IN THE EARLY PART OF THE 19TH CENTURY, INDUSTRIAL ENGLAND WENT PARANOID AND BALLISTIC over the emergence of roving bands of unemployed workingmen who feared the installation of new, automated machinery in the cotton-weaving industries of Nottinghamshire, Lancashire and Yorkshire as a threat to their jobs, livelihoods and honour.

Calling themselves "Luddites" (probably after Ned Ludd, who smashed a spinning jenny in a Leicestershire cotton mill in 1779 to protest his job being thus lost), its followers worked largely in camera under cover of darkness before going on their orgies of destroying what they saw to be the loss of their jobs and honour. (This was years before the welfare state and unemployment benefits, remember.)

After a series of notorious orgies with sledgehammers and iron bars, 17 Luddite ringleaders were sentenced to death on the gallows @ York in 1813, soon after an Act of Parliament made "machine breaking" (as in industrial sabotage) a capital crime; numerous others involved with the Luddites were sentenced to transportation to the Australian penal colonies. (IMHO, the Luddite types thus sentenced were more than likely assigned to the Van Diemen's Land [Tasmania] penal colony, Alcatraz, as it were, in contrast to the main such in New South Wales and Queensland.)

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"WHY," YOU MAY ASK, "BRING UP LUDDITERY AS PART OF A DISCUSSION on objections to abortion?"

Good question there, reader.

Come to think of it, Your Correspondent has to wonder if those who object to abortion on socioeconomic grounds (i.e., to "protect and maintain American jobs," perhaps by way of "industrial heritage" arguments) are probably Luddites @ heart.

Put another way, the protection and continued maintenance of a Luddite socioeconomic model and paradigm--itself expected to be based on free-market capitalistic models and "experience" as are themselves expected to be one with the defence of America's "antient and pecuilar soverignty and soverign identity"--requires maintaining a workforce expected to remain deliberately poor, ignorant and easily-influenced, especially on "patriotic" matters.

The only way they know how to "protect" what is essentially a labour-intensive socioeconomic model as is @ the core of Luddite thought? You guessed it--a "complete and final" ban on abortion, contraception, family planning and sex education.

All excused officially in the name of "economic reasons"--the very patsy which Romania's Communist regime under Nicolae Ceauçescu invoked to ban abortions during his tenure from 1966 until his overthrow in 1989.

Only in Ceauçescu's case, the core desire was to "hasten the final onset of Pure Socialism," which, in Marxist/Leninist thought, would be the final perfection of Communism. Never mind where super-secret estimates suggested that such a policy would only create a significant labour surplus some 30 years on, anathema to a political model which saw mass unemployment as a fatal flaw of capitalism and socioeconomic development based upon centralised Five-Year Plans.

And it's not just about banning abortions: Discouraging investment in new plant and industry, essentially expecting existing industries to keep soldering along with largely outdated, inefficent and labour-intensive manufacturing equipment and processes (excusing such as tax-break-protected "industrial heritage" all the while), is also key to such a strategem.

The which, in any case, needs to be challenged because of its potential socioeconomic consequences. (Unless, of course, you can provide a rational argument in defence of these points.)   

SO MUCH FOR HIS FRAUDULENCY'S GREAT WITHIN EXPECTING WASTEFUL AND FRIVOLOUS CONSUMER SPENDING ORGIES among those receiving Economic Stimulus Payments from $300 starting May 2nd, preferably @ the local Wally World and without due regard for getting your money's worth.

All that matters to the "inside of the inside," so to speak, is that these monies be spent all the sooner.

But when you get right down to it, expect elements weird and unwholesome to follow close behind, especially among those in lower-income or economically-disadvantaged communities so entitled, to exploit same in furtherance of Make Money Fast (MMF) schemes such as:

• "Five Reports" and "mailing-list generator" chain letters;
• "cashflow gifting clubs" in their several permutations (among them "Friends Helping Friends," "Dinner Party," "Pit Stop," "Aeroplane" and suchlike); and
• "Australian one-up" plans.

And if current trends are anything, expect PayPal and suchlike to be the preferred medium of choice, if only to get around the Postal Inspection Service (but, on the other hand, risking prosecution under 18 USC 1343, as proscribes Fraud by Wire, Radio or Television under pain of penal servitude).

Or, alternately, courier services like UPS, FedEx and DHL, and for much the same reasons.

