Saturday, June 25, 2005
BUSHCO SEZ THIS KIND OF CRAP MEANS AMERICA IS STRONG AND EVERYTHING IS FINE
A small sampling of the news today:
Bush Says No Timetable for Iraq Withdrawal AP - 2 hours, 15 minutes ago
WASHINGTON - Despite growing anxiety about the war in Iraq, President Bush refused to set a timetable Friday for bringing home U.S. troops and declared, "I'm not giving up on the mission. We're doing the right thing."
Oil prices cap record-breaking week with new high AFP - Fri Jun 24, 3:59 PM ET
NEW YORK (AFP) - World oil prices climbed to a new closing high just short of the 60-dollar mark in the face of projections about robust demand from China and the United States.
IBM to hire 14,000 in India, offsetting cuts elsewhere: report AFP - Sat Jun 25, 1:18 AM ET
NEW YORK (AFP) - US tech giant IBM plans to increase its payroll in India this year by 14,000 workers as it cuts up to 13,000 jobs in Europe and the United States, a labor group said.
House Approves Cuts to Labor Programs AP - Sat Jun 25,12:32 AM ET
WASHINGTON - Funding for job training, rural health care, low-income schools and help for people lacking health insurance would face big cuts under a bill passed Friday by the House.
Newsday) June 24, 2005 - In a landmark property rights decision, a sharply divided Supreme Court yesterday disappointed a group of stubborn New London, Conn., residents by ruling that the city had the right to seize their homes to clear the way for private developers.
WHAT THE FUCK.
Thursday, June 23, 2005
A MAN'S HOME IS A CORPORATION'S CASTLE
Government Power to Take Property Backed by Top Court
June 23 (Bloomberg) -- Local governments have broad power to take over private property to make way for shopping malls, office parks and sports stadiums, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled.
The court said government agencies can constitutionally take property in the name of economic development -- and even transfer it to another private party -- as long as the landowner receives compensation. The 5-4 ruling, which split the court largely along liberal-conservative lines, came in a case involving land near a Pfizer Inc. plant in New London, Connecticut.
``Promoting economic development is a traditional and long accepted function of government,'' Justice John Paul Stevens wrote for the majority in Washington. He said the justices ``decline to second-guess the city's considered judgments about the efficacy of its development plan.''
The ruling is a setback for property-rights advocates angered by what they say is an increasingly common practice, now used thousands of times a year.
``Any property may now be taken for the benefit of another private party, but the fallout from this decision will not be random,'' Justice Sandra Day O'Connor said in dissent. ``The beneficiaries are likely to be those citizens with disproportionate influence and power in the political process, including large corporations and development firms.''
Joining O'Connor's opinion were three conservatives, Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas.
Kennedy Opinion
Justice Anthony Kennedy, often a swing vote, joined liberals Stevens, Stephen Breyer, David Souter and Ruth Bader Ginsburg in the majority.
Kennedy wrote separately to say that the court might give more exacting scrutiny to government land seizures in other cases, such as those that involve ``the risks of undetected impermissible favoritism of private parties.''
The Institute for Justice, a Washington-based group representing seven property owners in the Connecticut case, had urged the high court to put new restrictions on government ``eminent domain'' power.
``The decision is an open invitation for the abuse of eminent domain by government and private developers,'' said Dana Berliner, an attorney for the group.
New London wants to raze a residential neighborhood to make room for a five-star hotel, luxury condominiums and office buildings near the Pfizer research facility. The city says it is trying to reverse decades of economic decline.
Hotel and Condos
The case was one of the most closely watched disputes in the court's 2004-05 term, which is scheduled to end Monday. The justices still must rule in cases involving online piracy of copyrighted songs and movies, high-speed Internet access and Ten Commandments displays on public property.
The end of the term also might be the occasion for a retirement announcement from Rehnquist, 80, who is battling thyroid cancer.
The Connecticut case centered on the U.S. Constitution's takings clause, which requires government agencies to pay compensation when they take over private property ``for public use.'' The property owners argued that the public-use prong requires more than simply the possibility of economic revitalization.
The justices ruled in 1954 that government agencies can condemn blighted property as long as they compensate the owners. Thirty years later, the court said governments could take over property to break up an oligopoly on land ownership.
The latest question concerned bids to take over property that isn't blighted and doesn't involve an oligopoly.
Pfizer Plant
New London's development plan, enacted in 2000, calls for the takeover of 115 homes and small businesses in the 90-acre Fort Trumbull neighborhood adjacent to the Pfizer facility. The city also set up a private entity, the New London Development Corporation, to manage the project.
The plan coincided with the decision by Pfizer, the world's largest drugmaker, to open a new research headquarters in New London. Pfizer isn't directly involved in the litigation, and its property wasn't at issue in the high court case.
A handful of property owners refused to sell their property and instead sued. The Connecticut Supreme Court, in a divided opinion, said the city and development corporation were acting legally.
Stevens said the New London plan ``unquestionably serves a public purpose.'' He said there is ``no principled way to distinguish economic development from the other public purposes that we have recognized.''
The case is Kelo v. City of New London, 04-108.
Thursday, June 23, 2005
BEFORE THERE WERE CONCERT T-SHIRTS
Turin Shroud confirmed as a fake
PARIS (AFP) - A French magazine said it had carried out experiments that proved the Shroud of Turin, believed by some Christians to be their religion's holiest relic, was a fake.
"A mediaeval technique helped us to make a Shroud," Science et Vie (Science and Life) said in its July issue.
The Shroud is claimed by its defenders to be the cloth in which the body of Jesus Christ was wrapped after his crucifixion.
It bears the faint image of a blood-covered man with holes in his hand and wounds in his body and head, the apparent result of being crucified, stabbed by a Roman spear and forced to wear a crown of thorns.
In 1988, scientists carried out carbon-14 dating of the delicate linen cloth and concluded that the material was made some time between 1260 and 1390. Their study prompted the then archbishop of Turin, where the Shroud is stored, to admit that the garment was a hoax. But the debate sharply revived in January this year.
Drawing on a method previously used by skeptics to attack authenticity claims about the Shroud, Science et Vie got an artist to do a bas-relief -- a sculpture that stands out from the surrounding background -- of a Christ-like face.
A scientist then laid out a damp linen sheet over the bas-relief and let it dry, so that the thin cloth was moulded onto the face.
Using cotton wool, he then carefully dabbed ferric oxide, mixed with gelatine, onto the cloth to make blood-like marks. When the cloth was turned inside-out, the reversed marks resulted in the famous image of the crucified Christ.
Gelatine, an animal by-product rich in collagen, was frequently used by Middle Age painters as a fixative to bind pigments to canvas or wood.
The imprinted image turned out to be wash-resistant, impervious to temperatures of 250 C (482 F) and was undamaged by exposure to a range of harsh chemicals, including bisulphite which, without the help of the gelatine, would normally have degraded ferric oxide to the compound ferrous oxide.
The experiments, said Science et Vie, answer several claims made by the pro-Shroud camp, which says the marks could not have been painted onto the cloth.
For one thing, the Shroud's defenders argue, photographic negatives and scanners show that the image could only have derived from a three-dimensional object, given the width of the face, the prominent cheekbones and nose.
