douglass carmichael: general

Mon, 11 Oct 2004 01:28:45 GMT

Another view of military life

http://www.benturner.com/soapbox/

excerpt

The third and final week, or Jump Week, finally came. I had become more and more apprehensive about it. I'd get off training in the evening and walk around outside, only to see a bunch of guys stumbling about with bandaged or casted legs and crutches, people who'd had horrible accidents when they'd jumped out of the plane and landed. I had dinner with one guy before Jump Week who landed wrong on his third jump out of five. He knew he busted his ankle when he landed, and when a medic cut his boot off, his foot just fell over with nothing stopping it. But when he went to the hospital, x-rays concluded he'd already broken the end parts of his right fibula and tibia! Encouraging for me!

Most of Jump Week is spent in an ominously named place called the Harness Shed, which sounds like a fucking Iraqi prison and seems to come close at times. All of us would don our chute harnesses and reserve chutes and sit for hours and hours until it was our turn to get on the C-130 to jump. During that waiting time, you're not allowed to drink water, go to the latrine, or touch any of your equipment, since it's been inspected by a sergeant airborne and you touching it might mess something up. The sergeants' airborne inspections are called JMPI's and they consist of a lot of holding things, checking snaps, arching your back, lowering and raising your chin, and bending over. In typical military fashion, this activity invites a lot of homophobic humor.

If you don't adjust your leg straps correctly, your harness will be too tight and your testicles will be smashed against your groin. Ever seen otherwise tough brickhouse guys buckle in pain and want to cry? I have! The harness also cuts into your collarbone because of all the weight. You can't stand up straight sometimes.

The day of our first jump, my stick waited ten hours (!!) to jump. We were the last stick of all to go, and this was after a two hour rain delay. It was an agonizing wait. Everyone would be trying to stay awake, my ass would get sore from sitting on saddle straps on a wooden workbench, and not being able to talk also made time pass slower. Not to mention a sergeant airborne watching the room from above and making cruel and demoralizing demands of us the whole time.

My stick's turn to jump finally came and we were guided out behind the parked plane outside. Its prop blast buffeted us with hot jet fuel fumes which made us want to hold our breaths and close our eyes. We'd be packed on the plane, hip to hip, looking at each other not with fright, but with apprehension and nervousness about performing all our points of performance correctly. I don't think many guys were scared to jump out the door -- they just didn't want to get banged up against the plane, or fucked up on the landing. We'd heard stories about one guy who smashed his face against the side of the plane because he didn't jump out far enough. And then there's the person the week before us whose chute was right above someone else's: he entered the vacuum above the lower person's chute and free-fell 50ft to the ground. Broke a lot of shit. There's also a story of a beheading of someone because the guy before him didn't pass his static line off properly, so it got tangled around the next guy's neck. Don't know if I believe that. I believe the story about the severed bicep muscle from the same thing though.

As soon as the plane takes off, we're already getting ready, .....

Thu, 19 Aug 2004 23:00:57 GMT

Pasted from <http://www.zwire.com/site/news.asp?brd=2318&;pag=460&dept_id=483214>

Throwing down the gauntlet

By Sean-Paul Kelley

Indian activist Arundhati Roy pursues her indictment of globalization in thoughtful conversations with David Barsamian

What I remember most about India is the heat and the crowds. It's the kind of heat that claws at your lungs and squeezes every last drop of sweat from your pores. All the while, you're fighting crowds of loud, exuberant people. Sadhus and snake charmers dance around while shopkeepers shout and rickshaws dodge the cows meandering in the streets: It's the kind of unrelenting urban raucousness that either drives a person insane or to a higher level of consciousness. This is the environment that Arundhati Roy, the controversial Indian activist and writer, grew up in. Perhaps this is why she is, in her own words, "an extremely troublesome citizen."

The Checkbook and the Cruise Missile is a new a collection of interviews with Roy conducted by David Barsamian, producer of the award-winning syndicated radio program Alternative Radio. His subject will challenge and assault the reader's well-guarded assumptions, but The Checkbook and the Cruise Missile is not a polemic: It is a thinker's book, one sadly out of place in today's jingoistic and ideologically driven politics. It's full of passion, nuance, and insight. It's also an easy read. The prose is smooth, conversational, and rich with the sugary colloquialisms of Indian English.

The four interviews that form this compact book take place over the course of three years, beginning in February 2001 and ending shortly after the "major combat operations" phase of the Iraqi-American war. Barsamian is a skillful interviewer, drawing out the most engaging and provocative aspects of Roy's character. His questions are open-ended enough to allow Roy to move effortlessly from corporate power and personal responsibility to the market's impact on democracy, following it up with a stirring observation about her experiences in the U.S.

There is one key issue to which Roy continually returns. "The further and further away geographically decisions are taken, the more scope you have for incredible injustice," she says. She details many examples, including the 56 million people displaced by India's dam-building project, in a country with no official resettlement policy.

The Checkbook and the Cruise Missile:

Conversations with Arundhati Roy

Interviews by David Barsamian

South End Press

$16, 178 pages

ISBN: 0896087115

Befitting an Indian in the tradition of Gandhi, Roy is at her most eloquent when discussing personal responsibility versus power in the framework of globalization and its institutions such as the World Bank and the World Trade Organization: "How do you break down this [increasingly] centralized and undemocratic process of decision making? How do you make sure that ... people have power over their lives and natural resources?"

Roy accuses Americans of ignoring the world at large and the implications of our foreign policy by oversimplifying them into pieties such as "they just hate our freedoms." As Roy describes us, our lives revolve around work, reality TV, Fox News, and sleep. "You don't know what the American government is up to and most ordinary people are too tired to make the effort," she says. She argues that terrorism is a political act, moored in strategy, not only hatred, and that to settle the conflict in which we are now engaged will require more politics and less bombs.

Roy's book ultimately challenges us to be better citizens: not docile and obedient, but independent and informed. Conservative or liberal, this book asks you to think more, do more, and try to understand the consequences of your actions, no matter how insignificant you might think they are. •

By Sean-Paul Kelley

Sat, 17 Jul 2004 06:30:21 GMT

This is a courageous column.

Jesus and Jihad

By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/17/opinion/17KRIS.html?hp

f the latest in the "Left Behind" series of evangelical thrillers is to be believed, Jesus will return to Earth, gather non-Christians to his left and toss them into everlasting fire:

"Jesus merely raised one hand a few inches and a yawning chasm opened in the earth, stretching far and wide enough to swallow all of them. They tumbled in, howling and screeching, but their wailing was soon quashed and all was silent when the earth closed itself again."

These are the best-selling novels for adults in the United States, and they have sold more than 60 million copies worldwide. The latest is "Glorious Appearing," which has Jesus returning to Earth to wipe all non-Christians from the planet. It's disconcerting to find ethnic cleansing celebrated as the height of piety.

If a Muslim were to write an Islamic version of "Glorious Appearing" and publish it in Saudi Arabia, jubilantly describing a massacre of millions of non-Muslims by God, we would have a fit. We have quite properly linked the fundamentalist religious tracts of Islam with the intolerance they nurture, and it's time to remove the motes from our own eyes.

Fri, 21 May 2004 17:10:29 GMT

From yesterday's www.washingtonmonthly.com

FRENCH HEALTHCARE....The Economist provides a capsule summary of healthcare in France:

Its hospitals gleam. Waiting-lists are non-existent. Doctors still make home visits. Life expectancy is two years longer than average for the western world.

