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Saturday, June 14, 2003

Remember a few weeks back when I linked to that Harpers' article by Jeffrey Sharlet on "the Family" (aka the Fellowship, Foundation, etc.), the secretive fundamentalist Christian organization who hosts the National Prayer Breakfast, and whose DC townhome is occupied by six congressmen paying ridiculously low rent? Well, Alternet has excerpted Sharlet's interview with the Guerilla News Network. It's nice and scary, and you should definitely give it a read. A few tidbits (ed. notes original):

SHARLET: The goal is an "invisible" world organization led by Christ – that's what they aspire to. They are very explicit about this if you look in their documents, and I spent a lot of time researching in their archives. Their goal is a worldwide invisible organization. That's their word, and that's important because it sounds so crazy.

What they mean when they say "a world organization led by Christ" is that literally you just sit there and let Christ tell you what to do. More often than not that leads them to a sort of paternalistic benign fascism. There are a lot of places that they've done good things, and that's important to acknowledge. But that also means they might be involved with General Suharto in Indonesia and if that means that God leads him to kill half a million of his own citizens then, well, it would prideful to question God leading them.

GNN: Who are these guys, and how many are there?

SHARLET: The only estimate was made by Charles Colson, Nixon's chief dirty tricks guy who went on to become the head of Prison Fellowship Ministries. Right before he went to prison the founder [of the Fellowship] Doug Coe turned him on to Christ. Colson said there are about 20,000 people involved in the U.S. But you aren't really supposed to talk about it.

I always say to interviewers, "This is not a conspiracy." There's no secret badge or anything. It's much looser. This is how the vast right-wing conspiracy works, by being associates, friends.

GNN: But they speak of themselves as operating in terrorist-like cells.

SHARLET: Yes, they do. Inside your cell, you might know six or eight guys.

Let me give you a real quick history. In 1935, Abraham Vereide starts it. By the 1940s he has about a third of Congress attending a weekly prayer meeting. In the mid-50s, he gets Eisenhower's support.

[According to a 2002 Los Angeles Times article, during the 1950's Vereide played a major role in the U.S. government's anti-communist activities: "Pentagon officials secretly met at the group's Washington Fellowship House in 1955 to plan a worldwide anti-communism propaganda campaign endorsed by the CIA, documents from the Fellowship archives and the Eisenhower Presidential Library show. Then known as International Christian Leadership, the group financed a film called 'Militant Liberty' that was used by the Pentagon abroad." Showing Faith in Discretion, Lisa Getter, The Los Angeles Times, Sep 27, 2002]

It's sort of stabilized now. By the mid-60's, they sort of realized they didn't want too many people. Too many people dilute the organization.

One scene I saw was Congressman Todd Tiahrt, Republican from Kansas, who seemed as if he was interviewing to be in the organization. He was very nervous. The leader of the organization was asking him questions, sort of leaning back and testing him. I think he wanted into this network, and he would fumble a little by talking about abortion. They don't really care about abortion. They are against it but they aren't really concerned about it.

GNN: What are their core issues then?

SHARLET: The core issue is capitalism and power. The core issue they would say, is love. There are a lot of different things love means. They will always work with both sides of the issue. I saw some correspondence with Chinese officials before Deng Xiao Ping was in power. They had some very clandestine associations with senior Chinese officials, and were told Deng was a guy they could do business with. So that was fine with them.

...

GNN: Let's cut to this house where these six congressmen are living on C Street in DC. What is the connection, if any, to the Bush Administration? The White House seems to have its own relationship to religion and people who are influencing them on religious issues. Is there a relationship here?

SHARLET: Yes, though I will say it is not exclusively Democrat or Republican. They say there are six guys at the C Street house, there were eight when I was there. They say there is one for members of Parliament in England, and I think there are similar ones in other capitals. The house is constantly rotating. Steve Largent used to live there. John Elias Baldacci, a conservative Democrat who is now the governor of Maine. As for the Bush connection, there is Ashcroft. I discovered in their archives a correspondence between Ashcroft and Coe that began in 1981. Al Gore at one time referred to Doug Coe as his personal hero, which is easy to believe. Doug Coe is an incredibly charming man.

