[Futurework] web gleanings

[Karen Watters Cole]

Two from Harvard Business Working Knowledge weekly newsletter:

 

Chinese premier promotes ties to US @ 

http://hbswk.hbs.edu/pubitem.jhtml?id=3833&t=globalization

 

 

Women leaders and organizational change @ http://hbswk.hbs.edu/pubitem.jhtml?id=3796&t=organizations

 

 

RE: [Futurework] Saddam's capture

[Karen Watters Cole]

Probably the unhappiest groups today are those companies who haven’t
yet inked their Iraq contracts, worried about international competitors.  

 

In the Arab world and elsewhere, there will be someone else who will
arise to ‘stand up to America’ as those who expressed regret for his capture
said.  Until then, would it not
make bin Laden more valuable to those who feel that way? Will Jordan’s King
emerge as a deal-maker?

 

Surely, there is some thinking about this as they consider whether
Saddam at trial will tarnish our image as a previous ally of his. Surely we are
thinking about the future and reducing the number of new enemies. Surely.  – KWC

 

Snagged from CAP (Center for American Progress) 

 

REFLEXIVE RESENTMENT TOWARD AMERICA: Reuters reports that while "Saddam may have been seen as a
dictator who oppressed his people, many
also saw him as the only Arab leader who stood up to the United States." As one member of Jordan's parliament said, "It is bad
news. To us, Saddam was a symbol of
defiance to the U.S. plans in the region. And
we support any person who stands in the face of the American dominance."
It is a troubling sentiment that has permeated the Muslim world. As American
journalist Andrew
Finkel writes from Istanbul, "people now
hold the American invasion of Iraq responsible for instigating a contagion of
resentment that has spread their way. They see Washington as a bee-stung giant,
thrashing about with reckless disregard for the damage it does."

WARNINGS THAT SADDAM CAPTURE WILL NOT BE
PANACEA: Administration officials have said for weeks that
the capture of Saddam, while important, will not solve the complex situation in
Iraq. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said on 5/27/03 "the fact is
that Saddam Hussein may or may not be alive [but]
he clearly is not running Iraq. So, the fact that he is not locatable at
the moment if he is alive is too bad but it certainly isn't determinative"
of whether he is controlling the insurgency. Rumsfeld reiterated that position
on 60
Minutes last night. When asked whether "the capture of Saddam Hussein
now means Mission Accomplished?" he replied, "Well, certainly
not." Similarly, the NYT
reported last week that Gen. Sanchez "said that even if American forces
captured or killed Saddam Hussein, that would not extinguish the resolve of the
guerrilla fighters." Part of the reason Saddam's capture might not have as
wide an impact as hoped is because not all of the insurgents were aligned with
Saddam in the first place. A recent Congressional
Research Service report "lists 15 separate groups battling US-led forces in Iraq, from
Hussein loyalists to Al Qaeda operatives."

LITTLE CONNECTION BETWEEN SADDAM CAPTURE
AND OSAMA HUNT: AP
reports, "Afghan officials hailed the capture of Iraqi dictator Saddam
Hussein, saying Sunday the arrest might blunt the growing insurgency here. They
also speculated Saddam's capture after seven months on the run could make it
easier to catch the world's other top fugitive - al-Qaida mastermind Osama bin
Laden." But as Knight-Ridder
reports, terrorism experts "say Saddam Hussein's capture is unlikely to
prompt U.S. officials to intensify their search for Osama bin Laden in
Afghanistan." Specifically, the "CIA
and Pentagon are unlikely to return to Afghanistan the scores of U.S. commandos
and intelligence agents that had been seeking bin Laden before they were
shifted to Iraq." Joseph
Cirincione of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace dispels the
notion of a connection between Saddam's capture and other challenges:
"Saddam's capture may decrease attacks in Iraq by Baathists but it is
largely irrelevant to the larger war against terrorism. Saddam means nothing to
al-Qaeda and all the al-Qaeda-like forces."

>

 

 

 

RE: [Futurework] Status and Honours

[Karen Watters Cole]

Here is the
beginning of a weekend magazine article on consumerism though I wasn’t sure if it
was more appropriate for the Virginia Postrel post today.  It’s worth reading through this to get
to the capuchin monkeys. 

Also note references
to the cult of workaholism, competitive
consumerism and perceptions of fairness.
Lots of good sociological observation here, enough to make some of us very ill
and hope not everyone in the Third World thinks we are all this way. Just this
weekend I heard taped political commentary by Paul Krugman (here in Portland
for a book tour) deploring that despite the wealth of America our poor are not
better off than other [KWC] comparable nation’s poor, if only because of the cost
of and lack of health care - and housing. 

References to
other writings included. Please go to the link and check out the photo of the
first consumer profiled. At 14 pages and 77KB the word formatted document won’t
go through the FW filter. - KWC

Quote: “Consumerism was the
triumphant winner of the ideological wars of the 20th century, beating out both
religion and politics as the path millions of Americans follow to find purpose,
meaning, order and transcendent exaltation in their lives. Liberty in this market democracy has,
for many, come to mean freedom to buy as much as you can of whatever you wish,
endlessly reinventing and telegraphing your sense of self with each new
purchase…."This society of goods is not merely the inevitable consequence
of mass production or the manipulation of merchandisers. It is a choice, never consciously made, to define self
and community through the ownership of goods."

Quote: “I have a very dark view of human
nature," Small says. "I think the reason the monkey study has gotten
so much publicity is that it touches something in all of us . . . There is a
contingent that says the
reason humans have such big brains is to keep track of social information, and we keep track of it all day long,
including who got what."

In recent years, who
has gotten what in the United States might leave the capuchins screeching. In
the decades following World War II, Americans in almost every income bracket
saw their earnings increase at about the same rate. Since the early 1970s,
however, the very wealthiest Americans have enjoyed virtually all the income
growth, creating what Cornell economist Robert H. Frank calls a winner-take-all society. The lucky few have largely spent what
they've earned, he says. In the process they've shaped everyone else's
perceptions of what constitutes the good life.”

Acquiring Minds 
Inside America's All-Consuming Passion 

By
April Witt, WP Staff Writer, Sunday, December 14, 2003; Page W14 @ http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A53732-2003Dec10.html

A blonde with a
perfect blow-dry flips through the pages of Us magazine on the morning shuttle
to New York. She's not interested in reading about celebrities; she just wants
to check out what they're wearing. "I have this dress," she says,
pointing to a photograph of actress Jada Pinkett Smith wearing a $2,300
bronze-toned satin Gucci cocktail dress with a wide belt shaped like a corset.

The fall shopping
season is almost over, and Jamie Gavigan, a colorist at a Georgetown hair
salon, is heading to New York City on one last fashion mission. She wants to
find a killer cocktail dress and satisfy her special footwear urges at the
Manolo Blahnik shoe salon.

Jamie shops in
Washington, too, at Neiman Marcus and Saks Fifth Avenue and some pricey
boutiques. But two or three times a year, the 36-year-old single mother flies
to New York to more fully indulge her fashion passions. It's her reward for
standing on her feet nine hours a day, mixing chemicals and working straight
through lunch to earn the six-figure income that makes these shopping
expeditions possible.

When the shuttle lands
at La Guardia, Jamie hops into a cab and heads to her favorite department
store, Barneys, at 61st and Madison, one of the culture's new cathedrals, where
the affluent bring their soaring aspirations for better living through luxury
shopping. "It's all good here," she says. "It's disturbing,
isn't it? I like everything they have."

On her feet, she's
wearing $750 Manolo Blahnik black suede boots with four-inch-high stiletto
heels. On her arm, she's carrying a blue Birkin tote bag by Hermes de Paris. If
you could buy one, which now you can't, prices for the Birkin would start at
$5,000 for plain leather and climb to more than $70,000 for crocodile
renditions with diamond-encrusted hardware. Swamped in recent years by demand
for the bag, Hermes had been asking would-be customers to put their names on a
waiting list. Jamie waited two years for her Birkin to arrive. Last year,
Hermes stopped adding names to the list.

…Deny it, outraged, if
you will. Rail against unchecked materialism like some puritanical scold. Pray
for the soul of a nation wandering lost in the malls, more likely to shop than
to vote, volunteer, join a

RE: [Futurework] How was Saddam captured alive?

[Karen Watters Cole]

The national
media made much of the disorientation Saddam reportedly displayed when he was
removed from the dugout; one reported that he had hit his head, another
mentioned that in the ‘year before the war’ he was not really involved in daily
dictatorship and ‘more interested in the long novels‘ he supposedly wrote. Another
report speculated that he appeared to be relieved to have been caught and
chatty.

In the
afternoon the media frenzy died down but by evening when the CBS Sunday news
show 60 Minutes regularly appeared, it was reported that from his initial
interrogation nothing of interest had been gained, that he maintained his
innocence of all charges, just your ordinary everyday dictator, so to speak.

As I write
this, the only commentary I’ve scanned is from David Ignatius, writing from
Amman, who suggests the image of a bearded Saddam looking more like a befuddled
homeless man had the effect of a broken voodoo spell throughout the Arab world.


 

See A Step Toward Mission Accomplished @ http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A447-2003Dec14.html

“For
the United States, Hussein's capture offers a new start for an Iraq policy that
in recent weeks looked as if its wheels were coming off. It shows the power and
panache of the U.S. military, whose competence many Iraqis had begun to doubt.

But the Bush
administration shouldn't be popping too many champagne corks in the expectation
that resistance to U.S. occupation will now end. Instead, resistance could
actually intensify. "Now it's no longer about Saddam bouncing back into
power, it's about resisting U.S. occupation," said political analyst Labib
Kamhawi.

The Baath Party, free
of Hussein's baggage, may also find new energy. That was the theme of a recent
series of articles in the Arabic daily Al-Quds
al-Arabi by Salah Omar Ali, a prominent Baathist rival of Hussein.
Certainly, the Baathists won't just fade away without Hussein. They will
continue doing what they know best, which is running a ruthless, clandestine
organization.

A key challenge for
the U.S.-led coalition will be to renew its outreach to Sunni Muslims, who in
recent months have moved toward open revolt. "The Americans need to be
talking to the Sunni tribal leadership, to reassure them that the Sunnis are an
active and equal part of the new Iraq," argues Ali Shukri, a former top
Jordanian military officer who for decades helped manage Jordan's secret
contact with Iraqi tribal leaders.”

 

RE: [Futurework] Framing the Issues (was Democratic 'Shadow' Groups Face Scrutiny)

[Karen Watters Cole]

And while I’m
on my soapbox, allow me to throw in another good example of what progressive
ideas can do in partnership with smart, good government. This is extracted from
the New Democrats online, a website of the Democratic Leadership Council, now nearly
an old fossilized dinosaur. But in giving an award to Wendy Kopp, the young
woman who founded Teach for America*
as a public service enterprise, I want to share language that we should be
hearing more often in these wars for “hearts and minds”:

“The Teach for America
model provides several important lessons for education reform, national service
initiatives, and civic enterprises generally. 

Part of Teach for
America's success is attributable to the willingness of some school districts
to waive the usual entry-level teacher certification retirements and instead
welcome new TFA teachers who have been through an intensive summer preparation
program (though participants typically work towards certification during their
two-year commitment to the host school). This is an approach that schools
should expand to attract other talented college graduates as well as older
career switchers. Teach for America has a secondary impact as well. About 60
percent of Teach for America participants have ultimately stayed in the
education field. Many are still teaching and TFA alums are active as social
entrepreneurs in their own right, leading organizations like KIPP Academies,
The Broad Foundation, and New Schools Venture Fund. 

Teach for America also
has important lessons for other national service initiatives. One is the importance
of giving young people a clear mission and a real challenge to engage them in service to the community. Another is the
huge payoff that a small investment of public and private dollars can produce.
Teach For America teachers earn the same salaries as other starting teachers in
their school districts and are eligible for a small amount of educational
assistance. Conservatives who think any form of compensation "taints"
the spirit of voluntarism should take a long look at the return-on-investment from Teach for America, and wise up. 

And finally, Kopp's
story shows that the best civic enterprises begin with a compelling idea, a
commitment to private-sector involvement in "public" work, and strong
and consistent leadership even in the face of entrenched opposition.  As Al From said in New York: "Wendy
Kopp's success is a testament to the power of ideas grounded in the timeless American values of community, opportunity, and
responsibility." 

http://www.ndol.org/ndol_ci.cfm?kaid=131&subid=207&contentid=252260

*TFA was
defunded when Bush2 eliminated promised funds to AmeriCorps this year.
Scholarships promised to current teachers in 2-year contracts will not be
forthcoming. One of my daughters has just begun her assignment, teaching in a
NE Washington DC elementary school, while taking grad classes at night. 

RE: [Futurework] Framing the Issues (was Democratic 'Shadow' Groups Face Scrutiny)

[Karen Watters Cole]

Ray, not all who marched in the 60s are "on the Right now". Like you, I do
not respect those who opposed something in their youth just to 'go to the
other side' as working adults IF they did so for superficial reasons like
voting with their pocketbook or preferring to socialize with the rich
instead of work with or for the poor, or just because the draft ended. But I
respect those who became conservatives on principles that they can defend
and articulate, not just play label games. My trump card with conservatives
who claim a religious perspective is this: how can you ignore and disdain
the "least among us" when your Bible tells you that is exactly who you are
to be watching out for as you work your way through life?

I agree with you that progressives and liberals need to regain the moral
high ground not just on specific issues, but because it is the right thing
to do, to remind people that this nation has represented opportunity and
fairness. The spirit of fairness has been nearly forgotten in the idolatry
of free market greediness and smugness.  Many people think they are failures
when they don't realize the rules were stacked against them.

REH wrote: Its not unbelievable Selma, its just politics.   Liberal have to
be willing to be less lazy than before.   We've had it too easy.   The
answer isn't in money but in ideas.   We have to get out there, develop the
ideas and most of all ask questions.   Claim the high road and on issues
like abortion NOT seem to be encouraging women to have them while supporting
the right of a woman to direct her childbearing life.   Support freedom and
then encourage people to choose that which is best for both mother and child
and if that fails and it becomes a competitive choice between the two then
allow them the freedom to do so.   Liberals have lost the morality because
they have been unable to focus on the underlying common sense issues that
lie behind the conservative codes.   Don't hide in words like unbelievable
or dirty. Instead use words like "morality" with impunity and be so.If
we are to
win we must be better at what we do than they are and for me it is that
simple.The Left had become corrupt and stupid in the sixties.   I would
never have marched with any of those guys.   They were disgusting.   But
they are all on the right now and I feel better.

Again, George Lakoff has written coherently about just this problem from the
POV of a cognitive scientist.  See Framing the Dems; How Conservatives
control political debate and how progressives can take it back @
http://www.prospect.org/print/V14/8/lakoff-g.html
Excerpt:
"Progressive policies grow from progressive morality. Unfortunately, much of
Democratic policy making has been issue by issue and program oriented, and
thus doesn't show an overall picture with a moral vision. But, intuitively,
progressive policy making is organized into five implicit categories that
define both a progressive culture and a progressive form of government, and
encompass all progressive policies. Those categories are:

Safety. Post-September 11, it includes secure harbors, industrial facilities
and cities. It also includes safe neighborhoods (community policing) and
schools (gun control); safe water, air and food (a poison-free environment);
safety on the job; and products safe to use. Safety implies health -- health
care for all, pre- and postnatal care for children, a focus on wellness and
preventive care, and care for the elderly (Medicare, Social Security and so
on).

Freedom. Civil liberties must be both protected and extended. The individual
issues include gay rights, affirmative action, women's rights and so on, but
the moral issue is freedom. That includes freedom of motherhood -- the
freedom of a woman to decide whether, when and with whom. It excludes state
control of pregnancy. For there to be freedom, the media must be open to
all. The airwaves must be kept public, and media monopolies (Murdoch, Clear
Channel) broken up.

A Moral Economy. Prosperity is for everybody. Government makes investments,
and those investments should reflect the overall public good. Corporate
reform is necessary for a more ethical business environment. That means
honest bookkeeping (e.g., no free environmental dumping), no poisoning of
people and the environment and no exploitation of labor (living wages, safe
workplaces, no intimidation). Corporations are chartered by and accountable
to the public. Instead of maximizing only shareholder profits, corporations
should be chartered to maximize stakeholder well-being, where shareholders,
employees, communities and the environment are all recognized and
represented on corporate boards.

The bottom quarter of our workforce does absolutely essential work for the
economy (caring for children, cleaning houses, producing agriculture,
cooking, day laboring and so on). Its members have earned the right to
living wages and health care. But the economy is so structured that they
cannot be fairly compensat

RE: [Futurework] Reframing (was V is for Volcano)

[Karen Watters Cole]

Agree, Ray. I
don’t even think ‘saving the world’ is possible, but improving it is. 

If we align
ourselves as coalitions around issues, we have short term results. We need a
movement, broadly based, perhaps a Second Revolution. 

Mostly I
wanted other FWers who might have an interest to see the list of other
organizations for their own references. 

But it wouldn’t
hurt to let women have more room at the table, would it?

Hope you are
well and warm.  I’ve seen the
forecast for the NE. We’ve had 6 inches of rain here the past few days. No worries about running out of Bull Run
drinking water for now. - Karen

 

 

REH wrote: Karen,  

 

I
applaude the rise in organizations from each group that present unique views
that give us all more scope and wisdom in our contexts.  But I reject that
any one group or person will serve a messianic purpose and save the
world.   We each do that one step at a time by being responsible to
our own gifts, talents and groups through an enlightened activism.  
I sound like that Geo-Libertarian that Robert wrote about.  But I'm
not.  I speak from my own side of the wheel but I must depend on others to
speak of the place where they sit.    But putting our ideas
together we can become one whole human and plan well for the children.

 

 



Here
is another piece of Women On The Rise journalism,
with an imposing date.  Relax, just
ovaries are mentioned this time.  -
KWC

 

Women Will Have to Save the World

Marlene Nadle, Pacific
News Service, September 11, 2003

 

President Bush may not face much opposition in Congress to his plan for
perpetual preemptive war, but he better watch out for the women.  Angry over the swagger of violence
coming out of the White House, disgusted by the bring-'em-on itch for a fight
as the solution to political problems, women around the globe are organizing in
new ways. 

 

These gender activists are on the Internet, in the streets, packed into
rooms forming more groups and pushing resolutions through the United Nations.
Some are setting up an Occupation Watch Center in Baghdad, and others are
building a transnational movement. They even have their first martyr in Rachel
Corrie, the young American who was killed trying to stop an Israeli bulldozer
from destroying Palestinian homes. 

 

The surge of women's activism is happening now partly as a response to
9/11. That event accelerated the growth of new groups like England's Global Women's Strike and Central Asia's Worldwide Sisterhood Against Terrorism and War.


 

Explaining her own reaction to that trauma and the macho strut of both
bin Laden and Bush, Code Pink
founder Medea Benjamin says, "I had feelings and fears I never had in all
my years of organizing. The male aggressive voice was so very dominant. We
needed to strengthen the voices opposed to that. Mobilizing women was one way
to do it." Her reaction to violent solutions is shared by Indian writer
Arundhati Roy who calls bin Laden Bush's "dark doppelganger." 

 

The new organizing is more than an attack on personalities. As Jasmina
Tesanovic, a member of Women in Black in Serbia, says, "My enemy is no
longer a bad hero, or a politician, or a person in power, but the culture that
makes such primitive people possible and empowers them." The organizing is
part of a culture war to end the love of military glory, power, dominance and
hierarchy often taught as part of male traditions. New Profile, a women's group
in Israel, demands a complete reevaluation of its country's "military
consciousness." 

 

To counter a male habit of imposing power and dominance in postwar
periods women diplomats and non-government organizations pressured the United
Nations to pass Resolution 1325,
calling for women's full participation in nation building. Now, Iraqi women are
organizing to stop Bush from running their country as a Boy's Club. They are
being supported and advised by the U.N. Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM), the Network of Kosovo Women, Women
to Women International, PeaceWomen,
and a deluge of visiting groups. 

 

This international alliance is aiding Iraqi women's own efforts to
protest violent rapes, honor killings and the rise of fanatics. "We fear
the threat of fundamentalist religious movements which an occupying army
inspires," the Iraqi Women's League
said in a recent statement. 

 

The activists count on women in postwar and prewar situations to argue
for political solutions to macho face-offs. They encourage them to use their
social training in settling issues with words, cooperation, and even empathy
for enemies. 

 

There are no illusions about ovaries making all women good and peaceful.
Instead, Ann Snitow of the Network of East-West Women urges women to
acknowledge their past complicity with men's wars. Few expect Bush National
Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice to give up her allegiance to traditional male
stomp-and-rule values. But men who share their alternate vision are welcome in
the movement. 

 

The women may be 

RE: [Futurework] Reframing (was V is for Volcano)

[Karen Watters Cole]

Here is another piece of Women On
The Rise journalism, with an imposing date.  Relax, just ovaries are mentioned this
time.  - KWC

 

Women Will Have to Save the World

Marlene Nadle, Pacific News Service, September 11, 2003

 

President Bush may not face much opposition in Congress to his plan for perpetual
preemptive war, but he better watch out for the women.  Angry over the swagger of violence
coming out of the White House, disgusted by the bring-'em-on itch for a fight
as the solution to political problems, women around the globe are organizing in
new ways. 

 

These gender activists are on the Internet, in the streets, packed into
rooms forming more groups and pushing resolutions through the United Nations.
Some are setting up an Occupation Watch Center in Baghdad, and others are
building a transnational movement. They even have their first martyr in Rachel
Corrie, the young American who was killed trying to stop an Israeli bulldozer
from destroying Palestinian homes. 

 

The surge of women's activism is happening now partly as a response to
9/11. That event accelerated the growth of new groups like England's Global Women's Strike and Central Asia's Worldwide Sisterhood Against Terrorism and War.


 

Explaining her own reaction to that trauma and the macho strut of both
bin Laden and Bush, Code Pink founder
Medea Benjamin says, "I had feelings and fears I never had in all my years
of organizing. The male aggressive voice was so very dominant. We needed to
strengthen the voices opposed to that. Mobilizing women was one way to do
it." Her reaction to violent solutions is shared by Indian writer
Arundhati Roy who calls bin Laden Bush's "dark doppelganger." 

 

The new organizing is more than an attack on personalities. As Jasmina
Tesanovic, a member of Women in Black in Serbia, says, "My enemy is no
longer a bad hero, or a politician, or a person in power, but the culture that
makes such primitive people possible and empowers them." The organizing is
part of a culture war to end the love of military glory, power, dominance and
hierarchy often taught as part of male traditions. New Profile, a women's group
in Israel, demands a complete reevaluation of its country's "military
consciousness." 

 

To counter a male habit of imposing power and dominance in postwar
periods women diplomats and non-government organizations pressured the United
Nations to pass Resolution 1325,
calling for women's full participation in nation building. Now, Iraqi women are
organizing to stop Bush from running their country as a Boy's Club. They are
being supported and advised by the U.N. Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM), the Network of Kosovo Women, Women
to Women International, PeaceWomen,
and a deluge of visiting groups. 

 

This international alliance is aiding Iraqi women's own efforts to
protest violent rapes, honor killings and the rise of fanatics. "We fear
the threat of fundamentalist religious movements which an occupying army
inspires," the Iraqi Women's League
said in a recent statement. 

 

The activists count on women in postwar and prewar situations to argue
for political solutions to macho face-offs. They encourage them to use their
social training in settling issues with words, cooperation, and even empathy
for enemies. 

 

There are no illusions about ovaries making all women good and peaceful.
Instead, Ann Snitow of the Network of East-West Women urges women to
acknowledge their past complicity with men's wars. Few expect Bush National
Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice to give up her allegiance to traditional male
stomp-and-rule values. But men who share their alternate vision are welcome in
the movement. 

 

The women may be waging a culture war, but that doesn't mean they can't
do down-and-dirty politics with Bush. In an incident that's an early warning
about the 2004 elections, a group of women greeted a fundraising George W. Bush
in Los Angeles recently with a 40-foot pink rejection slip that read:
"You're Fired!" 

 

More significant is the change in young women who haven't been voting.
In a recent article in a weekly magazine on youth voting, 23-year-old Chantel
Azadeh said, "The last two years have done a number on a lot of people's
minds. This election I plan on getting involved. I think it's crucial that we
get Bush out of the White House." An MTV survey showed only 41 percent of
the young are planning to vote for Bush. 

 

The president's ominous mutterings about nuclear weapons in Iran and
North Korea are enough to keep gender activism going. Ditto the economic attack
on women's domestic needs in America and in countries that are its once and
future allies. Niki Adams of London's Global
Women's Strike is helping to organize a demand for a Women's Budget in 24 countries where her
group has members including, the United States. 

 

"Our slogan is 'Invest in caring, not in killing'," she says. Even
Madonna has joined the post-9/11 resistance with her new music video
"American Lif

RE: [Futurework] Saddam's capture and Blair's body language

[Karen Watters Cole]

We have
not seen an broadcast or announcement from the White House yet, although one should be forthcoming. Since Bush heard
from Condi at 5am it was confirmed and aides rushed in early, they may be
waiting to preempt Sunday news shows. Bush cancelled plans to go to church just
across the street (there is snowfall in DC area). Early analysis is that they
don’t want to gloat while US troops are still under fire, although this is a
major boost for Bush2. Also, as one of the news reports reminded me, they may
be wishing he had been killed in the raid to avoid the angst of who gets to
bring him to trial now, especially since Chalabi has already announced he will
be tried by the Iraqi people.  

Ha’aretz
is reporting that the Israeli stock market rose 3% on the news, so expect
better here tomorrow morning. 

Because of
the timing and delay to broadcast, Paul Reynolds at BBC is the only analysis I’ve
caught so far. 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/world/middle_east/3113417.stm

 

Here’s the
latest on the WMD angle, written by veteran journalist Pincus, no less:

U.N.
Inspector: Little New in U.S. Probe for Iraq Arms 

By Walter Pincus,
Washington Post Staff Writer, Sunday, December 14, 2003; Page A27 

The United Nations's
top weapons inspector says most of the weapons-related equipment and research
that has been publicly documented by the U.S.-led inspection team in Iraq was
known to the United Nations before the U.S. invasion.

Demetrius Perricos,
acting chairman of the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission
(UNMOVIC), said in an interview and in a report to the U.N. Security Council
that the only significant new information made public by the U.S. search team
was that Iraq had paid North Korea $10 million for medium-range missile
technology, which apparently was never delivered.

Perricos's assessments
were his first public comments on the U.S.-sponsored search for weapons of mass
destruction since he took over as acting chairman from Hans Blix, who retired
in June. Perricos cautioned that his assessments were preliminary and made
without access to classified working documents compiled by the Iraq Survey
Group, the U.S. government team led by David Kay that is searching Iraq for
evidence of weapons of mass destruction.

Still, the assessment
shows that, even after Kay disclosed his preliminary findings, U.N. weapons
inspectors remain skeptical of the Bush administration's prewar statements that
Saddam Hussein had seriously breached U.N. resolutions barring chemical and
biological weapons, and that such Iraqi weapons programs posed an imminent
threat.

A senior U.S.
intelligence official said the Iraq Survey Group stands by its report, and
emphasized that Perricos had seen only the unclassified version of the report.
He also said the investigation is not yet complete.

In the months leading
up to the attack on Iraq last March, the Bush administration cited Iraq's
possession of chemical and biological weapons and a reconstituted nuclear
program as primary reasons for military action, after the U.N.-sponsored
weapons inspections regime had failed to verify Hussein's claims that he had
disarmed.

Since major combat was
declared over in May, Kay's 1,400-member group has found no chemical or
biological weapons. Kay told Congress last month the team determined that
Iraq's nuclear program was in only "the very most rudimentary" state.
He said his group, however, had "discovered dozens of WMD-related program
activities and significant amounts of equipment" that Iraq had hidden. He
said he believes "there was an intent . . . to continue production at some
point in time."

Among those
discoveries were scientific documents that could have been useful in restarting
weapons programs, a clandestine network of laboratories and safe houses in Iraq
Intelligence Services (IIS) facilities, a laboratory complex hidden in a
prison, and evidence of a program for ballistic and land-attack missiles with
ranges prohibited by the United Nations.

Last week, Perricos
delivered an official quarterly report to the Security Council in which he said
the findings made public by Kay were, for the most part, documented by the
United Nations before the war.

"Most of the
findings outlined in the [Kay] statement relate to complex subjects familiar to
UNMOVIC," he said in the report. He qualified that by adding, "In the
absence of access to the full [Kay] progress report . . . [the U.N. team] is
not in a position to properly assess the information provided in the [Kay]
statement."

Perricos said, for
example, that U.N. inspectors had investigated reports that the prison lab was
used to test effects of toxins on prisoners, but found no evidence of that. 

The U.N. inspection
team knew about most of the Kay group findings on Iraqi missiles, Perricos
said. U.N. resolutions had restricted Iraq to delivery systems that could carry
missiles no farther than 150 kilometers. Kay wrote that his findings to date
were suffici

RE: [Futurework] http://www.glaesernemanufaktur.de/

[Karen Watters Cole]

Bravo, Ed. Personally,
I see you as a philosopher with a sense of humor, given to occasional rants.  Seems like good magic to me. - KWC

 

EW
wrote: Thanks,
Ray, but I'm not that good.  I don't hold, or care to hold, political
office, and I'm aging.  But in my opinion, one of the great questions that
we face as both a society and as individuals is the proper balance between
self-interest and altruism.  In the case of the individual, how much do
we cater to our own needs versus the needs of others?  In the
case of society as a whole, how, and to what extent, should control
over the use of resources be exercised so that frivolous, self-serving and
wasteful uses are minimized and uses important to society as a whole are
maximized?

 

All of which requires prior definition: what is individualism and
what is altruism?  What are the limits to both?  What are frivolous
uses of resources and how does one define importance to society?  But I
don't think we are flying blind here.  There is plenty of literature on
all of these subjects.  And please note
that, by society, it don't mean "government".  I mean everybody
in that society somehow thinking about and debating things together, not
formally, but perhaps as many of us do now, by acting and reacting to things as
they come along, learning all the while and incorporating that learning so that
we do better next time.

 

IMHO, the most important thing a society can
do is educate its people.  And here I'm much more concerned with the arts and
humanities than with the sciences.  I believe we will continue to be able
to produce the technologists that will then create the status goods,
as Keith calls them, that will make the economy lurch forward.  What I am
concerned about is the ethics, morals, and ability to make judgments that
define how people should behave toward each other and what limitations or
permissions society should impose on its citizens.  If we were really able
to think about these things effectively, we would be far less likely to slip
into long held conventional thought modes that we now label as
"neo-con" or "neo-lib" or whatever.  We would also be
far more reluctant to let our politicians take actions out of such thought
modes.

 

How to fix up education has often been discussed on this list.  If
I were to fix it up at the grade-school level, I would put less emphasis on
mathematics and the sciences and more on disciplines that get maturing
individuals to think about themselves and their society.  And I would not
stop there.  I would set up special classes that adults could attend to
learn about, and discuss, bills that are moving through legislatures, or other
matters that could have a significant impact on society.  My hope would be
that, through education, we could reduce the
crap, the waste and the inhumanity that now characterizes society
and indeed ourselves.

 

So there you have it, Ray.  That's what I would hope to fix and
how I would try to fix it.  But I do wish I had more time.



REH wrote: Ed, 

Crap is just "economie of scale".    Your
complaint about survivor does not take into account the "news as
entertainment" cable news channels that pay almost nothing for performers
since life is the performer.   The perfect
productivity.   Make all of the performers volunteers or payment a
lottery.    That drives the serious programming onto the private
for pay channels like showtime and HBO with a little in PBS.   (Not
so great for upward mobility and designated marketing will make the gulf wider)
  People can rob music on the internet but when the "dung hits the
wind machine" everyone complains about the bad smell but denies culpability.
Productivity in labor creates a decline in quality in labor produced
products.   Only in automated products does it not
matter.    Quality and judgement are human traits not
machines and that requires professionalism on the part of the
producer and discrimination on the part of the consumer.   

Ed, you can't just crawl in a hole and retire.  You have to come
up with a solution to the economic rules that have created this
situation.   The theology of productivity and monetary value is the
root and it is rotting the tree.   Harry can long for noble savages
while demeaning networks and connectivity and others can complain about the
education system as if their own views on culture and value had nothing to do
with it.   But bemoaning your fate is beneath your considerable mind
and experience.   I believe you see it correctly, now what are your
solutions? 

EW wrote: I don't think we've solved the production
problem.  One reason for our inequitable distribution of income is that we
use our scarce resources to produce a lot of crap.  A lot of people make a
lot of money producing crap.  Others keep them rich and themselves poor by
buying it. 

RE: [Futurework] Look in the mirror

[Karen Watters Cole]

Keith, responding
to your comment about the likelihood of a massacre under the present troop
deployment ratio, the Army has been criticized in some quarters for its
heavy-handed tactics. It’s also come to our attention that the Israelis have
trained some US troops at Ft Bragg, that some of our people have trained in
Israel and some Israeli “consultants” are in
country with elite US troops who are employing IDF urban guerrilla
warfare tactics.  Lt. Gen. Jerry
Boykin, the outspoken Christian general who attracted a lot of negative
attention recently, is credited with this decision to adopt IDF tactics. (see links
below).  Ironic, isn’t it, that IDF
tactics are under attack by some in Israel for prolonging the intifada as much
as defending against it.

 

Due to this
negative publicity, it is not coincidental, I gather, that NYT war correspondent
Michael Gordon just put up an interview with the Marine general whose invasion troops
(now on R&R) will be relieving some of the greatly outnumbered Army troops.  Certainly, when engaged in long -term
military occupation, there is going to be some interagency competition and
differences, which might not add to consistency. Nevertheless, things need to
improve. So it was not good news to read that more than half of the Iraqi Army recruits
just trained have abandoned their jobs. (see below). As the cover of a recent
TIME magazine said: Mission Not Accomplished, or in French for Harry, C’est non accomplait (my apologies if my high
school français is wrong).

 

Excerpts from Marines Plan To Use Velvet Glove More Than Iron Fist
In Iraq @ http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/12/international/middleeast/12MARI.html

 

“Marine commanders say they do not plan to
surround villages with barbed wire, demolish buildings used by insurgents or
detain relatives of suspected guerrillas. The Marines do not plan to fire
artillery at suspected guerrilla mortar positions, an Army tactic that risks
harming civilians. Nor do the Marines want to risk civilian casualties by
calling in bombing strikes on the insurgents, as has happened most recently in
Afghanistan. 

 

"I do not envision using that tactic," said Lt.
Gen. James T. Conway, the commanding general of the First Marine Expeditionary
Force, who led the Marine force that fought its way to Baghdad and will command
the more than 20,000
marines
who will return to Iraq in March. "It would have to be a rare
incident that transcends anything that we have seen in the country to make that
happen." 

 

The increase in guerrilla attacks on American troops in Iraq
has prompted Army units in the so-called Sunni triangle in central Iraq to
adopt a hard-nosed approach — and spawned a behind-the-scenes debate within the
American military about the best way to quash the insurgents.

 

While some Army commanders insist the hard-nosed tactics
have been successful in reducing enemy attacks, other military officers believe
they are alienating Iraqis and thus depriving American commanders of the public
support and human intelligence needed to ferret out threats. 

 

2…The Marines, General Conway says, will
try to design their raids to be "laser precise," focused on the enemy with a maximum effort made to
avoid endangering or humiliating Iraqi civilians.

 

3… In that region, American military units
have come and gone so often that they have had little time
to understand their surroundings. Falluja was initially occupied by the 82nd
Airborne Division, which was soon replaced by the Third Armored Cavalry
Regiment, which was in turn replaced by the Second Brigade of the Army's Third
Infantry Division. In early summer, the Third Infantry Division had some
success in helping to establish the local police. But it returned to the United
States, handing the town back to the Third Armored Cavalry, which was soon
replaced by the 82nd Airborne. 

 

In
Iraqi society, which emphasizes personal relationships, the constant rotations have made a
difficult job that much harder. So have some tactics: in April, soldiers from
the 82nd Airborne based themselves in Falluja and were fired on during an
anti-American demonstration. The troops fired back. Iraqis say 17 people were
killed and more than 70 wounded, many of them civilians who never fired on the
American troops. The 82nd Airborne has disputed that account. 

 

4…Success, Marine commanders say, will ultimately depend
winning the trust of a wary Iraqi population. The measure of progress, General Conway says, will not be the
number of American raids or enemy dead. It will be tips about potential threats that are
provided to the Marines by ordinary Iraqis.”

>

 

Since
images can be extremely valuable in wartime and other normal propaganda, another
interesting piece of the Occupation puzzle is the photo of former POW Sen. John
McCain (R-AZ) visiting the Guantanamo prison, quoted saying that while
conditions looked adequate there, it was past time for the US to charge these pris

[Futurework] Look in the mirror

[Karen Watters Cole]

Conservative
columnist George Will warns about overreaching to establish democracy in Iraq by
comparing notes as Keith has recently about Northern Ireland. But he spends
most of his space here describing Putinism’s
dark side. 

 

If we are
comparing, maybe he could also write a column about gerrymandering and voting
integrity that challenge US democracy.

 

This is dated
for Sunday’s edition but online today. KWC

Democracy
Under Siege


By George F. Will,
Sunday, December 14, 2003; Page B07 

On Europe's western
edge, in Ulster, democracy is producing unlovely results. On Europe's eastern
edge, in Russia, the results are even more unsavory. Those whose mission is to finish
regime change in Iraq by constructing democracy can sense how long their task
may take by noting the difficulties in Europe, which is more politically mature
than the Middle East.

When did the troubles
in Northern Ireland begin? The Battle of the Boyne is a convenient marker. That
victory of the armies of King William III, a Protestant, over those of King
James II, a Catholic, is still celebrated by Ulster Protestants, largely to
lacerate the feelings of Catholics, every July 12. It occurred in 1690.

Thirty-five years ago
Northern Ireland boiled into violence that in three decades claimed 3,000
lives. Five years ago the Good Friday agreement, brokered by the United States
and endorsed by 71 percent of Ulster voters, supposedly brought peace by bringing
paramilitary forces into politics.

Concerning another
country, the Los Angeles Times reports that U.S. and other diplomats "have
met commanders of an Afghan faction that is attacking the U.S.-led troops,
urging the militants to dump their leader, disarm and form democratic
parties." Sudden conversions to civility would solve most of the world's
problems -- and would be especially helpful in Ulster. There the "power
sharing" under the 1998 agreement, which was supposed to marginalize or moderate
the extremists, has marginalized the moderates.

The party of Ian
Paisley, the 77-year-old Protestant fanatic who says the pope is the
"antichrist," has become the largest party in the province's
assembly, which has been suspended for more than a year, since allegations of
Irish Republican Army spying. Paisley refuses to deal with Sinn Fein, the
political arm of the IRA, a paramilitary force that probably will now refuse to
continue the "decommissioning" -- disarmament -- that it has
committed to but has done only partially and grudgingly. For the first time,
Sinn Fein has surpassed more moderate parties to become the dominant voice of
those who reject British rule in Ulster.

In Russia, a
bastardized mockery of democracy has produced the marginalization -- actually,
the annihilation -- of the moderates. After the elections to Russia's
parliament, a senior adviser to the real winner, President Vladimir Putin, used
a familiar Marxist trope in reading out of history the two pro-Western parties
that failed to win any seats. They should, he said, "be calm about it and
realize that their historical mission has been completed."

One reason they have
been, in Trotsky's words, consigned to the dustbin of history is that Putin,
who trained for democracy in the Soviet KGB, is using "managed
democracy" to concoct a meretricious legitimacy for lawless
authoritarianism. In a post-election statement, Putin blandly promised to
correct "shortcomings" in the election. They include his measures
suffocating independent media, controlling political communication from urban
billboards to broadcasting, and jailing the richest Russian on the eve of the
election. Optimists are construing his statement that Russia's constitution is
"the basis of stability" as a promise not to repeal the two-term limit
on the presidency. Do not bet on that.

Putinism is uprooting the shallow seedlings of
democracy across Russia's 11 time zones. Putinism is becoming a toxic brew of
nationalism directed against neighboring nations, and populist envy, backed by
assaults of state power, directed against private wealth. Putinism is a
national socialism without the demonic element of its pioneer who, 70 years ago
this year, used plebiscitary democracy to acquire the power to extinguish
German democracy. There probably are not enough Jews remaining in Russia to
make anti-Semitism a useful component of Putinism. But do not bet on that
either.

Responding to another
act of anti-Semitic violence, an attack on a Jewish school, Rabbi Joseph Sitruk
has suggested that Jewish men wear baseball caps rather than skullcaps in
public and "avoid walking alone" lest they become "targets for
potential assailants." This is in France, birthplace of the Enlightenment,
where Sitruk is chief rabbi.

Anti-Semitism in
post-Holocaust Europe, where Jews are few, is a reminder -- especially to
France, where Marxism was a long time dying -- of just how wrong Marx was. He
said modernity -- industrialism and the attendant demystification of the world
-- would dr

[Futurework] Between a rock and a hard place

[Karen Watters Cole]

Dated for
Saturday, posted 121203 online at 8:37 pm ET @ http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/13/international/middleeast/13MIDE.html?hp

Likud Debate: A
Palestinian State to Save Israel

By JAMES BENNET, NYT, December 13, 2003 

 


 
  
   
  
 


JERUSALEM, Dec. 12 — In this place that often seems burdened
by the past, it is the future that is suddenly bearing down.  Within the Likud, the dominant
right-wing party, leaders who once advocated holding every inch of the West
Bank and Gaza Strip, and who for three years argued that Israel could make no
concessions because it lacked a Palestinian peace partner, are now debating how
quickly to concede how much of that territory.

