mojo city index

February 24 , 2008 - a comment by Cody Barstow, Ph.D.

I had a headful of coffee this morning when the most incredible idea came to mind.

What if Google created a university? What would it be like?

Here is what Mojo City did with the idea and the anti-instutition it built.

***

The Things That Make Us Who We Are.

November 23, 2006 - a comment by Cody Barstow, Ph.D.

Yesterday, at around 3:27 in the afternoon, I fell in love again with Tom Waits', "Downtown Train." Heard it on the Internet radio I tune in to.

This morning, I took a look at the video on YouTube.

The strangest thing happened to me.

I began to look at the music video as a record of history. Much in the way I often see footage of Vietnam and it forces me to think historically. Forces me to look at things as removed, as objects of record, and not as something I've just come home from (which is kind of how a lot of us still cannot help but think about our war, I'm told) ... in essence to re-feel the being of that time as something gone by, not as recent.

Raymond Williams wrote about this as one of the three ways in which we consider history. First, you can know it as one who lived it (in which case, you really know it, yet you're bound by and limited in your understanding by your own demons). Second, you can know it as someone who knows it by studying the artifacts of the time. And third, you can know it by ... well it seems history has crept up on me and I've forgotten the third way of knowing.

The first way happened with me in seeing Tom Waits' video for this tune. I knew the tune by my personal experience with it. Glancing blows. Short encounters with the music on a forgotten someone's radio ... and especially the words. Short encounters with exquisite words that burned into my mind in a way that the person I was with never did.

I never had the chance to see, and review the tune on the computer screen. But this morning, I saw the video. It was simple, but complex.

I was, once again, back then, in those days when the song was written. And yet, I knew it as dated history.

It's not that it is actually dated. Far from that condemnation. What it does is place you back in those times of innocence in terms of video. It simply shows you the tune in the sense of those days. Waits, shining like a new dime. And the young man of him is way romanticised.

See if you get some kind of rush from a decade ago when you look at this 5:03 version. Notice the opening scene, and the difference between "full moon," and "fool moon" in the subtitles.

This is also the one tune that holds the best-ever line written in music. A young guy out on the streets at night. Cock-proud and ... "I'm shining like a new dime."

I've spent my creative life chasing a line like that. Seriously. That is the line I've measured all my work by.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JuSZEBuDUC4&mode=related&search=

And then compare it to today's quite accomplished, but incredibly pretentious:

http://www.ifilm.com/video/2800761?ns=1

(Sorry about the commercial)

Just some late-morning mind-snack.

***

Does a Patriotic Military Fail us as a Country?

November 23, 2006 - a Thanksgiving Day comment by Cody Barstow, Ph.D.

I woke to 145 people dead in Iraq. Killed by three suicide car bombings.

I woke to a president in this country who continues to believe his policy makes sense.

And not a word of dissent from the military. Hell, we constantly encounter news stories about the individual soldier who asks to go back to his unit in Iraq after losing a leg to an IED.

This is all backwards.

The military's duty is to the people of this country, not its politicians. The military has a duty to speak about the failures of this war. And the failures were only more deeply illustrated by 145 corpses this morning, in a country we've spent three years pacifying.

Yet, the warriors continue to defend the war effort. Gen. Abazaid, allegedly one of the brightest and the best continued to defend this war in congressional hearings last week.

He failed all of us in this country. And let's not make a mistake about all this. Our country and our people are our national interest. Iraq as a country, is not our national interest, when we weigh one against the other.

In Vietnam, a lot of us argued against a war we knew was wrong. You can look back to the records of the news reports back then, you can look at the books written from the soldier's perspective, you can see it in some incredible work by people like Gustav Hasford and Michael Herr.

You can see our soldiers living their lives in a war that made no sense to them. Not all, but a lot of us.

We saw the failure of Vietnam long before our politicians were able to admit to their wrong-headed thinking. Hunkered down there in-country, we knew it was all wrong. And we said so.

Our volunteer military is failing us. It sees the venture as its job, as some notion of national duty, not as a political issue they need to speak about.

But it is only when we feel the pain of the military that those of us at home can understand the cost of a war. We won't shy from the cost if the venture is righteous. But when it is plain wrong, as is our work in Iraq is, we need the military to speak up about it all.

