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OVERTIME--April 2004 issue
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Dedicated to reflecting the collective wisdom of enlightened workers.

Linda Featheringill
4651 West 41st Street, Down
Cleveland, OH 44109
(216) 661-0794

lfeatheringill@hotmail.com

April 2004
Volume 4, Number 11

Greetings!

A new season came in with the equinox and I hope that everyone is looking forward to a very pleasant spring or fall, depending on where you are. World events, alas, don’t seem to change much with the seasons. But I did find some informative articles to pass along. Enjoy! -- Linda Featheringill

Elections in Spain

To the people of Spain: My sincerest sympathy on the recent loss of your loved ones, friends, and neighbors because of the bombing of the commuter trains. Such a loss is very painful. Sustaining terrorist attacks is also painful. This is made even worse when you realize that you and your society are being targeted for things that are largely out of your control. The Powers That Be do what they want to do and The People have to cope with the consequences. It is really, really not fair.

We in the US send you warm thoughts and understanding. We wish you peace and comfort.

To the people of the US: We all know that the truth is hard to come by sometimes. It’s also true that the plain facts are difficult to uncover sometimes. Consider the recent bombing of commuter trains in Spain, followed by an election. These events naturally generated a lot of comment in the US media. But the volume of words did not in itself guarantee that we were exposed to all the facts. Actually, we were exposed to more opinion than fact.

National elections were held in Spain a few days after the terrorist attacks and the right-wing incumbents lost to the left-wing challengers. President Bush and his supporters have lamented what they call “a victory for terrorists.” They seem to be saying the fact that the leaders of Spain served as US allies in Iraq caused the terrorist attack, which caused the election to turn out the way it did. The winner of the election has promised to pull Spain’s troops out of Iraq and the Administration also characterizes that as “a victory for terrorists.” A large portion of US commentators followed the government line, saying that the loss of lives was tragic but that the voting in the subsequent election was unwise, at least.

Spanish journalists who actually live in Spain and who are closer to the situation had a different view of the events - that the incumbents lost the election because they participated in an unpopular war and because they tried to mislead the people about the perpetrators of the terrorist attack. News commentary from Spain argued that the Spanish people voted for candidates whose positions more nearly represented the public’s opinions.

These reporters felt that the election results were a victory for representational government, rather than a victory for the terrorists, and put forward the following facts:

-- According to polls, the election was close even before the bombings. The “undecided” voters could have tipped the race in either direction.

-- The challenger always said he favored withdrawal of Spanish troops from Iraq. This was a part of his campaign and was not a reaction to the terrorist attack.

-- Spain’s participation in the war in Iraq was always very unpopular. The terrorists didn’t change public sentiment regarding the war - they only hardened the disapproval that was already present.

-- The right-wing incumbents participated in a war they knew the people didn’t want.

-- Even worse, the incumbents were less than forthcoming about who was responsible for the terrorist attacks. They wanted to blame Basque separatists, even though the bombings were out of character. The Basque radicals usually attack members of the ruling elite, while the victims of these bombs were working class commuters. Only under great pressure from the challengers did the incumbents admit that evidence pointed towards involvement by an al Qaida-type organization.

-- Thus, the people of Spain felt they were lied to. Thousands of angry people demonstrated in the streets and accused the government officials of lying. There were more than enough voters in these demonstrations to change the outcome of the election.

-- Many of the demonstrators were young people who had previously neglected to vote. They voted in this election, however, in order to express their anger.

This version of the events is a little different from what your local television news program fed you, isn’t it?

When the US government says that it is immoral to vote against incumbents while there is the danger of terrorist attacks, perhaps you shouldn’t believe it. When the government says that it is foolish to vote against incumbents who lie and mislead, it’s probably time to investigate further. When the government says that fighting a war in Iraq is the only way to protect us from terrorism, we all need to consider alternatives.

And when the mainstream media echoes the government’s statements, perhaps we shouldn’t trust them, either.

In a world awash with opinions masquerading as facts, we cannot always believe everything we are told. Sometimes, we have to dig a bit deeper in order to get closer to the truth.
[L.F.]

Religious sects - Christianity

Zionist Christians comprise a group that is actively trying to help establish an Israeli territory, an empire even, that covers area about twice as large as the present-day Israel. The dimensions of this area are based on a divine promise recorded in the Old Testament of the Christian bible and the Pentateuch of Judaism. They are viewed by most practicing Christians as a bit strange and by most other folks as downright odd. As I was raised on backwoods fundamentalism, I will try to explain their position. For the sake of brevity, I will refer to them as ZCs.

