Abstract
“How come there aren't any peace heroes?”
The war on speech
The language police are after us all, not just the name-callers they once had in their sights. They want to strip speech of “linguistic violence,” a category that includes a wide assortment of words and expressions.
For some time, the painfully correct and/or professionally outraged have used as their springboard a book by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson–Metaphors We Live By, published in 1981–which focuses on expressions that arose in military life but are now universal, at least in English. David C. Smith, writing in the July/August 1997 issue of Peace Magazine, lists some examples of “militaristic” phrases, including “to mark time,” “to get off on the wrong foot,” “to close ranks,” and “to beat a hasty retreat.”
Smith says that some perfectly innocent people may believe that, at a “shallow level,” these military expressions are harmless. But, he says, those people are wrong. Using military terminology may not be bad in and of itself, but there is a deeply embedded danger: The use of military expressions has a deleterious effect on the “patterns of metaphorical thinking at the metacognitive level.” (Another item on Smith's military hit list–excuse me, laundry list–is the word “harbinger,” which originally described one who went before an army to set up camp or arrange for billets.)
The politically incorrect might think that the language cops are declaring some expressions like “mark time” or “get off on the wrong foot”–and especially, words like “harbinger”–as guilty merely by association. How can words be violent, after all, if they don't actually express violent acts or thoughts?
The ways are many, according to the December 1998 Peace Review, which features 19 articles on linguistic violence.
One of the editors of the special issue, Mary Tiles, a philosopher at the University of Hawaii, believes it will be hard to pacify speech because war is our society's dominant metaphor. But, says contributor Ellen Gorsevski, a doctoral candidate in the speech department at Pennsylvania State University, it must be done.
Gorsevski not only joins in the criticism of the “creeping militarization” of everyday speech, she is offended by “the rhetoric of violent opposition and force in the newspapers' sports pages.” She also believes that–putting aside the classic “sticks-and-stones” disclaimer–violent language makes people sick. (She cites a study by John M. Gottman, which concludes that people who participate in verbal conflicts have impaired immune function.)
Mark Helprin, describing the “academic critics” of Star Wars, National Review, February 22, 1999.
Gorsevski suggests a number of ways to avoid violent language (and thus protect your health), including a suggestion to “take periodic fasts from [TV] programs such as the evening news.”
Ralph Summy, who directs the Matsunaga Institute for Peace, encourages his students to replace violent expressions with nonviolent language. Instead of describing someone as “shooting a hole in an argument,” he suggests, that person could be described as “unraveling a ball of yarn.” Summy also recommends that the expression “to kill two birds with one stone” be replaced by “to stroke two birds with one hand.” “Dressed to kill,” he adds, might become “dressed to thrill.”
Substituting new language, he concludes, “arrests people's attention and paves the way for discussion on a range of peace topics.” (Even expressions that come from the Bible aren't safe in Summy's classes: one student, a vegetarian, decided to replace the expression “to kill the fatted calf” with “to reap the ripened grain.”)
Vrinda Dalmiya, another philosopher at the University of Hawaii, says that non-verbal communication can also constitute violent speech. And she is not talking merely about obscene gestures or dismissive body language. “Not saying” or silence, writes Dalmiya, can be “violent”: For instance, a speaker commits some kind of violence on others by not recognizing them (as when a speaker might address his remarks to “gentlemen” in the clear presence of an audience of both sexes).
Will C. Gay, who teaches philosophy at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, agrees that “not saying” is violent, and he argues that avoiding the use of defamatory words or phrases is only the first step in “practicing linguistic nonviolence.” He explains that a government might be persuaded to stop referring to another nation as a “rogue state,” but it would still hold the same prejudices toward that state and its people even if they were “unspoken.” Worse yet, unspoken biases can be more difficult to root out than clearly enunciated ones.
Gay's ultimate goal is “pacific discourse,” which, he says, has the power to transform culture. But people cannot be compelled to use nonviolent expressions, he warns. Many would agree with his view that “those who bite their tongues to comply with the demands of political correctness are often ready to lash out [with] vitriolic epithets when these constraints are removed.”
