The End Of The World?

By William M. H. Kötke

12 September, 2007

We are all looking at the end of the world as we know it. Our attention is focused on the holes in the ozone layer, planet warming, peak oil, the spread of DU weapons, the collapse of the house of credit cards, and the prospect of the planetary financial elite quickly establishing fascist control of the planet. Below this threshold of conscious awareness our biological survival systems are rapidly eroding. At this point some twenty percent of the planet’s soils erode each twenty-five year period. Each year at least two hundred thousand acres of irrigated crop-lands go out of production because of salinization or water-logging and experts say that sixty to eighty percent of all irrigated acreage is due to follow the eight to ten million acres that have historically gone into ruination from irrigation. The total drylands of the planet are 7.9 billion acres of which 61% are desertified, that is, driven by human abuse toward uselessness. Globally, 23% of all arable crop lands have been lost since 1945 through human use and experts say that all arable land on the planet will be ruined in 200 years.

It is estimated that prior to the human culture that we term civilization, one third of the planet was covered with closed canopy forest. Now forests cover 10% of the earth. In the oceans the collapse of major fish stocks is increasing. At least eight stocks have collapsed beginning with the Antarctic Blue Whale in 1935 to the Peruvian Anchovy stock collapse in the late twentieth century. Since 1984 the world fish catch has been shrinking even with greater investment and the taking of what in former times were considered “trash” fish. Of the 32 ocean fisheries, 30 are in decline and some of those are collapsing. At the same time coral reefs and mangrove swamps which are considered the “incubators” of sea life are dwindling precipitously.

Soil is the basis of the planetary terrestrial life. In the best of circumstances such as old growth forests and prairies, soil builds at the rate of one inch each three hundred to a thousand years. It is being exhausted and is eroding away. The way that the industrial system has continued to increase the food supply is by trading off soil fertility for fossil fuel energy through artificial fertilizers. Now, nearly half of the world’s people eat because of the added production of food caused by artificial fertilizers being injected into depleted soils and the use of all of the other accouterments of fossil- fueled industrial agriculture.. Half of the planetary population are hanging out on a limb essentially eating petroleum! Now as the population continues to explode we reach peak oil and its decline. We do not need to continue filling in the details. Our intellect can draw the conclusion for us. An exponentially exploding world population with increasing material consumption, based on dwindling resources and a dying planet, won’t work!

But this is not a new phenomenon as some would assume. This culture of civilization, of empire, was an ecological catastrophe when it began some eight thousand years ago. It is this culture and its inculcated reality-view that is the disaster. Half of China was once a great temperate zone forest. That forest was gone before recorded history, destroyed by the Han Chinese Empire. The Indus River Valley Empire had ecologically destroyed its habitat before recorded history. We do have recorded history of the Sumerian and Babylonian empires. We know they decimated the forests and overgrazed the landscape. One third of the land in Iraq that should be arable right now is still so salinized from imperial irrigation four and five thousand years ago that it cannot be used. The erosion material coming down the Tigris and Euphrates rivers from that destroyed watershed has filled in 185 miles of the gulf. As we follow the history of this type of human culture we find the Mid-East ecologically denuded. The empires of Greece and Rome used Turkey and North Africa as “breadbaskets.” Now, there are towns in Turkey, North Africa and even in Italy that were port cities during those empires which are now ten and fifteen miles from the water - all filled in with erosion material from the ecologically destroyed landscapes. Then we go on to the destruction of the great forests of Europe and now the whole world. These examples and many more are indelible effects on the world ecosystem which have not recovered in thousands of years.

The Success of the Human Species

Are humans a failed species? Is it what some Natives Americans have said, “very shrewd but no wisdom?” When we look around the biosphere we see that most other species devote much of their life energies to birthing, raising and protecting their progeny. In this respect, civilized humans are a failed species. They can’t even keep the planet alive for their descendants. But humans have been a marvelously successful species. For several million years we existed as forager/hunters. We lived in balance with the ecosystem, migrating in our traditional patterns around our areas gathering the fruits of the earth. We were adapted to the planetary life. We developed astonishing oral literatures, we developed a rich cultural life. Anthropology says that each forager/hunter worked an average of 500 hours per year obtaining the necessaries of life. Traditional agriculturalists like the Hopi or Balinese worked 1,000 hours per year and had shorter life spans. Now the modern industrial person works 2,000 hours per year on average and only stay alive because they have health insurance. Anthropology says that the forager/hunters (even those still remaining) have almost perfect health.

