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California State University, Dominguez Hills
University of Wisconsin, Parkside
Created: October 5, 2006
Latest Update: December 13, 2006
jeannecurran@habermas.org
takata@uwp.edu
The Complexity of Message-Building forFocal things; things that matter in the lives we live. Like, for example, all the media attention to Representative Foley's sexual transgress ions with Senate pages. Gee whiz, folks. Has anyone noticed that we're losing a war for which we're borrowing over $70 trillion dollars from China??? Has anyone noticed that our Congress and Senate are allowing one man to "disappear" any of us, while violating our privacy on telephones and computers, and then simply "hold us" indefintiely incommunicado, if he so chooses, with NO OVERSIGHT??? (the technical legal term for all this is habeas corpus.
Sure, Foley's a criminal jerk, or a jerky criminal. But he's a very small pebble in a hugely corrupt pond right now. Let's keep our eye on the ball. The media are corporate owned. Yes, both the newspapers and the television channels. "The Tribune Co. forced Los Angeles Times Publisher Jeffrey M. Johnson to step down Thursday, three weeks after the executive stirred a national debate about corporate ownership of newspapers by publicly defying a demand for staff cuts in his newsroom." (Tribune Asks for Times Publisher's Resignation By James Rainey, Times Staff Writer. 7:56 PM PDT, October 5, 2006.) Yes, that was today.
No, I don't know precisely what that means, except that the quality of news of the Los Angeles Times will suffer. Maybe it's time to subscribe to the Washington Post. This is why our theme this semester is Believe It! Own It! Whatever you think of the LA Times, you need now to warch and listen to see what this means to us in Los Angeles. Form any opinion you wish, based on the arguments of sources you trust. But once yoou believe it, own it. No fair saying, Oh, I didn't know. Not to know. Not to seek ways to make your voice heard. Not to demand the answerability which is a gift received only by humans. Not to . . . is to be complicit.
Check out what Merriam Webster's Online Dictionary says about habeas corpus:
"1 : any of several common-law writs issued to bring a party before a court or judge; especially : HABEAS CORPUS AD SUBJICIENDUM"2 : the right of a citizen to obtain a writ of habeas corpus as a protection against illegal imprisonment"
Note that this legal term has been around since the Middle Ages, in Latin as well as in English. Now, doesn't that scare you just a little thatour legislature has just voted to do away with human protections that date back to the Magna Carta?
Winston Churchill: "The greatest thing we have to fear is fear itself." My problem now is to decide whether I'm more afraid of outside terrorists or those who would destroy our constitutional monarchy from within. For me that's a much bigger issue than one more pederast. I mean, he isn't even a priest, folks. Let's get our priorities straight.
Discussion Questions
- Here's an edditorial on October 5, 2006, from the Washinton Times, a conservative newspaper:
"Flunking Science 101: TODAY'S EDITORIAL, October 5, 2006.
"We fear that the venerable Royal Society of London, the world's oldest science academy, has succumbed to global warming fever. Having maintained for several years that the science of global warming is "settled," it now tries to stifle debate. A letter to the British branch of Exxon Mobil found its way to the Guardian newspaper, which quotes from it:
"It is now more crucial than ever that we have a debate which is properly informed by the science. For people to be still producing information that misleads people about climate change is unhelpful. The next IPCC report should give people the final push that they need to take action and we can't have people trying to undermine it."
. . .
"The Royal Society wants Exxon to stop supporting studies that might reveal that the current warming is due to natural causes and is not man-made. Too late. The U.S. government released a report last May that clearly shows how observations disagree with results calculated from greenhouse models. Yes, that's how science works. It's a fundamental principle that one can never "prove" a scientific hypothesis; one can only falsify it. Here the hypothesis is that the current increase in greenhouse gases, presumably from the burning of fossil fuels, will cause temperatures to rise -- and, according to models, most rapidly in the high atmosphere in the tropics. But the data don't show this -- and thereby falsify the hypothesis.
"We recommend that the Royal Society and other concerned parties check for themselves and view the U.S. Climate Change Science Program report, which summarizes years of work with balloon and satellite temperature data, supported by many billions of dollars of federal money (http://www.climatescience.gov/Library/sap/sap1-1/finalreport/default.htm. Look at figure 5.4G in Chapter 5 of the report. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to discover that the observations disagree with climate models. This means that the current warming is mainly due to causes other than greenhouse gases -- most likely the sun.
"One other interesting fact: The report's executive summary and press release both claim "clear evidence" for human-caused warming. But that's not what the report itself says.
"Perhaps Congress should exercise its oversight responsibility and find the reason for this strange discrepancy."
References:
- The U.S. Climate Change Science Program, Executive Summary. "For recent decades, all current atmospheric data sets now show global-average warming that is similar to the surface warming. For details of new models and model simulations see Chapter 5 . . . "