 

The Likud is publicly grappling with a prospect long raised
by Israel's left: that within a few years Arabs are likely be the majority in
Israel and its occupied territories, and that they may switch from demanding
their own state to demanding the right to vote in Israel, threatening its
Jewish identity.  The result is a breathtaking inversion: Though the Likud's platform opposes a
Palestinian state west of the Jordan River as a threat to Israel, some members
of the party say they have concluded that only the creation of such a
state can save Israel as a Jewish democracy.

 

The debate within Likud is the most surprising development
in a fall that has brought a two-month lull in the violence here and, with it,
a series of official and unofficial initiatives for peace. 

 

Terje Roed-Larsen, the United Nations special envoy here,
told the Security Council on Friday that peacemakers had a "narrow window of opportunity,"
though he called the situation "very fragile."

 

In Washington on Friday, the Israeli foreign minister, Silvan Shalom,
sat down with Secretary of State Colin L. Powell. Mr. Shalom told reporters he
hoped for a meeting "in the near future" between the Israeli and
Palestinian prime ministers. Mr. Powell met Thursday with Sari Nusseibeh, a
Palestinian who worked on an unofficial peace initiative. 

 

As the Palestinian prime minister, Ahmed Qurei, struggles to
cement a cease-fire among Palestinian factions, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of
Israel is acting like a man in a hurry. The days when Mr. Sharon stressed
reasons not to act — like his demand for seven days of absolute quiet — are
past.  Now he is eager to meet with
his Palestinian counterpart. He is sitting privately with members of the opposition
Labor Party he had all but ignored. He is even talking about unilaterally
removing some of the settlers he worked so hard, for so many years, to place in
the West Bank and Gaza.

 

Mr. Sharon has said he will clarify his intentions soon,
perhaps in a speech planned for the middle of next week. 

 

On the right and left, many politicians believe that Mr.
Sharon's hints may be political and diplomatic
posturing, to satisfy the Bush administration, to restore his sagging
popularity, or perhaps to distract attention from a widening corruption
investigation. 

 

Shimon Peres, the Labor Party leader, who met with Mr.
Sharon this week, said he was skeptical. "You know, hints are not a
policy," Mr. Peres said in a telephone interview on Friday. "It's
like all the time in Israel they say we have hints of oil. The difference
between hints of oil, and oil, is quite a major one."

 

Mr. Peres
said that there had been a change within the Likud, an acceptance of the need for a Palestinian
state, but that it had yet to formulate a policy to express that. "The Likud doesn't anymore have an
ideology," he said, "but it doesn't have an alternative."

 

Mr. Sharon's advisers say he is committed to the road map,
the peace initiative promoted by the Bush administration. They say he is
formulating possible unilateral steps to take if, in six months or so, that initiative fails. At the same
time, a senior Israeli official said, Mr. Sharon is seeking to adjust the Likud
to a political realignment in Israel. "One of the things Sharon is doing
is to inculcate a new approach," he said. "The dream of Greater
Israel is no longer there. We have to adjust our sights."

 

Palestinians argue that any unilateral withdrawal would be a
cynical attempt to unload as many Palestinians as possible into as little
territory as possible.  "All
they're arguing is, how big a reservation do they want to give to the
Palestinians," said Michael Tarazi, a lawyer for the Palestine Liberation
Organization. 

 

Mr. Qurei has criticized any possible unilateral Israeli
action, while also saying he welcomes that "Israelis are beginning to think of a
solution."

 

Mr. Qurei says he believes that he can reach a deal with Mr.
Sharon. More than two years ago, he and Mr. Peres worked out an informal
understanding that would include an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza and part of the
West Bank to create an interim Palestinian state. Mr. Sharon, who has known Mr.
Qurei for years, has said privately that he backed the idea. 

 

But while Mr. Peres and Mr. Qurei envisioned 

[Futurework] We take this commercial break for Applause

[Karen Watters Cole]

Now I don’t
want anyone to take this personally, but after it was mentioned here that we eventually
wanted to attract more young minds to FW and the creative process we enjoy here,
I mischievously had to share this, passed on to me from PlanetArk but
originally posted at Reuters. - KWC












Teens Lauded for
West Nile, Mad Cow Research 










 
  
  WASHINGTON - Research that may lead to a
  better understanding of how diseases like mad cow destroy the brain and how
  the West Nile Virus spreads were among discoveries by high school students
  honored at a national science contest this week. 
  Yin Li, a 17-year-old
  senior from New York City's Stuyvesant High School, won $100,000 in
  scholarship money for studying how a protein from a mouse's brain reproduced
  itself when inserted in yeast cells, advancing the understanding of
  neurological diseases like bovine spongiform encephalopathy, known as mad cow
  disease, or its human equivalent Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. 
  Li was among 19
  high school students from around the nation who received prizes in the
  Siemens Westinghouse annual competition out of more than 1,000 who entered. "There is a plan behind everything. It's
  just extraordinary to get a glimpse of what that is," said Li who volunteered to work on
  the project in the laboratory of Nobel Prize-winner Eric Kandel after being
  inspired by his study on brain cells, memory and learning. 
  Science is considered
  an extremely noble profession in countries like China, India, and the former
  Soviet Union, said Albert Hoser, chairman and CEO of Siemens Foundation.
  "I'm afraid this is not so in this country." 
  Mark Schneider, 18,
  and his brother Jeffrey Schneider, 16, will share $100,000 as winners of the
  team category for advancing ways to understand the spread of West Nile. They were inspired to look at mosquitoes because the
  youngest of the brothers from South Windsor High School in Connecticut was
  especially susceptible to being bitten. They looked at the factors affecting
  the transmission and reproduction of the West Nile Virus using a computer
  program. 
  One of their main
  findings is that drought actually helps proliferate the virus, said Mark
  Schneider. His theory is that under drought conditions mosquitoes and their
  predators live in separate water pools. The predators are therefore less
  likely to eat the mosquitoes and keep the population under control. 
  Other prize winners
  included Arun Thottumkara, a 17-year-old senior from Macomb, Illinois, who
  was inspired by
  the bad smell in his father's laboratory to find ways of producing
  environment-friendly chemical compounds. 
  Sean Mehra and
  Jeffrey Reitman, 17-year-olds from Jericho, New York, were recognized for
  work with molecules that can be used as lubricants in space-based machinery
  or in making computer chips. 
  "We are
  trying to showcase young people who go into math, science and technology
  because this is what will drive the struggles, which will keep this country
  competitive and which will advance the lives and improve the lives of
  humankind on this planet," said Hoser of the Siemens Foundation. 
   
  Story by Cyrille
  Cartier, Story Date:
  10/12/2003 @ http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/23064/story.htm
   
  
 


 






<><>

RE: [Futurework] Reframing (was V is for Volcano)

[Karen Watters Cole]

SS
wrote: When Jane Fonda says --->

"Because we can't just talk about women being at the table - it's too late
for that - we have to think in terms of the shape of the table.  Is it
hierarchical or circular (metaphorically speaking)? We have to think about the quality
of the men who are with us at the table, the culture that is hovering over the
table that governs how things are decided and in whose interests.  This is
not just about glass ceilings or politics as usual." 

 

I hear
her saying "DOWN WITH BULLIES and the Patriarchal Structures that support
them!" and I say "Hear! Hear! Say it Again & Again!" 

>

 

Thanks,
Stephen for “getting it” re: Fonda’s points about redefining the structure. 

 

Yes, GDubya
had two sisters, one died as a toddler from an illness, and the youngest child in
their family is a sister named Dora, I believe. In official biographies and
others it has been told that George 2 became very devoted to his mother during
the grieving of the loss of the sister, as most boys would under those
circumstances. But with a famous father, as Freud might say, “the rest is
history”.

 

It may be a
good time to repeat here on FW that linguistics prof. George Lakoff has written about framing the debate in politics, something
Fonda was attempting to prescribe in her speech. Lakoff uses the metaphors of strict-father
vs nurturing parenting to illustrate how many people identify with political parties
and themes like patriarchal systems. 
Below this are other links. 
Here is the first third of a piece posted by Lakoff this fall:

 

Framing the Dems

How conservatives control political debate and how progressives can
take it back

By George Lakoff, in The American Prospect, Sept. 01, 2003

 

On the day that George W. Bush took office, the words
"tax relief" started appearing in White House communiqués. Think for
a minute about the word relief.
In order for there to be relief, there has to be a blameless, afflicted person
with whom we identify and whose affliction has been imposed by some external
cause. Relief is the taking away of the pain or harm, thanks to some reliever. 

 

This is an example of what cognitive linguists call a
"frame." It is a mental structure that we use in thinking. All words
are defined relative to frames. The relief frame is an instance of a more
general rescue scenario in which there is a hero (the reliever), a victim (the
afflicted), a crime (the affliction), a villain (the cause of affliction) and a
rescue (the relief). The hero is inherently good, the villain is evil and the
victim after the rescue owes gratitude to the hero. 

 

The term tax relief
evokes all of this and more. It presupposes a conceptual metaphor: Taxes are an
affliction, proponents of taxes are the causes of affliction (the villains),
the taxpayer is the afflicted (the victim) and the proponents of tax relief are
the heroes who deserve the taxpayers' gratitude. Those who oppose tax relief
are bad guys who want to keep relief from the victim of the affliction, the
taxpayer. 

 

Every time the phrase tax
relief is used, and heard or read by millions of people, this view
of taxation as an affliction and conservatives as heroes gets reinforced. 

 

The phrase has become so ubiquitous that I've even found it
in speeches and press releases by Democratic officials -- unconsciously
reinforcing a view of the economy that is anathema to everything progressives
believe. The Republicans understand framing; Democrats don't. 

 

When I teach framing in Cognitive Science 101, I start with
an exercise. I give my students a directive: "Don't think of an
elephant." It can't be done, of course, and that's the point. In order not
to think of an elephant, you have to think of an elephant. The word elephant evokes an image and a frame. If
you negate the frame, you still activate the frame. Richard Nixon never took
Cognitive Science 101. When he said, "I am not a crook," he made
everybody think of him as a crook. 

 

If you have been framed, the only response is to reframe.
But you can't do it in a sound bite unless an appropriate progressive language
has been built up in advance. Conservatives have worked for decades and spent
billions on their think tanks to establish their frames, create the right
language, and get the language and the frames they evoke accepted. It has taken
them awhile to establish the metaphors of taxation as a burden, an affliction
and an unfair punishment -- all of which require "relief." They have
also, over decades, built up the frame in which the wealthy create jobs, and
giving them more wealth creates more jobs. 

 

Taxes look very different when framed from a progressive
point of view. As Oliver Wendell Holmes famously said, taxes are the price of
civilization. They are what you pay to live in America -- your dues -- to have
democracy, opportunity and access to all the infrastructure that previous
taxpayers have built up and made available to you: highways, the 

[Futurework] Pax Americana update 2

[Karen Watters Cole]

Still making
more enemies than friends these days…..

 

Published on Tuesday, December 9, 2003 by the Guardian/UK 

Israel Trains US Assassination Squads in Iraq 

by
Julian Borger in Washington

 

Israeli advisers
are helping train US special forces in aggressive counter-insurgency operations
in Iraq, including the use of assassination squads against guerrilla leaders,
US intelligence and military sources said yesterday.  The
Israeli Defense Force (IDF) has sent urban warfare specialists to Fort Bragg in
North Carolina, the home of US special forces, and according to two sources,
Israeli military "consultants" have also visited Iraq. 

US forces in Iraq's
Sunni triangle have already begun to use tactics that echo Israeli operations
in the occupied territories, sealing off centers of resistance with razor wire
and razing buildings from where attacks have been launched against US troops. But
the secret war in Iraq is about to get much tougher, in the hope of suppressing
the Ba'athist-led insurgency ahead of next November's presidential elections. 

US special forces
teams are already behind the lines inside Syria attempting to kill foreign
jihadists before they cross the border, and a group focused on the
"neutralization" of guerrilla leaders is being set up, according to
sources familiar with the operations. 

"This is basically an assassination
program. That is what is being conceptualized here. This is a hunter-killer
team,"
said a former senior US intelligence official, who added that he feared the new
tactics and enhanced cooperation with Israel would only inflame a volatile
situation in the Middle East.  "It
is bonkers, insane. Here we are - we're already being compared to Sharon in the
Arab world, and we've just confirmed it by bringing in the Israelis and setting
up assassination teams." 

"They are being
trained by Israelis in Fort Bragg," a well-informed intelligence source in
Washington said. "Some Israelis went to Iraq as well, not to do training,
but for providing consultations."  The consultants' visit to Iraq was confirmed by another US
source who was in contact with American officials there. 

The Pentagon did not
return calls seeking comment, but a military planner, Brigadier General Michael Vane, mentioned the cooperation with Israel in
a letter to Army magazine in July about the Iraq counter-insurgency campaign.  "We recently traveled to Israel to
glean lessons learned from their counterterrorist operations in urban
areas," wrote General Vane, deputy chief of staff at the army's training
and doctrine command. 

An Israeli official
said the IDF regularly shared its experience in the West Bank and Gaza with the
US armed forces, but said he could not comment about cooperation in Iraq.  "When we do activities, the US
military attaches in Tel Aviv are interested. I assume it's the same as the
British. That's the way allies work. The special forces come to our people and
say, do debrief on an operation we have done," the official said. 

"Does it affect
Iraq? It's not in our interest or the American interest or in anyone's interest
to go into that. It would just fit in with jihadist prejudices." 

Colonel Ralph Peters, a former army intelligence officer and
a critic of Pentagon policy in Iraq, said yesterday there was nothing wrong with
learning lessons wherever possible. "When we turn to anyone for insights,
it doesn't mean we blindly accept it," Col Peters said. "But I think
what you're seeing is a
new realism.
The American tendency is to try to win all the hearts and minds. In Iraq, there are just some hearts and minds
you can't win. Within
the bounds of human rights,
if you do make an example of certain villages it gets the attention of the
others, and attacks have gone down in the area." 

The new
counter-insurgency unit made up of elite troops being put together in the
Pentagon is called Task
Force 121,
New Yorker magazine reported in yesterday's edition. 

One of the planners
behind the offensive is a highly controversial figure, whose role is likely to
inflame Muslim opinion: Lieutenant
General
William "Jerry" Boykin. In October, there were calls for his
resignation after he told a church congregation in Oregon that the US was at
war with Satan, who "wants to destroy us as a Christian army". 

"He's been
promoted a rank above his abilities," he said. "Some generals are
pretty good on battlefield but are disastrous nearer the source of power."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,1102869,00.html

 

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/1209-03.htm

 

 

[Futurework] Pax Americana update

[Karen Watters Cole]

U.S. Bars Iraq
Contracts for Nations That Opposed War

By Douglas Jehl, NYT, December 9, 2003, 4:22 pm ET




 
  
   
  
 


WASHINGTON, Dec. 9 — The Pentagon has barred French, German
and Russian companies from competing for $18.6 billion in contracts for the
reconstruction of Iraq, saying the step "is necessary for the protection
of the essential security interests of the United States."

 

The directive, which was issued by the deputy defense
secretary, Paul D. Wolfowitz, represents perhaps the most substantive
retaliation to date by the Bush administration against American allies who
opposed its decision to go to war in Iraq.

 

The administration had warned before the war that countries
that did not join an American-led coalition would not have a voice in decisions
about the rebuilding of Iraq. But the administration had not previously made
clear that French, German and Russian companies would be excluded from
competing for the lucrative reconstruction contracts, which include the
rebuilding of Iraq's infrastructure and equipping its army.

 

Under the guidelines, which were issued on Friday but became public knowledge
today, only
companies from the United States, Iraq and 61 other countries designated as
"coalition partners" will be allowed to bid on the contracts, which
are financed by American taxpayers.

 

Among
the eligible countries
are Britain, the closest American ally in Iraq, as
well Poland and Italy, which have contributed troops to the
American-led security effort. But the list also includes other nations whose
support has been less evident, including Turkey,
which allowed American aircraft to fly over its territory but barred American
forces at the last minute from using its soil as a staging point to invade Iraq
from the north in March.

 

The directive by Mr. Wolfowitz does not spell out a precise
argument for why allowing French, German and Russian companies to join in the
competition for the contracts would hurt American security interests. But it
suggests that the main motivation is to use the contracts as a reward for
countries that participate in the American-led coalition and contribute troops
to the American-led security effort.

 

"Every effort must be made to expand international
cooperation in Iraq," the directive says, noting that the number of troops
provided by non-American countries has increased from 14,000 to 23,700 in
recent months, while the number of American troops has declined by about
12,000. "Limiting competition for prime contracts will encourage the
expansion of international cooperation in Iraq and in future efforts."

 

A Republican congressman who recently returned from Iraq
said in a telephone interview today that it was a mistake to exclude particular
countries from the rebuilding effort. 
"It strikes me that we should do whatever we can to draw in the
French, the Germans, the Russians and others into the process," said the
congressman, Christopher Shays of Connecticut. "I would expect
that most of the contracts would go to countries who have done the heavy
lifting, but I wouldn't want to see any arbitrary effort to shut anyone
out."

 

In a report that he issued today along with another
congressman, Frank R. Wolf, Republican of Virginia, Mr. Shays said,
"The administration should redouble efforts to internationalize the
rebuilding of Iraq."

 

Bush administration officials, including Secretary of State
Colin L. Powell, warned last spring that France and other countries would have
to face the "consequences" of their efforts in the United Nations and
other forums to block the American invasion of Iraq.  But until now, the American response has been mostly
symbolic, including a notable absence of White House invitations to those
countries' leaders to join President Bush for cozy one-on-one sessions at his
Texas ranch. 

 

A spokeswoman for the German Embassy in Washington, Martina
Nibbeling-Wiessnig, would say only that "German companies and
entrepreneurs are already engaged in Iraq as subcontractors." The French
and Russian embassies in Washington did not immediately return telephone calls
seeking comment.

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/09/international/middleeast/09CND-DIPL.html?hp

[Futurework] Signs of the times

[Karen Watters Cole]

Given the House and soon the Senate may pass an omnibus budget bill that
fiscal conservatives are fuming about because of the federal deficit and our budgetary
imbalances, this item summarized by yours truly from The Oregonian front page, below the fold, seemed a tad unjust
and surreal, don’t you think?  KWC

 

Center Loses Grants
by Slimmest of Margins

 

A drug-and-alcohol treatment center in
Medford, Oregon had two grant applications rejected because it used page margins
that were less than an inch wide. 
The executive director of OnTrack Inc., Rita Sullivan, said the grants
would have totaled $703,000/year. 
The application page margins were two-tenths of an inch too small,
something a printer or copier could have done inadvertently.

 

Sen. Wyden (D-OR) has written HHS Sec.
Thompson demanding that the agency review the applications on their merits. 

 

Mark Weber, spokesman for the Substance Abuse
and Mental Health Services Administration, said that agency officials would
still have to verify the reason for rejection but said rules were written to
ensure fairness.  “If someone
doesn’t follow the rules, as silly as they may seen at times, it can put them
at an unfair advantage,” he said. “The folks who did follow the rules then
might lose out because we bent the rules a little to allow someone else to come
in.”

 

Indeed. Forty-six
of 186 applications for a program for adolescents were rejected for
technical reasons, as were 29 of 72
applications for a program for mothers. 

 

In his letter to Thompson, Wyden wrote that
the Medford facility, which treats about 5,000 patients a year, had received
grants in previous years using the same format, but that agency staff had begun
enforcing technical rules to limit
competition for scarce funds.

 

- originally by Jim Barnett, The Oregonian, Wednesday, December 03,
2003

 

[Futurework] China Files

[Karen Watters Cole]

From Asia
Times @ http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page.html

 

CHINA
ON THE MOVE

No reason to frighten the analysts
Concerns over China's economy are preoccupying analysts all over
the world. Samuel Baker toured the
country recently and found that visions of disaster are overblown. 

Charm offensive means business
In his visit to the US this week, China's premier is prepared to
wine and dine the leaders in Washington as part of his country's new charm
offensive - one that's swayed China's neighbors into accommodating the dragon
next door. But when it comes to Sino-US relations, it's not personal; it's
business, and sweet talk will likely win few hearts or minds. - Gary LaMoshi 

US-CHINA: QUEST
FOR PEACE
Part 1: Two nations, a world apart
A stable East Asia is essential to global peace and
prosperity, and US-China relations are the fulcrum for enduring peace in the
region. Yet how can two nations so fundamentally different achieve harmony? In
a new series, Henry C K Liu seeks
the answers in history, beginning with the disasters of the Crusades and the
promises of the US constitution.

 

And, for what
it’s worth :

 

Bombed hotel in SA was a playboy hotel;
not a political target?

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/EL09Ak01.html

 

 

 

RE: [Futurework] Polarization myths (was fw: Interesting)

[Karen Watters Cole]

Ray, thanks
for posting Samuelson’s piece on polarization. I agree with several of his
points about manipulating public perception, but wish that he had found a
source newer than 1999 (Wolfe, One Nation,
After All) that cited
more than just middle class families. Much has changed since then.  

 

Generally, in
the larger scope of society we do have more cultural diversification and
acceptance of things that were once less visible and familiar, racial and
religious intermarriage, gay partnerships, to name a few.  Nevertheless, Samuelson does a
disservice by leaving the impression that polarization is mostly a creation of
intellectual or media elites vying for public attention. 

 

History is
full of examples of turbulent times resulting in creative solutions, and just
as many examples of turbulence leading to great disarray. We need to be alert,
not complacent, and Samuelson’s effort to discount polarization as more
contrived than it is may lull many into ignoring vital issues that are shaping
our nation in the new century. When the public is apathetic and not involved,
someone WILL make the decision for them.

 

Samuelson’s
point that opponents maximize their differences to establish themselves as
viable is of course true. There are hot
button issues that still raise funds, generate good media coverage
and get applause/boos with targeted audiences and there will always be
opportunists who take advantage.

 

Let’s take one
of those hot buttons: Andrew
Sullivan, also known to generate some controversy for his opinions and the way
he has hurled them at opponents in the past, discusses The GOP Divide on Gay Marriage
in yesterday’s WP.  He identifies some
within the GOP who differ here and explains why he thinks the President will be
silent on this issue, citing poll weakness
(see below). 

 

Even if I
opposed gays having the same legal rights in civil unions that straights do in civil
unions, I would not favor a constitutional amendment because the less we tinker
with the Constitution the better, one area where George Will and I agree. On
this issue it is my opinion that the Polarizing
Right feels it necessary to go for the ‘holy grail’ of legitimacy with
a Constitutional amendment to establish their supremacy of preferred principles
because they are losing the “battle” of righteousness in the public domain and
the courts.

 

If gay rights
is the “new slavery” issue some people are going to find themselves
increasingly isolated and marginalized as the courts rule in consistency with
the Constitution, as they did after the Civil War, and during the Civil Rights
and women’s movements.  Hence the
zealous battle cry to amend it.  

- KWC

 

* Excerpt: “Polls show the public much more evenly
divided now than it once was on marriage for gays. In Massachusetts, the most
recent polls even show a majority for it: 50 percent to 39 percent. Nationally,
37 percent now support it, with 55 percent against, according to a recent ABC
News poll. But when you ask the 55 percent
opposed whether they would go so far as to amend the Constitution to ban such
marriages, only 36 percent say yes. That amounts to 20 percent of the entire electorate. Most
constitutional amendments, even those with overwhelming public support, fail.
What chance is there for one to succeed with a mere 20 percent?”

 

 

[Futurework] Opportunity Lost

[Karen Watters Cole]

There aren’t any real surprises here except, who’s saying
it and perhaps, the second and third recommendations below, in bold:

 

Quote: “In nation-building, Mr. Dobbins and his
Rand colleagues have concluded that larger peacekeeping forces are better than smaller
ones. Not only do small peacekeeping forces encourage potential adversaries to
think they can challenge the peacekeepers but they also force the peacekeepers
to rely more on firepower to make
up for their limited numbers, raising the risk
of civilian casualties and increased disaffection among the
population.

 

"The highest levels of casualties have occurred in the
operations with the lowest levels of U.S. troops, suggesting an inverse ratio
between force levels and the level or risk," the Rand book notes.

 

Quote: "Occupied people look first for
security," Mr. Dobbins said. "If you provide security, they will
provide cooperation," he added. "If you are not providing security,
they will remain passive, uncommitted and will allow extremists to circulate in
their midst."

 

Quote: "A provisional government does seem
to me to be feasible and almost inevitable," Mr. Dobbins said. "The
opportunity to be able to more methodically put in place the prerequisites for
a genuine democratic system before you move to Iraqi self-government has been
lost."

 

DISPATCHES 

Nation Building
in Iraq: Lessons from the Past

By Michael R. Gordon, NYT, November 21, 2003

 


 
  
   
  
 


WASHINGTON, Nov. 18 — James
Dobbins has long been one of those troubleshooters who never seem to
miss a crisis.  As the special
United States envoy for Afghanistan, Mr. Dobbins was responsible for finding and
installing a successor to the Taliban after they were toppled in 2001. During
the 1990's, Mr. Dobbins hop-scotched from one trouble spot to another as he
served as special envoy to Kosovo, Bosnia, Haiti and Somalia.

 

So when he offers a critique of the Bush administration's
nation-building effort in Iraq, it is worth paying attention. Now out of
government, Mr. Dobbins, who has worked for Republican as well as Democratic
administrations, does not have a partisan ax to grind.

 

I spoke with Mr. Dobbins after reading "America's Role in Nation-Building:
>From Germany to Iraq," which Mr. Dobbins co-wrote with
other experts at the Rand Corporation,
where he is now a senior official. 
L. Paul Bremer III, the American administrator of Iraq, describes the
recent book as a valuable "how to" manual on nation-building.  Nevertheless, Mr. Dobbins believes that
much of the Bush administration's planning for the political and physical
reconstruction of Iraq is an object lesson in how not to go about the
nation-building task.

 

Mr. Dobbins's basic argument is this: The Bush
administration would have been better prepared for its Iraq mission if it had
heeded the lessons of the United States' ongoing peacekeeping missions in the
Balkans and other recent nation-building efforts.  Those are cases, he argues, in which the United States had
to contend with a security vacuum and the potential for ethnic strife, and
designed a force to maintain order.

 

But the Bush administration, he argues, has such disdain for
anything associated with former President Bill Clinton that it largely ignored
useful lessons from recent United States peacekeeping operations. To the extent
it looked to history, Mr. Bush's administration turned to the American
occupation of Germany and Japan more than half a century ago.

 

It was, Mr. Dobbins says, a costly exercise in
"political correctness." 
"Iraq in 2003 looks more like Yugoslavia in 1996 than Germany and
Japan in 1945," Mr. Dobbins says. "What they have not done is look to
the models worked out in the 1990's for sharing the burden and allowing others
to participate in the management of the enterprise."

 

Iraq poses its own unique challenges, but Mr. Dobbins argues
that the nation-building problems there more closely resemble those faced in
Bosnia and Kosovo than in Germany. Like the former Yugoslavia, Iraq is a
multi-ethnic state that was held together by a dictator. Like Bosnia and
Kosovo, it has a Muslim population. Unlike Germany, Iraq does not have an
ethnically homogenous population or a first-world economy. Nor has it been
devastated by total war.

 

The failure to reflect on the sort of security breakdowns
and power vacuums that the United States confronted in the former Yugoslavia,
or Afghanistan and Haiti for that matter, Mr. Dobbins said, left the Bush
administration less prepared for post-Hussein Iraq than it should have been.
There is little historical support for the Defense Department's initial claim
that it would take fewer troops to occupy Iraq and stabilize the country than
to topple the Saddam Hussein regime.

 

In nation-building, Mr. Dobbins and his Rand colleagues have
concluded that larger peacekeeping forces are better than smaller ones. Not
only do small peacekeeping forces encourage potential adversaries to thin

[Futurework] Asymmetrical economic growth

[Karen Watters Cole]

Sound
familiar?  In case you missed this.
- KWC

Who Wins and Who Loses as Jobs Move Overseas?

By Erika Kinetz, NYT, Business, December 7, 2003




 
  
   
  
 


The outsourcing of jobs to China and India is not new, but
lately it has earned a chilling new adjective: professional. Advances in
communications technology have enabled white-collar jobs to be shipped from the
United States and Europe as never before, and the outcry from workers who once
considered themselves invulnerable is creating a potent political force.

 

After falling by 2.8 million jobs since early 2001,
employment has risen by 240,000 jobs since August. That gain, less than some
expected, has not resolved whether the nation is suffering cyclical losses or
permanent job destruction. 

 

Last month, The
International Herald Tribune convened a roundtable at the Algonquin
Hotel in Manhattan to discuss how job migration is changing the landscape. 

 

The participants were Josh Bivens, an economist with the Economic Policy Institute, a nonprofit
research group in Washington that receives a third of its financing from labor
unions; Diana Farrell, the director of the McKinsey
Global Institute, which is McKinsey & Company's internal
economics research group; Edmund Harriss, the portfolio manager of the Guinness Atkinson China and Hong Kong fund
and the Guinness Atkinson Asia Focus fund; M. Eric Johnson, director of Tuck's Glassmeyer/McNamee Center for Digital
Strategies at the Tuck School of Business, Dartmouth College; and,
via conference call from Singapore, Stephen S. Roach, managing director and chief economist of Morgan Stanley .
Following are excerpts from their conversation. 

 

Q. How big an issue is job migration?

MR. ROACH Offshore outsourcing is a huge deal. We
do not have a data series called jobs lost to offshore outsourcing, but 23
months into the recovery, private sector jobs are running nearly seven million
workers below the norm of the typical hiring cycle. Something new is going on. America is short of
jobs as never before,
and the major candidates for our offshore outsourcing are ramping up employment
as never before. So yes, I think two and two is four.

MS. FARRELL This is a big deal in the sense that we
see something structural happening. But I would react to the notion that it is
a big deal we should try to stop or recognize as anything other than the economic process of change. I think the bigger deal is the fact
that we are going to have very serious curtailment of the working age
population.

MR. BIVENS I'm curious about Steve's assertion that
outsourcing can explain the sluggish employment situation. If you just look at
slow growth plus fast productivity, you've got the sluggish labor market right
there.

MR. ROACH A pickup in productivity does not have
to be accompanied by sluggish employment. There are countless examples, like
the 1960's and again the 1990's, of rapid productivity growth accompanied by
rapid employment.

The point is that the relationship between aggregate demand
and employment growth looks to me as if it has broken down. That breakdown
reflects not just the rapid growth and maturation of outsourcing platforms in
places like China and India, but also the accelerated pace by which these platforms can now be connected
to the developed world through the Internet. These are brand-new developments.
This is a huge challenge for service-based economies, like the United States.

MR. BIVENS How much of the insecurity that people
think is caused by service sector outsourcing is in fact just the business
cycle as usual? Every time there's a recession people want to blame it on some
underlying structural factor, when sometimes recessions are just recessions,
shortfalls in demand that work themselves out. 

MR. ROACH Over the September to November period,
employment has turned up, but many of those jobs came from the temporary hiring
industry. These are service jobs, contingent workers without benefits and
significantly lower pay scales. We're getting the G.D.P. growth, and by now any
recovery in the past would be flashing green on the hiring front. This one
isn't. With all due respect, I don't know what you guys are talking about. This
is a profoundly different relationship between hiring and the business cycle.
And I think these jobs are, by in large, lost forever.

Q. Who wins in offshoring and who loses? 

MS. FARRELL There is an assumption by protectionists
that these jobs are going somewhere else, and all this money has been pocketed
by C.E.O.'s who take it home. A little more sophisticated version is: It's
being pocketed by companies in the form of profits. One step further and you
say those profits are either going to go as returns to the investors in those
companies, or they're going to go into new investment by those companies. Those
savings enable me, if I am an investor, to consume more and therefore
contribute to job recreation, and if I am a company, to re-invest and create
jobs. Th

[Futurework] Coal in their stockings

[Karen Watters Cole]

Three from Center
for American Progress, Dec. 05, 2003. 

COAL IN THE STOCKINGS: With only
twenty shopping days left until Christmas, disappointing retail sales have
suggested to many analysts that this shopping season "may not be as good
as some retailers hoped a month or two ago." And the season so far
underscores the income disparity rampant in America. So far this season, high-end
luxury shops like Saks and Neiman Marcus have rallied (ironically, FAO Schwartz
has recently filed for bankruptcy). However, "department stores that cater
to middle-income consumers" reported sales under expectations, and even
powerhouse Wal-Mart didn't do as well as analysts had forecast. According to a senior
economist at the consulting firm Retail Forward Inc, "the middle-and
down-market consumers, mostly blue-collar workers, have been hurt by continuing
issues with the job market and unemployment."

PERILS OF RELYING ON PRODUCTIVITY: President
Bush has been touting a recent surge in productivity in his economic speeches
this week – up 9.4% in the third quarter. While productivity is a good thing,
especially for corporations, for average Americans, it isn't time to pop the
champagne corks. Everett
Ehrlich, former undersecretary of Commerce, warns, "Productivity
growth does not automatically turn itself into economic growth," as wages
and consumption need to catch up for there to be any difference. And it's not
good news for some of the nation's unemployed: "If productivity is
surging, then some jobs will be harder to find — read manufacturing."
Another problem discovered by economist Josh Bivens of the Economic Policy
Institute: the gains of the recovery are disproportionately
going to corporations instead of workers.  "Those who work for a
living have reaped historically low gains from the current economic recovery,
while owners of corporations have enjoyed historically high gains," Bivens
said. According to Stephen
Roach, chief economist for Morgan Stanley, this phenomenon has been exacerbated
by companies using cheap foreign labor. "Another aspect of America's
recent productivity miracle: the growing use of overseas labor. While this may
increase the profits of American business — help-desk employees or
customer-service representatives in India earn a fraction of what their
counterparts in the United States do — the American worker does not directly
share the benefits."

BAD FOR THE ENVIRONMENT, BAD FOR THE
ECONOMY: From a strictly economic review, damaging the
environment hurts the economy. According to The
Oregonian, "A group of 104 economists, including two Nobel Prize
winners, sent a letter Wednesday to President Bush and Western governors saying
that policies harmful to the environment also harm the economy in the long
run." When the environment is damaged, the cost of "reversing the
trend becomes more expensive over time," the economists wrote. An example:
When the environment is damaged, it provides "fewer economically valuable
services, such as cleansing the water in streams, and communities therefore
must provide replacement services with water-treatment plants." The Office
of Management and Budget in September found that "the health and
social benefits of enforcing tough new clean-air regulations during the past
decade were five to seven times greater in economic terms than were the costs
of complying with the rules." Thus the Administration's penchant for
easing pollution standards – most recently the relaxing standards for toxic
mercury emissions – is damaging Americans' pockets as well as the earth.
(For more on the harmful mercury threat, click here for a Q&A with former
administrator of the EPA Carol
Browner.)

Also note that the President will be
speaking today from a Home Depot in Maryland to talk about the economy.  Home Depot and others would benefit by
the Bush2 proposed cuts to OSHA, something Reagan also did when he ran up the
federal deficit. - KWC

 

[Futurework] Bush Boom-Bust Foreign Policy

[Karen Watters Cole]

Currently, the
big money man the Bush2 loyalists love to hate, George Soros pens commentary on
Bush foreign policy.  I am
excerpting here from about midpoint in this essay, which appears in the current
issue of The Atlantic Monthly.  You
will see some familiar phrases here.  - KWC

 

The Atlantic
Monthly | December 2003 

The Bubble of American
Supremacy 

 

A prominent
financier argues that the heedless assertion of American power in the world
resembles a financial bubble—and the moment of truth may be here

 

by George Soros 



…“September 11 introduced a discontinuity
into American foreign policy. Violations of American standards of behavior that
would have been considered objectionable in ordinary times became accepted as
appropriate to the circumstances. The abnormal, the radical, and the extreme have been
redefined as normal. The
advocates of continuity have been pursuing a rearguard action ever since. 

To explain the significance of the transition, I should like to draw on my
experience in the financial markets. Stock markets often give rise to a
boom-bust process, or bubble. Bubbles do not grow out of thin air. They have a basis in reality—but reality as
distorted by a misconception. Under normal conditions misconceptions are
self-correcting, and the markets tend toward some kind of equilibrium.
Occasionally, a misconception is reinforced by a trend prevailing in reality,
and that is when a boom-bust process gets under way. Eventually the gap between
reality and its false interpretation becomes unsustainable, and the bubble
bursts.

Exactly when the boom-bust process enters far-from-equilibrium territory can be
established only in retrospect. During the self-reinforcing phase participants
are under the spell of the prevailing bias. Events seem to confirm their
beliefs, strengthening their misconceptions. This widens the gap and sets the
stage for a moment of truth and an eventual reversal. When that reversal comes,
it is liable to have devastating consequences. This course of events seems to
have an inexorable quality, but a boom-bust process can be aborted at any
stage, and the adverse effects can be reduced or avoided altogether. Few
bubbles reach the extremes of the information-technology boom that ended in
2000. The sooner the process is aborted, the better.

The quest for American supremacy qualifies as a bubble. The dominant position
the United States occupies in the world is the element of reality that is being
distorted. The proposition that the United States will be better off if it uses
its position to impose its values and interests everywhere is the
misconception. It is exactly
by not abusing its power that America attained its current position.

Where are we in this boom-bust process? The deteriorating situation in Iraq is
either the moment of truth or a test that, if it is successfully overcome, will
only reinforce the trend.

Whatever the justification for removing Saddam Hussein, there can be no doubt
that we invaded Iraq on false pretenses. Wittingly or unwittingly, President
Bush deceived the American public and Congress and rode roughshod over the
opinions of our allies. The gap between the Administration's expectations and
the actual state of affairs could not be wider. It is difficult to think of a
recent military operation that has gone so wrong. Our soldiers have been forced
to do police duty in
combat gear, and they
continue to be killed. We have put at risk not only our soldiers' lives but the
combat effectiveness of our armed forces. Their morale is impaired, and we are
no longer in a position to properly project our power. Yet there are more places than ever before where we might
have legitimate need to project that power. North Korea is openly building
nuclear weapons, and Iran is clandestinely doing so. The Taliban is regrouping
in Afghanistan. The costs of occupation and the prospect of permanent war are weighing
heavily on our economy, and we are failing to address many festering
problems—domestic and global. If we ever needed proof that the dream of
American supremacy is misconceived, the occupation of Iraq has provided it. If
we fail to heed the evidence, we will have to pay a heavier price in the
future. 

Meanwhile, largely as a result of our preoccupation with
supremacy, something has gone fundamentally wrong with the war on terrorism.
Indeed, war is a false metaphor in this context. Terrorists do pose a threat to
our national and personal security, and we must protect ourselves. Many of the
measures we have taken are necessary and proper. It can even be argued that not
enough has been done to prevent future attacks. But the war being waged has
little to do with ending terrorism or enhancing homeland security; on the
contrary, it endangers our security by engendering a vicious circle of
escalating violence. 

The terrorist attack on the United States could have been treated as a crime against humanity rather than an act of war. Treating it as
a crime

[Futurework] RE: A cottage in the country

[Karen Watters Cole]

Keith, I
assume the garden has room for that koi pond you wanted.  The aviary sounds interesting, only I’d
suggest keeping that long beard of yours trimmed before inviting small birds to
cohabitate with you. 

 

Now since you’ve
made it sound so delightful and quaintly British the way we Americans want it
to be still, what are the driving directions and how do those of us who know what
public transport means get there? 

 

And what was
the name of the pub? We’d be good not to tell tales about you to the locals…

 

Karen

 

M'mm  I see. While the cat's away ..    

I've been looking at a house for most of the day and when I come back I find
that the two old men of FW have been talking about me.

But I think I've found the place. Two old farm workers' terraced cottages of
the 1700s bolted together more recently (well, about a hundred years ago).
Attached to another pair similarly joined in stoney matrimony. Front room of my
choice extends across front garden boundary into neighbour's building. Her
kitchen extends across rear boundary into my intended garden. All very
higgledy-piggedly -- probably the result of territorial disputes. Walls are two
feet thick, circular staircase, oak beams everywhere. No room for a study on
the ground floor -- where I'll need to be in coming years as my breathing
worsens -- so I'll have to build a garden office where the GREAT BOOK will be
written. Also, I have a sudden fancy out of nowhere to breed canaries or
suchlike, so I might build an aviary next to my office with a little doorway
between me and them, and then they can fly around as I toil -- no doubt
crapping over the keyboard as they do so. That's something that George Bernard
Shaw never had in his garden office. But, then, I'm aiming for higher things
than GBS... Anyway, it's nice village -- has all the things that English
country villages should have -- cricket club, bowls club (another incipient
fancy of mine), Women's Institute meeting room where they teach young wives how
to make sponge cakes and marmalade, nice Gothic church with a bent spire and,
of course, the village pub. Also, so help me!, two manor houses (both, I'm glad
to say, have public footpaths that run right across their graceful and spacious
lawns along which the riff-raff can walk -- we're still protective of the
common weal over here) and one of them, unbelievably, has a paddock with four
llamas in it! What are they doing in the Somerset countryside, for God's sake!
Delicate whispy things they are with dainty legs and all,  nibbling away
and eating fallen autumn leaves rather than choice green grass --  but I
was told by a bent and ancient gent returning from the pub in painful gait on
gnarled walking sticks and wearing a white beard even longer than mine, not to
let my dog off the leash (she was anxious to give chase to these lovely
creatures) because one of these dainty llamas would land a well-aimed kick on
her skull and crack it open without a doubt. "Them there lamy things can
look after 'emselves a'right", we were told. M'mm  not so dainty after
all! 

