The Wider View------Jay Moynihan

The Wider View © 1994-2005 Jay Moynihan
These are selections from my sometimes newspaper column.

WV11142005

Planning the Land

Land use planning, zoning, and related matters are often political hot button issues. Some folks view the whole topic with deep suspicion. Others view it as an absolute necessity. Most do not think about it, until they find out they have to have a bigger set-back from the lake for their new cabin.

Land use planning is nothing new. Smart Growth is merely the most recent incarnation of a long effort to balance the use of the land with its impact, while growing an economy. This should be expected, given our impact on the land. We are the second most dominant land animal, (Ants are number one, but that's another story). Given our brains, pattern making is a given.

How we try to manage the land in many ways has to do with the collective stories we share about ourselves. Looking at those stories through time is a useful way to get some perspective on land use issues. To that end, I recommend "Planning A Wilderness: Regenerating the Great Lakes Cutover Region", by James Kates, University of Minnesota Press, (2001). Kates tells the story of land use in broad terms from the late 1800's until about 1947 in Northern Wisconsin. In doing so, he shows how the ideas ranging from rugged, pioneer individualism through to the Wisconsin rural land use planning effort were both imported from Washington and Madison.

The dire effects of the forestry cut-over where first noted by writers in 1867. But it continued until most of the trees were gone, and Washington reined in the industry. In April of 1919, at a Chicago forestry industry meeting, Henry Graves, the Chief U.S. Forester, threatened to nationalize the lumber industry if they did not move from a mining model (clear cutting) to an agricultural model. Hence the birth of "modern" forestry, built on an agricultural metaphor.

As policy changed to long term planning and sustained yield, the regeneration of the trees was tied to a new effort to attract farmers the new woods. Madison officials promoted the image of the "wilderness", and those who live in it, as rugged, self sufficient individuals. As Kates points out, the co-promotion of sustained yield management, which requires planning, and the mythic rugged individual would bear contradictory fruit in the social arena.

In the 1920's the University of Wisconsin started to depart from the "frontier individualism" motif, where the northern soil could be tamed by "brawny arms and brave hearts". This was because the farm crisis in the cut-over lands of that decade. While private land ownership would continue to be encouraged, its operation would have to be directed by law and regulation, to support continual use rigorous enough to avoid boom-bust cycles.

The steps implemented included fire protection, and the first efforts at rural zoning. The University, through its county agents, and the state government also began to promote what some would later call, "multi-use". The identity of the rugged individual was now transferred from the immigrant farmer, to the tourist. As farming food crops appeared to be less successful than farming trees, the tree stands where re-conceptualized as "wilderness", where the American urban citizen could retreat to for the frontier experience.

The expansion of the highway system, allowed the rise of "car camping" and expansion of outdoor recreation in the north woods. Hunting and fishing was promoted as a key component of the "frontier', or wilderness experience in the 1930's. This in turn gave rise to regulations concerning use areas, campground and motel placement, and then wildlife "management". The deer and fish transitioned from wild to crop status, while there pursuit was still officially styled as rugged, frontier, individualism.
Kates chapter, "The Production of Leisure", is worth the price of the book alone. As time passes, the redefinition of the forestry crop areas as wilderness begins to attract the attention of the early environmentalists, setting the stage for future controversies.

In the effort to further curb the boom-bust cycles, the University of Wisconsin and county governments worked to classify rural lands as to best use, and "zone them' as to that use. From the late 1930's through the 1940's , the effort to sell and implement zoning continued. By requiring diversified land use, it was thought a more diverse, and resilient economy would arise to stabilize the former cut-over areas.

Kate's "Planning A Wilderness" is a fascinating read for anyone who lives in Northern Wisconsin. It essentially reviews the past land use ideas, while tracing the development of the interest groups which still contend today.

WV08302005

Reverend Paley's Ghost

The concept of "Intelligent Design", or as some call it, Implied Deism, is not new. In 45 B.C. Cicero wrote in De Natura Deorum, "When you see a sundial or a water-clock, you see that it tells the time by design and not by chance. How then can you imagine that the universe as a whole is devoid of purpose and intelligence, when it embraces everything, including these artifacts themselves and their artificers?". This anticipated the writing of William Derham who published his Artificial Clockmaker in 1696.. The idea was widely popularized by William Paley in his book Natural Theology, or Evidences of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity collected from the Appearances of Nature, published in 1802. Charles Darwin, prior to the initiation of his scientific studies, read Paley's book as a young man studying for the ministry. He found it initially convincing.
Intelligent Design is "teleological". Teleology is the philosophical idea that there is purpose, direction, or a movement towards a finality in the works and processes of nature. Science, is non-teleological. This is because, science has a method, called the scientific method. (For a nice summary of the method, go to: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method . ) Science is not the sole arbiter of all knowledge. But strictly speaking, if something does not use this method, it is not science. That is why Intelligent Design is not an appropriate subject in a science class, other than perhaps, in classes on the history or philosophy of science. As conservative columnist George F. Will wrote in Newsweek:
"The problem with intelligent-design theory is not that it is false but that it is not falsifiable: Not being subject to contradicting evidence, it is not a testable hypothesis. Hence it is not a scientific but a creedal tenet - a matter of faith, unsuited to a public school's science curriculum."
Evolution by means of natural selection is not a subject of debate within science. It is the subject of research and application, as is the nature of science. It is one of the most well tested, established ideas in the history of our specie. It is the bedrock of much of modern medicine, agriculture, and a host of other disciplines. The action, and failure over time of an antibiotic is just one of many everyday examples of natural selection in action. It is even the basis for new types of computer programming (genetic algorthms). To place some platonic, philosophical idea in a science cirricula, as if it has some operant value, is a disservice to our children.
In the wider sweep of things, oppostion to modern evolutionary theory by ideologies that have a teleological premise is not new. In part this is because many people do not really understand science, or its method. As Bertolt Brecht wrote, in Life of Galileo, "The aim of science is not to open the door to infinite wisdom, but to set a limit to infinite error." After Darwin published his work, many clerics of the Abrahamic religions where agast. This is understandable, since the three Abrahamic religions are inherently teleological. But as the years passed, the remaining opposition has shrunk to the two sectors that maintain the necessity of scriptual literalism, American Fundementalism in Christianity, and Fundamentalist Islam.

Historically, when ideological opposition crossed from the social debate to governmental policy on science, the result was not pretty. In the 1920's the Soviets rejected "Darwinism" since it conflicted with the teleological aspects of the Marxist Dialectic. The result contributed to the periodic failures in their agricultural programs. The Nazi Party in Germany vehmently rejected Darwinian evolution, in favor of a dis-credited Pre-Darwinian evolutionary theory called Lamarckian Evolution. Lamarck had posited that individual creatures biologically adapt during there own lifetimes. Further, that the traits thus "acquired", by the individual during their life would be passed on to their offspring. The party did this since it ( to them) supported their conception of creating a master race, whereas Darwinian thought does not . The Nazi attack on German science contributed to the pre-war brain drain they experienced, as scientists went overseas. Their embracing Lamarck is the reason for much of the horrific medical "research" done upon inmates of the concentration camps. For instance, to try and prove their "theory", they would remove an arm from one or both parents, then force them to produce a child. They wanted to see if the offspring woulf be born without an arm.
I do not mean to imply that the introduction of Intelligent Design into science education by fiat will lead to ghoulism medical experiments. I assume it would not. But it would lead to fuzzy thinking about science, harm the student's employable skill development, and could negatively slow key areas of 21st century economic growth in our country. To paraphrase a famous, ancient rabbi, give onto the science the thing's that are science's, and give onto God, the things that are God's.

WV-LSS-05102005

What is The Natural Step?

With all the buzz lately about "The Natural Step", "Sustainable Sweden", and "Eco-municipalities", what might be useful is to present what The Natural Step is. The Natural Step (TNS) started in Sweden, but now is spreading around the world.

First, what TNS is not. It is not socialist. It is not a political movement. It is not some new attempt to regulate things. It is not "anti-business".
TNS has spawned a number of organizations in various countries. Some are community development oriented, most work only in the corporate realm, some do both. The Eco-municipality movement in Sweden grew out of TNS-Sweden. The Eco-municipality movement is a community-based application of TNS.

In 1989, a Swedish oncologist, Dr. Karl-Henrik Robèrt founded The Natural Step organization. Dr. Robèrt and physicist John Holmberg defined a set of principles of sustainability based on the laws of thermodynamics and natural cycles. He gathered scientists from across Europe to develop a consensus document on sustainability. The document went through 21 drafts, and the final product was sent to every household and school in Sweden. From that arose TNS-Sweden, and other efforts such as the Swedish Eco-Municipality idea.

TNS first showed up in the United States though in 1995 via the efforts of Paul Hawken ("The Ecology of Commerce", "Natural Capitalism"). A conference of American scientists approved the ideas at a conference at the Johnson Foundation's Wingspread Center in Racine, Wisconsin in 1997.

Generally, TNS is aimed square at business. It is not outside of it, not parallel to it. TNS is essentially a method. Its application is incremental. It can be used in small ways over time, (Toyota, BP), or in doing rather impressive transformations,(Interface, Inc., or Monsanto's controversial move out of pesticides and into genetic engineering). How it is applied is up to each business, determined by how each will save or profit in its application.

The Basic Science:
1. Matter and energy cannot be created or destroyed. (1st law of thermodynamics and the principle of conservation of matter.)
2. Matter and energy tend to disperse. (2nd law of thermodynamics) This means that sooner or later, all matter that is introduced into society will be released out into natural systems.
3. Material quality can be characterized by the concentration and structure of matter. We never consume energy or matter--only its quality (the degree of order within energy and matter), purity and structure.
4. Net increase in material quality on Earth can only be produced by sun-driven processes.

This last one refers primarily to photosynthesis. That is what the plants do, turning sunlight, carbon dioxide and water into structured material, i.e., themselves. Oil and coal are buried former plant material. Even heavy elements, and radioactive ores, are in a sense "sun-driven", since they are the results of stellar life cycles.

The cyclic principle
Waste must not systematically accumulate in nature, and reconstruction of material quality must be at least as large as its dissipation. Consequently, all matter must be processed in cycles. The societal "metabolism" must be integrated into the cycles of nature.

From the basic science, a set of four "System Conditions" arise. These conditions provide guidelines about doing business on earth. They are kind of like the operating instructions, that if exceeded, will result in problems that accumulate and become more dangerous over time. The useful thing about the conditions is they provide a methodology, a way of thinking and doing. They are not political, and are scientifically based.

1. Substances from the Earth's crust must not systematically increase in the ecosphere. Fossil fuels, metals and other minerals must not be extracted at a faster pace than their slow redeposit and reintegration into the Earth's crust.

2. Substances produced by society must not systematically increase in the biosphere. Substances must not be produced at a faster pace than they can be broken down and integration into the cycles of nature or deposited into the Earth's crust.

3. The physical basis for productivity and diversity of nature must not be systematically deteriorated. We cannot harvest or manipulate ecosystems in such a way that productive capacity and diversity systematically diminish.

4. In order to meet the previous three system conditions, there must be fair and efficient use of resources with respect to meeting human needs world-wide. Basic human needs must be fairly met with the most resource efficient methods possible.

When you read through those, your first reaction might be, "Geez, we have a long way to go, you've got to be kidding me!" Remain calm. That is the beauty of TNS. It was made with two things in mind. First, one of the things humans are really good at is design. Second, TNS is meant for market capitalism. No one expects anyone to be able to turn around on a dime and satisfy the four system conditions at once. The question is, what steps TOWARDS meeting them can you take, in your business, your home, and what you do? Again, its incremental, small steps. In other words, from the business point of view:

Does my decision:
Decrease dependence on materials from the earth's crust?
Decrease dependence on compounds produced by society that can accumulate in nature?
Increase productivity and biodiversity in nature?
Increase the efficiency and fairness with which resources are used?

In a way that cuts my costs, or increases my revenue, or does the same for my customer, or in some other way serves my customers better?

It is the kind of method you can combine with other management tools. You can do it at your own pace, where it makes sense for you. One of the nice things about TNS is that it fits in with employee innovation. Training usually is done with top management, then with all workers. The four questions encapsulate the whole thing after that.

