Dr. Lawrence Britt has examined the fascist regimes of Hitler (Germany), Mussolini (Italy), Franco (Spain), Suharto (Indonesia) and several Latin American regimes. Britt found 14 defining characteristics common to each:

1. Powerful and Continuing Nationalism -
Fascist regimes tend to make constant use of patriotic mottos, slogans, symbols, songs, and other paraphernalia. Flags are seen everywhere, as are flag symbols on clothing and in public displays. TOP

2. Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights -
Because of fear of enemies and the need for security, the people in fascist regimes are persuaded that human rights can be ignored in certain cases because of "need." The people tend to look the other way or even approve of torture, summary executions, assassinations, long incarcerations of prisoners, etc. TOP

3. Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause -
The people are rallied into a unifying patriotic frenzy over the need to eliminate a perceived common threat or foe: racial , ethnic or religious minorities; liberals; communists; socialists, terrorists, etc. TOP

4. Supremacy of the Military -
Even when there are widespread domestic problems, the military is given a disproportionate amount of government funding, and the domestic agenda is neglected. Soldiers and military service are glamorized. TOP

5. Rampant Sexism -
The governments of fascist nations tend to be almost exclusively male-dominated. Under fascist regimes, traditional gender roles are made more rigid. Divorce, abortion and homo-sexuality are suppressed and the state is represented as the ultimate guardian of the family institution. TOP

6. Controlled Mass Media -
Sometimes to media is directly controlled by the government, but in other cases, the media is indirectly controlled by government regulation, or sympathetic media spokespeople and executives. Censorship, especially in war time, is very common. TOP

7. Obsession with National Security -
Fear is used as a motivational tool by the government over the masses. TOP

8. Religion and Government are Intertwined -
Governments in fascist nations tend to use the most common religion in the nation as a tool to manipulate public opinion. Religious rhetoric and terminology is common from government leaders, even when the major tenets of the religion are diametrically opposed to the government's policies or actions. TOP

9. Corporate Power is Protected -
The industrial and business aristocracy of a fascist nation often are the ones who put the government leaders into power, creating a mutually beneficial business/government relationship and power elite. TOP

10. Labor Power is Suppressed -
Because the organizing power of labor is the only real threat to a fascist government, labor unions are either eliminated entirely, or are severely suppressed. TOP

11. Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts -
Fascist nations tend to promote and tolerate open hostility to higher education, and academia. It is not uncommon for professors and other academics to be censored or even arrested. Free expression in the arts and letters is openly attacked. TOP

12. Obsession with Crime and Punishment -
Under fascist regimes, the police are given almost limitless power to enforce laws. The people are often willing to overlook police abuses and even forego civil liberties in the name of patriotism. There is often a national police force with virtually unlimited power in fascist nations.

13. Rampant Cronyism and Corruption -
Fascist regimes almost always are governed by groups of friends and associates who appoint each other to government positions and use governmental power and authority to protect their friends from accountability. It is not uncommon in fascist regimes for national resources and even treasures to be appropriated or even outright stolen by government leaders. TOP

14. Fraudulent Elections -
Sometimes elections in fascist nations are a complete sham. Other times elections are manipulated by smear campaigns against or even assassination of opposition candidates, use of legislation to control voting numbers or political district boundaries, and manipulation of the media. Fascist nations also typically use their judiciaries to manipulate or control elections.

'From The Day of Our Founding'

By Molly Ivins, AlterNet
Posted on January 25, 2005, Printed on January 26, 2005
http://www.alternet.org/story/21082/

"From the day of our founding, we have proclaimed that every man and woman on this earth has rights, and dignity, and matchless value, because they bear the image of the maker of heaven and earth. Across the generations we have proclaimed the imperative of self-government, because no one is fit to be a master, and no one deserves to be a slave."

Oh dear. It took us almost 100 years to get rid of slavery right here in the Land of the Free, it took us another 100 years to get rid of legal discrimination based on race and gender, and how long it will take us to achieve equal opportunity for all in this country no one can say. At least we're working at it. Or we were.

The Bush theme of what someone else christened "evangelical democracy" is rather like the "From the day of our founding ..." passage – actually, it's more complicated than that. I, too, am happy to proselytize for freedom and democracy, but I don't think we can export it by force and I don't think we can expect the world to accept our noble intentions.

Nor is democracy necessarily the cure for terrorism. As a British journalist pointed out, if Britain had been following the Bush plan, it would have nuked us years ago for being the largest single source of money for the Irish Republican Army. Reality is so often much more complicated than George W. Bush thinks it is.

Saddam Hussein was about as nasty a dictator as you can find. So why didn't the Iraqis welcome us with flowers? Because we invaded their country and are now occupying it. It is extremely difficult to convince people that you are killing them (and torturing them) for their own good. How would you feel? The British medical journal Lancet estimates Americans have now killed about 20,000 Iraqis. We don't know for sure, because America has several policies that prevent anyone from keeping an accurate count.

Unfortunately, because of the violence in Iraq, we have achieved very little in the way of reconstruction there, so many Iraqis are actually worse off today, in terms of basic services like water and electricity, than they were under Saddam Hussein. We can still hope that the elections work out well in most of the country, but it's silly to say things are going well in Iraq, as some of my more delusional colleagues claim.

Actually, we have already tried foreign policy based on idealism: In one case, it didn't work worth a damn, and in the second, it produced pretty handsome results based on a pragmatic application of principle.

The first great foreign policy idealist in the presidency was Woodrow Wilson, everyone else having pretty much stuck to the Monroe Doctrine (pace our unfortunate venture into the Philippines, a sort of early Vietnam). Wilson got us into the insanely named "War to End War." (As A.J. Muste, the great pacifist, observed, "The way to peace is through peace.")

After that hideous slaughter, Wilson signed a treaty that set up the same war to happen all over again 20 years later. He was famously unable to get his own Senate to join the doomed League of Nations.

A rather better effort was made by Jimmy Carter, who based much of his foreign policy on human rights, the equivalent of Bush's "freedom." This consistent emphasis, applied over time, resulted in every country in Latin America (though not Central America) becoming a democracy.

Unfortunately, the rest of the world is skeptical of Bush's benign intent, mostly because he invaded a country that not only hadn't done anything to us, but also was no threat to us. (There is a new line on the right that goes, "But everybody in the whole world was saying Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction." Actually, everybody wasn't. Hans Blix and the U.N. inspectors had been unable to find any, even though we claimed we knew exactly where they were and had pictures of them. Quite a few people were beginning to doubt the existence of WMDs, and what "everybody in the world" was saying at the time we went to war was, "Give the inspectors more time." In retrospect, it was quite good advice, wasn't it?)

At other points in the speech, one was left wondering, as one so often is, about Bush's grip on reality. Talking about his "ownership society," he said, "By making every citizen an agent of his or her own destiny, we will give our fellow Americans greater freedom from want and fear, and make our society more prosperous and just and equal."

He's delusional: He cannot possibly believe his tax cuts are making this country more just and equal – they are making it more unjust and unequal every day, not to mention getting us ever deeper into debt. One does not provide "freedom from want and fear" by privatizing Social Security. We've been there, we've done this – we tried unregulated capitalism at the end of the 19th century, and it was awful.

© 2005 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/21082/

JON CARROLL

Jon Carroll

Friday, January 28, 2005

First, read the quote, then I'll tell you who said it when:

"In an ever-changing, incomprehensible world the masses had reached the point where they would, at the same time, believe everything and nothing, think that everything was possible and that nothing was true. ... Mass propaganda discovered that its audience was ready at all times to believe the worst, no matter how absurd, and did not particularly object to being deceived because it held every statement to be a lie anyhow. The totalitarian mass leaders based their propaganda on the correct psychological assumption that, under such conditions, one could make people believe the most fantastic statements one day, and trust that if the next day they were given irrefutable proof of their falsehood, they would take refuge in cynicism; instead of deserting the leaders who had lied to them, they would protest that they had known all along that the statement was a lie and would admire the leaders for their superior tactical cleverness."

That was Hannah Arendt, in her book "The Origins of Totalitarianism," published in 1951. It seems to me to perfectly describe our current perplex.

It solves a basic problem that has been bothering me forever: The duplicity of the Bush administration is so transparent, why are more people not bothered by it? Bush's father said, "Read my lips: no new taxes," and then raised taxes, and that was apparently enough to get him booted out of office.

Bush says "weapons of mass destruction" and pretends they're the reason he's going to war, and there are no WMDs and all of sudden we're "spreading democracy" using that old democracy spreader the Sword, and no one seems to care. Indeed, many people seem to believe that we did find WMDs. Or maybe they are just admiring the administration's tactical cleverness.

Give it credit: It was tactically clever. It did run rings around the opposition.

There's wonderful Barbara Boxer, in the Senate with her chart detailing Condoleezza Rice's lies. Beep! Wrong answer. The world is incomprehensible anyway, so really there are no such things as lies. Barbara Boxer -- far too reality-based.

White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan recently berated the press for continuing to use the word "private accounts" to describe a feature of the president's new Social Security plan, despite the fact that the president used the term himself many times. It's just that "private" and "privatization" did not test very well with the voters, so now it's "personal accounts." And the press has largely gone along with it.

What does it matter anyway? Everything is possible and nothing is true.

Also now verboten: "the coalition of the willing," perhaps because so many of the willing have become unwilling. Please adjust your memories to reflect the new reality. Thanks for playing.

We also have yet another member of the "media" who turns out to have been paid for her opinions. Syndicated columnist Maggie Gallagher, a vitriolic opponent of same-sex marriage, was paid $21,500 by the Health and Human Services Department to promote the president's Defense of Marriage agenda. Of course, her money pales in comparison with the $240,000 that Armstrong Williams was paid to shill for No Child Left Behind, but that's just haggling over price. They're in the same profession.

Perhaps the Bush administration has a stake in discrediting the media. When everything is possible and nothing is true, the media have no function. (Not that we exactly make it easy for ourselves -- it took much of the press two years not to be bullied by the words "Sept. 11" into printing almost any fantasy the Bush administration was peddling.)

It would seem that Hannah Arendt's words are applicable to our time -- people do not seem to mind being deceived. They believe what makes them feel safe. And the world turns.

See, if you're really afraid, you're prepared to believe the worst, and the nature of the worst doesn't actually matter so much.

  Some Just Voted for Food
  By Dahr Jamail
  Inter Press Service

  Monday 31 January 2005

  BAGHDAD - Voting in Baghdad was linked with receipt of food rations, several voters said after the Sunday poll.

  Many Iraqis said Monday that their names were marked on a list provided by the government agency that provides monthly food rations before they were allowed to vote.

 "I went to the voting centre and gave my name and district where I lived to a man," said Wassif Hamsa, a 32-year-old journalist who lives in the predominantly Shia area Janila in Baghdad. "This man then sent me to the person who distributed my monthly food ration."

  Mohammed Ra'ad, an engineering student who lives in the Baya'a district of the capital city reported a similar experience.

  Ra'ad, 23, said he saw the man who distributed monthly food rations in his district at his polling station. "The food dealer, who I know personally of course, took my name and those of my family who were voting," he said. "Only then did I get my ballot and was allowed to vote."

  "Two of the food dealers I know told me personally that our food rations would be withheld if we did not vote," said Saeed Jodhet, a 21-year-old engineering student who voted in the Hay al-Jihad district of Baghdad.

  There has been no official indication that Iraqis who did not vote would not receive their monthly food rations.

  Many Iraqis had expressed fears before the election that their monthly food rations would be cut if they did not vote. They said they had to sign voter registration forms in order to pick up their food supplies.

  Their experiences on the day of polling have underscored many of their concerns about questionable methods used by the U.S.-backed Iraqi interim government to increase voter turnout.

 Just days before the election, 52 year-old Amin Hajar who owns an auto garage in central Baghdad had said: "I'll vote because I can't afford to have my food ration cut...if that happened, me and my family would starve to death."

  Hajar told IPS that when he picked up his monthly food ration recently, he was forced to sign a form stating that he had picked up his voter registration. He had feared that the government would use this information to track those who did not vote.

 Calls to the Independent Electoral Commission for Iraq (IECI) and to the Ministry of Trade, which is responsible for the distribution of the monthly food ration, were not returned.

 Other questions have arisen over methods to persuade people to vote. U.S. troops tried to coax voters in Ramadi, capital city of the al-Anbar province west of Baghdad to come out to vote, AP reported.

IECI officials have meanwhile 'downgraded' their earlier estimate of voter turnout.

  IECI spokesman Farid Ayar had declared a 72 percent turnout earlier, a figure given also by the Bush Administration.

  But at a press conference Ayar backtracked on his earlier figure, saying the turnout would be nearer 60 percent of registered voters.

  The earlier figure of 72 percent, he said, was "only guessing" and "just an estimate" that had been based on "very rough, word of mouth estimates gathered informally from the field." He added that it will be some time before the IECI can issue accurate figures on the turnout.

  "Percentages and numbers come only after counting and will be announced when it's over," he said. "It is too soon to say that those were the official numbers."

 Where there was a large turnout, the motivation behind the voting and the processes both appeared questionable. The Kurds up north were voting for autonomy, if not independence. In the south and elsewhere Shias were competing with Kurds for a bigger say in the 275-member national assembly.

 In some places like Mosul the turnout was heavier than expected. But many of the voters came from outside, and identity checks on voters appeared lax. Others spoke of vote-buying bids.

  The Bush Administration has lauded the success of the Iraq election, but doubtful voting practices and claims about voter turnout are both mired in controversy.

  Election violence too was being seen differently across the political spectrum.

  More than 30 Iraqis, a U.S. soldier, and at least 10 British troops died Sunday. Hundreds of Iraqis were also wounded in attacks across Baghdad, in Baquba 50km northeast of the capital as well as in the northern cities Mosul and Kirkuk.

 The British troops were on board a C-130 transport plane that crashed near Balad city just northwest of Baghdad. The British military has yet to reveal the cause of the crash.

  Despite unprecedented security measures in which 300,000 U.S. and Iraqi security forces were brought in to curb the violence, nine suicide bombers and frequent mortar attacks took a heavy toll in the capital city, while strings of attacks were reported around the rest of the country.

As U..S. President George W. Bush saw it, "some Iraqis were killed while exercising their rights as citizens."

JON CARROLL

 Jon Carroll Thursday, February 3, 2005

Jared Diamond's new book "Collapse" is an effort to understand why some societies fail and others do not. He identifies five major areas of concern: climate change, hostile neighbors, friendly trading partners, environmental damage, and the response of the culture to environmental damage. Some cultures adapt well to change, others do not. Some cultures have functioning decision-making processes; others do not.

