Pressures Against Media Blogging

Iraq Versus Vietnam: A Comparison of Public Opinion

Submitted by editor on August 24, 2005 - 2:33pm.

By Frank Newport and Joseph Carroll
Source: Gallup

Due to complaints by the Gallup organization
MediaChannel has removed this article from our site.

and free use bites the dust again.

However, we still have the story, so hold on!

August 24, 2005 Iraq Versus Vietnam: A Comparison of Public Opinion Gallup reviews public opinion during the Vietnam War and the current war in Iraq by Frank Newport and Joseph Carroll

Americans have become negative about the war in Iraq more quickly than they did for the Vietnam War. It took more than three years before a majority of Americans said it was a mistake to send troops to Vietnam, a state of affairs reached within a year and three months of the inception of the Iraq war. However, the percentage of Americans mentioning Iraq as the nation's most important problem is lower than was the case for Vietnam at a similar point after it began. George W. Bush's approval ratings on Iraq — so far — have been higher than Lyndon Johnson's ratings on Vietnam.

uhm...

and now I have to go sign up for a thirty day trial, while being thrown around that website like a kid in a big blown up castle... sorta like what they try to be in our lives. The big castle from which the real information is announced.

shit.

more coming soon. I had some great articles working on the comparisons since the inception of the war. Lets take a look at all of those, what do you say?

I found that the news from a year ago was very interesting when compared to today's headlines. As most of you know, I have been following my dao further into creative indeavors and or course, when you live in the mountains in colorado, well, ya live outside mosta the time. So here's the scoop. I have been working on art. And have found a great way to get it to you.

Anyway back to the stories. I will start the warm-up exercises for the flaming-hoop jumping ahead of me to get the privilege of reading the rest of the above article. And again, I shall return.

Wanna look at a picture while ya wait?

xoxo this is the new blog

more duck, less editor.

YAYA!

Monbiot / A Thousand Dusty Codicils 2004 project

duckdaotsu

the 2004 project

one year ago today. .. what did you do?

Z

A Thousand Dusty Codicils

August 25, 2004
By George Monbiot

If we have learnt anything over the past 18 months it is this: that the first rule of politics — power must never be trusted — still applies. The government will neither regulate itself nor be regulated by the institutions which surround it. Parliament chose to believe a string of obvious lies. The media repeated them, the civil service let them pass, the judiciary endorsed them. The answer to the age-old political question — who guards the guards? — remains unchanged. Only the people will hold the government to account.

They have two means of doing so. The first is to throw it out of office at the next election. This works only when we are permitted to choose an alternative set of policies. But in almost every nation, a new contract has now been struck between the main political parties: they have chosen to agree on almost all significant areas of policy. This leaves the people disenfranchised: they can vote out the monkeys but not the organ grinder. So voting is now a less important democratic instrument than the second means: the ability to register our discontent during a government's term in office.

Applying the first rule of politics, we should expect those in power to seek to prevent the public from holding them to account. Whenever they can get away with it, they will restrict the right to protest. They got away with it last week.

The demonstrators who have halted the construction of the new animal testing labs in Oxford command little public sympathy. Their arguments are often woolly and poorly-presented. Among them is a small number of dangerous and deeply unpleasant characters, who appear to respect the rights of every mammal except Homo sapiens. This unpopularity is a gift to the state. For fear of being seen to sympathise with dangerous nutters, hardly anyone dares to speak out against the repressive laws with which the government intends to restrain them.

It is not as if the state is without the means of handling violent extremists. Murder, arson, assault, threatening behaviour and intimidation are already illegal in the United Kingdom. Instead, it has seized the opportunity provided by the violent activists to criminalise peaceful dissent.

The Home Office proposes "to make it an offence to protest outside homes in such a way that causes harassment, alarm or distress to residents."(1) This sounds reasonable enough, until you realise that the police can define "harassment, alarm or distress" however they wish. All protest in residential areas, in other words, could now be treated as a criminal offence.

The new measures, if they are passed, will also ensure that most protesters can be charged with stalking: they need only to appear outside a premises once to be prosecuted under the 1997 Protection from Harrassment Act.(2) The government will also seek to "suggest remedies" for websites which "include material deemed to cause concern or needless anxiety to others."(3) As my site has already been blacklisted by at least one public body,(4) I have reason to fear this proposal, alongside every online dissident in Britain.

If all this goes ahead, in other words, legal protest will be confined to writing letters to your MP. Or perhaps even that could be deemed to cause "concern or needless anxiety" to the honourable member.

When Caroline Flint, the Home Office minister, introduced these proposals to a grateful nation on Friday, she promised that "we are not talking about denying people the right to protest."(5) We have every reason to disbelieve her. The same promise was made with the introduction of the 1986 Public Order Act, the 1992 Trade Union Act and the 1994 Criminal Justice Act, and immediately broken. When the 1997 Protection from Harrassment Act was passed, the government swore that it would not be used against demonstrators: it was intended solely to protect people from stalkers.

The first three people to be prosecuted under the act were all peaceful protesters.(6) The government also assured us that it would not misuse the antisocial behaviour orders it introduced in 1998 to deal with nuisance neighbours. They too were immediately deployed against peaceful demonstrators. It is hard to think of a better tool for state repression: once an order has been served on a protester, he is banned from protesting until it lapses. The police now use it to neutralise the most effective activists. The government liked this new power so much that in 2003 it wrote it into law, with an Anti-Social Behaviour Act designed to restrict peaceful protest.

When some of us complained that the Terrorism Act 2000 was so loosely drafted that it could be deployed against almost anyone seeking political change, the government told us we were being hysterical. Since then, peaceful protesters all over Britain have been arrested as potential terrorists. At the Fairford airforce base, for example, the police used the act to terrorise the peace campaigners protesting against the Iraq war.(7)

The protesters were repeatedly stopped and searched: often one team of police would let someone go after a full body search, and another one would immediately seize her and repeat the whole procedure (this happened to one protester 11 times in one day)(8). On March 22nd last year, the police seized three coaches carrying people to a peaceful demonstration at Fairford, held them for two hours, confiscated their possessions, then sealed off the entire motorway network between Gloucestershire and London, and escorted them back to the capital. The police and the Home Secretary knew full well that these people were not terrorists. They also knew that the law allowed them to be treated as if they were.

It doesn't end here. The Civil Contingencies Bill, which permits the government to suspend parliament and ban all rights to assembly whenever it decides that it is confronting an emergency, passed its second reading in the Lords last month. It could become law later this year.

A similar clampdown is taking place all over the world. The US Patriot Act, passed by Congress before any representative had read it, allows the state to treat dissenting citizens as if they were members of Al Qaida. For the past three years, the European Union has been seeking to reclassify the protesters who travel to European gatherings as terrorists.(9) This is the contract the powerful have struck with each other: to agree to a single set of neoliberal policies, and to criminalise all those who seek to challenge them.

We are often told that the passage of laws like this is dangerous because one day it might facilitate the seizure of power by an undemocratic government. But that is to miss the point. Their passage IS the seizure of power. Protest is inseparable from democracy: every time it is restricted, the state becomes less democratic. Democracies like ours will come to an end not with the stamping of boots and the hoisting of flags, but through the slow accretion of a thousand dusty codicils.