In my own experience, there is precedent for such a likelihood: Almost concurrently with the State of Minnesota's issuing special tax rebate payments in 1998 and 1999 out of budget surpluses, "mailing list" chain letters were received of Your Correspondent in the letterposts (and perhaps quite a few others across Minnesota).

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HENCE, IF YOU RECEIVE ANYTHING ALONG THE LINES OF "GIFTING CLUB," CHAIN LETTER OR "AUSTRALIAN ONE-UP" PLANS about the same time you receive your Economic Stimulus Payments, by letterpost or e-mail, such would be well worth avoiding.

And should be reported instead to The Proper Channels, especially in view of their potential for exploiting the vulnerable of society to the point of causing substantial socioeconomic harm and disruption beyond that now abroad as is squarely the fault of His Fraudulency's Great Within.

But then again ... how do we know that the Great Within isn't, somehow, secretly endorsing such scams to target the vulnerable entitled to these special emouluments as a way of "keeping them in their place" all the more?

WITH THE START OF LAST YEAR, THE WORLD'S OLDEST DAILY GAZETTA (as in Sweden's Post-och Inrikes Tidningar, never mind its publishing nothing but legal and commercial notices as opposed to general news and information) "went virtual" after 361 years in print.

In other words, appearing only on the Information Stuporbahn.

Which, it turns out, will be the same way that The Capital Times of Madison, WI will be going @ the end of April after 90 years of afterlunch publication. (Well, not quite: They will still have a print presence every Wednesday [covering news, opinion and commentary] and Thursday [covering arts and amusements] as both an insert to the surviving Wisconsin State Journal and free stand-alone distribution in and around Wisconsin's capital city, and will still have an editorial presence in the State Journal's Sunday edition.)

Which, as Dave Zweifel of said Capital Times explained recently, was perhaps a painful, if necessary, decision to ensure the continued presence of alternative news and editorial voices in Mad City:

As I'm sure you can imagine, I've been answering phone calls, letters and e-mails the past couple of weeks about our decision to move The Capital Times at the end of April from a printed-on-newsprint six-day paper to a seven-day paper on the Web along with two substantial weekly editions on paper--one news and opinion, the other entertainment and lifestyle.

It's difficult for some folks to understand how we could make a decision that will take away a printed newspaper they have trusted and enjoyed, some for more than 60 years.

Let me share a story that came out of Albuquerque, N.M., just last month that might contain a clue to the dilemma we faced.

The Albuquerque Tribune, which has been published for 86 years, announced it was shutting down as of Feb. 23. The Tribune, an afternoon paper, has been in a joint operating agreement with the morning Albuquerque Journal, an arrangement quite similar to the one we have here in Madison with the Wisconsin State Journal and Lee Enterprises.

The announcement revealed that the Tribune's circulation had dipped to 9,600 in a metropolitan area with a population of more than 500,000. As recently as 1988, 42,000 homes got the newspaper.

The Tribune was no slouch of a paper. It won the Pulitzer Prize as recently as 1994 and was a finalist for another one in 1996. Its staff of 38 has continued to win state and national awards since.

The Albuquerque paper was just the most recent example of what's happened to afternoon papers over the past 30 years. Some of us were able to weather the storm, but as the Internet took hold, the handwriting was on the wall.

We had a choice. We could have continued to do things like we've always done and eventually suffered the fate of the Albuquerque Tribune and all the others and let The Capital Times slowly fade away, forever stilling its progressive voice and what we've meant to the Madison area and Wisconsin for roughly 90 years.

Or we could embrace the new technology, reposition ourselves on a medium that has captured millions, and head off into a future that can keep The Capital Times alive for a long time to come.

That's the goal we've set for ourselves, and I hope you will all come along for what should be an exciting ride.

No doubt something which the publishers of faltering daily or weekly gazettas ought to ponder: "Going virtual."

Even if (especially so in the case of rural weeklies) it sometimes requires embracing the collaborative weblog approach to stay afloat--even for the "locals" as are still a staple of many small-town weekly papers. And which, come to think of it, could be a good way for someone to keep alive such weeklies as may no longer be published, but are still fondly remembered; the Hokah Chief down in Your Correspondent's "home patch," as it were, serves as a likely example.

