The Luxury of Mourning - David Loftus

A friend died two weeks ago. Her memorial service was held on Friday the 17th. She was not a close friend, but a lovely person who was a joy to be around. A schoolteacher with a big voice and a bigger heart, Roseanne had a broad Boston accent. She had health problems, though, and died much too soon. Former students, some of them Hispanics, came to the service and attested to the positive effect she'd had on their lives.

It isn't hard to see many of the ways our lives are blessed here in the U.S.: we can drive or fly around the country and overseas, we have exotic foods (and familiar fruits and vegetables nearly year-round) brought to our local supermarket, we can order books, clothing, toys, antiques, etc., from our home computer and have them delivered to our door within days.

It may seem strange to consider a memorial service a luxury, much the way these goods and services are. I don't mean how funerals are so often conducted in this country -- with the pomp and lavish expense described so pointedly by Jessica Mitford in her classic 1963 expose The American Way of Death -- but simply that we can have them at all. Funerals are in fact a luxury to which many other humans beings across the globe simply do not have access, and this has been the case for many others in the past.

It's not so much a matter of wealth versus poverty as peace versus war. Unless we become scholars, all we know of wars is basically large-scale reports, arrows on maps, victories and surrenders. But there are thousands -- millions -- of lives who are more intimately acquainted with wars, and whose lives are damaged and cut short by them. The import of this is easy to forget unless you think of a significant death in your own circle and then try to magnify it by the numbers.

For example, there are at least four large-scale political conflicts going on in the world right now:

1. The Naxalite-Maoist insurgency in India (small but ongoing since 1967; considerably heated up last year)

2. The civil war in Afghanistan (now in its fifth phase since 1978, and totaling somewhere between half a million and two million deaths)

3. The Somali Civil War (19 years' running and nearing a half million dead) and

4. The Iraq War (dating from 2003, with somewhere between one-half and one-and-a-half million fatalities)

Reportedly, each of these conflicts accounts for at least 1,000 violent deaths per year.

Smaller political conflicts -- at least 15 to 19 -- have been going on in places from Algeria, Namibia, and Chad to Thailand, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Israel. The total casualties in each of these ranges from potentially a quarter of a million during the series of insurgencies in Colombia since the 1970s to less than a hundred in the al-Qaeda crackdown in Yemen (brand new this year). Some, like the five-year-old fighting in the Niger River Delta of Nigeria, are so remote and of so little interest to the West that it is simply unknown how many people have died in them; there are simply not any reporters or impartial observers on the ground to report back to the rest of the world.

Burned, drowned, hacked to death, or mutilated afterward, or eaten by wild animals, many of the victims of ethnic hatreds, drug wars, religious and political crusades,  and just plain struggles for food, land, or power are undoubtedly lost, unidentified, tossed in mass graves. These are sons, brothers, fathers, daughters, mothers, sisters, uncles, grandkids utterly lost to their families and never recovered to be properly mourned by their loved ones.

That's why I regard the American funeral as a luxury. Survivors of the dead in today's (and hundreds of past) wars elsewhere don't have the opportunity to recover the body of their family member, and are too busy fleeing further violence or trying to stay alive and find food as famine, disease, shortage, and exposure to the elements demand their time and attention.

What constitutes mourning for them? And are we, amid all our comfort and leisure, because we allow our government to pursue violent adventures overseas and American companies to sell weapons all over the world, inadvertently stealing  this precious luxury from other human beings who need and deserve to mourn their losses as much as we?

*  *  *  *

For more information on current conflicts around the world, visit GlobalSecurity.org and the Wikipedia list of ongoing conflicts.

Gambling with Welfare - Nikki Lorenzini

California has a problem that does not really surprise me: their welfare cards work in the ATMs in the casinos. Smirk as you may, this might just help perpetuate the stereotype that people on welfare squander their money. For more background on this problem, read here.

New Mexico made it impossible for people to dip into their welfare accounts via ATMs, and so has a Las Vegas ATM firm that supplies more than 1,000 U.S. casinos. A company spokeswoman said it was really easy to block such transactions. Makes me wonder why the state of California hasn’t thought to block these types of transactions.

States are starting to move towards paperless systems of providing government benefits. It seems like a good idea, right? You can track who is spending what and where. I am sure people abused the welfare system in the past with their checks, and I hope the government caught this and that is why this system was put into place. So why would the states be able to put more restrictions on debit cards now? I am sure some things would be hard to prove, but when people are possibly using their welfare money for smoking, drinking, and gambling, isn’t that an abuse of the system? And doing it where it can be tracked is an outright slap in the face.

Granted, I am sure there are plenty of people who would love to have a job and go to work. But there are some things that are luxuries and others that are necessities: food, yes; clothes, yes … but your pack of Marlboro Reds? Not really. I am sure that this is going around everywhere. I know from experience that if you use your food stamps and WIC checks, the system won’t process food that is not approved. Why didn’t the state think this one through?

Recycling, Part 4: To the Recycling Machines - David Loftus

The first few times I put a glass beer bottle in an automatic recycling machine, years ago, and heard the explosive crash of the container shattering into tiny pieces inside, I cringed.

It’s a perfectly good bottle, I thought. Why not strip the paper label, disinfect the glass, and refill it, instead of having to manufacture a whole new bottle from scratch? I suppose if there were some way to sort each one out and return it to the company that uses that color and shape -- Heineken, Miller, Bud, Beck’s, Corona, and especially the many lovely microbreweries in my home town (some just blocks from where I live, such as Bridgeport, Portland Brewing, Rogue, and Henry Weinhard’s) -- then that might be possible.

