THE FLASHLIGHT, May 24-30, 2008

THE FLASHLIGHT
May 24-30, 2008
No Peace without Justice, no Justice without the Facts
Mary K. Matossian, Editor

World Terrorism in Decline

Newsweek 6-2. If civilian deaths in Iraq are not counted among the victims of “terrorism,” then the trend in terrorism deaths has declined in the Muslim world for five years. The more Muslims are exposed to the Jihadist world view and tactics, the less they support them. In the world in general the decline has been since 2004.

China
Pollution
PBS 5-27. China has become the world’s biggest polluter of air and water. For the Beijing Olympics this summer, the government may temporarily shut down factories and close roads to cars.
Earthquake casualties
Hindustan Times 5-27. Earthquake deaths in China now exceed 68,000 with over 20,000 missing. PBS 5-27. 20 million are homeless.

Burma
Arca Times 5-27. The official death count from Hurricane Nargis is 77, 738 plus almost 56,000 missing. PBS. International aid workers have reached the Irrawaddy Delta, which was blocked for three weeks after the storm.

US Politics

NYTimes 5-28. Mark Mellman op ed. White working class voters are more favorable to Obama than they were to either John Kerry or Al Gore. In a recent poll, Hillary Clinton won them by a single point over McCain.

Science
NYTimes 5-30. Stonehenge was used as a cemetery from its beginning c. 3000 BC, probably for the dead of a ruling family. It may also have been a center of healing. See National Geographic for June.

Science: The Brain

Book Review: David J. Linden, The Accidental Mind. 2007. Harvard University Press, Cambridge. The author is a neuroscientist at Johns Hopkins Univ.

The author argues that the brain, far from been a wonder of Intelligent Design, is a kluge, a cobbled together contraption, grown by agglomeration. He compares brain anatomy to a two-scoop ice cream cone, the cone being equivalent to the reptile brain; the first scoop, to the mouse (mammalian) brain, and the only the top scoop being the human addition.
He says that all human beings are predisposed to believe things they cannot prove. This is a first step to making sense of the world. The place where this occurs is in the left cortex, which constantly creates coherent narratives to explain experience. Both scientific and religious ideas originate here.
But religious ideas are non-naturalistic: they violate everyday perceptions and cognitive structures. They differ from scientific hypotheses in that they are not testable and not falsifiable.

Brain Plasticity: a PBS special, rerun. 5-27.
How We Can Improve our Lives by Changing our Brain

W can change our brain by conscious effort. In this way we can change our body chemistry. We do not improve by repeatedly doing what we know how to do. We can change our brain for the better by learning new things that interest us and are important to us. What we need are challenges and stimulation.

We learn successfully only when the brain is in the mood to do so: attentive and engaged. We memorize by relating new material to what we already know, and by making predictions. Motivation is a key factor in learning and re-learning.
People who are dedicated to learning important new facts, ideals and skills are filled with joy, confidence, and vitality, even in old age.

Israel and Palestine

Haaretz (Tel Aviv) 5-26. Prime Minister Olmert, under fire on account of corruption charges, said, “Only delusional people think we’ll keep our post-1967 borders. “ Israel has offered the Palestinians 91.6% of the West Bank. He made reference to Syria’s newly acquired long-range rockets and missiles.

Haaretz 5-28. Palestinian software engineers are working on a program to make a desktop computer accessible from anywhere. The engineers are graduates of West Bank Universities: Bir Zeit and An-Najah. Bisan, a firm based in Ramallah, exports $15 million worth of software a year. The Israeli IT is much larger.