The example of Easter Island is instructive. The people of the island built those amazing stone statues, and in the process cut down every last tree. No trees, no wood for houses and fires; no protection from erosion; no useful species, and so on. What was the person thinking who cut down the last tree? We don't know, but whatever it was, it was based on faulty assumptions and flawed reasoning.

 According to Diamond, one of the things that leads to faulty assumptions and flawed reasoning is the isolation of the elite. In the Mayan kingdoms, the elite lived in huge palaces surrounded by many servants and much ritual. They were, he speculates, largely unaware of, or indifferent to, the overpopulation and depleted resources of the countryside. I can envision a Mayan noble, as the battles rage around him and the palace is sacked, uttering those immortal words, "maybe I should have been paying closer attention." We are easily distracted monkeys.

Paying attention is hard. The old joke about the man falling off the 90-story building who is heard to say as he passes the 32nd floor, "so far, so good" -- that's the dynamic. Hey, what could go wrong?

America in 2005 clearly has an isolation of the elite. Gated communities, private schools, vacation homes, personal planes and limousines -- people in the richest 1 percent could go for years without having a single conversation with a non-rich person -- except, of course, for the people in their employ. This situation is getting worse, not better -- as our public institutions fail, the elite are setting up parallel institutions for themselves.

I do not identify myself as a member of an elite. A bank owns my home and I pay for the privilege of living in it. It is probable that I will die shortly after I pay the mortgage. A year with full equity! Joy! I shop at Safeway and take out the garbage. Two weeks ago, when I had to go through the garbage to find a single screw, I did think, "this must be the media elite I hear so much about." But that's rationalization.

I am part of an elite, maybe the only elite that will matter -- the information elite. I know where to find data. I know how to evaluate it, or I know how to find someone who does. I am surrounded by people with the same skills. Some of us are not rich at all, but we know stuff. Increasingly, this is a country filled with people who don't know stuff. Increasingly, the media are feeding off the people who don't know stuff.

You hear the stories all the time: People, shown a copy of the Bill of Rights and told it is a proposed new law, say they are against it. (They do not say: "Hey, isn't that the Bill of Rights?") A fair percentage of people believe that Saddam Hussein instigated the Sept. 11 attacks. Jay Leno asks people on the street to name the country north of the United States, and they can't. At a journalism school in Michigan, students balked at the idea of reading a newspaper twice a week as part of a class exercise. Few read newspapers at all, and they saw no reason to start. They got their information somewhere else -- television, the Internet, wherever.

Obviously, I'm a fan of newspapers, but I'm not blind to their faults. They get stuff wrong a lot; I get stuff wrong a lot. But we get more stuff right, and we get a whole lot of stuff. In order to be part of the information elite, you need to wade through a lot of stuff. I am not talking about opinions; I am talking about the data people use to form the opinions.

There was a lot of talk after the tsunami about how the canny primitive people of the islands in the Indian Ocean sensed that a tsunami was coming and made for higher ground, saving themselves. What sixth sense could they have had? Maybe it was that they noticed the water rushing out at an alarming rate and thought, hmmm, when that comes back in, it may not be in a form we like. Run! They had information. They didn't get it from newspapers, they got it from observation.

But our society is constructed, artificial, often abstract. It is the use of language and the trends of law-making that represent the water rushing out to sea. If we know how to find that information, maybe we can save ourselves. If not -- well, in the words of a great Mayan statesman, "maybe I should have been paying closer attention."

________________________________________

It can't happen here because we have the latest technology, we have a vigorous democracy, we have values and piety, we have -- what's that noise?

I have a lovely little cabin on the moon; y'all come and visit jcarroll@sfchronicle.com.

Very few people choose war. They choose selfishness and the result is war. Each of us, individually and nationally, must choose: total love or total war.

Nothing, not even victory,
will erase the terrible hole of blood:
nothing, neither the sea,
nor the passing of sand and time,
nor the geranium burning
over the grave.

A U.S. Army sergeant (and his wife) speak out.

http://www.bruderhof.com/articles/benderman-k.htm?source=DailyDig

    Paranoia Grips the U.S. Capital
    By Eric Margolis
    The Toronto Sun

     Sunday 06 February 2005

     The film Seven Days In May is one of my all-time favourites. The gripping 1964 drama, starring Burt Lancaster, depicts an attempted coup by far rightists in Washington using a top-secret Pentagon anti-terrorist unit called something like "Contelinpro."

     Life imitates art. This week, former military intelligence analyst William Arkin revealed a hitherto unknown directive, with the Orwellian name "JCS Conplan 0300-97," authorizing the Pentagon to employ special, ultra-secret "anti-terrorist" military units on American soil for what the author claims are "extra-legal missions."

     In other words, using U.S. soldiers to kill or arrest Americans, acts that have been illegal since the U.S. Civil War.

     This frightening news comes as Washington is gripped by reborn, Cold-War-style paranoia, ominous threats of war against Iran from the real president, Dick Cheney, and a titanic bureaucratic battle just won by Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

     Instead of being fired for the grotesque military-political fiasco in Iraq and the shameful torture scandals, Rumsfeld has just managed to create a new, Pentagon spy/special ops organization, blandly named "Strategic Support Branch," that will replace or duplicate many of the CIA's tasks.

     The CIA has been sent to the doghouse. Too many CIA veterans criticized or contradicted Bush's and Cheney's phony claims over Iraq and terrorism. So Bush has imposed a new, yes-man director on the agency, slashed its budgets, purged its senior officers, and downgraded CIA to third-class status.

     Rumsfeld's new, massively funded SSB will become the Pentagon's CIA, complete with commando units, spies, mercenary forces, intelligence gathering and analysis, and a direct line to the White House. The Pentagon has just effectively taken over the spy business.

     Used Terrorism Hysteria

     Mind you, the Pentagon and its Defence Intelligence Agency have been deeply involved in intelligence around the globe for 50 years. U.S. Army intelligence and its covert sub-branches have long conducted "black ops," including missions in the U.S. as well as assassinations and sabotage abroad. The Pentagon consumes three-quarters of the total U.S. intelligence budget.

     Rumsfeld has skillfully used terrorism hysteria to wrest control of intelligence and make the Pentagon supreme in Washington's bureaucratic power struggles.

     The Pentagon's new spy arm will be largely excluded from Congressional oversight or media examination. Its special operations teams will roam the globe, all under cover of "deep black" missions of which no records will be kept, and no questions asked.

     Equally worrying, the Pentagon's new special-ops units are headed up by notorious religious fanatic, Lt. Gen. William Boykin, who calls the U.S. Army "the house of God" and Islamic insurgents "agents of Satan." He warned Muslims, "my God is bigger than your god, which is an idol."

     Boykin's command will now dispatch post-modern Christian crusaders to cleanse the world of Satanic Muslims and other miscreants. The Pentagon's new special forces will be able to run operations of which the CIA knows nothing.

     The 9/11 Commission called for improved intra-agency co-operation and data sharing -- instead, the U.S. will get far less co-operation, as the Pentagon goes its own, secret way.

     Now, George W. Bush, who clearly believes he holds the mandate of heaven after being re-elected by the less mentally active half of American voters, has decided to "unleash" special forces and all sorts of irregular units, including mercenaries, uniformed bounty hunters, and mutants sporting t-shirts proclaiming "kill 'em all, let God sort 'em out." These militarized thugs and video arcade Rambos are sure to run amok, dragging America's once good name ever deeper into the mud.

     We have evidently learned nothing from the wars in Indochina and Central America.

     Have we reached Seven Days in May?

     Not yet, but the second Bush administration has been taking dangerous steps that continue to curtail personal rights, further emasculate the supine, cowardly U.S. Congress, and empower ideological or religious extremists and shadowy agencies with unrestrained powers that endanger Americans at home, and all abroad suspected of troubling the Pax Americana.

    Eric Margolis is Contributing Foreign Editor to the Toronto Sun.

http://www.peace-out.com/

http://www.sistani.org/html/eng/

Meet the new boss:  It appears that the Grand Ayatollah Ali al- Sistani is the big winner in the Iraq elections.

 Bush to Social Security: Drop Dead
    By Harvey Wasserman
    The Columbus Free Press

    Saturday 05 February 2005

    Let's cut the actuarial doublespeak: Bush comes not to save Social Security, but to bury it.

    Ever since Franklin Roosevelt installed the most successful social program in US history, far right fanatics of the Bush ilk have been trying to destroy it. They may be on the brink of succeeding.

    Fundamentalist conservatives despise any social welfare program that works. Their stark ideological crusade demands the dismantling of any program through which society can exert control over the economy or our common heritage, such as the natural environment.

    Their demand is precisely the opposite when it comes to personal and cultural behavior. The fundamentalist right WANTS the government (if they control it) to legislate "morality" when it comes to sexual choice (gay marriage), recreational preferences (marijuana), women's rights (freedom to choose), free speech (the Patriot Act), free press (censorship), sexual expression (the FCC), religion (official prayer), education (evolution), human rights (Guantanamo), the sanctity of life (the death penalty) and much more.

    In other words, in the name of "family values," it's fine to insert the government into our personal lives.

    But when it comes to the economy, it's survival-of-the-fittest Social Darwinism all the way. The corporate rich are the Elect of God. Any interference with their absolute power is a heathen affront. To aid those less fortunate is to prolong the existence of inferior beings who are predetermined for Divine rejection.

    That means dismantling all government programs that might help anyone other than the very rich. Or that stand in the way of destroying the natural environment to pave the way for the return of the Messiah.

    It's important to make the rational arguments about why Bush's plan to "save" Social Security will result in its destruction.

    But it's equally crucial to remember that Bush is not really about saving Social Security. This latest assault is about destroying it -- consciously, willfully, utterly. It's the latest installment in a rightist crusade that's been going on since Social Security was born.

    Under normal circumstances, ascribing motive can be a dicey game. But these are not normal people. Karl Rove, Grover Norquist, Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly, Kenneth Blackwell and the rest of the far fundamentalist right are religious and ideological fanatics that have learned well the rhetoric of Orwell.

    So Bush spouts off about "saving" Social Security just as he trashed Iraq over "Weapons of Mass Destruction" to "bring them democracy." We hear from his ilk endless rhetoric about "Clear Skies" and "Healthy Forests" and "Leave No Child Behind" and "ending AIDS" and "an inspiring Ohio election" and other TV-friendly sound bites that mask reality.

    For the obvious outcome is precisely the opposite. And nowhere is that clearer than with Social Security.

    This proven program has stuck in the rightist craw ever since their "Great Satan," FDR, made it the centerpiece of history's most successful array of liberal social legislation. For seventy years the New Deal's Social Security, unemployment insurance, overtime guarantees, rights of organized labor, educational programs and much more have made this country a decent place to live for tens of millions who belong to the social classes beneath Bush's Divinely ordained Darwinian super-rich.

    It's that whole liberal edifice of social justice and true community that the right wing hates. Bush's grotesque use of the word compassion is perfectly designed to gut the term of all meaning. Every one of his programs aims in exactly the opposite direction.

    Starting with Social Security. Paul Krugman and an earnest army of economists, statisticians, actuaries and others have shown and will continue to show in painstaking detail that Bush's plans for "saving" Social Security will actually destroy it.

    But the key thing to remember is that despite what he says, destroying it is exactly what Bush is about. The Rove/Norquist fanatics that write Bush's speeches see Social Security as the final lynchpin in the New Deal's social justice legacy.

    And that's what they want obliterated. Along with your right to a comfortable retirement, free from the need to work their fundamentalist check-out counters or to sleep in their Social Darwinist cardboard boxes.

People tend to think of nonviolence as a choice between using force and doing nothing. But the real choice takes place at another level. Nonviolence is less a matter of "not killing" and more a matter of showing compassion, of saving and redeeming, of being a healing community. One can only choose between doing good to the person placed in one's path, or to do him evil. To do good is to love a person; but not to do that is as good as killing him. To love someone is to restore that person physically, socially, and spiritually. To neglect and postpone this restoration is already to kill.

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

   The Return of the Draft
    By Tim Dickinson
    Rolling Stone

    Thursday 27 January 2005

With the army desperate for recruits, should college students be packing their bags for Canada?

    Uncle Sam wants you. He needs you. He'll bribe you to sign up. He'll strong-arm you to re-enlist. And if that's not enough, he's got a plan to draft you.

Read the whole thing: 

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/_/id/6862691?rnd=1108325837276&has-player=false

If thou must love me, let it be for naught
Except for love’s sake only.  Do not say,
“I love her for her smile - her look - her way
Of speaking gently, - for a trick of thought
That falls in well with mine, and certes brought
A sense of pleasant ease on such a day” -
For these things in themselves, Belovèd, may
Be changed, or change for thee - and love, so wrought,
May be unwrought so. Neither love me for
Thine own dear pity’s wiping my cheeks dry.
A creature might forget to weep, who bore
Thy comfort long, and lose thy love, thereby!
But love me for love’s sake, that evermore
Thou mayst love on, through love’s eternity.

Monday, February 14

 RFID in schools

"SUTTER, Calif. - The only grade school in this rural town is requiring students to wear radio frequency identification badges that can track their every move. Some parents are outraged, fearing it will take away their children's privacy. The badges introduced at Brittan Elementary School on Jan. 18 rely on the same radio frequency and scanner technology that companies use to track livestock and product inventory. Similar devices have recently been used to monitor youngsters in some parts ofJapan. But few American school districts have embraced such a monitoring system, and civil libertarians hope to keep it that way.The system was imposed, without parental input, by the school as a way to simplify attendance-taking and potentially reduce vandalism and improve student safety. Principal Earnie Graham hopes to eventually add bar codes to the existing ID's so that students can use them to pay for cafeteria meals and check out library books."

Learn more in USA Today.

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/surveillance/2005-02-10-id-tag-protest_x.htm

The country is in deep trouble. We've forgotten that a rich life consists fundamentally of serving others, trying to leave the world a little better than you found it. We need the courage to question the powers that be, the courage to be impatient with evil and patient with people, the courage to fight for social justice. In many instances we will be stepping out on nothing, and just hoping to land on something. But that's the struggle. To live is to wrestle with despair, yet never to allow despair to have the last word.

JON CARROLL

Jon Carroll

Monday, February 21, 2005

The House of Representatives last week voted 389-38 to authorize federal regulators to boost indecency fines for radio and television stations to as much as $500,000 per incident. Not only would stations be liable, the individual purveyors of indecency would be also be vulnerable, meaning that disc jockey pulling down $100K per annum could have his financial life destroyed by saying "toad-sucking" on the radio.

