Category Archives: Current Events

Castro!: An Impact Biography

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castroI recently posted a commentary about President Obama’s initiative to normalize relations with Cuba. I noticed this small book by Don E. Beyer at the library and I’m glad I checked it out.  The book quickly gets to the point of explaining Fidel’s origins and how he became the face of revolution in Cuba. The first sentences of the book are, “Fidel Castro is a man at odds with the world. He likes to say he came into it under conditions natural for a guerrilla fighter. He was born on August 13, 1926, as an explosive storm swept over the mountains of the Oriented Province, the wild land that has long served as an incubator of revolution in Cuba.”

Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz was born illegitimate, one of seven children from two mothers. His father, Angel Castro, and his mother, Lina Ruz Gonzalez, were not married until several years after Fidel’s birth.  Fidel’s combative nature was displayed frequently in childhood. He was described as rebellious and combative. His brother Raul described him as dominating every situation. “He challenged the biggest and strongest ones, and when he was beaten, he started it all over again the next day. He would never quit.” As a student he displayed a photographic memory. “In later years, Fidel’s prodigious memory enabled him to give the impression of knowledge and competence where it did not exist.” Spanish Jesuit teachers taught him to admire Spanish Fascists such as Francisco Franco. He later admired Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini. “He was described as walking around his school with a copy of Mein Kampf under his arm.”

Fidel began to move into revolutionary politics when he went to Havana in 1945 to study law. He admired the stories of Jose Marti who had become a Cuban independence martyr in 1895 when he was killed fighting with a revolutionary army. Castro “…saw himself as Marti’s spiritual heir.” Continue reading →

Enlightened Self-Interest and Climate Change

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earth climate changeThe Earth’s climates are changing. I’m an American. I’m currently “winning” in terms of climate, so change is likely to be bad for me. Efforts to mitigate the impacts will be important to me and to posterity. We can also reduce our ongoing contributions to the problem.

Huge international summits produce more media stories than useful action. The world carries too much political baggage from the age of European colonization and – especially for America – the Cold War. At climate conferences, westernized nations see attempts at revenge and emerging economies see ongoing imperialism. Talking is better than shooting, but we need many answers, tailored to specific problems or locations.

I prefer enlightened self-interest, so I was pleased to read that “plenty of entrepreneurs are not waiting for the diplomats. They are finding ways to cut carbon emissions and make money from doing it.” While some “carbon offsets” seem phony – a tree planted today can be cut down tomorrow – I like the idea of reducing greenhouse gases at the source.

“Methane is… a potent greenhouse gas that warms the atmosphere – cow manure is ripe with it – but [on an Oregon dairy farm], the methane is captured and funneled into a red generator the size of a mini-bus. The generator burns it to make electricity. That electricity is sold back to the local power company. The farmers get paid.” To reject this idea and say we should get rid of the cows is to miss an opportunity.

But the manure to methane project has another source of income. “FarmPower makes additional money just for taking that methane out of circulation. For every ton of that methane they capture they earn a credit worth about five to $10. FarmPower then sells those credits to anyone who has to lower their own carbon emissions, say, a coal-fired power plant.”

America has used the “cap and trade” technique for many years, for example, to reduce sulfur-related smog. In the late 1970s, a refinery I worked for paved dirt roads around its plant to reduce dust generated by vehicles and thereby allow the refinery to put dust out its stack. (Don’t laugh at dust. Inhaled dust particles are directly linked to health problems.) Continue reading →

America’s Forgotten History – Surprising, Important, and Sometimes Funny

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here is whereHere is Where is a fun read. Andrew Carroll had a file of clippings about events in “America’s great forgotten history.” He was also between jobs and between girlfriends, so he decided to visit the sites of events that have no plaque, no memorial, and may only be known to local historians.

Carroll’s style is conversational. He writes about his problems arranging his trips, contacting people who might know about the sites he is seeking, even his troubles operating the car’s GPS. While he is on the trail of some particular event, he is sometimes distracted by other places he discovers.

Carroll concentrates on little-known events that had an impact on the nation. For example, the first amphibious landing and ground campaign of World War II was on American soil. During the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, a Japanese plane crashed on Niihau, an outlying Hawaiian island. The pilot survived and the residents seized documents from his cockpit and held the pilot until authorities could arrive. Three residents of Japanese descent tried to help the pilot escape. There was a gun battle and a death before Company M of the 299th Infantry arrived on the island. Americans were “terrified” by the “sudden betrayal of their neighbors” by the three Japanese-Americans. The fact that Company M included loyal Japanese-Americans got lost. This event contributed to the internment of Japanese-Americans.

