Basic Sanity

Sunday, November 12, 2006

Kick Them Out, Lock Them Up, and Throw Away the Key!

By Carl Golden

The results of the mid-term elections and the consequential dismissal of Secretary Rumsfeld have begun to restore my faith in our brand of democracy, but there is much yet to be done before my faith in our government is restored and I can join the chorus that lauds how great America is. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and others are guilty of war crimes that cry out for impeachment and imprisonment. It is enough to know that they orchestrated a concert of lies and half-truths while banging the drums of war in order to drive America into an illegal, oil-mongering invasion of a sovereign nation that never attacked us, resulting in the destruction of one of the world's most ancient cultural cities, the senseless loss of 151,000 innocent Iraqi civilian lives (and counting), the deaths of over 2,844 US troops (and counting), over 22,000 US troops wounded (and counting), and Iraq's hellish collapse into civil war. Add to this immense devastation the federally supported atrocities of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo (as well as the federally unsanctioned atrocities committed in Mahmudiya and Haditha), the export of wholesale torture, the war profiteering of Halliburton and its subsidiaries, the flagrant disregard of the Geneva Conventions, and the use of National Guard troops and mercenaries as regular military, and you have a laundry list of high crimes and misdemeanors that should be enough to kick these brigands out of the White House and send them up river for the balance of their days on Earth. This is the least that America -- the most powerful nation in the history of the world -- and Americans should do to attempt to save face and restore good faith amongst our neighbors. Great power must embrace undaunted responsibility, otherwise tyranny is inevitable. We must face our crimes as a nation by bringing the criminals to justice, then can we reclaim our place in history as America the Beautiful. Right now, we are America the Ugly.

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ECOPSYCHOLOGY: THE BIRTH OF A NEW PROFESSION

By Theodore Roszak

In the post-Earth Summit era it is becoming clear that the environmental movement will have to find a new way forward if it is to achieve its ambitious agenda for change. The Earth Summit succeeded in clearly establishing one fact: We are all – literally all – in one planetary boat. The living standard of the rich has been maintained largely off natural resources, labor, and the unwilling compliance of the poor. Now the poor demand their share, and we see that there is no benefit the rich nations enjoy that the poor nations cannot deny them or destroy by the reckless "development" of their resources.

Unique in human affairs, environmentalism is a movement whose audience is a Global Symposium of the Whole; it must address itself to all people, must persuade all listeners. There is no society one environmentalists can afford not to be on speaking terms with, from the bureaucrats in suits who make far-reaching decisions in the metropolitan centers to the earth's indigenous peoples. Needless to add, the dialogue must even (especially?) include the nonhuman realm that now is making its ethical and empathic claim. Yet, despite the scope and urgency of the crisis, the movement's familiar rhetoric of shock-and-shame shows signs of being less and less productive. "Green guilt" has lost its ethical sting: in its place is a growing anti-environmental backlash in the developed countries that identifies ecologists as bullying prophets of doom.

It is time for the movement to draw up a psychological impact statement. It must find a way to connect with what is generous, joyous, freely given, and noble in people everywhere and at all levels. It must touch that ecological depth of the human personality that is reborn to us in the spontaneous experience of children, in the great art of all ages, in the lore of indigenous people.

But where is the movement to turn to find the new psychological paradigm it needs? The psychiatric mainstream of contemporary society has little to teach us about our place in the natural environment; it is as alienated from the living planet as the rest of our society. Its role for generations has been to soothe the anguish of the urban-industrial psyche.

Psychology needs ecology; ecology needs psychology. From this partnership a new profession can be born: an ecopsychology that combines the sensitivity of the therapist with the expertise of the ecologist. The value of such a new body of professionals reaches well beyond individual healing. Just as past therapies have achieved wide-ranging, cultural influence by redefining the roles that sexuality, aggression, family ties, and spiritual alienation have in human nature, ecopsychology, too, has a greater cultural task: to redefine the relationship of the natural environment to sanity in our time. The political implications of such a trans-valuation of human nature should be clear.

A likely first step toward this goal might be to issue a call for the creation of a new profession. The call itself would dramatize the idea and the need, and there is good reason to believe that it would be heeded. A rising generation of therapists is seeking new directions for its ethical energies. Many Freudians, Jungians, Gestaltists, Transpersonalists, and Humanists are ready to reexamine their schools in search of a task that binds them to something greater than ethnocentric social forms and the usual repertory of modern, Western values. There are indications that many now wish to speak for the planet, for its imperiled species, for primary people, for the long lost Anima Mundi. Psychiatry has grown by constantly expanding its context; it has reached beyond the intrapsychic mechanisms to the family, the society, the workplace, the culture. The planetary environment would seem to be the largest of all imaginable contexts for the healing of the soul, especially if one finds within that context intimations of the sacred. Similarly, there are environmentalists who want to present a different face to the world audience than that of scolding puritans and scowling ideologues.

