Last Reflection on JUS494: Science, Technology & Inequality

     This has been my favorite class at ASU. It has opened my eyes, and given me confidence to write and say what I think.

 

      Technologies Transform. Technologies include Information, Exploration, Warfare, Industry, and Entertainment. Science & Technology should be biased toward eliminating Inequality. The process by which technologies are structured and decisions made positions people differently, giving them unequal degrees of power, access, and awareness. New technologies will always be weighted to benefit the powerful and wealthy. The powerful manipulate public opinion – acting on people’s ignorance, apathy, bigotry, or fear. That manipulation is overcome when the public participates, realizes the irrationality of its prejudices, and the false threats of fear-mongering.

 

          If the world wants peace, why are we not preparing for it? Why does the U.S. government give the U.S. Dept. of Defense the highest funding priority with all its human cruelty, torture, terror and violence. Because the military-industrial complex is such a money-making operation for some people. How can we transform public opinion towards nuclear disarmament? Who still remembers Hiroshima? With the apparent military build-up in the Middle East, the ignoring of pleas to be heard and believed against false media propaganda, (like what happened to the Japanese) it’s easy to see Iran is going to be the next nuclear target.

 

          Many people taking action can cause social transformation. Many people are concerned with the greed and corruption which perpetuates war, poverty and inequality. Technology based on positive principles of compassion and unselfishness will go a long way to ridding the world of pain, hopelessness, hunger, despair, grief and horror. The time is now. Let’s get involved.

 

 

 

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY SYSTEMS OF VIET NAM

 

Viet Nam is the 2nd best investment destination among ASEAN countries. (The first is Singapore.) Cost of investment is not as cheap as China, but cheaper than other countries and quicker to development because of its smaller size. Vietnamese love the Capitalist system. (Singapore is Socialist) More money is now being spent on research & development – their government has assigned their science & technology innovators to quickly apply new findings to production and business for purposes of industrialization and modernization. They want new equipment, improvement in existing technologies, to modernize traditional technologies and adapt foreign new technologies. Viet Nam does not lack expertise for effective use of science and scientific results or particular technological know-how. Vietnam offers financing and tax incentives to lure businesses. They have a formula to discourage monopoly from emerging stronger than the corporation.

 

But they have other problems:

1. Lack of communication between ministries and institutions
2. Lack of appropriate funding
3. Lack of relevant research equipment have forced the R&D institutions to move into contract research, technical services, and consultancy arrangements with as broad a range of customers as possible; researchers are holding more than one job. The national R&D system is organized, financed, and managed in ways that make communication difficult and expensive between sectors.

The government says they have good policies, but lack of good attitude towards the implementation.

 

Their growth rate of 7-8% is one of the highest in the world. Poverty rate is going down from 51% to 38%. Viet Nam is open and honest, doesn’t manipulate their figures as they want to open up the country. Inequality gap between urban and rural is not too different. Corruption there is less rampant due to government control. The new trend in Asia is to be self-sufficient. If you can solve the big city problem, you can solve the country’s political and economic problems. Viet Nam is proud of their luxury developments. Their social problems are crime, their dependency on cars is worse than the U.S. because things are changing more rapidly there and the political/social infrastructure is not ready for it.

 

The Vietnamese give highest priority to getting foreign high technology, then applying and adapting to their firms and institutions. They consider investment for science and technology as an investment in development, yet their researchers had no well-defined or rational criteria to use in deciding what level of resources to assign to institutions at different levels – national, city-province, enterprise. Now the government has launched a program of rationalization: first priority is given to R&D that targets Aids prevention, the provision of clean water, and elimination of poverty; second priority is given to IT, biotechnology, new materials, and automation.

 

A suggestion for Viet Nam would be a new policy giving a limited number of large, multiyear S & T grants that would create national Centers of Excellence. The government would specify criteria and invite proposals examined by regional and international assessors. This approach was used by Korea and Singapore in building their S&T institutions.

 

One problem View Nam faces is that priority-setting for basic research is difficult and not transparent. Another is that scientists need to be well-qualified, working in a good environment with advanced equipment, and have access to advances made by other scientists in the world. Viet Nam also has an aging scientific community.

 

The Government of Viet Nam might also consider establishing an endowed foundation for science and engineering – the Viet Nam Science and Engineering Foundation (VISEF) which could be structured for long-term support of basic research and human-resource development for Viet Nam. International financial support might be in order.

The activities of VISEF might be:

1. Evaluation of proposals for an award of support
2. Selection and awarding of fellowships
3. Evaluation and award of block grants to universities and research
4. institutions
5. Planning, selection, and establishment of Centers of Excellence
6. Evaluation and award of equipment for teaching and research laboratories
7. Administration of international cooperative research projects
8. Science and Engineering Awards for excellent research work
9. Improvement projects for science education
10. Assessment of new scientific breakthroughs

  

Curitiba – Towards Sustainable Urban Development – by Jonas Rabinovitch

See principal player/city planner extraordinaire:

Mayor Jaime Lerner at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=haKh9mCk3xk

What makes Curitiba unusual is not that it had a coherent plan, but that it was implemented. A city must know where it is growing, how and why. Existing trends must be evaluated technically, politically, economically, and socially. Curitiba has shown that successful solutions do not need to be expensive. A sustainable city spends the minimum and spares the maximum. Curitiba teaches us that solutions are not isolated and specific, but inter-connected as we are with the earth, and all the inhabitants of earth. The entire debate for or against privatization is not important when we realize there is a role for every citizen. Creativity and labor can substitute for financial resources. And a good information system is necessary. The better inhabitants know their city, the better they treat it, especially a city’s planners. Planning is essential, but we don’t have much time to plan and we cannot attempt to have all the answers, but it’s important to start using creativity and innovation now. Having people contribute will keep you on the right track. Taking care of a city is a process that you start, and then give the population space to respond. There is no place in a city that can’t be better.

