Dear Friend,

On June 26th, Councilman Wayne Harrison brought a motion before members of the Clarksville City Council to reduce compensation for the City Judge by almost 60% — returning the City Judge’s salary to a level of compensation last awarded in 1988 –20 years ago. This action came as a surprise to many people, including the City Judge.  To support this move, Mr. Harrison provided the Council with an unlabelled document intended to show the amount of time required by the City Judge to discharge judicial duties, but actually showing only the hours spent formally hearing cases. 

Time spent on the bench - which forms the basis for Mr. Harrison’s “study” - is no more reflective of the many hours spent discharging judicial responsibilities than would a similar report suggesting that City Council members only “work” when the Council meets for each session. Not included is the time spent on a nearly daily basis for review of citations, entering dispositions for default judgments, or reconsideration discussions with the City Court Clerk. It does not include time spent for legal research, order preparation, coordination with attorneys, police officers, Building & Code officials, legislative initiatives to benefit municipal courts, or other communication related to specific judicial responsibilities. 

Based on this incomplete, inaccurate, and hurriedly-presented information, 10 of the 12 City Council members voted to follow Mr. Harrison’s recommendation and reduce the compensation accordingly. Only
Councilwoman Diana Ward and Councilman Marc Harris voted against it. Please consider these facts:

• In 2004, the City Council reviewed judicial compensation for City Courts in nine other Tennessee cities. That exhaustive, impartial study examined salary, population, fringe benefits, frequency of court sessions, average hours in court, average hourly pay, number of citations issued, court costs, and numerous other elements related to the operation of CityCourt. Following that comprehensive study, the Clarksville City Council established compensation for the City Judge at $25,000 annually. The increased compensation still resulted in lower hourly compensation for the Clarksville City Judge than seven of the nine cities surveyed. Reducing the salary to the suggested level would put Clarksville’s compensation below cities with far smaller populations and hours of operation, including
  Columbia, Smithville, Lenoir City and Oliver Springs.
• The City Judge creates virtually no overhead for the city of Clarksville, yet a recent study found that the Court produces significant monetary surplus. The judge personally employs and compensates his staff, pays rent for an office, pays for utilities, phones, computers/ internet service, fax, a law library and all other expenses related to non-court judicial responsibilities. The City Judge must be prepared to hear scheduled cases each time the court convenes, whether it be one case or 150. Due to the unknown numbers of cases to be heard each day, time spent in private legal practice is compromised and appointments must frequently be rescheduled.
• The City Judge is the only elected position that has specific professional requirements to qualify for election. The judge must possess a Doctoral degree in law (Doctor of Jurisprudence), must have passed the Bar Examination, and must maintain a valid law license.

I believe the recent vote to reduce compensation is politically-motivated and based on inaccurate, misleading, and incomplete information. I would welcome an independent, comprehensive and analytical study of judicial compensation, and am in the process of informing Council members of these facts. Their decision does not impact me personally during my current term in office, and will only negatively affect the individual who is elected City Judge in November 2008.

But one voice is not enough. If you agree that further objective review is needed before this important decision is made, please contact as many City Council members as possible prior to the second and final vote on July 1. Respectfully urge them to reconsider.  If you cannot contact Council members in person or by phone, emails may prove to be helpful. Either way, direct citizen communication is important,
and immediate action is necessary.

If you have questions or concerns at any time, please feel free to contact me at (931) 624.9200 or by reply by email at your earliest convenience.

Thank you, in advance, for your considerationand support.

Charles W. Smith City Judge

Warming so far, about two degrees Fahrenheit over land areas, seems almost innocuous, being less than day-to-day weather fluctuations. But more warming is already “in- the-pipeline”, delayed only by the great inertia of the world ocean. And climate is nearing dangerous tipping points. Elements of a “perfect storm”, a global cataclysm, are assembled.

Climate can reach points such that amplifying feedbacks spur large rapid changes. Arctic sea ice is a current example. Global warming initiated sea ice melt, exposing darker ocean that absorbs more sunlight, melting more ice. As a result, without any additional greenhouse gases, the Arctic soon will be ice-free in the summer.

More ominous tipping points loom. West Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets are vulnerable to even small additional warming. These two-mile-thick behemoths respond slowly at first, but if disintegration gets well underway it will become unstoppable. Debate among scientists is only about how much sea level would rise by a given date.

In my opinion, if emissions follow a business-as-usual scenario, sea level rise of at least two meters is likely this century. Hundreds of millions of people would become refugees. No stable shoreline would be reestablished in any time frame that humanity can conceive.

Special interests have blocked transition to our renewable energy future. Instead of moving heavily into renewable energies, fossil companies choose to spread doubt about global warming, as tobacco companies discredited the smoking-cancer link. Methods are sophisticated, including funding to help shape school textbook discussions of global warming.

CEOs of fossil energy companies know what they are doing and are aware of long-term consequences of continued business as usual. In my opinion, these CEOs should be tried for high crimes against humanity and nature.

Conviction of ExxonMobil and Peabody Coal CEOs will be no consolation, if we pass on a runaway climate to our children. Humanity would be impoverished by ravages of continually shifting shorelines and intensification of regional climate extremes. Loss of countless species would leave a more desolate planet.

If politicians remain at loggerheads, citizens must lead. We must demand a moratorium on new coal-fired power plants. We must block fossil fuel interests who aim to squeeze every last drop of oil from public lands, off-shore, and wilderness areas. Those last drops are no solution. They yield continued exorbitant profits for a short-sighted self-serving industry, but no alleviation of our addiction or long-term energy source.

A price on emissions that cause harm is essential. Yes, a carbon tax. Carbon tax with 100 percent dividend is needed to wean us off fossil fuel addiction. Tax and dividend allows the marketplace, not politicians, to make investment decisions…..

http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/2008/TwentyYearsLater_20080623.pdf

Accompanying slides:

http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/2008/TippingPointsNear_20080623.pdf

About the author: Dr. James E. Hansen, longtime director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, said in a January 29, 2006, New York Times interview that officials at NASA headquarters had ordered the public affairs staff to review his coming lectures, papers, and postings on the Goddard Web site and requests for interviews from journalists. Since 1988, he has been issuing public warnings about the long-term threat from heat-trapping emissions, dominated by carbon dioxide, that are an unavoidable byproduct of burning coal, oil and other fossil fuels.

I explore below paths that might, if followed, lead out of the chaos of an open-ended climatic disruption. Unfortunately the issues are complicated, the time for action is now late, and effective action is growing more difficult daily. Effective action is possible, however….

The changes in climate are far more serious than they may appear…. These changes, the warming of the higher latitudes, the destruction of forests, the accelerated decay of organic matter in forests and tundra soils, the melting of permafrost, the change from a reflective frozen white to black open water in the Arctic Ocean, and the warming of the surface water of the oceans all point to an acceleration of the warming trend. These are “positive feedbacks” which dominate as the earth warms and accelerate the disruption. Despite their importance, they have not been included in appraisals that suggest that a two degree average change in the temperature of the earth might be acceptable. The fact is that the feedbacks will almost certainly take the disruption beyond human control well before the temperature rise is two degrees C. Stopping at 2 degrees will not be possible.