In addition, they say, there are no signs of any brushmarks. And, they argue, no pigments could have endured centuries of exposure to heat, light and smoke.
For Jacques di Costanzo, of Marseille University Hospital, southern France, who carried out the experiments, the mediaeval forger must have also used a bas-relief, a sculpture or cadaver to get the 3-D imprint.
The faker used a cloth rather than a brush to make the marks, and used gelatine to keep the rusty blood-like images permanently fixed and bright for selling in the booming market for religious relics.
To test his hypothesis, di Costanzo used ferric oxide, but no gelatine, to make other imprints, but the marks all disappeared when the cloth was washed or exposed to the test chemicals.
He also daubed the bas-relief with an ammoniac compound designed to represent human sweat and also with cream of aloe, a plant that was used as an embalming aid by Jews at the time of Christ.
He then placed the cloth over it for 36 hours -- the approximate time that Christ was buried before rising again -- but this time, there was not a single mark on it.
"It's obviously easier to make a fake shroud than a real one," Science et Vie report drily.
The first documented evidence of the Shroud dates back to 1357, when it surfaced at a church at Lirey, near the eastern French town of Troyes. In 1390, Pope Clement VII declared that it was not the true shroud but could be used as a representation of it, provided the faithful be told that it was not genuine.
In January this year, a US chemist, Raymond Rogers, said the radiocarbon samples for the 1988 study were taken from a piece that had been sewn into the fabric by nuns who repaired the Shroud after it was damaged in a church blaze in 1532.
Rogers said that his analysis of other samples, based on levels of a chemical called vanillin that results from the decomposition of flax and other plants, showed the Shroud could be "between 1,300 and 3,000 years old."Wednesday, June 22, 2005
FOOD CHAIN BREAKING DOWN
Extinction of frogs is catastrophic, scientists say
By Carlos Andrade 1 hour, 4 minutes ago
QUITO, Ecuador (Reuters) - Before the arrival of Spanish colonizers some 500 years ago, Indians in what is now Ecuador dipped their arrowheads in venom extracted from the phantasmal poison frog to doom their victims to convulsive death, scientists believe.
More recently, epibatidine -- the chemical which paralyzed and killed the Indians' enemies -- has been isolated to produce a pain killer 200 times more powerful than morphine, but without that drug's addictive and toxic side effects.
Pharmaceutical companies have not yet brought epibatidine to market but hope to discover other chemicals with powerful properties in frogs, which are a traditional source of medicine and food for many of Ecuador's Indians.
They may want to hurry because the treasure trove of the world's frogs and toads is disappearing at a catastrophic rate. And it's not just potential medicines which could be vanishing but creatures of beauty.
"Frogs and toads are becoming extinct all over the world. It's the same magnitude event as the extinction of the dinosaurs," said Luis Coloma, a herpetologist, or scientist dedicated to studying reptiles and amphibians, in Ecuador -- the country with the third-greatest diversity of amphibians.
The thumb-sized jungle-dwelling phantasmal poison frog is an example of amphibian good looks, despite its macabre associations. It is bright red with fluorescent green stripes.
At least two out of five of the 3,046 amphibian types in the Americas -- home to 53 percent of known species -- are threatened with extinction, according to a recent report titled "Disappearing Jewels" by lobby group NatureServe.
Nine amphibians, including eight frogs and a salamander, have become extinct in the Americas in the last 100 years, including five since 1980, according to the report. Scientists have also been unable to find representatives of another 117 species, which are also possibly extinct.
VARIOUS CAUSES
Toads and frogs are dying out under pressure from the expansion of agriculture, forestry, pollution, disease and climate change, NatureServe said.
"Amphibians are disappearing before our eyes," the report said.
Scientists fear they could be indicator species -- a sign of possible future damage to other parts of the ecosystem because frogs and toads are especially vulnerable and thus are the first to disappear.
"Disappearing amphibians break links in the food chain, with often unpredictable effects on other organisms," the report said.
Governments should strengthen controls at existing nature reserves and encourage the breeding of endangered species in captivity if they are to save frogs, NatureServe says.
They should also foster research on the recently discovered chytrid fungal disease, which is killing frogs, and educate the public about the plight of amphibians, it said.
"We have to change the idea that they are ugly and slimy. They are beautiful, diverse species, just like hummingbirds or butterflies," said Martin Bustamante, herpetologist at Ecuador's Catholic University.
The Catholic University possesses one of the largest collections of captive live frogs in the Americas, and, to boost public awareness of frogs and toads and their tribulations, it recently staged an exhibition of some of its charges in the capital Quito.
The jungles and mountains of Ecuador are home to 417 species of frogs and toads, of which more than a third are classed as vulnerable or in critical danger of extinction. In the Americas, only Colombia and Mexico are home to more endangered amphibians, according to NatureServe.Tuesday, June 21, 2005
MY MIND IS MADE UP - DON'T CONFUSE ME WITH REALITY
Views That Facts Can't Shake
By Ellen Goodman
BOSTON -- The medical examiners delivered their autopsy report in the most matter-of-fact tone. Terri Schiavo's brain had atrophied to half the normal size for a woman her age. Her eyes, the focus of that famous videotape, saw nothing. She was blind.
The examiners couldn't say why Terri collapsed 15 years ago. But they could say she wasn't abused by her husband. They could say that "no amount of treatment or rehabilitation would have reversed" her condition. There was no doubt about it.
Case closed? As the news conference replayed, the television screen spelled out a question for cable viewers: "Does This Change Opinions?" Did the facts of a case that had so divided the country, so politicized the fate of one woman, actually make a difference?
For Schiavo's parents, the answer was no. The Schindlers still insist their daughter related to them and tried to speak. Their lawyer said it only proved that "she was not terminal." The president said only that he "was deeply saddened by this case." His brother, the governor of Florida, said he would still have tried to keep Schiavo alive.
And if the autopsy changed the opinions of politicians such as Doctor/Senator Bill Frist, who disgraced his first profession by diagnosing a videotape, they were not in the mood for apologies.
This case was never solely about medicine. But the question on the TV screen illustrated the times we live in -- times when facts can exist in a separate universe from opinions. And a country in which science is seen not as a matter of black and white but increasingly as a matter of red and blue.
The Schiavo case is not the only example. The climate is equally apparent in the struggle over what the Bush administration calls "climate change" -- and everyone else calls global warming. The only way to justify doing nothing about global warming now is to deliberately muddle the science. It's not an accident that Philip Cooney, the White House official caught editing reports on greenhouse gases, left for Exxon Mobil, which has indeed funded doubts.
So, too, the struggle over evolution is no longer overtly between scientists and religious fundamentalists. It's between the science establishment and the handful of front men with PhDs who support "intelligent design." Their credentials make it seem as if evolution were also a matter of genuine scientific debate.
Meanwhile, reports of a link between breast cancer and abortion reappear on Web sites with the tenacity of urban legends. Stories continually report, most recently in Ohio, fantasies presented as facts in abstinence-only education programs being funded by the government. They link birth control pills with infertility, and HIV with French-kissing. But when they are debunked, "Does This Change Opinions?"
