October 2007 archive

Hello, hello, hello!  As an experiment tonight, I’ve audioblogged a bit of stuff, including an original protest song.  It’s all explained … well sort of … in the audioblog.

Before I post the audioblog, I’ll share my fantasy protest.  Big bands, big brass bands, big brass bands from New Orleans with that tuba blowing the rhythm, loud, folks marching along right to the nation’s capital.

Can you imagine that?  A giant sound, all wild and brassy, there’s no way anyone – including the media – could ignore that.

Ok, end of fantasy protest.  Onward.  Below is the audioblog and the words to the protest tune.

Shirley, now 52, was just 5 years old when she was captured in her homeland and torn from her family. This Asian elephant was sold to the Kelly- Miller Circus, which forced her to perform for 25 years. In 1958, she and the entire circus were detained for weeks by Fidel Castro’s forces in Cuba. Several years later, she narrowly escaped death when she was evacuated just before the circus ship she was on caught fire and sank while docked in Nova Scotia.

In 1977, Shirley suffered a permanent leg injury from an attack by another elephant that ended her life with the circus. The Louisiana Purchase Gardens and Zoo took Shirley. Fearing that her injury might put her at risk with the other elephants, they kept intelligent, social Shirley in solitary confinement for the next 22 years.

Then the Louisiana zoo curator learned about the Elephant Sanctuary in Hohenwald, Tennessee, the nation’s only natural-habitat refuge for Asian elephants.

At the time, the sanctuary was home to three other Asian elephants, Tarra, Barbara and Jenny. He contacted the sanctuary, which agreed to take Shirley, and arrangements were made for her journey to the safe haven.

When Shirley arrived at the sanctuary, she was scared to leave the trailer. But at last, she decided to back her way out of it, and the last chain she would ever wear was removed from her leg. Few of the onlookers could hold back their tears.

After a snack of fresh fruits and veggies, a cooling shower and rest, Shirley met Tarra, who gently inspected her injuries. They intertwined their trunks and “purred.” Then the gates to the barn were opened so that Shirley could explore her new surroundings. It took several hours for her to muster up the courage to step outside.

That evening, Jenny returned to the barn and discovered the newcomer-and an amazing thing happened. Jenny and Shirley frantically touched each other with their trunks and then began trumpeting together. Twenty-two years earlier, when Shirley was 30 and Jenny was just a baby, they had spent one winter together in the same circus. Although so much time had passed, they recognized each other instantly. Shirley and Jenny are inseparable now. Shirley is very protective, much like a mother watching over her daughter. After more than two decades apart, Jenny and Shirley will be together forever.

The story, out of England, is pretty straight-forward, but the implications are stunning; or, they would be stunning, if the repeated crimes and inhumanity of the Bush Administration had not fried whatever synapses allow us to feel stunned.

The Guardian reports:

Allegations that the CIA held al-Qaida suspects for interrogation at a secret prison on sovereign British territory are to be investigated by MPs, the Guardian has learned. The all-party foreign affairs committee is to examine long-standing suspicions that the agency has operated one of its so-called “black site” prisons on Diego Garcia, the British overseas territory in the Indian Ocean that is home to a large US military base.

1. BBC News reports that Carbon dioxide being emitted from ships is ‘twice that of planes’. “Global emissions of carbon dioxide from shipping are twice the level of aviation, one of the maritime industry’s key bodies has said. A report prepared by Intertanko, which represents the majority of the world’s tanker operators, says emissions have risen sharply in the past six years… Some 90,000 ships from tankers to small freighters ply the world’s oceans.”

   According to The Independent, Shipping pollution ‘far more damaging than flying’. Each year, “one billion tonnes” of greenhouse gases are emitted. “Since the 1970s, the bulk of commercial vessels have run on heavy ‘bunker’ fuel, a by-product of the oil refining process for higher grade fuels. One industry insider described it as ‘the crap that comes out the other end that’s half way to being asphalt’. It has potentially lethal side effects such as the release of sulphur dioxide, carbon dioxide, nitrogen oxide and sulphuric acid. I suspect if the environmental cost of shipping goods from overseas was part of the equation, then “cheap” Asian goods wouldn’t be quite so cheap. I wonder if it is economically viable yet to have a fleet of modern “clipper” ships?

2. Some positive news concerning global warming for a change. According to the Kansas City Star, a Coal power plant was denied a permit! Reporters David Klepper and Karen Dillon write, “Delivering a stunning victory to those concerned about global climate change, Kansas’ top regulator rejected a proposal to build a coal plant in western Kansas.”

   “I believe it would be irresponsible to ignore emerging information about the contribution of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases to climate change and the potential harm to our environment and health if we do nothing,” Rod Bremby, the state’s secretary of health and environment, said in a statement.

   Steven Mufson of the Washington Post has more on the news in slightly misleading headline, ‘Power plant was rejected over carbon dioxide for first time.’ “The Kansas Department of Health and Environment yesterday became the first government agency in the United States to cite carbon dioxide emissions as the reason for rejecting an air permit for a proposed coal-fired electricity generating plant, saying that the greenhouse gas threatens public health and the environment.”

   The Kansas agency’s decision comes after a Supreme Court decision in April that said greenhouse gases “should be considered pollutants under the Clean Air Act.” Two plants were to be built by Sunflower Electric Power in Holcomb to supply electricity for Kansas and eastern Colorado. “Together the plants would have produced 11 million tons of carbon dioxide annually”.

   This decision is a victory Kathleen Sebelius, the Democratic governor of Kansas. “Sebelius has been promoting the expanded use of renewable energy, especially wind. In her state of the state address this year, she said: ‘The question of where we get our energy is … no longer just an economic issue, nor solely an issue of national security. Quite simply, we have a moral obligation to be good stewards of this state.'” After the ruling, according to the story in the Kansas City Star, Sebelius “hailed Bremby’s decision in a statement as ‘a decision about all of us — today and into the future.'”

   Sunflower is likely to challenge the decision in court. “We are extremely upset over this arbitrary and capricious decision… This is a grievous error. To deny this on the basis of CO2 is pulling it out of thin air,” sputtered Steve Miller, Sunflower spokesman. Previously coal power plants have been stopped by the governors of Florida and California due to their negative climate change impact.

3. The New York Times reports on a New task for the Coast Guard in the Arctic’s warming seas. Matthew Wald and Andrew Revkin write, “The Coast Guard is planning its first operating base [in the Arctic] as a way of dealing with the cruise ships and the tankers that are already beginning to ply Arctic waters.” The new base is likely to be in Barrow, Alaska.

   “I’m not sure I’m qualified to talk about the scientific issues related to global warming,” the Coast Guard commandant, Adm. Thad W. Allen, said in an interview. “All we know is we have an operating environment we’re responsible for, and it’s changing.”

   “The Coast Guard has also begun discussions with the Russians about controlling anticipated ship traffic through the Bering Strait” such as freighters taking advantage of the Northwest Passage shaving more than 5,000 miles off a voyage between Asia and Scandinavia.” In another sign of less polar ice, “Royal Dutch Shell is preparing for exploratory oil drilling off Alaska’s Arctic coast beginning next year.”

Today’s Guns of Greed is below the fold.

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Stuff I didn’t know until I decided to go trashing around the intertubes today:

Item the First:

PARIS: For President Nicolas Sarkozy, a day does not get much darker than this.

On Thursday, the 52-year-old French leader was struck hard on two different domestic fronts: a wave of strikes that swept through France and an official announcement that his 11-year marriage had come to an end.

Join Senator Dodd in this fight.