Tuesday, February 04, 2003
- Columbia: Budgeting for Disaster by Geov Parrish
Military/Coporate focus of space missions mean less for safety, more for death and destruction
From
WorkingForChange.com
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=15085
Nobody knows, or has any way of knowing, what caused Saturday morning’s horrific explosion of space shuttle Columbia, with its gruesome rain of metal and flesh across the pine woods of East Texas. It will take the various commissions and panels months, or longer, to even agree on a reasonable theory of the cause and sequence of events that led to the tragedy.
But that sequence started before, say, the loss of a piece of foam during Columbia’s launch; it started, in fact, far before the launch itself.
For years, NASA has suffered from what a number of its critics charge has been a steady erosion of the agency’s culture of safety. The shuttle program itself has been plagued in the last three years with an unusual string of highly visible safety-related problems. They include: a 1999 delay in the launch of Columbia due to a hydrogen leak; the grounding that year of Discovery with damaged wiring, a contaminated engine, and a dented fuel line; a delay in Endeavor’s January 2000 launch due to wiring and computer failures; an October 2000 launch delay due to a misplaced safety pin and concerns regarding the external tank; the April 2002 cancellation of a scheduled Atlantis flight due to a hydrogen fuel leak; and the grounding last August of the shuttle launch system after fuel line cracks were discovered.
In August, 2000, an inspection uncovered 3,500 wiring defects in Columbia. Last July, the Inspector General blasted the management of the shuttle safety program. And in the wake of the Columbia disaster, numerous stories have emerged detailing the unsuccessful efforts by engineers, over the last several years, to convince NASA to fund the inclusion of an emergency escape mechanism for shuttle astronauts to have available in the event of exactly the sort of disaster that struck Saturday.
As has been endlessly reported, the Columbia’s science-oriented mission in its last, ill-fated voyage was a rarity these days. Such reports rarely explained why science is such a low priority for the modern NASA: It has become an agency almost entirely given over to military, and secondarily corporate, priorities. Those priorities are on display each time satellite imagery enables the United States to send precision bombs down some Iraqi air vent or on to some Afghan wedding party. The civilian commercial priorities will be on increasingly visible display in coming decades, as mechanized missions begin exploring, and exploiting, the mineral wealth of the rest of our solar system.
Ever since the first Star Wars research funding, NASA has steered sharply away from the program remembered by most Americans (and most of the rest of the world) over the age of about 45. At one time, the American space launches, especially the moon shots, were widely seen as representing the aspirations of not just the United States, but all humanity. Now, the U.S. space program is mostly more pedestrian and parochial: an effort to seize the military high ground and to ensure for American companies the wealth of all the planets, including ours.
With that shift, NASA’s annual budgets have increasingly failed to invest in the safety of its astronauts and the maintenance of its physical assets—and NASA’s bureaucracy has become increasingly resistant to criticism or change.
As goes Columbia, so goes America.
It’s a fluke of timing, but today’s White House release of President Bush’s proposed 2004 budget is eerily reminiscent of exactly the sort of NASA budgetary priorities that have preceded and accompanied the last three years’ worth of safety incidents, up to and including Saturday’s tragedy. Like the modern NASA, George W. Bush’s America circa Fiscal Year 2004 will make unprecedented, secretive, and largely unaccountable investments in militarism. As with NASA, Dubya’s proposed $2.2 trillion FY 2004 federal budget downplays investment in the basics. Even by the notoriously optimistic economic estimates of the White House, it also carries a staggering $304 billion deficit. One out of every seven federal dollars spent next year will not actually exist. Over half of that spending will be for military purposes, without even including the cost of a possible war with Iraq or an ensuing occupation—or the possible counterattacks throughout the Islamic world.
Dubya’s 2004 budget contains estimates for a federal deficit that are nearly triple of those made by the White House only six months ago. Almost all of that gap is traceable to three components: a persistently poor economy, Bush’s penchant for reducing the contribution to federal revenues made by the country’s economic elites—particularly through an unconscionable new ten-year, $670 billion tax cut plan included in the new budget—and military spending, particularly for the new Homeland Security department and for the military’s mobilization in the Middle East.
