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Monday, March 03, 2003
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John Perry Barlow writes: I remember a time years ago when I was as convinced that Dick Cheney was obscenely wrong about something as I am now. Subsequent events raised the possibility that he might not have been so wrong after all. With this in mind, I've given some thought lately to how all this might look to the Vice President (who is, I remain convinced, as much the real architect of American policy as he was while Gerald Ford's Chief of Staff or George the First's Secretary of Defense) ... I believe that Dick Cheney has thought all these considerations through in vastly greater detail than I'm providing here and has reached these following conclusions: first, that it is in the best interests of humanity that the United States impose a fearful peace upon the world and, second, that the best way to begin that epoch would be to establish dominion over the Middle East through the American Protectorate of Iraq. ... They are trying to convince every other nation on the planet that the United States is the Mother of All Rogue States, run by mad thugs in possession of 15,000 nuclear warheads they are willing to use and spending, as they already are, more on death-making capacity than all the other countries on the planet combined. In other words, they want the rest of the world to think that we are the ultimate weaving driver. Not to be trusted, but certainly not to be messed with either. By these terrible means, they will create a world where war conducted by any country but the United States will seem simply too risky and the Great American Peace will begin. Unregulated Global Corporatism will be the only permissible ideology, every human will have access to McDonald's and the Home Shopping Network, all 'news' will come through some variant of AOLTimeWarnerCNN, the Internet will be run by Microsoft, and so it will remain for a long time. Peace. On Prozac." (03/03/03) | |
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London Guardian -- Details of the aggressive surveillance operation, which involves interception of the home and office telephones and the emails of UN delegates in New York, are revealed in a document leaked to The Observer. The disclosures were made in a memorandum written by a top official at the National Security Agency - the US body which intercepts communications around the world - and circulated to both senior agents in his organisation and to a friendly foreign intelligence agency asking for its input. The memo describes orders to staff at the agency, whose work is clouded in secrecy, to step up its surveillance operations 'particularly directed at... UN Security Council Members (minus US and GBR, of course)' to provide up-to-the-minute intelligence for Bush officials on the voting intentions of UN members regarding the issue of Iraq. The leaked memorandum makes clear that the target of the heightened surveillance efforts are the delegations from Angola, Cameroon, Chile, Mexico, Guinea and Pakistan at the UN headquarters in New York - the so-called 'Middle Six' delegations whose votes are being fought over by the pro-war party, led by the US and Britain, and the party arguing for more time for UN inspections, led by France, China and Russia. (03/03/03) | |
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Boston Globe -- Five men in Boston have been infected with a powerful, drug-resistant bacteria, strikingly similar to larger outbreaks in Los Angeles and San Francisco. Beginning last fall, doctors at the Fenway Community Health Center started seeing patients with pneumonia, sinus infections, and skin conditions caused by methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus -- a germ normally caught only in hospitals by patients already seriously ill from other diseases. The germ, known as MRSA, can elude a whole class of antibiotics, making the illness significantly more difficult to treat. Its appearance in the general community has alarmed health authorities. All five of the men have been treated and recovered without lasting complications, but doctors are worried about the broader emergence of bacteria so wily that they can outrun the best drugs that medicine can produce. ''It's of great concern,'' said Dr. Scott Fridkin, a medical epidemiologist at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. ''The reports are becoming more frequent, and it appears to be a growing problem.'' (03/03/03) | |
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MSNBC News -- George W. Bush rises ahead of the dawn most days, when the loudest sound outside the White House is the dull, distant roar of F-16s patrolling the skies. Even before he brings his wife, Laura, a morning cup of coffee, he goes off to a quiet place to read alone. His text isn't news summaries or the overnight intelligence dispatches. Those are for later, downstairs, in the Oval Office. It’s not recreational reading (recently, a biography of Sandy Koufax). Instead, he’s told friends, it’s a book of evangelical mini-sermons, “My Utmost for His Highest.” The author is Oswald Chambers, and, under the circumstances, the historical echoes are loud. A Scotsman and itinerant Baptist preacher, Chambers died in November 1917 as he was bringing the Gospel to Australian and New Zealand soldiers massed in Egypt. By Christmas they had helped to wrest Palestine from the Turks, and captured Jerusalem for the British Empire at the end of World War I. Now there is talk of a new war in the Near East, this time in a land once called Babylon. One morning last month, as the United Nations argued and Washingtonians raced to hardware stores for duct tape amid a new Orange alert, the daily homily in “My Utmost” was about Isaiah’s reminder that God is the author of all life and history. “Lift up your eyes on high,” the prophet of the Old Testament said, “and behold who hath created these things.” Chambers’s explication: “When you are up against difficulties, you have no power, you can only endure in darkness” unless you “go right out of yourself, and deliberately turn your imagination to God.” (03/03/03) | |