But with millions of glass bottles returned every year in the state of Oregon, neither the supermarkets at one end nor the breweries and beer distributors at the other can spare the time and personnel to sort through the flotsam and retrieve the particular thousands they use. Middlemen -- the businesses that collect the raw glass (and plastic, and aluminum) and turn over new bottles to the folks who put stuff in them (or more likely, some other middle men who reshape the fragments of glass and plastic and aluminum into new containers) -- are necessary players in the process.

After I’d gotten into the habit of feeding dozens of glass bottles into the maw of the recycling machine on every visit, those glass explosions became a kind of music to my ears. It was the sound of money -- not a lot of money, but a fair amount over time -- pouring into my pocket, figuratively speaking. The same with the crackle of the plastic soda and water bottles being crushed, and the crinkle of the aluminum cans.

If the glass and plastic and aluminum containers were not smashed and crushed and flattened in the machines, the bins inside (which are long and narrow -- maybe 4 feet by a foot-and-a-half across, and less than 3 feet deep -- with only two at the bottom of each machine) would fill up a lot faster. Just one homeless man with a garbage bag full of plastic Coke bottles or aluminum Bud cans could do it … which would leave the rest of us standing around, cursing alongside the other homeless men and women who have been pulling containers out of city trash barrels and picking them off the ground.

So the glass bottles are reduced to their constituent materials, and the aluminum and plastic containers get wrenched and collapsed. Even so, with a steady parade of homeless people and occasional well-dressed tree-huggers like yours truly, the collecting machines fill up pretty fast. As soon as they’re full, they reject anything further and spit out a receipt for the bottles and cans you’ve fed into them, whether you’re finished or not.

Most supermarkets try to minimize traffic jams by hosting two collection machines of each type: two for glass, two for aluminum cans, and two for plastic bottles. But it’s not that hard for both machines of each type to fill up, or for one to fill and the other to jam.

At least I can take my unfinished load back to a storage locker inside the building. It’s got to be more frustrating for a street person who has no such option, except to wander across the city in search of another bank of recycling machines.

[Interim report: When I began this project on April 17, I wondered if I could make a hundred dollars off my neighbors in a year. That turned out to take less than six weeks. This evening, I passed the $150 mark. Since April 17, I have redeemed 3,012 glass, aluminum, and plastic containers -- all collected from recycling bins in my apartment building (with maybe a couple dozen handed to me by passersby, left on the sidewalk outside the supermarket recycling station, or scrounged from the return slots of the machines and abandoned by gleaners who couldn’t get the machines to accept them) -- worth a total of $150.60 at 5 cents a pop. We’ve used that money to buy cat food, cat litter, cookies, half-and-half, shampoo, deodorant, and other stuff from the store on the ground floor. The other night, I used the money to buy roses for Carole.]

[Next: a look at the other players]

Read part 1, the project overview

Read part 2, diving for cans and bottles in the bins

Read part 3, visiting the loading dock

Updates: Sarah Palin, the Salahis, and Tiger Woods - David Loftus

THE UNTHINKABLE SARAH PALIN

Sadly, we at American Currents have been unable to resist the urge to comment on a person whose 15 minutes of fame should have been over a year before we came online last November. First, there was the tussle with Newsweek over their use of a Runner’s World photo of Palin for a cover story, which we discussed on Nov. 20. A month later, she caused a tempest in a teaspoon during her Hawaiian vacation by wearing a McCain baseball cap with the name blacked out. Then we commented on Feb. 11 about the chances of Palin being a viable Presidential candidate in 2012 (in a word, no).

After that, another spitstorm came and went when the Fox animated series Family Guy referenced (rather unspectacularly) a girl with Down Syndrome, and Palin called it a “kick in the gut.” Finally, on March 19 the commentators of American Currents assessed what we thought might be the factors in Palin’s apparently enduring appeal. I used the occasion to talk about the cult of folksy personality in recent Presidential elections. (Palin also turned up in passing on April 20 when we discussed whether Joe Klein was justified in saying that she, Glenn Beck, and Rush Limbaugh might be guilty of sedition.)

Although Palin is doing her best to keep her name before the public, her act seems to be wearing thin even among folks one would normally expect to be part of her voting base. In mid June, Bill O’Reilly actually challenged her on her attacks on the Obama administration, and her remarks were so nonsensical and incoherent that the Young Turks Libertarian Republican web site ridiculed her. Not only does she suggest in her response to O’Reilly that big government (her supposed enemy, remember) wasn’t doing enough and should have done a lot more to tackle the Gulf oil spill, but it should have sought assistance from Norway and the Netherlands (normally among those nations targeted by U.S. conservatives for their old-world, “socialist” ideas).

Furthermore, in a June 16 Fox Business Network broadcast appearance with libertarian Ron Paul, she shrugged off the problem of marijuana use. While not in favor of decriminalizing pot smoking, she intimated that perhaps law enforcement resources would be better used elsewhere. “I think we need to prioritize our law enforcement efforts,” Palin said. “And if somebody’s gonna smoke a joint in their house and not do anybody else any harm, then perhaps there are other things our cops should be looking at to engage in and try to clean up some of the other problems that we have in society.” (Back in 2006, Palin told the Anchorage Daily News that she had smoked marijuana when it was legal in Alaska but “didn’t enjoy the experience.”) This is the sort of laissez-faire approach to “tea” that probably won’t go over with Tea Partiers, and though it’ll be a pleasant surprise to her accustomed enemies on the left, it’s probably not enough to make them want to vote for her.