Worse, there is now a common suggestion that a two-degree change – one-degree more than that at present — in the temperature of the earth would be acceptable and might be achieved by an 80% reduction in emissions of fossil fuels by 2040 or 2050. A two-degree change in the average temperature of the earth would be 4-6 degrees or more in higher latitudes, a catastrophic warming that would risk the mobilization of massive stores of carbon in forests and soils of the north, and a further release of methane as permafrost thaws and coastal waters warm. The positive feedbacks would own the earth and the warming would be beyond human control. Such assertions such as the two-degrees assumption are the ultimate in fallacy despite their popularity. An 80% reduction in emissions must be a much earlier objective. If it were set for 2012 it might be effective in avoiding run-away feedbacks.

It is clear that continuing on the present course of accelerated use of fossil fuels will lead to an open-ended climatic catastrophe whose earliest effects are underway now and accumulating in number and severity. These changes will inevitably produce a new, progressively impoverished world, a chaos that no one wants.

The era of fossil fuels must end abruptly. The immediate challenge for the first years of a responsible United States administration is clear leadership, first, in stabilizing the atmospheric burden of heat trapping gases in preparation for a major global program of reduction toward 350 ppm carbon dioxide or less.

Stabilization globally can in fact be achieved through reducing the use of fossil fuels combined with management of land to favor forests. No other action offers short term corrections in the range of billions of tons of carbon. One combination of actions that would meet the need would require:

• Preserving all remaining primary forests globally, worth about 1.5 billion tons of carbon
• Reforestation of 1-2 million square kilometers of abandoned or impoverished land,1.0 -1.5 billion tons per year
• An immediate global reduction in the emissions through use of fossil fuels of 25% of the current 8.5 billion tons about 2.1 billion tons per year.

The important step at the moment is to realize that the emergency exists, requires immediate stabilization of the atmosphere, and that the stabilization is possible. While such steps seem at this late date heroic, they are small relative to the chaos assured if we continue to fail to take them.

From awkward facts at http://www.whrc.org/resources

Worsening Amazon deforestation embarrasses Brazil’s government

June 3 — Alarming new figures showing worsening deforestation in the Amazon have embarrassed Brazil’s government, which is accused of making concessions to the powerful food producer lobby.

Brazil’s National Space Research Institute, which uses satellites to calculate how much of the vast rainforest has been destroyed, this week announced that another 1,132 square kilometers (437 square miles) had been cut or burned down, based on April imagery.

A Greenpeace representative in Brazil, Sergio Leitao, told AFP that the April data were “extremely worrying.”

Brazil’s new environment minister, Carlos Minc, acknowledged that “the deforestation this year will be greater than that of last year.” He blamed high world prices for soya and beef — two major Brazilian exports — for the increased clearing of the Amazon by farmers.

http://www.terradaily.com/2007/080603201344.selg893l.html

About Dr. Woodwell

Dr. Woodwell is an ecologist with broad interests in global environmental issues and policies. Prior to founding the Woods Hole Research Center, he was founder and director of the Ecosystems Center of the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole and a senior scientist at Brookhaven National Laboratories. He was also a founding trustee and is vice chairman of the board of the Natural Resources Defense Council. He is a former chairman of the board of trustees and currently a member of the National Council of the World Wildlife Fund, a founding trustee of the World Resources Institute, a founder and honorary member of the board of trustees of the Environmental Defense Fund, and former president of the Ecological Society of America. Dr. Woodwell is the author of more than 300 major papers and books in ecology. He holds a doctorate in botany from Duke University and is the recipient of several honorary degrees. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is the author of “Forests in a Full World.”

These young adults are members of the Clarksville High School H.O.P.E (Helping Other People Everyday) club. The causes they are raising money for are the Lance Armstrong Foundation and the Catie Summers Memorial Scholarship.

The method by which they are raising money and bringing notice to these causes is by riding bikes from Tennessee to the Lance Armstrong Foundation headquarters in Austin Texas - a trip of almost 1200 miles, which they will do in about six days.

If you have missed it, they are working and pedaling to Texas to bring attention and money to a disease that affects too many of us, cancer. The Lance Armstrong Foundation focuses on a national program of cancer prevention, access to screening and care, quality of life for cancer survivors, and investment in cancer research.

The Catie Summers Memorial Scholarship fund was established after the death of my own 16 year old daughter who died this past December after an almost four year battle against bone cancer. My daughter loved school and was a straight “A” student and in her honor a scholarship, in her name, will be given to students that have battled cancer in their young lives and want to go to college. First priority for scholarship awards will be cancer-surviving students graduating from the Clarksville-Montgomery County School System. The first award will be given to a student(s) in the 2009 graduating class, which is the year my Catie (at left) would have graduated.

The H.O.P.E club riders have been raising money for a couple of months and are still taking donations which can be delivered to any U.S. Bank branch in Clarksville, in the name of the Armstrong/Summers Fund. The fund will be split equally between the two causes.

I normally do not send this type of information by itself. However, I hope you will excuse me for doing this as it hits on several areas that I have devoted much time to in the last 14 years since I moved to Clarksville. I have performed thousands of hours of volunteer time to the school system, I do engineering and technology contract work for the school system, I’m a city councilman and the father of the daughter that never gave up and provided me with a definition of bravery that few can match. Thus, these great kids from the CHS H.O.P.E club come from, represent and touch those things in life I hold dear.

I hope to get end of day reports from them each day along with a picture or two which I will sent to you. Their bike jerseys, car signs and their grit and determination represent the qualities of our youth and city that all need to see and hear about. This afternoon the team packed, loaded their gear and drove to Columbia Tennessee. They will start their ride on the Natchez Trace Parkway at 6am Thursday morning heading to Austin Texas. Viva Lance Armstrong. Viva Catie. Viva CHS H.O.P.E club. Viva Clarksville

Editor’s Note: This article was submitted by Bill Summers, Catie’s father, who is a City Councilor serving Ward 10 in the City of Clarksville.

According to a new U.S. Census report, the Clarksville TN-KY Metropolitan Statistical Area is now the 10th-fastest growing MSA in the nation. Even though the national news may be depressing, our local economy is in good shape. Jimmy Settle, business editor for The Leaf Chronicle, says of the recent slow down in the residential market, “It’s a temporary condition, and should be perceived as more of a correction in the market, than a troubling decline. The truth is, the economy in northern Middle Tennessee is currently one of the nation’s best.”

The other truth is the residents in Clarksville are doing more than their share when it comes to helping the economic growth for surrounding cities and counties. The numbers are quite staggering! (More on those numbers later . . .)

The entire nation is feeling the pain at the gas pump. Gas prices are at an all time high and climbing higher. We’re all thinking about how to save gas, which will then make more money available for the necessary expenses and the extras; extras like dining out, shopping for clothes and home goods, entertainment, and more. Where will we be dropping those shopping and dining dollars?

Statistically, a great many of you will head to Nashville. You “think Nashville” for those extras. You head to the malls, the specialty shops, theatres, restaurants and even grocery stores! The fact is that every time you spend $100 in Nashville, you give that city $2.25 to use for their infrastructure, schools system, and other municipal expenses. (That’s the portion of their sales tax directly designated for Nashville.) $2.25 doesn’t sound like much, but we all know how little numbers quickly add up to big ones. Do you think Clarksville could use that $2.25? Do you think we could use better roads, sidewalks, schools, sewer lines?

