Light up the Sky: an ingenious form of protest

As a way to protest the policies of the Bush presidency,
New Yorkers and vistors to the city are asked to carry lights
during the night of August 30. The idea is the brainchild of
designer Milton Glaser. As the Light up the Sky explains:

"The Republicans have every right to meet and choose their
candidate in our city without abuse. At the same time their
convention creates an opportunity for all of us to express our
disagreement with the culture of militarizations and violence
that our current leaders represent. It is time to change the
meanspirited and abrasive tone of our civic discourse. We
need an alternative to the harsh and degrading words and images
that have filled our consciousness since the war began.

On August 30, from dusk to dawn, all citizens who wish to end
the Bush presidency can use light as our metaphor. We can
gather informally all over the city with candles, flashlights
and plastic wands to silently express our sorrowover all the
innocent deaths the war has caused. We can gather in groups
or march in peaceful confrontation without violence. Violence
will only convince the undecided electroate to vote for Bush.
Not a word needs to be spoken. The entire world will understand
our message. Those of us who live here in rooms with windows
on the street can keep our lights on through the night. Imagine,
it's 2 or 3 in the morning and our city is ablaze with a silent and
overwhelming rebuke. Light transforms darkness."

The gentle wisdom of Milton Glaser can be found in his essay,
"This is what I have learned." Among his ten life lessons are these:
"You can only work for people that you like."
"If you have a choice, never have a job."

The protest with light flows from Milton's always engaging, always
positive vision of art and action.

We are not animals

The following message was sent (as part of a group mailing)
to my son, Brooks Winner, from an Iraqi high school boy,
Ghazwan Majid. They met in July at the Hugh O'Brien
Conference on Leadership (or "HOBY") in Washington, D.C.
I have changed the original all caps format, fixed some spelling
and added some punctuation; otherwise the letter is unchanged.
It's copied here with Ghazwan's permission.

* * * * * * * * * * * * *
Hi HOBY

It’s me Ghazwan.
Well I hope that all of you are fine and having a
nice time.
Well we are fine (I meant our delegation) but the
others are not good.
Coz you know there are heavy battles taking place
right now in a Najaf and in Baghdad and everywhere
it is really bad.
To tell you about that I don’t wanna tell you but
I have to.
Our country is bleeding right now. I don’t know why
and how. The only thing that I know is hundreds of
people are dying everyday and I am writing my letter
under a heavy machine gun fire and under mortars shot
Please please pray for our people and try to tell your
people that we are (dying and bleeding). All of them
are innocent people, children and women and old men.
But there are some bad people who deserve to die. But
all of them are being killed right now and I’m not lying.
This is the truth.
I know you don’t like such stories, but I am just doing
the right thing and I am trying to stop that. But I can’t.
I don’t have the power. Please tell your people about
these facts and you have to think about us.
We are not animals (and we don’t like to be occupied).
And anyway I am not very good coz I am so nervous right now.
What have they done to be killed??????? What are the causes????
Who is responsible??????? ////And who will help????
And who will get better???? And who are dying???????
Thank you very much and I hope that this will be
thought about.

Ghazwan

McMurtry's "Unspeakable Propositions"

A truly free, open society would be one in which the
following propositions offered by John McMurtry
would be widely debated. McMurtry teaches philosophy at
the University of Guelph in Canada.

1. Taking more out than you put in as a regular practise—as in money
profits—is morally wrong.
2. The capitalist workplace is anti-democratic.
3. General Motors, Dupont, IT&T, Standard Oil and Ford Corporations all
produced military supplies for the Nazi armed forces during World War II
while the United States was at war with Germany.
4. Unearned wealth should be abolished as a matter of just public
policy.
5. The government needs to regulate the investment of Canadian/U.S.
capital abroad to societies with poor human rights and environmental
standards, so as to protect these standards in both North America and
the developing world.
6. The free market means that those without money to buy what they need
do not have the right to live.
7. The major player in the international drug trade since the Second
World War, using drug enforcement laws to maintain its monopoly, has
been the United States government to finance internationally illegal
foreign interventions.
8. Over 70 of eligible U.S. and British voters did not vote for Reagan
or Thatcher [in their] "landslides".
9. The arms race and international wars are very profitable for most
multinational corporations.
10. The long-term pattern of U.S. and Canadian foreign policy in the
non-white world has been alliances with fascist-type governments rather
than their opponents.
11. The "free world" is not truly free because its citizens do not have
the effective right to criticize the capitalist system.
12. The history of Western civilization is largely a history of genocide
against non-white peoples and cultures.
13. The greatest danger to Canada's l freedom and security comes from
the United States.
14. There is no correlation between people's wealth and their merit.
15. In many cases, social ownership of major industries is sound
social policy.
16. The very rich ought not to be admired, but rather condemned for
their acquisitive self-interest at others' expense.
17. A small minority's monopoly ownership of society's means of
production is an issue that needs to be carefully examined.
18. Pollution/poverty are specially advantageous to the major
shareholders of private enterprise.
19. Our major social problems are caused by the profit imperative
overriding all other values.
20. The belief that God sanctions our social order or our state at war
is a superstition.
21. There may be better alternatives for long-term sexual union than the
private property structure of state-regulated marriage.
22. The Soviet Union pays significantly more than the world-price for
imports from the countries of East Europe, and charges significantly
less for its exports.
23. Socialist revolution has been by and large beneficial for the living
standards of most citizens in societies where it has occurred.
24. Over 90 of Canadian citizens are not capitalists but members of the
working class who depend for their living on wages or salaries.
25. Unions have historically led the struggle for improvements in health
care, working conditions and social security for the population as a
whole.
26. The business community has excessive political and economic power in
our society.
27. Our schools do not train the young to think critically, but to obey
corporate or office authority without question.
28. The President and his leading advisors are provable war criminals.
29. Christianity calls for the redistribution of wealth.
30. The mass media are essentially a joint-stock company of profit and
advertising for major private corporations.

Originally published in Informal Logic, X,3 Fall 1988.

Save Vermont! -- State Declared "Endangered" by Wal-Mart Expansion

Following upon several successful instances of resistance
to the Wal-Martization of America, including the successful
"no" vote on the company's plans in Inglewood, CA, the National
Trust for Historic Preservation has placed the whole state of
Vermont on its list of "most endangered historic places." I
consider this an important turn of events, one that will help
people striving to save this wonderful piece of New England from
the sprawl of big box shopping malls and auto-centered development
that has made a chaotic hash of the American landscape.

Watch for Falling Prices!
Watch for Falling Wages!
Watch for Falling Environmental Standards!
Watch for Plywood Boarded-up Shops Downtown!
Watch for the Collapse of Communities Near You!

According to one news report:

"Officials for the Trust, a nationally recognized group that
helps save historic sites, said they put Vermont on the list
because the planned opening of so many Wal-Mart stores there
in the next few years threatens the state's small-town quaintness.

The state has four Wal-Mart Stores now, and seven more are
planned, company officials said, with about 1.3 million square
feet of total space. Trust officials blame the gigantic retailer,
with its vast boxy stores , for squeezing out mom-and-pop
operations and changing the character of Vermont.

'That will have a very large consequence, not just for the
communities where the Wal-Marts will be located, but for
the entire state,' said Richard Moe, president of the Trust,
a nonprofit group based in Washington, D.C. 'The unique small-town
character of the state and the fragile countryside will be
overwhelmed by their size.'"

* * * * *
[Of course the Wal-Mart flack, Mia Masten had a ready response
(I wonder how much they had to pay Mia to say this stuff)]:

"'Blaming Wal-Mart is a bit far-fetched,'" said Mia Masten,
Wal-Mart's community affairs manager for the Eastern region.

She said that the stores provide jobs and economic activity
in areas that need it.

"'It sounds as if we're trying to go and push our way in,'"
Masten said. "But we are asking for and getting local input.
We want a project that everyone likes at the end of the day.'"

* * * * * * * *

At a meeting in Albany recently I ran into a woman from a town
in the Hudson Valley who talk enthusiastically about Wal-Mart
"community affairs." She exclaimed, "Even before the final plans
for the store were approved, Wal-Mart managers called a meeting with
a couple dozen community groups and gave them each a check for $1,000!"

This reminds me of the kind of penny ante bribery we've seen in
battles with St. Lawrence Cement in Columbia County, New York. While
permits are pending, the company has been lavish in its "gifts" to the
community. When my kids were in Little League several years ago
they would ask, "Why are all the other teams wearing uniforms from
St. Lawrence Cement?" Fortunately, we've had some success shining
a bright light on these phony acts of charity and the risible, glossy
advertising campaigns the company has launched.

Good luck, Vermont! Give 'em hell!

