What Is Plan B?
Written on February 2nd, 2006China now consumes more grain, meat, coal and steel than the United States. If China’s income grows as projected, in 2031 its income per person will match incomes in the United States today. At that point, it will be consuming the equivalent of two-thirds of the current world grain harvest, driving 1.1 billion cars (versus 800 million in the world today) and using 99 million barrels of oil per day, well above current world production of 84 million barrels. That’s Plan A.
New threats — climate change, environmental degradation, the persistence of poverty and the loss of hope — call for new strategies. Brown — who left World Watch in 2001 to found Earth Policy Institute — says it’s time for Plan B — a renewable-energy-based, reuse-recycle economy with a diversified transport system: time to build a new economy and a new world. The world is now spending $975 billion annually for military purposes. Plan B — social goals and earth restoration — requires an additional annual expenditure of $161 billion.
Brown, founder of the World Watch Institute, was in Europe recently to address the Royal Geographic Society in London, the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, and the OECD in Paris. He will speak to the World Affairs Councils of San Francisco and Los Angeles the first week of February.
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Election Theft Emergency
Written on January 27th, 2006January 27, 2006 | For GOP voters, the 2004 presidential election was little short of miraculous: Behind in the Electoral College even on the afternoon of the vote, the Bush-Cheney ticket staged a stunning comeback. Usually reliable exit polls turned out to be wrong by an unprecedented 5 percent in swing states. Conservatives argued, and the media agreed, that “moral values” had made the difference.
In his latest book, Fooled Again: How The Right Stole The 2004 Election, And Why They’ll Steal The Next One Too (Unless We Stop Them), Mark Crispin Miller argues that it wasn’t moral values which swung the election — it was theft.
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Battlefield Iraq
Written on January 20th, 2006January 20, 2006 | Park City, Utah, is a long way from Baghdad. The four Iraq war veterans attending the Sundance Film Festival, which starts this weekend, are probably more comfortable in combat boots than Ugg boots, but they hope their presence will help promote “The Ground Truth,” a documentary directed by Patricia Foulkrod in which they appear. Two of those vets, Paul Rieckhoff and Sean Huze, recently joined a third, Jimmy Massey, to talk with interviewer Terrence McNally about their experiences in Iraq.
As a corporal in the Marines, Sean Huze participated in the March 2003 invasion of Iraq with the 2nd Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion. Huze was awarded a Certificate of Commendation citing his “courage and self-sacrifice throughout sustained combat operations” while in Iraq. After returning to the United States, he starred in his debut as a playwright, “The Sand Storm: Stories from the Front.” His third play, “The Dragon Slayer,” which focuses on PTSD, will premiere in Los Angeles in March.
Paul Rieckhoff enlisted in the U.S. Army Reserves on Sept. 15, 1998. In early 2003, he was assigned as platoon leader for the 3rd Platoon, B Company, 3/124th INF (Air Assault) FLNG, and spent approximately 10 months in Iraq. Third Platoon conducted over 1,000 combat patrols; all 38 men in Rieckhoff’s platoon returned home alive. In June 2004, Rieckhoff founded Operation Truth — now called Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA) — along with a couple of other veterans, some volunteers and massive credit-card debt.
Jimmy Massey, a co-founder of Iraq Veterans Against the War, is a former staff sergeant in the United States Marine Corps. He was a boot camp instructor at Parris Island, S.C., and a Marine recruiter before fighting in the Iraq war and was honorably discharged in December 2003 after 12 years of service. His autobiography, “Kill, Kill, Kill,” was recently published in France. Ron Harris, a reporter for the St. Louis Dispatch, once embedded with the Marines in Iraq, claims Massey has lied or exaggerated his accounts of atrocities in Iraq. The controversy was recently a cover story in Marine Corps Times.
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Real Leaders Have Heart
Written on December 8th, 2005In her new book about Abraham Lincoln, historian Doris Kearns Goodwin reveals the quality that makes a president great — his capacity for empathy.
With over 1,000 books about Lincoln in print, what remains to be said? In Team Of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Doris Kearns Goodwin approaches this well-known history through the lives of four men and their families. It was Lincoln’s extraordinary empathy, she asserts, that enabled him to bring his opponents together, create the most unusual cabinet in history, and marshal their talents to the task of preserving the Union and winning the war.
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Come Home Again, America
Written on November 21st, 2005At 24, I worked for George McGovern’s 1972 Presidential campaign. In 2005, I had the opportunity to interview him for an hour with the release of the documentary, One Bright Shining Moment: The Forgotten Summer of George McGovern. Robert Kennedy described him as the most decent man he’d ever met in politics. I agree. This interview was originally published at Alternet November 21, 2005.
In addition to his pledge to begin withdrawing US troops from Vietnam on Inauguration Day, George McGovern was for universal health care, a guaranteed minimum income, and tax reform. Not only that, his grassroots campaign wasn’t controlled by party bosses or professionals.
I couldn’t resist. I left paradise and drove back to the States in time to work the last two primaries in California and New York and the convention in Miami. As a reward for my efforts I was given the job of running California’s most conservative Democratic assembly district in southeast Los Angeles County, consisting of a few Latinos, a lot of Humphrey-loving unionists and, to the right of them, Wallace folks.
I was asked to win 37 percent of the vote. Without a university, a community college or a single affluent neighborhood in the region, and using a canvassing army of mostly high school students, that’s exactly what we did. Unfortunately, that’s all the campaign got nationally, losing to Richard Nixon 49 states to one. In our campaign office in Downey, we wept.
A decorated World War II bomber pilot, George McGovern ran the Food for Peace Program under John Kennedy and represented South Dakota for two terms in the House and three terms in the Senate. He’s written nine books, including his most recent, Ending Hunger Now: A Challenge to Persons of Faith. The late Robert Kennedy described McGovern as the most decent man he’d ever met in politics. A documentary about the campaign, One Bright Shining Moment: The Forgotten Summer of George McGovern, is now playing in select theaters. (photo: iowademocrats.org)
