ICE ROAD SKIING [and] FORWARD TO 1900?

ICE ROAD SKIING

February through mid-April is our favourite time of year here at the Chena Ridge Research Centre. The higher sun angles gives us longer, warmer days, with ample good-quality snow for our nordic ski outings. Just the view alone of the bright light through our windows lifts our spirits, after the dim times from early Dec. to mid-January.

Everyone thinks of Alaska as nearly roadless, and vastly "undeveloped", which it is. Every so often, state politicians and the local news media hype about building new roads across the state. A road to Nome from Fairbanks. A road to connect Juneau to the Alaska/Canada road system.

What many, especially in the lower 48, don't realize, is that we have multitudes of roads, at least in the interior, South-Central, and Southwest/West portions of the state, for almost half the year. These are our frozen rivers. By December, there is usually 25 to 80 or more centimetres of ice on all of the large interior rivers.  Such as this, on the Copper River, near Copper Center, early this past January.

We are fortunate in Fairbanks to have the large, Tanana River, on the southern edge of town. Just about 8km down from the top of Chena Ridge, a nice park/boat launch area allows all manner of access to it, throughout the year. We usually start skiing on the Tanana in late November or  December, but just for skating. Which requires, generally speaking, -20C or warmer temperatures, to be enjoyable, along with a packed-down surface, in this case, by snowmachine traffic. Along with a day off, that meets those criteria. This year that didn't happen until last week, but the ice is even twice as thick now, especially since our snow-cover is very skimpy this winter; we've only had 30% of our average snowfall so far.

The Tanana is very large in this area, sometimes easily 500 or more metres across. It runs very swiftly in summer, so ice safety is essential, to fall through would be fatal, as the swift current would sweep you under it. So we stick to proven snowmachine trails as often as possible out in the middle of the river. Which is what we want anyway, for skate skiing.

It really is a highway, mushers can run their teams between villages, for hundreds of kilometres, if they wish. Similarly, people on snowmachines can visit different villages this way, along the rivers, and across country that is brutally swampy in summer, but smooth and packed, in winter, with hard snow. Ideal for snowmachines, dog teams, skiers, and snowshoers. If we ever had the time and funds, we would ski from Fairbanks to the Bering Sea, preferably in March/April, when the days are longest, and conditions not as cold. It would be at least 900 km, but doable in a month or so. Some cyclists with winterised mountain bikes have done so before, and probably skiers, but we aren't sure.

We decided to hit the Tanana River road this week, on a day when it warmed to about -19C (-2F) in the afternoon. As you can see, the river is quite wide here, over 500 metres, just a few km down from the parking area. And the trail, very wide, about 10 metres in spots, from all the snowmachine traffic. It had just snowed a much-needed 1 cm, the day before, so that helped freshen the surface.

Even though Mattie is half husky, since she grew up on Kodiak, and came from the pound, we don't think she was ever a "real" sled dog, in the sense of serving on a team, and learning the commands, etc.. So she's very curious when she sees the teams running down the river, or on different trails in the region. But she doesn't get too close, I think because she is very independent, and would't want to be in harness.

Homer on the other hand, remembers his days in the harness, and always stays well clear!  The weather was beautiful and sunny, but as usual in mid-winter, a down-drainage breeze was present. Cold air drowns down through the river system to the Bering Sea all winter, in the absence of any opposing general winds from weather systems. If the general wind flow is aligned with the river drainage/canyon, they can get quite strong and nasty. It was about a 15-20 kph breeze that day, and the snow quite stiff, as it hadn't warmed much from the colder morning.

Which meant we only went down 8 km or so before turning back. With the very diminished glide, and cold breeze, not a very pleasant ski. When temperatures are -15C or warmer, and the snow surface suitable, one pushoff in skate skiing can propel you 10 metres or more. Which then allows us to cover vast distances in a much shorter time, with the same energy expenditure or less, as would be needed, for a much shorter run. We were only getting about a third of that glide this day.


FORWARD TO 1900?

Since the Ray-gun days of the 1980's, a focused assault on worker's rights and conditions in this country has been undertaken by the corporate world. Starting with the firing and blacklisting of the PATCO air traffic controllers by Reagan in 1981, and accelerating during the 1990s, as outsourcing to countries with no labor protections (allowing for deadly low pay and long hours in often unsafe conditions, along with little or no environmental regulations) began in every major manufacturing, and software development firm. Countries like India, Colombia, Mexico, Panama, Bangladesh, Vietnam, and of course, the giant of them all, China. Conditions for factory workers in these countries is very much what it was like in this, or European countries, in 1900. Which is to say, dismal. There was no workmen's compensation. An on-the-job injury from unsafe working conditions gets you fired, with no medical or wage benefits. Labour organisers are frequently beaten, jailed, or murdered. The workweek is always 60 hours long, or more, at least six days a week. The pollution from all unregulated industrial activities poisons the air and water over vast areas; China's incredible air pollution from it's thousands of coal-fired power plants and factories churning out our consumer items now reaches the west coast of the U.S., in significant, and sometimes unhealthy concentrations.

This is the World that will return to this country, within a few decades, unless organised labour reinvigorates, and all people look in their hearts, and support causes and politicians who will actually work to regulate Capitalism, and humanise our political/economic system.  We came across this article yesterday, it puts things in good perspective.

http://counterpunch.org/macaray02102010.html

A Dagger in the Heart of Labor

Congress Nixes Becker

By DAVID MACARAY

Just when organized labor had entered the seventh and final stage of the grief cycle—after having witnessed the death of the EFCA (Employee Free Choice Act), they’d already passed through shock, denial, anger, bargaining, guilt and depression—they get dealt another crushing blow, this one in the form of Craig Becker, Obama’s nominee to the NLRB, being denied confirmation by a hostile congress.

