Sheryl Crow makes Karl Rove squirm

The "highlight" of the White House Correspondents Dinner had to be when we were introduced to Karl Rove. How excited were we to have our first opportunity ever to talk directly to the Bush Administration about global warming.

We asked Mr. Rove if he would consider taking a fresh look at the science of global warming. Much to our dismay, he immediately got combative. And it went downhill from there.

We reminded the senior White House advisor that the US leads the world in global warming pollution and we are doing the least about it. Anger flaring, Mr. Rove immediately regurgitated the official Administration position on global warming which is that the US spends more on researching the causes than any other country.

We felt compelled to remind him that the research is done and the results are in (www.IPCC.ch). Mr. Rove exploded with even more venom. Like a spoiled child throwing a tantrum, Mr. Rove launched into a series of illogical arguments regarding China not doing enough thus neither should we. (Since when do we follow China's lead?)

At some point during his ramblings, we became heartbroken to think that the President of the United States and his top advisers have partially built a career on global warming not being real. We have been telling college students across the country for the past two weeks that government does not change until people demand it... well, listen up folks, everyone had better get a lot louder because the message clearly is not getting through.

In his attempt to dismiss us, Mr. Rove turned to head toward his table, but as soon as he did so, Sheryl reached out to touch his arm. Karl swung around and spat, "Don't touch me." How hardened and removed from reality must a person be to refuse to be touched by Sheryl Crow? Unfazed, Sheryl abruptly responded, "You can't speak to us like that, you work for us." Karl then quipped, "I don't work for you, I work for the American people." To which Sheryl promptly reminded him, "We are the American people."

At that point Mr. Rove apparently decided he had had enough. Like a groundhog fearful of his own shadow, he scurried to his table in an attempt to hibernate for another year from his responsibility to address global warming. Drama aside, you would expect as an American citizen to be able to engage in a civil discussion with a public official. Instead, Mr. Rove was dismissive, condescending, and quite frankly a bully.

Ultimately, we were left wondering what on Earth Mr. Rove was talking about when he said "the American people." If more than 60% of American voters, the Supreme Court, over 400 cities, the US National Academy of Sciences, numerous major US corporations, and others don't constitute the American people, then what does? The truth is, if this administration cared one iota about the American people, they would have addressed this problem long ago, and the sad reality is that this problem has been left to us, all of us, since the current administration has abandoned this issue entirely. In the absence of true leadership, we must guide ourselves. We can solve this, but we had better act fast.
(Story from Huffington Post)
www.stopglobalwarming.org

Why Are Americans So Stupid?

We've all heard about how most Americans can't find Iraq on a map or tell you who Condi Rice is. Here's more bad news....72% of Americans don't know that plastics are made from petroleum. No wonder we're the reason human-caused planetary extinction is around the corner. Check out the results of this national survey on plastic-headed Americans.

Snapshot of Survey Results:

72% of respondents do not know that plastic is made out of oil/petroleum
On average, respondents estimated 38% of plastic is recycled (the reality is less than 6%, according to the EPA)
Nearly 40% (38.1%) of respondents said plastic will biodegrade underground, in home compost, in landfills, or in the ocean (plastic will not biodegrade in any of these environments).
After learning that plastic is made from oil and never biodegrades, half (50.1%) of respondents stated they would be likely or very likely to pay 5-10% more for a natural, biodegradable plastic. Only 24% were unlikely/very unlikely to pay this much more.
62% of respondents rate their own level of environmental knowledge as fair or poor, with only 5.6% rating it as excellent.

And these are the people who want to dictate how the rest of the world lives. Scary.

http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/070420/20070420005536.html?.v=1

Rep. Rohrabacher (R): "Torturing one innocent person is a fair price to pay for locking up 50 terrorists"

Rep. Rohrabacher: ‘I Hope It’s Your Families That Suffer’ From A Terrorist Attack

This is outrageous. How do these people get elected? He's still using the "these people will kill thousands because they HATE our way of life." It sounded stupidly simplistic when Bush said it 4 years ago. Now this guy is justifying torture, linking Islam with violence, and wishing death on American citizens.

He literally thinks American lives are worth more than non-American lives. What's that called again....oh yeah, racism, white/Christian/American supremacy, and jingoism. I wouldn't be surprised if this guy goes to church on Sunday. Typical Christian who thinks that loving is only necessary for the person he sees in the mirror. Someone should give him a hug, teach him to read, and tell him to stop hating.

