After some interesting discussions I've had with friends about the five senses, I'd like to ask as many of you as possible to let me know which is the most important sense to you, and why - vision, hearing, taste, touch and smell. I'll wait a few days to collect some responses, ideally just as comments here so that anyone and everyone can read them, then I'll post a follow-up description of what my personal research showed... I think the answers will make us all think, and will likely be very enlightening...
Thanks to all of you who choose to take the few moments to respond...
Isn't it comforting to know how far the US govt will push the limits of peace and war, and in urban areas at that?!!!
Peace, White Feather
For immediate release: January 29, 2008
Energy Dept. Opens Dangerous Bio-Warfare Research Facility at Livermore Lab; Violates Own Federal Regulations and Law
Community Outraged at Risk from Accidents, Terrorist Attack; Will File Litigation to Stop Experiments with Deadly Pathogens
LIVERMORE, CA -- Yesterday, ignoring public concerns and without the required notification or circulation of its environmental analysis for public review and comment, the Department of Energy (DOE) opened a bio-warfare agent research facility at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. The new facility, housed in a prefabricated (i.e., portable) building, has now begun dangerous experiments with lethal pathogens such as live anthrax, plague, Q-fever, tularemia, and others.
This research includes genetic modification of deadly biological agents and toxins as well as aerosol (spray) experiments on up to 100 small animals at a time, according to DOE documents. The facility is rated a Bio-Safety Level-3 (BSL-3). The ratings, done by the Centers for Disease Control, go from 1 - 4, with the highest level reserved for the rarest diseases for which there is no known cure, such as Ebola. A BSL-3 designation allows scores of potentially deadly pathogens in and out of Livermore Lab, including "select agents," the name given to pathogens historically associated with bio-warfare activities.
"The DOE and Livermore Lab are jeopardizing the health and safety of the local community and the surrounding Bay Area," charged Marylia Kelley, the Executive Director of Tri-Valley CAREs and a neighbor of Livermore Lab. Analysis has shown that live anthrax released to the air due to "light damage" to the BSL-3 could result in up to 9.000 deaths, depending on wind patterns.
According to Tri-Valley CAREs' Staff Attorney, Robert Schwartz, "We are deeply frustrated by DOE's continuing refusal to analyze the risks, hold public hearings, or comply with federal regulations and our nation's most fundamental environmental law, the National Environmental Policy Act. Once again, it is up to us to bring legal action to stop the facility, and we are preparing to do so."
Tri-Valley CAREs, individual Livermore residents and others initially filed a lawsuit in 2003 challenging the adequacy of the environmental analysis that DOE prepared for the Livermore Lab BSL-3. In 2006, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ordered the DOE to consider whether the threat of terrorist activity necessitates the preparation of a high-level Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for the facility. Instead of conducting a detailed study of the terrorist threat, DOE chose to downplay the very real risks to the community and the environment and issue a Finding of No Significant Environmental Impact (FONSI) for the bio-warfare agent research.
"By issuing the FONSI without a public review and comment period, DOE violated its own regulations," explained Schwartz. Under those regulations, DOE must issue a proposed FONSI for public review and comment in certain situations, including where the nature of the proposed action is one without precedent.
"The BSL-3 facility at Livermore Lab is without precedent because DOE had previously never operated any microbiological laboratories above Biosafety Level 2," Schwartz continued.
Further, and contrary to the process DOE has chosen for its first-ever BSL-3, another, similar, facility proposed for the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico is currently in the process of undergoing the highest level of environmental analysis, an EIS. This will ensure a more robust environmental review and public hearings for the people of New Mexico.
"We in California deserve no less," insisted Kelley. "This situation is an outrage. There are 7 million people living within a 50-mile radius of Livermore Lab. We are not disposable people, and we will not allow DOE to ignore our safety."
Tri-Valley CAREs continues to maintain that a facility of this nature, which will handle deadly pathogens in an urban environment, requires the preparation of a full EIS. This concern was at the heart of the 2003 lawsuit. However, DOE has stubbornly refused to prepare an EIS in its haste to open the facility.
According to Kelley, the DOE is deliberately using "environmental blinders" in order to open the BSL-3. The lower-level Environmental Assessment (EA) the Department instead prepared is a poor substitute for the thorough analysis that would be contained in an EIS. Moreover, the EA omits significant information, including a thorough discussion of a September 2005 anthrax release caused by Livermore Lab that resulted in a $450,000 fine and the possible exposure of at least two individuals.
