ENRON'S GOOD FIGHT (In Memory of "Kenny Boy" Lay)
Topic: By Paul Loeb
We fought the good fight," Jeff Skilling said, standing strong after he and "Kenny Boy" Lay were convicted of defrauding Enron stockholders. But what an odd choice of words. I suppose Joachim von Ribbentrop and Attila the Hun could say the same thing, but fighting to stay out of jail is a small imperial dream. Skilling and Lay did authorize blitzkrieg-worthy raids on West Coast utilities, where Enron traders bragged about stealing from "grandma Millie," and jamming their $250 a megawatt hour power "right up her ass." And Enron did conquer the venerable Portland General utility, then leave it a hollow shell-I met a woman who'd lost her entire retirement. So maybe those were the fights Skilling referred to. But these opponents barely put up a struggle.

Maybe Skilling was talking about political battles. Enron lobbied through the laws that opened California up to utility deregulation, then gouged the state's utilities for every possible cent, and sent them to edge of bankruptcy. If low-income rate-payers couldn't afford the costs or social needs went unmet because of the need for bailouts, that was someone else's problem. Enron also served as George W. Bush's single largest donor, even lending him their private plane to campaign in, and their accounting firm, Arthur Andersen and their law firm, Vinson Elkins, were close behind. In return, Bush appoint the man Ken Lay recommended to head the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, replacing an earlier chairman who'd begun to question Enron's financing schemes. When California officials pleaded for price caps in the face of skyrocketing manipulated prices, the FERC and Bush enabled Enron to make hundreds of millions of dollars more by refusing to help.

Enron also fought the good fight internationally. As described by Indian novelist Arundhati Roy, Enron overcame massive popular opposition to build a power plant in the State of Maharashtra, contributing endless dollars to local officials until they finally agreed, and locking the province into a $30 billion contract. When the plant went on line, the electricity, as predicted by the critics, was so costly that the government decided it was cheaper not to buy it, but to pay the mandatory fixed charges of $220 million a year to produce nothing.

I don't claim to know the soul of Skilling or Lay, or to understand how as America was still mourning 9/11, these men who had more money then most of us could ever imagine, rationalized pulling their stock out of the company while destroying the futures of tens of thousands of employees and stockholders. Enron was strong, Lay told his employees, at the time. If they all persisted and stood together, he said, they'd prevail. So he advised them not to sell what they had, but in fact to buy more, even as he dumped millions of dollars of his own stock. Enron's employees then watched helplessly as their future melted away.

"We fought the good fight," gives us a clue to how Skilling and Lay could do this, as does Lay's sanctimonious talk of how "God, in fact, is in control and indeed he does work all things for good for those who love the Lord." It was all a grand game, like the games played by all those who wheel and deal in the destiny of other people's lives. Lay and Skilling needed no heroes. They made themselves their own Gods and worshipped their own soaring ascent. The actual people whose worlds were shattered by Enron's legacy were invisible and expendable.

Paul Rogat Loeb is the author of The Impossible Will Take a Little While: A Citizen's Guide to Hope in a Time of Fear, winner of the 2005 Nautilus Award for the best book on social change. His previous books include Soul of a Citizen: Living With Conviction in a Cynical Time. See www.PaulLoeb.org.

Nothing New With Lieberman
Topic: State Of The Union
The problem with supporting Joe Lieberman runs much deeper than his support for the occupation of Iraq and his belief that it is in some way related to the so-called "war on terror."

