Hugo Chavez – Roger Ingalls

At 58, Hugo Chavez, the President of Venezuela, is dead. How am I supposed to feel about this man? As a citizen of the USA, I’m expected to hate him because of his extreme socialism, reforms that nationalized many industries including foreign-owned businesses and railings against, what he called, US imperialism.

When Chavez became Venezuela’s president in 1998, close to 60% of his nation’s people lived in poverty and 25% of them lived in extreme poverty. Now, 15 years later, only a little over a quarter of the country’s people are below the poverty line with less than 7% falling into the extreme range. In addition, he established free public education for citizens of all social status, providing grade school through doctorial level studies. To further improve quality of life, Chavez created a national health care system free to everyone. Increasing the standard of living for so many, in such a short period of time, is an amazing achievement.

Venezuela is blessed with having a valuable natural resource, oil. However, the vast majority of its people never benefited from this treasured commodity. The riches went to foreigners from other countries. To heal his impoverished nation, Chavez seized the oil industry within Venezuela’s borders and used the wealth for the good of the people. His nationalization of industry angered the US because we lost control of oil in this region.

In the US, we are taught to believe people like Hugo Chavez are bad because their political and economic agenda differs from ours. However, I’m finding it difficult to hate or think badly of a man – a politician – that fought so hard for the good of his people. I hope to someday witness a US politician that fights this hard for his constituency.

Thanksgiving from the Mind of a Social Activist – Roger Ingalls

What are you thankful for? I’ve decided to take some liberties and put myself inside the heads of various characters, people and organizations in an attempt to say what is really on their minds. If retail giants can bastardize Thanksgiving why can’t I use it to make political statements? It’s all in good fun. Happy Thanksgiving.

Wall Street, “We’re thankful for gullible conservatives.”

Kardashians, “We’re thankful for Spanx.”

Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, “We’re thankful for gifts from the Koch brothers.”

The Financial Industries, “We’re thankful we get to write the regulations that govern us.”

Walmart Executives, “We’re thankful Americans prefer cheap crap over worker’s rights.”

Westboro Baptist Church, “We’re thankful we’ve created God in our own image.”

Global Warming Deniers, “We’re thankful for data culling.”

California School Board, “We’re thankful kids make good propaganda tools.”

Kermit the Frog, “I’m thankful most Americans don’t eat frog legs.”

Smokey the Bear, “I’m thankful for wildwood flowers…out here in the deep forest where no one’s around, smokey has a whole different meaning.”

Prison Industry Authority (PIA), “We’re thankful incarceration is big business and criminalizing human behavior doesn’t concern us as long as we get paid.”

Pharmaceutical Industry, “We’re thankful the Feds still won’t allow people to grow their own cheap medicine otherwise we’d be obsolete.”

Republican Politicians, “We’re thankful Americans don’t understand that Military personnel are government employees otherwise they’d understand we’re responsible for the biggest increase in government spending.”

Factory Farms, “We’re thankful military explosives and chemical fertilizers are one and the same; it makes availability cheap.”

Insurance Industry, “We’re thankful people don’t understand that business practices dictated by Wall Street eliminate a free market economy.”

Banking Industry, “We’re thankful people don’t understand that business practices dictated by Wall Street eliminate a free market economy.”

Fossil Fuel Industry, “We’re thankful people don’t understand that business practices dictated by Wall Street eliminate a free market economy.”

And me, “I’m thankful for beer and cookies.”

ExxonMobil Says Yes to Global Warming – Roger Ingalls

Denier’s walls are crumbling down. It an astonishing speech, ExxonMobil’s CEO Rex Tillerson, admitted that the burning of fossil fuel is warming the planet. Like many others, I was totally floored when reading about his revelation. Perhaps he had a moment of weakness or maybe the perpetual lying finally got the better of him. More likely reputation played a role; let’s face it, the silly-science arguments used by fossil-energy companies are making them look stupid and lacking in credibility.

Can you imagine the look on the Koch brothers’ faces when they heard about Mr. Tillerson’s speech? I bet they soiled their pants from moaning so hard.