Tennessee’s economic stability is reliant on sales tax. Without a state income tax, Tennessee depends on sales and property taxes for revenue needed to run the government engines. Other states, such a Florida, don’t have a state income tax either, but they’ve got a huge tourism industry. That’s why your local government is so concerned about “putting Clarksville on the map.” Tourist dollars are wonderful—they spend money, they return to their homes and their sales tax stays here.

Now back to the numbers. Are you aware we’re losing $40,297,000 in furniture, home furnishings, electronic and appliance sales? We’re losing $15,052,000 in restaurant sales. And, this one blows my mind, $72,285,000 in grocery sales! How do you get the ice cream home?

Now, as a local business owner, this all probably appears to be self-serving and to that I respond, “You’re darn straight!” I want you to shop at Hodgepodge, but I also want you to find unique clothing at Rogate’s Boutique and Posh; decorate your home with La Dolce Vita; eat a home cooked meal at Lovin’ Spoonful Café and get your caffeine fix at Blondie’s; feed your artistic interests at The Roxy Regional Theatre and The Customs House Museum; Seasons (the museum gift shop) has the most unique inventory of gift items in Clarksville. Okay enough of the gratuitous downtown plug, but you were expecting it. There are numerous independent retailers, restaurants and services, as well as the chains, right here in Clarksville.

There are more benefits to shopping local than the sales taxes. When you shop local businesses, especially independent retailers, they will do the same—their business does well, they hire local residents; many buy supplies and inventory locally; they pay their property taxes; they sponsor little league teams; they shop locally (they don’t have time to go anywhere else!). Without getting too far off topic, there are other benefits to shopping independent retailers, such as: personal service, unique inventory, and the sense of community. You’re greeted, more often than not, by the owner—they know your name, your likes, what you gave your wife for Christmas and what she’d like for her birthday. If there’s something you can only find in Nashville, why not ask your local business to start carrying it. I can guarantee you, they will at least look into it.

There are other trickle-down benefits to shopping local. One example, again it’ll be downtown (sorry, it’s what I know)—you shop at the local shops and eat at the restaurants, their business continues and grows, more people come and even want to live nearby, more residents means more tax dollars and a dense population demographic which many chains look for when deciding where to build. So if you want Wild Oats (or whichever grocery store your leaving Clarksville for), show them you’ll support it. You can write them, but they ultimately look at the local numbers. Further, we’ve become a big box store community—you know the one—that statistic discourages new retailers and grocers. If you want local options—shop the existing ones more frequently. You’ll be glad you did.

If you have to go to Nashville, at least buy your gas here.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Editors Note: Author Paige Thomas King is the owner of Hodgepodge, a downtown shop catering to specialty items and antiques (and wonderfully unique greeting cards). She is a 43 year-old Army wife and mother of three who has had the opportunity to live her dream of becoming a boutique owner. We have been residents of the Dog Hill Historic District of Clarksville for six years. King opened her business in November, 2004 and it has grown from 1,000- to 3,000 sq. ft. during that time—including the purchase of the building she currently occupies and the recent acquisition of the former Neblett’s Framing Outlet. She has been active with the business and property owner’s committee of the DDP—aka the Downtown Clarksville Association—since its inception three years ago. She is “passionate about the revitalization of the downtown area and look forward to a time when all of the store fronts are filled with retailers and restaurants; including those currently occupied by lawyers—they can move the second floor!”

But in order to get that commodity out to market - so that you can profit from harvesting it - you need a major highway or two to the nearest seaport where you can load it on big boats and ship it off to world markets.

Problem is: those aforementioned surrounding countries. Those highways will have to traverse their land and they’re not going to just let you do it.

What’s a Western capitalist to do!

In this case, the commodities in question are known as hydrocarbons, or as you and I know them; oil and natural gas.

Those highways you’ll need to transport it to seaport and waiting supertankers are called pipelines.

And the area on earth which has long been well known to industry experts to harbor these last vast and mostly untapped quantities of hydrocarbons is known as the Caspian Basin.

In the late 1990’s now Vice President Dick Cheney famously stated to a meeting of oil industrialists: “I can’t think of a time when we’ve had a region emerge as suddenly to become as strategically significant as the Caspian.”

So lets review so far. The Caspian Basin harbors what is largely considered to be one of the most significant as-yet-untapped resources of oil and natural gas on the planet, and so Western oil industry giants want their hands on it.

Problem: it resides in a landlocked region, far from seaports and their waiting supertankers. Pipelines will be needed to get it there, but those pipelines will have to cross bordering countries that are quite hostile to the Western capitalist interests.

Pumping the hydrocarbons out of the ground won’t be a problem, thanks to the cooperation of the actual land-owners beneath which these reserves are found, and who are more than willing to partner with you in the great wealth that is to be made.

So it’s the pipelines that are the problem, or more specifically those who own the land over which those pipelines will simply have to travel.

A quick look at a map shows you that the two most practical seaport destinations for your great hydrocarbon harvest are in the Persian Gulf or the Mediterranean. So you’re going to have run pipelines from the lower Caspian Sea Basin to one of both of these seas.

A closer look at the map reveals which countries lay in those more-or-less direct paths.

To get to the Persian Gulf you have to cross through Iran (the most direct route), or a longer way around through Turkmenistan, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

To get to the Mediterranean you also have to go through Iran, Iraq and Syria.

Do any of the countries ring a familiar bell since 9/11?

This isn’t rocket science. It’s oil industry science. You have to get the stuff out to market, and you can’t do that if the countries that surround your oil platforms are hostile to your interests.

Let’s review. In order to harvest and then get the vast oil and natural gas to market, you’re going to need pipelines through the aforementioned countries, several of which, namely Iran, Iraq and Syria do not like you.

So what do you do, forget about all that oil and natural gas? Well, no. You’re going to harvest it, and make gazillions on it, one way or another.

There’s only one real practical solution: Conquer those countries which stand in your way, using the U.S. Government’s world military superiority to do so. And that’s exactly what they decided to do, long before 9/11 provided them with the “publicly acceptable rationale for doing so”.

Long before the events of 9/11 oil industry giants have been laying the framework for harvesting and profiting from the Caspian Basin resources. In that, the record is clear.

They even have managed to get some of their best representatives into power. Dick Cheney - who then convenes a secret cabal of energy industry leaders to craft a U.S. Energy Policy that will help them achieve these goals. And, of course the Bush family, a long time oil industry player. Talk about conflict of interest!

With Pakistan and Turkmenistan already somewhat friendly to Western Capitalist Interests, Afghanistan was in the near-term sights. (You’ve no doubt heard of the Afghanistan pipeline? Michael Moore touched on it briefly in his post 9/11 documentary.)

Along comes 9/11, giving these people just what they need to act militarily in their quest for Caspian Basin hydrocarbons, and a war is launched.

Iraq, of course, is also in the long term plans because of their related geography and a leader who is hostile to the U.S. He’ll simply have to go so we’ll work on him next. Ah yes…”a mushroom cloud” is just around the corner if we don’t.

With Pakistan and Afghanistan already in the bag, Iraq is the next logical step, and for a whole host of reasons. Not only do they need the land for pipelines, but there’s a pretty nice pool of oil under that ground as well. Not to mention that Saddam, a member of OPEC, was being defiant to the oil cabal by randomly increasing his oil output way above OPEC levels, sending oil markets into a roller-coaster ride that was reducing oil industry profits and really pissing off both the Saudis and Americans in the process. This was his only leverage in retaliation for decades of U.S. led sanctions which were devastating to his country.

