UPDATE: YouTube already pulled the video down. Not to worry, it will go back up.

UPDATE 2: It’s fixed!

I want to give a shout out to those who participated in a successful night of activism. Several activists leafleted 249 people attending last night’s Israeli Ballet performance at the Flynn Theater.
 

The leaflet asked “Would you like some information about Don Quixote and the Israel Ballet?” — which was an accurate presentation of last night’s performance. “Israel’s ‘Golden Helmet of Mambrino’ — which makes one invisible, thus capable of all actions — is slowly turning into Don Quixote’s version of it — a upside-down shaving bowl plopped on the head — incapable of nothing but making its wearer more obvious and actionable to the world. Brand Israel will continue to call forth increasing protests as audiences realize they are being used,” said author and activist Marc Estrin.

The headline said “A Modern Don Quixote.” Estrin said almost all ballet-goers accepted it, even those glancing at the opening before continuing into the theater. There are no trash cans inside the actual theater, so he assumes most flyers made it to people’s seats for reading before the show began. Estrin said one elderly man “came all the way out again to present us with a crumpled up ball with instructions to ‘shove this up your ass,’ but the other 249 copies all made it in.

The other highlight was when one Israeli and three Vermonters unfurled a banner during the performance. Check out the YouTube Vimeo below the fold!

Israel ballet interrupted in Burlington, Vt. – No tutu is big enough to cover Israel’s War Crimes from samayfield on Vimeo.

Here is the text of the leaflet given out at last night’s performance. Kudos again to everyone involved in the organizing efforts.

A MODERN DON QUIXOTE

Whether conscious or not, there is a deep irony in the choice of Don Quixote as a touring piece for the Israel Ballet.

For the company here presents a story of enchantment and self-enchantment, delusion and self-delusion, a fairytale of madness and delusory nobility, the story of a dreamer driven mad by ancient books, his mental state now lucid, now insane.

Tonight you will meet The Knight of Sorrowful Countenance, surrounded by enemies and magicians, battling the world of evil. He is cruelly used, physically and mentally, beaten and scorned by the powers around him. Normally grave and self-controlled, he can be goaded into mad fits of rage, unable to distinguish between his fantasies and the world’s realities.

By the end of the book, our hero’s soul is taunted by doubt, by the suspicion that his quest to reestablish the past through arms and armor may be an illusion. “I find myself, Niece,” he says, “at the point of death, and I would die in such a way as not to leave the impression of a life so bad that I shall be remembered as a madman: for even though I have been one, I do not wish to confirm it on my deathbed.”

There are lessons here for all of us.

You art-lovers, people of conscience, members of the international community of intellectuals, have historically stood with the ancient — perhaps quixotic — moral responsibility to fight injustice — as you did, for instance, in helping abolish wage slavery among grape-pickers in California, or apartheid in South Africa — through various forms of boycott.

Given that the UN has many times condemned Israel’s colonial and discriminatory policies as illegal, and that six decades of diplomacy have until now failed to convince Israel to comply with humanitarian law, to respect fundamental human rights and to end its oppression of the people of Palestine, we ask you in the future to support a general boycott of Israeli goods and cultural offerings —  an international non-violent effort to impel the Israeli government to end its occupation of Arab lands, to end the house demolitions, dismantle the walls, recognize the claims of Arab citizens of Israel to full equality, and to promote the globally recognized rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes.

As it is not anti-American to call for ending our own wars, it is not antisemitic to call on the Israeli government to change its policies in the name of freedom and justice.

Vermonters for a Just Peace in Palestine/Israel   vtjp.org

For anyone who needs a brush up on Israel-Palestine click here.

On the ACORN front:

I caught up with Hannah Giles, co-star of the ACORN sting videos, after she accepted one of 10 “Buckley Awards” handed out in the XPAC lounge for young conservative leaders.

. . .

“We never claimed that he went in with a pimp costume,” said Giles. “That was b-roll. It was purely b-roll. He was a pimp, I was a prostitute, and we were walking in front of government buildings to show how the government was whoring out the American people.”

