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Wednesday, June 04, 2003
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Michael N. Nagler writes: Anyone who has seen Bowling for Columbine will recall the scene when Michael Moore is interviewing James Nichols, whose younger brother is in prison as an accomplice in the Oklahoma City bombing. As Nichols raves on about the need to overthrow the government with force, Moore suddenly interjects, “What about Gandhi?” Stunned to silence, Nichols hears Moore say, “He threw out the British without firing a shot.” After a long pause, Nichols quietly answers, “I’m not familiar with that.” When I saw Bowling for Columbine in Berkeley, the whole audience gasped. When I am asked, as I often am, “Can non-violence possibly work in times like these?” my answer is, “Can anything else?” It is not that I am unaware of the problem. I know what right-wing radio talk-show hosts are doing to the minds of millions of people, how corporate forces are dehumanizing an entire civilization—and how this dehumanization is making itself felt in the streets of Baghdad and Gaza. Nor am I making a prediction; I have no idea how things will turn out. But I am optimistic about what could be, because I am aware of the yet-to-be-unleashed power in the human individual—the power of nonviolence—and because I am aware of how that power has been growing. Jonathan Schell recently wrote that, despite a lot of noise to the contrary, the latter half of the 20th century saw brute force become increasingly futile and the power of the human will correspondingly more significant. This seems to me entirely correct. Despite, or in part because of, the appalling rise of violence, we are now experiencing the third wave of global nonviolence to uplift the modern world. (06/04/03) | |
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Apologies to John Lennon, but all they're saying is that we should give the Department of Peace a chance. The Department of Peace would be created by legislation sponsored by Rep. Dennis Kucinich, an Ohio Democrat and presidential hopeful. It's also a grass-roots project of the Global Renaissance Alliance, a group whose mission, it says, is "to harness the power of nonviolence as a social force for good." (06/04/03) | |
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BBC Science -- Clever canines can do something which not even our closest relative, the chimp, can manage. They can follow the human gaze or a pointing hand, figure out what it is we are looking at and seek out the target.  Dogs have spent thousands of years living with humans so a Hungarian research team set out to investigate whether this cunning ability came from wolves, the genetic ancestors of today's dogs, or developed during domestication. Dr Adam Miklosi, at Eotvos University in Budapest, compared the abilities of dogs with hand-reared wolves to find hidden food from human cues, such as pointing. These experiments are the first ever performed with such highly "humanised" wolves, brought up with round-the-clock care from volunteers in Dr Miklosi's department. ... Dogs frequently looked back at their master while wolves just kept their heads down and tried to solve the problem. Wild wolves generally tend not to look at human faces, and not even careful hand-rearing of the wolves could change this behaviour. In contrast, dogs have a tendency to follow the human gaze as they are accustomed to looking at our faces for clues. This difference in the behaviour between the humanised wolves and dogs tells us that they must have picked up this ability during domestication, over the past 15,000 years. (06/04/03) | |
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BBC Science -- A US environmental group, Conservation International (CI), has been given $5 million towards saving the world's oceans. The gift, by an anonymous donor, is conditional on CI raising $4m in matching funds.  It was announced at a conference in Mexico organised by CI and similar groups to plan an oceans campaign. The conference, on the theme Defying Ocean's End, agreed on an ambitious plan of action. It brought together more than 100 marine experts from 20 countries, for what is planned as a science-based international initiative. Recommendations included: 1) Setting up a World Ocean Public Trust, to manage the 60% of the oceans which lie in international waters and are at present open to uncontrolled exploitation. 2) Expanding the global system of marine parks, to give formal protection to critical areas like submarine mountains. Less than 1% of the world's oceans are fully protected. 3) Assessing global priorities, to get a clear idea which species are most vulnerable to extinction. And, 4) Starting an educational campaign "to shatter myths about the ocean's limitless ability to withstand human neglect and abuse". (06/04/03) | |
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New Scientist -- Hilary Koprowski at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia and colleagues have now successfully inserted DNA coding for the human antibody against rabies into tobacco plants. The antibodies produced by the transgenic tobacco plants were just as efficient at fighting rabies in hamsters as mammalian or human antibodies and caused no adverse or allergic reactions, say the authors. "There is a dramatic shortage of rabies antibodies worldwide; hence, the production of inexpensive and safe plant-derived antibody should be useful in post-exposure prophylaxis," they say. ... More than 10 million people a year receive these immune proteins, also known as immunoglobulins, to stop them developing rabies. But as well as a global shortage of these life-saving antibodies, the antibodies derived from horses can cause adverse reactions and antibodies from humans are expensive to isolate. Koprowski and colleagues inserted DNA for the human rabies antibody into tobacco plants (Nicotiana tabacum cv. Xantha). The antibodies produced were able to successfully bind and neutralise the rabies virus in mouse cells in the test tube. The antibody-containing extract from the tobacco leaves was also as good as human or mammalian immunoglobulin in protecting hamsters injected with rabies virus from actually developing the disease. (06/04/03) | |
