Mn-prog-events Mailing List: Progressive Calendar 05.19.06

[David Shove (shove001]

             P R O G R E S S I V E   C A L E N D A R      05.19.05

1. Science/law/policy 5.20 8:30am
2. Hakeem/garage sale 5.20 12noon
3. Palestine vigil    5.20 4:15pm
4. Pics/Lao/ArtAWhirl 5.20 5pm
5. Mizna open house   5.20 5pm
6. Willmar 8/film     5.20 7pm
7. Woman/drum/poem    5.20 7pm
8. Peace/Northside    5.20 7pm

9. Dwight Eisenhower - How the GOP will destroy itself
10. Dave Lindorff    - The plot to make the PATRIOT Act even worse
11. Mike Whitney     - Operation Falcon: 10,000 swept up
12. Mark Morford     - Ready for your own all-new sinister ID card?
13. Bill Moyers      - Take public broadcasting back (part 1 of 2)
14. ed               - Poem in background color font (revised version)

--------1 of 14--------

From: Consortium <lawvalue [at] umn.edu>
Subject: Science/law/policy 5.20 8:30am

Register now for a major national conference on: "Where are Law, Ethics &
the Life Sciences Headed? Frontier Issues"   Friday May 20; 8:30am-5pm
Mondale Hall, Room 25, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis  

This conference is an exceptional opportunity for academics, researchers,
policymakers, students, and members of the public working at the
intersection of law and science to exchange ideas on the relationship of
science, law, and policy.

Invited plenary speakers will address pressing issues in genetics,
environmental law, neuroscience, biotechnology, and health care to allow
symposium participants to examine these issues comparatively across areas.

Afternoon workshop participants were chosen competitively in response to a
call for papers issued in October 2004. Workshops will address bioethics,
behavioral biology, intellectual property, among other areas.

Plenary speakers include:  
 *Prof. Henry T. Greely, JD (Stanford University),
 *Prof. Crawford S. Holling, PhD, DSc (University of Florida),
 *Prof. Lars Noah, JD (University of Florida),
 *Prof. Arti K. Rai, JD (Duke University School of Law),
 *Sean Tunis, MD, MSc (Director of the Office of Clinical Standards and
Quality (OCSQ) and Chief Medical Officer at the U.S. Centers for Medicare
and Medicaid Services (CMS)).

Online registration, full agenda, and further information are available at
http://www.jointdegree.umn.edu/conferences/lawlifesci.php or by calling
612-625-0055.  Registration fees are $35 and $10 for students.  Fees
include lunch.  Continuing education credits (CME, CNE, CLE) are available
at no extra cost (more information below).

This conference is co-sponsored by the University of Minnesota's
Consortium on Law and Values in Health, Environment & the Life Sciences
(www.lifesci.consortium.umn.edu); Joint Degree Program in Law, Health &
the Life Sciences (www.jointdegree.umn.edu); and the Minnesota Journal of
Law, Science & Technology (www.mjlst.umn.edu).

Agenda:
 
8:30am   Welcome
         Profs. Jim Chen and Susan Wolf, University of Minnesota

8:45am   "Frontier Issues: Law, Ethics & Biotechnology"
         Prof. Lars Noah, JD, University of Florida Levin College
            of Law

9:30am   "Frontier Issues: Environment"
         Prof. C.S. Holling, PhD, University of Florida

10:15am   Break

10:30am   "Frontier Issues: Medical Technology"
            Sean Tunis, MD, MSc, Centers for Medicare & Medicaid
             Services

11:15am   "Frontier Issues: Neuroscience"
          Prof. Henry T. Greely, JD, Stanford University

Noon      Lunch - "The Intersection of Law, Ethics & Genetics"
            Prof. Arti Rai, JD, Duke University

1:15pm    Workshop 1A:  Bioethics and Law
          Moderator:  Prof. Susan Wolf, JD, University of Minnesota
             Law School & Medical School
          Colleen Sweeney, JD, PhD, Notre Dame College of Ohio
          Lyria Bennett Moses, LLM, Columbia University
          Cynthia Lee, JD, MA, University of Texas
          Gaia Bernstein, JD, LLM, Seton Hall University School
             of Law
AND
          Workshop 1B:  Behavioral Biology, Evolutionary Theory,
             and Law
          Moderator: Prof. Alexandra B. Klass, JD, William Mitchell
             College of Law
          Owen Jones, JD, Vanderbilt University
          Elizabeth Chorvat, LLM University of Virginia
          Jeffrey Stake, JD, Indiana University
          David Herring, JD, University of Pittsburgh
AND
          Workshop 1C:  Intellectual Property Protection for
             Biotechnology
          Moderator:  Prof. Jim Chen, JD, University of Minnesota
             Law School
          Keith Bustos, MA, University of Tennessee
          Cynthia Ho, JD, Loyola University
          Guido Westkamp, LLM, Dr jur, Queen Mary Intellectual
             Property Research Institute