By the time we have lost our freedoms, we will have forgotten what they were. The silence with which the new laws were greeted last week suggests that the forgetting has already begun.

References:

1. The Home Office, July 2004. Animal Welfare - Human Rights: protecting people from animal rights extremists http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/docs3/humanrights.pdf.

2. ibid.

3. ibid.

4. One of my readers is currently engaged in a dispute with the York City Library, which registers my site as "blacklisted". It is not yet clear why my site has been banned, or whether it has also been proscribed elsewhere.

5. Matthew Tempest, 30th July 2004. Animal activists prompt crackdown on protest. http://politics.guardian.co.uk/homeaffairs/story/0,11026,1272856,00.html

6. SchNEWS, 20th March 1998. Issue 159. Justice?, Brighton.

7. Liberty, Gloucestershire Weapons Inspectors and Berkshire CIA, 2003. Casualty of War: 8 weeks of counter-terrorism in rural England. http://www.liberty-human-rights.org.uk/issues/pdfs/casualty-of-war.pdf

8. ibid.

9. See Statewatch: Observatory on EU plans to counter protests. http://www.statewatch.org/observatory3.htm

--
© *ZNET*
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http://www.zmag.org/sustainers/content/2004-08/18monbiot.cfm

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the 2004 project

duckdaotsu

the 2004 project

one year ago today... what did you do?

State of the Union, 2004

by Gore Vidal

In the 1960s and '70s of the last unlamented century, there was a New York television producer named David Susskind. He was commercially successful; he was also, surprisingly, a man of strong political views which he knew how to present so tactfully that networks were often unaware of just what he was getting away with on their--our--air. Politically, he liked to get strong-minded guests to sit with him at a round table in a ratty building at the corner of Broadway and 42nd Street. Sooner or later, just about everyone of interest appeared on his program. Needless to say, he also had time for Vivien Leigh to discuss her recent divorce from Laurence Olivier, which summoned forth the mysterious cry from the former Scarlett O'Hara, "I am deeply sorry for any woman who was not married to Larry Olivier." Since this took in several billion ladies (not to mention those gentlemen who might have offered to fill, as it were, the breach), Leigh caused a proper stir, as did the ballerina Alicia Markova, who gently assured us that "a Markova comes only once every hundred years or so."

I suspect it was the dim lighting on the set that invited such naked truths. David watched his pennies. I don't recall how, or when, we began our "States of the Union" programs. But we did them year after year. I would follow whoever happened to be President, and I'd correct his "real" state of the union with one of my own, improvising from questions that David would prepare. I was a political pundit because in a 1960 race for the House of Representatives (upstate New York), I got more votes than the head of the ticket, JFK; in 1962, I turned down the Democratic nomination for US Senate on the sensible ground that it was not winnable; I also had a pretty good memory in those days, now a-jangle with warning bells as I try to recall the national debt or, more poignantly, where I last saw my glasses.

I've just come across my "State of the Union" as of 1972. Apparently, I gave it fifteen times across the country, ending with Susskind's program. Questions and answers from the audience were the most interesting part of these excursions. As I look back over the texts of what we talked about, I'm surprised at how to the point we often were on subjects seldom mentioned in freedom's land today.

In 1972, I begin: "According to the polls, our second principal concern today is the breakdown of law and order." (What, I wonder, was the first? Let's hope it was the pointless, seven-year--at that point--war in Southeast Asia.) I noted that to those die-hard conservatives, "law and order" is usually a code phrase meaning "get the blacks." While, to what anorexic, vacant-eyed blonde women on TV now describe as the "liberal elite," we were pushing the careful--that is, slow--elimination of poverty. Anything more substantive would have been regarded as communism, put forward by dupes. But then, I say very mildly, we have only one political party in the United States, the Property Party, with two right wings, Republican and Democrat. Since I tended to speak to conservative audiences in such civilized places as Medford, Oregon; Parkersburg,West Virginia; and Longview, Washington, there are, predictably, a few gasps at this rejection of so much received opinion. There are also quite a few nods from interested citizens who find it difficult at election time to tell the parties apart. Was it in pristine Medford that I actually saw the nodding Ralph Nader whom I was, to his horror, to run for President that year in Esquire? Inspired by the nods, I start to geld the lily, as the late Sam Goldwyn used to say. The Republicans are often more doctrinaire than the Democrats, who are willing to make small--very small--adjustments where the poor and black are concerned while giving aid and comfort to the anti-imperialists. Yes, I was already characterizing our crazed adventure in Vietnam as imperial, instead of yet another proof of our irrepressible, invincible altruism, ever eager to bring light to those who dwell in darkness.

I should note that in the thirty-two years since this particular state of the union, our political vocabulary has been turned upside down. Although the secret core to each presidential election is who can express his hatred of African-Americans most subtly (to which today can be added Latinos and "elite liberals," a fantasy category associated with working film actors who have won Academy Awards), and, of course, this season it's the marriage-minded so-called gays. So-called because there is no such human or mammal category (sex is a continuum) except in the great hollow pumpkin head of that gambling dude who has anointed himself the nation's moralist-in-chief, William "Bell Fruit" Bennett.

Back to the time machine. In some ways, looking at past states of the union, it is remarkable how things tend to stay the same. Race-gender wars are always on our overcrowded back burners. There is also--always--a horrendous foreign enemy at hand ready to blow us up in the night out of hatred for our Goodness and rosy plumpness. In 1972, when I started my tour at the Yale Political Union, the audience was packed with hot-eyed neocons-to-be, though the phrase was not yet in use, as the inventors of neoconnery were still Trotskyists to a man or woman or even "Bell Fruit," trying to make it in New York publishing.

I also stay away from the failing economy. "I leave to my friend Ken Galbraith the solving of the current depression." If they appear to know who Galbraith is, I remark how curious that his fame should be based on two books, The Liberal Hour, published a few years before the right-wing Nixon criminals tried to hijack the election of 1972 (Watergate was bursting open when I began my tour), and The Affluent Society, published shortly before we had a cash-flow problem.

In the decades since this state of the union, the United States has had more people, per capita, locked away in prisons than any other country, while the sick economy of '72 is long forgotten as worse problems--and deficits--beset us. For one thing, we no longer live in a nation, but in a Homeland. In 1972, "roughly 80 percent of police work in the United States has to do with the regulation of our private morals. By that I mean controlling what we smoke, eat, put in our veins--not to mention trying to regulate with whom and how we have sex, with whom and how we gamble. As a result our police are among the most corrupt in the Western world."

I don't think this would get the same gasp today that it did back then. I point out police collusion with gamblers, drug dealers, prostitutes and, indeed, anyone whose sexual activities have been proscribed by a series of state legal codes that were--are--the scandal of what we like to call a free society. These codes are often defended because they are very old. For instance, the laws against sodomy go back 1,400 years to the Emperor Justinian, who felt that there should be such laws because, "as everyone knows," he declared, "sodomy is a principal cause of earthquake."

