MY POV

IF YOU'RE NOT OUTRAGED, YOU'RE NOT PAYING ATTENTION!

"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."

Benjamin Franklin

How Bush really feels about you.

The Mars Society

Satire has never served a better purpose. Go see.
Before they cart us off to the camps.

"...The Fascist State organizes the nation, but leaves a sufficient margin of liberty to the individual; the latter is deprived of all useless and possibly harmful freedom, but retains what is essential; the deciding power in this question cannot be the individual, but the State alone...."

Benito Mussolini

"I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country... Corporations have been enthroned, an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money-power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until the wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed."

Abraham Lincoln
November 12, 1864

"Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided man."

Martin Luther King Jr., 1963

"CORPORATION, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility."

Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary

"The purpose of separation of church and state is to keep forever from these shores the ceaseless strife that has soaked the soil of Europe in blood for centuries."

James Madison
(1751-1836)
4th President of the United States

"Wherever they burn books they will also, in the end, burn human beings."

Heinrich Heine
Almansor, 1823

"Why of course the people don't want war. Why should some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece? Naturally, the common people don't want war: neither in Russia, nor in England, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship.

Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country."

Hermann Goering, Nazi Reichsmarschall

"Authoritarian societies inevitably crumble because they silence the critics who could save them from errors of blind hubris. Dissent is not a luxury to be indulged in the best of times, but rather an obligation of free people, particularly when the very notion of dissent is unpopular."

Robert Scheer

"FASCISM: a system of government that exercises a dictatorship of the extreme right, typically through the merging of state and business leadership together with belligerent nationalism."

American Heritage Dictionary

Cowardice asks the question - is it safe?
Expediency asks the question - is it politic?
Vanity asks the question - is it popular?
But conscience asks the question - is it right?
And there comes a time when one must take a position that is
neither safe, nor politic, nor popular; but one must take it
because it is right.

Dr. Martin Luther King

"My life is my message."

Gandhi

Posted: 30 Jan. 2005

I love to study ancient cultures and the Peruvian cultures are amongst the most interesting. This is a great article about recent discoveries of the Chavin, who predated the Inka by thousands of years. The underground tunnels remind me of the labyrinth from LeGuin's second Earthsea novel.

What Lies Beneath
In Peru 3,000 years ago, priests sent their followers into a bizarre underground maze. John Rick reveals what happened down there.
BY Tyler Bridges

IMAGINE A SOCIETY in which there was no governing force over a village or settlement—no hierarchical management, no division of labor, and no assumption of privilege or power. That was what existed among Andean people—and much of the rest of the world—before Chavín de Huántar was built, Rick says. "We just assume because of the way our world works that leadership and authority are built into society. [Most of] the archaeological record shows no haves or have-nots.

"Chavín is a monument to the idea that certain people have greater access to power than others," he adds. "If you want to create the idea of authority you have to develop the belief that people who are similar in appearance and ability are actually different. This requires convincing. You’re altering the basic idea of human organization. You have to create a different world."

To do that, the priest-elite at Chavín engineered an underground marvel. Using the maze of passageways as a disorienting venue, they constructed elaborate systems to manipulate light and sound, and introduced this to novitiates they hoped to impress. Would-be followers from the surrounding area would have come to Chavín on a pilgrimage, "paying" in materials or labor. The ritual would have begun, most likely, by ingesting a hallucinogenic powder or a liquid extracted from the San Pedro cactus. As the Chavín subjects walked through the dark, cramped halls, the sound of Strombus trumpets echoed around them from some unseen source. Water roared through canals beneath their feet (or, strangely, overhead), producing a heavy percussion amplified by the drugs. Mirrors placed in ventilation ducts to reflect the sun poured brilliant shafts of light into the subterranean hallways, only to be "turned off," thrusting the occupant into blackness as dark as obsidian. By the time the subjects emerged from the chambers, staggering and stunned, their perspective had been altered forever. The unmistakable impression: somebody powerful was in charge.

READ THE REST.

Posted: 29 Jan. 2005

This is absolutely fascinating.

Senses special: The art of seeing without sight
From New Scientist, Alison Motluk IT IS an odd sight. A middle-aged man, fully reclined, drawing pictures of hammers and mugs and animal figurines on a special clipboard, which is balanced precariously on a pillow atop his ample stomach. A half-dozen people buzz around him. One adjusts a towel under his neck to make him more comfortable, another wields a stopwatch and chants instructions to start doing this or stop doing that, and yet another translates everything into Turkish. A small group convenes in a corner to assess the proceedings. A few of us just stand around watching, and trying not to get in the way. The elaborate ritual is a practice run for an upcoming brain scan and the researchers want to get everything just right. Meanwhile, the man at the centre of all this attention, a blind painter, cracks jokes that keep everyone tittering. The painter is Esref Armagan. And he is here in Boston to see if a peek inside his brain can explain how a man who has never seen can paint pictures that the sighted easily recognise - and even admire. He paints houses and mountains and lakes and faces and butterflies, but he's never seen any of these things. He depicts colour, shadow and perspective, but it is not clear how he could have witnessed these things either. How does he do it? Because if Armagan can represent images in the same way a sighted person can, it raises big questions not only about how our brains construct mental images, but also about the role those images play in seeing. Do we build up mental images using just our eyes or do other senses contribute too? How much can congenitally blind people really understand about space and the layout of objects within it? How much "seeing" does a blind person actually do? READ THE REST.

Posted: 28 Jan. 2005

Found on the net.

first they came for bert and ernie
and i said nothing because i was not a muppet

then they came for tinky winky
and i said nothing because i was not a teletubby

then they came for spongebob and patrick
and i said nothing because i was not an asexual cartoon sea creature

and now i'm just wondering who'll be the next target of the
righteous conservative wrath against imaginary creatures

Of course, the satire of the above only works if you're familiar with the original quote by Martin Niemoeller.

First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out--
    because I was not a communist;
Then they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out--
    because I was not a socialist;
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out--
    because I was not a trade unionist;
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out--
    because I was not a Jew;
Then they came for me--
    and there was no one left to speak out for me.

Additional info from Christian Ethics Today.

Niemoeller was a leader in the mobilization of the Pastors' Emergency League, in the Synod that denounced the abuses of the dictatorship in the famous "Six Articles of Barmen," and in other visible joint actions and sermons that finally led to his arrest on 1 July 1937. There were then a few honest judges still functioning in Germany, and when the court let him go with a slap on the wrist Hitler personally ordered his incarceration. Niemoeller was in concentration camp, including long periods of solitary confinement, until the end of the war.

It's not just a cult, it's a Dominionist cult.

The Military is Nowhere; the Press is Nowhere; the Congress is Nowhere...
We've Been Taken Over By a Cult

By SEYMOUR HERSH

one of the things that you could say is, the amazing thing is we are been taken over basically by a cult, eight or nine neo-conservatives have somehow grabbed the government. Just how and why and how they did it so efficiently, will have to wait for much later historians and better documentation than we have now, but they managed to overcome the bureaucracy and the Congress, and the press, with the greatest of ease. It does say something about how fragile our Democracy is. You do have to wonder what a Democracy is when it comes down to a few men in the Pentagon and a few men in the White House having their way. What they have done is neutralize the C.I.A. because there were people there inside -- the real goal of what Goss has done was not attack the operational people, but the intelligence people. There were people -- serious senior analysts who disagree with the White House, with Cheney, basically, that's what I mean by White House, and Rumsfeld on a lot of issues, as somebody said, the goal in the last month has been to separate the apostates from the true believers. That's what's happening. The real target has been "diminish the agency." I'm writing about all of this soon, so I don't want to overdo it, but there's been a tremendous sea change in the government. A concentration of power.
****
For me, it's just another story, but out of this comes a core of -- you know, we all deal in "macro" in Washington. On the macro, we're hopeless. We're nowhere. The press is nowhere. The congress is nowhere. The military is nowhere. Every four-star General I know is saying, "Who is going to tell them we have no clothes?" Nobody is going to do it. Everybody is afraid to tell Rumsfeld anything. That's just the way it is. It's a system built on fear. It's not lack of integrity, it's more profound than that. Because there is individual integrity. It's a system that's completely been taken over -- by cultists. Anyway, what's going to happen, I think, as the casualties mount and these stories get around, and the mothers see the cost and the fathers see the cost, as the kids come home. And the wounded ones come back, and there's wards that you will never hear about. That's wards -- you know about the terrible catastrophic injuries, but you don't know about the vegetables. There's ward after ward of vegetables because the brain injuries are so enormous.

READ THE REST.

From Grist on-line magazine.