....For the patient, the French health system is still a joy. Same-day appointments can be made easily; if one doctor's advice displeases, you can consult another, a habit known as nomadisme médical. Individual hospital rooms are the norm. Specialists can be consulted without referral. And while the patient pays up front, almost all the money is reimbursed, either through the public insurance system or a top-up private policy.

For family doctors too, liberty prevails. They are self-employed, can set up a practice where they like, prescribe what they like, and are paid per consultation. As the health ministry's own diagnosis put it recently: “The French system offers more freedom than any other in the world.”

Mon, 26 Apr 2004 15:37:38 GMT

Bush on the press. Quoted from

http://www.bopnews.com/archives/000614.html#614

And the reporter then said: Well, how do you then know, Mr. President, what the public is thinking? And Bush, without missing a beat said: You're making a powerful assumption, young man. You're assuming that you represent the public. I don't accept that.

Which is a powerful statement. And if Bush believes it (a possibility not to be dismissed) then we must credit the president with an original idea, or the germ of one. Bush's people have developed it into a thesis, which they explained to Auletta, who told it to co-host Brooke Gladstone:

That's his attitude. And when you ask the Bush people to explain that attitude, what they say is: We don't accept that you have a check and balance function. We think that you are in the game of "Gotcha." Oh, you're interested in headlines, and you're interested in conflict. You're not interested in having a serious discussion and, and exploring things.

Further data point: The Bush Thesis. If Auletta's reporting is on, then Bush and his advisors have their own press think, which they are trying out as policy. Reporters do not represent the interests of a broader public. They aren't a pipeline to the people, because people see through the game of Gotcha. The press has forfeited, if it ever had, its quasi-official role in the checks and balances of government. Here the Bush Thesis is bold. It says: there is no such role.

The press certainly has moved from serious reporting. The good reporting is now to be found more in the comentators and bloggers who either have better access or some distance from the press corps. Especially time to think. Bush's comment suggests that a rel exploration of the issues would be welcomed. Big assumption, but it does suggest that the details and difficulties of say Iraq are not being explored. "gottcha" rules every sentence.

A friend once said "Doug, remember, every story has only one hero: the reporter."

Tue, 13 Apr 2004 15:19:29 GMT

Billmon asks this morning (the them in the quote is the nazi's).

The question is whether the average American is more like them or more like us -- and which way he or she might lean if the war against terrorism continues to degenerate into a war against the Islamic world.

That's one question I really don't want to see put to the test.

Notes from today.

Mon, 22 Mar 2004 23:47:37 GMT

On Edinburg http://www.boston.com/ae/books/articles/2004/03/21/enlightenment_edinbureh_a_suide?m...

While Hume was busy remaking the intellectual map, Edinburgh itself was made over in the middle decades of the 18th century. In a wave of improvements (which Buchan copiously records), the old crammed city expanded into a classically inspired new town of bridges and squares, banks and courts. For many thinkers, the city became a laboratory of modernity. The cash nexus and commercial relations slowly dissolved ancient tribal ties and old wavs. A new culture of sentiment and feeling was born.

on Israel http://amconmag.com/2004_03_29/print/articleprint.html

In the 1920s, Zionist leader Vladimir Jabotinsky called for Israel to rule "from the Nile to the Euphrates," as the famous slogan went, by smashing the fragile mosaic of its Arab neighbors into ethnic fragments, then seizing the oil riches of Arabia.

and, the same, on Iraq

Winston Churchill, authorized the RAF to drop poison gas on 'primitive tribesmen," meaning Iraq's Kurds and Afghanistan's Pashtun, a fact conveniently forgotten by Tony Blair and George W. Bush\\

the U.S. is now trying to block direct Elections

At the same time, Iraq's Kurds, who now have two virtually independent mini-states in the north, are determined to create an independent nation in northern Iraq that controls the rich Kirkuk oilfields. They are dead set against losing their newfound political and economic autonomy,,,,rurks are not about to countenance the emergence of a Kurdish state

^solution to Iraq's ethnic problems defies easy answers. A Swiss-style system, with a weak central government and powerful cantons, is probably the best solution. But long-term, Iraq's dissolution into three nations may be inevitable.

Tiat should the U.S. do? The most sensible course: hand Iraq to the UN and pull out

If a total pullout is not in the cards, then the best option is to co-operate with Iraq's Shia majority and show that the U.S. can work fruitfully with an Islamic regime. Co-operation with Islamists in Baghdad opens the way to good relations with Tehran and a major lessening of anti-American feelings across the Muslim World.

SURPRISE, SECURITY, AND THE AMERICAN EXPERIENCE By John Lewis Gaddis

http://www.nytimes.eom/2004/03/21/books/review/2 lMATLOCT.html?pagewanted=print&...

. Gaddis argues that pre-emption, unilateralism and hegemony remained persistent features of American behavior until World War II, when they were modified by Franklin D. Roosevelt. While Roosevelt acted to extend American hegemony beyond the Western Hemisphere, he discarded unilateralism. Rather than going it alone, the United States took the lead in creating a series of multinational institutions. Gaddis writes. Multilateralism was used to ensure American hegemony, not to undermine it. ...Roosevelt also discarded pre-emption, refusing to approve actions that violated his agreements with Stalin, even though Stalin was reneging on his commitments. Roosevelt, Gaddis believes, ...)ne can argue that the United States emerged from the cold war as the unquestioned global hegemon precisely because it had been willing to mute its traditional unilateral tendencies and to avoid the temptation of preventive war against its principal adversary.

of two cold war legacies in the international environment: "the declining authority of the international state system, and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction." ...A. preventive war is a different matter, since its justification rests on the perception, often questionable, of a potential rather than actual threat. ..Bush's decision to place the burden of today's wars only on those who do the fighting -- and on future generations that must pay the bills. One has to wonder whether the administration's fiscal and energy policies are consistent with the goal of maintaining American global predominance. [or are driven by an economic agenda of protecting the wealthy while they take their money out of the economy ]

Unfortunately, there are no magic potions or certain cures, despite the tendency ot both sides in the political debate to pretend that there are.

On revolution and the emregence of cells in the US

http://www.altpr.org/modules.php?op=::modload&;name=News&fi]e=artic1e&sid=46&mode-...

There is no democratic process alive today that provides sufficient hope for the downtrodden. ..And speaking of gated communities, I'm reminded of the castles invoked in William S. Lind's "Why They Throw Rocks" (www.counterpunch.com/lind03122004.html) wherein he re'minds'others that cities rose up around 1500 for reasons that had virtually zero to do with capitalism, democracy or freedom. He underscores the point that people bonded together (as per Hobbes) to better protect themselves. ...' Is this why Mike Whitney is writing with such passion about revolution ( www.counterpunch.com/whitney03182004.html)? ...how we can't afford the luxury of ignoring their demands.

Social structure and teror

Sun, 21 Mar 2004 15:41:02 GMT

We have a social structure,which means we each have some local friends and work connections, not many.we don't know the mayor o city council,we hire people to do the stuff or us, keep the electricity going, the gas flowing,all people whom we don't know.Terrorism arises within tis framework. The ethos of terror is very complex,having to do with ambition and power and perception, and long historical rivers of symbol and meanings,all mixed with human nature.