Interestingly, the training usually includes product or service re-conceptualization. This idea, common in marketing, looks at your product or service from the customer point of view. It is very useful to aide in finding ways to apply the systems conditions.

Some businesses use the 4 questions in their incentive program. For instance; each employee has the questions on a card or the backside of their ID badge. Whenever they come up with a better way to answer one of the questions in their job, in a way that saves money or otherwise makes it, or increases value to the customer, they are rewarded. Sometimes it's a bonus, sometimes more vacation, etc.

If you go to www.naturalstep.org , you can go to different country's TNS programs (including the U.S.A.) and check out what is happening. They also have a list of their partner corporations. No one would consider the companies light-weights.

But lets look at one down-in-the-dirt example of this new type on thinking. Thinking that addresses both the environment and the bottom line. Something basic. How about a mop?

Specifically, the 3M Easy Scrub Flat Mop System™.
3M re-conceptualized mops to work better, and last longer for commercial cleaners. They happen to also use less water, chemicals, and time. A step towards system conditions 1 & 2.

The Mop System is lightweight, and has low drag; reducing worker fatigue. It has a unique micro-fiber cleaning surface. Chemical use is drastically reduced (80%) by an on-demand dispenser built into the handle. The pads can be cleaned and reused.

VHS Cleaning Service of Ashland has started using these mops at one of its large customer's properties. They are finding that the mop system can use bio-degradable chemicals. They are finding there is a significant savings in water and chemicals. Workers can carry a small amount of detergent with them. They no longer need the wheeled buckets, etc. They also say that the mops are the first ones they have had that clean not only the flat surface, but actually clean the grout between the tiles, instead of just pushing dirt into it. So far, the mop system is saving VHS one hour/per mop worker/per day.

Want to clean your carpeting? Check out Electrolux's offerings. They are a TNS company. What about carpet? Look at Interface, Inc. (www.interfaceinc.com ). They are, as they put it,
"…the world's largest carpet manufacturer of commercial carpet and modular carpet and carpet tiles and carpet squares."
This American corporation adopted TNS and integrated into their management plan in the 1990's. The company's founder, Ray Anderson, has written a book about TNS and Interface called, "Mid-Course Correction". Interface is a global manufacturer and does business in 110 countries.

The corporation has made serious progress towards closed loop manufacturing, recycling waste and used product to feedstock, energy use reduction and many other areas, while at the same time growing to be a global leader in its industry.

" At Interface, we define waste as anything that does not provide value to the customer." In addition to saving hundreds of millions of dollars for the company, that idea has reduced their "environmental foot print" more drastically than probably any other American company while expanding their market share.

TNS is not just for large corporations though. Any small business in any sector can benefit from its application. It can often be easier for a small business than a large one. One of the regional examples is the Angry Trout Café, in Grand Marais, Mn. They joined TNS in the 1990's. It all boils down to learning the method, then taking the steps you can that are good for you and increase value for your customers.

wv04202005

Words that Work

Carl Rove is widely credited with being the architect of George Bush's political career. The credit is certainly due. In the last 15 years he has managed for his clients to no less than 3 times derail an opposing candidate who is a highly decorated veteran. The way he did it, getting the public to question the opponent's military record is what is notable. Rove is truly in a class of his own. Then to arrange to put the "anger words", (Rove's term) "gay marriage" issue on the ballot in eleven key states last fall to insure the turnout of the radical right base. He certainly is the master of his craft.
But who is Rove's "Rove"? Its Frank Luntz that who. Luntz is a public relations expert. But that is kind of like calling a nuclear weapon, ordinance. Luntz is the premier spinner of words of political persuasion. He is the fellow got people to say "death tax", not excise tax. Luntz uses polls and sophisticated focus groups to craft the language of the Bush Administration, and the radical right.
His 2005 annual memo to the party insiders recently leaked to the web. It is a fascinating 138 page read. It is his take on how Bush won, and, the 2006 off-year elections. The last 4 pages "The New American Lexicon" is subtitled "The 14 words you are never to use". As George Orwell wrote about language and politics in 1946, "The Great enemy of clear language is insincerity".

Here is the list, his recommended substitutions, and his rational, (not mine). As Orwell would have said, let us watch the Cuttlefish spurt out ink.

Government.
Not to be used since most people respect the word. Instead, use: Washington.

Privatization/Private Accounts.
Scary words to most. Substitute: Personalization/personal accounts.

Tax Reform.
People suspect that means they will pay more. Substitute: Tax Simplification.

Estate Tax.
Few people affected by it, few care about it. But 78% react negatively to the substitute phrase: Death Tax.

Global Economy/Globalization/Capitalism.
Luntz has found that the only thing scarier than the word "globalization" is the word "privatization". His recommended substitute: Free Market Economy.

Outsourcing.
Duh. recommended substitute: The problem is (pick one or more) taxation, regulation, litigation, innovation, education.

Immigration reform, undocumented worker.
Luntz says to play the fear card. Substitute: Border Security.

Foreign Trade.
for unrelated reasons, many people dislike the word foreign. Substitution: International Trade.

Drilling for Oil.
Not comfy, "black goop" and all that. Substitution: Exploring for energy.

Tort Reform.
Luntz thinks most Americans think a tort is a cake. substitution: Lawsuit Abuse Reform. For emphasis, he suggests the addition of the adjective "frivolous".

Trial Lawyer.
Luntz finds people trust that label. He suggestions substituting: Personal Injury Lawyer. Add the Adjective "predatory" for effect.

Corporate Transparency.
Substitute: Corporate accountability.

School Choice.
Still viewed in the negative. Public schools still politically popular. His studies recommend, substituting: Parental Choice, or Opportunity in Education.

Healthcare Choice.
Luntz says people want to have a choice, but, do not want to actually make the health care choices. substitution: The right to Choose.

Luntz is the fellow who coins some of the neat bill names over the last few years. No Child Left Behind was a hit. Also, Clear Skies Act, (rolling back air quality standards).

The complete Luntz 2005 memo is available at:
http://realitique.blogspot.com/2005/03/luntzing-toward-bethlehem.html

wv04142005

"Republics end with Luxury"

Congress is about to liberate our more affluent brothers and sisters from the burden of the estate tax, or as Republican wordsmith Frank Luntz renamed it, "the death tax". They call it a tax on success. You know what, they are right.
So, why has the United States had, off and on, an estate tax? Because it was designed to be a republic. The first estate tax was passed in 1797. One of the fears of the founders was that accumulation of wealth across generations would give rise to a monied class, and the development of aristocracy. They were a bit hostile to that developing, given their recent revolution against one and all.
In a September 6, 1789 letter from Paris, Then ambassador Thomas Jefferson wrote on this subject, saying, "The earth belongs to the living". Why did he say that? What were people thinking? They were "classically" educated, and were familiar with Aristotle, and a fellow named Charles de Secondat Baron de Montesquieu.
In the mid-1700's Montesquieu had written a "best seller" called "The Spirit of the Laws". It is one of the most referred to texts in Madison's and others notes on the deliberations on the Constitution. Everybody who was anybody used it. In fact, the phrase "separation of powers" was coined by Montesquieu. In the book Montesquieu profiles the "virtues" of different forms of government. At the time, the word virtue meant the key or necessary characteristic. As bizarre as it may seem to the modern reader, the "virtue" of a republic, was, frugality.

"A love of the republic in a democracy is a love of the democracy; as the latter is that of equality. A love of democracy is likewise that of frugality. Since every individual ought here to enjoy the same happiness and the same advantages, they should consequently taste the same pleasures and form the same hopes, which cannot be expected but from a general frugality....The love of frugality limits the desire of having to the study of procuring necessaries to our family, and superfluities to our country. Riches give a power which a citizen cannot use for himself, for then he would be no longer equal. They likewise procure pleasures which he ought not to enjoy, because these would be also repugnant to the equality." Bk. VII, Chapter 4.

For the founder, excess income was to ennoble the polis, the public place. Further, that principle needed to be enshrined in the law. Montesquieu, and Aristotle both said, "Republics end with luxury". They end, by evolving into a different form, usually an aristocracy, or in the modern, a plutocracy: rule by the wealthy.

The transition was described by Montesquieu also:

"When virtue is banished, ambition invades the minds of those disposed to receive it, and avarice possesses the whole community. The objects of their desire are changed; what they were fond of before has become indifferent; they were free while under the restraint of laws, but would fain now to be free to act against law; and as each citizen is like a slave who has run away from his master, that which was a maxim of equity he calls rigor; that which was a rule of action he styles constraint; and to precaution he gives the name of fear. Frugality; and not the thirst for gain, now passes for avarice. Formerly the wealth of individuals constituted the public treasure; but now this has become the patrimony of private persons. The members of the commonwealth riot on the public spoils, and its strength is only the power of the few, and the license of many."

That is the original philosophy behind the estate tax, and many other things now burdensome for some of us. But the founders never thought the republic would last for ever. At the close of the constitutional convention, Benjamin Franklin, was faced by a crowd, wanting to know what kind of government it would be. He said to them, you have a republic, then chuckled, and continued, as long as you can keep it.

wv04112005

Differences; U.S.A. and Sweden

Since the "Sustainable Sweden" conference in Ashland, I have had a number of conversations that go something like this. 'Did you go?" Yes. "What do you think, I mean, Sweden is so different from here?" I talk about the differences, then explain how The Natural Step is not dependent on culture for its success. But it is true, there are differences between here and there. What are the differences? Here they are. Country statistics are from the "CIA World Fact Book', latest edition. Lets do the numbers...

Size: Sweden is slightly larger than California, and in 2004 its population was a little over 8.6 million.
Median age: Sweden 40.3, 36 here.
Annual Per Capita income in 2003: Sweden $26,800, $37,800 here.
This is usually what people mention about Sweden, and its supposedly high tax rate versus the U.S.. This is deceptive. Sweden has one tax, an income tax. Over two thirds of the taxes go to the local ("municipal") level. There are 260 of these local governments. Control over the money is mostly by local councils and local elected officials. In some ways, the national government in Sweden is weak, compared to ours.
What do they spend the money on? Domestic stuff mostly. This includes national health insurance, free kindergarten through graduate/professional education, mostly free mass transit, paid vacation, guaranteed retirement and disability funds.
That makes a difference. Lets take one example, health insurance.
By contrast, here, the average per capita cost for health care coverage, on your own, is about $7000 per year, just for the insurance on medical. If you employ someone hourly, and provide medical insurance, you pay roughly an additional $3.08/hour for each hour worked, as of 2003. Its more now.

People below poverty line: Sweden, not measurable in a relevant way; here, 12% in 2003.
Unemployment rate in 2003: Sweden, 4.9%, 6% here.
Industrial production growth rate in 2003: Sweden,1.9% here, 0.3%.
Literacy: Sweden, 99%, U.S., 97%
Infant mortality: Sweden, 2.77/1000 live births U.S. 6.63/1000 live births.
Average life expectancy (combined male/female), Sweden 80.3 years, here 77.4.

Last fought a war; Sweden, 1814, U.S. current multiple conflicts. (Sweden is classified by us as "Armed Neutral". They have a compulsory military service period for males of 17 months, then mandatory reserve status until age 47.)

Number of political parties with national legislative seats: Sweden 7, here 2.
Priorities are different in the two countries, especially, in energy use and policy. While Sweden is much "greener" than the U.S., it exports electricity. We import twice as much electricity as we produce. In 2003 we consumed 6.7 barrels of oil per day per capita, Sweden 1/3 of a barrel per day per capita.
In 2003 our trade deficit was 542 billion dollars, Sweden had a 20 billion dollar trade surplus. In the same year, we spent $1265 per capita on military matters, the Swedes, $493. But Sweden spent $191 per capita on foreign aid, we spent $23 per capita.
So yeah folks, there are some big differences. In Sweden, most politics are local, since the money flows there. Real disposable income for the average person, after taxes, and after health, education, transportation, savings; is higher there than here.
So why did "The Natural Step" take off first in Sweden? Well, its founder is a Swedish cancer researcher. The government got behind it. The King and Queen, (Sweden has a symbolic monarchy) sent a letter to everyone in the country telling them they thought is was important. The schools also emphasized the settled, basic science behind it.
But I think the local and intensely democratic nature of Swedish government played a big role. That The Natural Step actually works, dollars and cents wise, didn't hurt either. Look at the energy and industrial growth figures, and just do the numbers.

