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
26 October 2008
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
12 October 2008
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
12 October 2008
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.
Perchlorate Levels Deemed Acceptable
The Environmental Protection Agency formally refused yesterday to set a drinking-water safety standard for perchlorate, a chemical in rocket fuel that has been linked to thyroid problems in pregnant women, newborns and young children.
With little fanfare, the agency issued a news release yesterday afternoon saying that it had “conducted extensive review of scientific data related to the health effects of exposure to perchlorate from drinking water and other sources and found that in more than 99 percent of public drinking water systems, perchlorate was not at levels of public health concern. Therefore, based on the Safe Water Drinking Act criteria, the agency determined there is not a ‘meaningful opportunity for health risk reduction’ through a national drinking water regulation.”
Last month, The Washington Post reported that White House officials had extensively edited the EPA’s perchlorate rule-making documentation to remove scientific data highlighting some of the risks associated with the chemical, which has been found in water in 35 states. The Defense Department and Pentagon contractors who face legal liability stemming from rocket fuel contamination have lobbied for six years to avoid a federal drinking-water standard for perchlorate.
In the document released yesterday, the EPA assumes that the maximum safe perchlorate contamination level is 15 times higher than what the agency suggested in 2002.
By that standard, the EPA estimates that more than 16 million Americans are exposed to the chemical at a level that is unsafe.
Congressional Democrats and environmentalists blasted the administration’s decision.
“Once again on a Friday, when nobody is paying attention, the Bush administration announces a policy that will harm the American people,” Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), who chairs the Environment and Public Works Committee, said in a statement.
“The Bush EPA’s failure to set a standard for perchlorate, a dangerous contaminant found in drinking water, is outrageous, and I will do everything in my power to reverse it. Perchlorate contamination endangers the health of our families, especially pregnant women and children, and to simply allow it to remain in our drinking water is immoral,” Boxer said.
The EPA statement said that its regulatory determination will be open for public comment for 30 days and that once the rule is final, the agency will issue a health advisory to guide state and local officials.
Only two states — Massachusetts and California — set limits on the allowable amount of perchlorate in drinking water, both at levels far below what the EPA deemed permissible.
“States have the right to establish and enforce drinking water standards, and EPA encourages state-specific situations to be addressed at the local level,” the agency document read.
The environmental law firm Earthjustice said it will file suit in federal court on behalf of several environmental organizations to try to overturn the decision.
“EPA’s decision has industry’s fingerprints all over it,” said Earthjustice attorney George Torgun. “Weapons makers will benefit at the expense of millions of Americans drinking water spiked with rocket fuel.”
Pentagon spokeswoman Cheryl Irwin did not comment on the ruling’s substance but wrote in an e-mail: “This decision is not needed by DoD to undertake a cleanup, as we use EPA’s established health risk assessment to conduct our clean-up decisions. DoD has, in fact, been cleaning up perchlorate from military facilities for ten years now.”
from http://www.votenader.org/issues/foreign-policy/peace/
Below is the complete letter Ralph Nader sent to the Washington Post in response to an editorial criticizing his comment that Israel is a puppeteer of the US government. When it published the letter on August 21st, the Post edited out the 4th to 6th paragraphs. These are important paragraphs illustrating that Nader’s positions are consistent with those of many Israelis and American Jews. These paragraphs highlighted the views of the Refuseniks, members of the Israeli Defense Force who refuse to participate in the occupation of Palestinian territory; and the views of over 400 rabbis who criticize the demolition of homes of hundreds of Palestinians. They also highlighted Senator John Kerry’s failure to face up to the human rights abuses of Israel.
Below that is another letter the Post refused to publish that highlights how charges of anti-semitism are used to stifle debate on Israel-Palestine in the United States.
Nader Continues to Urge Peace in Middle East
Dear Editor
Your editorial’s (Aug. 14th) juxtaposition of my words, taken from my statement which was rooted in an advocacy for an Israeli-Palestinian peace, with a passage from a domestic group, rooted in prejudice, was shameful and unsavory, at the very least. Suffice it to say that your objection to my description of the need to replace the Washington puppet show with the Washington Peace Show serves to reinforce the censorious climate against open and free discussion this conflict in the U.S., as there has been among the Israeli people. When Israelis joke about the United States being “the second state of Israel,” it sounds like they are describing a puppeteer-puppet relationship. Or, would The Post prefer using the descriptor “dominant-subordinate?”
