1. THE CENTURY OF DROUGHT
(One third of the planet will be desert by the year 2100, say climate experts in the most dire warning yet of the effects of global warming)

BY

MICHAEL McCARTHY

Drought threatening the lives of millions will spread across half the land surface of the Earth in the coming century because of global warming, according to new predictions from Britain's leading climate scientists.

Extreme drought, in which agriculture is in effect impossible, will affect about a third of the planet, according to the study from the Met Office's Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research.

It is one of the most dire forecasts so far of the potential effects of rising temperatures around the world - yet it may be an underestimation, the scientists involved said yesterday.

The findings, released at the Climate Clinic at the Conservative Party conference in Bournemouth, drew astonished and dismayed reactions from aid agencies and development specialists, who fear that the poor of developing countries will be worst hit.

"This is genuinely terrifying," said Andrew Pendleton of Christian Aid. "It is a death sentence for many millions of people. It will mean migration off the land at levels we have not seen before, and at levels poor countries cannot cope with."

One of Britain's leading experts on the effects of climate change on the developing countries, Andrew Simms from the New Economics Foundation, said: "There's almost no aspect of life in the developing countries that these predictions don't undermine - the ability to grow food, the ability to have a safe sanitation system, the availability of water. For hundreds of millions of people for whom getting through the day is already a struggle, this is going to push them over the precipice."

The findings represent the first time that the threat of increased drought from climate change has been quantified with a supercomputer climate model such as the one operated by the Hadley Centre.

Their impact is likely to be even greater because the findings may be an underestimate. The study did not include potential effects on drought from global-warming-induced changes to the Earth's carbon cycle.

In one unpublished Met Office study, when the carbon cycle effects are included, future drought is even worse.

The results are regarded as most valid at the global level, but the clear implication is that the parts of the world already stricken by drought, such as Africa, will be the places where the projected increase will have the most severe effects.

The study, by Eleanor Burke and two Hadley Centre colleagues, models how a measure of drought known as the Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI) is likely to increase globally during the coming century with predicted changes in rainfall and heat around the world because of climate change. It shows the PDSI figure for moderate drought, currently at 25 per cent of the Earth's surface, rising to 50 per cent by 2100, the figure for severe drought, currently at about 8 per cent, rising to 40 cent, and the figure for extreme drought, currently 3 per cent, rising to 30 per cent.

Senior Met Office scientists are sensitive about the study, funded by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, stressing it contains uncertainties: there is only one climate model involved, one future scenario for emissions of greenhouse gases (a moderate-to-high one) and one drought index. Nevertheless, the result is "significant", according to Vicky Pope, the head of the Hadley Centre's climate programme. Further work would now be taking place to try to assess the potential risk of different levels of drought in different places, she said.

The full study - Modelling the Recent Evolution of Global Drought and Projections for the 21st Century with the Hadley Centre Climate Model - will be published later this month in The Journal of Hydrometeorology.

It will be widely publicised by the British Government at the negotiations in Nairobi in November on a successor to the Kyoto climate treaty. But a preview of it was given by Dr Burke in a presentation to the Climate Clinic, which was formed by environmental groups, with The Independent as media partner, to press politicians for tougher action on climate change. The Climate Clinic has been in operation at all the party conferences.

While the study will be seen as a cause for great concern, it is the figure for the increase in extreme drought that some observers find most frightening.

"We're talking about 30 per cent of the world's land surface becoming essentially uninhabitable in terms of agricultural production in the space of a few decades," Mark Lynas, the author of High Tide, the first major account of the visible effects of global warming around the world, said. "These are parts of the world where hundreds of millions of people will no longer be able to feed themselves."

Mr Pendleton said: "This means you're talking about any form of development going straight out of the window. The vast majority of poor people in the developing world are small-scale farmers who... rely on rain."

A glimpse of what lies ahead

The sun beats down across northern Kenya's Rift Valley, turning brown what was once green. Farmers and nomadic herders are waiting with bated breath for the arrival of the "short" rains - a few weeks of intense rainfall that will ensure their crops grow and their cattle can eat.

