Working for Peace on Earth and Peace with Earth since 1952
Time to Ban Heavily Polluting small gas engines
Time to Rethink
Update 12/2/21 Article about all this published in Hearst papers today. California is moving fast to ban the use of small gas engines. It will start banning the sale as soon as 2024. In Palm Springs gas powered leaf blowers were outlawed in 2019
According an article in The Hill, "Gas-powered equipment with small off-road engines produce a similar amount of smog-causing pollution as light-duty passenger cars create in California, according to the Times, which is why lawmakers are working to curb emissions that come from those tools. According to The Associated Press, there are more than 16.7 million small engines in California, which tops the number of passenger cars on roads."
Back in 2011 the auto site Edmunds reported, "The hydrocarbon emissions from a half-hour of yard work with the two-stroke leaf blower are about the same as a 3,900-mile drive from Texas to Alaska in a[ Ford-150] Raptor." One reason is that an auto or truck has a catalytic converter and other things to lower pollution while a lawn mower or leaf blower has none.
In the future we'll have to redefine our ideas of gardening and go back to sensibly using hand rakes, and growing less grass. [ Lawns were an invention of 17th century aristocrats. Before that meadows were for sheep and goats.] And we desperately need to rewild land to lock in carbon.
More about this CT Post 10/16/21 Why CT is NOT looking to imitate the California law
First let's Kill Off All the Leaf Blowers - New York Times October 25, 2021
Small engines in California Fact Sheet The text of the new California law
From 2014 Dangers of Leaf Blowers.
Washington Post "How Bad are Leaf Blowers?"
Petition in New Haven to get rid of Leaf Blowers
Very good article from 2017 "Noisy, But That's Not All" which has a lot about the effects on the workers from noise and fumes.
This highly technical EPA report of 2015 says that small gas engines cause 4% of US CO2 emissions. That sounds small at first hearing , but considering we're in a life and death battle to curb CO2 it means this battle has an important greenhouse gas dimension.
2017 Yale Medical school professor calls for leaf blower ban
After the Fall of The U.S. created Neo-Liberal Afghanistan
Time to Rethink
Back in the days right after 9/11 a number of us went to demonstrations with signs saying "Stern Justice, but No War". We argued Bin Laden and his gang could be pursued and destroyed without invasion of Afghanistan. Our message was drowned out by the anger and war fever. Bush and the Republicans and Democrats united to conquer Afghanistan and to reorganize it as an ally government. It would be a shining example of neoliberalism and supposed democracy. For 20 years the fiction was maintained that this plan was working. Not any more. Perhaps now people will understand there was an alternative in 2001 and more importantly there was an alternative to the whole Western strategy of conquest and domination.
The events in Afghanistan are a catastrophe, proof of the total failure of militarist strategy outlined in the “The New American Century (1997)” and other visions of U.S. empire.
We need to take long look at US involvement in Afghanistan, well before 9/11, all the way back to Carter and Brzezinski arming of mujahedeen
There was a alternative back in 2011, stern justice, but not war. Recall that in the end Bin Laden was killed by a special force, not in Afghanistan, but in Pakistan.
There was an alternative after the U.S. invaded in October 2001 and defeated the Taliban main forces. See this segment on Democracy Now from August 20.
Tasks for Today
For all its terrible bombings from Afghanistan to Palestine to northern Syria, the US has a moral obligation to take in hundreds of thousands of refugees. (It did just that after Vietnam.)
The U.S. should take in the women and children and the poor, not just the people who collaborated with the U.S. war machine.
It’s time to close up many US bases abroad, to stop the ability of U.S. militarists to meddle and attack foreign countries.
In 1933 Congress had a special commission to investigate the influence of weapons makers and high finance on the U.S. entry into the Great War (World War I). There should be a Congressional investigation now to document: a) How the military-industrial complex pushes for war b)How the corporate media glamorizes war and gives soapboxes to retired military figures c) How billions in weapons the U.S. military handed over to the Taliban in Afghanistan
A fine archive of articles about Afghanistan can be found on "The Struggle" site by clicking here that will include this statement by RAWA, the revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan.
Click here for an article about Jawad, an Afghan refugee to the United States and his difficult experiences.
The vigil for mubarak Soulemane
Two Elected Officials Spoke
State representative Robyn Porter and member of the City Council of Hamden, Justin Farmer denounced the killing of black youth. The first speaker was Mubarak's sister, Mariyann.
See video of the Rally on June 27
On June 26 on the Black Lives Matter Instagram channel over 26,000 watched Mariyann Soulemane speak about her brother and his shooting (1/15/20) after he was entirely surrounded by CT Trooper and West Haven police cars. There have been no indictments, no firings and no reports.
Come to the vigil that takes place 3 days after Mubarak would have been 21 years old at the corner of Campbell Avenue and Hall Sts. in West Haven. (820 Campbell Avenue) More about the case: WestHavenCall.com
Sponsors: Justice for Mubarak, Black Lives Matter (national), Promoting Enduring Peace, Jewish Voice for Peace (New Haven), Black Alliance for Just Immigration, West Haven Black Coalition, Justice for Jayson, Justice for Steven Barrier, Democratic Socialists of America AfroSocialists & Socialist of Color Caucus
Are we on a path to nuclear war with China?
Listen to Daniel Ellsberg
Daniel Ellsberg was given our Gandhi Peace Award in 1976 for his bravery in issuing the Pentagon Papers. In 2107 he wrote The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner in which he told of his years in the nuclear war making department of the Kennedy Administration. There he learned that the strategy of our military for any war with the Soviet Union was to launch a full military strike with expected hundreds of millions dead.
He leaked a document this year (2021) that showed that in the '50's the U.S. military wanted to use nuclear weapons to defend Quemoy and Matsu, two "rocks" off the coast of Taiwan.
The event will be moderated by Joseph Gerson, president of the Campaign for Peace, Disarmament and Common Security , and a peacenews columnist.
Click here for link to register for the Mass Peace Action program
Protest Israeli Police Inaction
Weeks Go By, No One Arrested
It was a brazen attack on April 7, 2021. A masked man attacked 2011 Gandhi Peace Award winner Rabbi Arik Ascherman with a stick. Ascherman was in a private Palestinian field belonging to shepherds. He was trying to foil the newest settler tactic, "guard and secure". Settlers bring their flocks to Palestinian fields. If Palestinians object they are driven off. Eventually the claim is that this is the settler's land. See the video of the attack here.
See our April 27 press release here. Send a complaint to the Israeli Ministry of Public Security. Their email is applications@mops.gov.il Please BCC us a copy at office@pepeace.org You could simply write, "I've seen the video of the latest attack on Rabbi Ascherman that happened on April 7. Why have there been no arrests? What is the state of the investigation? If the suspects had been Palestinians would the weeks drag on without any reports?"
Read NYT columnist Nick Kristof's tribute to Ascherman in 2010.
You Can Use These Pictures for Your memes
