From mikeburke99 at yahoo.com Wed Jul 10 00:42:12 2002 From: mikeburke99 at yahoo.com (mike burke) Date: Sun Feb 8 02:51:42 2004 Subject: [Dryerase] 11 Articles From July Indy (Venezuela, Iraq, death penalty, AIDS, civil liberties...) Message-ID: <20020710054212.50010.qmail@web20509.mail.yahoo.com> It is great to see this list up and running. At the Indypendent we just published our July issue. Below are links to 11 articles with national relevance for your consideration. mike burke the indypendent new york city * * * * * AIDS Project Creates Hope in South Africa http://www.nyc.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=27187 “Tell Tale Signs”: America Drifts Toward Police State http://www.nyc.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=27196 Iraq: Smart Sanctions Still Kill http://www.nyc.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=27213 Venezuela: Apocalypse When? http://www.nyc.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=27216 Rallying Against Nukes: Peace Activists Seek to Revive Slumbering Movement http://www.nyc.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=27217 Indigenous Voices Heard at U.N. http://www.nyc.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=27210 Making Change: Ithaca Leads Local Currency Movement http://www.nyc.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=27208 Pacifica: Rebels Rebuild Battered Radio Network http://www.nyc.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=27204 Court Rules Against Death: Justices Bow to Increasing Opposition http://www.nyc.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=27200 National Briefs http://www.nyc.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=27197 International Briefs http://www.nyc.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=27214 USE POLICY: We haven’t drafted a formal policy but please use this for now: All of these articles may be reprinted in any not-for-profit publication if the original source of the article (the Indypendent) and our website (www.nyc.indymedia.org) is included. __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Sign up for SBC Yahoo! Dial - First Month Free http://sbc.yahoo.com From wires at the-alarm.com Thu Jul 11 21:56:05 2002 From: wires at the-alarm.com (Alarm!Wires) Date: Sun Feb 8 02:51:42 2004 Subject: [Dryerase] The Alarm! Editorial, 7-12-02 Message-ID: Hey all, The following is our editorial for the issue we put out earlier this evening. It is perhaps the most pertinent to folks outside of our region. Enjoy! Fhar Do we live in a world of exceptions? Last week when Donovan Jackson and his father were pulled over for expired tags on their vehicle neither expected to find themselves in the national headlines. Had it not been for the impulse of an amateur cameraman they wouldn?t have. What was captured on camera shocked viewers: a 16-year-old being flung onto a police car and then brutally assaulted by an officer. According to reports, the footage comes after the bulk of the Inglewood incident had occured. Of course, there has been an outcry, as citizens of Inglewood and others demand the immediate termination of the officer in question. What does not come to the forefront in this incident is the need to examine our overall surroundings and institutions. This week George W. Bush gave a speech addressing the recent wrong-doings of a number of corporations. He called the behavior of corporations, such as Enron and Worldcom, deplorable, and he outlined a need for stiffer penalties for those ?caught? doing misdeeds. The markets did not respond favorably, and the general public changed the news station. Two weeks ago a young mother was convicted of a hate-crime against an man of Arab descent. She faces three years in jail for running her vehicle into his, and then assaulting him on a San Jose street. Locally, there was minimal response. All three of these incidents are treated as relatively isolated situations. When Donovan Jackson was assaulted by the officer in southern California, he was immediately compared to Rodney King. When Worldcom was found to be cooking their books, they were in the same company as Enron. When this woman in San Jose was convicted there were not immediate comparisons, and the response was simply a stern sigh. These are presented to us, the public, as isolated situations, as exceptions to our average expectations. But are they? The fact of the matter is police aggression is a constant reality; corporations constantly fudge their books or act in ways that are less than ethical; and hate crimes are occurring everyday that are related to or independent of 9/11. Yet, these three events are said to be exceptions. People often comment that if the ?corrupt? exceptions within our society are rooted out, we will live in a ?just and civil society.? What we need to recognize is that all of these ?exceptions? are not isolated events; they are all a part of systematic issues within our society. As a matter of fact, when we identify these events as isolated, it distracts us from looking at systemic problems. These events are actually necessary to maintain the power of both capitalism and state over personal or community relationships, because they reinforce the ideology that the system works by rooting out such exceptions. This ideology creates an atmosphere where exploration into systemic issues does not occur; indeed, it creates safe harbor for these incidents to occur. When people do not take notice of the police and their activities, some cops will act cavalier. When people invest their money and hope for the best, never checking up on their investments, corporations will give the bosses raises and inflate their actual earnings reports. When the general public allows for people to say and act as they wish towards anyone who is ?not a true American,? we become a xenophobic society. We have to awaken our senses and sensibilities. We need to recognize our role as members of a community, and become accountable to one another. Let corporate America pretend to be accountable to itself; it is our job to recognize that corporations are NOT a part of our communities. We need to look at what we invest in?corporations or communities. Is there a tangible link between these three incidents I have mentioned above? There is the obvious link; these are our headlines. Then there is the implicit link; all of these incidents happen in an environment ripe with apathy. Once we recognize that each of these events are not exceptions to the status quo, but rather a result of the status quo, we can respond accordingly. It should not take the beating of a developmentally disabled young man to make us take notice?or maybe it does. Can the beating of Donovan Jackson bring about something better in our communities? Can we begin to look closely and become more accountable to one another; if not, we will never be members of a community. ?Michelle Stewart All content Copyleft ? 2002 by The Alarm! Newspaper. Except where noted otherwise, this material may be copied and distributed freely in whole or in part by anyone except where used for commercial purposes or by government agencies. ----- The Alarm! Newspaper a local weekly newspaper for an engaged populace http://www.the-alarm.com/ info@the-alarm.com P.O. Box 1205, Santa Cruz, CA 95061 (831) 429-NEWS - office (831) 420-1498 - fax From wires at the-alarm.com Thu Jul 11 22:13:36 2002 From: wires at the-alarm.com (Alarm!Wires) Date: Sun Feb 8 02:51:42 2004 Subject: [Dryerase] The Alarm--Deadly Illusions Message-ID: <5B3C79AE-9545-11D6-B276-003065F4865E@the-alarm.com> The following is a commentary piece from Conn Hallinan, a regular contributor to our paper. Most of his work appears originally in the San Francisco Examiner, but he retains the copyright outside of the SF area. He is aware of our copyleft policy and is apparently fine with being included under its rubric. You might want to contact him before printing. I, unfortunately, am not the one with his address, but you can likely find it on the SF Examiner page. Deadly Illusions By Conn Hallinan The Alarm! Newspaper Contributor The Middle East has always been a place where illusion paves the road to disaster. In 1095, Pope Urban?s religious mania launched the crusades. In 1915, Winston Churchill?s arrogance led to the WWI bloodbath at Gallipoli. Illusion tends to be a deadly business in those parts. And once again, illusions are about to plunge the Middle East into catastrophe. The first of these is George W. Bush?s ?vision? for peace between Israeli?s and Palestinians, a ?vision? consistent with the President?s uncomplicated ?See Spot Run? world of good guys and bad guys. Since the Palestinians are ?bad guys? the message is simple: Develop democracy (but only elect people we approve of), create free market capitalism, halt resisting the thirty-five year occupation, and stop causing trouble. If the Palestinians somehow manage all this while under occupation, then in three years they might get an ?interim? state with ?provisional? borders and sovereignty?if Israel agrees. The Sharon government, on the other hand, are the ?good guys,? so it gets to keep building settlements, occupying territory, and besieging West Bank cities until the Palestinians complete all the above tasks. Does anyone really take this seriously? Ariel Sharon is a man obsessed with illusions. He has always fantasized that combining violence with appointing leaders he can manipulate will get him his way. He was a supporter of the secret Israeli operation that, according to Tony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic Studies, funneled funds to Hamas in the late ?70s as a way to undermine the secular Palestine Liberation Organization. We know how that one turned out. Then he invaded Lebanon in 1982 to destroy ?terrorism,? killed 17,500 Lebanese and Palestinians, and appointed Bashir Jumayil President. Jumayil was promptly assassinated, and Israel found itself in the middle of an 18-year war, which it ended up losing. And once again he is using massive force in the West Bank and Gaza and trying to pick who leads the Palestinians. Sharon?s latest illusion is to fill the occupied territories with Jewish immigrants from France, Argentina, the U.S. and Russia, so that he will not have to remove a single settlement. According to Sharon, ?Netzarim in Gaza is the same as Tel Aviv.? Netzarim is a tiny settlement of fifty families in the Occupied Territories that takes up as much land as the Jebalya refugee camp, which holds 100,000 people. Tel Avid is the largest city in Israel. A recent study by the human rights organization B?Tselem, shows that while the settlements only occupy about two percent of the West Bank, through strategic placement and a network of roads restricted to settlers, they control forty-two percent of the Territories. Under Sharon, existing settlements have been expanded, and thirty-four new ones established. That millions of Jews will immigrate to Israel and live on the West Bank is sheer fantasy. Indeed, according to surveys by Peace Now, some sixty percent of the Jewish settlers would move back to Israel proper if the government would offer the same incentives it does for them to live in the West Bank: reduction in income taxes, low mortgage rates, and subsidized education. Peace Now projects that this ?re-transplant? would cost $700 million. It now costs $1.4 billion a year to subsidize the settlers and occupy the West Bank. There are illusions on the Palestinian side as well, the most glaring being that suicide bombers will drive the Israelis out of the Occupied Territories. In fact, the bombers only yield the moral high ground to Sharon and strengthen the annexationists in Tel Aviv. These illusion are ruining both Palestinians and Israelis. The former live in what is a virtually a national prison, with tens of thousands of their young men incarcerated, their economy destroyed, and a death toll approaching 2,000 since Sept. 2000. The Israelis may not be imprisoned, but they live in fear. The burden of empire has drained their treasury, forcing huge social service cutbacks, driving inflation to eight percent, and filling the jobless rolls. More than 550 have died. But sometimes illusion produces clarity. While Americans tend to think of Israel as Sharon and the Palestinians as suicide bombers, the reality is far more complex. Sharon has called up the reserves, but he will have to do without the 466 reservists who refuse to serve in the Occupied Territories. Hamas has pledged a new round of suicide bombers, but it will have to do so in the face of call by fifty-five leading Palestinians to stop the bombings in Israel. The call has already had an effect, according to the Financial Times, which reports that Palestinian support for suicide bombings is declining. There are people of goodwill on both sides, people not blinded by the illusion that violence solves everything. For the moment they are marginal, but their numbers are greater than they were last month, and they will be greater yet next month. They grow in numbers because their ?vision? is the only way out illusion. All content Copyleft ? 2002 by The Alarm! Newspaper. Except where noted otherwise, this material may be copied and distributed freely in whole or in part by anyone except where used for commercial purposes or by government agencies. ----- The Alarm! Newspaper a local weekly newspaper for an engaged populace http://www.the-alarm.com/ info@the-alarm.com P.O. Box 1205, Santa Cruz, CA 95061 (831) 429-NEWS - office (831) 420-1498 - fax From wires at the-alarm.com Thu Jul 11 22:14:45 2002 From: wires at the-alarm.com (Alarm!Wires) Date: Sun Feb 8 02:51:42 2004 Subject: [Dryerase] The Alarm--Pacific Agoraphobia Message-ID: <841716E2-9545-11D6-B276-003065F4865E@the-alarm.com> This piece is from one of our loyal contributors. A fabulous fellow with a tendency toward high-falutin language. We've forced him to tone it down for us, with mixed success. Manuel is a very smart writer and rhetoritician. He generally approaches problems of international significance. This is one exception where his commentary is based on local events. You may still find it interesting Pacific Agoraphobia By Manuel Schwab The Alarm! Newspaper Contributor 5-12-02 Agoraphobia, which is the clinical term for the fear of open spaces, is derived from the Greek words ?agora? and ?phobia.? The Agora was a large public square at the center of Athens. It was open to the Athenian citizen class, although only about 5 to 10 percent of the population of Athens could afford to live a leisurely life that included hours spent debating and talking in the Agora. As opposed to the theater?in which the distinction between spectators and orators was clearly marked?the Agora was the center of participatory political discussion in Athens, a place in which discourse was fragmentary rather than dominated by a single citizen. In modern Greek, the meaning of ?agora? has been altered. ?Agora? now refers not to a public forum but to a marketplace. Nevertheless, ?agoraphobia? still carries the connotation of a fear of public engagement: a phobia of putting oneself at stake in front of one?s fellow citizens. If the public documents about the current debate on the use of downtown space are any indication, it would serve us at this time to reflect on the shifting definition of ?agora.? In response to a series of ?incidents? that are perceived as threats to the placid face of our beloved Pacific Avenue?a shooting, a stabbing and agressive panhandling? the Santa Cruz City Council has held public forums and formed a special committee on downtown issues. Close on the heels of this chorus of concern, the July 3?10 edition of Metro Santa Cruz treated Santa Cruzians to ?The Reality Check Issue,? in which it attempted to ?put some overdue perspective on the controversy over safety in downtown Santa Cruz.? The institutional and media responses from the community demonstrated the heartening fact that Santa Cruz is actually