I use "toad-sucking" because I am not sure what constitutes "indecency." Nobody is sure; that's the beauty part. The government can do ex post facto outrage and punish people for doing something that they had no way of knowing was bad.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2005/02/21/DDGN8BDMI01.DTL

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Beware of holds on credit

David Lazarus

Sunday, February 27, 2005

Using a credit or debit card to fill your tank at a gas station can be costlier than you think. But who's to blame for this? That's a whole other matter.

Alameda resident Barbara Benson discovered the peril of plastic the other day after spending $22 to fill her Plymouth Voyager at an Oakland service station.

She'd first stopped at one pump, inserted her debit card and then found out the pump wasn't working. So she switched to another pump, which was.

A day later, Benson was checking out her bank account online and saw not just the $22 gas purchase but a $48 and a $50 "pre-authorization" charge for the same location.

What had happened, the bank later explained, was that a $48 "hold" was placed on her checking account when she inserted her debit card in the broken pump to cover the cost of the transaction.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2005/02/27/BUGJJBGMEN1.DTL

YOU'VE BEEN TOLD a zillion times by now that it's a bad idea to give out your personal data online. But hell, we all do it. Those of us who are particularly wary tell ourselves we're engaging in good data hygiene by checking the privacy policies of the companies that hold our e-mail and financial records. Of course, we all know in the backs of our minds – don't we? – that privacy policies are just guidelines and not legally binding. And yet we put our faith in them. It's the same process that keeps us paying social security even though the government might spend all our hard-earned retirement money by the time we need it.

Plus, who wants to keep track of all their own crap? It's nicer if Gmail can index your mail, even if it fills it with ads. And that's the kind of thinking that drove so many thousands of customers to a service called PayTrust, an online bill management system that receives your bills, pays them, and balances your checkbook in the process. Instead of having a messy bill drawer full of tattered stubs, you can use PayTrust to keep all your records in neat little spreadsheets, easily accessed and searched on the Web whenever you want.

Read the rest:

http://www.sfbg.com/39/21/x_techsploitation.html

5-4 Supreme Court Abolishes Juvenile Executions

By Charles Lane

Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, March 2, 2005; Page A01

The Supreme Court abolished capital punishment for juvenile offenders yesterday, ruling 5 to 4 that it is unconstitutional to sentence anyone to death for a crime he or she committed while younger than 18.

Read the rest:  http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A62584-2005Mar1.html?referrer=email

What women should want
Politically correct is tiresome tyranny

Steven Knipp

Sunday, March 6, 2005

Through the ages, men have sworn their adoration for the weaker sex, in paintings and poems, in songs and books and movies. But it has only been in the last century that men have openly admitted that women are better than men in far more ways.

China's Mao said: "Women hold up half of heaven," while the Soviet Union's Nikita Khrushchev acknowledged that "It is the men who do the administrating, and the women who do (the actual) work." And even that arch- capitalist billionaire Aristotle Onassis said: "If women didn't exist, all the money in the world would have no meaning."

As International Women's Day approaches on Tuesday, let's face it, women are not just kinder and more gentle, which are often considered feminine traits, they are also more honest, less sexist, less racist and less ageist. They are just plain better human beings than men.

Quick, think of 10 individuals who have ruined, just in the last 60 years alone, the lives of countless millions of people: Hitler, Stalin, Mao Zedong, Kim Il Sung, Idi Amin, Fidel Castro, Pol Pot, Slobodan Milosevic, Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden ... well, you get the idea.

Police statistics worldwide confirm that men commit 10 times as many crimes as women, both violent and commercial.

When was the last time you heard about a gang of women holding up a bank and pistol-whipping an elderly guard, whose only defense was a newspaper and a coffee cup? How many professional female assassins have you read about? Or hijackers? Or female mass murderers? Janet the Ripper? I don't think so.

Women are not only far less likely to whack you over the head for your watch, or juggle the books in your office, they are also harder-working and more responsible.

In interviews with scores of factory managers, corporate presidents, restaurant managers and industrial bosses in places as far afield as Tokyo and Tashkent, Northern Ireland and South Africa, Sydney and Shanghai, I have been told repeatedly that women report on time, stay later and are more quality- conscious than men.

It's no fluke that the only person to come out with any honor from the slimy Enron scandal with any honor happens to wear high heels.

Of course, women do have some minor, irritating traits. Like almost always being right: "Put on a sweater or you'll catch a cold. ... Don't get drunk at the office party. ... I think we should turn left here. ..."

Yet, compared to the myriad venal and stupid habits of men, everything from murder to walking with muddy shoes on a new carpet, women are virtually divine creatures.

But if women really are such Earthly angels, why have men always given them the short end of the stick? The reason's simple: because we could. For as long as Man has walked upright, physical strength and speed were the key requisites for survival.

But it is becoming evident to everyone that muscles will not matter much anymore. It will be brain power that brings home the bacon. And this means that one of two things will probably happen.

Either females will finally, at long last, take their rightful position as real equals with males, in which case, the world will be a far better place. Women will bring more compassion and compromise to world relations, and probably a lot more common sense, too.

Or, women will slowly begin to take on all the worst points of men, and I don't mean beer breath and pot bellies. They will begin to get heart attacks and high blood pressure. They will drink more and shout more and suffer from stress more. They will cut corners more, and may develop a cruel streak in the climb to the top.

But what I'm more afraid of is that we Americans will miss this opportunity to share the weight with our women. We are by now well behind much of the rest of the world in this regard.

Despite all our back-slapping about our cherished America being the land of equality, it is still a fact that on average women are paid only 75 cents to every dollar earned by men.

Since 1963, when the Equal Pay Act was signed, the closing of the wage gap between men and women has progressed at a rate of less than half a penny a year. Already there have been women presidents and prime ministers all across the globe -- from India and Pakistan, to the Philippines, Turkey, Ireland and Israel.

Yet it is still unlikely that I will see a woman running the White House in my lifetime. Instead of real sustained progress for women, we in the United States offer political correctness.

Yes, like cosmetic surgery for an aging face, it has some value, I suppose. But it does absolutely nothing for anybody's well-being. Like plastic surgery, political correctness is a semantic nonsense that goes only skin deep.

This kind of thinking has given us words like "chairperson" and "humankind" but, really, what has it done for the welfare of women anywhere?

Is it possible, though, to be a genuine, heartfelt feminist and still refuse to pander to political correctness?

Is it really so terrible to believe that women should have the same rights, salaries, opportunities and benefits as men -- yet still feel comfortable, even compelled, to give up your seat for a woman carrying too many bags on a bus?

Is it really so gauche to admire the professional skills and talents of a female boss or colleague, and still compliment them on the fragrance of their perfume? Where is it written that giving a woman a compliment -- a sincere one -- is some kind of belittlement?

Certainly, this can't be true if it is genuine praise, for the difference between a sincere compliment and manufactured flattery is the chasm between a wooden leg and a real one.

Abraham Lincoln once said: "A woman is the only thing I am afraid of that I know will not hurt me." I cannot recall ever once being censured by a woman for holding open a door or even saying that she looked really smashing in that little black dress at the Christmas party.

But now I'm told that here in the United States appreciating a woman with an admiring smile or a kind word constitutes some form of sexual harassment. How sad for them. How sad for us.

A few months ago, in Hong Kong, I was sitting in on a round-table meeting with a dozen people of both sexes. The discussion dragged on. The room was stuffy. I grew listless. Glancing across the table, I caught the eye of an attractive woman just as she stifled a yawn. I shrugged my shoulders and winked.

Without the slightest hesitation, she shrugged her shoulders and winked right back. There was no indecent suggestion, no illicit proposal. It was simply a human contact between two people, both bored at the same moment.

Now, however, I have been told that if I had had the same exchange in the land of my birth, I would be risking a possible lawsuit.

If that is true, then women will have paid too high a price for their alleged equality. In recent years, it sometimes seems that some women are not so much equal to men but are now no different.

And if that is the way of the future, it is not only something very sad, it is a step backward.

Freelance journalist Steven Knipp is Washington correspondent for the South China Morning Post. E-mail us at insight@sfchronicle.com

Ill-will Ambassador

By Jim Lobe, Inter Press Service.

Posted March 8, 2005.

John Bolton is a man best known for sabotaging international treaties and alienating entire nations. That's why he's been picked to be our ambassador to the United Nations.

In a breath-taking victory for right-wing hawks, President George W. Bush has nominated a die-hard unilateralist to become his next ambassador to the United Nations. John Bolton is best known as one of the most confrontational, combative, and humorless figures within the administration, having earned his formidable reputation as the undersecretary of state for arms control and international security during Bush's first term. ''This is like putting the fox in charge of the henhouse," said Heather Hamilton, vice president of programs for Citizens for Global Solutions (CGS) (formerly the World Federalist Association).

Read the rest:

http://www.alternet.org/story/21439/

    Monday 07 March 2005

    On August 27, 1859, Edwin Drake's oil well in Titusville, Pennsylvania struck a gusher, making him the man credited with drilling the first commercially successful oil well in America. In the time between then and now, the world has burned through about 900 billion barrels of Drake's discovery.

    Global daily oil consumption today stands at around 82 million barrels, and many experts believe the emerging mega-industrialization of nations like China and India will cause that daily consumption to reach at least 120 million barrels a day by the year 2030. Not to fear, however; ExxonMobil believes there are some 14 trillion barrels still in the ground, including nonconventional resource fields like the tar sands of Canada and petroleum-rich shale in the western United States.

    In the last several years, a theory known as 'Peak Oil' has been working its way into the mainstream. Chief proponent of this theory is Dr. Colin Campbell, a retired oil-industry geologist now living in Ireland. Dr. Campbell, who has been raising warnings about Peak Oil for some 15 years, believes that global consumption of oil is surpassing not only the amount of oil being pulled from the ground, not only the amount of oil left to be found, but is also surpassing the ability of technology to compensate for what he sees as an inevitable and looming shortfall.

Read the rest:

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/030705Z.shtml

per 3rdplanet:

http://www.saturn.com/saturn/aboutus/donor_center/index.jsp?nav=5600

Read the rest:

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0311-05.htm

The “great” commitment is so much easier than the ordinary, everyday one - and can all too easily shut our hearts to the latter. A willingness to make the ultimate sacrifice can be associated with, and even produce, a great hardness of heart. You thought you were indifferent to praise for achievements which you would not yourself have counted to your credit, or that, if you should be tempted to feel flattered, you would always remember that the praise far exceeded what the events justified. You thought yourself indifferent - until you felt your jealousy flare up at his naive attempts to “make himself important,” and your self-conceit stood exposed. Concerning the hardness of the heart - and its littleness - let me read with open eyes the book my days are writing, and learn.

Senate Supports Drilling in Alaskan Refuge

By H. JOSEF HEBERT, Associated Press Writer 

WASHINGTON - After nearly a quarter century of trying, the advocates for opening an Alaska wildlife refuge to oil drilling may finally be close to achieving their goal.

A majority of the Senate on Wednesday declared its support for allowing oil companies into the 1.5 million acre coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, where billions of barrels of crude oil are believe to rest beneath the tundra.

More importantly, the Senate assured that any Alaska refuge drilling provision would be linked to the budget process, depriving opponents of using a filibuster to block action — a tactic that has been used repeatedly over the years to stymie ANWR drilling proposals.

An attempt Wednesday by Democrats to take the issue out of the budget process failed when they could muster only 49 votes against 51 votes by drilling supporters.

It was a major victory for President Bush (news - web sites), who has made access to the refuge's oil a key part of his energy agenda.

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Gay Marriage Saves California Could a landmark decision re-empower the state to strike at the heart of BushCo? Let us hope - By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist Friday, March 18, 2005 So then you say to yourself, having just scoured the dour headlines, large glass of wine in hand and Jenna Jameson book lying open on the coffee table next to the Sunday NYT and a plate of fresh olives and maybe some fine assorted cheeses, can it really be that a Catholic Republican judge just came down on the side of gay marriage?

Can it really be true, you mutter in astonishment as you sip, working, as always, always, to take the edge off this bleak and BushCo'd world, that a respected right wing judge named Richard Kramer from San Francisco Superior Court just declared California's ban on gay marriage to be unconstitutional on the grounds that it's, well, just plain silly, and wrong headed, and at odds with what love and desire and human connection are truly all about?

Did this just really happen? And, if so, does it maybe mean something positive and progressive and hopeful could possibly spring forth from the wreckage of five gruesome years and two gruesome wars and a bitch-slapped environment and a miserably mauled economy and one of the bleakest least appealing most spiritually debilitating Bush-gutted decades in American history?

Read the rest:

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2005/03/18/notes031805.DTL&nl=fix

Free iPod -- um, not really
- David Lazarus
Friday, March 18, 2005

From the "No Free Lunch" file, let's take a look one of the more widespread offers circulating online for a free Apple iPod.

This one is from something called Incentive Reward Center, which is typically reached via Web-site banner ads and promises a "free*" iPod that normally sells for $399.

In the asterisked fine print below, the firm says that receiving your free iPod depends on the following conditions: "completion of offer terms," "completion of user survey" and "participation in sponsor offers."

What it doesn't say is that the offer terms will expose you to reams of spam and marketing solicitations, that the user survey is actually a lengthy marketing ploy, and that the sponsor offers needed to qualify for that free music player will almost certainly cost you money.

Read the rest:

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2005/03/18/BUGURBP6N353.DTL&type=printable

Tags Turning Web Chaos into Categories

By Matt Hicks March 17, 2005

 http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1777004,00.asp

SAN DIEGO—In the quest to organize the Web's information, an emerging approach is putting the power to categorize everything from links to digital photos into the hands of users.

In the halls and session rooms at the O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference here, a series of talks this week explored the growing use of tags to let users associate keyword metadata to Web information. Among the early implementers of tags are Ludicorp's Flickr photo-sharing site, the del.icio.us social bookmarking service and the Wikipedia collaborative online encyclopedia. During one conference session, leaders from the three upstart services explored the impact of their decisions to turn categorization over to individuals rather than enforcing established categories.

Tags are creating more than straightforward classifications of Web documents or links, said Joshua Schachter, the creator of del.icio.us. One of the most popular tags created on the bookmarking service is "to_read," a tag attached to links of pages users want to remember to read.

Read the rest:

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1777004,00.asp

The Shame of the Steroid Hunt

By Matt Welch, AlterNet. Posted March 21, 2005.

The public shaming of high-profile athletes has been a conscious policy all along, outstripping any real desire to prosecute criminals or get at the truth about steroid use.      