I return home to find an invitation to speak at an economics conference in
Milan next year. So even though you two go on at me, someone out there likes
me. Might go, might not. I haven't got my ideas together yet. Still a few more
hundred postings to write before my great thoughts start to gell.

And then I discover, from a wall of e-mails in my mailbox taller than the rooms
I've just been to, that you two have been rabbiting on again.

Ah well, back to the keyboard. Haven't made an offer for the country pad yet.
(Oh, I forgot, a well in the garden, of course. Probably better quality than
the stuff we get down pipes these days.) Might not get the house -- might not
have enough of the ready. If so, it'll have to be another day of house-hunting.
Meanwhile, does anybody want a Georgian town house in a most desirable city?
And with a genuine ice room -- in which I now sit -- to which ice came from a
freshwater lake near Boston in the early 1800s. Honest! Jane Austen visited next
door, and David Ricardo lived a hundred yards away while he was dwelling on
GREAT BOOK thoughts just like me. (Very sensibly he kept away from the gaming
tables.) This place is stiff with history. Also, remembering a visitation (nay,
delegation) last summer, I'm planning on putting a plaque on the wall outside: 

"Harry Pollard (and family) slept here"

Or perhaps not. 

Keith   

 

[Futurework] Challenging those mass-media produced assumptions

[Karen Watters Cole]

Besides the two excellent articles that EW posted this weekend challenging
assumptions about unemployment and productivity, this one also appeared in the
NYT.  It refers to a report by an Office of Tax Policy Research at the Univ
of Michigan @ http://www.otpr.org/: “How much
of a stimulus these tax cuts will provide depends in part on how much of it
will be spent. Research based on consumer surveys in 2001 and 2002 done by OTPR
Director Joel Slemrod and University of Michigan economics professor Matthew
Shapiro suggest that as little as a quarter will be spent, while the rest will
be saved or used to pay off debt. Times have changed since 2001, but a USA
TODAY/ CNN/Gallup Poll conducted in June 27-29 of this year suggest that the
consumer response may not be much different than it was in 2001-it found that
only 22% of Americans plan to spend their tax cuts.”

 

Click
on the Shapiro-Slemrod findings, “Consumer Response to Tax Rebates” and “Did
the 2001 Tax Rebate Stimulate Spending?” for pdf reports at the above
website.   - KWC

 

ECONOMIC VIEW 

As Stimulus, Tax Cuts May Soon Go
Awry

By Louis Uchitelle, NYT, Sunday November 30,
2003 @ http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/30/business/yourmoney/30view.html




 
  
   
  
 


Lauding the Bush tax cuts isn't easy. They have turned a
comfortable budget surplus into a constraining deficit, and they are enriching
the wealthy far more than families with only five-figure incomes. 

 

The one mitigating factor is stimulus. The tax cuts are
helping to revive the economy by putting more spending money into people's
pockets. But even that will soon backfire.

 

The stimulus is at its peak right now. During the fiscal
year that ended on Sept. 30, the nation's taxpayers pocketed $117 billion,
mainly from rebates and from reductions in paycheck withholding as lower tax
rates went into effect. That $117 billion, which is the portion of the tax cut
going only to individuals and not to companies, rises to $200 billion in the
current fiscal year, the Congressional Budget Office reports. 

 

Most of the windfall from both fiscal years is packed into
the 12 months that started last summer and will end next summer. Not surprisingly,
this front-loading of the tax cuts coincides with the improving economy. But
then the payout declines gradually, snuffing out the stimulus - unless there is
another big tax cut. Or as Chris Varvares, president of Macroeconomic Advisers,
put it, "We have reduced the scope of using fiscal policy to cushion the
economy in the next downturn.''

 

Tax cuts function as stimulus only when they increase the
amount that people spend. If America's $10 trillion economy expands by $117
billion in a given year, to a total, say, of $10.117 trillion, there is growth.
Among other good things, the additional spending on goods and services
generates jobs for people entering the labor force as the population expands.
And the rising demand for workers begins to absorb those who lost jobs during
the 2001 recession and the weak recovery that followed. The unemployment rate
thus falls.

 

The $200 billion flowing to taxpayers in the current fiscal
year includes the second installment of the $117 billion they received the previous
year and an additional $83 billion. If all $200 billion is spent on goods and
services, then there is still work for the people hired a year earlier, as well
as job creation to satisfy the additional $83 billion in spending. All else
being equal, the economy expands to a total of $10.2 trillion. 

 

A big chunk of the $200 billion will come to people as tax
refund checks in the next six months - a timely shot in the arm in a
presidential election year. Then the shrinking begins as the tax cuts run their
course. For fiscal 2005, which starts next Oct. 1, just a month before the
election, the tax windfall for individuals will total only $168 billion. There
will be another drop in fiscal 2006, the Congressional Budget Office estimates,
basing its calculations partly on the tax cuts themselves (80 percent will have
been paid out by 2005) and partly on an assumption about how much taxable
income the economy will generate. 

 

The two play off each other. A $10.168 trillion economy, of
course, is smaller than a $10.2 trillion one. The total production of goods and
services declines and, with it, the need for workers. Their wages disappear and
so does the revenue from taxing their pay. The stimulus aspect of the Bush tax
cuts thus shifts into reverse. 

 

Economists in the Bush camp argue that the tax-cut stimulus
will continue anyway, in a different,
supply-side format. With more of
their profits exempted from taxes, entrepreneurs will increase their efforts in
pursuit of lightly taxed wealth. The stimulus will shift to them, specifically
to their investments and hiring. The new profits and wages will then be spent
on goods and services, and the economy will grow. Rising demand will result
from rising supply.

 

Hyped-up entrepreneurs ar

RE: [Futurework] No Legal Cover

[Karen Watters Cole]

Ed, I agree
with you that now that we are there we have the devil of a problem.  But the point is the war profiteering contracts
can be stopped now. 

 

If Bush2 can
reverse course on which comes first, an unstable gov’t and elections or a
stabilizing but unpopular occupation, then they can also open ‘rebuilding’ to
international efforts and a UN umbrella, which they continue to resist. To the victor go the spoils seems to be
the most truthful assessment about how and why we are in Iraq, not the series
of compelling threats or democratic vision.  Bush2 again seems to be its own worst enemy. 

 

 

EW wrote: No, Karen, we can't turn a blind eye, and I do appreciate some of
the implications of what Naomi Klein is saying.  But what I can't seem to
get my head around is what kinds of demons have been unleashed because of the
invasion and occupation of Iraq.  The American presence and actions
of the CPA may very well be contrary to international law, but I question what
would happen if that presence were removed within a short period of time, as
Bush seems to want to do.  Personally, I fear all hell would break loose
because the various religious and ethnic groups can't get along.  Having
removed Saddam and let the genie out of the bottle, the US can't just walk
away, whether it is there legally or not.  And I don't think that ordinary
Iraqis, caught in the middle of it all, care whether the power grid is fixed by
privatized "key state assets" or someone else, as long as it
gets fixed up.

 



KWC wrote: Are you
suggesting that historical precedence and overwhelming power (might makes
right?) means that dissent is inconsequential?

 

Let us not turn a
blind eye to what is wrong just because we cannot stop it for the moment.  

 

Perhaps in addition
to security, insurance and asset risk management, corporations are wary about
rushing into Iraq because their corporate attorneys have told them what the
White House and Pentagon will not – that their investments can be
renationalized, if a noncompliant sovereign authority does not ratify the
illegal war profiteering contracts. 


 

On the other hand,
given their track record, Bush2 could be drafting corporate gift tax breaks for
those who lose heavily if that happens. Bush2 knows how to reward its real
constituency.

 

 

 





With all due respect, Karen, anyone as big and
powerful as the US writes his own rules (masculine intended).  Also
appreciate that pillage has always been a normal part of conquest. Ed





 

Well,
if I haven’t raised enough eyebrows today, here is another rousing,
controversial female challenging current thinking (by some), and those twins, complacency and acceptance.  

I
believe we discussed this at some length prior to the invasion this spring.

Also
see the companion FAQ’s – with notes - where the Hague and Geneva conventions
are specified. - KWC

 

Iraq is Not America's to Sell 





International
law is Unequivocal - Paul Bremer's Economic Reforms are Illegal

 

By Naomi
Klein, Published on Friday, November 7, 2003 by the Guardian/UK

 

Bring
Halliburton home. Cancel the contracts. Ditch the deals. Rip up the rules.
Those are just a few of the suggestions for slogans that could help unify the growing
movement against the occupation of Iraq. So far, activist debates have focused
on whether the demand should be for a complete withdrawal of troops, or for the
United States to cede power to the United Nations.

 

But
the "troops out" debate overlooks an important fact. If every last
Soldier pulled out of the Gulf tomorrow and a sovereign government came to
power, Iraq would still be occupied: by laws written in the interest of another
country; by foreign corporations controlling its essential services; by 70%
unemployment sparked by public sector layoffs.

 

Any
movement serious about Iraqi self-determination must call not only for an end
to Iraq's military occupation, but to its economic colonization as well. That
means reversing the shock therapy reforms that US occupation chief Paul Bremer
has fraudulently passed off as "reconstruction", and canceling all
privatization contracts that are flowing from these reforms.

 

How
can such an ambitious goal be achieved? Easy: by showing that Bremer's reforms
were illegal to begin with. They clearly violate the international convention
governing the behavior of occupying forces, the Hague regulations of 1907 (the
companion to the 1949 Geneva conventions, both ratified by the United States),
as well as the US army's own code of war.

 

The
Hague regulations state that an occupying power must respect "unless
absolutely prevented, the laws in force in the country". The coalition
provisional authority has shredded that simple rule with gleeful defiance.  Iraq's constitution outlaws the
privatization of key state assets, and it bars foreigners from owning Iraqi
firms. No plausible argument can be made that the CPA was "absolutely
prevented" from respecting those laws, and yet t

RE: [Futurework] Bush's PR problems (was Blair's curious illnesses)

[Karen Watters Cole]

KH
wrote re: Bush state visit with the Queen: It was a
disaster. But Bush got his photos with the Queen. That's what the trip was
planned for 18 months ago long before the invasion was planned and that's what
he got. The rest was humiliation, but Bush is so thankful that Blair -- his
only friend in the non-American world -- is supporting him that he was prepared
to be humiliated as no-one has ever been before.

Zakaria
confirms that Bush has PR problems outside of US military bases, something we
noticed here with the exception of GOP fundraisers. 

Also note that
David Frum, the former speechwriter quoted below, wrote a flattering book about
Bush last year.  - KWC

Quote: ”But the deeper
problem is not one of style but of substance. Bush's trips to Southeast Asia
and Australia focused single-mindedly on the war on terror. Karim Raslan, a
Malaysian writer, explained the local reaction: "Bush came to an economic
group [APEC] and talked obsessively about terror. He sees all of us through
that one prism.”

Quote: “What is most dismaying about this state
of affairs is that for the past 50 years the United States has skillfully
merged its own agenda with the agendas of others, creating a sense of shared
interests and values. When Presidents Truman, Eisenhower and Kennedy waged the
Cold War, they also presented the world with a constructive agenda dealing with trade, poverty
and health.
They fought
communism with one hand and offered hope with the other. We have fallen far from that model if
the head of the Chinese Communist Party is seen as presenting the world with a
more progressive agenda than the president of the world's leading democracy.”

OpEd: Bush's PR Problem 

By
Fareed Zakaria, Tuesday, December 2, 2003; Page A27 

President Bush's
Thanksgiving trip to Iraq was a generous and bold-hearted gesture of support to
American troops. What made it such a success, however, was that it managed to severely
limit an otherwise unavoidable aspect of travel: contact with foreigners. When
Bush has had to go beyond U.S. Army bases in recent weeks, the tours have not
gone so well.

Traveling through East
Asia last week, I noted how poorly most observers rated Bush's recent trip
there. Even more striking, however, was the comparison repeatedly made between
Bush's visit and that of Chinese President Hu Jintao -- with a thumping
majority believing Hu had done better.

In Thailand at the
meeting for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, "there was no question
that Hu was the better appreciated one," a Thai official said to me.
"He outshone Bush in most of the attendees' eyes." The trips ended
with the two making back-to-back visits to Australia. Bush was greeted with
demonstrations, his address to Parliament interrupted by hecklers. Hu, on the
other hand, got a 20-minute standing ovation from Parliament. "It is Hu's
visit rather than George W. Bush's that will provide a lingering sense of
satisfaction and security about Australia's place in the region," wrote
the Australian, a newspaper owned by Rupert Murdoch and not given to knee-jerk
anti-Americanism.

What is going on here?
How does the chief representative of the world's oldest constitutional
democracy lose a popularity contest to the leader of a Leninist party?

Let's start with the atmospherics. Everywhere Bush travels, his security is
handled with the usual American overkill: huge numbers of guards and aides,
walled-off compounds, tightly scripted movements from one bubble to another.
Hu, by contrast, had a modest security detail, traveled freely and mingled with
other leaders and even the general public. (Tony Blair sometimes manages to
travel abroad with a total of six people.) Bush's trip to London two weeks ago
is now being heralded as a great success. But here is how one of the
president's most ardent supporters, his former speechwriter David Frum, saw it
while in London himself. "Bush was sealed away from London for the entire
visit. There was no drive down the Mall, no address to Parliament, no public
events at all," Frum wrote in his Weblog on National Review Online.
"The trip's planners reduced the risk of confrontations -- but only by
broadcasting to the British public their tacit acknowledgement that the visit
was unpopular and unwelcome. By eliminating from the president's schedule
events with any touch of spontaneity or public contact, the trip planners made
the president look as if he could not or would not engage with ordinary British
people." In
Great Britain,
Frum concluded, "the
United States has a problem, a big one -- and it was made worse, not better, by
this recent visit."

But the deeper problem is not one of style but
of substance.
Bush's trips to Southeast Asia and Australia focused single-mindedly on the war
on terror. Karim Raslan, a Malaysian writer, explained the local reaction:
"Bush came to an economic group [APEC] and talked obsessively about
terror. He sees all of us through that one prism. Yes, we worry about terror,
but 

RE: [Futurework] No Legal Cover

[Karen Watters Cole]

Good morning,
Ed. 

 

Are you
suggesting that historical precedence and overwhelming power (might makes
right?) means that dissent is inconsequential?

 

Let us not turn
a blind eye to what is wrong just because we cannot stop it for the moment.  

 

Perhaps in
addition to security, insurance and asset risk management, corporations are
wary about rushing into Iraq because their corporate attorneys have told them
what the White House and Pentagon will not – that their investments can be
renationalized, if a noncompliant sovereign authority does not ratify the illegal
war profiteering contracts.  

 

On the other hand,
given their track record, Bush2 could be drafting corporate gift tax breaks for
those who lose heavily if that happens. Bush2 knows how to reward its real
constituency.

 

- KWC

 

 

With all due respect, Karen, anyone as big and powerful as the US
writes his own rules (masculine intended).  Also appreciate that pillage
has always been a normal part of conquest. Ed

 



Well, if I haven’t raised enough
eyebrows today, here is another rousing, controversial female challenging
current thinking (by some), and those twins, complacency
and acceptance.  

I believe we discussed this at
some length prior to the invasion this spring.

Also see the companion FAQ’s –
with notes - where the Hague and Geneva conventions are specified. - KWC

 

Iraq is Not
America's to Sell 





International
law is Unequivocal - Paul Bremer's Economic Reforms are Illegal

 

By Naomi
Klein, Published on Friday, November 7, 2003 by the Guardian/UK

 

Bring
Halliburton home. Cancel the contracts. Ditch the deals. Rip up the rules.
Those are just a few of the suggestions for slogans that could help unify the
growing movement against the occupation of Iraq. So far, activist debates have
focused on whether the demand should be for a complete withdrawal of troops, or
for the United States to cede power to the United Nations.

 

But
the "troops out" debate overlooks an important fact. If every last
Soldier pulled out of the Gulf tomorrow and a sovereign government came to
power, Iraq would still be occupied: by laws written in the interest of another
country; by foreign corporations controlling its essential services; by 70%
unemployment sparked by public sector layoffs.

 

Any
movement serious about Iraqi self-determination must call not only for an end
to Iraq's military occupation, but to its economic colonization as well. That
means reversing the shock therapy reforms that US occupation chief Paul Bremer
has fraudulently passed off as "reconstruction", and canceling all
privatization contracts that are flowing from these reforms.

 

How
can such an ambitious goal be achieved? Easy: by showing that Bremer's reforms
were illegal to begin with. They clearly violate the international convention
governing the behavior of occupying forces, the Hague regulations of 1907 (the
companion to the 1949 Geneva conventions, both ratified by the United States),
as well as the US army's own code of war.

 

The Hague
regulations state that an occupying power must respect "unless absolutely
prevented, the laws in force in the country". The coalition provisional
authority has shredded that simple rule with gleeful defiance.  Iraq's constitution outlaws the
privatization of key state assets, and it bars foreigners from owning Iraqi
firms. No plausible argument can be made that the CPA was "absolutely
prevented" from respecting those laws, and yet two months ago, the CPA
overturned them unilaterally.

 

On
September 19, Bremer enacted the now infamous Order
39. It announced that 200 Iraqi state companies would be privatized;
decreed that foreign firms can retain 100% ownership of Iraqi banks, mines and
factories; and allowed  these firms
to move 100% of their profits out of Iraq. The Economist declared the new rules
a "capitalist dream".

 

Order
39 violated the Hague regulations in other ways as well. The convention states
that occupying powers "shall be regarded only as administrator and usufructuary of public buildings, real
estate, forests and agricultural estates belonging to the hostile state, and
situated in the occupied country. It must safeguard the capital of these
properties, and administer them in accordance with the rules of usufruct."

 

Bouvier's
Law Dictionary defines "usufruct"
(possibly the ugliest word in the English language) as an arrangement that
grants one party the right to  use
and derive benefit from another's property "without altering the  substance of the thing". Put more
simply, if you are a housesitter, you can eat the food in the fridge, but you
can't sell the house and turn it into 
condos. And yet that is just what Bremer is doing: what could more
substantially alter "the substance" of a public asset than to turn it
into a private one?

 

In
case the CPA was still unclear on this detail, the US army's Law of Land
Warfare states that "the occupant does not have the right of sale or
unqu

RE: [Futurework] V is for Volcano2

[Karen Watters Cole]

Here are links
to two projects referenced in the original speech.

 

http://www.thewhitehouseproject.org/

 

http://www.vday.org/

 

 

RE: [Futurework] V is for Volcano2

[Karen Watters Cole]

Dear Arthur, I
must say I would have written the last sentence differently myself, repeating
the title and finishing the political theme, “V is for Volcana, vote and
victory.”

But I don’t
think this can be called ‘male bashing’, if for no other reason than she did
express the conviction that the patriarchal paradigm hadn’t been entirely
healthy for men, either. I’ve reduced her speech to the points I found most
interesting, below. 

Karen

 

 

Let's hear it
for a feminist paradigm.  Golda Meir, Margaret Thatcher et. al. 
really will change things.  Hmmm.

 

I thought we
were beyond the era of "male bashing."

 

Perhaps Ms.
Fonda's estrogen levels need a bit of a boost.  "V" for Vagina, for vote, for victory. 

(or for vomit.)

 

arthur

 

 

Quote:
"Maybe at some earlier stage in
human evolution, Patriarchy was what was needed just for the species to
survive. But today, there's nothing threatening the human species but humans.
We've conquered our predators, we've subdued nature almost to extinction, and
there are no more frontiers to conquer or to escape into so as to avoid having
to deal with the mess we've left behind. Frontiers have always given
capitalism, Patriarchy's economic face, a way to avoid dealing with its
shortcomings. Well, we're having to face them now in this post-frontier era and
inevitably -- especially when we have leaders who suffer from toxic masculinity
-- that leads to war, the conquering of new markets, and the destruction of the
earth. 

 

However,
it is altogether possible, that we are on the verge of a tectonic shift in
paradigms -- that what we are seeing happening today are the paroxysms, the
final terrible death throes of the old, no longer workable, no longer
justifiable system. Look at it this way: it's Patriarchy's third act and we
have to make sure it's its last."

 

V is for Volcano

By Jane Fonda, AlterNet, 112403, Viewed on
120103 @ http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=17248

 

 …Yes, men
and boys receive privilege and status from patriarchy, but it is a poisoned
privilege for which they pay a heavy price. If traditional, patriarchal
socialization takes aim at girls' voices, it takes aim at boys' hearts -- makes
them lose the deepest, most sensitive and empathic parts of themselves. Men
aren't even allowed to be depressed, which is why they engage so often in
various forms of self-numbing, from sex to alcohol and drugs to gambling and
workaholism. Patriarchy strikes a Faustian bargain with men. 

 

Patriarchy
sustains itself by breaking relationship. I'm referring here to real
relationship, the showing-up kind, not the "I'll stay with him cause he
pays the bills, or because of the kids, or because if I don't I will cease to
exist," but relationship where you, the woman, can acknowledge your
partner's needs while simultaneously acknowledging and tending to your own. I
work with young girls and I can tell you there's a whole generation who have
not learned what a relationship is supposed to feel like -- that it's not about
leaving themselves behind. 

 

…Another thing that I've learned is that there is a
fundamental contradiction not just between patriarchy and relationship, but
between patriarchy and Democracy. Patriarchy masquerades as Democracy, but it's
an anathema. How can it be democracy when someone has to always be above
someone else, when women, who are a majority, live within a social construct
that discriminates against them, keeps them from having their full human
rights? 

 

But just
because Patriarchy has ruled for 10,000 years since the beginning of
agriculture, doesn't make it inevitable. 

 

So, as Eve
Ensler says, we have to change the verbs from obliterate, dominate, humiliate,
to liberate, appreciate, celebrate. We have to make sure that head and heart
can be reunited in the body politic, and relationship and democracy can be
restored. 

 

…We need to really understand the depth and breadth of what a
shift to a new, feminine paradigm would mean, how fundamentally central it is
to every single other thing in the world. We win, everything wins, including boys,
men, and the earth. We have to really understand this and be able to make it
concrete for others so they will be able to see what Feminism really is and see
themselves in it. 

 

So our
challenge is to commit ourselves to creating the tipping point and the turning
point. The time is ripe to launch a unified national movement, a campaign, a
tidal wave, built around issues and values, not candidates. 

 

>>>

 

 

 

 

 

[Futurework] Managing damage control

[Karen Watters Cole]

Too bad they missed the
opportunity to release these before Ramadan, but am cynically thinking it has
more to do with the US holiday season and the election campaign.  A “politically propitious time” may have
a lot to do with how the rust belt states react to news pending of Bush’s
reversal of steel tariffs.  - KWC

 

U.S.
to Release 140 From Guantanamo 
No Time Frame Given for Letting Detainees Go 

Reuters, Monday,
December 1, 2003; Page A07 @ http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A23742-2003Nov30.html

The United
States plans to release 140 of the 660 prisoners at its Guantanamo Bay, Cuba,
prison for suspects in the U.S.-declared war on terrorism, Time magazine
reported yesterday.  Slated for
release were "the easiest 20 percent" of detainees, a military
official told the magazine. Time did not identify its source, who said the
military was waiting for "a politically propitious time to release
them."  A Pentagon spokesman was not immediately
available for comment.

No
charges have been filed against any of the 660 prisoners at the U.S. Navy base in Cuba. Defense officials say many
are suspected members of Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network or Taliban fighters
from the war in Afghanistan.

Human rights groups
have criticized the United States for holding the detainees without charges.
The U.S. Supreme Court, in a case involving two Britons, two Australians and 12
Kuwaitis, has agreed to decide whether foreign nationals can use U.S. courts to
challenge their incarceration at the base.

According to Time,
activities leading toward release of the 140 prisoners have accelerated since the Supreme Court
agreed to hear the case.
It said U.S.
officials had concluded that some detainees were kidnapped for reward money
offered for al Qaeda and Taliban fighters.

Separately yesterday,
a British human rights lobbyist said five European nations were close to a deal
to repatriate citizens held by the United States at Guantanamo Bay, possibly as
soon as Christmas.  Stephen Jakobi,
director of Fair Trials Abroad, said his group has been tracking negotiations
over the prisoners between Washington and Britain, France, Denmark, Sweden and
Spain.

Since the prison
opened in January 2002, prisoners from 42 countries have been taken to
Guantanamo Bay for detention and questioning. As of Nov. 24, 84 prisoners had
been transferred to their home countries for release and four had been returned
to Saudi Arabia for imprisonment.

 

[Futurework] Don't tell Santa

[Karen Watters Cole]

Okay. So where
is that list of good boys and girls anyway?  

 

Also see at
this website, Asia's Consumer Revolution Deepens

 

Asia Times November
22, 2003

Impact of declining US capital inflows
By Hussain Khan 

TOKYO - The wide range of declining currency inflows into numerous types of US
financial assets makes it almost certain that the dollar, beset by global
security concerns, trade-war anxiety and the crushing weight of the twin US
current-account and fiscal deficits, is heading for a serious plunge against
other currencies. 

The declining inflows, if they were to continue beyond the current month, would
ripple ominously across the globe. A substantially cheaper dollar means serious
trouble for the export-led economies that have traditionally depended on the
United States as importer of last resort, making their goods more expensive. It
is already causing a feeding frenzy in the shark-like world of currency
traders, who have the ability to wreck entire economies through currency
speculation. 

The latest US Treasury Department figures, released on Wednesday, show that net
capital inflows into the country fell precipitously, from about US$50 billion (42 billion euros) in August to $4.2
billion in September, the lowest since the near-collapse and bailout
of the Long Term Capital Management hedge fund rattled markets in 1998. 

The new data are raising fears that the US may have difficulty funding its
current-account deficit, which ran at about $46 billion a month in the first
half of the year and is expected to reach $550 billion by year-end. The fiscal
deficit reached $374 billion in the fiscal year ended in October, by far the largest
in US history, although off-budget expenditures could carry that as high as
$450 billion. 

With crucial foreign investor confidence
waning, foreign purchases of US Treasury bonds have fallen to their
lowest level on a monthly basis since February. The Treasury report said
foreigners bought a net $5.6 billion of treasuries in September, down from
$25.1 billion in August. 

Foreigners engaged in net selling of "agency" debt sold by the
quasi-governmental agencies Freddie Mac (Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corp) and
Fannie Mae (Federal National Mortgage Association), both of which package and
sell domestic home mortgages of various kinds, for the first time since October
1998, getting rid of a net $3.2 billion after buying $8.9 billion the previous
month. The lack of interest in bonds was not replaced by buying of equities.
Private accounts and central banks sold some $6.3 billion of equities. 

Japanese buying of US assets remains particularly strong, with some net $20
billion of debt and equity purchases. However, Japanese buying is occurring
only because Japan has no alternative to keeping its massive dollar reserves in
some form of US assets. These reserves are increasing day by day because of
Japan's massive intervention in the currency markets to sell trillions of yen
and buy dollars to stem the tide of yen appreciation. 

Economists noted that the bulk of the selling
came from private accounts and hedge funds, not central banks. 

Favorable US growth differentials now appear sufficient to put only a temporary
brake on the dollar's slide, with the focus shifting toward the impact of
strong US growth on the country's current-account deficit. Forecasts point to
the deficit's reaching 6 percent or even 7 percent of gross domestic product
next year. The deficit could narrow if the United States were to grow more
slowly than its trading partners, thus dampening consumers' appetites for
imported goods. But, ahead of the 2004 US presidential election, with the
administration and the US Federal Reserve reluctant to intervene, this seems
highly unlikely. 

Although foreigners have been financing the current-account deficit for more
than a decade, the necessity for exorbitant inflows is finally catching up with
the United States. The deteriorating trend in net US portfolio inflows suggests
a growing reluctance by foreign private investors to shoulder this burden.
Currency traders seized on September's sharp deterioration in capital flows,
pushing the dollar to a record low against the euro. However, the trend has been
clear for months. It is not particularly a pretty sight, and it is not
particularly reassuring for the global financial system.

 

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/EK22Dj01.html

[Futurework] You Win some You Lose some

[Karen Watters Cole]

Bon nuit, mes
amis.  

Whether or not
Bush and Jack Straw were ‘in country’ to secretly negotiate with the
influential religious leader or not, there is no controlling the free press. I
found the three citations from conservative papers in Spain a bit surprising.  Also the Israeli paper.  

Besides a
great photo op for the campaign commercials to come, how about a small version
of Wag the dog, ie. Wag the puppy? 

Great for
retail sales, n’est pas?  - KWC

 

Published on Friday, November 28, 2003 by the Agence France-Presse (AFP) 

Bush's
Iraq Visit a Pre-Election PR Stunt 

"Electoral raid
on Baghdad" read the caustic headline in the left-wing Paris daily
Liberation, which summed up European newspaper editorial reaction to President
George W Bush's Thanksgiving Day visit to US troops in Iraq.  The brief visit, arranged in top
secrecy, occurred too late for most papers to give it full coverage, and almost
all ran the same wire agency photo of Mr Bush, clad in a gray army bomber
jacket, carrying a large tray of roast turkey, potatoes and grapes through a
crowd of smiling soldiers. 

Those which did
comment were mostly skeptical of Mr Bush's motives, with the US presidential
election now less than 12 months away. 



 
  
  "The turkey has landed," ran the front-page headline in the London daily Independent.  
  The daily Vanguardia, published in Spain's
  second city Barcelona, noted darkly that "George W Bush does not attend
  the funerals of soldiers killed in Iraq, but has dinner in Baghdad with those
  who dream of coming home alive."  
  
 


"George Bush
becomes the first US president to visit Iraq in order to provide the television
pictures required by his re-election campaign," it said, noting that
Hillary Rodham Clinton, "his undeclared Democratic opponent," was on
her way to Baghdad from Afghanistan. 

Liberation noted that
more than 430 US soldiers had been killed in Iraq, 184 of them since Bush
declared an official end to the war on May 1, and quoted a Gallup opinion poll
this month showing that 54 percent of Americans disapproved of the way the
post-war situation was being handled.  "Bush knows that Iraq could become the Achilles heel of
his campaign," it said.

The conservative
London Times also did not run an editorial but its front-page report called the
visit "one of the most audacious publicity coups in White House
history." 

Europe's leading
business daily, the London-based Financial Times, used the visit to repeat its
call for general elections in Iraq, rather than the US government's "top-down strategy built around favored exiles and a
timetable synchronized with President Bush's re-election campaign". 

The daily Berliner
Zeitung said the visit had two other aims.  "Bush wanted to raise the groggy morale of his troops
and at the same time to show Iraqis his determination," it wrote. 

In Madrid, the
center-right daily El Mundo said the visit was "a publicity stunt which
will not solve the problem of Iraq." 

The daily Vanguardia,
published in Spain's second city Barcelona, said Bush was trying to put a
positive gloss on an increasingly difficult situation.  It noted darkly that "George W
Bush does not attend the funerals of soldiers killed in Iraq, but has dinner in
Baghdad with those who dream of coming home alive." 

The right-wing La
Razon said "Caesar Bush" was exploiting Hollywood machinery to the
full to send a message loud and clear to those who doubted the wisdom of his
military policies. 

In Rome, the daily La
Republica described the visit as "a brilliant stage-managed event and a
courageous act".  But it said
it was also "obviously an electoral blitz, a Hollywood-style stunt of the
kind we will see again and again throughout the campaign." 

As the Arabic media
saw the secrecy of Bush's visit as a sign of weakness amid spiraling violence
in Iraq, newspapers in Israel said the stunt was bound to help the US
president's ratings in opinion polls that had been falling alarmingly. 

"Bush's
popularity will undoubtedly go up in opinion polls this week, but on the
condition that his army does not face another painful strike," said the
Israeli daily Yediot Aharonot. 
"It is like playing the last $100 dollar bill at the casino,"
said Maariv in an editorial, adding that "only one thing can ensure
victory for Bush at the November 2004 polls: Saddam Hussein dead or chained
up." 

Iran's Foreign
Minister Kamal Kharazi said the secrecy of the visit, during which the only
Iraqis whom Bush encountered were four members of the US-installed Governing
Council, showed that Washington was afraid of the Iraqis.   "The US president's sudden
visit to Iraq was a sign of the US fear of the Iraqi people," said Mr
Kharazi, whose country opposed the US-led invasion of Iraq.  

"Bush
'infiltrated' Baghdad for two hours," scoffed the front-page headline of
the London-based Arabic daily Al-Hayat. 

In Beirut, Al-Mustaqbal
newspaper, owned by Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri, announced that
"B

[Futurework] Before you can reinvent or revive an ideal...

[Karen Watters Cole]

…don’t you
have to take challenge the myths, of prosperity, of the bootstrap, of a secure
middle-class? 

 

A New Kind Of Poverty

Anna Quindlen in Newsweek, Dec 1st
issue

Winter flits in and
out of New York City in the late fall, hitching a ride on the wind that whips
the Hudson River. One cold morning not long ago, just as day was breaking, six
men began to shift beneath their blankets under a stone arch up a rise from the
water. In the shadow of the newest castle-in-the-air skyscraper midwifed by the
Baron Trump, they gathered their possessions. An hour later they had vanished,
an urban mirage.

There’s a new kind of homelessness in the city, and a new kind of
hunger, and a new kind of need and humiliation, but it has managed to stay as
invisible as those sleepers were by sunup. "What we're seeing are many
more working families on the brink of eviction," says Mary Brosnahan, who
runs the Coalition for the Homeless. "They fall behind on the rent, and
that's it, they're on the street." Adds Julia Erickson, the executive
director of City Harvest, which distributes food to soup kitchens and food
pantries, "Look at the Rescue Mission on Lafayette Street. They used to
feed single men, often substance abusers, homeless. Now you go in and there are
bike messengers, clerks, deli workers, dishwashers, people who work on cleaning
crews. Soup kitchens have been buying booster seats and highchairs. You never
used to see young kids at soup kitchens." 

America is a country
that now sits atop the precarious latticework of myth. It is the myth that work
provides rewards, that working people can support their families. It's a myth
that has become so divorced from reality that it might as well begin with the
words "Once upon a time." According to the U.S. Department of
Agriculture, 1.6 million New Yorkers, or the equivalent of the population of
Philadelphia, suffer from "food insecurity," which is a fancy way of
saying they don't have enough to eat. Some are the people who come in at night
and clean those skyscrapers that glitter along the river. Some pour coffee and
take care of the aged parents of the people who live in those buildings. The
American Dream for the well-to-do grows from the bowed backs of the working
poor, who too often have to choose between groceries and rent. 

Even if you've never
been to the Rescue Mission, all the evidence for this is in a damning new book
called "The Betrayal of Work"
by Beth Shulman, a book that should be required reading for every presidential
candidate and member of Congress. According to Shulman, even in the go-go '90s
one out of every four American workers made less than $8.70 an hour, an income
equal to the government's poverty level for a family of four. Many, if not
most, of these workers have no health care, sick pay or retirement provisions. 

We salve our
consciences, Shulman writes, by describing these people as "low
skilled," as though they're not important or intelligent enough to deserve
more.  But low-skilled workers
today are better educated than ever before, and they constitute the linchpin of
American industry.  When
politicians crow that happy days are here again because jobs are on the rise,
it's these jobs they're really talking about.  Five
of the 10 occupations expected to grow big in the next decade are in the
lowest-paying job groups.  And
before we sit back and decide that that's just the way it is, it's instructive
to consider the rest of the world.  While the
bottom 10 percent of American workers earn just 37 percent of our median wage,
according to Shulman, their counterparts in other industrialized countries earn
upwards of 60 percent.  And those
are countries that provide health care and child care, which cuts the economic
pinch considerably. 

In America we console
ourselves with the bootstrap myth, that anyone can rise, even those who work
two jobs and still have to visit food pantries to feed their families. It is a
beloved myth now more than ever, because the working poor have become ever more
unsympathetic. Almost 40 years ago, when Lyndon Johnson declared war on
poverty, a family with a car and a Dutch Colonial in the suburbs felt
prosperous and, in the face of the president's call to action, magnanimous.
Poverty seemed far away, in the shanties of the South or the worst pockets of
urban blight. Today that same family may well feel impoverished, overwhelmed by
credit-card debt, a second mortgage and the cost of the stuff that has become
the backbone of American life. When the middle class feels poor, the poor have
little chance for change, or even recognition. Does anyone think twice about
the woman who turns down the spread on the hotel bed? 

A living wage,
affordable health care and housing, the bedrock understanding that it's morally
wrong to prosper through the casual exploitation of those who make your
prosperity possible. It's a tall order, I suppose. The lucky thing for many Americans
is that they don't even have to see or th

[Futurework] The sociology and religion of addiction recovery

[Karen Watters Cole]

Found this in the OpEd pages of the Washington Post.  Challenges a few myths. - KWC

Quote: “In
his comprehensive book "Not-God: A History of Alcoholics Anonymous,"
Ernest Kurtz notes that two conflicting impulses have been internalized in
Western cultures -- Enlightenment secularism and its reaction, Romanticism,
which places a premium on feelings at the expense of reason and science.
"Thus," Kurtz writes, "in yet another paradox, moderns readily
accept 'feeling' even as they resolutely reject belief."

Recovery. It Can Be So Addicting 

By
Mark Gauvreau Judge, OpEd, Sunday, November 23, 2003

Now that he's out of
rehab and back on the job, there's no shortage of people offering Rush Limbaugh
advice on his new life as a recovering drug addict. But I think I can offer the
pugnacious radio talk show host some advice he's probably not getting. Listen,
Rush. Whatever people tell you, recovery is not endless -- and it should not
remain the center of your life.

In 12-step circles,
this is heresy. Once you get bounced into what alcoholics call "the
rooms" of Alcoholics Anonymous and other groups -- those church basements
where the recovering meet -- it's hammered into you that recovery must be the
center of your life, every day, for the rest of your life. This is a
self-defeating proposition. Admitting powerlessness and asking for help are
signs of honesty and maturity. But making a fetish out of a long-ago disorder
and engaging in groupthink are not.

As someone once
addicted to alcohol, I've logged many hours in the rooms. I've heard lots of self-aggrandizing
stories of debauchery, which are common in the recovery culture. In most of
these stories, individuals battle addiction to arrive at the truth that the
world doesn't revolve around them -- yet often they still manage to make
themselves the center of the universe. They spend years of their lives in a
stupor of addiction; then, once sober, they spend years of their lives talking
about it.

A 12-step meeting is
like a perverse Mass; there's a format, a ritualistic structure in which certain
phrases are constantly repeated and a deity invoked -- except that in the
12-step group, the drug becomes the god. It's the focal point. Members offer
personal testimonials about the power of the drug god, tell stories about their
encounters with the drug god, joke about the drug god, and then recite
collective prayers to appease the drug god. I can certainly understand how this
kind of thing is helpful to those who have recently given up a drug and are
dealing with withdrawal from an addiction. I don't think there is any better
way to stop drinking than by joining Alcoholics Anonymous. As Limbaugh said,
you can't overcome addiction on your own. But the very founders of A.A.
themselves frequently emphasized that the point was to get alcoholics back into
circulation with the rest of humanity -- and to lead them to a spiritual
awakening not centered around the self as a godhead.

I can't help thinking
that Bill Wilson, the co-founder of A.A., would be disturbed if he saw how the
concept of recovery that he pioneered has evolved. A New York stockbroker,
Wilson formed A.A. in 1935 after having a religious experience in a hospital
while trying to dry out. The movement he started was based on a pastiche of
influences that included Jungian psychology; Christian tenets borrowed from the
Oxford Group, an early 20th-century evangelical group; and the then-progressive
medical theory that alcoholism is a disease. The foundation of A.A. was, and
is, the "Twelve Step" program, which encourages followers to admit
they are alcoholics, list their faults and share them with another person, pray
and meditate, come to a spiritual awakening and "carry the message"
to other alcoholics.

Wilson saw recovery as
a starting block. As he put it: "Sobriety is just the beginning." After
he got sober, Wilson, who had formulated his Twelve Steps largely on the model
of the spiritual exercises of Saint Ignatius Loyola, explored Catholicism and
even experimented with LSD -- at the time thought to be a harmless drug. The
man never stopped living. I believe he would understand why I left the recovery
culture after I returned to the Catholic Church a few years ago. He would have
recognized that A.A.'s Christian roots have been supplanted by the therapeutic
Oprah culture and dour talk of life as a long, tough slog.

This was brought home
to me powerfully at one of the last meetings I went to. It was a beautiful day,
I had just published a book, and I was feeling fine. I shared with the group
how great things were going and joked that I was ready to win my Pulitzer
Prize. The words were barely out of my mouth when a hand shot up behind me.
"We are not here to win prizes," the man hissed. "We are here to
get sober one day at a time." I felt humiliated, and at the next meeting I
dutifully stuck to the topic -- the drinking that isn't part of my life
anymore.

Actually, it is
possible to avoid talk of a

[Futurework] Monday Yin and Yang

[Karen Watters Cole]

Here’s a
thought for a Monday morning, from another list, shared with me and then to
you.  

