The Chronicle of Higher Education The Neoconservative-Conspiracy Theory: Pure Myth

"The ruins of Saddam Hussein's shattered tyranny may provide additional evidence of chemical weapons and other weapons of mass destruction, but one poisonous by-product has already begun to seep from under the rubble. It is a conspiracy theory purporting to explain how the foreign policy of the world's greatest power, the United States, has been captured by a sinister and hitherto little-known cabal."

"Ultimately, the neocon-conspiracy theory misinterprets as a policy coup a reasoned shift in grand strategy that the Bush administration has adopted in responding to an ominous form of external threat. Whether that strategy and its component parts prove to be as robust and effective as containment of hostile Middle Eastern states linked to terrorism remains to be seen. But to characterize it in conspiratorial terms is not only a failure to weigh policy choices on their merits, but represents a detour into the fever swamps of political demagoguery."

Counterpunch Battling for the Soul of the American Republic

"But what the neocons seek is not just a political transformation of the Middle East. Their end game is to bring about "the long-overdue internal reform and modernization of Islam." These ideologues are fundamentally confrontational in nature. They recognize that American military intervention in the Middle East will provoke terrorist attacks on Americans, both at home and abroad. They would welcome such an attack, since the terrorists would provide the U.S. with the pretext for even stronger military intervention. Neocons believe that the U.S. will emerge triumphant in the end, provided that it shows the will to fight the war against militant Islam to a successful conclusion, and provided too, that it has "the stomach to impose a new political culture on the defeated parties." All of these policies suggest that the neocons believe they have liberated the U.S. from the constraints of history in a post-9/11 world."

redux [04.07.03]
Policy Review Democratic Imperialism: A Blueprint

"Iraq forces the imperial question. In the aftermath of an Iraqi war, it may suffice to install a friendly autocracy, withdraw the bulk of our forces, and exert our influence from afar. Yet some have called for more. From voices within the administration like Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, to policy intellectuals like Richard Perle, to esteemed scholars like Bernard Lewis, many have argued that only a democratic transformation of Iraq, and eventually of the larger Arab world, can provide long-term security against terrorism and nuclear attack.

In an important address in February, George W. Bush lent his voice to this chorus."

"Could such a venture in democratic imperialism be harmonized with our liberal principles? Even if so, would it work? Is it possible to bring liberalism to a society so long at odds with the values of the West?"

JSOnline Neoconservative clout seen in U.S. Iraq policy

"Led by Weekly Standard editor William Kristol, the neoconservatives have offered a sweeping new vision for U.S. foreign policy: to restructure the Middle East and supplant dictators around the world, using pre-emptive attacks when necessary against any countries seen as potential threats. Traditional conservatives, such as Heritage Foundation fellow John C. Hulsman, suggest that this will lead to "endless war," while Jessica Mathews of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace has charged that "announcing a global crusade on behalf of democracy is arrogant."

Whether Bush ends up sticking with the neoconservative playbook remains to be seen, but a wide range of observers suggest it is a key part of his current game plan."

Project for the New American Century Power & Duty: U.S. Action is Crucial to Maintaining World Order

"The unavoidable reality is that the exercise of American power is key to maintaining what peace and order there is in the world today. Imagine a world in which the U.S. didn't exercise this power. Who would handle a nuclear-armed North Korea? Who would prevent the one-party state of China from acting on its pledge to gather democratic Taiwan into its fold? Who would be left to hunt down Islamic terrorists increasingly interested in getting their hands on weapons of mass destruction? Who could have contained, let alone defeated, a tyrant like Hussein, preventing him from becoming the dominant power in the Middle East? Who can prevent the Balkans from slipping back into chaos? Who is going to confront regimes like those of Iran, Syria and Libya as they rush to get their own weapons of mass destruction? Given how little most of our allies and critics spend on defense, certainly not them."

"Like the townsfolk in "High Noon," this naturally makes many in the world anxious. Change always brings risk and instability. But the danger in doing nothing -- of pretending that the volatile Middle East mix of failing regimes, rogue states, weapons of mass destruction and terrorism can be contained safely if we only let it alone -- is far greater."

Washington Monthly Practice to Deceive

"To most Americans, this would sound like a frightening state of affairs, the kind that would lead them to wonder how and why we had got ourselves into this mess in the first place. But to the Bush administration hawks who are guiding American foreign policy, this isn't the nightmare scenario. It's everything going as anticipated.