Wv04092005

American Taliban

I am getting old. When I was a sprout, "liberals" were often seen as those in favor of an activist government on moral issues, whereas "conservatives", well, when it came to moral issues, mind your own business, thank you. Time has made me a conservative. But not a "neo-conservative".

The saying now days is that the only thing worst than a tax and spend Democrat is a spend and no-tax Republican. Not only do they lack an economic policy (all they have essentially is a position on taxes), but when it comes to so-called moral issues and government intervention in individual rights, they make the Democrats look like libertarians. Well I suppose you need something to make you more exciting than Herbert Hoover.

Moral issues? We now have that wonderful phrase "culture wars". A few years ago people used it when writing about fundamentalist Islamic rage against the "secular" west. I guess the rage is now shared by the Republican base.

This new radicalism showed its big government colors again during the recent news channel mini-series, Terri Schiavo. I am not belittling the issue. But I am kinda old fashioned on this. Its a family matter, period.Not a subject for a media circus and political opportunism.As for the religious questions, I guess I agree with Thomas Jefferson on that score. He said about religion, "What do I care what another man thinks or believes, it neither picks my pocket, nor breaks my arm."

I am an American. I do fight in anybody's culture war. This place was created to be a culture war free zone. Loyality to the constitution and the rest is an argument, not a war. I am totally in favor of a child's right to pray in school. Certainly handy before a test. I would never support a law making children pray in group in a public school. Don't like gay marriage? well fella its easy, don't marry one. You know what I mean?
Traditionally, matters associated with Shiavo case types of health decisions where governed by state law, not federal law. A prinicple well settled, and conservative.

Mrs. Schiavo's case worked its way up from county to state supreme court years ago. Her parents appealed to the federal court system, and were rejected, as one would expect, given tradition and the law. Evidently the federal judges failed to notice the culture war, and that Delay and Fiske had declared jihad.

So what did the leadership of Congress, these American Taliban do? These members of the "Culture of Life", who favor the execution of retarded convicts and juvenile offenders? That which is shameful and vile. They spent tax dollars to recall and transport the membership from recess. They passed a law for the relief of a single person. An act, no matter its reason or substance, by its very nature anthema to the Founders, and if anyone still cares, flagrantly unconstitutional. Then, when the courts will not roll over, the capital hill mullahs accuse the courts of "activism"! But the craven moves did not end there.
Congress also appointed an ad hoc committee concerning Mrs. Schiavo. The reason? For the sole purpose of supoenaing her to a hearing! A person who's cranium is full of spinal fluid. Why? to pose the theat of federal prosecution for anyone "interferring" with her attendance, i.e., removing a feeding tube.

Never in my life have I seen a more ridiculous mis-use of process. When the Roman emperor Caligula made his horse a senator, people said it was enough. What will it take, before American citizens vote to rid themselves of these imposters of decency?

Indifference on four legs

They are not vicious, they are not kind. Some hate them, some love them, very few understand them. They are a question. They pose a query of the nature of our hand upon the land, our maturity, our imagined future. Wolves.

I have seen a wolf three times up here. On one occasion I was not in a car. I was off trail in the Chequamegon Forest. I was taking a break on a solo hike, sitting on a fallen tree trunk. Without a sound, seeming to float, a wolf entered my view, going right to left. It stopped, turned its head and stared at me. No, actually, it starred through me. In its gaze, was utter indifference. It then loped on its way.

My blood was full of adrenaline. My neck was warm, trying to raise the long gone guard hairs that covered the neck of my distant ancestors. Yes, it was pretty. It was also frightening. To it, I was a momentary anomaly. Neither food nor threat, and not pack. Irrelevant. I was once told that hate and love are not opposites. The opposite of each is indifference.

I was visiting a river ecologist. He had never attended college. But through self education and drive become a card carrying researcher. His beat was the Mississippi, on which he had run river barges for twenty years. During his time he had watched as river "management" had turned the Mississippi into an ecological and flood control nightmare. He asked me, "If we are the ones with the big brains, why can't we design our boats for river, instead of changing the river for our boats?" He had heard the question the wolf asks.

All lands are now managed. Even "wilderness", is bounded and set aside. The real challenge, the question, is how we live upon the land. We are the exotic species without peer, which erupted from Africa, and remade the land. We are the ones with the big brains, at the top of the food chain. It is a position envious, if there were any others capable of envy, and delicate. We rely on all else.

When asked to explain the difference between our minds and the minds of most other animals, I usually say, my dog knows, but I know I know. So the wolf to us poses the hard question, how are we to live upon the land? The wolf does not care. Deer, voles, calves are food. It is indifferent to our classification of utility. It seeks the slow, the weak, the injured. It cares not a wit if it deprives the human of its game for sport or farmer of its cow before the time of human slaughter. While some humans imitate it with their dog packs and pick-ups, pursuing bear, it is a pale, lazy imitation. The wolf lives in deadly earnest. It is a four-legged meat inspector that allows no errors.

De-list the wolf? No, not yet. The recent statements of the most vehement opponents of the wolf show we are not ready. We are not mature enough yet to deal with the wolf's indifference, let alone the question it poses. A child removed from a home because of abuse would not be returned unless the chance of further abuse in that home was gone. Ask the delisting question again later, maybe 50 years.
How we answer the wolf's question, how we live upon the land is crucial to us, but not the wolf. You see, we can eradicate the wolf. But it needs a level of biotic quality, that we can measure by its presence. We keep the wolf for ourselves, not for it. We can also pay so little heed to the land and water, that we too, pass away. If that happens, great also will be the fall of our allied species. But some will survive. Some dogs will prosper. Through the endless genetic dance of adaptation, the dogs will change through time. Buried in your dog is the wolf genetic tool kit. Something like a wolf would again pad across the land. Like all of nature apart from us, the wolf does not care either way.

wv09022004

A change of mind

How many times in your life, have you wished you had changed your mind? Made a different choice, taken a different route, done it different? Even more often, how many times have you decided upon a course of action, believing something to be accurate. Then when you find out the information was not accurate, changed your mind?
If you have been alive as long as I have, the answer is probably, alot. If not, you have either had a charmed life, or are a fool. Or, maybe your running for public office? In a universe where change is a constant, we have to change our minds quite regularly to simply keep up. If we do not, we are not learning, adapting, or even understanding ourselves. So why do we think politicians should not change their minds? We even have a derogatory term for it, "flip-flop".
Do we really want to elect people who will not change their minds about an issue, no matter what? If a politician will not change their mind about an issue in the face of facts, or because it has to be considered in counter-balance to another issue, they are either disingenuous, or, eh, well, stupid.
Lets put aside the change-of-mind due to receipt of campaign contributions. For verily, they have their own reward. Let us also dispose of the idea that a politician is bound to the view of constituents. When you vote for someone, you are not hiring an attorney. You are picking a combination of views and independent judgment. I think the confusion comes from the blurring of the line between "principles" and "issues". Political and philosophical principles are part of any intelligent person's character. One's principles can change, but the process is usually slow, more of a process of maturation and depth.
Issues on the other hand, are the controversies, the things of the moment. News cycles, political expediency and its rhetoric, a general lack of education in ethics and critical thought operate to blur the distinction between principles and issues. A principle can be an issue, (i.e., abolition of slavery, election of 1860), but few issues are principles.
An example of a principle from the current schema, phrased in two ways, (pick the version you are comfortable with):
Human life is sacred
or
Killing a human is taboo
There are many issues associated with this principle, and many different sides on those issues, all held by people who also hold to the principle. Among the issues are capital punishment, the legality of abortion, war vs pacifism, etc. What your entire set of principles is, the interplay of the multitude of issues you consider, and your life experience to date will inform how you interpret the principle and your take on an issue. You may also (gasp!) change your mind on issues now and then, as you learn.

wv09032004

Salem's lot.

On the evening of July 27 last, I went to the Ashland City Council Meeting to watch the presentation about Councilor Rehwald's impending trip to Sweden to study their economic and ecological planning methods. The evening turned out to be quite something else. It was personally ironic, having the evening before, finished Neal Stephenson's novel "Quicksilver". It opens in 1713 as one of the characters having just arrived in Boston on business via ship, rides into The Commons only to find an auto-du-fey in progress.
Like one rubber-necking at the scene of an accident, I went to the sequel at the next meeting. I was fortunate to hear Jennifer Fanucci (contract Bay Days organizer), a non-partisan in the Bay Days Affair, read her statement about what actually happened. Unfortunately, her statement was not carried by the media. Suffice to say, the media coverage was such an exercise in hyperbole, that all that can be learned from it was a lesson in the value of checking with original sources before setting finger to keyboard. No cognizable First Amendment issues. The controversy boiled down to the Mayor's uncouth suggestion made in reaction to an insult by campaign worker not of his party.
The Mayor's repartee was fixed somewhere between the Cheney outburst in the Well of the Senate (compleat in all its Angle-Saxon flavor), and Theresa Heinz-Kerry's advice to a reporter, given in English but Italian in style. But oh, the controversy. It is an election year, and a hot one at that. The Mayor is widely known to support Gary Sherman, and his four most out-spoken critics on the council openly professed their support for Barb Linton during the meeting of the 27th.
I must mention, the professionalism during the council meetings of some councilors, who provided a sense of decorum and thoughtfulness when speaking. Those being, councilors Ante, Boys, Rehwald, and Allen.
Upon reading of the changes made to the Comprehensive Plan in an article on August 27th last, I began to ponder what does cause hot controversy, and what does not.
As I wrote above, I attended the council meeting of July 27th to hear about the Rehwald trip. Sweden was the birth place of "The Natural Step", a process for economic/ecological decision making that I have written about at times in my commentaries over ten years. The Natural Step applies established scientific principles to matters economic. It is a collaborative process that can be used to do economic and business planning while taking into account what we have learned in the last one hundred and fifty years about reality.
I was somewhat surprised to learn that all mention of the promotion of ecologically friendly innovative economic development, and "green industrial parks", had been removed from the plan. Apparently, this occurred without hue nor cry, much less, gnashing of teeth.
The ideas excluded from the plan are the cutting edge in economic development and logical for this region. It does not take a rocket scientist to understand that a community on the shore of the largest body of fresh water in the world, a world the CIA and Pentagon both say will be driven by conflict over shortages of clean, fresh water, best look to its practical options. The painless election year bid by the neoconservatives to extend wilderness status to the Apostle Islands last week indicates that even the Republican power structure has some understanding, however dim, that this is a special area.
The very areas excluded from the plan are the areas for the greatest growth and jobs. A major flap over insults between politicians, but hardly a word over gutting our prospects for serious economic growth? Perhaps we should get serious people.

wv09042004

The Burdens of Rule.