They also had a rich culture. They didn’t simply sit around the campfire but created voluminous oral literature, great works of art as handcrafts and a rich ceremonial life of the tribe. Our species lived with the living earth. We had wide knowledge of the living things around us and we respected life. Such a grotesque event as killing thousands of buffalo simply to take their tongues or hides away to market and to leave the carcasses to rot were an act that was inconceivably inhuman in the eyes of a forager/hunter.

Our ancestors were well fed with a widely varied diet. Anthropologists studying the !Kung Bushmen of the inhospitable Kalahari Desert in Southern Africa say that each person’s daily protein intake was more than Britain and exceeded by only ten industrial countries. The proportion of men and women over sixty was only ten percent smaller than industrial countries. Forager/hunters who lived in more luxurious ecosystems did even better. This means that most of the people of the third world and the poor of the first world do not even have the living standards of the !Kung Bushmen and for eight thousand years, all of those who did breast beating about the superiority of “civilization” did not even come up to the living standards of free living forager/hunters - talk about being sold a bill of goods!

For 99% of the time our species has lived successfully in balance with the energy flows of the earth. The soil community with its millions of inhabitants provides a milieu in which plant roots can absorb nutrients that are in solution. The plant community sheds leaves and other organic debris onto the soil which feeds it as it is eaten by the “decomposers.” This cycling of biological energy is then extrapolated to the cycles of life of all the other biological entities of the ecosystem through the food chains and other services species do for each other in what is an energy flow system with photosynthesis as the primary motor. This is the energy flow system that our species was adapted to for an untold period of time. Being a small nomadic group (average of 28 people according to anthropology) we had a cooperative culture, a sharing culture and being migratory we only carried necessary items so that materialism, the accumulation and adulation of material goods, did not occur.

The Inversion

Then in Central Asia and Northern China, humans began to destroy the living planet with agriculture and herding. The military based empires began to grow by running a net deficit of the earth’s fertility - a human culture based in looting, thievery. This culture began then, in just an eye blink of time, just eight to ten thousand years, and the energy adaptation changed. Humans began civis, towns, the root of the word civilization. Male dominance - patriarchy, the horse and militarism became rooted in the soil, to grow based on sucking out the fertility of the earth. This culture was, in its origin, a culture of coercion based upon biological slaves such as annual plants and domesticated animals and human slaves, in order to extort fertility from the earth. The ecological history of empire is there for all to see. We no longer gather the fruits of the earth, we force the earth to give up surpluses, profits, until the earth can no longer, then we move on. This is the culture of empire, a culture of growth and imbalance. Its main tenets are patriarchy, hierarchy, materialism, and militarism. The configuration of the imperial system is: an Emperor (male), surrounded by a small financial/military elite, who control and profit from a coercive hierarchal command system. That is, they feed off the productive social activities of the people in society!

Now we are near the end. The culture of empire has spread over the earth except for a few pockets of remaining forager/hunters. As the exploding population meets the dwindling resources, societies begin to unravel. We are beginning to see massive cities around the planet, each encircled by millions of the poor. These people are still fed by the dwindling acres but the breaking point is in sight.

The Gauntlet

The human species is faced with an ultimate. Will the species die off or can a rabbit be pulled out of the hat over the long term? Inasmuch as humans live from other living things, we know that whatever humans may exist in two hundred years will be humans that have been able to keep their area of the planet alive.

We live in an era in which a number of things are occurring that have never happened to the species before. We live in a time of human caused, mass, global, die off of species. This is the third and largest mass die off of species since life began on earth, the previous (and second) die-off being when the dinosaurs went down millions of years ago. Humans have also caused the ozone holes and the climate warming. But, we also now have planetary communication and through the internet we also have planetary communication available on an individual level. This is the first time that the human species as a whole can communicate. This is also the first time that humans are in control of evolution on this whole planet and the possible further manifestation of themselves. Humans are in control and the choices that they make in the next few generations will determine the course for the future of the species as well as the earth.

