-Caveat Lector- [radtimes] # 174 An informally produced compendium of vital irregularities. "We're living in rad times!" ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Send $$ to RadTimes!! --> (See ** at end.) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Contents: --More "vital irregularities" available from the radman --New non-lethal energy weapon heats skin --Democracy, when you least expect it --Canada mounts biggest-ever security operation for Summit of the Americas --The Ultimate Surveillance System? --New Report Criticises US Health Care 'Maze' --Is Our Society Making You Sick? =================================================================== More "vital irregularities" available from the radman If the RadTimes information flow hasn't intimidated your email inbox too much, I also send out news in the following areas: --[HardGreenHerald] (environment/animal/genetics/GMOs/cloning/etc.) --prison news --voting/electoral news --the "sixties" --corporate criminals/corporation news All of the above are free. To subscribe/unsubscribe to these lists, send appropriate email to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>. NOTE: Except for [HardGreen Herald], articles in the above areas are sent in individual emails, NOT in a compilation like RadTimes. =================================================================== New non-lethal energy weapon heats skin <http://www.vny.com/cf/News/upidetail.cfm?QID=163207> By KELLY HEARN, UPI Technology Writer WASHINGTON, Feb. 26 (UPI) -- The Marine Corps is developing a non-lethal weapon that uses electromagnetic energy to heat but not permanently burn human skin. The weapon could help soldiers counter terrorism threats, control unruly crowds and defend airfields and ships. Experts confirmed it was the first time the military had designed a so-called "directed energy weapon" for use against human targets. The weapon concentrates energy into a beam of micro-millimeter waves that penetrate clothes to rapidly heat moisture particles in the outermost layer of flesh without going deep enough to damage organs. The device reportedly causes no permanent damage to the body or to electronic devices such as pacemakers. Dubbed the Vehicle-Mounted Active Denial System, the weapon was revealed in a story published first in the Marine Corps Times Monday. Officials at the Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate in Quantico, Va. reportedly planned to show the classified system to top generals in April. But Monday's story scuttled those plans and sent officials scrambling to contain a possible public relations fiasco. A Marine spokesmen would not comment on the system, saying only that subject specialists would be available for interviews later this week. Though detailed information about the weapon's design remain classified, the story stated that the weapon would heat a target's skin to approximately 130 degrees Fahrenheit in about two seconds. Humans start to feel pain at 113 degrees. The report went on to say that soldiers could fire the weapon from distances exceeding 750 meters (2,250 feet) from their targeta range that would allow them to remain outside the reach of most small arms fire. The weapon could be mounted atop a military vehicle or on an aircraft. Defense experts told United Press International the Marines especially have sought new ways to non-lethally confront large, hostile crowds. Among other things, the Department of Defense has looked to lasers, teargas and rubber bullets for less-than-lethal impact. But these have either proven ineffective or have attracted consternation from human rights groups. "Unlike the other three branches, the Marines often are in situations where there are lots of innocent bystanders, where they have to control an unruly mob," said John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, a non-profit policy research firm in Alexandria, Va. "Tear gas and rubber bullets just have not been effective, so they've want something more lethal than those and less lethal than an M16. Whether they have found that here remains to be seen." "One of the fears is that there will be a misapplication of this kind of technology, particularly in terms of civilian use," said Chris Hellman, a senior analyst for the Center for Defense Information, a Washington D.C.-based independent research group that monitors military planning and policy. "Clearly we've seen military combat weaponry migrate to the civil sector. Just walk past any Swat Team and you see what is basically an army unit," he told UPI. The article quoted an official saying that human subjects had been exposed to the beams more than 6,000 times under laboratory conditions. Furthermore, military researchers had completed a study, which has not been released, on the long-term health effects of exposure. "This puts a non-lethal arrow in quiver of commanders," said Ron Madrid, former Marine and an expert on non-lethal weaponry at the University of Pennsylvania. "It provides decision makers with options. You can guarantee that the Marines were excruciatingly detailed in building in technological limiters to keep the system from having a lethal effect," Retired Major General William L. Nash, the former commanding general of the 1st Armored Division, told UPI the device