First Amendment Challenge

CAUTION: Adult Content!

A challenge to the war on drugs and the war for oil, dedicated to the ones whose addiction is killing the people, the earth, and human integrity.

Donny Fix

Record Number of Americans Lack Health Insurance - Forbes.com

Record Number of Americans Lack Health Insurance - Forbes.com

Take note how the mainstream media pretty unanimously paints this as a health "insurance" crisis, instead of the more correct health "care" crisis.

There are more ways to deliver health care to the population besides the health insurance industry. There is no such industry in many countries, like England, Canada and France, whose populations are all covered by national health care coverage. And at a fraction of the total costs of the American system.

It just makes sense that if a thing like health care, education, energy and other public needs are privatized, relegated to making a profit for investors, those costs will rise to help the investors realize their just profits.

In California, we have an opportunity to turn that around. Support for the Single-Payer health care legislation drafted by State Senator Sheila Kuehl and supported by a growing list of legislators would expand Medicaid, Medi-Cal, and other health delivery agencies, and consolidate them in to a plan much like that of Canada.

Legislators at the state and national level need to hear that it is not just about insurance. Other tools are available to fulfill the need for health care. If you need encouragement, go see Michael Moore's "SICKO".

Then, in California, support SB 840.

And in the nation, Medicaid for the masses!

Donny Fix

He's Brave (with other people's children)

I wrote this song too long ago, now, about the timne the hundredth US soldier died in Iraq. It's called "He's Brave (with other people's children)", and were the words of one mother told her son would not be returning home. That mother later became known to me to be Sandy Sheehan

We will all know who "He" is, if we remember some of our saddest history the day Bush landed on an aircraft carrier and declared, "Bring 'em on!"- At least he did a mea culpa on that, if only a superficial one.

But one role of folk music and blues has been to document a moment in time, and the feelings engendered, and this is one that needs to be remembered.

Donny Fix

Bangkok Post Breaking News

Bangkok Post Breaking News

Now, as much as ever, follow the money.

It is no surprise that Afghanistan is offering yet another parallel with Viet Nam. During that war, the Golden Triangle grew as an international economic force through heroin export. French Connection mafia, local warlords and the CIA were among the profiteers.

Later, Ollie North and Ronald Reagan tried the same out of the White House basement, this time negotiating guns for cocaine deals between Nicaragua and Iran.

Now, poppies from Afghanistan, and if history is any judge, look for American hands in the blood money.

We should also prepare for a major influx of heroin, especially in to poorer neighborhoods as happened during Viet Nam. As Alongopos and Saigon Cities materialize outside the permanent military bases being established, young soldiers (and maybe some old) will find ways to smoke opium, or worse. One try...it's free. And the cares float away, for a while.

For many years, I have heard many the story of men my age who experienced horror or boredom and fixed it, for a while.

Meanwhile, look out for where the money for this bumper Afghan crop is headed.

Bill Moyers Journal . Tough Talk on Impeachment | PBS

Bill Moyers Journal . Tough Talk on Impeachment PBS

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other members of congress are complicit in the war crimes of the Bush-Cheney regime. We need to impeach them NOW, before another president is elected who believes that the tools Bush/Cheney have developed for themselves can continue to be used. Instead, Pelosi comtinues to call impeachment "off the table".

The American public will be increasingly estranged from this government as long as it continues to hold politics over statesmanship, as pointed out in this Moyer piece.

Everyone needs to pressure- and keep pressuring- their US Congressional representatives to hold this administration accountable for its deeds. Domestic spying, torture, intimidation of the media- these are not the things I consider American values.

IT MUST STOP NOW!

Our unnecessary nuclear future - SFBG Politics Blog

Our unnecessary nuclear future - SFBG Politics Blog

More on effort to revive nuclear power as an answer to global warming.

Following is an article I wrote a couple of years ago warning of Bohemian Grove connections to the support for this lie:

Lynn Orr, Bohemian Behind the Rebirth of Nuclear Power

by Don Eichelberger

Lynn Orr, director of the Global Climate and Energy Project (G-CEP), at the

press

conference announcing the creation of the project, Nov. 20, 2002.

[photo]

In 2002, Stanford University announced the creation of the Global Climate

and Energy Project, naming the interim head of the Stanford Earth Sciences

Dept, Lynn Orr, as director. His training as a hydraulics engineer has

focused on wringing more oil and gas deposits out of the earth's mantle,

and discovering ways of "sequestering" CO2 in deep geologic formations.

His conversations with Schlumberger (oil well drilling equipment and

technical support), ExxonMobil and General Electric helped develop the idea

for the project. DCEP has grown to include E.On, one of the world's

largest energy holding companies. E.On's holdings include natural gas and

oil wells, coal mines, electric production and distribution facilities,

including the newly acquired systems in Spain and Kentucky.

The stated goal of DCEP is to develop the means "to produce sufficient

energy to meet the needs of a growing world population in a way that

protects the environment..."

Orr's hope is to pull more students in to engineering careers and put them

to work solving the technical problems leading to plentiful energy and

fewer greenhouse gasses. He is a true believer that technology and

engineering will get us out of the problems we face. As a director of the

David and Lucille Packard Foundation with his wife, Susan Packard-Orr, he

has already endowed scholarships at Stanford.

Pulling together the massive resources of GE, ExxonMobil, E.On and

academia, he is also working to develop an integrated international energy

grid, drawing from all energy sources that do not produce greenhouse

gasses, or whose gasses can be sequestered. Prominently mentioned in his

speech announcing DCEP, Orr made it clear nuclear power has a welcome place

in the world's energy mix. GE is a founding member of DCEP, and proud

inventor of the boiling water reactor, work horse of the current nuclear

industry. They have developed a new generation of "safe" reactors they

make no secret of wanting to build. They predict that 4% of new generation

built in Europe will come from nuclear by 2015.

GE is also diversifying, and has recently acquired offshore natural gas

leases near marine sanctuaries in the Gulf of Mexico. They are investing

in creating an infrastructure that will allow them to get the remaining

natural gas from sources that were too played out to bother with while gas

prices were low. Now....

Following are key passages from Lynn Orr's speech announcing formation of

DCEP in 2002:

"Imagine a set of global energy systems that will meet society's

requirements for energy with low greenhouse emissions. What will the

primary energy sources be: solar, wind, nuclear power, biomass, fossil fuels?

"In this project, we will build a research portfolio that seeks

opportunities across the full range of primary energy sources, and we will

carry out pre-commercial research that will add innovative technologies and

systems to the global energy mix. We will concentrate on the technology

research, and we will consider safety, environmental impacts, market

acceptance, social responsibility and cost as we build the research effort.

"The mix of future energy technologies will interact in complex ways. Let

me give you an example. Suppose for the moment, that hydrogen becomes the

preferred transportation fuel of the future. We will need to find ways to

generate H2 on a large scale and at reasonable cost. The development of an

advanced infrastructure for hydrogen distribution could favor generation of

the hydrogen at central facilities, while the absence of such an

infrastructure would favor distributed generation.

"If hydrogen were made centrally from methane, coal or other fossil fuel

sources, then CO2 would also be generated as a by-product, and it would be

necessary to separate, capture and store the CO2 generated (perhaps in

depleted oil and gas reservoirs, or unmineable coal beds, for example). On

the other hand, if sufficient electricity could be generated by solar, wind

or nuclear power to make hydrogen from water, no CO2 would be created in

the hydrogen generation step, and CO2 sequestration methods would be less

important."