Iraq would also hold special opportunities for Western Capitalist interests by completely restructuring the economy in favor of them. A new constitution which allowed foreign business interests to literally rape the country economically with no risk, rules or retribution.

Well, there are just so many profitable elements for Western Capitalist interests in conquering Iraq that you could write an entire book about it.

Of course, once you control the Iraq oil fields, you can turn off (yes, I said TURN OFF) the oil spigots, reducing OPEC oil output to a desired minimum and driving oil prices through the roof. Notice what’s happened to the price of oil since we gained control of Iraq’s oil? The primary goal with Iraq’s oil was not simply to steal it, but clearly to control it’s flow in the short term to make more money for Western Oil interests.

So who’s next on the list?

Even from the beginning you’re heard the U.S. Government talking trash about Iran and Syria, once again that time-tested and proven chant about “a mushroom cloud”. Works every time!

There’s been no doubt even before we invaded Iraq that Iran and Syria would follow next. It’s only been the matter of time it takes to develop the political clout to make it happen, and sell the American people on the supposed reason why. The very same reason the worked for Iraq.

Make no mistake, we’re in the Middle East because of oil. If it wasn’t there - and nobody disputes this - we wouldn’t be either. But it goes so much further than what oil lies beneath Iraq or Iran. Those are just icing on the cake, along with the trillions of dollars of taxpayer money funneled through crony capitalism to private and corporate interests.

You know, that old “military-industrial complex” thing, now revised as the “military-industrial-media complex”. CNN, of course, became a household name thanks to the first Iraq war. War means huge profits for the big media companies as much as it does for the immense defense industry, etc. Not to mention that both are often now owned by the same interests.

The real golden egg here is what’s laying in the Caspian to be harvested by Western Capitalist interests. And that’s not trivial thing. We’re talking tens of trillions of dollars by conservative estimates alone.

And the only way that can happen is by constructing pipelines through countries like Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Syria etc. And the only way that can happen is by literally invading and conquering those countries so that we control the land that’s needed for pipelines.

This isn’t rocket science. It’s oil industry science.

This also isn’t news. It’s been out there openly for decades. But nobody wants to believe that the U.S. Government has become so corrupted by the private quest for wealth and power, so cynical that they would actually use our military might, and sacrifice thousands if not millions of innocent lives in the process, to achieve those goals of wealth for those who elite upper class interests which have the power to shape, if not utterly control, U.S. foreign policy for personal greed.

If you’re one who can’t bring yourself to acknowledge, let alone believe, that this could happen, then keep your head in the sand where it is.

But if you only use your head to look at the simple facts, and remember that governments through the ages have all done this very same thing, then it becomes all too clear what’s happening in our name.

I’m no world expert, I’m just a guy in Fresno, CA. But I’m not stupid either. I can read, I can hear, and I can objectively see what goes on in the world. There is no doubt that the quest for greater wealth and power drives the human existence, and ultimately corrupts people, organizations, and governments. This isn’t rocket science. This is obvious.

It’s about oil all right. It’s about how much of it is sitting under the Caspian Basin, and more than anything it’s about what it will take to get the oil out to necessary seaports in the Persian and the Mediterranean. Afghanistan, Iraq, and soon to include the governments of Iran and Syria are all in the way of these pipelines, and they’re being systematically conquered for this purpose. Not to mention all the extra money-making goodies that come along with it.

Iran and Syria will be next, under the same lying threat of a “mushroom cloud”. They’ve been on the list from the very start.

This is all part of a decades-long plan to both secure drilling rights in the Caspian, and then build the pipelines to get it to the supertankers.

And you know what, this all makes more sense, is more logical, than any other explanation for what’s going on. Ideology inevitably takes back seat to the quest for wealth and power, or is used to justify its means. It’s become a tool by those who want to get something, in order to sell it to the emotions of others who’s support is needed in order to effect it.

We went into Afghanistan, Iraq, and shortly will Iran and Syria because of oil all right. But not in the sense that most people think. Until, that is, you learn the greater picture here. At its roots, it’s the Caspian Basin resources, and a way to get them out to market.

It’s the pipelines, stupid!

About the author

The author Cufford is a diarist at the Daily Kos web site. He resides in Fresno, California.

* Editor’s Note: Images and maps added by Clarksville Online

Dear Governor Gibbons,

I hope that I may communicate with you as a fellow parent and grandparent about a matter that will have great effects upon the lives of our loved ones. I refer to climate change, specifically global warming in response to human-made carbon dioxide (CO2) and other pollutants.

Governor Gibbons, the scientific advances in just the past few years, paradoxically, carry both bad news and good news. We have already passed the threshold of atmospheric CO2 levels that we can allow to exist over the long-term. Mother Nature, as a friend of mine has noted, is wagging her finger at us, saying “Now you have gone too far!” Consequences of ignoring this admonishment would be dire. The Earth is nearing climate “tipping points” with potentially irreversible effects, including extermination of countless species, ice sheet disintegration and sea-level rise, and mass dislocation of populations.

The good news is that it is still feasible to solve the problem, to reduce CO2 emissions over coming decades and draw down the atmospheric CO2 amount through natural processes and with the help of improved agricultural and forestry practices.

However, solution of the problem has one unavoidable implication for fossil fuels. As the attached “Fossil Fuel Facts” make clear, atmospheric CO2 can be successfully constrained only if coal use is phased out except where the CO2 is captured and sequestered so that it does not enter the atmosphere. Utilities and the fossil fuel industry must reckon with the fact that the laws of Nature and the human instinct for survival will overrule any paper agreements that may exist now or be wrangled in the near-term.

Is it possible that I am wrong, that the governments are so larded with fossil fuel special interests that they will allow us to destroy the planet that we leave for our children and grandchildren? Sure – just as there was a chance that the United States and the Soviet Union could have blown each other off the face of the planet with nuclear weapons – but it is much more likely that we will come to our senses soon, as the scientific story and empirical evidence overwhelm the deceit of short-term special interests.

One of the “Fossil Fuel Facts” is that a substantial fraction of fossil fuel CO2 emissions stays in the air for what is, for all practical purposes “an eternity”, more than 1000 years. That is a well- established scientific fact – there is no debate. A direct implication is that we cannot be aiming for a 50, 80 or 90 percent reduction of emissions. We must transition over the next several decades to practically zero net CO2 emissions. Thus our energy focus must be to develop renewable energies and energy efficiency.

Energy departments, influenced by fossil fuel interests, take it as a God-given fact that we will extract all fossil fuels from the ground and burn them before we move on to other ways of producing usable energy. The public is capable of changing this course dictated by fossil fuel interests, but clear-sighted leadership is needed now if the actions are to be achieved in time.

Perhaps the most important question is this: can we find the leadership to initiate the tipping point among nations? Can we find a country that will place a moratorium on any new coal-fired power plants unless they capture and store the CO2? Unless this happens soon, there is little hope of avoiding the climate tipping points, with all that implies for life on this planet.

