Shell Oil apologizes for messing up the environment:
Watch and listen
In a parallel but more equitable universe this could be true. Alas, not in this one but the idea behind the hoax is good. Perked me up for a moment or two!
Thanks to the creators!
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
The World Bank and the Four Horsemen of Climate Change: Apocalypse Now?
Read my article below, ...then tell U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner to ensure the U.S. votes against any World Bank loans for dirty coal.
World Bank and the Four Horsemen of Climate Change: Apocalypse Now?
Senator John Kerry described President Obama, Premier Wen, Prime Minister Singh, and President Zuma as “the four horsemen of climate change.” It is, Kerry said, “a powerful signal to see [them] agree on a meeting of the minds.”
As the World Bank prepares to vote April 8 on a $3.75 billion dollar loan to South Africa's parastatal Electricity Supply Commission (Eskom) Kerry's language evokes a powerful vision: the apocalypse of business-as-usual disguised as “clean coal.”
Rocks of ages
The World Bank is positioned better than most to know the true, externalized costs of coal fired energy. Indeed, in 2007 the Bank acquiesced to China's request to excise mortality information from its report, “Cost of Pollution in China”: about 350,000 to 400,000 people die prematurely each year from high air-pollution levels; 300,000 die from exposure to poor air indoors; another 60,000 deaths are attributed to poor water quality.
As a geologist and engineer by profession climate change horseman Premier Wen knows that coal fires have burned for centuries along China's 5000 kilometers mining belt. They contribute up to three percent of annual global carbon emissions, about 360 million metric tons, as much as all the cars and trucks in the US.
China's government intends to extinguish fires to meet its own target of 20 percent reduction of carbon emission over three years. But it takes from months to years to put out one fire. Then, small private mining companies working under cover of dark often fail to replace the soil after extracting coal; spontaneous combustion occurs at 80 degrees Celsius. Yet China seems intent to cut greenhouse gas emissions by putting out fires rather than introduce energy saving measures.
Climate change horseman President Zuma's South African government inherited the decades old coalfield fires at Witbank (renamed Emalahleni).
Two years ago, unemployed mother Thandi Mthlango and her young son scavenged for coal to heat their home on land pocked with subsidence from underground fires and acid mine drainage. He was in a trench when it collapsed and crushed him to death.
There is no one to blame; even assigning responsibility is tough as former owners of Emalahleni's seven abandoned mines are long gone; apparently they cannot be traced.
A German consultancy estimated that it would cost at least R1 billion to rehabilitate the area, way beyond the funding capacity of the city council as it mulls relocating squatters crowded on the toxic land. But where? Town planner Eric Parker says the region is “sterilized”. In the video report UnderMined, he laughs ruefully and says he sees one bright spot: local cattle are acclimated. “But, if you bring a new cow from somewhere else, it dies. We have a super breed of resistant cows!”
Climate change horseman Prime Minister Singh's Ministry of Coal controls Coal India Limited (CIL), the world's largest coal mine. But, in November or December 2010 financial investors anywhere could own a piece when CIL presents an initial public offering (IPO). It intends to invest the proceeds of US $1 billion to $1.5 billion in joint ventures in Australia, Indonesia, US, and South Africa. Chairman Bhattacharya told Economic Times, “Our focus is to invest our funds in acquiring assets that deliver energy to our country...in a viable manner.” This includes relocating 400,000 people from mining town Jharia who suffer breathing disorders, skin disease, and compromised health from the fumes emitted by fires.
Singh's government has been criticized for its attitude. But, India's coal is worth US$12 billion and relocating the poor is cheaper than implementing environmental controls.
The unaffordable luxury of clean earth
South Africa's finance minister Pravin Gordhan knows the externalized costs of coal fired energy and believes they are unavoidable. He wrote recently in a Washington Post op ed:
If there were any other way to meet our power needs as quickly or as affordably as our present circumstances demand, or on the required scale, we would obviously prefer technologies -- wind, solar, hydropower, nuclear -- that leave little or no carbon footprint. But we do not have that luxury if we are to meet our obligations.
