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Wednesday, July 31, 2002
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Bernie DeKoven answers the following question: "How do you get people to be more cooperative? I take them on a retreat to an expensive, full-service natural setting, we talk for a day and a half about how important it is for us to work together, and fifteen minutes into the volleyball game people are ready to kill each other." (07/31/02) | |
Vision for a Synergic Transition | |
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Barry Carter writes: Our social institutions are dying. The pain we feel is the pain of death and birth simultaneously, the death of one civilization and the birth of a new one. We have entered a period where the conservative, non-risk taker requiring stability has become the risk taker, the radical and the gambler. A period where the one who refuses to change will surely be the one who loses the most in the coming years. There is no going back to the way things used to be. “Back to the basics” is a failed policy. The future has already begun and the trend is clear. Starting today you must have a completely new outlook on life. You must be responsible. You can no longer depend on employers, unions or governments to look out for your economic well being, to provide you with a job, retirement, social security, health care or a safety net. From this day forward you, and your global network of partners, are responsible for creating work and wealth for yourself. If you have no network you have no security. All of the rules have changed. The guarantees and promises made to you by Industrial Age society are null and void and will be breached. (07/31/02) | |
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BBC World News -- Researchers at the world's largest aircraft maker, Boeing, are using the work of a controversial Russian scientist to try to create a device that will defy gravity. The company is examining an experiment by Yevgeny Podkletnov, who claims to have developed a device which can shield objects from the Earth's pull. ... The project is being run by the top-secret Phantom Works in Seattle, the part of the company which handles Boeing's most sensitive programmes. The head of the Phantom Works, George Muellner, told the security analysis journal Jane's Defence Weekly that the science appeared to be valid and plausible. ... Boeing is the latest in a series of high-profile institutions trying to replicate Dr Podkletnov's experiment. The military wing of the UK hi-tech group BAE Systems is working on an anti-gravity programme, dubbed Project Greenglow. The US space agency, Nasa, is also attempting to reproduce Dr Podkletnov's findings, but a preliminary report indicates the effect does not exist. (07/31/02) | |
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Guardian's The Observer--Dateline London: Saudi Arabia is teetering on the brink of collapse, fuelling Foreign Office fears of an extremist takeover of one of the West's key allies in the war on terror. Anti-government demonstrations have swept the desert kingdom in the past months in protest at the pro-American stance of the de facto ruler, Prince Abdullah. At the same time, Whitehall officials are concerned that Abdullah could face a palace coup from elements within the royal family sympathetic to al-Qaeda. Saudi sources said the Pentagon had recently sponsored a secret conference to look at options if the royal family fell. ... Anti-Abdullah elements within the Saudi government are also thought to have colluded in a wave of bomb attacks on Western targets by Islamic terrorists. The authorities have blamed the attacks on an alleged 'turf war' between Westerners involved in the bootleg alcohol trade and have jailed five Britons, a Canadian and a Belgian for the bombings. But British intelligence sources have confirmed that the attacks were carried out by Islamists linked to al-Qaeda. ... The tensions between the royal factions will intensify with the death of King Fahd. The condition of the king, in hospital in Switzerland, is 'unstable', doctors said. (07/31/02) | |
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SF Gate -- Daniel Kurtzman writes: As President Bush wages his war against terrorism and moves to create a huge homeland security apparatus, he appears to be borrowing heavily, if not ripping off ideas outright, from George Orwell. The work in question is "1984, " the prophetic novel about a government that controls the masses by spreading propaganda, cracking down on subversive thought and altering history to suit its needs. It was intended to be read as a warning about the evils of totalitarianism -- not a how-to manual. ... In "1984," the state remained perpetually at war against a vague and ever- changing enemy. The war took place largely in the abstract, but it served as a convenient vehicle to fuel hatred, nurture fear and justify the regime's autocratic practices. Bush's war against terrorism has become almost as amorphous. Although we are told the president's resolve is steady and the mission clear, we seem to know less and less about the enemy we are fighting. What began as a war against Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda quickly morphed into a war against Afghanistan, followed by dire warnings about an "Axis of Evil," the targeting of terrorists in some 50 to 60 countries, and now the beginnings of a major campaign against Iraq. Exactly what will constitute success in this war remains unclear, but the one thing the Bush administration has made certain is that the war will continue "indefinitely." (07/31/02) | |
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NewScientist.com -- Scientists have discovered why being cuddled feels so good - human skin has a special network of nerves that stimulate a pleasurable response to stroking. The revelation came after doctors realised that a woman with no sense of touch still felt a "pleasant" sensation when her skin was caressed. Normal touch is transmitted to the brain through a network of fast-conducting nerves, called myelinated fibres, which carry signals at 60 metres per second. But there is a second slow-conducting nerve network of unmyelinated fibres, called C-tactile (CT), the role of which was unknown. The CT network carries signals at just one metre per second. "It must be used for unconscious aspects of touch because it is so slow," says Håkan Olausson, who led the study at the Department of Clinical Neurophysiology at Sahlgrenska University Hospital, Sweden. "It seems the CT network conveys emotions, or a sense of self." "This study definitely helps our understanding of how touch systems work," says Brian Fiske, assistant editor at Nature Neuroscience. (07/31/02) | |