The Bushes have visited the Cedars many times, but all presidents have. Bush Sr. when he was Vice President was hosting dinners for Middle Eastern ambassadors there. There are going to be people at all levels.
...

GNN: Are they codified like the Masons or something?

SHARLET: There is an inner core group that is codified in their documents, called the Core. I don't know who is in it other than Doug Coe. The documents I saw only went up to the late 80's with senators, congressmen, and a lot of military men. Before he died, Senator Harold Huges was Core. Former Senator Mark Hatfield used to be Core, and may still be. In the AP article, there is an Air Force officer who I hadn't known about. Then there are associates, usually about 150 associates and they are the key individuals in their areas, and then there are the people who are in a cell with an associate and they are very close. And then there are close friends. Senator James Inhofe, Republican from Oklahoma, is frequently, for instance, referred to as a close friend. President Museveni of Uganda is a close friend. There is no membership card. In all of their letters there is a paragraph that says this is a private, confidential relationship and we don't talk about it when they are recruiting a new person into the group.

...

GNN: What are the connections between the CIA and the Fellowship?

SHARLET: A lot of their key men in a country would be the intelligence officers in the American embassy. Throughout their correspondence, that's the kind of guy they would like to have involved. They always had a lot of Army intelligence guys involved, Pentagon guys.

Doug Coe in the early 70's was touring the frontlines in Vietnam with intelligence officers and South Vietnamese generals. That's the level of connections they are talking about, like the Salvadoran general Carlos Eugenios Vides Casanova [convicted by a Florida jury for the torture of thousands] and Honduran general Gustavo Alvarez Martinez [a minister also linked to the CIA and death squads]. They are the people who brought those people in. They said you need to meet this person. That's how it works.

Their diplomacy can affect some good things, like the truce in Rwanda. They had a lot of connections with the South African [apartheid] regime, where they were generally a moderate, even a progressive force. But it's kinda hard to name a nasty regime around the world that doesn't have really well-documented connections to them. Franco was a hold-out. So they started winning over a bunch of ministers in the Franco regime and then they went to Franco and said this is a good group, we can do business with them.

posted by Jenny at 3:15 AM |

Lambert at Eschaton directs us to the latest Austin Chronicle article on the "Killer-D Manhunt":

The DPS postings substantiate what DPS officers have said: They were taking orders from Republican officials, who were nowhere near as "hands off" as Craddick and Perry have claimed. Even more alarming are the materials suggesting that other, as yet unidentified, personnel were also involved in the search: According to notes provided to the DPS by Austin Sen. Gonzalo Barrientos, a couple of legislators' spouses were apparently followed or watched by plainclothes operatives of whom the DPS claims no knowledge.

Whatever the complete and unredacted story of the state's pursuit of the absent House Democrats, the surviving DPS documents make clear it is yet to be fully revealed.

posted by Jenny at 2:03 AM |

Time to write some praiseworthy emails to Nightline, says Hesiod:

CREDIT WHERE CREDIT IS DUE: I do an awful lot of bashing on the "Liberal Media" here. And, in most cases it's well deserved. I must give props, however, to Nightline.

I couldn't believe my eyes. They were raking the Bush administration over the coals for their pre-war fudging of intelligence about Iraq's WMD's. I mean, Joe Conason, or Nicholas Kristoff could have written that piece.

And it wasn't just editorializing. It had on-air interviews from Vince Cannistraro, and a former U.S. Nuclear arms inspector.

They had everything in it including the Niger Uranium forgeries and the aluminum tubes.

It was like we were living in a real democracy where the press actually does its job.