The New York Times columnist and Middle Eastern Specialist, Tom Friedman, used stronger words than “puppet” when on February 9th, he wrote: “Mr. Sharon has the Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat under house arrest in his office in Ramallah, and he’s had George Bush under house arrest in the Oval office. Mr. Sharon has Mr. Arafat surrounded by tanks, and Mr. Bush surrounded by Jewish and Christian pro-Israel lobbyists, by a vice president, Dick Cheney, who’s ready to do whatever Mr. Sharon dictates . . . all conspiring to make sure the president does nothing.”
When AIPAC works to obtain a recent 407-9 vote for a House of Representatives’ resolution which supported the latest Sharon strategy and rejected any mention of an independent Palestinian state, how would you describe such a surrender of the privately held positions of many Representatives, favoring a two-state solution?
Half of the Israeli people and over two-thirds of Americans of the Jewish faith believe the conflict can only be settled by allowing an independent Palestinian state together with a secure Israel.
Four hundred American rabbis, including leaders of some of the largest congregations in the country, protested the Israeli government’s house demolition policy. Hundreds of Israeli reserve combat officers and soldiers signed a declaration refusing, in their words, “to fight beyond the 1967 borders in order to dominate, expel, starve and humiliate an entire people.” http://www.seruv.org.il
That these and many other Israeli and American peace advocates with impressive political, business, academic, military and intelligence experience, receive no hearing in official Washington is further indication of a serious bias inside both political parties. George W. Bush is a messianic militarist with a tin ear toward these courageous collaborators in peace. And what is John Kerry’s problem? He told us he has “many friends” in the broad and deep Israeli peace movement. Yet, Mr. Kerry issues a pro-Sharon statement that in its obeisance goes to the right of Bush.
Given that your editorial did not have any problem with these views, why do you object to a description of AIPAC as an awesome lobby on Capitol Hill, labeling it “poisonous stuff?” AIPAC has worked hard over the years to enlist the support of both Christians and Jews. Its organizing skills are the envy of the NRA and other citizen groups. Muslim-Americans are trying to learn from its lobbying skills to produce a more balanced Congressional debate on Middle Eastern policies. How does acknowledging such an achievement “play on age-old stereotypes?” The bias may be in your own mind.
Sincerely,
Ralph Nader
Debating Israel
August 19, 2004
To the Editor:
It is difficult to find an acceptable language with which to criticize the hard-line policies of successive Israeli governments.
Ralph Nader is charged (Washington Post Editorial, August 14, 2004) with anti-Semitism for speaking of the Israeli government and the Israeli Jewish lobby as “puppeteers” and American politicians as the “puppets” by the same people who charge Arafat and the Palestinians of being the “puppeteers” who mastermind votes critical of Israel in the General Assembly and in the Security Council of the United Nations.
The danger of anti-Semitism is a red-herring in a country in which the two major parties and their presidential candidates – cheered on by Christian Zionists — are competing for first prize in championing the cause of Sharon.
It is an open secret that the Israeli-Jewish lobby is among the most influential lobbies in Washington and beyond. Indeed, the leaders AIPAC and of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Organizations would be the first to make this claim. What is so distressing is that these leaders arrogate to themselves the right to be more Catholic than the Pope in their support of Israeli hard-liners but also far more hard-line than most American and Israeli Jews. Indeed, the likes of Ronald Lauder and Malcolm Hoenlein never accepted Oslo and the principle of “land for peace.”
The American supporters of the Peace Now and affiliated peace organizations in Israel are frozen out of these Jewish-American organizations.
In any case, the accusation of anti-Semitism is a tried and effective tactic for silencing criticism or opposition to the policies of Israeli governments and of American administrations.
The Nader campaign is a natural home for American Jews committed to the peace process who are appalled at Kerry’s efforts at out-Bushing Bush on the Israeli question and many others. It is neither Jewish nor Democratic to stifle debate with false charges of anti-Semitism.
Arno J. Mayer
Arno J. Mayer is professor emeritus of history at Princeton University and the author of “Why Did Not the Heavens Darken?: The ‘Final Solution’ in History.”
Last year, 2007, I was first taught the widespread view (misbelief?) that economic growth benefits everyone through “Trickle Down” dynamics and “the Rising Tide that Lifts All Boats,” cited by Fields (2001). I was skeptical, actually more of a total disbeliever. But it was taught by someone whose credentials were much greater than mine, and I was tested on the “Knowledge” I had learned. Recently I’ve heard Barack Obama say the “Trickle Down” method hasn’t worked. My feelings have been validated that the theory is used, knowingly by some, perhaps unknowingly by others (though I doubt it), as a political trick.
