Revolutionary Advance in Video Surveillance Coming to Chicago

By Joe Eitel

* * * * *

The most revolutionary new advance in video surveillance will soon be monitoring Chicago's streets and other popular areas in the city.

Chicago already has surveillance cameras littered throughout the city, which monitor traffic. These new "smart" cameras will do a whole lot more than that. These new cameras will have the ability to read license plates, alert emergency services, and recognize suspicious activity. These cameras will even be able to recognize sounds, such as car accidents and gun shots and automatically notify the police.

The maker of the smart camera technology is IBM, and they are teaming up with the Chicago Office of Emergency Management and Communications (OEMC) to implement these new devices. Chicago already has a multi-million dollar video surveillance system in place throughout the city. The OEMC plans on adding to this infrastructure already in place.

The city of Chicago is hoping that the new "smart" cameras will help increase security for the city against things like terrorism threats and violent crime. Chicago is hoping to host the Olympics for 2016, and the "smart" cameras will help to monitor any kind of possible terrorist threat. For instance, if someone should leave a backpack filled with explosives in a public place, the camera would recognize the unattended backpack and notify police.

Many of the existing surveillance cameras in Chicago will be integrated with IBM's new software, which will give them the capabilities of a "smart" camera. Many more cameras will be added to intersections and public places to complete the proposed infrastructure. It is unclear how much money this new infrastructure will end up costing the city of Chicago. It is known that the gunshot recognizing technology mentioned earlier costs $10,000 per unit, so needless to say, the new surveillance system will be expensive. The cost shouldn't be a issue for the city, but the complexity of the software could slow down the transition of converting old cameras to the new surveillance system.

IBM is collaborating with two other companies in this effort. One of the companies is Firetide, who is a leading provider of wireless solutions. The other company contributing in this effort is Genetec, who is recognized as a pioneer in IP video surveillance technology. Firetide will help integrate all of these new cameras on a wireless network, which will save the city of Chicago millions of dollars in cable costs. These three companies, along with the OEMC, will team up to accomplish this surveillance project which Chicago is calling Operation Virtual Shield.

Some people are already protesting the implementation of more surveillance cameras in the city, because they believe it violates their privacy. The city of Chicago claims that these cameras will help keep the citizens of Chicago safer, and will not violate any privacy statutes.

<Notice how they always talk about "statutes" and "laws" rather than "privacy", "rights" or "the good of the people".>

They make their own rules, and they STILL don't follow them...

Top 100 Ways Global Warming Will Change Your Life

Say goodbye to French wines, baseball and the Great Barrier Reef. Say hello to massive amounts of mosquitoes, the northwest passage and hurricanes.

Say Goodbye to French Wines. Wacky temperatures and rain cycles brought on by global warming are threatening something very important: Wine. Scientists believe global warming will "shift viticultural regions toward the poles, cooler coastal zones and higher elevations." What that means in regular language: Get ready to say bye-bye to French Bordeaux and hello to British champagne. [LA Times]

Say Goodbye to Light and Dry Wines. Warmer temperatures mean grapes in California and France develop their sugars too quickly, well before their other flavors. As a result, growers are forced to either a) leave the grapes on the vines longer, which dramatically raises the alcoholic content of the fruit or b) pick the grapes too soon and make overly sweet wine that tastes like jam. [Washington Post]

Say Goodbye to Pinot Noir. The reason you adore pinot noir is that it comes from a notoriously temperamental thin-skinned grape that thrives in cool climates. Warmer temperatures are already damaging the pinots from Oregon, "baking away" the grape's berry flavors. [Bloomberg]

Say Goodbye to Baseball. The future of the ash tree -- from which all baseball bats are made -- is in danger of disappearing, thanks to a combination of killer beetles and global warming. [NY Times]

Say Goodbye to Christmas Trees. The Pine Bark Beetle, which feeds on and kills pine trees, used to be held in control by cold winter temperatures. Now the species is thriving and killing off entire forests in British Columbia, unchecked. [Seattle Post Intelligencer]

Say Goodbye to the Beautiful Alaska Vacation. Warmer weather allowed Spruce Bark Beetles to live longer, hardier lives in the forests of Kenai Peninsula in Alaska, where they killed off a section of spruce forest the size of Connecticut . [Alaska Science Forum]

Say Goodbye to Fly Fishing. As water temperatures continue to rise, researchers say rainbow trout, "already at the southern limits" of their temperature ranges in the Appalachian mountains, could disappear there over the next century. [Softpedia]

Say Goodbye to Ski Competitions. Unusually warmer winters caused the International Ski Federation to cancel last year's Alpine skiing World Cup and opening races in Sölden, Austria. Skiers are also hard-pressed now to find places for year-round training. Olympic gold medalist Anja Paerson: "Of course we're all very worried about the future of our sport. Every year we have more trouble finding places to train." [NY Times]

Say Goodbye to Ski Vacations. Slopes on the East Coast last year closed months ahead of time due to warmer weather, some losing as much as a third of their season. [Washington Post]

Say Hello to Really Tacky Fake Ski Vacations. Weiner Air Force and former House Majority Leader Dick Armey are building a year-round ski resort in Texas, with "wet, white Astroturf with bristles" standing in for snow to make up for all the closed resorts around the country. [WSJ] Say Goodbye to That Snorkeling Vacation. The elkhorn coral which used to line the floor of the Caribbean are nearly gone, "victims of pollution, warmer water and acidification from the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide seeping into oceans." [Denver Post]

Say Goodbye to That Tropical Island Vacation. Indonesia's environment minister announced this year that scientific studies estimate about 2,000 of the country's lush tropical islands could disappear by 2030 due to rising sea levels. [ABC News]

Say Goodbye to Cool Cultural Landmarks. The World Monuments Fund recently added "global warming" as a threat in their list of the top 100 threatened cultural landmarks. "On Herschel Island, Canada, melting permafrost threatens ancient Inuit sites and a historic whaling town. In Chinguetti, Mauritania, the desert is encroaching on an ancient mosque. In Antarctica , a hut once used by British explorer Captain Robert Falcon Scott has survived almost a century of freezing conditions but is now in danger of being engulfed by increasingly heavy snows." [AP]

Say Goodbye to Salmon Dinners. Get ready for a lot more chicken dinners: Wild pacific salmon have already vanished from 40 percent of their traditional habitats in the Northwest and the NRDC warns warmer temperatures are going to erase 41 percent of their habitat by 2090. [ENS]

Say Goodbye to Lobster Dinners. Lobsters thrive in the chilly waters of New England, but recent numbers show that as those waters have warmed up, "the big-clawed American lobster -- prized for its delicate, sweet flesh -- has been withering at an alarming rate from New York state to Massachusetts." [Bangor Times]

Say Goodbye to Discoveries of Sharks That Can Walk. Scientists recently revealed a "lost world" of marine life off the coast of Indonesia, including 20 new species of corals, 8 species of shrimp, a technicolor fish that "flashes" bright pink, yellow, blue, and green hues, and sharks that "walk" on their fins. (" Avon Lady. Candygram.") However, marine biologists warn the threats posed by global warming means millions of other crazycool sea creatures may become extinct before we ever discover them. [ABC]

Say Goodbye to Meadows of Wildflowers. Scientists think global warming could wipe out a fifth of the wildflower species in the western United States. They'll be replaced by dominant grasses. [National Wildlife Federation]

Say Goodbye to Guacamole. Scientists from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory predict hotter temps will cause a 40 percent drop in California 's avocado production over the next 40 years. [Lawrence Livermore National Lab]

Say Goodbye to Mixed Nuts. Guess you'll have to start eating pretzels at the bar instead: Scientists from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory predict hotter temps will cause a 20 percent drop in California 's almond and walnut crops over the next 40 years. [Science Daily]

Say Goodbye to French Fries. Scientists from the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research say warmer temperatures are killing off wild relatives of potato and peanut plants, "threatening a valuable source of genes necessary to help these food crops fight pests and drought." [AP]

Say Goodbye to Your Pretty Lawn. Thanks to global warming, dandelions will grow "taller, lusher, and more resilient." By 2100, the weed will produce 32 percent more seeds and longer hairs, which allow them to spread further in the wind. [LA Times]

Say Hello to More Mosquitoes. Get ready for more mosquitoes. Mosquitoes like to live in drains and sewer puddles. During long dry spells (brought on by higher temperatures) these nasty, stagnant pools become a vital source of water for thirsty birds ... which provide a tasty feast for the resident mosquitoes. At the same time, these dry spells "reduce the populations of dragonflies, lacewings, and frogs that eat the mosquitoes." [Washington Post]

Say Hello to Poison Ivy . You're gonna need an ocean of calamine lotion. Increased CO2 levels cause poison ivy and other weeds to grow "taller, lusher, and more resilient." [LA Times]

Say Hello to Bulgarian Hooker Shortages. "Brothel owners in Bulgaria are blaming global warming for staff shortages. They claim their best girls are working in ski resorts because a lack of snow has forced tourists to seek other pleasures." [Metro UK]