The Becker rejection could hurt even more than the EFCA (“card check”). Why? Because Becker’s chances were infinitely better than those of the EFCA, which, beneficial as it would have been, remained broken down in the driveway. In truth, the ambitious legislation never really got any momentum behind it. By contrast, the Becker nomination appeared to be running on all eight cylinders.

True, the Republicans had played games by stalling the vote for five months, but the Democrats had the 60 senators necessary to avoid the procedural roadblock of a filibuster and, once over that disgraceful parliamentary hurdle, had more than enough votes to carry the nomination. At least they did until Massachusetts elected Scott Brown, a Republican.

Then, to make matters worse, Senator Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) announced that he would join the Republican filibuster, killing Becker’s chances. Say what you will about Martha Coakley, Brown’s Democratic opponent, she wouldn’t have joined the Republican filibuster. And without the filibuster, Becker gets confirmed.

So what made Craig Becker so unappealing to the Republicans? He was unapologetically pro-labor, an old-fashioned labor advocate. He was a champion of America’s working class, of its struggling middle-class, and of its impoverished bottom-class.

In other words, Becker was all the things you would expect in an NLRB member, all the things the position called for going back to 1935, when the New Deal agency was invented, and all the things that had been missing in the NLRB under eight years of the Bush administration. And, of course, it was precisely these qualities that the Republican party and U.S. Chamber of Commerce objected to.

Despite the Republicans’ attempt to demonize him, Becker, a lawyer for the SEIU (Service Employees International Union), is a recognized labor expert. Becker earned both his law school and undergraduate degrees from Yale University, and has either practiced or taught law for the past 27 years.

On Tuesday I asked the IBT (International Brotherhood of Teamsters) what their thoughts were on the Becker rejection. The Teamsters were instrumental in lobbying for passage of the EFCA, and were very much in favor of Becker filling one of the vacancies on the Labor Board.

James P. Hoffa, General President, IBT, replied: “The President ought to be able to appoint who he wants to sit on the NLRB. Politics should not stand in the way of a well qualified appointee. Craig Becker has impeccable credentials and has devoted his professional career to the field of labor law….Blocking his confirmation is, in reality, just a cynical strategy on the part of people who don’t believe in the statute to prevent it from being enforced.”

How cynical? The Republican minority is using stalling tactics and bogus parliamentary techniques to deny the Democratic majority the goals they were entitled to pursue by virtue of having been elected. The Republicans may have lost the election fair and square, but they are determined to thwart the administration at every turn, which includes not allowing Obama nominees to be voted upon. If you don’t have the votes to get elected, and don’t have the votes to defeat a measure, you embark upon the only strategy left to you: governing via paralysis.

Incredibly, three of the NLRB’s five seats still remain vacant. Becker was supposed to fill one of them. The only thing these three vacancies continue to do is postpone indefinitely hundreds of important labor cases—cases that deserve to be heard. Which is perfectly fine with the Republican minority because that is precisely how they intend to govern.

David Macaray, a Los Angeles playwright and author (“It’s Never Been Easy: Essays on Modern Labor”), was a former labor rep. He can be reached at dmacaray@earthlink.net

Labour unions and the struggles (and often-times injury and death) they endured from 1850 to 1940 brought us everything we take for granted in our working experience. The 40 hour workweek. Time-and-a-half overtime. Paid holidays, vacation, and sick leave. Worker's compensation for on-the-job- injuries. Inspection and regulation to prevent injury and fatality from unsafe working conditions.

It's quite clear by now, that if we wish to hold onto these just and beneficial aspects of working experience, we must support labour unions, and oppose any politicians that don't. The Democrats have expressed only tepid support since the 1990s, and their support of NAFTA in 1992-94, decimated the U.S. industrial base. The Republicans of course, are really fascists, who overtly work to bring back 1900s conditions to our society. Both parties still actively support countries like Colombia (which is the only South American country now that will allow a US military base on it) that intimidate, jail, and murder labour organisers. That is why we support the Green party, primarily.  http://www.gp.org/index.php

To that end, we at A.P.R. do not support or recommend, generally speaking, supporting or voting for any Democratic politician, unless they meet stringent pro-labor, anti-war, and environmental support criteria. Those that "make our cut" are very few in number, like Congressman Dennis Kucinich, of Ohio, or Senator Bernie Sanders, of Vermont. 

We definitely try to avoid purchasing products from companies that are documented as being particularly sociopathic in their drive for short-term profits.

http://www.greenamericatoday.org/programs/responsibleshopper/learn_hub.cfm

And of course, we have divested ourselves competely from the profit-driven financial sector. All our financial transactions and loans are with non-profit credit unions.

Everyone should read "The Peoples History of the United States",

http://books.google.com/books?id=P8V7J5qm5-YC&dq=people's+history+of+the+united+states&printsec=frontcover&source=bn&hl=en&ei=1QN1S-r0EovisQPptPDKCA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=6&ved=0CCQQ6AEwBQ#v=onepage&q=&f=false

which documents the struggles of workers and indigenous people that is not told about in our schools. It is very eye-opening. It's author, celebrated historian and peace activist Howard Zinn, passed away a few weeks ago at the age of 87, a great loss to this country, and for progressive people everywhere.

http://howardzinn.org/default/     Thank you for your inspiring work Howard!

WORKERS OF THE WORLD, UNITE!