Save Christiania! -- An Alternative Urban Community Avoids Destruction

Earlier this year the right wing political authorities of Denmark
threatened to dismantle Christiania, the hippie-style commune that
has existed in the middle of Denmark. Following police raids that
evidently smashed the drug selling business in the village, discussions
continued about what to do with this odd national landmark. Evidently,
a deal has been worked out that will save much of Christiania and its
alternative lifestyles. The BBC has a good report on a story not
likely to get much press in the neo-Puritan U.S.A.

"The new law, agreed on Tuesday, leaves open the possibility
for an independent committee to take charge of Christiania,
a plan favoured by many residents.

A police spokesman said the illegal drug market that had
flourished in Christiania would not be allowed to develop again.

Under the new law, several houses built on the site of an old
naval fort will be torn down, while an extra 300 houses will be
built elsewhere on the site.

The 1,000 residents will also have to pay a fixed rate for
utilities such as gas and electricity, much of which they have
been using for free.

Christiania is one of Copenhagen's biggest tourist attractions."

George W. Bush's racist comments

It's interesting that the press hasn't picked up these astonishing
musings from George W. Bush on skin color, Muslims and
self-government. His remarks came at a White House press
conference with Prime Minister Martin of Canada held on April 30.


Bush exclaims:

"There's a lot of people in the world who don't believe that people
whose skin color may not be the same as ours can be free and self-govern.
I reject that. I reject that strongly. I believe that people who practice
the Muslim faith can self-govern. I believe that people whose skins
aren't necessarily -- are a different color than white can self-govern."

*****

Who are those who serve as the reference point for comparing "people
whose skin color may not be the same as ours"? All Americans?
No. Evidently it is people whose skin is "white." In contrast are those of
"different color" who are immediately conflated with Muslims.

I want to offer my personal apologies to anyone, American or otherwise,
offended by Bush's ignorant, confused, racist remarks. The assumptions
revealed in his words say a great deal about Iraq, the war on terror, and
a whole lot more. As a citizen of a country founded upon the view that "all
men are created equal," his comments are a profound embarrassment.

I'm truly sorry.

The global treadmill

An article from the LA Times depicts the hard edge of globalization.
Personal experiences break through to give the lie to the boosterism.

Oh, by the way, tell me again: What was it that was supposed to
happen when we all bought those nifty personal computers?

He'll Take Your Job and Ship It
Atul Vashistha's firm helps U.S. companies cut costs by sending work abroad.
Sorry, he says, but it's a case of move up or lose out.
By Warren Vieth
Times Staff Writer

April 27, 2004

SAN RAMON, Calif. — Atul Vashistha might help move your job overseas one day. He would like you to understand why.

Vashistha, 38, is one of the leading practitioners of "offshoring." His San Ramon consulting firm, neoIT, helps U.S. companies cut costs by sending work to India, the Philippines and other nations with cheaper labor. By his own estimate, Vashistha's deals are providing wages to 50,000 workers overseas. Many of those paychecks used to go to white-collar workers in the United States.

Since he was a boy growing up in India, Vashistha wanted to be a global entrepreneur. To get from there to here, he rejected tradition, devoured new information, sought out opportunities and repeatedly retooled himself to respond to changing circumstances.

If he can do it, he says, so can you.

"If you're a Web programmer, I'm sorry, you have no right to think you can keep your job in the U.S. if you're using the same technology that existed four years ago," Vashistha says. "You've got to keep moving up. You've got to keep going back to school…. If you're not going to do that, you're going to lose your job."

*****
In the midst of the melee, Vashistha has stepped forward as an apostle of offshoring, corporate shorthand for shifting jobs abroad. In his view, it's important for workers to hear the truth — even if it hurts.

Like it or not, Vashistha says, Americans are now part of a global competition for labor. With the advent of the Internet and high-speed telecommunications, virtually any job that can be done at a computer or over the phone can be moved to countries where wages are much lower. And U.S. companies that resist the trend, he says, will be swept away by rivals.

That may spell disaster for workers who are cast aside, Vashistha acknowledges. But there is good news too: In the long term, companies that save money this way will generate new jobs, he says, which will go to workers who are willing to reinvent themselves.

*****
For some workers, Vashistha's arguments ring hollow. Clifford Cotterill is one of them.

A software engineer for one of the companies on neoIT's client list, Cotterill, 55, managed to dodge several previous rounds of workforce cuts. But he was recently told his job would be sent to India in May, three months shy of the date he would qualify for early retirement.

"I've always taken classes, picked up new technologies. I have pages of training I can include on my resume," Cotterill says. "They're not really being honest."

Vashistha says he empathizes with workers like Cotterill. But he knows there's not much he can say about the long-term benefits of globalization that would solve the immediate problems of people who get ground up in its gears.

"It is very painful, and I understand that," he says. "To tell somebody who is 55 years old … you've got to go back to school. But that is the new reality of being competitive."

Fighting "sub-humans"? -- a sad commentary on the American
military's view of Iraqis

From the Telegraph comes an unsettling report. It brings to mind
similar sentiments among many soldiers in the Vietnam quagmire who
came to see the enemy, indeed the Vietnam people as a whole, as "gooks."
The news story is not at all surprising, given the overall attitude of Americans
about the human dimensions of the war, for example the total lack of coverage
in our media about the numbers of Iraqi soldiers and civilians killed or injured.
It is deeply assumed -- beyond any need for comment -- that those people simply
do not matter.




US tactics condemned by British officers
By Sean Rayment, Defence Correspondent
(Filed: 11/04/2004)


Senior British commanders have condemned American military tactics in Iraq as heavy-handed and disproportionate.

One senior Army officer told The Telegraph that America's aggressive methods were causing friction among allied commanders and that there was a growing sense of "unease and frustration" among the British high command.

The officer, who agreed to the interview on the condition of anonymity, said that part of the problem was that American troops viewed Iraqis as untermenschen - the Nazi expression for "sub-humans".

Speaking from his base in southern Iraq, the officer said: "My view and the view of the British chain of command is that the Americans' use of violence is not proportionate and is over-responsive to the threat they are facing. They don't see the Iraqi people the way we see them. They view them as untermenschen. They are not concerned about the Iraqi loss of life in the way the British are. Their attitude towards the Iraqis is tragic, it's awful.

"The US troops view things in very simplistic terms. It seems hard for them to reconcile subtleties between who supports what and who doesn't in Iraq. It's easier for their soldiers to group all Iraqis as the bad guys. As far as they are concerned Iraq is bandit country and everybody is out to kill them."

The phrase untermenschen - literally "under-people" - was brought to prominence by Adolf Hitler in his book Mein Kampf, published in 1925. He used the term to describe those he regarded as racially inferior: Jews, Slaves and gipsies.

Fantasies and realities of robot war

The idea of replacing human solidiers with automated devices for
fighting wars has been an obsession in the Pentagon since the
1960s. During the Vietnam War, for example, there were elaborate
plans to build an electronic barrier separating North from South, a
network of sensing devices that would identify enemy traffic and
guide strikes from the air. Much of the technology that makes possible
today's computers and the Internet derives from decades of
government funded research, development and production originally
justified by any all out push to create the "electronic battlefield."

A recent article by Conn Hallinan, "The Rise of the Machines," comments
on the most recent steps in this ongoing, throughly deranged misuse
of American science and engineering, i.e., scientists, engineers and your
tax dollars. He writes:


The press had lots of fun with the recent robot debacle in the Mojave Desert. Competing for $1 million in prize money, 15 vehicles headed off on a 142-mile course through some of the most forbidding terrain in the country. None managed to navigate even eight miles. The robots hit fences, caught fire, rolled over, or sat and did nothing.

However, the purpose of the event was not NASCAR for nerds, but a coldly calculated plan to construct a generation of killer machines.

Sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the Mar. 13 “race” was part of the Department of Defense’s (DOD) plan to make one third of the military’s combat vehicles driverless by 2015. The push to replace soldiers with machines is impelled by an over-extended military searching for ways to limit U.S. casualties, a powerful circle of arms manufactures, and an empire-minded group of politicians addicted to campaign contributions by defense corporations.

This “rise of the machines” is at the heart of the Bush administration’s recent military budget. Sandwiched into outlays for aircraft, artillery, and conventional weapons, are monies for unmanned combat aircraft, robot tanks, submarines, and a supersonic bomber capable of delivering six tons of bombs and missiles to anyplace on the globe in two hours.

. . . . The military’s interest is in part a function of the Vietnam Syndrome: lots of aluminum caskets and weeping survivors play poorly on the six o’clock news. While so far the Bush administration has managed to keep these images at arm’s length by simply banning the media from filming C-130s disgorging the wounded and the slain, as casualty lists grows longer, that will get harder to do.