WHITE HOUSE GATE-CRASHERS

On November 30 the American Currents team commented on the Nov. 24 incident in which Tareq and Michaele Salahi managed to sneak into a White House state dinner for India’s prime minister Manmohan Singh without having been invited. They got by two security checkpoints and managed to meet and be photographed with President Obama. In the subsequent barrage of investigations and press releases, it became clear that the couple were publicity seekers who hoped to turn the stunt into a reality TV appearance and future celebrity status. Most of our commentators were fairly unimpressed.

Michaele Salahi’s elaborate preparations, which included dressing in a gold-embroidered red ensemble of Indian clothing garnished with $30,000 in jewelry borrowed from a Washington store, were filmed for a show called “The Real Housewives of Washington, D.C.” -- which is scheduled to begin airing in August. The couple were subpoenaed by the Homeland Security Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives, but they refused to show up for the Dec. 3, 2009 hearing and invoked the Fifth Amendment 32 times in response to questions at a Jan. 20, 2010 hearing.

Unlike the experience of other publicity hounds, the Salahis discovered that it is not always true that there is no such thing as bad publicity. An appearance on Larry King Live was canceled by the show. Tareq Salahi was asked to resign from the Virginia Tourism Board. A USA Today/Gallup poll conducted Dec. 11-13, 2009 found that 70 percent of respondents regarded the Salahis as “losers” for their White House caper, and only 16 percent termed them “winners.” On May 19 of this year they were detained and turned away when their stretch limo ran a red light and attempted to enter a restricted area of the White House grounds on the occasion of a state dinner for Mexico’s president Felipe Calderon.

In a June 17, 2010 press conference to publicize their coming TV series, the Salahis revealed that his mother is suing his dementia-impaired father over their financially troubled vineyard, the Oasis Winery in Hume, Virginia, though the couple said they believe a lot of families are “dysfunctional.” (Aren’t you glad to know that?)

TEED-OFF GOLFER

Even less enthusiastically than about Sarah Palin, American Currents writers had to address the escapades of champion golfer Tiger Woods several times over the past six months. First, with regard to the initial report of a minor fender bender in which he crashed his own vehicle near his home the day after Thanksgiving; then, a cascade of reports over the next two weeks that he had slept with more than a dozen women not his wife, and was therefore taking a break from the sport; and finally, his elaborate and lengthy public apology more than two and a half months after the initial incident. In response to the last, thoroughly sick of Woods and the story, I reviewed the apology as if it were a Winter Olympic sporting event (since those were taking place in Vancouver, BC at roughly the same time) -- one of my favorite pieces for American Currents.

I predicted on Dec. 14 that Woods’s image would be forever tarnished but that he would also bounce back. Sorting out his personal life would take one to three years, I thought, and he would probably lose some corporate sponsors, but once he started playing and winning again, they (or just as many and similarly lucrative contracts) would be back.

That’s pretty much what has happened, in less time. Although Gatorade, AT&T, and Accenture dropped his endorsement deals (and Swiss watch maker Tag Heuer pulled him from its Australian ads), Nike stuck by him and aired a new ad with Woods in the spring of 2010. In 2009, Forbes magazine estimated his personal fortune at $600 million, which makes him the second-wealthiest African-American, after Oprah Winfrey.

His break was shorter than I anticipated: Woods returned to competitive golfing with the PGA Masters Tournament on April 8, 2010. He tied for fourth. In subsequent appearances he has not fared so well, and he withdrew from The Players Tournament in the fourth round, citing an injured neck. As of this writing, his marriage continues to hang in the balance. Divorce rumors have appeared regularly from December to the present, but there has still been no conclusive sign. The former Elin Nordegren and the couple’s two children vacationed in China in early June, but it appeared that the father would be on hand for daughter Sam’s third birthday.

Where Have All the Children Gone? - Nikki Lorenzini

Isabella Ruth Miller-Jenkins has been missing since January 1, 2010. She is from Bedford, Maryland, and since disappearing she has turned 8. This was a possible family abduction and she could be with her mother.

Jozlynn Mari Martinez is currently 2 years old and has been missing since February 22, 2010. She is from Grand Rapids, Michigan and is listed as a “non family abduction.”

These are just two of the many missing children that are listed as missing on the Website for the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. Where I live, we get flyers in the mail that we regard as junk mail. I see them when I stand in line while waiting at the site-to-store at Wal-Mart. My question is: where are these children’s news stories at?

Currently it is Kyron Horman’s turn. Natalee Holloway has been in and out of the news for the past 5 years. Laci Peterson and her unborn child dominated airwaves and print for months back in 2005. These missing people got their share of national media coverage. Back in 2009, a Bucks County woman, Bonnie Sweeten, tried to kidnap her children and take them to Florida. This case made a big splash in the Philadelphia area. It makes me wonder how or why these cases get such national coverage while other children to missing -- are currently missing -- and there hasn’t been a peep.

About 797,500 children under 18 were reported missing within a one-year period. One child goes missing every 40 seconds. When I hear stories like this, it makes me think: Where’s the justice for these kids? Where are their nationwide news stories? There are programs like the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, which have helped recover more than 151,000 children since 1984. But what about the remaining children that are missing? Is it because certain children are born into the “right” families who have the money or are clever enough to get on the news? Who are willing to take the time and keep on pushing the police, the news crews, etc., to keep a search going? There were about 203,000 children that were the victims of family abductions. Why would a parent not push the courts for better custody terms? To have the courts become more strict with custody?