He also covers some famous Americans who have memorials that may be in the wrong place. Daniel Boone – who did not wear a coonskin cap! He wore a felt Quaker hat with a brim that came in handy shielding his gun barrel during muzzle-loading in rainy weather. A fifteen foot obelisk in Kentucky displays a carving of Boone in a coonskin cap, much to the annoyance of a local historian. He is also “peeved by the last image, of Boone fighting Native Americans… If anything, he was a peacemaker.” But the obelisk gets into the book because it marks one of two Daniel Boone graves. The other is in Missouri. The Missouri gravesite was raided and some bones brought to Kentucky. The original grave contained jumbled remains from several individuals and only some bones were retrieved, so Boone probably lies in both graves. Continue reading →

Confusion About Common Core

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I happen to be the one who is confused by the debate over Common Core. I’ve read in an article by Michael J. Petrilli and Michael Brickman that “…educators have spent almost five years implementing Common Core in their classrooms.” The stated goal of the program is to prepare students for college and careers. It has milestones that “…students need to pass to reach those goals.” The program lays out standards for what students should know at the end of each school year. Teachers are accountable to see that their students learn what they are expected to learn.

None of that sounds bad to me, so what’s the problem? An article by Allie Bidwell says that support is waning for the academic benchmarks. Conservative critics are against the program as federal intrusion into what states should be controlling. Teachers are becoming more and more outspoken about opposition to the accountability measures that are part of the program. “Randy Weingarten, present of the American Federation of Teachers said in a statement the standards ‘must be guides, not straightjackets and they must be decoupled from testing.’” Continue reading →

Cuba has no Intention of Abandoning Communism

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I was conflicted about President Obama’s announcement that he was taking action to open diplomatic relations with Cuba. I’ve been interested in Cuba since my days as a teenager watching Walter Cronkite when he announced (as I recall), with what appeared to be satisfaction, that Fidel Castro and his revolutionaries had overthrown the “evil dictator Batista.” I began to notice as time went by that things weren’t improving for the Cuban people. Those who were suspected of being Batista supporters, or were accused by someone who didn’t like them of being Batista supporters, were being tried in a stadium by Che Guevara and either being executed or imprisoned. I became even more conflicted as the years passed as I noticed young people were eager to wear shirts with a picture of Che “celebrating the revolution.” I’ve always found it sad to see young Liberals (or Progressives, if you prefer) celebrating a man who oversaw the murder or imprisonment of people who “might” have disagreed with him. I wasn’t included in those who mourned his death.

My conversion to being a “Cuba policy skeptic” was intensified as Cuba began to be a proxy providing soldiers for the Soviet Union when they wanted a revolution in some African country. The willingness of Cuba to allow installation of Soviet missiles that could carry nuclear warheads to many American cities in the early 1960s (the Cuban Missile Crisis) ended any tiny remaining doubts. Continue reading →

A Criticism of Climate Change Science

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The following was provided by Dr. William F. Downs, a Geochemist and friend. I’ve done a tiny bit of editing, and added a comment at the end. The timing is perfect as a contrast to  the review posted today.

earth climate changeThere is little controversy over the fact that the temperature of Earth is currently rising and has been since the end of the “Little Ice Age” which lasted from about 1380 AD until circa 1780 AD.  Previously the climate experienced a warm period which was called the “Millennium Optimum” (c. 850 AD – 1300 AD) when I studied it during the 1960s.  It was considered “optimum” because the Vikings were able to expand into and develop farms in Greenland and grapes that had been planted in Britain by the Romans produced wine.  By the early 1300s, Greenland was no longer able to sustain agriculture and the Viking society in Greenland had collapsed.  There was another warming period termed the “Roman Warm Period” that existed in the first few centuries after the time of Christ.  The “Little Ice Age” was documented by Monks in Monasteries along the roads to Rome as Alpine Pilgrims on their way to Rome told their stories of glacial destruction of their Villages.

The temperatures and CO2 contents of the atmosphere in the past are estimated by measuring the oxygen isotope ratios and concentrations of CO2 released from ice cores collected from Vostok Glacier in Antarctica.  These data have been collected from ice that had formed during the last 100,000 years or so.  These data indicate that the current temperature level is lower than those experienced during the Millennial Warming Period. Continue reading →