The short rains are due in the next month. Last year they never came; large swaths of the Horn of Africa stayed brown. From Ethiopia and Eritrea, through Somalia and down into Tanzania, 11 million people were at risk of hunger.

This devastating image of a drought-ravaged region offers a glimpse of what lies ahead for large parts of the planet as global warming takes hold.

In Kenya, the animals died first. The nomadic herders' one source of sustenance and income - their cattle - perished with nothing to eat and nothing to drink.

Bleached skeletons of cows and goats littered the barren landscape.

The number of food emergencies in Africa each year has almost tripled since the 1980s. Across sub-Saharan Africa, one in three people is under-nourished. Poor governance has played a part.

Pastoralist communities suffer most, rather than farmers and urban dwellers. Nomadic herders will walk for weeks to find a water hole or riverbed. As resources dwindle, fighting between tribes over scarce resources becomes common.

One of the most critical issues is under-investment in pastoralist areas. Here, roads are rare, schools and hospitals almost non-existent.

Nomadic herders in Turkana, northern Kenya, who saw their cattle die last year, are making adjustments to their way of life. When charities offered new cattle, they said no. Instead, they asked for donkeys and camels - animals more likely to survive hard times.

Pastoralists have little other than their animals to rely on. But projects which provide them with money to buy food elsewhere have proved effective, in the short term at least.

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2. TARIQ ALI ON HUGO CHAVEZ, AND THE AXIS OF HOPE

AMY GOODMAN: Are you following this vote in the UN?

TARIQ ALI: I am following this vote very closely, and I know that the United States is strong-arming even tiny countries, who obviously can’t resist the pressure. And the fact that the United States takes this vote that seriously in a situation in Latin America indicates how much they fear Hugo Chavez, because otherwise this would have been a routine vote. It didn't matter to them which Latin American country sits on the Security Council. There’s no right to veto. But they are fearful that the Venezuelans will use the Security Council as a platform to put an alternative view forward, and we live in a world where alternative views aren’t permitted.

AMY GOODMAN: So what do you foresee happening at the United Nations?

TARIQ ALI: Well, I fear that the Venezuelans will not make it. I think that the United States will probably get its way and that Guatemala, a country with the worst human rights record in Latin America probably, is going to be the representative of Latin America on the Security Council, when a majority of Latin American countries would prefer Venezuela. The majority of Latin Americans are voting for Venezuela, but the United States wants Guatemala, because they will not tolerate a Venezuelan presence on the Security Council.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re talking to Tariq Ali. Your last book was on Iraq. Can you talk about how Iraq relates to Latin America?

TARIQ ALI: Well, I just felt, Amy -- I mean, we all write about Iraq. We talk about Iraq. The situation is incredibly depressing, as some of the images on your own program showed today. And I felt, because I’ve been traveling to Latin America a great deal, that we needed a book out which gave some sense of what is possible in this world and that people were getting incredibly weighed under the constant reports of violence coming out of the Arab world. And here was a part of the world where the only violence was that being directed against popular movements by those who the United States backs, and Chavez and Evo Morales were winning democratic elections and actually giving the people what they had promised them in these campaigns.

So, calling it Pirates of the Caribbean was, of course, tongue-in-cheek, but the Axis of Hope is the strong part of this book, that it shows that you can wake the world up from a neoliberal sleep, in which it has sunk, and that the Latin American leaders have a social vision, which offers some hope to the world at the present time. I mean, what we get from the Middle East is at the moment three occupations and constant battles and struggles and resistance and violence.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to go to a clip of a film, going back to the attempted coup in Venezuela. On April 11, 2002, President Hugo Chavez was removed from power by a coalition of military officials and business leaders. But the attempted coup d’etat failed, and Chavez returned to office two days later.

Two Irish documentary filmmakers, Kim Bartley and Donnacha O’Briain, happened to be in the presidential palace in Venezuela, both when Hugo Chavez was removed and when he returned. They chronicled this period in a remarkable documentary called The Revolution Will Not Be Televised. This is a clip from the film. We start with then-White House press secretary, Ari Fleischer, giving the Bush administration’s response to the coup.

