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I think this Topic is one of the most important on all of The Spring. However where do we in the US get free and unadulterated press? Ever listen closely to Radio Free America? At least they insert a quiet disclaimer stating that the news contained herein reflects the policies of the current administration. Good luck. I seldom get my news from the US press. The BBC and Deutche Welle are two favorites. How do we know what the agenda of the group mentioned above really is. Apparently, each of us see things differently. Therein lies the rub.

that's easy...you read everything, make an informed decission, and spread your own disinformation...

And, soon you also believe your disinformation when it makes its way back to you from some other "reliable' source. Isn't technology wonderful.

Bearing accurate witness is neither easy nor safe. In many organizations it is illegal to bear accurate witness.

The Secret Societies and the Gnomes of Zurich and Trilateral Commission are all out there. Perhaps it is best to hole up in your corner of the world and make it as good as you can...or bury your head in the sand...or be like Chicken Little. The world is a scary place!

but then I couldn't manipulate those groups as easily...

You have to join them. Become one of them. Think like them. By that time it will be difficult to know who is manipulating whom. But, is that not the nature of the challenge? Too easy, and it would be no fun!

similar, yes

Your other option is to infiltrate them. Highly hazardous to your health and all those you know and love, but incredibly exciting.

and last, and possibly the most fun, is to convince them that they need to come to you...

...as a consultant with an exhorbitant amount of money flowing from them to you for the privilege of having you around.

see, that's the part I'm still working on...

Or to keep you quiet. Think of the tobacco industry hiring scientists studying the dangers of tobacco smoking, so that they could fund their studies and shelve their reports.

That whole deal makes me most curious. I have a whole bunch of chemists in my family of one sort or another, and all are active in research (though not in the tobacco industry.) Not a single one would even think of negative research, let alone the transmission of faulty data. That is the ultimate sin in research and is little more that intellectual prostitution, IMO.

And, to do the research and to know it is not being published makes it that much more insidious. Can scientists be bought off so easily? They must have been well paid, indeed. The very idea rebels against everthing I believe in.

I publish all my research. But to gain that freedom, I had to give up my job. Even when I worked at Bell Labs, I was not free to publish my findings. Now I do publish it, and it frankly alarms some people. I don't really know why, but it does.

Letter From John Hines to Senator Olympia J. Snowe of Maine Senator Snowe: MAINE: The Way Life Should Be Perhaps not. Today at Brunswick smiling sailors will welcome little children to climb aboard killing machines. They will smile as they invite the children to pull the triggers of the killing machines. The children will be dazzled by the majesty of their moment with the killing machines. No one will tell the children of the blood, the wrecked lives, the destroyed sewer systems, the disatrously devastated chemical plants, the shambles of electric plants, of civilization's shards broken by these killing machines. Today we lie to the children of Maine. Lies. Official lies. The government's lies. Lies to the children of Maine. That isn't the way life in Maine should be. You responded, twice, quite clearly that when you vote to fund the School of the Americas, you vote to support democracy in Latin America. What would my sweet dead friend, Juan Moreno S.J., respond? What democracy! The democracy of the rich against the poor^Kscarcely the only democracy Latin America knows? What would the campesinos of Chiapas respond? The democracy of the paramilitaries trained and armed by the military trained in low level warfare against their own people by the cadre of the School of the Americas? To pretend, to assert in the boldest language, that the School of the Americas is training soldiers to defend democracy is the pretense of a lie. The way of lies is not the way life in Maine should be. You created the funding for three additional destroyers, destroyers the Navy itself did not want, to be built at Bath Iron Works. The Navy brags that the Aegis destroyers are the most lethal weapon in the world. They are designed to fire nuclear-tipped Cruise missiles to destroy massive numbers of human beings. They are designed to fire laser tipped Cruise missiles to destroy with dazzling precision unfriendly embassies and other unfriendly assets. We fired over 3,000 of these in Yugoslavia. We threw three billion dollars up in smoke and wreckage. Isn't all of this military hardware about profit and the personal power of the few, like you? Aren't we lying to the people of Maine about the real Motives for building this war machine? The way of lies is not the way life in Maine should be. Awkwardly yours, Copy: Bill Slavick, Pax Christi, Maine John Hines 20 Green Street Gorham, Maine 04038