Implicit in this project is the need for a scientific paradigm that gives life and mind a new central status in the universe. Building that paradigm as part of an ecopsychology would make the effort more than a merely academic exercise; it would become part of a practical healing mission.

Issuing a call for such a new profession is concrete, specific, timely, and deeply imaginative. Its object is to heal both the psyche and planet as a single, continuous project.

The Voice of the Earth
Theodore Roszak
Simon Schuster 1992

Ten Reasons to Imprison George Bush and Dick Cheney

I ask Congress to impeach President Bush and Vice President Cheney for the following reasons:
1. Violating the United Nations Charter by launching an illegal "War of Aggression" against Iraq without cause, using fraud to sell the war to Congress and the public, misusing government funds to begin bombing without Congressional authorization, and subjecting our military personnel to unnecessary harm, debilitating injuries, and deaths.

2. Violating U.S. and international law by authorizing the torture of thousands of captives, resulting in dozens of deaths, and keeping prisoners hidden from the International Committee of the Red Cross.

3. Violating the Constitution by arbitrarily detaining Americans, legal residents, and non-Americans, without due process, without charge, and without access to counsel.

4. Violating the Geneva Conventions by targeting civilians, journalists, hospitals, and ambulances, and using illegal weapons, including white phosphorous, depleted uranium, and a new type of napalm.

5. Violating U.S. law and the Constitution through widespread wiretapping of the phone calls and emails of Americans without a warrant.

6. Violating the Constitution by using "signing statements" to defy hundreds of laws passed by Congress.

7. Violating U.S. and state law by obstructing honest elections in 2000, 2002, 2004, and 2006.

8. Violating U.S. law by using paid propaganda and disinformation, selectively and misleadingly leaking classified information, and exposing the identity of a covert CIA operative working on sensitive WMD proliferation for political retribution.

9. Subverting the Constitution and abusing Presidential power by asserting a "Unitary Executive Theory" giving unlimited powers to the President, by obstructing efforts by Congress and the Courts to review and restrict Presidential actions, and by promoting and signing legislation negating the Bill of Rights and the Writ of Habeas Corpus.

10. Gross negligence in failing to assist New Orleans residents after Hurricane Katrina, in ignoring urgent warnings of an Al Qaeda attack prior to Sept. 11, 2001, and in increasing air pollution causing global warming.

Letters at 3AM by MICHAEL VENTURA

America is over. America is like Wile E. Coyote after he's run out a few paces past the edge of the cliff - he'll take a few more steps in midair before he looks down. Then, when he sees that there's nothing under him, he'll fall. Many Americans suspect that they're running on thin air, but they haven't looked down yet. When they do ...

Former Federal Reserve Board Chairman Paul Volcker, a pillar of the Establishment with access to economic information beyond our reach, wrote recently: "Circumstances seem to me as dangerous and intractable as any I can remember. ... What really concerns me is that there seems to be so little willingness or capacity to do anything about it" (quoted in The Economist, April 16, p.12). Volcker chooses words carefully: "dangerous and intractable," "willingness or capacity." He's saying: The situation is probably beyond our powers to remedy.

Gas prices can only go up. Oil production is at or near peak capacity. The U.S. must compete for oil with China, the fastest-growing colossus in history. But the U.S. also must borrow $2 billion a day to remain solvent, nearly half of that from China and her neighbors, while they supply most of our manufacturing ("Benson's Economic and Market Trends," quoted in Asia Times Online) - so we have no cards to play with China, even militarily. (You can't war with the bankers who finance your army and the factories that supply your stores.) China now determines oil demand, and the U.S. has no long-term way to influence prices. That means $4 a gallon by next spring, and rising - $5, then $6, probably $10 by 2010 or thereabouts. Their economy can afford it; ours can't. We may hobble along with more or less the same way of life for the next dollar or so of hikes, but at around $4 America changes. Drastically.

The "exburbs" and the rural poor will feel it first and hardest. Exburbians moved to the farthest reaches of suburbia for cheap real estate, willing to drive at least an hour each way to work. Many live marginally now. What happens when their commute becomes prohibitively expensive, just as interest rates and inflation rise, while their property values plummet? Urban real estate will go up, so they won't be able to live near their jobs - and there's nowhere else to go. In addition, thanks to Congress' recent shameless activity, bankruptcy is no longer an option for many. What happens to these people? Exburb refugees. A modern Dust Bowl.