2:45pm    Break

3:00pm    Workshop 2A:   Environment
          Moderator:  Prof. Brad Karkkainen, JD, University of Minnesota
             Law School
          Douglas Kysar, JD, Cornell University
          Ron Millen, University of Minnesota
          J.B. Ruhl, JD, Florida State University
AND
          Workshop 2B:  Regulation of Biotechnology
          Moderator:  Prof. Ronald Phillips, PhD, University of Minnesota
                 College of Agricultural, Food, and Environmental Sciences
          Rebecca Bratspies, JD, City University of New York
          Deb Collier, LLM, University of Cape Town
          Victoria Sutton, JD, PhD, MPA, Director, Center for
             Biodefense, Law and Public Policy, Texas Tech University
AND
          Workshop 2C:  Neuroscience & Law
          Moderator:  Prof. Peter Huang, JD, University of Minnesota
             Law School
          Eric Racine, PhD, Stanford Center for Biomedical Ethics
          Erin O'Hara, JD, Vanderbilt University
          Terrence R. Chorvat, JD, LLM, George Mason University
          Oliver Goodenough, JD, Vermont University

4:30pm    Wrap-up

5:00pm    Adjourn

Continuing Education Credits:
This conference will provide continuing education credit for physicians
(CME), nurses (CNE), and attorneys (CLE).

The University of Minnesota is accredited by the Accreditation Council for
Continuing Medical Education to provide continuing medical education for
physicians.

The University of Minnesota designates this educational activity for a
maximum of 7 hours in category 1 credit toward the AMA Physician's
Recognition Award. Each physician should claim only those hours of credit
actually spent in the educational activity.

Continuing legal education credit (CLE) for attorneys is pending (7 hours
requested).

This conference is intended for students, faculty, researchers, scientists,
policymakers, patients, health care professionals and organizations, and
interested community members.  Following this conference, participants
should be able to:
 *Identify cutting-edge issues at the intersection of law, ethics, and
biotechnology.
 *Discuss new environmental issues and their legal, ethical, and social
implications.
 *Understand the ethical and legal implications of recent developments in
medical technology.
 *Consider the implications of new research in neuroscience and behavioral
biology.
 *Analyze issues at the intersection of law, ethics, and genetics.

Susan M. Wolf Faegre & Benson Professor of Law Professor of Medicine
Director, Joint Degree Program in Law, Health & the Life Sciences Chair,
Consortium on Law and Values in Health, Environment & the Life Sciences
University of Minnesota Law School 229 19th Avenue South Minneapolis, MN
55455 Tel. 612-625-3406 FAX 612-624-9143 www.jointdegree.umn.edu
www.lifesci.consortium.umn.edu


--------2 of 14--------

From: announce [at] lists.mngreens.org
Subject: Hakeem/garage sale 5.20 12noon

Hakeem for Mayor Garage Sale (5/20 - 5/21)

Garage Sale from 12noon-5pm Friday May 20, and 10am-3pm Saturday May 21! 
Support the Hakeem for Mayor Campaign by buying all of your summer needs
at our Garage Sale located at 2830 E 22 St Mpls 55406.  For more info,
contact Elina at 612-877-2102.


--------3 of 14--------

From: peace 2u <tkanous [at] hotmail.com>
Subject: Palestine vigil 5.20 4:15pm

Every Friday
Vigil to End the Occupation of Palestine
4:15-5:15pm
Summit & Snelling, St. Paul

There are now millions of Palestinians who are refugees due to Israel's
refusal to recognize their right under international law to return to
their own homes since 1948.


--------4 of 14--------

From: John Geisen-Kisch <geisenkischs [at] yahoo.com>
Subject: Pics/Lao/ArtAWhirl 5.20 5pm

Catherine to Exhibit World Travel Photography (May 20 - 22nd during
Art-A-Whirl); Fundraiser for Lao America, a local nonprofit organization

Please join me for the first exhibit of my photography from two years of
backpacking in East/West Africa, Nepal, SE Asia and New Zealand - THIS IS
A BENEFIT FOR Lao America, a nonprofit organization located in North
Minneapolis which helps to build the capacity of Lao refugees and
immigrants www.laoamerica.org . (I serve as a Board Member for Lao
America.) All purchases are tax deductible.

Opening Reception: Friday, May 20 from 5 to 9pm
Exhibit also open on Saturday, May 21 from Noon to 8pm; and Sunday,
May 21 from Noon to 5pm

Antiquified Antiques and Collectibles, 1519 Central Avenue NE (north of
downtown Minneapolis on Central Avenue; north of the RR overpass and
across from Diamond's Coffee)

Enjoy wine, organic Lao coffee, and appetizers, a silent auction and a
raffle during the opening reception. Framed and matted prints as well as
gift card sets will feature the people, environment and experiences of two
years traveling and living in the developing world.

This fundraiser/exhibit is held in conjunction with Art-A-Whirl, the
annual art studio tour sponsored by the Northeast Minneapolis Arts
District (www.nemaa.org, on whose board I also serve) in the Northeast
Minneapolis Arts District. Stay and visit the thousands of art studios
housed within reclaimed industrial buildings of Northeast. Wander around,
fill up on complementary wine and finger food and revel at the amazing
talent of professional potters, painters, sculptures, photographers,
fabric artists, and soap, candlestick makers ... Just look for the signs
and/or red balloons. In the last year alone, nearly 10 new studios have
opened up on 13th Avenue NE (near the Grainbelt Brewery off of 94W; and
over 300 studios open their doors for the event in the Northrup King
building off of Central Avenue --- not to mention hundreds of other very
special studios scattered throughout Northeast.

Thanks so much and hope to see you all there!! Hey .. can I call myself an
'artist' now?!?!?