(sniff) Excuse me...I'm getting all emotional.

posted by Jenny at 1:24 AM |

Citing posts from Hesiod, Trish Wilson, and Sean Malloy, and Teresa Neilsen Hayden, Jeanne d'Arc looting in Iraq has not stopped. Check it out...

posted by Jenny at 1:20 AM |

As the human rights situation in Zimbabwe worsens, US black leaders confront Mugabe, says the Village Voice. And it couldn't come at a better time:

Among many recent illustrations of those violent abuses, there is the report in the June 7 Economist of demonstrators lying on the pavement "with policemen's feet on their heads. . . . Police even burst into a private hospital to drag out injured protesters. According to the Movement for Democratic Change [the opposition party], one of its activists, Tichaona Kaguru, died after being tortured by the security forces."

...

Moreover, the new Amnesty International Report 2003 points to "widespread reports . . . [of] the deliberate denial of food aid by [Mugabe's] ZANU-PF officials to Movement for Democratic Change members and supporters. Youth militia stationed outside long queues to buy grain reportedly targeted MDC supporters for assaults and intimidation to prevent them from getting food."

The letter to Mugabe by William Lucy and his fellow signers tells Mugabe: "We have communicated clearly [to Mugabe's representative in Washington] that we view the political repression underway in Zimbabwe as intolerable and in complete contradiction of the values and principles that were both the foundation of your liberation struggle and of our solidarity with that struggle." (Emphasis added.)

posted by Jenny at 1:16 AM |

Join "The Homeguard"

Bill Berkowitz introduces us to the latest of I Spy programs initiated by patriotic CEOs...

Now, however, a whole new world of stay-at-home work may be at your fingertips, thanks to Jay Walker. You may not reel in thousands of dollars, but if you've got good eyes, time on your hands and the patriotic gusto to apply to the task, you just may catch a terrorist or two. If Walker's company, US HomeGuard, gets rolling, citizens will be able to log onto the Internet and sign up to monitor one of several hundred thousand of America's essential infrastructure facilities that are currently at risk from a terrorist attack.

Here's how it works: Outdoor Webcams will be installed along the fences of chemical plants, reservoirs, airports, and other critical infrastructure facilities across the country. The cameras -- costing about $1,000 a pop -- will be equipped with heat sensors, microphones and loudspeakers. These onsite cameras will transmit pictures to the World Wide Web, and that's where the at-home spotters come in -- they will be monitoring these sites from the safety and comfort of their own homes. Terrorist spotters will register online and get paid for clicking through photos from various facilities.

According to Newsweek's Steven Levy: "If any of the first round of spotters saw something suspicious, the system would 'flood the zone' by sending more pictures from that camera and those around it to 10 new spotters. If this group confirmed the alert, the professionals at the [central] data center would [be alerted and then] take over. They could confront the trespassers via the speakers in the Webcam… and, if necessary, contact local authorities."

Jay Walker's no ordinary Jay with an idea. He is the founder of the Stamford, CT-based Walker Digital LLC, a company that "invents business systems which solve problems." Founded in 1994, Walker Digital's inventors "have been granted over 200 U.S. and International Patents for unique business systems."

Walker is probably best known for founding Priceline.com, the Web site buying service that allows people to bid on airline tickets and hotel rooms. After its initial success, Priceline.com's stock plunged from a high of $162 "to just over $1, and Walker, once a billionaire on paper, fell from business magazine listings of America's richest people," reports the Boston Globe's Hiawatha Bray. (As of this writing, the stock was trading for just under $4.00. For a critique of the company, see The TRUTH about PRICELINE.COM.)

Walker's spin-off project, called WebHouse -- which allowed customers to bid on gas and groceries -- tanked in 2000, one year and $363 million after its startup.

In order to protect the several hundred thousand facilities "about a quarter-million miles of perimeter" must be secured, writes Levy. Walker figures that it would cost about $50,000 a mile for the setup -- about $12 billion -- which would be paid for by the operators of each facility.