A vote for Joe Lieberman is a vote for continued U.S. imperialism. A vote for Lieberman says to the world that it is O.K. that the U.S. has acted with hubris and will continue to do so because no country can stop it. A vote for Lieberman lends support for violent U.S. unilateralism against sovereign nations under false pretenses all across the globe. A vote for Lieberman is a sign to the citizens of our democracy that it is O.K. for a senator to bow down to the increasing power grab of the executive branch. A vote for Lieberman means that the ends justify the means and that the President should not be held responsible for his criminal actions. A vote for Lieberman ensures that Israel will continues to be a major welfare recipient of U.S. taxpayer's money, a bill that has cost us almost $135 billion dollars since 1949. A vote for Lieberman says to the world it is O.K. for Israel to perpetrate terrorist acts against the Palestinians even though they are fighting for their homeland. Supporting Joe Lieberman means that you accept a man who believes that the U.S. should be a radical interventionist to assert its hegemonic authority over the rest of the world. Supporting Joe Lieberman means that you have somehow found a way to justify the murder, rape and imprisonment of innocent men, women and children who just happen to believe in the wrong religion and whose skin happens to be a little too tanned for our tastes. Voting for Lieberman says to the world that it is O.K. to bomb someone's family, friends, neighborhood, wedding, etc., if we arbitrarily label them a "terrorist."

I would agree with Lieberman's characterization that he's a Kennedy democrat. Just look at Kennedy's naval blockade of Cuba that almost brought nuclear war to our shores or his economic embargo of Cuba that has caused tremendous hardships to the people and never succeeding at wresting control from Castro. Or better yet, let's look to Kennedy's excursion in Vietnam for the best example of how this Democratic mentality has allowed a man like Fidel Castro to leave a more enduring legacy than those men who have pursued him violently.

The world doesn't need any more men like Kennedy, Bush or Lieberman and it will continue to be a much more dangerous place when half the battles we fight are against men who cause more problems than they fix. Hopefully someday, the people of the U.S. and men like Joe Lieberman and George W. Bush will heed the advice of the dominant religions in that if you want to save the world the first thing you should do is look within.

No MOORE Please!
Topic: Iraq
All the signs were there, in fact he appeared in the most volatile, thought provoking movie to come along in a long time. He, like many Americans, chose to ignore the truth. Unlike many Americans he actually lost something in the occupation of Iraq but his loss was the ultimate sacrifice.

Marine in `Fahrenheit 9/11' killed in Iraq

It Wasn't Friendly Fire
Topic: Iraq
I've always chalked up the occupation of Iraq to the Bush administration's incompetence, selfishness, and short-sightedness because they are after all, ruthless, corporate, profit-driven bastards, but almost anyone who knows anything about occupying countries knows that your are not supposed to train the people your occupying to more effectively kill you.

Iraqi Troops Killed U.S. Soldiers

I can just see it now, Bush standing in the Rose garden saying, "You're doing a heck of job, Rummy!"

Can you hear all the fat, lazy, neocon history revisionists and Bush apologists sitting in their air-conditioned homes with the SUV's parked in the driveway tapping away at the keys on their keyboard, trying to find the words to justify why sacrifice is good when its a poor kid doing it and trying to explain that their value to the cause is much greater working in corporate America, contributing to their 401k.

Doesn't that make you just a little sick to your stomach because the whole stinking thing makes me sick. I bet we can't even imagine what those 2 mothers and fathers are going through.

"Great Quotes!"
Topic: Misc.
"The most unpardonable sin in society is independence of thought." -- Emma Goldman, American anarchist and feminist, 1869-1940

GREAT QUOTES! Read 'em to the end!

Scientific Explanation of Hell
Topic: Hopefully Humorous
The following is a question given on a chemistry mid-term. The answer by one student was so "profound" that the professor shared it with colleagues, via the Internet, which is, of course, why we now have the pleasure of enjoying it as well.

Bonus Question: Is Hell exothermic (gives off heat) or endothermic (absorbs heat)?

Most of the students wrote proofs of their beliefs using Boyle's Law (gas cools when it expands and heats when it is compressed) or some v ariant.

One student, however, wrote the following:

First, we need to know how the mass of Hell is changing in time. So we need to know the rate at which souls are moving into Hell and the rate at which they are leaving.

I think that we can safely assume that once a soul gets to Hell, it will not leave. Therefore, no souls are leaving.