ARI FLEISCHER: Let me share with you the administration's thoughts about what's taking place in Venezuela. […] We know that the action encouraged by the Chavez government provoked this crisis. […] The Chavez government suppressed peaceful demonstrations, […] fired on unarmed, peaceful protestors, resulting in ten killed and 100 wounded. […]That is what took place, […] and a transitional civilian government has been installed.

NARRATOR: Despite the blackout by the Venezuelan private media, members of Chavez’s government have managed to communicate with international television networks, getting the message back to Venezuela via cable TV that Chavez had not resigned and was being held captive. Very quickly, the word began to spread.

Chavez had not been seen or heard of since he had been taken away two days earlier. That morning, as we drove around Caracas, the atmosphere was electric. Despite police repression, people had decided to march on the palace.

With so many people out on the streets, the palace guard who had remained loyal to Chavez decided to act. Behind Carmona’s back, a plot was being hatched by Chavez’s men to retake the palace. The plan was for the guard to take up key positions, surround the palace and to wait for a given signal.

With all their positions secured, the signal was given. The presidential guard moved in. Several members of the newly installed government were taken prisoner, but in the confusion, Carmona and the generals had managed to slip away.

As the guards secured the building, Chavez’s ministers, who had been in hiding for the last two days, began to arrive back to the palace to try and reestablish the legitimate cabinet.

AMY GOODMAN: The Revolution Will Not Be Televised, the film that was made in the palace during the attempted coup. Tariq Ali, your response?

TARIQ ALI: Well, I was there a year later, Amy, when they were celebrating the victory and the defeat of the coup, and I saw the first viewing of this film in Caracas with 10,000 citizens of that city, and they were going absolutely wild. And, of course, what the film showed is that it was popular support for Chavez, both amongst the poorer sections of the community and amongst rank-and-file soldiers, which made the coup impossible for the United States and the Venezuelan oligarchy. And this, of course, has been Chavez's big, big strength in that country. He has now won five elections in a row, and he’s probably going to win the next one, too, with a big majority.

And what people do not seem to understand, within the establishment in the United States and its state media hacks, is that you can have political leaders today in parts of the world who are extremely popular because they give the people what they promised to give them. And politics elsewhere has become so isolated and alienating from the population that people just don't expect this anymore. And I think this is what explains the popularity of Chavez. And, of course, using oil money to push through mega-spending on health, on education, on building homes for the poor, free universities for the poor, this is not permitted in this world. He does it, and at the same time he challenges U.S. foreign policy in a very sharp way.

AMY GOODMAN: What about those who say he’s increasingly authoritarian?

TARIQ ALI: Well, they’ve been saying this from the first time he won the election. You know, if he were increasingly authoritarian, how come that not a single private television station or newspaper, who denounce him day in and day out, have been touched? I mean, I cannot imagine, by the way, Amy, any Western country, this country or Britain, where you had the bulk of the media against you, which denounced you, which slandered you, and the governments would just sit back and take it. I think, you know, it’s crazy to say that he’s authoritarian. Some of the criticisms made by him from within the Bolivarians is that he’s not tough enough with the opposition. So it’s exactly the opposite.

AMY GOODMAN: And the significance of his speech at the United Nations?

TARIQ ALI: Well, that was a historic speech. I mean, the images weren’t fully shown. But in other parts of the world, they were shown, and you saw the bulk of the delegates applauding him. It was like a breath of fresh air. And he took on the Bush administration's foreign policy, and lots of people came up to him afterwards from the Arab world, from other parts of the world, and said, “You say something which we can no longer say. We are just too frightened.” And that is what gives it its support.

I mean, I think he went over the top a bit. I’m personally opposed to attacking Bush personally, in personal terms. Whether he’s an alcoholic or what is not significant. But I think the administration has been attacking Chavez so hard, trying to get rid of him, telling lies about him, as we saw in that clip from the White House press secretary, that he’s a very spontaneous guy and lost his cool a bit. But overall, the speech had a tremendous impact, and it made him a cult figure globally. And then, of course, it made Noam Chomsky a bestseller in this country, Amy, which is the other side of it.