HERE A WHITMAN, THERE A WHITMAN, EVERYWHERE A WHITMAN-WHITMAN
Christie Whitman does the rounds criticizing Republican radicalism

Ex-EPA chief Christine Todd Whitman's new book "It's My Party Too" is out now, and she is having her moment of media ubiquity, bashing what she calls the increasing extremism of the Republican Party. In interviews and appearances on such commie-pinko outlets as NPR's "Fresh Air" and "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart," Whitman is revealing some of the details behind her decision to bail on her thankless job in 2003. The final straw, she says, was when it became clear that the White House was going to get behind weakened rules on power-plant emissions. Because she couldn't sign off on such regs "in good conscience," she left. She also dishes some juicy gossip (in her buttoned-up, patrician way) about Cheney's monomaniacal energy task force, the administration's torpedoing of chemical-plant safety regulations, and Bush's decision to reverse his campaign pledge on regulating CO2 emissions. Naturally, she's being savaged. "I expected criticism, but I'm surprised at how personal the attacks are," she said, raising doubts as to just how well she knows her party after all.

straight to the source: The Philadelphia Inquirer, Chris Mondics, 27 Jan 2005

straight to the source: The Star-Ledger, Alexander Lane, 28 Jan 2005

straight to the source: The New York Times, David Kocieniewski, 26 Jan 2005

From The Center for American Progress

CORRUPTION
Payola Part Three

Drip. Drip. Drip. Yesterday, Salon revealed that a third conservative syndicated columnist has been paid off by the Bush administration. Michael McManus was paid $10,000 to promote President Bush's marriage initiative, the same program Maggie Gallagher was paid to promote. Like Gallagher and Armstrong Williams, McManus failed to disclose that he was on the administration's payroll in his column, which appears in 50 newspapers nationwide, including the Washington Times, the Dallas Morning News and the Charlotte Observer.

WADE HORN – THE PAYOLA POINT MAN: The payoffs to both McManus and Gallagher can be traced back to one man, Assistant Secretary of Health and Human Services Wade F. Horn. It was Horn's staff that cut McManus the $10,000 check. Horn is also a former board member of Marriage Savers, the group McManus founded in 1996. (Besides the 10K to McManus, the administration paid Marriage Savers an additional $49,000.) According to the 1/15/04 Orlando Sentinel, prior to joining HHS in 2001, Horn founded the National Fatherhood Initiative and "obtained a federal grant to study the effectiveness of the community marriage policy programs." Twenty thousand dollars from that grant was funneled to Maggie Gallagher. In her syndicated column on 4/16/02, Gallagher urged HHS to adopt the recommendations of her study, which she didn't mention was paid for with administration money. (She also failed to mention her contract with HHS, worth another $21,500.)

THE HERITAGE CONNECTION: You can find the full archive of columns from government-funded columnists Williams and Gallagher on the Heritage Foundation's website, Townhall.com. Heritage also helped procure over $46,000 from HHS for Marriage Savers, which used the money to study its efforts to convince low-income couples to get married. The administration later touted the study in a May 2004 press conference as evidence that its "Healthy Marriage Initiative" could work.

BLACK CLOUD OF SUSPICION HANGS OVER CONSERVATIVES: According to Tony Blankley, editorial page editor of the right-wing Washington Times, the administration's payoffs to Gallagher and Williams (and now McManus) have cast "a cloud over conservatives." Right-wing columnists, aware that Payolagate threatens their own credibility, are speaking out against the administration's actions. Debra Sanders, a conservative columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle, says she is "appalled." James Pinkerton, a Newsday columnist who worked for Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, said, "You shouldn't be on the government payroll. It's KGB-ish."

FEDERAL SPENDING ON PR SKYROCKETS: It takes a whole lot of money to make the Bush administration's policies look good. In 2004, the Bush administration funneled over $88 million in taxpayer money to public relations firms. That represents an increase of 128 percent since 2000. Worse, 40 percent of that money is awarded to firms without competitive bidding. The Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services has spent nearly $100 million over the last four years contracting with public relations firms to sell the administration's policies to the public.

RIGHT WING
Bye Bye Base

As the White House pushes its right-wing economic agenda into overdrive, opposition is coming from the most unlikely of places: conservatives. In Congress, in state capitals, and among socially conservative activist groups, President Bush is finding that his plans to privatize Social Security and enact more tax cuts while gutting funding for priorities like veterans' health care are running up against voices of conscience on the right. The result is that just a week after being inaugurated, the president's legislative agenda is in jeopardy.

SENATE CONSERVATIVES BUCK WHITE HOUSE ON SOCIAL SECURITY: Under the headline "Republicans Skeptical of Bush Social Security Plan," the Los Angeles Times reports that various conservative senators are raising questions about the White House plan to privatize Social Security. For instance, Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-ME) now says she is "certainly not going to support diverting $ 2 trillion from Social Security into creating personal savings accounts." Bloomberg reports that Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) "says Bush should consider raising the $90,000 cap on yearly income subject to Social Security taxes." The administration is so concerned with the disarray among its conservative ranks that, according to the Washington Post, the president held a special meeting at the White House to "plead for patience" from conservative lawmakers as they make the case for dismantling Social Security.

SOCIAL CONSERVATIVES NOT PLAYING BALL: The White House is also having trouble with its traditional base of social conservatives. The New York Times reports that various conservative Christian groups wrote a letter to the White House indicating that they "lack [e]nthusiasm for changing the retirement system or other tax issues." The groups are "threatening to withhold support" for the privatization scheme "unless Mr. Bush vigorously champions a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage." This follows an earlier NY Times story about how social conservatives are at odds with the Big Business cronies of conservative lawmakers who only want to cut taxes for the wealthy. "People are not going to give the kind of support necessary for tax reform that leaves the investor class untaxed," said one top religious conservative leader.

FORMER BUSH BUDGET CHIEF ABANDONS TAX CUT ORTHODOXY: Mitch Daniels, the former White House budget director who is now governor of Indiana, unveiled a plan last week to raise taxes on the wealthy in Indiana. The move is noteworthy because it was Daniels who, as budget director, helped pass massive federal tax cuts for the wealthy that fueled huge state budget deficits like the one he now faces in Indiana. It was Daniels who railed against those who said his federal tax cuts would create deficits. Brushing aside statistical data, he told one reporter in 2001, "There is every reason to believe, every reason to believe there will be more, not less, surplus available over these 10 years." Now, the federal deficit is skyrocketing, and Indiana this year faces a $600 million deficit. As the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities noted, the policies shepherded through Congress under Daniels increased state deficits by up to $175 billion over President Bush's first term.

FORMER CONSERVATIVE CONGRESSMAN PUSHES FOR PROGRESSIVE TAX: After a career as one of the most conservative House members and ardent supporters of the Bush tax cuts, Bob Riley became governor of Alabama in 2003 and headed "a revolutionary campaign to raise his state's total taxes by more than a billion dollars while also lowering taxes for the poor." Though right-wing groups like Grover Norquist's Americans for Tax Reform helped defeat the measure, CNN reported, "Riley has joined a growing number of GOP governors in swing states, from Georgia to Nevada, who are pushing mammoth tax hikes as a way to cover gaping budget shortfalls – gaps they blame, in part, on cuts by the feds (read: George W. Bush)."

CONSERVATIVE CRITICIZES BUSH TREATMENT OF VETERANS: Earlier this month, Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ) was stripped of his chairmanship of the Veterans Affairs Committee after he voiced concern that the White House was shortchanging health care for America's veterans. As Smith said, his dismissal from the chairmanship "all came down to the fact I wanted to spend too much on veterans." Smith said, "I am not a yes man. I am a loyal Republican who believes in fighting for good public policy and that is the best way to show loyalty."

HOUSE CONSERVATIVES REJECT BUSH'S UNFUNDED MANDATES: AP reports that other House conservatives are expressing their displeasure at the administration's implementation of the No Child Left Behind Act. Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN), who leads the Republican Study Committee, told the National Press Club that "I have no problem with Washington, D.C. finding ways to get resources to the schools, but not red tape, not mandates."

ECONOMY – CHINA LOSING FAITH IN DOLLAR: President Bush's pledges to reduce America's trade deficit have met with skepticism from foreign leaders. Now, a top Chinese economist, Fan Gang, says his country, which finances a large portion of America's debt, has "lost faith in the stability of the U.S. dollar" and will begin investing in a "more flexible basket" of currencies. The announcement comes as a result of President Bush's reckless fiscal policies, which are leading the dollar towards a dangerous "free fall" that could imperil the U.S. economy. "The U.S. dollar is no longer – in our opinion is no longer – (seen) as a stable currency, and is devaluating all the time, and that's putting troubles all the time," Fan said. The dollar "hit a new low in December against the euro and has been falling against other major currencies on concerns about the ever-growing U.S. trade and budget deficits."

Posted: 27 Jan. 2005

Found in email, no doubt the work of some liberal commie pinko agitator who hates freedom.

QUESTION: How many Bush Administration officials does it take to change a light bulb?

ANSWER: None. There is nothing wrong with the light bulb; its conditions are improving every day. Any reports of its lack of incandescence are a delusional spin from the liberal media. That light bulb has served honorably, and anything you say undermines the lighting effect. Why do you hate freedom?

RECENT ADDENDUM: In light of Ms. Rice's solution to the "burnt-outlightbulb" crisis by simply forcing more and more electricity in (as Bush pointed out, that ought to fix it!), we confirm promoting her from lightbulb monitor to Chair of the Energy Commission. Any physicists or electricians who point out flaws in her solution are merely being disrespectful.

From Grist on-line magazine.