Tillerson wasn’t, by any means, apologetic or gracious. He called the public illiterate, the press lazy and indicated that the risk of spills and accidents were worth the reward. The biggest industry challenge, he said, “taking an illiterate public and try to help them understand why we can manage these risks.”

Interestingly, Tillerson appeared to ignore any discussion relating to remedial activities that would curb global warming. I suppose this is not a surprise. Slowing the release of greenhouse gasses would negatively impact ExxonMobil financially since more energy burn means more profits for them. The CEO believes we can manage in a hotter world. “We have spent our entire existence adapting. We’ll adapt,” he said. “It’s an engineering problem and there will be an engineering solution.”

I give Mr. Tillerson credit for stepping up and acknowledging the impact fossil fuels have on the environment but I also find it obscene that these Wall Street-massaged companies go from “denying” straight to “it’s too late, the damage is done so let’s adapt to our new climate”. Again, not a surprise, it’s all about lining pockets with gold but obscenely sinister nonetheless.

As much as I hate to agree with Tillerson, it is too late. Even if we drastically reduced carbon emissions today, temperatures are going to rise and so will sea levels for the next 200 to 300 years. Forget about green or sustainable economies, we need to pursue an adaptive economy that makes today’s disasters tomorrow’s normal.

Save a Cow, Save the Planet

A while ago, I suggested that obesity and wrong food production is the core to our sinking economy. It seems to have resonated with many people and I feel a need to explain myself. In the first of two articles, I want to focus first on the effects on our planet and then on our economy.

However, allow me to begin with a disclaimer: While I was vegetarian or vegan for most of my life, I am not now. It is something I struggle with regarding my own health and have been eating fish for a few years. I have also been known to eat rather than cry fowl.

It’s not just the remains of the animal dead on our plates, but the energy and resources involved putting them there. As John Vidal, a reporter for The Observer in England, and the author of the McLibel case that The Accidental Activist is based upon, once said: “It’s time to think of waste as well as taste.”

When we look for major ways to lower the impact we are having on the earth, where to cut energy, and become sustainable, eating less meat seems to be one of the clearest and most attainable. Note that I said “eating less meat” and not becoming vegetarians. Perhaps one of the biggest mistakes of the veggie movement has been this all-or-nothing approach, meaning that those not ready to make such a radical switch are likely to dismiss it.

But there is a more telling reason to cut meat consumption. With a billion hungry people and three billion more mouths to feed in the next few decades, this argument is far bigger than being nice to animals. People are dying of starvation, our planet is exhausting its ability to feed us, and we have the knowledge and technology already to turn this around.

If we really want to reduce the human impact on the environment, the simplest and cheapest thing anyone can do is to eat less meat. Vidal says: “Behind most of the joints of beef or chicken on our plates is a phenomenally wasteful, land- and energy-hungry system of farming that devastates forests, pollutes oceans, rivers, seas and air, depends on oil and coal, and is significantly responsible for climate change. The way we breed animals is now recognized by the UN, scientists, economists and politicians as giving rise to many interlinked human and ecological problems, but with 1 billion people already not having enough to eat and 3 billion more mouths to feed within 50 years, the urgency to rethink our relationship with animals is extreme.”

Millions of hectares of trees have been felled for cattle ranching in the Amazon. Photograph: Paulo Whitaker/Reuters

Vidal lists 10 environmental concerns that curbing the meat industry would help turn the situation around.

1. Global Warming

2. Land Use

3. Water Supplies

4. Deforestation

5. Waste Management and Harmful Chemicals

6. Ocean pollution

7. Air Pollution

8. Pathogens from animals making humans ill.

9. Depleting the Oil Supply

10. Other Costs – This tenth point is what I will focus on in my next post. There is so much environmental information available now, one needs to make a conscientious effort remain uninformed!

The average American consumes about 200 pounds of meat a year – that is about 1/2 lb a day assuming that everyone eats meat. We don’t. About 7.3 million Americans don’t eat meat at all, while just fewer than 23 million eat a vegetarian-inclined diet. I am not sure what this means, but I doubt they eat vegetarians who are known to be lean and bad tempered when someone sticks a fork in them.

