The Old Man, the Mountain and the Sea
Naturalist Has Big Plan for Sailboat
By Blaine Harden
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, April 28, 2004; Page A01
ORCAS ISLAND, Wash. -- At 85, App Applegate keeps pushing the limits of living off the grid.
Out here in Puget Sound, on the upper west side of the American dream, he lives in a shack without running water, listens to National Public Radio on a hand-crank radio and avoids outhouses as ecologically incorrect. He prefers a shovel and an open field.
Barely 5 feet tall, Applegate is a Hobbit-size pioneer among the counterculture cadre that has long sought soggy exile in the far corners of the Pacific Northwest. But Orcas Island, which Seattle millionaires are busily refurbishing as the Martha's Vineyard of the West, is not nearly far out enough for Applegate. So, for the past 15 years, he has been building an escape module.
It's a whopper: An 80-foot, 50-ton, three-masted sailboat. Local sailors say the wooden barkentine is nearly finished, solid and seaworthy, if a bit rough around the gunnels. Applegate built it by hand -- outdoors, often in miserably dank weather -- and he paid for the whole thing with Social Security checks. He plans to sail east around the world to dock in Cienfuegos Bay, Cuba. He's a fervent admirer of Fidel Castro.
There is a logistical kink. The boat sits where it was built: on the side of a mountain beneath towering Douglas firs, 400 feet above sea level, six miles from a suitable boat launch. A narrow dirt road -- steep, potholed and snaggled with switchbacks -- lies between Applegate's boat and its departure for his beloved "Coo-bah."
"We will set sail in April," he said. "I am not yet sure which April."
Before explaining how Applegate -- a retired physics professor and self-described atheist, socialist and radical -- intends to get himself and his boat off the mountain, it makes sense to examine why he went up there in the first place.
"I came to Orcas to sit down and read, to enjoy the ferns and moss and to escape the contemptibility of our politicians," he said.
In this respect, Applegate is not all that far off the demographic grid, as it exists in the Pacific Northwest.
The region is more liberal, more literate and much less religious than the country as a whole. Washington and Oregon lead the states in the percentage of adults who report no religious identification -- 25 percent here, compared with 14 percent nationally.
There is a secular orthodoxy here, and it believes in wild salmon, clean rivers and urban growth management. Twenty-eight percent of the population voted for George W. Bush in 2000, compared with 45 percent nationally. Politicians in Portland and Seattle have welcomed gay marriage. Heterosexual marriage, meanwhile, takes its lumps. The Northwest has a higher divorce rate than any other region of the country.
Politically correct Northwest residents drink Wild Salmon Organic Pale Ale and build houses out of wood that is certified by a third party to have been cut from sustainable forests. When Washington state residents die, they are 12 times as likely as Alabamans to be cremated rather than buried. Eco-aware residents, apparently, don't want to contribute to cemetery sprawl.
The name of Applegate's boat is the Aproximada. It's Spanish for "approximate," and the word captures Applegate's design and construction philosophy. It also describes his departure schedule and his technique for recruiting sailors who might want to go with him to Cuba.
The Aproximada has eight berths and will need a crew of at least five. So far, there is only one sure bet.
more...
Thursday, April 29, 2004
Monday, April 26, 2004
10 things you can do to contribute to internal, interpersonal, and organizational peace
cnvc:: 10 Steps to Peace and Harmony in Our World
(1) Spend some time each day quietly reflecting on how you would like to relate to yourself and others.
(2) Remember that all human beings have the same needs.
(3) Check your intention to see if you are as interested in others getting their needs met as your own.
(4) When asking someone to do something, check first to see if you are making a request or a demand.
(5) Instead of saying what you DON’T want someone to do, say what you DO want the person to do.
(6) Instead of saying what you want someone to BE, say what action you’d like the person to take that you hope will help the person be that way.
(7) Before agreeing or disagreeing with anyone’s opinions, try to tune in to what the person is feeling and needing.
(8) Instead of saying No, say what need of yours prevents you from saying Yes.
(9) If you are feeling upset, think about what need of yours is not being met, and what you could do to meet it, instead of thinking about what’s wrong with others or yourself.
(10) Instead of praising someone who did something you like, express your gratitude by telling the person what need of yours that action met.
cnvc:: 10 Steps to Peace and Harmony in Our World
(1) Spend some time each day quietly reflecting on how you would like to relate to yourself and others.
(2) Remember that all human beings have the same needs.
(3) Check your intention to see if you are as interested in others getting their needs met as your own.
(4) When asking someone to do something, check first to see if you are making a request or a demand.
(5) Instead of saying what you DON’T want someone to do, say what you DO want the person to do.
(6) Instead of saying what you want someone to BE, say what action you’d like the person to take that you hope will help the person be that way.
(7) Before agreeing or disagreeing with anyone’s opinions, try to tune in to what the person is feeling and needing.
(8) Instead of saying No, say what need of yours prevents you from saying Yes.
(9) If you are feeling upset, think about what need of yours is not being met, and what you could do to meet it, instead of thinking about what’s wrong with others or yourself.
(10) Instead of praising someone who did something you like, express your gratitude by telling the person what need of yours that action met.
Sunday, April 25, 2004
Political Split Is Pervasive
AMERICA IN RED AND BLUE : A Nation Divided
Clash of Cultures Is Driven by Targeted Appeals and Reinforced by Geography
By David Von Drehle
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, April 25, 2004; Page A01
First of three articles
I know there are fierce neo-cons, conservatives, hawks, what have you. Are there really "fierce" liberals?
The revolution! Coming to a place near you! This fall! Don't miss it!
here...
AMERICA IN RED AND BLUE : A Nation Divided
Clash of Cultures Is Driven by Targeted Appeals and Reinforced by Geography
By David Von Drehle
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, April 25, 2004; Page A01
First of three articles
I know there are fierce neo-cons, conservatives, hawks, what have you. Are there really "fierce" liberals?
The revolution! Coming to a place near you! This fall! Don't miss it!
here...
Wednesday, April 21, 2004
Brave New World
The Manufacture of Consent (Part II)
Using M.R.I.'s to See Politics on the Brain
The political consultants discreetly observed from the next room as their subject watched the campaign commercials. But in this political experiment, unlike the usual ones, the subject did not respond by turning a dial or discussing his reactions with a focus group.
He lay inside an M.R.I. machine...
More ...
The Manufacture of Consent (Part II)
Using M.R.I.'s to See Politics on the Brain
The political consultants discreetly observed from the next room as their subject watched the campaign commercials. But in this political experiment, unlike the usual ones, the subject did not respond by turning a dial or discussing his reactions with a focus group.
He lay inside an M.R.I. machine...
More ...
Can we learn something from Baboons?
---
By NATALIE ANGIER
Published: April 13, 2004
NYTimes Science Times
Sometimes it takes the great Dustbuster of fate to clear the room of bullies and bad habits. Freak cyclones helped destroy Kublai Khan's brutal Mongolian empire, for example, while the Black Death of the 14th century capsized the medieval theocracy and gave the Renaissance a chance to shine.
Among a troop of savanna baboons in Kenya, a terrible outbreak of tuberculosis 20 years ago selectively killed off the biggest, nastiest and most despotic males, setting the stage for a social and behavioral transformation unlike any seen in this notoriously truculent primate.
In a study appearing today in the journal PloS Biology (online at www.plosbiology.org), researchers describe the drastic temperamental and tonal shift that occurred in a troop of 62 baboons when its most belligerent members vanished from the scene. The victims were all dominant adult males that had been strong and snarly enough to fight with a neighboring baboon troop over the spoils at a tourist lodge garbage dump, and were exposed there to meat tainted with bovine tuberculosis, which soon killed them. Left behind in the troop, designated the Forest Troop, were the 50 percent of males that had been too subordinate to try dump brawling, as well as all the females and their young. With that change in demographics came a cultural swing toward pacifism, a relaxing of the usually parlous baboon hierarchy, and a willingness to use affection and mutual grooming rather than threats, swipes and bites to foster a patriotic spirit.
Remarkably, the Forest Troop has maintained its genial style over two decades, even though the male survivors of the epidemic have since died or disappeared and been replaced by males from the outside. (As is the case for most primates, baboon females spend their lives in their natal home, while the males leave at puberty to seek their fortunes elsewhere.) The persistence of communal comity suggests that the resident baboons must somehow be instructing the immigrants in the unusual customs of the tribe.
"We don't yet understand the mechanism of transmittal," said Dr. Robert M. Sapolsky, a professor of biology and neurology at Stanford, "but the jerky new guys are obviously learning, `We don't do things like that around here.' " Dr. Sapolsky wrote the report with his colleague and wife, Dr. Lisa J. Share.
Dr. Sapolsky, who is renowned for his study of the physiology of stress, said that the Forest Troop baboons probably felt as good as they acted. Hormone samples from the monkeys showed far less evidence of stress in even the lowest-ranking individuals, when contrasted with baboons living in more rancorous societies.
The researchers were able to compare the behavior and physiology of the contemporary Forest Troop primates to two control groups: a similar-size baboon congregation living nearby, called the Talek Troop, and the Forest Troop itself from 1979 through 1982, the era that might be called Before Alpha Die-off, or B.A.D.