AMY GOODMAN: Yes, I think Noam Chomsky´s book Hegemony or Survival has hit number five on the New York Times bestseller list, the one that he held up.

TARIQ ALI: But, you know, this is a very interesting development, that a foreign head of state comes to the United Nations, denounces the American government, advises U.S. citizens to read Noam Chomsky, and they flock out and buy his book.

AMY GOODMAN: The New York Times had to issue a correction, by the way, because they reported twice that afterwards Chavez said he wished he could have met Noam Chomsky, but unfortunately he was dead. And that’s what the Times reported twice.

TARIQ ALI: It was not true, because Chavez was talking about Galbraith.

AMY GOODMAN: Yes, that he wished he could have met Galbraith, but that he had not said that about Chomsky.

TARIQ ALI: He wished he could have met John Kenneth Galbraith. Yeah, but he certainly knows Chomsky is alive. I think Chomsky at the moment is probably on his way to Venezuela, as we speak. But there’s no question about that, but that’s very interesting, because this is a president -- the other thing about him is he genuinely reads books. There are very few politicians who do. He reads books.

AMY GOODMAN: Evo Morales, the Bolivian president?

TARIQ ALI: Evo Morales, I have met once. I met him in Caracas. Incredibly honest, sincere, devoted politician. The first Native South American to be elected president of a republic.

AMY GOODMAN: Indigenous.

TARIQ ALI: Indigenous American. And I think that’s had a mega impact. I’m nervous about the situation in Bolivia, because there's a lot of talk going on. The oligarchs there are incredibly unhappy and [inaudible] with the army. But again, if they try and topple Evo, you will have a very, very fierce resistance, because he came to power on the basis of gigantic social movements, which I try and explain in this book, that it’s not that these people suddenly emerged. They have been part of social movements, both in Venezuela, where the first big revolt against neo-liberalism took place in 1989 and 3000 people were killed -- that´s what produced Chavez -- then in Bolivia, where you’ve had giant social movements taking place.

And what they’ve also done is broken the isolation of the Cubans. You know, there’s no doubt about that, that Cubans are less isolated now than they’ve been for a very, very long time. And the human capital that Cuba, this island of 12 million people, has produced in terms of doctors and teachers now flooding into Venezuela and Bolivia to help people there. So there are good things going on.

AMY GOODMAN: What’s happening in Cuba now with President Castro sick?

TARIQ ALI: Well, I think he is ill. I think, you know, of course, Fidel, being a total atheist, has no illusions about where he’s going to end up after he dies. He knows he’s going to be six foot under the ground. There’s no hell or no heaven. He doesn't believe. He’s never been a believer.

The question is: what will happen to Cuba? And the big question dominating discussions behind the scenes is: what will Miami do, what will Washington do? My own view is that they will try and flood the island with money and buy it. That’s what they will do, after all 12 million people. But from that point of view, I think the Cuban leadership has really to push through certain reforms themselves -- they’ve been very lax in it -- but, I mean, you know, proper reforms, not neoliberal reforms, but actually make available to the population a media which reflects criticism and discussion, opens up the country to diverse thought processes. It’s important for that government to do it, and I have said this to them, and at the same time, opens up the economy to a certain extent, learns some of the lessons, positive lessons, from Venezuela, etc., and try and keep Miami at bay.

It would be a total disaster for Cuba if Miami really reentered Havana, because with it would come everything that existed before, and all the gains that the revolution has made, which even people hostile, like Colin Powell, admit that Castro has done a lot for the people of his country, that would go if it became a neoliberal island. And so, the Cuban leadership now needs to discuss how to stop that happening.

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3. NOAM CHOMSKY ADVOCATES Chávez

(Author unknown)

US intellectual Noam Chomsky Monday defended Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez' foreign policy and justified nuclear tests by North Korea as "an act of survival."

"North Korea faces the threat of the nuclear weapons the United States has in the region and, therefore, it needs to defend itself," Chomsky told reporters in the Chilean town of Temuco, Efe reported.