SEEING THE LIGHT [and] THINKING AHEAD

SEEING THE LIGHT

Sometimes we at A.P.R. come across an article in our daily news-scans that just brings things into focus, about major issues. One major issue is the U.S.'s invasion and occupation of Afghanistan, which is going badly, like all imperial "adventures" have in that country for the past 3000 years. Ostenstibly started in 2001 to apprehend the perpretrators of the 9/11 attacks, and punish their supporters, the Taleban, it is in it's tenth year now, with no end in sight. Thousands of innocent civilians have died in that country, and hundreds of U.S. troops. We saw this article today (naturally, not in the US corporate media) , and found it very revealing. See what you think...

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2010/02/01-6

Afghan 'Geological Reserves Worth a Trillion Dollars'

Karzai exclaims 'very good news for Afghans', but perhaps history tells us that regular Afghans should be very cautious of such news

KABUL - Afghanistan, one of the world's poorest countries, is sitting on mineral and petroleum reserves worth an estimated one trillion dollars, President Hamid Karzai said Sunday.

Miners work in the Anyak copper mine in Afghanistan. While Afghanistan is not renowned as a resource-rich country, it has a wide range of deposits, including copper, iron ore, gold and chromite, as well as natural gas, oil and precious and semi-precious stones. (Afghan Government photo)The war-ravaged nation could become one of the richest in the world if helped to tap its geological deposits, Karzai told reporters.

"I have very good news for Afghans," Karzai said.

"The initial figures we have obtained show that our mineral deposits are worth a thousand billion dollars -- not a thousand million dollars but a thousand billion," he said.

He based his assertion, he said, on a survey being carried out by the United States Geological Survey (USGS), due to be completed in "a couple of months".

The USGS, the US government's scientific agency, has been working on the 17-million dollar survey for a number of years, Karzai said.

While Afghanistan is not renowned as a resource-rich country, it has a wide range of deposits, including copper, iron ore, gold and chromite, as well as natural gas, oil and precious and semi-precious stones.

Little has been exploited because the country has been mired in conflict for 30 years, and is embroiled in a vicious insurgency by Islamist rebels led by the Taliban.

More than 100,000 foreign troops under US and NATO command are battling the insurgents, with another 40,000 due for deployment this year.

China and India have bid for contracts to develop mines, with the Chinese winning a copper contract. An iron ore contract is due to be awarded later this year.

In 2007, China's state-owned metals giant Metallurgical Group Corporation (MCC) signed a three-billion-dollar contract to develop the Aynak copper mine -- one of the world's biggest -- over the next 30 years.

First discovered in 1974, the site, 30 kilometres (20 miles) south of Kabul in Logar, is estimated to contain 11.3 million tonnes of copper.

The Hajigak iron ore mine in Bamiyan province, north of Kabul, is currently under tender, with one Chinese and half a dozen Indian firms bidding.

The contract is for exploitation of almost two billion tonnes of high-grade ore, involving processing, smelting, steel production and electricity production.

© 2010 Agence France-Presse

There were alot of good comments, in the comment section, at the end of the article, on the Commondreams Web-Site. Here are a some of our favourites:

"I suppose the U.S. is in Afghanistan to stabilize what might otherwise be its shaky mineral and petroleum wealth. And that wealth would become unstable if the Chinese took an interest in it."

"Wow, Afghanistan is worth something, imagine that!
Too bad the current residents don't do something with it, you know the world needs cheap copper!
Labor is cheap in Afghanistan, so I imagine U.S. companies are lined up too.
If only the people of Afghanistan had a say, if only the people of the U.S. had a say... how their resources are being stolen."

"i thought imperialists were supposed to make money off their wars. can we do anything right?"

Yes, this article was definitely enlightening. Just as much as our rapidly brightening days here in Interior Alaska, where the sun is blazing at 9 degrees above the horizon now at mid-day.

THINKING AHEAD

Another interesting article that came across the A.P.R. laptop the other day, was this. Give it a read, and then we'll provide our analysis.

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2010/01/31-3

Pentagon to Rank Global Warming as Destabilizing Force

US defense review says military planners should factor climate change into long term strategy

by Suzanne Goldenberg

The Pentagon will for the first time rank global warming as a destabilizing force, adding fuel to conflict and putting US troops at risk around the world, in a major strategy review to be presented to Congress tomorrow. The Quadrennial Defense Review, prepared by the Pentagon to update Congress on its security vision, will direct military planners to keep track of the latest climate science, and to factor global warming into their long term strategic planning.

"While climate change alone does not cause conflict, it may act as an accelerant of instability or conflict, placing a burden on civilian institutions and militaries around the world," said a draft of the review seen by the Guardian.

A fisherman in the dried reservoir of Lam Takhong Dam, Thailand, a consequence of global warming.

The Pentagon says climate change does not cause conflict but it could act as an accelerant. Heatwaves and freak storms could put increasing demand on the US military to respond to humanitarian crises or natural disaster. But troops could feel the effects of climate change even more directly, the draft says.

More than 30 US bases are threatened by rising sea levels. It ordered the Pentagon to review the risks posed to installations, and to combat troops by a potential increase in severe heatwaves and fires.

The review's release coincides with a sharpening focus in the American defense establishment about global warming - even though polls last week showed the public increasingly less concerned.

The CIA late last year established a center to collect intelligence on climate change. Earlier this month, CIA officials sent emails to environmental experts in Washington seeking their views on climate change impacts around the world, and how the agency could keep tabs on what actions countries were taking to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

The CIA has also restarted a program - scrapped by George Bush - that allowed scientists and spies to share satellite images of glaciers and Arctic sea ice.