"It's a really fine, thorough piece of work, with the sort of methodology and lucky data sets that you can only get from doing long-term field research," said Dr. Duane Quiatt, a primatologist at the University of Colorado at Denver and a co-author with Vernon Reynolds of the 1993 book "Primate Behaviour: Information, Social Knowledge and the Evolution of Culture."
The new work vividly demonstrates that, Putumayo records notwithstanding, humans hold no patent on multiculturalism. As a growing body of research indicates, many social animals learn from one another and cultivate regional variants in skills, conventions and fashions. Some chimpanzees crack open their nuts with a stone hammer on a stone anvil; others prefer wood hammers on wood anvils. The chimpanzees of the Tai forest rain-dance; those of the Gombe tickle themselves. Dr. Jane Goodall reported a fad in one chimpanzee group: a young female started wiggling her hands, and before long, every teen chimp was doing likewise.
But in the baboon study, the culture being conveyed is less a specific behavior or skill than a global code of conduct. "You can more accurately describe it as the social ethos of group," said Dr. Andrew Whiten, a professor of evolutionary and developmental psychology at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland who has studied chimpanzee culture. "It's an attitude that's being transmitted."
The report also offers real-world proof of a principle first demonstrated in captive populations of monkeys: that with the right upbringing, diplomacy is infectious. Dr. Frans B. M. de Waal, the director of the Living Links Center at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center of Emory University in Atlanta, has shown that if the normally pugilistic rhesus monkeys are reared with the more conciliatory stumptailed monkeys, the rhesus monkeys learn the value of tolerance, peacemaking and mutual hip-hugging.
Dr. de Waal, who wrote an essay to accompany the new baboon study, said in a telephone interview, "The good news for humans is that it looks like peaceful conditions, once established, can be maintained," he said.
"And if baboons can do it," he said, "why not us? The bad news is that you might have to first knock out all the most aggressive males to get there."
Jerkiness or worse certainly seems to be a job description for ordinary male baboons. The average young male, after wheedling his way into a new troop at around age 7, spends his prime years seeking to fang his way up the hierarchy; and once he's gained some status, he devotes many a leisure hour to whimsical displays of power at scant personal cost. He harasses and attacks females, which weigh half his hundred pounds and lack his thumb-thick canines, or he terrorizes the low-ranking males he knows cannot retaliate.
Dr. Barbara Smuts, a primatologist at the University of Michigan who wrote the 1985 book "Sex and Friendship in Baboons," said that the females in the troop she studied received a serious bite from a male annually, maybe losing a strip of flesh or part of an ear in the process. As they age and lose their strength, however, males may calm down and adopt a new approach to group living, affiliating with females so devotedly that they keep their reproductive opportunities going even as their ranking in the male hierarchy plunges.
For their part, female baboons, which live up to 25 years — compared with the male's 18 — inherit their rank in the gynocracy from their mothers and so spend less time fighting for dominance. They do, however, readily battle females from outside the fold, for they, not the males, are the keepers of turf and dynasty.
The new-fashioned Forest Troop is no United Nations, or even the average frat house. Its citizens remain highly aggressive and argumentative, and the males still obsess over hierarchy. "We're talking about baboons here," said Dr. Sapolsky.
What most distinguishes this congregation from others is that the males resist taking out their bad moods on females and underlings. When a dominant male wants to pick a fight, he finds someone his own size and rank. As a result, a greater percentage of male-male conflicts in the Forest Troop occur between closely ranked individuals than is seen in the control populations, where the bullies seek easier pickings. Moreover, Forest Troop males of all ranks spend more time grooming and being groomed, and just generally huddling close to troop mates, than do their counterpart males in the study.
Interestingly, the male faces in the Forest Troop may have changed over time, but the relative numbers have not. Ever since the tuberculosis epidemic killed half the adult males, the ratio has remained skewed, with twice as many females as males. Yet the researchers have demonstrated that the troop's sexual complexion alone cannot explain its character. Examining other troops with a similar preponderance of females, the Stanford scientists saw no evidence of the Forest Troop's relative amity.
Dr. Sapolsky has no idea how long the good times will last. "I confess I'm rooting for the troop to stay like this forever, but I worry about how vulnerable they may be," he said. "All it would take is two or three jerky adolescent males entering at the same time to tilt the balance and destroy the culture."
---
No Time for Bullies: Baboons Retool Their Culture
By NATALIE ANGIER
Published: April 13, 2004
NYTimes Science Times
Sometimes it takes the great Dustbuster of fate to clear the room of bullies and bad habits. Freak cyclones helped destroy Kublai Khan's brutal Mongolian empire, for example, while the Black Death of the 14th century capsized the medieval theocracy and gave the Renaissance a chance to shine.
Among a troop of savanna baboons in Kenya, a terrible outbreak of tuberculosis 20 years ago selectively killed off the biggest, nastiest and most despotic males, setting the stage for a social and behavioral transformation unlike any seen in this notoriously truculent primate.
In a study appearing today in the journal PloS Biology (online at www.plosbiology.org), researchers describe the drastic temperamental and tonal shift that occurred in a troop of 62 baboons when its most belligerent members vanished from the scene. The victims were all dominant adult males that had been strong and snarly enough to fight with a neighboring baboon troop over the spoils at a tourist lodge garbage dump, and were exposed there to meat tainted with bovine tuberculosis, which soon killed them. Left behind in the troop, designated the Forest Troop, were the 50 percent of males that had been too subordinate to try dump brawling, as well as all the females and their young. With that change in demographics came a cultural swing toward pacifism, a relaxing of the usually parlous baboon hierarchy, and a willingness to use affection and mutual grooming rather than threats, swipes and bites to foster a patriotic spirit.
Remarkably, the Forest Troop has maintained its genial style over two decades, even though the male survivors of the epidemic have since died or disappeared and been replaced by males from the outside. (As is the case for most primates, baboon females spend their lives in their natal home, while the males leave at puberty to seek their fortunes elsewhere.) The persistence of communal comity suggests that the resident baboons must somehow be instructing the immigrants in the unusual customs of the tribe.
"We don't yet understand the mechanism of transmittal," said Dr. Robert M. Sapolsky, a professor of biology and neurology at Stanford, "but the jerky new guys are obviously learning, `We don't do things like that around here.' " Dr. Sapolsky wrote the report with his colleague and wife, Dr. Lisa J. Share.
Dr. Sapolsky, who is renowned for his study of the physiology of stress, said that the Forest Troop baboons probably felt as good as they acted. Hormone samples from the monkeys showed far less evidence of stress in even the lowest-ranking individuals, when contrasted with baboons living in more rancorous societies.
The researchers were able to compare the behavior and physiology of the contemporary Forest Troop primates to two control groups: a similar-size baboon congregation living nearby, called the Talek Troop, and the Forest Troop itself from 1979 through 1982, the era that might be called Before Alpha Die-off, or B.A.D.
"It's a really fine, thorough piece of work, with the sort of methodology and lucky data sets that you can only get from doing long-term field research," said Dr. Duane Quiatt, a primatologist at the University of Colorado at Denver and a co-author with Vernon Reynolds of the 1993 book "Primate Behaviour: Information, Social Knowledge and the Evolution of Culture."
The new work vividly demonstrates that, Putumayo records notwithstanding, humans hold no patent on multiculturalism. As a growing body of research indicates, many social animals learn from one another and cultivate regional variants in skills, conventions and fashions. Some chimpanzees crack open their nuts with a stone hammer on a stone anvil; others prefer wood hammers on wood anvils. The chimpanzees of the Tai forest rain-dance; those of the Gombe tickle themselves. Dr. Jane Goodall reported a fad in one chimpanzee group: a young female started wiggling her hands, and before long, every teen chimp was doing likewise.
But in the baboon study, the culture being conveyed is less a specific behavior or skill than a global code of conduct. "You can more accurately describe it as the social ethos of group," said Dr. Andrew Whiten, a professor of evolutionary and developmental psychology at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland who has studied chimpanzee culture. "It's an attitude that's being transmitted."
The report also offers real-world proof of a principle first demonstrated in captive populations of monkeys: that with the right upbringing, diplomacy is infectious. Dr. Frans B. M. de Waal, the director of the Living Links Center at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center of Emory University in Atlanta, has shown that if the normally pugilistic rhesus monkeys are reared with the more conciliatory stumptailed monkeys, the rhesus monkeys learn the value of tolerance, peacemaking and mutual hip-hugging.
Dr. de Waal, who wrote an essay to accompany the new baboon study, said in a telephone interview, "The good news for humans is that it looks like peaceful conditions, once established, can be maintained," he said.
"And if baboons can do it," he said, "why not us? The bad news is that you might have to first knock out all the most aggressive males to get there."
Jerkiness or worse certainly seems to be a job description for ordinary male baboons. The average young male, after wheedling his way into a new troop at around age 7, spends his prime years seeking to fang his way up the hierarchy; and once he's gained some status, he devotes many a leisure hour to whimsical displays of power at scant personal cost. He harasses and attacks females, which weigh half his hundred pounds and lack his thumb-thick canines, or he terrorizes the low-ranking males he knows cannot retaliate.
