By Jason Miller
The Fourth Estate is in a tumultous state of evolution. The public's trust in the integrity of the mainstream media has become severely tainted over the last several years, and justifiably so. As Dave Helling, a local television journalist in Kansas City with a long resume' of outstanding work, suggested in a recent ACLU seminar, America is undergoing a significant paradigm shift in the way in which consumers get their news. Alternative media sources on the Internet, and a phenomenon called blogging, pose a significant threat to the long-standing reign of the evening news, the daily newspapers, and even cable titans like CNN. Recent Nielsen ratings indicate that 75% of American homes now have an Internet connection. According to the Pew Research Firm, network news audiences diminished by 50% from 1993 to 2000, and have declined slightly since then. About 32% of Americans get their news regularly via the network news. In 1994, 58% of news consumers read daily, mainstream newspapers. That percentage has fallen to 42%. Meanwhile, the percentage of those regularly drawing news from the Internet has risen to 29%. 22 million Americans regularly read blogs, an integral part of the delivery of information through the Internet. The nascent Internet media is challenging traditional, mainstream forms of news delivery, and in turn freeing the Fourth Estate from its servitude to corporate and government interests.
Why would the Internet pose a threat to the mainstream news entities, commonly referred to as the liberal media? The notion of a "liberal media" is a myth created by the power moguls behind the mainstream media as a red herring to lull an unsuspecting public into actually believing that the Fourth Estate is still standing watch as a guardian of their freedom. 29 multi-national conglomerates own the media sources that account for nearly the entire audience for mainstream news broadcasts, and over half of newspaper readers. To appreciate the absurdity of calling the mainstream media "liberal", simply consider the fact that powerful corporations control most of the mainstream media. What are the motives of the corporate masters to whom our news censors (the editors) answer?
One answer is profit, and to achieve this profit, they need to maximize the number in their audience to satisfy their advertisers. Sensational stories draw viewers. The higher the shock value, the bigger the draw. The moral, spiritual, or historical impact an event has on the world holds little meaning to the "gods of information" in the mainstream media. What is more important is degree to which it will shock viewers and how it will feed a media-inspired narcissitic, insular worldview that America is more important than the rest of the world. If 300 children were to die in India due to chemical exposure caused by poor safety standards in a manufacturing facility, and Michael Jackson was found guilty of his alleged crimes on the same day, the mainstreamers would inundate us with the Jackson decision until we were drowning in it, while including the tragedy in India as a footnote. More eyeballs mean more money from advertisers, and the editors who determine what stories "make the cuts" ultimately answer to colossal corporations, which demand dividends or increases in share value for their stockholders through increased profitability. Thus, our mainstream news is censored to feed the corporate machine.
More important than profit is the mainstream media ownership's interest in preserving the dominance of the corporation over the individual. Starting in the 1950's, post World War II America entered into a period of mass consumption and consumerism that has moved us into a dark period of unparallelled avarice and obsession with materialism. The corporate owners of mass media utilize both mainstream news, and its accompanying advertising, to entice Americans to buy things they do not need and to create an image of who a person "should be" if they want to attain success (i.e. thin, straight, tough, beautiful, young, wealthy). Through the medium of television, corporations have a captive audience to mass market their goods and services to people who neither want or need them, but buy them because they are psychologically manipulated into doing so (think Saturday morning cartoons and toy commercials). Reaching millions of receptive minds at once, the corporate puppeteers have learned to perpetuate the paradigm of white male patriarchy and blind patriotism. The power of television, print and advertising enables the wealthy elite to perpetually employ a variety of propaganda tactics to maintain their hold on most of the wealth and power in our society. Meanwhile, the power of labor unions continues to wane, real wages decline, the wealth gap widens, the national debt skyrockets, social welfare programs are cut, taxes on the wealthy decline, and the military industrial complex, including Haliburton, reaps obscene profits as people bleed red to keep corporations out of the red.
Despite the limitations imposed by the First Amendment, America's federal government still manages to slide its tentacles into the mainstream media and influence the news we receive. A flagrant example is the recent rash of journalists on the Bush administration's payroll to promote the administration's agenda disguised as "news". The US government spends a great deal of money to accomadate journalists by providing them with meeting facilities, carefully orchestrated press conferences, and propaganda. Government funded think tanks that disseminate "news", carefully censored press releases by the Pentagon and White House, and the use of government-compensated "experts" as resources to validate news stories further attest to the federal government's corrupt influence on the news supplied by the mainstream media. Why would this be a surprise? Mainstream media and the federal government, particularly under the Bush administration, represent a match made in heaven. Their interests in seeing the predominating paradigm of mass consumption and white male patriarchy continue to prevail are inextricably linked.
While much of the mainstream media is corrupted by the influence of government and corporate interests, there are still mainstream journalists who practice a high degree of journalistic integrity, and who do challenge the prevailing social ideals with their stories and opinions. To make a sweeping dismissal of every journalist employed by a mainstream newspaper or television network would be both unrealistic and unfair. Once can point to numerous muck-raking stories aired on "60 Minutes" that expose government or corporate corruption as examples of truth-seeking in the public's interest, but even Mike Wallace and "60 Minutes" are constrained by corporate domination, as evidenced by the Jeffrey Wigand story. There are many well-intentioned journalists with high ideals working in the mainstream media, but as Dave Helling pointed out in the ACLU seminar I attended, they are becoming fewer and further between, and are often hand-cuffed by younger editors who are servile to corporate interests.
The Internet is the hammer and anvil with which one can shatter the shackles of psychological tyranny perpetrated by the likes of Fox, the Washington Times, and columnists like Jonah Goldberg. Media mavens such as Michelle Malkin pollute the minds of readers with ideas that are so emotionally-driven, devoid of logic, and packed with ringing endorsements of American hubris that that they leave critical thinkers who have a social conscience reeling with nausea. However, it is not difficult to visualize those who still believe that the mainstream media "preaches the gospel of truth" nodding their heads in silent assent as they read or listen to the abhorrent words of the likes of Anne Coulter. Mesmerized by the "power" of Anne's message, their thoughts might run like this:
"Yes, yes, Anne, the liberals are the scourge of the Earth, the cause of the numerous ills in our society, and above all, they control the media, and thus our minds. Thank God we have courageous conservatives like you to save us from moral decay that stems from atheism, socialism, and homosexuality."
The corporate ruling class does not tolerate assaults against the truths that "good Americans" hold to be self evident. They hire the Anne Coulters to preach the gospel that the Christian, white, straight male is the ideal, and that he rules the world.
If there is a "liberal media", it lies within the Internet. Americans now have unprecedented access to a smorgasbord of information. We are no longer limited to the steady, pre-determined diet of brain candy and propaganda served up by the mainstream media. The Internet is comprised of over two billion websites, providing a wealth of information drawn from almost unlimited resources that span the globe. A person can find still load up on brain candy to their heart's content on the Internet, but the Internet opens the mind to a rich plethora of solid nourishment for the brain. If knowledge is power, one's capacity to increase their power increases exponentially through navigation of the Internet for news and information. Search engines like Google and Dogpile are the sextant (or in today's world, GPS devices) to guide us through the oceans of information available on the Internet. With only a few keystrokes, one can access information on topics that span the spectrum of the human capacity to think and imagine. While responsible analysis of the source and content are necessities when sifting through some of the flotsam and jetsam of this ocean, if one is willing to do the work, the Internet's sea offers pearls of wisdom and treasures of knowledge that the limited scope of 30 minutes of television programming, or a limited number of print pages, could not begin to rival. If I watch ABC nightly news, I get one five minute synopsis of the events that unfolded in Iraq that day. If I go on the Internet, I can find hundreds of accountings and analyses produced by varying perspectives, cultures, news entities, nations, and individuals. As a consumer of news, I want to choose my sources, and my topics. The Internet allows me to do both. The mainstream media allows me to do neither.
The question is, can quality alternative news sources on the Internet continue to thrive without falling prey to the same ills as their corrupt mainstream counter parts? Many of the publications for which I write rely on free lance writers, like me, and on hard-working editors to contribute their efforts for no pay. They sustain their websites through donations and through a small amount of advertising. Many of these Internet publications share my writing's raison d' etre in that they believe in their cause and are willing to engage in it without monetary compensation. Their freedom from financial manipulation represents another refreshing distinction between many Internet news/oped entities, and those of the mainstream media. Hopefully, there are enough socially conscientious individuals to perpetuate the true "liberal media" by avoiding the pitfall of selling out to the elite. The last thing America needs to give the corporate elite is another means to assert psychological domination over the masses.
Wednesday, May 04, 2005
THE BIBLE IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS
By William Fisher
Despite numerous court setbacks and continuing challenges from civil liberties organizations, the religious right is stepping up its efforts to introduce the Bible into public school classrooms– and now claims that it is being used as a textbook in classes taught in 300 school districts nationwide.
One of the major providers of Bible teaching materials, the North Carolina-based National Council on Bible Curriculum in Public Schools, (NCBCPS) says it's "amazed at the snowball effect that is taking place across America" as more districts adopt the material.
The campaign seems to have gained significant momentum as the influence of the religious right has increased in the Republican Party over the past decade, and particularly since the 2004 presidential election.
Elizabeth Ridenour, NCBCPS's president, says, “The curriculum for the program shows a concern to convey the content of the Bible as compared to literature and history. The program is concerned with education rather than indoctrination of students. The central approach of the class is simply to study the Bible as a foundation document of society, and that approach is altogether appropriate in a comprehensive program of secular education.”
Civil liberties organizations take a decidedly different view. For example, the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida (ACLU) brought the first legal challenge to the introduction of the Bible into publicly-funded education by suing the school board in Lee County (Ft. Myers), Florida. A settlement was reached when the school board agreed to replace its Bible course with a “secular, objective and neutral” curriculum, and to use a college-level critical analysis of biblical scholarship, and permit monitoring of its classes by audiotape for approximately one year.
Howard Simon, ACLU Executive Director, told IPS, "While the Bible has a place in the public schools as part of a genuinely secular course of education, it cannot be taught as literal history." He added, "The Bible is a sacred text, not a history text.”
Another advocacy group, People for the American Way, agrees. Judith Schaeffer, PFAW’s Deputy Legal Director, told IPS, “This and other similar groups want to introduce only one version of the Bible – The King James version of the New Testament – ignoring the many versions accepted by others. Furthermore, they want to present this one version as ‘history’. It is not history.”
Ms. Ridenour says her organization's elective class, The Bible in History and Literature, “examines many aspects you wouldn't expect to find in a Sunday School class such as how the Bible influenced America's founding fathers, art, music and literature, including Shakespeare.” She is, however, referring to the King James version of the New Testament.
The separation of church and state is one of the cardinal principles embedded in the First Amendment to the US constitution. Two clauses in this section of the Bill of Rights guarantee freedom of religion. The ‘establishment clause’ prohibits the government from passing legislation to establish an official religion or preferring one religion over another. It enforces the separation of church and state. The ‘free exercise’ clause prohibits the government, in most instances, from interfering with a person’s practice of their religion.
But the high court has consistently upheld the teaching of the Bible as literature, as long as it is not employed for devotional purposes or indoctrination.
That, Ms. Ridenour says, is her organization’s goal. Opponents contend the opposite is true.
Says Howard Simon: “If you adopt a curriculum that disguises Bible stories suitable for Sunday school as literal history; if you try to address moral and character development by simply proselytizing young people with sectarian religious views; if you dismiss the constitutional requirements of separation of church and state in the public schools as a mere fiction of a tyrannical judiciary, you too will ineptly end up in court.”
Pursuing that agenda, civil liberties groups routinely write to school boards that have been asked to make Bible teaching part of their normal curricula. Their letters refer to court decisions upholding separation of church and state, and limitations placed on these courses by various courts.
Most school boards, they say, are grateful for the guidance and reject the curriculum proposed by organizations like the NCBCPS.
But Ms. Ridenour says about 1,000 high schools in 35 states are using material produced by her organization in classes during regular school hours. It claims that 93 percent of all the school boards it has approached to implement the curriculum have accepted it.
"This paradigm shift is not only taking place in the Bible Belt but in school districts in Alaska, California, across the board to Pennsylvania and down to Florida," her organization says.
However, it declines to provide a list of the school districts in which its course materials are being used.
Ms. Ridenour founded the NCBCPS in 1993. Her work has been endorsed by most of the better-known Christian fundamentalist and evangelical personalities and groups. She is a member of the highly-secretive Council on National Policy (CNP), founded in 1981 as an umbrella organization of right-wing leaders who gather regularly to plot strategy, share ideas and fund causes and candidates to advance the far-right agenda. Last year, the group gave an unannounced award to US Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, a conservative from Tennessee who is widely reported to be seeking the Republican nomination for president in 2008.
The NCBCPS Board of Directors includes a number of prominent members of the religious right. Among them is its general counsel, Steve Crampton, who believes that current IRS tax codes that prohibit not-for-profit organizations, such as religious organizations, from advocating particular political candidates or parties, “leaves churches unduly muzzled.”
The organization’s extensive Advisory Board includes conservative members of the US House and Senate, numerous state legislators, and large financial donors.
The NCBCPS sees a connection between a1963 court decision, when “the Bible largely was removed from classrooms” and “dramatic increases in unwed pregnancies, cases of sexually transmitted diseases, violent behavior and other social factors.”
The group says its updated 300-page curriculum and a new CD-Rom is already being requested by school districts.
.
Despite numerous court setbacks and continuing challenges from civil liberties organizations, the religious right is stepping up its efforts to introduce the Bible into public school classrooms– and now claims that it is being used as a textbook in classes taught in 300 school districts nationwide.
One of the major providers of Bible teaching materials, the North Carolina-based National Council on Bible Curriculum in Public Schools, (NCBCPS) says it's "amazed at the snowball effect that is taking place across America" as more districts adopt the material.
The campaign seems to have gained significant momentum as the influence of the religious right has increased in the Republican Party over the past decade, and particularly since the 2004 presidential election.
Elizabeth Ridenour, NCBCPS's president, says, “The curriculum for the program shows a concern to convey the content of the Bible as compared to literature and history. The program is concerned with education rather than indoctrination of students. The central approach of the class is simply to study the Bible as a foundation document of society, and that approach is altogether appropriate in a comprehensive program of secular education.”
Civil liberties organizations take a decidedly different view. For example, the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida (ACLU) brought the first legal challenge to the introduction of the Bible into publicly-funded education by suing the school board in Lee County (Ft. Myers), Florida. A settlement was reached when the school board agreed to replace its Bible course with a “secular, objective and neutral” curriculum, and to use a college-level critical analysis of biblical scholarship, and permit monitoring of its classes by audiotape for approximately one year.
Howard Simon, ACLU Executive Director, told IPS, "While the Bible has a place in the public schools as part of a genuinely secular course of education, it cannot be taught as literal history." He added, "The Bible is a sacred text, not a history text.”
Another advocacy group, People for the American Way, agrees. Judith Schaeffer, PFAW’s Deputy Legal Director, told IPS, “This and other similar groups want to introduce only one version of the Bible – The King James version of the New Testament – ignoring the many versions accepted by others. Furthermore, they want to present this one version as ‘history’. It is not history.”
Ms. Ridenour says her organization's elective class, The Bible in History and Literature, “examines many aspects you wouldn't expect to find in a Sunday School class such as how the Bible influenced America's founding fathers, art, music and literature, including Shakespeare.” She is, however, referring to the King James version of the New Testament.
The separation of church and state is one of the cardinal principles embedded in the First Amendment to the US constitution. Two clauses in this section of the Bill of Rights guarantee freedom of religion. The ‘establishment clause’ prohibits the government from passing legislation to establish an official religion or preferring one religion over another. It enforces the separation of church and state. The ‘free exercise’ clause prohibits the government, in most instances, from interfering with a person’s practice of their religion.
But the high court has consistently upheld the teaching of the Bible as literature, as long as it is not employed for devotional purposes or indoctrination.
That, Ms. Ridenour says, is her organization’s goal. Opponents contend the opposite is true.
Says Howard Simon: “If you adopt a curriculum that disguises Bible stories suitable for Sunday school as literal history; if you try to address moral and character development by simply proselytizing young people with sectarian religious views; if you dismiss the constitutional requirements of separation of church and state in the public schools as a mere fiction of a tyrannical judiciary, you too will ineptly end up in court.”
Pursuing that agenda, civil liberties groups routinely write to school boards that have been asked to make Bible teaching part of their normal curricula. Their letters refer to court decisions upholding separation of church and state, and limitations placed on these courses by various courts.
Most school boards, they say, are grateful for the guidance and reject the curriculum proposed by organizations like the NCBCPS.
But Ms. Ridenour says about 1,000 high schools in 35 states are using material produced by her organization in classes during regular school hours. It claims that 93 percent of all the school boards it has approached to implement the curriculum have accepted it.
"This paradigm shift is not only taking place in the Bible Belt but in school districts in Alaska, California, across the board to Pennsylvania and down to Florida," her organization says.
However, it declines to provide a list of the school districts in which its course materials are being used.
Ms. Ridenour founded the NCBCPS in 1993. Her work has been endorsed by most of the better-known Christian fundamentalist and evangelical personalities and groups. She is a member of the highly-secretive Council on National Policy (CNP), founded in 1981 as an umbrella organization of right-wing leaders who gather regularly to plot strategy, share ideas and fund causes and candidates to advance the far-right agenda. Last year, the group gave an unannounced award to US Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, a conservative from Tennessee who is widely reported to be seeking the Republican nomination for president in 2008.
The NCBCPS Board of Directors includes a number of prominent members of the religious right. Among them is its general counsel, Steve Crampton, who believes that current IRS tax codes that prohibit not-for-profit organizations, such as religious organizations, from advocating particular political candidates or parties, “leaves churches unduly muzzled.”
The organization’s extensive Advisory Board includes conservative members of the US House and Senate, numerous state legislators, and large financial donors.
The NCBCPS sees a connection between a1963 court decision, when “the Bible largely was removed from classrooms” and “dramatic increases in unwed pregnancies, cases of sexually transmitted diseases, violent behavior and other social factors.”
The group says its updated 300-page curriculum and a new CD-Rom is already being requested by school districts.
.
SCOPES REDUX: DÉJÀ VU ALL OVER AGAIN
By William Fisher
In the early 1920s, with many in the United States worried about losing traditional values to the secular modernism of ‘the jazz age’, the silver-tongued William Jennings Bryan -- three-time Democratic candidate for President -- led a Fundamentalist crusade to banish Charles Darwin’s 1859 theory of evolution from American classrooms.
Bryan’s movement was flush with success when, in 1925, a Tennessee court found John Scopes, a high school biology teacher, guilty of breaking a new law that made it illegal "to teach any theory that denies the story of divine creation as taught by the Bible and to teach instead that man was descended from a lower order of animals."
The case, publicized throughout the world, came to be known as ‘The Monkey Trial’. Scopes volunteered to be a test-case defendant after the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) announced that it would offer its services to anyone challenging the new Tennessee anti-evolution statute.
Famed attorney Clarence Darrow led the Scopes’ defense team. A carnival atmosphere permeated the tiny town of Dayton, Tennessee, as the trial proceeded.
And many in Dayton were angered and disappointed when the US Supreme Court overturned – on a technicality – the Scopes conviction, and the teaching of evolution was restored.
This week, however, it will be déjà vu all over again when the State of Kansas holds its own hearings on what school children should be taught about how life on Earth began.
The Kansas Board of Education originally set aside "six days of courtroom-style hearings” in the state capitol Topeka." The re-run of the Scopes trial was triggered by recent school board elections that gave religious conservatives majority control of the board.
Dozens of witnesses were called to testify and were to be "subject to cross-examination," The majority was "expected to argue against teaching evolution." The committee's minority bloc presented a list of 23 anti-evolution witnesses for the hearing, including a handful of scientists closely associated with the ‘intelligent design’ movement.
Attorney John Calvert, managing director of Kansas-based Intelligent Design Network – a group that supports the theory that "living creatures are too intricately designed to have come about randomly" – will push for a new school curriculum that would "encourage teachers to discuss various viewpoints and eliminate core evolution claims as required curriculum."
His opponent will be Pedro Irigonegaray, the Topeka attorney who will be making the argument that evolution is a valid science. Irigonegaray says he is in a state of shock. "I feel like I'm in a time warp here. To debate evolution is similar to debating whether the Earth is round. It is an absurd proposition," he told Reuters news service.
