True Freedom - Guest Opinion - the original

True Freedom

Every time you hear your furnace kick on that's money and energy being wasted. With efficiencies and retrofits, we would not "need" anywhere near the amount of energy projected by those who come up with every reason why renewables will not satisfy our needs.

Renewables absolutely will meet our needs when we stop wasting it. NYSERDA has a Deep Retrofit program that can lower energy costs by at least 70% but it can cost around $70,000 per house, depending on age. A lot of people can't afford that. Deep Retrofit is not just blowing in insulation into walls and attics but also layering additional panels on external walls, plus moving out old boilers, furnaces and water heaters, replacing with instant-on heaters or solar hot water heaters. You could end up with not having the need for any heat/cool appliances in the basement and close to zero heating/cooling bills. That's real freedom.

Deep Retrofits can reduce costs and thus improve the bottom line, can improve the economy with more jobs, reduce carbon emissions, and create energy security.

We must move federal, state and local subsidies and tax breaks from oil, gas, coal and nuclear now and transfer those taxpayer dollars to Deep Retrofit incentives and grants as well as solar on every single and multifamily residence and on all public buildings, thus lowering our taxes. New York could meet 15% of its power needs and 100% of its electricity needs with rooftop solar.

Every new high rise must first dig a geothermal trench before they start building. They have to dig a deep hole anyway. Both geothermal and solar installation companies are in New York State and growing, including in Broome county. Check out the New York State solar Industries Association. The state and the Southern Tier should be open to business to these companies and others like them, not to giving tax breaks for polluting gas pipelines, noisy compressor stations, puzzled about what to do with fracking waste fluid, taking the chance of illegal dumps of radioactive waste into fields and streams in the middle of the night, etc., etc.

Hydraulic fracturing's sole purpose is to burn fossil fuel, the greenhouse gas emissions of which have brought us global warming. Methane, i.e. natural gas, is worse than CO2 for heating up the planet. Formerly rare downpours, floods and heat waves are now common across the U.S. and will come to dominate our climate in our grand-children's lifetime.


Let’s stop hiding our heads in the sand and get to work on this. Call and write your legislator and demand a change. If he or she refuses to budge or fudges, vote him or her out of office in 2012. Get together with community members and start your own community energy initiative like in Maryland and Washington State. States that have more insulated buildings and solar have lower electricity bills, including cold mid-western states. New York State is not one of those states. Let's change that.

Identity theft

A thief based in a post office mail box in a building in Scottsdale, AZ, has stolen my name, educational credentials, experience, etc. by picking up my url at cecilelawrence.org so as to hawk snake oil crap of colon cleanse etc. This url, which Green Party NY used for my 2010 campaign as a volunteer on their behalf, was released by one of their web people, without explaining to me the potential threat to me. DO NOT under any circumstances click on cecilelawrence.org. It's a fraud and theft. I'm in the process of bringing this identify theft to the attention of the feds and others.

Thank you.
Cecile Lawrence, Ph.D., J.D.
The REAL one

Earthquake in eastern U.S.

This afternoon, shortly before 2:00 p.m., the heavy solid wood chair in which I was sitting at the computer, began to rock from side to side for about 30 seconds. I figured it was either the woman next door in her driveway slamming her truck doors repeatedly, which she likes to do, setting up vibrations, or it was an earthquake. It was an earthquake. http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/recenteqsww/Quakes/se082311a.html

It's now mid-August in upstate NY without any sign of any activity by anyone to protect any part of Tioga, Broome, Chemung counties from the hazards of hydrofracking, spefically a town ban on this toxic process as part of a larger ban on heavy industrial activity. Not even one town is doing the work necessary (i.e. door to door outreach and the collection of signatures, as well as feeling out incumbents) except for a potential effort in the city of Binghamton. Will we be fracked, come 2012?