Walker anticipates that a surveillance force of about a million people would be needed. He thinks that government agencies and those companies in need of protection would pick up the approximate $10 per hour payment to the home spotters (sans benefits, no doubt). Walker would sell the system to the federal government for $1 and then charge fees to run the system.

Could Walker's system actually work? Some critics argue that it would be subject to all kinds of potential glitches including power outages, bad phone connections, and hackers. Inattentive spotters could be the cause of a huge number of false alarms that police and fire departments would be forced to respond to. What about the stay-at-home spotters: Will they have to undergo a round of security checks and drug testing? How much will that cost? Who will be assigning the shifts?

Charles Boyd, the retired Air Force general who served as executive director of the Hart-Rudman National Security Commission, which warned of a massive attack on the United States eight months before Al Qaeda struck, told the Globe's Bray that he "found the idea interesting and appealing. I don't know if the damn thing will work or not. But I like two things about it: I like innovative thinking… and I like ideas that engage and energize the citizenry."

Yeah, so what better way to foster the culture of fear than to encourage people to sit at home and watch little screens, looking for terrorists. I'm disturbed by the deepening alienation in the United States--watching CNN for your news, buying online to keep from having to go to the mall, going to the mall or grocery store for entertainment (whatever happened to playing board games, walking outdoors, cooking, making your own stuff?)...and now, to "protect the homeland", sitting at home in front of a display. Get paid to be paranoid and stationary...

Meanwhile, the Cursor notes that the HomeGuard website is "currently set up to get more than it gives, soliciting the name and address of visitors, while offering virtually no information about the company or what it plans to do." Kind of reminds me of that corporation that bought up those intelligence files on millions of Latin Americans...except this time, we're just handing our intelligence over to them!

posted by Jenny at 1:10 AM |

Friday, June 13, 2003

From MoveOn.org:

On June 2nd, the FCC let giant media companies get even bigger, despite overwhelming opposition from the American public.

But June 2nd ignited a movement to take that power back, and June 19 is the next big day in the fight, as legislation reversing several FCC rules will come before the Senate Commerce Committee.

The legislation up for a vote in Committee is S.1046, and it would overturn some of the most egregious parts of the FCC rule change. This bipartisan bill would keep a single company from owning broadcast outlets that reach more than 35% of American households (as opposed to 45% post-rule-change). A crucial amendment sponsored by Senators Dorgan and Snowe would keep newspapers and TV stations from merging.

Two minutes of your time will make the difference: Please take action now.

22 States are represented on the Commerce Committee. If you live in one of the states listed below, Please click this link and enter your zip code here:

http://causenet.commoncause.org

Alaska, Arizona, California, Florida, Hawaii, Illinois, Kansas, Louisiana, Maine, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, North Dakota, Oregon, South Carolina, Texas, Virginia, Washington, or West Virginia

If you don’t live in one of the Commerce Committee states, please click this link below to contact your Senators:
http://causenet.commoncause.org/afr/issues/alert/?alertid=2555996&type=CO

Remember, S.1046 is an important FIRST STEP in the legislative fight to take back the power from big media. There are many more ahead. But it is a move in the right direction. And it is our next best move towards less concentration in the media.

posted by Jenny at 1:44 PM |

...and since we've already been number-crunching with Kos, might as well include these figures submitted by Adam, a Kos reader:

National debt when Bush entered office (as of close of business, Friday, 1/19/2001, since he was inaugurated on the weekend):
$5,727,776,738,304.64

National debt as of June 9, 2003:
$6,578,826,704,876.87

Total debt added during Bush's term:
$851,049,966,572.23

Number of days Bush has been president:
870

Debt added per day:
$978,218,352.38 (That's right, nearly $1 BILLION dollars a day in new debt.)

Total debt added if Bush is re-elected:
$2,858,354,025,659.84 (assuming same pace of debt accumulation. That's nearly 3 trillion.)