First, let me say that the fundamentalist Christians I knew had no political aspirations and did not expect their faith to be rewarded with wealth and/or power. They were just trying to infuse some meaning into their lives - lives that were otherwise filled with poverty and hardship. The same could probably be said of most fundamentalists of all religions, the world over. The ZCs, on the other hand, probably have higher expectations.

To understand these beliefs, we need to look at the prophecies concerning the Millennium contained in Revelations, the last book of the Christian New Testament. A millennium, as you know, contains a thousand years but the Millennium refers to a thousand years of peace on earth, characterized by the brotherhood of man under the fatherhood of God. This era of peace is to be brought about by the return of Jesus (the Second Coming) to set up and run a world government, a theocracy.

According to the writer of Revelations, the Second Coming will be associated with the restoration of Israel. There is some disagreement among true believers as whether the restoration is to happen before the Second Coming as the premillennialists believe or afterwards as the postmillennialists argue.

The premillennialists believe that if they can manage to establish the necessary earthly conditions, the Second Coming will happen sooner. They also believe that those who labor in this effort will be rewarded, both materially and spiritually.

Postmillennialists believe that all these changes will take place after the Second Coming and will be established by the new world government. In general, they don’t agree with the idea that The End Is Near.

This explanation is not complete but I hope it will be helpful.
[L.F.]

ECOLOGY

The only way we can preserve the earth is to grant every living entity what it needs to thrive and take from it only what it can afford to give.

Water

An argument over control over the Nile has broken out between Egypt, which regards the world's longest river as its lifeblood, and the countries of sub-Saharan Africa, which complain that they are denied a fair share of its water. In the latest escalation in the dispute, which some observers believe could lead to a new conflict in east Africa, Tanzania has announced plans to build a 105-mile pipeline drawing water from Lake Victoria, which feeds the Nile. The project flouts a treaty giving Egypt a right of veto over any work that might threaten the flow of the river.

The Nile Water Agreement of 1929, granting Egypt the lion's share of the Nile waters, has been criticised by east African countries as a colonial relic. Under the treaty, Egypt is guaranteed access to 55.5 billion cubic metres of water, out of a total of 84 billion cubic metres [Egypt gets 2/3 of the water].

The Nile treaty, which Britain signed on behalf of its east African colonies, forbids any projects that could threaten the volume of water reaching Egypt. The agreement also gives Cairo the right to inspect the entire length of the Nile.

It has been gravely resented by east African countries since they won their independence. Kenya and Tanzania suffer recurrent droughts caused by inadequate rainfall, deforestation and soil erosion. The proposed Lake Victoria pipeline is expected to benefit more than 400,000 people in towns and villages in the arid northwest of Tanzania.

The Nile, which is over 4,000 miles long, is fed by the White Nile, flowing from Lake Victoria, and the Blue Nile, flowing from Ethiopia. An estimated 160 million people in 10 countries depend on the river and its tributaries for their livelihoods. Within the next 25 years, the population in the Nile basin is expected to double, and there is a growing demand to harness the river for agricultural and industrial development.

The Ugandan commentator Charles Onyango-Obbo wrote recently: "Egypt can't enjoy the benefits of having access to the sea, while blocking a landlocked country like Uganda from profiting from the fact that it sits at the source of the Nile."

While east African countries are eager to make greater use of the river, Egypt fears any threat to its lifeblood. Most of Egypt's population lives in the Nile valley - on 4% of the country's land - and any fall in the water level could be disastrous.

The Nile treaty was drawn up at a time when Egypt was a British satellite, regarded as strategically crucial by London because of the Suez Canal, which controlled access to India. The agreement is now in effect enforced by international donors, who are reluctant to advance funds for major river projects that will upset Egypt, a key Arab ally of the US in the Middle East. Sub-Saharan countries cannot match Egypt's diplomatic clout, but they face a dilemma as a major untapped resource rolls through their territories.

"We have reached a stage where all the Nile basin countries are confronted by domestic development challenges," said Halifa Drammeh, a deputy director of the United Nations environment programme. "How many people have access to safe water? How many have access to sanitation? There is a tremendous pressure on these governments to sustain the needs of their populations, and to raise their standard of living. After all, there is nothing we can do in life without water. Wherever there is sharing, there is potential for conflict."

