From the desk of Dennis Weaver....

June 2005

To justify his war in Iraq, President Bush tells us that it was necessary to secure our freedom. And with the powerful national public relations campaign coming out of Washington daily, to support that premise, most freedom loving Americans believe it. The irony is that while the President tells us that the war is necessary for our freedom he strongly calls upon congress to extend the Patriot Act, which threatens and erodes our freedom.

Shortly after it was passed [overwhelmingly by both the House and the Senate] in November of 2002, the very conservative columnist William Saffire of the New York Times wrote, “Every purchase you make with a credit card, every magazine subscription you buy and medical prescription you fill, every website you visit and e-mail you send or receive, every academic grade you receive, every bank deposit you make, every trip you book and every event you attend – all these transactions and communications will go into what the defense department describes as ‘a virtual, centralized grand database’.

“Add to this computerized dossier on your private life from commercial sources, every piece of information that government has about you – passport application, driver’s license and bridge toll records, judicial and divorce records, complaints from nosy neighbors to the FBI, your lifetime paper trail plus the latest hidden camera surveillance – and you have the supersnoop’s dream, a ‘total information awareness’ about every US citizen.”

What makes America great and very special is our love for the precious freedom that the founding fathers gave their blood to make sure that we can enjoy it. What would they say if they were alive today and witnessed the erosion of those freedoms? What would Patrick Henry say who sounded the battle cry, “Give me liberty or give me death.”

Freedom must not only be fought for on the battlefield and in the halls of congress but by every truly patriotic citizen of this great country in the town halls, the homes, the workplaces of America and finally in the voting booth. It is sad that often we don’t realize the value of something until it is taken away from us. It seems to be true with freedom for the process of its erosion is gradual and we won’t realize that it is happening until perhaps it is too late. I’m reminded of the experiment the scientists did with the frog. They put the poor fellow in a container of water in such a way that the frog could vacate it if it wanted to. But the water was pleasantly warm and the frog felt no desire or need to get out. The scientists then began to heat the water - very slowly. The frog continued to swim until one day it woke up and cried out,  “I’m in real hot water.” But by that time he was so enervated that he didn’t have the strength to save himself. Are we going to fall into the same trap? Are we going to ignore the slow chipping away of our civil liberties and freedoms until it’s too late?

George Orwell tried to warn us in his controversial book “1984” that perhaps the real and greatest threat to our way of life is not from an outside force but from within. And today we see those that have been elected to protect our civil liberties are willing, even seemingly eager, to support legislature that will deny us those civil liberties. And it is all being done in the name of security. The justification is that we are at war, and war requires that we must take extreme measures to ensure our safety and that The Patriot Act will be necessary only until the war is over. The problem is that we are fighting an endless war. There can always be terrorist cells somewhere around the world, and in the minds of some, that is justification for depriving us of our constitutional rights. 

President Bush is not only lobbying for an extension of the Patriot Act but is requesting that congress make it permanent. He wants it forever? It’s hard enough to get a piece of legislature reversed even if it is not permanent. Income tax for instance. It was voted a necessity during World War I. There wasn’t enough money to support the war from the sale of war bonds, so income tax was created with the assurance that it would be repealed after the war was over. Not only was it not repealed but, over the years congress has increased it. And that was a war that had a definite ending.

Our freedoms and our private lives are sacred. Are we willing to give up that which the founders of our country gave their blood to give us? Is it not our responsibility to pass on to those who follow the freedoms and the right to privacy, which we have been given? Security is important but not if we have to sacrifice our freedom and our civil liberties, not if we shred the protection that our constitution guarantees us. Security without freedom is meaningless. There are thousand of individuals incarcerated in our prisons that are ‘secure’ but live futile lives of desperation without freedom.

Patriotism does not mean that we acquiesce meekly to those in power, but to speak out when we feel that they are making decisions contrary to the good of our country and the welfare of its people.  

To express your feelings on this important matter, you may contact your Senators and members of the House of Representatives by going to

http://www.senate.gov/

http://www.house.gov/

March 2005

If something isn’t working, more often than not, it’s because the original design was faulty. Design is the key to constructive change.  The greatest percentage of environmental problems we face today is the result of bad design. If we are concerned about the wanton waste of our resources we must examine the design---of our making---which allows such a result.