Let's re-cap. A congressional body called the House Committee on Government Reform – not the House Committee on "Getting Past" the Fourth and Fifth Amendments, not the House Committee on Urinalysis, but the House Committee on Government Freakin' Reform – spent 11 hours on national television Thursday advocating several dozen illiberal measures that would give the government even more far-reaching power to harass individuals and neuter their labor unions. A microscopic sampling of these terrible ideas:

• Federally mandated drug tests for all professional and amateur athletes, down to junior high school lacrosse players.
  
• Ripping up federal labor laws.
  
• Butting into the collective bargaining process of a single, targeted private industry.
  
• Forcing private employers to share their confidential drug tests with the FBI.
  

Read the rest:

http://www.alternet.org/drugreporter/21551/

Shilling For Steroids

By David Borden, DRCNet. Posted March 18, 2005.

If there were any teenagers in America who didn't know that steroids can enhance athleticism, they almost certainly know it now.                                      

It was the talk of the airwaves today: Congress held hearings on steroid use in professional baseball, with sports stars like Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa subpoenaed to be there. Is steroid use wrong? Can baseball police itself? Are congressmen seeking the public good or just grandstanding? Should the issue lie within Congress' purview at all? Numerous participants in the public debate have opined on the issue, and it will no doubt continue to be talked about for months or more likely years to come.

The most emotion-laden argument heard is that of the superstar athlete as role model for the nation's youth. One of the witnesses at the hearing was a grieving father whose son committed suicide, it is believed, as a result of withdrawal from anabolic steroid use. If kids get the idea that steroids can make them excel at sports, maybe even make the major leagues, more kids will use them and more such tragedies will be the result, is the idea. There may or may not be a lot of truth to the notion – it is notably difficult to sort fact from fiction on matters involving drugs and especially drugs and kids. But let's assume for the sake of argument that there is at least some truth to it. There probably is at least a little.

Read the rest:

http://www.alternet.org/drugreporter/21539/

U.S. Polit. slang.

Brit. /b k/, U.S. /b rk/  Also with lower-case initial. [< the name of Robert H. Bork (b. 1927), a judge whose nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1987 was rejected following a large amount of unfavourable publicity for his allegedly illiberal and extreme views.] 

  trans. To defame or vilify (a person) systematically, esp. in the mass media, usually with the aim of preventing his or her appointment to public office; to obstruct or thwart (a person) in this way. Also intr.

OED Online!  click here.

March 17, 2005
SMALL BUSINESS
Fears for a Program That Lends Just a Little
  By ELIZABETH OLSON


Since the beginning of the 1990's, thousands of aspiring entrepreneurs
have moved away from unemployment or welfare by borrowing a few
thousand dollars - even as little as $500 - to set up their own small
business.

Diane Holloway, a single mother and out-of-work pastry chef, used a
$5,000 loan from a local women's economic agency in Silver City, N.M.,
several years ago to cobble together a restaurant in an old storefront,
cooking for customers with a scavenged pizza oven and serving them on a
half-dozen mismatched tables.

"That money made the difference," said Mrs. Holloway, whose restaurant,
Diane's, is now thriving, with 30 employees. She plans to open two more
restaurants next year. "Without it, I wouldn't have had a chance to get
my business going."

Now the modest financial backing that Mrs. Holloway and other women and
minorities have used to create jobs for themselves and others may soon
be shut off. The Bush administration has proposed ending the funding
for the Small Business Administration's microloan program, which
provides seed money and technical assistance to start-ups and
low-income entrepreneurs.

Read the rest:

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/17/business/17sbiz.html

Why U.N. Won't Call It Genocide
    By Jonathan Curiel
    The San Francisco Chronicle

    Sunday 06 February 2005

    A man's eyeballs are gouged out. A classroom of school girls is violated in public. Babies are tossed into fires as their mothers watch. Other victims are crucified, dragged on the ground by horses and shot in the head. The United Nations' report -- 176 pages in all -- is filled with many more such horrible details of rapes, killings, assaults and plundering. All of these are crimes -- but do they constitute "genocide"?

    No, according to the U.N. report, which examined the extent of atrocities in the Darfur region of Sudan, where government-backed militia called the Janjaweed ("devils on horseback") and government soldiers have terrorized civilians for more than a year. Released last week, the finding became an immediate point of contention for those who want the United Nations to do more to halt atrocities in Darfur. Avoiding the g-word is significant because if the United Nations officially labels the Darfur violence "genocide," it's required by its own charter to intervene more forcefully. Critics lashed out at the U.N. commission for soft-pedaling the suffering in Darfur.

    "We stand by the conclusion that genocide had been occurring in Darfur," said State Department spokesman Richard Boucher, "and we think that the continued accumulation of facts on the ground, the facts that are reported in the commission's report, supports that conclusion that we've reached."

    It's easy to stay mired in this rhetorical standoff -- to quickly take sides in the question of what constitutes genocide -- but to do so would ignore what may be the most important element of the U.N. commission's report: Its gripping narrative of the Darfur violence. Here is a study that explains all the complexities and contradictions of the ongoing abuses.

    Media reports from Darfur make it seem that the conflict is strictly a battle between Khartoum's Arab military and militia and the Sudanese blacks who are the subject of atrocities -- that this racial and ethnic divide is the sole factor in Darfur's mayhem -- but the U.N. study relays these important facts:

    -- Many Sudanese Arabs oppose the Janjaweed, and some of these opposition Arabs are fighting alongside rebel groups to defend the black Sudanese who've lived for generations in Darfur's western provinces.

    -- Many non-Arabs, including black Sudanese, support the government in Khartoum, and some of these black Sudanese are serving in Khartoum's army.

    -- War crimes have been carried out by government and government-backed militia and by the rebel groups operating in Darfur (though the rebels' acts pale in comparison).

    -- The Darfur conflict is tied to Khartoum's long-standing conflict in southern Sudan. This North-South war, which started in 1983, created a vacuum of soldiers that -- at least in Darfur -- was filled by the Janjaweed and even volunteer militants from neighboring countries. The North-South war was rooted in disputes over religion (the north is more Islamic than the Christian and animist south), oil (Khartoum claimed areas of southern Sudan that had large petrol deposits) and other issues.

    -- Drought and limited economic opportunities have fueled the Darfur violence. Most of the people of Darfur live in small villages and hamlets, and make their living from farming and cattle herding. The land is arid. Combined with drought, the desertification of the region has led to increased skirmishes among tribes and foreign herders looking for pasture and water -- skirmishes that Khartoum settled on its own legal terms, ignoring traditional tribal laws. This helped create a climate of animosity that prompted Darfur's rebel groups to fight Khartoum.

    Adotei Akwei, the Africa Advocacy Director for Amnesty International's United States office, said in a phone interview, "Our organization has not termed (the Darfur violence) genocide. Others disagree with us (but) we don't have time to debate (whether genocide is technically taking place in Darfur). We need to protect people. It's important to debate what the nature of the violations is, but it's not going to save lives ultimately whether this is called genocide or not.

    "What's going to save lives is the actual changing of behavior on the ground in Darfur. The nature of the crimes in Darfur are all serious enough to merit a more robust response from the international community and by the United Nations."

    The U.N. report is online at www.un.org/news/dh/sudan/com_inq_darfur.pdf. For those who want to focus on the question of genocide, pages 124-132 are crucial.

    There, the U.N. commission explains why it believes the word "genocide" cannot be applied to Darfur. The commission says that the Janjaweed and Khartoum's forces have not killed or harmed every civilian they've encountered in Darfur -- that their actions (however gruesome) have not resulted in an intentional annihilation of an entire people. In other words, Darfur is different from Nazi Germany, where whole categories of people (Jews, Gypsies, etc.) were deliberately targeted because of their religion, race, ethnicity or nationality, and Darfur is different from Bosnia-Herzegovia, where Muslims were targeted in masse.

    The U.N. commission wasn't trying to absolve the atrocities committed by both sides in Darfur. In fact, the report states unequivocally that the perpetrators of violence in Darfur should be prosecuted to the fullest extent possible. On this point, there is no debate at all.

--------

    On the Web: UN Dispatch: http://undispatch.com/

Man Sells Device That Blocks Fox News

Fri Mar 25, 7:40 PM ET

By EMILY FREDRIX, Associated Press Writer

It's not that Sam Kimery objects to the views expressed on Fox News. The creator of the "Fox Blocker" contends the channel is not news at all. Kimery figures he's sold about 100 of the little silver bits of metal that screw into the back of most televisions, allowing people to filter Fox News from their sets, since its August debut.

The Tulsa, Okla., resident also has received thousands of e-mails, both angry and complimentary — as well as a few death threats.

"Apparently the making of terroristic threats against those who don't share your views is a high art form among a certain core audience," said Kimery, 45.

Read the rest:

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20050326/ap_en_tv/tv_fox_blocker

THEOCRACY WATCH #1: Evolution Censored--But Americans Don't Believe In It Anyway

Today DIRELAND inaugurates a new occasional feature: Theocracy Watch, which--as the increasing avalanche of assaults on the separation of Church and State and on rational thought warrants it--will bring you news of the Christian right's American Taliban and their depredations. Here's the first installment:

The I-Max chain has canceled screenings of science films in a dozen of its movie theaters because test screenings showed a majority of viewers judged their portraits of evolution "blasphemous" because they contradicted the Biblical portrayal of Genesis, the New York Times and the BBC report.

According to the BBC, "Religious controversy has reportedly affected the distribution of educational films such as Cosmic Voyage, Galapagos and Volcanoes of the Deep Sea to Imax cinemas, some based within science museums.  While relatively few cinemas were involved, it was feared it could have a profound knock-on effect across the world because of the high cost of producing Imax films."

At the same time, a new poll on religion and American life out today from NBC shows that a significant majority of our fellow citizens -- 57% -- believe in the literal truth of the Biblical explanation for the origin of human life, while only 33% believe in evolution (another 10%, who must have been living in a bubble, said they "didn't know.")

Read the rest, or not:

http://direland.typepad.com/direland/2005/03/theocracy_watch.html

No shortage of women who dream of snaring a husband on Death Row
Experts ponder why deadliest criminals get so many proposals

Peter Fimrite, Michael Taylor, Chronicle Staff Writers

Sunday, March 27, 2005

Scott Peterson, the man who was convicted of murdering his wife and unborn child, had been on Death Row barely an hour when the first proposal arrived from a woman who wants to be the new Mrs. Scott Peterson.

Three dozen phone calls came in to the warden's office on Peterson's first day at his new home in San Quentin State Prison -- women were pleading for his mailing address, and one smitten 18-year-old said she wanted to marry him.

As far as anyone knows, these women don't really know Peterson -- and unlike Laci Peterson, they certainly haven't spent any time with him, usually a requisite for getting married -- but, according to several experts on the world of the condemned, it doesn't really matter.

Read the rest:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/03/27/MNGMTBVFQJ1.DTL

ow will future historians explain it? How will they possibly explain why President George W. Bush decided to ignore the energy crisis staring us in the face and chose instead to spend all his electoral capital on a futile effort to undo the New Deal, by partially privatizing Social Security? We are, quite simply, witnessing one of the greatest examples of misplaced priorities in the history of the U.S. presidency.

"Ah, Friedman, but you overstate the case." No, I understate it. Look at the opportunities our country is missing - and the risks we are assuming - by having a president and vice president who refuse to lift a finger to put together a "geo-green" strategy that would marry geopolitics, energy policy and environmentalism.

By doing nothing to lower U.S. oil consumption, we are financing both sides in the war on terrorism and strengthening the worst governments in the world. That is, we are financing the U.S. military with our tax dollars and we are financing the jihadists - and the Saudi, Sudanese and Iranian mosques and charities that support them - through our gasoline purchases. The oil boom is also entrenching the autocrats in Russia and Venezuela, which is becoming Castro's Cuba with oil. By doing nothing to reduce U.S. oil consumption we are also setting up a global competition with China for energy resources, including right on our doorstep in Canada and Venezuela. Don't kid yourself: China's foreign policy today is very simple - holding on to Taiwan and looking for oil.

Finally, by doing nothing to reduce U.S. oil consumption we are only hastening the climate change crisis, and the Bush officials who scoff at the science around this should hang their heads in shame. And it is only going to get worse the longer we do nothing. Wired magazine did an excellent piece in its April issue about hybrid cars, which get 40 to 50 miles to the gallon with very low emissions. One paragraph jumped out at me: "Right now, there are about 800 million cars in active use. By 2050, as cars become ubiquitous in China and India, it'll be 3.25 billion. That increase represents ... an almost unimaginable threat to our environment. Quadruple the cars means quadruple the carbon dioxide emissions - unless cleaner, less gas-hungry vehicles become the norm."

All the elements of what I like to call a geo-green strategy are known:

Read the rest:

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/27/opinion/27friedman.html?incamp=article_popular_1&pagewanted=print&position=

Why Does God Hate Caribou? Drill for oil and screw Alaska's wildlife? Why, sure, all part of the imminent Rapture!

 By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist Wednesday, March 23, 2005

God wants oil. This is the message. This is the belief. God wants more oil and also uranium and coal and iron and nuclear waste and whatever the hell else we want to pump into or out of this godforsaken lump of floating space rock. Word to the GOP.

 In other words, God wants us, if the happily bleak and decidedly nasty interpretation of Bible verse currently extolled by the rabid evangelical mind-set now mauling the American political and social landscape is to be believed, to use up the Earth however we see fit and stomp all over this pointless ecological blob with our macho SUVs and manly tanks and badass army boots because it's all just one giant disposable sandbox o' fun anyway, right?

 Hey, it's all part of the Master Plan to destroy the Earth and smite our enemies and hasten the arrival of the Rapture. Didn't you know?

We are all merely waiting until the Big Battle happens in Israel, the bloody clash between the True Believers and the Antichrist Heathens, to be followed immediately by Jesus gliding down on gilded wings made of fine Egyptian cotton and cheap American flags and wearing kickass robes of fire and ready to suck the true believers up to heaven through a giant Crazy Straw and wipe the whole goddamn secular slate clean. Right?

Crazy rantings, you might say. Pseudo-religious babbling, you might titter. I have no idea what the hell this guy is talking about, you might blink.

You would, of course, be wrong

Read the rest:

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/gate/archive/2005/03/23/notes032305.DTL

“Countdown to Freedom from Debt Campaign” Pressures the U.S. Government to Support 100% Debt Cancellation

Philadelphia, PA — The American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) adds its name to the list of groups, organizations and millions of concerned citizens calling for the complete cancellation of Africa's debt.

The Service Committee, as part of the Jubilee USA Network and its' Countdown to Freedom from Debt campaign, is calling on the United States and other G-7 governments to support 100% debt cancellation for all impoverished countries at their upcoming meeting in Washington D.C. on October 1.