The lure of being able to fight a war without getting your own people killed is a seductive one. “It is possible that in our lifetime we will be able to run a conflict without ever leaving the United States ,” Lt. Col. David Branham told the New York Times last year.

Traveling in Spain recently, I came across the audacious free software
project, LinEx, sponsored by Extremadura, an autonomous region
(state) in western Spain. Here's a story about it from the
Washington Post.

The web page for the gnuLinEx project is here, including
a link that enables on to download gnuLinEx for your personal
use.

As Bruce Sterling writes of about Extremadura,
in Wired, "this quaint haven has suddenly become a bastion
of Tux the Penguin. Extremadura has gone whole hog for free
software: ¡Software libre para la libertad! Its government has
minted some 80,000 CDs to marinate the populace in Linux.
Social workers carry the latest open source code to remote schools,
municipal offices, and city-funded ISPs. Thanks to Juan Carlos Rodríguez Ibarra,
the left-wing academic who became regional president and has
dominated local politics for the past 20 years, the Global Project for
the Development of the Information Society aims to give every resident
access to the knowledge gathered by humanity throughout history."

My thanks to my Spanish colleagues Javier Bustamante and Andoni Alonzo
for alterting me to this wonderful development.

Maybe it's the light -- a view from San Francisco

To hear Governor Schwarzenegger and other voices of the far right
describe the matter, California seems threatened by a total breakdown
of civil order -- a wave of lawlessness comparable to people blandishing
assault rifles in public or openly selling hard drugs to school children
on every street corner. Clearly, the marriage riot in San Francisco has
got to stop! It presents a peril to world civilization more grave than al-Qaeda
and suicide bombers. Call in the National Guard -- immediately!

For a more sane, thoughtful view of the matter, check out Gray Brechin's
"Of Course It Started in San Francisco" from the Washington Post. As Brechin describes
his stroll past City Hall last week:

"As it has been since Feb. 12, when Mayor Gavin Newsom directed the city
to begin issuing the controversial marriage licenses, the building has long
been a site of resistance as well as of unity. In 1960, police turned fire
hoses on protesters against the House Un-American Activities Committee,
forcing them down the marble stairs of the place where Marilyn Monroe and
Joe DiMaggio were married in 1954. On the night of May 21, 1979, thousands
of gays converged on City Hall to torch police cars and attack the building,
enraged by a jury verdict that wrist-slapped Dan White, an ex-member of the
Board of Supervisors, for gunning down gay supervisor Harvey Milk and Mayor
George Moscone in their offices. The verdict said to the rioters that a clean-cut
family man was almost within his rights to execute a gay man, along with Milk's
liberal friend and supporter.

The mood was very different last Sunday when my partner of 11 years and I
left the Asian Art Museum that faces City Hall across Civic Center Plaza . We could
hear the commotion across the plaza, so we walked toward it, and unwittingly into history.

We had thought that Mayor Newsom's dramatic decision to issue same-sex
marriage certificates was a stunt, and that we didn't really care. Sanctity,
after all, is not a description that either of us would apply to our own parents'
marriages, and we were not about to splurge on rings in order to repeat their mistakes.

But our convictions dissolved as we watched ecstatic couples emerge from
City Hall and descend the granite steps to the cheers, tears and applause of
gays and straights alike, as well as to the affirmative honks of cars passing
on Polk Street, and to the appreciation of those people waiting in a line that
stretched around the block for their turn at legal recognition, many with their
children. Marriages were taking place throughout a City Hall kept open during
the long weekend for just that purpose, and everyone present was aware of
being party to something momentous. We knew that in the present political
climate beyond the Bay Area, Newsom's seeming defiance of state law, and
that of the thousands of couples who have filed through the building, may have
been foolish and even perilous. President Bush and Karl Rove could whip and
ride the divisive issue to another term. But events can create their own unexpected
consequences, just as the televised spectacle of citizens flushed down the stairs
with fire houses 44 years ago helped bring down the HUAC.

The infectious joy at City Hall made the risk of defiance worthwhile, because what
happened there went far beyond an out-of-step city that is almost an island
in more ways than one. It was worthy of a nation that, every July 4, celebrates
those who seek freedom more than security."

Digital democracy teach-in

While I remain largely skeptical about the prospects for digital democracy,
there have been some interesting developments in recent months -- the
success of MoveOn.org, the flurry of activity around Howard Dean's Internet
centered campaign, the use of the Net to mobilize tens of millions in
opposition to the war in Iraq, etc.

Here's a report on the Digital Democracy Teach-in held in early February.

Excerpt:

Former Howard Dean campaign manager Joe Trippi started off the day with the claim that "the political press could never figure out what the Dean campaign was. Now they feel qualified to comment on whether what it did worked." Much of his session, "Down from the Mountain: My Experience with the Dean Campaign," was targeted at broadcast media and the resulting political tactics.

He said, "Let's take the scream tape: it wasn't news, it was entertainment. It was the heat-seeking missile footage hitting its target. That really was damaging -- not what the governor did but the media's portrayal of it out of context. They are now apologizing."


Trippi argued, "Broadcast politics has failed the country miserably. You had no debate going into war, no debate about the Patriot Act. That debate isn't happening anywhere except on the Net."

He explained that the roots of broadcast politics go back 40 years. "In the 1960s, with the Nixon-Kennedy debate, people should have realized that television was going to change everything in American politics. It became a race for money and for one-way communications. How do I find a rich guy writing a $200K check and buy time with it?"

. . . . .

According to Trippi, "We have a communications problem. The political press has no clue what this Internet community is about. The Internet community doesn't really understand the hard, cold realities of American politics."

. . . . .

[LW: Yes, but politics on the Internet does make us feel so warm and fuzzy
and involved and effective and shaking the power structure and changing
the world for the better and so virtually virtuous ....]

Doubters take note:
At last the tax cuts are producing new jobs! (in Bangalore)

I'll have to admit that Bush and his economists were right. Those huge
tax givebacks for the wealthy -- the ones my kids will be paying for until
they die -- are working just fine!

(from the L.A. Times)

Bush Supports Shift of Jobs Overseas
The loss of work to other countries, while painful in the short term,
will enrich the economy eventually, his report to Congress says.

By Warren Vieth and Edwin Chen
Times Staff Writers

February 10, 2004

WASHINGTON — The movement of American factory jobs and white-collar
work to other countries is part of a positive transformation that will enrich
the U.S. economy over time, even if it causes short-term pain and dislocation,
the Bush administration said Monday.

The embrace of foreign outsourcing, an accelerating trend that has contributed
to U.S. job losses in recent years and has become an issue in the 2004 elections,
is contained in the president's annual report to Congress on the health of the economy.

"Outsourcing is just a new way of doing international trade," said N. Gregory Mankiw,
chairman of Bush's Council of Economic Advisors, which prepared the report.
"More things are tradable than were tradable in the past. And that's a good thing."

The report, which predicts that the nation will reverse a three-year employment
slide by creating 2.6 million jobs in 2004, is part of a weeklong effort by the administration
to highlight signs that the recovery is picking up speed. Bush's economic stewardship has
become a central issue in the presidential campaign, and the White House is eager to
demonstrate that his policies are producing results.

[LW: And exactly where on the planet will those 2.6 million jobs be located? Hmmmm?]

"Shocked! Shocked, I say!" -- scientists catch on to Bush's science scams

Well, it's only taken three years, but finally some prominent members
the scientific community have begun speaking out against the many
blatant distortions of scientific information, abuses of the scientific
authority and outright censorship of scientific research that have
characterized the Bush administration from day one. Better late than
never, I suppose.

Seth Borenstein writes for the Knight Ridder Newspapers:

WASHINGTON - (KRT) - A group of more than 60 top U.S. scientists,
including 20 Nobel laureates and several science advisers to past
Republican presidents, on Wednesday accused the Bush administration
of manipulating and censoring science for political purposes.

In a 46-page report and an open letter, the scientists accused the
administration of "suppressing, distorting or manipulating the work
done by scientists at federal agencies" in several cases. The Union of
Concerned Scientists, a liberal advocacy group based in Cambridge,
Mass., organized the effort, but many of the critics aren't associated with it.

White House Science Advisor John Marburger III called the charges
"like a conspiracy theory report, and I just don't buy that." But he
added that "given the prestige of some of the individuals who have
signed on to this, I think they deserve additional response and we're
coordinating something."

[LW: Translation -- Damn, we've been caught! What lie do we
float now?]

Back to the story ......


"The report charges that administration officials have:

_Ordered massive changes to a section on global warming in the
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's 2003 Report on the Environment.
Eventually, the entire section was dropped.

_Replaced a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention fact sheet
on proper condom use with a warning emphasizing condom failure rates.

_Ignored advice from top Department of Energy nuclear materials
experts who cautioned that aluminum tubes being imported by Iraq
weren't suitable for use to make nuclear weapons.