Work is due to begin on Tanzania's pipeline project next month, and it is due to be finished late next year. The Tanzanian government has said the pipeline is not intended for irrigation, which requires large quantities of water, but for domestic use and livestock. It will initially benefit more than 400,000 people, but this number is expected to rise above 900,000 in the next two decades.

Kenya plans a conference of the Nile basin countries in March to seek a peaceful solution to the dispute. [Jeevan Vasagar, The Guardian (London), February 13, 2004. Contributed by P.E.N., Colchester, England, UK.]

Soil

Erosion of topsoil - already a serious problem in Australia, China and parts of the US - threatens modern civilisation as surely as it menaced societies long since vanished, researchers warned yesterday.

Jared Diamond, a physiologist at University of California Los Angeles and author of Guns, Germs and Steel, told the AAAS yesterday that Iraq, part of the Fertile Crescent in which agriculture started 10,000 years ago, was once the wealthiest, most innovative, most advanced country in the world.

But today it is a "basket case", mainly because of "soil problems, salinisation, and erosion, coupled with problems of deforestation".

Although more than 99% of the world's food comes from the soil, experts estimate that each year more than 10 million hectares (25 million acres) of crop land are degraded or lost as rain and wind sweep away topsoil. An area big enough to feed Europe - 300 million hectares, about 10 times the size of the UK - has been so severely degraded it cannot produce food, according to UN figures.

In many places, soil is being lost far faster than it can be naturally regenerated.

Attempts to irrigate arid lands have produced soils so salty that nothing will grow.

One speaker, Ward Chesworth of the University of Guelph, Ontario, told the conference that farming had produced an "agricultural scar" on the planet that affected a third of all suitable soils.

Societies in the past had collapsed or disappeared because of soil problems. Easter Island in the Pacific was a famous example, Prof. Diamond said. Ninety per cent of the people died because of deforestation, erosion and soil depletion.

"Society ended up in cannibalism, the government was overthrown and people began pulling down each other's statues, so that is pretty serious. In another example, Pitcairn and Henderson island in the south-east Pacific, everybody ended up dead. Another example was Mayan civilisation in the Yucatan peninsula of Mexico and Guatemala. Again, people survived but about 90% of the population was lost," he said. Other examples include Iceland, where about 50% of the soil ended up in the sea. Icelandic society survived only through a drastically lower standard of living.

The media focuses on fossil fuel problems, climate change, biodiversity, logging and forest fires, but not on the soil because it is less spectacular.

"There are about a dozen major environmental problems, all of them sufficiently serious that if we solved 11 of them and didn't solve the 12th, whatever that 12th is, any could potentially do us in," he said. "Many of them have caused collapses of societies in the past, and soil problems are one of those dozen."
[Tim Radford, The Guardian, February 14, 2004. Contributed by P.E.N., Colchester, England, UK.]

Ecologically responsible in Australia

Aussie Honours were awarded recently and, as usual, the grossly overpaid sporting, entertainment, political, and business celebrities topped the list. Not ONE person who REALLY contributes something meaningful to society is ever recognized. On the contrary, such people are normally punished by the lowest of wages and face continuous official obstruction.

Outstanding people like Fred Hollows (an ophthalmologist who spent his life delivering eye care to poor people in Asia, Africa, and Australia) and the team that continues his work remain virtually unheard of. So many volunteer workers do such sterling and necessary activities that are simply taken for granted and remain hidden.

Obviously, I am not in the same class as these unrecognized heroes but I think I DO make a meaningful contribution to Australia and I certainly get severely punished financially for it.

The land area around my house is kept as natural as possible and the provision of reliable and plentiful water creates a wildlife sanctuary for a variety of animals and birds. The ground-fire threat is minimized by a few resident sheep, although feed has to be bought to sustain them from late summer into autumn. I get hammered for rates and land tax. Also, because pensions are “means tested” here, land in excess of 5 acres are deemed an asset and that reduces the pension I am paid. On the other hand, if I lived in a multi-million dollar mansion with 5 acres of sweeping river frontage, I could collect a FULL pension because my assets would be within limits. I am certain I’m helping to maintain and conserve natural Australian flora and fauna but my life is made difficult, instead of being assisted and appreciated.