 

• Public Transportation System: Innovative rapid bus transport system (uses boarding tubes). Each of 5 axes has a trinary road system consisting of a central road for express buses flanked by high-capacity one-way roads on each side: one in and one out of the city. The boarding tubes have a platform the same height as the bus which eliminates the need for crew to collect fare, enables 2 or 3 times more passengers per hour. 2/3 of the populations use this bus system. Traffic lights give priority to buses. Entire bus system uses no direct financial subsidy. Land-use legislation encourages high-density service and commerce occupation. Land along the axes allows floor area six times the plot size which decreases the further the site is from public transportation.
• Planning Process: The government acquired land along the axes prior to construction in order to organize high density housing to lower-income families (17,000) close by. Road network has structural framework – 4 types of roads: structural, priority, connector, and collector. Capital costs: use of express buses on exclusive bus ways using boarding tubes (.2 million) is far less expensive than subways ($90-100 million per kilometer cost) or light rail systems ($20 million/kilometer cost). Buses are color-coded, there are express buses, inter-district buses and feeder buses-a single fare is good for all buses with ease in transferring. Limited pollution due to bus use. Computerized area traffic control system. Social bus fare: standard fare which meant benefit for the city’s periphery (poor) as shorter trips subsidized longer trips. Expansion of park/green areas and reduced resource use.
• Water, Sanitation & Garbage: Environmental education: “garbage that is not garbage” solid waste management program encourages citizens to separate organic from inorganic. 90% of the population has piped water, 60% has sewage lines. They are developing an innovative lagoon system where water is first treated with micro-organisms in anaerobic lagoons which flow into aerobic lagoons, which flow into the rivers. Other methods used include an open air canal running parallel to a river to prevent flooding and allow breakdown of pollutants before entering a river. A pedestrian walkway and cycle-way is being developed on one of the banks of this canal.
• Preservation of city’s cultural heritage: owners of building designated as having historical value can change the building’s use, but not the fundamental facade and layout. A foundry is now a popular shopping mall, gunpowder arsenal turned into a theater, a glue factory into a creativity center, army headquarters into a cultural foundation, the city’s oldest house is now a documentation/public center, the old railway station is the railway museum, and a stone quarry is an open air theater. They have a 24-hour street where business stay open 24/7 and sustains commercial activities in the city center. The “Guarda Verde” (the green guard, a municipal corporation protects and maintains the green areas. The guards keep the public informed about environmental issues and are trained in first aid. Millions of trees have been planted. Programs encourage community responsibility for the parks such as “Friends of the Park” and “Boy Scout Bicycle Watch”. Local schools promote ecological principles. The parks provide aesthetic and recreational value, also flood control. Each park has information centers on the local environment and ecology, along with bike paths. Botanical gardens are being developed over garbage dumps which include some of the last remaining flora and fauna native to that region. The city provides free bus service on weekends to the parks which are painted green. 
• Social services and environmental education: Health care, child day care, adult education, rehabilitation programs. Remodeled old city buses are mobile classrooms for adults in low-income areas, providing short-term courses in hair-styling, mechanics, sewing, carpentry, and word-processing. They go to different areas each day of the week. Income earned from recycled garbage is used on social programs. Jobs in the garbage-separating plant are provided for the homeless and recovering alcoholics. Garbage exchange program – to deal with potential health problems, squatter settlements can sell their bagged garbage for bus tickets and agricultural/dairy products. This has decreased urban litter and increased quality of life for the poor. Cost to the city for bus fares and garbage bags are no different than what they pay for garbage collection. This has prevented garbage from being dumped in forests, rivers, and valleys, and decreased infant mortality rates and saving families’ expenditures on medicines. Since lack of education is one reason for environmental destruction, environmental education is especially strong in elementary schools. Curitiba’s city planners believed one of the most effective ways to teach people about recycling is through the children who teach their parents.

 

What was the planning/administrative framework necessary to make it happen?

1. Priority on meeting the population’s transportation needs rather than meeting the needs of car owners.

2. Plan, Direct & Control the Growth Process, avoiding large-scale/expensive projects.

3. Encourage physical expansion along linear axes which at the center had a road with exclusive bus lanes.

4. Reduce concentration of employment in city center to return this area to the pedestrian and cultural heritage. Commercial/service sectors were expanded along structural axes north, south, east and west.

5. A special designated industrial area west of the city which generates one fifth of all jobs in the city without significant industrial pollution.

 

The “Sustainable Song” (watch Jaime Lerner sing it at the end of his video)

It’s possible! It’s possible!

You can do it! You can do it! 

Use your car less!

Make this transition!

Avoid carbon emission!

It’s possible! It’s possible!

You can do it! You can do it!

Live closer to work!

Work closer to home!

Save energy in your own home!

It’s possible! It’s possible!

You can do it! You can do it!

Separate your garbage!

Organic, schmorganic!

Do More with Less!

It’s possible! You can do it!

Please do it now!

 

 

 

Election Day Reflection – Part 2 of 2

After a 19-hour day for me on Election Day, I certainly wasn’t expecting to get ballot results shortly after dropping off ballots from my precinct. Minutes after I arrived home, it was with great surprise I found people on TV seemed to be celebrating already, like the presidential election had already been decided. It had been – probably before I even left my precinct in Maricopa County, Arizona.

 

Barack Obama was now President Elect Barack Obama. I hadn’t expected those results for several hours. I fell into bed exhausted minutes later, somewhat numb. I had been tense and on-guard for so long fearing election fraud, and I certainly wasn’t alone. Courageous, dedicated people were at my precinct the entire day to “watch” the process. I can’t say had I been one of them, I would have felt welcomed (not that I didn’t appreciate their dedicated effort).