My favorite definition of propaganda is: A lie that is repeated over and over and over...until it is accepted as truth. Having just studied Communications I can tell you what young hopeful reporters are told. Just report what you have heard...do not question it's validity. What happened to the reporters who went out looking for the truth? I have a dear friend by the name of Neil Boggs who was a news reporter on the national, Whitehouse, and International level. During the Regan administration, deregulation opened the door to corporate rule of the media. He showed us a film in which some famous news reporters were asked how this would affect them. Neil walked out of the business, but others were unwilling to give up their careers and the cushy paychecks...and decided to play by the new rules. Have you ever called the media when you saw gross injustice? In Northern New Mexico, a plant moved upstream from a pueblo many of the children are now being born with birth defects and people are suddenly going blind from the contaminated water. The media is not interested. It is not in the interest of the corporation to let this become mainstream knowlege. I work at a public radio station...we refuse to take money from any corporate group...but ours is not an easy battle to keep a balance of voices out there. We are at best, a consevative/liberal station. Why? Because we are housed at the University. My father used to tell me.... read both sides of any issue...then make up your own mind. I studied Documentary Theory and the main message we were taught was that there is no unbiased way to present an issue...there is only the truth that you manipulate to present your case.

Oh please. "Having just studied Communications I can tell you what young hopeful reporters are told. Just report what you have heard...do not question it's validity." I've been one of those nasty journalists for 25 years, Debra, and for the last 12 of those years I've been teaching "young hopeful reporters" at a large western university how to do public affairs reporting. I also teach media ethics. What you say here is simply not the truth.

It was my experience in the classes I took. Perhaps it was because the department was being let go to pot. That was part of the reason I decided to deversify in my studies. My reaction was the same as yours when the profesors in question said that. I was told that I would never be hired if I insisted on digging below the surface.

I wish I could introduce you to Neil Boggs. He had the film where the nationally known figures talked in length about these things. He has retired and moved to Yucatan. He showed us film clips to show how the media manipulated the pictures we saw. A very famous one was a Viet Nam officer executing a man who was on his knees by shooting him in the head. This footage was used to stir up public opinion...when in reality the officer had just come to his village and found his family slaughtered by the man in question. Nothing was said by the media about why the man had gone nuts and done this horrible thing. Another were early pictures of Abby Hoffman at peace rallies. The illusion that their were hundreds of people there was created by doing tight shots. Neil had all the footage and in the long shots you could see there were only about 50 people there. An interesting footnote...Neil's house was burned down and all his personal film archives were lost. I did not in any way mean to demean your character. I had good teachers and bad in my departments. Neil was one of the best as far as I was concerned because he showed how media (even film) can be used to create images that are not as honest as we would like to think.

For all the brouhaha in places like Utne, no more than 100 people were reading those conferences, notwithstanding the much ballyhooed claim that Utne was the largest online community in North America. That's a lot of tsuris and grief over an audience of barely 100 souls.

Wow! So it is more of the bigger, better, faster, new and improved hype that is used in commercials? I have a freind who was hooked on these pyramid schemes. A very intellegent man in most cases. He would bring these promo films over that he was sold by and which he used to sell potential customers with. One of the films was for NSA water filters, The gentleman they used to speak was a voice all America grew up with because he had been the narrator on tons of Walt Disney films. (I didn't know the m n's name but I immediately knew him from his Walt Disney narrations.) I tryed to explain the subconscious effect this had on the average person's mind. The tune used was also an American icon. "Cool Clear Water" As I told him, whoever put the film together, had been a master at subconscious manipulation. Advertising agencies know that if they can trigger the ego, trigger some basic human need, that they have a better chance of roping you into their agenda. So Utne uses ego, come talk to the nation. Have a voice that is heard. (grin)

I hit some WRONG KEY and went backwards here, and when I went forward again I had lost the whole post I was carefully writing to respond to you, Debra, so please forgive me for not taking the time to recreate it with quotes, which takes more minutes than I've got today. Damn. OK. What I tried to say to you, Debra, was that you didn't "demean my character" -- you said something about what all student journalists are taught that was false, and I corrected it. I regret that any journalists might be taught not to dig into a story, but I acknowledge that there might be some professors out there who would tell this the lie that they won't be hired if they do that. May those professors retire early and move on to creating other works of fiction that are less harmful.