Global Warming Kills the Animals

Species Disappear. The latest report from the World Conservation Union says that a minimum of 40 percent of the world's species are being threatened ... and global warming's one of the main culprits. [Reuters]

Cannibalistic Polar Bears.... As longer seasons without ice keep polar bears away from food, they start eating each other. [AP]

...And Dying Polar Bears. A recent study completed by the U.S. Geological Survey shows that cannibalism -- while brutal -- may be the least of the bear's problems. Many are also drowning, unable to swim in the increased spaces between melting sea ice. Two-thirds of them may be gone by 2050. [National Geographic] [Mongo Bay]

More Bear Attacks. Earlier this year, Moscow warned its citizens to beware of brown bear attacks. In Russia, it's been too hot in the winter for bears to sleep. When bears can't hibernate, they get very grouchy and become "unusually aggressive."[Der Spiegel]

Dying Gray Whales . Save the whales! Global warming is thwarting majestic gray whales' struggle to recover from their endangered status. In recent years, more gray whales have been washing up on beaches after starving to death. Culprit: Rising ocean temps, which are killing off their food supply. [Washington Post]

Death March of the Penguins. Scientists blame global warming for the declining penguin population, as warmer waters and smaller ice floes force the birds to travel further to find food. "Emperor penguins ... have dropped from 300 breeding pairs to just nine in the western Antarctic Peninsula ." [National Geographic] [MSNBC]

Farewell to Frogs. An estimated two-thirds of the 110 known species of harlequin frog in Central and South America have vanished since the 1980s due to the outbreak of a deadly frog fungus ... brought on by global warming. Scientist J. Allen Pound: "Disease is the bullet killing frogs, but climate change is pulling the trigger." [National Geographic]

Farewell to the Arctic Fox. The White Arctic Fox used to rule the colder climes, but as temperatures warm up, its more aggressive cousin, the Red Fox, is moving North and taking over. [Wired]

Farewell to the Walrus. Walrus pups rest on sea ice while their mothers hunt for food. A new study shows more and more abandoned pups are being stranded on floating islands as ice islands melt. Also, sadly, mother walruses are abandoning them to follow the ice further north. [Mongo Bay]

Farewell to Cute Koala Bears. Australia's Climate Action Network reports that higher temperatures are killing off eucalyptus trees while higher levels of CO2 in the atmosphere are decreasing the nutritional value of the eucalyptus leaves Koala bears eat. They warn that the cute furry creatures could become extinct in the next few decades. [Science]

Jellyfish Attack. Ouch! At least 30,000 people were stung by jellyfish along the Mediterranean coast last year; some areas boasted more than 10 jellyfish per square foot of water. Thank global warming: Jellyfish generally stay out of the way of swimmers, preferring the warmer, saltier water of the open seas. Hotter temperatures erase the natural temperature barrier between the open sea and the shore. The offshore waters also become more saline, causing the stinging blobs of hurt to move in toward the coastlines (and your unsuspecting legs). [BBC]

Giant Squid Attack. Giant squid -- an "aggressive predator" that grows up to 7 feet long and can weigh more than 110 lbs -- used to only be found in the warm waters along the Pacific equator. Hotter waters mean today they're invading the waters of California and even Alaska . [ABC]

Homeless Sheep, Goats, and Bears. Bighorn sheep, mountain goats, and grizzly bears are becoming homeless, due to the disappearance of the alpine meadows in Glacier National Park . [AP]

Homeless Deer and Marsh Rabbits. The deer and marsh rabbits in the Florida Keys also face a housing crisis, as water levels rise and warmer temperatures destroy coastal prairies and freshwater marsh habitats. [AP]

Gender-Bended Lizards. Scientists in Australia found warmer temperatures caused baby bearded dragon lizards to change from males to females while still in their eggs, making it harder for them to find mates. Trippy. [ABC AU]

More Stray Kitties. Global warming has extended the cat-breeding season beyond spring, which is the usual time for a kitten boom. The kittens are often homeless and end up in animal shelters. And remember, "The trouble with a kitten is that/ Eventually it becomes a cat." [NBC-10: Philadelphia] [Ogden Nash]

Suffocating the Lemmings. Lemmings like to burrow under the snow when they hibernate for the winter. Warmer temperatures cause rain to fall during the winter months, where it freezes into a hard sheet of ice above the sleeping lemmings, who can't crack their way out come spring. [Denver Post]

Goodbye to Cod. Cod in the North Sea are dying out. The warmer waters kill off the plankton the cod eat, making those ones that survive smaller. The warmer waters also mean the poor dears have become "less successful at mating and reproducing." [MSNBC]

Birds around the World. Recent research found that "up to 72 percent of bird species in northeastern Australia and more than a third in Europe could go extinct due to global warming." [Monga Bay]

Birds on the Coast. Hundreds of Pacific seabirds -- such as common murres, auklets, and tufted puffins -- washed ashore last year after starving to death. Scientists blame global warming which led to less plankton, which led to fewer small fish for the birds to eat. [San Francisco Chronicle]

Birds in your Backyard. A report by the National Audubon Society found that birds such as the bobwhite and field sparrow are dying thanks to global warming, as higher temperatures mess with their migration schedules. With vital food stocks peaking earlier and earlier, many migratory birds get to the party too late and can't find enough to eat. [CNN] [ABC News]

Death to a Snail. The Aldabra banded snail is officially extinct. Existing only on an atoll 426 kilometers northwest of the northern tip of Madagascar , the snail died out after warmer weather cut the rainfall in its habitat. [Monga Bay]

Global Warming Kills the Planet

Greenland's Melting. Greenland is melting at a rate of 52 cubic miles per year -- much faster than once predicted. If Greenland 's entire 2.5 million cubic kilometers of ice were to melt, it would lead to a global sea level rise of 7.2 meters, or more than 23 feet. [LA Times]

Less Ice in the Arctic . The amount of ice in the Arctic at the end of the 2005 summer "was the smallest seen in 27 years of satellite imaging, and probably the smallest in 100 years." Experts said it's the strongest evidence of global warming in the Arctic thus far. [Washington Post]

The Northwest Passage Becomes a Reality. Remember the " Northwest Passage "? For centuries, explorers were obsessed with the almost-mythical idea of northern sea route connecting the Atlantic and Pacific. Well...it's here. So much of the ice cover in the Arctic disappeared this summer that ships were able to take recreational trips through the Arctic, and scientists say so much of the ice cover will disappear in upcoming years that the passage could be open to commercial shipping by 2020. [CNN]

Ice Shelf in Antarctica Bites the Dust. In 2002, a chunk of ice in Antarctica larger than the state of Rhode Island collapsed into the sea. British and Belgian scientists said the chunk was weakened by warm winds blowing over the shelf ... and that the winds were caused by global warming. [ENS]

Ice Shelf in Canada Bites the Dust. In 2005, a giant chunk of ice the size of Manhattan broke off of a Canadian ice shelf and began free floating westward, putting oil drilling operations in peril. [Reuters]

Say Farewell to Glaciers. "In Glacier National Park, the number of glaciers in the park has dropped from 150 to 26 since 1850. Some project that none will be left within 25 to 30 years." [AP]

The Green, Green Grass of Antarctica . Grass has started to grow in Antarctica in areas formerly covered by ice sheets and glaciers. While Antarctic hair grass has grown before in isolated tufts, warmer temperatures allow it to take over larger and larger areas and, for the first time, survive through the winter. [UK Times]

The Swiss Foothills. Late last summer, a rock the size of two Empire State Buildings in the Swiss Alps collapsed onto the canyon floor nearly 700 feet below. The reason? Melting glaciers. [MSNBC]

Giant Seas in Africa. Global warming may unleash giant "sand seas" in Africa -- giant fields of sand dunes with no vegetation -- as a shortage of rainfall and increasing winds may "reactivate" the now-stable Kalahari dune fields. That means farewell to local vegetation, animals, and any tourism in the areas. [National Geographic]

Florida's National Marine Sanctuary in Trouble. Global warming is "bleaching" the coral in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary, killing the coral, tourism, and local fish that live among the coral for protection. [Washington Post]

The Oceans are Turning to Acid. It sounds like a really bad sci-fi movie, but it's true: The oceans are turning to acid! Oceans absorb CO2 which, when mixed with seawater, turns to a weak carbonic acid. Calcium from eroded rocks creates a "natural buffer" against the acid, and most marine life is "finely tuned" to the current balance. As we produce more and more CO2, we throw the whole balance out of whack and the oceans turn to acid. [CS Monitor]

Say Goodbye to the Great Barrier Reef . According to the U.N., the Great Barrier Reef will disappear within decades as "warmer, more acidic seas could severely bleach coral in the world-famous reef as early as 2030." [CBC News]

Mediterranean Sea? .Try the Dead Sea. Italian experts say thanks to faster evaporation and rising temperatures, the Mediterranean Sea is quickly turning into "a salty and stagnant sea." The hot, salty water "could doom many of the sea's plant and animal species and ravage the fishing industry." [AP]