The Cultural Conditioning

Culture is hypnosis. A hypnotic suggestion can be given in deep trance or in light trance, a state of conscious attention such as watching television. In light trance the suggestion is repetitive over time. We have all had a world view suggested to us by our cultural conditioning. For example, we intellectually know that, except for native people, the rest of us in the American hemisphere and many other places on the planet are colonials. But, we don’t subconsciously hold this understanding because of the culturalization. Since birth we have heard of “warlike” Indians. But intellectually we know that any country that is invaded will put up a vigorous response. Intellectually we know that, according to the historian Eduardo Galeano, up to 70 million native people were eliminated from the Americas by sword and pestilence yet we subconsciously view the holocaust of the Jews and Armenians as the only significant massacres.

In this manner our world view is created. The gold fish does not see the water. As our culture instructs us that wealth is security and is the purpose of life, we use up the earth more rapidly toward our demise. On a psychological level we identify with our material possessions and subconsciously assume our existence without these elements would be non-identity. Our needs toward greater ego-security also point toward our demise.

The Species Initiation

Now that the planet-wide human species, is by default, in control of the life of the earth we can understand what would be needed for the species to succeed to full maturity. The first order is to stay alive. To do that we must maintain that which feeds and shelters us. We must keep the earth alive and ecologically restore it even in the areas of dense human population today. Our reality view is in fact, global now by default. Ozone holes, nuclear radiation, sea level rise, planet heating and the rubbing out of the living flesh of the earth are global phenomena.

Like the Six Nations Iroquois who frame each tribal decision to its effects on the seventh generation, we must create a reality frame as the life of the earth. Given our subconscious conditioning that is difficult, but in this case our intellect can lead us. If we can frame our cultural reality view as based upon the care of the earth and teach that to the children, then many other cultural values will flow from that.

A present day citizen of the earth, if they were a mature and responsible adult would say that honorable actions would perpetuate the living earth for its sake as well as for the progeny of the human species. That commitment at the level of the whole species would signify the initiation of the species to maturity.

The Hero At The Portals of Initiation

The center does not hold.. Oil and the resources of the earth such as soil and forests are exhausting as the mass swells. Can the hero make it through the disintegration? Can small land based, self-sufficient communities make it through, some of them? Can they carry the universal value of life through with their culture? Can they create a culture that will spread in the future that focuses on the highest development of each human as a person rather than the highest rung up the ladder of empire? This is what is being asked of the hero for initiation into human species maturity - nothing less than courage, the adherence to the culture of life over long periods of time and transformation.

All the elements that we need exist. We have examples of alternative buildings, created from local materials, with solar advantages that can heat and cool themselves with no outside energy inputs. We have a world-wide movement to Permaculture which can help us restore ecologies while producing more human food per acre than the industrial system. We have a wide and increasing selection of human development methods which can aid in the development of each individual to their highest potential - outside the materialist paradigm. We have planetary communication through the internet whose maintenance could require few resources.

When the hero can succeed at the matter of keeping the human species and the planet alive and see that as just a “housekeeping” duty, then we can get on with the truly challenging task of creating a positive and joyous human culture to which the hero is entitled.

William H. Kötke author ofGarden Planet: The Present Phase Change of the Human Species. See at: www.gardenplanetbook.com and THE FINAL EMPIRE an underground classic book available for free download at: http://www.Rainbowbody.net/Finalempire .

http://www.countercurrents.org/kotke120907.htm

Progressive Civil Disobedience

By Joel S. Hirschhorn

Try to suppress your initial, gut reactions and let the following ideas sink in.

We tend to think of exercising power through the application of force or by strong overt action. Another, perhaps more Eastern, way of seeing power is through withholding something or through denial. For effective patriotic behavior today we must deny the corrupt political and economic system of what it wants from us – our participation. Through denial we can remove credibility and legitimacy and open opportunities for fundamental change that no exercise of traditional raw power can achieve. Populist power is the goal.