And the Bush budget—like those of NASA in recent years—compensates for its unchecked military spending by failing to invest in the country’s people and infrastructure. Dubya’s State of the Union claim that his administration would not pass on our generation’s problems to our children might just rank among the most preposterous claims a powerful politician has ever made—and that’s saying a whole lot. Not only is the federal deficit growing by $200 billion every six months (care to extrapolate that rate through the end of a second term?), and not only is the Chicken Hawk Club gleefully promising a 100 Years’ War that will outlive our children (even if they’re not killed by terrorist bombs), but Bush’s spending priorities, at least in the budget presented today, represent a radical underfunding of the basic economic, social, and political infrastructure that keeps our country, or any country, running smoothly.
The Bush Administration’s domestic agenda, as outlined in the FY2004 budget, includes a privatization plan for Medicare that, if implemented, would throw to the wolves the health care needs of millions of elderly and disabled Americans. It includes virtually nothing that would assist unemployed workers, help finance the cost of higher education, help rebuild the country’s decaying industrial and transportation infrastructure, promote renewable energy sources, or help feed the unconscionable number of hungry children in our country.
Dubya’s version of what his father once called “the vision thing” once again does not, needless to say, include any sort of urgency for defending Americans against unsafe drinking water, polluted skies or streams, unethical business leaders, lying stock market analysts, or corporations vying to ship American jobs overseas. It does include nearly $6 billion, over the next 10 years, to develop a wide variety of vaccines against the preposterously unlikely advent of a terrorist bioattack using anthrax, Ebola, botulinum, or the plague.
The chances of such an attack are infinitesimally small; meanwhile, 20,000 Americans die each year from influenza while the country suffers from chronic shortages of flu vaccine. Bush’s budget, in this as in so many other areas, is not about spending money in the most effective way to give the maximum help to the maximum number of Americans. It does not prioritize the basics that keep us, and our economy and society, safe and healthy. Its authors are as unlikely to heed criticism, or to respond effectively to warning signs of trouble, as any entrenched NASA bureaucrat. And those warning signs are everywhere: persistent unemployment, staggering consumer debt, shattered retirement plans, accelerated global warming and environmental degradation, rising anti-Americanism around the world, the expanding gap between rich and poor, endless James Bond sequels.
The image of a too-wide contrail across the Texas sky is now firmly fixed in the minds of hundreds of millions of people, not because a contrail in the sky is remarkable, but because of what that image signified. In many ways, the Bush budget proposal released today is equally frightening—not because of the tedious lines and pages of figures and bureaucratese within, but because, again, we know what they signify: millions of compromised lives. With NASA’s failure, one or a series of possibly small but clearly critical details resulted in a catastrophe as sudden as it was indelible. The Bush approach, handed to Congress today, spreads its impacts out for years to come. But the catastrophes it sets in motion are no less horrific.
Geov Parrish is a Seattle-based columnist and reporter for Seattle Weekly, In These Times and Eat the State! He writes the daily Straight Shot for WorkingForChange.
© 2003 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
- NY City witholding permit for anti war demo? Demo info here
The NYC authorities are refusing march permits for Feb. 15. Under no circumstances, they say, will there be a march bigger than 10,000 people. Why? Because the police cannot contain it. The following are *excerpts* of notes from Co-chair Leslie Cagan of the United For Peace and Justice Coalition(admin. committee notes.)
a) The NYC Police Dept. informed our lawyers today that they will NOT issue a parade permit for the demonstration. On the call today we all agreed to challenge this decision in court. The New York Civil Liberties Union is representing us and the papers will be filed in the court tomorrow (Thursday).
The police said they would grant us permission to have a rally, but for safety and security reasons they will not give us the permit to march. Our lawyers believe we have a strong case, but certainly there is no guarantee on what the judge will eventually decide. [...]More details on the campaign will be forthcoming very soon. In the meantime it is full steam ahead with the organizing!
b) Below is a complete list of the people presently confirmed to participate in the rally on 2/15, followed by the other categories the program committee wants to include.
[...]