In their view, invasion of Iraq was not merely, or even primarily, about getting rid of Saddam Hussein. Nor was it really about weapons of mass destruction, though their elimination was an important benefit. Rather, the administration sees the invasion as only the first move in a wider effort to reorder the power structure of the entire Middle East. Prior to the war, the president himself never quite said this openly. But hawkish neoconservatives within his administration gave strong hints. In February, Undersecretary of State John Bolton told Israeli officials that after defeating Iraq, the United States would "deal with" Iran, Syria, and North Korea. Meanwhile, neoconservative journalists have been channeling the administration's thinking. Late last month, The Weekly Standard's Jeffrey Bell reported that the administration has in mind a "world war between the United States and a political wing of Islamic fundamentalism ... a war of such reach and magnitude [that] the invasion of Iraq, or the capture of top al Qaeda commanders, should be seen as tactical events in a series of moves and countermoves stretching well into the future.""

Guardian Unlimited A fearful war to remember

"We have all misunderstood the past 20 years, the transition from Cold War to the 'new world disorder'. The time when the United States really dominated the world was then, not now. It was before the fall of the Soviet empire that American authority was unchallenged across most of the globe. But now the Cold War disciplines have gone. America finds the world uncontrollable, flinging down one challenge after another. American military power is colossal and still growing. But the political purpose that made it effective has been lost. Before 1989, America's role in the world was obvious: the containment and reduction of Communism. Today, the lonely superpower stands baffled, uncertain how to use its strength, defied by men with box-cutters, backstreet snipers and tens of millions of young demonstrators.

This is why the 'Project for a New American Century' arose. This neo-conservative programme, hatched during Clinton's presidency by a group that included Rumsfeld, Wolfovitz and many others now guiding Bush, at least tried to provide American military supremacy with a clear political aim to replace anti-Communism. The trouble is that the Project, expressed in the new defence doctrine of pre-emptive war against states fancied to offer a threat to American security, cannot work in the twenty-first century world."

The Globe and Mail Don't brush aside the analysts when cleaning up the Street

"Only the most simple-minded of investors would believe that the Street's problems were solved yesterday when two disgraced analysts had their heads served up on a platter."

"Life is just a bit more complex than this."

Forbes For Wall Street, Fines Are A Day's Pay

"First, the fines, while large in absolute terms, are tiny compared to the big banks' revenue. Merrill Lynch, for instance, will pay $200 million. But last year, the company reported revenue of $28 billion (down from $45 billion in 2000). That works out to $112 million a day, not counting weekends. So the total fine, only half of which is a penalty, represents 1.8 days of Merrill's revenue. Since the conduct Merrill and the others are accused of took place over at least four years, it's fair to say that Merrill is paying less than a day's pay for its transgression."

redux [05.21.02]
Salon Lock up the analysts and throw away the key

"But will individual analysts take a fall? History suggests they won't. White-collar criminals almost never pay out of pocket or go to jail. The reasons go deeper than just the ability of analysts to hire the best lawyers. According to experts, American capitalism at the turn of the 20th century does a great job of encouraging entrepreneurship and risk taking but lacks an effective mechanism for punishing those who go too far. The two predominant legal responses -- the criminal prosecution and civil class-action suit -- continually fail to do the job."

The Street Stock Analysts' Dirty Little Secret

"The real skinny is that virtually no one who matters in the investment industry -- which is to say, portfolio managers at large pension, mutual and hedge funds -- ever took nine-tenths of research reports seriously. Only the public did. As I explained in my book Online Investing, analysts at the major brokerages for years have been looked down upon by institutional investors as sales support staff, a pack of kids with fancy college degrees who provided little more than PR material for the retail brokerage and investment banking teams. If they were called "promoters" rather than "analysts," the public would have had a better idea of their role in the retail investment ecosystem. The funds have their own, unbiased, independent staff analysts."

redux [04.19.02]
The Motley Fool How Do Analysts Sleep?

"It should have been the "big-freaking-surprise" story of the year, and yet we still find ourselves shocked at the cynicism and self-interest of Wall Street's equity analysts. We have known, and yet not known, that analysts commanded enormous salaries based in no small part on their ability to drive investment banking business to their companies. After the Attorney General of New York's inquiry, we know for sure, and the truth is as bad as we imagined."

redux [04.10.02]
The Washington Post Analysts Accused Of Touting Tech 'Junk' To Boost Profits

"At the height of the technology bubble, Henry Blodget and other Internet analysts at Merrill Lynch & Co. issued glowing reports about companies that would later crash, while privately deriding the stocks to one another in salty, dismissive language.

