(Courtesy of Dale Fitzgibbons--an inspiring story, its never too late...)
The University of Chicago's oldest doctoral graduate made a career of growing
strawberries; with his degree the cream has risen to the top
By Jodi S. Cohen
Chicago Tribune (August 20, 2006)
Not every day does a student bring a crate of fruit to the oral defense of his dissertation.
But there sat a panel of University of Chicago economists last month, including Nobel laureate James Heckman, in their button-down shirts, munching on some of the sweetest, juiciest strawberries on the market.
Across from them stood their student, Herbert Baum, just shy of 80 years old, whose life's work had been aptly distilled into the title of his thesis: "The Quest for the Perfect Strawberry."
This week, Baum will become the oldest candidate ever awarded a doctoral degree from the university. His work was blessed by a department credited with more Nobel Prize winners in economics than any place in the world.
In fact, three of the four faculty members on Baum's dissertation committee are Nobel winners, including legendary free-marketeer Milton Friedman, who hadn't served on a dissertation committee in about 25 years, Heckman said.
It's a strange and sweet turn of events for Baum, who left the U. of C. about 55 years ago as a graduate student in economics who was "ABD"--all but dissertation, one step shy of his doctorate.
He went on to spend nearly his entire career in strawberries, helping transform California's sleepy localized market into an industry in which different players acted in concert, using the best research available, to move toward a year-round business that could put berries on the table in the dead of a Chicago winter.
He kept a storage room of boxes full of data and reports on the fruit business as it changed, and he always wondered whether one day he could turn his specialized knowledge into something worthy of the highest academic degree.
"I always had in my mind that this was something I wanted to do," said Baum, whose once dark hair turned gray long ago.
Finally, he did, defying naysayers to write a book that became his dissertation. In it, Baum offers an economic model for evaluating the effectiveness of a policy under which strawberry growers, shippers and producers pay mandatory assessments to fund research and marketing.
His book isn't full of complicated economic equations; rather, it's a story about an industry. It is a dissertation typical of the 1950s, when Baum was a student, using economic theory to explain a problem.
Some faculty members grumbled that it wasn't up to today's standards, but Heckman dismissed their complaints as petty. He pointed to a student thesis approved last year that analyzed factors contributing to diarrhea in the Union Army.
"Strawberries are probably more interesting than the diarrhea study," said Heckman, a 2000 Nobel Prize winner for his work using economics to solve public policy problems. "This is not a joke or any compromise. It is a high-quality piece of work."
He said Baum's work contributes to the study of agriculture policy and regulation.
"You can think of this as a very well-executed case study," he said. "We know now more about a certain industry than we ever did before."
Baum, born into a family of wholesale produce merchants, graduated from high school in Ft. Wayne, Ind.
After serving in the military during World War II, he got a bachelor's degree from Ohio State University and a master's degree in economics from the U. of C. in 1951.
One of his professors was Friedman, who is credited with transforming the U. of C.'s economics department into the powerhouse it is today.
Inspired by Friedman's work on free markets, Baum decided to leave a government job as an agricultural economist and switch to the private sector. He moved to California and became a leader in the state's strawberry industry, spending most of his career at Naturipe Berry Growers in San Jose.
Baum also served as chairman of what is now the California Strawberry Commission, using his economics background to evaluate the effectiveness of the mandatory assessments for research and marketing on growers' profitability.
After retiring as chief executive officer of Naturipe in 1991, Baum asked faculty members at the U. of C. what it would take to complete his degree.
He worked with U. of C. agricultural economist D. Gale Johnson, who challenged Baum's ideas and helped him develop a thesis proposal.
But Johnson died in 2003, without having approved Baum's proposal.
Baum spent several years expanding the thesis proposal into a book and self-published it late last year. An editor called it tedious. A friend said he couldn't get through it.
Undeterred, Baum sent an e-mail flier in December announcing the publication to several economists.
Heckman, who had read Baum's thesis proposal years ago, responded.
"Did you get your PhD?" Heckman asked.
Baum said he hadn't. "Perhaps this will suffice," Baum replied.
Heckman thought it would. He appointed himself chair of Baum's dissertation committee and set in motion the steps to get Baum readmitted as a student. He recruited Gary Becker, who was a Nobel Prize winner in 1992, and Friedman to serve on the committee.
A condensed version of the book was circulated among the economics faculty, and none objected.
On July 10, with strawberries in hand, Baum answered tough questions during the oral defense. He passed.
"I don't like to talk about miracles, but I do really believe this is a miracle. I don't know what other word to use," Baum said.
He wears bifocals and a hearing aid, and looks more grandfather than grad student. But after paying about $3,000 in tuition and fees for the summer session, he now carries a student ID in his wallet.
He moved with his wife, Gloria, from their home in Depoe Bay, Ore., to a furnished, two-bedroom apartment in Hyde Park, where his coffee table books include "Microeconomics: The Easy Way," and U. of C. professor Steven Levitt's best-seller "Freakonomics."
The apartment is decorated with graduation cards from neighbors in Oregon and California, colleagues from the strawberry business and proud relatives.
"What's next? Emmy? Oscar?" wrote one friend.
Prior to Baum, the oldest U. of C. doctoral graduate was Frank Bourgin, who was 77 when he was awarded the degree in 1988, 44 years after his dissertation was initially rejected by a faculty committee.
Baum, meanwhile, still seems a bit amused by the lofty academic circles in which he now travels.
During a drink with Heckman at the Quadrangle Club last week, the Nobel winner paged through his own book on education policy.
"As an economist, you will enjoy this," Heckman said to Baum, turning to a chart in his book.
"You called me an economist!" Baum said, turning to his wife. "Did you hear that? He called me an economist!"
Some of the other students living in his apartment building are just as amazed when they hear Baum's story.
"They all open their mouths in disbelief," he said. "Some of them wonder if it's an honorary thing. Oh no, it's an earned one."
His coworkers in the California strawberry business are not surprised.
"He was always on the cutting edge and always wanted to develop marketing programs and strategies on how to get the best price," said Roger Hamamura, who grows strawberry plants. "Everyone's bottom line improved."
P.J. Mecozzi, president of Del Mar Food Products Corp., credited Baum with organizing the strawberry industry to benefit all the players.
"Other than this innate drive that he has, his understanding of economics served him in a special way," he said. "He is very analytical and was always pushing and seeking to further improve the system."
On Friday, Baum will put on a cap and gown and walk in summer graduation ceremonies at Rockefeller Chapel. His wife will be there snapping pictures, and they'll celebrate over dinner at a Chicago restaurant.
Then they'll return to their apartment with some friends. For dessert, Dr. Baum will serve a big bowl of strawberries.
Sunday, September 10, 2006
Open Democracy: 9/11, Five Years On--What Has Been Learned
9/11, five years on: what has been learned?
openDemocracy
The attacks on New York and Washington on 11 September 2001 were the prelude to a still unfolding global conflict. In the week of their fifth anniversary, openDemocracy asked our contributors and other writers to reflect briefly on what they have learned since the "two hours that shook the world".
Sidney Blumenthal, journalist and author: What are we fighting for?
A few things I have learned since 9/11 are:
▪ that cadres of neo-conservative ideologues were ready and waiting to transform the constitutional foundation of American government
▪ that they had clearly devised plans to use the power over the law to rescind and restrict rights in the interest of concentrated unaccountable authority in the executive (which after 9/11 is subsumed completely by the identity of commander-in-chief, or what Bush calls "war president")
▪ that the radical overthrow of constitutional checks and balances, of the longstanding American view of rights, and of the rule of law notably began with abrogation of Article 3 of the Geneva convention of 1949 on the treatment of prisoners of war forbidding cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment of prisoners (thus rolling back a policy that began with George Washington's order for the humane treatment of captured Hessian soldiers during the American revolutionary war).
I have also observed that, more or less, for much of the press, Bush's radical presidency has created realities too radical and therefore dangerous to report, perhaps especially the persistent campaign of intimidation against the press. This is yet another aspect of the effort to derange the constitution, in this case to vitiate - by displays of power, condign threats, and manipulations of indulgences of status - the check and balance guaranteed under the first amendment.
I have also learned that virtually all serious people in the senior military, intelligence community and law enforcement, not only in the United States but throughout Europe, do not believe in President Bush's "war on terror" as he describes it, or believe that it is or can be effective in meeting its end. And I have observed that few of these considered views have entered a highly constricted public debate - a narrowing of democracy that is essential to Republican preservation of power. President Bush speaks about "freedom" and "liberty" as his objects. So what is it we are fighting for? The extension of power of Bush's radical presidency?
Which reminds me of President Lincoln's statement, on 18 April 1864, during the civil war: "The world has never had a good definition of the word liberty, and the American people, just now, are much in want of one. We all declare for liberty; but in using the same word we do not all mean the same thing."
...
Jihad Fakhreddine, media analyst: What's left of We Are All Americans?
Since the emotional pledge in the Le Monde on 12 September 2001 - "We are all Americans" - I have been in futile search for those who will now make such a claim. I was not one them, but I could at least have claimed then: "We all have green cards".
For me, the most intriguing question is: how could the United States administration allow two things to happen: failure to capitalise on the sympathy the world demonstrated towards the US on 9/11, and allowing the perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks to win the war?
The 9/11 attacks could not have been more than symbolic. Al-Qaida could win neither a military battle nor a war against the US. It did nevertheless achieve the aim of the attacks: to drive an insurmountable psychological wedge between the US and the Arab and Muslim worlds.
I spent the entire 1980s studying and working in the US, and have directed close to twenty-five national public polls in Arab and Muslim countries for the Gallup organisation since 9/11. So I feel that I am a virtual holder of a green card.
But still, upon my arrival at the JFK international airport this spring, the officer of the homeland-security department greeted me by asking: What are you doing here? After waiting for two hours for finger and eye-scanning, I asked for directions to the toilet. The officer who directed me to one, commanded his colleague: Watch him.
As "We are all Americans" becomes a vanishingly rare sentiment, I still hold tightly to my virtual green card, which I strongly believe is a passport for coexisting. All my friends, and even my US-educated wife, wonder why I have not denounced it yet?!
Al-Qaida won the war not by its sheer power, but because of the US's misuse of its own political, cultural, and military power.
...
Godfrey Hodgson, journalist: Beyond paralysis
Outrage was a justifiable response to the atrocities of 9/11 on the part of American public opinion. The administration's policy, however, was "worse than a crime, it was a mistake", motivated and justified by hubristic fantasies. It has forfeited much of the goodwill won by generosity and restraint in the cold war, gravely damaged the international system, and prevented common action to confront other urgent and dangerous issues.
I have learned that many Muslims, both in Muslim countries and especially in Europe and America, are more unforgiving of western conduct, especially but not only in relation to Israel, than I had realised. I have learned that American public opinion is deeply divided, with at least half of the electorate, led astray by cynical media, committed to dangerous, because unrealistic and narcissistic, views of America's destiny. I have also learned how divided and impotent Europe is too, and how marginalised by American contempt.
The Democrats seem paralysed, but the other half of American public opinion is coming to understand how wrong Republican policy has been. In November we shall see whether this disastrous episode in America's public life is over. In the meantime, it feels like 1938.
...
Ivan Krastev, Centre for Liberal Strategies, Sofia: An age of conspiracy
What strikes me about the post-9/11 world are the threatening similarities among the three discourses that largely shape global politics today - anti-terrorism, anti-corruption, and anti-Americanism. All three are "empty boxes", easily filled with vague anxieties and cynically designed political strategies; each is a response to the growing gap between publics and elites. Groups with totally conflicting purposes can exploit all three to serve their own agendas.
Washington adopted a high profile in promoting the anti-corruption agenda, attempting to bypass unfriendly governments by telling civil-society actors that corrupt governments are the problem and using democracy promotion as an instrument to confront the rise of anti-Americanism.
In the case of anti-terrorism, Washington allowed discredited but friendly governments to label their domestic opponents as terrorists in return for support in the global "war on terrorism".
In the case of anti-Americanism, corrupt governments are trying to convince frustrated publics that the United States is the problem for everything that is going wrong in their own countries and in the world. The end result is a world that is marked by the rise of conspiracy theories of any kind and paranoid-style politics. So, personally I feel the post-9/11 world as the age of conspiracy.
...
Saskia Sassen, scholar and author: An empire trapped
Nothing was learned by the current United States administration from that tragic event on 11 September 2001 about the multiple interdependencies of the US with other countries. In an article published by the Guardian the next day, I argued that this was a moment for those wielding immense power in the world – the US government and multinationals, the International Monetary Fund, global banks, and other powerful actors - to interrogate the ways they handle their power.
The reason for such interrogation is not so much because of any direct connection between the attacks and the oceans of deprivation in the world, but because of the many, multiple interdependencies binding them:
“We may think that the debt and growing poverty in the south have nothing to do with the violence in New York and Washington. But they do. (“A message from the global south”, 12 September 2001)
Terrorist suicide-attacks have very specific origins. So does HIV/Aids. And so does the absolute immiseration of one billion people. How we contribute to these conditions and how we handle them can make a big difference. To respond by bombing Iraq was reducing a complex world-map of interdependencies to a one-to-one fist-fight. As is so often the case with quick and dirty responses, it has not worked – nor helped us address so many other aspects of today’s world that need addressing, urgently. The result has been the ultimate entrapment of US power – a massive distortion of the country’s capacities and of the dispositions of so much (though not all) of its citizenry.
...
David Theo Goldberg, scholar
Neo-liberalising 9/11
To say that 9/11 changed our world is a clichéd and forcibly America-centric view of things: cataclysmic events striking other societies - from political to natural disasters - seem not to register as volubly on the mediatised public’s global scale of concern. More deeply, though, 9/11 exacerbated broader political and social forces already underway.
First, neo-liberal commitments - increasingly institutionalised since the 1980s era of Thatcher, Reagan, and Kohl - have transformed the state into a structure focused on the protection of privatised interests from perceived threat: of those deemed not to belong, to have little or no standing, or who are too expensive to care for.
This shift places a premium on security. Neo-liberal states commit to guaranteeing privatised interests the conditions to flourish. This requires extensive policing – both of flows of information, capital, and consumer goods, and of people. The result is an expansion of institutions of violence - military, policing, homeland security. The combination caps the succession of the caretaker or pastoral state of mid-20th-century welfare liberalism to the traffic-cop state of the millennial turn.
At the macro level neo-liberalism expresses itself in terms of the nation over - even at the expense of - the state. The state is to stand for protecting me (and those “like” me, my national family). The rest can be damned. The traditional language and objects of racial humiliation – immigrants and refugees, young Muslim men, nations not in the orbit of acceptable power - are expunged from the neo-liberal state’s terms of reference but return as silent, shadowy figures of potential contamination. There they figure, as threats to the fiscal wellbeing or the social security of the nation, or to the new world order entire.
To Read all of the Commentaries
openDemocracy
The attacks on New York and Washington on 11 September 2001 were the prelude to a still unfolding global conflict. In the week of their fifth anniversary, openDemocracy asked our contributors and other writers to reflect briefly on what they have learned since the "two hours that shook the world".
Sidney Blumenthal, journalist and author: What are we fighting for?
A few things I have learned since 9/11 are:
▪ that cadres of neo-conservative ideologues were ready and waiting to transform the constitutional foundation of American government
▪ that they had clearly devised plans to use the power over the law to rescind and restrict rights in the interest of concentrated unaccountable authority in the executive (which after 9/11 is subsumed completely by the identity of commander-in-chief, or what Bush calls "war president")
▪ that the radical overthrow of constitutional checks and balances, of the longstanding American view of rights, and of the rule of law notably began with abrogation of Article 3 of the Geneva convention of 1949 on the treatment of prisoners of war forbidding cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment of prisoners (thus rolling back a policy that began with George Washington's order for the humane treatment of captured Hessian soldiers during the American revolutionary war).
I have also observed that, more or less, for much of the press, Bush's radical presidency has created realities too radical and therefore dangerous to report, perhaps especially the persistent campaign of intimidation against the press. This is yet another aspect of the effort to derange the constitution, in this case to vitiate - by displays of power, condign threats, and manipulations of indulgences of status - the check and balance guaranteed under the first amendment.
I have also learned that virtually all serious people in the senior military, intelligence community and law enforcement, not only in the United States but throughout Europe, do not believe in President Bush's "war on terror" as he describes it, or believe that it is or can be effective in meeting its end. And I have observed that few of these considered views have entered a highly constricted public debate - a narrowing of democracy that is essential to Republican preservation of power. President Bush speaks about "freedom" and "liberty" as his objects. So what is it we are fighting for? The extension of power of Bush's radical presidency?
Which reminds me of President Lincoln's statement, on 18 April 1864, during the civil war: "The world has never had a good definition of the word liberty, and the American people, just now, are much in want of one. We all declare for liberty; but in using the same word we do not all mean the same thing."
...
Jihad Fakhreddine, media analyst: What's left of We Are All Americans?
Since the emotional pledge in the Le Monde on 12 September 2001 - "We are all Americans" - I have been in futile search for those who will now make such a claim. I was not one them, but I could at least have claimed then: "We all have green cards".
For me, the most intriguing question is: how could the United States administration allow two things to happen: failure to capitalise on the sympathy the world demonstrated towards the US on 9/11, and allowing the perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks to win the war?
The 9/11 attacks could not have been more than symbolic. Al-Qaida could win neither a military battle nor a war against the US. It did nevertheless achieve the aim of the attacks: to drive an insurmountable psychological wedge between the US and the Arab and Muslim worlds.
I spent the entire 1980s studying and working in the US, and have directed close to twenty-five national public polls in Arab and Muslim countries for the Gallup organisation since 9/11. So I feel that I am a virtual holder of a green card.
But still, upon my arrival at the JFK international airport this spring, the officer of the homeland-security department greeted me by asking: What are you doing here? After waiting for two hours for finger and eye-scanning, I asked for directions to the toilet. The officer who directed me to one, commanded his colleague: Watch him.