Total debt at end of Bush's 2nd term:
$8,586,130,763,964.48 (assuming same pace of debt accumulation. That's close to 9 trillion)

Those numbers are only going to get worse. CBO just said the debt for Fiscal Year 2003 is going to be over $400 billion, a record in nominal terms.

posted by Jenny at 6:11 AM |

Atrios reminds us that MoveOn.org is conducting their own "primary" among members, polling them all to choose a candidate that will receive the organization's endorsement and financial backing...and speaking of blog-based fundraising, check out what the Daily Kos has been up to, if you haven't already donated yourself...

posted by Jenny at 6:07 AM |

Good reading

Following a link from Emma's Notes on the Atrocities, I just discovered a Berkeley Economist Against Empire. Neat blog...well, both of them are, really. Check them out today!

posted by Jenny at 5:59 AM |

"They would say I was too compliant with the Iraqis when in reality [they meant] I was not compliant enough with what the US wanted. I have never criticised the US or UK for lack of sincerity." Mr Blix tried to focus on the reports for his bosses at the UN security council, pointing out that they were always "happy" with him. Even now, he refuses to be explicitly drawn on just what he feels, insisting he is not "frustrated, bitter or betrayed".

But, despite his apparent equanimity, he cannot conceal his anger at the constant vilification by "bastards" who "planted nasty things in the media". "Not that I cared very much," he insists. "It was a bit like a mosquito bite in the evening that is still there in the morning, an irritant."

These remarks by Hans Blix have put the US on the defensive, says today's Guardian, with Colin Powell and others spinning to stave off a backlash...

posted by Jenny at 5:39 AM |

Barbershop wisdom

I think that many of we "lefties" in the blogosphere (yours truly included) reside in what ctheory commentator Kevin Barnhurst refers to as "hegemonia, the land of illusion where everyone 'out there' shares one's own worldview." Speaking for myself, it's always energizing to see how many people on the web SEEM to want to effect change...but when I head back into non-cyber reality, it's pretty crushing to realize just how many people believe in Dubya's troupe, or are just plain apathetic. Nonetheless, signs from beyond blogtopia (coined by skippy!) suggest that the tide may be turning for Bush & Co:

"Bush is in trouble," he said.

This was neither a columnist nor a politician. It was my barber, Phil. And when Phil says that Bush is in trouble, he is.

Phil was born in the United States, but his parents are from Mexico. His Spanish is fluent. His intimate barbershop in San Jose reflects much of contemporary American society. His customers are U.S. citizens, but born everywhere: California, the Midwest, Latin America, East and Southeast Asia – they all come through. The TV is tuned to CNN, when there are no sports to watch.

"We knew that Saddam was a bad guy, but how many bad guys are there in the world? Are we going to go after them all?" Phil asks. "And where are all those weapons?"

I expect that Phil's words are being echoed in many barber shops, beauty salons, taverns, ball fields, golf courses and around a lot of kitchen tables this month as Americans begin to ruminate on the Bush administration's actions in Iraq.It feels like public opinion on the war is beginning to turn. Like Phil's, the unquestioned support of many for the war is beginning to erode. But why should there have been strong support in the beginning and during the conflict, and slippage now?

I think that the anthropologist, Margaret Mead, knew the answer. She would certainly have understood Phil. Mead witnessed four world conflicts: World War I, World War II, and the Korean and Vietnam wars. She knew a lot about American attitudes toward violence and conflict, and she would have understood Phil very well.

In her classic work, "And Keep Your Powder Dry," and in numerous other writings, Mead pointed out that Americans have four prevalent attitudes toward the use of violence:

– First, Americans see themselves as resorting to violence only in defense, never for aggression.

– Second, Americans say they use violence for altruistic, never for selfish purposes.

– Third, though Americans must put up a strong defense, they are never bullies.

– Finally, for Americans, violent action is a "job" with a finite length.

The Bush administration sold Americans the conflict in Iraq based on just these principles.

It was essential that the war be seen as defensive. Therefore there had to be weapons of mass destruction ready for imminent use. There also had to be an implicit tie between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda, since the war had to be tied to an actual attack on American soil.