One company given a top rating by analysts was described in-house as "a piece of junk." Another was called "such a piece of crap," even though analysts in Merrill's Internet group told investors to buy more of it for their portfolios. One analyst worried that regular investors "are losing their retirement" because of the misleading advice."

redux [08.21.01]
The Standard Days of Reckoning

"There is something a bit disingenuous about this legal assault, which is, after all, mainly about people who lost money speculating in the stock market. Some are suing because they couldn't get shares in initial public offerings at the offering price; others are suing because they got the shares and lost money on them. Federal regulators and politicians are suddenly shocked - shocked! - to discover that conflicts of interest are rampant on Wall Street.

Still, with $3.3 trillion up in smoke since the Nasdaq hit its peak in March 2000, it's hardly surprising that the people and institutions that helped engineer the epic Internet bubble are being called to account. And for the technology finance industry - which was transformed by the Nasdaq's boom from a relatively obscure West Coast offshoot of Wall Street into a major source of growth and profits for top-tier firms such as Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, J.P. Morgan Chase, Credit Suisse First Boston and Merrill Lynch - it's going to be a painful reckoning indeed."

redux [07.19.01]
The New York Times Opinion Page Cleaning Up Stock Market Research
[requires 'free' registration]

"Investment banks, whose analysts were touting stocks with overwhelming zeal even as the stock market started crashing, are now trying to rehabilitate their images. Last week Merrill Lynch , by some measures the world's biggest investment bank, declared that except under strictly monitored circumstances, its analysts would be prohibited from holding shares in the companies they research. The goal is to remove any incentive for them to boost a stock to ensure their own enrichment. But this novel policy will not entirely prevent conflicts of interest from arising. It should be regarded as a springboard to a more complete revamping of the relationship between publicly available research and investment banking."

redux [06.27.01]
News.Com Will Wall Street analysts turn apologetic?

"Wall Street analysts are known for a lot of things--being too optimistic, failing to warn investors about the dot-com crash, and being the latest target for Congress--but they usually aren't known for their apologies."

"Morgan Stanley analyst Jeffrey Camp cut Exodus to a "neutral" from "strong buy" and gave his clients an apology.

"There are few moments in my career that rival this one in its difficulty and unpleasantness. Elbert Hubbard said, 'The line between failure and success is so fine, we scarcely know when we pass it.' But passed it I have, and it is time to own up," Camp said."

redux [06.11.01]
News.Com Did so many get it so wrong?

"As pundits rush to explain what happened on Wall Street, fingers point to the thought leaders. We read exposes on Mary Meeker and Frank Quattrone--once dubbed geniuses--and wonder how they could have sponsored initial public offerings for the nth online grocer or women's portal. Or we ask ourselves how stock analysts could ride a stock all the way down from $150 to $3, all the while touting it as a "strong buy.""

"These are people who were supposed to be making smart decisions. How did they get it so wrong? The answer is, they didn't. "

redux [05.10.02]
Business2.0 Who's to Blame for the Dotcom Insanity?

"And yet, as compared with previous bubbles -- say, junk bonds in the '80s -- the dotcom fiasco owed relatively less to Wall Street's lack of ethics and relatively more to willing contagion by the public itself. "The market wanted these stocks," Blodget observed to CNBC, and Blodget was right. By the millennium's waning months, it was common, for example, to see engineers in Silicon Valley with CNBC in one pop-up window on their computer screens and their brokerage accounts in another, and they would -- or so I'm told -- trade all day and scarcely attend to their jobs.

Of course, the financial press -- CNBC in particular -- fanned the flames, but faulting it or any other group misses the epidemic nature of the contagion, which naturally infected the whole of society without distinction."

redux [03.13.01]
The Washington Post Who Blew the Dot-Com Bubble?

"Henry Blodget, Wall Street's loudest cheerleader for Internet stocks, made it to the front page of the New York Times last week. And thereby hangs a tale about the media and the bubble."

"For it was the mainstream media -- which now take such delight in scolding those involved in the dot-com mania -- that helped push the idea that anyone could get rich by playing the market.

"The media invented Blodget," says Christopher Byron, a columnist for Bloomberg News and MSNBC. "In a bull market everyone loves to cheer, and Henry Blodget was everyone's first phone call. . . . Where were they when companies were trading for 150 times revenues? They were repeating the words of these guys. It's disgusting."