Watch the video at: http://thinkprogress.org/2007/04/24/rohrabacher-terrorists/

In January, South America’s largest city officially banned outdoor advertising.

Forget culture jamming, let's just get rid of all outdoor advertising.

This is amazing!

Billboards, neon signs, bus-stop ads, even the Goodyear blimp - all were suddenly illegal. Folha de Sao Paulo reporter Vinicius Galvao describes seeing his city as though for the first time.

http://www.onthemedia.org/transcripts/2007/04/20/04

VINICIUS GALVAO:They uncovered a lot of problems the city had that we never realized. For example, there are some favelas, which are the shantytowns. I wrote a big story in my newspaper today that in a lot of parts of the city we never realized there was a big shantytown. People were shocked because they never saw that before, just because there were a lot of billboards covering the area.

BOB GARFIELD: No writer could have [LAUGHING] come up with a more vivid metaphor. What else has been discovered as the scales have fallen off of the city's eyes?

VINICIUS GALVAO: Sao Paulo's just like New York. It's a very international city. We have the Japanese neighborhood, we have the Korean neighborhood, we have the Italian neighborhood and in the Korean neighborhood, they have a lot of small manufacturers, these Korean businessmen. They hire illegal labor from Bolivian immigrants.

And there was a lot of billboards in front of these manufacturers' shops. And when they uncovered, we could see through the window a lot of Bolivian people like sleeping and working at the same place. They earn money, just enough for food. So it's a lot of social problem that was uncovered where the city was shocked at this news.

PBwiki is the greatest!

One problem that I had when I first started Conscious Lifestyle is that I had so much information, but no way to organize it or make it accessible to other people. For example, I had lists of companies to add scribbled on paper, saved on my own computer, or buried in my email inbox. When I wanted to tell someone about the companies I would have to send out individual emails, which then got buried in other people's inboxes. Finally, I found a solution, http://www.pbwiki.com.

PBwiki's tagline is: “Make a PBwiki as easily as a peanut butter sandwich”. If you don't have a wiki for your company, classroom, club or group of friends, you should get one. Setting up a PBwiki is free and takes only 10 seconds. The best thing about PBwiki is that they actually care about the people that use its product. They give you a lot of free stuff, and if you want to get fancy you can pay for extras.

So go ahead and check out the PBwiki tour.

Have fun!

R.I.P. ALL victims of violence

I rarely laugh out loud when I read the Wall Street Journal, but what I found at the top of the "What's News" section was so preposterous, that I couldn't help it.

"Bush urged Virginia Tech survivors to 'overcome evil with good.'"

How about overcoming evil with policies that prohibit mentally instable people from getting two semi-automatic handguns? How about overcoming the evil of poverty and the AIDS pandemic with living up to a sliver of the foreign aid that our government has promised? How about overcoming the evil of war and occupation by being honest and admitting that Iraq was a disastrous mistake?

It's interesting that Bush paraphrases a biblical mandate related to loving one's enemies. The killer at Virginia Tech was living by the paradigm that Bush's foreign policy perpeturates; that is, that you should NOT love your enemies, that you should kill them. Bush resents the Lord's notion that you should turn the other cheek. In fact, Bush has shown us that you should slap someone that may, or may not, slap you. Bush doesn't make a statement when 171 people die in Baghdad (for example, today). It begs the question, "What does Bush care about?"I genuinely hope that his confused-religious rhetoric turns into a sincere love for God and other people. If so, he'll repent for the blood on his hands, and perhaps then, there will be space for new life to grow.

Read the article here.

Project Management

Today I rewrote the phrasing for the advertisement of our Conscious Lifestyle Social Innovator program. A friend had to email me and let me know that what we had was not up to par. How did I miss this? We are 6 weeks into promotion and I'm just now bringing it to where we need it to be to attract applications. Why didn't I look at it earlier and ask, "is this the best it can be?" When didn't I survey people from our demographic?

I've become so convinced that there is power in a network of people that all use their strengths to work for the cause. Why did I even write the ad in the first place? Creative writing/marketing is not my gift. There are a million people that can do it better than I can. Why didn't I delegate the task to them? Someone could have crafted an ad that we can all be proud of.

Teamwork. Momentum. Strengths. Communication. Vision. Strategy.

I'm learning a lot.