What the loose and fragmented progressive movement in this country needs is a broad strategy to actually accomplish something other than talking, writing and complaining. I propose the application of civil disobedience to fit our times and needs. We can learn from the pioneering thinking and actions of great revolutionaries.

From Henry David Thoreau we must learn that we do not have to physically fight the government if we think it no longer gives us a trustworthy representative democracy, but instead not support it in ways that give it legitimacy and empower it to serve the interests of political and economic elites rather than working- and middle-class Americans.

Mahatma Gandhi said "Civil disobedience is the inherent right of a citizen to be civil, implies discipline, thought, care, attention and sacrifice." This is asking a lot of Americans that to an incredible extent have become – actually have been conditioned and trained to become – disengaged from civic life and responsibility, and too consumed with materialistic consumption to fully comprehend the many ways their democracy and economic system no longer serve their interests. Their democracy has let them down, and they have let their democracy down. It gives little satisfaction to say that the public has gotten the government it deserves. A great many of us know that we have not gotten the government we deserve. But what are we to do?

From Dr. Martin Luther King and the civil rights movement we must learn that although great rhetoric is important in building public support, people must take concrete actions to reveal and oppose evil forces in our society. It seems impractical today, however, to expect large numbers of people to break laws and suffer the consequences of police brutality and imprisonment. Or to think that doing so is sufficient to overturn our corrupt political system. Such violent protest is more likely to hasten the path to a police state.

I propose two forms of civil disobedience that suit these times and the nature of the political and economic repressive forces that now reign supreme in America.

On the political front, no restoration of American democracy is possible until we break the stranglehold of the corrupt two-party duopoly. What I like to call the Democraps and Republicrooks have been irreversibly corrupted by money from corporate and other special interests, creating a MISrepresentative democracy that no longer serves public interests. By marginalizing third parties the range and quality of political discourse in our nation have been terribly eroded. Nor has our mainstream media performed its vital function to safeguard our democracy, because like the political system they too have been corrupted by corporate interests.

It has become rational for many thoughtful people to not vote at all, while many others have become lesser-evil voters out of desperation. Lesser-evil voting sustains the two-party duopoly and, at best, produces cosmetic change, while not touching underlying root problems. Only a tiny fraction of the electorate is committed to minor political parties, too few to create any competing party nationally and with very few exceptions even locally.

My first proposed act of progressive civil disobedience is for all Americans to NOT vote in any election for either Democraps or Republicrooks. You are likely among the many who vehemently hate the Bush regime. And so proposing that you NOT vote for Democraps this November will at first seem ludicrous. But with deeper reflection, you just may come to see that for obtaining major political change it would help to NOT vote for Democraps.

The goal is to sharply reduce the already low voter turnout figures in all elections, but especially presidential elections, to such low figures that the government visibly has little legitimacy as a representative democracy that is accountable to the will of the people. Legitimacy of the American government is rarely discussed, at least here in America. But it is exactly the loss of legitimacy worldwide that has risen in recent years. What we need to do is shove the legitimacy of our democracy off the cliff – and by doing so open our political arena to truly bold, new independent thinkers and leaders. To rescue and restore our currently sick democracy we must first de-legitimize it.

The objective of such non-voting civil disobedience is not to abdicate our responsibility, but take our civic responsibility to a higher level. We must exercise power by withholding our votes from a system that no longer deserves our votes. In this way we can demand and receive a host of political and policy reforms that reenergizes and restores our democracy. Most important are reforms to greatly balance or really offset the power of elected representatives with much greater participatory and direct democracy by we the sovereign people. Such reforms must also open up the political system to third parties and eliminate the corrupting influence of money from corporate and other special interests.

The best way to NOT waste your vote is to NOT vote for candidates from both major parties. Stop being enablers of a fraudulent government.

