1128. Where is our Amsterdam? Lavabits, Snowden & Wikileaks Censorship recall age of Absolutism

By Juan Cole, Informed Comment, August 9, 2013

The long struggle against censorship in the 18th century at the time of oppressive kings in Europe involved the hand-copying and circulation of unpublished anonymous manuscripts. Sometimes dangerous or proscribed books were printed in places beyond the reach of the French kings, in Amsterdam or Geneva.

The struggle against censorship was not won with the almost miraculous First Amendment to the US constitution. The amendment, which forbids the government to establish an official religion and prescribes freedom of speech, the press, and assembly only slowly over the subsequent two centuries actually came to mean in practice some of what the words seem to imply.

It only took a decade or so for the US government to abolish the First Amendment, taking us back to a censorship regime. It is not the censorship regime of the Sun King in France, but it more resembles that system than it resembles the world imagined in the First Amendment.

On Thursday, Lavar Levison, head of the anonymous email service Lavabits, closed his company down after 10 years rather than submit to an FBI demand that he turn over customer passwords.

“I wish that I could legally share with you the events that led to my decision. I cannot….the First Amendment is supposed to guarantee me the freedom to speak out in situations like this. Unfortunately, Congress has passed laws that say otherwise.” Levison concludes: “This experience has taught me one very important lesson: Without Congressional action or a strong judicial precedent, I would strongly recommend against anyone trusting their private data to a company with physical ties to the United States.”

Just as Voltaire had to flee to exile from the French king’s arbitrary order of imprisonment without trial in the Bastille (first to Great Britain and then later to Amsterdam), so any American seeking privacy from the prying eyes of the Federal government must now try to find an email provider abroad that would resist the pressure of the American authorities. While it is legitimate for the police to gain access to someone’s records, such as emails, where there is evidence that the person committed a crime, it isn’t legitimate for the government to go on a fishing expedition through a person’s papers and effects to get pointers on how to arrest that person.

Intensive government surveillance of whom all citizens call, from where and for how long, isn’t warranted because at the beginning the police have no reason to suspect a crime. It seems increasingly clear that this information is being shared with local police in hopes of making a minor pot bust, as a form of harassment. There are disturbing indications, moreover, that the government is lying when it says it is not collecting the substance of emails or phone calls.

But not only is the government snooping into our private business, it is trying to censor what we read. Government employees have been forbidden to read the Wikileaks diplomatic cables. As a result, web sites that republish or discuss them, such as Tomdispatch.com, have been blocked on government servers.

But think about the prohibition. The Supreme Court found that once the Pentagon Papers were leaked, the New York Times could legally publish them. It seemed to have a doctrine that the government can try to cover things up with ‘classification’ schemes, but if it fails, then anyone can read the leaked documents.

But the US government currently disputes the Supreme Court decision, and continues to hold that it is a crime so much as to read the Wikileaks cables. That is, if the cables were reprinted in a book and the analyst were known to be reading that book, it could lead to the person’s firing.

So Levison has been forbidden to tell anyone about what information the government requested from him. His speech is not free.

Edward Snowden is in exile in Russia because the government, outrageously, charged him with espionage for leaking the existence of secret NSA programs that spy on the American people without a warrant.

Whistleblowing is espionage.

Reading books is a crime

Next we’ll have to publish our books and blogs anonymously in Amsterdam for fear of arbitrary arrest.

1127. Unions and Environmentalists: A Match Made with Difficulty

By Madeline Ostrander, The Nation, August 7, 2013

Union workers protest climate change in Richmond, California. Photo: Peter Cochrane

For many years, the labor movement and environmentalists have tried to maintain a tense affiliation over the issue of climate change.

