GlobeNews 1/2001 | NEW WORLD NEWS | Vol.3, No.1 Global citizen! Keep on top of events worldwide: politics, travel, society, environment, technology. Not your nine o'clock news. GlobeNews! TABLE OF CONTENTS ---------------------------- HELP PROTECT ARCTIC REFUGE WITH FREE CALL AGREEMENT WILL CUT TOXINS WORLDWIDE REAL WORLD NEWS SITES INTERNET BOUNDARIES STEWART BRAND AND THE LONG NOW USA HAS NEW WORLD ORDER WEAPONS SHOPPING LIST TO AVOID FRANKENFOODS ================== MAKE A DIFFERENCE ================== HELP PROTECT ARCTIC REFUGE WITH FREE CALL ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Until January 20, 2001 we have the opportunity to help protect a national treasure, the ARCTIC NATIONAL WILDLIFE REFUGE, for future generations. Use the TOLL FREE number, 1-888-750-4897, to make your voice heard! Make a difference! It's easy! Simply let the White House operator know that you want President Clinton to protect the Arctic Refuge as a national monument. Clinton has the executive right to provide NATIONAL MONUMENT STATUS to the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. We need your help to urge the President to take this historic action. January 3, 2001 was Arctic Monument Nationwide Call-In Day. Thousands of supporters called the White House to voice their support for the Arctic Wildlife National Monument. Nou YOU can call - and ask your friends and colleagues to make the call as well. Why? The coastal plain of the Arctic Refuge is the biological heart of the last unspoiled Arctic ecosystem in North America. Polar bears den on these coastal lands while 130,000 Porcupine River caribou travel hundreds of miles each year to the coastal plain, where they deliver their young. Grizzly bears, musk oxen, wolves, golden eagles and tundra swans all call this unique place home for at least part of the year. The Gwich'in Indians call this area "the sacred place where life begins." ============== THE GOOD NEWS ============== AGREEMENT WILL CUT TOXINS WORLDWIDE ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Representatives of 122 nations recently decided to ban or greatly reduce use of 12 of the world's most toxic pollutants, or the "dirty dozen": pesticides like aldrin and chlordane, chemicals used in manufacturing, and industrial byproducts like dioxins and furans. The treaty regulates the production, import, export, disposal and use of the initial 12 substances, and nine are to be banned immediately. ===================== NEW GLOBALCOM RATES ===================== 2001 has barely begun and GLOBALCOM already has great new LONG DISTANCE RATES! Check out the new VOICENET "PRECISION" and "POWER" CALLING PLANS for the USA! How does this sound: * 4.9¢ per minute state to state * 9.9¢ per minute domestic calling card calls (from any phone!) * NO MONTHLY FEE - only a 5$ monthly minimum usage! Lots lots more telecommunication tidbits are at: http://www.kahl.net/global ========== GLOBESITES ========== REAL WORLD NEWS SITES ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Looking for websites with real news from around the world? Try these on for size: Stratfor.com Global Intelligence: http://www.stratfor.com/ WebActive Radio News Online: http://www.webactive.com/ OneWorld communicates the big picture: http://www.oneworld.org/ Inter Press Service: http://www.link.no/IPS/ World Press Review Magazine: http://www.worldpress.org/ ----------------------------------------- SALE AT RADIKAHL GEARSTORE! ----------------------------------------- CELEBRATE 2001 WITH 15% OFF! INCREDIBLE DEALS! HOW INCREDIBLE? HOW ABOUT: 1) Canon BJC-2100 Color Inkjet Printer with Bonus Printer Cable ONLY $27.96 2) Refurbished Agfa Snapscan Touch USB Scanner ONLY $38.24 3) Original Razor Scooter $67.99 Just use this code: C3F6A Visit the RadiKahl GearStore: http://www.kahl.net/camping/ ========= GlobeNews ========= INTERNET BOUNDARIES ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ As borderless as the Internet may be, Yahoo! is willing to sacrifice the idea for a shot at Webcasting the Olympics. Broadcasting rights to the Games and other events are typically sold regionally. To win rights, online businesses like Yahoo! are looking to break the Net into regions. Existing Internet addressing schemes allow Websites to pinpoint a visitor's geographical location and thus block out surfers from certain countries. Though hardly 100 percent effective, Yahoo!'s Antonucci says, "the technology is basically here." As nations assert their legal and cultural norms on their piece of the planet, efforts to divide the Net into separate sovereignties could become increasingly popular. A Paris court recently ordered California-based Yahoo! to prevent French Internet users from seeing Nazi paraphernalia on its auction pages. China, meanwhile, has threatened to create a separate network of Chinese sites. The result could split the World Wide Web into regional virtual fiefdoms where you've got to show your ID at the door. The free exchange of ideas could be inhibited by governments intent on blocking materials posted on foreign sites, or by Web sites trying to restrict distribution of specific content. The most popular method for location detection uses the same technology that locates websites, called REVERSE INTERNET PROTOCOL LOOKUP: A Web site tries to determine users' locations by checking their numeric return addresses, or IP addresses, against databases that list their service