THE FLASHLIGHT, May 17-23, 2008

THE FLASHLIGHT
May 17-23, 2008
No Peace without Justice, no Justice without the Facts
Mary K. Matossian

The World Balance of Power

NYT 5-21. Tom Friedman sees many shifts in the balance of power this year, none of them in favor of the US. (1) The Bush Administration failed, after the 9/11 Attack, to adopt an effective energy policy. Such a policy would have been to establish a 55 mph national speed limit; to require more fuel efficient cars to be produced; and to institute a gas tax or carbon tax. As a result of this failure we see the rise of petrol-authoritarian states: Russia, Iran, Venezuela. These, and China, India, and Brazil, are establishing major news channels and spreading their own narratives.
(2) The US has a low savings rate, no national health care system, and no strategic plan to improve its competitiveness.
(3) The system of addressing global issues by nation states and the UN remains ineffective. So a new multinational superrich class of individuals and networks has arisen from the world of business and finance. It may become more influential.

World Food and Health

The New Yorker, 5-19. Bee Wilson, “The Last Bite: Is the World’s Food System Collapsing?” pp. 76-81. In 2006 there were 800 million people who were hungry. There were one billion people who were overweight or obese. The market system of pricing does not allow the raising of food prices for the rich, without squeezing the underfed poor. (note: Sardines provide Omega 3 fat, are cheaper than salmon, and a lot healthier than farm grown salmon).

Los Angeles Times 5-18. In an article in Lancet Phil Edwards and Ian Roberts argued that obesity contributes to global warming. The obese consume 18% more food than people of normal weight. This raises food prices and increases demand for fuel to transport food.

Disasters (1) Recent

China’s 7.9 earthquake.
PBS 5-16. Over 50,000 dead. Hundreds of thousand homeless. Aftershocks cause mass exodus from the quake area. PBS 5-19. 14.8 million homeless. $10 billion business loss.

Burma’s hurricane (typhoon)
The Nation 6-2. According to the UN, there are 102,000 dead, 220,000 missing, and 2.5 million in dire need.
The Guardian 5-23. Three weeks after cyclone Nargis, the Burmese military junta, after conferring with Ban Ki-moon, Sec. Gen. of the UN, agreed to open Burma to aid workers of all nationalities.

Disasters (2) Historic

PBS 5-21. Documentary on eruption of Krakatoa, Indonesia, in 1883, the first great eruption to be observed by scientists with instruments and studied for its global effects. Explosivity Index 6 (next to the maximum of 7), production of ash and lava 10 (11 maximum). (Volcanoes of the World, ed. 2, Simkin and Siebert)
Peak period August 26-27. Three linked craters erupted together. Ash, steam, and gas, acrid and sulfurous. It became pitch dark in the vicinity. Hot and sticky ash falls, pumice rains, humid air. Sea agitated by pyroclastic flows. Tsunamis, seven shocks waves sent round the earth. Maximum wave reached 40 meters (c. 120 feet). A ship threatened by it was saved by the captain, who ordered the bow pointed at the oncoming wave at a 90 degree angle. The wave lifted the ship and passed it backward. On land, seeing the eruption, a Dutch observer on the coast knew a tsunami was coming in 20 minutes, and hiked with his family and neighbors to the top of a 400 foot hill in time to escape. However, 34,000 people died. The sulfur dioxide gas thrust into the upper atmosphere blocked the sun’s rays for months, lowering the temperatures around the earth, and ash up high turned the sky blood red. Krakatoa destroyed itself, but is re-emerging as a new island nearby with a peak 2,600 feet high so far.

Other super-eruptions: Thera (Santorini) in the Aegean, c.1600 BC. Explosivity 7, lava and ash, 10. Destroyed Minoan Civilization.
Vesuvius, 79 AD, near Naples, Italy. Explosivity 6, lava and ash 11. Tambora, Indonesia, 1815, explosivity 7, lava and ash 11. Caused global cooling: 1816 was the “year without a summer” in the US and much of Europe.
Lebanon

NYT 5-18. The Sunnis of Lebanon, led by Saab Hariri, were humiliated by Hezbollah, who showed their militia to be weak, pushed their TV programs off the air, and burned two of their buildings. Lebanese Christians remained neutral. Fighting followed in which c. 60 died. The Lebanese Army did nothing.
W Post 5-21. The various Lebanese sectarian factions met in Doha, Qatar, and reached an agreement. After 18 months of sit-ins in Beirut, Hezbollah got what it wanted: ll out of 60 seats in the cabinet, giving it veto power. Gen. Michael Suleiman, a Maronite Christian, was accepted as President by all factions.