Sodomy gets the audience's attention. "Cynically, one might allow the police their kinky pleasures in busting boys and girls who attract them if they showed the slightest interest in the protection of persons and property, which is what we pay them to do." I then suggested that "we remove from the statute books all penalties that have to do with private morals--what are called 'victimless crimes.' If a man or a woman wants to be a prostitute, that is his or her affair. Certainly, it is no business of the state what we do with our bodies sexually. Obviously, laws will remain on the books for the prevention of rape and the abuse of children, while the virtue of our animal friends will continue to be protected by the SPCA." Relieved laughter at this point. He can't be serious--or is he?

I speak of legalizing gambling. Bingo players nod. Then: "All drugs should be legalized and sold at cost to anyone with a doctor's prescription." Most questions, later, are about this horrific proposal. Brainwashing on the subject begins early, insuring that a large crop of the coming generation will become drug addicts. Prohibition always has that effect, as we should have learned when we prohibited alcohol from 1919 to 1933; but, happily for the busy lunatics who rule over us, we are permanently the United States of Amnesia. We learn nothing because we remember nothing. The period of Prohibition called the "Noble Experiment" brought on the greatest breakdown of law and order that we have ever endured--until today, of course. Lesson? Do not regulate the private lives of people, because if you do they will become angry and antisocial, and they will get what they want from criminals, who work in perfect freedom because they know how to pay off the police.

What should be done about drug addiction? As of 1970, England was the model for us to emulate. With a population of 55 million people, they had only 1,800 heroin addicts. With our 200 million people we had nearly a half-million addicts. What were they doing right? For one thing, they turned the problem over to the doctors. Instead of treating the addict as a criminal, they required him to register with a physician, who then gives him, at controlled intervals, a prescription so that he can obtain his drug. Needless to say, our society, based as it is on a passion to punish others, could not bear so sensible a solution. We promptly leaned, as they say, on the British to criminalize the sale and consumption of drugs, and now the beautiful city of Edinburgh is one of the most drug-infested places in Europe. Another triumph for the American way.

I start to expand. "From the Drug Enforcement Administration to the FBI, we are afflicted with all sorts of secret police, busily spying on us. The FBI, since its founding, has generally steered clear of major crime like the Mafia. In fact, much of its time and energies have been devoted to spying on those Americans whose political beliefs did not please the late J. Edgar Hoover, a man who hated commies, blacks and women in, more or less, that order. But then the FBI has always been a collaborating tool of reactionary politicians. The bureau also has had a nasty talent for amusing Presidents with lurid dossiers on their political enemies." Now in the year 2004, when we have ceased to be a nation under law but instead a homeland where the withered Bill of Rights, like a dead trumpet vine, clings to our pseudo-Roman columns, Homeland Security appears to be uniting our secret police into a single sort of Gestapo with dossiers on everyone to prevent us, somehow or other, from being terrorized by various implacable Second and Third World enemies. Where there is no known Al Qaeda sort of threat, we create one, as in Iraq, whose leader, Saddam Hussein, had no connection with 9/11 or any other proven terrorism against the United States, making it necessary for a President to invent the lawless as well as evil (to use his Bible-based language) doctrine of pre-emptive war based on a sort of hunch that maybe one day some country might attack us, so, meanwhile, as he and his business associates covet their oil, we go to war, leveling their cities to be rebuilt by other business associates.

Thus was our perpetual cold war turned hot.

My father, uncle and two stepbrothers graduated from the US Military Academy at West Point, where I was born in the cadet hospital. Although I was brought up by a political grandfather in Washington, DC, I was well immersed in the West Point ethos--Duty, Honor, Country--as was David Eisenhower, the President's grandson, whom I met years later. We exchanged notes on how difficult it was to free oneself from that world. "They never let go," I said. "It's like a family."

"No," he said, "it's a religion." Although neither of us attended the Point, each was born in the cadet hospital; each went to Exeter; each grew up listening to West Pointers gossip about one another as well as vent their political views, usually to the far right. At the time of the Second World War, many of them thought we were fighting the wrong side. We should be helping Hitler destroy Communism. Later, we could take care of him.

In general, they disliked politicians, Franklin Roosevelt most of all. There was also a degree of low-key anti-Semitism, while pre-World War II blacks were Ellisonian invisibles. Even so, in that great war, Duty and Honor served the country surprisingly well. Unfortunately, some served themselves well when Truman militarized the economy, providing all sorts of lucrative civilian employment for high-ranking officers. Yet it was Eisenhower himself who warned us in 1961 of the dangers of the "military-industrial complex." Unfortunately, no one seemed eager to control military spending, particularly after the Korean War, which we notoriously failed to win even though the cry "The Russians are coming!" was heard daily throughout the land. Propaganda necessary for Truman's military buildup was never questioned...particularly when demagogues like Senator McCarthy were destroying careers with reckless accusations that anyone able to read the New York Times without moving his lips was a Communist. I touched, glancingly, on all this in Nixonian 1972, when the media, Corporate America and the highly peculiar President were creating as much terror in the populace as they could in order to build up a war machine that they thought would prevent a recurrence of the Great Depression, which had only ended in 1940 when FDR put billions into rearmament and we had full employment and prosperity for the first time in that generation.

I strike a few mildly optimistic notes. "We should have a national health service, something every civilized country in the world has. Also, improved public transport (trains!). Also, schools which do more than teach conformity. Also, a cleaning of the air, of the water, of the earth before we all die of the poisons set loose by a society based on greed." Enron, of course, is decades in the future, as are the American wars of aggression against Afghanistan and Iraq.

In the end, we may offer Richard Nixon a debt of gratitude. I'm in a generous mood. "Through Nixon's awesome ineptitude we have seen revealed the political corruption of our society." (We had, of course, seen nothing yet!) What to do? I proposed that no candidate for any office be allowed to buy space on television or in any newspaper or other medium: "This will stop cold the present system, where Presidents and Congressmen are bought by corporations and even by foreign countries. To become President, you will not need thirty, forty, fifty million dollars to smear your opponents and present yourself falsely on TV commercials." Were the sums ever so tiny?

Instead, television (and the rest of the media) would be required by law to provide prime time (and space) for the various candidates.

"I would also propose a four-week election period as opposed to the current four-year marathon. Four weeks is more than enough time to present the issues. To show us the candidates in interviews, debates, uncontrolled encounters, in which we can see who the candidate really is, answering tough questions, his record up there for all to examine. This ought to get a better class into politics." As I reread this, I think of Arnold Schwarzenegger. I now add: Should the candidate happen to be a professional actor, a scene or two from Shakespeare might be required during the audition...I mean, the primary. Also, as a tribute to Ole Bell Fruit, who favors public executions of drug dealers, these should take place during prime time as the empire gallops into its Ben-Hur phase.

I must say, I am troubled by the way I responded to the audience's general hatred of government. I say we are the government. But I was being sophistical when I responded to their claims that our government is our enemy with that other cliché, you are the government. Unconsciously, I seem to have been avoiding the message that I got from one end of the country to the other: We hate this system that we are trapped in, but we don't know who has trapped us or how. We don't even know what our cage looks like because we have never seen it from the outside. Now, thirty-two years later, audiences still want to know who will let them out of the Enron-Pentagon prison with its socialism for the rich and free enterprise for the poor. So...welcome to Imperial America.

This article can be found on the web at: http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20040913&s=vidal

NOTICE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107,
this material is distributed without profit to those who
have expressed a prior interest in receiving this
information for research and educational purposes.