James Wagoner of Advocates for Youth describes the trend this way: "If science doesn't fit the ideology, you shop and find your own science." Just last week the Heritage Foundation, an overtly conservative think tank, was given a government platform to attempt to debunk, indeed to attack, an earlier study on virginity pledges.
The original, peer-reviewed study by researchers at Columbia and Yale universities found that young people who make virginity pledges may delay intercourse, but ultimately end up with rates of sexually transmitted diseases similar to their peers. The Heritage team makes a counterclaim, in a paper that was presented at a forum sponsored by the Department of Health and Human Services, that pledgers have lower STDs and fewer risky behaviors.
With its flawed methodology, the Heritage study may never be published, but as Wagoner said, "They don't have to win the scientific debate, they only have to muddy the water." In a day when unvetted research becomes public as quickly as rumors on the Internet, it enters the data bank as "scientific proof" that virginity pledges "work."
As Peter Bearman, co-author of the original study, says ruefully, "Science has often been deployed for political reasons. The deployment of science is different than the distortion of science. That's what is happening now."
It doesn't help that 15.5 percent of the scientists in a recent survey said they changed something in a study to satisfy a sponsor. It's bad enough when the sponsor is a drug company, worse when it's an ideological purveyor.
Maybe it's a good sign that even ideologues still need scientists to make their case legitimate. But what happens when science is seen and even skewed as partisan? Is one scientist's fact given no more weight than another's opinion?
At the height of the Schiavo furor, I saw a protester carrying a sign that asked: "How do you kill someone while she's smiling at you?" Now we know beyond any doubt that Terri Schiavo couldn't smile. Does this fact change even one opinion?
ellengoodman@globe.comTuesday, June 21, 2005
BIG BROTHER SEZ: "RULES? WE DON'T NEED NO STEENKIN' RULES!"
Gov't Collected Data on Airline Passengers
By LESLIE MILLER, Associated Press
WASHINGTON - Air travelers who have been concerned about the government collecting their personal information from airlines now have a second source to worry about: commercial data brokers.
The federal agency in charge of aviation security revealed that it bought and is storing commercial data about some passengers — even though officials said they wouldn't do it and Congress told them not to.
The Transportation Security Administration is testing a terrorist screening program called Secure Flight that uses information about U.S. citizens who flew on commercial airlines in June 2004.
"This is like a secret file that's been compiled," said Tim Sparapani, a privacy lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union.
The TSA hopes that successful testing of Secure Flight will allow it to take over from the airlines the responsibility for checking passenger names against terrorist watch lists.
But Secure Flight and its predecessor, CAPPS II, have been criticized for secretly obtaining personal information about airline passengers, not doing enough to protect it and then misleading the public about its role in acquiring the data.
The TSA and several airlines were embarrassed last year when it was revealed that the airlines gave personal information about 12 million passengers to the government without their permission or knowledge.
Class-action lawsuits have been brought against airlines and government contractors for sharing passengers' information. Airlines agreed to turn over passenger data for testing only after they were ordered to do so by the government in November.
According to documents obtained by The Associated Press, the TSA gave passenger name records to a contractor, Virginia-based EagleForce Associates. A passenger name record can include a variety of information, including name, address, phone number and credit card information.
EagleForce compared the passenger name records with more detailed data from three other contractors to find out if the records were accurate, according to the TSA.
EagleForce then produced CD-ROMs containing most of the information "and provided those CD-ROMs to TSA for use in watch list match testing," the documents said. The TSA now stores that data.
According to previous official notices, TSA had said it would not store commercial data about airline passengers.
The Privacy Act of 1974 prohibits the government from keeping secret databases. It also requires agencies to make official statements on the impact of their record-keeping on privacy.
The TSA revealed its use of commercial data in a revised Privacy Act statement to be published in the Federal Register on Wednesday.
TSA spokesman Mark Hatfield said the program was being developed with a commitment to privacy, and that it was routine to change Privacy Act statements during testing.
"Secure Flight is built on an airtight privacy platform, and the GAO (Government Accountability Office) and Congress are providing close oversight every step of the way," he said. "The purpose of the testing is to define what the program will ultimately look like."
The TSA said it is protecting the data from theft and carefully restricting access.
Congress said no money could be spent to test such an identity verification system "until TSA has developed measures to determine the impact of such verification on aviation security and the Government Accountability Office has reported on its evaluation of the measures." That language was part of the Homeland Security Department spending bill, which became law on Oct. 18.
The GAO issued its report on Secure Flight testing on March 28.
Hatfield said appropriate congressional committees were briefed on the contract — awarded to EagleForce on Feb. 22 — in December.
But Bruce Schneier, a security expert who serves on the TSA-appointed oversight panel for Secure Flight, said the agency was explicitly told not to try to verify passengers' identity with commercial data.
"They're doing what they want and they're working around any rules that exist," Schneier said.
Last week, the Homeland Security Department's chief privacy officer, Nuala O'Connor Kelly, announced that she's conducting an investigation into the TSA's use of commercial data for Secure Flight testing.
___
On the Net:
Transportation Security Administration: http://www.tsa.gov
Homeland Security Department: http://www.dhs.govTuesday, June 21, 2005
GIRLS JUST WANNA HAVE FUN
"Holstege said he had trouble getting reliable results from the study on men because the scanner needs activities lasting at least two minutes and the men's climaxes didn't last that long. " Har!
Brain Areas Shut Off During Female Orgasm
By EMMA ROSS, AP
COPENHAGEN, Denmark - New research indicates parts of the brain that govern fear and anxiety are switched off when a woman is having an orgasm but remain active if she is faking.
In the first study to map brain function during orgasm, scientists from the Netherlands also found that as a woman climaxes, an area of the brain governing emotional control is largely deactivated.
"The fact that there is no deactivation in faked orgasms means a basic part of a real orgasm is letting go. Women can imitate orgasm quite well, as we know, but there is nothing really happening in the brain," said neuroscientist Gert Holstege, presenting his findings Monday to the annual meeting of the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology.
In the study, Holstege and his colleagues at Groningen University recruited 11 men, 13 women and their partners.
The volunteers were injected with a dye that shows changes in brain function on a scan. For men, the scanner tracked activity at rest, during erection, during manual stimulation by their partner and during ejaculation brought on by the partner's hand.
For women, the scanner measured brain activity at rest, while they faked an orgasm, while their partners stimulated their clitoris and while they experienced orgasm.
Holstege said he had trouble getting reliable results from the study on men because the scanner needs activities lasting at least two minutes and the men's climaxes didn't last that long. However, the scans did show activation of reward centers in the brain for men, but not for women.
Holstege said his results on women were more clear.
When women faked orgasm, the cortex, the part of the brain governing conscious action, lit up. It was not activated during a genuine orgasm.
Even the body movements made during a real orgasm were unconscious, Holstege said.
The most striking results were seen in the parts of the brain that shut down, or deactivated. Deactivation was visible in the amygdala, a part of the brain thought to be involved in the neurobiology of fear and anxiety.
"During orgasm, there was strong, enormous deactivation in the brain. During fake orgasm, there was no deactivation of the brain at all. None," Holstege said.
Shutting down the brain during orgasm may ensure that obstacles such as fear and stress did not get in the way, Holstege proposed. "Deactivation of these very important parts of the brain might be the most important necessity for having an orgasm," he said.
