Green News

Matt Gonzalez
From a Green listserv

Matt Gonzalez, a former public defender, current President of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, and one of the leading elected Greens in the country, is running for Mayor of San Francisco.  The election is this Tuesday, November 4th, and we need your help.

New polls out Wednesday, Oct 29 show that Matt has climbed into a slim lead for second place and a coveted spot in the upcoming runoff election, which will feature the top two finishers from the November 4th contest.  This is HUGE.

Even better, our own polling from a few weeks back showed that, should he make it into the runoff, Matt’s poll numbers starting out are statistically tied with those of the leading candidate (Gavin Newsom, a neo-conservative anti-homeless candidate backed by downtown business interests), with each candidate receiving 41-42% support.  In other words, Matt has a very strong chance to become the first Green mayor of a major international city - not just in the U.S., but in the world!

www.mattgonzalez.com 

Ralph Nader
Ralph Nader has declined to be a candiate on the California Green Party Presidential ticket in 2004, citing exploratory committee rules that would make it difficult for him to be a listed candidate now. He did the same thing in 2000, and didn’t decide to run until April 2000. He can still get on the California ballot by doing a signature campaign. Speculation is he is waiting to see if Kucinich or Dean get the Democratic nomination. Also, he will be 72 and a Presidential campaign would tax anyone, 72 or not.

The four Greens currently on the California ballot are, basically, nonentities, except for David Cobb, who has some visibility among GP activists. Nader, love him or hate him, gave the Green Party international attention in the 2000 race. If he doesn’t run, Greens have no one even remotely approaching his name recognition as a candidate in 2004.

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Get those cameras rolling, folks!

Bush in 30 Seconds

Moby has come up with a political advertising contest called Bush in 30 Seconds. “You don’t have to be formally trained in the art of filmmaking, just ready, willing and able to create an ad that tells the truth about George Bush.”

A panel of celebrity judges will choose the winner.

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Arnold won’t let facts get in the way of ideology

The recent hike in the California car tax, among other things, funds firefighters. Given the current conflagrations, a reasonable human might consider keeping these taxes. But not Arnold, he still wants to repeal the tax, thus slashing firefighting funding.

Various state and local officials want Schwarzenegger to preserve the car tax rate that tripled under Gov. Gray Davis, contending that the money pays for lifesaving fire and emergency services now being marshaled against the wildfires.

Will the governor-elect heed calls to preserve the threefold increase in the vehicle license fee that raises $4 billion for local government?

“In a word, no,” said H.D. Palmer, a Schwarzenegger spokesman.

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Big dogs back grocery strike

The AFL-CIO is starting a multi-union fund to aid striking grocery workers in Southern California, saying the strike is a defining battle.

Another big dog, the Teamsters, will decide by late next week whether to strike the grocery warehouses in support. If they do, the grocery chains will be forced to close their stores until the strike is over.

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A VERY scary Halloween news item

Microsoft buying Google?

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Attackers loot U.S. supply train

Blast in Baghdad kills 2 and boosts unease in capital

Meanwhile the administration continues their unreal world of spin and propaganda.

Rumsfeld accuses press of “ignoring” progress in Iraq.

Do the Bushies ever admit they are wrong, made a mistake, or apologize for anything? Lordy, a few months back the only attacks in Iraq were a few random snipers. Now they’re looting supply trains. Only in the demented Dr. Strangelove world of the current administration could that be considered “progress”.

Maybe someone should tell them propaganda only works as long as people don’t know it is propaganda.

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More signs Bush is losing his grip on power

Senate Democrats block Bush court pick

Senate Democrats yesterday blocked President Bush’s selection of Charles W. Pickering Sr. for a federal appeals court after a two-year struggle that evoked conflicting interpretations of the past, present and future of race relations in Mississippi and Pickering’s role in them.

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Paper plate oragami

Right here!

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Malaysia’s Dr M takes parting shot at Israel

Malaysia’s Prime Minister, Mahathir Mohamad, speaking on the eve of his retirement, has said that Jewish people’s past sufferings in Europe are no excuse for taking Arab land and persecuting Muslims.

That is a reasonable statement.