Published from 1855 until 1952, the Chief gained particular fame and attention in its last 40 years of publication (1912-52) under the legendary Herbert Wheaton, who often wrote under such pen names as "Father Ivonoff," "Aunt Jemima," "Hen Peck," "Seldom Seen," "Rube Ellick" and "Ole Vindblo" to the point where, @ times, the Chief had press runs of as many as 10,000 copies (including a substantial circulation in nearby LaCrosse, Wisconsin) and subscribers in every state--not to mention some American visitors in inter-war Europe reportedly receiving copies of the Chief @ the leading hotels.

And this from a rather small community in the Root River Valley of southeast Minnesota!

(Only to be done in by advancing age on Mr. Wheaton's part and an inability to find good help to keep the enterprise going, prompting him to end publication in early 1952, passing away not long afterwards.)

You never can tell....

(But then again, let me know if anybody has designs on reviving the Hokah Chief concept in blog form. I'll be happy to swap links.)  

LEONARD H. PITTS, JNR., A WIDELY-SYNDICATED COLUMNIST WITH THE MIAMI HERALD, is one of those few editorialists who bring sanity and clarity to the Op-Ed pages of the nation's gazettas where conservative voices want to predominate all the more.

Another interesting example of Mr. Pitts' clarity comes in the following, addressed as an open letter to a high-school journalist feeling the heat for taking issue with T-shirts displaying the Confederate battle flag as an arrogant show (@ least in some circles) of "Southern heritage and honour" in his school's gazetta:

Last week, a fellow journalist wrote to ask me for help.

His name is David Tintner, and he's a senior at Cooper City [FL] High, where he's the editor of the school paper. Recently, he wrote a column criticizing those who wear what he regards as ''an extremely offensive symbol'': the Confederate battle flag. David says a group of students known on campus as ''the Redneck Nation'' took exception. A gang of them cornered him at lunch to yell at him. They've made threats and tried to stare him down.

Despite this, David writes that he "found it really cool that so many people actually read the paper. One kid who usually associates himself with the `Rednecks' actually came up to me and said that after reading my column he put all of his Confederate flag attire away and won't wear it anymore. However, the rest of the 'Redneck Nation' seems to have it in for me now.''

David added: "I'm sure you deal with this sort of thing all of the time. I mean what's a good opinion piece if it doesn't make someone mad right? I was just hoping you could offer a few words of wisdom, I would really appreciate it.''

Dear David:

My first words of wisdom would be, watch your back. It sounds as if some of the folks you're dealing with aren't screwed on too tight. That said, let me offer you some answers to the arguments typically advanced by defenders of this American swastika.

• They will tell you the Civil War was not about slavery. Remind them that the president and vice president of the so-called ''Confederate States of America'' both said it was.

• They will tell you that great-great grandpa Zeke fought for the South, and he never owned any slaves. Remind them that it is political leaders--not grunts--who decide whether and why a war is waged.

• They will tell you the flag just celebrates heritage. Remind them that ''heritage'' is not a synonym for ''good.'' After all, Nazis have a heritage, too.

I wish I could say any of that will do you any good. Problem is, it's logic, and we live in a time where people are less able to accept, understand or respond to logic.

If you approach writing your column as I do mine, you see it as an attempt, not to hammer the other side down, but to persuade persuadable minds. Unfortunately, persuadable minds are an endangered species these days. You and I have the misfortune to live in a time and media culture when people think that the loudness of the argument matters more than the coherence of it, when threats and intimidation substitute for logic and reason, a time of made-up ''facts'' and ideological ''truth,'' a time when critical thinking is a lost art and ignorance is ascendant.

By way of example: I guarantee you the three lines of argument I gave you above will earn me loud rebuke from Confederate flag fetishists. They will insult my ancestry and intelligence, throw hissy fits of indignation. The one thing they will not be able to do--this matters to me, though it will not matter to them--is refute a single word of what I said.

I tell my column-writing classes that if ever you propound an argument and all the other side can do in response is have a tantrum, you may consider yourself the winner, by default, of that debate. It is, I grant you, small consolation, but I commend it to you anyway. If you insist on trying to be a reasonable person in an unreasonable time, you should get used to small consolations.

You can find another in what you yourself wrote about the young man who disavowed his Confederate gear because of your column. People do still read us, we do still have an effect and, once in a very great while, we can even take credit for change.

And you're right. That is the very definition of cool.

The which speaks for itself.

"We wish all the time to be able to provide you fresh bread and to propose you a joy of eating life with bread."

