[x BBC] Thursday, 19 October, 2000
Who are Hamas?

Hamas was born during the last intifada

By BBC News Online's Kathryn Westcott

Hamas, the main Islamist movement in the Palestinian territories, was born soon after the previous intifada erupted in 1987.

The organisation opposes the Oslo peace process and its short-term aim is a complete Israeli withdrawal from the Palestinian territories.

Hamas does not recognise the right of Israel to exist. Its long-term aim is to establish an Islamic state on land originally mandated as Palestine - most of which has been contained within Israel's borders since its creation in 1948.

The organisation has strong support in Gaza

The grass-roots organisation - with a political and a military wing - has an unknown number of hard-core members but tens of thousands of supporters and sympathisers.

It has two main functions:

*It is involved in building schools and hospitals in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, and in helping the community in social and religious ways.

*The military wing of Hamas - known as the Izzedine al-Qassam Brigades - has carried out a series of bloody attacks against Israeli targets.

In February and March 1996, Hamas carried out several bus bombings, killing nearly 60 Israelis. It was also blamed for attacks in 1997 in Jerusalem which killed 15 people, and brought the peace process grinding to a halt.

Yasser Arafat's Palestinain Authority (PA) - the government-in-waiting if a Palestinian state is established - views Hamas as a serious rival, yet the Palestinian leader has tried to co-opt the movement into mainstream politics.

But his insistence that Hamas recognise the PA as the only national authority in the Palestinian territories and cease military operations against Israel has been resisted.

Hamas argues that to accept the PA would be to recognise the Oslo accords - which Islamist groups saw as nothing more than a security deal between the PA, Israel and the US, with the ultimate aim of wiping them out.

Despite a fierce offensive against the group in 1996, when the PA arrested some 1,000 Palestinians and took over mosques in Gaza, the PA has been careful not to drive Hamas underground.

'No civil war'

There were concerns this could breed violence that could provoke a collective repression against the Palestinians, which has been inflicted by Israel in the past.

Also, Mr Arafat would not want to be seen to be doing Israel's bidding by trying to destroy Hamas.

The leadership of the organisation has long been divided, with some emphasising Hamas' eventual absorption into the political scene as a legitimate opposition party.

After the 1996 clampdown, more moderate Hamas policymakers questioned whether the suicide attacks were worth the cost of repression.


Hamas has carried out suicide attacks in Israel

But others argued the military wing was necessary to protect the organisation against such repression.

As a result, the movement's leaders have tried, with little success, to get their followers to agree on a policy calling for military reprisals to what they would perceive as Israeli aggression but accepting coexistence with the PA.

The movement has long maintained that in the interests of Palestinian unity, it would not be drawn into a civil war with the PA.

Popular support

Hamas is particularly strong in Gaza, where the economic conditions are worse than the West Bank.

The spiritual head of the group is Sheikh Ahmad Yassin, who despite his often fiery rhetoric is seen as the moderate face of the Palestinian Islamists.

The 64-year-old quadriplegic was released from prison in Israel in 1997, as King Hussein of Jordan's price for freeing Israeli Mossad agents after a bungled attempt to assassinate Hamas leader in Jordan, Khaled Meshal.

After his release, he devoted his energies to repairing damage to Hamas' educational and charitable institutions inflicted during the 1996 crackdown against the movement.

Although in theory based in the Palestinian territories, it was long viewed that the former Amman-based leaders were the real brains behind the movement's military arm.

They were allowed to operate in Jordan - where almost half the population is Palestinian - by the late King Hussein, because it gave him leverage over Mr Arafat.

But the group's headquarters was closed down by the king's successor, Abudullah, and senior figures expelled to Qatar.

6-23-03: Culture Watch

The Question Students Flunked

How well do students comprehend what they read? The answer provided by the federal government's latest test is not very reassuring. According to the National Asessment of Educational Progress, a substantial number of twelfth graders have trouble meeting basic reading proficiency standards. Translation: they can't read.

The National Report Card, as it's called, found that students are doing worse now than a decade ago. In 1992 one in five seniors flunked the test. In 2002 one in four flunked. (The survey found that students in the 4th and 8th grades did a little better than their counterparts in the 1990s.)

Sample Question: Students were asked to read the following passage from FCC chairman Newton Minow's famous address in 1961 denouncing television as a "vast wasteland." They were then asked to answer this question:

What was the main point of Mr. Minow's address?