The second part of the strategy is on the economic front where class warfare is being waged. It is necessary to stop a number of destructive forces that manipulate the economy, penalizing the vast majority of Americans through their consumer spending while making the rich richer. Worsening economic inequality makes economic slaves out of working- and middle-class Americans. The system has been rigged by an alignment of political and economic elites and is rapidly creating a two-class system. The middle class is being attacked and steadily destroyed. The Upper Class through globalization, outsourcing, illegal immigration, union busting and other tactics is creating a large Lower Class of the working poor. The necessary progressive act of civil disobedience is the conversion of consumer spending power into political power.

This can be accomplished by motivating millions of Americans to suspend their discretionary spending for critical times to achieve specific political and economic concessions from the plutocratic Ruling Class. Many millions of successful Americans are incredibly discontent with our political and economic system and every week they collectively spend enormous sums of money on big and little things and activities that truly are unnecessary. Such discretionary spending has become habitual and addictive.

Some 70 percent of the American economy is driven by consumer spending that now works against the interests of non-wealthy Americans. We need national "buycotts" that require no formal membership in organizations, but merely voluntary spending reductions. They can be coordinated by widespread messages from many progressive groups, especially Internet sites. Sharp, sustained reductions in consumer spending can compel the Ruling Class to grant concessions. Even the rich want to maintain a vibrant economy to safeguard their wealth and living style. In reality, if American consumers use their inherent spending power they have the power to bring the entire global economic system down. The plutocracy knows this and that is why they always emphasize maintaining "consumer confidence." At critical times the power elites manipulate events to maintain consumer borrowing and spending, such as the recent steep cuts in gas prices and stock market highs. Fiscal and monetary policies are also used to maintain abundant borrowing and spending.

Ironically, few Americans understand that a relatively small number of consumers, roughly 5 to 10 million have the economic power to severely damage the American and global economy. Spending cutbacks could be become contagious. Leaving out the working poor with little discretionary spending, the amount of discretionary spending by millions of middle class Americans with ample disposable income is sufficient to threaten economic growth and the economy. A major reason is that there is a large "multiplier" associated with consumer spending, meaning that every dollar spent has a large ripple or cumulative impact through various sectors of the economy. One person's spending is another's (actually many others') income. The multiplier can range from four to six. For example, cut consumer spending by $250 billion and it can easily reduce the national GDP by $1 trillion. If the middle class does not soon use its consumer spending power, it will surely lose it as its discretionary income evaporates, because the war against will be won by the Upper Class.

Economic civil disobedience for the foreseeable future has much more power to change our nation for the better than the political act of non-voting. The goal of the economic strategy is to obtain enough reforms and improvements in the political system to restore the effectiveness of voting at some later time. Now, in our perverse society, dollars are more powerful agents of change than votes. In truth, as has been evident for many years, we cannot vote ourselves out of a corrupt, oppressive and delusional democracy that uses military and economic weapons of mass devastation on a global scale for the benefit of elites, while pretending to be the world's best democracy. The truth of all this defines the case for a populist Second American Revolution. We must motivate some millions of Americans that are so fed up with current conditions that they will eagerly join a loose network of American Insurgents for Democracy, not fighting with weapons in the streets, but by withholding their dollars from the economy.

Hundreds of public opinion polls in recent years have supplied all the evidence one could want to demonstrate the terrible state of American democracy, so awful and disgraceful that it is justifiably called delusional, because it no longer is what people think it is. Yet people keep out the pain of admitting that their democracy is no longer great, even though they have little confidence in politicians and their parties. The latest stark public appraisal of politicians was the New York Times/CBS poll conducted earlier this month. Among its findings was that 69 percent of people think that members of congress consider themselves above the law; 70 percent believe that most members of congress do not understand the needs and problems of people like them; and 36 percent believe that Republicrooks in congress are more corrupt than Democraps, 17 percent believe the reverse, and 27 percent think both are equally corrupt – adding up to 80 percent seeing a corrupt congress. You might expect such public opinion statistics of some blatantly faux foreign democracy, not the United States of America.

Another interesting reality is a statistic determined about the recent primary elections nationwide. The Center for the Study of the American Electorate at American University found that just 15 percent of eligible voters went to the polls for primary elections. Just 15 percent!