South Africa has one of the planet's most energy-intensive economies and Eskom plans a five year, $50 billion dollar expansion to increase capacity. Its Kendal plant is already the largest coal-fired power station in the world. If approved, over $3 billion of the Bank loan will go toward constructing 4800 MW Medupi, the first so-called super-critical clean coal plant in Africa and the fourth largest coal-fired power plant in the world that, as advertised, will use “some of the most efficient, lowest-emission coal-fired technology available.”
Analyst Patrick Bond says Eskom’s bid for the loan comes “at a time of intense controversy surrounding Eskom’s mismanagement. In its last annual reporting period, the company lost R9.7 billion, mainly due to miscalculations associated with hedging aluminium prices and the South African currency. Both the chair and chief executive officer lost their jobs late last year amidst unprecedented acrimony.” Moreover, “Eskom's continuation of inexpensive prices to several large export-oriented metals or mining multinational corporations, headquartered abroad, and offering the world's cheapest electricity, [is] heavily subsidised by all other – mainly poor – users in South Africa.”
He refers to Nersa, National Energy Regulator of South Africa, recently tapping ordinary South Africans for power rate increases of 25 percent for each of the next three years.
Gordhan assures the public that the “rest of the loan, $745 million, will be invested in wind and concentrated solar power projects, each generating 100 megawatts, and in various efficiency improvements.” He avoids the government's 2003 White Paper that states that by 2013 four percent of electricity – 4700 MW based on Eskom's projected electricity consumption – must come from renewable energy. Eskom's three year plan – unveiled after Nersa's country-wide community meetings in January – states that only 400 MW will come from such sources.
Gordhan concedes the loan “faces stiff opposition.” Civil society around the world reminds him that Medupi adds an estimated 25 million metric tons of CO2 emissions per year to Eskom’s 40 percent share of South Africa’s overall total greenhouse gas emissions. There is also the real possibility that, if South Africa's currency crashes again – as it has five times since 1996 – repayment in US dollars is more expensive than in South African rands.
The South African government can afford the luxury of R8.4 billion to construct five new stadia and refurbish five others for the 2010 FIFA World Cup. There are further, yet undisclosed, costs to improve public transport, implement special safety measures for tourists' security, and “beautify” (by hiding or removing tens of thousands of shack dwellers). Why can't it afford to clean up environmental degradation that results from generating electricity?
The US is the largest World Bank funder. Send a powerful signal to climate change horseman Obama and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner to intervene. Then buckle up for a wild ride along the unexplored path of real energy sustainability. In the long run it affords more security than tripping down the World Bank's yellow brick road of business as usual.
World Bank and the Four Horsemen of Climate Change: Apocalypse Now?
Senator John Kerry described President Obama, Premier Wen, Prime Minister Singh, and President Zuma as “the four horsemen of climate change.” It is, Kerry said, “a powerful signal to see [them] agree on a meeting of the minds.”
As the World Bank prepares to vote April 8 on a $3.75 billion dollar loan to South Africa's parastatal Electricity Supply Commission (Eskom) Kerry's language evokes a powerful vision: the apocalypse of business-as-usual disguised as “clean coal.”
Rocks of ages
The World Bank is positioned better than most to know the true, externalized costs of coal fired energy. Indeed, in 2007 the Bank acquiesced to China's request to excise mortality information from its report, “Cost of Pollution in China”: about 350,000 to 400,000 people die prematurely each year from high air-pollution levels; 300,000 die from exposure to poor air indoors; another 60,000 deaths are attributed to poor water quality.
As a geologist and engineer by profession climate change horseman Premier Wen knows that coal fires have burned for centuries along China's 5000 kilometers mining belt. They contribute up to three percent of annual global carbon emissions, about 360 million metric tons, as much as all the cars and trucks in the US.
China's government intends to extinguish fires to meet its own target of 20 percent reduction of carbon emission over three years. But it takes from months to years to put out one fire. Then, small private mining companies working under cover of dark often fail to replace the soil after extracting coal; spontaneous combustion occurs at 80 degrees Celsius. Yet China seems intent to cut greenhouse gas emissions by putting out fires rather than introduce energy saving measures.