WHO WILL SCREENSAVE US NOW?
Big climate-modeling experiment predicts disaster

A worldwide, collaborative climate-modeling study has produced its first results, and the news is not good. More than 95,000 volunteers from 150 countries participated in the study by downloading a program, run as a screensaver, which created slightly different climate simulations on each computer and sent them back to researchers. The distributed effort exceeded the processing power of any existing supercomputer and logged the equivalent of more than 8,000 years of computer time in just 16 months. The models generated by the study suggest that when CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere reach twice pre-industrial levels -- a point that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has pegged at roughly mid-century -- global increases in temperature ranging from 3.6 to 19.8 degrees Fahrenheit will follow close behind. This is roughly twice the increase predicted by previous studies. Said lead project scientist David Stainforth, "When you start to look at these temperatures, I get very worried indeed."

straight to the source: Reuters, Patricia Reaney, 26 Jan 2005

straight to the source: The Independent, Steve Connor, 27 Jan 2005

straight to the source: Newsday, Bryn Nelson, 27 Jan 2005

do good: Participate in the climate-modeling study

From The Center for American Progress

MEDIA
Spellings' Intolerance

Late last year, when the Department of Education highlighted the new PBS series "Postcards from Buster," it praised the show's embrace of different cultures: "And by learning about different cultures, Buster also helps to show children what we all have in common." But apparently the concept of universal humanity only extends so far. On her second day on the job as secretary of education, Margaret Spellings, who replaced a previous education secretary with little regard for our nation's educators, has condemned a not-yet-aired episode of the show because of the title character's visit to the state of Vermont, where he spends some time with Emma, an 11-year-old girl, and her two mommies.

THE HORROR!: Although the episode's "focus is on farm life," Secretary Spellings rebuked the president and chief executive officer of the Public Broadcasting System for exposing the nation's children to "such lifestyles." It is unclear what is so offensive about the family's "lifestyle." Emma introduces Buster to her mother and her stepmom, "whom she says she loves a lot," and the few glimpses the viewer gets of the family – the parents are always a background aspect of episodes – show "loving, moral, and committed" relationships. Furthermore, the episode actually revolves around teaching children how maple syrup is made and the processing of milk from cows.

ERRING ON THE SIDE OF NOT AIRING: In a win for intolerance, PBS has chosen not to distribute the episode nationally to its subsidiary stations, but claims the decision is due to the sensitivity of the issue rather than the secretary's objections. However, PBS officials – including President Pat Mitchell – had "viewed the episode and called it appropriate" before Secretary Spellings expressed her displeasure. Self-described as a "trusted community resource," PBS used to herald itself for quality programming that had the power to "inform, inspire and delight." For seven straight years, its subsidiary stations have been "atop all broadcast and cable networks for children's programming," winning 10 Daytime Emmys in 2004 alone. It is disheartening that a network that informs our nation's children has now been pressured to accept the bigoted agenda of Secretary Spellings.

LOCAL STATIONS STICKING TO PRINCIPLE: Marc Brown, creator of "Postcards from Buster," was understandably saddened by PBS's decision, and for good reason: "What we are trying to do in the series is connect kids with other kids by reflecting on their lives. In some episodes, as in the Vermont one, we are validating children who are seldom validated." Emma is one little girl who the Department of Education, in conjunction with PBS, has decided deserves to be left behind. Thankfully, the show's producer, Boston-based WGBH, and other individual subsidiaries such as WNET-TV in New York and KVIE-TV in Sacramento, have recognized the value of such an episode and will be airing it in late March.

EDUCATING OR PREJUDICING?: Secretary Spellings primly declared that "Congress' and the Department's purpose in funding this programming certainly was not to introduce this kind of subject matter to children." She provides no justification as to why. The funding to which the secretary refers is the Ready-To-Learn program that provides grants for "the development of educational programming for preschool and early elementary school children and their families," and the stated purpose of the grant program is to promote school readiness and literacy amongst school-age children, a task which even the department has admitted "Postcards from Buster" is more than up to. And though Secretary Spellings points to the law's statement that "any funded shows must give top attention to 'research-based educational objectives, content and materials,'" she makes no explanation as to why the "Sugartime!" episode does not fit into these guidelines, as the format for this particular episode is no different from previous ones.

EPISODE MEETS GOALS OF GRANT: Secretary Spellings also failed to address additional wording in the grant that states, "Diversity will be incorporated into the fabric of the series to help children understand and respect differences and learn to live in a multicultural society." At a time when one in three gay teens is threatened with a weapon while at school, it seems that the educational programming provided by the "Sugartime!" episode would certainly fall under the purview of the grant and be well worth the money. Instead, the Department of Education continues to choose different spending priorities.

SETTING UP THE CASE FOR CONSERVATIVE CENSORSHIP: In addition to criticizing this particular episode, Secretary Spellings "asked PBS to consider refunding the money it spent on the episode." That was not her only request. She also asked for the destruction of any symbol or statement "linking the department to the show" and that the member stations be alerted to "the nature of the show." She finished off the letter with an open-ended warning: "You can be assured that in the future the department will be more clear as to its expectations for any future programming that it funds." For now, the department is more than clear as to whether bigoted ideology matters more than fruitful education and true acceptance.

MEDIA – GALLAGHER GETS DEFENSIVE: Payola princess Maggie Gallagher yesterday lashed out at Howard Kurtz's article revealing she had received $21,500 from the Bush administration to write articles supporting President Bush's marriage policies. Gallagher insisted Kurtz's claim was "completely false," explaining that she was asked "to do research and writing, not on the President's $300 million marriage initiative, but on marriage." That's a curious distinction, considering her writings "on marriage" happened to be specifically about President Bush's marriage policies found in the initiative, as the Washington Post detailed. In related news, the editor of Gallagher's print syndicate, Lee Salem, responded to those who e-mailed him through American Progress's action alert yesterday, explaining why he doesn't plan to drop Gallagher. Salem's weak excuse was that Gallagher was paid to toe the president's line in government publications, not in her syndicated column. The problem, however, is that she did write about the president's policies in her column – multiple times – while never mentioning her financial ties to the administration. Let's keep the pressure on – write Salem again and tell him to drop Gallagher.

SOCIAL SECURITY – DEJA VU: Turns out this isn't the first time President Bush has warned that Social Security was about to go broke. In 1978, while running for Congress in Texas, Bush was quoted by USA Today and the Texas Observer as saying the system would go broke by 1988 if Congress failed to privatize the system. The Observer notes that Bush "warned that Social Security would go bust in ten years unless people were given a chance to invest the money themselves." USA Today also had the congressional candidate saying that "Social Security would go broke in 10 years." Asked about his remarks by Rep. Charles Rangel (D-NY) at a meeting with the Congressional Black Caucus Wednesday, Bush reportedly responded, "I lost." Rangel said he responded, "the Lord works in mysterious ways."

SOCIAL SECURITY – CHILEAN SYSTEM COMING UP SHORT: President Bush has said the U.S. needs to "take some lessons from Chile" – which initiated private accounts nearly 25 years ago – in its quest to modernize Social Security. But the lesson may be that privatization works less well than the traditional system. The New York Times reports, "Now that the first generation of workers to depend on the new system is beginning to retire, Chileans are finding that it is falling far short of what was originally advertised under the authoritarian government of Gen. Augusto Pinochet." The government has had to direct billions of dollars to a safety net for those whose contributions were too small and "[e]ven many middle-class workers who contributed regularly are finding that their private accounts – burdened with hidden fees that may have soaked up as much as a third of their original investment – are failing to deliver as much in benefits as they would have received if they had stayed in the old system."

IRAQ – NO GUARANTEES ON TRAINED FORCES: Gen. George Casey, the top American commander in Iraq, said on Wednesday that U.S.-trained Iraqi security forces were "still not ready to take over the counterinsurgency and there was no guarantee they will ever be able to defeat it on their own." Casey said Iraqi police and soldiers "still lack leaders to direct them in a fight against rebels, and local police forces who've deserted in the thousands in the face of intimidation and withering assaults by guerrillas remain a key weak point." In September, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld promised there would be 145,000 "fully trained, fully equipped" Iraqi security forces by this time, but in the last week top administration officials have been reluctant to pin down how many forces are actually ready to provide their own security. Sen. Joe Biden (D-DE), who traveled to Iraq recently, placed the number somewhere around 4,000.

DAILY OUTRAGE
Some wounded soldiers at Walter Reed hospital are being made to pay for their meals. The policy applies to outpatient soldiers there longer than 90 days, often with serious injuries sustained fighting in Iraq.

Posted: 26 Jan. 2005

Bush's new bitch, I mean "Secretary of Education", hasn't wasted any time imposing censorship and restriction on American media.

Education secretary condemns public show with gay characters

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The nation's new education secretary denounced PBS on Tuesday for spending public money on a cartoon with lesbian characters, saying many parents would not want children exposed to such lifestyles.

The not-yet-aired episode of "Postcards From Buster" shows the title character, an animated bunny named Buster, on a trip to Vermont -- a state known for recognizing same-sex civil unions. The episode features two lesbian couples, although the focus is on farm life and maple sugaring.

With her letter, Spellings has made criticism of the publicly funded program's depiction of the gay lifestyle one of her first acts as secretary. She began on Monday, replacing Rod Paige as President Bush's education chief.

Spellings issued three requests to PBS.