Fiction is a great scam. You get to tell the truth by pretending to lie.

Fiction is cool. You get away with telling the truths others lie about. You can get people to follow your argumentation, reading about matters they would not even talk about, much less discuss constructively. Yet, here you can seed ideas they would frown upon in conversation or reading the newspaper. May I refer to e.g. the writing of Savinien Cyrano de Bergerac to support this stand? Or the allegories by B. Kort? Or works of T.C. Boyle? Or J. Swift? Do not demonize the tools. It is the tool-bearers and their causes you must look into.

and their toolboxes, as well...

... and while you're at it, check out their lunchboxes, too, and don't miss to investigate the thermos!

This isn't about the guy taking wheel barrows filled with sand home each night, it is?

(Quick, Wer- duck! Marcia's here to find out who dug up the beaches! Put that darn shovel down, man!) Ahem - Hi Marcia! Naw, it's about some ole nasty geezers North of Response 20, and their evil impact on young enthusiastic impressionable minds. Basically the academic tragedy one can witness so often... It also is about misunderstandings, manipulative use of media - by the way, did you hear about the media consultancy that worked for the UCK in Kosovo? Media warfare is really interesting and really real, too!-, and about how evil the establishment's tricks are. It could also have been about the tricks, how to discover and evaluate them, if the trick's ethical value changes with the cause it is applied for and with its users - or even about if these tricks have ethical values by itself, or if they are rather like tofu, just tasting like whatever sauce they're in. Also it could have been about the use of fables and allegories from Aesop to Kort, about what these fictionous works might be useful for and about what not. Perhaps it could have been about something like how not every comparison that sounds authoritative and rational is truly adequate and fitting, you know, how stuff like that can be distorted without external trace to support one's point in an argument. But that wasn't in the lunchb-, in the air, right. Just wasn't. Too bad. Nothing here... (Wer! Keep down - you'll give us away!)

You can keep playing in the sand - turns out the guy was really stealing wheel barrows! The entire point of an allegory is a pithy statement of image one is left with when it is over. Some of the North 20 posters need to keep that in mind. I tend to get lost in their verbage. I guess not a lot of improvement has occurred since I took ethics in Journalism long ago in college. In fact, it has probably gone by the boards by now. In the best of worlds, Ethics never change. Good cannot become evil and evil become good no matter how well disguised. Butm by bending and refracting the light illuminating them strange things happen and the good can seem evil and the evil, good. We need to pay attention to what is really being said.

Ok, so - tell me, can ethics change? Or are the the same for everybody all over?

According to my dictionary, ethics = the principles of conduct governing an individual or group. If they change for the group promulgating them, it is very slowly and with the concent of the group - if they are truly autonomous. Other ethical standards can be forced upon them (eg slavery), but this is not the group's choice. They differ widely from group to group, and I think it would be dangerous to try to impose one set of ethics on another's group. That is what wars inevitably are about after the erritory (the real prize) has been won. This very problem is ongoing in Ireland and the former Yugoslavia. Perhaps religion (organized, that is) has caused the most damage over the centuries. More lives have been lost contesting my religion against yours and knowing I am right and killling you is also right in this instance. What rubbish!

Ethics is frequently confused with law. Laws set a minimum standard of conduct -- "go this far and no farther. If you cross this line, you've broken the law." Ethics is the high bar on your pole vault, the thing you shoot for. "This is what we strive to be. This is the best practice, the most good, the solution that will bring about the least harm and the most good." Violating an ethics code won't land you in jail. More and more frequently, people do legal things that are completely unethical. It's much easier to do that because you're abiding by the letter of the law. Much tougher to do the ethical thing that's illegal -- that's civil disobedience.

Ethics, being an instance of Best Practices, evolves with the advance of knowledge and the advance of technology. What was yesterday's best practice may become today's obsolescent and contraindicated practice, because it has been supplanted by a superior practice with fewer downside risks or side effects.

The "best practice" may change as more information becomes available, as Barry notes. But the ethical principles underlying the decision do not change over time.