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New York Times -- NEW ENGLAND does not lack for wind. Stiff ocean breezes whip over the coastline. Rolling hills act as natural wind tunnels. So it is not surprising that companies interested in using wind as an energy source should be looking at New England's shores. At the moment, nearly a dozen wind-power projects are being considered in the region, but many face strong opposition from a variety of groups, especially those projects proposed for the scenic Massachusetts coast, near Cape Cod. The proposal that is farthest along would create the nation's first offshore "wind farm," in Nantucket Sound. Cape Wind Associates, a Boston company, recently scaled down its original proposal, somewhat, from 170 wind turbines to 130. But the $700 million project is still stirring opposition among groups ranging from fishermen and tourism interests to property owners and some environmental organizations. Some opponents, including many people who live or vacation in the area, say they are concerned that the wind farm's turbines, which would stretch 417 feet above sea level at the tip of the highest blade, would be unsightly and noisy, reducing property values and hurting tourism. Others fear the wind farm will interfere with shipping lanes. And while environmentalists generally support energy alternatives that do not depend on oil or coal, some are concerned that the wind farm could impinge on marine ecosystems. (03/03/03) | |
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New York Times -- In the coming months you are going to see and read a lot about North Island. A new resort on this speck of land in the Seychelles has all the features that glossy magazines and TV shows (travel, decor, faux adventure, you name the genre) love -- azure sea, white beaches, full butler service, private plunge pools. Lost in all the hoopla, though, will be an important fact: North Island resort is the carefully orchestrated result of sound ecological philosophies and conscientious building practices. In the process of creating a $1,700-a-night (for two) resort, the island has been brought back from the brink. ... ''It's a rescue operation,'' says Hitchins. The ''rescue'' takes place because of government decree and private zeal. As recently as December 2001, according to Hitchins, the authorities in the capital, Victoria (Mahe), once again committed themselves to ''the protection and conservation of the natural environment and biodiversity.'' They also demanded that anyone who buys one of the islands must conduct a thorough environmental study, and then stick to its recommendations. (03/03/03) | |
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Timothy Wilken, MD writes: The possession of an object does not mean that the possessor has a moral or rational claim to ownership of the object. The political, economic, and social structures of our present world are all based on our concept of ‘property’ and property rights. Recall from the Basics section, my discussion of the shifting of human values as humanity evolves from adversary processing to neutral processing to synergic processing. Adversary wealth is physical force. Neutral wealth is money. And, synergic wealth is mutual life support. Therefore adversary ‘property’ is property obtained by force or fraud, and then held with physical force. Neutral ‘property’ is property purchased in the fair market, and held by right of law enforced by neutral government. Remember Neutrality was an evolutionary advance from Adversity, at the time of Neutrality’s inception most possessions were adversary. They had been obtained through force or fraud and held with physical force. The new institutions of Neutrality never made any attempt to correct what by the new values of Neutrality would be past injustices. Neutral values would prevail in future, but the past was left alone. This resulted in the legal precedent wherein possession is 9/10 of the law. In other words, at the time Neutrality was institutionalized, all existing ‘property’ whether adversary or neutral was made legal ‘property’. However, all new ‘property’ was required to be neutral ‘property’–that is ‘property’ acquired by paying a fair price in a free market to the rightful owner, or that ‘property’ which is created directly by the mind and labor of the owner. Most of the founding fathers of Neutrality were beneficiaries of ‘adversary’ property and in no hurry to give it up. They also believed that in the long run these injustices would slowly be corrected, and all property would eventually come to be ‘neutral’ property. We will see later that this was not the case. While synergic ‘property’ is not yet defined, it would have to be property that was obtained without hurting or ignoring anyone, and even more importantly, it would have to be property that was mutually life supporting–that is it would have to be property that had a beneficial effect for self and others. If humanity is to advance to Synergy, our concept of ‘property’ and property rights must change radically in the future. (02/28/03) | |