The results? According to the chart provided by the NAEP:



2002 National Performance Results
Score
Percentage of Students
Evidence of full comprehension


47%
Evidence of partial or surface comprehension


38%
Evidence of little or no comprehension


12%
Omitted Item


2%
Off Task


2%


Note:
These results are for public and nonpublic school students.
Percentage may not add to 100 due to rounding.

The Passage

Newton Minow (1926– ) was appointed by President John Kennedy as chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, the agency responsible for regulating the use of the public airwaves. On May 9, 1961, he spoke to 2,000 members of the National Association of Broadcasters and told them that the daily fare on television was "a vast wasteland." Minow's indictment of commercial television launched a national debate about the quality of programming. After Minow's speech, the television critic for The New York Times wrote: "Tonight some broadcasters were trying to find dark explanations for Mr. Minow's attitude. In this matter the viewer possibly can be a little helpful; Mr. Minow has been watching television."

. . . Your industry possesses the most powerful voice in America. It has an inescapable duty to make that voice ring with intelligence and with leadership. In a few years this exciting industry has grown from a novelty to an instrument of overwhelming impact on the American people. It should be making ready for the kind of leadership that newspapers and magazines assumed years ago, to make our people aware of their world.

Ours has been called the jet age, the atomic age, the space age. It is also, I submit, the television age. And just as history will decide whether the leaders of today's world employed the atom to destroy the world or rebuild it for mankind's benefit, so will history decide whether today's broadcasters employed their powerful voice to enrich the people or debase them. . . .

Like everybody, I wear more than one hat. I am the chairman of the FCC. I am also a television viewer and the husband and father of other television viewers. I have seen a great many television programs that seemed to me eminently worthwhile, and I am not talking about the much-bemoaned good old days of "Playhouse 90" and "Studio One."

I am talking about this past season. Some were wonderfully entertaining, such as "The Fabulous Fifties," the "Fred Astaire Show" and the "Bing Crosby Special"; some were dramatic and moving, such as Conrad's "Victory" and "Twilight Zone"; some were marvelously informative, such as "The Nation's Future," "CBS Reports," and "The Valiant Years." I could list many more—programs that I am sure everyone here felt enriched his own life and that of his family. When television is good, nothing—not the theater, not the magazines or newspapers—nothing is better.

But when television is bad, nothing is worse. I invite you to sit down in front of your television set when your station goes on the air and stay there without a book, magazine, newspaper, profit-and-loss sheet, or rating book to distract you—and keep your eyes glued to that set until the station signs off. I can assure you that you will observe a vast wasteland.

You will see a procession of game shows, violence, audience participation shows, formula comedies about totally unbelievable families, blood and thunder, mayhem, violence, sadism, murder, Western badmen, Western good men, private eyes, gangsters, more violence and cartoons. And, endlessly, commercials—many screaming, cajoling, and offending. And, most of all, boredom. True, you will see a few things you will enjoy. But they will be very, very few. And if you think I exaggerate, try it.

Is there one person in this room who claims that broadcasting can’t do better?. . .

Why is so much of television so bad? I have heard many answers: demands of your advertisers; competition for ever higher ratings; the need always to attract a mass audience; the high cost of television programs; the insatiable appetite for programming material—these are some of them. Unquestionably these are tough problems not susceptible to easy answers.

But I am not convinced that you have tried hard enough to solve them. I do not accept the idea that the present overall programming is aimed accurately at the public taste. The ratings tell us only that some people have their television sets turned on, and, of that number, so many are tuned to one channel and so many to another. They don't tell us what the public might watch if they were offered half a dozen additional choices. A rating, at best, is an indication of how many people saw what you gave them. Unfortunately it does not reveal the depth of the penetration or the intensity of reaction, and it never reveals what the acceptance would have been if what you gave them had been better—if all the forces of art and creativity and daring and imagination had been unleashed. I believe in the people's good sense and good taste, and I am not convinced that the people's taste is as low as some of you assume. . . .

Certainly I hope you will agree that ratings should have little influence where children are concerned. The best estimates indicate that during the hours of 5 to 6 p.m., 60 percent of your audience is composed of children under twelve. And most young children today, believe it or not, spend as much time watching television as they do in the schoolroom. I repeat—let that sink in—most young children today spend as much time watching television as they do in the schoolroom. It used to be said that there were three great influences on a child: home, school and church. Today there is a fourth great influence, and you ladies and gentlemen control it.

