Scientists warn of new Anthropocene age

Scientists warn of new Anthropocene age
Should we recognize new epoch of human influence?
STOCKHOLM, Sweden - Scientists are beginning to accept that Earth has entered a new geological epoch, the Anthropocene, so named because humans have come to rival nature in their impact on the global environment.
The EuroScience forum in Stockholm heard on Thursday that climate change was the most obvious of a complex range of man-made effects that is rapidly changing the physics, chemistry and biology of the planet.
Paul Crutzen, the Nobel Prize-winning atmospheric chemist who first proposed the term Anthropocene four years ago, said the concept was winning wide acceptance from colleagues in other fields.
Will Steffen, chief scientist for the International Geosphere-Biosphere Program, said: "The Anthropocene is a very different era from the relatively stable and nurturing environment in which humans and our societies have evolved. We should expect more instability in the future."
Scientists are building computer models that give a view of the whole "earth system" in the Anthropocene era. These are beginning to show the hot spots or Achilles' heels in Earth's defenses against catastrophic change, said John Schellnhuber, director of the Tyndall Center for Climate Change at the University of East Anglia.
A dozen hot spots have been identified so far. They are critical regulators of the global environment, which could trigger rapid large-scale changes across the planet if sufficiently stressed.
The Amazon basin and the Sahara are a linked pair of hotspots; Saharan dust, carried by the wind across the Atlantic Ocean, fertilizes the Amazon. "This process has been going on for thousands of years and is one reason why the Amazon basin teems with life," Professor Schellnhuber said.
Computer models predict that global warming will cause forests in the Amazon to die back, while the Sahara will become greener, reducing the amount of dust it produces and exacerbating the climatic stress on the Amazon. "This creates the peculiar and disturbing prospect that one day the relationship between the Sahara and Amazon could be reversed," he said.
Human behavior is further influencing the ancient relationship between the two regions, as four-wheel-drive vehicles churn up the Sahara and increase the amount of dust produced. This might help the Amazon, Professor Schellnhuber said, "but on the other hand global dust is becoming a major problem in terms of climate change."
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5831910/

Thanks to Josh for this picture:

Ted Kennedy on No Fly List

I read today on Buzzflash that Senator Edward Kennedy, good old Ted, was not allowed on an airplane in Washington, DC because he was placed on a no-fly list. The supervisor recognized him and let him on the flight. This happened three times and he called Tom Ridge himself to have it rectified. They say his name was "similar" to someone who is a so-called terrorist. That is funny. How many Kennedys are there...many thousands I would guess. It is my opinion that someone in Homeland Security is making fools of those who disagree politically and having a good laugh. The story was not clear on whether or not he has been oked to fly. What chance does a regular person have in getting their name off these lists if even the most recognized Senator in the United States cannot?


Having some trouble with my peoplearepowerful site. I published my poll and site counter 5 times and can't get them off. Time for hubby help.

Generation Kill

Natural-born killers will never win hearts and minds

Financial Time, June 26-27, 2004

CHARLES CLOVER

One of the more jarring memories from my experience covering the war in Iraq as a reporter "embedded" with US troops was of a young American soldier after a firefight in the streets of Najaf. During a shoot-out with a sniper, a blue Fiat raced into the the street, trying to escape. The soldier fired 15 rounds from his SAW (squad automatic weapon), killing the driver, who we found out was an unarmed university professor. An hour later, I heard the soldier complaining that his weapon had jammed, preventing him firing off more rounds. Meanwhile, fellow soldiers clustered around him, congratulating him on "busting his cherry" - making his first killing. It was riot clear at the time if he knew who he had killed and if it mattered.

I have always had difficulty understanding how someone like this, an American teenager who probably grew up in some suburb, like me, could have this attitude toward taking a life. I saw plenty more like him.

This group of young, violent Americans is the subject of one of the best books to come out of the Iraq war: Generation Kill by Evan Wright, who covered the war for Rolling Stone magazine as an embedded reporter with a US Marine reconnaissance battalion. One does not know quite how to categorise Generation Kill. It is not anti-war in its exposition, but the sum total of Wright's observations lead to a harsh indictment of US conduct in Iraq. Like the generation it observes, the book has no moral compass, it is simply a grim ledger of conversations, . deeds and misdeeds - all recorded in an adrenaline rush of intelligent prose.