– James Hansen

Editor’s Note: This article was sent to Clarksville Online by Catherine Lowther, Ph.D. Ms. Lowther is a professor in the Goddard College Individualized B.A. Program. She holds a Ph.D. in Consciousness Studies from the Union Institute, an M.A. in Counseling Psychology from Vermont College, and a B.A. in Transpersonal Psychology from Goddard College. She is currently researching the relationships between peak oil, resource wars, 9/11, climate change, and the transition to sustainable living and local economies, all areas that are of interest to many of our readers.

]]> http://www.clarksvilleonline.com/2008/05/03/a-plea-for-planet-earth/feed/ http://www.clarksvilleonline.com/2008/04/18/before-the-kafka-law-of-military-commissions/ http://www.clarksvilleonline.com/2008/04/18/before-the-kafka-law-of-military-commissions/#comments Fri, 18 Apr 2008 11:00:07 +0000 A Guest Commentator http://www.clarksvilleonline.com/?p=4416 Today, another hearing ended in turmoil when a 47-year-old Sudanese man, Ibrahim al-Qosi, refused representation and declared he would boycott the military commission, before which he is charged with conspiracy and providing material support to terrorism. Al-Qosi told the judge, Air Force Col. Nancy Paul, that he has been waiting for this day for four years, that he does not recognize the lawfulness of the military commission, and that he “leaves the field for you to play as you wish.”

Today, the fragile and flawed system of military commissions produced a new episode in its Kafkaesque system of “justice” series. As in the famous Franz Kafka piece “Before the Law,” Al-Qosi has waited “to gain entry into the law” only to discover that this unjust system was created for him (and the others declared “unlawful alien enemy combatants” by the Bush administration). In the Kafka story, the man who waits at the door until he is about to die asks the doorkeeper why, even though everyone seeks the law, no one else has come in all the years. To this question the doorkeeper replies: “No one else can gain entry, since this entrance was assigned only to you. I’m going now to close it.”

Al-Qosi is one of the few Guantánamo detainees who were charged under the first system of military commissions, which was held unconstitutional and in violation of international law by the Supreme Court in June 2006. At those hearings, Al-Qosi agreed to be represented by a military lawyer, Air Force Lt. Col. Sharon Shaffer. Unfortunately, many events including a new charge of “providing material support to terrorism,” have significantly undermined al-Qosi’s trust in the system. In fact, in November 2004, through his civilian lawyer, Paul Reichler, al-Qosi, who is married and has two daughters, filed a habeas corpus petition in the D.C. District Court in which he claimed he was beaten, humiliated, and repeatedly abused in while in U.S. custody in Afghanistan and at Guantánamo.

His newly appointed lawyer, Navy Reserve Cmdr. Suzanne Lachelier, protested about her lack of access to al-Qosi and said that the first time she was able to meet with him was at the military commission hearing itself. Her experience is common among Guantánamo defense lawyers, both military and civilian, who constantly face tremendous difficulty when attempting to freely communicate with their clients, a basic requirement for effective legal advice and representation. The defense counsel asked the judge to help her gain permission to meet with al-Qosi face-to-face, rather than through messages delivered via Guantánamo guards. This basic, constitutionally-protected request was denied. Cmdr. Lachelier was also forced to represent al-Qosi despite his clear statement that he does not wish to be represented by military, civilian, or even volunteer counsel. The military judge was more concerned with moving the process forward and warning al-Qosi of his right to appointed counsel than working to fulfill this right.

In a prepared handwritten statement, al-Qosi said that his only war crime was that he was from a third world country, Sudan.Al-Qosi stressed that the Guantánamo detainees who had European citizenship had been released as a result of a political and diplomatic pressure by their own governments. In fact, just last month the U.N. Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination found that this system of military commissions was discriminatory, in that it denied non-citizens equal standing and access to U.S. courts and violated the rule that counterterrorism measures should not discriminate (PDF) in purpose or effect on grounds of race, color, descent, or national or ethnic origin.

No one knows if al-Qosi will ever appear again before this military commission, but what we witnessed today is becoming a trend in which detainees are challenging the legitimacy of the forum and refusing to take part in the proceedings. Cmdr. Lachelier did not hide her discomfort and concern about the situation she has been forced into. She said she was very close to making a decision similar to that made by her client, but for now she will try her best to reconcile her ethical duties as a lawyer representing Al-Qosi with her respect for the distorted rules of “justice” created under the Military Commissions Act.

About Jamil Dakwar

Jamil Dakwar is the Director of the ACLU’s Human Rights Program. Jamil is in Guantánamo Bay this week to observe the Military Commissions hearings of three detainees. This piece was originally published at the Daily Kos.

As she accepts her 2008 TED Prize, author and scholar Karen Armstrong talks about how the Abrahamic religions — Islam, Judaism, Christianity — have been diverted from the moral purpose they share to foster compassion. But Armstrong has seen a yearning to change this fact. People want to be religious, she says; we should act to help make religion a force for harmony. She asks the TED community to help her build a Charter for Compassion — to help restore the Golden Rule as the central global religious doctrine.

Read the transcript >>

To brainstorm on this wish and get involved, visit TEDPrize.org

About Karen Armstrong

Religious thinker Karen Armstrong has written more than 20 books on faith and the major religions, studying what Islam, Judaism and Christianity have in common, and how our faiths shaped world history and drive current events.

A former nun, Armstrong has written two books about this experience: Through the Narrow Gate, about her seven years in the convent, and The Spiral Staircase, about her subsequent spiritual awakening, when she developed her iconoclastic take on the major monotheistic religions — and on the strains of fundamentalism common to all. She is a powerful voice for ecumenical understanding.

Armstrong’s TED Prize wish asks us to help her assemble a Council on Compassion, where religious leaders can work together for peace.

“I say that religion isn’t about believing things. It’s ethical alchemy. It’s about behaving in a way that changes you, that gives you intimations of holiness and sacredness.”

Karen Armstrong on http://www.Powells.com/

Ted: Ideas Worth Spreading

TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design. It started out (in 1984) as a conference bringing together people from those three worlds. Since then its scope has become ever broader.

TEDTalks began as a simple attempt to share what happens at TED with the world. Under the moniker “ideas worth spreading,” talks were released online. They rapidly attracted a global audience in the millions. Indeed, the reaction was so enthusiastic that the entire TED website has been reengineered around TEDTalks, with the goal of giving everyone on-demand access to the world’s most inspiring voices.

The key to success is to work with, rather than against, motorists. With this in mind, there are several opportunities to reduce gasoline consumption, without resorting to rationing schemes or heavy-handed price controls:

• Synchronize Traffic Signals - In 2003, the City of San Jose, California started to coordinate its traffic light system. By altering the timing on just a third of the city’s stoplights, traffic delays were reduced 33 percent and average travel time was reduced 16 percent. The city also estimated that this project significantly reduced fuel usage - saving approximately 471,000 gallons of gasoline each year.
• Properly Install Stop Signs - Stop signs are intended to control right-of-way at intersections, not to slow traffic or discourage motorists from taking certain routes. Improper stop sign installations increase noise, emissions, and gas usage. Confining stop sign installations to locations where traffic volume or intersection conditions make them necessary would save significant amounts of gasoline.
• Promote and Enforce Lane Courtesy - Lane courtesy, the practice of yielding the left lane to faster moving traffic, strongly influences highway safety, traffic flow, congestion, and the entire driving environment. Disregarding lane courtesy creates more congestion, and in turn, it contributes to speed fluctuations, both of which increase overall fuel consumption.