This seems to
reinforce that a computer and cell phone are not status goods but part of a master-slave relationship.

We have the
Consumption Economy, The New Economy, The Restorative Economy, The Creative
Economy, The Knowledge Economy. 

What’s next?

 

The Cyberserfs

Technological innovation promised us more leisure
time. 

But, asks Christine Evans-Pughe, are we now just in
thrall to machines?

 

19 November 2003

 

Around the world, people are sitting with one hand
poised over a keyboard and the other going from keys to mouse. They're all
staring at dull grey squares labelled File, Edit, View, Tools, Format, Windows
and Help - "the ghastly spoor of some aesthetically-challenged Microsoft
employee of the late 1980s," according to the teleworking guru and labour
historian Ursula Huws in her new book of essays, The Making of a Cybertariat.

 

"For the first time in history," she says,
"thanks to Bill Gates, we are all working with a common language in the
form of an identical labour process." This is why, "having designed
the creativity and skill out of their information processing jobs, companies
can partition what's left into piecework tasks and shunt them around the
globe". 

 

Huws is professor of international labour studies at
London Metropolitan University and an expert on the global division of labour
in the information business. As the director of the multigovernment-funded
programme Emergence (Estimation and Mapping of Employment Relocation in a
Global Economy in the New Communications Environment), she's also a leading
commentator on the implications of the rush to outsource every job under the
sun.

 

Her essays chart the transformation of technology
and work since the late Seventies, with the theme that we're using technology to turn every part of our working
and personal lives into commodities. On the one hand, she says, we're employing it to standardise paid
work processes to squeeze the maximum labour from each other at minimum cost.
On the other, we're plundering areas of life in which labour is carried out
beyond the money economy (for example, housework, entertainment, communication
and sex) to come up with more and more "labour-saving" products. The
result is amazingly complex global systems of machines and people that are
slowly spiralling out of our control.

 

"The first shift is typically to a service
industry," Huws says. "Then, as technology develops, the service
industry becomes automated and goods that are more complex are produced, which
spawn new services to deal with the complexity. Then each of these services can
be automated, allowing the creation of more new products in a continual cycle
of innovation.

 

"Communication used to be people talking to
each other," she says "Then it became writing, and then various
electrical and electronic ways of transmitting, like the telegraph and
telephone. Entertainment used to be somebody singing; the service industry grew
minstrels and then orchestras, then technologies for recording music, which
become the basis for mass commodities like the CD or pop music videos."

 

Mobile phones are a great example of the creeping "commoditisation" of our personal lives, Huws says. "We now walk down
the road with friends while talking on our mobiles to other people. We're
prioritising the distant person over the near one, which is exactly what the
phone companies want us to do because it doesn't cost anything to talk to the
person you're standing next to."

 

Huws shows me pictures taken as part of her
Emergence research. One is of a home-based outworker in Vietnam sitting in
front of a gleaming computer in a dilapidated shack. Others show Chinese women
employed to enter data for credit-card companies; they eat, sleep and work in
the same building while being continuously monitored by video from Australia.
Huws explains how their work is chopped up so that one set of women types postcodes,
another surnames and so on. In India computer operators - often postgraduates -
now process medical transcriptions for doctors in the United States for
one-eighth of what US computer operators would earn, but four times the salary
of an Indian schoolteacher. These Indian workers have their own servants and
are part of the élite. Supermarket security cameras in California are now
monitored by cheap labour sitting in Atlanta, Georgia.

 

Huws mentions that someone from the World Bank
recently suggested that employment could be created in Africa by giving the
Africans jobs remotely monitoring supermarket cameras in the West. She feels
the idea is brutally idiotic: "They would have their noses constantly
rubbed in the profusion of Western consumer goods. And would they ask them to
watch out for the dodgy-looking black shoppers?"

 

Using technology to standardise and strip creativity
out of work processes and to monitor
workers is certainly dehumanisin

[Futurework] Signs of the Times

[Karen Watters Cole]

Posted in red
and white above each of the customer copiers at Office Depot, 

suburbs of
Portland, Oregon, first noticed Sunday pm Nov 23, 2003:

 


 
  
  NOTICE TO OUR CUSTOMERS
   
  During this time of national emergency we will report any and all
  suspicious or questionable activity to law enforcement authorities.
   
  Also, if asked to make copies of passports, driver’s licenses, Social
  Security cards or other forms of identification, we are required to make two
  copies of these items and retain one copy in our records.  If this is not acceptable, we cannot
  make your copies.
   
  Office Depot supports our Customers, Community and Nation!
   
   
  
 


 

Going
Backwards

Patriot Act Expansion Moves Through Congress

By Jim Lobe @ http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/1121-01.htm, Published on Friday, November 21, 2003 by OneWorld.net

 

WASHINGTON --
Congress is poised to approve new
legislation that amounts to the first substantive expansion of the
controversial USA Patriot Act since it was approved just after the September
11, 2001, attacks on New York and the Pentagon.

Acting at the Bush
administration's behest, a joint House-Senate conference committee has approved
a provision in the 2004 Intelligence Authorization bill that will permit the
Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to demand records from a number of
businesses - without the approval of a judge or grand jury -if it deems them relevant to a
counter-terrorism investigation. 

The measure would
extend the FBI's power to seize records from banks and credit unions to securities dealers, currency exchanges,
travel agencies, car dealers, post offices, casinos, pawnbrokers and any other business that, according to the
government,
has a "high
degree of usefulness in criminal, tax or
regulatory matters." Such seizures could be carried out with the
approval of the judicial branch of government. 

Until now only banks,
credit unions, and similar financial institutions were obliged to turn over
such records on the FBI's demand. 

Shortly after the conference agreement was reached, the House of
Representatives approved the underlying authorization bill by a margin of 263
to 163. The measure is expected to pass the Senate shortly. 

The American Civil
Liberties Union (ACLU) said it was "disappointed" with the House's
approval, but also expressed satisfaction that a number of lawmakers on both
left and right decided to oppose the bill because they oppose the records
provision, whose inclusion in the bill was discovered by staff aides only last
week. 

Particularly notable
in Thursday's House vote was the defection by several conservative Republicans
from the administration's fold. "This PATRIOT Act expansion was the only
controversial part of this legislation, and it prompted more than a third of
the House, including 15 conservative Republicans, to change what is normally a
cakewalk vote into something truly contested," said Timothy Edgar, ACLU
Legislative Counsel.  "One
need look no further than this vote to get an effective gauge of the PATRIOT
Act's lack of popularity on Capitol Hill and among the American people,"
he said. 

The USA PATRIOT
Act--which gives unprecedented powers to the FBI and the federal government as
a whole and was rammed through Congress at the administration's behest just six
weeks after the 9/11 attacks--has evoked great controversy.  An unusual coalition of liberal, left,
and right-wing groups is convinced that the law's expansion of the government's
surveillance and investigatory powers threatens individual freedoms and privacy
rights. 

More than 200 local
governments,
including some of the country's largest cities, have approved resolutions
upholding the full enjoyment of the rights guaranteed in the Constitution and
urging a narrowing of the USA PATRIOT Act, while the
Senate Judiciary Committee has been holding a series of critical hearings over
the past month about the Act's impact. 

Members of the
Judiciary Committee, including Republican Larry Craig of Idaho and five
Democratic senators, sent a letter to the conference committee earlier this
week urging it strip
the new provision
from the intelligence bill so that it could be taken up by their Committee in
public hearings. The provision has never been publicly debated. 

"I'm concerned
about this," Illinois Sen. Richard Durbin, who tried unsuccessfully to limit the life of the new provision, told the New York Times. "The idea of
expanding the powers of government gives everyone pause except the Republican
leadership." 

The government wants
these powers in order to more effectively prosecute the "war on
terrorism," although critics warn that, once given these powers, the FBI
may use them in cases that are not relevant to terrorism in order to gather evidence against
other targets of investigation.  Indeed,
recent Senate
hearings have covered incidents in which information about individuals was
obtained by the FBI through the use of its counter-

RE: [Futurework] The rise (and fall?) of fundamentalism

[Karen Watters Cole]

I’d like to
add a few comments on fundamentalism, the USA version 2003.

 

Cheney and
Rumsfeld et al are
fundamentalists in regard to an absolutist worldview.  They may not share the same spiritual
values and social commonalities with the religious fundamentalists but they are
symbiotic to each other.  They are powerbrokers
and rely on an alliance of true believers, not unlike Hitler and the
Brownshirts, because many in this alliance believe that America should be
supreme, and this is very important, is being preempted by other entities from
its rightful place of glory.  

 

There is a
deeply imbedded mythology about America as a unique achievement in modern
history which co-exists here with deeply imbedded Christian beliefs that the
religion of the ancient Hebrews modified by a crucifixion and resurrection make
it the superior religion for the universe and the only one that will save the
planet from ultimate destruction, as predicted and believed by many
literalists.

 

Of course,
there are orthodox Jews and Muslims who transfer religious beliefs to
nationalism, but I’m focused on my own ‘shaping’ myth, my own religious
background from which I can speak most comfortably and criticize, too. But this
is why I’ve begun to use the phrase orthodox communities rather than just fundamentalists
or Christian Zionists, because they have similar goals and are allies, as we
see in the Middle East and elsewhere.

 

America is
indeed a unique and wonderful concept, blessed by imminent timing, the legacy
of Europe’s creative genius and her aristocratic failures at our inception, bold
visionary authors, preferential geography and natural resources, fueled by
immigrants in love with the idea that here was a place to start over, a place
where all were given the opportunity to succeed and thrive.  That is the prevailing myth and dream,
still largely relevant to many born here and those who want to immigrate here,
even temporarily. An ideal can be difficult to achieve and maintain. 

 

America is
coming of age, maturing, a process altered or accelerated by 9/11 but within
the positive experience of the past half-century of success, enough success
that our crimes and sins of omission are largely overlooked if deeper
reflection is avoided. We are at a point in our history where we can reimagine
what it means to be Americans and reinvent the idea of America.

 

The dynamic
tensions of fundamentalism on the political and social horizons will affect this
process but not be the only determining factors in what we rebirth. But they
could determine our fate for the next generation and create a lot of havoc for
everyone given the global dynamics of resource wars and religious crusades,
spawned by fears of extinction.  

 

-KWC

RE: [Futurework] The rise (and fall?) of fundamentalism

[Karen Watters Cole]

Keith, Baker makes a good point and I’ve seen this argument before,
that as much noise and ballast as they create, the orthodox agenda has not been
very successful – in terms of enacted legislation or actually changed that much
on the political scorecard – yet.  

 

As we know from other movements, say, the Brownshirts, it can seem like
just another provincial nuisance and then become something else overnight. That
is the key question I have around the upcoming presidential election, and why I
think the neoconservatives who have waited to get back into power will continue
to manipulate any and all orthodox issues,.to assure they remain there.  Baker is correct that religiosity abounds.

 

My concern over the cultural wars is that, like so many other examples
in history, the pendulum will swing radically from one extreme to the other,
while moderates behave and reasonable voices remain silent. 

 

I am becoming more convinced that the orthodox extremists in the US are
just as capable of political shenanigans and deceit as the heathens they
deplore. I suspect the issues, the speeches and votes are being cherry-picked
and calculated deliberately to inflame passion, fear and theological symbolism.
The orthodox communities should feel manipulated and cheapened. My hope is that
they will become aware sooner rather than later how they are being used.

 

Slight detour: Browsing through a discount bookstore this afternoon I
wandered over to the New Age and Religious/Inspiration aisle and was chagrined
to see evidence that religion has become commercialized even further, to say
nothing of dummied down:  You can
now purchase Spirituality for Dummies, Judaism for Dummies and The Bible for
Dummies. A look through my county yellow pages directory revealed that of the
independent bookstores, they were all Christian or Adult (the indies in East
County have lost their market to Big Box Borders and Barnes & Noble, but
this is not the case in Portland proper where indies are alive and well and
Powell’s dominates both online and bricks and mortar).  

 

There is a healthy showing of Christian merchandising that is not
limited to books, music, cards, crafts and small gifts.  As with Christian rock, it’s a growing
business.  Websites, newsletters
and daily e-Journals abound, so that, looking at it solely from the market angle,
the business of Christianity Inc is a more potent factor in the political
agenda than it was 10 years ago, even 2.5 years ago.  You may not see bumper stickers that say Buy Christian, but the attitude is there.
Marketers and pollsters would like to know just how deep/true public sentiment
is around religious issues.

 

I hope no one will mistake my observations for discrimination. These
are my kith and kin, after all.  I’m
simply suggesting that the business is enough of a motive to mobilize,
protecting one’s market.  The
owners of these businesses have an investment and image to protect.  So when politicians and ministers have
a political union, and the politics gets dirty, which one is cheapened?
McReligion. 

 

I am distrustful of Gen. Rove and Ralph Reed, the ex-Christian
Coalition mastermind who is a religious political hybrid.  If the orthodox movement takes on the
passion and hostility that we saw over the Vietnam war and
anti-establishmentarianism, the next 11.5 months could be very intense here and
send ripples elsewhere. - KWC, brooding

 

KH wrote: Many people over
this side of the Atlantic have viewed what appears to be a
rising tide of Christian fundamentalism in America with some consternation.
We often see photographs of American churches the size of our Albert Hall
with clappy-happy congregations and wonder whether and when we are going to
see this sort of thing here. There have been some troubling symptoms. Last
year, for example, it was discovered that the head of science at one of our
new state-supported city technology colleges was a creationist. He said he
would not forbid the teaching of evolutionary theory -- which I thought was
rather generous of him -- but he implied on a radio inerview that he would
make sure that creationism was also taught as another valid scientific
theory! I've heard nothing of this since but it was so outrageous that I
think something was quietly done about his role in the school and that the
blunder was not made again in these new 'showcase' institutions on which
our Whitehall Department of Edcuation is placing so much faith. (I have no
objections at all to creationism being taught in school, or indeed in
university, so long as they are private and parents have choosen them
voluntarily. Of course, intelligent parents with a concern for the future
of their children's careers would not do so.)

There is little doubt that the fundamentalist faction in the Anglican
church has been growing over here in recent years, and its voice has indeed
been much in evidence over the controversy of the appointment of homosexual
bishops, with live-in partners 

[Futurework] Military Families and Vets speak out

[Karen Watters Cole]

7,000 US troops wounded in the Iraq War so far. Being charged $8/day
for their food while in hospital? 
In the US of A?  

 

There’s a new article about the “new
swing voter” – the military – as more military families question the
strategy and competence of the Pentagon under Bush2.  Hearing Bush contradict the Pentagon this week in
volunteering US troops to Turkey there must certainly be a lot of concern about
who is going to fill that manpower request.  These people are not afraid to serve or to die, but they
want to be treated well for their service.  Not getting paychecks for 11 months (in Afghanistan) will
erode confidence of even the most loyal soldiers. Suspecting that your
commander-in-chief and his advisors can’t fulfill their boastful promises and
manipulated data that puts you or yours in harms’ way is another way to make
those voters feel taken for granted. 
– KWC

 

Another Former Intelligence Official Blows the Whistle

Viewed on November
18, 2003

From Tuesday's edition of Democracy Now! with host Amy Goodman. 

 

AMY GOODMAN: Veterans' groups are holding a vigil today outside Walter Reed Medical Center. Among them, vets of the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the
Gulf War and other wars and conflicts. Their protest comes as reports are
emerging that several thousand U.S. soldiers have been wounded and are being
treated at a single military hospital in Germany. 

 

Peter Molan is on the line with us now. He was a Department of Defense
Middle East analyst for 25 years. He began his military career with the U.S.
Army in the Middle East during the 1967 Arab/Israeli war. He then left the
military, but came back to work at the Pentagon until August, 2001, when he
retired. After the 9-11 attacks, he was recalled to duty because he speaks
fluent Arabic. He was one of the people working on the Bin Laden case for the
Pentagon. But today he stands in front of Walter Reed Medical Center. Welcome
to Democracy Now!, Peter Molan. 

 

PETER MOLAN: Thank you very much, Amy. We're very pleased to be here,
and I would like to just mention that the fine ladies that you just spoke to --
they are, I believe, all members of Military Families Speak Out, and we are in coalition with them, and they will be represented at our
rally today. There will also be similar rallies throughout the country at other
veterans' hospitals and facilities, so while we're here in Washington, we are
celebrating Veterans Day across the country in protest for two reasons. 

 

We would like to point out that we do honor and support our troops and
that was one of the initial functions of Armistice Day in 1918, but there's
another bylaw aspect to Veterans Day. As it was established in 1918, as it
became an official U.S. government holiday in 1938, and as its name was changed
in 1954 from Armistice Day to Veterans Day to honor veterans of all of our wars
-- not just the first World War -- but in addition to honoring the veterans, there is also in each of the legislation acts that brought about this
holiday, a requirement that we rededicate ourselves to world peace and justice, and we believe that the Bush Administration is dishonoring
both the commitment that is required by today's holiday -- a legal holiday --
to the veterans and to concurrently serving GIs, as well as to that notion of
international peace and justice. 

 

AMY GOODMAN: Why to protest in front of Walter Reed Medical Center? Why,
for example, not in front of the White House? 

 

PETER MOLAN: We have chosen Walter Reed precisely because it is the
medical center, the Army medical center through which all U.S. Army GIs pass on
their way to other places here in the United States. You mentioned the 7,000
wounded GIs in Germany, but they will be coming through Dover and through
Andrews Air Force Base. They'll be coming through Walter Reed, and then going
on to their homes and . . . the veterans' facilities that will take care of
them there. [They] will be passing through Walter Reed, and we felt that was a
particularly appropriate place to express the views that we're having. 

 

You may know that we did have the opportunity yesterday, Veterans for
Peace had a delegation go in and visit with a number of the GIs who are
currently recuperating from their wounds there, and we do want to recognize the
splendid care they're getting there from the medical staff and the nursing
staff in a state-of-the-art facility. But that, too, is part of the thing that
we are concerned with and protesting. As you mentioned, the overcrowded
conditions in Germany, [and] the situation at Ft. Stewart as the GIs are coming
back . . . the medical facilities here are being overwhelmed. And of course,
that is at a time when tremendous cutbacks are being made. 

 

So, all the talk about 'support for the troops' that we hear from the
White House is belied by the fact that facilities are being closed, charges are
being placed on the veterans. We
were hearing about them being charged $8 a day for the

[Futurework] More than a pound foolish

[Karen Watters Cole]

Another victim
of the Bush tax cuts and foolish myopia. KWC

 

NYT Editorial:
November 22, 2003

Save
the Conservation Security Program

 


 
  
   
  
 


In the debacle of last year's farm bill, a few programs
emerged that had both common sense and innovation behind them. One that
actually made it into law was called the Conservation Security Program. It
would pay farmers to keep up conservation practices they have already adopted
and to add new ones as well. It was a way to support good farming practices in every region
and on farms of every size.
You didn't have to grow a commodity crop to qualify. It was, in short, a way
for Americans to help farmers take good care of America's land. When President
Bush signed the farm bill, he took the trouble to praise its conservation
provisions.

 

But a lot has happened to the Conservation Security Program
since then. The Agriculture Department has yet to write the rules that would
put it into effect, even though they were required by law last February. The
White House has insisted that any emergency funds — for crop damage from
drought or floods — be paid out of the money set aside for the Conservation
Security Program, thereby cutting its financing nearly in half, to $3.77
billion over 10 years from $6.9 billion. Now, in the House's agricultural
appropriations bill, the $53 million set aside for this new program in next
year's budget has been wiped out entirely with a stroke of the appropriators'
pen. This is called "mandatory savings" — reducing funds for a
mandatory program. 

 

President Bush did not request this savings, though his tax cuts made it inevitable. It was the House's own idea to gut the
Conservation Security Program, which farmers, environmentalists and lawmakers
from both sides of the aisle have called one of the best farm programs in ages.

 

To almost anyone who thinks seriously about agriculture, the House of
Representatives is the place where truly bad ideas are raised to the level of
doctrine. The
House seems to understand only one way to help out farmers: giving fat checks
to the biggest farmers for raising crops we have too much of anyway. When the
House and Senate meet in conference next week to resolve their differences, the
Senate should stand up for this program and restore its full financing, $53
million, for 2004. If we are ever going to find a new model for agricultural spending,
it will begin with smart, innovative and egalitarian programs like this one.

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/22/opinion/22SAT3.html

 

 

RE: [Futurework] Bush's impossible problem of same-sex marriage

[Karen Watters Cole]

REH wrote: In Keith we had the UK version of conservative thought about
marriage while here is the American version.   Although I disagree
with Keith's math analogy.    (You could make the case that any
group that is not in the majority is somehow unnatural using his
theory.)   I do agree more with Keith's worldliness than
the romance of Brooks.   Anyway here is the article.  

 

Brooks: The Power
of Marriage @ http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/22/opinion/22BROO.html

 

I commend
Brooks for his brave attempt to make conservatives consider their logic,
actually follow through on their principles if promoting the sanctity of
marriage the institution, but agree that it is a bit romanticized.  Maybe those of us who have been
divorced, for whatever reasons, have other perceptions from our experiences.  Idealists defending a principle
sometimes make it too difficult to practice in reality, and this may become
more self-evident soon.

 

This caught my
eye fishing in cyberspace last night, trolling for more evidence of a coming religious
cultural war (yes, it’s there) and before I read this morning that Bush had
offended his political base by allowing that “Christians and Muslims worship
the same God”. Apparently, his base got a tad upset about it, but they are
willing to forgive and forget – perhaps because there is too much at stake when
you’ve become a successful business venture and powerhouse to quibble on
theological differences, eh?   - KWC

 

The author
below is “editor in chief of Beliefnet,
the leading multifaith spirituality and religion Web site.”  Links are live. 

 

A Common Missed Conception
Why religious people are against gay marriage.
By Steven Waldman @ slate.com, posted
Wednesday, Nov. 19, 2003, at 1:12 PM PT


It's hard to overstate just how upset religious conservatives are about
gay marriage. Gary Bauer's e-mail newsletter about the Massachusetts Supreme
Court ruling declared, "Culture Wars Go Nuclear." Brian Fahling of
the American Family Association said
it was "on an order of magnitude that is beyond the capacity
of words. The Court has tampered with society's DNA, and the consequent
mutation will reap unimaginable consequences for Massachusetts and our
nation." 

A new poll
from the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life found, not surprisingly, that opposition
to gay marriage and homosexuality is highest among the most religious. 

Poignantly,
homosexuality would seem to be the one topic that unites the leaders of the
world's faiths—an issue over which Franklin Graham and Malaysia's Mahathir
Mohamed could break bread. Even the Dalai Lama views it as "sexual
misconduct." (But don't mention this to the liberal Hollywood Buddhist
set.)

Why exactly are religious
folks opposed to gay marriage? The most fashionable argument against it is that
it undermines the institution of marriage (and therefore family and therefore
society), but I can't help but think this is a poll-tested idea that doesn't
really get at the true feelings of the advocates; in the Pew poll, few people
opposing the notion of gay marriage offered that up as the main reason. Most
said, instead, that gay marriage and homosexuality were inherently
"wrong" or violated their religious beliefs. 

The world's sacred
texts are silent on the question of gay marriage, as it was not really an issue
when they were written. However, those same texts do have strong opinions on
homosexuality itself. Though there are differences in the views of different faiths,
conservative Protestants, the Catholic Church, Mormons, traditional Jews, and
Muslims share two fundamental antigay arguments. 

The first is that
homosexuality is wrong because it involves sex that doesn't create life. In the
case of Judaism, a key Bible passage is the story
of Onan, who
sleeps with his dead brother's wife but, to avoid giving his brother offspring,
doesn't ejaculate inside her. Instead, he "spilt the seed on the
ground." God slew him, which some might view as a sign of disapproval. 

The Catholic catechism
decries
homosexual acts
because "they close the sexual act to the gift of life." Early
American antisodomy laws discouraged all forms of non-procreative sex
(including, incidentally, heterosexual oral and anal sex). Islam shares a
similar view. One Islamic hadith explains that Allah "will not look at the
man who commits sodomy with a man or a woman." 

But if non-procreative
sex is the issue, society started down the slippery slope not with the recent
Supreme Court ruling but with production of the pill—or, really, even earlier,
when birth control became common. We've been into the non-procreative sex thing
for some time now. Even most religious conservatives don't have the heart to go
after this. If sex without the possibility of creating life is wrong, then
religious leaders would have to go back to warring against masturbation. And
what about sex among the infertile? Or sex among people over 70? Only the
Catholic Church has maintained logical consiste

[Futurework] Greider: Beyond Scarcity A New Story for American Capitalism

[Karen Watters Cole]

Following Brian's posting from Greider's The Soul of Capitalism, I thought
some of you might be interested in this broadcast notice.
Have we already discussed Louis Kelso's work on ESOPs?
http://www.cesj.org/binaryeconomics/kelsovision.htm
A QUESTION OF FAIRNESS: A NOW with Bill Moyers Special Edition
Friday, November 21, 2003 at 9pm on PBS - (Check local listings at
http://www.pbs.org/now/sched.html)

 =
A QUESTION OF FAIRNESS

On Friday, November 21, 2003, A QUESTION OF FAIRNESS, a special edition of
NOW WITH BILL MOYERS, analyzes how the politics of the privileged is
jeopardizing America's economic future. The program traces the roots of the
growing economic inequality in the U.S. and illustrates the sometimes
forgotten human toll of government policies that favor corporations over
individuals through three compelling stories.

First, NOW examines NAFTA's role in the impending extinction of a cherished
American way of life in the story of a once-thriving Pennsylvania mill town
and the hardworking residents plunged into the desperate ranks of the
working poor in WINNERS AND LOSERS.

Then, NOW reports on the tangible human costs of financial deregulation laws
passed in the late 1990s by corporate-friendly politicians and the WorldCom
collapse that stole the future away from so many individual investors in
REWRITING THE RULES.

Finally, NOW tells the tale of the best intentions derailed by corporate
greed in a profile of a Republican governor's thwarted bid to reform the
nation's most regressive tax system and level the playing field for
Alabama's poor in TAX JUSTICE.

"Essential to the soul of democracy is the question of fairness. Absolute
equality is impossible, but can a country with great extremes between rich
and poor be fair?  This is an extraordinarily complicated story, and in this
hour we analyze some of the examples of how real people are affected when
the see-saw of economics tilts so far in one direction," says Bill Moyers.
"We live in a political economy, and viewers of this report will see how
what happens to America on the economic front can often be traced through
what happens out of sight, behind a closed door in some political corridor
of power."

=
NOW WITH BILL MOYERS continues online at PBS.org (www.pbs.org/now).  Log on
to the site to for information on executive pay in relation to the average
worker; for updates on the WorldCom scandal; for a job re-training resource
map; for an evaluation of the state of American unions; for a comparison of
an average family's tax rate to 10 of America's corporations; and more.



___
Futurework mailing list
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RE: [Futurework] Critical Assumptions

[Karen Watters Cole]

Literature and
the arts, writers and artists, help us to see ourselves.  Art is our mirror.

Art is central
to society’s existence so that we can reimagine who we are and what we want to
be or not to be.

 

KWC

 

 

REH
wrote: Thanks for your analysis.  

 

I must
give the impression that I put the arts on a one up position but I intended to
indicate that they were the roots of all disciplines as they are the developers
of the perceptions.   So rather than the top of the tree they are the
base. 

 

At the
same time the advanced arts share equality with all of the other disciplines. 

 



What is the purpose of the Arts? 





KH wrote:
I agree with many of your Assumptions and will make some brief comments
below.  Before I do this, however, let me very quickly describe my
position in contrast to yours. I believe that we should not put the Arts on a pedestal
-- as you give the impression that you do. I believe that the Arts, Sciences
and Trade are all inter-related, and all are at their peak during particularly
vigorous periods of human accomplishment.

[Futurework] Web Gleanings Nov 17 2003

[Karen Watters Cole]

1.  Portal For Nonprofits
Two years ago, multimillionaire Arthur A. Bushkin paid $15 million to create an
Internet portal called StargazerNet, and used it to offer nonprofit organizations a free way of networking,
conducting online chats among offices, and organizing their data. Yet today few
nonprofits use StargazerNet, apparently because they don't understand how it
works. However, Bushkin remains optimistic, noting that "it takes a
certain amount of time for people's behavior to change, to use the new
technology... We honestly believe that this is the 21st-century equivalent of
the Carnegie library online." He says that StargazerNet "is an
attempt to put a certain amount of technology in the public domain. Secondly,
and more importantly, put it in the public domain in a way the public can use
it and control it themselves." He points out: "It took more than 20
years for the Internet to get traction." As of today, StargazerNet is
still looking for traction. (Washington Post 9 Nov 2003) http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A19793-2003...

 

2. 
No Social Problem Left Behind (from Public Education Weekly Newsblast)

If
the politicians who enacted the No Child Left Behind law really believed it
would accomplish the noble goal expressed in its title, then they clearly do
not understand the daunting challenges facing our public-education system and
they should not be making education policy, writes Ron Wolk, a Public Education
Network board member. No Child Left Behind is designed to force schools that
enroll disproportionate numbers of poor, minority and non-English-speaking students
to make every one of them proficient. But it's pure folly to expect schools to
accomplish this as long as we tolerate the widespread poverty and racism that
almost guarantee that such students will be at risk of academic failure. 

This
is not to say that society's problems must all be solved before our schools can
succeed with poor, minority and immigrant students. There is no doubt that too
many of the country's public schools are failing because of the way they are
organized and the way that they do business, especially those serving the
neediest students. We urgently need to change our public schools -- to make
them smaller and more diverse in their offerings; to focus more on the child,
and personalize education; to anchor them in the real world and make them more
relevant to the needs, interests and talents of the students; and to make them
more flexible. No Child Left Behind, with its punitive provisions and
overemphasis on standardized testing, does none of these things. It is likely
to do more harm than good. 

There
are, however, some provisions of No Child Left Behind that could help improve
schools, such as programs to improve teacher quality and provide opportunities
for professional development; increased choice for students in low-performing schools;
and emphasis on improving reading instruction. But even these provisions have
been compromised because the president and the Congress weren't committed
enough to provide the necessary funding to implement them. Where No Child Left
Behind will ultimately take us is unclear. At worst, it may lead to chaos and
even less public confidence in public education. At best, it may fade away,
because it cannot be implemented. Meanwhile, if the federal enforcers keep
tightening the noose, the majority of schools are likely to be on the
endangered list.  

http://www.publiceducation.org/papersopeds-wolk_102203.asp

3.  Last but not Least:  Personal Surfing At Work Can Be A Good Thing
Here's a new book that turns conventional wisdom about personal surfing on
company time on its head. Claire Simmers and Murugan Anadarajan have
co-authored a human resources guide to worker Web use that indicates a looser
attitude toward personal surfing can yield some beneficial side effects. 

"Personal Web usage in the
workplace has a negative perception, especially among administrators who often
see it as inefficient and creating a decrease in work productivity," says
Simmers. But according to the authors' research, personal surfing at work can
result in better time management, lower stress levels, improved skill sets and
a happier balance between work and personal life. (AP 5 Nov 2003) http://apnews.excite.com/article/20031105/D7UKH7E81.html 

 

 

[Futurework] Using the technology we already paid for

[Karen Watters Cole]

Some of you may already know about this.  If you don’t, please check it out.

 

I can’t take credit for this web discovery, but I am passing it along
because I think you will like this idea.

 

Creative Commons @ http://mirrors.creativecommons.org/

 

 

You will need speakers. 1.5 Mb Flash

 

 

 

RE: [Futurework] Enemy Myth (was Jessica Lynch -- American Dreamer

[Karen Watters Cole]

As others have
discoursed here, there is a human need to put a face on an enemy. In these
particularly uncertain times, the answer is all too simple for many: identify
an enemy and focus all misbegotten confusion, failure and anger on him/it. This
includes otherwise decent folk, well-educated or not, evangelicals and
secularists.

In tracking
down an item in Moyers World of Ideas
this weekend on Jacob Needleman, whose new book, American Soul, I’ve just
checked out of the library, I ran across a pleasant conversation in Vol 2 with
Sam Keen, philosopher and mythologist, who discussed his book Face of the Enemy and the myth of the
enemy run amok.  If we consider
that many no longer believe in the myth of progress, and a searching journey to
create a new myth is too painful, then an enemy gives focus to the loss.  

Here are two
excerpts from that 1990 conversation
with Moyers:

 

Bill Moyers visits with Sam Keen, Philosopher

World of Ideas, Vol. II  (pages 64– 72, Doubleday, 1990 ISBN
0-385-41664-4/0-385-41665-2)

 

“Like our mutual friend the late Joseph Campbell, Sam Keen has focused
his prodigious energies on how the world’s mythologies affect our daily
lives.  His book The Faces of the Enemy, which he made into
a film for PBS, probes the images we create of our enemies – personal or global
– and the serious implications for daily behavior.  A prolific writer and popular lecturer, Keen has described
himself as “a lover of questions, a freelance thinker, a man rich in
friendship, and in a former life, a professor.”

 

MOYERS: Last night I watched again your film The Faces of the Enemy, and I was struck by how the decline
of the Soviet Union as our enemy has left so many people with a sense of
loss.  Filmmakers and spy novelists
in particular are having trouble finding a common standard villain these days.  Where’s the face of the enemy now?

 

KEEN: Well, the politicians don’t have much trouble finding a
face.  They filled the vacumn quite
rapidly with the splendid little invasion of Panama, where we used the Stealth
bomber against people who have very primitive armed forces.  Or look at how the Pentagon uses the
language of war and warfare in the interdiction of drugs.  That’s one place the image of the enemy
has gone.  But it’s also moved into
a much more hopeful place, the whole environmental movement, where pollution
and warfare itself are now seen as the enemies.  That’s a much more mature and hopeful direction.

 

MOYERS: What’s the role of mythology in all this?

 

KEEN: I use myth to mean the systematic, unconscious way of structuring
reality that governs a culture as a whole, or a people, or a tribe.  It can govern a corporation, a family
or a person.  It’s the underlying
story.  So, for instance, the
underlying story that we all have in common in the Western world is the myth of progress, the belief
that we are going to get better and better in every way, and our children are
going to have a better world, and we are going to engineer our way into a kind
of human utopia.  We don’t stand up
and salute that, but in fact, that’s what governs our lives.  As the song, “America the Beautiful”
says, we are an alabaster city “undimmed by human tears.”



MOYERS: Or as Ronald Reagan said in his final speech “a city upon the
hill.”

 

KEEN:  Right.  In that sense, you see, we all have a
common myth.  But then you realize
that other nations also have their binding myths, and ethnic groups have their
myths.  Or you go into a
corporation, and IBM is very different from Apple Computer about the stories
they tell that give structure to that organization.  And I think the way we structure and see enemies and evil is
all mythology.  The evil is not a
myth, but the glass through which we see it is a mythology.  A culture always has a mythology about
evil, because one of the great mythical questions has always been: What is the
source of evil? And if myth tells us who creates evil, it also can tell us who
are not people, and whom we can kill without quilt.  We can say there’s one source of evil,
and it’s over there; and if we go clean that up, we can feel
righteous ourselves in the process.

 

and 

 

MOYERS: Do you think we can really defuse aggression just by changing
the images?  Many people think
there is a certain aggression bred within us that comes with the turf.

 

KEEN:  I don’t at all
equate aggression and hostility. 
Aggression is very fine.  Aggression
merely means the focused use of energy.  Right now you and I are being very aggressive in trying to
define ideas and sharpen them. 
We’re using the knife of decision and clarity to do that.  Writing a book or making television
requires a lot of aggression.  

 

Hostility is something else. 
Hostility is aggression mixed with some degree of hatred,
paranoia, and fear.  So those are
two separate questions.  We could
be quite aggressive and never be hostile.

 

MOYERS:  And image can turn
aggression into hostility.

 

KEEN:  Yes.  Probabl

[Futurework] Some things are true even if GDubya believes them

[Karen Watters Cole]

Something here we all recognize and are familiar with, and
yet, isn’t it frustrating that the POTUS and his support staff have had such a difficult time articulating a vision and
strategy?  Could that be because
they embraced militarization as a primary method and have just now learned its
limits?  Didn’t any of those “old
hands” from Ford-Reagan-Bush1 learn that the first time around? 

 

Think of the lives, global reputation and treasure lost that could have
been avoided had Bush2 been thinking, not conniving, a vision.  In the open, with allies, leading a
nation that believes it has something unique
to offer and has sacrificed heroically before to deliver it. 

 

Again, Zakaria is the editor of the International edition of Newsweek,
and a columnist elsewhere. He is also an articulate new US citizen who has not
lost the “glow” of what America stands for, proving once again that we often
learn much about ourselves through the eyes of others.  If only we will listen. 

- KWC

 

World View: Fareed Zakaria

Bush’s Really Good Idea

The president finds it easy to embrace democracy, but not the
various means to make it happen

 

NEWSWEEK  - NOV. 17 ISSUE @ http://www.msnbc.com/news/991191.asp?0dm=s15Ck

 

Sometimes
I think that President Bush’s critics need to put up a sign somewhere in their
rooms that reads: “Some things are true even
if George W. Bush believes them.” A visceral dislike for the
president is boxing many otherwise sensible people into a corner because they
cannot bring themselves to agree with anything he says. How else to explain the
churlish reaction among so many Democrats, Europeans and intellectuals to the
president’s speech on democracy in the Middle East last week?  Whatever the problems—and I’ll
get to them—as a speech it stands as one of the most intelligent and eloquent
statements by a president in recent memory. (Don’t take my word for it: read it
at whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/11/20031106-2.html.) If it marks a real
shift in strategy, it will go down in history as Bush’s most important speech.

 

The president expanded on an analysis that he and national-security
adviser Condoleezza Rice have been veering toward for several months. He argued
that a deficit of freedom and openness were at the heart of the Middle East’s
dysfunctions, that neither Islam nor Arab culture made liberty and democracy
impossible there, and that American foreign policy had for too long supported a
corrupt status quo that has been bad for the Arabs and bad for the West. “Sixty
years of Western nations’ excusing and accommodating the lack of freedom in the
Middle East did nothing to make us safe,” he noted.

 

To change policy and achieve his lofty ambitions, President Bush
announced a “forward strategy for freedom” that must be adopted for
decades to come. Here is the hole in the doughnut. The “forward strategy” is
never fleshed out, not even in a few lines, has no substantive elements to
it and no programs associated with it. In fact it is mentioned only at the tail
end of the speech. What explains this strange mismatch between a powerful
statement of goals and virtual silence about the means?



I think that the president—and many of his advisers—find it easy to
embrace democracy but not the means to get there. Actually,
they like one method. Let’s call it the “silver bullet” theory of
democratization. It holds that every country is ready for democracy. It’s
just evil tyrants who stand in its way. Kill the tyrant, hold elections and the
people will embrace democracy and live happily ever after. This theory is
particularly seductive to neoconservatives because it means that the one government
agency they love—the military—is the principal force for
democratization around the world.


The second theory of democratization could be
called the “long, hard slog” (thanks, Mr. Rumsfeld). It
holds that genuine democracy requires the building of strong political
institutions, a market economy and a civil society. In order to promote
democracy, in this vision, you need economic reform, trade, exchange programs,
legal and educational advances, and hundreds of such small-bore efforts. The agencies crucial
to this process are the State Department, the U.S. Agency for International
Development, even, God forbid, the European Union and the United Nations. After
all, the EU provides almost twice as much foreign aid as the United States. And
it is the United Nations that produces the much-heralded Arab Development
Reports, which President Bush quoted in his speech.

 

The president must see that the first strategy has reached its limits.
We have used military force in Afghanistan and Iraq, and while it has rid those
countries of evil dictatorships, it has not brought them democracy. That goal
remains fully dependent on the second strategy. And beyond Iraq and
Afghanistan, unless Washington is going to invade all the countries of the
Middle East, democracy will come only through a process of reform and

[Futurework] two step strategy back to fiscal sanity

[Karen Watters Cole]

As Russell Baker noted
in his review of Krugman’s book, The Great Unraveling, the trouble with Krugman
as a critic of Bush2 policy is that he actually knows what he is talking about,
unlike most pundits on Economics.  KWC

The
Sweet Spot 

By Paul Krugman, NYT, October 17, 2003 @ http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/17/opinion/17KRUG.html



What we have here is a form of
looting."
So says George Akerlof, a Nobel laureate in economics, of the Bush
administration's budget policies — and he's right. With startling speed, we've
blown right through the usual concerns about budget deficits — about their
effects on interest rates and economic growth — and into a range where the very
solvency of the federal government is at stake. Almost every expert not on the administration's payroll now sees budget deficits
equal to about a quarter of government spending for the next decade, and
getting worse after that. 

 

Yet the administration insists that there's no problem, that
economic growth will solve everything painlessly. And that puts those who want to
stop the looting — which should include anyone who wants this country to avoid
a Latin-American-style fiscal crisis, somewhere down the road — in a difficult
position. Faced
with a what-me-worry president, how do you avoid sounding like a dour party pooper?

 

One answer is to explain that the administration's tax cuts
are, in a fundamental
sense, phony, because the government is simply
borrowing to make up for the loss of revenue. In 2004, the typical family will
pay about $700 less in taxes than it would have without the Bush tax cuts — but
meanwhile, the government will run up about $1,500 in debt on that family's
behalf.

 

George W. Bush is like a man who tells you that he's bought
you a fancy new TV set for Christmas, but neglects to tell you that he charged
it to your credit card, and that while he was at it he also used the card to
buy some stuff for himself. Eventually, the bill will come due — and it will be
your problem, not his.