If parents, teachers, and ministers conducted their responsibilities by following the ratings, children would have a steady diet of ice cream, school holidays, and no Sunday school. What about your responsibilities? Is there no room on television to teach, to inform, to uplift, to stretch, to enlarge the capacities of our children? Is there no room for programs deepening their understanding of children in other lands? Is there no room for a children's news show explaining something about the world to them at their level of understanding? Is there no room for reading the great literature of the past, teaching them the great traditions of freedom? There are some fine children's shows, but they are drowned out in the massive doses of cartoons, violence, and more violence. Must these be your trademarks? Search your consciences and see if you cannot offer more to your young beneficiaries whose future you guide so many hours each and every day.

What about adult programming and ratings? You know, newspaper publishers take popularity ratings too. The answers are pretty clear; it is almost always the comics, followed by the advice-to-the-lovelorn columns. But, ladies and gentlemen, the news is still on the front page of all newspapers, the editorials are not replaced by more comics, the newspapers have not become one long collection of advice to the lovelorn. Yet newspapers do not need a license from the government to be in business—they do not use public property. But in television—where your responsibilities as public trustees are so plain—the moment that the ratings indicate that Westerns are popular, there are new imitations of Westerns on the air faster than the old coaxial cable could take us from Hollywood to New York. . . .

Let me make clear that what I am talking about is balance. I believe that the public interest is made up of many interests. There are many people in this great country, and you must serve all of us. You will get no argument from me if you say that, given a choice between a Western and a symphony, more people will watch the Western. I like Westerns and private eyes too—but a steady diet for the whole country is obviously not in the public interest. We all know that people would more often prefer to be entertained than stimulated or informed. But your obligations are not satisfied if you look only to popularity as a test of what to broadcast. You are not only in show business; you are free to communicate ideas as well as relaxation. You must provide a wider range of choices, more diversity, more alternatives. It is not enough to cater to the nation's whims—you must also serve the nation's needs. . . .

Let me address myself now to my role, not as a viewer but as chairman of the FCC. . .I want to make clear some of the fundamental principles which guide me.

First, the people own the air. They own it as much in prime evening time as they do at 6 o'clock Sunday morning. For every hour that the people give you, you owe them something. I intend to see that your debt is paid with service.

Second, I think it would be foolish and wasteful for us to continue any worn-out wrangle over the problems of payola, rigged quiz shows, and other mistakes of the past. . . .

Third, I believe in the free enterprise system. I want to see broadcasting improved and I want you to do the job. . . .

Fourth, I will do all I can to help educational television. There are still not enough educational stations, and major centers of the country still lack usable educational channels. . . .

Fifth, I am unalterably opposed to governmental censorship. There will be no suppression of programming which does not meet with bureaucratic tastes. Censorship strikes at the taproot of our free society.

Sixth, I did not come to Washington to idly observe the squandering of the public's airwaves. The squandering of our airwaves is no less important than the lavish waste of any precious natural resource . . . .

What you gentlemen broadcast through the people's air affects the people's taste, their knowledge, their opinions, their understanding of themselves and of their world. And their future. The power of instantaneous sight and sound is without precedent in mankind's history. This is an awesome power. It has limitless capabilities for good—and for evil. And it carries with it awesome responsibilities—responsibilities which you and I cannot escape.

I knew Gary Urton as a freshman at Eastern New Mexico University. He arose from those humble origins to win a MacArthur (Genius) Fellowship and then on to Harvard as a professor of anthropology. Urton has found a written language for the Incas - previously believed to be preliterate - in the form of knots. Youneverknow.

The Independent (London)

June 23, 2003, Monday

DID THE INCA COMMUNICATE THROUGH A COMPUTER CODE OF KNOTS?

BYLINE: STEVE CONNOR SCIENCE EDITOR


THEY RAN the biggest empire of their age, with a vast network of roads, granaries, warehouses and a complex system of government. Yet the Inca, founded in about AD1200 by Manco Capac, were unique for such a significant civilisation: they had no written language. This has been the conventional view of the Inca, whose dominions at their height covered almost all of the Andean region, from Colombia to Chile, until they were defeated in the Spanish conquest of 1532.

But a leading scholar of South American antiquity believes the Inca did have a form of non-verbal communication written in an encoded language similar to the binary code of today's computers. Gary Urton, professor of anthropology at Harvard University, has re-analysed the complicated knotted strings of the Inca - decorative objects called khipu - and found they contain a seven-bit binary code capable of conveying more than 1,500 separate units of information.