Donald Pfaff, professor of neurobiology and behavior at Rockefeller University in New York, said the interpretations were reasonable. "It makes poetic sense," said Pfaff, who was not connected with the research.
___
On the Net:
European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology
http://www.eshre.comTuesday, June 21, 2005
THERE'S HOPE FOR THE NEXT GENERATION AFTER ALL
Angelina Jolie Did What?
ALEX STATHOPOULOS
Oh my freakin’ God. I like, heard that Lindsay Lohan dissed Jessica Simpson at her birthday party. Talk about career suicide—I mean, “Herbie: Fully Loaded” is bound to become a classic, but catching beef with the star of “Newlyweds”? For the love of edible makeup and all that is holy, she should know better.
Bar none, the United States is full of a million wonderful little oddities. Sometimes I wonder how anybody can get bored here—thanks to Hollywood, whenever life throws us monotony, we can sit on a couch and watch TV with it, broil a cheeseburger on it and create a Web site about it. Making lemonade is so five minutes ago, as is Nicole Richie, walking and breathing regular-flavored air.
Thanks to the rigors of UC Berkeley, summertime is the only time when I have the luxury to catch up on movie watching, the latest trends Target has to offer and celebrity gossip. And before you start wagging your hypocritical little finger at me for keeping score of the latest media blitzes, reflect back on how many references you understood in the introduction to this column. Ah hah! So you’ve been eavesdropping on the media buzz too.
It’s not that I blame you or anybody else. There’s something irresistible about celebrity gossip: It’s a variety of intrigue entirely risk-free, it makes us feel better about ourselves and new developments provide wholesome entertainment for the whole family—unless we’re talking about the anorexic Olsen twin, why Michael Jackson stood trial, Grandpa Cruise marrying a 26-year-old, or the queen of pinecone-laden centerpieces doing time in Camp Cupcake.
Wait a minute, maybe celebrity gossip isn’t so wholesome after all. Maybe it’s actually a waste of time and reflects the disintegration of our attention spans to those only slightly above the average cow.
Perhaps you were taken by Paris Hilton’s Oscar-deserving performance in “House of Wax,” but I’ll tell you something that will scare you more than all the wax in the world poured onto every multi-billion dollar heiress. The average person knows more about Jennifer Lopez, Brad Pitt or some other celebrity than they do about their own next-door neighbor.
Let’s take a moment out of our busy days to reflect on this. Most people, especially those of my generation, are more than willing to enter into conversation about Will Ferrell’s smashing performance in “Old School” (You my boy, Blue!) yet while walking through Sproul Plaza, won’t even take a moment to ask friends how they’re doing. We pry into the lives of people who are famous, odd or outrageous, while devoting little effort to the relationships that actually pertain to us.
And at the risk of losing the journalistic integrity I never had, I’m going to posit that America’s obsession with celebrities is the fodder of social and political apathy, representing everything that makes this nation culpable for its materialistic, self-serving tendencies. Harsh? Then let me rephrase: If someone in my generation had a ticket to a local concert, they would probably go. In the last Presidential election, fewer than one in 10 people who went to see the local ballot box were aged 18-24.
Sure, I’m confounding issues. But in a world where women pay to get plastic bags full of salt water sewn into their chests, I’m going to argue that sometimes confounding an issue is the only way to hit it dead-on. If our social directive continues to overlook real people and problems and target the private lives of select individuals, sensationalism will consume our ability to lead this country as informed members of a democratic system.
There’s nothing wrong with wondering about whether Britney Spears’ baby is going to look more like her or that dashing Kevin Federline. But when our fascination with pop princesses and the cribs of rap stars trumps our interests in relevant social and political issues, what was once entertainment becomes escapism.
I don’t know about you, but I cried tears of joy when Kelly Clarkson became the first American Idol. It’s inevitable that we form attachments to those cute little figures inside the boob tube, with all their drama and angst—they remind us of who we would be if we were black-tar heroin junkies. Enjoying the occasional celebrity smack down is okay in my book, so long as we remember that justice is bigger than Michael Jackson, beauty is more than appearances and girls can be beasties too.
Sign up for the first KY wrestling match of the year at alex@dailycal.org.Monday, June 20, 2005
I'M GONNA BUY ME A BIG OLD RANCH FOR A NICKEL
The global housing boom - In come the waves
From The Economist
The worldwide rise in house prices is the biggest bubble in history. Prepare for the economic pain when it pops
NEVER before have real house prices risen so fast, for so long, in so many countries. Property markets have been frothing from America, Britain and Australia to France, Spain and China. Rising property prices helped to prop up the world economy after the stockmarket bubble burst in 2000. What if the housing boom now turns to bust?
According to estimates by The Economist, the total value of residential property in developed economies rose by more than $30 trillion over the past five years, to over $70 trillion, an increase equivalent to 100% of those countries' combined GDPs. Not only does this dwarf any previous house-price boom, it is larger than the global stockmarket bubble in the late 1990s (an increase over five years of 80% of GDP) or America's stockmarket bubble in the late 1920s (55% of GDP). In other words, it looks like the biggest bubble in history.
The global boom in house prices has been driven by two common factors: historically low interest rates have encouraged home buyers to borrow more money; and households have lost faith in equities after stockmarkets plunged, making property look attractive. Will prices now fall, or simply flatten off? And in either case, what will be the consequences for economies around the globe? The likely answers to all these questions are not comforting.
The increasing importance of house prices in the world economy prompted The Economist to start publishing a set of global house-price indices in 2002 (see article). These now cover 20 countries, using data from lending institutions, estate agents and national statistics. Our latest quarterly update shows that home prices continue to rise by 10% or more in half of the countries (see table). America has seen one of the biggest increases in house-price inflation over the past year, with the average price of homes jumping by 12.5% in the year to the first quarter. In California, Florida, Nevada. Hawaii, Maryland and Washington, DC, they soared by more than 20%.
In Europe, prices have long been at dizzy heights in Ireland and Spain, but over the past year have also spurted at rates of 9% or more in France, Italy, Belgium, Denmark and Sweden. Both France (15%) and Spain (15.5%) have faster house-price inflation than the United States.
By contrast, some housing booms have now fizzled out. In Australia, according to official figures, the 12-month rate of increase in house prices slowed sharply to only 0.4% in the first quarter of this year, down from almost 20% in late 2003. Wishful thinkers call this a soft landing, but another index, calculated by the Commonwealth Bank of Australia, which is based on prices when contracts are agreed rather than at settlement, shows that average house prices have actually fallen by 7% since 2003; prices in once-hot Sydney have plunged by 16%.
Housepricecrash.co.uk collates information and statistics on house prices in Britain. Nationwide and the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors give differing appraisals of Britain’s housing market. A study from America's National Association of Realtors, summarised here, found that one-quarter of houses bought in 2004 were for investment, not owner-occupation. See also the Federal Reserve.
