Monthly Archives: June 2006

Dump Duhbya

Committees on the Present Danger (CPD)

International Relations Center | Special Report | The “Present Danger” War Parties by Tom Barry

On three occasions since the end of World War II—in 1950, 1976, and 2004—elite citizen committees have organized to warn the nation of what they viewed as looming threats to U.S. national security.

These three Committees on the Present Danger (CPD) aimed to ratchet up the level of fear among the U.S. public and policy community. In each case, the committees leveraged fear in attempts to increase military budgets, to mobilize the country for war, and to beat back isolationist, anti-interventionist, and realist forces in American politics.

In the early 1950s and in the late 1970s, the Committees on the Present Danger succeeded in shifting the country to a war footing—first to launch the Cold War, and two decades later to end the move in the policy community toward détente and arms control agreements with the Soviet Union.

The success of the first two present danger committees has inspired the country’s hawks and neoconservatives to imitate the CPD model. Both the Center for Security Policy, founded by Frank Gaffney in 1988, and the Project for the New American Century, founded in 1997 by William Kristol and Robert Kagan, cite the CPD model.

It was not, however, until the backlash against the war in Iraq started spreading that the Committee on the Present Danger name was resurrected. This time the Committee on the Present Danger points to Islamic terrorism as the present danger we face abroad and anti-war sentiment as the clear and present danger we face at home.

This IRC special report traces the history and the impact of the three CPDs. [keep reading…]

ID

Scientists Take on Intelligent Design

Scientists Take on Intelligent Design BY PAUL R. GROSS

Science journalism is a demanding profession, and the list of its great practitioners is not long. Even shorter, however, is the list of professional scientists who write engaging and accessible prose – who write, in short, excellent popular science. The literary agent for a large subset of that group is John Brockman, himself an author as well as literary entrepreneur. In “Intelligent Thought” (Vintage, 272 pages, $14), he has assembled a set of 16 essays, each responding to the current, anti-evolution Intelligent Design Movement (IDM), and the authors include some of the best-known science writers.

The war (it must be so named) between science and the fundamentalist faith-driven IDM is of a deeply troubling import for science education, and for science itself – thus inevitably for contemporary culture. …

The contributors represent a broad range of scientific disciplines. Richard Dawkins, for example, is a noted evolutionary biologist, as are Jerry Coyne and Neil Shubin. Leonard Susskind is a theoretical physicist; so is Lee Smolin. Greatly respected are philosopher-cognitive scientist Daniel Dennett; paleontologists Tim White and Scott Sampson; psychologists Steven Pinker, Nicholas Humphrey, and Marc Hauser; physicists Seth Lloyd and Lisa Randall; mathematical biologist Stuart Kauffman; anthropologist Scott Atran, and historian of science and behaviorist Frank Sulloway. …

The prolific Mr. Dennett writes on “The Hoax of Intelligent Design and How It Was Perpetrated.” Hoax is a belligerent word, but the argument supporting it is solid.

Mr. Dennett’s essay is not a paper-trail of the IDM: There is no such thing in this book – a significant lack. But a rich paper trail certainly exists. The IDM’s history – with documentation – was presented in Harrisburg, Penn., by plaintiff’s witness Barbara Forrest. It was eye-opening and central to the Dover outcome. In the trial, the IDM’s attempt on the science curriculum was ruled unconstitutional. Mr. Dennett’s contribution is a sharp expose of the IDM’s logical and epistemological blunders. …

We need this book because its authors have name recognition with the general reading public, because they write well, and because the fight will not end any time soon. Humanity needs to come to grips, sooner rather than later, with its biological meanings, and with the values and anti-values of its religious belief systems. The fight is just beginning. If the real values of religion and spirituality, which include humility before the wonders of nature, are to survive our rising tastes for religious war and destruction, then more than just an elite among us must understand science – and what it yields as description of physical reality through deep time. The more often the small faction of us who read can pause to browse engaging books like “Intelligent Thought,” the better is the chance that we can stop the impetus of Homo sapiens toward self-destruction.