--slogan of Kobeya Kitchen, a Japanese bakery/restaurant chain

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EGYPTIAN PRESIDENT HOSNI MUBARAK HAS CALLED UPON THE EGYPTIAN ARMY AND INTERIOR MINISTRY TO INCREASE BREAD PRODUCTION AND DISTRIBUTION in the poorer districts of Cairo and other major cities in response to rioting and long lines outside bakeries over recent days.

Said riots and queues having been aggravated by high wheat prices on the global markets and rumours of corruption among bakeries producing subsidised bread for the poor @ an official price of five piastres (about a penny) a loaf; in contrast, free-market bread sells for as much as 10-12 times the price of subsidised loaves.

Which, by American standards, is cheap however you slice it.

But in Egypt, a substantial number of its 70 million populace lives below the poverty line, and cannot live without subsidised bread.

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MEANWHILE, BACK IN IRAQ, NOTWITHSTANDING THE CONTINUED PRESENCE OF AMERICAN COLONIAL OCCUPATION FORCES, a newly-released poll jointly commissioned by broadcasters ABC (USA), BBC (GB), ARD (D) and NHK (JPN) reveals that the Iraqis are showing some semblance of optimism five years into the ur-RAHOWA-turning-misadventure.

Howbeit guarded, considering the continued and continuing American Colonial Occupation which His Fraudulency and his hand-picked (as it were) successor, The Terrible-Tempered Mr. Bang, insists will be now, tomorrow and forever (even if there has been a decline in the numbers of those wanting American troops to leave Iraq forthwith).

The BBC, one of the co-sponsors of the survey of 2,000 Iraqis across all its provinces, elaborates further:

While 55% of all Iraqis believe that their lives are good, only 33% of Sunnis are happy with their lives, compared with 62% of Shias and 73% of Kurds.

"In spite of all the improvements, the Sunni population of Iraq clearly remains deeply alienated, and deeply hostile," our correspondent says.

Some 62% of those polled say security in their own area is good - up from 43% last year - but exactly half of all Iraqis still rate security as the biggest problem for the country overall.

And Iraqis are still reporting problems with the provision of basic services.

Large majorities of Iraqis - 88%, 81% and 61% respectively - say that the availability of water, fuel and electricity is "very bad" or "quite bad".

These results echo the findings of a Red Cross report on the humanitarian situation in Iraq.

The Red Cross found that millions of Iraqis have little or no access to clean water, sanitation and healthcare, with some families spending a third of their average monthly wage of $150 (£75) just buying clean water.

And Iraqi public hospitals provide only 30,000 beds, less than half of the 80,000 needed, the report says.

Next month, the top US commander in Iraq, Gen David Petraeus, will testify before the US Congress about progress in Iraq since the beginning of the "surge", when 30,000 extra troops were sent to the country.

One of the stated aims of the surge was to provide enough security to allow Iraqi politicians to hammer out a lasting political settlement.

The poll suggests that Iraqis are sceptical about political progress.

Only 21% believe that the increase in US forces has made conditions for political dialogue in Iraq better, while 43% think the surge has made conditions worse.

And 38% want American forces to leave immediately, compared with 35% who want the troops to remain until security has been restored.

The survey suggests that support for the Iraqi government is returning, after a drop-off in recent years.

Just under 50% of Iraqis now have confidence in the government, up from 39% in March 2007.

"Iraq seems to be holding together as a country. Overwhelming numbers of both Sunnis and the Shia still want it to remain a unified nation," says John Simpson.

"By comparison the Kurds are the splitters. Only 10% of them want to keep the country together."

Support for Iraqi security forces remains high, with 67% expressing confidence in the police and 65% in the army.

In contrast, public confidence in local militias has fallen since last year.

In March 2007 it stood at 36%, by August it was down to 24%, and it has fallen another 2% since then, to 22%.

Within that, Shia feelings about local militias has fallen the most steeply.

In March 2007, 51% of Shias had confidence in militias - now that figure has declined to 28%, the survey suggests.

The poll is the fifth such survey to be conducted since the beginning of the US-led invasion in 2003.

Reinforced by glowing-sounding earnings claims as are unlikely to be realised by respondents, let alone substantiated by advertisers--who, come to think of it, are more than likely to offer what amounts to time-limited "make-work" positions as are unlikely to constitute work by even the requirements for "work experience" in state workfare schemes.