These are probably just the questions of a naïve 27-year-old who doesn’t have any children. But my heart breaks every time I see those missing children pictures when I am in Wal-Mart and I wonder where their nationwide coverage went.

Sign? (Sigh), Everywhere a Sign - Shaun Hautly

It seems like I can’t drive down a street or round a corner without seeing four signs for a “Zone 3 Comptroller” or a handful of old people holding signs that -- as of lately -- say, “Liberate America.” Sunny Saturdays are perfect for many things, and shouldn’t be wasted on mindless pride. That’s all these people and their signs are: pride. Did anyone vote for Obama because of what they read on their street? No.

Sure, in some cases, with smaller elections, it helps that informed voters may at least recognize a name; however, in most cases it’s a pointless waste of paper and wood. It gets really dumb when these people stand outside holding up their signs at passing traffic.

1) The text is way too small. I have perfect eyesight, and can read “Liberate America.” That’s it. I can't read whatever they want me to vote for or support.

2) Even if I could read it, I don’t care. You look trashy and unkempt. I don’t take intellectual advice from people who look like they need the concept of a toothbrush explained to them.

3) Most importantly, NO ONE CARES. This country is decided by votes cast by our elected officials. If you want them to vote on something for you, write them. Call them. Give them signed petitions. A congressman can’t go into session and say, “a bunch of my constituents held up signs for six hours on Saturday.” However, if he or she can say, “We got 300 phone calls, 500 letters, and 1500 signatures wanting XYZ,” then we’re more apt to make some progress.

Don’t waste time, trees, and Saturdays telling people what you believe in. Go make a phone call, then play Frisbee like the rest of us.

Mother Is Bleeding - David Loftus

As I have had occasion to note here before, I am an atheist. I have been ever since I declared myself one at the age of 5. I can acknowledge there are many things we cannot explain, and perhaps never will, but I don’t go in for woo-woo spirituality or New Age fuzziness. Nevertheless, my training in English and American Literature has fostered a certain open-mindedness, I imagine, especially a fondness for metaphor.

And thus it is that the disastrous oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico brings to mind the Gaia Hypothesis. In brief, as proposed by chemist and environmental scientist James Lovelock in the 1970s, the theory posits a view of Earth as a complex of interlocking and interacting physical and biological systems -- all of which affect and maintain one another almost as if the planet were one great organism. Lovelock and colleagues of like mind reject the notion of the planet as being actually alive or possessed of intention; his interest is in building mathematical models that describe how complex systems keep atmospheric gases (particularly the ones that keep plant and animal life alive on the surface) in relative balance. But as Stephen Jay Gould suggested, the theory could be regarded more as a metaphor for a “live planet” (Gaia was the name of the Greek goddess of the primordial earth) … and New Age and environmental enthusiasts are only too happy to view it that way.

However, as Tim Dickinson put it in his excellent report on the crisis in Rolling Stone, the spill is “the most devastating attack on American soil since 9/11.” An estimated 28 to 42 million gallons of crude oil have blossomed from the ocean floor -- discoloring the water, killing marine animals and plants, and clogging the beaches of the southern U.S. It is only too easy to think of Gaia as bleeding. Human greed and recklessness have wounded our Mother Earth by punching a hole in her side. But in its effects, the “blood” is more like a pus: thick, poisonous, and deadly to the skin of the planet and the tinier organisms that inhabit it.

Sadly, the catastrophe in the Gulf isn’t the only example of this. It’s not even the biggest. It just happens to be getting all the attention right now. ExxonMobil and Shell have leaked a Gulf’s worth of oil into the Niger River delta possibly every year from the deteriorating, 40-year-old pipe system in the 606 oilfields maintained there, as the British newspaper The Guardian reported last month. Perhaps even worse, Texaco extracted oil from the jungles of the northern Amazon, in Ecuador and Colombia from the 1960s until 1992, and has left “widespread toxic contamination that devastated the livelihoods and traditions of the local people, and took a severe toll on their physical well-being,” according to an opinion column by Bob Herbert in the New York Times.

A lawsuit brought on behalf of those locals asserts that Texaco “deliberately dumped many billions of gallons of waste byproduct from oil drilling directly into the rivers and streams of the rainforest covering an area the size of Rhode Island. It gouged more than 900 unlined waste pits out of the jungle floor -- pits which to this day leach toxic waste into soils and groundwater. It burned hundreds of millions of cubic feet of gas and waste oil into the atmosphere, poisoning the air and creating ‘black rain’ which inundated the area during tropical thunderstorms.”

So it’s not just the one big wound we’re hearing about. Gaia is bleeding all over: we’ve stabbed her multiple times, and either she is dying or she is going to take her revenge on us, sooner or later, for wounding her so thoroughly. It won’t be pretty. The description of the process may be metaphorical, but the pain and suffering of the human race, along with all the other creatures who have made their homes on Gaia’s epidermis, won’t be.

Catching Up - David Loftus

One of the things that used to bother me about printed newspapers in particular -- and all the other news media, to an extent -- was how poorly they followed up on news stories. Big ones that had extended developments, from Vietnam and Watergate to the Gulf oil spill, will generate enough fodder for continuing coverage, but many small, eye-catching stories pop up for a day or a week, and then sink almost without a trace (unless, as in the case of an Octomom or Sarah Palin, they fight desperately to create more breaking news, and in those cases you don’t want to hear any more about them).

