Miriam, yes she is an angry person indeed. Quick story, after I went blind I
was on SSDI for two years. About the same time I went blind my mother got very
sick and I had to take her in and care for her in my home 24/7. One day I got a
letter from SS indicating that I was cut off from SSDI and I had an
"overpayment" that I had to repay. After much back and forth between SS and my
attorney I found out that that caring for my mother was reported to them as
doing substantial work and I had to repay all of the money I received in those
twoyears. Even SS said it was extremely rare for someone to be turned in. The
fact that I wasn't getting paid for the work doesn't matter since there really
are two types of SSDI. The first is if you become disabled (blind in our case)
prior to age 22. In that case you are presumptively disabled and there is no
other means test besides that. When you become disabled later in life there is
a two prong test. The first is that you must be disabled and the second is that
you *cannot* work. Whoever turned me in was able to provide enough evidence
that caring for moter proved I can work and that is why I had to repay SS. OK
so what does this have to do with Alice? Although SS would never reveal who
turned me in to protect the person (if they even knew themselves) however they
did provide some evidence to my attorney and it was triggered by emails I wrote
about taking care of my mother. I can't say she was involved but at the time
she was getting me to do a lot of work for her (mostly computer
repair/training). When I finally cut her off she got very angry and I know you
witnessed her anger on the list. It really wouldn't surprise me...
Enjoy the weekend
Frank
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Miriam Vieni
Sent: Saturday, November 28, 2015 8:58 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Why a Climate Deal Is the Best Hope for Peace
Excerpt: "'The drums of war are beating. Count on climate change being drowned
out.' The assumption is reasonable enough. While many politicians pay lip
service to the existential urgency of the climate crisis, as soon as another
more immediate crisis rears its head - war, a market shock, an epidemic -
climate reliably falls off the political map."
Climate change is a growing cause of displacement and conflict where land has
been devastated by drought. (photo: B. Bannon/UNHCR)
Why a Climate Deal Is the Best Hope for Peace By Naomi Klein and Jason Box, The
New Yorker
28 November 15
Soon after the horrific terror attacks in Paris, last Friday, our phones filled
with messages from friends and colleagues: "So are they going to cancel the
Paris climate summit?" "The drums of war are beating. Count on climate change
being drowned out." The assumption is reasonable enough.
While many politicians pay lip service to the existential urgency of the
climate crisis, as soon as another more immediate crisis rears its head-war, a
market shock, an epidemic-climate reliably falls off the political map.
After the attacks, the French government stated that the COP21 climate summit
would begin as scheduled at the end of November. Yet the police have just
barred the huge planned marches and protests, effectively silencing the voices
of people who are directly affected by these high-level talks. And it's hard to
see how sea-level rise and parched farmland-tough media sells at the best of
times-will have a hope of competing with rapid military escalation and calls
for fortressed borders.
All of this is perfectly understandable. When our safety feels threatened, it's
difficult to think of anything else. Major shocks like the Paris attacks are
awfully good at changing the subject. But what if we decided to not let it
happen? What if, instead of changing the subject, we deepened the discussion of
climate change and expanded the range of solutions, which are fundamental for
real human security? What if, instead of being pushed aside in the name of war,
climate action took center stage as the planet's best hope for peace?
The connection between warming temperatures and the cycle of Syrian violence
is, by now, uncontroversial. As Secretary of State John Kerry said in Virginia,
this month, "It's not a coincidence that, immediately prior to the civil war in
Syria, the country experienced its worst drought on record. As many as 1.5
million people migrated from Syria's farms to its cities, intensifying the
political unrest that was just beginning to roil and boil in the region."
As Kerry went on to note, many factors contributed to Syria's instability.
The severe drought was one, but so were the repressive practices of a brutal
dictator and the rise of a particular strain of religious extremism. Another
big factor was the invasion of Iraq, a decade ago. And since that war-like so
many before it-was inextricable from the West's thirst for Iraqi oil (warming
be damned), that fateful decision in turn became difficult to separate from
climate change. ISIS, which has taken responsibility for the attacks in Paris,
found fertile ground in this volatile context of too much oil and too little
water.
If we acknowledge that the instability emanating from the Middle East has these
roots, it makes little sense to allow the Paris attacks to minimize our already
inadequate climate commitments. Rather, this tragedy should inspire the
opposite reaction: an urgent push to lower emissions as rapidly and deeply as
possible, including strong support for developing countries to leapfrog to
renewable energy, creating much-needed jobs and economic opportunities in the
process. That kind of bold climate transition is our only hope of preventing a
future in which, as a recent paper in the journal Nature Climate Change put it,
large areas of the Middle East will, by the end of the century, "experience
temperature levels that are intolerable to humans."
But even this is not enough. The deepest emission reductions can only prevent
climate change from getting far worse. They can't stop the warming that has
already arrived, nor the warming that is locked in as a result of the fossil
fuels we have already burned. So there is a critical piece missing from our
climate conversation: the need to quickly lower atmospheric
CO2 levels from the current four hundred parts per million to the upper limit
of what is not considered dangerous: three hundred and fifty parts per million.