A special thank you to Julie Gubbin for donating the space for the
exhibit, to my husband, Anne-Severine and Phill for helping me to sort
through so many difficult decisions regarding which photos to use ... as
they all hold such special memories, to Lao America staff and Board
Members for helping with advertising, supplies and silent auction events,
to my friends in Northeast for their advice, and to Andy for his work on
all the matting! The prize item thus far for the silent auction is a hand
woven story cloth on wool from Laos which measures over 5' x 5' - thanks
to Patrick from the Lao board for contributing this beautiful piece of
artwork!


--------5 of 14--------

From: mizna-announce <mizna-announce [at] mizna.org>
Subject: Mizna open house 5.20 5pm

Please come to our Open House!

Mizna is proud to be a participant in "Art a Whirl", a weekend of
celebration of arts in Minneapolis.  At this time we will be holding an
open house in our office and we invite you to join us for sweets and
solidarity!

Bring a copy of this email for a complimentary issue of Mizna journal *
and special deals on Mizna merchandise will be available at this time as
well.

Times/Dates:
Friday, May 20:  5-9 pm
Saturday, May 21:  12-8 pm
Sunday, May 22:  12-6 pm

Location:
California Building
2205 California Street NE
Suite #109A
Minneapolis, Minnesota

Hope to see you there!

Mizna is a forum a forum for Arab art. Visit our website:
http://www.mizna.org Email us at Mizna [at] Mizna.org


--------6 of 14--------

From: stpaulunions.org <larkinl [at] mtn.org>
Subject: Willmar 8/film 5.20 7pm

St. Paul Area Trades and Labor Assembly
Join us again for movie night!

THE WILLMAR 8 - by Asa Wilson - Workday Minnesota

The wind chill was 70 degrees below zero in December 1977 when the
nation's first bank strike began in Willmar, Minnesota. On the morning of
December 16, the eight members of Willmar Bank Employees' Association
Local 1 marched out on the sidewalk in front of Citizen's National, armed
with snowmobile suits against the cold and signs against the blatant
sexism that reigned at the bank.

When they huddled together in the cold on that first December day, they
hoped a contract would bring them back inside within a couple of weeks.
When they stepped away from the picket line in 1979, they still had no
contract, but they had stirred up the emotions of the nation. Their fight
was not about the Citizen's National Bank in Willmar anymore; it was about
the rights of women in American and beyond.

Friday May 20 at 7pm
Carpenter's Hall, 700 Olive Street, St. Paul
Popcorn and beverages provided - Free and open to the public

Sponsored by:
Lakes and Plains Regional Council of Carpenters and Joiners - Sisters'
Committee
Twin Cities Coalition of Labor Union Women
Women in the Trades


--------7 of 14--------

From: PrairiePoet58 [at] aol.com
Subject: Woman/drum/poem 5.20 7pm

AMAZON BOOKSTORE
4755 Chicago Avenue South
Friday Man 20, 7pm

Poet, activist, and hand-drummer Leigh Herrick will be performing poetry
from her JUST WAR CD and discussing the ancient and contemporary
relationship between women, drumming and poetry.  Leigh has trained with
local and national drum masters including Ubaka Hill, Chico Perez and
Layne Redmond.  Vibration is the first peace to which we all are formed,
pulsed into being by the flow of Mother-blood. In a time of seemingly
non-stop aggression and extreme capitalism Herrick's CD uses rhythm to
recall and reclaim those peaceful vibrations as she reveals them, in
juxtaposition with a poetry that never ceases to confront the life-denying
paradigms of non-egalitarianism.


--------8 of 14--------

From: Tom Taylor <tom [at] organicconsumers.org>
Subject: Peace/Northside 5.20 7pm

What Real Thing Will You Do For Peace On Friday?

Please come join us as we stand to say that violence and crime will not
carry the day in our Minneapolis communities.  Come be a part of PEACE
Across The Northside.

For too long the corridor along 26th AVE N. has been plagued by hopelessness
and senseless acts of violence and degradation and now is this time to stand
up and say that this not the reality that we choose and it must end.

On Friday, May 20, starting at 7pm citizens are gathering on 26th Avenue
outside of the Church of St. Philip at Bryant Avenue North and at Jordan
New Life Community Church at Newton Avenue North and 26th AVE. N in
Minneapolis to stand up for our children, their future and the collective
hope of our community.

Come with us as we line 26th AVE N and take it back for us all.

There will be an inspired program of spoken word from youth and righteous
dancing in the streets that evening so please join us.

Please forward this on to all that may be interested but most of all show
up, we all deserve it.

This is the start of PEACE Summer 2005.
http://www.citypeace.org/summer/index.html

Tom Taylor PEACE Across The Northside Coordinator 612-788-4252


--------9 of 14--------

Social Security and the Stupid Splinter Group
How the GOP will Destroy Itself
By DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER
CounterPunch
May 18, 2005

A letter to his brother, Milton, written November 8, 1954:

Should any political party attempt to abolish social security,
unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you
would not hear of that party again in our political history.

There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes you can do these
things.

Among them are H. L. Hunt (you possibly know his background), a few other
Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or business man from
other areas.

Their number is negligible and they are stupid.


--------10 of 14--------

A CounterPunch Exclusive
The Senate Intelligence Committee's Secret Session
The Plot to Make the PATRIOT Act Even Worse
By DAVE LINDORFF
CounterPunch
May 18, 2005

In a stunning slap at the democratic legislative process, the Senate
Intelligence Committee, headed by Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kansas), has
suddenly and quietly scheduled a closed-door session for this Thursday to
mark up its version of a renewed USA PATRIOT ACT, the frankenstein legacy
of former Attorney General John Ashcroft and his then assistant Michael
Chertoff (now secretary of Homeland Security).