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http://lists.igc.org/mailman/listinfo/duckdaotsu
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Let's Play War: How Militarism is Marketed to Children

http://www.zmag.org/sustainers/content/2005-08/24marshall.cfm
==================================
ZNet Commentary

Let's Play War: How Militarism is Marketed to Children

August 25, 2005
By Lucinda Marshall

My friend Loretta is hopping mad about the mail that her nine year old grandson is receiving. While military recruiters cannot 'recruit' children under seventeen years of age, there is nothing stopping them from waging a marketing campaign to win the hearts and minds of much younger children such as Loretta's grandson. She tells me that he just received a mailing from the Marines labeled "Required Summer Reading" that offers him limited edition posters. As any parent well knows, anything labeled as 'limited edition' is irresistible to kids of that age.

Parents are becoming more aware of the presence of military recruiters in high schools because of the No Child Left Behind Act which requires schools to turn over contact information on students to the military unless the students request that their records not be shared. While this is an easy way for the military to obtain information on prospective recruits, it is only one of many ways in which the military can make a sales pitch to children.

Each branch of the military runs its own JROTC (Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps) programs. The Air Force alone runs 746 JROTC programs throughout the U.S. with plans start more this year. The programs enroll more than 100,000 students. According to the American Friends Service Committee, each program costs school districts an average of $76,000, effectively putting cash-strapped schools in the position of subsidizing the military. It is important to note that JROTC programs routinely bring weapons into schools (and teach children how to use them) and there are numerous reports of JROTC-related violence, including murder.

The programs claim that they are not geared towards recruiting, that their purpose is to teach leadership and discipline. But as former defense secretary William Cohen told Congress in 2000, JROTC is "one of the best recruiting devices we have." (1)

When now Vice President Cheney served as Secretary of Defense, he summarized the purpose of the military quite accurately, "The reason to have a military is to be prepared to fight and win wars. That is our basic fundamental mission. The military is not a social welfare agency, it's not a jobs program." Yet recruiters and JROTC programs as well as television ads routinely hawk the educational and job benefits of joining the military.

What they do not tell prospective recruits is that 57% of military personnel receive no educational benefits and only 5% receive the maximum benefit. The military frequently boasts about the great job training it provides, but according to the Army Times, only 12% of male veterans and 6% of female veterans report using job skills learned in the military. According to the Veterans Administration, veterans earn less, make up 1/3 of homeless men and 20% of the nation's prison population. (2)

The military's presence in schools is not limited to high schools. The Middle School Cadet program at Lavizzo Elementary School in Chicago is one example. Youngsters wear uniforms and are taught how to carry guns, a skill distinctly at odds with the policies that virtually every school has banning weapons on school property. (3)

The Navy also offers a program geared at middle-schoolers, the Navy League Cadet Corp, designed for children ages 11-14, in addition to their Naval Sea Cadet Corp which is geared towards high schoolers. The Navy offers 300 such programs reaching 11,000 children.

Another tool the military uses is to send military recruiting trucks to visit U.S. high schools. The trucks use high tech media and eye-catching graphics to whet students interest. The Army describes its Special Operations Van this way,

"The SOF incorporates several exhibits. One can experience the excitement of flying a helicopter, test your skills and landing accuracy in the Airborne parachute simulator, or improve your driving or marksmanship (sic) in the Ground Mobility Vehicle (GMV) system."

While the military claims that vehicles like this are for educational purposes, their own regulations indicate otherwise, stating that the vehicles are to be sent to schools that recruiters are trying to target, and that recruiters must stay with the trucks while they are open to the public. The purpose of the trucks is to "Ensure that exhibits create a favorable image of the Army and current Army enlistment opportunities." (Section 1-5.a.) (4) (5)

The Department of Defense has been quick to understand that video games are an excellent marketing tool. On the America's Army website, you can play all manner of war games, although as Sheldon Rampton points out in his article "War is Fun as Hell", the games are a, "sanitized, Tom Clancy version of war."

Not only that, but the website sexes up their offerings, providing what Rampton aptly describes as a "babes-and-bullets fantasy", by employing a group of young attractive female gamers known as the Frag Girls to market the games. (6)

As one woman gamer describes it,

"Lord knows you wouldn't want someone that was a real gamer and a wife and mother. What would the drooling masses have to drool over? Certainly it wouldn't be a young attractive SINGLE female that they might think they had a chance with right?" (7)

And just to make sure there is no doubt as to what a Frag Girl is, they have their very own website which offers these illuminating definitions:

"frag /frag/ n. & v. · n. 1 number of kills. 2 a fragmentation grenade. · v. 1 to eliminate other players in multiplayer shooters (fragging).

rag·doll physics {buzzword} /ragdol fiziks/ n. 1 a program allowing videogame characters to react with realistic body and skeletal physics.

frag·doll /fragdol/ n. 1 a female gamer with the skills to dominate in multiplayer shooters. 2 a lady with the sass to use the laws of physics to her incontestable advantage."

As concerned as many parents, schools and communities are about the impact of No Child Left Behind, the Pentagon's recent announcement that it intends to assemble a much more comprehensive database is far more worrisome. According to the Pentagon, the database will contain some 30 million records of data about youth ages 16-25. The data kept will include name, gender, address, birthday, email address, ethnicity, phone number, education records including graduation dates, grade point averages education level and military test scores. Parents, educators and privacy rights activists have raised a number of objections to the planned database, pointing out that it violates the Privacy Act and the DoD's own regulations about the collection of information on citizens.

Misleading advertising is always reprehensible. But when we allow our military to target children, leading them to believe that war is a game and fighting is fun, one has to wonder if the next logical step is camouflage diapers? (8)

-------------------------

Notes:

(1) "Air Force Plans To Invade: 48 High Schools Set to Start AF JROTC". Based on research by Peacework intern Jamie Munro and materials on JROTC from the Central Committee for Conscientious Objectors and the American Friends Service Committee Youth and Militarism Program. Compiled by Sam Diener.

(2) "Why Question the Military's JROTC Program?", Central Committee for Conscientious Objectors.

(3) "The Children's Crusade" by Jennifer Wedekind, In These Times, June 3, 2005.

(4) "US Army Makes Surprise Claim: We're Endangering US High Schools",
Peacework Co-Editor Sam Diener previously served on the staff of the Central Committee for Conscientious Objectors. Bill Sweet, an AFSC and GI Rights Hotline volunteer, contributed research to this article.

(5) "Army's New Special Operations Van Invading US Schools", American Friends Service Committee.

(6) "War is Fun as Hell" by Sheldon Rampton, Alternet, August 2, 2005.

(7) "The Fragtastic FragDolls" by Danielle "Sachant" Vanderlip.

(8) There are several excellent organizations that offer more information about military recruiting and marketing to youngsters. They include:

• American Friends Service Committee.
• Center on Conscience and War (NISBCO).
• Leave My Child Alone (has downloadable forms to opt out of having a child's contact information given to the military and to opt out of the new Pentagon database).