"Tri-Valley CAREs intends to pursue legal action against DOE," maintained Schwartz. "In addition to violating its own regulations, DOE has also run afoul of the National Environmental Policy Act. In particular, the terrorist threat analysis ordered by the Ninth Circuit is inadequate and unsupported," Schwartz continued. "Contrary to DOE's assertions, it is evident that the Department did not take a 'hard look' at the environmental consequences of the BSL-3 facility."
In addition to deadly impacts in surrounding communities, the Livermore Lab bio-warfare agent research facility has global implications and may fray the already fragile international treaty banning bio-weapons.
Staff Attorney Schwartz pointed out that he recently returned from the Meeting of States Parties to the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) in Geneva, where he discussed with diplomats from treaty's signatory nations, including the United States, the potential problems posed by "mixing bugs and bombs" and a highly-classified nuclear weapons laboratory like Livermore. "If the research that is now begun at Livermore Lab moves forward, it has the potential to weaken the BWC. I am concerned, especially, that negotiations toward stringent, needed verification and enforcement protocols to the BWC will suffer because of DOE's capricious action," Schwartz concluded.
For more information on the Livermore Lab bio-warfare research facility's health and environmental risks, and the organization's pending legal action to stop it, contact Tri-Valley CAREs at (925) 443-7148.
Oops, I think I posted this as a broadcast! How quickly I forget things and how to do them!!!
I'll apologize in advance that this little rant is a bit more academic than usual, but I'd prefer to get it out than to take the time to lighten it a bit at the risk of not finding the time... I'm sure you'll understand! But even so, it's not written in French!!!
I'm sure many of you wonder, as do I, what can we do next to avoid the destruction of humanity or, even worse, our survival and the destruction of most other living organisms. I'd very much like to know your ideas on realizable things we can do next.
Why? Last month, our fairly new car decided that it was time to let the diesel turbo die, and in so doing, totally destroyed the engine... cost to repair, somewhere around $15,000. It was a fairly clean vehicle, even by European standards, but I had already begun to think about what I needed to change to even before this little incident. Now I have no choice to find an alternative as our only other vehicle is a microscopic compact that belonged to my late father-in-law, 15 years old, and it is petrol-based and quite dirty (read quite clean by American standards). Unfortunately, we live in the French countryside where there are very few jobs, no buses, and shops are always miles away...
My initial review of what's out there in not very encouraging. Either the vehicles are far too expensive for our non-existent budget (as the insurance can't pay because even though the car is a write-off, it was an engine problem) or they simply don't live up to the manufacturers green claims. I'm actually thinking again of disappearing on a sailboat or perhaps founding an ecovillage in the Pyrenees or Massif Central where we could have a community vehicle for the few times we need to go into the outside world...
On a more serious note, I have been thinking recently of what we can do to get the message out, and, as I'm foolishly going to start a doctoral program next year (getting bored again - hey I'm almost 50 now, it's my right), I was thinking of trying to tie research with action. I was very inspired by Barbara Bender's book a few years ago entitled "Stonehenge: making space" in which she created a mobile exhibition in partnership with the highly radical Stonehenge supporters (pacifists, druids, anarchists, travelers etc.) and even the govt agencies responsible for closing Stonehenge off from everything that it stands for (open and public space, for the people and not to exclude those who Stonehenge was built for - us). They created a very interactive exhibition that catered for academic needs but also the alternative realities and needs of most other actors in the saga. I'm thinking along the lines of trying to do the same thing in a highly paradoxical area, that of Southern California.
To do what? To have a mobile, interactive discussion about climate change, conservation, biodiversity and to search for better ways to be able to actually EFFECT the massive cultural change, short of worldwide total revolution (which I'm not ruling out).