Dr Mahathir, who steps down on Friday after 22 years in power, provoked widespread international criticism earlier this month by saying that the Jews had emerged from the Holocaust to “rule the world by proxy.”

That is a lunatic statement.

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BOO!

Happy Halloween a day early!

Which gives you time to circulate this photo to all your friends and startle them too!

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L.A. D.A. declines to prosecute Mike Feinstein

Several months back I filed a criminal complaint with the Santa Monica police against Mike Feinstein, founding member of the California Green Party and current member of the Santa Monica City Council, concerning his disposition of a check for $10,000 made out to Green Party of LA County and deposited by him into his private bank account.

Lt. Mike Beautz, the investigating officer, spent “hundreds of hours” on the case. They got a warrant and pulled the bank records, then turned the case over to the D.A. The case went to the top, and yesterday LA DA Steve Cooley declined to prosecute primarily because the office in question had been, and still is, used for Green Party (GP) business and, crucially I think, because the GP knew about the check for 2 1/2 years and did nothing about it.

Oh, there had been countless rancorous meetings, endless email flames, and much factional warfare within the GP at the county, state, and national levels, but little action was taken until I forced people’s hand by filing.

DA’s wants easy kills. This case was not an easy kill, based both on what Cooley said, and also on the maddening vagueness of political contribution law which, by a bizarre coincidence, is written by the very same politicians who could get indicted under these laws. Beautz told me the laws on commingling political funds do not even specify whether it is a civil or criminal offense. Talk about loopholes…

Pondering all this some things become clear. First, the GP has serious structural problems that prevent it from taking action fast and decisively. The Reps or Dems would have dealt with this quickly, they would not have allowed it to drag on for years, causing serious, probably irreparable, problems, at the state and national level, as has happened in the GP. The problem, as I’ve discussed here before, is the GP insistence on consensus and decentralization, which, while noble in purpose, doesn’t translate much beyond the neighborhood meeting level. In practice, it means that controversial measures seldom get passed and major decisions take way too long to make. It also means, contrary to the intent, that the few can always block the many from acting.

I mostly volunteer with ANSWER now, where meetings are purposeful, free of rancor and internal factional battles. Let me repeat that - ANSWER, a hard left sectarian organization, has had no internal wars, or even serious squabbles, in the 14 months I’ve been volunteering - and I’ve been at steering committee meetings and helped organize multiple demos and dozens of smaller events. Given the fractiousness of the left, this is an almost bizarre rarity.

Why this is, I don’t specifically know. Many of the lead ANSWER organizers have been at it for decades, and their experience is invaluable. Also, ANSWER, as policy, will never publicly criticize an ally or coalition partner - even when attacked by one, and this ‘let’s focus on organizing, show solidarity, and avoid conflict between us’ viewpoint is reflected in the internal politics too. Also, we are generally doing several events at once and this emphasis on action means less time for squabbling. There’s something in the group dynamics of ANSWER that precludes internal bickering, and when I figure out exactly what it is, I’ll share it with you all!

This whole Feinstein affair has been quite an education. I made some enemies, found out who my real friends are and who will stand and who will run, learned that those who yell the loudest for action often are incapable taking action themselves - and much more.

Would I do it again? Absolutely.

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The fires

I met with friends tonight. One has a home in Big Bear, the other in Lake Arrowhead. Both were in Los Angeles and don’t know if they have homes to go back to.

What do you say, what can you say? Words seem so frail here.

And this story is being repeated thousands of times today.

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Dean Likely To Get SEIU Nod

The Dean juggernaut just keeps rolling on.

“Howard Dean is about to take another huge step toward winning the Democratic nomination,” Ryan Lizza writes in the New Republic (link to come tomorrow). “According to union officials and aides to several campaigns, it is nearly certain that the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) will endorse Dean next week. This may sound like just another obscure piece of campaign inside baseball, but the endorsement could transform the race.”

Editor’s Note: I have now heard this same intelligence from several informed Political Wire readers in the last 24 hours. The endorsement is expected on November 6th. Rep. Dick Gephardt’s campaign is working frantically to get the union to delay the decision.