The controversial act, many provisions of which seriously undermine basic
Constitutional rights and protections, was just being examined in hearings
by the Senate Judiciary Committee headed by Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA),
where it came under heavy criticism from both right and left. Both the
Intelligence and Judiciary committees have jurisdiction over the act, but
the Judiciary committee, with its open hearings, was widely seen as having
primacy.

Critics of some of the act's provisions, such as the notorious library
records provision, which allows federal agents, or local law enforcement
authorities working for them, to inspect the patron or customer records of
libraries, video stores and bookstores, without a warrant and without
notification, or the sneak-and-peek provision, which lets federal agents
spy and surveil on people without later notifying them, carry a "sunset
provision," which means if they are not renewed this year, they would
expire.

The administration has been arguing for renewal or for making the
provisions permanent, but a coalition of conservative and liberal groups
calling itself Patriots to Restore Checks and Balances, has expressed
hopes of convincing a majority of the Judiciary Committees of both House
and Senate to modify those and several other rights-threatening measures
in the PATRIOT Act before sending the renewal legislation to the full
Congress in June.

This surprise move by the Intelligence Committee, which is packed with
senators from both parties who have not been particularly friendly to
civil libertarians, appears to be an end run by supporters of the White
House.

Says Lisa Graves, intelligence lobbyist for the American Civil Liberties
Union, "This is an effort by the administration to get everything they
want. It is an outrage." Graves says the move suggests that the
administration and its congressional backers fear that they could lose in
the Judiciary Committee, and are hoping to present the bill they want as a
fait accompli and then call anyone who tries to weaken it "soft on
terror."

"This is a radical bill," Graves says of the Intelligence Committee
work-in-progress. She says her sources tell her that besides making the
controversial sunset provisions of the PATRIOT Act permanent, the
Intelligence Committee version of the revised act would greatly expand one
of its most dangerous provisions, the administrative subpoena. "It would
allow administrative subpoenas for virtually anything held by a third
party, such as bank or phone or medical records, with only the merest
unsubstantiated hint of a foreign connection." Equally troubling, she
says, the Intelligence Committee version of the bill would strip out a
current bar on using warrantless administrative subpoenas in cases that
involved primarily protected First Amendment activities, such as
legitimate political protest.

"I guess now we'll have to see whether the people on the Judiciary
Committee will have the political courage to stand up to this," says
Graves.

While the Intelligence Committee's plan for a closed-door mark-up of the
bill is a clear affront to democracy and to the Bill of Rights, it is in
keeping with the history of the PATRIOT Act, which was drawn
up--reportedly at the direction of Chertoff, who was then in charge of
terrorism issues at the Justice Department--in the weeks after the 9-11
attacks, and then passed by Congress with no committee hearings and
virtually no discussion. Although no member of Congress even had time to
read the mammoth 362-page bill, it passed in the Senate with only one
dissenting vote--cast by Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wisconsin)--and then passed
in the House by a lopsided 357-66 margin.

Over the intervening four and a half years, a dramatic grassroots movement
against the PATRIOT Act has swept across the country, with some 383
communities so far, large and small, including some major cities and seven
state governments, passing legislation that seeks to protect their
residents from the act--for example by barring local or state law
enforcement authorities from supporting unconstitutional federal agency
requests for information or surveillance or by calling on state
congressional delegations to vote to rescind the act.

Given this broad cross-party popular opposition to the Act, it will be
interesting to see how the full House and Senate vote on whatever PATRIOT
Act renewal bill is ultimately presented out to them.

Unlike the Intelligence Committee session this Thursday, their votes will
be in public.

Dave Lindorff is the author of Killing Time: an Investigation into the
Death Row Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal. His new book of CounterPunch columns
titled "This Can't be Happening!" is published by Common Courage Press.
Information about both books and other work by Lindorff can be found at
www.thiscantbehappening.net.

He can be reached at: dlindorff [at] yahoo.com


--------11 of 14--------

The Secret Raids of Alberto Gonzales
Operation Falcon: 10,000 Swept Up
By MIKE WHITNEY
CounterPunch
May 18, 2005

There's only one way to make sure that the machinery of state-terror is
operating at maximum efficiency; flip on the switch and let er rip. That
was thinking behind last month's massive roundup of 10,000 American
citizens in what was aptly-christened Operation Falcon.

Operation Falcon was a massive clandestine dragnet that involved hundreds
of state, federal and local law-enforcement agencies during the week of
April 4 to April 10, 2005. It was the largest criminal-sweep in the
nation's history and was brainchild of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales
and his counterpart in the US Marshal's office, (Director) Ben Reyna.

The secret-raids "produced the largest number of arrests ever recorded
during a single initiative," Reyna boasted.

The details are mind-boggling. Over 960 agencies (state, local and
federal) were directly involved acting on 13,800 felony warrants and
spending nearly $900,000 on the operation. As the conservative Washington
Times noted, "The sweep was a virtual clearinghouse for warrants on drug,
gang, gun and sex-offender suspects nationwide."

It's clear that the Marshal's office knew where the vast majority of the
suspects were or they never would have had such stunning success rounding
them up; which, of course, begs the question, "Why did they wait to
apprehend alleged' murderers, when they already knew where they were
hiding?"