Britain's housing market has also cooled rapidly. The Nationwide index, which we use, rose by 5.5% in the year to May, down from 20% growth in July 2004. But once again, other surveys offer a gloomier picture. The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) reports that prices have fallen for ten consecutive months, with a net balance of 49% of surveyors reporting falling prices in May, the weakest number since 1992 during Britain's previous house-price bust. The volume of sales has slumped by one-third compared with a year ago as both sellers and buyers have lost confidence in house valuations. House-price inflation has also slowed significantly in Ireland, the Netherlands and New Zealand over the past year.
Since 1997, home prices in most countries have risen by much more in real terms (ie, after adjusting for inflation) than during any previous boom. (The glaring exceptions are Germany and Japan, where prices have been falling.) American prices have risen by less than those in Britain, yet this is still by far the biggest boom in American history, with real gains more than three times bigger than in previous housing booms in the 1970s or the 1980s.
The most compelling evidence that home prices are over-valued in many countries is the diverging relationship between house prices and rents. The ratio of prices to rents is a sort of price/earnings ratio for the housing market. Just as the price of a share should equal the discounted present value of future dividends, so the price of a house should reflect the future benefits of ownership, either as rental income for an investor or the rent saved by an owner-occupier.
Calculations by The Economist show that house prices have hit record levels in relation to rents in America, Britain, Australia, New Zealand, France, Spain, the Netherlands, Ireland and Belgium. This suggests that homes are even more over-valued than at previous peaks, from which prices typically fell in real terms. House prices are also at record levels in relation to incomes in these nine countries.
America's ratio of prices to rents is 35% above its average level during 1975-2000 (see chart 1). By the same gauge, property is “overvalued” by 50% or more in Britain, Australia and Spain. Rental yields have fallen to well below current mortgage rates, making it impossible for many landlords to make money.
To bring the ratio of prices to rents back to some sort of fair value, either rents must rise sharply or prices must fall. After many previous house-price booms most of the adjustment came through inflation pushing up rents and incomes, while home prices stayed broadly flat. But today, with inflation much lower, a similar process would take years. For example, if rents rise by an annual 2.5%, house prices would need to remain flat for 12 years to bring America's ratio of house prices to rents back to its long-term norm. Elsewhere it would take even longer. It seems more likely, then, that prices will fall.
A common objection to this analysis is that low interest rates make buying a home cheaper and so justify higher prices in relation to rents. But this argument is incorrectly based on nominal, not real, interest rates and so ignores the impact of inflation in eroding the real burden of mortgage debt. If real interest rates are permanently lower, this could indeed justify higher prices in relation to rents or income. For example, real rates in Ireland and Spain were reduced significantly by these countries' membership of Europe's single currency—though not by enough to explain all of the surge in house prices. But in America and Britain, real after-tax interest rates are not especially low by historical standards.
Betting the house
America's housing market heated up later than those in other countries, such as Britain and Australia, but it is now looking more and more similar. Even the Federal Reserve is at last starting to fret about what is happening. Prices are being driven by speculative demand. A study by the National Association of Realtors (NAR) found that 23% of all American houses bought in 2004 were for investment, not owner-occupation. Another 13% were bought as second homes. Investors are prepared to buy houses they will rent out at a loss, just because they think prices will keep rising—the very definition of a financial bubble. “Flippers” buy and sell new properties even before they are built in the hope of a large gain. In Miami, as many as half of the original buyers resell new apartments in this way. Many properties change hands two or three times before somebody finally moves in.
New, riskier forms of mortgage finance also allow buyers to borrow more. According to the NAR, 42% of all first-time buyers and 25% of all buyers made no down-payment on their home purchase last year. Indeed, homebuyers can get 105% loans to cover buying costs. And, increasingly, little or no documentation of a borrower's assets, employment and income is required for a loan.
Interest-only mortgages are all the rage, along with so-called “negative amortisation loans” (the buyer pays less than the interest due and the unpaid principal and interest is added on to the loan). After an initial period, payments surge as principal repayment kicks in. In California, over 60% of all new mortgages this year are interest-only or negative-amortisation, up from 8% in 2002. The national figure is one-third. The new loans are essentially a gamble that prices will continue to rise rapidly, allowing the borrower to sell the home at a profit or refinance before any principal has to be repaid. Such loans are usually adjustable-rate mortgages (ARMs), which leave the borrower additionally exposed to higher interest rates. This year, ARMs have risen to 50% of all mortgages in those states with the biggest price rises.
The rapid house-price inflation of recent years is clearly unsustainable, yet most economists in most countries (even in Britain and Australia, where prices are already falling) still cling to the hope that house prices will flatten rather than collapse. It is true that, unlike share prices, house prices tend to be somewhat “sticky” downwards. People have to live somewhere and owners are loth to accept a capital loss. As long as they can afford their mortgage payments, they will stay put until conditions improve. The snag is that eventually some owners have to sell—because of relocation, or job loss—and they will be forced to accept lower prices.
Indeed, a drop in nominal prices is today more likely than after previous booms for three reasons: homes are more overvalued; inflation is much lower; and many more people have been buying houses as an investment. If house prices stop rising or start to fall, owner-occupiers will largely stay put, but over-exposed investors are more likely to sell, especially if rents do not cover their interest payments. House prices will not collapse overnight like stockmarkets—a slow puncture is more likely. But over the next five years, several countries are likely to experience price falls of 20% or more.
While America's housing market is still red hot, others—in Britain, Australia and the Netherlands—have already cooled (see chart 2). What lessons might they offer the United States?
The first is that, contrary to conventional wisdom, it does not require a trigger, such as a big rise in interest rates or unemployment, for house prices to decline. British home prices started to fall in the summer of 2004 after the Bank of England raised rates by a modest one and a quarter percentage points. Since 2002, the Reserve Bank of Australia has raised rates by exactly the same amount and unemployment is at a 30-year low, yet home prices have fallen. The Federal Reserve's gradual increase in rates by two percentage-points over the past year has done little to scare away buyers, because most still have fixed-rate mortgages and long-term bond yields have remained unusually low. But as more Americans have been resorting to ARMs, so the housing market is becoming more vulnerable to rising rates.
Rung at the bottom
British and Australian prices have stalled mainly because first-time buyers have been priced out of the market and demand from buy-to-let investors has slumped. British first-timers now account for only 29% of buyers, down from 50% in 1999. And, according to the National Association of Estate Agents, buy-to-let purchases are running 50% lower than a year ago. As prices become more and more heady in America, the same will happen there.
British experience also undermines a popular argument in America that house prices must keeping rising because there is a limited supply of land and a growing number of households. As recently as a year ago, it was similarly argued that the supply of houses in Britain could not keep up with demand. But as the expectation of rising prices has faded, demand has slumped. According to RICS, the stock of houses for sale has increased by one-third over the past year. America has faster population growth than Britain, but its supply of housing has also been rising rapidly. Economists at Goldman Sachs point out that residential investment is at a 40-year high in America, yet the number of households is growing at its slowest pace for 40 years. This will create excess supply.
Another mantra of housing bulls in America is that national average house prices have never fallen for a full year since modern statistics began. Yet outside America, many countries have at some time experienced a drop in average house prices, such as Britain and Sweden in the early 1990s and Japan over the past decade. So why should America be immune? Alan Greenspan, chairman of America's Federal Reserve, accepts that there are some local bubbles, but dismisses the idea of a national housing bubble that could harm the whole economy if it bursts. America has in the past seen sharp regional price declines, for example in Boston, Manhattan and San Francisco in the early 1990s. This time, with prices looking overvalued in more states than ever in the past, average American prices may well fall for the first time since the Great Depression.
