Thursday, April 17, 2003

Participatory Economics Michael Albert writes: First off, like all of you I despise capitalism. I don’t want an economy in which Bill Gates has as much wealth as the population of Norway. I don’t want homeless people living under bridges and CEOs having huge mansions. I don’t want people fleecing one another, oblivious to social well being, competing for crumbs or fortunes. I don’t want a rat race in which most people lose, and the winners are the biggest, baddest rats. I don’t want corporate dictatorships in which most people have no dignity, no influence, no power, and even no food. I don’t want markets or central planning. I don’t want wage slavery. I don’t want class division and class rule. I don’t want an economy which produces people like Bush and Rumsfeld – people with tremendous power who think that if you are Afghan you are expendable, if you are Iraqi you are expendable, if you are Palestinian you are expendable, if you are Korean you are expendable, if you are Venezuelan, or Argentinean, or Brazilian you are expendable, or if you are from the Bronx, or Watts, or in fact if you are from anything other than Bush and Rumseld’s ruling class family and constituency class – you are expendable. What is in fact expendable is capitalism. And we are the ones, with millions more, who must remove it from history. But, if we don’t want capitalism – what do we want in its place? (04/17/03) Examples of Powerful NonViolence Richard Gregg writes: There have been many instances of the successful use of non­violent resistance in different countries and at different times. Be­cause the taste of historians inclines more toward politics and wars, these other events have received but slight attention at their hands, and the records of many of them have been lost. In some instances the nonviolent resistance was by individuals, in other instances it took a mass or corporate form. The latter form is rarer and perhaps more significant. For this reason and because this book is not pri­marily a history, I will attempt to tell of only a few outstanding suc­cessful modem examples of the latter sort. (04/17/03) Astronomy Scientists get it Right! BBC Science -- For the first time scientists have predicted the explosion of a star. The star in question is designated Supernova 2003dh and was seen to brighten on 8 April. The prediction was the consequence of detecting a pulse of energy in the form of gamma rays from the same direction ten days earlier. Before this observation, and the prompt given to them by the gamma-ray burst, scientists could not predict the explosion of a supernova to an accuracy of better than a few million years. Scientists Arnon Dar and Alvaro de Rujula from the European Centre for Nuclear Research and the Technion Institute of Technology in Israel made the prediction about the explosion and watched it happen. The pair developed a theory to account for the mysterious gamma-ray bursts that come from the depths of the Universe. For over 30 years these bursts of high-energy radiation have mystified scientists, who cannot explain their enormous energies. According to the Cern-Technion team, gamma-ray bursts are linked to supernovae, the cataclysmic explosions of massive stars at the end of their lives. (04/17/03) U.S. Declines to Clean Up Depleted Uranium BBC Science -- The US says it has no plans to remove the debris left over from depleted uranium (DU) weapons it is using in Iraq. It says a 1990 study suggesting health risks to local people and veterans is out of date. A United Nations study found DU contaminating air and water seven years after it was used. DU, left over after natural uranium has been enriched, is 1.7 times denser than lead, and very effective for punching through armoured vehicles. When a weapon with a DU tip or core strikes a solid object, like the side of a tank, it goes straight through before erupting in a burning cloud of vapour. This settles as chemically poisonous and radioactive dust. ... Many veterans from the Gulf and Kosovo wars believe DU has made them seriously ill. One UK Gulf veteran is Ray Bristow, a former marathon runner. In 1999 he told the BBC: "I gradually noticed that every time I went out for a run my distance got shorter and shorter, my recovery time longer and longer. "Now, on my good days, I get around quite adequately with a walking stick, so long as it's short distances. Any further, and I need to be pushed in a wheelchair." Ray Bristow was tested in Canada for DU. He is open-minded about its role in his condition. But he says: "I remained in Saudi Arabia throughout the war. I never once went into Iraq or Kuwait, where these munitions were used. "But the tests showed, in layman's terms, that I have been exposed to over 100 times an individual's safe annual exposure to depleted