As "We are all Americans" becomes a vanishingly rare sentiment, I still hold tightly to my virtual green card, which I strongly believe is a passport for coexisting. All my friends, and even my US-educated wife, wonder why I have not denounced it yet?!
Al-Qaida won the war not by its sheer power, but because of the US's misuse of its own political, cultural, and military power.
...
Godfrey Hodgson, journalist: Beyond paralysis
Outrage was a justifiable response to the atrocities of 9/11 on the part of American public opinion. The administration's policy, however, was "worse than a crime, it was a mistake", motivated and justified by hubristic fantasies. It has forfeited much of the goodwill won by generosity and restraint in the cold war, gravely damaged the international system, and prevented common action to confront other urgent and dangerous issues.
I have learned that many Muslims, both in Muslim countries and especially in Europe and America, are more unforgiving of western conduct, especially but not only in relation to Israel, than I had realised. I have learned that American public opinion is deeply divided, with at least half of the electorate, led astray by cynical media, committed to dangerous, because unrealistic and narcissistic, views of America's destiny. I have also learned how divided and impotent Europe is too, and how marginalised by American contempt.
The Democrats seem paralysed, but the other half of American public opinion is coming to understand how wrong Republican policy has been. In November we shall see whether this disastrous episode in America's public life is over. In the meantime, it feels like 1938.
...
Ivan Krastev, Centre for Liberal Strategies, Sofia: An age of conspiracy
What strikes me about the post-9/11 world are the threatening similarities among the three discourses that largely shape global politics today - anti-terrorism, anti-corruption, and anti-Americanism. All three are "empty boxes", easily filled with vague anxieties and cynically designed political strategies; each is a response to the growing gap between publics and elites. Groups with totally conflicting purposes can exploit all three to serve their own agendas.
Washington adopted a high profile in promoting the anti-corruption agenda, attempting to bypass unfriendly governments by telling civil-society actors that corrupt governments are the problem and using democracy promotion as an instrument to confront the rise of anti-Americanism.
In the case of anti-terrorism, Washington allowed discredited but friendly governments to label their domestic opponents as terrorists in return for support in the global "war on terrorism".
In the case of anti-Americanism, corrupt governments are trying to convince frustrated publics that the United States is the problem for everything that is going wrong in their own countries and in the world. The end result is a world that is marked by the rise of conspiracy theories of any kind and paranoid-style politics. So, personally I feel the post-9/11 world as the age of conspiracy.
...
Saskia Sassen, scholar and author: An empire trapped
Nothing was learned by the current United States administration from that tragic event on 11 September 2001 about the multiple interdependencies of the US with other countries. In an article published by the Guardian the next day, I argued that this was a moment for those wielding immense power in the world – the US government and multinationals, the International Monetary Fund, global banks, and other powerful actors - to interrogate the ways they handle their power.
The reason for such interrogation is not so much because of any direct connection between the attacks and the oceans of deprivation in the world, but because of the many, multiple interdependencies binding them:
“We may think that the debt and growing poverty in the south have nothing to do with the violence in New York and Washington. But they do. (“A message from the global south”, 12 September 2001)
Terrorist suicide-attacks have very specific origins. So does HIV/Aids. And so does the absolute immiseration of one billion people. How we contribute to these conditions and how we handle them can make a big difference. To respond by bombing Iraq was reducing a complex world-map of interdependencies to a one-to-one fist-fight. As is so often the case with quick and dirty responses, it has not worked – nor helped us address so many other aspects of today’s world that need addressing, urgently. The result has been the ultimate entrapment of US power – a massive distortion of the country’s capacities and of the dispositions of so much (though not all) of its citizenry.
...
David Theo Goldberg, scholar
Neo-liberalising 9/11
To say that 9/11 changed our world is a clichéd and forcibly America-centric view of things: cataclysmic events striking other societies - from political to natural disasters - seem not to register as volubly on the mediatised public’s global scale of concern. More deeply, though, 9/11 exacerbated broader political and social forces already underway.
First, neo-liberal commitments - increasingly institutionalised since the 1980s era of Thatcher, Reagan, and Kohl - have transformed the state into a structure focused on the protection of privatised interests from perceived threat: of those deemed not to belong, to have little or no standing, or who are too expensive to care for.
This shift places a premium on security. Neo-liberal states commit to guaranteeing privatised interests the conditions to flourish. This requires extensive policing – both of flows of information, capital, and consumer goods, and of people. The result is an expansion of institutions of violence - military, policing, homeland security. The combination caps the succession of the caretaker or pastoral state of mid-20th-century welfare liberalism to the traffic-cop state of the millennial turn.
At the macro level neo-liberalism expresses itself in terms of the nation over - even at the expense of - the state. The state is to stand for protecting me (and those “like” me, my national family). The rest can be damned. The traditional language and objects of racial humiliation – immigrants and refugees, young Muslim men, nations not in the orbit of acceptable power - are expunged from the neo-liberal state’s terms of reference but return as silent, shadowy figures of potential contamination. There they figure, as threats to the fiscal wellbeing or the social security of the nation, or to the new world order entire.
To Read all of the Commentaries
Thomas Berry: The Mystique of the Earth
The Mystique of the Earth: Thomas Berry's vision for an Earth Democracy recognizes the unity between humans and the planet.
He is interviewed by Caroline Webb
Caduceus, Spring 2003, Issue 59: Reposted on Ratical
`I have been having coffee with Confucius, for heaven's sake. This person is as giant a thinker as Confucius -- and I've been having coffee with him!' Speaking at a conference in Berkeley California in November 2002, cosmologist Brian Swimme recalls his astonishment after his first meeting in 1982 with the person who has emerged as one of the leading thinkers of the world, and who became his primary mentor and co-worker: Thomas Berry. The description seems apt. As the seminal influence of this American monk, philosopher, cultural historian, poet and teacher continues to expand into all fields of society, it would seem that Berry's contribution is most especially that of a visionary. Visionaries and prophets are known for their interference with complacent social beliefs and Thomas is no exception. His call to us -- whatever the field we work in -- is to come off the pedestal of human superiority over nature and expand our horizons far beyond our anthropocentrism, all the way out to the stars. Emphasizing time and again that the real context for all human affairs is the universe which gave birth to us, Berry's life work has been to call humanity into a new partnership with the Earth, imbued with reverence and wonder, which he describes as `a mutually enhancing relationship and presence'. In that altered relationship and presence lies the key to a true sustainability for all life, far into the future.
Now 87, with three books to his name that address fundamental issues of our relationship with the cosmos and with Earth, [1] Berry's creativity is undiminished. Preferring the title of `geologian' to that of `theologian', and having been heard many times to call for the Bible to be placed on a shelf for twenty years while attention is paid to the `primary sacrament', namely the Universe itself, Thomas is now busy with generating ideas and principles by which our legal structures and thinking may be altered. Jurisprudence -- the philosophy of law and the assumptions couched in all national constitutions, written or unwritten -- has become his primary focus for tackling the deep-rooted causes of human destruction of nature.
Caroline Webb met Thomas Berry and discussed his work on creating an `Earth jurisprudence' at a conference held in honour of his work in Berkeley, California called The Cosmological Imagination: Transforming World Views for the Planetary Era.
Caroline Webb: As Caduceus is a magazine concerned with healing, transformation and wholeness, I'd like to start with asking how you approach the question of healing -- whether for an individual, a community or the planet. What do you see as its essence?
Thomas Berry: Healing presupposes the integral unity of things. What is the context of healing? Human health is a subsystem of the Earth's health. You cannot have well humans on a sick planet. And that is what we are trying to do, with all our technologies: we are trying to have well humans on a sick planet. The same principle applies for economics: you cannot have a viable human economy by destroying the Earth's economy. So a person could apply this in different ways. Everything we have is derivative from the larger community out of which we come and to which or in which we are fulfilled.
Caroline Webb: We have a sense of spirituality that is still very anthropocentric, and your interest in an Earth jurisprudence gives me a different sense about what it means to be spiritual. To think that we can have a viable human economy by destroying the Earth economy is absurd
Thomas Berry: We talk about spirituality but first of all humans are not spirits. That's why I don't use the word `spirit' or `spirituality' much. `Spirit' has no inner reference to body, or to matter. We are ensouled beings. The soul is that vital principle in a living organic body, and all living beings are ensouled beings. Humans have an intelligent soul, a soul that is capable of reflecting on itself and on the deeper aspects of the universe. In the human it's not so much that we know the universe, but the universe knows itself in us. And in a certain sense we could apply this to every aspect of things -- like `governance'. The human has been trying to establish a human governance out of its own needs, or its own functioning, but in reality human governance is a function of the universe, particularly of planet Earth, so planet Earth is the unit of governance. The ecology issue emerges out of the fact that humans have been constructing a government for humans, by humans and with its destiny in developing the human -- but that won't work because if the human is looking for its own benefit rather than the benefit of the larger community, if we become predators on the natural community, then we lose in every way.
To Read the Rest of the Interview
He is interviewed by Caroline Webb
Caduceus, Spring 2003, Issue 59: Reposted on Ratical
`I have been having coffee with Confucius, for heaven's sake. This person is as giant a thinker as Confucius -- and I've been having coffee with him!' Speaking at a conference in Berkeley California in November 2002, cosmologist Brian Swimme recalls his astonishment after his first meeting in 1982 with the person who has emerged as one of the leading thinkers of the world, and who became his primary mentor and co-worker: Thomas Berry. The description seems apt. As the seminal influence of this American monk, philosopher, cultural historian, poet and teacher continues to expand into all fields of society, it would seem that Berry's contribution is most especially that of a visionary. Visionaries and prophets are known for their interference with complacent social beliefs and Thomas is no exception. His call to us -- whatever the field we work in -- is to come off the pedestal of human superiority over nature and expand our horizons far beyond our anthropocentrism, all the way out to the stars. Emphasizing time and again that the real context for all human affairs is the universe which gave birth to us, Berry's life work has been to call humanity into a new partnership with the Earth, imbued with reverence and wonder, which he describes as `a mutually enhancing relationship and presence'. In that altered relationship and presence lies the key to a true sustainability for all life, far into the future.
Now 87, with three books to his name that address fundamental issues of our relationship with the cosmos and with Earth, [1] Berry's creativity is undiminished. Preferring the title of `geologian' to that of `theologian', and having been heard many times to call for the Bible to be placed on a shelf for twenty years while attention is paid to the `primary sacrament', namely the Universe itself, Thomas is now busy with generating ideas and principles by which our legal structures and thinking may be altered. Jurisprudence -- the philosophy of law and the assumptions couched in all national constitutions, written or unwritten -- has become his primary focus for tackling the deep-rooted causes of human destruction of nature.
Caroline Webb met Thomas Berry and discussed his work on creating an `Earth jurisprudence' at a conference held in honour of his work in Berkeley, California called The Cosmological Imagination: Transforming World Views for the Planetary Era.
Caroline Webb: As Caduceus is a magazine concerned with healing, transformation and wholeness, I'd like to start with asking how you approach the question of healing -- whether for an individual, a community or the planet. What do you see as its essence?
Thomas Berry: Healing presupposes the integral unity of things. What is the context of healing? Human health is a subsystem of the Earth's health. You cannot have well humans on a sick planet. And that is what we are trying to do, with all our technologies: we are trying to have well humans on a sick planet. The same principle applies for economics: you cannot have a viable human economy by destroying the Earth's economy. So a person could apply this in different ways. Everything we have is derivative from the larger community out of which we come and to which or in which we are fulfilled.
Caroline Webb: We have a sense of spirituality that is still very anthropocentric, and your interest in an Earth jurisprudence gives me a different sense about what it means to be spiritual. To think that we can have a viable human economy by destroying the Earth economy is absurd
Thomas Berry: We talk about spirituality but first of all humans are not spirits. That's why I don't use the word `spirit' or `spirituality' much. `Spirit' has no inner reference to body, or to matter. We are ensouled beings. The soul is that vital principle in a living organic body, and all living beings are ensouled beings. Humans have an intelligent soul, a soul that is capable of reflecting on itself and on the deeper aspects of the universe. In the human it's not so much that we know the universe, but the universe knows itself in us. And in a certain sense we could apply this to every aspect of things -- like `governance'. The human has been trying to establish a human governance out of its own needs, or its own functioning, but in reality human governance is a function of the universe, particularly of planet Earth, so planet Earth is the unit of governance. The ecology issue emerges out of the fact that humans have been constructing a government for humans, by humans and with its destiny in developing the human -- but that won't work because if the human is looking for its own benefit rather than the benefit of the larger community, if we become predators on the natural community, then we lose in every way.
To Read the Rest of the Interview
Saturday, September 09, 2006
Thivai: A Response to Starrider
(Starrider's original comments to an earlier post are here--I purposely did not correct anything I wrote in the moment)
Starrider,
First, let me say thank you for your long, passionate response.
I too believe that modern humans are missing pieces to the puzzle of life, although, I'm not so sure that we are anymore unique in the development in humanity... we always seem to be missing the point, somehow, which is why I'm asuch andvocate of multiple perspectives and the process of dialogue as a method of sharpening our individual perspectives (even if it is an agonistic dialogic format in which we take opposing viewpoints and sharpen them against the grain)
Which, once again, leaves me touched, in a sense that you left this post... but onward...
I don't necessarily believe that "most" people don't understand what spirituality is, perhaps, when it seems to be missing, these people are engaged in an endless cycle of work and consume, that keeps them distracted from the finer points you are trying to make about our role in the world? How do we break that cycle as a dominant force in the majority of peoples lives?
Absolutely the problem with religion, or spirituality, is that is bureacratic, dogmatic and institutionalized. I would be the first to say that each and every person should study all of the world's religions/philosophies at an early point in their education and then be allowed to develop their own particular worldview/spirtualiy. In this I join with Susanne who visits this site from time to time and introduced me to a great term--we are anti-theists. Against static, unchanging, dogmatic, closed religions (and politics and philosophies). I would want my children, my friends, my loved ones, and, yes, my enemies to have the opportunity to develop their own sense of spirituality and then to put it into play with mine and others.
I feel disengaged most of the time from the natural world--probably why I nostalgistically post pictures of the few moments when I do get to be a part of a more natural world--although in my more posthuman moments I also wonder what is natural and what is not--can something be not-a-part-of-nature? Which I think you would agree with, in priniciple, and I think you argument is definitely on target in that we do not provide enough clear rituals, signposts and anchors for people these days, perhaps, were we might differ, is that I do not see Christianity as the answer (although it could help)... as it is in our society, and throughout Western civilization, linked to the destruction of the environment and, increasingly, apping consumer society in its appeals to the young/disaffected (but then I feel in your intelligent response that you would reject these consumeristic appeals?)
Man? Do you mean human? or are you a patriarchal authoritarian--sorry just thought you should think about it?
Contemporary Christian religion seems to be doing a good job, in Kentucky of picking up the slack, they have adopted all the bells and whistles, the spectacle, the sensations and they have de-mythologized and repackaged their messages for a new generation. It rings empty for me, but then I am somewhat cynical and it does not mean I am closed to the message--I was raised Southern Baptist, I read the bible straight through six times (with careful annotations)--what it means is that it does not seem like an institution that really wants people to think-through and come to their own conclusions (much like our current government and their pushing of a secular religion called patriotism).
Then you say such a beautiful and powerful quote that I could never deny, nay, only hope, that others would at least give a nod of acceptance to:
"Establishing a belief system or comprehensive worldview that they can EXPERIENCE instead of only believe or "have faith" in could make a great difference in the lives of individuals, communities even nations or the world itself."
Once again we have to allow an open space for people to develop their own conception of the world (and beyond) to bring it into play with other viewpoints and to sharpen their conceptions in the process.
You know I am a great listener. This is not a boast. I talk to people, I'm not afraid to state my opinion, but when people want to talk, I listen, wholeheartedly, I "want" to know what they have learned from their experience/their studies. We live in a society that celebrates, nay, that worships, those that shout down others, those that are unchanging in their beliefs, those that say my way or the highway (this is not hyperbole--we can see this operating in America from the micro to the macro scale)
My life has a huge fucking rift across it from the moment I decide I wanted to understand the world (and beyond) to the moment I decide I would learn as much as I possibly could by listening to others
What I have learned is that few respect an open attitude, few hav no patience for patience, and few want to decide for themselves. Where does that leave us? I would not think it would be down the alley of a pre-formed institutionalized religion (not saying we have to reject, but damn it needs some revolutions before I see it anew--once again I do not reject its wisdoms, I do not accept it wholesale)
You state:
"I believe also that having a greater understanding and sense of purpose begins first with the fear (respect) of God and then respect for his creations."
Is it necessary that I "fear" God (oops, here we go again down that slippery slop of patriarchal designations again--ok, I'll quit that critique for now). Perhaps what is needed is for us to quit thinking that we are so special, to recognize that we are all in the same boat (this material world), to care beyond our species, our home, our locality, our nation, our corporation... to recoginize the broader connections and interrealtionships, but, then that is difficult, that requires that we open our minds to other forms of thought, other worldviews, other religions, other nationalistic (and teroristic) goals.
So then I get to this part f your comment... and you know what, I begin to think you ar just trolling, perhaps you are going to catch a blogger on a bad day, and you can hook em' bringing a big fat trophy for your god (lower case intentional):
"The existence of the world then means; not chaos, but order, and if humans wish to exist within that order, they should integrate into the creational order. This is what wisdom and/or spirituality is all about."
Because this comment is so different from your earlier statements (or perhaps it isn't and my idealistic nature over-interrpeted an earnest Chritian seeking to engage in dialogue?)
Then I read the most insensibke gobbledy-gook:
"The Bible itself demonstrates that God's mood regarding the behaviour of man is usually clearly demonstrated by the state of the Earth we live upon. When he is pleased, it is fruitful and yielding- when he is not happy it becomes unfruitful and covered with stubble and desolation."
What?