Dr. Barbara Smuts, a primatologist at the University of Michigan who wrote the 1985 book "Sex and Friendship in Baboons," said that the females in the troop she studied received a serious bite from a male annually, maybe losing a strip of flesh or part of an ear in the process. As they age and lose their strength, however, males may calm down and adopt a new approach to group living, affiliating with females so devotedly that they keep their reproductive opportunities going even as their ranking in the male hierarchy plunges.
For their part, female baboons, which live up to 25 years — compared with the male's 18 — inherit their rank in the gynocracy from their mothers and so spend less time fighting for dominance. They do, however, readily battle females from outside the fold, for they, not the males, are the keepers of turf and dynasty.
The new-fashioned Forest Troop is no United Nations, or even the average frat house. Its citizens remain highly aggressive and argumentative, and the males still obsess over hierarchy. "We're talking about baboons here," said Dr. Sapolsky.
What most distinguishes this congregation from others is that the males resist taking out their bad moods on females and underlings. When a dominant male wants to pick a fight, he finds someone his own size and rank. As a result, a greater percentage of male-male conflicts in the Forest Troop occur between closely ranked individuals than is seen in the control populations, where the bullies seek easier pickings. Moreover, Forest Troop males of all ranks spend more time grooming and being groomed, and just generally huddling close to troop mates, than do their counterpart males in the study.
Interestingly, the male faces in the Forest Troop may have changed over time, but the relative numbers have not. Ever since the tuberculosis epidemic killed half the adult males, the ratio has remained skewed, with twice as many females as males. Yet the researchers have demonstrated that the troop's sexual complexion alone cannot explain its character. Examining other troops with a similar preponderance of females, the Stanford scientists saw no evidence of the Forest Troop's relative amity.
Dr. Sapolsky has no idea how long the good times will last. "I confess I'm rooting for the troop to stay like this forever, but I worry about how vulnerable they may be," he said. "All it would take is two or three jerky adolescent males entering at the same time to tilt the balance and destroy the culture."
Tuesday, April 20, 2004
All right, now--the two images which we have been working under for 2000 years and maybe more are what I would call two models of the universe, and the first is called the ceramic model, and the second the fully automatic model. The ceramic model of the universe is based on the book of Genesis, from which Judaism, Islam, and Christianity derive their basic picture of the world. And the image of the world in the book of Genesis is that the world is an artifact. It is made, as a potter takes clay and forms pots out of it, or as a carpenter takes wood and makes tables and chairs out of it. Don't forget Jesus is the son of a carpenter. And also the son of God. So the image of God and of the world is based on the idea of God as a technician, potter, carpenter, architect, who has in mind a plan, and who fashions the universe in accordance with that plan.
But we have thought, historically, you see, of the world as something made, and the idea of being--trees, for example-- constructions, just as tables and houses are constructions. And so there is for that reason a fundamental difference between the made and the maker. And this image, this ceramic model of the universe, originated in cultures where the form of government was monarchial, and where, therefore, the maker of the universe was conceived also at the same time in the image of the king of the universe. 'King of kings, lords of lords, the only ruler of princes, who thus from thy throne behold all dwellers upon Earth.' I'm quoting the Book of Common Prayer. And so, all those people who are oriented to the universe in that way feel related to basic reality as a subject to a king. And so they are on very, very humble terms in relation to whatever it is that works all this thing. I find it odd, in the United States, that people who are citizens of a republic have a monarchial theory of the universe. That you can talk about the president of the United States as LBJ, or Ike, or Harry, but you can't talk about the lord of the universe in such familiar terms. Because we are carrying over from very ancient near-Eastern cultures, the notion that the lord of the universe must be respected in a certain way. Poeple kneel, people bow, people prostrate themselves, and you know what the reason for that is: that nobody is more frightened of anybody else than a tyrant. He sits with his back to the wall, and his guards on either side of him, and he has you face downwards on the ground because you can't use weapons that way. When you come into his presence, you don't stand up and face him, because you might attack, and he has reason to fear that you might because he's ruling you all. And the man who rules you all is the biggest crook in the bunch. Because he's the one who succeeded in crime. The other people are pushed aside because they--the criminals, the people we lock up in jail--are simply the people who didn't make it.
Well now, in the course of time, in the evolution of Western thought. The ceramic image of the world ran into trouble. And changed into what I call the fully automatic image of the world. In other words, Western science was based on the idea that there are laws of nature, and got that idea from Judaism and Christianity and Islam. That in other words, the potter, the maker of the world in the beginning of things laid down the laws, and the law of God, which is also the law of nature, is called the 'loggos.?,.' And in Christianity, the loggos is the second person of the trinity, incarnate as Jesus Christ, who thereby is the perfect exemplar of the divine law. So we have tended to think of all natural phenomena as responding to laws, as if, in other words, the laws of the world were like the rails on which a streetcar or a tram or a train runs, and these things exist in a certain way, and all events respond to these laws.
So here's this idea that there's kind of a plan, and everything responds and obeys that plan. Well, in the 18th century, Western intellectuals began to suspect this idea. And what they suspected was whether there is a lawmaker, whether there is an architect of the universe, and they found out, or they reasoned, that you don't have to suppose that there is. Why? Because the hypothesis of God does not help us to make any predictions. Nor does it-- In other words, let's put it this way: if the business of science is to make predictions about what's going to happen, science is essentially prophecy. What's going to happen? By examining the behavior of the past and describing it carefully, we can make predictions about what's going to happen in the future. That's really the whole of science. And to do this, and to make successful predictions, you do not need God as a hypothesis. Because it makes no difference to anything. If you say 'Everything is controlled by God, everything is governed by God,' that doesn't make any difference to your prediction of what's going to happen. And so what they did was drop that hypothesis. But they kept the hypothesis of law. Because if you can predict, if you can study the past and describe how things have behaved, and you've got some regularities in the behavior of the universe, you call that law. Although it may not be law in the ordinary sense of the word, it's simply regularity.
And so what they did was got rid of the lawmaker and kept the law. And so the conceived the universe in terms of a mechanism. Something, in other words, that is functioning according to regular, clocklike mechanical principles. Newton's whole image of the world is based on billiards. The atoms are billiard balls, and they bang each other around. And so your behavior, every individual around, is defined as a very, very complex arrangement of billiard balls being banged around by everything else. And so behind the fully automatic model of the universe is the notion that reality itself is, to use the favorite term of 19th century scientists, blind energy. In say the metaphysics of Ernst Hegel, and T.H. Huxley, the world is basically nothing but energy--blind, unintelligent force. And likewise and parallel to this, in the philosophy of Freud, the basic psychological energy is libido, which is blind lust. And it is only a fluke, it is only as a result of pure chances that resulting from the exuberance of this energy there are people. With values, with reason, with languages, with cultures, and with love. Just a fluke. Like, you know, 1000 monkeys typing on 1000 typewriters for a million years will eventually type the Encyclopedia Britannica. And of course the moment they stop typing the Encyclopedia Britannica, they will relapse into nonsense.
And so in order that that shall not happen, for you and I are flukes in this cosmos, and we like our way of life--we like being human--if we want to keep it, say these people, we've got to fight nature, because it will turn us back into nonsense the moment we let it. So we've got to impose our will upon this world as if we were something completely alien to it. From outside. And so we get a culture based on the idea of the war between man and nature. And we talk about the conquest of space. The conquest of Everest. And the great symbols of our culture are the rocket and the bulldozer. The rocket--you know, compensation for the sexually inadequate male. So we're going to conquer space. You know we're in space already, way out. If anybody cared to be sensitive and let outside space come to you, you can, if your eyes are clear enough. Aided by telescopes, aided by radio astronomy, aided by all the kinds of sensitive instruments we can devise. We're as far out in space as we're ever going to get. But, y'know, sensitivity isn't the pitch. Especially in the WASP culture of the United States. We define manliness in terms of agression, you see, because we're a little bit frightened as to whether or not we're really men. And so we put on this great show of being a tough guy. It's completely unneccesary. If you have what it takes, you don't need to put on that show. And you don't need to beat nature into submission. Why be hostile to nature? Because after all, you ARE a symptom of nature. You, as a human being, you grow out of this physical universe in exactly the same way an apple grows off an apple tree.
Alan Watts The Nature of Consciousness
But we have thought, historically, you see, of the world as something made, and the idea of being--trees, for example-- constructions, just as tables and houses are constructions. And so there is for that reason a fundamental difference between the made and the maker. And this image, this ceramic model of the universe, originated in cultures where the form of government was monarchial, and where, therefore, the maker of the universe was conceived also at the same time in the image of the king of the universe. 'King of kings, lords of lords, the only ruler of princes, who thus from thy throne behold all dwellers upon Earth.' I'm quoting the Book of Common Prayer. And so, all those people who are oriented to the universe in that way feel related to basic reality as a subject to a king. And so they are on very, very humble terms in relation to whatever it is that works all this thing. I find it odd, in the United States, that people who are citizens of a republic have a monarchial theory of the universe. That you can talk about the president of the United States as LBJ, or Ike, or Harry, but you can't talk about the lord of the universe in such familiar terms. Because we are carrying over from very ancient near-Eastern cultures, the notion that the lord of the universe must be respected in a certain way. Poeple kneel, people bow, people prostrate themselves, and you know what the reason for that is: that nobody is more frightened of anybody else than a tyrant. He sits with his back to the wall, and his guards on either side of him, and he has you face downwards on the ground because you can't use weapons that way. When you come into his presence, you don't stand up and face him, because you might attack, and he has reason to fear that you might because he's ruling you all. And the man who rules you all is the biggest crook in the bunch. Because he's the one who succeeded in crime. The other people are pushed aside because they--the criminals, the people we lock up in jail--are simply the people who didn't make it.
