satmandu: 12/12/2004

Response to discussion of UK verdict denouncing a purportedly
anti-terror law.

> From: "David Farber"
> Date: December 17, 2004 10:45:14 AM EST
> To: ip@v2.listbox.com
> Subject: not the first such UK anti-terror law .. Re: [IP] (UK)
> Judges' verdicton terror laws provoke s constitutional crisis
> Reply-To: dave@farber.net
>
>
>
> _______________ Forward Header _______________
> Subject: not the first such UK anti-terror law .. Re: [IP] (UK)
> Judges' verdicton terror laws provoke s constitutional crisis
> Author: Suresh Ramasubramanian
> Date: 17th December 2004 9:06:33 pm
>
> David Farber [17/12/04 05:10 -1000]:
>> _______________ Forward Header _______________
>> Author: Brian Randell
>>> As Lord Hoffman noted, the case called into
>>> question "the very existence of an ancient
>>> liberty of which this country has until now been
>>> very proud: freedom from arbitrary arrest and
>>> detention". His conclusion could not have been
>
> Not the first anti terror law though. Rather ancient history, but
> there's
> the Rowlatt Act, passed in British India in 1919 on the
> recommendations of
> a commission headed by Sir Sidney Rowlatt.
>
> The most accurate description of this act is, I guess, in this short
> Hindi
> phrase .. "Na Vakeel, Na Daleel, Na Appeal" - No Lawyer, No Trial, No
> Appeal
>
> Needless to say, it was rather unpopular back then, even more so when
> the
> arrest of two Indian politicians under this act made a whole lot of
> people
> in the city of Amritsar defy a curfew order and organize a political
> meeting in a city park to protest the arrests. A whole lot of families
> from the surrounding towns and villages, who were in the city to
> attend a
> religious festival, also happened to be in the park.
>
> The date was April 13, 1919, the park was called Jallianwala Bagh.
>
> More on that park, and its history - are rather well documented in this
> excellent website on Churchill -
> http://lachlan.bluehaze.com.au/churchill/amritsar.htm
>
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_______________ Forward Header _______________
Subject: A sobering report from Moyers
Author: Dick Edmiston
Date: 13th December 2004 7:40:00 pm

For IP, if you like.

Bill Moyers will be retiring from public broadcasting on December 17,
2004. Coming at the close of a distinguished career makes his award
acceptance speech below quite sobering. It is long, but well worth
reading.

Dick Edmiston

--------------------------------------------

Battlefield Earth

By Bill Moyers, AlterNet
Posted on December 8, 2004, Printed on December 13, 2004
http://www.alternet.org/story/20666/

Recently the Center for Health and the Global Environment at Harvard
Medical School presented its fourth annual Global Environment Citizen
Award
to Bill Moyers. In presenting the award, Meryl Streep, a member of the
Center board, said, "Through resourceful, intrepid reportage and
perceptive
voices from the forward edge of the debate, Moyers has examined an
environment under siege with the aim of engaging citizens." Following is
the text of Bill Moyers' response to Ms. Streep's presentation of the
award.

I accept this award on behalf of all the people behind the camera whom
you
never see. And for all those scientists, advocates, activists, and just
plain citizens whose stories we have covered in reporting on how
environmental change affects our daily lives. We journalists are simply
beachcombers on the shores of other people's knowledge, other people's
experience, and other people's wisdom. We tell their stories.

The journalist who truly deserves this award is my friend, Bill
McKibben.
He enjoys the most conspicuous place in my own pantheon of journalistic
heroes for his pioneer work in writing about the environment. His best
seller "The End of Nature" carried on where Rachel Carson's "Silent
Spring"
left off.

Writing in Mother Jones recently, Bill described how the problems we
journalists routinely cover ï¿½ conventional, manageable programs like
budget
shortfalls and pollution ï¿½ may be about to convert to chaotic,
unpredictable, unmanageable situations. The most unmanageable of all, he
writes, could be the accelerating deterioration of the environment,
creating perils with huge momentum like the greenhouse effect that is
causing the melting of the Arctic to release so much freshwater into the
North Atlantic that even the Pentagon is growing alarmed that a
weakening
gulf stream could yield abrupt and overwhelming changes, the kind of
changes that could radically alter civilizations.

That's one challenge we journalists face ï¿½ how to tell such a story
without
coming across as Cassandras, without turning off the people we most
want to
understand what's happening, who must act on what they read and hear.

As difficult as it is, however, for journalists to fashion a readable
narrative for complex issues without depressing our readers and viewers,
there is an even harder challenge ï¿½ to pierce the ideology that governs
official policy today. One of the biggest changes in politics in my
lifetime is that the delusional is no longer marginal. It has come in
from
the fringe, to sit in the seat of power in the Oval Office and in
Congress.
For the first time in our history, ideology and theology hold a
monopoly of
power in Washington. Theology asserts propositions that cannot be proven
true; ideologues hold stoutly to a world view despite being
contradicted by
what is generally accepted as reality. When ideology and theology
couple,
their offspring are not always bad but they are always blind. And there
is
the danger: voters and politicians alike, oblivious to the facts.