Guardian Unlimited AP Panel Says Embedding Reporters Worked

"Embedding reporters with fighting military units during the Iraq war offered unprecedented access to the battlefield and was generally a success, a panel of journalists told the annual meeting of The Associated Press on Monday.

But "we still have to work hard"' for bits of information that help bring the story of the war to readers, listeners and viewers, said Kathleen Carroll, AP executive editor."

redux [04.11.03]
Editor & Publisher Military Retirees, Journalists Praise 'Embedding'

"Veteran military leaders and journalists agreed that the embedding of reporters with U.S. military forces in Iraq had been a success during a panel discussion at the American Society of Newspaper Editors conference here. But they offered mixed opinions on specific elements of the war coverage and differed over how the press had handled some sensitive issues.

The panel, which included two veteran Washington journalists and two retired U.S. generals, offered mostly praise for the embedding process, which had more than 600 reporters, photographers, and broadcast media traveling with coalition troops."

redux [03.28.03]
dw-world.de War Coverage Draws Skepticism in Europe

"The Pentagon and U.S. media are very pleased with the way "embedded" correspondents are covering the war. In Europe, the media community is more skeptical."

"Today, openness is the priority. "Here's why embedding is important to me," Col. Rick Thomas, chief of U.S. military public affairs in Kuwait, told the British newspaper the Financial Times. "As the public affairs officer, I have a deep and abiding obligation to tell the families of our servicemembers what they are doing. ... My objective is that through the journalists' eyes and through their words and images, mothers and fathers will understand the courage, dedication and sacrifices of their sons and daughters.""

abs-cbnNEWS.com Beware 'embedded' sources of reports

"Just as the Pentagon has developed increasingly sophisticated munitions for the battlefield abroad, it has perfected propaganda to secure public opinion at home.

n that battle, American citizens need critical, independent journalists if they are to get the information necessary to participate meaningfully in the formation of policy. Never has that been more crucial, as the United States unleashes an attack on Iraq that signals a new era of the use of force. Unfortunately in the first few days of the conflict, and the months leading to war, American journalism has largely failed, on several counts."

Editor & Publisher 15 Stories They've Already Bungled

"The problem, I suggested, is that most of the TV commentators on the home front appear to be just as "embedded" with the military as the far braver reporters now in the Iraqi desert.

Surely this is a bipartisan issue. While many on the antiwar side complain about the media's alleged "pro-war bias," those who support the war, and the Bush administration itself, have also been ill served by overly-positive coverage that now has millions of Americans reeling from diminished expectations."

Counterpunch Onward Embedded Soldiers

"Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting assigned itself the near impossible task of tracking a Niagara of media untruths. On March 25, the beleaguered FAIR watchdogs reported on broadcast lies by network household names about Iraqi use of Scud missiles -- disinformation that the media made up all by themselves."

"The military later announced "that U.S. forces searching airfields in the far western desert of Iraq have uncovered no missiles or launchers." In fact, the Iraqis had not launched any Scuds since the beginning of the invasion."

Washington Post U.S. Military Expels Journalist for Pinpoint Reporting

"Smucker, who was traveling with the 1st Division but was not part of the Pentagon's embedding program, talked about the unit's location and approach to Baghdad in interviews Wednesday with CNN and National Public Radio."

"Judging from a transcript of the CNN interview, "it does not appear to us that he disclosed anything that wasn't already widely available in maps and in U.S. and British radio, newspaper, and television reports on that same news cycle," Van Slambrouck said. "Of course, the Pentagon has the final say in the field about any threat the information reported might pose.""

redux [03.12.03]
Editor & Publisher Some Journalists Will Go It Alone in Iraq

"Ask Jeffrey Fleishman of the Los Angeles Times if he wishes that he were among the hundreds of reporters embedded with U.S. military troops and the veteran scribe doesn't mince words. "I'm glad I'm not," he said during a satellite-phone interview from northern Iraq, where he's been assigned for two months. "I like the freedom of movement and the choice to see the story from the middle."