In the search for definitive proof of his discovery, which will be detailed in a book, Professor Urton believes he is close to finding the "Rosetta stone" of South America, a khipu story that was translated into Spanish more than 400 years ago. "We need something like a Rosetta khipu and I'm optimistic that we will find one," said Professor Urton, referring to the basalt slab found at Rosetta, near Alexandria in Egypt, which allowed scholars to decipher a text written in Egyptian hieroglyphics from its demotic and Greek translations.

It has long been acknowledged that the khipu of the Inca were more than just decorative. In the 1920s, historians demonstrated that the knots on the strings of some khipu were arranged in such a way that they were a store of calculations, a textile version of an abacus.

Khipu can be immensely elaborate, composed of a main or primary cord to which are attached several pendant strings. Each pendant can have secondary or subsidiary strings which may in turn carry further subsidiary or tertiary strings, arranged like the branches of a tree. Khipu can be made of cotton or wool, cross-weaved or spun into strings. Different knots tied at various points along the strings give the khipu their distinctive appearance.

Professor Urton's study found there are, theoretically, seven points in the making of a khipu where the maker could make a simple choice between two possibilities, a seven-bit binary code. For instance, he or she could choose between weaving a string made of cotton or of wool, or they could weave in a "spin" or "ply" direction, or hang the pendant from the front of the primary string or from the back. In a strict seven-bit code this would give 128 permutations (two to the power of seven) but Professor Urton said because there were 24 possible colours that could be used in khipu construction, the actual permutations are 1,536 (or two to the power of six, multiplied by 24).

This could mean the code used by the makers allowed them to convey some 1,536 separate units of information, comparable to the estimated 1,000 to 1,500 Sumerian cuneiform signs, and double the number of signs in the hieroglyphs of the ancient Egyptians and the Maya of Central America.

If Professor Urton is right, it means the Inca not only invented a form of binary code more than 500 years before the invention of the computer, but they used it as part of the only three-dimensional written language. "They could have used it to represent a lot of information," he says. "Each element could have been a name, an identity or an activity as part of telling a story or a myth. It had considerable flexibility. I think a skilled khipu-keeper would have recognised the language. They would have looked and felt and used their store of knowledge in much the way we do when reading words."

There is also some anecdotal evidence that khipu were more than mere knots on a string used for storing calculations. The Spanish recorded capturing one Inca native trying to conceal a khipu which, he said, recorded everything done in his homeland "both the good and the evil". Unfortunately, in this as in many other encounters, the Spanish burnt the khipu and punished the native for having it, a typical response that did not engender an understanding of how the Inca used their khipu.

But Professor Urton said he had discovered a collection of 32 khipu in a burial site in northern Peru with Incan mummies dating from the time of the Spanish conquest. He hopes to find a khipu that can be matched in some way with a document written in Spanish, a khipu translation. He is working with documents from the same period, indicating that the Spanish worked closely with at least one khipu-keeper. "We have for the first time a set of khipu from a well-preserved and dated archaeological site, and documents that were being drawn up at the same time."

Without a "khipu Rosetta" it will be hard to convince the sceptics who insist that, at most, the knotted strings may be complicated mnemonic devices to help oral storytellers to remember their lines. If they are simple memory machines, khipu would not constitute a form of written language because they would have been understood only by their makers, or someone trained to recall the same story.

Professor Urton has little sympathy with this idea. "It is just not logical that they were making them for memory purposes," he said. "Tying a knot is simply a cue; it should have no information content in itself other than being a reminder." Khipu had layers of complexity that would be unnecessary if they were straightforward mnemonic devices, he said.

TRANSLATING THE SECRETS OF THE AGES

SUMERIAN CUNEIFORM

THE WORLD'S first written language was created more than 5,000 years ago, based on pictograms, or simplified drawings representing actual objects or activities. The earliest cuneiform pictograms were etched into wet clay in vertical columns and, later, more symbolic signs were arranged in horizontal lines, much like modern writing. Cuneiform was adapted by several civilisations, such as the Akkadians, Babylonians and Assyrians, to write their own languages, and used for 3,000 years. Many of the clay tablets, and the occasional reed stylus used to etch cuneiform on them, have survived. Knowledge of cuneiform was lost until 1835 when a British Army officer, Henry Rawlinson, found inscriptions on a cliff at Behistun in Persia. They were identical texts written in three languages - Old Persian, Babylonian and Elamite - which allowed Rawlinson to make the first translation for many hundreds of years.