Israel/Syria
BBC 5-21. Israel and Syria are now in direct peace talks, mediated by Premier Erdogan of Turkey.

The US; Presidential Primaries

NYTimes 5-21. Obama wins Oregon 58-42. Clinton wins Kentucky 2 to 1. Obama now has a majority of delegates to the Democratic Convention.
Since 1972, when exit polls began, no Democratic candidate has won a majority of white voters. Last April Obama had raised $31.3 million, Clinton, 22 million, and McCain 18.5 million.
L.A. Times 5-21. The Clinton campaign debt is now $31 million.

Ted Kennedy Illness
CNN 5-20. Senator Ted Kennedy, 76, has brain cancer, probably inoperable. He probably has no more than a year to live.

The Israel/Palestine Conflict

AP 5-17 [appeared in Haaretz, Tel Aviv and International Herald Tribune]
The Egyptian state-owned press blasted Pres. Bush for his speech to the Knesset on 60th anniversary of Israel. Said Mursi Atallah, publisher of Al-Ahram, “Bush aims to do nothing but appease Israel.
Meanwhile, on May 16 about a thousand Palestinians and Americans of Palestinian descent rallied near the UN, at Dag Hammerskjold Place, to mark the 60th anniversary of the Nakba (Catastrophe) of 1948. They blamed the current impasse on extremists in both sides.

NYTimes Editorial 5-20. It said that the next US President will need more skilled and creative advisers and be a more honest broker. The Israelis must halt all settlement building. The President must press both sides to compromise. [There is no suggestion that the next President put pressure on Israel to stop settlement building.]

CNN 5-22. 61% of Jews support Obama, but he will need more of their support to win the swing state of Florida. Polls show McCain ahead of Obama there. Obama makes a speech in a Boca Raton Synagogue, trying to win over Jews with promise not to negotiate with Hamas or Hezbollah and that he will not take military options off the table. But he says that diplomacy must come before military force, and that the Iraq War was a strategic blunder.

The Nation 5-26: two article on the 60th anniversary. 1) By Avi Shlaim, Professor of International Relations at Oxford University.
Speaking of Israel, he said, “Nations, like individuals, are capable of acting rationally – after they have exhausted all the alternatives.”
2) Rashid Khalidi, Professor of Arab Studies at Columbia University.
He condemned both the leaders of Hamas and Fatah as “clueless” and pointed out that only 18% of Palestinians support Hamas, and 32% support Fatah.
The population of Israel today is 7.2 million, of which 1.4 are Palestinians. There are at least 8 million Palestinians in the world.

THE FLASHLIGHT, May 10-16, 2008

THE FLASHLIGHT
May 10-16, 2008
No Peace without Justice, no Justice without the Facts
Mary K. Matossian, Editor

China
NYT 5-12 A 7.9 earthquake caused huge destruction in Sichuan Province in mountainous Western China. It was the worst quake in 58 years. About 80% of buildings collapsed into piles of brick and concrete. 5-14. There was widespread anger vs. the government for failing to apply and enforce adequate building codes.
5-15. Hundreds of thousands were homeless and over 40,000 were still trapped under the rubble. The known dead reached 19,500. CNN 5-15 The ultimate death toll could reach 50,000.

Burma

NYT 5-13. There are now 32,000 known dead from the hurricane that hit Burma last week. UN estimates that more than 100,000 are dead. The military dictatorship still refuses to allow in most Western relief managers. It allowed in some relief supplies without foreign personnel, and then put them in storage. Help is reaching only one-third of those in need. The worst danger is the contamination of water by the corpses of people and animals. 5-15. PBS estimates that there may be 250,000 dead. Buddhist monks are organizing relief.