Fleishman's comments echoed those of many nonembedded correspondents assigned to the Middle East in preparation for a possible U.S. invasion."

redux [02.26.03]
Editor & Publisher War Correspondent's Advice: Stay Off the Press Bus

"The Pentagon's new "embedding" policy, while less restrictive than a press pool, prohibits journalists from having their own vehicles. To Hedges, who says the first thing he would do if he were covering this war is get a jeep, the limitations are significant. "I'm not saying people shouldn't be embedded," he insists, "but they're not going to get an accurate picture unless people are allowed to do their job. When you're embedded in a unit, you rely on the military for transportation: they will decide where you go, what you see, and what you report. They're not going to drive the press vehicle to sites if things go terribly wrong."

He cites what happened early in the Gulf War in Al-Khafji, where he witnessed Saudi soldiers fleeing in panic from Iraqi soldiers. U.S. Marines were called in to push back the Iraqis. But back in Riyadh and Dhahran, "the press put out that the Saudis were defending their homeland. When the military has a war to win, everything gets sacrificed before that objective, including the truth.""

Palm Beach Post How does the hi-tech press file from a foxhole?

"The idea of embedding journalists with units was tossed around. But field commanders wanted those journalists to have at least the basics of basic training. Thus the media boot camp."

"If conversations between media and military at the base saloon on the last night were any indication, all but a very few gained much perspective if not renewed respect for the soldiers, sailors and Marines who will do the fighting.

After the Marines thanked us for coming, a young photographer stood and said: "We've learned a lot, and thank you. We learned again something we've always known, but see now in a different light: We carry cameras and notebooks. You guys carry something we don't -- the guns. And we will not forget that."

redux [02.14.03]
Editor & Publisher U.S. Military Document Outlines War Coverage

"The U.S. military plans to take extraordinary steps to provide the media access to combat zones in Iraq, but only after making reporters agree to a series of strict prohibitions, according to a lengthy document sent by a press officer for a major U.S. military base to a news organization that will be "embedding" reporters with American forces preparing for an attack on Iraq.

The document offers the first detailed glimpse into Pentagon planning for media coverage of the campaign."

Associated Press Dan Rather Mulls Reporters' Place in War

"CBS News anchor Dan Rather says he hopes that embedding journalists among U.S. troops if there's a war with Iraq will help coverage, but he has doubts."

""There's a pretty fine line between being embedded and being emtombed," Rather said Thursday at a news conference where CBS outlined war preparation plans."

Guardian Unlimited News Organizations Get Iraq War Slots

"Bob Steele, director of the ethics program for the Poynter Institute for Media Studies, said the good intentions of the Pentagon and journalists give him hope, with some caution.

``There's no doubt there will still be tensions between the goals of the military and goals of journalists,'' he said."

Australian Broadcasting Corporation TV networks prepare for war

"While the rhetorical and diplomatic wrangling over Iraq continues, it is worth noting that the global TV network war has already begun. The American Cable News Channel, CNN, made its reputation during the first Gulf war, but its got stiff competition this time around -- not just from the traditional networks, but from newcomer, Fox. Now if you think this is a trivial point, consider the budgets that these media giants are getting ready to commit. According to one account, CNN alone is planning on spending $60 million to cover the war in Iraq. But what will we see for all this money? Anything more than network anchors standing against a backdrop of Kuwait city and commenting on the latest official account of the battle from American generals? That's about it, according to distinguished journalist Phillip Knightley. The former 'Sunday Times' investigative reporter is also the author of what's considered a classic history of war reporting -- 'The First Casualty'. In it, he documents the decline of independent war reporting and the attitude of the military. It's best summed up by the American government censor, who at the height of World War II said, in relation to the press, "tell them nothing till it's over and then tell them who won.""

Wired Magazine High Score Education

"The fact is, when kids play videogames they can experience a much more powerful form of learning than when they're in the classroom. Learning isn't about memorizing isolated facts. It's about connecting and manipulating them. Doubt it? Just ask anyone who's beaten Legend of Zelda or solved Morrowind.

The phenomenon of the videogame as an agent of mental training is largely unstudied; more often, games are denigrated for being violent or they're just plain ignored. They shouldn't be. Young gamers today aren't training to be gun-toting carjackers. They're learning how to learn."

redux [01.16.01]
The Globe and Mail Why kids are smarter than you

"In a culture of couch potatoes where TV quiz shows pass for brain teasers and how-to books "for dummies" fly off the shelves, it can be hard to reconcile the notion that the human species is smarter than ever.

But if IQ tests are any measure -- and even critics say they have some value -- then there is evidence people are making mental gains. For the past two decades, researchers have collected information showing that IQs around the world rose steadily over the past century.