The Internet has made this somewhat easier to remedy; as long as you can remember the story (not an easy task, with a constant flood of distracting new events) and the names involved (even more difficult), a Google News search might enable you follow up, if there was anything further.

Going back nearly to the launch of American Currents at the start of last November, here are updates on some of the more interesting stories we tackled.

November 12 – CHARGING CHILDREN FOR ADULT CRIMES

On October 12, 2009, 15-year-old Michael Brewer (shown here) allegedly doused 15-year-old Matthew Bent with rubbing alcohol and set him on fire after a dispute over payment for a video game. Bent suffered third-degree burns over 65 percent of his body and remained in critical condition for weeks, unable to speak and under heavy sedation. Brewer and two friends were charged by the Broward County, Florida district attorney with second-degree attempted murder, to be tried as adults.

I argued that teenagers should not be tried as adults, because they cannot be held fully responsible for their actions. Inadequate sentencing guidelines should be adjusted to punish heinous crimes for longer than currently allowed, however, and to include community service that requires a perpetrator to help care for his victim and others like him in the hope that this will awaken a sense in the convict of the enormity of the crime.

The victim Bent was released from the hospital after intensive rehabilitation and started school in Palm Beach County in April. Today Brewer, Denver Jarvis, and Jesus Mendez remain in jail awaiting trial. They face 25 years to life in prison if convicted. Jeremy Jarvis, 13, a younger brother of one of the accused and one of five originally taken in custody for the Bent incident but not charged, was arrested June 16 for an alleged burglary on May 24 to steal a Nintendo Wii.

November 16 – TERROR TRIALS IN NEW YORK CITY

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder stated last year that the trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, alleged mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, would proceed in civilian court in Manhattan. Critics argued that the case should be heard before a military tribunal, and in a less provocative location -- one that would not invite another terrorist attack, and would be less traumatic for survivors of 9/11 -- outside the city. I argued that a civilian trial in New York was the best way to show how we uphold the values we stand for in front of the eyes of the world, as well as trust the huge Homeland Security superstructure devised and financed by the Bush administration. (We do trust it, don’t we?)

In February, however, Holder and the White House left open the possibility that the trial, thus far unscheduled, could be moved from federal court to the military justice system. The appointment of a respected ex-Navy lawyer to oversee military war crimes trials was seen as a possible step in that direction. James Cole, a longtime friend of Holder who was nominated to be deputy attorney general in June, also said he would consider the use of both civilian and military courts to try terrorists.

In a speech in Grand Rapids, Mich. on June 2, former President Bush said his administration had waterboarded Mohammed and “I would do it again to save lives.” (Not that anybody’s offered any more proof that this has actually happened, any more than there were WMDs in Iraq. Note also that the U.S. prosecuted Japanese soldiers after World War II for doing the same thing …  which suggests that might, not righteousness, makes right, apparently.)

On June 16, Osama bin Laden (remember him? He was the guy Dubya pledged he was gonna nail) purportedly released a message that if Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and other Al Qaeda leaders are executed in the U.S., bin Laden and his organization will henceforth execute any Americans that come into their hands.

November 19 - 2012: THE END OF THE WORLD

Released in mid November, a Hollywood thriller called “2012” depicted a world cataclysm supposedly predicted by the ancient Mayan calendar and expected to occur Dec. 21, 2012. In its opening weekend, the film raked in $65 million at the box office in the U.S., and $225 million worldwide. It subsequently made at least $150 million a week for the ensuing 10 weeks. Never mind that plenty of experts told the media the movie badly misinterprets Mayan cosmology. The American Currents crew were pretty blasé. I predicted a fairly imminent end of the world as we know it, but not that soon.

Of course there’s been no end of other predictions for potential mid-sized disasters. Just in the past week, NASA’s Helophysics division predicted significant solar storm activity, a combination of its 22-year magnetic energy cycle and the peak of an 11-year sun spot cycle, for the end of 2012 and early 2013 that could cause ripples in the Earth’s magnetic field and more damage than Hurricane Katrina – just in time to disrupt the 2012 London Olympics. Astronomer Chris Impey noted in the London Independent that a meteor crashes into the Earth with the force of a nuclear blast about once every 100 years.

The Gulf of Mexico oil spill that commenced on April 20 offered us a whole new vision for how the world (as we know it) might end. To date, somewhere between 25 and 42 million gallons of crude oil have erupted into the ocean; more than 900 animals, from pelicans and gulls to turtles and porpoises, have reportedly died; about 78,264 square miles of the Gulf are closed to fishing; and “dead zones” where oxygen has all but disappeared from the water and fish cannot survive are turning up as deep as 3,300 feet down. When the hurricane season starts up fairly soon, who knows where the goo could end up: Spain, Portugal, France, Ireland?

To many Americans, the scope of the disaster is hard to comprehend because we can’t really see much of it yet; but trust me, we will. As of today’s writing, the news is that sharks, dolphins, and other deep water dwellers are showing up along the Gulf coast, apparently to escape the black death. And all this is just a harbinger of what’s to come.

