Posted by Pincas Jawetz (PJ@SustainabiliTank.info) Sept. 28,
2005.

“The Onion” is a weekly magazine with a 100,000 New York verified
circulation. The following was published in this week’s paper, but we
note
that we could not corroborate the information. We post this
nevertheless,
because we find an interesting connecting line in the narrative published by
The
Onion. If the article were indeed based on facts, the fate of the
Sheehan family would match the best of classic Greek drama; as it does not,
it
still remains great material for a 2005 United States oil drama.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

According to The Onion, the body of Tyler Sheehan was recovered from
the
receding floodwaters in New Orleans. Tyler was working on a
levee-upkeep
crew while completing the EMT-certification training he needed to
become a
firefighter. He is remembered at the Ochsner Hospital as having helped
evacuate dozens of patients from the intensive-care unit.

He came to New Orleans in 2004 after losing his coho-salmon fishing
business in Oregon’s Klamath Basin, because of the Bush Administration
relaxing the federal protection of endangered fish regulations, and the
resulting increase in contamination of the Coho catch with mercury.

Tyler Sheehan, we are told, was the son of the outspoken anti
war-in-Iraq
activist Cindy Sheehan - the bereaved mother who also lost a son in the
war
in Iraq - a war to provide supply of crude to the US refining industry.

The Onion writes: “Tyler was last seen September 4, hours after he and
his
levee crew sustained injuries while attempting to shore up
storm-weakened
levee pilings. According to sources, contaminated water laced with
slicks of
petroleum from recently deregulated, poorly fortified, refinery
ignited,
causing third-degree burns among the workers. Survivors recall seeing
Tyler,
badly injured and without the life jacket and medical kit denied him by
recent budget cuts digging survivors out of the wreckage.”

Further, the Onion writes, Cindy Sheehan’s now, lone surviving son
Teddy, a
meteorologist, is studying global warming with the international
Geophysical
Foundation in Antarctica. At this time he is believed to be marooned on
a
45-square-mile chunk of ice that broke loose Tuesday morning from the
shrinking Ross ice shelf.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

The Katrita hurricanes (Katrina and Rita and those to come), and the
shrinking Antarctica ice cover, are two manifestations of the
Green-House
Gas effect caused mainly by the CO2 emitted to the atmosphere from
burning
fuels that return to the atmosphere fossil carbon it took millions of
years
to deposit, but only 200 years to move in the reverse direction. The
Onion
has managed to put our own tragedy in words by describing a family’s,
seemingly private, tragedy. It may be just an intellectual
exercise but it really does not matter - the drama effect can teach us
something regardless. If we refuse to learn - this shows our
tragedy -
and worse. This last paragraph is purely mine. The Onion presented just
raw
material that activated my mind.

Further, in order to highlight the activities of anti-war activist
Cindy
Sheehan, we are scanning in Associated Press material as printed
by “amNewYork” of September 27, 2005. We chose this piece, rather
then similar reports in other papers, because we felt that “amNewYork”
had the most matter of fact journalistic presentation - that is with
the
minimum intrusion from the writer’s opinion.