concerned about its public space. But the terms of the debate led to the unavoidable observation that we cannot, at least as far as the dominant perspectives of our community are concerned, imagine the difference between civic spaces and commercial districts. What becomes clear in both the framing of the Council Committee?s recommendations, and the response of the Metro article?which relies heavily on community testimony?is that the Santa Cruz community works from extremely narrow assumptions about what a downtown should be, about whom it serves, and what constitutes the good health of a public space. What was once the politically heated public space, perfectly suited for the exchange of debate, has become marketplace, suited only for the exchange of goods and services. Yet even with this devolution of public space into the relative safety of rule?bound economics, we in Santa Cruz still retreat from any trace of the old political friction once associated with the Agora. The Downtown Issues Committee, for its part, is so split in its recommendations that it is difficult to understand where they would have us go with downtown. One minute they want the City Council to take a clear position regarding ?anti-social behavior.? But in the same statement they re-affirm their commitment to ?protecting public space.? These commitments may not at first seem at odds, until we realize that ?anti-social behavior? has come to include any form of friction, encompassing many activities that were once an integral part of ?public space.? ?Public space,? in turn, has become emaciated, left with nothing to flourish around but money transactions, so that merchant interests are the only ones that count. Not recognizing that these developments have transformed the defense of the space now considered public into an attack on the social sphere in all of its fertile messiness, the council is proposing to take measures that work in the exact opposite direction they intend Sarah Phelan?s article in the Metro illustrates the tension between the desire to regulate downtown and to still allow the space to be genuinely public. In the article we find the County Supervisor telling us in no uncertain terms that fears about downtown safety are generated and defined by the commercial interests in downtown. ?Usually the merchants plan a campaign [to crack down on downtown problems] just before Thanksgiving,? Mardi Wormhoudt tells Phelan, ?but this year it?s earlier, maybe because of the economic downturn?? Perhaps, but if so the economic downturn clearly has the business sector peculiarly worried. Phelan claims she sees ?no signs of Armageddon,? and while I agree, it seems clear that signs of a new brink in the battle between private and public space is at hand. On the one side, we have the usual fare of self-indulgent overstatements by those who frequent downtown and clearly have a lot to gain by painting themselves as the targets of excessive oppression. Most glaring among these is Est?ban Fox, who seems to think that getting a ticket for sitting on a planter (yeah, we all know how ridiculous that is) puts us one step closer to building a ?20-foot-high wall around downtown?and a military takeover of downtown.? This claim seems excessive, especially in light of developments in Palestine and Israel, where citizens have every tangible reason to fear draconian governments. On the other hand, there are legitimate reasons to suspect the merchants? new campaign. New-Corp-on-the-block Borders has the audacity to publicly admit ?we?re considering installing an ATM that would limit loitering [around the Borders store] to 50 feet.? Reality check: with laws on the books like the one that would provide Borders with a 50 foot buffer for its ATM, town ordinances already fall clearly on the side of the merchants. No matter how self indulgent the ?gypsy kids? on the streets may get, there is a higher power indulging the commercial interests. This indulgence becomes even more clear when we look at the remaining recommendations of the Downtown Issues Committee. While they include a few more gestures like the promise to protect public space (the hiring of a Downtown Social Worker, for instance), the committee?s recommendations, aimed ostensibly at restoring a downtown ?out of balance,? bend over backwards to accommodate the merchants who feel so deeply threatened. Take a close look and you will recognize that the committee?s recommendations for Ordinance Modifications?made under the guise of simplifying the understanding and enforcement of the present ordinances on soliciting and sitting down on sidewalks?and you see that they are actually engineered to clear the mall of any such activity by ?undesirables.? ?The proposed adjustment is to make the distance for all of the above situations 14 feet.? Apparently, Borders will not have to bother with the 50 foot buffer around their store?by my estimation, a 14 foot distance from storefronts puts panhandling ?gypsy kids? in the street for almost the entire length of the Mall. The threat that these ?gypsy kids? pose, as Glenn Rogers informs us in Phelan?s collection of interviews, is not that they are dangerous. Rather, Rogers informs us that he tends to avoid ?walking along Pacific Avenue because I don?t want to get hit up for money all the time.? The irony, of course, is that extracting money from customers is precisely what every mall is engineered to do. The entire shopping district is a place where people go to be solicited for their money in exchange for one commodity or another. The fact that this economic exchange is an acceptable replacement for the democratic confrontations of the past is symptomatic of the time in which we seem no longer to have a social sphere, but an economy instead. In fact, as Greg Kindig rightly points out later on in the ?Nuz? section of the Metro the entire list of downtown issues ?reads like a list of symptoms.? But nobody seems to be understanding the disease. Focusing only on symptoms?from the disruptive presence of panhandlers to hacky-sack projectiles?amounts to establishing scapegoat issues to avoid the fact that our public engagement is bankrupt. Downtown?s status as a shopping/public district in which it seems that the stores themselves are the only citizens who ultimately have a right to occupy downtown? with prospective consumers as their temporary guests?is testimony to this. As is the repeated reference to the Beach Flats as the source of the dangerous elements in downtown?references that seem acceptable across the board, as they are made by residents, merchants, and homeless citizens alike. We are afraid of confrontations with difference, of heterogeneity, of any form of friction?we are agoraphobic, scared of others, afraid of precisely that which we need to make us strong. Of course this superstitious disposition is neither the fault of Sarah Phelan, nor of the Metro Editorial Staff, nor for that matter of the City Council. What all three entities should be taken to task for, however, is that they present this superstition without challenging it systematically. After glossing over the myth of the ?dangerous? Beach Flats and the victimized chain store?or rather allowing these myths to speak for themselves?it is downright aggravating to see Phelan take on the quite evident process of gentrification and dismiss it as mythical. One almost gets the impression that Phelan is bent on ignoring the facts. Has she forgotten that the fear that the Cinema 9 would drive out the Del Mar cannot be so quickly dismissed, as the theater actually did go under, and the ?beautiful renovation? touted by one of her interviewees was made possible only by a city government bailout. And while the Dotcom bomb may have made a serious dent in the office rentals downtown, it has not made a dent in the rent prices that the previous Dotcom boom helped drive skyward. Luckily, it seems that there are still plenty of us left who realize that the replacement of the social considerations with economic transactions is an unacceptable compromise. For now, even the Committee Forums and Reality checks that offered such a startling illustration of the problem also offered us a good picture of those people left in resistance. The biggest danger, then, is that we will slowly be taught to underestimate the import of this struggle to maintain our spaces for civic confrontation. When that happens, we will have lost a monumental battle in the fight for self determination. In the final analysis, what must become more and more clear to all of us is that ironically, the capacity for self determination depends on our willingness to be confronted, often uncomfortably, by others. All content Copyleft ? 2002 by The Alarm! Newspaper. Except where noted otherwise, this material may be copied and distributed freely in whole or in part by anyone except where used for commercial purposes or by government agencies. ----- The Alarm! Newspaper a local weekly newspaper for an engaged populace http://www.the-alarm.com/ info@the-alarm.com P.O. Box 1205, Santa Cruz, CA 95061 (831) 429-NEWS - office (831) 420-1498 - fax From wires at the-alarm.com Thu Jul 11 22:15:46 2002 From: wires at the-alarm.com (Alarm!Wires) Date: Sun Feb 8 02:51:42 2004 Subject: [Dryerase] The Alarm--Eye on the INS Message-ID: Michelle Stewart, who wrote our editorial this issue, does a weekly column focusing on the INS and immigration policy, mostly in the southwest. Eye on the INS A weekly focus on the INS and immigration policy Was it really news on July 4, 2002? By Michelle Stewart The Alarm! Newspaper Collective Case Study: Mohammad Nour al-Din Saffi On Wednesday, July 3, 2002, federal agents stormed a hotel suite across the street from the Miami International Airport. Their target was Mohammad Nour al-Din Saffi. Saffi, a naturalized New Zealander and employee of Tiger Lines Cargo (a New Zealand-based airline company), entered the US last Wednesday via LAX where he was detained and questioned about his visit. Saffi stated he was going to Miami to take a recertification course for flight engineers; he was entering on a tourist visa. He had the appropriate documentation from his employer and the flight school had confirmed his immigration status with the Department of Justice. Despite his long interrogation by a battalion of INS and FBI agents, he was eventually allowed to continue on his trip. As Saffi boarded the plane for Miami, the agents at LAX called the Florida INS authorities to inform them that he was on his way. A surveillance operation was offically underway. INS agents then called the flight school, Aeroservice Aviation Center, to ask Saffi?s intent. They were informed he was scheduled to take a course to recertify his license to fly Boeing 747s. The INS identified this as a different act than was reported by Saffi, and declared that he had lied to an INS official upon entry into the US, and that he entered without the correct visa. Saffi was picked up at his hotel room that same evening and the news broke on July 4, 2002. Who is Mohammad Nour Al-Din Saffi? Why was this news? To an outsider, Saffi is a 36-year-old man of Arab descent who works as a flight engineer for Tiger Lines Cargo, and has been a naturalized New Zealander for the past six years. To the FBI and INS, Saffi is a man of Arab desent who was last in the United States just days before 9/11, and this latest visit would have been to go to a flight school on the July 4th weekend... oh, and his stepfather is Saddam Hussein. ?The circumstances are somewhat disturbing,? said Jim Goldman, INS chief of investigations. ?It?s an awful long way to come to take a refresher course. Post 9-11, an individual such as this definitely comes onto our radar screen.? But are the circumstances really so disturbing? Not really, once the facts become evident. According to Saffi?s employer and the flight school, they followed all of the immigration rules related to entering the US and taking the flight engineering class. The school ran all of Saffi?s immigration information per the instructions on the new Department of Justice webpage to ensure that he was cleared to attend the class. Both the school and employer are stumped, and contend that the incident is just a simple mistake of failing to acquire a student visa. Berton Beach , Vice President of operations at the flight school outlines the confusing immigration polices regarding student visas and flight school, ?There is no requirement on any information we have from the Department of Justice or from the FBI or from INS that a [student] visa is required,? (CNN, 7/6/02). Indeed, the Aeroservice Aviation Center is likely one of the best-informed flight schools because it holds the dual distinction to be the best flight school in the nation as well as one of the schools to train an alleged 9/11 hijacker. It is only under recent immigration reform that Saffi is required to get a student visa for this type of course, and, according to INS, he is being detained and deported for failing to get the student visa, not for ?lying? to an INS officer about his intentions at the flight school. Saffi has admitted to misunderstanding the need for a student visa to attend the class, and the school has broadcast that they were misinformed. Yet Saffi sits in detention, waiting to be deported, and will be barred from entering the US for five years. A rather steep penalty for a simple mistake. Well, there are a few inflammatory details that need to be addressed. First, Saddam Hussein, many years ago, married Saffi?s mother. There is much gossip surrounding the affair that pre-dated the marriage, and the incidents of violence surrounding the marriage. Suffice it to say, that I will not be further engaging this gossip, but feel free to visit CNN?s webpage for the whole soap opera. At the end of the day, Saffi has no relevant ties to Saddam Hussein since the connection is only through his mother and he lives a totally autonomous life. The second factor is his presence in the US days before 9/11. The Department of Justice claimed this was suspicious. The simple fact was that he was here on a flight (he is a flight technicican) en route to London. Finally, there is the question of why he came to the US on the 4th of July weekend to go to flight school. According to his employer, it is the best school for the training he needed and it seems obvious that the school would have had openings and smaller classes on the Independence weekend. What do we do with all of this then? Do we chalk it up to an under-handed deed by Saffi?as did the federal authorities? Do we recognize that immigration law is changing so rapidly that no one really knows what type of paperwork to file and when?as is the contention of all of the affected parties in this case? Or do we admit to the larger issues? Mohammad Nour al-Din Saffi made the mistake of entering into the US as a man of Arab descent looking to go to a flight school. This is the baseline fact, all that comes before and after are secondary. His link to Saddam Hussein is simply the icing on the cake; first and foremost, Saffi was seen as an Arab looking to fly. If it were anything less, the feds would not have stormed the hotel room, made a big splash on Independence Day, and then deported him for something as silly as a visa mistake. Saffi entered the US and declared his intention, and when he made a mistake he admitted fault. Yet, he sits in detention. And there are dozens more stories like this; stories where immigrants are not aware of the varied nuances of immigration policy and paperwork. Immigration law changes at such a rapid pace, little time or attention is devoted to disemminating the facts. Post 1996 immigration law was changing at this same speed; again there was no effort to really explain to immigrants and visitors the policy changes, and it has extreme effects on many people. In many cases, small mistakes then resulted in people being barred from the US for five to ten years. This recent mistake for Saffi will result in a five year bar from the US. We are in ridiculous times, measured easily by this ridiculous hysteria and penalties. The only reason we heard about this case was because the headline could read that Saddam?s stepson was in jail, that he wanted to fly a plane, and that he was caught just before the 4th of July. Many in the country read the first paragraph of this story last week and breathed a collective sigh of relief. We need to read past these shock-value headlines and see what is happening to people in this country. One close read of any of the details of this story should have instigated a collective outcry. And yet, these stories are only on the increase. Since detention is still a secretive process there is limited information available, and there are currently over 1,000 people being held in INS detention with infractions that range from the mundane to the exteme. Until we bring all of these cases out into the open we will continue to hear about stories such as that of Mohammad Nour al-Din Saffi. Your comments are welcomed and encouraged at michelle@the-alarm.com All content Copyleft ? 