She asked that her department's seal or any statement linking the department to the show be removed. She asked PBS to notify its member stations of the nature of the show so they could review it before airing it. And she asked for the refund "in the interest of avoiding embroiling the Ready-To-Learn program in a controversy that will only hurt" it.

In closing, she warned: "You can be assured that in the future the department will be more clear as to its expectations for any future programming that it funds."

READ THE REST.

I wrote an educational book for kids about The Ocean Depths. I studied how the ocean works and how the fundamental conveyer belt of water works in the ocean. This flow of water from warm to cold back to warm is vital to maintaining our weather patterns and much of the life in the ocean. It depends upon a certain level of salinity in key parts of the ocean, a salinity that is being destroyed when too much fresh water melts into the ocean. This article covers additional areas of concern with respect to global warming.

Antarctica, Warming, Looks Ever More Vulnerable
By LARRY ROHTER, New York Times

OVER THE ABBOTT ICE SHELF, Antarctica - From an airplane at 500 feet, all that is visible here is a vast white emptiness. Ahead, a chalky plain stretches as far as the eye can see, the monotony broken only by a few gentle rises and the wrinkles created when new sheets of ice form.

Under the surface of that ice, though, profound and potentially troubling changes are taking place, and at a quickened pace. With temperatures climbing in parts of Antarctica in recent years, melt water seems to be penetrating deeper and deeper into ice crevices, weakening immense and seemingly impregnable formations that have developed over thousands of years.

As a result, huge glaciers in this and other remote areas of Antarctica are thinning and ice shelves the size of American states are either disintegrating or retreating - all possible indications of global warming. Scientists from the British Antarctic Survey reported in December that in some parts of the Antarctic Peninsula hundreds of miles from here, large growths of grass are appearing in places that until recently were hidden under a frozen cloak.

READ THE REST.

From The Center for American Progress

CORRUPTION
Payola Part Two

On the heels of the Armstrong Williams scandal, the contractual obligations of another commentator cheerleader have been exposed. In 2002, syndicated columnist Maggie Gallagher staunchly defended the Bush marriage initiative in any venue that would give her space without disclosing that she was under a $20,000-plus contract with the Department of Health and Human Services to promote the proposal. She "received an additional $20,000 from the Bush Administration" for authoring a report, "titled 'Can Government Strengthen Marriage?', for a private organization." In one of her columns, Gallagher goes on to plug this same policy brief and encourages HHS to implement it, of course, without mentioning her financial connection. After the Armstrong Williams debacle, White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan rebuffed questions about whether there were additional commentators on the government dole, saying, "I'm not aware of any others that are under contract."

YOU GET WHAT YOU PAY FOR: The department certainly got its money's worth. Gallagher commissioned polls to contradict other columnists who had found the public was not fond of the Bush marriage initiative, suggested that marriage education programs reduce divorce and domestic violence, repeatedly advocated the Bush marriage initiative and attacked its critics, and went so far as to state that the future prosperity of our nation depends on our appreciation of marriage. Though Gallagher makes the argument that the contract was for specific work to be done, and thus not the same as the one under which Armstrong Williams was placed, the contract apparently puts no limit on the "variety of activities" in which Gallagher can be engaged on its behalf. After originally questioning whether or not the situation was an issue of journalistic ethics in the first place, Gallagher has "apologized" by claiming that she had forgotten about the contract.

TAKE ACTION: E-mail Lee Salem – executive vice president for print syndication at Universal Press Syndicate – and tell him that Gallagher has violated the trust of her readers and destroyed her credibility. Demand UPS immediately stop distributing her column.

BUDGET
Down Is Up

Another year, another record deficit. The federal budget deficit will reach a record $448 billion this year, exceeding last year's record of $412 billion. According to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO), "the long-term outlook for the US budget deficit has deteriorated since the end of last year." For most Americans these enormous, persistent deficits would be cause for concern. But not for White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan. According to McClellan, the new numbers show "we are on track."

THE SHELL GAME EXPOSED: Astoundingly, the White House seized on the CBO numbers as proof that the president would meet his goal to cut the deficit in half by 2009. Here is how it works. The administration takes the CBO's baseline 2009 deficit projection, which excludes funding for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, the administration's $2.5 trillion proposal to extend tax cuts, and the administration's $2 trillion Social Security package. Because of these exclusions, even the CBO admits its long-term budget numbers are "misleading." But even if you take the CBO's misleading 2009 deficit projection and compare it to the actual 2004 deficit, Bush will still "miss his goal." So the administration takes the misleading 2009 projection and compares it to the higher deficit projections for 2004 it predicted last February, but which never actually materialized. The February numbers, however, "artificially inflated the projected deficit for 2004, apparently so that subsequent downward adjustments in the deficit estimate could be presented as progress." The bottom line: there is no way the administration can pursue its current policies and cut the deficit in half by 2009.

IT'S THE TAX CUTS, STUPID: The deficit could be reduced by more than half this year if the administration would roll back its tax cuts for the wealthy. An analysis by the Center for Budget and Policy priorities found there have been $504 billion in increased costs since January 2001 and tax cuts account for just about half (49 percent) of that total. Tax cuts have cost the nation four times as much as all changes in domestic programs over that time.

THE ENTITLEMENT CON: Conservatives will use the numbers to justify cuts in benefits for the poor and the elderly. Using deficits as an excuse, "Senate Budget Chairman Judd Gregg (R-NH), and House Budget Chairman Jim Nussle (R-IA), have both indicated that they want to cut spending, particularly on entitlements." But programs like Social Security and Medicaid aren't why we have a deficit. (In fact, absent the Social Security program, the deficit would be much worse.) As the CBO notes, "new legislation accounts for about three-quarters of [the federal deficit] increase [since last year's projections], most of it from recent laws that extend certain tax provisions."

THE GRAFT OF WAR: This year's budget deficit includes $105 billion in war funding, up from $87 billion last year, pushing the total bill for war close to an astonishing $300 billion. The 2005 figure includes the $80 billion the president requested this week. The White House, however, "provided few details about how they want to use the $80 billion." We do know that an astounding $1.5 billion has been allocated to build the U.S. embassy in Iraq. To put that in perspective, that is the estimated cost of the Freedom Tower, to be built on Ground Zero in New York City. The Freedom Tower will be the tallest building in the world.

CHRISTIAN RIGHT – NO MORE FOLLOW THE LEADER?: Heady off the success of their threats of the chairmanship of Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA), an alliance of conservative Christian groups have a new target in their crosshairs: President Bush himself. Calling in their debts, the coalition, "known as the Arlington Group," is now questioning how Bush is choosing to spend his political capital and threatened that his priorities would not pass unless he prioritized theirs: a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage. The letter's signatories, who include Jerry Falwell and Dr. James C. Dobson of Focus on the Family, also call for the creation of "a top level official to coordinate opposition to same-sex marriage."

From Grist on-line magazine.

THE CLEAR SKIES' THE LIMIT
Lawmakers defend states' rights, introduce Clear Skies competition

Govs. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R-Calif.) and George Pataki (R-N.Y.), in a letter to a Senate committee that's convening today to deliberate the Bush administration's Clear Skies bill, emphasized the importance of protecting state environmental enforcement powers. Both California and New York have put in place environmental regulations stricter than federal standards, which some enviros say may be weakened if Clear Skies is approved. Meanwhile, a bipartisan ... no, make that tri-partisan trio of senators -- Jim Jeffords (I-Vt.), Susan Collins (R-Maine), and Joseph Lieberman (D-Conn.) -- yesterday introduced a competing, more-strict clean-air bill. The legislation, dubbed the Clean Power Act, would require stringent caps on power-plant emissions of nitrogen oxides, sulfur dioxide, and carbon dioxide beginning in 2010 and a 90 percent cut in mercury emissions by 2009.

straight to the source: Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Associated Press, Devlin Barrett, 25 Jan 2005

straight to the source: MarketWatch, Stephanie I. Cohen, 25 Jan 2005

straight to the source: FXstreet.com, 25 Jan 2005

SOAP OPERA
Degassed water may reduce need for detergents

Researchers at the Australian National University in Canberra have found an effective alternative to caustic, strong-smelling detergents: water. Good ol' water. Degassed water, to be specific. According to their findings, published in the Journal of Physical Chemistry, if dissolved air present in everyday water is removed, H2O becomes at least as effective a degreaser as regular detergent, getting clothes clean, sans chemicals. This could be good news for the environment, since water can be degassed cheaply and efficiently simply by passing it through a porous membrane, a method much easier on the earth than manufacturing conventional detergents that have been linked to some nasty things, including massive algal blooms. So goodbye, detergent. And hello, water, soap of the future.

straight to the source: Nature, Philip Ball, 24 Jan 2005

Posted: 25 Jan. 2005

It is not up to some goddam politician to tell me, or any other woman, what we may do with our bodies ad our reproductive organs.

Post-Roe Postcard
by Sharon Lerner, The Nation

How Mississippi all but outlawed abortion is a story people on both sides of the abortion debate are still struggling to understand. Few would expect this famously conservative Southern state to be prochoice. And Texas, Louisiana and a few other states have been competing for the dubious distinction of being the worst place to be if you want or need to end a pregnancy. But Mississippi has gone further in its hostility to abortion even than other Bible Belt states. A small, mostly rural population and the absence of local prochoice organizations have helped turn Mississippi into the perfect laboratory for antiabortion strategists.