(Hannah Giles Explains Those Pimp and Prostitute Outfits, The Washington Independent, 02/19/10, with special thanks to The Brad Blog for the pointer)

Of course this forthright admission on the part of Ms. Giles is directly counter to the “reporting” of many major “news” outlets. I’m talking about lies that claimed the (so heavily cut that they were not anywhere close to the truth) tapes showed the duo of Giles and O’Keefe wearing pimp and prostitute outfits into the ACORN offices.

These were the same lies that our own federal representative weasel welch used to join the radical right wing of Amercian politics in an attack against a group, ACORN, who’s sole crime has been to fight for the economic and political power of our nation’s lower economic classes.

HEY WEASEL WELCH … you owe the good, honest, hard working folks of ACORN a loud and public apology.

And then you have to explain why you, a supposed one-time prosecutor, would rely on lies and misdirections in assigning guilt to a party … or should I ask how many people you fraudulently imprisoned in your time as a faux prosecutor?

Did I say thanks, weasel welch?

(“When I arrived that evening, I felt like I might’ve been one of the only “undecideds” in attendance.”  This writer has written about his or her feeling of confusion regarding the Burlington Ballot item “repeal of IRV” slated for a vote March 2nd, 2010.   – promoted by Maggie Gundersen)

Originally posted at http://asrblog.com/2010/02/19/…

For those readers who neither live in Burlington, Vermont, nor are political junkies, IRV stands for Instant Runoff Voting, and it has been the center of some local controversy recently.  A few years ago, Burlington voted in a referendum to change its voting system by which the mayor is elected from requiring a plurality of at least 40% to IRV, and the most recent mayoral election was the first second in which the mayor was elected by the new system.  That election has been at the center of the aforementioned controversy, and there is now an item on the upcoming ballot proposing IRV’s repeal.

Before I get into the controversy, however, we’ll first run over the whys and hows of Instant Runoff Voting.  

The traditional voting system with which we’re all familiar usually gives each person one vote, and if the candidate with the most votes fails to reach the required threshold (usually 50%, in the case of Burlington, 40%), a run-off election is held between the top two vote-getters a few weeks later.  However, there’s a glaring problem with that voting system; namely, the “spoiler effect”.  Instead of allowing people to vote their consciences, they are incentivized to vote for the least personally objectionable of the two most popular or visible candidates; hence in the 2000 election, people could claim that, by voting for Ralph Nader, people on the left were helping the right by “spoiling” the election for George Bush.  For folks who aren’t happy with having a two-choice political system, the spoiler effect is deeply problematic.

IRV was designed to eliminate the spoiler effect by allowing people to express their opinions about the full slate of candidates by ranking them.  To use a hypothetical example to illustrate this, let’s assume that the Presidential election had been conducted by IRV, with John McCain, Barack Obama, Ron Paul, and Ralph Nader on the ballot.  In a traditional election, if most people supported Barack Obama and John McCain, voting for Paul or Nader could be considered helping the other side.  However, under IRV, a hypothetical conservative might vote:

  1. Paul (First choice, most in line with personal beliefs)

  2. McCain (Not such a fan, but would prefer him to Obama or Nader)

  3. Obama (Dislikes, but not as much as that commie Nader)

  4. Nader (Bottom of the heap)

If Paul were eliminated in the first round, all first-round Paul voters’ votes would then be transferred to their second choices (in the case of our hypothetical voter, McCain), thus, in theory, eliminating the bystander effect and allowing each voter to have a more nuanced influence on the election which reflects their personal beliefs rather than being intensively molded by the logic of lesser-evilism.

I’d long thought this was a great idea, and was quite cynical when Burlington’s Republican mayoral candidate Kurt Wright decried the system after losing the last election.  However, the fact that 2,000 signatures were collected in order to get its repeal on the ballot, combined with some people (whose opinions I deeply respect) prodding me about the issue, forced me to take a second look.  Essentially, the anti-IRV camp argues that, in the last election, Bob Kiss was elected by an “artificial majority”, as he wasn’t the recipient of the most first-choice votes.  Instead, its asserted, 71% of Burlingtonians voted against Kiss in the four-way race (“voting against” meaning he wasn’t their first choice).  A lot of numbers were being thrown about and I was having trouble wrapping my head around the issue, so I was delighted to hear that there was a debate on the issue scheduled at City Hall for the 18th of February.  I resolved to attend with an open mind, and to determine my position on the issue after listening to each side’s arguments as objectively as possible.