A Big Prize in an Old War Zone? - Ryan John

An interesting discovery was made in Afghanistan this week.  Or perhaps I should say an interesting discovery in Afghanistan was announced this week? I think this is huge! I mean, could it get any easier for conspiracy theorist? After close to ten years of occupation, without capture of the main culprit in the attacks on 9/11, we discovered a trillion dollars in minerals in a country we were assured in 2008 by the campaigning President-to-be, was the better of the two wars to be fought. He increased our troop presence late last year. We didn’t find WMDs in Iraq, but we did topple Saddam and removed a threat.  We didn’t catch Bin Laden in Afghanistan, but we found a trillion dollars.

This is making the blogosphere go wild. Some are saying this was the reason we initially invaded Afghanistan in 2001. Others conclude that whatever country has the capital stability to sponsor such mining will profit immensely. Will Halliburton get a no-bid contract? Although some people swear on it, I find it that too unbelievable. I do believe, however, that the money gained will eventually boost the Afghanistan economy only as a byproduct of our gains.

The U.S. Geological Survey and the Navy concluded in a 2007 report that “Afghanistan has significant amounts of undiscovered non-fuel mineral resources.” I’m sure this wasn’t news to many. But the fact that, all of the sudden, the United States happens across one of the largest mineral deposits in the world is fascinating. Maybe we’ll engage in conflict over ownership with say, Russia, who apparently discovered it first when the Soviets invaded almost 20 years ago. Maybe the spoils will propel the battery-powered transportation we need to eliminate our oil dependency, and that use alone will win over war support from the American people. Plus we’re in some serous debt that huge mineral deposits could ease; that alone might be enough to boost morale.

But maybe in the same fashion we tried to promote the war against Iraq by “sprinkling democracy dust” all over (as Bill Maher amusingly puts it), we’ll promote a righteous cause with the mineral issue. The United States, through control of mining, will impose fair practices and orderly removal and distribution of the minerals.  If anyone else takes over, it will threaten American interests with forces that are erratic, corrupt, and a threat to the rest of the world.

I’m glad we received some good news for a change. But the potential for a fight between China and Iran over the goods scares me.

Is Obama the Worst President Ever? - Shaun Hautly

Read this piece carefully, because it’s not what you think.

While one could argue that Bush suffered more criticism and judgments, in the past four years we’ve seen the rise of Twitter, Facebook, and the instantly reactive Internet. This means that every move and mistake that Obama makes is captured, documented, shared, and spread within minutes. There’s no more “controlling the press” or hiding things. This is the transparency he wanted and got. Tenfold.

The oil spill: Already the worst environmental disaster of its kind in history and getting worse by the day. Obama has already gained media attention for using some profanity, making some pretty hefty “no rest until” promises, and had a fair share of media friendly face time with the victims. However, oil continues to spread. Obama continues to meet with NCAA champions, foreign countries, and novelty organizations for vanity’s sake. Sounds like he’s doing plenty of resting.

Healthcare: We heard the same “no rest” promises over a year ago, and I think there was a bit of rest in those nine months from idea to bill.

Unemployment: Continues to plague this country. My Honda still sucks, even with Cash for Clunkers. CEOs are still going on million dollar vacations with the government’s bailout money. Yet there’s Obama, smiling on TV.

Is he the first President to be so fickle on his promises, or are we the first society who demands real-time updates of the President’s whereabouts? And do we get our news objectively or from skewed sources that give more opinion than fact?

The Curse of the Spectating Class - David Loftus

As I write this -- the morning of Friday, June 11 -- a little boy has been missing in the Portland, Oregon area for seven days. Not an unusual occurrence, sad to say, and it’s not surprising that Kyron Horman’s disappearance has dominated the local news for the past week. What is unusual is that the seven-year-old second grader disappeared without a trace from inside his elementary school on a crowded public day, and the story has made the national news.

The sweet, shy little boy, whose stepmother brought him to Skyline Elementary on the morning of Friday, June 4 with a display about red-eyed tree frogs he made for the school’s science fair, was last seen at 9 a.m. when she dropped him off. When he did not come home on the school bus at 4 p.m., she called the school.

Portland Police were notified shortly thereafter. By 9:45 p.m., about 20 searchers were combing the area around the school (located in a rural, forested area in the hills just west of downtown Portland). More than 100 volunteers were searching the next day, and the FBI was called in toward the end of the second day. Eventually, Facebook pages and new Web sites buzzed with breaking news and proposals to help, the local sheriff was being interviewed by Matt Lauer on the “Today” show, and I saw the story linked from the news feed on my Earthlink account by the middle of this week.

I won’t rehearse the many other details, which you may Google yourself. I don’t have any particular connection to the case: I have no children, and I don’t know any of the principals -- although I do know where Skyline Elementary is (about 2 miles west of where I sit typing this) because I performed there with my English morris folk dance team one sunny May Day morning more than a decade ago.

What inspires me to comment is some of the local reaction to the developing story, as embodied in the comments to each new story on the local paper’s Web site. You are probably familiar with the abusive, name-calling, overly personal and inflammatory comments that follow many news reports on almost any American newspaper’s Web site. They typically turn a local news story into an illustration of some political, ideological point, or make something personal about every national news story and any other comments made about it.

This is the sort of thing we Internet surfers used to see only on Usenet (in the mid 1990s) and then on various fan blogs (after the turn of the millennium). Now it has spread to more public forums, where it naturally shocks newcomers and the general public (not to mention established writers who have not been longtime Web surfers).