 

Still, those who want to restore fiscal sanity probably need
to frame their proposals in a way that neutralizes some of the administration's demagoguery. In particular, they probably shouldn't
propose a rollback of all of the Bush tax cuts.

 

Here's why: while the central thrust of both the 2001 and
the 2003 tax cuts was to cut taxes on the wealthy, the bills also included
provisions that provided fairly large tax cuts to some — but only some —
middle-income families. Chief among these were child tax credits and a
"cutout" that reduced the tax rate on some income to 10 percent from
15 percent. 

 

These
middle-class tax cuts
were designed to create a "sweet
spot" that
would allow the administration to point to "typical" families that received big tax cuts. If a
middle-income family had two or more children 17 or younger, and an income just
high enough to take full advantage of the provisions, it did get a significant
tax cut. And such families played a big role in selling the overall package.

 

So if a Democratic candidate proposes a total rollback of
the Bush tax cuts, he'll be offering an easy target: administration
spokespeople will be able to provide reporters with carefully chosen examples
of middle-income families who would lose $1,500 or $2,000 a year from tax-cut
repeal. By leaving the child tax credits and the cutout in place while
proposing to repeal the rest, contenders will recapture most of the revenue
lost because of the tax cuts, while making the job of the administration
propagandists that much harder.

 

Purists will raise two objections. The first is that an
incomplete rollback of the Bush tax cuts won't be enough to restore long-run
solvency. In fact, even a full rollback wouldn't be enough. According to my rough calculations,
keeping the child credits and the cutout while rolling back the rest would
close only about half the fiscal gap. But it would be a lot better than current policy.

 

The other objection is that the tricks used to sell the Bush
tax cuts have made an already messy tax system, full of special breaks for
particular classes of taxpayers, even messier. Shouldn't we favor a reform that
cleans it up?

 

In principle, the answer is yes. But an ambitious reform
plan would be demagogued and portrayed as a tax increase for the middle class.
My guess is that we should propose a selective rollback as the first step, with
broader reform to follow.

 

Will someone be able to find the political sweet spot, the
combination of fiscal responsibility and electoral smarts that brings the
looting to an end?  The future of
the nation depends on the answer.  

 

RE: [Futurework] No similarities? (was All the President's votes)

[Karen Watters Cole]

Harry, please
add Progressives and Independents to your list of those who don’t like Bush2 corporate
governance and corporate policy and intend to raise hell about it.  Also some real fiscal conservatives who don’t
like the bigger gov’t he’s making.  

 

We can happily
disagree about the partisanship, but I take exception to your saying people don’t
want peace or stability just to win. 
While you may believe it, and are free to say so, I believe that people
assessing this unnecessary war on its merits/demerits are separating the
inevitable deaths in Iraq (civilian and combatant) differently than fans do in
bleachers cheering an opponent’s loss. 

 

More voters are
becoming disaffected of the flag-waving propaganda haze and see the reality
through the rhetoric.  The internet
and independent media played a starring role here.  This has necessitated that Gen. Rove alter the rhetoric, as
it was this week to the more Glory-ious Mission of bringing Democracy (read the
Gospels) to the Middle East (read Infidels), recapturing not just political missionary
zeal but mythic remnants of Manifest Destiny and the great spirit of “the
American dream“, the sequel.

 

After trying
out WMD and imminent threat, and then replacing a(n old ally) ruthless dictator
with a more humanitarian regime, now the Preemptive Doctrine is Neo-Wilsonian
and heroic – since the UN wouldn’t do it we had to.  Nice try, but a little late.  Still, lots of voters will go for it (Arnold is Gov.-elect
of California, isn’t he?) because
they want to.  Too
many believed the WMD story and that Saddam was behind the 9/11 attacks, (promoted
by Bush2 though now sheepishly denied instead of acknowledged honorably) so why
shouldn’t semi-attentive voters respond to a Call to Glory?  I’ve been saying for over a year now
that Bush made a mistake not calling on a great sense of mission and sacrifice
for a common goal in the war on terrorism, so maybe he should have listened to the
numerous experts who called for it back then - though not louder than Dick
Cheney whispering otherwise.  And
he can’t now ask for common sacrifice to help the economy because his tax cuts
don’t really benefit the middle class, and it is a permanent loss of revenue ($230B), far above and beyond the $50
+ 87B on Iraq so far or the annual cost of Homeland Security (about $30B) and
lost revenue after 9/11.  

 

Let me detour
to paraphrase Krugman here: No other US President has ever cut taxes in war
time. It doesn’t make sense; the opposite is expected as a shared sacrifice to
protect the greater good (survival). 
He can’t blame the economy on 9/11 or the war on terrorism. The math
does not add up.  The only
economists not now terrified by the deficit are those on the Bush payroll.  The Bush tax cuts have pre-ordained
that Medicare and SS will be breached, and some are writing that was the
neo-con intention all along.

 

Unfortunately,
since Bush2 didn’t act on this advice for a Call to Action soon after 9/11,
taking the cowboyish “my way or the highway” ride over the UN, (and we see why
now), the moment has been lost, the effect diminished. “There was no time like the
present but it’s now in the past”.   Like the late
convert to religion that he is, Bush2 finally grasped the best-and-brightest reasons
for pro-active foreign policy in the Middle East, but only after he had exposed
himself as an opportunist for earthly gain.  If he were Jimmy Carter, he’d have a fireside chat and an
honest ‘lust my heart’ moment with the public where he confessed that he misled
us, but for the right reason after all, and we should lower the thermostat and wear
sweaters indoors because that is what it was going to take to solve this
problem.  Most of the public scorned
Carter then, but who’s sorry now?  Carter
is Mr. Respect.

 

While I am not
yet predicting a dramatic reversal of the GOP in Nov 2004, I do think more
voters have taken the time to learn some foreign policy issues since 9/11 and
also economic issues with this Bush2 recession, so that the upcoming election
will probably be another Love it or Leave it experience.  I’ve used up my allotted time talking
about religious and cultural issues, but that’s where this is headed.  It will be equally divisive, if not more
so than 2000, because there really is much more at stake, in blood and money,
and therefore voters are more attentive.  And just as Enronitis appeared to be fading away, the SEC
scandals are mutating into even uglier mutual funds horrors, soon to hit the
front-page consciousness of the public.

 

Lastly, if it
is discovered and convincingly exposed that Bush2 actively lied to the public
(as Nixon lied about that third rate burglary) then all bets are off on 2004
being just a bruising, muddy rugby election.  Think about it. 
If the internet had existed before Pearl Harbor was attacked and soon
thereafter rumors were substantiated with evidence that FDR knew an attack was
coming but just didn’t know where or when, do you thin

RE: [Futurework] Bush's preliminary step to withdrawal?

[Karen Watters Cole]

Personally, I was relieved to hear a better speech than
usual from Bush, making good use of semantics designed to revitalize the disgruntled
taxpayer.  As we enter the holiday
season, what could be more effective with voters than appealing to a higher
mission and raising the spirit of democracy?  However, even as this commentary today dissects the reality
from the rhetoric, only half the domestic audience believes even his rare good
speeches are genuine.  

It’s really too bad, but former oilmen and a Cabinet
of corporate CEOs with business acumen really don’t have the credibility to
claim statesmanship ambitions in the Middle East after making their real agenda
so transparent.  Like bank robbers now
claiming to be priests, they needed to have been more convincing of their conversion
to higher callings by their actions. 


His major strength is the military and economic power
we wield, and that, too, he has squandered.  Looking at the horizon, he doesn’t need to return to
Congress for more Iraq $ until after Nov 2004.  What he needs now is real improvement in the Hades that is
Israel and Palestine and to capture either of the two Most Wanted terrorists.  You can easily bet what’s on his Santa
wish list.  

I applaud his verbal recognition to Islam’s values in
this speech, suspecting that it will cause him grief among Christian Zionists
who believe only one religion can be tied to democracy.  - KWC

As usual, bold highlights are mine. Link is live. 

 

Idealism
in the Face of a Troubled Reality

By Robin Wright, Washington Post
Staff Writer, Friday, November 7, 2003; Page A01 

In a speech that redefined the U.S. agenda in the Middle East,
President Bush waxed eloquent yesterday about his dream of democracy coexisting
with Islam and transforming an important geostrategic region that has defiantly
held out against the global tide of political change.  But Bush failed to acknowledge the tough realities that are
likely to limit significant political progress in the near future: the United
States' all-consuming commitment to fighting a global war on terrorism and
confronting Islamic militancy. Washington still relies heavily on alliances
with autocratic governments to achieve these top priorities. 

The president's vision
was an attempt to wrap together major U.S. goals in the Islamic world -- new
governments in Iraq and Afghanistan, an Arab-Israeli peace, as well as
political and economic openings in a wide swath of countries from North Africa
to South Asia -- under the wider rubric of promoting democracy. Bush pledged
new momentum to foster broad change comparable
to the end of communism in Eastern Europe. 

"The United
States has adopted a new policy: a forward strategy of freedom in the Middle
East. This strategy requires the same persistence and energy and idealism we
have shown before. And it will yield the same results," he vowed in a
speech marking the 20th anniversary of the National Endowment for Democracy.

The speech was clearly
aimed at putting troubled Iraq into a more
acceptable context for a domestic audience alarmed by the mounting
attacks and the now daily troop deaths there. But for a foreign audience, the
president did send an important new signal
by criticizing decades of Western inaction in the Middle East.

"Sixty years of
Western nations excusing and accommodating the lack of freedom in the Middle
East did nothing to make us safe, because in the long run stability cannot be
purchased at the expense of liberty," Bush said. "As long as the Middle
East remains a place where freedom does not flourish, it will remain a place of
stagnation, resentment and violence ready for export. And with the spread of
weapons that can bring catastrophic harm to our country and to our friends, it
would be reckless to accept the status quo."

In an unusual move,
the president even cited key allies, notably Egypt, that should foster greater
change.  "He named names,
which he hasn't in the past, and it's vital to do that as the audience in the
region needs to know there's an address for his words, namely the Saudi royal
family and [Egyptian President Hosni] Mubarak," said Tom Malinowski,
Washington advocacy director of Human Rights Watch.  Bush basically "threw
down the gauntlet to Egypt," one of the two largest recipients
of U.S. aid and a stalwart ally, which is likely to infuriate Mubarak, said
Hisham Melhem, an Arab journalist and commentator. 

In a move that may gradually resonate in Muslim countries, Bush heralded
Islam as a force compatible with democracy.  "It should be clear to all that Islam, the
faith of one-fifth of humanity, is consistent with democratic rule," Bush
said. "A religion that demands individual moral accountability and
encourages the encounter of the individual with God is fully compatible with
the rights and responsibilities of self-government." 

The words were
striking in the context of 25 years of tensions between the United States and
various Islamic movements. For half 

RE: [Futurework] The coming crash

[Karen Watters Cole]

Yes, I
remember something as recently as this summer at 1.1 or 1.2 to 3.1.  Does that sound right?

 

 

Karen,

 

Thanks for the reference. What I remember
from basic economics was that military spending does not have the same
multiplier effect as does domestic spending.

 

Bill

 

See NOW
segment @ http://www.pbs.org/now/politics/defensedollars.html with sources listed at the
bottom of the page.

RE: Re: [Futurework] No similarities? (was All the President's votes)

[Karen Watters Cole]

Harry, it’s a
poor response from you to suggest that people complaining about deaths in Iraq
are solely interested in the political outcome of the upcoming election.  Sounds more like something Rush
Limbaugh would say to get better ratings.  That line of counterattack only promotes more divisiveness
and disrespect.  We need
constructive debate, listening to each other’s arguments, and seeking a common purpose.  These problems are too big and too
critical to be tackled with half the country divided as it is.  

 

I am
anti-Bush, but would enjoy meeting the man, and his better half, certain we
could find something pleasant to talk about besides the four daughters we have
between us (and the trouble they can be). 
If I couldn’t persuade him on some policy disagreements, I would try a
few bbq recipes.  I hear the
personal approach softens him up more than anything else, and I can still ‘talk
southern’.  But I would be happy to
‘free the Bush twins’ by sending Daddy back home to Crawford. - KWC

 

By the way, is
the voice recognition software you are trying out called Dragon (7)?  

 

Harry
wrote: Karen, I
like reading Robert Fisk and do often (though the English paper that prints him
now demands a subscription fee - so I haven't read much of him lately. He does
have a web site though.

 

I cannot recall an item in all his columns
that I've read that shows Americans in a favorable light. Maybe there is nothing favorable
about us that can be written about. If there were, I'm sure you wouldn't find
it in a Fisk column.

 

Which
is all right, for he writes to his constituency, among whom is our good friend
Keith.

 

So,
that's my background to the present column.

 

Perhaps
everything he said is true about the 130,000 or so American soldiers in Iraq.
Perhaps there are a score of good things happening for every bad thing recounted
by Fisk.

 

But,
as we've said, a story about children going to school or adults going to the
races don't sell newspapers to anti-Americans. So, you are unlikely to get them
from a Fisk column.  

 

I fear
that anti-Bush political types (I
except you) see in the present attacks, not a
danger to US soldiers, but a good way to beat him in 2004. 

 

It would
be good for Americans if the attacks can be stopped - or at least
squelched. Perhaps the best thing about them is they will light a fire under
the bureaucrats charged with recruiting Iraqis to fight the Saddamites and
the foreign intruders.

 

Harry









One of the unfortunate
similarities, perhaps, between Vietnam and the current conditions in Iraq is
that troop morale and incidences of increasing hostile acts are leading to
atrocities.  For all concerned, let
us hope this does not continue. 
Even if just half of these stories trickling out are true, it is very
sobering and sad to see any reports of this already.

 

Yes, there are good stories
also emerging, of school boards and courts operating, of poor families with
less than they had before who no longer fear the secret police.  But that does not excuse the
deteriorating situation or incidences of unnecessary violence.  Don’t tell me to “never mind, it
happens.”

 

Now I know Harry and maybe
others will object to Robert Fisk, the Brit journalist and the more ‘argumentative’
style of Brit journalism, so they say, but read this and pause to think about
all the men and women – and children - who are victims here, civilians,
combatants and soldiers.  

This did not have to
be.  - KWC

 

One, Two, Three, What Are They Fighting For? 

Robert
Fisk | 10.27.2003, Tikkun @ http://www.tikkun.org/index.cfm/action/current/article/193.html

I was in the
police station in the town of Fallujah when I realised the extent of the schizophrenia.
Captain Christopher Cirino of the 82nd Airborne was trying to explain to me the
nature of the attacks so regularly carried out against American forces in the
Sunni Muslim Iraqi town. His men were billeted in a former presidential rest
home down the road—"Dreamland", the Americans call it—but this was
not the extent of his soldiers' disorientation. "The men we are being
attacked by," he said, "are Syrian-trained terrorists and local
freedom fighters." Come again? "Freedom fighters." But that's
what Captain Cirino called them—and rightly so.

Here's the
reason. All American soldiers are supposed to believe—indeed have to believe,
along with their President and his Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld—that
Osama bin Laden's "al-Qa'ida" guerrillas, pouring over Iraq's borders
from Syria, Iran, Saudi Arabia (note how those close allies and neighbours of
Iraq, Kuwait and Turkey are always left out of the equation), are assaulting
United States forces as part of the "war on terror". Special forces
soldiers are now being told by their officers that the "war on
terror" has been transferred from America to Iraq, as if in some
miraculous way, 11 September 2001 is now Iraq 2003. Note too how the Americans
always leave the Iraqis out of the culpabilit

RE: [Futurework] The coming crash

[Karen Watters Cole]

I wonder how much of the US growth was military driven.

Bill

 

Bill, I found it right
after sending you that clearinghouse link.  Different writer here. 
“Can’t wait” to see the Q3 numbers.  

 

And while thinking about
more money, less accountability, check out the National Priorities Project, one of the NOW sources @ http://www.nationalpriorities.org/,
below this.  - KWC

 

Excerpts: Defense
Spending Driving U.S. Economy
By Glenn
Somerville, Thu July 31,
2003 10:23 AM ET @ http://reuters.com/financeNewsArticle.jhtml?type=businessNews&storyID=3196574

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The biggest surge in defense spending
since the Korean War era helped drive U.S. economic growth ahead at a
surprisingly brisk 2.4 percent annual clip in the second quarter, the Commerce
Department said on Thursday. 

…"Growth in the
second quarter was boosted by federal defense spending, by business investment
in plant and equipment, and by consumer spending," Commerce noted.  Spending on defense, much of it to
support the war in Iraq, shot up at a 44.1 percent rate -- the strongest since
110 percent in the third quarter of 1951 -- after falling 3.3 percent in the first three
months of the year. 

NPP Bulletin - 
November 5, 2003 



Two
days ago, the Senate approved an additional $87.5 billion in spending for war,
occupation and reconstruction in Afghanistan and Iraq, clearing the way for
final approval by President Bush. The bill voted upon specifically
rejected earlier versions that would have required the President to submit to
Congress a report on the projected total costs of U.S. operations in Iraq
through fiscal year 2008.  To find out more about what's in the bill, go
to NPP's November budget update at: http://www.nationalpriorities.org/BudgetUpdates/budgetupdate110403.html?email

 

The
budget update also contains information about the recently released CBO report
that may underestimate future costs of the war.  Again, to learn more, go
to: http://www.nationalpriorities.org/BudgetUpdates/budgetupdate110403.html?email

 

Also,
a brief reminder about our recent releases on the cost to selected states of
repealing the estate tax -- see http://www.nationalpriorities.org/taxes/EstateTax/EstateTaxIndex.html --
and Bush's energy bill -- see http://www.nationalpriorities.org/Issues/Energy/EnergyTaxBreaks.html. 

 

 

RE: [Futurework] The coming crash

[Karen Watters Cole]

See NOW
segment @ http://www.pbs.org/now/politics/defensedollars.html with sources listed at the
bottom of the page.  

 

 

I wonder how
much of the US growth was military driven.

 

Bill

 

[Futurework] Back to the Future of Work

[Karen Watters Cole]

I’m adding a
section from the transcript excerpted below, discussing Employee Stock Ownership
Plans.  For those interested, please
note the question from San Diego, and the summary remarks.  - KWC

Leadership for
a Changing World website info below. 




Minneapolis
Can you describe the attributes of a business that make it a good candidate for
employee ownership? 

Are there certain industries that are easier to convert, e.g. high tech vs. low
tech, local market-oriented vs. national or international market-oriented? 

John Logue
The basic characteristics of companies that we look at to see if they’re good
candidate for employee ownership are pretty much as follows. One, is the
company profitable or otherwise worth owning? Two, is the owner willing to
sell? Three, do the potential employee owners have the expertise and knowledge
to improve the business? Four, is there a good management team on board or can
the selling owner be kept in for some years to train a new management team and
pass on his or her expertise? When you have a company with employees who
believe it’s worth owning and have got the knowledge and experience to improve
operations and an owner who wants to sell and willing to sell gradually to the
employees over a period of time, you have an ideal situation. 

On the other hand, employee ownership doesn’t work very well in companies where
your employees are transitory, the skill level is minimal, the boss is a rank
exploiter, and nobody wants to continue working in the company. Employee
ownership works best where the employees see these jobs as jobs they want to
work in for years. 

In terms of industries, we have seen employee ownership work well in practically
every industrial sector. It seems to work equally well in old-line
manufacturing and in new high-tech industries. As far as we can see, it works
particularly well with “knowledge workers” who take the company capital home
with them when they leave at 5 o’clock. Employee ownership makes them real
owners of the assets of the company they work for, which are their own
knowledge and expertise. 

On the local versus national or international market question, we have seen
companies succeed as employee-owned companies in all markets. It may be
somewhat easier for employees to understand local and national markets than
international markets, however. There are also days when the Fortune 500
companies seem not to understand the ins and outs of currency hedging and other
international market problems. 



On Friday, October 31, Leadership for a Changing World
hosted a live, online interview with John Logue, Director of the Ohio Employee
Ownership Center, and a 2003 Leadership for a Changing World award recipient.  Below is an excerpt from the interview:

~~

Marietta, GA

The idea of employee ownership is very interesting. But what
evidence is there that employee owned companies outperform
traditionally-structured companies?

 

John Logue

Since the US General Accounting Office did its pathbreaking
study of Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP) companies in 1985, EVERY study
that has looked at the internal structures of employee-owned companies has
found that companies that encourage employee participation in decision-making outperform
those which do not. 

 

What seems to work is the combination of employee ownership
with employee participation in decision making, open communication of
information about how the business is doing, and enough employee education to
understand business information and use the participation system effectively.
It's what we can call "informed employee participation." 

 

To take just one example, our Ohio ESOP study found that
only 3% of ESOP companies that did not increase "informed employee
participation" improved their profits relative to their industry after
becoming ESOPs. On the other hand, 48% of those that made full use of
"informed employee participation" increased their profits relative to
their industry. 

 

Those are pretty compelling numbers. 

 

Interestingly, we also found a high correlation between
having non-managerial employee representatives on the board of directors and improved
performance. If you are interested in more evidence, have a look at our recent
book The Real World of Employee Ownership (Cornell University Press, 2001). 

 

~~

To read the complete transcript of Leadership Talks with
John Logue, go to http://leadershipforchange.org/talks/archive.php3?ForumID=19

To view the complete Leadership Talks archives, go to: http://leadershipforchange.org/talks/

The next Leadership Talks is scheduled for Friday, November
21 with Marilyn Smith, Executive Director of Abused Deaf Women's Advocacy
Services, in Seattle, WA.  http://leadershipforchange.org/awardees/awardee.php3?ID=124

__ 

Leadership for a Changing World 

Advocacy Institute 

1629 K St., NW, Suite 200 

Washington, DC 20006-1629 

p: 202-777-7560 

RE: [Futurework] All the President's votes?

[Karen Watters Cole]

Karen

We even need irascible opponents, like Thurmond was, to bring color
and individuality to politics so that the general public can see somebody like themselves up there
representing them and not feel distanced or awed by the process that in truth
is operating everyday in their name.  

 

arthur

Hence the Dean statement on Confederate flags.  A good
statement given what he was trying to achieve, inclusiveness.  But under
the barrage of media political correctness he quickly apologized.

 

As well he
should have.  It was clumsy speech,
and a presidential candidate should be more careful not to direct friendly fire
at himself.  

 

I applaud his
intent, however, and hope that who ever is the final candidate to oppose Bush
will use that message better: the party standard bearer running for POTUS must
represent all the public, even those he or she may find disagreeable and
difficult to represent.  Begone,
this holier-than-thou cr*p we get now from the GOP.  

 

The DEMs need
to recover those “Confederate flaggers” and the so-called “Reagan Democrats” in
2004.  I think they have a fighting
chance, thanks to the damage Bush2 has inflicted upon itself, and the better
late than never hell raising that gives some balance to public debate.  

 

PS. I’ve been
sick all week and have run out of sweetness, but thankfully not Kleenex.  KWC

 

While chopping veggies for a soup to ward off
early winter weather in the Pacific Northwest and the first round of winter
colds, I heard a tribute to now-deceased Sen. Mike Mansfield by the author of a
new book about him, and was startled that I had failed to mention him recently
as a man of principles in politics and one who served a very long time as a
public servant.  

 

The only politician who told LBJ to his face that his plans in Vietnam
would bring disaster, he also originated a bipartisan committee of Senators
(and Reps) to investigate what became Watergate, just 3 months after Nixon was
reelected by a landslide in 1972, convening only members with no presidential
ambitions (thus we got Ervin and Tallmadge, elders unafraid to ask the ugly
questions), something never done previously.  Fascinated with China from his youth, he later served as
Ambassador to Japan under Carter and Reagan's full 8 years.  

 

This is a remarkable man who forged a
signature to get into the armed services while under age, then served in all
three branches and as a copper miner for 9 years before getting his high school
and college education simultaneously, and then running for Congress,
representing his adopted state of Montana with distinction.

 

I have been ruminating on personality and
politics, again, in light of several deaths and intent to retire announcements
recently, several of whom are decidedly "characters", leaving the
bulk of Congress filled with bland bureaucratic members.  This is a loss, in my opinion.  Thank goodness McCain refuses to go
away, or Barbara McKulski, who more mildly replaces Bella Abzug.  We need elected officials with personal
integrity and also the fearlessness to speak up against the grain when
necessary, like Dennis Kucinich is doing now in the tradition of Paul
Wellstone, unafraid of sticky labels thrown at him.  We even need irascible opponents, like Thurmond was, to
bring color and individuality to politics so that the general public can see somebody like themselves up there
representing them and not feel distanced or awed by the process that in truth
is operating everyday in their name. 


 

This only partly explains the popularity of
Dean right now, or for that matter, Nader's popularity in the 2000 cycle.  People distrust "talking head
suits" who will say anything for the campaign commercial and then not
follow-through.  Accountability is
the foundation of checks and balances, and since politics requires some
compromise, it's best to make sure you "say what you mean and mean what
you say" when trying to get there, as GDubya might acknowledge in private,
about credibility gaps.  

 

-
KWC

 

[Futurework] RE: A major war coming?

[Karen Watters Cole]

Keith, while I
don’t disagree with your speculations below about prospective warfare plans, it’s
entirely possible that strategists are reacting to the politically risky
dependence upon Reserve and Guard units to supplement active duty forces.  If a draft is reinstated but only calls
up enough young men to replace those (mostly) older men with families and
private workforce careers, that would decrease much of the public
dissatisfaction/anxiety about long deployments and disparity in pay/benefits
for those units and active duty.

 

Let’s not
forget that when young people begin to pay their own rents and raise families,
they realize that more than the minimum wage is necessary.  The piece that Robt Dowd posted today
about Wal Mart again expresses this youthful naivete, quoting an 18 year old
whose friends work there and think it’s great – for now.  The draft would reduce the average age
and expenses for a military with long-term front line plans. [KWC]  

 

All joking
aside about new revivals of MASH, fleeing to Canada, or ways to fool the draft
board, can you imagine the nightmare in an age of terrorism and paranoia over
the USA Patriot Act, having to decipher which son of a Middle East immigrant is
red, white and blue enough and which isn’t?  Certainly, there would be second generation  (and maybe a few firsts) immigrants
signing up and serving with extra motivation to liberate the ME of despots, as
Japanese-Americans served with distinction in WW2, but the gov’t didn’t have
invasive “sneak and peak “ authorization and pc spy equipment then, either.  Think about it.

 

I was
ruminating privately yesterday that it is at moments like this you miss
intelligence and good public speaking skills that could make a tremendous
difference in the public’s wavering support and declining confidence that we are
being led in the right direction.  A
good speech in the tradition of TR or FDR, a rousing Churchillian moment could
have dispelled much suspicion in the past two years.  Instead, we get defensive posturing.

 

Bush missed
his chance to call upon all Americans to sacrifice a little for the greater
good after 9/11, and let subside the rebounding spirit of Americans after their
initial good faith and appreciation for the public servants who died on 9/11
helping others.  Heck, people even
looked kindly upon public servants in suits who worked overtime to make sure
government systems continued to operate.  There seems to be a consistent run of bad timing in Bush2
that makes one wonder about bad karma or something, as if they know deep down
they haven’t been upfront and honest with the public from the beginning.  Words can be manipulated, facial ticks
can be trained to stillness, but instinctively people know this is not an
administration representing the greater common good.  That moment was lost after Enron, with all the White House
secrecy, the greed of fundraising, defunding initiatives like No Child Left Behind
and AmeriCorps, promising one thing and then doing another.  Accountability?  Lost.  Credibility? 
Losing it quickly.  We all
have at least one person in our lives like that, and would we want them running
the country?  No.  And should we let these people continue
to for another four more years?  Absolutely not. 
- KWC

 

Karen,
What a fascinating article you have found for us!  (And well-introduced by
your goodself if I might say so.)  Merci beaucoup.  

I don't belong to any of the categories you cite in your last introductory
paragraph (Vietnam or Gulf War veteran, supporter of preemptive action) but I
have a tentative view --- put forward with some hesitation because, if the
experts are in some disagreement, then who am I to come up with the reason? But
my interpretation goes along the following lines.

Occupancy of the draft boards are not so low that they need to be replenished
just at the present time. Indeed, even though the advertising is low key, it's
quite risky for Bush to do this at the present time in view of the Nov 04
election coming up -- it might just possibly cause more opposition to the
present occupation of Iraq.

However, events in Iraq and possible subsequent policy changes in the next few
months are very much in the lap of the gods. If, for example, there were two or
three more terrorist incidents in the near future that were as productive as
the 16 killed in the recent attack on the Chinook then it is quite possible
that public opinion would turn ferociously against Bush and he would have to revise
radically the whole occupation policy of Iraq -- or certainly lose the
election.

Replenishing the draft boards must be a product of longer-term thinking in the
Pentagon and State Department. Internal think-tanks must be coming to the
conclusion that a large conscripted army might be required in due course --
that is, from about a year from now and onwards. Now why should this be in a
modern world in which, with little doubt, the developed countries do not need
large armies?

RE: [Futurework] All the President's votes?

[Karen Watters Cole]

While chopping
veggies for a soup to ward off early winter weather in the Pacific Northwest
and the first round of winter colds, I heard a tribute to now-deceased Sen.
Mike Mansfield by the author of a new book about him, and was startled that I
had failed to mention him recently as a man of principles in  politics and one who served a very long
time as a public servant.  

 

The only
politician who told LBJ to his face
that his plans in Vietnam would bring disaster, he also originated a bipartisan
committee of Senators (and Reps) to investigate what became Watergate, just 3
months after Nixon was reelected by a landslide in 1972, convening only members
with no presidential ambitions (thus we got Ervin and Talmadge, elders unafraid
to ask the ugly questions), something never done previously.  Fascinated with China from his youth, he
later served as Ambassador to Japan under Carter and Reagan’s full 8
years.  

 

This is a
remarkable man who forged a signature to get into the armed services while
under age, then served in all three branches and as a copper miner for 9 years before
getting his high school and college education simultaneously, and then running
for Congress, representing his adopted state of Montana with distinction.

 

I have been
ruminating on personality and politics, again, in light of several deaths and intent
to retire announcements recently, several of whom are decidedly “characters”,
leaving the bulk of Congress filled with bland bureaucratic members.  This is a loss, in my opinion.  Thank goodness McCain refuses to go
away, or Barbara McKulski, who more mildly replaces Bella Abzug.  We need elected officials with personal
integrity and also the fearlessness to speak up against the grain when
necessary, like Dennis Kucinich is doing now in the tradition of Paul Wellstone,
unafraid of sticky labels thrown at him. 
We even need irascible opponents, like Thurmond was, to bring color and
individuality to politics so that the general public can see somebody like themselves up there
representing them and not feel distanced or awed by the process that in truth
is operating everyday in their name.  

 

This only
partly explains the popularity of Dean right now, or for that matter, Nader’s
popularity in the 2000 cycle. 
People distrust “talking head suits” who will say anything for the
campaign commercial and then not follow-through.  Accountability is the foundation of checks and balances, and
since politics requires some compromise, it’s best to make sure you “say what
you mean and mean what you say” when trying to get there, as GDubya might acknowledge
in private, about credibility gaps.  

 

- KWC

RE: [Futurework] Wal-Mart...

[Karen Watters Cole]

Thanks for
sharing the SF Chronicle article about Wal-Mart’s shenanigans in obtaining
signatures for ballots, Robert.   - KWC

 

Here’s the
beginning of another article, too long to drop in here, but also contains other
details, including making the point that “WalMartization” has contributed to
illegal immigration around the US. 

Stores
Follow Wal-Mart's Lead in Labor 
Competitors Struggle to Match Savings From Non-Union Workforce 

By Greg Schneider and Dina ElBoghdady,
Washington Post, Thursday, November 6, 2003

MORGANTOWN, W.Va. --
As a young man, Roy Bukrim found a job that seemed better than working in
dangerous coal mines like his relatives: He hired on at the Kroger supermarket,
where 27 years later he's head night stocker and supports a wife, two kids and
a mortgage.  But Bukrim, 48,
figures he wouldn't have that career option today. Young people who take a job
there now get minimum wage and no health benefits, then leave after a few
months. Bukrim said the future that he saw in grocery work no longer exists.
"We've been the generation where that's all changed."

To Bukrim and other
workers -- as well as Kroger Co. executives -- the juggernaut driving that
change is the store's most-feared competitor, Wal-Mart Stores Inc.  "All we've heard is Wal-Mart this
and Wal-Mart that," said Kroger cashier Victoria Marano. "They want
to be like Wal-Mart so they can compete."

Wal-Mart, the world's
biggest retailer and the nation's biggest private employer, has become so
powerful that its practices reverberate throughout the U.S. economy. About as many people work for Wal-Mart --
1.3 million -- as are on active duty in the U.S. military.  Its most recent annual sales -- $245 billion -- are greater
than the gross domestic product of Switzerland. It's no wonder the company has
more than 3,000 stores in the United States; on Oct. 29 alone Wal-Mart opened
39 stores, and it once opened 47 in a day.

Because it wields
enormous buying power, Wal-Mart influences the makers of virtually all
household products, dictating everything from pricing to packaging. What's
more, Wal-Mart's mania for selling goods at rock-bottom prices has trained
consumers to expect deep discounts everywhere they shop, forcing competing
retailers to follow suit or fall behind.

The Oct. 23 arrest of
250 illegal aliens working for outside cleaning crews at 61 Wal-Mart stores
nationwide underscores another aspect of Wal-Mart's low-price formula: a
fervent effort to hold down labor costs. This week the retailer said it has
received a "target letter" from a federal grand jury in Pennsylvania,
signifying that Wal-Mart itself is under investigation for its role in using
illegal workers.

Part of the reason the
chain is able to offer a microwave oven for under $30 or a 24-can package of
Sam's Choice cola for $3.64 or a gas-powered lawn mower for under $150, for
instance, is because it contracts with outside janitorial services -- some of
which have questionable hiring practices -- and relies heavily on lower-paid
part-time workers, say unions and competitors.

Wal-Mart's vast, non-unionized work force earns a typical
wage of about $7 to $8 an hour. Unionized
workers at Kroger,
by contrast, said they were making between $11 and $13 an hour, with full health benefits. About 62 percent of Wal-Mart workers
are eligible for benefits, but less than half of the workforce participates.
Critics say the low participation is because Wal-Mart requires steep employee
contributions. 

As other retailers
follow Wal-Mart's lead, workers without technical training are feeling a
tightening squeeze. Low-skilled manufacturing jobs are vanishing at historic
rates -- West Virginia's coalfield employment, for instance, plummeted from
59,700 jobs in 1980 to 15,700 in 2000. Untrained people entering today's
workforce the way Bukrim did three decades ago have dwindling odds of reaching
the middle class.

"These are jobs
that have historically yielded a middle-class lifestyle. But with a much more
lean and mean approach to services, many of those jobs are going by the
wayside," said Jared Bernstein, an economist with the Economic Policy
Institute.

Nowhere is that shift
more evident than at supermarkets, such as Kroger, which have seen Wal-Mart
rocket to the top of their industry in only 10 years. Bukrim and 70,000 other
unionized workers at the Kroger, Safeway and Albertsons chains in several
states -- including West Virginia, California and Kentucky -- are now on strike
or locked out in a conflict over wage and benefits changes their employers say
are necessary to compete with Wal-Mart.

Some economists argue
that the Wal-Martization of the American workforce is simply the free-market system functioning as
it should. Gary Stibel, founder and principal of the New England Consulting
Group, said Wal-Mart has saved consumers more than $20 billion through its
discount pricing. Figuring in Wal-Mart's pressure on other retailers to lower
prices, savings top $100 billion,

[Futurework] Waging war against commercial feudalism

[Karen Watters Cole]

Followed from
sojo.net to Orion, found: an excellent article about civil community and
activist groups, local municipalities standing up to ‘corporate personhood’
lawsuits, and the applications that citizens can take from these practical
lessons opposing international trade agreements (GATT and FTAA cited).  There are also some very interesting
connections here to current political-environmental battles and legislation
underway to protect corporations from lawsuits in the still-to-be passed Energy
Act of 2003.  

 

I highly
recommend this essay, for content and clarity.  

 

Jeffrey Kaplan: Consent of the Governed, the reign of corporations and
the fight for democracy 

@ http://www.oriononline.org/pages/om/03-6om/Kaplan.html

 

CORPORATE
POWER, largely unimpeded by democratic processes, today affects
municipalities across the country. But in the conservative farming communities
of western Pennsylvania, where agribusiness corporations have
obstructed local efforts to ban noxious corporate farming practices, the commercial
feudalism de Tocqueville warned against has evoked a response that
echoes the defiant spirit of the Declaration of Independence.

In late 2002 and early 2003, two
of the county's townships did something that no municipal government had ever
dared: They decreed that a corporation's rights do not apply within their
jurisdictions.

The author of the ordinances,
Thomas Linzey, an Alabama-born lawyer who attended law school in nearby
Harrisburg, did not start out trying to convince the citizens of the heavily
Republican county to attack the legal framework of corporate power. But over
the past five years, Linzey has seen township supervisors begin to take a stand against expanding
corporate influence -- and
not just in Clarion County. Throughout rural Pennsylvania, supervisors have
held at bay some of the most well-connected agribusiness executives in the
state, along with their lawyers, lobbyists, and representatives in the
Pennsylvania legislature.

Linzey anticipated none of this
when he cofounded the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF), a
grassroots legal support group, in 1995. Initially, CELDF worked with activists
according to a conventional formula. "We were launched to provide free legal services
to community groups,
specifically grassroots community environmental organizations," Linzey
says. "That involved us in permit appeals and other typical regulatory
stuff." But all that soon changed.

…“DESPITE THEIR ENORMOUS RAMIFICATIONS,
most international trade agreements remain a mystery to the average American.
At the core, they are simple.  GATT
and NAFTA cover the trade of physical goods between countries. They can be used
to override any country's protection of the environment, for example, or of
workers' rights, by defining relevant laws and regulations as illegal
"barriers to trade." They provide for a "dispute
resolution" process, but the process routinely determines such laws to be
in violation of the agreements.

In the case of GATT, a WTO member
country can sue another member country on behalf of one of its corporations, on
the grounds that a country's law has violated GATT trade rules. The case is
heard by a secret tribunal appointed by the WTO. State and local officials are
denied legal representation. If the tribunal finds that a law or regulation of
a country -- or state or township -- is a "barrier to trade," the
offending country must either rescind that law or pay the accusing country
whatever amount the WTO decides the company had to forgo because of the
barrier, a sum that can amount to billions of dollars. In short, practitioners
of democracy at any level can be penalized for interfering with international
profit-making.

Through this process, WTO
tribunals have overturned such U.S. laws as EPA standards for clean-burning
gasoline and regulations banning fish caught by methods that endanger dolphins
and sea turtles. The WTO has also effectively undermined the use of the precautionary principle, by which practices can be banned until proven safe -- in
one recent instance superseding European laws forbidding the use of growth
hormones in beef cattle. A WTO tribunal dismissed laboratory evidence that such
hormones may cause cancer because it lacked "scientific certainty."
On similar grounds, the U.S., on behalf of Monsanto and other
American agribusiness giants, recently initiated an action under GATT
challenging the European Union's ban on genetically modified food.

Under NAFTA, which covers Canada,
Mexico, and the U.S., a corporation can sue a government directly. The case
would also be heard by a secret tribunal, such as when Vancouver-based Methanex
sued the U.S. over California's ban on a cancer-causing gas additive, MTBE. The
company, which manufactures the additive's key ingredient, claimed that the ban failed to consider
its financial interests. Since
July 2001, three men -- one former U.S. official and two corporate lawyers --
have held 

[Futurework] We export cronyism

[Karen Watters Cole]

Following that
last little ‘poison pen’ mention of the Bush2 global-corporate policy – Ooops! -
I meant to say global foreign policy, here’s another example of cronyism.  We already have a surplus of suspicion
about US preemptive policy and governing agendas.  Shouldn’t the laws of supply and demand begin to apply soon?  

 

As some of you
no doubt have read, the second phase of reconstruction contracts for Iraq will
not favor just a few big bucks friends of the BC 04 campaign; however, mischief
is afoot as ‘Friends of Dubya’ sneak preferential treatment into omnibus
legislation, as below, for Trick or Treat:

 

Amendment to Spending Bill Questioned

By Christopher Lee, Washington Post Staff Writer,
Wednesday, November 5, 2003

Two Senate GOP allies
of President Bush recently inserted a provision into a spending bill that
critics say contradicts the president's stated goal of making government more
efficient through his "competitive
sourcing"
initiative.

Republican Sens. Craig
Thomas (Wyo.) and George V. Voinovich (Ohio) sponsored the amendment during the Oct.
23 floor debate on the $90 billion spending bill for the departments of
Transportation and the Treasury. The measure appeared to be an effort to
promote accountability and transparency under the controversial Bush
initiative, which requires hundreds of thousands of federal employees to prove
they can do their jobs more efficiently than private contractors, or risk
seeing the work outsourced.

But one paragraph -- unnoticed at the time because the full
text of the amendment was unavailable, even as lawmakers were debating it -- requires that job competitions involving
architectural and engineering services be governed by a process that emphasizes
selection based on technical merits, not cost. The amendment passed 95 to 1.
The House version of the bill does not contain similar language.