Disaster deal

Green Party of NY Alert - Vote No on Debt Deal
WWW.GPNY.ORG
The debt ceiling deal struck last night does not tax the rich or even allow temporary tax cuts on the rich to expire. Nor does it defund any wars. Yet it requires cuts of $1.2 trillion now and $2.5 trillion over a decade. This so-called deal boxes US policy into a relentless program of domestic spending cuts, economic stagnation, and growing poverty when we need increased public spending to create jobs and build a sustainable economy that meets the people's basic needs and restores the environment.

Call your Congressmembers and urge them to vote no on the deal and demand that the President use his constitutional power to raise the debt ceiling, raise the funds, and pay our nations' bills under the 14th Amendment, Section 4 of the US Constitition ("The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law,...shall not be questioned.)"

Call the Congressional switchboard at 202-224-3121

You can send an email message at: http://bit.ly/nWsr7q

From Paul Krugman, Nobel Prize winning economist:

"The deal is a disaster. It will damage an already depressed economy; it will probably make America's long-run deficit problem worse, not better; and most important, by demonstrating that raw extortion works and carries no political cost, it will take America a long way down the road to banana-republic status.... Obama could and should have demanded an increase in the debt ceiling back in December. When asked why he didn't, he replied that he was sure that Republicans would act responsibly. Great call. And even now, the Obama administration could have resorted to legal maneuvering to sidestep the debt ceiling, using any of several options."

From Robert Reich, Secretary of Labor under Clinton: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/08/01-2

"The deal does not raise taxes on America's wealthy and most fortunate - who are now taking home a larger share of total income and wealth, and whose tax rates are already lower than they have been, in eighty years. Yet it puts the nation's most important safety nets and public investments on the chopping block. It also hobbles the capacity of the government to respond to the jobs and growth crisis. Added to the cuts already underway by state and local governments, the deal's spending cuts increase the odds of a double-dip recession. And the deal strengthens the political hand of the radical right."

From Glen Greenwald, constitutional lawyer (http://www.commondreams.org/glenn-greenwald)

"The reported deal on the debt ceiling is so completely one-sided -- brutal domestic cuts with no tax increases on the rich and the likelihood of serious entitlement cuts in six months with a "Super Congressional" deficit commission -- that even Howard Kurtz was able to observe: "If there are $3 trillion in cuts and no tax hikes, Obama will have to explain how it is that the Republicans got 98 pct. of what they wanted," while Grover Norquist, the Right of the Right on such matters, happily proclaimed: "Sounds like a budget deal with real savings and no tax hikes is a go." The same White House behavior shaping the debt deal -- full embrace of GOP policies and (in the case of Social Security cuts) going beyond that -- has been evident in most policy realms from the start.

Three days ago, Democratic Rep. John Conyers, appearing at a meeting of the Out of Poverty caucus, said: "The Republicans -- Speaker Boehner or Majority Leader Cantor -- did not call for Social Security cuts in the budget deal. The President of the United States called for that"

There's no Earth II

Cuomo, the 2011 governor of New York State, AKA the Andrew according to Chip Northrup, states that the needs of the environment need to be balanced against the need for jobs. Not! The environment is where we breathe, drink, live, hear. If that balancing results in deterioration of the air, water, soil, hearing, mental and physical health, and death, which it will when it comes to fracking, you could have a million jobs but they'll be useless in a dead environment. We're running out of places to which to move. There's no Earth II.

Eulogy on my mother's death- partly delivered at the memorial service at St. George's church in Flushing, NY on Sunday, May 22nd.

My mother encountered many challenges, right from the start, but she persevered throughout.
Born in New York city, my mother told me that a doctor told her parents to take her someplace warm, as she would not last another winter. Taken to live with her grandmother in the Manchester parish countryside in Jamaica in the 1900's, she was left there for a number of years. Mother told me that her grandmother had four? sons and so was a "tough" woman and that she beat my mother when she lost her eyeglasses in the bush. Mother spoke about that often and also wrote a story about it for her Queens branch AAUW group. I wrote a poem about it for my Ph.D. dissertation which I'll post another time.