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Wesley Clark lays responsibility for 9/11 at Bush’s feet

In a blistering review of President Bush’s national security policy, Gen. Wesley K. Clark said on Tuesday that the administration could not “walk away from its responsibilities for 9/11.”

“You can’t blame something like this on lower-level intelligence officers, however badly they communicated in memos with each other,” said the retired general, the latest entrant in the Democratic presidential field. “It goes back to what our great president Harry Truman said with the sign on his desk: ‘the buck stops here.’ And it sure is clear to me that when it comes to our nation’s national security, the buck rests with the commander in chief, right on George W. Bush’s desk.”

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“The case for letting Malibu burn”

“We keep putting tens of thousands of homes in harm’s way,” said author Mike Davis.

The UC Irvine history professor’s scorching books have assailed Southern California as an apocalyptic theme park, always courting disaster. In “Ecology of Fear,” Chapter 3 is called “The Case for Letting Malibu Burn.” It’s a history of California’s failure to conduct preventive burns, despite the growth of “firebelt suburb populations” on the edge of combustible vegetation.

Homeowner groups resist preventive burns because they’re risky and leave scars, but then scream for help when fire rages out of control, Davis argues. The public cost is huge; so is the risk to firefighters.

On Monday, Davis said friends had been burned out and relatives were preparing to evacuate, and it’s remarkable there hasn’t been more death. He captured the horror and madness in a single sentence:

“We’re building homes in places where there’s no fire escape at all.”

In “Ecology of Fear”, Davis details how people, usually well off financially, build homes in dangerous fire-prone areas, then get low interest loans to rebuild when the homes burn. He rightfully says this is a tax subsidy for the wealthy paid by the rest of us. There are other costs too, like maintaining expensive fire departments, roads, sewage, electricity, etc. in canyon areas.

Most controversial, and the article touched on this when it mentioned controlled burns, is the insistence of homeowners that property be protected first, even at the expense of fighting the fire. Thus, fire crews sometimes are forced to leave an area where they have a chance of stopping the fire to, say, go to an evacuated housing development to protect houses. This is backwards, as it puts protecting individual property above that of protecting the general populace.

If a house in a canyon burns, it is lunacy to give low cost loans to rebuild in the same spot, yet this happens all the time.

Update:

Forest Service boss urges more prescribed burns
 
The head of the U.S. Forest Service said Tuesday that residents of the fire-prone West must reintroduce prescribed burns into their vocabulary to avoid the sort of catastrophic blazes now sweeping Southern California.

From Steve Lopez in the L.A Times today

It doesn’t take a genius to figure out how to prevent the kinds of roaring fires that are currently swallowing homes and taking lives. If we’re going to be dumb enough to continue building in high-fire-danger areas, brush needs to be cleared to prevent the spread of killer blazes.

But we don’t do it, because our attention spans are shorter than the time it takes to eat a bag of Cheetos. Someone can be burned out of house and home, only to move straight back to Tinder Box Boulevard as soon as possible and wait for history to repeat itself.

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Here’s why mandatory evacuations are ordered

KCRW reported a fire captain was patrolling the outskirts of a fire when the fire suddenly came straight towards him very fast. He was driving 55 mph and said the fire gained on him.

And this …

Fire destroys Calif. mountain town 

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Saudi fighters join resistance in Iraq

Contrary to what you may be reading, this isn’t a hidden conspiracy at all…

A leading Saudi dissident says thousands of fighters from the kingdom are embroiled in attacks against  American occupation soldiers in Iraq.

Dr Muhammad al-Massari, a political activist living in exile in London has told Aljazeera.net that resistance attacks in Iraq will continue to escalate in Baghdad.

“There are around 5000 mujahedin fighters from Saudi Arabia in Baghdad, and many others joining them from all over the Muslim and Arab world.

Among these mooj, I’m sure, are battle hardened vets from the Afghanistan war.

And the raindrops keep falling on George Bush’s head:

U.S. position in Iraq seen as increasingly perilous

Independents bail On Bush

“Independent voters, who some say are key to President Bush’s re-election hopes next year, are losing confidence in his leadership in Iraq as attacks there continue,” a USA Today/CNN/Gallup Poll has found.