Critics say choosing a winner first and negotiating a
price later is not a recipe for increased efficiency. They note that the Office of Management and
Budget rejected such language this spring in revising the rules for such
competitions. And they complain that neither Thomas nor Voinovich mentioned the
controversial provision during the floor debate, even though Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski (D-Md.) sought a full accounting of what was in
it.

"This deal for
specific contractors is cronyism," Mikulski said in a statement yesterday,
adding that she will work to remove it in a House-Senate conference. "It
does the opposite of what I'm trying to do -- make sure federal employees get a
fair competition." 

John Gage, president
of the American Federation of Government Employees, decried the "disingenuous
tactics" to benefit "politically connected contractors."

Scott Milburn, a
spokesman for Voinovich, referred calls about the provision to Thomas's office,
which did not respond yesterday.  "In
general, what I can say is that this bill was brought to the floor at the last
minute…And if there are any modifications that need to be made as a result,
then Senator Voinovich certainly will support making those modifications in
conference," Milburn said.

David Raymond,
president of the American Council of Engineering Companies, said the provision
echoes a 31-year-old
federal procurement law
that requires government projects to be designed and engineered properly, so
more money would not be necessary later to fix them. 

>

You’d think
the only reliable contractors in the whole country are Bechtel, Halliburton and
Kellogg, Brown & Root.  Did I
post that article suggesting that if the totals for private contractor personnel
doing business in Iraq were tallied it would likely surpass the number of UK
troops?  So our largest coalition
force would be war profiteers?  How
could that possibly, possibly be?  And
aren’t you glad I’m drinking organic tea and not espresso?  - KWC

RE: [Futurework] Teleworking -- or, a fortune awaits a house-builder

[Karen Watters Cole]

Keith, combined neighborhood office centers are
already being implemented in small communities and suburbs as part of the ‘redevelopment
industry’, wherein small pieces of real estate are converted as you envision, to
lease on a temporary basis, bring revenue and enhancing property values instead
of vacant buildings, reducing sprawl.  

 

There isn’t anything I disagree with in your comments
on this subject, but we should get out of the habit of thinking that all
construction needs to be new construction – we are running out of land that is
better saved for ecological and mental health reasons and more lasting values.  There is a fortune to be made,
absolutely, in remodeling older and vacant properties that in many cases sit in
well-established, close-in neighborhoods, which would as you say, reduce not
just traffic congestion, smog, fuel consumption and commuter stress, but reward
contractors, developers, real estate and local taxes – and get you out of the
house occasionally.

 

I redirect your attention to Storm Cunningham’s book, The Restoration Economy: The Greatest New Growth Frontier - Immediate and Emerging Opportunities for Businesses, Communities
and Investors, (Barrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc. San Francisco, 2002. ISBN 1576751910 - it was at my library).  This is a sales book, no question.  He is converting old concepts about
growth to new concepts.  He often
reads like a preacher full of enthusiasm. 
I’m pasting some of the Introduction.  He praises the US EPA for originating brownfields programs to
rescue abandoned and polluted properties for redevelopment.  

 

By the
way, identifying disaster/war as a major feature of built environments explains
why this Iraq war by a corporate-led Bush2 administration is cynically, a
market expansion opportunity as much as a global stability/anti-terrorism
campaign.  If Bush2 wanted us to
think otherwise, they should mend their ways favoring all their major
contributor$ and have included allies from the beginning. - KWC



“Restoration
is the business and the spirit of the twenty-first century.  Let’s now expand on the subjects
mentioned in the Preface, so you’ll understand why this opening sentence is
accurate, rather than wishful. 
Part of that understanding will come from facts and figures, and part
from grasping three key concepts:

 

1. The Trimodal Development Perspective 
Development has three modes of operation, corresponding to natural life
cycles: new development, maintenance/conservation, and restorative
development.  Each category
produces its own realm of players.

 

Communities
and nations normally start with new development, for obvious reasons.  The maintenance and conservation mode
then kicks in, to service the newly built environment (and to save parts of the
newly threatened natural environment). 
When their creations get too old to maintain, when the “highest and
best” uses of their structures change, and/or when they run out of room and
have to start redeveloping the land they’ve already developed, then the final,
and longest-lasting, mode becomes dominant: restorative development.

 

When
viewed from this “trimodal” perspective, the causes of many “mysterious”
national and community problems suddenly become conspicuous, and strategizing
becomes far simpler.  The most
interesting fact for business and government strategists is this: restorative development
is now the fastest growing of those three modes, and it will soon be the largest of the three realms of
development.

 

2. 
The interactivity of the Built and Natural Environments 
This concept should be painfully obvious, but you’d never know it from
the way we plan and run our world today. 
Industries involved in new development are, by nature, generally
exploitative.  They normally ignore
the negative impacts of their activities, chalking them off as “the price of
progress” in a manner disturbingly similar to the “justify anything” style of
fundamentalist religious fanatics. 
When we attempt to restore the aging products of new development,
however, the importance of the interrelatedness of built and natural becomes startling clear.

 

For
example, city planners now know that a key to restoring the quality of metropolitan life is restoring the
surrounding watersheds.  Watersheds are
their major source of both clean air and clean water, not to mention
mental-health-enhancing green spaces and recreational areas.  (A recent poll of US public works
directors revealed water supplies to be their top concern.)

 

Combining
watershed restoration with infrastructure restoration is now a proven path to
metropolitan restoration.  Add just
one more element to the mix (such as heritage restoration) and a near-magical
renewal often results, as businesses become attracted to the area because it’s now healthier,
more efficient, and more interesting.

 

3. The Eight Industries of Restorative
Development   Most restorative development can
be divided into two sectors; restoration of

RE: Re: [Futurework] No similarities? (was All the President's votes)

[Karen Watters Cole]

One of the unfortunate
similarities, perhaps, between Vietnam and the current conditions in Iraq is
that troop morale and incidences of increasing hostile acts are leading to
atrocities.  For all concerned, let
us hope this does not continue. 
Even if just half of these stories trickling out are true, it is very
sobering and sad to see any reports of this already.

 

Yes, there are good stories
also emerging, of school boards and courts operating, of poor families with
less than they had before who no longer fear the secret police.  But that does not excuse the
deteriorating situation or incidences of unnecessary violence.  Don’t tell me to “never mind, it
happens.”

 

Now I know Harry and maybe
others will object to Robert Fisk, the Brit journalist and the more
‘argumenative’ style of Brit journalism, so they say, but read this and pause
to think about all the men and women – and children - who are victims here,
civilians, combatants and soldiers. 


This did not have to
be.  - KWC

 

One, Two, Three, What Are They Fighting For? 

Robert
Fisk | 10.27.2003, Tikkun @ http://www.tikkun.org/index.cfm/action/current/article/193.html

I was in the
police station in the town of Fallujah when I realised the extent of the
schizophrenia. Captain Christopher Cirino of the 82nd Airborne was trying to
explain to me the nature of the attacks so regularly carried out against
American forces in the Sunni Muslim Iraqi town. His men were billeted in a
former presidential rest home down the road—"Dreamland", the
Americans call it—but this was not the extent of his soldiers' disorientation.
"The men we are being attacked by," he said, "are Syrian-trained
terrorists and local freedom fighters." Come again? "Freedom
fighters." But that's what Captain Cirino called them—and rightly so.

Here's the
reason. All American soldiers are supposed to believe—indeed have to believe,
along with their President and his Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld—that
Osama bin Laden's "al-Qa'ida" guerrillas, pouring over Iraq's borders
from Syria, Iran, Saudi Arabia (note how those close allies and neighbours of
Iraq, Kuwait and Turkey are always left out of the equation), are assaulting
United States forces as part of the "war on terror". Special forces
soldiers are now being told by their officers that the "war on
terror" has been transferred from America to Iraq, as if in some
miraculous way, 11 September 2001 is now Iraq 2003. Note too how the Americans
always leave the Iraqis out of the culpability bracket—unless they can be
described as "Baath party remnants", "diehards" or
"deadenders" by the US proconsul, Paul Bremer.

Captain
Cirino's problem, of course, is that he knows part of the truth. Ordinary
Iraqis—many of them long-term enemies of Saddam Hussein—are attacking the
American occupation army 35 times a day in the Baghdad area alone. And Captain
Cirino works in Fallujah's local police station, where America's newly hired
Iraqi policemen are the brothers and uncles and—no doubt—fathers of some of
those now waging guerrilla war against American soldiers in Fallujah. Some of
them, I suspect, are indeed themselves the "terrorists". So if he
calls the bad guys "terrorists", the local cops—his first line of
defence—would be very angry indeed.

No wonder
morale is low. No wonder the American soldiers I meet on the streets of Baghdad
and other Iraqi cities don't mince their words about their own government. US
troops have been given orders not to bad-mouth their President or Secretary of
Defence in front of Iraqis or reporters (who have about the same status in the
eyes of the occupation authorities). But when I suggested to a group of US
military police near Abu Ghurayb they would be voting Republican at the next
election, they fell about laughing. "We shouldn't be here and we should
never have been sent here," one of them told me with astonishing candour.
"And maybe you can tell me: why were we sent here?"

Little
wonder, then, that Stars and Stripes, the American military's own newspaper,
reported this month that one third of the soldiers in Iraq suffered from low
morale. And is it any wonder, that being the case, that US forces in Iraq are
shooting down the innocent, kicking and brutalising prisoners, trashing homes
and—eyewitness testimony is coming from hundreds of Iraqis—stealing money from
houses they are raiding? No, this is not Vietnam—where the Americans sometimes
lost 3,000 men in a month—nor is the US army in Iraq turning into a rabble. Not
yet. And they remain light years away from the butchery of Saddam's henchmen.
But human-rights monitors, civilian occupation officials and journalists—not to
mention Iraqis themselves—are increasingly appalled at the behaviour of the American
military occupiers.

Iraqis who
fail to see US military checkpoints, who overtake convoys under attack—or who
merely pass the scene of an American raid—are being gunned down with abandon.
US official "inquiries" into these killings routinely res

[Futurework] Why Bush made his speeches quickly and then flew on

[Karen Watters Cole]

Again, 55,000 jobs added per month is still a loss. Until
100,000 jobs are added each month consecutively, we still have a jobless
recovery.  

Also see Economic Policy Institute’s Job Watch @ http://www.jobwatch.org/ and 

GDP Picture @ http://www.epinet.org/content.cfm/webfeatures_econindicators_gdppict

 

Job Cuts Surged 125 Percent in Oct.- Challenger 
Tue November 4, 2003 12:36 PM ET 

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The number of job cuts announced by U.S. employers more
than doubled in October, after declining for two months, calling into question
the strength of job market as other segments of the economy surge. 

Planned layoffs at
U.S. firms shot up to 171,874 jobs in
October, from 76,506 in September, job placement firm Challenger,
Gray & Christmas said on Tuesday. Layoffs were at their highest since Oct.
2002, when 176,010 job cuts were announced. 

Some economists say
the data may not provide a complete picture of the labor market, but investors
seeking clues about Friday's employment report sent bond prices higher after
the Challenger report. 

"With factors
like technology, outsourcing, and consolidation working against job creation,
any job market rebound we see in the near future will be relatively
small," said John Challenger, chief executive at Challenger, Gray &
Christmas, in a statement. 

In a signal that the
job market may face another difficult month in November, Tyco International
Ltd. on Tuesday said it would eliminate 7,200 jobs as it dismantles its
far-flung global empire. 

"We're not out of
the woods yet with regard to the labor market," said Lehman Brother
economist Drew Matus. 

The job market won't
really turn the corner until the economy shows a few quarters of strong growth,
Matus said. But some economists believe that the layoff numbers do not
necessarily indicate a sour labor market.  Higher layoffs at larger
companies could be offset by more robust hiring at small and medium-sized firms,
said Sung Won Sohn, chief economist at Wells Fargo & Co. 

The Challenger report
clashes with other signals that the labor market has shown signs of
stabilizing.  The September
employment report showed that employers increased the number of workers on
their payrolls by 57,000, the first increase since January.  In addition, last week the number of
initial jobless claims fell to 386,000, the fourth straight week that claims
were under 400,000, which economists consider as a critical level for the labor
market. 

A report on the
manufacturing sector on Monday said the pace of factory job cuts was slowing. Analysts
are eagerly awaiting Friday's report payrolls and unemployment. According to a
Reuters poll, economists on average forecasted payrolls increased by 55,000,
and unemployment held steady at 6.1 percent. 

(Additional reporting
by Kevin Plumberg) © Reuters 2003. All Rights Reserved.

 

RE: [Futurework] Fw: Electronic Voting Machine Action

[Karen Watters Cole]

Add this from the Practical Futurist blog at msnbc:

"I suspect we students of the cyberworld are getting a distant early warning
of a potential electoral disaster that could make hanging chads look
trivial. Newsweek's Steven Levy wrote about the gathering storm around
electronic voting systems last week in the magazine. Today, the New York
Time's ever-vigilant John Schwartz has a terrific piece on the attempts of
the major electronic voting device maker, Diebold Voting Systems, to quash
efforts to expose its systems' flaws .

Briefly, Diebold is trying to use copyright law to keep people from posting
the company's internal documentation about flaws and security problems in
its voting machines. But it's far too late for Diebold Voting Systems to try
to kill this story: it's only going to get worse until an election outcome
falls into doubt, whereupon the whole notion of electronic balloting -
itself a very good idea - will fall into disfavor.

Diebold's desperate attempts remind me of the early days of the commercial
Internet, when Cisco Systems was among the first tech companies to put all
of their bug reports on its Web site. The Cisco salespeople in the field
immediately complained, fearing that their competitors' reps would just
print out the bug reports as arguments against buying Cisco. Cisco's CEO
John Chambers suggested they remind customers that all software has bugs,
but Cisco was honest enough to admit it instead of making customers find out
by accident. Cisco thereafter prospered mightily.

The same standard should go for companies like Diebold Voting Systems, who
will profit richly by serving the public trust. The public trust doesn't
come free, and the price of entry must be openness even at the cost of
corporate discomfort."

>From Levy's Black Box Voting Blues, mentioned above:
"Critics of verifiable voting do have a point when they note that the
printouts are susceptible to some of the same kinds of tricks once played
with paper ballots. But there's a promise of more elegant solutions for
electronic voting that are private, verifiable and virtually tamperproof.
Mathematician David Chaum has been working on an ingenious scheme based on
encrypted receipts. But whatever we wind up using, it's time for politicians
to start listening to the geeks. They start from the premise that democracy
deserves no less than the best election technology possible, so that the
vote of every citizen will count. Can anyone possibly argue with that?"
>From the post forwarded by Selma earlier: Rep. Rush Holt , New Jersey (D),
has introduced a bill (HR 2239) called "The Voter Confidence and Increased
Acceptability Act" which would require all such machines to provide a paper
audit trail and thus give some  assurance against fraud.  Currently he has
sixty cosponsors for this bill, with not a single one being a Republican.
The Republican leadership opposes this legislation with a vengeance and is
blocking efforts to bring it to the floor where it can see the light of day
and be voted on.  We can only guess why.

If you have been keeping up with this issue of electronic vote fraud through
the many e-mails going around, you know how big it is.  It will make no
difference how good any Democratic candidate is if the GOP political
operatives rig the results a la Florida and Georgia.  As Josef  Stalin said,
"It's not who does the voting, it's who does the counting."

I suggest two simple steps to take.
1) Go to the volunteer page at the activist site www.verifiedvoting.org.
Sign up and follow the suggestions listed under What To Do.  You can log
onto that page directly at:
http://www.verifiedvoting.org/resources/hr2239_volunteers/hr2239_effort.asp";

2) Let's lobby Moveon.org to make support of this bill a major grass roots
compaign just as they did so successfully with the FCC regulations vote.
This requires going to the Issue Forum at Moveon.org, filling out the
questionnaire and adding your own comments.  It's the first one at the top
of the page.  The direct link is:
http://www.actionforum.com/forum/?forum_id=222

If you would like to hear an excellent radio interview with Rep. Holt
outlining the details of his bill, log on to Democracy Now at:
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=03/10/30/1624227

Other highly informative articles can be found at:
 http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=452972
 http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,60563,00.html
 http://www.truthout.org/docs_03/102503C.shtml

For general ongoing information and action I highly recommend
www.verifiedvoting.org.  Their Home page is loaded with stuff and things to
do.

But at the very least I urge you to take the two steps listed above.
Spread it out over a couple of days if you have to, but get it done and pass
it on to your friends.  I know we are exhausted and overwhelmed a lot of the
time by the sheer weight of this juggernaut bearing down on us, but I
believe this is part of their strategy and I personally refuse to l

[Futurework] web discoveries

[Karen Watters Cole]

While in orbit this week:

 

1. 
Smaller galaxy being torn apart by much larger Milky Way @ http://www.msnbc.com/news/988973.asp?0cv=CB20

Also see Space.com

 

2. 
Harvard Business School’s
online Working Knowledge, has a new webpage, 

Entrepreneurs in their own words
@ http://hbswk.hbs.edu/pubitem.jhtml?id=3761&t=entrepreneurship

 

3.  www.oil.com

 

 

RE: [Futurework] Anthony Cordesman - Saudi Arabia and terror

[Karen Watters Cole]

And note
the alumni list to the right on this page you provide but also check the names
at About CSIS (private, nonpartisan, tax exempt)

 

Just on a
hunch, I went to my research files to see if he was a signer on the PNAC*
letters to Clinton and Bush setting the precedent for Bush2 policy in the
ME.  He wasn’t.  I’m checking on others. 

 

From
Google there are several other older interviews, such as this one on PBS
Newshour with a panel of ME experts and US Senators Biden and Hagel debating if
containment had failed in Iraq and invasion was the best plan now, dated July 31,
2 002 @ http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/middle_east/july-dec02/holman_7-31.html.  He takes a moderate, careful approach here, also.  - KWC

 

*Project
for New American Century (headed by Wm. Kristol et all).  

 

 

I was just
now listening to News World International and Anthony Cordesman was the guest.
Talk was on Saudi Arabia and terrorism. Cordesman seemed to have a good picture
of what was going on. He is listed as an ABC consultant but I have never seen
him on the air before nor knew of him. 

 

Here is a
link:

 

   
http://www.csis.org/html/4cordesm.htm

 

Bill

 

RE: [Futurework] The penny hasn't dropped yet

[Karen Watters Cole]

And bolded
here are the hot issues, imho, you will see repeated for Campaign 2004:

 

“The final size of the bill was $87,543,098,000, an amount larger than the annual budgets of seven
cabinet departments. All the money will be added to the year's record budget deficit. The bulk of the bill
— $65.7 billion — will pay for the military occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan,
with $24 billion alone going for Army operations and $10 billion earmarked for
Afghanistan. Congress agreed to give $983 million for the operating expenses of the American
authority in Iraq, and added to the president's request for $500 million for
aid to victims of the California wildfires and Hurricane Isabel.

 

The most contentious part of the bill was the $20.3 billion
requested by the president for rebuilding
Iraq. Although the president won the larger battle, preventing Iraq from having
to repay any of that money to the United States, he was forced to accept a $1.6
billion cut in the total amount of aid after scores
of lawmakers objected to projects they considered unnecessary.

 

The flag bearers
of the debate were Mr. Stevens and
Mr. Byrd, the two longest-serving members of their parties,
who gave the diametrically opposed last words as Congress opened its purse. 

 

"The $87 billion in this appropriations bill provides
the wherewithal for the United States to stay
the course in Iraq, when what we badly need is a course correction," Mr.
Byrd said. "The president owes
the American people an exit strategy
for Iraq, and it is time for him to deliver."  But Mr. Stevens said the bill demonstrated the nation's resolve to fight terrorists wherever they gather. "We will not walk away from Iraq," he said.
"We will not withdraw our forces from Iraq. We will not leave the Iraqi
people in chaos."

 

 

Keith wrote: Bush's team will undoubtedly realise in
the privacy of the White House that yesterday's vote in the Senate with only
six members present is the most ominous sign yet that American public opinion
and politicians (from both sides) are now at a point of balance, poised to turn
savagely against the present Bush policy at any psychological moment from now
onwards.

The penny has not yet quite dropped in the mind of the American public that
Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with the attack on the Trade Center of 11
September 2001. When it does, perhaps one American senator will have the
courage to say to Bush, "You are a war criminal", just as Tam
Dalyell, the Father of the House of Commons has said to our prime minister.

The more frequently that Bush says that the Americans are in Iraq to stay until
the country has some sort of democracy, the nearer he is getting to the point
of thrusting a Constitution on Iraq and getting out as quickly as
possible.  

 
SENATE SENDS SPENDING BILL FOR WAR COSTS TO PRESIDENT

David Firestone

WASHINGTON, Nov. 3  The Senate gave its final approval on Monday to
President Bush's request for $87.5 billion to occupy and rebuild Iraq and
Afghanistan, completing Congressional action on the largest emergency spending
bill ever sought by a president.

The Senate's action came on a voice vote with only six members present, meaning
that the decisions of individual members on the administration's vision for
Iraq were not recorded. Not voting on the record appealed to both Republicans
nervous about explaining the amount to their constituents, and Democrats who
did not want their patriotism questioned for opposing the bill. On Friday, the
House voted 298 to 121 in favor of the bill. The bill now goes to the president
for his signature.

Senator Robert C. Byrd, a West Virginia Democrat who has been the loudest
Congressional challenger of the administration's Iraq policy, was the lone
voice shouting no during the vote, a contrast to the 12 senators who opposed
the emergency spending bill, known as a supplemental, in a preliminary vote
last month.
New York Times -- 4 November  2003







Keith Hudson, Bath, England,
,
,

RE: [Futurework] Fw: Electronic Voting Machine Action

[Karen Watters Cole]

See HR 2239 @
http://www.congress.org/congressorg/webreturn/?url=http://holt.house.gov

I consider this the one most important we are facing in this country today;
of course every country that holds elections will be facing the same issue
sooner or later.

Selma

- Original Message -
Sent: Tuesday, November 04, 2003 12:05 AM
Subject: Electronic Voting Machine Action


> Commentary by Jim Borrell, sent via email:
>
> This is the action many of us have been waiting for regarding the 2004
> Electronic Voting Machines.
>
> Rep. Rush Holt , New Jersey (D), has introduced a bill (HR 2239) called
> "The Voter Confidence and Increased Acceptability Act" which would require
> all such machines to provide a paper audit trail and thus give some
> assurance against fraud.  Currently he has sixty cosponsors for this bill,
> with not a single one being a Republican.  The Republican leadership
> opposes this legislation with a vengeance and is blocking efforts to bring
> it to the floor where it can see the light of day and be voted on.  We can
> only guess why.
>
> If you have been keeping up with this issue of electronic vote fraud
> through the many e-mails going around, you know how big it is.  It will
> make no difference how good any Democratic candidate is if the GOP
> political operatives rig the results a la Florida and Georgia.  As Josef
> Stalin said, "It's not who does the voting, it's who does the counting."
>
> I suggest two simple steps to take.
>
> 1) Go to the volunteer page at the activist site www.verifiedvoting.org.
> Sign up and follow the suggestions listed under What To Do.  You can log
> onto that page directly at:
>
http://www.verifiedvoting.org/resources/hr2239_volunteers/hr2239_effort.asp";
>
>  2) Let's lobby Moveon.org to make support of this bill a major grass
> roots compaign just as they did so successfully with the FCC regulations
> vote.  This requires going to the Issue Forum at Moveon.org, filling out
> the questionnaire and adding your own comments.  It's the first one at the
> top of the page.  The direct link is:
> http://www.actionforum.com/forum/?forum_id=222
>
> If you would like to hear an excellent radio interview with Rep. Holt
> outlining the details of his bill, log on to Democracy Now at:
> http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=03/10/30/1624227
>
> Other highly informative articles can be found at:
> http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=452972
> http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,60563,00.html
> http://www.truthout.org/docs_03/102503C.shtml
>
> For general ongoing information and action I highly recommend
> www.verifiedvoting.org.  Their Home page is loaded with stuff and things
> to do.
>
> But at the very least I urge you to take the two steps listed above.
> Spread it out over a couple of days if you have to, but get it done and
> pass it on to your friends.  I know we are exhausted and overwhelmed a lot
> of the time by the sheer weight of this juggernaut bearing down on us, but
> I believe this is part of their strategy and I personally refuse to let
> them get away with it as long as I can move my fingers and open my mouth
> to talk.  We're too smart to be snookered like this again.  So, come on,
> get your wits together, folks, get on the web and kick some ass.


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RE: [Futurework] Riots in Riyadh?

[Karen Watters Cole]

Ray, I can
only speak from my observations and proximity to those who believe that Armageddon
is approaching and is the only way to obtain the any peace on earth: they subscribe
to a victor and the defeated, who should be converted before they die in hell.  

 

I hesitate
to generalize that all Christian Zionists believe this in lock step, but the
only peace that some zealots can imagine is what they have been told literally
to obediently work towards, and that is a religious kingdom on earth after a
great purging and suffering.  The ‘lion
will lay down with the lamb’ only after Christ is recognized by all.  Naturally, they see the bloodshed in
Israel vs Palestine as proof their interpretation of sacred texts are correct, but
their goals are not peace as we think of it, but conquest and vindication. 

 

Some Xn Zionists
verge on cultism, others are willingly misled and others passively stand aside.
 “None are so blind as those who
will not see”, which is I’m certain what they would say about me. - KWC

 

We've used fire for thousands of years as
a creative life affirming tool.   Europe used iron.  
Perhaps we should not be afraid but make our piece with it.   The
West has always been afraid of that garbage dump outside Jerusalem they called
Hell.   Perhaps its time to get beyond it.   Fire is man,
water is woman.   Perhaps its time to make our peace with both and go
on.  -  REH 

  



And possibly this seems so
because we have been conditioned to look for them as such.

 

For example, the wildfires
in S. California no doubt remind those absolutely convinced of that persuasion
that it will not be a flood this time, but fire that destroys the earth.  There are plenty of examples in all of
history of great human sin, zealotry opposing secular humanism and nations
warring against each other’s evil empires, with innocents dying.  As just noted, the meaning of something
is the meaning you give it.  

 

Great thematic linkage
between threads this morning. - KWC

 

In my more gloomy moments it seems that the Biblical prohecies
seem to  be unfolding inexorably.  Armageddon.
... 





 arthur





 

US
policy is being used for a narrow set of interests: the Christian evangelicals
seem determined to create a clash of religions -- Christianity vs
Islam.  Oddly, a branch of them, the Christian-Zionists, have added to the
portfolio an Israel-first agenda. Given the Christian-Zionist belief that all
non-Christians will be destroyed, it seems strange that some elements in Israel
have embraced an alliance with these Christian-Zionists, but then the Israelis
probably don't think that God has that in store for them, so don't much
care for the beliefs and values that lie behind Christian-Zionism, happy to
settle for the political support the Christian-Zionists offer Israel. 

In case any of you missed it, by
Christian-Zionist I am referring to people like Tom DeLay -- see the very
interesting speech he gave to the Israeli Knesset recently.

Right now, the Christian evangelical and
Christian-Zionist agenda is powerfully placed within the Administration: Rove,
DeLay, Feith, Perle, Bolton, Reed...et al.  US policy toward the rest of
the world generally and the Arabs and Muslims specifically has been hijacked by
these folks, and is now working against the interests of the country. Sometimes
these US policies are justified by the 'war on terrorism' -- one of the
inventions of the Christian evangelicals -- but the sad fact is that the 'war
on terrorism' is actually aggravating the terror threat, not diminishing it.
This is a pedantic way of saying that Americans will die thanks to these
Christian evangelicals.

As the rest of the world reacts to what
they see as a US out of control, we will see a broadband resistance to the US
take shape. Not only will there be further terror attacks on US interests, but
trade relations will suffer, and cultural ones. I don't know if you ever had a
desire to take your art overseas, but the chances of that happening have taken
a nose-dive in the last two years.  Then, also, we have the trillions of
dollars that this 'war on terror is costing us, or rather costing future
generations. And the impact on US civil liberties, e.g. the 'sneak and peek'
and unlimited uncharged detention policies pushed by Ashcroft and the
President.

The Christian evangelicals simply do not
care about these costs to the US and our interests: they give their religious
goals precedence over US interests.

The American public is gullible. How many
Americans have ever traveled to the Muslim or Arab worlds (other than in a
tank)? How many Americans even know Arabs or Muslims who live in this country,
as their neighbors?  Hell, how many people even on this list???

Americans are patriotic. Combined with their
gullibility, this leaves them open to being exploited, to being conned into
giving their support, if only a passive support, for policies that would
readily appear inimical to a populace that was more knowle

RE: [Futurework] More nuance, less fury (was Riots in Riyadh?)

[Karen Watters Cole]

A Friend To the Other Israel 

By Yoel
Esteron, Washington Post OpEd, Monday, November 3, 2003; Page A19 

The writer is managing editor of the Israeli newspaper
Haaretz

TEL AVIV -- Was it
only a bad dream? Just seven months ago, my girls, the grandchildren of
Holocaust survivors who barely escaped the gas chambers of Auschwitz, left for
school every morning with gas masks slung over their shoulders. Actually, for
several weeks, all the citizens of Israel were instructed to carry their gas
masks around with them 24 hours a day. The Iraqi threat may have been
imaginary, but the fear was real. Saddam Hussein lobbed missiles at Israel in
1991 and had no qualms about using chemical weapons to suppress the Kurdish
uprising in Halabja in 1988. He never gave up his dream of equipping his
country with unconventional arms and "incinerating Tel Aviv," as he
put it. So if there was fear, it was not some kind of weird paranoia.

Maybe Hussein's hidden
arsenal will be found one day and maybe it won't. For the moment, it seems
that, in March 2003, he didn't have the means to carry out that dream of his and
that the Iraqi threat was all bluff and bluster.

One thing is clear: We
are no longer afraid of Iraqi missiles. That threat is gone from the skies of
Israel and the entire Middle East, and for that we are grateful to the Bush
administration and U.S. troops. As the United States passionately debates
whether or not the war was justified, one fact is not in dispute: In the Middle
East today there is one less dangerous and ruthless tyrant -- which is nothing
to sneer at.

The American victory
in Iraq has not eliminated all our fears. Foreign reporters are impressed by
our stamina, by our ability to live with day-to-day Palestinian terror. The
truth is that many Israelis have become as numb to terror as they are to
traffic accidents, swiftly returning to their normal routine. But the fear
doesn't disappear. It controls our lives and exacts a terrible price. We are
emotionally drained and gripped by despair at the thought that we could be
doomed to live with this bloody conflict forever. The Americans understand our
predicament, and we are grateful to the United States for being our friend. In
a world where Israel is vilified and cursed, treated almost like a leper,
American friendship is a source of hope and faith.

Looking more closely
at U.S.-Israeli relations, however, it turns out that things are more
complicated. The Bush administration, with its avid support of Israel, is also
helping the Sharon government to sit on its hands and do nothing to promote a
solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Washington has drawn
up a "road map," but after a succession of sickening attacks on
Israeli cities, not to mention America's troubles in Iraq, the Bush team has
lost its desire to push Israel into following that map. There are many people,
of course, who believe that the political track cannot advance while human
bombs are blowing people to shreds. After this kind of bloodbath, I admit, even
the peaceniks shake with fury and despair. But fury and despair are bad advisers. Without political dialogue and the
creation of hope for the Palestinians' national aspirations, only bombs will
talk.

Bush is helping the
Israeli government, but which Israel stands to gain? There are two Israels. One
wants to control all the land from the Jordan to the sea, step up the building
of Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza and deny the legitimate rights
of the Palestinians. The other Israel is satisfied with a Jewish state inside
the Green Line and prepared to live in peace alongside a Palestinian state in
the West Bank and Gaza.

The Sharon government
represents the Israel of the settlers. But most Israelis, according to surveys
conducted over the past decade, favor the second option. They expect the United
States to keep up its warm and greatly appreciated friendship, for which there
is no substitute, but also to act in a way that will serve their most precious
interests -- which are not necessarily those of the current government.

What
does that mean?
It means a more complex, nuanced American
policy. Vigorously coming to Israel's aid when it is attacked?
Certainly. Understanding and support for the unique predicament of the Jewish
state? Of course. But at the same time, genuine pressure on the Sharon
government to stop the building in the settlements, ease the plight of the Palestinians
and give them hope, and put forward some political plan that they can accept.

To liberate this
region from the fear of Saddam Hussein, Bush sent over hundreds of thousands of
U.S. troops. To stop the insanity of suicide bombings we need sharp thinking --
not aircraft carriers. The question is whether Bush can come up with a policy
that will further peace without harming U.S. friendship with Israel. We will be
very grateful.


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A55092-2003Nov2.html

 

Yes,
absolutely, and here is just anoth

RE: [Futurework] Riots in Riyadh?

[Karen Watters Cole]

Yes,
absolutely, and here is just another indication of how it divides and why we
must pursue a peaceful resolution:

 

Poll controversy as Israel and US labelled biggest
threats to World peace - 30.10.2003 - 17:41



The European Commission is coming under fire for
publishing selective poll

results while failing to release results which
revealed the extent of the

mistrust of Israel and the United States in Europe.

 

Article >> http://euobs.com/?aid=13324&rk=1

 

Before we can get beyond
this, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has to be resolved, annoying as it may
be

 

Lawry



Yes,
everything is really about a small country 4,000 years ago in the middle of a
desert.    Can't we get beyond this?    There are
other ways and we can learn from each other.   

 REH 





In my
more gloomy moments it seems that the  Biblical prohecies seem
to  be unfolding inexorably.  Armageddon. ... 

arthur





US
policy is being used for a narrow set of interests: the Christian evangelicals
seem determined to create a clash of religions -- Christianity vs
Islam.  Oddly, a branch of them, the Christian-Zionists, have added to the
portfolio an Israel-first agenda. Given the Christian-Zionist belief that all
non-Christians will be destroyed, it seems strange that some elements in Israel
have embraced an alliance with these Christian-Zionists, but then the Israelis
probably don't think that God has that in store for them, so don't much
care for the beliefs and values that lie behind Christian-Zionism, happy to
settle for the political support the Christian-Zionists offer Israel. 

 In case any of you missed it, by Christian-Zionist I am referring
to people like Tom DeLay -- see the very interesting speech he gave to the
Israeli Knesset recently.

 Right now, the Christian evangelical and Christian-Zionist agenda
is powerfully placed within the Administration: Rove, DeLay, Feith, Perle,
Bolton, Reed...et al.  US policy toward the rest of the world generally
and the Arabs and Muslims specifically has been hijacked by these folks, and is
now working against the interests of the country. Sometimes these US policies
are justified by the 'war on terrorism' -- one of the inventions of the
Christian evangelicals -- but the sad fact is that the 'war on terrorism' is
actually aggravating the terror threat, not diminishing it. This is a pedantic
way of saying that Americans will die thanks to these Christian evangelicals.

 As the rest of the world reacts to what they see as a US out of control,
we will see a broadband resistance to the US take shape. Not only will there be
further terror attacks on US interests, but trade relations will suffer, and
cultural ones. I don't know if you ever had a desire to take your art overseas,
but the chances of that happening have taken a nose-dive in the last two
years.  Then, also, we have the trillions of dollars that this 'war on
terror is costing us, or rather costing future generations. And the impact on
US civil liberties, e.g. the 'sneak and peek' and unlimited uncharged detention
policies pushed by Ashcroft and the President.

 The Christian evangelicals simply do not care about these costs to
the US and our interests: they give their religious goals precedence over US
interests.

 The American public is gullible. How many Americans have ever
traveled to the Muslim or Arab worlds (other than in a tank)? How many
Americans even know Arabs or Muslims who live in this country, as their
neighbors?  Hell, how many people even on this list???

 Americans are patriotic. Combined with their gullibility, this
leaves them open to being exploited, to being conned into giving their support,
if only a passive support, for policies that would readily appear inimical to a
populace that was more knowledgeable, thoughtful, and skeptical. 

RE: [Futurework] Riots in Riyadh?

[Karen Watters Cole]

And possibly
this seems so because we have been conditioned to look for them as such.

 

For
example, the wildfires in S. California no doubt remind those absolutely
convinced of that persuasion that it will not be a flood this time, but fire
that destroys the earth.  There are
plenty of examples in all of history of great human sin, zealotry opposing secular
humanism and nations warring against each other’s evil empires, with innocents
dying.  As just noted, the meaning
of something is the meaning you give it. 


 

Great thematic
linkage between threads this morning. - KWC

 

In my more gloomy moments
it seems that the  Biblical prohecies seem to  be unfolding
inexorably.  Armageddon. ... 

 

arthur

 

US policy is being used for a narrow set
of interests: the Christian evangelicals seem determined to create a clash of
religions -- Christianity vs Islam.  Oddly, a branch of them, the
Christian-Zionists, have added to the portfolio an Israel-first agenda. Given
the Christian-Zionist belief that all non-Christians will be destroyed, it
seems strange that some elements in Israel have embraced an alliance with these
Christian-Zionists, but then the Israelis probably don't think that God has
that in store for them, so don't much care for the beliefs and values that
lie behind Christian-Zionism, happy to settle for the political support the
Christian-Zionists offer Israel. 

In case any of you missed it, by
Christian-Zionist I am referring to people like Tom DeLay -- see the very
interesting speech he gave to the Israeli Knesset recently.

Right now, the Christian evangelical and
Christian-Zionist agenda is powerfully placed within the Administration: Rove,
DeLay, Feith, Perle, Bolton, Reed...et al.  US policy toward the rest of
the world generally and the Arabs and Muslims specifically has been hijacked by
these folks, and is now working against the interests of the country. Sometimes
these US policies are justified by the 'war on terrorism' -- one of the
inventions of the Christian evangelicals -- but the sad fact is that the 'war
on terrorism' is actually aggravating the terror threat, not diminishing it.
This is a pedantic way of saying that Americans will die thanks to these
Christian evangelicals.

As the rest of the world reacts to what
they see as a US out of control, we will see a broadband resistance to the US
take shape. Not only will there be further terror attacks on US interests, but
trade relations will suffer, and cultural ones. I don't know if you ever had a
desire to take your art overseas, but the chances of that happening have taken
a nose-dive in the last two years.  Then, also, we have the trillions of
dollars that this 'war on terror is costing us, or rather costing future
generations. And the impact on US civil liberties, e.g. the 'sneak and peek'
and unlimited uncharged detention policies pushed by Ashcroft and the
President.

 The Christian evangelicals simply do not care about these costs to
the US and our interests: they give their religious goals precedence over US
interests.

The American public is gullible. How many
Americans have ever traveled to the Muslim or Arab worlds (other than in a
tank)? How many Americans even know Arabs or Muslims who live in this country,
as their neighbors?  Hell, how many people even on this list???

Americans are patriotic. Combined with
their gullibility, this leaves them open to being exploited, to being conned
into giving their support, if only a passive support, for policies that would
readily appear inimical to a populace that was more knowledgeable, thoughtful,
and skeptical.

 



While
the gullibility of Americans is saddening, the pernicious behavior of those who
are willing to exploit this gullibility is nothing short of criminal.

Could
you speak more about this?

REH 





Excellent
article -- thanks for posting it, Keith.

If Turki
al-Faisal is criticizing US policy and actions openly, this is indeed serious.
I figure it will take the US and UK about two decades to repair the damage they
have done to themselves overseas.. What an unnecessary penalty we have to pay
for the ignorance and narrow-focus agenda of the US administration.

The Shah
tried the White Revolution, and found that it led to greater demands for civil
liberties and economic freedom, not fewer. Then with US advice and advisors, he
created SAVAK, an instrument of secret and not so secret repression. And so he
was overthrown and a counter-revolution swept into power, instead of the
moderates who led the anti-Shah effort.  I don't think the Saudis will go
this way; the Saudi populace is more united and coherent than Iran's (and
smaller), and they have the tribal structures of governance, which are accepted
generally by all, to fall back on. Specifically, I am referring to the
diwanniya and succession practices.

There is
no intrinsic reason that the US and Saudi Arabia should not get along. Attacks
on Saudi Arabia have been pretty well organized by those who w

[Futurework] Bush League and The pen is mightier than the sword

[Karen Watters Cole]

"Blueprint for a Mess," The New
York Times Magazine (2 November 2003) by David Rieff 

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/02/magazine/02IRAQ.html

 

It’s been
another busy FW weekend.  Stephen
Straker posted Rieff’s work on Saturday with a succinct note.  I made a go at responding late Sunday
afternoon and posted sections 5 & 6. Keith has downloaded the whole thing
this morning with commentary under another subject heading.  We have surely succeeded in giving it
good broadcast coverage and hopefully someone other than the three of us read
it! 

 

I agree
that Rieff reinforced the perception that this was about oil by the
circumstantial evidence of the soldier’s protecting just that ministry, but to
me the impact of that section was not that it proved a point but that he added
damning weight to the incredible lack of priority in after battle planning.  To me, it’s like differentiating between
homicide and premeditated murder.  It’s
now ‘beyond a reasonable doubt’ that Bush2 went over its head based on false
pretenses, not just false evidence.  

 

How simple
it could have been to protect all of the buildings and plan to have enough
soldiers and tanks there to do it.  What a different image that would have projected, after all
that publicity and demonstration of our ‘shock and awe’ precise bombing
capability.  

 

It is
infuriating to know that men and women are dead unnecessarily and treasure lost
needlessly because ideologues in one department deliberately froze out another
in the pursuit of their textbook plans. 
How stupid to freeze out Arabists and the foundational democracy work of
the Future of Iraq project.  It was
a callous, myopic and reckless thing to do, but that is what happens in a ‘zealous
mode’ and protecting one’s power. 