_Established political litmus tests for scientific advisory boards. In
one case, public health experts were removed from a CDC lead paint
advisory panel and replaced with researchers who had financial ties to
the lead industry.

_Suppressed a U.S. Department of Agriculture microbiologist's finding
that potentially harmful bacteria float in the air surrounding large hog farms.

_Excluded scientists who've received federal grants from regulatory
advisory panels while permitting the appointment of scientists from
regulated industries."

The full report can be found at the website of The Union of Concerned Scientists.

Same sex marriage -- a jazz musician's comment

Last Monday my old buddy Charlie took me and my twin boys
to the Jazz Standard, a wonderful club in Manhattan that features
fine barbecue and great music. The band that evening, the nine piece
Millennium Territory Orchestra, featured an exuberant, often humorous
collision between traditional tunes (including ones from the 1920s)
and avant guarde jazz blowing. Steven Bernstein, trumpet and leader
of the ensemble, peppered the audience with wry quips, some of them fairly
political. Pointing to a musician holding his soprano sax high in the air,
he noted, "Now there's a weapon of mass destruction!"

As I visited the JamBase website today, I
read another of Bernstein's comments from a previous concert. It's the
funniest thing I've heard about the raging debate about sex marriage:

"Aren’t all marriages same sex? Isn't that why you get married,
because you want the same sex?"

Watch for falling wages! (and jobs moving south)

Those who've bought into the rhetoric and enthusiasm of globalization
can, I suppose, only applaud the trends noted in the Bob Herbert
column below. It's astonishing that American educators and politicians
remain so quiet about these matters.

*****************
NY Times, January 26, 2004

Education Is No Protection
By BOB HERBERT

The conference was held discreetly in the Westin New York hotel in Times
Square last week, and by most accounts it was a great success. The main
objections came from a handful of protesters who stood outside in a brutally
cold wind waving signs that said things like "Stop Sending Jobs Overseas"
and "Put America Back to Work." No one paid them much attention.

The conference was titled "Offshore Outsourcing: Making the Journey Work
for Your Corporation." Its goal was to bring executives up to speed on the
hot new thing in corporate America, the shipment of higher-paying
white-collar jobs to countries with eager, well-educated and much lower-paid
workers.

"We basically help companies figure out how to offshore I.T. [information
technology] and B.P. [business process functions]," said Atul Vashistha, the
chief executive of NeoIT, a California consulting firm that co-hosted the
conference.

Several big-name corporations had representatives at the conference,
including Procter & Gamble, Motorola, Cisco Systems and Gateway. Because the
outsourcing of white-collar jobs is so controversial and politically charged
(especially in a presidential election year), there was a marked reluctance
among many of the participants to speak publicly about it. But Mr. Vashistha
showed no reluctance. He was quick to proselytize.

"These companies understand very clearly that this is a very painful
process for their employees and for American jobs in the short term," he
said. "But they also recognize that if they don't do this, they will lose
more jobs in the future and they won't have an ability to grow in the
future." He said his firm had helped clients ship about a billion dollars'
worth of projects offshore last year.

Noting that he is an American citizen who was born in India, Mr. Vashistha
said he is convinced that outsourcing will prove to be a long-term boon to
the U.S. economy as well as the economies of the countries acquiring the
exported jobs. Whether it becomes a boon to the U.S. economy or not, the
trend toward upscale outsourcing is a fact, and it is accelerating. In an
important interview with The San Jose Mercury News last month, the chief
executive of Intel, Craig Barrett, talked about the integration of India,
China and Russia ÿ with a combined population approaching three billion ÿ
into the world's economic infrastructure.

"I don't think this has been fully understood by the United States," said
Mr. Barrett. "If you look at India, China and Russia, they all have strong
education heritages. Even if you discount 90 percent of the people there as
uneducated farmers, you still end up with about 300 million people who are
educated. That's bigger than the U.S. work force."

He said: "The big change today from what's happened over the last 30 years
is that it's no longer just low-cost labor that you are looking at. It's
well-educated labor that can do effectively any job that can be done in the
United States." In Mr. Barrett's view, "Unless you are a plumber, or
perhaps a newspaper reporter, or one of these jobs which is geographically
situated, you can be anywhere in the world and do just about any job."

You want a national security issue? Trust me, this threat to the long-term
U.S. economy is a big one. Why it's not a thunderous issue in the
presidential campaign is beyond me. Intel has its headquarters in Silicon
Valley. A Mercury News interviewer asked Mr. Barrett what the Valley will
look like in three years. Mr. Barrett said the prospects for job growth were
not good. "Companies can still form in Silicon Valley and be competitive
around the world," he said. "It's just that they are not going to create
jobs in Silicon Valley."

He was then asked, "Aren't we talking about an entire generation of lowered
expectations in the United States for what an individual entering the job
market will be facing?" "It's tough to come to another conclusion than
that," said Mr. Barrett. "If you see this increased competition for jobs,
the immediate response to competition is lower prices and that's lower wage
rates."

We can grapple with this problem now, and try to develop workable solutions.
Or we can ignore this fire in the basement of the national economy until it
rages out of our control.

Why didn’t I think of that?

Speaking at the very important World Economic Forum held in Davos
recently, Bill Gates, the world’s richest man, delivered an uplifting talk
on how to rid the planet of one of its most persistent ills – Internet spam.
He noted:

"Lots of mail you get is from people on your contact list. So what's the problem?
Strangers!"

Filters could do a lot to sort spam from real mail, Mr Gates said: "Does the
e-mail say it's about 'enlargement' - that might be spam."
- - - - - - - - - -

Wow! It’s easy to tell why he’s a billionaire. It takes someone with a keen grasp
of techno-social problems and innovative solutions to come up with an
incisive analysis of that kind. Gates went on to suggest some other remedies
for this menace (which the software he peddles has so greatly fostered – oops!).

Personally, I have my own approach to spammers. When I find that I’m
running low on cash from buying all the better-than-viagra and “enlargement”
products, I just send away for several million dollars from one of those nice,
deposed princes in Nigeria.

The Internet giveth and the Internet taketh away ....

Alas, the same Internet that helped propel Howard Dean to prominence is now helping devour him alive. See the LA Times story below. Videos and images of Dean’s shriek are proliferating on the Net like crazy.

The best philosophical account of this phenomenon is Hannah Arendt’s discussion in “The Human Condition,” describing public life as a “space of appearances” in which no one can ultimately control the impression people have of his/her identity and character. As someone who finds Dean basically appealing, I regret he gave today’s image shapers the very ammunition they need to shoot him down. It’s possible, but not likely, that he’ll recover. Setbacks like this – e.g., Edmund Muskie tears -- tend to be terminal, a verdict endlessly echoed in the hollow, mocking spheres of propaganda.


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

Dean's Late-Night Battle Cry May Have Damaged Campaign
By Mark Z. Barabak and Faye Fiore
Los Angeles Times Staff Writers

January 22, 2004

MANCHESTER, N.H. — Howard Dean's overheated concession speech in Iowa may have inflicted irreparable harm on his campaign, intensifying concerns that Vermont's former governor is prone to outbursts and fits of pique that make him unqualified to be president, analysts said Wednesday.

The image of Dean repeatedly punching the air in a performance some likened to an emotional meltdown has played endlessly on cable news networks and offered instant fodder for late-night comedy monologues.

"He's a very rational, pleasant human being, but he looked like a rabid dog," said Charlie Cook, publisher of a nonpartisan Washington political newsletter. "To say he appeared unpresidential is an understatement."

The damage was immediately quantifiable. Surveys showed a fall in Dean's approval ratings and a tightening race in New Hampshire — where he faces a major test Tuesday, when the state hosts the nation's first presidential primary.

Adding further insult, the medium that had been the most powerful force for delivering his campaign message was being used to mock him Wednesday as samples of his Iowa speech were turned into shrieking soundtracks on the Internet.

Dean, who has been criticized for his peevish personality since his days as Vermont governor, abruptly shifted his style to a more measured approach since arriving here after his third-place finish in Iowa.

Conducting a series of television interviews from Burlington, Vt., Wednesday, the former governor was asked repeatedly about his caucus night speech. Dean defended his tenor, saying he was reaching out to his tireless volunteers.

"There were 3,500 screaming kids in that room who'd worked their hearts out for me in Iowa, all of them waving an American flag," Dean told KWTV in Oklahoma City. "I thought I owed it to them to buck up their spirits and I was pleased that I did."

But the price could be one of those frozen-in-time moments that forever defines his campaign. The round-the-clock broadcasts of that isolated appearance come at a time when many voters nationwide are just tuning in to the election now that the balloting has actually started. . . . .