Technology has fundamentally shifted the distribution of effectiveness. before incursion into Iraq,some in the military were talking about "the super empowered individual",which meant individuals with extreme tech and extreme money, or both. Perhaps with such people around we need to rethink social structure. the current trend is to put more stress on security as police and military, but maybe we are fundamentally flawed and in neglecting community, a world where each knows many, we have set up a response that only provokes en more hostility.

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,1174502,00.html

Forget the idea of al-Qaeda as a coherent fighting group, or even a flag of convenience. Call it what you will - 'Islamist', 'Salafi' or 'Jihadi' - it hardly matters. According to some intelligence experts, they do not wish to be understood.
For an increasing number of young Muslims, resistance to the western values is now a way of life. Most are not terrorists and those who are do not accept the term, because they believe they are fighting imperialism by western infidels.
As the investigators continued yesterday trying to piece together details of the terror network in Europe, the reverberations from the Madrid blasts swept America and Britain. The terrorists had scored a spectacular victory, ousting the Spanish Prime Minister and a key ally over the war in Iraq.
New security measures were being deployed to protect trains and tunnels from suicide bombers, and London announced a huge increase in the number of intelligence officers being deployed to hunt the enemy. They have one major problem: they are fighting a mindset, not an army, and nobody has yet patented a technique to read minds.
'At first we thought we were up against an organisation,' one western intelligence source told The Observer. ' Something with a definable body and head. In fact, the war on terror is being fought against an idea. That does not make it any easier.'

Terrorism as dominant issue. (unfortunately)

Fri, 19 Mar 2004 23:48:32 GMT

As of today, it looks posible that Madrid can have the impact of further uniting the world in a saner strategy in coping with causes and actualities of terrorism and simultaneously isolating the US. The US may lose any acceptable sense of "leadership" in the struggle to define "terrorism" and put it behind us (there are always new issues..)

The alternative might be, some have suggested , a forty year "war" defined by our own belicosity.

Helmut Schmidt on Islam and the west.

Tue, 16 Mar 2004 18:33:30 GMT

A very direct article hy Helmut Schmidt on Islam and the west. One detail struck me with real pain.

But alas, in the meantime, we sell weapons and military technologies to them.

I would hope that arms limitation is to remain on the international agenda. Poverty, population explosions, and migrations will probably make for future armed conflicts — and not to forget petrol and natural gas.

...

More than one-fifth of the total population of the globe is made of Islamic believers — and their share is growing. Therefore, I take it as a certainty that Europe will try to resist any inclination towards a general clash with Islam.

Sun, 14 Mar 2004 20:00:10 GMT

Fishing..

Title: Sunday, March 14, 2004 11:04:45 AM
Harvard Gazette: Academic turns city into a social experiment

Text:
Women's night and mimes
There is almost always a civics lesson behind Mockus' antics. Florence Thomas, a feminist and a professor at Colombian National University, pointed out to Mockus that in Bogotá women were afraid to go out at night. "At that time, we were also looking for what would be the best image of a safe city, and I realized that if you see streets with many women you feel safer," Mockus explained.
So he asked men to stay home and suggested that both sexes should take advantage of the "Night for Women" to reflect on women's role in society. About 700,000
More of Mockus in Bogotá
Here are a few more innovations from Antanas Mockus' two mayoral terms:
Mockus mobilized people to protest against violence and terrorist attacks. He invented a "vaccine against violence," asking people to draw the faces of the people who had hurt them on balloons, which they then popped. About 50,000 people participated in this campaign.
Mockus also embraced the concept of community policing. He tried to bring the community and the police closer together through the creation of Schools of Civic Security and local security fronts. In 2003, there were about 7,000 local security fronts in Bogotá. "It is very important to understand that the Schools and Fronts respond to a civic ideal. They have nothing to do with firearms but basically promote community organization," Mockus points out.
Voluntary disarmament days were held in December 1996 and again in 2003. Though less than 1 percent of the firearms in the city were given up, homicides fell by 26 percent, thanks in part to the attention given to the program by the media. The percentage of people who think that it is better to have firearms in order to protect themselves fell from 24.8 percent in 2001 to 10.4 percent in 2003.
In 2003, the Mockus administration provided 1,235,000 homes with sewage service and 1,316,500 with water services. The city's provision of drinking water rose from 78.7 percent of homes in 1993 to 100 percent in 2003. The sewage service rose from 70.8 percent of homes in 1993 to 94.9 percent in 2003.
When Mockus assumed power, many city positions were distributed according to council members' recommendations. "I stopped that, and some called me an anti-patronage fundamentalist," Mockus said. He remembers that when he handed a text explaining his goals of transparency to one key council member, the council member first smiled, but later resigned.
women went out, flocking to free, open-air concerts. They flooded into bars that offered women-only drink specials and strolled down a central boulevard that had been converted into a pedestrian zone.
To avoid legal challenges, the mayor stated that the men's curfew was strictly voluntary. Men who simply couldn't bear to stay indoors during the six-hour restriction were asked to carry self-styled "safe conduct" passes. About 200,000 men went out that night, some of them angrily calling Mockus a "clown" in TV interviews.
But most men graciously embraced Mockus' campaign. In the lower-middle-class neighborhood of San Cristobal, women marched through the streets to celebrate their night. When they saw a man staying at home, carrying a baby, or taking care of children, the women stopped and applauded.
That night the police commander was a woman, and 1,500 women police were in charge of Bogotá's security.
Another innovative idea was to use mimes to improve both traffic and citizens' behavior. Initially 20 professional mimes shadowed pedestrians who didn't follow crossing rules: A pedestrian running across the road would be tracked by a mime who mocked his every move. Mimes also poked fun at reckless drivers. The program was so popular that another 400 people were trained as mimes.
"It was a pacifist counterweight," Mockus said. "With neither words nor weapons, the mimes were doubly unarmed. My goal was to show the importance of cultural regulations."

Comment:
much to learn from here. Face issues with art and creativity and respect for people.

From:
http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/2004/03.11/01-mockus.html

Title: Sunday, March 14, 2004 10:53:14 AM
Harvard Business Online

Text:
Microsoft's and Wal-Mart's preeminence in modern business has been attributed to any number of factors--from the vision and drive of their founders to the companies' aggressive competitive practices. But the authors maintain that a bigger factor of their success is the success of the networks of companies with which Microsoft and Wal-Mart do business. Most companies today inhabit ecosystems--loose networks of suppliers, distributors, and outsourcers; makers of related products or services; providers of relevant technology; and other organizations. The analogy between business networks and biological ecosystems vividly highlights certain pivotal concepts. The moves that a company makes will, to varying degrees, affect the health of its business network, which in turn will ultimately affect the organization's performance. Because a company, like an individual species in a biological ecosystem, ultimately shares its fate with the network as a whole, smart firms pursue strategies that will benefit everyone. So how can you promote the health and stability of your own ecosystem, determine your place in it, and develop a strategy to match your role? Knowing what to do requires understanding the ecosystem and your organization's role in it. Is your company a niche player, a keystone, or a dominator?

Comment:
And note the metaphors. It is fine to submaximise with your friends. The glue of these two networks is cash flow, and that requires anti-social actions, treating groups within society as in darwinian competition with each other till the pond is dry.