Interweaved are great realizations:
"I respect the idea that we should care for people before worrying about a paricular problem in nature, but I don't see how the two become completely different issues, they are symbiotic."
but yor ultimate conclusions leave little room for interpetation outside of your beliefs (which is acceptable for you--but not in a dialogue)
.... and your glimmers of progressive politics are undercut by apolitical statements like this:
"As for ridding the Earth of sinful and unworthy men, that is God's business and it has been done according to the book of Genesis."
Bullshit... if thy own eye offends you pluck it out--wake up!
I reject your belief in a Christian god and his mandates based upon the biblical scriptures of Genesis--where does that leave us?
Once again thank you for your response--I'm sorry but, at this time, I will follow my own anti-theist path.
Peace
Thivai
Starrider,
First, let me say thank you for your long, passionate response.
I too believe that modern humans are missing pieces to the puzzle of life, although, I'm not so sure that we are anymore unique in the development in humanity... we always seem to be missing the point, somehow, which is why I'm asuch andvocate of multiple perspectives and the process of dialogue as a method of sharpening our individual perspectives (even if it is an agonistic dialogic format in which we take opposing viewpoints and sharpen them against the grain)
Which, once again, leaves me touched, in a sense that you left this post... but onward...
I don't necessarily believe that "most" people don't understand what spirituality is, perhaps, when it seems to be missing, these people are engaged in an endless cycle of work and consume, that keeps them distracted from the finer points you are trying to make about our role in the world? How do we break that cycle as a dominant force in the majority of peoples lives?
Absolutely the problem with religion, or spirituality, is that is bureacratic, dogmatic and institutionalized. I would be the first to say that each and every person should study all of the world's religions/philosophies at an early point in their education and then be allowed to develop their own particular worldview/spirtualiy. In this I join with Susanne who visits this site from time to time and introduced me to a great term--we are anti-theists. Against static, unchanging, dogmatic, closed religions (and politics and philosophies). I would want my children, my friends, my loved ones, and, yes, my enemies to have the opportunity to develop their own sense of spirituality and then to put it into play with mine and others.
I feel disengaged most of the time from the natural world--probably why I nostalgistically post pictures of the few moments when I do get to be a part of a more natural world--although in my more posthuman moments I also wonder what is natural and what is not--can something be not-a-part-of-nature? Which I think you would agree with, in priniciple, and I think you argument is definitely on target in that we do not provide enough clear rituals, signposts and anchors for people these days, perhaps, were we might differ, is that I do not see Christianity as the answer (although it could help)... as it is in our society, and throughout Western civilization, linked to the destruction of the environment and, increasingly, apping consumer society in its appeals to the young/disaffected (but then I feel in your intelligent response that you would reject these consumeristic appeals?)
Man? Do you mean human? or are you a patriarchal authoritarian--sorry just thought you should think about it?
Contemporary Christian religion seems to be doing a good job, in Kentucky of picking up the slack, they have adopted all the bells and whistles, the spectacle, the sensations and they have de-mythologized and repackaged their messages for a new generation. It rings empty for me, but then I am somewhat cynical and it does not mean I am closed to the message--I was raised Southern Baptist, I read the bible straight through six times (with careful annotations)--what it means is that it does not seem like an institution that really wants people to think-through and come to their own conclusions (much like our current government and their pushing of a secular religion called patriotism).
Then you say such a beautiful and powerful quote that I could never deny, nay, only hope, that others would at least give a nod of acceptance to:
"Establishing a belief system or comprehensive worldview that they can EXPERIENCE instead of only believe or "have faith" in could make a great difference in the lives of individuals, communities even nations or the world itself."
Once again we have to allow an open space for people to develop their own conception of the world (and beyond) to bring it into play with other viewpoints and to sharpen their conceptions in the process.
You know I am a great listener. This is not a boast. I talk to people, I'm not afraid to state my opinion, but when people want to talk, I listen, wholeheartedly, I "want" to know what they have learned from their experience/their studies. We live in a society that celebrates, nay, that worships, those that shout down others, those that are unchanging in their beliefs, those that say my way or the highway (this is not hyperbole--we can see this operating in America from the micro to the macro scale)
My life has a huge fucking rift across it from the moment I decide I wanted to understand the world (and beyond) to the moment I decide I would learn as much as I possibly could by listening to others
What I have learned is that few respect an open attitude, few hav no patience for patience, and few want to decide for themselves. Where does that leave us? I would not think it would be down the alley of a pre-formed institutionalized religion (not saying we have to reject, but damn it needs some revolutions before I see it anew--once again I do not reject its wisdoms, I do not accept it wholesale)
You state:
"I believe also that having a greater understanding and sense of purpose begins first with the fear (respect) of God and then respect for his creations."
Is it necessary that I "fear" God (oops, here we go again down that slippery slop of patriarchal designations again--ok, I'll quit that critique for now). Perhaps what is needed is for us to quit thinking that we are so special, to recognize that we are all in the same boat (this material world), to care beyond our species, our home, our locality, our nation, our corporation... to recoginize the broader connections and interrealtionships, but, then that is difficult, that requires that we open our minds to other forms of thought, other worldviews, other religions, other nationalistic (and teroristic) goals.
So then I get to this part f your comment... and you know what, I begin to think you ar just trolling, perhaps you are going to catch a blogger on a bad day, and you can hook em' bringing a big fat trophy for your god (lower case intentional):
"The existence of the world then means; not chaos, but order, and if humans wish to exist within that order, they should integrate into the creational order. This is what wisdom and/or spirituality is all about."
Because this comment is so different from your earlier statements (or perhaps it isn't and my idealistic nature over-interrpeted an earnest Chritian seeking to engage in dialogue?)
Then I read the most insensibke gobbledy-gook:
"The Bible itself demonstrates that God's mood regarding the behaviour of man is usually clearly demonstrated by the state of the Earth we live upon. When he is pleased, it is fruitful and yielding- when he is not happy it becomes unfruitful and covered with stubble and desolation."
What?
Interweaved are great realizations:
"I respect the idea that we should care for people before worrying about a paricular problem in nature, but I don't see how the two become completely different issues, they are symbiotic."
but yor ultimate conclusions leave little room for interpetation outside of your beliefs (which is acceptable for you--but not in a dialogue)
.... and your glimmers of progressive politics are undercut by apolitical statements like this:
"As for ridding the Earth of sinful and unworthy men, that is God's business and it has been done according to the book of Genesis."
Bullshit... if thy own eye offends you pluck it out--wake up!
I reject your belief in a Christian god and his mandates based upon the biblical scriptures of Genesis--where does that leave us?
Once again thank you for your response--I'm sorry but, at this time, I will follow my own anti-theist path.
Peace
Thivai
Friday, September 08, 2006
Random Thoughts: How Green Was My Valley
(I know what this feels like--a powerful sensation of regret, loss and nostalgia. The reason you can never go home again is because that nostalgic home is a state-of-mind that is a product of you at an earlier point in time. When you leave you gain new perspectives and experiences that irrevocably change you, forever moving you beyond that person that left their homeland, and leaving you separated... even if you go back, because you return as a new immigrant, re-acclimating themselves to this estrangement, or displacement, ... hell words escape me--thanks for this post!)
How Green Was My Valley
Random Thoughts
I was looking at some photos my cousin sent me from his recent trip to Calcutta. Photos of the city, of the people I love and grew up with, of places and times that I left behind when I came to the US. And as I went through photo after photo of known places and loved ones I was gripped with pain and sadness. It appeared to me that every little thing I knew and remembered was changed and different now. The city looked old and dirty, the people looked tired and aged. And nothing seemed to be the same anymore. And suddenly I realized as a sharp pang of regret shot through me that the only thing that was probably changed and different was me and how I viewed things now. And I wept. For times that were gone and lost. For family that I had moved away from. For days that I had spent growing up loving a place, missing it every single day, only to realize how distant I had become and how things were not the same anymore.
To Read the Rest of the Post
How Green Was My Valley
Random Thoughts
I was looking at some photos my cousin sent me from his recent trip to Calcutta. Photos of the city, of the people I love and grew up with, of places and times that I left behind when I came to the US. And as I went through photo after photo of known places and loved ones I was gripped with pain and sadness. It appeared to me that every little thing I knew and remembered was changed and different now. The city looked old and dirty, the people looked tired and aged. And nothing seemed to be the same anymore. And suddenly I realized as a sharp pang of regret shot through me that the only thing that was probably changed and different was me and how I viewed things now. And I wept. For times that were gone and lost. For family that I had moved away from. For days that I had spent growing up loving a place, missing it every single day, only to realize how distant I had become and how things were not the same anymore.
To Read the Rest of the Post
Reappropriate: What Are You?
Jenn at Reappropriate comments on the tendency from some to ask "What are you?":
Eric Stoller blogged recently about his girlfriend being confronted with the "what are you" question, and queried as to why many Whites feel the need to put people of colour into identifiable little boxes.
To me, it's just a by-product of the Other-izing of minorities. For many Whites, who are, by definition, never face the racial degradation of Otherizing (or even conscious membership to a racial community) see nothing wrong with being curious about a "different person"'s background or appearance. For some, there is a fascination with being visibly different, for others, it is a belief that racism exists only as racial slurs and sodomizing broomsticks, and cannot be found within an "innocent question" posed by a curious and nonetheless open-minded White liberal.
The truth is that people of colour loathe the "what are you" question because it's a reminder of the inequality we face inherent to our racial background. "What are you" suggests that we are not them, we are not normal, we are different. Though the White querient may believe the question is not harmful, they never consider how the very non sequitor nature of the question not only reminds us of our "Other"-izing but showcases the mindset of Whites who feel entitled to the knowledge.
I'm frequently asked by Whites "what I am" -- and these questions are usually followed by comments about Chinese culture that supposedly connect them to my background. I haven't quite figured out how to respond to these kinds of questions, but I certainly know that I'm tired of being a "what" in the first place.
Tim Cavanuagh: Why Captain Kirk’s story is the story of America
(Deep Space Nine is easily the best Star Trek series--the one I cannot stand was the last one, a prequel that fed off the conservative impulse of Post 9/11 culture.)
Happy 40th Birthday, Star Trek: Why Captain Kirk’s story is the story of America
Tim Cavanaugh
Reason
As an American story, Star Trek is not just about resurrection but about production, and there’s been plenty of that: Fan books such as Dave Marinaccio’s All I Really Need to Know I Learned From Watching Star Trek, a tome that more than lives up to the promise of its title. Fan films like the Star Trek: New Voyages series (freely watchable at newvoyages.com, and executed with an astonishing degree of commitment and creativity). Fan fiction in which Captain Kirk, a man whose robustly heterosexual libido made satisfied customers out of white, black, brown, and green women, finds his true soul mate in Mr. Spock.
And that’s just the unofficial stuff. Paramount declines to say how much money Star Trek has made for it over the years. A 1999 Salon article estimated that the Star Trek franchise had earned $2.3 billion in TV revenues, more than $1 billion in movie box office, and $4 billion in merchandise sales; there have been more series, movies, and merchandise since then. But any dollar amount is dwarfed by the overall content amount the franchise has produced.
On the big screen, there have been 10 movies so far. Paramount and J. J. Abrams, the creator of the hit TV shows Lost and Alias, have announced development of Star Trek XI, though seasoned Trek numerologists are wary of the movie’s place in the series. (Just as you should stick with the odd-numbered Beethoven symphonies, you’ll have better luck with the even-numbered Star Trek films.)
On the small screen, in addition to the cartoon (now remembered mainly for bringing Lucien the goat-man into many an already troubled childhood in the ’70s), there have been four live-action spin-off series. Star Trek: The Next Generation featured Patrick Stewart’s Captain Picard and the only post-Kirk crew member this viewer can fully endorse, Data, the coolly curious and helpful android played by Brent Spiner. Deep Space Nine, a darker, more pessimistic show, moved the action to a space station and explored the ugly, sausage-making dynamics of maintaining the Federation on a daily basis.
Voyager featured Kate Mulgrew as the franchise’s first woman commander as well as a sexy but unapproachable “Borg” character played by Jeri Ryan, the actress who later gained fame in her divorce from sex-club-addicted Republican Senate candidate Jack Ryan. (Scientists may never be able to calculate the number of teenage geeks whose adolescences were soothed by the women of Star Trek.) Enterprise was a prequel cleverly set on an earlier, ramshackle version of the flagship. For many viewers (including this one), Captain Kirk’s is the one true Trek, but it should be noted that each of the spin-off series ran through many more episodes than the original show’s 79 and won many more Emmy awards than the original’s zero.
None of this stuff—the successful TV series, the big-screen Trektaculars, the video games and action figures and merchandise—would have happened if the decisions had been left to the actual owners of the brand. The value of Star Trek remained hidden by some Romulan cloaking device until the Trekkies, doggedly gathering at fan conventions and bombarding Paramount with letters throughout the ’70s, demonstrated the franchise’s potential. The commitment of those fans (along with the unprecedented success of George Lucas’ Star Wars, which may yet turn out to be merely an epiphenomenon of Star Trek) eventually persuaded Paramount to bring Trek to movie theaters in 1979. With a less rabid fan base, Wise’s disappointing film would have been the end of the franchise, but the Trekkies hung on, demanding more movies, more television series, more Star Trek crap than there were tribbles on the Enterprise. For in the resurrection story of Star Trek, the fans are the Holy Spirit.
Happy 40th Birthday, Star Trek: Why Captain Kirk’s story is the story of America
Tim Cavanaugh
Reason
As an American story, Star Trek is not just about resurrection but about production, and there’s been plenty of that: Fan books such as Dave Marinaccio’s All I Really Need to Know I Learned From Watching Star Trek, a tome that more than lives up to the promise of its title. Fan films like the Star Trek: New Voyages series (freely watchable at newvoyages.com, and executed with an astonishing degree of commitment and creativity). Fan fiction in which Captain Kirk, a man whose robustly heterosexual libido made satisfied customers out of white, black, brown, and green women, finds his true soul mate in Mr. Spock.
And that’s just the unofficial stuff. Paramount declines to say how much money Star Trek has made for it over the years. A 1999 Salon article estimated that the Star Trek franchise had earned $2.3 billion in TV revenues, more than $1 billion in movie box office, and $4 billion in merchandise sales; there have been more series, movies, and merchandise since then. But any dollar amount is dwarfed by the overall content amount the franchise has produced.
On the big screen, there have been 10 movies so far. Paramount and J. J. Abrams, the creator of the hit TV shows Lost and Alias, have announced development of Star Trek XI, though seasoned Trek numerologists are wary of the movie’s place in the series. (Just as you should stick with the odd-numbered Beethoven symphonies, you’ll have better luck with the even-numbered Star Trek films.)
On the small screen, in addition to the cartoon (now remembered mainly for bringing Lucien the goat-man into many an already troubled childhood in the ’70s), there have been four live-action spin-off series. Star Trek: The Next Generation featured Patrick Stewart’s Captain Picard and the only post-Kirk crew member this viewer can fully endorse, Data, the coolly curious and helpful android played by Brent Spiner. Deep Space Nine, a darker, more pessimistic show, moved the action to a space station and explored the ugly, sausage-making dynamics of maintaining the Federation on a daily basis.
Voyager featured Kate Mulgrew as the franchise’s first woman commander as well as a sexy but unapproachable “Borg” character played by Jeri Ryan, the actress who later gained fame in her divorce from sex-club-addicted Republican Senate candidate Jack Ryan. (Scientists may never be able to calculate the number of teenage geeks whose adolescences were soothed by the women of Star Trek.) Enterprise was a prequel cleverly set on an earlier, ramshackle version of the flagship. For many viewers (including this one), Captain Kirk’s is the one true Trek, but it should be noted that each of the spin-off series ran through many more episodes than the original show’s 79 and won many more Emmy awards than the original’s zero.
None of this stuff—the successful TV series, the big-screen Trektaculars, the video games and action figures and merchandise—would have happened if the decisions had been left to the actual owners of the brand. The value of Star Trek remained hidden by some Romulan cloaking device until the Trekkies, doggedly gathering at fan conventions and bombarding Paramount with letters throughout the ’70s, demonstrated the franchise’s potential. The commitment of those fans (along with the unprecedented success of George Lucas’ Star Wars, which may yet turn out to be merely an epiphenomenon of Star Trek) eventually persuaded Paramount to bring Trek to movie theaters in 1979. With a less rabid fan base, Wise’s disappointing film would have been the end of the franchise, but the Trekkies hung on, demanding more movies, more television series, more Star Trek crap than there were tribbles on the Enterprise. For in the resurrection story of Star Trek, the fans are the Holy Spirit.
Reviewers Needed for "Theories/Practices of Blogging" special issue of Reconstruction
I need some fairly quick reviews (by Oct 14) of books, websites, new technologies, documentaries, new media performances, for a special issue on the "Theories/Practices of Blogging" for the journal Reconstruction.
Anyone interested? Contact me.
Anyone interested? Contact me.
Reconstruction 7.2: Eco-Cultures: Cultural Studies and the Environment
(I need two book reviews for this issue--if you contact me and supply me with your qualifications, I can hook you up with a review copy and set up a deadline for the review--anyone interested?)
Reconstruction 7.2: Eco-Cultures: Cultural Studies and the Environment
Call for Papers: Special theme issue of Reconstruction
Co-edited by
Alexandra Ganser, M.A ., University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, Germany
Dr. Vibha Arora, Indian Institute of Technology, New Delhi, India
Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture is an open access, electronic, peer-reviewed journal devoted to publishing essays in cultural studies from emerging and established scholars worldwide.
Alexandra Ganser and Vibha Arora invite additional original essays as well as book reviews for a themed issue on "Eco-Cultures: Cultural Studies and the Environment" of Reconstruction (April 2007, Issue 7.2 ) exploring the significance and representation of the "natural" environment cross-culturally and from a variety of scholarly approaches and perspectives. With this special issue of Reconstruction we aim to explain the articulation of the environment as an integral part of cultural articulation and discourse systems, which complements class, race, and gender. Whereas the latter three have been established as the triadic focus of examination in Cultural Studies, for instance, an ecological perspective is often ignored in the analysis of cultural expression within this field. Thus, essays with a Cultural Studies approach are strongly encouraged.