Why SoCal? I just had the pleasure of spending two weeks there. With all deference to a number of Ecologists and Academics assessments that CA is really trying to make a difference, I was actually shocked by what I saw. Just a few examples. A lovely Honda Accord parked in the entry lobby of a department store, loaded with a (clean) 2.4L petrol engine, leather and everything one could ever hope for (my expectations have dropped considerably since leaving the US 6 years ago) for only $26,000 - here, in France, if we could find such a fine example, it would be well over $35,000 and so wouldn't be bought, with people opting for smaller vehicles. A BMW 528i for only $500 a month 3-yr lease. Same for an Audi. Less for a baby hummer. Petrol at less than $3 a gallon - here, closer to $8 or even $10 a gallon now. In the driveway of a lovely , little (multi-million dollar) house on Palos Verdes, overlooking the Pacific, a hummer parked next to a Prius - how sweet , perhaps one balances out the other. Why buy a 6-cylinder, 3L Lexus when a 4.6L V8 is available? - Here we think why buy a V6 when a V4 or even a V3 does the same job? Mercedes with designations (ie model numbers representing engine size) that I've never even seen in France and yet there's one on every corner around LA. In effect what I saw was ostentatious consumption coupled with whatever-it-takes marketing and financial backup (read highly subsidized financing) to make-it-happen (which I well understand from my business executive days revolving around the "get-it-done" attitude). I saw massive organic-based hypermarkets with huge parking lots filled with hummers, suburbans, tahoes, cadillac trucks, and every other exuberantly expensive vehicle one could think of, and with so many goodies inside - I'm an almost-Vegan and dying of hunger in France - most of which would not come out too well if we were to have a mandated "true-price" sticker explaining all the hidden production/delivery costs and pollutions and subsidies and tax-exempt jet fuel. Shops selling French cosmetic products for approximately half the retail price we pay in France. English beer for less than we pay in England. The green vegetation, none of which is indigenous to CA, everywhere. Perfectly manicured lawns and gardens. Hose pipes watering everything, even Christmas trees set up at graves in a local cemetery to ensure that the needles lasted through the holidays. Vans offering to put up the Holiday lights. The holiday lights. WOW, the lights. On another note, I heard of the tragic assassination of Bhutto, reported on a news-flash: "Now to the assassination of Bhutto and what this means to Americans". I was astounded. Silly me, I though it was a crisis for Pakistan. Or even to women in general, or the underdog in general. I heard the Bush administration shoot down the California attempt to accelerate and increase emission reductions suggesting that "Americans don't need to lower their emissions, there are other solutions" (I'm serious; I heard that from someone in the administration). Brief: what I saw and heard was a state of incredible paradoxes, which apparently represents the state the most switched-on to saving our planet. I'm not bashing California, not at all: I paradoxically love California. But I did leave thinking that as a human race we have already lost...
Hence my idea of trying to do something, interactively, with the people.
Donald Worster is an environmental historian at the University of Kansas. He is the author of Dust Bowl: the Southern Plains in the 1930s, Nature's Economy, and Rivers of Empire: Water, Aridity and the American West. It is sometimes claimed that he is one of the most brilliant people of our time.
Worster just published an article that argues a pet theme of mine, that as bad as terrorism is, the "war" against terrorism and the unfathomable cost associated with it is terribly misguided. It can only bring about a more insecure world and massive suffering - imagine the almost one and a half million Iraqis who have died under two presidents named Bush. I'm not even going to get into the counter-argument of what would their lives have been like otherwise, that is not my point. In a culture of our alleged intelligence and compassion, war and killing are never justifiable.
More importantly, if just a fraction of that effort were directed towards peace... ah, what an interesting thought. And if just a fraction of that effort were directed towards stopping the pollution that is poisoning our atmosphere, rivers, land and seas, and that is directly putting humanity and half of all the animals on this planet on?a road to hell, if not extinction, because of the global warming consequence... We learned a long time ago that every action has an equal an opposite reaction. But even before that knowledge of enlightenment, we knew the story of the Pied Piper: it's the same thing. We can't live as we do with impunity. We can't take with one hand without giving back with the other - the problem is that what we are taking can only be given back in kind, and it's a kind that is not very kind to biological life. Well, at least not to the 99.999% (plus or minus a few decimal places)?of biological life that supports the remaining part. I'm not trying to be academically or scientifically accurate here: any hyperbole is used only to support a point. Until we can accept, as many shamanic and indigineous cultures have for millennia, that every single part of the known universe exists for a reason, and that we?must respect all the component parts, we will continue down this road to hell. What is increasingly clear is that the Earth does not need humans -?we need the Earth. The approaching 7 billion humans don't need the tiny percentage who control all of the power and money - the elite need the rest. Without a "rest", there is no elite - but without an elite there can still be a "rest".