Lebanon

BBC 5-9. Hezbollah Shiites, fighting street by street, took over much of West Beirut, inhabited mainly by Sunnis. CNN 5-15. 60 have died in fighting across Lebanon. NYT and BBC 5-16. Hezbollah has shown its military superiority over the Sunni-Christian-Druse coalition. The latter has conceded the Presidency to Gen. Suleiman, commander of the Lebanese Army, which is weaker than Hezbollah. It appears that Hezbollah will obtain its desire: veto power over government decision making. This is a win for Iran and Syria, as opposed to Saudia, Egypt, and the US.

Iraq `NY Review of Books, 5-29. Article by Thomas Powers, “Iraq: Will We Ever Get Out?”
p. 14. “ The Surge has not so much ended the sectarian strife as it has set the stage for a renewal of civil war at a higher level of violence.” P. 16. “ Invading the Middle East is the kind of imperial overreach that breaks the spine of Great Powers.”

US Presidential Primaries

PBS 5-9. The race for the Democratic nomination is over, and Obama has won. The Clinton camp is $25 million in the red. The Democrats have six times the money as the Republicans to fight in the fall election. PBS and CNN 5-14. Former presidential candidate John Edwards announced his support for Obama. This put Hillary Clinton’s 2 to 1 win in W. Va. in the shadow. Three long-time Republican house seats have been taken back by Democrats in by-elections. CNN 5-15. The Steelworkers Union backed Obama.

CNN 5-15. Speaking to the Knesset on the 60th anniversary of the founding of Israel, Pres. Bush accused the Democratic opposition of “appeasing terrorists” because Obama has said he would have direct talks with Iran. Obama retorted that Bush is engaging in “the same old head-in-the-sand cowboy diplomacy.” He rejected the idea that not talking to other countries punishes them. Sen. John Kerry said that Bush has presided over the strengthening of Hamas and Hezbollah in the Middle East. Schneider commented that Jews tend to vote Democratic, and that Bush’s appeal was directed more at pro-Israeli Christian evangelicals, who often vote Republican.

US: Gay Marriage Issue
` CNN 5-15. The California Supreme Court has voted 4-3 that the law banning same-sex marriage is unconstitutional. The opponents of gay marriage have introduced an initiative on the November ballot to amend the California Constitution to ban same-sex marriage.

Archaeology:
The End of Minoan Crete
PBS 5-14 and Wikipedia. Archaeologists are now confident that Minoan Civilization in Crete was mainly destroyed in about 1600 BC by a huge tsunami, with a height between 115 feet and 492 feet. It was generated by the most severe volcanic eruption in human history, Category 7, on the island of Thera (Santorini). The tidal wide swamped Minoan coastal settlements, where most Minoans lived, killing about 80% of the population. Some Peloponnesian Greeks survived because the Gulf of Corinth, running from east to west, was sheltered from the tidal wave. A century a half later they attacked Crete and probably destroyed most of the survivors and their buildings. Then they repopulated Crete.

Caral Civilization, A “mother civililization” in Peru.

PBS 5-14. Archaeologists, testing the theory that warfare was the main cause for the beginning of civilizations, found a “mother civilization” buried near the coast of Peru. It went back to 2600 BC, and was as old as Egyptian civilization. Both peoples built great pyramids. In its first thousand years Caral Civilization possessed no weapons and no defensive walls. It also lacked ceramics and metal. Its focus was on pleasure. Archaeologists have found many bone flutes and an amphitheater.
In addition, the inhabitants used two psychoactive drugs: from the achiote plant, an aphrodisiac, and from the coca plant, the stimulant cocaine. To enhance the effects of cocaine they added to it lime (calcium carbonate, an alkaline substance obtained from ground-up seashells), which counteracted stomach acids, and increased absorption of the cocaine. The Caral people obtained these substances from trade with their neighbors in Equador and the rain forests. In return they offered their neighbors cotton, which they grew in their fertile fields.