Some people would be depressed by this figure. I see it very positively. Curtis Gans, the director of the study, concluded "People are becoming increasingly disaffected with both parties." Amen. But people are more than disaffected. They are mad as hell. Yet few see a way out of this national morass.

Our political elites and plutocrats can easily ignore low turnout for primaries. But contemplate how a really low turnout for general elections would be treated. Imagine a presidential election with a national turnout of say 20 or 25 percent. Such low eligible voter turnout would publicly de-legitimize our delusional democracy. How could any American president that had a majority of something like 15 percent or less of all eligible voters be viewed as legitimate? Our representative democracy would be seen worldwide as a sham. Many Americans would conclude "enough is enough."

More people must agree that there is nothing sacred about two-party rule. Bipartisanship is just a ploy to make the two-party conspiracy more palatable. Democraps and Republicrooks have a political partnership. Each needs the other to maintain the optical delusion that we have political choices, and that when one fails the people, the other will come to the rescue. We cannot vote our way to national renewal as long as we play according to their status quo rules. Our democracy is choking to death on bipartisan corruption. Only independent-minded Americans can apply a Heimlich maneuver to save it.

Divided, we empower the plutocracy with our money and our votes.

United, we can deliver a peaceful, disobedient and populist Second American Revolution by withholding our money and our votes. We have it in our power to make Thoreau, Gandhi, King and future generations proud of us.

What is true American patriotism today? Our sick democracy needs dissent through disobedience, not our votes, to become healthy.


Authors Website: www.delusionaldemocracy.com

Authors Bio: Joel S. Hirschhorn is the author of Delusional Democracy - Fixing the Republic Without Overthrowing the Government (www.delusionaldemocracy.com). His current political writings have been greatly influenced by working as a senior staffer for the U.S. Congress and for the National Governors Association. He advocates a Second American Revolution, beginning with an Article V Convention to propose constitutional amendments.

http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_joel_s___061014_progressive_civil_di.htm

Conservatism isn't what it used to be

By Paul Craig Roberts
Online Journal Guest Writer


Sep 17, 2007, 01:39

When I was in the Reagan administration, America had a lively press that never hesitated to take us to task. Even the "Teflon President" received more brickbats than Bush and Cheney.

The lively press disappeared along with its independence in the media concentration engineered during the Clinton administration. Shortly thereafter all the liberal news anchors disappeared as well. Today the US media serves as propaganda ministry for the government's wars and police state. Yet, some conservatives continue to rant on about "the liberal media."

That other conservative bugaboo, liberal academia, has also been crushed. Universities once controlled their appointments, but no more. Recently, the political science faculty at DePaul, a Catholic university, voted to give tenure to the courageous scholar and teacher Norman Finkelstein. The department was unable to make its tenure decision stick over the objections of the Israel Lobby and their conservative allies, who were able to reach in over the heads of the political science department and the College Personnel Committee and force DePaul's president to block Finkelstein�s tenure. Finkelstein, a Jew, had angered the Israel Lobby with his criticisms of Israel's misuse of the holocaust sufferings of Jews to oppress the Palestinians and to silence critics.

On September 14, the Los Angeles Times reported that the appointment of the distinguished legal scholar Erwin Chemerinsky as the Dean of a new law school at the University of California at Irvine had been withdrawn by the university's chancellor, Michael V. Drake, who gave in to the demands of conservatives outside the university. Conservatives are outraged at Chemerinsky because he criticized Attorney General Gonzales. In withdrawing Chemerinsky's appointment, Drake told him: "I didn't realize there would be conservatives out to get you." [Furor disrupts plans for UCI school of law, By Garrett Therolf, Rebecca Trounson and Richard C. Paddock, September 14, 2007]

Gonzales is the attorney general who wrote memos justifying torture and denying that the Bush administration was bound by the Geneva Conventions. Gonzales told a stunned Senate Judiciary Committee that the US Constitution did not provide habeas corpus protection to American citizens.