2002 by The Alarm! Newspaper. Except where noted otherwise, this material may be copied and distributed freely in whole or in part by anyone except where used for commercial purposes or by government agencies. ----- The Alarm! Newspaper a local weekly newspaper for an engaged populace http://www.the-alarm.com/ info@the-alarm.com P.O. Box 1205, Santa Cruz, CA 95061 (831) 429-NEWS - office (831) 420-1498 - fax From wires at the-alarm.com Thu Jul 11 22:16:47 2002 From: wires at the-alarm.com (Alarm!Wires) Date: Sun Feb 8 02:51:42 2004 Subject: [Dryerase] The Alarm--HIV Surveillance threatens anonymity Message-ID: This was our front page story last issue and was continued in this issue. Most of the interviews are from local folks, and it focuses primarily on California State, but it could be relavent elsewhere. HIV surveillance threatens anonymity By Caroline Nicola The Alarm! Newspaper Collective California implemented new regulations Monday to enhance the State?s existing system of HIV reporting. The legislation requires health care clinics and laboratories to provide local health officers with information on persons infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, using ?non-name codes.? HIV tests done anonymously will not be reported. However, in order to get access to medical services, a confidential test is required and the results will be reported using the non-name codes. State officials claim the codes will ensure individual privacy, but some health care workers worry that the new reporting requirements will scare people away from being tested. ?One of my biggest fears is that it will decrease the number of people tested,? said Saji Seven, African American HIV Prevention Coordinator at the Equinox, an HIV prevention center in Santa Cruz. Seven pointed out that the HIV case reporting system could be intimidating for those concerned with privacy. Roy Jimenez, Health Program Director of Salud Para La Gente in Watsonville, said just walking through the door of a clinic to be tested is a major decision for many people, and includes an understandable level of anxiety and fear. People may back off from being tested due to the new reporting requirements, he said. Sally Cantrell, HIV Prevention Services Coordinator of the Berkeley Free Clinic shares his concern. ?People at the highest risk for being HIV positive are the most reluctant to take a HIV test if they have to divulge personal information,? she said. The non-name codes will consist of an individual?s Soundex code (a phonetic, alphanumeric formula which is used to convert the last name into an algorithm), complete date of birth, gender and the last four digits of the patient?s Social Security number. The California Department of Health Services (CDHS) will use the reporting system to track the number of individuals in the state with HIV in order to provide access to prevention and treatment programs and to apply for federal funds, according to the State Department. ?The confidential reporting of HIV will allow more accurate epidemiological surveillance to better monitor the HIV/AIDS epidemic,? said State Health Director Diana Bonita. ?It will also provide for targeted planning, resource allocation and evaluation of HIV prevention programs.? Prior to the new regulations, Santa Cruz County already tracked communicable diseases and reported their findings to CDHS and the Center for Disease Control, a federal agency. The problem with that system is it didn?t give exact numbers, according to Cantrell. When people with positive results were tested more than once, the data did not indicate that the multiple positives were from one person, she said. Even though the State claims the new regulations ensure individual privacy, Cantrell argues the new HIV case reporting system compromises people?s anonymity. ?People can be clearly identified with that information,? she said. Cantrell said the health care system is not being up front with its clients. However, Leslie Goodfriend, Health Services Manager at the Santa Cruz Health Agency said the new tracking system is a very positive and necessary step in dealing with AIDS. She says it would be difficult, if not impossible to link people to their codes. The State has been interested in tracking HIV more effectively because of an increase in concern about HIV transmission, particularly among immigrant populations, according to Jimenez. He said the new reporting requirements will track where the disease emanates from and look at patterns, clusters and analyze how it affects local populations. Jimenez is concerned that the data might be misused to blame immigrants for the spread of the disease. ?Many of us in the health care movement will monitor that very closely,? he said. ?We want the data to be used to identify and treat diseases when they are noted, not to make accusations that might target any number of populations, whether they are Latinos, Asians or other folks who have immigrated here.? Currently, seven states (Hawaii, Illinois, Kentucky, Maryland, Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Vermont) have established HIV surveillance systems using codes in lieu of names. Five states (Delaware, Maine, Montana, Oregon and Washington) use a hybrid reporting system in which names of HIV-positive individuals are initially reported, but later replaced with codes. By the beginning of the fiscal year 2004, the distribution of federal funds to States will be based on the number of HIV cases reported through the HIV tracking system. Next week will explore the Soundex code and other ?Unique Identifiers? options used by health care agencies. HIV Surveillance Part 2: The Soundex Code By Caroline Nicola The Alarm! Newspaper Collective On July 1, California joined seven other states in reporting people who test positive for HIV using codes in lieu of names. Most other states that track HIV use a name-based system. This article is the second of two parts on the new HIV surveillance system in California. Advocates and people living with AIDS have waged a tough battle for the right to be tested anonymously, a battle lost in many states. People?s health can not be protected if their civil rights are compromised, said Anna Forbes, an AIDS policy consultant, writer and teacher. That dilemma is fundamental to concerns about the new HIV surveillance system in California. Unlike other conditions, funding for AIDS has been based on a numbers count since its beginning. Because State and Federal agencies want the funding to be based on the number of people who test positive for HIV rather than the number of full-blown AIDS cases, some case reporting system is needed. To get an accurate epidemiological account of how many people are HIV positive and in what populations, an HIV case reporting system needs to have a low duplication rate, meaning that people testing positive for HIV are not listed more than once. In order to do that, unique identifiers (UI) are needed. UI consists of a combination of public or private data elements used to distinguish people. The non-name codes used in California?s HIV case reporting system consist of an individual?s Soundex Code (a code based on the way a person?s name sounds phonetically), complete date of birth, gender and the last four digits of their Social Security number. In an effort to prevent duplications, people?s privacy erodes in the process, said cryptographer Philip Zimmermann, creator and founder of Pretty Good Privacy, Inc. He said there are two pressures working in opposite directions: one is to create a unique identifier, the other is trying to make it anonymous. ?Those two are working at cross purposes. The more unique you make a code, the easier it is to break its anonymity,? he said. Zimmermann has received numerious technical and humanitarian awards for his pioneering work in cryptography. He said there may be people who believe the non-name system using Soundex is anonymous, but those people are probably not software engineers or data security professionals. ?It is possible to break an anonymity scheme as flimsy as one based on Soundex, especially if it has other information in it like date of birth,? he said. All that would be needed to crack the non-name code would be a computer, a secondary data base that has all the necessary data elements in it and a copy of the algorithm used to produce the Soundex codes. So why use the Soundex code if it can be cracked? It is easy, cheap and States have been using it to report AIDS cases to the Center for Disease Control since the beginning of the AIDS outbreak, according to Forbes. She said if a State develops a different UI system, it would be harder to cross-match HIV data against other relevant databases such as the AIDS registry and the national death registry. ?It is a question between do you give your State a really good UI system that protects people?s privacy, or do you go with another system like Soundex that is easier and cheaper to use, but doesn?t protect privacy as well,? she said. Forbes argues that any UI system is still more secure then name-based systems because they are harder to crack. All content Copyleft ? 2002 by The Alarm! Newspaper. Except where noted otherwise, this material may be copied and distributed freely in whole or in part by anyone except where used for commercial purposes or by government agencies. ----- The Alarm! Newspaper a local weekly newspaper for an engaged populace http://www.the-alarm.com/ info@the-alarm.com P.O. Box 1205, Santa Cruz, CA 95061 (831) 429-NEWS - office (831) 420-1498 - fax From wires at the-alarm.com Thu Jul 11 22:17:33 2002 From: wires at the-alarm.com (Alarm!Wires) Date: Sun Feb 8 02:51:42 2004 Subject: [Dryerase] Casa Bienestar Message-ID: This was our feature story this week. It focuses on a harm-reduction center in Watsonville, a primarily latino community south of Santa Cruz. It has versions in both English and Spanish. Casa Bienestar By/Por Halie Johnson Translated By/Traducido Por Armando Alcaraz The Alarm! Newspaper Collective / Collectivo del Peri?dico ?La Alarma! The Center solidifies the relationship between three organizations that provide similar services in Watsonville The last school bell rings, and you decide to join some friends who are walking to a nearby youth center. You imagine a large room with fluorescent lights and too many rules. You and your friends walk up to a building with teens playing basketball in the parking lot. When you see a sign in front that reads ?Casa Bienestar?(House of Wellbeing), you realize one would be in for something different than what you expected Inside the building, more people your age are playing pool, and you recognize your favorite radio station in the background. You overhear someone explaining safe condom use to a group of teens. A woman with a warm smile takes a break from helping someone else with her homework to welcome you and offer you some chips and salsa. When Casa Bienestar, ?An HIV Prevention, Harm Reduction and Community Health Resource Center,? opened its doors in December 2000, it sealed the working relationship between three local organizations. The Santa Cruz Needle Exchange Project (SCNEP), the Santa Cruz AIDS Project (SCAP) and the Homeless Persons Health Project (HPHP) had been collaborating in various ways for nearly a decade, creating and staffing the Santa Cruz Drop-In Center and providing street-level services in Watsonville and Santa Cruz. All three organizations work to prevent the spread of HIV, through meeting at-risk community members at their own level to provide assistance and education. For several years, SCAP, SCNEP and HPHP volunteers have been setting up weekly needle-exchange and HIV prevention sites in the parking lot of Watsonville?s Del Sol Market. HPHP provides health services while SCAP help provide free HIV testing. SCNEP provides a one-for-one syringe exchange, where injection drug users can trade one dirty syringe for a clean one. Needle exchange programs are based on the idea that lowering the number of contaminated syringes on the streets lowers the risk of new HIV infections. SCNEP also conducts regular outreach on foot, exchanging needles and giving out free condoms in areas where drugs are bought and sold. But according to SCAP Director of Education and Prevention Timothy Maroni, all three organizations needed a more permanent site in order to be as effective as possible. ?It was sort of hectic because we didn?t have a site for the services that we wanted to offer,? he said. In an effort to provide such a site, members of the three organizations founded Casa Bienester. In addition to providing HIV prevention and services to injection drug users, the center was developed to serve as a recreational space for Watsonville residents, with a focus on at-risk youth, ages twelve to twenty-four. ?Kids come in, they hang out, they check us out before they say ?okay, I need help,?? said Linda Valdez of HPHP. The Center offers free condoms, birth control, food, entertainment, advice, encouragement, clean syringes and a safe place to rest. ?Basically whatever their need is we try to meet it for them,? Valdez added. ?If we can?t, we do referrals.? HIV testing and needle exchange sites still show up behind Watsonville?s Del Sol Market every Wednesday afternoon. Now volunteers often refer participants to Casa Bienestar where they can access the same services with more comfort and privacy. ?I think [the center has] been able to expand the scope and quality and quantity of the services that we offer [in South County],? Maroni added. The line-staff at Casa Bienestar, who oversee the day-to-day operation of the center, represent all three of the collaborating organizations. Their goals include providing ?a home-like environment for youth to drop-in, hang out and access health services, which are all free of cost.? Martha Zabale of SCAP was born and raised in Watsonville. ?There are a lot of people who come here and basically need someone to talk to, so I get a chance with them before they decide to run away or something like that,? she said. ?I feel that they are comfortable here because we know Watsonville.? Ronaldo of SCNEP has lived in Watsonville for thirteen years and has volunteered with other local organizations. ?I?m still able to reach the people who I grew up with and help them,? he said. A Space for Many Purposes Casa Bienestar, much larger than the Drop-In Center in Santa Cruz, offers a ?hang out? room equipped with a pool table, TV/VCR, a stereo, a computer with scanner and internet access, a full kitchen and a conference room. ?We?ve had a lot of students who come in here, and we help them out with their homework or r?sum?s,? Zabale said, pointing out the computer station. Casa Bienestar also provides plenty of lounging areas where staff and volunteers can sit with youth and spark up conversation about school, sex, family or whatever is on a participant?s