The discussion comes at a critical time, as many countries are repeatedly forced to commit crucial resources to debt payment rather than essential social services.

"Debt cancellation for all impoverished nations is urgently needed and must be resolved at Friday's summit,” states Imani Countess, national coordinator of the AFSC Peacebuilding Africa Program. "Delay costs lives. We can not afford to wait. No where is this more evident than on the African continent, home to only 5 percent of the developing world's income, yet which carries about two thirds of the world's debt — over $300 billion. Because of this, the average African country spends three times more of its scarce resources on repaying debt than it does on providing basic services.”

Read the rest:

http://www.afsc.org/africa/new-africa/activism/debt-release.htm

Before we take on the right to die too enthusiastically, let's make sure everyone has an equal right to live. If we don't, the right to die, like everything else in this society, will reflect the gulf between those whose lives are valued and those whose lives are deemed worthless. The morality of our progressive movements must be based on the equal and priceless value of each individual life. This is the real right to life, one we can't afford to cede to the promulgators of war, the death penalty, and global immiseration.

Read the rest:

http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0328-26.htm

An Unlikely Meeting Of the Minds

For Very Different Reasons, Groups Agree on Gas Alternatives

By Greg Schneider

Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, March 31, 2005; Page E01

Environmentalists aren't the only ones applauding the sales stumble of big SUVs and pickups in the face of high gas prices.

Groups of conservative Republicans see an opportunity to step up a campaign to promote alternative-fuel vehicles and wean the nation from dependence on foreign oil. While skeptical about links between autos and global warming, the conservatives have concluded that cutting gasoline consumption is a matter of national security.

A who's who of right-leaning military hawks -- including former CIA director R. James Woolsey and Iraq war advocate Frank J. Gaffney Jr. -- has joined with environmental advocates such as the Natural Resources Defense Council to lobby Congress to spend $12 billion to cut oil use in half by 2025. The alliance highlights how popular sentiment is turning against the no-worries gas-guzzling culture of the past decade and how alternative technologies such as gas-electric hybrids are finding increasingly widespread support.

Read the rest:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A14232-2005Mar30.html

Read the rest:

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0330-04.htm

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/science_technology/story.jsp?story=624667

A Flip Side

 Johann Christoph Arnold

 In past centuries, warfare, famine, and disease decimated whole towns and cities, and sooner or later every family was touched by death. As writer Philip Yancey has pointed out, "No one could live as if it did not exist." Nowadays, thanks to improved nutrition, public sanitation, greater life expectancy, and medical technology, death no longer seems such an unavoidable reality. Indeed, we have largely removed it from our day-to-day experience. But there is a flip side: we have also lost the ability to accept the end of life when it does finally come.

By BOB HERBERT

Published: April 1, 2005

At dinner on a rainy night in Manhattan this week, I listened to a retired admiral and a retired general speak about the pain they've personally felt over the torture and abuse scandal that has spread like a virus through some sectors of the military.

During the dinner and in follow-up interviews, Rear Adm. John Hutson, who is now president of the Franklin Pierce Law Center in Concord, N.H., and Brig. Gen. James Cullen, a lawyer in private practice in New York, said they believed that both the war effort and the military itself have been seriously undermined by official policies that encouraged the abuse of prisoners.

Both men said they were unable to remain silent as institutions that they served loyally for decades, and which they continue to love without reservation, are being damaged by patterns of conduct that

Read the rest:

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/01/opinion/01herbert.html?

The Long Emergency

What's going to happen as we start running out of cheap gas to guzzle?

By JAMES HOWARD KUNSTLER

A few weeks ago, the price of oil ratcheted above fifty-five dollars a barrel, which is about twenty dollars a barrel more than a year ago. The next day, the oil story was buried on page six of the New York Times business section. Apparently, the price of oil is not considered significant news, even when it goes up five bucks a barrel in the span of ten days. That same day, the stock market shot up more than a hundred points because, CNN said, government data showed no signs of inflation. Note to clueless nation: Call planet Earth.

Carl Jung, one of the fathers of psychology, famously remarked that "people cannot stand too much reality." What you're about to read may challenge your assumptions about the kind of world we live in, and especially the kind of world into which events are propelling us. We are in for a rough ride through uncharted territory.

It has been very hard for Americans -- lost in dark raptures of nonstop infotainment, recreational shopping and compulsive motoring -- to make sense of the gathering forces that will fundamentally alter the terms of everyday life in our technological society. Even after the terrorist attacks of 9/11, America is still sleepwalking into the future. I call this coming time the Long Emergency.

Read the rest:

http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/_/id/7203633?rnd=1112480112286&has-player=false

Whole Foods Market: Scandals!

Whole Foods Market does some good things. For starters, there probably wouldn't be a national organic standards act without their efforts. The fact that WFM has literally created the market for organic foods means that organic foods are available in much greater quantity, with more variety, and at a lower price than ten or fifteen years ago.

But just because a company sells natural foods doesn't mean they can do no wrong. Many of Whole Foods' actions have been controversial, especially where their labor practices are concerned. This page exists to remind consumers about some of the more questionable aspects Whole Foods Market. We're not suggesting that anyone stop shopping at Whole Foods and we're not calling for any kind of boycott -- we just want consumers to realize that even a company that puts on a socially-responsible face doesn't always live up to its own hype.

Read the  rest  - Posted on tribe.net by:

http://michaelbluejay.com/main/wholefoods.html

Save Our Blogs

A federal judge has ordered the Federal Election Commission to draft regulations governing politics on the Internet. These regulations will constrain individuals, like you, but exempt the established corporate news media, like the New York Times. This is a direct attack on the growing power of individuals to compete with the established media through blogs and other grassroots Internet activity. This judicial ruling is a consequence of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 (BCRA). To “save our blogs” BCRA must be repealed.

Check out some of the other issues Downsize DC is working
on. I especially urge you to click on the big banner on their Home page that says "Make Congress read the laws it passes." Learn about Downsize DC's proposal for legislation to force Congress to actually read bill before it votes on them.

www.downsizedc.org/index.shtml

 Howard on tribe.net

Published on Saturday, March 26, 2005 by CommonDreams.org

Who's the Sucker? US Prepares to Sell F-16s to Pakistan

by Christopher Brauchli

Everyone complains of his memory and no one complains of his judgment.
- François, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Sentences and Moral Maxims

A sucker is born every minute. It may not always be obvious who the sucker is. Pakistan is negotiating with the United States to buy some airplanes. Apparently there is no one left in Pakistan who remembers the 1990s. The United States may be considering selling airplanes to Pakistan. Apparently there is no one left in the administration who remembers Pakistan’s ties to terrorists, the sale of nuclear secrets to Iran and other troubling facts about that country.

Back in the ‘80s and ‘90s the United States had some really keen airplanes that Pakistan wanted to buy to use if it got into a fight with India. Pakistan paid the United States $650 million for 25 F-16 fighter planes. Then a bad thing happened. Someone remembered the Pressler Amendment that said the planes could only be sold to Pakistan if the president could certify that Pakistan was not developing nuclear weapons. It was, and the president did not issue the certification. The planes were kept by the United States.

That left the United States with 25 F-16 fighter planes for which it had no use and $650 million for which Pakistan had a use. Instead of writing a refund check to Pakistan, the United States kept the money and tried to get money to repay Pakistan by making deals with other countries. It sold nine of the planes to Indonesia. Before it collected, however, President Suharto got mad because the U.S. was criticizing his human rights record. He cancelled the sale. That left the United States with 25 F-16 fighter planes for which it had no use and $650 million for which Pakistan had a use. A number of other sales or leases were attempted but none proved successful.

In March, 1998, Pakistan announced that it was going to sue the United States to recover the $650 million it had paid that the United States refused to return. It is unclear what defense the U.S. would have asserted had the case been filed. It wasn’t filed and at the end of 1998 the U.S. agreed to pay Pakistan $326.9 million in cash and $140 million in other kinds of compensation including $60 million in white wheat. (That is almost certainly one of the few disputes over $650 million not involving the purchase and sale of white wheat that has ever been settled by the delivery of white wheat.) Earlier, $157 million had been refunded to Pakistan and how the last many millions were to be paid was left up to future negotiations Anyone wanting to know how that came out will have to do his or her own research.

The Pakistanis are now back asking for seconds. Having been ripped off once before it’s a surprise they are back. Given Pakistan’s record it’s a surprise we’d do business with it again and a short while ago it looked as though we would not. In November of 2004 at a White House conference Deputy National Security Advisor Robert Blackwill was quoted as saying with respect to the sale of airplanes to Pakistan: “There’s nothing that we are aware of and at any level a decision has been made to supply F-16s to Pakistan.” Things can change in a hurry, especially when friendship trumps principle as it often does in the Bush administration.

On March 16, 2005, it was reported that during Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice’s visit to Pakistan, the issue of F-16 sales to Pakistan was sure to come up. Commenting on the upcoming visit, diplomats said that the ban that precluded the earlier sale might be dropped. The reason is apparently related to the fact that Pakistan and India now both have nuclear weapons. That being the case, there’s no reason not to sell Pakistan airplanes that can be used to deliver them since it would not have a destabilizing effect on the region. It wouldn’t be destabilizing because according to a report in the Wall Street Journal, the U.S. is also prepared to consider selling planes to India. If both countries have the ability to drop their nuclear weapons on each other the balance of power remains in perfect equilibrium. For that I suppose one should be grateful although it’s not clear why.

During Secretary Rice’s visit she said she looked forward to “the evolution of a democratic path toward elections in 2007.” Secretary Rice may be looking forward to it. It’s not clear that she and General Musharraf have the same view. The General may or may not be looking forward to it. What he is certainly looking forward to is the advent of some F-16s. He may get those before he has to decide whether to permit free elections. Time will tell.

Brauchli.56@post.harvard.edu
See his website at http://humanraceandothersports.com

http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0326-28.htm

Even when pressed by the demands of inner truth, men do not easily assume the task of opposing their government's policy, especially in time of war. Nor does the human spirit move without great difficulty against all the apathy of conformist thought within one's own bosom and in the surrounding world...

Yet it should be incandescently clear that no one who has any concern for the integrity and life of America today can ignore the present war.

I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must begin the shift from a "thing-oriented" society to a "person-oriented" society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.

America, the richest and most powerful nation in the world, can well lead the way in this revolution of values. There is nothing, except a tragic death wish, to prevent us from reordering our priorities.

If we do not act we shall surely be dragged down the long dark and shameful corridors of time reserved for those who possess power without compassion, might without morality, and strength without sight.

This is the calling, and our brothers around the world wait eagerly for our response. Shall we say the odds are too great? That the struggle is too hard? Will our message be that the forces of American life militate against their arrival as full men, and we send our deepest regrets? Or will there be another message, of longing, of hope, of solidarity with their yearnings, of commitment to their cause, whatever the cost? The choice is ours.

Read the rest (it is very long):
http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/45a/058.html

Cheney Opposes Retribution Against Schiavo Judges

 By Mike Allen and Brian Faler

 Monday, April 4, 2005

 Vice President Cheney says he opposes revenge against judges for their refusal to prolong the life of the late Terri Schiavo, although he did not criticize House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) for declaring that they will "answer for their behavior."

Read the rest:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A23666-2005Apr3.html?referrer=email

    Thursday 31 March 2005

    Increasing numbers of children in Iraq do not have enough food to eat and more than a quarter are chronically undernourished, a UN report says.

    Malnutrition rates in children under five have almost doubled since the US-led intervention - to nearly 8% by the end of last year, it says.

    The report was prepared for the annual meeting of the UN Human Rights Commission in Geneva.

    It also expressed concern over North Korea and Sudan's Darfur province.

    UN specialist on hunger Jean Ziegler, who prepared the report, blames the worsening situation in Iraq on the war led by coalition forces.

Read the rest:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4395525.stm

Digital Rules
Real-World Advice for the Young
Rich Karlgaard, 04.11.05, 12:00 AM ET
http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2005/0411/041.html

Our country spends $900 billion a year on education of all kinds--or
about 8% of GDP. What do we get for it? Less and less. Our K-12
schooling has slipped out of the world's top ten ranking. Our colleges
are supposedly the best, but a deeper look into this claim is scary.
This reputation rides too much on America's position in science,
engineering, medicine, law and business schools--the paths of rigor.

Meanwhile, the softer path--the liberal arts curriculum in American
universities--is a joke. It has become an asylum for haters, anarchists
and cranks. Too strong a statement? Ask Harvard's president, Lawrence
Summers. Or Google the name Ward Churchill and take a look

Read the rest:

http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2005/0411/041.html

Try here, here, and here, with the latter offering discussion as well.  Thanks to the ever-keen Naunihal Singh for the pointer.

Addendum: Here are Tradesports.com odds by country, thanks to Paul N for the pointer.

Posted by Tyler Cowen on April 3, 2005

http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2005/04/betting_odds_on.html

From Wikipedia's Creator, A New Site for Anyone, Anything
By VAUHINI VARA

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL ONLINE
March 28, 2005
http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB111196673261990485,00.html


Four years ago, Jimmy Wales launched a free online encyclopedia that 
anyone could edit. Now, Wikipedia is one of the most popular sites on 
the Web, and Mr. Wales is building on its success with a new venture. 
This time, he intends to make a buck.

Cut/paste the link and read the rest.

    FBI Wants Greater Search Powers
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7388717/

    Tuesday 5 April 2005

FBI seeks expanded search powers; Justice Dept. also wants expiring Patriot Act provisions renewed.

    WASHINGTON - FBI Director Robert Mueller on Tuesday asked lawmakers to expand the bureau's ability to obtain records without first asking a judge, and he joined Attorney General Alberto Gonzales in seeking that every temporary provision of the anti-terrorism Patriot Act be renewed.

    "Now is not the time for us to be engaging in unilateral disarmament" on the legal weapons now available for fighting terrorism, Gonzales, for his part, told senators.

    He said that some of the most controversial provisions of the Patriot Act have proven invaluable in fighting terrorism and aiding other investigations. "It's important that these authorities remain available," Gonzales told the Senate Judiciary Committee.

    Mueller said sections of the law that allow intelligence and law enforcement agencies to share information are especially important.

    "Experience has taught the FBI that there are no neat dividing lines that distinguish criminal, terrorist and foreign intelligence activity," Mueller said in his prepared testimony.

    He also asked Congress to expand the FBI's administrative subpoena powers, which allow the bureau to obtain records without approval or a judge or grand jury.