When I arrived that evening, I felt like I might’ve been one of the only “undecideds” in attendance.  IRV supporters sported blue stickers with “40%” crossed out, while anti-IRV partisans sported bright yellow paper fliers attached to a button with a rubber band.  The debate had about forty people in the audience, and CCTV (the local government access station) and Seven Days (a local newspaper) were broadcasting it live.  The questions addressed to the two teams were posed alternatively by representatives of local media outlets (Seven Days, The Burlington Free Press, WCAX), the audience at City Hall, and TV/Internet viewers sending questions in via email.

For the first part of the debate, things didn’t look up for the pro-IRV team of State Rep. Mark Larson and Keri Toksu of the League of Women Voters.  They seemed to spend more time rehearsing trite slogans than they did explaining the value of IRV, and Larson in particular was almost painfully inarticulate.  The anti-IRV side, by contrast, was lucid and forceful in their arguments, and by the time questions rolled around to the community, I was tentatively against IRV.

Then came an incredibly insightful question from the Internet.  A large part of the anti-IRV side’s argument hinged on the assertion that IRV voters are more or less “voting in the dark”, whereas in a traditional runoff they have access to enough information to make an informed decision; the questioner essentially inquired into the nature of that information differential.  If, on election day, I know that I like A more than B, and that I like B more than C, and rank them as such, how does that change if there ends up being a runoff between B and C?  The anti-IRV team’s answer wasn’t satisfactory to me, and I spent the next few minutes wrapping my head around the implications of that question.

I wasn’t able to get in a question asking for more clarification during the debate, but afterwards I was able to talk to Kurt Wright and Sandy Baird, two IRV opponents.  Mr. Wright told me that he was the candidate who received the most “bullet votes” in the last election; that is, votes in which the voters only marked one candidate, and the implication was that he considered those people to have been disenfranchised by the IRV system.

That finished the debate for me; essentially, the problem in the last election wasn’t with the system, it was with voters.  All voters had the equal right to rank the candidates according to their preferences; I ranked them all, and thus exerted the maximum possible amount of agency allowed by the system.  Anyone who didn’t do so, and instead voted for just their favorite candidate, was the equivalent of a voter who turned out for the election but failed to show up to the runoff.  The instructions were clearly printed on the ballot; I read them and marked my ballot accordingly.  Anyone who didn’t do so was making a choice and is responsible for results their actions.  Disenfranchisement happens when an external force removes an individual’s agency; “bullet voters” voluntarily chose to not rank all the candidates and thus were not disenfranchised by the IRV system.  Once I grasped this idea, the anti-IRV argument fell apart for me.

No system of elections is perfect; in fact, by the basic laws of the universe, no system can be perfect, period.  For me, though, IRV’s elimination of the Spoiler Effect is a step in the right direction, and the repeal of IRV can thus only be justified by successfully arguing that the results generated by the system do not reflect the will of Burlington’s voters.  As the bullet voting issue indicates, though, the “disenfranchisement” trumpeted by anti-IRV advocates was really the moral equivalent of failing to vote in the runoff, and the responsibility for the result thus lay with the bullet voters who voluntarily chose to not have a say in future rounds, not the system.  I’m always open to rebuttals, but I’m pretty confident with my logic at this point.  Unless I encounter a really good argument, then, I plan on slapping on a blue sticker and voting no on 5 this town meeting day.

