John Lennon was a singer, songwriter, and co-founded the Beatles. He was from Liverpool. The murder of John Lennon, who in so many ways represented the heart and soul not just of the Beatles but of all ’60s rock’n'roll, was perhaps the most emotionally felt of all rock deaths. Certainly there was an equal outpouring of emotion for Elvis Presley, and perhaps as much in some quarters for Buddy Holly, Jimi Hendrix, and Janis Joplin. But John Lennon’s death was more stunning than any of them. He was just emerging from a long period of silence with a vigor as surprising as it was refreshing, and he seemed in command of his powers as never before, at a time when rock’n'roll and the world desperately needed his voice. It was the time immediately following the first landslide election of Ronald Reagan, a discouraging prospect to so many who had embraced all that Lennon seemed to stand for and believe in. If the two events were unrelated, and clearly they were, they are indelibly linked on an emotional level. Not only had Ronald Reagan been elected president, with all his cold, brutal values coming to ascendance — but the one rock star who seemed the warmest and most human (much of that merely public image, as it turned out) had been summarily slain a month later. Asked about Lennon’s death within days of its happening, Ronald Reagan cupped a hand to an ear and then shrugged and grinned, saying something affably inaudible toward the crowd of reporters. He obviously didn’t care.But don’t get mixed up about John Lennon. His true genius, which he practiced all his life, was to make people love him. … Carole King was born 9 February 1942, Brooklyn, New York, USA. A proficient pianist from the age of four, King was a prolific songwriter by her early teens. When friend and neighbour Neil Sedaka embarked on his recording career, she followed him into the New York milieu, recording demos, singing back-up and even helping arrange occasional sessions. As a student at Queen’s College, New York, she met future partner and husband Gerry Goffin whose lyrical gifts matched King’s grasp of melody. She completed a handful of singles, including “The Right Girl” (1958), “Baby Sittin’”, “Queen Of The Beach” (1959), prior to recording “Oh Neil” (1960), a riposte to Sedaka’s “Oh Carol”. Although not a hit, her record impressed publishing magnate Don Kirshner, who signed the Goffin/King team to his Aldon Music empire. They scored notable early success with the Shirelles (”Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow”), Bobby Vee (”Take Good Care Of My Baby”) and the Drifters (”Up On The Roof”) and were later responsible for much of the early output on Dimension Records, the company’s in-house label. The duo wrote, arranged and produced hits for Little Eva (”The Loco-Motion”) and the Cookies (”Chains” and “Don’t Say Nothin’ Bad (About My Baby)”) while a song written with Bobby Vee in mind, “It Might As Well Rain Until September”, provided King with a solo hit in 1962. … Tapestry has now sold in excess of 15 million copies worldwide and established its creator as a major figure in the singer-songwriter movement. (07/30/05)
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Michael Klare
writes: CONGRESS is about to enact an energy bill that would severely
limit the power of coastal states and municipalities to veto
construction of massive — potentially dangerous –
liquefied-natural-gas (LNG) terminals in their harbors. If the bill is
signed into law by President Bush, federal authorities will gain the
power to overrule states and municipalities in choosing locations for
these terminals. The terminals, costing up to $1 billion each, are to
be built at U.S. ports, which would receive giant LNG-cargo ships and
convert the refrigerated liquid back into gas, for delivery across the
country. Because such facilities could pose a risk of explosion and
would represent a tempting target for terrorists, many coastal
communities are understandably reluctant to allow their construction in
local waters. Yet if this measure is adopted, these municipalities and
states will lose their say over the terminals’ placement. The bill, if
enacted, would set a dangerous precedent; it should be rejected. … In
recent months, American energy companies have announced plans to build
dozens of LNG terminals at ports on both sides of the country,
including one off Rhode Island and one in Long Island Sound.
Understandably, these plans have sparked opposition from the
communities involved, thus calling into question the administration’s
plan to boost U.S. reliance on imported natural gas. It is this
opposition that the White House seeks to circumvent by proposing — in
the name of “national energy security” — a federal takeover of
decisions regarding the location of LNG facilities and pipelines.
People in this country have long insisted that decisions bearing on the
health and safety of the communities in which they live should be made
locally, especially in the case of industrial facilities that pose
substantial environmental threats and risks of explosion. If the
administration succeeds in eliminating local rights regarding LNG
terminals, it can be expected, on the same “energy security” grounds,
to seek the abrogation of such rights in the case of other facilities,
such as oil refineries and nuclear reactors. Not only would this
deprive communities of their essential rights, but it would also bring
the country closer to an authoritarian, “Big Brother” form of
government. Making the new energy bill a law would be a dangerous
mistake. (07/29/05)
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BBC Humanity — The
Danes love their beer, but increasingly they are looking beyond the old
Danish standby, Carlsberg, to quench their thirst. Students from the
Information Technology University in Copenhagen are trying to help by
releasing what they are calling the world’s first open source beer
recipe. It is called Vores Oel, or Our Beer, and the recipe is proving
to be a worldwide hit. The idea behind the beer comes from open source
software. This is software whose code is made publicly available for
anyone to change and improve, provided that those changes and
improvements are then shared in turn. Perhaps the most well-known
example of open source software is the Linux operating system.
Microsoft, on the other hand, creates proprietary software, meaning the
company does not tend to let others see how its software works. The
Danish brewer Carlsberg takes a similar approach to beer. Rasmus
Nielsen, who runs a Copenhagen-based artist collective called
Superflex, wanted to challenge the idea of “proprietary” beer. He was
teaching a workshop on intellectual property and copyright at the
Information Technology University in Copenhagen.  Mr Nielsen asked
his students to think about applying open source ideas to the
non-digital world. “Why not take those ideas back to the old world, and
try to apply them to other things as well?” asks Nielsen. Why beer? As
the Vores Oel website says, why not? “It’s a universal commodity that
we like to think of as free, but unfortunately it isn’t,” says Mr
Nielsen. “So, I thought it was an appropriate medium to confront these
issues.” A group of about 15 students at the university agreed. “Beer
is an amusing subject in a university environment,” says Thorarinn
Stefansson, one of the students who signed up for the open source beer
project. “It’s something more stimulating than perhaps making something
non-edible or non-drinkable.” To get started, the students met with the
author of a Danish book on home-brewing. Then, they came to an
agreement on what kind of beer they wanted. They bought the
ingredients, and brewed up 100 litres of it in the university
cafeteria. Mr Stefansson says he and the other students decided to call
it Our Beer, version 1.0. (07/29/05)
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BBC Medicine — A
common blood pressure drug could help people who have witnessed
traumatic events, such as the London bombings, to block out their
distressing memories. Cornell University psychiatrists are carrying out
tests using beta-blockers, the journal Nature reports. The drug has
been shown to interfere with the way the brain stores memories.
Post-traumatic stress disorder affects around one in three of people
caught up in such events, and memories can be triggered just by a sound
or smell.  People with PTSD are given counselling, but because it
is not always effective, researchers have been looking for alternative
therapies. However there are concerns that a drug which can alter
memories could be misused, perhaps by the military who may want
soldiers to become desensitised to violence. The beta-blocker
propranolol has been found to block the neurotransmitters involved in
laying down memories. Studies have shown that rats who have learned to
fear a tone followed by an electric shock lose that fear if propranolol
is administered after the tone starts. The Cornell University team are
reported to be seeing similar results in early studies in humans,
Nature reports. Margaret Altemus, who is one of the psychiatrists
working on the study, told the journal: “The memory of the event is
associated with the fear, and they always occur together.” The researchers plan to recruit 60 patients for a
clinical trial where participants would be asked to take a dose of
propranolol whenever they experienced symptoms of PTSD, such as an
increased heart rate or breathing difficulties. (07/29/05)
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BBC Environment — Las
Vegas is world-renowned as a city of fantasy, flaunting its reputation
for excess. It appears a green oasis of refrigerated plenty, set in a
blazing desert. But environmentalists warn water supplies could run dry
within the next 50 years; while urban sprawl is out of control and
development is encroaching on protected areas. No matter how you arrive
in Las Vegas, by car or plane, you are immediately struck by the stark
contrast of a lush city against a barren desert that stretches in all
directions. Yet, this is a region in the grip of one of the worst
droughts on record. Las Vegas consumes around 870 litres (190 gallons)
of water per person per day, according to the Western Resource
Advocates group. And each day countless tourists wander up and down the
Strip, in awe of dancing fountains, sinking pirate ships, tropical
landscaping, pools and many more water features. But this is one of
“Sin City’s” greatest myths. Local hotels account for just 7% of the
area’s total water usage, according to the Southern Nevada Water
Authority. … Water authorities estimate around 70% of residential
water is used outdoors, washing the car and irrigating the lawns, and
only 30% is used indoors. Although Nevada has been banking excess water
from the Colorado River in Arizona, environmentalists fear this is a
short-term solution. … Nevada State senate majority leader Dina Titus
says this a problem that is been compounded by explosive growth in the
region. “Right now, 6,000 people a month are moving to this valley
because the weather is good, the taxes are low and there are plenty of
jobs,” she said. (07/29/05)
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Timothy Wilken, MD
writes: The possession of an object does not mean that the possessor
has a moral or rational claim to ownership of the object. The
political, economic, and social structures of our present world are all
based on our concept of ‘property’ and property rights. Recall from the
Basics section, my discussion of the shifting of human values as
humanity evolves from adversary processing to neutral processing to
synergic processing. Adversary wealth is physical force. Neutral wealth
is money. And, synergic wealth is mutual life support. Therefore
adversary ‘property’ is property obtained by force or fraud, and then
held with physical force. Neutral ‘property’ is property purchased in
the fair market, and held by right of law enforced by neutral
government. Remember Neutrality was an evolutionary advance from
Adversity, at the time of Neutrality’s inception most possessions were
adversary. They had been obtained through force or fraud and held with
physical force. The new institutions of Neutrality never made any
attempt to correct what by the new values of Neutrality would be past
injustices. Neutral values would prevail in future, but the past was
left alone. This resulted in the legal precedent wherein possession is
9/10 of the law. In other words, at the time Neutrality was
institutionalized, all existing ‘property’ whether adversary or neutral
was made legal ‘property’. However, all new ‘property’ was required to
be neutral ‘property’–that is ‘property’ acquired by paying a fair
price in a free market to the rightful owner, or that ‘property’ which
is created directly by the mind and labor of the owner. Most of the
founding fathers of Neutrality were beneficiaries of ‘adversary’
property and in no hurry to give it up. They also believed that in the
long run these injustices would slowly be corrected, and all property
would eventually come to be ‘neutral’ property. We will see later that
this was not the case. While synergic ‘property’ is not yet defined, it
would have to be property that was obtained without hurting or ignoring
anyone, and even more importantly, it would have to be property that
was mutually life supporting–that is it would have to be property that
had a beneficial effect for self and others. If humanity is to advance
to Synergy, our concept of ‘property’ and property rights must change
radically in the future.   (07/25/05)
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William Greider
writes: DURING the cold war, as the Soviet economic system
slowly unraveled, internal reform was impossible because highly placed
officials who recognized the systemic disorders could not talk about
them honestly. The United States is now in an equivalent predicament.
Its weakening position in the global trading system is obvious and
ominous, yet leaders in politics, business, finance and the news media
are not willing to discuss candidly what is happening and why. Instead,
they recycle the usual bromides about the benefits of free trade and
assurances that everything will work out for the best. 
Much like Soviet leaders, the American establishment is enthralled
by utopian convictions - the market orthodoxy of free trade
globalization. The United States is heading for yet another record
trade deficit in 2005, possibly 25 percent larger than last year’s. Our
economy’s international debt position - accumulated from many years of
tolerating larger and larger trade deficits - began compounding
ferociously in the last five years. Our net foreign indebtedness is now
more than 25 percent of gross domestic product and at the current pace
will reach 50 percent in four or five years . For years, elite opinion
dismissed the buildup of foreign
indebtedness as a trivial issue. Now that it is too large to deny, they
concede the trend is “unsustainable.” That’s an economist’s euphemism
which means: things cannot go on like this, not without ugly
consequences for American living standards. But why alarm the public?
The authorities assure us timely policy adjustments will fix the
matter. Reporters and editors typically take cues from the same
influential
sources and learned experts in business, finance and government. If the
news media decided to cast these facts as the story of the world’s only
superpower losing ground in global competition and becoming financially
dependent on strategic rivals like China, the public would take greater
notice. But governing elites would regard such clarity as inflammatory.
America’s awesome trade problem is instead portrayed as something else
- an esoteric technical dispute about currency values, the dollar
versus the Chinese yuan. The context is guaranteed to baffle and benumb
citizens. … At a different moment in history, American leadership
might have stepped up to these disorders and led the way to solutions.
If globalization is to continue without encountering more crisis and
random destruction, governments must together shift the balance of
power so labor incomes can rise in step with rising productivity and
profits. If the United States is to avert its own reckoning, it must
take decisive action to draw firm limits on its exposure to trade
deficits, that is, resign its position as the open-armed buyer of last
resort. In effect, Washington would also reform its own national
interest imperatives so that they more closely resemble what other
nations already embrace. Ultimately, American remedial action may
protect the global system from its own crisis - the moment when trading
partners discover they have just lost their best customer. But to
describe plausible remedies is to explain why none are likely. The webs
of mutual interests connecting government, corporate boardrooms and
Wall Street are too deeply woven, as are habits of thought among policy
makers and politicians. So I do not expect anything fundamental will be
altered in time. (07/25/05)

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Orion Magazine –
THERE IS COLOR IN THE LAND AGAIN. Or perhaps the color was always
there, like a pigment in the soil, but was simply rendered
imperceptible for a while. But not for long. Not all that much
separated the land—famous already for the mineral-rich hues of its
cliffs and mountains, its gurgling hot springs and bubbling mudpots—in
terms of time or space, from the breath of the wolves that would bring
the color back like painters. The wolves, to the best of anyone’s
knowledge, had been extinguished from Yellowstone for only seven
decades: shot, trapped, poisoned, eradicated. In terms of space, only a
veil of country had separated them, some seven hundred miles, more or
less. Any one of the Yellowstone wolves—any one—could have covered that
short distance in a week, rather than taking the better part of a
century. There is an increasing wealth of science, and of knowledge,
accruing around the recolonization of Yellowstone, but the
recolorization of Yellowstone will always be wrapped in mystery. The
wolves did not return on their own. It took a massive reversal of
public sentiment and 160,000 letters to Congress and the U.S. Fish and
Wildlife Service and ceaseless lobbying, public education, and outreach
by environmentalists before fourteen wolves were finally captured up in
British Columbia and transported to Yellowstone during 1994, where,
after dramatic political maneuverings of lawsuit-and-countersuit, they
were released into the snows of Yellowstone. An ocean of elk and bison
awaited them. Maybe they would have eventually recolonized Yellowstone
without human intervention. They were already beginning to ease back
down across the border, filtering into Montana through places like the
Yaak, the Ninemile, and the Flathead valleys, but the American public
wanted them sooner. So we went out and got them, and brought them here
in trucks and helicopters, wrenched from their old homelands, and with
significant mortality. Not that a more natural recolonization would
have been entirely seamless. (07/25/05)
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Richard Heinberg writes:
In his best-selling 1998 book The Greatest Generation,
Tom Brokaw extolled the virtues of the American women and men, now deep
into their retirement years, who grew up during the Great Depression
and fought in World War II. Brokaw’s book drew an implied contrast
between “the greatest generation any society ever produced” and those
that preceded and followed it. The cohort born during World War I and
up to 1930 faced immense adversity and made sacrifices that ensured the
survival of freedom and democracy; as a result, their children have
enjoyed the most extended and exuberant period of affluence in the
history of any nation. Brokaw and I are children of that
generation; ours is the so-called Baby Boom generation, about which an
oil tanker’s worth of ink has been spilled in self-adulation,
self-criticism, self-analysis, and general self-obsession. I hesitate
to join in the orgy of demographic mirror gazing, but lately I’ve begun
to reflect on a simple fact: during my lifetime - and that of my cohort
- about half of the non-renewable resources of the planet will have
been used. Gone, forever. This is a generation that has
practised diachronic competition (that is, competition with future
generations) more ruthlessly than has any other since the dawn of our
species. The implications are devastating. I might
dispute Brokaw’s assertion that the World War II generation was the
best in history (in fact I will do so below); nevertheless, a good case
could be made that my generation, because it so threatens the
perpetuation of its kind and the survival of countless other species,
is the worst ever. … Of course, in a way the very idea of a
“generation” is arbitrary. The notion implies uniformity where there is
endless diversity, discreteness where there is continuity. Worse still,
discussion of “better” or “worse” generations entails a moral judgment,
as though all of the members of a demographic cohort somehow deserve
equal praise or blame, when in fact this is never the case. Who is the
exemplary Boomer - Karl Rove or Ron Kovics? Laura Bush or Amy Goodman?
It may make sense to speak of the moral triumphs or failures of
individuals, but the application of such judgments to whole generations
is problematic. However there is one respect in which the discussion
has merit: Much of Brokaw’s argument (if it can be called that)
revolves around the truism that a demographic cohort is shaped by
historical circumstances. Individuals within that cohort inevitably
respond to events differently and help shape subsequent history in
divergent ways, yet members of each generation undeniably share a
certain commonality of experience - notably so during periods of
large-scale, dramatic change. Brokaw’s “greatest generation” was
tempered by adversity. In contrast, the Boomers have been spoiled by
abundance. One generation presided over America’s ascendancy while the
other is overseeing its peak in power and wealth and its inevitable
decline. That’s the conventional-wisdom summary of the situation, but
it is in many ways a misleading one: a closer look might reveal that
the World War II generation was not so praiseworthy after all, nor are
the Boomers uniformly culpable. All of us are mostly responding to
circumstances beyond our control. In this essay I hope to explore some
of the circumstances that have made us Boomers what and who we are, and
to argue that, having failed to live up to some of our expressed ideals
and now finding ourselves in power just as the industrial world is
beginning its inevitable decline, Boomers may have one last opportunity
to redeem themselves. (07/25/05)
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Common Dreams — Ecocide
means destroying our ecosystem by actions of the human species. Human
activity like war and the profligate use of our ecosystem’s resources
is ecocidal. War’s destruction of life is a stark example of ecocide.
War is a crime against God and nature. Usually motivated by greed and
the desire for the spoils of empire, war is often glorified as God’s
will. Leaders of both sides in our present never-ending war on terror
call on God to help wage war and bring victory over “evil” enemies,
asking God to bless the violation of his sixth Commandment to us, “Thou
Shalt Not Kill”. Though Islam and Christianity are both derived from
the same God of the prophet Abraham, religious fundamentalist leaders
on both sides declare the terror war to be holy and heroic. They
justify the killing by invoking the Almighty to sanction the violence
and grant them the victory. … The Arabic word jihad is often
translated as “holy war”. According to Islamic scholars, the first use
of the term “holy war” was by Europeans in the Crusades to refer to the
war against the Muslims. These scholars point out that in the Koran and
the teachings of the Prophet Mohammed, jihad’s primary meaning is an
effort for the benefit of the community and self improvement. Jihad is
a religious duty. Military action is only one means of jihad, and is
very rare. In the First Crusade the forces representing the Catholic
Church of Western Europe captured Jerusalem in 1099 and slaughtered the
population establishing Christian rule there. In 1187, a Muslim jihad
led by Saladin recaptured the holy city of Jerusalem. Many Muslims
blame crusaders for today’s hostile Western invasions, occupations and
deaths of the faithful and the loss of the holy city of Jerusalem. …
The worship of materialism is ecocidal. Our economy is fueled by oil
and other fossil fuels like coal. Burning fossil fuels creates
excessive carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and is a principal cause of
global warming, contributing to “more extreme weather, rising sea
levels, changing precipitation patterns, ecological and agricultural
dislocations and the increased spread of human disease.” according to
the leading climatologists in the US and UK. Despite overwhelming
scientific and political support throughout the world for the Kyoto
accords, designed to reduce such emissions, ecocidal U. S. policymakers
refuse to support them. World wide weather is becoming more extreme and
the habitat of all forms of life is being destroyed by our ecocidal
species. An article outlining the impact of this destruction, published
in 2004 in the science journal Nature, was co-authored by 18 eminent
scientists. These researchers, working independently in six
bio-diversity rich regions around the world from Australia to South
Africa, all have concluded that global warming will doom a million
species by 2050. As it is with war, it is ecocidal to raise global
temperatures with human-induced carbon dioxide and other greenhouse
gases that will send so many of Earth’s land-dwelling plants and
animals to extinction. For top-of-the-food-chain humans, ecocide could
finally include our own extinction. (07/24/05)
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