Well now, in the course of time, in the evolution of Western thought. The ceramic image of the world ran into trouble. And changed into what I call the fully automatic image of the world. In other words, Western science was based on the idea that there are laws of nature, and got that idea from Judaism and Christianity and Islam. That in other words, the potter, the maker of the world in the beginning of things laid down the laws, and the law of God, which is also the law of nature, is called the 'loggos.?,.' And in Christianity, the loggos is the second person of the trinity, incarnate as Jesus Christ, who thereby is the perfect exemplar of the divine law. So we have tended to think of all natural phenomena as responding to laws, as if, in other words, the laws of the world were like the rails on which a streetcar or a tram or a train runs, and these things exist in a certain way, and all events respond to these laws.
So here's this idea that there's kind of a plan, and everything responds and obeys that plan. Well, in the 18th century, Western intellectuals began to suspect this idea. And what they suspected was whether there is a lawmaker, whether there is an architect of the universe, and they found out, or they reasoned, that you don't have to suppose that there is. Why? Because the hypothesis of God does not help us to make any predictions. Nor does it-- In other words, let's put it this way: if the business of science is to make predictions about what's going to happen, science is essentially prophecy. What's going to happen? By examining the behavior of the past and describing it carefully, we can make predictions about what's going to happen in the future. That's really the whole of science. And to do this, and to make successful predictions, you do not need God as a hypothesis. Because it makes no difference to anything. If you say 'Everything is controlled by God, everything is governed by God,' that doesn't make any difference to your prediction of what's going to happen. And so what they did was drop that hypothesis. But they kept the hypothesis of law. Because if you can predict, if you can study the past and describe how things have behaved, and you've got some regularities in the behavior of the universe, you call that law. Although it may not be law in the ordinary sense of the word, it's simply regularity.
And so what they did was got rid of the lawmaker and kept the law. And so the conceived the universe in terms of a mechanism. Something, in other words, that is functioning according to regular, clocklike mechanical principles. Newton's whole image of the world is based on billiards. The atoms are billiard balls, and they bang each other around. And so your behavior, every individual around, is defined as a very, very complex arrangement of billiard balls being banged around by everything else. And so behind the fully automatic model of the universe is the notion that reality itself is, to use the favorite term of 19th century scientists, blind energy. In say the metaphysics of Ernst Hegel, and T.H. Huxley, the world is basically nothing but energy--blind, unintelligent force. And likewise and parallel to this, in the philosophy of Freud, the basic psychological energy is libido, which is blind lust. And it is only a fluke, it is only as a result of pure chances that resulting from the exuberance of this energy there are people. With values, with reason, with languages, with cultures, and with love. Just a fluke. Like, you know, 1000 monkeys typing on 1000 typewriters for a million years will eventually type the Encyclopedia Britannica. And of course the moment they stop typing the Encyclopedia Britannica, they will relapse into nonsense.
And so in order that that shall not happen, for you and I are flukes in this cosmos, and we like our way of life--we like being human--if we want to keep it, say these people, we've got to fight nature, because it will turn us back into nonsense the moment we let it. So we've got to impose our will upon this world as if we were something completely alien to it. From outside. And so we get a culture based on the idea of the war between man and nature. And we talk about the conquest of space. The conquest of Everest. And the great symbols of our culture are the rocket and the bulldozer. The rocket--you know, compensation for the sexually inadequate male. So we're going to conquer space. You know we're in space already, way out. If anybody cared to be sensitive and let outside space come to you, you can, if your eyes are clear enough. Aided by telescopes, aided by radio astronomy, aided by all the kinds of sensitive instruments we can devise. We're as far out in space as we're ever going to get. But, y'know, sensitivity isn't the pitch. Especially in the WASP culture of the United States. We define manliness in terms of agression, you see, because we're a little bit frightened as to whether or not we're really men. And so we put on this great show of being a tough guy. It's completely unneccesary. If you have what it takes, you don't need to put on that show. And you don't need to beat nature into submission. Why be hostile to nature? Because after all, you ARE a symptom of nature. You, as a human being, you grow out of this physical universe in exactly the same way an apple grows off an apple tree.
Alan Watts The Nature of Consciousness
Sunday, April 18, 2004
Published on Sunday, September 8, 2002 by the Sunday Herald (Scotland)
by Neil Mackay and Felicity Arbuthnot
THE US and Britain sold Saddam Hussein the technology and materials Iraq needed to develop nuclear, chemical and biological weapons of mass destruction.
Reports by the US Senate's committee on banking, housing and urban affairs -- which oversees American exports policy -- reveal that the US, under the successive administrations of Ronald Reagan and George Bush Sr, sold materials including anthrax, VX nerve gas, West Nile fever germs and botulism to Iraq right up until March 1992, as well as germs similar to tuberculosis and pneumonia. Other bacteria sold included brucella melitensis, which damages major organs, and clostridium perfringens, which causes gas gangrene.
Classified US Defense Department documents also seen by the Sunday Herald show that Britain sold Iraq the drug pralidoxine, an antidote to nerve gas, in March 1992, after the end of the Gulf war. Pralidoxine can be reverse engineered to create nerve gas.
The Senate committee's reports on 'US Chemical and Biological Warfare-Related Dual-Use Exports to Iraq', undertaken in 1992 in the wake of the Gulf war, give the date and destination of all US exports. The reports show, for example, that on May 2, 1986, two batches of bacillus anthracis -- the micro-organism that causes anthrax -- were shipped to the Iraqi Ministry of Higher Education, along with two batches of the bacterium clostridium botulinum, the agent that causes deadly botulism poisoning.
One batch each of salmonella and E coli were shipped to the Iraqi State Company for Drug Industries on August 31, 1987. Other shipments went from the US to the Iraq Atomic Energy Commission on July 11, 1988; the Department of Biology at the University of Basrah in November 1989; the Department of Microbiology at Baghdad University in June 1985; the Ministry of Health in April 1985 and Officers' City, a military complex in Baghdad, in March and April 1986.
The shipments to Iraq went on even after Saddam Hussein ordered the gassing of the Kurdish town of Halabja, in which at least 5000 men, women and children died. The atrocity, which shocked the world, took place in March 1988, but a month later the components and materials of weapons of mass destruction were continuing to arrive in Baghdad from the US
more...
How Did Iraq Get Its Weapons? We Sold Them
by Neil Mackay and Felicity Arbuthnot
THE US and Britain sold Saddam Hussein the technology and materials Iraq needed to develop nuclear, chemical and biological weapons of mass destruction.
Reports by the US Senate's committee on banking, housing and urban affairs -- which oversees American exports policy -- reveal that the US, under the successive administrations of Ronald Reagan and George Bush Sr, sold materials including anthrax, VX nerve gas, West Nile fever germs and botulism to Iraq right up until March 1992, as well as germs similar to tuberculosis and pneumonia. Other bacteria sold included brucella melitensis, which damages major organs, and clostridium perfringens, which causes gas gangrene.
Classified US Defense Department documents also seen by the Sunday Herald show that Britain sold Iraq the drug pralidoxine, an antidote to nerve gas, in March 1992, after the end of the Gulf war. Pralidoxine can be reverse engineered to create nerve gas.
The Senate committee's reports on 'US Chemical and Biological Warfare-Related Dual-Use Exports to Iraq', undertaken in 1992 in the wake of the Gulf war, give the date and destination of all US exports. The reports show, for example, that on May 2, 1986, two batches of bacillus anthracis -- the micro-organism that causes anthrax -- were shipped to the Iraqi Ministry of Higher Education, along with two batches of the bacterium clostridium botulinum, the agent that causes deadly botulism poisoning.
One batch each of salmonella and E coli were shipped to the Iraqi State Company for Drug Industries on August 31, 1987. Other shipments went from the US to the Iraq Atomic Energy Commission on July 11, 1988; the Department of Biology at the University of Basrah in November 1989; the Department of Microbiology at Baghdad University in June 1985; the Ministry of Health in April 1985 and Officers' City, a military complex in Baghdad, in March and April 1986.
The shipments to Iraq went on even after Saddam Hussein ordered the gassing of the Kurdish town of Halabja, in which at least 5000 men, women and children died. The atrocity, which shocked the world, took place in March 1988, but a month later the components and materials of weapons of mass destruction were continuing to arrive in Baghdad from the US
more...
Friday, April 16, 2004
A nation divided
How a broad progressive vision could win back our country
by Arianna Huffington
[...]
We need to offer an overarching moral vision for America that is the alternative to the conservative movement’s "Leave us Alone Coalition." My response to the Leave-Us-Alone Coalition is simple: Sorry, no can do. There are no gates or walls high enough. There are no bank accounts large enough to isolate you from the consequences of growing social inequities. We are all in this boat together. And the fact that there isn’t a hole at your end of the boat doesn’t mean you are safe.
