Angela Bacca

As the water supply dries up in Georgia, the snow falls early in the Rockies, and California gets burned up in a succession of wildfires the Bush Administration continues to pretend that the clear and present danger of climate change is unfounded and nonexistent. Meanwhile, I am still trying to figure out what was so clear and present about the Iraq threat that elicited such quick and not-so-efficient reaction.

I would like to see some of the legislative enthusiasm that didn’t hesitate to throw us into war do something useful for once, like save the whole world.

Al Gore winning the Nobel Prize is exciting, if for nothing more than the immediate reaction it caused. Within days I noticed a swift change in national news: a focus on “green” campaigning. From TV ads to magazine articles, the rest of America is starting to get it.

It has become the duty of the people, and our celebrity leaders, to respond where our government does not. Even Sean Penn beat the feds to Katrina.

As much as we would like to preserve the post-WWII capitalist paradise we have created ourselves–the world of Wal-Marts, bulldozers, McDonald’s, SUV’s, and overzealous meat consumption–we simply cannot. The only thing “we the people” seem to be unable to do is convince our elected officials to step in.

Amidst the green flurry infesting the masses, advertisers are getting more creative to maintain profits on some of their most wasteful products.

Jack in the Box has billboards off of Interstate 80 that read “Vegetariano? Lastima!” (“Vegetarian? What a pity!”) next to a picture of a burger topped with about ten layers of meat. Jack in the Box is targeting low-income Mexican immigrants and it is despicable.

The dairy and meat industry in the United States not only pumps cows full of harmful antibiotics and hormones (which may be connected to the bevy of gastroenterological conditions unique to first-world countries) but they are one of the worst contributors to global warming. Our insatiable and unnaturally frequent appetite for blood is no longer sustainable in our world.

Meanwhile, Atlanta, another Southern low-income metro area with a large black population, is drying up. Lake Lanier, the water supply for most of northern Georgia, is at dangerously low levels. The US Army Corps of Engineers have been controlling the flows of the Chattahoochee and other rivers feeding the lake to supply the US Army’s West Point, in Mississippi. As the drought gets worse for the Atlanta area, the Army still isn’t reducing the amount of water they are taking out of Georgia.

The people of Atlanta are going to fall to the wayside as our administration continues to wait for factual evidence on global warming.

The Nobel Laureates are trying to send us a message, and they are doing it the only way we Americans will understand it. Acknowledging Al Gore as an important global figure forces Americans into acknowledging global warming as a clear and present danger. The next step is convincing our government of the same.

If individuals really step it up to do their part, including educating ourselves to our government’s actions, we will find that we do have the power to affect global change.

When America voted in a Democratic Congress in the mid-term elections, a sigh of relief could be heard all over the world. Finally, Americans are taking the right step to understand our global position.

Sadly, our so-called Democrat Congress has been a major disappointment. We elected these legislators under the assumption that they would do all they could to overcome the mistakes of the failing Bush Administration.

So far, they still haven’t approved a timeline for withdrawal in Iraq, they haven’t passed legislation to lower America’s carbon emissions, they haven’t fixed our healthcare, they aren’t even able to uphold our supposed separation of church and state.

So what have they been doing? They have been working diligently to bring to light the human rights violations of a current ally for past transgressions.

Lately Congress has been pushing to approve a resolution recognizing the genocide of 1.5 million Armenians in 1915 by the Turks of the dying Ottoman Empire.

Genocide is one of the most demented manifestations of human society. Recognizing this genocide would be an overdue validation for Armenians, but it’s hypocritical for our government to spend its time recognizing a 90-year-old genocide across the world when we haven’t even recognized our own country’s genocide of the Native American people or black enslavement.

Even President Bush is making sense on this issue. Wednesday morning, Bush scolded Congress harshly, saying, “One thing the Congress should not be doing is sorting out the history of the Ottoman Empire… Congress has more important work to do than antagonizing an important democratic ally in the Muslim World.”

Bush is right: our Congress does have more important work to do, like getting us out of one of the most financially draining military entanglements in American history. Our activity in the Middle East is a mounting blow for our economy.

Turkey, which has been petitioning to become a member of the European Union (EU), could be hindered in its application process by a resolution recognizing this genocide, the perpetrators of which are long dead. The European Union has strict standards as far as its member states and human rights violations.

We have no reason to further complicate our relations in the Middle East, and creating tension with Turkey is just plain stupid.

It is clear that our Democratic congress was elected on the mere principal that they weren’t Republican, but they are proving to be inefficient. The Democrats we elected into Congress need to step up their game and show us they are more than just “not Republican,” they need to do what we elected them to do: be a voice of the people in a democracy.

It is no secret that the money-grubbing music industry has been in a constant state of fear since Napster and the dawn of the download era, but who would have thought that they could be destroyed not by the consumers disgust of paying too much for shitty music, but by Radiohead?

Radiohead, the art-rock band that first gained notoriety with their 1993 single “Creep,” announced Sept. 30 that they would be releasing their new album only 10 days later. Since the expiration of their contract with record label EMI in 2003, they have been independently touring and recording their seventh studio album, “In Rainbows.” What is so revolutionary about “In Rainbows” is that it is only available through Radiohead’s Web site—and the buyer names their price.

Radiohead is not the first to do this, but they are the first big name recording act to do so. The music industry is up-in-arms, especially since it looks like the band will be turning a profit from album sales anyway. The band has such a loyal following that many of them are willing to actually pay a little something for their music (even if Radiohead has already played all of the tracks live so many times that they have been available as an illegal download for at least a year now.)

Essentially, if Radiohead is successful with this release, they may be sending the message to other big names in the music business that they really don’t need their record companies.

Good, we can only hope that other corporations in other fields take notice of what is going on. As consumers, the Internet has given us an incredible power—we are the “Judge, Jury, and Executioner” as the Radiohead song says. We will no longer be told by Clear Channel and Viacom Inc., through the mindless repetition of singles, what good music is. We have the power to choose what is good and pay the artist what we think it is worth.

What is scarier to record companies is if other musical acts with the same clout as Radiohead decide to follow this model it could possibly render the whole music industry obsolete. Artists will have the ability to produce music themselves and release it through private Web sites. The listener, ultimately, will rate the band by how much they are willing to pay for an album. The band will receive 100 percent profit from what the listener pays, and can still make heinous amounts of money through touring and merchandise sales.

Another unique attribute of “In Rainbows” is that, because it is being released online, it won’t be eligible for any sort of conventional ratings chart until it is released as a compact disc. Radiohead is close to signing a deal that would release the album in disc form in spring 2008, but after its Internet release, sales of the album would be a different beast entirely.

Radiohead’s embrace of the internet as a powerful tool of citizen globalization should be set as an example to the corporate world; consumers have the power to get smarter in the modern market. The industry can no longer fool the music buyer into paying $20 for one hit single and 15 tracks of garbage. Now, not only do consumers know it, but the producers do too.