The following is an update from Suzanne Taylor and TheConversation.org Making Sense of These Times [http://www.theconversation.org] Website. Thank you for your interest. If you wish to be removed from this list at any time, just let us know.________________________________________August 16, 2002The "Not in My Name" statement that we previously posted is going to run in newspapers, and as someone who signed onto it I was solicited to contribute money. I've posted the exchange I'm having with their organization, which I think has an important point to make about a troublesome sentence in the statement, at http://www.theconversation.org/wontdeny.html#conv.________________________________________CROP CIRCLE DIARY ENTRIES:8/14/02Hoaxers are the terrorists of the crop circle community, trying to dispel any belief humanity might have in the circles being of non-human origin. This has pushed the researchers to become more convincing about how the phenomenon cannot be done by people. In this email, Stanley Messenger [http://www.isleofavalon.co.uk/messenger.html], the elder sage of the English crop circle world, makes good points:Dear Suzanne,
It's really good to read your stuff as often as it comes. This material, especially Walter Starck's contribution [http://www.theconversation.org/c-walterstarck.html], is immensely encouraging to the crop-circle community here.
Where do those of us on our side of the credibility divide really now stand?
First of all there is the whole issue of the increasing complexity of the formations, both texturally and mathematically. As has been pointed out, at least some of those who make the most vociferous claims of authorship are not, when it comes down to it, all that intelligent, precisely on the levels which would be needed to cope with the increasing mathematical intricacy of at least some of the later formations.
Then there is the sheer engineering skill required to manipulate growing corn, sometimes on three levels of overlay, and interwoven sometimes with the intricacy of corn-dolly weaving. All this has to be done without breaking stalks and moreover contriving to bend them at the nodes as if you were simulating biological tropisms like photo- and geotropism, the forces which cause plants to follow light and gravity in their growth. In simpler language, you literally have to GROW them into the necessary complexity of form.
These are not achievements that can be met with the simple tools people currently suppose they claim to be using -- planks and string and garden rollers.8/15/02
Tom Sutter, one of the Americans on the listserve I run for crop circle researchers, has some fascinating ideas about the scientific information they are giving us. He's just posted everything at http://imageevent.com/cropcirclerational/cropcirclesdecoded. When I passed it along to Palden Jenkins [www.palden.jenkins.btinternet.co.uk], English croppie extraordinaire, he had this to say:
Interesting to see someone free-style theorising about crop formations. Croppies are so nervous about being criticised and caught out that they fail to do such things. I wish croppies would come to understand the enormous price they incur on themselves and the croppie movement as a whole by being dictated to by sceptics. But there we go. Thanks for pointing me to this link. ________________________________________COLUMN FROM ARIANNA HUFFINGTON: A Democracy On Corporate Autopilot -- August 8, 2002Suzanne's comments: Arianna doesn't give our squirming government anyplace to hide. In this column, she's not settling for the government's pseudo fixes of the corporate morass. I emailed her my two cents to cheer her on: "Arianna, as you and some other dogged compatriots keep at it, methinks that is how the tide will turn. Even though we tear our hair, I think it is in the natural progression for the entrenchment to give way slowly -- and then, as in that inspirational report from Howard Zinn about the trial of the Camden 28 [http://www.theconversation.org/break-in.html], all of a sudden the old collapses and it's a new game. I can just feel your relentlessness paying off in the end."Other quotes drawn from the column:...the corporate crimes we've been so sickened by are only symptoms of a much larger -- and more insidious -- crisis. In a bloodless coup, our government by, for and of the people has been replaced by the dictatorship of the corporate dollar.
...for all his get-tough promises -- "No more easy money for corporate criminals, just hard time" -- this [Sarbanes-Oxley] bill would actually do very little to change the level of corporate influence over our government.
...corporate lobbyists actually succeeded in fighting off a whole slew of potential reforms: stock options still don't have to be treated as a business expense, offshore tax havens are still allowed, and there's been no pension fund reform...industry lobbyists were able to water down many of the provisions that actually made it into the bill, including those affecting the ability of accounting firms to offer consulting services to the companies they audit.
...down payment on preferential public policy has extended across party lines, with $636 million going to Republicans and $449 million to Democrats. Yet Al Gore, in his New York Times j'accuse, still had the gall to lay the blame for the current threat to "the future of democratic capitalism" squarely at the feet of Republicans "bankrolled by a new generation of special interests." What utter claptrap.
What makes the ongoing corporate crime wave not just a business scandal but a political one, is precisely the fact that there is simply no consistent institutional opposition to the corporate take-over of our politics -- certainly not from the Democratic Party.COLUMN FROM ARIANNA HUFFINGTON: Redefining The Bottom Line: The Coming Corporate Revolution? -- August 12, 2002Suzanne's comments: After Arianna brandishes her rapier, she opens a new door, pointing to the now well-developed socially conscious underground in the business community. Maybe this is a signal that presages more attention being paid to those heroic entrepreneurs who try to help others re-evaluate what's on the bottom line. "Yes, stock price is important, say Triple Bottom Liners, but so is how you treat your workers, the effect you're having on the environment, and whether the McNuggets you sell are made from chickens raised in deplorable conditions."Other quotes drawn from the column:Citigroup will no longer provide financing to companies that conceal debt from shareholders. In other words: it's no longer going to aid and abet the fraudulent acts of corporate crooks. How noble...I guess we're living at a time when "Big Corporation Announces It Will Do The Right Thing" really is news.
But while the media are focusing on these belated corporate mea culpas, there's a truly important movement among American companies that is hardly getting any attention.
More than a hundred companies in America are seeking to redefine the bottom line -- moving away from conventional corporate accounting, where the only consideration is profit, to one that also includes the social and environmental impact the company is having. It's called the Triple Bottom Line.
...most importantly, the public has to keep the heat on. We can't settle for companies like Citigroup promising to no longer help corporate crooks intent on fleecing us.
Demanding that companies stop being bad is not enough. We have to demand that they start being good. That has to be our bottom line on corporate reform.________________________________________COLUMN FROM GEOV PARRISH: The Land of the Hunted -- August 12, 2002Suzanne's comments: Geov is eloquent about the unspeakableness of waging war on Iraq. This piece is a battle cry against trading in violence not only by the administration, but by the power structure at large. "We have now a political leadership that is corrupt beyond all measure, in bed with the predators that have been stealing our savings as well as our democracy—a leadership that has been shredding, in the process, the guarantees of personal liberty that many, many Americans take very seriously (and rightly so). And, not incidentally, it's also a leadership frightfully willing to use its military might to commit mass murder at the drop of a hat, for what can only be viewed as selfish political and economic purposes."Other quotes drawn from the column:...newscasts have been in their element over the last year. For twelve months we've been besieged, all of us, by predators: hate-filled terrorists living in caves, evil priests molesting our kids, corporate criminals stealing our savings, and most recently, a particular obsession with child kidnappings...
After a year of extraordinary horrors, opponents of a U.S. invasion of Iraq are now faced with the prospect of trying to get a numbed and skittish public to pressure its government into not launching a unilateral, groundless, one-sided "war" that would almost certainly amount to a massacre...
Saddam Hussein has never, by and large, been a predator that posed a threat to Americans. Lone wolves might eat sheep, but they rarely attack, let alone eat, elephants...we, as the elephant, are proposing the obliteration of not only Saddam but those other 40 million creatures in his country...in the kind of war America (and most other militaries these days) fights, the targets are civilian. A lot of them will die before a hair of Saddam's mustache is even disturbed...________________________________________If you are receiving this newsletter from a third party, you can sign up
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