–Linda Rothstein
Spies R Us
Enemies of the state?
Move over ballistic missiles, rogue states, loose nukes, and bioterrorists–Fortress America has a new national security threat. It's small and fluffy, comes in assorted colors, and might at this very moment be holding a conversation with your child–not in English, mind you, but in “Furbish.”
According to the Washington Post (January 21), Furbies, those interactive stuffed animals that were all the rage last Christmas, have been declared creatura non grata by the National Security Agency (NSA) because of their alleged conversational ability, which might facilitate espionage.
In a “Furby Alert” distributed to its employees last December, NSA banned the stuffed animals from its Fort Meade headquarters and declared that Furbies could not be introduced into any NSA spaces. “Those who [had a Furby on the premises] should contact their staff security officer for guidance.” An unnamed government source told the Post that the agency was afraid that “people would take them home and they'd start talking classified.”
In March, the navy went into Furby-damage-control mode as well. According to the Wall Street Journal (March 12), personnel at the Norfolk Naval Shipyard were sent an e-mail notice that Furbies were not allowed on the base “without the commander's approval. If you see one … you are to take proper action–seize it and its owner–this is a security violation. The toy shall be held as evidence on a chain of custody form.”
Tiger Electronics, the division of Hasbro Inc. that manufactures the toy, is a bit perplexed by the Furbyas-spy allegations. In a January 21 press release that described the NSA and the navy as responding to “funny, yet incorrect rumors,” Tiger president Roger Shiffman explained that “although Furby is a clever toy, it does not record or mimic voices. Each Furby is preprogrammed to react to its environment. The NSA did not do their homework. Furby is not a spy!” Shiffman admitted that the toy is so life-like that “it starts to inspire people's imaginations.”
Furby unmasked.
Most surprising about the charges, says Lana Simon, Tiger's director of public relations, is that “nobody thought to ask Tiger about the toy before banning it.” Furbies, she told the Bulletin, start out speaking only their own language–Furbish. But in response to various stimuli–Furbies react to sound, touch, and movement–they gradually begin using a pre-recorded English vocabulary. Words are neither “learned [n]or mimicked,” she said.
According to Simon, the company is concerned that consumers, having heard the spy stories, might assume that Furbies are supposed to record and parrot what they hear. If so, disgruntled parents might protest when their child's Furby fails to record and play back.
Some parents have begun protesting–but not because of Furby's inability to “learn” words. The toy's tendency to chatter incessantly drives adults crazy. Jennifer Sparks and Lars Norpchen, two parents driven to the brink by Furby's antics, decided to perform an “autopsy” on their Furby when it started acting in strange ways. After several failed attempts to repair it, Sparks and Norpchen “did what any bereaved Furby owner would do–we cut him up and took photos.” The photos can be found on their web page (www.phobe.com/furby). “We find him much more amusing dead than he was alive,” they write.
Despite a growing list of detractors–which now includes hospitals concerned that Furby's electromagnetic waves will disrupt medical equipment, and labor unions upset over working conditions at the Chinese factories where Furbies are assembled–the latest threat to national security is proliferating exponentially. Tiger's spokeswoman told the Bulletin that sales “continue to soar.” During one week in March, retailers sold more than 250,000 of the would-be secret agents.
As for the spy allegations, one child, writing in his school newspaper, asked the obvious questions: “How does a Furby get into the NSA in the first place? Do they just break out the Furbies at national security meetings? Do we really want someone who does something like that protecting our country?”
–Michael Flynn
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It's been bugging the National Institute of Standards and Technology (nist) and the International Electrotechnical Commission that the terms commonly used to express how much memory a computer chip has–namely, kilobyte, megabyte, and gigabyte–are inaccurate. Their prefixes mean one thousand, a million, and a billion, respectively–even though a kilobyte, as nist points out, is actually 1,024 bytes, not 1,000. This is not acceptable, say NIST's standardsetters. Determined to “increase precision in expressing electronic information,” in its March 1999 TechBeat newsletter, nist explains that the familiar terms for chip memory will be banished, to be replaced by the “kibibyte,” the “mebibyte,” and the “gibibyte.” Nist is also ready for the inevitable exponential increases in computer memory. It has the terms “tebibyte,” “pebibyte,” and “exbibyte” waiting in the wings.