And the military has failed us. At the general ranks, our military merely sees its job as the execution of national policy. Witness the absence of Gen. Tommy Franks, the architect of the original wartime in the national debate. Try to find the voices of those now in command commenting on yesterday's reports about this last month pushing up the greatest number of Iraqi dead since the beginning of the war. They're all silent. And the individual soldier sees duty to the brothers and sisters who remain in-country overriding the duty to think of what this war means to this country.

Our military has forgotten about its duty to we, the people.

This is truly not about the individual soldier. Because you will find heroes in every war. Ordinary people brought to extraordinary times and demands. It is not a question about our support for the kid next door.

It is a question about the military itself. And we must think in those larger terms, while we support our individual troop with open arms.

Those of us in Vietnam served our country in a different manner. As individuals and as a military a lot of us said that what we were doing was misguided. We said it loudly.

Today's military is silent.

It is up to this country to decide whether it is the voice of dissent, or the silent one which serves her best.

***

A Small Plane Crash Turns New York City into a Vietnam Firefight.

(and the press victimizes The City.)

October 12, 2006 - a comment by Cody Barstow, Ph.D.

On a Vietnam summer night in 1969, I crawled to the top of a wooden barracks building and watched a firefight rage in the jungle just a short ways outside the fence perimeter. Pretty close stuff.

It was my first night in-country. Kind of a breathless, adrenalin-rushing thing. The sound. Flashes of light kicking around in the jungle. Someone likely dying out there. Maybe a bunch of someones.

I got tired of it after a short while and climbed down from the roof and went to sleep inside on a temporary bunk.

I didn't have the press to dwell on it for me. Slobber it with a dog's drool of wanting more. I was done with it and walked away.

The American press's continued obsession with a small plane crash yesterday into a building in NYC, has done more harm than the original crash-and-rush fear of "not-again." It's made it hard for people to climb down from the roof and get some sleep.

This morning, with continued oh-my's on the television screen, the roiling mindless herd of the press is once again leading their newscasts with the crash. When most of us have gathered ourselves up from the initial shock of that violence, they're drooling. And the spittle-slime's falling on us.

It's as if they were running about on that Vietnam roof of mine the following morning, anguishing over the fact that someone had been shooting at someone, breathlessly anticipating when the bad guys will be coming through the razor wire. With no sense of proportion.

The press are on my TV this following-morning, leading with the plane crash. Nattering nabobs of negativism, I think one-time Vice President Agnew called them. For all his horrorshow, Agnew got it right at least once. And the press have not learned. They will not let this plane crash go.

The effect of it all is that it makes it harder for a lot of people in The City to gather themselves up and get on with things. After all, the press are still working the story. Leading with it everywhere you turn. What right does the ordinary citizen have to let go of that adrenalin-push and another screwed-up night's sleep?

Well, maybe it's time we strike back. Maybe it's time we turn off the TV.

***

Al Gore's Global Warming Slide Show is Dead-on ... But Al's Missing the Point.

July 23, 2006 - a comment by Cody Barstow, Ph.D.

Okay, I'm hip to global warming. I believe its occurring. I have for many years. You can't escape the constant barrage of information that points at the reality. Any reasonable human being who walks this earth who really contests the idea either holds a lot of oil investments or is too damned stupid to make a difference in anybody's world.

I saw Al Gore's film/lecture about global warming this Saturday. The film's called, "An Inconvenient Truth." The reality is something more like, "A Dangerous Distraction."

Gore spent the entire show trying to convince people that global warming exists as a real problem, and that it's reaching crisis proportions. If you already believe this to be true, the show does nothing but warm your heart with self-validation. And dangerously, make you feel like you're doing something meaningful by watching the images.

As a politician (which he clearly remains), Al Gore has a duty, a real and solemn duty to use this film to empower people. Rather than spend precious time educating them in things they already know.

Here's why ... the education has already been done by so many other people in so many ways over the years. Almost anyone who is needed to begin fomenting a political action plan for policies to act against global warming already knows the facts in general. The folks who attend Gore's slide-show presentations and watch the movie will already be believers, so he's not even teaching them... he's just making the believers secure in their belief.

I repeat ... we already have enough people who know what is wrong and what is happening.