will inevitably create a race to build counter weapons. "The good news is the weapon is non-lethal but the bad news is that for every weapon there is bound to be a counter weapon," he said. "I can imagine someone trying to develop a polymer based shield against this, for example." The Defense Department spent nearly $40 million over 10 years to develop the technology, said the Marine Corps Times report. The Air Force co-sponsored the project, the story said, doing much of the research and development. =================================================================== Democracy, when you least expect it by Naomi Klein The Globe and Mail February 28, 2001 Anyone still unclear about why the police are constructing a modern-day Bastille around Quebec City in preparation for the unveiling of the Free Trade Area of the Americas should take a look at a case being heard by the B.C. Supreme Court. In 1991, Metalclad, a U.S. waste management company, bought a closed- down toxic treatment facility in Guadalcazar, Mexico. The company wanted to build a huge hazardous waste dump and promised to clean up the mess left behind by the previous owners. But in the years that followed, they expanded operations without seeking local approval, earning little good will in Guadalcazar. Residents lost trust that Metalclad was serious about cleaning up, feared continued groundwater contamination, and eventually decided that the foreign company was not welcome. In 1995, when the landfill was ready to open, the town and state intervened with what legislative powers they had available: The city denied Metalclad a building permit and the state declared that the area around the site was part of an ecological reserve. By this point, NAFTA -- including its controversial "Chapter 11" clause, which allows investors to sue governments -- was in full effect. So Metalclad launched a Chapter 11 challenge, claiming Mexico was "expropriating" its investment. The complaint was heard last August in Washington by a three-person arbitration panel. Metalclad asked for $90-million (U.S.), and was awarded $16.7-million. Using a rare third-party appeal mechanism, Mexico chose to challenge the ruling before the B.C. Supreme Court. The Metalclad case is a vivid illustration of what critics mean when they charge that free-trade deals amount to a "bill of rights for multinational corporations." Metalclad has successfully played the victim, oppressed by what NAFTA calls "intervention" and what used to be called "democracy." As the Metalclad case shows, sometimes democracy breaks out when you least expect it. Maybe it's in a sleepy town, or a complacent city, where residents suddenly decide that their politicians haven't done their jobs and step in to intervene. Community groups form, council meetings are stormed. And sometimes there is a victory: A hazardous mine never gets built, a plan to privatize the local water system is scuttled, a garbage dump (such as the one planned for Kirkland Lake north of Toronto) is blocked. Frequently, this community intervention happens late in the game and earlier decisions are reversed. These outbreaks of grassroots intervention are messy, inconvenient and difficult to predict -- but democracy, despite the best laid plans, sometimes bursts out of council meetings and closed-door committees. It is precisely this kind of democracy that the Metalclad panel deemed "arbitrary." Under so-called free trade, governments are losing their ability to be responsive to constituents, to learn from mistakes, and to correct them before it's too late. Metalclad's position is that the federal government should simply have ignored the local objections. There's no doubt that, from an investor perspective, it's always easier to negotiate with one level of government than with three. The catch is that our democracies don't work that way: Issues such as waste disposal cut across levels of government, affecting not just trade but drinking water, health, ecology, and tourism. Furthermore, it is in local communities where the real impacts of free-trade policies are felt most acutely. Cities are asked to absorb the people pushed off their land by industrial agriculture, or forced to leave their provinces due to cuts in federal employment programs. Cities and towns have to find shelter for those made homeless by deregulated rental markets, and municipalities have to deal with the mess of failed water privatization experiments -- all with an eroded tax base. There is a move among many local politicians to demand increased powers in response to this offloading. For instance, citing the Metalclad ruling, Vancouver City Council passed a resolution last month petitioning "the federal government to refuse to sign any new trade and investment agreements, such as . . . the Free Trade Area of the Americas, that include investor-state provisions similar to the ones included in NAFTA." And on Monday, the mayors of Canada's largest cities launched a campaign for greater constitutional powers. "[Cities] are listed in the constitution of the late 1800s between saloons and asylums and that's where we get our power, so we can be offloaded [and] downloaded," explained Joanne Monaghan, president of the Federation of Canadian Municipalities. Cities and towns need decision-making