That suggests climate change is here to stay as a topic of concern for the Pentagon.

The Pentagon, in acknowledging the threat of global warming, will now have to factor factor climate change into war game exercises and long-term security assessments of badly affected regions such as the Arctic, sub-Saharan Africa, and South Asia.

Military planners will have to factor climate change into war game exercises and long-term security assessments of badly affected regions such as the Arctic, sub-Saharan Africa, and South Asia..

"The leadership of the Pentagon has very strongly indicated that they do consider climate change to be a national security issue," said Christine Parthemore, an analyst at the Center for A New American Security who has been studying the Pentagon's evolving views on climate change. "They are considering climate change on par with the political and economic factors as the key drivers that are shaping the world."

Awareness of climate change and its impact on threat levels and military capability had been slowly percolating through the ranks since 2008 when then Senators Hillary Clinton and John Warner pushed the Pentagon to look specifically at the impact of global warming in its next long-term review.

But the navy was already alive to the potential threat, with melting sea ice in the Arctic opening up a new security province. The changing chemistry of the oceans, because of global warming, is also playing havoc with submarine sonar, a report last year from the CNAS warned.

US soldiers and marines, meanwhile, were getting a hard lesson in the dangers of energy insecurity on the battlefield, where attacks on supply convoys in Afghanistan and Iraq inflicted heavy casualties.

"Our dependence on fuel adds significant cost and puts US soldiers and contractors at risk," said Dorothy Robyn, deputy Undersecretary of Defense for the Environment. "Energy can be a matter of life and death and we have seen dramatically in Iraq and Afghanistan the cost of heavy reliance on fossil fuels."

She told a conference call on Friday the Pentagon would seek to cut greenhouse gas emissions from non-combat operations by 34% from 2008 levels by 2020, in line with similar cuts by the rest of the federal government.

In addition to the threat of global warming, she said the Pentagon was concerned that US military bases in America were vulnerable because of their reliance on the electric grid to cyber attack and overload in case of a natural disaster.

The US air force, in response, has built up America's biggest solar battery array in Nevada, and is testing jet fighter engines on biofuels. The Marine Corps may soon start drilling its own wells to eliminate the need to truck in bottled water in response to recommendations from a task force on reducing energy use in a war zone.

But not all defense department officials have got on board, and Parthemore said she believes it could take some time to truly change the military mindset.

Parthemore writes of an exchange on a Department of Defense list-serv in December 2008 about whether global warming exists. It ends with one official writing: "This is increasingly shrill and pedantic. Moreover, it's becoming boring."

© 2010 Guardian/UK

Again, the first thing to notice about this article, is that it is not from any US corporate media source. Isn't it interesting, that the US military, which is the globe's largest greenhouse-gas emitting single entity (not counting actual countries, but militaries and industrial sectors), is recognising the threast global warming  poses to all countries, peoples, and ecosystems? How are all the brownshirts (Teabaggers, Limbaugh/Palin/Beckites) going to fit this into their world-view? Now, if only the US military could be acting to counteract global warming, rather than exacerbating it. Dreams are the beginning of new realities.  

OK folks, time to lay it out again. I know we tend to harp alot on climate change. But your lead editor has acquired some expertise in this area, and we feel comfortable in presenting the state-of-the-science research results about it. And the news is not good.

http://akprogressive.blogspot.com/2009/12/what-seems-likely-based-on-what-weve.html

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2009/11/23-0

What the latest research is saying, is that the last time the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere was 390 ppm, which is what it is today (up from 280 ppm 60 years ago), 128,000 years ago, sea levels were 18 to 25 feet (5 to 7 metres) higher than they are today. [higher than most of Florida]

This was due to naturally occurring volcanism, it is thought, and it is unknown how rapidly they rose to this level. But what would this mean, a sea level, that much higher? If it were to occur relatively quickly, say within 20-30 years (or even 10), could humanity adapt? Because all the major seaports and their infrastructure would be underwater, which is where and how the bulk of the global food and energy is distributed. Would all the different countries be able to rebuild all the transport and distribution facilities on higher ground that quickly? If not, shortages of food and energy would cause great hardship, and could lead to societal collapse, in many areas. It's not inconceivable that this rapid of a sea-level rise could occur.

Research is also showing that the Greenland Ice Cap is shrinking rapidly, especially on the coastal margins. And that large areas of it could collapse quite quickly, within a matter of a few years, which could raise sea levels on it's own, by a few metres. Which would quickly drown many areas like Bangladesh, and low-elevation island countries in the Pacific and Indian Oceans. Cheers.

LEGITIMISED SOCIOPATHY

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/sociopath

SOCIOPATH:

–noun Psychiatry. a person, as a psychopathic personality, whose behavior is antisocial and who lacks a sense of moral responsibility or social conscience.

It can be shown that many large corporations, in all the major corporate structures, military-industrial, pharmaceutical/health insurance, fossil-fuel, and agriculture, which generally control and dictate policy to the U.S. Government, act in sociopathic ways. History is replete with examples, from the destruction of indigenous peoples in the 1800s, repression of the labour movement from the 1800s-mid 20th Century, to modern-day struggles, especially in third-world countries, where they support and keep in power repressive, authoritarian governments which torture and murder citizens in them who work for basic human rights (Colombia, Nigeria, Myanmar, Mexico, etc...).