providers. Thus, an address that begins with "24.92" is likely from a Time Warner cable system in the United States. Addresses starting with "161.23" are assigned to the London Hospital Medical College. The technique has its loopholes. A French user could make a phone call to the United States to access a U.S. service provider, such as Earthlink. >From the Internet's point of view, that computer would appear to be in the United States. In addition, anonymizing services like anonymizer.com allow users to hide their location. Reverse lookup tracks users' ISPs, not their own computers. A New York-based company, for instance, may register all addresses in New York, though some computers on its networks are in Tokyo, London and other branch offices. If people find they are blocked, they can work around it easily. Still, companies like InfoSplit and NetGeo are developing ways to improve accuracy, down to the ZIP code or city in the United States. Location detection will improve with wireless devices that link with global-positioning satellites, or with high-speed broadband networks that prohibit long-distance phoning. Some Web sites already use location detection for targeting advertisements geographically -- and to reduce Net congestion by steering visitors to servers closer to them that "mirror" the original site's content. One day, U.S. states might adapt a refined reverse lookup to collect sales taxes. Will these boundaries destroy the net? Or will information find a way to circumvent such boundaries? [Source: SF Examiner] Check out the Border Control site: http://www.bordercontrol.com/ ============= FUTURE IS NOW ============= STEWART BRAND AND THE LONG NOW ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Stewart Brand is like the yellow brick road leading to The Next Big Thing. A blinking neon arrow pointing the way: This is It, folks! This is What's Happening! Brand organized the 1966 Trips Festival in San Francisco, the three-day coming-out party that loosed hippies and psychedelics upon the world at large. Brand realized that PHOTOS OF THE EARTH TAKEN FROM SPACE would change forever the way we view our relationship to the planet. He spent 1966 hawking buttons that read, "Why Haven't We Seen a Photograph of the Whole Earth Yet?" After the first photos were released, the ecology movement was born. Brand was on the cutting edge of the computer revolution as well. First in 1974 with his book, TWO CYBERNETIC FRONTIERS; next with the 1984 founding of the ONLINE COMMUNITY, THE WELL, and also that year, with the first annual hackers' conference. So pay attention when Brand takes on a major new project! Chances are good it'll be on everyone's lips in a year or two. His latest goal: CHANGING OUR RELATIONSHIP WITH TIME. It's all set out in his latest book, THE CLOCK OF THE LONG NOW. Technological changes are coming faster and faster, he says, while our attention spans are becoming shorter. Computer languages become obsolete so quickly that data stored 15 years ago is now inaccessible. We're no longer leaving tracks. To keep from getting hopelessly lost, we need to start looking at where we've been and where we're headed. We need to LENGTHEN OUR PERCEPTION OF NOW. Brand and a group of visionary thinkers have established the LONG NOW FOUNDATION. What we need, they say, is a symbol that will do for our sense of time what Whole Earth photos did for our sense of place something that wordlessly, experientially, instantly communicates the perception of a 10,000-year continuum. The symbol they've hit upon is an enormous clock, to be built inside a mountain somewhere in the Nevada desert, constructed to last 10,000 years and designed for maximum sensory impact on visitors. The mountain will also house a 10,000-year library, to keep the records of deep time. I met Brand at his office near the waterfront. The iconoclastic, acid-tripping Merry Prankster and disciplined, well-grounded Army lieutenant are equally evident in him. Have you encountered much nay saying yet on the Long Now project? Well, mostly it's been on the level of, "You're not really serious, are you?" That's surprising, considering your track record. Lots of people have no idea of track records. For some reason, I'm not sure why yet and I should be by now, the idea of the 10,000-year library is much more directly appealing to people [than the clock]. The clock is so clear and specific and focused and already under way - the prototype is already more than half-built. I can understand why people are more drawn to the library project than the clock. The library clearly would serve a certain function, whereas the clock is a little harder to grasp. And, as you say in the book, it might not achieve what you're hoping for. There's no way of knowing how it will be experienced in the future. It seems that the process of planning and construction will achieve your goal of lengthening people's view. But once it's built, who knows? Good point. Then it comes down to execution, I think. It's a wonderful clock at a wonderful location that people want to go to anyway. And it's got this context of giving information to think long-term and there's some aspect of a library right there that, as you say, has a quality of being very useful. Then it has a good chance of being a point of reference. And if it doesn't, then it'll just be an amazing thing in its own right. (chuckles) You know, as I was reading your description of the kinds