ID

Thirty years of the Selfish Gene

Thirty years of the Selfish Gene Jerry A. Coyne

Intelligent life first comes of age when it works out the reasons for its own existence. If superior creatures from space ever visit earth, the first question they will ask, in order to assess the level of our civilization, is: “Have they discovered evolution yet?” …

For [Richard Dawkins’s The Selfish Gene (1976)] is no ordinary science book. Yes, it is about evolutionary biology, but its message, that “we are survival machines – robot vehicles blindly programmed to preserve the selfish molecules known as genes”, still resonates deeply after thirty years. It is a brilliant exposition of how natural selection works, laying out in clear and compelling detail, for both scientists and lay readers, the process that produced all of life’s diversity. Using the metaphor of genes as selfish entities, whose “motivation” is simply to copy themselves at the expense of other genes, Dawkins describes a tale of competition – of nature red in tooth and claw – but in which genes are the combatants, fighting their battles by co-opting the bodies of their carriers. It is nothing less than the story of what made us who we are.

The Selfish Gene has also been immensely controversial. Understandably, people don’t like to see themselves as marionettes dancing on strings of DNA, however brilliantly described….

Richard Dawkins
THE SELFISH GENE
Thirtieth anniversary edition
384pp. Oxford University Press. £14.99 (US $25).
0 19 929114 4

Alan Grafen and Mark Ridley, editors
RICHARD DAWKINS
How a scientist changed the way we think
283pp. Oxford University Press. £12.99 (US $25) .
0 19 929116 0

The [separately published] collection [of essays on Dawkins’ impact] includes twenty-four contributions from a variety of writers and scholars, including the novelist Philip Pullman, Richard Harries (Bishop of Oxford), the philosopher Daniel Dennett, the linguist Steven Pinker and the biologist John Krebs. Their essays cover not just exegesis of The Selfish Gene, but also Dawkins’s general contributions to biology and its philosophy. The section on Dawkins and religion, though tangential to The Selfish Gene, is well worth reading given his vehement hostility to theistic belief.

While such festschrifts are usually deadly dull, designed to flatter rather than enlighten, this is a delightful exception, containing a number of thought-provoking essays that go far beyond mere appreciation of Dawkins’s book. They are in fact essential in understanding the book’s influence. The simultaneous publication of both volumes allows us to re-examine the impact of The Selfish Gene. How well has it aged? Is it still important? And did Dawkins really change the way we think?

Dump Duhbya

Hands In The Cookie Jar

Lawmakers’ Profits Are Scrutinized By Jonathan Weisman, Washington Post Staff Writer

House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) made a $2 million profit last year on the sale of land 5 1/2 miles from a highway project that he helped to finance with targeted federal funds.

A Republican House member from California, meanwhile, received nearly double what he paid for a four-acre parcel near an Air Force base after securing $8 million for a planned freeway interchange 16 miles away. And another California GOP congressman obtained funding in last year’s highway bill for street improvements near a planned residential and commercial development that he co-owns. …

[F]or watchdog groups, the cases have opened a fresh avenue for investigation and a new wrinkle in the ongoing controversy over earmarks — home-district projects funded through narrowly written legislative language. …

“The sound bites from politicians have always been that they’re doing what’s best for their districts, but we’re starting to see a pattern that looks like they might be doing what’s best for their pocketbooks,” said Keith Ashdown, vice president of the group Taxpayers for Common Sense. …

“The facts are the facts,” he said, “and the facts are, [Hastert] made a lot of money off this deal, and he was the one who got this earmark.”

Dump Duhbya

the zeal of the Republican leadership for eviscerating the estate tax is mystifying

Undead Tax Cutters Washington Post Editorial

In a time of terrorism and fiscal challenge, Congress has some strange priorities.