How does this effect our economy? That’s for another post.

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Alon Shalev is the author of The Accidental Activist and A Gardener’s Tale. He is the Executive Director of the San Francisco Hillel Foundation, a non-profit that provides spiritual and social justice opportunities to Jewish students in the Bay Area. More on Alon Shalev at http://www.alonshalev.com/ and on Twitter (@alonshalevsf).

Gas Prices: Who’s to Blame? – Roger Ingalls

Often, filling stations take the heat for high gas prices but, in reality, your local pit stop doesn’t make much money from the fuel they sell. They make pennies per gallon. Most of their revenue comes from junk food sold out of the attached convenient store. Yes, stations do raise prices minutes after crude oil goes up and then lower the price weeks after oil decreases so they do take a little advantage but that has always been the case. Gas stations are not to blame for the current high price of fuel.

Are oil producing companies or middle-east countries to blame for high gas prices? For the most part, they run their output and let the market dictate the prices. They may vary production levels a little but it hasn’t been a market-driver since the 1970s. Oil suppliers are not to blame.

How about oil refineries, are they the evil ones? Back in 2008, oil peaked at $147 a barrel and gas prices rose to about $4.30 a gallon. Now, in early 2012, gas prices are again hitting the $4.30 range but oil is trading at approximately $105 a barrel. Something seems fishy. Oil is 30% less now than in 2008 but current gas prices are the same. Also, we now use 17% less gas than we did in 2008; it doesn’t add up. Demand is down, crude oil prices are lower but fuel prices are higher!

US oil refineries are to blame for the current increase in gas prices. They created an artificial shortage by reducing their refining capacity to 85% of what it was in 2008. The refineries say they had to close down some refineries because the crude oil quality has made some of their production capacity obsolete. It is unbelievable that companies making record billions in profits cannot keep up with the required technology in their own industry. I believe this excuse is a flat-out market manipulating lie. These big companies are not that stupid; they know what kind of oil they’re getting years in advance.

When gas hits $8 per gallon in a year or two, you can blame deregulating legislation that now allows reckless speculation (futures trading of oil) and the elimination of alternative energy programs by Ronald Reagan in the 1980s. However, the current high price of gas falls squarely on shoulders of US oil refineries.

An Iraqi Veteran Against the War

I had a conversation with an ex-soldier who served in Iraq at my local coffee shop last week. I saw a sticker on his laptop, which said “Iraq Veterans Against The War” and struck up a conversation.

The first thing that hit me was his suspicion about why I was asking. It took a while to establish that I am a caffeine-addicted blogger and not an undercover MP or a reporter, despite wearing a necktie (I did score points for it being a Jerry Garcia tie). A number of times throughout the conversation I needed to confirm that I would not reveal his name or anything that might identify who he is. At first I felt he was being a trifle paranoid, but by the end, I found I have checked this article a number of times to see if I possibly left a trail.

I do not know this person, his views, experiences or anything else about him. He told me that, like so many of his peers, he saw the army as a porthole to learning a profession or getting a degree, an alternative more attractive than flipping burgers. But there was more that attracted him – a sense of belonging and pride and the opportunity to make a close group of friends. ‘I felt it would make me a better person as well – more confident, more perspective, more worldly.’

I asked him why he had the sticker and he shared two points. The first is that he felt America is dabbling in a region and culture that we have no connection to or understanding of. The people there generally don’t want us there and feel that our presence is just an obstruction to their country standing up on its own feet. I asked him if all Iraqis that he met felt this way and he replied no. There are many who see the US army as the only things standing against religious extremism.

But it is the second reason that he mentioned that has stayed with me: the feeling that the reason the US was so involved in Iraq had to do with oil. He mentioned other countries that are suffering from violence and oppressive regimes to whom we are giving little more than lip service. Guarding the interests of those who make fortunes from an energy source that is destroying the world is no reason to employ the US army, he told me.

War Vets focus their protest on the petrochemical industry's connection to the war.

While these are his thoughts and beliefs written in my words, he spoke calmly and intelligently. I felt considerable respect for this young man.