The implications of a failure to bring carbon down to safer levels go well
beyond amplifying catastrophes like Syria's historic drought. The last time
atmospheric CO2 was this high, global sea levels were at least six metres
higher. We find ourselves confronted with ice-sheet disintegration that, in
some susceptible areas, already appears unstoppable. In the currently
overloaded CO2 climate, it's just a matter of time until hundreds of millions
of people will be displaced from coastal regions, their agricultural lands and
groundwater destroyed by saltwater intrusion from sea rise. Among the most
vulnerable areas are broad swaths of South and Southeast Asia-which include
some of the world's biggest cities, from Shanghai to Jakarta-along with a
number of coastal African and Latin American countries, such as Nigeria,
Brazil, and Egypt.
A climate summit taking place against the backdrop of climate-fuelled violence
and migration can only be relevant if its central goal is the creation of
conditions for lasting peace. That would mean making legally enforceable
commitments to leave the vast majority of known fossil-fuel reserves in the
ground. It would also mean delivering real financing to developing countries to
cope with the impacts of climate change, and recognizing the full rights of
climate migrants to move to safer ground. A strong climate-peace agreement
would also include a program to plant vast numbers of native-species trees in
the Middle East and the Mediterranean, to draw down atmospheric CO2, reduce
desertification, and promote cooler and moister climates. Tree planting alone
is not enough to lower CO2 to safe levels, but it could help people stay on
their land and protect sustainable livelihoods.
We knew that the Paris summit wasn't going to achieve all of this. But just
days ago, bold collective action on climate seemed within reach: the climate
movement was accelerating, winning tangible victories against pipelines and
Arctic drilling; governments were strengthening their targets, and some were
even starting to stand up to fossil-fuel companies.
Enough pressure existed, it seemed, to achieve the main goals of the
conference: an enforceable and binding international treaty to ratchet down
carbon emissions once and for all. But the movement believed that keeping the
pressure up during the summit would be critical. That just got a lot harder.
The last time there was this much climate momentum was in 2008, when Europe was
leading a renewable-energy revolution and Barack Obama was pledging, as he
accepted the Democratic nomination, that his election would be "the moment when
the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal." Then came
the full reverberations of the financial crisis. By the time the world met at
the Copenhagen climate-change conference, at the end of 2009, global attention
had already shifted away from climate to bank bailouts, and the deal was widely
considered to be a disaster. In the years that followed, support for renewables
was slashed across southern Europe, ambitions dwindled, and pledges of climate
financing for the developing world virtually disappeared. Never mind that a
decisive response to the climate crisis, grounded in big investments in
renewables, efficiency, and public transit, could well have created enough jobs
to undercut the discredited logic of economic austerity.
We cannot afford to allow this story to be repeated, this time with terror
changing the subject. To the contrary, as the author and energy expert Michael
T. Klare argued weeks before the attacks, Paris "should be considered not just
a climate summit but a peace conference-perhaps the most significant peace
convocation in history." But it can only do that if the agreement builds a
carbon-safe economy fast enough to tangibly improve lives in the here and now.
We are finally starting to recognize that climate change leads to wars and
economic ruin. It's time to recognize that intelligent climate policy is
fundamental to lasting peace and economic justice.
Error! Hyperlink reference not valid. Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.
Climate change is a growing cause of displacement and conflict where land has
been devastated by drought. (photo: B. Bannon/UNHCR)
http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/why-a-climate-deal-is-the-best-hope-
for-peacehttp://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/why-a-climate-deal-is-the-b
est-hope-for-peace
Why a Climate Deal Is the Best Hope for Peace By Naomi Klein and Jason Box, The
New Yorker
28 November 15
oon after the horrific terror attacks in Paris, last Friday, our phones filled
with messages from friends and colleagues: "So are they going to cancel the
Paris climate summit?" "The drums of war are beating. Count on climate change
being drowned out." The assumption is reasonable enough.
While many politicians pay lip service to the existential urgency of the
climate crisis, as soon as another more immediate crisis rears its head-war, a
market shock, an epidemic-climate reliably falls off the political map.
After the attacks, the French government stated that the COP21 climate summit
would begin as scheduled at the end of November. Yet the police have just
barred the huge planned marches and protests, effectively silencing the voices
of people who are directly affected by these high-level talks. And it's hard to
see how sea-level rise and parched farmland-tough media sells at the best of
times-will have a hope of competing with rapid military escalation and calls
for fortressed borders.
All of this is perfectly understandable. When our safety feels threatened, it's
difficult to think of anything else. Major shocks like the Paris attacks are
awfully good at changing the subject. But what if we decided to not let it
happen? What if, instead of changing the subject, we deepened the discussion of
climate change and expanded the range of solutions, which are fundamental for
real human security? What if, instead of being pushed aside in the name of war,
climate action took center stage as the planet's best hope for peace?