But attorney Calvert may welcome up empty: He may have no witnesses to cross examine –many prominent US scientific groups have denounced the debate as founded on fallacy and have promised to boycott the hearings.
Irigonegaray predicts the State Board of Education will face a lawsuit if it revises the state's science testing standards to include elements of ‘intelligent design’.
One of the key pro-Darwin witness groups, the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), has declined to send representatives. The organization believes the event is likely to sow confusion rather than understanding among the public.
In a letter to George Griffith, science consultant to the Kansas State
Department of Education, AAAS CEO Alan I. Leshner sided with the leaders
of the Kansas science community who have described the hearings as an effort by faith-based proponents of "intelligent design" theory to attack and undermine Science.”
The format and agenda of the hearing before the board's education subcommittee "suggests that the theory of evolution may be debated," wrote Leshner. "It implies that scientific conclusions are based on expert opinion rather than on data."
In an interview, Leshner told IPS, “These hearings create a false impression that science and religion are in opposition; they are not. Moreoer, they will confuse the question of whether evolution is widely accepted within the scientific community. There is no science base to the so-called theory of intelligent design, and it would not withstand any scientific criteria for even being called a theory. In science, a theory is not a "belief" — we don't believe or disbelieve a theory. We accept or reject theories based on scientific tests of them. Intelligent design is not a scientifically testable concept and therefore should not be taught in science classes.”
AAAS is the world's largest general science organization and the publisher of
the journal Science; Leshner also serves as the journal's executive publisher.
Leaders of the Kansas science community have also called for a boycott of the
hearing, and thus far, representatives of state and national science groups have
refused to testify. A group called Kansas Citizens for Science has called for the boycott, objecting to a "rigged hearing" in which anti-evolution Board of Education members "will appear to sit in judgment and find science lacking."
As a result, the hearings have now been reduced to a single day.
Kansas has been a focal point of efforts to restrict the teaching of evolution
in public schools. Proponents of ‘intelligent design’ theory hold that the
physical universe is so elaborate and complicated that its creation required a
sophisticated architect, and they are working to impose that theory in science
classrooms.
Debates over evolution are currently being waged in more than a dozen states, including Texas where one bill would allowing for creationism to be taught alongside evolution.
Critics, including virtually all of the science community, say the theory lacks any hard evidence and is a matter of faith. Evidence and proven facts are central to the scientific method, they say, and for that reason, faith has no place in a science classroom.
The Intelligent Design Network is a Kansas organization that argues the Earth was created through intentional design rather than random organism evolution.
The group is one of many that have been formed over the last several years to challenge the validity of evolutionary concepts and seek to open the schoolroom door to ideas that humans and other living creatures are too intricately designed to have come about randomly.
At the same time, adherents of the Christian fundamentalist right-wing, strengthened by the political muscle they flexed in the 2004 presidential election – and their growing power within the Republican Party – continue their attempts to make Bible study part of the curriculum in taxpayer-supported public schools.
In the early 1920s, with many in the United States worried about losing traditional values to the secular modernism of ‘the jazz age’, the silver-tongued William Jennings Bryan -- three-time Democratic candidate for President -- led a Fundamentalist crusade to banish Charles Darwin’s 1859 theory of evolution from American classrooms.
Bryan’s movement was flush with success when, in 1925, a Tennessee court found John Scopes, a high school biology teacher, guilty of breaking a new law that made it illegal "to teach any theory that denies the story of divine creation as taught by the Bible and to teach instead that man was descended from a lower order of animals."
The case, publicized throughout the world, came to be known as ‘The Monkey Trial’. Scopes volunteered to be a test-case defendant after the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) announced that it would offer its services to anyone challenging the new Tennessee anti-evolution statute.
Famed attorney Clarence Darrow led the Scopes’ defense team. A carnival atmosphere permeated the tiny town of Dayton, Tennessee, as the trial proceeded.
And many in Dayton were angered and disappointed when the US Supreme Court overturned – on a technicality – the Scopes conviction, and the teaching of evolution was restored.
This week, however, it will be déjà vu all over again when the State of Kansas holds its own hearings on what school children should be taught about how life on Earth began.
The Kansas Board of Education originally set aside "six days of courtroom-style hearings” in the state capitol Topeka." The re-run of the Scopes trial was triggered by recent school board elections that gave religious conservatives majority control of the board.
Dozens of witnesses were called to testify and were to be "subject to cross-examination," The majority was "expected to argue against teaching evolution." The committee's minority bloc presented a list of 23 anti-evolution witnesses for the hearing, including a handful of scientists closely associated with the ‘intelligent design’ movement.
Attorney John Calvert, managing director of Kansas-based Intelligent Design Network – a group that supports the theory that "living creatures are too intricately designed to have come about randomly" – will push for a new school curriculum that would "encourage teachers to discuss various viewpoints and eliminate core evolution claims as required curriculum."
His opponent will be Pedro Irigonegaray, the Topeka attorney who will be making the argument that evolution is a valid science. Irigonegaray says he is in a state of shock. "I feel like I'm in a time warp here. To debate evolution is similar to debating whether the Earth is round. It is an absurd proposition," he told Reuters news service.
But attorney Calvert may welcome up empty: He may have no witnesses to cross examine –many prominent US scientific groups have denounced the debate as founded on fallacy and have promised to boycott the hearings.
Irigonegaray predicts the State Board of Education will face a lawsuit if it revises the state's science testing standards to include elements of ‘intelligent design’.
One of the key pro-Darwin witness groups, the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), has declined to send representatives. The organization believes the event is likely to sow confusion rather than understanding among the public.
In a letter to George Griffith, science consultant to the Kansas State
Department of Education, AAAS CEO Alan I. Leshner sided with the leaders
of the Kansas science community who have described the hearings as an effort by faith-based proponents of "intelligent design" theory to attack and undermine Science.”
The format and agenda of the hearing before the board's education subcommittee "suggests that the theory of evolution may be debated," wrote Leshner. "It implies that scientific conclusions are based on expert opinion rather than on data."
In an interview, Leshner told IPS, “These hearings create a false impression that science and religion are in opposition; they are not. Moreoer, they will confuse the question of whether evolution is widely accepted within the scientific community. There is no science base to the so-called theory of intelligent design, and it would not withstand any scientific criteria for even being called a theory. In science, a theory is not a "belief" — we don't believe or disbelieve a theory. We accept or reject theories based on scientific tests of them. Intelligent design is not a scientifically testable concept and therefore should not be taught in science classes.”
AAAS is the world's largest general science organization and the publisher of
the journal Science; Leshner also serves as the journal's executive publisher.
Leaders of the Kansas science community have also called for a boycott of the
hearing, and thus far, representatives of state and national science groups have
refused to testify. A group called Kansas Citizens for Science has called for the boycott, objecting to a "rigged hearing" in which anti-evolution Board of Education members "will appear to sit in judgment and find science lacking."
As a result, the hearings have now been reduced to a single day.
Kansas has been a focal point of efforts to restrict the teaching of evolution
in public schools. Proponents of ‘intelligent design’ theory hold that the
physical universe is so elaborate and complicated that its creation required a
sophisticated architect, and they are working to impose that theory in science
classrooms.
Debates over evolution are currently being waged in more than a dozen states, including Texas where one bill would allowing for creationism to be taught alongside evolution.
Critics, including virtually all of the science community, say the theory lacks any hard evidence and is a matter of faith. Evidence and proven facts are central to the scientific method, they say, and for that reason, faith has no place in a science classroom.
The Intelligent Design Network is a Kansas organization that argues the Earth was created through intentional design rather than random organism evolution.
The group is one of many that have been formed over the last several years to challenge the validity of evolutionary concepts and seek to open the schoolroom door to ideas that humans and other living creatures are too intricately designed to have come about randomly.
At the same time, adherents of the Christian fundamentalist right-wing, strengthened by the political muscle they flexed in the 2004 presidential election – and their growing power within the Republican Party – continue their attempts to make Bible study part of the curriculum in taxpayer-supported public schools.
Saturday, April 30, 2005
WORLD PRESS FREEDOM DAY
William Fisher
Recent polling data shows that most Americans think their press is the freest in the world – indeed, some believe it is too free. But according to a new report by Freedom House, a highly respected civil liberties advocacy group, the US is among countries that have experienced “notable setbacks” in press freedom.
"Freedom of the Press 2005: A Global Survey of Media Independence," revealed that the US ranked 17th among a group of 194 countries, behind Costa Rica.
The report said the US score declined due to “a number of legal cases in which prosecutors sought to compel journalists to reveal sources or turn over notes or other material they had gathered in the course of investigations.”
It declared, “Doubts concerning official influence over media content emerged with the disclosures that several political commentators received grants from federal agencies, and that the Bush administration had significantly increased the practice of distributing government-produced news segments.”
The survey was produced by asking journalists, researchers and legal experts to answer 50 questions covering a wide range of press freedom violations.
Of the 194 countries and territories examined, 75 (39 percent) were rated ‘Free’, 50 (26 percent) were rated ‘Partly Free’ and 69 (35 percent) were rated ‘Not Free’. The freest nations in 2004 were Finland, Iceland, and Sweden. At the very bottom of the list was North Korea, followed by Burma (Myanmar), Cuba, and Turkmenistan.
The second reason for the poorer showing by the US, the Freedom House report claims, is the government’s practice of paying journalists to espouse Administration positions without identifying their government sponsors.
In one case, the administration -- seeking to build support among black families for its education reform plans -- paid a prominent African American pundit, Armstrong Williams, 240,000 dollars to promote the ”No Child Left Behind” law on his nationally syndicated television show and through his newspaper column, and to urge other black journalists to do the same.
Other nationally known journalists have also admitted accepting thousands of dollars to endorse government programs.
In addition, the government has been producing Video News Releases (VNRs) – pre-packaged to look like independent news – and distributing them to local television stations across the US. The stations frequently fail to identify the government as the source, thus encouraging viewers to believe they are watching genuine news. More than 20 different federal agencies have used taxpayer funds to produce television news segments promoting Bush administration policies.
Pres. Bush has defended the government's sending such ”pre-packaged news stories” to local television stations and says he plans to continue the practice. The Government Accountability Office (GAO), the Congressional watchdog agency, has called them a form of “covert propaganda”.