Right now we design things so that waste is inevitable. We’re a throwaway society. We make disposable items, such as pens, diapers, cameras etc. for the purpose of throwing them away. As a society we have embraced and promoted “planned obsolescence,” and the reason it has been so eagerly adopted by industries and big business is that it forces consumers to buy more.  Built-in obsolescence is as American as apple pie and Mom. Just when we get the refrigerator paid for, it breaks down. It’s all in the design---a design that disregards the limited resources we have on the planet, or what price we will have to pay for the damage the design will do to our environment. Our economy has always been our number one priority even if it means destroying our environment. Our priorities must change. Our environment and our economy are equally important for human welfare. We do not have to sacrifice one for the other.

It costs billions of dollars to clean up our pollution and our waste, and it always falls on the shoulders of the taxpayer. Even if the government fines businesses for violating environmental regulations, the business can, and often will, simply pass that cost on to the consumer in the form of higher prices.

Our challenge is to design an Ecolonomic Industrial Ecosystem where government regulations to control waste and pollution would be unnecessary because the design of the system itself would produce neither.

The model for the Ecolonomic Industrial Ecosystem must be nature itself. We might ask, “Why has nature’s ecosystem sustained itself for millions of years with no end in sight?”

Number one: It produces no waste. What might appear to be waste simply reforms its self and serves another purpose in the never-ending cycle of life. To the casual observer the falling fruit and leaves from the tree might appear to be waste, but to the tree they become nutrients on which the roots, trunk and even the fruit of the tree, that will come forth in the next season, feed and the cycle is complete.

William McDonough, one of the truly brilliant minds of today, says, “If people are to prosper within the natural world, all the products and materials manufactured by industry must, after each useful life, provide nourishment for something new.” Of course that’s exactly what happens in nature. What we take from the Earth must return to the Earth to once again be part of nature’s magnificent on-going cycle of life.

Those products that biodegrade, McDonough   calls “biological nutrients”. If all we used were products that biodegrade easily, as certain indigenous civilizations around the world do, it would solve most of our environmental problems. However, we not only manufacture products that are not biodegradable, such as tires, cans, plastics, metal tools etc., which McDonough refers to as “technical nutrients,” we also make products that are highly toxic, dangerous to our health, and disrupt and destroy the Earth’s fragile ecosystems.   

Number two: Everything in nature is interdependent and integrated into one magnificent ONE. Everything supports something else and in turn is supported by something else. It is this interdependent quality that has allowed nature to survive indefinitely. There is one other very important item in nature’s ecosystem, it is supported by an energy that is clean, inexhaustible, and economical attractive---the sun.

We must use nature’s ecosystem as our model and create an Ecolonomic Industrial Ecosystem. The first step is to develop Ecolonomic technologies, products and processes, which then can be used to establish Ecolonomic businesses and industries---those that give us good jobs and a strong economy while nurturing and protecting our environment.

Next step: bring Ecolonomic industries together to form Eolonomic Industrial Parks where the chosen industries support each other. Where one industries waste becomes a resource for another. Where  the entire Ecolonomic park is designed as a closed-loop industrial cycle that emits no pollution. Where the power that operates the park is clean, limitless, and economically feasible [possibly solar-hydrogen]. Where the manufacturer is responsible for the goods it manufactures. Where the products made in the park either return to the Earth as biological nutrients after their useful life, or, if they are technical nutrients, return to the Ecolonomic Park to be used again.

This may seem like a huge undertaking, but so was putting a man on the moon. The benefits will be worth the effort. Creating such a design would not only save our life-giving environment, but it would create an untold number of new jobs that we can’t even imagine. The cost of not doing it will be disastrous. It would mean continuing down the path we are now on toward what the Union of Concerned Scientists have described as environmental suicide. As Pogo has said, “We are surrounded by insurmountable opportunities.” The challenge is clear.  The question is do we seize the opportunity. The choice is ours.

January 2005

The Petroleum Review, an oil industry magazine, estimates that the demand for oil worldwide will be greater than the industry's ability to keep up with the demand by the year 2007. It is also estimated that the peak production of oil in all countries will peak in 2015 including the Mid-East. All other countries will have reached their peaks long before that. The United States did so in 1970. The demand for oil will continue to grow exponentially, which means recoverable oil will disappear at a greatly accelerated rate. For the sake of our "national interests," we are now spending billions of dollars, and no one knows how many lives, in a effort to hold on to oil that will soon be gone.