According to the press releases, which celebrated the dazzling display of
law enforcement, the raids netted "162 accused or convicted of murder, 638
wanted for armed robbery, 553 wanted for rape or sexual assault, 154 gang
members and 106 unregistered sex offenders." (CNN)

Okay, that's roughly 1,000 criminals; what about the other 9,000? Traffic
tickets, late child-support payments, jay-walking???

"We're really amazed. We had no idea we'd apprehend more than 10,000 bad
guys," said one federal law enforcement official who asked not to be
identified. "We didn't know what to expect, but the response from law
enforcement personnel everywhere was truly amazing." (CNN)

The media's approbation does little to disguise the real purpose of
Operation Falcon. (which is an acronym for "Federal and Local Cops
Organized Nationally.")

The Bush administration is sharpening its talons for the inevitable
difficulties it expects to face as a result of its disastrous policies.
With each regressive initiative, the governing cabal seems to get
increasingly paranoid, anticipating an outburst of public rage. Now,
they're orchestrating massive round-ups of minor crooks to make sure that
every cog and gear in the apparatus of state repression is lubricated and
ready to go.

Rest assured that Attorney General Gonzales has absolutely no interest in
the petty offenders that were netted in this extraordinary crackdown. His
action is just another indication that the noose is tightening around the
neck of the American public and that the Bush team is fully prepared for
any unpleasant eventualities. They want to make sure that everyone knows
that they're ready when its time to thin out the ranks of mutinous
citizens.

(Note: to date, the US Marshall's office has issued no public statement to
the press as to whether the 10,000 people arrested in operation Falcon
have been processed or released.)

Mike Whitney lives in Washington state. He can be reached at:
fergiewhitney [at] msn.com

[The full name for the operation was Good Falcon, which is what BushCo
intends to give the American public and democracy. - ed]


--------12 of 14--------

CommonDreams
They Really Are Watching You
Ready for your own all-new, sinister ID card, courtesy of Homeland
Security? Shudder
by Mark Morford
Published on Wednesday, May 18, 2005 by the San Francisco Chronicle

Congress just passed it and Dubya has promised to sign it and the Homeland
Security Department is giddier than Mel Gibson in a nail factory over it
and marketers nationwide are salivating at the groin at the prospect of
it, and the next big step toward America becoming an even more
delightfully paranoid and draconian Big Brother wonderland has now
officially been taken.

It's called Real ID. It is, in short, a new and genetically mutated type
of driver's license for all Americans, replacing your current license and
replacing your Social Security card and replacing your sense of well being
and privacy and humanity and part of a new, uniform, deeply sinister,
national uniform card system whereby every person living and breathing in
these paranoid and tense times shall henceforth be much more traceable and
watchable given how we will all soon be required by law to carry this
super-deluxe computerized ID card with us at all times, packed as it will
be with more personal, digitized info about you than even your mother
knows.

Real ID is coming very soon. The legislation was passed with little outcry
and zero debate by both House and Senate just last week because lawmakers
snuck it into a massive $82 billion military spending bill, and therefore
no one was really paying much attention and this is the way you get thorny
disturbing culturally demeaning bills to pass without resistance from
smart people who should know better.

The new law will, according to the Wired News story linked above, require
everyone to hand over not one, not two, but fully four types of
documentation to renew their driver's license, such as a photo ID, a birth
certificate, proof that their Social Security number is legit and
something that validates their home address, like a phone bill. DMV
employees will then have to verify the documents against giant teeming
federal databases and store the documents and a digital photo of you in a
database. Isn't that fun? Doesn't that sound gratifying?

What's more, the card's design plan includes multiple openings for the
Homeland Security Department to add on whatever features they deem
necessary, with or without your knowledge, consent or who the hell cares
what you think because we do what we want now please shut the hell up and
quit asking questions.

Computer (RFID) microchip? Likely. Digital fingerprint? Sure. Political
affiliation? You bet. Web-site-visit log and religious affiliation and
recent sperm count and arrest record and drug addictions and medical
history and blood type and gender orientation and parent's/children's home
address and number of personal blog posts calling Dr. Phil a "slug-licking
ego-bitch charlatan" and your recent purchase history on shotathome.com?
One guess.

Make no mistake: Real ID, in short, takes us one happy step closer to a
total surveillance state, where everyone is stamped and everyone is
watchable and everyone is traceable and unless you live way, way off the
grid out in the increasingly nonexistent hinterlands, you cannot escape
the spazzy and twitchy and paranoid eye of Homeland Security.

Remember the scenes in that surprisingly not-awful Tom Cruise flick
"Minority Report" with the ubiquitous eye scanners, installed all over the
near-future city? And as poor Tommy ran around like a maniac, little
scanner machines installed by the gummint would read the eye pattern of
every citizen as they walked around and the system could track anyone at
any time no matter where they might wander and all the info was dumped
into a huge database that was studied and cross-checked and manipulated by
the CIA and FBI and Banana Republic?

Real ID feels much like that, only not nearly as cool.

Real ID is, as you might expect, giving civil liberties groups and
immigrant-support groups the hives. State governors across the nation are
none too happy, either, as implementation of the new law will cost each
state hundreds of millions of dollars, but, of course, the bill provides
zero federal funds to help. Such is the BushCo way.