Stewart, Colbert viewers best informed, Fox News viewers worst

Pew Survey Finds Most Knowledgeable Americans Watch 'Daily Show' and 'Colbert'-- and Visit Newspaper Sites
Published: April 15, 2007 11:30 PM ET

NEW YORK A new survey of 1,502 adults released Sunday by Pew Research Center for the People & the Press found that despite the mass appeal of the Internet and cable news since a previous poll in 1989, Americans' knowledge of national affairs has slipped a little. For example, only 69% know that Dick Cheney is vice president, while 74% could identify Dan Quayle in that post in 1989.

Other details are equally eye-opening. Pew judged the levels of knowledgeability (correct answers) among those surveyed and found that those who scored the highest were regular watchers of Comedy Central's The Daily Show and Colbert Report. They tied with regular readers of major newspapers in the top spot -- with 54% of them getting 2 out of 3 questions correct. Watchers of the Lehrer News Hour on PBS followed just behind.

Virtually bringing up the rear were regular watchers of Fox News. Only 1 in 3 could answer 2 out of 3 questions correctly. Fox topped only network morning show viewers.

Told that Shia was one group of Muslims struggling in Iraq, only 32% of the total sample could name "Sunni" as the other key group.

The percentage of those who knew their state's governor dropped to 2 in 3. Almost half know that Rep. Nancy Pelosi is Speaker of the House and 2 in 3 know that Condi Rice is secretary of state. But just 29% can identify Scooter Libby, 21% know Robert Gates and 15% can name Sen. Harry Reid.

But nearly 9 in 10 knew about President Bush's troop escalation in Iraq.

Men scored higher than women, and older Americans did better than younger, on average. Democrats and Republicans were about equally represented in the most knowledgeable group but there were more Republicans in the least aware group.

Day-to-day life in Palestine

The following is the report for a week in March from the village I stayed in this summer. You won't hear about this kind of stuff in the news. No one has died. These people have just been humiliated and inconvenienced. This is the new tactic used to make life for Palestinians so difficult that they surrender their land to the Israelis who harrass them. Why is it that some people want more rights than others? Why is it that some people dehumanize others? Why is it that the US funds the occupation of Palestine? When will this nightmare end?

Wednesday 14 March
Mueller and a Dove learned from shepherds that settlers plowed under a Palestinian barley field late the previous night. The farmer who owns the land plans to file a police report. Internationals gathered documentation for lawyers working on the case.

Friday 16 March
In the afternoon, two settlers approached two young shepherds in the Palestinian village of Tuba. The settlers hit two of the sheep and told the boys they had to leave. Two hours later, nine settlers returned. Armed with sticks, they knocked over stacks of firewood, cut the rope on a bucket hanging in a well, and threatened the boys and their family.

Tuesday 20 March
A settler chased the children from Tuba and Magayer Al-Abeed during their walk home from school. One child sustained injuries when she ran away from the settlers and fell. The soldiers accompanying the children did nothing.

Thursday 22 March
Soldiers arrested a young man with special needs from the Palestinian town of Yatta at a checkpoint near Tuwani because he did not have an Israeli-issued ID. Muehlsteph and a Dove went with his father to the Israeli police station at Kiryat Arba. Shortly before they arrived at the station, the police called the father to say they could not cope with his son's way of answering questions. When they learned he has special needs, they released him. As the group was leaving Kiryat Arba, a police officer told the father to take his son to get an ID. The father informed him that he has tried over twenty times; the officer said a Palestinian should expect to be turned down one hundred times before acquiring one.

Monday 26 March
Schramm and a Dove monitored a flying checkpoint on the road to Yatta. Soldiers refused to allow any cars to pass for one hour, because a funeral was taking place in the Susiya settlement, and settlers from other settlements and outposts were afraid to drive to Susiya with Palestinians moving about freely.

Wednesday 28 March
Muehlsteph and a Dove went to the Palestinian village of Al-Birki to document damage done by soldiers during a raid the previous night. They learned that approximately sixty soldiers arrived in the village near 2:00 that morning. They forced the families, including the children, to wait out in the cold until they left at 4:30 a.m. They searched five houses, and did body searches of all of the men, claiming to be looking for weapons. They found none.

Friday 30 March
At the invitation of the At-Tuwani Committee (responsible for coordinating nonviolent activity in the region), two Palestinians came to Tuwani to lead nonviolence training for the people of the area. Thirty-two women attended the morning session and twenty-five men attended in the afternoon. They discussed the history and practice of nonviolent resistance and how to apply that to their lives in the South Hebron Hills.