It only seems an act of sanity to spend a good portion of that money to develop energy sources that are clean, renewable and inexhaustibleenergy that can support our economy indefinitely.

We need leaders in the business, scientific, educational, media and especially the political communities to come together with one intentionto find that sustainable energy source that will save our environment and sustain our economy. For that to happen we need bold and visionary leadership. Otherwise our future will continue to be filled with turmoil, chaos, and war.

We need the same strength of national will that President Kennedy exhibited in the early 60s when he declared that we would put a man on the moon and bring him safely back to earth by the end of the decade. All of America supported that decision. The goal was clear. The will was strong and it was done.

America has always been known for it innovative nature. There is nothing that we can't accomplish as a nation, no problem we can't overcome if we put our best minds and hearts to it. But we can't solve anything if we don't first recognize the problem. Right now, that is the problem. We don't seem to recognize or admit that oil is going to be gone, at least those in the position of leadership don't. We have within our grasp the potential to make life on the planet a "Garden of Eden," but it can't happen without leadership.

I applaud those individuals like Dr. Brian O'Leary for creating The New Energy Conference and the hundreds of others around our country that see the problem and are trying to solve it in their own way, but that is not enough. Time is running out and we need those who sit in the seats of power to exercise that power in a way that brings benefit to the people of this nation and those around the world and give us hope that the world will be what we know it can be.

The thought of a war without end drains our energy and often leaves us depressed. I'm reminded of the old Chinese proverb, "If we don't alter our course, we're going to wind up where we're headed." The good news is we can alter our course for we have the power to choose. I also think of the Peace Pilgrim and her dauntless and inspirational attitude when she said, "This is not the darkness before the storm. This is the darkness before the golden age of peace and prosperity." It can be ours. It is our choice.

November 2004

I recently received an email from a lady expressing her great admiration for President Bush. Her only reason was that she had always been a Republican like him. That reasoning, or lack of it, has been eating at me ever since. It gave strength to my belief that labels have always been a disservice to our society as a whole and to the electoral process in particular.

From early life, we have been taught, by those that have had great influence on us---usually family and close friends---that we must choose sides. We must be a Republican or a Democrat. Or, if we are lucky, we are taught that it is important to be an Independent, to think for ourselves, to judge a person by their record and actions rather than by their words. We have become "label loyal" and too often go to the voting place like automatons and vote the "label." It's easy and comfortable.


It has been said over and over again that this election is the most important in recent memory. I would wholeheartedly agree. It is very important that we scrutinize both candidates as objectively as possible. The problem is that only President Bush can be judged on his record as President, for only he has occupied that office. Determining what Senator Kerry would have done can only be a matter of conjecture.

After examining Bush's record for the past three years I find it is impossible for me to vote him four more years. In my opinion, he has simply made bad choices and led us in the wrong direction. Let me explain: first the War on Terrorism, which seems to be his strongest appeal.

When we were attacked on 9/11, Bush immediately announced that we were at war with Al Queda. The Taliban in Afghanistan was providing Osama Bin Laden with safe haven and within weeks we were bombing Afghanistan, in areas we thought Bin Laden might be hiding. This decisive action I agree was correct. We had been attacked, as we had been at Pearl Harbor, and defensive action was absolutely appropriate. From there however, in my opinion, bad choices by Bush led to more bad choices.

He established a very dangerous policy by engaging us in a preemptive war. The U.S. then began a war to prevent a war. The logic is questionable. War doesn't prevent war it breeds war. Violence breeds violence, and we see that axiom alive and well in Iraq today. The strongest, most powerful nation on Earth set a bad example for others to follow. Our policy had always been to exhaust every avenue possible before sending our youth into harms way. We only went to war when we had to, not because we chose to.

Bush lost the best opportunity to capture Bin Laden by waging war on Iraq. It was a distraction, a very costly one in lives and money. He showed his lack of diplomacy by blatantly declaring that the United Nations would either follow his lead or become irrelevant. The goodwill the world felt toward us after 9/11 quickly began to erode, and the cost of the war---125 billion dollars and counting---fell on the shoulders of the American taxpayer.