EGYPTIAN HIEROGLYPHICS

THE ORIGINAL hieroglyphs, dating from about 5,000 years ago, were etched on stone and were elaborate and time-consuming to make, which meant they were reserved for buildings and royal tombs. A simplified version, called hieratic, was eventually developed for everyday bureaucracy, written on papyrus paper.

Later still, hieratic was replaced by demotic writing, the everyday language of Egypt, which appeared on the Rosetta stone with Greek and hieroglyphic script, allowing scholars to translate the original Egyptian writing.

MAYAN HIEROGLYPHICS

THE MAYA used about 800 individual signs or glyphs, paired in columns that read from left to right and top to bottom. The glyphs could be combined to form any word or concept in the Mayan language and inscriptions were carved in stone and wood on monuments or painted on paper, walls or pottery. Some glyphs were also painted as codices made of deer hide or bleached fig-tree paper covered by a thin layer of plaster and folded like an accordion. The complete deciphering of the Mayan writing is only 85 per cent complete, although it has been made easier with the help of computers.

Only highly trained Mayan scribes used and understood the glyphs, and they jealously guarded their knowledge in the belief that only they should act as intermediates between the gods and the common people.

Steve Connor

[x NYTimes Magazine, June 22, 2003]

QUESTIONS FOR NEWT GINGRICH
Speak, History
Interview by MICHAEL CROWLEY

Q A novel you were co-writer of that imagines a Confederate victory at Gettysburg is just out. How would the world be different today if the battle turned out that way?

Well, we don't believe that winning Gettysburg means the South wins the war automatically. It's a three-volume alternative history, and we're exploring it on a couple of levels. One is, Can a brilliant tactical leader from an agrarian society win a fast-enough victory to offset the weight of an industrial society? The second thing we're exploring is the nature of command.
Advertisement

Is there any lesson from Gettysburg that you could apply to politics?

Have a command team that works well together. You could argue that the Bush-Cheney-Rove team is an example.

Is history the best place to find lessons about commanding and leading?

I would say history is the best place. But I also look at social anthropology, studies of animal behavior. There's a wonderful book by Frans de Waal called ''Chimpanzee Politics'' that I routinely recommend to people.

You can understand Washington by studying primates?

Listen, I tell Army officers they'll never see the Pentagon, the White House or the Congress the same after they read ''Chimpanzee Politics.''

Have you ever taken part in a Civil War re-enactment?

No. We're going to be up at Gettysburg next month. I'm probably going to dress as a reporter.

What does re-enacting as a reporter entail?

Just a fancy suit and shirt and tie. I had to pick either congressman or reporter, and I decided that reporters had more fun.

You were recently on Capitol Hill testifying about human longevity. What was that about? What is the secret to longevity?

Well, first of all, not dying. Just the fact that we're in a world where you have fewer people dying of infectious disease, of other kinds of problems -- people just live longer. I'm advocating that if you're going to have that many million people living to that age, you'd better rethink your whole system of health care, retirement.

Has your research taught you any specific health tips, like which vitamins we should take?

It's not complicated. Monitor what you take in and what you do. Keep your attitude positive. Optimists live longer -- that's really true statistically. Smiling is actually a healthy behavior.

When you testify before Congress, is it strange being on the other side of that dais? Do you find yourself impatient with long-winded questions?

No, no, no. An awful lot of these folks are my friends, and they treat me very, very well. I find partly because I was speaker and partly because they see me on Fox and partly because we have a book out, there's a seriousness that I'm very grateful for -- people approach me in a very serious way.

You're a historian. Is history repeating itself for George W. Bush, who is now threatened by a bad economy after a war in Iraq?

I think he clearly has to focus a lot on the question of what he's going to do about the economy. I think he has begun to focus on that.

So the ''tragedy'' of Bush senior won't recur as farce with Bush junior?

I'm not sure I want Karl Rove to know you even asked that question. I think George W. Bush understands the importance of focusing on domestic policy, and he is not likely to disengage.

Now that you're out of Congress, do you find yourself watching a lot of C-Span, wishing you could march onto the floor and tell someone off?

No. If I need to join the debate, I just go to Fox, and it seems to work out fine.

Hillary Clinton's own book has just come out. Do you feel competitive with her? Will you compare rankings on Amazon?

