Category: Uncategorized

By David Swanson

Way back in January, the ocean was still ocean, oil still oil, and combining the two had not yet occurred to us. The Conch Republic, the Florida Keys, was — in retrospect — a secure and pristine paradise.

The danger was of sunburn, not of crude oil on your skin or toxic chemicals in the air you breathed.

While I was there with my family, we enjoyed the sand, sun, and sea. But we wanted to see more pelicans. We wanted to see lots of pelicans.

So we went to the Florida Keys Wild Bird Center.

Well, it turns out that pelicans know what time it is. And if someone hands out buckets of fish on the shore at the same time every day, any pelican in the greater metropolitan area is going to be there right on time.

And that’s what they do there on Tavernier Key. They know the pelicans. They tag them. They doctor injured ones. And, if they want to check on how they’re doing, all it takes is several buckets of fish and predictable timing.

The pelicans didn’t have everything perfect, even pre-oil. The effects on the weather of our burning of oil we’re hitting the pelicans hard before the oil itself hit the water. These birds require a finely calibrated climate. They migrate from the U.S. gulf coast to the Keys with the seasons. And they need fish, fresh, healthy fish, and lots of it.

When the weather goes freaky with unusually cold or hot or dry periods, and when fish die, the pelicans are in danger too. We just didn’t know how good they had it before BP-USA dipped them and their world in oil.

At lunchtime, hundreds of pelicans show up with one thing on their minds.

If you watch CNN you’ll see heartwarming stories of how purchasing the proper brand of dishwashing soap at your local supermarket will contribute to the work of washing the pelicans off before dipping them back in the oil to die. Not to put too fine a point on it, this is horseshit.

The ocean is filling up with oil, which kills the fish, which kills the pelicans, and which — with a few more steps — kills all of us. The pelicans are canaries in this coalmine, and they are expiring.

There will be no more human enjoyment of the pelicans if this continues, and no more pelican enjoyment of anything at all. They will be gone, along with the world they lived in.

This does not strike me as yet another ho-hum project for the president to create a commission on or the oil baron primarily responsible to be annoyed by when he’s not yachting in another ocean. This is the worst damage we have yet imposed on the earth, an ongoing explosion of black liquid death pumping into paradise, and we’re taking it all pretty coolly.

Oh, but what can we do?

What would the pelicans do? When they want something, they don’t hesitate. If you don’t toss them the fish fast enough, they grab your legs. If that doesn’t work, they try to knock the bucket over. These are birds on a mission to survive. We’re on a mission to nap.

What should we be doing? Not yachting. Not golfing. Not deferring as people to our government or as Congress to a president or as that president to the criminals responsible.

There should be an all-out night-and-day effort to stop this oil gusher. The national guard should be brought home to guard the nation. The trillions of dollars being put into wars for oil should be reinvested (ending the wars) into a war against the oil we do not want and cannot survive, and into an all-out crusade to create a renewable energy economy.

The oil should be claimed by our nation, and our nation should seize the assets of the company responsible.

The state of Delaware should decharter the US branch of BP.

BP and the government regulators who did not regulate it should be prosecuted.

The military and the rest of the government should end all contracts with BP.

All offshore drilling should be banned.

All restrictions on journalists in the Gulf of Mexico should be lifted.

Corporations should be denied their dangerous status of possessing the privileges of people with none of the responsibilities.

If anyone should be given the protections afforded flesh and blood people, it is the pelicans.

* * * * * *

David Swanson is the author of the new book “Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union” by Seven Stories Press. You can order it and find out when tour will be in your town.

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In a perfect world the health insurance industry would be liquidated overnight, replaced by a universal care fund, aka single payer. But until last week, the reason for abolition wasn’t so clearly phrased by the insurance industry itself. Now they say it plain: “You can’t make us cover Tiny Tim.”

If the insurance industry wants to boast that it can cut Tiny Tim out of its future, then it should expect the righteous judgment that falls upon the head of each and every Scroogelike creature–a lonesome and cold gravestone. Nor should we forget to pick their corporate pockets thoroughly as we ready their legacies for the burial that their recent history so richly deserves.

For a day or two anyway, Washington danced enthusiastically with the profiteering managers of our health care economy. And from a distance it looked like a partnership that had half a chance. Then the creeps started whispering little things in Washington’s ear.

But situations like this are what elbows are made for, and it would be interesting to see who would vote against a little old law of one sentence only. “Any insurance company who refuses to cover a child will forfeit all of its assets immediately to the US Treasury.”

Oh, and “God bless us all, every one!”–gm

On the Mexico side of the international boundary, the Rio Grande has historically been called the Rio Bravo. In this appeal, we refer to this 1885-mile long international river as the Rio Grande-Rio Bravo.