Virtually every possible restriction on the procedure exists here, from a mandatory twenty-four-hour waiting period after counseling, to a requirement that minors obtain the consent of both parents to have an abortion, to thirty-five pages of regulations dealing with such physical characteristics as the width of a clinic's hallways and the size of its parking lot. The mounting restrictions (Mississippi passed six antiabortion laws last year alone) have delighted antiabortion activists all over the country, who have hailed--and copied--the state's innovations.

Meanwhile, prochoice activists see Mississippi as a glimpse of what might become the norm in a possible post-Roe future. "It's the canary dying in the mine," says Nancy Northrup, president of the Center for Reproductive Rights. If the Supreme Court were to reverse the decision, abortion would likely become illegal in thirty states, including Mississippi, according to a 2004 report by the center. Across what can seem like a great divide, the twenty other states have laws, constitutions or court decisions that would protect the basic right to abortion even if Roe falls. While some of these, including New York and Washington State, which both decriminalized abortion before 1973, will likely remain strongly prochoice, others may pass restrictive laws like Mississippi's.

With the third-highest teen pregnancy rate in the country, Mississippi's low number of abortions is not an illustration of the "safe, legal and rare" ideal that many talk about, in which a decline in unwanted pregnancies creates a corresponding drop in abortions. Rather, it is the direct consequence of concerted opposition to abortion from the grassroots to all levels of government.

Such concern for the rights of fetuses does not appear to translate into a commitment to promoting the well-being of the children they may become. The uncomfortable irony for an opposition movement purportedly concerned with saving "innocent babies" is that restrictions on abortion are associated with worse outcomes for actual babies. Indeed, children fare terribly in Mississippi. The state with arguably the least access to abortion also has the second-highest rate of child poverty in the country, according to the Children's Defense Fund. Mississippi's infant mortality rate--a good indication of the health of both women and children--is the highest in the country. For every 1,000 live births, 10.5 infants under age 1 die in Mississippi. In parts of the impoverished Delta region, that number ranges up to 18. (The national infant mortality rate, by comparison, is 6.8.) Interestingly, a postelection comparison found that "red" states had higher infant mortality rates than "blue" ones. In general, states that restrict abortion spend far less money per child than prochoice states on services such as foster care, education, welfare and the adoption of children who have physical and mental disabilities, according to a 2000 book by political scientist Jean Reith Schroedel.

Schroedel also found that women in antiabortion states are worse off than their counterparts in prochoice states. They suffer from lower levels of education, higher levels of poverty, and a larger gender gap in earnings. They are also less likely to enjoy mandated insurance coverage for minimum hospital stays after childbirth. Together, the conditions make for an abysmal reality for women in Mississippi, which came in fifty-first in a 2004 ranking of the status of women in the fifty states and Washington, DC, published by the Institute for Women's Policy Research.

READ THE REST.

From The Center for American Progress

WOMEN'S RIGHTS
The Assault on Liberty

Yesterday, President Bush addressed a gathering of tens of thousands of people who want Roe v. Wade to be overturned and reaffirmed his support for criminalizing abortion. Bush told the crowd they were "making progress" toward their goal. The organizers of the rally, March for Life, favor criminalizing abortion even in cases of rape and incest. Bush's hostile views towards women's rights are of even greater concern because he could "make several Supreme Court appointments in his second term" who oppose Roe. If Roe v. Wade is overturned, at least 21 states would quickly outlaw abortion. That's why it's so important for progressives not to abandon their commitment to reproductive rights.

BUSH'S AGGRESSIVE ANTI-WOMAN AGENDA: Bush's opposition to abortion is more than just talk. The National Right to Life Committee heralded the 2003-2004 Congress as "the most successful ever for the pro-life movement." With the help of his right-wing allies in Congress, Bush signed a number of laws which erode women's rights in the United States. The new laws criminalize certain abortion procedures, define a fetus at any stage of development as a person, and make it harder for women to obtain abortions at publicly funded hospitals. Out of over 200 judges nominated to the federal bench by Bush, only two have expressed any respect for abortion rights.

THE NEXT GENERATION OF INTIMIDATION: Now "lawmakers in Congress and several states, meanwhile, are introducing the latest in a wave of measures aimed at making it more daunting to obtain an abortion." One bill would require abortion providers to read a script telling women 20 weeks or more pregnant that an abortion could cause pain to their fetus. Also under consideration: a bill that makes it a crime – even for family members – to take a minor to another state for a legal abortion.

PUTTING WOMEN'S HEALTH AT RISK: Criminalizing abortion won't end abortion – it will just put women's health at risk. In 1930, "almost 2,700 women died from illegal abortions – and that's just the number who had abortion recorded as their official cause of death." In 1962, "almost 1,600 women were treated for incomplete illegal abortions in at Harlem Hospital." Forty-three percent of all abortions worldwide are performed in countries where abortion is illegal. According to the World Health Organization, "80,000 women around the world still die each year of complications from illegal abortion." Maybe that's why Laura Bush opposes overturning Roe v. Wade.

COMMON GROUND – REDUCING UNWANTED PREGNANCIES: In a speech yesterday at the New York State Capital, Sen. Hillary Clinton said, "There is an opportunity for people of good faith to find common ground in this debate – we should be able to agree that we want every child born in this country to be wanted, cherished and loved." The best way to reduce the number of abortions is to help people out of poverty, get them access to medical care – including family planning – and a high-quality education. That is what happened during the 1990s, and the abortion rate declined. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, during the Clinton years the abortion rate fell by about 27 percent. Now that we have abandoned many of those policies and poverty is back on the rise, the trend has reversed. A new independent study by an ethics professor at Fuller Theological Seminary finds that "contrary to popular assumption, abortion has risen in the U.S. during George W. Bush's presidency." And protecting women's rights isn't about rejecting faith. The Rev. Debra W. Haffner writes that "for more than fifty years, many religious leaders from diverse denominations have affirmed the moral agency of women."

BUSH PRAISES ANTI-ABORTION TACTICS: Bush praised abortion opponents for "the civil way that you have engaged one of America's most contentious issues." But since 1982 "there have been 169 arsons and/or bombings of abortion clinics." The Pro-Life Action League, a group affiliated with the march, supports "sidewalk counseling," which involves approaching "a woman about to enter an abortion clinic…in an effort to talk her out of aborting the baby."

WAR COSTS
The $200 Billion Boondoggle

You can't put a price on freedom, but the cost of waging an ill-conceived and unnecessary war in Iraq is about to top $200 billion. The Bush administration is expected to announce today a request for an $80 billion supplement, in addition to the "$25 billion already appropriated for the fiscal year that began October 1st," to continue fighting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. While the Bush administration may not want to explain the soaring costs, it is only fair that the numbers get a closer look.

BILLIONS MORE IN BACKDOOR SPENDING: What you see and what you don't: Though the up-front cost of the war on Iraq is already an astounding $200 billion, Gordon Adams, director of security policy studies at George Washington University, recently revealed that "taxpayers are spending twice as much on these wars." In what he calls "back-door budgeting for the wars," Adams points to the "reduced training, exercises and operating tempo, slowdowns in maintenance, [and] delays on maintaining facilities" as ways that the Pentagon is getting around paying for the bloated war. Other strategies appear to be not paying soldiers what they are owed and deducting money for debts that do not even exist. There is no shortage of cash, however, for questionable contracts and corrupt and incompetent corporations.

THE NUMBERS IN PERSPECTIVE: Today's supplemental request will push the amount spent on the so-called war on terror to over $280 billion since the Sept. 11 attacks. When adjusted for inflation, this amount is "nearly half the $613 billion the United States spent for World War I." Coincidentally timed with the supplemental announcement, the Congressional Budget Office will be releasing a semi-annual report that is a revision of last year's war costs projection, which revealed "the 10-year costs of the wars [would be] $1.4 trillion at current levels of operations."

NEGLECT LEADS TO COSTLY OPIUM CRISIS IN AFGHANISTAN: Though the details of the budget are not yet available, "at least $780 million would go to combat the drug trade in Afghanistan." When the Bush administration went gallivanting off to Iraq, it shifted its focus off the reconstruction needed in Afghanistan, leaving the country free to be carved up and taken advantage of by drug traders. In 2004, the United Nations reported that "the opium trade accounted for more than 60 percent of [Afghanistan's] gross domestic product" and that the country supplied "an estimated 87 percent of the world's opium." Afghan President Hamid Karzai has repeatedly stated that the future of his nation depends on the resolution of the opium problem, which has now become "more dangerous than terrorism." Apparently not learning its lesson, the White House has spent "only a fraction of the $18.4 billion set aside for rebuilding Iraq."

GLOBAL WARMING – THE POINT OF NO RETURN: A new report co-published by the Center for American Progress warns that global warming is quickly approaching the point of no return, after which "widespread agricultural failure, water shortages and major droughts, increased disease, sea-level rise and the death of forests" will become irreversible. The findings were a product of a taskforce co-chaired by Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-ME) and Stephen Byers, a close confidant of British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who called on world leaders "to recognize that climate change is the single most important long-term issue that the planet faces." The task force urges G-8 countries "to agree to generate a quarter of their electricity from renewable sources by 2025 and shift agricultural subsidies from food crops to biofuels."