This is because a corporation is chartered to make profits, and will do what is necessary to achieve that aim. Under the anonymity of collective approval (executive board, shareholders groups, etc...), people are able to get away with actions that if undertaken by individuals, would result in imprisonment, and societal disapproval, in every country and culture. This is not to say that all corporations, big or small, act in these ways, but their very reason for existence, makes these actions all the more likely. And some psychologists have argued that people with sociopathic tendencies tend to do very well in the corporate and political worlds. How else can you explain policies where thousands of people are thrown out of work, so profits can be maximised, by moving jobs to countries with no worker's rights, unions, or environmental protections. Or, the proven deliberately-started war of aggression against the sovereign nation of Iraq, which was no threat to it's neighbours, or this one. Which has claimed at least a million innocent civilian lives there, and laid waste to their economy and environment. And from which many American and European large corporations are profiting enormously.

Well, unfortunately, the Supreme Court of the U.S. this week, has rendered a "decision" which will have far-reaching effects, to further support and legitimise corporate power and domination over the political and cultural structure of this country (which of course is already nearly total). This of course, is the definition of FASCISM, as given by Benito Mussolini, considered the politician who really developed the modern form of this nightmaric political structure.

One of the few places in the corporate media where actual news and commentary can be seen and heard, is Keith Olbermann's Countdown show, on MSNBC. Here is an excellent commentary he aired a few days ago on the incredible U.S. Supreme Court decision this week, preceded by some comments from politicians in the past who were able in moments of candour, to describe things as they were/are:

"I hope we shall ... crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations which dare already to challenge our government in a trial of strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country." Thomas Jefferson, 1816

"I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. Already they have raised up a moneyed aristocracy that has set the government at defiance. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs." Thomas Jefferson

"The money powers prey upon the nation in times of peace and conspire against it in times of adversity. It is more despotic than a monarchy, more insolent than autocracy, and more selfish than bureaucracy. It denounces as public enemies, all who question its methods or throw light upon its crimes. I have two great enemies, the Southern Army in front of me and the Bankers in the rear. Of the two, the one at my rear is my greatest foe.. corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money powers of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until the wealth is aggregated in the hands of a few, and the Republic is destroyed." Abraham Lincoln

http://www.truthout.org/olbermann-supreme-court-campaign-finance-ruling56311

Transcript:

"Finally tonight, as promised, a Special Comment on the Supreme Court's ruling today in the case titled "Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission."

On the cold morning of Friday, March 6th, 1857, a very old man who was born just eight months and thirteen days after the Declaration of Independence was adopted; a man who was married to the sister of the man who wrote "The Star Spangled Banner;" a man who was enlightened enough to have freed his own slaves and given pensions to the ones who had become too old to work read aloud, in a reed-thin voice, a very long document.

In it, he ruled on a legal case involving a slave, brought by his owner to live in a free state; yet to remain a slave.

The slave sought his freedom, and sued. And looking back over legal precedent, and the Constitution, and the America in which it was created, this judge ruled that no black man could ever be considered an actual citizen of the United States.

"They had for more than a century before been, regarded as beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race, either in social or political relations, and so far unfit, that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect."

The case, of course, was Dred Scott. The old man was the fifth Chief Justice of the United States of America, Roger Brooke Tawney. And the outcome, he believed, would be to remove the burning question of the abolition of slavery from the political arena for once and for all.

The outcome, in fact, was the Civil War. No American ever made a single bigger misjudgment. No American ever carried the responsibility for the deaths and suffering of more Americans. No American ever was more quickly vilified. Within four years Chief Justice Tawney's rulings were being ignored in the South and the North.

Within five, President Lincoln at minimum contemplated arresting him. Within seven, he died, in poverty, while still Chief Justice. Within eight, Congress had voted to not place a bust of him alongside those of the other former Chief Justices.

But good news tonight, Roger B. Tawney is off the hook.

Today, the Supreme Court, of Chief Justice John Roberts, in a decision that might actually have more dire implications than "Dred Scott v Sandford," declared that because of the alchemy of its 19th Century predecessors in deciding that corporations had all the rights of people, any restrictions on how these corporate-beings spend their money on political advertising, are unconstitutional.

In short, the first amendment - free speech for persons - which went into affect in 1791, applies to corporations, which were not recognized as the equivalents of persons until 1886. In short, there are now no checks on the ability of corporations or unions or other giant aggregations of power to decide our elections.

None. They can spend all the money they want. And if they can spend all the money they want - sooner, rather than later - they will implant the legislators of their choice in every office from President to head of the Visiting Nurse Service.

And if senators and congressmen and governors and mayors and councilmen and everyone in between are entirely beholden to the corporations for election and re-election to office soon they will erase whatever checks there might still exist to just slow down the ability of corporations to decide the laws.

It is almost literally true that any political science fiction nightmare you can now dream up, no matter whether you are conservative or liberal, it is now legal. Because the people who can make it legal, can now be entirely bought and sold, no actual citizens required in the campaign-fund-raising process.

And the entirely bought and sold politicians, can change any laws. And any legal defense you can structure now, can be undone by the politicians who will be bought and sold into office this November, or two years from now.

And any legal defense which honest politicians can somehow wedge up against them this November, or two years from now, can be undone by the next even larger set of politicians who will be bought and sold into office in 2014, or 2016, or 2018.

Mentioning Lincoln's supposed ruminations about arresting Roger B. Tawney, he didn't say the original of this, but what the hell:

Right now, you can prostitute all of the politicians some of the time, and prostitute some of the politicians all the time, but you cannot prostitute all the politicians all the time. Thanks to Chief Justice Roberts this will change. Unless this mortal blow is somehow undone, within ten years, every politician in this country will be a prostitute.

