My World of “Ought to Be”
by Timothy Wilken, MD










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Sunday, November 03, 2002
 

Helping Others

Barry Carter writes: One of our human needs is that of helping others. Helping others has not been an integral part of our daily work lives during an Industrial Age. Our business and work system of the Industrial Age has been more about competition and winning at other’s expense or plainly stated hurting others. Since helping others is a human need, we have had to separate it and have it met separate from our work. We live in a bureaucracy centered world where we have had to look to specialized and controlled bureaucracies, such as charities and non-profit agencies, to handle our need for help others. We work in win/lose competitive environments attempting to hurt others through competition and then give part of the income to a charity to meet our need for helping others. In fact in virtually every large company nationwide there is tremendous pressure put on employees to contribute to United Way and the like. Some companies require employees who don’t give to meet with management and explain why—power corrupts. (11/03/02)


  b-future:

Heavy Thoughts for a Twelve Year Old

Charlotte Aldebron writes: HELLO—is anyone out there listening?! I guess my own voice is too small to make a difference. So this time, I’ll add the voices of other children, and maybe together we’ll be loud enough. Children like Ali, who was three when we killed his father in the Gulf War. Ali scraped at the dirt covering his father’s grave every day for three years calling out to him, “It’s all right Daddy, you can come out now, the men who put you here have gone away.” And Luay who was 11 at the time and was glad he didn’t have to go to school or do homework. He went to bed and got up whenever he felt like it. But today he has no education and still hears the explosions in his head. And the children in Basra, southern Iraq, who today play in the dust while air raid sirens scream around them because we keep dropping bombs. And all the children in Iraq who will never grow up because they have leukemia and cancers from the depleted uranium in our missiles, and they can’t get any drugs or radiation treatment because we won’t let their country have them. I don’t know the names of all these children. Can you hear our voices yet? I’ll add 10-year-old Mohibollah in Afghanistan, who was out collecting firewood for his family when he found one of those bright yellow soda-can-sized cluster bomblets with parachutes. What child could resist? He ended up with mangled flesh where his left hand used to be. President Bush asked each American child to give a dollar to help Afghani children. Here is my dollar’s worth: it is the voice of 6-year-old Paliko who was carried to the hospital still wearing her party dress from the wedding that we bombed for two hours, killing her whole family—by mistake. And 2-year-old Alia, who was dug out of the rubble where her family was crushed when we blew up their village—again, by mistake. Afterward, our soldiers said they were sorry. Among themselves, they called the Afghans "rag heads." Like I said in my flag essay, we are better at caring about symbols than real people. (11/03/02)


  b-CommUnity:

Brazil's Challenge to Washington

Alternet.com -- On Jan. 1, 2003, Luis Inacio Lula da Silva -- elected in a landslide victory with over 61 percent of the vote -- will become president of Latin America's largest country. Lula, as he is commonly known, received three million more votes for president than George W. Bush did in the United States in 2000. ... ." Lula's first act as president-elect was to create the Secretariat for Social Emergencies. Its primary responsibility is to end hunger and malnutrition among more than 20 million Brazilians. "If at the end of my presidential mandate every Brazilian has three meals a day then I will have realized my life's mission," proclaimed Lula. ... Brazil has a public debt of $240 billion, the largest in Latin America. In the run up to the election on Oct. 27, foreign capital began to flee Brazil, leading to a depreciation of the country's currency, the Real, by over 40 percent. Much of Lula's campaign questioned the free trade policies launched under the "Washington Consensus" during Ronald Reagan's administration in the 1980s. The consensus has meant not only the opening of Latin American markets to U.S. trade, but also the privatization of state enterprises and the slashing of social spending in health and education. According to a Brazilian financial advisory firm, ABM Consulting, the 10 largest banks in Brazil, including Citibank and BankBoston, earned returns of 22 percent on their holdings in Brazil in 2001 compared to 12 percent on a global level. George Soros, a forward-thinking international financier with significant holdings in Brazil, declares: "The system has broken down;" it "does not provide an adequate flow of capital to countries [like Brazil] that need it and qualify for it." In its initial response to Lula's victory, the Bush administration declares it "looks forward to working productively with Brazil." But even before Lula's victory, the U.S. Under-Secretary of the Treasury, Kenneth Dam, stated, "we have a contingency plan" if Brazil declares a moratorium on its international debt. (11/03/02)


  b-theInternet:

Into the Dark

The Moscow Times -- Chris Floyd writes: According to a classified document prepared for Rumsfeld by his Defense Science Board, the new organization -- the "Proactive, Preemptive Operations Group (P2OG)" -- will carry out secret missions designed to "stimulate reactions" among terrorist groups, provoking them into committing violent acts which would then expose them to "counterattack" by U.S. forces. In other words -- and let's say this plainly, clearly and soberly, so that no one can mistake the intention of Rumsfeld's plan -- the United States government is planning to use "cover and deception" and secret military operations to provoke murderous terrorist attacks on innocent people. Let's say it again: Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, George W. Bush and the other members of the unelected regime in Washington plan to deliberately foment the murder of innocent people -- your family, your friends, your lovers, you -- in order to further their geopolitical ambitions. For P2OG is not designed solely to flush out terrorists and bring them to justice -- a laudable goal in itself, although the Rumsfeld way of combating terrorism by causing it is pure moral lunacy. (Or should we use the Regime's own preferred terminology and just call it "evil"?) No, it seems the Pee-Twos have bigger fish to fry. Once they have sparked terrorists into action -- by killing their family members? luring them with loot? fueling them with drugs? plying them with jihad propaganda? messing with their mamas? or with agents provocateurs, perhaps, who infiltrate groups then plan and direct the attacks themselves? -- they can then take measures against the "states/sub-state actors accountable" for "harboring" the Rumsfeld-roused gangs. What kind of measures exactly? Well, the classified Pentagon program puts it this way: "Their sovereignty will be at risk." (11/03/02)


  b-CommUnity:

Scientists Warn: Switch to Clean Energy Now

New York Times: Science -- Meeting the world's rising energy needs without increasing global warming will require a research effort as ambitious as the Apollo project to put a man on the moon, a diverse group of scientists and engineers is reporting today. To supply energy needs 50 years from now without further influencing the climate, up to three times the total amount of energy now generated using coal, oil, and other fossil fuels will have to be produced using methods that generate no heat-trapping greenhouse gases, the scientists said in today's issue of the journal Science. In addition, they said, the use of fossil fuels will have to decline, and to achieve these goals research will have to begin immediately. Without prompt action, the atmosphere's concentration of greenhouse gases, mainly carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels, is expected to double from pre-industrial levels by the end of this century, the scientists said. "A broad range of intensive research and development is urgently needed to produce technological options that can allow both climate stabilization and economic development,"the team said. The researchers called for intensive new efforts to improve existing technologies and develop others like fusion reactors or space-based solar power plants. They did not estimate how much such a research effort would cost, but it is considered likely to run into tens of billions of dollars in government and private funds. The researchers, a team of 18 scientists from an array of academic, federal, and private research centers, said many options should be explored because some were bound to fail and success, somewhere, was essential. (11/01/02)


  b-theInternet:

Pyrrhic Win for the Future of Civilization

Yulia Latynina writes: At the end of the 20th century, everything came full circle. The infrastructure of post-industrial society reached such a level of complexity that it became a weapon in itself. The weapon of the third world war is not the nuclear bomb, but the civilian airliner and the theater. This is a guerrilla war in which Islamic extremists are using the civilized world's own infrastructure against it. The guerrillas believe that Islam should assume a leading position in the world, and that their enemies are enemies of Allah. But the real convictions of the shakhidy are very similar to those laid out by Ataulphus 16 centuries ago: "Why do these pampered cowards in their skyscrapers have everything, while we, who are prepared to die, have nothing?" I have no intention of indiscriminately knocking Islam, but for some reason we haven't seen Shintoist terrorists. The snipers captured in Washington had accepted Islam, not Buddhism. The paradox of the third world war is that the terrorists cannot win. If they did, there would be no one to produce the weapons they like to use --airplanes and musicals. (10/31/02)


  b-CommUnity:

World's Worst Water

New York Times -- Dr. Kazmi doesn't drink the water in Karachi, Pakistan. Enough said? Well, not really. Plenty of cities have water problems. Few have water problems to rival Karachi's. One scientist here tied Karachi water a few years ago to 50 separate ailments. A second recent analysis by government water experts found at least 70 percent of all Karachi water samples fouled by microbes, chemical pollutants, or both. "It can cause skin problems and gastrointestinal problems," Dr. Kazmi said. "It can cause an infection if it gets into a cut. It can cause hepatitis A and hepatitis E. It can cause rotovirus." ... Fifty years ago, Karachi was a placid port town of 435,000 souls. Twenty years ago, it had 5 million. Today it is 14 million strong, an awesome jumble of sepia-toned slums and high-rises. In Karachi, people either boil their tap water, boil water taken from grimy trucks roving the streets, boil water lifted from brackish, sewage-fouled wells — or, if they are lucky enough to afford it, buy bottled water. They should boil that, too: the government says that 11 of 21 brands of bottled water are themselves too contaminated for safe drinking. ... The population explosion has created a water shortage totaling nearly 170 million gallons a day. The constant emptying and refilling of mains — in flat Karachi, all water must be pumped under pressure — strains 40-year-old pipes and creates bacteria-attracting leaks. Unable to wait for city services, thirsty new slums plug their own dirty pipes into city networks, spreading contamination. (Only 1.25 million customers are formally hooked up, and only 250,000 of those pay their bills.) Residents have taken to storing water in underground tanks that, seldom, if ever, cleaned, turn into huge petri dishes. High-rise clusters overtax the sewage system, which then overflows into wells and into the leaky water mains. Only seven in 10 gallons of water actually reaches the tap. Nobody knows the consequences of all this with precision. But the anecdotal evidence is sobering. When tap water becomes turbid, as it periodically does, hospitals swell with sick babies and the elderly, who lack the immunity induced by regular exposure to stomach bugs. (10/31/02)


  b-theInternet:

Cancer Diagnostic Breakthrough

Yahoo! News -- COVENTRY, England (Reuters) - A new test that detects a group of molecules in cancerous cells could revolutionize cancer screening by picking up early signs of bowel, cervical and other common forms of the disease. Professor Ron Laskey of the University of Cambridge and his colleagues have developed a simple, non-invasive test that pinpoints a group of molecules called MCMs which are found in rapidly dividing cancerous cells but not in healthy cells. If further studies confirm the results of early trials, he believes the molecular markers could form the basis for screening tests for bowel and other types of cancer such as cervical, bladder, oral, lung and breast. "It is affordable, non-invasive and it has the potential to revolutionize cancer screening," Nobel Prize winner Sir Paul Nurse told a science conference. (10/31/02)


  b-theInternet:

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7:42:07 AM    


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