It has become Al Gore's responsibility to move from the role of educator, and into that of leader and help people mobilize into political action communities, into online blogging-community crazies creating a political movement, into neighborhood communities banding together through door-to-door contact and standing-on-the-sidewalks conversation to demand accountability of their politicians. We need leadership into how one small person can make a large political difference rather than live on the hope that turning off a light in an unused room will somehow keep the oceans from rising 20 feet when the ice caps melt ....

Gore blew it with the film. We already know things are going to hell. A reminder/summary in the film would have been useful. But the film should have been devoted to how we, the people, can develop a meaningful political action plan to take the battle to the streets.

What the people need is the political leadership to guide them into actually acting on the information and doing something meaningful and political about the problem. To force government and private industry to be accountable and to change immediately.

And that was nowhere in this film. Absolutely nowhere.

There is, at the end of the film, a frighteningly meaningless list of suggestions for controlling one's personal CO2 footprint or whatever. Buy energy-efficient lights. How original. How powerful an act. The suggestion to buy a hybrid car if you can was absurd. And the others were so forgettable, I've forgotten them. But as the ideas were cycling through, mixed in with the credits, they looked like nothing more than a rehash of the old-thought on conservation that any of us who went through the gasoline crisis in the 1970s will remember. It was all old stuff. There was no real new thought guiding the list overall.

There is a Web site listed in the credits for people to go to for more information. www.climatecrisis.net. It's insignificant. Same material as in the film, and no sense of creating an organization.

This is the greatest sin of this movie. It primes people with fear, and provides them with no short- and long-range programs of action to deal with the very real fear of global warming.

It is very much like your dad, tucking you in when you're six years old and suddenly telling you not to worry about the boogy man in the closet. And he walks out of the room turning the lights off, and never leaving you with a freaking bat to take a whack at the boogy man when he appears. You just sit up in bed, the covers over your head, shivering with fear and cursing dad for not leaving you with a Louisville slugger.

Look, global warming is too serious an issue to be left without a bat to whack at it with.

While we waste our time with feel-good affirmations of our beliefs like watching packaged arguments like, "Inconvenient," the bad boys who really run the show like the auto industry, the coal-fired energy plants, and the rest are getting a free ride. And they're smiling a lot as they watch us file into the theaters to hear all about the boogy man, and nothing about taking action.

In public relations and a lot of other disciplines dedicated to mobilizing action on the public's part, you often run into a three-stage plan of development:

You make people aware of the issues ... educate them so they can see the main issue and take a position.
You organize these people, so they see themselves as a concerned public, not isolated individuals.
You encourage them to take action and provide a pathway or plan for it.

What we need now is a path for how to accomplish that second organizing aspect of the movement.

Though continued education will always be important, we do not need a concentration on the first stage of making the public aware of the issue anymore. We have enough people convinced. We need that second stage of building a public. From there, we'll move to the third stage of action.

This country needs an Inconvenient Leader in helping change come from the bottom up ... from us, the masses. Change is certainly not coming from our more convenient leaders currently in office.

What is needed to make that happen, is a real political leader who can take us to the points of making the necessary changes ... first, to organize.

Instead, we get a movie. "Inconvenient" was exactly that ... an inconvenient and distracting sidetrip into old territory most of us know about already, distracting us from the real issue of organization.

How do we organize? How do we take down the bad boys, Mr. Gore? What plan of action do you suggest? That's what we really need to know now.

***

Our Press of the 21st Century. It's Failing Us. And We've Failed It.

March 22, 2006 - a comment by Cody Barstow, Ph.D.

I'm getting pretty pissed at the media, as you'll see in the note below. I believe we need another Vietnam's Cronkite-moment of courage where he told us on the air that the Vietnam war was lost, to make us, as a people, make the move out of the Iraq misadventure.

Where is that Cronkite-person these days?

I hate to say it, but I'm thinking the postmodern world has infused itself into ours. We have no Cronkite. No person of authority.

Right or wrong. We have no sense of direction. And yet, as lost as I feel, I fear even more, the Cronkite.