Later, after her primary and secondary schooling ended, she became a teacher of Spanish. She was living or visiting with distant relatives or friends (Claude and Kathleen Clarke) where my father met her when visiting the Clarkes. My mother assured me it was only because she needed a place to stay while going to school in town, as her parents had moved back from NYC to the countryside, had a house with furniture brought from the U.S. therefore she was not needy. Photos show my father hanging out with the young Clarkes (Yvonne, Valerie and Neville) so it appears he was a close friend or distant relative of the Clarkes. The furniture part surprised me as at another time she told me her father lost a lot of money in the Wall St. crash in the 1920s. He was an elevator operator and her mother was a nurse who died of problems related to diabetes. I referred to Kathleen Clarke as "Aunt Kathleen" and our family maintained contact with them long after the marriage of my father and mother so I suspect there was some kind of blood relationship never made clear to me.

While I was growing up, I knew my mother taught at Excelsior High School and that she, at one point, was studying for her B.A. through the University of London's extension program in Jamaica. She graduated. At another time, when I was little, she was away in the U.S., on Long Island, working as a nanny for a family. That separation was not good for me at all. It might as well have been six years.

A wife, a mother, and a teacher, her love of Spanish culture and music was great. Something about Cervantes' story of Don Quijote de la Mancha as well as the stories in the Novelas Ejemplares, resonated with her. Persevrance in spite of obstacles. Her love of Spanish classical music and dance she gave to me. I remember listening to Manuel de Falla's "El Sombrero de tres picos" - The three cornered hat - over and over. I loved and love the dance movement at the end. There's also the Fire Dance of which I used to be able to do a pretty good rendition.

Later, when I was in high school, she never pressured me to take Spanish as my foreign language. She encouraged me and arranged for me to have a tutor in Latin in order to meet certain class requirements (i.e. stay in the A track for "office" work rather than the B track for "wife" work). Knowing Latin was a huge help for when I went to law school.

She knew the importance of music and the arts in general. I thank her for the five years of private piano lessons and the band concerts we attended in Hope Botanical Gardens, as well as for introducing me to Jamaican pantomime, such as in "Eight O'clock Jamaica time." She loved to sing but did so less and less as she got older.

My mother encouraged a life in public service, especially for females. One of her best friends was a female magistrate. My mother probably wanted to go into law, but the obstacles were too many.

When I was 16 and my sister 8 years old, our father died of a heart attack. Within one day, my mother went from wife to widow with two teenage daughters. Shortly after, political unrest worsened in the island. My sister and I were caught in the 1968 Rodney riots, in danger of losing our lives. My mother said I came home traumatized. She handled finding a place for us to move to in the U.S. and a job for herself and for me and registering Marie at Flushing High School. The stress must have been tremendous but she carried on. She soon got her license to teach in the New York City schools and in short order got her M.A. from St. John's University.

When the opportunity arose she took a tour trip to Spain and the UK and other European countries. Finally, she was in the land of Cervantes and all the other Spanish writers, artists, and passionate music she so appreciated.

She so loved being amongst people and having conversations. She regretted being an only child but tried to make up for it by gathering friends around her and being very diligent in keeping contact with cousins on her side and the Lawrence side.
She loved words and great literature, frequently quoting from Shakespeare and poets like Tennyson. In the weeks before she died, she was quoting from the "daffodils" poem. She also would reference Jamaican folk sayings like "cockroach should not be in fowl business." In her later years she loved playing scrabble and liked crossword puzzles although she did not always finish them. Throughout it all, with such a hill and gully ride-o life, she persevered, not much different from one of the heroes in Cervantes' Novelas Ejemplares.

All the world's problems can be solved in a garden

http://youtu.be/wZmYdX9zHVU

The extent to which we rely on plankton for our lives is the extent to which we are plankton.