 

Miz Molly
(Ivins) wrote recently, in response to the conservative media counterattack on GDubya’s
increasingly vocal critics, it is not rage but anger that is building here.  Anger can be productive, rage is
not.  

 

As to the gross
generalization that Bush2 critics are gleeful with death counts and mistakes on
the ground to prove their point, let me unequivocally say that ‘raising hell’
about what is not right, pointing
out what is wrong and where death
and sacrifice have been made for naught
is not gleeful work, but is often necessary to chip away at the powerful imagery
that can be abused by those in power, intimidating and confusing ‘sheeple’.  Not everyone will understand the
ramifications of every policy decision and each diplomatic affront, but they do
understand when a President does not appear at military funerals to honor those
who followed his command into combat, they do understand when they sense
preferential treatment for one elite over the greater common interest in national
security, domestic and foreign policy, they do recognize scandal and
corruption, and I hope they will recognize in good time an imbalance in the system
that needs correction.  The pen is
indeed mightier than the sword and some of us ‘hellraisers’ plan to use it. – KWC

 

 






Keith Hudson, Bath, England,
,
,

[Futurework] Bad advice. Bad example. Bad politics.

[Karen Watters Cole]

Bush Ignores
Soldiers' Burials

By Christopher Scheer, AlterNet, October 30, 2003

On Monday and Tuesday,
amid the suicide bombing carnage that left at least 34 Iraqis dead, three more
U.S. servicemen were killed in combat in Iraq. In the coming days their bodies
will be boxed up and sent home for burial. While en route, the coffins will be
deliberately shielded from view, lest the media capture on film the dark image
of this ultimate sacrifice. It is almost certain, as well, that like all of the
hundreds of U.S. troops killed in this war to date, these dead soldiers will be
interred or memorialized without the solemn presence of the President of the
United States. 

Increasingly, this
proclivity on the part of President Bush to avoid the normal duty of a commander-in-chief
to honor dead soldiers is causing rising irritation among some veterans and
their families who have noticed what appears to be a historically anomalous
slight. 

"This country has
a lot of history where commanders visit wounded soldiers and commanders talked
to families of deceased soldiers and commanders attend funerals. It's just one
of these understood traditions," says Seth Pollack, an 8-year veteran who
served in the First Armored Division in both the first Gulf War and the Bosnia
operation. "At the company level, the division level ... the general
tradition is to honor the soldier, and the way you honor these soldiers is to
have high-ranking officials attend the funeral. For the President not to have
attended any is simply disrespectful." 

Repeated questions on
the matter posed to the White House over the past week earned only a series of
"We'll call you back" and "Let me get back to you on that"
comments from press officer Jimmy Orr. 

Soldiers in the field,
say veterans who have been there, have a lot more on their mind than whether or
not the President has been photographed with a flag-draped coffin. But for
those vets' rights activists who have not only noticed but begun to demand
answers from the Bush Administration, the President lost the benefit of their
doubt by his actions over the past six months. "I was really shocked that
the president wouldn't attend a funeral for a soldier he sent to die,"
said Pollack, who is board president of Veterans
for Common Sense. "But
at the same time I'm not surprised in the least. This Administration has
consistently shown a great deal of hypocrisy between their talk about
supporting the troops and what they've actually done," he added. 

"From the cuts in
the VA budget, reductions in various pays for soldiers deployed . . . to the
most recent things like those we've seen at Fort Stewart, where soldiers who
are wounded are not being treated well, the Administration has shown a blatant
disregard for the needs of the soldiers." Pollack was referring to 600
wounded, ill and injured soldiers at a base in Georgia who were recently reported to be suffering from terrible living
conditions, poor medical treatment and bureaucratic indifference. During a
recent stop at Fort Stewart, President Bush visited returning soldiers but
bypassed the wounded next door. 

"Bush's inaction
is a national disgrace," said one Gulf War I vet, speaking off the record.
"I'm distressed at the lack of coverage – amounting to government
censorship – of the funerals of returning U.S. service members. 

"Bush loves to
go to military bases near fundraisers," he continued. "The taxpayers pay for his trip, then he
rakes in the cash. Soldiers are ordered to behave and be quiet at Bush events.
What a way to get a friendly crowd! The bottom line is that if Bush attended a funeral now, it
would highlight a few things: 1) There's a war going on, stupid; 2) There are
bodies flying home in coffins censored by the Pentagon; and 3) Bush is
insensitive to families and veterans." 

Even as a propaganda
strategy hatched by a PR flak, Bush's absence at funerals or memorial services
– or even being photographed greeting the wounded – is starting to look less
savvy. On September 8, Washington Post columnist Courtland
Milloy wrote of
one D.C. family's outrage that the President had not only been unable to attend
the funeral of Spec. Darryl T. Dent, 21, killed in Iraq while serving in the
District of Colombia's National Guard, but hadn't sent his condolences either. 

"We haven't heard
from him or the White House, not a word," Marion Bruce, Dent's aunt and
family spokeswoman, told Milloy. "I don't want to speak for the whole
family, but I am not pleased." A month later, after it was revealed by
Dana Milbank in the Washington Post that the Pentagon was for the first time enforcing
a ban on
all media photographs of coffins and body bags leaving the war zone or arriving
in America, more critics came to believe in their heart what their guts had
been telling them for some time: that the White House was doggedly
intent on not associating the President with slain American troops, lest it
harm the already tarnished image of the Iraq occupa

RE: [Futurework] Article on Khodorkovsky

[Karen Watters Cole]

Ed, the
CSM agrees with you.

Kremlin’s
corporate seizure a war of elites @ http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/1031/p01s03-woeu.html

“Until now, Putin has
apparently kept the two conflicting Kremlin clans in check by playing one off
the other. But the likely departure of Putin's chief of staff, Alexander
Voloshin, is being seen as a symbol of the new power shift - and a warning to
business. Voloshin - a main Kremlin advocate of big business - is a former
Yeltsin aide known as the "Gray Cardinal" for his master-of-intrigue
influence. He played a critical role in bringing Putin to power.

Dmitri Orlov, deputy
head of Moscow's Center for Political Technologies, predicts that "the
authoritarian nature of the current regime will increase ... and expansion of
the siloviki will have negative
consequences for the whole of civil society and the political future of the
country.

"The problem is
that, being aggressive as they are, and expanding quickly, this group has no
positive program," says Mr. Orlov. "It's clear a change of elites is
taking place at the top, but what is their message? Let it be a totalitarian
program, but it should be clear. It can't just be power for power's sake."

Critics of the growing
power of the siloviki faction,
including many in Russia's print media, charge that the informal system of
checks and balances that prevailed in the Kremlin until now is crumbling, as
the St. Petersburg faction makes its play for more control over Russia's vast
natural resources, which in turn means more political power.”

I believe
that, constitutionally, Putin has one more term to go but cannot run again in
2008.  I don't think that Putin went after K. on petty political grounds,
but on grounds of who runs Russia, the central government or the
oligarchs.  I repeat what I've said before: Russia, except at the village
level, is not inherently democratic.  There are too many diverse interests
and too many nationalities.  When I was there in the mid-nineties, the war
against the Chechens was getting all of the attention, but there were several
other little regional wars going on at the same time - one of the academics I
talked to said as many as twelve.  The central government, whether
czarist, communist or Putinist (KGBist?), firmly believes that to control
Russia, it has to sit on it hard, very hard, and be extremely wary of any
threats to its power.  During the past decade, governments have not been
in a position to do the hard sitting, but it now seems that Putin has built
up a bureaucracy of former KGBists, well able to do the kind of dirty work
that needed to handle threats to his power.  I would be willing to bet
that by the time Putin leaves the scene everything will be under control and
that his successor will be a Putin clone.

 

Ed

 



Dimitri Simes
of The Nixon Center was just on CSpan this morning being interviewed on a
number of topics covering Russia and confirmed that Khodorkovsky may have
political ambitions.  He said that
Putin cannot run for reelection next time, the implication is that K. has to be
taken out of the competition or become a rehabilitated loyalist who will
continue to play Putin’s game.  

Simes mentioned
that the court imposed prison sentence ended Dec. 31st.   Is that correct?

If it extends
beyond that, there would seem to be more politics involved, or Tsarist
tendencies, as Keith has suggested, at play.

KWC 

RE: [Futurework] Bush League Addendum

[Karen Watters Cole]

Let me also
suggest Benjamin’s Rumsfeld’s Folly in Slate @ http://slate.msn.com/id/2090529/
and 

Friedman’s End
of the West?, in today’s NYT @ http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/02/opinion/02FRIE.html.

From Rumsfeld’s folly: “As foreign fighters pour into Iraq to
attack U.S. troops and undermine the occupation, the questions are long
overdue. They suggest that a top official is beginning to recognize what others
outside and inside government have been arguing since Sept. 11, 2001: The
United States faces an insurgency that is not tied to one piece of Middle East
real estate or to one rogue state. 

Instead, it is a global
fight with lots of ideological fuel to burn. Rumsfeld observes that we have no
"metrics" for judging how well we are doing in the larger war on
terror. Surely a key issue is whose ideas are gaining ground. When I worked in
the government, analysts closely followed the Friday sermons and the public
statements of Muslim clerics. Review some recent ones, such as those posted at www.memri.org, and you can see preachers
who are paid by the state, usually counted on for moderation, delivering
pronouncements that approach Osama Bin Laden's in spirit, depicting America as
the head of world infidelity whose presence in Iraq justifies jihad. Rumsfeld
might also consider polling data, such as the June results from the Pew Global Attitudes Project,
which shows majorities in seven of eight Muslim nations surveyed believing
their countries are militarily threatened by the United States—again, much as
Bin Laden argues. 

There is, in fact,
overwhelming evidence that the radicalization of the Muslim world is deepening.
That means more sympathizers, more fund raising, and more recruits for the
jihadist camp. On the tactical side of the war on terror, counting the
terrorists captured or killed, as the administration frequently does, is a
somewhat useful approach—and the record is better than anyone could have
predicted two years ago. But strategically, we're slipping. 

Rumsfeld's
memo, informal as it is, also says much about the basic assumptions of the Bush
foreign policy team. It takes for granted that stopping the next generation of
terrorists is the job of the Pentagon and, secondarily, the CIA. Is a new
organization needed, Rumsfeld asks, to integrate efforts better? Unmentioned is
the existing institution that ought to play the lead role in dealing with the
long-term problem of radical Islam and terror: the State Department.”

 

From Friedman’s End of the West? “What
I'm getting at here is that when you find yourself in an argument with
Europeans over Iraq, they try to present it as if we both want the same thing,
but we just have different approaches. And had the Bush team not been so
dishonest and unilateral, we could have worked together. I wish the Bush team
had behaved differently, but that would not have been a cure-all — because if
you look under the European position you see we have two different visions, not
just tactical differences. Many Europeans really do believe that a dominant
America is more threatening to global stability than Saddam's tyranny.

 

The more I hear this, the more I wonder whether we are
witnessing something much larger than a passing storm over Iraq. Are we
witnessing the beginning of the end of "the West" as we have known it
— a coalition of U.S.-led, like-minded allies, bound by core shared values and
strategic threats?

 

I am not alone in thinking this. Carl Bildt, the former
Swedish prime minister, noted to me in Brussels the other day that for a
generation Americans and Europeans shared the same date: 1945. A whole
trans-Atlantic alliance flowed from that postwar shared commitment to
democratic government, free markets and the necessity of deterring the Soviet
Union. America saw the strength of Europe as part of its own front line and
vice versa — and this bond "made the resolution of all other issues both
necessary and possible," said Mr. Bildt.

 

Today, however, we are motivated by different dates.
"Our defining date is now 1989 and yours is 2001," said Mr. Bildt.
Every European prime minister wakes up in the morning thinking about how to
share sovereignty, as Europe takes advantage of the collapse of communism to
consolidate economically, politically and militarily into one big family. And
the U.S. president wakes up thinking about where the next terror attack might
come from and how to respond — most likely alone. " While we talk of
peace, they talk of security," says Mr. Bildt. "While we talk of
sharing sovereignty, they talk about exercising sovereign power. When we talk
about a region, they talk about the world. No longer united primarily by a
common threat, we have also failed to develop a common vision for where we want
to go on many of the global issues confronting us."

 

RE: [Futurework] Bush League

[Karen Watters Cole]

Stephen, I just finished reading this. Thanks for
posting it.  It covers the
chronology of the planning process quite well, and though it is critical of the
Pentagon and White House, does not subscribe to conspiracy theories for
motives.  I would concur that the
section on neglecting ORHA and the critical but ignored support of the Shiites suggests
where we are now in terms of the next threats, with time running out. 

Those following the other thread on FW ‘getting the
hell out” should read Rieff’s version, even though much of it will be familiar.
He puts it into context, and most importantly, by being in the NYT Sunday
magazine, it will get broad distribution and airing.  This essentially exonerates Garner, who was scapegoated
quickly, but focuses more on the ideological determination of Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz,
Feith and Cheney, by implication.

Given the recent polls that show Bush’s numbers
continuing to erode, although they are temporarily propped up, it’s rather like
returning to your home after a fire destroyed it, knowing that the coming rains
will bring mudslides and more problems, with less margin of error available. The
Bush2 credibility factor is declining precipituosly.  - KWC

 

I have the whole article in word (75KB).  Here are #5 & 6 of Rieff’s piece,
after his work detailing how the Pentagon went in “too deep” with Chalabi and
froze out the foundational work of the Future of Iraq project and other exiles
who didn’t tell them what they wanted to hear, or practicing “selective
deafness”:

 

5. Neglecting ORHA (Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance)
In his Congressional testimony before the war, Douglas Feith described General
Garner's mission as head of ORHA as ''integrating the work of the three
substantive operations'' necessary in postwar Iraq. These were humanitarian
relief, reconstruction and civil administration. Garner, Feith said, would
ensure that the fledgling ORHA could ''plug in smoothly'' to the military's
command structure on the ground in Iraq. But far from plugging in smoothly to
Central Command, ORHA's people found themselves at odds with the military
virtually from the start. 

 

Timothy Carney has given the best and most damning account
of this dialogue of the deaf between ORHA officials and the U.S. military on
the ground in Iraq. ''I should have had an inkling of the trouble ahead for our
reconstruction team in Iraq,'' he wrote in a searing op-ed article in The
Washington Post in late June, ''from the hassle we had just trying to get
there. About 20 of us from the Organization for Reconstruction and Humanitarian
Assistance showed up at a military airport in Kuwait on April 24 for a flight
to Baghdad. But some general's plane had broken down, so he had taken ours.'' 

 

Carney stressed the low priority the military put on ORHA's
efforts. ''Few in the military understood the urgency of our mission,'' he
wrote, ''yet we relied on the military for support. For example, the military
commander set rules for transportation: we initially needed a lead military
car, followed by the car with civilians and a military vehicle bringing up the
rear. But there weren't enough vehicles. One day we had 31 scheduled missions
and only nine convoys, so 22 missions were scrubbed.'' 

 

More substantively, he added that ''no lessons seem to have
taken hold from the recent nation-building efforts in Bosnia or Kosovo, so we
in ORHA felt as though we were reinventing the wheel.'' And doing so under
virtually impossible constraints. Carney quoted an internal ORHA memorandum
arguing that the organization ''is not being treated seriously enough by the
command given what we are supposed to do.'' 

 

The lack of respect for the civilian officials in ORHA was a
source of astonishment to Lieutenant Colonel Rutter. ''I was amazed by what I
saw,'' he says. ''There would be a meeting called by Ambassador Bodine'' -- the
official on Garner's staff responsible for Baghdad -- ''and none of the senior
officers would show up. I remember thinking, This isn't right, and also
thinking that if it had been a commander who had called the meeting, they would
have shown up all right.'' 

Carney attributes some of the blame for ORHA's impotence to
the fact that it set up shop in Saddam Hussein's Republican Palace, where
''nobody knew where anyone was, and, worse, almost no one really knew what was
going on outside the palace. Some of us managed to talk to Iraqis, but not
many, since the military didn't want you to go out for security reasons unless
accompanied by M.P.'s.'' 

 

Kevin Henry of CARE, a humanitarian organization active in
Iraq, says that he still has similar concerns. ''One of my biggest worries,''
he says, ''is the isolation of the palace.'' 

 

Garner disputes these complaints. He is adamant that he
managed to talk with many Iraqis and strongly disagrees with claims that
officials in the palace were out of touch. 

 

Still, ORHA under Pentagon control was compelled to adhere
r

RE: [Futurework] Article on Khodorkovsky

[Karen Watters Cole]

Dimitri Simes of The Nixon Center was just on CSpan this
morning being interviewed on a number of topics covering Russia and confirmed that
Khodorkovsky may have political ambitions.  He said that Putin cannot run for reelection next time, the
implication is that K. has to be taken out of the competition or become a rehabilitated
loyalist who will continue to play Putin’s game.  

Simes mentioned that the court imposed prison sentence ended
Dec. 31st.   Is that correct?

If it extends beyond that, there would seem to be more
politics involved, or Tsarist tendencies, as Keith has suggested, at play.

KWC

 






Keith Hudson, Bath, England,
,
,

RE: [Futurework] We're getting the hell out

[Karen Watters Cole]

The article further quotes Commerce Sec. Evans
endorsing Russia’s flat tax at the Heritage Foundation and “President Bush, in Russia last year to
see President Vladimir Putin, said: "The good news is that the flat tax in
Russia is a good, fair tax -- much more fair, by the way, than many Western
countries, I might add."

…“The 15 percent rate
does not take effect until January. In the
meantime, Bremer has abolished all taxes except for real estate, car
sales, gasoline and the pleasantly named "excellent and first class hotel
and restaurant tax." Even while leaving these Hussein-era levies in place,
Bremer exempted his coalition authority, the
armed forces, their contractors and humanitarian organizations.
Exempting occupation personnel leaves only the Iraqis to pay taxes, as well as
journalists, business people and other foreigners.”

Social engineering can be a lot of fun when you don’t have
to pay the political price back home. 
- KWC

 

REH wrote: With the exception of the military, roads and education what do
they tax for in Islamic countries? Here in the US we
have a very complicated system that upholds the culture.   The flat
tax would reduce support to many activities that are uniquely Western in
culture and not related to Islamic values.   So now we know that
Norquist, Graham, Armey, Kemp and Forbes are Moslems?    Or that
they have enough money to do what they want and screw the little guy that needs
the government to make things available for his children that give him equality
in the possibilities Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.  

 



Repeating what other
colonial powers have done in times past, instituting policies or systems not
possible to do on the home front, the US imposes a flat tax on Iraq that might
be the equivalent of a Superbowl ad: great marketing for a huge audience.  KWC

 

U.S. Administrator
Imposes Flat Tax System on Iraq 

By Dana Milbank and Walter Pincus, Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, November 2, 2003; Page A09 @ http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A50031-2003Nov1.html

The flat tax, long a dream of economic conservatives, is
finally getting its day -- not in the United States, but in Iraq.

It took L. Paul Bremer, the U.S. administrator in Baghdad,
no more than a stroke of the pen Sept. 15 to accomplish what eluded the likes
of publisher Steve Forbes, Reps. Jack Kemp (R-N.Y.) and Richard K. Armey
(R-Tex.), and Sen. Phil Gramm (R-Tex.) over the course of a decade and two
presidential campaigns.

"The highest individual and corporate income tax rates
for 2004 and subsequent years shall
not exceed 15 percent,"
Bremer wrote in Coalition Provisional Authority Order Number 37, "Tax
Strategy for 2003," issued last month.

Voilà! Iraq has a flat tax, and the 15 percent rate
is even lower than Forbes (17 percent) and Gramm (16 percent) favored for the
United States. And, unless a future Iraqi government rescinds it, the flat tax
will remain long after the Americans have left.

"It's extremely good news," said Grover Norquist, head of Americans for Tax
Reform and a Bush administration ally. Bremer's vaguely worded edict leaves open the possibility that Iraqis could
face different levels of taxation below 15 percent, but "they told me it's
a flat rate and it appears as though it's a flat rate," Norquist said. The
tax fighter added: "It
might be a hint to the rest of us."

Bremer's new economic policy for Iraq will slash
Saddam Hussein's top tax rate for individuals and businesses from 45 to 15
percent. Of course, since Hussein's government, like others in the Middle East,
almost never enforced tax collection, there is no real history of paying taxes in the country.

 





Bremer's
statement in the following excerpt from Joel Brinkley's piece in today's NYT is
coded language for:

"We're getting the hell out of here. Our soldiers are at the point of
mutiny. Americans are going to turn aginst Bush with vengeance quite soon
unless we leave. We'll concoct a Constitution and fling it at the Iraqis and
let them get on with it. Never mind that Saddam Hussein has not been caught.
Never mind that the Constitution will not resolve the problem of the
relationship between the Sunnis and the Shias, nor that between the Kurds and
Turkey. We're getting out because Bush won't have a snowflake in hell's chance
of re-election if this goes on for much longer."

When the Americans get out of Iraq by the spring there'll very likely be a
bloodbath and either the Sunnis + Saddam's Fedayeen will win or the Shias will
win. It's as simple and messy as that unless -- and it's very big unless -- the
Iranians invade Iraq and occupy the southern part of the country in order to
protect the Shias.

As far as the American energy situation is concerned, the country will be back
to where they were a year ago, having to rely on Saudi Arabia as their main
Middle East oil sujppliers. And SA is just about the most unstable country in
the world right now. (See my posting of the

RE: [Futurework] We're getting the hell out

[Karen Watters Cole]

Repeating
what other colonial powers have done in times past, instituting policies or
systems not possible to do on the home front, the US imposes a flat tax on Iraq
that might be the equivalent of a Superbowl ad: great marketing for a huge
audience.  KWC

 

U.S. Administrator Imposes Flat Tax System on Iraq 

By Dana Milbank and Walter Pincus,
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, November 2, 2003; Page A09 @ http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A50031-2003Nov1.html

The flat tax, long a
dream of economic conservatives, is finally getting its day -- not in the
United States, but in Iraq.

It took L. Paul
Bremer, the U.S. administrator in Baghdad, no more than a stroke of the pen
Sept. 15 to accomplish what eluded the likes of publisher Steve Forbes, Reps.
Jack Kemp (R-N.Y.) and Richard K. Armey (R-Tex.), and Sen. Phil Gramm (R-Tex.)
over the course of a decade and two presidential campaigns.

"The highest
individual and corporate income tax rates for 2004 and subsequent years shall not exceed 15 percent," Bremer wrote in Coalition
Provisional Authority Order Number 37, "Tax Strategy for 2003,"
issued last month.

Voilà! Iraq has a flat tax, and the 15 percent
rate is even lower than Forbes (17 percent) and Gramm (16 percent) favored for
the United States. And, unless a future Iraqi government rescinds it, the flat
tax will remain long after the Americans have left.

"It's extremely
good news," said Grover Norquist,
head of Americans for Tax Reform and a Bush administration ally. Bremer's vaguely worded edict leaves open the possibility that Iraqis
could face different levels of taxation below 15 percent, but "they told
me it's a flat rate and it appears as though it's a flat rate," Norquist
said. The tax fighter added: "It
might be a hint to the rest of us."

Bremer's new
economic policy for Iraq will slash Saddam Hussein's top tax rate for
individuals and businesses from 45 to 15 percent. Of course, since Hussein's
government, like others in the Middle East, almost never enforced tax
collection, there
is no real history of paying taxes in the country.

 

Bremer's
statement in the following excerpt from Joel Brinkley's piece in today's NYT is
coded language for:

"We're getting the hell out of here. Our soldiers are at the point of
mutiny. Americans are going to turn aginst Bush with vengeance quite soon
unless we leave. We'll concoct a Constitution and fling it at the Iraqis and
let them get on with it. Never mind that Saddam Hussein has not been caught.
Never mind that the Constitution will not resolve the problem of the relationship
between the Sunnis and the Shias, nor that between the Kurds and Turkey. We're
getting out because Bush won't have a snowflake in hell's chance of re-election
if this goes on for much longer."

When the Americans get out of Iraq by the spring there'll very likely be a
bloodbath and either the Sunnis + Saddam's Fedayeen will win or the Shias will
win. It's as simple and messy as that unless -- and it's very big unless -- the
Iranians invade Iraq and occupy the southern part of the country in order to
protect the Shias.

As far as the American energy situation is concerned, the country will be back
to where they were a year ago, having to rely on Saudi Arabia as their main
Middle East oil sujppliers. And SA is just about the most unstable country in
the world right now. (See my posting of the interview with Prince Turki from
this week-end's Financial Times Magazine.)

Keith Hudson


BAGHDAD, Iraq, Nov. 1 -- Almost every sector of life in Baghdad was off kilter
on Saturday, usually a normal business day here, because of anonymous warnings
that hospitals, schools and other unspecified sites would be the targets of
bombings.

Residents kept their children home from school. The United States military kept
most soldiers in their barracks, and shopkeepers complained that they had no
business.

After one of the worst weeks of violence here in months, L. Paul Bremer III,
the special representative for Iraq, said the American strategy for quelling
the attacks was to "encourage Iraqis to play a central role" in
securing the nation.







Keith Hudson, Bath, England,
,
,

RE: [Futurework] clarification: All the President's votes?

[Karen Watters Cole]

After an
offline query, I’d like to clarify something from my last post, in which I
detailed that Sen. Ron Wyden is a Jew, but did not mention religious
affiliation of any of the other names. 
The short answer is that I am familiar with Wyden, but not the others mentioned.  

 

In a very
secular state where church competes with bountiful recreation, and the Jewish
population is definitely a minority, Wyden’s being a Jew has been an issue for
some, though he was reelected by a wide margin.  I hope it was understood that religious affiliation was
mentioned as added layering to understanding, just as knowing that Tom Daschle
and Dick Gephardt are Catholics, as well as Jeb Bush (re: the recent
intervention in a death with dignity issue in Florida) or that Tom DeLay is a
rabid, absolutist Zionist Christian, which partly explains his sometimes
bizarre pronouncements.  Please
note I ‘pick on my own’ vehemently. I scorn DeLay because he uses personal
convictions without regard to protecting the separation of church and state,
and promotes a particular agenda that is not for the greater common good.  I used to live in his district in Texas and
disliked him then, also.  

 

I admire Wyden’s
personal dedication and his family history that has leant itself to his public
service. He made a name for himself here by being the Ralph Nader of the senior
citizen Gray Panthers, and I like his bulldog willingness to filibuster, work
behind the scenes, be the spoiler (as in exposing BP’s secret gas price scheme
on the West Coast several years ago and more recently exposing the Pentagon’s
plans to create a terrorism betting office) when necessary.  Most of the time he is a team player
and made a point of working in concert with Gordon Smith, who once ran against
him, after Smith was elected as our other Senator.  Both of them, plus my House of Rep. Earl Blumenauer, hear
from me frequently.  

 

Wyden is also
a pro-environmentalist legislator most of the time, though he voted yesterday
against the Harkin amendment to the Healthy Forest bill, which I don’t
understand yet.  Back when I
thought about trying to work as a legislative aide, he would be my first choice
to work for.  

 

Maybe I should
add that Smith is a Mormon (I don’t know about Earl, but he always wears bow
ties.  Now I’m being sassy.) and
that in his first year announced his opposition to right to die legislation
because of his Mormon teachings. 
Of course, I respect individual religious values, but I respect Wyden
for representing the people who elected him ahead of his own personal
principles – those are the
political principles I meant to highlight.

 

Karen 

 

Please, Arthur, let’s not use
the word “hero” with anyone in politics today.  I’m a great believer in mythological heroes, some military
heroes, sports heroes, and especially fire fighters, police, medical and science
research heroes, and everyday heroes.

 

Yes, Byrd has a ‘colored past’,
as do many old Dixie politicians. He also ‘mended his ways ‘, as did Strom
Thurmond, much later, under pressure to do so.  But my religious upbringing urges me to give people a second
chance in life. Some don’t always deserve it.  Some even get third chances. Some never last that long and
are forever remembered at their worst. There are lots of examples of those. 

 

Of a younger earnest generation,
I am intrigued by Dennis Kucinich, who is running for president unafraid of the
sticky labels he acquires on the trail. But until now his political work for
his home state has been off the national map.  Byrd has made a career of sticking to core Democratic
principles, and serves as an elder statesman to his party, which has evolved
back and forth since he entered politics. 

 

On a more personal note, I think
my former professor, David Boren, ex-Gov. and Senator of Oklahoma has held fast
to the moderately conservative wing of the Democratic party, even with all the
events since 1970 that changed the political landscape.  He is now Chancellor at Univ of
Oklahoma.  I also thought Sam Nunn
(D-GA) was top-notch in his time, and has served the country well since
then.  I also like Jay Rockefeller and
my own Sen. Ron Wyden, a Jew who came to prominence in Oregon after championing
the Gray Panthers and who has steadfastly defended Oregonians choice (twice) on
right to die legislation when it has been challenged, even though his personal
values oppose it. 

 

Many former politicians do
better work once they are off the taxpayer’s payroll.  Think of the work Colorado’s party boy Gary Hart and New
Hampshire’s xxx ??? have done with terrorism/homeland security issues.  Lee Hamilton also comes to mind, now with
the Wilson Center.  The best
example today may be Jimmy Carter, whose successes and failures are both deeply
tied to his principles. 

 

While in the game, politics is
like being a plumber, you have to occasionally get dirty to keep things
flowing.  It is the public’s job to
be alert and knowledgeable enough 

RE: Re: [Futurework] All the President's votes?

[Karen Watters Cole]

Please,
Arthur, let’s not use the word “hero” with anyone in politics today.  I’m a great believer in mythological
heroes, some military heroes, sports heroes, and especially fire fighters,
police, medical and science research heroes, and everyday heroes.

 

Yes, Byrd has
a ‘colored past’, as do many old Dixie politicians. He also ‘mended his ways ‘,
as did Strom Thurmond, much later, under pressure to do so.  But my religious upbringing urges me to
give people a second chance in life. Some don’t always deserve it.  Some even get third chances. Some never
last that long and are forever remembered at their worst. There are lots of
examples of those. 

 

Of a younger earnest
generation, I am intrigued by Dennis Kucinich, who is running for president
unafraid of the sticky labels he acquires on the trail. But until now his
political work for his home state has been off the national map.  Byrd has made a career of sticking to
core Democratic principles, and serves as an elder statesman to his party,
which has evolved back and forth since he entered politics. 

 

On a more
personal note, I think my former professor, David Boren, ex-Gov. and Senator of
Oklahoma has held fast to the moderately conservative wing of the Democratic
party, even with all the events since 1970 that changed the political
landscape.  He is now Chancellor at
Univ of Oklahoma.  I also thought
Sam Nunn (D-GA) was top-notch in his time, and has served the country well
since then.  I also like Jay
Rockefeller and my own Sen. Ron Wyden, a Jew who came to prominence in Oregon
after championing the Gray Panthers and who has steadfastly defended Oregonians
choice (twice) on right to die legislation when it has been challenged, even
though his personal values oppose it. 

 

Many former
politicians do better work once they are off the taxpayer’s payroll.  Think of the work Colorado’s party boy Gary
Hart and New Hampshire’s xxx ??? have done with terrorism/homeland security
issues.  Lee Hamilton also comes to
mind, now with the Wilson Center.  The
best example today may be Jimmy Carter, whose successes and failures are both deeply
tied to his principles. 

 

While in the
game, politics is like being a plumber, you have to occasionally get dirty to
keep things flowing.  It is the
public’s job to be alert and knowledgeable enough to keep an eye on what is
exactly flowing, and watchdog groups help. It’s just gotten to be such a big
enterprise that many people get dismayed of ever having an impact and they give
up trying. - Karen

 

Arthur wrote: Karen, type in "senator robert byrd" kkk in Google and you will see your hero in
a rather different light.

 

Ed, Harry, these are good
comments about the nature of politicians and the public's often naïve
expectations about them and by extension, government.  

 

There are still 'politicians
with principles' around, and Sen. Bobby Byrd comes quickly to mind, as
irascible as he can be.  The
trouble with politics is that you do must sometimes compromise and do business
with people or issues that you would generally oppose or care not to be
identified with.  Representative
politics is a process, a system, and requires a lot of flexibility to move
forward, as most know, but obviously, some do not. 

 

It is much easier to think of
bad examples than good ones, especially because current politics is framed by
the neoconservative principle of Attack Gov't and by the media's propensity for
highlighting bad over good. 
Remember how public servants looked good right after 9/11 when there was
reason to honor their sacrifice and work? 


 

Because the business of
government is mostly about dispensing money, therefore making priority
decisions, there will always be conflict and plenty of misunderstanding.  We have made politics another kind of
religion, therefore increasing the likelihood of creating false gods and
celebrity impressions, whereas the majority of 'believers', participants in the
process, are hard-working and dedicated, if not spectacularly successful or
popular.  

 

As amusing and sad as is
Arnold's ascension, it is not that different than widows who finish the term of
their deceased spouse.  He is just
very good with the camera and knows how to manipulate a crowd.  He is playing the "hero comes to
the rescue" role.  He has a
lot to prove, and no doubt will do his best, but this time the game is real, as
in money and lives through policies that are legislated by compromise to reach
a consensus.  

 

It's interesting that the two
most powerful men in the GOP right now both came from storied wealthy,
political families, both are fitness buffs and have/had more personality than
experience in politics and depend on a bevy of senior advisors with more brains
than brawn to guide them.  If these
men came from the Democrat party, current political punditry would be spun much
differently.  My grandfather would
be shaking his head that this can't be the Republican party.  I have no doubt that futu

[Futurework] trick or treat

[Karen Watters Cole]

Just in time for Halloween - Mark Fiore’s animated Energy Bill @ http://www.sfgate.com/columnists/fiore/

 

 

RE: Re: [Futurework] All the President's votes?

[Karen Watters Cole]

Ed, Harry, these
are good comments about the nature of politicians and the public’s often naïve expectations
about them and by extension, government.  

 

There are
still ‘politicians with principles’ around, and Sen. Bobby Byrd comes quickly to
mind, as irascible as he can be.  The trouble with politics is that you do must sometimes compromise
and do business with people or issues that you would generally oppose or care
not to be identified with.  Representative
politics is a process, a system, and requires a lot of flexibility to move
forward, as most know, but obviously, some do not. 

 

It is much
easier to think of bad examples than good ones, especially because current
politics is framed by the neoconservative principle of Attack Gov’t and by the
media’s propensity for highlighting bad over good.  Remember how public servants looked good right after 9/11
when there was reason to honor their sacrifice and work?  

 

Because the
business of government is mostly about dispensing money, therefore making
priority decisions, there will always be conflict and plenty of
misunderstanding.  We have made
politics another kind of religion, therefore increasing the likelihood of
creating false gods and celebrity impressions, whereas the majority of ‘believers’,
participants in the process, are hard-working and dedicated, if not
spectacularly successful or popular.  

 

As amusing and
sad as is Arnold’s ascension, it is not that different than widows who finish
the term of their deceased spouse.  He is just very good with the camera and knows how to
manipulate a crowd.  He is playing
the “hero comes to the rescue” role. 
He has a lot to prove, and no doubt will do his best, but this time the
game is real, as in money and lives through policies that are legislated by compromise
to reach a consensus.  

 

It’s
interesting that the two most powerful men in the GOP right now both came from storied
wealthy, political families, both are fitness buffs and have/had more
personality than experience in politics and depend on a bevy of senior advisors
with more brains than brawn to guide them.  If these men came from the Democrat party, current political
punditry would be spun much differently. 
My grandfather would be shaking his head that this can’t be the
Republican party.  I have no doubt
that future history books will continue to emphasize the significance of the
Supreme Court’s intervention in our tale of history, and it may never be known
just how much complicity was involved. 
No doubt, it will not be just fiction writers who will speculate how the
US government would be had the outcome been different. - KWC

 

Ed
wrote: Harry,
my problem is that I'm not very sophisticated.  I hold to a naive belief
that politicians should operate from a body of principles and not be elected
simply because they project the kind of image that appears right at the moment. 
When I was a kid in rural Saskatchewan, there were politicians with principles
around.  But that is a bygone era, as long ago as the stone age.

 

Harry
wrote: Ed, Catching
up after completely changing my E-Mail set-up.
> 
> After bringing me up-to-date on Canadian politics, you said:
> 
> ">I've snipped the rest of your posting because I'm still hoping
> to wake 
> >up to find that the election of Ahnold Schwarzenegger was some
> kind of 
> >comic dream!  If it isn't, all one can say is the people deserve
> the 
> >kind of government they elect." 
> 
> I think your remark about Schwarzenegger is an indication that we
> have elevated politicians into a kind of nobility. The Lords and
> Ladies knew they were born to the purple. That the commoners were
> not only a class apart but also somewhat inferior. Certainly, not
> material for the upperclass.
> 
> I think that a similar attitude has led to the sneering at Arnold
> even as Ronald was sneered at in his time. They were not
> politicians, so how can they aspire to the role of leading the
> country -- or even a State?
> 
> A favorite painting of mine is hung somewhere in Capitol building
> (I think). It is a picture of George Washington handing back his
> letters of commission to Congress. He had completed the job of
> throwing out the English, and was now going home.
> 
> I wish politicians would think in terms of going home. As it is,
> they like to stay in power forever. Al Gore finished college, did
> a short stint in Vietnam, spent a year in divinity school, and in
> his late twenties went to Congress. That's where he spent his
> time until he was defeated by Bush.
> 
> He is without doubt the professional politician. We don't really
> elect people to represent us. Rather, they elect themselves and
> quite right  for who could possibly do the job better than they.
> People like Reagan and Schwarzenegger, not to mention Jesse
> Ventura, are interlopers.
> 
> They shouldn't be allowed to into the Halls of the Godly.
>>>

[Futurework] web gleanings

[Karen Watters Cole]

Gleaned from
an abundance of interesting items at Public Education Network newsweekly: www.publiceducation.org

 

Schools With Poor, Minority Students Get
Less State Funds

School districts in Illinois and New York that have large
numbers of poor students get some $2,200 less in state and local funds per
student than other schools, according to a new report, "The Funding Gap," from The Education Trust.  Alaska did the
best, providing $840 in additional funds per student to school districts with
low-income students, followed by Delaware, which provided more than $600.  School districts with large minority
populations also get short-changed, the report said. New York again has the
largest gap ($2,000 per student), followed by Kansas and Nebraska, both with
nearly $1,800. On the flip side, Massachusetts provided an extra $940 per
student to school districts with a lot of minority students and Georgia an
extra $560, reports Pamela M. Prah. All dollar figures have been adjusted to
take into account local cost differences
and the extra cost of educating poorer
students, the trust said.  "In
too many states, we see yet again that the very students who need the most, get
the least," Kevin Carey, senior policy analyst and author of the report,
said. "At a time when schools, districts and states are rightly focusing
on closing the achievement gap separating low-income and minority students from
other students, states can and must do more to close these funding gaps."

http://www.stateline.org/stateline/?pa=story&sa=showStoryInfo&id=332153

 

No Parent Left Behind

Educators have recognized for some time that parent
involvement plays a critical role in student achievement. Especially in urban
districts it has become increasingly clear that failure to enlist parents as
partners seriously hampers any school-reform efforts. But it's only recently
that many schools, districts, and states have been taking concrete steps to help
what's often a tense relationship. Particularly in urban areas, school
officials often complain that parents are too busy or not sufficiently caring
to get involved at their childrens' schools. Yet at the same time many parents
say they feel threatened or unwelcome, and that what many principals mean by
"parent involvement" is really bake sales and book drives. The result: open hostility between people who ultimately all have
the same goals. To improve this unhappy state
of affairs, the sweeping 2002 No Child Left Behind Act has for the first time
put in place laws intended to foster parent involvement. The mandates included
in the federal act range from better communication on such things as test
scores and parents' options to requirements that schools develop a "school-parent"
compact and a plan to involve parents. At this point, most of the reforms still
exist more on paper than in practice. But just formally recognizing the
importance of the issue - the need for involvement that's truly collaborative -
is a step in the right direction, say educators. "People in the [school]
community have to see that communicating well with families is part of their
professional job," says Joyce Epstein, director of the Center on School,
Family, and Community Partnerships at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.
"That's explicit now. If No Child Left Behind really were implemented as
intended, it would really be quite exciting." As Amanda Paulson reports, a
number of states and districts are also trying out their own strategies.  http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/1028/p12s01-legn.htm

 

No Cow Left Behind

Since testing seems to be a cornerstone to improving
performance, Kenneth Remsen doesn't understand why this principle isn't applied
to other businesses that are not performing up to expectations. In this satire,
he examines the problem of falling milk prices and wonders why testing cows wouldn't
be effective in bringing up milk prices since testing students is going to
bring up test scores. Remsen doesn't want to hear about the cows that just came
to the barn from the farm down the road that didn't provide the proper
nutrition or a proper living environment. All cows need to meet the standard. It
will be necessary for all farmers to become certified. This will mean some more
paperwork and testing of knowledge of cows but in the end this will lead to the
benefit of all. It will also be necessary to allow barn
choice for the cows. If cows are not meeting
the standard in certain farms they will be allowed to go to the barn of their
choice. Transportation may become an issue but it is critical that cows be
allowed to leave their low performing barns. This will force low performing
farms to meet the standard or else they will simply go out of business.  

http://www.storm-lake.k12.ia.us/Admin/Pages/ncowlb.htm

[Futurework] Neuroscience to social science

[Karen Watters Cole]

Based on prior
conversations on the list, this should be of interest.  Also nice to know that TV reruns can be
health educational material.  See
below.   KWC

U.S. National Academy
of Sciences Institute of Medicine (IOM) Annual Meeting 2003
http://www.iom.edu/event.asp?id=10244

THE SCIENTIST - October 30, 2003

From neuroscience to social science

Institute of
Medicine meeting links basic research, health policy, and Law and Order | By Eugene Russo

 

For the first time in its history, the IOM made mental
health a focus of its annual meeting, held Monday and Tuesday
(October 27-28) in Washington, DC.

