[Mb-civic] Mb-civic Digest, Vol 21, Issue 80

Mon Mar 13 14:45:55 PST 2006

No way starting at 5. Between 4:30 and 6 we are the busiest.  Starting at 6, we could it. And they could work in 3 different areas of the clinic to avoid interfernce.  Let me know?

Sent wirelessly via BlackBerry from T-Mobile.

-----Original Message-----
From: mb-civic-request at islandlists.com
Date: Mon, 13 Mar 2006 12:00:05 
To:mb-civic at islandlists.com
Subject: Mb-civic Digest, Vol 21, Issue 80

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Today's Topics:

   1. Headlines for March 13, 2006 (mblaxill at yahoo.com)
   2. Story from Palm Beach Daily News (HS)
   3. Excellent: Why Civilizations Decline (Linda Hassler)
   4. jury duty and identity theft (IHHS at aol.com)

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

Message: 1
Date: 13 Mar 2006 16:12:51 -0000
From: mblaxill at yahoo.com
Subject: [Mb-civic] Headlines for March 13, 2006
To: mb-civic at islandlists.com
Message-ID: <20060313161251.17009.qmail at trinity.democracynow.org>
Content-Type: text/plain

Mike Blaxill  ( mblaxill at yahoo.com )
sent you this story from democracynow.org

+--------------------------------------------------------------------+
|  Headlines for March 13, 2006
|  http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/03/13/1429225
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+

- Kidnapped Peace Activist Tom Fox Found Dead in Iraq-
Michele Bachelet Becomes First Female Chilean President -
80 Die in Violence on Sunday in Iraq-
Elite UK Soldier Refuses to Fight w/ U.S. in Iraq- Sen. Feingold to Introduce Resolution to Censure Bush-
Charges Droppsed Against U.S. Troops in Jose Couso Killing- 
State Department Expands Iranian Operations-
Report: Donald Rumsfeld Makes $5M on Stock of Tamiflu Company-
U. of Miami Janitors Enter Second Week on Strike-
Latino War Resisters Begin 241-Mile March For Peace
This story continues at: 
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/03/13/1429225

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

Message: 2
Date: Mon, 13 Mar 2006 12:08:44 -0500 (EST)
From: HS <harry.sifton at sympatico.ca>
Subject: [Mb-civic] Story from Palm Beach Daily News
To: Mb Civic <mb-civic at islandlists.com>
Message-ID: <200603131708.k2DH8iI19931 at apache53.iad.cimedia.net>

http://backend-palmbeachdailynews.iad.cimedia.net(none)

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

Message: 3
Date: Mon, 13 Mar 2006 13:20:18 -0600
From: Linda Hassler <lindahassler at sbcglobal.net>
Subject: [Mb-civic] Excellent: Why Civilizations Decline
To: CIVIC <MB-Civic at islandlists.com>, HAIR mail-list
    <mb-hair at islandemail.com>
Message-ID: <41843c17411a7f3a7a8f19a1ce5c3ff6 at sbcglobal.net>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed

 From Linda Hassler

WHY CIVILIZATIONS DECLINE

By Peter Montague

The year 2005 began with an interesting choice by the editors of the
New York Times -- the first op ed of the year was a long essay by
Jared Diamond called "The ends of the world as we know them."
Diamond won the Pulitzer prize for his non-fiction book, "Guns,
Germs, and Steel" and later in 2005 he published "Collapse; How
Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed."

Diamond's op-ed offers an analysis of why civilizations collapse. It
is an essay obviously intended to make us ask, "Does our civilization
have what it takes to survive?" In the opening paragraph he says, "In
this fresh year, with the United States seemingly at the height of its
power and at the start of a new presidential term, Americans are
increasingly concerned and divided about where we are going. How long
can America remain ascendant? Where will we stand 10 years from now,
or even next year?"

Diamond goes on: "Such questions seem especially appropriate this
year. History warns us that when once-powerful societies collapse,
they tend to do so quickly and unexpectedly. That shouldn't come as
much of a surprise: peak power usually means peak population, peak
needs, and hence peak vulnerability. What can be learned from history
that could help us avoid joining the ranks of those who declined
swiftly?"

Diamond tells the stories of a few past civilizations that collapsed
and rapidly disappeared -- the Maya of the Yucatan Peninsula in
Mexico; the Polynesian societies on Henderson and Pitcairn islands
in the tropical Pacific Ocean; the Anasazi in the American
southwest; the ancient societies of the Fertile Crescent; the
Khmer at Angkor Wat; and the Moche society of Peru, among others.