Chomsky, who arrived in Temuco upon an invitation from the La Frontera University to take part in a Congress on American Indigenous Languages and Literatures, also criticized the foreign policy of his country's President George W. Bush.

Chomsky (77) was quoted by Chávez last September 20 during his speech before the United Nations General Assembly, where the Venezuelan ruler suggested reading Chomsky's book "Hegemony and Survival," published in 2003.

In Temuco, Chomsky declared that Venezuela "lives in a climate of absolute democracy." He was replying to questions regarding Venezuela bid to occupy a non-permanent seat at the United Nations Security Council.

On the contrary, Guatemala -the other candidate to the Security Council for Latin America- "was intervened by the United States" in the 1950s and "has suffered a serious repression by its own governments."

"Anyone voting Guatemala is endorsing genocide, torture and killings in this country," Chomsky stressed, adding that Chávez "is given great support by his people, the largest support in the hemisphere."

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4. HOWARD ZINN ON OUR 'ADDICTION TO MASSIVE VIOLENCE'

BY

YURI LOUDON

Howard Zinn has changed the way we read history. The People's History of the United States pulled the mask off some of the enduring, and damaging myths about America. His writings and teachings encourage us to look beyond what we've been spoon fed and to question the "need" for violence. He continues to be an outspoken critic of war and political coruption and a vocal proponent of grassroots activism. The Internationalist caught up with him for our Worldly Advice Issue.

You argue that governments must convince the public to go to war; that war is not inherent of human nature. How did this happen with the Iraq war?

The government set out to present false information. Colin Powell presented a detailed account of Hussein's WMDs, probably the most compact assembly of falsehoods that have ever been uttered in front of the United Nations. They then bombarded the public, aided by an uncritical press, with information that led them to believe that the United States was somehow in imminent danger and that we had to go to war. There was a barrage of information given to the public by the government, and then repeated by the press. This is clear evidence that the government cannot depend on the public's natural instinct to go to war; they have to work very, very hard; they have to propagandize and persuade them [the public] that war is necessary.

In a recent article in The Progressive, you say that we have an "addiction to massive violence." How can we shake this addiction?

It isn't that the people are addicted to massive violence, but they can become addicted. That is, they can become accustomed to the idea that the only solution to a problem, when someone crosses a boundary or when a tyrant exists, war is the solution.

The wars are poisoning minds of the people engaged in them, and the answer is to look back in history, to look at the outcomes of war. Can you find that when you kill millions of people and maim hundreds of thousands, is there more democracy? More liberty? To learn about history is to kick the habit of violence and show that war is futile and addiction is a consequence of engagement in it.

How do you look back on your time as a WW2 bombardier?

Now I am very regretful and very sad. I indiscriminately killed, which is what bombing is, and it was acceptable. It was only afterward that I began to think about what I was really doing to human beings. I was participating in atrocities. Over half of those dead were not soldiers, but civilians. So, I look back regretfully at that experience and have since tried to make up for it by educating people and by participating in the anti-war movement.

What is an issue on which your opinion has changed, and what have you learned from the change?

Certainly my opinion changed from the time I was a bombardier that there was such a thing as a good war, and I now know that there is no such thing. I also thought we had a democratic society and government, with checks and balances. I now believe only in the movements of the people that can change history.

Are popular resistance movements different now than in the past?

I think that the mobilization of people is not fundamentally different. Very often, people will get frustrated that the movement isn't succeeding in stopping the war. They think there must be a better way, that there must be some magic new way to organize, but it takes time and patience; there's no magic to it. There's no cause for despair that we have not yet seen results yet; it's a matter of continuing to do it because people are basically decent and don't want war.

Should there be limits on free speech in higher education?

Professors and students should be express whatever opinions they want. Our culture is dominated by certain ideas: the ideas of patriotism, nationalism, ideas of capitalism and success in terms of wealth and prestige; students are already exposed to all sorts of ideas. Professors should be free to express their ideas because it serves as an example to students. For them to bring their ideas into the classroom is to bring their own cart to the marketplace of ideas. Professors need to express those opinions; when a professor holds back and is timid, he is setting an example of timidity in the classroom.