 

What I finally understand today, only after having the opportunity to share post-election feelings (of relief) with my global studies class, is that yesterday, I was hysterical inside. Anybody around me yesterday would vouch for it, though thankfully the number was few. I couldn’t understand what was wrong with me yesterday, but now I can.

 

After much thinking, I remembered I reacted the same way when I received divorce papers for which I had filed. The first day I cried for no apparent reason even though I had been glad to get them, and have the divorce behind me. The day after I experienced happiness and relief – a lot like I am feeling now.

 

Yesterday, I spent a little time reading about the election and Obama’s grandmother. I cried inconsolably to find she had died the day before his monumental election. But I didn’t read much more. I was sick of the tension and worry over the election process. I have been ready to sell my car in order to get out of this country had the election not gone the way I felt it must. A family member had told me “this country is not ready for a black president.” What the @)#%? Tell me, what kind of preparation would be necessary to allow a black man to be president? What could possibly be so different that it would matter? Only that he might appreciate it more than a man of the dominant race.

Thankfully, the country was able to show itself less bigoted, less hateful, less ignorant that its past has shown it. I was an emotional wreck the rest of the day, even missing an important test. 

 

Today enforced perceptions I thought I was only imagining yesterday. Strangers on the street, at the gas station, and on campus seem more relaxed and happy, less fearful. I predict we will now experience a let up from the fear-mongering that has showered us the last 8 years. Hopefully, “terrorism” can someday become of word associated with a corrupt administration of the global hegemon in a bygone era. I can say this “divorce” was much more important than my first.  

My perceptions were validated when my class was given the entire class time to comment. Group therapy after a crisis could not have been any better.  I wish I could recall  everything that was said because it was beautiful. Acomment that actually made me laugh out loud was to picture the look on George Bush’s face as he hands the keys to the White House over to President Obama. Another student said they will no longer feel stupid when traveling outside the country, after having felt stupid before even though they not the cause of the problem – the world might now even think of Americans to be as smart as Obama for having voted him into office. Many expressed confidence in Obama’s ability. A few worried for his safety.

 

After our “sharing time” in class today, my hysteria is over, and I can smile as I talk to people. I tell myself I should down my guard, yet I am quite wary of allowing this administration leave office without their consequences for bad behavior. Anybody else for consequences?

By tomorrow night, I should be ready to celebrate with Obama people. 

 

ELECTION FRAUD

 

A general election absentee ballot from Rensselaer County, N.Y. misspelling the name of Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama is seen, Friday, Oct. 10, 2008 in Sand Lake, N.Y. The absentee ballots sent to voters in Rensselaer County identified the two presidential candidates as ‘Barack Osama’ and ‘John McCain.’ In the United States, the best-known individual named Osama is Osama bin Laden, leader of the al Qaida terrorist group behind the 2001 attacks that destroyed the World Trade Center in New York City.

(AP Photo/The Albany Times Union, Michael P. Farrell)

 

http://news.yahoo.com/nphotos/911-Terror-Attacks/ss/events/ts/081202sept11;_ylt=AuziLszOhgJZqAA9rBWNrfJsaMYA#photoViewer=/081010/480/206691a4c4d8495eab797948b176a39d

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Election Day Reflection Part 1 of 2

I was a volunteer poll worker Election Day looking for a story to write that could make us laugh. My fellow poll workers were an well-experience, dedicated group who knew their job well and teased veryone who came their way. Yet that was the extent of the light-heartedness. Most people there to vote, though smiling, were quite serious, as was I.  

 

I was up at 3 am, arriving at the polling booth a little after 5 am. There were already people there waiting to vote, though I did not understand at first they were voters that had arrived before me.

 

From 6-8 am, we worked as fast as we could. From 8-9 am it wasn’t quite as fast. Then it slowed for a while. Around 3:30 it got steady again for most the rest of the day, but never as fast as morning.

 

People were pretty intent on voting, even when told they were have to bring back additional identification or vote a provisional ballot, most went home or to their car to get the additional items. One poor guy had an car accident while going to get more ID. We only had one person give up in frustration who said it was a Communist-Republican conspiracy to keep him from voting.

 

There were mothers who brought their children through the poll booth to show them how voting was conducted. There were people who announced it was their very first time to vote. There were students and the elderly from a nearby retirement home. Many people were in a rush to get to work, or back to work, and it wasn’t fun to tell them we needed additional identification. Many people were listed on our election sheets as having voted early ballot, yet who said they had never requested or voted by early ballot. There were people who had lived and voted years in that same area, yet their names were not on our election list. Both those problems made me worry about whether it could be possible election fraud.  

 

There were people standing outside from different organizations (I’m not sure which ones) who stayed the entire day to watch the process. I admired their dedication to try to ensure a fair election process. There were also a couple people inside whose entire job all day was just to watch the process.

 

 

Cameras were not allowed within 75′ of the polling booth, nor were cell phones with cameras so I could not take pictures.

 

After our booth closed at 7 pm, we had a people there for awhile, trying to finish, but who did not understand the wording of the propositions. We were not allowed to explain anything to them. They had already used the published book on the propositions, but still did not understand. This feels wrong – that somebody (who?) made the wording so confusing. I had spoiled my early ballot for the same reason, needing to change it when I received an email explaining what each proposition really meant. I wonder how many people were tricked into voting other than they would have due to the confusing wording. 

 

We (two poll workers from different parties) had just taken taking the ballots to the designated drop-off point where security were standing close by. The ballots were unloaded and we left around 8:30 pm. I was exhausted and headed for bed thinking I must wait until morning for results. 