Climate change horseman President Zuma's South African government inherited the decades old coalfield fires at Witbank (renamed Emalahleni).
Two years ago, unemployed mother Thandi Mthlango and her young son scavenged for coal to heat their home on land pocked with subsidence from underground fires and acid mine drainage. He was in a trench when it collapsed and crushed him to death.
There is no one to blame; even assigning responsibility is tough as former owners of Emalahleni's seven abandoned mines are long gone; apparently they cannot be traced.
A German consultancy estimated that it would cost at least R1 billion to rehabilitate the area, way beyond the funding capacity of the city council as it mulls relocating squatters crowded on the toxic land. But where? Town planner Eric Parker says the region is “sterilized”. In the video report UnderMined, he laughs ruefully and says he sees one bright spot: local cattle are acclimated. “But, if you bring a new cow from somewhere else, it dies. We have a super breed of resistant cows!”
Climate change horseman Prime Minister Singh's Ministry of Coal controls Coal India Limited (CIL), the world's largest coal mine. But, in November or December 2010 financial investors anywhere could own a piece when CIL presents an initial public offering (IPO). It intends to invest the proceeds of US $1 billion to $1.5 billion in joint ventures in Australia, Indonesia, US, and South Africa. Chairman Bhattacharya told Economic Times, “Our focus is to invest our funds in acquiring assets that deliver energy to our country...in a viable manner.” This includes relocating 400,000 people from mining town Jharia who suffer breathing disorders, skin disease, and compromised health from the fumes emitted by fires.
Singh's government has been criticized for its attitude. But, India's coal is worth US$12 billion and relocating the poor is cheaper than implementing environmental controls.
The unaffordable luxury of clean earth
South Africa's finance minister Pravin Gordhan knows the externalized costs of coal fired energy and believes they are unavoidable. He wrote recently in a Washington Post op ed:
If there were any other way to meet our power needs as quickly or as affordably as our present circumstances demand, or on the required scale, we would obviously prefer technologies -- wind, solar, hydropower, nuclear -- that leave little or no carbon footprint. But we do not have that luxury if we are to meet our obligations.
South Africa has one of the planet's most energy-intensive economies and Eskom plans a five year, $50 billion dollar expansion to increase capacity. Its Kendal plant is already the largest coal-fired power station in the world. If approved, over $3 billion of the Bank loan will go toward constructing 4800 MW Medupi, the first so-called super-critical clean coal plant in Africa and the fourth largest coal-fired power plant in the world that, as advertised, will use “some of the most efficient, lowest-emission coal-fired technology available.”
Analyst Patrick Bond says Eskom’s bid for the loan comes “at a time of intense controversy surrounding Eskom’s mismanagement. In its last annual reporting period, the company lost R9.7 billion, mainly due to miscalculations associated with hedging aluminium prices and the South African currency. Both the chair and chief executive officer lost their jobs late last year amidst unprecedented acrimony.” Moreover, “Eskom's continuation of inexpensive prices to several large export-oriented metals or mining multinational corporations, headquartered abroad, and offering the world's cheapest electricity, [is] heavily subsidised by all other – mainly poor – users in South Africa.”
He refers to Nersa, National Energy Regulator of South Africa, recently tapping ordinary South Africans for power rate increases of 25 percent for each of the next three years.
Gordhan assures the public that the “rest of the loan, $745 million, will be invested in wind and concentrated solar power projects, each generating 100 megawatts, and in various efficiency improvements.” He avoids the government's 2003 White Paper that states that by 2013 four percent of electricity – 4700 MW based on Eskom's projected electricity consumption – must come from renewable energy. Eskom's three year plan – unveiled after Nersa's country-wide community meetings in January – states that only 400 MW will come from such sources.
Gordhan concedes the loan “faces stiff opposition.” Civil society around the world reminds him that Medupi adds an estimated 25 million metric tons of CO2 emissions per year to Eskom’s 40 percent share of South Africa’s overall total greenhouse gas emissions. There is also the real possibility that, if South Africa's currency crashes again – as it has five times since 1996 – repayment in US dollars is more expensive than in South African rands.