powers commensurate to their increased responsibilities, or they will simply be turned into passive dumping grounds for the toxic fallout of free trade. Sometimes, as in Guadalcazar, the dumping is plain to see. Most of the time it is better hidden. =================================================================== Canada mounts biggest-ever security operation for Summit of the Americas <http://www.wsws.org/articles/2001/mar2001/queb-m02.shtml> By Keith Jones 2 March 2001 The Summit of the Americas, which will be held in Quebec City April 20-22, has become the object of the largest security operation in Canadian history. While much of this operation is cloaked in secrecy, flagrant violations of basic civil liberties have already come to light. Moreover, by transforming Quebec City into an armed camp, the authorities hope to marginalize and stigmatize opposition to the summit and to the big business agenda pursued by its 34 participating governments. Publicly, government officials are admitting that 5,000 police drawn from four different police forces, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), the Quebec Provincial Police and the municipal police forces of Quebec City and neighboring Ste.-Foywill be mobilized for the summit. The police will be charged with keeping protesters quarantined far from the summit site and ruthlessly suppressing any transgression of the law by the summit's opponents. To this end, all five of the RCMP's riot control detachments are being deployed to Quebec City and the Quebec provincial government has ordered that 500 inmates be temporarily transferred from a local prison, so it can serve as a detention centre for persons arrested during anti-summit protests. The authorities are taking extraordinary steps to ensure that the most lowly summit participants, let alone US President George W. Bush and the 33 other state presidents and prime ministers who are slated to attend, do not encounter or even come within earshot of any anti-summit protests. The downtown core of Quebec Cityan area of several dozen blocks that contains the summit meeting site and the hotels where the participants are to be housed, as well as numerous shops, office, and residences, is to be fortified and transformed into an exclusion zone. A 4.5 kilometre-long and 3-metre high metal fence anchored in concrete will be built around this entire area and during the summit only those with police passes will be permitted entry. Three types of passes are being issued: one for those attending the summit, another for those who live within the exclusion zone and a third for those who work in the zone. Depending on whether the Quebec government decides to give civil servants who work at the provincial legislature and the various ministries that are likewise situated in the no-go zone a holiday for the duration of the summit, up to 25,000 workers and residents will be compelled to obtain police passes and have their movements monitored during the summit. The police are conducting security checks on those requesting passes for the exclusion zone. Bibiane Bernier, manager of a souvenir store at a hotel where some summit-related activities are to take place, told the Canadian Press that the RCMP have been carrying out detailed security checks on the store's employees. "They called one of our employees who'd moved five times in recent years, and asked, 'What were you doing? Why did you move?'" These measures have been defended by Quebec's Security Minister in stark terms. "As the proverb goes," Serge Menard told reporters, "if you want peace, prepare for war." Civil liberties groups have pointed out that the exclusion-zone represents an unprecedented constraint on people's right to use city streets and other public places. Canadian Civil Liberties Association general counsel Alan Borovoy added, "The further the protesters are, the less viable their protest will be." The RCMP have visited organizations involved in anti-summit activities, including church groups, to question them about their plans and to encourage them to inform on any group or individual they suspect might disobey the police's strict rules as to where protests will be permitted and how protestors must act. The Canadian Security Intelligence Service has also been paying unannounced visits to anti-summit activists. These pressure tactics have already had one desired outcome. Eager to demonstrate to the establishment their respectability, the trade unions have announced that their protest demonstration will be staged well away from the perimeter of the exclusion-zone. In the run-up to the summit, the local police and government are seeking to instill a climate of fear and intimidation. On at least two occasions, police have detained persons handing out anti-summit materials in the Quebec City are. In the first case, police said that if more than two people distributed materials together they would be considered an unlawful assembly. This week, the suburb of Ste.-Foy followed the lead of Quebec City and passed a municipal bylaw that makes it illegal for anyone in a crowd to wear a mask, scarf or otherwise cover any part of their face, and this in a city where sub-freezing temperatures are a common occurrence in late April. Not only does the Ste.