New Yorkers United to Ban Fracking

New Yorkers United to Ban Fracking

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
April 20, 2011

Statewide Grass-Roots Leaders Meet,

Agree a Fracking Ban Is the Only Acceptable Outcome

Nearly 70 grass-roots activist leaders from around New York State met in Binghamton on Saturday, April 16, to confer on ways to institute a statewide ban on hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, and form a powerful alliance.

The polluting, industrializing, and energy-intensive method of extracting petro-methane, aka “natural” gas, has been causing water pollution and health problems in other states where it has taken place. This group, which includes entrepreneurs and business leaders, wants to stop it from harming New York—not to follow the usual regulatory route of mitigating harm after it happens.

The New Yorkers were joined by allies from Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia, and Michigan, all states currently under siege from the gas exploitation industry.

Mike Bernhard is a member of Chenango-Delaware-Otsego Gas Drilling Opposition Group (CDOG), whose website has been tracking drilling issues for two-and-a-half years. “The more we’ve learned,” said Bernhard, “the more we know it’s impossible to extract shale gas from the Marcellus or any other formation around the country without catastrophic effects on our quality of life, property rights, property values, communities, individuals and traditional industries, as well as on the environment.”

Gloria Mattera, who traveled from Brooklyn for the all-day series of workshops and presentations, stressed the statewide unity of the group. “Although New York City politicians seem to think that the watershed that supplies 90 percent of city water is at least nominally protected,” she said, “it is not. We’re all in this together.”

Carl Arnold, of Delaware County, echoed Mattera’s thoughts. “We recognize that if the clean fresh waters of the Delaware, Susquehanna, Finger Lakes and other watersheds are contaminated by this dangerous and destructive industry, we all lose. We won’t let industry or anyone drive a wedge between ‘upstaters’ and ‘downstaters.’ We’re all New Yorkers, and we all want a healthy environment and safe water, clean air and a healthy food supply.”

The group was united in feeling that New York taxpayers should not be forced to bear the financial burden of cleaning up the toxic mess the gas industry leaves wherever it goes.

The day was filled with sessions on legal and issues related to fracking, and attendees networked over lunch catered by Binghamton eatery Cyber Café, supplemented with local foods brought by conveners.

The group recognizes there’s a hard fight ahead. “It’s not easy for a bunch of ordinary citizens to fight a megatrillion-dollar industry that obviously has a lot of local, state, and national politicians in its pocket,” said Maura Stephens of Tioga County, a cofounder of Coalition to Protect New York (CPNY), which also sent representatives from Chemung, Oneida, Schuyler and Yates Counties to the conference.

Fellow Tioga County resident Cecile Lawrence, a member of several organizations working for peace and a greener economy, added, “Other besieged areas of this country, as well as other parts of the world, are looking to New York State for leadership in ending the corporate invasion and toxic occupation of their communities. We aim to provide that leadership.”

LuAnne Kozma, who drove nine hours from Michigan to attend the conference, said, “More and more of us in Michigan recognize that a pro-regulatory approach simply allows fracking to continue and that only a ban will prohibit it.”

Kozma is with Don’t Frack Michigan, which seeks a statewide ban on fracking. She was glad to connect with many experienced New York activists who shared their ideas for educating the public and getting the ear of honorable legislators.

Attendees stressed that attaching the disclosure of fracking chemicals to only the public water supply, as the FRAC Act now languishing in the U.S. Congress would do, is not enough.

“That abandons tens of millions of rural people around the country who rely on well water,” pointed out Jack Ossont of Yates County, a member of the Committee to Preserve the Finger Lakes and CPNY. “Besides, the FRAC Act requires only that companies disclose what chemicals they’re using—it doesn’t protect our water from contamination by industry in the first place. That’s not acceptable.”

All conference participants agree that only a full ban on fracking for methane, a potent greenhouse gas, will protect the clean fresh water, air quality, food supply, community infrastructure, property values and quality of life now enjoyed by people in beautiful New York State.

Robert Jereski of New York City put it bluntly: “Shale gas is a dead end. The transition to a green economy must begin now. That makes sense for jobs and for a sustainable economy.”