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Barry Carter writes: Today, based upon quantum physics, it’s “win-win or no deal.” We must learn to see from many different perspectives in order to see win-win. We must today visualize the win-win and abundance before us. If we are to survive, we must visualize win-win and make it the expectation. Though the reinforcing loops for win-win are tiny, they are growing and we must look to find them. Visualizing win-win based upon knowledge power and seeing the growing win-win feedback loops are the premiere challenges of our lifetime. We must have a powerful enough vision of a desired future to change our win/lose expectations. We must understand the concepts of quantum physics—the reality we see is merely a reflection of our thinking, not some independent, absolute reality. We cannot stay in our win/lose civilization. On the other hand, we cannot move to a win-win civilization without an intelligent vision. Since we humans crave the “practical,” based upon empirical, observable evidence, we must see and use Mass Privatization and information technology as the human maturity stepping stones to a win-win world. (07/30/02) | |
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David Bollier writes: One of the great questions of contemporary American political economy is, who shall control the commons? "The commons" refers to that vast range of resources that the American people collectively own, but which are rapidly being enclosed: privatized, traded in the market, and abused. The process of converting the American commons into market resources can accurately be described as enclosure because, like the movement to enclose common lands in eighteenth-century England, it involves the private appropriation of collectively owned resources. Such enclosures are troubling because they disproportionately benefit the corporate class and effectively deprive ordinary citizens of access to resources that they legally or morally own. The result is a hypertrophic market that colonizes untouched natural resources and public life while eroding our democratic commonwealth. The commons and enclosure are archaic, unfamiliar terms. But this strangeness is appropriate. We currently lack a vocabulary for identifying a wide range of abuses that harm public assets and social ecology. When such abuses are acknowledged, they tend to be viewed as isolated and episodic, rather than systematically related. A discussion of the commons and enclosure helps bring into sharp focus a dramatic but largely unexamined phenomenon of contemporary American society: the forced privatization and marketization of large swaths of shared wealth and social life. We already have a familiar and sophisticated language for talking about economic exchange, focused on market efficiency. We need to develop a similarly rich body of knowledge about the commons, in order to appreciate the value of our civic patrimony and to develop strategies that will help us fortify and extend it. (07/30/02) | |
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New York Times -- This morning the Pentagon's plan to attack BAGHDAD first, was revealed: As the Bush administration considers its military options for deposing Saddam Hussein, senior administration and Pentagon officials say they are exploring a new if risky approach: take Baghdad and one or two key command centers and weapons depots first, in hopes of cutting off the country's leadership and causing a quick collapse of the government. The "inside-out" approach, as some call this Baghdad-first option, would capitalize on the American military's ability to strike over long distances, maneuvering forces to envelop a large target. Those advocating that plan say it reflects a strong desire to find a strategy that would not require a full quarter-million American troops, yet hits hard enough to succeed. One important aim would be to disrupt Iraq's ability to order the use of weapons of mass destruction. ... In concentrating its attention on an air campaign and ground action, the military and administration officials have been weighing troop deployments ranging from 70,000 to 250,000. (07/30/02) | |
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Financial Times -- US and European banks and bondholders lent an estimated $500bn to the crippled US gas and power sector, new research commissioned by the Financial Times reveals. The figure raises fears that a further string of corporate failures in the wake of the Enron scandal would expose lenders to heavy losses. Dynegy and Williams, which have combined debts of more than $20bn, are among those that could be forced into bankruptcy following the collapse of their energy trading markets and a crisis of investor confidence. Although the energy trading companies are under the most immediate pressure, the fall in electricity prices is hitting the finances of the entire US gas and power sector which SNL Financial, an independent research firm, estimates had total debts of $450bn at the end of last year. ... "We are past the point of no return on significant levels of debt default in the energy industry, which will dwarf WorldCom and Global Crossing," said Mr Miller. "There is no doubt we will see multiple bankruptcies shortly." (07/30/02) | |
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The Sidney Morning Herald -- Recent pronouncements from the Bush Administration and national security initiatives put in place in the Reagan era could see internment camps and martial law in the United States. ... By April, the US military had created a Northern Command to aid Homeland defence. Reuters reported that the command is "mainly expected to play a supporting role to local authorities". However, Mr Ridge, the Director of Homeland Security, has just advocated a review of US law regarding the use of the military for law enforcement duties. ... At the time of the Reagan initiatives, the then attorney-general, William French Smith, wrote to the national security adviser, Robert McFarlane: "I believe that the role assigned to the Federal Emergency Management Agency in the revised Executive Order exceeds its proper function as a co-ordinating agency for emergency preparedness ... this department and others have repeatedly raised serious policy and legal objections to an 'emergency czar' role for FEMA." Criticism of the Bush Administration's response to September11 echoes Mr Smith's warning. On June 7 the former presidential counsel John Dean spoke of America's sliding into a "constitutional dictatorship" and martial law. (07/30/02) | |
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BBC News -- A two-kilometre-wide (1.4 miles) chunk of flying rock, was discovered on 9 July. The asteroid was named 2002 NT7. Initial estimates of its orbit suggested there was a small chance of it colliding with our planet in 2019. However, the latest observations accumulated over the last few days have confirmed the asteroid will fly harmlessly by. Dr Don Yeomans, of the US space agency's (Nasa) Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said: "We can now rule out any impact possibilities for 2019." ... However, "it would be prudent to caution interested observers that further observations in the near future could result in new impact dates," he told BBC News Online. (07/30/02) | |
6:56:01 AM 
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© TrustMark
2002
Timothy Wilken.
Last update:
7/31/2002; 3:01:19 PM.
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