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Tuesday, August 06, 2002
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Despite the fact that all the terrorists involved in the 911 World Trade Tower attack were from Saudia Arabia, we attacked Afghanistan. Now we are preparing to attack Iraq, despite the fact there is no solid evidence they were involved with the 911. What about Saudia Arabia ? (08/06/02) | |
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CONFLICT —def—> The struggle to avoid loss — the struggle to avoid being hurt. Barry Carter writes: When we look at the underlying norms and thinking that employment and our entire Industrial Age systems rest upon, we find a win/lose norm. The controlled economy and other Industrial Age systems were not the start of win/lose norms and systems. Serfdom, slavery and monarchy of the Agricultural Age were also based upon win/lose norms and prior to this so to was tribal life and customs. Controlled economies are merely the latest in a series of perhaps progressively improving win/lose systems. The inherent win/lose nature of slavery and serfdom is self-evident, however, how is a controlled economy inherently a win/lose system? Any economy that must be controlled to maintain order is one based upon fear not love. The former Soviet Union controlled its economy because it feared what free humans would do without control, likewise so do companies. Only systems and actions that come from a love paradigm can be win-win. Actions and systems from an authoritarian control or fear paradigm are inherently based upon win/lose and scarcity. The heart of the controlled economy is its win/lose compensation system. Controlled economies operate based upon standardized compensation – salaries and wages. Regardless of the value one adds the controlled economy pays the same within a relatively narrow range. With standardized compensation the more you make the less the organization makes and vise-versa. I must lose in order for you to win and vise-versa. The controlled economy is based upon adversarial human relationships. At a tangible level we see a win/lose system as CEO's salaries explode while they layoff record numbers of people. Managers and the company makes more by holding down wages and salaries; the more the employee makes the less the company makes and vise-versa. The more vacation and benefits the employee gets the more it cost the company. There is also win/lose competition for limited positions. The primary job of most managers is to get more work out of people for less money. Unions who represent employees (a check and balance bureaucracy) have the job of getting more money and benefits for employee at the owner’s expense. Externally controlled economies compete with other controlled economies for survival, customers, growth, resources and prestige. (08/06/02) | |
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NewScientist.com -- Embryonic stem cells that are free from the risk of animal pathogens have been grown by scientists in Singapore. The technique overcomes a key stumbling block to using ESCs to cure diseases like Parkinson's or diabetes. The therapeutic promise of ESCs depends on their ability to develop into any different type of cell. But they are notoriously difficult to grow in the lab, not least because they must first be persuaded to divide to produce more cells, without specialising. ... Bongso's team is getting guidance from experts at the US Food and Drug Administration to help them develop cell lines that stand the best chance of being approved for medical use when and if stem cell therapy is shown to work in humans. For example, they will try to improve safety even more by screening cells for other human diseases such as CJD. (08/06/02) | |
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Janis Ian writes: The Internet, and downloading, are here to stay... Anyone who thinks otherwise should prepare themselves to end up on the slagheap of history. ... I propose the following experiment: 1) All the record companies get together and build a single giant website, with everything in their catalogues that's currently out of print available on it, and agree to experiment for one year. 2) The site offers only downloads in this part of the experiment. 3) Here's where the difficult part comes in. All the record companies agree that, for the sake of the experiment, and because these items are currently dead in the water anyway, they're going to charge a more-than-reasonable price for each download. I mean something in the order of a quarter per song. 4) Last but not least, the monies received would be portioned out fairly. ... By working together, artists and consumers could feel like they were a part of something bigger than themselves, and actually become partners with the music industry. And that industry, instead of responding with Draconian measures and safeguards, could feel like they were actually a part of the community - helping to further the artistic and intellectual resources of this country, and of the world. America has always exported its culture; that's our number one route into the hearts of the rest of the world. Instead of shutting that down, let's run with the new model, and be the first and the best at it. It's a brave new world out there, and somebody's going to grab it. (08/06/02) | |