A Sacred River Dries UpThe sacred Ganges River in India is beginning to run dry. The Ganges is fed by the Gangotri glacier, which is today "shrinking at a rate of 40 yards a year, nearly twice as fast as two decades ago." Scientists warn the glacier could be gone as soon as 2030. [Washington Post]

Disappearing African Rivers Geologists recently projected a 10 percent to 20 percent drop in rainfall in northwestern and southern Africa by 2070. That would leave Botswana with just 23 percent of the river it has now; Cape Town would be left with just 42 percent of its river water. [National Geographic]

Suddenly Vanishing Lakes. What happened to the five-acre glacial lake in Southern Chile ? In March, it was there. In May, it was ... gone. Scientists blame global warming. [BBC News]

Goodbye to the Mangrove Trees. Next on the global warming hit list: Rising sea levels linked to climate change mean we could lose half of the mangrove trees of the Pacific Isles by the end of the century. [UNEP]

Volcanoes Blow Their Tops. British scientists warn of another possible side effect of climate change: A surge of dangerous volcanic eruptions. [ABC News Australia]

More Hurricanes. Over the past century, the number of hurricanes that strike each year has more than doubled. Scientists blame global warming and the rising temperature of the surface of the seas. [USA Today]

More Floods. During the summer of 2007, Britain suffered its worst flood in 60 years. Scientists point the finger directly at global warming, which changed precipitation patterns and is now causing more "intense rainstorms across parts of the northern hemisphere." [Independent]

More Fires. Hotter temperatures could also mean larger and more devastating wildfires. This past summer in California , a blaze consumed more than 33,500 acres, or 52 square miles. [ABC] [AP]

More Wildfires. Global warming has also allowed non-native grasses to thrive in the Mojave Desert , where they act as fast-burning fuel for wildfires. [AP]

Thunderstorms Get Dangerous. Hurricanes aside, NASA scientists now say as the world gets hotter, even smaller thunderstorms will pose more severe risks with "deadly lightning, damaging hail and the potential for tornadoes." [AP]

Higher Sea Levels. Scientists believe sea levels will be three feet higher by the end of the century than they are now. [National Geographic]

Burning Poo. As "shifting rainfall patterns" brought on by global warming "have made northern Senegal drier and hotter," entire species of trees (like the Dimb Tree) are dying out, making it harder for natives to find firewood. As a result, more people are having to burn cow dung for cooking fires. [MSNBC]

A New Dust Bowl. Calling Mr. Steinbeck. Scientists this year reported the Southwest United States is "expected to dry up notably in this century and could become as arid as the North American dust bowl of the 1930s," a process which has already started. [ABC News]

Global Warming Makes Us Sicker

People Are Dying. 150,000: Number of people the World Health Organization estimates are killed by climate-change-related issues every year. [Washington Post]

Heat Waves and Strokes. Authorities in China say warmer temperatures are responsible for an uptick in heat-wave associated deaths, such as strokes and heart disease. They calculated between 173 and 685 Chinese citizens per million die every year from ailments related to global warming. [MSNBC]

Death by Smog. Three words you really don't want in your obit: "Death by Smog." Yet Canadian doctors say smog-related deaths could rise by 80 percent over the next 20 years. And since warm air is a key ingredient in smog, warmer temperatures will increase smog levels. [CBC News]

More Heart Attacks. Doctors warn global warming will bring more cardiovascular problems, like heart attacks. "'The hardening of the heart's arteries is like rust developing on a car,' said Dr. Gordon Tomaselli, chief of cardiology at Johns Hopkins University. 'Rust develops much more quickly at warm temperatures and so does atherosclerosis.'" [MSNBC]

More Mold and Ragweed= More Allergies, Asthma. A Harvard Study in 2004 showed higher concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere is good news to allergens like mold and ragweed (they love the stuff). And that means higher rates of asthma attacks, especially in kids. [Globe and Mail]

A Resurgence In Deadly Disease. "The World Health Organization has identified more than 30 new or resurgent diseases in the last three decades, the sort of explosion some experts say has not happened since the Industrial Revolution brought masses of people together in cities." Why? Global warming "is fueling the spread of epidemics in areas unprepared for the diseases" when "mosquitoes, ticks, mice and other carriers are surviving warmer winters and expanding their range, bringing health threats with them." Ick. [Washington Post]

More Malaria in Africa . "A WHO report in 2000 found that warming had caused malaria to spread from three districts in western Kenya to 13 and led to epidemics of the disease in Rwanda and Tanzania ." [Washington Post]

Malaria Spreading in Western Europe . The World Health Organization warns warmer temperatures mean malaria-carrying mosquitoes are able to live in northern climes, which could lead to a surge in malaria outside the tropics (aka Europe ). [BBC]

Malaria Spreading in South America . Thanks to global warming, "Malaria has spread to higher altitudes in places like the Colombian Andes, 7,000 feet above sea level." [An Inconvenient Truth]

Malaria Spreading in Russia . Russians found larvae of the anopheles mosquito, the malaria carrier, for the first time in Moscow last September. [BBC]

Spread of Dengue Fever. Scientists predict warmer temperatures will allow mosquitoes carrying Dengue Fever to travel outside the tropics. Since people in cooler climes lack immunity from previous exposure, that means transmission would be extensive. You get a severe fever, you start spontaneously bleeding, you can die. There is no vaccine. [Science Daily]

Death in the Time of Cholera. Cholera, which thrives in warmer water, appeared in the newly warmed waters of South America in 1991 for the first time in the 20th century. "It swept from Peru across the continent and into Mexico , killing more than 10,000 people." [Washington Post]Spread of Lyme DiseaseCold weather no longer kills ticks that carry Lyme Disease. Ticks recently began spreading along the coastlines of Scandinavia , which formerly was too cold for them to survive. Cases of Lyme Disease in the area have doubled since the late 1990s. [MSNBC]

West Nile Virus Home Invasion. Once confined to land near the equator, West Nile Virus is now found as far north as Canada . Seven years ago, West Nile virus had never been seen in North America; today, it has "infected more than 21,000 people in the United States and Canada and killed more than 800." [Washington Post]

Global Warming Threatens Our National Security

IISS: "A Global Catastrophe" For International Security. A recent study done by the International Institute for Strategic Studies has likened the international security effects of global warming to those caused by nuclear war. [On Deadline]

U.N.: As Dangerous As War . United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said this year that global warming poses as much of a threat to the world as war. [BBC]

Center for Naval Analyses: National Security Threat. In April, a report completed by the Center for Naval Analyses predicted that global warming would cause "large-scale migrations, increased border tensions, the spread of disease and conflicts over food and water." [Seattle Post-Intelligencer]

Genocide in Sudan . UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon charges, "Amid the diverse social and political causes, the Darfur conflict began as an ecological crisis, arising at least in part from climate change." [Washington Post]

War in Somalia . In April, a group of 11 former U.S. military leaders released a report charging that the war in Somalia during the 1990s stemmed in part from national resource shortages caused by global warming. [Washington Post]

Starvation. A study by IISS found that reduced water supplies and hotter temperatures mean "65 countries were likely to lose over 15 percent of their agricultural output by 2100." [Yahoo]

Large-Scale Migrations. Global warming will turn already-dry environments into deserts, causing the people who live there to migrate in massive numbers to more livable places. [MSNBC]

More Refugees. A study by the relief group Christian Aid estimates the number of refugees around the world will top a billion by 2050, thanks in large part to global warming. [Telegraph]

Increased Border Tensions. A report called "National Security and the Threat of Climate Change," written by a group of retired generals and admirals, specifically linked global warming to increased border tensions. "If, as some project, sea levels rise, human migrations may occur, likely both within and across borders." [NY Times]

Famine. "Developing countries, many with average temperatures that are already near or above crop tolerance levels, are predicted to suffer an average 10 to 25 percent decline in agricultural productivity by the 2080s." [Economic Times]

Droughts. Global warming will cause longer, more devastating droughts, thus exacerbating the fight over the world's water. [Washington Post]

The Poor Are Most at Risk. Although they produce low amounts of greenhouse gases, experts say under-developed countries -- such as those in sub-Saharan Africa -- have "the most to lose under dire predictions of wrenching change in weather patterns." [Washington Post]

Your Checkbook. A report done last year by the British government showed global warming could cause a Global Great Depression, costing the world up to 20 percent of its annual Global Domestic Product. [Washington Post]

The World's Checkbook. A study by the Global Development and Environment Institute at Tufts University found that ignoring global warming would end up costing $20 trillion by 2100. [Tufts]

This piece is from the Center for American Progress Action Fund's Mic Check Radio.

The author of "The End of America" points out disturbing parallels between the Bush administration and fascist dictatorships throughout history.