Diamond then offers a long list of other societies that followed a
different trajectory and survived for very long periods in Japan,
Tonga, Tikopia, the New Guinea Highlands, and Central and
Northwest Europe, among others. So collapse is not inevitable.
Collapse is the result of choices.

Diamond asserts that collapse results from 5 inter-woven factors:

1. The damage that people have inflicted on their environment;

2. Climate change;

3. Enemies;

4. Changes in friendly trading partners;

5. Society's political, economic, and social responses to those
shifts.

After telling the stories of particular societies that collapsed or
prospered, Diamond asks pointedly, "What lessons can we draw from
history?"

Take environmental problems seriously

He answers bluntly: "The most straightforward [lesson from history]:
take environmental problems seriously. They destroyed societies in the
past, and they are even more likely to do so now. If 6,000 Polynesians
with stone tools were able to destroy Mangareva Island, consider
what six billion people with metal tools and bulldozers are doing
today. Moreover, while the Maya collapse affected just a few
neighboring societies in Central America, globalization now means that
any society's problems have the potential to affect anyone else. Just
think how crises in Somalia, Afghanistan and Iraq have shaped
the United States today."

The second reasons for collapse is "failure of group decision-making."

Diamond then offers three kinds of failure of decision-making:

Decision-making failure #1: "One reason involves conflicts of
interest, whereby one group within a society (for instance, the pig
farmers who caused the worst erosion in medieval Greenland and
Iceland) can profit by engaging in practices that damage the rest of
society," Diamond writes.

Examples of this in contemporary society might include

** The petrochemical industry that reaps mountainous profits by
selling products that are heating up the planet, contaminating our
bodies with biologically-active industrial poisons, and leaving tens
of thousands of chemically-contaminated waste sites for taxpayers to
try to deal with.

** Another example might be the tobacco industry that is now hawking
its cancer-causing wares to unsuspecting children world-wide.

This list could be readily extended because the U.S. pays only lip
service to the important principle that "the polluter shall pay."
More often than not, in the U.S. the polluter is subsidized by the
federal government to evade paying.

Decision-making failure #2: "... [T]he pursuit of short-term gains at
the expense of long-term survival, as when fishermen overfish the
stocks on which their livelihoods ultimately depend."

** We might include in this category, unsustainable logging practices;
industrialized agriculture, which depletes topsoil and contaminates
water with fertilizer and pesticides; and waste-treatment plants that
discharge wastes into waters that must then be cleaned for drinking
and other essential purposes.

Decision failure #3: "History also teaches us two deeper lessons about
what separates successful societies from those heading toward
failure."

Deep lesson #1: "A society contains a built-in blueprint for failure
if the elite insulates itself from the consequences of its actions."

** With 10% of the U.S. population owning 71% of all private wealth,
we do not have to look far to see this principle at work in the U.S.

-- The Walmartization of the economy is one example -- getting rid
of good, family-sustaining jobs and substituting low-wage jobs with no
benefits and no job security. This does not hurt the 10%, but
ultimately it weakens the social fabric that sustains the other 90% of
us.

-- The privatization of public services is another example --
depleting the ranks of the civil service that provides continuity and
expertise to government from one administration to the next. The firms
that run the private prisons, the privatized public schools, the
private water-supplies, the private highways, the privatized
environmental services -- those firms can make out like bandits but
the rest of us stand by helplessly as the capacity of our governmental
institutions withers and our common wealth disappears.

-- The refusal to provide pensions for workers would be a third
example -- when a Reagan-appointed judge allows United Airlines to
walk away from its pension obligations, it's good for the company's
bottom line, and other firms quickly follow suit. Renouncing pension
responsibilities is now epidemic. Meanwhile, government -- dominated
as it is by the 10% -- is working mightily to cut back Medicare and
Medicaid. The 10% do not have to ask who will care for them in their
old age, but the other 90% of us do and for many the answer is nothing
but an empty question mark.

Deep lesson #2: "The other deep lesson involves a willingness to re-
examine long-held core values, when conditions change and those values
no longer make sense."

Here, Jared Diamond provides his own examples of the U.S. clinging to
dangerously outmoded ideas:

"In this New Year, we Americans have our own painful reappraisals to
face. Historically, we viewed the United States as a land of unlimited
plenty, and so we practiced unrestrained consumerism, but that's no
longer viable in a world of finite resources. We can't continue to
deplete our own resources as well as those of much of the rest of the
world.

"Historically, oceans protected us from external threats; we stepped
back from our isolationism only temporarily during the crises of two
world wars. Now, technology and global interconnectedness have robbed
us of our protection. In recent years, we have responded to foreign
threats largely by seeking short-term military solutions at the last
minute.