Bush says he is a wartime president. Kerry says he wants to be the wartime president. But are we at "war"? If we are at war, when have we not been, and what is special then, about a "wartime" president?
Lets measure from an arbitrary but useful point in time. A pause in causi belli of 1897. That is between the conquest of the Apache Nation and our 1898 dismemberment of the Spanish Empire. What president was not a wartime president, as we use the term today? None. American troops have been deployed somewhere on the globe in combat or occupation for 106 years. Even in the quiet years of Coolidge and Hoover, the Marines were fighting in Latin America on dozens of occasions.
Perhaps a better way to look at the spaces between world wars (what Americans call peace) is periods of global administration. What conservative writer Max Boot calls, borrowing from Kipling, "the savage wars of peace". They are the duties, or sorrows, as the Romans put it, of Empire. Oh, yes, the "E" word. I'm sorry. How about the polite term: World's Only Remaining Superpower, (hereinafter for brevity; WORS).
As WORS, we are responsible for keein' the peace (or something like it), making sure commerce flows, and calamity to a minimum. As many military people have pointed out, you cannot fight a war against a concept. Terrorism is a concept. Professionals call it asymmetrical warfare. It is the tool of those in desperation, real or imagined, with little money or tools left. A better analogy than war would be fighting organized crime, piracy, of illegal drugs. But we do love to label things war don't we? War on Drugs, War on Poverty, War on Terrorism.
A WORS is almost always fighting somewhere. So the pertinent question is not who do we want as a wartime president, rather it is, who do you want as Chief Executive of the WORS?
A WORS is supposed to support international commerce, the rule of law, and the international framework. It does this by force rarily, as a last resort. Usually it uses its shear economic and cultural weight to get its way. It uses international organizations to its advantage, (that's what the Americans created the U.N. for). People are always easier to control if they like you and feel they have a say in the process. That is tradition we have followed since Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson laid the foundation of our global domination, and the spread of both civil rights and our economic power around the planet.
If you do not do it that way, it gets increasingly expensive, in terms of both blood and treasure. If the international legitimacy of your power is not maintained by due respect for and involvement others, the effort to maintain your power increases like the mass of an object approaching the speed of light. That has been the genius of our past diplomacy, and the reason we are the WORS. The government even made money on the first gulf war, (really). Why? A real coalition. The Wilsonian Consensus in action. As Theodore Roosevelt said, "speak softly, but carry a big stick".
So to run the WORS, you want someone who is bright, widely versed, inter-culturally conversant, and capable of thinking in grey tones. Having some personal combat experience is probably a plus, so they can identify with the lot of those who serve the WORS with their lives.
That was the path we followed until February of 2002. President Bush, in his habit of seeing things in black and white, scarred the rest of the planet with his pronouncement that from now on we would place emphasis on military power and attack anyone we darn well pleased, thank you. As Cicero said so long ago, "That which people fear they hate, and that which they hate, they wish to destroy".
Friction. He breeds friction. Friction at home, friction abroad. Friction makes movement harder, it requires more work. That means it costs more to get what we want. Bush is too expensive. We cannot afford him running the WORS.

wv05292004

The role of the public purse

The "economy" is always an issue in elections. It seems though now to be confused with the concept of taxes. Many Americans seem to think taxation is wrong, akin to confiscation. The view apparently holds no matter the effect on infrastructure. This would have struck the nation's founder's as rather odd.

The thirteen British colonies on the American seaboard were created through royal charters from the king. These charters provided for certain rights, including the colonists electing legislators and, taxing themselves, with a cut to the king of course. The necessity of taxation was well understood. Tax = income, for government, or as many of the colonies called themselves, the Commonwealth. To not tax to cover public expenditure was viewed as fundamentally unsound. Deficits, through the circuitous logic of the capital market, hurt investment and trade.

As the 1770's opened, the Americans taxed themselves, paid the King his due, and toasted his health with the last glass of Madeira of the evening. The tax burden in 1770 in the colonies was one fifteenth what was borne in England. One thing that kept the taxes low was not having a standing army or navy. The British Empire's navy protected the colonials. Americans did not consider a standing military as a proper subject of their own policy. As Washington would later say, a standing military was not fit for a free people, because it would be an invitation to foreign mischief and a drain upon the public purse.

Britain's Empire though, was expensive. Parliament passed new taxes upon its American citizens. Many Americans found this outrageous. It was not the tax that angered them, rather, it was the fact they had no representatives in parliament. The Americans held that they should not be taxed by anyone they had not elected. Hence the phrase popular at the time: taxation without representation is tyrannical. Many feared that if they did not protest parliament's acts, they would suffer the fate of the Irish. At the time, Ireland was ruled by the British Parliament, without Irish representatives, other than British nobles who had both estates in Ireland and a seat in parliament.

The American idea became one of the issues of our revolution, and was viewed by the British as rather brash and cheeky at the time. After the revolution, Alexander Hamilton, a young war hero and math wiz became our first secretary of the Treasury. Washington considered a standing military tyrannical, and "old Europe". But Hamilton was allowed to start the Coast Guard. It was formed to protect coastal vessels from piracy, and enforce customs laws and interdict smuggling (tax evasion).

What did the newly independent Americans want to spend public funds on? Infrastructure. Roads, post offices, diplomacy, libraries, and schools. All of these were an aide to commerce, but the idea of public education was not just to create "job skills", one would be forgiven for thinking now-days.

The idea of publicly funded education sprouted in Virginia. In 1787 congress passed the Northwest Ordinance. It provided, among other things, the each territory (including that later called Wisconsin), should be surveyed, and that as a condition of statehood, each provide basic education at public expense. Why? Well, because the constitution required a republic. They felt education was necessary for a rational political discourse, by citizens charged with the duty of electing their representatives. Since one of the issues in the revolt had been separation of church and state, public, secular schools were considered a basic support of liberty. Interestingly, the most important subject in these schools, after reading, writing, and grammar, was of course, history.

wv06012004

That great ceremony of a republic

I recently listened to two weeks of radio coverage of the planet's largest free election. Last month India spent two weeks conducting a nation-wide election for three fourths of a billion citizens. Eighty five percent turn out. I heard an interview with an illiterate farmer who walked barefoot five miles to vote.
The philosophical children of ourselves and Britain take their voting seriously. The campaigns are intense and no holds barred. Like the early days of our old republic, no subject is taboo, and the struggle is to the bone. In India a Hindu majority chose a Sikh prime minister and a Muslim president. Jefferson and Hamilton translated through Gandhi. Turkey and Spain constrained by its voters, had to walk away from being obedient auxiliaries to our legions. Who would of thunk it?
As America concentrates on its latest woes, it seems to have failed to notice that it has already won. The vast majority of the species now votes for its leaders. Nearly every week another country's report surfaces critical of our record on individual and human rights. That is in essence, at the core, what our own revolution was all about. Take a moment to relax, think about that, and give out a little sigh.
The election season is upon us, unusually early in its intensity. But how tame the rhetoric, mundane the debate. The homeland of the greatest empire in history, the birth place of the modern republic, argues in sound bits and slogans. My goodness people, our children around the world are watching!
Ever since I was a sprout, the party occupying the presidency has, especially in time of so called war, (which is often the case), proclaimed that it was wrong to criticize the president in time of conflict. I have heard that tired refrain from both Democrat and Republican, during each their watch. Yawn.
President Theodore Roosevelt, second from the right on Mount Rushmore, and a Republican said:
"To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public."
Lets have a real dialogue. Heck, that is way too polite. Lets have a good old fashioned political brawl. No subject off limits, as is fitting for a free people. What would be really fun for a change would be argument in coherent thoughts and complete sentences. Let us remember that as citizens we have one loyalty; to Defend and protect the Constitution of the United States. As for other considerations, may the devil take the hindmost. All else is subject to debate, argument. An election is that great free-for-all that is the lifeblood of a republic (with a small "r"). Take your beliefs and views in hand, and joyfully prepare for civic battle. As the great American poet, Walt Whitman said, "The spotted hawk swoops by and accuses me, he complains of my gab and my loitering. I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable; I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world."

wv05072004

The Harvest of Mars

Dr. Lawerence H. Keely, in his book, "War Before Civilization", wrote: "It is extremely uncommon to find instances among nonstate groups of recognizing surrender or taking adult male prisoners. Adult males who fell into the hands of their enemies were usually immediately dispatched." With the rise of agriculture and the state structure, prisoners had value as slave laborers. Later, as money came into use, high-status prisoners would be held for ransom.
Humanitarian progress in the treatment of prisoners of war has been slow. In 1901, the first "scandal" faced by President Theodore Roosevelt concerned the reports of torture and execution of insurgents by American forces in the Phillipines. It is interesting to read reports from then, and compare them to the news from Iraq about prisoner abuse.
In a society where showing pictures of enemy dead opens a newspaper to criticism, the Iraq prisoner abuse pictures have proven exspecially disturbing. such images disturb our self image as a different, moral people. We (as true of all people) want to believe we are different from those we fight. We will no doubt seek and punish those in the causal chain of responsibility. This will allow us to put it behind us, and resume the usual program. We will consider the whole thing an anomaly.
The prisoner abuse is not an anomaly. It is, part of the coin of war paid out, by all countries and people, through the ages. The only major ongoing changes in war have been the numbers involved, and the technology. That is stated in the beginning of "War Fighting" (aka MCDP1, U.S. Marine Corps 1997), which further states:
"War is among the greatest horrors known to humanity; it should never be romanticized. The means of war is force applied in the form of organized violence, or the credible threat of violence, to compel our enemy to our will. Violence is an essential element of war, and its immediate result is bloodshed, destruction, and suffering. While the magnitude of violence may vary with the object and means of war, the violent essence of war will never change."
While the media bemoans the effect of scandal from the scenes of degradation on our national image, no one regrets the degradation of the torturers. Young humans put in position of absolute power over the helpless in a scenario of violence. It is a position no one should be put in. The guilty are degraded also. The very term "law of war" strikes the ear as strange. In 1905 Baroness Von Suttner said, that trying to improve the law of war was like regulating the temperature while boiling someone in oil.
Nevertheless, the modern rules of war must be enforced, and some punished. The mundane reason is the hope that future enemies will follow suit. The higher reason is the hope that someday our specie may deserve the adjective civilized. But it is you and I, the citizens, that are ultimately responsible for any atrocities committed by our agents.
Whenever any citizen in any nation, either actively or through indifference unleashes war, all of its horrors are implied. Whether we deem the cause just or banal, it is the same. The harvest of Mars cuts wide and deep. Atrocity sits at the left hand of war, and terror upon its right. It has always been so.

wv01062004

Looking back at 2003

What were the most significant events of 2003? That probably depends on what is important to you. But what things will resonant along time's arrow giving form to the future as it unfolds? In the alternative, what things are profound? Here are my picks. I have divided them into two groups. The first are those of import for the nearer future. The second are scientific things I find to be simply grand in scale.

1. The Invasion and occupation of Iraq. The abandonment of our policy and practice that stood since the Wilson presidency is what people outside this country are drawing their own lessons from. Broad based coalitions (Bush 1/ 1989, Clinton/Kosovo), "soft power" vs "hard power" are the U.S. Tradition. In 2003 we broke from that. Without U.N. blessing (therefore, technically illegal under international law) we attacked another country. While Americans care little about this point, it means alot to folks around the rest of the world. Most countries will work with us out of necessity. Some will for there own benefit. More still, will work with us out of fear. Historically though, powerful countries that devalue their good will on the international balance sheet have to rely more on costly use of force and maintaining the reputation for the use of force.
2. China became the fourth largest player in world trade. Its growing share in the areas of manufacturing and technology, and consequent hunger for energy, will shape world economics for years to come.
3. Not unrelated to the last item, is Walmart. In 2003 Walmart became the largest employer in America, and the largest corporation in the world. It is the first time a retail sector company has assumed this position. China's biggest customer is the textbook example of the changes in our national economy and the effects of globalization.
4. The United States deficit. The poor economy, high levels of government spending, and massive tax cuts. The year ends with the International Monetary Fund warning other countries that in 10 years U.S. debt will equal 40% of its GNP. The stage is set for the slow disappearance of social programs through fiscal starvation over the next decade. Look to see more privatization of traditional public functions. To each according to their ability to pay.
5. The burst in growth of structural unemployment. Structural unemployment is unemployment resulting from advances in technology and productivity per worker in a market system. On the macro level, higher profits for investors vs fewer jobs and widening vocational retraining gaps. Higher economic disparity and more pronounced social stratification? We will see.

For the philosophically inclined:
6. Gamma-ray bursts, (GRBs). On March 29, 2003 the upper-most layer of our atmosphere was slightly ionized by an extremely strong, narrow burst of gamma radiation. The cause was a GRB. A massive star going super nova, with one of its magnetic poles pointed right at us. The awesome part though was the location of the star. It was in a galaxy 2.5 billion light years away. Like, wow!
7. The tally of nearby extra-solar planets and accretion disks approached 200. Extra-solar planets are planets orbiting stars other than our sun. Accretion disks are the flotsam and jetsam left over from stellar formation that planetary systems apparently form from. Solar systems are more common than many thought.
8. Scientific consensus on climate change and the humans sharing in its causality reached overwhelming in 2003. Nearly the only scientists left who disagree work as lobbyists.