Contributors to this special issue include Brian Black, Chris Drinkwater, C. Richard King, Lori Martindale, Mary Newell, and Catherine Roach. We are now seeking 2-3 additional essays with a focus on nature and nature perception in cultural representation (literary, filmic , architectural, etc.); nature/culture/ecology in critical and cultural theory (Raymond Williams, for instance); ecofeminisms; indigenous ecologies, cosmologies, and narratives; travel, tourism, and the environment; historical perspectives on nature politics and representation; landscape aesthetics; etc.
In addition, we are looking for book and other (music, exhibitions, photographic, etc.) reviews and review essays with a similar focus.
Reconstruction 7.2: Eco-Cultures: Cultural Studies and the Environment
Call for Papers: Special theme issue of Reconstruction
Co-edited by
Alexandra Ganser, M.A ., University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, Germany
Dr. Vibha Arora, Indian Institute of Technology, New Delhi, India
Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture is an open access, electronic, peer-reviewed journal devoted to publishing essays in cultural studies from emerging and established scholars worldwide.
Alexandra Ganser and Vibha Arora invite additional original essays as well as book reviews for a themed issue on "Eco-Cultures: Cultural Studies and the Environment" of Reconstruction (April 2007, Issue 7.2 ) exploring the significance and representation of the "natural" environment cross-culturally and from a variety of scholarly approaches and perspectives. With this special issue of Reconstruction we aim to explain the articulation of the environment as an integral part of cultural articulation and discourse systems, which complements class, race, and gender. Whereas the latter three have been established as the triadic focus of examination in Cultural Studies, for instance, an ecological perspective is often ignored in the analysis of cultural expression within this field. Thus, essays with a Cultural Studies approach are strongly encouraged.
Contributors to this special issue include Brian Black, Chris Drinkwater, C. Richard King, Lori Martindale, Mary Newell, and Catherine Roach. We are now seeking 2-3 additional essays with a focus on nature and nature perception in cultural representation (literary, filmic , architectural, etc.); nature/culture/ecology in critical and cultural theory (Raymond Williams, for instance); ecofeminisms; indigenous ecologies, cosmologies, and narratives; travel, tourism, and the environment; historical perspectives on nature politics and representation; landscape aesthetics; etc.
In addition, we are looking for book and other (music, exhibitions, photographic, etc.) reviews and review essays with a similar focus.
Michel Gondry: Science of Sleep
(Courtesy of RES Magazine--I'm looking forward to this film because I have always confused my dreams with reality and I never get the one I like--besides its Michel Gondry ;)
HOW DO YOU DREAM?
In honor of Michel Gondry's latest film The Science of Sleep (opening September 22), the director has invited you to share your dreams through blogs, photos, videos and music in a new online community based around the film.
Science of Sleep
Watch the Trailer
bye, bye now, i'm off to sleep...
HOW DO YOU DREAM?
In honor of Michel Gondry's latest film The Science of Sleep (opening September 22), the director has invited you to share your dreams through blogs, photos, videos and music in a new online community based around the film.
Science of Sleep
Watch the Trailer
bye, bye now, i'm off to sleep...
Thursday, September 07, 2006
Allison Hantschel: The Last Defenders of Marriage
The Last Defenders of Marriage
By Allison Hantschel
Sirens Magazine Posted at AlterNet (September 7, 2006)
The institution of marriage isn't under attack by gay couples -- despite what conservatives would have you believe.
When photos of the same-sex weddings being performed in San Francisco started popping up online, I called my husband. Photos of happy couples, both sexes, all ages, in all kinds of outfits: I'll never forget the one newlywed pair who carried a stuffed monkey with them. Nor the image of the two young men in kilts, one heavy, the other slim, holding up their marriage certificate with mouths open in a joyous yawp of victory.
I called my husband because those pictures of other people happily and publicly pledging their lives to one another, made me glad he and I had done the same.
Much of the rhetoric opponents of gay marriage use depicts marriage as "under attack" from gay couples. They talk about the destabilization of society, about the dangers inherent in changing the way we see the word "spouse." Republican Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania famously warned that if gay marriage were permitted, "man on dog" would not be far behind. So to speak.
In the years since, more than a dozen states have passed laws restricting marriage to a couple consisting of a man and a woman. Even more states have ongoing court cases in which gay couples, most pleading for the simplest things we straights take for granted: the right to be at our beloved's side if he is ill, the right to adopt a child with her if she wants a baby.
Gay union opponents can grandstand all they want about the "defense of the family." That doesn't change the fact that these loving couples fighting desperately for this right are actually reminding us, at a time when some heteros slip easily in and out of marriage and divorce at will, how precious this institution actually is. They're making it damn near impossible for even cynical sworn bachelors and bachelorettes to deny how desirable a state betrothal can be.
The political battle, however, seems to play out more nastily in every election. During the 2004 campaign in Virginia, Republican organizations posted flyers saying Democrats (many of whom themselves opposed gay marriage) wanted to legalize same-sex wedlock while banning the Bible. This fall, the topic is sure to come up again in conservative-leaning states like Ohio and Wisconsin, where voters are considering whether to amend the state constitution to keep boys from legally bumping.
Even some advocates of gay rights sometimes urge a pullback on the marriage front, saying "civil unions" will be a halfway point that does not offend too many voters squeamish about gays (you know, the type who say, "I don't mind them being gay, but why do they have to shove it down my throat by demanding health insurance?"). Domestic partnerships are often viewed as a way to give homosexual couples some protections like health insurance and hospital visitation.
But domestic partnerships at the state level, even those reinforced by extensive power-of-attorney and custody arrangements made by couples themselves, don't address the hundreds of federal benefits granted automatically to those who meet the specific legal definition of "married" or "spouse."
Everything from Social Security survivor benefits to discounts for fishing on federal land is affected by marital status. In total, more than 1,049 separate statutes mention marriage, covering issues from tax breaks to timber licenses.
So it doesn't really matter if Becky Everymatron from Ittybittyville, Nebraska, doesn't like the thought of girls getting it on (though I'm sure Mr. Everymatron doesn't mind it). Our society rewards two people who have chosen to make a public commitment to one another, and it rewards them with financial security in the form of money owned by all of us through paying our taxes.
By Allison Hantschel
Sirens Magazine Posted at AlterNet (September 7, 2006)
The institution of marriage isn't under attack by gay couples -- despite what conservatives would have you believe.
When photos of the same-sex weddings being performed in San Francisco started popping up online, I called my husband. Photos of happy couples, both sexes, all ages, in all kinds of outfits: I'll never forget the one newlywed pair who carried a stuffed monkey with them. Nor the image of the two young men in kilts, one heavy, the other slim, holding up their marriage certificate with mouths open in a joyous yawp of victory.
I called my husband because those pictures of other people happily and publicly pledging their lives to one another, made me glad he and I had done the same.
Much of the rhetoric opponents of gay marriage use depicts marriage as "under attack" from gay couples. They talk about the destabilization of society, about the dangers inherent in changing the way we see the word "spouse." Republican Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania famously warned that if gay marriage were permitted, "man on dog" would not be far behind. So to speak.
In the years since, more than a dozen states have passed laws restricting marriage to a couple consisting of a man and a woman. Even more states have ongoing court cases in which gay couples, most pleading for the simplest things we straights take for granted: the right to be at our beloved's side if he is ill, the right to adopt a child with her if she wants a baby.
Gay union opponents can grandstand all they want about the "defense of the family." That doesn't change the fact that these loving couples fighting desperately for this right are actually reminding us, at a time when some heteros slip easily in and out of marriage and divorce at will, how precious this institution actually is. They're making it damn near impossible for even cynical sworn bachelors and bachelorettes to deny how desirable a state betrothal can be.
The political battle, however, seems to play out more nastily in every election. During the 2004 campaign in Virginia, Republican organizations posted flyers saying Democrats (many of whom themselves opposed gay marriage) wanted to legalize same-sex wedlock while banning the Bible. This fall, the topic is sure to come up again in conservative-leaning states like Ohio and Wisconsin, where voters are considering whether to amend the state constitution to keep boys from legally bumping.
Even some advocates of gay rights sometimes urge a pullback on the marriage front, saying "civil unions" will be a halfway point that does not offend too many voters squeamish about gays (you know, the type who say, "I don't mind them being gay, but why do they have to shove it down my throat by demanding health insurance?"). Domestic partnerships are often viewed as a way to give homosexual couples some protections like health insurance and hospital visitation.
But domestic partnerships at the state level, even those reinforced by extensive power-of-attorney and custody arrangements made by couples themselves, don't address the hundreds of federal benefits granted automatically to those who meet the specific legal definition of "married" or "spouse."
Everything from Social Security survivor benefits to discounts for fishing on federal land is affected by marital status. In total, more than 1,049 separate statutes mention marriage, covering issues from tax breaks to timber licenses.
So it doesn't really matter if Becky Everymatron from Ittybittyville, Nebraska, doesn't like the thought of girls getting it on (though I'm sure Mr. Everymatron doesn't mind it). Our society rewards two people who have chosen to make a public commitment to one another, and it rewards them with financial security in the form of money owned by all of us through paying our taxes.
Kentucky Film Lab: Accepting Applications for Fall Film Lab
*********************************************
2006 Filmmakers Studio NOW Accepting Applications
October 13-15 2006 / Louisville, Kentucky
*****************************************
The Kentucky Film Lab (KFL) is now accepting applications for its fall Filmmakers Studio to be held October 13-15 in Louisville, Kentucky, during the 2006 IdeaFestival™. KFL is a non-profit program dedicated to creating and supporting a community of filmmakers and multimedia artists in Kentucky.
The Studio will offer two tracks: screenwriting and production, staffed by industry professionals from Hollywood, New York and Kentucky. Through interactive sessions, panel discussions and hands-on learning experiences involving successful film professionals and educators, participants will gain an overview and solid understanding of the critical elements involved in successful film development and production.
In the production track, participants will explore the essential elements of film production (directing, shooting, editing, etc.) and collaborate to design and shoot a short (three-five minute) film. A group of select industry advisors will work with the participant teams as they complete their production.
The screenwriters track will be led by working screenwriters and instructors from the prestigious University of Southern California School of Cinema/Television. In the screenwriting tract, session participants will explore and work through all of the critical elements involved in writing a successful screenplay…from story design and structure to selling their work. Interactive discussions, scene reviews and writing sessions round out the track.
Space is limited so you are encouraged apply early.
For further details including information about applying and fees go to Kentucky Film Lab and click on Filmmakers Studio.
Sponsors to-date include:
Toyota Motor Manufacturing, Kentucky, Inc.
Bluegrass Community and Technical College
Georgetown College
University of Louisville
***********************
Kentucky Film Lab
7 September 2006
***********************
2006 Filmmakers Studio NOW Accepting Applications
October 13-15 2006 / Louisville, Kentucky
*****************************************
The Kentucky Film Lab (KFL) is now accepting applications for its fall Filmmakers Studio to be held October 13-15 in Louisville, Kentucky, during the 2006 IdeaFestival™. KFL is a non-profit program dedicated to creating and supporting a community of filmmakers and multimedia artists in Kentucky.
The Studio will offer two tracks: screenwriting and production, staffed by industry professionals from Hollywood, New York and Kentucky. Through interactive sessions, panel discussions and hands-on learning experiences involving successful film professionals and educators, participants will gain an overview and solid understanding of the critical elements involved in successful film development and production.
In the production track, participants will explore the essential elements of film production (directing, shooting, editing, etc.) and collaborate to design and shoot a short (three-five minute) film. A group of select industry advisors will work with the participant teams as they complete their production.
The screenwriters track will be led by working screenwriters and instructors from the prestigious University of Southern California School of Cinema/Television. In the screenwriting tract, session participants will explore and work through all of the critical elements involved in writing a successful screenplay…from story design and structure to selling their work. Interactive discussions, scene reviews and writing sessions round out the track.
Space is limited so you are encouraged apply early.
For further details including information about applying and fees go to Kentucky Film Lab and click on Filmmakers Studio.
Sponsors to-date include:
Toyota Motor Manufacturing, Kentucky, Inc.
Bluegrass Community and Technical College
Georgetown College
University of Louisville
***********************
Kentucky Film Lab
7 September 2006
***********************
James LaVeck: Compassion for Sale?
(I'm not a vegan, but this article gives me pause about my "happy" consumption of organic and natural meat products, as well, makes me think about the whole capitalist greening agenda.)
Compassion for Sale? Doublethink Meets Doublefeel as Happy Meat Comes of Age
By James LaVeck
Satya (September 2006)
Last fall, an intelligent, socially conscious, and compassionate person told me that after seeing a Tribe of Heart documentary at a local film festival, she had made a commitment not to participate in animal cruelty anymore. From now on she would only purchase “happy meat” at Whole Foods Market.
Something about these words, offered with sincere appreciation for the work I do as an activist filmmaker, was deeply troubling. I knew they were part of a trend I’d been seeing build amongst audiences over the last few months. The same films that had once inspired large numbers of people to completely reconsider their participation in the exploitation of animals were now triggering something new, an enthusiasm for the moral advantages of “humane” meat. I began to think about how this had come to be, and why the implications seemed to loom so large.
Eerily, the first thing that floated into my mind was George Orwell’s book 1984, with its depiction of a gloomy world in which nameless bureaucrats would daily redefine the meanings of words in the dictionary as a means of controlling the thoughts of the masses. “Doublethink,” said Orwell, “means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.”
Let’s open the door to increased pollution and call it the “Clear skies initiative.” Let’s eviscerate funding for schools and call it “No child left behind.” And let’s drop bombs on innocent civilians and pitch it as a noble effort to bring those same people “freedom and democracy.” Yes, Orwell saw it coming, a kind of moral retrovirus that was poised to take over our world. The only thing he got wrong was the level of marketing brilliance that would go into disguising the discombobulation of our ability to think critically, and the consequent enthusiasm with which we could be induced to take part in our own undoing.
Environmentalism’s Third Wave: A Cautionary Tale
In the midst of this disquieting interlude, I was lucky enough to share a meal with John Stauber, co-author of Toxic Sludge is Good for You: Lies, Damn Lies, and the Public Relations Industry. “This has all happened before,” said John, after patiently listening to my tale of woe. “Read Losing Ground: American Environmentalism at the Close of the 20th Century by Mark Dowie.”
So I did, and the plot thickened. What was bothering me, I realized, was the devastating consequences of allowing the core language of a social movement to be distorted as a means of accruing short-term gain. Consider, for example, words such as “environmental” and “organic.” In the beginning, these concepts meant little to most people. Then, countless scientists, educators and activists worked for decades to imbue them with meaning and moral value. Wrapped up in these words were hard-won principles of ecological reality, concern for the common good, respect for our planet, and the timeless wisdom of indigenous peoples.
Enter Mark Dowie and the sad story he tells in Losing Ground. Some of the very people who had labored to give the concept of environmentalism so much power, unwittingly played a part in its dilution during what has been called the environmental movement’s “third wave.” Massive corporate donations, prestigious seats on corporate boards, lunch with powerful legislators, highly publicized “win-win” collaborations with industry—watch as the budgets and membership rolls of environmental organizations skyrocket. It all feels so good and so right.
But over time, says Dowie, something subtle starts to shift. Non-profit environmental groups begin to compete more vigorously against each other for press coverage, money and members. Cynicism creeps in. Program priorities inexplicably drift toward those activities which will bring in the greatest financial return. Large organizations start taking credit for the work of smaller ones. At the same time, interest in education and grassroots empowerment falls by the wayside, displaced by a fascination with congressional lobbying and partnerships with industry. Reliable access to national publicity and the corridors of power becomes an end in itself. A grassroots movement morphs into something more businesslike and professionalized, and what were once vibrant gatherings characterized by diversity and passionate dialogue come to resemble the meetings of a trade association or cartel. Every organization must learn how to make more money, how to recruit and retain more members, how to build its advocacy brand, and how to dominate the marketplace of meaning. The idealism of millions of caring citizens is shoveled like coal into the furnaces of never ending corporate growth.
Soon enough, a schism opens up between those who enthusiastically collaborate with industry and those who think this way of operating represents an inherent conflict of interest. By and by, a kind of auto-immune disorder sets in, turning people of good will against each other. One camp, filled with righteous indignation, holds faithfully to the “old ways,” and battles daily with disempowerment and isolation. Another camp resolutely does what it must to gain a place at the table where the big decisions of society get made, and does their best to resist the creeping temptations of complicity.
Before too long, the word “environmental” comes to be applied to the policies of some of the worst polluters, and to a president who has done more to damage the earth than any other in history. In this topsy-turvy scenario, even Monsanto claims to be a green company, presumably run by environmentalists.
Meanwhile, as some of the people at the center of the environmental movement become indistinguishable from their former adversaries, others walk away utterly demoralized. Many more just have a feeling of confusion and loss. And the challenges multiply as industry comes up with more and more clever ways to blur the distinction between those who serve the common good and those who serve their own self-interests.
To Read the Entire Essay
Compassion for Sale? Doublethink Meets Doublefeel as Happy Meat Comes of Age
By James LaVeck
Satya (September 2006)
In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.—George Orwell
Last fall, an intelligent, socially conscious, and compassionate person told me that after seeing a Tribe of Heart documentary at a local film festival, she had made a commitment not to participate in animal cruelty anymore. From now on she would only purchase “happy meat” at Whole Foods Market.
Something about these words, offered with sincere appreciation for the work I do as an activist filmmaker, was deeply troubling. I knew they were part of a trend I’d been seeing build amongst audiences over the last few months. The same films that had once inspired large numbers of people to completely reconsider their participation in the exploitation of animals were now triggering something new, an enthusiasm for the moral advantages of “humane” meat. I began to think about how this had come to be, and why the implications seemed to loom so large.
Eerily, the first thing that floated into my mind was George Orwell’s book 1984, with its depiction of a gloomy world in which nameless bureaucrats would daily redefine the meanings of words in the dictionary as a means of controlling the thoughts of the masses. “Doublethink,” said Orwell, “means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.”