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Time.com -- A meeting that might have changed the course of history took place in the White House situation room during the first week of January 2001. The session was part of a program designed by Bill Clinton's National Security Adviser, Sandy Berger, who wanted the transition between the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations to run as smoothly as possible. With some bitterness, Berger remembered how little he and his colleagues had been helped by the first Bush Administration in 1992-93. Eager to avoid a repeat of that experience, he had set up a series of 10 briefings by his team for his successor, Condoleezza Rice, and her deputy, Stephen Hadley. Berger attended only one of the briefings-the session that dealt with the threat posed to the U.S. by international terrorism, and especially by al-Qaeda. "I'm coming to this briefing," he says he told Rice, "to underscore how important I think this subject is." Later, alone in his office with Rice, Berger says he told her, "I believe that the Bush Administration will spend more time on terrorism generally, and on al-Qaeda specifically, than any other subject." ... A senior Bush Administration official denies being handed a formal plan to take the offensive against al-Qaeda, and says Clarke's materials merely dealt with whether the new Administration should take "a more active approach" to the terrorist group. (Rice declined to comment, but through a spokeswoman said she recalled no briefing at which Berger was present. (08/06/02) | |
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Common Dreams News Center -- Jeremy Scahill writes: Donald Rumsfeld’s December 19-20, 1983 visit to Baghdad made him the highest-ranking US official to visit Iraq in 6 years. He met Saddam and the two discussed “topics of mutual interest,” according to the Iraqi Foreign Ministry. ... In March of 1984, with the Iran-Iraq war growing more brutal by the day, Rumsfeld was back in Baghdad for meetings with then-Iraqi Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz. On the day of his visit, March 24th, UPI reported from the United Nations: “Mustard gas laced with a nerve agent has been used on Iranian soldiers in the 43-month Persian Gulf War between Iran and Iraq, a team of U.N. experts has concluded... Meanwhile, in the Iraqi capital of Baghdad, U.S. presidential envoy Donald Rumsfeld held talks with Foreign Minister Tarek Aziz (sic) on the Gulf war before leaving for an unspecified destination. The day before, the Iranian news agency alleged that Iraq launched another chemical weapons assault on the southern battlefront, injuring 600 Iranian soldiers. ... Prior to the release of the UN report, the US State Department on March 5th had issued a statement saying “available evidence indicates that Iraq has used lethal chemical weapons.”... Most glaring is that Rumsfeld was in Iraq as the 1984 UN report was issued and said nothing about the allegations of chemical weapons use, despite State Department “evidence.” ... Rumsfeld was in a position to draw the world’s attention to Saddam’s chemical threat. He was in Baghdad as the UN concluded that chemical weapons had been used against Iran. He was armed with a fresh communication from the State Department that it had “available evidence” Iraq was using chemical weapons. But Rumsfeld said nothing. (08/06/02) | |
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Barry Carter writes: If we make the leap forward, we will create a new win-win paradigm and a new reality. Though I personally believe we shall make the leap, by no means is it guaranteed. In a very real sense we, and all of humanity, could soon be in heaven or hell. We have just entered the Knowledge Era and have just enough knowledge to be dangerous. ... our win/lose world is rapidly evolving to either a win-win system or a lose/lose system. Also as shown losing individuals are being empowered with virtually unlimited power to destroy. A short but intense period of lose/lose, sparked by a few losing individual, could mean a giant step backwards to hell, possibly to a complete loss of everything. Maintaining the win/lose status quo of the past is no longer possible due to the wide decentralization of knowledge and power, to the individual, in a knowledge era. This is not the first time that humanity has been on the verge of a move forward or a fall backwards. We have a precedence for a fall backwards. The last time humanity took a step backwards we, however, hadn't the power to destroy ourselves. We only had the power to regress and stagnate for a thousand years. This period, called the Dark Ages, lasted from 415 AD to 1492 AD . (08/05/02) | |