The South African government can afford the luxury of R8.4 billion to construct five new stadia and refurbish five others for the 2010 FIFA World Cup. There are further, yet undisclosed, costs to improve public transport, implement special safety measures for tourists' security, and “beautify” (by hiding or removing tens of thousands of shack dwellers). Why can't it afford to clean up environmental degradation that results from generating electricity?
The US is the largest World Bank funder. Send a powerful signal to climate change horseman Obama and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner to intervene. Then buckle up for a wild ride along the unexplored path of real energy sustainability. In the long run it affords more security than tripping down the World Bank's yellow brick road of business as usual.
Thursday, January 28, 2010
Goodbye Guinea Fowl, Hello Truck Stop
This week I learned that the land I grew up on will be a truck stop as of mid-February 2010. Each day after that up to 32 trucks with trailers, those eighteen wheelers that terrify motorists as they race along the N3, will drive over the land where once stood our horse stables, pigsties, and my grandfather's cow shed. Soon I will wonder if it is true that I once played barefoot here and watched the penny stinker grasshoppers leap, the shongalolos curl into spirals, and the snake swallow the frog. Alas, these memories, taken for granted back then, have not been passed on....
This time next month the unique veld grass that only grows on this plateau, in this part of the Valley of a Thousand Hills, in this section of KwaZulu Natal, will be replaced by tar and macadam and encircled by a high brick wall. The thorn- and corral trees will be gone, chopped down, roots dug up, and hauled to a waste dump to rot slowly among discarded papers and toys, food scraps, and plastic bottles.
I worry about the weaver and Hoopoe birds and the flock of four adult guinea fowl with two new chicks that live in the scrub and bush among the razor wire under the electric fence that, until this week, separated Thor Chemical from our land.
It is not as if this was a pristine environment. For decades, Assmang – called Ferralloys during my youth – belched smoke most days and flared most nights on the western horizon. Despite the black dust that cakes our buildings that facility is as familiar and as annoying as an old relative puffing a pipe on the back porch.
It was a shock when Thor Chemical arose on what was also once my grandfather's land...and a further shock when it contaminated the region with toxic waste. Then, three years ago and despite “the process” required when a new facility is built – the EIAs, meetings to gather input from Interested and Affected Parties, and local residents' outcry against the facility – Chlor Chem chlorine manufacturing plant went up across the road where my grandfather grazed and dipped his small herd of Jerseys.
Melvin, a nice enough man who owns the truck stop, represents the much vaunted South African entrepreneur. He must be relieved that, somehow, his trucking business was not subject to “the process.” And, if it was, it flew so low under the radar that we – right next door living lives that eschew the entrepreneurial spirit that digs into, dumps upon, fills, burns, and sucks dry the land – knew nothing about his truck stop's imminent arrival. Melvin dreams, not of shongalolos, penny stinkers, and guinea fowl but of his 32 trucks speeding along the nation's roads. He worries, not about flora and fauna, but that his cargo – perhaps plastic bottles filled with syrupy liquid, or reams of paper from many pulp and paper mills, or kids' toys imported from China – arrive on time and on budget at Makro, Super Spar, Click's and Game.
Truth is, my grandfather could have been Melvin. He, too, was an entrepreneur, out to make a buck, feed his family, and leave something by which to remember him. He believed in owning land and he bought as much as he could afford from someone who'd bought and sold it from someone else, all the way back to the English king's land grant to George Cato. Back then wild creatures abounded: Duiker and other buck, leopard, civets, lynx, snakes, chameleons, fowl, frogs, thousands of species of birds, beetles, mantis, grass hoppers, spiders, ants.... My grandfather dug up a portion of the land, conveyed it into a rock crusher, graded it according to the formula of his day, and sold it to spec housing developers.
Indeed, entrepreneurs like my grandfather and Melvin – decades apart in how they conduct business – are the global norm and follow the multi-generational mindset to dig, build, trade, promote, and bequeath plots of land despite the loss of indigenous flora and fauna.