Saturday 31 March
Muehlsteph joined shepherds from the Palestinian villages of Biweeg and Bani Na'im who went with activists from the Israeli peace organization Ta'ayush to graze their sheep near the settlement of Pnei Chever. They abandoned the land several years ago, when Israel built the settlement. Five settlers came to the fields in protest. Soldiers told the settlers that they could leave because the soldiers intended to force the shepherds off the land. The soldiers began to move the sheep and shepherds. In the afternoon a large number of settlers arrived with a dog and kicked the sheep. They threw stones at a car belonging to a Ta'ayush activist and attempted to prevent the car from leaving the area. Israeli Border Police arrived and allowed the car to leave.

Friday 6 April
The nonviolence trainers returned to the South Hebron Hills to lead a training session for the people of the villages west of Tuwani. Over eighty Palestinian shepherds and farmers, both men and women, participated in the training.

Cop attacks Sikh bronze star vet for not moving his van. “You f****** Arab! You f***** immigrant, go back to you f****** country before I kill you!”

Wow. Read this now. http://www.saldef.org/content.aspx?a=1682

Worse Than Apartheid?

By Robert D. Novak
Monday, April 9, 2007; 12:00 AM

BETHLEHEM, West Bank -- Hani Hayek, an accountant who is the Christian mayor of the tiny majority-Christian Palestinian village of Beit Sahour, was angry last week as he drove me along the Israeli security wall. "They are taking our communal lands," he said, pointing to the massive Israeli settlement of Har Homa. "They don't want us to live here. They want us to leave."

Har Homa, dwarfing nearby dwellings of Beit Sahour, seemed larger than when I saw it at Holy Week a year ago. It is. The Israeli government has steadily enlarged settlements on the occupied West Bank, and I could see both the construction at Har Homa and road building for a dual transportation system for Israelis and Palestinians.

Jimmy Carter raised hackles by titling his book about the Palestinian question "Peace Not Apartheid." But Palestinians allege this is worse than the former South African racial separation. Nearing the 40th anniversary of the Israeli military occupation of the West Bank, the territory has been so fragmented that a genuine Palestinian state and a "two-state solution" seem increasingly difficult.

The security wall has led to virtual elimination of suicide bombings and short-term peace. But life is hard for Palestinians, whose deaths because of conflict increased 272 percent in 2006 while Israeli casualties declined. In a minor incident last week of the type that goes unnoticed internationally, Israel Defense Forces (IDF) troopers killed a Palestinian man accused of illegally entering a firing zone while collecting metal scraps to sell. The Britain- based organization Save the Children estimates that half the children in the occupied territories are psychologically traumatized.

Palestinians argue that things have gotten worse because of pervasive feelings of hopelessness. Students at Bethlehem University (run by the Catholic Brothers of De La Salle, with an enrollment that is 70 percent Muslim) sounded more pessimistic and radicalized than a year ago. Ahmad al Issa, a fourth-year journalism student, was held for a year in an Israeli prison on charges of throwing stones at Israeli troops. Now he has bought into the libel that Jewish employees at the World Trade Center were warned in advance of the Sept. 11 attacks.

The U.S.-backed boycott following the election victory of the extremist group Hamas in early 2006 has made the Palestinian Authority destitute, crippling government services. Deprived of help from the authority, with the economy in a shambles, city governments are bankrupt. Bethlehem's mayor, Victor Batarseh, has a special problem because tourists and pilgrims no longer stay overnight in the city of Christ's birth. Out of money and credit, he is ready to lay off the city's 165 staffers.

Batarseh, a U.S. citizen who practiced thoracic surgery in Sacramento, is pinned down in Bethlehem. A Christian and political independent who calls himself a private-enterprise democrat, Batarseh is on the Israeli blacklist because he contributed to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), which the State Department has designated a terrorist organization. Denied permits for Jerusalem, the mayor must drive to Amman, Jordan, to get to meetings in Europe.

Contact with the PFLP is not a requirement for being holed up by the Israel Defense Forces. Bethlehem University students cannot get to Jerusalem, a few minutes' drive away, unless they sneak in illegally. The students from the separated Gaza enclave have to take classes from Bethlehem via the Internet.

Republican Rep. Chris Smith of New Jersey was at the university the same day I was, and faculty members could hardly believe a real live member of Congress was there. Smith later was given a tour of Jerusalem to see with his own eyes that the separation barrier in most places is a big, ugly and intimidating wall, not merely a fence.

Smith, an active Catholic layman, was drawn here because of the rapid emigration of the Holy Land's Christian minority. They leave more quickly than Muslims because contacts on the outside make them more mobile. Peter Corlano, a Catholic member of the Bethlehem University faculty, told Smith and me: "We live the same life as Muslims. We are Palestinians."