 

I heard some confusing information about a concession by John McCain, but I was sure the results could not possible be in yet. Arriving home, I was told John McCain was giving a concession speech. When I looked at the TV, I was shocked to see the incredible words “President-Elect Barack Obama.” I thought was mistaking the news. When I felt sure it was true because people were happy and celebrating, I fell into bed totally exhausted, but happy. 

Inequality vs Economic Democracy by Dr. J. W. Smith of the Institute for Economic Democracy

Early corporations burned all the spice trees which they could not control in order to retain their high charge for spices. Modern corporations control America’s foreign policy the same way. They destroyed the farming industry of poor countries by selling highly-subsidized, low-priced grains to developed and undeveloped nations. Under their self-designed monopolization of the world’s food supply, those corporations doubled, tripled, and even quadrupled their grain prices as food supplies grew scarcer. This monopoly structure is specifically designed to plunder the wealth out of nations, drawing them in so that extrication is almost impossible, and now hundreds of millions now face starvation. These people are helpless against the corporate controlled world structure, and they die. Hundreds of millions dollars of (mis)appropriated wealth becomes hundreds of billions of dollars, while innocent people entitled to a secure food supply die. Both of these crimes of inhumanity against humanity are the result of greed, called “the Plunder by Trade system” and the “property rights structure” that have been designed into our laws during the last more than 700 years.  

 

This was done under the name of “privatization” which the perception managers of the power brokers have taught us is a good thing. (It’s only good for them. They get away with these outright frauds because advancing technology is so efficient, they can distribute half the gains of technology, and retain the remaining gains in the form of massive capitalized unearned profits. Immense as those unearned profits are, they are only a fraction of the gains in living standards.Technology is monopolized.

 

How can a nation or region attain security so as to avoid starvation and poverty as faced by hundredds of millions today due to intentional destruction of the viability of local farmers and corporate control of world food supplies?

 

1) Establish local perma-culture and abandon corporate control of food supplies. Plants providing thread for cloth such as hemp are among the most prolific in the world. Perma-culture can be expanded to produce fiber for clothes and exotic threads made from oil or coal will not threaten the environment.

 

2) Houses built from rammed earth or rock with ceramic interiors that will last for centuries is also a local industry.

 

Within those two local industries, perma-culture and housing, are the essentials of a secure society, food, fiber, and shelter. When regional soils are used with attention to protection of nature’s wealth, these necessities of life are not intense consumers of resources.

 

If nobody get unearned wealth, money in a secure social structure represents real values. Taxes disappear and health care, retirement, governments, and more are all funded from those natural flows of money.

 

See ied.info to find out more about the Institute for Economic Development.

 

My Notes From John Gittings’ After Trident: Proliferation or Peace?

Humanity must soon rediscover Peace, not War. The test of the good ruler in ancient China was to maintain peace within the four corners of the kingdom. What is your test for your ruler? It is the responsibility of a nation-state to demonstrate good governance globally. There must be sustained re-education of elites and strong public participation for that to occur. 

 

The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse portrayed by Albrecht Durer in his woodcutting appeared often during the Cold War. Their names in the Book of Revelation: Pestilence, War, Famine and Death can now be substituted by the likely consequences of Pandemic (Deadly Disease), Terror, Climate Change and Nuclear Proliferation.

 

Regarding nuclear proliferation and it’s probable consequences, the focus is on Iran and N. Korea rather than the entire earth. There was less controversy in Britain over the Iraq War, and the Environment and Globalization, than in renewing Britain’s nuclear weapons capability.

 

Non-debate on Trident renewal: In 2005, Prime Minister Tony Blair told the new Parliament any decision would not be taken without ‘an open and continual discussion in the House and elsewhere, but Silence followed. A year later, the Commons Defense Committee said it was ‘surprised and disappointed’ that the Ministry of Defense had refused to cooperate with its inquiry regarding the future of Trident. The exchange of letters between Tony Blair and President Bush confirmed U.S. support for the British deterrent, and did not mention the need for parliamentary approval.

 

If Britain’s are asked whether they should renew their nuclear deterrent or not, their opinion is equally divided. But if a poll is conducted in Scotland where the Trident nuclear submarine fleet is based the answer is always no.

 

The British reasoning for Trident renewal is based on special circumstances or reasons applying to Britain, but NOT to ANY WOULD-BE nuclear state, which justify the retention of such weapons (This sounds like hypocrisy);the second reason being these weapons are here to stay and will never be got rid of.  None of this initiated significant national debate.

 

50 years ago when Harold Macmillan claimed Britain needed to test the hydrogen bomb to possess the same ‘massive’ weapon’ as the US and Soviet Union to be able to ‘discuss’ on equal terms with them.

 

Russian President Vladimir Putin asserts ‘it is impossible to discuss many issues, including international security issues, without Russia, which is a nuclear power’

 

The way General de Gaulle restored France’s greatness was by mainly by acquiring nuclear weapons.

 

This motivated Mao Zedong who in 1960 maintained that ‘money, steel and atom bombs’ were the key to gaining respect.

 

For the United States, nuclear weapons are an indispensable part of the claim of ‘unprecedented and unequalled strength and influence in the world’

 

France affirms its commitment to nuclear disarmament, but focuses on measures to be taken to prevent further proliferation by others

 

A speech by US Ambassador Christina Rocca to the 2006 UN Conference on Disarmament in which she questioned nuclear disarmament. “How can we create the environment necessary to complete the process of nuclear disarmament?” Her disappointing answer was hopefully someday a better world where ‘the lessening of international tension and the strengthening of international trust would make it possible’ for nations to give up their nuclear weapons voluntarily. *Maybe the nation with the first to create and proliferate, and with the most, to act first giving them up, thus providing moral fortitude to the rest by removing the “security dilemma” they were the first to create.