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On March 4, the Washington Post reported that William C. Patrick, described as a “U.S. expert on biological warfare,” testified before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. To emphasize his point–that it would be incredibly easy for a terrorist to smuggle anthrax into an American facility like the Capitol–Patrick carried a small plastic bottle which, the Post reported, contained seven and a half grams of powdered anthrax. “I've been through all the major airports, and the security systems of the State Department, the Pentagon, even the cia, and nobody has stopped me,” he boasted. The next day, however, Patrick admitted that he had in fact been carrying an “anthrax simulant”–and that he had checked in with Capitol police before he testified.
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After five years of consideration, in February the U.S. Agriculture Department gave final approval for the irradiation of red meat for the purpose of reducing disease-causing microorganisms like E. coli 0157, listeria, salmonella, and campylobacter. With red meat approved for zapping, the United States now permits the irradiation of virtually all foodstuffs, yet it is rare for any irradiated products other than spices to be offered for sale in American markets. Many who favor irradiation are disappointed with Agriculture's ruling that packages of treated meat be clearly marked with the “radura” symbol and the statement that the product has been irradiated. They want to call irradiation “cold pasteurization.”
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A lot of concern has been expressed about Russia's willingness to sell old Soviet weapons, including major ships and planes, to the highest bidder. But some sales seem harmless enough. A South Korean company, for instance, has bought a Soviet aircraft carrier and is converting it into an entertainment center in Guangdong, China. Tours of another aircraft carrier will be offered to sightseers in Macao, which reverts to China later this year (World Press Review, February 1999).
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The National Security Center is a defense-issue think tank with big ideas–or a lively imagination. Richard Delgaudio, the center's president, argues in his new book, Peril in Panama, that the Red Chinese intend to take control of the Panama Canal when the United States withdraws later this year. According to Delgaudio, Hutchison Whampoa, a Hong Kong-based business, took over the management of key ports in March 1997, and the company is now poised to seize control of both ends of the canal when the United States moves out. The Indianapolis Star (February 22, 1999) says that Delgaudio “makes a strong case” that the threat of a Chinese takeover of the canal is real. The Star also claims that “a number of retired United States military officers” believe that China also wants to use the Canal Zone as a staging area for intermediate-range missiles aimed at the United States.
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According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in Atlanta, Georgia, authorities at the Savannah River Site may have underestimated the amount of radiation the facility emitted over the years. According to a CDC report released in early February, Savannah River officials say the plant released some 2,500 curies of iodine 131 during the decades-long period when it produced plutonium. A better estimate of Savannah River's output, says the CDC, is about 57,000 curies (Savannah Morning News electronic edition, February 9, 1999).
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Some of the mercenaries–especially the pilot-mercenaries–who fight in Africa's wars are Russians, according to U.S. News & World Report (March 15, 1999). For example, the pilot whose plane went down recently in the Ethiopian-Eritrean border war was Vyacheslav Myzin, a former Russian Air Force colonel. Sometimes Russians are part of package deals that supply not only aircraft but also the pilots and mechanics needed to keep the planes aloft. But there is another reason why Russian pilots are popular–they're willing to work for lower pay and put up with poorer maintenance than are the South Africans who dominate the profession.
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According to a report by Steven Garfinkel, director of the government's Information Security Oversight Office, the federal government declassified 204 million pages of documents in fiscal 1997. And, says Garfinkel, “in two years … the agencies have declassified 56 percent more pages than in the prior 16 years combined.” Meanwhile, the number of documents that were classified also increased in 1997. And classifying those documents costs money–about $3.4 billion a year.