The title says it all: this is a book about the contemporaries of the Columbine high school massacre in Colorado, blitzing their way across Iraq to spearhead the US campaign last year. They "represent what is more or less America's first generation of disposable children", says Wright, who estimates that half his platoon are from absentee, single-parent homes: "Many are on more intimate terms with the culture of video games, reality TV shows and internet porn than they are with their own families."

The core of Generation Kill questions the dark intersection of war-making and this generation's obsession with violence - how the largely virtual world of America's teens seamlessly transposes itself onto the battlefield. Early on, Wright records one of the soldiers enthusing "I was just thinking one thing when we drove into that ambush ... Grand Theft Auto: Vice City", referring to a popular computer game. "I felt like I was living it when I seen the flames coming out of the windows, and the blown-up car in the street, guys crawling around shooting at us. It was fucking cool."

This generation will play a decisive role in America's open-ended war on terror - for better or for worse. As Wright observes, the soldiers are so cynical they need no reason to do their grim jobs. Unlike the Vietnam generation for whom the war represented a loss of innocence, the

Iraq generation has no innocence to lose, they are a generation "for whom the big lie is as central to government as taxation", according to Wright, and are perfectly happy to contemplate that the war is entirely a grab for oil.

Unlike the Vietnam generation, for whom the war meant loss of innocence, the Iraq generation has no innocence to lose

From my perch covering the US-led wars in Afghanistan and Iraq over the past two years, I have seen this group of socially maladjusted, heavily armed youths become America's main international liability. Violent youth subculture in the US has long been a curiousity abroad, but it has now been driven to unprecedented levels of contact with an ancient civilisation which it does not understand, and which does not understand it. The result is grisly and tragic, and ultimately self-defeating for the US and its allies. More than anything, the decisive shift in Iraqi public opinion against the occupation in recent months has come about due to contact between Iraqis and these young men and women.

Rather than winning hearts and minds abroad, America's military has become the most acute source of anti-American rage. It neatly symbolises the US national priority of producing missiles and aircraft carriers at the expense of education highlights the income inequality that has made mercenaries out of the poor.

The 374 men of the First Marine Recon battalion, in which Wright was embedded, epitomise the violent youth subculture. "We've been brainwashed and trained for combat. We must say 'Kill!' 3,000 times a day in boot camp. That's why it's so easy", a soldier tells Wright.

Nathaniel Fick, a 25-year-old lieutenant and platoon leader, also explains the point. "In World War Two, when Marines hit the beaches, a surprisingly high percentage of them didn't fire their weapons . . . Not these guys ... These guys have no problem with killing."

Amid the bravado are powerful however there are powerful moments of remorse. One sergeant who mistakenly ordered his turret-gunner to shoot at a civilian house has to confront the consequence: a critically injured 12 –year-old boy and a sobbing mother. "A pilot doesn’t have to go down and look at the civilians his bombs have hit. Artillery men don’t see the effects of what they do. This is killing me inside," admits the sergeant.

But, observes Write, this was not the first time anyone got caught at it: "This only happened because this time, the battalion stopped moving long enough for the innocent victims to catch up with it.”

'Generation Kill' is published by Bantam Press in the UK and by G.P. Putnam's Sons in the US.

The writer, an FT news editor, was the FT's Iraq correspondent in

America is Not a Democracy: What Are We Going to Do About It?

The 2004 Elections

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http://www.axisoflogic.com

America Is Not a Democracy: What Are We Going To Do About It? By John Spritzler Aug 5, 2004, 15:28

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The United States is not a democracy. Sure, we have elections and all the trappings of a democracy. But if, by democracy, we mean a society shaped by the values of ordinary people rather than by the values of a wealthy and privileged elite, in which the popular vote actually determines the direction of the society, then no, we don't have a democracy. We have a plutocracy. Billionaires hold the real power because they own the media and the entire private sector and they use this leverage to control the politicians.

Billionaires ensure that every major public and private institution promotes their values of inequality, control from above and competition (for us, not for them). In many different ways they attack our efforts to create relations of solidarity and trust. They create resentment and mistrust between the generations by using two-tier wage scales that pay newly hired younger workers less for doing the same work for which older workers get paid more. They stress relations within working class families to the breaking point by paying so little that mothers and fathers between them have to work two or three jobs and have no time for their children or involvement in their communities. And they drill our children in public schools to compete with classmates (and others like themselves around the world) for grades and jobs in the grim "global economy."