How can students contribute to and encourage the marketplace of ideas?

Students shouldn't simply accept the authority of their teacher; they should go outside of the reading lists and outside the syllabus to bring into the class challenging ideas. They must be willing to speak up and argue with the professor and not worry about being put down.

What would the 20-year-old you say to the current you?

Wow, I didn't realize you would turn out this way! I didn't realize that you would turn from an eager young bombardier to an anti-war protester. And the 20 year old would say, "I didn't think you would last this long!"

Any advice for readers?

Go to the library. Don't watch TV! Every time you are tempted to watch TV, pick up a book. Pay attention to independent news sources and independent magazines!

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5. FIGHTING THE 'IMPERIAL' INTERNET

BY

BILL MOYERS & SCOTT FOGDALL

It was said that all roads led to Rome. However exaggerated, the image is imprinted in our imagination, reminding us of the relentless ingenuity of the ancient Romans and their will to control an empire.

For centuries Roman highways linked far-flung provinces with a centralized web of power. The might of the imperial legions was for naught without the means to transport them. The flow of trade -- the bloodstream of the empire's wealth -- also depended on the integrity of the roadways. And because Roman citizens could pass everywhere, more or less unfettered on their travels, ideas and cultural elements circulated with the same fluidity as commerce.

Like the Romans, we Americans have used our technology to build a sprawling infrastructure of ports, railroads and interstates which serves the strength of our economy and the mobility of our society. Yet as significant as these have been, they pale beside the potential of the Internet. Almost overnight, it has made sending and receiving information easier than ever. It has opened a vast new marketplace of ideas, and it is transforming commerce and culture.

It may also revitalize democracy.

"Wait a minute!" you say. "You can't compare the Internet to the Roman empire. There's no electronic Caesar, no center, controlling how the World Wide Web is used."

Right you are -- so far. The Internet is revolutionary because it is the most democratic of media. All you need to join the revolution is a computer and a connection. We don't just watch; we participate, collaborate and create. Unlike television, radio and cable, whose hirelings create content aimed at us for their own reasons, with the Internet every citizen is potentially a producer. The conversation of democracy belongs to us.

That wide-open access is the founding principle of the Internet, but it may be slipping through our fingers. How ironic if it should pass irretrievably into history here, at the very dawn of the Internet Age.

The Internet has become the foremost testing ground where the forces of innovation, corporate power, the public interest and government regulation converge. Already, the notion of a level playing field -- what's called network neutrality -- is under siege by powerful forces trying to tilt the field to their advantage. The Bush majority on the FCC has bowed to the interests of the big cable and telephone companies to strip away, or undo, the Internet's basic DNA of openness and non-discrimination. When some members of Congress set out to restore network neutrality, they were thwarted by the industry's high spending lobbyists. This happened according to the standard practices of a rented Congress -- with little public awareness and scarce attention from the press. There had been a similar blackout 10 years ago, when, in the Telecommunications Act of 1996, Congress carved up our media landscape. They drove a dagger in the heart of radio, triggered a wave of consolidation that let the big media companies get bigger, and gave away to rich corporations -- for free -- public airwaves worth billions.

This time, they couldn't keep secret what they were doing. Word got around that without public participation these changes could lead to unsettling phenomenon -- the rise of digital empires that limit, or even destroy, the capabilities of small Internet users. Organizations across the political spectrum -- from the Christian Coalition to MoveOn.org -- rallied in protest, flooding Congress with more than a million letters and petitions to restore network neutrality. Enough politicians have responded to keep the outcome in play.

At the core this is a struggle about the role and dimensions of human freedom and free speech. But it is also a contemporary clash of a centuries-old debate over free-market economics and governmental regulation, one that finds Adam Smith invoked both by advocates for government action to protect the average online wayfarer and by opponents of any regulation at all.