Where are the boundaries of war? Having read Khaled Hosseini’s ‘A Thousand Splendid Suns,’ I feel justified ‘freeing’ the Afghan people from Taliban oppression. I want a world where people have the freedom to choose their government, their religion, and to express their political beliefs without fear. I believe in freedom and desire to eradicate its antonym: oppression. I believe our perfect world cannot evolve without the use of force when oppressive powers refuse to listen to the needs of their people. But this is a far cry from justifying military actions to protect energy sources.

One more thing that this young war vet wanted me to make clear: He is a patriotic and proud American and would have no hesitation donning his uniform again to defend our freedom.

I believe him. He is just another Accidental Activist.

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Alon Shalev is the author of The Accidental Activist (now available on Kindle) and A Gardener’s Tale. He is the Executive Director of the San Francisco Hillel Foundation, a non-profit that provides spiritual and social justice opportunities to Jewish students in the Bay Area. More on Alon Shalev at http://www.alonshalev.com/and on Twitter (#alonshalevsf).

Oil sands in Canada – should we? RhondaJo Boomington

From Alon – RhondaJo is joining our team. Please click here (or scroll down) to get acquainted. Over to you, RhondaJo:

Last night, at dinner with a young fellow who is working at the Canadian Consulate this summer, I got a crash course on the Oil Sands of Canada.

The oil sands consist of oil that is encased in a type of thick sludge, which has the consistency of cold molasses at room temperatures. According to the New York Times, “Canadian oil sands are expected to become America’s top source of imported oil this year, surpassing conventional Canadian oil imports and roughly equaling the combined imports from Saudi Arabia and Kuwait”

Some people believe that oil sands are the answer to the United States’ unfulfilled need for oil that we can not produce. There’s no drilling in the ocean, no wrangling over supply from the Mid East. Just essentially an unlimited supply from a friendly neighbor.

Ah – but there’s a but. Isn’t there always – when we’re jockeying for the oil that we need?

The process of separating of the oil from the sludge  is dirty business, creating vast amounts of greenhouse emissions, far surpassing those created from drilling. And forests are ravaged in the process.

By 2030, oil sands are production may make up 36% of United States oil imports. There are plans to build a pipeline from Canada to transport the oil to Texas. The latest word is that the State Department is “inclined to approve the line on energy security grounds.”

Then the EPA will weigh in. The EPA may attempt to involve Obama – and Obama may simply stay out of the fray and suggest the two entities compromise amongst themselves.

I am not advocating for the use of oil sands. I am suggesting that oil sands are a reality about which we should learning more.

Yes, we should pursue biofuels (which is the research project of  another dinner companion that night). And electric cars and new fangled car designs that can ensure that our future is less dependent upon oil.

Cars of our future?

But in the meantime, my relatives, along with millions of others in middle America have to drive their older, gas guzzling cars to their job at the factory. To keep our economy going. To keep their families going.

Factory Worker

In getting the oil we need to live now – bad things will happen to the environment somewhere. It’s simply a fact.

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RhondaJo Boomington landed in the haven of Berkeley six years ago and she never plans to leave. Formally a fundamentalist from North Carolina, she always voted for for Jesse Helms. Now she relishes her liberal lesbian life in the Bay Area. Her  J.D.  and a Masters of Divinity degree provides great material for her gigs as a stand up comic and solo performance artist.

And So It Begins…

Today, The Accidental Activist is officially launched at the Northern California Independent Booksellers Association. The tree-book is up on Amazon and the e-book will soon follow. Oilspill dotcom is being withdrawn from all outlets. Hold on to yours – it is about to become a collectors’ item!

The Accidental Activist is essentially the same story. New title, new cover and the text has been raked over by Three Clover Press editors and the language tightened.

Countdown to a Novel Published, sadly neglected over the past couple of months will stay dormant. As part of the terms with Three Clover Press, my publisher, I am committed to posting every day at Left Coast Voices.

The focus on blogging as a way to bring traffic to my website and selling pages for my books is intriguing. For those authors who stay the course, the results are clear and, best of all, encouraging. You can’t argue with statistics and sales. I certainly won’t.