Leonard Pitts, the estimable columnist for the Miami Herald, published a piece on March 31 about how anonymity protects posters and probably encourages them to be disrespectful and abusive. His column ran in our paper that same day. Comments in my local paper immediately proceeded to prove his point. Pitts is an excellent, thoughtful writer, but conservative readers in Portland manage to find something “racist” (Pitts is African-American) about nearly every one of his pieces. (Having hunted down the column in Pitts’s home paper, I note that the general quality of comments in response to the piece there is not as bad as it was here -- perhaps because Pitts is local and readers are used to seeing him as a real person and a “neighbor.”)

In the case of little Kyron Horman, some comments immediately guessed at the possible guilty party. They accused the stepmother of kidnapping her own son, wondered whether his birth mom (divorced from father and living down state) might be to blame, suggested the stepmother’s 16-year-old son from a previous marriage might have done something sinister (he was actually on a Boy Scout camping trip with his father that weekend), blamed the school for not having security cameras operating all over the building, demanded other policies and practices on the part of the school district, and so on.

As the days have passed and the story plays out, strangers have found fault with various parents’ behavior (why aren’t they out searching night and day? … why have they not made more public comment? … why did the stepmother blithely report on her Facebook page that she was going to the club to work out that night? … etc.).

Clearly, it is a matter for suspicion that the boy disappeared from a public but fairly closed facility, which suggests he left with someone he trusts. Each day that passes and he is not found fallen in a hole, trapped in a custodial closet, or maimed or electrocuted, increases the likelihood he was indeed abducted, and by someone he knew.

But why can’t people restrain the urge to toss out hurtful theories and lay blame in public when a family is suffering over the disappearance of their beloved child? Citizens who have no connection to the case are treating it as if it were an episode of “Law and Order” or “Without a Trace” (a widely circulated photo taken of the boy the morning of his disappearance unfortunately shows him wearing a “CSI” tee shirt!); in other words, it’s just another piece of entertainment for them.

Too many Americans treat almost everything, even their own lives, as if it were a show. This reaches its deplorable zenith with the war(s), wherein citizens both thrill to and jeer news reports of complicated and deadly developments as if they were no more than points scored in an athletic contest (and a badly umpired one, too), and then lose interest and stop caring what their government does, largely because the “show” has become repetitive and boring. (Meanwhile hundreds of young American boys and girls, and thousands of Iraqi and Afghan civilians, continue to die and suffer loss of health and limbs for no damn good reason!)


This is not a game show. It is not an entertainment. It is reality -- yours and those of other human beings who happen to be caught at a particularly vulnerable time of their lives. They are not actors or politicians accustomed to being questioned, judged, evaluated, pilloried, or even just noticed in public, by the media, in front of their neighbors. So stop treating them like fictional characters, and quit behaving like this is a piece of entertainment. Learn to reserve judgment; wait for better information; keep your nose out of matters that don't personally concern you and your loved ones.


Otherwise you're just indulging in public gossip and bullying.

Safe Summer Fun - Nikki Lorenzini

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, about 400 people die each year from the heat. The National Weather Service says that excessive heat was the number-one weather-related killer between 1994 and 2003 -- beating out floods, lightning, tornadoes, hurricanes, winter storms, and extreme cold.  Everyone is at risk for getting sick from the heat, but children and the elderly are most susceptible. How can you tell if you are getting sick from the heat? Nausea, dizziness, flushed/pale skin, heavy sweating, and headaches are all signs of heat illnesses. According to the Red Cross, if you are suffering from any of these illnesses, you should move to a cool place, drink cool water, and apply ice packs or cool wet cloths to your skin.

Here are some tips from the Red Cross for how to stay cool during the summer months:

- Wear light-weight, light-colored clothing. Lighter colors reflect some of the sun’s energy. Also, wear hats or use an umbrella.

- Drink lots of water! Drink constantly even if you don’t feel thirsty, and avoid drinking alcohol and caffeine, which tend to dehydrate you.

- Avoid high protein foods because they will increase metabolic heat.

- Avoid strenuous activity, but if you can’t avoid it, do it between 4 and 7 a.m., which is the coolest part of the day.

The Web site of the American Academy of Pediatrics has a list of summer safety tips. Here is a quick list.

For pool safety, make sure there is a fence at least four feet high around the whole pool, with the gate opening out from the pool that has a self-close and self-latch. Never leave children unattended in or near the pool or spa area. Large inflatable pools are usually exempt from local pool fencing requirements, but an extra fence might a good idea, since children can lean on the soft sides and fall in.

On bug safety, use of scented soaps, perfumes, or hairsprays will attract the bugs. Stagnant pools of water, uncovered foods, and gardens in bloom have a higher population of bugs. DEET is needed to prevent insect-related diseases such as ticks that can carry Lyme Disease and mosquitoes that carry West Nile Virus. Ten-percent DEET provides enough protection for about two hours. For more information on child safety, visit: http://www.aap.org/advocacy/releases/summertips.cfm  .

If you’re a sun lover, keep an eye out and use your sunscreen. SPF stand for Sun Protection Factor and it refers to the product’s ability to block the sun’s harmful rays. For example, SPF 15 allows you to be in the sun 15 times longer without being burnt. Dermatologists recommend using an SPF 15 or greater year-round for all skin types. People with fairer skin and who burn easily may want to use a higher SPF for additional protection. You will want to use a cream or lotion, because oils do not contain a sufficient amount of SPF. Also, use a broad-spectrum sunscreen that protects against UVB and UVA rays. UVA rays penetrate deeper into the skin and are the reason in premature aging and wrinkling of the skin.

Have a fun and safe summer. If you have any other summer safety tips, please comment and share the summer love!

