See the “[discuss]” link on each post? I’ve added BlogVoices‘ functionality to FmH. By clicking on the link, you can add to a public discussion thread about any of my postings, or just ‘lurk’ and read the discussion (if any) to date. Enjoy.

The depleted uranium furor continues not to attract the attention in the U.S. with which it is being covered in Europe. A new report, scoffed at by the British Ministry of Defence, reveals that a secret, but leaked, paper from the British Army’s medical team warned the Army four years ago that soldiers exposed to dust from depleted uranium weapons risked lung, lymphatic and brain cancer. Of course, all the concern about NATO peacekeeping forces’ exposure to radiation pales in comparison to the likely Balkan victims. Independent And now Britain’s Royal Navy announces that it is “phasing out depleted uranium ammunition on its warships
after the U.S. manufacturers stopped producing the shells that have sparked safety
concerns.” Reuters via ENN

The Patriot Missile “Didn’t Work”. “Secretary of Defense
William S. Cohen, supporting a
decade of questions about the
Patriot missile’s performance, said
Raytheon Co.’s famous antimissile
system failed to work in the Persian
Gulf War.” Raytheon begs to differ. Critics have long claimed its kill rate was anywhere between 0-10% in contrast to the 70% figure the U.S. Army and Raytheon have cited. Cohen’s point: we need to invest in research to improve antimissile technology. Watch this space, since the antimissile defense program is certainly alive and well, especially with Dubya ascending to the throne. Boston Globe

How will Microsoft position Whistler, the Win-9x replacement OS now in beta and due out (so they say) in the second half of Y2K1? Is it an upgrade or something new? The Register And here‘s a good preview of several of its features. Windows Help.net

What the heck is Kaiju? B-movie wrestling? pop art? shameless opportunism? The New York Press

An Unacceptable Risk. Washington Post op-ed piece by Lloyd Cutler, former counsel to Presidents Carter and Clinton, and Howard Baker, former Republican Senator from Tennessee and Senate majority leader: “Russia’s nuclear stockpile is the most serious national security threat we face today.”

Genre Trouble: The Boston Review considers the densely-written fiction of John Crowley (The Deep, Beasts, Engine Summer, Little Big, Aegypt, Love and Sleep, Daemonomania), off the critical radarscreens because he “(tries) to create literature with the tools of the genre writer”. He runs the risk “of intimidating readers and baffling
reviewers, of trying the patience of his publisher, of falling
off the literary map altogether.” He’s largely out of print and what there is is buried in the sci-fi/fantasy section of your bookstore.

Paean to a Jan. 8th New Yorker piece describing the writer’s mental illness and psychiatric hospitalizations. “Daphne Merkin bravely gives words to the silent scream and deserves not our pity,
not our voyeurism, but—better than our sympathy—our envy and admiration of her
sharp eye and sharper tongue. We need her to stay with us for a very long time.” The New York Observer

A consortium of six daily newspapers including the New York Times, the Washington Post, the parent company of the Los Angeles Times, and the Wall Street Journal has convened to cost-share on an examination of all the uncounted Florida ballots. The Miami Herald is racing them to complete its own solo recount effort. The New York Observer

“I
have good news for you: You may have the opportunity to
be president of France.” An open letter to Bill Clinton from a French scientist. New York Times

Star in the East: Krishnamurti –
the Invention of a Messiah: review of the new, accessible biography of Krishnamurti by Roland Vernon. London Telegraph via net.headlines

Remembrance of the public as well as the personal departed is a renewing experience for those surviving them, I’m convinced. One of my year-end rituals is to make a point of reflecting on those lists that start showing up of those we lost in public life during the preceding year. This, abit belatedly, is a thorough list of those in the arts who died in 2000. There are people on the list whose passing will diminish me, and surprises, people I did not know had left us. SF Chronicle

U.S. Shifts Policy on Sierra — Trees, Wildlife Protected “The U.S. Forest Service unveiled a
long-awaited management plan for the
Sierra Nevada yesterday, signaling drastic
cutbacks in logging and sweeping
protections for old-growth trees and
endangered species.

The plan’s dramatic shift in policy sparked
predictable responses from
environmentalists, who enthusiastically
endorsed it, and timber industry
advocates, who vehemently opposed it.” SF Chronicle

Clear and Present Danger James Ridgeway: “Democrats have the goods to sink John Ashcroft’s nomination. Now the question is whether they have the
guts.” The hottest property on Capitol Hill is two dozen boxes of “opposition research” painting a damning portrait of Ashcroft “entirely at odds with the bland, friendly image the ever-smiling conservative tries so hard to project”. The files were gathered by Democrat Mel Carnahan who unseated Ashcroft posthumously after dying in a plane crash during a polarized campaign. Village Voice

Democrats are eyeing a 1999 speech by John Ashcroft that may give clues to his lack of belief in the rule of law. New York Times Ashcroft appears to have been in his element, being given an honorary degree at Bob Jones University; here’s the text of the speech. Phil Agre comments:

“When the Constitution was written, religious conservatives opposed
it because, as everyone perfectly well understood, it did not create
a Christian nation. Their arguments sound more or less identical
to the arguments that their descendants make today, as for example
in John Ashcroft’s speech at Bob Jones University, enclosed. Having lost
that fight, the opponents of the Constitution now take a different
approach: they claim to have invented it. The evidence being so
overwhelmingly against them, they use bits and pieces of quotations
to dance around the Constitution’s straightforward assertion that
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion,
or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. It’s okay for them to hold
these opinions. That’s what we’re here for. What’s not okay is for
them to be placed in charge of enforcing the laws. Lately they have
taken to accusing John Ashcroft’s opponents of opposing him because
he believes in God. This is going to get worse before it gets better.” Red Rock Eaters’ Digest

Guilty by Association? “Ashcroft appeared in a 1997 video from Phyllis Schlafly’s Eagle Forum that portrayed the feminist movement, multiculturalism, reproductive
rights, gay rights, environmental concerns, global cooperation, and even chemical weapons treaties as part of a secret conspiracy to promote a
socialist One World Government and New World Order.

This type of conspiracist allegation is found in the right-wing of the Republican Party, the Patriot and armed militia movement, and the Far
Right. The use of language about cosmopolitan international financial elites shows insensitivity to the historic use of such phrases to promote
antisemitic claims of an international Jewish banking conspiracy.” Political Research Associates

And here’s some commentary by attorney and former federal prosecutor Edward Lazarus on The Proper Standard for Ashcroft’s Confirmation Fight: “If the Senate does reject Ashcroft,
no one should lose sleep over it. It would be poetic justice for a
man who deprived so many others of confirmations they rightly
deserved.”

Since I seem unable not to mention Gale Norton, interior secretary-designate, in the same breath as Ashcroft, the New York Times today reviewed her record of “declin(ing) to endorse high-profile laws with which she disagrees,” as Greg Wetstone, the national program director for
the Natural Resources Defense Council, nicely put it. Of course, one of her most egregious declarations was a 1996 speech that described the cause of states’ rights
as having suffered a grievous blow with the defeat of the cause
of the Confederacy in the Civil War. Dubya is certainly acting as if he has a mandate, isn’t he?