    "For many years, the FBI has had administrative subpoena authority for investigations of crimes ranging from drug trafficking to health care fraud to child exploitation," he stated. "Yet, when it comes to terrorism investigations, the FBI has no such authority."

    15 Provisions at Stake

    The Patriot Act is the post-Sept. 11 law that expanded the government's surveillance and prosecutorial powers against suspected terrorists, their associates and financiers. Most of the law is permanent, but 15 provisions will expire in December unless renewed by Congress.

    On the same day Gonzales was speaking to the Senate committee, Sens. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, and Dick Durbin, D-Ill., planned to reintroduce legislation designed to curb major parts of the Patriot Act that they say went too far.

    "Cooler heads can now see that the Patriot Act went too far, too fast and that it must be brought back in line with the Constitution," said Gregory Nojeim, associate director of the American Civil Liberties Union's Washington legislative office.

    The ACLU is part of an unusual coalition of liberal and conservative groups, including the American Conservative Union, that have come together in a joint effort to lobby Congress to repeal key provisions of the Patriot Act.

    'Library Provision' Is Controversial

    Among the controversial provisions is a section permitting secret warrants for "books, records, papers, documents and other items" from businesses, hospitals and other organizations.

    That section is known as the "library provision" by its critics. While it does not specifically mention bookstores or libraries, critics say the government could use it to subpoena library and bookstore records and snoop into the reading habits of innocent Americans.

    Gonzales told lawmakers Tuesday the provision has been used 35 times, but never to obtain library, bookstore, medical or gun sale records.

    But the criticism has led five states and 375 communities in 43 states to pass anti-Patriot Act resolutions, the ACLU says.

    Even some Republicans are concerned. Senate Judiciary Chairman Arlen Specter, R-Pa., has suggested it should be tougher for federal officials to use that provision.

    Gonzales already has agreed to two minor changes to the provision, and was expected to support giving someone who receives a secret warrant under the provision the right to consult a lawyer and challenge the warrant in court. He was expected to also back slightly tightening the standard for issuing subpoenas.

    Bigger Concerns

    Neither change addresses the central concern of opponents, which is that it allows the government to seize records of people who are not suspected terrorists or spies.

    Critics say the law allows the government to target certain groups, but the Justice Department counters that no Patriot Act-related civil rights abuses have been proven.

    Just in case, Craig and Durbin want Congress to curb both expiring and nonexpiring parts of the Patriot Act, including the expiring "library" provision and "sneak and peek" or delayed notification warrants. Those warrants - which will not expire in December - allow federal officials to search suspects' homes without telling them until later.

    The Justice Department said federal prosecutors have asked for 155 such warrants since 2001.

    That's just two-tenths of one percent of all search warrants, but their use is growing. The warrants were sought 47 times between the time the law was passed and April of 2003. Since then, it's been invoked 108 times.

    Gonzales also notes that the law has been used in non-terrorism cases. For example, federal officials used it to track over the Internet a woman who ultimately confessed to strangling a pregnant woman and cutting the fetus from her womb.

    And such searches have been allowed for years in drug and organized crime cases.

    The Associated Press and NBC's Pete Williams contributed to this report.

Cardinals Set Conclave for April 18

John Paul's Will, Called 'Spiritual Testament,' Due to Be Released Today

Bush: Condi! Nice to see you. What's happening?
Condi: Sir, I have the report here about the new leader of
China.

Bush: Great. Lay it on me.
Condi: Hu is the new leader of China.

Bush: That's what I want to know.
Condi: That's what I'm telling you.

Bush: That's what I'm asking you. Who is the new leader of
China?
Condi: Yes.

Bush: I mean the fellow's name.
Condi: Hu.

Bush: The guy in China.
Condi: Hu.

Bush: The new leader of China.
Condi: Hu.

Bush: The Chinaman!
Condi: Hu is leading China.

Bush: Now whaddya' asking me for?
Condi: I'm telling you Hu is leading China.

Bush: Well, I'm asking you. Who is leading China?
Condi: That's the man's name.

Bush: That's who's name?
Condi: Yes.

Bush: Will you or will you not tell me the name of the new
leader of China?
Condi: Yes, sir.

Bush: Yassir? Yassir Arafat is in China? I thought he was
in the Middle East.
Condi: That's correct.

Bush: Then who is in China?
Condi: Yes, sir.

Bush: Yassir is in China?
Condi: No, sir.

Bush: Then who is?
Condi: Yes, sir.

Bush: Yassir?
Condi: No, sir.

Bush: Look, Condi. I need to know the name of the new
leader of China. Get me the Secretary General of the U.N.
on the phone.
Condi: Kofi?

Bush: No, thanks.
Condi: You want Kofi?

Bush: No.
Condi: You don't want Kofi.

Bush: No. But now that you mention it, I could use a glass
of milk. And then get me the U.N.
Condi: Yes, sir.

Bush: Not Yassir! The guy at the U.N.
Condi: Kofi?

Bush: Milk! Will you please make the call?
Condi: And call who?

Bush: Who is the guy at the U.N?
Condi: Hu is the guy in China.

Bush: Will you stay out of China?!
Condi: Yes, sir.

Bush: And stay out of the Middle East! Just get me the guy
at the U.N.
Condi: Kofi.

Bush: All right! With cream and two sugars. Now get on the
phone.
(Condi picks up the phone.)
Condi: Rice, here.

Bush: Rice? Good idea. And a couple of egg rolls, too.
Maybe we should send some to the guy in China. And the
Middle East. Can you get Chinese food in the M

The Mall Goes Undercover
It now looks like a city street.
By Andrew Blum
Posted Wednesday, April 6, 2005, at 3:24 AM PT
http://slate.com/id/2116246/

Like insecure teenagers, malls keep changing their style. They are
ripping away their roofs and drywalled corridors; adding open-air
plazas, sidewalks, and street-side parking; and rechristening
themselves "lifestyle centers." This new look may remind you of
something: a vibrant urban street. Yet, while these new malls may
appear to be public space, they're not public at all—at least if you
want to do anything but shop. They represent a bait-and-switch routine
on the part of developers, one that exchanges the public realm for the
commercial one. They're also enormously successful—by the most recent
count, there are about 130 lifestyle centers scattered around the
country. In 2006, New York City will get its very first.

  On a recent Saturday, in search of the future, I visited a lifestyle
center on the edge of Phoenix called the Desert Ridge Marketplace.
Parking my rented Chevy in front of a big-box emporium called Barbeques
Galore, I walked through the arched portals that decorate the
marketplace entrance. Inside, there were restaurants and stores lining
a winding and narrow outdoor pedestrian street that opened up onto a
series of little plazas. Padded wicker chairs were strewn about in a
studied, casual way, and a huge fieldstone fireplace had benches built
into it for those cool desert nights. This was a delightful place for a
Frappuccino.

Next, I drove only a dozen miles down the road to another lifestyle
center, Kierland Commons, that has a more residential feel. It
immediately felt like a real, bustling neighborhood. The sidewalks were
shaded from the sun by flowered trellises, and the streets narrowed at
the corners to give pedestrians an implied right of way. An urban plaza
with a good café and a band shell provided a central gathering place.
The promotional material for Kierland Commons boasts of a "unique urban
village," and a "pleasing, vibrant place where community takes shape
and public life happens." Indeed, as I stand around watching, a jazz
singer draws an audience, stooping to serenade a passing bichon frisé.
The crowd coos. And, wait, the Phoenix Suns girls are here!

This is civic life in America, circa 2005, and it's spreading.

Read the rest:

http://slate.com/id/2116246/

Bloggers: legit and regulation-free, for now

Denizens of the blogosphere can breathe a sigh of relief for the moment regarding tighter regulation: San Francisco's governing Board of Supervisors has backed off proposed legislation that would require political bloggers with high traffic to pay fees and register with the city's Ethics Commission. After receiving what was apparently a barrage of angry emails, the supes opted to modify the campaign finance-reform ordinance in question to exempt almost all Internet activities from regulation. (Paid online advertisements would still require accompanying disclosure messages.)

There's more:

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/index.html?blog=/politics/war_room/2005/04/08/bloggers/index.html

By WILLIAM J. KOLE, Associated Press Writer

VATICAN CITY - Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger of Germany, a hard-line guardian of conservative doctrine, was elected the new pope Tuesday evening in the first conclave of the new millennium. He chose the name Pope Benedict XVI and called himself "a simple, humble worker.

Read the rest:

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&e=1&u=/ap/20050419/ap_on_re_eu/pope

    Tuesday 19 April 2005

One push of the button
And a shot the world wide
And you never ask questions
When God's on your side.

    - Bob Dylan, 'With God on Our Side'

    Ten years ago today, an anti-government extremist named Timothy McVeigh parked a Ryder truck filled with fertilizer and fuel oil in front of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. At 9:02 in the morning, the truck exploded and carved out the guts of that building like a gourd. 168 people, including 19 children, died in the blast. It remains today the most devastating act of domestic terrorism in American history.

    McVeigh was birthed from a movement that became all too prominent during the 1990s. The militia people, they of the Black Government Helicopters and the theory that the United Nations was getting ready to take over the world, made up the far-right flank of Newt Gingrich's GOP back in the day. After Oklahoma City, however, the militias petered out and faded into the backwoods background from whence they came.

    That breed of extremist was on the outside looking in at the time. They have been replaced today by an extremist movement of surpassing menace. Like the militias before them, this new breed likewise represents the far-right flank of the GOP. Unlike their predecessors, however, this new breed enjoys unprecedented insider status. They are represented vigorously in Congress and the White House, and are calling many of the shots.

Read the rest:

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/041905Y.shtml

COMMANDO-HIDING CREAM

"The growing use of inexpensive, and commercially available, thermal cameras (that can see at night by detecting body or engine heat), has created more risk for commandos… who typically operate at night, and use stealth," says StrategyPage.

A Greek company, Intermat, has jumped in with clothing, and even a face cream, that makes thermal cameras much less effective. In fact, anyone wearing clothing made from the Intermat material, and wearing the anti-thermal cream, is barely visible to a thermal camera, and would probably be missed by guards glancing at a bunch of monitors showing what thermal cameras outside are scanning. This can work both ways, giving terrorists an edge, but Intermat is a military supplier, and sells only to legitimate military customers. So, for the moment, the troops retain the edge.

http://www.defensetech.org/archives/001499.html

Blue ketchup. Peanut-butter yogurt with little plastic dome-tops full of chocolate sprinkles and M&M's and freeze-dried, strawberry-like lumps. Sugar-free SnackWell's cookies featuring GMO wheat and eight pounds per square bite of cancer-happy sucralose and aspartame. Velveeta. Kraft "Shrek"-shaped Cheese Nips featuring enough thiamine mononitrate and disodium phosphate and partially hydrogenated oil and outright brain-cramping MSG to kill, well, Shrek.

We are surrounded. We are immersed. American consumer culture is teeming with so many neon-colored, overprocessed, semicomestible, demon-spawn products we can no longer even recognize how bad it is, how it is all meant to drive us slowly insane, so slowly we forget to keep asking why we feel so sick all the time, and we just shut the hell up and buy more giant tubs of Country Crock to go with our liquefied reconstituted pork tubes because we think this is the only way.

Of course, it's not. The solution is easy.

Read the rest:

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/gate/archive/2005/04/15/notes041505.DTL&nl=fix

http://riverbendblog.blogspot.com/

and

http://www.feministpress.org/Book/index.cfm?GCOI=55861100869560

JON CARROLL

 April 20, 2005

 Just for the fun of it, let's play "gas price tipping point," the home game where we all try to guess how high gas prices have to go before they have a significant impact on the behavior of American citizens.

Five years ago, someone might have said, "Three dollars a gallon," but we are at 3 bucks per now, and nothing much has happened. (I welcome evidence to the contrary.) I am all in favor of letting gas prices drift higher and higher. For once I agree with the president -- hang on to those prudent reserves. Let's see whether cartel greed can do what well-meant environmental hectoring cannot do. The president has suggested that the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is the solution to our gas price problems. Let us get that oil, and we will be free from those evil foreign people with their kooky policies. Sure, love the caribou, but we gotta protect the American way of life. Let's leave the environmental arguments alone for now -- as we have seen, choking air pollution and gridlock have not done much to persuade drivers to change their ways -- and concentrate on the issue of the refuge and our oil shortages.

According to Elizabeth Kolbert in the New Yorker, quoting estimates from the federal Energy Information Administration, if the drilling in the refuge were to start today, it would take 10 years for the first oil to reach market. Maximum production would not be achieved for 22 years. I am not sure how oil reserves that will come to market in 2015 are supposed to affect today's gas prices.

Read the rest:

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2005/04/20/DDG27BCCRN1.DTL

LA TIMES EDITORIAL

Bolton Should Step Aside

President Bush's nomination of John Bolton to become United Nations ambassador began as an embarrassment and is ending as a disgrace. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee was right to delay a scheduled vote and resist being railroaded by the administration into approving him.

Bolton's infantile crack that it would make no difference if the U.N. lost its top 10 floors already testified to his unfitness to serve as the United States' diplomat to the world. It may have been Bush's right to appoint someone provocative yet capable. But the revelations that have emerged over the past weeks in the Senate call into question Bolton's basic ability to do the job.

On issue after issue, whether North Korea or Iraq, Bolton has wielded a wrecking ball. It might be possible to wave off one allegation of the misuse of intelligence — infighting always takes place in the government bureaucracy — but Bolton appears to have willfully and systematically suppressed and misused classified information, including bullying civil service officials who dared to challenge his apocalyptic assessments of North Korean, Iraqi and Cuban weapons programs

Read the rest:

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/editorials/la-ed-bolton20apr20,0,1738794.story

Against Poverty

Wangari Maathai (Nobel Prize Winner)

Poverty is both a cause and a symptom of environmental degradation. You can't say you'll deal with just one. It’s a trap. When you're in poverty, you're trapped because the poorer you become, the more you degrade the environment, and the more you degrade the environment, the poorer you become. So it's a matter of breaking the cycle.

We cannot solve all the problems that we face: we don't have water, we don't have energy, we don't have food, we don't have incomes, we're not able to send our children to school. But we can do something – something that is cheap, that is within our power, our capacity, our resources. And planting a tree was the best idea I had. For me, it became a wonderful way of breaking the cycle.

Oh my God I feel so much safer. Don't you?

I mean, don't you feel so much more secure in your all-American gun-totin' oil-happy lifestyle now that we have wasted upward of $300 billion worth of your child's future education budget, along with 1,600 disposable young American lives and over 20,000 innocent Iraqi lives and about 10,000 severed American limbs and untold wads of our spiritual and moral currency, all to protect America from terrorism that is, by every account, only getting worse? Nastier? More nebulous? More anti-American?