The promise of nanotechnology clarified

It's time for me to apologize for all those years I spent as a
technology skeptic. The moment of contritition came as I watched
a Hewlett-Packard advertisement during a football game on
television last Sunday. The HP commercial clarified the promise of
nanotechnology (and a great deal more):

"These are nature's building blocks, and they can be used to
build some amazing things. Like a cell phone so small an ant
could use it, or a tiny computer that can hold every book ever
written."

My only remaining question -- will the ants have those
nifty cell phones that take and send digital photos?

Citizen participation included in nanotechnology legislation

Readers of last spring's "Technopolis" may recall news that the
House of Representatives version of a bill funding nanotechnology
research included provisions for occasional evaluation of this research
by citizens panels. As the legislation passed through the labyrinthine
corridors of capitol hill, this feature of the bill encountered some
criticism, especially the mistaken claim that attempts at citizen
participation in technology assessment had not been effective.
The last I heard during the summer was that language about
citizens panels and consensus conferences had been cut from the
bill the Senate passed. Oh well....

Now it turns out that Public Law 108-153, the 21st Century
Nanotechnology Research and Development Act, restored some
of the content. The relevant text from Public Law 108-153
which Bush signed, is given below. I believe that reference
to citizens panels and consensus conferences in these matters
is something of a first in U.S. lawmaking!

**********************************
Public Law 108-153
108th Congress

An Act

To authorize appropriations for nanoscience, nanoengineering, and
nanotechnology research, and for other purposes.
<>

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the
United States of America in Congress assembled,
. . . . .
[Here is the passage:]

(10) ensuring that ethical, legal, environmental, and other
appropriate societal concerns, including the potential use of
nanotechnology in enhancing human intelligence and in developing
artificial intelligence which exceeds human capacity, are
considered during the development of nanotechnology by--
(A) establishing a research program to identify
ethical, legal, environmental, and other appropriate
societal concerns related to nanotechnology, and
ensuring that the results of such research are widely
disseminated;
(B) requiring that interdisciplinary nanotechnology
research centers established under paragraph (4) include
activities that address societal, ethical, and
environmental concerns;
(C) insofar as possible, integrating research on
societal, ethical, and environmental concerns with
nanotechnology research and development, and ensuring
that advances in nanotechnology bring about improvements
in quality of life for all Americans; and
(D) providing, through the National Nanotechnology
Coordination Office established in section 3, for public
input and outreach to be integrated into the Program by
the convening of regular and ongoing public discussions,
through mechanisms such as citizens' panels, consensus
conferences, and educational events, as appropriate;

....

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Dick Sclove has pointed out that the National Institutes of Health
has been using what it calls "consensus conferences" for a while,
but that these are a far cry from the open, deliberative citizens
meetings used in, for example, the Danish model of technology
assessment. Hence, an important challenge now is to make sure that
the real promise of democratizing this dimension of science and
technology policy-making is accomplished in authentic ways, using the
best practices available, not a counterfeit that merely consults the
"experts" and special interests for their limited, self-interested views.

During these dreary times in U.S. public life, this novel provision
of the nanotech law can be counted one small step for American
democracy.

The meaning of the WTC "Freedom Tower"?

At the same moment that public officials and architects proudly
unveil the ghastly, twisted, windmill-powered 1,776-foot 'Freedom Tower"
to be plopped down at Ground Zero in New York City, we're regaled
with a steady stream of news stories about the freedoms lost since
the 9/11 attack. Is there a subliminal message here?

See the visual commentary, "Two Symbols of Freedom," by reclusive
New Hudson River School artist, Frederick Clinker.

A story from the New York Times describes the latest assault on
what's left of the Bill of Rights.

* * * * * * * *
January 8, 2004, NY Times

U.S. Reasserts Right to Declare Citizens to Be Enemy Combatants
By ERIC LICHTBLAU


WASHINGTON, Jan. 7 ? The Bush administration on Wednesday reasserted
its broad authority to declare American citizens to be enemy combatants,
and it suggested that the Supreme Court consider two prominent cases at
the same time.

The Justice Department, in a brief filed with the court, said it would seek
an expedited appeal of a federal appeals court decision last month in the
case of Jose Padilla, jailed as an enemy combatant in 2002.

The divided Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, in New York, ruled on
Dec. 18 that President Bush lacked the authority to indefinitely detain an
American citizen like Mr. Padilla who was arrested on American soil simply
by declaring him an enemy combatant. Mr. Padilla has been held incommunicado
at a military brig in South Carolina. American authorities say he plotted with
operatives of Al Qaeda overseas to detonate a "dirty" radiological bomb in
the United States.

But the Justice Department said in its brief that the ruling was "fundamentally
at odds" with court precedent on presidential powers.

The decision "undermines the president's constitutional authority to protect
the nation," Solicitor General Theodore B. Olson wrote. ....

Willie Nelson's new Christmas song

From the Austin American Statesman:

Whatever Happened to Peace on Earth
December 30, 2003

Willie Nelson, who has endorsed Dennis Kucinich for President,
and who will lead a fundraising concert for Kucinich's campaign
in Austin, Texas, on Jan. 3, 2004, wrote a new song on
Christmas that he will perform in public for the first time at the
Austin concert.

There's so many things going on in the world
Babies dying
Mothers crying
How much oil is one human life worth
And what ever happened to peace on earth

We believe everything that they tell us
They're gonna' kill us
So we gotta' kill them first
But I remember a commandment
Thou shall not kill
How much is that soldier's life worth
And whatever happened to peace on earth

(Bridge)
And the bewildered herd is still believing
Everything we've been told from our birth
Hell they won't lie to me
Not on my own damn TV
But how much is a liar's word worth
And whatever happened to peace on earth

So I guess it's just
Do unto others before they do it to you
Let's just kill em' all and let God sort em' out
Is this what God wants us to do

(Repeat Bridge)
And the bewildered herd is still believing
Everything we've been told from our birth
Hell they won't lie to me
Not on my own damn TV
But how much is a liar's word worth
And whatever happened to peace on earth

Now you probably won't hear this on your radio
Probably not on your local TV
But if there's a time, and if you're ever so inclined
You can always hear it from me
How much is one picker's word worth
And whatever happened to peace on earth

But don't confuse caring for weakness
You can't put that label on me
The truth is my weapon of mass protection
And I believe truth sets you free

(Bridge)
And the bewildered herd is still believing
Everything we've been told from our birth
Hell they won't lie to me
Not on my own damn TV
But how much is a liar's word worth
And whatever happened to peace on earth


*******************

Fascinating. And, hey, this is a prominent voice of the South!

The destruction of Christiania?

One of the most successful and well-organized of hippie-style
alternative communities is Christiania in the middle of Copenhagen.
Begun in the 1970s by a group of Danes who moved in as squatters
on an abandoned military base, the village is renown for its
eccentric architecture, its methods of self-government, its innovative
"Christiania" bicycles (now marketed around the world), its lovely bars
and restaurants, and, of course, the drugs - marijuana and hashish -
sold openly at kiosks on "Pusher Street." About one thousand people
now live in this community.

But, according to recent reports, it's all about to end. The conservative
government of Denmark, renown for its repressive, anti-immigrant policies
and promotion of individualism and bare knuckles capitalism, has
decided to turn its anger on this peaceful, thriving experiment. The
people of Christiania will be removed and its environment culturally
cleansed, replaced by modern amenities and luxury apartments.

Here's a story from The Guardian on this sad turn of events.

There are many good sources of information and photographs
about Christiania, its democracy, bicycles, houses, and history.

Anyone interested in imaginative alternatives to the plastic dreariness
of modern life, anyone interested in indigenous wellsprings of design
and the fostering of diversity in social and economic life, should tune in
and speak out against the small-minded decision to destroy Christiania.

Have a secure Christmas and police state New Year

As I waited in line at my local U.S. post office today, I read a notice
announcing the end of "Operation Dear Abby." Evidently, in happier
times the post office would send packages to soldiers overseas
without any specific person identified as the recipient; if one addressed
a gift to "Operation Dear Abby" or to "Any Servicemember," the
item would be paired with a soldier chosen at random. The flier on
the wall said that the program had been scrapped in response to
"security" concerns.

A recent story in an Illinois newspaper reports Pentagon fears that "terrorists
would use [Operation Dear Abby]...to dump chemical or biological toxins into
the military mail."

"It's not that we don't want things to go to our soldiers," said
Lt. Col. Alicia Tate-Nadeau.

"It's an issue of force protection, of keeping them out of harm."

.... This holiday season, Defense officials are discouraging the
shipment of any bulk mail items, even from family members or
loved ones.

"'America has had a strong tradition of sending cards and packages
to troops, but in this case, whenever we do that, it poses a security
risk and bogs down the shipping system, so that it takes longer
to send things like replacement pieces of equipment,' she said."