-Foy bylaw give the police the power to immediately arrest anyone even partially covering his or her face, it overturns the presumption of innocence and says that those who obscure any part of their face must prove that they did so for a valid reason. Such draconian measures point to the authorities' hostility to basic civil liberties and eagerness to give the state powers that can be invoked so as to justify clearing the streets of those opposed to government policy. With the full support of Canada's Liberal government, the United States intends to use next month's summit to reinforce its longstanding economic and geopolitical domination of Latin America by pushing for the creation of a hemispheric free trade zone. =================================================================== The Ultimate Surveillance System? <http://www.iht.com/articles/12230.htm> Anne Eisenberg New York Times Service Friday, March 2, 2001 AT&T Tracking Device Mimics Navigation Method Used by Bats Harry Potter, the star of the children's book series, has a Marauder's Map, with tiny moving symbols that show the location of everyone in his school. It is very handy when he is out late at night solving mysteries and wants to avoid bumping into enemies. Now scientists have devised a real map that has a lot in common with Harry's magic one. Visitors can see it at AT&T Laboratories in Cambridge, England, perhaps not far from Harry's fictional home, somewhere in England. There, in a three-story, 10,000-square-foot space, AT&T staff members have developed a constantly updated map that can track people with ultrasound signals as they move through the building. It pinpoints their locations within inches, as long as they are wearing a transmitter the size of a key chain. This ultrasound technology has a highly practical purpose: to track people moving through a hospital, factory or other building without encumbering them with computer gear. Since the system knows where the person is at all times, any nearby computer can be instructed to display the person's familiar desktop or data. It would be as if the desktop were following the person from machine to machine throughout the building. The tagging of machines and people, and the coordination of these tags through a computer network, is one form of what is known as ubiquitous, or pervasive, computing. In such a world of networked buildings, communications and computer power would be constantly at hand as people moved around. A doctor in a hospital would be able to call up important records quickly at a patient's bedside by using the nearest remote display. For such technology to work, though, the system must be aware of exactly where the people are. It needs to know when someone walks over to a computer, telephone or microphone, not just when the person enters a room. The system that AT&T Labs has developed is designed to do just that. "We wanted to be able to locate people very accurately," said Pete Steggles, one of the designers of the system, "but to limit the amount of stuff they had to carry - only your ID, really." The ID Mr. Steggles speaks of is the linchpin of the location system. It is a device about 2½ inches (6.4 centimeters) long that includes an ultrasound transmitter and a two-way radio. People who want to be part of the system carry these small devices. The transmitters are also placed outside or on top of objects, like desktop computers, telephones and cameras, throughout the building. The rest of the wireless system is embedded in the building, mainly in the form of ultrasound receivers tucked in every four feet or so above the tiles of the suspended ceiling. These receivers detect the ultrasound pulses emitted by the transmitters to locate people and equipment. A detector that is mounted on the far side of the room registers an ultrasound pulse later than a detector just above an object. "Using this differential timing information," Andy Hopper said, "it is possible to calculate the position of objects to about a cubic inch." Mr. Hopper is the managing director of the laboratory and an engineering professor at the University of Cambridge. "Bats find their way around using much the same principle," he said, "so we called the system Active Bat." Real bats send out high-frequency chirps, then navigate based on the location information they get from the reflected sound waves. With the AT&T system, the devices that are carried around (called bats by the researchers) emit the ultrasound chirps, and a high-speed network analyzes the signals it receives. These devices easily fit into a pocket, but AT&T researchers put them in their pockets only when they want to make sure that the system cannot find them. Andy Ward, who helped develop the system, said, "You can just put them on a desk and walk away from them, too, if you don't want to be found." He said he wore his around his neck so he could be reached easily while moving around the building. The central controller keeps its electronic eye out for any device that it knows is moving around the building, like the one that Mr. Ward wears. Each device is assigned a unique 48-bit address. The central controller triggers the device with a radio signal, causing it to generate a click of ultrasound. At the same time, the computer resets the nearby ceiling