ABUSE – THE DISEASE SPREADS: Apparently not content with simply mistreating prisoners, officers in American detention centers have been seriously abusing Iraqi civilians and the military has done little to investigate these claims. According to documents released by the American Civil Liberties Union, the rampant but previously underreported abuse of civilian detainees in Iraq seemed to be "part of a broader pattern of prisoner mistreatment," contrary to the repeated claims of U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. In fact, one of the documents made a direct "reference to an order by President George W Bush authorizing interrogation techniques such as sleep deprivation, stress positions, the use of military dogs, and 'sensory deprivation through the use of hoods, etc.'" And although Army documents revealed that personnel admitted to abuse and mistreatment of Iraqi detainees as well as civilians, they have yet to be "charged with criminal conduct." Apparently some of Bush's orders – like "saying the military would punish all soldiers who abused or tortured prisoners" – do not get followed.

SOCIAL SECURITY – PRIVATIZERS PUMMELED: The Republican chairman of the House tax-writing committee has raised a political firestorm after admitting he wants Congress to discuss whether Social Security benefits should be tied to factors like gender, race, and employment. Appearing "incoherent and off-message" on NBC's Meet the Press, California Rep. Bill Thomas also voiced disagreement with President Bush's assertion that Social Security is "in crisis," increasing doubts among conservatives about the future of their privatization campaign. Stephen Moore, founder of the conservative Free Enterprise Fund, tells the Washington Times that "Republicans are just all over the map on Social Security" and that "the chance of getting reform done this year is looking to be unlikely." In another good sign for pro-Social Security progressives, AARP chief William Novelli yesterday announced that his organization is "dead set" against any proposal that takes tax money out of Social Security to establish private accounts.

From Grist on-line magazine.

DROUGHT, DROUGHT, LET IT ALL OUT
Drought is up, and climate change seems partly to blame, report says

The proportion of the planet's land area suffering from drought has more than doubled since the 1970s, to about 30 percent, according to a recent study by the National Center for Atmospheric Research. Researchers attribute about half of that change to rising temperatures caused by global warming rather than to a lack of precipitation. The drying has been widespread in Europe, Asia, Canada, western and southern Africa, and eastern Australia, said Aiguo Dai, the study's lead author. Climate models predict that rising temperatures will lead to most of earth's land masses experiencing more warm-season drying in coming decades. "Our analyses suggest that this [greenhouse-related] drying may already have begun," said Dai.

straight to the source: New Scientist, 22 Jan 2005

straight to the source: Rocky Mountain News, Jim Erickson, 11 Jan 2005

TWO DEGREES OF SEPARATION
Report warns of major climate catastrophe in as few as 10 years

A task force of leading politicians, academics, and business leaders from around the world has quantified global warming's so-called "point of no return." And it's bloody soon! In as little as 10 years, says a report by the task force, the global average temperature could rise 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit from its pre-industrial level. At that point, the authors contend, the tipping point will have been reached and major droughts, sea-level rise, and widespread crop failures are all but certain. So far, global average temperature has risen about 1.4 degrees since 1750, meaning we've still got a couple of degrees before the threshold is reached. To help beat the clock, the report calls on all G8 nations to produce a quarter of their electricity from renewable sources by 2025 and double their expenditures on low-carbon energy technologies by 2010. "There is an ecological time bomb ticking away," said British Member of Parliament Stephen Byers, who co-chaired the task force with U.S. Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine).

straight to the source: The Independent, Michael McCarthy, 24 Jan 2005

straight to the source: CNN.com, Associated Press, 24 Jan 2005

Posted: 24 Jan. 2005

Not that the truth will put a crimp in the arrogance of the Bushites.

No. 1?
BY MICHAEL VENTURA

No. 1? In most important categories we're not even in the Top 10 anymore. Not even close.

The USA is "No. 1" in nothing but weaponry, consumer spending, debt, and delusion.

No concept lies more firmly embedded in our national character than the notion that the USA is "No. 1," "the greatest." Our broadcast media are, in essence, continuous advertisements for the brand name "America Is No. 1." Any office seeker saying otherwise would be committing political suicide. In fact, anyone saying otherwise will be labeled "un-American." We're an "empire," ain't we? Sure we are. An empire without a manufacturing base. An empire that must borrow $2 billion a day from its competitors in order to function. Yet the delusion is ineradicable. We're No. 1. Well ... this is the country you really live in:

• The United States is 49th in the world in literacy (The New York Times, Dec. 12, 2004).

• The United States ranked 28th out of 40 countries in mathematical literacy (NYT, Dec. 12, 2004).

• One-third of our science teachers and one-half of our math teachers did not major in those subjects. (Quoted on The West Wing, but you can trust it – their researchers are legendary.)

• Twenty percent of Americans think the sun orbits the Earth. Seventeen percent believe the Earth revolves around the sun once a day (The Week, Jan. 7, 2005).

READ THE REST.

Here, by an interesting coincidence, is an article dealing with whethere there is any real difference in how women and men use their brains.

Gray Matter and the Sexes: Still a Scientific Gray Area
By NATALIE ANGIER and KENNETH CHANG

Has science found compelling evidence of inherent sex disparities in the relevant skills, or perhaps in the drive to succeed at all costs, that could help account for the persistent paucity of women in science generally, and at the upper tiers of the profession in particular?

Researchers who have explored the subject of sex differences from every conceivable angle and organ say that yes, there are a host of discrepancies between men and women - in their average scores on tests of quantitative skills, in their attitudes toward math and science, in the architecture of their brains, in the way they metabolize medications, including those that affect the brain.

Yet despite the desire for tidy and definitive answers to complex questions, researchers warn that the mere finding of a difference in form does not mean a difference in function or output inevitably follows.

"We can't get anywhere denying that there are neurological and hormonal differences between males and females, because there clearly are," said Virginia Valian, a psychology professor at Hunter College who wrote the 1998 book "Why So Slow? The Advancement of Women." "The trouble we have as scientists is in assessing their significance to real-life performance."

Overall size aside, some evidence suggests that female brains are relatively more endowed with gray matter - the prized neurons thought to do the bulk of the brain's thinking - while men's brains are packed with more white matter, the tissue between neurons.

To further complicate the portrait of cerebral diversity, new brain imaging studies from the University of California, Irvine, suggest that men and women with equal I.Q. scores use different proportions of their gray and white matter when solving problems like those on intelligence tests.

The modest size and regional variability of the sex differences in math scores, as well as an attitudinal handicap that girls apparently pack into their No. 2 pencil case, convince many researchers that neither sex has a monopoly on basic math ability, and that culture rather than chromosomes explains findings like the gap in math SAT scores.

READ THE REST.

Now THIS is a powerful usage of interactive media.

Software re-enacts Rwanda's genocide
By Mark Doyle

It has been a long journey from the Rwandan genocide in 1994 to an Edinburgh classroom in 2005, but a remarkable new computer program is being piloted to teach children about the genocide, about citizenship and about the tough choices adults often have to make.

The new simulation - it sounds wrong to call it a computer game given the subject matter - runs a series of dilemmas similar to those the UN peacekeepers faced during the genocide.

In all, some 800,000 Rwandans were systematically put to death in just 100 days at a rate faster than during the holocaust of the Jews in World War II.

The whole affair was a desperate attempt by an extremist ethnic Hutu regime to hang on to power in the face of ethnic Tutsi rebel advances.

The regime meticulously planned the murder of ethnic Tutsi civilians and Hutu moderates they deemed to be in support of the rebels.

But far too few UN peacekeepers were there to stop the carnage. And some people questioned the political will of the UN and the superpowers on its security council.

Now James Gillespie's High School is seeing what, if anything, can be learned from the terrible dilemmas raised by the tragedy.

Many computer games are violent and involve zapping an enemy. But Pax Warrior is about saving people.

In reality very few Rwandans were saved, but that's reflected in the programme too.

The idea is to use new media to develop the students' decision-making capacity and at the same time learn about one of the momentous events of 20th century history.

Andreas Ua'Siaghail is the designer of Pax Warrior: "Kids are using books less and less, and there are also different kinds of learners.

"Some learn visually, some learn through auditory stimulation and some from reading text.

"We are using all three methods of reaching the users." The students have to face a real life decision made by UN commanders.

READ THE REST.