[The puzzling absence of ceramics among the Caral people was probably because cocaine could be obtained simply by chewing the leaves of the coca plant. Wine and opium, drugs which were available in Europe and the Middle East in Neolithic times, before civilization, were consumed in liquid form (they didn’t learn how to smoke opium until the Bronze Age (after c. 3000 BC). Western Neolithic people needed large containers to store these liquids as well as cups for drinking. Drugs may have played a major role in the Neolithic Agricultural Revolution and prehistoric religion. ]

THE FLASHLIGHT, May 3-9, 2008

THE FLASHLIGHT
May 3-9, 2008
No Peace without Justice, nor Justice without the Facts
Mary K. Matossian, Editor

US Presidential Primaries

5-7. NYT, Obama won by 14% (200,000) votes in North Carolina. Clinton won by 23,000 votes, (51-49) in Indiana.
5-9 NYT. Obama has the edge in superdelegate votes, 267-266. He is focusing now on John McCain.

US Economy
5-9, NYT. Oil price hits $126 a barrel.

Burma (Myanmar) Cyclone Disaster

5-8 CNN and PBS. The 120 mph cyclone death toll may exceed 100,000. It is highest in the Irrawaddy River Delta, where 6 million people lived. Power is still out and there is a shortage of clean drinking water. Consequently the deadly threat of diarrhea and cholera is looming.
5-9 NYT. The oppressive military dictatorship, which has ruled since 1962, refuses to admit foreign relief specialists in. It confiscated the UN relief supplies that had arrived, so the UN announced the suspension of its relief operations.

Lebanon

BBC and PBS 5-8. After 17 months of political stalemate between Shiite Hezbollah and the US-backed Siniora government, the situation in Beirut is critical. In two days of violence, 8 persons were killed. The Shiite militia has taken over west Beirut and other neighborhoods. The roads have been cut from Beirut to its airport, to Damascus and to the south.

Health: Alzheimer’s Disease
BBC 5-6. The painkiller Ibuprofen appears to reduce protein deposits in the brain, thus preventing dementia.

THE FLASHLIGHT, April 26 - May 2, 2008

THE FLASHLIGHT
April 26 – May 2, 2008
No Peace without Justice, no Justice without the Facts
Mary K. Matossian, Editor

US Presidential Primaries

NYTimes 4-29. In a commentary, “Demography is King”, David Brooks said that the old US WASP (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant) hierarchy has been replaced by an education hierarchy. The different strata have marked differences in towns of residence, divorce rates, and parenting practices. Obama has been winning 70% of the most educated counties, and Hilary Clinton has been winning 90% of the least educated. Social identity has been more influential in voter choice than money spent on persuading them. CNN 4-28. Obama is seen by blue collar white workers has having “elitist” values, and therefore not being “one of them.” Hilary leads Obama by 30 points within this group. Obama does better among Independents and young people.

CNN 4-29. After his former pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright criticized him and America at the National Press Club et al. Barack Obama described Wright’s speech as a “rant” and said that he was outraged, appalled, and deeply saddened by it.

CNN 5-1. Clinton’s lead among super delegates has been cut to 19. Her threat to “obliterate” Iran if it attacked Israel or obtained nuclear weapons is being criticized as excessive.

CNN 6-1. Young people, 18-30, are preferring Democrats to Republicans by 25 percentage points.

PBS 5-1. Polls show that McCain and Obama have a more positive than negative image overall, but Clinton has a more negative than positive image overall. Obama is collecting super delegates faster than Clinton.

` CNN 4-28. The Supreme Court rules, 6-3, that the Indiana law requiring voters to show a picture ID is constitutional. The ID must be government issued. The ruling does not cover absentee and residential voters. This will hurt the poor, blacks and the elderly, all of whom tend to vote Democratic.

US Polygamist Scandal

` AP 4-28. Of 53 girls, 14-17, taken from Yearning or Zion Ranch in West Texas, 31 had already borne a child or were pregnant.
NYTimes 5-1. 41 children (out of 464) have had bones broken. Some boys may have been sexually abused.