mind. There are two bulletin boards listing jobs, events, activities and other resources that might be of interest to young people. A health care office provides health and medical services from pregnancy tests to Hepatitis B vaccines. The Needle Exchange room has a separate entrance from the main reception area to facilitate the anonymity of clients. ?If there?s a bunch of kids playing pool out front, they can come in through the side and go, without being seen by family members or having to go through the embarrassment of seeing non-injectors,? explained Heather Edney, Executive Director of SCNEP. There are three offices for private meetings to help people feel more comfortable talking about difficult subjects. Edney feels that the awareness of young people in HIV prevention is crucial. A lot of what SCNEP, HPHP and SCAP do is geared towards youth. ?Almost all of the literature we produce is by youth and for youth. ?Fuck safe, shoot clean? speaks to youth,? Edney said. The Drop-In Center as a State-wide model for effectiveness The success of the Drop-In Center in Santa Cruz is what made Casa Bienestar possible, according to Maroni. The State Office of AIDS in California agreed that the Santa Cruz Drop-In Center, which opened in 1988, met an important need in North County. In fact, the State Office of AIDS used it as a model for the establishment of twenty similar centers throughout the State of California. The Drop-In Center in downtown Santa Cruz is not specifically youth-targeted, but approximately fifty percent of the participants who utilize it are below the age of twenty-four, according to Maroni. Harm Reduction In contrast to other drug counseling centers in Watsonville which generally work from an abstinence-based model, Casa Bienestar is set up to be a place where participants can obtain support even when they are not ready to kick the habit. ?A lot of people don?t want to be fixed today,? Maroni added. ?They might want to be in a couple of months from now, or a couple of years from now, but they know they can?t do it in a half an hour. So they?re living their lives, and we?re just there to live their lives with them, more or less how they tell us they want to live them.? ?There?s no yes or no, there?s no right or wrong,? said Edney. ?We give people as much information as we can and then they do what they want with it?. We?re just kind of trying to step in before things get worse.? [Spanish version follows] El Centro solidifica la relaci?n existente entre tres organizaciones que prov?en servicios similares en Watsonville. Suena la campana de salida de la escuela y decides acompa?ar a algunos amigos que se encaminan a un centro jouvenil cercano. Te imaginas un cuarto grande con luces fluorecentes y con demas?adas reglas. T? y tus amigos llegan a un edificio donde hay adolecentes jugando baloncesto en el estacionamiento. Cuando ves el letrero de enfrente que dice ?Casa Bienestar,? te das cuenta que esto puede ser muy distinto a cualquier cosa que te hubieras imaginado. Dentro del edificio hay otros de tu edad jugando billar, y reconoces a tu estaci?n de radio favorita tocando m?sica en el fondo. Alcanzas a escuchar a alguien que explica a un grupo de adolecentes sobre el uso seguro del cond?n. Una mujer con una sonrisa c?lida deja de ayudar a alguien mas con su tarea para darte la bienvenida ofreciendote chips y salsa. Cuando la Casa Bienestar, ?Un Centro de Recursos para Prevenci?n del VIH, Reducci?n de Da?o, y Salud Comunitaria,? abri? sus puertas en diciembre de 2000, se solidific? la relaci?n de trabajo de tres organizaciones locales. El Proyecto de Intercambio de Jeringas de Santa Cruz (SCNEP), El Proyecto SIDA de Santa Cruz (SCAP), y el Proyecto de Salud para Personas Desamparadas (HPHP), hab?an trabajado en colaboraci?n durante casi una d?cada, creando el Santa Cruz Drop-In Center y proveyendo servicios en las calles de Watsonville y Santa Cruz. Las tres organizaciones trabajan para prevenir el contagio del VIH reuni?ndose con miembros de la comunidad de alto riesgo en su propio nivel para proporcionar as?stencia y educacion. Los voluntarios de SCAP, SCNEP y HPHP han estado colocando sitios temporales para prevenci?n del VIH por varios a?os en los estacionamientos del Mercado Del Sol en Watsonville. HPHP prov?e servicios de salud y SCAP ayuda a proporcionar pruebas gratis de detecci?n del VIH. SCNEP ofrece un intercambio de uno a uno de jeringas, donde quienes usan drogas inyectadas pueden intercambiar sus jeringas sucias por nuevas sin usar. Los programas de intercambio de jeringas operan bajo la premisa que al disminuir el n?mero de jeringas contaminadas en las calles tambi?n se disminuye el riesgo de nuevas infecciones de VIH. SCNEP tambi?n conduce campa?as de alcance a pie, intercambiando jeringas y distribuyendo condones gratis en areas donde hay compra y venta de drogas. Pero seg?n Timothy Maroni, Director de Educaci?n y Prevenci?n de SCAP, las tres organizaciones necesitaban un lugar mas permanente para poder ser lo mas efectivas posible. ?Era muy dif?cil porque no teniamos un lugar para los servicios que quer?amos ofrecer,? el dijo. En un esfuerzo conjunto para proporcionar tal lugar, los miembros de las tres organizaciones fundaron la Casa Bienestar. Adem?s de proveer prevenci?n de VIH y servicios a usadores de drogas inyectadas, el centro fue desarrollado con el objetivo de servir como un espacio recreacional para los residentes de Watsonville, enfoc?ndose en j?venes de entre los doce y veinticuatro a?os de edad considerados como alto riesgo. ?Los muchachos y muchachas vienen, y est?n aqu? un rato viendo el lugar y ech?ndonos un ojo antes de decir ?necesito ayuda,?? dijo Linda Valdez de HPHP. El Centro ofrece condones gratis, m?todos anticonceptivos, comida, entretenimiento, consejos, apoyo, jeringas limpias y un lugar seguro para descansar. ?B?sicamente, cualquiera que sea su necesidad tratamos de atenderla,? a?adi? Valdez. ?Si no podemos, les proporcionamos referencias.? Los lugares de pruebas de VIH e intercambio de jeringas a?n aparecen detr?s del Mercado Del Sol en Watsonville cada mi?rcoles por la tarde. Ahora los voluntarios refieren a los participantes a la Casa Bienestar donde pueden tener acceso a los mismos servicios pero con m?s comodidad y privacidad. ?Creo que [el Centro] ha sido capaz de expander el enfoque, calidad y la cantidad de los servicios que ofrecemos [en el Condado Sur],? a?adi? Maroni. El personal ?de linea? de la Casa Bienestar, que se encarga de las operaciones diarias del centro, representa a las tres organizaciones colaborantes. Sus objetivos incluyen el proveer ?a los j?venes con un ambiente hogare?o donde puedan venir, disfrutar, y tener acceso a servicios de salud, los cuales son libres de cargo.? Martha Zabale, de SCAP, naci? y creci? en Watsonville. ?Hay mucha gente que viene aqu? que b?sicamente necesita de alguien con quien hablar, entonces tengo una oportunidad con ellos antes que decidan escapar de sus casas o algo as?,? ella dijo. ?Siento que est?n c?modos aqu? porque conocemos Watsonville.? Ronaldo de SCNEP ha vivido en Watsonville por trece anos y ha trabajado como voluntario para otras organizaciones locales. ?A?n puedo alcanzar la gente con quien crec? y ayudarlas,? el dijo. Un Espacio de UsosM?ltiples La Casa Bienestar, mucho mas grande que el Drop-In Center en Santa Cruz, ofrece un cuarto de estancia equipado con una mesa de billar, televisi?n, videocasetera, est?reo, y una computadora con ?scanner? y acceso al internet, as? como una cocina completa, y un cuarto de conferencias. ?Hemos tenido a muchos estudiantes que vienen aqu?, y nosotros los ayudamos con su tarea o con sus r?sumes,? dijo Zabale, se?alando la estaci?n de la computadora. La Casa Bienestar tambi?n prov?e suficientes lugares donde el personal y los voluntarios pueden sentarse a conversar con los j?venes y adolecentes sobre la escuela, el sexo, la familia, o cualquier otra cosa que tengan en mente. Hay dos pizarrones con enlistados de trabajos, eventos, actividades y otros recursos que pueden ser de inter?s para los j?venes. Una oficina de salud prov?e servicios m?dicos y de salud, desde pruebas de embar?zo hasta vacunas contra la hepatitis B. El cuarto del Proyecto de Intercambio de Jeringas tiene una entrada separada del ?rea de recepci?n principal, para as? facilitar el anonimato de los clientes. ?Si hay un mont?n de muchachos jugando billar enfrente, pueden entrar y salir por el costado, sin ser vistos por familiares o sin tener que pasar por la incomodidad de ver a personas que no se inyectan,? explic? Heather Edney, la Directora Ejecutiva de SCNEP. Hay tres oficinas para entrevistas privadas para ayudar a las personas sentirse mas c?modas al hablar sobre temas que encuentren dificiles. Edney cree que es crucial la conciencia de los j?venes sobre la prevenci?n de VIH. Mucho de lo que hacen SCNEP, HPHP, y SCAP est? encaminado hacia la juventud. ?Casi toda la literatura que producimos est? escrita por j?venes para los j?venes. El fuck safe, shoot clean le habla a la juventud,? explic? Edney. El Centro Drop-In como un modelo estatal para la efectividad. Seg?n Maroni, el ?xito de el Drop-In Center en Santa Cruz fue lo que hizo posible que se hiciera la Casa Bienestar. La Oficina Estatal del SIDA en California (SOA) decidi? que el Drop-In Center en Santa Cruz, abierto en 1988, atend?a una necesidad importante en el Condado Norte. Incluso, el SOA lo us? como modelo para el establecimiento de veinte centros similares a lo largo del Estado de California. El Drop-In Center en el centro de Santa Cruz no est? exclus?vamente orientado a los j?venes, pero aproximadamente cincuenta por ciento de los participantes que lo utilizan est?n por debajo de los veinticuatro a?os de edad, seg?n Maroni. Reducci?n de Da?o A diferencia de otros centros de apoyo para drogas en Watsonville que generalmente trabajan con un modelo basado en la abstinencia, la Casa Bienestar est? dise?ada para ser un lugar donde los participantes pueden obtener apoyo a?n cuando no est?n listos para dejar el h?bito del consumo de drogas. ?Mucha gente no quiere cambiar hoy,? a?adi? Maroni. ?Podr?n querer cambiar en un par de meses, o en un par de a?os de ahora, pero saben que no pueden hacerlo en media hora, as? que est?n viviendo sus vidas, y nosotros solo estamos aqu? para vivir con ellos sus vidas, m?s o menos de la manera en que ellos nos dicen querer vivirlas.? ?No hay un si o un no, y no hay un bien y un mal,? dijo Edney. ?Le damos a la gente tanta informaci?n como podemos y ellos hacen lo que quieran con ella? S?lamente estamos tratando de intervenir antes que las cosas se pongan peor.? All content Copyleft ? 2002 by The Alarm! Newspaper. Except where noted otherwise, this material may be copied and distributed freely in whole or in part by anyone except where used for commercial purposes or by government agencies. ----- The Alarm! Newspaper a local weekly newspaper for an engaged populace http://www.the-alarm.com/ info@the-alarm.com P.O. Box 1205, Santa Cruz, CA 95061 (831) 429-NEWS - office (831) 420-1498 - fax From wires at the-alarm.com Thu Jul 11 22:28:12 2002 From: wires at the-alarm.com (Alarm!Wires) Date: Sun Feb 8 02:51:42 2004 Subject: [Dryerase] The Alarm--Transience in Santa Cruz Message-ID: <65F75771-9547-11D6-B276-003065F4865E@the-alarm.com> This comprises the first two of a three-part series on "Transience in Santa Cruz". It is obviously fairly specific to the area, but it touches on issues of importance everywhere: entrenched bureacracies beholden economically and politically to a tax base which is itself dependent on a transient, insecure workforce. It is particularly applicable to college towns and tourism hubs. It is also some of our most biting journalism so far (if i do say so myself). Transience in Santa Cruz In this series, I address the role of transience in Santa Cruz?how it affects our community economically, politically and psychologically. To accomplish this analysis, however, requires a redefinition of transience which includes more than the narrow colloquial version of ?the transient? limited to homeless vagabonds. Without this redefinition, it becomes far too easy to scapegoat the homeless for the problems stemming from a much broader and more systemic transience. Part One: The economy By Fhar Miess The Alarm! Newspaper Collective Transience, in a very literal sense, is a perennial phenomenon in Santa Cruz, and it is by no means a new one. The Ohlone tribes, who were likely the first people to settle here, are said to have migrated between the mountains and the low wetlands seasonally, as the weather and availability of food changed. As broad-leaved plantain (which some call ?White Man?s Foot? because of the way it tended to spring up wherever settlers tread) began to populate the area, seasonal migrations took on a slightly different character, but they were still determined, to a large degree, by shifting weather and availability of natural resources. As those resources?mostly forests?became denuded at the end of the 19th Century, tourism began replacing the resource-intensive manufacturing base that had come to define the Santa Cruz area. It was still a very transient set of communities, but that transience was driven less and less by seasonal weather changes and more and more by market fluctuations. It?s interesting to examine what we mean by ?transient? in this historical context. Most people in Santa Cruz, when asked to point out a transient, will look about for the nearest person they can identify as being homeless. In a sense, they are right. In one?somewhat superficial?respect, the homeless in Santa Cruz are transient much as the native Ohlone were: their need for shelter and the shelter options they choose are largely determined by what the climate dictates. This climate, however, is very different from the climate known to the Ohlone before missionaries and settlers arrived. Contrary to the local natural climate, which was (and is) ideal for human habitation and cohabitation, our present climate is marked economically by inflated housing costs and deflated wages, with the availability of both being determined to a large extent by a much more significant transient population than the homeless: namely, the student and tourist populations. For those who are homeless, it is also a social climate marked by violence. The Homeless 2000 Needs Assessment survey for Santa Cruz County, conducted by Applied Survey Research, indicated that seventy-six out of 811 people said they had been physically beaten, sixty-five said they had been robbed and thirteen had been sexually assaulted. The Santa Cruz Police Department noted in a memo that homeless people are more likely to be victims of crime than the housed. The survey also noted that more than three quarters of respondents had lived in Santa Cruz County for over five years. Almost thirty percent grew up here. Respondents? biggest daily problem, after lack of work or income, was transportation, which indicates that their transience is more of an unpleasant necessity than a choice. But this is only one sliver of the transience that characterizes our region. According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, the agricultural sector accounted for some 12,940 documented workers in the county in the peak growing season of 2000, with only 4,469 employed that winter. Many of those displaced are forced to relocate after the growing season. UCSC students account for some 13,000 people during the school year, but only 2,900 during the summer vacation. The tourism industry offsets this to an extent. On its own, the Seaside Company and its concessionaires employ over 1,200 people to keep the Boardwalk running during the summer. Many of these are travelers from outside the country, participating in Seaside Company?s ?Work & Travel Program? which houses seasonal travelers and employees in La Bahia apartments, displacing the largely student population which resides there the rest of the year. Students planning to