The watershed of the Rio Grande-Rio Bravo covers eight states in our two countries. In the United States, that would include Colorado, New Mexico,and Texas. In Mexico the watershed includes Durango, Chihuahua, Coahuila, Nuevo Leon, and Tamaulipas.

For their agricultural, industrial, commercial,and residential existence, millions of US citizens and millions of Mexican citizens have historically relied on the natural hydrological flows of the Rio Grande-Rio Bravo and its tributaries, from its headwaters in the Colorado Rockies all the way to its mouth as it flows into the Gulf of Mexico.

Due to drought, just a few years ago, the waters of the Rio Grande-Rio Bravo dried up before it could reach the Gulf.

In this era of global climate change, the likelihood of more drought seems imminent. In this past year Texas just came out of a period of the worst drought on record. Yet, new threats are looming on the horizon for the Rio Grande-Rio Bravo, especially on the Texas-Mexico portion of the river.

The Mexico side of the border is the fastest growing region in Mexico. Similarly, the Texas side of the Rio Grande-Rio Bravo is the fastest growing region in the United States. Such growth will continue to put a lot of added pressure on the waters of the Rio Grande-Rio Bravo, both in the terms of consumption as well as contamination.

As it is, according to American Rivers, the Rio Grande-Rio Bravo is one of the most endangered rivers in North America. According the World Wildlife Fund, the Rio Grande-Rio Bravo is the seventh most endangered river in the world.

The newest endangerment to the Rio Grande-Rio Bravo is upon us. This threat is somewhat stealth, as it is under the radar of most state, federal and international agencies and organizations. For over a century, the State of Texas has regulated its waters based on the archaic “rule of capture,” or “right of capture.” Essentially, the biggest pump and pumper owns the water that can be extracted.

Based on this “rule”, an application has been made by a private party to extract 47,000 acre feet per year out of the Rio Grande-Rio Bravo watershed. An acre foot is equal to roughly 326,000 gallons of water.

The application is from Clayton Williams, Jr.’s Fort Stockton Holdings to the Middle Pecos County Groundwater Conservation District (MPGCD). The application proposes to extract 41,000,000 gallons of water a day, or about 15,000,000,000 gallons of water per year–for 30 plus years–out of the Rio Grande-Rio Bravo watershed.

If approved, the permit would allow 45,000,000,000,000 gallons of water to be taken out of the Rio Grande-Rio Bravo watershed as a result of this one application alone. Others will follow. The preliminary hearing will be held this coming Tuesday, April 20, 2010, in Fort Stockton. The final decision will be rendered on May 18, 2010.

With all this in mind, the Rio Grande International Study Center (RGISC), a non-profit organization based at the Laredo Community College on the banks of the Rio Grande-Rio Bravo, along with our sister organization in Mexico, el Centro Internacional del los Estudios del Rio Bravo (CIER), has allied with the City of Fort Stockton.

We are also allying with not only the citizens of Pecos County but also the millions of citizens of the international community who reside within and depend upon the Rio Grande-Rio Bravo for their existence. On their behalf, we are appealing to US Congressmen to help us prevent such an unprecedented action that would be taken without adequate science.

We request that Congressmen please utilize your office and position of authority to call for a moratorium on any extraction of waters from the Rio Grande-Rio Bravo watershed. Approval of such extraction of billions of gallons of water a year should NOT be granted.

There is a need for time, time for an adequate hydrological study to be performed that would reveal what impact such a diversion away from the international watershed would have. Our concern is that there is insufficient science that would show the impact on the natural hydrological cycle of the Rio Grande-Rio Bravo watershed, on which millions of bi-national citizens downriver depend.

Under the 1944 Treaty with Mexico, the waters of Fort Stockton and Pecos County, Texas, are within the geographical boundaries of the International Boundary and Water Commission (IBWC). Never before has a massive amount of water been extracted and transferred out of the watershed and IBWC boundaries. This is a precedent-setting case. How would this impact the spirit and intent of the 1944 treaty?

The City of Fort Stockton is a small community of some 7,500 population. The total population of Pecos County is about 20,000. Alone, they are hard-pressed to handle the magnitude of this challenge. The residents there already have a historic natural spring, Comanche Springs, that is dried up most of the year due to high impact pumping of the aquifer for irrigation by the same businessman who now wishes to export water out of the watershed to Midland, Texas, for profit.

Find below a resolution drafted by the City Council of the City of Fort Stockton. Together , the City Council and RGISC appeal to you to intervene and prevent, this dangerous hydrological precedent. If this permit is allowed, others will follow. Diverting Rio Grande-Rio Bravo waters away from almost ten million inhabitants within the IBWC boundaries would be to divert water away from the fastest growing region in our two countries that already depends on this river.

This action is being done for one entity’s profit. It is also being done so that other areas outside the Rio Grande-Rio Bravo watershed region could experience economic growth. That such an action would jeopardize the growth along the border seems discriminatory against those who live on the US-Mexico border.