When doing some research into propaganda in my years as a master's student, I came across a file which has stayed with me in a way no other bit of research I've done ever has. It reported that people under stress would do the most unlikely things, as long as a leader told them what to do. To illustrate this, the article noted that in WWI, there was an horrific, endless, multi-day artillery bombardment against the British troops dug in on the lines facing the Germans. Taking huge losses, they were looking for any way to act. They'd lost all their officers.

A sergeant assessed the situation and said, "Over the top, boys." I'm guessing at the words. But they all went over the top and charged the German lines. It was, of course, suicide. Everyone knew that. And everyone died in the charge. But they needed leadership at that exhausted point of the bombardment, and they chose a clear path of action, rather than one of indecision. Charge and die, or huddle and wait for the next random artillery round to kill you.

We need to remember that foolishness of choice as we move into the next couple years. We cannot seek a clear path of action at the cost of our own lives, or our own futures.

Let's keep a rational head about ourselves.

***

Our Press of the 21st Century. And How We've Lost What It Can Do for A Free People.

March 22, 2006 - a matter of partial full disclosure ... I did my year in Vietnam under a different name. I was shot at often enough, tripped a booby trap that didn't go off, and was happy to leave. I've done my time and I've earned the right to the following comments, by Cody Barstow, Ph.D.

This is a cynic's review on how to read a news reports coming out of Iraq. Even a (war-critical) New York Times piece, such as the following, must be viewed with care, in this age of the government trying to shore up its polling numbers and show success in this insane venture in Iraq. This showed up today, and the full article can be seen at:

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/22/
international/middleeast/22cnd-iraq.html?hp&ex=1143090000&en=
d261467bd53d2edd&ei=5094&partner=homepage

I will comment on the first part of the article, which is the framing part, or the part which tells you how to read the whole of the piece.

The article's contents are in italics ...

Insurgents Captured in New Assault on Iraqi Police Station.
By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN
and JOHN O'NEIL
Published: March 22, 2006

BAGHDAD, Iraq, March 22 — Insurgents launched a large-scale predawn assault on a police station near Baghdad today, their second in two days, but Iraqi forces fought off the attackers and captured 50 of them, Interior Ministry officials said.

We will see later that it probably wasn't Iraqi forces, but American forces that repulsed the attack. We will also see that the 50 captured may have been innocents.

[content about another attack deleted]

The latest attack on a police station took place at 4 this morning in Madain, southeast of Baghdad. Insurgents fired 14 mortars that landed on the station, in the former Salman Pak government center there, killing four police officers, including their commander, and wounding at least five.

Firing weapons and rocket-propelled grenades, the insurgents followed the mortar attack with an assault that turned into a two-hour firefight with Iraqi forces that rushed to the scene, according to news service reports.

It would seem the American press is playing cards in their hotel rooms and are not out in the streets and cannot claim to independently know or to have verified any of these points. The phrase "according to news service reports" is plain mysterious. Exactly what "news sources" are we depending on for this interpretation of the events?

Iraqi officials told news service reporters that American troops had joined the reinforcements, but a spokesman for the American military in Baghdad, Sgt. Doug Anderson, said he had no information on any such operation.

This is where we see the probability (I do not claim the certainty) of American forces being the real forces which repulsed the attack. There is too much here in this one line which brings everything into question. It would be natural for the American Sgt. (a mere sergeant as a spokesperson for the American military?) to claim no knowledge of the participation of American forces. To state he had no knowledge is not the same as stating American forces were not there.

After the assault was repulsed, a sweep of the area led to the arrest of 50 suspected insurgents, the Interior Ministry officials said.

If you spent any time in Vietnam, you know that post-operation sweeps of the population end up getting you "the usual suspects," and anyone the forces in power had a grudge against or any other reason to take into custody. These 50 "suspected insurgents" were apparently not taken during the battle, but in later operations. Their participation in the attack must be viewed with the greatest of suspicion.

In full disclosure, I am one angry sombitch about this war. My arguments have already been made elsewhere. But I am constantly compelled to ask everyone to carefully consider the news coming out of this war, to challenge that news, to seek out other motivations for even the most innocent of facts. Our government has shown they are willing to change reports of reality when it suits them.

And our press, fearful of being hurt by being out on the streets where they belong, have already abdicated their position of being meaningful reporters of the conflict.