Political threat to Bush growing

The latest rocket and bomb attacks in Baghdad are only the most recent in a series of setbacks for the Bush administration that threaten to turn Iraq into a political liability just as the 2004 election cycle is beginning.

And in a personal sign of the times, a conservative Republican cousin just emailed me and everyone he knows saying he can not, will not, vote for Bush in 2004.

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ELF sabotages Walmart

From the ELF listserv

Earth Liberation Front takes credit for sabotage at Walmart construction site

In its 11th known action of 2003, the Earth Liberation Front has taken credit for extensive sabotage at the site of a Walmart under construction in Martinsville, Indiana.

An anonymous communique, sent to the ELF Press Office, claims the action took place on the 24th October and did significant damage to heavy machinery being used on site, as well as to the site itself.

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Smoke to the left of me, smoke to the right

These photos were taken today from the same vantage point as the photo yesterday. The top photo was taken facing northwest and shows the Simi fire. The mountains are no longer visible because of smoke.

The next photo, taken from the same spot,  but facing northeast, shows smoke from the San Bernardino fires, which are over 50 miles away starting to clog the San Fernando Valley. The area I live in, Encino, has little smoke, but with smoke from two fires moving in, this may not last much longer …

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Attention spammers!

1) I am, in fact, already happy with the proportion and size of certain of my body parts and am unclear why lengthening would be of any appreciable benefit, if indeed this could be done - which of course it can not.

2) Concurrent with the above, I am not in the market for Viagra, and most especially, not in the market for “Viagra substitutes”, whatever that might be.

3) Absolutely, if I was going to re-fi my condo, a quite important financial decision, I would certainly do it with anonymous companies who tell me ten times a day, generally with misspelled words and grammar errors, why I should rely on them. 

4) Sending me the exact same email twenty times using a different phony name each time does not inspire my confidence in you nor does it fool me. This is especially true as I have six active email accounts, thus I get the same email with twenty different phony addresses at all six email accounts. Thanks so much…

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Baghdad bombs kill at least 43, injure 230

US President George W. Bush has vowed to stay the course in Iraq, after a series of bold attacks around the Iraqi capital killed 43 people and wounded more than 200 in the deadliest day for two months.

The five morning attacks which plunged the capital into terror and sparked worldwide condemnation were launched with two simultaneous blasts at the police stations in Al-Bayaa and Al-Dora, south of Baghdad.

Within barely an hour, explosions also rocked the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) office, and three other police stations in the capital.

In response, Dubya, who must be drinking again, said the ferocity of the attacks were because we are winning. Uh huh…

At the White House, Bush said the escalating attacks were a reaction to US successes on the ground.

Should someone tell him the US is nowhere close to winning, that things get appreciably worse everyday? Will reality ever intrude into his little plastic PR bubble?

Six months ago much of the public either believed what Dubya said or gave him the benefit of the doubt. However his evasions, mistruths, and lies have become so blatant and obviously untrue that his credibility, judging from recent polls, is dropping precipitously and many who used to believe him no longer do.

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The fires

The Santa Ana winds

<Santa Ana> winds are born of weather systems out in the Great Basin, in high-pressure zones over Nevada and Utah. The cold, dense, moist air descends from the high deserts and mountains toward the Pacific Coast. It is funneled through canyons and passes, gaining speed and heat from the land.

As it drops to sea level, it can warm by 20 or 30 degrees and becomes very dry. On Monday, temperatures near the San Diego and San Bernardino fires reached the upper nineties, and the relative humidity was less than 10 percent.

The mountains

Mountains in Southern California are geologically young. They haven’t eroded much and thus have steep narrow canyons and gullies. Not only does this make getting fire trucks in a difficult task, the amount of brush and undergrowth in these areas can be stupendous.

Yesterday I hiked in about fifteen minutes on the outskirts of Topanga State Park to take photos of the Simi fire across the valley. The brush and vegetation is mostly dead and bone dry. But here’s what those who don’t live here may not know - in such areas you can’t wander off a fire road or trail because the brush is impenetrable. Such brush can easily be three feet high, and six feet high is not unusual.

Imagine thousands of acres of bone dry brush several feet high in areas so steep that walking off trail is difficult, if not dangerous. Then, imagine how fast and how furiously such areas would burn if ignited and how hard it would be to put it out.