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Timothy Wilken writes: The total costs to American, including both the direct and indirect expenses of a new war with Iraq, might exceed $1 trillion ( 1 million million dollars) plus the unquantified suffering of the American combatants their families, and the rest of us. But this is not the true cost of the war. As Andrew J. Galambos stated: “Humans develop evermore powerful knowledge and therefore evermore powerful tools. When tools are used to harm other humans they are called weapons. Since human knowledge can grow without limit then tools themselves can be made without limit. And limitless tools can will produce limitless weapons.” And, limitless weapons (progress) combined with leveraged adversity (warfare) must by all definitions and understanding of science produce human extinction. In the 1983 movie WARGAMES, NORAD’s computer — Joshua realizes after playing out all possible outcomes for Global Thermonuclear War: “A strange game, the only winning move is not to play.” (08/05/02) | |
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PR Newswire -- As the debate about a U.S. invasion of Iraq continues in Washington, President George W. Bush's administration is quietly getting ready for a fight, Newsweek reports in the current issue. U.S. munitions plants have put on extra shifts to rebuild arsenals depleted during the Afghan war, and a few hundred uniformed personnel are working as advance teams in Jordan and elsewhere, assessing the need for new airstrips, wider roads and the like, Newsweek reports. And even before Saddam Hussein became a priority target, the U.S. Department of Energy was working to get America's strategic petroleum reserve up to its full capacity of 700 million barrels -- enough to meet U.S. energy needs for more than 80 days in a crunch, report National Security Correspondent John Barry and Diplomatic Correspondent Roy Gutman in the August 12 issue of Newsweek. (08/04/02) | |
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GUARDIAN Unlimited -- UK: President George W. Bush will announce within weeks that he intends to depose Iraq's ruler, Saddam Hussein, by force, setting the stage for a war in the Gulf this winter. Amid signs of active preparations for a war within six months, senior officials on both sides of the Atlantic have said that war against Iraq is now inevitable. 'The expectation is that President Bush will make a final decision on the timing of a war over the course of August. That would be followed by British-led efforts to get a mandate for action at the UN, either under existing resolutions or a new UN resolution,' said one senior source. The disclosure came as US Secretary of State Colin Powell dismissed an offer by Iraq to talk to the chief weapons inspector of the United Nations. 'Inspection is not the issue, disarmament is, making sure that the Iraqis have no weapons of mass destruction,' said Powell during a visit to Manila, capital of the Philippines. (08/05/02) | |
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World Tribune -- JERUSALEM — Israel's military has projected that Iraq could launch nonconventional missiles strikes should President Saddam Hussein feel his regime is endangered by the United States. The threat of an Iraqi attack has led to a revision of Israeli combat doctrine, the sources said. They said Israel has upgraded its early-warning alert of any Iraqi attack despite U.S. pledges to supply such a warning. In all, the sources said, Israel cannot expect advance warning of more than eight hours of any U.S. attack on Iraq, Middle East Newsline reported. They said this will demand increase satellite reconnaissance and intelligence operations to determine Iraqi military movements. Military sources said the Israeli intelligence estimate is that Iraq could use medium-range missiles with biological or chemical warheads against Israel amid any U.S.-led war against Baghdad. The sources said the intelligence estimate has concluded that Iraq has several dozen extended-range Scud B missiles capable of reaching the Jewish state. (08/05/02) | |
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Newsday — True story, names changed: Annie Jones is 84. She lives with her husband, who had a stroke several years ago. Between them, they spend more than $1,000 a month (more than a third of their income) on medicines for high blood pressure, arthritis, high cholesterol, diabetes and memory loss. Their money from Social Security and pension runs out before the end of the month, but they don't want to ask their adult children for financial help. To save money, Mrs. Jones starts skipping her blood pressure and diabetes pills on alternate days. Her sugar gradually climbs to a dangerous level. She gets dizzy and falls, breaking her hip and landing in the hospital for surgery and rehabilitation. Mr. Jones, alone at home except for once-daily visits from relatives bringing food, does not always remember to take his medicines or eat. He becomes weaker and malnourished, develops pneumonia, and lands in the hospital himself. This case dramatizes how the lack of benefits for prescription drugs can begin the descent of an elderly person into illness and injury that might well have been avoided, or at least postponed. (08/05/02) | |
6:43:25 AM 
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© TrustMark
2002
Timothy Wilken.
Last update:
9/3/2002; 6:03:20 AM.
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