I do not ask that the press act irrationally and go off willy-nilly and get themselves killed off by the bad guys. But I miss the days when I could look back at things from the simple, but on-the-site ABC reporter's time with an army unit in the bush in Vietnam, to a later book by someone like Michael Herr and his "Dispatches." We will never see that kind of integrity, and meaningful, insightful reporting from the lame media we have sent to cover this war.

Our current media are simply too fearful of the potential consequences of doing their job. The hair gets mussed. Bullets may come your way.

Yeah, your career will suffer seriously if you get your sorry ass killed.

But you might send us something like an approximation of the truth before that happens.

***

Old News from 1967.

about a morning briefing by some inane general in Iraq and the press failure to do its job, by Cody Barstow, Ph.D.

This is just plain sad. No one ever learns.

Back in the old days (think the Vietnam war), we were kind of intent on killing the bad guys. We did a lot of that. We got pretty good at it. In fact, we got so damned good at it, we got kind of boastful and kind of exaggerated the kills we made and lowered the number of our losses and made the whole damned thing look like some goddamned killfest. It was like we were the only ones who had the guns.

And we held press releases in Saigon and told the press about our incredible victories. Now, the press took all of this in, in open-mouthed in amazement at first, but eventually became sort of cynical. In fact, they became so cynical, they came to name these daily briefings on the war by the military, "The five-o-clock follies."

And one day Cronkite freaked and said he thought the war sucked ... Anyway, the press had some backbone back then. Yes, it took far too many years to develop that courage to spit in the eye of some lying bastard Lt. General, but they eventually could not take it anymore.

The press has lost that backbone.

I watched an abbreviated press interview with some army general in Iraq on CNN, I think it was. The press were all respectful, the general pussyfooted throughout the interview and raved about how the Iraqi soldiers were taking the lead in Operation Swarmer, and the press was, oh, so respectful.

Here's a question they should have asked. Um ... General ... isn't it easy to take the lead in an operation when no one's shooting at you? I mean, according to reports, you killed absolutely no insurgents, have captured only about 40 or so people and let about a third of those go free already.

Isn't this a sham operation? And why are there no embedded reporters in the most massive air assault since ... gee, I can't remember when.

That's what a responsible press would do. But we've got cowards covering a war these days. I have lost all respect for our press "corps," and probably will never really support the Fist Amendment in terms of press rights in the way I used to. The press has a deal with society ... it gets preferential and greater treatment regarding the First Amendment because it's supposed to be both the beacon of free speech, and the watchdog (this has become such a laughable concept) on the government and its actions for the rest of us regular people.

As the press continues to fail in its responsibilities, the bloggers supplant them. I detest bloggers and the culture it's developed. But I can see the day when I move toward them and Jon Stewart for my daily real news.

And sadly, I'm not making up these facts about Op Swarmer. It truly is a sham operation.

Take a look at these selected bits of info from a report on Operation Swarmer.

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/
I/IRAQ_AIR_ASSAULT?SITE=7219&SECTION= HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2006-03-16-18-21-23

It was not known if they met any resistance, but the military reported detaining 41 people.

...

The Pentagon said there were no reporters embedded with U.S. troops, and it released video and a series of photos of preparations for the assault. The images showed soldiers receiving a preflight briefing from a UH-60 Blackhawk crew chief, soldiers and aircraft positioned on an airstrip, and helicopters taking off over a dusty landscape.

***

Okay, Folks. Music Changes Everything.

another morning, by Cody Barstow, Ph.D.

I'm listening to Bowie's "Ziggy Stardust" right now after just hearing "Tiny Dancer" off Elton John's album released at the same time. That's 35 years ago. Thirty-five freaking years ... the first two albums I bought on returning from Vietnam.

Some of you might dust off the coming question, but I'd really like some response from everyone. The question goes to my very core for being.

Cody Barstow

Why is the same exponential leap in music and understanding not happening these days? Rap is no excuse for a lack of creativity. It is, in fact, all the same. And call hip-hop by any 'nother name, it remains the same. In our history, we see grunge falling by the wayside already. And the Gun's and Roses time and imitators, while certainly fun and powerful, can be left behind when setting out on a 500-mile drive without feeling like you've left the baby in the bassinet on the rooftop when you punched the accelerator to get on the Interstate.

Something happened in those times of Ziggy and "Madman Across the Water."