From:
http://harvardbusinessonline.hbsp.harvard.edu/b02/en/common/item_detail.jhtml?id=R0403E

Title: Sunday, March 14, 2004 10:50:50 AM
Harvard Business Online

Text:
Leaders who rely forever on the same internal advisers run the risk of being sold short and possibly betrayed. Alternatively, lone-wolf leaders may make enormous, yet preventable, mistakes when trying to sort through difficult decisions. A sophisticated understanding of trust can protect leaders from both fates. During the past decade, author and consultant Saj-nicole Joni studied leadership in more than 150 European and North American companies. Her research reveals three fundamental types of trust: personal trust, expertise trust, and structural trust. Executives may persevere in relationships that are based on personal trust, but such relationships are unlikely to remain static--and probably won't provide the kinds of deep, often specialized knowledge leaders need. In organizations, leaders develop expertise trust by working closely with people who consistently demonstrate their mastery of particular subjects or processes. Structural trust refers to how roles and ambitions influence advisers' perspectives and candor. Advisers in positions of the highest structural trust generally reside outside organizations, providing leaders with insights that their organizations cannot. High-performing leaders' most enduring valuable relationships are characterized by enormous levels of all three kinds of trust.

Comment:
Does this past the awake test? There is no sense here of trusting or being trutworthy to the society. It is all institutional loyalty, with the implicatins for the kind ogo such leaders have.

From:
http://harvardbusinessonline.hbsp.harvard.edu/b02/en/common/item_detail.jhtml?id=R0403F

Title: Sunday, March 14, 2004 10:42:43 AM
THE CONSTITUTION AND THE NATION (4 Volumes)

Text:
THE CONSTITUTION AND THE NATION (4 Volumes), by Christopher Waldrep
and Lynne Curry (eds.). New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 2003.
Volume 1: ESTABLISHING THE CONSTITUTION, 1215-1829. 214 pp. Paper $21.95 23.50 € 15.00 £. ISBN: 0-8204-5730-2.
Volume 2: THE CIVIL WAR AND AMERICAN CONSTITUTIONALISM, 1830-1890. 269 pp. Paper$21.95 23.50 € 15.00 £. ISBN: 0-8204-5731-0.
Volume 3: THE REGULATORY STATE, 1890-1945. 179 pp. Paper $21.95 23.50 € 15.00 £. ISBN: 0-8204-5732-9.
Volume 4: A REVOLUTION IN RIGHTS, 1937-2002. 269 pp. Paper $21.95 23.50 € 15.00 £. ISBN: 0-8204-5733-7.
Reviewed by Samuel B. Hoff, Department of History, Political Science, and Philosophy, Delaware State University. Email: shoff@desu.edu .

Comment:
Very impressive. Just reading the titles gives an important overview of the law, most of which we are too ignorant about.

From:
http://www.bsos.umd.edu/gvpt/lpbr/subpages/reviews/Waldrep-Curry304.htm

Title: Sunday, March 14, 2004 10:40:43 AM
washingtonpost.com: Right Makes Might

Text:
Bush does seem sincere enough in his moral opinions, contrary to an entirely cynical interpretation of his words and actions, but there is an impression of callow simple-mindedness in his moral sentiments; at the least, he has not thought through the complexities of the issues he is called upon to deal with.
The conventional view of George W. Bush is that, while he is a man of marked intellectual limitations, he is governed by a consistent set of deeply held moral convictions. Singer's book refutes this comforting myth. Bush is a man of sporadically good moral instincts, perhaps, as with his AIDS initiative, but he sways inconsistently and opportunistically in the political breeze, and has no idea how to make his beliefs fit coherently together. •

Comment:
Good summary, close to the opinion of history, my guess.

From:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A49757-2004Mar11?language=printer

Title: Sunday, March 14, 2004 10:38:04 AM
washingtonpost.com: Right Makes Might

Text:
The President of Good & Evil, Peter Singer's timely and searching new book, is in effect an ethics tutorial directed toward the leader of the "free world." Singer, professor of bioethics at Princeton University, gives Bush a D, if not an outright fail. The bulk of the book is a litany of moral inconsistencies and failures, of persistent hypocrisy and doublethink. Singer's method is to contrast Bush's enunciations of principle with the realities of his policies, finding repeatedly that political expediency triumphs over declarations of principle. The list is by now familiar, but worth assembling. Bush began his presidency lamenting the injustice of children born to poverty and disadvantage: "And this is my solemn pledge: I will work to build a single nation of justice and opportunity." Yet his enormous cuts in taxation clearly entail the withdrawal of resources from social programs that would help ameliorate such problems.

Comment:

From:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A49757-2004Mar11?language=printer

Title: Sunday, March 14, 2004 10:34:07 AM
washingtonpost.com: Crude Relations

Text:
Saudi Arabia has dire problems: Average annual income has dropped from around $20,000 to $8,000 in the past two decades; half the population are teenagers, many of whom are unlikely to have jobs in the future;

Comment:
bad trend

From:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A49755-2004Mar11?language=printer

Title: Sunday, March 14, 2004 10:29:27 AM
The Way We Live Now: The Year of Living Dangerously

Text:
Now that we are there, our problem is no longer hope and illusion but despair and disillusion. The press coverage from Baghdad is so gloomy that it's hard to remember that a dictator is gone, oil is pumping again and the proposed interim constitution contains strong human rights guarantees. We seem not even to recognize freedom when we see it: Shiites by the hundreds of thousands walking barefoot to celebrate in the holy city of Karbala, Iraqis turning up at town meetings and trying out democracy for the first time, newspapers and free media sprouting everywhere, daily demonstrations in the streets. If freedom is the only goal that redeems all the dying, there is more real freedom in Iraq than at any time in its history. And why should we suppose that freedom will be anything other than messy, chaotic, even frightening? Why should we be surprised that Iraqis are using their freedom to tell us to go home? Wouldn't we do just the same?
Freedom alone, of course, is not enough. Whether freedom turns into long-term constitutional order depends on whether a vicious resistance that does not hesitate to pit Muslim against Muslim, Iraqi against Iraqi, can drive an administration, fearful about its re-election, into drawing down U.S. forces. If the United States falters now, civil war is entirely possible. If it falters, it will betray everyone who has died for something better.
Interventions amount to a promise: we promise that we will leave the country better than we found it; we promise that those who died to get there did not die in vain. Never have these promises been harder to keep than in Iraq. The liberal internationalism I supported throughout the 1990's -- interventions in Bosnia, Kosovo and East Timor -- seems like child's play in comparison. Those actions were a gamble, but the gamble came with a guarantee of impunity: if we didn't succeed, the costs of failure were not punitive. Now in Iraq the game is in earnest. There is no impunity anymore. Good people are dying, and no president, Democrat or Republican, can afford to betray that sacrifice.
Michael Ignatieff, a contributing writer for the magazine, is director of the Carr Center at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

Comment:
Setting up pressurs against kerry algtering the course. The question of what if, what if it doesn't work, are not asked. The impact on the ME and Pkaistan are not asked about. The issue may come down to, can the US afford the effort it would take to make the Iraq intervention a success? And by afford I mean both our dollar capital and our once tendency to be moving towards a freer society? (the quality of curent public debate is actually the best in my lifetime).

From:
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/14/magazine/14WWLN.html?pagewanted=print&;position=

Title: Sunday, March 14, 2004 9:49:55 AM
The Value of Knowledge and the Pursuit of Understanding

Text:
There has been a spate of recent work in epistemology questioning some of the fundamental assumptions about the values that underlie epistemological theorizing. One of the most fundamental of these assumptions is that knowledge is always more valuable than mere true belief. This was considered so obvious for so long that it had hardly been questioned and virtually never been defended, at least not recently. But in The Value of Knowledge and the Pursuit of Understanding, Jonathan Kvanvig builds upon his earlier work to argue persuasively that accounting for the value of knowledge is much more difficult than had been assumed, and might even be impossible

Comment:
As knowledge hs become coopted by power and public policy, its value, in comparison to tradition and intuition, has been undercut. This leaves us weaker if society takes the probable path of trying to solve problems rather than retreat from them.