Over the past year, I have jumped from one marketing tactic to another. I have read in bookstores and community centers but these have been very time consuming with little return. The consignment game played with small independent bookstores is depressing. It’s not their fault, but there are serious cracks in the system.

So it is an ending of sorts, a parting of ways from Oilspill dotcom and Countdown to a Novel Published. It’s been a great journey, a learning experience and now both the book and my resolve as an author are more focused and more optimistic.

Hope you’ll become a regular here at Left Coast Voices. Leave me a comment – it’s not quite a conversation over cappuccino, but let’s keep in touch.

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Alon Shalev is the author of The Accidental Activist and A Gardener’s Tale. He is the Executive Director of the San Francisco Hillel Foundation, a non-profit that provides spiritual and social justice opportunities to Jewish students in the Bay Area. More on Alon Shalev at www.alonshalev.com

 

Breaking News!

The ink is drying on the contract. My novel, Oilspill dotcom has been picked up by Three Clover Press. The book will see a new round of editing, receive a new cover, new title and new author (okay – I got carried away at the end).

The new title will be The Accidental Activist, emphasizing the role and transformation of my protagonist from a self-absorbed computer programmer to a social activist.

The cover, still not finalized, will show him staring up at the towers of corporate America. I am really enjoying working with the graphic designer and would be happy to recommend her to other authors.

One exciting aspect for me is that my book will now be available in the UK. When it first came out, the publisher Booksurge put it up on Amazon.co.uk. Weeks later they closed their European operations. And Oilspill dotcom was just about to storm the bestsellers list! Seriously, with the novel based upon the McDonald’s libel trial that happened in London, I had high hopes of making a splash in England.

Other developments will include creating a broader Internet presence. The Three Clover Press president is a firm believer in blogging and has the experience (and statistics) to back it. In August I will launch a new blog that will cover West Coast voices who use literature and culture as a source for social justice. The blog will be on Word Press and I am already writing posts so that I can quickly make a splash.

The release date is scheduled for the NCIBA Trade Show in the beginning of October. But hold on to your copy of Oilspill dotcom. When I win the Nobel Prize for Literature, it will be a collectors item (as solid as most other investments these days!).

I’m stoked!
Have a great week,
Alon
http://www.alonshalev.com/

Oilspill / Oil spill

I am passionate about New Orleans as you will know from reading this blog. I organize groups of students to travel to Louisiana for a week of volunteering. I have traveled every year but one, and even that year I recruited students and raised money to help them make the trip. Our program, beyond hands-on work, includes meeting people impacted by the hurricanes and helping to rebuild the community.

So you can imagine how sad I am at the impending disaster to the Louisiana community if and when the BP oil spill reaches the coast, and the damage already done to the seafood industry. I listen to the stories on National Public Radio and my heart goes out to them.

My car sports a magnet on the passenger door with Oilspill dotcom in big black letters and the words: “Maybe there is a way to hold big business accountable for its actions.” In the world of marketing, my book is “trending.” The key words are in the news, on the web and in conversations among activists and concerned citizens.

But I feel bad every time someone comments on my car magnet and rather than lamenting the Louisiana disaster, I direct the conversation to talking about my book, in hope of the next sale. Honestly, I need the sales, the exposure, anything that can help me promote Oilspill dotcom. I want and need to make money from my writing and shouldn’t feel ashamed doing so.

And yet I feel guilty highlighting my needs when perhaps I should be highlighting my passion for a community about to be consumed in its second natural disaster in five years, when it hasn’t even recovered from the first.

Hillel, a great Jewish teacher, has a famous quote.
If I am not for myself, who will be for me?
If I am only for myself, what am I?
And if not now, when?

To me he suggests a balance. So now I alternate, talking one time about my book, the next about the Gulf Coast.

But the community there needs serious help if it is to preserve its heritage, its uniqueness, and its culture. And if not now, when? Now, absolutely now. There may not be an opportunity later. If you are interested in helping, I have worked with this agency (Jewish Funds for Justice) in the Gulf Coast Area since Katrina, and I have great respect for their work.

Good Writing,
Alon
http://www.alonshalev.com/