Under the terms of an unprecedented legal settlement, the Energy Department will offer web surfers an alternative to Furby autopsies (see “Spies R Us,” page 8) and daytrading technology stocks. On the cyberhorizon: an on-line database detailing pollution levels and cleanup efforts at the nation's nuclear weapons labs and plants.
The first-of-its-kind database was mandated by a settlement reached between the Energy Department and 39 plaintiffs–among them the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Los Alamos Study Group, and the Western States Legal Foundation–after a 10-year legal battle over the nation's sprawling nuclear weapons complex.
The agreement, reached last December, allows for greater public oversight of the department's efforts to manage dozens of the nation's most contaminated sites. For the first time, it will bring together current data on the location, volume, make-up, and disposition plans for waste and contaminated material at Energy Department sites.
The first step in the creation of the web site will be a “Stakeholders Forum,” scheduled for June 2-3 in Washington, D.C. The two-day conference will allow environmental, anti-nuclear, and other watchdog groups to lobby for the features they want to see included in the on-line clearinghouse–such as the ability to search for a particular pollutant at all of the Energy-run facilities.
In addition to setting up the web site, the department agreed to establish a $6.25 million “Citizen Monitoring and Technical Assistance Fund” and to perform a study of its long-term plans for sites where clean-up has been or will be completed.
The fund will support the efforts of plaintiffs, other non-profits, and tribal governments to independently monitor the department's environmental management activities. In effect, Energy will pick up the tab for the watchdogs.
“We view [the fund] as something that is forward-looking,” says David Adelman of the NRDC Nuclear Program. “Now the public can play a useful role in assisting [the Energy Department] in cleaning up the nuclear weapons complex.”
The settlement capped a lengthy legal battle between the Energy Department and a coalition of local and national environmental and anti-nuclear organizations. In 1989, the groups sued the Bush administration to force an evaluation of its plans for the weapons complex. The suit was settled in 1990 when the department promised to carry out a programmatic environmental impact statement (PEIS) that would assess the options for clean-up and disposal of wastes at the sites. Of the two studies resulting from the settlement, one was canceled by the Clinton administration; the other, widely viewed as flawed and incomplete, was largely ignored.
In 1997, the plaintiffs went back to court to have the terms of the original agreement enforced. The Clinton administration argued that nuclear weapons sites–including the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington, the Rocky Flats Plant in Colorado, and the Savannah River Site in South Carolina–needed to be assessed individually, rather than through a comprehensive clean-up strategy. After years of wrangling, the plaintiffs' lawyers recognized that forcing the department to complete a PEIS would be a hollow victory–at best, it would be a summary of why Energy had chosen the course it was already following.
Instead of insisting on a PEIS, plaintiffs' attorneys devised a novel approach: a database created by Energy; influenced by the groups most interested in tracking the what, where, and how of radioactive contamination; and available to anyone with an Internet hookup. “We viewed the database as a logical replacement for [the PEIS],” Adelman says. “Because the department was already far along in its work, the combination of the database and the fund gave us the same sort of information and allowed for greater public involvement.”
“He got the grant! He got the grant! Hey, what am I cheering about?”
No date has been announced for the database's debut, but Adelman hopes to see it on line by January 2000, a date he realizes is “optimistic.”
–Brendan Mathews
Check out “Jump-START”
Sometimes you just have to cut to the chase. Those of us who think about arms control and nuclear proliferation are inclined to use the namby-pamby word “concern.” As in, “Iraq is a state of proliferation concern.”
Last February, Jesse James, executive director of the Committee on Nuclear Policy, based at the Henry L. Stimson Center in Washington, D.C., conducted a press conference introducing the committee's report, “Jump-START: Retaking the Initiative to Reduce Post-Cold War Nuclear Dangers.”
Jump-START outlines how the United States can quickly begin a series of positive steps designed to reduce the nuclear danger. Take missiles off alert, for instance, and cut the numbers of U.S. warheads way down–say, to a thousand. That would be lower than anything the current administration plans.
During the Q&A, the reporters' questions were thoughtful but predictable. A recurring theme: How do you get the administration on board? For that matter, how will you get the American people interested in such arcane issues?
