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Optimistic About Energy Future- Civic Issues

I devoted my Civic Issues blogs to one of America’s major problems: the future of energy. I noticed a few other classmates did similar topics, such as alternative energy sources, and it’s nice seeing that many people are aware of the potential danger if we do not sort out this energy mess. Replacing the efficiency of fossil fuels with cost-effective alternative energy sources is something that has baffled the country for decades, and will continue to. In my own opinion, I do not see a significant shift to cleaner energy sources in the near future mainly due to the price of these methods. What seems more feasible is to take action that will decrease our need to import so much oil on a daily basis.

 

One of the primary issues is that we are overly reliant on foreign regions, especially the volatile Middle East, for our oil supply. Although there is not much that can be done to stop relying on these countries for oil, there is more that we can do within the country to diminish the need for foreign oil. While many people have discussed alternative energy sources such as wind, solar, and nuclear (to name a few), an interesting solution may lie in unconventional oil and gas.

 

Unconventional oil and gas activity is already revolutionizing America’s energy future and bringing enormous benefits to its economy. Unlocking unconventional energy will generate millions of jobs and billions in government receipts. Against a backdrop of a historically slow economic recovery and persistently high unemployment following the Great Recession, the surge in spending associated with unconventional oil and natural gas activity is proving to be an important engine for jobs creation.

 

Shale oil and natural gas industries will continue to boom, allowing domestic production to reach an all-time high. By exporting the natural gas extracted within the country and importing liquid natural gas, we will be able to shift to cleaner natural gas. This will keep carbon emission levels from rising, and actually start an overall decrease. But the revolution in U.S. energy isn’t just about fracking and other new forms of production. Behavior change can also alter the way we use energy. This will work exceptionally if the Obama administration is able to keep the motor industry towards reaching the goal of 54.5 MPG by 2025. But the thing about the future is that it remains remarkably unpredictable, and we’ll never really know until the time comes.

Heart Attack Gun- Final Passion Blog

So throughout this semester’s Passion Blogs, I have brought up numerous conspiracies, many of which were drawn up by our own government. It may seem as though I’m skeptical of everything the government does, but I just find it interesting what measures they would go to in order to maintain what they call “order.” For my final conspiracy, I will talk about the Heart Attack Gun. That’s correct, a gun that almost instantly will cause a heart attack.

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This weapon exists, and it was the CIA that actually invented it… with taxpayer’s money. It was not disclosed until 1975, when Senator Frank Church displayed it to a committee investigating the CIA’s illegal activities. They are specifically forbidden from directly killing anyone in the performance of espionage. It fires a bullet made of ice, about 0.11 inches wide, which has been laced with a tiny amount of shellfish toxin. The gun was designed to be untraceable, and this toxin induces a myocardial infarction in any human, regardless of their health. The bullet then melts leaving no trace, and leaves an entrance wound the size of a mosquito bite. Autopsies would discover the presence of shellfish toxin in the bloodstream, but if the victim has died of a legitimate heart attack, unnaturally induced or not, an autopsy is unlikely.

There is no consensus if the CIA has assassinated anyone with this gun, but they do everything in their power to hide things like these. A possible victim of this gun is Andrew Breitbart, a conservative media mogul who published less than flattering stories about President Barack Obama. He had promised in the months prior to his death that he would publish proof that Obama’s presidency was illegitimate. Breitbart collapsed on the sidewalk in a Brentwood neighborhood of Los Angeles on March 1st, 2012, and was taken to a hospital where he died of a heart attack at the age of 43, despite being relatively healthy his whole life. He was not obese, but coroner report states that cardiomegaly caused his heart to fail.

Another possible victim is Mark Pittman, the financial journalist who, in 2007, predicted the ongoing American economic recession, which was caused by subprime mortgaging. During the subsequent federal bailouts of major financial companies, Pittman sued the Federal Reserve for mishandling taxpayer money. The case is still on appeal. Pittman, however, died on November 25th, 2009, in Yonkers, New York, in the very same circumstances as Breitbart–he was walking down the sidewalk and collapsed from a heart attack.

Possible victims notwithstanding, the heart attack gun does exist, and the CIA invented it. They could have had only one purpose in store for it, silently assassinate whomever they pleased. Well I hope this had made you weary of our government, but remember, not every conspiracy theory is true.