The Apollo Alliance, a coalition of greens and labor, was launched in 2001 after the 9/11 attacks with a vision for creating jobs and ending dependence on oil through nationwide investments in clean energy. By 2008 and 2009, green hard hats seemed to be an obligatory fashion accessory at environmental demonstrations, and there was great hope that President Obama would usher in a green jobs revolution. Since then, economic growth in the green jobs sector has been strong (faster than the economy overall) but, so far, not as large-scale and far-reaching as the vision originally articulated by Apollo.

And in a tough economy, any promise of jobs can be more compelling for some unions than seemingly abstract questions about climate change. Last year, some labor unions stood conspicuously on the opposite side of the Keystone XL debate from environmental groups, aligning themselves instead with groups with a reputation for union-busting (like the National Association of Manufacturers). (For more, see Sarah Laskow’s analysis in The American Prospect.) In early 2012, the Laborers’ International Union of North America (LIUNA) walked indignantly away from the BlueGreen Alliance (which is now merged with the Apollo Alliance). “We’re repulsed by some of our supposed brothers and sisters lining up with job killers like the Sierra Club and the Natural Resources Defense Council to destroy the lives of working men and women,” said LIUNA General President Terry O’Sullivan in a press statement.

So this past weekend, it was noteworthy that a coalition of more than thirty unions and worker advocacy groups turned up at the gates of the Chevron oil refinery in Richmond, California, to protest climate change. They joined a crowd of more than 2,500 people to rally for green jobs and a transition away from the fossil-fuel economy. (On Monday, I blogged about the local political significance of holding an anti–fossil fuel protest in a refinery town.)

The protest was organized in part by 350.org, an organization that has coordinated the world’s largest demonstrations against climate change. This summer, the group has been, in a sense, scaling down—it has staged a series of community-scale protests that draw attention to the tangible impacts of both climate change and the fossil-fuel industry. The focus on local concerns appealed to Bay Area labor groups. “I heard over and over from union members…‘My kid has asthma. My aunt went to the hospital when there was a refinery fire,’ ” says labor organizer Brooke Anderson. “A lot of [the protesters were] everyday folks who happened to be union members, saying, ‘Oh yeah, that’s my community too.’ ”

Anderson, who coordinated the protest’s labor contingent for 350.org, saw the demonstration as a “turning point, at least here in…California” from a “labor movement that was divided [on] jobs and environment to a movement that’s united.… The only way to win on either the economy or the climate is to fight for good jobs…that help us roll back climate change.”

It’s hard to know whether the Richmond rally is evidence of an enduring change of perspective among labor groups. California unions and greens have found common cause on a number of issues in the last few years. Most recently, labor and environmental groups joined forces on a campaign launched earlier this year to protest proposals to overhaul the California Environmental Quality Act.

In the big picture, such alliances make sense. Statistically speaking, many environmental regulations ultimately create jobs and produce net economic growth. Moreover, as leaders from the Labor Network for Sustainability wrote in an opinion piece, if global carbon emissions don’t shrink, “America’s workers and workplaces will be devastated along with the rest of our people and the rest of the world.”

But the big, dismal news of climate change or the slow, hopeful trends of the green economy don’t always resonate with individual workers struggling to pay the rent. Economic transitions can be hard on some, even when they help in the long term. The Teamsters knew this when they collaborated with environmental groups on California’s clean trucks program a few years ago. The program, which replaced the dirtiest diesel trucks with more efficient ones, reduced truck pollution at the Port of Los Angeles by 80 percent. Many truckers wanted the regulations—if given reasonable financial means for making the transition. “We see the smoke pouring out of our trucks and we breathe it all day, every day,” one trucker told the Los Angeles Times when the program was being proposed. Labor leaders insisted that the program require trucking companies to hire independent truck drivers, so that the regulations wouldn’t place hardship on drivers who were often underpaid and could not afford new, more efficient trucks. But when the trucking industry sued to stop this requirement, it placed a number of drivers in dire financial straits.

That outcome has, for labor groups, clouded the program’s environmental success, and it’s an example of why unity between greens and labor will always be a careful balancing act. A moment like the Richmond protest can be turning point—when it becomes clear that community, family and health are at stake and that dirty jobs shouldn’t be the only option. It will be up to labor and environmental groups to work together to find practical means to make such economic transitions possible.