receivers. Then it starts counting. "You measure the times of flight of the sound from the bat to the ceiling receiver," Mr. Ward said. "Because we know the speed of sound in the air, we can calculate the distances of the bat to the receiver and by triangulation, find the three-dimensional position of the bat." Steven Shafer, manager of the ubiquitous-computing research group at Microsoft, has seen the AT&T system several times. He said it was highly promising. "It's the only sensor that seems to rival the camera in terms of giving information about people and the world," he said. AT&T is not yet making the ultrasound technology commercially available, although Mr. Steggles said many people had asked for it. "That's a few years away, once we've reduced the cost a bit by tinkering with it," he said. =================================================================== New Report Criticises US Health Care 'Maze' by Lauran Neergaard Thursday, March 1, 2001 in the Independent / UK The US health care system is a tangled maze that too often leaves Americans with inadequate, outdated, even unsafe therapy, according to a scathing report Thursday that recommends an urgent overhaul to bring 21st century care to more patients. US specialists know sophisticated and effective ways to fight killers like diabetes, heart disease and breast cancer. But too many patients slog from doctor to doctor in search of one who can even fit a basic physical examination into their crowded schedules, much less one who understands and uses the best treatments, says the report by the Institute of Medicine. "The frustration levels of both patients and clinicians have probably never been higher," the report says. "Health care today harms too frequently and routinely fails to deliver its potential benefits." The report is a follow- up to the institute's groundbreaking 1999 announcement that medical mistakes kill from 44,000 to 98,000 hospitalized Americans a year. While some scientists quibble with the toll, that report has sparked major changes as hospitals nationwide adopted new programs and technology to cut mistakes. The new report looks at overall health systems, from private doctors' offices to insurance. The institute, a private organization that advises Congress on scientific matters, recommends an overhaul toward patient-focused health care that gives Americans more information about their health and makes more doctors follow the latest scientific evidence instead of outdated treatments. It urged Congress to set aside US$1 billion over the next three to five years to boost programs that would spur such change. Another big recommendation: If someone gets sick late at night or on a Saturday, and it's not an emergency, they still should be able to get care, even if all they need is a doctor's e-mail recommending self-treatment. That represents "a fundamental shift in the culture of medicine," Dr. Kenneth Kizer of the National Quality Forum, a nonprofit health improvement research group, said after reviewing the recommendations. One of the report's most alarming findings: It can take 17 years for important research discoveries to become accepted and used by the average doctor. Heart medicines called beta blockers, for example, were proved more than 10 years ago to increase significantly a person's chances of survival after a heart attack. But nearly half of heart attack victims still don't receive them, Leape said. Other problems: Women forced to wait nine weeks for a biopsy after a suspicious mammogram; patients denied access to their own medical records, so that they can't weigh treatment options; paper medical records that emergency rooms can't get during a crisis and that are easily lost when patients switch doctors; sufferers of complicated chronic illnesses bounced from specialist to specialist who don't coordinate their care. =================================================================== Is Our Society Making You Sick? By Stephen Bezruchka, M.D. February 26, 2001 Newsweek Americans are obsessed with health. Just look at today's magazines, TV shows, Web sites, self-help books--and where we put our dollars. As a country, we make up about 4 percent of the world's total population, yet we expend almost half of all the money spent on medical care. We should be pretty healthy. Yet I have always been amazed at how poorly the United States ranks in health when compared with other countries. When I began medical school in 1970 we stood about 15th in what I call the Health Olympics, the ranking of countries by life expectancy or infant mortality. Twenty years later we were about 20th, and in recent years we have plunged even further to around 25th, behind almost all rich countries and a few poor ones. For the richest and most powerful country in the world's history, this is a disgrace. As a physician obsessed with understanding what makes groups of people healthy, I'm dumbfounded that our low ranking doesn't raise more concern in the medical and public-health communities. Is it because experts in these fields don't want to question the role of medical care in producing health? Does our focus on diseases--including the search for risk factors, cures and specific preventive answers--stop Americans from looking at what would really keep us