This is the funny thing. This is the sad thing. This is the terrifying
thing. We have suffered one major debilitating act of terrorism in this
nation and we have recoiled so violently, so rabidly, so desperately that
we are still more than willing to give up whatever freedoms necessary in a
vain and silly attempt to control chaos and plug every hole, when of
course the nation is basically one giant hole to begin with.

Of course, any good conspiracy theorist worth his secret underground
bootleg Area 51 videos will tell you this sort of citizen-surveillance
thing has been going on for years, decades, from spy satellites to GPS to
all manner of phone tracking and e-mail snooping and behavior watching and
this Real ID thing only takes it a little more public, national, makes it
part of the cultural lexicon because we have finally weakened so much we
just don't seem to give a damn what they do to us anymore.

Don't think it's all that bad? Think BushCo's flying monkeys in the CIA
and FBI and Homeland Security really have your best interests at heart and
are genuinely trying to protect you from scary swarthy furriners who want
to sneak into our country and poison our Cheerios and paint our flag
orange and cover our wimmin in burlap? Have at it. The GOP would love to
have you. Oh, and while you're at it, enjoy that tiny grain-of-rice-size
bar-coded implant RFID microchip the FDA just approved, which they can
permanently slip under your skin in about 20 seconds, with nary a peep.

This is what's happening now. With Real ID (and who knows what else), the
government is cracking down and creating a new and improved and far more
devious and exploitable system to monitor its citizens because, well,
because we let them. Because millions of us have been pummeled so
successfully by the fear-mongering Right. Because we have never been so
lax, so blinded by warmongering and dread, so numbed to what might become
of us.

Ah, but maybe I'm wrong. Maybe this is just rampant paranoia talking and
it's just a silly piece of harmless legislation and Real ID is overall a
genuinely good and useful idea that will ultimately make us safer and more
secure. You think?

Because hasn't BushCo proven to be reliable and honest and just reeking
with integrity about privacy and security issues so far? Hasn't the USA
Patriot Act been just a wondrous boon to police and CIA and our sense that
we are trusted and cared for by our government? Aren't we all feeling just
so much safer with this most secretive, least accountable administration
at the helm?

After all, why not trust the government on this? Why not put our faith in
the goodly Homeland Security Department? Maybe Real ID really is patriotic
and constructive and it will be a smooth and secure and completely
inviolable system, one that protects citizens while giving them a new
sense of freedom to move about the country with carefree flag-waving ease,
safe in the knowledge that their big, snarling gummint is watching over
them like a protective mother bear - as opposed to, say, a female praying
mantis, who greedily screws her lover, and then, of course, eats him
alive.

Mark Morford's Notes & Errata column appears every Wednesday and Friday on
SF Gate, unless it appears on Tuesdays and Thursdays, which it never does.

 2005 San Francisco Chronicle

[Each one of us will have to decide when to finally apply the reserved
word "fascist" to BushCo. I'm about there. -ed]


--------13 of 14--------

Take Public Broadcasting Back   (part 1 of 2)
by Bill Moyers
Closing address
St. Louis, Missouri
May 15, 2005
commondreams

I can't imagine better company on this beautiful Sunday morning in St.
Louis. You're church for me today, and there's no congregation in the
country where I would be more likely to find more kindred souls than are
gathered here.

There are so many different vocations and callings in this room - so many
different interests and aspirations of people who want to reform the media
or produce for the media - that only a presiding bishop like Bob McChesney
with his great ecumenical heart could bring us together for a weekend like
this.

What joins us all under Bob's embracing welcome is our commitment to
public media. Pat Aufderheide got it right, I think, in the recent issue
of In These Times when she wrote: "This is a moment when public media
outlets can make a powerful case for themselves. Public radio, public TV,
cable access, public DBS channels, media arts centers, youth media
projects, nonprofit Internet news services . . . low-power radio and
webcasting are all part of a nearly-invisible feature of today's media
map: the public media sector. They exist not to make a profit, not to push
an ideology, not to serve customers, but to create a public - a group of
people who can talk productively with those who don't share their views,
and defend the interests of the people who have to live with the
consequences of corporate and governmental power."

She gives examples of the possibilities. "Look at what happened," she
said, "when thousands of people who watched Stanley Nelson's 'The Murder
of Emmett Till' on their public television channels joined a postcard
campaign that re-opened the murder case after more than half a century.
Look at NPR's courageous coverage of the Iraq war, an expensive endeavor
that wins no points from this Administration. Look at Chicago Access
Network's Community Forum, where nonprofits throughout the region can
showcase their issues and find volunteers."

For all our flaws, Pat argues that the public media are a very important
resource in a noisy and polluted information environment.

You can also take wings reading Jason Miller's May 4th article on Z Net
about the mainstream media. While it is true that much of it is corrupted
by the influence of government and corporate interests, Miller writes,
there are still men and women in the mainstream who practice a high degree
of journalistic integrity and who do challenge us with their stories and
analysis. But the real hope 'lies within the internet with its two billion
or more web sites providing a wealth of information drawn from almost
unlimited resources that span the globe. . . If knowledge is power, one's
capacity to increase that power increases exponentially through navigation
of the Internet for news and information."

Surely this is one issue that unites us as we leave here today. The fight
to preserve the web from corporate gatekeepers joins media reformers,
producers and educators - and it's a fight that has only just begun.

I want to tell you about another fight we're in today. The story I've come
to share with you goes to the core of our belief that the quality of
democracy and the quality of journalism are deeply entwined. I can tell
this story because I've been living it. It's been in the news this week,
including reports of more attacks on a single journalist - yours truly -
by the right-wing media and their allies at the Corporation for Public
Broadcasting.