Government Mind Control

When the stories of the NSA surveillance came out, it made me wonder what else does the government try to do. Ever heard of those stories about the government trying to control everyone’s minds? Well, it’s a real thing. The CIA conducted something from 1953 to 1964 called Project MKULTRA, which was intended to “develop a capability in the covert use of biological and chemical materials.” It was actually a series of CIA experiments in which they tried to figure out how to control your mind, by conducting dozens of experiments on the effects of biological and chemical agents on American citizens without their knowledge.

The project started out as a response to rumors of Communist mind control being used on American prisoners from the Korean War. Afraid of being left in the enemy’s pseudo-scientific dust, the CIA quickly jumped on the mind control bandwagon. However, they got their procedures wrong in one crucial aspect; instead of experimenting on enemy prisoners that the national media wouldn’t miss, they decided to go ahead and start jamming probes and shooting drugs such as LSD and aerosols into unwitting United States citizens.

Sadly, but not surprisingly, almost no records remain of the 10 years of covert activity. As far as anyone can tell, they were unable to succeed in finding a way to control the way people act or think. Though we’d probably say the same thing if they had succeeded.

Civic Issues – Energy: Federal vs State Laws

An issue in the energy industry in America is the differences between federal and state laws regarding energy. How much should the federal government be involved in controlling how states produce their own energy, and supply energy to their citizens? That complex question has political questions that remain open as energy problems become more complex.

Energy policy issues are among the most difficult ones to untangle in a modern economy. Federal policies encourage the use of renewable resources, while at the same time the national government may seek power to regulate traditional energy products that states have controlled for decades. One prime example of this is hydraulic fracking. Currently, individual states mostly control policies about how operators use technology to extract natural gas and oil by pumping chemicals into the ground, and extracting the chemicals along with the energy products.

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There are concerns with fracking itself, and whether it will help the United States avert an impending energy crisis. Fracking has been hailed as a “bridge” solution. However, there are long-term dangers that are hard to predict, such as if the chemically tainted water will remain underground or begin to filter into rivers and streams.

 While some states see hydraulic fracking as a method for the United States to be less dependent on other countries for energy, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) wants to become more involved in regulating fracking. The EPA has a mandate to ensure Americans have access to safe drinking water, and it plans to release a public study on hydraulic fracturing in the future. States that regulate hydraulic fracking also face legal challenges from local governments who have safety and policy concerns.

SOURCES: http://www.theecologist.org/News/news_round_up/2252418/davos_fracking_wont_avert_energy_crisis.html

http://energyindepth.org/national/how-anti-fracking-activists-deny-science-water-contamination/

FBI Sought To Neutralize Civil Right Activists

What if I told you the FBI Sought to Neutralize Civil Rights Activists? Seems blasphemous, right? Well, sadly, this did happen.

The FBI referred to this as COINTELPRO, or Counter Intelligence Programs, specifically those targeted at activists of almost any organization from 1956 to 1971. COINTELPRO was used to monitor, manipulate and disrupt social and political movements in the United States. During those years of turmoil, Martin Luther King was the primary spokesperson for civil rights in America, and the FBI considered him and his movement equivalent to the Black Panthers, the American Indian Movement, the anti-Vietnam war activists, and dozens of others all striving to attain equal rights for all races. COINTELPRO referred to all of these groups and movements as “black hate groups,” even the American Indian Movement, and spent 85% of its money on attempts to subvert them; the remaining 15% it spent on the subversion of “white hate groups” like the KKK.

All these domestic political organizations and movements, as the FBI labeled them, were deemed threats to national security. This to me makes absolutely no sense. Movements to create equality were considered “threats?” If he had done his thing in America in the 20th Century, it is probable that the FBI would have considered Jesus guilty of the same kind of sedition. In general, COINTELPRO targeted the entire left wing of political thought; anyone liberal was seen as a danger to American society and slandered in print, sued or threatened with imprisonment, imprisoned, and illegally wiretapped.

The most shocking discovery while reading upon this topic was what happened with Fred Hampton. The home of Fred Hampton, a Black Panther Party officer, invaded by the Chicago Police, who used deadly force against him and Mark Clark. Clark was shot first, and Hampton was unable to wake to the sound of gunfire because FBI agent William O’Neal had infiltrated their organization and spiked Hampton’s supper with barbiturates. The police shot him to death while he slept unarmed in bed. Things like this make you wonder, what “threat” did these organizations pose, and was what the FBI did justified?