For the rural poor it's even worse. They are the poorest among us, with no assets and few skills; they earn the lowest nonimmigrant wages in America, and they must drive. When gas hits $4, their already below-the-margin life will be unsustainable. They'll have no choice but to be refugees and join in the modern Dust Bowl migration. So, too, will people who live where people were never intended to live in such numbers - places like Phoenix and Vegas, unlivable without air conditioning and water transport (energy prices will rise across the board, regular brownouts, blackouts, and faucet-drips will be "the new normal" everywhere). In the desert cities, real estate will plunge, thousands will be ruined, most will leave - while all over the country folks will have to get used to "hot" and "cold" again.

But where will the new refugees go, and what will they do when they get there? They will migrate to the more livable cities, where rents are already unreasonable and social services are already strained, and where the new refugees will compete with immigrants for the lowest-level housing and jobs. Immigration issues will intensify to hysteria. Native-born Americans will clamor for work that only legal and illegal aliens do now. In a culture as prone to violence as ours, that will probably get ugly.

Meanwhile, suburbs and cities will be in various states of chaos, depending on their infrastructure. As inflation and interest rates rise, and the real estate bubble bursts, millions will see their assets plunge precipitously. In five years, many who are now well-off will live as the marginal live today, while the marginal will sink into poverty. With gas at $4-plus a gallon, real estate values will depend on nearness to working centers and access to transportation. As has already happened in Manhattan, the well-off will head for what are now slums, and the slum-dwellers will go God-knows-where. Places with decent rail service will be prime. Places without rail service will be in deep trouble.

One key to America's future will be: How quickly can we build or rebuild heavy and light rail? And where will we get the money to do it? Railroads are the cheapest transport, the easiest to sustain, and the only solution to a post-automobile America. (For reasons I haven't space to detail, hybrid cars and alternative energy won't cut it, if by "cut it" one means retaining anything like the present standard of living. See James Howard Kunstler's "The Long Emergency" on Rolling Stone's Web site. Also check Mike Ruppert's site http://www.fromthewilderness.com/ and the documentary The End of Suburbia.) A massive investment in railroad infrastructure could offer jobs to the unskilled and skilled alike, absorb much of the inevitable population displacement, and create a new social equilibrium 10 or 15 years down the line. Old RR cities like Grand Junction, Colo.; Amarillo, Texas; and Albuquerque, N.M., could become vital centers, offering new lives for the displaced. Railroads are key, but the question is: how to finance them?

There's only one section of our economy that has that kind of money: the military budget. The U.S. now spends more on its military than all other nations combined. A sane transit to a post-automobile America will require a massive shift from military to infrastructure spending. That shift would be supported by our bankers in China and Europe (that is, they would continue to finance our debt) because it's in their interests that we regain economic viability. What's not in their interests is that we remain a military superpower.
And that's where things get really interesting. The question becomes: Can America face reality?

If the government responds to the coming changes by attempting to remain a superpower no matter what, there is no way to underestimate the harm. The numbers speak for themselves. Soon we'll no longer have the resources to remain a military superpower and sustain a livable society that is anything like what we know today. It happened to England; it happened to Russia; it's about to happen to us. England sustained the transformation more or less gracefully; it lost its dominance while retaining its essential character. Russia is still in a period of transformation, but has remained a player thanks to its oil reserves. Europe in general - France, Germany, Italy, and Spain (all world powers in the fairly recent past) - is creating a post-national society, the most experimental form of governance since America's revolution. We have no appreciable oil, and we no longer have a manufacturing base. So what will the United States do? Sanely recognize its declining status and act accordingly, or make one last ignoble stab to retain its position by force?

Half a century ago James Baldwin wrote: "Confronted with the impossibility of remaining faithful to one's beliefs, and the equal impossibility of becoming free of them, one can be driven to the most inhuman excesses." Americans believe they're "No. 1," destined to lead the world. That is the America that's over. If we insist on that illusion, then this world is in for tough times. We will neither hold on to what we have nor create what we might have, but we will wreak untold harm (if we don't destroy the species altogether). Or we can face and embrace reality. And that reality is: There is no such thing as "No. 1" ... there is no such thing as an ideal destined country that is better than any other ... there is only us, doing the best we can, trying to live free and sanely, within limits that are about to become only too clear. Our glory days are done.

What's next? Remember, we're not talking about the far future. We're talking about the next decade. No country gets two centuries anymore. The 21st will be China's century. That's what $4-plus a gallon means, and nothing can stop it.

So: How will we change? But the question "How will we change?" is really the question "How will I change?" Because history isn't a spectator sport. It's you and me. Everything depends on whether we side with reality or illusion. Face reality, and we have a chance. Cling to illusion, and we are lost. The America we've known is over very soon. The America we can create is up to us.

Basic Sanity

Sunday, November 12, 2006

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