( – promoted by odum)

this just out from ONE Vermont; a fascinating counterpoint to Jim Douglas’ supposed concern for the jobs at VY; I guess not all jobs are created equal…

“an independent analysis of the broad economic and employment impacts of his administration’s proposed AHS budget cuts found that:

[T]he proposed AHS cuts…are likely to result in the loss of more than 1,000 jobs per year, and could approach losses of 1,400 jobs per year.  Employment impacts from the loss of matching federal funds are estimated to total approximately 400 to 650 per year…”

the analyst is Tom Kavet, the legislature’s economist; smart guy, straight shooter

here is the link to the Exec. Summary on the JFO web site

http://www.leg.state.vt.us/jfo…

ps – Jim Douglas’ budget proposals remind me of the old Vietnam line about having to destroy the village in order to save it

By Danielle Nierenberg and Abdou Tenkouano, special thanks to the Kansas City Star

As hunger and drought spread across Africa, a huge effort is underway to increase yields of staple crops, such as maize, wheat, cassava, and rice.

While these crops are important for food security, providing much-needed calories, they don’t provide much protein, vitamin A, thiamin, niacin, and other important vitamins and micronutrients-or taste. Yet, none of the staple crops would be palatable without vegetables.

Vegetables are less risk-prone to drought than staple crops that stay in the field for longer periods. Because vegetables typically have a shorter growing time, they can maximize scarce water supplies and soil nutrients better than crops such as maize, which need a lot of water and fertilizer.

Unfortunately, no country in Africa has a big focus on vegetable production. But that’s where AVRDC – The World Vegetable Center steps in. Since the 1990s, the Asian Vegetable Research and Development Center (based in Taiwan) has been working in Africa, with offices in Tanzania, Mali, Cameroon, and Madagascar, to breed cultivars that best suit farmers’ needs.

By listening to farmers and including them in breeding research, AVRDC – The World Vegetable Center is building a sustainable seed system in sub-Saharan Africa. The Center does this by breeding a variety of vegetables with different traits-including resistance to disease and longer shelf life-and by bringing the farmers to the Regional Center in Arusha and to other offices across Africa to find out what exactly those farmers need in the field and at market.

Babel Isack, a tomato farmer from Tanzania, is just one of many farmers who visits the Center, advising staff about which vegetable varieties would be best suited for his particular needs-including varieties that depend on fewer chemical sprays and have a longer shelf life.

The Center works with farmers to not only grow vegetables, but also to process and cook them. Often, vegetables are cooked for so long that they lose most of their nutrients. To solve that problem, Mel Oluoch, a Liaison Officer with the Center’s Vegetable Breeding and Seed System Program (vBSS), works with women to improve the nutritional value of cooked foods by helping them develop shorter cooking times.

“Eating is believing,” says Oluoch, who adds that when people find out how much better the food tastes-and how much less fuel and time it takes to cook-they don’t need much convincing about the alternative methods.

Oluoch also trains both urban and rural farmers on seed production. “The sustainability of seed,” says Oluoch, “is not yet there in Africa.” In other words, farmers don’t have access to a reliable source of seed for indigenous vegetables, such as amaranth, spider plant, cowpea, okra, moringa, and other crops.

Although many of these vegetables are typically thought of as weeds, not food, they are a vital source of nutrients for millions of people and can help alleviate hunger. Despite their value, these “weeds” are typically neglected on the international agricultural research agenda. As food prices continue to rise in Africa-in some countries food is 50-80 percent higher than in 2007-indigenous vegetables are becoming an integral part of home gardens.

The hardiness and drought-tolerance of traditional vegetables become increasingly important as climate change becomes more evident.

Many indigenous vegetables use less water than hybrid varieties and some are resistant to pests and disease, advantages that will command greater attention from farmers and policymakers, and make the work of AVRDC – The World Vegetable Center more urgent and necessary than ever before.

Abdou Tenkouano is director of the Regional Center for Africa of AVRDC – The World Vegetable Center in Arusha, Tanzania. Danielle Nierenberg is a senior researcher at the Worldwatch Institute blogging daily from Africa at Nourishing the Planet

Changes are coming fast and furious to parts of the utility industry in the US.  The stirrings of a nuclear power renaissance (fueled by federal loan guarantees), carbon trading credits, wind power and smart grid initiatives are regularly in the news.   However, attitudes in the industry may not be open to change. A new survey of the utility industry offers some interesting insights into their collective mind. This science and technology driven business apparently contains many who seriously doubt the science of climate change.  