There is still time to change the infinite number of possible futures that humanity faces, and to narrow these futures down to one of a few that represent hope. And having said that, my heart goes out to those who have died in the name of terrorism - and every other cause that can be blamed on humans...
Peace, White Feather
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Here's the article by Worster.
Counterpunch Weekend Edition June 30 / July 1, 2007 Which City is Worse Off Today: New York or New Orleans? Fiddling While America Sizzles
By DONALD WORSTER
The United States is the richest, most powerful nation in history -- this you have heard many times before. What you have not heard so often is that America has also been, for nearly 200 years, the safest, most secure nation ever. Far from being aware of that fact and enjoying it, we have become a nation filled with fear and anxiety. But we fear the wrong invader.
Not since the British burned our capital in 1814 has a foreign army succeeded in invading our continental domain. Pearl Harbor lay thousands of miles from our mainland homes. And the World Trade Center bombing was no real invasion or victory of a foreign power, but one act by a handful of fanatics, all killed. Their brothers are hiding in caves along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, no more able to invade America, if we keep our eyes open, than camels could take over our national parks.
Yet a far more serious threat has appeared that our leaders are ignoring. It is global climate change. And it has the potential to bring the United States down economically, socially and agriculturally, making us a much poorer and weaker nation.
In February the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released its latest major report of scientific data. Based on the greenhouse gases already affecting the atmosphere, and on expected increases in those gases under various economic scenarios, the IPCC projects -- too cautiously, many say -- that the Earth's overall surface temperature will rise 3 to 7 degrees by the end of this century, and the sea may rise almost 2 feet.
In an April IPCC report, world policy-makers were told to expect long-term flooding of coastal areas, more intense tropical storms, increased drought in drought-prone areas, and a decline in crop productivity with increased risk of hunger.
Here is where the danger comes to the United States: Not only may we be forced to protect people on the coasts, or move them inland, we will also be in great danger of losing our agricultural heartland -- the Corn Belt and the Wheat Belt. Today, half of our wheat crop goes overseas. In a few decades we may not have enough food to support our own population, let alone share with others.
And our Western cities may be paying a lot more for water, if they can find any, than for the last drops of oil.
We are most threatened today, not by terrorists, but by impersonal physical forces. And as the century goes on, that invasion will gather speed and effect with biological threats like invasive plants and malaria.
Such talk, we are told, is scare mongering. We also are told that defensive measures would cost too much.
Yet which place is worse off today? New York, which lost two major buildings and thousands of lives to terrorists? Or New Orleans, which lost many lives as well and may never recover much of its displaced population or destroyed territory after being hit by a hurricane that drew its energy from warming gulf waters?
And how can we not afford to invest in conservation and alternative energy sources to defend our own land against the ravages of global climate change, but afford to fight wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which cost $120 billion a year? And pay four to five times that, depending on the calculation, for the military as a whole? And spend more than $40 billion more on the Homeland Security Department?
All that money to defend a country that is the most secure and safe in the world from outside human invasion!
Our homeland is facing a change of unprecedented danger, one that we have helped create by wasteful consumption. This is likely to be the greatest threat to security and prosperity in our history.
When will our leaders stop beating the drums about "a war on terrorism" and start facing the real dangers we face? When will they wake up and take action -- today, this year? Will they wait until Washington is under water and the Great Plains are a burning desert?
While traveling my million miles on corporate business adding countless tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, I wrote this poem on a primitive blackberry and then sent it to myself. Today I refound the poem...
Peace White Feather
the vulture 2000
the vulture caught the wind cutting though the air looking searching although only the size of a pea its brain thought only of survival not really focused on the vector transcribed by the bird in multi-dimensional reality food eat mate live desert below but nothing moving no sign of food no vegetation hungry alone sick its brain too small to realize it was dying not a single question to confuse its mind eat nothing parched earth below tan crisscrossed with black dead the vulture swooped on a down current dying like everything below too stupid to realize that death came grace of an even more stupid human a leader too stuck in power too stuck in greed his brain too small to realize too stuck in competition with other leaders who led who were followed by others just like him who were followed by a streams of filth leading proudly to the end too stupid to realize that in a competition with nature only nature can win even if only pyrrhic the vulture the victim the earth empty quiet peace nothing