In some countries, those with strong safety nets like Europe and Australia, a few rich get richer, but then are taxed to provide resources to help the poor. Yet there is no sure case like this in the United States where there is no national health-care system, minimum wages are so low, unemployment insurance is minimal, … Even in Europe, the argument is wearing thin as some countries run out of resources and begin taking apart the welfare state by such things a moving up the retirement ages. What’s more, many developing countries are required by international lending organizations such as World Bank to dismantle those safety nets. World Bank’s strictures against subsidies for water supply is one example. Unbelievable! Water – the most basic necessity to support life after air.
There is no global welfare state, and the countries of the global North are not even living up to their very modest pledges of assistance to developing countries. There are even those in the U.S. who demand why this country is obligated to foreign aid at all. They speak of ‘Us’ vs. ‘They’. As if ‘Us’ had never been guilty of any atrocities upon ‘They’ and might need to compensate for it. And what assistance is provided, is filtered through the same elites who benefit from open market policies.
Science and Technology Policy consists of four sub-areas:
- Research policies
- Innovation policies
- Human Resource policies
- Regulatory policies
Globally – different countries make different choices from Science & Technology policy instruments.
There are four traditions in the political philosophy in Principles of Distributive Justice:
- Libertarian engine: In libertarian thought, collecting taxes to pay for any other function is an unjust violation of rights and liberties, so tax-supported funding for research and development is out, and with it, most of what contemporary science and technology policies involve.
- Utilitarian accelerator: As social cohesion declines, the re-distributive mechanisms that utilitarians think are operating ‘over there somewhere’ can no longer be counted on: S&T policy must consider its own intrinsic contributions to distributive dynamics.
- Contractarian distributor: John Rawls in his “Theory of Justice (1971) states under contract theory, a fair system of distribution is one that rational individuals would agree to after deliberation. However if your starting point at negotiation is affluent – one set of rules will look good, and if you are poor, another set will look good. So he adds to the hypothetical moment of negotiating: the moral system is one that individuals would agree to behind a “veil of ignorance,” – they would not know what their starting position is. On this basis, nobody would agree to utilitarian moral principles because it’s possible that while total well-being increases, someone’s well-being might decrease. But behind the veil of ignorance, the rational individual would also not know whether he or she was male or female, black or white, Tutsi or Hutu, Chinese or Thai. So they would never agree to a set of distributive principles that distributed rewards unequally based on ascriptive characteristics that are outside individual control. So justice as fairness holds no tolerance for ‘culture’-based patterns of unequal distribution. This is in complete contrast with utilitarianism which is quiet on such differences. The empirical evidence showing growth pays off for the poor, does not demonstrate that growth pays off for all ethnic groups, nor that it pays off equally for women and men, girls and boys. Income inequality is growing in most U.S. states, and this is fairness under this justice principle. These first three approaches do nothing to improve a world with growing inequality. Neither Libertarian, Utilitarian, or Contractarian principles of Distributive Justice expect it to do otherwise. Does this matter to you? Example: China. In the past decade, they have raised hundreds of millions above the U.S. $1/day poverty level, but is not straining with fast-growing gaps between rich and poor, urban and rural. Paul Farmer’s work on health in poor communities demonstrates inequality makes poverty more dangerous. Like the polarized world Marx predicted, such a society does not appear to be sustainable. (Reminds me of a scary movie I saw as a young girl painting a situation like this where women were considered to be “furniture” because of the huge inequality gap.) (James Galbraith 1999: … A high degree of inequality causes the comfortable to disavow the needy. It increases the social and the psychological distance separating the have from the have-nots, transforming the U.S. from a middle-class democracy … into something that more closely resembles an authoritarian quasi-democracy with an over-class, and an under-class, and a hidden politics driven by money.” He describes our current nation perfectly – bailout and all.
For those who use religion to sanction their motives:
Asian societies have combined economic growth, technological innovation and broadly-shared prosperity under strongly communitarian political philosophies (Bell 2000). European commitment to ‘social cohesion’ is seen in its social policies and also its innovation strategies.
Some Americans are injudicious about re-distributive mechanisms. But the safety they value is threatened by growing inequality. Communitarians find fault with the welfare state for bureaucratizes distribution of benefits, shifts power away from communities and loosens family social ties. They are also critical of the political right under which Unregulated Free-Market Capitalism undermines families, local communities and the political process. Look at what just happened in the U.S. There could not be much more extreme example of this than the current bailout (Paulson Plunder). There was a higher sense of civil obligations among university scientists before the emergence of market-oriented policies – before “the valorization of greed in the Thatcher/Reagan era…” The example given is the shock the biomedical research community expressed that parts of the human genome could be patented. The previous value was that scientific knowledge was public. The new value was that it could be made private. Are you shocked? I am.
Science, Technology & Inequality 