It just so happened that King Shaka's tactics in this region had left the area underpopulated at the time the English king's land grant displaced indigenous communities. Nevertheless, as I walk around to photograph the last of the thorn and corral trees, stroke the veldt grasses, and warn the guinea fowl to find safer ground, my heavy heart reminds me that I share these feelings of loss, and anger, and impotence, and sadness, and fear – with millions of others who have seen their histories disappear under the mindset that admires tar and macadam, brick and block, smoke and smog. I haven't seen a wild Duiker for years while chameleon and mantis, sensitive to environmental pollution, disappeared long ago.
This is how people the world over lose that which few of us recognize as the only human heritage worth working to maintain: our natural environment. As they say, lives ends not with a bang but a whimper.
This time next month the unique veld grass that only grows on this plateau, in this part of the Valley of a Thousand Hills, in this section of KwaZulu Natal, will be replaced by tar and macadam and encircled by a high brick wall. The thorn- and corral trees will be gone, chopped down, roots dug up, and hauled to a waste dump to rot slowly among discarded papers and toys, food scraps, and plastic bottles.
I worry about the weaver and Hoopoe birds and the flock of four adult guinea fowl with two new chicks that live in the scrub and bush among the razor wire under the electric fence that, until this week, separated Thor Chemical from our land.
It is not as if this was a pristine environment. For decades, Assmang – called Ferralloys during my youth – belched smoke most days and flared most nights on the western horizon. Despite the black dust that cakes our buildings that facility is as familiar and as annoying as an old relative puffing a pipe on the back porch.
It was a shock when Thor Chemical arose on what was also once my grandfather's land...and a further shock when it contaminated the region with toxic waste. Then, three years ago and despite “the process” required when a new facility is built – the EIAs, meetings to gather input from Interested and Affected Parties, and local residents' outcry against the facility – Chlor Chem chlorine manufacturing plant went up across the road where my grandfather grazed and dipped his small herd of Jerseys.
Melvin, a nice enough man who owns the truck stop, represents the much vaunted South African entrepreneur. He must be relieved that, somehow, his trucking business was not subject to “the process.” And, if it was, it flew so low under the radar that we – right next door living lives that eschew the entrepreneurial spirit that digs into, dumps upon, fills, burns, and sucks dry the land – knew nothing about his truck stop's imminent arrival. Melvin dreams, not of shongalolos, penny stinkers, and guinea fowl but of his 32 trucks speeding along the nation's roads. He worries, not about flora and fauna, but that his cargo – perhaps plastic bottles filled with syrupy liquid, or reams of paper from many pulp and paper mills, or kids' toys imported from China – arrive on time and on budget at Makro, Super Spar, Click's and Game.
Truth is, my grandfather could have been Melvin. He, too, was an entrepreneur, out to make a buck, feed his family, and leave something by which to remember him. He believed in owning land and he bought as much as he could afford from someone who'd bought and sold it from someone else, all the way back to the English king's land grant to George Cato. Back then wild creatures abounded: Duiker and other buck, leopard, civets, lynx, snakes, chameleons, fowl, frogs, thousands of species of birds, beetles, mantis, grass hoppers, spiders, ants.... My grandfather dug up a portion of the land, conveyed it into a rock crusher, graded it according to the formula of his day, and sold it to spec housing developers.
Indeed, entrepreneurs like my grandfather and Melvin – decades apart in how they conduct business – are the global norm and follow the multi-generational mindset to dig, build, trade, promote, and bequeath plots of land despite the loss of indigenous flora and fauna.
It just so happened that King Shaka's tactics in this region had left the area underpopulated at the time the English king's land grant displaced indigenous communities. Nevertheless, as I walk around to photograph the last of the thorn and corral trees, stroke the veldt grasses, and warn the guinea fowl to find safer ground, my heavy heart reminds me that I share these feelings of loss, and anger, and impotence, and sadness, and fear – with millions of others who have seen their histories disappear under the mindset that admires tar and macadam, brick and block, smoke and smog. I haven't seen a wild Duiker for years while chameleon and mantis, sensitive to environmental pollution, disappeared long ago.