N., does that mean that in your opinion there are basic ethical principles common to all people, which are something like "eternal" values?

Nan is on the road this week, and may not have a chance to check in for a few more days. I dunno if Nan would buy into the model I use, but ethical behavior, as I see it, is functionally indistinguishable from the optimal policy under a comprehensive system model. In particular, that means the optimal policy is unlikely to reduce to unilaterally imposed rules enforced by sanctions.

Hmh. Explain the difference to me, now you're talkin': If "ethical behaviour" = "enactment of best practices", tell me - whose best practices? Whose benefit? Who calls the shots, who judges? Are people who deviate unethical? And those best practices are universally the same to all people, but adapt over time? And last not least: Why are you so confident a sanctions- (or incentive-)run system excludes implementation of best practices (i.e. disallows "ethical" behaviour)?

Ethics embraces bilateral protocols, Alex. Your questions assume unilateral protocols, and hence are incompatible with the notion of ethics.

(Weeeell, you sure don't mind about commenting questions. You don't mind them. Hmh. Will I ever be happy with a response of yours?) Phrases such as "BEST PRACTICE" weren't introduced by me, I was just trying to get into a vocabulary you would relate to easier, since you did not understand other things I posted in the past (or at least there was no indication you did... but then, there weren't a lot of indications at all).- My questions do NOT assume "unilateral protocols", my question was maybe in part "Do YOU assume unilateral protocols?", and who are the parties in question, and how do they measure against each other, and where and how are the "ethics" generated, and what are their properties ACCORDING TO BARRY. You know - good, oldfashioned askin' stuff. No harm. Questions. Let's just note for the record that my questions are NOT rhetorical questions which answer themselves, or sarcastic remarks against your ideas. I don't deal in that trade much. Those were questions I asked you because I wanted - once more - to see how you evaluate concepts behind something, and what you make of it in relation to your idea. Once more, it didn't work. And there are still many things in my questions not adressed by your reply. "Ethics embraces bilateral protocols" - that just doesn't say it all, does it?

Alexander, pin them against the wall until they explain themselves. It is the only way we learn from each other. Terms have to be clearly defined and accepted by all in the discussion. No throw-away lines permissable to avoid thinking seriously about the post preceding yours. Is it the nature of New-Think to avoid discussion and understanding of what the other is trying to say / ask? You deserve a thoughtful answer. I most devoutly hope you get one.

My goal is to discover how to evolve from a culture of unilateralism to one of bilateralism or multilateralism. I have not yet discovered how to do that. It is not clear to me that those currently embedded in the unilateral culture are familiar with the possible successor cultures. It occurs to me that if they were aware of the successor phases of cultural evolution, they would embrace them as superior practices in which all parties are better off, by their own lights. But it appears to require a leap of faith that, to the best of my knowledge and experience, cannot be induced unilaterally. One has to patiently await for evolution to takes its ineluctible course. I fear I shall not live long enough to realize that dream.

and if we are waiting on evolution, isn't it possible that the "optimal" solution today would no longer be optimal at the end of the time period needed for the evolution to occur? and, correct me if I'm wrong, but if something evolves into an "optimal" condition, doesn't that mean it has both filled a niche, and hit a dead end?

It's already non-optimal. Optimality is not necessarily a dead end, because the space of feasible options gradually enlarges with new knowledge and technology. The history of best practices is a sequence that pushes against the boundaries of knowledge and technology. The advent of better communications opens up new opportunities to discover possibilities for exploring mutual interests. The discovery of mutual interests pushes back the darkness of complementary ignorance and reveals previously uncontemplated alternatives, from which better practices may emerge. We do not wait on evolution. We are part and parcel of the process of evolution. Evolution is waiting on us. We are the ones we are waiting for.