To experience an attorney general of the US fiercely attacking the US Constitution, rending its every provision, is the most frightening experience of my lifetime. That the head of the legal branch of the executive, sworn to uphold the Constitution, would turn against it in order to enhance unaccountable executive power is a clear impeachable offense. If anyone anywhere in the world deserved criticism, Gonzales did. But when Chemerinsky upbraided the despicable Gonzales, conservatives rushed to Gonzales' defense, not to the defense of the American Constitution.

It seems only yesterday that conservatives were complaining about the liberties that liberals took with the Constitution. Liberals were expanding rights, fancifully perhaps. But today conservatives are curtailing long established rights, such as habeas corpus and protection against self-incrimination. Conservatives abandoned "original intent" and all of their constitutional scruples once they had a chance to cram more power into the presidency.

In my conservative days as an academic, I experienced some liberal blackballs. But liberals did not attack academic freedom per se. The new conservatives despise academic freedom and have created organizations to monitor departments of Middle East studies in order to lower the boom on scholars who follow the truth instead of neoconservative ideology or Israeli policy. Today academic freedom has disappeared just like the independent media. No one but powerful organized interest groups has a voice. In the media truth can only emerge on comic shows like The Colbert Report and Jon Stewart�s The Daily Show.

In years past, conservatives were often shouted down on university campuses by left-wing students. But today speakers disapproved by powerful interest groups are simply disinvited in advance. Even Harvard University has fallen to the new censorship. On September 14, the Harvard Crimson reported that the Israel Lobby was able to force Harvard University to disinvite three speakers, an Oxford University professor, a DePaul professor, and a Rutgers professor, because they had criticized Israeli policy.

In America today, speaking your mind in the media or in academia is a thing of the past. A country that has no voices independent of powerful interests is a country in which freedom is dead.

Paul Craig Roberts [email him] was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan Administration. He is the author of Supply-Side Revolution : An Insider's Account of Policymaking in Washington; Alienation and the Soviet Economy and Meltdown: Inside the Soviet Economy, and is the co-author with Lawrence M. Stratton of The Tyranny of Good Intentions : How Prosecutors and Bureaucrats Are Trampling the Constitution in the Name of Justice. Click here for Peter Brimelow's Forbes Magazine interview with Roberts about the recent epidemic of prosecutorial misconduct.

 

http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_2423.shtml

Blackwater working again in Iraq

It was all just a glitch. Sorry...

 

The US security firm Blackwater has resumed limited operations in the Iraqi capital Baghdad four days after a deadly shootout involving the company.

The company provides security to all US state department employees in Iraq.

It had been ordered by the Iraqi government to halt operations while a joint US-Iraqi inquiry was held.

A US embassy spokeswoman said the decision to allow Blackwater to resume work had been taken in consultation with the Iraqi government.

The spokeswoman, Mirembe Nantongo, said Blackwater operations would be limited to essential missions only outside Baghdad's heavily-fortified Green Zone....

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/7006697.stm

Feds probe Blackwater weapons smuggling

WASHINGTON - Federal prosecutors are investigating whether employees of the private security firm Blackwater USA illegally smuggled into Iraq weapons that may have been sold on the black market and ended up in the hands of a U.S.-designated terrorist organization, officials said Friday.

The U.S. Attorney's Office in Raleigh, N.C., is handling the investigation with help from Pentagon and State Department auditors, who have concluded there is enough evidence to file charges, the officials told The Associated Press. Blackwater is based in Moyock, N.C....

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070922/ap_on_go_co/us_blackwater_probe_8;_ylt=AgDaYxCSuHn7_RIHtdf89BQE1vAI

Frequent cell phone use may slow brain function

....Differences in brain activity, as measured in terms of quantitative results of electroencephalographic (EEG) studies and assessments of neuropsychological functions such as attention, memory, executive function and personality, were examined. Among the results: Frequent users scored higher on ratings as extroverts and were found to be less open-minded.

The study also found that frequent users are better able than others to focus their attention. That result could be due to a learning effect that comes from making phone calls in busy places where people have to focus on a phone call while filtering out background noise and other distractions, according to the researchers.