Wv12292003

Living between the candle and the stars

Whenever there is a blackout on a clear night in a major city, the police are deluged with telephone calls reporting strange lights in the sky. Of course the strange lights are simply the stars. I sometimes wonder what our estrangement from the night sky will mean to our cultures. Our specie's religions developed under dark skies. Countless are the poems that use night sky metaphors. Every culture has invented patterns of stars in the sky to explain its inherent beauty and terror. Except the Inca, who made constellations of the dark areas, the great galactic dust and gas clouds.

I am an amateur astronomer. Consequently, I am probably a bit more sensitive to light pollution than most. When I lived South of Ashland, its light dome was nicely tucked down on the Northern horizon, where it interfered with little. I live in Ashland, within the light dome. I do not expect to have a truly dark sky here.

Never-the-less, the amount of wasted light in Ashland is profound for a city its size. I sometimes observe it in wonder, instead of the stars. If you live in town, the next time the night has low clouds, look up. Sometimes it is an orange-brown haze. Sometimes it is a detailed cloudscape. One clear, Moonless night I took a photographic spot meter outside and pointed it about 45 degrees above the horizon, and pressed the button. I was able to get a light density reading off the waste light from a nearby large waste source. On the up side, it makes bats easier to watch, which is fun.

By wasted light, I mean two things. Light used for illuminating an object that mostly misses its target, and/or, is much brighter than necessary.

Lighting can be done that both saves energy, and does not illuminate the bottoms of migrating bats. If you have a sign, put up signs, street lights, or have a security light, visit http://www.darksky.org/ The site has a wealth of useful information on dealing with the problem. You can have both security lights, illuminated signs, and a more attractive visual landscape. It is a design question. It is possible for a community to have its cake and eat it too on this issue, even, yes, for astute signage and lighting companies.

Security lighting that does not direct all its energy down is a favor to burglars. Studies done of career burglars, muggers, etc. show a preference for indiscriminately lit areas. Why? They can see what they need to better, see people coming from farther away, and can work faster. While it may seem counter-intuitive, it makes hiding easier. A lot of light sources in a potential victim's or officer's field of vision at night also interferes with the ability to see into shadow areas.

People who dislike commercial signage of the large or otherwise uninspired variety often think it is a modern phenomena. Well, go through pictures of Ashland at the Historical Society sometime. In the late 19th century and early 20th, it was incredible. Disparate signs of all shapes and sizes, all over the place. Things are much visually cleaner now. Of course, back then, the sign were for the most part not illuminated. If you want a realistic "old fashioned" look to a town, clutter it visually.

But what people think about the past, is often more important than what the past was actually like. Any competent advertiser knows that. It is the image the rules. It is the image that sells. That is why people in Ashland that are concerned about light pollution are actually concerned about business also. Any area that wants to successfully promote tourism (Los Vegas and New York excepted) is concerned about light pollution.

Since most of the planet's population is urban, part of very concept of vacation for many is getting away from what is usually experienced. That is why small communities that want tourism pay attention to lighting. Part of what people usually want to get away from is density of message and glare. It also has to do with the relationship between relaxation at night and various properties of the mammal eye among herbivores and omnivores, but I digress.

Waste light not only sends energy into the outer darkness, it is a waste of money. The energy thrown away is obvious. The affect on tourism is less easy to see. It is another potential guest or diner that just keeps on driving, or does not come back.

Wv12072003

Oil and Life

An acquaintance of mine, when consuming a quality cigar and bit of fine liquor, well often lapse into a slurred meditation upon the duplicity of those folks opposed to the erection of power transmission lines across their portion of landscape. He says they are hypocrites, since they use electricity themselves. Sometimes I respond in a manner to illustrate that in a social life form capable of symbolic thought and language, the question is more complicated than that. Other times I smile and just worry about whether or not he is driving.

His words often make me think also of oil. Petroleum. It is interesting to ponder our relationship to it. It is a relationship fraught with contradiction. The president rhetorically bent over backwards to justify an invasion of Iraq without using the word oil. An environmentalist will plaster their gas powered vehicle with anti-oil use bumper stickers. Welcome to pretzel logic.

What is the essential basis of United States Middle Eastern policy? Its oil. Now, before those of you of the faux patriot persuasion lift your pen to send a missive to the editor, to proclaim that it about freedom and fighting evil, etc., two things. Read on. I am saying that while not the only thing, oil is the essential thing, and I am positing it as a fact, not a criticism. Second, do not trouble to try to distract me with the pretty words used by those you follow to cloth the stark reality of the mundane. Bedtime stories are for children.

I drink at the fountain of oil everyday. I was born into a society that lives on it. I am not proud of it. I am not ashamed of it. I use gas. I use plastic. I know what it costs. Besides the price at the pump, I am warming the atmosphere, causing cancer, environmental ruin, and the deaths of many to the arms of my country and the arms of its foes. I am a fellow addict. I was born into addiction.

Oil is important. It is important because our machines run on it and most products contain it. The CD you may be listening to is oil. Your cool synthetic outdoor clothing, your running shoes, are oil. Oil is money. Money is how we keep score. How important? Congress debates whether or not to open The Arctic Wildlife Refuge to drilling. It holds a few weeks of gasoline for the country. The recent "major" British oil find, is enough gasoline for the planet for 5.5 days. Even the industry says only 30 some years of it are left. Carbon loading of the atmosphere is turning our future into a bad science fiction flick, but it does not matter. Oil is that important.

In Roman times the economy ran on grain. That is what fueled the means of production; slaves and animals. Roman imperial policy in the East, (what we call the Middle East) revolved around two things. First, keeping the grain coming. Second, keeping the price down. Now it is oil. The oil must flow. The price must be enough for profit, but not too high. Otherwise, the economy stalls. So if necessary, the blood must flow too. Whether it is the blood of the soldier, the partisan, or the child, it will flow. That too is part of the price we all pay.

If this is a problem, we are all part of it. Any hope of remedy requires a social remedy. We have to work on it, together. The solutions are mind-boggling, They encompass the very redesign of industrial society. The first step in recovery is to admit you're an addict, and stop telling bedtime stories.

Wv12062003

Ask Not

The fortieth anniversary of the assassination of President Kennedy has come and gone. It was marked by documentary and specials. The day was marked even by the bizarre speculations of what if he had completed two terms, what would the world be like? The Kennedy mythos is still strong. It arises from many causes. I was a young sprout when he was shot, but I have clear memories of that day, and his presidency.

I have been wondering why. Why does a not very successful president, in most measures, stand out as he does? The commonly given reasons include, the very fact of the assassination, his celebrity or glamour image. But for me it is something else. He was the last president we have had that consistently, and successfully, appealed to what, Lincoln called, “the angels of our better nature”. Kennedy’s rhetoric challenged us, individually, and as a group, to be more. It was also a different time. The word “taxation” was not yet a profanity. The words “public” and “government” were still found in sentences with the word “honor”.

One of Kennedy’s favorite authors, Ralph Waldo Emerson, wrote, “We all serve the self. The important question is, how big of a self do I serve?” My generation has answered resoundingly that it is a very small self. That self bounded by the edges of my skin. It is no wonder that our politicians can make such uninspiring, narrow, mean sounds to us. They compete for our attentions by appealing to the lowest common denominator. It should not be a surprise that Clinton was, in the truly classic Greek sense, a tragic figure, or, that Bush can fly thousands of miles to pose with a cardboard turkey platter. We demand so little from leaders now, because we ask so little from them, and from ourselves.

This week, the news came that various scientific models of climate change had reached a statistical “unity of one”. That means certainty, in lay-person-speak. That certainty is that human caused global warming will raise the average planetary temperature by as much as 9.5 degrees over the next 100 years. Certainty is that it is well underway. The lack of our understanding of the ramifications of this is witness to the sorry state of scientific education. Our lack of motivation to address it is testimony on the poverty of our desires. Denial by those holding high position is either ignorance or mendacity of historic proportion.

Climate change is the issue of our time. The relationship between climate change and us is comprised of most other great issues. In facing it square on, we could realize economic, social, and environmental benefits of the most profound accomplishment. Continuing in denial we wed our progeny to a future of such a struggle, that it beggars the imaginings of the most pessimistic.

So, where is the candidate for president that will call upon us to take up this challenge? Certainly not among either the Democrats or the Republicans, or in the tatters of third parties. In an election year wherein the sales of SUV’s will first surpass the sales of cars, would any candidate have the courage to even utter the challenge? More importantly, would we have the wit to listen?

I think not. The mythic effort, the heroic, is always better enjoyed at a safe temporal distance. We can’t even figure out how to get everyone health care. Kennedy merely asked for the Moon. Who would dream of asking us for the Earth?

wv12072003

Oil and Life

Oil is important. It is important because our machines run on it and most products contain it. The CD you may be listening to is oil. Your cool synthetic outdoor clothing, your running shoes, are oil. Oil is money. Money is how we keep score. How important? Congress debates whether or not to open The Arctic Wildlife Refuge to drilling. It holds a few weeks of gasoline for the country. The recent “major” British oil find, is enough gasoline for the planet for 5.5 days. Even the industry says only 30 some years of it are left. Carbon loading of the atmosphere is turning our future into a bad science fiction flick, but it does not matter. Oil is that important.

Wv10212003

Worth Reading

Here are some of the things I have read recently that bear upon U.S. foreign policy. I think these have some lasting value.

"Foreign Affairs" is the quarterly publication of the Council on Foreign Relations. It is the status quo word on the subject, and has been published for a long time. Tone is scholarly and cautious. Upper- class, intellectual, corporate, and the feeling of where the safe money view is. In the past it was not uncommon to see a piece in it that later became policy. Read the September/October 2003 issue, (vol. 82, number 5) entitled, "Bush at Midterm".

The "realist" school of thought in international relations is enjoying the privilege of being both out of favor with the current administration and scorned by the left. But one ignores the analysis of the realists at their own peril. It was refreshing to read analysis devoid of emotionality, that traced the continuities from Wilson through pre-9/11 Bush II, (yes, similarities between Clinton and both Bushs, gasp!), yet nailed the nature of the sea change after 9/11/2001. Read "American Empire: The Realities and Consequences of U.S. Diplomacy", by Andrew J. Bacevich (2002). He says:
"The question that urgently demands attention--the question that Americans can no longer afford to dodge--is not whether the United States has become an imperial power. The question is what sort of empire they intend theirs to be. For policymakers to persist in pretending otherwise--to indulge in myths of American innocence or fantasies about unlocking the secret of history--is to increase the likelihood that the answers they come up with will be wrong. That way lies not just the demise of the American empire but great danger for what used to be known as the American republic."

Niall Ferguson is a professor of history at the Stern School of Business and at Oxford. His ancestors were in the colonial service of the British Empire. He is a fan of the idea of an American Empire (as he prefers to call it), or "hegemony" as some prefer. He is a bit of a stickler though for professionalism and competence. To help matters along he has written a fine book for Americans. It is, "The Rise and Demise of the British World Order and the Lessons for Global Power". It is a very readable book with lots of illustrations. You learn for instance, that In 1898 the British administered India (present day India, Pakistan, Burma, and parts of Iran and Afghanistan), with 1200 career civil servants and about 30,000 British soldiers. The administrators were highly educated, fluent in local languages, and did their best not to run afoul of local sensibilities.
Technological advantage is always relative. American dominance over any fools willing to meet us in the conventional manner face the combination of: firepower, total horizontal and vertical maneuver, orbital dominance (therefore gps, smart weapons, sensing, and pin-point communication). One interesting historical parallel is Britain and Sudan in the 1890's, specifically the Battle of Omdurman in 1898. The British had 20,000 troops, mostly local folks, facing 52,000 Islamic fundamentalists soldiers. The British also had long range artillery, armored river gunboats, the telegraph, the railroad, and the Maxim Gun, the first truly operational machine gun. The fighting lasted a couple hours. The British regulars lost 48 men. The fundamentalists lost 95% of their army. A young war correspondent, Winston Churchill, called it, "a turkey shoot". British dead from occupation duty far exceeded battlefield casualties.
Some books age very well. I am re-reading one now, "The History of the Peloponesian War" by Thucydides. Written in the 5th century B.C., it is an account of the twenty year conflict between the states of Greece. What relevance in this tome for you? Here is an excerpt. A Corinthian addressing the Spartans about their common enemy:
"The Athenians are addicted to innovation, and their designs are characterized by swiftness alike in conception and execution…they are adventurous beyond their power and daring beyond their judgment, …they are never at home,…for they hope by their absence to extend their acquisitions. … To describe their character in a word, one might truly say that they were born into the world to take no rest themselves and to give none to others."