It was also essential that the war be conceptualized altruistically as a "war of liberation" designed to "bring democracy to Iraq" rather than a "war for oil" or a "war to establish American hegemony."

Because Americans are not bullies, every instance of civilian death, or destruction of non-military targets had to be seen as "accidental" or "collateral damage."

Finally, as President Bush stated on March 17, two days before military action began, the war had to be billed as short and limited in scope. Americans would do a job and get out.

Americans were in full support of the war, because it was sold to them using principles in which they already believed. In many ways, they were provided with rhetoric they could not resist. It was the sales job of the century.

However, for Phil and others, the bases on which Bush administration sold the war are cracking.

The defensive purpose of the war is now being called fully into question. Weapons of mass destruction have not been found. The al-Qaeda connection remains non-existent.

The altruistic nature of the war is being overwhelmed by stories of profiteering by American industrial interests with ties to the administration, like Halliburton, and continual reference to Iraq's oil resources. The idea that the United States was bringing democracy to Iraq is fading as American viceroy Paul Bremer establishes his own hand-picked counsel of transition leaders headed by Ahmad Chalabi, widely viewed as an American puppet. The majority Shi'a population has been excluded from the process.

Americans are increasingly seen as bullies. They are no longer defending anything in Iraq, and so are treated as unwelcome occupiers by the citizens, who protest and fire on them. Some 41 have died since May 1, when President Bush declared that military action in Iraq had ended; some in accidents, others from enemy fire.

Finally, it looks like the idea of the Iraqi mission as a self-terminating job is a vain hope. The American military will be there for a very long time.

So, for Phil and for others, the Iraqi war looks like it was sold under false premises, and they are beginning to wonder why they bought it.

posted by Jenny at 5:16 AM |

Thursday, June 12, 2003

Screen legend Gregory Peck dies at 87

Peck was one of the exceptions I always had to cite when bemoaning that all the good ones in Hollywood are gone. What an incredible, gifted man. My two favorites among his movies were definitely Roman Holiday and To Kill a Mockingbird...he simply was Atticus Finch. Still gives me goosebumps just thinking about it!

posted by Jenny at 1:42 PM |

The understatement of the year...

Few Fined for Polluting Water, Agency Says It Must Do Better Job of Monitoring

About a quarter of the nation's largest industrial plants and water treatment facilities are in serious violation of pollution standards at any one time, yet only a fraction of them face formal enforcement actions, according to an Environmental Protection Agency internal study.

The study is the broadest effort to date to document the failure of the EPA and the states to fully enforce the Clean Water Act, enacted 30 years ago to clean up the nation's rivers and streams. The study, completed in February by the EPA's Office of Enforcement and Compliance, found that half the serious offenders exceeded pollution limits for toxic substances by more than 100 percent.

When formal disciplinary actions were taken, fewer than half resulted in fines, which averaged about $6,000.

posted by Jenny at 9:58 AM |

F.U.T.K.

Heh heh heh...

Enviro groups target Dixie Chicks nemesis

Rainforest Action Network, Global Exchange and Blue Water Network have launched a campaign to pressure country music star Toby Keith to drop his lucrative relationship with Ford. Jason Mark of Global Exchange says Keith, as a patriotic American, "should think long and hard about whether he wants to be associated with a company that fuels America's addiction to oil."

The self-described "angry American" has made his career riding the coattails of post-9/11 jingoism, especially by attacking the Dixie Chicks. Sign the petition at the StopTobyKeith.com website.

Via Alternet.

posted by Jenny at 9:45 AM |

Another one we've been waiting for...