Writer Naomi Wolf about her book, The End of America, A Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot, which outlines ten steps that "fascist, totalitarian, and other repressive leaders [employ to] seize and maintain power, especially in what were once democracies.” The ten steps are:

1. Invoke a terrifying internal and external enemy

2. Create a gulag

3. Develop a thug caste

4. Set up an internal surveillance system

5. Harass citizens' groups

6. Engage in arbitrary detention and release

7. Target key individuals

8. Control the press

9. Dissent equals treason

10. Suspend the rule of law

'Kid Nation': CBS' New Reality Show Creates Little Capitalists

By Ellen Goodman

When 40 kids were asked to create a new town, was it possible for them to escape the model of cutthroat competition, class divisions and unrelenting consumerism?

When they write the cultural history of childhood in 21st-century America, I hope they leave room for a few unkind words about "Kid Nation."

CBS' latest new reality show -- that wonderful oxymoron -- is about 40 kids from 8 to 15 years old who are dropped into a ghost town in New Mexico with only a production crew to call their own. The kids' task, we are told in the best go-team fashion, is to "try to fix their forefathers' mistakes and build a new town that works."

Their real job, of course, is to attract viewers who want to see what happens to the "first ever kid nation." Will kids left to their own devices create a democratic idyll or a savage anarchy?

There is nothing particularly new about the conflicting images of children as innocents and children as beasts. It's as old as mythology. It lives on in the heart of every parent who's seen her child turn from a screaming sociopath at the supermarket checkout to a philosopher king at the beach: "Who painted the sky blue?"

But the real founding fathers of "Kid Nation" leave little to chance or choice. It's the producers, not the so-called "pioneers," who determine the structure of the town called Bonanza. It's the adults who lay the cultural grid down the main street. And this makes "Kid Nation" an entry into the annals of childhood as it's now lived and argued about in America.

You see, this is what the adults brought with them from Hollywood to Bonanza: competition, class and consumerism. In the very first episode, the children were directed to form four armies for color war. And they did. They were told that victory would determine their class status. And it did. In a scenario Karl Marx couldn't have made up, the winners of the war were dubbed "upper class," the runners-up were labeled "merchants," then "cooks," and finally "laborers."

The little capitalists were allowed to use their very unequal paychecks for very unequal chores to pay for goodies at the town store. The producers did everything but deny the lower income children their health coverage.

Cutthroat competition, class divisions, unrelenting consumerism. Maybe it is reality programming after all. Aren't these the basic three C's of the culture in which we are all raising children? Parent bashing is the favorite indoor sport these days. It's behind the voyeurism that makes Supernanny popular and Britney Spears unpopular. It's why we cheered the judge assigning the sinking celebrity a parenting coach.

Ordinary parents are held responsible for protecting their children from every imaginable danger. They are fed a high-anxiety diet of horror stories about lead paint in toys, Crocs on escalators and killer cribs. If you google "danger" and "children," you get 21 million hits of everything from online predators to takeout junk food.

Yet even the most watchful parents are not immune to criticism. The latest villains are the helicopter parents. See them hover over their children's lives! Watch them pull the invisible apron strings of a cell phone, book their children's playdates and write their college entrance essays while squashing their sense of imagination.

Parents even have to protect kids from overprotection. The back story is that America has privatized child-raising. We regard children as the wholly owned subsidiary and responsibility of their families. Parents, in turn, can become so absorbed in worrying about the side rails on cribs that we lose focus on the cultural environment that encases all of us. And there is no bike helmet that can protect our children's brains from the three C's.

Before it premiered, "Kid Nation" itself was charged with endangering the children by violating child labor laws and even child abuse laws. Indeed, the consent form that the parents signed is as creepy as the ones you don't read before you go into surgery. Even creepier was the scene when two homesick children cried and not one adult had the impulse to drop a camera and offer comfort.

Nevertheless, the real trouble in Bonanza is not that the cast of mini-survivors was exposed to "serious bodily injury, illness or death." It's that the children urged to build a better town (read "world") than their forefathers were manipulated into the copycat media culture.

The reward is a gold star literally worth its weight in gold: $20,000. The only hero so far is 8-year-old Jimmy, the New Hampshire boy who had the good sense to go home. As for the rest? The children of Bonanza didn't make the rules. They inherited them. It's not a kid nation. It's our nation.

U.S. Troops Bait Iraqis So Snipers Can Kill Them

By Kim Sengupta

Just one more reason that proves they don't hate us for our 'freedom.'

US soldiers are luring Iraqis to their deaths by scattering military equipment on the ground as "bait", and then shooting those who pick them up, it has been alleged at a court martial. The highly controversial tactic, which has hitherto been kept secret, is believed to have been responsible for the deaths of a number of Iraqis who were subsequently classified as enemy combatants and used in statistics to show the "success" of the "surge" in US forces.

The revelation came in court documents, obtained by The Washington Post , related to murder charges against three US soldiers who are alleged to have planted incriminating evidence on civilians they had killed. In a sworn statement, Captain Matthew Didier, the officer in charge of a sniper platoon, said: "Basically we would put an item out there and watch it. If someone found the item, picked it up and attempted to leave with the item, we would engage the individual as I saw this as a sign they would use the item against the US forces."

Capt Didier, of the 1st Battalion 501st Infantry Regiment, said members of the US military's Asymmetric Warfare Group visited his unit in January and later supplied ammunition boxes filled with "drop items" to be used " to disrupt the AIF [Anti-Iraq Forces] attempts at harming coalition forces and give us the upper hand in a fight."

Within months of the introduction of the strategy, three snipers in Capt Didier's platoon were charged with murder for allegedly using the "baits " to try to cover up unprovoked shootings. Specialist Jorge Sandoval and Staff Sgt Michael Hensley are accused of placing a spool of wire, sometimes used to detonate roadside bombs, in the pocket of a man who had been cutting grass with a rusty sickle after he was killed on 27 April this year.

Sgt Evan Vela is accused of shooting an Iraqi prisoner twice in the head with a 9mm pistol on the orders of Staff Sgt Hensley. The two soldiers told investigators that the man was carrying an AK-47 rifle. Other soldiers have testified that the rifle was planted next to the Iraqi after he was shot.

In earlier testimony Pte David Petta said he believed that "classified" items were to be placed on people killed by the sniper unit "if we killed somebody that we knew was a bad guy but didn't have the evidence to show for it".

The court martial of Spc Sandoval is due to start in Baghdad this week. His father, Curtis Carnahan, accused the US military of holding the proceedings in a war zone to try to minimise publicity.

"I feel you can't prosecute our soldiers for acts of war and threaten them with years and years of confinement when this ["bait"] programme, if it comes to the light of day, was clearly coming from higher levels."

A US military spokes-man said: "We don't discuss specific methods of targeting enemy combatants. The accused are charged with murder and wrongfully placing weapons on the remains of Iraqi nationals. There are no classified programmes that authorise the murder of local nationals and the use of 'drop weapons' to make killings appear legally justified."

A US military source said "baits" had been left by a number of units. "The guys picking them up are sometimes bad guys. But how do you know each time?"

Robert Emerson, a British security analyst, said: "This seems a highly arbitrary and suspect way of carrying out counter-insurgency operations."

Bush Restricting Travel Rights of Over 100,000 U.S. Citizens

by Sherwood Ross

The freedom to travel of more than 100,000 Americans placed on "watch" and "no fly" lists is being restricted by the Bush-Cheney regime.

Citizens who have done no more than criticize the president are being banned from airline flights, harassed at airports, strip searched, roughed up and even imprisoned, feminist author and political activist Naomi Wolf reports in her new book, "The End of America."(Chelsea Green Publishing)

"Making it more difficult for people out of favor with the state to travel back and forth across borders is a classic part of the fascist playbook," Wolf says. She noticed starting in 2002 that "almost every time I sought to board a domestic airline flight, I was called aside by the Transportation Security Administration(TSA) and given a more thorough search."

During one preboarding search, a TSA agent told her "You're on the list" and Wolf learned it is not a list of suspected terrorists but of journalists, academics, activists, and politicians "who have criticized the White House."

Some of this hassling has made headlines, such as when Senator Edward Kennedy was detained five times in East Coast airports in March, 2004, suggesting no person, however prominent, is safe from Bush nastiness. Rep. John Lewis of Georgia has also been mistreated. And it can be nasty. Robert Johnson, an American citizen, described the "humiliation factor" he endured:

"I had to take off my pants. I had to take off my sneakers, then I had to take off my socks. I was treated like a criminal," Wolf quotes him as saying. And it gets worse than that. Nicolas Maduro, Venezuela's foreign minister, said he was detained at Kennedy airport by officers who "threatened and shoved" him. And that was mild. Maher Arar, a Canadian software consultant was detained at Kennedy and "rendered" to Syria where he was imprisoned for more than a year by goons that beat him with a heavy metal cable.

After the Canadian furor over Arar's illegal kidnapping and torture, he was eventually released as he had zero ties to terrorists. Yet the Bush gang refused to concede error; refused to provide documents or witnesses to Canadian investigators; and claimed last January it had "secret information" that justified keeping Arar on the watch list, Wolf noted.