Confirmed Participants in 2/15 rally in NYC
this includes speakers, singers and poets and the list is not in any particular order
Bishop Desmond Tutu
Julian Bond, chair of the board of the NAACP
Colleen Kelly representing Sept. 11th Families for a Peaceful Tomorrow
Middle East and Iraq experts Phyllis Bennis, Anthony Arnove and Rania Massri
Mike Marqusee of the UK Stop the War Coalition based in London
an Israeli refusnik, one of the reservists refusing to serve in the occupied West Bank
Martin Luther King III
Vietnam Veteran Jaime Vasquez former Deputy Mayor
two of the poets from Def Poetry Jam
playwright Tony Kushner
Harry Belafonte
Danny Glover
Mos Def
Sarah Jones, performer
Patti Smith, singer
Betty, accopela group of three women
Richie Perez, NYC community activist
highest ranking labor leader possible
Brenda Stokley, NYCLAW (NYC labor leader)
Humberto Brown, Black Radical Congress (on reparations)
Rev. Al Sharpton
David Rovics (musician, singer)
[The next part of the email mentions unconfirmed speakers and other categories of speakers that the program commmittee wants to include.]
For more information contact (DC) Jason Kafoury (w) 202-387-8030, (c) 202-465-2764 (NYC) Leslie Cagan (w) 646 473 8934
- Guernica Reproduction Covered at UN
NEW YORK.- The “Guernica” work by Pablo Picasso at the entrance of the Security Council of the United Nations has been covered with a curtain. The reason for covering this work is that this is the place where diplomats make statements to the press and have this work as the background. The Picasso work features the horrors of war. On January 27 a large blue curtain was placed to cover the work.
Fred Eckhard, press secretary of the U.N. said: “It is an appropriate background for the cameras.” He was questioned as to why the work had been covered.
A diplomat stated that it would not be an appropriate background if the ambassador of the United States at the U.N. John Negroponte, or Powell, talk about war surrounded with women, children and animals shouting with horror and showing the suffering of the bombings.
This work is a reproduction of the Guernica that was donated by Nelson A. Rockefeller to the U.N. in 1985.
originally at
http://www.artdaily.com/news.asp?not=11
and apparantly moved
Few of us can easily surrender our belief that society must somehow make sense. The thought that the state has lost its mind and is punishing so many innocent people is intolerable. And so the evidence has to be internally denied.
Read another story on this by Maureen Dowd
Wednesday, January 29, 2003
- Arundhati Roy | Confronting Empire (Port Alegre)
.....While bombs rain down on us, and cruise missiles skid across the skies, we know that contracts are being signed, patents are being registered, oil pipelines are being laid, natural resources are being plundered, water is being privatized, and George Bush is planning to go to war against Iraq......
....Our strategy should be not only to confront empire, but to lay siege to it. To deprive it of oxygen. To shame it. To mock it. With our art, our music, our literature, our stubbornness, our joy, our brilliance, our sheer relentlessness — and our ability to tell our own stories. Stories that are different from the ones we’re being brainwashed to believe.....
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=51&ItemID=2919
Tuesday, January 28, 2003
- Student Strike on March 5th
National One-Day Student Strike - March 5th
The Bush administration is intent on plunging America into an illegitimate and pre-emptive war in Iraq that will only increase danger for Americans and the world. At the same time education, healthcare, and the economy are being neglected. Its time for youth and students to take a stand for America’s future!
http://www.nyspc.net/home.html
- US Librarians See ‘Big Brother’ in Monitoring of Library Patrons Under ‘USA Patriot Act’
PHILADELPHIA—A federal law aimed at catching terrorists has raised the hackles of many of the nation’s librarians, who say it goes too far by allowing law enforcement agencies to watch what some people are reading.
The USA Patriot Act, passed after the Sept. 11 attacks, gave the FBI new powers to investigate terrorism, including the ability to look at library records and computer hard drives to see what books patrons have checked out, what Web pages they’ve visited, and where they’ve sent e-mails.
The Department of Justice says the new powers are needed to identify terrorist cells.
But some librarians, who were meeting in Philadelphia for an American Library Association convention, worry that the FBI has returned to routinely checking on the reading habits of intellectuals, civil rights leaders and other Americans.
Those tactics, common in the 1950s and 1960s, were occasionally used to brand people as Communists......
