The forgotten radical founder: Thomas Paine

How important was Thomas Paine and his Common Sense to the American Revolution and the founding of these United States of America?  Here is Brendan O'Neill, reporting from New York:

Prior to the publication of Paine’s Common Sense in America in January 1776, only around a third of the delegates to the Continental Congress, the political body of the American Revolution, supported separation from Britain. The rest wanted only for the ‘mother country’ to grant its American subjects more rights and to ease the tax burdens. As late as 1775, the year before Common Sense was published, George Washington was still toasting George III after dinners and Thomas Jefferson said: ‘There is not in the British Empire a man who more cordially loves a union with Great Britain than I do.’
Paine changed all that. This Englishman, not yet 40 and of no significant social standing, argued in Common Sense for the immediate and complete separation of America from Britain. ‘Even the distance at which the Almighty hath placed England and America is a strong and natural proof that the authority of one over the other was never the design of heaven.’ Ridiculing Britain’s hereditary principle and imperfect democracy, Paine urged Americans to ‘make a true revolution of their various struggles’ (3), and to create a single nation state with a government constituted for ‘respublica... or the public good’, in which there should be a Bill of Rights and ‘above all things, the free exercise of religion according to the dictates of conscience’ (4).
Americans read it in their thousands. A New Yorker wrote to his local newspaper: ‘This animated piece dispels, with irresistible energy, the prejudice of the mind against the doctrine of independence, and pours in upon it such an inundation of light and truth as will produce an instantaneous and marvellous change in the temper, in the views and feelings of an American.’ Within months, Jefferson made his Declaration of Independence, and Paine joined Washington’s armies against Britain as a kind of intellectual soldier, writing a 13-volume series called The American Crisis in the bloody era of 1776 and 1777. If Common Sense helped to give rise to the desire for independence, The American Crisis sustained it in the face-off with the ‘mother country’. ‘These are the times that try men’s souls’, wrote Paine (as quoted by Obama in his inauguration address in 2009).
Not content with having created an intellectual ‘land-flood that sweeps all before it’ in America, as one of his readers put it, Paine later went to France and stirred things up there too. His defence of the French Revolution, The Rights of Man, published in 1791 (part one) and 1792 (part two), was burnt by conservatives in Britain, and devoured by radicals in France. Paine later co-authored the French revolutionaries’ Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen and was elected to the French National Convention (where he had to have his speeches read out by other people, on account of the fact that he didn’t speak French).

How easily we forget, eh ...

A floating power plant?

A most intriguing news report I read today:

The world's largest ship-based power plant has arrived off the Pakistani coast to try to mitigate the country's chronic electricity shortages, a company official said on November 19.

The new supply still won't come close to ending electricity shortages that plague Pakistan, increasing widespread public frustration with the U.S.-allied government as it struggles to contain the Taliban insurgency.

The ship, which burns furnace oil, will generate about 230 megawatts for the national power grid, said Asad Mahmood, a spokesman for the vessel's Turkish owner Karkey Karadeniz Electrik. The owner has a five-year contract with the Pakistani national power company.

Now anchored off the southern port city Karachi, the Kaya Bey will begin feeding into the national grid within four weeks after a dedication ceremony on November 21, Mr. Mahmood said.

The ship's contribution will only make a dent in the overall power crisis. Pakistan's energy demands outstrip supply by an estimated 5,000 MW, thanks to a lack of investment, soaring usage and a crumbling electricity generation infrastructure that heavily relies on hydropower. 

What a story at so many levels ... I had no idea that there could be such ship-based power generation plants!  and then issues such as

the state of infrastructure in Pakistan
the effects of internal unrest and floods
the growing energy needs in the developing countries
technological solutions--as in a ship-based power generation!

I was curious about this ship-based power generation.  It just sounds way too surreal.  To be able to generate 230 MW?  Turns out that this is old news, and there are even proposals like:

Scientists at Cambridge University have outlined a 20-year master plan for the “global rebirth” of nuclear energy.
The two-stage plan involves giant, ship-borne power plants moored next to cities

Something new everyday, eh!  As Johnny Carson used to say, "I did not know that" :)

Bush hopes Sarah Palin will stay in Alaska!

Barbara Bush's back handed compliment :) (ht)

No tweet yet from Tina Fey Sarah Palin