stay in Santa Cruz over the summer must vacate to make room. The UCSC community accounts for a large part of the transient nature of our community. In early summer, while the departure of the students allows locals to breathe a sigh of relief for a week or so until the tourists show up in droves, it also strains the region economically. The housing market goes totally out of whack as students who live in town try to find subletters before they leave town for the summer, and students who live on campus or in seasonal housing such as La Bahia try to find off-campus housing, and often for longer than just a summer sublet will allow. The job market goes through similar spasms. Graduation marks another period of transience, where many will venture over the hill to find decent-paying jobs. Many of these graduates will stay to live on this side of the hill. When they do find high-paying jobs, particularly in high-tech fields, this exerts an enormous amount of pressure on housing costs and availability in Santa Cruz County, as well as other counties to the south and east. This climate is what prompted the National Association of Homebuilders in January to label the Santa Cruz/Watsonville housing market the least affordable in the nation (we have since dropped back down to third place, after San Francisco and Salinas). UCSC Chancellor MRC Greenwood?s overhaul of the institution to make it a ?Gateway to Silicon Valley? can only exacerbate this situation. It is evident, between increased funding priorities for applied sciences and engineering and the gutting of the Narrative Evaluation System (NES), that the UCSC administration is bent on turning the University into a well-oiled machine to churn out skilled workers and bases of knowledge for the Silicon Valley. Manuel Schwab, who advocated the retention of NES during the 1999-2000 school year, described the battle this way: ?One of the issues that gave the NES fight much broader significance beyond the desire for a certain intellectual atmosphere was that many of us realized that quantifiable evaluation was one way to facilitate the transition of students from the intellectual laboratory to the ?real-world? workforce. ?It was yet another method to make it difficult for us to think of ourselves outside of the career track,? he said. Still, the University administration boasts of its contribution to the community through money students, faculty, staff and visitors to the campus spend in Santa Cruz County. From July 1, 2000 to June 30, 2001 it valued this contribution at $413.8 million. While a portion of that money goes toward well-paid workers, particularly in the construction trades, members of the campus community spend nearly the majority of it to support low-wage positions in the retail sector. Those same retail workers are the ones to serve travelers when the transient demographic of Santa Cruz changes from students to tourists. According to Bureau of Labor Statistics records from the year 2000, the retail sector is the second largest employer in Santa Cruz, after services, with the lowest average weekly wage of any sector at $374. The largest portion of employers in the retail sector is eating and drinking establishments, with an average wage of $232 per week (of course, these are statistics for documented labor)?hardly a living wage in Santa Cruz. Even I make more than that (barely). Merchants all over Santa Cruz County depend on revenues from tourism, but their particular brand of transience is even more insecure than that of the campus community. If it?s a bad year, whether due to recession or fears of terrorism, merchants become neurotic at the prospect of lost revenues. This neurosis surfaces in the form of proposals for draconian ordinances in shopping districts, where that other population of transients?the homeless?already complains of constant harassment by law enforcement. Results from the Homeless Needs Assessment Survey of 2000 indicate that over 15 percent of respondents listed ?problems with police? among their most troublesome daily problems. It seems ironic for merchants to blame problems caused by the capriciousness of Santa Cruz?s tourist transients on some of Santa Cruz?s most stable transients?the homeless. It is particularly ironic when one considers that those same merchant?s wages and hiring policies (transient student and youth populations are favored over more stable residents who are less likely to accept such low wages) encourage?more than any other sector?the sort of economic climate that forces people out into the weather. In Part Two of ?Transience in Santa Cruz?, I will focus on the political apparatus that solidifies much of what happens on the economic level into policy and bureaucratic practice. Transience in Santa Cruz Last week, I examined the role of transience in the local economy of Santa Cruz. In this installment of ?Transience in Santa Cruz,? I?ll be drawing attention to the political apparatus that both encourages, and is determined by, that transience. Readers may remember from the last installment that I conceive of transience not primarily as the homeless and the transient poor, but as tourists and students. Part 2?The Politics of Transience By Fhar Miess The Alarm! Newspaper Collective In the late 1920?s, as Ku Klux Klan chapters grew around Santa Cruz, Fred Swanton, Santa Cruz Mayor, industrialist and town booster, lead caravans promoting the area?s tourist attractions, most of which he had built himself (or, more accurately, paid others to build for him). In 1933, during the last year of Swanton?s five-year mayoral term, he transferred title on a few acres of public land at the current location of the Boardwalk parking lot and some of its rides from the City to the Santa Cruz Seaside Company. The Seaside Company has owned and operated the Boardwalk since Swanton himself bankrupted the operation in 1915. Santa Cruz politics has changed a lot since then. Certainly, one would hope that a KKK rally would not last long here these days. But, in other ways, the old guard is still very much in power. According to maps from the 1850s, the land that Swanton sold to the Seaside Company was below the ?mean high tide? level, in what are called ?tidelands?, properties owned by the State of California and held in trust by the City of Santa Cruz. According to the State Constitution, those tidelands should never have been transferred to any private party. In 1998, activists challenged the City Council to file suit against the Seaside Company to reclaim the land and restore the tidelands to natural habitat for Coho and Steelhead. The San Lorenzo Estuary, which was largely filled in after the construction of the river levee, is deemed essential for the ability of the fish to survive upon entering the briny waters of the Monterey Bay. Apparently, the State Lands Commission found the evidence compelling enough to offer to back up the City if it were to take the case to court. The City Council ceded eighty percent of the land to the Seaside Company in October of 1998 rather than suing for the entire property. But a few months later, a new council?populated by councilmembers such as Kristopher Krohn and Ed Porter who had been elected partly on their pledge to advocate for the return of the land to the City?reversed the decision. Unfortunately, according to Beach Flats resident Phil Baer, the weight of the tourism industry giant leaned hard upon the professional city staff (City Manager Richard Wilson and City Attorney John Barisone) who advise the council. The city staff in turn leaned on the City Council. ?My observation is that the City Council rarely, if ever, does anything other than what the staff suggests and advises that they do,? he says. Metro Santa Cruz reported on July 4, 2001 that the council held private negotiations that summer with the Seaside Company. Despite vigilant protests from activists and claims of violations of the Brown Act, which mandates open access to public meetings, the council eventually dropped the case. Tourist transience is big money in Santa Cruz. Former Santa Cruz Mayor Mike Rotkin estimates that between one-third and two-thirds of Santa Cruz tax revenues come from the tourism industry. The City Admission Tax, which comes primarily from the tourism industry and the Boardwalk in particular, accounts for about $1.5 million of city tax revenues annually. The City also levies a Transient Occupancy Tax (TOT) on hotel patrons, which accounts for over $3 million annually, and sales taxes from money spent by tourists amount to millions more. When it comes to local politics, that big money talks, and?as the tidelands case illustrates?often behind closed doors. Baer notes that the Seaside Company exerts ?this quiet, behind-the-scenes pressure that you can never seem to trace exactly, but things always seem to go their way.? The City spends big money to keep tourism in Santa Cruz as well. Upwards of $400,000 per year is allocated from the City?s General Fund to support the Convention and Visitor?s Bureau (CVB) which promotes tourism in Santa Cruz. The primary benefactor of this subsidized advertising is the Seaside Company with its various tourist attractions. But city subsidies for the tourism industry are not always so direct. The City also contributes significant funds for public works (which go toward cleaning up sidewalks and beaches, etc.) and police protection. ?A lot of our police efforts are directed towards tourism,? says Rotkin. ?When you put police officers on Pacific Avenue or in the beach area, that?s pretty much tourist-related.? Several people I spoke with would like to see some hard numbers detailing the amount of money that tourism actually brings to the Santa Cruz community as well as the social, environmental and economic costs of accommodating tourists. Those numbers are hard to come by. In the course of conducting interviews for this series, I have found politicians and bureaucrats alike reluctant to offer solid figures on either the costs or the benefits. I was lucky to get approximations. Fred Geiger, an activist who follows the Seaside Company and the local tourism industry, had a few things to say about it. ?I don?t think the business community wants to have that kind of information out there because people might decide that it?s simply not worth it,? he says. ?Many other towns have condemned these types of operations [like the Boardwalk]?Los Angeles, Santa Monica, Venice, Long Beach?because they bring blight to the community.? Of particular concern to activists is the sort of vehicle-intensive ?day-tripper? tourism attracted to the Boardwalk which contributes little to the local community except reduced air quality, increased noise and traffic, and drunken rowdiness. Folks like Baer and Geiger claim that much of this day-tripper tourism precludes lower-impact, ?conceivably beneficial? tourism, not to mention the health and sanity of locals. Student transience There is, however, a dearth of political will to move away from tourism as a local tax base. ?I don?t think anybody is thinking that there?s some other industry that?s going to replace tourism in Santa Cruz,? says Rotkin. But he does note the way in which Santa Cruz?s economic and political establishment of the 1950?s dealt with the lack of any off-season industry by pushing for the location of a UC in town. In some ways, though, they ended up shooting themselves in the foot. ?I don?t think they understood the political impact of bringing a major university here,? says Rotkin. After all, the voting age was still 21, and students were not allowed to vote outside of their home districts for some time. Vietnam-era state and federal legislative changes reversed those conditions. This, in combination with the student body that was attracted to one of the most radical experiments in higher education at the time, led to a strong progressive shift which gave the town the nickname ?The People?s Republic of Santa Cruz?. Santa Cruz still carries that reputation across the country?undeservedly so, according to many. Contrary to the high ideals which originally put people like John Laird, Mike Rotkin, Ed Porter and others into local government, Baer now describes the City Council as a ?dynasty?. ?The local politics are so entrenched that you?re basically choosing between incumbents and former council members, selecting from this handful of people who can get elected any time they want and just sort of pass it back and forth between each other because we have some regulation on the books that no council member can sit on the council for more than eight years,? he says. ?They then have to take a two-year break, and then they can go for another eight years, on and on until they?re senile and attending council meetings from the retirement home.? To a large degree, this state of affairs can be attributed to the transience of the political powerhouse that is the student body. Eight-year term limits do little good in a population with at best a four-year attention span. ?As much as I like the students and the university and higher education,? says Baer, ?in general, I don?t think of the average UCSC student as being particularly cognizant of what?s going on in city politics or what the impacts are of the votes that they somewhat casually cast. ?I think they get played by the people who are influential up there [on campus], notably Mike Rotkin,? he says. ?Their vote is being used by people to do some things I?m not sure students would really want done if they understood how it was really playing out.? What Baer is referring to is the myriad controversies that Rotkin, who teaches a class on Marxism at UCSC, has gotten himself embroiled within. Rotkin, along with councilmembers Scott Kennedy, Cynthia Mathews and Mike Hernandez consistently found himself in hot water with local activists over issues such as the Beach Area and South of Laurel Plan, which included converting La Bahia apartments into a convention center, an expansion of the Boardwalk and the razing of affordable housing in the Beach Flats, among other things. The plan was meant to ?revitalize? (many would say ?gentrify?) the area and bolster tourism. The Rotkin-Kennedy-Mathews-Hernandez council majority also came under fire for supporting the Gateway Plaza and Costco developments. Rotkin, who is running for a fifth term in November, cites this as an attempt to take advantage of a potential non-tourist tax base and stem the flow of capital out of the community into big-box havens such as Fremont and Sand City. Community activists countered that these developments would only support low-wage jobs and the profits of huge corporate chains. Those other transients When asked what the city had done to mitigate the tourism industry?s tendencies to draw down wages in the area with the proliferation of low-skill, poorly-paid jobs, Rotkin responded, ?It?s led to people thinking that we need to help try and support organizing so that people in those industries can organize and provide an economic defense for themselves.? As evidence, he cited a case in 1981 in which, as Mayor, he supported a strike at a local hotel. He was hard-pressed to cite more recent examples, but noted that the City requires that contractors pay prevailing wages in the building of city developments and that, had the La Bahia Conference Center idea gone through, the City would have required the employer to pay prevailing wages. The City?s recent passage of the Living Wage Ordinance, which requires the city and its contractors to pay their employees an annually-indexed ?living wage?, indicates that?at least ideally?the City Council is in support of decent wages and workers? rights to organize on the job. While this may tend to exert an upward pressure on regional wages, it will likely be limited to workers specifically identified in the ordinance. There are some notable exceptions, such as the Santa Cruz Community Credit Union, which this spring voted to tie their lowest wages to the city?s annually-indexed ?living wage?. Unfortunately, those workers in the largely tourism-driven retail sector are least likely to share in the ancillary benefits. When it comes to material, systemic support for decent wages and working conditions, the City?s record is not so impressive. Continuing no-strings subsidies for the exploitive tourism industry are a notable example. ?Police protection?, which, according to Rotkin, comprises a large portion of public subsidies for tourism, is particularly problematic. When asked who it was that was being policed in this case, Rotkin answered ?everyone.? However, the casual observer will note that, at least when it comes to Pacific Avenue, the scruffier transients are targeted overwhelmingly over the more well-to-do tourist transients who visit the area. Again, hard numbers are hard to come by on this issue, as law enforcement officials are reluctant to keep records to track it. Even stricter downtown ordinances and more rigorous enforcement of existing downtown and anti-homeless ordinances can only compound this problem. As tempers flared around the time of the police-instigated riots of 1994, members of the Santa Cruz General Membership Branch of the Industrial Workers of the World (the IWW, or ?Wobblies?) put it succinctly: ?All low-paid waged laborers?are essentially being warned by anti-homeless legislation to ?play it safe? on the job so as not to end up on the street. ?The effort to stigmatize and outright vilify an economic circumstance that all waged workers must constantly struggle to avoid is a very useful strategy for keeping labor in line. In Santa Cruz, a worker?s existence is primarily defined by the constant struggle to maintain legal housing where over half of one?s monthly wages may go towards rent. The criminalization of the condition of being unable to pay rent functions as a very real demand that workers remain ever-grateful for current employment, regardless of conditions or pay. ?By securing access to a subdued and fearful service-industry workforce, supporters of anti-homeless legislation (almost entirely bosses) seek to simultaneously sweep the streets of the homeless while assuring that there will always be a willing employee to hold the broom.? Where to now? This piece began in 1920?s Santa Cruz, when the Wobblies were as active here as they were in 1994, then struggling against the timber barons in the Santa Cruz Mountains. Tom Scribner, whose bronze statue perches on the Pacific Avenue sidewalk facing the St. George Hotel and whose portrait graces the wall of the Poet & Patriot, was a Wobbly during those times. He devoted most of his life to organizing with the unemployed and downtrodden against the financial system that kept them down. He was later known for his skill in playing the musical saw, which he often did in public spaces. If only our eclectic street musicians were treated with such respect nowadays. Still, it is positive that we have a statue of an old-time radical and no such visible monument to the racial and class bigotry which ran rampant in the ?20s in Santa Cruz (at least until Louis Rittenhouse erects?as Bruce Bratton claims he plans to?a commemorative plaque to his grandfather, a major proponent of the ?Keep California White? movement). But, we cannot rely on a transient and unrooted student radicalism to maintain the pseudo-progressive majority in Santa Cruz. For one thing, the political power of the student body is likely to become increasingly fragmented as a new student demographic is brought to UCSC by bolstered Economics and Engineering departments and a waning commitment among faculty to non-traditional education. For another, it is clear that the student body has enormous political power, but that political power will be easily mobilized, as it always has been, to serve the interests of the political elite who have in turn enslaved themselves to the economic interests of the tourism industry. The solution does not lie in City Government. As Phil Baer notes about his experience in City Council meetings, ?It just seems like a predetermined process. You go there, you say your spiel, but you get the sense the decision has already been made.? How we vote matters far less than how we relate to our bosses, our landlords or those who would presume to police us. It also matters far less than how we all relate to each other?the community ties and the alternative institutions we build together. My next installment of ?Transience in Santa Cruz? will focus on how transience affects these interpersonal relationships. It will not appear in the next issue, but rather in the following one, to give all of you time to relate your stories and register your opinions on this topic. Please send us your thoughts to our P.O. Box or e-mail me at fhar@the-alarm.com. All content Copyleft ? 2002 by The Alarm! Newspaper. Except where noted otherwise, this material may be copied and distributed freely in whole or in part by anyone except where used for commercial purposes or by government agencies. ----- The Alarm! Newspaper a local weekly newspaper for an engaged populace http://www.the-alarm.com/ info@the-alarm.com P.O. Box 1205, Santa Cruz, CA 95061 (831) 429-NEWS - office (831) 420-1498 - fax From wires at the-alarm.com Thu Jul 11 23:03:02 2002 From: wires at the-alarm.com (Alarm!Wires) Date: Sun Feb 8 02:51:42 2004 Subject: [Dryerase] The Alarm--Re-tool Message-ID: <43406019-954C-11D6-B276-003065F4865E@the-alarm.com> This was a column i attempted to do for three weeks, but dropped it as the workload became to high. It highlights new, not-so-new, and emergent technologies and critiques them. Target technolgies: cell phones, IBM and the "Segway Human Transporter". They are current, but not especially timely, in many cases. They are not locally-specific. 6-21-02 Segway or non sequitor? By Fhar Miess The Alarm! Newspaper Collective In December of 2001, inventor Dean Kamen unveiled his newest development: a two-wheeled machine called the ?Segway Human Transporter (HT)?, which looks remarkably like a push mower, but functions as a small one-person vehicle. The machine, which comes in both consumer versions and customized versions for corporate clients, weighs some 65lb. and is able to travel up to speeds of 12.5 mph. Through some very sophisticated engineering and a parallel system of microprocessors that surpasses the computing power of many desktop personal computers, the machine is able to respond to slight tilts and shifts in weight so that it moves forward as the driver shifts forward and stops when he or she stands up straight. The Segway HT can turn on a dime by the use of simple handlebar controls. Segway LLC (the partnership which Kamen formed to develop, produce and market his invention) boasts an executive management team with some impressive credentials. Members of the team have cut their teeth working for such heavyweight organizations as Subaru, IBM (see last week?s Re-tool), the Rand Corporation, Johnson & Johnson Medical, Inc., Ford Motor Company, General Electric Company, The Gillette Company, Martin Marietta Data Systems and various arms of the United States Government. Segway LLC?s business savvy and its executives? years of experience in corporate culture show through. Until the personal consumer version of the Segway becomes available, the company is focusing on marketing to large corporate clients. The Segway HT?s major selling point, according to its manufacturer, is that it ?increases worker productivity by allowing workers to do everything more efficiently. Greater speed and capacity will enable them to carry more and cover greater distances. Machines can be outfitted with customized accessories, allowing workers to transport enough equipment to perform multiple operations and reduce the need for re-supply trips.? True to standard corporate rhetoric, these machines are represented as ?labor-saving devices? which are liberating to workers. The Segway HT is billed as a solution to repetitive stress and other work-related injuries, although not in order to improve health and safety for workers, but to ?allow? them to remain on the job longer. It will not ?allow workers to do everything more efficiently?; it will mandate that they work more efficiently. Such technological tools do not save labor, they exploit it in order to enhance productivity. As for the personal consumer model, Segway LLC executives remain confident that the Segway HT will fundamentally change the way people move from place to place in their personal lives, as well as at work. They likely derive this confidence from their army of lobbyists urging state and federal legislatures to revise laws prohibiting motorized vehicles from sidewalks. Many other individuals and groups, however, are not so buoyant about this eventuality. Consumer and medical groups such as the Consumer Federation of America and the American Academy of Pediatrics, for example, are pressing for greater restrictions on the speed at which these vehicles may travel and the safety gear their drivers must wear. Others are not so circumspect. ?I think the Segway is evil,? says Christopher Congleton, half jokingly. Congleton is a graduate researcher at the Institute for Transportation Studies at UC Davis. ?Like any transportation tool, people don?t think about anything beyond the direct experience of the technology itself?they don?t consider the effects on public space from a mixed-use environment populated by Segways.? As Congleton notes, the Segway is not without its analogs in the realm of motor vehicles: ?The Segway is the pedestrian SUV: although lacking the emissions and inefficiency of its larger cousin, the Segway caters to similar character traits as most SUV markets. It may encourage a new class distinction with aristocrats atop elevated roving pedestals dominating those on foot. One can imagine a sidewalk with varying densities and speeds of traffic, with the Segway marginalizing the elderly, the multi-mobile [?the disabled? in common parlance], children, and those who cannot?or chose not to?afford the Segway.? Referring to the possibility of road rage spilling over onto sidewalks, trails, and other mutli-use and pedestrian areas, Congelton claims, ?the chance for injuries could be high, quite possibly stemming from intermodal aggression.? But, as noted by Chris Carlsson, one of the progenitors of ?Critical Mass?, ?there?s a huge market for finding ways to move people around in ways that negate their ability to propel themselves under their own power?. At first glance, one would be tempted to think that many of the wonders of modern innovation are the result of pure laziness. But, upon closer examination, it becomes abundantly clear that innovation has been driven by some very industrious individuals who are not content to allow simple laziness to determine product demand. At the same time as these individuals manipulate demand for ?labor-saving devices? through cunning and aggressive marketing ploys, they operate organizations that mandate high levels of worker productivity. Laziness is not an inherent human trait; rather, it is a by-product of a sped-up workforce with little or no control over its own productive activities. After working 50, 60 or more hours per week in an environment where productivity is paramount, is it any wonder that we find it hard to derive satisfaction from such quaint activities as walking, kneading dough, growing food, or any number of other activities made obsolete and horribly ?inefficient? by new-fangled techno-fixes? For the most part, Dean Kamen has in the past stuck to medical gadgetry, his most recent invention before the Segway HT being a self-balancing machine for wheelchair users. Of Kamen?s over 150 US and foreign patents, this is his first major invention developed without regard to any discernible medical condition?or is it? Is it not possible that the Segway HT was developed for a consumer base that has been crippled in even more profound?if less obvious?ways? In Japan, they at least have a word for this condition: karoshi, which roughly translates as ?death by overwork.? It is no surprise that a group of career corporate executives such as those who populate Segway LLC should find it mutually beneficial to partner with a man most well-known for inventing high-end gadgets to facilitate the mobility of disabled people. Why should they limit themselves to the congenitally sick and the accidentally disabled when there is money to be made from those maimed?with symptoms ranging from simple laziness to diagnosable karoshi?by an economic system they have invested their entire careers into perpetuating? After having broken our legs, literally and figuratively, they are eager to find someone to develop some value-added crutches they can sell to us at a premium. As long as we fail to recognize how the crippling work habits we?ve inherited have been foisted upon us, we will remain perpetually frustrated by technological solutions that are in fact nothing more than disempowering half-measures by design. This brutal feedback loop will not be interrupted by government or industry because both depend on it. It can only be interrupted by each of us as producers, consumers and living, breathing, loving human beings determined to make our destinies together on terms we?ve decided collectively. 6-14-02 IBM and the impending holocaust By Fhar Miess The Alarm! Newspaper Collective This Tuesday (June 11), International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) made an announcement that their researchers had developed a new technology for data storage which surpasses the capabilities of any other storage technology by 20 times. This new development comes as a result of a technique originally exploited in the 1880s by the founder of the company which eventually became IBM. That technique is the use of punched cards as a means of storing, tabulating and eventually processing data. The primary difference, of course, is size. IBM?s new machine, developed by its Millipede program, uses nanotechnology to create a pattern of indentations, each measuring only 10 nanometers (about 6,000 times smaller than the width of a human hair). The original punched-card system, developed by Herman Hollerith, was first used on a massive scale during the 1890 US Census. Ultimately, the need of the government to accurately gather intelligence on its citizenry was what drove the technology (it also enabled Hollerith?s monopolistic business practices). A constitutional mandate in combination with large upsurges in population at that time meant that a technology needed to be developed which would make the Census feasible. The Hollerith system was the solution (true to IBM?s present motto). When Adolf Hitler ordered a census of all Germans in the first weeks of his ascension to power in 1933, IBM?s Hollerith machines were equally indispensable for the first steps toward what would eventually become the Third Reich?s ?Final Solution?. In fact, Dehomag (IBM?s German subsidiary, in which it held a 90% stake) was contracted by the NSDAP (the Nazi Party) to conduct the entire census process (with the exception of the actual collection of data, which largely fell upon the Storm Troopers and SS) in Prussia, Germany?s most populous state. The application of the Hollerith machines, as well as the export of training and technical personnel and resources by IBM New York, was not limited to this early case, either. As has been well documented in Edwin Black?s IBM and the Holocaust, IBM resources and personnel were used throughout the Reich, not least of all in the Race Political Office. The Dehomag Hollerith machines? assistance in the areas of demographics and information management is what made the Nazi dream of a Final Solution a viable possibility. In February of 2001, when Edwin Black released his book clearly outlining collusion between IBM, Thomas Watson (IBM?s head), Dehomag (IBM?s German subsidiary) and the NSDAP, it generated a flurry of denunciations and denials from the company