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0126-05.htm
- Poets Against Bush call for poems to counter war
January 19, 2003
Dear Friends and Fellow Poets:
When I picked up my mail and saw the letter marked “The White House,” I felt no joy. Rather I was overcome by a kind nausea as I read the card enclosed:
“Laura Bush requests the pleasure of your company at a reception and White House Symposium on “Poetry and the American Voice” on Wednesday, February 12, 2003 at one o’clock”
Only the day before I had read a lengthy report on the President’s proposed “Shock and Awe” attack on Iraq, calling for saturation bombing that would be like the firebombing of Dresden or Tokyo, killing countless innocent civilians.
I believe the only legitimate response to such a morally bankrupt and unconscionable idea is to reconstitute a Poets Against the War movement like the one organized to speak out against the war in Vietnam.
I am asking every poet to speak up for the conscience of our country and lend his or her name to our petition against this war, and to make February 12 a day of Poetry Against the War. We will compile an anthology of protest to be presented to the White House on that afternoon.
Please submit your name and a poem or statement of conscience to:
There is little time to organize and compile. I urge you to pass alon this letter to any poets you know. Please join me in making February 12 a day when the White House can truly hear the voices of American poets.
Sam Hamill
Ref
http://www.poets.org/poets/poets.cfm?prmID=750
- A Call For Conscientious Objection to War and War Preparations
When War Resisters’ International issued its call for conscientious objection to war and preparations for war in September 2001, the attacks on the World Trade Centre in New York and the Pentagon in Washington were only three weeks old, and the Western states, led by the USA, was mobilising for the ‘war on terrorism’. The first stage for this war was Afghanistan. Now, more than one year later, we are at the edge of a war on Iraq, justified as the second stage of the ‘war on terrorism’. Maybe, when you read this letter, this war has already begun.
While the peace movement all over the world was too slow to mobilise strong nonviolent resistance to the war on Afghanistan, this new war on Iraq already meets with strong public opposition, and an increasing number of people all over the world agree with our call for conscientious objection:
In the United States of America, more than 50,000 people signed the Pledge to Resist , and in January not only 500,000 people took to the streets in Washington, but also a wide range of civil disobedience actions were organised.
In Britain nonviolent direct actions took place at several military bases connected to a war on Iraq: Fairford, Lakenheath, and Northwood are only a few examples. The British Pledge of Resistance was signed by more than 3,500 persons.
In Germany, the Resist! campaign mobilises for nonviolent direct action against the war, and collected more than 4,000 signatures under their pledge.
These are only a few examples. Many other nonviolent actions are organised spontaneously, or without being part of a specific campaign that focuses on civil disobedience or direct action.
As part of WRI’s commitment to support resistance to war - renewed in our ‘Say No!’ statement - WRI provides information on these activities, and tries to link the different groups involved in nonviolent action. In addition, WRI makes information on conscientious objection - and where to get advice and support - available on its website, especially to members of those forces which will be part of the war on Iraq, notably US and UK forces. We also distributed a special report on conscientious objection and desertion in Iraq - an important issue, as it shows that the Iraqi people do not necessarily support the regime of Saddam Hussein, and that especially those who oppose the regime will suffer the most.
At this crucial time, we all need to work together to prevent this war. If you live in one of the countries mentioned above, you can get involved in one of these campaigns if you don’t do so already. In other countries, you can get information on activities against the war from your local WRI affiliate (we enclose an affiliation list in this mailing) or from other peace organisations.
On 15 February, mass demonstrations against the war on Iraq will be held in many European countries and in North America, called for by the European Social Forum. Please take our ‘Say No!’ statement and other WRI material to these demonstrations, maybe in a translation in your local language, and help us spread the message. Check our website for available language versions, and if you do a new translation, please send it to us by email to We will make new languages available as soon as we receive them.
War Resisters’ International also needs your support. Please make a donation to enable us to continue our work against war. Together we might be able to stop the war!