The vision of all of us in the same boat together is the founding vision of this country. Even before there was a United States of America, when John Winthrop landed in Massachusetts Bay in 1630, he stood on the deck of the Arbella and gave a speech that gave voice to what would become the central American creed: "We must bear one another’s burdens... we must be willing to abridge ourselves of our superfluities, for the supply of other’s necessities."
This is the heart of what this country is about. And the exact opposite of the Republican messianic vision of national salvation through ever-bigger tax cuts. But let’s not fool ourselves. This call to worship at the church of tax cuts, while very destructive, has also proven incredibly alluring: It’s clear, it’s broad and it’s accessible.
[...]
Thursday, April 15, 2004
God Save The Rich!
The way it works - US Tax system
David R. Kamerschen, Ph.D., Distinguished Professor of Economics, U of Georgia (...Does this guy really exist?)
Sometimes politicians can exclaim; "It's just a tax cut for the rich!", and it is just accepted to be fact. But what does that really mean? Just in case you are not completely clear on this issue, we hope the following will help.
Tax Cuts - A Simple Lesson In Economics by David R. Kamerschen, Ph.D., Distinguished Professor of Economics;
536 Brooks Hall, University of Georgia. This is how the cookie crumbles. Please read it carefully.
Let's put tax cuts in terms everyone can understand. Suppose that every day, ten men go out for dinner. The bill for all ten comes to $100. If they paid their bill the way we pay our taxes, it would go something like this:
The first four men (the poorest) would pay nothing.
The fifth would pay $1.
The sixth would pay $3.
The seventh $7.
The eighth $12.
The ninth $18.
The tenth man (the richest) would pay $59.
So, that's what they decided to do.
The ten men ate dinner in the restaurant every day and seemed quite happy with the arrangement, until one day, the owner threw them a curve.
"Since you are all such good customers," he said, "I'm going to reduce the cost of your daily meal by $20."
So, now dinner for the ten only cost $80. The group still wanted to pay their bill the way we pay our taxes.
So, the first four men were unaffected. They would still eat for free. But what about the other six, the paying customers? How could they divvy up the $20 windfall so that everyone would get his 'fair share'?
The six men realized that $20 divided by six is $3.33. But if they subtracted that from everybody's share, then the fifth man and the sixth man would each end up being 'PAID' to eat their meal.
So, the restaurant owner suggested that it would be fair to reduce each man's bill by roughly the same! amount, and he proceeded to work out the amounts each should pay.
And so:
The fifth man, like the first four, now paid nothing (100% savings).
The sixth now paid $2 instead of $3 (33% savings).
The seventh now paid $5 instead of $7 (28% savings).
The eighth now paid $9 instead of $12 (25% savings).
The ninth now paid $14 instead of $18 (22% savings).
The tenth now paid $49 instead of $59 (16% savings).
Each of the six was better off than before. And the first four continued to eat for free. But once outside the restaurant, the men began to compare their savings.
"I only got a dollar out of the $20," declared the sixth man. He pointed to the tenth man "but he got $10!"
"Yeah, that's right," exclaimed the fifth man. "I only saved a dollar, too. It's unfair that he got ten times more than me!"
"That's true!!" shouted the seventh man. "Why should he get $10 back when I got only $2? The wealthy get all the breaks!"
"Wait a minute," yelled the first four men in unison. "We didn't get anything at all. The system exploits the poor!"
The nine men surrounded the tenth and beat him up.
The next night the tenth man didn't show up for dinner, so the nine sat down and ate without him. But when it came time to pay the bill, they discovered something important. They didn't have enough money between all of them for even half of the bill!
And that, boys and girls, journalists and college professors, is how our tax system works. The people who pay the highest taxes get the most benefit from a tax reduction. Tax them too much, attack them for being wealthy, and they just may not show up at the table anymore. There are lots of good restaurants in Europe and the Caribbean.
Thanks David R. Kamerschen, Ph.D., Distinguished Professor of Economics, U of Georgia
The way it works - US Tax system
David R. Kamerschen, Ph.D., Distinguished Professor of Economics, U of Georgia (...Does this guy really exist?)
Sometimes politicians can exclaim; "It's just a tax cut for the rich!", and it is just accepted to be fact. But what does that really mean? Just in case you are not completely clear on this issue, we hope the following will help.
Tax Cuts - A Simple Lesson In Economics by David R. Kamerschen, Ph.D., Distinguished Professor of Economics;
536 Brooks Hall, University of Georgia. This is how the cookie crumbles. Please read it carefully.
Let's put tax cuts in terms everyone can understand. Suppose that every day, ten men go out for dinner. The bill for all ten comes to $100. If they paid their bill the way we pay our taxes, it would go something like this:
The first four men (the poorest) would pay nothing.
The fifth would pay $1.
The sixth would pay $3.
The seventh $7.
The eighth $12.
The ninth $18.
The tenth man (the richest) would pay $59.
So, that's what they decided to do.
The ten men ate dinner in the restaurant every day and seemed quite happy with the arrangement, until one day, the owner threw them a curve.
"Since you are all such good customers," he said, "I'm going to reduce the cost of your daily meal by $20."
So, now dinner for the ten only cost $80. The group still wanted to pay their bill the way we pay our taxes.
So, the first four men were unaffected. They would still eat for free. But what about the other six, the paying customers? How could they divvy up the $20 windfall so that everyone would get his 'fair share'?
The six men realized that $20 divided by six is $3.33. But if they subtracted that from everybody's share, then the fifth man and the sixth man would each end up being 'PAID' to eat their meal.
So, the restaurant owner suggested that it would be fair to reduce each man's bill by roughly the same! amount, and he proceeded to work out the amounts each should pay.
And so:
The fifth man, like the first four, now paid nothing (100% savings).
The sixth now paid $2 instead of $3 (33% savings).
The seventh now paid $5 instead of $7 (28% savings).
The eighth now paid $9 instead of $12 (25% savings).
The ninth now paid $14 instead of $18 (22% savings).
The tenth now paid $49 instead of $59 (16% savings).
Each of the six was better off than before. And the first four continued to eat for free. But once outside the restaurant, the men began to compare their savings.
"I only got a dollar out of the $20," declared the sixth man. He pointed to the tenth man "but he got $10!"
"Yeah, that's right," exclaimed the fifth man. "I only saved a dollar, too. It's unfair that he got ten times more than me!"
"That's true!!" shouted the seventh man. "Why should he get $10 back when I got only $2? The wealthy get all the breaks!"
"Wait a minute," yelled the first four men in unison. "We didn't get anything at all. The system exploits the poor!"
The nine men surrounded the tenth and beat him up.
The next night the tenth man didn't show up for dinner, so the nine sat down and ate without him. But when it came time to pay the bill, they discovered something important. They didn't have enough money between all of them for even half of the bill!
And that, boys and girls, journalists and college professors, is how our tax system works. The people who pay the highest taxes get the most benefit from a tax reduction. Tax them too much, attack them for being wealthy, and they just may not show up at the table anymore. There are lots of good restaurants in Europe and the Caribbean.
Thanks David R. Kamerschen, Ph.D., Distinguished Professor of Economics, U of Georgia
What? Kerry is a liar too? How can this be? A computer would be a more effective president than any of these guys. We could all vote for code changes and outsource the development to India.
Yahoo! News - JOHN KERRY, WAR HERO?
Yahoo! News - JOHN KERRY, WAR HERO?
Wednesday, April 14, 2004
Panel Says Bush Saw Repeated Warnings
Reports Preceded August 2001 Memo
By Dana Priest
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, April 14, 2004; Page A01
By the time a CIA briefer gave President Bush the Aug. 6, 2001, President's Daily Brief headlined "Bin Ladin Determined To Strike in US," the president had seen a stream of alarming reports on al Qaeda's intentions. So had Vice President Cheney and Bush's top national security team, according to newly declassified information released yesterday by the commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
In April and May 2001, for example, the intelligence community headlined some of those reports "Bin Laden planning multiple operations," "Bin Laden network's plans advancing" and "Bin Laden threats are real."
The intelligence included reports of a hostage plot against Americans. It noted that operatives might choose to hijack an aircraft or storm a U.S. embassy. Without knowing when, where or how the terrorists would strike, the CIA "consistently described the upcoming attacks as occurring on a catastrophic level, indicating that they would cause the world to be in turmoil," according to one of two staff reports released by the panel yesterday.
"Reports similar to these were made available to President Bush in the morning meetings with [Director of Central Intelligence George J.] Tenet," the commission staff said.
The information offers the most detailed account to date of the warnings the intelligence community gave top Bush administration officials, and it provides the context in which a CIA briefer put together a memo on Osama bin Laden's activities in the Aug. 6 brief for Bush.
---
BUSH CONTRADICTS SELF AT HIS OWN PRESS CONFERENCE
During last night's prime time press conference, President Bush once again
claimed that "there was nobody in our government, at least, and I don't
think the prior government that could envision flying airplanes into
buildings" (1). But just minutes later at the same press conference the
president proved he was not telling the truth.