But even if prices in America do dip, insist the optimists, they will quickly resume their rising trend, because real house prices always rise strongly in the long term. Robert Shiller, a Yale economist, who has just updated his book “Irrational Exuberance” (first published on the eve of the stockmarket collapse in 2000), disagrees. He estimates that house prices in America rose by an annual average of only 0.4% in real terms between 1890 and 2004. And if the current boom is stripped out of the figures, along with the period after the second world war when the government offered subsidies for returning soldiers, artificially inflating prices, real house prices have been flat or falling most of the time. Another sobering warning is that after British house prices fell in the early 1990s, it took at least a decade before they returned to their previous peak, after adjusting for inflation.
Another worrying lesson from abroad for America is that even a mere levelling-off of house prices can trigger a sharp slowdown in consumer spending. Take the Netherlands. In the late 1990s, the booming Dutch economy was heralded as a model of success. At the time, both house prices and household credit were rising at double-digit rates. The rate of Dutch house-price inflation then slowed from 20% in 2000 to nearly zero by 2003. This appeared to be the perfect soft landing: prices did not drop. Yet consumer spending declined in 2003, pushing the economy into recession, from which it has still not recovered. When house prices had been rising, borrowing against capital gains on homes to finance other spending had surged. Although house prices did not fall, this housing-equity withdrawal plunged after 2001, removing a powerful stimulus to spending.
Housing-equity withdrawal has also fallen sharply over the past year in Britain and Australia, denting household spending. In Australia, the 12-month rate of growth in retail sales has slowed from 8% to only 1.8% over the past year; GDP growth has halved to 1.9%. In Britain, too, a cooling of the housing market has been accompanied by an abrupt slowdown in consumer spending. If, as seems likely, home prices continue to fall in both countries, spending will be further squeezed.
Even a modest weakening of house prices in America would hurt consumer spending, because homeowners have been cashing out their capital gains at a record pace. Goldman Sachs estimates that total housing-equity withdrawal rose to 7.4% of personal disposable income in 2004. If prices stop rising, this “income” from capital gains will vanish.
And after the gold rush?
The housing market has played such a big role in propping up America's economy that a sharp slowdown in house prices is likely to have severe consequences. Over the past four years, consumer spending and residential construction have together accounted for 90% of the total growth in GDP. And over two-fifths of all private-sector jobs created since 2001 have been in housing-related sectors, such as construction, real estate and mortgage broking.
One of the best international studies of how house-price busts can hurt economies has been done by the International Monetary Fund. Analysing house prices in 14 countries during 1970-2001, it identified 20 examples of “busts”, when real prices fell by almost 30% on average (the fall in nominal prices was smaller). All but one of those housing busts led to a recession, with GDP after three years falling to an average of 8% below its previous growth trend. America was the only country to avoid a boom and bust during that period. This time it looks likely to join the club.
Japan provides a nasty warning of what can happen when boom turns to bust. Japanese property prices have dropped for 14 years in a row, by 40% from their peak in 1991. Yet the rise in prices in Japan during the decade before 1991 was less than the increase over the past ten years in most of the countries that have experienced housing booms (see chart 3). And it is surely no coincidence that Japan and Germany, the two countries where house prices have fallen for most of the past decade, have had the weakest growth in consumer spending of all developed economies over that period. Americans who believe that house prices can only go up and pose no risk to their economy would be well advised to look overseas.
Monday, June 20, 2005
FERAL YOBS: PUNKASS MUTHAS WHO WOULDN'T LAST 5 MINUTES IN MY HOOD
`Happy slap' yobs breed fear, anger
By Tom Hundley, Chicago Tribune
Watch out for "happy slapping," the latest youth craze to sweep Britain.
It's not a new dance step or even a new designer drug. It's a criminal assault.
Groups of teenagers approach an unsuspecting person and begin punching and kicking him or her while capturing it all on their mobile camera phones. The images are later uploaded and shared on the Internet.
The victims can be young or old, male or female. Bus stops, tube stations and parks are considered prime venues. In most cases, the injuries are minor. But on Saturday, British newspapers reported that an 11-year-old London girl had been raped by a gang of happy slappers, and Scotland Yard confirmed that three 14-year-old boys had been arrested.
The craze apparently started in London late last year but has spread across the country. British Transport Police say they have investigated about 200 attacks in London alone since the beginning of the year, but they acknowledge that most go unreported.
Happy slapping is the latest manifestation of what Britons call "yob culture." The word "yob" dates to the 19th Century--it likely derives from "boy" spelled backward--and it denotes a kind of loutish, anti-social behavior associated with working-class youth in Britain's urban centers. The British soccer hooligan is the quintessential yob.
"I happyslap people," explained "Huni bo" from Sleaford on a popular yob blog. "I dnt see nowt wrong wit it tho, ima good person! Its well funni tho!!"
"It's not funny," replied Spartanette from Swansea. "If it's just among mates and you actually know the person, then it's harmless, but when you do it to someone you don't even know, you deserve a beating."
"So I deserve a beatin yeh?" replied Huni bo. "Wes onli do it ppl lyk are age ish, say from 15 -- 19 or 20. summats, wunt do it to an old man, even though they keep avin a go at us, an it dus are heds in!"
Violent anti-social behavior is hardly news in Britain--it was common in Charles Dickens' time and was made iconic by the 1971 film and Anthony Burgess' 1962 novel, "A Clockwork Orange"--but a particularly vicious attack last month once again focused national attention on the problem.
Phil Carroll, 49, a father of four from Salford, a modest, middle-class suburb of Manchester, confronted three youths from a nearby housing project after they threw a stone at his car. Suddenly, he was set upon by a larger group. The attackers left him bleeding and unconscious in the street. He remained in a coma for two weeks before waking.
But it wasn't the attack that drew headlines. It was Manchester Police Chief Supt. David Baines' graphic characterization of the attackers:
"They are gangs of feral youths who are under no control from adults, parents or anyone else," he said. "They are not concerned about respect or their responsibilities. The criminal justice system holds no fear for them. This is a national problem. Today it is Salford. Tomorrow, it will be somewhere else."
`Culture of respect'
A week later, Prime Minister
Tony Blair pledged to create "a culture of respect" in Britain. He used the annual Queen's Speech, in which the government sets out its legislative agenda for the year, to declare war on yob culture.
"It's time to reclaim the streets for the decent majority," Blair told Parliament. "People are rightly fed up with street corner and shopping center thugs ... [and] binge drinking that makes our town centers no-go areas for respectable citizens."
One new tactic that will be tried this summer is "dispersal zones," designated areas in cities where police have powers to impose curfews, ban groups of two or more youths from congregating and send those younger than 16 home to their parents. Those who defy the police risk large fines.
The government also floated the idea of forcing young offenders serving community service sentences to wear bright orange jumpsuits as a means of shaming them.
Hazel Blears, the Home Office's minister for anti-social behavior, told the Observer newspaper that she didn't want young people "breaking rocks" in chain gangs but that the public needed to see that offenders were being punished.