US Education
NYTimes 5-2. The one billion dollar Bush Administration program to improve the reading scores of poor children has failed. Sen. Ted Kennedy blamed it on cronyism.

Economy

NYTimes 5-2. In an op-ed piece, David Brooks said that globalization explains little of US job losses. Rather, technological advance is responsible. Even China has recently lost 25 million manufacturing jobs because it too has advancing technology.
Brooks says that we are in the midst of a “cognitive revolution,” in which workers need a higher level of skills. An important skill is to absorb, process, and combine information.

Tibet/China

NYTimes 4-26. China says it is ready to meet with envoys of the Dalai Lama.

The Israel/Palestine Conflict

CNN 4-29. In an interview with Wolf Blitzer, former President Jimmy Carter said that Pres. Bush is “completely mistaken” about Hamas and Sec. Rice is “misinformed.” Bush does not know that that Hamas is willing to recognize the existence of Israel [under certain conditions] and that the top leaders in Damascus have authorized him (Carter) to say so publicly.
Carter said that no one in the Bush Administration, including Rice, counseled him not to go to Syria or not to meet with Hamas leaders. He was advised not to go to Gaza because of dangerous conditions there, and so he met in Cairo with the Hamas leaders from Gaza.
Carter said that the Bush Administration practice of referring to Hamas as a “terrorist” organization is inappropriate. The Bush Administration branded Hamas as “terrorist” only in 2006, after the latter had won a free and fair democratic election among the Palestinians. Al-Qaeda has never won such an election.

[This CNN interview was not mentioned anywhere else in the mainstream media. I checked Google News. It was not even posted on cnn.com.]

Book Review: Pens and Swords; The American Mainstream Media Report the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict. By Marda Dunsky. New York, Columbia University Press, 2007.

The American mainstream media [such as the New York Times and the Washington Post] report the day to day events of the Israeil-Palestinian conflict fairly accurately, but they fail to provide an adequate context for those events. Consequently the reporting is incoherent and unclear. Reporters fail to explain why the conflict is so intractable.
In particular, reporters portray the US as an “honest broker” trying to stop the conflict. This is not true. The policy of the US is overwhelmingly pro-Israeli. It is expressed in diplomatic support, military aid, and financial support to the tune of $2.6 billion dollars a year.
The roots of the conflict are
1) the ethnic cleansing of Palestine in 1948 et seq. which created the Palestinian refugee problem. This was illegal according to international law and an international consensus of opinion.
2) Since 1967, the ongoing colonization of Palestinian land in the West Bank by Israeli settlers. This too is condemned by international law and international consensus. The US indirectly aids this colonization by its annual gift to Israel of $2.6 billion. But the mainstream press does not show that the US is a party to the israeli-Palestinian conflict.

US policy in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has long been a source of tension and antagonism toward the US in Arab and Muslim countries. It is a major obstacle to peace in the Middle East. It tends to increase Al-Qaeda recruiting and financial support.

Remedies
I. The first step is for the mainstream media to include the above information in their interpretation of daily events.

II. The mainstream media should broaden the sources of their discourse to include:
A. Letters to the editor concerning this issue
B. The opinions of non-partisan experts in the academic world (seldom consulted).
C. Critical reports of events in the liberal Israeli media, such as Haaretz.
D. Instead of trying to appear balanced by using “He said…He said” quotations, reporters should seek out underlying causes and explanations.

III. The mainstream media should reconsider audience reactions.

According to study by the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations in 2004, 74% of the American public, and 77% of American leaders favored an even-handed policy toward Israelis and Palestinians. Only 17% of the public and 15% of leaders favored taking Israel’s side. However, American leaders were far off in their estimates of American public opinion on this issue.

IV. Mainstream Media should rethink what is meant by journalistic “objectivity.” Guided by conscience, journalists should dig deeper to find the truth.