Civic Issues: Oil and Politics

As of last year, the United States imports 10.6 million barrels of oil per day from other countries. During the presidential debates in 2012 between Mitt Romney and Barack Obama, both candidates proposed the idea that the United States should do two things: drill more oil on U.S. land and become energy independent as soon as possible. This debate, to no surprise, ended with both candidates navigating their way around providing a concrete answer. I will try my best to answer why no significant changes are being made in the energy world, due to political motives.

I think we can all agree that we must find greener alternatives since fossil fuels are being depleted at an alarming rate, and are harming the environment. Although alternatives such as wind, nuclear, and geothermal (to name a few) have been established as feasible energy sources, we still continue to rely heavily on oil and natural gas. Why are the people we elected, the President, his staff, and Congress, not doing enough to change? Well that can be explained by one word that seems to be the center of all decisions: money.

What if you were in a casino, and a friend told you there was this one slot machine that was giving out $59 for every $1 that was put in?  You’d think the machine was rigged, and that there must be some catch. Well this is how oil and natural gas industry works in our nation’s capital, and there’s no catch. For every $1 the industry spends on campaign contributions and lobbying in DC, it gets back $59 in subsidies. For mathematicians, that’s a solid 5800% return. Here are the numbers: “Big Oil” companies provided $347 million to the 111th Congress, and $20 BILLION in subsidies.

Why do they get so much in return? It’s due to their influence. Influence is a tricky thing to measure.  It is obvious to anyone that pays attention to US politics that the oil and gas industry is one of the most influential industries on Capitol Hill.  While quantifying that influence is not always straightforward, it is easy to see the trend that campaign contributions often leads a candidate to support the fossil fuel industry. Due to the large grasp this industry has on Congress, it will be very difficult to get the leaders of our country to back away from fossil fuels.

SOURCES:

http://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=727&t=6

http://priceofoil.org/fossil-fuel-subsidies/

CIA Using A False Witness

We’ve all heard either on the news or in crime investigation television shows that a witness holds immeasurable power. What happens when high authority abuses this power? This post delves into the theory that the CIA had Nayirah al-Sabah bear as a false witness.

Nayirah al-Sabah was a woman in Kuwait who, in 1990, testified on the floor of the House of Representatives that she had personally witnessed Iraqi soldiers invade Kuwaiti hospitals and take newborn infants out of their incubators and throw them onto the cold floor to freeze to death. Nayirah was invited primarily by Tom Lantos, who definitely provided subtle messages in support of the U. S. retaliating against Iraq for its offenses against Kuwait.

It was Nayirah’s testimony that provided the largest part of the foundation for American public opinion in favor of military force against Iraq, and the CIA was responsible for organizing the funds and advertisements to disseminate Nayirah’s testimony. They enlisted the help of Hill & Knowlton, a global Public Relations corporation that specializes in marketing, to reach the masses.

It was not until 1992 that John MacArthur of the New York Times discovered Nayirah was the daughter of the Kuwaiti Ambassador of the U. S., and that her story had been utterly fabricated. Thus was it shown that the CIA assisted a few powers-that-were in America in waging war with Iraq for another purpose, and that purpose was oil. The Iraqis did invade Kuwait and should not have done so, but they did not throw babies out of incubators. The nurses and doctors who supposedly witnessed this with Nayirah had already fled, and most of them stated that she was lying. The CIA had paid her to lie, and even paid for her to attend acting classes to appear convincing. In the end, it worked. If this is the first time you are hearing about this, what are your reactions?

 

FBI Poisoning Alcohol During Prohibition

The main goal of the Prohibition era was to effectively enforce a ban on the production and consumption of alcoholic beverages. However, like most situations where there are set rules, someone is bound to break them. While legislation was enacted to curb the drinking in America, many argue that alcohol consumption rose to record levels during the Prohibition (specifically, consumption was decreasing during the years before the Prohibition, and rose to new peaks a few years after, with the Prohibition still in effect). When Prohibition went into effect and there were a number of new problems — such as a drinking epidemic among children — that had not been there before.

So where does the Conspiracy lie in all of this? Well many people went to the hospital during this time due to alcohol-induced illnesses. Doctors were accustomed to alcohol poisoning by then, the routine of life in the Prohibition era. The bootlegged liquor often made people sick. The alcohol produced in hidden stills (which were illegal by law) frequently came tainted with impurities. But this outbreak was bizarrely different. The deaths, as investigators would shortly realize, came courtesy of the U.S. government.