* * * * * * * * * * *

Soon to appear on the North Chatham post office bulletin board:

ATTENTION SUBJECTS OF HOMELAND
If you spot a bearded man in a red suit coming down your chimny,
notify authorities immediately! It's likely an "enemy combatant."

Finally confirmed: PowerPoint makes you stupid

I've seen it countless times. Otherwise intelligent colleagues, students and
leaders of important organization stand up to give what turn out to be
remarkably silly presentations on topics that could be rich in substance.
A significant part of the problem has to do with the popularity of the beguiling
but vastly limited PowerPoint program that has become the norm for talks
everywhere, from middle schools to academic conference to corporate boardrooms.
Now a panel investigating the the explosion of the Columbia space shuttle
has determined that the focus and judgment of NASA managers may have
undermined by excessive reliance on PowerPoint. The New York Times
Magazine reports:

"In August, the Columbia Accident Investigation Board at NASA released
Volume 1 of its report on why the space shuttle crashed. As expected, the
ship's foam insulation was the main cause of the disaster. But the board also
fingered another unusual culprit: PowerPoint, Microsoft's well-known
''slideware'' program.

NASA, the board argued, had become too reliant on presenting complex
information via PowerPoint, instead of by means of traditional ink-and-paper
technical reports. When NASA engineers assessed possible wing damage
during the mission, they presented the findings in a confusing PowerPoint
slide -- so crammed with nested bullet points and irregular short forms that
it was nearly impossible to untangle. ''It is easy to understand how a senior
manager might read this PowerPoint slide and not realize that it addresses
a life-threatening situation,'' the board sternly noted.

PowerPoint is the world's most popular tool for presenting information. There
are 400 million copies in circulation, and almost no corporate decision takes
place without it."

* * * * * *
The story goes on to cite Edward Tufte, expert on graphical presentations
of data and ideas, who criticizes an obvious feature of PowerPoint: its use of
skimpy, low resolution bullet points that actually contain very little information.
To this I would add the tendency speakers who use PowerPoint to repeat
the words on the screen, e.g., "Conclusions from our Strategic Planning Process,"
rather than say anything of substance.

This is additional evidence of a larger malady -- widespread deteroriation of
social intelligence caused by excessive reliance on computers. "New media
impede-i-ya."

Comparing responses to Sputnik and 9/11

Michael Halloran, professor of rhetoric and colleague at Renssealear,
offers a thoughful comparison of America's response to two shocking events.

Letter to editor:
Today's leaders can learn from how we responded to Sputnik

First published: Saturday, December 6, 2003

In October 1957, the Soviet Union launched Sputnik, the first man-made
satellite to orbit Earth, and in the view of many the prototype of the
Intercontinental Ballistic Missile.

No one died as a direct result of Sputnik, but in other important ways
the blow to the United States signaled by the incessant beeping of
Sputnik was comparable to that signaled by the incessantly repeated
images of jets crashing into the World Trade Center towers that filled
our TV screens in the weeks after Sept. 11, 2001.

In both cases, the economic, technological and military might that had
made us feel invulnerable was shown to be inadequate.

In both cases, we suddenly recognized an enemy capable of end-running
our defenses and threatening our existence.

In response to Sputnik, Congress declared an "educational emergency" and
passed the National Defense Education Act, providing federal assistance
to education and research in science, mathematics and the modern foreign
languages. The NDEA fueled a transformation of American education from
kindergarten through the university and created intellectual capital
that the United States and indeed the world continue to benefit from to
this day. A case might be made that the Cold War was ultimately won by
the decades of scientific and technological advances set in motion by
the National Defense Education Act.

So what has been the educational response to 9/11? Has any political or
educational leader had the vision to declare a new educational emergency
and propose a national response to it? Surely our intelligence failures
revealed by the event itself and our gross ignorance of Islamic cultures
that continues to be revealed are evidence of needs that ought to be
filled by a strengthened national educational and research infrastructure.

How often have we heard of the desperate need for fluent speakers of
Arabic, Urdu, Farsi and other relevant languages? How much of current
Arabic thought are we missing because books published in Arabic
countries are not being translated into English? (Hint: Go to the
Amazon.com Web site, search under "books" for "translations from
Arabic," and note how few of the results are of recent vintage, and how
many of those that do come up are marked "out of print.")

The Puritan divines of Colonial New England used to preach about
"fetching good out of evil." In our own time, an enormously powerful
network of scientific research laboratories is a good that was fetched
out of the evil signaled by the launch of Sputnik. A similarly powerful
network of research and scholarship focused on such subjects as Middle
Eastern languages and cultures, techniques of intelligence gathering and
analysis, and the conduct of international diplomacy is a good we ought
to be trying to fetch out of the evil we experienced on 9/11. Where are
the political and educational leaders who will develop the plan?

MICHAEL HALLORAN

Troy, New York

* * * * * * * * *
It's sad to realize that none of America's prominent political leaders have
explored the powerful comparison Halloran sketches here. Framing the
response to 9/11 as a "war" has rendered most politicians and much of
the U.S. populace brain dead when it comes to seeking creative reponses
to our present situation.

[In the interest of full disclosure, I confess that I was a beneficiary of
the National Defense Education Act which financed the first three
years of my education in graduate school. This scholarly work prepared
me to defend my country by resisting several unwise, unjust, costly,
socially calamitous wars. - Langdon]

Sorrows of Empire: grim diagnosis from a noted political scientist

An excerpt from Chalmers Johnson's new book, The Sorrows of
Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic, offers
an extremely dreary, but all-too-plausible summary of America's
situation at home and abroad.

"The sorrows of empire are the inescapable consequences of the
national policies American elites chose after September 11, 2001.
Militarism and imperialism always bring with them sorrows. The
ubiquitous symbol of the Christian religion, the cross, is perhaps
the world's most famous reminder of the sorrows that accompanied
the Roman Empire--it represents the most atrocious death the
Roman proconsuls could devise in order to keep subordinate
peoples in line. From Cato to Cicero, the slogan of Roman leaders
was "Let them hate us so long as they fear us."

Four sorrows, it seems to me, are certain to be visited on the United
States. Their cumulative effect guarantees that the U.S. will cease
to resemble the country outlined in the Constitution of 1787. First,
there will be a state of perpetual war, leading to more terrorism
against Americans wherever they may be and a spreading reliance
on nuclear weapons among smaller nations as they try to ward off
the imperial juggernaut. Second is a loss of democracy and Constitutional
rights as the presidency eclipses Congress and is itself transformed from
a co-equal "executive branch" of government into a military junta. Third
is the replacement of truth by propaganda, disinformation, and the
glorification of war, power, and the military legions. Lastly, there is
bankruptcy, as the United States pours its economic resources into
ever more grandiose military projects and shortchanges the education,
health, and safety of its citizens. All I have space for here is to touch
briefly on three of these: endless war, the loss of Constitutional liberties,
and financial ruin.

. . . . .
In my judgment, American imperialism and militarism are so far
advanced and obstacles to its further growth have been so completely
neutralized that the decline of the U.S. has already begun. The
country is following the path already taken by its erstwhile
adversary in the cold war, the former Soviet Union. The U.S.'s
refusal to dismantle its own empire of military bases when the
menace of the Soviet Union disappeared, combined with its
inappropriate response to the blowback of September 11, 2001,
makes this decline virtually inevitable.

There is only one development that could conceivably stop this
cancerous process, and that is for the people to retake control
of Congress, reform it and the election laws to make it a genuine
assembly of democratic representatives, and cut off the supply
of money to the Pentagon and the Central Intelligence Agency.
That was, after all, the way the Vietnam War was finally brought
to a halt.

John le Carré, the novelist most famous for his books on the role
of intelligence services in the cold war, writes, "America has entered
one of its periods of historical madness, but this is the worst I
can remember: worse than McCarthyism, worse than the Bay of Pigs
and in the long term potentially more disastrous than the Vietnam
War."15 His view is somewhat more optimistic than mine. If it is just
a period of madness, like musth in elephants, we might get over it.
The U.S. still has a strong civil society that could, at least in theory,
overcome the entrenched interests of the armed forces and the
military-industrial complex. I fear, however, that the U.S. has indeed
crossed the Rubicon and that there is no way to restore Constitutional
government short of a revolutionary rehabilitation of American democracy.
Without root and branch reform, Nemesis awaits. She is the goddess of
revenge, the punisher of pride and arrogance, and the United States is
on course for a rendezvous with her."

The full text of the article, "Sorrows of Empire," can be found at the
web site of Foreign Policy in Focus.

Constitution? We don't need no stinking Constitution!