 

Ambassador Rocca’s suggestion that it is up to sovereign states to behave appropriately is like telling the fox who is guarding the hen house to behave appropriately. This is a dream world of sweetness and light, and is particularly bizarre to hear this vision set out by the United States which basically regards the world as a very evil place.

 

How can some nuclear powers claim to be more legitimate than others (or non-nuclear powers?) I say they can’t. Human behavior is human behavior and is the same everywhere. We still face a nuclear crisis no different than during the Cold War, though when the term is used now, it is applied to Iran, N. Korea, or the hypothetical ‘terrorist bomb’. Yet there are current warnings statesmen and strategists who believe we’re at a ‘nuclear tipping point’.

 

One of these statesmen was Jimmy Carter. Regarding the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty he said the ‘treaty must be ‘reconfirmed and subsequently honored by leaders who are inspired to act wisely and courageously by an informed public’. The steps necessary were: to adopt a Comprehensive Test-Ban Treaty, to conclude negotiations on a Fissile Material Cut-Off Treaty, to reduce reliance on nuclear arsenals, adopt a policy of ‘no-first-use’, and refrain from new missile defense systems which could undermine the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.

 

After that was the election of George W. Bush and 9/11, and no further progress was made.

 

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan had no doubt. He warned in his final statement before stepping down that the 2005 failure was a ‘terrible signal’ for the future: “The world [stands] at a crossroads … One path … can take us to a world in which the proliferation of nuclear weapons is restricted and reversed through trust, dialogue and negotiated agreement. The other leads to a world in which a growing number of States feel obliged to arm themselves with nuclear weapons, and in which non-State actors acquire the means to carry out nuclear terrorism.

 

N. Korea is now a de facto nuclear power, and can be expected to maintain covert capability even if the six-power negotiations succeed in limiting further development.

 

Iran has become the touchstone in everyday discussion of nuclear crisis, as if its alleged (though unproved) nuclear aspirations minimized every other concern possible. In April 2007, senior US defense official, Eric Edelman, tried to justify his government’s plan to install missile defenses in Poland / Czech Republic almost entirely as a response to a completely hypothetical Iranian ballistic missile threat by 2015.

 

Nuclear achievements are a matter of national pride, starting with the U.S., Britain, Soviet Union, and onward. What is wrong with a nation desiring to join that prestigious list. If it is not a prestigious list, what is keeping the other nations from giving up their power and taking their names off the list? (What is good for the goose is good for the gander.) As energy supplies diminish, there is must support for clean, efficient nuclear fuel. Yet technology of enrichment of uranium to provide that fuel can be used to make bombs.

 

The annual call by IAEA Director-General Mohamed El Baradei for a diplomatic effort to rid the Middle East of all weapons is ignored as frequently as it is made. Well, yeah. Why would anyone give up what little power they do have as it will always be less than the hegemon who has imperialistic intentions towards that region.

 

What is more frightening is new and great willingness to threaten pre-emptive use of nuclear weapons, (such as the U.S. 2005 ‘Doctrine for Joint Nuclear Operations’.), loss of interest in the concept of no-first-use (only China still declares it will not use nuclear weapons first, and some Chinese strategists have cast doubt on that), continued modernization and miniaturization of nuclear weapons which blurs the distinction between strategic and tactical use, and increases the temptation to take pre-emptive action, the spread of ballistic missile technologies and the development of missile defense systems, the maintenance of nuclear weapon systems at a high state of readiness, with many warheads on ‘hair-trigger alert’, the proliferation of nuclear energy programs which could produce weapon usable material: 40 states now have capacity to build a bomb.

 

It is an old concept that a world at peace must be well-governed. “The emperor must ensure that ‘all the common people prosper’ according to Chinese historian Sima Qian 2000 years ago.

 

As Globalization shoots across the boundaries of nations, new obligations and duties are imposed on governments to provide human security and good governance across the whole world based collective interest as well as morality for there to be peace ‘across the four seas’. The invisible connections between inequality, deprivation, exploitation, hunger, migration, environmental degradation, militarization, arms expenditure, conflict and war are now clearly seen. In the early 1990s, there were great expectations that the proceeds of peace would be spent for the benefit of humankind. This was not achieved and renewed pessimism has set in. Issues of war and peace are disconnected from the effort to take care of global basic human needs.

 

Older campaigners for nuclear disarmament in the 1960-70s may remember the Marxist argument that ‘we have to get rid of capitalism before we can abolish the bomb’. Now the argument is we have to get rid of poverty, inequality and oppression first, with global warming recently added.

 

Kofi Annan warned before leaving office that progress need to be made on both fronts – non-proliferation and disarmament – at once’. This means agreement between people who put non-proliferation first and those who put disarmament first.

 

Work on the non-proliferation front needs agreement to: universal adherence to the IAEA additional protocol; restrictions on the behavior of states who withdraw from the treaty; nuclear fuel to be supplied solely by an international fuel-service regime; effective enforcement mechanisms against nuclear proliferators.

 

Work on the disarmament front needs agreement to: extension of international controls over those nuclear states outside the NPT; ratification of the Comprehensive Test-Ban Treaty; conclusion of a verifiable Fissile Material Cut-Off Treaty; acceptance of the principle of no-first-use.

 

Development and aid packages shouldn’t be used to patch wounds caused by war and violence, but to prevent wounds from being made – Iraq being the example. The policies chosen by the international community made the second war more likely. Sanctions came first, humanitarian aid last. Hans von Sponeck (former UN Humanitarian Coordinator for Iraq) said ‘the civilian population [was held] accountable for the acts of armament of their Government and therefore became a tool for the punishment of innocent people for something they had not done’. The small amount of aid that was given only ensured the survival of S. Hussein and his group. It would have been wiser and more humane kill Saddam’s regime kindness, flooding his country with international aid to reduce the power of his elites. Negating evil with good – a novel, efficient idea? Should have been the same strategy used on N. Korea instead of the “grudging drip-feed of aid which kept Kim Jong Il’s elite healthy but the rest of his people barely alive.”