In The Wealth of Nations, Smith argued that only the unfettered dealings of merchants and customers could ensure economic prosperity. But he also warned against the formation of monopolies -- mighty behemoths that face little or no competition. Our history brims with his legacy. Consider the explosion of industry and the reign of the robber barons during the first Gilded Age in the last decades of the 19th century. Settlements and cities began to fill the continent, spirited by a crucial technological advance: the railroad. As railroad companies sprang up, they merged into monopolies. Merchants and farmers were often charged outlandish freight prices -- until the 1870s, when the Granger Laws and other forms of public regulation provided some protection to customers.

At about the same time, chemist Samuel Andrews -- inventor of a new method for refining oil into kerosene -- partnered with John D. Rockefeller to create the Standard Oil Company. By century's end Standard Oil had forged a monopoly, controlling a network of pipelines and railways that spanned the country.

Competition became practically impossible as the mammoth company manipulated prices and crushed rival after hapless rival. Only with the passage of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act in 1890 did the public have hope of recourse against the overwhelming might of concentrated economic and political power. But, less than a century later a relative handful of large companies would assemble monopolies over broadcasting, newspapers, cable and even the operating system of computers, and their rule would go essentially unchallenged by the U.S. government.

Now we have an Internet infrastructure that is rapidly evolving, in more ways than one. As often occurred on Rome's ancient highways, cyber-sojourners could soon find themselves paying up in order to travel freely. Our new digital monopolists want to use their new power to reverse the way the Internet now works for us: allowing those with the largest bankrolls to route their content on fast lanes, while placing others in a congested thoroughfare. If they succeed in taking a medium that has an essential democratic nature and monetizing every aspect of it, America will divide further between the rich and poor and between those who have access to knowledge and those who do not.

The companies point out that there have been few Internet neutrality violations. Don't mess with something that's been working for everyone, they say; don't add safeguards when none have so far been needed. But the emerging generation, which will inherit the results of this Washington battle, gets it. Writing in The Yale Daily News, Dariush Nothaft, a college junior, after hearing with respect the industry's case, argues that:

Nevertheless, the Internet's power as a social force counters these arguments. … A non-neutral Internet would discourage competition, thereby costing consumers money and diminishing the benefits of lower subscription prices for Internet access. More importantly, people today pay for Internet access with the understanding that they are accessing a wide, level field of sites where only their preferences will guide them. Non-neutrality changes the very essence of the Internet, thereby making the product provided to users less valuable.

So the Internet is reaching a crucial crossroads in its astonishing evolution. Will we shape it to enlarge democracy in the digital era? Will we assure that commerce is not its only contribution to the American experience?

The monopolists tell us not to worry: They will take care of us, and see to it that the public interest is honored and democracy served by this most remarkable of technologies.

They said the same thing about radio.

And about television.

And about cable.

Will future historians speak of an Internet Golden Age that ended when the 21st century began?

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6. ADVOCACY GROUPS IGNORE BREAST CANCER HOT SPOTS

BY

FRANCESCA LYMAN

Living on the wild, craggy elbow of Cape Cod, Jane Chase feels lucky to have spent 50 years in a house facing Nantucket Sound. "We love it here," she says, looking out over a marsh at a spectacular sunset on Red River Beach.

It wasn't until a few years ago, when a community effort was launched to understand the strangely high rate of breast cancer on Cape Cod, that the mother of six considered her South Harwich, Mass., home to be anything other than a bucolic haven.

The two-time breast cancer survivor might never have linked her disease to the environment had she not joined a local cancer group and later enlisted in a household health study. She then learned that her classic colonial garrison house harbored lurking toxins, and that her idyllic neighborhood had likely been aerially sprayed with now-banned organochlorine pesticides such as DDT.

Cape Cod, with a breast cancer rate 20 percent higher than the rest of Massachusetts, is just one of a several places around the United States with the dubious distinction of being a "hot spot" on our nation's increasingly lit-up breast cancer map. It's joined by Long Island, Marin County and San Francisco -- places where a controversy has brewed for years -- and newly emerging areas such as the Puget Sound in Washington state and Brownsville, Texas.