General Tommy Franks, leader of U.S. forces in the war on Iraq,
has an interview in Cigar Aficianado magazine in which he expresses
severe doubt that the Constitution would survive an attack on
country by weapons of mass destruction.

A summary from Newsmax.com reports:

Discussing the hypothetical dangers posed to the U.S. in the wake
of Sept. 11, Franks said that “the worst thing that could happen”
is if terrorists acquire and then use a biological, chemical or nuclear
weapon that inflicts heavy casualties.

If that happens, Franks said, “... the Western world, the free world,
loses what it cherishes most, and that is freedom and liberty we’ve
seen for a couple of hundred years in this grand experiment that
we call democracy.”

Franks then offered “in a practical sense” what he thinks would
happen in the aftermath of such an attack.

“It means the potential of a weapon of mass destruction and a
terrorist, massive, casualty-producing event somewhere in the
Western world – it may be in the United States of America –
that causes our population to question our own Constitution and
to begin to militarize our country in order to avoid a repeat of
another mass, casualty-producing event. Which in fact, then
begins to unravel the fabric of our Constitution. Two steps,
very, very important.”

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

It's always interesting to learn what our leaders are thinking.

London protesters use mobile technology to ruin Bush PR images

Here’s a story from the BBC about clever attempts to ruin
the scenic spectacles Bush handlers hope to capture during
his visit with Queen Elizabeth and the Poodle.

“Protesters angry about the "security bubble" around President
George Bush on his UK visit are being asked to use gadgets to be
heard and seen.

The Chasing Bush campaign is asking people to "disrupt the PR"
of the visit by spoiling stage-managed photos.

They are being encouraged to send location reports and images
by mobile to be posted on the Chasing Bush site.

"We want to give people a chance to be a visible voice of
dissatisfaction," said campaign organiser Tim Ireland.

Technologies like text messaging and weblogs have been
Successfully used in the past to co-ordinate routes and
meet-up points for mass protests.

But the gadgets are now being used more proactively to make
protests more visible and disrupt any potential stage-managing
of the President's visit.”

Smithsonian celebrates weapons of mass destruction

The shameful history of attempts to exhibit the Enola Gay, the airplane
that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, has opened a new
chapter. A museum site recenlty organized by the Smithsonian National
Air and Space Museum, new facility, the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center at
Washington Dulles International Airport, will feature the Enola Gay as its centerpiece.
According to the History News Nework, "Fully restored, the Enola Gay will be displayed
as a 'magnificent technological achievement.'

"A coalition of scholars, religious leaders, veterans, scientists, and citizen activists
plan to protest the exhibit in its current form. They claim that it lacks historical
context and fails to address the controversy surrounding the bombings or
information on casualties. Arguing that the "celebratory nature of the exhibit
gives legitimacy to the 1945 bombing," the coalition joins other groups that
have already objected to the exhibit. According to Peter Kuznick, professor of
history and director of the Nuclear Studies Institute at American University,
who drafted the committee's statement, "We are not opposed to exhibiting the
Enola Gay...we welcome any exhibition that will spur an honest and balanced
discussion of the atomic bombings in 1945 and of current U.S. nuclear policy."

*****
In early episodes during the 1990s, planned exhibitions of the Enola Gay
that called attention to deaths and destruction caused by the bomb were
censored because they cast a bad light on the American military. Now that flaw
has been repaired and thought control restored. Visitors to the Smithsonian can
view with pride the curators' patriotic celebration of U.S. airpower and weapons
of mass destruction.

File under "History - politically correct."

The global spread of HIV

A map prepared by the BBC provides graphic depiction of the
spread of HIV AIDS around the world. There is much good
information and comment on the BBC web page as well, including
Robin Lustig's "The genocide of a generation."

Also important is a BBC poll that shows astonishing levels of ignorance
about the causes and prevention of AIDS, especially in China. The
survey also finds that world public opinion is clear about one crucial
matter: Their governments are not doing enough to fight the disease.

More on global warming

From CNN today:

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Melting of glaciers in the Patagonian ice fields of southern
Argentina and Chile has doubled in recent years, caused by higher temperatures,
lower snowfall and a more rapid breaking of icebergs, a study suggests.

. . . .

The researchers concluded that the Patagonia ice is melting faster now due to
warmer air temperatures, a decrease in precipitation and a more rapid breaking
of pieces of icebergs into the ocean, known as calving.

The study was conducted by Eric Rignot of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in
Pasadena, California; Andres Rivera of the University of Chile in Santiago,
and Gino Casassa of the Center of Scientific Studies in Valdivia, Chile.

Phytoplankton vanishing at a rate that alarms scientists

Were it not for reassurances from the Bush administration that global warming
is (a) not happening and (b) would not be of any significance even if it were,
this report would be worrisome. From a story by David Perlman in the San Francisco Chronicle ....


"Plant life covering the surface of the world's oceans, a vital resource that
helps absorb the worst of the "greenhouse gases" involved in global warming,
is disappearing at a dangerous rate, scientists have discovered.

Satellites and seagoing ships have confirmed the diminishing productivity
of the microscopic plants, which oceanographers say is most striking in the
waters of the North Pacific -- ranging as far up as the high Arctic.

Whether the lost productivity of the plants, called phytoplankton, is
directly due to increased ocean temperatures that have been recorded
for at least the past 20 years remains part of an extremely complex puzzle,
says Watson W. Gregg, a NASA biologist at the Goddard Space Flight Center
in Greenbelt, Md., but it surely offers a fresh clue to the controversy over
climate change.

According to Gregg, the greatest loss of phytoplankton has occurred
where ocean temperatures have risen most significantly between the
early 1980s and the late 1990s. In the North Atlantic summertime, sea
surface temperatures rose about 1.3 degrees Fahrenheit during that
period, Gregg said, while in the North Pacific the ocean's surface temperatures
rose about 7/10ths of a degree.

While the link between ocean temperatures and the productivity of
plankton is striking, other factors can also affect the health of the plants.
They need iron as nourishment, for example, and much of it reaches them
in powerful winds that sweep iron-containing dust across the oceans from
continental deserts. When those winds diminish or fail, plankton can suffer.
There have been small but measurable decreases in the amount of iron
deposited over the oceans in recent years, according to Gregg and his colleagues.

PRODUCTIVITY OFF 6% GLOBALLY

The significant decline in plankton productivity has a direct effect on the
world's carbon cycle, Gregg said. Normally, he noted, the ocean plants
take up about half of all the carbon dioxide in the world's environment
because they use the carbon, along with sunlight, for growth, and release
oxygen into the atmosphere in a process known as photosynthesis.

Primary production of plankton in the North Pacific decreased by more
than 9 percent during the past 20 years, and by nearly 7 percent in the
North Atlantic, Gregg and his colleagues determined from their satellite
observations and shipboard surveys. Combining all the major ocean basins
of the world, Gregg and his colleagues found the decline in plankton
productivity more than 6 percent."

Clash of civilizations -- Wesley Clark's view of the preparations

The Village Voice has a story by Sydney H. Schanberg about a new book, Winning Modern Wars, written by General Wesley Clark. Evidently the neocons in the Bush administration took him into their confidence about plans for the emerging Pax Americana
in all its arrogant ugliness.

- - - - - - -
Schanberg writes:

"Wesley Clark, the retired four-star general who is one of 10 candidates for the
Democratic nomination for president, has written a new book that is just arriving on bookstore shelves. Called Winning Modern Wars, it’s mostly about the Iraq
war and terrorism—and it is laced with powerful new information that he held
back from the public when he was a CNN military commentator during the Bush administration’s preparations for the war.

For example, he says he learned from military sources at the Pentagon in
November 2001, just two months after the September 11 terrorist attacks on
New York and Washington, that serious planning for the war on Iraq had already
begun and that, in addition to Iraq, the administration had drawn up a list of six other nations to be targeted over a period of five years.

Here’s what he writes on page 130:
"As I went back through the Pentagon in November 2001, one of the senior
military staff officers had time for a chat. Yes, we were still on track for going
against Iraq, he said. But there was more. This was being discussed as part
of a five-year campaign plan, he said, and there were a total of seven countries,
beginning with Iraq, then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Iran, Somalia, and Sudan." Clark
adds, "I left the Pentagon that afternoon deeply concerned."

He never disclosed anything like this information in any of his CNN commentaries
or in the opinion columns he wrote for print media at the time. If Americans had
known such things, and if the information is accurate, would they have supported
the White House’s march to war? Would Congress have passed the war resolution
the White House asked for?

On the next page of the book, 131, Clark writes: "And what about the real sources
of terrorists—U.S. allies in the region like Egypt, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia? Wasn’t
it the repressive policies of the first, and the corruption and poverty of the second,
that were generating many of the angry young men who became terrorists? And
what of the radical ideology and direct funding spewing from Saudi Arabia? Wasn’t
that what was holding the radical Islamic movement together? . . . It seemed that
we were being taken into a strategy more likely to make us the enemy—encouraging
what could look like a ‘clash of civilizations’—not a good strategy for Winning the war
on terror."