From The Center for American Progress

INTELLIGENCE
Rumsfeld's Dirty Little Secret

The Pentagon has secretly been operating a clandestine espionage branch for the past two years after reinterpreting U.S. law to place more power directly in the hands of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. According to an explosive new article in yesterday's Washington Post, the group, called the Strategic Support Branch, is "designed to operate without detection and under the defense secretary's direct control" in collecting human intelligence (or HUMINT, in intelligence-speak). Not only does the group operate outside the public view, Rumsfeld has also hidden it from Congress and is not coordinating with the CIA. Already, it has been operating in places like Iraq and Afghanistan – as well as in unnamed "friendly countries" with which the United States is not at war. The group has been working with the elite U.S. Special Forces, such as Delta Force, as well as recruited outside agents, including "notorious figures" whose "links to the U.S. government would be embarrassing if disclosed." The Defense Department has also engaged in legal tricks, redefining the rules to support its claims that the intelligence group is subject to less stringent oversight than similar operations within the CIA. Here's a look inside the Strategic Support Branch:

PLAYING GAMES WITH THE LAW: Defense Department lawyers are hard at work redefining the rules to give Secretary Rumsfeld more expansive powers and to get around any legal constraints. Take Title 10 of the U.S. code, for example. While the Pentagon is legally required to tell Congress about all "deployment orders," Undersecretary for Intelligence Stephen A. Cambone this month issued new guidelines that state the group is allowed to "conduct clandestine HUMINT operations…before publication" of a deployment order, making the subsequent order meaningless. Title 50 got a friendly freshen-up as well: current law says Congress does not have to be informed about "traditional" military activities and their "routine" support, so the Pentagon's general counsel simply expanded the definition of "traditional" and "routine."

RE-READING HERSH: The Post article fits with the article written last week by Seymour Hersh, which detailed the Pentagon's secret plans to go to war in Iran. Hersh wrote, "The President has signed a series of findings and executive orders authorizing secret commando groups and other Special Forces units to conduct covert operations against suspected terrorist targets in as many as ten nations in the Middle East and South Asia… The President's decision enables Rumsfeld to run the operations off the books—free from legal restrictions imposed on the C.I.A."

WHO IS WALDROUP? The secret intelligence group is headed up by Col. George Waldroup, a man with little intelligence experience. Waldroup, who likes to refer to himself in the third person as "GW," is not a graduate of the Army's Special Warfare Center nor the CIA's Field Tradecraft Course for intelligence officers. He spent much of his professional life as a "midlevel manager" at the Immigration and Naturalization Service. He was embroiled in scandal in the mid-'90s for deceiving a congressional delegation about staffing problems at Miami International Airport. "Waldroup, then assistant district director for external affairs, helped orchestrate a temporary doubling of immigration screeners on the day of the visit, instructed subordinates not to discuss staff shortages and physically confronted a union leader to prevent him from reaching members of Congress." During the investigation, he then "refused to disclose the password to his e-mail files, refused to sign an affidavit summarizing his testimony and, in a subsequent interview, 'stated that he would not answer any questions' because 'he wished to protect himself from exposure to criminal sanctions.'"

A DANGEROUSLY INEXPERIENCED TEAM: The Strategic Support Branch operatives are sent to work directly with the military's elite Special Operations forces. One big problem: Waldroup's team is staffed with members who lack crucial intelligence experience and training. One military Special Forces officer who worked with the team said one of Waldroup's men actually held his team back like an anchor "because of his physical conditioning and his lack of knowledge of our tactics, techniques and procedures. The guy actually put us in danger." Another Special Forces officer in Afghanistan said Waldroup's men were reluctant to leave the base to do their intel: "These guys can't set up networks and run agents and recruit tribal elders."

SHHHH…DON'T TELL CONGRESS: The Strategic Support Branch operated well below congressional radar. The group was set up using funds siphoned off of other Pentagon projects "without explicit congressional authority or appropriation." The Post reported two "longtime members" of the House Intelligence Committee were unaware of any details surrounding the group. And on CBS's Face The Nation, Sen. John McCain, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, called yesterday for hearings to examine the group.

DI RITA'S NON-DENIAL: Pentagon spokesman Larry Di Rita issued a very carefully worded statement designed to look like a denial. "There is no unit that is directly reportable to the Secretary of Defense for clandestine operations as is described in The Washington Post…Further, the Department is not attempting to 'bend' statutes to fit desired activities, as is suggested in this article." Di Rita, however, went on to admit, "It is accurate and should not be surprising that the Department of Defense is attempting to improve its long-standing human intelligence capability."

MEDIA
Powell Exposed

FCC Chairman Michael Powell announced Friday he will step down in March, modestly proclaiming he had "completed a bold and aggressive agenda." Powell will be best remembered for his crackdown on Janet Jackson's right breast and other crimes against decency (prompting Saving Private Ryan to be canceled on Veteran's Day and the pixilation of a cartoon baby's butt). But Powell's most lasting impact will be rewriting the rules of media ownership on behalf of corporate conglomerates to allow for greater consolidation. Powell has set a course that erodes media diversity, competition and independence. Write the president and tell him you want a new FCC chairman to "stop further media consolidation, enforce public interest obligations, increase the diversity of voices in the media, and create policies that will encourage universal, low-cost access to the Internet."

POLICIES FOR FOX AND VIACOM, NOT CONSUMERS: In June 2003, Powell marshaled through new rules that allowed for the continued consolidation of media ownership. Under the old rules, a single company couldn't own a group of individual stations that reach more than 35 percent of the national audience. Powell increased that to 45 percent. While there was no apparent benefit to consumers, it was a windfall for companies like Fox and Viacom which, at the time of the rule change, already owned stations that reached nearly 40 percent of the audience and could have been forced to sell. (The percentage was reduced to 39 percent by Congress – just high enough so Fox and Viacom wouldn't have to sell.)

COURT FINDS POWELL'S DECISIONS LACKED JUSTIFICATION: The June 2003 rules also allowed one corporation to own more stations in a single market. Under the old rules, corporations were limited to one station in most markets and two in the largest markets. Powell changed the rules to allow for ownership of two stations in most markets and three in the largest markets. The rules also lifted rules restricting cross ownership of print and broadcast media in a single market. In June 2004, a federal court blocked implementation of all the rules, finding that the commission fell short "of its obligation to justify its decisions to retain, repeal or modify its media ownership regulations with reasoned analysis." The FCC is now required to revisit its decision.

ANTI-CONSUMER POLICIES CRAFTED BEHIND CLOSED DOORS: On numerous occasions while at the FCC, Powell met with top corporate media executives in closed-door, off-the-record meetings. Leading up to the June 2003 rule changes, Powell met privately with top executives of Viacom, NBC, Gannet and News Corp., including Rupert Murdoch. Kevin Martin, a Republican commissioner, had 16 private sessions with broadcasters through June 2003, the most of any commissioner. In all, the FCC held 71 meetings with corporate media interests before the rulemaking, compared to just five with major consumer groups.

DIGITAL DIVIDE WIDENS: During Powell's tenure, the gap between the technological haves and have-nots widened. Powell made it clear from the beginning that he didn't care. Shortly after assuming the chairmanship of the FCC, Powell attacked the notion that the digital divide was a problem, declaring, "I think there's a Mercedes Benz divide, I'd like one, but I can't afford it." As a result, during Powell's tenure "there has been almost no increase in the percentage of households with Internet access at home. Penetration has been stuck at 60 percent." Of households that lack Internet access, four-fifths have incomes below $50,000. The FCC's policies under Powell created "a cozy duopoly of broadband providers: the Bells and the cable-TV companies ... [which] have been slow to push for higher broadband speeds or fast price declines." The result: "Americans pay ten and twenty times as much, on a megabit basis, as consumers in Korea and Japan pay. Three years ago the price gap was half as large."

MEET THE NEW BOSS, WORSE THAN THE OLD BOSS: Kevin Martin, who worked for the Bush-Cheney transition team before being appointed to the FCC, "is believed to top a short list of candidates" to replace Powell. Martin has followed "a more stringent deregulatory path than Powell" – meaning he would permit even greater media consolidation. Martin is also "considered more hard-line on indecency issues than Powell."

FDA – DRAGGING ITS HEELS: Apparently not convinced by conclusive scientific evidence, the opinion of its own review staff or top advisors, the Food and Drug Administration has yet again delayed ruling on the over-the-counter sale of Plan B, the morning-after birth control pill. It seems unfair that the pill's manufacturer, Barr Pharmaceuticals, has been made to jump through hoop after hoop in trying to get approval for the pill, which "could reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies while posing no apparent risk to women," yet the FDA keeps dangerous drugs like Vioxx available for years after they should be recalled.

STEM CELL – PUTTING ALL THE EGGS IN ONE BASKET: In 2001, when President Bush imposed a far-reaching ban on stem cell research, he rested the hopes of millions upon just 60 stem cell lines that supposedly had "great promise that could lead to breakthrough therapies and cures." After only "20 of those lines proved usable", researchers have revealed that all the stem cell lines approved for federally funded research are tainted. Far from providing any disease alleviation, they could potentially "provoke an immune system attack that would wipe out their ability to deliver cures." Scientists, whose hands are already bound by the administration's ideology-based policy toward stem cell research, could be forced to wait at least another year for these stem cells to be recovered, if they can even be salvaged.

From Grist on-line magazine

HOPE AGAINST SLOPE
Bush admin poised to open sensitive Alaska North Slope land to drilling

The Bush administration plans to open to drilling more than 400,000 acres of Alaska's North Slope thought to be vital to migratory birds and caribou, after the Bureau of Land Management determined that drilling can be done with "minimum impact" on wildlife. Interior Secretary Gale Norton is expected to give a final go-ahead for the plan this week. The area is part of the 22-million-acre National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska; 87 percent of the NPR-A was opened for drilling by President Clinton, but the northeast corner, home to Lake Teshekpuk and key wildlife habitat, was put off-limits. Well, so much for that. The Bush team now says the oil and gas in the area is needed. Enviros, of course, disagree and plan to fight the move in court. "You do need to have oil and gas development in the NPR-A, but not on every single acre," said Eleanor Huffins of the Wilderness Society.

straight to the source: Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Associated Press, H. Josef Hebert, 21 Jan 2005

straight to the source: KTUU.com, Steve MacDonald, 21 Jan 2005

Posted: 23 Jan. 2005

Let the facts speak for themselves.