His reasoning for going to war with Iraq was simple: Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and was an imminent threat to the United States. When both were proven false, Bush then changed his reasoning. Saddam could potentially make WMDs and he had a strong connection with Al Queda and was directly involved in the horror of 9/11. I suppose he could have potentially made WMDs, but Bush's assertion that Saddam had strong ties with Bin Laden and the attack of 9/11 once again were proven false.

Now, Bush simply takes the position that the war was worth it because we have freed the Iraqi people, and the world is a safer place without Saddam. I wonder if the thousands upon thousands of Iraqis that have been killed or maimed by our bombs and guns feel the same. There is no question that Saddam is an evil person and many Iraqis are relieved that he is gone. But is the world safer? It is questionable. What we do know is that by invading Iraq, Bush created a magnet, a rallying cause that Bin Laden has used to swell the ranks of terrorists and extremists around the world. For him it became a recruiting bonanza. And the United States has become even more established as the bulls eye of their target.

Yes, We freed the world of Saddam. But is that our job? Are we the policeman of the world? What about other evil men? What about the premier of North Korea? Who actually has weapons of mass destruction and has brazenly told us so? Why haven't we freed the world of him? Could it be that he has no oil. Excuse my cynicism.

When Bush took over the White House he was handed a surplus of over a hundred billion dollars and in three and a half years he has not only squandered that but has accumulated a greater deficit than any other president in our country's history, a whopping estimated 520 billion, by the end of his term, that our kids and there's will be saddled with. To put it in perspective, that's over 2 times as much as the 211 billion dollar deficit that Reagan amassed in 1986, which is the second largest ever. And Bush came into office claiming to be fiscally responsible?

The tragedy of President Bush's term in office is that by drawing us into an unnecessary war he has been able to divert our attention away from the real issues that affect our daily lives---education, health care, jobs, the economy, civil liberties, foreign policy, the deficit, and real security at home have all suffered from Bush's preoccupation with his war in Iraq.

Oh yes, the environment is another issue that should be important to all of us. It makes life possible. Bush is in the process of ravaging it. The Union of Concerned Scientists has warned us that "a great change in the stewardship of the planet and life on it is required if vast human misery is to be avoided and our global home on this planet is not to be irretrievably mutilated". They're telling us that we must change the way we relate to this Earth. What is the most important change we have to make? It's the energy that we are using to drive our economy---primarily oil. Most of the environmental problems that we have created can be traced to our addiction to oil. It is imperative that we move to a clean, inexhaustible, renewable energy source to support our economy. It's not as though we do not have alternatives. Solar, wind, biomass, moving water and hydrogen, or a combination of them all, are available to us now. Moving toward a sustainable future would not only allow us to stop trashing our planet, enhance our national security and promote peace worldwide, but it would also create thousands of new jobs in the process and strengthen our economy.

We certainly can't expect the Bush administration to move in that direction. His top advisors from Vice President Cheney on down have strong ties to the oil industry. So it's not surprising that the people from Enron and other huge energy companies were the ones Bush turned to, to advise him on his energy bill. Which is a disaster. Not one environmentalist was consulted until after the bill was finished.

Bush called his proposal the Clear Skies initiative. Sounds good, but in reality it was the Dirty Skies initiative. It allowed power companies to generate 50 percent more sulfur emissions and millions more tons of smog-forming nitrogen oxides, and 3 times more mercury than currently allowed. He was so eager to allow certain corporations and special interests to continue polluting [his policy was to ask them to volunteer to cut pollution] that he postponed, for ten years, the reduction of pollution required by the Clean Air Act. Ironically the Clean Air Act was voted into law during the Nixon administration. Thanks to the filing of a federal lawsuit against it by states that suffered most from smog belching coal-fired power plants, the courts have, temporarily at least, blocked Bush's "Dirty Skies" initiative.

I can only imagine the bad choices Bush would make as a lame duck president if given 4 more years. Knowing that legally he couldn't run again, he would no longer have to pretend that he is something that he isn't. His mantra right now is "We must stay the course, stay the course". Folks, if you are going 70 miles an hour toward a brick wall, you don't stay the course. If your quarterback keeps calling the wrong plays and fumbling the ball you don't "stay the course". You get a new quarterback. For the safety of our nation and the welfare of our children, it's time to bench George W. Bush.