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Frustrated that people continued to consume so much alcohol even after placing a ban, federal officials had decided to try a different method of enforcement. They ordered the poisoning of alcohols manufactured in the United States, products regularly stolen by bootleggers and resold as drinkable spirits. The plan was to scare people into giving up illegal drinking. Instead, by the time Prohibition ended in 1933, the federal “poisoning program”, by some estimates, had killed over 10,000 people.

The government redesigned formulas used to make industrial alcohol undrinkable. These “formulas” included adding kerosene, gasoline, and benzene, among other things, to the alcohol, making it toxic. Denaturing of alcohol lead to a drastic increase in the number of ill-people and deaths. Some anti-Prohibitionists, including Missouri Senator James Reed and New York Medical Examiner Charles Norris, spoke out against this poisoning program. After the uproar created by these individuals from speaking out, the Prohibition eventually ended in 1933. The bottom line is the FBI used lethal chemicals in an attempt to steer people away from alcohol, and the results were horrid. How do you guys feel about this situation?

A good book to check out if you ever get the chance is, “The Poisoner’s Handbook.”

Civic Issues- Politics & Divestment

For decades, America, like the rest of the world, has relied heavily on oil and natural gas as the main energy sources. As many of you know, this has created many environmental issues, with the most prominent one being global warming (climate change, to be scientifically accurate). The over-exhaustion of these non-renewable resources has created loud uproar and political movements against its usage. For example, the Green Party of America, an electoral alternative to the two-party system, was created to improve the quality of our environment and everyday lives. They have been around since 1984, and have devoted their attention to establishing a national Green presence in politics and policy debate. If you have watched energy politics debates, you would see that the Green Party has not been able to dent the dominant two-party system.

A much stronger political campaign that has started recently is fossil fuel divestment; specifically, fossil fuel divestments for colleges and universities. Fossil fuel divestment is a student-driven political movement that aims to force universities to sell-off the parts of their endowment portfolios that are most tightly tied to coal, oil, and gas. The question is should colleges divest, and how much of an overall impact will this movement have?

In November of 2012, Unity College, based in Unity, Maine, became the first school to vote for fossil fuel divestment in coordination with 350.org. Since then, there are currently 210 active divestment campaigns across the nation, including colleges such as Stanford, Syracuse, and Dartmouth. However, opponents of this divestment movement say that it will have a negligible impact on oil companies, following the “too large to fail” logic. This is a valid point because if this movement was successful and every American university divested, University endowments hold less than 1 percent of the market capitalization of fossil fuel companies worldwide, so their divestment would only have a tiny impact on the companies.

Another argument is that schools with large endowments from these companies will lose their competitive edge if they were to lose the funding. An example of this scenario is Harvard University. Harvard is the most endowed school in the country with $30.7 billion dollars, and if they were to lose the funding received from oil companies, would they really be able to sustain a top international ranking?

Divestment from select fossil fuel producers would send a powerful message to the energy industry and the nation. Although the message may be strong, how much of a real impact will divestment have on the major companies?

Hendey, Eric. “Does Divestment Work?” The Institute of Politics at Harvard University. Harvard University, n.d. Web. 20 Feb. 2014. <http://www.iop.harvard.edu/does-divestment-work>.

Smith, Randall. “A New Divestment Focus on Campus: Fossil Fuels.” DealBook A New Divestment Focus on Campus Fossil Fuels Comments. New York Times, 5 Sept. 2013. Web. <http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2013/09/05/a-new-divestment-focus-fossil-fuels/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0>.

WIP Blog: Moderator Philosophy

For the Deliberation Unit I will be moderating Option Two: Work Together and Repair an Ailing Society. There are a few things a moderator should be able to conduct a successful deliberative dialogue.

While a moderator is the one that presides over a deliberative body, the most effective moderators are the ones that can conduct a discussion without too much of their own input. Successful discussions are those in which many people are participating, so it the moderator’s job to encourage participation, without trying to force certain people to speak, as this will only further intimidate them.

A moderator should also be able to propose questions to pick up a conservation that is turning “dead.” They should also know when to direct the conversation to another topic or a different aspect if the discussion starts to polarize and resemble a debate. At the end of the discussion, a moderator’s success is dependent on if the group heard all the sides of scenario, not necessarily determining a “right” and “wrong.” These are some ways a moderator can do an effective job.