Specifically, Bush said the reason he supposedly requested intelligence
briefings before 9/11 "had to do with the Genoa G-8 conference I was going
to attend" in 2001. Bush was referring to the fact that, prior to that
conference, he was warned that "Islamic terrorists might attempt to kill him
and other leaders by crashing an airliner into the summit" meetings (2).
His statement that "the prior government" had not taken precautions against
terrorists using planes as weapons is also contradicted by the facts. The
Wall Street Journal recently reported that under President Clinton, "the
federal government had on several earlier occasions taken elaborate, secret
measures to protect special events from just such an attack" (3) after
receiving intelligence warnings (4).
At the press conference, Bush also claimed to have no "inkling whatsoever"
(5) about an attack before 9/11. But the Washington Post today reports that
newly-declassified information shows that the president did not just receive
one intelligence briefing about an imminent Al Qaeda attack, but "a stream"
of repeated warnings (6). In April and May 2001, for example, the
intelligence community titled some of those reports "Bin Laden planning
multiple operations," "Bin Laden network's plans advancing" and "Bin Laden
threats are real." The CIA explicitly told the Administration that upcoming
attacks would "occur on a catastrophic level, indicating that they would
cause the world to be in turmoil."
Sources:
1. President Addresses the Nation in Prime Time Press Conference,
04/13/2004,
http://daily.misleader.org/ctt.asp?u=1675067&l=28724.
2. "Italy Tells of Threat at Genoa Summit", Los Angeles Times, 09/27/2001,
http://daily.misleader.org/ctt.asp?u=1675067&l=28725.
3. Wall Street Journal, 04/01/2004.
4. "Report Warned Of Suicide Hijackings", CBS News, 05/10/2002,
http://daily.misleader.org/ctt.asp?u=1675067&l=28726.
5. President Addresses the Nation in Prime Time Press Conference,
04/13/2004,
http://daily.misleader.org/ctt.asp?u=1675067&l=28724.
6. "Panel Says Bush Saw Repeated Warnings", Washington Post, 04/14/2004,
http://daily.misleader.org/ctt.asp?u=1675067&l=28727.
---
Ashcroft on Pre-9/11 terror warnings: "I do not want to hear about this anymore"
Right before Ashcroft appeared yesterday, Thomas Pickard, a former career FBI agent who served as the bureau's acting director for the three months before 9/11, criticized Ashcroft's handling of terrorist threat warnings in the months before Sept. 11:
RICHARD BEN-VENISTE, COMISSION MEMBER: Good afternoon, gentlemen. Mr. Pickard, on January 21st of this year you met with our staff. Is that correct?
THOMAS PICKARD, FORMER ACTING DIRECTOR, FBI: That's correct.
BEN-VENISTE: And according to our staff report, you told them that in June 2001, you met with Attorney General Ashcroft and he told you that you would be the acting FBI director.
PICKARD: That's correct.
BEN-VENISTE: You had some seven or eight meetings with the attorney general?
PICKARD: Somewhere in that number. I have the exact number, but I don't know the total.
BEN-VENISTE: And according to the statement that our staff took from you, you said that you would start each meeting discussing either counterterrorism or counterintelligence. At the same time the threat level was going up and was very high. Mr. Watson had come to you and said that the CIA was very concerned that there would be an attack. You said that you told the attorney general this fact repeatedly in these meetings. Is that correct?
PICKARD: I told him at least on two occasions.
BEN-VENISTE: And you told the staff according to this statement that Mr. Ashcroft told you that he did not want to hear about this anymore. Is that correct?
PICKARD: That is correct.
Pickard also said Ashcroft rejected appeals for additional counterterrorism funds. Ashcroft, who testified next after Pickard sharply contradicted his claims:
JAMES THOMPSON, COMMISSION MEMBER: Acting Director Pickard testified this afternoon that he briefed you twice on al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden and when he sought to do so again you told him you didn't need to hear from him again. Can you comment on that please?
ASHCROFT: First of all, Acting Director Pickard and I had more than two meetings. We had regular meetings. Secondly, I did never speak to him saying that I did not want to hear about terrorism. I care greatly about the safety and security of the American people and was very interested in terrorism and specifically interrogated him about threats to the American people and domestic threats in particular. One of the first items which came to my attention -- which I mentioned in my opening remarks -- was the question of whether we wanted to capture or find and kill bin Laden. I carried that immediately to the national security adviser and expressed myself in that matter. Together with the vice president of the United States, we got a briefing at FBI headquarters regarding terrorism. And I asked the question, "Why can't we arrest these people because I believe an aggressive arrest and prosecution model is the way to disrupt terrorism?" These are things about which I care deeply. When the Senate Appropriations Committee met on May the 9th, in the summer of 2001, I told the committee that my number one priority was the attack against terror; that we would protect Americans from terror. I wrote later to them a confirming letter saying that we had no higher priority. These are the kinds of things that I did in order to communicate very clearly my interest in making sure that we would be prepared against terror. In addition when we went for the largest increase in counterterrorism budgeting before 9/11, in the last five years, that signalled a priority in that respect. And when we, for the next year, had a 13 percent higher counterterrorism budget than was provided in the last year of the Clinton administration, it was also a signal that counterterrorism was a matter of great concern us to and that we would treat it seriously.
---
Reports Preceded August 2001 Memo
By Dana Priest
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, April 14, 2004; Page A01
By the time a CIA briefer gave President Bush the Aug. 6, 2001, President's Daily Brief headlined "Bin Ladin Determined To Strike in US," the president had seen a stream of alarming reports on al Qaeda's intentions. So had Vice President Cheney and Bush's top national security team, according to newly declassified information released yesterday by the commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
In April and May 2001, for example, the intelligence community headlined some of those reports "Bin Laden planning multiple operations," "Bin Laden network's plans advancing" and "Bin Laden threats are real."
The intelligence included reports of a hostage plot against Americans. It noted that operatives might choose to hijack an aircraft or storm a U.S. embassy. Without knowing when, where or how the terrorists would strike, the CIA "consistently described the upcoming attacks as occurring on a catastrophic level, indicating that they would cause the world to be in turmoil," according to one of two staff reports released by the panel yesterday.
"Reports similar to these were made available to President Bush in the morning meetings with [Director of Central Intelligence George J.] Tenet," the commission staff said.
The information offers the most detailed account to date of the warnings the intelligence community gave top Bush administration officials, and it provides the context in which a CIA briefer put together a memo on Osama bin Laden's activities in the Aug. 6 brief for Bush.
---
BUSH CONTRADICTS SELF AT HIS OWN PRESS CONFERENCE
During last night's prime time press conference, President Bush once again
claimed that "there was nobody in our government, at least, and I don't
think the prior government that could envision flying airplanes into
buildings" (1). But just minutes later at the same press conference the
president proved he was not telling the truth.
Specifically, Bush said the reason he supposedly requested intelligence
briefings before 9/11 "had to do with the Genoa G-8 conference I was going
to attend" in 2001. Bush was referring to the fact that, prior to that
conference, he was warned that "Islamic terrorists might attempt to kill him
and other leaders by crashing an airliner into the summit" meetings (2).
His statement that "the prior government" had not taken precautions against
terrorists using planes as weapons is also contradicted by the facts. The
Wall Street Journal recently reported that under President Clinton, "the
federal government had on several earlier occasions taken elaborate, secret
measures to protect special events from just such an attack" (3) after
receiving intelligence warnings (4).
At the press conference, Bush also claimed to have no "inkling whatsoever"
(5) about an attack before 9/11. But the Washington Post today reports that
newly-declassified information shows that the president did not just receive
one intelligence briefing about an imminent Al Qaeda attack, but "a stream"
of repeated warnings (6). In April and May 2001, for example, the
intelligence community titled some of those reports "Bin Laden planning
multiple operations," "Bin Laden network's plans advancing" and "Bin Laden
threats are real." The CIA explicitly told the Administration that upcoming
attacks would "occur on a catastrophic level, indicating that they would
cause the world to be in turmoil."
Sources:
1. President Addresses the Nation in Prime Time Press Conference,
04/13/2004,
http://daily.misleader.org/ctt.asp?u=1675067&l=28724.
2. "Italy Tells of Threat at Genoa Summit", Los Angeles Times, 09/27/2001,
http://daily.misleader.org/ctt.asp?u=1675067&l=28725.
3. Wall Street Journal, 04/01/2004.
4. "Report Warned Of Suicide Hijackings", CBS News, 05/10/2002,
http://daily.misleader.org/ctt.asp?u=1675067&l=28726.
5. President Addresses the Nation in Prime Time Press Conference,
04/13/2004,
http://daily.misleader.org/ctt.asp?u=1675067&l=28724.
6. "Panel Says Bush Saw Repeated Warnings", Washington Post, 04/14/2004,
http://daily.misleader.org/ctt.asp?u=1675067&l=28727.
---
Ashcroft on Pre-9/11 terror warnings: "I do not want to hear about this anymore"
Right before Ashcroft appeared yesterday, Thomas Pickard, a former career FBI agent who served as the bureau's acting director for the three months before 9/11, criticized Ashcroft's handling of terrorist threat warnings in the months before Sept. 11:
RICHARD BEN-VENISTE, COMISSION MEMBER: Good afternoon, gentlemen. Mr. Pickard, on January 21st of this year you met with our staff. Is that correct?