The survey found that 44% don’t believe global warming is caused by human activity. They note that in a 2009 Gallup poll, 57% of Americans believed global warming exists and is man made.  Earth2tech points out this utility respondent comment from the survey:

“The energy industry needs to unite and fight the ridiculous ‘consensus’ science of AGW [Anthropogenic Global Warming]. This is not science as anyone with scientific and engineering training understands, but it is power politics.”

The industry may see climate change as bringing new waves of what are seen as troublesome rules and regulations. Strange though, that the very science based industry which might be a source for innovation and creativity in solving global warming challenges may be home for climate change deniers.  

In a survey of over 300 utility industry participants, in response to the question:“Do you personally believe that fundamental, long-term global warming is taking place, or are we simply in a cyclical period of warming that is the result of the earth’s natural cycles?” — 39 percent of utility respondents said that they believe the earth is on a fundamental long-term warming trend, while 54 percent believe that we are in a cyclical warming period, and 7 percent responded that they don’t believe in global warming.  

but, alas, the plan for the United States vis-a-vis Iran appears to be more of the same old neo-con war mongering.

Oh, sorry, here’s what I’m referring to:

Scientific output has grown 11 times faster in Iran than the world average, faster than any other country. A survey of the number of scientific publications listed in the Web of Science database shows that growth in the Middle East – mostly in Turkey and Iran – is nearly four times faster than the world average.

(Iran showing fastest scientific growth of any country, New Scientist, 02/18/10)

My take below …

I’ve been around the block enough times to come to the firm conclusion that fundamentalist religion demands a certain level of ignorance and lack of basic education in the sciences. This, in my well developed sense of reality, is true whether we’re discussing Islam, Christianity, Judaism or any other organized religion.

We WANT Iran to become developed scientifically. We WANT a well educated class of technocrats to develop inside that nation.

We want this because this is the best way to move beyond the ignorance so required of fundamentalist regimes.

If our plans for Iran had involved pushing them into the future, our desired results could not have better than what the New Scientist article proclaims.

Now if only we could bring this same advancement to the United States.

This might become a new feature. We’ll see.

Every week we receive comments that are worth a second look, further discussion or just plain recognition for being smart, entertaining, pathetically retarded (h/t Rush&Sara) lame, entertaining or generally worthy of a second slide through the page.    

Friday is a good day to post, rescue, reprint (regurgitate?) a few of the better, more interesting, funny, insightful or just plain awful comments from our virtual banquet of reader punditry from the preceding week.

So which reader comments hit your radar this week? Drop your links and thoughts in the comments. A few of my picks are below the fold.  

On the overdue but still insufficient primary date correction, you can’t argue with this clear statement of the situation from Reelvermonter:

If Douglas vetos a bill that passed the House with 139 votes it will prove once and foreall who is POLITICAL!  If he does not veto it, it will also prove who talks out of both sides of his mouth.

Long-time GMD denizen Hoopmeister pinned the tail on the donkey (and the elephant and the moose) with this spot-on observation regarding Burlington Telecomm:

it never should have come to this and the intervention of Shaver and that other numnuts from the NNE is further evidence of how far the R contingent will go to stand in the way of progress just to spite Kiss. . .

When will Burlington folks realize that internet and TV and phone are public utilities and the ability of a public entity to provide that service is a good and cost savings thing for citizens??

Are those clowns now advocating that Burlington Electric be sold off to GMP or Velco???  Pretty much the same situation except one is established and the other developing and competing with Fairpoint and Comcast. The service from BurlTel is so much better than Comcast that they cant stand a side by side test.  Even for the same money you get better service…  

Both the R and D contingent are willing to sacrifice something good to shame Kiss, who is not without blame, but they certainly should be able to rise above this game for the public good.  

DoesLess and his PSB clowns are just another story… we no longer have a functioning state government.

Truer words, Buddy, truer words . . .

In response to Hoopmeister’s wise reminder that Burlington Tellcomm is a better deal and far more customer friendly than, for instance, the jokers at Comcast, Doug Hoffer is quick to remind everyone what passes for GOP “policy” when it comes to public utilities or public policy for that matter, by reminding us all that Burlington Electric:

was targeted for sale 15 years ago when Peter Brownell was mayor (for one term); it was even supported by the General Manager of BED at the time; ridiculous but that’s what passes for policy ideas from that crowd

That would have been brilliant!