The connection between warming temperatures and the cycle of Syrian violence
is, by now, uncontroversial. As Secretary of State John Kerry said in Virginia,
this month, "It's not a coincidence that, immediately prior to the civil war in
Syria, the country experienced its worst drought on record. As many as 1.5
million people migrated from Syria's farms to its cities, intensifying the
political unrest that was just beginning to roil and boil in the region."
As Kerry went on to note, many factors contributed to Syria's instability.
The severe drought was one, but so were the repressive practices of a brutal
dictator and the rise of a particular strain of religious extremism. Another
big factor was the invasion of Iraq, a decade ago. And since that war-like so
many before it-was inextricable from the West's thirst for Iraqi oil (warming
be damned), that fateful decision in turn became difficult to separate from
climate change. ISIS, which has taken responsibility for the attacks in Paris,
found fertile ground in this volatile context of too much oil and too little
water.
If we acknowledge that the instability emanating from the Middle East has these
roots, it makes little sense to allow the Paris attacks to minimize our already
inadequate climate commitments. Rather, this tragedy should inspire the
opposite reaction: an urgent push to lower emissions as rapidly and deeply as
possible, including strong support for developing countries to leapfrog to
renewable energy, creating much-needed jobs and economic opportunities in the
process. That kind of bold climate transition is our only hope of preventing a
future in which, as a recent paper in the journal Nature Climate Change put it,
large areas of the Middle East will, by the end of the century, "experience
temperature levels that are intolerable to humans."
But even this is not enough. The deepest emission reductions can only prevent
climate change from getting far worse. They can't stop the warming that has
already arrived, nor the warming that is locked in as a result of the fossil
fuels we have already burned. So there is a critical piece missing from our
climate conversation: the need to quickly lower atmospheric
CO2 levels from the current four hundred parts per million to the upper limit
of what is not considered dangerous: three hundred and fifty parts per million.
The implications of a failure to bring carbon down to safer levels go well
beyond amplifying catastrophes like Syria's historic drought. The last time
atmospheric CO2 was this high, global sea levels were at least six metres
higher. We find ourselves confronted with ice-sheet disintegration that, in
some susceptible areas, already appears unstoppable. In the currently
overloaded CO2 climate, it's just a matter of time until hundreds of millions
of people will be displaced from coastal regions, their agricultural lands and
groundwater destroyed by saltwater intrusion from sea rise. Among the most
vulnerable areas are broad swaths of South and Southeast Asia-which include
some of the world's biggest cities, from Shanghai to Jakarta-along with a
number of coastal African and Latin American countries, such as Nigeria,
Brazil, and Egypt.
A climate summit taking place against the backdrop of climate-fuelled violence
and migration can only be relevant if its central goal is the creation of
conditions for lasting peace. That would mean making legally enforceable
commitments to leave the vast majority of known fossil-fuel reserves in the
ground. It would also mean delivering real financing to developing countries to
cope with the impacts of climate change, and recognizing the full rights of
climate migrants to move to safer ground. A strong climate-peace agreement
would also include a program to plant vast numbers of native-species trees in
the Middle East and the Mediterranean, to draw down atmospheric CO2, reduce
desertification, and promote cooler and moister climates. Tree planting alone
is not enough to lower CO2 to safe levels, but it could help people stay on
their land and protect sustainable livelihoods.
We knew that the Paris summit wasn't going to achieve all of this. But just
days ago, bold collective action on climate seemed within reach: the climate
movement was accelerating, winning tangible victories against pipelines and
Arctic drilling; governments were strengthening their targets, and some were
even starting to stand up to fossil-fuel companies.
Enough pressure existed, it seemed, to achieve the main goals of the
conference: an enforceable and binding international treaty to ratchet down
carbon emissions once and for all. But the movement believed that keeping the
pressure up during the summit would be critical. That just got a lot harder.
The last time there was this much climate momentum was in 2008, when Europe was
leading a renewable-energy revolution and Barack Obama was pledging, as he
accepted the Democratic nomination, that his election would be "the moment when
the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal." Then came
the full reverberations of the financial crisis. By the time the world met at
the Copenhagen climate-change conference, at the end of 2009, global attention
had already shifted away from climate to bank bailouts, and the deal was widely
considered to be a disaster. In the years that followed, support for renewables
was slashed across southern Europe, ambitions dwindled, and pledges of climate
financing for the developing world virtually disappeared. Never mind that a
decisive response to the climate crisis, grounded in big investments in
renewables, efficiency, and public transit, could well have created enough jobs
to undercut the discredited logic of economic austerity.
We cannot afford to allow this story to be repeated, this time with terror
changing the subject. To the contrary, as the author and energy expert Michael
T. Klare argued weeks before the attacks, Paris "should be considered not just
a climate summit but a peace conference-perhaps the most significant peace
convocation in history." But it can only do that if the agreement builds a
carbon-safe economy fast enough to tangibly improve lives in the here and now.
We are finally starting to recognize that climate change leads to wars and
economic ruin. It's time to recognize that intelligent climate policy is
fundamental to lasting peace and economic justice.
http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize
http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize