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WRI Logoco-alert
conscientious objectors need our support
GR14750-220805
War Resisters' International, London, 22 August 2005

GREECE: Jehovah's Witness CO sentenced to 3.5 years imprisonment
Greek conscientious objector Boris Sotiriadis (GR14750), a Jehovah's Witness, was today sentenced to 3.5 years in prison by the Military Court of Xanthi, in North Greece.
Boris Sotiriadis is of Greek origin, but he came from Georgia, where he already had served in the army before he became a Jehovah's Witness. He is now living in Cyprus. On 1 August, he followed a call-up to the army, and went to the military camp of Aulona, where he refused to serve citing conscientious objection based on his religious beliefs. He was then detained in the military camp, and later sent to the military camp of Didimoticho in Northern Greece, where he again refused to serve any military service, and asked to perform a substitute service instead. He was then charged with disobedience.

Today, the military court of Xanthi convicted him and sentenced him to 3.5 years in prison without suspension. He is now being sent to the military prison in Thessaloniki. Sotiriadis had only been called up for 3 months military service, and will now serve more than 3 years in prison.

War Resisters' International calls for letters of protest to the Greek authorities, and Greek embassies abroad. A list of Greek embassies can be found at http://www.mfa.gr/english/the_ministry/missions/. You can send a protest email to Mr. Kostas Karamanlis, Prime Minister of Greece, at http://wri-irg.org/co/alerts/20050822a.html.

Andreas Speck
War Resisters' International

Contact for protest letters:

Mr. Kostas Karamanlis, Prime Minister of Greece Maximos Mansion (?Megaro Maximou?) 19, Herodou Attikou str GR-106 74 Athens
info@primeminister.gr

Background information on CO in Greece:

* http://wri-irg.org/news/2005/icod05full-en.htm
* http://wri-irg.org/news/2005/greece05a-en.htm
* http://wri-irg.org/pubs/br66-en.htm

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Birth of a new Iraq, or blueprint for civil war?

2005

Birth of a new Iraq, or blueprint for civil war?

By Kim Sengupta
Published: 23 August 2005

Iraq's new constitution, supposedly the blueprint for a democratic future, was threatening to drag the country into civil war last night.

As Shia and Kurdish factions presented the document to the National Assembly, minutes before a midnight deadline, Sunni Muslims strongly opposed to its federal structure made accusations of "betrayal" and warned of a violent sectarian backlash. A vote on the draft was later delayed for three days in the hope that the sides could come to an agreement on its wording.

The draft constitution is the principal plank of President George Bush's exit strategy from the Iraq conflict, which has made his popularity collapse among American voters.

American diplomats, led by the ambassador, Zalmay Khalilzad, had been frantically lobbying for it to be adopted before last night's deadline. But far from sealing Iraq's post-Saddam era, the draft appeared to be quickly fracturing the fragile edifice of government, with Shia and Kurdish parties declaring they were prepared to use their parliamentary majority to push through the document in the teeth of Sunni opposition.

The Sunni reaction was immediate, with politicians queuing to denounce the move and warning of a cataclysmic reaction. Soha Allawi, one of the leading negotiators, declared: "We will not be silent. We will campaign for public awareness to tell both Sunnis and Shias to reject the constitution, which has elements that will lead to the break-up of Iraq and civil war." Another Sunni delegate, Hussein Shukur al-Fallu, said: "If they pass this constitution, then the rebellion will reach its peak."

Sunni leaders said the text had dropped wording that forbade secession from Iraq; Kurdish parties maintained they did not want to break away entirely but wanted to keep the option open.

There were also warnings from Sunni insurgent groups, engaged in a war of attrition, that they will increase their attacks, targeting those responsible for the constitution.

But some militant Shias, including followers of the radical cleric Muqtada Sadr with their powerbase in relatively resource-poor central Iraq, are also opposed to federalism and yesterday renewed their call for "Iraqi unity". In a further sign of growing polarisation, several minority and tribal groups also said guarantees made about their roles had been changed in the draft document.

A spokesman for the tribal umbrella group said: "The text of the constitution was destroyed in violation of what it had been agreed on. We shall now boycott the political process." Mohaim Ased Abdul, the chairman of the Assembly of Minorities, added: "We must oppose this because it does not represent minorities."

Yonadem Kanna, a representative of Iraq's dwindling Christian community, said he expected Sunni leaders to start mobilising their supporters against the constitution. "Tomorrow on the street, on the ground, they will move against the constitution, that we can say for sure."

There was also controversy over the role of Islam in a future administration, with the main Shia party insisting it should be the main source of law and womens' groups warning that it would lead to the denial of female rights.

The most contentious issue in the document was federalism, which the majority Shia and Kurdish factions are determined to make the basis of government.

The Sunnis, who have already seen their dominance under Saddam and previous regimes overturned in elections this year, are convinced this is a pretext for the Shias and Kurds carving out the oil-rich regions in the north and south of the country.

A copy of the document, seen by the media, described the future Iraq as a "republican, parliamentarian, democratic and federal state" without specifying the exact nature of the federalism. The draft needs to be approved by a majority of the 275-member National Assembly, but Hussain al-Shahristani, the Shia deputy speaker, insisted it would be passed with a substantial majority. If approved, the constitution will be put to a referendum on 15 October; it can become defunct if any of the 18 provinces reject it by two-thirds or more.

Jalaaldin al-Saghir, a Shia negotiator, said: "There is a time limit and we do not want to breach it. We had talks with our Sunni brothers. We cannot wait for all the time needed by those people to be convinced. We agree that the constitution, including federalism, be put before the people. If the Sunni Arabs do not want to vote for federalism, they can reject the constitution."

Mr al-Saghir said Shias and Kurds had also agreed that no laws would be allowed to contradict the principles of Islam. He said: "In addition, no law shall be adopted that contradicts human rights and democratic principles. Also it was stated that the constitution ensures the Islamic identity of the majority of Iraqi people."

Meanwhile, violence has continued unabated. Yesterday, gunmen killed 10 people, including eight policemen, in a van north of Baghdad, and two American soldiers were killed in a bomb attack near Samarra.

As talks continued into last night, the talk of insurrection and of a steadily deteriorating situation continued to grow.

Iraq's new constitution, supposedly the blueprint for a democratic future, was threatening to drag the country into civil war last night.

As Shia and Kurdish factions presented the document to the National Assembly, minutes before a midnight deadline, Sunni Muslims strongly opposed to its federal structure made accusations of "betrayal" and warned of a violent sectarian backlash. A vote on the draft was later delayed for three days in the hope that the sides could come to an agreement on its wording.

The draft constitution is the principal plank of President George Bush's exit strategy from the Iraq conflict, which has made his popularity collapse among American voters.

American diplomats, led by the ambassador, Zalmay Khalilzad, had been frantically lobbying for it to be adopted before last night's deadline. But far from sealing Iraq's post-Saddam era, the draft appeared to be quickly fracturing the fragile edifice of government, with Shia and Kurdish parties declaring they were prepared to use their parliamentary majority to push through the document in the teeth of Sunni opposition.

The Sunni reaction was immediate, with politicians queuing to denounce the move and warning of a cataclysmic reaction. Soha Allawi, one of the leading negotiators, declared: "We will not be silent. We will campaign for public awareness to tell both Sunnis and Shias to reject the constitution, which has elements that will lead to the break-up of Iraq and civil war." Another Sunni delegate, Hussein Shukur al-Fallu, said: "If they pass this constitution, then the rebellion will reach its peak."