A large cluster of elevated mortality rates for breast cancer, extending from the Mid-Atlantic through the Northeastern states, has "persisted for many years," says Deborah Winn of the National Cancer Institute (NCI). In the Northeast, rates are about 16 percent higher than the rest of the U.S. and in the smaller swatch from New York City to Philadelphia rates are 7 percent higher than the rest of the Northeast.

The reasons for variable rates of the disease are not well understood, according to Winn. But what is clear is that the discovery of hot spots have sparked a new breast-cancer environmental movement, with strong local advocacy groups as well as new national groups.

Long Island activists began drawing their own breast cancer maps in 1992, pinpointing neighbors' homes as if they were battlefield targets. As more hot spots were identified, each touched off a surge of interest. On Cape Cod, women "called on researchers, like ourselves, to begin studying the problem," says Julia Brody of Silent Spring Institute, in Newton, Mass. Long Island activists went to Congress for research funding to investigate possible environmental factors.

"They felt there was a bias in the scientific literature toward 'known risk factors' for the disease, and that these tend to reside with the personal [factors] -- like [use of] alcohol, tobacco and birth control," says Scott Carlin, a geographer at C.W. Post College. "And there's not an equally well-studied and known list of risk factors in the environmental spheres."

The first flurry of environmental studies proved inconclusive, but activists and scientists have not stopped pursuing the environmental questions. Far from it: Interest in environmental factors is growing, says Kevin Donegan of the Breast Cancer Fund (BCF), one of several national breast cancer advocacy groups that formed in the 1990s. "Our own polls show an overwhelming majority of people believe that pollution of various kinds is driving this disease," he says.

In 2006, some 270,000 U.S. women -- and men, too, since a small percentage are prone -- will learn that they have some form of breast cancer. The American Cancer Society predicts that, of those cases, more than 40,000 will die of the disease. Worldwide, an estimated 1.2 million people will be diagnosed with breast cancer this year, but women living in North America maintain the highest rate of the disease.

Breast cancer is what scientists call "multifactorial," in that a variety of genetic, environmental and lifestyle factors may play a role. The American Cancer Society attributes 5 to 10 percent of the risk of developing the disease on genetic predisposition. Another 25 to 30 percent of the risk has been linked to reproductive/hormonal factors, such as earlier age at menarche, later age of menopause, waiting longer to have children and having few (if any) children.

But these possible risk factors leave much unexplained. So researchers have also looked to diet, lifestyle (smoking, exercise, alcohol) and exposure to environmental toxins in the air, water and food. In the view of establishment groups such as the American Cancer Society and the NCI, however, the environment is an unlikely reason for the noticeable U.S. hot spots.

For many breast cancer activists, this lack of attention to the physical environment is frustrating. And certainly, Jane Chase, with her family of six kids and young age at motherhood, proves that having children early and often is no guarantee of being protected from breast cancer.

"They can continue to dismiss environmental factors, and harp on demographics, when frankly that's why we're in such a pickle," says Jeanne Rizzo, director of the BCF. "This generation is getting sicker rather than healthier, and we need to understand why."

Federal funding for breast cancer research since 1991 has totaled $6.8 billion, according to BCF's 2006 report, State of the Evidence, but only a small percentage of that has been directed toward studying environmental connections to the disease. Like other cancers, breast cancer has a long latency period -- typically 20 to 40 years -- and before it can be detected, people have moved, died or been exposed to other factors that promote or retard the disease.

Enter the mapmakers. An exciting new tool of epidemiological researchers is geographic information systems (GIS), a computer-aided system that makes it possible to integrate and display (most commonly as a map) geographically referenced information that is otherwise difficult to correlate.

"Geographic data can add another dimension to the mix," says Silent Spring's Brody, "because it can answer questions about the environment that women can't answer for themselves -- like whether their neighborhood was sprayed for Gypsy moths."

Back in Cape Cod, Jane Chase thinks about her nine grandchildren as she follows the results of studies looking into her local environment. "Instead of just focusing on treating and curing those who are unfortunately afflicted now," says Chase, "we need to learn about all of the factors that are triggering and promoting this disease so that we can prevent it from attacking future generations."

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