“Most people would be amazed by the fuel savings that would occur if these simple, well-proven, strategies were implemented,” said Eric Skrum, NMA Communications Director. “There is an urgent need to properly implement traffic control measures that promote smoother traffic flow.

About the National Motorists Association

The National Motorists Association (NMA) was established in 1982 to represent the interests and rights of North American motorists. It is a grassroots organization that operates at the national level and through a system of state chapters. The NMA is entirely supported through the contributions of individuals, families, and small businesses.

In 2007, 115 US plants produced 7 billion gallons of Corn Ethanol - the energy equivalent of 132 million barrels of oil using about 15% of corn production. While this sounds large, it is tiny in the context of the US economy. This is equal to only 1.6% of the energy from from oil in 2007 used in the US. But the situation is worse than this because it takes 1 unit of fossil fuel to produce 1.3 units of corn ethanol. The net energy produced was only 0.5% of the energy from from oil - while consuming 15% of the US corn crop!

Vast sums of taxpayer and consumer dollars are funding an ineffective solution to the real problems of global warming and energy independence. While the country does not sufficiently fund what can be real solutions.

The Federal corn ethanol policy is extremely costly to working people in the US and the world’s poor (through higher food prices). The ethanol equivalent of a gallon of gasoline costs far more than a gallon of gasoline. Fueling your car with corn ethanol makes the world grain shortage worse and increases food prices to the world’s poor. 15 gallons of ethanol in your gas tank uses enough corn to feed one person for a year. Higher grain prices, from corn ethanol subsidies, have a big impact on grain feed beef, chicken, milk, and egg prices for hard working Americans.

US politicians love heavily subsidizing corn ethanol because it makes great politics because of the many subsidized winners from this policy - farmers, farm states, companies and workers that make fertilizer, seed, agriculture equipment; banks and venture capital; towns wanting new factories and jobs, construction workers and mis-informed green voters. By supporting Corn Ethanol, politicians can present themselves as Green and pro-energy independence.

There is a major economic boom in US grain farming from the massive government subsidies to corn ethanol from direct payments, credits and mandates for ethanol use - while the rest of the economy is likely in a recession. Oil companies benefit from Corn Ethanol, as it does little to reduce demand for oil and therefore keeps prices up. Big agriculture is more powerful than big oil, as big agriculture is powerful in most states while big oil is concentrated in a few states and many more people work in agriculture and supporting industries than the oil industry.

Another big interest group in the way are politicians who advocated corn ethanol, who now may be better informed that this was a bad policy - but are afraid to change for fear of “flip flopping” charges. Maybe as part the new politics, Democrats can have the courage to say as John Maynard Keynes said, “When the facts change, I change my mind ? what do you do, sir?” Then again there will be others who will do the same as Hillary Clinton did to preserve her reputation by - holding fast to the Iraq war - when it was recognized as bad policy.

It will take political courage to oppose Corn Ethanol’s powerful interests - while the rest of the public are not interested in “policy details.”

About the author

Nextstep, the author is a diarist with the Daily Kos web site.

An irony of urban redevelopment is that the purported goal of economic development is usually hampered by government’s insistence on retaining the power of eminent domain for a project. Forest City, a developer infamous for its Atlantic Yards dispute in New York, is involved in just such a situation in Fresno, Calif. Fresno decided in 2005 that the area south of Chukchansi Park, home of the city’s minor league baseball team, should be “revitalized.” The next year, the city hired mega-developer Forest City to begin the downtown redevelopment; unfortunately, the very plan designed to revitalize Fresno’s downtown is draining the area of not only its current tax base but hampering other future investments in that area.

Forest City’s plan for the 85-acre South Stadium area, which calls for a new shopping district and 700 new homes, has threatened more than 40 properties with eminent domain for private gain. ¹ Two years after the plan was first proposed, property owners and city officials alike are still waiting for development to begin. According to The Fresno Bee, Forest City must still conduct a yearlong environmental review and the city still has not come up with a public financing scheme for the project.

The Bee’s editorial summed up the situation: “The problem is that property owners in the area, and small business owners who wish to move in or expand in existing locations, are left on hold while the big developer jumps through the regulatory hoops. Few want to take a chance on an investment that might be swept away by some grander vision for downtown. Owners find it difficult to rent or see properties because of the uncertainty.” ²

The threat of eminent domain stifles native efforts to revitalize apart from the plan because entrepreneurs will not invest in a business that may not be around for more than a couple of years. Randy Miller and Robert Toman are two entrepreneurs in the area who want to open up a brewpub in a former furniture store owned by the family of Miller’s wife. Miller and Toman find themselves in limbo: because there is no council-approved plan, the city will not tell them whether it will be necessary to take the property for the Forest City development.

“It would be nice if they said, ‘We’re going to demolish you and move you,’ or, ‘You can stay here,” Miller told The Bee. ³

However, the potential threat or eminent domain is driving away businesses already established in the area. Pat Cody, who has owned Wilson’s Motorcycles for 18 years, could not even find a realtor to list his property after he decided that the survival of business depended on moving somewhere where his future prospects were more stable. Cody said realtors considered his property “a waste of their time.” Even though the city most likely would have bought the property, it cannot do so yet because the city council has not officially given approval for the final project.

Property owners are also having difficulty renting out properties to tenants because the city could come and condemn the property at any point once the final plan is approved. Octavia Diener told The Bee that the city actually discourages prospective renters.

“They go to the city,” said Diener. “And the first thing the city tells them is, ‘That’s under this redevelopment plan.’” ⁴

With businesses moving away, renters staying away, and potential new businesses unable to contribute to revitalization, the city of Fresno’s potential threat of eminent domain is creating the very blight factors that officials say they wish to remedy. Unfortunately, for small business owners and independent developers, city officials have chosen their favored developer, Forest City, and city officials will not allow anything other than Forest City’s vision in the area. Unlike nearly every other neighborhood that developed organically, with many neighbors creating the spirit and content of the area, Fresno is insisting on a centrally planned model for what should take place in this district.

City Council Member Larry Westerlund, who is also the chairman of the Redevelopment Agency board, defends Forest city this way: Forest City, “has always expressed an interest in working with property owners, if there’s a way to do so and make a project that’s unique and authentic.” ⁵

The fact that most redevelopments tend to be neither unique nor authentic aside, it is ironic that the city may not consider private residents and business owners of Fresno “unique” or “authentic” enough for the plan imposed upon the area by a Cleveland-area developer.

Given those circumstances, it is not surprising that city officials seem to be indifferent to the deleterious effects of their redevelopment procedures. Fresno citizens, who are already established and committed to the area and who sincerely wish to contribute to the economic revitalization of the area are being turned away because they do not conform to the city’s visions of the future, a future that may not ever materialize.

• 1. Jeff St. John, “Keeping the city on hold,” The Fresno Bee, February 11, 2008
• 2. The Fresno Bee, “Downtown visions collide in proposed Forest City area; Big projects and smaller efforts are crucial to revitalized success,” The Fresno Bee, February 13, 2008.
• 3. St. John
• 4. Ibid.
• 5. Ibid.

About CastleWatch

CastleWatch is the online publication of the Castle Coalition, the Institute for Justice’s nationwide grassroots property rights activism project. The Castle Coalition helps home and small business owners fight eminent domain abuse through the public and political processes and this is our way of letting you know what’s happening.