well? Research during this last decade has shown that the health of a group of people is not affected substantially by individual behaviors such as smoking, diet and exercise, by genetics or by the use of health care. In countries where basic goods are readily available, people's life span depends on the hierarchical structure of their society; that is, the size of the gap between rich and poor. How can hierarchy affect health? Consider the feelings that predominate in a hierarchical situation: power, domination, coercion (if you are on top); resignation, resentment and submission (if you are on the bottom). Compare them with feelings in an egalitarian environment: support, friendship, cooperation and sociability. Studies with baboons in Kenya and macaque monkeys in captivity, both of which feature strong hierarchical relationships, show that high-ranking animals are healthier than those lower in the pecking order. Human population studies show additional findings. The death rate from heart attacks among middle-aged men is four times greater in Lithuania than in Sweden, which is much more egalitarian. We can learn something by looking at countries that do well in the Health Olympics. In 1960 Japan stood 23d, but by 1977 it had overtaken all the others in the health race. Today, at No. 1, Japan has a life expectancy on average three and a half years longer than the United States'. Twice as many Japanese men as American men smoke, yet the deaths attributable to smoking are half of ours. Why? After the second world war, the hierarchical structure of Japan was reorganized so all citizens shared more equally in the economy. Today Japanese CEOs make 15 to 20 times what entry-level workers make, not the almost 500-fold difference in this country. During their recent economic crisis, CEOs and managers in Japan took cuts in pay rather than lay off workers. That the structure of society is key to well-being becomes evident when we look at Japanese who emigrate: their health declines to the level of the inhabitants of the new country. Did this health-hierarchy relationship always exist--is it part of human nature? Archeological records from burial mounds and skeletal remains indicate that human populations were relatively healthy before the advent of agriculture. The development of farming allowed food to be produced in quantities and stored, enabling some to live off the efforts of others--a hierarchy. With agriculture, health declined, nutrition worsened and workload increased. Why has the medical community, as well as the popular press, essentially ignored these findings? I suspect that part of the explanation lies in Americans' "cradle to grave" relationship with the health-care industry, which represents one seventh of the U.S. economy. If equality is good medicine, then what can be done to improve Americans' well-being? Our primary goal should be to reduce today's record gap between rich and poor. Prescriptions for such "structural medicine" might include a tax on consumption rather than income, or increased support for public transportation, schools and day care, all of which would reflect a change in how the population shares in the economy. We must put our eyes on a new prize: doing better in the Health Olympics. The best prescription for health is not one we will get from doctors. ----- Bezruchka teaches at the University of Washington's School of Public Health. =================================================================== "Anarchy doesn't mean out of control. It means out of 'their' control." -Jim Dodge ====================================================== "Communications without intelligence is noise; intelligence without communications is irrelevant." -Gen. Alfred. M. Gray, USMC ====================================================== "It is not a sign of good health to be well adjusted to a sick society." -J. Krishnamurti ====================================================== "The world is my country, all mankind my brethren, and to do good is my religion." -Thomas Paine ====================================================== " . . . it does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brush fires in people's minds . . . " -Samuel Adams ====================================================== "You may never know what results come from your action. But if you do nothing, there will be no results." -Gandhi ______________________________________________________________ To subscribe/unsubscribe or for a sample copy or a list of back issues, send appropriate email to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>. ______________________________________________________________ **How to assist RadTimes: An account is available at <www.paypal.com> which enables direct donations. If you are a current PayPal user, use this email address: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, to contribute. If you are not a current user, use this link: <https://secure.paypal.com/refer/pal=resist%40best.com> to sign up and contribute. The only information passed on to me via this process is your email address and the amount you transfer. Thanks! <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/">www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! 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