This is how people the world over lose that which few of us recognize as the only human heritage worth working to maintain: our natural environment. As they say, lives ends not with a bang but a whimper.
Published on Monday, January 25, 2010 by CommonDreams.org
The Seamy Side of Coal-Fired Power by Susan Galleymore
The Seamy Side of Coal-Fired Power by Susan Galleymore
Wednesday, December 2, 2009
HIV/AIDS and Global Arc of War
Two recent articles published in CounterPunch
Still Killing Millions- (December 2, 09)
African Realities in the Wake of World AIDS Day
The Casualties of Toxic Warfare- (December 1, 09)
Global Connections and the Arc of War
Thursday, November 26, 2009
A View from the Faultline
I met a Birther! Here, in the San Francisco Bay Area. My small island town is a mix of people and, until 1997, was home port to one of the largest naval fleets in the Pacific. Many of those who worked on the naval base still live here. Nevertheless, I was surprised to find a real, live person who seriously believes that Barack Obama was born in Mombasa ...and that his presidency will last only one year.
I was the only person at the bus stop about 6:30 pm last night heading to San Francisco. A tall, elderly, casually dressed white man, pulling what looked like an up-market milk crate, joined me. (The milk crate has wheels and a long retractable handle like up-market luggage. Later he explained that this manly version of a purse goes everywhere with him.) It was too dark to read the schedule so I said, “If you're heading to San Francisco the bus is scheduled to arrive in nine minutes.” We chit-chatted as he shed a jacket and switched it for a lighter garment in the crate.
I like to talk to strangers. Often those who look threatening to others are friendly and voluble – at least for the duration of a bus stop or casual car pool ride.
This fellow, Gary, quickly told me he'd been a naval commander, that he and his wife lived on a yacht, that they owned another yacht as well as a condo in Sausalito. (Metamessage: we are financially independent, we choose to live this way.)
We agreed riding the bus is superior to driving a car: no tollbooth to squeeze through with a hundred thousand other vehicles, no need to find parking or dig around for coins to feed the parking meter. A bus allows me to see over the bridge safety rail and admire the beautiful bay.
But Gary wasn't interested in my point of view. I was a target at which to aim words. Once he zeroed in on me: “I detect an accent. British?” I told him “It's South African.” Gary knew South Africans, had dated a South African beauty queen in his youth, planned to visit Cape Town next year. Did I know the Sloan-Smiths who lived in Cape Town? Could I guess how old Gary is? He didn't wait for my response. “Can you believe I'm actually seventy? Most people think I'm fifty-five. ...I tried on a topee the other day. I'm not the sort to wear a topee but it looked good!”
En route Gary continued talking. I could barely hear him over the engine sounds but I was fascinated: When would his stream of (un)conscious verbal diarrhea end? (As a writer I thrive on such interactions.) He quickly skipped around the world: Australia – he'd dated an airline stewardess. Also dated a South African once; her name was Annakie. Philippines. Japan. Then Israel. “I was there during the '67 war. Great place. Also visited in the mid 70s. I ventured, “I was there then, just before Begin's era.” He said, “I've got a great book for you: “Netanyahu's A Lasting Peace. Excellent analysis. Give me your phone number and come have dinner with me and my wife.” Then, “I believe Barack Hussein Obama was not born in the United States. He'll soon be found out. His presidency won't last long. I give him a year....I predict the Democratic Congress is trounced at the next election and the country throws out Barack Hussein Obama. McCain should be president.”
“You'd like Sarah Palin as VP?”
“Yes. She's smart as a whip...gets bad press because she's a small town girl. Now, Michele Bachman, there's a real candidate. Beautiful. Smart. Forceful.”
Bachman is the Republican Representative of Minnesota's 6th district who tried to set up a Charter school that taught classes on Creationism. As a school board member she advocated the '12 Christian principles' – a version of the 10 commandments. And she refused to allow the in-school screening of Disney's Aladdin, claiming it endorsed witchcraft and promoted paganism. She and Sarah Palin are peas in a pod; they're also beginning to stump together.