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Julius K. Nyerere writes: Peace is a product of Justice; it is not simply the absence of violence. All violent conflicts represent earlier failures of leadership, either by wrong-doing or by default. They represent failures at local levels, and especially at national levels. With the interdependence associated with modern technology, they can also mean failures at international levels. And these leadership failures themselves breed more hatred, fear, and injustice and more violent conflict. It is much easier to prevent than to end wars and revolts once these have started. In Africa today, and especially in Rwanda and Burundi, we hear a great deal about ethnic conflicts. Yet these are taking place at particular times and places after members of the different ethnic groups have for long periods lived side by side in the same villages and towns, have worked together, and have intermarried. Thus ethnicity is clearly not a sufficient explanation of conflict. Ethnicity can, however, be used to conceal the real problems, -- the genuine economic problems or cultural clashes -- behind the easily aroused human fears about those who are unlike ourselves in appearance, culture, or beliefs. (03/02/03) | |
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William R. Catton writes: In 1798, Thomas Robert Malthus tried to inform people that a human population, like a population of any other species, had the potential to increase exponentially were it not limited by finite support from its resource base. He warned us that growth of the number of human consumers and their demands will always threaten to outrun the growth of sustenance. When Charles Darwin read Malthus, he recognized more fully than most other readers that the Malthusian principle applied to all species. And Darwin saw how reproduction beyond replacement can foster a universal competitive relationship among a population's members, as well as how expansion by a population of one species may be at the expense of populations of other species. ... Most of us can remember learning in school to dismiss Malthus as "too pessimistic." Technological progress and the economic growth resulting therefrom, we learned to assume, can always provide the essential consumables (or substitutes) that have permitted exuberant population growth. ... Malthus was not wrong in the ways commonly supposed. From his 18th century perspective he simply had no basis for seeing the human ability to "overshoot" carrying capacity. It was inconceivable to Malthus that human societies could, by taking advantage of favorable conditions (new technology, abundant fossil fuels), temporarily increase human numbers and appetites above the long-term capacity of environments to provide needed resources and services. But it is inexcusable today not to recognize the way populations can sometimes overshoot sustainable carrying capacity and what happens to them after they have done it. Human economic growth and technology have only created the appearance that Malthus was wrong (in the way we used to learn in school). What our technological advances have actually done was to allow human loads to grow precariously beyond the earth's long-term carrying capacity by drawing down the planet's stocks of key resources accumulated over 4 billion years of evolution. (03/02/03) | |
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Eric Szuter writes: The impending construction on Ground Zero presents an incredible opportunity to send a message and to teach. The end result should be so meaningful and so uplifting that it could almost be said that those who have died in the attack gave their lives so that a greater goodness could come to America and the world. We have in our hands the power to make sure that these people did not die in vain.
Two half-mile-high towers
New twin towers must be constructed. The design should embody an imaginative and dramatic new concept of heroic proportions. It should make the strongest, boldest statement possible. It should encompass the most fantastic project conceivable and the underlying theme need be philosophy. It should proclaim to one and all, "I am the Eighth Wonder of the World."
The tower to the left would be "The Tower of Reason." On the cornerstone, below its name, would be the motto: "From rationality does truth emerge." At the very pinnacle would be inscribed the word, TRUTH. The basement would house a large museum dedicated to the great thinkers who have made major contributions to the rational realm of philosophy - science - including a special place honoring Isaac Newton.
The tower to the right would be "The Tower of Love." On the cornerstone, below its name, would be the motto: "From goodness does beauty emerge." At the very pinnacle would be inscribed the word, BEAUTY. The basement of this tower would house a large museum dedicated to the great thinkers who have made major contributions to the intuitive realm of philosophy - the humanities - including a special place honoring Immanuel Kant.
A side-by-side arrangement of two, half-mile high towers inspired by Frank Lloyd Wright's mile-high concept would be a suitable design that could meet the above-stated criteria.
A design that suggests "goodness"
The side-by-side arrangement is suggestive of the spires of a cathedral. This implies a certain quality of sacredness or Godliness and, therefore, goodness. This seems perfectly appropriate, considering the great loss of life and the overall purpose of the project. However, at the same time, this feature would also serve to convey to the world that, as the aftermath of September 11th clearly demonstrated, the goodness of Americans described in 1831 by de Tocqueville lives on.
In the early evening just before sunset, the towers together with their crossover connection project an image of a golden "H", which stands for HUMANITY. Its arms reaching for the heavens, this gigantic "H" would serve as a reminder that if we wish to realize our full humanity, we must hold fast in our hearts the belief of Henry David Thoreau that goodness is the only investment that cannot fail. (03/01/03)
Text and Image © 2003 by Eric Szuter | |
6:54:39 AM 
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© TrustMark
2003
Timothy Wilken.
Last update:
4/1/2003; 5:16:46 AM.
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