And now let's contemplate what that perfectly symmetrical, money-driven world might look like. Be prepared, first, for laws criminalizing or at least neutering unions. In today's Court Decision, they are the weaker of the non-human sisters unfettered by the Court. So, like in ancient Rome or medieval England, they will necessarily be strangled by the stronger sibling, the corporations, so they pose no further threat to the Corporations' total control of our political system.

Be prepared, then, for the reduction of taxes for the wealth, and for the corporations, and the elimination of the social safety nets for everybody else, because money spent on the poor means less money left for the corporations.

Be prepared, then, for wars sold as the "new products" which Andy Card once described them as, year-after-year, as if they were new Fox Reality Shows, because Military Industrial Complex Corporations are still corporations. Be prepared, then, for the ban on same-sex marriage, on abortion, on evolution, on separation of church and state. The most politically agitated group of citizens left are the evangelicals, throw them some red meat to feed their holier-than-thou rationalizations, and they won't care what else you do to this corporate nation.

Be prepared, then, for racial and religious profiling, because you've got to blame somebody for all the reductions in domestic spending and civil liberties, just to make sure the agitators against the United Corporate States of America are kept unheard.

Be prepared for those poor dumb manipulated bastards, the Tea Partiers, to have a glorious few years as the front men as the corporations that bankroll them slowly unroll their total control of our political system. And then be prepared to watch them be banished, maybe outlawed, when a few of the brighter ones suddenly realize that the corporations have made them the Judas Goats of American Freedom.

And be prepared, then, for the bank reforms that President Obama has just this day vowed to enable, to be rolled back by his successor purchased by the banks, with the money President Bush gave them his successor, presumably President Palin, because if you need a friendly face of fascism, you might as well get one that can wink, and if you need a tool of whichever large industries buy her first, you might as well get somebody who lives up to that word "tool."

Be prepared for the little changes, too. If there are any small towns left to take-over, Wal-Mart can now soften them up with carpet advertising for their Wal-Mart town council candidates, brought to you by Wal-Mart.

Be prepared for the Richard Mellon Scaifes to drop such inefficiencies as vanity newspapers and simply buy and install their own city governments in the Pittsburghs. Be prepared for the personally wealthy men like John Kerry to become the paupers of the Senate, or the ones like Mike Bloomberg not even surviving the primary against Halliburton's choice for Mayor of New York City.

Be prepared for the end of what you're watching now. I don't just mean me, or this program, or this network. I mean all the independent news organizations, and the propagandists like Fox for that matter, because Fox inflames people against the state, and after today's ruling, the corporations will only need a few more years of inflaming people, before the message suddenly shifts to "everything's great."

Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh don't even realize it: today, John Roberts just cut their throats too. So, with critics silenced or bought off, and even the town assessor who lives next door to you elected to office with campaign funds 99.9 percent drawn from corporate coffers - what are you going to do about it? The Internet!

The Internet? Ask them about the Internet in China. Kiss net neutrality goodbye. Kiss whatever right to privacy you think you currently have, goodbye. And anyway, what are you going to complain about, if you don't even know it happened? In the new world unveiled this morning by John Roberts, who stops Rupert Murdoch from buying the Associated Press?

This decision, which in mythology would rank somewhere between "The Bottomless Pit" and "The Opening Of Pandora's Box," got next to no coverage in the right-wing media today, almost nothing in the middle, and a lot less than necessary on the left.

The right wing won't even tell their constituents that they are being sold into bondage alongside the rest of us. And why should they? For them, the start of this will be wonderful.

The Republicans, Conservatives, Joe Liebermans, and Tea Partiers are in the front aisle at the political prostitution store. They are specially discounted old favorites for their Corporate Masters. Like the first years of irreversible climate change, for the conservatives the previously cold winter will grow delightfully warm. Only later will it be hot. Then unbearable. Then flames.

And the conservatives will burn with the rest of us. And they'll never know it happened. So, what are you going to do about it? Turn to free speech advocates? These were the free speech advocates! The lawyer for that Humunculous who filed this suit, Dave Bossie, is Floyd Abrams.

Floyd Abrams, who has spent his life defending American freedoms, especially freedom of speech. Apparently this life was spent this way in order to guarantee that when it really counted, he could help the corporations destroy free speech.

His argument, translated from self-satisfied legal jargon, is that as a function of the First Amendment, you must allow for the raping and pillaging of the First Amendment, by people who can buy the First Amendment.

He will go down in the history books as the Quisling of freedom of speech in this country. That is if the corporations who now buy the school boards which decide which history books get printed, approve. If there are still history books. So, what are you going to do about it?

Russ Feingold told me today there might yet be ways to work around this, to restrict corporate governance, and how corporations make and spend their money. I pointed out that any such legislation, even if it somehow sneaked past the last U.S. Senate not funded by a generous gift from the Chubb Group would eventually wind up in front of a Supreme Court, and whether or not John Roberts is still at its head would be irrelevant.

The next nine men and women on the Supreme Court will get there not because of their judgement nor even their politics. They will get there because they were appointed by purchased presidents and confirmed by purchased Senators.

This is what John Roberts did today. This is a Supreme Court-sanctioned murder of what little actual Democracy is left in this Democracy. It is government of the people by the corporations for the corporations. It is the Dark Ages. It is our Dred Scott. I would suggest a revolution but a revolution against the corporations? The corporations that make all the guns and the bullets?

Maybe it won't be this bad. Maybe the corporations legally defined as human beings, but without the pesky occasional human attributes of conscience and compassion maybe when handed the only keys to the electoral machine, they will simply not re-design America in their own corporate image.