Despite this improved focus and the findings about personality, the frequent users showed more instances of slowed activity as measured by delta and theta EEG power, as well as a slowdown in a measurement called alpha peak frequency....

http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9037378&intsrc=hm_list

Kite Runner rape scene 'threatens actor's life'

Morning Edition, September 20, 2007 · Khaled Hosseini's best-selling
novel Kite Runner opens as a film in November. But it is already
causing concern in Afghanistan and in Hollywood for its depiction of
ethnic tensions in Afghanistan and harsh portrayal of life under the
Taliban.
Listen at http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?
storyId=14556301

Kite Runner rape scene 'threatens actor's life'
Tuesday September 18, 2007
Guardian Unlimited

The forthcoming adaptation of The Kite Runner, the Afghanistan-set
bestseller by Khaled Hosseini, has run into controversy over fears
that the life of one of its child actors may be in danger.
The Kite Runner tells the story of Amir and Hassan, one a privileged
Afghan youth, the other a poor servant boy, growing up in Kabul. Amir
eventually emigrates to the West but, throughout his life, is wracked
by guilt over his failure to intervene when Hassan was raped during
their childhood.

A filmed adaptation of the novel, helmed by Finding Neverland's Marc
Forster, wrapped earlier this year and will be released in November.
But the father of Ahmad Khan, the Afghan boy who portrays Hassan in
the film, fears that he and his son's life are threatened because
rape is a taboo subject in Afghanistan.
"They [the film-makers] said they would not film this part," Mr Ahmad
told BBC Radio. "Of course I am worried about it. My own people from
my own tribe will turn against me because of the story. They may cut
my throat, they may kill me, they may torture me, anything could
happen to me."

Other cast members have reportedly demanded the scene be cut. But the
film's producers say these fears are misplaced. "The scene contains
no nudity; it's rendered in a very impressionistic way," Rebecca
Yeldham, a producer, told the BBC. "It's also important in being
faithful to the story that there's no confusion that the attack in
the alley was a sexual violation.

"We're working with various organisations on the ground to advise us.
We don't believe that kids' lives are at risk," she said.

The film will not be released in Afghanistan, but only because there
is no suitable distribution network in the country. It will be
released in the US on November 2 and in the UK on Boxing Day.

Trailer at
http://www.apple.com/trailers/paramount_vantage/thekiterunner/

SAFER to Denver Council: Let's Make a Deal!

Proponents of a marijuana reform initiative that would make adult pot use the city’s lowest law enforcement priority have offered the Denver council and mayor – who are none too happy that the initiative earned enough signatures to make it on the November ballot – a chance to get the damn thing off the ballot.

In an Aug. 23 press release, Mason Tvert, director of the marijuana reform group Safer Alternatives for Enjoyable Recreation says that his organization would agree to nix the intiative if – and only if – the council and Mayor John Hickenlooper (owner of a local brewery) agree to a few – ahem – modest terms. First, SAFER wants the city leaders to officially “recognize” that adult marijuana use poses less harm to the user, and to the city, than does adult alcohol abuse. Second, based on that new awareness, SAFER is asking that the council “commit to exploring” what marijuana policy reforms the city can implement that reflect the fact that adult pot use poses less harm to user and city. And, third, SAFER is asking that the city impose a moratorium on all citations for possession of less than one ounce of pot by adults over 21 during the Democratic National Convention in August 2008.

If their conditions are met, Tvert says SAFER would be happy to yank the lowest-priority initiative from the upcoming ballot. Whether that’ll work is entirely unclear, though seemingly unlikely since the city hasn’t exactly embraced pot policy reforms – including a successful 2005 ballot initiative that directed the city to remove criminal penalties for private pot use by adults. Still, Tvert remains forever optimistic: “Every objective study ever conducted on marijuana has concluded that it is a far safer recreational drug than alcohol,” he said in a press statement. “We hope our city officials will consider the relative harms of these two substances, as well as the potentially dangerous effects of a policy that pushes adults toward the more harmful of the two [substances]” – that is, alcohol use. “The city has every right to stop arresting adults for possessing small amounts of marijuana, and we hope they will stand up for the voters who elected them and exercise that right.”

Jordan Smith, Fri Aug 24

http://www.austinchronicle.com/gyrobase/News/?oid=oid:528637