Again, Chaplain James Yee, an American citizen born in New Jersey who had converted to Islam and had the Christian compassion to call for better treatment of Guantanamo prisoners, was nabbed in Sept., 2003 on suspicion of "espionage and possibly treason" and flung into the Naval brig at Charleston, S.C., where he was manacled, put in solitary for 76 days, forbidden mail and family visits, demonized in the media and warned he could face execution. Wolf writes, "Within six months, the U.S. government had dropped all criminal charges against Yee," claiming it did so to avoid making sensitive evidence public, not because the chaplain was innocent.

Over and again, the Bush gang claims it can prove terrible crimes about suspects but, like the men imprisoned at Guantanamo, it repeatedly turns out to have "conspiracy" zilch in its briefcase rather than hard proof of actual misdeeds. Yet it goes on punishing hundreds of suspects with solitary confinement and worse without ever bringing them to trial. Globally, the number of such detainees is in the tens of thousands. Stalin would have understood.

Apparently, favorite targets of the Bush tyranny are peace activists like Jan Adams and Rebecca Gordon, detained at the San Francisco airport; a political leader such as Nancy Oden, of the Green Party, prevented from flying from Maine to Chicago; King Downing and David Fathi, both of the American Civil Liberties Union and both detained (proves ACLU's case about Bush, eh what?); and Constitutional scholar Walter F. Murphy, of Princeton University, who had attacked the illegalities of the Bush regime. He was put on notice his luggage would be ransacked.

"When you are physically detained by armed agents because of something you said or wrote, it has an impact," Wolf writes. "...you get it right away that the state is tracking your journeys, can redirect you physically, and can have armed men and women, who may or may not answer your questions, search and release you."

Wolf traces the "watch list" back to a 2003 directive from Bush to his intelligence agencies to identify people "thought to have terrorist intentions or contacts." After the list was given to the airlines, CBS-TV's 60 Minutes got a copy. The list was 540 pages long and there were 75,000 names on it of people to be taken aside for extra screening.

The more stringent "no fly" list has 45,000 names on it, Wolf reports. Prior to 9/11, the list had just 16 names, but 44,984 suspects were quickly manufactured to justify the creation of the vast airport security apparatus at God knows what cost to American taxpayers.

One ludicrous "no fly" story concerns John Graham, president of the nonprofit Giraffe Heroes Project, an organization that honors people who stick their necks out. A former government careerist who served in Viet Nam, Graham is an inspired speaker that receives standing ovations from groups such as West Point cadets, yet is kept from flying from his Langley, Wash., base by the National Security Agency. NSA won't tell him why, either. Maybe they have "secret" information on him, too.

Author Wolf notes that dictatorships from Hitler's Germany to Pinochet's Chile have employed arbitrary arrests to harass critics. And Bush's airport detention policies are more of the same. As Wolf writes, "being free means that you can't be detained arbitrarily." Somebody ring the fire bell!

Dangers of a Turbocharged Economy

By STEPHEN KOTKIN

IT’S Labor Day weekend, so let’s talk about labor. (Capital absorbs our attention most of the other 364 days of the year.)

Around 140 million people are employed in the United States. They are engaged in work like governing, manufacturing, health care providing, retailing and researching (as well as suing).

This gigantic army of laborers, argues Robert B. Reich, has morphed into a nation of consumers and investors, rather than citizens. “Supercapitalism” (Knopf, $25), his 11th book, seeks to explain why this supercharged economic system is a civic problem, and what can be done about it.

Mr. Reich, who teaches at the University of California, Berkeley, does not rip into opaque hedge funds and demand their regulation. Nor does he harp on lax government regulation of credit and mortgage practices. On the contrary, he criticizes many of the usual liberal fixes directed at the “excesses of the market.” His book is smart and compelling, if ultimately toothless.

Born in 1946, Mr. Reich served as labor secretary under President Bill Clinton, the avatar of the have-it-all baby boom generation. Equally significant, though, is that Mr. Reich’s government service dates back to the administrations of Gerald R. Ford and Jimmy Carter — that is, to the 1970s, the decade when America’s immediate postwar economy, a middle-class bonanza like no other, began to give way to today’s upper-class bacchanalia.

It was during what Mr. Reich aptly calls the Not Quite Golden Age, from 1945 to 1975, that America prospered, income inequality fell and most people trusted in government. Then, thanks to technologies like shipping containers and the Web, companies suddenly confronted brutal competition. After that, there was no going back.

Consumers got more choice and lower prices, while the people on Main Street became investors. Together, newly powerful shoppers and shareholders of this supercapitalism drove a decline in labor unions and a frenzy by corporations desperate to buy some market advantage in Washington.

“You and I are complicit,” Mr. Reich writes. Our “great deals” are somebody else’s lower pay and some corporation’s lobbying.

We are hypocrites, too, he says.

One of the book’s examples of consumers’ hypocrisy has to do with canned tuna. J. W. Connolly, former president of Heinz U.S.A., which was the parent company of StarKist, explains that “consumers wanted a dolphin-safe product,” but “if there was a dolphin-safe can of tuna next to a regular can, people chose the cheaper product. Even if the difference was a penny.” The company terminated its higher-cost effort to protect dolphins. After all, it’s a business, beholden to consumers and shareholders.

With such vignettes culled from the news media, Mr. Reich disembowels proponents of corporate “social responsibility.” He shows that companies like Wal-Mart are operating legally yet being shamed into incurring social costs that their competitors are not. Critics’ campaigns are a misleading diversion, he argues, because they confuse businesses with what they can never be: public interest bodies.

Public-relations skirmishes are no substitute for democracy. The ritual scolding of corporations in front of Congressional committees, Mr. Reich says, goes hand in hand with Congress’s failure to pass follow-up laws that reward businesses for safeguarding the environment or walking away from deals with serial human rights abusers.

Washington is all about the money, he writes. In 2005, the Census Bureau listed seven suburban counties around the capital as among the 20 richest in the country. And it’s not just Republicans cashing in on their service. “Upon leaving office,” he notes, “more than half of the senior officials in the Clinton administration became corporate lobbyists.”

Would-be analysts of this trend, Mr. Reich says, have it backward; government is not historically bigger now, relative to gross domestic product, and politicians are not more corrupt. Rather, market competition is greater, which means that public policy contests — over organic labeling, for example — have more than ever become just brawls among business rivals.

Here, however, we arrive at a cul-de-sac. Mr. Reich argues that the “most effective thing reformers could do is to reduce the effects of corporate money on politics and enhance the voices of citizens.” But he also writes of the lock that corporations have and how “the system cannot repair itself from the inside.”

So he opts for consciousness-raising. The public and the media, he writes, must understand the obscured truths laid bare in his book and demand change. In passing, Mr. Reich comes out in favor of decoupling health insurance from employers and raising the minimum wage to about half the average worker’s wage. He mentions runaway C.E.O. pay but offers no prescriptions.

Capping executive compensation is liable to be rejected as un-American, which it is. So here’s my suggestion: a legally binding maximum on C.E.O. multiples of their own workers’ salaries. Let’s pick a multiple of 300, well above the historical average. If chief executives want to be paid hundreds of millions, and boards comply, no problem; the C.E.O.’s task would be to figure out how to pay the company’s lowest worker hundreds of thousands.

That would be supercapitalism. Chief executives could devote their formidable talents to raising the skills and living standards of loyal work forces and avoiding the huge self-imposed costs of labor turnover, rather than gaming quarterly reports. Shareholders would remain empowered to invest or divest based on performance.

A lot of American businesses are already well in line with the proposed pay multiple. Companies that insist that they could never compete under the mandated guideline would have an option: look abroad for a cheaper C.E.O.

To provide an incentive, Congress could enact one of Mr. Reich’s best-argued proposals: elimination of the corporate income tax. But only for companies in compliance with the pay-scale multiple. Happy Labor Day.

Flight delayed after she feared 7 were terrorists

By Debbi Farr Baker and Alex Roth

She was simply “protecting my tiny little family,” she insisted, adding that “all I could think of was 9/11.”

But yesterday, Leigh Robbins offered an apology to seven Iraqi men who were passengers on a plane scheduled to fly from San Diego to Chicago on Tuesday night. Robbins was also on the plane but was so terrified the men might be terrorists that she demanded to get off, causing a delay that prompted the airline to postpone the flight until the next morning.

The Iraqis, as it turned out, were consultants working with Marines at Camp Pendleton. They say they were humiliated when airport security, reacting to Robbins' concerns, took them aside and questioned them. They have hired a lawyer.

“I know they're upset, and they have every right to be,” said Robbins, 35, a Richmond, Va., homemaker. She said she was traveling with her two young sons that night and decided to err on the side of caution.

“How can you overreact when it's your children?” she said.

American Airlines Flight 590, with 126 passengers on board, had been scheduled to depart Lindbergh Field at 11 p.m. Tuesday. In an interview yesterday, Robbins said she was sitting in the back of the plane with her children, awaiting the departure from the gate, when one of the Iraqis walked by to use the restroom.

She heard him “clunking around” inside the bathroom. When he came out, he had a suspicious look on his face, she said.

“He looked so mean, the way he was looking at everyone,” Robbins said. “It was very frightening, like something out of a movie.”