The rise has been too swift for genetics or evolution to explain. And researchers cannot precisely say what's driving the phenomenon. But many suspect that the very same TV-watching, video-game-playing cultural trappings we blame for "dumbing us down" may also be partly responsible for raising our IQs."

redux [07.23.02]
Netfuture Does Television Cause Violent Behavior? Wrong Question.

""The news will stimulate little change, but should be mentioned anyway. A seventeen-year study of 707 individuals, published in Science magazine (March 29, 2002), concluded that

"There was a significant association between the amount of time spent watching television during adolescence and early adulthood and the likelihood of subsequent aggressive acts against others."

"Anderson and Bushman also point out that the weight of the evidence from all the available studies is not trivial. The effects "are larger than the effects of calcium intake on bone mass or of lead exposure on IQ in children". Moreover, "recent work demonstrates similar-sized effects of violent video games on aggression"."

Forbes Internet radio takes off bit by bit

"Internet radio has found a niche. Lots of them, in fact."

"More than 100 million listeners have tried Web radio and the number of regular monthly listeners has tripled in the last three years, according to rating agency Arbitron (http://www.arbitron.com)."

""What consumers go online to listen to and what works best is content they can't listen to through traditional sources," says Bill Rose, general manager of Arbitron Internet Broadcast Services."

redux [11.20.02]
New Media Great surge in online radio listening

"A recent MeasureCast study shows that time spent listening to online radio has jumped 159 percent since last year.

Blame it on the demise of Napster, which means one less centralized location to download free music. Or chalk it up to improved broadband technology that makes streaming music sound almost like its traditional radio cousin. Whatever the reason, it's good news for some of the world's largest channels."

redux [10.01.02]
Salon Radio killed the radio star

"Radio execs share an almost palpable tenet that holds that radio is bulletproof. They see the medium as we see cockroaches and Twinkies: indestructible.

Jim Boyle, a Wall Street analyst for Wachovia Securities, moderated the panel at which Reese spoke. He comes from a family that's been in the radio business for 45 years, and he summed up this particular philosophy nicely when he told me: "Radio is 82 years young. It has survived a lot of new media, survived a lot of different options inside the car space: you've had CB radios, you've had cassettes, you've had eight-track cartridges, you've had six- and now 10-CD changers in the trunk. You've had satellite radio that's shown up ... so it does seem to be a situation where 10 years from now, 20 years from now, there's still gonna be radio."

In their "experiments," radio execs have starved their stations of manpower and research and music testing and polluted them with extra commercials and digital disc jockeys. They're betting it will all work out just fine."

PC World Tech Companies Embrace Earth Day

"Earth Day, which is observed on April 22, began in 1970 as a way to promote conservation. That message has made its way to the tech community, with everyone from PC makers to cell phone vendors getting into the environmentalist spirit this week.

Many companies are using Earth Day to announce and promote programs that encourage recycling of their products--as well as those of their competitors."

Houston Chronicle Corporations co-opt Earth Day

"From Houston to Hong Kong, companies are seeking to polish their green image by sponsoring Earth Day events, which grass-roots groups and cities struggle to fund."

""Waste Management sponsoring Earth Day is similar to Enron sponsoring a seminar on corporate responsibility," said John Stauber, author of Toxic Sludge is Good for You: Lies, Damn Lies and the Public Relations Industry, which examined how companies disguised poor environmental records beneath glitzy green advertising and marketing."

redux [11.13.02]
Salon Silicon hogs

"If we all had to lug around the true environmental weights of the microchips in our iPods, cellphones or laptops, most of those portable gadgets would never make it off their docking stations, much less out the front door.

It takes 3.7 pounds of fossil fuels and other chemicals and 70.5 pounds of water to produce a single two-gram microchip, according to a forthcoming study in the Dec. 15 issue of Environmental Science & Technology, a publication of the American Chemical Society."

redux [05.22.02]
Wired News Tech Toxics' Tarnished Legacy

"California high-tech manufacturing companies are degrading the environment in developing countries, a new research report confirms.

Case studies done in Taiwan, Malaysia, India, Thailand, and Costa Rica by the California Global Corporate Accountability Project document water pollution and inadquate waste management resulting from component production."

redux [04.22.00]
Grist Earth Day Turns Thirty

"We have among us die-hard optimists who will berate me for not reporting the good news since the last Earth Day. There is plenty of it, but it is mostly measured in human terms, not Earth terms.