NOAA interactive smoke plume map

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Newsweek: Bush’s Iraq mess driving voters to Dean

From Howard Dean’s blog

In this week’s Newsweek, Howard Fineman reports that President Bush’s failed Iraq policy–the centerpiece of an administration of deception and irresponsibility–may well be his undoing. “If presidencies are destined to crumble,” writes Fineman, “the cracks tend to appear first in the Granite State.” He profiles a New Hampshire Republican who has switched parties to vote for Howard Dean:

Hilary Cleveland of New London, N.H., goes way back with the Bush family. Her late husband, James Colgate (Jimmy) Cleveland, was a Republican in Congress, where his paddle-ball partner in the House gym was George H.W. Bush. Hilary served on the Andover board with Barbara Bush and was finance chair of Bush’s primary campaign in New Hampshire in 1980. She organized locally for George W. in 2000. But the other day, upset over the war in Iraq, she left the Republican Party, changing her registration to “undeclared” so she could vote for Dr. Howard Dean in the Democratic primary in January. “You don’t go to war without valid reason,” she said, “or international support.” Bush’s call for $87 billion in new spending on Iraq offended her Yankee sense of thrift: “I believe in fiscal integrity and balanced budgets, and spending so much doesn’t seem sound.”

The story also notes that Senator John McCain, who defeated Bush in the 2000 New Hampshire primary, has for the first time began to distance himself from the fiasco overseas:

“This is the first time that I have seen a parallel to Vietnam,” McCain declared, “in terms of information that the administration is putting out versus the actual situation on the ground.”

The same issue analyzes the cronyism and lack of vision that has turned Iraq into an $87 billion money pit:

Six months ago the administration decided to cut corners on normal bidding procedures and hand over large contracts to defense contractors like Bechtel and Halliburton on a limited-bid or no-bid basis. It bypassed the Iraqis and didn’t worry much about accountability to Congress. The plan was for “blitzkrieg” reconstruction. But by sacrificing accountability for speed, America is not achieving either very well right now. . .

Numerous allegations of overspending, favoritism and corruption have surfaced. Halliburton, a major defense contractor once run by Vice President Dick Cheney, has been accused of gouging prices on imported fuel.

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Simi Valley fire: bigger, closer

Compared to yesterday, the Simi Valley fire is much larger, smokier, and for the first time, I could see flames - which means the fire has crested mountains. It is also noticeably closer, and in some areas is now next to the 118 Freeway in Simi. 

For those who know the area, I took this photo from the south end of the San Fernando Valley at the Reseda Blvd trailhead to Topanga State Park, a huge area with miles of fire roads and hiking trails. In a highly unusual move, the park itself is closed, with signs on the gates saying “Park Closed, Extreme Fire Danger”.

So, I stayed outside the park on a fire roads, scrambled up a small peak, and took the photo.

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Resistance increases by orders of magnitude in Iraq

Five attacks in 24 hours in Baghdad. Major damage and looss of life.  Targets included the Red Cross and police (who insurgents see as collaboraters) and sent a clear message that 1) anyone supporting the U.S. or  occupying the country are in danger, 2) they can attack at will and the US, despite its blustering, can do little to stop them.

Dozens killed by Baghdad bombs

More than 30 people are killed as the Red Cross building and several Iraqi police stations come under attack.

From Saul Alinksky’s “Rules for Radicals”, Alinksy being one of the best organizers the US has ever had - he invented what is now called “community organizing” in the 30’s in Chicago.

From his discussion of ends vs. means:

Judgment must be made in the context of the times the action occurred and not from any other vantage point.

The ethics of ends vs. means varies inversely with one’s distance from the scene of the conflict.

In war, the ends justify almost any means.

And in a classic Alinsky phrase

The ends-and-means moralists or non-doers always end up on their ends without any means.

His point being those in the middle of a conflict will view what tactics are permissible quite differently than those comfortably distant from the conflict, and that this is a simple observation of the world as it is, not as we wish it to be. Further, those on the periphery who wish to avoid getting involved will spend copious amounts of time pondering ends vs. means while those directly involved haven’t that luxury.

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