Robbins gathered up her sons, ages 9 and 4, and demanded to be let off the plane. The crew complied with her request, but the resulting delay meant the plane couldn't take off by Lindbergh Field's 11:30 p.m. curfew. The airline was forced to postpone the departure until 10:15 a.m. the next day.

Meanwhile, airport security officers questioned the seven Iraqis and determined that they posed no threat.

One of the men, David Al Watan, 30, of Dearborn, Mich., said the experience was mortifying because they were singled out for questioning based on their appearance.

He and the other Iraqis are employed by an Alaska-based defense contractor that works with the U.S. military. Watan, who fled Iraq in 1991 and said his mother was killed by Saddam Hussein's regime, wants an apology from American Airlines.

“While they sit in their air conditioning, I was out in the desert helping to save Marines' lives,” Watan said. “I am an American. I love this country. I would die for it.”

Lawrence Garcia, a lawyer for six of the Iraqis, accused the airline of acting improperly by questioning the men.

“They can't just assume someone has a bomb strapped to them just because they are Arabic,” Garcia said.

An American Airlines spokesman didn't return several phone calls requesting comment yesterday.

Robbins hasn't been able to reach the seven Iraqis to apologize personally. She feels terrible about the whole thing, she said.

“I'm very sorry, but I'd do anything to protect my kids,” she said. “If people want to put me down, that's their right.”

<Let me go a little further than that, I'd like to "put her down". The bolded statements above illustrate exactly why the country sucks. You do NOT have the right, responsibility or anything else to harm those around you in your own defense. This isn't even a matter of defense, this is pure speculative, illogical insanity.>

Police Brutality repaid

Hollywood Bus Driver Attacks Cyclist, LAPD Handcuff Cyclist (and Wife!)

A cyclist westbound on Hollywood Boulevard hears a loud horn behind him as he rides in the right side of the #2 lane, alongside a row of parked cars and dangerously close to the door zone.

The motorist with the heavy horn hand turns out to be Metro Bus Driver #XXXXX and she passes the cyclist so closely that his left hand touches the side of the bus as it speeds past him. The number #1 lane is empty and nothing serves to prevent the bus driver from changing lanes to pass the cyclist except for a failure on her part to acknowledge the cyclist’s right to ride the streets of Los Angeles without having his life threatened.

The bus proceeds down Hollywood Boulevard to a bus stop at Wilton and stops. The cyclist pulls up on the driver’s side of the bus and addresses the bus driver informing her that honking at a cyclist with no room to spare will only serve to startle the cyclist and cause a dangerous situation and that as a professional driver she should know that if the lane is too narrow to share, she should change lanes in order to pass without endangering the safety of the cyclist.

The driver screams “You were in my way. You need to get off the road!” She slams the window shut.

The cyclist, who would have accepted a “Sorry, my bad!” and called it a day, pulled in front of the bus and informed the driver that he was calling the police to report the driver for Assault with a Deadly Weapon, the bus. She screams, points at her watch, tells the cyclist to move and puts the bus in gear.

The cyclist stands his ground, all the while hearing “…all operators are busy, please continue to hold…” on the phone. The cyclist calls his wife and tells her to send the police to Hollywood & Wilton. He continues to call the local police station.

The bus driver pushes the cyclist with her bus. A witness on the south side of Hollywood screams at the bus driver. “I’m watching you! Stop it!”

The cyclist stands his ground, now with a passenger who steps out and screams at the cyclist to get out the way and then lets loose with a stream of expletives. The passenger gets back on the bus.

The bus driver backs up, turns the bus into the boulevard and comes back at the cyclist who is now standing behind his bike. She comes a bit faster and pushes the bus against the cyclist until the bike is now wedged under the right front bumper of the bus. She throws up her hands and wails at the bus drivers who drive past in the #1 lane. They yell at her to sit tight and just call the supervisor. All the while the witness on the street keeps yelling at the bus driver “He’s right! You’re wrong!”

Inside the bus, the angry passenger is stirring up the other three or four passengers for their “Let’s roll!” moment. He jumps off the bus with an elderly man backing him up, pulls the bike from under the bus, flings it up onto the sidewalk and then assumes a Karate Kid pose that causes all time to stop and all motion to be suspended as the absurdity of the moment is absorbed by the cyclist. The old man has already disappeared and the passenger jumps back onto the bus.

With the bus blocking the #2 lane of Hollywood Boulevard, traffic is now backed up for several blocks. The bus driver takes the time to explain to each motorist as they pull alongside her that the traffic congestion is due to the cyclist. “Can you believe this?” she asks.

The bus driver talks to somebody on her bus phone, gets out witness cards and proceeds to have the passengers fill them out. She collects the cards.

The Karate Kid jumps off the bus, spits on the cyclist, yells at the witness across the street and proceeds down Hollywood Boulevard.

Eventually an LAPD patrol car pulls up and two cops jump out. The cyclist naively expects to hear “What’s going on here?” but is instead greeted by “Hands behind your back!” The cyclist’s wife who is just arriving on the scene yells at the cops, “Hey, he’s the one who called you!” which apparently sounded like “Hey, put me in handcuffs too!” because Officer Hayhurst promptly placed her in handcuffs and placed her face against the wall.

Officer Swan held the cyclist, face against the wall, while he struggled with the definition of impeding traffic. The cyclist countered that he wanted to file charges against the driver for assault with a deadly weapon and battery charges against the Karate Kid.

Officer Swan gave the cyclist the first of the many lectures that are apparently free on holidays to those wearing handcuffs, this one entitled “The Metro provides a public service and you are not to interfere with it.” The cyclist responds that riding a bike in the street could hardly be construed as “interfering” with the Metro and that cyclists are guaranteed by law their place on the street and that it is his duty to protect and serve everybody, not just those in poor command of tons of steel.

The waste of time exchange continued as Sgt. Jerrett arrived on the scene and consulted with Swan and Hayhurst, Metro Deputy Sheriff Parrott, Metro Supervisor Mike Dunn and the Metro driver. Sgt. Jerrett lumbers over to the cyclist and proceeds to ask questions such as “Do you think it’s appropriate to stand in the street?” and “Do you think that yelling through the windshield is the best way to communicate with the driver?”

The cyclist responds that he was attempting to detain the driver while he waited for the LAPD to answer the phone so that he could have her arrested for threatening his life with her irresponsible and dangerous driving and, as it turns out, her stated contempt for his right to ride in the street. The cyclist again asks the police to arrest the driver for assault with a deadly weapon, pointing out that if a motorist were to move a vehicle toward a police officer in the same manner, they would not be so conflicted as to action, that they would respond quickly and effectively and there would be little debate as to any definition of assault with a deadly weapon. Jerrett listens, stares and walks away.

After much discussion, Sgt. Jarrett decides that Sheriff’s Deputy Parrott will be taking over the “incident” and that the LAPD will be moving on. Deputy Parrott gets in the cyclist’s face to state clearly that there would be no Private Persons Arrest, there would be no arrest period. There will be an investigation and there will be a citation for an infraction and it might be the cyclist!

He then allowed the Metro driver to leave the scene with the bus.

As the cyclist stood giving his report to Deputy Parrott and Metro Supervisor Dunn, the cyclist pointed out that the witness cards had just left with the Metro drive.

Deputy Parrott and Supervisor Dunn looked at each other with a synchronized “WTF” look on their humbled faces and for a moment the only sound that could be heard was the thundering roar of systemic incompetence resounding down the boulevard.

Two and a half hours after the beginning of this incident, Supervisor Mike Dunn stands on the sidewalk explaining in his most earnest manner, “But you have to understand, that’s how they are trained to drive. They are told to honk at road hazards!”

This is fuel on the fire for the cyclist who argues “Cyclists aren’t road hazards!” The cyclist’s wife calmly records Supervisor Dunn’s explanation and the cyclist wearily takes his claim form for the bent wheel and walks home.

The next day the cyclist calls the Metro and reports the incident. Within hours he receives an email from an official at the Metro contradicting Supervisor Mike Dunn and with Bus Drive Instructions in the subject line. “Bus operators are not told to honk at cyclists. As a matter of fact, the policy states that cyclists have the same rights on the road as motorists and that operators are to follow at a safe distance or pass with 3-4 l/2 feet of right side clearance.”

Unfortunately, the Metro official neglected to copy Supervisor Mike Dunn or Driver #XXXXX on that email which means that she’s still out there, sideswiping and screaming “You need to get off the road!”

As for this cyclist (yes, that's me in those pictures!), “See you on the streets!”

Activist silenced for fear of surveillance

ROCCO PARASCANDOLA

Jennifer Flynn is not a rabble-rouser. She's not an aspiring suicide bomber. She doesn't advocate the overthrow of the government. Instead, she pushes for funding and better treatment for people with HIV and AIDS.

Better keep an eye on her.

Wait! Somebody already did.

On the day before a rally by the New York City AIDS Housing Network at the 2004 Republican National Convention - a rally by an organization Flynn co-founded, and a rally that the NYPD had approved - she experienced something straight out of a spy novel.