”Paying journalists to write positive stories is part of a pattern of secrecy and manipulating the public that undermines our safety and our democracy”, Steven Aftergood, who runs the Project on Government Secrecy for the Federation of American Scientists, told IPS.
Rick Blum of OpenTheGovernment.org, another pro-transparency advocacy group, told IPS, ”The public expects journalists are credible and independent, free of government money and conflicts of interest.”
Norman Solomon, a syndicated columnist on media and politics and founder of the Institute for Public Accuracy, said in an interview with IPS, ”The 'video news releases' put out by the US government are pernicious because the TV broadcasts often do not tell the viewers that the government is funding and controlling those supposed 'news' reports.”
And Martin Kaplan, head of the Lear Center at the University of Southern California's Annenberg School for Communication, told IPS. ”The consequence of their injecting fake news into the media mainstream may be even worse than poisoning public debate on specific issues. It corrodes the ability of real journalism to do its job.”
But, media critics say, there are many other factors at play in the diminution of press freedom in the US. A major threat, they say, is the Bush Administration’s excessive secrecy.
Bill Moyers, who recently retired as one of America’s most respected broadcast journalists and who was press secretary to President Lyndon B. Johnson when Johnson signed the Freedom of Information Act, charges that President Bush) “has clamped a lid on public access.”
Since Bush entered office, there has been a more than 75 percent increase in the amount of government information classified as secret each year. There has been a corresponding explosion in the number of requests for information under Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).
FOIA was signed into law by President Johnson in 1966 to increase public access to federal government records.
Dr. Charles N. Davis, Associate Professor and Executive Director of the Freedom of Information Center at the University of Missouri School of Journalism, told IPS, “Press freedom in the US is experiencing some dark days, as government at all levels seems content to turn its back on cherished freedoms in favor of administrative expediency, executive privilege and propaganda. Its embrace of secrecy to the point of caricature is but a symptom of the broader disease: this is a government with absolutely no respect for the role of the press in a democracy.”
Another critic, Dr. Jack N. Behrman, a former assistant secretary of commerce, told IPS, “The present Administration has cowed the American media to the point where many dare not oppose public policies or particularly those proposed. Our government avowedly promotes freedom abroad but has sought successfully to limit it in the US through secrecy and manipulation of the media."
Journalists complain that Administration secrecy has greatly increased the difficulty of accurately reporting the Bush White House. According to US News and World Report, the Administration has “quietly but efficiently dropped a shroud of secrecy across many critical operations of the federal government --cloaking its own affairs from scrutiny and removing from the public domain important information on health, safety, and environmental matters. The result has been a reversal of a decades-long trend of openness in government…”
White House spokespersons have said repeatedly that the administration policy toward the media is honest and transparent.
But there are many other factors at play in the erosion of press freedom – and the difficulties faced by journalists trying to report the facts -- in the US. For example:
Recent polls suggest the public has little confidence in the integrity of the media.
The growth of cable TV’s 24-hour news cycle has often blurred the line between news, commentary and entertainment. It has also become increasingly ideological.
Demographic changes have cut audiences for newspapers and ‘the nightly news’ broadcasts, and increased the use of cable and the Internet as primary sources for news.
Increasing concentration of media ownership is also playing a role in reducing news sources for Americans. There are only a few cities left in the US with more than one newspaper. And ‘local’ television stations often get their news from a centralized source far from the location of the viewer.
In the US, two journalists, Judith Miller of the New York Times, and Matthew Cooper of TIME Magazine, are facing prison sentences for refusing to reveal their sources in a high-profile case in which the name of a covert CIA agent was publicly revealed. Neither Miller nor Cooper ever wrote articles about the case – a Chicago Sun Times syndicated columnist, Robert Novak, named the agent in print. But the government is demanding that Miller and Cooper turn over any information they have. The journalists have lost their appeals in lower courts, and will now take their case to the Supreme Court.
A number of recent surveys suggest Americans take their first amendment freedoms for granted. For example, more than a third of US high school students think the First Amendment – which protects freedom of speech -- goes too far in the rights it guarantees, according to a survey carried out last year by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.
Recent polling data shows that most Americans think their press is the freest in the world – indeed, some believe it is too free. But according to a new report by Freedom House, a highly respected civil liberties advocacy group, the US is among countries that have experienced “notable setbacks” in press freedom.
"Freedom of the Press 2005: A Global Survey of Media Independence," revealed that the US ranked 17th among a group of 194 countries, behind Costa Rica.
The report said the US score declined due to “a number of legal cases in which prosecutors sought to compel journalists to reveal sources or turn over notes or other material they had gathered in the course of investigations.”
It declared, “Doubts concerning official influence over media content emerged with the disclosures that several political commentators received grants from federal agencies, and that the Bush administration had significantly increased the practice of distributing government-produced news segments.”
The survey was produced by asking journalists, researchers and legal experts to answer 50 questions covering a wide range of press freedom violations.
Of the 194 countries and territories examined, 75 (39 percent) were rated ‘Free’, 50 (26 percent) were rated ‘Partly Free’ and 69 (35 percent) were rated ‘Not Free’. The freest nations in 2004 were Finland, Iceland, and Sweden. At the very bottom of the list was North Korea, followed by Burma (Myanmar), Cuba, and Turkmenistan.
The second reason for the poorer showing by the US, the Freedom House report claims, is the government’s practice of paying journalists to espouse Administration positions without identifying their government sponsors.
In one case, the administration -- seeking to build support among black families for its education reform plans -- paid a prominent African American pundit, Armstrong Williams, 240,000 dollars to promote the ”No Child Left Behind” law on his nationally syndicated television show and through his newspaper column, and to urge other black journalists to do the same.
Other nationally known journalists have also admitted accepting thousands of dollars to endorse government programs.
In addition, the government has been producing Video News Releases (VNRs) – pre-packaged to look like independent news – and distributing them to local television stations across the US. The stations frequently fail to identify the government as the source, thus encouraging viewers to believe they are watching genuine news. More than 20 different federal agencies have used taxpayer funds to produce television news segments promoting Bush administration policies.
Pres. Bush has defended the government's sending such ”pre-packaged news stories” to local television stations and says he plans to continue the practice. The Government Accountability Office (GAO), the Congressional watchdog agency, has called them a form of “covert propaganda”.
”Paying journalists to write positive stories is part of a pattern of secrecy and manipulating the public that undermines our safety and our democracy”, Steven Aftergood, who runs the Project on Government Secrecy for the Federation of American Scientists, told IPS.
Rick Blum of OpenTheGovernment.org, another pro-transparency advocacy group, told IPS, ”The public expects journalists are credible and independent, free of government money and conflicts of interest.”
Norman Solomon, a syndicated columnist on media and politics and founder of the Institute for Public Accuracy, said in an interview with IPS, ”The 'video news releases' put out by the US government are pernicious because the TV broadcasts often do not tell the viewers that the government is funding and controlling those supposed 'news' reports.”
And Martin Kaplan, head of the Lear Center at the University of Southern California's Annenberg School for Communication, told IPS. ”The consequence of their injecting fake news into the media mainstream may be even worse than poisoning public debate on specific issues. It corrodes the ability of real journalism to do its job.”
But, media critics say, there are many other factors at play in the diminution of press freedom in the US. A major threat, they say, is the Bush Administration’s excessive secrecy.
Bill Moyers, who recently retired as one of America’s most respected broadcast journalists and who was press secretary to President Lyndon B. Johnson when Johnson signed the Freedom of Information Act, charges that President Bush) “has clamped a lid on public access.”
Since Bush entered office, there has been a more than 75 percent increase in the amount of government information classified as secret each year. There has been a corresponding explosion in the number of requests for information under Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).
FOIA was signed into law by President Johnson in 1966 to increase public access to federal government records.
Dr. Charles N. Davis, Associate Professor and Executive Director of the Freedom of Information Center at the University of Missouri School of Journalism, told IPS, “Press freedom in the US is experiencing some dark days, as government at all levels seems content to turn its back on cherished freedoms in favor of administrative expediency, executive privilege and propaganda. Its embrace of secrecy to the point of caricature is but a symptom of the broader disease: this is a government with absolutely no respect for the role of the press in a democracy.”
Another critic, Dr. Jack N. Behrman, a former assistant secretary of commerce, told IPS, “The present Administration has cowed the American media to the point where many dare not oppose public policies or particularly those proposed. Our government avowedly promotes freedom abroad but has sought successfully to limit it in the US through secrecy and manipulation of the media."
Journalists complain that Administration secrecy has greatly increased the difficulty of accurately reporting the Bush White House. According to US News and World Report, the Administration has “quietly but efficiently dropped a shroud of secrecy across many critical operations of the federal government --cloaking its own affairs from scrutiny and removing from the public domain important information on health, safety, and environmental matters. The result has been a reversal of a decades-long trend of openness in government…”
White House spokespersons have said repeatedly that the administration policy toward the media is honest and transparent.
But there are many other factors at play in the erosion of press freedom – and the difficulties faced by journalists trying to report the facts -- in the US. For example:
Recent polls suggest the public has little confidence in the integrity of the media.
The growth of cable TV’s 24-hour news cycle has often blurred the line between news, commentary and entertainment. It has also become increasingly ideological.
Demographic changes have cut audiences for newspapers and ‘the nightly news’ broadcasts, and increased the use of cable and the Internet as primary sources for news.
Increasing concentration of media ownership is also playing a role in reducing news sources for Americans. There are only a few cities left in the US with more than one newspaper. And ‘local’ television stations often get their news from a centralized source far from the location of the viewer.
In the US, two journalists, Judith Miller of the New York Times, and Matthew Cooper of TIME Magazine, are facing prison sentences for refusing to reveal their sources in a high-profile case in which the name of a covert CIA agent was publicly revealed. Neither Miller nor Cooper ever wrote articles about the case – a Chicago Sun Times syndicated columnist, Robert Novak, named the agent in print. But the government is demanding that Miller and Cooper turn over any information they have. The journalists have lost their appeals in lower courts, and will now take their case to the Supreme Court.
A number of recent surveys suggest Americans take their first amendment freedoms for granted. For example, more than a third of US high school students think the First Amendment – which protects freedom of speech -- goes too far in the rights it guarantees, according to a survey carried out last year by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.