As some of you know, CPB was established almost forty years ago to set
broad policy for public broadcasting and to be a firewall between
political influence and program content. What some on this board are now
doing today, led by its chairman, Kenneth Tomlinson, is too important, too
disturbing and yes, even too dangerous for a gathering like this not to
address.

We're seeing unfold a contemporary example of the age old ambition of
power and ideology to squelch and punish journalists who tell the stories
that make princes and priests uncomfortable.

Let me assure you that I take in stride attacks by the radical
right-wingers who have not given up demonizing me although I retired over
six months ago. They've been after me for years now and I suspect they
will be stomping on my grave to make sure I don't come back from the dead.
I should remind them, however, that one of our boys pulled it off some two
thousand years ago - after the Pharisees, Sadducees and Caesar's
surrogates thought they had shut him up for good. Of course I won't be
expecting that kind of miracle, but I should put my detractors on notice:
They might just compel me out of the rocking chair and back into the
anchor chair.

Who are they? I mean the people obsessed with control, using the
government to threaten and intimidate. I mean the people who are hollowing
out middle class security even as they enlist the sons and daughters of
the working class in a war to make sure Ahmed Chalabi winds up controlling
Iraq's oil. I mean the people who turn faith based initiatives into a
slush fund and who encourage the pious to look heavenward and pray so as
not to see the long arm of privilege and power picking their pockets. I
mean the people who squelch free speech in an effort to obliterate dissent
and consolidate their orthodoxy into the official view of reality from
which any deviation becomes unpatriotic heresy.

That's who I mean. And if that's editorializing, so be it. A free press is
one where it's okay to state the conclusion you're led to by the evidence.

One reason I'm in hot water is because my colleagues and I at NOW didn't
play by the conventional rules of beltway journalism. Those rules divide
the world into Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives, and
allow journalists to pretend they have done their job if, instead of
reporting the truth behind the news, they merely give each side an
opportunity to spin the news.

Jonathan Mermin writes about this in a recent essay in "World Policy
Journal."

Mermin quotes David Ignatius of the Washington Post on why the deep
interests of the American public are so poorly served by beltway
journalism. The "rules of our game," says Ignatius, "make it hard for us
to tee up an issue...without a news peg." He offers a case in point: the
debacle of America's occupation of Iraq. "If Senator so and so hasn't
criticized post-war planning for Iraq," says Ignatius, "then it's hard for
a reporter to write a story about that."

Mermin also quotes public television's Jim Lehrer acknowledging that
unless an official says something is so, it isn't news. Why were
journalists not discussing the occupation of Iraq? Because, says Lehrer,
"the word occupation...was never mentioned in the run-up to the war."
Washington talked about the invasion as "a war of liberation, not a war of
occupation, so as a consequence, "those of us in journalism never even
looked at the issue of occupation."

"In other words," says Jonathan Mermin, "if the government isn't talking
about it, we don't report it." He concludes, "[Lehrer's] somewhat jarring
declaration, one of many recent admissions by journalists that their
reporting failed to prepare the public for the calamitous occupation that
has followed the 'liberation' of Iraq, reveals just how far the actual
practice of American journalism has deviated from the First Amendment
ideal of a press that is independent of the government."

Take the example (also cited by Mermin) of Charles J. Hanley. Hanley is a
Pulitzer Prize winning reporter for the Associated Press, whose fall 2003
story on the torture of Iraqis in American prisons - before a U.S. Army
report and photographs documenting the abuse surfaced - was ignored by
major American newspapers. Hanley attributes this lack of interest to the
fact that "It was not an officially sanctioned story that begins with a
handout from an official source." Furthermore, Iraqis recounting their own
personal experience of Abu Ghraib simply did not have the credibility with
beltway journalists of American officials denying that such things
happened. Judith Miller of The New York Times, among others, relied on the
credibility of official but unnamed sources when she served essentially as
the government stenographer for claims that Iraq possessed weapons of mass
destruction.

These "rules of the game" permit Washington officials to set the agenda
for journalism, leaving the press all too often simply to recount what
officials say instead of subjecting their words and deeds to critical
scrutiny. Instead of acting as filters for readers and viewers, sifting
the truth from the propaganda, reporters and anchors attentively
transcribe both sides of the spin invariably failing to provide context,
background or any sense of which claims hold up and which are misleading.

I decided long ago that this wasn't healthy for democracy. I came to see
that "news is what people want to keep hidden and everything else is
publicity." In my documentaries - whether on the Watergate scandals thirty
years ago or the Iran Contra conspiracy twenty years ago or Bill Clinton's
fund raising scandals ten years ago or, five years ago, the chemical
industry's long and despicable cover up of its cynical and unspeakable
withholding of critical data about its toxic products from its workers, I
realized that investigative journalism could not be a collaboration
between the journalist and the subject. Objectivity is not satisfied by
two opposing people offering competing opinions, leaving the viewer to
split the difference.

I came to believe that objective journalism means describing the object
being reported on, including the little fibs and fantasies as well as the
Big Lie of the people in power. In no way does this permit journalists to
make accusations and allegations. It means, instead, making sure that your
reporting and your conclusions can be nailed to the post with confirming
evidence.