But let me leave you with this final question: After today who's going to stop them?"

That was an excellent and concise summation of what we, in the U.S. (and in other countries that will try and follow, if their citizens can't stop them) will be facing, as a result of this ruling. Thanks Keith!

Another thing to remember is this. The five supreme court justices who ruled in the majority on this decision, while nominated by Republican presidents, were approved in Congress by Democrats and Republicans. With little real debate or probing questions given to them.  We think it should be clear now that it doesn't matter which party is in power at State and Federal levels (and soon, even on the local). Corporate power and influence dominates. Is this the kind of society we think is desirable? If not, vote and support alternative political parties. We support the Green Party of the U.S.A., http://www.gp.org/index.php,  but there are many others out there seeking fairness, and a sane, just, and sustainable political and economic system. Please join us!

Finally, here are some good common-sense comments I've seen written in on the Commondreams.org website recently, in articles about the supreme court decision:

Corporations, artificial constructs, have the constitutional privileges of humans, but are not bound by the same laws.

If I throw poison into my neighbor's yard and their kid eats it, dies, and I'm found guilty, I'll be going to jail or possibly executed by the state.

If a corporation does the same thing it suffers only a minor financial penalty and continues with its life as normal.

Why do artificial constructs, corporations, have all the privileges and protections of the law but are not subject to the same penalties as their human counterparts?

How can anyone who argues in defense of Citizens United not be a hypocrite for not also demanding corporations be subject equally to all the laws of human beings?

Every defense, oil and banking company in this country is guilty of the murder of innocent people. If ALL the laws were applied equally, and not just the privileges, such as free speech, they should've been subjected to the death penalty long ago (having their corporate charter dissolved.)

If corporations, are in essence "beings", they MUST be subject to all the laws.

Cheers.

REMEMBERING WHAT HE DIED FOR

"I've decided what I'm going to do," King preached at one of his last sermons at Ebenezer Baptist Church. "I ain't going to kill nobody in Mississippi ... [and] in Vietnam. I ain't going to study war no more. And you know what? I don't care who doesn't like what I say about it. I don't care who criticizes me in an editorial. I don't care what white person or Negro criticizes me. I'm going to stick with the best. On some positions, cowardice asks the question, ‘is it safe?' Expediency asks the question, ‘is it politic?' Vanity asks the question, ‘is it popular?' But conscience asks the question, ‘is it right?' And there comes a time when a true follower of Jesus Christ must take a stand that's neither safe nor politic nor popular but he must take that stand because it is right. Every now and then we sing about it, ‘if you are right, God will fight your battle.' I'm going to stick by the best during these evil times."

http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkatimetobreaksilence.htm

4 April, 1967:

"In 1957, a sensitive American official overseas said that it seemed to him that our nation was on the wrong side of a world revolution. During the past ten years, we have seen emerge a pattern of suppression which has now justified the presence of U.S. military advisors in Venezuela. This need to maintain social stability for our investments accounts for the counterrevolutionary action of American forces in Guatemala. It tells why American helicopters are being used against guerrillas in Cambodia and why American napalm and Green Beret forces have already been active against rebels in Peru.

It is with such activity in mind that the words of the late John F. Kennedy come back to haunt us. Five years ago he said, "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." Increasingly, by choice or by accident, this is the role our nation has taken, the role of those who make peaceful revolution impossible by refusing to give up the privileges and the pleasures that come from the immense profits of overseas investments. I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin...we must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered...

...A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. On the one hand, we are called to play the Good Samaritan on life's roadside, but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho Road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life's highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.

 

A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa, and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say, "This is not just." It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of South America and say, "This is not just." The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just.

A true revolution of values will lay hand on the world order and say of war, "This way of settling differences is not just." This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice, and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death...

America, the richest and most powerful nation in the world, can well lead the way in this revolution of values. There is nothing except a tragic death wish to prevent us from reordering our priorities so that the pursuit of peace will take precedence over the pursuit of war. There is nothing to keep us from molding a recalcitrant status quo with bruised hands until we have fashioned it into a brotherhood.

This kind of positive revolution of values is our best defense against communism. War is not the answer. Communism will never be defeated by the use of atomic bombs or nuclear weapons. Let us not join those who shout war and, through their misguided passions, urge the United States to relinquish its participation in the United Nations. These are days which demand wise restraint and calm reasonableness. We must not engage in a negative anticommunism, but rather in a positive thrust for democracy, realizing that our greatest defense against communism is to take offensive action in behalf of justice. We must with positive action seek to remove those conditions of poverty, insecurity, and injustice, which are the fertile soil in which the seed of communism grows and develops.

...These are revolutionary times. All over the globe men are revolting against old systems of exploitation and oppression, and out of the wounds of a frail world, new systems of justice and equality are being born. The shirtless and barefoot people of the land are rising up as never before. The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light. We in the West must support these revolutions.

It is a sad fact that because of comfort, complacency, a morbid fear of communism, and our proneness to adjust to injustice, the Western nations that initiated so much of the revolutionary spirit of the modern world have now become the arch antirevolutionaries. This has driven many to feel that only Marxism has a revolutionary spirit. Therefore, communism is a judgment against our failure to make democracy real and follow through on the revolutions that we initiated. Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go out into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism, and militarism. With this powerful commitment we shall boldly challenge the status quo and unjust mores, and thereby speed the day when "every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain."

...A genuine revolution of values means in the final analysis that our loyalties must become ecumenical rather than sectional. Every nation must now develop an overriding loyalty to mankind as a whole in order to preserve the best in their individual societies.