1126. Global Warming: Thousands Marched Against Chevron in Richmond, California

By Bill McKibben, 350.org, August 6, 2013 

Photo: Shadia Fayne Wood/Project Survival Media

Last Saturday [August 3], I was walking back to the BART station to meet my wife after the police let us out of custody, and my walk took me through a residential section of Richmond on a pleasant sunny afternoon, and I had a chance to appreciate a bit of what daily life is like in the neighborhood: people playing music, barbecuing, shooting hoops.

That daily life was interrupted dramatically one year ago today when the Chevron refinery exploded and released toxic chemicals into the air, sending 15,000 people to the hospital; much like how daily life is interrupted around the globe almost constantly by flood or drought or storms.  

Daily life was also interrupted on Saturday -- in a good way, this time -- by a beautiful march and demonstration outside the Chevron refinery. Highlights included the magnificent sunflower mural that kids painted on the street; the thousands of sunflowers that we carried with us through the streets; the speeches by local leaders including a powerful elder of the Lao community; and the ride in the police wagon with six friends old and new. We were some of the first of 210 people who were arrested at the gates of Chevron's refinery -- so many that the police eventually ran out of zip cuffs.

The press even turned out -- see some of the coverage here: www.350bayarea.org/richmondaug3

The fossil fuel resistance won't prevail in a day, but it will prevail, because its a tough sunflower. Its roots are sunk in rich soil: community, collaboration, joy. Sue and I got to stand on the stage and look out at the strong, committed crowd -- for us it was the perfect ending to the weeks of Summer Heat, a wave of action that reached both coasts and many places in between.

So many thanks to the local leaders and strong organizations that made it possible -- this was a true team effort, bringing in support from labor, environmental justice and community groups, 70 in all.

This is the kind of disruption that the planet needs more of, and I hope to be a part of more with you soon,

Bill McKibben

P.S. The 350 Bay Area crew, who did a great deal of heavy lifting on the action Saturday, asked that this get passed along -- the local air quality board is taking a vote tomorrow on a resolution on Keystone XL, and they want to pack the room when it happens. Click here for details.

1125. A Republican Case for Climate Action

By William D. Ruckelshaus, Lee M. Thomas, William K. Reilly and Christine Todd Whitmann, The New York Times, August 1, 2013

Each of us took turns over the past 43 years running the Environmental Protection Agency. We served Republican presidents, but we have a message that transcends political affiliation: the United States must move now on substantive steps to curb climate change, at home and internationally.

There is no longer any credible scientific debate about the basic facts: our world continues to warm, with the last decade the hottest in modern records, and the deep ocean warming faster than the earth’s atmosphere. Sea level is rising. Arctic Sea ice is melting years faster than projected.

The costs of inaction are undeniable. The lines of scientific evidence grow only stronger and more numerous. And the window of time remaining to act is growing smaller: delay could mean that warming becomes “locked in.”

A market-based approach, like a carbon tax, would be the best path to reducing greenhouse-gas emissions, but that is unachievable in the current political gridlock in Washington. Dealing with this political reality, President Obama’s June climate action plan lays out achievable actions that would deliver real progress. He will use his executive powers to require reductions in the amount of carbon dioxide emitted by the nation’s power plants and spur increased investment in clean energy technology, which is inarguably the path we must follow to ensure a strong economy along with a livable climate.

The president also plans to use his regulatory power to limit the powerful warming chemicals known as hydrofluorocarbons and encourage the United States to join with other nations to amend the Montreal Protocol to phase out these chemicals. The landmark international treaty, which took effect in 1989, already has been hugely successful in solving the ozone problem.

Rather than argue against his proposals, our leaders in Congress should endorse them and start the overdue debate about what bigger steps are needed and how to achieve them — domestically and internationally.