From:
http://ndpr.icaap.org/content/archives/2004/3/riggs-kvanvig.html

Title: Sunday, March 14, 2004 9:22:52 AM
International Social Science Review: The Middle East: some new realities and old problems.

Text:
The links between the academy and the panoply of American interests in the Middle East did not develop fully until the 1960s. Passage of Title VI of the National Defense Education Act in 1958 provided federal monies for the education of area and language experts. This did much to inaugurate what historian Bruce Cumings has termed the critical "state/intelligence/foundation nexus." The cross-pollination of scholars at key research centers, state experts and state monies, and corporate philanthropic organizations crystallized in the 1960s and 1970s. (8) Scholarship in the aid of progress along the American path conceived many of the development plans that were designed. While federal and foundation monies underwrote the budgets for expert planners and programs of economic aid and social reconstruction, government funding provided military assistance to strategically allied states in the Middle East. (9)

Comment:

From:
http://www.findarticles.com/cf_dls/m0IMR/1-2_78/106558979/print.jhtml

Title: Sunday, March 14, 2004 9:09:58 AM
International Social Science Review: The Middle East: some new realities and old problems.

Text:
Appearing before a joint session of Congress on March 12, 1947, President Harry S. Truman characterized Britain's pending withdrawal from Greece and Turkey as a "grave situation" affecting American national security that required an immediate response. He then outlined the basic principles around which American foreign policy in the developing areas of the world would revolve until the collapse of the Soviet Union in late 1991. An essential objective of American foreign policy entailed "the creation of conditions in which we and other nations will be able to work out a way of life free from coercion." Alternative systems of government and of life contended with one another for adherents. As Truman described the choice between opposites, "one way of life is based upon the will of the majority, and is distinguished by free institutions, representative government, free elections, guarantees of individual liberty, freedom of speech and religion, and freedom from political oppression." The other, by contrast, "is based upon the will of a minority forcibly imposed upon the majority. It relies upon terror and oppression, a controlled press and radio, fixed elections, and the suppression of personal freedoms." The Truman Doctrine firmly equated democracy, economic stability, and orderly political processes. These, the president argued, must be fostered through economic and financial aid, since "the seeds of totalitarian regimes are nurtured by misery and want. They spread and grow in the evil soil of poverty and strife. They reach their full growth when the hope of a people for a better life has died. We must keep that hope alive." (2)

Comment:
on the origin of the cold war and false democracy

From:
http://www.findarticles.com/cf_dls/m0IMR/1-2_78/106558979/print.jhtml

Rushing on..

Thu, 11 Mar 2004 22:20:01 GMT

That the Security Council pounced on The Basques, and by now it looks like not. Why the rush? Why not a good commision on Inqury, a serious look?

Insurance report on increased climate risks

Thu, 11 Mar 2004 21:21:39 GMT

On climate change

Insurer warns of global warming catastrophe The world's second-largest reinsurer, Swiss Re, warned on Wednesday that the costs of natural disasters, aggravated by global warming, threatened to spiral out of control, forcing the human race into a catastrophe of its own making.

In a report revealing how climate change is rising on the corporate agenda, Swiss Re said the economic costs of such disasters threatened to double to $150 billion (82 billion pounds) a year in 10 years, hitting insurers with $30-40 billion in claims, or the equivalent of one World Trade Centre attack annually.

"There is a danger that human intervention will accelerate and intensify natural climate changes to such a point that it will become impossible to adapt our socio-economic systems in time," Swiss Re said in the report.

"The human race can lead itself into this climatic catastrophe -- or it can avert it."

The report comes as a growing number of policy experts warn that the environment is emerging as the security threat of the 21st century, eclipsing terrorism.

Scientists expect global warming to trigger increasingly frequent and violent storms, heat waves, flooding, tornadoes, and cyclones while other areas slip into cold or drought.

"Sea levels will continue to rise, glaciers retreat and snow cover decline," the insurer wrote.

EXPONENTIAL RISE Losses to insurers from environmental events have risen exponentially over the past 30 years, and are expected to rise even more rapidly still, said Swiss Re climate expert Pamela Heck.

"Scientists tell us that certain extreme events are going to increase in intensity and frequency in the future," Heck told Reuters by telephone.

"Climate change is very much in the mind of the insurance industry."

Over the past century, the average global temperature has increased by

0.6 degrees Centigrade, the largest rise for the northern hemisphere in the past 1,000 years, Swiss Re said.

In the short- and medium-term, simply knowing that the planet is warming will allow society to adapt, for example, through infrastructure to cope with more-frequent floods or by instructing farmers to use drought-resistant cereals.

In other cases, governments need to restrict risk-taking, such as approving housing developments in low-lying areas, and improve catastrophe management capabilities.

In the long term, Swiss Re said, greenhouse gases widely thought to trigger global warming will need to be reduced, the use of fossil fuels cut and new energy technologies developed.

"The role of the insurance industry is through establishing risk adequate tariffs and to give the risk taker the opportunity to implement appropriate measures to reduce the chance of possible losses," Heck said.

http://news.ft.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=FT.com/WireFeed/WireFeed&;c=WireFeed&cid=1074160755828

China and military

Sun, 07 Mar 2004 17:22:30 GMT

Thi is importnat, to see trends

China hikes spending on military

China has announced another large increase in its military spending.
The increase of nearly 12% - higher than that of 2003 - will see an extra $2.6bn allocated to defence, officially raising the budget to more than $25bn

The reason this is so important is because China is in deep trouble socially. We may see the move towards military exploits - the US, China - to cover over social failure.

Sun, 07 Mar 2004 16:27:01 GMT

Symptom

SWEDISH BOGS FLOODING ATMOSPHERE WITH METHANE American Geophysical Union / ScienceBlog Wednesday, February 25, 2004

http://www.scienceblog.com/community/article2366.html

Alexander's fifteen points

Mon, 01 Mar 2004 22:16:19 GMT

Alexander's fifteen points for good community design

African multilateral police..

Sat, 28 Feb 2004 16:13:19 GMT

This seems very sane. If only the US had been the leader in this kind of initiative.

Leaders of African Union nations, meeting at a summit Saturday in Libya, are set to establish a multinational peacekeeping force aimed at resolving conflicts throughout the continent.

Delegates from the Union's 53 member states say details of the African peacekeeping force -- including how it will be funded -- are to be approved before the summit concludes later Saturday. The multinational force would have the authority to intervene militarily, where necessary, to end local or regional conflicts.

garbage to sculpture gardens

Thu, 26 Feb 2004 16:24:54 GMT

This is a good reminder of what can be done - anywhere. (Nick Chand in India - Chandagar is another).

Today, however, the trash is gone, and patches of dusty hillside have been planted with trees and vegetable gardens. Residents have built makeshift theaters and cooking huts, and walls of rock have been piled up to form "dialogue circles" - spaces for meetings, parties, and performances.

Projects like this reflect a "greening" movement that is slowly spreading in neglected urban townships and degraded rural settlements, where most South Africans live. While communities improve themselves for a variety of reasons, Soweto's changes were spearheaded by one individual, Mentoor, on a mission to bring culture and employment to his home. "Through the development of this mountain, the young people are having fun and giving back to their communities.... They are becoming changed people," says Mentoor. "They have ownership of it."