James Ridgeway finally came out and linked up Cat Eyes (the Community Anti-Terrorism Training Initiative, a network of neighborhood "snitch programs" in Jersey, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Ohio, and beyond) to the East German Stasi!

posted by Jenny at 9:37 AM |

"Hitler was elected"

Man, I go away on vacation for a couple of days (biking and boating around the canals of Amsterdam and trying to stay away from the hoardes of American youth on the hunt for soft drugs), and I miss a whole slough of political idiocy! And who better to provide us with idiotic quotes but the poet laureate of the Bush regime, Donald Rumsfeld. Check out the latest from Lisa English, with Ed Boswell and Tony Perrault.

posted by Jenny at 9:28 AM |

skippy channels Lambert at Eschaton's point that letters to the editor count! In that spirit, then, he provides us with an excellent resource...Mr. Smith Emails the Media, a page devoted to enabling you to contact the newspapers electronically, helping to conserve paper and all that jazz. Thanks for the link, skippy!

posted by Jenny at 9:24 AM |

Tuesday, June 10, 2003

Hey folks, I'll be out today and Wednesday, so blogging will be light to nonexistent. In the meantime, feel free to visit any of the fine blogs on the blogroll. Plus there's always choice news to be found at the Cursor and the Agonist. And in closing, I'd like to share with you this heartwarming story that Jeanne d'Arc found at Counterspin Central. Check it out and have a good one!

posted by Jenny at 6:33 AM |

Fellow expatriates: no place is quite safe! The Economist tells us that Frankenfoods are on their way to Europe...with the latest on the debates between GM proponents and the Green opposition.

posted by Jenny at 6:31 AM |

Monday, June 09, 2003

*sigh of the day*

Lingering anti-French sentiment cancels school exchange program

Read it, it does indeed make the bile rise...

posted by Jenny at 2:36 PM |

Remember the Three Gorges Dam?

On June 1, after a decade of construction, China began to fill the reservoir for the controversial Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze River. In 2009, when the final phase is completed and the reservoir is filled to capacity, more than 2,000 known archeological sites — some dating to the Paleolithic era — will have been submerged, and numerous historic buildings and anthropological sites and the beautiful Three Gorges will be at risk.

The Chinese government has long known where the archeological sites are but claims that it has not had the resources to protect them. Although the projected costs for the dam are in the billions (estimates range from $20 billion to $70 billion), only under international pressure did China allocate $135 million to preserve relics.

But insufficient money isn't the only hindrance. One archeologist has estimated that it would take 500 years to excavate all of the sites properly; to date, only one-tenth of the known sites have been excavated.

In this vacuum created by a lack of resources, time and will, sophisticated thieves equipped with cell phones, radios and metal detectors have ransacked tombs from the Han through the Qing dynasties. As in Iraq, the failure of law enforcement has resulted in some farmers — armed with shovels, pickaxes and sometimes the village tractor — becoming emboldened enough to try their luck at looting. Some artifacts have already made it into the world art market. In 1998, a Han Dynasty bronze "spirit tree" — believed to have come from the Three Gorges region — sold in New York for $2.5 million.

Dealers and collectors argue they are acquiring these pieces as a way of preserving them. Given the shortage of time, perhaps it is better they have been saved rather than lost at the bottom of a lake. But should cultural artifacts and relics — objects that give us keys to our collective past — be hidden in the vaults of private collectors?

Historic monuments and buildings in the Three Gorges have presented some interesting preservation conundrums and a few wacky solutions. Some structures, such as the 1,700-year-old Zhangfei Temple, are being dismantled and moved to higher ground, while others, like the 12-story, 500-year-old Shibaozhai Temple and the White Emperor City, will be protected in situ by massive concrete dikes, creating modern islands with ancient architecture set at lower levels than the surrounding man-made lake.

The White Crane Ridge stone carvings — the world's first hydrometric station — has proved to be one of the greatest challenges. This ancient navigation system cut into a sandstone ledge emerges only during dry season, revealing carvings and 30,000 characters of Chinese poems and comments that record 1,200 years of the Yangtze's water history. To save the attraction, Chinese engineers have envisioned an "underwater palace," with a pressure-free container covering the carvings on one side, the lake on the other and an enclosed underwater walkway in the middle.