as well as great deal of overall hoop-lah in the media. While the historical facts are very much significant, particularly in light of the reparations suit filed at the same time against the firm, they may possibly pale in comparison to the ramifications of the technology IBM is currently developing. In August of 2000, IBM announced the formation of its new Life Sciences Division, dedicated to producing machines and technologies capable of serving the needs of biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies in the growing disciplines of genomics, bioinformatics and proteomics. Despite the fact that it entailed the allocation of millions of dollars, the move went largely unnoticed in the media by all except the business press. One of the stars of the Life Sciences Division is IBM?s ?Blue Gene? supercomputer. The machine was developed to be able to efficiently manage and process enormous volumes of genetic information. It will be used by various sectors of the biotechnology industry (pharmaceuticals, agricultural biotechnology and animal genetics) to map plant and animal genomes (including the human genome), analyze and simulate protein folding (with applications primarily for pharmaceuticals development) and study the roles of certain portions of genetic codes in plant and animal development and living functions. IBM and its Blue Gene clients are quick to assure us that all of these new developments will only be utilized for the betterment of the human condition. We ?alarmists? are not so sure. This past week (June 9?12), the Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO) held its annual conference, this year in Toronto, Ontario. For each of the past several years, the conference has been marked by protests from activists who consider the current trend of biotechnology development anathema to the betterment of the human condition, not to mention that of the planet. This year was no exception (see article, page 9). On the second day of the BIO conference, Carl Feldbaum, President of BIO, delivered a speech to the conference in which he outlined his ten-point platform for ?Biotechnology?s Foreign Policy?. This platform was modeled after Woodrow Wilson?s 14 points, which were meant to inaugurate the League of Nations and marked the beginning of an era of internationalist liberal democracy and economic development. Here are some highlights: Point One states, ?The industry must work with governments and international bodies to integrate biotechnology into compelling responses to public-health crises.? And how is it that we should come to conclusions about what constitutes a ?public-health crisis?? Well, that brings us to Point Five, which states, ?For biotech?s positive outcomes to truly flourish, we need to agree that both international and national regulatory regimes be based on science.? Feldbaum goes on: ?As more and more nations upgrade their regulatory systems to consider complex biotechnology products, we urge them to detach that process from politics and ideology, even superstition.? Apparently, Mr. Feldbaum is one of the old guard who still believe that reductionist scientific inquiry is utterly devoid of politics and ideology, even superstition. Take, for instance, the investigations of the very scientifically-inclined eugenicists and statisticians whose work informed and facilitated the Final Solution. One would be hard-pressed to conceive of a basis for these scientists? endeavors which wasn?t political, ideological or even superstitious. In Point Ten, Feldbaum declares, ?biotechnology should be used to develop treatments and protective products for both military personnel and civilians, but it must never be used to develop weapons.? Well, that?s all very nice, but it?s too little, too late. Biotechnology has been used for the purpose of weapons development for some time, and it is not likely to stop now. The case of anthrax is well known, but recent news shows only increasing trends toward weapons development. IBM recently (November of 2001) partnered with Lawrence Livermore National Labs to develop a new Blue Gene supercomputer specifically for nuclear weapons development and storage. Indicating more deliberate collusion between nuclear weapons research and the biotechnology industry, Compaq Computing, Sandia National Labs and Celera Genomics agreed in January of 2001 to work together on a project to develop a supercomputer comparable to IBM?s Blue Gene. It is being developed openly and specifically for nuclear weapons research. Underlying Feldbaum?s tenth point is the assumption that it is possible and advisable to keep the power of biotechnology and bioinformatics ?out of the wrong hands?. If there?s anything we should learn from the case of IBM, it is that it is neither possible nor advisable. That power is always already in the wrong hands. The governmental and economic forces which drive the vast majority of scientific development are problematic from the beginning. Those scientists who uncritically respond to those pressures are not absolved of responsibility for the very political and ideological (even superstitious) forces which drive their work. To go back to Feldbaum?s fifth point, he says, ?every new technology inevitably provokes a political confrontation between alarmists [*snicker*] and the scientific community. ?Again and again, the science proves the alarmists wrong.? For one, this assumes consensus among the scientific community, which is rarely present. Consensus among the so-called alarmists is scarcely monolithic, either (for instance, we have no presentiment about the computer chip implants being the ?Mark of the Beast?). And, on the contrary, science does not prove the alarmists wrong; history suggests that wherever science succeeds in erasing its inherently ideological and political nature, it invites disaster and?at the risk of sounding ?alarmist??holocaust. 6-7-02 Cell phones suck more than just your brains By Fhar Miess The Alarm! Newspaper Collective Union Network International (UNI) inaugurated its ?global week of organizing? among workers at mobile phone companies around the world May 27-31, highlighting an aspect of cell phone culture that has gone largely ignored: its effect on working people and work habits. Much has been made of the controversy surrounding the safety of cell phone use and of proximity to transmission towers and antennas (a great survey of how this plays out in our community can be found in the May issue of the Green Press). And the popular annoyance with cell phones and their users in public spaces like movie theaters and restaurants has given rise to an abundance of jokes, comics and regulatory signage. But these are largely coping mechanisms and safety valves for a perhaps more deeply held anxiety about cell phones: that they are fundamentally calling into question the way we relate to each other and the spaces around us, and the boundaries we place between work and leisure time. It is easy to get caught up in chicken-and-egg discussions when considering the role of cell phones in a sped-up and over-worked society. Is the popularity of cell phones attributable to their inherent virtue as nifty and useful gadgets (with a few unintended effects of a destabilized, flexible workforce)? Or did the popularity of cell phones arise in the first place because of worker?s needs to keep up with a hyper-connected and highly-casualized global economy around them? It would be easy to say that the popularity of cell phones paralleled the privatization and casualization of the global economy in an organic fashion, much as the telegraph and railroads grew alongside one-another. Unfortunately, this analysis erases the role of leading executives in shaping global market forces, just as it would denigrate the deliberate market and labor-force manipulations of industrialists in the late 19th century which led to fourteen-hour (and more) workdays in that era. On the consumer end of the equation, a number of mobile phone operators across the globe?many of which are comprised of mergers and joint ventures between the Baby Bells*?have spearheaded the telecommunications ?revolution? which has made ?telework? both possible and, in some instances, necessary, for a flexible, just-in-time global market structure. Those of us who have had cell phones know the always-on-call, perpetual-multitasking modes we get sucked into, despite our best attempts to avoid these patterns and limit cell phone use to keeping in touch with the people who are most important to us. But, these deliberate attempts to affect generalized work speed-ups and increased ?flexibility? throughout the global workforce become most evident in the attitudes of telecommunications company executives toward their own workers. At the end of the summer of 2000, 87,000 workers at Verizon Communications?which owns Verizon Wireless, the largest mobile phone operator in the country?went on strike for eighteen days. The issues? Forced overtime, forced relocation, job security and the right to organize. In essence, the striking workers at Verizon were protesting precisely the conditions (high stress, long working hours, insecurity and enforced mobility) that are the corollary of the technology they were being paid by Verizon to operate, maintain and support. The strike won Verizon workers significant gains in all of the issues over which they went out. Verizon?s experience apparently taught a few lessons to other cellular providers facing mounting pressure from workers in the months leading up to the fall surge in new phone orders from incoming students. A change in tactics was in order. A year later, in August of 2001, Cingular Wireless, the second largest mobile phone operator in the United States, signed a ?card-check and neutrality? agreement with Communications Workers of America (CWA), the union which represented 72,000 of the 87,000 workers striking against Verizon. This paved the way for relatively unimpeded union organizing campaigns. The executives at BellSouth and SBC Communications (two of the remaining four Baby Bells), which co-own Cingular Wireless, have clearly learned a few things about how to make their joint venture run smoothly without the risk of costly work stoppages. Cingular has recently even introduced special discounted deals to CWA members on mobile products and services offered by the company: the carrot to Verizon?s stick. If they can?t enforce ?Taylorism?, ?rationalization?, ?workflow management?, or ?flexibility? (or any other of the various industry euphemisms for work speed-ups and lack of job security) on the shop floor, they?ll do it through the lure of product marketing and incentives. CWA has apparently accepted these dubious shows of goodwill uncritically. A joint press release by CWA and Cingular has touted the amicable partnership between the two parties, and the wonderful services (as well as the pre-packaged sense of ?self-expression?) to be offered by Cingular Wireless. There is no outward recognition of the effect of telecommunications products and services on the work habits and employment relations the CWA claims to have as its primary concerns. To the contrary the CWA advertises these products and services glowingly. Evidently, CWA has become blinded by the prospect of thousands of new dues-paying highly-skilled and well-compensated telecommunications workers in the ranks. As a result, they have sacrificed long-term working and living conditions for a large swath of the global working class in exchange for short-term gains in job security limited to those workers CWA directly represents. To have rejected the card-check and neutrality agreement would have been suicide for the organization, but to do so uncritically is fratricide (and also suicide, if one takes some of the health and safety warnings about cell phones seriously). The United Auto Workers (UAW) and International Longshore and Wherehouse Union (ILWU) made similar concessions to employers over automation and containerization (respectively), leading to declines in both the power and relevancy in two of the most militant mainstream unions in the United States. So long as we remain attached to the ideal of an ultimately amicable partnership between capitalism and an organized working class, the former will win out over the latter. So long as we maintain that capitalism and technological ?progress? for the sake of profit is inevitable, we will ensure the same. * The ?Baby Bells? were the seven companies set up to provide local telephone services after the US government broke up the AT&T telephone monopoly in 1984. The concentration of telecommunications services into the hands of companies which formerly comprised a monopoly has generally followed the pattern of mergers between Rockefeller?s old Standard Oil empire spin-offs in the petroleum industry. All content Copyleft ? 2002 by The Alarm! Newspaper. Except where noted otherwise, this material may be copied and distributed freely in whole or in part by anyone except where used for commercial purposes or by government agencies. ----- The Alarm! Newspaper a local weekly newspaper for an engaged populace http://www.the-alarm.com/ info@the-alarm.com P.O. Box 1205, Santa Cruz, CA 95061 (831) 429-NEWS - office (831) 420-1498 - fax From xraymagazine at yahoo.com Fri Jul 12 07:51:29 2002 From: xraymagazine at yahoo.com (XRay Magazine) Date: Sun Feb 8 02:51:42 2004 Subject: [Dryerase] UPC Stories Message-ID: <20020712125129.95028.qmail@web14407.mail.yahoo.com> UPC Organizers chat with XRay An email interview by Stephen Novotni with UPC organizers Jen Angel and Jason Kuscma X: How many people showed up? What was the farthest someone travelled to get there? Jason: Approximately 700-800 people showed up this weekend from over 36 different states and Canada. Both the east and west coasts were well-represented and we had people from the hearts of Florida and Texas as well. A good number of the attendees were midwesterners and local Northwest Ohio residents. X: How does the 4th UPC compare with the first or last year's? Jason: The 4th UPC differed from the others primarily in its intention. In the past, the conferences had been about 2/3 devoted to media and art while the balance was made up by activist-related workshops, panels and discussions. This year we not only increased the number of sessions per day (and per time slot) but we made sure that each one was explicitly related somehow to democratizing the tools for do-it-yourself media making. We had independent film screenings, workshops on web production, screen-printing, bookbinding, and a host of others. We also used panel discussions to allow independent media makers talk about the work they are involved in. Jen: We've also become more organized. This year, people were able to register and pay online, we had welcome packets/bags for each person that were full of books, cds, flyers, magazines, buttons, etc, and we had new evening events, like the Saturday night Bowling party, where we rented an entire bowling alley for conference-goers. X: What's been the most valuable thing you've learned from the event? Jason: The most important thing that I think a lot of people take home from the weekend (myself included) is a renewed sense of purpose-kind of a reminder that the work that we do is important, and sometimes we need to renew that purpose and energy to keep it all going. Jen: I also think that events such as this one constantly reinforce how much we need and can learn from one another. X: What do you think is in store in the future of the progressive/indie/leftist press? Jason: I think we are at an exciting time right now where participatory media projects have the potential to contend with the corporate giants. Everyday folks know that the stuff they see on television and read in the paper is not entirely accurate and often immoral in it's omission of certain news. Participatory media counters this by creating more media sources that amplify the voices of the people. I'm excited