My flagging interest in Gary reawakens. Here is a man, by all outward signs, affluent, white, worldly, healthy, and sociable who lives in a cosmopolitan conurbation and maintains a worldview that is at odds with the reality around him. How does he do it?
I don't hold with the point of view that, “those folks are just nut-jobs” that can or ought to be dismissed. On the contrary, people like me – with progressive ideals and as much love of country and planet as someone like Gary – need to understand Gary's worldview.
As he talked I noticed the feelings our interaction evoked in me: annoyance, fear, a desire to flee, and curiosity mixed with repulsion. Also, determination to stick with it. People holding my worldview need to, must, remain in “conversation” with people holding Gary's worldview. Despite personal discomfort, progressives must make the effort to engage these worldviews and coax them into the light for real examination. It 's a difficult experience to endure yet it is at the heart of changing hearts and minds.
Try it. Let me know how you do with it.
I was the only person at the bus stop about 6:30 pm last night heading to San Francisco. A tall, elderly, casually dressed white man, pulling what looked like an up-market milk crate, joined me. (The milk crate has wheels and a long retractable handle like up-market luggage. Later he explained that this manly version of a purse goes everywhere with him.) It was too dark to read the schedule so I said, “If you're heading to San Francisco the bus is scheduled to arrive in nine minutes.” We chit-chatted as he shed a jacket and switched it for a lighter garment in the crate.
I like to talk to strangers. Often those who look threatening to others are friendly and voluble – at least for the duration of a bus stop or casual car pool ride.
This fellow, Gary, quickly told me he'd been a naval commander, that he and his wife lived on a yacht, that they owned another yacht as well as a condo in Sausalito. (Metamessage: we are financially independent, we choose to live this way.)
We agreed riding the bus is superior to driving a car: no tollbooth to squeeze through with a hundred thousand other vehicles, no need to find parking or dig around for coins to feed the parking meter. A bus allows me to see over the bridge safety rail and admire the beautiful bay.
But Gary wasn't interested in my point of view. I was a target at which to aim words. Once he zeroed in on me: “I detect an accent. British?” I told him “It's South African.” Gary knew South Africans, had dated a South African beauty queen in his youth, planned to visit Cape Town next year. Did I know the Sloan-Smiths who lived in Cape Town? Could I guess how old Gary is? He didn't wait for my response. “Can you believe I'm actually seventy? Most people think I'm fifty-five. ...I tried on a topee the other day. I'm not the sort to wear a topee but it looked good!”
En route Gary continued talking. I could barely hear him over the engine sounds but I was fascinated: When would his stream of (un)conscious verbal diarrhea end? (As a writer I thrive on such interactions.) He quickly skipped around the world: Australia – he'd dated an airline stewardess. Also dated a South African once; her name was Annakie. Philippines. Japan. Then Israel. “I was there during the '67 war. Great place. Also visited in the mid 70s. I ventured, “I was there then, just before Begin's era.” He said, “I've got a great book for you: “Netanyahu's A Lasting Peace. Excellent analysis. Give me your phone number and come have dinner with me and my wife.” Then, “I believe Barack Hussein Obama was not born in the United States. He'll soon be found out. His presidency won't last long. I give him a year....I predict the Democratic Congress is trounced at the next election and the country throws out Barack Hussein Obama. McCain should be president.”
“You'd like Sarah Palin as VP?”
“Yes. She's smart as a whip...gets bad press because she's a small town girl. Now, Michele Bachman, there's a real candidate. Beautiful. Smart. Forceful.”
Bachman is the Republican Representative of Minnesota's 6th district who tried to set up a Charter school that taught classes on Creationism. As a school board member she advocated the '12 Christian principles' – a version of the 10 commandments. And she refused to allow the in-school screening of Disney's Aladdin, claiming it endorsed witchcraft and promoted paganism. She and Sarah Palin are peas in a pod; they're also beginning to stump together.
My flagging interest in Gary reawakens. Here is a man, by all outward signs, affluent, white, worldly, healthy, and sociable who lives in a cosmopolitan conurbation and maintains a worldview that is at odds with the reality around him. How does he do it?