The whole point now is - what happens when I wish to move? Selling it on condition that it remains a sanctuary will probably make the land almost worthless.

Perhaps a conservation group would be interested by how can I be certain that ANY buyer won’t find a way of flouting such an agreement and skim off the a substantial profit by reselling to a developer? If I accept the maximum amount from such an agent, how will my conscience react at the thought of all the wildlife that have found safety and have made their homes here? This is my dilemma. Living within capitalism means the destruction, not only of nature but also of all morals. [Gogglesworth, Australia.]

This and that

What with all the governmental problems in Washington DC, maybe it’s time to take drastic action. Fumigation would seem unwise: Too many unaffected vermin. Only one option remains, abandoning everyone and everything in the nation’s capital and re-opening a new seat of government in a big wheat field somewhere in the heart of Kansas, in the middle of the contiguous 48 states.

Right - the new capital would be a planned community. Sure, Washington DC once was, too. But that design is now 200 years out of date. With a new community, adequate public transportation could be devised and private transportation forbidden. Pollution of all kinds could be prevented and crime eliminated.

What’s more, the three present-day major elements of national government - bureaucracy lobbyists, and regulatory agencies - could be centrally housed in new government buildings all close together. Then the three minor division of federal government - congress, presidency, and supreme court - could be positioned to more accurately reflect their ineffectiveness in governing our country’s affairs today, in buildings on the periphery of the city.

Personnel in the Kansas wheat field filling government posts would be new staff. When Washington is abandoned, all current congresspersons, senators, president and minions, judges at all federal levels, regulators, bureaucrats, lobbyists, etc. will be left behind.

Moreover, all financial liabilities of the federal government, like the national debt, would be left in Washington, too. The new seat of government, in the wheat, would be totally unencumbered financially.

Wealthy individuals holding government IOUs, such as T-bills and bonds, wouldn’t be left empty-handed, however. They would be given, in a fair exchange for their securities, ownership of all old government properties and structures. They could divide all of that amongst themselves.

It might be a most profitable idea for those new owners of Washington’s government properties to become partners with some big entertainment firm. Together, they could convert the old city into one huge theme park, “Government Land of the Past.” The cast of characters, president and senators and federal judges, would still be occupying their old places of business. So there’d be no lack of park employees.

People from all over the country would come to see this new attraction and possibly spend their summers and fortunes there in order to view everything the park had to offer. The old FBI could provide security, the IRS could oversee ticket sales and accounting, and the US Navy could conduct boat rides in the Reflecting Pool and on the Potomac.

The investors might consider, as an alternative approach, joining forces with major players from the gambling community of Las Vegas Atlantic City. Merv Griffin or Donald Trump might become downright ecstatic about adding Washington to his portfolio as the next major gambling Mecca.

Slot machines could be installed in the old White House, roulette wheels in the halls of congress, and bingo games nightly in the supreme court would really bring in high rolling citizens from the 50 states. Except for the gambling entrepreneurs from other cities, who could object to such a plan?

But whichever plan those investors choose, the new seat of federal government would be a-building in Kansas. Of course, the new government would incorporate several changes from the current scene. Instead of a rose garden next to the presidential mansion, a small but tidy acre of prairie grass might be more appropriate. Instead of the Washington Monument, a large government silo could be erected. It could be emblazoned, of course, with patriotic slogans. And as for congress, a pig sty might be most appropriate. The supreme court could have a pole barn close to the silo for shade. These distinguished jurists will need their sleep on hot summer Kansas afternoons!
[James Sullivan, Indiana, USA]

Bad news from Swaziland

It is a grim and awful title, and now Swaziland holds it: the country with the world’s highest rate of HIV-AIDS infection. Swaziland’s latest national survey of AIDS infection in adults found a rate of 38.6%. A recent UNICEF survey found rates as high as 49.5% in some areas for women ages 19 to 30. Swaziland’s infection rate tops that of Botswana, which previously held the dubious title with an infection rate of 37.5%. At least 200,000 adults among Swaziland’s one million citizens are infected with the virus. [Toronto Globe and Mail, March 25, 2004.]

[The HIV infection rate in the US is estimated to be about 2 out of every thousand people, or 2.4 out of every 1000 adults. Healthcare professionals emphasize, however, that this estimate might be low. L.F.]

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