uranium." (04/17/03) Supernovae Produce Gamma Ray Bursts BBC Science -- Scientists may have solved one of astronomy's major puzzles - the origin of powerful gamma-ray bursts. For a few seconds a gamma-ray burst can pour out more radiation than anything else in the Cosmos. About once a day a flash of high energy radiation coming from deep space and lasting only a few seconds is detected by satellite observatories orbiting the Earth. The enormous power of the energy bursts has long mystified astronomers. Now, thanks to a burster that was remarkably close in cosmic terms, their true nature may have been revealed. The bursts seem to come from exploding stars called supernovae. "There should no longer be doubt in anybody's mind that gamma-ray bursts and supernovae are connected," says Thomas Matheson of the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics, a member of the team that made the discovery. (04/17/03) Adult Diabetes in Children? CNN Health -- Once a true medical oddity, children with adult diabetes are becoming commonplace. Doctors blame the twin evils of too much food and too little exercise and fear a tragic upswing in disastrous diabetic complications as this overweight generation reaches adulthood. At hospitals everywhere, boys and girls who range from chubby to hugely obese are being diagnosed in unprecedented numbers with type 2 diabetes. Most are barely into their teens. Some are as young as 6. This disease used to be called adult-onset diabetes, since it rarely occurred before middle age. But over the past decade, it has slowly become clear this is now a disease of the young, as well. Just how frequently is uncertain, since nationwide statistics are still being gathered. Nevertheless, doctors are convinced they see the leading edge of a dangerous shift, one that will inevitably lead to kidney failure, blindness, heart attacks, amputations and more as these young people live another 10 or 20 years with their diabetes. (04/17/03) PARECON: Life After Capitalism From the jacket of a new book by Michael Albert: How can we replace the economics of exploitation and greed with an economics of equitable cooperation and solidarity? How can we put people in charge of their own economic life, rather than being controlled by corporations and markets? How can we foster economic well-being that benefits the whole society, rather than engorgement of the few? ... In this highly praised book, attracting worldwide attention and support, Michael Albert provides an answer: Participatory Economics, called parecon for short, is a new economy beyond capitalism. Parecon celebrates solidarity, equity, diversity, and people democratically controlling their own lives. To attain these values, it utilizes original institutions for production, consumption, and allocation, that are described throughout the book. (04/17/03) How Much Fresh Water is There? BBC Science -- Dr Sivapalan hopes that the Pub - Prediction in Ungauged Basins - initiative he has developed through the International Association of Hydrological Sciences (IAHS) will provide Jaffna, and towns like it, with basic information about fresh water so they can manage their supply. Pub is the first scientific endeavour to track and quantify the world's water supply. It calls for data collection on river basins, rainfall and ground water - the sort of information needed to build sustainable management programs. The 10-year initiative has begun with an appeal to local governments to fund basic research. The work is urgently needed, said Kuniyoshi Takeuchi, a hydrologist at Yamanashi University in Kofu, Japan. Although the world's fresh water supply continues to dwindle and a crisis looms, scientists do not really understand how - and how much - water moves over the planet in any given area. (04/17/03) EPA finally acts to Protect! New York Times: Environment -- The Bush administration proposed rules yesterday that would deeply cut the soot, sulfur and smog-forming pollution from diesel engines in construction, farm and other industrial equipment. Over the next decade, the proposed rules would phase in both a cleanup of the high-sulfur diesel fuel consumed by such engines and far stricter requirements for emissions controls on the engines themselves. Shifting to cleaner diesel for the nonroad fleet would cost about $1.5 billion a year over the next 27 years, but that would be more than offset by savings estimated at $16 billion to $80 billion a year from prolonged lives and avoided health-care costs, administration officials said. The proposed changes were lauded by environmentalists often at odds with the Bush administration and received muted support from affected industry groups. (04/17/03) 5:07:27 AM

© TrustMark 2003 Timothy Wilken. Last update: 5/1/2003; 8:14:17 AM. This theme is based on the SoundWaves (blue) Manila theme.