Thursday, April 28, 2005
YOUR TAX DOLLARS AT WORK
By William Fisher
It’s truly comforting to know that, even in the grip of post-9/11 paranoia, the G-men of the FBI are still using their resources efficiently.
If you have any doubts, just ask Steve Kurtz. He is living proof that your tax dollars are hard at work.
A year ago this month, Steve’s wife, Hope, died of a heart attack in Buffalo, New York. Steve called 911. Police and emergency medical services responded.
What the police saw when they got to the Kurtz home, aside from Mrs. Kurtz’s body and a distraught husband, were vials, bacterial cultures, and an assortment of laboratory equipment, including a mobile DNA extracting machine used for testing food products for genetic contamination.
Kurtz, an art professor at the University of Buffalo, explained to the police that these were some of the materials for an art exhibit he and his wife had been preparing on genetic modification. The Kurtzes were founders of an avant garde group called “The Critical Art Ensemble”, a collective of "tactical media" protest and performance artists.
Kurtz told the cops his art has focused on the problems of the emergence of biotechnology, such as genetically modified food. He and the art ensemble have published several books including "Digital Resistance: Explorations in Tactical Media" and "Electronic Civil Disobedience and Other Unpopular Ideas."
The police didn’t buy his story. They called the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Before long, a team arrived from Quantico, Virginia, in full HAZMAT gear, and began searching and testing. Erie County health officials declared the Kurtz home a potential health risk and sealed it for two days while a state lab examined the bacterial cultures found inside. They confiscated Mrs. Kurtz’s body, and Steve's computer, notebooks, art supplies and cat. They cordoned off the street, quarantined the Kurtz home, and took Steve to a hotel, where the FBI and the Joint Terrorism Task Force questioned him for two days.
Meanwhile, the special agent in charge of the Buffalo FBI office gave interviews to the press.
Officials declined to disclose what was examined and what was found. But the New York State Commissioner of Public Health tested samples from the home and announced there was no public safety threat.
Steve was released and allowed to go home.
But your tax-dollars-at-work didn’t stop there. Federal authorities obviously thought there must be something illegal in the Kurtz home, because prosecutors subsequently convened a grand jury, with Kurtz as its target. But instead of charging him with bioterrorism, he was indicted for mail and wire fraud, charges normally used against those defrauding others of money or property, as in telemarketing schemes.
Also indicted was Robert Ferrell, head of the Department of Genetics at the University of Pittsburgh's School of Public Health, who helped Kurtz obtain the $256 worth of harmless bacteria for one of his art projects.
Now, the FBI is once again seeking charges under the US Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989, as expanded by the USA PATRIOT Act - charges which a previous grand jury appeared to reject last summer when they handed down indictments for mail and wire fraud. There has been no decision from the grand jury as yet.
Kurtz’s lawyer has moved to have all charges dismissed, and no trial date has yet been set.
But, while Kurtz and Ferrell await trial – and try to raise money for their legal defense fund -- FBI agents have been using your tax dollars to talk with everyone ever connected with Kurtz -- museum curators in Massachusetts and the state of Washington, colleagues in New York and California, current students at Buffalo – maybe even the cat.
The Justice Department will not comment on the case. Supporters say the government is trying “to make their own initial overreaction to the confused call for help from the first responders seem anything but foolish overkill.”
Now, I’ve never seen any of the Kurtz art. I might hate it. But it’s a stretch to think I would end up being poisoned by it.
Feel better now?
It’s truly comforting to know that, even in the grip of post-9/11 paranoia, the G-men of the FBI are still using their resources efficiently.
If you have any doubts, just ask Steve Kurtz. He is living proof that your tax dollars are hard at work.
A year ago this month, Steve’s wife, Hope, died of a heart attack in Buffalo, New York. Steve called 911. Police and emergency medical services responded.
What the police saw when they got to the Kurtz home, aside from Mrs. Kurtz’s body and a distraught husband, were vials, bacterial cultures, and an assortment of laboratory equipment, including a mobile DNA extracting machine used for testing food products for genetic contamination.
Kurtz, an art professor at the University of Buffalo, explained to the police that these were some of the materials for an art exhibit he and his wife had been preparing on genetic modification. The Kurtzes were founders of an avant garde group called “The Critical Art Ensemble”, a collective of "tactical media" protest and performance artists.
Kurtz told the cops his art has focused on the problems of the emergence of biotechnology, such as genetically modified food. He and the art ensemble have published several books including "Digital Resistance: Explorations in Tactical Media" and "Electronic Civil Disobedience and Other Unpopular Ideas."
The police didn’t buy his story. They called the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Before long, a team arrived from Quantico, Virginia, in full HAZMAT gear, and began searching and testing. Erie County health officials declared the Kurtz home a potential health risk and sealed it for two days while a state lab examined the bacterial cultures found inside. They confiscated Mrs. Kurtz’s body, and Steve's computer, notebooks, art supplies and cat. They cordoned off the street, quarantined the Kurtz home, and took Steve to a hotel, where the FBI and the Joint Terrorism Task Force questioned him for two days.
Meanwhile, the special agent in charge of the Buffalo FBI office gave interviews to the press.
Officials declined to disclose what was examined and what was found. But the New York State Commissioner of Public Health tested samples from the home and announced there was no public safety threat.
Steve was released and allowed to go home.
But your tax-dollars-at-work didn’t stop there. Federal authorities obviously thought there must be something illegal in the Kurtz home, because prosecutors subsequently convened a grand jury, with Kurtz as its target. But instead of charging him with bioterrorism, he was indicted for mail and wire fraud, charges normally used against those defrauding others of money or property, as in telemarketing schemes.
Also indicted was Robert Ferrell, head of the Department of Genetics at the University of Pittsburgh's School of Public Health, who helped Kurtz obtain the $256 worth of harmless bacteria for one of his art projects.
Now, the FBI is once again seeking charges under the US Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989, as expanded by the USA PATRIOT Act - charges which a previous grand jury appeared to reject last summer when they handed down indictments for mail and wire fraud. There has been no decision from the grand jury as yet.
Kurtz’s lawyer has moved to have all charges dismissed, and no trial date has yet been set.
But, while Kurtz and Ferrell await trial – and try to raise money for their legal defense fund -- FBI agents have been using your tax dollars to talk with everyone ever connected with Kurtz -- museum curators in Massachusetts and the state of Washington, colleagues in New York and California, current students at Buffalo – maybe even the cat.
The Justice Department will not comment on the case. Supporters say the government is trying “to make their own initial overreaction to the confused call for help from the first responders seem anything but foolish overkill.”
Now, I’ve never seen any of the Kurtz art. I might hate it. But it’s a stretch to think I would end up being poisoned by it.
Feel better now?
THE ART OF THE FBI
William Fisher
A year ago next month, Hope Kurtz died of a heart attack in Buffalo, New York. Her husband, Steve, an art professor at the University of Buffalo, called 911. Police and emergency medical services responded. What has happened to Steve Kurtz since then may be symbolic of the paranoia that has gripped the United States since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.
What the police saw when they got to the Kurtz home, aside from Mrs. Kurtz’s body and a distraught husband, were vials, bacterial cultures, and an assortment of laboratory equipment, including a mobile DNA extracting machine used for testing food products for genetic contamination.
Kurtz explained to the police that these were some of the materials for an art exhibit he and his wife had been preparing on genetic modification. The Kurtzes were founders of a group called “The Critical Art Ensemble”, a collective of "tactical media" protest and performance artists.
Kurtz told the cops he has focused on the problems of the emergence of
biotechnology, such as genetically modified food. He and the art ensemble have published several books including "Digital Resistance: Explorations in Tactical Media" and "Electronic Civil Disobedience and Other Unpopular Ideas."
The police didn’t buy his story. They called the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Before long, a team arrived from Quantico, Virginia, in full HAZMAT gear, and began searching and testing. Erie County health officials declared the Kurtz home a potential health risk and sealed it for two days while a state lab examined the bacterial cultures found inside. They confiscated Mrs. Kurtz’s body, and Steve's computer, notebooks, art supplies and cat. They cordoned off the street, quarantined the Kurtz home, and took Steve Kurtz to a hotel, where the FBI questioned him for two days. Meanwhile, the special agent in charge of the Buffalo FBI office gave interviews to the press.
Officials declined to disclose what was examined and what was found, but eventually made it known that there was no danger to public health, and Kurtz was allowed to move back to his home.
But federal authorities obviously thought something in the Kurtz home was
Illegal, because prosecutors subsequently convened a grand jury, with Kurtz as its target. But instead of charging him with bioterrorism, he was indicted for mail and wire fraud, charges normally used against those defrauding others of money or property, as in telemarketing schemes.
Also indicted was Robert Ferrell, head of the Department of Genetics at the University of Pittsburgh's School of Public Health. The charges concern technicalities of how Ferrell helped Kurtz obtain $256 worth of harmless bacteria for one of Kurtz's art projects.
Kurtz’s supporters – most of whom refused to testify to the Grand Jury -- believe the attempt to cast the $256 technicality as a public health and safety issue is a face-saving measure by the government, which has already spent a considerable amount of time and money in their pursuit of this case.
No trial date has yet been set, and Kurtz’s lawyer has moved to have all charges dismissed. Meanwhile, FBI agents have been talking with people connected with Kurtz. They have reportedly interviewed museum curators in Massachusetts and the state of Washington, colleagues in New York and California, and current students at Buffalo.
The Justice Department will not comment on the case. Supporters say the government is inflating the case “to make their own initial overreaction to the confused call for help from the first responders seem anything but foolish overkill.”
If that’s true, it would not be the first time it’s happened since 9/11.
David Cole, a professor at Georgetown University Law Center and an internationally recognized legal authority on civil liberties, told IPS, “Not one person of the more than 5,000 locked up as a foreign national in preventive detention by John Ashcroft was ever convicted of a terrorist crime. The only convictions have been of U.S. citizens. (Former Attorney General) John Ashcroft labeled them as suspected terrorists, but it turned out they had nothing to do with terrorism whatsoever.“
Cole recalls that on September 2, 2004, “a federal judge in Detroit threw out the only jury conviction the Justice Department has obtained on a terrorism charge since 9/11.”