THOMAS PICKARD, FORMER ACTING DIRECTOR, FBI: That's correct.
BEN-VENISTE: And according to our staff report, you told them that in June 2001, you met with Attorney General Ashcroft and he told you that you would be the acting FBI director.
PICKARD: That's correct.
BEN-VENISTE: You had some seven or eight meetings with the attorney general?
PICKARD: Somewhere in that number. I have the exact number, but I don't know the total.
BEN-VENISTE: And according to the statement that our staff took from you, you said that you would start each meeting discussing either counterterrorism or counterintelligence. At the same time the threat level was going up and was very high. Mr. Watson had come to you and said that the CIA was very concerned that there would be an attack. You said that you told the attorney general this fact repeatedly in these meetings. Is that correct?
PICKARD: I told him at least on two occasions.
BEN-VENISTE: And you told the staff according to this statement that Mr. Ashcroft told you that he did not want to hear about this anymore. Is that correct?
PICKARD: That is correct.
Pickard also said Ashcroft rejected appeals for additional counterterrorism funds. Ashcroft, who testified next after Pickard sharply contradicted his claims:
JAMES THOMPSON, COMMISSION MEMBER: Acting Director Pickard testified this afternoon that he briefed you twice on al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden and when he sought to do so again you told him you didn't need to hear from him again. Can you comment on that please?
ASHCROFT: First of all, Acting Director Pickard and I had more than two meetings. We had regular meetings. Secondly, I did never speak to him saying that I did not want to hear about terrorism. I care greatly about the safety and security of the American people and was very interested in terrorism and specifically interrogated him about threats to the American people and domestic threats in particular. One of the first items which came to my attention -- which I mentioned in my opening remarks -- was the question of whether we wanted to capture or find and kill bin Laden. I carried that immediately to the national security adviser and expressed myself in that matter. Together with the vice president of the United States, we got a briefing at FBI headquarters regarding terrorism. And I asked the question, "Why can't we arrest these people because I believe an aggressive arrest and prosecution model is the way to disrupt terrorism?" These are things about which I care deeply. When the Senate Appropriations Committee met on May the 9th, in the summer of 2001, I told the committee that my number one priority was the attack against terror; that we would protect Americans from terror. I wrote later to them a confirming letter saying that we had no higher priority. These are the kinds of things that I did in order to communicate very clearly my interest in making sure that we would be prepared against terror. In addition when we went for the largest increase in counterterrorism budgeting before 9/11, in the last five years, that signalled a priority in that respect. And when we, for the next year, had a 13 percent higher counterterrorism budget than was provided in the last year of the Clinton administration, it was also a signal that counterterrorism was a matter of great concern us to and that we would treat it seriously.
---
So why did Ashcroft stop flying commercial jets in the summer of 2001???? Why is no one asking him this question???
Stress Relief: Beer Quotes
"Sometimes when I reflect back on all the beer I drink I feel shamed.
Then I look into the glass and think about the workers in the brewery
and all of their hopes and dreams. If I didn't drink this beer,
they might be out of work and their dreams would be shattered.
Then I say to myself, "It is better that I drink this beer and let their
dreams come true than be selfish and worry about my liver."
~ Jack Handy
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"I feel sorry for people who don't drink.
When they wake up in the morning,
that's as good as they're going to feel all day."
~ Frank Sinatra
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"When I read about the evils of drinking, I gave up reading."
~ Henny Youngman
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~! ~~
"24 hours in a day, 24 beers in a c ase. Coincidence? I think not."
~ Stephen Wright
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"When we drink, we get drunk. When we get drunk, we fall asleep.
When we fall asleep, we commit no sin. When we commit no sin,
we go to heaven. Sooooo, let's all get drunk and go to heaven!"
~ Brian O'Rourke
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy."
~ Benjamin Franklin
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"Without question, the greatest invention in the history of mankind is
beer. Oh, I grant you that the wheel was also a fine invention,
but the wheel does not go nearly as well with pizza."
~ Dave Barry
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
BEER: HELPING UGLY PEOPLE HAVE SEX WITHOUT A PARTNER SINCE 3000 B.C.!!!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Remember "I" before "E", except in Budweiser.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
To some it's a six-pack, to me it's a Support Group. Salvation in a can!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
And saving the best for last, as explained by Cliff Clavin of the TV show Cheers.
One afternoon at Cheers, Cliff Clavin was explaining the Buffalo Theory
to his buddy Norm. Here's how it went:
"Well ya see, Norm, it's like this...
A herd of buffalo can only move as fast as the slowest buffalo.
And when the herd is hunted, it is the slowest and weakest ones
at the back that are killed first. This natural selection is good for the herd
as a whole, because the general speed and health of the whole group
keeps improving by the regular killing of the weakest members.
In much the same way, the human brain can only operate as fast as the
slowest brain cells. Excessive intake of alcohol, as we know, kills brain cells.
But naturally, it attacks the slowest and weakest brain cells first.
In this way, regular consumption of beer eliminates the weaker brain cells,
making the brain a faster and more efficient machine.
That's why you always feel smarter after a few beers."
"Sometimes when I reflect back on all the beer I drink I feel shamed.
Then I look into the glass and think about the workers in the brewery
and all of their hopes and dreams. If I didn't drink this beer,
they might be out of work and their dreams would be shattered.
Then I say to myself, "It is better that I drink this beer and let their
dreams come true than be selfish and worry about my liver."
~ Jack Handy
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"I feel sorry for people who don't drink.
When they wake up in the morning,
that's as good as they're going to feel all day."
~ Frank Sinatra
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"When I read about the evils of drinking, I gave up reading."
~ Henny Youngman
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~! ~~
"24 hours in a day, 24 beers in a c ase. Coincidence? I think not."
~ Stephen Wright
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"When we drink, we get drunk. When we get drunk, we fall asleep.
When we fall asleep, we commit no sin. When we commit no sin,
we go to heaven. Sooooo, let's all get drunk and go to heaven!"
~ Brian O'Rourke
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy."
~ Benjamin Franklin
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"Without question, the greatest invention in the history of mankind is
beer. Oh, I grant you that the wheel was also a fine invention,
but the wheel does not go nearly as well with pizza."
~ Dave Barry
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
BEER: HELPING UGLY PEOPLE HAVE SEX WITHOUT A PARTNER SINCE 3000 B.C.!!!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Remember "I" before "E", except in Budweiser.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
To some it's a six-pack, to me it's a Support Group. Salvation in a can!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
And saving the best for last, as explained by Cliff Clavin of the TV show Cheers.
One afternoon at Cheers, Cliff Clavin was explaining the Buffalo Theory
to his buddy Norm. Here's how it went:
"Well ya see, Norm, it's like this...
A herd of buffalo can only move as fast as the slowest buffalo.
And when the herd is hunted, it is the slowest and weakest ones
at the back that are killed first. This natural selection is good for the herd
as a whole, because the general speed and health of the whole group
keeps improving by the regular killing of the weakest members.
In much the same way, the human brain can only operate as fast as the
slowest brain cells. Excessive intake of alcohol, as we know, kills brain cells.
But naturally, it attacks the slowest and weakest brain cells first.
In this way, regular consumption of beer eliminates the weaker brain cells,
making the brain a faster and more efficient machine.
That's why you always feel smarter after a few beers."
Sunday, April 11, 2004
Wildest Training Run Encounter
Hmm... I'm not sure yet. I must have a good running story tucked away somewhere.
Hmm... I'm not sure yet. I must have a good running story tucked away somewhere.
What the president knew and when: This reviews history and current status. This is a report. One has NO idea if such briefings ever contain direct requests for action, or if this is the way action is asked for.
This memo says "it's 70 degrees outside". It doesn't say anything about what to wear. (I have NO idea WHERE that advice is given)
Declassified and Approved for Release, 10 April 2004
Bin Ladin Determined To Strike in US
Clandestine, foreign government, and media reports indicate Bin Ladin since 1997 has wanted to conduct terrorist attacks in the US. Bin Ladin implied in US television interviews in 1997 and 1998 that his followers would follow the example of World Trade Center bomber Ramzi Yousef and "bring the fighting to America."
After US missile strikes on his base in Afghanistan in 1998, Bin Ladin told followers he wanted to retaliate in Washington, according to a ...(redacted portion) ... service.
An Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ) operative told an ... (redacted portion) ... service at the same time that Bin Ladin was planning to exploit the operative's access to the US to mount a terrorist strike.
The millennium plotting in Canada in 1999 may have been part of Bin Ladin's first serious attempt to implement a terrorist strike in the US. Convicted plotter Ahmed Ressam has told the FBI that he conceived the idea to attack Los Angeles International Airport himself, but that Bin Ladin lieutenant Abu Zubaydah encouraged him and helped facilitate the operation. Ressam also said that in 1998 Abu Zubaydah was planning his own US attack.
Ressam says Bin Ladin was aware of the Los Angeles operation.
Although Bin Ladin has not succeeded, his attacks against the US Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998 demonstrate that he prepares operations years in advance and is not deterred by setbacks. Bin Ladin associates surveilled our Embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam as early as 1993, and some members of the Nairobi cell planning the bombings were arrested and deported in 1997.