Barry - "The advent of better communications opens up new opportunities to discover possibilities for exploring mutual interests. The discovery of mutual interests pushes back the darkness of complementary ignorance and reveals previously uncontemplated alternatives, from which better practices may emerge." I'm with you on that. Would we not have this here Spring, I would not address you. I would not think about what you say, and would certainly not provide you with a different view upon your ideas, "from which better practices may emerge." But I do, and I care, and I think it might be worth for you to really look at this, and invest some modest effort: You still haven't told me - among other things - how something will be identified as "optimal" and something else as not. Please do tell me! And: How much does any given individual's voice count in this? Or, does the indivual count at all? What are Best Practices here? Or in other words: "Who are the parties in question, and how do they measure against each other, and where and how are the "ethics" generated, and what are their properties ACCORDING TO BARRY"? And I do not see this one adressed yet, either: "Why are you so confident a sanctions- (or incentive-)run system excludes implementation of best practices (i.e. disallows "ethical" behaviour)?" This last question is really interesting, because I see societies that are - at least for Western audiences - very ethical, or at least more so than we, BUT WORK ON SANCTIONS (or incentives, which is the same) EXCLUSIVELY, so please help me understand your concept on this.

The notion of optimality assumes an agreed-upon value system (which could in general be a vector field). Then, within the agreed-upon value system, each alternative is evaluated to identify those with the greatest value. In some cases, when the value field is multi-dimensional, there will be a Pareto-optimal frontier with multiple equi-valued alternatives. But basically, it's a calculation. Note that it requires that the parties delineate and define their common value system. A great deal of conflict occurs because one or more parties has not clearly delineated their value system, leaving it a mystery to be solved by the other parties. In discovering mutual interests, every stakeholder has a voice, and nothing is agreed upon unless everyone agrees. That's called consensus. Consensus is often slow because some parties may be weak at model-based reasoning, and unable to reliably anticipate the downstream consquences of approving one or more choices. When this happens, the status quo, no matter how mutually harmful, remains in effect, to everyone's detriment. The parties in question are those who come to the table and assert their interests. A sanction-based system fails to rise to the level of best practices because there exists a superior system that avoids damage to any of the parties. By Pareto-optimality, zero damage to anyone is preferable to non-zero damage to some parties. This principle is found in the Hippocratic Oath ("First of all, do no harm.") and in the sayings of the Dalai Lama ("Help people if you can. If you can't help them, try not to hurt them."). It's also found in Bellman's principle of optimality ("No matter what has happened so far, do the optimal thing going forward.") Deliberately damaging one or more parties is suboptimal.

how does one "correct" accidental harm?

(A favorite subject around this place...)

The optimal response in the event of a misadventure is to intervene minimally to prevent, neutralize, minimize, or ameliorate the damage. I call this the "Bounty Model" after the paper towel. Clean up the spill with the quicker picker upper. Do not damage the party who spilled the milk. When I was in college, everyone took turns being the "wake-up person" who got up first, put the house in order, and then woke up others in time for their first class. One morning when I was the "wake-up person" I found that one of the last persons to go to bed had scrawled graffiti on the bathroom mirrors in soap. Before anyone else was up, I cleaned up the graffiti and told no one about it. Minimum intervention to neutralize the damage. Had I made a big fuss about it, the practice would have likely c ntinued and become more common.

I've only just returned to this topic and cannot access the link above because it is outdated...

Would you like me to paste the last ones into email for you?

thanks (you did)... I was actually trying to access the link that (i think moonbeam) posted... it is no longer active... any idea on what the article contained?

As soon as I get on the main PC, I'll let you know. This laptop is not much better than telnetting as far as going back and checking is concerned. Curious that the link should be dead so soon...Unfortuantely, I did not access it at the time, and Barry's Buddies are not on this week.

Stace, don't know waht to tell you. I downloaded the entire topic to search for the link and it does not show up anywhere, so I read them all over again, and still found no link. Might it have been in Justice 5 - Violence in America? If you can give me the number of the post or the topic, I will hunt it down for you. We need to get these discussions active again.

no biggie... the link was to a newspaper... I'm sure the article was timely at the time... they just didn't archive it logically... thanks for helping though!

OK, I recall. It was from the Albuquerque newspaper about a local good-guy lawyer being shot and killed just a few steps from the court house, if I remember correctly.

oh better left unread methinks... we had one of our fellow coworkers written up in the paper yesterday... they found her in a makeshift coffin in her own basement, they believe her daugther murdered her and put her body downstairs...