Evictions for Olympics - part of a pattern of privilage.

Thu, 26 Feb 2004 16:06:04 GMT

We do not see what we do. Remember that Dee Hok said "the function of business is to separte the consumer from the consequences of production."

'Thousands evicted' for Olympics

Reuters in Geneva
Thursday February 26, 2004
The Guardian

China had evicted 300,000 people from their homes in Beijing to prepare for the 2008 summer Olympics, the Geneva-based Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions (Cohre) said yesterday.

The group said the evictions were part of a global crisis which saw an average of six million people illegally thrown out of their homes every year.
The mayor of Beijing, Wang Qishan, admitted on Saturday that in some cases the demolition of homes and evictions had been conducted illegally.
Scott Leckie, the executive director of Cohre, said: "Large international events including global conferences and sporting events like the Olympic Games are mostly accompanied by forced evictions.

Alternative currency bibliography

Wed, 25 Feb 2004 17:44:01 GMT

Thinking about alternative currencies, the following biblio is helpful

Hayek, F. A. 1976. Denationalisation of Money -- The Argument Refined: An Analysis of the Theory and Practice of Concurrent Currencies . London: Institute of Economic Affairs.

Friedrich A.Hayek: Denationalization of Money--The Argument Refined: An Analysis of the Theory and Practice of Concurrent Currencies, 2nd ed., Hobart Special Paper 70, London: Institute of Economic Affairs, 1978

Hayek, F. A. 1990. Denationalisation of Money -- The Argument Refined: An Analysis of the Theory and Practice of Concurrent Currencies. Third Edition. London: Institute of Economic Affairs.

For the following compare:

Latzer M, S.W.Schmitz(Eds. 2002): Carl Menger and the Evolution of Payment Systems: From Barter to electronic Money. Cheltenham, UK, Northampton, MA,USA: E.Elgar. esp. 159-170

Klein B., 1974: The Competitive Supply of Money, Journal of Money Credit and Banking, 6, pp 423-53 Vaubel R. 1984: The Governments Money Monopol: Externalities or Natural Monopoly?, Kyklos 37, pp.27-58

Vaubel, R. 1985: Competing Currencies: The Case for Free Entry, Zeitschrift für Wirtschafts- und sozialwissenschaften,5, pp 547-64

Vaubel R.Currency Competition: Free Entra versus Governmental Legal Monopoly. in K.Groeneveld, J.A.H.Maks and J.Muyksen (eds) (1990), Economic Policy and the Market Process: Austrian and Mainstream Economics, Amsterdam: North Holland

Issing 2000: Hayek, Currency Competition and European Monetary Union - with commentaries by Lawrene H. White and Roland Vaubel, Inst. of Economic Affairs

Vaubel R. 2000: Commentary (on Issing 2000): in O.Issing (1999), Hayek, Currency Competition and European Monetary Union - with commentaries by Lawrene H. White and Roland Vaubel, Inst. of Economic Affairs, Occasional Paper 111, London pp.49-53

Hellwig, M,1985: What do we know about Courrency Competition?, Zeitschrift für Wirtschaft und Sozialwissenschaften, 5, pp.565-88

Dowd, K.; D. Greenway 1993: 'Currency Competition, Newtwork Externalities and Switching Costs: towards an Alternative View of Optimal Currency Areas', The Economic Journnal 103, pp.1180-9

Taub B 1985: Private Fiat Money with Many Suppliers, J. of Monetary Economics,16, pp.195

Selgin 1997: Network Effects, Adaptive Learning, and the Transition to Fiat Money. Working Paper. Dep of Economics, Terry College of Business, Univ. of Georgia, Athens

White L.H. 1999: The Theory of Monetary Institutions, Oxford: Blackwell Publishers

White L.H. 2000: Commentrary (on Issing 2000) in O.Issing (1999), Hayek, Currency Competition and European Monetary Union - with commentaries by Lawrene H. White and Roland Vaubel, Inst. of Economic Affairs, Occasional Paper 111, London, pp.39-47

I would be glad to see the final report of the senior project (and may be - before that - the collected list of publications you get just now).

I wrote once a little about the topic but did not know most of above references (other than Hayek) and elaborated soemwhat on alternate money at the time of hyperinflation in the 1920ies+ in Germany and Austrai. However, this is in German and highly inadequate.

Peter Sint

Some google results (+concurrent.currencies):

http://www.eh.net/XIIICongress/cd/papers/15Kuroda83.pdf

http://www.jorim.nl/

http://www.jorim.nl/economicscommunitycurrencies.pdf

http://www.econlib.org/library/Essays/LtrLbrty/brnCCMR2.html

much is partisan directed

http://www.worldservice.org/issues/octnov95/banking.html

http://www.libertarian.co.uk/lapubs/econn/econn073.pdf

http://www.jubileeplus.org/opinion/shann_Liquidwb.htm

http://www.cato.org/moneyconf/14mc-3.html

http://www.econlib.org/library/Essays/LtrLbrty/brnCCMR2.html

http://www.geog.le.ac.uk/ijccr/vol4-6/5no1.htm

http://cog.kent.edu/archives/ownership/msg00641.html

demographics of age - time for wisdom?

Wed, 18 Feb 2004 14:16:57 GMT

As the world's population ages, could this not be a time to pay more attention to wisdom? Seriously.

Bush and Israel

Fri, 13 Feb 2004 20:56:57 GMT

On Israel and US support..

I have a suspicion that Bush and co are looking for a way to escallate before election. Taking Israel's side in a definiteive war against terorism would be one such. The hope is that the President, wounded by all the latest, will turn cautious. But losing the election or trying for a KO? And new legitimacy?

The uglier issue is jewish support for Bush as he ups his support of Sharon.

Thu, 12 Feb 2004 16:29:24 GMT

This is dramatic and importnat. The transcript and early warnings of the first plane to crash..

http://www.observer.com/pages/frontpage1.asp

"We know what she said from notes, and the government has them," said Mary Schiavo, the formidable former Inspector General of the Department of Transportation, whose nickname among aviation officials was "Scary Mary." Ms. Schiavo sat in on the commission’s hearing on aviation security on 9/11 and was disgusted by what it left out. "In any other situation, it would be unthinkable to withhold investigative material from an independent commission," she told this writer. "There are usually grave consequences. But the commission is clearly not talking to everybody or not telling us everything."

Bush war record - the drama

Thu, 12 Feb 2004 03:54:23 GMT

Interesting how it took Kerry to be a serious candidate with a war record to allow the press to go after Bush's. The story is not a story unless contrast can emerge. I'd never thought of that.

Photo Essay

Thu, 05 Feb 2004 19:57:58 GMT

Check out thisn remarkable photo essay from an around the worldequatorial trip...

http://www.time.com/time/2004/equator/essay09.html

keep cliking on the next, there are about 100 photos.

And then think about how these lives support our consumption..