Let’s open the door to increased pollution and call it the “Clear skies initiative.” Let’s eviscerate funding for schools and call it “No child left behind.” And let’s drop bombs on innocent civilians and pitch it as a noble effort to bring those same people “freedom and democracy.” Yes, Orwell saw it coming, a kind of moral retrovirus that was poised to take over our world. The only thing he got wrong was the level of marketing brilliance that would go into disguising the discombobulation of our ability to think critically, and the consequent enthusiasm with which we could be induced to take part in our own undoing.
Environmentalism’s Third Wave: A Cautionary Tale
In the midst of this disquieting interlude, I was lucky enough to share a meal with John Stauber, co-author of Toxic Sludge is Good for You: Lies, Damn Lies, and the Public Relations Industry. “This has all happened before,” said John, after patiently listening to my tale of woe. “Read Losing Ground: American Environmentalism at the Close of the 20th Century by Mark Dowie.”
So I did, and the plot thickened. What was bothering me, I realized, was the devastating consequences of allowing the core language of a social movement to be distorted as a means of accruing short-term gain. Consider, for example, words such as “environmental” and “organic.” In the beginning, these concepts meant little to most people. Then, countless scientists, educators and activists worked for decades to imbue them with meaning and moral value. Wrapped up in these words were hard-won principles of ecological reality, concern for the common good, respect for our planet, and the timeless wisdom of indigenous peoples.
Enter Mark Dowie and the sad story he tells in Losing Ground. Some of the very people who had labored to give the concept of environmentalism so much power, unwittingly played a part in its dilution during what has been called the environmental movement’s “third wave.” Massive corporate donations, prestigious seats on corporate boards, lunch with powerful legislators, highly publicized “win-win” collaborations with industry—watch as the budgets and membership rolls of environmental organizations skyrocket. It all feels so good and so right.
But over time, says Dowie, something subtle starts to shift. Non-profit environmental groups begin to compete more vigorously against each other for press coverage, money and members. Cynicism creeps in. Program priorities inexplicably drift toward those activities which will bring in the greatest financial return. Large organizations start taking credit for the work of smaller ones. At the same time, interest in education and grassroots empowerment falls by the wayside, displaced by a fascination with congressional lobbying and partnerships with industry. Reliable access to national publicity and the corridors of power becomes an end in itself. A grassroots movement morphs into something more businesslike and professionalized, and what were once vibrant gatherings characterized by diversity and passionate dialogue come to resemble the meetings of a trade association or cartel. Every organization must learn how to make more money, how to recruit and retain more members, how to build its advocacy brand, and how to dominate the marketplace of meaning. The idealism of millions of caring citizens is shoveled like coal into the furnaces of never ending corporate growth.
Soon enough, a schism opens up between those who enthusiastically collaborate with industry and those who think this way of operating represents an inherent conflict of interest. By and by, a kind of auto-immune disorder sets in, turning people of good will against each other. One camp, filled with righteous indignation, holds faithfully to the “old ways,” and battles daily with disempowerment and isolation. Another camp resolutely does what it must to gain a place at the table where the big decisions of society get made, and does their best to resist the creeping temptations of complicity.
Before too long, the word “environmental” comes to be applied to the policies of some of the worst polluters, and to a president who has done more to damage the earth than any other in history. In this topsy-turvy scenario, even Monsanto claims to be a green company, presumably run by environmentalists.
Meanwhile, as some of the people at the center of the environmental movement become indistinguishable from their former adversaries, others walk away utterly demoralized. Many more just have a feeling of confusion and loss. And the challenges multiply as industry comes up with more and more clever ways to blur the distinction between those who serve the common good and those who serve their own self-interests.
To Read the Entire Essay
Wednesday, September 06, 2006
Noam Chomsky and Robert Trivers: On Deceit
Noam Chomsky and Robert Trivers
The anti-war activist and MIT linguist meets the Rutgers evolutionary biologist in the Seed Salon to discuss deceit.
Seed (September 2006)
In the 1970s, a Harvard class taught by evolutionary biologist Robert Trivers ignited a controversy that would escalate into the "sociobiology wars." His papers provided a Darwinian basis for understanding complex human activities and relationships. Across town at MIT, revolutionary linguist Noam Chomsky had earned a reputation as a leading opponent of the Vietnam War. Throughout those pivotal years, and in the following decades, the two explored similar ideas from different perspectives. Long aware of each other's work, they had never met until a couple of months ago, when they sat down to compare notes on some common interests: deceit and self-deception.
Noam Chomsky: One of the most important comments on deceit, I think, was made by Adam Smith. He pointed out that a major goal of business is to deceive and oppress the public.
And one of the striking features of the modern period is the institutionalization of that process, so that we now have huge industries deceiving the public—and they're very conscious about it, the public relations industry. Interestingly, this developed in the freest countries—in Britain and the US—roughly around time of WWI, when it was recognized that enough freedom had been won that people could no longer be controlled by force. So modes of deception and manipulation had to be developed in order to keep them under control.
And by now these are huge industries. They not only dominate marketing of commodities, but they also control the political system. As anyone who watches a US election knows, it's marketing. It's the same techniques that are used to market toothpaste.
And, of course, there are power systems in place to facilitate this. Throughout history it's been mostly the property holders or the educated classes who've tended to support power systems. And that's a large part of what I think education is—it's a form of indoctrination. You have to reconstruct a picture of the world in order to be conducive to the interests and concerns of the educated classes, and this involves a lot of self-deceit.
Robert Trivers: So you're talking about self-deception in at least two contexts. One is intellectuals who, in a sense, go through a process of education which results in a self-deceived organism who is really working to serve the interests of the privileged few without necessarily being conscious of it at all.
The other thing is these massive industries of persuasion and deception, which, one can conceptualize, are also inducing a form of either ignorance or self-deception in listeners, where they come to believe that they know the truth when in fact they're just being manipulated.
So let me ask you, when you think about the leaders—let's say the present set of organisms that launched this dreadful Iraq misadventure—how important is their level of self-deception? We know they launched the whole thing in a swarm of lies, the evidence for which is too overwhelming to even need to be referred to now. My view is that their deception leads to self-deception very easily.
To read the rest of the dialogue and access video of their discussion
The anti-war activist and MIT linguist meets the Rutgers evolutionary biologist in the Seed Salon to discuss deceit.
Seed (September 2006)
In the 1970s, a Harvard class taught by evolutionary biologist Robert Trivers ignited a controversy that would escalate into the "sociobiology wars." His papers provided a Darwinian basis for understanding complex human activities and relationships. Across town at MIT, revolutionary linguist Noam Chomsky had earned a reputation as a leading opponent of the Vietnam War. Throughout those pivotal years, and in the following decades, the two explored similar ideas from different perspectives. Long aware of each other's work, they had never met until a couple of months ago, when they sat down to compare notes on some common interests: deceit and self-deception.
Noam Chomsky: One of the most important comments on deceit, I think, was made by Adam Smith. He pointed out that a major goal of business is to deceive and oppress the public.
And one of the striking features of the modern period is the institutionalization of that process, so that we now have huge industries deceiving the public—and they're very conscious about it, the public relations industry. Interestingly, this developed in the freest countries—in Britain and the US—roughly around time of WWI, when it was recognized that enough freedom had been won that people could no longer be controlled by force. So modes of deception and manipulation had to be developed in order to keep them under control.
And by now these are huge industries. They not only dominate marketing of commodities, but they also control the political system. As anyone who watches a US election knows, it's marketing. It's the same techniques that are used to market toothpaste.
And, of course, there are power systems in place to facilitate this. Throughout history it's been mostly the property holders or the educated classes who've tended to support power systems. And that's a large part of what I think education is—it's a form of indoctrination. You have to reconstruct a picture of the world in order to be conducive to the interests and concerns of the educated classes, and this involves a lot of self-deceit.
Robert Trivers: So you're talking about self-deception in at least two contexts. One is intellectuals who, in a sense, go through a process of education which results in a self-deceived organism who is really working to serve the interests of the privileged few without necessarily being conscious of it at all.
The other thing is these massive industries of persuasion and deception, which, one can conceptualize, are also inducing a form of either ignorance or self-deception in listeners, where they come to believe that they know the truth when in fact they're just being manipulated.
So let me ask you, when you think about the leaders—let's say the present set of organisms that launched this dreadful Iraq misadventure—how important is their level of self-deception? We know they launched the whole thing in a swarm of lies, the evidence for which is too overwhelming to even need to be referred to now. My view is that their deception leads to self-deception very easily.
To read the rest of the dialogue and access video of their discussion
Chögyam Trungpa: Basic Goodness or Original Sin?
Basic Goodness or Original Sin?
By Chögyam Trungpa
Shambhala Sun (November 2002)
Buddhist psychology is based on the notion that human beings are fundamentally good. Their most basic qualities are positive ones: openness, intelligence and warmth. Of course this viewpoint has its philosophical and psychological expressions in concepts such as bodhichitta (awakened mind), and tathagatagarbha (birthplace of the enlightened ones). But this idea is ultimately rooted in experience—the experience of goodness and worthiness in oneself and others. This understanding is very fundamental and is the basic inspiration for Buddhist practice and Buddhist psychology.
Coming from a tradition that stresses human goodness, it was something of a shock for me to encounter the Western tradition of original sin. It seems that this notion of original sin does not just pervade western religious ideas. It actually seems to run throughout Western thought as well, especially psychological thought. Among patients, theoreticians and therapists alike there seems to be great concern with the idea of some original mistake, which causes later suffering—a kind of punishment for that mistake. One finds that a sense of guilt or being wounded is quite pervasive. Whether or not such people actually believe in the idea of original sin, or in God for that matter, they seem to feel that they have done something wrong in the past and are now being punished for it.
The problem with this notion of original sin or mistake is that it acts very much as a hinderance to people. At some point it is of course necessary to realize one’s shortcomings. But if one goes too far with that, it kills any inspiration and can destroy one’s vision as well. So in that way, it really is not helpful, and in fact it seems unnecessary.
According to the Buddhist perspective there are problems, but they are temporary and superficial defilements that cover over one’s basic goodness (tathagatagarbha). This viewpoint is a positive and optimistic one. But, again, we should emphasize that this viewpoint is not purely conceptual. It is rooted in the experience of meditation and in the healthiness it encourages. There are temporary, habitual neurotic patterns that develop based on past experience, but these can be seen through. It is just this that is studied in the abhidharma, the Buddhist teachings on psychology: how one thing succeeds another, how volitional action originates and perpetuates itself, how things snowball. And, most importantly, abhidharma studies how through meditation practice this process can be cut through.
The attitude that results from the Buddhist orientation and practice is quite different from the “mistake mentality.” One actually experiences mind as fundamentally pure, that is, healthy and positive, and “problems” as temporary and superficial defilements. Such a viewpoint does not quite mean “getting rid” of problems, but rather shifting one’s focus. Problems are seen in a much broader context of health: one begins to let go of clinging to one’s neuroses and to step beyond obsession and identification with them. The emphasis is no longer on the problems themselves but rather on the ground of experience through realizing the nature of mind itself.
To Read the Entire Essay
By Chögyam Trungpa
Shambhala Sun (November 2002)
Buddhist psychology is based on the notion that human beings are fundamentally good. Their most basic qualities are positive ones: openness, intelligence and warmth. Of course this viewpoint has its philosophical and psychological expressions in concepts such as bodhichitta (awakened mind), and tathagatagarbha (birthplace of the enlightened ones). But this idea is ultimately rooted in experience—the experience of goodness and worthiness in oneself and others. This understanding is very fundamental and is the basic inspiration for Buddhist practice and Buddhist psychology.
Coming from a tradition that stresses human goodness, it was something of a shock for me to encounter the Western tradition of original sin. It seems that this notion of original sin does not just pervade western religious ideas. It actually seems to run throughout Western thought as well, especially psychological thought. Among patients, theoreticians and therapists alike there seems to be great concern with the idea of some original mistake, which causes later suffering—a kind of punishment for that mistake. One finds that a sense of guilt or being wounded is quite pervasive. Whether or not such people actually believe in the idea of original sin, or in God for that matter, they seem to feel that they have done something wrong in the past and are now being punished for it.
The problem with this notion of original sin or mistake is that it acts very much as a hinderance to people. At some point it is of course necessary to realize one’s shortcomings. But if one goes too far with that, it kills any inspiration and can destroy one’s vision as well. So in that way, it really is not helpful, and in fact it seems unnecessary.
According to the Buddhist perspective there are problems, but they are temporary and superficial defilements that cover over one’s basic goodness (tathagatagarbha). This viewpoint is a positive and optimistic one. But, again, we should emphasize that this viewpoint is not purely conceptual. It is rooted in the experience of meditation and in the healthiness it encourages. There are temporary, habitual neurotic patterns that develop based on past experience, but these can be seen through. It is just this that is studied in the abhidharma, the Buddhist teachings on psychology: how one thing succeeds another, how volitional action originates and perpetuates itself, how things snowball. And, most importantly, abhidharma studies how through meditation practice this process can be cut through.
The attitude that results from the Buddhist orientation and practice is quite different from the “mistake mentality.” One actually experiences mind as fundamentally pure, that is, healthy and positive, and “problems” as temporary and superficial defilements. Such a viewpoint does not quite mean “getting rid” of problems, but rather shifting one’s focus. Problems are seen in a much broader context of health: one begins to let go of clinging to one’s neuroses and to step beyond obsession and identification with them. The emphasis is no longer on the problems themselves but rather on the ground of experience through realizing the nature of mind itself.
To Read the Entire Essay
Tuesday, September 05, 2006
Walter Gilberti: Sellout danger in Detroit teachers strike
(The teachers are striking because they were told they have to take a 5.5% pay cut, increases in the amount of their medical payments, freeze on seniority increases, reduction in paid sick days, loss of preparation periods for some levels, lengthening on the school day, "and the elimination of bonuses for attendance, longevity, and teaching in critical shortage areas." School District CEO William Coleman who is trying to force the teachers to take these cuts makes $220,000 a year.)
Sellout danger in Detroit teachers strike
By Walter Gilberti
World Socialist Web Site (31 August 2006)
With the strike by 7,000 Detroit teachers only three days old, a sellout concessions deal between the leadership of the Detroit Federation of Teachers (DFT) and the school district is already in the works. On Wednesday it was reported that DFT negotiators along with those from the school district had agreed to a court-imposed gag order.
Since Monday afternoon, round-the-clock negotiations in the presence of state mediator Jim Amar have been taking place. Teachers voted en masse last Sunday to strike against drastic concessions demands contained in the contract offer from school district CEO William Coleman. In the three days that teachers have been manning picket lines in front of their respective schools, there has been a continuous outpouring of support from area workers, parents and students.
Local television channels have reported opinion polls showing overwhelming public support for the teachers. One such poll reported pro-teacher sentiment at 72 percent.
Yet the DFT has done nothing to mobilize this support, despite the threat hanging over the teachers of harsh fines—one day’s pay for each day on strike—under a state law banning strikes by public employees. The entire political establishment—the school officials, Democratic Mayor Kwame Kirpatrick, Democratic Governor Jennifer Granholm, the media—has ganged up against the teachers, blaming them for the disastrous state of public education in Detroit in an attempt to turn the public against their struggle and force them back to work.
The DFT and the city and state AFL-CIO, the United Auto Workers, the Teamsters and other area unions are deliberately seeking to isolate the teachers. Meanwhile, the DFT is working behind closed doors to arrive at an agreement that will continue to make teachers pay for the city’s fiscal crisis and the legacy of official negligence and the diversion of resources from the schools to tax breaks for big business and subsidies for casinos, sports stadiums and high-rent condos. This is in a city that, according to newly released US Census figures, is the second most impoverished in the country.
To Read the Rest of the Article
Sellout danger in Detroit teachers strike
By Walter Gilberti
World Socialist Web Site (31 August 2006)
With the strike by 7,000 Detroit teachers only three days old, a sellout concessions deal between the leadership of the Detroit Federation of Teachers (DFT) and the school district is already in the works. On Wednesday it was reported that DFT negotiators along with those from the school district had agreed to a court-imposed gag order.
Since Monday afternoon, round-the-clock negotiations in the presence of state mediator Jim Amar have been taking place. Teachers voted en masse last Sunday to strike against drastic concessions demands contained in the contract offer from school district CEO William Coleman. In the three days that teachers have been manning picket lines in front of their respective schools, there has been a continuous outpouring of support from area workers, parents and students.
Local television channels have reported opinion polls showing overwhelming public support for the teachers. One such poll reported pro-teacher sentiment at 72 percent.
Yet the DFT has done nothing to mobilize this support, despite the threat hanging over the teachers of harsh fines—one day’s pay for each day on strike—under a state law banning strikes by public employees. The entire political establishment—the school officials, Democratic Mayor Kwame Kirpatrick, Democratic Governor Jennifer Granholm, the media—has ganged up against the teachers, blaming them for the disastrous state of public education in Detroit in an attempt to turn the public against their struggle and force them back to work.
The DFT and the city and state AFL-CIO, the United Auto Workers, the Teamsters and other area unions are deliberately seeking to isolate the teachers. Meanwhile, the DFT is working behind closed doors to arrive at an agreement that will continue to make teachers pay for the city’s fiscal crisis and the legacy of official negligence and the diversion of resources from the schools to tax breaks for big business and subsidies for casinos, sports stadiums and high-rent condos. This is in a city that, according to newly released US Census figures, is the second most impoverished in the country.
To Read the Rest of the Article
Monday, September 04, 2006
John Daniel: When Words Fail
WHEN WORDS FAIL: Writers and the Clearing of Cuttlefish Ink
by John Daniel
Orion (2002)
Take care for the spiritual quality, the holy
quality, the serious quality of language.
-- Barry Lopez
It is always the task of the artist to imagine experience, meaning not to blur it or make it up but to bring it into fresh focus. Good art, wrote Ezra Pound, is "art that bears true witness, the art that is the most precise." For the writer this entails a special responsibility. His medium is the ordinary one by which we address each other, by which news is known and history is recorded, by which a culture understands and misunderstands itself. Language is the medium of politics, and as such it is subject to debasement by those in government who shape interpretations of their acts and policies for public consumption.