Walking the walk on family values
By William V. D'Antonio

PRESIDENT Bush and Vice President Cheney make reference to "Massachusetts liberals" as if they were referring to people with some kind of disease. I decided it was time to do some research on these people, and here is what I found.

The state with the lowest divorce rate in the nation is Massachusetts. At latest count it had a divorce rate of 2.4 per 1,000 population, while the rate for Texas was 4.1.

But don't take the US government's word for it. Take a look at the findings from the George Barna Research Group. George Barna, a born-again Christian whose company is in Ventura, Calif., found that Massachusetts does indeed have the lowest divorce rate among all 50 states. More disturbing was the finding that born-again Christians have among the highest divorce rates.

The Associated Press, using data supplied by the US Census Bureau, found that the highest divorce rates are to be found in the Bible Belt. The AP report stated that "the divorce rates in these conservative states are roughly 50 percent above the national average of 4.2 per thousand people." The 10 Southern states with some of the highest divorce rates were Alabama, Arkansas, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Texas. By comparison nine states in the Northeast were among those with the lowest divorce rates: Connecticut, Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Vermont.

READ THE REST.

Next generation may be doomed to live in 'global Somalia' By Steve Connor, Science Editor

An environmental collapse that would transform the world into a "global Somalia" could begin in 50 years if we fail to do anything about it, a world authority on the rise and fall of civilisations warned yesterday. Professor Jared Diamond, of the University of California, Los Angeles, said society was on the brink of irreversible decline unless 12 major environmental problems were tackled.

Professor Diamond, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author, has spent many years studying the reasons why some societies in history thrived and others slipped into decline. He cited present-day Somalia as among several places where environmental degradation has already helped to trigger a collapse of government and the rule of law.

"Conditions of Somalia will spread," he said. "Somalia is an example of a worst-case scenario. State government has collapsed; it is a dry landscape, difficult to manage and, not surprisingly, it has problems of environmental degradation.

READ THE REST.

PLEASE PASS THE HEMP, BILLY
DEA drops resistance to hemp food products

Hemp may be the new soy. Recently, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency quietly ended its attempts to ban hemp oil and sterilized industrial hemp seed in food products. (Yes, these products are taken from the Cannabis plant, but no, they won't even get your little brother high.) "It's a victory [for the hemp industry]," says food studies professor Ellen J. Fried, "except for the fact that you can't grow it in the United States. ... But hemp's there. It's in Trader Joe's. It's in Whole Foods." That's right, hemp enthusiasts: When you really, really need a snack (we're not implying anything), you can reach for a growing variety of hemp food products including energy bars, pretzels, waffles, bread, salad dressing, coffee, and beer. The hemp food industry touts the crop's low impact on the environment and its nutritive value -- it's a great source of essential amino acids, essential fatty acids, and protein, backers say. But no major food producers have gotten into the game yet, so don't expect to see Honey Bunches of Hemp cereal any time soon.

straight to the source: The News Tribune, Ed Murietta, 12 Jan 2005

From The Center for American Progress

INAUGURATION
Free From Specifics

President Bush opened his second term with an "assertively abstract" speech in which he promised to promote liberty and democracy "in every nation and culture" on earth. The speech was "harnessed to almost no specifics" – the words "freedom," "free" and "liberty" appeared 49 times, but Bush "did not mention Iraq, Iran, North Korea – or indeed any country, friend or foe." The word "terrorism" did not appear, nor was there mention of al Qaeda. And the war in Iraq, which has claimed the lives of 1,360 American troops and wounded upwards of 10,000, went unacknowledged.

IRAQ? WHAT IRAQ?: While Bush mentioned the abstract notion of "freedom" 25 times in a 17-minute speech (yes, that works out to 1.5 times a minute), the president remained strangely silent on the most important issue facing the country today, the increasingly unpopular war in Iraq. Three other presidents gave their second inaugural addresses during times of war: James Madison, Abraham Lincoln and Nixon. All three focused heavily on the challenges faced by the country in a time of war. Bush, however, never let the word Iraq pass his lips. And "while the war's costs mount, the president pointedly did not ask the country for sacrifices to win the victory he promises."

UNDERMINING DEMOCRACY: THE FIRST-TERM RECORD: President Bush's rhetoric on promoting democracy abroad was undermined by several of his first-term actions. The Bush administration continued to cultivate a close relationship with monarchic Saudi Arabia, for instance, despite that country being ranked by the non-partisan Freedom House as "one of the world's least free nations." In Russia, President Bush stood idly by as his "straightforward and trustworthy" friend Vladimir Putin eliminated political competition, canceled checks and balances, and muzzled the press. According to the Washington Post, "even Putin's defenders have reservations about calling Russia a democracy anymore." And the administration has been protective of Pakistan, "even though President Pervez Musharraf, a general who seized power in 1999, reneged last year on his promise to give up his role as chief of the armed forces."

PROMOTING DEMOCRACY: SECOND-TERM CHALLENGES: Bush's vow to spread freedom also raises several second-term challenges: Will he "go to the mat for instance, to bring democracy to China? To Iran?...How hard will he press for women's rights and free elections in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Egypt?" The challenge may be especially difficult in autocratic China, where U.S. investments are valued at more than $35 billion. The State Department cites "Well-documented abuses of human rights in violation of internationally recognized norms." Human Rights Watch accuses China of stifling free discourse, rigging elections in Hong Kong and repressing freedom in Tibet.

DOMESTIC DITHERING: The last third of Bush's speech was focused on his domestic priorities for his upcoming term. He brushed off his rhetoric on the so-called "ownership society," saying he wanted to "widen the ownership of homes and businesses, retirement savings and health insurance, preparing our people for the challenges of life in a free society." But over the past four years, Bush has systematically shifted retirement and health care costs and risks onto individuals while making sure financial services and health care providers get billions in new fees and services. His plan for privatizing Social Security, for example, leaves the elderly at the mercy of fickle financial markets, while private financial management firms will collect an estimated $940 billion windfall in new fees. He has advocated sharp cuts in the budget for Housing and Urban Development (which helps the poor find housing); today, HUD is poised to lose a quarter of its $31 billion budget.

THE WORLD MAY NOT FOLLOW: In his speech, Bush set forth the idea that the United States would become a global leader for freedom and democracy. One big problem: The world may no longer trust him. Over the past four years, President Bush and his administration have systematically squandered international support and undercut America's position as global leader. A new public opinion poll conducted by BBC World Service shows that of 22,000 surveyed in Africa, Latin America, North America, Asia, and Europe, "58 percent of those surveyed said they believed US President George Bush will have a 'negative impact on [global] peace and security.'" Doug Miller, president of the polling firm GlobeScan, which helped conduct the survey, called the results troubling: "Our research makes very clear that the re-election of President Bush has further isolated America from the world," he said. "It also supports the view of some Americans that unless his administration changes its approach to world affairs in its second term, it will continue to erode America's good name, and hence its ability to effectively influence world affairs."

"So it is the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture."
– George W. Bush, 1/20/05

VERSUS

"Maybe I'm missing something here. I mean, we're going to have kind of a nation building core from America? Absolutely not."

– George W. Bush, 10/11/00

IRAN – CHENEY SOUNDING THE WAR DRUMS: In December, Swift Boat Veterans for Truth leader Jerome Corsi spoke out in favor of a pre-emptive strike on Iran. Corsi said, "either the U.S. alone or the U.S. plus Israel or Israel alone will seriously contemplate a pre-emptive strike, and I'd be in favor of it." Now, Vice President Cheney seems to be on board. In an interview before the inauguration, Cheney said, "If, in fact, the Israelis became convinced the Iranians had a significant nuclear capability...the Israelis might well decide to act first." Cheney added that "We don't want a war in the Middle East, if we can avoid it." His boss may be on board as well: On Monday, Bush said he supported a diplomatic settlement of Iran's nuclear program but said, 'I will never take any option off the table.'"

These people are seriously sick in the head.

RELIGIOUS RIGHT – STOP SPONGEBOB: Alas, five years after Jerry Falwell threw down the gauntlet and demanded Tinky Winky stop "damaging…the moral lives of children," a new threat to America's youth has risen. "Does anybody here know SpongeBob?" James Dobson, the founder of Focus on the Family, asked members of Congress and fellow conservatives at a black-tie dinner on Tuesday. Conservative culture warriors say SpongeBob Squarepants, the popular children's cartoon character, has been enlisted in a "pro-homosexual video" that seeks to "indoctrinate children to accept homosexuality." The video maker's lawyer says the critics "need medication." The New York Times reports that the movie, which will be distributed to public and private elementary schools nationwide through a partnership with FedEx, doesn't even mention sexual identity, though there is a music video to teach children about multiculturalism.

Posted: 18 Jan. 2005

It's time to Skin The Fox

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