 

The failure of the rich and developed nations to provide adequate aid and support for countries and peoples who are poor and disadvantaged is a history of many failures.

 

The Alma Ata Declaration of 1977 where the world committed to health care for all people by the end of the century, but in 2000, millions of poor people died of pandemic and other diseases, most easily preventable and treatable. The 1990 Summit on Children the world committed to universal primary education by 2000, but failed. Generally the developed world has failed, and continues to fail, to reach its mark. The United Nations’s review of the Millennium Development Goals in 2006, almost halfway through the period in which they were to be met found that the absolute number of people across the world suffering from chronic hunger continued to increase, and the goal of reducing by 50% the amount of people without access to basic sanitation and clean drinking water by 2015 was not going to be met.

 

Bertha von Suttner’s main point was if we really want peace, we should expect it, we should prepare for it. Instead we prepare for human cruelty, torture, terror, violence and bloodshed.

 

President Eisenhower said thermonuclear weapons are tremendously powerful but not ‘as powerful as is world opinion today’.

 

What would it take today to renew public opinion in favor of nuclear disarmament? Who remembers Hiroshima that is alive today? Would it require a nuclear button being pushed before we “remember” the lessons we’ve already learned. It is not hard to imagine the scene of a “pre-emptive” strike on Iran.

 

And don’t forget the permanent risk of a nuclear launch by accident or misinterpreted data.

 

The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists’ Doomsday Clock “minute hand” has been moved forward from seven to five minutes before midnight due to: North Korea’s recent test of a nuclear weapon, Iran’s nuclear ambitions, a renewed, U.S. emphasis on the military utility of nuclear weapons, the failure to adequately secure nuclear materials, and the continued presence of some 26,000 nuclear weapons in the United States and Russia are symptomatic of a larger failure to solve the problems posed by the most destructive technology on earth.

 

How are we going to put peace and disarmament back into our media headlines?

 

Kenneth Boulding, leading peace theorist says serious work in the field of peace studies gets less attention than the huge writings of war studies, and is harder to find in the bookshops. There was never a problem in writing editorial comment on the wars and conflicts of the 1990s … much harder to find a place for UN reform, non-proliferation,

human development.

 

Recommendations from John Gittings:

1) We need to balance studies of Peace and War, intensify peace research, promote peace education especially in school curricula. (John Burton asks if conflicts are caused by inherent human aggressiveness, or ‘the emergence of inappropriate social institutions and norms that would seem reasonably easy to alter. It means delving far back into history to examine the evolution of peace and violence – to study peaceful cultures to learn what makes

them peaceful, as well as why they did not last.

 

2) We need to admit the true history of the Cold War, not the revised version that the West shared no blame for its crises, downplays the risk involved: the nuclear threats, alarms, accidents and near catastrophes of that period should be part of our historical consciousness rather than airbrushed out of the record. Robert McNamara reminds us ‘we came within a hair’s breadth of war with the Soviet Union on three different occasions’, yet film, literature and print downplay the dramas

 

3) We need to take seriously the warnings of senior former political and military leaders who have seen the system working, or failing to work, whose fears for the future are disregarded. General Lee Butler, once head of US Strategic Air Command, said the leaders of the nuclear weapon states today ‘risk very much being judged by future historians as having been unworthy of their age … of reigniting nuclear arms races around the world, of condemning mankind to live under a cloud of perpetual anxiety’. In 2007, the Global Security Institute in Washington warned: ‘Current efforts by the administration to stem proliferation fail precisely because they do not uphold the principal bargain of the non-proliferation treaty, a clear commitment to nuclear disarmament in exchange for non-proliferation’.

 

4) Educate our public in the relative order of magnitude expressed in our budgets for war preparation, and budgets for peaceful development. A sixth of the world’s population subsists on the equivalent of less than one US dollar a day: including them, more than half lives on less that two dollars a day. Three million children are living with HIV/AIDS and four million more have died of it since the epidemic began. In a world where global military spending reached one trillion US dollars in 2003, the problem needs to be stated in starker terms. When we support the call for the doubling of development aid to meet the Millennium Goals, we should be demanding the cutting in half of all military expenditures as it is unlikely one can be achieved without the other.

 

5) We need to rescue the internationalist values of the United Nations from the cynicism and despair into which they have been cast because of the way its authority has been undermined. Remember Secretary-General Boutros-Ghali’s Agenda for Peace, written on the instructions of a special summit of the Security Council in 1991. It urged that the new opportunity offered by the end of the Cold War to achieve the ‘great objectives’ of the UN Charter ‘must not be squandered. Ten years later, the follow-up Brahimi Report commissioned by Kofi Annan admitted that the UN had ‘repeatedly failed to meet the challenge’ of protecting people from war, and that it could ‘do no better today’. This is not a judgment on the UN, whatever its organizational shortcomings, but on the member states who have failed to bolster U.N. authority or who have defied it. We should not abandon core issues such as reform of the Security Council or the establishment of a permanent peacekeeping force just because so far they have been impeded.

 

From David Davies, who argued so passionately in favor of the League of Nations and for the establishment of an international police force in his writing in the 1920s of his metaphor for the collapse of civilization by the reoccurrence of world war: How thin and meager is the partition which divides sheer barbarism from modern civilization! The one is as far removed from the other as the basement of a New York skyscraper is from its roof-garden, but it only requires a bomb of sufficient magnitude to shatter the entire edifice. A new world war, waged with the weapons which ‘applied’ science has now placed at the disposal of man, may easily produce the wholesale annihilation of man within the space of a few months … Internationally we walk along the edge of a precipice.