Experts dismiss humiliation
Juvenile crime experts were doubtful, and the idea appears to have been scuttled.
"In my experience there is no benefit gained from humiliating offenders in public," said Rod Morgan, the government's chief adviser on juvenile crime.
Last month, a large shopping mall near London banned teenagers wearing hooded sweatshirts and baseball caps, an adolescent fashion that in Britain is associated with anti-social behavior. The justification was that the hoods and caps obscured faces from the mall's ubiquitous security cameras.
Politicians and the public have applauded the ban. Owners of the mall say they have seen a 22 percent increase in shoppers since they began enforcing it. But many ordinary law-abiding teens also dress in that style, and critics said the ban tarred all youngsters with the same brush.
"It grabs media attention," said Bob Ashford, a specialist in prevention programs with the Youth Justice Board, an advisory and monitoring panel.
"Our view is we don't want to demonize kids. Lots of kids wear this clothing. It's a fashion statement. To label a person as criminal or dangerous because of what he is wearing . . . is not a solution," he said.
The government's main weapon against yobbery is the ASBO. An acronym for "anti-social behavior order," it is a civil order obtained from a court that prohibits a person from engaging in certain narrowly defined activities that are not necessarily criminal but are clearly anti-social.
A neighbor who habitually throws loud drunken parties might be slapped with an ASBO that sharply curtails the number of guests allowed on the premises after 9 p.m. People who violate an ASBO can be jailed.
At first, the process of obtaining an ASBO was overly bureaucratic, slow and costly. Only 600 were issued in the first three years of the program, which began in 1998. But the process has been streamlined, and last year 2,600 ASBOs were issued.
Some community activists say the targeted use of ASBOs has been an effective crime-stopper, but others point to abuses.
Banned from rivers, bridges
In one well-publicized case earlier this year, a woman from Bath who had tried repeatedly to commit suicide was issued an ASBO that prohibits her from going near rivers, bridges, train lines and tall buildings. A woman in Scotland got an ASBO to stop her from answering the front door in her bra and panties.
The problem, according civil libertarians, is that ASBOs allow people to be jailed for activities that are not crimes, such as using foul language or answering the door in one's underwear.
Children as young as 10 have been ASBOed. That prompted a warning earlier this month from Alvaro Gil-Robles, the Council of Europe's human-rights commissioner. He said the government's policy was "criminalizing" children, and that no child under 16 should be jailed for violating an ASBO.
Morgan, the government's crime adviser, said ASBOs could be useful in curbing juvenile crime, but only after authorities had worked with parents and schools, issued warning letters and drawn up acceptable behavior contracts.
"If you do the proper groundwork, very seldom do you need to resort to an ASBO," he said.
But crime rates falling
Although crime rates in Britain have been dropping for a decade, the public perception is that crime and anti-social behavior are on the rise. There has been no shortage of tough talk from politicians.
In the run-up to last month's general elections, Michael Howard, leader of the opposition Conservative Party, vowed to "make yobs fear the police."
"I want policemen--and women--to have the confidence to eyeball these characters, to invade their personal body space, just like they are invading ours, to confront and challenge their unacceptable behavior," he said.
"I don't want members of the public looking over their shoulders. I want the yobs looking around in fear," he added.
Morgan said a good start would be for politicians and the media to stop describing children as yobs and their anti-social behavior as "feral."
"They didn't choose their parents or their neighborhoods, and they can't walk away from their circumstances," he said. "I don't think these are appropriate words if we are trying to build a culture of respect."Sunday, June 19, 2005
ABOUT DAMNED TIME, TOO.
The Beginning of the End?
Katrina vanden Heuvel, The Nation
"We see this as the beginning of the end," said Tom Andrews, a former Democratic representative from Maine who is executive director of the antiwar group Win Without War. "It's the very beginning of a new wave of activism on this war. There's a real sense that something is beginning to move."--Los Angeles Times, Friday June 17, 2005
Earlier that day, a friend and longtime antiwar activist left me a voice mail message. Just ten days earlier he told me that he was more depressed about our politics than at anytime in the last 40 years. "Hello, this is..." he said. "I was in Washington yesterday at the rally and at the Conyers hearings. And since I laid a heavy statement on you last week, I just wanted to make a correction. It's finally over. My despair is over. Something has happened these last ten days that has revived the antiwar issue. It has to do with public opinion polls and casualties and Republicans like Walter Jones and more Democrats standing up. I won't say how optimistic I am. But something is coming together--you can feel it."
You can feel it.
*Every day brings news of public opinion turning against the occupation--and the President's conduct of the war. Last week, a Washington Post-ABC News poll showed that for the first time since the war began, more than half of the public believes the US invasion has not made the US more secure; and nearly 40 percent described the situation there now as analagous to the Vietnam War. A new Gallup survey finds that almost 60 percent of Americans say the US should withdraw some or all of its troops from
Iraq, the largest number in that category ever. And for the first time, most Americans say they would be "upset" if
President Bush sent more troops. Gallup also found that 56 percent now feel the war was "not worth it," and 73 percent consider the number of casualties unacceptable.
* Every day brings news of more Democrats coming forward, standing up and introducing "exit strategy" resolutions. (Though, as of yet, leadership isn't coming from the leadership.) Lynn Woolsey forced a Congressional vote on bipartisan legislation that would have asked Bush to submit a plan to Congress explaining the outlines of an exit strategy from Iraq. Senator Russell Feingold has introduced a nonbinding resolution calling on the Bush Administration to set specific goals for leaving Iraq.
In the House, the International Relations Committee last week voted overwhelmingly, 32 to 9, to call on the White House to develop and submit a plan to Congress for establishing a stable government and military in Iraq that would "permit a decreased US presence" in the country. Congresswomen Maxine Waters (D/CA)--along with 41 Congressional progressives, including Woolsey, John Lewis, Charles Rangel, Jim McGovern, Rush Holt, Marcy Kaptur and Jan Schakowsky--has just formed the "Out of Iraq Congressional Caucus." Its sole purpose, Waters says, "is to be the main agitators in the movement to bring our troops home from Iraq and
Afghanistan." And Rep John Conyers' impassioned efforts to bring attention to the Downing Street Memo--on Thursday he held hearings on Capitol Hill and then delivered to the White House letters that contained the names of more than 560,000 Americans demanding answers to questions raised by the British memo--has reenergized and refocused opposition to the war.
While the Administration and its allies in Congress are trying to make it seem as if these new initiatives merely reflect Democrats' reading of the polls, I say--bring it on. Let's welcome more Democrats--and sane Republicans--giving legislative expression and voice to the majority of Americans who want to see our Iraq policy changed. (In fact, according to the recent Gallup poll, Congress appears to be lagging behind the public on the issue: Some 72 percent of Democrats, 65 percent of independents and 41 percent of Republicans say they favor a partial or complete withdrawal.)