Writers, then, perhaps uniquely among artists, must work against the corruption of their medium, and that responsibility, like it or not, has a political dimension. It is about preserving the health of public discourse in our culture, and ultimately it is about the health of our own art. George Orwell wrote, in his great essay, Politics and the English Language: "A man may take to drink because he feels himself to be a failure, and then fail all the more completely because he drinks. It is rather the same thing that is happening to the English language. It becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts."
Orwell argues that the telltale sign of corrupt political language is the continual repetition of prefabricated phrases put forth reflexively in lieu of thought:
When one watches some tired hack on the platform mechanically repeating the familiar phrases -- bestial atrocities, iron heel, bloodstained tyranny, free peoples of the world, stand shoulder to shoulder -- one often has a curious feeling that one is not watching a live human being but some kind of dummy... The appropriate noises are coming out of his larynx, but his brain is not involved as it would be if he were choosing his words for himself. If the speech he is making is one that he is accustomed to make over and over again, he may be almost unconscious of what he is saying... And this reduced state of consciousness, if not indispensable, is at any rate favorable to political conformity.
But not all spokespersons are robotic dummies. Some official language is uttered or written quite consciously to obscure real facts. Orwell again: "When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish squirting out ink." Orwell published his essay 56 years ago, but it could just as aptly have been written yesterday. Only the phrases have changed.
Here is some of the ink squirted out since September 11, 2001, and one writer's view of what it obscures.
It became voguish among certain academics and think-tankers soon after the attacks to characterize our situation as "a clash of civilizations." This is language not of history or political science but of science fiction. It assumes that a civilization is a uniform, intransigent, monolithic entity -- or that Islamic civilization is, because we don't view our own that way. All the phrase really accomplishes is to stipulate ignorance, because it subsumes under one homogenizing rubric the vast diversity and varied texture of the Muslim world. It says that we are incompetent or unwilling to distinguish Sunnis from Shi'ites, Farsi from Arabic, extreme fundamentalist Wahhabis from progressive, pious, and peace-loving mainstream Muslims. It sounds awfully like an intellectual euphemism for a low-life belief that all those serious brown faces with head-wraps look the same and we can't trust any of them.
To Read the Rest of the Essay
by John Daniel
Orion (2002)
Take care for the spiritual quality, the holy
quality, the serious quality of language.
-- Barry Lopez
It is always the task of the artist to imagine experience, meaning not to blur it or make it up but to bring it into fresh focus. Good art, wrote Ezra Pound, is "art that bears true witness, the art that is the most precise." For the writer this entails a special responsibility. His medium is the ordinary one by which we address each other, by which news is known and history is recorded, by which a culture understands and misunderstands itself. Language is the medium of politics, and as such it is subject to debasement by those in government who shape interpretations of their acts and policies for public consumption.
Writers, then, perhaps uniquely among artists, must work against the corruption of their medium, and that responsibility, like it or not, has a political dimension. It is about preserving the health of public discourse in our culture, and ultimately it is about the health of our own art. George Orwell wrote, in his great essay, Politics and the English Language: "A man may take to drink because he feels himself to be a failure, and then fail all the more completely because he drinks. It is rather the same thing that is happening to the English language. It becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts."
Orwell argues that the telltale sign of corrupt political language is the continual repetition of prefabricated phrases put forth reflexively in lieu of thought:
When one watches some tired hack on the platform mechanically repeating the familiar phrases -- bestial atrocities, iron heel, bloodstained tyranny, free peoples of the world, stand shoulder to shoulder -- one often has a curious feeling that one is not watching a live human being but some kind of dummy... The appropriate noises are coming out of his larynx, but his brain is not involved as it would be if he were choosing his words for himself. If the speech he is making is one that he is accustomed to make over and over again, he may be almost unconscious of what he is saying... And this reduced state of consciousness, if not indispensable, is at any rate favorable to political conformity.
But not all spokespersons are robotic dummies. Some official language is uttered or written quite consciously to obscure real facts. Orwell again: "When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish squirting out ink." Orwell published his essay 56 years ago, but it could just as aptly have been written yesterday. Only the phrases have changed.
Here is some of the ink squirted out since September 11, 2001, and one writer's view of what it obscures.
It became voguish among certain academics and think-tankers soon after the attacks to characterize our situation as "a clash of civilizations." This is language not of history or political science but of science fiction. It assumes that a civilization is a uniform, intransigent, monolithic entity -- or that Islamic civilization is, because we don't view our own that way. All the phrase really accomplishes is to stipulate ignorance, because it subsumes under one homogenizing rubric the vast diversity and varied texture of the Muslim world. It says that we are incompetent or unwilling to distinguish Sunnis from Shi'ites, Farsi from Arabic, extreme fundamentalist Wahhabis from progressive, pious, and peace-loving mainstream Muslims. It sounds awfully like an intellectual euphemism for a low-life belief that all those serious brown faces with head-wraps look the same and we can't trust any of them.
To Read the Rest of the Essay
This is Where I Live, Pt. 1: Infidel Book Ban Repeal Unlikely
'Infidel' book ban repeal unlikely: Move seen as political suicide
By Frank E. Lockwood
Herald-Leader (August 12, 2006)
Kentucky's century-old "infidel" books ban might be archaic and unconstitutional, but don't look for it to disappear any time soon, lawmakers said this week.
Republicans and Democrats alike predict legislators will shy away from the issue when they convene in 2007.
"Many of my colleagues are fearful of taking a vote that would tend to put them on the side of infidels," said state Rep. Kathy Stein, D-Lexington.
Lawmakers expressed shock when they were told of the existence of the law that says "no book or other publication of a sectarian, infidel or immoral character, or that reflects on any religious denomination, shall be used or distributed in any common school."
But as news spread this week, politicians questioned the wisdom of removing it from the statutes.
"There's nobody that wants to get on record saying 'I'm against God and Christianity,'" said state Sen. David Karem, D-Louisville.
Such a vote could cost incumbents their seats and give challengers an issue to run on, he said.
"Why would a legislator want to give someone ammunition by repealing a law nobody knows is there," he said.
School districts across the state, including Fayette County, have included the book ban in their policies and procedures.
The book ban was included in the 1990 Kentucky Education Reform Act, but it dates to at least 1905.
The law doesn't apply to the Christian and Hebrew Scriptures. The Kentucky Supreme Court has ruled that the Bible is not a sectarian book.
It's not known where Gov. Ernie Fletcher stands on the issue. The Baptist minister, who has encouraged educators to teach creationism, declined to comment.
The legal definition of infidel is unclear. It may be defined as an unbeliever or as someone who rejects the majority's religious faith.
In Kentucky, the dominant faith is evangelical Christianity.
Attempts to repeal the anti-infidel ban would likely be met with vigorous opposition, some lawmakers say.
"There's a strong conservative religious tone to the Kentucky General Assembly. The legislature would be adverse to changing the statute to allow those types of publications in our schools." said state Rep. Stephen R. Nunn, R-Glasgow.
State Rep. Stan Lee, R-Lexington says "Democrats are scared silly (about) every moral and social issue that's come down the pike" in recent years.
The book ban is fine with him.
"It was put there for a purpose, and if one of the purposes is to keep immoral books out of the schools, then I'm all for that," he said.
But state Rep. Mary Lou Marzian, D-Louisville, says these type of laws aren't good for the state's image. "It's 2006, for heaven's sake. ... We look like a bunch of Jim-Jones-drinking-Kool-Aid kind of folks," she said. "I think it makes it look like we're not quite in the 21st century."
To Read the Entire Article
By Frank E. Lockwood
Herald-Leader (August 12, 2006)
Kentucky's century-old "infidel" books ban might be archaic and unconstitutional, but don't look for it to disappear any time soon, lawmakers said this week.
Republicans and Democrats alike predict legislators will shy away from the issue when they convene in 2007.
"Many of my colleagues are fearful of taking a vote that would tend to put them on the side of infidels," said state Rep. Kathy Stein, D-Lexington.
Lawmakers expressed shock when they were told of the existence of the law that says "no book or other publication of a sectarian, infidel or immoral character, or that reflects on any religious denomination, shall be used or distributed in any common school."
But as news spread this week, politicians questioned the wisdom of removing it from the statutes.
"There's nobody that wants to get on record saying 'I'm against God and Christianity,'" said state Sen. David Karem, D-Louisville.
Such a vote could cost incumbents their seats and give challengers an issue to run on, he said.
"Why would a legislator want to give someone ammunition by repealing a law nobody knows is there," he said.
School districts across the state, including Fayette County, have included the book ban in their policies and procedures.
The book ban was included in the 1990 Kentucky Education Reform Act, but it dates to at least 1905.
The law doesn't apply to the Christian and Hebrew Scriptures. The Kentucky Supreme Court has ruled that the Bible is not a sectarian book.
It's not known where Gov. Ernie Fletcher stands on the issue. The Baptist minister, who has encouraged educators to teach creationism, declined to comment.
The legal definition of infidel is unclear. It may be defined as an unbeliever or as someone who rejects the majority's religious faith.
In Kentucky, the dominant faith is evangelical Christianity.
Attempts to repeal the anti-infidel ban would likely be met with vigorous opposition, some lawmakers say.
"There's a strong conservative religious tone to the Kentucky General Assembly. The legislature would be adverse to changing the statute to allow those types of publications in our schools." said state Rep. Stephen R. Nunn, R-Glasgow.
State Rep. Stan Lee, R-Lexington says "Democrats are scared silly (about) every moral and social issue that's come down the pike" in recent years.
The book ban is fine with him.
"It was put there for a purpose, and if one of the purposes is to keep immoral books out of the schools, then I'm all for that," he said.
But state Rep. Mary Lou Marzian, D-Louisville, says these type of laws aren't good for the state's image. "It's 2006, for heaven's sake. ... We look like a bunch of Jim-Jones-drinking-Kool-Aid kind of folks," she said. "I think it makes it look like we're not quite in the 21st century."
To Read the Entire Article
Naomi Klein: Pay To Be Saved
Pay to be Saved
by Naomi Klein
The Nation (August 29, 2006)
The Red Cross has just announced a new disaster-response partnership with Wal-Mart. When the next hurricane hits, it will be a co-production of Big Aid and Big Box.
This, apparently, is the lesson learned from the government's calamitous response to Hurricane Katrina: Businesses do disaster better.
"It's all going to be private enterprise before it's over," Billy Wagner, emergency management chief for the Florida Keys, currently under hurricane watch for Tropical Storm Ernesto, said in April. "They've got the expertise. They've got the resources."
But before this new consensus goes any further, perhaps it's time to take a look at where the privatization of disaster began, and where it will inevitably lead.
The first step was the government's abdication of its core responsibility to protect the population from disasters. Under the Bush administration, whole sectors of the government, most notably the Department of Homeland Security, have been turned into glorified temp agencies, with essential functions contracted out to private companies. The theory is that entrepreneurs, driven by the profit motive, are always more efficient (please suspend hysterical laughter).
We saw the results in New Orleans one year ago: Washington was frighteningly weak and inept, in part because its emergency management experts had fled to the private sector and its technology and infrastructure had become positively retro. At least by comparison, the private sector looked modern and competent (a New York Times columnist even suggested handing FEMA over to Wal-Mart).
But the honeymoon doesn't last long. "Where has all the money gone?" ask desperate people from Baghdad to New Orleans, from Kabul to tsunami-struck Sri Lanka. One place a great deal of it has gone is into major capital expenditures for these private contractors. Largely under the public radar, billions of taxpayer dollars have been spent on the construction of a privatized disaster-response infrastructure: the Shaw Group's new state-of-the-art Baton Rouge headquarters, Bechtel's battalions of earthmoving equipment, Blackwater USA's 6,000-acre campus in North Carolina (complete with paramilitary training camp and 6,000-foot runway).
To Read the Rest of the Post
by Naomi Klein
The Nation (August 29, 2006)
The Red Cross has just announced a new disaster-response partnership with Wal-Mart. When the next hurricane hits, it will be a co-production of Big Aid and Big Box.
This, apparently, is the lesson learned from the government's calamitous response to Hurricane Katrina: Businesses do disaster better.
"It's all going to be private enterprise before it's over," Billy Wagner, emergency management chief for the Florida Keys, currently under hurricane watch for Tropical Storm Ernesto, said in April. "They've got the expertise. They've got the resources."
But before this new consensus goes any further, perhaps it's time to take a look at where the privatization of disaster began, and where it will inevitably lead.
The first step was the government's abdication of its core responsibility to protect the population from disasters. Under the Bush administration, whole sectors of the government, most notably the Department of Homeland Security, have been turned into glorified temp agencies, with essential functions contracted out to private companies. The theory is that entrepreneurs, driven by the profit motive, are always more efficient (please suspend hysterical laughter).
We saw the results in New Orleans one year ago: Washington was frighteningly weak and inept, in part because its emergency management experts had fled to the private sector and its technology and infrastructure had become positively retro. At least by comparison, the private sector looked modern and competent (a New York Times columnist even suggested handing FEMA over to Wal-Mart).
But the honeymoon doesn't last long. "Where has all the money gone?" ask desperate people from Baghdad to New Orleans, from Kabul to tsunami-struck Sri Lanka. One place a great deal of it has gone is into major capital expenditures for these private contractors. Largely under the public radar, billions of taxpayer dollars have been spent on the construction of a privatized disaster-response infrastructure: the Shaw Group's new state-of-the-art Baton Rouge headquarters, Bechtel's battalions of earthmoving equipment, Blackwater USA's 6,000-acre campus in North Carolina (complete with paramilitary training camp and 6,000-foot runway).
To Read the Rest of the Post
Sarah Anderson: Blatantly Boasting War Profiteers
Blatantly Boasting War Profiteers
by Sarah Anderson
AlterNet
Profiteering execs don't usually brag about their windfalls from the 'war on terror' -- unless they're talking to potential investors.
Like Sen. George "macaca" Allen in a crowd of white Virginia Republicans and Rep. Katherine "God chooses our rulers" Harris with a reporter for a Baptist newspaper, defense executives tend to let their hair down in conversations with investment analysts.
In their glossy annual reports, military contractors are typically modest about how much loot they've gotten from a bloody and increasingly unpopular "War on Terror." But read the transcript of virtually any Q&A session with Wall Street and the truth comes out. While millions are suffering from the human and economic costs of the Iraq war, the violence has been very good for the bottom lines of military contractors and their top executives.
Black Hawk up
"Obviously, military was a big bang for us in the post-September 11 period," crowed George David, CEO of United Technologies, in a meeting with analysts last December. UTC makes Black Hawk helicopters and fighter jet engines, along with civilian aircraft and elevators. David went on to boast that UTC had beaten all its competitors because the military side of its business had more than made up for a 25 percent drop in commercial aerospace revenues.
Not surprisingly, David's personal rewards haven't been too shabby either. Since 9/11, he has been by far the highest paid defense executive, hauling in a total of more than $200 million. David and other top defense executives are highlighted in a new report, "Executive Excess," by the Institute for Policy Studies and United for a Fair Economy (PDF).
So confident is Mr. David of continued military largesse that he's biting the hand that feeds him. In a lawsuit that is the first of its kind, UTC is suing the Pentagon to block the public release of documents related to alleged quality control problems in its Black Hawk factories. The Bush administration, not exactly known for its openness, had agreed to make the documents public in response to a journalist's Freedom of Information Act request.
A pop for "Uncle Bucky"
"Obviously, we got a pop during the Iraq and Afghani thing," CEO Gerald Potthoff of Engineered Support Systems International candidly if indelicately told an investment publication last year. A big pop indeed. A series of war-related contracts for logistical services, some awarded on a no-bid basis, drove company earnings to record levels and set up executives for a lucrative sale of the company to another defense contractor, DRS Technologies, earlier this year.
Among the beneficiaries of that sale: President George W. Bush's uncle, William H. T. Bush, an ESSI director, who cleared $2.7 million in cash and stock. Known to the president as "Uncle Bucky," he claims he had nothing to do with the company's landing lucrative defense contracts.
The Securities and Exchange Commission is now investigating whether company officials went even further to jack up their war windfalls by manipulating the value of their stock options. In 2004, Potthoff's pay, including options gains, came to nearly $40 million.
Casualties = $$
Investors shouldn't trouble their little heads over the possibility of a U.S. troop withdrawal from Iraq, Health Net CEO Jay Gellert said in a conference call, since the military's own medical capacity will be stretched "into the foreseeable future" by the huge number of injured troops. That's reassuring for Health Net, which, thanks to Pentagon outsourcing, provides managed care services to as many as three million persons in the military and their families.
To Read the Entire Article
by Sarah Anderson
AlterNet
Profiteering execs don't usually brag about their windfalls from the 'war on terror' -- unless they're talking to potential investors.
Like Sen. George "macaca" Allen in a crowd of white Virginia Republicans and Rep. Katherine "God chooses our rulers" Harris with a reporter for a Baptist newspaper, defense executives tend to let their hair down in conversations with investment analysts.
In their glossy annual reports, military contractors are typically modest about how much loot they've gotten from a bloody and increasingly unpopular "War on Terror." But read the transcript of virtually any Q&A session with Wall Street and the truth comes out. While millions are suffering from the human and economic costs of the Iraq war, the violence has been very good for the bottom lines of military contractors and their top executives.
Black Hawk up
"Obviously, military was a big bang for us in the post-September 11 period," crowed George David, CEO of United Technologies, in a meeting with analysts last December. UTC makes Black Hawk helicopters and fighter jet engines, along with civilian aircraft and elevators. David went on to boast that UTC had beaten all its competitors because the military side of its business had more than made up for a 25 percent drop in commercial aerospace revenues.
Not surprisingly, David's personal rewards haven't been too shabby either. Since 9/11, he has been by far the highest paid defense executive, hauling in a total of more than $200 million. David and other top defense executives are highlighted in a new report, "Executive Excess," by the Institute for Policy Studies and United for a Fair Economy (PDF).