And then we lost the understanding that music was who we are. We lost the artists who could claim to produce music that let us say that absolutely and incredibly insane thing. We are the music.

What the hell happened to all of us?

We did not just grow old. I will not accept that. Music is more than a people growing older.

What the hell happened?

Possibilities.

another morning, by Cody Barstow, Ph.D.

This morning, not wanting to startle Amber when I walked in the room unexpected, I announced I was going to come in and urged her not to freak out.

And then I began wondering if anyone's ever "freaked in."

What would that be?

Since freaking out kind of puts us outside the behavior pattern of people around us, would freaking in be like inviting someone to some group activity ... Hey, baby. C'mon over here and freak in with the rest of us.

Would it be the opposite of freaking out ... like two shrinks behind the observation glass watching a patient in a room and he's kind of hyper and talking to non-existent people and one shrink turns to the other and says, "Dude, we've got to get that guy to freak in."

Or, since freaking out usually means getting startled, or surprised, would freaking in be like scaring some 89-year-old guy with a surprise birthday party and he collapses and begins going into cardiac arrest and all you can do is stand there, trying to comfort him, while someone's crushing his brittle ribcage with far too-hard chest compressions, saying, "Freak in, man. It's all good."

***

Bird Flu, and
the loss of our
truckers and food.

a consideration of the coming disaster, by Cody Barstow, Ph.D., (we've been having some fun at Mojo City for a while now, but things have become serious.)

Bird Flu.

We don't think too much about dying. We need to, if we're going to live. The Bird Flu's on its way. So far, it's killed more than half of everyone it's infected. And we have no vaccine. No way to change those numbers.

Some people will live. Some will survive their encounter, or never get the disease. They'll be angry, devastated, lost when they see who among them are dead.

And they'll be hungry. Just this one small issue points to the problems with not dealing with this now. Consider food. How will it get shipped into your city when the disease rages for the projected 12 months? Truckers will likely stop driving when they realize that going from city-to-city exposes them to the illness more than nearly anyone else.

Planning for death now is the only way to look forward to the possibility of survival. And we have done none of it. No governmental body has shown the public plans for shipping food, maintaining energy supplies, and gas and electricity to keep our homes warm in the winters.

It's time we face the facts of life, and make some plans for death on a massive scale.

***

Bird Flu, and
the failure of our government.

a consideration of the coming disaster, by Cody Barstow, Ph.D., (we've been having some fun at Mojo City for a while now, but things have become serious.)

Bird Flu.

Here's what it means to you. Go up to the person you love most in this world right now while you have the chance, hold hands. Kiss goodbye-forever.

Because if both of you are infected with Bird Flu in the coming months or years without a vaccine, either you or that person could be dead a few days later. According to the odds.

Current stats show more than 50 percent of people infected with Bird Flu die from it. Sure, both of you might live. But both of you could just as easily die.

Or an entire family of four could die alone in their home because it's been quarantined, while across the street, another family of four recovers.

Fifty-percent odds on never drawing another breath. After being sick for just a couple days. That's what's waiting for all of us. If you get Bird Flu without a vaccine, you have less than a 50-percent chance of survival. No one can tell you which 50 percent you fall into.

It's coming. What we must do now.

Everything does indeed point to the cliched, "not if, but when" reality of Bird Flu (known also as H5N1) jumping to humans. Millions upon millions of us without vaccination will die (especially the young and healthy, based on current death patterns), if we let things continue to unfold as they are.

As citizens, we must demand that our government act now in at least three ways:

1. That it institute the building of vaccine production facilities to actually produce sufficient vaccine for the entire population, not just 20 percent of the population as proposed by Congress and President Bush. In fact, according to the experts, we may already have a vaccine that's effective against the current Bird Flu, but we don't know if it will be effective against the final version of the Bird Flu we think might infect humans.
We can't wait. We need to produce vaccine with what we have now. To have a fighting chance.

2. That it ignore the economic implications and begin developing stockpiles of the antiviral Tamiflu (and any other antivirals which may lessen the severity of the disease) without the permission of the current patent holder, Roche Pharmaceuticals, which is capable of producing only relatively limited quantities of the drug. The Bird Flu is an immense threat to national security, and a single European company's patent rights are nothing in the face of this threat. Taiwan has already begun such a self-protective program.