As for how many souls are entering Hell, let's look at the different Religions that exist in the world today. Most of these religions state that if you are not a member of their religion, you will go to Hell. Since there is more than one of these religions and since people do not belong to more than one religion, we can project that all souls go to Hell.

With birth and death rates as they are, we can expect the number of souls in Hell to increase exponentially. Now, we look at the rate of change of the volume in Hell because Boyle's Law states that in order for the temperature and pressure in Hell to stay the same, t he volume of Hell has to expand proportionately as souls are added.

This gives two possibilities:

1. If Hell is expanding at a slower rate than the rate at which souls enter Hell, then the temperature and pressure in Hell will increase until all Hell breaks loose.

2. If Hell is expanding at a rate faster than the rate at which souls enter Hell, then the temperature and pressure will drop until Hell freezes over.

So which is it?

If we accept the postulate given to me by Teresa, (Cheerleader Captain and Class Valedictorian) during my Freshman year that, "it will be a cold day in Hell before I sleep with you", and take into account the fact that I slept with her last night and again this morning, then number 2 must be true, and thus I am sure that Hell is exothermic and has already frozen over.

The corollary of this theory is that since Hell has frozen over, it follows that it is not accepting any more souls and is therefore, extinct...leaving only Heaven, and thereby proving the existence of a divine being which explains why, Teresa kept shouting "Oh my God!!!"

THIS STUDENT RECEIVED THE ONLY "A."

Dallas and Becky's First Time, Thanks!

GLOBAL WARMING, LOCAL HOPE
Topic: By Paul Loeb
As the evidence of global warming becomes inescapable, I fear Americans will switch instead to a fatalistic pessimism. Maybe it's real and maybe it's our fault, this sentiment goes, but at this point there's nothing we can do, so we're off the hook.

It's hard to deal with melting arctic glaciers, Katrina refugees who might never return to New Orleans, and floods that recently covered half of Bangladesh. Weather-related catastrophes cost a record $225 billion last year, with the impact of global climate change just beginning. Add in a president deep in denial, and it's tempting to feel powerless. We can't even escape to the Weather Channel without a sense of impending doom.

Yet people are beginning to act, sometimes from unexpected places. By so doing they're opening up new possibilities. The heads of BP Amoco and the world's largest reinsurance companies, Swiss Re and Munich Re, have spoken out. So has the vice president for governmental affairs of the National Association of Evangelicals, joined by other key evangelical leaders like the country's largest megachurch pastor, Reverend Rick Warren. In Britain, even the Conservatives are demanding the issue be made a top national priority. In spring 2005, in Seattle, where I live, Mayor Greg Nickels recognized that even though the Bush administration was still denying the consequences of global warming, local mayors could still take a stand. Nickels committed Seattle to meet or exceed the Kyoto standards of greenhouse gas reduction and challenged the mayors of other cities to make the same commitment. Now 238 cities have signed the US Mayor's Climate Protection Agreement, from New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago to Omaha, Charlottesville, and Laredo. Together they represent 44 million people and greenhouse gas emissions exceeding those of the combined population of Great Britain, the Netherlands and Scandinavia.

Nickels also created a committee of environmental, business and community leaders to issue a Green Ribbon Report on specific ways Seattle could cut back. They just issued their report after a year of work, and the municipally owned utility, City Light, will now meet all new electrical demand with conservation and renewable resources-they've already been giving rebates for energy-efficient light bulbs and appliances. Seattle will expand infrastructure for public transportation, biking and walking. The city will offer incentives and requirements for city contractors to use more fuel-efficient vehicles or ones using bio-fuels, and work with major employers to increase car-sharing. A Green Building program will support conservation in residential and commercial construction and renovation.

The city also issued a challenge to local businesses to meet or surpass the same reduction levels: Six of the top fifty local employers have so far agreed for their local and in some cases national and international operations, including Starbucks, outdoor equipment coop REI, a major real estate development company, the Port of Seattle, and the international cement and building materials company LaFarge SA.