Andreas Speck
WRI Office Coordinator
http://www.wri-irg.org/news/2003/sayno-03.htm
- Denis J. Halliday/Normon Solomon on Bush War Plans: Obscene
GUEST MEDIA ALERT:
STATEMENTS BY DENIS HALLIDAY AND NORMAN SOLOMON
January 26, 2003
Halliday is Former Assistant Secretary General of the United Nations and Former head of U.N. oil-for-food program
The obscene haste of Bush to go to war, beside his friend Tony Blair, is very hard to understand. In the absence of any immediate threat to the Middle East, or to the United States, from Iraq, one has to seek another rationale. Is it the messianic fervor driving the kind of simplistic thinking that gave us the Bush concept of the ‘axis of evil’? Or is it a determination to enhance Israel with total disregard for the well-being and human rights of the people of Palestine? Or is it about oil? I believe it is primarily the latter.
Since 9/11 the relationship between Washington and Saudi Arabia has become fragile.... And this comes when Venezuelan oil is all but stopped and the future of large Mexican supplies is in doubt.... The Bush administration perception is that Iraq constitutes one very large reserve tank—a ‘tank’ of some 120 billion barrels. And control of that tank has become paramount for American economic superiority. Control also would represent leverage over Europe and Japan --an important part of U.S. ambitions for empire in the coming years.
Resolution 1441, for all its drama and careful wording, amounts to little more than theatre when we know that U.S. intelligence undoubtedly is aware of what, if any, remnant of weapons of mass destruction Iraq possesses. After all, America is the leading arms dealer of the UN permanent five of the Security Council, and together they formed the weapons source leading up to and during the Iran-Iraq war. U.S. impatience with the UN inspections—despite cooperation by the Iraqi authorities—would seem to underline the charade.
Resolution 1441 was designed to provide UN cover and respectability for a war that Bush wants so badly. This cover now seems more and more remote as most other permanent members of the Council remain unconvinced that war is justified.
And now Bush is facing an appreciable turning of the tide with respect to American public opinion against unilateral aggression by Washington. Despite the jingoism of the last 18 months, Americans are questioning the priorities of Bush vis a vis both domestic and foreign
affairs—and also questioning the contrast of his diplomatic-dialogue approach to North Korea, with nuclear capacity, and to his aggressive stance towards Iraq without. Angry over the loss
of major allies, concerned by the change in public opinion, rejected by UN Security Council friends—Bush has become even more dangerous and anxious to take his country to war. It is patriotism? Or irresponsibility? That is for Americans to determine, just as it should be for Iraqis to determine what is right for their country.
If UN sanctions were terminated—and if the lives of the people were to be restored and the economy rebuilt and society and culture restored—the capacity to go forward with change via a multiparty democracy, as foreseen in the constitutional change under consideration, could become viable. The United Nations has cruelly damaged the social, economic and cultural rights of the Iraqi people under sanctions for over 12 years. We have allowed massive loss of life. We have allowed a state of war to stand ever since 1991. Rather than initiate massive new aggression, we should reach out to the people of Iraq and offer our assistance. We should fully recognize the sovereignty of the country and the unique qualities of its ancient people. We should focus on stopping the war of Bush now, and starting the process of restoring the well-being of the children, the families, the people of Iraq. Iraq is for the Iraqis—they and only they can determine what and when is best. And they can only begin when the U.S. withdraws its forces and ends its interference; when the UN terminates its deadly embargo; and we as individuals take responsibility for demanding that our respective governments act within international law.
Statement by Norman Solomon—January 26, 2003
Executive Director, Institute for Public Accuracy
Co-author, Target Iraq (Context Books, New York: January 2003)
Like millions of other American citizens, I am horrified by the imminent threat of an all-out U.S. attack on Iraq. In our names, with our tax dollars, the Bush administration appears ready and willing—even eager—to devastate Iraqi society while killing large numbers of civilians in the process. No amount of oil or geopolitical leverage for the U.S. government could possibly serve as a valid justification for such slaughter.
The people I’ve seen and met in the streets and shops of Baghdad in recent days have done nothing to deserve the horrors that President Bush appears to have in store for them.
Top officials in Washington have repeatedly pledged to lead a “coalition of the willing”; in other words, a coalition for the killing—of vast numbers of Iraqi people.