This call for a worldwide fellowship that lifts neighborly concern beyond one's tribe, race, class, and nation is in reality a call for an all-embracing and unconditional love for all mankind. This oft misunderstood, this oft misinterpreted concept, so readily dismissed by the Nietzsches of the world as a weak and cowardly force, has now become an absolute necessity for the survival of man. When I speak of love I am not speaking of some sentimental and weak response. I am not speaking of that force which is just emotional bosh. I am speaking of that force which all of the great religions have seen as the supreme unifying principle of life. Love is somehow the key that unlocks the door which leads to ultimate reality. This Hindu-Muslim-Christian-Jewish-Buddhist belief about ultimate reality is beautifully summed up in the first epistle of Saint John: "Let us love one another, for love is God. And every one that loveth is born of God and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God, for God is love." "If we love one another, God dwelleth in us and his love is perfected in us." Let us hope that this spirit will become the order of the day.

We can no longer afford to worship the god of hate or bow before the altar of retaliation. The oceans of history are made turbulent by the ever-rising tides of hate. And history is cluttered with the wreckage of nations and individuals that pursued this self-defeating path of hate. As Arnold Toynbee says: "Love is the ultimate force that makes for the saving choice of life and good against the damning choice of death and evil. Therefore the first hope in our inventory must be the hope that love is going to have the last word" (unquote).

We are now faced with the fact, my friends, that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history, there is such a thing as being too late. Procrastination is still the thief of time. Life often leaves us standing bare, naked, and dejected with a lost opportunity. The tide in the affairs of men does not remain at flood -- it ebbs. We may cry out desperately for time to pause in her passage, but time is adamant to every plea and rushes on. Over the bleached bones and jumbled residues of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words, "Too late." There is an invisible book of life that faithfully records our vigilance or our neglect. Omar Khayyam is right: "The moving finger writes, and having writ moves on."

We still have a choice today: nonviolent coexistence or violent coannihilation. We must move past indecision to action. We must find new ways to speak for peace in Vietnam and justice throughout the developing world, a world that borders on our doors. If we do not act, we shall surely be dragged down the long, dark, and shameful corridors of time reserved for those who possess power without compassion, might without morality, and strength without sight."

__________________________________________________________________________________

George Orwell, 1984

"The essential act of war is destruction, not necessarily of human lives, but of the products of human labour. War is a way of shattering to pieces, or pouring into the stratosphere, or sinking in the depths of the sea, materials which might otherwise be used to make the masses too comfortable, and hence, in the long run, too intelligent. Even when weapons of war are not actually destroyed, their manufacture is still a convenient way of expending labour power without producing anything that can be consumed...

...But when war becomes literally continuous, it also ceases to be dangerous. When war is continuous there is no such thing as military necessity. Technical progress can cease and the most palpable facts can be denied and disregarded. As we have seen, researches that could be called scientific are still carried out for the purposes of war, but they are essentially a kind of daydreaming, and their failure to show results is not important...

...War, it will be seen, is now a purely internal affair. In the past, the ruling groups of all countries, although they might recogise their common interest and therefore limit the destructiveness of war, did fight against one another, and the victor always plundered the vanquished. In our own day they are not fighting against one another at all. The war is waged by each ruling group against its own subjects, and the object of the war is not to make or prevent conquests of territory, but to keep the structure of society intact. The very word "war", therefore, has become misleading. It would probably be accurate to say that by becoming continuous war has ceased to exist. The peculiar pressure that it exerted on human beings between the Neolithic Age and the early twentieth century has disappeared and has been replaced by something quite different. ..

...A peace  that was truly permanent would be the same as permanent war. This-although the vast majority of Party members understand it only in a shallower sense-is the meaning of the Party slogan: WAR IS PEACE."

_____________________________

"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron."   ( President Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1953)

http://coursesa.matrix.msu.edu/~hst306/documents/indust.html

Farewell Address to the Nation (1961)

"In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the militaryindustrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

...We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together...

...Akin to, and largely responsible for the sweeping changes in our industrial-military posture, has been the technological revolution during recent decades.

In this revolution, research has become central; it also becomes more formalized, complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government.

Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers.

The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present and is gravely to be regarded.

Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific/technological elite.

It is the task of statesmanship to mold, to balance, and to integrate these and other forces, new and old, within the principles of our democratic system -- ever aiming toward the supreme goals of our free society.

Another factor in maintaining balance involves the element of time. As we peer into society's future, we -- you and I, and our government -- must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering, for our own ease and convenience, the precious resources of tomorrow. We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without risking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage. We want democracy to survive for all generations to come, not to become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow. 

Down the long lane of the history yet to be written America knows that this world of ours, ever growing smaller, must avoid becoming a community of dreadful fear and hate, and be instead, a proud confederation of mutual trust and respect.

Such a confederation must be one of equals. The weakest must come to the conference table with the same confidence as do we, protected as we are by our moral, economic, and military strength. That table, though scarred by many past frustrations, cannot be abandoned for the certain agony of the battlefield.

Disarmament, with mutual honor and confidence, is a continuing imperative. Together we must learn how to compose differences, not with arms, but with intellect and decent purpose. Because this need is so sharp and apparent I confess that I lay down my official responsibilities in this field with a definite sense of disappointment. As one who has witnessed the horror and the lingering sadness of war -- as one who knows that another war could utterly destroy this civilization which has been so slowly and painfully built over thousands of years -- I wish I could say tonight that a lasting peace is in sight..."