On matters of huge importance to us, like whether we go to war, or have a decent job or receive health care when we need it most, the government makes decisions by consulting "important" people in the "business community," not working class Americans. Whenever the government decides to go to war, we're always kept in the dark about the true reasons why. All we get are the phony reasons and lies designed to make us go along with the war. LBJ used the lie about the Gulf of Tonkin to get support for the Vietnam war, and Bush, Jr. used the lie about WMD. These aren't exceptions. In every war it's the same story.

Likewise, the very rich, not "We, the People," determine the crucial domestic government policies that affect our lives. We – the great majority of Americans according to poll after poll over the decades – want universal health care, but government and corporate leaders refuse. We want better schools for all of our children with smaller class sizes in safe buildings with lots of books and an inspiring curriculum, and what do we get? Fancy private schools that teach the children of parents who can afford the steep tuition that they are smart and fit to be tomorrow's leaders. For working class children, boring standardized testing centers designed to make them feel insecure about whether they are good enough even to deserve a job that will pay a living wage. If there is not democracy in the public sector, forget about it in the private. We all know what it's like to work for any of the big or medium sized corporations that employ most of us. During work hours there is not even the pretense of a democracy -- orders come from above, from "Them, the Owners" not "We, the People." No, this is not a democracy. It is a dictatorship of the rich.

Furthermore, most of us know that we do not live in a democracy. I know this is true because I have made a habit of asking strangers if we have a democracy (as opposed to the trappings of one) and they invariably say No. At the grocery store checkout counter the other day the magazines on display included Boston Magazine with a cover featuring a young woman with a T-shirt that said, "Got Democracy?" I asked the woman next to me in line what she thought the answer was to the question? She laughed and said, No. A couple of days earlier someone on the street collecting signatures for a ballot referendum asked me to sign. I said I wasn't a registered voter. She asked me why in the world wasn't I. When I told her I'd be the first in line to register to vote on the day we had a democracy, she smiled and said, "How true."

So what are we going to do about it?

If we want to live in a democracy we need to overthrow the plutocracy. But how? They have all of the power. They have the government, the military, the media, the money. How can we overthrow them?

We have what it takes, at least potentially. We have nearly three hundred million people who want to live in a democracy. How many people do they have who want to live in a plutocracy? Their money comes from us working for them. Their military power comes from our sons and daughters fighting for them. When we stand together and refuse to do their bidding, their power vanishes and ours becomes enormous. They understand this very well, even if we don't. Everything they do is designed to prevent us from standing together against them.

But to stand together and succeed, we must transform ourselves, from several hundred million people who each feel all alone in wanting to defeat the plutocracy into several hundred million people who know they are not alone. People who know they are not alone have the confidence to make concrete plans that can win. Until then, it seems foolish to even think about challenging the power of the plutocracy.

How do we do that? The first step, at least, is quite simple. We start talking to each other and saying out loud, "We don't have a democracy. What are we going to do about it?" We say it to our relatives. We say it to our friends. Our neighbors. People we work with. Strangers at the checkout counter. The person on the street who wants us to vote for some politician.. We say what most people already believe, so they know they are not alone in thinking it. We stop pretending to believe we have a democracy.

A very specific thing we can do about it, in this election campaign season, is ask our friends and neighbors to join us in refusing to vote in the presidential election and in telling the world (or at least a friend or two) why. This is what the MassRefusal/2004 (www.massrefusal.org) campaign is all about. Everybody from 18 to 100 years old can take this easy step together. It's safe and legal. Yet it not only strikes a blow at the ideological foundation of the plutocracy, it also enables all who do it to see themselves in a new light, as people who know that they are not alone and that it is no longer foolish to think about carrying out more ambitious kinds of mass actions to challenge the rule of the plutocracy.

Simple words, spoken by millions of friends and neighbors and people at work can completely change the "political reality" in our nation because the words are so true. They can undercut the sham of elections that make people think their only option is to "hold your nose and vote for the lesser evil." They can give people the confidence to rely on each other to fight little battles at work or elsewhere, while aiming to win the big battle against the plutocracy's stranglehold on our society.

Speaking the truth is more revolutionary in its effect than anything else we can do presently. It creates the basis for a powerful mass movement that can eventually take the kind of actions required to win a real democracy. And it answers the question posed by the fact of our current plutocracy: "What are we going to do about it?"

© Copyright 2004 by AxisofLogic.com

The Peace President