Lastly, a rather personal read. Chris Hedges is a rare bird. He has degrees in English literature, journalism, and divinity. He is well known for covering most of the organized slaughter in the world since the late 1970's. Hedges has seen more pain and suffering than most career soldiers ever do. He kicked the war reporter addiction recently. That is not my metaphorical, it is his. He explains it, and the inner face of war for its witnesses, in his book, "War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning". Hedges is neither a pacifist nor a hawk. He is a human that has seen too much. He decided to tell us what he learned. "This book is not a call for inaction. It is a call for repentance."

wv09112003

The dangers of a point of view

As the saying goes in the Middle East, a car bomb is the poor man's cruise missile.

You say you have $600,000? Have you considered a cruise missile?, Your limit is five grand? Well, I have this fine used van, it still has its floral service decals. It comes with a full load of left over mines and howitzer shells. I will knock off a grand if you do the wiring yourself. So kid, you only got 150 bucks? Here is a body belt and 30 pounds of dynamite. You should be able to find nails and ball bearings at the hardware store.

What is proper, heroic, or horrific and cowardly depends on who you are, where you are, your point of view. What has your life been like so far, what have you learned to feel? What group of people do you identify with, who is the "other", hey, what's your team? Maybe the safe money is on the premise that it is a dog-eat-dog world. But through space and time, different cultures take turns wearing the milk bone underwear.

Imagine this: A government office building in a capital city. A plane comes in low and slow. It sprays the building with thousands of bullets, each tipped with nuclear waste. A vehicle across the river from the building fires a few rounds into it, each bearing several pounds of nuclear waste.

Imagine another government building, another capital city. A van parks near the building. Inside there is a pile of mattresses. Inside the mattresses are hundreds of pounds of plastic explosive. But one mattress is special. Tucked deep is a spent nuclear fuel rod from a medical scanner. The van blows. deaths, injuries. A million little bits of cancer float on the wind. How do you clean it up, and what about the property values?

The second example is a fear. It is commonly referred to as a, "dirty bomb". The first example is an all to common occurrence. The last time I saw it was in April on Fox News. Live coverage of an A-10 Warthog and an M-1 tank taking care of business at the Iraqi Ministry of Information. Both weapons systems use Depleted Uranium Ordinance, or as it is known, DU.

Back in the middle years of the Cold War, military planners grappled with the concept of the Great Tank Battle to Come some day on the Central German Plain. The fewer high tech tanks of the Americans versus the great hordes of Russian tanks. They came up with an interesting recycling idea. When you make nuclear fuel or weapons from uranium, you, "enrich" it. The really hot product you want is a fraction of the material you start with. But you are left with large amounts of a waste product, that is much less radioactive, but still, dangerous. That waste is DU. You compact it and shape it and you get a very hard, heavy thing. Put it in a shell and fire it at high velocity, and it literally will burn through metal or thin concrete upon impact. The DU does not go away though. It turns to vapor and dust. It goes on broadcasting its little radioactive message to animal and plant cells; human cells.

DU ordinance is used by Bradley's, M-1 tanks, and aerial delivery anti-armor and bunker buster ordinance. The Americans are not the only users. The Germans, French, British, Russians, and Israelis are among its fans. Thousands of tons of DU are in the soil and air of the planet. Its health affects: immunity problems, cancer, birth defects are data spikes around the world. Afghanistan got a double dose. First the Soviets, then us. Iraq now is in the two-dose club. Kuwait, The West Bank, Serbia, Kosovo, Chechnya.

DU is truly the gift that keeps on giving. DU is the leading suspect for the cause of "Gulf War Syndrome", that collection on "unexplained" health problems many American veterans have. "Private, check that command BMP we just cooked, for documents when it cools". Should the private just say no?

What should we as citizens say about DU? Is anyone who uses a "dirty bomb" a terrorist? Does that kind of depend? I mean, they are evil, we are good, right? Maybe it depends on how far away it is, or who it is. Maybe if you are not an exposed American soldier or in their family, it will not matter to you.

To start learning about depleted uranium, simply go to Google and search for "depleted uranium".

Wv08272003 (Not run in print)

Random Thoughts

I have been having some random thoughts since the conquest of Iraq was declared over on May 1st. Over de jure, if not defacto, that is. Yesterday marked a symbolic turning point in Iraq, of more American combat deaths since May 1st, than during the "war'.

1.Since the early 1990's the term liberal has rarely been a self-proclaimed moniker by a politician. But since the last presidential election, an even rarer bird is the traditional American conservative. Most of those who sport the label "conservative", are actually, "neo-conservative". Neo-cons support strong corporate-government ties, high defense spending, tax elimination for the non-salaried/hourly workers, and consequently, deficit spending in fact if not in word. Maybe someday people will say that the only thing worse than tax and spend liberals, is no-tax and spend Republicans.
But when you are riding on top of a globalized economy, you have to ride shotgun or the spice don't flow. That's spendy. An when even white-collar jobs start being out-sourced to other countries, who is going to pay the taxes anyway?

2.The word "empire" is no longer a dirty word. Even the neo-cons are using it at times with apparent pride. The phrase Pax Americana is heard everywhere now. I think it is healthy for Americans to be coming out of the closet on the empire issue, and face it. Maybe we can actually have a public discourse on how to run it? Ya, right.

3.For years the NRA (National Rifle Association) has argued that possession of firearms was a basic way to insure "liberty". Separate and apart from what ever else is said in the gun control debate, I think Iraq has laid this particular argument in the dustbin of history. Iraq maintained a brutal dictatorship for decades with a population armed to the teeth. Automatic weapons, and RPG (rocket propelled grenade) rounds cheaper than a gallon of gas on the street.

4.With the de jure ending of the Third Gulf War, (the locals count the 1980's Iran-Iraq War as the first), perhaps we can leave the absurd analogies of spin, (...like the fight against Hitler, geez), and contemplate those more germane. Technological advantage is always relative. American dominance over any fools willing to meet us in the conventional manner face the combination of: firepower, total horizontal and vertical maneuver, orbital dominance (therefore gps, smart weapons, sensing, and pin-point communication). One interesting historical parallel is Britain and Sudan in the 1890's, specifically the Battle of Omdurman in 1898. The British had 20,000 troops, mostly local folks, facing 52,000 Islamic fundamentalists soldiers. The British also had long range artillery, armored river gunboats, the telegraph, the railroad, and the Maxim Gun, the first truly operational machine gun. The fighting lasted a couple hours. The British regulars lost 48 men. The fundamentalists lost 95% of their army. A young war correspondent, Winston Churchill, called it, "a turkey shoot". British dead from occupation duty far exceeded battlefield casualties. But such is necessary for the honor of queen and empire I guess.

5.In 1898 the British administered India (present day India, Pakistan, Burma, and parts of Iran and Afghanistan), with 1200 career civil servants and about 30,000 British soldiers. The administrators were highly educated, fluent in local languages, and did their best not to run afoul of local sensibilities. If we want an empire, it is time to study, study, study!

6.With the abandonment of the Wilsonian Model, or "international consensus", by invading Iraq without benefit of law, the Americans are finding the rebuilding of Iraq to be a bit of a rough go. Since it was illegal, the UN cannot just jump in. The usual partisan-guerilla activity rising. The fact that Iraq is primarily urban and modern means a wide variety of soft, fragile, infrastructure targets. Plus, with the police state gone the borders now akin to a sieve, Al Queda among others can get in easily. Many players are on the board there. Many agendas are in play. A bit of a sticky wicket.

Wv06202003

The Living Skin of a Thought

We are approaching my favorite holiday, Independence Day. An anniversary of the passage of a document declaring the reasons for revolt from the greatest empire to ever exist before our own. The Declaration is a beautiful piece of writing by Mr. Jefferson. It also a good example of how the common perception of words changes through time. Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. wrote:
" A word is not crystal, transparent and unchanging. It is the skin of a living thought, and may vary greatly in color and context according to the circumstances and time in which it was used."
Among the many important words in the declaration are two phrases; " laws of nature and nature's God", and ,"pursuit of happiness". Neither of the phrases were debated or discussed before the signing. That is because the founders knew what they meant, and the phrases were commonly understood.
"...laws of nature and nature's God", had a very exact meaning in 1776. Most of the signers of the Declaration, including its writer, held to a religious belief called "Deism". In that view, God was a first cause, a creator of the universe. After creation though, it was believed God stood back, so to speak. They believed that the creation put in motion a web of natural laws, ("laws of Nature").Humans through the use of reason could discern those laws. In this belief, God is unitary; there is no incarnated God, no salvation. By using reason, humans could come to understand nature and continually strive for perfection.
This view of God is sometimes called the God of the enlightenment, or the clockwork God. Isaac Newton, a man revered by the founders for his scientific work in the 17th century, was himself, a Deist. Probably the nearest contemporary religion to Deism is Unitarianism. This view was the most common spiritual belief of the time amongst the "intelligentsia". In fact, it is why the period is called, "The Age of Reason". The assertion that certain rights are referred to as inalienable is because they believed those rights were among the laws of nature, bound into the very weave of the universe.
While attending law school my main pleasure reading was about Thomas Jefferson. I was fortunate to have access to an extensive Jefferson collection and I set out to read his correspondence and succeeded.
The word "happiness" now is usually seen as an emotional state, or sensation. That was not the case for Mr. Jefferson. The phrase "life, liberty, and property", is of course, from John Locke's "Treatise on Government". Jefferson used the phrase in the Declaration but substituted "pursuit of happiness" instead of "property". He and his colleagues were well familiar with Aristotle. Happiness as used by Jefferson is linked to the concept, "eudiamonia", in classic Greek thought. Happiness meant the exercise of self and reason along lines of excellence in a life affording such exercise scope.
Perhaps the enduring inspiration of the Declaration is best understood by reading Mr. Jefferson's last letter, turning down an invitation to an event to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Declaration. In the letter he wrote:

"May it be to the world, what I believe it will be, (to some parts sooner, to others later, but finally to all), the signal of arousing men to burst the chains under which monkish ignorance and superstition had persuaded them to bind themselves, and to assume the blessings and security of self-government. That form which we have substituted, restores the free right to the unbounded exercise of reason and freedom of opinion. All eyes are opened, or opening, to the rights of man. The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view palpable truth, that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately by the grace of God."

Wv06212003

White Tails, Humans, The Land

Should you feed deer or not? Should the state not allow feeding? In the ecological long run, the controversy is like arguing about the table settings on the Titanic. But the debate is interesting, because the relationship we have with White Tail Deer is interesting. That relationship is a part of a human driven process of change upon the land that began here thousands of years ago. The story has no villains, only acts and consequences. We are the animal that tells the stories. We give the meaning, the emotion.
"This is after all how we understand the world, by investing ourselves in the creatures that move through it." Katherine Govier wrote that in her novel, "Creation", about John James Audubon. Audubon, the most celebrated of bird artists, lived before the camera, before the binocular. He shot his subjects with a shotgun so he could paint them.

East of Eden.