There are too many angles to the story about legislative reimbursement for food and travel to cover. Putting aside the legal and moral questions as well as the political nuances, Mike Eldred hits a pragmatic realism note with his thoughtful observations:

If you drop per diem, then it will either cost substantially more to be a legislator from, say, Bennington than to be a legislator from Barre. Many legislators simply have to stay in Montpelier during the week, or else they face three to six hours on the road every day. And they’d miss a lot of the other work that goes on between legislators outside of the regular day.

There has to be some way of dealing with the added expense that some legislators face because of the location of the districts they represent – whether it’s to require reimbursement based on receipts for actual expenses incurred or to build a dorm and cafeteria for legislators.  (Visions of all-nighters and food fights.)  

I’ve received both a per diem and a meals allowance from the federal government.  It was just a flat rate, based on the local economic conditions.  If I spent less, the rest was mine, if I spent more, the difference was mine to make up out of my base pay.  

And that’s the way it was supposed to be.  I wasn’t supposed to claim an amount based on actual expenses.  There wasn’t any way to return money that wasn’t used for its specific purpose.  Nothing I was doing was considered unusual or unethical, in fact, I had no choice but to accept the terms.

On the other hand, I’ve also collected mileage from the federal government.  It had to be for actual miles driven in my own personal (or borrowed or rented) car.  I did not, and could not legally, collect mileage reimbursement for carpooling miles in someone else’s car, or for personal side trips.

So what exactly are the rules for legislators?  According to the 7D article, legislators are supposed to estimate their expenses for the coming year in January – that’s not even the “honor system,” that’s asking them to make a prediction. Is it any wonder that legislators predict they’ll need the maximum?

Finally, check out this Olympic PeteySweety / Sue / Bill McKibben discussion.

There are plenty more comments to mine and run through the vomitorium for further review, next week maybe I’ll flesh it out some more.  

What comments have caught your attention recently? Nothing is off-topic in this post.

We’ll begin with the Herald, which has a fairly interesting story about one whistleblower contacting another.  It includes this bit:

The whistleblower told Gundersen that about two years ago the company experienced another tritium leak in the same general location that involved a drain pit in the advanced off-gas system, the same place Entergy Nuclear is now excavating in hopes of finding the problem.

“‘[the] Employee said that in addition to the current tritium leak, there have been other leaks in the advanced off-gas systems in previous years,'” Gundersen wrote to the state Department of Public Service.

[…]

…the employee told him the old leak could not be isolated and a shutdown would have been required to repair the leak, something the company didn’t do.

Instead, the company applied a leak sealant to plug the hole until the complete repair could be done during a refueling outage.

Read the whole piece.  It’s worth reading.

Let’s move on to The Reformer…

An excavation being conducted at Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant in Vernon to help determine the source of a leak of tritiated water was halted Wednesday because “the original plan … is not working, and a new approach is set to begin as soon as materials and safety preparations are in order,” stated the Vermont Department of Health in its daily update on the leak investigation.

A new plan to dig up piping related to the power plant’s advanced off-gas system may be put into action today, stated the DOH.

Shall I summarize?

We have one report that indicates that this has happened before (we, apparently just didn’t know about it) and another report that indicates that it’s not until now that we’re finding out that, yet again, their approach is not working.

I will say again: a lot of what I say about VY is political and I have no problem admitting that.  But in this particular case, it goes so far beyond politics and simply into the realm of human decency.  Shut the plant down until the source of the leak is found.  And then, when the license is up, just shut it down for good.

Former gold medalists both, 23 year old Hannah Teter of Belmont took the Silver Medal and 26 year old Kelly Clark of West Dover took the Bronze in the Women’s Halfpipe Snowboarding competition at the Vancouver Olympics. Congratulations!

That makes three medals for Vermont (a matched set, in fact – Bronze, Silver and Hannah Kearney’s Gold in the moguls).

So let’s see… whats that in medalers per capita for the state… 1 in 208,000? C’mon, that’s just gotta blow the other states away.