Thirty-five years ago, on February 27, 1968, I sat in a small room on Capitol Hill and watched a hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Oregon’s Senator Wayne Morse spoke about the war in Vietnam. Moments before the hearing adjourned, Morse said he did not “intend to put the blood of this war on my hands.” Years earlier, in 1964, Senator Morse told a national TV audience: “I don’t know why we think, just because we’re mighty, that we have the right to try to substitute might for right.”
Today, I join with increasing numbers of Americans who do not intend to put the blood of this war on our hands. We refuse to accept the pernicious and murderous notion that the United States has the right to substitute might for right. We will continue to denounce the administration’s war plans—no matter how much President Bush cloaks his war cries in lofty rhetoric. No one can dispute the Pentagon’s capacity to inflict massive and overpowering violence. But might does not make right.
Feel free to respond to Media Lens alerts:
Visit the Media Lens website: http://www.medialens.org
Thursday, January 23, 2003
- Iraq: legal challenge to Norwegian Government
PRESS RELEASE
From the Norwegian Peace Alliance, Oslo -
FOR REPLY, use address:
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION: [url=http://www.nowar.no]http://www.nowar.no[/url]
(You are welcome to forward to movement or media contacts)
Oslo, Jan. 16, 2003
Most nations seem to hold that a new resolution by the Security Council, which in express words authorizes an armed attack against Iraq will make such a war legitimate. However, under the UN Charter there is no basis for such a resolution, since the legal conditions in Art. 42 are not presently fulfilled in the Iraq situation. This was the essence of a stern warning to the Norwegian Government Thursday. The challenge, which threatened the extremely US-loyal Norway with legal action if the Government should support or participate in a war in violation of international law, came in a letter from attorney-at-law, Haakon Helle, acting for the Norwegian Peace Alliance, the Norwegian umbrella of peace organizations.
- To keep the peace is the key objective of the UN and its Security Council is the only body in the world which can legally decide to use military force. The sole exception is the right of countries to self defense “if an armed attack occurs”, but there is no present reason to fear an attack by Iraq against the US or any other country, says Fredrik S. Heffermehl, president of the Norwegian Peace Alliance.
- A right to preventive action or “preemptive attack” would destroy the existing prohibition against force that it has taken centuries to establish. If a country is found to have illegal weapons there is a case for eliminating them, but not for war, Mr. Heffermehl added.
Since ministers in the Cabinet of Norway have created considerable doubt about their familiarity with international law and their intention to abide in good faith, the Norwegian Peace Alliance warned the Government that they will scrutinize all its actions and decisions and - if they violate international law - demand an injunction from the Norwegian courts.
Below: the Norwegian Peace Alliance letter 16. Jan. 2003 to the Governement. Groups in other countries are encouraged to address their own governments with a similar warning and establish a preparedness to go to court if their national law and court system should so warrant.
Norges Fredsråd / The Norwegian Peace Alliance
Storgata 11, N-0155 Oslo, Norway
Ph: 23010339, Fax: 23010303
Thursday, January 16, 2003
- Oakland and San Francisco Teachers Organize Teach-Ins on the War
School board members...declared themselves firmly against another Iraq war. But all agreed the events would be non-biased and present all sides of the issue.....The problem, organizers said, was they couldn’t find anyone to represent a “pro-war” side.
From one of the teachers: “I think many of us remembered why we became teachers, to change the world, to build a better future, to awaken a sleeping country of materialists and individualists, and help people see the beauty and power of community and working to make a better world.”
Note how some of the articles editorialize and trivialize while pretending to be neutral, particularly “Teaching In Friday”, December 20, 2002 By Joanne Jacobs, Associated Press (Last article)
More
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/portside/message/3610
- John le Carre: The United States of America has gone mad
“Will people be killed, Daddy?”
“Nobody you know, darling. Just foreign people.”
America has entered one of its periods of historical madness, but this is the worst I can remember: worse than McCarthyism, worse than the Bay of Pigs and in the long term potentially more disastrous than the Vietnam War.
The reaction to 9/11 is beyond anything Osama bin Laden could have hoped for in his nastiest dreams. As in McCarthy times, the freedoms that have made America the envy of the world are being systematically eroded. The combination of compliant US media and vested corporate
interests is once more ensuring that a debate that should be ringing out in every town square is confined to the loftier columns of the East Coast press.
More:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/portside/message/3609