The story begins long ago. So long ago, as the Kiowa would one day say, that dogs could talk. In the last years of our specie's original Diaspora from Africa. For thousands of years our ancestors moved across the continents. They moved through lands of plenty, full of animals that knew them not. Animals that did not recognize us as death on two legs. With their snares, spears, and setting of fires, our ancestors reaped great quantities of flesh. The flesh of animals and birds already stressed by an age of glaciation and melt. Whole taxia, whole families of species went extinct.
Some of those wanderers made it to Australia about 60,000 years ago. No more the giant marsupials, or flightless birds of prey twelve feet tall. In the waning days of the last glacier, some of the wanderers discovered America. Here too the extinction flowed. The native horse, the mastodon, mammoth. No more beaver the size of an SUV. A few thousand years ago great nations rose in our hemisphere. Great cities, vast permaculture tracts. The land was being remade. Kingdoms rose and fell, stories told. Until an Italian backed by Spanish investors landed in the Caribbean. Diseases unknown to this "new" world, as bacteria and viruses will, spread through the trade routes. Millions died before the first battle ever took place. The King of England years later heard the reports from his explorers, of the abandoned towns, overgrown fields, and graves. His reponse, "We must thank divine providence for this wonderous plague, for without it, we would never prevail".
After the Euroamericans arrived in our watershed, the timber began to be cut in quantity. They did not practice permaculture, but practiced agriculture. The great forests of Maple, White Pine, and Cedar turned into the cut over. The ecosystem again collapsed. But one specie's collapse is another's chance.
The more open space, the scrub and early succession trees favored an ungulate which preferred such land. Its numbers increased. No four legged hunters checked it. Poor immigrant farmers and loggers ate them. But human hunters with projectile weapons were not limited to the sick, weak, and old. The hunter did not have to be physically fit either. They could down the large racked male, the healthy, from a distance. And as the eastern woods shrank, some would travel here to hunt this ungulate for the simple pleasure of the kill, to experience a romantic shadow of the life of their ancestors. These hunters meant money for the outfitter, for the hotelier. Others found the ungulate to be a pretty reminder of an imaginary lost world. They graced painting and mud flap with its image.
The fate of land vertebrates after we came out of Africa can be summarized. Many died out. Others are restricted to genetic islands called wilderness; areas of economic and emotional value, where they are allowed to live until a more profitable use arises. Some, like rodents for example, adapted to our landscape and survive by breeding so fast we cannot kill all of them. They live in perpetual war with our kind. Others, the lucky few, are welcome among us. The genes of the creature that humans want to reproduce are lucky genes indeed. The White Tail Deer had found a new home among the humans.

Remembering the Rose

It will have alternating strands of barbed and electric wire. That is what my friend said about the new fence he was going to put around his yard. Come fall he will hunt the deer he wants to keep out. Another person complains about the damage to the trees he just planted, as he refills the deer feeder in his yard. He never hunts. Our relationship with the North American White Tailed Deer, odocoileus virginianus borealis, is complicated.
But then, domestic relationships are often complicated. Domestication is, "to bring into a degree of conformity and comfortable accommodation with one's home environment. To adapt to life in intimate association with and to the advantage of man or another specie by modifying growth traits through breeding, provision of food, protection from enemies." Webster's Third New International Dictionary.
Deer are free-bred in the captivity of the human landscape. The modern rural landscape is totally a human cultivation. Wilderness is a set-aside. The act of setting aside land and surrounding it with other uses in itself shapes the character of the area set apart. The very wild-ness, the unfettered interaction of genotypes through phenotypes through space and time is pruned and shaped by segregation.
For deer in our watershed though, wilderness is of little value. Their numbers here before the cut over were immensely fewer than now. Our deer are creatures of our agricultural spaces; the field, the woods edge, the industrial, or "productive" forests. Forestry, roads, country homes, maintain the more open, deer friendly landscape.
Just as we protect our livestock, we intentionally or not, protect the deer. Wolves, Bobcats, Lynx, and Bear are limited in range and number. We reserve predation of the deer to our own harvest. Accidentally, some are killed by our vehicles. We tolerate the damage from such accidents, absent a conscious analysis in public policy. The owner of livestock is responsible for damage they cause, but who owns the deer?
The parasite, bacteria, and virus still have their way on occasion with the deer as they do with us. It is logical for disease to increase among the deer. The sick deer will tend to be slower, less alert. But the four-legged meat inspectors are mostly gone. Human hunters do not operantly select for infirmity.
Deer groom our land. They browse natives such as Canadian Yew and Cedar before they get a chance to take hold. The digestive system of the deer is essentially similar to cows. And adult deer eats 5 to 7 pounds per day. In winter, deer's basal metabolic rate drops by 40%. In winter, about one-third of their energy need can come from fat stored in summer and fall. A sudden change in diet itself can cause disease or death. Like cows, deer use bacteria, not acids, for digestion. To avoid this, deer must be introduced to corn slowly, so they have the weeks necessary for their stomachs to adapt. Commercial beef cattle are fed corn so they get big enough faster. In their last months, one out of three pounds of feed is anti-biotics. This is done to fight off infection long enough so the cow grows to slaughter size.
Some bait the deer to reduce the exertion and skill necessary to kill one. Others feed them like many feed birds. The tourists like the deer. Hunters like to kill them. Deer serve our purposes. They are an economic factor. Maybe someday most deer will be tame, like some nearly are now. Living lawn ornaments.
For the deer's ultimate good or ill, their fate is now bound to our fate. If we fall, the deer's population would crash also, as the trees closed in, and wolves reoccupied the space. Should you feed deer if it is legal to do so? I do not know. How do you feel? The answer depends upon what you want, what you desire. If you want deer to be "wilder" and resilient, no. But as we learned from the children's book, "The Little Prince", you are forever responsible for what you tame. You must always remember the rose.

wv06052003

President Signs Lottery Bill

After a record breaking swift passage through Congress, the President signed the Deficit Reduction Lottery Bill of 2003 today. The bill establishes two new lotteries, the Freedom Lottery and the Patriot Lottery. All proceeds of both lotteries will go towards deficit reduction the Social Security Trust Fund, and the new Night Watch program.
The Freedom lottery is open only to players in most foreign countries. It will run annually, with the first winner drawn in October 2004. The winning country will receive a written guarantee that the United States will not liberate it for a period of ten years from the date of the drawing.
The Patriot lobby is open to all citizens of countries not eligible to play the Freedom Lottery, (United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Israel, and the United States). The Patriot Lottery will have a winner drawn monthly. The winner will be able to name the person of their choice to be classified as a terrorist under the Patriot Act, (elected and appointed officials, their advisor's and appointees, corporate officers and board members in publicly traded corporations, members of the armed forces, or anyone with more than $100,000 capital gains income in the previous tax year, may not be named).
The person named will be arrested without benefit of legal rights under their respective constitutions, and classified as an Illegal Enemy Combatant. All of their property will forfeit to the faith-based non-profit of the winner's choice. The first winner, and the arrest of the person of their choice is scheduled for the half-time show of Super Bowl 2004.
"People do not want to pay taxes, but love lotteries", said Rep. Ima Quisling, (R. Texas), "with the economy in the ditch, a tax cut for the rich, and all the liberation work ahead around the globe, we gotta get the funds somewhere." After signing the bill, President Bush said, "We cannot let the cost of freeing people from evil doers be put on the back of the American Taxpayer."
Democrats initially opposed passage due to concerns about the Freedom Lottery allowing citizens to buy ticket for their country. Havno Vertebrae, (D. California) warned that , "dictators could force their people to buy tickets, in violation of their basic human rights." Secretary Rumsfeld responded, "Democracy has a cost, and if the cost of obedience to ruthless thugs is too high, people will opt for change."
Major media has generally been supportive of the new law, with the exception of Fox News. Randolph Hearst IV, spokes-person for the network said, " We already have laid out our splash screens for the next countries to be liberated. What if Islamic states pool their money and buy tickets for Syria or Iran? All our graphics work will be useless. The Freedom Lottery interferes with our ability to prepare the in-depth coverage we are known for." Fox would not comment on plans to challenge the new law in court.
This morning, Attorney General John Ashcroft used his appearance as keynote speaker at the National Amnesia Association to unveil the Night Watch program. The program will create a nationwide youth group intended to teach traditional values and terrorist detection skills. Ashcroft appeared in an adult size version of the Night Watch uniform; A button-down brown shirt, black jeans, and knee-high black steel toed running shoes. Ashcroft said, "Just what are traditional values? True Americans do not ask, they know. One people, one country, one leader!"
Disney has announced a Night Watch series of children's movies will soon be in production, with co-marketing of action figures to be done with a major fast food chain.

Media Highlights, Fumbles, Bricks, and Kudos. (wv04072003)

Three weeks into the final assault on Iraq I'd like to share some thoughts on media coverage. Some aspects of the coverage are of long term importance, some are simply worthy of praise or scorn. I am limiting my comments to status quo media sources.
A Technical Achievement Award must go to the Pentagon information and psych-ops personnel for the near flawless integration of the major electronic media, notably, the cable news corporations, into the war plan. They have kept, "on message" for the home front, and provided "eyes" for the enemy to see through in an unprecedented degree. The use of the independent media by war planners will be the subject of study for years to come.
Notable. An interesting change with the coverage of this conflict has been the absence of numbers of wounded U.S. and U.K. personnel from daily casualty totals in both military briefings and in media reports.
Notable. The reaction to U.S.A.Today's running a front page picture of dead Iraq soldiers on battlefield. The paper was criticized for being "anti-war" for doing so. This is a change. It is common now for media that display civilian casualties to be criticized as anti-war. This further move towards sanitization is interesting, historically.
A Most Fumbles in a Single Season Award would be shared by the entire media. It is for the lack of depth on the coverage of Ansar al-Islam. Ansar is a Kurdish/Islamist militant group. They and another group were attacked for the first time by the U.S. as part of the "northern front" operations. Ansar is reported to have ties to Al Queda. The interesting part is that this group and the other unnamed one were based in the Kurdish controlled, (therefore under daily U.S. over flight) area of Iraq since the early 1990's. That means not in the area under Saddam's control. Why were they not attacked until now? This is even more intriguing given the pre-war polls that showed most Americans thinking that the 9/11 hijackers were from Iraq, (wrong, none were). The pointing to Ansar by Secretary Powell's presentation to the U.N. as an Al Queda tie was one of the disingenuous aspects of his presentation that so alienated foreign diplomats.

Bricks
Fox News. Fox has mixed opinion and reportage together to the point that it resembles the media portrayed in modern dys-utopian science fiction. Fox even used ads to attack the patriotism of competing cable channels. Probably the worst display of yellow journalism since the Hearst newspapers regarding the Spanish-American War.
Cable News generally. While Fox has led the way from journalism to entertainment and unabashed cheer leading, all the Cable sources (Fox, CNN. MSNBC), have enthusiastically jumped the gun and dumbed down. The Saturday morning (4/7) recon in force in Baghdad is one of many examples. It was a reconnaissance in force of southwest suburban Baghdad, (as immediately and correctly reported by NPR, BBC, and New York Times), on Cable it was, "Drive downtown". With CNN contracting with the New York Times to carry TV reports from some of the latter's embed personnel, the differences can be interesting. The Same reporter in the paper delivers more detail and balance in the paper than on air.
Kudos
Most balanced coverage, and still struggling to maintain journalistic standards: BBC radio. It is a syndicated offering on many public radio stations late at night. The BBC is an especially laudable example of war coverage since its country, the U.K., is a combatant.
The Guts Award would have to go to the 3/24 issue of Newsweek cover story, "Why America Scares the World", a background article on Administration's long range policy.
A Pathos Award should go to NPR for it's "Radio Diary" series. They gave tape recorders to a scattering of Americans. They range from a grandmother taking care of to children while their parents are on duty in Iraq, to a young Marine corporal, "at the tip of the spear".
In the area of placing things in context, NPR and PBS have the laurels nearly all to themselves. Now (Bill Moyers - PBS), Frontline (PBS), The Connection (NPR), and Fresh Air (NPR), are nearly alone in the major media in carrying the ball on context.

Finally, the Best Soundbyte award has to go to the unnamed Iraqi civilian asked by an embedded reporter what he thought of being "liberated". His response was, "democracy, whiskey, sexy!". Who says they do not understand America?

A Rose by Any Other Name… (wv04032003)

Ever since I was a child I have been fascinated by word usage across time. One of the most interesting times to look at how language is used is during war. For example, "casualty", is now a relatively accepted word. But it began its modern life as a euphemism. During World War I newspapers listed the fallen as killed, wounded, missing, and captured. As the slaughter increased, politicians started using the term casualty as a summary term for the other four words. It was originally a French word meaning a serious or fatal accident.
Words invoke strings of meaning in the mind. Whether a word is used accurately will often depend upon the context and beliefs of the listener. Here are a few examples.