But what about the unexplored sites? So much history is buried in China, and it is usually found by accident. A farmer digging in a field in 1974 discovered the famous "terra cotta warriors" of Xian. In 1984, in the village of Longgupo not far from the Yangtze, a farmer stumbled across a cave that had collapsed 2,000 years ago. Inside, anthropologists found 20 layers of bones, including those of many extinct species. But the most amazing discovery was a piece of human jawbone more than 1.8 million years old. The Longgupo hominid could be the ancestor of all Asian mankind.

And then there is the greatest loss of all. Even with the pollution along the river, the Three Gorges are one of the planet's most magnificent masterpieces, having inspired countless poets and artists to reflect on man's insignificance in the face of nature. The Chinese government promises that new, pristine sights will now be accessible, but the fact is that the gorges themselves will be diminished. The majestic Kuimen Gate — a pair of towering cliffs flanking the river — will now be reduced to two rather insignificant mounds.

Artifacts may be unique to a country or culture, yet these pieces of bone, stone, metal, wood and earth tell us not only where we came from as human beings but who we are today and what we can become tomorrow. These losses in China and Iraq may go quietly unmourned today, but their absence will ripple across the centuries.

posted by Jenny at 2:07 PM |

Heh heh heh...

posted by Jenny at 1:55 PM |

I had to smile when visiting Vegan Blog a few minutes ago as I read that a survey conducted at the University of Oregan asserts that over 80 percent of American think that the United States should reduce its greenhouse gas emissions. Check it out!

posted by Jenny at 1:17 PM |

Curioser and curioser

Just ran across this at Utne (original article here). I can't think of any stranger expression of the ways in which cultural factors influence "objective" scientific pursuits...any comments?

Retired University of Washington psychology professor John M. Gottman has invoked the principles of calculus to develop a formula for marital discord, reports David Glenn in The Chronicle of Higher Education. This formula is the foundation of the book, The Mathematics of Marriage: Dynamic Nonlinear Models (MIT Press). Based on the theorem that divorce can be predicted by “husbandly tone-deafness”—the man’s inability to respond to his wife’s “suggestions and emotional expressions”—Gottman and his colleagues have successfully predicted couples’ divorce rates with “greater than 90 percent accuracy.”

Inspired by mathematician James D. Murray’s book, Mathematical Biology, a book explaining the mathematics of “complex dynamic systems, such as brain tumors,” Gottman met with the author and suggested the possibility that mathematical equations could be applied to his marital studies. Initially, Murray dismissed the possibility, but by the end of the conversation, he was “totally hooked.” Gottman’s colleagues also expressed some skepticism toward his research, but six months into the project they couldn’t go into the applied mathematics lounge “without getting drawn into arguments about how to write these marriage equations.”

Gottman and co-authors Kristin R. Swanson, Catherine C. Swanson, and Rebecca Tyson based their final formula on several factors: “influence functions”—which describe a variable of spousal “snarky comments”; the “uninfluenced steady state”—which represents each spouse’s overall mood on a given day; “ojive functions”—a “sophisticated variant” that measures whether or not one partner’s mood is positive or negative enough to affect the other; and “dampening” or “repairing”—spousal attempts to respectively hinder or fix communications during an argument. Although the long-term implications of their research are unclear, Gottman and his colleagues have utilized the formula to inform and improve their marital therapy techniques.

posted by Jenny at 1:13 PM |

Truth is scarier than fiction

Just doing some catch-up reading over at LMB...check out this "TV News That Looks Local, Even if It's Not"...Jake tells us about the Sinclair Broadcast Group, a company that owns 62 American television stations. Bizarrely, while local reporting is integrated into the newscast beamed out by all local affiliates, half of the program is actually produced at SBG headquarters, shaped by "right-wing invective" Mark Hyman, who happens to be the Vice President of Corporate Communications for the SBG. What's more unbelievable, the fact that this stuff is actually happening, or the fact that it's so easy to watch the debacle unfold?

posted by Jenny at 1:08 PM |