Concerned by the disappearance of Christians in the land of Christianity's birthplace, Smith could also become (as I did) concerned by the plight of all Palestinians. If so, he will find precious little company in Congress.

© 2007 Creators Syndicate Inc.

Someone Please Tell Me McCain Will Retire Based on Insanity

McCain's BS photo-op took a tragic turn yesterday: "21 Shia market workers were ambushed, bound and shot dead north of the capital."

"The victims came from the Baghdad market visited the previous day by John McCain, the US presidential candidate, who said that an American security plan in the capital was starting to show signs of progress."

One can't help but wonder if this wasn't in response to McCain's false bravado. (Source: AlterNet)

McCain's Lies About Situation in Baghdad

Last week John McCain was caught with his pants down, claiming that "General Petraeus goes out there almost every day in an unarmed humvee."

It was not true -- not by a longshot -- and he was forced to beat a hasty and mealy-mouthed retreat.

Today, McCain, who also said that "There are neighborhoods in Baghdad where you and I could walk through those neighborhoods, today," went out to a market very close to the Green Zone with over 100 armed guards, 3 helicopters, 2 gunships (and a partridge in a...) before holding a press conference in which he reiterated his "it ain't as bad as they tell you in the media" storyline: "The American people are not getting the full picture of what's happening here..."

CNN's Michael Ware, who laughed at McCain's previous claims HERE was reportedly laughing at this press conference. Indeed, as you can see in the video, "microimprovement" or no microimprovement, Baghdad and the nation of Iraq as a whole is a mess...

C&L, which gets the hat tip on the video, notes this from Newsweek: "[I]t didn't take the insurgents long to send their reply. Less then 30 minutes after McCain wrapped up, a barrage of half a dozen mortars peppered the boundaries of the Green Zone, where the senators held their press conference."

Story from AlterNet. To see video go to: http://alternet.org/blogs/video/50034/

The McCain Lies Never End

Just a day after John McCain observed that: "Extremist Shiite militia leader Moqtada al-Sadr is in hiding, his followers are not contesting American forces," Moqtada al-Sadr, the powerful Shiite leader, called on the mostly Shia Iraqi army and police to "turn all their efforts" to the US Military.

Thoughts on the new ConsciousLifestyle.org, set to launch this summer

It seems like there are some sites online that are just plain popular. Most are blogs that derived - not from extensive planning - but rather, from the creator's own desire to do what s/he loved. The success was organic. The creator of the site enjoyed was s/he was doing, so s/he did it well. People came to the site because of the quality of the writing, period.

On the other hand you have ventures that are incredibily well planned. They are derived from market analysis, well-planned strategy, and disciplined actions. The creators of these sites know they can succeed before they even begin. They anticipate who will come to the site. They set goals and create plans to achieve them. They are the opposite of organic.

This is obviously a spectrum that we need to be aware of. If we jump into this thing too soon, everyone that is involved better love what they are doing. If not, we may lose steam and collapse. If, on the other hand, we become very disciplined in running the site, we better have planned to ensure success. Who wants to write for free when no one will read it?

-What time-frame do we have for this launch?
-What must be accomplished by launch date?
-What incentives do we offer our writers?
-What is our market?
-How do we reach our demographic?

Letter to the Editor in Hartford Courant

The following was published in the Hartford Courant a couple weeks ago:

Thanks For Rachel's Story

Thanks for printing Bessy Reyna's March 16 column "The Voice Of A Martyr."

As someone who has been to Israel/Palestine twice, I cannot overemphasize the need to have open dialogue on what is happening there.

Rachel Corrie was only a few years older than me, so her writings eloquently express my own reactions to seeing the human rights abuses in the West Bank. Her death is jarring because she was such a young, idealistic American woman.

By retelling her stories, we are forced to think about the idealistic Palestinian men and women, boys and girls who face humiliation, harassment and the possibility of death every day.

Michael Del Ponte
New Haven

Sites I like, so you should like them, too.

Good Magazine
Amazing magazine on making the world a better place. $20 a yr. subscription. 100% of proceeds go to charity.

Defunker
T-Shirts I like. (Translastion: "T-Shirts you should buy for me.")

The Case Against Meat
"Evidence Shows that Our Meat-Based Diet is Bad for the Environment, Aggravates Global Hunger, Brutalizes Animals and Compromises Our Health."

You Grow Girl
I just thought the name of this one was funny.