LIKE THE GHOUL in the horror movie that refuses to die, estate tax repeal has returned from the grave to stalk the halls of Congress. Just two weeks after abolitionists failed in the Senate, they have regrouped behind a new bill that would achieve most of what they want — not quite the elimination of the tax but its “reform” into insignificance. …

To succeed this time around, the abolitionists have included unrelated tax breaks for timber interests as a bribe for the two wavering Democratic senators from Washington state, Maria Cantwell and Patty Murray. …

The nation faces the expensive retirement of the baby boomers. It is grappling with rising inequality. Its prized social mobility may ultimately be threatened if the richest members of society are allowed to pass unlimited riches to their children. Given these circumstances, the zeal of the Republican leadership for eviscerating the estate tax is mystifying. We trust that the two Washington state senators, along with other wavering Democrats such as Sen. Mark Pryor of Arkansas, won’t be the enablers of this error.

Dump Duhbya

Raise the Minimum Wage

[mjh: Note that Republicans killed this legislation before I could post anything on it. However, read the points anyway to be ready for the next time. Fewer votes defeated this than are needed for the Democrats to take back power.]

Progress Report Archives 2006 – American Progress Action Fund
Raise the Minimum Wage

The buying power of the federal minimum wage is currently at its lowest level in 51 years. Eighty-three percent of Americans favor an increase in the minimum wage (nearly half “strongly support” it). Yet, the House conservative leadership hasn’t allowed a full floor vote on the minimum wage since the last increase went into effect, in 1997. …

In the nine years since the federal minimum wage was raised, Congress has voted itself nine pay hikes totaling nearly $35,000 a year, while a full-time minimum wage worker’s annual pay has not budged from $10,712. Just a few days ago, House lawmakers cleared the way for a $3,300 pay raise that will increase their salaries to $168,500.

Follow the link for very thorough rebuttal to many conservative claims about the minimum wage. Progress Report Archives 2006 – American Progress Action Fund

loco

Stop the Senseless Slaughter

What a low-life profession: a sharpshooter who kills endangered wolves. Reminds me of the Fire Department in Fahrenheit 451 — they start fires instead of putting them out. One can only wish this sharpshooter reads Aldo Leopold’s account of killing a wolf.

“We saw what we thought was a doe fording the torrent, her breast awash in white water. When she climbed the bank toward us and shook out her tail, we realized our error: it was a wolf. A half-dozen others, evidently grown pups, sprang from the willows and all joined in a welcoming melee of wagging tails and playful maulings. What was literally a pile of wolves writhed and tumbled in the center of an open flat at the foot of our rimrock.

“In those days we had never heard of passing up a chance to kill a wolf. In a second we were pumping lead into the pack, but with more excitement than accuracy; how to aim a steep downhill shot is always confusing. When our rifles were empty, the old wolf was down, and a pup was dragging a leg into impassable side-rocks.

“We reached the old wolf in time to watch a fierce green fire dying in her eyes. I realized then, and have known ever since, that there was something known only to her and to the mountain. I was young then, and full of trigger-itch; I thought that because fewer wolves meant more deer, that no wolves would mean hunters’ paradise. But after seeing the green fire die, I sensed that neither the wolf nor the mountain agreed with such a view.”

—an excerpt from “Thinking Like a Mountain” (A Sand County Almanac) [from Attitudes toward wolves – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia]

This program is fraught with madness. Ranchers need to just suck-it-up and learn to live with predation — they’re rewarded for their loss, anyway.

Given a chance, not only will some balance be restored and an old wrong righted but ecotourism will come to New Mexico. Wake up! mjh

ABQjournal: U.S. Kills Wolf, Hunts His Mate By Tania Soussan, Journal Staff Writer

The male was killed Sunday in New Mexico by a sharpshooter on the program team. Efforts to trap or kill the female were continuing Monday, said U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service spokeswoman Elizabeth Slown.

Michael Robinson of the Center for Biological Diversity said, “We’re very troubled that they’re wiping out yet another pack.”

[mjh: Note this pack was located in the Aldo Leopold Wilderness last month. Tragic irony.]
– – – – –

Writing.Com: Canis lupis, The Gray Wolf

In 1933 the Park Service began to see that perhaps predation was a necessary evil and they decided upon new policy, “no native predator shall be destroyed on account of its normal utilization of any other park animal [in Yellowstone]” ….