While visiting her family in Hillside, N.J., Flynn spotted a car with a New York license plate parked outside the house. When she left to head back to her Brooklyn home that evening, the car followed hers. Shortly after leaving Hillside, two more vehicles, also with New York plates, seemed to be tailing her, too.

Trying to assure herself she wasn't nuts, Flynn tested her hunch - changing lanes, making turns, pulling over and parking. The drivers in those three vehicles mimicked her actions.

At one point, she recalled, she slowed down and one of the other vehicles ended up alongside her car. She looked over to see several men in the vehicle. She gestured toward them. The men "threw up their arms as if to say, 'We're only doing what we're told,'" she remembers.

On the New Jersey side of the Goethals Bridge, her followers pulled away. But later, when Flynn pulled up in front of her Flatbush home, she spotted another car, with two men inside, both with laptops. At 4 a.m., they were still there.

Is Flynn paranoid? Well, she is now. She did, however, jot down the license plate number of one of the vehicles in Jersey - a blue sport utility vehicle. When a reporter asked for the number, Flynn couldn't find it. Recently, it was found in a file kept by Christopher Dunn, the civil liberties lawyer she called that day in a panic.

The license plate number traces back to a company - Pequot Inc. - and a post office box at an address far from the five boroughs. Registering unmarked cars to post office boxes outside the city or to shell companies is a common practice of law enforcement agencies to shield undercover investigators.

The NYPD, however, says it didn't follow Flynn that evening. And the department's Deputy Commissioner of Intelligence David Cohen has said no federal agency was involved in preconvention surveillance.

So who was following Flynn? And what, exactly, did they hope to learn about a woman the NYPD knew well, as it had been in regular communication with her about her organization's rally?

The answer - well, part of it - is a 99-mile road trip from NYPD headquarters: uptown, into the Bronx, and onto I-87. A quick switch onto the Saw Mill River Parkway, then the Taconic Parkway. Fifty more miles to go, past the leaves turning color and the country club golf courses. After that, it's the winding roads of tony Millbrook, with its horse farms and vineyards.

At last, we're in Amenia, population 1,115. It's so far from the city its dry cleaners actually clean horse blankets.

The street named on the license-plate printout exists, though the address doesn't. An auto-shop worker on the block suggests checking with the post office. When Postmaster Bonnie Colgan and an assistant are shown the printout, they stop dead in their tracks.

There's a Pequot Capital Management in midtown and a Pequot Construction in the Bronx. But no Pequot Inc. in Amenia.

"That's not a real company," the assistant says. "The people who used that box, they're from New York. They used to come here and get the mail, but not anymore."

Colgan is tempted to elaborate, but doesn't.

"I can't because of the sensitive nature of the issue," she says.

Back in the city, Flynn takes a seat at a Starbucks near City Hall and shakes her head. She still feels as passionately about what she does as she did three years ago. But she concedes the experience has taken its toll.

"I feel like I've stepped back, in a way," she says. "I feel I'm not as vocal as I was. I'm still going to sign a petition. I'm still going to organize a rally. I do it. But now I'm deathly afraid."

Flynn, 35, may one day learn who was following her. Activists have decried police tactics at the GOP convention - 1,806 arrests, protesters hemmed in with orange netting, people arrested and held for hours and hours in a West Side pier warehouse. The New York Civil Liberties Union, which represents seven plaintiffs suing the city over their arrests, is pushing for the release of raw NYPD intelligence reports detailing police surveillance of activists and protest groups.

Flynn says the damage is done. She sees it in the attitudes of other activists. There's less desire. More trepidation.

"When you use scare tactics, you really are curbing our right to dissent against the government," she said. "The only thing this is serving to do is squash public dissent. By going after the organizers of a rally, you really are sending a message - 'Don't hold a rally.'"

In Europe and U.S., Nonbelievers Are Increasingly Vocal

By Mary Jordan

BURGESS HILL, England -- Every morning on his walk to work, high school teacher Graham Wright recited a favorite Anglican prayer and asked God for strength in the day ahead. Then two years ago, he just stopped.

Wright, 59, said he was overwhelmed by a feeling that religion had become a negative influence in his life and the world. Although he once considered becoming an Anglican vicar, he suddenly found that religion represented nothing he believed in, from Muslim extremists blowing themselves up in God's name to Christians condemning gays, contraception and stem cell research.

"I stopped praying because I lost my faith," said Wright, 59, a thoughtful man with graying hair and clear blue eyes. "Now I truly loathe any sight or sound of religion. I blush at what I used to believe."

Wright is now an avowed atheist and part of a growing number of vocal nonbelievers in Europe and the United States. On both sides of the Atlantic, membership in once-quiet groups of nonbelievers is rising, and books attempting to debunk religion have been surprise bestsellers, including "The God Delusion," by Oxford University professor Richard Dawkins.

New groups of nonbelievers are sprouting on college campuses, anti-religious blogs are expanding across the Internet, and in general, more people are publicly saying they have no religious faith.

More than three out of four people in the world consider themselves religious, and those with no faith are a distinct minority. But especially in richer nations, and nowhere more than in Europe, growing numbers of people are actively saying they don't believe there is a heaven or a hell or anything other than this life.

Many analysts trace the rise of what some are calling the "nonreligious movement" to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. The sight of religious fanatics killing 3,000 people caused many to begin questioning -- and rejecting -- all religion.

"This is overwhelmingly the topic of the moment," said Terry Sanderson, president of the National Secular Society of Britain. "Religion in this country was very quiet until September 11, and now it is at the center of everything."

Since the 2001 attacks, a string of religiously inspired bomb and murder plots has shaken Europe. Muslim radicals killed 52 people on the London public transit system in 2005 and 191 on Madrid trains in 2004. People apparently aiming for a reward in heaven were arrested in Britain last year for trying to blow up transatlantic jetliners. And earlier this month in Germany, authorities arrested converts to Islam on charges that they planned to blow up American facilities there.

Many Europeans are angry at demands to use taxpayer money to accommodate Islam, Europe's fastest-growing religion, which now has as many as 20 million followers on the continent. Along with calls for prayer rooms in police stations, foot baths in public places and funding for Islamic schools and mosques, expensive legal battles have broken out over the niqab, the Muslim veil that covers all but the eyes, which some devout women seek to wear in classrooms and court.

Christian fundamentalist groups who want to halt certain science research, reverse abortion and gay rights and teach creationism rather than evolution in schools are also angering people, according to Sanderson and others.

"There is a feeling that religion is being forced on an unwilling public, and now people are beginning to speak out against what they see as rising Islamic and Christian militancy," Sanderson said.

Though the number of nonbelievers speaking their minds is rising, academics say it's impossible to calculate how many people silently share that view. Many people who do not consider themselves religious or belong to any faith group often believe, even if vaguely, in a supreme being or an afterlife. Others are not sure what they believe.

The term atheist can imply aggressiveness in disbelief; many who don't believe in God prefer to call themselves humanists, secularists, freethinkers, rationalists or, a more recently coined term, brights.

"Where religion is weak, people don't feel a need to organize against it," said Phil Zuckerman, an American academic who has written extensively about atheism around the globe.

He and others said secular groups are also gaining strength in countries where religious influence over society looms large, including India, Israel and Turkey. "Any time we see an outspoken movement against religion, it tells us that religion has power there," Zuckerman said.

One group of nonbelievers in particular is attracting attention in Europe: the Council of Ex-Muslims. Founded earlier this year in Germany, the group now has a few hundred members and an expanding number of chapters across the continent. "You can't tell us religion is peaceful -- look around at the misery it is causing," said Maryam Namazie, leader of the group's British chapter.

She and other leaders of the council held a news conference in The Hague to launch the Dutch chapter on Sept. 11, the sixth anniversary of the terrorist attacks in the United States. "We are all atheists and nonbelievers, and our goal is not to eradicate Islam from the face of the earth," but to make it a private matter that is not imposed on others, she said.

The majority of nonbelievers say they are speaking out only because of religious fanatics. But some atheists are also extreme, urging people, for example, to blot out the words "In God We Trust" from every dollar bill they carry.

Gaining political clout and access to television and radio airtime is the goal of many of these groups. With a higher profile, they say, they could, for instance, lobby for all religious rooms in public hospitals to be closed, as a response to Muslims demanding prayer rooms because Christians have chapels.

Associations of nonbelievers are also moving to address the growing demand in Britain, Spain, Italy and other European countries for nonreligious weddings, funerals and celebrations for new babies. They are helping arrange ceremonies that steer clear of talk of God, heaven and miracles and celebrate, as they say, "this one life we know."

The British Humanist Association, which urges people who think "the government pays too much attention to religious groups" to join them, has seen its membership double in two years to 6,500.

A humanist group in the British Parliament that looks out for the rights of the nonreligious now has about 120 members, up from about 25 a year ago.

Doreen Massey, a Labor Party member of the House of Lords who belongs to that group, said most British people don't want legislators to make public policy decisions on issues such as abortion and other health matters based on their religious beliefs.

