else.

Tell me why

2008-05-10T03:03:00.000-07:00

Why is it that if I am crazy enough to take a large and powerful weapon out of my house, travel for a short while and then begin to target individuals out enjoying their day; peaceable law-abiding people causing no harm to no one, if I should target guys wearing hats, or kids playing basketball or any random assortment of people engaged in a mutual activity like walking down the street or riding bicycles, if I should maliciously and willfully try to cause grievous injury or death--why is it that the consequences of this certifiably insane act of mayhem should be weighed in the balance of my choice of weapon?

Now to create mayhem without consequence, the choice of weapon is one to be pondered before a hasty decision is reached. Maximum effectiveness might be realized through the use of an M1A1, a highly efficient and manoeuvrable killing machine. The trouble is that deniability is hard to claim as they drag your smoking corpse from the hull of your shattered tank. Besides, those babies are really hard to get a hold of.

No I'll need something more practical, more personal, more American--I need a gun. Not just any gun. I need a big gun. A really big gun....

So now that I got my Mr.Keaton giant earthworm killin' death bringer loaded, one must decide upon a target, say, bicyclists...NO--short people. Yes that's it, short people. They are always getting in front of you when you're walking and because they have small little legs they take short little steps, so they're slow as jam and you're in a damn hurry and why are you so slow??! They usually wear weird clothes too, a fine enough reason right there.

--But wait.

I must admit that I have been watching a lot of NCIS on the tube lately and you know them crafty coppers have a million and one ways to tie you to a gun like that. Shoot a bunch of people down and your options become few--a bullet self administered, die in a hail of police gunfire, or spend the rest of your mortality swapping out brutality, sodomy and boredom.

--There must be a better way. Hmmmm, there must be a better way. Think think think.

--I know. I've got it! I've been overthinking this all along. The answer is sitting right there. Right there in my driveway.

I can get behind the wheel and for the most part can give my attention to my cell phone, changing the CD, making a grocery list, checking my email, balancing a cup of coffee, burning a cigarette, swattin' the kids--anything and everything expect paying attention to actually driving. This is viewed and is fully accepted as normal and rational behavior.

I can get behind the wheel and injure, maim and kill others, usually with minimal consequence. The word "accident" will be falsely applied to many of my sins, so long as I keep it alcohol free (cuz those Muthas will put a quick end to all the fun) . When the accident excuse fails, it is of little matter, for remember always that it is very rare that you will be labeled as "killer" or "attempted murderer" because first and foremost you are a "driver", and that supercedes all.

I can kill a man with a gun and receive twenty-five years to life as punishment, kill the same man with my car and, most often, I'll see NO jail time.

Routinely we view a driver's license as a right and not a privilege. Driver's licenses are handed out to wild-eyed sixteen year olds like ritalin is handed out to their little brothers. At the other end of the scale, old men who can barely walk and barely see still motor around in their oversized ancient automobiles, yet it cannot be argued that those whose wisdom has increased are shown to have decreased reaction times.

All organisms degenerate, all systems will slow to zero.

How do we acknowledge this fact when it comes to making the tough decision about our very old relatives, within our families and within our societies, about their "right" to drive? We rely on self-assessment, or more often, wait for the inevitable "accident" to happen.

Dollar short and a day late

2008-03-17T17:34:00.000-07:00

As usual I am kind of slow catching on to these new fangled things like the world wild web and the whole blogosphere, aka, nattering away into the void. I have been mostly a lurker and a commenter on other people's missives, but was inspired today to get this going by stumbling upon this delightful and new blog.

I have been solely self-propelled for a lifetime; the elegance and simplicity, the beauty and the reliability of the bicycle capturing my soul from the start. I don't mind to walk, but most walks of any length will usually result in my comment: "We should've rode our bikes."

Back in the day when we were kids, when gas was cheap and smog was plentiful, when the post-war dream was still in rem stage, when we had seemed to indeed achieve "better living through chemistry," the parentals dragged us back and forth across the country from Ontario to California, a number of times. Back then I seemed to be enjoying the scenery and the "freedom of the open road" that would soon become only a marketing slogan, as the realities of the first oil crisis took hold of the nation, gas lines formed, and a strange new, ominous 'word' appeared on everyone's lips: "OPEC."

I was too young to really be effected by any of this, and perhaps it had left no real impression, as I dutifully played with my hot wheels cars and GI Joe's. My family was no different than any other in our neighbourhood--two cars in the driveway that were relied upon for 100% of the journeys made that were more than a block away. A distant "Uncle" owned a classic car, which we appreciated and were appropriately thrilled to get a ride in such a beautiful old touring car. I enjoyed building the model cars in my basement, and I knew who "Big Daddy" Don Garlits was.

In short, my automobile indoctrination was proceeding apace.

So, what went wrong? Where did the indoctrination fail? Today, I hold no driver's license, and go about my daily business quite capably on two wheels.

Still, this is a question I don't ponder much, as the bicycle is my first love and preferred conveyance.

I 'm not "super-fit" or "super-brave" or even "really stupid", as I have been called in the past. If anything, I became more and more conscious of the superior lifestyle that the committed cyclist enjoys. Upon some of these virtues I hope to extol in the coming pages.