by how far indymedia.org has come in such a short time, and I also think it's remarkable that Clamor is still around after two years...both of which are using models that technically shouldn't be able to work in a market that works best when it panders to the lowest common denominator. X: What are the most important things women can do to have a voice in the media? What publications are best at advancing the role of women in the media? Jen: Well, there are many ways that women can be strong in media. One is to participate in creating and founding new media institutions, such as new magazines and radio stations, etc. It is important for women to not only participate in these things, but to help create them. Women who are currently involved need to lead by example and help reset our ideas of what the "norm" is.... Instead of featuring a women's issue or a radio show devote to women, how about producing a magazine where all the writers and contributors are female, but the topics are regular topics and not specifically womens-interest topics? That would be more powerful. There isn't any one organization that exemplifies how women should act within media. Venus magazine is a great resource, but it is organized differently than many participatory media resources. THere are many good organizations out there, but no matter how much outreach they do, individual women need to take the initiative to find their own voice. X: The conference had some diversity, but how can more minority-owned publications and publishers be brought into the mix? Jason: This is always a concern of ours, and something we've tried to address every year. The primary way that we can work on increasing diversity would be to increase the funds available to bring folks who are not as easily able to drop what they're doing to head to a conference in Ohio. With an increase in sponsors, donors and other fundraising projects, we should be able to bring folks in from a variety of media projects from various communities of color. Jen: However, we have always had a lot of women involved, and have been very good at bringing together a good mix of ages, from high school students to experienced media activists in their 50's and 60's. *Current List members should feel free to use this piece for one time use in their publications or on an ongoing basis online. Please attribute to Stephen J. Novotni, GoXRay.com __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Sign up for SBC Yahoo! Dial - First Month Free http://sbc.yahoo.com From wires at the-alarm.com Thu Jul 11 22:55:05 2002 From: wires at the-alarm.com (Alarm!Wires) Date: Sun Feb 8 02:51:43 2004 Subject: [Dryerase] The Alarm--Writings of Manuel Schwab Message-ID: <28CE585E-954B-11D6-B276-003065F4865E@the-alarm.com> Here is a collection of Manuel Schwab's pieces since our first issue on May 17th. They are all very good and none of them are particularly local. Some are timely, but not in a way that would make them sound dated if reprinted. The last issue (7-5-02) was omitted because his piece revolved around a photograph that i'm not sure how to get to y'all. They are ordered from oldest to newest 5-17-02 Antiterrorism, Zionism, and Apartheid By Manuel Schwab ?You cannot in one breath claim the right of the Jews to political power and sovereignty in one part of the world?and in the next breath seek to take away the same hard-won right from the children of the Boers.? In this way H. Katzew, the Editor of the Zionist Record in South Africa, characterized the ideological equivalency he perceived between the Zionist state in Palestine and his own country?s Apartheid regime. The analogies between the two regimes are, in fact, striking; both were the result of systematic expropriation or simple seizure of native land, both depended on the support of an imperial international consensus. Both depend on racialized citizenship laws and racially biased political codes. Both withstood decades of international pressure against them (often only surviving with the support of a few powerful allies). It demands an explanation, therefore, why 11 years after the celebrated collapse of Apartheid, the largest military operation by Israel targeting the Palestinian population (a population that Israel has systematically displaced, persecuted, and oppressed) is met with official support from the same government that touts the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission as an exemplary political transition. The necessity of an explanation seems all the more pressing if we look beyond the broad structural similarities of these two settler regimes and examine what cannot be called anything but a peculiar alliance. It was May 15th, 1948?the same month that the Afrikaner Nationalist Party which implemented the ?separate development? (Apartheid) policy in South Africa came to power?that the state of Israel was officially recognized by the United Nations. The build up of what was to become the military infrastructure of Israel, however, began long before the state?s official recognition; it was in fact prior to the success of the Zionist settler state that we see Zionism?s relationship to the South African colonies burgeoning. We can take the case of the Haganah, a pre-military infrastructure that played an instrumental role in the suppression of the Arab Revolt against the British (1936-1939), as an example. Established in 1920, it is from the ranks of the Haganah that the infamous Irgun emerged, later to become responsible?alongside their more radical right wing splinter group, The Stern Gang -- for the April 1948 massacres in Jaffa and Deir Yasin. It was also the Haganah that enjoyed the financial and political support of General Jan Christian Smuts?the early Apartheid ideologue (before the policy was officially implemented) and celebrated prime minister of South Africa. Although it is important to note that this objective was under some dispute throughout the pre-history of Israel, many Zionists taking it as their objective to combat both the British Mandatory Authority and the Arab Palestinians, General Smuts? interest in Zionism was its promise to defend British imperial interests in the Middle East. Smuts was revered as one of the founding father?s of the League of Nations, and is remembered for making indispensable contributions to the British dream of the establishment of a new international society. He was a man who believed just as firmly in race-separation, and in the control of native populations by a settler regime explicitly constructed around racial exclusion. His relationship to Chaim Weizmann, who was the first President of Israel and one of its most important founding Zionists?as well as staunch pro-British Zionist?was an important diplomatic and strategic boon to the diplomatic success of Israel. Weizmann?s diplomacy would help frame Israel as the imperial bulwark which Smuts believed necessary for the occidentalization of Africa, and Smuts in turn made Zionism a personal diplomatic project. The collusion between Israel and South Africa was far more than a fleeting allegiance between two racialist ideologues at a time when many western powers were still avowedly dedicated to some version of traditional colonialism. Beyond being the products of the same colonial power block (the Balfour agreement that promised British support for a Zionist State in Palestine and the 1909 South Africa Act of Union were the result of the machinations of the same network of imperialist players), the cooperation between South Africa and Israel included tactical, ideological, and politico-economic alliances that lasted at least until the final decade of the Apartheid regime. The chief of staff of the Israeli Air Force, for instance, lectured in the late 60s on the tactics Israel used during the 1967 Six-Day War to a South African Air Force academy. A rough decade later (circa 1975), Israeli Officers were still being sent to South Africa to train troops there in counter-insurgency techniques, a collusion aired publicly at that time by the London Guardian. Beyond these glaring collaborations, bilateral trade and expansion arrangements with South Africa were actively pursued by the Israeli Histadrut (the second largest employer in Israel at the time, next to the state) through the 70s in relation to South Africa. This all fell against the backdrop of the Cold War, a time in which the US had already proven its capacity to fight their battles against the Soviet Union by surrogate, supporting regimes they felt to be instrumental for the containment of communism (with overt Military interventions like the Vietnam war, but more often clandestinely) the world over. Whatever is to be said about the appropriate way to situate Israel and South Africa in this picture, it is clear that the magnitude of US military and financial support to Israel made the latter?s international interventions possible. From the mid 1970s on, furthermore, the South African Apartheid government was engaged in the period in which their policy against Apartheid resistance was explicitly framed as an attempt to prevent the spread of socialist affiliation in that country. Both states, then, can be viewed, even by conservative estimations, as crucial stratagems in the global containment policy of the Cold War. The barrage of institutional facts that emerge when we examine the Zionist relationship to Imperial powers in general and South Africa (the most famous settler regime save perhaps the United States, which all but succeeded in the extermination of its own native population) makes clear certain claims that are often hotly disputed by analysts of contemporary Zionism. The fledgling Zionist state was by definition a settler regime, and moreover one whose founding architects self-consciously positioned themselves to take advantage of the imperial aspirations of the major global powers from 1948 on. It is clear from their correspondences that neither Herzl (widely acknowledged as the founder of modern Zionism), nor Weizmann, nor Ben Gurion (Israel?s first Prime Minister) ever had any illusions about the necessity to systematically displace the Palestinian Arabs. The government of Israel was, finally, an explicitly racialized political regime, and its close relationship to the Apartheid government can only be understood in the context of its relationship to its own native populations?a political and economic subjugation which is as robust as ever?and its relationship to the US. It seems then that there must be less of a contradiction than we think between the global liberal world order our nation vainly claims to champion and the racist empires from which it sprung. Israel operates, after all, under the banner of its renowned status as a beacon of democracy in the Middle East. It has made the seamless transition, on the ideological level, from the imperially funded settler regime of the past to the stratagem on the forefront of an ever-expanding sphere of liberal influence of the present. It stands alongside the US?despite laughable admonitions we?ve heard of late from our administration attempting to preserve competing alliances in the Arab world?in a fight against ?politically motivated violence.? The irony of this formulation will not escape the careful reader who recognized state violence as definitively political. Israel?s policies have not essentially changed since its close collusion with the Apartheid Regime of the 80s, and even this relationship was compatible in many western propagandists eyes with the civilizing mission of Israel until the regime fell. This seeming contradiction would come as more of a surprise if Israel?s pseudo-metamorphosis didn?t mirror in particular ways the liberal recuperations of our own neo-imperial ideologies, more and more often structured around our ?humanitarian? interests in intervention. On this last point, we must be clear. The current US war, which is fought like countless others to make the world safe for the democratic and the tolerant, is perpetrated in the name of security, and for this we must take our government to task. For the contradiction that we see in the claims of our own national objectives and the means by which our government pursues them is secondary to a deeper contradiction to which we must pay attention as much in our analysis of Israel as domestically. The contradiction between the interests of an industrialist government, built around hard military core, and our interests as its citizens (consenting or otherwise) cannot be overlooked. From the earliest stages of the successful Zionist campaign to gain control of Palestine, there were vocal opponents both within the Palestinian Jewish settler community and from the entire range of the Jewish community at large who decried the imperialism and racism of the Revisionist Zionists. Among them was Bernard Lazarre, a member of the Zionist Organization at a time when the question of whether Zionism would be imperialist was not yet decided, and who resigned in 1899 because of what he believed was an attempt by burgeoning Zionism to mislead its people. (Lazarre, incidentally, fought Herzl on the necessity of a Homeland, emphasizing rather a coalition based defense of European Jews in Europe). We find today the same form of dissent in Israel (yes, from a minority, as dissent always is in democracies), and we should not be seduced into believing that the high approval ratings for the Sharon government are an indicator of some innate hatred stemming from the population. Governments are always robust during a ?crisis of security,? and we see this all too well in the case of our own marginally accepted administration which suddenly, under attack, is given leave to enact policies that would otherwise have seen a president deposed. Nor should we be seduced into believing that this high approval rating amounts to a de facto legitimacy for Sharon and his policies. Remember that in the case of our own government, the attacks which came to legitimate the Bush administrations power were precipitated by decades of imperialism by his precursors, imperialism that systematically militarized the anti-American resistance we now decry. Remember that Sharon took power after a long history of personal military service, in which he was commanding officer during the massacres of both Sabra and Shatilla, and that his visit to the temple mount was the critical spark in the violence that swept him into office. Once a state is at war, it demands as a matter of public responsibility that we revere its leaders?and neither Sharon nor Bush is in the least bit oblivious to that fact. As far as the history of these wars is concerned, sanity would require us to remember the responsibility that both Sharon and Bush hold respectively for initiating the violence they now purport to defend themselves against. But sanity is not the objective here, and in a state of emergency it somehow becomes subversive to even acknowledge their agency. Patriotism, however, is more than ever a prime objective, and during war time, it is more and more clear that historical memory itself has become unpatriotic. 5-24-02 Subjecting ourselves to objectivity By Manuel Schwab The Alarm! Newspaper Contributor The non-neutrality of the media should not come as a revelation in an age in which virtually every new medium is credited with ushering in a new world. Whether it is by virtue of the rapidity of data transmission (the lynchpin of the utopian dreams of the silicon valley) or a spectacular capacity for impressing messages onto its target audience (the seduction of the moving picture), media always exert their influence. The dream of a magic tunnel through which the world can pass unaltered is as unrealizable as it is desired. In this desire lies, among other things, a recognition of the threat that ideology poses to our autonomy. We fear that our capacity for judgement will be hijacked by the selective vision of the messengers who are the mediators of our world. And this fear is, let us make