The answers offered by members of the committee reflected frustration and “concern.” As Russia's political climate and command-and-control systems degrade, disaster seems ever more possible if not probable, they said. Nevertheless, President Clinton has not invested much political capital in resolving the situation, and ordinary people just don't care.
But at one point, James suggested that language might also play a role in the general apathy. The word “concern” is often used, he said, when the right word is “fear.” “What we've got today is a condition where people think everything is fine. And to change that condition, we've got to make people fearful.”
Fear that paralyzes is dangerous; but fear that overcomes apathy and inspires constructive action is useful. The Bulletin has its Doomsday Clock. It is a conceit, of course. What right do we have to “tell the world what time it is”? But we do it anyway because the clock is, well, a little scary. There are tens of thousands of nuclear warheads out there, thousands of which are on 15-minute alert. Objectively speaking, that is a fearsome situation. Jesse James and the Committee on Nuclear Policy understand that, and they are trying to do something about it.
The American Physical Society presented John A. Simpson with its 1999 Leo Szilard Award for Physics in the Public Interest at its centennial meeting in Atlanta in March. During World War II, Szilard and Simpson worked in the Manhattan Project's “Met Lab” at the University of Chicago. After the end of the war, both vigorously championed the idea that atomic weapons should never again be used in war. Simpson became one of the principal founders of the Bulletin; Szilard later started the Council for a Livable World.
Simpson began focusing on the shape of the post-war world in the fall of 1944, when he helped start a series of discussions among younger Met Lab scientists regarding the long-range implications of their work. After the war ended, Simpson became a faculty member at the university. Chancellor Robert Hutchins, however, gave Simpson–then in his late 20s–free rein to help organize scientists around nuclear policy issues.
Hutchins also encouraged Simpson to spend time in Washington, lobbying Congress on behalf of the civilian control of atomic energy in the United States, and for the international control of atomic energy under U.N. auspices. In August 1945 Simpson became the first chairman of the Atomic Scientists of Chicago, the organization that started the Bulletin. He was also one of the founders of the Federation of Atomic Scientists, which became the Federation of American Scientists.
The Szilard Award cites Simpson's “leading role in educating scientists, members of Congress, and the public on the civilian control of nuclear policy.” But it also notes his “critical efforts in the planning and execution of the International Geophysical Year, which established in 1957 a successful model for today's global scale scientific endeavors.”
International cooperation among scientists has long been one of Simpson's passions. He abandoned weapons work after the war and became one of the world's leading astrophysicists. Even in the depths of the Cold War, he promoted cooperation in research and the free exchange of ideas between Soviet and Western scientists.
Simpson, who now chairs the Bulletin's Board of Sponsors, previously received the NASA Medal for Scientific Achievement, the U.N.'s COSPAR Award for Scientific Research in Space, the Bruno Rossi Prize of the American Astronomical Society, and the Arctowski Medal from the National Academy of Sciences.
Canada, it seems, is likely to be “the first target of a North Korean nuclear attack.” Or so said three Canadian MPs when they returned home from a meeting of NATO representatives at the U.S. Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. According to the February 12 issue of Canada's National Post, the MPs were tipped off about the threat by U.S. Army officials, who added that a war scenario being developed at the college pinpointed Montreal as the most likely target of North Korean missiles.
The logic behind the alleged scenario was that North Korea would be reluctant to hit the United States, because it would surely result in massive retaliation. Therefore, the North Koreans would attack a close, but non-nuclear, ally (New York Times, March 7, 1999).
Unfazed by news of the North Korean threat, some Montrealers suggested the next day that a missile attack by the Democratic Peoples Republic might be an advantage if it knocked down Olympic Stadium–a from the 1976 games.
Although U.S. Army War College staff denied they had developed a scenario involving a North Korean attack on Canada, the To ronto Star concluded instead that a U.S. “scare campaign” had failed. But, said the Star, it had at least provided La Belle Province with “a giggle.”
–L. R.