Here's something funny, in a rip-your-patriotic-heart-out-and-spit-on-it sort of way: Just last week, BushCo's State Department decided to kill the publication of an annual report on international terrorism. Why? Well, because the government's top terrorism center concluded that there were more terrorist attacks in 2004 than in any year since 1985. Isn't that hilarious? Isn't that heartwarming? Your tax dollars at work, sweetheart.

Lest you forget, this is what they do. They trim. They edit. They censor. BushCo kills what they do not like and fudges negative data where they see fit and completely rewrites whatever the hell they want, and that includes bogus WMD reports and CIA investigations and dire environmental studies and scientific proofs about everything from evolution to abortion and pollution and clean air, right along with miserable unemployment data and all manner of research pointing up the ill health of the nation, the spirit, the world.

In other words, if BushCo doesn't like what comes out of their own hobbled agencies and their own funded studies, they do what any good dictatorship does: They annihilate it. Now that's good gummint!

Read the rest:

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/gate/archive/2005/04/22/notes042205.DTL&nl=fix

Passover Thoughts

Abraham Joshua Heschel

 We are all Pharaohs or slaves of Pharaohs. It is sad to be a slave of a Pharaoh. It is horrible to be a Pharaoh. Daily we should take account and ask: What have I done today to alleviate the anguish, to mitigate the evil, to prevent humiliation? Let there be a grain of prophet in every person!

By Paul Richter and Sonni Efron
Times Staff Writers

April 22, 2005

WASHINGTON — A former U.S. ambassador to South Korea said Thursday that John R. Bolton, President Bush's choice for U.N. ambassador, might have misled the Senate Foreign Relations Committee about a provocative and controversial 2003 speech on North Korea.

The former ambassador, Thomas Hubbard, also described Bolton yelling and slamming down a telephone on him during a confrontation. It was the latest example of the allegedly confrontational behavior that had helped stall Bolton's nomination.

Hubbard has spoken with Foreign Relations Committee aides, who are expanding an investigation into Bolton's background after senators this week postponed a confirmation vote until mid-May.

Read the rest:

http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/la-na-bolton22apr22,1,1040889,print.story?ctrack=2&cset=true

24 April 2005

Scientists have begun putting genes from human beings into food crops in a dramatic extension of genetic modification. The move, which is causing disgust and revulsion among critics, is bound to strengthen accusations that GM technology is creating "Frankenstein foods" and drive the controversy surrounding it to new heights.

Even before this development, many people, including Prince Charles, have opposed the technology on the grounds that it is playing God by creating unnatural combinations of living things.

Environmentalists say that no one will want to eat the partially human-derived food because it will smack of cannibalism.

Read the rest:

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/environment/story.jsp?story=632444

Holy war Sunday

At the rate things are going in American politics, next week will bring ads by the Noah's Ark Veterans for Truth claiming that the two Democrats on board were actually stowaways, whom God had intended for drowning but who snuck on cross-dressed as gayals.

That wouldn't be much more bizarre than what's planned for today: Bill Frist, the majority leader of the United States Senate, is going to Sunday meeting to preach that some deeply flawed and highly ideological judicial nominees are actually bloodied victims of religious persecution.

"Justice Sunday: Stop the filibuster against people of faith," the revival's being called.

It should be called, "Injustice Sunday: Demean the holy and foment schism for partisan gain."

Read the rest:

http://www.courier-journal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050424/OPINION01/504240359

Environmental Defense Challenges Flawed Mercury Rule
Last month, the EPA announced a deeply flawed rule on toxic mercury pollution. The rule allows levels of mercury to increase in the Western U.S., a big step in the wrong direction. Environmental Defense intends to sue the EPA for its failure to protect the nation from the health hazards of mercury. More than 600,000 newborns are at risk of brain damage and learning disabilities every year in the U.S. because their mothers were exposed to mercury pollution. Reduce your own mercury exposure by avoiding contaminated fish.

Seafood Selector Tip of the Month - Stone Crab Claws
Florida stone crab is in season. Known for its succulent claw meat, the Florida stone crab also comes from a well-managed fishery. Fishers only remove one claw and return the live crab back to the water to grow a new claw. Get a wallet-sized list of seafood that's healthy and eco-friendly. If you eat fish, eat smart with the Seafood Selector.

Is Your Fish Oil Supplement Safe?
Fish oil supplements are a source of heart-healthy omega-3 fatty acids, but not all supplements are created equal. Producers of fish oil supplements should purify their products to reduce or remove contaminants like PCBs and dioxins. Environmental Defense surveyed 54 companies to find out which major U.S. brands of supplements are causes for concern. See a list of ratings.

Tom's Cosmetic Make-over

by Jim Hightower

Breaking news from the political front in our Nation's Capitol: Tom DeLay has undergone an extreme make-over!

The thuggish, ethically-impaired house majority leader, who likes to be called "The Hammer" for his take-no-prisoners political style, apparently is getting PR advice to develop something of a softer appearance. For example, instead of his dark, slicked-down, Snidely-Whiplash-style hairdo, Tom is currently sporting a friendlier, pouffier do, and he's even had cosmetic dentistry to fix the gap between his two front teeth.

Sadly for Tom, however, there's no cosmetic procedure that will cover the ugly gaps in his ethical behavior. While he has been claiming that all criticism of him is a politically-motivated, "seedy attempt... to embarrass me," he's the seedy one, and he's embarrassing himself, the Republican loyalists trying to defend him, and the entire congress.

Let's chronicle the seediness. DeLay was first reprimanded by the bipartisan house ethics committee in 1997 for essentially letting campaign donors buy legislative favors, then again in 1999 for threatening to kill the legislation of an industry group because it had hired a Democrat as its top lobbyist. Last year, Tom got three new spankings from the ethics committee – one for giving special access to a corporate campaign contributor, another for using a federal agency for partisan political purposes, and a third for trying to bribe another member of congress to vote with him.

This year, DeLay reacted to all of these spankings by having the Republican chairman of the ethics committee fired and by rigging the rules so the committee won't investigate his behavior again. But he's also under scrutiny by a Texas grand jury and by others for such ethical lapses as illegally laundering corporate money, taking four junkets illegally paid for by lobbyists and foreign agents, and funneling half-a-million dollars in campaign cash to his wife and daughter.

Tom doesn't need a cosmetic make-over, he needs an entire ethics transplant.

Sources: "DeLay under fire, What's at Stake," USA Today, April 12, 2005. "For Tom DeLay, it was only a matter of time," Austin American-Statesman, April 12, 2005. "Even for the GOP, DeLay might go too far," Austin American-Statesman, April 8. 2005.

© 2005 Hightower.com

U.S. takes brakes off nuke arms race

As hard as it might be to believe, the United States is embarked on a path that's bound to trigger yet another nuclear arms race.

Yet few in this country seem to be paying attention.

It's as if we were lulled to sleep about nuclear weapons when the Berlin Wall came tumbling down in 1989. All those Cold War years of worrying whether the United States and the Soviet Union would start lobbing bombs at each other were finally over.

They should have been, but, unfortunately, the chances of nuclear devastation are as strong today as they've ever been.

Read the rest:

http://www.madison.com/tct/opinion//index.php?ntid=37398&ntpid=0

U.S. Ad Blitz Dismisses Obesity Threat as 'Hype'

Reuters

Mon Apr 25, 5:36 PM ET

By Nichola Groom

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - A group backed by the U.S. food and restaurant industries on Monday launched an advertising campaign aimed at dismissing as hype concerns about the large number of obese Americans.

The full-page ads in major U.S. newspapers were inspired by new government data questioning government assertions that obesity causes nearly as many deaths as smoking, according to the Center for Consumer Freedom, which paid for the ads.

The group, based in Washington, does not disclose names of its donors, though spokesman Mike Burita said casual dining restaurant chains "are predominant sources of funding for us."

Read the rest:

http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=healthNews&storyID=8287992

DeLay Woes Prompt Rush to Refile Forms

 Members of Congress are rushing to amend their travel and campaign records, fearing that the controversy over House Majority Leader Tom DeLay will trigger an ethics war that will bring greater scrutiny to their own travel and official activities.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/04/25/AR2005042501414.html

GOP to Reverse Ethics Rule Blocking New DeLay Probe

January Change Led Democrats to Shut Down Panel

Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, April 27, 2005; Page A01

Read the rest:

http://www.commondreams.org/news2005/0427-09.htm

Public records show DeLay's leadership political action committee (PAC) gave $15,000 to the campaign of Rep. Melissa Hart, R-Pa. — $10,000 in 2000 and $5,000 in 2002. Hart would chair a panel to investigate DeLay if the committee moves forward with a probe.

Read the rest:

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2005-04-26-delay-donations-ethics_x.htm

Jesus Was No GOP Lobbyist

·  A tortured version of his message is being marketed for political gain.

By Jack Hitt, author of "Off the Road: A Modern-Day Walk Down the Pilgrim's Route Into Spain" (Simon & Schuster, 2005).

What would Jesus filibuster? The question is bizarre, of course, but the fact that many prominent religious and political leaders believe that there is an answer surely marks our time as pretty strange.

How quickly it has all happened — that the media, particularly television, has convinced itself that Christianity is little more than a Republican political action committee. When the pope died, CNN's Wolf Blitzer introduced former Clinton aide Paul Begala and right-wing pundit Robert Novak this way: "Bob is a good Catholic; I'm not so sure about Paul Begala." At the bottom of the screen, CNN ran an informative factoid for the audience: "Many Catholic doctrines are conservative."

Read the rest:

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-hitt26apr26,0,1240928.story?coll=la-news-comment-opinions

The Magic Chocolate Math Assessment

1. First of all, pick the number of times a week that you would

like to have chocolate (more than once but less than 10).

2.  Multiply this number by 2. (Just to be bold)

3.  Add 5.

4.  Multiply it by 50. We'll wait while you get the calculator.

5.  If you have already had your birthday this year, add 1755. If
you haven't, add 1754.

6.  Now subtract the four digit year that you were born in.

You should have a three digit number....AND:

The first digit of this was your original number (i.e., how many times
you want to have chocolate each week.)

The next two numbers are.......

Your Age! (Oh YES, it is!!!!!)

What's On Jesus' iPod?
Protest anthems, Zeppelin, gospel, classical and, of course, Nine Inch Nails. And, yes, Jesus does P2P
By Mark Morford

You know he has one.

You know it's the big 60GB model, loaded, flawless and gleaming and radiating a strange liquid ethereal glow and couched in a beautiful custom rainbow-colored biodegradable case made of clouds and eagle feathers and wine.

And of course Jesus gets his iPods wholesale, given how he and Steve Jobs go way back, back to the time when Jobs was a scruffy twentysomething geek ever praying for revelation and God finally gave Jesus the green light to inspire the first Mac.

The iPod and Jesus -- it just makes sense. ...

(click here to read the rest)

(Full URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/gate/archive/2005/04/27/notes042705.DTL&nl=fix)

Ozone layer most fragile on record

Paul Brown, environment correspondent
Wednesday April 27, 2005
The Guardian

Fears over increase in skin cancer as scientists report that climate change continues to destroy the earth's protection



The protective ozone layer over the Arctic has thinned this winter to the lowest levels since records began, alarming scientists who believed it had begun to heal.

The increased loss of ozone allows more harmful ultraviolet light to reach the earth's surface, making children and outdoor enthusiasts such as skiers more vulnerable to skin cancer - a disease which is already dramatically increasing.

Scientists yesterday reinforced the warning that people going out in the sun this summer should protect themselves with creams and hats

Read the rest:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,1470944,00.html

Feminist Daily News Wire
April 26, 2005

The Return of Laughter

Alfredo Molano

Published on Friday, April 29, 2005 by the Daily Camera (Boulder, CO)

Our New Pluto-Theocracy

by Molly Ivins

Being of the populist persuasion, I am a terminal fan of Thomas Frank, who has gone from "What's the Matter With Kansas?" to "What's the Matter With Liberals?" in the current issue of the New York Review of Books. Those of us in the beer-drinking, pick-up-truck-driving, country-music-listening school of liberals in the hinterlands particularly appreciate his keen dissection of how the Republicans use class resentment against "elitist liberals," while waging class warfare on people who work for a living. The unholy combination of theocracy and plutocracy that now rules this country is, in fact, enabled by dumb liberals. Many a weary liberal on the Internet and elsewhere has been involved in the tedious study of the entrails from the last election, trying to figure out where Democrats went wrong. I don't have a dog in that fight, but I can guarantee you where they're going wrong for the next election: 73 Democratic House members and 18 Democratic senators voted for that hideous bankruptcy "reform" bill that absolutely screws regular people. And it's not just consumers who were screwed by the lobbyist-written bill. The Wall Street Journal shows small businesses are also getting the shaft, as the finance industry charges them higher and higher transaction fees. If Democrats aren't going to stand up for regular people, to hell with them. Now here's some populist lagniappe (that's a word us populists often use) for you to chew on. The Economic Policy Institute reports the economic well-being of middle-class families has declined between 2000 and 2003 for three reasons: the generally lousy economy, the Bush tax policies and the cost of health care. The Tax Justice Network recently reported the world's richest individuals have placed $11.5 trillion in assets in offshore tax havens to avoid paying taxes, a sum 10 times the GDP of Great Britain. The ratio of CEO pay to average worker pay reached 301 to one in 2003. The average worker takes home $517 a week, while the average CEO earns $155,796, according to BusinessWeek. In 1982, the ratio was 42 to one. Dialogue between President Bush and a citizen during a February meeting in Nebraska, where Bush was trying to sell his scheme to privatize Social Security: Woman: "That's good, because I work three jobs and I feel like I contribute." Bush: "You work three jobs?" Woman: "Three jobs, yes." Bush: "Uniquely American, isn't it? I mean, that is fantastic that you're doing that. (Applause.) Get any sleep? (Laughter.)" One out of every two jobs created in the United States over the past 12 months was taken by a worker over 55. Economist Dean Baker says the flood of older workers is caused by the falling value of retirees' 401(k)s and the cost of health care. The number of long-term unemployed who are college graduates has nearly tripled since 2000. Nearly one in five of the long-term jobless are college graduates, according to the Los Angeles Times. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities has a brand-new study out showing the uneven division of the fruits of the supposed economic recovery: "The data show that the share of real income growth that has gone to wages and salaries has been smaller than during any other comparable post-World War II recovery period, while the share of real income growth that has gone to corporate profits has been larger than during all other comparable post-World War II recoveries." In previous recoveries, workers got an average of 49 percent of the national income gains, while corporate profits got 18 percent. This time, the workers are getting 23 percent and the corporations are getting 44 percent — about one half as much as the share that has gone to corporate profits. None of that apply to you? Good. Go listen to Tom DeLay give another lecture on moral values.