As administrators of the E.P.A under Presidents Richard M. Nixon, Ronald Reagan, George Bush and George W. Bush, we held fast to common-sense conservative principles — protecting the health of the American people, working with the best technology available and trusting in the innovation of American business and in the market to find the best solutions for the least cost.

That approach helped us tackle major environmental challenges to our nation and the world: the pollution of our rivers, dramatized when the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland caught fire in 1969; the hole in the ozone layer; and the devastation wrought by acid rain.

The solutions we supported worked, although more must be done. Our rivers no longer burn, and their health continues to improve. The United States led the world when nations came together to phase out ozone-depleting chemicals. Acid rain diminishes each year, thanks to a pioneering, market-based emissions-trading system adopted under the first President Bush in 1990. And despite critics’ warnings, our economy has continued to grow.

Climate change puts all our progress and our successes at risk. If we could articulate one framework for successful governance, perhaps it should be this: When confronted by a problem, deal with it. Look at the facts, cut through the extraneous, devise a workable solution and get it done.

We can have both a strong economy and a livable climate. All parties know that we need both. The rest of the discussion is either detail, which we can resolve, or purposeful delay, which we should not tolerate.

Mr. Obama’s plan is just a start. More will be required. But we must continue efforts to reduce the climate-altering pollutants that threaten our planet. The only uncertainty about our warming world is how bad the changes will get, and how soon. What is most clear is that there is no time to waste.

The writers are former administrators of the Environmental Protection Agency: William D. Ruckelshaus, from its founding in 1970 to 1973, and again from 1983 to 1985; Lee M. Thomas, from 1985 to 1989; William K. Reilly, from 1989 to 1993; and Christine Todd Whitman, from 2001 to 2003.

1124. The 2013 International Permaculture Congress IPC11 Cuba

Click on the link for more information:
The 2013 International Permaculture Congress IPC11 Cuba 

1123. Video Documentary: The Power of Community, How Cuba Survived Peak Oil

From  El Tránsito Necesario, 2010

The Power of Community. How Cuba Survived Peak Oil (sub español) from El Tránsito Necesario on Vimeo.

1122. Cuba's 1st Solar Farm a Step Toward Renewables

By Andrea Rodriguez, Associated Press, August 1, 2013

CANTARRANA, Cuba—It's like a vision of the space age, carved out of the jungle: Thousands of glassy panels surrounded by a lush canopy of green stretch as far as the eye can see, reflecting the few clouds that dot the sky on a scorching Caribbean morning.
Cuba's first solar farm opened this spring with little fanfare and no prior announcement. It boasts 14,000 photovoltaic panels which in a stroke more than doubled the country's capacity to harvest energy from the sun.

The project, one of seven such farms in the works, shows a possible road map to greater energy independence in cash-poor Cuba, where Communist leaders are being forced to consider renewables to help keep the lights on after four failed attempts to strike it rich with deep-water oil drilling and the death of petro-benefactor Hugo Chavez.

"For us this is the future," said Ovel Concepcion, a director with Hidroenergia, the state-run company tasked with building the solar park 190 miles (300 kilometers) east of Havana in the central province of Cienfuegos.

"This is just like having an oil well," he told The Associated Press on a recent tour of the facility.

Outside experts have chastised Cuba for missing an opportunity to develop alternative energy sources; just 4 percent of its electricity comes from renewables. That lags behind not only standard-setter Germany (25 percent) but also comparable, developing Caribbean nations such as the Dominican Republic (14 percent).

Located on rural land unfit for farming, the solar park at Cantarrana, which translates roughly as "where frogs sing," is a tentative step toward redressing that oversight.
Construction began at the end of last year, about the same time that officials announced that a fourth exploratory offshore oil well drilled in 2012 was a bust and the only rig in the world that can drill in the deep waters off Cuba under U.S. embargo rules set sail with no return date.