We are also writing the IBWC, the Council on Environmental Quality-Office of the White House, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of the Interior, US Fish and Wildlife, the Army Corps of Engineers, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, the Texas Water Development Board, and Texas Parks and Wildlife.

We are writing all the members of Congress who have border districts. We are writing the Governor of the State of Texas as well as all the members of our Texas Legislature that represent the border.

In Mexico, we are writing the Comision Internacional de los Limites y Agua, Comision Nacional del Agua, Secretaria de Medio Ambiente y Recursos Naturals, and the governors of the five states within the Rio Grande-Rio Bravo watershed.

Editor’s Note: Article adapted from letter to Congressman Cuellar from Jay J. Johnson-Castro, Sr., Executive Director of the Rio Grande International Study Center–gm

RESOLUTION NO. 1O-111R

A RESOLUTION BY THE CITY COUNCIL OF THE CITY OF FORT STOCKTON JOINING FORCES WITH THE RIO GRANDE INTERNATIONAL STUDY CENTER IN ITS PLEA FOR A MORATORIUM & INTERVENTION TO PREVENT WATER FROM BEING TRANSPORTED, EXPORTED OR PUMPED FROM THE PECOS RIVER AND RIO GRANDE RIVER WATERSHEDS & REQUESTING THAT A HYDROLOGICAL STUDY BE PERFORMED OF THE SUBTERRANEAN WATER FLOWS OF THE EDWARDS-TRINITY AQUIFER TO DETERMINE WHAT UNFORESEEN ADVERSE IMPACTS COULD OCCUR ON THE FLOW OF WATER INTO THE INTERNATIONAL BODY WATER OF WHICH MILLIONS OF INHABITANTS IN THE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY DEPEND ON FOR EXISTENCE.

WHEREAS, The Pecos River is an integral part of the Rio Grande watershed, which is an
international body of water under the 1944 treaty between the United States and Mexico; and

WHEREAS, Downriver from the mouth of the Pecos River in confluence with the Rio Grande is
an internatio
nal comm
unity of some 6-10 million inhabitants that solely rely on the Rio Grande as
a source of existence; residential, commercial, industrial and agricultural usage; and

WHEREAS, Pecos County is confronted with an enterprise that is attempting to extract
approximately 15 billion gallons of water per year from the Pecos watershed under the Texas “rule
of capture”; and

WHEREAS, If successful, that would become a precedent for other water marketing enterprises;
and

WHEREAS, The Rio Grande International Study Center is a non-profit organization with the
stewardship of protecting the Rio Grande watershed; and

WHEREAS, The board of directors of the RGISC has voted unanimously to support Fort
Stockton in attempting to protect the Pecos River watershed; and

WHEREAS, RGISC and the City of Fort Stockton will jointly submit correspondence to the
International Boundary and Water Commission (IBWC), Environmental Protection Agency,
Comision Internacional de los Lirnites y Agua (CILA), CONAGUA (Comision Nacional del
Agua), SEMARNAT (Secretaria de Medio Ambiente y Recursos Naturals), Texas Water
Development Board (TWDB), Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ), along with
the four Congressional representatives from Texas bordering Mexico; Congressman Silvestre
Reyes (Dist. 16), Congressman Ciro Rodriguez (Dist. 23), Congressman Henry Cuellar (Dist. 28)
and Congressman Solomon Ortiz (Dist. 27); and

WHEREAS, A request will be sought for a moratorium and an intervention regarding plans to
transfer, export or pump water out of, along with the protection of, the Pecos River and Rio
Grande River watersheds until additional hydrological studies of the subterranean water flows of
the Edwards-Trinity aquifer can be made to determine what unforeseen adverse impacts could
occur on the flow of water into the international body water of which millions of inhabitants in the
international community depend on for existence; and

WHEREAS, Input will also be solicited from the Texas Parks and Wildlife, National Parks
Service, US Fish and Wildlife, as well as other local, state, national and international organizations
and agencies; and

WHEREAS, A joint press conference will be held to inform the media about our request for
intervention; and

– – NOW THEREFFORE, BE IT RESOLVED BY THE FORT STOCKTON CITY COUNCIL,
THAT IT HEREBY ENDORSES:
JOINING FORCES WITH THE RIO GRANDE
INTERNATIONAL STUDY CENTER IN ITS PLEA FOR A
MORATORIUM & INTERVENTION TO PREVENT WATER
FROM BEING TRANSPORTED, EXPORTED OR PUMPED
FROM THE PECOS RIVER AND RIO GRANDE RIVER
WATERSHEDS & REQUESTING THAT A HYDROLOGICAL
STUDY BE PERFORMED OF THE SUBTERRANEAN WATER
FLOWS OF THE EDWARDS-TRINITY AQUIFER TO
DETERMINE WHAT UNFORESEEN ADVERSE IMPACTS
COULD OCCUR ON THE FLOW OF WATER INTO THE
INTKRNATIONAL BODY WATER OF WIllCR MILLIONS OF
INHAB1.TA.””I!TS IN THE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY
DEPEND ON FOR EXISTENCE.

