Democracy Now: Student Scares Away Minuteman Gilchrist

Yesterday's edition of Democracy Now! had a piece on the incident involving the anti-immigration group Minuteman's founder Jim Gilchrist at Columbia University. Apparently the man was invited by the institution's student Republicans. As he started speaking, several students got up on the podium and started chanting progressive slogans and held up banners that said that no human being is illegal, etc.

Amy Goodman had invited Gilchrist and Karina Garcia, senior at Columbia. This piece is a must-watch for the bizzare exit made by Gilchrist right in the middle of the dialogue. Also a must-watch to see Garcia, who is a courageous young person, openly taking on Gilchrist and NY Mayor Bloomberg, and speaking freely and unambiguously about her position on racism, free speech, and facism. I think a lot of people can watch this spunky young person and learn a thing or two about standing for something worthwhile and having the courage to speak out for one's principles.

Here is the link: http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/10/11/1430231

The "American's Energy Diet"

I just read the article titled "The Energy Diet" in the NYT -
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/05/garden/05green.html?8dpc

It is a very interesting account, humorously penned, of the energy-saving travails of the article's author, Andrew Postman. He talks about the sacrifices he has chosen to make and not make (a big-screen hi-def television being one of the latter). He talks about energy-saving tactics for the "lazy man".

Given my own desires to incorporate an environment-friendly lifestyle, I started reading the article with a lot of anticipation. However, as I was half-way through it, I realized that his prescription for an energy diet were really for the "American", and that there was nothing new in it for me.

Now, I have lived in America for several years, and do consider myself an American in several ways. But this is one area where my Indian upbringing totally dominates my personality. Because virtually everything that Postman suggests as ways to cut down energy usage is something we do anyway in India. In fact, we even do things that Postman rejects as too much sacrifice. For example, he says he simply will not put out a clothes-line for drying his clothes. That is exactly what practically all of India does, hangs washed clothes on lines. A pretty sight they are not, but a rudimentary calculation will reveal colossal amounts of unspent energy. We line-dry most of all our clothes in the U.S., too, although it is usually more of a pain than in India to figure out an out-of-the-way spot in the house for the clothes-lines. Interestingly, though, our original motivation for line-drying in the U.S. was the appalling state in which clothes come out of most electric dryers (except for some very good Swedish dryers).

So, all in all, Postman's ideas are going to be new only for Americans like him. My guess is that most of the rest of the world is already far ahead.