Earth Day is beginning to remind me of Mother's Day, a commercial occasion upon which you buy flowers for the person who, every other day of the year, cleans up after you. Guilt-assuaging. Trivializing. Actually dangerous. All mothers have their breaking points. Mother Earth does not soften hers with patience or forgiveness or sentimentality. "

Salon Living in shimmering disequilibrium

"But the worst-case scenario is that by the end of the century we would be living in a still changing and increasingly hostile physical environment. We would have an impoverished world with great inequities remaining in quality of life and an enormous opportunity cost for what we've done in the 21st century.

The truth of the matter is that all the changes we make render the planet less suitable, not more suitable, for human beings. It's a fundamental distinction to be made between scientific environmentalism on the one hand and nonscientific, ideological- or religious-based anti-environmentalism or indifference on the other. This is what arguments about the environment -- as they are still with us at this Earth Day -- basically consist of.""

Reason Earth Day, Then and Now

"Three decades later, of course, the world hasn't come to an end; if anything, the planet's ecological future has never looked so promising. With half a billion people suiting up around the globe for Earth Day 2000, now is a good time to look back on the predictions made at the first Earth Day and see how they've held up and what we can learn from them. The short answer: The prophets of doom were not simply wrong, but spectacularly wrong.

More important, many contemporary environmental alarmists are similarly mistaken when they continue to insist that the Earth's future remains an eco-tragedy that has already entered its final act. Such doomsters not only fail to appreciate the huge environmental gains made over the past 30 years, they ignore the simple fact that increased wealth, population, and technological innovation don't degrade and destroy the environment. Rather, such developments preserve and enrich the environment. If it is impossible to predict fully the future, it is nonetheless possible to learn from the past. And the best lesson we can learn from revisiting the discourse surrounding the very first Earth Day is that passionate concern, however sincere, is no substitute for rational analysis."

CNN Money Apple readies online music service

"Music executives who have seen Apple's upcoming service said it is simple to use, offers single songs from a deep catalog and -- unlike Kazaa and the other pirate services that have picked up where the now-defunct Napster left off -- it pays royalties to the troubled record industry."

""It's exactly the system that should have existed five years ago," said one record industry executive."

Mercury News Hollywood role could be right for Jobs

"The next piece of Silicon Valley's knife dance with Hollywood might be choreographed by Steve Jobs, an executive whose unique influence in both spheres gives him rare potential to shape the way the two industries evolve."

"Whatever happens, Jobs has Hollywood's attention."

Business2.0 Could Apple Pull Off the Universal Music Purchase?

"That, dear readers, is at the heart of the gamble Apple faces. Could it persuade enough customers to sign up for its digital music service in a short enough time that the sheer number of users would force the other labels to play ball and adopt Apple's tactics? It's a tantalizing scenario for sure. Even if the purchase doesn't come to pass in this round, the possibilities it portends have people thinking about a radical reshaping of the music world. "In a few years," Sinnreich predicts, "I wouldn't be surprised to see all the major labels owned by other parent companies -- companies like Apple, Yahoo (YHOO), or Microsoft." The music industry seems incapable of capitalizing on digital music. Could Apple do it better?"

redux [03.18.02]
Matt Haughey The future of music

"Everyone with a computer I know uses them, rips them from their CDs, and shares them with others. Napster (and later on, Kazaa) built massive worldwide networks based on the sharing of these files, spreading terabytes of files to millions of users. And yet, you can't walk into a store anywhere in America and buy a physical form of media embedded with mp3s."

"Given the ubiquity of mp3s among consumers, the continued rise in popularity of the format despite anything that's been put in place to stop them, and the millions of dollars being spent on mp3 encoding/decoding software and hardware, I no longer think the RIAA operates solely on fear. At this point, they're simply running on stupidity."

redux [05.02.00]
Infoworld Napster sends a message to music industry: 'Your customers aren't happy'

""The Recording Industry Association of America wants to educate consumers with the message, "Artists deserve to be compensated -- artists won't make music if they can't make money." I can only imagine the public service announcements with multimillionaire artists pleading for their right to a seventh Porsche in the driveway.

There's no rationalization for piracy; it is what it is. However, rampant music piracy online indicates that the music industry's distribution and pricing model is out of whack with what people want. The problem isn't the piracy; the problem is unhappy customers.

And the music industry had better do something about it. This is a dinosaur moment -- with the big rock looming overhead -- where the music industry needs to ask itself how it will adapt."