In April, the solar farm came online and began contributing the first solar power to the island's energy grid. Cuba already had about 9,000 panels in use, but all of them were for small-scale, isolated usage such as powering rural hamlets, schools and hospitals.
The solar farm now generates enough electricity to power 780 homes and had saved the equivalent of 145 tons of fossil fuels, or around 1,060 barrels of crude, through the end of July. Peak capacity is expected to hit 2.6 megawatts when the final panels are in place in September.

That's just a drop in the energy bucket, of course.

Cuba gets about 92,000 barrels of highly subsidized oil per day from Venezuela to meet about half its consumption needs, according to an estimate by University of Texas energy analyst Jorge Pinon.

But hopes are high that solar can be a big winner in Cuba, which enjoys direct sunlight year-round, allowing for consistent high yields of 5 kilowatt-hours per square meter of terrain.

"The possibility of solar energy on a large scale could contribute to the island's future energy security," said Judith Cherni, an alternative energy expert at the Imperial College London Center for Environmental Policy who is familiar with Cuba's efforts.

Six other solar parks will come online in the coming months in Havana and the regions of Camaguey, Guantanamo, the Isle of Youth, Santiago and Villa Clara, though Concepcion did not specify their size.

Concepcion did not say how much the Cantarrana park cost, but said the industry standard for a facility of its size is $3 million to $4 million. The government, which controls nearly all economic activity in Cuba, financed construction, and the panels were manufactured at a factory in the western province of Pinar del Rio.

Cantarrana is already saving the island around $800 a day and Concepcion said it should pay for itself after a little more than a decade into its 25-year expected lifespan.
The project is a notable change in mindset for a country that relies on imports for half its energy consumption and is vulnerable to the political ebb and flow in other countries.
After the dissolution of the Eastern Bloc in the early 1990s, a loss of Soviet subsidies plunged Cuba into a severe crisis. Blackouts sometimes darkened Havana for 12 hours at a time.

Chavez's election in Venezuela in 1998 helped ease the crunch, but his death this March made clear that Havana can hardly depend on the tap staying open forever.

Chavez's handpicked successor, Nicolas Maduro, has vowed to maintain the special relationship with Cuba. But he won election by a razor-thin margin, and the Venezuelan opposition will almost certainly cut the Cuba subsidy if it wins power.

Pinon, of the University of Texas, predicted it will be at least three to five years before serious deep-water oil drilling can resume in Cuba.

Cuba's fuel uncertainty apparently prompted President Raul Castro to issue a decree in December creating seven working groups to chart a 15-year plan to develop alternative energy including solar, wind, biomass and others.

Cuba already has a handful of experimental wind farms and some small, isolated hydroelectric facilities, though experts say Cuba's shallow rivers are not ideal for large-scale power generation. The island has had the most success burning biomass from sugarcane, but harvests have fallen in recent years.

According to a government report from May, the island hopes to get 10 percent of its electricity from renewables by 2030.

"The reality is that cheap, abundant oil is over, and we have to turn toward these technologies," said Vicente Estrada Cajigal, a specialist on regional alternative energy initiatives and the former president of Mexico's National Association for Solar Energy. "That treasure in the Gulf (of Mexico), I have my doubts."

Estrada Cajigal said the cost of solar panels has fallen by 80 percent in recent years, making it an ever more attractive option.

But other experts were cautious about how much photovoltaic energy can contribute to the island.

Mexican energy consultant Francisco Acosta said that the shaky Cuban economy's intricate ties to fossil fuels are not easily undone, and the country has no choice but to continue to rely heavily on petroleum and derivatives.

Solar "is a good idea, but to a certain point. ... In a country like Cuba, stable energy is that which comes from hydrocarbons," Acosta said.

Cherni said unanswered questions remain about how Cuba will fund its alternative energy ambitions. But she said the island's goal for 2030 seems about right, given that more-developed nations with greater resources are committing to 15 or 20 percent from renewables by 2020.

"So 10 percent is a good start," Cherni said.