This is always hard to do, but it has never been harder than today.
Without a trace of irony, the powers-that-be have appropriated the
newspeak vernacular of George Orwell's "1984." They give us a program
vowing "No Child Left Behind" while cutting funds for educating
disadvantaged kids. They give us legislation cheerily calling for "Clear
Skies" and "Healthy Forests" that give us neither. And that's just for
starters.

In Orwell's "1984", the character Syme, one of the writers of that
totalitarian society's dictionary, explains to the protagonist Winston,
"Don't you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of
thought?" "Has it ever occurred to you, Winston, that by the year 2050, at
the very latest, not a single human being will be alive who could
understand such a conversation as we are having now? The whole climate of
thought," he said, "will be different. In fact there will be no thought,
as we understand it now. Orthodoxy means not thinking - not needing to
think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness."

An unconscious people, an indoctrinated people, a people fed only on
partisan information and opinion that confirm their own bias, a people
made morbidly obese in mind and spirit by the junk food of propaganda, is
less inclined to put up a fight, to ask questions and be skeptical. That
kind of orthodoxy can kill a democracy - or worse.

I learned about this the hard way. I grew up in the South where the truth
about slavery, race, and segregation had been driven from the pulpits,
driven from the classrooms and driven from the newsrooms. It took a bloody
Civil War to bring the truth home and then it took another hundred years
for the truth to make us free.

Then I served in the Johnson administration. Imbued with cold war
orthodoxy and confident that "might makes right," we circled the wagons,
listened only to each other, and pursued policies the evidence couldn't
carry. The results were devastating for Vietnamese and Americans.

I brought all of this to the task when PBS asked me after 9/11 to start a
new weekly broadcast. They wanted us to make it different from anything
else on the air -commercial or public broadcasting. They asked us to tell
stories no one else was reporting and to offer a venue to people who might
not otherwise be heard. That wasn't a hard sell. I had been deeply
impressed by studies published in leading peer-reviewed scholarly journals
by a team of researchers led by Vassar College sociologist William Hoynes.
Extensive research on the content of public television over a decade found
that political discussions on our public affairs programs generally
included a limited set of voices that offer a narrow range of perspectives
on current issues and events. Instead of far-ranging discussions and
debates, the kind that might engage viewers as citizens, not simply as
audiences, this research found that public affairs programs on PBS
stations were populated by the standard set of elite news sources. Whether
government officials and Washington journalists (talking about political
strategy) or corporate sources (talking about stock prices or the economy
from the investor's viewpoint), Public television, unfortunately, all too
often was offering the same kind of discussions, and a similar brand of
insider discourse, that is featured regularly on commercial television.

Who didn't appear was also revealing. Hoynes and his team found that in
contrast to the conservative mantra that public television routinely
featured the voices of anti-establishment critics, "alternative
perspectives were rare on public television and were effectively drowned
out by the stream of government and corporate views that represented the
vast majority of sources on our broadcasts." The so-called 'experts' who
got most of the face time came primarily from mainstream news
organizations and Washington think tanks rather than diverse interests.
Economic news, for example, was almost entirely refracted through the
views of business people, investors and business journalists. Voices
outside the corporate/Wall Street universe - nonprofessional workers,
labor representatives, consumer advocates and the general public were
rarely heard. In sum, these two studies concluded, the economic coverage
was so narrow that the views and the activities of most citizens became
irrelevant.

All this went against the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967 that created the
Corporation for Public Broadcasting. I know. I was there. As a young
policy assistant to President Johnson, I attended my first meeting to
discuss the future of public broadcasting in 1964 in the office of the
Commissioner of Education. I know firsthand that the Public Broadcasting
Act was meant to provide an alternative to commercial television and to
reflect the diversity of the American people.

This, too, was on my mind when we assembled the team for NOW. It was just
after the terrorist attacks of 9/11. We agreed on two priorities. First,
we wanted to do our part to keep the conversation of democracy going. That
meant talking to a wide range of people across the spectrum - left, right
and center. It meant poets, philosophers, politicians, scientists, sages
and scribblers. It meant Isabel AlIende, the novelist, and Amity Shlaes,
the columnist for the Financial Times. It meant the former nun and
best-selling author Karen Armstrong, and it meant the right-wing
evangelical columnist, Cal Thomas. It meant Arundhati Roy from India,
Doris Lessing from London, David Suzuki from Canada, and Bernard
Henry-Levi from Paris. It also meant two successive editors of the Wall
Street Journal, Robert Bartley and Paul Gigot, the editor of The
Economist, Bill Emmott, the Nation's Katrina vanden Heuvel and the Los
Angeles Weekly's John Powers. It means liberals like Frank Wu, Ossie Davis
and Gregory Nava, and conservatives like Frank Gaffney, Grover Norquist,
and Richard Viguerie. It meant Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Bishop Wilton
Gregory of the Catholic Bishops conference in this country. It meant the
conservative Christian activist and lobbyist, Ralph Reed, and the
dissident Catholic Sister Joan Chittister. We threw the conversation of
democracy open to all comers. Most of those who came responded the same
way that Ron Paul, Republican and Libertarian congressman from Texas did
when he wrote me after his appearance, "I have received hundreds of
positive e-mails from your viewers. I appreciate the format of your
program which allows time for a full discussion of ideas I'm tired of
political shows featuring two guests shouting over each other and offering
the same arguments NOW was truly refreshing."

Hold your applause because that's not the point of the story.

[The point of the story is contained in part 2, in the next PC]


--------14 of 14--------




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