So confident is Mr. David of continued military largesse that he's biting the hand that feeds him. In a lawsuit that is the first of its kind, UTC is suing the Pentagon to block the public release of documents related to alleged quality control problems in its Black Hawk factories. The Bush administration, not exactly known for its openness, had agreed to make the documents public in response to a journalist's Freedom of Information Act request.
A pop for "Uncle Bucky"
"Obviously, we got a pop during the Iraq and Afghani thing," CEO Gerald Potthoff of Engineered Support Systems International candidly if indelicately told an investment publication last year. A big pop indeed. A series of war-related contracts for logistical services, some awarded on a no-bid basis, drove company earnings to record levels and set up executives for a lucrative sale of the company to another defense contractor, DRS Technologies, earlier this year.
Among the beneficiaries of that sale: President George W. Bush's uncle, William H. T. Bush, an ESSI director, who cleared $2.7 million in cash and stock. Known to the president as "Uncle Bucky," he claims he had nothing to do with the company's landing lucrative defense contracts.
The Securities and Exchange Commission is now investigating whether company officials went even further to jack up their war windfalls by manipulating the value of their stock options. In 2004, Potthoff's pay, including options gains, came to nearly $40 million.
Casualties = $$
Investors shouldn't trouble their little heads over the possibility of a U.S. troop withdrawal from Iraq, Health Net CEO Jay Gellert said in a conference call, since the military's own medical capacity will be stretched "into the foreseeable future" by the huge number of injured troops. That's reassuring for Health Net, which, thanks to Pentagon outsourcing, provides managed care services to as many as three million persons in the military and their families.
To Read the Entire Article
Libby Quaid: Ranchers decry grass-fed beef rule plan
Ranchers decry grass-fed beef rule plan
By LIBBY QUAID
Yahoo News
WASHINGTON - Meat-eaters usually assume a grass-fed steak came from cattle contentedly grazing for most of their lives on lush pastures, not crowded into feedlots. If the government has its way, the grass-fed label could be used to sell beef that didn't roam the range and ate more than just grass.
The Agriculture Department has proposed a standard for grass-fed meat that doesn't say animals need pasture and that broadly defines grass to include things like leftovers from harvested crops.
Critics say the proposal is so loose that it would let more conventional ranchers slap a grass-fed label on their beef, too.
"In the eye of the consumer, grass-fed is tied to open pasture-raised animals, not confinement or feedlot animals," said Patricia Whisnant, a Missouri rancher who heads the American Grassfed Association. "In the consumer's eye, you're going to lose the integrity of what the term 'grass-fed' means."
All beef cattle graze on grass at the beginning of their lives. The difference generally is that grass-fed beef herds graze in pastures, while conventional cattle spend the last three or four months of their lives being fattened with corn or other grains in feedlots.
People buy grass-fed beef for many reasons: They want to avoid antibiotics commonly used in feedlots, they think it's healthier, or they like the idea of supporting local farms and ranches.
To read the Rest of the Article
By LIBBY QUAID
Yahoo News
WASHINGTON - Meat-eaters usually assume a grass-fed steak came from cattle contentedly grazing for most of their lives on lush pastures, not crowded into feedlots. If the government has its way, the grass-fed label could be used to sell beef that didn't roam the range and ate more than just grass.
The Agriculture Department has proposed a standard for grass-fed meat that doesn't say animals need pasture and that broadly defines grass to include things like leftovers from harvested crops.
Critics say the proposal is so loose that it would let more conventional ranchers slap a grass-fed label on their beef, too.
"In the eye of the consumer, grass-fed is tied to open pasture-raised animals, not confinement or feedlot animals," said Patricia Whisnant, a Missouri rancher who heads the American Grassfed Association. "In the consumer's eye, you're going to lose the integrity of what the term 'grass-fed' means."
All beef cattle graze on grass at the beginning of their lives. The difference generally is that grass-fed beef herds graze in pastures, while conventional cattle spend the last three or four months of their lives being fattened with corn or other grains in feedlots.
People buy grass-fed beef for many reasons: They want to avoid antibiotics commonly used in feedlots, they think it's healthier, or they like the idea of supporting local farms and ranches.
To read the Rest of the Article
Sunday, September 03, 2006
Shreema Mehta: Students Seek Alternatives as Textbook Prices Mount
(To my fellow professors, try to minimize the cost for your students. I'm often stunned by the disregard, or straight out ignorance, some professors have about the costs of their assigned textbooks. While you are at it, teach your students how to find used textbooks.)
Students Seek Alternatives as Textbook Prices Mount
By Shreema Mehta
Originally published by The New Standard; reposted on AlterNet
A recent study finds that the college textbook industry is driving up costs and restricting cheaper options and suggests alternatives students can use to save money.
The report, released by the members of the Student Public Interest Research Groups (Student PIRGs), a network of campus-based advocacy groups, said textbook companies are taking advantage of a skewed market in which students are forced to buy books assigned by professors.
Students spend an average of about $900 on textbooks every year, according to the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress. The GAO also found the price for books had tripled between 1986 and 2004, growing at twice the rate of inflation.
The Student PIRGs point out that "the party that orders textbooks -- faculty -- is not the same party that must purchase textbooks -- students -- removing price as a primary consideration in the ordering process." The group also notes that students have no way to "exert their own market power" by finding competitors with lower prices.
The Student PIRGs also criticized publishers for frequently releasing new editions -- often without adding significant educational value -- and thereby squelching a used-book market. Companies also add CD-ROMs and other supplementary "bells and whistles" that drive up costs.
To Read the Rest of the Article
Students Seek Alternatives as Textbook Prices Mount
By Shreema Mehta
Originally published by The New Standard; reposted on AlterNet
A recent study finds that the college textbook industry is driving up costs and restricting cheaper options and suggests alternatives students can use to save money.
The report, released by the members of the Student Public Interest Research Groups (Student PIRGs), a network of campus-based advocacy groups, said textbook companies are taking advantage of a skewed market in which students are forced to buy books assigned by professors.
Students spend an average of about $900 on textbooks every year, according to the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress. The GAO also found the price for books had tripled between 1986 and 2004, growing at twice the rate of inflation.
The Student PIRGs point out that "the party that orders textbooks -- faculty -- is not the same party that must purchase textbooks -- students -- removing price as a primary consideration in the ordering process." The group also notes that students have no way to "exert their own market power" by finding competitors with lower prices.
The Student PIRGs also criticized publishers for frequently releasing new editions -- often without adding significant educational value -- and thereby squelching a used-book market. Companies also add CD-ROMs and other supplementary "bells and whistles" that drive up costs.
To Read the Rest of the Article
Milan Kundera: Vertigo
(Thanks to Wes who insisted I read this book and gave me his annotated version)
Anyone whose goal is "something higher" must expect some day to suffer vertigo. What is vertigo? Fear of falling? Then why do we feel it even when the observation tower comes equipped with a sturdy handrail? No, vertigo is something other than the fear of falling. It is the voice of the emptiness below us which tempts and lures us. it is the desire to fall, against which terrified, we defend ourselves.
----Kundera, Milan. The Unbearable Lightness of Being. (1984/1991 Harper Perennial edition: 59-60)
Anyone whose goal is "something higher" must expect some day to suffer vertigo. What is vertigo? Fear of falling? Then why do we feel it even when the observation tower comes equipped with a sturdy handrail? No, vertigo is something other than the fear of falling. It is the voice of the emptiness below us which tempts and lures us. it is the desire to fall, against which terrified, we defend ourselves.
----Kundera, Milan. The Unbearable Lightness of Being. (1984/1991 Harper Perennial edition: 59-60)
Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman: Saving the ballot evidence from Ohio 2004
Saving the ballot evidence from Ohio 2004
by Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman
September 2, 2006
The Free Press
This weekend was to be "D-Day" in Ohio. It marked the September 2 deadline after which federal law allows the destruction of ballots from the 2004 election.
It didn't happen, at least on a statewide basis. But the fight to preserve that vital evidence is far from over.
Republican election officials here have been chomping at the bit to shred, burn or otherwise destroy the ballots and other related materials from the dubious vote count that gave George W. Bush a second term. Yet, in several rural southwest Republican-dominated counties, you have to trip over boxes of ballots and election material from earlier elections dating back as far as 1977 in order to see the stickers "Destroy on 9/3/06" on the 2004 ballot boxes.
J. Kenneth Blackwell, the Republican Secretary of State, is running for governor. His dual role as administrator of the election and state co-chair of the Bush-Cheney campaign has raised deep-seated embarrassment and ire throughout the Buckeye State.
The disturbing revelations of irregularities, theft and fraud continue to pour from the ballots still stored by election boards around the state. Statistician Dr. Richard Hayes Phillips has been instrumental in the research process along with a volunteer crew of election protection activists. This summer, Dr. Ron Baiman of Loyola has also been analyzing ballots and other election records from the 2004 election in a project funded by the CICJ. Many have spent countless hours pouring through and photographing piles of voter records and thousands of ballots, some of them stacked in filthy, leaky warehouses. Through this work, the evidence that the 2004 election was stolen continues to build. We will cover some of these new revelations in a future piece.
Unfortunately, some vital material has already been destroyed by various county election boards. Fears have also been expressed that some BOEs might ignore the new orders to preserve the ballots. Some 2004 election workers have already been indicted in Cuyahoga County. A major partisan battle has erupted in the Democratic stronghold of Cleveland over the actions of the Executive Director of the Board of Elections, Michael Vu, for Cuyahoga County. Nominally a Democrat, Vu only holds his position because of the support of Cuyahoga County BOE Chair, Robert Bennett, also the Chair of the Ohio Republican Party. Bennett and his fellow Republican on the election board are keeping Vu from being ousted by the Democratic Party who originally appointed him. Legal battles also continue over the firing of Sherole Eaton, a federal whistleblower who dared to call attention to unauthorized manipulations of a central tabulator during the recount in 2004 in Hocking County.
How many more such legal and political battles will come is unclear. But what is clear is that it will take years of hard investigating to get to the bottom of what really happened in 2004. And that doing so will require preservation of the ballots, which the GOP has been all too eager to destroy.
Ironically, the state of Florida has saved its ballots from 2000. A concerted campaign by academics and other interested parties gathered enough political clout to force Gov. Jeb Bush and Secretary of State Katherine Harris to order those records be moved to a state repository in Tallahassee, where they are now air conditioned and protected for future generations.
Until this past week, Blackwell has made clear his intent to rid himself of the remnants of 2004. Federal law says ballots must be preserved 22 months after a presidential election, which would have meant Blackwell and the BOEs could have shredded them all September 2.
But a week prior, a legal team including Columbus-based Clifford Arnebeck filed notice with Blackwell that action would be taken to preserve the evidence. The formal filing came Thursday, August 30, in the form of a civil rights action. In concert with the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights, Arnebeck and John Marshall, also of Columbus, asked the federal district court in Columbus to force Blackwell to order the 88 county boards of elections to preserve the ballots. The filing says the ballots are needed as evidence of official fraud, manipulation and discrimination that violated the rights of young and black voters.
With prior wind of the action, Blackwell issued a directive asking the BOEs not to destroy the ballots and election records, at least for the time being. The directive looks like little more than a reciting of existing law that has on more than one occasion, gone unenforced. Initially, Blackwell claimed he did not have the power to order the BOEs not to destroy the ballots. But he has now indicated they are under a limited legal obligation to do so.
Blackwell's prior claim of powerlessness is absurd. Throughout the 2004 campaign the secretary of state ordered major unilateral changes by directive in provisional ballot counting and voter registration procedures. He threatened to remove election board officials who failed to comply. By Ohio law, all BOE officials serve at the pleasure of J. Kenneth Blackwell. Blackwell also denied paper ballot backups to Franklin County (Columbus), in case of long lines during the 2004 election, even after they were requested by the Democratic Franklin County BOE Chair William Anthony and Republican Director Matt Damschroder.
To Read the Rest of the Article
by Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman
September 2, 2006
The Free Press
This weekend was to be "D-Day" in Ohio. It marked the September 2 deadline after which federal law allows the destruction of ballots from the 2004 election.
It didn't happen, at least on a statewide basis. But the fight to preserve that vital evidence is far from over.
Republican election officials here have been chomping at the bit to shred, burn or otherwise destroy the ballots and other related materials from the dubious vote count that gave George W. Bush a second term. Yet, in several rural southwest Republican-dominated counties, you have to trip over boxes of ballots and election material from earlier elections dating back as far as 1977 in order to see the stickers "Destroy on 9/3/06" on the 2004 ballot boxes.
J. Kenneth Blackwell, the Republican Secretary of State, is running for governor. His dual role as administrator of the election and state co-chair of the Bush-Cheney campaign has raised deep-seated embarrassment and ire throughout the Buckeye State.
The disturbing revelations of irregularities, theft and fraud continue to pour from the ballots still stored by election boards around the state. Statistician Dr. Richard Hayes Phillips has been instrumental in the research process along with a volunteer crew of election protection activists. This summer, Dr. Ron Baiman of Loyola has also been analyzing ballots and other election records from the 2004 election in a project funded by the CICJ. Many have spent countless hours pouring through and photographing piles of voter records and thousands of ballots, some of them stacked in filthy, leaky warehouses. Through this work, the evidence that the 2004 election was stolen continues to build. We will cover some of these new revelations in a future piece.
Unfortunately, some vital material has already been destroyed by various county election boards. Fears have also been expressed that some BOEs might ignore the new orders to preserve the ballots. Some 2004 election workers have already been indicted in Cuyahoga County. A major partisan battle has erupted in the Democratic stronghold of Cleveland over the actions of the Executive Director of the Board of Elections, Michael Vu, for Cuyahoga County. Nominally a Democrat, Vu only holds his position because of the support of Cuyahoga County BOE Chair, Robert Bennett, also the Chair of the Ohio Republican Party. Bennett and his fellow Republican on the election board are keeping Vu from being ousted by the Democratic Party who originally appointed him. Legal battles also continue over the firing of Sherole Eaton, a federal whistleblower who dared to call attention to unauthorized manipulations of a central tabulator during the recount in 2004 in Hocking County.
How many more such legal and political battles will come is unclear. But what is clear is that it will take years of hard investigating to get to the bottom of what really happened in 2004. And that doing so will require preservation of the ballots, which the GOP has been all too eager to destroy.
Ironically, the state of Florida has saved its ballots from 2000. A concerted campaign by academics and other interested parties gathered enough political clout to force Gov. Jeb Bush and Secretary of State Katherine Harris to order those records be moved to a state repository in Tallahassee, where they are now air conditioned and protected for future generations.
Until this past week, Blackwell has made clear his intent to rid himself of the remnants of 2004. Federal law says ballots must be preserved 22 months after a presidential election, which would have meant Blackwell and the BOEs could have shredded them all September 2.
But a week prior, a legal team including Columbus-based Clifford Arnebeck filed notice with Blackwell that action would be taken to preserve the evidence. The formal filing came Thursday, August 30, in the form of a civil rights action. In concert with the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights, Arnebeck and John Marshall, also of Columbus, asked the federal district court in Columbus to force Blackwell to order the 88 county boards of elections to preserve the ballots. The filing says the ballots are needed as evidence of official fraud, manipulation and discrimination that violated the rights of young and black voters.
With prior wind of the action, Blackwell issued a directive asking the BOEs not to destroy the ballots and election records, at least for the time being. The directive looks like little more than a reciting of existing law that has on more than one occasion, gone unenforced. Initially, Blackwell claimed he did not have the power to order the BOEs not to destroy the ballots. But he has now indicated they are under a limited legal obligation to do so.
Blackwell's prior claim of powerlessness is absurd. Throughout the 2004 campaign the secretary of state ordered major unilateral changes by directive in provisional ballot counting and voter registration procedures. He threatened to remove election board officials who failed to comply. By Ohio law, all BOE officials serve at the pleasure of J. Kenneth Blackwell. Blackwell also denied paper ballot backups to Franklin County (Columbus), in case of long lines during the 2004 election, even after they were requested by the Democratic Franklin County BOE Chair William Anthony and Republican Director Matt Damschroder.
To Read the Rest of the Article
Saturday, September 02, 2006
The Kentucky Fairness Alliance: Election Activities
The Kentucky Fairness Alliance is incredibly excited to introduce Kentucky Votes Fairness, a project dedicated to voter identification, education, and participation in the places where we need it most. The action starts next week in Lexington and Northern Kentucky!
Learn more
Sign up for Lexington Activities
Sign up for Northern Kentucky Activities
Three Communities
Lexington, Danville, and Northern Kentucky are the homes of some of our most notorious anti-fairness legislators. They're also homes to communities of progressive voters who are likely to support fairness. Kentucky Votes Fairness will get more of those voters to the polls, and send their legislators a message.
Four Activities
Saturdays/Sundays: Voter Identification Walks
In order to find and connect with those progressive voters, we're making an all-out effort to walk door-to-door and meet them on their own front porches. Kentucky Votes Fairness revolves around these weekend walks, but volunteer recruiting efforts take place all week.
Tuesdays/Wednesdays: Phone Banks
Reach out to supporters in your community and encourage them to participate in Kentucky Votes Fairness activities.
Thursdays: Volunteer Recruiting
Visit local hangouts and meet new allies.
Fridays: Walk Preparation
Assemble voter information into clipboards for our walkers to use on the weekends.
Huge Opportunities
Kentucky Votes Fairness kicks off in Northern Kentucky and Lexington next week, with Danville joining the action on September 26. The effort will be massive, with walks nearly every weekend between now and November's election.
Please sign up today for an event in your community!
Northern Kentucky
Lexington
Danville
We pride ourselves on educating and advocating for fairness at the grassroots. No amount of television advertising is as persuasive as a neighbor talking friendly with a neighbor. Become a part of Kentucky Votes Fairness, meet allies, and take a measurable step toward the fair Kentucky we all believe in.
We can't wait to meet you, or see you again.