The University of Washington, the other major local employer to sign on, was already part of a campus-focused environmental network called the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (www.aashe.org), and schools like Yale, Oberlin, Cornell, the University of California system, and the Universities of Iowa, Minnesota, and Oklahoma have similarly pledged to meet or exceed the same standards. Member schools have renovated campus heating, cooling, ventilating and lighting systems, super-insulated buildings, installed solar collectors, switched to renewable electricity energy sources, and strengthened recycling programs. They've bought more efficient cars and trucks or vehicles running on bio-diesel. Tufts even held an energy-saving competition for its dorms called "Do it in the Dark," where they encouraged students to turn off lights and computers when not using them. As with the local city projects, the success of each particular effort encourages others and opens up new possibilities.

It's tempting to dismiss these initiatives as insignificant, given the magnitude of the challenge. Cuts in greenhouse emissions need to be far more drastic than Kyoto's limited reach of reducing emissions to 7% below the 1990 levels by 2012.. But efforts like Seattle's and some of the other cities and businesses offer a path forward, a way to act despite the Bush administration's massive denial. Each city inspires the next. So does each business. The more concrete the solutions, the less credible the arguments that nothing can be done. If a city can buy efficient cars and trucks for its fleets, or weatherize houses, or offer incentives for alternative energy generation, then so can any state or the U.S. federal government. If a company the size of Starbucks can decrease their greenhouse gas emissions, then so can other corporations. If the University of Washington or University of Oklahoma can find ways to lighten their impact, so can other campuses. Each initiative provides a model for others to follow.

I spent this past Earth Day with the Sierra Club canvassing the suburban neighborhoods of Bellevue, Washington State's fifth largest city. Going door to door in a swing Congressional district, we distributed coupons, supplied by the local utility, for discounted compact-fluorescent lightbulbs, handed out postcards urging Bellevue's mayor to sign the national mayor's agreement, and enlisted volunteers for future efforts. Most important, we talked with ordinary citizens about global warming and what they could do. Had Seattle not taken the initial step, our task would have been far harder.

The institutions and individuals taking these actions aren't perfect. I dislike how Starbucks undermines the rich culture of local independent coffee houses. I've disagreed with Seattle Mayor Nickels on a key transportation initiative and what I consider excessive deference to downtown development interests. But on this issue, they're taking risks to do what's right, and we're all the beneficiaries.

As Al Gore pointed out at the press conference announcing Seattle's Green Ribbon report, setting and meeting even initially modest targets opens up new possibilities. This occurred when countries worldwide phased out the chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) that were destroying the stratospheric ozone layer that protects us from harmful ultraviolet radiation. At first political leaders and leaders of affected businesses said this was impossible, that alternatives were unavailable or prohibitively costly. But even though the scientific data was still in flux, and CFCs had wide uses in electronics, refrigeration, plastics, telecommunications, aerospace, pharmaceuticals, and agriculture, 24 nations, including the U.S., committed to the specific reduction standards of the 1987 Montreal Protocol. Businesses responded with major innovation, soon surpassing the standards. Northern Telecom developed and licensed new ways to clean electronic circuit boards. Greenpeace and a former East German company developed CFC-free refrigerators, which were sold throughout Europe and which German and Swiss aid programs promoted in China and India. The US food packaging industry stopped using CFCs in creating Styrofoam packaging, and China replaced their Styrofoam with a biodegradable product made from grass and straw. By a few years later, a series of amendments raised the standards still further and the bulk of the world's nations had signed on. With CFCs no longer accumulating in the atmosphere, the ozone layer is gradually beginning to recover.