Closing the Chatrooms

A fairly large piece of Internet utopia is closing down. As reported
by Reuters, Microsoft is draining the sewer that, alas, has
flooded its MSN chatrooms.

"LONDON (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp. announced on Wednesday
it would shut down its Internet chat rooms in 28 countries,
saying the forums had become a haven for peddlers of junk
e-mail and sex predators.

"The straightforward truth of the matter is free unmoderated
chat isn't safe," said Geoff Sutton, European general manager
of Microsoft MSN, told Reuters.

From October 14, the software giant will shut down its MSN
chat services in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Asia and
much of Latin America, forcing millions of message board
users to find alternative online forums to discuss the topics of the day.

In those regions, said Microsoft, the chat was free and
unsupervised, giving rise to a nefarious element that
bombarded users with "spam" mail, much of which was
pornographic and, in some cases, allowing pedophiles to
prey on children."

..... "In the United States, Canada and Japan, Microsoft
will introduce an unsupervised chat service solely for subscribers,
who are considered more accountable because their billing details
and identities are on record with the company.

"It's a signal that some of the joyful early days of the Internet
have moved on a bit. Chat was one of those things that was a bit
hippyish. It was free and open. But a small minority have changed
that for everyone. It's very sad," Sutton said.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *
I wonder if Yahoogroups and other prominent chatrooms will
now take similar steps.

In the early days of euphoria about the Internet, it was considered
bad form to talk about the need to control misbehavior on the Net.
Libertarian freedom was to prevail and only the best of human
traits would be on display. No need to worry about greed, explotation,
corporate domination, the corruption of democracy, or the ordinary
evils that afflict social groups. When I called attention to the need
to pay attention to such matters, I was dismissed as overwrought and
probably "anti-technology." But if one sees technologies as forms of
social and political organization, eventually one has to figure out how
to balance the good with the bad. To postpone confronting these problems
merely exacerbates them, as the MSN debacle clearly demonstrates.

Terrorizing America's climate scientists

There’s new evidence of Bush administration attempts to bully E.P.A. scientists studying global climate change. The Observer notes:

"Emails and internal government documents obtained by The Observer show that officials have sought to edit or remove research warning that the problem is serious. They have enlisted the help of conservative lobby groups funded by the oil industry to attack US government scientists if they produce work seen as accepting too readily that pollution is an issue.

Central to the revelations of double dealing is the discovery of an email sent to Phil Cooney, chief of staff at the White House Council on Environmental Quality, by Myron Ebell, a director of the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI). The CEI is an ultra-conservative lobby group that has received more than $1 million in donations since 1998 from the oil giant Exxon, which sells Esso petrol in Britain.

The email, dated 3 June 2002, reveals how White House officials wanted the CEI's help to play down the impact of a report last summer by the government's Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), in which the US admitted for the first time that humans are contributing to global warming. 'Thanks for calling and asking for our help,' Ebell tells Cooney.

The email discusses possible tactics for playing down the report and getting rid of EPA officials, including its then head, Christine Whitman. 'It seems to me that the folks at the EPA are the obvious fall guys and we would only hope that the fall guy (or gal) should be as high up as possible,' Ebell wrote in the email. 'Perhaps tomorrow we will call for Whitman to be fired,' he added. ….

Former EPA climate policy adviser Jeremy Symons said morale at the agency had been devastated by the administration's tactics. He painted a picture of scientists afraid to conduct research for fear of angering their White House paymasters. 'They do good research,' he said. 'But they feel that they have a boss who does not want them to do it. And if they do it right, then they will get hit or their work will be buried.'"

* * * * * * * *

Of course, this is not an isolated case. The breakdown of any rational relationship between science and policy making is one of the hallmarks of the Bush administration. "Facts" are mere constructs to serve predetermined ideological objectives.
Those who object to this way of doing things are threatened and intimidated. It's interesting that we hear so little from the scientific community about this reign of terror. Perhaps the gravy train of research funding is lavish enough to buy their acquiescence.

Thoughts on Howard Dean

I went down to the City of Hudson for a Howard Dean rally this afternoon.
While I've always had a favorable view of Dean, I must say I was strongly
impressed by his talk, both the substance and the way he delivered it.

He began with reminiscences of the Civil Rights movement and its contributions
to American life. From there he recalled the sense of community that
flowed from that movement, noting that the policies and attitude of the
Bush administration has generated not community but division, both among
Americans and in America’s relationship to the rest of the world.
Significantly, he noted Bush’s emphasis on “quotas” in his opposition to
the affirmative action case before Supreme Court, saying that Bush chose to
sow division by playing “the race card.” Dean went on to talk about the 3
trillion dollars that Bush has given to his wealthy friends in tax cut
legislation, as well as the billions spent on the war in Iraq, noting some
of the urgent needs to which this money could be applied in the U.S. –
early education, health insurance for all citizens, veterans pensions,
broadband for rural economies, renewable energy, etc. Especially telling
were his comments about the financial and social costs of our burgeoning
prison population which, he observed, are all the more appalling given the
fact that elementary school teachers can identify the four or five kids in
their classes who are most at risk of winding up in jail. Wouldn’t it make
more sense, he asked, to address the problems of possible future prisoners
while they are just young children with obvious needs?

Dean took special care to attack Bush’s record on defense and security.
How are we more secure having destroyed respect for America around the
globe? What good does it do national defense to wreck the kinds of
cooperation that we know are necessary to quell international conflict?
His approach on these key points struck me as sensible and likely to strike
a responsive chord even among those who have supported Bush’s war policies
until now.

At the heart of his message this afternoon was the conviction that the
American people themselves must join together to take back their country
from the clutches of the cynically self-interested Bush cabal. The hope
for renewal must come from the combined efforts of people in communities
like Hudson, New York.

A fairly large crowd listened and responded enthusiastically. Dean came
across as a straight shooter, a man from the heartland with a no nonsense
vision of the country’s problems and possibilities. Speaking with humor
and modesty, he seemed anything but full of himself, a welcome change from
so many of the politicians we hear these days. Win or lose, we are lucky to
have Howard Dean’s voice gaining prominence in the presidential campaign.

Your Daily Dose of Fear from Bush
(don’t worry, children, he’ll protect us)

Social scientists and concerned citiizens have begun paying attention
to the disempowering rhetoric Bush and his people routinely use to frighten the
public and foster dependency upon the President and support for his perpetual
“war on terrorism.” A short article on this no longer subtle tactic is Renata Brooks’
“Bush Dominates a Nation of Victims.” Now an anonymous anthropologist at
the University of Louisiana, Lafayette has edited the text of Bush's Speech on
Iraq, September 7, 2003, identifying the references to terror, violence and death.

>terror
>deadly attacks
>Terrorism
>destroying
>terror
>killed
>terrorist
>terrorist
>terror
>mass destruction
>terrorists
>attacked
>terrorists
>dead
>war
>terrorist threat
>torture chambers
>mass graves
>violence and terror
>international terrorism
>terrorists
>ideologies of terror
>terror
>assassins
>torturers
>killers
>attackers
>attackers
>foreign terrorists
>war
>killers
>attacks
>attacks
>terrorist groups
>attacks
>terrorists
>ambushed
>killed
>bombed
>murdered
>bombing
>violence
>attacks
>terrorists
>terrorists
>inflict harm
>war on terror
>a lengthy war
>a different kind of war
>war on terror
>destroying the terrorists
>against the terrorists
>future attacks
>precise strikes against enemy targets
>combat
>raids
>enemy weapons
>ammunition
>killed hundreds
>terrorists
>dead
>hunting for them
>terrible weapons
>terrorist attacks
>attacks
>war on terror
>died
>war
>terror

Edward Teller's "contributions"


Edward Teller, 95, physicist and tireless Cold War advocate for nuclear
armaments, died this past week.

He was renown as “the father of the H-bomb.” When I was a grad
student in Berkeley during the middle 1960s, I lived briefly in an apartment
just across the street from Teller and would occasionally see him ambling
down the path to his car. I had to suppress an urge to yell out “Hi, Dad!”

Beyond his work on the atomic and hydrogen bomb projects, Teller is
best known for (1) destroying the career of his friend Robert Oppenheimer
during 1954 government hearings on Oppenheimer’s security clearance
and (2) boosting the idea of the “Star War” missile defense shield to
Ronald Reagan and anybody foolish enough to take the plan seriously.

If any of the devices Teller built and promoted are ever put into use, we
can kiss the planet goodbye. The man may have accomplished some good
during his lifetime, but I am unaware of it.