*Every day brings news of another Republican signing on to the bipartisan resolution introduced last Thursday by Rep. Walter Jones (news, bio, voting record) (R-NC)--the man who brought us "Freedom Fries"--and Neil Abercrombie (D-Hawaii). That resolution calls for the Bush Administration to announce a plan for the withdrawal of all US forces from Iraq by the end of the year and to initiate the plan as soon as possible. Maverick Congressman Ron Paul (R/Texas) is already a sponsor, Jim Leach (R/ Iowa) signed on Friday and Howard Coble (R/North Carolina) is considering adding his signature. (With 2006 midterms fast approaching, more Republicans will be hearing from constituents who are growing uneasy about the war. And more GOP members up for reelection may start sounding like Jones, who said in an interview with ABC's George Stephanopolous last weekend that he votes his conscience first, his constituents second, and his party third. )
But much hard and grinding organizing work remains ahead.
On Monday afternoon, Abercrombie and others are going to sit down with Congressman Jones and other House members to discuss options to advance the resolution and build activism against the war.
They'll be supported by a national coalition, that includes Win Without War, MoveOn.org, The National Council of Churches, True Majority, Sojourners, Working Assets and the National Organization of Women, which is planning a grassroots outreach campaign encouraging Members of Congress to sign onto the newly introduced bipartisan resolution.
These organizations are going to be concentrating on those members of Congress who should be particularly susceptible to constituent demand about the war. (As Tom Andrews of the invaluable Win Without War group says, "Take it from one who has been there, in Congress loyalty to one's party leaders and president stops at the 'waters edge' of the voters at home.")
"A prairie fire of activism has started," Andrews argues. "Our job now is to fan these flames and get a conflagration of opposition spreading across the country. We are working with our member groups as well as others on a range of action options to build momentum over the next several months. These will include a major action in Washington in September with what I hope will include a complementary Internet based component. Between those marching in DC and those joining through the Internet around the country I am certain that we could have a million Americans demonstrating against the Bush war in September."
The combination of dropping poll numbers, the grinding images of chaos and violence in Iraq, the daily news of young Americans dying in what seems a senseless war and the increasingly active and visible opposition of constituents is bad news for the president and his Congressional allies.
This really can be the beginning of the end of a disastrous war and a bankrupt national security strategy.Sunday, June 19, 2005
HUMANISM
Definitions of Humanism
Humanism is a progressive lifestance that, without supernaturalism, affirms our ability and responsibility to lead meaningful, ethical lives capable of adding to the greater good of humanity.• American Humanist Association
Humanism is a rational philosophy informed by science, inspired by art, and motivated by compassion. Affirming the dignity of each human being, it supports the maximization of individual liberty and opportunity consonant with social and planetary responsibility. It advocates the extension of participatory democracy and the expansion of the open society, standing for human rights and social justice. Free of supernaturalism, it recognizes human beings as a part of nature and holds that values—be they religious, ethical, social, or political—have their source in human experience and culture. Humanism thus derives the goals of life from human need and interest rather than from theological or ideological abstractions, and asserts that humanity must take responsibility for its own destiny. • The Humanist Magazine
Humanism is a democratic and ethical lifestance which affirms that human beings have the right and responsibility to give meaning and shape to their own lives. It stands for the building of a more humane society through an ethics based on human and other natural values in a spirit of reason and free inquiry through human capabilities. It is not theistic, and it does not accept supernatural views of reality. • The International Humanist and Ethical Union
Humanism is an approach to life based on reason and our common humanity, recognizing that moral values are properly founded on human nature and experience alone. • The Bristol Humanist Group
Humanism is: A joyous alternative to religions that believe in a supernatural god and life in a hereafter. Humanists believe that this is the only life of which we have certain knowledge and that we owe it to ourselves and others to make it the best life possible for ourselves and all with whom we share this fragile planet. A belief that when people are free to think for themselves, using reason and knowledge as their tools, they are best able to solve this world's problems. An appreciation of the art, literature, music and crafts that are our heritage from the past and of the creativity that, if nourished, can continuously enrich our lives. Humanism is, in sum, a philosophy of those in love with life. Humanists take responsibility for their own lives and relish the adventure of being part of new discoveries, seeking new knowledge, exploring new options. Instead of finding solace in prefabricated answers to the great questions of life, humanists enjoy the open-endedness of a quest and the freedom of discovery that this entails. • The Humanist Society of Western New York
Humanism is the light of my life and the fire in my soul. It is the deep felt conviction, in every fiber of my being that human love is a power far transcending the relentless, onward rush of our largely deterministic cosmos. All human life must seek a reason for existence within the bounds of an uncaring physical world, and it is love coupled with empathy, democracy, and a commitment to selfless service which undergirds the faith of a humanist. • Bette Chambers, former president of the AHA
Humanism is a philosophy, world view, or lifestance based on naturalism—the conviction that the universe or nature is all that exists or is real. Humanism serves, for many humanists, some of the psychological and social functions of a religion, but without belief in deities, transcendental entities, miracles, life after death, and the supernatural. Humanists seek to understand the universe by using science and its methods of critical inquiry—logical reasoning, empirical evidence, and skeptical evaluation of conjectures and conclusions—to obtain reliable knowledge. Humanists affirm that humans have the freedom to give meaning, value, and purpose to their lives by their own independent thought, free inquiry, and responsible, creative activity. Humanists stand for the building of a more humane, just, compassionate, and democratic society using a pragmatic ethics based on human reason, experience, and reliable knowledge—an ethics that judges the consequences of human actions by the well-being of all life on Earth. • Steven Schafersman
Humanism is a philosophy of life that considers the welfare of humankind - rather than the welfare of a supposed God or gods - to be of paramount importance. Humanism maintains there is no evidence a supernatural power ever needed or wanted anything from people, ever communicated to them, or ever interfered with the laws of nature to assist or harm anyone.
Humanism's focus, then, is on using human efforts to meet human needs and wants in this world. History shows that those efforts are most effective when they involve both compassion and the scientific method - which includes reliance on reason, evidence, and free inquiry.
Humanism says people can find purpose in life and maximize their long-term happiness by developing their talents and using those talents for the service of humanity. Humanists believe that this approach to life is more productive and leads to a deeper and longer-lasting satisfaction than a hedonistic pursuit of material or sensual pleasures that soon fade.
While service to others is a major focus of Humanism, recreation and relaxation are not ignored, for these too are necessary for long-term health and happiness. The key is moderation in all things.
Humanism considers the universe to be the result of an extremely long and complex evolution under immutable laws of nature. Humanists view this natural world as wondrous and precious, and as offering limitless opportunities for exploration, fascination, creativity, companionship, and joy.
Because science cannot now and probably never will be able to explain the ultimate origin or destiny of the universe, I think Humanism can include more than atheists and agnostics. The lack of definite answers to these ultimate questions leaves room for reasonable people to hypothesize about the origin of the natural universe, and even to hope for some form of life beyond this one.
In fact, two of Humanism's greatest luminaries, Thomas Paine and Robert Ingersoll, maintained a hope for an afterlife. On the issue of whether God exists, Ingersoll was agnostic, and Paine believed in a deistic God who established the laws of nature but then stepped away and never intervenes in the world. Those beliefs did not interfere with their ability to lead outstanding humanistic lives.
Thus, in my opinion, people holding such views can be Humanists if they believe that humanity is on its own in this world, and the lack of any evidence for an afterlife means this life should be lived as though it's the only one we have. • Joseph C. Sommer