Chlorophyll

If you know anything about computers, you know Apples are the alternative to Intel/AMD hardware. If you know a lot about computers, you know just how cool Apple hardware is (Linux will always have the edge philosophically, but this post is about hardware).

However, there's a dark side. Apple computers, iPods, and the new phone are made using nasty chemicals that other companies have abandoned. Greenpeace has a campaign to get them to stop that, and to implement takeback policies.

She makes Richmond, CA, the biggest city in the USA to have elected a Green as mayor. She promises to start a jobs program and reduce the homicide rate. As the article points out, this is a milestone for the Green Party, but Gayle will have a lot to prove to her constituents. We need to support her where we can.

Spammers are the lowest category of human being since slave trader ceased to be a profession. These people give parasites a bad name. In general, I'm opposed to corporal punishment, but the stock and pillory is sounding pretty good right now.

They've grown like a mold on this site, and several others I run. I bet I can find organic feathers... can anyone supply organic tar?

This site was down for several days. It didn't necessarily look like it, because the front page would come up, but none of the links worked. However, thanks to the magic of trial and error, that's all behind us now.

For those of you on the Organize mailing list, the list is down for the forseeable future.

This all the result of bringing this site over to a new server. What does that mean to you? Nothing! You shouldn't see any difference at all. For me, it means one fewer web hosting accounts to pay for.<1--break-->

I don't know about the rest of you, but 2006 was an exhausting year for me. I moved to Madison, settled in with my girlfriend, changed jobs multiple times, traveled south of the equator for the first and second times, founded a magazine, hosted a number of friends coming through town, went to a variety of conferences, ran my first electoral campaign, and through it all, kept this site limping along. (I've decided not to close it down just yet, though I'm paying attention to the clicks and turnover here versus Green Commons and other places.)

Anyway, I'm largely out of the loop at the national level. I hear things are tough, economically. I want to encourage folks to hang in there, and help the party out in whatever way you can. For example, here in Wisconsin, we voted to return the money the national party sent us.

Other than that, I only know what I've heard about elections around the country. On the one hand, we had the best returns a "third party" has seen since 1934. On the other hand, that means we averaged around 2%.

It's hard to guess how 2007 will shape up. Two big topics, however, are sure to be...

Day 1: meeting on nuclear power

We started off with a meeting with Argentine ecological NGOs on nuclear power. I came prepared to argue the GPUS position on nuclear power, in case some of them were the kind of "environmentalists" that are pro-nuke simply because it doesn't produce CO2, but happily, that wasn't the case. Every person in the room was anti-nuclear, and many were working actively against it.

There's a lot going on that, frankly, I was unaware of going into this meeting. The governments of Argentina, Brazil, and Venezuela are collaborating on a tri-national nuclear energy program, and Chile wants in as well. The Canadian government is selling nuclear technology to Argentina, and apparently the Australian government is going to reprocess the waste. This is no small part of the reason for the founding of the Venezuelan and Argentine Green Parties.

American Chronicle has published my piece by that name. In the article I argue that the Democratic members of congress are destined to disappoint those who voted for the US to get out of Iraq, and how a Green approach might be much different. If you care to read it, the link is below.

I'll also say that, in my humble opinion, every Green blog should remain in place if at all possible. One can never tell when the next visitor will click and generate a new Green leader. I regret that all the things, persuasive and meaningful things, that Ken Sain wrote on his blog are now gone. My own blog hasn't seen a new post for a month, but come on, it's the season, no? We must do the best we can, and be cool with that. I don't have time to beat myself up for "not doing enough", and I feel the same way about all of us.

Gregg Jocoy
South Carolina

The Song Remains the Same: American Chronicle

Like many Greens, I find public radio to be the cream of the broadcast media crop. I love Morning Edition, Car Talk, Prairie Home Companion, and more. But this time around, I will not be contributing to Wisconsin Public Radio.

In this article, a poli sci prof actually calls Greens "election spoilers," though he does at least know enough to caution the reader that not all Green votes would otherwise be Democratic votes.

How many times will we have to say there is no such thing as a "spoiler" effect? We have an effect, to be sure, but to frame it as spoilage is to accept the idea that we are some sort of exception to the rule. It presumes that we live in a two-party system, and the the Green Party is some anomaly that the rightful parties have to put up with.

In fact, the Green Party is a fully legitimate choice in any context. If the Dems want our votes, trying to blame or suppress us is hardly the way to get them. The way that will work for them is instant run-off voting.

Gayle McLaughlin is not only the first Green elected to be mayor in California, she will also apparently head up the largest city in the US to currently have a Green mayor.

The well-read among you will recall that Mike Feinstein was mayor of Santa Monica for a while. That's because they have some weird system there where the post of mayor cycles through the City Council. It was the council Mike was elected to, not mayor.