These are hopeful signs. But how do we act if we don't hold a position of visible power, if we're not the mayor of a city or a corporate executive? We can take modest, or not so modest, individual steps, improving the insulation of our houses, installing solar water heaters, driving less, and buying energy-efficient cars, lighting and appliances. But voluntary efforts will never be enough, so we also have to compel large political and economic institutions to act. That means getting out from behind our computers and participating in efforts, like the Sierra Club's, to educate and sway voters in swing districts, showing up at community meetings, registering voters, convincing local civic groups to speak out. It means joining efforts like the international environmental boycott of Exxon/Mobil for being the prime financial supporter of the denial of global warming. And pressuring political, economic, and religious leaders to take a stand, both those whose hearts are in the right place but who have so far lacked the courage, and those who are willfully blind or just haven't come to grips with the facts. It means levying enough collective power so that these leaders have no choice but to respond.

One way to bring the issue home would be to create a context where our neighbors and colleagues can really begin telling the local stories. Farmers could talk about how changing patterns are affecting local agriculture, hunters and hikers about shifts in the patterns of wild animals and birds, skiers about melting snowpacks, backyard gardeners about the changing cycles of local plants, physicians about changing disease vectors from insect and rodent migration. If droughts, floods, tornadoes, or forest fires have threatened a local city or town, citizens could talk about that as well, weaving in discussion of the larger global patterns and of the choices we can make to respond. If we coordinated these testimonies well enough, they'd go a long way toward making some of the invisible changes visible.

We need to take action to promote further alternatives, not only as ends in themselves, but also to fight denial, which remains a powerful force. As Al Gore points out in An Inconvenient Truth, Science magazine analyzed 928 peer-reviewed scientific papers on the subject published between 1993 and 2003. Not one dissented from the international scientific consensus-that human activity is dramatically increasing the earth's temperature, in ways that will bring severe consequences. But because of promotion by corporations like Exxon/Mobil of a handful of global warming deniers, over half the news stories during the same period presented the issue as if there were a serious scientific debate. In the wake of Katrina's devastation of New Orleans and efforts like the local cities initiatives and Gore's powerful film, citizens may finally be ready to acknowledge global warming and its consequences, though the Bush administration is proposing to cut $152 million from federal energy conversation programs. Everywhere I go, people acknowledge how strange their local weather has been in recent years. But they don't always connect it to the larger patterns that threaten the habitability of the earth.

Efforts like the city-by-city campaigns and Gore's powerful film are helping to bring this critical issue to the public square. But they'll only bear fruit with the massive participation of ordinary citizens. However we decide to participate, it's not enough to follow the news, lament the parade of disasters, and long for someone else to solve the problem. If we don't act, the potential of even the wisest and most visionary alternative plans will remain just that: potential. If we demand that our economic and political leaders make them a reality, we have a chance to solve what may be the most profound crisis we've faced while inhabiting this planet. Each time we can convince a major institution to change, this encourages others to follow.

Paul Rogat Loeb is the author of The Impossible Will Take a Little While: A Citizen's Guide to Hope in a Time of Fear, winner of the 2005 Nautilus Award for the best book on social change. His previous books include Soul of a Citizen: Living With Conviction in a Cynical Time. See www.PaulLoeb.org.

The Righteous Hippie
Topic: Hopefully Humorous
A man who called himself a Christian was proselytizing on a street corner critiquing all the sinners he observed when a man who looked like a hippie crossed his path. The man yelled at the hippie, "Why don't you cut your hair, shave your beard and look like a responsible Christian?"

The hippie paused and thought for a second. He responded, "Didn't Jesus have long hair and a beard?"

The man was finally quiet.

The man who called himself a Christian moved on to have the #1 rated Evangelism television network where he regularly espoused his misinterpretations of the bible and skimmed a little off the top from all the charitable and good-hearted, albeit gullible contributors.

The hippie never thought it was important to accept Christ as his lord and savior but he still lived his life in his image. The hippie hasn’t attained worldly riches but his treasure still awaits him.

The man who calls himself a Christian has already received his treasure.

