Wednesday, January 22, 2003

The Future will be Different Timothy Wilken, MD writes: Scientific discoveries have the power to turn the world upside down. Prior to the first flight of the Wright's Aeroplane, when one believed something was impossible it was common to say, "You could no more do that than you could fly." We are now 100 years later, and no one would say such a thing today. In those 100 years, humanity has continued to make scientific discoveries and invent evermore powerful tools. Many other things that were once thought impossible have become common place today. The ability to make scientific discoveries and create inventions is one of the defining characteristics of being human. This ability results from the little known fact that we humans are Time-binders.  Time-binders adapt to the stressors in their lives by analyzing and understanding their world. It is this unique awareness of time that grants us humans the ability to analyze and understand our world. By observing change over time, we come to understand process. And this understanding of process is the basis of knowledge. When humans act with knowledge they gain the ability to control. As our knowledge increases, the control we can exert in and on our lives increases as well. With the growth of the human population and with the ever increasing knowledge, humans now exercise ever increasing control over their lives, and over the lives of others and the environment as well. And, whether for good or for bad humanity now dominates the planet earth. (01/23/03) Eliminating Poverty Howard Richards writes: When Martin Luther King, Jr. was five years old, his father took him to see the bread lines where people stood in line for food. It was during the depression of the 1930s. The experience had a profound effect on the 5 year old toddler. Years later, when King was a first year student at Crozer Seminary, he wrote an autobiography as a class assignment. In it he wrote that his early experience of seeing grown men and women reduced to standing in line to wait their turn for a charity handout had been at the beginning of the formation of his anti-capitalist views. Poverty was not a personal issue for King; it was a human issue; it was a love issue. Martin Luther King was middle-class; he was the son of the pastor of Atlanta's Ebenezer Baptist Church. He came to the bread lines as one of the helpers, not as one of the many children his own age he found there, who stood beside their parents waiting in line for bread. Yet at the end of his life, on the day he died, King was leading a Poor People's movement made up of whites, and blacks, and Latinos, and people of every color found in our rainbow nation. King was ready to accept the anti-racist whites who threw themselves body and soul into the struggle for racial justice for blacks. He knew what it was to be committed by love of humanity to solving a problem that was not his personal problem. There were middle class people in America who threw themselves body and soul into the struggle for economic justice for people of all races, and Martin Luther King, Jr. was one of them. ... King does not leave us any easy outs. He was convinced that poverty is not necessary; on this earth there is enough for all. Solutions to the problem are known. What is lacking is a collective conversion, the redeeming of the soul of America, a transformation of the social will, which requires of me as an individual member of society my own ethical response. That does not leave me any easy outs. Nobody will believe me if I advocate the transformation of other people's wills, if I do not allow the gift of grace to transform my own. (01/23/03) Twelve Things to Make the World Better Dr. Howard Richards, Professor of Peace Studies at Earlham College, tells us that there are 12 things we can each do to make the world a better place. (01/23/03) US will attack Iraq in February The London Guardian -- A Russian source today claimed to have information that the US plans to launch an attack on Iraq within the next month. The claim came as Germany confirmed that it would not back a UN resolution authorising war. The Russian news agency Interfax quoted an unnamed, high-ranking source in the Russian general headquarters as saying that the US and its allies would attack once a battle-ready force of 150,000 troops reached the Gulf. "According to the information we have, the operation is planned for the second half of February. The decision to launch it has been taken but not yet been made public," the source said. The source claimed that toppling the Iraqi president, Saddam Hussein, was a pretext allowing the US to acquire control of Iraqi oilfields. "The military operation against Iraq will be conducted by a combination of means. Strikes will be from the air, land and sea," the source said, claiming that Washington expects the military campaign to last for around a month. (01/23/03) Bush Warns Allies NEWS Scotsman.com -- George Bush last night made it clear that he is losing patience with the United Nations over Iraq, as China, France and Russia united in opposition to an early war. The US president said he has seen enough to prove that Saddam Hussein, the Iraqi president, is refusing to disarm, and does not need to wait until weapons inspectors file their report on Monday next week. However, Moscow, Paris and Beijing, which all wield a UN veto, said they are against war and called for weapons inspectors to be given more time - leaving a clear split in the five permanent members of the Security Council. The White House yesterday vented exasperation with doubts voiced in Europe, and said it would not follow the UN into a "dead end route" of weapons inspections. "This looks like a re-run of a bad movie, and I’m not interested in watching it," Mr Bush said yesterday. "It’s clear to me now that Saddam is not disarming. And surely our friends have learned lessons from the past." (01/23/03) 37,000 US Troops Ship Out ! NEWS Scotsman.com -- Pentagon has ordered two more United States aircraft carriers and another 37,000 combat troops to deploy to the Gulf region for a possible war with Iraq. The moves by US defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, will bring to four the number of US carriers within striking distance of Iraq and boost to more than 100,000 the number of US troops ordered to the Gulf this month. The USS Abraham Lincoln will move to the Gulf from Perth, Australia, and the USS Theodore Roosevelt will soon deploy from training exercises in the Atlantic off the east coast of the United States, according to officials. The carriers, each including 75 war planes and battle groups of warships armed with cruise missiles, would join the USS Constellation and USS Harry S Truman in the region. The Constellation is in the Gulf and the Truman in the Mediterranean. The new troop movement is centred around the hi-tech 4th Infantry Division based at Fort Hood, Texas. The division is considered one of the US army’s most élite units. It is equipped with the military’s best M1-A2 tanks and Apache "Longbow" attack helicopters, according to Cecil Green, a civilian spokesman for the unit at Fort Hood. "[The unit] uses a variety of sensors, communications devices and other technological equipment to help the commander understand where his troops are on the battlefield, where the enemy is on the battlefield, and to better control his combat capabilities," Mr Green said. "We’re anticipating the equipment moving some time in the next few days and the troops soon thereafter," he added. (01/23/03) Freedom of the Press - Iranian Style The London Guardian -- Iran's top-selling newspaper has been temporarily shut by the country's judiciary, the fifth liberal publication to be closed this month. The Hamshari daily, which is sold only in the capital, Tehran, was ordered to close because it had failed to publish letters sent to the paper from the country's politicians. ...  Hamshari sells 250,000 copies a day and was Iran's first colour daily. It is better known for its cultural and lifestyle reporting than for its political content. The title used to circulate across the country but was ordered to restrict its distribution to Tehran in 2000. "We're waiting here to see what will happen. We should go home and wait for 10 days, that's if they do reopen it," a journalist at the newspaper said. ... Moderate President Mohammad Khatami has frequently complained about newspaper closures by the conservative-controlled judiciary, which has shut about 90 publications over the past three years. (01/23/03) 11:05:41 PM

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