In October 2001, he adds, “shortly after the men were initially arrested, Ashcroft heralded the case in a national press conference as evidence of the success of his anti-terror campaign. The indictment alleged that the defendants were associated with Al Qaeda and planning terrorist attacks”.
But Ashcroft, he recalls, “held no news conference in September when the case was dismissed, nor did he offer any apologies to the defendants who had spent nearly three years in jail.”
The Detroit case was dismissed at the request of the DOJ because the prosecution failed to disclose to the defense evidence that other government experts did not consider the sketches and videotape to be terrorist casing materials at all and that the government's key witness had admitted to lying.
“When the Attorney General was locking these men up in the immediate wake of the (9/11) attacks”, Cole says, “he held almost daily press conferences to announce how many ‘suspected terrorists’ had been detained. No press conference has been forthcoming to announce that exactly none of them have turned out to be actual terrorists.”
The DOJ has brought several other high-profile prosecutions. Among them is the case of “The Lackawanna Six”. Arrested in the Yemeni community of this old steel town in upstate New York, the six young men were charged under the federal anti-terrorism statute with providing material support to al-Quaida, which, prior to September 11, 2001, had been designated by the Secretary of State as a “foreign terrorist organization.”
Specifically, the men were charged with providing “material support” in the form of training. The training consisted of paying for a uniform, attending the training camp where they learned to use weapons, and standing guard duty. The charges against them also specified viewing videotapes of the bombing of the USS Cole and speeches by Osama Bin-Laden.
None of the defendants engaged in acts that were, at the time, obviously criminal in nature. It was not until several months after their return from Afghanistan that planes crashed into the World Trade Center. The six young men agree to plead guilty to providing "material support" to al Qaeda. Prosecutors said the defendants belonged to a terrorist "sleeper cell." The defendants claim they pled guilty because the FBI threatened to send them to Guantanamo Bay.
A year ago next month, Hope Kurtz died of a heart attack in Buffalo, New York. Her husband, Steve, an art professor at the University of Buffalo, called 911. Police and emergency medical services responded. What has happened to Steve Kurtz since then may be symbolic of the paranoia that has gripped the United States since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.
What the police saw when they got to the Kurtz home, aside from Mrs. Kurtz’s body and a distraught husband, were vials, bacterial cultures, and an assortment of laboratory equipment, including a mobile DNA extracting machine used for testing food products for genetic contamination.
Kurtz explained to the police that these were some of the materials for an art exhibit he and his wife had been preparing on genetic modification. The Kurtzes were founders of a group called “The Critical Art Ensemble”, a collective of "tactical media" protest and performance artists.
Kurtz told the cops he has focused on the problems of the emergence of
biotechnology, such as genetically modified food. He and the art ensemble have published several books including "Digital Resistance: Explorations in Tactical Media" and "Electronic Civil Disobedience and Other Unpopular Ideas."
The police didn’t buy his story. They called the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Before long, a team arrived from Quantico, Virginia, in full HAZMAT gear, and began searching and testing. Erie County health officials declared the Kurtz home a potential health risk and sealed it for two days while a state lab examined the bacterial cultures found inside. They confiscated Mrs. Kurtz’s body, and Steve's computer, notebooks, art supplies and cat. They cordoned off the street, quarantined the Kurtz home, and took Steve Kurtz to a hotel, where the FBI questioned him for two days. Meanwhile, the special agent in charge of the Buffalo FBI office gave interviews to the press.
Officials declined to disclose what was examined and what was found, but eventually made it known that there was no danger to public health, and Kurtz was allowed to move back to his home.
But federal authorities obviously thought something in the Kurtz home was
Illegal, because prosecutors subsequently convened a grand jury, with Kurtz as its target. But instead of charging him with bioterrorism, he was indicted for mail and wire fraud, charges normally used against those defrauding others of money or property, as in telemarketing schemes.
Also indicted was Robert Ferrell, head of the Department of Genetics at the University of Pittsburgh's School of Public Health. The charges concern technicalities of how Ferrell helped Kurtz obtain $256 worth of harmless bacteria for one of Kurtz's art projects.
Kurtz’s supporters – most of whom refused to testify to the Grand Jury -- believe the attempt to cast the $256 technicality as a public health and safety issue is a face-saving measure by the government, which has already spent a considerable amount of time and money in their pursuit of this case.
No trial date has yet been set, and Kurtz’s lawyer has moved to have all charges dismissed. Meanwhile, FBI agents have been talking with people connected with Kurtz. They have reportedly interviewed museum curators in Massachusetts and the state of Washington, colleagues in New York and California, and current students at Buffalo.
The Justice Department will not comment on the case. Supporters say the government is inflating the case “to make their own initial overreaction to the confused call for help from the first responders seem anything but foolish overkill.”
If that’s true, it would not be the first time it’s happened since 9/11.
David Cole, a professor at Georgetown University Law Center and an internationally recognized legal authority on civil liberties, told IPS, “Not one person of the more than 5,000 locked up as a foreign national in preventive detention by John Ashcroft was ever convicted of a terrorist crime. The only convictions have been of U.S. citizens. (Former Attorney General) John Ashcroft labeled them as suspected terrorists, but it turned out they had nothing to do with terrorism whatsoever.“
Cole recalls that on September 2, 2004, “a federal judge in Detroit threw out the only jury conviction the Justice Department has obtained on a terrorism charge since 9/11.”
In October 2001, he adds, “shortly after the men were initially arrested, Ashcroft heralded the case in a national press conference as evidence of the success of his anti-terror campaign. The indictment alleged that the defendants were associated with Al Qaeda and planning terrorist attacks”.
But Ashcroft, he recalls, “held no news conference in September when the case was dismissed, nor did he offer any apologies to the defendants who had spent nearly three years in jail.”
The Detroit case was dismissed at the request of the DOJ because the prosecution failed to disclose to the defense evidence that other government experts did not consider the sketches and videotape to be terrorist casing materials at all and that the government's key witness had admitted to lying.
“When the Attorney General was locking these men up in the immediate wake of the (9/11) attacks”, Cole says, “he held almost daily press conferences to announce how many ‘suspected terrorists’ had been detained. No press conference has been forthcoming to announce that exactly none of them have turned out to be actual terrorists.”
The DOJ has brought several other high-profile prosecutions. Among them is the case of “The Lackawanna Six”. Arrested in the Yemeni community of this old steel town in upstate New York, the six young men were charged under the federal anti-terrorism statute with providing material support to al-Quaida, which, prior to September 11, 2001, had been designated by the Secretary of State as a “foreign terrorist organization.”
Specifically, the men were charged with providing “material support” in the form of training. The training consisted of paying for a uniform, attending the training camp where they learned to use weapons, and standing guard duty. The charges against them also specified viewing videotapes of the bombing of the USS Cole and speeches by Osama Bin-Laden.
None of the defendants engaged in acts that were, at the time, obviously criminal in nature. It was not until several months after their return from Afghanistan that planes crashed into the World Trade Center. The six young men agree to plead guilty to providing "material support" to al Qaeda. Prosecutors said the defendants belonged to a terrorist "sleeper cell." The defendants claim they pled guilty because the FBI threatened to send them to Guantanamo Bay.
Take the Red Pill
By Jason Miller
Why are we here? An eternal philosophical question that has no simple or universal answer, and can be asked collectively or individually. Perhaps equally important, yet more individual in nature is the mystery of who we are. Many people spend virtually entire lives with few answers to either fundamental human question, either collectively or individually. Why don't they pursue a deeper understanding of the foundations of their humanity? Why do they shun or avoid a path that would lead to deeper spiritual and intellectual fulfillment, and at the same time enhance our world? Are they apathetic and lazy? Is there a fundamental lack of desire for self actualization and individual freedom in these people? Once could make that argument, but I doubt it. Just as the Matrix offered a pleasant fiction to humans in exchange for their subordination to the machine world, American society offers such an "opiate to the masses" in a variety of forms through a variety of channels.
From a young age, American society bludgeons the individuality out of us. The natural human instinct to self actualize through finding a deep-seated sense of self and sense of purpose is shunted by Madison Avenue, think tanks, political propaganda, government-manipulated mainstream media, churches that manipulate through fear, and a patriarchal system that continues to ensure the dominance of white males.
Corporations like Wal-Mart, McDonalds, and Microsoft have staked their claim on the economic landscape, and continue to steamroll the competition in their insatiable quest to expand. They have created a sterile, mundane uniformity in how people shop, eat and use their computers. A person can save $20.00 per week by shopping at Wal-Mart, buying goods imported from China and stocked by Wal-Mart employees making sub-standard wages, and receiving sub-standard benefits. Meanwhile the locally owned vendors go under, further guaranteeing Wal-Mart's dominance in the marketplace, and further enhancing the role of the big yellow smiley face as a cultural icon. As the economy slips into a depression, the overwhelming monotony of shopping, the only store in town, becomes nauseating. Where do 99% of children under the age of ten want to go when it is time to go out to eat? The allure of toys and play places has kept McDonald's thriving in spite of the fact that their food is unhealthy and its taste is marginal. With 90% of the desk-top operating system locked up, Microsoft does not have much competition. Most Americans would not have an inkling how to change operating systems, or even if there was a better system than Windows Realistically, what choice do they have? How can one seek individuality, freedom, and a sense of purpose in a sterile landscape dominated by monopolistic corporations which often reap outrageous profits as they bulldoze small, entrepreneurial competitors who could offer choice, innovation, and healthy competition?
From the age we learn to speak, our gender roles are assigned to us with a rigid delineation. Boys play with trucks and girls play with dolls. Boys are taught not to cry. Girls learn to act fragile and sweet. America inculcates boys with its twisted compulsion to compete. Losing is cause for shame, and winning is the only thing that matters. The drive to be "number one" is the only goal worth pursuing. Many boys are seduced by the alluring myth that they are valued solely based upon their performance, and when they perform well, they feel high as a kite. Unfortunately, when they do not "perform well", whether it be in school, at work, in the bedroom, or on the football field, their feelings plunge to extreme lows as their sense of worth dissipates. Girls learn that they derive their self worth from their beauty and ability to attract men. America's obsession with the "ideal woman", created with silicone, personal trainers, tanning salons, and air brushes has driven many females to engage in the horrors of eating disorders. How can one know one's true self or one's true purpose on this earth when one is compulsively striving to "be number one" or to be the next Pamela Anderson?