Title:		Sunday, March 14, 2004 11:04:45 AM Harvard Gazette: Academic turns city into a social experiment
Text:		Women's night and mimes There is almost always a civics lesson behind Mockus' antics. Florence Thomas, a feminist and a professor at Colombian National University, pointed out to Mockus that in Bogotá women were afraid to go out at night. "At that time, we were also looking for what would be the best image of a safe city, and I realized that if you see streets with many women you feel safer," Mockus explained. So he asked men to stay home and suggested that both sexes should take advantage of the "Night for Women" to reflect on women's role in society. About 700,000 More of Mockus in Bogotá Here are a few more innovations from Antanas Mockus' two mayoral terms: Mockus mobilized people to protest against violence and terrorist attacks. He invented a "vaccine against violence," asking people to draw the faces of the people who had hurt them on balloons, which they then popped. About 50,000 people participated in this campaign. Mockus also embraced the concept of community policing. He tried to bring the community and the police closer together through the creation of Schools of Civic Security and local security fronts. In 2003, there were about 7,000 local security fronts in Bogotá. "It is very important to understand that the Schools and Fronts respond to a civic ideal. They have nothing to do with firearms but basically promote community organization," Mockus points out. Voluntary disarmament days were held in December 1996 and again in 2003. Though less than 1 percent of the firearms in the city were given up, homicides fell by 26 percent, thanks in part to the attention given to the program by the media. The percentage of people who think that it is better to have firearms in order to protect themselves fell from 24.8 percent in 2001 to 10.4 percent in 2003. In 2003, the Mockus administration provided 1,235,000 homes with sewage service and 1,316,500 with water services. The city's provision of drinking water rose from 78.7 percent of homes in 1993 to 100 percent in 2003. The sewage service rose from 70.8 percent of homes in 1993 to 94.9 percent in 2003. When Mockus assumed power, many city positions were distributed according to council members' recommendations. "I stopped that, and some called me an anti-patronage fundamentalist," Mockus said. He remembers that when he handed a text explaining his goals of transparency to one key council member, the council member first smiled, but later resigned. women went out, flocking to free, open-air concerts. They flooded into bars that offered women-only drink specials and strolled down a central boulevard that had been converted into a pedestrian zone. To avoid legal challenges, the mayor stated that the men's curfew was strictly voluntary. Men who simply couldn't bear to stay indoors during the six-hour restriction were asked to carry self-styled "safe conduct" passes. About 200,000 men went out that night, some of them angrily calling Mockus a "clown" in TV interviews. But most men graciously embraced Mockus' campaign. In the lower-middle-class neighborhood of San Cristobal, women marched through the streets to celebrate their night. When they saw a man staying at home, carrying a baby, or taking care of children, the women stopped and applauded. That night the police commander was a woman, and 1,500 women police were in charge of Bogotá's security. Another innovative idea was to use mimes to improve both traffic and citizens' behavior. Initially 20 professional mimes shadowed pedestrians who didn't follow crossing rules: A pedestrian running across the road would be tracked by a mime who mocked his every move. Mimes also poked fun at reckless drivers. The program was so popular that another 400 people were trained as mimes. "It was a pacifist counterweight," Mockus said. "With neither words nor weapons, the mimes were doubly unarmed. My goal was to show the importance of cultural regulations."
Comment:		much to learn from here. Face issues with art and creativity and respect for people.
From:		http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/2004/03.11/01-mockus.html

Title:		Sunday, March 14, 2004 10:53:14 AM Harvard Business Online
Text:		Microsoft's and Wal-Mart's preeminence in modern business has been attributed to any number of factors--from the vision and drive of their founders to the companies' aggressive competitive practices. But the authors maintain that a bigger factor of their success is the success of the networks of companies with which Microsoft and Wal-Mart do business. Most companies today inhabit ecosystems--loose networks of suppliers, distributors, and outsourcers; makers of related products or services; providers of relevant technology; and other organizations. The analogy between business networks and biological ecosystems vividly highlights certain pivotal concepts. The moves that a company makes will, to varying degrees, affect the health of its business network, which in turn will ultimately affect the organization's performance. Because a company, like an individual species in a biological ecosystem, ultimately shares its fate with the network as a whole, smart firms pursue strategies that will benefit everyone. So how can you promote the health and stability of your own ecosystem, determine your place in it, and develop a strategy to match your role? Knowing what to do requires understanding the ecosystem and your organization's role in it. Is your company a niche player, a keystone, or a dominator?
Comment:		And note the metaphors. It is fine to submaximise with your friends. The glue of these two networks is cash flow, and that requires anti-social actions, treating groups within society as in darwinian competition with each other till the pond is dry.
From:		http://harvardbusinessonline.hbsp.harvard.edu/b02/en/common/item_detail.jhtml?id=R0403E

Title:		Sunday, March 14, 2004 10:50:50 AM Harvard Business Online
Text:		Leaders who rely forever on the same internal advisers run the risk of being sold short and possibly betrayed. Alternatively, lone-wolf leaders may make enormous, yet preventable, mistakes when trying to sort through difficult decisions. A sophisticated understanding of trust can protect leaders from both fates. During the past decade, author and consultant Saj-nicole Joni studied leadership in more than 150 European and North American companies. Her research reveals three fundamental types of trust: personal trust, expertise trust, and structural trust. Executives may persevere in relationships that are based on personal trust, but such relationships are unlikely to remain static--and probably won't provide the kinds of deep, often specialized knowledge leaders need. In organizations, leaders develop expertise trust by working closely with people who consistently demonstrate their mastery of particular subjects or processes. Structural trust refers to how roles and ambitions influence advisers' perspectives and candor. Advisers in positions of the highest structural trust generally reside outside organizations, providing leaders with insights that their organizations cannot. High-performing leaders' most enduring valuable relationships are characterized by enormous levels of all three kinds of trust.
Comment:		Does this past the awake test? There is no sense here of trusting or being trutworthy to the society. It is all institutional loyalty, with the implicatins for the kind ogo such leaders have.
From:		http://harvardbusinessonline.hbsp.harvard.edu/b02/en/common/item_detail.jhtml?id=R0403F

Title:		Sunday, March 14, 2004 10:42:43 AM THE CONSTITUTION AND THE NATION (4 Volumes)
Text:		THE CONSTITUTION AND THE NATION (4 Volumes), by Christopher Waldrep and Lynne Curry (eds.). New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 2003. Volume 1: ESTABLISHING THE CONSTITUTION, 1215-1829. 214 pp. Paper $21.95 23.50 € 15.00 £. ISBN: 0-8204-5730-2. Volume 2: THE CIVIL WAR AND AMERICAN CONSTITUTIONALISM, 1830-1890. 269 pp. Paper$21.95 23.50 € 15.00 £. ISBN: 0-8204-5731-0. Volume 3: THE REGULATORY STATE, 1890-1945. 179 pp. Paper $21.95 23.50 € 15.00 £. ISBN: 0-8204-5732-9. Volume 4: A REVOLUTION IN RIGHTS, 1937-2002. 269 pp. Paper $21.95 23.50 € 15.00 £. ISBN: 0-8204-5733-7. Reviewed by Samuel B. Hoff, Department of History, Political Science, and Philosophy, Delaware State University. Email: shoff@desu.edu .
Comment:		Very impressive. Just reading the titles gives an important overview of the law, most of which we are too ignorant about.
From:		http://www.bsos.umd.edu/gvpt/lpbr/subpages/reviews/Waldrep-Curry304.htm