 

The Monday session was an attempt to highlight issues
associated with everything from mental health-related basic science to national
mental health policy, in an effort to further "integrate mental health
into the mainstream" of science and health policy and research, IOM
President Harvey Fineberg told The Scientist.

 

There is a significant gap between the wide scope of mental
health afflictions and their "recognition and appreciation," he said.

 

The meeting began with presentations on the basic science
end of the spectrum-in particular, basic research findings providing insight
into social behavior and illness. Baylor College of Medicine Professor Huda
Zoghbi suggested that her research into Rett syndrome, a rare
neurodevelopmental disorder that affects one in every 15,000 girls, may have
implications for understanding the molecular details of movement disorders as well
as of autism,
seizures, and disorders related to anxiety and cognition in general. Specifically, Zoghbi's lab
is interested in the role of the gene that encodes methyl CpG-binding protein
2, which, in its mutated form, has been shown to be a major contributor to the
onset of Rett syndrome.

 

Columbia University neuroscientist and Nobel Laureate Eric
Kandel spoke about his lab's work on learning and memory, specifically how a
neuronal memory mechanism called long-term potentiation has been associated with fear and anxiety in mouse models.
Asked by an attendee how such research might be applied to population-level fear and anxiety such as that seen in places like Israel, Palestine, and post-September 11 New York City, Kandel suggested that neuroscience will
one day spawn a field of "molecular
sociobiology"
that could explain such phenomena.

 

Echoing the notion that basic science has potential social
implications, National Institute of Mental Health Director Thomas Insel
illustrated how biological studies of autism may be part of a broader, growing
"social
neuroscience" that
would identify targets for mental health treatment. He spoke of investigations
into oxytocin, a peptide hormone that in rodents has been shown to play a role
in social recognition and pair-bond formation. Because little is known about
the biological basis
of autism,
Insel is looking at mechanisms of social behavior in hopes that they might open
a window into social deficits associated with autism, whose hallmarks in humans
include minimal language development and lack of social reciprocity.

 

A
different sort of social mental disorder, the psychological impact of violence, was the subject of an afternoon panel.
Psychology Professor Paul Slovic of the University of Oregon pointed out the
frequent occurrence of "probability neglect" - i.e., the magnitude of
people's responses to unsettling violent events like those on September 11 is
disproportionate to the likelihood that such events will occur. He noted, for
example, that people who avoided air travel after the terrorist attacks and
drove hundreds of miles instead were much more likely to be injured or killed.

 

Several presentations also addressed the "nations"
end of the mental health spectrum, namely, national policies necessary to
ameliorate disparities in mental healthcare among minorities, the inadequacies
of mental health insurance coverage, and the epidemic of suicide. Incremental reform of the healthcare system is
no longer a viable option; a fundamental transformation is needed, said Michael Hogan, director of the
President's New Freedom Commission on Mental Health.

 

And such healthcare issues are very relevant to the agenda
of biomedical researchers, noted American Association for the Advancement of
Science Chairman Floyd Bloom, director of neuropharmacology at the Scripps
Research Institute. Bloom argued that scientists and policymakers should
realize that the healthcare system, in its current dilapidated state, will not
be able to take advantage of much-heralded promise of "postgenomics medicine." Scientists "must insist
that the system is prepared for discoveries of the future," said Bloom.

 

Presentations also addressed methods of educating the public
about mental health problems. Neal Baer, a physician and executive producer for
the television program Law and Order SVU,
discussed representation of mental illness in the media and argued that even
fictional television programs c

RE: [Futurework] Word.A.Day--pundit

[Karen Watters Cole]

Arthur, I love it that "pundit" comes from Sanskrit.

Following the trail of one of the quotes below, here is a link to Russell
Baker's New York Review of Books comments re: Paul Krugman's book, The Great
Unraveling: Losing our way in the New Century.  IMHO, Baker is himself a
pundit and commentator with a wry (rye) gift with words - no boring white
bread here:
"When The New York Times tempted Paul Krugman to try daily journalism, no
one, including Krugman, could have anticipated what was to come. Krugman was
an Ivy League professor of economics, a scholar acclaimed for his youthful
brilliance, and an author of learned books and occasional commentary on
international money crises.  All clues pointed to a master of the tedious.
One suspected the Times wanted someone to be boring in a genteel, scholarly
way twice a week on its Op-Ed page.  Krugman himself may have thought so.
In The Great Unraveling he says he intended to write about globalization,
world financial problems, and sometimes the "vagaries" of the domestic
economy.
Before anyone could say "narcolepsy," politics intruded, and it quickly
became obvious that Krugman was incapable of being either boring or genteel,
but was highly gifted at writing political journalism.  Starting in January
of the election year 2000, he rapidly acquired a large, adoring readership
which treasured his column as an antidote for the curiously polite treatment
President Bush was receiving from most of the mainstream media.
At his most polite, Krugman was irreverent, but much of the time he seemed
to think irreverence was much too good for the President, the people around
him, and almost everything he stood for. In The Great Unraveling he commits
the ultimate rudeness: Bush, he says, is surreptitiously leading a radical
right-wing political movement against American government as it has
developed in the past century. The words "radical" and "right-wing" are bad
words in the political lexicon of mainstream American journalism. Normally
they are simply not used to describe presidents, except by the kind of
people who write for funky little out-of-the-mainstream journals.
As a Times columnist, Krugman is as mainstream as it gets. His readiness to
apply disapproved words to the President helps to explain why his column
quickly became catnip to so many who had voted for Al Gore and were still
angry about the bizarre manner of Bush's elevation. For them, to have the
Bush presidency so relentlessly and expertly savaged was a consolation of
sorts.
>From the White House viewpoint criticism itself was bad enough-Bush people
are famous for thin skin-but the really troublesome problem was that Krugman
seemed to know what he was talking about. This is not entirely unheard of
among political columnists, but the typical Washington pundit is
stupefyingly uninformed about economics, a field in which Krugman is
exceedingly well informed. He had the professional skills needed to tell
when the political rhetoric was nonsense and he took a short-tempered
professor's sadistic delight in holding oafs up to ridicule.
The vocabulary Krugman applied to the President bristled with words such as
"dishonesty," "lying," "mendacity," and "fraud." Among political pundits
such language verges on the taboo.  As a class, political columnists do not
shrink from the occasional well poisoning, but on matters of etiquette they
are conservative to the verge of stuffiness, and they tend to view plain
speech as the mark of the ill-mannered bumpkin."
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/16730
Arthur wrote: Finally, a description of who FWers are and what we do!!!

pundit (PUN-dit) noun also pandit

   1. A learned person.

   2. A person who offers commentary or judgments as an expert on
  a certain topic.

[From Hindi pandit, from Sanskrit pandita (learned).]

"According to a top psychologist, the brain starts working the moment you're
born and never stops until you become a TV football pundit. I understand our
psychologist actually reached his conclusion, having studied Mercy Green,
the most famous pundit in the history of punditry. Mercy Green is not the
real name; it's an anagram I'm using so as not to get on the wrong side of
him." Grant Us Mercy; Daily Record (Glasgow, UK); Oct 22, 2003.

"This is not entirely unheard of among political columnists, but the typical
Washington pundit is stupefyingly uninformed about economics, a field in
which Krugman is exceedingly well informed."   Russell Baker; The Awful
Truth; The New York Review of Books; Nov 6, 2003.

This week's theme: words derived from Sanskrit.


___
Futurework mailing list
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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[Futurework] Ramadan a launch date for global terror?

[Karen Watters Cole]

Stratfor
Weekly (free intel) 10.27.03: Ramadan attacks raise fears of global violence

Key selected
excerpts: 

 

“The string of attacks in Iraq raises an alarming
question for U.S. and other Western countries fighting al Qaeda: Were these
attacks a symbolic trigger -- a message from al Qaeda to its allies around the
globe -- to kickstart a
campaign of attacks
against Western allies, assets and infrastructure across the globe? Although
the answer currently is unclear, the bombings will cause Western governments
and businesses to respond as though Ramadan will be a month of bloodletting.

 

…The ability of militant Islamist organizations to act in concert on a global scale is a critical concern for the United States and its
allies. Washington's war against al Qaeda is in part psychological, and both
sides need to demonstrate that the other cannot operate globally without
substantial risk. Al Qaeda hopes to raise the costs of U.S. involvement in the
Gulf region high enough that Washington will pull out. The United States needs
to break al Qaeda's global network so that it eventually can back the group's
leadership into a geographic corner, lock it down and finally quash its
operational capability.

 

… Who carried out the attacks remains unclear, and
the suspect list is long. The multiple attacks, coordinated within a 45-minute window and targeting sites in the central, north, south and western parts of
the city, indicate that the group responsible is sophisticated, has a solid knowledge of the areas and experience in planning and
logistics necessary for carrying out such operations.

 

…Decision-makers in Washington, London, Canberra,
Madrid and elsewhere will be desperate to know the answers to these questions:
Were these attacks dictated solely by local issues? Were they conducted by the
Sunni guerrillas or foreign fighters? Are they tied only to the U.S. occupation
in Iraq, or are they meant to signal to groups -- such as the Jemaah Islamiyah
in Indonesia, the Taliban in Afghanistan, the Salafist Group for Preaching and
Combat in Algeria and the Aden-Abyan Army in Yemen or sleeper cells in the
United States -- to launch their own attacks against Westerners and their
allies?

 

Al Qaeda is a global network but also an operational
unit formerly based in Afghanistan that might still be directing attacks
against the United States and its allies in the Gulf. Al Qaeda Prime, the senior leadership's operating unit based in Afghanistan --
which conducted the Sept. 11 attacks and other major operations -- has never
used symbolic dates for operational activities.

 

… Al Qaeda Prime still needs to show that it
continues to survive if it hopes to take the war against the Americans beyond
the Gulf. Using the start
of Ramadan as an agreed launch date for a global terrorism campaign would resonate with radicals
throughout the world.

 

.. Western governments are worried about Ramadan
attacks. Australia,
Britain and the United States all warned their citizens within the last few days of specific
plots in Saudi Arabia……..A spate of bombings in Los Angeles, New Delhi, Rio de Janeiro, Madrid and Sydney would
serve as a remarkable victory for al Qaeda and a mortal blow to the U.S. war
against terrorism. (end of
excerpts. Attached in full)

 

 








STRATFOR Ramadan attacks heighten fears of global violence 102703.doc
Description: MS-Word document

[Futurework] It takes more work but it's worth it

[Karen Watters Cole]

Another
reason to be thankful for FW and our predominately spirited exchange of ideas
and information with opinion and learning.  

 

Up in Heaven, Alexander the Great, Frederick the Great and Napoleon
are looking down on events in Iraq. Alexander says, "Wow, if I had just
one of Bush's armored divisions, I would definitely have conquered India."
 Frederick the Great states,
"Surely if I only had a few squadrons of Bush's air force I would have won
the Seven Years War decisively in a matter of weeks."  There is a
long pause as the three continue to watch events.  Then Napoleon speaks,
"And if I had only had that Fox News, no one would have ever known that I
lost the Russian campaign."

Final
paragraph from below: “Even
if the news is comprehensive, the growing cleavage between left and right is
leaving little room in the middle for discussions about the problems that ail a
society. "There's the old idea of the public sphere, where people came
together and in reasonable ways discussed issues of the public good, allowing
reason to triumph over emotions," notes Andrea Tucher, an assistant
professor at the Columbia School of Journalism. "I think it is getting harder and harder to have a common body of
knowledge, or assumptions from which to start a debate. The conversation ceases
to be discourse. That concept of the public sphere is more idealistic and less
possible than ever."

EXCERPTS: Are the US Airwaves about to lean to the
left?

Al
Gore and others think they can scoop some viewers who aren’t likely to be tuned
to Fox News

By Simon
Houpt, Toronto Globe and Mail, Saturday, Oct. 25, 2003

NEW YORK — Last month,
as U.S. Vice-President Dick Cheney came under attack from Democrats over his
former company Halliburton Co. landing no-bid government contracts to rebuild
Iraq, Rupert Murdoch came to his rescue. Well, not Murdoch exactly. Just a few
of his loyal employees at the Fox News Channel. 

During a report on the
controversy, the business correspondent Terry Keenan soothed her viewers by
explaining, "Halliburton is getting a bunch of these contracts, probably
about $2-billion worth so far in Iraq. But, you know, it is in the oil-services
business and that's a big part of what we're doing in rebuilding Iraq, is
trying to fix the oil fields and the oil pipelines." The program's anchor
John Gibson nodded. "The thing that I don't understand about all the
screaming about the Halliburton contract," he replied, picking up her
thread, "is my understanding is there really aren't American competitors
on Halliburton's level."

There were no
discussions about whether Cheney might be profiting in some other way, or how
much money Halliburton had contributed to the Bush-Cheney campaign. Like much
aired on the Fox News Channel (FNC), the Halliburton segment played like a
Platonic dialogue designed to prove the Bush administration may have its flaws,
but is essentially beyond reproach.

The big story in the
American news industry over the last few years has been the success of FNC,
which discovered an audience for television news and opinion delivered from a
conservative ideological perspective. The liberal or Democratic side has been
all but silent. But now, as anti-Bush books climb the bestseller lists and the
president's approval rating slides, new left-wing media ventures are ready to
feast off the growing disenchantment with the Republican administration and
control of the U.S. Congress.

Al Gore is reported to
be exploring a purchase of Newsworld International, a U.S. cable channel
formerly owned by CBC that currently airs news from Germany, the U.K., and
Japan, along with CBC programs such as Hot
Type and The National.
During the Iraq war, many Americans turned to NWI, as it is known, for an
alternative to the resolutely pro-American narrative followed by even the most
skeptical U.S. broadcast networks.

Gore may be planning
to offer an even stronger alternative. With Democratic fundraisers, he is
exploring the possibility of purchasing NWI from Vivendi Universal SA, which
just completed an agreement to merge with NBC and is looking to unload the
channel. Although his partner in the venture, Joel Hyatt, refused comment on
the matter, they are reported to be considering transforming the channel into
either a left-wing alternative to FNC or a youth-oriented MTV-style news outlet
that can tap into the inchoate liberal leanings of a large bloc of potential
voters who don't usually go to the polls.

The television channel
is only one element that could help shift the U.S. media landscape again.
Sheldon Drobny, a Chicago venture capitalist who calls the Clintons and Gores
personal friends, says he will launch a liberal talk-radio network in January,
in time to gain enough traction to affect next year's presidential election.  Stand-alone progressive talk-radio
shows were attempted in the past but failed to catch fire like those hosted by
right-wing firebrands Rush Limbaugh, G. Gordon Liddy and Oliver North, part

RE: [Futurework] Blue Monday

[Karen Watters Cole]

My interest in
that article was mostly about the nature of how we respond to children after
they are born, not what conditions surround their conception.  

 

As to the
theory you mention, I would very personally argue that it is wrong.  But I hope we aren’t going to get into
a discussion, no matter how lively, about boxer shorts and other details,
including, how ancient Roman women reclined afterward (she said, with a fond
and bemused Mona Lisa smile). 

 - KWC

 

I guess what I left
out was the following assumption:  (probably a shaky one)  That where
there is less freq of sexual activity, either party may feel more tempted to
look elsewhere for sexual satisfaction.  Thus more divorces in couples
with female gender children.

 

Quite a stretch
but--who knows.

 

arthur

Years ago I ran across a study
which suggested that (all things being equal) the sex of the child was a
function of whether the ovum was present when the sperm arrived or whether the
sperm arrived with the ovum arriving after.  The study suggested that the
latter case led to more males (by a slight number).  So the greater the
frequency of sexual activity the more likely it is to have sperm present when
the ovum appears.

The variable might be freq. of
intercourse with the gender of the child being the dependent variable.

arthur

-Original Message-
From: Karen Watters Cole
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Monday, October 27, 2003
11:20 AM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: [Futurework] Blue Monday

Somedays, it is really difficult to be a Pollyanna and believe and hope
that people will tap into their better natures, and evolve towards more
positive ways of living with each other. 
It doesn't have to be enlightenment or an utopian state, just better,
moving progressively forward reasonably. 


 

Excerpts from two depressing states of realities, both an uncomfortable
notion to live with, both on topics discussed on this list.  

 

It's a Girl! (Will the Economy
Suffer?)

By David Leonhardt, NYT, Business, Sunday, October 26, 2003 @ http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/26/business/yourmoney/26girl.html



Looking for a distraction, the two economists sauntered out
of their offices at the University of California at Berkeley last spring and
met near the water cooler.  The
economists, Gordon B. Dahl and Enrico Moretti, are both experts in a rarefied
part of the field known as econometrics. On this day, however, their
conversation quickly drifted to a wide-ranging discussion of the reasons for
the persistent wage
gap between men and women.


 

Could the problem stretch far beyond the workplace, they
wondered, and all the way back to childhood and the ways that parents treat boys and girls? Was it possible that even in the United
States, even in 2003, parents favor boys in a way that has lifelong
implications?

 

One way to look for such a preference, they realized, would
be to see whether parents of girls divorced more often than parents of boys, as
has long been the case in male-centric societies like China. So the two
economists scurried back to their respective offices and, over the next three
days, did what economists do: plugged reams of data into a computer and ran
regressions, statistical speak for the search for patterns.  "We thought, 'There is no way we
are going to find something systematic,' " Mr. Moretti said. "The
results were shocking." 

 

In every decade since the 1940's, couples with girls indeed
divorced more often than those with boys, United States Census Bureau data showed. The effect was not huge - just a few percentage
points - but it was unmistakable. It happened in every region of the country. It happened
among whites more than blacks and among people with only high school diplomas
more than those with college degrees.

 

Over
the last 60 years,
parents with an only child that was a girl were 6 percent more likely to split
up than parents of a single boy. The gap rose to 8 percent for parents of two girls
versus those of two boys, 10 percent for families with three children of the
same sex and 13 percent for four. Every year, more than 10,000 American
divorces appear to stem partly from the number of girls in the family.

 

Whatever the cause, and there are some prime suspects, the
effects are as obvious as they are pernicious. Children from divorced families
are twice as likely as other children to drop out of high school, become
parents while teenagers or be jobless as young adults, earlier studies show.
The new research makes clear that girls are bearing more than their share of these costs. 


 

...Taken together, this research strongly suggests that the
age-old favoring of boys is not
confined to the past
or to developing countries like China and India. It is subtle and less widespread than it once
was in the United
States, but it still gives boys an important leg up. 

 

Parents, and especially fathers, appear to invest more in
their families when

[Futurework] Cultural Wars 3 (was Jihad 2004)

[Karen Watters Cole]

Last in a series.  Now mind
you, I am not trying to persecute Christians, many of them believe everyone is right
now, but I am pursuing with journalistic vigor and from personal background
something that I feel grabs people much more passionately than economics and most
policy in the political arena.  If
you thought environmentalists were conducting a near jihad against corporations
and vice versa, this is more powerful in its ability to compel solidarity, like
Keith was suggesting about the close blood kinship of leaders in Saddam’s
regime. 

 

Of course, religious moral values should be a foundation of a civil
society, a building block.  I’m
just opposed to living in a theocracy. 
My image of the wall between church and state is not like the one being
constructed in Israel today, huge concrete blocks topped by barbed wire, but
more like Jefferson’s brick serpentine wall, strong, functional and enhancing
the landscape. 

 

From a news portal called www.christianheadlines.com I
noticed a story at www.agapepress.com about a
FLA attorney preparing Xns for cultural wars, and this is what appeared:

 

Christian Attorney: Conference Equips Believers
for Culture War

By
Allie Martin, October 24, 2003

FORT LAUDERDALE, FL (AgapePress) - A Florida
attorney who specializes in defending the civil liberties of Christians says a
two-day conference taking place in that state will help believers defend their
constitutional rights.

For the next two days, thousands of Christians
from around the country will attend the "Reclaiming America for Christ" conference at Coral
Ridge Presbyterian Church in Fort Lauderdale. They will hear from a host of speakers
involved in Christian activism on areas such as the pro-life movement, civil
rights for believers, and the true homosexual
agenda. ?

…The Christian attorney
is convinced the conference can make a big difference for those willing to get
involved in the culture war. 
"I think it equips folks to go back home because it gives them
information about what's happening in their area," he says. "Even
though many of the people are well aware of what's happening in America, they
may not be fully aware of all the landscape. But more importantly, they become
additionally aware of what they can do to impact their communities."

The conference wraps
up on Saturday evening. Among the featured speakers are Dr. D. James Kennedy,
Dr. Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention, and Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore.  http://headlines.agapepress.org/archive/10/242003e.asp

If you are interested in checking on a good site and broadcast, try
Religion & Ethics Newsweekly, an ecumenical site.  It’s where I started yesterday, exploring in cyberspace,
searching for the link to the broadcast’s story about the Florida medical
intervention.  A Loyola Marymount
Univ. ethicist made this simple
but clear statement:

ABERNETHY: So in such a case, what are the
ethical issues, the major ones?
Dr. WALTER: “The major ones would be the value of human life. Some people want
to grant an absolute value to life so that there is an absolute obligation to
preserve that life. I think a number of
people in society consider life a very fundamental value, but recognize that it
is a relative good and, therefore, we have not absolute obligations to preserve
it. “

By the way, here’s an editorial from the
Ft Worth Star Tribune, blasting Jeb Bush’s intervention in the Florida case,
which also sees this as political pandering.  And we are just getting warmed up.  Medical Meddling: FLorida's Right to Die Fiasco.  As a practicing Catholic, no one doubts Gov. Bush’s personal
religious beliefs, but this is not expected to withstand judicial review, so
the effort by the Florida GOP is vote insurance.  Who’s being manipulated the most?  The pro-life absolutists or the family in this case?  What are the affects after the
headlines disappear?  

At R & E N, I also learned about a secret biological testing
program during the Cold War on drafted Seventh Day Adventists, who are
pacifists, called Whitecoats; and how Muslims coordinate the beginning each
year of Ramadan.  See http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/.  - KWC

 

[Futurework] Blue Monday

[Karen Watters Cole]

Somedays, it
is really difficult to be a Pollyanna and believe and hope that people will tap
into their better natures, and evolve towards more positive ways of living with
each other.  It doesn’t have to be
enlightenment or an utopian state, just better, moving progressively forward
reasonably.  

 

Excerpts from
two depressing states of realities, both an uncomfortable notion to live with,
both on topics discussed on this list. 


 

It's a Girl! (Will the Economy
Suffer?)

By David Leonhardt, NYT, Business, Sunday, October 26, 2003 @ http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/26/business/yourmoney/26girl.html



Looking for a distraction, the two economists sauntered out
of their offices at the University of California at Berkeley last spring and
met near the water cooler.  The
economists, Gordon B. Dahl and Enrico Moretti, are both experts in a rarefied
part of the field known as econometrics. On this day, however, their
conversation quickly drifted to a wide-ranging discussion of the reasons for
the persistent wage
gap between men and women.


 

Could the problem stretch far beyond the workplace, they
wondered, and all the way back to childhood and the ways that parents treat boys and girls? Was it possible that even in the United
States, even in 2003, parents favor boys in a way that has lifelong
implications?

 

One way to look for such a preference, they realized, would
be to see whether parents of girls divorced more often than parents of boys, as
has long been the case in male-centric societies like China. So the two
economists scurried back to their respective offices and, over the next three
days, did what economists do: plugged reams of data into a computer and ran
regressions, statistical speak for the search for patterns.  “We thought, 'There is no way we are
going to find something systematic,' " Mr. Moretti said. "The results
were shocking." 

 

In every decade since the 1940's, couples with girls indeed
divorced more often than those with boys, United States Census Bureau data showed. The effect was not huge - just a few percentage
points - but it was unmistakable. It happened in every region of the country. It happened
among whites more than blacks and among people with only high school diplomas
more than those with college degrees.

 

Over
the last 60 years,
parents with an only child that was a girl were 6 percent more likely to split
up than parents of a single boy. The gap rose to 8 percent for parents of two
girls versus those of two boys, 10 percent for families with three children of
the same sex and 13 percent for four. Every year, more than 10,000 American
divorces appear to stem partly from the number of girls in the family.

 

Whatever the cause, and there are some prime suspects, the
effects are as obvious as they are pernicious. Children from divorced families
are twice as likely as other children to drop out of high school, become
parents while teenagers or be jobless as young adults, earlier studies show.
The new research makes clear that girls are bearing more than their share of these costs. 


 

…Taken together, this research strongly suggests that the
age-old favoring of boys is not
confined to the past
or to developing countries like China and India. It is subtle and less widespread than it once
was in the United
States, but it still gives boys an important leg up. 

 

Parents, and especially fathers, appear to invest more in
their families when they include a boy. They put more money into their homes,
spending an additional $600 a year on housing, according to a study of families
with an only child by Ms. Lundberg and her colleague Elaina Rose, an associate
professor of economics.  In
addition, fathers increase their workweeks by more than two hours, and their
earnings, after the birth of a first, male child. When the first child is a
girl, workweeks increase by less than an hour.

 

…The
preference for boys could matter a lot more in the future. Technology already permits parents to
choose a baby's sex, and as the cost of the procedure falls, it could create a
divisive social issue.  For about
$3,000 on top of the usual fee for in vitro fertilization or artificial
insemination, the Genetics & IVF Institute in Fairfax, Va., will sort sperm
by weight, separating the X chromosomes, which produce girls, from the smaller
Y's.  When its customers are indeed
able to become pregnant, the institute claims a 75 percent success rate for
parents who request boys and 90 percent success for those who want girls.
Another method boasts a success rate closer to 95 percent for each sex, but it
is more controversial because doctors check for gender after in vitro
fertilization and discard the embryos of the unwanted sex.

 

"There is reliable technology for gender selection," said Dr.
Norbert Gleicher, chairman of the Centers for Human Reproduction, which has
clinics in Chicago and New York. Whether it becomes more popular "will
depend to a large degree on the political climate.

RE: [Futurework] Wal Mart and the American dream

[Karen Watters Cole]

I guess,
Harry, the shortest and sweetest reply I can give you is that many of us are
interested in more than the cheapest price and just the bottom line in our
choices.  

 

By the
way, I think retail cannibalism refers to saturating a market area even if it
means cannibalizing customer sales from one’s own nearby store.  Someone please correct me if this is
wrong.  As in Wal Mart, Home Depot,
Target within 5 miles of each other.  Or maybe it refers to when they close a smaller store after a
supercenter is built, and the smaller property is kept vacant, a blight on the
city tax rolls and a real estate nightmare.

 

Maybe the
Mom & Pop shops don’t like the monopoly competition, but they are paying
local taxes at a higher rate than Wal Mart does.  They use local attorneys, CPAs, advertisers, insurers, too,
and because they are locals who raise their families there, they are more
concerned about the long term health of their community.  For every 1 job Wal Mart creates, it
displaces 3.  Isn’t that a
negative?  Since Wal Mart pays
minimum wages and no health benefits, don’t the tax payers pay the cost of their
employees using emergency rooms and hospitals in the long run?  Isn’t that subsidizing them?  

 

I’ve read in
business journals that Wal Mart has expansion plans to build smaller stores in
downtowns.  They may be eyeing
China, too, and are doing better in the UK than Germany, probably because of ignoring
cultural issues affecting retail.  Like
Bush2, maybe Wal Mart has become it’s own worst enemy.

 

I am sorry
to learn your daughter’s home and family may be in jeopardy in Poway.  My sympathies.  Hope everything will be okay soon.  I lived in Scripps Ranch among all those oil-bearing eucalyptus
trees imported from Australia and know how dry it is this time of year.  Regards, Karen

Harry wrote: As you might expect, I have some of
disagreement with what you say. You
wrote: 

"other living wage issues
recently, such as the current 70,000 striking in S. California"

The 70,000 striking in Southern California
can hardly be called a living wage issue. They get $17.90 an hour along with
health benefits -- I would think much more than most of the people get who go
into their stores to shop.

The major issue seems to be the desire of
the stores to hire new people at a lower rate. As long as the union can
establish tenure (I think they already have it) for the veterans, this
doesn't seem to be a problem.

You continued:

'due to
the monopoly pricing that Wal Mart imposes with its market saturation, or
retail "cannibalism".'

This translates into supplying Southern
California consumers with goods at a 14% discount. I've never known any
supplier of goods or services to boast proudly of how much extra he is charging
his customers.

I shall add "cannibilism" to
"law of the jungle" and "cut throat competition" - phrases
that are used by corporations who want to charge people more of their wages for
the same thing.

Also by left wingers like Chris who don't
realize they are lap-dogs for the capitalists.

You said:

"grassroots resistance to the new
Robber Barons "

Sounds more like shops that had a monopoly
position in town being threatened by competition. The best way to measure
"grassroots" is to watch an empty Walmart parking lot as everyone
shops in town. That doesn't happen. Instead, the "grassroots" are
walking the aisles of Walmart.

When you oppose Walmart, you are opposing
the grassroots as you support a dozen or two merchants who for too long have
had a monopoly. As they were without competition, it is probable, no certain,
that they have been supplying their friends and neighbors with goods priced a
little more than they should be.

In the UK, government watchdogs, I recall,
pointed out that local people will more likely be swindled than strangers in
the mom-and-pop stores. The thumb on the scale was OK for the local Mrs. Smith,
but the stranger might be an inspector, so he was likely to be treated fairly.

The downtown monopoly has a lot to do with
the rent. In fact, high downtown rents are the reason why WalMart gets out of
town.

I must say I love your comment:

"These protestors are mom & pop,
garden variety, flag-waving, tax-paying, small business-supporting
voters."

They are obviously the good guys. All they
want to do is stop people from freely shopping where they want to shop.

That's all.

Harry









Karen wrote: This news item ties in nicely to the NOW
with Bill Moyers report on low wages at Tyson Foods and other labor issues that
Arthur alerted us to yesterday via FW. 
Tyson also was raided and charged with knowingly hiring illegals, and
two executives plead guilty, fines were paid.  Wal Mart figured into that story, too, like so many other
living wage issues recently, such as the current 70,000 striking in S.
California, due to the monopoly pricing that Wal Mart imposes with its market
saturation, or retail “cannibalism”. 
Workers are losing living wage potential as giant reta

[Futurework] web discoveries

[Karen Watters Cole]

The
Globalist: For global citizens. By global citizens. @ http://www.theglobalist.com/

From its mission statement: Our
core editorial belief is that now more than ever, people everywhere are seeking
a better understanding of what connects — and divides — nations and societies,
economies and cultures.   Through
cross-country comparisons, our features provide the key to understanding our
common future.

>

The Natural Step announces the release of a new book
titled:  

Ants, Galileo,
and Gandhi: Designing the Future of Business through Nature, Genius, and
Compassion.



This collection, edited by Sissel Waage (Director of Research at The
Natural Step), examines the emergence of 21st-century enterprises that
recognize their reliance on broad social and ecological systems (ants),
incorporate sparks of genius rooted in rigorous analyses (Galileo), and
acknowledge the importance of compassion and determination within any endeavor
(Gandhi).



“At a time of
diminishing natural resources and heightened public sensitivity about the
environment and fair labor, leading corporations are beginning to take a more
sustainable approach to their business practices. 

A new book, Ants,
Galileo, and Gandhi: Designing the Future of Business through Nature, Genius
and Compassion, edited by Sissel Waage, explores how a number of
companies, including Hewlett Packard, Norm Thompson Outfitters, Interface, and
Verdant Power (up-and-coming sustainable energy company), are triggering
innovation while ensuring future prosperity for people and the planet. 

For example, Hewlett
Packard is investing in dematerialization initiatives across a range of
business activities and products. The benefits include material and energy
savings, as well as economic value added to both consumers and Hewlett Packard.

The book also
highlights financial services sector cases—including the Dow Jones
Sustainability Index and Shorebank Enterprise Pacific—that demonstrate how
sustainability issues are being integrated into investment screens. As a set,
the span of work presented reveals that a fundamental re-design of businesses
is emerging across sectors within the economy.”  (http://www.naturalstep.org/newsroom/news_101403.php)

About The Natural Step:
Since
1989, The Natural Step has been guiding companies and governments onto an
ecologically, socially, and economically sustainable path. An international advisory
and research organization, The Natural Step works with some of the largest
resource users on the planet to create new models of sustainable enterprise and
tools designed to accelerate global sustainability.

For more information: www.naturalstep.org

>

[Futurework] Culture Wars 2 (was Jihad 2004)

[Karen Watters Cole]

While I am not
denigrating by any means the validity of the human rights issues and the moral
values it derives from, I offer this piece as another example of catering to
one segment of your voter base, while rebuffing others.  - . KWC

 

Open Door Policy

Bumiller: Evangelicals Sway White House on Foreign
Human Rights

 

“No one disputes that Mr. Bush already
cares deeply about those issues and has a personal faith that his advisers say
brings a moral dimension to a foreign policy better known for war. "To put
it simply, it's a fairly radical belief that a child in an African village
whose parents are dying of AIDS has the same importance before God as the
president of the United States," said Michael Gerson, Mr. Bush's chief
speechwriter and an important White House policy adviser who is a born-again
Christian.

But it is also true, religious leaders and administration
officials note, that white evangelicals accounted for about 40 percent of the
votes that Mr. Bush received in the 2000 presidential election. In 2004,
political analysts say, he is unlikely to be re-elected without the strong
support of this constituency, which is predominately but not wholly Republican,
and which in other years has thrown significant support to southern Democrats
like Bill Clinton. Mr. Rove is now tending to the constituency with great care.

"You're not going to run into too many people who are smarter than
Karl," said Dr. Richard D. Land, the president of the Ethics and Religious
Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, who is in regular
contact with Mr. Rove. "Karl understands the importance of this segment of
his coalition, and I think the president understands it. The president feels
that one of the contributory factors to his father's loss is that he didn't get
as many evangelical votes as Reagan did."

 

Closed Door Policy

Rich: Why are we back in Vietnam?

“However spurious any analogy between the
two wars themselves may be, you can tell that the administration itself now
fears that Iraq is becoming a Vietnam by the way it has started to fear TV
news. When an ABC News reporter, Jeffrey Kofman, did the most stinging major
network report on unhappiness among American troops last summer, Matt Drudge
announced on his Web site that Mr. Kofman was gay and, more scandalously, a
Canadian — information he said had been provided to him by a White House
staffer. This month, as bad news from Iraq proliferated, Mr. Bush pulled the
old Nixon stunt of trying to "go over the heads of the filter and speak
directly to the people" about the light at the end of the tunnel. In this
case, "the people" meant the anchors of regional TV companies like
Tribune Broadcasting, Belo and Hearst-Argyle.

..
It's at times like
this that we must be grateful that Disney didn't succeed in jettisoning
"Nightline" for David Letterman. (The administration is only too
happy to send its top brass to Mr. Letterman when it doesn't send them to Oprah
— Colin Powell most recently.) If the Oct. 15 "Nightline" wasn't an
Edward R. Murrow turning point in the coverage of the war on terrorism, it's
the closest we've seen to one since 9/11. There will be others, because this
administration doesn't realize that trying to control the news is always a loser.
Most of the press was as slow to challenge Joe McCarthy, the Robert McNamara
Pentagon and the Nixon administration as it has been to challenge the wartime
Bush White House. But in America, at least, history always catches up with
those who try to falsify it in real time. That's what L.B.J. and Nixon both
learned the hard way.”

 

 

RE: [Futurework] Walmart and the American dream

[Karen Watters Cole]

This news
item ties in nicely to the NOW with Bill Moyers report on low wages at Tyson
Foods and other labor issues that Arthur alerted us to yesterday via FW.  Tyson also was raided and charged with
knowingly hiring illegals, and two executives plead guilty, fines were
paid.  Wal Mart figured into that story,
too, like so many other living wage issues recently, such as the current 70,000
striking in S. California, due to the monopoly pricing that Wal Mart imposes with
its market saturation, or retail “cannibalism”.  Workers are losing living wage potential as giant retailers try
to avoid becoming Wal Mart’s next victim.  

It was
interesting that in the Tyson strikers story, local merchants had removed  Tyson products from their shelves in
solidarity with striking neighbors, even though Tyson has long been their
largest town employer. They are also fighting a Wal Mart store, afraid it would
wipe out the last local merchants. 
These are not counter culture rebels from so-called “liberal” places
like Arcadia, California or the numerous others townships who have drafted
wording in their permitting processes to limit big box retail per capita
growth.  These protestors are mom &
pop, garden variety, flag-waving, tax-paying, small business-supporting voters.  We are seeing a grassroots resistance to the
new Robber Barons of the 21st century, not just a simple lifestyle
movement.  - KWC 

 

One
wonders if the cleaners had to line up and sing the Walmart song, or do the
Walmart salute or whatever it is that Walmart employees do.  Probably not
though.  They weren't really Retail Associates, or whatever staff are
called.


Ed Weick

 










 
  
   
  
  
  
  
  October 25, 2003
  
  Cleaner at Wal-Mart Tells of Few Breaks and
  Low Pay
  
  By STEVEN GREENHOUSE
  
  
  
   

 

   
  
  
  very
  night for months, Victor Zavala Jr., who was arrested on Thursday in a
  21-state immigration raid, said he showed up at the Wal-Mart
  store in New Jersey to clean floors.
  As the store's regular employees left at 11
  p.m., Mr. Zavala said, they often asked him whether he ever got a night off.
  Mr. Zavala, identified by federal agents as
  an illegal immigrant from Mexico, told the Wal-Mart workers that he and four
  others employed by a cleaning contractor worked at the Wal-Mart in Old Bridge
  every night of the year, except Christmas and New Year's Eve.
  Now Mr. Zavala feels cheated, saying he
  worked as hard as he could pursuing the American dream, only to face an
  immigration hearing that could lead to deportation for himself, his wife,
  Eunice, and their three children, 10, 7 and 5 years old. He was one of 250
  janitors employed by Wal-Mart contractors who were arrested at 60 Wal-Mart
  stores before dawn on Thursday.
  "My family's not happy about
  this," said Mr. Zavala, who said he paid a "coyote" $2,000 to
  smuggle him into the United States three years ago. "My children do not
  want to leave and go back to Mexico."
  A federal law enforcement official who spoke
  on condition of anonymity said yesterday that several current and former
  cleaning contractors for Wal-Mart, the nation's biggest retailer, were
  cooperating with the government in its investigation. On Thursday, federal
  officials acknowledged that they had wiretaps and recordings of conversations
  and meetings among Wal-Mart executives and contractors.
  Federal officials said that as part of the
  Thursday raid, they searched the office of a middle-level manager at
  Wal-Mart's headquarters in Bentonville, Ark. The officials said the
  government believed that Wal-Mart executives knew the cleaning contractors
  were using illegal immigrants. 
  Federal officials noted that 102 illegal
  immigrants working for Wal-Mart cleaning contractors had been arrested in
  1998 and 2001 and that 13 Wal-Mart cleaning contractors had pleaded guilty
  after those arrests. Those pleas remain under court seal.
  Wal-Mart said yesterday that it had begun an
  internal investigation and would dismiss anyone in its work force who did not
  have proper immigration papers. Wal-Mart also told its officials to preserve
  any documents that might be relevant to the federal inquiry, which is being
  conducted by the Department of Homeland Security's division of Immigration
  and Customs Enforcement. 
  Wal-Mart officials said that the raid
  surprised them, and that they had no idea the company's cleaning contractors
  used illegal immigrants.
  They acknowledged yesterday that 10
  immigrants arrested on Thursday in Arizona and Kentucky were employed
  directly by Wal-Mart. Company officials said they had brought these workers
  in-house after certain stores phased out the use of the contractors for whom
  the immigrants had worked.
  Wal-Mart officials also said the company
  required its contractors to hire legal workers only.
  "We have seen no evidence thus far that
  anyone in Wal-Mart is involved in any scheme involving illeg

[Futurework] assessing Iraq oil potential

[Karen Watters Cole]

Some of you may have seen this but given it’s appearance on the list, I
thought I’d forward yet another item of interest:

 

Iraq’s Oil: assessing the potential

 

Amy Jaffe, the senior energy adviser for the James A. Baker Institute
for Public Policy at Rice University; Yasser Elguindi, director of oil and
energy at Medley Global Advisors; and Vijay Vaitheeswaran, energy correspondent
for the Economist and author of a forthcoming book on the world's energy
future, "Power to the People."

 

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/middle_east/july-dec03/oil_10-23.html

 

Jaffee is woman who spoke up detailing the conclusions of the secret
oil advisory group that advised the White House last fall before the invasion,
clarifying that the group’s conclusions were much less optimistic than what the
WH reported.

 

Jaffee also states that the new Iraqi constitution will need to
establish a petroleum industry foreign investment clause, citing Russia’s
ongoing issues.  I remember seeing
that Bush had signed a provision that foreign investors could purchase the
entire assets of Iraqi businesses. 
Was this part of the Executive Order he signed at the beginning of the
invasion, something temporary? 
Does anyone have more information on that or can you refute it?

 

- KWC