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New Scientist -- The US Centers for Disease Control has begun distributing an experimental diagnostic test for the deadly SARS virus to laboratories. Diagnosing the virus which causes SARS remains a major problem in controlling the spread of the potentially fatal disease. The World Health Organization cautions that the tests available so far are unreliable; full information on the reliability of the new US test is still unknown. ... The US test, being offered to 100 specialised laboratories, uses a technology called polymerase chain reaction (PCR) to detect the RNA of the deadly SARS coronavirus in samples of body fluids like respiratory secretions or urine. But because scientists do not know exactly how well the test will perform, patients are to be asked for their written consent before it is given. "This experimental test marks a significant step forward in our ability to confront and ultimately overcome this new disease, and its development embodies the commitment of our department to protecting the public health," said Tommy Thompson, US Health and Human Services Secretary. (06/04/03) | |
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BBC Science -- Members of the insect order known as Strepsiptera parcel themselves up in a piece of their victim's own skin to avoid detection. Once inside the body, the invaders and their offspring consume their hapless target before the new generation bursts out to find further hosts. The parasites' remarkable means of evading their victim's immune defences has been described in detail for the first time by Dr Jeyaraney Kathirithamby, from Oxford University, UK, with colleagues. The research team says this "bizarre but stunning" group of parasites - which live off a wide range of insect species, such as ants, grasshoppers, wasps, and crickets - can be used in an environmentally friendly way to protect important commercial crops. (06/04/03) | |
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The Weekly Standard -- FOR BETTER or usually for worse, the Islamic Republic of Iran can always command our attention, easily reminding us, as did the wars with Saddam Hussein and September 11, that the Israeli-Palestinian confrontation isn't the cutting edge of modern Middle Eastern history. Clerical Iran's ever-advancing nuclear-weapons program and its fondness for using terrorism as statecraft have made the country the litmus test of President George W. Bush's war on terrorism and his "axis of evil" doctrine. Neither will end up making much sense unless the Bush administration somehow confronts the Islamic Republic on both issues in a way different from the Clinton administration. After all, the Clintonites tried to staunch the flow of nuclear technology to the Islamic Republic (the rather advanced Natanz gas centrifuge facility near Isfahan and the nearly completed Bushehr nuclear reactor suggest that they failed). But they didn't try at all to hold the Iranians responsible for the 1996 bombing of the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia. As the former director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation Louis Freeh recently pointed out in an amazing cri de coeur in the Wall Street Journal, the Clinton White House willfully dragged its counterterrorist feet for fear of damaging what it perceived as a possible fruitful dialogue with Iran's new (1997) "reformist" president, the ever-smiling, Tocqueville-quoting Mohammad Khatami. Khatami would be more likely to triumph over the hard-core clerics, so the theory then went, if the United States didn't aggressively confront Iran for its culpability in killing and maiming dozens of American soldiers. The Clinton administration went for engagement. Khatami neither responded nor seriously confronted his more hard-core clerical brethren on any contentious foreign or domestic issue. Still the most revolutionary country in the region, Iran has the natural resources, population, geography, culture, and experience with faith-based politics to transform the Muslim Middle East through its successes and failures. A clerical Iran armed with nuclear weaponry might recover some of the dynamism of its early years. The hard-core mullahs' abiding hatred of the United States and its threatening liberal culture could become bolder, fueled by the security of nuclear deterrence and ever-growing anxiety about an "America-inspired" reform movement, which has turned Iran's clerical rulers into dictators in the eyes of most of the country's people. The terrorist reflex in Iran could again start powerfully acting up against the United States, with horrendous results. On the other hand, a democratic Iran, where clerics no longer had dominion, would have an enormous impact on the Middle East. The Islamic revolution would be dead. A secular, democratic alternative would have finally taken root in the heartland of the Muslim world. (06/04/03) | |
5:25:05 AM 
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© TrustMark
2003
Timothy Wilken.
Last update:
7/1/2003; 5:51:01 AM.
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