Al-Qa'ida members -- including some who are US citizens -- have resided in or traveled to the US for years, and the group apparently maintains a support structure that could aid attacks. Two al-Qa'ida members found guilty in the conspiracy to bomb our Embassies in East Africa were US citizens, and a senior EIJ member lived in California in the mid-1990s.
A clandestine source said in 1998 that a Bin Ladin cell in New York was recruiting Muslim-American youth for attacks.
We have not been able to corroborate some of the more sensational threat reporting, such as that from a ... (redacted portion) ... service in 1998 saying that Bin Ladin wanted to hijack a US aircraft to gain the release of "Blind Shaykh" 'Umar 'Abd al-Rahman and other US-held extremists.
Nevertheless, FBI information since that time indicates patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks, including recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York.
The FBI is conducting approximately 70 full field investigations throughout the US that it considers Bin Ladin-related. CIA and the FBI are investigating a call to our Embassy in the UAE in May saying that a group of Bin Ladin supporters was in the US planning attacks with explosives.
2004 The Washington Post Company
Friday, April 09, 2004
Transcript of oral pleadings
Talk about a convincing argument: Dr. Newdow pleads the removal of "under god" from the pleja-leegenz
Talk about a convincing argument: Dr. Newdow pleads the removal of "under god" from the pleja-leegenz
The O'Franken Factor
Drug-Free Radio
Liars beware: Al Franken, co-host Katherine Lanpher and Team O'Franken invite you to spend three hours a day in the Zero Spin Zone.
Weekdays noon-3pm
Repeat: 11pm-2am
Drug-Free Radio
Liars beware: Al Franken, co-host Katherine Lanpher and Team O'Franken invite you to spend three hours a day in the Zero Spin Zone.
Weekdays noon-3pm
Repeat: 11pm-2am
The "war on terror" needed to stop suicide attacks as being an illegitimate tactic under any circumstances. It is NOT merely a military tactic, as some have suggested: it is a poison to any process of civilization when it becomes so very commonplace.
You can pretty effectively stop non-suicide attacks against civilian targets. But if any person, any human being that can get on a bus, go into a restaurant, reach out and shake your hand if any such person can be a bomb: game, set, match.
All terrorism is NOT the same: this country allowed the bombing and burning of churches and clinics. This country (and the UN) allowed the Israel/Palestine conflict to fester. This country treated the Oklahoma bombing as a simple crime. That was foolish. Legal minds, government minds that recognized hate crimes as something different, should have recognized attacks against a population as another form of crime, to be treated differently.
We can still move in that direction. We'd best move smartly on that. "Smart" and "Bush" are so very very different, as in "how Bush can you be?"
You can pretty effectively stop non-suicide attacks against civilian targets. But if any person, any human being that can get on a bus, go into a restaurant, reach out and shake your hand if any such person can be a bomb: game, set, match.
All terrorism is NOT the same: this country allowed the bombing and burning of churches and clinics. This country (and the UN) allowed the Israel/Palestine conflict to fester. This country treated the Oklahoma bombing as a simple crime. That was foolish. Legal minds, government minds that recognized hate crimes as something different, should have recognized attacks against a population as another form of crime, to be treated differently.
We can still move in that direction. We'd best move smartly on that. "Smart" and "Bush" are so very very different, as in "how Bush can you be?"
Thursday, April 08, 2004
You should be taking Lipitor here
"Lipitor could prevent hundreds of thousands of heart attacks and heart deaths if more people used it." Forbes Magazine
No question. (well, age.)
"Lipitor could prevent hundreds of thousands of heart attacks and heart deaths if more people used it." Forbes Magazine
No question. (well, age.)
Saturday, April 03, 2004
Road trip thru Chernobyl
This is what a toxic world looks like. This is a very large site. Smaller sites available at a site not far from you. Not well advertised, so you have to look. Or just stumble on one by luck. (I wonder how any animals survive. But note that the world misses man not in the least. Is the world beautiful without us to see? Have to ask the horses.)
This is what a toxic world looks like. This is a very large site. Smaller sites available at a site not far from you. Not well advertised, so you have to look. Or just stumble on one by luck. (I wonder how any animals survive. But note that the world misses man not in the least. Is the world beautiful without us to see? Have to ask the horses.)
Thursday, April 01, 2004
Bush will NOT testify without Cheney there! Yuck!
from the "Charlie McCarthy is alive and well" dept:
also "I'd really like to, but I'm the president and I need to get permission" dept:
Bush and Cheney
Really really really together.
George Bush CAN walk and chew gum. But he may NOT cross the street! Not without Dick.
from the "Charlie McCarthy is alive and well" dept:
also "I'd really like to, but I'm the president and I need to get permission" dept:
Bush and Cheney
Really really really together.
George Bush CAN walk and chew gum. But he may NOT cross the street! Not without Dick.
Republican Satire - The Ant and the Grasshopper
OLD VERSION:
The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house
and laying up supplies for the winter.
The grasshopper thinks he's a fool and laughs and dances and plays the
Summer away. Come winter, the ant is warm and well fed.
The grasshopper has no food or shelter, so he dies out in the cold.
MORAL OF THE ORIGINAL STORY: Be responsible for yourself!
MODERN VERSION:
The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house
and laying up supplies for the winter.
The grasshopper thinks he's a fool and laughs and dances and plays the
Summer away.
Come winter, the shivering grasshopper calls a press conference and demands
to know why the ant should be allowed to be warm and well fed while others
are cold and starving.
CBS, NBC, and ABC show up to provide pictures of the shivering grasshopper
next to a video of the ant in his comfortable home with a table filled with
food.
America is stunned by the sharp contrast. How can this be, that in a country
of such wealth, this poor grasshopper is allowed to suffer so?
Kermit the Frog appears on Oprah with the grasshopper, and everybody cries
when they sing, "It's Not Easy Being Green."
Jesse Jackson stages a demonstration in front of the ant's house where the
news stations film the group singing, "We shall overcome." Jesse then has
the group kneel down to pray to God for the grasshopper's sake.
Tom Daschle & John Kerry exclaim in an interview with Peter Jennings that
the ant has gotten rich off the back of the grasshopper, and both call for
an immediate tax hike on the ant to make him pay his "fair share."
Finally, the EEOC drafts the "Economic Equity and Anti-Grasshopper Act,"
retroactive to the beginning of the summer. The ant is fined for failing to
hire a proportionate number of green bugs and, having nothing left to pay
his retroactive taxes, his home is confiscated by the government
Hillary gets her old law firm to represent the grasshopper in a defamation
suit against the ant, and the case is tried before a panel of federal judges
that Bill appointed from a list of single-parent welfare recipients.
The ant loses the case.
The story ends as we ! see the grasshopper finishing up the last bits of the
ant's food while the government house he is in, which just happens to be the
ant's old house, crumbles around him because he doesn't maintain it.
The ant has disappeared in the snow.
The grasshopper is found dead in a drug related incident and the house, now
abandoned, is taken over by a gang of spiders who terrorize the once
peaceful neighborhood.
MORAL OF THE STORY: Vote Republican
OLD VERSION:
The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house
and laying up supplies for the winter.
The grasshopper thinks he's a fool and laughs and dances and plays the
Summer away. Come winter, the ant is warm and well fed.
The grasshopper has no food or shelter, so he dies out in the cold.
MORAL OF THE ORIGINAL STORY: Be responsible for yourself!
MODERN VERSION:
The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house
and laying up supplies for the winter.
The grasshopper thinks he's a fool and laughs and dances and plays the
Summer away.
Come winter, the shivering grasshopper calls a press conference and demands
to know why the ant should be allowed to be warm and well fed while others
are cold and starving.
CBS, NBC, and ABC show up to provide pictures of the shivering grasshopper
next to a video of the ant in his comfortable home with a table filled with
food.
America is stunned by the sharp contrast. How can this be, that in a country
of such wealth, this poor grasshopper is allowed to suffer so?
Kermit the Frog appears on Oprah with the grasshopper, and everybody cries
when they sing, "It's Not Easy Being Green."
Jesse Jackson stages a demonstration in front of the ant's house where the
news stations film the group singing, "We shall overcome." Jesse then has
the group kneel down to pray to God for the grasshopper's sake.
Tom Daschle & John Kerry exclaim in an interview with Peter Jennings that
the ant has gotten rich off the back of the grasshopper, and both call for
an immediate tax hike on the ant to make him pay his "fair share."
Finally, the EEOC drafts the "Economic Equity and Anti-Grasshopper Act,"
retroactive to the beginning of the summer. The ant is fined for failing to
hire a proportionate number of green bugs and, having nothing left to pay
his retroactive taxes, his home is confiscated by the government
Hillary gets her old law firm to represent the grasshopper in a defamation
suit against the ant, and the case is tried before a panel of federal judges
that Bill appointed from a list of single-parent welfare recipients.
The ant loses the case.
The story ends as we ! see the grasshopper finishing up the last bits of the
ant's food while the government house he is in, which just happens to be the
ant's old house, crumbles around him because he doesn't maintain it.
The ant has disappeared in the snow.
The grasshopper is found dead in a drug related incident and the house, now
abandoned, is taken over by a gang of spiders who terrorize the once
peaceful neighborhood.
MORAL OF THE STORY: Vote Republican
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