of technological problems that we're headed for ”the Singularity, digital discontinuity” it reminded me of the story of the Sorcerer's Apprentice. Do you remember that story from Fantasia? Vividly. Remember how the pace was picking up and the music was going faster and faster Yes! It started out as a labor-saving device and it turned into a nightmare because he didn't have the knowledge to control his invention and he didn't have the wisdom to foresee the consequences of his actions. It seems like exactly the fix we're in now with computers. I'm fascinated by the reason you're doing this project. You want to change the way people think. Mm-hmm. To become comfortable thinking long-term. Comfortable stepping up to the real frame of a global civilization. We don't have global government and, in some ways, I hope we never do. But we do have a global economy. There's increasingly a global culture. And if the global civilization were to go down, you don't really have a backup. Unlike before, when, if Egypt went down, Greece was there to pick up the pieces. And global civilization probably needs to think in 10,000-year terms because that's what it takes to survive. And yet we've staked our survival on the opposite - on being able to think so fast that we're constantly on the cutting edge. Yup. Parts of a healthy civilization move very quickly and parts move very slowly. And you want that combination to have both adaptability and continuity. We're mastering speed and there's slow stuff that we're not tending to. Our relations with the natural environment is clearly a big one. One of the reasons we're getting financial support from people in high tech is that they're surfing that wave of accelerating technology and they do feel a realization that if everybody were surfing that wave, it's not a world they would really be comfortable in. They're looking for balance in their own lives. And they find it easy to project that balance would probably be useful to culture as a whole. There are natural things, like the Grand Canyon, or ancient trees, that offer people a long view of time. What can the clock offer that these things don't'? A good illustration of this is out at Muir Woods, where they've got a redwood tree slab that's cut and shows when Columbus landed, when the U.S. Constitution was signed, and people study these tree rings. And they get a little hit of the long now. It's a little time machine. There are museums like the Planetarium in SF that has a nice tall Foucault pendulum, 60 feet high. 7-year-old kids who are on a dead run through life and a dead run through the museum come screeching to a stop by this pendulum and watch it! There's a row of pegs, that have been knocked down and there's another peg that hasn't been knocked down yet and the pendulum is getting closer and closer to it. And they'll sit there for five minutes which is like five years in a 7-year-old's life - just to watch that [clicks tongue] peg get knocked down. So it's a visit to a different pace which fascinates even children. Both of those are the kind of experience potentially brought together in the clock. You have the sense of this big, slow, inexorable, implacable machine and it should make its case pretty plausible, that this can actually last 10,000 years. The cuckoo only comes out every 1,000 years. That's a bit long for anyone to sit around and wait for it to happen. One of our guidelines is "reward patience." Brian Eno is working on sound environments for the clock that basically reward you for being quiet. The clock will probably do a calculation twice a day, at noon and at midnight. And it's pretty interesting to watch. Adder rings rotate and you see them [makes rapid-fire tick-a-tick-a-tick-a-tick-a sound) making this calculation. So you can visit at noon and be there for the noon flash of sunlight that comes in and adjusts the clock. That'll be a little light show in its own right. At the moment of high noon, there's a flash of sunlight that resets the clock and it's gone. Be there or be square. And the clock is almost certainly going to be designed to ask people to wind it. Tell me about the Global Business Network. I was surprised to learn that some businesses are interested in working out long-term scenarios. They're interested in taking a 20-year view, which was heretical just a couple years ago. Because the experience was that forecasting turned out to be more distracting and misleading than useful. So they stopped doing long-term forecasting. Scenario thinking is a rigorous way of thinking 20 years into the future where you actually get a better strategy that's better both for the company and for the general environment because they take larger things into consideration. So, for example, education becomes really important to a company once they're thinking in 20-year terms. If the workers are not well educated, that presents a number of problems. The state of their industry matters a lot. The state of the region they're in matters a lot. For the corporation that's just going quarter-by-quarter, year-by-year, the region doesn't really impact as a serious concern. In 20-year terms, it does. The companies you hear more about are like Maxxam, mentioned in your book, who are just in it for the short term, to exploit the resources and get out. You got it. And that's as good a reason for governance as any I know: for government to just say, "You're not gonna do that. It's