 

From Gittings: We are still walking on the edge of that precipice, and are threatened by vastly more powerful weapons that could destroy humanity not within months but within

days – or even hours.

 

From me: It’s not the countries trying to compete with the hegemon I fear. It is the country that has already used nuclear weapons, is using them now to manipulate and control others, and the ones that feel they will be inclined to need them in the future. It’s that greedy, elitist mentality I fear most. 

 

See comment from Trent

If you think robocalling is bad, I see in this YouTube video that McCain’s campaign is outsourcing their calls to India! I guess that’s what you have to do when you can’t find enough “real Americans” to be your volunteers. This is a pretty hysterical behind-the-scenes look at the McCain campaign through the eyes of Martin Eisenstadt (the guy who ‘leaked’ that Joe “the Plumber” was linked to Charles Keating):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ESZiv9gFwhY

Living by the Communitarian principle is possible

1. Libertarian beliefs anti-government, anticentralized control, equal distribution of rights, process over produce/consequence, says you won’t find a real Libertarian in Washington D.C. because they don’t want to work with the government. Is centered on individual rights, talks of Amarta Sen criticism, see development as “freedom”, freedom as means and end to development, access-not everyone starts at the same point.

 

2. Utilitarian (China) distributional system is moral as long as it increases total happiness for the group (not individuals) “we grow the pie; someone else cuts it”, innovation-development geared towards wealth-creation. Science & Technology for economic growth-how the benefits are distributed (unequal distribution is the other areas problem, believe in “trickle down” or “the rising tide that lifts all boats” effect, believes economic growth at nationalo level almost always helps the poor.

 

3. Contractarian: negotiation:, John Rawls criticism of utilitarianism: contract theory-a moral system of distribution is one that rational individuals would agree to, but one’s starting point is affluent, a twist: moral system where individuals would agree to be behind a “veil of ignorance” to make sure race & gender could not be used for basis of discrimination, anti-utilitarian: unfair distrubution, justice as fairness for the least advantaged, distinctly different than dominant paradigh, currently science/tech focusese on the diseases of the affluent (cardiovascular, obesity) rather than those of poverty (malaria, tuberculosis) which can be quickly cured. Science/tech focuses on telecommunication or business market phone/email rather than basic communication for villages, the poor are more likely to bear the environmental costs of production and innovation. U.S. ships toxic wastes to dump where poor live, science/tech for the poor is still marginal, this beliefe is more acceptable, not ‘the radical one’

 

4. COMMUNITARIAN (the radical theory, but it IS possible)

Cannot embrace the permanently growing gap between rich and poor which the Rawlsian contract theory permits, inequality produces a worse outcome for everyone-not just for the poor, social conflict-rate of crimes is a result of inequality which affects the health of the rich-everyone should be wanting less inequality, poverty-reduction, not wealth-creation or economic growth is the most important for creating less inequality, how innovation is done is as important as what innovation focuses on; participatory, capacity-building, public research, private sector stimulation all goes together, involves the largest number of people, the broadest range of skill, experts and non-experts together to spread and understand the knowledge, public deliberation process to become informed, public research should align research and innovation, research community should go public so community to become better informed, inform private sector & give them incentitives so they see themselves getting economic benefits taking care of the public, not just the rich, EU is doing this-getting stronger. The U.S. is using the utilitarian plan right now, not free market, government give unequal treatment to special interests, actually what is happening now is actually worse thatn utilitarianism-the deregulation of markets, contracts between government & certain people, China is more utilitarian-government is working toward economic growth. Communitarian failed in Russia-has its own problems-we need to be more communitarian-we are not starting from scratch-certain interventions should be done, example nano-technology may need more intervention. We have to see we are growing inequality-we won’t make a difference until we see that happening, it’s all about the power, social policies must regulate.

Points from Simon Cole’s article

Simon Cole was warded the 2003 Rachel Carson Prize by the Society for Social Studies of Science. He is a member of the American Judicature Society Commission on Forensic Science and Public Policy.

 

There are two basic positions regarding the impact of technological innovation on inequality in the justice system:

1) New technologies will always be harnessed in ways to benefit the powerful and wealthy – DNA technology is an enhanced means of social control.

2) Some technologies have the power to level the playing field such as when DNA exonerates convicts or suspects who are at risk of becoming convicts.

 

The criminal DNA technological systems of today were built by large governments in an environment of heightened anxiety about crime, maybe an atmosphere where they “govern through crime.” (Who would do that? Imagine the possibilities or just read about them in today’s headlines!) Criminal DNA technological systems might have been built differently by other actors, or by the same actors in different circumstances, but today, they have not been.

 

There is no denying the history of inequality in American criminal justice system at every stage of the process, from police investigation through criminal sentencing.

 

Even if the cause of minority overrepresentation in the U.S. criminal justice system were due only to larger rates of offending, not discrimination, what is the reason for this? My opinion – it boils down to U.S. history of racial abuses.

 

Under the current regime of mass incarceration, these consequences have been devastation in poor and minority communities. Some scholars see the prison system as essentially the contemporary equivalent of America’s historic institutions: racial control, slavery and Jim Crowism.

 

Inequality generates more crime in many ways – crime and its consequences exacerbate not only the crime problem itself, but other forms of inequality: economic, social, political.

 

The litigation process is inherently unequal. The principle of adversarialism, especially in the context of a ruthlessly capitalist economy, creates a system in which inequality of resources among litigants is inevitable and tolerated. In America, “it’s better to be guilty and rich than innocent and poor.”

 

U.S. law is so complex that it is impossible to prosecute or defend a court case competently without formal legal training. Modem legal proceedings are virtually impenetrable to those uninitiated to the guild. The legal system has been slow to respond to this situation.