Madison Avenue bears much of the responsibility for manufacturing the alluring lies that Americans swallow so readily. The illusions and pleasant fictions that they project to us through television, magazines, the Internet, and on radio border on the obscene in their disconnect from truth and reality. These propagandistic wizards use intricate forms of manipulation to entice us to buy what we do not need, use products that are unsafe or of low quality, and to our greatest detriment, to waste our precious drive and energy attempting to be someone we are not. Sprite's slogan is to "obey your thirst". If I were to truly obey my thirst, which is a physical drive to maintain the water volume that comprises much of my physical self, I would drink of water, not Sprite. Wearing the "right cologne" or driving the "right car" are not going to get me the "right girl", or at least not one with whom I will enjoy a fulfilling relationship. Drinking Coors at an NFL game is not going to morph me into Kid Rock and surround me with scantily clad women. Madison Avenue projects a steady stream of garbage into the minds of the willing. Unfortunately, most people engage in the mediums used by advertisers to hock their wares, and are readily seduced by the images, sounds, and enticing lies evoked by commercials and ads.
Government plays their role in the oppression of the individual's quest for self and purpose. One need look no further than the Bush administration to find numerous examples. They have sold 150,000 military personnel a bill of goods in convincing them that they are performing a patriotic act by going to war in Iraq, and are continuing to recruit new "patriots" each day with false claims that the war was, and is, justified. The Bush administration brands those who do not support their imperialist endeavors as "unpatriotic" despite mounting evidence that they lied to the American people to garner their initial support of the invasion. From a very early age, we are taught to "pledge allegiance to the flag, one nation, under God". What young elementary school child has the cognitive development to truly understand the meaning of those words as they put their hand over their heart and swear a loyalty oath to the symbol of a concept as abstract as that of a nation? Our psyche is pummeled with the message that a significant portion of our self worth rests on our willingness to support our nation, and even die for it, if necessary, by going to war. But what if our nation's decision- makers are corrupt, and the real cause they are asking us to die for is to enhance corporate and elitist financial interests? Are we still unpatriotic if we refuse to sacrifice ourselves to fatten the wealthy, or are we just using our innate moral sense and intellect? I say it is the latter. If they knock on my door and ask me to participate in their imperialistic crusades, they will get a resounding no, regardless of the consequences they impose upon me.
The oppression of minorities, including racial minorities, religious minorities, women, the disabled, the mentally ill, and gays, is woven into the fabric of American society. Immigrants built the America that we know. The only true Americans are Native Americans, and they were shamefully relegated to a subordinate role long ago by the original immigrants from Western Europe. Blacks are called separatists when they express their cultural heritage and individuality. Middle and Near Easterners are eyed with suspicion and mistrust when they wear their traditional garb. Women who act in masculine ways and achieve "masculine goals" by attaining positions of power are shunned by men and women alike. Hispanic immigrants are vilified for not learning English quickly enough. Disabled individuals are still denied equal access to buildings, facilities, and employment. Mentally ill individuals are shunned and treated as pariahs as governors (like Matt Blunt of Missouri) slash funding for treatment facilities. Therapists and medication can enable the mentally ill to lead productive, fulfilling lives. The Religious Right, a movement of conservative Christians, are giving moderate and progressive Christianity a black eye by attacking the judicial system and attempting to impose their narrow beliefs, including homophobia, on the rest of America through legislation like the Constitution Reformation Act Homosexuals are mocked, beaten, murdered, and perhaps in some ways worst of all, are denied basic human rights by their own government. How can a person be who they truly are, and act for the purpose for which they were intended, if they are oppressed because of an innate aspect of their being?
9/11 enabled Evangelists, like George Bush, to use fear inspired by the event to create false dichotomies of good versus evil. USA good. Middle East bad. Christianity good. Islam bad. Karl Rove and his fellow conspirators preyed upon this fear to propel Bush back into office in 2004, despite the corrupt nature of his administration and his personal incompetence. The Religious Right also seized the opportunity as they moved in to fill the spiritual vacuum felt by many Americans laid vulnerable by fear of more terrorist attacks. What a tremendous relief and comfort they offered by providing all the answers one needs in one book. The clincher was their guarantee that all one needs to do to assure one's ascendancy into heaven is to accept Jesus as your personal savior. Let me see if I understand this offer. The Bible is my instruction book to resolve any problem, I am guaranteed to go to heaven, and I get the smug satisfaction of knowing that I am indisputably right AND that those who believe differently than me are going to burn in Hell? My intellectual freedom and further spiritual growth would be a pittance to pay for such "treasures"!
Wandering in this barren spiritual desert, it is small wonder that many fall prey to the "quick fixes" and easy answers. Instead of continuing on their spiritual journey through the sometimes barren land-scape of ongoing self discovery, and continuing on the challenging quest toward fulfilling one's higher purpose, some get side-tracked by oases offered by the media or government. They focus their attention and energy on attempting to attain society's definition of "success" by becoming the next Michael Jordan, pursuing wealth for the sake of accumulation in an effort to emulate Donald Trump, embodying the patriotic ideal projected by Big Brother, or accepting Christ as one's personal savior and embarking on a crusade to stamp out homosexuality.
I am not saying that people who engage in these institutionalized, inculcated practices are the problem. I have visited several oases at various points in my life, and probably will visit others. The problem arises when a person sells oneself out for the false security these snake oil salesman are peddling, and remains at the oasis. Each human being has the potential to be so much more than we are told we can be. We have the capacity to do so much more than we are told we can do. The tragedy occurs when one swallows the lies and dons the shackles provided by the media, Madison Avenue, the government, and some religions. Once one sells out, the elite and the ruling class have a new pawn with which to further their interests, and they take no prisoners. Human cost, meaning loss of life or limb, only matters to the elite when it translates into financial liability or diminished power over the masses.
The world has entered a dark age. America represents a significant blight on humanity's well-being. The current administration's insatiable desire to spend money it does not have, and incur massive debt, has placed the world economy on a precipice. America is becoming a debtor nation, beholden to its lenders, not unlike the so-called "Third World", developing countries, which the United States views with such condescension. Despite its scandals, the United Nations represents a unifying body that could potentially offer solutions to many of the world's problems involving poverty, war, and natural disasters, if it was properly managed. Yet if this administration has its way, the UN will be little more than a puppet to further American imperialistic interests. America is involved in an illegal, imperialistic war in Iraq, and a potentially "never-ending" war which Bush has launched against terrorists, a nameless, faceless enemy with whom we can engage as long as it fills the military-industrial complexes coffers. For them, the beauty of it is that it does not matter whether any more terrorists exist or not because there it will be virtually impossible to prove that they have been extinguished. Bush and his followers have created the real judicial crisis in America as they are attempting to railroad several unfit candidates onto the federal bench, are attempting to do away with the filibuster in the Senate, and have created and endorsed attacks and threats on the judiciary. Bush and the Religious Right both have an irrational resolve to severely cripple the judiciary because it is the only remaining significant check on their power. Since stocking the judiciary with "their people" was not effective, their new plan is to render it impotent. America's Religious Right mirrors the dogmatic followers of Islam in the Middle East, and is garnering the political power to convert our republic into a theocracy. Many of these events have unfolded because people have been beguiled by the propaganda of Karl Rove and the Religious Right, or because their obsession with attaining the "American dream" of "success" has kept them too occupied to be aware of what these schemers have been doing.
It is not too late for a change of course. The Morpheus of my life offered me the red and the blue pill in 1993, and I chose red, which in the Matrix, opened the door to reality while blue enabled one to keep one's distorted version of reality intact. I chose red, because at that time, my version of reality was not something I would want to wake up to the next morning. Reality unfolded before my eyes as I learned to emphasize reason, logic, critical thinking, acting assertively, and gathering evidence over faith, fantasy, self delusion, deflection of responsibility, and waiting for someone to show me the way. My worldview changed. Human dignity, human rights, parenting my children, educating myself, respecting myself and others, empathy, honesty, taking responsibility for my actions,and love as an act of will (as defined by Scott Peck in The Road Less Traveled) became my core values. Certainly, I have my limitations, make mistakes, backslide, and above all, do not claim to have THE answer, or even a complete answer. However, when I took that red pill from the Morpheus who came into my life, my eyes were opened to a world of hope, love, and possibilities for spiritual growth and development without harming others. They were also opened to the many lies, manipulations, and abuses of trust. I work each day to discover more about who I am and what my purpose is, and to apply my energy and time toward fulfilling that purpose. THE answer does not exist. I know that some people do not feel comfortable with that concept, but it is true. Each human being has the capacity, and bears the responsibility, for finding THEIR answer. My advice? When Morpheus visits you, take the red pill......
Why are we here? An eternal philosophical question that has no simple or universal answer, and can be asked collectively or individually. Perhaps equally important, yet more individual in nature is the mystery of who we are. Many people spend virtually entire lives with few answers to either fundamental human question, either collectively or individually. Why don't they pursue a deeper understanding of the foundations of their humanity? Why do they shun or avoid a path that would lead to deeper spiritual and intellectual fulfillment, and at the same time enhance our world? Are they apathetic and lazy? Is there a fundamental lack of desire for self actualization and individual freedom in these people? Once could make that argument, but I doubt it. Just as the Matrix offered a pleasant fiction to humans in exchange for their subordination to the machine world, American society offers such an "opiate to the masses" in a variety of forms through a variety of channels.
From a young age, American society bludgeons the individuality out of us. The natural human instinct to self actualize through finding a deep-seated sense of self and sense of purpose is shunted by Madison Avenue, think tanks, political propaganda, government-manipulated mainstream media, churches that manipulate through fear, and a patriarchal system that continues to ensure the dominance of white males.