"But how long can we keep this up? Though we are the richest nation on
earth, there's simply no way we can afford (or muster the troops) to
intervene in the dozens of countries where emerging threats lurk --
particularly when each intervention these days can cost more than $100
billion and require more than 100,000 troops. [The Iraq war has cost
the U.S. $244 billion so far, with no end in sight.--PM]

"A genuine reappraisal would require us to recognize that it will be
far less expensive and far more effective to address the underlying
problems of public health, population and environment that ultimately
cause threats to us to emerge in poor countries. In the past, we have
regarded foreign aid as either charity or as buying support; now, it's
an act of self-interest to preserve our own economy and protect
American lives."

To me the most important point in Jared Diamond's essay is this one:

"A society contains a built-in blueprint for failure if the elite
insulates itself from the consequences of its actions." This is surely
the case in the United States today.

The remedy for this problem is more democratic decision-making.
Decisions should be made with real participation by the people who
will be affected. (For information about how this is working now
in some places, see here and here).

If this simple principle were practised to a greater extent that it is
today, most of the problems that threaten our civilization could be
reversed or considerably diminished. On the other hand, if we continue
to allow a tiny elite to manage the economy and run the government for
their own narrow, selfish purposes, the outlook for long-term success
is dim.

==============

Jared Diamond is the author of The Third Chimpanzee; The Evolution and
the Future of the Human Animal (N.Y. Harper Perennial, 1992; ISBN
0060183071); Guns, Germs and Steel (N.Y.: W.W. Norton, 1999; ISBN
0393317552); and Collapse; How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed
(N.Y. Penguin, 2005; ISBN 0670033375).

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

From: New York Times, Feb. 21, 2006

------ End of Forwarded Message

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

Message: 4
Date: Mon, 13 Mar 2006 09:55:03 EST
From: IHHS at aol.com
Subject: [Mb-civic] jury duty and identity theft
To: IHHS at aol.com
Message-ID: <E1FIswc-000714-LC at smtpauth04.mail.atl.earthlink.net>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

snopes verifies this

Subject: Fraud involving jury service

Most of us  take those summons for jury duty seriously, but enough people 
skip out on their  civic duty, that a new and ominous kind of scam has surfaced. 
Fall for it and  your identity could be stolen, reports CBS news. 

In this con, someone  calls pretending to be a court official who 
threateningly says a warrant has  been issued for your arrest because you didn't show up 
for jury duty. The caller  claims to be a jury coordinator. 

If you protest that you never received  a summons for jury duty, the scammer! 
asks you for your Social Security number  and date of birth so he or she can 
verify the information and cancel the arrest  warrant. Sometimes they even ask 
for credit card numbers. Give out any of this  information and bingo! Your 
identity just got stolen. 

The scam has been  reported so far in 11 states, including Oklahoma, 
Illinois, and  Colorado. 

This (scam) is particularly insidious because they use  intimidation over the 
phone to try and bully people into giving information by  pretending they're 
with the court system. 

The FBI and the federal court  system have issued nationwide alerts on their 
websites, warning consumers about  the fraud. 

This link takes you to a related notice on the FBI website.  
http://www.fbi.gov/majcases/fraud/fraudschemes.htm

>From  the FBI site 
Press  Release

For Immediate  Release
September 28,  2005
Washington  D.C.
FBI  National Press Office
(202)  324-3691
TELEPHONE FRAUD INVOLVING JURY  DUTY 
Washington,  D.C. - The FBI  today is providing a warning to the public 
against an ongoing scheme  involving jury service. The public needs to be aware 
that individuals  identifying themselves as U.S. court employees have been 
telephonically  contacting citizens and advising them that they have been selected 
for  jury duty. These individuals ask to verify names and Social Security  
numbers, then ask for credit card numbers. If the request is refused,  citizens 
are then threatened with fines.  
The judicial system does not contact  people telephonically and ask for 
personal information such as your Social  Security number, date of birth or credit 
card numbers. If you receive one  of these phone calls, do not provide any 
personal or confidential  information to these individuals. This is an attempt to 
steal or to use  your identity by obtaining your name, Social Security number 
and  potentially to apply for credit or credit cards or other loans in your  
name. It is an attempt to defraud you.  
If you have already been contacted  and have already given out your personal 
information, please monitor your  account statements and credit reports, and 
contact your local FBI office.  Local FBI field office telephone numbers can be 
found in the front of your  local telephone directory or on _www.fbi.gov_ 
(http://www.fbi.gov/) . For further information,  please review the warnings 
posted on the U.S. Courts website at _www.uscourts.gov_ (http://www.uscourts.gov/) 
, "Newsroom" news  article "WARNING: Bogus Phone Calls on Jury Service May 
lead to Fraud,"  August 19, 2005.   

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