 

How much quality of legal representation is a criminal defendant constitutionally entitled to? ‘How much justice can you afford?’ The Supreme Court, in Strickland v. Vashington (1984) gave a minimalist answer: Criminal defendants are entitled to “competent” counsel with an extremely restrictive definition of “incompetence.”

 

Remember Joe Frank Cannon, the famous ‘sleeping lawyer’ who tried a death penalty case in Texas? Well, the Fifth Circuit panel’s legalistic ruling was that it couldn’t know if the defendant’s representation was ‘incompetent’ because the record was not specific as to the counsel’s precise periods of sleep, so the court didn’t know if the attorney had missed crucial episodes of the trial.

 

Inadequate counsel is the cause of many problems: Legal errors at trial, misuse of forensic evidence, and poorly investigated cases – “the death sentence is not for the worst crime, but for the worst lawyer.”

 

Slight inequalities in police investigation and in litigation reverberate through the criminal justice system to produce gross inequalities in sentencing and punishment.

 

How about this slight inequality? My son’s murder investigation was not even investigated for 7-8 months because the detective was ‘too busy’. He kept this little secret from me by saying he could not discuss the case with me (the mother) as it could damage the investigation. He said if nothing turned up after 6 months, he would talk with me. After 6 months, I requested to finally know the facts of the case. He held me off other month or two due to “training” and then he had to edit the file by blacking out the names of two witnesses who found my son’s body 12 hours after the crime. When I showed up to see the file, heard all sorts of prejudices come out of that detective’s mouth. My son was 18 years old, half-black, and thought he might be gay. The victim-rights advocate with me told me later her mouth had dropped open. Soon that detective was removed from the case. But it was too late – it was now a cold case – and has never been solved.

 

We had gone to see the detective a week after the crime, but he was too busy to see us. His supervisor chastised us, the parents of the victim, for taking their time from investigations to ask what happened to our son. And this from a police department I had previously worked for almost six years, though the detective probably did not know that at the time. Eight years later the case still has no resolution. No suspects. We are still hanging in the initial stages of grief. We have no one to be angry with except the system that let us down.

 

American law has sometimes explicitly embodied racial inequalities. Example: ante-bellum laws mandating harsher penalties for blacks. Today inequalities are less explicit. Sometimes racial inequalities are encoded. Example: harsher punishments mandated for possession or sale of equal quantities of ‘crack’ vs. ‘powder’ cocaine.

 

Western (2006) demonstrates how penal inequality exacerbates socio-economic inequality,

which in turn exacerbates penal inequality, which exacerbates socio-economic inequality, …

 

Peterson (2006) says there is insufficient justice as to how racial inequality acts as a structural force to generate inequalities in the criminal justice system.

 

If defenders of the unjust system can invoke uncertainty concerning the factual truth of a case proven false by the results of DNA testing, they can continue to hamper the critics’ of the criminal justice system by delaying reform.

 

The parade of Innocents  – those whose ‘actual innocence’ is proven by the authority of science – out of the nation’s prisons over the last 15 years has shaken faith in the criminal justice system. Neufeld and Scheck insist on treating post-conviction DNA exonerations as an “audit” exposing the failings of the criminal justice system inequity likes ineffective assistance counsel, and unequal access to forensic expertise.

 

The exonerees are usually people who would have rotted away in prison or executed by the state if not for exoneration for crimes the did not commit. They are individuals whose lives society was willing to throw away, but in retrospect appears to have been a mistake. They are “expendable”.

 

It is not an exaggeration to say forensic DNA technology has the potential to wreak revolutionary changes in the criminal justice systems of the U.S. and the world.

 

It is a development of information technology, not forensic science, that computerized databases are rendering DNA and fingerprint databases far more useful.  DNA technology has enormous potential, but it is vastly underutilized by law-enforcement agencies.

 

Two view regarding DNA evidence: 1) Experience shows good old-fashioned detective work to be so imbued with inequality – with unfairness to minorities and the poor – that victims of inequality would do better with forensic technology. Forensic technology can be abused and misinterpreted. But it has objectivity that makes it less vulnerable to abuse than traditional police investigative methods. The disenfranchised can benefit from the increased non-corrupted use of science in criminal investigation. 2) A second view is that forensic DNA profiling is a powerful crime-control technique in hands of a law-enforcement system that targets minorities, the poor, and inner-city neighborhoods, and will only increase existing inequalities. DNA profiling may identify the criminal, has little influence over which crimes are investigated, none over which prosecutions are pursued more vigorously, or who is sentenced more harshly. Tactics such as ‘DNA dragnets’ or ‘sweeps,’ suspicion-less searches where residents of certain neighborhood are asked to ‘volunteer’ DNA samples retained by law enforcement – may fall mostly on minorities, the poor, and others with less confidence to resist state authority.

 

We should be careful about stereotyping the disenfranchised as suspects. The predominant role of the disenfranchised in the criminal justice system is as victims, not as suspects. If racial inequality in the American criminal justice system is caused more by indifference and under-enforcement of crimes involving victims of color than by over-enforcement or railroading of suspects of color, then forensic DNA profiling might be ‘good for the disenfranchised’ because it will mean more justice for victims.

 

In the Duke lacrosse case, the colors are inverted. The rape accusation was leveled by a working class African-American woman against privileged white male defendants. Americans, and the state, took her side at first, but now the case has crumbled. District Attorney Michael Nifong dropped the rape charges, but retained kidnapping charges (which do not require evidence of penetration). Nifong has removed himself from the case because his conduct is under investigation by the state attorney general. One accusation out of many is that the prosecution team conspired with the private laboratory that performed the DNA testing to conceal exculpatory results from the defense. This raises the question of whether this sort of thing happens all the time, but is only discovered by well-resourced defendants.