On May 2, New Yorkers United to Ban Fracking will join thousands of other New Yorkers in Albany to demand a statewide ban on this industrial nightmare. Find more information at http://www.un-naturalgas.org.

With spring 2011 comes......

Photo of the opening plenary at Left Forum in NYC in March.

Increasing number of events on fracking. Events downstate and upstate. Concerns about injection wells for ramming toxic fracking waste deep into the ground, in OH and AK. Do earthquakes result? Mining sand for fracking, causing lung scarring in WI and elsewhere. The horror of the earthquake/tsunami/multiple nuclear plants breaking down in Japan continues. Radiation released into the atmosphere floating across the ocean eastward to the North American continent. Increased radiation levels found in rainwater and surface water in areas of the U.S. but the EPA assures us it's not of concern. Reading that the EPA has raised the level of "safety."
With spring comes plants pushing up out of the ground and the planting of crops. The combined threats of fracking, Fukushima radiation, existing fracking south of the border releasing toxins into the air, trucking frack waste to landfills this side of the border and spreading radioactive frack waste salt on roads in winter now to blow around. How to remain hopeful as Mr. Hope Obama touts the need for un-natural gas to save us all.

Egypt: Tariq Ramadan & Slavoj Zizek

It all comes down to fungus

I just finished watching a video interview of an Italian oncologist, Dr. Tullio Simoncini, where he presents his evidence that fungus causes cancer, that cancer cells are acidic, and that he's had good results with direct application of a baking soda solution onto the cancer cells via a catheter into the breast tumor or the prostate tumor, or a bronchial tumor for example. Look in Google video for this: "Fungus Causing Cancer - - A Novel Approach to Most Common Cause of Death."
I had difficulty figuring out how he would do this with a brain tumor. Still, this approach is intriguing. I think he said that a catheter could be inserted into the brain to directly apply the sodium bicarbonate to the tumor cells in the brain.
Marc Sircus, OMD, Director of the International Medical Veritas Association, has been writing for a long time that sodium bicarbonate is the poor man's cancer treatment.
http://imva.info/
I'm not saying this to take away from the Italian oncologist. Either Dr. Simoncini knew about what Marc Sircus has been writing or did not know, and developed his idea independently, which is a kind of scientific verification. It does not matter.
So the Italian oncologist concludes that it's rampant pollution that's causing the fungus. Now, think about white nose syndrome that's killing off bats in a big way in the U.S., especially in the northeast. Look at the www.bats.org page for the section on white nose syndrome.

Think also about so-called Colony Collapse Disorder in bees, for which there's various theories as to cause but one recent study points to fungus as causative. Look at www.sciencedaily.com for an article about this theory put forward in October of 2010.

Put this all together.

Widespread pollution from toxins in the air, water, food, soil, - toxins which can be chemicals or electro-magnetic radiation


or vaccine contents and all the benzene, toluene, formaldehyde, etc. in the air and water from oil and gas drilling via fracking




and the compressor stations leaking methane into the air, the toxins in clothing - all this pollution, the cumulative impact of which is attacking all life -humans, bees, bats and who know what else that has or will develop fungus. As Dr. Simoncini pointed out, hundreds of thousands of people in Japan have toenail fungus. Have you checked your toes lately? This is not an issue of morality or cleanliness. It's an issue of our bodies being overwhelmed with trying to fend off an ever increasing amount of environmental stresses and toxins that corporations are blasting at all life.
One route, at least for humans, is for us to do our best to eliminate sources of yeast and fungus in our diets, like mushrooms, wheat, dairy, dried fruit. Yes, there go the sauteed portabella on focaccia with melted mozzarella accompanied with date squares for dessert.

This is the kind of epidemic event at which homeopathy can excel over conventional Western medicine (ConMed), along with food discipline.
And soak your feet in baking soda at night as frequently as possible, e.g. while you check email or post on your blog.

But the most important route is to get out there and fight back!