PASSED AND APPRGYED by the Fort Stockton City Council on this 23rd day of February,
2010.

Unsustainable Contradictions in Immigration Law

CounterPunch / DissidentVoice / TheRagBlog

By Greg Moses

What’s up with the Mormons? Orem, Utah legislator Stephen Eric Sandstrom last week pledged to follow the lead of “my friend” Arizona State Senator Russell Pearce and expand the number of states with show-me-your-papers bills aiming to criminalize, jail, and deport irregular migrants.

Rep. Sandstrom, who is a graduate of Brigham Young University and a former Mormon missionary to Venezuela, takes credit for co-founding a state’s rights organization called the Patrick Henry Caucus.

Sandstrom’s “friend” Sen. Pearce of Arizona, sponsor of the recently signed SB-1070, hails from the Mormon stronghold of Mesa and claims to be the mastermind behind Maricopa County’s infamous Tent City Jail.

For Pearce and Sandstrom, the crucial issue of liberty in the 21st Century would appear to involve the rights of states in relation to the federal government of the USA–never mind the rights of individual people who reside in those states.

What’s curious about this particular Pearce-Sandstrom movement for state’s rights over individual rights is how it seems to contradict the interests of the Mormon family itself, which has been witnessing an increase in Spanish-speaking congregations.

Last summer, Salt Lake Tribune writer Peggy Fletcher Stack reported increasing fears among Spanish-speaking members of the Mormon Church of Latter- day Saints (LDS) who were concerned about travel restrictions they were facing for missionary work and then-impending implementation of Utah’s anti-migrant law, SB-81. “People are very scared,” said one woman via translator.

“Other than for its missionaries, the LDS Church takes a ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ approach toward the immigration status of its members,” reported Fletcher Stack. “But some estimate between 50 percent and 75 percent of members in Utah’s 104 Spanish-speaking congregations are undocumented. That includes many bishops, branch presidents, even stake presidents.”

Salt Lake City Police Chief Chris Burbank declared that Utah’s SB-81 would require illegal racial profiling, so he openly refused to enforce the self-contradictory statute. Last week Chief Burbank “blasted” Arizona’s SB-1070, telling KSL NewsRadio talk-show host Doug Wright: “This sets law enforcement back 30 to 40 years.”

Mormon Times Columnist Jerry Earl Johnston shook his head last year in dismay over the unwisdom of the Utah anti-migrant legislation:

“I can only speak from my own LDS experience here, but I hold Utah lawmakers responsible for breaking up good LDS families and forcing young American citizens out of their native land,” wrote Johnston, predicting that victory would not reward the shortsighted anti-migrant forces.

“I could see these Hispanic brethren were going to win,” wrote Johnston. “I could see their faith, resilience and strength. They wanted to be in Utah more than Utah lawmakers wanted them out. They had weathered tribulations with good humor and without malice toward those who persecuted them.”

Meanwhile, in the Mormon stronghold of Mesa, Arizona, represented by SB-1070 sponsor Sen. Pearce, the number of Spanish-speaking LDS congregations had grown from five to 13 between 2002 and 2007 according to East Valley Tribune reporter Sarah N. Lynch.

Last fall, official LDS printing presses in Salt Lake City ran off an approved Spanish-language edition of the Mormon Bible–“The Santa Biblia: Reina-Valera 2009 (Publicada por La Iglesia de Jesucristo de los Santos de los Últimos Días Salt Lake City, Utah, E.U.A.)–with an initial press run of 800,000 copies.

“It is one of the most significant scripture projects ever undertaken by the Church,” proclaimed a notice of Sept. 14, 2009 posted at lds.org. “The volume contains new chapter headings, footnotes and cross-references to all scriptures used by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.” Announcement of the volume was reportedly shared among “thousands of Spanish-speaking Latter-day Saints congregations.”

Mormon political leaders, like everyone else in today’s global economy, are confronting a real crisis in human welfare. Maricopa County in particular is a frontline disaster zone for the crisis in real estate values, mortgage defaults, unemployment, and revenue shortfalls.

“In Maricopa,” according to an April report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics on Q3 2009 unemployment, “every private industry group except education and health services experienced an employment decline, with construction experiencing the largest decline (-32.2 percent).”

Crisis reveals character. So when Mormon political leaders campaign for agendas of states’ rights according to Patrick Henry rhetorics of “liberty or death,” perhaps their Spanish-speaking LDS brethren can remind them that there are millions of people of goodwill in need of actual freedom-loving legislators in whatever state they have freely chosen to congregate and build up.