Sunni leaders said the text had dropped wording that forbade secession from Iraq; Kurdish parties maintained they did not want to break away entirely but wanted to keep the option open.

There were also warnings from Sunni insurgent groups, engaged in a war of attrition, that they will increase their attacks, targeting those responsible for the constitution.

But some militant Shias, including followers of the radical cleric Muqtada Sadr with their powerbase in relatively resource-poor central Iraq, are also opposed to federalism and yesterday renewed their call for "Iraqi unity". In a further sign of growing polarisation, several minority and tribal groups also said guarantees made about their roles had been changed in the draft document.

A spokesman for the tribal umbrella group said: "The text of the constitution was destroyed in violation of what it had been agreed on. We shall now boycott the political process." Mohaim Ased Abdul, the chairman of the Assembly of Minorities, added: "We must oppose this because it does not represent minorities."

Yonadem Kanna, a representative of Iraq's dwindling Christian community, said he expected Sunni leaders to start mobilising their supporters against the constitution. "Tomorrow on the street, on the ground, they will move against the constitution, that we can say for sure."

There was also controversy over the role of Islam in a future administration, with the main Shia party insisting it should be the main source of law and womens' groups warning that it would lead to the denial of female rights.

The most contentious issue in the document was federalism, which the majority Shia and Kurdish factions are determined to make the basis of government.

The Sunnis, who have already seen their dominance under Saddam and previous regimes overturned in elections this year, are convinced this is a pretext for the Shias and Kurds carving out the oil-rich regions in the north and south of the country.

A copy of the document, seen by the media, described the future Iraq as a "republican, parliamentarian, democratic and federal state" without specifying the exact nature of the federalism. The draft needs to be approved by a majority of the 275-member National Assembly, but Hussain al-Shahristani, the Shia deputy speaker, insisted it would be passed with a substantial majority. If approved, the constitution will be put to a referendum on 15 October; it can become defunct if any of the 18 provinces reject it by two-thirds or more.

Jalaaldin al-Saghir, a Shia negotiator, said: "There is a time limit and we do not want to breach it. We had talks with our Sunni brothers. We cannot wait for all the time needed by those people to be convinced. We agree that the constitution, including federalism, be put before the people. If the Sunni Arabs do not want to vote for federalism, they can reject the constitution."

Mr al-Saghir said Shias and Kurds had also agreed that no laws would be allowed to contradict the principles of Islam. He said: "In addition, no law shall be adopted that contradicts human rights and democratic principles. Also it was stated that the constitution ensures the Islamic identity of the majority of Iraqi people."

Meanwhile, violence has continued unabated. Yesterday, gunmen killed 10 people, including eight policemen, in a van north of Baghdad, and two American soldiers were killed in a bomb attack near Samarra.

As talks continued into last night, the talk of insurrection and of a steadily deteriorating situation continued to grow.

Israeli troops smash their way into last two settlements

Israeli troops smash their way into last two settlements

By Donald Macintyre in Homesh, West Bank
Published: 24 August 2005

Israeli police and troops yesterday completed Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's plan to abandon 25 Jewish settlements in occupied Palestinian territories after smashing their way into the last two settlements earmarked for evacuation and removing the settlers along with more than 1000 illegal infiltrators.

The security forces broke the back of the resistance at the two militant hilltop settlements of Homesh and Sa-nur in what had been seen as potentially the most difficult phase of an operation which has now boosted the Israeli Prime Minister's standing by being executed way ahead of schedule.

While predictions that protesters would use firearms did not prove correct, the police and the army encountered more determined civil disobedience, barricading of houses and other buildings, and other forms of - mainly - passive resistance than they had in most of the Gaza settlements evacuated last week.

The army said last night that one man had been arrested after attempting to stab a soldier at the religious college here, and there had been a second stabbing attempt somewhere else. By nightfall, the only protesters left were two in Homesh who had clambered up a 30 metre pylon to shout anti-disengagement slogans.

In the last stand against the disengagement process - which began in earnest only a week ago - some of the opponents, mainly drawn from extreme-right youth in other West Bank settlements and in Israel, had coiled barbed wire round houses and public buildings, pelted police and soldiers with eggs, paint, flour and lightbulbs and set fire to skips and at least one car.

In two houses where dozens of clapping, singing religious teenage girls held second-storey sit-ins, the stairs had been destroyed to make their arrest more perilous. In one house police were obliged to create a makeshift staircase of breeze blocks, and in the other a ladder, to bring down the teenage girls, after a local rabbi failed in his reluctant efforts to persuade them to come down.

Several men and women were carried out struggling from their houses after troops broke down the barricaded doors. The overwhelming majority of the 1,320 people removed from the two settlements were infiltrators.

Security forces were forced to lay down a limestone coating on the main roads into and through the settlement after protesters poured oil to slow their advance. In Sa-nur police used teargas as they cleared the roof of the old British police station which protesters were using as their redoubt.

The turning point at Homesh came when specialist border police with visors and riot shields stormed up ladders to cut a two-meter barbed wire fence erected around the roof of the settlement's synagogue where a dozen young adults and children had been leading the verbal abuse and egg-throwing at security forces.

After moving on to the roof the police called up a bulldozer to take the handcuffed adults in its scooped bucket to the ground below. Police forced open the doors of both the synagogue and the religious college next door shortly afterwards and dragged out around 40 protesters from inside.

As the army chief of staff General Dan Halutz said that the demolition of 2,500 houses in Gaza would take place within 10 days, it was clear that the speed of the disengagement has confounded predictions, first that it would not take place at all, and then that it would be a protracted and violent process.

Mr Sharon intends to exploit the success by addressing the UN General Assembly in New York next month. But by breaking the taboo on dismantling any of the settlements, which have grown relentlessly since Israel's seizure of Gaza and the West Bank in 1967, the process may fuel international - and some domestic - calls for larger evacuations in the West Bank.

Mr Sharon could seek to deflect such pressure by fulfilling his long-standing promise to the US to dismantle illegal outposts - effectively new mini-settlements which are not openly authorised by the government. The Jerusalem Post reported yesterday that he was "likely" to start dismantling outposts within 90 days.

At the same time Mr Sharon has repeatedly told his restive Likud party that he intends no further unilateral disengagement and this week once again repeated that building would continue within the largest semi-urban settlement blocks on the West Bank.

The mood of the opposition at Homesh and Sa-nur yesterday may have been affected by the repeated predictions of settlers leaders on the Yesha Council - in the face of equally repeated denials by Mr Sharon - that the evacuations there were the first of many more in the West Bank.

One mother, who would give her name only as Orly and came to Homesh three months ago to join the anti-disengagement protests with her four children, said: "It is horrible that we destroy our lands, our synagogue, that we destroy our homes. The Palestinians will be happy when they see this."

http://www.zmag.org/sustainers/content/2005-08/18sharma.cfm
ZNet Commentary


Technology Has Its Pitfalls

August 24, 2005
By Devinder Sharma

In a desperate effort to seek a permanent seat in the UN Security Council, Indian Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh has signed a deal with the United States. Addressing recently a joint session of the US Congress, he said: "The Green Revolution lifted countless millions above poverty.... I am very happy to say that U.S. President George Bush and I have decided to launch second generation of India-US collaboration in agriculture."