Terrorist.
The origin of the term is a bit murky. Some trace it to a derogatory term used by the British to describe the American soldiers during the American Revolution. Some French radicals described themselves as terrorists in 1792-93. It is clear though that British politicians and newspapers used the term to describe proponents of the "reign of terror" during the French Revolution.
Over the centuries usage has pretty well settled out. It is generally used by people in a society or country with significant, mechanized , military force for an opponent that opposes it using guerilla techniques. Often guerrillas carry out acts that are primarily aimed at instilling fear, confusion and doubt.

Guerrilla
This term is usually applied to un-uniformed, organized, combatants. In recent times it is becoming a term used primarily by neutral journalists and military professionals. If you don't like the guerrillas you call them criminals, terrorists, etc. If you like them, you may use words such as; freedom fighter, resistance, martyrs, and the like. If guerrillas are fighting an invader, a correct usage would also be, "partisan". "Guerrilla" dates to the Napoleonic campaign in Spain (1808-1811). The adjective use dates from 1811. In Spanish the word is a diminutive of "guerra" or war; so guerrilla is literally "little war."

Weapon of Mass Destruction (WMD)
This current term for a nuclear, biological, or chemical weapons dates to 1937. It was first used by the London Times:"Who can think without horror of what another widespread war would mean, waged as it would be with all the new weapons of mass destruction?" This referred to aerial bombing of cities, which had happened in the Spanish Civil War. The current usage originated in the former Soviet Union, Oruzhiye Massovo Porazheniya, (Weapons used to inflict heavy casualties. From Dictionary of Basic Military Terms: A Soviet View. Published by the United States Air Force.).
The common United States term was, "NBC weapons", for Nuclear-Biological-Chemical. In the 1960's, WMD became jargon in arms control negotiations.
An interesting variant is,"weapons of mass terror", recently coined by Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfwitz. From administration usage it apparently means WMD's that are possessed by parties other than the United States, its allies, and ethnarchs.

Liberation
A term popularized during World War II by the allies for the conquest of territory controlled by the fascist powers. During the Cold War both sides used it to describe the conquest, or the hope thereof, of each others respective territories, allies, and clients. For speakers of English and the romance languages the term liberation has a deep emotional resonance, (setting free, releasing). It continues to be used in political speech as a substitute for conquest. In Arabic the concept of liberation is primarily a spiritual one, and political use of it does not translate very well.
Since World War I the word conquest has fallen into disuse, perhaps because it is too direct and now carries a negative connotation. "Conquest" is actually a legal term with a specific meaning. That is why I continue to use it for clarity. Conquest means gaining by force of arms, or, acquisition of the sovereignty of a country by force of arms, exercised by an independent power which reduces the vanquished to submission.

Decapitation Strike.
Originally a Cold War nuclear conflict term. The use of a low angle shot with a submarine launched ballistic missile that would theoretically provide little or no warning. It would be used to destroy a capital city or other central command site, so as to retard the opponents ability to respond. Now it is a military term for an air or missile strike intended to kill an opponent's leadership.

The Battle of the Potomac and the Fog of War (WV04012003)

The most interesting battle as I write (March 31), is not in far off Mesopotamia, nor in Afghanistan. Rather, in is near the banks of the Potomac. Journalist Seymour Hersh fired a volley at Richard Perle in mid-March and knocked him from the chair of the Defense Policy Board. On the 31st, Hersh launched a salvo at Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, "Offense and Defense", The New Yorker, 4/7/2003 issue.
For readers who limit their media intake to neoconservative agitprop the build-up to this battle probably passed under the radar. But the battle is important to the 2004 election, the future wars in the Middle East, and points beyond.
When Colin Powell was head of the Joint Chiefs, the Pentagon embraced the Powell Doctrine. The doctrine is that the U.S. will use military force when and only when:
1. It is a matter of last resort;
2. It is about a matter of vital national interest;
3. It is to win;
4. There is full congressional and high public support;
5. Overwhelming force will be employed.
Gulf War I was fought on this doctrine. Bush I and Clinton deviated at times from it, (Somalia), but otherwise followed it. For instance, the Kosovo War "vital national interest" was providing a rationale for U.S. troops staying on the ground in NATO/Europe. In the mid-1990's a methodology arose for a graduated application of "overwhelming force", in the post cold war period, in the glare of global media. This is called Rapid Dominance, or Shock and Awe, "Shock and Awe: Achieving Rapid Dominance, Harlan K. Ullman & others, (1996).
Shock and Awe is not meant to displace the Powell Doctrine. Rather, it was a method for exercising the overwhelming force aspect. In early 2002 Bush II decided to conquer Iraq. The military brass felt invasion was not appropriate. They felt it was not a matter of last resort, was not vital to the national interest, and would not have high popular support. Rumsfeld requested plans. The Pentagon provided war plans to Rumsfeld, which he rejected. He felt that the pre-positioning of overwhelming force was not necessary since the Iraqis would collapse with the first bombings. The military pointed out to him that in Gulf War I the mass surrenders by Iraqis took place primarily in Kuwait. When two Republican Guard divisions retreated back into Iraq, they turned and fought. They were massacred, but they did fight, often to the last man. Further, there were no links between Al Queda and Saddam. The two Islamist groups with terror ties are Kurdish, and reside in the Kurdish area under U.S. control since 1991.
Rumsfeld was not persuaded. In his ideological epiphany he wanted shock and Awe without the key component of pre-positioned overwhelming force. He and his deputies even kibitzed in the key logistics plans that are usually left to military professionals. For a person fond of quoting Al Capone, Rumsfeld must have missed one. "Only a fool brings a knife to a gunfight." The initial mistake of invasion, was now compounded by an error of means.
Whether Iraqi resistance is due to fear of Saddam or due to patriotic fervor, or both, is now, not the point. Aljeezra and other global media have shown determined Arab resistance to American forces. Greater resistance results in higher civilian casualties, which does not play well outside of the U.S.. Given the administration's rhapsodic statements about remaking the Middle East, this points to a rather rough road.
The majority of people in the Arab Middle East do not want their world "remade" by us. Most Arab people use the term nation, to refer to all Arabs. Now they will have even more of their own heroes, their own martyrs and their own brave fallen. People everywhere have a similar reaction to seeing their own killed, wounded, or suffering. The emotions run all the hotter when the foe is a foreign invader. They will fight back anyway they can. Eyes blinded by the sting of tears, will they not, as we have, as Shakespeare wrote, "With a monarch's voice Cry 'Havoc!' and let slip the dogs of war; That this foul deed shall smell above the earth, With carrion men, groaning for burial."

What can I Do? ( Wv03292003 )

As an individual there are things you can do, to "support the troops", and help the people of Iraq both, at the same time. This is important. If the Bush Doctrine continues, you can expect plenty of troops to support and civilians to aid as the years go by.
Bush Administration officials have repeatedly stated that their broader purpose is to "remake" the Middle East. For most people around the world, that translates as, "conquer". Some people seem surprised at "Iraqi resistance". This is strange considering that "patriotism", generally means love of country. An Iraqi is a person living in Iraq.
If our government retains its current policy, this is just the beginning. It is true that most of the Arab governments are autocratic and dictatorial. But we must not forget examples such as Stalin. As head of the Soviet Union he starved, tortured, and murdered millions of Russians. Yet millions willingly died fighting the Germans in World War II. Some of you had first hand experience fighting the North Vietnamese Army. The NVA was fighting for a brutal, dictatorial government. No one needs to remind you how hard they fought. People have a tendency to do that when they are invaded. It is called fear. Don't let the tactics confuse you. As the saying goes among off-camera military experts, a car bomb is a poor man's cruise missile.

So here are some things we can do.

Bush is quietly pushing for the most sweeping cuts in veteran's benefits since the end of World War 1. This is being done while he is also pushing a massive tax cut aimed to benefit the top 1% of tax payers. This is being done while the administration awards the bid for rebuilding Iraqi oil infrastructure to companies such as Halliburton, Cheney's former company.
The American Legion stated in a March 17th press release:
"Veterans' pensions and disability compensation are parts of the costs of defending freedom. Our nation cannot, in good conscience, commit men and women to battle, and reduce the meager, yet well-deserved, compensation for those who are wounded," said American Legion National Commander Ronald F. Conley. "Of all the citizens who benefit from mandatory federal funding, none are worthier than those who are disabled today because they risked all of their tomorrows fighting for freedom. This budget defies common sense. We'll fight it with all our might."
Edward R. Heath Sr., National Commander of the Disabled American Veterans, said:
"It is unconscionable to cut benefits and services for disabled veterans at a time when we have thousands of our service members in harm's way fighting terrorism around the world and when we are sending thousands more of our sons and daughters to fight a war against Iraq."
Get a hold of your Congress people, NOW!

The "Red Cross" you see on the CNN reports about Iraq, is "The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies", (not to be confused with the American Red Cross). They are the folks that help civilians during war. They have been doing this for over 120 years. The "red crescent" part of the name is how they are known in Islamic countries. The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent is also the only group that can cross the battle lines to visit POWs, from both sides.
The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent website is: http://www.ifrc.org/ .
You can make donations on-line at:
http://www.ifrc.org/helpnow/donate/donate_response.asp
The money you donate will go to blood, food, water, medical care, and relocation services for civilians. It also supports the work of enforcing the provisions of the Geneva Conventions about treatment of prisoners of all combatants, including getting information to the families of prisoners.

Shock and Dissent (wv03202003)

03-20-2003

The final assault on Iraq began. The television media, with a style that combines all the aesthetics of opera, music videos and the super bowl, give a whole new meaning to "March Madness". I am old enough to remember war coverage when the news divisions of networks were expected to lose money. They felt it was a public service called "journalism". But since the early 1980's their parent companies have transferred control to their entertainment divisions, with all that it implies, and fashioned them to get rating share and produce income.
The media was salivating over the pre-invasion promise of "Shock and Awe". Today as I write this, (Thursday the 20th), they are spinning around asking, hey when does the shock and awe begin? No one is pointing out, not even the hired gun-pundits, what "Shock and Awe", means.
Well, the term comes from a 1996 document written by Harlan K. Ullman among others. It is entitled "Shock and Awe: Achieving Rapid Dominance". It is about a strategic/tactical methodology of using smart weapons precisely, in measured clever ways, to essentially unhinge the enemy. It is not about flattening things. Sorry CNN, hope it is not too disappointing.
The primary author of "Shock and Awe", is a former navy man with distinguished service. He is also against the "Bush Doctrine", and against the invasion of Iraq without UN authority. A decorated soldier, a keen tactician, and a dissenter. But as somebody once said, the test of an intelligent mind, is to be able to hold two contradictory thoughts in mind at the same time.
As we go through a time of de facto war, it is important to remember our roots as a people. Our nation was born in dissent, followed by revolution against the greatest military power of it's day. That empire, Great Britain, now provides small numbers of an auxiliary unit to our massive high-tech legions.
The tension, between support of our government, and dissent against it, is tradition. Dissent to power, elected or no, is fundamental to liberty.
Our citizen soldiers have been faithful to their oaths. We all hope their duty is short, and their travel back home is safe and soon. We who have the luxury of being back home have a duty also. It is the same duty we always have, loyalty to the constitution. And that loyalty, that duty requires each of us to support civil rights and liberties. Dissent is always proper. Dissent is always "American". This is because, in the long run, the purpose of dissent against the government, is also, like the soldier on the line, to protect this elusive thing called liberty. The dissenter is also a patriot. They fight against the mistakes that can come from fear, and hubris.
Gustave Gilbert, a German-speaking intelligence officer and psychologist was granted free access by the Allies to all the prisoners held in the Nuremberg jail in 1946. He wrote a book called, "Nuremberg Diary". In the book he recounted his conversations with Former Reich Marshall Hermann Goering. Goering had been explaining how easy it is to get ordinary people to go to war, no matter what the government or people in question. Gilbert disagreed. He wrote:
"There is one difference," I pointed out. "In a democracy the people have some say in the matter through their elected representatives, and in the United States only Congress can declare wars."
Goering replied:
"Oh, that is all well and good, but, 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 pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country."
For the sake of liberty, hold dear both your soldiers, and your dissenters.