Corporations like Wal-Mart, McDonalds, and Microsoft have staked their claim on the economic landscape, and continue to steamroll the competition in their insatiable quest to expand. They have created a sterile, mundane uniformity in how people shop, eat and use their computers. A person can save $20.00 per week by shopping at Wal-Mart, buying goods imported from China and stocked by Wal-Mart employees making sub-standard wages, and receiving sub-standard benefits. Meanwhile the locally owned vendors go under, further guaranteeing Wal-Mart's dominance in the marketplace, and further enhancing the role of the big yellow smiley face as a cultural icon. As the economy slips into a depression, the overwhelming monotony of shopping, the only store in town, becomes nauseating. Where do 99% of children under the age of ten want to go when it is time to go out to eat? The allure of toys and play places has kept McDonald's thriving in spite of the fact that their food is unhealthy and its taste is marginal. With 90% of the desk-top operating system locked up, Microsoft does not have much competition. Most Americans would not have an inkling how to change operating systems, or even if there was a better system than Windows Realistically, what choice do they have? How can one seek individuality, freedom, and a sense of purpose in a sterile landscape dominated by monopolistic corporations which often reap outrageous profits as they bulldoze small, entrepreneurial competitors who could offer choice, innovation, and healthy competition?
From the age we learn to speak, our gender roles are assigned to us with a rigid delineation. Boys play with trucks and girls play with dolls. Boys are taught not to cry. Girls learn to act fragile and sweet. America inculcates boys with its twisted compulsion to compete. Losing is cause for shame, and winning is the only thing that matters. The drive to be "number one" is the only goal worth pursuing. Many boys are seduced by the alluring myth that they are valued solely based upon their performance, and when they perform well, they feel high as a kite. Unfortunately, when they do not "perform well", whether it be in school, at work, in the bedroom, or on the football field, their feelings plunge to extreme lows as their sense of worth dissipates. Girls learn that they derive their self worth from their beauty and ability to attract men. America's obsession with the "ideal woman", created with silicone, personal trainers, tanning salons, and air brushes has driven many females to engage in the horrors of eating disorders. How can one know one's true self or one's true purpose on this earth when one is compulsively striving to "be number one" or to be the next Pamela Anderson?
Madison Avenue bears much of the responsibility for manufacturing the alluring lies that Americans swallow so readily. The illusions and pleasant fictions that they project to us through television, magazines, the Internet, and on radio border on the obscene in their disconnect from truth and reality. These propagandistic wizards use intricate forms of manipulation to entice us to buy what we do not need, use products that are unsafe or of low quality, and to our greatest detriment, to waste our precious drive and energy attempting to be someone we are not. Sprite's slogan is to "obey your thirst". If I were to truly obey my thirst, which is a physical drive to maintain the water volume that comprises much of my physical self, I would drink of water, not Sprite. Wearing the "right cologne" or driving the "right car" are not going to get me the "right girl", or at least not one with whom I will enjoy a fulfilling relationship. Drinking Coors at an NFL game is not going to morph me into Kid Rock and surround me with scantily clad women. Madison Avenue projects a steady stream of garbage into the minds of the willing. Unfortunately, most people engage in the mediums used by advertisers to hock their wares, and are readily seduced by the images, sounds, and enticing lies evoked by commercials and ads.
Government plays their role in the oppression of the individual's quest for self and purpose. One need look no further than the Bush administration to find numerous examples. They have sold 150,000 military personnel a bill of goods in convincing them that they are performing a patriotic act by going to war in Iraq, and are continuing to recruit new "patriots" each day with false claims that the war was, and is, justified. The Bush administration brands those who do not support their imperialist endeavors as "unpatriotic" despite mounting evidence that they lied to the American people to garner their initial support of the invasion. From a very early age, we are taught to "pledge allegiance to the flag, one nation, under God". What young elementary school child has the cognitive development to truly understand the meaning of those words as they put their hand over their heart and swear a loyalty oath to the symbol of a concept as abstract as that of a nation? Our psyche is pummeled with the message that a significant portion of our self worth rests on our willingness to support our nation, and even die for it, if necessary, by going to war. But what if our nation's decision- makers are corrupt, and the real cause they are asking us to die for is to enhance corporate and elitist financial interests? Are we still unpatriotic if we refuse to sacrifice ourselves to fatten the wealthy, or are we just using our innate moral sense and intellect? I say it is the latter. If they knock on my door and ask me to participate in their imperialistic crusades, they will get a resounding no, regardless of the consequences they impose upon me.
The oppression of minorities, including racial minorities, religious minorities, women, the disabled, the mentally ill, and gays, is woven into the fabric of American society. Immigrants built the America that we know. The only true Americans are Native Americans, and they were shamefully relegated to a subordinate role long ago by the original immigrants from Western Europe. Blacks are called separatists when they express their cultural heritage and individuality. Middle and Near Easterners are eyed with suspicion and mistrust when they wear their traditional garb. Women who act in masculine ways and achieve "masculine goals" by attaining positions of power are shunned by men and women alike. Hispanic immigrants are vilified for not learning English quickly enough. Disabled individuals are still denied equal access to buildings, facilities, and employment. Mentally ill individuals are shunned and treated as pariahs as governors (like Matt Blunt of Missouri) slash funding for treatment facilities. Therapists and medication can enable the mentally ill to lead productive, fulfilling lives. The Religious Right, a movement of conservative Christians, are giving moderate and progressive Christianity a black eye by attacking the judicial system and attempting to impose their narrow beliefs, including homophobia, on the rest of America through legislation like the Constitution Reformation Act Homosexuals are mocked, beaten, murdered, and perhaps in some ways worst of all, are denied basic human rights by their own government. How can a person be who they truly are, and act for the purpose for which they were intended, if they are oppressed because of an innate aspect of their being?
9/11 enabled Evangelists, like George Bush, to use fear inspired by the event to create false dichotomies of good versus evil. USA good. Middle East bad. Christianity good. Islam bad. Karl Rove and his fellow conspirators preyed upon this fear to propel Bush back into office in 2004, despite the corrupt nature of his administration and his personal incompetence. The Religious Right also seized the opportunity as they moved in to fill the spiritual vacuum felt by many Americans laid vulnerable by fear of more terrorist attacks. What a tremendous relief and comfort they offered by providing all the answers one needs in one book. The clincher was their guarantee that all one needs to do to assure one's ascendancy into heaven is to accept Jesus as your personal savior. Let me see if I understand this offer. The Bible is my instruction book to resolve any problem, I am guaranteed to go to heaven, and I get the smug satisfaction of knowing that I am indisputably right AND that those who believe differently than me are going to burn in Hell? My intellectual freedom and further spiritual growth would be a pittance to pay for such "treasures"!
Wandering in this barren spiritual desert, it is small wonder that many fall prey to the "quick fixes" and easy answers. Instead of continuing on their spiritual journey through the sometimes barren land-scape of ongoing self discovery, and continuing on the challenging quest toward fulfilling one's higher purpose, some get side-tracked by oases offered by the media or government. They focus their attention and energy on attempting to attain society's definition of "success" by becoming the next Michael Jordan, pursuing wealth for the sake of accumulation in an effort to emulate Donald Trump, embodying the patriotic ideal projected by Big Brother, or accepting Christ as one's personal savior and embarking on a crusade to stamp out homosexuality.
I am not saying that people who engage in these institutionalized, inculcated practices are the problem. I have visited several oases at various points in my life, and probably will visit others. The problem arises when a person sells oneself out for the false security these snake oil salesman are peddling, and remains at the oasis. Each human being has the potential to be so much more than we are told we can be. We have the capacity to do so much more than we are told we can do. The tragedy occurs when one swallows the lies and dons the shackles provided by the media, Madison Avenue, the government, and some religions. Once one sells out, the elite and the ruling class have a new pawn with which to further their interests, and they take no prisoners. Human cost, meaning loss of life or limb, only matters to the elite when it translates into financial liability or diminished power over the masses.
The world has entered a dark age. America represents a significant blight on humanity's well-being. The current administration's insatiable desire to spend money it does not have, and incur massive debt, has placed the world economy on a precipice. America is becoming a debtor nation, beholden to its lenders, not unlike the so-called "Third World", developing countries, which the United States views with such condescension. Despite its scandals, the United Nations represents a unifying body that could potentially offer solutions to many of the world's problems involving poverty, war, and natural disasters, if it was properly managed. Yet if this administration has its way, the UN will be little more than a puppet to further American imperialistic interests. America is involved in an illegal, imperialistic war in Iraq, and a potentially "never-ending" war which Bush has launched against terrorists, a nameless, faceless enemy with whom we can engage as long as it fills the military-industrial complexes coffers. For them, the beauty of it is that it does not matter whether any more terrorists exist or not because there it will be virtually impossible to prove that they have been extinguished. Bush and his followers have created the real judicial crisis in America as they are attempting to railroad several unfit candidates onto the federal bench, are attempting to do away with the filibuster in the Senate, and have created and endorsed attacks and threats on the judiciary. Bush and the Religious Right both have an irrational resolve to severely cripple the judiciary because it is the only remaining significant check on their power. Since stocking the judiciary with "their people" was not effective, their new plan is to render it impotent. America's Religious Right mirrors the dogmatic followers of Islam in the Middle East, and is garnering the political power to convert our republic into a theocracy. Many of these events have unfolded because people have been beguiled by the propaganda of Karl Rove and the Religious Right, or because their obsession with attaining the "American dream" of "success" has kept them too occupied to be aware of what these schemers have been doing.
It is not too late for a change of course. The Morpheus of my life offered me the red and the blue pill in 1993, and I chose red, which in the Matrix, opened the door to reality while blue enabled one to keep one's distorted version of reality intact. I chose red, because at that time, my version of reality was not something I would want to wake up to the next morning. Reality unfolded before my eyes as I learned to emphasize reason, logic, critical thinking, acting assertively, and gathering evidence over faith, fantasy, self delusion, deflection of responsibility, and waiting for someone to show me the way. My worldview changed. Human dignity, human rights, parenting my children, educating myself, respecting myself and others, empathy, honesty, taking responsibility for my actions,and love as an act of will (as defined by Scott Peck in The Road Less Traveled) became my core values. Certainly, I have my limitations, make mistakes, backslide, and above all, do not claim to have THE answer, or even a complete answer. However, when I took that red pill from the Morpheus who came into my life, my eyes were opened to a world of hope, love, and possibilities for spiritual growth and development without harming others. They were also opened to the many lies, manipulations, and abuses of trust. I work each day to discover more about who I am and what my purpose is, and to apply my energy and time toward fulfilling that purpose. THE answer does not exist. I know that some people do not feel comfortable with that concept, but it is true. Each human being has the capacity, and bears the responsibility, for finding THEIR answer. My advice? When Morpheus visits you, take the red pill......
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