history: August 2004 Archives

Maybe I picked up the vibrations of the recent ST convention, because it's been on my mind - sharing all those videotapes with Catalin and Raz en route to Shemaya. ;-)

The NY Times had a story today, Fans Hope Suns Can Rise Again on Star Trek.

Full text of the article is in the extended entry. Why do I love Star Trek? Besides the fact that the crew from the original series were my best friends while I was growing up (!), the vision now embodied in I.D.I.C. - "infinite diveristy in infinite combinations" and the way they deliberately try to forecast current events into the future has always inspired me.

"Freedom of information is at the root of American democracy, and yet every day we see that freedom being compromised, controlled and limited. The Grokster decision is a ruling in favor of keeping our bets open about which technologies will turn out to serve our freedoms best."

The Supreme Court rules (finally!) against corporate control of copyright!

Grokster and the Information Exchange

None of my friends with disabilities will be surprised at this story in the NYTimes: School Achievement Reports Often Exclude the Disabled.

"Federal officials have acknowledged permitting a growing number of states to exclude many special education students from reports on school progress, on the grounds that they account for only a small portion of enrollment."

Kinda makes one wonder what other "small portions" of people are excluded from consideration, acknowledgement, and other features of basic human regard.

"Fifteen percent of Arabs and Chaldeans in the Detroit area say they personally have had a "bad experience" after the Sept. 11 attacks because of their ethnicity, according to preliminary results from a University of Michigan study."

Encouragingly, "a greater proportion (one-third) have received expressions of support from non-Arabs."

Includes info on religious affiliation, perceptions of safety for the families, support of U.S. presence in the Middle East, thoughts on surveillance and security, degree of bilingualism, activism, and other interesting results.

~ from Ximena to the social justice listserv.

Donna sends this:

Even former conservative allies now find this president really scary:

The FBI's Pre-Emptive Interrogations Of "Possible" Demonstrators:
Chilling Political Speech
By BOB BARR
----
Wednesday, Aug. 25, 2004

Excerpt: "The Administration and campaign of George W. Bush is squelching any possible hint of disagreement or protest at every political rally or gathering.

For example, people with T-shirts that hint at disagreement are not allowed anywhere near the events, nor even on the route traveled by the presidential motorcade. Think what they'd do to you if you showed up in a - shudder -- mask.

But it's gotten even worse than that.

The FBI's Preemptive Interrogation Memorandum

As the New York Times has reported, in an October 2003 memorandum to law enforcement agencies, the FBI expressed great concern over the possibility that marches and rallies in Washington, D.C. and San Francisco might become "violent, destructive, or disruptive."

The memo went on to urge law enforcement to monitor the Internet, because "protesters often use the Internet to . . . coordinate their activities prior to demonstrations." It also urged law enforcement to watch out for protesters who use cell phones to "coordinate . . . or update colleagues."

In the memo, law enforcement agencies at all levels of government are warned to be aware of "possible indicators of protest activity."

Might be worth reading this article about the people relocated from the towns where the atomic bomb was built in concert with viewing the documentary...

South Africa dissolves party that was architect of apartheid from the NYTimes: "It is of huge symbolic significance," said Robert B. Mattes, a political analyst at the University of Cape Town, "that the party which for a long time was the champion of Afrikaner nationalism and later of white nationalism is now bound for the dustbin of history."

While the article downplays any political impact (the party has received virtually no substantial voter support for years), I think it is indicative of the depth of social change that there is not even minimal support for the ideology of the old regime. This is Good News!

Raz is gonna love this documentary. Wish he was here to watch it with us tonight, but maybe we can see it together once he's back in the country.

The line that struck me the most was Hassan, talking about how the American people will defeat the American empire. Not only are we, perhaps, the only ones who can, we are certainly the ones most closely positioned to do it sooner rather than later.

Prem said he thought this movie was more powerful than Fahrenheit 9/11. I'm not sure, but the two together certainly pack one heck of a whallop. Control Room adds no editorializing, one simply sees what folks are thinking in the moment, as opposed to the narrative storyline that ties the incidents of F 9/11 together. Each movie reveals facts. F 9/11 makes its case explicit, essentially telling you what you ought to think, what the evidence means. Control Room is more subtle, it assumes the audience can piece the evidence together without guidance.

I found it both disheartening and encouraging. It is encouraging to see the commitment and integrity to a journalism that struggles with itself as it seeks to represent events in the world that we all must grapple with and are affected by. At the same time, it is discouraging to be reminded, once again, of the formidable barriers in the way to peaceful co-existence and collaborative modes of problem-solving. Lt. Rushing states the contradiction most clearly when he says that he doesn't like war but he doesn't believe we're ready to live in a world without war. I would suggest that most of us ARE ready to live in a world without war, but we must convince our political leaders that this is what they need to pursue, and that whatever costs or fears they have about peace's uncertain (?) outcomes need to be faced squarely and openly, without compromise or rationalization.

This obituary for the Bilingual Education Act was written by James Crawford, author of At War with Diversity: U.S. Language Policy in an Age of Anxiety.

"...what the [current spate of Olympic] mascots have in common: the aggressive, predatory and rapacious traits of the creatures they represent have been eliminated."

Said traits have been transferred to capitalism - the game of the age.

"Ancient Games had their origins as somber celebrations of death....Part of the reason the ancient Games were so uncompromising and often violent has to do with what was at stake. The Greeks, for the most part, had no heaven; with some notable exceptions, good and bad all went to the same gray, characterless, drizzly underworld after death, and that was that. In the absence of a post-mortem reward for moral goodness, the one thing you could strive for was immortal fame -- doing something so glorious that men would talk of you in years, centuries, millenniums to come. "

"And so, whereas today's Olympic committee prefers to ''celebrate humanity'' (an official slogan of contemporary Olympiads), the Greek athlete wanted only to be celebrated himself; it was his one ticket to immortality."

This reminds me of my conversation with Ingrid last night when I got so passionate about

"Now I am beginning to wonder if well-built architecture occurs only at a very fragile economic moment," says an architecture professor, commenting on differences between overall sloppy American architecture and the more skillful and precise artifacts produced in Asia and Europe.

Building a Bad Reputation: Sloppy American Construction.

Not personally guilty (?) but oh so close to those who are....

Halliburton Settles S.E.C. Accusations

"The Halliburton Company secretly changed its accounting practices when Vice President Dick Cheney was its chief executive, the Securities and Exchange Commission said yesterday as it fined the company $7.5 million and brought actions against two former financial officials.

The commission said the accounting change enabled Halliburton, one of the nation's largest energy services companies, to report annual earnings in 1998 that were 46 percent higher than they would have been had the change not been made. It also allowed the company to report a substantially higher profit in 1999, the commission said."

from the NYTimes, By FLOYD NORRIS

Published: August 4, 2004

Critt's passion is stopping the genocide in Sudan. I don't have explicit ideas, but the media - mass communication - has got to be part of the solution. People in general have to be hooked into caring. I think Fahrenheit 9/11 (still in the top ten!) might be one kind of model...