But the church has disproportionate power and influence in Parliament, she said. For example, she said, polls show that 80 percent of Britons want the terminally ill who are in pain to have the right to a medically assisted death, yet such proposals have been effectively killed by a handful of powerful bishops.

"We can't accept that religious faiths have a monopoly on ethics, morality and spirituality," Massey said. Now, she added, humanist and secularist groups are becoming "more confident and more powerful" and recognize that they represent the wishes of huge numbers of people.

While the faithful have traditionally met like-minded people at the local church, mosque or synagogue, it has long been difficult for those without religion to find each other. The expansion of the Internet has made it a vital way for nonbelievers to connect.

In retirement centers, restaurants, homes and public lectures and debates, nonbelievers are convening to talk about how to push back what they see as increasingly intrusive religion.

"Born Again Atheist," "Happy Heathen" and other anti-religious T-shirts and bumper stickers are increasingly seen on the streets. Groups such as the Skeptics in the Pub in London, which recently met to discuss this topic, "God: The Failed Hypothesis," are now finding that they need bigger rooms to accommodate those who find them online.

Wright, the teacher who recently declared himself a nonbeliever, is one of thousands of people who have joined dues-paying secular and humanist groups in Europe this year.

Sitting in his living room on a quiet cul-de-sac in this English town of 30,000, Wright said he now goes online every day to keep up with the latest atheist news.

"One has to step up and stem the rise of religious influence," said Wright, who is thinking of becoming a celebrant at humanist funerals. He said he recently went to the church funeral of his brother-in-law and couldn't bear the "vacuous prayers of the vicar," who, Wright said, "looked bored and couldn't wait to leave."

Now, instead of each morning silently reciting a favorite nighttime prayer, "Lighten our darkness, we beseech thee, O Lord, and by thy great mercy defend us from all perils and dangers . . . " (from the Anglican Book of Common Prayer), he spends the time just thinking about the day ahead.

He said his deceased mother, a Catholic, was comforted by her faith: "It kept her going through difficult times," particularly when his father left her when he and his sister were young.

"I really don't know how I will react if something really bad happens," he said. "But there is no going back. There is nothing to go back to."

Not believing in an afterlife, he said, "makes you think you have to make the most of this life. It's the now that matters. It also makes you feel a greater urgency of things that matter," such as halting global warming, and not just dismissing it as being "all in God's plan."

He called himself heartened that the National Secular Society, which he recently joined, is planning to open chapters at a dozen universities this fall. The rising presence of the nonreligious movement, he said, is "fantastic."

"It's a bit of opposition, isn't it?" he said. "Why should these religious groups hold so much sway?"

Vitter earmarked federal money for creationist group

by Bill Walsh

WASHINGTON -- Sen. David Vitter, R-La., earmarked $100,000 in a spending bill for a Louisiana Christian group that has challenged the teaching of Darwinian evolution in the public school system and to which he has political ties.

Sen. David Vitter, R-La.

The money is included in the labor, health and education financing bill for fiscal 2008 and specifies payment to the Louisiana Family Forum "to develop a plan to promote better science education."

The earmark appears to be the latest salvo in a decades-long battle over science education in Louisiana, in which some Christian groups have opposed the teaching of evolution and, more recently, have pushed to have it prominently labeled as a theory with other alternatives presented. Educators and others have decried the movement as a backdoor effort to inject religious teachings into the classroom.

The nonprofit Louisiana Family Forum, launched in Baton Rouge in 1999 by former state Rep. Tony Perkins, has in recent years taken the lead in promoting "origins science," which includes the possibility of divine intervention in the creation of the universe.

The group's stated mission is to "persuasively present biblical principles in the centers of influence on issues affecting the family through research, communication and networking." Until recently, its Web site contained a "battle plan to combat evolution," which called the theory a "dangerous" concept that "has no place in the classroom." The document was removed after a reporter's inquiry.

Vitter, Forum have ties

The group's tax-exempt status prohibits the Louisiana Family Forum from political activity, but Vitter has close ties to the group. Dan Richey, the group's grass-roots coordinator, was paid $17,250 as a consultant in Vitter's 2004 Senate race. Records also show that Vitter's campaign employed Beryl Amedee, the education resource council chairwoman for the Louisiana Family Forum.

The group has been an advocate for the senator, who was elected as a strong supporter of conservative social issues. When Vitter's use of a Washington, D.C., call-girl service drew comparisons last month to the arrest of Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, in what an undercover officer said was a solicitation for sex in an airport men's room, Family Forum Executive Director Gene Mills came to Vitter's defense.

In a video clip the group posted on the Internet site YouTube, Mills said the two senators' situations are far different. "Craig is denying the allegations," he said. "Vitter has repented of the allegations. He sought forgiveness, reconciliation and counseling."

Vitter's office said it is not surprising that people he employed would also do work for Louisiana Family Forum, which shares his philosophical outlook. He said the education earmark was meant to offer a broad array of views in the public schools.

"This program helps supplement and support educators and school systems that would like to offer all of the explanations in the study of controversial science topics such as global warming and the life sciences," Vitter said in a written statement.

The money in the earmark will pay for a report suggesting "improvements" in science education in Louisiana, the development and distribution of educational materials and an evaluation of the effectiveness of the Ouachita Parish School Board's 2006 policy that opened the door to biblically inspired teachings in science classes.

"I believe it is an important program," Vitter said.

Critics said taxpayer money should not go to support a religion-based program.

"This is a misappropriation of public funds," said Charles Kincade, a civil rights lawyer in Monroe who has been involved in church-state cases. "It's a backdoor attempt to push a religious agenda in the public school system."

Group has history

Former Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., a Christian conservative defeated for re-election in 2004, attempted to open the door for such money when he inserted language into a report accompanying the 2001 No Child Left Behind Act enabling teachers to offer "the full range of scientific views" when "topics that may generate controversy (such as biological evolution)" are taught.

In 1987, the U.S. Supreme Court threw out a Louisiana law that would have required schools to teach creationist theories, which hold that God created the universe, whenever evolution was taught. In 2002, the Louisiana Family Forum unsuccessfully sought to persuade the state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education to insert a five-paragraph disclaimer in all of its science texts challenging the natural science view that life came about by accident and has evolved through the process of natural selection.

The group notched a victory last year when the Ouachita School Board adopted a policy that, without mentioning the Bible or creationism, gave teachers leeway to introduce other views besides those contained in traditional science texts.

"Many of our educators feel inadequate to address the controversies," said Mills, executive director of the Louisiana Family Forum.

Mills said that his group didn't request the money in the 2008 appropriations bill, and that Vitter's proposal "was a bit of a surprise."

Mills said his group is not attempting to push the teaching of evolution out of the schools, but wants to supplement it. Yet, some of the material posted on the Louisiana Family Forum's Web site suggests a more radical view.

Among other things, a "Louisiana Family Forum Fact Sheet" at one point included "A Battle Plan -- Practical Steps to Combat Evolution" by Kent Hovind, a controversial evangelist who is serving a 10-year prison sentence for tax offenses and obstruction of justice.

Hovind's paper stated, "Evolution is not a harmless theory but a dangerous religious belief" that underpinned the atrocities committed by Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin and Pol Pot of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia.

Looking deeper urged

"I've got so much stuff on the Web site I don't know what's there," Mills said. "We think that in order to teach controversial topics successfully, you have to teach both sides."

The group's "Evolution Addendum for Public Schools," also posted on the Web site, offers a flavor of its concerns. The document rejects the evolutionary connection between apes and humans, questions the standard explanation of fossil formation and seeks to undercut the prevailing scientific view that life emerged from a series of chemical reactions.

"Under ideal conditions, the odds of that many amino acids coming together in the right order are approximately the same as winning the Power Ball Lotto every week for the next 640 years," it states. "How could this have happened accidentally?"

Kincade, the Monroe lawyer, said Vitter's and Louisiana Family Forum's motives are not benign.

"What you have to do is look below the surface," said Kincade, who holds an undergraduate degree in physics and has been active in legal cases in which religious groups challenge science instruction. "It frames the issue in a way that appeals to America's sense of fair play. The problem is, except for fringe people, evolution is an accepted fact of science. It is not a hotly contested issue. The general concept of natural selection and evolution is settled and beyond dispute. To suggest otherwise is misleading. They are trying to backdoor creationism."

Vitter's appropriation was contained in a database compiled by Taxpayers for Common Sense, a nonprofit group seeking to reduce the number of earmarks in federal legislation. Earlier this year, Congress agreed for the first time to begin linking specially requested earmarks to the names of their sponsors. Taxpayers for Common Sense has compiled thousands of them into searchable databases.

Vitter said the financing request was submitted earlier this year and "was evaluated on its merit." But Steve Ellis, of the taxpayers' group, said most earmarks are not vetted by anyone except the member requesting it.

"Using an earmark to dictate that the Louisiana Family Forum receive the funding to develop a science education program ironically ignores a hallmark of scientific research, making decisions on the basis of competitive, empirical research," Ellis said.

The appropriations bill is awaiting Senate action.