Voted to power by an angry rural protest vote in May 2004, Dr Manmohan Singh leads the UPA Coalition. Reiterating time and again that his government's top most priority is to increase the growth rate in agriculture, he follows the same technology prescription that led to the collapse of the green revolution. Without first ascertaining the reasons behind the terrible agrarian crisis, much of it the result of imposing environmentally-unfriendly alien technology, the prime minister embarks on the faulty promise of a 'second' green revolution.

Technology too has its pitfalls. Much of the crisis today that afflicts every nook and corner of rural India is the result of an unsustainable technology that did not integrate well with the social milieu. Nor is any effort being made to see through the dirty politics of technology, whether these new technologies are relevant given the farm size, varying agro-climatic conditions, environment and above all the needs of the farming community. Let us try to examine a few of the known technologies and the trail of woes it left behind. While the companies that marketed these technologies have made their profits, millions of farmers are paying the price for such unwanted technologies, all backed by government support.

The controversial Seed Bill 2004 introduced in India, which has now been referred to a Parliamentary select committee, lays emphasis on ensuring quality of improved seed being supplied to farmers. It seeks to make it mandatory for farmers to grow seed that is registered, a proposal that has come under severe criticism from the farmers as well as the civil society.

Seed quality is an important aspect of crop production. For ages, farmers had traditionally been selecting and maintaining good quality seed. They knew and understood the importance of quality seed in production. With the advent of green revolution technology, based primarily on the high-yielding dwarf varieties of wheat and rice, the mainline thinking changed. Agricultural scientists, for reasons that remain unexplained, began to doubt the ability of farmers to maintain seed quality.

Aided by the World Bank, the Ministry of Agriculture launched a National Seeds Project in 1967. Under the project, spread into three phases, seed processing plants were set up in the states of Punjab, Haryana, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Orissa. Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, West Bengal, Assam, Meghalaya and Arunachal Pradesh were covered under phase III. All that the huge processing plants were supposed to do was to provide 'certified' seeds of food crops, mainly self-pollinating crops, to farmers.

A majority of these plants have since emerged as white elephants. It was primarily for the lack of demand for certified seeds of self-pollinating crops that a majority of these seed processing plants slid deep into red and often remained burdened with carryover stocks. Farmers refrained from buying the 'certified' seeds, and if the seed replacement ratio is any indication, they preferred to save and clean a part of the grain harvest for sowing in the next season.

Studies have subsequently shown that there is hardly any difference in the quality and productivity of processed 'certified' seed and the normal seed of self-pollinating crops like wheat and rice. In fact, what remains relatively unknown is that the 18,000 tonnes of dwarf wheat seed that was imported in 1966 from Mexico, which ushered in the wheat revolution, was not 'certified' processed seed. It was cleaned wheat grain collected from Mexican farmers. If the cleaned grain could bring about a record production what was the need to push expensive 'certified' seed to the farmers?

Not only the quality of seeds, even the traditional method of sowing paddy was dubbed as inefficient and thereby considered to be the cause for low yields. Agricultural scientists urged farmers to discard the traditional way - through broadcasting -- of sowing paddy. Farm extension machinery was mobilised to disseminate the improved technology of transplanting from a paddy nursery. Within a few years of the advent of the high-yielding varieties of rice, paddy transplantation changed the rural landscape.

Transplanting paddy required additional farm labour and therefore increased the cost of production. The crop was transplanted in rows which made it easier for the tractors and other mechanised instruments to operate in the rice paddies. It also forced farmers to go in for more irrigation thereby resulting in the increased withdrawal of groundwater.

In mid-1980s, the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) in the Philippines concluded in a study that there was hardly any difference in the crop yields from transplanted rice and from the crop sown by broadcasted seeds. Puzzled, I asked a distinguished rice breeder: "If this is true than why in the first instance were the farmers asked to switch over to transplanting paddy?" He thought for sometime, and then replied: "We were probably helping the mechanical industry grow. Since rice is the staple food in Asia, tractor sales could only grow if there was a way to move the machine in the rice fields. "

No wonder, the sales of tractors, puddlers, reapers and other associated equipment soared in the rice growing areas. Tractors became a symbol of a proud farmer. With the banks manipulating the loans lucratively, tractors have now turned into a symbol of distress and suicides.

Farmers spraying insecticides on crops have also been a usual feature of modern farming. Pesticides on rice (and others crops) were deemed necessary since the fertiliser-responsive dwarf varieties would attract horde of insects. To make the pesticides reach the target pest, farmers were advised to use 'knap-sack sprayers' mounted on their backs. These sprayers came with varying kinds of nozzles - different sizes for different crops. Tractor driven sprayers were also promoted for various crops.

Although David Pimental of the University of Cornell had concluded in early 1980s that only 0.01 per cent of the pesticides reached the target pest, whereas 99.9 per cent escapes into the environment, yet farmers were asked to go in for more sprays. International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) also came out with a study on the efficiency of pesticides application. The study concluded that there was no difference in pesticides efficiency from 'knap-sack sprayers' and if the chemical was kept at the source of the irrigation flow in a crop field.