good for your immediate investors, but it's not good for the commonweal. It's not good for the loggers, it's not good for the region, it's not good for people who like trees, so stop what you're doing." So people like you need to be consulting with government. We do. GBN works for the government of Singapore. We've done work for Japan, we've worked for a number of branches of U.S. government including Energy, Defense, CIA. I love working with the Department of Defense because the senior officers there are some of the most intelligent and responsible people I've ever encountered. They think globally in many cases better than at the State Department, in my humble opinion. And their idea of a good war is no war at all. That's because they're not politicians? In part. They're not politicians, they're not corporate folks. And their careers are developed in a way that they're sent back for advanced degrees in this and that. If they're showing signs of being good material for Senior officers, they go back and get a Ph.D. in politics or business or history. And they get posted around the world. And most of them have been in and around combat and have a low opinion of that as a way to solve a problem. And they have to deal with long cycles. For example, a weapons system typically has a 30-year cycle. For airplanes like B-52s, it can be longer than that. So they're very interesting to work with. Typically, the [people at the] Pentagon are the ones to say, "Twenty years is too short. Let's do 50 years." I'd like to hear a little about the hackers conference you started. Hacking started out as a romantic and democratic idea, but these days I associate it with computer viruses. It never turned malevolent. It's benign as ever and the Internet is basically based on the hacker ethic. The great thing that's going on now is operating systems that are hacked together by an endless population of people making them free and better operating systems than, say, DOS. The hackers conference is alive and well. I'll be going up there in November. The malevolent part turned out to be largely a matter of interpretation. Some of the early hackers, phone freaks as they were called, were Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak. Before they sold computers they sold blue boxes. Yeah, I used to have one. There you go. That was both naughty and benign. But if they had been thrown in jail and the key thrown away, as many would like to do to system intruders, where would we be now? It would be 10 years later and a computer revolution. There are definitely malicious hackers. At the first hackers conference, the term "cracker" showed up, the malevolent hacker, somebody who cracks into a system, and that distinction has survived. And "hacker" is still kind of romantic, in the same way that Harley-Davidson is romantic. It's got an outlaw edge to it. It's part of why America keeps being ahead in the computer race. Because it gives a little more slack to that kind of outlaw behavior than your usual very strong, moralistic government would permit. So you're saying that an occasional virus is an acceptable price to pay for that kind of innovation? Yeah, that's probably not a bad way to put it. If a warring government with the United States decided to attack our computer systems, the front line of our defense would be hackers. Both ones paid by the government and ones paid by nobody at all. And this is well known in defense circles. Tell me about the buttons you made, "Why Haven't We Seen a Photograph of the Whole Earth Yet?" When you started that, did you know or intend for that to be a jumping-off point for the ecology movement? At the time, there wasn't much of an ecology movement They were called conservationists or something like that. And the young ones were opposed to the space program. The line was, we've got to fix Earth before we leave it. Except for Jacques Cousteau, who was flat-out all for it and very supportive and he said there's no other way to police the oceans except from orbit. And the New Left hated space except for Abbie Hoffman. So those were my two heroes from that period. So how did you get the idea for the buttons? It was a Buckminster Fuller spin-off. Fuller was saying, "People treat the Earth as if it's flat." In their minds, it's infinite. If they really understand that it's round and contained and there's only so much of it, it's an island, then they treat it much differently. So, on LSD on my rooftop in North Beach, I sort of saw the curve of the Earth. I was seeing Earth from a distance of three stories, so it was easy to imagine seeing Earth from a higher altitude and really getting the curve, and that it was finite. And that indeed seems to have been what happened when the Apollo photographs started to come back in 1969. In 1970, we had Earth Day, there is an ecology movement and it hasn't let up and it probably won't. And the clock hopes to step into that and carry it along. [Source: Jill Kramer] THE LONG NOW FOUNDATION http://www.longnow.org/ ORDER THE BOOK "The Clock of the Long Now": http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0465007805/kahlconsultants LOFTY ADVERTISEMENT: If you are also interested in space, astronomy and extraterrestrial news, subscribe to ASTRONEWS, another free newsletter from Kahl Consultants. Visit us: http://www.kahl.net/astro ============ !!GLOBALERT!! ============ USA HAS NEW WORLD ORDER WEAPONS ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The debate on global warming under UN auspices provides but a partial picture of climate change. In addition to the impacts of greenhouse gas emissions on the ozone layer, the World's climate can now be modified as part of a new generation of sophisticated "non-lethal weapons." Both the Americans and the Russians have developed capabilities to manipulate the World's climate. In the US, the technology is being perfected under the High-frequency Active Aural Research Program (HAARP) as part of the ("Star Wars") Strategic Defence Initiative (SDI). HAARP is a weapon of mass destruction that has the ability of potentially triggering floods, droughts, hurricanes and earthquakes. Potentially, it constitutes an instrument of conquest capable of selectively destabilising agricultural and ecological systems of entire regions. World renowned scientist Dr. Rosalie Bertell, President of the International Institute of Concern for Public Health (IICPH) confirms that "US military scientists are working on weather systems as a potential weapon. The methods include the enhancing of storms and the diverting of vapor rivers in the Earth's atmosphere to produce targeted droughts or floods." HAARP is based in Alaska and jointly managed by the US Air Force and Navy. Operated by the Air Force Research Laboratory's Space Vehicles Directorate, HAARP constitutes a system of powerful antennas capable of creating "controlled local modifications of the ionosphere". Scientist Dr. Nicholas Begich --actively involved in the public campaign against HAARP-- describes HAARP as "A super-powerful radiowave-beaming technology that lifts areas of the ionosphere [upper layer of the atmosphere] by focusing a beam and heating those areas. Electromagnetic waves then bounce back onto earth and penetrate everything -- living and dead." Dr. Rosalie Bertell depicts HAARP as "a gigantic heater that can cause major disruption in the ionosphere, creating not just holes, but long incisions in the protective layer that keeps deadly radiation from bombarding the planet." HAARP has been presented to public opinion as a program of scientific and academic research. US military documents seem to suggest, however, that HAARP's main objective is to "exploit the ionosphere for Defense purposes." A US Air Force study points to the use of "induced ionospheric modifications" as a means of altering weather patterns as well as disrupting enemy communications and radar. HAARP apparently has the ability of modifying the world's electro-magnetic field. [Source: Prof. Michel Chossudovsky, University of Ottawa] Further resources: http://www.haarp.alaska.edu/ http://www.earthpulse.com/ http://www.conspire.com/haarp.html ====== NetTips ====== SHOPPING LIST TO AVOID FRANKENFOODS ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Guide To Genetically Engineered Foods In United States The FDA has failed to require labeling of genetically engineered (GE) food so Greenpeace has compiled a Shopping List to avoid genetically engineered "Frankenfoods." If you do not want to be used as a guinea pig by companies who continue to sell genetically contaminated food you now have a fighting chance. Organized like supermarket aisles the TRUE FOOD SHOPPING LIST covers foods in 20 categories. The "Red" list shows genetically engineered foods, such as Kellogg’s Corn Flakes which contain StarLink GE corn (note that Kellogg’s has stopped using GE-food in Europe). The "Green" list shows alternatives made by companies that have eliminated genetically engineered ingredients. The "Yellow" transitional list includes products made by companies that are working to eliminate genetically engineered ingredients. The best way to avoid foods that may contain GE foods is to buy certified organic whenever possible. The classification of products is based on communication with food producers and company statements. The True Food Shopping List is available online from Greenpeace's True Food Network website. True Food Shopping List: How to Avoid Genetically Engineered Food http://www.truefoodnow.org/shoppinglist.html Printer Friendly Version of Entire True Food Shopping List: (careful, the list is 40 pages long) http://www.truefoodnow.org/gmo_facts/product_list/pf-list.html Thanks to all who wrote in. Send us your questions for the next edition of GlobeNews. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ GlobeNews online: http://www.kahl.net/globenews ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ THE PLUG ======== How's your small biz performing? Happy with work? Technology. Use it appropriately. Put it in our hands. Kahl Consultants. Visit us: http://www.kahl.net You got this far - you obviously enjoy GlobeNews. Pass it on! Please forward to a handful of friends. Remember, the best things in life are free. THE PUNCH LINE ============== The federal judge who ordered Microsoft split in two last year compares Bill Gates to Napoleon even musing that the company founder should be required to write a book report on him and said Microsoft executives behave like children. I think he has a Napoleonic concept of himself and his company, an arrogance that derives from power and unalloyed success, with no leavening hard experience, no reverses, Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson says of Gates in the Jan. 8 issue of The New Yorker. Of company officials, Jackson says, They don’t act like grown-ups!