Remember James Watt, President Reagan's first secretary of the
Interior? My
favorite online environmental journal, the ever-engaging Grist,
reminded us
recently of how James Watt told the U.S. Congress that protecting
natural
resources was unimportant in light of the imminent return of Jesus
Christ.
In public testimony he said, "after the last tree is felled, Christ will
come back."

Beltway elites snickered. The press corps didn't know what he was
talking
about. But James Watt was serious. So were his compatriots out across
the
country. They are the people who believe the bible is literally true ï¿½
one-third of the American electorate, if a recent Gallup poll is
accurate.
In this past election several million good and decent citizens went to
the
polls believing in the rapture index. That's right ï¿½ the rapture index.
Google it and you will find that the best-selling books in America today
are the 12 volumes of the left-behind series written by the Christian
fundamentalist and religious right warrior, Timothy LaHaye. These true
believers subscribe to a fantastical theology concocted in the 19th
century
by a couple of immigrant preachers who took disparate passages from the
Bible and wove them into a narrative that has captivated the
imagination of
millions of Americans.

Its outline is rather simple, if bizarre (the British writer George
Monbiot
recently did a brilliant dissection of it and I am indebted to him for
adding to my own understanding): once Israel has occupied the rest of
its
"biblical lands," legions of the anti-Christ will attack it, triggering
a
final showdown in the valley of Armageddon. As the Jews who have not
been
converted are burned, the Messiah will return for the rapture. True
believers will be lifted out of their clothes and transported to heaven,
where, seated next to the right hand of God, they will watch their
political and religious opponents suffer plagues of boils, sores,
locusts,
and frogs during the several years of tribulation that follow.

I'm not making this up. Like Monbiot, I've read the literature. I've
reported on these people, following some of them from Texas to the West
Bank. They are sincere, serious and polite as they tell you they feel
called to help bring the rapture on as fulfillment of biblical prophecy.
That's why they have declared solidarity with Israel and the Jewish
settlements and backed up their support with money and volunteers. It's
why
the invasion of Iraq for them was a warm-up act, predicted in the Book
of
Revelations where four angels "which are bound in the great river
Euphrates
will be released to slay the third part of man." A war with Islam in the
Middle East is not something to be feared but welcomed ï¿½ an essential
conflagration on the road to redemption. The last time I Googled it, the
rapture index stood at 144 ï¿½ just one point below the critical threshold
when the whole thing will blow, the son of god will return, the
righteous
will enter heaven and sinners will be condemned to eternal hellfire.

So what does this mean for public policy and the environment? Go to
Grist
to read a remarkable work of reporting by the journalist, Glenn Scherer
ï¿½
"The Road to Environmental Apocalypse." Read it and you will see how
millions of Christian fundamentalists may believe that environmental
destruction is not only to be disregarded but actually welcomed ï¿½ even
hastened ï¿½ as a sign of the coming apocalypse.

As Grist makes clear, we're not talking about a handful of fringe
lawmakers
who hold or are beholden to these beliefs. Nearly half the U.S. Congress
before the recent election ï¿½ 231 legislators in total ï¿½ more since the
election ï¿½ are backed by the religious right. Forty-five senators and
186
members of the 108th congress earned 80 to 100 percent approval ratings
from the three most influential Christian right advocacy groups. They
include Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, Assistant Majority Leader
Mitch
McConnell, Conference Chair Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, Policy Chair
Jon
Kyl of Arizona, House Speaker Dennis Hastert, and Majority Whip Roy
Blunt.
The only Democrat to score 100 percent with the Christian coalition was
Senator Zell Miller of Georgia, who recently quoted from the biblical
book
of Amos on the senate floor: "the days will come, sayeth the Lord God,
that
I will send a famine in the land." he seemed to be relishing the
thought.

And why not? There's a constituency for it. A 2002 TIME/CNN poll found
that
59 percent of Americans believe that the prophecies found in the book of
Revelations are going to come true. Nearly one-quarter think the Bible
predicted the 9/11 attacks. Drive across the country with your radio
tuned
to the more than 1,600 Christian radio stations or in the motel turn
some
of the 250 Christian TV stations and you can hear some of this end-time
gospel. And you will come to understand why people under the spell of
such
potent prophecies cannot be expected, as Grist puts it, "to worry about
the
environment. Why care about the earth when the droughts, floods, famine
and
pestilence brought by ecological collapse are signs of the apocalypse
foretold in the bible? Why care about global climate change when you and
yours will be rescued in the rapture? And why care about converting from
oil to solar when the same god who performed the miracle of the loaves
and
fishes can whip up a few billion barrels of light crude with a word?"