Christina, Wes, & Misty
Your Kentucky Fairness Alliance Staff
Find out more about Kentucky Votes Fairness
Learn more
Sign up for Lexington Activities
Sign up for Northern Kentucky Activities
Three Communities
Lexington, Danville, and Northern Kentucky are the homes of some of our most notorious anti-fairness legislators. They're also homes to communities of progressive voters who are likely to support fairness. Kentucky Votes Fairness will get more of those voters to the polls, and send their legislators a message.
Four Activities
Saturdays/Sundays: Voter Identification Walks
In order to find and connect with those progressive voters, we're making an all-out effort to walk door-to-door and meet them on their own front porches. Kentucky Votes Fairness revolves around these weekend walks, but volunteer recruiting efforts take place all week.
Tuesdays/Wednesdays: Phone Banks
Reach out to supporters in your community and encourage them to participate in Kentucky Votes Fairness activities.
Thursdays: Volunteer Recruiting
Visit local hangouts and meet new allies.
Fridays: Walk Preparation
Assemble voter information into clipboards for our walkers to use on the weekends.
Huge Opportunities
Kentucky Votes Fairness kicks off in Northern Kentucky and Lexington next week, with Danville joining the action on September 26. The effort will be massive, with walks nearly every weekend between now and November's election.
Please sign up today for an event in your community!
Northern Kentucky
Lexington
Danville
We pride ourselves on educating and advocating for fairness at the grassroots. No amount of television advertising is as persuasive as a neighbor talking friendly with a neighbor. Become a part of Kentucky Votes Fairness, meet allies, and take a measurable step toward the fair Kentucky we all believe in.
We can't wait to meet you, or see you again.
Christina, Wes, & Misty
Your Kentucky Fairness Alliance Staff
Find out more about Kentucky Votes Fairness
Zack Exley: The Real Patriotism
THE REAL PATRIOTISM
MoveOn Bulletin Op-Ed (June 2005)
by Zack Exley
Patriotism is love of country. But love comes in many forms: deep, permanent and unconditional, as well as superficial, fleeting and with strings attached. Too often in America, expressions of patriotism seem to flow from our perceived status as "number one" -- number one in terms of military might, wealth, freedom, and democracy. Our leaders remind us in nearly every speech they make that we live in the "greatest, freest, most just nation on Earth." They remind us so often, that one can't help but wonder if they really do believe it. That is a patriotism borne of fear, confusion and insecurity.
What if America wasn't -- or isn't -- number one? Would we still love our country then? Suggest American fallibility, and you may find yourself labeled a traitor. But how, then, are we to find our way to a better America, if this superficial, insecure patriotism prevents us from naming problems that need fixing and traits that need changing?
The solution is to reject false, jingoistic patriotism, and to embrace a patriotism based on the unconditional love of one's country. Note: that's unconditional love, not unconditional approval. Like a parent loves a child, or a child a parent, we love our country because it is OUR country. Period.
Beware: this type of patriotism brings with it much more responsibility than the kind based on superficial, conditional love. Once you accept responsibility for your country in the way that a parent does for a child -- or a child for a parent -- then you're really committed. When your country misbehaves, you can't just roll your eyes as if you had nothing to do with it.
Too many on the left have tried to absolve themselves of responsibility for their country by saying "that's my government, not me." Too many on the right have tried to erase the responsibility governments have to represent all the people by saying, "Love it (read 'agree with me') or leave it!"
Perhaps as old political categories such as left and right lose their relevance, we can aim for a new political unity based on a new kind of patriotism. Let's leave behind the hollow patriotism which is based on disdain for and fear of others. Instead, let's define a new patriotism -- one that expresses our unconditional love for America and lives up to our responsibility to our fellow Americans.
MoveOn Bulletin Op-Ed (June 2005)
by Zack Exley
Patriotism is love of country. But love comes in many forms: deep, permanent and unconditional, as well as superficial, fleeting and with strings attached. Too often in America, expressions of patriotism seem to flow from our perceived status as "number one" -- number one in terms of military might, wealth, freedom, and democracy. Our leaders remind us in nearly every speech they make that we live in the "greatest, freest, most just nation on Earth." They remind us so often, that one can't help but wonder if they really do believe it. That is a patriotism borne of fear, confusion and insecurity.
What if America wasn't -- or isn't -- number one? Would we still love our country then? Suggest American fallibility, and you may find yourself labeled a traitor. But how, then, are we to find our way to a better America, if this superficial, insecure patriotism prevents us from naming problems that need fixing and traits that need changing?
The solution is to reject false, jingoistic patriotism, and to embrace a patriotism based on the unconditional love of one's country. Note: that's unconditional love, not unconditional approval. Like a parent loves a child, or a child a parent, we love our country because it is OUR country. Period.
Beware: this type of patriotism brings with it much more responsibility than the kind based on superficial, conditional love. Once you accept responsibility for your country in the way that a parent does for a child -- or a child for a parent -- then you're really committed. When your country misbehaves, you can't just roll your eyes as if you had nothing to do with it.
Too many on the left have tried to absolve themselves of responsibility for their country by saying "that's my government, not me." Too many on the right have tried to erase the responsibility governments have to represent all the people by saying, "Love it (read 'agree with me') or leave it!"
Perhaps as old political categories such as left and right lose their relevance, we can aim for a new political unity based on a new kind of patriotism. Let's leave behind the hollow patriotism which is based on disdain for and fear of others. Instead, let's define a new patriotism -- one that expresses our unconditional love for America and lives up to our responsibility to our fellow Americans.
Adbusters: The function of a society is to create meaning...
The function of a society is to produce meaning - to come up with the trends, fashions, myths and agendas that people can collectively believe in. It's too bad that so much of the meaning we have been producing in the affluent West is toxic to ourselves and to other cultures that decide--with a considerable degree of coercion--to go along for the ride.
Adbusters (July/August 2006): 3.
Adbusters (July/August 2006): 3.
Rhizomes: Cultural Studies in Emerging Knowledge
A journal edited/founded by one of my favorite professors Ellen Berry (when I was a MA in cultural studies at Bowling Green State University):
Manifesto/Introduction:
Rhizomes oppose the idea that knowledge must grow in a tree structure from previously accepted ideas. New thinking need not follow established patterns.
Rhizomes promotes experimental work located outside current disciplines, work that has no proper location. As our name suggests, works written in the spirit of Deleuzian approaches are welcomed but not required.
We are not interested in publishing texts that establish their authority merely by affirming what is already believed. Instead, we encourage migrations into new conceptual territories resulting from unpredictable juxtapositions.
Rhizomes: Cultural Studies in Emerging Knowledge
Manifesto/Introduction:
Rhizomes oppose the idea that knowledge must grow in a tree structure from previously accepted ideas. New thinking need not follow established patterns.
Rhizomes promotes experimental work located outside current disciplines, work that has no proper location. As our name suggests, works written in the spirit of Deleuzian approaches are welcomed but not required.
We are not interested in publishing texts that establish their authority merely by affirming what is already believed. Instead, we encourage migrations into new conceptual territories resulting from unpredictable juxtapositions.
Rhizomes: Cultural Studies in Emerging Knowledge
Farhang Erfani: Continental Philosophy
Farhang has set up a new Continental Philosophy bulletin board.
His intro to the site:
My aim in creating this site is to provide a bulletin board for events in continental philosophy, broadly understood. I am also interested in the history of philosophy in general and its interdisciplinary developments. Serving as the moderator of this bulletin board, I intend to be fairly invisible. My inspiration is in part Alfredo Perez’s political theory.info, though I would not pretend to compete with Alfredo ’s range or fortitude. I will do my best to write posts announcing new articles, CFPs, conference programs, book publications and other similar matters. I will also develop separate pages, putting together bibliographies and teaching materials (syllabi, handouts, links, etc.) I would be delighted to have anyone willing to help to join these projects.
Please feel free to contact me (by email), if you wish to see any event appear on this site.
I am an assistant professor of philosophy at American University, in D.C. and a proud graduate of Villanova University’s doctoral program in philosophy.
Farhang Erfani
His intro to the site:
My aim in creating this site is to provide a bulletin board for events in continental philosophy, broadly understood. I am also interested in the history of philosophy in general and its interdisciplinary developments. Serving as the moderator of this bulletin board, I intend to be fairly invisible. My inspiration is in part Alfredo Perez’s political theory.info, though I would not pretend to compete with Alfredo ’s range or fortitude. I will do my best to write posts announcing new articles, CFPs, conference programs, book publications and other similar matters. I will also develop separate pages, putting together bibliographies and teaching materials (syllabi, handouts, links, etc.) I would be delighted to have anyone willing to help to join these projects.
Please feel free to contact me (by email), if you wish to see any event appear on this site.
I am an assistant professor of philosophy at American University, in D.C. and a proud graduate of Villanova University’s doctoral program in philosophy.
Farhang Erfani
Joshua Holland: The Clash of Civilizations Doesn't Exist... Yet
The Clash of Civilizations Doesn't Exist... Yet
By Joshua Holland
AlterNet (September 1, 2006)
The neocons who are pushing a Clash of Civilizations are mirror-images of the terrorists that inspire their hyperbolic fear -- they are just as irrational and just as great a threat to our security.
"Seriousness" has become the word of the day for the Islamophobic set.
According to some of our more serious hawks, anyone who doesn't buy that the liberal democracies of the West are engaged in a death-match with hordes of dusky Muslim fanatics is "unserious" about America's security and can't be trusted.
It's the latest in a series of attempts to forestall any meaningful discussion of the causes of violent Islamist ideologies, much less how the United States should respond to them. It locks us into the global "war on terror."
Unfortunately, all too many otherwise sane people seem to accept the terms.
But it's hard to imagine anything more profoundly unserious than taking a dozen complex conflicts that originated in a dozen countries, stripping them of all historical and political context and lumping them together in an amorphous blob called the "Clash of Civilizations." But that's exactly what we're talking about.
So let's take them at their word for a moment and think seriously about the framework they use to understand a dangerous and confusing world.
Consider this: in the epic struggle between East and West, some of our staunchest allies are the undisputed champs in spreading violent Islamic extremism. Saudi Arabia and Pakistan established fundamentalist, anti-Western madrassas all across the world, funneled gobs of cash to extremist groups, and nurtured and supported them in their infancy. It wasn't just random individuals within those countries; Saudi Arabia made it a foreign policy priority to spread its brand of Wahhabism, mostly to counter the perceived threat of Pan-Arabism and other anti-colonial ideologies. Pakistan's intelligence service, the ISI -- sometimes called a "state within a state" -- not only supported the Taliban in Afghanistan but funded, equipped and helped train some of the most notorious terror groups that grew out of that country in the 1990s. Talk all you want about Syria and Iran supporting Hezbollah, these are the great terror-sponsoring states, and they're on the side of the Western democracies.
What's more, the West isn't all that unified in this great existential struggle to save itself from destruction. A recent poll of citizens in the United Kingdom, our most loyal ally and a country that largely believes the Clash of Civilizations meme, found that -- "by a margin of more than five to one -- the public wants Tony Blair to split from President George W. Bush and either go it alone in the 'war on terror', or work more closely with Europe." Just 14 per cent believed "Britain should continue to align itself with America." A Pew Global Attitudes survey in June found that in Spain, supposedly a target of "Islamic Imperialism" and the victim of one of the most spectacular terror attacks ever, "four times as many people oppose the war on terror as support it (76 percent to 19 percent)."
Of course, the hawks' response is that there must be something wrong with the rest of the world. Outside of the United States, they argue, the West is "feminized," spineless and too "politically correct" to take on the Muslim hordes. That's like an ugly, unhygienic man's sincere belief that every woman who rejects his advances must be a lesbian. If there's a consensus among your closest friends that you're wrong about something, you probably are.
To Read the Rest of the Hyperlinked Article
By Joshua Holland
AlterNet (September 1, 2006)
The neocons who are pushing a Clash of Civilizations are mirror-images of the terrorists that inspire their hyperbolic fear -- they are just as irrational and just as great a threat to our security.
"Seriousness" has become the word of the day for the Islamophobic set.
According to some of our more serious hawks, anyone who doesn't buy that the liberal democracies of the West are engaged in a death-match with hordes of dusky Muslim fanatics is "unserious" about America's security and can't be trusted.
It's the latest in a series of attempts to forestall any meaningful discussion of the causes of violent Islamist ideologies, much less how the United States should respond to them. It locks us into the global "war on terror."
Unfortunately, all too many otherwise sane people seem to accept the terms.
But it's hard to imagine anything more profoundly unserious than taking a dozen complex conflicts that originated in a dozen countries, stripping them of all historical and political context and lumping them together in an amorphous blob called the "Clash of Civilizations." But that's exactly what we're talking about.
So let's take them at their word for a moment and think seriously about the framework they use to understand a dangerous and confusing world.
Consider this: in the epic struggle between East and West, some of our staunchest allies are the undisputed champs in spreading violent Islamic extremism. Saudi Arabia and Pakistan established fundamentalist, anti-Western madrassas all across the world, funneled gobs of cash to extremist groups, and nurtured and supported them in their infancy. It wasn't just random individuals within those countries; Saudi Arabia made it a foreign policy priority to spread its brand of Wahhabism, mostly to counter the perceived threat of Pan-Arabism and other anti-colonial ideologies. Pakistan's intelligence service, the ISI -- sometimes called a "state within a state" -- not only supported the Taliban in Afghanistan but funded, equipped and helped train some of the most notorious terror groups that grew out of that country in the 1990s. Talk all you want about Syria and Iran supporting Hezbollah, these are the great terror-sponsoring states, and they're on the side of the Western democracies.
What's more, the West isn't all that unified in this great existential struggle to save itself from destruction. A recent poll of citizens in the United Kingdom, our most loyal ally and a country that largely believes the Clash of Civilizations meme, found that -- "by a margin of more than five to one -- the public wants Tony Blair to split from President George W. Bush and either go it alone in the 'war on terror', or work more closely with Europe." Just 14 per cent believed "Britain should continue to align itself with America." A Pew Global Attitudes survey in June found that in Spain, supposedly a target of "Islamic Imperialism" and the victim of one of the most spectacular terror attacks ever, "four times as many people oppose the war on terror as support it (76 percent to 19 percent)."
Of course, the hawks' response is that there must be something wrong with the rest of the world. Outside of the United States, they argue, the West is "feminized," spineless and too "politically correct" to take on the Muslim hordes. That's like an ugly, unhygienic man's sincere belief that every woman who rejects his advances must be a lesbian. If there's a consensus among your closest friends that you're wrong about something, you probably are.
To Read the Rest of the Hyperlinked Article
Rage Against the Machine: No Shelter
(New video set to this song)
"No Shelter"
Rage Against the Machine
Posted on AlterNet
The main attraction, distraction
got ya number than numb
Empty ya pockets son,
they got you thinkin that
What ya need is what they sellin
Make you think that buyin is rebellin'
From the theaters to malls on every shore
The thin line between entertainment and war
The frontline is everywhere,
there will be no shelter here
Spielberg the nightmare works so push it far
Amistad was a whip,
the truth feathered and tarred
Memories erased and burned and scarred
Trade in ya history for a VCR
Cinema, simulated life, ill drama
Fourth reich culture, Americana
Chained to the dream they got ya searchin for
The thin line between entertainment and war
There'll be no shelter here!
The thin line is everywhere
There'll be no shelter here!
The thin line is everywhere
Hospitals not profit full
The market bull's got pockets full
To advertise some hip disguise
View the world from American eyes
Tha poor adore keep feeding for more
Tha thin line between entertainment and war
Fix the need, develop the taste
Buy their products or get laid to waste
Coca-Cola is back in the veins of Saigon
And Rambo too, he's got a dope pair of Nikes on
Godzilla pure mother f**kin filler
Get your eyes off the real killer
Cinema, simulated life, ill drama
Fourth reich culture, Americana
Chained to the dream they got you searchin for
Tha thin line between entertainment and war
There'll be no shelter here!
The thin line is everywhere
There'll be no shelter here!
The thin line is everywhere
American eyes, American eyes
View the world from American eyes
Bury the past, rob us blind
And leave nothin behind
American eyes, American eyes
View the world from American eyes
Bury the past, rob us blind
And leave nothin behind
Just stare!
Just stare!
Just stare!
Just stare!
Relive the nightmare!
Lyrics by Zack de la Rocha.
Watch the Video
"No Shelter"
Rage Against the Machine
Posted on AlterNet
The main attraction, distraction
got ya number than numb
Empty ya pockets son,
they got you thinkin that
What ya need is what they sellin
Make you think that buyin is rebellin'
From the theaters to malls on every shore
The thin line between entertainment and war
The frontline is everywhere,
there will be no shelter here
Spielberg the nightmare works so push it far
Amistad was a whip,
the truth feathered and tarred
Memories erased and burned and scarred
Trade in ya history for a VCR
Cinema, simulated life, ill drama
Fourth reich culture, Americana
Chained to the dream they got ya searchin for
The thin line between entertainment and war
There'll be no shelter here!
The thin line is everywhere
There'll be no shelter here!
The thin line is everywhere
Hospitals not profit full
The market bull's got pockets full
To advertise some hip disguise
View the world from American eyes
Tha poor adore keep feeding for more
Tha thin line between entertainment and war
Fix the need, develop the taste
Buy their products or get laid to waste
Coca-Cola is back in the veins of Saigon
And Rambo too, he's got a dope pair of Nikes on
Godzilla pure mother f**kin filler
Get your eyes off the real killer
Cinema, simulated life, ill drama
Fourth reich culture, Americana
Chained to the dream they got you searchin for
Tha thin line between entertainment and war
There'll be no shelter here!
The thin line is everywhere
There'll be no shelter here!
The thin line is everywhere
American eyes, American eyes
View the world from American eyes
Bury the past, rob us blind
And leave nothin behind
American eyes, American eyes
View the world from American eyes
Bury the past, rob us blind
And leave nothin behind
Just stare!
Just stare!
Just stare!
Just stare!
Relive the nightmare!
Lyrics by Zack de la Rocha.
Watch the Video
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