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) is just the latest salvo in an attempt to install a surveillance society in America. Don’t let anger at the Bush administration and Fear Uncertainty and Doubt (FUD) over the NSA blind you to a much larger problem. We need a comprehensive national policy on data collection and its use in both the public & private sectors. Privacy rights and the associated laws must be clarified and strengthened, taking into account the complexities of modern technologies. The wall between government and private industry must also be restored.

Theoretically, U.S. laws and policies restrict the government’s use of dossiers on individual citizens who are not under criminal investigation. President Carter’s Executive order 12036 prohibited domestic surveillance. There are no such laws preventing private companies from doing so, as long as they ensure that specific protected pieces of data (your social security number, for example) aren’t lost or stolen or otherwise compromised. And some people in the intelligence community have been trying to get their hands on that commercial data for years.

Knowledge for Sale

There are many companies that aggregate, or gather together, publicly or privately-available information about YOU - down to the household or even individual level - your job, your income, the value of your house, what kind of car you drive, how many children you have and where they are enrolled in school, what charities you donate to, what magazines you subscribe to, what political contributions you have made. One of the largest, Acxiom, has been in business since 1969, and according to its 2007 Annual Report, has total assets in excess of $1.65 Billion. Other well known data aggregators include Lexis Nexis, Experian, TransUnion, and ChoicePoint. Any public record can, and will, be added to these private databases. Remember that the next time you’re tempted to fill out a survey or a warranty card or sign up for a grocery store club card. Who do you think is paying for that discount?

All those records are analyzed for patterns, and those patterns create group profiles. For example, Acxiom has defined 70 specific “life stage segments” based on the kind of criteria above. And they’re good. (Disclosure: I worked at a dot.com startup some years ago that existed specifically to gather user data, so it could be sold to Acxiom. They went under less than a year after I quit. It was a stupid site.) Acxiom can infer - correctly - what kind of wine you might buy based on random-seeming datapoints such as your age, the car you drive, and the magazines you subscribe to. It’s creepy scary. Another firm, ChoicePoint, has its own niches in the market: insurance data, background checks, tenant screening, employment screening, and more.

Then these companies sell access to their data to anybody who will pay. You can find data aggregators who will help you: grow your business, develop market-targeted products, find a new customer, or win a campaign. If you need a list of names, there’s someone out there who has it and will sell it. How about a list of suburban households in their low 30’s with a combined income between $55-75K, three kids under 15, a Ford Taurus, and a subscription to Outdoor magazine? Or retired single childless teachers who wear prescription lenses and prefer Grey Goose vodka? Need to find out if a potential child care provider is a sexual offender? Write a check, run a query.

There are myriad ways these kinds of reports can be used to manipulate. The most obvious is in product development and marketing. If a company has a product line that’s not selling well, they can mine their customer data to identify the segments that buy the product, and focus their advertising and marketing on that segment. Or they can create marketing language that will appeal to a wider range of segments. This is Business 101 stuff. It’s fairly easy for an aware consumer to find the line between selling me what I want to buy, and convincing me that what I want is what you have to sell.

K Street meets Madison Avenue

Things gets trickier when you apply the technology to politics. It’s called “microtargeting,” and it’s a recipe for political manipulation on a whole new level. The Bush 2004 campaign began working with TargetPoint Consulting in 2003, testing the theories and technologies that would win the 2004 election, on several Pennsylvania judicial races. TargetPoint founder Alex Gauge believed “[t]he Bush majority would be made up of thousands of groups of like-minded voters whom the campaign could reach with precisely the right message on the issues they considered most important.” When TargetPoint’s 2003 projections came up 90% accurate, Rove knew he had a winning strategy. The Bush election machine found the exact hot-button issues for the necessary profiles (”Flag and Family Republicans” and “Tax and Terrorism Moderates” are two examples), and then pushed those buttons to convince individual voters to come out for him. At its best, microtargeting eliminates the expense and effort of campaigning to voters you already know will vote for you. At its worst, it’s virtualized gerrymandering - letting politicians select their constituents.

The problem is not that each group hears a targeted message, it’s that they don’t hear anything else. “Flag and Family” hears positioning on flag burning. “Tax and Terrorism” hears plans for security. Neither hears the whole story, even if they live next door to each other. And when you only hear what you want to hear, you’re missing an opportunity to grown and change. When you only hear your own individual message you miss out on ideas like the Common Good. You might come to think that the only good is what’s good for you. And then what happens to democracy?

And don’t think this is just a Republican dirty trick. Democrats are johnny-come-lately to the game but microtargeting, also known as narrowcasting, is used by both sides.

And I’m not saying that datamining technology is inherently evil. Technology is, in my opinion, value-neutral. The questions of morality must be applied to how the technology is used. Are you focusing your limited campaign budget to convince people who haven’t made up their minds yet, or are you telling me what I want to hear? Are you selling me what I want to buy or are you convincing me that I want is what you have to sell? What comes next, when Big Brother lives at the intersection of K Street and Madison Avenue? How do you even know if what you want is what you want or what you’ve been told you want by someone who knows you better than you know yourself? It’s Room 101 through the looking glass - here is your deepest desire, all wrapped up with a pretty bow. And while you’re enjoying your new toys or new candidates, liberty is slowly slipping away. You never even notice.

Total Information Awareness

Things get really hairy when you start looking at government intelligence databases. In the months after 9/11, the federal government was feverish to buy, build, or borrow, tools that would help identify potential terrorists. John Poindexter headed the creation of DARPA’s Total Information Awareness (TIA - which was quickly renamed the Terrorist Information Awareness) system, which the ACLU calls “the closest thing to a true ‘Big Brother’ program that has ever been seriously contemplated in the United States.” The stated goal of TIA was to build an umbrella that pulled together every conceivable intelligence system - public and private databases, surveillance systems, biometrics, and more - into a single system that could be monitored and mined for evidence of terrorist-like behavior. One place to go to, to find everything “we” know about everything.

The net effect of these efforts, however, resulted in what many have dubbed the Surveillance Society; a virtual panopticon of data mining and realtime snooping. The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) has obtained documents showing John Poindexter meeting with Acxiom board member General Wesley Clark in May and June of 2002 and an email between Poindexter and Lt. Col. Douglas Dyer discussing the usefulness of Acxiom data and capabilities in creating the TIA. Dyer mentions the need to respect citizens’ privacy concerns, (”[P]eople will object to Big Brother”), but follows with the suggestion that the system may, in time, need “huge databases of commercial transactions that cover the world.”

(Nerd alert: EPIC obtained a very high-level, fluffy-bunny design document of the TIA system. The document was written by Hicks & Associates, a wholly owned subsidiary of infamous defense contractor SAIC, and uses UML diagrams and Use Cases such as this one on page 18: “3.1.2.2.2.1 Generating Threat Scenarios - Generating Threat Scenarios represents the capability for analysts to create scenarios representing possible threats that have potential to occur given a partial set of facts, events, links, and models.” Yeah, I’ll get right on that module. The project life cycle is defined on page 16 as “TBA - Developing - Prototyping - Experimenting - Transitioning.” This is no life cycle I’ve ever seen, in any OOSE-related materials. What ever happened to requirements gathering and designing? On the other hand, they are very precise about the analysts’ Dell Power Edge 620 workstations on page 95. The document reads like it was written by a vendor whose focus is on billing hours, not building software. It sounds good to risk managers but is completely useless to a developer; full of buzzwords and vague diagrams and little else. The tech industry’s opinion of the TIA system is low; it seems we are protected from Big Brother by greed and incompetence, rather than honor or intellectual vigor.)