But even then, pesticides were promoted blindly. It has now been accepted by IRRI that pesticides on rice were a 'waste of time and effort'. Farmers in central Luzon province of the Philippines, and in Vietman and Bangladesh, have clearly established that what agricultural scientists were telling them all these years was simply wrong. Rice yields are higher in areas where pesticides are not sprayed.

~~~~~~~

Now let us take a look at the emergence of the cutting-edge technology. First of all, let us be clear that those who promoted and gained from the unwanted use and abuse of chemicals in agriculture have moved onto life sciences. One of the genetically engineered products being pushed with impunity is Bt cotton. Scientists and economists have joined the industry bandwagon in the sole quest to perform well in the Stock market. As of this is not enough, governments are rolling the red carpet for the biotechnology industry. And you guessed it right. Politicians and bureaucrats are bending backwards hoping to have a finger in the profit pie of the so-called sunrise industry !

Bt cotton occupies only 1.3 million acres in India in 2004. This is only a fraction of the over 22.5 million acres being planted with cotton. In China, Bt cotton now occupies some 1.25 million acres, which again is a fraction of the total acreage. Incidentally, Bt cotton does not increase the crop yield. All it does is to reduce the dependence on pesticides in some areas. One thing is clear, both pesticides and Bt only reduce crop losses.

If Bt cotton increased yield than how come the use of pesticides on the remaining acreage under cotton is not considered as also responsible for increasing crop yields? After all, roughly 55 per cent of the total pesticides used in India (like elsewhere) for instance are applied on cotton alone. Why don't scientists say that pesticides also increase yields? Further what is little known is that in the past 40 years or so and despite the use of chemicals, number of cotton pests multiplied. In 1960s, there were hardly seven pests on cotton that were a matter of concern, today the number of pests that worry the farmers have increased to nearly 70.

Interestingly, Bt cotton had failed miserably in large parts of India. Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra and Karnataka, which cultivated nearly 70 per cent of the crop in the first three years of commercialisation have already informed the Genetic Engineering Approval Committee (GEAC) of its failure. In China too, Bt cotton sowing had initially saved farmers some 28 kg of pesticides per hectare. Within two years, pesticides use had increased to 14 kg. This was the figure available till 2002. In the next two years -- 2003 and 2004 -- going by the same yardstick (since no official studies are available), pesticides use is almost back to the earlier figure of 28 kg per hectare.


Why are the farmers then buying Bt cotton?

Well, why did the farmers earlier buy all kinds of chemical pesticides? Isn't it surprising that even though farmers knew that pesticides were harmful, they went on purchasing and applying still more potent chemicals. They even used them in all kinds of combinations and cocktails.

Why blame the farmers? Didn't the educated and the elite continued to smoke cigarettes even though they knew that smoking was harmful. Wasn't it prescribed in bold letters on the cigarette packs that smoking is harmful for health? And yet, cigarette smoking was on an upswing. If it were not for the state intervention in clamping bans on smoking in public places, cigarette sales would have still multiplied.

Bt cotton sales are picking up the same way. It is the market, stupid. This is how the markets can lure you to sure death. Millions have been attracted to the propaganda of the markets in the past and millions will be driven by it in future. What is not being realised is that the same pesticides that were promoted by the US Department of Agriculture and the agricultural scientists during the past three decades, has taken a human toll of at least 600,000 people from pesticides poisoning. How? Well, the World Health Organisation (WHO) tells us that some 20,000 people die every year from pesticide poisoning. Multiply that figure with 30 years (this is on a conservative scale, green revolution began around 1966-67), and you get the staggering death toll. Isn't that mass murder?


How could the USDA promote a technology all these years that killed 600,000 people worldwide?

Much of these pesticides were applied on cotton. Bt technology too is primarily commercialised for cotton. But by the time the world realises the grave mistake in promoting Bt cotton (for the sake of commercial profits of a handful of private companies), the farmers would have paid a price, as they did earlier with chemicals.


What is the way out?

Ask the farmers. The USDA needs to look closely at a remarkable turnaround brought about by a tiny village in the heart of the killing fields of Andhra Pradesh in India. This village has stopped using chemical pesticides and has therefore no need for Bt cotton, and therefore is not worried about pests. Isn't that the way forward? Isn't sustainable farming the best way forward? Haven't farmers all over the world proved that low external input agriculture is the best option to have a bountiful harvest without leaving a scr on environment?

Much of the agrarian crisis therefore is the result of such 'unwanted' and 'cost-intensive' technologies that have been forced on the farmers. Isn't it obvious that scientists were unknowingly trying to promote the commercial interests of the seed, tractor and the pesticides industry? Blindly introducing alien farm technologies without ascertaining its utility under the Indian farm conditions has cost the farmers dearly. In fact, the lure of such unwanted and expensive technologies, has fleeced the farming community. The savings from crop harvests have actually gone towards the cost of purchasing and maintenance of these irrelevant technologies. This has compounded the plight of the farming community thereby aggravating the farm crisis.

Politics of technology is no less tricky. It is time the politics behind the new agriculture technologies, including biotechnology and nano-technology, and farming systems like like 'contract farming' and corporate agriculture are first examined and analysed in depth before pushing it on to unsuspecting farmers. #


(The writer is a New Delhi-based food policy analyst)



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Close the Door on Escalation / Solomon

Close the Door on Escalation
by Norman Solomon

The Bush administration may ratchet up the Iraq war.

That might seem unlikely, even farfetched. After all, the president is facing an upsurge of domestic opposition to the war. Under such circumstances, why would he escalate it?

A big ongoing factor is that George W. Bush and his top aides seem to believe in red-white-and-blue violence with a fervor akin to religiosity. For them, the Pentagon's capacity to destroy is some kind of sacrament. And even if more troops aren't readily available for duty in Iraq, huge supplies of aircraft and missiles are available to step up the killing from the air.

Back in the USA, while the growth of antiwar sentiment is apparent, much of the criticism – especially what's spotlighted in news media – is based on distress that American casualties are continuing without any semblance of victory. In effect, many commentators see the problem as a grievous failure to kill enough of the bad guys in Iraq and sufficiently intimidate the rest.

(Bypassing the euphemisms preferred by many liberal pundits, George Will wrote in a Washington Post column on April 7, 2004, that "every door American troops crash through, every civilian bystander shot – there will be many – will make matters worse, for a while. Nevertheless, the first task of the occupation remains the first task of government: to establish a monopoly on violence.")

A lot of what sounds like opposition to the war is more like opposition to losing the war. Consider how Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Trudy Rubin concluded a piece on Sunday that disparaged Bush and his war policies. The column included eloquent, heartrending words from the mother of a Marine Corps Reserve member who died in Iraq early this year. And yet, the last quote from her was: "Tell us what it is going to take to win, Mr. Bush." In a tag line, the columnist described it as a question "we all need an answer to."

But some questions are based on assumptions that should be rejected – and "What is it going to take to win?" is one of them. In Iraq, the U.S. occupation force can't "win." More importantly, it has no legitimate right to try.

While leveling harsh criticisms at the White House, many analysts fault Bush for the absence of victory on the horizon. A plaintive theme has become familiar: The president deceived us before the invasion and has made a botch of the war since then, so leadership that will turn this war around is now desperately needed and long overdue.

Some on Capitol Hill, like Democrat Joseph Biden and Republican John McCain in the Senate, want more U.S. troops sent to Iraq. Others have different messages. "We should start figuring out how we get out of there," Chuck Hagel said on Sunday. He lamented: "By any standard, when you analyze two and a half years in Iraq … we're not winning." But a tactical departure motivated by alarm that "we're not winning" is likely to be very slow and very bloody.

In the Democratic Party's weekly radio address over the weekend, former senator Max Cleland said that "it's time for a strategy to win in Iraq or a strategy to get out."

Cleland's statement may have been focus-group tested, but it amounts to another permutation of what Martin Luther King Jr. called "the madness of militarism." All the talk about the urgent need for a strategy to win in Iraq amounts to approval for more U.S. leadership in mass slaughter. And the United States government does not need a "strategy" to get out of Iraq any more than a killer needs a strategy to stop killing.

"It is time to stand back and look at where we are going," independent journalist I. F. Stone wrote. "And to take a good look at ourselves. A first observation is that we can easily overestimate our national conscience. A major part of the protest against the war springs simply from the fact that we are losing it." Those words appeared in mid-February 1968. American combat troops remained in Vietnam for another five years.

It matters why people are critical of the U.S. war effort in Iraq. If the main objections stem from disappointment that American forces are not winning, then the warmakers in Washington retain the possibility of creating the illusion that they may yet find ways to make the war right.

Criticism of the war because it isn't being won leaves the door open for the Bush administration to sell the claim that – with enough resolve and better military tactics – the war can be vindicated. It's time to close that door.

Links referenced within this article

George Will wrote

http://www.townhall.com/columnists/georgewill/gw20040407.shtml

a piece on Sunday

http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0821-26.htm

He lamented

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uslatest/story/0,1282,-5224310,00.html

Max Cleland said

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory?id=1053046

Find this article at:

http://www.antiwar.com/solomon/?articleid=7045