I don't hold with the point of view that, “those folks are just nut-jobs” that can or ought to be dismissed. On the contrary, people like me – with progressive ideals and as much love of country and planet as someone like Gary – need to understand Gary's worldview.
As he talked I noticed the feelings our interaction evoked in me: annoyance, fear, a desire to flee, and curiosity mixed with repulsion. Also, determination to stick with it. People holding my worldview need to, must, remain in “conversation” with people holding Gary's worldview. Despite personal discomfort, progressives must make the effort to engage these worldviews and coax them into the light for real examination. It 's a difficult experience to endure yet it is at the heart of changing hearts and minds.
Try it. Let me know how you do with it.
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
Governor Goldie Myron – Family of War Series
(I share my unique art work to express a view of families affected by war. And I hold that the suffering of Iraqis and Afghans- and so many others - is not receiving much attention. This narrative is fiction based on my worldview.)
GOLDIE still can't quite believe that she's the Governor of her whole damned state...and that state's first woman governor at that! It took an enormous effort, not to mention a huge amount of funding, to get to where she is today: blood, sweat, tears, and lots of dollars but she is the Governor! Only she and God know what she had to give up. But it's worth it. America really is the land of opportunity for those who are prepared to work hard. Sure, a gal has to hustle but that's the American Way.
The first time she sat down at the Governors' Convention she could have burst with pride. One of only three women among all those white guys…the sort of guys who wouldn't look at her twice in college because her father was just a hard-working business man contracted to the military to supply a little gadget the detonates fuel air explosives. Since he wasn't the scion of a blue blood family who could move those guys' careers forward, why should they bother courting her? If they could see her now... she'd raspberry the lot of them.
Too bad the only other women governors at the Convention were stand-offish. Goldie felt they'd snubbed her. Maybe that's how it's done at this level of politics. Or maybe they're just threatened by Goldie. Back in the 60s and 70s there'd been a lot of exciting rhetoric about sisterhood, about women-supporting-women to shatter glass ceilings, and women gaining real positions of power. We called it Feminism back then but young women cringe at that word today. Turns out rhetoric is as American as apple pie and she sure is learning the benefits of good rhetoric: the funding just keeps rolling in. She's learning to play the game: go along to get along. She used to insist upon honesty as the best policy. Now she is, as she phrases it, “nuanced” about the definition of honesty. There are simply too many things that politicians cannot be honest about. If citizens knew half the stuff that politicians had to decide, Ms. Average Citizen would be too afraid to come out of her house and drive to the mall!
Be great if we lived in a simple world, one in which women like Goldie could just tell it like she sees it. But political life is too complicated for that. Goldie's job, as governor, is to guide the people of her state toward a way of being that may not be optimal for everyone but gives enough people jobs to keep their families fed and clothed and educated and God-fearing...to get their kids through high-school, at least. After that, the kids can go into the military if they can't afford college. Military life is good. Not one she wanted but her dad did alright on it. Look where it got him. About to retire very well after a lifetime of honest work for the United States military. If he hadn't been in the right place at the right time to capitalize on it he'd never even have known about the bomb whose explosion disperses a huge cloud of burning hot gasoline just above ground level. An amazing design! It simply obliterates everything around it. And her dad's company manufactures the embedded detonator that makes the whole thing work! That's how he paid for Goldie's ivy-league college education and helped fund her meteoric political rise. His friends helped too, of course, folks like her dad who also made their fortunes building ingenious munitions.
Thank God for war: it keeps the economy going. A lifetime of listening to her dad explain his business taught Goldie how to spin a good story. Despite what the naysayers think his business is not only about making money, it is largely about love of country and ensuring that America stays on top. They don't call her Goldie for nothing. Everything out of her mouth is like gold and she's as good as gold.
See other pieces in the Family of War Series:
Daniel, Deployed! - Band of Buddies Series
Ryan, Recruited! - Band of Buddies Series
Bob, Burned in Combat
Luis, Corporate Warrior
Jerry and Candy, family of war
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