Title:		Sunday, March 14, 2004 10:40:43 AM washingtonpost.com: Right Makes Might
Text:		Bush does seem sincere enough in his moral opinions, contrary to an entirely cynical interpretation of his words and actions, but there is an impression of callow simple-mindedness in his moral sentiments; at the least, he has not thought through the complexities of the issues he is called upon to deal with. The conventional view of George W. Bush is that, while he is a man of marked intellectual limitations, he is governed by a consistent set of deeply held moral convictions. Singer's book refutes this comforting myth. Bush is a man of sporadically good moral instincts, perhaps, as with his AIDS initiative, but he sways inconsistently and opportunistically in the political breeze, and has no idea how to make his beliefs fit coherently together. •
Comment:		Good summary, close to the opinion of history, my guess.
From:		http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A49757-2004Mar11?language=printer

Title:		Sunday, March 14, 2004 10:38:04 AM washingtonpost.com: Right Makes Might
Text:		The President of Good & Evil, Peter Singer's timely and searching new book, is in effect an ethics tutorial directed toward the leader of the "free world." Singer, professor of bioethics at Princeton University, gives Bush a D, if not an outright fail. The bulk of the book is a litany of moral inconsistencies and failures, of persistent hypocrisy and doublethink. Singer's method is to contrast Bush's enunciations of principle with the realities of his policies, finding repeatedly that political expediency triumphs over declarations of principle. The list is by now familiar, but worth assembling. Bush began his presidency lamenting the injustice of children born to poverty and disadvantage: "And this is my solemn pledge: I will work to build a single nation of justice and opportunity." Yet his enormous cuts in taxation clearly entail the withdrawal of resources from social programs that would help ameliorate such problems.
Comment:
From:		http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A49757-2004Mar11?language=printer

Title:		Sunday, March 14, 2004 10:34:07 AM washingtonpost.com: Crude Relations
Text:		Saudi Arabia has dire problems: Average annual income has dropped from around $20,000 to $8,000 in the past two decades; half the population are teenagers, many of whom are unlikely to have jobs in the future;
Comment:		bad trend
From:		http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A49755-2004Mar11?language=printer

Title:		Sunday, March 14, 2004 10:29:27 AM The Way We Live Now: The Year of Living Dangerously
Text:		Now that we are there, our problem is no longer hope and illusion but despair and disillusion. The press coverage from Baghdad is so gloomy that it's hard to remember that a dictator is gone, oil is pumping again and the proposed interim constitution contains strong human rights guarantees. We seem not even to recognize freedom when we see it: Shiites by the hundreds of thousands walking barefoot to celebrate in the holy city of Karbala, Iraqis turning up at town meetings and trying out democracy for the first time, newspapers and free media sprouting everywhere, daily demonstrations in the streets. If freedom is the only goal that redeems all the dying, there is more real freedom in Iraq than at any time in its history. And why should we suppose that freedom will be anything other than messy, chaotic, even frightening? Why should we be surprised that Iraqis are using their freedom to tell us to go home? Wouldn't we do just the same? Freedom alone, of course, is not enough. Whether freedom turns into long-term constitutional order depends on whether a vicious resistance that does not hesitate to pit Muslim against Muslim, Iraqi against Iraqi, can drive an administration, fearful about its re-election, into drawing down U.S. forces. If the United States falters now, civil war is entirely possible. If it falters, it will betray everyone who has died for something better. Interventions amount to a promise: we promise that we will leave the country better than we found it; we promise that those who died to get there did not die in vain. Never have these promises been harder to keep than in Iraq. The liberal internationalism I supported throughout the 1990's -- interventions in Bosnia, Kosovo and East Timor -- seems like child's play in comparison. Those actions were a gamble, but the gamble came with a guarantee of impunity: if we didn't succeed, the costs of failure were not punitive. Now in Iraq the game is in earnest. There is no impunity anymore. Good people are dying, and no president, Democrat or Republican, can afford to betray that sacrifice. Michael Ignatieff, a contributing writer for the magazine, is director of the Carr Center at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.
Comment:		Setting up pressurs against kerry algtering the course. The question of what if, what if it doesn't work, are not asked. The impact on the ME and Pkaistan are not asked about. The issue may come down to, can the US afford the effort it would take to make the Iraq intervention a success? And by afford I mean both our dollar capital and our once tendency to be moving towards a freer society? (the quality of curent public debate is actually the best in my lifetime).
From:		http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/14/magazine/14WWLN.html?pagewanted=print&;position=

Title:		Sunday, March 14, 2004 9:49:55 AM The Value of Knowledge and the Pursuit of Understanding
Text:		There has been a spate of recent work in epistemology questioning some of the fundamental assumptions about the values that underlie epistemological theorizing. One of the most fundamental of these assumptions is that knowledge is always more valuable than mere true belief. This was considered so obvious for so long that it had hardly been questioned and virtually never been defended, at least not recently. But in The Value of Knowledge and the Pursuit of Understanding, Jonathan Kvanvig builds upon his earlier work to argue persuasively that accounting for the value of knowledge is much more difficult than had been assumed, and might even be impossible
Comment:		As knowledge hs become coopted by power and public policy, its value, in comparison to tradition and intuition, has been undercut. This leaves us weaker if society takes the probable path of trying to solve problems rather than retreat from them.
From:		http://ndpr.icaap.org/content/archives/2004/3/riggs-kvanvig.html

Title:		Sunday, March 14, 2004 9:22:52 AM International Social Science Review: The Middle East: some new realities and old problems.
Text:		The links between the academy and the panoply of American interests in the Middle East did not develop fully until the 1960s. Passage of Title VI of the National Defense Education Act in 1958 provided federal monies for the education of area and language experts. This did much to inaugurate what historian Bruce Cumings has termed the critical "state/intelligence/foundation nexus." The cross-pollination of scholars at key research centers, state experts and state monies, and corporate philanthropic organizations crystallized in the 1960s and 1970s. (8) Scholarship in the aid of progress along the American path conceived many of the development plans that were designed. While federal and foundation monies underwrote the budgets for expert planners and programs of economic aid and social reconstruction, government funding provided military assistance to strategically allied states in the Middle East. (9)
Comment:
From:		http://www.findarticles.com/cf_dls/m0IMR/1-2_78/106558979/print.jhtml

Title:		Sunday, March 14, 2004 9:09:58 AM International Social Science Review: The Middle East: some new realities and old problems.
Text:		Appearing before a joint session of Congress on March 12, 1947, President Harry S. Truman characterized Britain's pending withdrawal from Greece and Turkey as a "grave situation" affecting American national security that required an immediate response. He then outlined the basic principles around which American foreign policy in the developing areas of the world would revolve until the collapse of the Soviet Union in late 1991. An essential objective of American foreign policy entailed "the creation of conditions in which we and other nations will be able to work out a way of life free from coercion." Alternative systems of government and of life contended with one another for adherents. As Truman described the choice between opposites, "one way of life is based upon the will of the majority, and is distinguished by free institutions, representative government, free elections, guarantees of individual liberty, freedom of speech and religion, and freedom from political oppression." The other, by contrast, "is based upon the will of a minority forcibly imposed upon the majority. It relies upon terror and oppression, a controlled press and radio, fixed elections, and the suppression of personal freedoms." The Truman Doctrine firmly equated democracy, economic stability, and orderly political processes. These, the president argued, must be fostered through economic and financial aid, since "the seeds of totalitarian regimes are nurtured by misery and want. They spread and grow in the evil soil of poverty and strife. They reach their full growth when the hope of a people for a better life has died. We must keep that hope alive." (2)
Comment:		on the origin of the cold war and false democracy
From:		http://www.findarticles.com/cf_dls/m0IMR/1-2_78/106558979/print.jhtml