A New York Times article in November 2002 raised concerns about privacy in the TIA-watched world. 2002 and 2003 saw a firestorm of reports, articles, and concerns about the TIA system. Senators Russ Feingold and Ron Wyden both introduced bills to stop data mining in general and TIA in specific. DARPA sent a report about the TIA system to Congress in May 2003. On September 24, 2003, Congress officially defunded the TIA project, with the exception of some specific components that were moved under other foreign intelligence projects.

Privacy issues were also raised by the Government Accountability Office, which responded after the project was canceled. Wesley Clark resigned from Acxiom’s board On October 9, 2003, citing the pressures of his presidential campaign.

To bring things full circle, it is reported that the equipment and technology used by the NSA for the warrantless wiretapping in Room 641-A and beyond had its origin in the TIA program. Is it possible that the fight over telecom immunity from prosecution is actually a red herring to distract us all from recognizing that the TIA program, a miserable failure that sucked millions or even billions of dollars from our budget, wasn’t actually canceled, but moved to a new organization and renamed? The ACLU has filed an amicus brief requesting that AT&T whistleblower Mark Klein’s documentation be made public and studied, to answer this question.

“Whether the specific technologies developed under TIA and acquired by ARDA have actually been used in the NSA’s domestic surveillance programs — rather than only for intelligence gathering overseas — has not been proved. Still, descriptions of the two former TIA programs that became Topsail and Basketball mirror descriptions of ARDA and NSA technologies for analyzing vast streams of telephone and e-mail communications. Furthermore, one project manager active in the TIA program before it was terminated has gone on record to the effect that, while TIA was still funded, its researchers communicated regularly and maintained “good coordination” with their ARDA counterparts.”
http://www.technologyreview.com/…

The Right to Privacy

What ever happened to the right to privacy? Truth is, the words “right to privacy” do not appear in the constitution. But Madison and the gang made sure that specific rights to specific privacies were spelled out in the Amendments: the privacy of beliefs, (1st Amendment), privacy from being forced to house soldiers (3rd Amendment), privacy against unreasonable searches and seizures - which includes protection for the privacy of personal information, referred to as “papers” (4th Amendment), and privacy against self-incrimination (5th Amendment).

Every time you use a credit card, a club card, a library card, visit a web page, take out a loan, make a political contribution, you are leaving a digital breadcrumb trail behind you. It is inescapable. And since we can’t avoid leaving the trail we must regulate those who would follow it. The use of these massive databases of “papers” must be reinterpreted as a violation of our 4th Amendment right. They violate what Justice Brandeis famously termed our “right to be let alone.” Even the honorable intention of protecting the country from bad people who would harm us is no justification for violating that right.

“Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.”

The Solution

I know this has been a long post. I hope you’ve taken the time to read through the links of the various relationships and abuses of aggregated personal data and seen the danger to our democracy for yourself. Protections for personal information in the United States are random, confused, and limited.

Laws have been enacted only in response to specific problems, and no governmental body has taken a wider view to build a consistent, nation-wide policy to protect citizens and prevent the kinds of dangers presented here. Indeed, there isn’t even a single, national standard of what data is private and what is public. It is way past time for this oversight to be addressed.

Without specific laws to protect YOU and your data, there is no limit to the way YOUR data can be used, bought, sold, and manipulated. Don’t limit your fear, uncertainty, and doubt to FISA and warrantless wiretapping. We need to act now to limit the use of privately and government owned data warehouses while we still have a democracy to do so.

And I haven’t even mentioned data loss, data theft, hacking, honest mistakes, Internet cookies, and spyware.

Want to read some more? These folks are working on the problem:

• Electronic Privacy Information Center
• ACLU 2003 report on the growing surveillance society
• IEEE Computer Society - Security and Privacy

About Terri Shea

Terri Shea had a thriving career in high tech for many years until the dot.com crash coincided with maternity leave at the beginning of 2001. Her computer experience includes system configuration and installation, networking, administration, technical support, web development (technical design, specification, and programming) and development management. She currently works from home in Seattle, WA as a freelance writer for the hand knitting market, and published her first book, Selbuvotter: Biography of a Knitting Tradition, in 2007.

Matt Wuerker

Editorial cartoons by Matt Wuerker can be viewed at his Cartoonist group page, or at Politico.com

Halloran says his choice of exhibit title came about when he was reviewing his finished work.

“I was looking for some kind of common thread but, as usual, the work was an eclectic mish-mash of both photo images and pastel paintings; each image had at some point diverted from my original intention. So, I decided to explore this way of working and follow the “something” that led me to a different way of seeing.”

The pastel paintings include Halloran’s homage to Russian abstract painter Mark Rothko and Swiss expressionist Paul Klee. He says these paintings continue a series of his pastel works which he equates with jazz, poetry and spirituality and they created new technical challenges. “Flower” (at left) is among Halloran’s works on exhibit.

The photo images are a mix of abstract explorations of the same theme. These images were found in his explorations around his Cadiz, KY, home and represent Halloran’s newfound interest in digital photography which, “I have come to appreciate is not as easy as it first appeared to me.”

Halloran graduated from APSU in 1985 with a BFA in photography. He is a member of the Downtown Artists Co-op in Clarksville where he has participated in many exhibits and won the Best of Show award at the juried U.S. Bank show. He is a past member of the Lousiville, KY, Visual Arts Accociation (LVAA) and taught beginning photography at Artopia Art Center which was run by LVAA.

Halloran’s show will continue from February 23 through March 22 at the DAC gallery. Gallery hours are 12:00 noon until 6:00 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday. There is no charge for admission and visitors are welcome.

Editor’s Note: Information on this exhibit submitted by Cliff Whitaker. 

I would like to address the upcoming talks on the controversial Redevelopment Plan that blights the entire downtown. The idea of involving the residents and business owners in the affected area is, of course, the only right thing to do. They should have been notified from the beginning and one can only speculate as to why they were excluded, referring to the Emerald Hill and Dog Hill residents. The Brandon Hills and Red River residents were notified. If proper procedure is followed, there will be a series of meetings and discussions on how redevelopment should proceed and all should have a voice in the matter. For the record, we are not anti-redevelopment. We just want redevelopment that is fair and beneficial to the residents as well as to the city.

While the mayor has stated that citizen’s input is important and everyone will have a chance to voice their concerns, ideas and thoughts on how redevelopment should be done, I anticipate a problem. Our mayor does not handle opposition well. People are removed from committees if they oppose him and organizations are threatened. The only people in good standing are people with like ideas and agendas.

We live in a democracy, so I thought. In a democracy, everyone has a voice. Not just those close to the mayor. Our country is rich in diversity and our individuality makes for colorful personalities that ultimately enrich our own lives and those around us. What a pity it would be to squelch those voices. What a pity that one person, or a group of people, can be the controlling factor in a city and make monumental changes that the majority are against. How can we let this happen without a fight?

Patsy Sharpe

Clarksville, TN