Thoughts for May Day, when workers of the world still unite.

Source: Ernesto “Che” Guevara, from "Economics and Politics in the Transition to Socialism"

Our goal is that the individual feels the need to perform voluntary labor out of internal motivation, as well as because of the social atmosphere that exists. The two must go hand in hand. The atmosphere should help the individual feel the need to do voluntary work. But if it is simply the atmosphere, if it is simply moral pressure, then this just perpetuates what is known, for better or worse, as the alienation of man. Because then voluntary work is no longer something that comes from within oneself, something new, something done freely and no longer as a slave to work.

As we enter a new society, work cannot be considered the dark side of life but rather the opposite. Our educational task in the coming years is to transform work into a moral necessity, an internal necessity. We have to rid ourselves of the erroneous view—appropriate only to a society based on exploitation—that work is a disagreeable human necessity. We have to bring out work’s other aspect, as a human necessity within each individual.

U.S. Called Unprepared For Nuclear Terrorism

Experts Critical of Evacuation Plans

John Mintz, Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, May 3, 2005;

When asked during the campaign debates to name the gravest danger facing the United States, President Bush and challenger Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) gave the same answer: a nuclear device in the hands of terrorists.

But more than 3 1/2 years after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the U.S. government has failed to adequately prepare first responders and the public for a nuclear strike, according to emergency preparedness and nuclear experts and federal reports.

Although hundreds of thousands of lives could be saved by rapidly evacuating people downwind of a radiation cloud, officials have trained only small numbers of first responders to prepare for such an event, according to public health specialists and government documents. And the information given to the public is flawed and incomplete, many experts agree.

Read the rest:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/02/AR2005050201454.html

At Ground Zero, Disarray Reigns, and an Opportunity Awaits

he master plan for ground zero is unraveling, which is not necessarily bad news. But what are the odds that planners will see this as an opportunity to save it?

The discovery that the Freedom Tower will have to be redesigned to address concerns raised by security experts has once again sent architects scurrying to patch up one of the most muddled developments in the city's recent memory.

State officials have said that the changes sought by police officials could delay construction of the tower, already behind schedule, for at least three more months. But one of the suggestions under discussion - moving the tower to the east, where it would be less vulnerable to a truck bomb - would clearly delay construction longer. Meanwhile, there is growing apprehension that adhering to new security standards will transform the tower into an armored bunker - a message that is unlikely to instill confidence in downtown's rebirth.

Read the rest:

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/02/arts/design/02note.html?

28. April 2005
Famous Munch paintings destroyed?

The famous Munch paintings "Scream" and "Madonna", which were stolen from the Munch Museum in August last year, may have been destroyed.

The newspaper Dagbladet, quoting a criminal source, reports that the paintings have been burnt, in order to destroy evidence.

The police denies any knowledge of this, but the newspaper also quotes a confidential police report which allegedly confirms that the investigators also have the same information.

Three persons have so far been arrested and held in custody, suspected of having participated in the theft. However, the two who actually stole the paintings are still at large.

http://www.norwaypost.no/content.asp?cluster_id=27642&folder_id=1

Day 113 of the President's Silence

By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

Published: May 3, 2005

Finally, finally, finally, President Bush is showing a little muscle on the issue of genocide in Darfur.

Is the muscle being used to stop the genocide of hundreds of thousands of villagers? No, tragically, it's to stop Congress from taking action.

Incredibly, the Bush administration is fighting to kill the Darfur Accountability Act, which would be the most forceful step the U.S. has taken so far against the genocide. The bill, passed by the Senate, calls for such steps as freezing assets of the genocide's leaders and imposing an internationally backed no-fly zone to stop Sudan's Army from strafing villages.

The White House was roused from its stupor of indifference on Darfur to send a letter, a copy of which I have in my hand, to Congressional leaders, instructing them to delete provisions about Darfur from the legislation.

Mr. Bush might reflect on a saying of President Kennedy: "The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who in a period of moral crisis maintain their neutrality."

Read the rest:

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/03/opinion/03kristof.html?hp

Albert Einstein

The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed.

Making the Most of Mother's Day

By Rebecca Ephraim, AlterNet. Posted May 7, 2005.

This Mother's Day, why not follow in the tradition that Julia Ward Howe set and Marla Ruzicka exemplified.                                                                

I grudgingly admit that the big things I wanted when I was a young adult were fame and fortune. Yes, I can rationalize that I wasn't alone in my youthful lust for more, more, more for me, me, me. But then there's the audacious northern Californian, Marla Ruzicka, whose stirring death in Iraq last month, at age 28, was an elegant reminder of how stuck we can be in our boundless self-interests.

It's as if her bigger-than-life role as a long-time advocate for the victims of war was a giant finger poking at the tightly woven cocoon many of us have spun (consciously or not) that insulates us from acknowledging the ravages of armed struggle on the lives of ordinary people in other lands. Yes, she did the heavy lifting for a lot of us.

Ruzicka, by dint of personality and pluck, sought out politicians (for aid money), U.S. soldiers (for clearing landmines) and the media (to cover the plight of civilian Iraqis) so she could assist displaced families and orphaned children who were either bombed by mistake or simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. Ironically, this woman who had made helping victims of war her life's work was "collateral damage" herself when a car bomb meant for another target, killed her and two others on April 16. She was on her way to help an Iraqi child. I recall I was on my way to the mall.

It was a stunning realization that this smart and pretty blonde -- 20 years my junior -- had done more at her age, as Vermont's U.S. Senator Patrick Leahy put it, "than most people do in a lifetime."

Yes, Marla Ruzicka was a daughter any mom could be proud of. "She cared about people and gave people her love and help," her own mother, Nancy, was quoted as saying following her daughter's death. "I'll remember the love she spread around the world and the good ambassador that she was for her country."

In one sense -- and not as tacky as it sounds -- Marla Ruzicka's death comes just in time for Mother's Day. Her acts of compassion in war-torn countries renew the importance that Julia Ward Howe gave to the act of honoring mothers in the late 1800's. You could say Mother's Day was her brainchild; but flowers and chocolates didn't figure in.

Julia Ward Howe is probably best known for writing the Battle Hymn of the Republic. Yet, like Marla Ruzicka, Howe witnessed first-hand the carnage and suffering of war -- for her, the Civil War, taking place on our own shores. She was shocked by the staggering deaths, injuries and disease among the soldiers, the devastating toll it took upon the widows and orphans she worked with and the ensuing economic crises that followed the war.

It was from this seminal experience that in 1870, Howe composed a Mother's Day Proclamation calling on women to rise up and "solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means whereby the great human family can live in peace. Each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar, but of God."

This Mother's Day, why not follow in the tradition that Julia Ward Howe set and Marla Ruzicka exemplified. Both embraced the great human family, drawing no distinctions between "them" and "us." Let's honor the valued women in our lives by making peace a priority, whether it's making peace at home or a half a world away. Even better, as you sit with your family this Mother's Day, read Howe's original Proclamation aloud knowing that we all can't soar with eagles -- but we can carve the turkey and aspire to doing a little more to make the world a better place.

Read the proclamation at www.codepink4peace.org.

Rebecca Ephraim is a member of the newly-formed Chicago chapter of Code Pink: Women for Peace.

Power Failure
What Bush still doesn't understand about Iraq and North Korea.
By Fred Kaplan
Posted Friday, April 29, 2005, at 3:43 PM PT

Two questions prompted by President Bush's press conference Thursday night: Does he believe what he said about Iraq and North Korea, or was he just yakking? And which prospect is more disturbing?

If the president believes what he said, he doesn't comprehend the nature of either crisis. If he doesn't believe it and was just reciting the usual grab bag of clichés, what was his point? To deflect attention from an as-yet-undisclosed policy, or to obscure the lack of any policy at all?

On Iraq, a reporter at the press conference cited the recent comment by Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, that the insurgency is as strong today as it was a year ago and asked why we weren't doing better. President Bush replied:

I think he went on to say we're winning, if I recall. But nevertheless, there are still some in Iraq who aren't happy with democracy. They want to go back to the old days of tyranny and darkness and torture chambers and mass graves.

Does he really believe that this is the defining struggle in Iraq: the forces of democracy vs. the remnants of Saddam? Bush's own military officers and intelligence agencies have said, time and again, that the insurgency consists of several elements—some Baathist holdouts and foreign terrorists, but also disparate Iraqis who oppose the American-led occupation and Sunni tribesmen who fear disenfranchisement and dispossession at the hands of a new Shiite-dominant regime.

Read the rest:

http://slate.msn.com/id/2117761/fr/rss/

Our war for 'whatever'

By James Carroll  |  May 10, 2005

A FEW years ago, while checking into a ''W" Hotel, I asked the clerk what the W stands for. She shrugged, ''Whatever." The word so perfectly matched the insouciance of her manner that, for a moment, I believed her. The tossed off expression ''whatever" captures the mood of a contemporary minimalism, making it a fit inspiration for a mod hotel chain, where the understatement even of decor is itself overstated.

Every few years a new expression enters the common usage, language's method of giving form to the particularity of each era's attitude. Young people are the custodians of this function of expression, leading the way with words and phrases that define the new. A generation ago, the words ''never mind," with the comic Gilda Radner as its tribune, caught the spirit of disappointed expectation that went with a crushed economy and the social dislocations that followed Vietnam, Watergate, busing.

We Americans of the early 21st century say something essential about ourselves by responding to a vast range of questions and experiences with the supreme offhandedness of ''whatever." The word suggests indifference, lack of intensity, a refusal to commit, a rejection, above all, of conflict. The word proclaims a refusal to be responsible. ''Whatever you say" is the implication. Whatever you want; whatever you think. There is surrender in the word, a lack of will, which points to a lack of selfhood.

At her court martial last week, according to The New York Times, Private First Class Lynndie R. England told the judge that when pressed to join in the humiliating of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib, she responded by saying, ''OK. Whatever." In that case ''whatever" consisted in an abandonment of human decency, but it assumed England's prior abandonment of her own moral core. The word ''whatever" as prelude to her acts revealed that, before humiliating the prisoners, she had humiliated herself.

But, speaking of Iraq, a spirit of ''whatever" animates those much further up the US chain of command. Indeed, England and her fellow guards at Abu Ghraib were not the originators of that spirit, but merely transmitters of it. When President Bush announced the effective American abandonment of normal restraints in the global war on terror, he was saying, ''Whatever it takes." Whatever we have to do. We will be bound by nothing but our own will, accountable to no one. Forget Geneva. In order to win, we will do whatever

Read the rest:

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2005/05/10/our_war_for_whatever?mode=PF

http://store1.yimg.com/I/powerseed_1841_658039

The Powerseed is a small, egg-shaped device (which has been around for about a year) that sits on your dinner table and beeps at regular intervals, indicating when you should to take a bite. Every five minutes, it flashes a different signal to remind you to evaluate just how hungry you really are. This is, of course, a stark contrast to my current eating methodology, which rarely involves chewing more than once, so it might be worth a shot. Helping you not fall prey to the "eyes-bigger-than-stomach" cycle holds a lot of promise, if you're the patient, starving type. And, although the picture (see link) seems to indicate that they hunt in packs, a single user system is available for $50, plus shipping.

Product/Catalog Page ($50, in stock) [Powerseed via RFJ]

    Wednesday 11 May 2005

Critics say UN Ambassador-designate John Bolton didn’t properly prepare for a key nonproliferation conference, which could be a serious setback in US efforts to isolate Iran.

    George W. Bush has said it often enough. The No. 1 security challenge for America post-9/11 is to prevent nuclear weapons from falling into the hands of terrorists or rogue regimes. In a landmark speech at the National Defense University in February 2004, the president called for a toughened Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and other new initiatives. "There is a consensus among nations that proliferation cannot be tolerated," Bush said. "Yet this consensus means little unless it is translated into action."

    By action Bush meant the hard work of diplomacy, John Bolton, the president’s point man on nuclear arms control, told Congress a month later. For one thing, America needed to lead an effort at "closing a loophole" in the 35-year-old NPT, Bolton testified back then. The treaty’s provisions had to be updated to prevent countries like Iran from enriching uranium under cover of a peaceful civilian program—which is technically permitted under the NPT—when what Tehran really sought was a bomb, according to the administration.

Read the rest:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7817986/site/newsweek/

 Bargain Art

Greg Allen writes in The New York Times:

In the early 1950's Lee Krasner, not yet famous but already a promising Abstract Expressionist painter, asked Hans Hofmann, her former teacher, to help her land a gallery show. He offered her the biggest compliment he could: "This is so good," he said of her work, "you would not believe it was done by a woman." Nonetheless, he declined. Female artists were a relative rarity at the top galleries, and the most famous painters of the day were all men. The disparity was even more extreme at museums, and when paintings came up for sale, those by male artists fetched by far the higher price. By 1989, the artist-activists known as the Guerrilla Girls, founded to call attention to these disparities, were postering SoHo with a list of 67 women and artists of color whose work could be purchased with the record $17.7 million one Jasper Johns painting brought at auction.

Flash forward to spring 2005. With the Guerrilla Girls preparing to exhibit in the first Venice Biennale overseen by two women, a casual observer might think the art world is at the vanguard of gender equality. But next week's contemporary art auctions, one of the most prestigious art markets in the world, tell a very different story indeed. Of the 861 works that Christie's, Sotheby's and Phillips de Pury, & Company are offering over three days starting May 10, a mere 13 percent, are by female artists. Sixty-one pieces have each been assigned an estimated price of $1 million or more; of those, only 6 are by women: a marble sculpture by Louise Bourgeois, 2 grid canvases by the late Minimalist Agnes Martin and 3 paintings by the South African artist Marlene Dumas.

The first two are venerated figures in the canon of contemporary art, whose work has been shown and taught for decades; Ms. Dumas is a relative newcomer whose recent price jumps have attracted considerable attention. The male ranks of the million-plus club, by comparison, include those of some lesser-known contemporary artists. "When you're talking about the market, there may be a glass ceiling," Irving Sandler, an art historian and expert on the New York school, said. "It's not as if women aren't recognized; they are. But look at your top auction people, and there is a vast discrepancy between what the men get and what the women get."

Read the rest here. Looking at the issue in all its complexity -- most art collectors are men; women are described as "less Machiavellian about their careers"; women's art brings in less at auction houses and this affects the gallery market -- the author concludes with a very simple, yet disappointing, statement: "Women's art sells for less because it is made by women."

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