Because these people believe that until Christ does return, the lord
will
provide. One of their texts is a high school history book, America's
providential history. You'll find there these words: "the secular or
socialist has a limited resource mentality and views the world as a pie
...
that needs to be cut up so everyone can get a piece." However, "[t]he
Christian knows that the potential in god is unlimited and that there
is no
shortage of resources in god's earth ... while many secularists view the
world as overpopulated, Christians know that god has made the earth
sufficiently large with plenty of resources to accommodate all of the
people." No wonder Karl Rove goes around the White House whistling that
militant hymn, "Onward Christian Soldiers." He turned out millions of
the
foot soldiers on Nov. 2, including many who have made the apocalypse a
powerful driving force in modern American politics.

I can see in the look on your faces just how hard it is for the
journalist
to report a story like this with any credibility. So let me put it on a
personal level. I myself don't know how to be in this world without
expecting a confident future and getting up every morning to do what I
can
to bring it about. So I have always been an optimist. Now, however, I
think
of my friend on Wall Street whom I once asked: "What do you think of the
market?" "I'm optimistic," he answered. "Then why do you look so
worried?"
And he answered: "Because I am not sure my optimism is justified."

I'm not, either. Once upon a time I agreed with Eric Chivian and the
Center
for Health and the Global Environment that people will protect the
natural
environment when they realize its importance to their health and to the
health and lives of their children. Now I am not so sure. It's not that
I
don't want to believe that ï¿½ it's just that I read the news and connect
the
dots:

I read that the administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency
has declared the election a mandate for President Bush on the
environment.
This for an administration that wants to rewrite the Clean Air Act, the
Clean Water Act and the Endangered Species Act protecting rare plant and
animal species and their habitats, as well as the National Environmental
Policy Act that requires the government to judge beforehand if actions
might damage natural resources.

That wants to relax pollution limits for ozone; eliminate vehicle
tailpipe
inspections; and ease pollution standards for cars, sports utility
vehicles
and diesel-powered big trucks and heavy equipment.

That wants a new international audit law to allow corporations to keep
certain information about environmental problems secret from the public.

That wants to drop all its new-source review suits against polluting
coal-fired power plans and weaken consent decrees reached earlier with
coal
companies.

That wants to open the Arctic [National] Wildlife Refuge to drilling and
increase drilling in Padre Island National Seashore, the longest
stretch of
undeveloped barrier island in the world and the last great coastal wild
land in America.

I read the news just this week and learned how the Environmental
Protection
Agency had planned to spend nine million dollars ï¿½ two million of it
from
the administration's friends at the American Chemistry Council ï¿½ to pay
poor families to continue to use pesticides in their homes. These
pesticides have been linked to neurological damage in children, but
instead
of ordering an end to their use, the government and the industry were
going
to offer the families $970 each, as well as a camcorder and children's
clothing, to serve as guinea pigs for the study.

I read all this in the news.

I read the news just last night and learned that the administration's
friends at the international policy network, which is supported by
ExxonMobil and others of like mind, have issued a new report that
climate
change is "a myth, sea levels are not rising," [and] scientists who
believe
catastrophe is possible are "an embarrassment."

I not only read the news but the fine print of the recent appropriations
bill passed by Congress, with the obscure (and obscene) riders attached
to
it: a clause removing all endangered species protections from
pesticides;
language prohibiting judicial review for a forest in Oregon; a waiver of
environmental review for grazing permits on public lands; a rider
pressed
by developers to weaken protection for crucial habitats in California.

I read all this and look up at the pictures on my desk, next to the
computer ï¿½ pictures of my grandchildren: Henry, age 12; of Thomas, age
10;
of Nancy, 7; Jassie, 3; Sara Jane, 9 months. I see the future looking
back
at me from those photographs and I say, "Father, forgive us, for we know
not what we do." And then I am stopped short by the thought: "That's not
right. We do know what we are doing. We are stealing their future.
Betraying their trust. Despoiling their world."

And I ask myself: Why? Is it because we don't care? Because we are
greedy?
Because we have lost our capacity for outrage, our ability to sustain
indignation at injustice?

What has happened to our moral imagination?

On the heath Lear asks Gloucester: "How do you see the world?" And
Gloucester, who is blind, answers: "I see it feelingly.'"

I see it feelingly.

The news is not good these days. I can tell you, though, that as a
journalist I know the news is never the end of the story. The news can
be
the truth that sets us free ï¿½ not only to feel but to fight for the
future
we want. And the will to fight is the antidote to despair, the cure for
cynicism, and the answer to those faces looking back at me from those
photographs on my desk. What we need to match the science of human
health
is what the ancient Israelites called "hochma" ï¿½ the science of the
heart
... the capacity to see ... to feel ... and then to act ... as if the
future depended on you.

Believe me, it does.

Bill Moyers is the host of the weekly public affairs series NOW with
Bill
Moyers, which airs Friday nights on PBS.

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Saturday, December 18, 2004

Friday, December 17, 2004

Fwd: not the first such UK anti-terror law .. Re: [IP] (UK) Judges' verdicton terror laws provoke s constitutional crisis

Thursday, December 16, 2004

Tuesday, December 14, 2004

[IP] A sobering report from Moyers

Monday, December 13, 2004