Our government can no longer be permitted to protect the economic interests of Roche, at the expense of the lives of millions of our citizens.

3. That it release current federal, state, and local public safety plans designed to cope with pandemics to the public for review and comment. We need transparency in our government's plans, so that we, the public can understand what is expected to occur. And if we find there are no plans, as a people we may need to develop them for ourselves.

That all this be done today.

Consider:

1. Bird flu has a current lethality of more than 50 percent in humans. Straight out, this means that if it makes the species-jump into humans that we're all concerned about without a compromise of lethality, at least half those infected without a vaccine or antiviral ... will die.

2. Infection potential/lethality may be greater than considered. "The revivified killer [a reconstructed virus of the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic] was lethal to mice infected with as few as 1,000 virus particles, whereas some H5N1 [Bird Flu] isolates have killed mice infected with just 10 or 15 particles." This is from Killer Resurrected, Scientific American, Dec. 2005, p. 34, bracketed information inserted by Mojo City News.

While lethality may be compromised because of the mutation necessary to make it human-to-human transmissible, there is no guarantee of that lessened potency. Even if the kill-rate were cut nearly in half to 30 percent, that means three out of 10 infected would die. The Spanish Flu only killed 2 to 5 percent of those infected, depending on which source you look at.

3. With any of the projected impacts of bird flu, we will have a huge disruption of commerce with great consequence for the general population. A very basic example - even food might become scarce. How will we transport food from where it is grown, to places where it is consumed, in the face of quarantines or when transport specialists may be ill or already dead? Who will grow and process food in the first place if H5N1 sweeps the wheat fields and corn rows of the Midwest?

4. Federal, state, and local governments' overall plans for action are not publicly known or apparently available. Do public institutions such as universities, which are major hotspots for transmission of disease and which should be shuttered immediately on first instance of the disease in this country, do they even have plans?

5. Consider one other issue at this point ... we need to recognize that the people who have survived H5N1, those 50-percenters, did so with the benefit of intensive hospital care ... including respirators to help breathe when their lungs filled with fluid. Do you have a respirator at home? Because when the pandemic comes, there will be no room in the hospital for most of us.

As a result of the lack of hospital care for most citizens, and with the virus lethality remaining equal, we should actually expect the death rate to increase.

The bird-version of this flu has just made a very quick invasion of Eastern Europe and there are great fears of invasion into northeastern Africa after being contained in Southeast Asia for a few years. This sudden and widespread increase in the overall pool of the bird-version of the flu likely makes the impending mutation to human-to-human version of the virus more likely, much sooner.

It is time responsible citizens hold the feet of those responsible to the fire before the event, rather than after. We cannot afford to wait around for answers … to wait around to die.

We cannot wait for political compromise, understanding, and political goodwill to determine a deliberate but traditionally slow course of action.

We need leaders who can comprehend this horror today, and take the action necessary now to put effective programs in place for the benefit of the entire population, not only the selected 20 percent, which naturally would seem to include government leaders.

It is uncertain who, beyond those government leaders, medical care workers, first-responders, and possible vaccine-producers will receive the vaccine and antivirals when available. But it won't be you. And to be selfish, it won't be me or my wife. All the rest of us are in that 80 percent of the population left to face the Bird Flu without help. Left without the consideration of vaccine or antivirals, or respirators … so that more than half of us infected could die.

We are expendable, apparently.

It could be different. If we act now. Instead of sitting around with our thumbs up our asses waiting to die. If we demand action and reward the true leaders in this country who will emerge.

Flood your representative's e-mail boxes with letters and demand they act on the three main points at the beginning of this commentary. See Taking Direct Action for a Sample Letter to your government officials.

Make damned sure you send a copy of every one of your communications to your local newspaper and favorite TV news station, so they can see what you're doing and can show the rest of us what we're doing.

Write them over and over again. So we can all see that we won't just roll over and die.

[I make this document open, with only the following copyright liability - please feel free to use it elsewhere, in its full form only.]

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Taking Direct Action

How we beat this thing.

9 out of 10 infected kids in Thailand died from Bird Flu.

Is using the 50% kill-rate irresponsible fear-mongering?

What else can be done?