You almost slipped and said that both of our ''novels'' came out at the same time! Look, I'm not competitive with her. She is laying the base for a presidential campaign, and she wrote a book that attracted interest for obvious reasons. I wrote a historical novel that will attract a different kind of interest. Yesterday we were No. 1 on Amazon for fiction, so I'm very happy with how ''Gettysburg'' is doing in its own right. But it's a different market for a different reason.

Will you read her book?

No. I lived through that period.

Cadillac Ranch, January 2003

Cadillac Ranch, June 2003

Official Ant Farm Cadillac Ranch Page

On its 20th anniversary, we look back at the making of Texas' most famous roadside attraction.
by Anne Dingus (Texas Monthly magazine, July 1994)

Vintage and timeless, Cadillac Ranch just turned twenty years old. Ten Cadillacs headed west are buried hood-down in a row,their tail-fins silhouetted against the Panhandle sky: "The hood ornament of Route 66," as one of its creators dubbed it. Cadillac Ranch became a national symbol practically from the moment of its birth in a Texas wheat field in June 1974. The last monument Texans embraced so wholeheartedly was the Alamo. But Cadillac Ranch had its photographer; the Alamo had none.

Cadillac Ranch began as a collaboration between Amarillo's eccentric emeritus, Stanley Marsh 3, and a San Francisco-based designers collective called the Ant Farm. In 1970 Marsh had undertaken his first major pop art project, building what he called "the world's largest soft pool table" on a farm outside Amarillo; shortly thereafter, the Ant Farm was constructing its self-styled "house of the century" in Houston (which resembled a "praying mantis eating a Volkswagen," Marsh says). Eventually, the creators of both architectural whimsies exchanged letters. Next, Marsh offered a piece of land for a then-undetermined art project, and soon thereafter three members of the Ant Farm pulled off the interstate eight miles west of Amarillo to examine a featureless stretch of plain. Ant Farmer Doug Michels remembers the moment: "To me, it was a dolphin idea. Chip Lord, Hudson Marquez, and I were standing in a wheat field off Route 66 in the rain. And you know how the wheat waves and ripples in the wind? Well, suddenly we imagined a dolphin tail fin sticking up out of the wheat. Then the dolphin tail fin became a Cadillac tail fin. That was it. There was Cadillac Ranch."

Marsh loved the concept, particularly since the chosen site lay just off Route 66 (now Interstate 40). Twenty years later, he still waxes enthusiastic about the Cadillac Ranch credo, "What makes America the best country in the world is the car," he says. "In Germany, Africa, China, or Russia kids grow up thinking they'll have a house someday. But American kids dream that they'll have a car. A car represents freedom, romance, money. You can head west to Las Vegas, where you can break the bank, then go out to the beach in California and become a movie star."

The Ant Farmers proceeded to make their idea a reality. Marsh provided beer, money, wheel greasing, a red flatbed for hauling Caddies, and two photographers, Wyatt McSpadden and the late Don Reynolds. In the intervening two decades, the 41-year old McSpadden, who now lives in Austin, repeatedly photographed the Cadillac Ranch, even featuring it on his wedding invitation. Naturally, he took along his camera in June for the twentieth-anniversary party Marsh sponsored on-site (which included a chance for guests to spray-paint congratulatory messages on the freshly whitewashed cars). McSpadden's portraits of Cadillac Ranch as a monument have been widely reproduced. But the pictures on these pages—never before published—document the making, humorous and historical, of a genuine American icon.

Ben Sargent, 6/25/03

Ben Sargent - 1982 Pulitzer Prize in Editorial Cartooning

Ben Sargent received the Pulitzer Prize in 1982 in editorial cartooning while at the Austin American-Statesman.

Sargent began his journalism career in his hometown of Amarillo while a student at Amarillo College (1966-1968). He then attended the University of Texas and graduated with a Bachelor of Journalism degree in 1970.

Early in his journalism career, he was a reporter with the Corpus Christi Caller-Times, the Long News Service, the Austin American-Statesman and the UPI.

He has been the Austin American-Statesman’s political cartoonist since 1974.

Muckraking, 2003

This book - Sex, Drugs, and Cheap Labor In the American Black Market (2003) - by Eric Schlosser follows his Fast Food Nation. Where Schlosser talked about the hidden costs of fast food in our culture, he devotes this new book to strawberries, marijuana, and pornography. The costs are enormous to all of us.