Recycling, Part 3: Down to the Loading Dock - David Loftus

My apartment is located among an unusual mixture of permanent residents -- well-to-do and not-so-affluent -- and white collar transients.

When the place was built, about ten years ago, the developers cut a deal with the city that probably involved some financing or tax breaks in return for a promise to rent a certain number of units to low-income folks.

A portion of the residents -- let’s say half -- are happily permanent (which includes my wife and me); but a variety of folks pass through for only a month to a year or two at a time: home buyers waiting for a purchase to close, employees of high-tech companies and hospitals in town on temporary assignment (last summer, this group included Aldis Hodge, a star of Timothy Hutton’s TNT cable series “Leverage”), and students at the adjacent university.

Since many in that mix are from out of state (even from outside the U.S. -- I’ve heard German, French, and Oriental chatter in the elevator), perhaps some of them are simply ignorant of the practice of recycling in Oregon. You’d think they could read the signs on the doors and walls of the recycling rooms, but judging by the cardboard in the paper bin, the glass in the aluminum and tin can bin, the plastic in the glass bin, and even food in both, that is too much to ask.

Twice a week, on Monday and Thursday night, a custodial employee wheels all the blue recycling bins to the ground-floor loading dock for pickup the following morning. You might think this would make scrounging easier: everything’s gathered at one spot rather than spread out between six different floors.

But that’s not necessarily the case. By this time, most of the bins are stuffed, so you have to do a lot of digging through paper, tin cans, and un-recyclable glass and plastic (such as an increasingly popular Lipton Green Tea with citrus drink; only beer, carbonated soda, and bottled water containers qualify under the law, remember) and possibly even risk a close encounter with stale food or broken glass. Also, you have to wrestle the bins around the concrete floor because they’re all jammed up against one another.

Another feature of the loading dock, since the trash chute feeds from all six recycling rooms on the floors above and into the enclosed dumpster down here, is the occasional sound of the neighbors' trash sliding down the metal chute into the huge metal container. It's a surprisingly soft and gentle sound, but it still startles you since you don't expect to hear evidence of anyone else in the place.

So, partly depending on my time (whether I have plenty to spare, or my watch says it’s near or after midnight) I strike a medium between visits to the various floors and the loading dock, and how far down into the bins I choose to dig for Coors Lite and Rockstar cans, and plastic Coke and Aquafina water bottles.

So far, I would imagine most of what I've described sounds pretty mundane. You may have collected bottles and cans for redeeming yourself; even if you don't live in a state that has a bottle deposit for returned containers, you could easily picture most of what I've discussed. But the next stop is the recycling room, with the machines that devour cans and bottles and read their bar codes automatically, where you'll be stepping on the wet sticky floor and sharing a small room with homeless men and women. How many of you have done that on a regular basis?

Next: the recycling machines

Read part 1, the project overview

Read part 2, diving for cans and bottles in the recycling bins

They're Taking Over! (Aren't They?) - Ryan John

Picture this scenario: The most powerful people in the world, also affectionately known as the Global Elite, are meeting right now in Barcelona, Spain for their annual conference, known as Bilderberg, from June 4-10 like they have for more than fifty years. Kind of sounds like something out of a comic book, if you ask me. But it’s a reality and it’s a reality that doesn’t get much attention in the mainstream media.

Since 1954 world leaders in government, media, and commerce have met every year to discuss important world issues. This year’s topics include the future of the European Union, the US troop presence in Afghanistan, the collapse of the United States dollar, the Iranian and Russian alliance, and Japan’s economy, to name a few. According to some, this meeting is setting the stage for world government, with the slow but deliberate merger of European powers and the Anglo establishment of the United States and England. In 2008 Hilary Clinton and Barack Obama were attendees.

Now, I am fascinated by conspiracy theories and those who perpetuate them. Alex Jones is the most prominent spokesperson for conspiracy theories and often my go-to guy. If he says it, you can believe others are following right behind him. He is totally convinced there is a secret world conspiracy working toward global governance and the transformation into a New World Order.

Analyzing politics is a funny thing for me. The highest person I know in politics is a county commissioner in Pennsylvania. He may not even know my name, come to think of it. So I have nothing but an outrageous curiosity, the Internet, and a gut feeling that I know how things work -- a totally false sense, perhaps, but a sense I believe nevertheless. I think the Republicans and Democrats work for the same machine and each party respectively plays its part to advance whatever agenda this country sets forth. I don’t believe the country’s agenda is set by President and an administration that comes and goes every 4 to 8 years. Absolutely not. I think those gentlemen are essentially figureheads for someone or something bigger that the American people don’t see and hear.

Maybe I give people too much credit.  But I can’t believe George W. Bush invaded Iraq and toppled Sadam with no reason other than the possible possession of WMDs that were eventually unfounded. “Whoops, my bad,” we were told.  I didn’t buy it. Although W. has a hard time putting sentences together, it’s not because he’s dumb. It’s because he has to watch what he says. If the man could speak from the gut all the time, he’d be engaging and enlightening I’m sure. But he can’t. We are not kept informed by the government or the media. My gut tells me we are those prisoners trapped in the cave in Plato’s famous allegory. We aren’t given the truth. Rather, we’re given whatever images that Somebody Unidentified wants us to see. The global elite, possibly? I don’t know. But with the convenience of the Internet, we’re getting more and more of our fellow prisoners feverishly trying to tell us what we don’t know or can’t see. And when I hear these things, it makes more sense than what I see on the 6 o’clock news.