Zarqawi's Dead. So What?
Topic: Iraq
With the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi the U.S. and the Iraqis are left with some important questions. What does this mean for peace in Iraq? What does this mean for the U.S. occupation of Iraq? With there be any affect on the level of violence in Iraq? What does the future hold?

The answers to these questions depend upon your perspective.

The first thing that we need to do in order to adequately answer these questions is ask who was Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. The answer is important so that we not only "know our enemy" but so that we can head off future Zarqawis. Finding an answer to this question is not that easy as there are many contradictory sources but one source that gives good background information is "Who is Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi?". Basically, Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi was a terrorist whose affect in Iraq has been incredibly exaggerated by the Bush administration and the right-wing, for-profit media. Al-Zarqawi was the leader of a small faction of Islamist extremists who, after the invasion and occupation of Iraq by U.S. forces, was elevated to a position of increased credibility in the previously isolated minority Muslim extremists.

Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi elevation to the point of ineffectual figure-head was cemented when President George W. Bush gave Islamist extremist the wet dream they've not only prophesized but needed to sustain their cause. In the post-invasion occupation men like Zarqawi moved into Iraq to fight Americans face-to-face. When Bush convinced U.S. citizens that Iraq was involved with the attack on 9/11, that they represented a direct and imminent threat to the U.S., and that Iraq was a part of the ambiguous "war on terror" which is without duration, without a defined goal or enemy and can be used to subjectively justify the attack of a country that did not pose a threat to their direct neighbors, no less the U.S., he opened up a Pandora's box, which if you're a Muslim sitting in an oil-rich Muslim country is reminiscent of the crusades.

Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi moved into Iraq and made it his new hunting ground with his sole purpose to foment sectarian violence between the Sunnis (Zarqawi was a Sunni) and Shia Muslims so that the occupying U.S. forces would not succeed in their mission of securing Iraqi natural resource assets. The problem with his policy and tactics is that many native Iraqi Sunnis, who were already fighting against U.S. forces prior to Zarqawi's arrival and prominence in Iraq, did not want to fight with other Iraqi Muslims (Shia) but rather seek to work together in violently removing U.S. occupying forces from their sovereign land.

Zarqawi represented such a small minority presence in Iraq of foreign born fighters that without tacit Bush administration and right-wing media support in elevating his prominence he surely would have faded into obscurity brought upon by the overwhelming occurrence of murdered civilians, maimed soldiers and general chaos in which he did not direct or inspire. It should also be said that U.S. ignorance of Iraqi culture has played a huge part in perpetuating Zarqawi's small role in Iraq. Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi was, from the perspective of the Bush administration's power people who exploited our widespread Iraqi cultural ignorance, the much needed figure-head and more importantly, foreign-born terrorist, to justify the existence of the flawed policy of preemptive action against weak Muslim countries; to give Americans something to soothe their need for vengeance. The problem is that we are imposing American values on an Iraqi problem. Zarqawi was not the head of the Iraqi insurgency which even if he was, doesn't need a head to continue, as it will indefinitely, well after Zarqawi's death.

The irony of the situation is that the Bush administration's explicit reasons for invading Iraq was to fight the "war on terror" to do away with men like Zarqawi who didn't previously exist in Iraq but with the U.S. invasion and the fallaciously created image of his preeminence, his death will certainly inspire more just like him.

Indifferent Decadence
Topic: State Of The Union
For the deaf, dumb and blind amongst us who actually believe that our country is the most benevolent in the world,

"The United States promised $2.5 million
in emergency aid; the European Union
granted $3.8 million"

This in response to a major earthquake in Indonesia that has already killed 4300 people. It absolutely makes me sick that the economically arrogant nation that I live in does so much of all the wrong things and way to little of the right things. Spend $300 billion in blowing up a country, no problem, help poor, suffering farmers who just lost large chunks of their family and we throw them the tiniest of bones.

Just remember that the soldiers that have died for our freedom didn't do so, so that we could live in indifferent decadence.


Quake in Indonesia Kills at Least 4,300


Happy Memorial Day.

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