Good grief...are they poisoning more than our water or something? Some guy in Honolulu admitted that he cut off his wife's head. Is there OJ-itis spreading everywhere? (I think her link must have been in Justice 5 - violence in America, and no, you do not want to read it...!) Stace, I am so sorry...!

thanks... but I didn't know her... just made it extra freaky that she is a JMer... somehow brought it closer to reality.... (most of the news seems very far removed from my reality...)

Between Littleton and this, you have had more than your share of violence brought home. Again, my sympathies. It must be very difficult...*hugs*

The gist of the newspaper article I linked that has expired already (this comes from an ABQ Journal column): Monday, Aug. 16, 1999 "Last week, a Santa Fe lawyer known for representing the underprivileged was gunned down as he walked from his office to the courthouse. Carlos Vigil, 52, was killed in a drive-by shooting and police started looking for a former client for questioning. Vigil's death shocked the close-knit Santa Fe legal community. Friends and colleagues said Vigil didn't practice law for the money. Rather, they said, he just wanted to help clients get fair deals. He often took food or firewood for payment from clients who couldn't afford to give him anything else for his services." Carlos was indeed one of the good guys.

Nan, thanks for posting that again, for those who missed it.

Well, somebody asked... and I've been on the road until this evening.

We did...again thank you. Stacey found the link dead (newspapers do that since they cover so much.)

Yes, I know. You're welcome. I wish there were a bio page on this software -- then you'd know I've been a print journalist for 25 years and know one or two things about my subject, and that I'm the senior professor in the print and online journalism program at a major university. Lots of online papers archive all their stories. Some (like my local daily) don't save anything older than a week. Some (like the NYTimes) charge you to access the archives. Most, however, archive their coverage and offer it free. Maybe I'm just in a bad mood.

I studied to be a technical journalist, but married a newly-created college professor and did research for him for years, then for myself for further degrees and fun, then for whomever needed it. I am most dismayed to note that archives for newspapers are noticably lacking on the internet. Is it not possible to scan them in?! Or is it the expense of doing so? We have an uncommonly intelligent membership at Spring. There is a Plastic Surgeon in Drool Conference, and editor/publisher Alexander everywhere but Drool. There are many many people here who would astonish you with their credentials were they commonly known. I am delighted to know more about you!

Archiving on a website requires someone (a librarian type) whose time is dedicated to relocating all the already-scanned stories from past days and weeks, usually on another server. It's both an expense and a time issue. IMO, rhat's why many of the archives aren't free, and also why so many zoned editions on large dailies (e.g., the Northwest section of the Boston Globe) and smaller newspapers don't have online archives.

That was the conclusion I had come to, also. It is unfortunate, because we are going to lose this important source of local information as we continue to consolidate and amalgamate the media into one medium which is no longer free nor valid in newsworthiness. Maybe it is my day to grouch some, too...!

Lexis-Nexus archives a surprisingly big chunk of the "small stuff" -- or at least they did as recently as a year ago. Things may have changed, but back then when I was searching for a story that had run in the Northwest section of the Globe and couldn't find it on their archive, it turned up in L-N. No photos, of course, but all the text was there and that's what I wanted.

The story, with photo, is on my web site.

I know it is. I was using that as an example for a class that was learning to search the Web, and found (by accident) that L-N had archived the story whereas the Globe had not.

*(moonbeam) * Thu, Aug 26, 1999 (18:41) * 7 lines *I wish there were a bio page on this software You just stop over at the Porch Conf, there's a Bio top. Not too many folks use it, though. You'll see. Ah, heck, I just feel like that, so here's the link: http://www.spring.net/yapp-bin/restricted/read/porch/23 One reason people can do without that here is that many people who come freshly to a conference make use of the Introduction topic, usually topic 1, to say what their interest is relating to this conf. Personally, I find it refreshing that at our Spring, you are what you post, not what CV you post. If people think you have a point, they do - be you of the rocket-science league, or just regular folk. Be what you post.

Thanks, Alexander. I'm no rocket scientist. Just a long-time journalist and short-time grandmother. And yes, I do believe I am what I post, at least I'm sure not trying to be anything else.

Who do you journal for, moonbeam?

Now that's a good question, Terry. Mostly these days I teach the craft and try to finish writing a book, though I came to this ivory tower from the ranks of the ink-stained wretches. More info: http://www.usu.edu/~communic/Dept/Faculty/williams/nwilliams.html